{"_id": "228054", "title": "Are (mostly) client-side JavaScript web apps slower or less efficient?", "text": "I am in the midst of writing a web application for work. Everything is from scratch. I have been a PHP programmer for about 13 years, Node.js programmer for the past 2 years, and have no shortage of experience with JavaScript. I love Node.js, and recently rebuilt the company's API in it... So, in planning this web application, the approach I'm considering is, have the Node.js API for getting data from the server, but render everything in the browser. Use AJAX for retrieving data, History API for loading pages, and a MVC-like pattern for the different components. I have read articles detailing twitters rebuild a few years ago. It was more or less a client-side JavaScript app, but a couple years after launching it, they started moving a lot of processing/rendering back to the server, claiming the app improved dramatically in terms of speed. So, my question is as the title asks, is a client-side centric app substantially slower?"}
{"_id": "110557", "title": "How can a team apply the Scrum methodology without a clear customer?", "text": "Our team is trying to understand and adapt Scrum and other agile practices, but we can not figure out how to deal with customer feedback when there is no customer. Every document about the subject emphasizes how important is having the customer involved in every sprint and how having early feedback helps correcting problems fast and maximizes satisfaction to both sides. I understand clearly this point. In our case, we have no single customer. We develop a website and a smartphone app for an already established and growing audience. I am sure this is a fairly common case so I would like to know some real world experience about how to apply and manage Scrum in this case. Do you just decide all features by yourselves or do incorporate user testing in the sprint? Any other solution?"}
{"_id": "11546", "title": "Are there laws to protect us from hackers who disclose vulnerabilities prior to alerting the vendor?", "text": "Take the example of the recent ASP.NET (and Java Server Faces) vulnerability disclosure at a Hacker conference in Brazil. It's my understanding that the poet tool was demonstrated before Microsoft was even aware of the issue. Are there laws to protect legitimate customers from people who encite the hacker community to start hacking all the ASP.NET servers they can? Who knows how many legitimate businesses were compromised between when the tool was demoed and the patch was applied to the server."}
{"_id": "89378", "title": "Is EF4 mature enough with MySQL or Oracle?", "text": "Is Entity Framework 4 with MySQL or Oracle mature enough to be used on production level web application? Can it provide high level of performance, or should we stick with just plain data access with `SqlCommand`?"}
{"_id": "232179", "title": "Are patches a bad sign for the customer?", "text": "At the office we just got out of a long period where we released patches on a too-frequent basis. Near the end of that period we were doing almost three patches per week on average. Beside that this was very demotivating for the developers, I was wondering what the customer would think about this. I asked the question myself and concluded that I never knew software that was updated that frequently. However, for the case that comes the closest I do not care really since the patches are pretty quickly applied. The customers which received these patches differ a lot from each other. Some were really waiting for the patch where others did not really cared, yet they all got the same patches. The time to update the customers software is less than 30 seconds, so I do not expect any problems concerning time. They do need to be logged out though. So my question in more detail: Is getting updates frequently giving a 'negative' message to the receiver? Of course, I could ask the customers, but I'm not in that position nor do I want to 'Awaken the sleeping dogs'. PS: If there is anything I could do to improve my question, please leave a comment."}
{"_id": "19397", "title": "Why would anyone need this java syntax?", "text": "One day while trawling through the Java language documentation, as you do, I found this little beauty lurking within Double:               0.25 == 0x1.0p-2      Now, obviously (!) this means take the number hexadecimal 1 and right shift it decimal 2 times. The rule seems to be to use base 16 on the integer side and base 2 on the real side. Has anyone out there **actually used the right hand syntax** in a necessary context, not just as a way getting beers out of your fellow developers?"}
{"_id": "19392", "title": "When is it better to offload work to the RDBMS rather than to do it in code?", "text": "Okay, I'll cop to it: I'm a better coder than I am at databases, and I'm wondering where thoughts on \"best practices\" lie on the subject of doing \"simple\" calculations in the SQL query vs. in the code, such as this MySQL example (I didn't write it, I just have to maintain it!) -- This returns the username, and the users age as of the last event.               SELECT u.username as user,             IF ((DAY(max(e.date)) - DAY(u.DOB)) < 0 ,               TRUNCATE(((((YEAR(max(e.date))*12)+MONTH(max(e.date)))            -((YEAR(u.DOB)*12)+MONTH(u.DOB)))-1)/12, 0),              TRUNCATE((((YEAR(max(e.date))*12)+MONTH(max(e.date))) -                        ((YEAR(u.DOB)*12)+MONTH(u.DOB)))/12, 0)) AS age        FROM users as u     JOIN events as e ON u.id = e.uid     ...      Compared to doing the \"heavy\" lifting in code: Query:               SELECT u.username, u.DOB as dob, e.event_date as edate     FROM users as u     JOIN events as e ON u.id = e.uid      code:               function ageAsOfDate($birth, $aod)     {    //expects dates in mysql Y-m-d format...          list($by,$bm,$bd) = explode('-',$birth);          list($ay,$am,$ad) = explode('-',$aod);               //Insert Calculations here           ...          return $Dy; //Difference in years     }          echo \"Hey! \". $row['user'] .\" was \". ageAsOfDate($row['dob'], $row['edate']) . \" when we last saw him.\";       I'm pretty sure in a simple case like this it wouldn't make much difference (other than the creeping feeling of horror when I have to make changes to queries like the first one), but I think it makes it clearer what I'm looking for. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "155638", "title": "Designing a Content-Based ETL Process with .NET and SFDC", "text": "As my firm makes the transition to using SFDC as our main operational system, we've spun together a couple of SFDC portals where we can post customer- specific documents to be viewed at will. As such, we've had the need for pseudo-ETL applications to be implemented that are able to extract metadata from the documents our analysts generate internally (most are industry- standard PDFs, XML, or MS Office formats) and place in networked \"queue\" folders. From there, our applications scoop of the queued documents and upload them to the appropriate SFDC CRM Content Library along with some select pieces of metadata. I've mostly used DbAmp to broker communication with SFDC (DbAmp is a Linked Server provider that allows you to use SQL conventions to interact with your SFDC Org data). I've been able to create [console] applications in C# that work pretty well, and they're usually structured something like this:               static void Main()     {         // Load parameters from app.config.         // Get documents from queue.         var files = someInterface.GetFiles(someFilterOrRegexPattern);              foreach (var file in files)         {             // Extract metadata from the file.             // Validate some attributes of the file; add any validation errors to an in-memory                       // structure (e.g. List<ValidationErrors>).             if (isValid)              {                 var fileData = File.ReadAllBytes(file);                 // Upload using some wrapper for an ORM or DAL                 someInterface.Upload(fileData, meta.Param1, meta.Param2, ...);             }             else             {                 // Bounce the file             }         }              // Report any validation errors (via message bus or SMTP or some such).     }      And that's pretty much it. Most of the time I wrap all these operations in a \"Worker\" class that takes the needed interfaces as constructor parameters. This approach has worked reasonably well, but I just get this feeling in my gut that there's something awful about it and would love some feedback. Is writing an ETL process as a C# Console app a bad idea? I'm also wondering if there are some design patterns that would be useful in this scenario that I'm clearly overlooking. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "155639", "title": "Which algorithms/data structures should I \"recognize\" and know by name?", "text": "I'd like to consider myself a fairly experienced programmer. I've been programming for over 5 years now. My weak point though is terminology. I'm self-taught, so while I know how to program, I don't know some of the more formal aspects of computer science. So, what are practical algorithms/data structures that I could recognize and know by name? Note, I'm not asking for a book recommendation about implementing algorithms. I don't care about implementing them, I just want to be able to recognize when an algorithm/data structure would be a good solution to a problem. I'm asking more for a list of algorithms/data structures that I should \"recognize\". For instance, I know the solution to a problem like this: > You manage a set of lockers labeled 0-999. People come to you to rent the > locker and then come back to return the locker key. How would you build a > piece of software to manage knowing which lockers are free and which are in > used? The solution, would be a queue or stack. What I'm looking for are things like \"in what situation should a B-Tree be used -- What search algorithm should be used here\" etc. And maybe a quick introduction of how the more complex(but commonly used) data structures/algorithms work. I tried looking at Wikipedia's list of data structures and algorithms but I think that's a bit overkill. So I'm looking more for what are the essential things I should recognize?"}
{"_id": "127472", "title": "Is Agile Development used in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing?", "text": "I've been developing web apps for a while now and it is standard practice in our team to use agile development techniques and principles to implement the software. Recently, I've also become involved in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. I heard people primarily use Matlab for developing ML and NLP algorithms. Does agile development have a place there or is that skill completely redundant? In other words, when you develop ML and NLP algorithms as a job, do you use agile development in the process?"}
{"_id": "103545", "title": "Switching from SVN to Mercurial: one repository or many?", "text": "We currently have a large Subversion repository, with a tree like:               root         /libraries             /library1                 /trunk             /library2                 /trunk         /solutions             /solution1                 /trunk             /solution2                 /trunk      There are 81 solutions and 22 libraries. The `trunk` subdirectories were added so we could use branches, but in practice, we don't use branches at all. My question is: if we migrate this to Mercurial, should be set up one big Mercurial tree with the same structure? Or should we create 81+22 Mercurial repositories?"}
{"_id": "123857", "title": "Allowing the user to specify the location of a logfile", "text": "I'm working on an application, and adding logging, but now I'm stuck. I want to allow ( _not force!_ ) the user to set the location of the logfile. Basically, my problem is:   * logger initialization should be the first thing the program does   * but I can't initialize the logger until I determine where the user wants the log to be saved   * determining where the log should be saved ... is a process that should be logged How is this problem solved? Are log file locations not user-customizable? Is log output buffered until a logfile is set?"}
{"_id": "254376", "title": "How to implement a genetic algorithm with distance, time, and cost", "text": "I want to make a solution to find the optimum route of school visit. For example, I want to visit 5 schools (A, B, C, D, E) in my city. Given the choice of five routes regarding what school I should visit first, then the second, then the third etc., how do I calculate the efficiency of each route with distance, time, and cost criteria? Once I've done this, how do I use my calculations (distance with time and cost fuel usage) in a genetic algorithm to find the optimum route?"}
{"_id": "215304", "title": "Is this a typo in the Artistic License 2.0?", "text": "_I'm not sure if this would fit better inStackExchange/English, but regardless, there is no practical use to the answer, other than to cure my curiosity._ Note this sentence at the end of the Artistic License 2.0: > THE PACKAGE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS' AND > WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES. It does not affect any legal aspects of the license, but is there a reason they mixed the use of single and double quotes on `\"AS IS'`? The license is so new that this wouldn't have been for \"command prompt friendly\" reasons. Is there special use or meaning behind this in the English language, or was it a typo?"}
{"_id": "148701", "title": "Information about how much time in spent in a function, based on the input of this function", "text": "Is there a (quantitative) tool to measure performance of functions based on its input? So far, the tools I used to measure performance of my code, tells me how much time I spent in functions (like Jetbrain Dottrace for .Net), but I'd like to have more information about the parameters passed to the function in order to know which parameters impact the most the performance. Let's say that I have function like that:               int myFunction(int myParam1, int myParam 2) {       // Do and return something based on the value of myParam1 and myParam2.        // The code is likely to use if, for, while, switch, etc....     }      If would like a tool that would allow me to tell me how much time is spent in `myFunction` based on the value of `myParam1` and `myParam2`. For example, the tool would give me a result looking like this:               For \"myFunction\" :      value   |  value   | Number of | Average     myParam1 | myParam2 |   call    | time     ---------|----------|-----------|--------        1     |    5     |   500     | 301 ms        2     |    5     |   250     | 1253 ms        3     |    7     |   1268    | 538 ms     ...      > That would mean that myFunction has been call 500 times with myParam1=1 and > myParam2=5, and that with those parameters, it took on average 301ms to > return a value. The idea behind that is to do some statistical optimization by organizing my code such that, the blocs of codes that are the most likely to be executed are tested before the one that are less likely to be executed. To put it bluntly, if I know which values are used the most, I can reorganize the if/while/for etc.. structure of the function (and the whole program) to optimize it. I'd like to find such tools for C++, Java or.Net. **Note** : I am not looking for technical tips to optimize the code (like passing parameters as const, inlining functions, initializing the capacity of vectors and the like)."}
{"_id": "215301", "title": "How Microsoft Market DotNet?", "text": "I just read an Joel's article about Microsoft's breaking change (non-backwards compatibility) with dot net's introduction. It is interesting and explicitly reflected the condition during that time. But now almost 10 years has passed. ## The breaking change It is mainly on how bad is Microsoft introducing non-backwards compatibility development tools, such as dot net, instead of improving the already-widely used asp classic or VB6. As much have known, dot net is not natively embedded in windows XP (yes in vista or 7), so in order to use the .net apps, you need to install the .net framework of over 300mb (it's big that day). However, as we see that nowadays many business use .net as their main development tools, with asp.net or mvc as their web-based applications. C# nowadays be one of tops programming languages (the most questions in stackoverflow). The more interesing part is, win32api still alive even there is newer technology out there (and still widely used). Imagine if microsoft does not introduce the breaking change, there will many corporates still uses asp classic or vb-based applications (there still is, but not that much). There are many corporates use additional services such as azure or sharepoint (beside how expensive is it). Please note that I also know there are many flagships applications (maybe adobe's and blizzard's) still use C-based or older language and not porting to newer high-level language. ## The question How can Microsoft persuade the users to migrate their old applications into dot net? As we have known it is very hard and give no immediate value when rewrite the applications (netscape story), and it is very risky. I am more interested in Microsoft's way and not opinion such as \"because dot net is OOP, or dot net is dll-embedable, etc\". This question may be constructive, as the technology is vastly changes over times lately. As we can see, Microsoft changes Asp.Net webform to MVC, winform is legacy now, it is starting to change to use windows store rather than basic-installment, touchscreen and later on we will have see-through applications such as google class. And that will be breaking changes. We will need to account portability as an issue nowadays. We will need other than just mere technology choice, but also migration plans. Even maybe as critical as we might need multiplatform language compiler, as approached by Joel's Wasabi. (hey, I read his articles too much!)"}
{"_id": "120126", "title": "What is the history of why bytes are eight bits?", "text": "What where the historical forces at work, the tradeoffs to make, in deciding to use groups of eight bits as the fundamental unit ? There were machines, once upon a time, using other word sizes, but today for non-eight-bitness you must look to museum pieces, specialized chips for embedded applications, and DSPs. How did the byte evolve out of the chaos and creativity of the early days of computer design? I can imagine that fewer bits would be ineffective for handling enough data to make computing feasible, while too many would have lead to expensive hardware. Were other influences in play? Why did these forces balance out to eight bits? (BTW, if I could time travel, I'd go back to when the \"byte\" was declared to be 8 bits, and convince everyone to make it 12 bits, bribing them with some early 21st Century trinkets.)"}
{"_id": "235388", "title": "How can I gauge the supportability and reliability of a package before introducing it to a project?", "text": "I recently found a package (JavaBuilders) that I like and I think will help develop on my project but it has some issues:   * No longer being developed (last commit on github >1 year ago)   * Lack of activity implies no longer supported by Developers   * No noticeable community implies it is not supported by a larger userbase For all I know this package is dead and any issues we have will be insurmountable without a large re-write to remove it's use in the Worst Case Scenario. Separately (probably worth another question) if this package is not widely known, it'll increase lead-in time for any new members who join the team. Is there a more reliable way to gauge the use of a package, to see if it's 'supportable' and flexible enough (e.g. if we want it to do feature X we can't go back to a developer who has vanished from developing the package) to not put the project at risk?"}
{"_id": "173154", "title": "What are the differences between programming languages?", "text": "Once upon a time, I heard from someone > the only difference between programming languages is the syntax I wanted to deny it - to say that there are other **fundamental** aspects that truly set a language apart from others than just syntax. But I couldn't... So, can you? Whenever I search Google for something like \"differences between programming languages\", the results tend to be debates between two specific languages (I'd like something more general) - however, some of the aspects that people seemed to debate the most were:   * Object-Oriented   * Method/Operator overloading (I actually see this rather related to syntax)   * Garbage-Collection (While it seems like a good difference, for some reason it doesn't seem that \"fundamental\") What important aspects other than syntax can you think of?"}
{"_id": "173153", "title": "JSF best practice for binding UI components to backing bean?", "text": "In JSF is it ok to bind UI components to backing bean just to render messages or we should only bind when we need to do lot more than just rendering messages?"}
{"_id": "203507", "title": "What's so useful about closures (in JS)?", "text": "In my quest to understand closures in the context of JS, I find myself asking why do you even need to use closures? What's so great about having an inner function be able to access the parent function's variables even after the parent function returns? I'm not even sure I asked that question correctly because I don't understand how to use them. Can someone give a real world example in JS where a closure is more beneficial vs. the alternative, whatever that may be? Edit: the question Why is closure important for JavaScript? did not answer clearly enough what I want to understand. So, I don't consider this a duplicate. I'll take a look at all of the answers/resources, and I'll mark an accepted one. Thanks to everyone!"}
{"_id": "46137", "title": "What is the main difference between Scripting Languages and Programming Languages?", "text": "Say difference between Python and C++?"}
{"_id": "254370", "title": "Security Pattern to store SSH Keys", "text": "I am writing a simple flask application to submit scientific tasks to remote HPC resources. My application in background talks to remote machines via SSH (because it is widely available on various HPC resources). To be able to maintain this connection in background I need either to use the user's ssh keys on the running machine (when user's have passwordless ssh access to the remote machine) or I have to store user's credentials for the remote machines. I am not sure which path I have to take, should I store remote machine's username/password or should I store user's SSH key pair in database? I want to know what is the correct and safe way to connect to remote servers in background in context of a web application."}
{"_id": "177641", "title": "Is it efficient to use the number pad in your programming", "text": "I'm a programmer and use vim for all my software. I use the `hjkl` keys to avoid moving from the home row. Is it efficient/inefficient using the number pad on the keyboard? My thoughts are probably that it's inefficient because you need to move your hand? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "89374", "title": "Help me understand this \"mindmap / constellation\" visual pattern", "text": "Please help me identify and understand this visual pattern, what's the common name used for such mindmap / constellation visualisations? http://asterisq.com/products/constellation/roamer/demo http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/#user-scobleizer I am also looking a for a framework, library or **math formula** that will help me build something similar. I am especially interested in the auto arranging functionality as I will have plenty of nodes that I need to arrange on the screen in the best possible fashion. What's the math behing auto arranging somethoing in 2D? I also need combine to that all with extensive zooming and map-like navigation. If you know about anything that could help achieve my goal please don't hesitate to leave an answer. My preferred language is ActionScript 3 / Flash but I will be thankful for any info, tutorial or article in any language."}
{"_id": "177649", "title": "What is constructor injection?", "text": "I have been looking at the terms constructor injection and dependency injection while going through articles on (Service locator) design patterns. When I googled about constructor injection, I got unclear results, which prompted me to check in here. What is constructor injection? Is this a specific type of dependency injection? A canonical example would be a great help! **Edit** Revisiting this questions after a gap of a week, I can see how lost I was... Just in case anyone else pops in here, I will update the question body with a little learning of mine. Please do feel free to comment/correct. _Constructor injection and property injection are two types of Dependency Injection._"}
{"_id": "102813", "title": "Best practices for graph representation of a system architecture?", "text": "I don't really know the nomenclature regarding these matters, but here is a brief description of what I want. Please let me know if I should substantiate more. So I have this larger project involving databases, different languages, and interfaces (SQL, R, C, Python, both GUI & CLI). It's growing a little too big to fit into a simple mental construct of what is actually going on. I am interested in making the mother of all charts mapping out the project from a system architecture perspective. Generally speaking I'd like the information to show some meta information of the data rather and where it is produced / consumed. I guess it is close to a flow chart, but as I am no expert in these matters I am asking for help. Are there any tools for this? Any best practices regarding formatting etc? How about symbols for all the procedures / classes / methods / functions? Please chime in if you have any opinion regarding the matter. Just to frame a little bit more what I would be interested in:   * I rather use tools like Latex than Visio   * I hate large and fancy IDEs, but I adore VIM   * I would do with static solutions, but I would be interested in automated solutions too (as long as they are not too complicated of course)"}
{"_id": "78758", "title": "Downloadable Game vs Non-Downloadable", "text": "I want to make a networked building game with limited physics(just for the characters) and I wanted to know what the best route would be. I was looking at a browser based Java game or a downloadable C++ game or maybe even a downloadable Java game. Anyways, would a browser based game be too slow for something like this(thousands of blocks with multiple players)? What are your thoughts/suggestions?"}
{"_id": "272", "title": "When someone asks you what you do, what do you say (e.g. programmer, developer, code monkey)?", "text": "Do you call yourself a programmer, a developer, or a code monkey? I personally prefer to say I am a developer."}
{"_id": "66393", "title": "Motivation and practical learning", "text": "I'm a newcomer to StackExchange and this seems a very good place to ask my question, that's been wandering in my head for a few months. Currently I'm 22, I'm studying a BS of Computer Science in the UNED (Spanish Distance University) and I'm doing well. I have a job as well, doing web programming (PHP, SQL, CSS, HTML, Apache, that kind of stuff) in a company, but working from my home. I've tried those last few years to accomplish success in other programming languages. I started with C++, Java, Perl & Python and although I can say I have a decent level on it, it's difficult for me to find some projects where I can use them. And I mean **real projects** where you can drive the language level to its cap. I think the lack of motivation is one of the reasons behind this. Its like after a full day repetitive programming, my brain is exhausted and it is hard to achieve something. Also, I have problems with my learning methods. I read a lot of forums (like this one), a lot of books and websites talking about programming, but I don't know how to apply the knowledge acquired. It's like I need a different approach to learning, a more practical one. So, the question is: How do you find the motivation to keep programming after a full day at the job? How do you find a more practical learning method? (It's easy to keep _reading about_ programming after all, but it's another to actually code **something big** ). Thank you in advance. PS: I'm not a native speaker, so don't mind me for lexical and grammatical errors."}
{"_id": "239180", "title": "Working on a project, lacking motivation to actually get to coding", "text": "I'm a hobbyist programmer. Often during a period of working on a project, I find myself having a hard time to actually get to coding. I sit in front of my computer, sometimes open the IDE, and instead of continuing work on the project, I find myself watching YouTube videos (often programming related), browsing Facebook, reading questions on this site, etc. Also sometimes in the design phase of something, I think hard of different designs and solutions, come up with a cool solution which I get excited about, sketch it on paper, but eventually when I actually sit in front of my computer to implement what I designed, I don't program but rather do other stuff, or sometimes code a little bit. I do like programming a lot. And I also enjoy designing stuff and thinking of ideas. However often when I actually sit down to continue my current project, I have this lack of motivation to code. I have two questions about this:   1. Is this normal? **Are there other people - _that enjoy programming very much_ \\- that experience the same problem?** Is this 'starting-to-work-bummer' feeling common?   2. How do you suggest I solve this? **When sitting down to code, should I just 'power through' this initial phase of lack of motivation, knowing it'll get more fun after I 'warm up' and get deep into coding?** **Or am I risking getting burned out and tired of programming by forcing myself into this when I lack motivation?** What do you suggest from your personal experience? **This isn't just a \"do you sympathize with this?\" kind of question. I'm asking in order to find a solution. Thanks for your help** _I don't think this is a duplicate. There are a lot of questions about lack of motivation, but this one in particular is about a specific feeling of lack of motivation when sitting down to code._"}
{"_id": "29852", "title": "Motivating yourself to actually write the code after you've designed something", "text": "**Does it happen only to me or is this familiar to you too?** It's like this: You have to create something; a module, a feature, an entire application... whatever. It is something interesting that you have never done before, it is challenging. So you start to think how you are going to do it. You draw some sketches. You write some prototypes to test your ideas. You are putting different pieces together to get the complete view. You finally end up with a design that you like, something that is simple, clear to everybody, easy maintainable... you name it. You covered every base, you thought of everything. You know that you are going to have this class and that file and that database schema. Configure this here, adapt this other thingy there etc. But now, after everything is settled, you have to sit down and actually write the code for it. And is not challenging anymore.... Been there, done that! Writing the code now is just \"formalities\" and makes it look like re-iterating what you've just finished. At my previous job I sometimes got away with it because someone else did the coding based on my specifications, but at my new gig I'm in charge of the entire process so I have to do this too ('cause I get payed to do it). But I have a pet project I'm working on at home, after work and there is just me and no one is paying me to do it. I do the creative work and then when time comes to write it down I just don't feel like it (lets browse the web a little, see what's new on P.SE, on SO etc). I just want to move to the next challenging thing, and then to the next, and the next... Does this happen to you too? How do you deal with it? How do you convince yourself to go in and write the freaking code? I'll take any answer."}
{"_id": "80599", "title": "Is it worth the experience gained by publishing a simple app on the App Store?", "text": "Eg. Another stupid Fart app or something of that sort. Not for money or recognition or anything else except maybe the experience you get from it. Are there any caveats one should be a aware of before deciding to go through with it?"}
{"_id": "19974", "title": "IDE Generated Code", "text": "Many IDEs have the ability to spit out automatically written pieces of code. For example, it might generate a getter/setter pair for you. I wonder whether it isn't an attempt to work around some flaws in the language. If your IDE can figure out what the code should be without your help, why can't the compiler? Are there cases where this is a really good idea? What kind of code generation does your IDE provide? Would the same thing be better provided as a feature of the language?"}
{"_id": "16701", "title": "Is time tracking required for web based/service industries?", "text": "I work in the web development industry and we implement a time tracking system to log our time (Project/time/comment). In the beginning of a project, we create a contract, and decide upon a price based on our hourly rate _x_ estimated hours. We log out times to see if we go \"over budget\". Is time tracking in this industry the norm? Is it required? What are the pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "80591", "title": "Why is no C++ interview complete if it does not have vtable questions?", "text": "Frankly, I don't understand the practical importance of vtable. For me it is just a theoretical concept which needs to be mugged up since interviewer will ask it surely. Can anyone shed some light on it that why interviewers love vtable? I don't see how knowledge of vtable makes me a competent c++ developer :-|"}
{"_id": "245825", "title": "Why GPL was made so that it requires open application code yet not open pipe of compiled applications?", "text": "Say we have a GPL library (CGAL for example). We have a big tasks chain like pipes modeling and testing. We would love to use library for our indoors application yet we must open sources... so we make a minimal application that takes arguments and files in, and returns files and data out. And is being used like `closedSourceApp > GPLApp > closedSourceApp`. And all interesting/relevant parts are excluded from GPL app. At the same time GPL library is not used at its full potential and does not get integrated into bigger applications. So the question is what reasons were behind GPL license idea to force project new code to live under it?"}
{"_id": "245824", "title": "How to mentor a junior team member while remaining productive on your own projects?", "text": "This question is not about multitasking... there are plenty of tips around for that. This is about how to take steps to efficiently multi-project (work on two projects at a time) on a single large code-base. More specifically, how does a senior programmer go about working on one project, and mentoring another beginner programmer on a different project with the same codebase, and thus assisting with training, design, integration, troubleshooting, etc. The beginner needs to be mentored so as to prevent unnecessary complexity and debt from creeping into the codebase. I don't see any questions pertaining to this scenario. Closest is senior + senior, but mentoring a beginner is a different animal. I wonder if multi-project'ing is even normal in the industry. Are there patterns for making it more efficient? The context switching is brutal. Multitasking is already hard enough as it is. I would think both engineers should ideally work on the same project until the beginner is far enough along to be able to handle a project on his or her own, always with some assistance from a senior of course. Not to get too far off topic, but to give context, it seems management wants to skip the training step and throw the beginner into the deep end of a large code base. I am less concerned about the success of the near term project(s), and more concerned with resulting increased entropy and complexity in the code if I were to not mentor, which would prove disastrous in the long run."}
{"_id": "245827", "title": "Setting global parameters: is this a reasonable use of const_cast and volatile?", "text": "I have a program that I run repeatedly with various parameter sets. Different parameters are used in different parts of the program (including different source files). The same parameter may also be used in different places. However, all parameters are **constant** during run-time after they have been set. I discovered very quickly that declaring the parameters locally does not make sense (it involves having to remember where every parameter is defined, etc.), so I resorted to using a `params.h` where I declared and defined all the parameters: `const int Param1 = 42;`, etc. The downside of this is that I have to recompile every time I change a parameter. So I'm thinking of using the method below. It relies on using`volatile` and `const_cast`, which is normally considered \"dirty\", but it ensures once the parameters have been set in `main`, they are not accidentally changed anywhere else in the program. I'm wondering whether people think this is OK, because eventually I want to open-source my code. In `params.h`:               namespace Params     {     extern volatile const int Param1;     // etc.     }      In `main.cpp`:               #include \"params.h\"          volatile const int Params::Param1 = 0;          int main(int argc, char* argv[])     {         int* const pParam1 = const_cast<int*>(Params::Param1);         *pParam1 = // Get value from argv[] or some config.ini file.         // etc.     }"}
{"_id": "88020", "title": "Why would a code analysis tool be priced based on lines of code count?", "text": "I heard some static analysis tools are priced depending on how much code they are licensed for. I can think that it's usual segmentation - the more code the customer has the more care he needs and the more useful the tool is for him, so he should pay more, so basically it's the way for the tool supplier to get more money. Are there any other objective reasons why a source code analysis tool would be priced depending on how much code the customer is planning to analyse?"}
{"_id": "136792", "title": "Is this a proper implementation of an iOS MVC pattern?", "text": "After browsing the apple docs, I came across this sample of their MVC pattern: ![mvc](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BYaCl.png) Using NSNotificationCenter and without using KVO, would this diagram below represent a correct implementation of the MVC pattern? If not, what\u2019s wrong and how can it be corrected or improved? ![mvc example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jjQa2.png)   1. App starts with the left light set to on, and the right one off. Only one light may be on at a time.   2. Users presses the right switch, which sends a target action to the view controller.   3. The view controller receives the message, and send a message to the right light data model.   4. The right light uses NSNotificationCenter to notify the controller the right light has changed.   5. The controller receives the message, and performs the following method `BOOL rightLightOn = [rightLightData on]; if( rightLightOn ) { [rightLightImage setImage:onImage]; [leftLightSwitch setOn:NO]; } else { [rightLightImage setImage:offImage]; }`   6. The switch change causes the UISwitch to call the method \u201cleftSwitchChanged\u201d in the controller.   7. The controller receives the message, and send a message to the left light data model.   8. The left light uses NSNotificationCenter to notify the controller the left light has changed.   9. The controller receives the message, and again performs the same method shown above, but modified for the right light. In addition, what if the system wasn\u2019t using a switch, and instead was using a UIButton that displayed the text, \u201cTurn On\u201d or \u201cTurn Off.\u201d Would the switch update it\u2019s own text, then call \u201crightSwitchChanged\u201d or would it call rightSwitchChanged immediately and wait for the view controller to change the text?"}
{"_id": "88025", "title": "Quickly Large Data Pivoting", "text": "We are developing a product which can be used for developing predictive models and the slicing and dicing of the data in order to provide BI. We are having two kind of data access requirements. For predictive modeling, we need to read data on daily basis and do it row by row. In this the normal SQL Server database is sufficient and we are not getting any issues. In case of slicing and dicing data of huge sizes like 1GB of data having let us say 300 M rows. We want to pivot that data easily with minimum response time. The current SQL Database is having response time issues in this. We like our product to run on any normal client machine with 2GB RAM with Core 2 Duo processor. I would like to know how should I store this data and then how I can create a pivoting experience for each of the dimension. Ideally we will have data of let us say daily sales by sales person by region by product for a large corporation. Then we would like to slice and dice it based on any dimension and also be able to perform aggregation, unique values, maximum, minimum, average values and some other statistical functions."}
{"_id": "12017", "title": "Software development books are useful, but when to find the time to read them?", "text": "I have 5 books in my \"read-wish-list\". When do I read them? I mean I could force myself to use 1 hour during working hours, but this will last for 2 days then someone will ask me to do more \"high priority things\". One option can be reading at night, but also this has limits, even because I prefer to spend time with kids. Could you please share your experiences? A long term plan is needed of course, it makes no sense to read 5 books in a week, but to continuously read something. For this reason it must not be a stressful thing. It should be easy. It must not be a struggle to find time to read, but it should be done on a continuous regular basis. Somehow this question can be similar to THIS ONE but I want to ask about books. How many if you read books at work for self improvement, not to tackle a specific task?"}
{"_id": "48697", "title": "Should a programmer be indispensable?", "text": "As a programmer or system administrator, you could either strive to have your fingers in every system or to isolate yourself as much as possible to become an easily-substituted cog. Advantages of the latter include being able to take vacations and not being on call, while the former means that you'd always have something to do and be very difficult to fire. Aiming for either extreme would require a conscious effort. **Except for the obvious ethical considerations** , what should one strive for?"}
{"_id": "245828", "title": "Pair-programming and company privacy guidelines", "text": "At our office new privacy regulations are introduced requiring every employee to protect his or her computer with a personal password. The employees are required not to share these passwords. Prior to this, everybody could access everybody's computer. No, there is little doubt that this is an improvement from a security point of view. However we - as developers - struggle with this, because we do a lot of pair programming (often for several days in a row) and due to flexible working hours and a like, access to different working station is needed without the presence of the developer who owns the computer. There is a tendency, that developers will share their passwords (even going so far as putting it as a list on the wall). How can you reconcile the need for accessing uncommitted code on a working station from different developers with security and privacy guidelines regarding these working stations?"}
{"_id": "153777", "title": "Personal Version Control Benefits", "text": "What are the benefits, if any, of having a personal Version Control System? This includes such things as personal projects, hobbies, sample code accumulated over the years, etc. ### Over and above the obvious benefits such as backup/history."}
{"_id": "203618", "title": "Should I Use Native Generic PHP or a Framework", "text": "I'm working with a team i just met. I've been using the normal native generic php for coding up until now, and built several webapps with it. But a team member suggests we switch to using a framework for development. I personally prefer going the normal way, using native generic PHP codes, but he Suggests we use a framework. I learnt Code Igniter has problem with loading images, and this is one problem with some frameworks, they have some difficulties you just have to go with, unlike writing native PHP Codes. I have a large archive of PHP Codes, that does the work of what some Framework does, i can use this and implement it in the WebApp. Is it better to go with a Framework or Go Native & Generic PHP. Another thing is that, this is a web app for mobile devices, which me and the team are developing for a company, and there will be need for maintenance in the nearest future, if we are not available for the maintenance. Our codes has to be very simple, not too ambiguous and self explanatory, and with comments too, for the future developer. Which is why i'm thinking we write out our own codes, and make it very Simple in the best possible way."}
{"_id": "100010", "title": "How to flag a class as under development in Java", "text": "I'm working on a internship project, but I have to leave before I can finish up everything. I have 1 class that is not stable enough for production use. I want to mark/flag this class so that other people will not accidentally use it in production. I have already put the notice in Javadoc, but that doesn't seem enough. Some compiler error or warning would be better. The code is organized like this:               [Package] | company.foo.bar.myproject               |-- Class1.java               |-- Class2.java               |-- Class3.java <--(not stable)      If there was a single factory class that calls those classes in public methods, I could have set the method to `class3` as `private`. However the API is NOT exposed that way. Users will directly use those class, e.g. `new Class1();`, but I can't make a top-level class private. What's the best practice to deal with this situation?"}
{"_id": "119864", "title": "Has anyone used Sproutcore?", "text": "Has anyone used Sproutcore for a web application? If so, can you give me a description of your experience? I am currently considering it, but I have a few concerns. First, the documentation is bad/incomplete, and I'm afraid that I'll spend lots of time figuring things out or digging through source code. Also, I'm a bit hesitant to use a project that is relatively new and could undergo significant changes. Any thoughts from people who have developed in Sproutcore are appreciated! EDIT/PS: Yes, I've seen this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/370598/sproutcore-and-cappuccino . However I'm interested in a bit lengthier description of Sproutcore itself from someone who's used it for a significant project."}
{"_id": "17254", "title": "Do poor writers make poor programmers?", "text": "I'm reading _Coders at Work_ by Peter Seibel, and many a time it has been mentioned that programmers who can't write generally make poor programmers - it's been claimed by Douglas Crockford, Joshua Bloch, Joe Armstrong, Dijkstra (and I've only read half the book). What's your view of this? Is an inability to express yourself in writing in a natural language such as English a hindrance of writing good code?"}
{"_id": "52466", "title": "What should a freelancer's business card have?", "text": "For example, when I first started out freelancing a year ago, my business card had my name, email and website - and up top a list of the technologies I'm comfortable with. In retrospect I don't feel this was a wise decision. Why would a potential client know what Python or Ruby is? How could he know what .NET was? I still have a couple of the old batch left, but I'm going to send out for some new cards. What do you recommend we developers have to show on our business cards? Am I correct in thinking listing technologies is meaningless to potential clients?"}
{"_id": "235967", "title": "Use a global variable, a singleton, or something else", "text": "**Preface:** I am working in PHP ( _Abandon hope all ye who enter here_ ). **Background:** There exists a large set of global functions in PHP, a number of which are miscellaneous system calls, like sleep (and others). Now, I use `sleep` (and others) in a bunch of different scripts I run in a bunch of different places, and I have found I need sleep to call `pcntl_signal_dispatch` as soon as the `sleep` finishes- but possibly not in all my scripts. **A Generalization:** I need to make global function do more than it currently does, hopefully without disrupting my current ecosystem too much. **My Solution:** I figure I could create a wrapper class that executes the correct `\"sleep\"`. _Singleton:_ I could make a singleton \"System\" class that wraps the global functions. Hell, I could even make the wrappers static methods. The downside is that there would be a lot of boilerplate checking to see which version I would need to execute, either a vanilla function call or one with extra stuff. _Global variable:_ I could make a generic \"System\" class that wraps the global functions. I could then extend the System class with different classes that override the wrapper functions. I create a global `System` variable within each script, dependent upon how I need the functions to behave. All my scripts have access to that global variable. The downside is I would have to make sure the global variable is declared, is never overwritten, and uses the proper `System`. _Something else:_ I could create a `SysControl` class with a static `System` variable and static wrappers of the `System`'s wrappers of the functions, and then swap out which `System` my `SysControl` class references. The downside is that I feel I am going overboard. Are there any more options I should consider? Which of these methods is the best, and why? What pitfalls should I look for going forward? EDIT: I ended up using the _Something else_ solution."}
{"_id": "95796", "title": "Why is C++ often the first language taught in college?", "text": "My school starts the computer science curriculum with C++ programming courses, meaning this is the first language that many of the students learn. I've seen that many people dislike C++, and I've read a variety of reasons why. It almost seems to be popular opinion that C++ isn't a very good language. I get the impression it's not very liked based on some questions on StackExchange as well as posts such as:   http://damienkatz.net/2004/08/why-c-sucks.html   http://blogs.kde.org/node/2298   http://blogs.cio.com/esther_schindler/linus_torvalds_why_c_sucks   http://www.dacris.com/blog/2010/02/16/why-c-sucks-part-2/   etc. _(Note: It is not my opinion that C++ is a bad language. In fact, it's the main language I use. However, the internet as well as some professors have given me the impression that it's not a very widely liked language. In fact, one of my professor constantly rags on C++, yet it's still the starting language at my college!)_ With that in mind, **why is this the first language taught at many schools? What are the reasons for starting a programming curriculum with C++?** Note: This question is similar to \"Is C++ suitable as a first language\", but is a little different since I'm not interested in whether it's suitable, but why it's been chosen."}
{"_id": "63028", "title": "In term of performance : while , for ... Loops VS recursion", "text": "What is better for performance to write the loop as linear e.g. for , while or write it as recursion ?"}
{"_id": "235962", "title": "What is the process of determining which method in a class hierarchy should execute known as?", "text": "I thought I understood inheritance and polymorphism, but I was given this question, and I can't, for the life of me, figure out what the proper answer is or what they're trying to get at: > The process of determining which method in a class hierarchy should execute > is known as: > >   * a) inheritance >   * b) polymorphism >   * c) is-a >   * d) has-a >   * e) parent class > Looking at each of the terms, none of them seem like the proper answer. **Inheritance** is just when a class automatically gets the public variables and methods in its parent class. So this clearly isn't the right answer. **Polymorphism** allows us to write one method to handle object A, and as a result will work with everything that extends object A (or continues to extend it, IE Object B extends Object A. Object C extends Object B, etc) So this clearly isn't the right answer! **Is-a** : This doesn't even make any sense. Is-a is just used to declare that a class is an instance of its parent class (dog is-an animal), so it inherits its public variables and methods. I don't see how this is \"determining which method in a class hierarchy should execute\" **Has-a** : I'm not too familiar with this, but it's essentially composition, where Object-A has-a Object B, but object-B isn't an instance of Object A. This doesn't seem like the right answer either **Parent Class** : This is just the base class, if we trace the tree of inheritance up, the top of the tree is the parent class. Can someone please explain which term can also be defined as _\"The process of determining which method in a class hierarchy should execute is known as\"?_ Am I not understanding one or more of the terms? Is this simply a poorly worded question?"}
{"_id": "180131", "title": "What are Web runtime environments and programming languages", "text": "I've been looking into the details behind these two different categories:   1. Web runtime environments   2. Web application programming languages I believe I have the correct information and have phrased it correctly but I am unsure. I have been searching for a while but only find snippets of information or what I can see as useless information (I could be wrong). Here are my descriptions so far: Web runtime environments - A Run-time environment implements part of the core behaviour of any computer language and allows it to be modified via an API or embedded domain-specific language. A web runtime environment is similar except it uses web based languages such as Java-script which utilises the core behaviour a computer language. Another example of a Run-time environment web language is JsLibs which is a standable JavaScript development runtime environment for using JavaScript as a general all round scripting language. JavaScript is often used to create responsive interfaces which improve the user experience and provide dynamic functionality without having to wait for the server to react and direct to another page. Web application programming languages - A web application program language is something that mimics a traditional desktop application within a web page. For example, using PHP you can create forms and tables which use a database similar to that of Microsoft Excel. Some of the other languages for web application programming are:   * Ajax   * Perl   * Ruby Here are some of the resources used:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application_development   http://code.google.com/p/jslibs/ **I would like some confirmation that the descriptions I have created are correct as I am still slightly unsure as to whether I have hit the nail on the head.**"}
{"_id": "176063", "title": "How to be successful at BDD Specifications Workshops?", "text": "Today we tried to introduce BDD in our software development process by having a specification workshop. For this workshop we had 2 developers, 1 tester and 1 business analyst. The workshop lasted 1h30 and by the end of it we managed to figure out some BDD scenarios for our new feature. We tried to focus on finding the scenarios that we could miss, and the difficult ones. At the end of the workshop some people were actually unhappy with the workshop. One developer felt he **wasted his time** as he was used to be given out the scenarios directly by the business analyst and review them with her. The business analyst **didn't feel confident with our scenario coverage** (Had a feeling that we could have missed out other important stuff) but **more importantly felt that this workshop was also a waste of time as she could have figured out all these scenarios by herself and in a shorter period of time**. This experimental workshop lasted 1h30, and by the end of it, we didn't feel confident enought about what we did...sure we could have spent more time on it but honestly most people get exhausted after 1h30 of brainstorming to fetch out business rules from the BA brain. So my question is how that kind of workshop can actually work. In the theory, given you have a new feature to develop, you put the tree 'amigos' (dev/tester/ba) in the same room so that they can collaborate together on writing the differents requirements for the new feature using examples. I can see all the benefits from that. Specially in term of knowledge sharing and common product/end goal/done vision. Our conclusion from this experiment was that it is actually more cost effective to **first have a BA to work on his own on the examples** and only **then to have the scenarios to be reviewed/reworked by the 3 'amigos'**. By having the BA to work on his own, we actually feel more confident that we are less going to miss out stuff + we still get to review the scenarios afterward to double check. We don't think than simple one time brainstorming/deliberate discovery session is actually enought to seriously cover all the requirement for a new feature. The business analyst is actually the best person for that kind of stuff. The best thing we can do is to review what she wrote and see if then we have a common understanding (which could then lead to rewrite some of her scenarios or add new ones she could have missed). So how can you get that to work effectively **in practice** ?"}
{"_id": "176065", "title": "Brief material on C++ object-lifetime management and on passing and returning values/references", "text": "I was wondering if anybody can point to a post, pdf, or excerpt of a book containing the rules for C++ variable life-times and best practices for passing and returning function parameters. Things like when to pass by value and by reference, how to share ownership, avoid unnecessary copies, etc. This is not for a particular problem of mine, I've been programming in C++ for long enough to know the rules by instinct, but it is something that a lot of newcomers to the language stumble with, and I would be glad to point them to such a thing."}
{"_id": "21617", "title": "GPL Notice on Snippets", "text": "I just wan't to ask, is it ok to put a GPL notice inside a small script or a snippet? > This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it > under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free > Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) > any later version. > > This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT > ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for > more details. > > You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with > this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. Or just the Copyright notice will be enough?"}
{"_id": "212820", "title": "Generating a custom widget that users can embed into their external website based on my server data which changes periodically", "text": "I'm deciding on how to generate the code to allow users generate an embeddable widget (much like the StackOverflow badge) into external websites. The content of the embedded widget will periodically change, but it doesn't need to be communicating in real-time with my server after a visitor has loaded the page where it's embedded. This opens up several possibilities for getting this to work:   1. On the server, pre-generate the static html content I want rendered in their page (and have a scheduled job which regenerates the static file). My users can then embed it in their page using an iframe reference to the static resource.   2. Same as above, but instead of the iframe I create a js file which they reference (much like an Google Analytics code) and then the js file served inserts the data in into their DOM. My web server would need to dynamically generate the js file on each request for the file resource.   3. Give them a js file which creates the element on their page like the above, except the js file payload doesn't include all the data and instead basically generates the DOM element as a template, then calls web services to populate the data (like their name and score) using JSONP requests to my server. I like 2 for the explicit server-side control, but it will take more time. 3 is good because the services I expose to retrieve this data can be reused for other purposes later. I don't generally like iframes, but they work and are very quick to implement. Any suggestions of which way to proceed or ideas that I've missed?"}
{"_id": "212822", "title": "Why many designs ignore normalization in RDBMS?", "text": "I got to see many designs that normalization wasn't the first consideration in decision making phase. In many cases those designs included more than 30 columns, and the main approach was \"to put everything in the same place\" According to what I remember normalization is one of the first, most important things, so why is it dropped so easily sometimes? **Edit:** Is it true that good architects and experts choose a denormalized design while non-experienced developers choose the opposite? What are the arguments against starting your design with normalization in mind?"}
{"_id": "69178", "title": "What is the benefit of git's two-stage commit process (staging)?", "text": "I'm learning git and I've noticed that it has a two-step commit process:   1. `git add <files>`   2. `git commit` The first step places revisions into what's called a \"staging area\" or \"index\". What I'm interested in is why this design decision is made, and what its benefits are? Also, as a git user do you do this or just use `git commit -a`? I ask this as I come from bzr (Bazaar) which does not have this feature."}
{"_id": "45447", "title": "Foreign key restrictions -> yes or no?", "text": "I would like to hear some\u201dreal life experience\u201d suggestions if foreign key restrictions are good or bad thing to enforce in DB.   I would kindly ask students/beginners to refrain from jumping and answering quickly and without thinking.   At the beginning of my career I thought that stupidest thing you can do is disregard the referential integrity. Today, after \"few\" projects I'm thinking different. Quite different. What do you think: Should we enforce foreign key restrictions or not?   *Please explain your answer."}
{"_id": "250991", "title": "Is immutability very worthwhile when there is no concurrency?", "text": "It seems that thread-safety is always/often mentioned as the main benefit of using immutable types and especially collections. I have a situation where I would like to make sure that a method will not modify a dictionary of strings (which are immutable in C#). I\u2019d like to constrain things as much as possible. However I am not sure whether adding a dependency to a new package (Microsoft Immutable Collections) is worth it. Performance is not a big issue either. So I guess my question is whether immutable collections are _strongly_ advised for when there are no hard performance requirements and there are no thread safety issues? Consider that value semantics (as in my example) might or might not be a requirement as well."}
{"_id": "250994", "title": "Static and dynamic data : should I use different databases?", "text": "Say I am building a website that uses two different types of data :   * Static : information that will hardly change, like movie awards or world countries names (I want fast access so no external API)   * Dynamic : information entered by users I have not written a single line of code yet. My static db is more likely to be quite large but will not change overtime. As for the dynamic db I have no idea yet but I might need scalability. Should I use different databases in the long run ? Is it common practice to do so ?"}
{"_id": "125401", "title": "Do you keep DONE stories in the physical product backlog?", "text": "We have our Product Backlog as a physical Kanban board with TODO & DONE column. Some of the stories are moving from the TODO column to the Sprint backlog during our planning, and then during the Sprint review back in the Product Backlog in the DONE column for the one which we completed. I was wondering if keeping history of DONE stories on the wall was intresting at all. It's starting to take up space Sprints after Sprints and I can't see any value from it for now."}
{"_id": "125402", "title": "How can I learn practical applications of software engineering principles?", "text": "I'm having problems bringing the software engineering I learned in school into my projects at my job. The patterns are all easy enough to apply, but coming up with architectures and general class structures is tough for me. It's so open ended and I never know how to approach my projects, with the exception of any project that cleanly fits the MVC architecture. I've been working on some increasingly larger projects. The end product works because I know testing well, but getting there is hell and going back to add features is worse. My work usually degrades into planning from the applications entry point and thinking through the use cases. This works eventually, but I end up with low cohesion and tightly coupled code. I had enough experience coming out of school to start in a job with more responsibilities than entry level programmers, so I don't have the benefits of learning from a more experienced team. The problem is I'm very inefficient. My boss said once that if I get these projects out faster and with the same level of testing I can make more. So I have to teach myself software engineering. I've read a lot of books, but they are a little too abstract; I need something concrete. **Where should I go to learn real project software engineering?** **EDIT:** It may help to know that I sometimes end up with clean code. It either just takes me a really long time to get there, or I give up and hack it cause I know it will work. Most people will say this comes with experience, but there must be some place I can go that says: if your project is like this this and this, try these architectures."}
{"_id": "254679", "title": "Python IZIP list comprehension returns empty list", "text": "I have a list of strings that I am sorting. There are 12 different key strings within the list that I am using to sort by. So instead of writing 12 separate list comprehensions I would like to use a list of empty lists and a list of key strings to sort, then use izip to perform list comprehensions. Here is what I am doing:               >>> from itertools import izip     >>> tran_types = ['DDA Debit', 'DDA Credit']     >>> tran_list = [[] for item in tran_types]     >>> trans = get_info_for_branch('sco_monday.txt',RT_NUMBER)     >>> for x,y in izip(tran_list, TRANSACTION_TYPES):         x = [[item.strip() for item in line.split('    ') if not item == ''] for line in trans if y in line]     >>> tran_list[0]     []      I would like to see an output more like the following:               >>> tran_list[0]     [['DDA Debit','0120','18','3','83.33'],['DDA Debit','0120','9','1','88.88']]      The output doesn't make sense to me; the objects that izip returns are lists and strings               >>> for x,y in itertools.izip(tran_list, TRANSACTION_TYPES):     type(x), type(y)     (<type 'list'>, <type 'str'>)     (<type 'list'>, <type 'str'>)      Why is this process returning empty lists?"}
{"_id": "168087", "title": "Learning Issued Token in Federated Service", "text": "I would like to learn federated WCF service. I have the following in my system. \u2022 Windows XP \u2022 Visual Studio 2010 Express \u2022 SQL Server 2008 Express Is it possible to create a federated service sample with this infrastructure? Is there any article for that? **UPDATE** Federation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms730908.aspx Federation Sample: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa355045.aspx"}
{"_id": "254672", "title": "How could a system be zero-knowledge?", "text": "I'm actually interest about zero-knowledge storage system. Those system where the storage provider claims he can't have any access to the data stored. As far I know, the data are encryptit using a symmetric encryption system, such as AES or other, But those system needs a key to function. So what happens to the key? is it stored? Where? If a user connect from an other location, and want to retrieve one of his file, he must retrieve the key first. So if the storage provider store the key too, he could have access to the encrypted data. It's like having a chest locked and the code on a paper next to the chest, then claim that you couldn't open the chest. So is there a flaw in that? I'm I mistaking completely about those zero- knowledge system? If they can finally open the file, how some of them could escape justice by saying \"We can not know that we are hosting illegal files?\""}
{"_id": "254673", "title": "LAMP without PHP", "text": "My question is that is the P part of the LAMP really necessary? I will have the database and I can connect to it via the appache http so why will I need php/python in the server side (if it is a really simple set up) also from a seperation of concern it might be more robust at least thertically to leave the P out of the equation and to use LAM only. What are you guys think? I need to build this as a linux server in order to backend mobile ios and android. cheers"}
{"_id": "168089", "title": "Why has extreme programming (XP) gone out of date in favor of Agile, Kanban etc?", "text": "I like XP (extreme programming) especially the part where there are 2 programmers at the same screen since often a problem's solution gets closer if only you explain what you're doing and pair programming forces you to explain what your doing. Last 10 years or so, the XP style of working seems to have gone out of date in favor of the working methodologies Agile and/or Kanban. Why? Since XP to me seems a veru good way to work and is a lot about the programming where Agile and Kanban are more about processes."}
{"_id": "44792", "title": "The Basics of Project Management / Software Development", "text": "It suddenly struck me today that I have never developed any large application or worked with a team of programmers, and so am missing out a lot - both in terms of technical knowledge and the social-fun part of it. And I would like to rectify that - an idea is to start an open source group by training college students (for no charge) and developing some open source application with them. Please give me some basic advice on the whole process of how to (1) plan and (2) manage projects in a team. What new skill sets would you recommend? (I have read _joel on software_ and _37 Signals_ , and got many insightful tips from them. But I'd like a little more technical knowledge ...) * * * Background (freelancer, past 4+ years) - Computer engineer > graphic / web designer > online marketing > moved on to programming in PHP, Perl, Python > did Oracle DBA OCP training to understand DB's > current self-assigned title - web application developer."}
{"_id": "254674", "title": "Accepting the UUID collision risk based on number of clients", "text": "After reading some questions about the probability of UUID collisions it seems like collisions although unlikely, are still possible and a conflict solution is still needed. Therefore I am wondering about the background of choosing UUIDs for CouchDB   * Is the \"unlikely collision\" a responsibility of the developer?   * Was it expected that IDs will be used by a reduced set of clients? When I went through the documentation it looked like CouchDB algorithm was great to withstand partition, but the more I read about the problems of distributed ID generation, the more I believe taking the UUID collision risk is only feasible with a low number of clients. Although I am still interested in the previous questions, the main thing I want to find out is:   * Is it the normal practice accepting the collision risk of UUIDs counting on a low number of distributed generators? Or always assumed that the probability of collision is so low that is not a concern?"}
{"_id": "160258", "title": "Looking for a very memory-efficient way of finding exporting all relations in a family tree", "text": "Think of the question as a family tree, in the **PS** section I will explain what exactly it is but family tree is easier to imagine: so father, has kids, those kids may have more kids, those kids may have more kids, etc.. 1- I don't have the whole information in memory to traverse them. With each method call and hitting the database I have just the father at some level and its kids. See here is the high-level of the method that I have and need to some how use some good parts of it:               private void Foo(string fatherNode)     {       // call some DB scripts and grab data you need to work with.       int numberOfKids = // get it from the thing you populated from the DB call.       for(int i = 1  to numberOfKids)       {          Node Child = // grab child[i] from the list we populated from DB calls          //Add it to the treeView       }     }      Well this was working because it is a GUI application and with each you know \"click\" event we were really requesting just one level of info but Now I need a new functionality where I can click an Export button and it writes the WHOLE structure of this whole family tree to a XML file..( so you can expand those nodes and still see the family hierarchy) 2- There is a lot of data. One Father might have 400 children, each children might have 10 more children and each of those chilcren might have 500 more children...so I need to also be concerned about getting memory exceptions... 3- Recursion? can we really load ALL of this hierarchy to memory? I don't think so..remember the goal is to export it to a XML SO Maybe the efficient way is write a good algorithm that at each call writes one level of hierarchy to file and doesn't load the whole thing in memory... But I am pulling my hair and banging my head on desk and can't crack the code and figure it out.. So what are your pseduo-code- suggestions... I am using C# by the way. * * * **P.S:** This is actually a Clinical Bioinformatics hierarchy, so you say Ok human genomes..ok now there 27000 genes under it, Ok now gets gene234 and let's say what are its children,..."}
{"_id": "190339", "title": "Performance and other issues with using floating point types in C++", "text": "Being interested in C++ performance programming there is one aspect I really have no clue about- and that is the implications of using floating point calculations vs doubles vs normal integer mathematics? What performance issues with these types of calculations should I consider? What other issues need to be considered when deciding which kind of operators to use? All I currently know is that doubles are probably the most expensive because they are larger, floating point is next and then integer calculations are usually the fastest on a CPU because they are much simpler."}
{"_id": "160254", "title": "Using a openid in a \"closed system\"", "text": "I would like to publish a website for certain family members only. Simply put, like a mishmash of family photos and videos. I want it to remain private, however. I was considering using openid for the login process because I really wanted to avoid:   1. Storing Usernames and Passwords (Too much maintainance)   2. Making a obfuscated url that can be picked up by toolbar (Not private enough)   3. Making a password to access the page (I've had users unable to manage this) So I was hoping to use openid to have say my brother log in using his google account. But from what I've seen openid used for, it wouldn't prevent others from logging in to the website. I was thinking maybe I could limit it manually however this paragraph from Google App Platform best practices has me double thinking: > From a protocol perspective, both logins to the two IDPs are legitimate and > the attributes returned by the 2nd IDP appear identical \u2014 the same email > address, name, and so on. The only thing that differs between the two > requests is the user's claimed identity. In fact, relying parties are > required to verify that IDPs only return identities that they're > authoritative to prevent a rogue IDP from asserting identities from other > providers. But nothing prevents a rogue IDP from asserting attributes like > names and email address that may not be truthful. Is openid the \"right\" tool for what I wish to do? (Have a private web interface that requires logins but no user management beyond identifying family members)"}
{"_id": "160252", "title": "Is it a good practice to capture build artifacts in Artifactory that Jenkins produces?", "text": "We use Jenkins to run continuous integration builds. The output of these builds might be EAR files, WAR files, or just a collection of files that are TAR'd up. To this point we have used Jenkins to manage the produced artifacts. We have Artifactory deployed in-house. Would it be a bad idea to leverage Artifactory to capture the produced artifacts? Or is Artifactory meant to hold JARs with versions that can be pulled into projects with Maven when building and not meant to capture artifacts that a continuous integration tool uses?"}
{"_id": "46867", "title": "How can I tell if software is highly-coupled?", "text": "I am familiar with the term \"highly coupled\" but am curious if there are signs (code smells) that can indicate that code is highly coupled. I'm currently working with Java EE but this can apply to any language. **Edit:** In case anyone's interested, this article sounds helpful: In pursuit of code quality: Beware the tight couple! (IBM)"}
{"_id": "160251", "title": "Being a team manager and a developer in a Scrum team", "text": "I am managing a team of 6 people that recently moved to Scrum. We have a Scrum Master (one of the developers in the team) and a Product Owner. Since I have quite a lot of free time (because a lot of management work that I used to do is now done by the Scrum Master and Product Owner), and since I want to remain technically relevant, I am doing some technical development work. I act as a part of the development team, commit to some of the stories in each sprint, and participate in all the meetings as a part of the team. Do you think it is a good idea? Can it contradict the \"self-organization\" of the team?"}
{"_id": "211558", "title": "Design patterns for multi-threaded messaging server", "text": "I'm designing an instant messaging server as a personal exercise to improve my understanding and application of multi-threading and design patterns in Java. I'm still designing, there's no code yet. My goal is to have a server that should make effective use of a multi-CPU box. I'd like the server to be distributable across multiple boxes, but wonder if that's running before I can walk. My initial thoughts are:   * `ClientConnectionManager` has `ServerSocket` object that constantly accepts client `Socket` connections.   * `ClientConnectionManager` has a thread pool that spawns a new `ClientProxy` object when a client socket connection is accepted, handing in the client `Socket` object.   * The `ClientProxy` objects represent the client app and handles sending/receiving messages across the `Socket` stream. Is it correct that only one `ServerSocket` may bind to a Port? I take it there's no way to have a pool of objects accepting Socket connections? I have two ideas for passing messages between `ClientProxy` objects. Either directly between `ClientProxy` objects that are \"buddies\" or via a central \"Exchange\" object, or better yet, pool of objects. What are the Pros/Cons of the two approaches? Does the Exchange lend itself better to a distributed app? Would the Observer and Mediator patterns, respectively, be appropriate?"}
{"_id": "158713", "title": "GDI low on memory", "text": "I am fresh to Visual C++. While moving forward in the book \"Programming Windows with MFC\", I came across GDI (Graphics Device Interface) and use of paint brush. The book says a brush cannot be created if your GDI is low on memory. I want to know when and how does GDI get low on memory? And more important, what is the reason that we cannot create brush when GDI is low on memory?"}
{"_id": "158715", "title": "Are small amounts of functional programming understandable by non-FP people?", "text": "**Case** : I'm working at a company, writing an application in Python that is handling a lot of data in arrays. I'm the only developer of this program at the moment, but it will probably be used/modified/extended in the future (1-3 years) by some other programmer, at this moment unknown to me. I will probably not be there directly to help then, but maybe give some support via email if I have time for it. So, as a developer who has learned functional programming (Haskell), I tend to solve, for example, filtering like this:               filtered = filter(lambda item: included(item.time, dur), measures)      The rest of the code is OO, it's just some small cases where I want to solve it like this, because it is much simpler and more beautiful according to me. **Question** : Is it OK today to write code like this?   * How does a developer that hasn't written/learned FP react to code like this?   * Is it readable?   * Modifiable?   * Should I write documentation like explaining to a child what the line does?               # Filter out the items from measures for which included(item.time, dur) != True      I have asked my boss, and he just says \"FP is black magic, but if it works and is the most efficient solution, then it's OK to use it.\" What is your opinion on this? As a non-FP programmer, how do you react to the code? Is the code \"googable\" so you can understand what it does? I would love feedback on this :) **Edit** : I marked phant0m's post as answer, because he gives good advice on how to write the code in a more readable way, and still keep the advantages. But I would also like to recommend superM's post because of his viewpoint as a non-FP programmer."}
{"_id": "158716", "title": "Is Liskov Substitution Principle incompatible with Introspection or Duck Typing?", "text": "Do I understand correctly that Liskov Substitution Principle cannot be observed in languages where objects can inspect themselves, like what is usual in duck typed languages? For example, in Ruby, if a class `B` inherits from a class `A`, then for every object `x` of `A`, `x.class` is going to return `A`, but if `x` is an object of `B`, `x.class` is not going to return `A`. Here is a statement of LSP: > Let _q(x)_ be a property provable about objects _x_ of type _T_. Then _q(y)_ > should be provable for objects _y_ of type _S_ where _S_ is a subtype of > _T_. So in Ruby, for example,               class T; end     class S < T; end      violate LSP in this form, as witnessed by the property _q(x)_ = `x.class.name == 'T'` * * * _Addition._ If the answer is \"yes\" (LSP incompatible with introspection), then my other question would be: is there some modified \"weak\" form of LSP which can possibly hold for a dynamic language, possibly under some additional conditions and with only special types of _properties_. * * * _Update._ For reference, here is another formulation of LSP that I've found on the web: > Functions that use pointers or references to base classes must be able to > use objects of derived classes without knowing it. And another: > If S is a declared subtype of T, objects of type S should behave as objects > of type T are expected to behave, if they are treated as objects of type T. The last one is annotated with: > Note that the LSP is all about expected behaviour of objects. One can only > follow the LSP if one is clear about what the expected behaviour of objects > is. This seems to be weaker than the original one, and might be possible to observe, but I would like to see it formalized, in particular explained who decides what the expected behavior is. Is then LSP not a property of a pair of classes in a programming language, but of a pair of classes together with a given set of properties, satisfied by the ancestor class? Practically, would this mean that to construct a subclass (descendant class) respecting LSP, all possible uses of the ancestor class have to be known? According to LSP, the ancestor class is supposed to be replaceable with any descendant class, right? * * * _Update._ I have already accepted the answer, but i would like to add one more concrete example from Ruby to illustrate the question. In Ruby, each class is a module in the sense that `Class` class is a descendant of `Module` class. However:               class C; end     C.is_a?(Module) # => true     C.class # => Class     Class.superclass # => Module          module M; end     M.class # => Module          o = Object.new          o.extend(M) # ok     o.extend(C) # => TypeError: wrong argument type Class (expected Module)"}
{"_id": "193821", "title": "Are there any problems with implementing custom HTTP methods?", "text": "We have a URL in the following format > /instance/{instanceType}/{instanceId} You can call it with the standard HTTP methods: POST, GET, DELETE, PUT. However, there are a few more actions that we take on it such as \"Save as draft\" or \"Curate\" We thought we could just use custom HTTP methods like: DRAFT, VALIDATE, CURATE I think this is acceptable since the standards say > \"The set of common methods for HTTP/1.1 is defined below. Although this set > can be expanded, additional methods cannot be assumed to share the same > semantics for separately extended clients and servers.\" And tools like WebDav create some of their own extensions. Are there problems someone has run into with custom methods? I'm thinking of proxy servers and firewalls but any other areas of concern are welcome. Should I stay on the safe side and just have a URL parameter like action=validate|curate|draft?"}
{"_id": "193820", "title": "What should I consider when choosing between taking a MOOC or working on a project?", "text": "As background, I've been programming for about 5 years, and feel like I'm somewhat \"up to speed\" on industry best-practices and techniques (for web development, specifically), as well as software development fundamentals. However, I know I have a lot to learn. Recently, many free online classes, MOOCs, have been made available from multiple initiatives, including many universities. A number of these courses are in software development, theoretical computer science, mathematics, and other fields that are generally relevant for programming. I've been taking many of these MOOCs, learned a lot, and had lots of fun in the process. However, the time that it takes for me to complete the material **leaves little room for doing much of anything else** , including diving deeper into the subject matter or applying the material in the form of a project (I'm usually taking 3+ courses at once). Thinking about this, I've come up with a few questions:   * From a purely skill-oriented perspective, _what are the pros and cons of taking classes / working on projects?_ Will working on projects help me improve my real programming skills faster? Will I miss out on some deep insight by not taking courses?   * From a career perspective, _what do employers value most?_ (I suspect that I already know the answer) Will a multitude of (open source) projects or a plethora of coursework be most convincing?   * Finally, assuming courses are deemed as a \"net positive\", _how much formal education is enough?_ If I continue taking MOOCs, when should I take a break and work on a project?"}
{"_id": "193824", "title": "java classes and database queries", "text": "Can someone please explain the best way to solve this problem. Suppose I have three classes   1. `Person`   2. `Venue`   3. `Vehicle` I have a DAO method that needs to return some or all of these attributes from each of the classes after doing a query. Please note, by requirements I am using one DAO for all three classes and no frameworks. Only my own MVC implementation How do I accomplish this? It seems very wrong to make a class `PersonVenueVehicle` and return that as an object to get the instance field, values. I was taught that the database entities must be reflected by classes, if this is case how is it implemented in such a situation?"}
{"_id": "222228", "title": "Algorithm to find times when resources are available", "text": "I'm writing a semi-automatic scheduling application. Given some existing bookings and some resource requirements, it needs to find the times at which a new event can be scheduled. A human user will then evaluate the results and choose one of the options. It does not need to optimise a timetable for multiple events and hence it is not the usual NP-Hard timetabling problem. The system has a number of resources (trainers, rooms, equipment) each of which has a type (e.g. French teacher, seminar room, projector...). Resources are booked for events each of which has a start and end time. Now, say I need to schedule a 2 hour long French class using a projector in a seminar room, what are the times that at least one resource of each required resource type is available? In order to limit the problem space, it's acceptable to consider only 9am-5pm, Mon-Fri at 15 minute intervals for the next 90 days. Total number of resources in of the order of 1000. How can I do this without having to compare every resource with every other resource?"}
{"_id": "163509", "title": "In centralized version control, is it always good to update often?", "text": "Assuming that:   * You are in a team developing some software.   * Your team is using centralized version control in the development process.   * You are working on a new feature which will surely take several days to complete, and you won't be able to commit before that because it would break the build.   * Your team members commit something every day that affects some of the files you're working with for your fancy new feature. Since this is centralized version control, you will have to update your local checkout at some point: at least once right before committing the new feature. If you update only once right before your commit, then there might be a lot of conflicts due to the many other changes by your teammates, which could be a world of pain to resolve all at once. Or, you could update often, and even if there are a few conflicts to resolve day by day, it should be easier to do, little by little. Can we say that it is always a good idea to update often?"}
{"_id": "176681", "title": "Did C++11 address concerns passing std lib objects between dynamic/shared library boundaries? (ie dlls and so)?", "text": "One of my major complaints about C++ is how hard in practice it is to pass std library objects outside of dynamic library (ie dll/so) boundaries. The std library is often header-only. Which is great for doing some awesome optimizations. However, for dll's, they are often built with different compiler settings that may impact the internal structure/code of a std library containers. For example, in MSVC one dll may build with iterator debugging on while another builds with it off. These two dlls may run into issues passing std containers around. If I expose `std::string` in my interface, I can't guarantee the code the client is using for `std::string` is an exact match of my library's `std::string`. This leads to hard to debug problems, headaches, etc. You either rigidly control the compiler settings in your organization to prevent these issues or you use a simpler C interface that won't have these problems. Or specify to your clients the expected compiler settings they should use (which sucks if another library specifies other compiler settings). My question is whether or not C++11 tried to do anything to solve these issues?"}
{"_id": "163506", "title": "How does one handle sensitive data when using Github and Heroku?", "text": "I am not yet accustomed with the way Git works (And wonder if someone besides Linus is ;)). If you use Heroku to host you application, you need to have your code checked in a Git repo. If you work on an open-source project, you are more likely going to share this repo on Github or other Git hosts. Some things should not be checked in the public repo; database passwords, API keys, certificates, etc... But these things still need to be part of the Git repo since you use it to push your code to Heroku. How to work with this use case? Note: I know that Heroku or PHPFog can use server variables to circumvent this problem. My question is more about how to \"hide\" parts of the code."}
{"_id": "163502", "title": "Port numbers in Visual Studio projects and IIS", "text": "I have a few questions about localhost and port numbers as this is an area where I do not have a lot of knowledge, and because I recently had to work with setting up Visual Studio projects and IIS and there are things I'm not clear on. I have the following questions on the things I find confusing. I thought it made more sense to include them all in one question instead of making separate questions.   1. I have noticed a random port number is generated with projects I have worked on in the past, but I recently saw a project where the port number was fixed. What is the purpose of having a fixed/default localhost port number? i.e is it particularly useful on projects that have many programmers working on the project?    2. If a solution contains multiple projects (for example, WCF services, Domain, MVC/Web pages), is it possible to setup a different localhost port for each of them? If so, what is the benefit of this?   3. If a solution contains multiple projects and has different localhost urls/port numbers, must there be a corresponding website (and application pool) for each project in IIS? Or just for the project that contains the actual web pages?"}
{"_id": "34609", "title": "Most commonly forgotten thing to do when programming/web developing", "text": "Does anyone else have that one thing they always forget to do when programming or developing a website? Personally mine is forgetting to include the Doctype in a website...the amount of time i have spent ages fixing/adding/hacking around with CSS to fix IE problems and it turns out to be the F'in Doctype declaration!!!"}
{"_id": "112953", "title": "Is it wrong to take code you have produced at work and re-use it for personal projects?", "text": "Throughout my various workplaces and through my university life I always wrote code which I thought \"this would be really useful in generic situations\". Indeed, I intentionally write code, even if it takes me a while to write, which I know will help me in the future (e.g. custom `SubString()` functions). Hence the reason for 'Helper' classes. These functions I'm sure can probably be found elsewhere online but the point is, I wrote them, and I will use them again later in other jobs or for personal projects. Currently I don't maintain a personal code library as I never have time to sit there and copy code from my work place / projects to another personal location. Question is, is it wrong to take code you have produced at work and re-use it ( **a** ) for personal projects, and ( **b** ) in other jobs?"}
{"_id": "237529", "title": "AI development, variation on the horizon effect", "text": "Developing an alpha-beta search for \"Colorito\", which has the characteristic that sometimes simple hill-climbing is impossible; so a sequence of 2 or 3 moves is the only way to make progress. I came up with an endgame position where, with a 6 ply search, it's possible to make good progress in 2 moves but the third move must be the \"bad\" move of a new sequence. It's also possible to make the same 2-move sequence take 3 moves, avoiding the \"bad\" move on the horizon. This 3-moves which could be 2-moves becomes the principle variation. The problem is that this same analysis applies to the next move, too; so the AI becomes stuck, making no progress. The search framework serves a lot of different games, so I'm most interested in generic approaches to detecting/avoiding this problem, but also game- specific ideas that might avoid this particular problem. Edit: After some thought, a reasonable and somewhat general approach is to allow \"pass\" moves at the terminal level of the search, even if the game does not. These artificial passes can be valued at zero, or slightly positive, so instead of finding a \"bad\" move at the search depth limit, the search will find a pass."}
{"_id": "118806", "title": "Translating longer texts (view and email templates) with gettext", "text": "I'm developing a multilingual PHP web application, and I've got long(-ish) texts that I need to translate with gettext. These are email templates (usually short, but still several lines) and parts of view templates (longer descriptive blocks of text). These texts would include some simple HTML (things like bold/italic for emphasis, probably a link here or there). The templates are PHP scripts whose output is captured. The problem is that gettext seems very clumsy for handling longer texts. Longer texts would generally have more changes over time than short texts \u2014 I can either change the msgid and make sure to update it in all translations (could be lots of work and very error-prone when the msgid is long), or I can keep the msgid unchanged and modify only the translations (which would leave misleading outdated texts in the templates). Also, I've seen advice against including HTML in gettext strings, but avoiding it would break a single natural piece of text into lots of chunks, which will be an even bigger nightmare to translate and reassemble, and I've also seen advice against unnecessary splitting of gettext strings into separate msgids. The other approach I see is to ignore gettext altogether for these longer texts, and to separate those blocks in external subtemplates for each locale, and just include the one for the current locale. The disadvantage is that I'm separating the translation effort between gettext .po files and separate templates located in a completely different location. Since this application will be used as a starting point for other applications in the future, I'm trying to come up with the best approach for the long term. I need some advice for best practices in such scenarios. How have you implemented similar cases? What turned out to work and what turned out a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "118801", "title": "Sharing Authentication Across Subdomains using cookies", "text": "I know that in general cookies themselves are not considered robust enough to store authentication information. What I am wondering is if there is an existing design pattern or framework for sharing authentication across subdomains without having to use something more complex like OpenID. Ideally, the process would be that the user visits abc.example.org, logs in, and continues on to xyz.example.org where they are automatically recognized (ideally, the reverse should also be possible -- a login via xyz means automatic login at abc). The snag is that abc.example.org and xyz.example.org are both on different servers and different web application frameworks, although they can both use a shared database. The web application platforms include PHP, ColdFusion, and Python (Django), although I'm also interested in this from a more general perspective (i.e. language agnostic)."}
{"_id": "13053", "title": "First languages with generic programming support", "text": "Which was the first language with generic programming support, and what was the first major staticly typed language (widely used) with generics support. Generics implement the concept of parameterized types to allow for multiple types. The term generic means \"pertaining to or appropriate to large groups of classes.\" I have seen the following mentions of \"first\": > First-order parametric polymorphism is now a standard element of statically > typed programming languages. Starting with System F [20,42] and functional > programming lan- guages, the constructs have found their way into mainstream > languages such as Java and C#. In these languages, first-order parametric > polymorphism is usually called generics. From \"Generics of a Higher Kind\", Adriaan Moors, Frank Piessens, and Martin Odersky > Generic programming is a style of computer programming in which algorithms > are written in terms of to-be-specified-later types that are then > instantiated when needed for specific types provided as parameters. This > approach, pioneered by Ada in 1983 From Wikipedia Generic Programming"}
{"_id": "222222", "title": "Building a distributed system on Amazon Web Services", "text": "Would simply using AWS to build an application make this application a distributed system? For example if someone uses   **RDS** for the database server,   **EC2** for the application itself and   **S3** for hosting user uploaded media,   does that make it a distributed system? If not, then what should it be called and what is this application lacking for it to be distributed? **Update**   Here is my take on the application to clarify my approach to building the system:   1. The application I'm building is a social game for Facebook.   2. I developed the application locally on a LAMP stack using Symfony2.   3. For production I used an a single EC2 Micro instance for hosting the app itself, RDS for hosting my database, S3 for the user uploaded files and CloudFront for hosting static content. I know this may sound like a naive approach, so don't be shy to express your ideas."}
{"_id": "237526", "title": "Practical programming according to the Dependency Inversion Principle", "text": "What the Dependency Inversion Priciple implies in practice is that in a system, high level components should depend on abstractions of the low level components (instead of on the low level components directly), and the low level components should be defined in terms of these abstractions. The key point for my question is that _the low level components are defined in terms of the abstractions, which is defined in terms of the high level components_. Meaning: the high level components 'define the abstraction' in terms of what would be convenient for them, and the low level components have to be defined according to that abstraction (usually an interface). So if the high level component is a `Car`, and the low level component is the `Engine`, and an interface `IEngine` is defined - it will be defined according to the needs of the `Car`, and `Engine` will have to fit these needs. So if it's convenient for the `Car` to be able to simply start the engine, `IEngine` would feature a method `start()` and `Engine` would have to implement it. My question is: When starting programming on a project designed according to the Dependency Inversion Principle - are the high level components usually implemented before the low level ones, ie. \"top to bottom\" development? Since the principle implies that the low level components are designed according to what is convenient for the high level components, it makes sense to first start programming the high level components, and only then define the `ILowLevelComponent` interface, based on what we learned the high level components need when we programmed them. For example we're implementing a system that simulates a car. `Car` is the high level component, while `Engine` and `SteeringWheel` are the low level components. `Engine` and `SteeringWheel` take care of the concrete work of moving the car around, while `Car` takes care of coordinating everything and creating a functioning system. If we were designing the system according to DIP, that means that `Engine` and `SteeringWheel` are defined in terms of an abstraction, that is defined in terms of what is convenient for `Car`. So it would make sense to first implement `Car`, understand exactly how it's going to work in high level terms and what it needs to work, and only then define the `IEngine` and `ISteeringWheel` interfaces, according to what the `Car` needs. And then ofcourse implement the concrete classes that implement the interfaces. **So what I'm asking is: when working on a project that is designed in the spirit of DIP, is the \"top to bottom development\" approach common? Is this how work is usually done on project following the Dependency Inversion Principle?**"}
{"_id": "54171", "title": "Have you worked with poorly designed application?", "text": "Well , I have been asked to work in a Java web application that is very very poorly designed . In the name of \"making this easy\" , they have come up with their own \"framework\" to make things extremely difficult to understand . I am struggling to figure out the control flow . Do you have any such experience ? What do you do in such situations when the guy who has \"designed\" it has already left the company ?"}
{"_id": "54175", "title": "What do you do before you start programming?", "text": "I'm not sure this question belongs here, it's not so much I problem I'm having with programming but rather a problem of what to do before I start programming. I want a visual representation of what variables I need and what classes have what methods.I know there is UML but I'm not sure if that is the best way, so what do you guys use before you start programming, which method? I don't want to start a flamewar about what is better just what are several approaches?"}
{"_id": "256124", "title": "What is a good design pattern to implement REST services on mobile?", "text": "It is easy to implement calls to API endpoints, then to parse JSON and handle the data - but what is a good design pattern for this? Here are some ways I have tried but I feel like there should be a better way:   1. Create a singleton class that manages all networking code and all data parsing code for the entire application for all endpoints. Then any controller class can hit the singleton   2. Make network endpoint tasks straight from view controllers - using blocks within the view controller to manage responses Consider an application that can hit an endpoint (GET) to download a list of appointments. Also consider an POST endpoint where you can send new appointments. Data must be packaged/unpackaged in JSON and errors must be handled appropriately. What is a good design pattern to accomplish this? And before you downvote this post and say its too broad or subjective just look at this page: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask > Some subjective questions are allowed, but \u201csubjective\u201d does not mean > \u201canything goes\u201d. All subjective questions are expected to be > **constructive**. A good answer to this common problem is hard to find."}
{"_id": "94540", "title": "What to do if a team member misses a sprint planning?", "text": "Lets say a team member is on an annual leave. He won't be attending sprint planning but he will be back by mid of iteration/sprint. Lets say he has 50% capacity i.e. as he will be available for later half of the iteration, should we:   1. have a planning session with him after he is back.   2. have a planning session with him before he goes on annual leave i.e. before sprint planning.   3. don't schedule him for any task and assign him on non sprint tasks e.g. spikes etc   4. have his peers plan on his behalf during sprint planning and absent person can then add tasks when he is back and if he cannot do all the work he can descope.   5. have him sit with another developer and do pair programming for a while.   6. anything else.. i am interested to know what you are doing.. Note: We are doing (1) and it doesn't feel right."}
{"_id": "62088", "title": "Going to coding conference -- bosses expectations reasonable?", "text": "Next week a coworker and I are being sent to a local coding conference. This morning our manager sent us an email pretty much telling us we need to take our laptops and hinted at doing a google document so he can see us take notes in real time. This really rubbed me the wrong way and both of us emailed him back. These emails I have posted below. I'm wondering if you guys have encountered these types of expectations from your bosses. I've been a professional programmer for over 10 years and have never had this type of micro management about being sent to a conference. Just wondering if \"coworker\" and I are not seeing things clearly or if our boss is being a little weird about this. * * * From: Boss Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 11:51 AM To: Coworker; Me Subject: Re: DevConnections next week Really guys? Whatever works for you, I guess. But I'm expecting that you have detailed enough notes to adequately share sessions you attend, including any URLs for supporting information, etc. This is not a \"would be nice\" but a professional expectation for attendance at these type of events. \\--Boss On 3/25/11 10:08 AM, \"Coworker\" wrote: > The hotel where the conference is being held is huge. \"Lugging around your > laptop\" is an accurate description he he. > > I myself am not a classical learner. I learn by paying attention, > participating in the class topic, and asking questions. If I try to take > notes it's destructive to my learning process. A gifted teacher in community > college, Dr. Phar, pointed this fact out to me and told me I was a \"visual > learner\". After that I was able to excel in college and obtain my Master's > Degree. > > To meet Boss's requirements I generally take a half day after the conference > to put together some presentation material for the team. > > Coworker > > \\-----Original Message----- From: Me Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 9:48 AM > To: Boss; Coworker Subject: RE: DevConnections next week > > Thanks for the reminder. I was definitely planning to take a notebook to > take notes and have no problem sharing information I come back with, but I > would rather not lug around the laptop if I have the choice. Is that ok? > Maybe we could take our laptops and keep them in the trunk in case of a work > emergency? What do you think? > > Me > > \\-----Original Message----- From: Boss Sent: Friday, March 25, 2011 8:39 AM > To: Me; Coworker Subject: DevConnections next week > > Coworker / Me, > > Don't forget to take your laptops next week and take notes to share with the > team. As in the past, we can schedule a review session to share the > highlights. Maybe use Google Docs and share your notes with me and . >Also, > take some time to coordinate your session attendance to help hit all the > good topics. > > Have fun, Boss"}
{"_id": "256122", "title": "Questions about UML in relation to the command pattern", "text": "http://www.oodesign.com/command-pattern.html In reading through a tutorial about the command pattern, I came across a UML diagram that seems to omit some relationships. For the following diagram, the client instantiates a stock trade, an agent, and buy and sell stock orders. Why is it that the author omits the relationship arrow to the agent class? Why is the dashed line for <> used in place of a solid arrow like the one from Client to StockTrade? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9clLI.gif) I also compared the above diagram with the one below, which leaves out the Invoker/Agent class entirely and also uses the class CallbackTwo to aggregate Receivers. The C# implementation has an invoker class, although the implementations in other languages don't. Does this mean the invoker relationship is implicit? http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns/command http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns/command/c-sharp-dot-net ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GljS8.png)"}
{"_id": "215597", "title": "\"Whole-team\" C++ features?", "text": "In C++, features like exceptions impact your whole program: you can either disable them in your whole program, or you need to deal with them throughout your code. As a famous article on C++ Report puts it: > Counter-intuitively, the hard part of coding exceptions is not the explicit > throws and catches. The really hard part of using exceptions is to write all > the intervening code in such a way that an arbitrary exception can propagate > from its throw site to its handler, arriving safely and without damaging > other parts of the program along the way. Since even `new` throws exceptions, every function needs to provide basic exception safety \u2014 unless it only calls functions which guarantee throwing no exception \u2014 _unless you disable exceptions altogether in your whole project_. Hence, exceptions are a \"whole-program\" or \"whole-team\" feature, since they must be understood by everybody in a team using them. But not all C++ features are like that, as far as I know. A possible example is that if I don't get templates but I do not use them, I will still be able to write correct C++ \u2014 or will I not?. I can even call `sort` on an array of integers and enjoy its amazing speed advantage wrt. C's `qsort` (because no function pointer is called), without risking bugs \u2014 or not? It seems templates are not \"whole-team\". Are there other C++ features which impact code not directly using them, and are hence \"whole-team\"? I am especially interested in features not present in C. **Update** : I'm _especially_ looking for features where there's no language- enforced sign you need to be aware of them. The first answer I got mentioned const-correctness, which is also whole-team, hence everybody needs to learn about it; however, AFAICS it will impact you only if you call a function which is marked `const`, and the compiler will prevent you from calling it on non- const objects, so you get something to google for. With exceptions, you don't even get that; moreover, they're always used as soon as you use `new`, hence exceptions are more \"insidious\". Since I can't phrase this as objectively, though, I will appreciate any whole-team feature. **Update 2** : instead of C++ feature I should have written something like \"C++-specific feature\", to exclude things like multithreading which apply to a large amount of mainstream programming languages. ### Appendix: Why this question is objective (if you wonder) C++ is a complex language, so many projects or coding guides try to select \"simple\" C++ features, and many people try to include or exclude some ones according to mostly subjective criteria. Questions about that get rightfully closed regularly here on SO. Above, instead, I defined (as precisely as possible) what a \"whole-team\" language feature is, provide an example (exceptions), together with extensive supporting evidence in the literature about C++, and ask for whole-team features in C++ beyond exceptions. Whether you should use \"whole-team\" features, or whether that's a relevant concept, might be subjective \u2014 but that only means the importance of this question is subjective, like always."}
{"_id": "62084", "title": "best practices in creating a product backlog in scrum", "text": "I am new to scrum, project management in general, and i am having problems deciding what to call a feature or a sub-feature (which are tasklists to creating that feature?) especially for the standard things we have in every web app. So i am looking for best practices on how people are creating product backlogs for a typical website software (users, profiles, admin, front-end) . I have this in mind as an example.                - feature: home page           - feature: contact us page           - feature: admin panel                 - create user                    + create database (tasklist)                    + write stored procedures (tasklist)                 - delete user                 - add content                 - delete content           - feature: subscribe                  - create subscribe page      Also, how granular is too granular?"}
{"_id": "62087", "title": "Once and only once - with more lines of code", "text": "I have an ugly bit of code - essentially iteration over some data structures where the meat of the action was changing, but the iteration code stayed same. The iteration constituted the bulk of code, and there were at least four cases of code copying. So I refactored the code, putting each level of iteration into its own class (I'll probably do another post on it later).The new code is considerably nicer (at least to my eye), with no copy/paste locations. However, due to some infrastructure I had to introduce to refactor nested loops into separate classes, I ended up with 10% larger number of LOCs. If I discount the extra infrastructure, I get about 5% smaller code compared to the original size. So, the code is more sophisticated, but it is not shorter and may be harder to understand for a less experinced programmer. I may still end up with shorter code in the future if more oppotunities for reuse present themselves. My question is: do you think it was worth it? Is it a good idea to refactor for \"once and only once\" if the LOC count goes up?"}
{"_id": "256128", "title": "How to identify hackers based on ip addresses and the pages that were accessed", "text": "I saw some suspicious errors being generated on my site based on pages that were requested. My error is logging the path that the user is trying to access. Because of these errors (and the paths that they were trying to access) I created my own blacklist process where I can blacklist someone from my site based on ip address and/or username. After implementing this, I didn't see ANY errors of that kind....until today. Now, before I go ahead and blacklist this person, I'd like to make sure that it isn't a legitimate search engine just trying to build it's database with all links available from my site. So, my question, is there a way to see what company an ip address is assigned to? Or, do those crawlers from search engines only go to pages that exist?"}
{"_id": "215308", "title": "Area of testing", "text": "I'm trying to understand which part of my code I should to test. I have some code. Below is example of this code, just to understand the idea. Depends of some parametrs I put one or another currency to \"Event\" and return his serialization in the controller. Which part of code I should to test? Just the final serialization, or only \"Event\" or every method: getJson, getRows, fillCurrency, setCurrency?               class Controller {         public function getJson()         {             $rows = $eventManager->getRows();                   return new JsonResponse($rows);         }     }          class EventManager {         public function getRows()         {             //some code here             if ($parameter == true) {                 $this->fillCurrency($event, $currency);             }         }              public function fillCurrency($event,  $currency)         {             //some code here             if ($parameters == true) {                 $event->setCurrency($currency);             }         }     }          class Event {         public function setCurrency($currency) {             $this->updatedAt = new Datetime();             $this->currency = $currency;         }     }"}
{"_id": "156656", "title": "Picture Parsing", "text": "If I open a picture file, lets say with an PNG extension, I will see bunch of code. Now let say I want to get some information from the picture mechanically. So the question here is what is the first step here, do I need to parse the picture?. If so how can I get the grammar for picture files? (PNG, JPEG, etc.) UPDATE: Found an issue with my thinking!. Parsers are for text-based languages, however pictures are binary files. So, I dont think we need to parse them we need to go in the opposite direction and turn them into abstract syntax trees, wondering how to do so without knowing the grammar!"}
{"_id": "156654", "title": "Is C++.Net used extensively?", "text": "I am a C++ coder by tradition. Over the last 12 months or so I have been doing a lot of C# coding, and have been pleasantly surprised by C#'s pragmatic approach (once I stopped trying to code it as if it was \"C++ with garbage collection\"). We have recently had some graduates in and when helping one of them I realised she was using .Net within C++. After asking her why, she said she had been \"told to use C++ by her manager\". Obvious communication problem aside, I assume she was using .Net because that's the only framework she's been exposed to. I then came across an old project by a senior developer who also used C++ to drive a Forms front end. Now this would have been written around the time .Net first appeared, so I assume it was a learning exercise on his part to play around with .Net. It was only a small utility app. Having had to do some minor modification in this app, it seemed to me that using C++ to drive .Net gives you the worst of both worlds. No garbage collection or memory safety, but no similarly no real speed/optimisation opportunities since you're dealing with a managed framework. So my question is whether people do use C++ .Net for any large stand alone (ie non-plumbing) production code, and if so what are your reasons for doing so? I freely admit I have never delved deeply into the C++ .Net extensions so I may be doing it a disservice."}
{"_id": "143178", "title": "Which open source PHP project has the 'perfect' OOP design I can learn from?", "text": "I am a newbie to OOP, and I learn best by example. You could say this question is similar to Which Scala open source projects should I study to learn best coding practices \\- but in PHP. I have heard-tell that Symfony has the best 'architecture' (I will not pretend I know what that exactly means), as well as Doctrine ORM. Is it worth it to spend many months reading the source code of these projects, trying to deduce the patterns used and learning new tricks? I have seen equal number of web pages dissing and liking Zend's codebase (will provide links if deemed necessary). Do you know of any other project that would make any veteran OOP developer shed tears of joy? Please let me add that practicality and scope of use is not a concern at all here - I just want to do:   * Pick a project that has a codebase deemed awesome by devs way better and greater than me.   * Write code that achieves what the project does.   * Compare results and try to learn what I don't know. Basically, an academic interest codebase. Any recommendations please?"}
{"_id": "252633", "title": "C programming practice, passing a pointer to a function", "text": "Consider the following C function which takes as argument a string, which is then stored inside a struct:               struct mystruct* usestring(char* string)     {         struct mystruct *struct;         struct = malloc(sizeof(struct mystruct));         struct->string = string;         return struct;     }      My understanding is that the string passed to the function is the same string that is stored inside the struct. What is the proper etiquette in this situation? Should I make a copy of the string and store that in the struct, or should I expect that the function caller will not modify the string later?"}
{"_id": "143170", "title": "Actor library / framework for C++", "text": "In the C++ project I am working on, we have an application consisting of several processes deployed on different machines. This network of processes is dynamic since processes (clients or background services) can be started and terminated during the application's lifetime. We have already a module that allows to transport arbitrary data over the network through RPC, and we are using it to exchange information (such as status information, progress information, error codes, etc) between the processes. We would like to have a more abstract layer to handle asynchronous communication (currently, the RPC is executed synchronously), and to allow processes to be started and terminated dynamically and still find each other. We recently looked for a solution and we think we can use something like Scala **actors** and **remote actors** (see e.g. this tutorial). Another language using the actor model that has been around longer than Scala is Erlang (see also this question). Actors are objects that have a behaviour and a mailbox, share no data. Actors are executed concurrently, and communicate through asynchronous message exchange. As part of their behaviour, actors can create other actors. Messages are also represented as objects. The simplest case is that actors live in the same process. In this case they can address each other using a handle (reference, pointer, unique identifier). The actor implementation hides the underlying threads and any other details. When actors live in different processes (and possibly on different machines in a network) they are identified by an IP address, a port and a name. In this case we speak of **remote actors** (see the short example at the top of this page). In our case, we would have one actor on each process, taking care of all the communication, i.e. we need some kind of remote actors. On wikipedia I have found some links to actor libraries for C++ and I have started to look at Theron. Theron seems a very well-written and documented library but, to my understanding, it does not support remote actors: all actors must live within the same process. It is possible to create several actor pools ( **frameworks** ), but all these pools must live in the same process. So I wanted to ask if someone knows other C++ libraries that support the remote actor concept as sketched above. **EDIT** This question has been edited wrt the original question, following indications from programmers-meta discussion. **UPDATE** Other frameworks I have looked at are libcppa (should support remote actors, but it is still under development, currently version 0.1), actor-cpp (also under development), and libactor, which is in C (the web site says it \"is usable, although it may not be ready for production\")."}
{"_id": "156659", "title": "Design pattern for access to tree-like database in Java?", "text": "I'm developing a Roleplaying character viewer/manager programme for a locap LARP system. The Characters have access to skills that are layed out in a tree-like structure. There are a lot of skills, and potentially a lot per character. I know I can just import the Java swing library to get access to a tree, but I feel like this may bog me down, when all that needs to be done is access to a tree-like database, and the character needs only know that they have access to a subset of the skills. I'm not sure if the tree design pattern is the best choice for this (i.e. instantiate a tree for the skills known per character, and add to/delete parts as needed) or 'do the clever stuff' and use a list per character to see which parts (skills) of database (external tree) are 'owned'. My skills are broken down roughly as so:   `Course catogory -> Weapon Type -> Actual Weapon -> Proficiency-->Special Skill`, which goes quite deep. Further to this there is little need to know what is at each level, just that it's children, until you hit the leaf, and the one up. My database effectively already exists on the LARP website, so if I don't have to reproduce it, that would be good. Here is a sample               Weapons and Shields     Warrior Priest Scout Mage      1H Weapon Proficiency     3        6     6     9      1H Weapon Specialisation  6        12    12    18      1H Weapon Expertise       12       24    24    36      1H Weapon Mastery         24       48    48    72       And later on:               Magic           Warrior       Priest        Scout         Mage      Learn Spell     9 x (l + 1)   9 x (l + 1)   6 x (l + 1)   3 x (l + 1)      l = spell level,       ...     Create Talisman 9 + l         9 + l         6 + l         3 + l      l = level,"}
{"_id": "20255", "title": "What would you choose for your project between .NET and Java at this point in time?", "text": "You are just starting a new project and you have these two technologies to choose from, Java and .NET. The project you are working doesn't involve having features that would make it easy to choose between the two technologies (e.g. .NET has this that I need and Java does not) and both of them should work just fine for you (though you only need one of course). Take into account:   * Performance    * Tools available (even 3rd party tools)   * Cross platform compatibility   * Libraries (especially 3rd party libraries)   * Cost (Oracle seems to try and monetize Java)   * Development process (Easiest/Fastest) Also keep in mind that Linux is not your main platform but you would like to port your project to Linux/MacOs as well. You should definitely keep in mind the trouble that has been revolving around Oracle and the Java community and the limitations of Mono and Java as well. It would be much appreciated if people with experience in both can give an overview and their own subjective view about which they would choose and why."}
{"_id": "216029", "title": "Found a better solution to a problem at work - should I deter from posting the code snippet online?", "text": "I think most of us, programmers, used Stack Overflow to solve every day problems: looked for an efficient algorithm to do something. Now imagine a situation: you have a problem to solve. Googled a bit, found a StackOverflow question but you are not really satisfied with the answers so far. So you have to do your own research: you need to do it because you want it in the company's app. Eventually after some hours you have found the better solution. You're happy, you added it to the company's code base, then you want to submit your answer with a code snippet (just several lines) to the question you've found before to help others too. But wait: the company's software is closed source, and you worked on it on the clock. So does this mean I shouldn't post the answer neither at work nor at home to that question in the rest of my life, because I solved it at work, and the company owns that piece of code?"}
{"_id": "129181", "title": "Resume dilemma for professional job", "text": "On my resume, I list myself as having \"7 years of hands-on experience programming in C\". To clarify, I am a self-taught C programmer with some college courses thrown in the mix. I've worked on some small personal projects, and I consider myself to be more competent than a Computer Science grad with no actual real-world experience, though by no means am I anywhere near being an expert. The issue is this... I keep getting calls and emails from recruiters that see my resume on job sites, inquiring about my interest in senior developer positions, contracts, etc., of which I feel that I am completely under- qualified for. My resume only has 3 years of work experience listed (which is all IT stuff), so when they ask about my prior experience in C, I have to clarify that it was personal work, not professional work. I'd really like a job as a developer, but I don't want to get hired for something that I can't handle, nor do I want to misrepresent myself while trying to show off my strengths. I deliberately chose the phrasing \"hands-on\" to imply that it wasn't professional. How should I phrase my C experience on my resume to clarify it better?"}
{"_id": "178653", "title": "Is there benefit to maintain a large project with bad code?", "text": "I'm currently maintain a large project with more than 100000 LOC. The code use the MFC as its framework, in genral, it only has interface part which heavily use the mfc api and a business logic part which full of bad code, confusing logic. The company has some small features delivered to the customer each year(most features are adding code to exisiting project, finding some reference of some api or variable and it' s no different with fixing 3-4 bugs ), most of the tasks are to resove issue and optimize performance . Like other company with maintaining position, it value people who knows much logic about its product. There are people who can quickly finish the job on such project, is it worth to train myself like such a programmer? Is there benifits to work on such project for a long time?"}
{"_id": "129184", "title": "Programmers clipboard monitor under Windows", "text": "In the process of adapting a \"put on clipboard\"-solution to new behavior I have found that I need a good _programmers_ clipboard monitor for Windows. I do not need to have a history of items on the clipboard, but I need to see the details of what is currently placed there, including - this is important - the various flavors (RTF/HTML/plain text/etc) to be sure that all those I place there are correct. Free is preferred, but cheap will do. We are a Java shop, but I can install a Visual Studio Express edition if that makes things easier. (EDIT: The development box is Windows 7 64-bit) Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "194398", "title": "Books/sources on inner workings of JavaScript", "text": "When I started studying C++ a couple of years ago, a lot of the books and texts I read did a very thorough job of explaining, how the code written would translate into concrete operations in the hardware (like dynamically memory allocation, pointer arithmetics etc.). I found those explanations extremely helpful in order to fully understand the language. Now I am studying JavaScript and learning about the whole functional programming paradigm, with functions as first class objects and so on. I have read a lot of texts and books about how to use JavaScript, but I have yet to come across a source, that explains the low-level inner workings of the language (like how a function is represented in memory, what excactly happens when a function is called with .apply() and a new context is provided etc.). I guess you could say, that what I am looking for is the knowledge needed to write a JS compiler/VM..? How the runtime environments handle the different aspects of the language at a low level. Does anyone know where to find books or text, that goes into the very low level details of the language?"}
{"_id": "23506", "title": "Background & Research Methods section (Writing an Article)", "text": "It is my first time writing an _article_ on a software project. I am supposed to use ACM UbiComp paper format. I already have a structure that I should follow and there is a **Background & Research Methods** section after Abstract, Introduction, Related Work sections. I have browser through several articles, but some of them either dont have it, have only background section or have only research methods section. **I am having hard time to find an article that has this section and moreover what I must write on here**. My project is about Bluetooth location tracking and I do have the implementation and evaluation, so it is not something theoretical."}
{"_id": "228160", "title": "How this Fibonacci exponentiation by squaring algorithm works?", "text": "This is one of the best algorithms to calculate the nth Fibonacci sequence. it needs O(log(n)) time to do its job, so it's so efficient. I found it somewhere but don't know how it works! Can anyone tell me how this algorithm works? thanks. Here's the code:               int fib3 (int n) {              int i = 1, j = 0, k = 0, h = 1, t;         while (n > 0) {             if (n % 2) {                 t = j * h;                 j = i * h + j * k + t;                 i = i * k + t;             }             t = h * h;             h = 2 * k * h + t;             k = k * k + t;             n /= 2;         }         return j;     }"}
{"_id": "179850", "title": "Can I display part of the source code of an open source plugin's with GPLv2 liscence?", "text": "I would like to publish part or full source code of one or more plugins (licensed under GPL, GPLv2, MIT or no license) in my website/blog. Website I am talking about is for everyone, free to use and free to copy code. Plus, is it okay if I do not provide any link to the source code/plugin? I will definitely give full credits to the developer."}
{"_id": "144913", "title": "Should a new programmer focus on a single technology until he's proficient at it?", "text": "Ok, I've been teaching a buddy how to program for a while now. He's a very fast learner, and he's quite good at programming so far. However, he has one \"issue\" I keep trying to correct. He jumps in and starts doing highlevel programming without learning some of the basics (He's created a full blown web application but still doesn't know pagination or session management). This isn't the problem though. He keeps jumping around to new technology (Node.js, MongoDB, EC2, etc). I tried telling him that he should learn some of the basics about his RDMS of choice (MySQL) as he uses it everyday before investing a bunch of time into learning the basics of MongoDB (And probably moving to something new). Am I the one in the wrong here, or should he try to focus on one thing at a time and get really good at it?"}
{"_id": "161619", "title": "Unit Testing: \"It's a code smell if you're refactoring and there are no collaborators\"?", "text": "I'm reading The Art of Unit Testing by Roy Osherove. I'm at section 7.2 Writing maintainable tests where the author has this note about code smell: > NOTE: When you refactor internal state to be visible to an outside test, > could it be considered a code smell (a sign that something might be wrong in > the code's design or logic)? It's not a code smell when you're refactoring > to expose collaborators. **It's a code smell if you're refactoring and there > are no collaborators (so you don't need to stub or mock anything).** **EDIT** : What the author means by \"collaborators\" is dependencies. Some of his examples for dependencies are classes that access a database or that access the OS's file system. Here is where he defines stub and begins to use the word collaborator: > A _stub_ is a controllable replacement for an existing **dependency** (or > **collaborator** ) in the system. The author doesn't have an example of this code smell and I'm having trouble understanding/picturing what this would look like. Can someone explain this a little more and perhaps provide a concrete example?"}
{"_id": "129235", "title": "Advantage/disadvantage of parameters / return types declaration in languages with type inference", "text": "I would like to know your opinion on declaration by hand of parameters/return types in languages with type inference like Scala. Is there any reason why to or not to do this when compiler can infer types?"}
{"_id": "129234", "title": "Functional Programming: Are Tuples a viable replacement for Types?", "text": "A while ago I decided to learn Haskell to help with learning more \"pure functional\" ideas that I could apply to F#. Right off the bat it seems as if there's no real types in Haskell like the ones that F# has. I'm fine with that so I wanted to find a way to remove myself from the hybrid OO/Functional design I've used in F# and really try to go classless and truly develop a function centric design. The first thing that came to mind when using Haskell was to just pass tuples around as they can hold information in key value pairs much like dynamic languages but don't have the constructor syntax like F# types. For example in F#:               type DatabaseWorkValueItem(firstItem, secondItem, thirdItem) =       member public x.FirstItem = firstItem       member public x.SecondItem = secondItem       member public x.ThirdItem = thirdItem      And this would be in my new proposed design:               module DatabaseWorkValueItem =            let firstItem (item, _, _) = item       let secondItem (_,item, _) = item       let thirdItem (_,_, item) = item            --Replace constructor with method       let CreateValueItem (parameter:String, value:Object, sqlType:SqlDbType) =         (parameter, value, sqlType)            --Replace properties with more methods       let GetDataType (item :(String *Object * SqlDbType)) =          thirdItem item            let GetParameter (item :(String *Object * SqlDbType)) =          firstItem item            let GetValue (item :(String *Object * SqlDbType)) =          secondItem item      They both get the same idea. One creates a class like Type with properties set on construction and the other uses all functions to create and read a tuple. Question is: Am I crazy to bother with this? Although I realize F# has the convenience of jumping between two paradigms, I can't help but feel that it's a comfort blanket to"}
{"_id": "161610", "title": "Can unit testing software be used to unit test itself?", "text": "QUnit advertises itself on its web page like this: > ...capable of testing any generic JavaScript code, including itself! Can you really use unit testing software to test itself? Wouldn't defects in the software mean that the results are unreliable?"}
{"_id": "129238", "title": "How to Document the Security/Encryption Code of an Application", "text": "I am working on an application that I developed a security layer for. It uses the hardware ID of the hard drive, MAC address and another hardware serial key, to lock the software a particular piece of hardware. I came across sites online, that said I should use fairly weird names for the procedures/functions/variables in the the security layer. For instance               function XtDmat: Boolean;      var       x3mat: string;       hhiTms: Interger;     begin       Result := False;       x3mat := GWindosColr;  //this returns the HD ID       hhiTms := GalilDriverID; //this gets a controller ID       if (t5gFx=x3mat) and (hhiTms=f4teXX) then Result := True; //match IDs with those saved in the registry     end;      And for the messages dialog box:               procedure Tfrm_MainWindow.mxProtectorExpiration( Sender: TObject );     begin       lbl_Remaining.Caption := GetClassPath('xsedfers34;;''kd'); // encrypted value  decryted and shown       '0 days remained'       lbl_Message.Caption := GetClassPath('qwe23vftTxxx ii gtr');   //decryt and show       'This license has expired'       btn_Go.Enabled := False;     end;      I did this because I used Delphi DEDE to decompile my code and found even the registry key 'HCKU\\software\\myapplication' to be in plain sight. Now, however, it has become difficult to   1. explain to my fellow team mates, why I did this (meaning the names),   2. document as the names do not make sense,   3. debug which gives me headaches. Can anyone suggest a good way to document this type of code in this type of situation. So the code becomes easier to, but is still diffcult to decompile. Alternatively, could one suggest a obfuscator for Delphi."}
{"_id": "97935", "title": "How is Delphi XE2 going to work across platforms?", "text": "So I've been reading a little about Delphi XE2 and I probably will go to the world tour thing in Chicago coming up later this month and ask this question if no one can answer it here. What I wonder is how is my Delphi code going to be executed on a Mac? Is something else going to have to run (i.e. virtual machine) in order for the program to run?"}
{"_id": "59037", "title": "Linking Libraries in iOS?", "text": "This is probably a totally noob question but I have missing links in my mind when thinking about linking libraries in iOS. I usually just add a new library that's been cross compiled and set the build and linker paths without really know what I'm doing. I'm hoping someone can help me fill in some gaps. Let's take the OpenCV library for instance. I have this totally working btw because of a really well written tutorial( http://niw.at/articles/2009/03/14/using-opencv-on-iphone/en ), but I'm just wanting to know what is exactly going on. What I'm thinking is happening is that when I build OpenCV for iOS is that your creating object code that gets placed in the .a files. This object code is just the implementation files( .m ) compiled. One reason you would want to do this is to make it hard to see the source code and so that you don't have to compile that source code every time. The .h files won't be put in the library ( .a ). You include the .h in your source files and these header files communicate with the object code library ( .a ) in some way. You also have to include the header files for your library in the Build Path and the Library itself in the Linker Path. So, is the way I view linking libraries correct? If , not can someone correct me on this ?"}
{"_id": "193176", "title": "In Java, would you sacrifice type safety for a nicer programming interface", "text": "**When and why would you generally sacrifice typesafety for a nicer programming interface?** Let me give you an example: if you had the choice between two event aggregators, which one would you prefer and why? Reflective Version:               SomeEvent.subscribe(instance, \"nameOfAMethod\"); //method called via reflection     SomeEvent.fire(arg1, arg2);  //the firing could actually even be statically typed      Statically typed version:               EventSystem.getEvent(SomeEvent.class).subscribe(new EventHandler<Payload>() {        public void eventOccurred(Object sender, Payload payload) {            //event handler code here        }     });          EventSystem.getEvent(SomeEvent.class).fireEvent(payload);      Please note, that in Java, due to type erasure, you cannot implement a generic interface with different type parameters more than once and need to resort to anonymous or external classes for handlers. Now the reflective event system has a nicer user interface, but you lose type safety. Which one would you prefer? Would you create empty event classes just for the sake of having a symbol, like Microsoft does it with PRISM in its event aggregator?"}
{"_id": "178102", "title": "Why is there never any controversy regarding the switch statement?", "text": "We all know that the `goto`statement should only be used on very rare occasions if at all. It has been discouraged to use the `goto` statement countless places countless times. But why it there never anything like that about the `switch` statement? I can understand the position that the `switch` statement should always be avoided since anything with `switch` can always be expressed by `if...else...` which is also more readable and the syntax of the switch statement if difficult to remember. Do you agree? What are the arguments in favor of keeping the 'switch` statement? It can also be difficult to use if what you're testing changes from say an integer to an object, then C++ or Java won't be able to perform the switch and neither C can perform switch on something like a struct or a union. And the technique of fall- through is so very rarely used that I wonder why it was never presented any regret of having switch at all? The only place I know where it is best practice is GUI code and even that switch is probably better coded in a more object-oriented way."}
{"_id": "238874", "title": "overriding implemented base class methods", "text": "I read somewhere that the chain of inheritance breaks when you alter a behavior from derived class. What does \"altering a behavior\" mean here? Is overriding an already implemented method in base class considered as \"altering behavior\"? Or, does the author mean altering method signatures and the output? Also, I ready Duplicating code is not a good practice, and its a maintenance nightmare. Again, does overriding an already implemented method in base class considered \"Duplicating code\"? If not, what would be considered as \"Duplicating code\"? I"}
{"_id": "218601", "title": "Ordering if conditions for efficiency and clean code", "text": "This is purely a design question and the example is simple to illustrate what I am asking and there are too many permutations of more complex code to provide examples that would cover the topic. _I am not referring specifically to this example, just using the example to illustrate what I am referring to._ In an if statement, is there a preferred way to order conditions, in terms of coding convention and, more importantly, efficiency? For such a simple example, efficiency will not be an issue, but I am not asking for a code review per se, but an understanding of the concept. Two alternatives:   1.               public double myStuff(int i)     {         // check for an invalid number of tourists         if (i > 0)         {             // do something here                  return doubleSomething;         } else         {             return Double.NaN;         }     }      2.               public double myStuff(int i)     {              if (i <= 0)         {             return Double.NaN;              } else         {                  {                 // do something here                      return doubleSomething;             }      If the if statement was to become more complex, and possibly nested, in what order should conditions be addressed?"}
{"_id": "178105", "title": "Understanding HTTP Cookies in Indy 10 for Delphi XE2", "text": "I have been working with Indy 10 HTTP Servers / Clients lately in Delphi XE2, and I need to make sure I'm understanding session management correctly. In the server, I have a \"bucket\" of sessions, which is a list of objects which each represent a unique session. I don't use username and password to authenticate users, but I rather use a unique API key which is issued to a client, and has an expiration. When a client wishes to connect to the server, it first logs in by calling the \"login\" command, which is a path like this: `http://localhost:1234/login?APIKey=abcdefghij`. The server checks this API Key against the database, and if it's valid, it creates a new session in the bucket, issues a new cookie (unique string), and sets the response cookies with `Success=Y` and `Cookie=abcdefghij`. This is where I have the question. Assuming the client end has its own method of cookie management, the client will receive this login response back from the server and _automatically_ save the cookies as necessary. Any future request from the client to the server shall automatically send along these cookies, and the client side doesn't have to necessarily worry about setting these cookies when sending requests to the server. Right? PS - I'm asking this question here on programmers.stackexchange.com because I didn't see it fit to ask on stackoverflow.com. If anyone thinks this is appropriate enough for stackoverflow.com, please let me know."}
{"_id": "221178", "title": "Entity Framework Entities - Some Data From Web Service - Best Architecture?", "text": "We are currently using Entity Framework as an ORM across a few web applications, and until now, it has suited us well as all our data is stored in a single database. We are using the repository pattern, and have services (the domain layer) which use these, and return the EF entities directly to the ASP.NET MVC controllers. However, a requirement has come up to utilise a 3rd party API (through a web service) which will give us extra information that relates to the user in our database. In our local User database, we will store an external ID which we can provide the to API to get additional information. There is quite a bit of information available, but for the sake of simplicity, one of them relates to the user's company (name, manager, room, job title, location etc). This information will be used in various places throughout our web apps - as opposed to being used in a single place. So my question is, where is the best place to populate and access this information? As it is used in various places, it's not really sensible to fetch it on an ad-hoc basis wherever we use in the web application - so it makes sense to return this additional data from the domain layer. My initial thought was just to create a wrapper model class which would contain the EF entity (EFUser), and a new 'ApiUser' class containing the new information - and when we get a user, we get the EFUser, and then get the additional info from the API, and populate the ApiUser object. However, whilst this would be fine for getting single users, it falls over when getting multiple users. We can't hit the API when getting a list of users. My second thought was just to add a singleton method to the EFUser entity which returns the ApiUser, and just populate it when needed. This solves the above problem as we only access it when we need it. Or the final thought was to keep a local copy of the data in our database, and synchronise it with the API when the user logs in. This is minimal work as it's just a synchronisation process - and we don't have the overhead of hitting the DB and API every time we want to get user information. However, these means storing the data in two places, and also means the data is out of date for any user that hasn't logged in for a while. Does anyone have any advice or suggestions on how best to handle this kind of scenario?"}
{"_id": "99935", "title": "MonoTouch/MonoDroid + C# = trustable?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  MonoTouch vs Objective-C for iPhone/iPod/iPad development   >  As a C# developer, would you learn Java to develop for Android or use > MonoDroid instead? I'm very curious about the tools named MonoTouch and MonoDroid to create applications for Android, iPhone and iPod by using c# code. Question:   * Are these tools good enough to create applications that will be used in different environments?   * Can these tools replace the orgininal way of creating application? If you create an application for Android, you often use Java to create it.   * How different is it to create a application with Mono for Android compare to creating an application for Windows Mobile Phone?"}
{"_id": "151386", "title": "Do Android developers have to pay sales taxes?", "text": "According to blog post by RetroDreamer Android developers have to pay sales taxes for their App sales in countries with have sales taxes while Apple developers don't as Apple pays the taxes directly. Is this an accurate description? Is so, how do the various people who publish Android apps handle it?"}
{"_id": "66502", "title": "Project Closures in Scrum", "text": "In a typical software development environment, **project closures** mark the end of a project.   1. Project records are completed and archived,    2. resources released,    3. issues and lessons are documented, and    4. a formal dinner/party held for celebration.  Last step is optional, though is very motivating for participants. :-) Contrast this with Scrum. I know that scrum runs on **stories from backlogs**. So, technically, every iteration closes certain stories. So, there are two questions here.   1. For a group that works on **multiple simultaneous projects** , how do project closures fit in?    2. For a project that involves **multiple groups** , how does this concept apply? Or, does project closure term not apply to **T &M projects** at all?"}
{"_id": "108240", "title": "Why are interfaces useful?", "text": "I have been studying and coding in C# for some time now. But still, I can't figure the usefulness of Interfaces. They bring too little to the table. Other than providing the signatures of function, they do nothing. If I can remember the names and signature of the functions which are needed to be implemented, there is no need for them. They are there just to make sure that the said functions(in the interface) are implemented in the inheriting class. C# is a great language, but sometimes it gives you the feeling that first Microsoft creates the problem (not allowing multiple inheritance) and then provides the solution, which is rather a tedious one. That's my understanding which is based on limited coding experience. What's your take on interfaces? How often you make uses of them and what makes you do so?"}
{"_id": "229691", "title": "what is the main utility of Interface in real world programming (OOPS)", "text": "what is the main utility of Interface. we know that we can implement dynamic behavior using interface but i guess it is not only the utility. so i like to know when we have to write interface and when we need to go for abstract class. **show me 5 or 10 most important uses of interface in real life scenario.** another main use is coming to my mind that project manager or team lead will implement basic skeleton through interface and other developer follow it. so please guys show me with sample code few most important use of interface which we can do with abstract class or concrete class. **one guy told me like this way which is not very clear to me** interfaces are defined contracts between classes or structs, consumers can exchange the implementation by a different one as long as the same contract is met that is the method names and signature that compose a specification that classes and structs can work against rather than working against a concrete implementation. The important part about interfaces is to know when to use them and as a matter of fact it's quite simple, when you want two or more unrelated objects to have the same common functionality but not necessarily the same implementation you will want to use interfaces; otherwise, when you have related objects that have a shared functionality and implementation then you may consider to use an abstract class instead of an interface. **this thing is not clear specially** when you want two or more unrelated objects to have the same common functionality but not necessarily the same implementation you will want to use interfaces; otherwise, when you have related objects that have a shared functionality and implementation then you may consider to use an abstract class instead of an interface. it would be nice if anyone explains with sample code when to go for interface & when abstract class. show me few best important area which is always handle with interface with sample code or best interface uses with sample code.thanks"}
{"_id": "207207", "title": "Programming to interface in Java", "text": "What is the real use of interfaces in Java? What is meant by programming to interfaces? I heard these things several times but I don't know what it is and why it is used."}
{"_id": "180001", "title": "Abstract Class, Interface: difference and use", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces and extension methods in > C#? What is the difference between abstract classes and interfaces in java? And under what circumstances should I choose to create an abstract class or an interface. What are the points that I must have in my mind before choosing one of the above?"}
{"_id": "131332", "title": "What is the point of an interface?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces and extension methods in > C#?   >  What other reasons are there to write interfaces rather than abstract > classes? This question sounded a bit trivial to me as well, till I gave a it serious thought myself. What is the point of a Java interface? Is it really Java's answer to multiple inheritance? Despite using interfaces for a while I never got around to think the point of all this. I know what an interface is, but still pondering on the why."}
{"_id": "129075", "title": "What other reasons are there to write interfaces rather than abstract classes?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces and extension methods in > C#? When I read and looked at codes using Abstract classes, I was able to justify it because it allows you to add common methods for any subclasses extending the abstract class. So for example, if objects behavior is similar, I would use Abstract classes to implement bodyless abstract methods that is required for each object, and simply use non abstract methods already implemented in the abstract class. I can think of a scenario dealing with multiple media file types (avi,mpg,mp4) and you would have common methods for all files, as well as media specific abstract methods that needs to be implemented. However, I am a bit confused as to why you would knowingly create an interface which cannot contain any non-abstract methods. Reading this page, it states that it hides information (you mean the abstract methods?). > Hiding details and providing common interfaces is called encapsulation, > which is an analogy from making an object look like it's covered by a > capsule (the interface in this case). This allows two objects differing in > internal representation but having the common interface interchangeably > usable (called interchangeability). Interfaces also allow to facilitate the > use of data structure and guard the state of the object from invalid inputs > and modification of the structure. So does this mean that any objects which share the common behaviors implemented uniquely can be treated like they are the same category? So for the media file example, does this mean any specific media file type implementing the `interface MediaFile` are to be passed as arguments for a method dealing with such type of objects?               public class ServiceClass {         public ServiceClass(){         //no-args constructor            }              public boolean runService(ICollaborator collaborator){         if(\"success\".equals(collaborator.executeJob())){             return true;         }         else         {             return false;         }     }     }      But can't you do above with an abstract class? Also, isn't the ability of having a non-abstract method better than having none at all for the future when you suddenly need to have an existing method that will apply to all classes extending the abstract class? Or is the difference of using Interface, the ability to protect the implementation of data completely? Once again, I don't see what cases you would use it. Other than that I implement `ActionListener` quiet often to have the `actionPerformed` method."}
{"_id": "113313", "title": "What is Interface in Java programming language?", "text": "Last week my lecturer was teaching us about interfaces in Java. However, I failed to understand her explanation that well. Does anyone have a good description, or explanation of Java interfaces, and reasons to make use of them?"}
{"_id": "245907", "title": "Why do APIs generally consist of interfaces?", "text": "I am starting out in Java API design and in reading existing code bases, I have found that most APIs consist of interfaces only with their implementations bundled in a different package. Having read that interfaces are generally more problematic to use/maintain than abstract classes, why aren't abstract classes used instead of interfaces?"}
{"_id": "239189", "title": "Is using interfaces on internal code a good idea?", "text": "I'm working on a set of automated tests that we use internally at work. Lately, we've been designing classes that implement interfaces in addition to inheritance. As I understand it, interfaces in Java are used to fulfill a contract. A class that implements an interface must include implementations of any members of that interface. This works really well for building libraries or objects that are meant to be used by outside teams or individuals since it guarantees certain methods will be present. What about code that's entirely kept within a single team in a single location? (Assume this code will stay internal, or else this question changes entirely.) If I can simply go to my VCS history or ask a team-member about changes to code, do I really need to enforce these changes using interfaces? Even if a team is large, you could still develop conventions or tests to verify things. I feel like we're just making more work for ourselves by using interfaces, but maybe there are additional arguments. NOTE: This project is a Java project and will stay that way. Interfaces here are instances of `interface` with all the syntax and rules that apply."}
{"_id": "109602", "title": " Why should I use interfaces if the implementation will mostly stay the same?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why are interfaces useful? In our company we have a service oriented architecture in our asp.net application. We use interfaces for every crap class. Its a huge overhead. The service classes, dataprovider classes etc... they all use interfaces but **practically** we could also go without those interfaces and just use the class type. So why should we do it that complicated and lose lots of productivity?"}
{"_id": "41740", "title": "When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces with extension methods in C#?", "text": "\"Abstract class\" and \"interface\" are similar concepts, with interface being the more abstract of the two. One differentiating factor is that abstract classes provide method implementations for derived classes when needed. In C#, however, this differentiating factor has been reduced by the recent introduction of extension methods, which enable implementations to be provided for interface methods. Another differentiating factor is that a class can inherit only one abstract class (i.e., there is no multiple inheritance), but it can implement multiple interfaces. This makes interfaces less restrictive and more flexible. **So, in C#, when should we use abstract classes instead of interfaces with extension methods?** A notable example of the interface + extension method model is LINQ, where query functionality is provided for any type that implements `IEnumerable` via a multitude of extension methods."}
{"_id": "163459", "title": "Understanding interfaces", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When to use abstract classes instead of interfaces and extension methods in > C#?   >  Why are interfaces useful?   >  What is the point of an interface?   >  What other reasons are there to write interfaces rather than abstract > classes?   >  What is the point of having every service class have an interface?   >  Is it bad habit not using interfaces? I am reading Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Step by Step which I feel it is a very good book on introducing you to the C# language. I have just finished reading a chapter on interfaces and although I understood the syntax of creating and using interfaces I have trouble of understanding the point on why should I use them? Correct me If I am wrong but in an interface you can only declare methods names and parameters.The body of the method should be declared in the class that inherits the interface. So in this case why should I declare an interface if I am going to declare the entire method in the class that inherits that interface? What is the point? Does this have something to do with the fact that a class can inherit multiple interfaces?"}
{"_id": "145436", "title": "How to synchronize web page refresh with file upload from windows application?", "text": "I have a rather simple app in .net which uploads images in fixed intervals in an ftp server. The file name is specific. I need to have a web page that refreshes **but** i want this to happen only when the upload finishes. How i find a way to determine that the upload has finished? And if the solution has to do with renaming and deleting temp files, should i do this from the windows app or server side? Thanks update: What if i could find a way to check if a filename is a **valid** jpg? I mean if the transfer is not over this check should return false..ideas?"}
{"_id": "50415", "title": "Python lower_case_with_underscores style convention: underscores not popular?", "text": "PEP8 recommends using > lowercase, with words separated by underscores as necessary to improve > readability for variable and function names. I've seen this interpreted as `lower_case_with_underscores` by most people, although in practice and in Python's native methods it seems like `lowercasewithoutunderscores` is more popular. It seems like following PEP8 strictly would be awkward since it seems to suggest mixing both `lower_case_with_underscores` and `lowercasewithoutunderscores`, which would be inconsistent. What is your interpretation of PEP8's variable names, and what do you actually use in practice? (Personally, I like `lowerCamelCase` as a compromise between readability and ease of typing.)"}
{"_id": "189107", "title": "When can one call themselves a \"Rubyist\"?", "text": "I was wondering what that term even meant. Is it something to do with one's amount of knowledge about the Ruby language or just the plain idea of using it. When can one call themselves a \"Rubyist\"?"}
{"_id": "223203", "title": "GitHub etiquette for duplicating a repo to change functionality", "text": "I've found a GitHub project I'd like to add some features to. After contacting the maintainer, the changes aren't in line with the direction he's going but he's interested to see what I do with it. What is the GitHub etiquette for using one repo as a base for another project that almost certainly won't ever be merged back into the original? Instead of forking, my instinct is to create a brand new repo and manually copy the current state of the original code into it. Then, in the documentation, give credit and a link to the original author/repo for the starting point. Is that acceptable, or is there some other standard approach?"}
{"_id": "189103", "title": "I'm trying to create a visual representation of something, but I don't know what words to use, so I'll try to describe it", "text": "My project team is making a site that will use reddit style voting to track users' opinions on various issues, and use the data to create a \"heat map\". I say heat map in quotes because I'm not sure that it's the correct term - I don't have the math to express it properly. The idea is you'll be able to see, on a 2 dimensional graph, how your opinons compare to those of other voters in your municipality, and to politicians currently running for office. This will help voters make more informed decisions about voting. I'm not sure how to code this or even what to start googling for. Can anyone suggest a direction? ** I'll change the title to something more useful when I have more information, sorry"}
{"_id": "189102", "title": "How to overcome the fear of building a web application with a recurring payment system?", "text": "I'm a Ruby on Rails developer. I'd like to create a web application. I will let users get a payed subscription to use the product. So I will need a recurring billing system (e.g. via paypal). But there is the fear to fail and make some bad mistakes, because I will handle money from other people.... regardless following the instructions of e.g. Ryan Bates on Railscasts how to implement such a recurring payment system. What is your advice to overcome this fear of building such a product? What are the risks I need to calculate when designing such a system?"}
{"_id": "52816", "title": "What do you do to remain productive when working on your own?", "text": "I find working in isolation, on a piece of code that won't be seen by anyone else for weeks, draining. I'm looking for ideas to try to keep myself productive and motivated. What do you do to remain motivated and productive, when given a long term programming task, and working on your own (for example, from home, without any team-mates or coworkers)?"}
{"_id": "52818", "title": "Marking services for secure handling; Annotation or inheritance?", "text": "We have a lot of services, some that demand some security, some that don't. We want an easy way of telling, in code, if a service will be secure or not. What would be the better way: Annotation or inheritance?               public class SomeServiceImplementation : BaseSecureService, ISomeService      or               [SecureService]     public class SomeServiceImplementaion : ISomeService"}
{"_id": "111546", "title": "Is this a ridiculous way to structure a DB schema, or am I completely missing something?", "text": "I have done a fair bit of work with relational databases, and think I understand the basic concepts of good schema design pretty well. I recently was tasked with taking over a project where the DB was designed by a highly- paid consultant. Please let me know if my gut intinct - \"WTF??!?\" - is warranted, or is this guy such a genius that he's operating out of my realm? DB in question is an in-house app used to enter requests from employees. Just looking at a small section of it, you have information on the users, and information on the request being made. I would design this like so: ### User table:               UserID (primary Key, indexed, no dupes)     FirstName     LastName     Department      ### Request table               RequestID (primary Key, indexed, no dupes)     <...> various data fields containing request details     UserID -- foreign key associated with User table      Simple, right? Consultant designed it like this (with sample data): ### UsersTable               UserID  FirstName   LastName     234     John        Doe     516     Jane        Doe     123     Foo         Bar      ### DepartmentsTable               DepartmentID   Name     1              Sales     2              HR     3              IT      ### UserDepartmentTable               UserDepartmentID   UserID   Department     1                  234      2     2                  516      2     3                  123      1      ### RequestTable               RequestID   UserID   <...>     1           516      blah     2           516      blah     3           234      blah      The entire database is constructed like this, with every piece of data encapsulated in its own table, with numeric IDs linking everything together. Apparently the consultant had read about OLAP and wanted the 'speed of integer lookups' He also has a large number of stored procedures to cross reference all of these tables. Is this valid design for a small to mid-sized SQL DB? Thanks for comments/answers..."}
{"_id": "149926", "title": "Is it a good idea to use CouchDB?", "text": "Is it a good idea to use CouchDB for a web application that is going to be platform agnostic (from tablet to PC):   * The app is a big form which I need to be able to modify at will.    * I also need to scan the results to retrieve the data to send some file to help the client.   * I need to be able to upload the results to a master server.   * I want to mainly use the app offline and online at will.  The data is questions with answers and comments linked to them. At the end a percentage is generated for the user and depending on the result, a call to another application will be made to \"send\" information to the user depending on its results. The application needs to be offline because we don't know if the user is connected to the internet at the time they answer the questions. The data needs to be the same on all platforms (replication is a given). I cannot rely on the browser even if the app is going to be built with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. Is it possible with CouchDB and is it a too big mandate for only one person? If there are not enough details, ask and I will explain more thoroughly. **EDIT:** After all your answers here is what i have concluded.   * I am gonna use SQLite and sync it with our sql databases.   * NoSQL is not made for the kind of app i am working on.   * Using what you know is sometimes the way to go    * If you dont know how to use the technology and intend to use it for a huge project your coding alone. dont."}
{"_id": "60900", "title": "Do abstractions have to reduce code readability?", "text": "A good developer I work with told me recently about some difficulty he had in implementing a feature in some code we had inherited; he said the problem was that the code was difficult to follow. From that, I looked deeper into the product and realised how difficult it was to see the code path. It used so many interfaces and abstract layers, that trying to understand where things began and ended was quite difficult. It got me thinking about the times I had looked at past projects (before I was so aware of clean code principles) and found it extremely difficult to get around in the project, mainly because my code navigation tools would always land me at an interface. It would take a lot of extra effort to find the concrete implementation or where something was wired up in some plugin type architecture. I know some developers strictly turn down dependency injection containers for this very reason. It confuses the path of the software so much that the difficulty of code navigation is exponentially increased. My question is: when a framework or pattern introduces so much overhead like this, is it worth it? Is it a symptom of a poorly implemented pattern? I guess a developer should look to the bigger picture of what that abstractions brings to the project to help them get through the frustration. Usually though, it's difficult to make them see that big picture. I know I've failed to sell the needs of IOC and DI with TDD. For those developers, use of those tools just cramps code readability far too much."}
{"_id": "26560", "title": "Which back-end web programming language to use", "text": "I have a project where I will be collaborating to build a fairly simple site with some database access. I will be doing the back-end work, and my colleague will be doing the web design. The problem is that my colleague has only worked with PHP developers and I have a lot more experience in Perl. The options would be to either learn PHP while doing the project or for my colleague to learn how to design around Perl. (I guess a third option would be to decline the project because this obstacle is just too insurmountable). If the answer is to use Perl, the next question is which templating module would be easiest for my PHP-aware web designer colleague to adapt to. HTML::Mason? HTML::Template? Something else?"}
{"_id": "126469", "title": "Design Document From Code", "text": "I am not much familiar with documenting/System designing stuff. I have to maintain an application written in C# - working as windows service.   However there is no documentation for this system which makes it really pathetic to find where some problem (conceptually) occurred. I would like to know the best way to design/document it (using current code) manually or preferably automatically so that I can identify the exact problems. Like I feel as if sequence diagram won't much help probably.   Also, please guide me if I am taking it on wrong side?"}
{"_id": "175824", "title": "Quality Assurance activities", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Verification of requirements question Having asked but deleted the question as it was a bit misunderstood. If Quality Control is the actual testing, **what are the commonest true quality assurance activities?** I have read that verification (reviews, inspections..) but it does not make much sense to me as it looks more like quality control as mentioned here:   _DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LIFE CYCLE FRAMEWORK Practices guide_ > Verification - \u201cAre we building the product right?\u201d **Verification is a > quality control technique** that is used to evaluate the system or its > components to determine whether or not the project\u2019s products satisfy > defined requirements. During verification, the project\u2019s processes are > reviewed and examined by members of the IV&V team with the goal of > preventing omissions, spotting problems, and ensuring the product is being > developed correctly.   >  Some Verification activities may include items such as: \u2022 Verification of > requirement against defined specifications \u2022 Verification of design against > defined specifications \u2022 Verification of product code against defined > standards \u2022 Verification of terms, conditions, payment, etc., against > contracts And the opposite ( _project management knowledge scope_ \\- google result) **Verification is a quality assurance process or technique applied by ...**"}
{"_id": "127735", "title": "Android development using C and C++", "text": "I am a C, C++ developer. I am interested in mobile development. I want to know how can I develop Android apps using C and C++, I have read that they are providing a kit for C, C++ developers but it does not have all functions as of Java kit. Should I go for C/C++ development kit or it's better to learn java as they may not provide all the functionality in future?"}
{"_id": "75536", "title": "Are there some types of software that cannot be developed by all major programming languages?", "text": "I'd like to know if some of the major programming languages can absolutely not be used to create some very specific types of software. By major programming language I mean the likes of C++, C#, Java, Ruby, Python. By \"cannot be developed\" I mean cannot be developed or it is unrealistic to do it due to performance, difficulty of implementation, etc. I've always thought that any programming language could be used to solve any problem but lately I've been thinking that some languages are unsuitable for some projects. If you can provide examples of such applications, it would be appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "65266", "title": "How does \"new message\" notification work?", "text": "I'm interested to know the implementation of the 'new message' in gmail for example. I know that ajax is used, but what else it is used on the server and client side. Can you explain me the scenario? Gmail is just a sample to sustain my question. I'm interested about the cheapest solution which allow to display new content in asynchronous manner without a user triggered event. If you know a resource which explains the optimal way of implementing such app I will appreciated. TY"}
{"_id": "214539", "title": "Technique to deal with occasionally blocking json api?", "text": "I have a web app that occasionally (after some idleness) will block a very simple request for small chunks of data (30~50 kb) up to 20 or so seconds. Assuming I can't refactor or modify the API, is there some pattern in javascript or jquery to accommodate a situation like this? I'm thinking to set a timeout for 5 seconds or so for the api call and retry the ajax request -- via jquery's $.ajax() with the timeout argument. I imagine this could be the equivalent of the user refreshing a slow-loading page. Thanks for your thoughts."}
{"_id": "396", "title": "What are some good office-layout guidelines for a small development team?", "text": "Our office is moving soon and we have the opportunity to redesign our office space. We have five developers and a couple of testers, working with a project manager, and a business analyst. I'd like your ideas for an ideal office layout for a a small development team like ours."}
{"_id": "209441", "title": "Generic term for \"objects\" vs \"fundamental types\"?", "text": "What are the exact terms to call **data types with a logic structure** (like C structures, C++ or Java objects) versus **fundamental data types** (like numeric types, characters, booleans...) independently of any language or paradigm. (I am searching for abstract/academic computer science words)."}
{"_id": "250569", "title": "Could the trivium be used to successfully teach programming languages?", "text": "The trivium is a systematic method of critical thinking for deriving certainty from any information which is comprised of:   * grammar    * logic    * rhetoric Joseph, Sister Miriam (2002). in _The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Paul Dry Books, Inc._ shortly describe this stages: > Grammar is concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized, Logic is concerned > with the thing as-it-is-known, and Rhetoric is concerned with the thing as- > it-is-communicated When I learned about the trivium I realized that would be the best way to approach teaching programming languages. Adapted to programming languages this would be the stages:   * in the grammar stage there would be the learning phase where writing any program, playing with all the all variants of syntax, simple, data structures, using all the keywords, datatypes, making simple programs, would be the goal.   * in the logic stage there will be teaching algorithms, complex conditionals, as a learning goal    * in the rhetoric stage there could be teaching programming paradigms, procedural programming, OOP, collaboration and versioning tools (git) etc. What would be the shortcomings of the trivium method applied to programming languages, what would be the learning subjects who could not be integrated with the trivium method, and would the trivium stages order(grammar first, logic second, etc) apply well to programming learning?"}
{"_id": "209448", "title": "My github pull request was merged, what's the convention at this stage?", "text": "I forked a project on Github, made a small change and sent a pull request to the original maintainer, who has pulled it in. Now the last commit there is `Merged pull request #11 from my_username/master`. This is the first time I'm doing this, so I'm not sure what the etiquette now is: I did a `git pull upstream master` and then `git push origin master`, and now the last commit on my own repository reads `Merged pull request #11 from my_username/master` which feels pretty weird to me. Is this the way people usually do it, is there anything I need to do to \"clean up the history\" or something? Note: since this was a tiny documentation change, I hadn't created any branches, I just made the change in my `master` branch and sent the pull req. So there's no cleanup to be done in that part."}
{"_id": "114443", "title": "Is it really that hard to find good developers?", "text": "There was a topic about job marker few days ago, and urban legends about this topic have been floating around as well. So, what's your experience? Have you tried hiring programmers (it's probably a good idea to mention the sector - web/database/embedded/general, and a continent)? And what are your experiences? Do companies receive 500+ CVs a day? No-one applies? People who apply are bad at things? What are the main reasons why candidates are found \"not good enough\"?"}
{"_id": "134736", "title": "Good open source projects to master Python concurrency", "text": "Concurrent programming in Python is very colorful (and confusing too). There's just too many options with each having it's pros and cons...   * Thread based (`threading` module)   * Process based ( `multiprocessing` module)   * Co-routines (`greenlet`, `gevent`, `eventlet`)   * Async (`Twisted`, `Tornado`)   * Inter-process communication (`subprocess` module)   * Message queue based (`\u00d8MQ`, `PyCom`, `mpi4py`)   * Others (`Pyro`, `execnet`, `Parallel Python`) I know some of these and can write programs using them. But, I just don't feel I know them pretty well -- I can't decide what to use when. I don't know how to put these into perspective. So, my simple question is -- what are some open source projects that employ these techniques so that I can see them in action in real program."}
{"_id": "114446", "title": "OO Design principle name?", "text": "I think I remember reading somewhere that one of the principles of good OO design is to write methods which take the least derived type possible, but return the most derived type possible? First, is there such a principle and second, what name would it go by? I'm looking for the name so that when I mentor other developers I can refer them to it."}
{"_id": "93138", "title": "How to advocate Stack Overflow at work", "text": "I am thinking of doing a short presentation at work about using Stack Overflow as a resource for your day job. What is your experience doing this? Would you deem it a valid resource to tell your colleagues about it or is it similar to telling them about Google as a resource? Is there a better way of doing it? I was leaning toward asking questions side of Stack Overflow rather than answering them to avoid you-shouldn't-be-doing-this-on-work-time argument. * * * Just as a follow up. Originally I didn't want to make the question too specific to my own case. My presentation will only be a quick four minute talk, which I will repeat over an hour to different groups. I may ask a question before the talk on Stack Overflow and refer to it during the presentation. Hopefully I will get some activity during the hour. I am also going to talk briefly about some of the other Stack Exchange sites that would fit the audience as they are not all developers. I think Super User, Server Fault and Programmers should work well. I will not be doing the presentation for another couple of months as it has been rescheduled, but I will update on how I got on."}
{"_id": "164590", "title": "Python as a first language?", "text": "I have just started working in Information Security World. I want to learn the Python language for creating my own automated tool for Fuzzing, SQL-Injection etc. My question is I don't know much about C language (only basic knowledge) but I want to learn directly Python Language so is it good? I have seen there is lots of difference between Python and C (obviously) and for Information Security field Python = GOD so I want to know learning Python need any experience on C language? If not so can I start learning Python directly?"}
{"_id": "165615", "title": "Make audible Ding! sound, or growl notification, when `rake test` finishes!", "text": "I lose a ton of productivity by getting distracted while waiting for my tests to run. Usually, I'll start to look at something while they're loading --- and 15-20 minutes later I realize my tests are long done, and I've spent 10 minutes reading online. Make a small change... rerun tests ... another 10-15 minutes wasted! How can I make my computer make some kind of alert (Sound or growl notification) when my tests finish, so I can snap back to what I was doing??"}
{"_id": "104277", "title": "In what order should I read these books?", "text": "This question is not a duplicate - I'm not asking about the best books. Rather, I'm asking for the best order in which to study. I'm new to programming but I finished a very, very simple book (Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming) and wrote some simple programs. These are the books I plan to read from here: Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference CLR via C# C# in Depth, Second Edition What would be the best order in which to study them?"}
{"_id": "165616", "title": "is it safe to use jQuery and MooTools together?", "text": "I just need to know is it safe to use jQuery and MooTools Together in one web framework? I am not trying create application using both of them, but I am in a situation where I need to modify mootool based application framework, so I am used to jquery, I don't want to waste my time learning mootools and I think jquery is better than the mootools in many contexts like number of applications, plugins etc. so questions are   1. is it safe to use mootools and jquery in one framework?   2. will there be cross browser issues?   3. how robust the application will be when using both?"}
{"_id": "104273", "title": "Two interviews: Advice on replying to lesser of the two if awaiting result of the preferred one", "text": "I recently gave two interviews (Say company A and B) and am inclined to get into company A more than B. The hiring manager of A might get a little late in replying. I do not want to lose B if I don't get into A. I want to know if I get a positive reply from company B before A, is there a polite way to say that I am waiting on one other result? Or can I buy a week or so? How do I convey this? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "75287", "title": "Does KISS encourage tools and frameworks that expose complex leaky abstraction layers?", "text": "Tools and frameworks make complex tasks simple. This seems like something that would be supported by KISS(keep it simple stupid). Tools and frameworks also have the potential to introduce leaky layers of abstraction, where the complexity of the issues are far more problematic than anything you would have written yourself. I am not interested in the effectiveness of tools and frameworks, since that is more of a religious opinion, and can be kept private. What I am interested in is whether or not tools and frameworks are favored by KISS. Obviously some layers of abstraction are accepted by just about everyone, but there are plenty of examples of edge cases where it is harder to tell. For example: For a web service in .Net, would KISS favor a basic WCF service (super easy to create; fairly difficult understand/see what is actually going on under the hood) or a basic REST service (more challenging to create; easier to understand/see what is actually going on under the hood)? Note: There are plenty more examples of this, so feel free to suggest more appropriate ones."}
{"_id": "100680", "title": "When should you rewrite?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When is a BIG Rewrite the answer? In Joel Spolsky's famous (or infamous) article Thins You Should Never Do, Part I, he makes the case that doing a rewrite is always a wrong move because:   1. It automatically puts you behind (your competitors/schedule/etc.)   2. The code probably isn't as bad as the programmers believe (anything someone else wrote is always a mess, although some are bigger messes than others - and even then)   3. It's probably easier/quicker/cheaper to fix what's truly wrong with it than to rewrite from scratch.   4. In rewriting from scratch, you are probably going to re-introduce bugs that were fixed in previous versions the original code. Instead, he recommends fixing what's wrong with the code. I assume this is a good summary of his post, and I'll postulate that it is generally true. I'm trying to collect a set of rules/guideline for my team, and one of them (based on Joel's article) is               We don\u2019t re-write ... ever!      - But we can refactor large portions of the code.       (this exception takes care of ugly/problematic code issues)      One question that has cropped up is \"What about when technology changes and you can no longer get support for older versions?\". This is what I think of as the Sisyphean Upgrade path. E.g., I recall when Oracle moved from SQL*Forms 2.x/3.x through to Forms 6i and beyond, Forms that were originality developed in the old .inp format were no longer supported with the current version of Oracle and Oracle Forms. So you had a choice of sticking with an unsupported database with unsupported tools or rewriting the Forms from scratch (or converted with 3rd party tools and then gone over with a fine toothed comb). Which I will call porting, particularly when you are doing a faithful line by line/function by function translation into the new tech and not adding any functionality. The rule then became:               We don\u2019t re-write ... ever!     - But we can refactor large portions of the code.     - And we can port the code to a new platform when we *truly* have no other        choice.      (and by truly I mean, you can't even buy your way out of the problem for 2x the cost of porting it) Are there any other exceptions that I've missed?"}
{"_id": "43948", "title": "How can I convince management to deal with technical debt?", "text": "This is a question that I often ask myself when working with developers. I've worked at four companies so far and I've become aware of a lack of attention to keeping code clean and dealing with technical debt that hinders future progress in a software app. For example, the first company I worked for had written a database from scratch rather than use something like MySQL and that created hell for the team when refactoring or extending the application. I've always tried to be honest and clear with my manager when he discusses projections, but management doesn't seem interested in fixing what's already there and it's horrible to see the impact it has on team morale. What are your thoughts on the best way to tackle this problem? What I've seen is people packing up and leaving. The company then becomes a revolving door with developers coming in and out and making the code worse. How do you communicate this to management to get them interested in sorting out technical debt?"}
{"_id": "155488", "title": "I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?", "text": "I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice. I am newly employed as the sole \"SW Engineer\" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 years cobbling together a vast code base. (It was written in a virtually obsolete language: _G2_ \\-- think Pascal with graphics). The program itself is a physical model of a complex chemical processing plant; the team that wrote it have incredibly deep domain knowledge but little or no formal training in programming fundamentals. They've recently learned some hard lessons about the consequences of non-existant configuration management. Their maintenance efforts are also greatly hampered by the vast accumulation of undocumented \"sludge\" in the code itself. I will spare you the \"politics\" of the situation (there's _always_ politics!), but suffice to say, there is not a consensus of opinion about what is needed for the path ahead. They have asked me to begin presenting to the team some of the principles of modern software development. They want me to introduce some of the industry- standard practices and strategies regarding coding conventions, lifecycle management, high-level design patterns, and source control. Frankly, it's a fairly daunting task and I'm not sure where to begin. Initially, I'm inclined to tutor them in some of the central concepts of _The Pragmatic Programmer_, or Fowler's _Refactoring_ (\"Code Smells\", etc). I also hope to introduce a number of Agile methodologies. But ultimately, to be effective, I think I'm going to need to hone in on 5-7 core fundamentals; in other words, what are the most important principles or practices that they can realistically start implementing that will give them the most \"bang for the buck\". So that's my question: What would _you_ include in your list of the most effective strategies to help straighten out the spaghetti (and prevent it in the future)?"}
{"_id": "131052", "title": "Reengineering the project from scratch", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When do you rebuild an application or keep on fixing the existing one I am currently working on a project that has been in development for the last few years used throughout the organization but the way the project has been coded the maintainability of it is completely shot. Reading the code presents with pages and pages of Anti-Patterns and trying to identify the path of a business workflow takes on occasion days. At this point I would probably classify the software in its current state as \"Working by accident\" rather then as intended. So I am looking for some wisdom as to the following: At what point would you consider simply dumping the project into an abandonware pile and starting from scratch? P.S. I understand that in a lot of cases organization would consider it cheaper to maintain the existing project."}
{"_id": "141005", "title": "How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code?", "text": "How would one know if the code he has created is easily maintainable and readable? Of course in your point of view (the one who actually wrote the code) your code is readable and maintainable, but we should be true to ourselves here. How would we know if we've written pretty messy and unmaintainable code? Are there any constructs or guidelines to know if we have developed a messy piece of software?"}
{"_id": "253273", "title": "Self-Evaluation: How do I know if I actually have a \"good grasp\" of OOP?", "text": "If I skip the back story and any thoughts I have on this topic, there's really only one question left to ask: **How can I find out if I have a \"good grasp\" on OOP?** (I am specifically using PHP, but it probably won't matter...) Right now I kind of think of classes as a collection of functions with some global-ish variables accessible by all those functions. This helps to reuse code, keep files short and the namespace clean. Some of you mentioned inheritance: To me that again just means that I can extend an existing class with more functions and more global-ish variables. It's like an add on to my existing class. And the same benefits come into place: reuse code, keep files short. I have a ominous feeling that I'll be disillusioned here in a minute..."}
{"_id": "47416", "title": "How to explain to a non-technical person why the task will take much longer than they think?", "text": "Almost every developer has to answer questions from business side like:   Why is going to take 2 days to add this simple contact form? When a developer estimates this task, they may divide it into steps:   * make some changes to the Database   * optimize DB changes for speed    * add front end HTML   * write server side code   * add validation   * add client side javascript    * use unit tests   * make sure SEO set-up is working   * implement email confirmation   * refactor and optimize the code for speed   * ... These maybe hard to explain to a non-technical person, who basically sees the whole task as just putting together some HTML and creating a table to store the data. To them it could be 2 hours MAX. So is there a better way to explain why the estimate is high to a non- developer?"}
{"_id": "211528", "title": "How to educate business managers on the complexity of adding new features?", "text": "We maintain a web application for a client who demands that new features be added at a breakneck pace. We've done our best to keep up with their demands, and as a result the code base has grown exponentially. There are now so many modules, subsystems, controllers, class libraries, unit tests, APIs, etc. that it's starting to take more time to work through all of the complexity each time we add a new feature. We've also had to pull additional people in on the project to take over things like QA and staging, so the lead developers can focus on developing. Unfortunately, the client is becoming angry that the cost for each new feature is going up. They seem to expect that we can add new features _ad infinitum_ and the cost of each feature will remain linear. I have repeatedly tried to explain to them that it doesn't work that way - that the code base expands in a fractal manner as all these features are added. I've explained that the best way to keep the cost down is to be judicious about which new features are really needed. But, they either don't understand, or they think I'm bullshitting them. They just sort of roll their eyes and get angry. They're all completely non-technical, and have no idea what does into writing software. Is there a way that I can explain this using business language, that might help them understand better? Are there any visualizations out there, that illustrate the growth of a code base over time? Any other suggestions on dealing with this client?"}
{"_id": "121844", "title": "What is the most effective approach to learn an unfamiliar complex program?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I have quite a bit of experience with different programming languages and writing small and functional programs for a variety of purposes. My coding skills aren't what I have a problem with. In fact, I've written a decent web application from scratch for my startup. However, I have trouble jumping into unfamiliar applications. What's the most effective way to approach learning a new program's structure and/or architecture so that I can start attacking the code effectively? Are there useful tools for their respective languages (Python and Java are my two primary languages)? Should I be starting with just looking at function names or documentation? How do you veterans approach this problem? I find this has to be with minimal help from coworkers or contributors who are already familiar with the application and have better things to do than help me. I'd love to practice this skill in an open source project so any suggestions for starting points (maybe mildly complex) would be great too!"}
{"_id": "78881", "title": "Contributing to open source software (how to hack)", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I am currently a student and started programming a few years ago. I am able to write complete working software in many languages. However, there is something that bugs me about contributing to open source projects: how do you understand how the organization structured its source code? I tried to add functionality to Apache Tomcat and found it difficult to find myself in all these source files. Is there something I am missing that makes it easier to understand the organization of the work done?"}
{"_id": "221144", "title": "What's the best approach to studying Open Source projects or any large codebase?", "text": "There is a Open Source project which I need to use in my project. All other functionality is built on top of it. I am new to programming and find it very daunting. There are a lot of Open Source projects and APIs out there. At one point or another we need to use these in our projects since we don't want to re-invent it again. There are tons of lines of code written in those Open Source projects by other programmers. It's really hard to understand. How do I pick a library or API and understand it quickly to use it in my project? Do I need to understand each line of code, or just have a general overview of how it works? Please share your experience of how you approach it and any guidance on how to look at it."}
{"_id": "34227", "title": "Developing my momentum on open source projects", "text": "I've been struggling to develop momentum contributing to open source projects. I have in the past tried with gcc and contributed a fix to libstdc++ but it was a once off and even though I spent months in my spare time on the dev mailing list and reading through things I just never seemed to develop any momentum with the code. Eventually I unsubscribed and got my free time back and uncluttered my mailbox. Like a lot of people I have some little open source defunct projects lying around on the net, but they're not large and I'm the only contributor. At the moment I'm more interested in contributing to a large open source project and want to know how people got started because I find it difficult while working full time to develop any momentum with the code base. Other more regular contributors, who are on the project full-time, are able to make changes at will and as result enter that positive feedback cycle where they understand the code and also know where it's heading. It makes the barrier to entry higher for those that come along later. My questions are to people who actively contribute to large opensource projects, like the Linux kernel, or gcc or clang/llvm or anything else with say a developer head count of more than 10.   * How did you get started? Was there a large chunk of time in your life that you just could dedicate to working on the project? I know in Linus's case he had a chunk of time (6 months) to get it started.   * What barriers to entry did you encounter?   * Can you describe the initial stages of the time spent with the project, from when you had little understanding of the code to when you understood enough to commit regularly. Thanks"}
{"_id": "167209", "title": "Persuading management that refactoring code is a good idea", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best supporting argument for refactoring Has anyone got any tips for persuading management that refactoring code is a good idea ? I was asked something like > \"After this refactoring, will I have a better product ? How does time spent > on this benefit the company?\" Or something along those lines. I can see why management asked it but my response was not fantastic. I said something about how a well designed piece of software will mean that adding new features in the future will be quicker and easier. Does anyone else have any tips ? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "247034", "title": "How to handle a client that wants me to use code from Google under all circumstances?", "text": "I have a client that has been upset with the fact that it takes more time than he thinks to complete a feature / bug in a web application. He is more of a project manager that has hired me as a sub-contractor. He has constantly been questioning the estimates I have given him, and is always trying to get me to agree to do things in a less amount of time than I have estimated. I have made it clear to him that I will not always bill for the full estimate if it does not in fact take me that long to complete. He also told me that if there is code on google (w3schools), that I should use that and not write it myself. I have been doing business with this person for 12 months. Just to clarify what I mean by \"Google\", I mean that he would always prefer I copy / paste code that I have found from Google rather than writing code myself."}
{"_id": "29788", "title": "How do you dive into a big ball of mud?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? So there is a question about understanding code. Mine is a similar problem. It started when I joined my current org. and like I always do at beginning I tried to get a feel of the code starting from high up and working my way down to details. Only, there is no detail, or to be more precise I have not been able to discern any design to the this big ball of mudness. Application is riddled with duplicate/unnecessary data, there is no attempt at encapsulation or abstraction or hierarchy with same code copied in multiple classes/modules for the same functionality (of course this means that the duplicated code is out of sync everywhere). Majority of the code concerns the manipulation of POD style classes entirely obscuring business logic in between, DAOs are horribly mutated.To illustrate following is a typical statement in the code               W.X[Y].Z = A.B.C[D]      To summarize the code is to OO programming, sorry make it any programming, what Freddy was/is to teens at Elm street. Now I would like to gradually refactor this insanity away, but I for that I must somehow get a hook on the code. So my question is, does anyone know of any systematic approach to this situation , or do I have to hack till I get the job done. Update: Just to add some additional information.   1. Ours is a new team so we can't talk to anyone who is familiar.   2. I have switched to a new domain as a result I am not familiar with it.   3. We don't have any direct interaction with the customer."}
{"_id": "228468", "title": "Engineering a better solution, coming from existing codebase", "text": "**The Code** I have high-business-value daily-used-by-customer software that is written in PHP and spans approximately 600K lines of code. Customer for a long time needs, wants, and demands new features and functionality. The time to have it done is _yesterday_. So, just write the new features and implement new functionality and deliver it to the customer, yes? Well, no, here are some problems that have been causing considerable pain to current developers: **Existing code-base is ... abig ball of mud.** Notable problems:   * code is hairy - a single feature permeates everything, tracing code is a pain, and adding a feature may potentially impact everything else   * there are no tests   * mix of procedural and object oriented code ridden in bad programming practices   * files reaching 6000-lines of HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, jQuery, JavaScript, comments   * complete disregard/non-existence of MVC/separation-of-concerns pattern. Code is intermixed together   * some business logic depends on volatile things that have no relation to the code (like database metadata)   * hardcoded values, paths, and lack of configurability contribute to lack of security of current architecture   * large repeated blocks of essentially the same code contribute to similar features working slightly differently. Updating one does not update the other   * code is slow, lack of documentation., etc, etc. quite a few other things can be done better **It works...** The good thing is that it works... The functionality that's there, is reasonably worked-out for actual business cases, but ... going forwards is painful. **The Problem** It is easier now (and faster) to add a new feature using existing code style, mostly using cut-n-paste-n-modify approach, thus perpetuating the badness, than it is to do rewrites of this thing using currently existing modern best practices. **Solution?** There is a talk about rewriting the whole thing using one of the currently- leading frameworks (i.e. ZF2), but in doing so it means ignoring customer demands, taking a long time to build the software, and essentially creating new software (version 0.0.1) for the customer, with all the new-software bugs and lack of mature-software feel and functionality. Another thought is to do some incremental development. i.e. When a new feature comes about, write it using a new approach. This is currently failing for the reason stated under \"The Problem\" title above. Yet another idea is to do some slow refactoring of existing codebase... It might work in cleaning up things like MVC and a host of other things, and it will take a long time, and it will essentially feel like unraveling a messed up tightly-wound knotted ball of yarn. But doing this will not address things like unit testing, dependency injection, modern framework principles, and so on. So, in the end, new features are coming, code is being added, and the existing codebase is not getting any better. What might you suggest to do in this case?"}
{"_id": "141968", "title": "What to do when tackling an unfamiliar Code base?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? When you join a pre-existing project that has a large code base, what are some of the things you do to get acclimatized quickly towards being able to code soundly in it? How much time do you spend reading, making diagrams etc as opposed to diving right in and coding?"}
{"_id": "114316", "title": "How should I go about learning a very large and complex application?", "text": "Being a young and fairly inexperienced developer recently employed by a \"real\" software company I'd like some opinions and pointers on how to do the following: **Approaches on how to get familiar with a companies products , especially when you've no idea how it all works**. The company I'm at now has one HUGE product , continually evolving and having been here for 2 weeks I've still no idea how it all sticks together apart from a special kind of glue made from the tears and frustration of young developers, it's incredibly fragmented and only 4 people in the office know the inner workings, all of them constantly busy **Give useful input on the product :** Now, I know I'm just a kid in the company and I can't be expected to deliver anything ground-breaking in my first months, but you have to give as much as you're paid. I'm getting around twice as much as at my previous job but objectively speaking I've not done anything to deserve it yet. Just sat around staring at my laptop screen trying to decipher code. Now you might say that this is what I'm here for , to start off with at least, but at my previous job I was something of a go-to-guy, making decisions and contributing to almost every aspect of the company's daily running. While that was a lot of work I enjoyed the feeling of being 'connected' in the inner workings of the company I have a stake in (a symbiotic relationship if you will). _please edit this point down, I'll leave it up to you guys to decide what's important_ _I'll post more things as I think of them, have to get back to reading and writing something only vaguely resembling C#_"}
{"_id": "170109", "title": "What kind of process should I use to learn a big system?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I just joined a new company and started to study one of the their bigger system. For me to be productive, I need to understand the entire system without too much help. Other programers are really busy and dont' have time to hold my hands. I used to use brain map to draw a pictorial representation of the system. Any recommendations on what is the right appproach to dissect a big program? It is a .net prgoram by the way."}
{"_id": "39386", "title": "How to estimate the length of a programming task", "text": "What process do you use to estimate how long a (significant) programming task will take. Do you use one or more of the following:   * intuition/guessing   * reference to similar tasks whose estimated/actual lengths you recorded   * reference to the lengths of similar task others recorded   * saying it will take the length of time allocated for it (by your manager)"}
{"_id": "204639", "title": "How to properly take over a complex PHP project", "text": "I've been tasked to correct some issues on the backend of a large website project that has been outsourced for some time. The original developers and us are not on good terms so it's not feasible to get them involved. The technology stack is as follows:   * MySQL 5.x   * PHP 5.3 (and a variety of supporting libraries)   * Apache with mod_rewrite The problems I am facing are:   * No documentation, not even comments   * 4 index files in root, plus 2 main files in a combo of php and html and 1 default.php, the referenced index file in .htaccess references their local test server.    * Duplicate file names / files   * Atrocious file system layout ( ultiple js folders, multiple script folders etc )    * Reliance on original mysql functions ( not mysqli or PDO )    * multiple frameworks, JQuery, various marketplace API's etc.  It has been a highly frustrating several hours trying to sort out where to begin with this mess, let alone how to fix the items I need. So my question is: What would be the best place to start or If this was dropped on your lap, how would you approach it? I know this is subjective, and opinions are what I am looking for, so any advice is appreciated."}
{"_id": "114835", "title": "What is the best method to start understanding BIG project source code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? Sometimes before developing new products we need to understand some existing products or existing source code. Sometimes to write another small module of that big project we need to understand that big source code. **In our case we need to study and understand a project with lots of files and folders. What is the easiest and most comfortable way to do it ? (especially for C and C++ and under Linux)**"}
{"_id": "126224", "title": "How to fix very bad code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases?   >  How do I handle refactoring that takes longer than one sprint? I have 2 files that cover 5000 lines of code. I have been ask to fix THE problem. The code is object oriented but use hundred of flags, is multi threads, uses variable name without meaning, has recursion problems, etc... The problem is that rewriting the code will take a couple of months and there is not specifications. The specifications are encrypted in the code. So the big question is do you have any ways or technique to fix/understand such bad code?"}
{"_id": "222641", "title": "How to organize legacy multi page web app with tons of Javascript spaghetti", "text": "I have inherited of an application and need to reorganize and I hope I will be able to modularize the tons of Javascript that is everywhere. It is a **multi-page webapp**. Each page has a script tag in the header, which currently contains a **DomReady handler** which initializes all user event handlers for that specific page, and also very often contains from **1 to 10 javascript functions that are specific** to this page (meaning they are not useful anywhere else in the app). Then, there is a jQuery import on every page, plus an import of somthing like App.js which is simply a **very large collection of global functions** which are useful in many different pages of the application. Page of the application are quite different one from another, so it seems to make sense not to make every page load everything. I'm desperately trying to organize all this, and after investigating modern solutions like RequireJS, Browserify, simple lightweight MVP frameworks like Riot.js, loose coupling through Mediator pattern and so on. A lot of these seem to target single-page web applications mainly. I'm having a hard time to imagine how to reorganize this 40 page application where almost every page needs a **separate initialization, a few specific functions and a large number of general ones**... Also, the webapp can be installed on a user's own server and **individual page scrips behaviour must be customizable** through overriding some of the functions (or adding to the initialization, or the modules if they become modules in the future). What would an JS expert do ?"}
{"_id": "102649", "title": "If TDD is about design why do I need it?", "text": "TDD gurus more and more tell us that TDD is not about tests, it is about design. So I know some developers who create really great design without TDD. Should they practice TDD then?"}
{"_id": "222544", "title": "Emotional detachment from bad code", "text": "We all would like to work with good, easy to maintain code that follows best practices and design patterns. However, reality is far from ideal. After all, content on sites like The Daily WTF is not made up, and we all sometimes have to maintain code that is, to put it mildly, subpar in quality. I have problem working with that code. Of course, working with bad code is difficult from technical standpoint, but I have, well, emotional problem. When I have to, say, fix tiny bug in poorly designed application, I tend to focus on how bad the overall application is instead of how to fix simple bug. I think \"jeez how one can be so stupid to write this\". I treat work as punishment rather than challenge. It impeds my work productivity. How can I change my mindset to focus on task instead of contemplating how bad is the codebase I have to deal with? In this question I assume that obvious solution, i.e. fixing the bad code is not possible/applicable: it works, is too big, fixing it woud take too much effort, it will be soon phased out, was written by your boss etc. TO CLARIFY: I do not want to use overall code quality to justify spoiling it further. I assume overall code quality is wide known concern, but there just happen to be tasks with higher priority. Let's consider following example:               print \"<h1>\", sql(\"SELECT title FROM news WHERE id='$ID'\"), \"</h1>\"      There are two problems:   1. Data and presentation layers are mixed   2. Code is vulnerable to SQL injection `#1` hurts maintainability of codebase, but do not cause any bugs or feature loss by itself. Moreover, fixing it, for example by moving to a proper MVC architecture requires significant effort. `#2`, on the other hand, may lead to data loss and is trivial ro repair (by escaping `$ID`). My question is, provided you are _assigned_ to fix `#2`, how focus on task instead of wishing \"those guys writing Ruby on Rails apps are so happy\"."}
{"_id": "178856", "title": "Does TDD lead to the good design?", "text": "I'm in transition from \"writing unit tests\" state to TDD. I saw as Johannes Brodwall creates quite acceptable design from avoiding any of architecture phase before. I'll ask him soon if it was real improvisation or he had some thoughts upfront. I also clearly understand that everyone has experience that prevents to write explicit design bad patterns. But after participating in code retreat I hardly believe that writing test first could save us from mistakes. But I also believe that tests after code will lead to mistakes much faster. So this night question is asking for people who is using TDD for a long time share their experience about results of design without upfront thinking. If they really practice it and get mostly suitable design. Or it's my small understanding about TDD and probably agile."}
{"_id": "6395", "title": "How do you dive into large code bases?", "text": "What tools and techniques do you use for exploring and learning an unknown code base? I am thinking of tools like `grep`, `ctags`, unit-tests, functional test, class-diagram generators, call graphs, code metrics like `sloccount`, and so on. I'd be interested in your experiences, the helpers you used or wrote yourself and the size of the code base with which you worked. I realize that becoming acquainted with a code base is a process that happens over time, and familiarity can mean anything from \"I'm able to summarize the code\" to \"I can refactor and shrink it to 30% of the size\". But how to even begin?"}
{"_id": "167492", "title": "How to justify rewriting/revamping legacy software in a business case?", "text": "I work for a great little software company which makes good revenue from our main software package. The problem for me is that it's almost unmaintainable. It's written in Delphi 7 (has upgraded versions over time) and has been worked on by a lot of developers over the past 20 or so years. The software lacks any meaningful architecture - there's no object orientation whatsoever, horrible amounts of cyclical dependencies and an over-reliance on global variables to name just a few things. Another huge thing for me is Delphi 7 does NOT support 64-bit. The problem here for me is that my management team don't care about technical things, they want to know why they should care. Obviously that's expected, so what I'm asking here is for some guidance, or tales, or pitfalls about this kind of thing. There's a few things I would love to include, namely for me, the length of time taken to debug/write a feature in \"legacy\" code, versus coherent, well structured OO code. Does anyone know of any blog posts or the like where this is talked about? For us in the company this is a huge reason. Despite being decent developers we feel like writing a new feature is just piling more rubbish on top. On top of that, even for me who has a decent level of understanding of the code, changing things is infuriating - a small change can have a ridiculous domino effect. Anyone have any experiences they'd like to share?"}
{"_id": "6268", "title": "When is a BIG Rewrite the answer?", "text": "Just read the question about the Big Rewrites and I remembered a question that I've been wanting answered myself. I have a horrible project passed down to me, written in old Java, using Struts 1.0, tables with inconsistent relationships, or no relationships at all and even tables without primary keys or fields meant to be primary keys but aren't unique at all. Somehow most of the app \"just works\". Most of the pages are reused (copy pasted code) and hard-coded. Everyone who's ever worked on the project has cursed it in one form or the other. Now I had long considered to propose to upper management a total rewrite of this horrendous application. I'm slowly attempting to on personal time but I really feel that this deserves some dedicated resources to make it happen. Having read the articles on big rewrites I'm having second thoughts. And that's not good when I want to convince my superiors to support my rewrite. (I work in a fairly small company so the proposal has the possibility of being approved) TL;DR When is a big rewrite the answer and what arguments can you use to support it?"}
{"_id": "237891", "title": "Junior - How to understand the flow of the code?", "text": "_A junior asking..._ **First a rather large chunk of background** Assume you have done some programming and now you want to take the next step out in the real world or at least learn more. I have no mentor, not yet anyway, but I have no intention sitting at home and twiddle my thumbs. My idea is to study the vast sea of open source. The problem is to understand a project. You can see the files and read the code line by line but it is of little help since there is > 1000 files with > 1000 lines of code. It is like standing in the middle of a forest at midnight. Where do you go ? The Internet have a lot of ideas on how to get involved in open source. As a developer, it is assumed you have at least > 2 years of experience. You read code like a newspaper. Fluent and with great ease. This is not very helpfull since I don't have that kind of experience yet. My idea is to use UML to get started. This should show some interest too, and will generate good questions to ask. I will start at the top with the packages, the folders. For a given file the include statement (or import or ...) provide all required dependencies. Dependencies can be divided into external och internal. The classes is of various types like subclass, abstract, data, factory, template and so on. This provide more relations between classes. Once you know something about the structure you can start to understand the flow. Now you can start to see the forest. The UML diagram can be auto generated of course but I will learn so much more by doing this by hand. Learning is the key here. This is my idea on how to get started with an alien code base as a junior. I have just started so I would be very happy if you shared your view, ideas and experience. **My question is:** _Imagine you stand in front of an alien code base, what do you do in order to understand the flow of the code ?_ For me it is a just huge set of files, I can't really see the flow between them. I really would like to be a good developer and know I still have much to learn. Hope you understand. **Thanks !! // Jim G**"}
{"_id": "109262", "title": "When do you rebuild an application or keep on fixing the existing one", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  When is a BIG Rewrite the answer?   >  Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite? I am at a customer where I have been tasked to fix a number of issues they have in their existing systems. These systems are all quite old and was built in older technologies to really low development standards. All of this makes it quite difficult and frustrating to properly maintain these systems, because of the two thoughts that often come to mind while working on this:   * A. It would have been so much easier / quicker to do this in one of the newer technologies.    * B. I would not have coded this feature like this. There are many better ways to design this application to make it more maintainable and better performing. (examples are bad OO design, code is often repeated, settings are hard coded, etc.. the list is long).  So under the circumstances I try to make the best of it and fix everything to the best of my ability without complaining too much, but my question is now: How do you decide when it is time to rebuild a system with newer technology, versus keeping on plugging holes in an old one? And how do you make a case for rebuilding? How can you persuade the powers-that-be it is necessary to rebuild the system?"}
{"_id": "171295", "title": "How to manage and estimate unstructured requirements received from customers", "text": "A lot of the times during the bidding phase of a project I receive a software system's requirements from our potential customers in a very unstructured format from various sources [email, word documents, excel]. It is usually a bunch of \"product development\" guys from the customer's side who come up with these \"proposed solutions\" to the business problems they have. While they are the experts at the business domain, a lot of the times they don't have the solutions right. This results in   * multiple versions of the same requirement   * mixing up of two requirements into one   * a few versions of the requirement later down the line, the requirements which were combined together get separated out again, each taking with it some of the new additions How do you work with such requirements coming in and sort them out into proper use cases and before development begins? What tools can we use to track a particular requirement's history, from the first time it was conceived till the time it gets crystallized into a proper use case? Estimating work against requirements received in such a fashion is a nightmare which ends up in making mistakes in understanding the requirement correctly and estimating the effort against it correctly. Once we win the project, then the customers have given some more thought to their requirements and have been able to articulate it properly. What happens in this case is that some functionality gets dropped, some enhanced, some take a whole new turn. This basically can nullify some of the work item's estimates that were made before the project was won. I would be interested in knowing if there is any system by which we can build a tree of a particular requirement and how each branch resulted in a different estimate. Any tips, tools, tricks to make this activity more manageable? I'm just trying to get some insights from someone more experienced than I am in requirements management and effort estimation."}
{"_id": "68399", "title": "How do you accurately create estimates for programming projects given to you?", "text": "I am looking for some insight from you smart people on SO. I'm a relatively new developer (3+ years of experience) primarily on the .NET framework, and I'm absolutely terrible at knowing how to properly estimate even the smallest of projects. I know that it's going to be a pretty big hindrance to my upward mobility as well as my joy of programming if I don't figure out good tools, methodologies, approaches, etc. Therefore, I am seeking your knowledge and wisdom on this subject. I have heard of SWAG and have most of the time employed that to give my estimates in the past, but I don't feel comfortable just \"feeling it out.\" Certainly, from my experience of doing similar projects I can recall how long it took me and give a relatively accurate estimate, but even that isn't always very accurate. Plus, it seems that inherent in every project are gotchas and unforeseeables to make estimating even more difficult. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "192089", "title": "Limit useless complexity in code", "text": "I have a question, to explain that, what better than an entirely fictional example? Let's say you are a young developer just being employed in a firm. All data is stored in a huge database (let's say 500+ tables with billion rows). Your boss ask you to make some consolidation queries stuff. So, you start making your query and, during the development process you learn a lot of conditions to add to your query. Result? Your query works pretty well, result asked is correct but is slow and not very easy to understand. Why? Cause the query, due to a lot of modifications became very complicated. After that, with checking that with a colleague who work in the firms since years, he wrote the same query than you but... easier to learn and faster to execute. So, in fact the main question is: how can we limit this useless complexity ? How can make code more logic in fact? Actually, my initial idea was to draw activity diagrams of code to see where are bottlenecks but I think a better approach is possible. Looking for Books, Links, Ideas, Approaches, Methodologies..."}
{"_id": "196847", "title": "Are there any well-known quantitative approaches to evaluate a particular design whether it satisfies or violates the SOLID design principles?", "text": "I designed an application framework by considering the SOLID design principles and supported by design patterns. However, I wonder if there are any automated tools or well-known approaches to evaluate whether the SOLID design principles are satisfied or violated in the proposed design?"}
{"_id": "16326", "title": "How to learn to make better estimates?", "text": "I suck at estimates. When someone asks me how long something will take, I don't even dare to make a guess since I will be completely off the mark. Usually I'm way too optimistic, and should probably multiply my guess with some large X factor... How can I learn to make better estimates? It's not taught at my uni, and even though we have deadlines for all laborations I never think about how long something will actually take. Which I should. For everyone's sake (especially mine)."}
{"_id": "202757", "title": "How do you get users to rank their software enhancement needs?", "text": "I've inherited a legacy software system, and have been tasked with performing usability and system upgrades. While there's nothing bad with the system, from discussions with the users, there are \"small\" usabilty issues that need to be addressed. At this stage I'm the lone developer on this system, and apart from testing I don't use the system at all, so its difficult for me to know what issues may exist or are percieved to exist. I'm going to have some time to speak with them all and discuss what they percieve to be good/bad or indifferent about the system. Since its essentially just me for the time being my time is limit. So I was considering asking them to imagine that I'd only be able to do one change, have them all write privately what they'd want that one change to be, and then helping them rank those, but I'm hoping for other tips as well. What techniques exist for getting users to explain their wants, needs, and requirements, while also having them rank them by importance or desirability?"}
{"_id": "190048", "title": "Entropy in large scale software systems", "text": "I work on a fairly large software system and over the years it has accumulated a lot of entropy. There is plenty of scope for refactoring but there is always pressures to build the next features upon what's already there. This adds to more entropy, because design choices for implementing new features are typically made by first accepting what's there and 'working-around' some earlier weaker design that is otherwise ripe for refactoring. What are some ways to manage this kind of complexity and build functionality without substantially weakening the structure of the system further. I know this is a very broad question and the approaches/solutions depend on the particular software system at hand, but I am still hoping there are some generic ways to manage the problem I am highlighting."}
{"_id": "115839", "title": "How clean should new code be?", "text": "I'm the lead designer in our team, which means I'm responsible for the quality of the code; functionality, maintainability and readability. How clean should I require my team members' code to be if we are not short on time? In my view, we should clean up old code we modify; adding a line to a method means you clean up that method. But what about new code? We could make it sparkling clean, so that if another coder comes along tomorrow and makes a small modification, she doesn't have to clean it up at all. But that means if no-one ever reads that piece of code again, we've wasted time making it sparkling clean. Should we aim for \"almost clean\" and then clean it up further on future visits? But that would mean not getting the full value for the understanding we had when we wrote it in the first place. Right now, I'm going for \"sparkling clean\"; partly as a tutorial for my colleagues who are not as picky as I."}
{"_id": "171652", "title": "Quantifying the value of refactoring in commercial terms", "text": "Here is the classic scenario; Dev team build a prototype. Business mgmt like it and put it into production. Dev team now have to continue to deliver new features whilst at the same time pay the technical debt accrued when the code base was a prototype. My question is this (forgive me, it's rather open ended); how can the value of the refactoring work be quantified in commercial terms? As developers we can clearly understand and communicate the value in technical terms, such a the removal of code duplication, the simplification of an object model and so on. But this means little to an executive focussed on the commercial elements. What will mean something to this executive is the dev. team being able to deliver requirements at faster velocity. Just making this statement without any metrics that clearly quantify return on investment (increased velocity in return for resource allocated to refactoring) carries little weight. I'm interested to hear from anyone who has had experience, positive or negative, in relation to the above. \\----------------- EDIT ---------------- Thanks for the responses so far, all of which I think are good. What I want to develop is a metric that proves (or disproves!) all of these statements. A report that ties velocity to refactoring and shows a positive effect."}
{"_id": "198244", "title": "How do I survive in a Waterfall world?", "text": "I currently work in a company where the Waterfall model is deeply ingrained. We are pushing Agile principles but it's a long process. Meanwhile, I have to work in a Waterfall world with sequential projects phases. My question is about the analysis phase. I must provide a list of task and how long they will take. What techniques can I use to improve the accuracy/precision of my estimates, while fulfilling the requirement of having a detailed estimate up front? One example I know would be to use prototyping to get more knowledge before making the estimate."}
{"_id": "220235", "title": "Considerations before rewriting a software component from scratch?", "text": "A piece of software is a patchwork of old and undocumented efforts. There are no comments, no documentation, and the code is hairy -- it involves _Unix shell scripts that check for dummy files and then call SQL statements that call database procedures that modify data._ The original developers have left and we score a solid 2 on the Joel Test but I can raise it to at least 4 - yay... The code is reasonably error-free, but we constantly need to add new features into it which is highly error-prone because of the state of the code, so the deadlines slip and the efforts rise. **We want to rewrite this software in order to reduce maintenance and development efforts.** As part of the rewrite, we will introduce specs, comments, test cases -- all things that we currently don't have. It'll still be a bit complex afterwards, but no more than necessary. This is not a BIG rewrite because we are not going to switch languages or frameworks; we'll still need shell scripts (but fewer) and database procedures (but fewer). The implications are also fairly simple because we're in control of the installation sites and we can fully replace the old code with the new code at the flick of a switch. I know a rewrite is never good but I think these are reasonable counterarguments. Nevertheless, my concern is the typical danger of introducing brand new bugs instead of the old known ones, and also the danger of not implementing certain details because nobody even knows they exist or are needed. **How can I approach this rewrite in an efficient manner?**"}
{"_id": "238007", "title": "How long do you spend on analysis? Is this analysis paralysis?", "text": "I am not very good at estimating how long a piece of work will take to complete. I am guilty of putting my finger in the air and guessing. Usually things are later than expected, however sometimes they are earlier than expected. For example, a recent individual task was delivered in four months instead of five months. However, I am usually late. I want to get better at this. If I say something will take four months then I want it to take four months or less and not four and a half months or five months etc. The next task I am approaching was moved to the top of the project plan within the last week because of external pressures (external to the department). The business area want to know exactly how long it will take to complete. I find it difficult to estimate because of the following reasons:   1. The system I develop is very complex. I inherited it a few years ago and the previous developer did not follow good practice e.g. SOLID, separating layers (business layer etc) etc.   2. The business requirements are not particularly well understood by the business area because the system is very complex and we have to take into account legislation, which is only guidance and completely open to interpretation.   3. We lack the appropriate tools e.g. testing framework, continuous integration etc.   4. I am a sole developer so I have no-one to really turn to for guidance or help e.g. with testing etc. Anyway I have read questions like this: How to respond when you are asked for an estimate? and this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/hh765979.aspx. My manager has suggested that I spend one month doing the analysis for the next piece of work (it is complex). I think I could do it in a week (I usually only spend a few days). What should the Agile output of an analysis be? How long do you typically spend of analysis?"}
{"_id": "239018", "title": "How do you get relevant and useful information out of a client in regards to a job?", "text": "A brief background on this specific question: > After meeting with a client and hearing all of their requests, requirements, > and other comments about a specific software job, planning out the software > functionality, design, and basic user experience, the client comes back with > a comment regarding, \"That is not what we are looking for. You can't do what > we want to do.\" Now, I understand the concept that not everyone understands tech, and that some people are more visual than others and may need to see things before they can be sure about something. I also understand the process of revisions and other modifications to meet specific functionality demands or requirements that may only come up after you start putting things together. I mean, if everyone got it right in version 1.0, imagine how great a world this would be! **Given** : There is no magic formula for a guaranteed success rate when a lot of the work is artistic in the sense that the same set of directions can be interpreted differently by different people. I'm aware that asking the **right** questions is important, and I have done some research about what questions others are asking in similar jobs. I also have previous experience with clients (this isn't my first job), and through it all, I have developed my own little system for getting this information-- which has had a 99% success rate up to this point. Usually if I don't get it right the first time, it's fixed during the revision and modification process. I know I'm not perfect, but I've never really had a client flat out refuse what they asked for... So **how do you get relevant and useful information out of a client in regards to job requirements and specifics?**"}
{"_id": "21538", "title": "Best supporting argument for refactoring", "text": "Currently I am working on a code best described as C code living in C++ body. However I haven't been able to convince power that be to re-factor on ground of ease of maintenance. What in your opinion is the best argument for refactoring the code."}
{"_id": "188292", "title": "Should I try to persuade my manager that code tidying should take priority over meeting deadlines?", "text": "My manager has tight deadlines to meet. The current project I am working on is currently on schedule, but I've noticed a couple of quite significant areas in the code that are really badly written. (Bits of code get called two or three times, when they only need to be called once.) The problem is, as far as my manager is concerned, the program works. As he sees it, there's no point making lengthy changes to code that will make us miss the release date, for no tangible improvement that he can see. He keeps saying \"That's not a priority. It's working fine as it is.\" Should I keep trying to persuade him, or should I just do what he suggests and leave it? Why or why not? Note that how to persuade management has already been covered."}
{"_id": "174770", "title": "What is the way to understand someone else's giant uncommented spaghetti code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I\u2019ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code \u2014 what now? I have been recently handled a giant multithreaded program with no comments and have been asked to understand what it does, and then to improve it (if possible). Are there some techniques which should be followed when we need to _understand_ someone else's code? OR do we straightaway start from the first function call and go on tracking next function calls? C++ (with multi-threading) on Linux"}
{"_id": "132977", "title": "How-to convince company to start documenting for legacy software", "text": "It has been less than a year since I joined my current company. Their majority of sales have come from a single product that has been alive since the last 10 years. However, there is minimal (if at all) documentation. Not only do the developers in the company struggle with the lack of documentation but also there is a high amount of turnover, causing everyone to lose their time. This is because experienced developers have left the company and there is less and less resources to communicate/brain storm with. Without getting into too much detail, I have suggested to the previous manager that there needs to be some sort of documentation (at least an Architecture document) that outlines the product. I also suggested using JavaDoc and other automatic documentation tools. These suggestions were responded to by slight smiles and statements of the sort \"We do not have enough time\", \"We need short-term improvements right now\" and even \"The code itself should be the documentation\" from the programmers themselves. I have already wasted enough time trying to find out if what I needed per requirement/bug had existed in this big (really) code base. I am looking for any suggestions that you might give regarding the need of documentation. Or, rather, if this is a lost case for this legacy system or organization."}
{"_id": "199870", "title": "What exactly makes code \"clean\"?", "text": "I am an intern at a small software company, doing typical grunt work. Many tasks that the actual developers are doing are above my head however I finally got to see some real \"action\" and write some code myself. I will admit the task was perhaps a bit too difficult for me but I managed and my coded worked in the end. When my mentor was doing code-review he had said to me \"Man, this part is ugly.\" When I said, \"Why? Is something wrong with it?\" he replied, \"No, the code works, but it's just not clean code.\" The concept of of clean code is one I have run across a few times before, especially now since that I get to hang around professional developers. But what exactly is it that makes code \"clean\"? In other words what is the criteria? I have heard in formal mathematics, a \"beautiful\" proof, is one that is ideally as clear and as short as possible and uses creative techniques. Many people know that in literature, \"good\" literature is one that can express feelings effortlessly and elegantly to the extent that one can \"feel\" it. But one can't \"feel\" code (at least I can't) and I think most would agree that short code is not necessarily the best (as it could be very inefficient) or even that the most efficient way is always preferred (as it could be very long and complex). So, what is it! Please, try to enlighten me to just what exactly makes code \"clean\"."}
{"_id": "253622", "title": "How to tidy up a massive spaghetti project", "text": "I previously asked this on StackOverflow, but was advised it was a better fit for Programmers. I have recently begun working on a codebase (as a Java developer) with the following characteristics:   * Roughly 800,000 lines of source (including whitespace and comments). Primarily Java, but also XML, PHP, Shell scripts, JSP, JS, HTML, CSS   * Frameworks: Mainly Stripes, a bit of Struts, and some quite old customised Hibernate (and I expect lots of other bits and bobs).    * No particular methodology for stories, sprints etc.   * No tests   * No build process   * No dependency management (everything is just setup in IDEA)   * Some very old code dating back as far as 2002   * No coding standards   * Masses of code redundancy, though given the lack of tests this is difficult to track down   * Multiple modules and inter-dependencies   * A massive 10,000 line XML file containing named Hibernate queries   * 'Dump-all' classes at the top of the inheritance tree containing references to multiple services that may only be used in a handful of child-classes (As an example, one class is extended by 573 classes. A particular service contained in it is used by only 3 children)   * Demotivated developers I know this a really open-ended question: Where would you start in trying to tidy up this system?"}
{"_id": "228702", "title": "Arguments to non-technical manager for program upgrade", "text": "**My situation:** I'm currently intern in a big company, developing an automation tool (for company internal use only). There are about 30 persons in the team, but we are only 3 developers, all interns (in master degree). The core of the software and the UI were made by experienced employees but three years ago. **The problem:** A lot of the technologies used can be upgraded (.net 3.5 to 4.0, using LINQ for Database interactions, Forms to WPF ...) and the User Interface is really not ergonomic. **What I want to do:** I would like to upgrade it and remake the UI, to improve performance, maintainability and ergonomy but my managers - business analysts - don't feed the need for improving a software that works fine. **Why I can't:** They want us to do new automation tasks, they think it would be a waste of time to do the upgrade and they are not sure we will success to do completely what I am aiming for. **My Temporary solution:** As I am motivated and really think the upgrade is necessary, I spend some evening and week-ends developing the new version, hopping once it's done I can show them and they will like it. But all this _working time_ is not payed and I don't have that much so I still hope to have like a full working week at the office to work on it. **My Question:** What is the best way to try to convince my managers that time used to develop the upgrade won't be a waste of time (knowing that all the technical arguments won't be understood)? I also don't want them and my coworkers to misunderstand my motivation with a tentative to show off or some other selfish intentions."}
{"_id": "146471", "title": "Understanding already existing complex code base", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is the most effective way to add functionality to unfamiliar, > structurally unsound code? Till now, all I have worked on is with Java projects that I build from scratch (mostly course projects and some hobby stuff). But now, I have come across a huge code base of about 46000 lines spread across around 200 classes. Additionally there are around 10 dependent libraries. The problem is not only that I have never worked with someone else's code before, but I have not worked with such a huge code-base before too. I am asked to completely understand the code-base and suggest improvements to the existing design. Now, I am kind of stuck. **I start with some part of the code and then by the time I reach some other part of the code, I have lost the working details of the previous part.** I could really use your suggestions and experiences to deal with this issue. How do I proceed/document the details of the classes to understand the code better? Edit: This is a university level research project. Students have developed it over couple of years and the bad part: The students who wrote this have already graduated. The existing documentation (only in the form of Javadocs, not UML stuff) is a lot but not helpful in terms of understanding the application design."}
{"_id": "252588", "title": "Why are deadlines always so short?", "text": "I'm a junior developer in a small company (in a team of 2 developers). Everytime we are asked to implement a new feature:   * the deadline is set so that we just have time to do the development: there is no error margin (if something takes a little bit more time than expected, we are late) ; almost no time for tests (we are pretty sure there will be bugs) ; no time to refactor anything    * we are asked to start the development before the features are completely specified, so new things to do show up but the deadline stays as it is The result is that we deliver software that has bugs and the technical debt keeps growing. We use technology that was considered as a recent version in 2006 or so. There was one release that I remember very well. When we did a demonstration to the boss, he told us \"What!?? You took two weeks to produce that?!\" and all we could answer was \"No, in fact it took us three weeks\". I had a meeting with him and another junior developer (that quit the company because of this said meeting!), and he basically told us that he was not happy because what we released was crap. The technical debt and the need to refactor were so big in the parts that we had to modify (but we were told not to refactor because we have no time) that:   * we had to add a layer of bad code on top of the already bad code;   * we took much time to try and understand completely incomprehensible code.  I don't feel like I'm responsible for this bad release, I think that it's the boss' responsibility to hire good developers that, at least, understand the basic principles of OOP. But hiring juniors is so much less expensive... He is already saying that we are late for the development I'm working on at the moment. He spent more than one year to \"redesign\" a tool that was already present in our application, but now he wants us to implement it in two weeks. I personally think that if we want to do it correctly, we need at least one month, or maybe even 6 weeks. I don't know what to do, because I think that the boss thinks that we are just slow and ineffective. That's not the way I will get the raise I think I deserve. Why is it like that? That doesn't seem so hard to understand that if I need x days to complete a task, I can't do it in x/2 days, even if you say \"please\" and ask with a smile. That seems so obvious that the deadline will be missed and/or that the quality requirements won't be met. I don't need to know how I can explain to my boss that software development is a longer process that just clicking an icon. Because I hope he already knows that."}
{"_id": "95589", "title": "Boss doesn't believe my time estimate... advice/backup?", "text": "I'm working at a startup software company -- 3 developers, less than 15 employees including the CEO. We deal exclusively with Windows Mobile, the .NET CF, and passing the information gathered from our handheld application to and from our website. My director and I just had a meeting over an urgent project that hasn't begun yet, but it should probably get on a roll soon if we are to meet delivery deadlines for a prospective but very powerful and influential client. He proceeded to explain the project to me as follows:   * The new project will consist primarily of a .NET CF app that allows the client to conduct multiple soil samples over the course of a single session.   * The area being sampled by the user should be shown on a map of appropriate size and scale.   * The map should be dynamically split into grid squares of a size set by the user (in acres).   * On each grid square, the user will have the ability to take notes and mark individual points via real-time GPS from the on-board receiver.   * In addition, functionality should exist to help point the user to any grid square given their current position.   * All information collected should be easily retrieved and read in a very user-friendly manner on the customer's handheld device -- a device which we provide -- at any time.   * All information collected should be easily sent -- through ActiveSync, wirelessly, or what-have-you -- to our website where it should be viewable/editable in an interface similar to that of the handheld device. With that description in mind I thought things over (albeit rather quickly). With our current staff size, limited budget, and limited resources, I projected that such an endeavor would take roughly 9 to 18 months. Forgive me if I'm off in left field, I'm a recent CS grad and pretty new to the \"real\" world. However, the project is currently only realized in my director's head, with no design documentation or specs. My question here is, how far off am I, really? Once again, my director -- who has no background in software or IT whatsoever, but is a subject matter expert insofar as soil sampling goes -- put the project at about a 3-month duration. Keep in mind that we're currently using an unsupported SDK for the rest of our GPS and GIS needs, and ESRI products are almost too far out of range for us. Current functionality in our other apps goes give us a leg up, with the ability already in place for us to draw areas, polylines, and plot points on a map. I'm just kind of confused/afraid here, wondering if I'm completely wrong or if I'm right but just without confidence. Any and all advice is appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "101391", "title": "What to do with a not well organized application?", "text": "I'm a newly graduate programmer and just got hired before my graduation. In the office, I used to create and revise modules of some applications developed by other programmers in our company. The problems I encountered with their applications are:   1. Unnormalized database at it's best, they've broken all the rules of database normalization, Codd must be angry.   2. 50% of the content of the database is literally NULL (they should have default value I swear).   3. One stored procedure is used in all database transactions, full of \"if-else\" statements.   4. They are reinventing the application settings in .NET WinForms, they create their own file which contains everything they want. I think they are very fan of VB6 or maybe they don't study really, they're guessing how to achieve something.   5. No error handling! Clients sometimes report \"Exceptions\" which they shouldn't be seeing.   6. Web files and Windows Forms are not organized or grouped according to their use.   7. Naming convention, there are Camel case, pure lower case, with and without underscores and abbreviations.   8. Bad programming practices like database transaction in each iteration of a loop.    9. They developed website with SQL injection in mind, they welcome them.   10. HTML elements were not used according to their sematics.   11. CSS are not optimized for different browsers.   12. They include several versions of jQuery in one HTML! . . . N. Many more! The worst thing is, I felt being blamed for it's fragility. I mean, when I add code, there are times that it ends up with error, sometimes because they did not create constraints or they allowed duplicate data. The system is so fragile and dependent to one another, it's like walking in a field with landmines! (THIS HAPPENS SOMETIMES, THIS IS NOT THE REAL ISSUE) What should I do?"}
{"_id": "205786", "title": "What should I do if I don't have any formal spec?", "text": "I recently was assigned to a task, but it says only a couple of words, like, do it as it made there, with no actual spec attached. What is the best thing to do in that circumstances?"}
{"_id": "199144", "title": "How to quickly understand a huge piece of code", "text": "(This is a general question but I think is important.) How do you quickly understand a huge piece of code, say, a project with tens of thousands of lines of code (written by other people)? Are there any useful source analysis tools (for example, call graph visualizer) or IDEs that may be helpful? Any techniques are also welcome. Thanks."}
{"_id": "255311", "title": "When systems get larger and larger, how do you keep a global understanding of your system?", "text": "Today I realized painfully that for some decisions you need a good overall understanding of the system. Otherwise, the risk is too high that your assumption turn out to be wrong. Imagine that you are a developer for an online web shop. To understand the system, you have to understand many connected subsystems, for example:   1. How to receive and process product information from various suppliers   2. How the customer can search and order products on your web shop   3. How the orders are processed and managed by your customer service   4. How your SAP system handles the invoicing process   5. ... The larger the system becomes, the more you have to understand. If that knowledge is lacking, sub-optimal solutions where developed when specialized teams worked together. Specialized teams, which only understood their part of the system in detail. To deal with that problem, our company changed the strategy, so that one development team always has to be responsible for all aspects of a feature. Even if it involves the complete process chain. (It is kind of a feature team, but not from teams working on different subsystems.) **What are effective strategies for developers to keep their system and operational process knowledge up to date?** I think good system documentation is a key, but I'm afraid that there is a point where the human mind cannot scale as fast as the system involves. At some point to have to simply, but that simplified assumptions can turn out to be costly mistakes. When you have to implement and maintain the code, you just have to know the exact details. As a developer, I currently have to face a difficult conflict of interests:   1. I need to spend more time to understand our system and operational process.   2. I need to develop and maintain our code. As time is limited, 2) mostly wins. The result is that I mostly gain deeper knowledge along the way, and some half knowledge from casual conversations. Do you know how huge companies like Amazon solve that problem? I would assume that no single human is capable of understanding such a complex process, and be able to contribute code at multiple subsystems at the same time."}
{"_id": "206404", "title": "I have 200k lines of poorly designed code, will units tests or integration tests be more valuable?", "text": "I've inherited a lot of poorly designed code; the code has no tests. I am putting tests in place before I attempt a major refactor, but I have run into a problem with my unit tests. The problem is, I will unit test a function, and then later decide that function is a liability. I will either get rid of the function, or change its purpose. Either way, the original function gone and the unit tests fail. Should I spend a lot of time putting unit tests into a design I will change dramatically? Wont those unit tests be useless after a major redesign? Would integration tests be more valuable? I can chose program features I know will not change and create some integration tests to ensure they, indeed, do not change. I might change all the code behind the feature, but the feature should still work, and the integration tests should still pass. I know there are lot of questions on similar topics. I am asking specifically about the use and value of unit test vs integration tests in messy legacy code."}
{"_id": "211470", "title": "Should We Code for Performance or Stability?", "text": "There is a point in time where you make design choices and debate them with management. In my case I have to debate my positions and design choices with senior management but it is frustrating that management only strives for performance while I think stability is a must while performance can be achieved later. E.g. We are facing a design choice to make a recovery mechanism due to lack of transactionality in certain processes i.e. we need to guarantee transactionality of a those processes making them complete fully or rollback the changes it made to database. The current code makes this difficult because we are using stored procedures that manage their own transactions. This means that if the process calls 3 or 4 stored procedures, there is 3 or 4 transactions and if we want the recovery process we need to rollback those changes (yes, they are committed at that time, this means that we need to make more transactions to the database in order to leave it in a consistent state or at least somehow \"ignore\" those records). Of course, I wanted to remove the transactions from the stored procedures and commit the transaction in the code after the process ends or rollback there if the process has exceptions. The case is that management thinks that this approach will make the process slow and also will impact greatly in our code. I think this is correct but also I think that making the rollback process ourselves is plainly reinventing the wheel, error prone and IMHO it will take too much time in stabilize. So, after the previous example, **What could be the most beneficial approach in such cases?** I mean, I want a Win-Win situation but I think it is just plainly impossible to agree on this because every time I want to talk about it I get responses like \"there should be another way\", \"you should not tell me there is no way around\", \"this is not factible\", \"the performance will degrade\", etc. and I think I will end making this faux recovery process just to comply with management. OTOH I could be wrong and I should do what is told to me without complaining."}
{"_id": "197842", "title": "How much poor quality code should a junior put up with?", "text": "I am a junior developer who has been working at a new job for a few weeks. I am working with a large framework for scientific desktop software, adding pieces of functionality. While there are general aspects of the job that are appealing (such as the people and the pay), I have to admit that I find the work unrewarding and boring. I feel disappointed because I do like programming in general. I'm concerned that if I \"settle for\" this job - or this position within this job - I may lose my love of programming. I think that I am getting frustrated because it is hard to get feedback on the correctness of my code that I'm writing. It is hard to unit-test. Testing involves firing up the program and stepping through the code. I do not feel like I have a mentor. My impression of the code base is that it does not use much in the way of OOP principles. (Perhaps many of the people who have worked with it are more experienced as scientists than developers.) Do you think I'm being soft/naive/idealistic and should continue to work with this code for a year or two (and do more personal projects on the side)? Or do you think that I should go with my gut feeling and try to find a new job where I can work with higher quality (maybe TDD) code?"}
{"_id": "210078", "title": "Best way to quickly explore/grok open source C/C++ projects?", "text": "I'm looking for a suggested workflow for quickly being able to download various c/c++ open source projects and then begin intelligently navigate sources. \"Intelligently\" means being able to jump around to usages, definitions, implementations of a particular symbol, both in the downloaded code base, and also the headers of referenced libraries perhaps installed in /usr/local or /System/Frameworks etc. this code jumping could be driven by etags, ctags, gnu global, eclipse CDT indexer, Xcode's indexer, I'm open to anything, but I have no idea what is the best solution for most cases out there. Shortly afterwards I would like to begin stepping through unit tests, examples, demos in the debugger so I can better grok how the code works Obviously, this isn't going to be possible for every project out there.. but most of the projects I am interested in are either autotools or cmake based -- In general, I don't really care what IDE (emacs, vim, xcode, eclipse, etc) I use, and I don't mind running a command line debugger -- I just want to quickly download a C/C++ project, \"fool around with it\" at a source level, and then move on if its not interesting. My question is particularly directed to the guy or gal super hacker who routinely explores several different large C/C++ projects every few days/weeks --> how do YOU productively do this? (My background/experience level is that I know enough about c/c++ tooling to get things to build/or debug a broken build on several different os'es usually within a few minutes, but it can take hours before I get to the point where I can take a large project and get to the point where I am stepping through examples in the debugger. I have a feeling this is because I try to use modern IDE's, but I'd be better of just using 'old school' tools. when dealing with jvm stuff -- it is usually pretty quick to get to a place where one can get intellij to grok code and start debugging -- I'd like to replicated this as much as possible in C/C++) thanks!"}
{"_id": "201350", "title": "How to document legacy code (shell scripts)?", "text": "I got involved into a project where we are taking over a bunch of legacy code. Code is basically shell scripts and PL/SQL packages/procedures/functions. There is no documentation how the code works and there is also no comments on the shell scripts. I was thinking that first thing to do is to get an understanding of the dependencies of the code, how to scripts call each other and so on. Do you have any suggestions what would be the best way to document the dependencies between scripts and PL/SQL code? What would be the most suggested tool for this (for diagrams, perhaps)?"}
{"_id": "132926", "title": "How does one determine whether or not to rewrite poorly-designed code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When is a BIG Rewrite the answer? I'm on a small team that's been handed a poorly-written, half-finished 2D Java game. Our objective is to do as much as we can to make it better in about 11 weeks. I'm pretty sure the code is not maintainable and I need to decide if I should pitch the idea of a rewrite (near rewrite, anyway). For example, the Main class, which is an applet, has most of the game logic just thrown into it. Keyboard and mouse events are handled with huge if/else blocks, none of it is commented (the only comments are the sections of code that have been commented out), and all of the drawing and animation code is just in one huge chunk. Images are loaded in a separate class that just goes through each file, each on a separate line, and reads the image into a static Image variable. This all seems like poor design. We have until the end of the semester, roughly 11 weeks, to make the game better than it is right now. It's playable but severely broken in spots. I've currently been assigned a small feature to implement: a clickable main menu instead of one that's controllable by keyboard only. On one hand I know I'm capable of implementing this but on the other I'm afraid to try to add new features because a) the more stuff we add the more likely it is that the program will break because of the bad design choices and b) the more I'll be adding to the mess that's already there. I took the weekend to try to duplicate the basic game functionality with a different design (to see if it could be done quickly enough). I'm able to load and cache sprites, create game entities and move them, and keep track of the game's state to determine which keyboard input to handle and what to draw on- screen. A spritesheet loader was next on my list (I found out that the game art isn't in sprite sheets but each is in a separate file). A trusted friend said that it might be better to have to maintain the old code but looking at it it's too brittle. We could refactor as we go but I think that would be difficult too. Our group is meeting this Friday. I planned to discuss the idea of an overhaul and present what I've been working on but now I'm not so sure. I feel like it's a simple-enough 2D Java game that once we put together a solid base that it would be a lot easier to add features but we'd have to redesign the base code pretty quickly, probably in two to four weeks or thereabouts. I'd like to think that we can do it that fast but I'm not completely sure. I guess you could reduce my question down to this: how do you best determine when to maintain poorly-designed code and when to spend some time starting almost completely from scratch?"}
{"_id": "87114", "title": "Estimating Coding/Development efforts?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How possible is it to estimate time for programming projects? We have designed a User Interface (UI) in HTML for an Intranet Application.it took almost 30 days to make it,how we should estimate the development effort(coding) for it,is there some ratio we can use to estimate,it need not have to be exact but some estimate would help."}
{"_id": "163455", "title": "What to do when you inherit an unmaintainable codebase?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity?   >  I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now? I'm currently working at a company with 2 other PHP developers aside from me, and 1 junior developer. The senior developer who originally built the system we're all working on has resigned and will only be here for a matter of weeks. The other developer, who is the only other guy who knows anything about the system, is unhappy here and is looking for a new job. I'm very real danger of being left behind as the only experienced developer on this codebase. Since I've joined this company I've tried to push for better coding standards, project documentation, etc and I do think I've made some headway, but the vast majority of the code is simply unmaintainable and uncommented. A lot of this has to do with the need to get things done fast at points in the project before I joined, but now the technical debt is enormous, even with the two developers who do understand the system on board. Without them, it will simply be impossible to do anything with it. The senior developer is working on trying to at least comment all his code before he leaves but I think the codebase is simply too vast to properly document in the remaining time. Besides, when he does comment it still doesn't make things as clear as it could. If the system was better organized and documented I could probably start refactoring it incrementally, but the whole thing is so tightly coupled that it's very difficult to make any changes in one module without having unintended knock-on effects in other modules. Naturally, there's no unit tests either, and I honestly don't think this codebase could possibly be unit tested anyway given how it's implemented. There also never seems to be enough time to get things done even with 3 developers and 1 junior developer. With one developer and one junior, neither of which had significant input into the early design of the system, I don't see how we could possibly get anything done with keeping the current system working, implementing new features as needed and developing a replacement for the current codebase that is better organized. Is there an approach I can take to cope with this situation, or should I be getting my own CV in order as well at this point? If it was just me and the junior designer who would be left I'd go for the latter option almost without question. However, there's a team of front-end developers and content managers as well, and I'm worried what would become of them if I left and put them in a position where there would be no developers at all. The department might just be closed down altogether under such circumstances, and then I'd have their unemployment on my conscience as well!"}
{"_id": "234266", "title": "Familiarize with unknown source code", "text": "I have to continue feature development, issue fixing of a halfway completed code base. There is a no documentation, all developers had left the company. The technology stack is somewhat familiar to me (Spring, Hibernate, Web Services (Rest, SOAP), MySQL). Also there are non descriptive JIRA items that the team had worked over 3 years. Seems code has implemented in consistent way like layering, ant file per project, DAO classes. I would like to get feedback from all our experts. What should be the approach to get familiar with the project? Do you recommend to use profilers, bug track tools like Sonar to get some hints? Any other approach I can try out?"}
{"_id": "250746", "title": "Can I refactor \"safely\" without specs?", "text": "I have inherited a legacy web application many years which:   * Does not make use of Object Oriented principles, even though the language would permit it   * Has no unit tests, nor any sort of test suite, automated or not   * Generally ignores various general best practices making the code very hard to read and maintain   * Splits its workings (including code for business rules) across the web application, database views and stored procedures. Some of the code is even externalized in that outside applications (not under me or my team's control) often read _or write_ directly into the database   * Has only the barest documentation (including some I've created)      * No documented technical or functional specs to speak of either   * Has changed rules so many times and so fast that no one truly knows how it's supposed to work anymore. Rules are stacked on as missing features or specific cases are discovered on a daily basis.   * Happens to be the most business-critical application of the company   * Is still constantly evolving Refactoring almost always comes with the main suggestion of adding unit tests to make sure you don't break anything. How do you do this when you do not even know how the thing is supposed to work (and no one else can tell you _for sure_ )? Is this a case where you'd need to go back to square 1 and slowly, iteratively, as new features are requested, ask for specs focused on the modified section and _then_ refactor what's there? Is there any other way to deal with this situation? This question focuses mostly on the lack of specs in opposition the refactor safety rule of creating unit tests to ensure the rules are respected throughout refactoring. That said, a few more bits on the situation beyond lack of specs:   * The \"best\" programming structure found in the code so far is the function. They tend to not be self-contained and call on many global variables (even local variables were erroneously set as global variables risking unexpected behaviors). I get the feeling the first step might be to refactor _this_ to even allow unit testing.   * The issues mentioned apply to the whole application, the database procedures and even sister applications. Everything is intermingled together and almost never through interfaces. It's still possible to find   * Code tends to be duplicated in various places. It happens with business-rules code, meaning you may get different results depending on _where_ in the application you call up a feature. Obvious maintenance complexity and risk."}
{"_id": "245426", "title": "Working with a large, messy object", "text": "I have been handed a very cluttered, \"One Ring\" object (one object to rule them all). The OR class has 40 fields. These fields map to 16 different objects (the OR has all the fields from the 16 objects concatenated together. Some of the fields are common to all objects, some are unique to individual objects [all of the 16 objects are descended from a common parent]). The OR points to a catch-all table in a denormalized SQL database. I've been asked to write an adapter for this that will take random instances of the 16 objects, map the fields from a given object to an instance of the OR, and send it on its way. Oy. Changing the back end or the code is not an option (I tried). As I'm sure is no surprise, this beast is a nasty thing to manage. I would love to hear some thoughts about ways to help make working with this a bit more manageable. I'm primarily concerned with code maintenance: comprehension and readability. I know whatever gets implemented will be far from perfect, because I'm basically trying to make garbage look pretty. That said, for now, I have to live with it, so I'm trying to make my side of the train wreck a little bit more livable."}
{"_id": "215935", "title": "How to educate business managers on the complexity of adding new features?", "text": "We maintain a web application for a client who demands that new features be added at a breakneck pace. We've done our best to keep up with their demands, and as a result the code base has grown exponentially. There are now so many modules, subsystems, controllers, class libraries, unit tests, APIs, etc. that it's starting to take more time to work through all of the complexity each time we add a new feature. We've also had to pull additional people in on the project to take over things like QA and staging, so the lead developers can focus on developing. Unfortunately, the client is becoming angry that the cost for each new feature is going up. They seem to expect that we can add new features _ad infinitum_ and the cost of each feature will remain linear. I have repeatedly tried to explain to them that it doesn't work that way - that the code base expands in a fractal manner as all these features are added. I've explained that the best way to keep the cost down is to be judicious about which new features are really needed. But, they either don't understand, or they think I'm bullshitting them. They just sort of roll their eyes and get angry. They're all completely non-technical, and have no idea what does into writing software. Is there a way that I can explain this using business language, that might help them understand better? Are there any visualizations out there, that illustrate the growth of a code base over time? Any other suggestions on dealing with this client?"}
{"_id": "233169", "title": "Next steps for developing new product", "text": "I was hired about a year ago as the lead (well, really the only) developer on a new project/product we will call product \"B\". Product B was designed to pursue a new market for the company. This company has had great success with a similar product for a different market. We will call this other product \"A\". \u201cA\u201d is almost 5 years old now and is reliable. The two markets don\u2019t necessarily overlap, but a lot of the core functionality in A could be re-purposed to work for B. My deadline to pursue this new market for product B was pretty aggressive. We had to demonstrate certain capabilities to potential clients quickly and show them that we were a serious competitor in the new market. To expedite the development, we took the shortest route to create a new product. We started with a deep copy (a branch) of the companies' product A and re-purposed it as B. This approach made a lot of sense given the time constraints as we inherited a lot of overlapping core functionality and infrastructure for free. We removed a bunch of features and options that didn't apply, left some things that carried over, and added a bunch of new features that were needed to secure these customers. It wasn't a perfect transition, but it was good enough. Product B has been around for about a year now, and things are looking good as we have secured two customers with several more potential customers on the horizon. What are the next steps? From a \u201cbest practices\u201d perspective, it doesn't seem like a good strategy to continue developing product B as a copy of product A. It\u2019s not a solid foundation to build a new product. We accomplished our immediate goal by creating a \u201cproduct\u201d and demonstrating it to potential clients. Now, shouldn't we take a step back, find out what the users really want and refine our design? We really don\u2019t have a \u201cnew product\u201d. We created some \u201cvaporware\u201d for a couple of demo installs. Unfortunately, I get the impression from management that they think we have a new product to develop and sell and there is no time to step back and refactor and refine. Why would we spend time and money redesigning when we already have something we can use and sell? Here are my issues:   * Since it was created from a copy of A, the product B code base is littered with artifacts and \u201ctechnical debt\u201d from product A. Some of this code is no longer reachable. Some of this code is reachable, but maybe the business logic does not make sense for product B. For example, there may be lookups against empty tables in the database or checks against things that don\u2019t exist. This type of logic not only hurts performance, but it also a maintenance nightmare. I\u2019m going to estimate that we\u2019re actually using 35% of product A\u2019s code base, and the rest is baggage.   * Management thinks it was smart to create B from a copy of A: \u201cIt will save money since code can be reused between the products.\u201d If a bug is fixed in A, why can\u2019t it be merged into B? Or if I develop a new feature in B, why can\u2019t it be merged to A? This argument is flawed. Although B was created from A, it was done so over a year ago, and A has a dedicated team with 4 developers. I am alone on product B. The code branch for A continues to diverge from B. Now, it\u2019s very difficult to merge anything.   * Finally, I feel as if we've put unnecessary constraints on ourselves by starting with a product that's already 5 years old. Some aspects were designed very poorly and will no doubt create the same problems with a new user base. Let\u2019s take our lessons learned and use this opportunity to improve the design instead of copying crap. Also, let\u2019s utilize new technologies where it makes sense - a lot of things have changed in 5 years!  How can I convince management that we need to refine our product \u2013 most likely from the ground up? My boss thinks in terms of time and dollars, and I feel that I am going to lose this debate if I\u2019m not careful. Can this type of effort be quantified and put into management terms? I've been reading up on \u201cemergent design\u201d and I\u2019m trying to approach my argument from the angle that we don\u2019t have to deliver everything all at once. Let\u2019s focus on small pieces of working code with the most business value."}
{"_id": "236482", "title": "How do you write good software while learning a language?", "text": "Quick background: I'm in an advanced C++ course for a study abroad program. The problem is that I don't have any background in C++. I have a modest C background, but I'm starting to think I have more holes in my knowledge than I knew about. My problem is that I'm writing really shitty code right now, but the university has an automated testing system that always seems to stump me in some way: does your code meet all the automated tests (no points if not), did you use the naive solution in terms of time or space (you get less points for this), do you have ANY memory errors (usually no points if so). So, my question is what do you do during development that leads to verifiable, integrated results? Is there a better way to learn and develop so I'm not always cornering myself with features of C/C++? I'm looking to develop a method of software engineering for myself in which I can get full points for these homeworks in less than 10 hours per week (I'm currently spending 15 hours and not getting full points)."}
{"_id": "188933", "title": "What can I do to maintain respect for a poorly written codebase?", "text": "In my job I have to maintain a poorly written codebase which is both hard to understand, has tons of comments that are just plain wrong, has a bunch of weird decisionmaking going on in it and a whole lot more. I primarily do bugfixing which ranges from finding that little comment somewhere in the code that makes some random part not work, to understanding complex circular dependencies with some kind of singleton'a'palooza going on, and occasionally I actually get to write some real code, which is when I'm the happiest. But I'm concerned about the bugfixing witch I must confess many times ends up in being sloppy patchwork because I don't have the time or the mental fortitude to look at the horrendous code anymore. Now the biggest problem this project has is not that I'm just a whiny guy, I'm most certainly not alone in having above mentioned sentiments about the codebase. The biggest problem is probably the cost of maintaining it... But i digress. What I'm wondering is if there is some practices that I and my colleagues can try use to regain some respect for the codebase we've inherited and are working so that we don't walk down the path of creating more code rot?"}
{"_id": "170894", "title": "Inheriting projects - General Rules?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When is a BIG Rewrite the answer?   >  Software rewriting alternatives   >  Are there any actual case studies on rewrites of software success/failure > rates?   >  When should you rewrite?   >  We're not a software company. Is a complete re-write still a bad idea?   >  Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite? This is an area of discussion I have long been curious about, but overall, I generally lack the experience to give myself an answer that I would fully trust. We've all been there, a new client shows up with a half-complete project they are looking to finish and launch. For whatever reason, they fired their previous developer, and it's now up to you to save the day. I am just finishing up a code review for a new client, and in my estimation is would be better to scrap what the previous developers built since and start from scratch. There's a ton of reasons why I am leaning toward this way, but it still makes me nervous since the client isn't going to want to hear \"those last guys built you a big turd, and I can either polish it, or throw it in the trash\". What are your general rules for accepting these projects? How do you determine whether it will be better to start from scratch or continue with the existing code base? What other extra steps might you take to help control client expectations, since the previous developer may have inflated those expectations beyond a reasonable level? Any other general advice?"}
{"_id": "180186", "title": "Refactoring several huge C++ classes / methods. How to start?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I\u2019ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code \u2014 what now? I'm dealing with legacy code. It contains some BIG classes (line count 8000+) and some BIG methods (line count 3000+). For one of these methods I wrote a unit test that covers at least some code. This function has no specific structure, it is a mess of nested loops and conditions. I'd like to refactor but still I have no idea how to start. I actually started by extracting one single function. In the end it had to have 21 parameters :-/ Should I ...   1\\. continue extracting awful functions knowing that in the long run I will succeed?   2\\. start extracting even bigger functions? So I expose the structure of this monster and then I can start the real refactoring.   3\\. only extract small \"good\" functions (and / or classes) just because I am a helluva clean coder?   4\\. do something completely different?"}
{"_id": "225955", "title": "How to manage stress from ongoing difficult maintenance?", "text": "I recently signed on to a contract where I am supporting an aging legacy system. The system is a collage of .net and VBScript components. Part of it operates as a web application; part of it operates as a Windows Service. As anyone on this site can tell you, it is possible to write great code with legacy technology and it is possible to write terrible code in new technology. The project I'm working on is some of the worst spaghetti code I've ever seen. It is over ten years old, and has been developed, supported, and maintained by a half-dozen unrelated companies. There are few code comments, and it's like each developer didn't know what the previous developer was doing. Yet somehow, the program works most of the time and is a critical part of a big business. There are hundreds of thousands of lines of code in the system, and here's how it works: Each week, my client gives me several bug reports to review at the beginning of the week. I am told specifically not to try to improve the design of the system, but to make the smallest change possible to fix each bug. Here is what bothers me: First of all, it is very taxing just to try to read the code and discern what it does. There are iframes galore and very odd ways of interfacing browser to server and server to DB. It is common for to take days to find the corner of the codebase where a bug is caused, and if the fix isn't trivial, it can take days more to understand the related parts of the codebase. It feels like pushing a rock up a hill for a living. The work is very exhausting mentally. It is difficult to maintain focus, and then I feel additionally stressed by wanting to perform my best while being tired and unfocused. To top it all off, I know the whole time that I am working on a bug that as soon as it's done, I am to start all over with another bug. The work is very remunerative and I would like to fit myself better to it. How do some of the more experienced developers handle this sort of stress? **Edit:** I think that Robert Harvey brought up a good point in the comments below: that I could be stressing myself with my own expectations. Much of my past experience has been with green-field development, so perhaps the slower pace of maintenance. Perhaps this maintenance requires a different mindset and way of thinking. Also, I take great exception to the idea that I'm inappropriately asking for help with my mental health. I do understand that psychiatry is now considered a medical discipline, but that doesn't mean that any and all questions about managing stress and being happy should be handled only by mental health professionals. That's just silly."}
{"_id": "204872", "title": "How to restructure Python frameworks", "text": "I just joined a group of five developers (non-professionals) working on a medium sized Python framework (> 50 modules, > 10.000 lines of code). The project has no documentation whatsoever and there are no coding conventions of any kind. My job is to   1. get an overview of what the framework does (theoretical physics calculations),   2. write a detailed documentation for the current code,   3. define development guidelines,   4. design a new software architecture,   5. perform code refactoring. Unfortunately, I'm not used to programming languages with a dynamic type system in such large projects (until now I've used Java for such purposes and Python for shorter scripts). Speaking in terms of anti-patterns, the code is pure spaghetti code, contains a god class and lots of copy-and-paste programming. In my oppinion, the code has degenerated to a point that is unmaintainable. However, rewriting the entire code is not an option. In \"AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architecture, and Projects in Crisis\" William Brown et al. suggest the following steps for code refactoring, when adding new code in such software projects:   1. Control access to member variables (in Python I would use properties).   2. Avoid duplicated code.   3. Reorder function arguments to improve consistency.   4. Remove code that is, or may become, inaccessible.   5. Rename classes, functions, data types to improve consistency and set standards. Step 1 seems to be somehow un-Pythonic to me and steps 2-5 are trivial. I have resigned at trying to figure out the big picture. Instead, I am approaching the issues one at a time. However, I am constantly stuck at trying to resolve the insane amount of object coupling. I am uncertain if my approach is a good idea at all, as I have no experience in software restructuring. It is also hard to ask a specific question as I am stuck in the beginning of my work. I would appreciate if someone could provide insight into best practices in this topic. * * * **Edit:** This question now focuses on the approach of restructuring Python frameworks instead of simply getting an overview."}
{"_id": "199975", "title": "How Much Of A (Broken) Legacy Framework To Keep", "text": "I've inherited a hosted system (system \"A\") which can be used to manage products, inventory, and orders, and can send those products to various third- parties. Quite simply, system \"A\" doesn't work. The product and inventory systems are slow, convoluted, and buggy. The third-party integration doesn't work at all. The code is an unholy, spaghettied mess, so fixing things is not simple. My task is to try and salvage the system into something usable, and my original plan was to just refactor, refactor, and refactor some more until the system worked. However, my company also has a separate system (system \"B\") that we use to build e-commerce websites. Among other things, system \"B\" can manage products, inventory, and orders as well - just in a lesser capacity in some cases. System \"B\" is also constantly being worked on and updated by a team. My new plan is to essentially throw out system \"A\", and re-create it based on system \"B\". Since my refactors would have eventually restructured system \"A\" entirely, I figure I can just save time by starting over with a different, existing framework. However, if I go that route, I would still have to re-code the third party integration, and minor functionality that system \"A\" has and system \"B\" does not. Right now, system \"A\" is basically defunct - nobody is really using it, so I do have the freedom of a slightly extended rewrite period if I choose. Is this a good idea, or should I stick with the original plan of refactoring system \"A\"?"}
{"_id": "134855", "title": "What characteristics or features make code maintainable?", "text": "I used to think I knew what this was, until I really started thinking about it... \"maintainable\"... what exactly makes code maintainable? To me, if code must be maintainable that means we can expect to revisit the code to make some sort of change to it in the future. Code is always \"changeable\" no matter what state it is in. So does this mean code needs to be easy to change? However, if our code was scalable/extensible, there would be no need to directly change it, because it will \"change\" (adapt) for free and automatically. I've also seen code maintainability used interchangeably with coding standards. Using a consistent coding pattern or style, does this really make code more maintainable? More readable and more consistent? Sure, but how does this improve the maintainability? The more I try to think into this, the more confused I get. Anyone have a proper explanation?"}
{"_id": "209124", "title": "First step in analysing a proposed system", "text": "A client asked us to automate his offline paper-based processes. He sent us a copy of the physical forms that he uses. Our team met and discussed how the navigation should be, what major components would exist in the UI. That's it. Problem is, we don't have actual \"written\" requirements. With a lack of an actual business/system analyst in our company, what are the steps that we should take to reach the point where we are ready to start developing the system?"}
{"_id": "205760", "title": "What's a good way to manage long piece of code in files?", "text": "I am a web developer and at the moment am finding it hard to cope with long un-documented code written by previous developers in an organisation I work for. With the deadline gun always pointed at my forehead, it's doing my head in. I use aptana studio's search feature for some quick wins but it is becoming overwhelming to a point that I do not want to work with them anymore. Is there any quick/proven approach that I can take to help me with a scenario like this?"}
{"_id": "39411", "title": "What can I do to get better at estimating how long projects are going to take?", "text": "I don't want to make life hard for management. I really don't. They're nice enough guys, but every time I am assigned a new project or task and get asked \"how long do you think it will take to do this\" I end up sputtering off ridiculous timeframes; \"between a day and three weeks\". I would like to believe that it's not entirely my fault: I am the company's sole programmer, I am relatively new to proper development (Was it only six months ago that I wrote my first unit test? sigh...), and I am working with a code base that at times is downright absurd. So I would like some advice. Obviously, experience is the biggest thing I lack but anything that would make me better would be greatly appreciated. I am looking for reading material, methodologies, maybe even actual tools. Any way that I can give my boss more accurate information without having to sit down and design the darn thing first is appreciated. Ok magic stackoverflow genie, what have you got for me? **EDIT:** @Vaibhav and others suggesting I take time to research and sketch out the system I agree with you in principle, but how do you balance that with real-world constraints? When you're a one man show or even a part of a small team \"I will need 2 days to build an estimate\" is a real deterrent when you can fight 4 fires in the time it takes to get a simple estimate."}
{"_id": "198124", "title": "Document existing Visual Studio Project", "text": "I am a small business owner and my sole developer quit. Cold. I am not a coder. He developed an existing application that works .net, c#, javascript, sql, visual studio based, 250,000 lines of code. Needs to evolve to v2.0. I have zero documentation. Is there a product that can read the code and generate documentation that would significantly reduce the learning curve for my new development team? What is it? If not, suggestions?"}
{"_id": "177624", "title": "quick approach to migrate classic asp project to asp.net", "text": "Recently we got a requirement for converting a classic asp project to asp.net. This one is really a very old project created around 2002/2003. It consists of around 50 asp pages. I found very little documentation for this project, FSD and design documents for only a few modules. Just giving a quick look into this project my head start to hurt. It is really a mess. I checked the records and found none of the developers who worked on this project work for the company anymore. My real pain is that this is an urgent requirement and I have to provide an estimated deadline to my supervisor. I found a similar question classic-asp-to-asp-net, but I need some more insight on how to convert this classic asp project to asp.net in the quickest possible way."}
{"_id": "238597", "title": "Previous programmer died unexpectedly; how do I pick up where he left off?", "text": "I have recently taken a job finishing the development of a .Net application. The delivery of the application is two years behind schedule. The previous developer died before I had a chance to meet him. I have been given copies of directories from the deceased's laptops. There are many directories of code (including seemingly duplicate directories), two SQL Server databases, and some Visual Studio project files. A quick wc shows about 300,000 lines of .Net code. There is no source control, no documentation, no licenses for third party controls, no unit tests, no build scripts, no release scripts, no install, and no real software development process to speak of. Maybe some of these things did exist, but I can't find them. I am an experienced software developer, but I have never been in a situation quite like this. Lastly, I have budget to buy tools as necessary, but not more staff. _What would be your 90-day plan to get this project moving again?_ Obviously I have months or years of work ahead of me; _what should be my priorities?_"}
{"_id": "41409", "title": "Why does TDD work?", "text": "Test-driven development (TDD) is big these days. I often see it recommended as a solution for a wide range of problems here in Programmers SE and other venues. I wonder why it works. From an engineering point of view, it puzzles me for two reasons:   1. The \"write test + refactor till pass\" approach looks incredibly anti-engineering. If civil engineers used that approach for bridge construction, or car designers for their cars, for example, they would be reshaping their bridges or cars at very high cost, and the result would be a patched-up mess with no well thought-out architecture. The \"refactor till pass\" guideline is often taken as a mandate to forget architectural design and do _whatever is necessary_ to comply with the test; in other words, the test, rather than the user, sets the requirement. In this situation, how can we guarantee good \"ilities\" in the outcomes, i.e. a final result that is not only correct but also extensible, robust, easy to use, reliable, safe, secure, etc.? This is what architecture usually does.   2. Testing cannot guarantee that a system works; it can only show that it doesn't. In other words, testing may show you that a system contains defects if it fails a test, but a system that passes all tests is not safer than a system that fails them. Test coverage, test quality and other factors are crucial here. The false safe feelings that an \"all green\" outcomes produces to many people has been reported in civil and aerospace industries as extremely dangerous, because it may be interepreted as \"the system is fine\", when it really means \"the system is as good as our testing strategy\". Often, the testing strategy is not checked. Or, who tests the tests? In summary, I am more concerned about the \"driven\" bit in TDD than about the \"test\" bit. Testing is perfectly OK; what I don't get is driving the design by doing it. I would like to see answers containing reasons why TDD in software engineering is a good practice, and why the issues that I have explained above are not relevant (or not relevant enough) in the case of software. Thank you."}
{"_id": "177058", "title": "How do I maintain a really poorly written code base?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I\u2019ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code \u2014 what now? Recently I got hired to work on existing web application because of NDA I'm not at liberty to disclose any details but this application is working online in sort of a beta testing stage before official launch. We have a few hundred users right now but this number is supposed to significantly increase after official launch. The application is written in PHP (but it is irrelevant to my question) and is running on a dual xeon processor standalone server with severe performance problems. I have seen a lot of bad PHP code but this really sets new standards, especially knowing how much time and money was invested in developing it.   * it is as badly coded as possible there is PHP, HTML, SQL mixed together and code is repeated whenever it is necessary (especially SQL queries). there are not any functions used, not mentioning any OOP    * there are four versions of the app (desktop, iPhone, Android + other mobile) each version has pretty much the same functionality but was created by copying the whole code base, so now there are some differences between each version and it is really hard to maintain    * the database is really badly designed, which is causing severe performance problems also for fixing some errors in PHP code there is a lot of database triggers used which are updating data on SELECT and on INSERT so any testing is a nightmare Basically, any sin of a bad programming you can imagine is there for example it is not only possible to use SQL injections in literally every place but you can log into app if you use a login which doesn't exist and an empty password. The team which created this app is not working on it any more and there is an outsourced team which suggested that there are some problems but was never willing to deal with the elephant in the room partially because they've got a very comfortable contract and partially due to lack of skills (just my opinion). My job was supposed to be fixing some performance problems and extending existing functionality but first thing I was asked to do was a review of the existing code base. I've made my review and it was quite a shock for the management but my conclusions were after some time finally confirmed by other programmers. Management made it clear that it is not possible to start rewriting this app from scratch (which in my opinion should be done). We have to maintain its operable state and at the same time fix performance errors and extend the functionality. My question is, as I don't want just to patch the existing code, how to transform this into properly written app while keeping the existing code working at the same time? **My plan is:**   1. Unify four existing versions into common code base (fixing only most obvious errors).   2. **Redesign db and use triggers to populate it with data (so data will be maintained in two formats at the same time)**   3. All new functionality will be written as separate project.   4. Step by step transfer existing functionality into the new project    5. After some time everything will be in the new project Some explanation about #2, right now it is practically impossible to make any updates in existing db any change requires reviewing whole code and making changes in many places. **Is such plan feasible at all?** Another solution is to walk away and leave the headache to someone else."}
{"_id": "127658", "title": "How to reply to incomplete requests from potential customers?", "text": "Working as a freelancer, I receive many weird, invalid or incomplete requests from the actual or potential customers. The most frequent case is this one: > Hi, > > I need a website where people can register and there are also postings and > ratings. How much will it cost to me? > > Thank you. The request sucks, but **it doesn't mean that a customer like this is not worth it**. This person doesn't know how to make a request correctly, but with **a bit of effort and a bit of learning and advice** , this person may become a valuable customer who will not waste my time. For a while, I just **replied by asking to provide details**. They never do. Recently, I decided to **reply in a more detailed way** , explaining _why_ is it impossible to give a price (except telling that it would be somewhere between $500 and $50 000). First I just made a simple explanation, telling that their description of the project is too sparse. Then I added further info, metaphors, etc., or by making comparisons with other domains which are better known by people with no technical background. For example: > \u201cImagine you want to build a two-storey house. Do you believe it's possible > to determine the cost of building a house just by knowing the number of > storeys? You probably need to provide much more details: is it built with > rock or wood? Are there solar panels on the roof? Is there a swimming pool > in the backyard? > > A large Victorian-style house using the newest technologies, with two > garages, a large terrace, etc. will cost much more than an tiny modest two- > storey house for a family who really don't have too much money to spend.\u201d It's still not working: those potential customers never respond. I also tried the \"let me gather the project requirements for you from scratch and do the specification and architecture, but don't forget to pay me for this\" technique, but it looks like scam\u00b9. In all cases, in my country (France), this never works with new customers for several reasons. Some hints show me that **some of those people actually succeed finding a developer and succeed with their project**. It means that my approach with those potential customers fails, while there is one approach used by someone else which works well. How to reply to such price requests, considering that those people don't know me, don't trust me yet, don't want to spend days writing a detailed document describing every functionality of the project, and sometimes don't even know precisely what they want, but are not ready to pay you thousands of dollars just for requirements, specification and architecture steps? * * * \u00b9 Most projects are small enough and have tiny funding; most customers don't bother to know that the source code is clean and maintainable, that it was regularly refactored, and that you have unit and integration tests. **They want to pay less, now, no matter how expensive it would be later to maintain the codebase.** In this context, talking about functional and non functional requirements, architecture etc., is perceived like the attempt either to waste half of the customer's money doing marketing jibber-jabber instead of writing code, or to scam them by making them pay for something they don't need nor understand, and then disappearing with their money when it will come to actually writing source code. They don't know that you are a professional, and they even don't care."}
{"_id": "246688", "title": "How to take over sizable codebase, without having access those who implemented?", "text": "I've started a job as mobile lead in a 100employee company. Their Mobile products (iOS and Android) has been developed by external teams, and now they have decided to assemble internal teams, so I'm heavily involved in hiring ATM, both for iOS and Android. I will have teams of 5 people for each of the platforms. I've been manager before, but it's the first time I'm not starting code from scratch. My question is how to handle taking over code? The iOS code is about 50 classes, many of them over 700 lines. The code quality is around 5/10. What should be my first steps for taking over the code base? Little by little or major restructure first, or both using different resources?"}
{"_id": "50576", "title": "How do you stay productive when dealing with extremely badly written code?", "text": "I don't have much experience in working in software industry, being self- taught and having participated in open source before deciding to take a job. Now that I work for money, I also have to deal with some unpleasant stuff, which is normal of course. Recently I was assigned to add logging to a large SharePoint project which is written by some programmer who obviously was learning to code on the job. After 2 years of collaboration, the client switched to our company, but the damage was done, and now somehow I need to maintain this code. Not that the code was _too_ hard to read. Despite problems\u2014each project has one class with several copy-pasted methods, enormous `if` nestings, Systems Hungarian, undisposed connections\u2014it's still readable. However, I found myself absolutely unproductive despite working on something as simple as adding logging. Basically, I just need to go through the code step by step and add some trace calls. **However, the idiocy of the code is so annoying that I get tired within 10 minutes of starting**. In the beginning, I used to add `using` constructs, reduce nesting by reversing `if`'s, rename the variables to readable names\u2014but the project is large, and eventually I gave up. I know this is not the task I should be doing, but at least reducing the mess gave me some kind of psychological reward so I could keep going. Now the trick stopped working, and I still have 60% of my work to do. I started having headaches after work, and I no longer get the feeling of satisfaction I used to get\u2014which would usually allow me to code for 10 hours straight and still feel fresh. This is not just one big rant, for I really do have an actual question: > Is there a way to stay productive and not to fight the windmills? Is there some kind of psychological trick to stay focused on the task, instead of thinking _\u201cHow stupid is **that**?\u201d_ each time I see another clever trick by the previous programmer? The problem with adding logging is that I actually have to _understand_ what the code does, and doing so hurts my brain in an unpleasant fashion."}
{"_id": "80625", "title": "We're not a software company. Is a complete re-write still a bad idea?", "text": "I understand the reasoning behind Joel Spolsky's article \"Things You Should Never Do, Part I\", but I always see it referenced in regards in situations where the end goal is the production of software. What if I'm a developer who maintains an ecommerce site? My job isn't writing a retail platform, but instead putting it to use. In fact, this wouldn't even be a re-write, as such, but a big database and web design transition. The software our site is based on is written in classic ASP, and is fundamentally missing many features that customers expect from a current shopping site. Rather than continue to add these features in piecemeal, my gut feeling is that I should start to transition to a more modern platform. We would lose the customizations that we've made over the years, but frankly, many of this features already exist (and have have almost certainly been implemented better!) in the package that I'd like to switch to. Am I falling victim to the spirit of Netscape, or am I right in thinking my time is better spent in places besides making our tools do what we need? To clarify, this is the equivalent of switching blogging platforms for us. Any \"development\" that I do is essentially rewriting the front end of our website, while the back end is out of my control. Suppose WordPress development had stopped years ago, and was missing \"modern\" features like commenting, static pages, clean permalinks, etc. Sure, I could write a plug-in to add those things, but after a while, wouldn't it be better to switch platforms to something that had all those (needed) features built in from the beginning?"}
{"_id": "229690", "title": "On the process of replacing an internal framework by a public one", "text": "I am working on several applications which depends on a framework which was developed by a prior engineer in the company. The framework was mainly developed and maintained in the early 2000s, and provide the same functionality available in `boost`, `Qt` or even `c++11`. I believe the framework was developed internally because the engineer in question is an autodidact, and that at this time he didn't knew a framework which will satisfy his need. Right now the framework has reached his limit, and we plan to switch to public and well known frameworks to do the same job. The issues we are facing :   * We have to deal with custom basic data structure implementations (strings, arrays)   * We are limited by the capacity to do event-driven or clean concurrent programming correctly   * Coupling and code complexity can be very high (due to people working on both framework and apps )   * Nobody even remotely want to maintain that library   * GUI application management is just inferior to Qt. For instance it is very hard (read _we still havent managed_ ) to make a CLI based on this framework. This is an issue when we want to create CLI executables which does some of the functionality of the UI. Basically **the application is very resistent to change**. One developer joked that _the source code became self aware, and that we have lost control_. We are a small team, and want to move away from our lib incrementally. We cannot go into full rework mode, as the application has features\\bugs to be taken care of in the meantime. We are lucky that the management part of the company understood the issues and is in a cooperative mindset.   * What approach or strategy should we consider?   * What should we do in order to not be stuck midway with a unusable mutant?   * What are the opportunities? Is it teh occasion to improve the architecture? To improve testatibility? Or the development process?   * If several things come to mind, which one should be done first?"}
{"_id": "40676", "title": "Dealing with bad/incomplete/unclear specifications?", "text": "I'm working on a project where our dev team gets the specifications from the business part of the company. Both the business management and the IT management require estimates and deadline projections, as they should. The good thing is that estimates are mostly made by the actual developers who get to do the required features. The bad thing is that the specifications are usually either too simple (it turns out you're left with a lot of question marks over your head because a lot of information seems to be missing) or too complex(up to the point that you can't even visualize where everything would \"fit\" in the app). More often than not, the business part of the specs are either incomplete or unaware of what can and can't be done (given the previously implemented business logic). Dev team is given about a day per new spec to give an estimate and we do try to clear uncertainties, usually by meeting up with whoever did the spec. Most of the times it turns out that spec writers haven't really thought everything through, and it's usually only when we start designing and developing that we end up in trouble, as a lot of the spec seems to have holes. How do you deal with this? Are you generous on estimates in advance?"}
{"_id": "225341", "title": "How to integrate unit testing process into legacy software development process?", "text": "I'd like you to share your insights of how have you successfully turned the direction of rotting legacy code base to modular application design where it's easy and useful to add unit tests? What I'm here trying to find out is little bit different what has been asked before. I want to hear about your own experiences on actual systems. I'm interested in hearing what were the critical points which mattered most and resulted in improvement. I have been working for over five years with a 15 year old C/C++ code where I have seen the change from old C code built as a monolith application to modularized modern C++ application, now utilizing unit testing as a development process (to simplify a lot). As I see it, critical things to reach the success (as I see it), has been   1. highly talented individuals doing great things and prototyping (somewhat outside the official process) unit testing and promoting it to others    2. management willingness to invest in architectural development (not to enable unit testing, but for business reasons)    3. heavy investment in continuous integration system (which is not easy thing to setup for large legacy C++ application)    4. dedicated people to develop and maintain unit testing frameworks, integrations and training of developers    5. and of course the developers themselves who make the progress. So, **what worked** in your case, and **what did not?**"}
{"_id": "206475", "title": "Are missed deadlines common in programming jobs?", "text": "It was my freelancer job at oDesk. I have done several jobs earlier in given time, but is was the first time I missed the deadline. It was a very lengthy job and I tried my best but I still missed the deadline. Now, I am very scared. Because it's my fault that I missed the deadline. My question is: Is this is a big concern or are missed deadlines common among programming jobs, so I shouldn't worry too much about this?"}
{"_id": "254360", "title": "How would you rewrite/refactor this ?", "text": "Old application that is used by 50-60.000 paying customers. Company is several hundred people big. Application has a lot of business critical code (30% of all code) written in classic asp. Application has a lot more .net code. Application has a COM+ bridge for enabling asp to \"talk\" to .net Organization lacks some/a lot knowledge on what is causing the 10-20% server-reset per day (might be due to COM+ ?) There is no red line through the application; no architecture, no real patterns etc. The application has been like this for at least 5 years. The asp code base is increasing, slowly but certainly. I have read refactoring stories and I have knowledge on why you some of the times should not re-write a system. I would love for the old asp code to vanish as well as the COM+ component. But the pain is that no one really knows what is going on inside the asp classic code and the attitude inside all the teams are \"this is just how it is\". Down the line, this causes a lot of other issues like recruiting, dev effeciency, business needs that cannot be met, scale etc. With these little facts, does that justify a re-write of the asp code and the removal of the COM+ component ? How would you go about it ?"}
{"_id": "213973", "title": "How to ask management to increase the number of programmers in the team without sounding incompetent", "text": "I am currently working for a small-medium sized company (~50 employees) as the sole IT staff. Recently, we are on track to replace one expensive yet critical legacy system in favor of an application I am currently working on during my free time at work. However, its been very busy lately with issues spawning left and right so the development of the application has been lagging a lot. How do I ask a very thrifty management to hire more programmers to help me build the new application without sounding incompetent. FYI. I do support of all our applications, setup and administration of the network and servers and in-house application development. EDIT 1: Nature of the Critical Legacy System for added information The Legacy System is the center of our operations. Basically, all our reports, notifications and data are being handled or are passing through this system. We want to replace it for a few reasons:   1. We are bleeding money paying for support that is rarely helpful (really terrible support) plus licensing cost.   2. Ridiculous cost for adding new features (500$ to adjust the width of a column in a report)   3. System Design/Architecture problems that cause the system to be slow and unscalable (Other branches find the system unusable because of how slow it is when used outside of the Office LAN)   4. Its a program made with access '97. Need I say more? It still works but its like trying to cut something with a dull blade in terms of performance"}
{"_id": "46272", "title": "How can I estimate how long a project will take?", "text": "I'm working as a web developer and I want to be able to determine if I'm efficient. Does this include the how long it take to accomplish tasks such as:   * Server side code for the site logic with one language or multiple php,asp,asp.net.   * Client side code like javascript with jquery for ajax, menus and other interactivity   * Page layout, html, css (color, fonts (but I have no artistic sense!))   * The needs of the site and how it will work (planning) How can i judge how long it will take to complete a website? The site has CMS for adding and editing news, products, articles on the experience of the company. Also, they can edit team work, add Recreational Activities and a logo gallery with compressed psd download, and send messages to cpanel and to email. You are starting from scratch except JQuery and PHPmailer. How can I estimate how long the job will take, and how can I calculate the required time to finish any new projects? I'm so sorry for many scattered questions, but I'm in my first experiment and I want to take benefits from the great experience of those who have it."}
{"_id": "194347", "title": "Strategy for reading and understanding Node.js code", "text": "Concretely I am looking at this 2000 line file of what I will pretty arbitrarily call \"mediocre\" code.   * It's not well-commented   * variable names and function names seem consistently intelligent   * functions are not well-documented   * functions are good length In short: its lines and small structures are readable, but it's impossible to infer architecture or design at a glance. Most code I've worked on can be described thusly, to be fair. So I need to understand this. And work on it. This is an important skill in software development I'm still weak at, and it's extremely important when working in a nascent system. So my question is, when encountering foreign code like this that I am employing as client code but now need to understand and modify, what is a quick strategy for having a good understanding?"}
{"_id": "66438", "title": "Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity?", "text": "So I'm sitting down to a nice bowl of c# spaghetti, and need to add something or remove something... but I have challenges everywhere from functions passing arguments that doesn't make sense, someone who doesn't understand data structures abusing strings, redundant variables, some comments are red- hearings, internationalization is on a per-every-output-level, SQL doesn't use any kind of DBAL, database connections are left open everywhere... Are there any tools or techniques I can use to at least keep track of the \"functional integrity\" of the code (meaning my \"improvements\" don't break it), or a resource online with common \"bad patterns\" that explains a good way to transition code? I'm basically looking for a guidebook on how to spin straw into gold. Here's some samples from the same 500 line function:               protected void DoSave(bool cIsPostBack) {       //ALWAYS  a cPostBack       cIsPostBack = true;       SetPostBack(\"1\");       string inCreate =\"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\";       parseValues = new string []{\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\",\"\"};                 if (!cIsPostBack) { //.......       //....       //....       if (!cIsPostBack) {            } else {            }       //....         //....       strHPhone = StringFormat(s1.Trim());       s1 = parseValues[18].Replace(encStr,\" \");       strWPhone = StringFormat(s1.Trim());       s1 = parseValues[11].Replace(encStr,\" \");       strWExt = StringFormat(s1.Trim());       s1 = parseValues[21].Replace(encStr,\" \");       strMPhone = StringFormat(s1.Trim());       s1 = parseValues[19].Replace(encStr,\" \");       //(hundreds of lines of this)       //....       //....       SQL = \"...... lots of SQL .... \";            SqlCommand curCommand;            curCommand = new SqlCommand();       curCommand.Connection = conn1;            curCommand.CommandText = SQL;       try {         curCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();        } catch {}       //....     }      I've never had to refactor something like this before, and I want to know if there's something like a guidebook or knowledgebase on how to do this sort of thing, finding common bad patterns and offering the best solutions to repair them. I don't want to just nuke it from orbit,"}
{"_id": "226534", "title": "How to convince/prove my manager that a rewriting is needed rather than a refactoring", "text": "My manager wants me to refactor a **gigantic amount of terribly-coupled, macroed, full of private namespace methods, hierarchy-perverted (even 10+ levels of inheritance)** code which hasn't been (indeed) designed with a \"whole-vision\" concept. I tried to explain to him that this code needs to be rewritten, not just refactored but he didn't listen and stated explicitly that **I need to refactor it.. somehow**. I could dive into all the \"dealing with legacy code\" books but I think nothing useful would come out. How can I convince him that a rewriting, instead of a refactoring, is actually needed?"}
{"_id": "228371", "title": "Does anyone have experience with a difficult customer?", "text": "We have a reoccurring conflict with one of our larger and strategically important customers. The company (let's call them \"C\" for now) sells and distributes technical articles, everything from hardware components to hairdryers, and has more than 400000 products in their catalog. The product owner, who is also the head of product documentation and internal software at \"C\", has at some point in the 90's taken a course in software testing, and is now writing \"Requirement specifications\" as user tests. These are often contradictory and error prone, but she maintains that what she writes is what she want's, until she writes something else (in same imperative but ambiguous and abstract format). Furthermore, she demands a final budget for the project, and is unwilling to work in smaller iterations of budgeting. I'm looking for hints on how to control the development-process (and our own economy) and still provide the customer with a product that gives the company most value-for-money. Normally, I'd start a project by identifying goals of the project and business use-cases of the organization - and then deriving scope from those goals, using User-stories. The details (specifications) of how user-stories should be implemented, is decided at specifications prior to the sprint including the respective user-stories. This has repeatedly proven to result in better products and greater ROI for the customers. Does anyone have experience of knowledge of techniques that can be used to \"Reverse engineer\" imperative user-tests, or any other input on how to handle the situation? Historically, she has been allowed to completely dominate the development process, which has blown our budgets and taught her that she is in control of our process. Our management has now asked me to control (and defend) the development process. They told \"C\" that there will be used no more hours than the agreed budget, regardless of how \"done\" she (the product owner) feels that we are, which of course will be my leverage. She will become defensive, even aggressive to get things her way - any sound arguments based on professional reference or experience would be of help. * * * Follow up: I thought I'd follow up in case anyone stumbled across this post with similar problems: We have turned the communication around, and are expecting to deliver the next project within budget and on time (I'll edit this post again if hell breaks loose later on). Initially, I focused on creating trust between me and the Product Owner. That meant choosing the relevant battles, and presenting myself as her tool to get most value for her money. Requirements are still expressed in more or less the same way (although she is open for input about syntax, she is firm about the format: Word Documents and Emails), but we are slowly trading control with visibility regarding the development process. I managed to persuade her to participate in weekly meetings for project status, backlog grooming and prioritization. Between each meeting, she gets the chance to test the newest revision, which makes her test-feedback what used to be an object for discussion, the most valuable feedback for the backlog grooming and prioritization. By having a head-to-head talk about the feedback from the tests, we're able to \"weed out\" misunderstandings, contradictions and scope creep before it leaks into development. The trust between us enabled us to have a constructive talk about each others organizations and the processes and intentions of these, which opened my eyes to quite a big part of the problems being our lack of capacity (professionally, theoretically, and methodically). The product owner has called management to personally compliment the progress we are making, so I'm calling success on these first steps - but constantly watching the scope and progress, as to not \"rest on ones laurels\""}
{"_id": "162923", "title": "What defines code readability?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How would you know if you've written readable and easily maintainable code? It is often said that readability is perhaps the most important quality- defining measure of a given piece of code for reasons concerning maintainability, ease of understanding and use. **What defines the word _readable_ in context of program source code?** What kind of definitive aspects are there to code readability? I would be grateful with code examples of _readable_ code, along with reasoning why it is readable."}
{"_id": "14492", "title": "How to gain understanding of large systems?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I have worked as a developer developing C/C++ applications for mobile platforms (Windows Mobile and Symbian) for about six years. About a year ago, however, I changed job and currently work with large(!) enterprise systems with high security and availability requirements, all developed in Java. My problem is that I am having a hard time getting a grip on the architecture of the systems, even after a year working with them, and understanding systems other people have built has never been my strong side. The fact that I haven't worked with enterprise systems before doesn't exactly help. Does anyone have a good approach on how to learn and understand large systems? Are there any particular techniques and/or patterns I should read up on?"}
{"_id": "86454", "title": "Taking part in an open source project", "text": "I am new to open source development. I want to add some functionality to an open source project PRISM. But I couldn't find any developer guide or code architecture guide sort of a thing for it. How should I begin use its code. I have just imported the archive file in Eclipse and began reading the code. I want to ask whether there are any specific tools which will help me?"}
{"_id": "230521", "title": "How to handle not-quite-legacy code?", "text": "This is a frequently asked topic... And I have read through many posts, articles and am about to read the book `Working Effectively with Legacy Code`, but before that and mainly because it will take more than a couple days for book to arrive, and I would like to keep my sanity in check, here's the question: I am looking at not-that-old (1-2 years) code by a company I recently joined, and I have found so many bad practices in there that it's almost heart breaking... Massive code duplication, global variables (which are inconsistently used), and things like using a factory class to instantiate various objects that extend a parent object... and then calling methods that don't exist in the parent, but are defined in all the subclasses... The code works... It's rigorously QAed and bugs are at a minimum, which is fine... but I cringe so much looking at the code... I recently asked my boss if I could refactor the entire codebase, he asked how I would be able to guarantee the changes will not break anything, I asked we could invest some time to create _real_ unit tests, as their so called unit tests are actually end-to-end tests, so we have to trace the debug log very time something breaks. He said we don't have enough time to create the unit tests (actually the code isn't very unit testable, since there is so much tightly couple code... and I would've had to pretty much re-write most of the classes), so in effect I couldn't even do minor changes to code if it isn't listed as a bug in the issue tracker... What I'm doing right now is alot of copy and pasting... then fine tuning that since the logic isn't exactly the same... What can I do? :/ Sorry I think I'm just venting here, and there is nothing I can do in the short/medium term... sigh"}
{"_id": "253834", "title": "How to redesign the UI of a large project?", "text": "I'm currently working at a quite big Android project (a social network, you can see it here if is useful to answer the question). We decided to restyle the whole app, changing all the UI design. The code I actually have is complex, there are many controllers, and it's a little messy too. Is it \"better\" in terms of time and code cleanliness to take one controller per time, and rewrite it entirely, or to _modify_ one controller per time? The layout change entirely anyway, so for that I know I've to restart from scratch. Maybe it could seem a stupid question, but with the \"time\" variable I really can't see the best way."}
{"_id": "246223", "title": "When does extracting methods from code stop to make sense?", "text": "I am currently studying the refactoring methods defined by Marting Fowler (http://refactoring.com/catalog/). He states a tip for replacing chunks of code by a single method that does that job. So far, I agree, as we all learned about the downsides of Spaghetti-code. But the example for this rule looks as follows: Replacing                   void printOwing() {           printBanner();                //print details           System.out.println (\"name:  \" + _name);           System.out.println (\"amount \" + getOutstanding());         }      by                   void printOwing() {           printBanner();           printDetails(getOutstanding());         }              void printDetails (double outstanding) {           System.out.println (\"name:  \" + _name);           System.out.println (\"amount \" + outstanding);         }      Is the readability and thus, the immediate understanding of the code really better in the latter example? There is no indication about what \"details\" are in reference to \"owing\". For example, will the name be listed or is there another method printName()? Is the interest listed as well? I would need to search for the printDetail() method's implementation to find out about that. The method printOwing() itself is already a print-method. Would it not be easier for maintaining the code to just list the System.out.println()'s in this method commenting the purpose as in the first example instead of \"scattering\" the code this way? Is there a rule of thumb about when to stop \"methodizing\" and when it still makes sense?"}
{"_id": "87757", "title": "How to convince my boss that quality is a good thing to have in code?", "text": "My boss came to me today to ask me if we could implement a certain feature in 1.5 days. I had a look at it and told him that 2 to 3 days would be more realistic. He then asked me: \"And what if we do it quick and dirty?\" I asked him to explain what he meant with \"quick and dirty\". It turns out, he wants us to write code as quickly as humanly possible by (for example) copying bits and pieces from other projects, putting _all_ code in the code-behind of the WebForms pages, stop caring about DRY and SOLID and assuming that the code and functionalities will never ever have to be modified or changed. What's even worse, he doesn't want us do it for just this one feature, but for _all_ the code we write. > We can make more profit when we do things quick and dirty. Clients don't > want to pay for you taking into account that something _might_ change in the > future. The profits for us are in delivering code as quick as possible. As > long as the application does what it needs to do, the quality of the code > doesn't matter. They never see the code. I have tried to convince him that this is a bad way to think as the manager of a software company, but he just wouldn't listen to my arguments:   * **Developer motivation:** I explained that it is hard to keep developers motivated when they are constantly under pressure of unrealistic deadlines and budget to write sloppy code very quickly.   * **Readability:** When a project gets passed on to another developer, cleaner and better structured code will be easier to read and understand.   * **Maintainability:** It is easier, safer and less time consuming to adapt, extend or change well written code.   * **Testability:** It is usually easier to test and find bugs in clean code. My co-workers are as baffled as I am by my boss' standpoint, but we can't seem to get to him. He keeps on saying that by making things more quickly, we can sell more projects, ask a lower price for them while still making a bigger profit. And in the end these projects pay the developer's salaries. What more can I say to make him see he is wrong? I want to buy him copies of Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month, but I have a feeling they won't change his mind either. A lot of you will probably say something like \"Run! Get out of there _now_!\" or \"I'd quit!\", but that's not really an option since .NET web development jobs are rather rare in the region where I live... * * * # Update Wow, I hadn't expected to get so many answers. Thank you all for your contributions and your opinions! As quite a few of the answers and comments point out, the type of company and the type of projects play a big role in this topic. I have explained a few things here there in comments on some answers, but it's probably better to add it here as well. The company I work for is rather small. We have 4 developers, 1 designer, 1 boss and 1 jack-of-all-non-technical-trades (the boss' wife). The projects we do can be divided into two categories:   1. Smallish websites built with our own CMS or e-commerce framework (65%)   2. Middle-sized web applications (35%) So while a lot of our projects are rather small, they are built on top of the same system. This system is about 4 years old and the code base is below par to say the least. It always is a dread to add new functionalities or modify standard functionalities for specific customers. One of the goals set by the boss is to start moving our focus to product development. So that means we'll be developing bigger applications that will serve as the base for other projects or are something SaaS-like. I totally agree that doing things quick and dirty can be the best solutions for certain projects. But when you are extending an existing CMS that will be used by all sites you will develop in the next few years or building a SaaS product from scratch, there are better approaches I think."}
{"_id": "238734", "title": "How to code efficiently?", "text": "I often compare my code to others and I find their solution more efficient and shorter than mine. Although both solutions work, I can't help it but wonder if mine is not adequate enough. As a result, sometimes I get a mental block when I'm about to start a project because I keep wondering if my solution is the best way. Are there any steps one can take to code in a more efficient manner?"}
{"_id": "135311", "title": "What is the most effective way to add functionality to unfamiliar, structurally unsound code?", "text": "This is probably something everyone has to face during the development sooner or later. You have an existing code written by someone else, and you have to extend it to work under new requirements. Sometimes it's simple, but sometimes the modules have medium to high coupling and medium to low cohesion, so the moment you start touching anything, everything breaks. And you don't feel that it's fixed correctly when you get the new and old scenarios working again. One approach would be to write tests, but in reality, in all cases I've seen, that was pretty much impossible (reliance on GUI, missing specifications, threading, complex dependencies and hierarchies, deadlines, etc). So everything sort of falls back to good ol' cowboy coding approach. But I refuse to believe there is no other systematic way that would make everything easier. Does anyone know a better approach, or the name of the methodology that should be used in such cases?"}
{"_id": "225052", "title": "Should I start refactor this messy project even if I know I won't have the time to completely refactor everything?", "text": "I have this older project (1st release 2005-ish) I've inherited that a customer asks me to fix or add something to now and then. It's a bit of a mess architecture-wise. Basically it's an ASP.NET WebForms site where 90% of the logic is in the code behind file of each view and the other 10% is in the data access layer. Although \"layer\" might be the wrong word, since all data access is just piled into one service, an all-in-one 3500 line class with ADO.NET code. All other parts of the site use this one service for everything. I'm still a newbie myself, with about 2 years of work exp. And every time I come back to this project it feels worse because I've learned and seen how to do architecture better in other projects. So although I've been smelling the bad code in this project pretty much since day 1, it's now almost unbearable. No business logic is testable, and there are always smaller bugs I know would've been caught earlier with tests in place and a better defined business layer. So my dilemma is that I want to refactor this using MVP (for example https://github.com/webformsmvp/webformsmvp), move the logic from code behind and data access service into a business layer, and at the very least split the big repository class into smaller repositories. The problem is that the customer is not willing to dedicate the time or money for this amount of work in one batch so I'm considering refactoring bits and pieces as I come across them so that this will be refactored over a longer period of time. However I'm not sure if I should mess up the codebase even further by introducing a lot of new concepts, architecture and frameworks if I'm not sure that I can complete the work myself. It feels kinda bad leaving a project in a kind of partly- refactored state where the guy after me might not now where to begin or how to continue the refactor (or if he even will and continues down his own path instead)."}
{"_id": "234763", "title": "If TDD is design, how do you know your TDD is well designed?", "text": "Given a large group (50+) of programmers:   * All given the same problem,   * All using Test-Driven Development (TDD),   * All pair programming,   * All doing group-based code review, I have personally seen the wide spectrum tests that are possible for the same problem, even on the first test. So, if TDD is design, how do you know your TDD is optimal for the current problem, and how do you know it is not? Following the first test, is the approach for reviewing the consecutive tests any different, and if so, how?"}
{"_id": "105018", "title": "How do you find your way in deeply nested, interfacey code?", "text": "I know most people hate flat and long functions, and hate when code is not full of ISomethings. The problem is that I guess my mind works in different way, and I always have problems with that type of code in any non-trivial solution. So, since most of people enjoy explosive number of functions, can you describe what is the preferred method when dealing with unknown code-bases written in this way? So far, for me, it looks like: I have a object with interface IFoo, great, I need to extend it with method Bar1. Reverse lookup, we land nowhere, global search on who implements IFoo, it's Baz1, Baz2, Baz3, Baz4, an they are created by 3 class factories. So we start one by one, definition of Baz1, looks nice, but it's behaviour is completely dependent on parameters used when object was created through class factory. And what's worse, it's just a wrapper around some other functionality of yet another class with IFooBar. Which again uses some internal implementation of classes with ISomethingElse, which again turns into an explosive graph. How do you navigate all that effectively?"}
{"_id": "202107", "title": "OO - are large classes acceptable?", "text": "Despite many years in IT, I still struggle with OO design. One particular problem I seem to keep ending up with is large classes, often containing many hundreds of lines of code. The OO world talks a lot about SRP, and I _could_ argue that these large classes I end up with are each handling a single responsibility. The complex nature of the app (a scientific data processing system) means that one of these responsibilities requires an awful lot of code! E.g. a class might have a single public method `Calculate()`, but there could be 15-20 or more private methods to support this operation. Where possible I will extract methods into separate classes for re-usability, but often there is little or no scope for this. Part of me says I should split these large classes up purely to improve readibility (e.g. grouping similar methods into their own classes), but the times I've done this feels like a wasted exercise - all I've really done is spread the methods around, created more class dependencies, and made things a little more difficult for other devs to find stuff. But then I read articles where developers talk about how all their classes are small enough to fit on the screen without scrolling, and I worry that I'm doing something wrong! In a previous job, I worked on a system where it had been OO'd to the extreme, and it was common to see classes containing just one method, often with no more than one or two lines of code. Personally I found this difficult to find my way around the code-base and to debug, and for this reason (and sheer number of classes) I could argue that it becomes more difficult to maintain - not the aim of good OO design. I guess it's down to personal taste. So, is it acceptable to have large classes, or can you suggest other ways that I could deal with them?"}
{"_id": "219467", "title": "Who should provide the Requirement doc / SRS?", "text": "I am creating a Mobile application (CRM) for another software company. They told me they need these these stuff from here and there, within 15-30 minutes. But they never provided a detailed client requirement document in writing. I have been asking this for number of times, but still no. As soon as I started working I realized what they told by mouth is not even 10% of the work. They first asked me to come up with my own design which is similar to another app they mentioned. I did, 100% similar design to the app they mentioned. Then they said they don't like it so they gave me their design. I completed there design and submitted it. Now they again say they don't like their own design and asking me to do another design! Apart from that, they are asking for some \"Activity Sliding Animations\", \"Windows Like UI\" etc now. In order to do this, I need to remove the entire work I did and start from the scrach, because it can be done by Fragments and mine contains Activities. I even have no idea how the backend will be. Even after one month, we are still designing and changing the designing (Because you have to send at least 3-4 mails, contact at least 2 of their team via phone to get an answer. Very slow communication). And will they pay for the trashed designs? I don't think so. So what about the other customers of mine which I said 'no' due to the lack of time I am going to have because of this project? I feel almost crazy. They always say come up with your own idea, but that is very risky in this situation. If my idea is not accepted, waste of time and money. I am so tired of this, I wasted lot of time designing two 100% different designing, and about to proceed to 3. Since I don't know how the software will be, I haven't done a cost estimation as well. So my question is, client is not supposed to give you any documented requirement? May be an SRS? (What I meant by SRS is, complete detailed document about functionality they need. Including these 'animation' stuff, because I have no super power to guess) The requirement doc they provided is useless, it only says \"update\", \"delete\", \"edit\". All my other clients did provide complete data, some even provided drafts of the design process, except this one. They should at lease ptovide me their requirements in details, in writing, I need some advice here."}
{"_id": "139683", "title": "How to deal with bad code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity?   >  Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being > consistent, or not? I was hired about 6months by a company that uses Agile, but after learning the code I've realized that it's bad code - methods with over 100 lines of code, duplicate code, methods that says it does one thing but does a few other unrelated things. It works, but the more we update it, the more it become like a house of cards. Refactoring one little thing requires changing lots of others, which can make program unworkable. What did go wrong and is it possible to fix it? I thought agile was supposed to make a good code."}
{"_id": "210248", "title": "How many days is it normal for a new hire programmer to take to get up to speed?", "text": "I have just landed a role as a C#/Asp.Net developer at a large software house. I have previously worked at a much smaller software house for about two years but it was a varied/mixed role there, and here the asp.net applications we have are a factor of 10 or so larger. As seems to be the norm, I have been given the task of fixing bugs. At the moment I am just trying to understand the system. How long , in your experience , does it \"roughly\" take ( and is generally acceptable) for a new developer to get up to speed? It of course varies from company to company but as a general rule, when you have hired someone/have worked with someone new, how many days/weeks would it have been normal for them to get to grips with the system?"}
{"_id": "193553", "title": "Time required to start coding at a new company", "text": "I am a software engineer for 4 years, and I just changed my company for the first time. Company works with pair programming, and it's been 3 days, I couldn't even write a single line of code. It's so frustrating for me because I was very productive at my previous company. The codebase is large, they are using 5-6 languages/tools that I am not familiar with, like rspec, haml, jasmine and others. But still, I feel awful. This weekend I created UML to get better understanding of the application, but still I am guessing I'll not be able to write decent amount of code this week. **Is this normal?** _What is your experience when you change your job, and dive into a large codebase written with languages/libraries you are not familiar with._ **Of course I am not asking for _exact_ time required, but past experiences or things to make the process would be great.** Btw, I've already read below questions&answers, How do you dive into large code bases? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/215076/whats-the-best-way-to-become- familiar-with-a-large-codebase http://stackoverflow.com/questions/214605/the-best-way-to-familiarize- yourself-with-an-inherited-codebase **UPDATE** All great suggestions! I just came from work, I've worked a lot! _**About pair programming:_** Generally they write code, and I am trying to not miss even a second! If I try to write the code, I know it's gonna take forever, because I don't even know which files should I edit, but beside that, as I said, they are using 6-7 languages/frameworks that I'm not familiar with, and learning all these syntaxes at one is not easy. _**How well the company prepared for engineers:_** I can't say they are well organized, they kind of expecting me to start writing code immediately. _**Taking notes, being proactive:_** I'm always taking notes when they write a new command/or anything about data models. My peers are very smart and kind people, and I'm trying to ask lots of questions, even **lots of stupid questions** sometimes. _**Is this common?:_** @Telastyn, thanks for your answers, it made me feel a little better. It seems like my problem is not that uncommon, but I was really productive before this job, and now I really feel useless and not smart. I hope I can start solving bugs/implementing issues very soon. _**About frameworks/languages they use:_** I was really honest about that, I didn't say I know something that I don't know actually. But I wasn't expecting that much different things, and since I started working at the day I accepted the offer, I didn't have time to prepare myself. @Southpaw Hare, thanks alot for sharing your experience. You are absolutely right. There is no guarantee that I'm going to learn all of these stuff, but I'm trying. At the end, it's is hard to learn all of the syntax at once, and I think that is the main problem too. Because I can navigate in ruby code well since I know that language, and I navigate in js codes thanks to browser inspectors, but the problem is writing the actual codes with the frameworks/languages I don't know."}
{"_id": "29671", "title": "What to do with bad source code?", "text": "I have been contracted to modify an application for a software company and the source code is quite frankly, a mess. It's not commented much and the author is inconsistent with coding conventions. The guy seems experienced , but his style isn't great. What do you suggest doing to get the project done properly and to make thing easier? **Edit** I didn't mean to say _rewrite_ , I've been hired to modify the the UI in a certain part of an app. I don't think that the client cares so much abut what I do to the source code , so long as it works and so long as it's decent quality code. That said, I've expanded some > if(condition) ? TrueResult : FalseResult; for readability. While I don't think those particularly make bad code, there is an inconsistency in the style throughout the code and a few \"left over\" constants that don't seem to be used anywhere. There are also some arbitrary numbers where constants would Have been wise for readability's sake. It's not as bad as I initially had thought, but I still have some questions for the original developer."}
{"_id": "252392", "title": "How to handle bad code base", "text": "Company I worked for recently inherited a custom CMS system that is extremely buggy, no documentation, and unreadable logic in everything. The client will not have the budget to re-platform for another 6 months or more. The issue we are having is fixing bugs generally requires either patching it or completely rewriting the entire functionality/feature and is extremely hard to estimate time. Should we continue to patch until they re-platform or refactor entire functionality and add documentation?"}
{"_id": "159662", "title": "Software rewriting alternatives", "text": "We have a legacy system to bring up-to-date because:   1. It uses an unpopular (amoung our users) non-sql database (Btrieve)   2. Provides only a text interface   3. Is written in Turbo Pascal (but compiled in free pascal) which is hard to recruit/retain developers to maintain it To give you an idea of the scale, the code base is 15MB over 756 files. All the studies I've looked in to such as those listed here suggest it is vastly more expensive to rewrite than to adapt what you have. If I thought we could encapsulate the legacy stuff behind a web service and then design new client(s), that would be fine. But I'm stuck with this legacy database which 90% of those 756 files reference. We even attempted replacing the low-level DB code with code to convert to SQL, and while it worked fine, it was too slow because the code is still accessing records one at a time generating far too many SQL statements than it would need. Plus this approach does not allow any improvements in the DB design. When faced with such an upheaval as replacing the DB that is referenced so heavily in code and the other requirements listed, can it still pay to reuse or are we better off treating the new version as a whole new product and just listing the current systems abilities as requirements (bearing in mind no handy requirements doc exists for the current system). I know it's too hard to give a definitive answer on this, so just any advice would be appreciated especially if you've experienced a similar situation."}
{"_id": "196449", "title": "Starting a recurring project from scratch", "text": "We have a project that keeps recurring. The client expects us to run a website twice a year and this is happened for the last year and a half. I took the last working copy and based our latest website on it. Now, a co-worker has suggested that next time we should start from scratch instead of fighting against legacy code. I have already started refactoring the existing code and so have the other developers who were on the project. The code is cleaner than before and it meets client needs. The refactoring was ongoing while we developed new features. What are some good reasons to advise against starting from scratch?"}
{"_id": "37091", "title": "How to convince my boss to improve code quality?", "text": "The place I'm working for is a service provider. We have a lot of services, which are written to deal with deadline, so their code are really terrible:   * No coding convention, everyone codes in his own style   * No unit testing (which is really bad)   * No refactoring (which is truly worse)   * No automation build/deployment  etc and these code are used again and again, so bad code continue to spread all over my department. I really want to set up a standard quality for our code, by requiring everyone to follow \"rules\": every line of code which does not follow convention will be rejected, and every function of code which does not pass unit testing will not be committed,...But I don't know how to convince my boss to allow me to do this. I'm relatively new comer, so inspiring people from my works is really hard, and I think it's easier if my boss support me to this. Thank you very much for your advices"}
{"_id": "87460", "title": "Deciphering foreign code", "text": "What is the best strategy to go about understanding some one else's code for a medium sized project, if the code is not well documented and does not adhere to many coding standards?"}
{"_id": "235678", "title": "What can I do with a poorly coded vb6/access2003 project?", "text": "I'm currently working on a big vb6 project and since I'm not the leader of the team (we're just 2) but I'll be in the near future I've started wondering about improving the code and the data structure. There are 5 poorly coded projects with a total of 60-70 forms. The code is really bad, I've tried to improve it with the use of functions to avoid repetitions but it's still awful. It would take me a lifetime to just describe all the stuff that are wrong. The database is even worse, there are 5 .mdb (access 2003) badly designed, the person who created them doesn't know what normalization is and so Index are random, no relationship between table (some table that should be related are on different Dbs...) and so on. I feel bad for users that use this thing and whenever they type in something wrong they need to relaunch the application because there is no control on errors. Beside that it's slow as hell (DBs are on a local server, the apps are local). Where should I start? I was thinking about getting rid of Access, but what's the point if the structure has been conceived so badly?"}
{"_id": "254643", "title": "Gathering requirements from confusing co-worker", "text": "I'm working at my first software internship, and it's great so far. One problem I'm having, however, is getting clear requirements from my co-worker (we'll call him Person A) who assigns projects. Normally, I get requirements from a co-worker/manager, design/code/test my changes, and eventually commit them for integration in our product. The problem is that, fairly often, it is virtually impossible to get clear requirements from Person A. I will ask questions to better understand what problem is being solved, and one of the following often happens:   * Person A will interrupt mid-sentence to think out loud, derailing the current conversation. Sometimes this is for good reason. Example: > Me: \"So if there should be a table mapping Bazzes to Foos, what if there > were-\" > > Person A: \"Actually, I wonder if we actually need to add a BizzleContainer > in this here.\" > > [I wait a few minutes for A to think through their unrelated thought, and > try to help solve it.] This will repeat a few times, and by the time the conversation is done, I'm more confused than when we started and half an hour has gone by, so I don't want to waste the person's time any longer. Note that I wouldn't mind if the interruption was related to the current topic, but it seems that interrupting someone to take a conversation down a completely different path is poor form.   * Person A often barely understands the requirements. These factors add up to wasting a lot of development time based on simple misunderstandings of what needs to be done. Co-workers B and C are capable of clearly expressing what needs to be done, but they are often overrun with demands for their time. So rather than annoy B and C to get requirements clarifications, co-workers often go to A, and get less than satisfactory results. How do you wring clear, correct requirements from someone who understands them but does not have the inclination to take the time/effort to explain what they actually are?"}
{"_id": "75866", "title": "How To Deal With Terrible Design Decisions", "text": "I'm a consultant at one company. There is another consultant who is a year older than me and has been here 3 months longer than I have, and a full time developer. The full-time developer is great. My concern is that I see the consultant making absolutely terrible design decisions. For example, M:M relationships are being stored in the database as a comma-delimited string rather than using a conjunction table to hold the relationships. For example, consider two tables, Car and Property: Car records:   * Camry   * Volvo   * Mercedes Property records:   * Spare Tire    * Satellite Radio    * Ipod Support    * Standard Rather than making a table CarProperties to represent this, he has made a \"Property\" attribute on the Car table whose data looks like \"1,3,7,13,19,25,\" I hate how this decision and others are affecting the quality of my code. We have butted heads over this design three times in the past two months since I've been here. He asked me why my suggestion was better, and I responded that our database would be eliminating redundant data by converting to a higher normal form. I explained that this design flaw in particular is discussed and discouraged in entry level college programs, and he responded with a shot at me saying that these comma-separated-value database properties are taught when you do your masters (which neither of us have). Needless to say, he became very upset and demanded I apologize for criticizing his work, which I did in the interest of not wanting to be the consultant to create office drama. Our project manager is focused on delivering a product ASAP and is a very strong personality - Suggesting to him at this point that we spend some time to do this right will set him off. There is a strong likelihood that both of our contracts will be extended to work on a second project coming up. How will I be able to exert dominant influence over the design of the system and the data model to ensure that such terrible mistakes are not repeated in the next project? A glimpse at the dynamics:   I can be a strong personality if I don't measure myself. The other consultant is not a strong personality, is a poor communicator, is quite stubborn and thinks he is better than everyone else. The project manager is an extremely strong personality who is focused on releasing tomorrow's product yesterday. The full-time developer is very laid back and easy going, a very effective communicator, but is someone who will accept bad design if it means not rocking the boat. Code reviews or anything else that takes \"time\" will be out of the question - there is no way our PM will be sold on such a thing by anybody."}
{"_id": "223869", "title": "How to understand codebase of complex opensource application", "text": "I'm trying to develop a new feature for open source application. But the existing application uses different APIs like Qt and KDE3. And more over the existing files are also very complexand depend on each other. e.g I wanted to create an object of PlaylistBox::Item but its constructor is protected. So I searched the codebase using grep, there is one line that uses this class, but then there are initialization variables of this constructor. Now how do I create these variables when I don't have any use and way to initialize them. My constructor on github,               SyncList::SyncList(QWidget* parent)//: PlaylistBox(player,parent,stack)      now how do I initialize these variables of PlaylistBox. This is the link to PlaylistBox constructor               PlaylistBox::PlaylistBox(PlayerManager *player, QWidget *parent, QStackedWidget *playlistStack) :      and this is PlaylistBox::Item in same file playlistbox.cpp#L775               PlaylistBox::Item::Item(PlaylistBox *listBox, const QString &icon, const QString &text, Playlist *l)      This was just an example case where I face problem. I want to know the basic approach to read such huge and interconnected codebases where one class inherits another and so on. How do I figure out which class should I use. I keep on trying different values hoping one of them will fix it, but clearly I'm doing it totally wrong way."}
{"_id": "125435", "title": "What is a good way to refactor a large, terribly written code base by myself?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity? I have a fairly large PHP code base that I have been writing for the past 3 years. The problem is, I wrote this code when I was a terrible programmer and now it's tens of thousands of lines of conditionals and random MySQL queries everywhere. As you can imagine, there are a ton of bugs and they are extremely hard to find and fix. So I would like a good method to refactor this code so that it is much more manageable. The source code is quite bad; I did not even use classes or functions when I originally wrote it. At this point, I am considering rewriting the whole thing. I am the only developer and my time is pretty limited. I would like to get this done as quickly as possible, so I can get back to writing new features. Since rewriting the code would take a long time, I am looking for some methods that I can use to clean up the code as quickly as possible without leaving more bad architecture that will come back to haunt me later. So this is the basic question: What is a good way for a single developer to take a fairly large code base that has no architecture and refactor it into something with reasonable architecture that is not a nightmare to maintain and expand?"}
{"_id": "98930", "title": "It's my first week of work, I've got the code checked out and am told to look around it until I have an assignment next week. What do I do?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I've been in this situation before and I kind of just poke around the code while really surfing the internet. I care about this job though, and I want to excel. What kinds of things should I look for? How should I go about starting to learn the framework? In my experience, I learn by doing - but clearly they expect something out of me or they wouldn't give me this week to figure out the code."}
{"_id": "181044", "title": "How to understand and debug legacy software?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I\u2019ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code \u2014 what now? Not long ago my company placed me in a team that deals with some of the most complex bugs that are in production. The thing is that almost all of these bugs are in legacy applications I am having a really difficult time understanding and debugging, and these are some of the reasons:   * Bad software design   * Lots of code duplication   * Misleading comments   * Bad names    * No documentation at all   * The creators of the software no longer work in the company   * Really big classes and methods, very badly programmed   * Bugs are very badly documented and the operations team makes very poorly documented reports on the issues that occur. It is very time consuming and frustrating. As a TDD and ATDD developer, I try by starting writing tests to triangulate and pinpoint the problem, but there are so many things that need to be mocked that it is very difficult. Also the business analysts don't provide criteria for this software since they don't even know it themselves. The only thing they say is that it needs to be fixed. I thought that maybe here I could find somebody with experience in legacy software that could give me some advice on how to deal with bugs in an environment like this. I feel I am doing software archeology when working with this. Also it is very stressful and this big amount of frustration makes me feel useless and unproductive since it takes weeks sometimes to fix bugs. I always worked green field development and this is the first time I am doing production support. I would really appreciate some advice."}
{"_id": "183851", "title": "Study Doom 3 Source Code", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I want to study the source code of a large project (for example, the Doom 3 source code) and I would like some help determining how I should navigate the code. How should I start reading it? Should I find a main() function and go on from there? Do you have any other tips that may help me?"}
{"_id": "225860", "title": "What is the norm for introducing new hires to a code base?", "text": "After college I worked at one company for 6 months, and I've just now joined another one, bringing the grand total in my career so far to two. So the first company had a few hundred thousand lines of code, maybe, across a couple hundred files. There was absolutely no introduction to where to start learning the organization of the code base...just, \"Here, go find the source of this bug.\" It was horrifically intimidating. I did slowly start to find my way around the front end, but 6 months in I was only _just_ starting to be introduced to the server-side code. I was really happy to leave the company...I was relatively terrified of trying to find my way around the back end, which was by far the larger part of the code. (I'm a front end developer whose work occasionally requires me to make minor modifications to the back end.) But this new company...it's a big one, focused around a website...think Amazon. 2000 employees. I would estimate millions of lines of code but there's no way for me to know for sure. One of my coworkers showed me a 3-dimensional graph of the file dependencies...I almost fainted. It looked like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yh6ek.jpg) The coworker was chuckling fondly as he rotated it and zoomed around. Yet again, there is no guide, no introduction, just....here you go, get coding. I am horrified and very stressed. The job seems great in every way besides this, and I am quickly starting to worry that I am not competent as I seem to be the only person who finds this intimidating. What are other people's experience with this scenario? Is it just me? What have you done in the past? How long does it take you to get a firm grasp on things? I have asked my coworkers this question and they said \"a couple weeks.\" A COUPLE WEEKS TO LEARN A THOUSAND PLUS FILES, HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF LINES LONG EACH??? Am I incompetent? Just say it."}
{"_id": "106168", "title": "How do you approach a new project where the code has already been written?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you dive into large code bases? I'm about to take on maintenance and enhancements of a fairly large and complex Java EE project with a Javascript front end. I'm trawling through the code trying to work out how it all hangs together but I wondered if any of you people have come up with a methodology for doing this that works best for you? do you start with the UI and work backwards to the database? Or take discrete 'slices' through the system for particular bits of functionality? Do you take notes? How do _you_ get up to speed with a new project?"}
{"_id": "28551", "title": "How do you go about understanding others' code?", "text": "What do you do to understand some code that you didn't write? Or code that you wrote long time ago and don't remember what it does anymore. Do you have some technique that you go about? Do you analyze the structures first, or the public methods, or do you draw flow charts, etc.? Or do you fire up the debugger and just step through it? Or do you just ad-hoc your way through until you understand it?"}
{"_id": "196414", "title": "Prevent code from getting mess", "text": "I am a student and a freelance programmer. These days I am developing a software in VB6 which has recently crossed 100KB of source code. The main problem, I face is, many times I have to refactor my existing source code which is really very boring. Also the size of my code base is not very big (only 100KB). What are the techniques I should you use to prevent my code from getting mess?"}
{"_id": "129951", "title": "General approach to re-factoring an large, very badly written legacy system", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity?   >  What is a good way to refactor a large, terribly written code base by > myself? Really open question here. I'm not after an answer.. only advice. Any past experience people have had with re-factoring legacy systems that they could pass on would be amazing. Here's some information about the software I am to re-factor (you'll cringe!):   * Web application   * Database driven (MySQL)   * PHP4 and PHP5   * Most of the code is PHP4   * Nearly all the code is procedural   * Code that is PHP5 isn't OO.. example: 10,000 line+ file with one class and one function   * Global variables used everywhere   * No source control was used to write the software (you can see from the comments in the code)   * Massive amounts of code repetition   * No separation of concerns - user interface and logic is combined everywhere   * Application relies on order of database tables   * Few code comments   * 250,000+ lines of code   * Application in heavy use Basically, the software is our core product and I have been hired to do a major re-factor (amongst other things). It's a massive task and I can't just dive in and fix all the little things.. I need an overall strategy. I've written some scripts to tidy indentation up, removed commented-out code everywhere and made the project into a repo but now it's time to do the real stuff. I kind of have a vague idea but not sure how to go about it. I could somehow leave the current code alone and write some layer of software over it that abstracts away from all the horribleness. It would be good if the new layer was some sort of MVC architecture. At the same time I would go into the current code, remove redundancies because otherwise the new layer would be using bad code anyway so the code could slow down even more. As you can see.. need some clues/hints/tips/advice/experiences! Thanks very much :)."}
{"_id": "134470", "title": "Newbie to Intermediate PHP Programmer - How to Deal with Maintenance Spaghetti Code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity? So I was given this project for a client, but the person who wrote the site originally did a terrible job (worse programmer than I am). They've got all sorts of kludgy fixes and I'm having trouble figuring out what variables are doing what. Like, for example, one section says this:               $id = \"\";     $cuid = \"\";     session_start();     if (isset($_SESSION['id'])) {         $id = $_SESSION['id'];         $cuid = $id;         $valid_user = $_SESSION['valid_user'];         $cuname = $_SESSION['cuname'];         $website = $_SESSION['website'];         $site = $website;         $email_contact = $_SESSION['email_contact'];          }     $cuid = $_GET['cuid'];     include_once(\"dbfunctions.php\");     if (isset($_SESSION['id']))  {         $cuid = $_SESSION['id'];     } elseif (isset($cuid)) {         $_SESSION['id'] = $cuid;     }      Which just seems to repeat the same thing, over and over. How am I, as a newer programmer (about a year experience, mostly in Python, now with about 6 months experience in PHP) supposed to deal with this sort of thing? More senior developers can't take a look at it - they've got more major clients right now."}
{"_id": "211755", "title": "To rewrite or slowly refactor old C++ project", "text": "Our team has recently inherited a relatively large project from another company (~250k lines). It was developed using C++Builder and we intend to port the Ui side to Qt. Most of the Ui code is separate from the business logic (yay!) but the logic side is quite a mess. There is a lot of diamond inheritance going on (virtual inheritance thankfully) but it makes understanding the code quite difficult to do. We've got very little documentation to go on, what's there is out of date (comments included). I generated class diagrams using Doxygen, here's the most complex one (I had to remove most of the class names but kept some of the more important ones and kept the standard C++ data types and std classes, yes, they inherit from std) ![confusing inheritance](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iEOhW.png) So far we've been able to convert the base program to Qt and we're at a point where we can start converting the program's functionality bit by bit. Problem is, is it worth it long term? We would like to be maintaining this software as our own long term. Is there a general approach we should take to untangling this kind of inheritance mess or should we simply redesign from scratch and only keep bits and pieces of the existing code as we go? EDIT: Some more info Zavior posted a link to an article about why we should not start from scratch but Ptolemy also brought up some good questions and I'd like to add some information about our situation. The program we have is not 'bug free.' There are known issues that users have workarounds for most. There is no 'list' of these issues, that is currently being compiled by talking to all the existing users one by one as they tend to keep things to themselves. We are all new developers to this project. Our only resource is a developer who started working on the project about half-way through its lifetime. He is available via e-mail/chat mostly. He has also put together some documentation on how some parts of the code work. The program has only been used as an internal tool so far. We would like to make it commercially viable. EDIT 2: One of the most important things we want to do is have the program be in Qt. It's currently using the VCL framework from C++Builder that no one on our team is familiar with and we only have 1 license for. It's during my work porting from VCL to Qt that I found the messy code structure and question the decision to 'convert' vs redo."}
{"_id": "39468", "title": "How possible is it to estimate time for programming projects?", "text": "It seems like it is nearly impossible to get close because you could run into any number of issues and things not first anticipated. How close can we be expected to reasonably estimate? Our PM wants to be able to have things like Gant charts and such mapping out weeks at a time and such... So we say we can get these bugs done, and this is how long each will take, and the goal will be Friday, but things get thrown off and pushed into the next week, like every time! How are we suppose to guess the right time?"}
{"_id": "61655", "title": "How do you know you're writing good code?", "text": "Serious question here. I love programming. I've been messing around with code since I was a kid. I never went the professional route, but I have coded several in-house apps for various employers, including a project I got roped into where I built an internal transaction management/reporting system for a bank. I pick stuff up quickly, understand a lot of the concepts, and feel at ease with the entire process of coding. That all being said, I feel like I never know if my programs are any good. Sure, they work - but is the code clean, tight, well-written stuff, or would another coder look at it and slap me in the head? I see some stuff here on SO that just blows my mind and makes my attempts at coding seem completely feeble. My employers have been happy with what I've done, but without peer review, I'm in the dark otherwise. I've looked into peer code review, but a lot of stuff can't be posted because of NDAs or confidentiality issues. A lot of you pros might have teammates to look at stuff over your shoulder or bounce ideas around with, but what about the indies and solo guys out there like me? How do you learn best practices and make sure your code is up to snuff? Or does it not matter if it's \"the best\" as long as it runs as expected and provides a good UX? EDIT: Wow, I can't believe the great response and helpful answers this question generated!!! In the spirit of democracy I have selected the answer with the most upvotes as the correct one -- in reality, I wish I could accept many of these answers, since they all made some great points and helped me expand my mind a bit when it comes to my programming. Thank you to everyone who took the time to answer and comment!"}
{"_id": "219834", "title": "Methods to understanding coding relationships and infrastructure within an unfamiliar codebase", "text": "I have recently begun studying a codebase which I will soon be working with. The current codebase has been written by a team of about 5 rockstar developers (whatever that means), and it hasn't really been documented for a newcomer like me. I have a general understanding of what technologies are being used, but not enough to begin coding and adding features. I first need to understand the general architecture that's employed throughout the code, all the basic relationships, and the process flow from input to output, as well as read and write - from the server to the client and from the client to the server. When I'm able to understand their system at this level, developing on this codebase should be much more do-able. I'm not concerned with reading through the code and studying their use of the language. I know that I can Google syntax and a library or an API if I need to figure something out. But what are some approaches to understanding the architecture and all the important relationships for code that doesn't specifically document it? The codebase has been written by advanced-level developers who've used a lot of top-down method, so how does a newcomer come and understand it from the mind of the developer who initially wrote it? You'll find this quite often in code- bases that are hosted on GitHub and such. A lot of code. Little documentation. So where does one begin? What are some suggestions, and what has your experience been?"}
{"_id": "193990", "title": "Maintenance code needs improvements", "text": "I am currently maintaining/enhancing a project a bit old speaking of the 1990's. Atleast 15 developers would have worked over it. Going through the code for understanding is bit difficult.   1. No coding standards being followed.   2. OOP concepts not clear.   3. Too many unnecessary methods and functions, also unused files.   4. Worst of all global objects (hard to determine when its created and destroyed). At times I feel should I be correcting the code so its better to work on, but my PM says we should not bother about it. As we have to finish the tasks within deadlines. This also leads to difficulties in tracking the bugs occurring. Any suggestions on how should I approach it?"}
{"_id": "186021", "title": "How should I go about \"overhauling\" a large legacy application?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I\u2019ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code \u2014 what now? For my next project, I've been tasked with \"overhauling\" a large legacy web application with many parts. It is a JSP application written in 2004 and it is used heavily by my company. This application was designed badly in that there is no separation of concerns; no service layer, no DAO layer, no MVC structure. Just a bunch of JSP files loaded with scriptlets containing logic and database queries mixed in with HTML. It's a mess. My boss has defined \"overhaul\" as basically rewriting the entire thing using the technologies we use for our more recent applications, which are:   * Maven   * Spring    * JPA (w/Hibernate)   * JSF **AND** add a bunch of new features. My question is: How do I go about this? What should be my strategy for completely redoing a large application that is currently in use AND add a bunch of features? Should I rewrite the existing application first and get it working with the updated technologies and THEN worry about adding new features afterward? Or should I go about it like I'm creating a whole new application and implement the new features WITH the old features? Has anyone done this successfully? If so, what strategies were instrumental to your success? * * * **Edit: More info from comments:** How bad does the design have to be to justify a rewrite? This design is pretty bad. There is tons of business logic hiding in the application. No specs, no logs of requirements changes, no list of bug fixes, no list of open bugs, no test suite, no documentation. And the guy who originally wrote it is now in upper management."}
{"_id": "205515", "title": "How to accurately predict release items?", "text": "We are having a disconnect between development and business needs. Business is asking me to produce an accurate list of deliverables for a fixed date and development being difficult to predict is pushing back saying that can only produce a list 80 or 90% accurate. So my question is, how do we solve this problem? How to provide an accurate list of deliverables weeks before they are completed and fully tested?"}
{"_id": "254915", "title": "How to set more accurate \"deadlines\"?", "text": "Context: My work is to build financial reports using mostly Excel spreadsheets. This consists mostly of formulas and a good deal of VBA. Each person is built by a single person. We service many sub-departments under the finance / accounting department and we often have many projects lined-up. I have had a rough time in the last few months because of projects taking longer than expected, then projects overlapping and getting very close to critical deadlines. Question: Obviously, we try our best to plan our projects so that we have a little bit of room to breathe but I always feel helpless when I have to estimate how long a given project will take me to complete. Are there techniques that can be used to better estimate how long a project can take to complete ? Analysis: I am thinking that one way to get a better idea of the length of the project would be to look into our process for getting requirements which could be infinitely better. It would help to get a clearer picture but it would still not give us a measurement. Then I thought that maybe isolating and measuring the average development time of different tasks that need to be done for most reports (e.g. build the queries, write the functions, construct the report, automate the process) would be one way to achieve this but it does not take into account the variability in complexity of those tasks. Some reports have very simple queries while others are extremely complex. Obviously the more complex the query the longer it would take. Note: Most of the time we have to deal with legacy code / inefficient reports which can cloud the waters even more."}
{"_id": "67166", "title": "When do code hacks become bad?", "text": "When you begin a new project/function/object you mostly have an idea of the model you want to build. It can be based on the clients' wish, on your ideas for the app or whatever. In the middle you often realise that your model will not work. There may be new requirements, you didn't think of something etc. Then you have two options. Either you rewrite your code to work with the new specifications, or you \"hack\" the current code to do what you want. A rewrite is time consuming, and you may need to do it several times, but in the long run it often pays. Hacks are fast and often effective for the moment, but many hacks will make the code really bad, and after a while they may come back and bite you in the behind... How do you determine when to do what? _(Pardon my very non-academic way of explaining this, but I hope you understand what I'm getting at.)_"}
{"_id": "98101", "title": "How to organize a one-man project?", "text": "Every once in a while (read: about every day) I come up with a new idea, start a new project in my favorite editor/IDE, start coding and the next day I delete it and start something new. I've been programming for about six years now and in those six years I have only really completed one very small project (a Dashboard widget for Pastebin.com). Though this might be great for learning coding, I really want to complete something. What are some things I should do before, while and after the actual coding? What are good resources that teach me how to organize such one-man projects? * * * If it matters, I want to do web or Mac development."}
{"_id": "167614", "title": "Is eval the defmacro of javascript?", "text": "In Common Lisp, `defmacro` basically allows us to build our own DSL. I read this page today and it explains something cleverly done: > But I wasn't about to write out all these boring predicates myself, so I > defined a function that, given a list of words, builds up the text for such > a predicate automatically, and then evals it to produce a function. Which just looks like `defmacro` to me. Is `eval` the `defmacro` of javascript? Could it be used as such?"}
{"_id": "222559", "title": "Is it fair to say that \"macros don't compose\"?", "text": "On this blog post aphyr (who is a brilliant programmer) states: > Clojure macros come with some important restrictions. Because they\u2019re > expanded prior to evaluation, macros are invisible to functions. They can\u2019t > be composed functionally\u2013you can\u2019t `(map or ...)`, for instance. The classic example of this is:               (reduce and [true true false true])     ;RuntimeException      Yet we can write:               (reduce #(and %1 %2) [true true false true])     ;false      **Is 'macros don't compose' a valid claim?** Surely the only valid point is that macros are not first class functions and shouldn't be treated as such."}
{"_id": "226322", "title": "How do International Call Rerouting Apps work?", "text": "Since DTMF seems impossible on Android devices, I really wonder how it is possible to setup a direct dail service like Jinggling (http://www.jinggling.com/how_it_works.html). I realize one registers his phone number, but to what end? Say a customer now dails an international number, the App intercepts the call, reroutes it to their own service but how gets the desired number transmitted? The whole point is that this is works without wifi-/data-connection, no VOIP. The only way I can imagine this to work is using SMS to exchange auth and other related data. Or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "222555", "title": "Gradual Typing: \"Almost every language with a static type system also has a dynamic type system\"", "text": "This claim by Aleks Bromfield states: > Almost every language with a static type system also has a dynamic type > system. Aside from C, I can't think of an exception Is this a valid claim? I understand that with Reflection or Loading classes at runtime Java gets a bit like this - but can this idea of 'gradual typing' be extended to a large number of languages?"}
{"_id": "167619", "title": "TypeScript or JavaScript for noob web developer", "text": "Following the recent release by Microsoft of TypeScript I was wondering if this is something that should be considered for a experienced WinForm and XAML developer looking to get into more web development. From reviewing a number of sites and videos online it appears that the type system for TypeScript makes more sense to me as a thick client developer than the dynamic type system in Javascript. I understand that Typescript compiles down to JavaScript but it appears that the learning curve is shallower due to the current tooling provided by Microsoft. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "57663", "title": "Does Apple own any rights to software you create with their developer tools?", "text": "Or do you own the rights to any software you create, regardless of whether you used tools supplied by a third party? Thanks"}
{"_id": "231123", "title": "I'm struggling with abstracting my animation code in my game using a functional style. How can I do this?", "text": "My game is a top down 2D shmup programmed in a functional style. I'm struggling with abstracting the code that is responsible for animating the projectiles. There are many types of guns with many types of projectiles. Here are a few that are very different:   1. A **standard gun** that shoots a bullet that travels a distance over time.    2. A **laser** that shoots a line that goes from start to end in an instant.      * This is different from the **standard gun** projectile because its projectile doesn't travel over time. It's drawn as a line. Unlike the standard gun, the laser beam animation should last after the projectile hits something.    3. A **psychic shockwave** that forms a circular blast wave around your body and damages anything in range. The size of the circle is variable.       * This is different from the **standard gun** projectile because its size is variable and circular. Also, it doesn't move. I'm struggling on how I can use a sprite sheet for this. It seems like the best way might be to draw a circle on the screen. All the other projectiles are sprites.      * This is different from the **laser** because it's a circular shape rather than a line.  If this were object oriented, the path I'd take is straight-forward: I'd create an `Animation` class that is responsible for animating itself. The client code would have no idea _how_ the animation occurs, it would just pass in the necessary objects in order to get it done. But I'm not sure how to do something like this in a functional style. Right now I represent everything as data. A `projectile` contains `animation` data like so:               projectile: {       type: \"laser\"       animation: ...     }      But what feels very wrong is I have to have one switch to create this projectile, and then in my rendering code, I have to have _another_ switch to decide how to use the data to animate it. EG:               if projectile.type is \"standard gun\"       rotateBulletTowardsVelocityAndAnimateAtPosition(projectile)     if projectile.type is \"laser\"       rotateLaserTowardsTargetAndAnimateFromStartToTarget(projectile)     if projectile.type is \"psychic shockwave\"       drawCircleAroundProjectilePosition(projectile)      This doesn't seem very abstract to me. What's a better way to code this while still being functional about it?"}
{"_id": "250386", "title": "Difference between Yesod and Ocsigen web frameworks", "text": "I have been looking at web-frameworks in functional languages and eventually found Yesod and Ocsigen interesting. As far as I understand, they leverage the type system to statically prevent basic errors such as invalid HTML or internal dead links. My question is are there practical differences such as feature focus or maturity between these two frameworks? What does one have that the other miss? For example, with Yesod, can I write the entire web-application in Haskell and have the appropriate component compiled to Javascript? Thanks."}
{"_id": "250384", "title": "Unit testing statically loaded data", "text": "Scenario: I have a configuration file containing some structured data that is loaded in at runtime and is **not** modified by the application, but is referenced in many places. There are functions that retrieve specific data from the configuration file (after it's been loaded into memory). I'd like to write unit tests that ensure that data has not been changed inadvertently by a developer, is this good practice or overkill? E.g. `Assert(GetDataForKey(\"SomeKey\") == \"MyValue\")`"}
{"_id": "250383", "title": "How to prove that following practices and industrial standards are profitable, and investment in refactoring are good", "text": "I started working in a company not much time ago, and what I see a lot inside a project is a high amount of low quality code and some custom ideas instead of industry standards and selected best practices. But when I trying to talk with manager about that, I often see the answers, that guys who doing that make things quick and they are good etc, etc, etc"}
{"_id": "105630", "title": "How can I study C# from Stack Overflow", "text": "How can I study C# from Stack Overflow?   I have only the basics of the C# language with some simple exercises; now I want to go to the highest level C# through Stack Overflow, reading any questions tagged \"c#\". The questions are not ordered from easiest to hardest. Do you have any idea on how to learn C# from Stack Overflow?"}
{"_id": "141842", "title": "C++ Multithreading on Unix", "text": "I have two related questions:   1. Are there any good books for multithreading in C++, especially now that C++11 contains multithreading in the standard library?    2. I have the Wrox Programming on Unix book (1000 pages fat red one) and within it, it uses the Unix Thread class.      * How does this code relate to boost and the C++11 multithreading libraries?      * Is it better/worse/just specific to Unix etc?      * Is the performance the same?"}
{"_id": "141843", "title": "What is the actual purpose of MVC?", "text": "I've seen a lot of stuff that describes how it's done, but not a lot that tells WHY it's done. Is it just a way to keep the code readable, or is there a better reason?"}
{"_id": "250388", "title": "Best patterns for variable-scope disposables", "text": "I have `Client` which uses a disposable `Connection` for talking to a remote service. A `Connection` is somewhat expensive to set up and needs to be Dispose()d properly. I want to allow multiple methods in `Client` to share a connection, like this:               using (client._connection = client.Connect())     {       client.SyncTime();       client.UpdateUsers();       client.SomeOtherOperation();     }      But I don't want to _insist_ on `Client`'s consumers managing connections. They should be allowed to call individual single `Client` methods without being aware or concerned with `Connection`s. Here is the pattern I'm using at the moment. It makes SRP cry. Any suggestions on how I can do this better, or should I be doing this at all?               public class Client     {       Connection _connection;            public void SyncTime()       {         bool wasConnected = _connection == null;         try         {           if (!wasConnected)             _connection = Connect();                _connection.ActuallyDoSomeWork();           ...              }         finally         {           if (!wasConnected)             _connection.Dispose()         }       }     }"}
{"_id": "60012", "title": "Why isn't Lisp more widespread?", "text": "I am starting to learn Scheme by the SICP videos, and I would like to move to Common Lisp next. The language seems very interesting, and most of the people writings books on it advocate that it has unequaled expressive power. CL seems to have a decent standard library. **Why is not Lisp more widespread?** If it is really that powerful, people should be using it all over, but instead it is nearly impossible to find, say, Lisp job advertisements. I hope it is not just the parenthesis, as they are not a great problem after a little while."}
{"_id": "146319", "title": "C# open-source framework for multithreaded task management", "text": "I have an API library for C# that provides flexible multithreaded task management of objects on task bases. The library was developed extensively for a project that was later cancelled by the client. I received the legal rights to the library, and the client doesn't care what I do with it now. I don't know what to do with this source code. Can you please explain to me, what the steps are in taking source code and making it a successful open source project? How do you attract developers? How will people know the library exists? EDIT: The reason I ask this question, is to bring the source code to an open source state. I'll be adding a full set of unit tests, documentation, examples, etc.. etc.. That represents more investment of my time, and if there is no pay off \"i.e. no one uses it\". Then what's the point?"}
{"_id": "204651", "title": "Will object reuse optimize this often-called function?", "text": "Suppose I have a function that I need to call a lot, maybe a few thousand times on every mouse down or mouse move. It uses an instance of a function (class), called `Transform`:               function func1(a, b, c) {       var t = new Transform();       t.rotate(a);       t.scale(b, c);       return t.m[0];     }      So I'm creating thousands of new transforms as I call this `func1` lots. What if, instead of creating `new Transform()`s every time, I created a small system to allocate extra transforms only as they are needed, and re-use them:               window.Util = {       _CachedTransforms: [],       tempTransform: function() {         var arr = Util._CachedTransforms;         var temp = arr.pop();         if (temp === undefined) return new Transform();         return temp;       },       freeTransform: function(temp) {         Util._CachedTransforms.push(temp);       }     }      Then instead I could call `func2`:               function func2(a, b, c) {       var t = Util.tempTransform();       t.reset();       t.rotate(a);       t.scale(b, c);       var result = t.m[0];       Util.freeTransform(t);       return result;     }      Using `func2` several thousand times, `new Transform` is only ever called once. This might suggest a benefit, but the numbers from jsperf don't seem to suggest any. If you want to see these two functions in action as well as the Transform class, take a look at jsperf: http://jsperf.com/transforms And especially: http://jsperf.com/transforms/2 To simulate it occuring lots during an event, my jsperf test does:               var a;     for (var i = 0; i < 4000; i++) {       a += func1(1, i, 3); // vs func2     }      There may be better ways to test if this is advantageous or not. Am I missing something? More broadly, is object reuse like this still a good idea in this scenario, or ever?"}
{"_id": "113145", "title": "Is the concept of computational complexity important for software developers?", "text": "I was under the impression that the concepts of time and memory complexity are a must for graduates of compsci courses, but having studied engineering I have no knowledge if that is the case. I have recently been surprised to interview some graduates of a local college that do not even know the concept. I guess my question is: Is the concept of computational complexity important for software developers? And should it be taught in undergraduate courses?"}
{"_id": "146317", "title": "How to fulfill EASTL license", "text": "I'm integrating EASTL into my game programming framework. I did some changes to it since I have my own memory management sub-system and now I'm wondering what I need to do to not break the license under which EASTL was released. The source code files include the following notice:               Copyright (C) 2005,2009-2010 Electronic Arts, Inc.  All rights reserved.          Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without     modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions     are met:          1.  Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright         notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.     2.  Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright         notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the         documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.     3.  Neither the name of Electronic Arts, Inc. (\"EA\") nor the names of         its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived         from this software without specific prior written permission.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY ELECTRONIC ARTS AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY     EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED     WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE     DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL ELECTRONIC ARTS OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY     DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES     (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;     LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND     ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT     (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF     THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.      Since I will probably be releasing the source code on GitHub at some point, but do not plan on releasing any binaries without source code, can I just add something similar to my own source files and be okay with this? Will something like the following do?               /*      * Copyright (c) 2012 Bartlomiej Siwek All rights reserved.      * Based on EASTL (https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL) - copyright information follows.      */          /*      * Copyright (C) 2005,2009-2010 Electronic Arts, Inc.  All rights reserved.      *       * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without      * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions      * are met:      *       * 1.  Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright      *     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.      * 2.  Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright      *     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the      *     documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.      * 3.  Neither the name of Electronic Arts, Inc. (\"EA\") nor the names of      *     its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived      *     from this software without specific prior written permission.      *       * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY ELECTRONIC ARTS AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY      * EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED      * WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE      * DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL ELECTRONIC ARTS OR ITS CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY      * DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES      * (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;      * LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND      * ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT      * (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF      * THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.      */      P.S. This is a repost of a legal-like question from StackOverflow where it was found off-topic. If this is off-topic here as well, please tell me where I can ask such question?"}
{"_id": "113142", "title": "LINQ to SQL - Business logic in another assembly?", "text": "So I am trying my hand at this whole tiered application thing with ASP.NET 4. The software I've developed is a maintenance nightmare and it isn't very well organized. I've done some looking around the web and can't seem to find an example of what I'm looking for here. Someone please pick this design apart. My Data Access Layer will be an assembly with LINQ to SQL. I will have a Business Logic Layer that references the DAL assembly and does what BLLs do. Very general and basic stuff. Then I will have a business objects class that does some that is data-related but is more \"work\" type stuff - like generating documents, etc. The web site will interact with the BLL and the business objects. So:                   DAL          |          |          |         BLL----------BO          |           |          |           |          |           |         Web----------|      Am I making this way too complicated? Should I just put my business logic right in there with the LINQ classes in the DAL? I'm not sure how a DataContext would work in a separate assembly with classes that inherit from LINQ classes. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "185904", "title": "Can my GitHub and SourceForge account share the same repository?", "text": "I like that SourceForge can also let people browse your code using Git. But, before I even set up the project on SourceForge, I had a GitHub repository for it. Now that I have created my SourceForge project, I had the option to use the Git tool. The problem is when I did that it made a new repository from scratch. I would like to use my existing GitHub repository with my SourceForge project, is this possible? As of now the SourceForge project has no files, so the button on the summary page, instead of a 'Download' button, is a 'Browse Code' button, but the button leads to an empty repository. So I am wondering, is it possible to link my SourceForge project with my existing GitHub repository, or do I need to remove the 'Code' tool from my SourceForge project and just leave a link to my repository in the description?"}
{"_id": "198446", "title": "Are there languages that expand on the STL's iterator types?", "text": "Many languages use the concept of an iterator. The c++ STL expands on this with input iterators, output iterators, forward, bidirectional, random access and others. As far as I know, these distinctions don't exist in other languages. In this talk the author of the STL, Alexander Stepanov, talks about iterators (among other things), and mentions the idea and of 2-dimensional iterators. I haven't seen these anywhere. Question 1: Are there other languages/ libraries that expand on iterators and/or use 2-dimensional iterators? Question 2: Could anyone point me to some good resources on iterator theory (if that is what it's called)?"}
{"_id": "191147", "title": "Efficiently compute distance of location to POIs?", "text": "I want to write an android application that holds information where (climbing) rocks are located in a wider area. I want to display all rocks nearby my current location (say below 500m) and may be update the displayed distance to them (straight-line distance) in real time. To naively compute the distance between two points will not be efficient regarding a rock database with thousands of entries. For this special case the use of online services is discouraged as they are not available at all. I've heared about some location-aware databases. Does anyone have experiences with them (under android)? Is it efficient enough to divide the map of rocks into quadrants and enrich the rock database with these information? (Then compute the quadrant of the current location and only compute the distances of the rocks in the nearby quadrants?) I tried searching for an answer to this question (I'm sure others had these question too) but could not find anything appropriate. **tl;dr** How do I **efficiently** find points of interest near my current gps location?"}
{"_id": "191141", "title": "Server distribution for high performance", "text": "I've developed a Socket Application on top of TCP in .NET C#, which allows many clients to send files from one another via a VPS I'm using. Most file transfers will occur between people in the same region, say, even in the same neighborhood. So, If 300 clients are connected, some of them will be connected from say Europe, others from, say the USA etc... Those who are connected from Europe will never try to send files to those in the USA. What matters to me the most is scalability (hopefully, I will have thousands of users connecting simultaneously), and low latency (responsiveness) when it comes to upload/download transfer rates. Something tells me, that if I want the files (up to 2MB) to be transferred quickly between my clients, I should get a VPS in Europe, USA, Asia etc. In this way, users will get higher transfer rates, and in case one of the server fails, they will be able to use the the other one(s). Besides, I should have a separate database for user info/statistics to which all of the servers connect when needed. My question is, what is the common practice for such usage and requirements? Any kind of clue/terminology I should start to get familiar with will be highly appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "204711", "title": "How to justify migration from Java 6 to Java 7?", "text": "We were migrating from Java 6 to Java 7. The project is behind schedule and risks being dropped, in which case it will continue to use Java 6. What are the specific improvements in Java 7 that we could go back to our manager with and convince him it is important to use JDK 7? Looking for bug fixes that I could highlight in Oracle Java 7 (with respect to Java 6). Fixes in security, performance, Java 2D/printing, etc. will be more sellable in my case. Compiler fixes for example, will not of much use. [I am going through many sites like Oracle adoption guide, bug database, questions on Stack Overflow]. Update: Thanks for the answers. We rescheduled the update to next release. Closest we got was security. Accepting the highest voted answer."}
{"_id": "231194", "title": "Is it generally a good idea to work with JDK 6 instead of JDK 7?", "text": "As far as I know, there aren't a lot of differences between JDK 6 and JDK 7. At least, I haven't yet come across a difference (I coded with JDK 7 and with JDK 6). A lot of computers run JRE 6 or JRE 7. Compiling my program using JDK 7 will narrow the number of potential computers that can run my application. Is it generally a good idea to always program using JDK 6 and compile my program for JRE 6? Is this something common? Or is it generally a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "210320", "title": "Organisation of $(document).ready", "text": "I have some code that looks something like this, except rather than 2 sections, there are about 20, and they have real code in them:               /*------------      * Contents:      *  1. Load slider      *  2. Check form     /*------------              /*------------          * 1. Load slider     /*------------          var slider_id = 101;     var num_slides = 10;          $(document).ready(function(){         // Initiate document ready slider     });          /*------------          * 2. Check form     /*------------          var fields = {\"text\",\"number\",\"textarea\"};          $(document).ready(function(){         // Do some document ready form stuff     });      I'm trying to keep everything neat as there is going to be a handover at some stage. My question is should I do it like I have done, or something like so:               /*------------      * 1. Load slider      * 2. Check form     /*------------              /*------------          * 1. Load slider     /*------------          var slider_id = 101;     var num_slides = 10;          /*------------          * 2. Check form     /*------------          var fields = {\"text\",\"number\",\"textarea\"};          $(document).ready(function(){         /*------------              * 1. Load slider         /*------------              // Initiate document ready slider              /*------------              * 2. Check form         /*------------              // Do some document ready form stuff          });      So, do I minimise document ready calls, or group associated content together? Just self taught so no idea about these kinds of best practises. Thanks"}
{"_id": "198442", "title": "Storing escaped mysqli characters in database but outputting them correctly with htmlspecialchars()", "text": "I have a database sanitizing function that I use when the user enters some data into my website. I escaping the mysqli characters with mysqli_real_escape_string(), but I wish to also output the content with htmlspecialchars(). The problem is, let's just say the user enters something with a single quote; that will be escaped by the sanitize function and will be output as \\'. Is there any way to store it like that, and then output it as '?"}
{"_id": "210322", "title": "Generic service control interface", "text": "I need an interface to a back-end service, mostly for control commands (stop, status, cancel, reload config). The service might be in Python, Perl, Java, or whatever, and runs continuously. The interface will let me send infrequent commands to the running process. A signal handler can tell a process to stop, and USR1 and USR2 signals let it do two more things. Tomcat sets up a special listener on a fixed port number to get it to shutdown, perhaps due to limitations of Java signal handling. But I'd like it to respond, not just react. And I'd like to use this for a service written in any language on any platform. I'm hoping to avoid middleware or databases to communicate, since it's a simply request/response (Q: \"how are you?\" / A: \"I have been running for 3 hours at peak efficiency\"). I glanced at these but they seem like overkill for a simple control interface:   * dBus \\- general interprocess message bus   * UPnP \\- device communciation   * Avahi \\- DNS queries to find services   * Hadoop YARN \\- Distributes work across a network, parallel processing Each seem compelling, but they feel heavy weight or else require special software to be installed ahead of time, or aren't for every language or every platform. If I wrote my own, I could write a single-threaded TCP listener with JSON requests/responses. That seems about as lightweight and universal as you can get, and is small enough for a \"hello world\" service, and big enough for speaking to any service. JSON over TCP would be very command-line friendly (curl or netcat), and therefore easily scriptable. Lots of languages already have a JSON library (C++, Java, etc), in any platform. A harder approach is adding HTTP semantics to the JSON request/response so you could browse to your application or use curl to control it. But embedding HTTP seems like a lot of space and complexity when it will only support a few resources (PUT text/plain \"true\" to /stop to shutdown your app, GET application/json from /status to see how it is running). Frankly, I'm surprised nobody invented a standard service control interface for simple things like basic control commands. At work we used CORBA and registered in a naming service and then had to deal with Java/C++ ORB connection issues and it seemed like tons of code for something that should be simple."}
{"_id": "251385", "title": "Is there a name for this anti-pattern? (Variable has context-dependent meaning)", "text": "I'm working on a legacy system with troubling behavior - it uses the same identifiers to signify different things in different places. The system in question is a CRM system. It uses special codes for each subscriber's account to signify a bundle of features they've purchased access to. These codes are transmitted to licensing servers, which activate the appropriate features. However, the same code means different things depending on which licensing server happens to serve the subscriber. For example:   * Code 241 means the subscriber has access to features 1-10, 12, and 20-50 if they are served by licensing server A.   * Code 241 means the subscriber has access to features 1-20, 33, 34, and 50 if they are served by licensing server B. Clearly (to me, at least), it would be better if each code meant one things. That is, 241 should mean (1-10, 12, 20-50) everywhere and new code 242 should mean (1-20, 33, 34, and 50) everywhere. Is there a name for a problem of out-of-band data being required to uniquely specify something?"}
{"_id": "251387", "title": "JavaScript Combination Inheritance Pattern", "text": "In the chapter of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers on OOP, Nicholas Zachas describes a JavaScript inheritance pattern which he refers to as _combination inheritance_. The basic idea is that methods are inherited via prototype chaining; whereas parent properties are passed on to descendants by calling the parent constructor within the child constructor. A small example:               function Parent() {         this.parentProperty;     }          Parent.prototype.parentMethod = function() {         console.info(parentProperty);     }          function Child() {         Parent();     }          Child.prototype = new Parent();      He concludes his discussion by saying that \"combination inheritance is the most frequently used inheritance pattern in JavaScript.\" However, in his following discussion on the prototypal inheritance pattern, he mentions a shortcoming of combination inheritance, namely that the child type invokes the parent constructor twice: once when creating the prototype and then again in the constructor. My question is why does the combination inheritance pattern suggest extending the prototype by having the child's prototype be an **instance** of the parent type, why shouldn't it just reference the parent's prototype directly? Using the previous example, why not just do the following:               Child.prototype = Parent.prototype;"}
{"_id": "6815", "title": "How can I maintain my technical skills after becoming a project manager?", "text": "As I advance in my career, I have found that I do less technical work and more project management work. I joke that I am getting dumber every day. Each time I go back to doing technical work it seems to be a little harder to get things going. What suggestions do people have for maintaining technical expertise throughout your career?"}
{"_id": "223784", "title": "Where does Windows Workflow Foundation fit into the messaging oriented middleware architecture?", "text": "I've been trying to find information online about where WWF 4.5 fits with in an architecture based around an enterprise message queue using central broker(s) (RabbitMQ in particular). It seems like responsibilities overlap a bit since WWF offers the ability to pause-and-resume (persist/restore) workflow instances. I'm wondering if I'm erroneously equating this pause-and-resume WWF functionality to the general message queuing concept. Having looked at MassTransit, in particular a code listing of a sample Saga showing parallel code \"activities\" that then \"combine\" when completed... it seems like WWF excluding the pause-resume functionality in this context, is better compared against MassTransit.. is this an accurate assessment?"}
{"_id": "24147", "title": "How would you introduce an agile methodology like scrum?", "text": "If you've found agile and walk into a workplace that doesn't particularly follow any methodology and they are resistant to change (as most people usually are), how would you introduce an agile methodology like scrum? **NOTE:**   * Well, I've phrased it as a hypothetical question, but it isn't.   * I'm not very confident about Agile myself"}
{"_id": "223786", "title": "Can I share ~1k of dynamically updated data between HTML5/JS pages using only apache2?", "text": "I have an HTML5/Javascript web site. There is a form which updates JSON data. There are other pages which I would like to load that JSON data dynamically. I know how to do this via Tomcat/JSP but I'd like to keep this site solely apache2. Is there a way to persist and read the JSON data? It is ok if the data is temporal and is lost upon an apache2 bounce."}
{"_id": "37307", "title": "As a self-taught programmer, how do I get the academic foundation without attending school again?", "text": "I've made a pretty good living as a self-taught programmer, but when I find that I discuss some low-level fundamental topics with my peers who have a CS degree, holes appear in my knowledge. I'm a big picture (architecture) guy, so for a long time this hasn't bothered me, but lately I've wondered if there is an approach I can take that will help me learn these fundamentals without going back to school? Are there books, websites or videos that you can recommend that would give me a ground-up perspective as opposed to a learn it as you need it mentality?"}
{"_id": "223780", "title": "How to trace logical errors in algorithms", "text": "I am beginner in algorithms. Last year I participated in Google Code Jam. One of the major issues I faced during the competition was my code was working fine on my test cases, but when I submitted on a large number of test cases, I failed to pass them causing some logical error. So, my question is basically how can I trace logical errors in my code in such situation where it fails to match some test cases?"}
{"_id": "233033", "title": "How can I deal with a slow API in PHP?", "text": "I'm writing a public web app to get stock data from a magento store. I've accessed the data, but it turns out that i have to query each product individually for stock data. With thousands of items this is a resource hog and takes lots of time. This cannot be avoided. It's just how their API works and I have to do it this way. How can I code something in php that runs in the background, harvesting the api data by nibbling it in a calmer more friendly manner, and not hammer their shops with SOAP api calls? Am I right in thinking that I need to use a background process like this: $pid = shell_exec(sprintf('%s > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!', $command)); ...and then query that $pid? Store them in a database? Are there any examples of background process managers?"}
{"_id": "187415", "title": "Legitimate reasons for circular references in C++", "text": "I have project written in C++ that I am working on which has a parent-child relationship where each child has only one parent. I had previously decided after looking at this post that I would make the children know nothing of their parents. A little background on my project before I go into my question: The parents in this situation are objects representing a collection of interlinked computational \"blocks\". The parent (The \"Model\" class) takes in one or more input values, runs them through its blocks, and the blocks return back one or more output values. The child objects are the Blocks and a Block is owned by exactly one Model. The issue is that a certain kind of Block can contain a Model so that I can nest them and re-use models. Although most blocks know nothing of the Model class, the ModelBlock (inheriting Block) knows about Models and is allowed to encapsulate a Model. **The Question:** The above seemed to be working pretty well, at least in the console version of my application. However, I need a GUI to be able to create any large Model without losing my mind and so I have started making one. The issue has reared its ugly head again when I realized that the Blocks in general need to know about their Model so that ModelBlocks can inform a Model when it is being used inside of another Model. This is so that I can easily find \"orphaned\" Models that are not the root model and not used in any other context (meaning they will never be run). I guess I could make it specific to ModelBlocks, but if I'm going to do something like that, why not make it apply to all the blocks? In C#, its seemingly not a bad practice to use a circular reference to accomplish this (Entity Framework does it up the wazoo...it wreaks havoc with serializers). However, it seems very taboo in C++ to use circular references. So, I am wondering if the above is a legitimate use. Were I to do this, Blocks would be informed of their parent Model's destruction so that they know if they are orphans. Even if the above isn't, are the legitimate uses for circular references in C++ since they seem to be relatively common other languages (of course, that's assuming that those programs in those other languages using circular references don't have serious design issues)? If I didn't explain my question well enough just let me know and I'll try to clarify. EDIT: I should mention that the actual implementations are separate from all this since I am using interfaces (classes with all pure virtual functions) to define how a block looks or how a model looks. Here is a partial class diagram with my proposed changes: http://oi50.tinypic.com/16c8cwn.jpg Here is the source: https://github.com/kcuzner/Simulate/tree/develop. If you feel like building it, it depends on Qt >= 4.7, boost >= 1.52. The projects are Qt-Creator projects. Console and GUI depend on Engine."}
{"_id": "223789", "title": "Is Convention Over Configuration \"Knowledge in the World\" or \"Knowledge In Your Head\"?", "text": "In Don Norman's seminal work \"The Design of Everyday Things\", the author coined the phrases and explains the difference between \"Knowledge in the World\" and \"Knowledge In Your Head\"; an example of this is a multi-switch light panel that can either incorporate \"Knowledge in the World\" by being a model/map of the room, with the switches in the corresponding location, or \"Knowledge In Your Head\" (which is how they are almost always designed/implemented) when you have to memorize which switch toggles which light. You could think of \"Knowledge in the World\" as something you can deduce by using observation and logic, and \"Knowledge in your Head\" as something that has to be memorized. In the world of DI, and \"Auto-Registration,\" which relies on the \"Convention Over Configuration\" pattern, would using this process be a case of the programmer using \"Knowledge in the World\" (the functionality is expected, as the framework provides it) or is it \"Knowledge In Your Head\" (the programmer has to be aware of and learn the convention). I am taking the wishy-washy/middle-of-the-road view that Convention Over Configuration is a midway world twixt the two. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "187410", "title": "Marked nodes in Fibonacci heaps", "text": "I don't understand why Fibonacci heaps have marked nodes (picture). A node is marked when its child is deleted. Quoting from Wikipedia: \"[Keeping degree of each node low] is achieved by the rule that we can cut at most one child of each non-root node. When a second child is cut, the node itself needs to be cut from its parent and becomes the root of a new tree.\" Why do we need to do that? Why not just leave the node where it is after the second child is cut? The heap structure is not violated. I don't see the point of this optimization."}
{"_id": "117628", "title": "Why are wrapper classes not suited for use in callback frameworks?", "text": "I just read the question what are callback frameworks?, where the asker cites the following from Effective Java: > The disadvantages of wrapper classes are few. One caveat is that wrapper > classes are not suited for use in callback frameworks, wherein objects pass > selfreferences to other objects for subsequent invocations (\u201ccallbacks\u201d). So I am curious, why are wrapper classes not suited for use in callback frameworks? And can you provide an example of what the problem is?"}
{"_id": "59959", "title": "What is a \"cross-functional team\" actually?", "text": "The general meaning of \"cross-functional team\" is a team which combines specialists in different fields that are required to reach the goal. But it looks like in Agile cross-functionality means not only combining different specialists, but making them mix. Henrik Kniberg defines cross- functional team this way: \"Cross-functional just means that the team as a whole has all skills needed to build the product, and that each team member is willing to do more than just their own thing.\" But where is the line drawn? Is it normal to ask developers to become testers for an iteration if it is required?"}
{"_id": "37079", "title": "Unobtrusive JavaScript (regarding asp.net mvc3) not clear", "text": "Unobtrusive JavaScript avoids injecting inline JavaScript into HTML. This makes your HTML smaller and less cluttered, and makes it easier to swap out or customize JavaScript libraries http://www.asp.net/mvc/mvc3#BM_JavaScript_and_Ajax_Improvements what really is it ?( i am really trying to go deeper in the above article) can some one explain in simpler words"}
{"_id": "59954", "title": "Are there real world applications where the use of prefix versus postfix operators matters?", "text": "In college it is taught how you can do math problems which use the ++ or -- operators on some variable referenced in the equation such that the result of the equation would yield different results if you switched the operator from postfix to prefix or vice versa. **Are there any real world applications of using postfix or prefix operator where it makes a difference as to which you use?** It doesn't seem to me (maybe I just don't have enough experience yet in programming) that there really is much use to having the different operators if it only applies in math equations. EDIT: Suggestions so far include:   1. function calls //f(++x) != f(x++)   2. loop comparison //while (++i < MAX) != while (i++ < MAX)    3. operations on objects where ++ and -- have been overloaded"}
{"_id": "146869", "title": "Does the use of Comparator interface breaks encapsulation in Java?", "text": "According to the essay \"The Object Calisthenics\" by Jeff Bay in the book ThoughtWorks Anthology, Use of Getters and Setters should be avoided as they break encapsulation and we should instead ask the object to do something for us instead of digging in to the object and getting its fields. how about comparison of objects ? I have to find best object say a Resort for the customer on the basis of a rule that uses few properties of the Resort object. This rule can change in future. So I find use of comparator interface better as compared to comparable interface. But then I will have to use getters and setters for to access individual properties to compare to objects in a different class."}
{"_id": "11846", "title": "How large is ok for a Class?", "text": "I\u2019m a long time developer (I\u2019m 49) but rather new to object oriented development. I\u2019ve been reading about OO since Bertrand Meyer\u2019s Eiffel, but have done really little OO programming. The point is every book on OO design starts with an example of a boat, car or whatever common object we use very often, and they start adding attributes and methods, and explaining how they model the state of the object and what can be done with it. So they usually go something like \"the better the model the better it represents the object in the application and the better it all comes out\". So far so good, but, on the other hand, I\u2019ve found several authors that give recipes such as \u201ca class should fit in just a single page\u201d (I would add \u201con what monitor size?\" now that we try not to print code!). Take for example a `PurchaseOrder` class, that has a finite state machine controlling its behavior and a collection of `PurchaseOrderItem`, one of the arguments here at work is that we should use a `PurchaseOrder` simple class, with some methods (little more than a data class), and have a `PurchaseOrderFSM` \u201cexpert class\u201d that handles the finite state machine for the `PurchaseOrder`. I would say that falls in the \u201cFeature Envy\u201d or \u201cInappropriate Intimacy\u201d classification of Jeff Atwood's Code Smells post on Coding Horror. I\u2019d just call it common sense. If I can issue, approve or cancel my real purchase order, then the `PurchaseOrder` class should have `issuePO`, `approvePO` and `cancelPO` methods. Doesn\u2019t that goes with the \u201cmaximize cohesion\u201d and \u201cminimize coupling\u201d age old principles that I understand as cornerstones of OO? Besides, doesn\u2019t that helps toward the maintainability of the class?"}
{"_id": "137185", "title": "Code sharing with a newbie coder in our group?", "text": "I'm working on a group project for school, and it's just me and a teammate. Well he is really behind with coding skills, and I was wondering if I should still give him access(email a copy) to the source I've been working on solely. So far he hasn't done anything except a basic TUI. Is it advisable to gently tell him to \"catch up\" to the coding level first?"}
{"_id": "197667", "title": "Dependency injection and ease of use", "text": "I'm writing a handy library (we'll call it Thinger) that goes off and fetches an XML document, does some X-Path query on it and does something helpful with the result of that. (What I'm actually doing is far too boring to bother you all with, this is just a simplified example.) Because I'm a wise and lazy programmer I'm making use of two third-party components, one for fetching remote XML documents (we'll call it Fetcher) and one for running X-Path queries (we'll call it Querier). My library provides a Thinger class, into which one must inject a Fetcher and a Querier. I could do this via setters or a constructor. But then I think about the poor people using my library, who now have to think about injecting my dependencies when all they really want to do is call something like               new Fetcher()->fetch(someurl);      So far, I have written a static factory which instantiates a new Thinger, Fetcher and Querier, assembles them as appropriate and returns the Thinger. That left me feeling slightly unclean. Surely there's a better way? EDIT Most frameworks etc would probably get around this using a Dependency Injection Container or similar, but since I'm writing a fairly small third party library that seems like a bad approach."}
{"_id": "189957", "title": "What is difference between publisher-subscriber and reactor patterns?", "text": "Publish-subscribe and Reactor patterns looking very similar to me. How they are different? In both patterns a message is getting passed to subscribers indirectly (listeners in reactor pattern). I feel observer pattern is very similar to two other patterns too. What are key differences between those patterns?"}
{"_id": "197663", "title": "Scratch - why do schools teach students a language that is not used anywhere else?", "text": "Why do schools teach Scratch instead of more commonly used programming languages (C, C++, Java, C#, Python etc)?"}
{"_id": "197668", "title": "Defining a status between last check and now", "text": "I have sets of probing data from an internal monitoring tool which represent the availability of different services (databases, webservices and so on). Now my task is to visualize this data and I reached a point where I should make a decision concerning the data interpretation for the most recent data set. **Quick overall definition** , each data set reflects the given status at the time when it was verified and the probing intervals vary from service to service, so there is no constant time window. Hence if there is an interval of e.g. five minutes between set A and B, for these five minutes (assuming with B there is a change) the status of A is always assumed. So far no problem, my question now however is what should be assumed for the time between **now** and the **most recent** data. I see two solutions   * Only visualize data up until the most recent check, and ignore the passed time since then or   * Assume the status from the most recent check is still valid up until now (like between two given data entries) I could see arguments for both and hope someone can point me in the right direction as to which approach would be the most logical one."}
{"_id": "138987", "title": "Do I need to test everything?", "text": "I'm going to start my first real project in Ruby on Rails, and I'm forcing myself to write TDD tests. I don't see real advantages in writing tests, but since it seems very important, I'll try. Is it necessary to test **_every_** part of my application, including static pages?"}
{"_id": "211054", "title": "How to design a task scheduler (like cron) with a Calendar Queue", "text": "I've been working on a dynamic task scheduler based on a Calendar Queue structure and I've hit a bit of a wall. The Calendar Queue lets me enqueue and dequeue events, however I think I might not be understanding the pseudo code correctly, but it can't seem to find any pseudo code referencing the application loop and how the application waits for the correct time before executing the task. Heres a naiive solution for what I'm talking about: Let calQueue be a CalendarQueue populated with events.               while(1){         time = DateTime.now         nextTask = calQueue.dequeue()         if(time!= nextTask.time){             sleep(nextTask.time-time);             executeTask(nextTask)         }     }      Obviously this has many problems:   1. many events may occur at the same exact time   2. the executeTask method may take a significant amount of time to execute, which means events might be missed.   3. I'm using a database backed CalendarQueue, and so the dequeue method may take a not insignificant time to complete.    4. This also ignores tasks that were added to the calQueue that must execute before the next task, ie the task was added while it was sleeping, for immediate execution.  Other considerations:   1. I would like to eventually make this a distributed (clustered) scheduler.   2. I've looked at cron and fcron but honestly they are both pretty large applications, and somewhat difficult to trace.  Basically what I'm looking for is how I could design a CalendarQueue scheduler."}
{"_id": "211056", "title": "Main method templating", "text": "Now that I've gotten into a dependency injection groove, I find main methods for different applications all look basically the same. This is similar to stuff you might find on the Guice documentation, but I'll put an example here:               public class MyApp {         public static void main(String... args) {             Injector inj = Guice.createInjector(new SomeModule(),                            new DatabaseModule()                            new ThirdModule());             DatabaseService ds = inj.getInstance(DatabaseService.class);             ds.start();                  SomeService ss = inj.getInstance(SomeService.class);             ss.start();                  // etc.         }     }      For multiple applications I have main methods that all look just like that. But now, lets say I want to make a brand new app, that, say, reuses my `DatabaseModule`. I pretty much have to copy and paste the `main` method and make appropriate changes... I view copy-paste as a code smell. Further, lets say I realize I should probably be putting shutdown hooks in, now I have to go through and change every main method in all my applications to attach shutdown hooks to each service. Is there some good way to template this process and minimize the boilerplate?"}
{"_id": "68348", "title": "In DVCS with production and development branches, whats the master/default branch?", "text": "If your following the standard DVCS methodology of having a production branch and a development branch, I'm really interested in what do you do with the default (mercurial) or master (git) branch?   * Do you delete it (not recommended by several guides)?    * Do you use it as production?    * Do you use it as development?    * Or do you leave it empty and have separate dev and production branches? Note: I'm really interested in Mercurial specifically, but any other DVCS or just general rules would be ok"}
{"_id": "211053", "title": "Why isn't `length` generic by default?", "text": "Haskell often provides two versions of a given function f, i.e:               f :: Int ...     genericF :: Integral i => i ...      There exist many standard library functions with those two versions: length, take, drop, etc. Quoting the description of `genericLength`: > The genericLength function is an overloaded version of length. In > particular, instead of returning an Int, it returns any type which is an > instance of Num. It is, however, less efficient than length. My question is: where does the efficiency loss comes from? Can't the compiler detect that we are using `genericLength` as an Int and therefore us `length` for better performance? Why isn't `length` generic by default?"}
{"_id": "211052", "title": "a lot of small objects - OO pasta", "text": "In the code I am working on, there are a lot of really small objects like:                   class HasFieldLameSetter         {          public:             HasFieldLameSetter(field& p_):m(_p){}             void set(bool p2)             {                 m.hasLame = p2;             }               field& m;         };      Having lots of small classes creates a hard-to-read and complicated \"code pasta\". Sometimes, reading it is really really hard because I spend a lot of time jumping from file to file to find out that the class did something trivial like in the example setting bool to true. In addition, those objects are being passed around everywhere by \"dependency injection\" which makes reading it even more difficult. **How do I persuade the author of the code to write slightly bigger objects?** In my opinion too many small objects is just a nightmare for programmers. Am I missing something, or is there a mistake in my thinking? I would be happy to read any papers that might change my point of view."}
{"_id": "157240", "title": "When Rob Pike says \"Go is about composition\", what exactly does he mean?", "text": "From Less is Exponentially More > If C++ and Java are about type hierarchies and the taxonomy of types, Go is > about composition."}
{"_id": "184298", "title": "Understanding open and listening ports", "text": "I developed an app in Java (which is working perfectly; with this app you can scan TCP/UDP ports -for testing purposes only-), but meanwhile when I was writing the code I read several documentation (wiki) about sockets. I thought open port is mean, a protocol where the client/server can establish/bind a connection even if there are nothing on the server side which can handle/response data. I thought open port is mean (if there are no routers/firewalls) a protocol which is ready to be used. I was testing my application on my local server machine, but at first I thought my application is not working. It was working, but there was no any software which could response to my queries. After I opened my APACHE server and I wrote a simple UDP server (which can handle/response to any query on a specific port) the application was able to find those ports. I thought listening port is a port which is used and it's opened. What does listening port is meaning? If I send UDP packets to a remote host and there are no closed ports (router or firewall) what happens to the packet? Does the data is written in the buffer? Or it simply ignores/denies the packet."}
{"_id": "184299", "title": "Is it better to create a stored procedure or entities to get to the data I need?", "text": "I just jumped into a new project with a new company using Entity Framework and ASP.NET MVC 4. I am no expert on Entity Framework, but I think I have a decent grasp of how to use it. From what I can tell, my models should reflect a table in the database omitting the columns I don't need. Also, we can use stored procedures with Entity Framework, or an IoC to map the model. I need to connect the relationship with two objects, whose relationship is pretty nested. I could create a stored procedure to do this or create a bunch of models (based on the tables in the database) and use an IoC configuration to have a table from the database for each model, then query the models in the repository layer for the data I need using Linq to Entities. Seems like I would have a lot of \".Include(x=>x.SomeModel)\" My question is: which option is better for maintenance and integration in the future of the project? A stored procedure or Linq to entities? Or am I not understanding Entity Framework properly?"}
{"_id": "184290", "title": "How to connect several (mobile) devices", "text": "I want to start a little project, where I want to connect several of my devices. Some are Android mobile devices, others are desktop devices like a PC or laptop. Furthermore I want keep the project as generic as possible. Means I want to share it, so other people can use it. By connecting I mean send messages between them. My problem is, that I'am not sure what technology or architecture to use, and hope to get some advice from you. (I think this question is more about software architecture then gorilla vs. shark) I have considered several approaches already. I looked at Google's Cloud Messaging, but that seems not to fit my requirements, where several users can register to send independent messages. It looks more like, sending from one master to several devices. The next thing I thought about was something lile VLC did with its Android remote app, where the desktop application hosts something like a server to which the mobile app must connect. This seems to be limited to LAN and only fits to about 80% of my use cases. Is there another approach which does not require something like a server who is aware of all clients, which has to seperate the user's devices and route the messages?"}
{"_id": "108105", "title": "What should I understand before I try to understand functional programming?", "text": "I've been Learning `Me A Haskell For Great Good` because I thought it looked interesting. Of course, I'm completely sold on the idea that functional programming will end world hunger, bring about world peace, send crows to peck out the eyes of my enemies, bring many young women with good birthing hips to my beck and call, double my order for free, and just generally improve my life in every way, shape, and form with zero drawbacks whatsoever. I am pretty well-versed in imperative paradigms. I learned Java and C++ before I dropped out of university, after which I taught myself Python. My problem is that even beginner tutorials get way far over my head pretty quickly and I'm not sure if there's something specific I'm missing or not understanding or if I just can't quite wrap my head around the whole paradigm just yet. I made it all the way to Section 4.7 of the Haskell Tutorial for C Programmers before I couldn't understand it anymore. Am I missing something foundational (like those last two years of university)? Or should I just keep going slowly and hopefully it will click? Put another way, what information would help me best bridge the gap between an imperative paradigm and a functional paradigm?"}
{"_id": "108101", "title": "a better approach for reviewing performance of developers?", "text": "I am a web developer. My office sets a list of criteria such as   * Discipline   * Attendance   * Project Schedule   * Teamwork   * Problem Solving   * Idea Sharing   * Dedication for evaluating employees performance. Each criteria is allocated some points and the review is based on the total points scored in each criteria. My problem is I feel these criteria are quite vague and I don't think they can actually portray an employees performance. In software development, I think there are other other ways to measure an employees performance. Any suggestions? Thanks"}
{"_id": "220846", "title": "Product backlog acceptance criteria", "text": "I read on a similar forum http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8117530/examples- for-acceptance-criteria-for-a-user-story about putting in the acceptance criteria for product backlog item. I am working on a Scrum based project and I need more info as my backlog item is as follows - UserProfiles ( I am using this in the title field in tfs 2013) and the description contains all the \"As a user I want to be able to create new users and assign permissions' The acceptance criteria talks about how the user interacts with the UI (as discussed in one of the answers in the above link - which is very logical) For example   * As the user clicks on the home button, system will bring up 3 options   * And then the user can enter their user name  Is this the right approach I am using to use title for PBI and put the actual user story in description field in tfs Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "136582", "title": "Extensibility data model pattern", "text": "I was wondering how you'd be able to map the following criterias to common design patterns. I use PHP 5.3 and MySQL 5.5 and have my own mvc framework for my company but some parts could be better and here are the requirements: (Take the concept of a catalog since it's the first app that would be affected in our application pool) The controllers (products, clients and basket) all manage different information namely their own set of models. For example, the basket will create basket objects in memory, assign products to it, quantities, etc. Then it will save the basket to database and try the payment logic and save the payment associated to the basket. My issue is that most of the time, our clients want to customize the different objects such as the client (add more coordinate fields or descriptive fields) or the product (add custom properties to the product). If my controller always refers to the class product but i want to extend it to create:               MyCompany_Models_Product     MyClient_Models_Product extends MyCompany_Models_Product      How will i setup my system to support extension of classes and change the classes used by my different modules, controllers, views and other models. If i hardcode MyCompany_Models_Product as the class name in the controller and all other object, how would i go at creating an overridable system. Is there any pattern i can go for that will leverage this problem?"}
{"_id": "170137", "title": "Execute a Managed bean from a JSF view in WEB-INF folder", "text": "We are initiating a Spring + Primefaces project and the first problem we have encountered concerns storing the XHTML pages into the WEB-INF folder. When we use a faces form in a view located inside the WEB-INF folder, then the `commandButton` does not execute the managed bean method.                <h:form id=\"loginForm\">         <p:commandButton action=\"#{LoginMgr.doLogin()}\" value=\"Login\"/>      </h:form>      Our bean:               <bean id=\"LoginMgr\" name=\"LoginMgr\" class=\"com.tesipro.channelmanager.business.implemented.CMLoginManager\">     </bean>      In fact we think the problem is that with JSF, the pages are rendered using a link to the same page as the action of the form, so if the page is located in WEB-INF it is not publicly accessible. We know that having all our XHTML views in the web folder instead of WEB-INF actually solves the issue, but we would like to store that pages into WEB-INF."}
{"_id": "224350", "title": "Does Exception Handling Violates \"Program to Abstraction\"?", "text": "I am talking based on experience with Java and C#. I do not know if other language have different exception handling implementation. In order to achieve loose coupling, we need our code being programmed to use abstraction rather than implementation. However the exception handling case is the opposite. The best practice is you need to handle specific exception type (`SqlException`, `StackOverflowException`, etc). This thing may be better (or not) in java thanks for it's `Checked Exception`, there is a kind of \"contract\" between the interface and the consumer. But in C# or for the `Unchecked Exception` there is no contract about what exception can be thrown by the interface. For example, say that we use `Repository Pattern` to decouple the DAL with BLL. The simple catch exception usually be used like:               public void Consume()     {         try{             productRepository.Get(k=>k.Id == \"0001\");         }         catch(Exception e){             // handle         }     }      In more specific case we usually use `SqlException`. However it means that we must know that the `ProductRepository` is a repository to database server. What if the implementation changed to use file repository instead? Now you need to catch `FileNotFoundException` or something like that. Why does it violates the \"code to abstraction\" principle? And what can we do to prevent it?"}
{"_id": "254398", "title": "Try and catch error trapping, why is it so significant?", "text": "I try to understand why should I \"try\" a method to catch errors. It looks to me like the concept is: \"letting a process run assuming its not properly developed\". Should I always assume that a program based on classes and inheritance is bound for unexpected errors, which I should handle with tools like try catch and throw? Should all Java programs be included within try catch framework?"}
{"_id": "229549", "title": "What is the advantage of wrapping exceptions", "text": "It's very common in .NET for an exception to be wrapped in several layers of \"outer exceptions\" which give marginally more contextual data. For example, in EF if your update fails, you get exceptions wrapped similar to this:   * `EntityException`   * `DbUpdateException`   * `SqlException` The data I need to understand what failed is almost always in the `SqlException`, so what's the advantage to the other two? What if I was using EF inside a custom library, should I wrap this exception with one of my own? Like `MyCustomLibraryException: Could not update the data. See inner exception for details.`"}
{"_id": "189222", "title": "Are exceptions as control flow considered a serious antipattern? If so, Why?", "text": "Back in the late 90's I worked quite a bit with a code base that used exceptions as flow control. It implemented a finite state machine to drive telephony applications. Lately I am reminded of those days because I've been doing MVC web apps. They both have `Controller`s that decide where to go next and supply the data to that destination logic. User actions from the domain of an old-school telephone, like DTMF tones, became parameters to action methods, but instead of returning something like a `ViewResult`, they threw a `StateTransitionException`. I think the main difference was that action methods were `void` functions. I don't remember all the things I did with this fact but I've been hesitant to even go down the road of remembering because since that job, like 15 years ago, _I never saw this in production code at any other job_. I assumed this was a sign that it was a so-called anti-pattern. Is this the case, and if why? Update: when I asked the question, I already had @MasonWheeler's answer in mind so I went with the answer that added to my knowledge the most.. I think his is a sound answer as well."}
{"_id": "177831", "title": "Try/Catch or test parameters", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Arguments for or against using Try/Catch as logical operators   >  Efficient try / catch block usage? I was recently on a job interview and I was given a task to write simple method in C# to calculate when the trains meet. The code was simple mathematical equation. What I did was that I checked all the parameters on the beginning of the method to make sure, that the code will not fail. My question is: Is it better to check the parameters, or use try/catch? Here are my thoughts:   * Try/catch is shorter    * Try/catch will work always even if you forget about some condition   * Catch is slow in .NET    * Testing parameters is probably cleaner code (Exceptions should be exceptional)   * Testing parameters gives you more control over return values I would prefer testing parameters in methods longer than +/- 10 lines, but what do you think about using try/catch in simple methods just like this \u2013 i.e. `return (a*b)/(c+d);` There are many similar questions on stackexchnage, but I am interested in this particular scenario."}
{"_id": "145941", "title": "Efficient try / catch block usage?", "text": "Should catch blocks be used for writing logic i.e. handle flow control etc? Or just for throwing exceptions? Does it effect efficiency or maintainability of code? What are the side effects (if there are any) of writing logic in catch block? **EDIT:** I have seen a Java SDK class in which they have written logic inside the catch block. For example (snippet taken from `java.lang.Integer` class):                       try {                 result = Integer.valueOf(nm.substring(index), radix);                 result = negative ? new Integer(-result.intValue()) : result;             } catch (NumberFormatException e) {                 String constant = negative ? new String(\"-\" + nm.substring(index))                                            : nm.substring(index);                 result = Integer.valueOf(constant, radix);             }      **EDIT2** : I was going through a tutorial where they count it as an advantage of writing logic of exceptional cases inside the exceptions: > Exceptions enable you to write the main flow of your code and to deal with > the exceptional cases elsewhere. **Any specific guidelines when to write logic in catch block and when not to?**"}
{"_id": "82682", "title": "What to put in a try/catch?", "text": "**Note on the question: this is not a duplicate,Efficient try / catch block usage? was asked after this one. The other question is the duplicate.** I was wondering what was the best way to use try/catch. Is it better to limit the content of the try block to the minimum or to put everything in it? Let me explain myself with an example: Code 1:               try {       thisThrowsAnException();     }     catch (Exception e) {       e.printStackTrace();     }     thisDoesnt();      Code 2:               try {       thisThrowsAnException();       thisDoesnt();     }     catch (Exception e) {       e.printStackTrace();     }      Assuming that `thisThrowsAnException()`... well... can throw an exception and `thisDoesnt()`... I'm sure you got it. I know the difference between the two examples: in case the exception is caught, `thisDoesnt()` will be called in the first case, not in the second. As it doesn't matter for me, because the throwing of that exception would mean the application should stop, why would one use a version better than the other?"}
{"_id": "237843", "title": "Is ok to throw exception in normal code path which eliminate a possible programmer error?", "text": "I know that exception should be thrown in exceptional case (e.g. out of memory, programmer error). For these cases, I don't need to worry about performance throwing these exception. But what happen if use exception in normal code path? In my case, use it to stop user code supplied function. So for given code, is `foo` better or `foo2` better? It is very likely that `outputFunc` will return false / throw exception.               // library provided function     void foo(std::function<void(std::function<bool(int)>)>);          // how user suppose to use it     foo([](std::function<bool(int)> outputFunc){         while (/*condition*/)         {             // user have to check the return value and stop work when it return false             if (!outputFunc(/*some value*/)) return;          }     });          // library provided function     void foo2(std::function<void(std::function<void(int)>)>);          // how user suppose to use it     foo2([](std::function<void(int)> outputFunc){         while (/*condition*/)         {            // this will throw exception and handled internally when it should stop            // user does not have to check the return value but they need to write exception-safe code             outputFunc(/*some value*/));         }     });      * * * In my case, the use of exception eliminate a possible programmer error (by not checking return value of `outputFunc`) and make code easier to write (no need to check return value) And the exception is throw/catch internally, no user code required to deal with them (except they need to write exception-safe code in the lambda, but we should always write exception-safe code)"}
{"_id": "132612", "title": "Is rethrowing an exception leaking an abstraction?", "text": "I have an interface method that states in documentation it will throw a specific type of exception. An implementation of that method uses something that throws an exception. The internal exception is caught and the exception declared by the interface contract is thrown. Here's a little code example to better explain. It is written in PHP but is pretty simple to follow.               // in the interface          /**      * @return This method returns a doohickey to use when you need to foo      * @throws DoohickeyDisasterException      */     public function getThatDoohickey();          // in the implementation          public function getThatDoohickey() {              try {             $SomethingInTheClass->doSomethingThatThrowsAnException();         } catch (Exception $Exc) {             throw new DoohickeyDisasterException('Message about doohickey failure');         }              // other code may return the doohickey          }      I'm using this method in an attempt to prevent the abstraction from leaking. My questions are: Would passing the thrown internal exception as the previous exception be leaking the abstraction? If not, would it be suitable to simply reuse the previous exception's message? If it would be leaking the abstraction could you provide some guidance on why you think it does? Just to clarify, my question would involve changing to the following line of code               throw new DoohickeyDisasterException($Exc->getMessage(), null, $Exc);"}
{"_id": "107723", "title": "Arguments for or against using Try/Catch as logical operators", "text": "I just discovered some lovely code in our companies app that uses Try-Catch blocks as logical operators.   Meaning, \"do some code, if that throws this error, do this code, but if that throws this error do this 3rd thing instead\".   It uses \"Finally\" as the \"else\" statement it appears.   I know that this is wrong inherently, but before I go picking a fight I was hoping for some well thought out arguments.   And hey, if you have arguments FOR the use of Try-Catch in this manner, please do tell. For any who are wondering, the language is C# and the code in question is about 30+ lines and is looking for specific exceptions, it is not handling ALL exceptions."}
{"_id": "231300", "title": "Partial recovery from an Exception", "text": "I have seen _Exception Handling_ blocks that they were `throw`ing the recently caught `Exception` in the `catch` block. Something like:               } catch ( Exception $e ) {         // Do some recovery here         callSomeFunction();              throw $e;     }      To me it doesn't make that much sense to `throw` the exact same `Exception` like this, but I'm not sure if I'm right or not. Maybe there are situations that that's the only option? My question is what are the pros and cons of this approach and shouldn't it be totally avoided as much as possible?"}
{"_id": "220848", "title": "Starting point for building an iPhone app", "text": "I have one idea that I want to make an app for iPhone, I have recently bought a mac for the same purpose. I want to make small app and build on it in later versions. I work in in a small company and have 1 year of experience on working of iOS platform . I am a developer and don't have any design background so I want to know - should I take help from some designer? Or learn on my own and start coding for the app? I would like to know before starting out, what things should I consider or give more importance to. In general how should I approach building the app, design first and code later or reverse way."}
{"_id": "30336", "title": "how to evaluate own project", "text": "I am working on a open source project in pure `C`, that I have started some time ago, but only recently found time to add some features. I can clearly some weaknesses of my old design, so I am trying to refactor my old code. I have no idea however, how to evaluate properly my new code. Do you know about any techniques or tools for code evaluation? I am pretty good with object oriented design, but for about three years I had no contact with purely structural one. Therefore I don't have enough experience, to be able to discern between good and bad design choices."}
{"_id": "109857", "title": "Is it worth it for a developer to be a scrum master? Is it an official designation or?", "text": "Is it beneficial for a developer to become a 'scrum master'? Is this an official certification or just someone who specializes? What are the steps towards becoming one?"}
{"_id": "169925", "title": "Are long methods always bad?", "text": "So looking around earlier I noticed some comments about long methods being bad practice. I am not sure I always agree that long methods are bad (and would like opinions from others). For example I have some Django views that do a bit of processing of the objects before sending them to the view, a long method being 350 lines of code. I have my code written so that it deals with the paramaters - sorting / filtering the queryset, then bit by bit does some processing on the objects my query has returned. So the processing is mainly conditional aggregation, that has complex enough rules it can't easily be done in the database, so I have some variables declared outside the main loop then get altered during the loop.               variable_1 = 0     variable_2 = 0     for object in queryset :          if object.condition_condition_a and variable_2 > 0 :          variable 1+= 1          .....          ...              .            more conditions to alter the variables          return queryset, and context       So according to the theory I should factor out all the code into smaller methods, so That I have the view method as being maximum one page long. However having worked on various code bases in the past, I sometimes find it makes the code less readable, when you need to constantly jump from one method to the next figuring out all the parts of it, while keeping the outermost method in your head. I find that having a long method that is well formatted, you can see the logic more easily, as it isn't getting hidden away in inner methods. I could factor out the code into smaller methods, but often there is is an inner loop being used for two or three things, so it would result in more complex code, or methods that don't do one thing but two or three (alternatively I could repeat inner loops for each task, but then there will be a performance hit). So is there a case that long methods are not always bad? Is there always a case for writing methods, when they will only be used in one place? UPDATE: Looks like I asked this question a over a year ago. So I refactored the code after the (mixed) response here, split it into methods. It is a Django app retrieving complex sets of related objects from the database, so the testing argument is out (it would have probably taken most of the year to create relevant objects for the test cases . I have a \"this needs done yesterday\" type work environment before anyone complains). Fixing bugs in that part of the code is marginally easier now, but not massively so. before :               #comment 1      bit of (uncomplicated) code 1a       bit of code 2a          #comment 2      bit of code 2a     bit of code 2b     bit of code 2c          #comment 3     bit of code 3      now:               method_call_1     method_call_2     method_call_3          def method_1          bit of (uncomplicated) code 1a           bit of code 2a          def method_2          bit of code 2a         bit of code 2b         bit of code 2c          def method_3         bit of code 3"}
{"_id": "210125", "title": "collection naming - singular or plural", "text": "This is related to this question but not quite the same. BTW, I'm not a native English speaker. I keep having a hard time choosing a proper name for collections - Lets say that we have a collection of _item_ s and that each _item_ has a _name_. How will we call the collection of names such that the collection's name will be the most understandable under standard naming conventions?               var itemNames = GetItemNames(); // Might be interpreted as a single item with many names     var itemsNames = GetItemsNames(); // No ambiguity but doesn't look like proper English     var itemsName = GetItemsName(); // Also sounds strange, and doesn't seem to fit in e.g. a loop:     foreach( itemName in itemsName){...}      As native English speakers, how would you name your collections, and how would you expect them to be named?"}
{"_id": "234564", "title": "Pair Rotation in a team for effective pair programming", "text": "We follow pair programming in our company and always face the issue of balanced and effective pair rotation within the developers on stories. We follow a simple metrics in which every developer's name is mapped with every other developer and we mark the respective intersection whenever two developers are pairing. This is not working out well, we cannot track how much time a pair has spent pairing and people forget to update the metrics many times. Tracking the pair rotation is helpful because we want the project knowledge to be shared across the team, and not just one pair. So usually what happens is, whoever is pairing keeps pairing till the entire story is completed (given they have better context), and no body else knows about what is being done & if the story or a regression/production bug comes back, the same pair has to pick it up (leaving whatever they are currently doing), which is what creates a bottleneck. Are there any known metrics that can be used for tracking the pair rotations."}
{"_id": "169920", "title": "Is C# development effectively inseparable from the IDE you use?", "text": "I'm a Python programmer learning C# who is trying to stop worrying and just love C# for what it is, rather than constantly comparing it back to Python. I'm caught up on one point: the lack of explicitness about where things are defined, as detailed in this Stack Overflow question. In short: in C#, `using foo` doesn't tell you what names from `foo` are being made available, which is analogous to `from foo import *` in Python -- a form that is discouraged within Python coding culture for being implicit rather than the more explicit approach of `from foo import bar`. I was rather struck by the Stack Overflow answers to this point from C# programmers, which was that in practice this lack of explicitness doesn't really matter because in your IDE (presumably Visual Studio) you can just hover over a name and be told by the system where the name is coming from. E.g.: > Now, in theory I realise this means when you're looking with a text editor, > you can't tell where the types come from in C#... but in practice, I don't > find that to be a problem. How often are you actually looking at code and > can't use Visual Studio? This is revelatory to me. Many Python programmers prefer a text editor approach to coding, using something like Sublime Text 2 or vim, where it's all about the code, plus command line tools and direct access and manipulation of folders and files. The idea of being dependent on an IDE to understand code at such a basic level seems anathema. It seems C# culture is radically different on this point. And I wonder if I just need to accept and embrace that as part of my learning of C#. Which leads me to my question here: is C# development effectively inseparable from the IDE you use?"}
{"_id": "150760", "title": "Single Responsibility Principle - How Can I Avoid Code Fragmentation?", "text": "I'm working on a team where the team leader is a virulent advocate of SOLID development principles. However, he lacks a lot of experience in getting complex software out of the door. We have a situation where he has applied SRP to what was already quite a complex code base, which has now become very highly fragmented and difficult to understand and debug. We now have a problem not only with code fragmentation, but also encapsulation, as methods within a class that may have been private or protected have been judged to represent a 'reason to change' and have been extracted to public or internal classes and interfaces which is not in keeping with the encapsulation goals of the application. We have some class constructors which take over 20 interface parameters, so our IoC registration and resolution is becoming a monster in its own right. I want to know if there is any 'refactor away from SRP' approach we could use to help fix some of these issues. I have read that it doesn't violate SOLID if I create a number of empty coarser-grained classes that 'wrap' a number of closely related classes to provide a single-point of access to the sum of their functionality (i.e. mimicking a less overly SRP'd class implementation). Apart from that, I cannot think of a solution which will allow us to pragmatically continue with our development efforts, while keeping everyone happy. Any suggestions ?"}
{"_id": "154723", "title": "How to determine if class meets single responsibility principle?", "text": "Single Responsibility Principle is based on high cohesion principle. The difference between the two is that highly cohesive classes feature a set of responsibilities that are strongly related, while classes adhering to SRP have just one responsibility. But how do we determine whether particular class features a set of responsibilities and is thus just highly cohesive, or whether it has only one responsibility and is thus adhering to SRP? Namely, isn't it more or less subjective, since some may find class very granular (and as such will consider a class as adhering to SRP), while others may find it not granular enough?"}
{"_id": "232145", "title": "Lots of classes with only one single static method with same name as class - Code smell?", "text": "I'm trying to follow the single responsibility principle (SRP) in my applications. I have lots of CRUD classes I just name xxxxxManager. Following the SRP, I made 4 classes for each one : xxxxxCreator, xxxxxGetter, xxxxxDeleter, xxxxxUpdater They end up having only one static method : xxxxxCreator::create(Model $model), xxxxUpdater::update(Model $model), etc. This is a code smell for me. Am I pushing the SRP too far ?"}
{"_id": "216283", "title": "Parallel.For Inconsistency results", "text": "I am using VB.net to write a parallel based code. I use _Parallel.For_ to generate pairs of 500 objects or in combination C(500,2) such as the following code; but I found that it didn't always generate all combinations which should be 124750 (shown from variable Counter). No other thread was runing when this code was run. I am using a Win-7 32 Bit desktop with Intel Core i5 CPU 650@3.2GHz, 3.33 GHz and RAM 2GB. What's wrong with the code and how to solve this problem? Thank You.                   Dim Counter As Integer = 0         Parallel.For(0, 499, Sub(i)                          For j As Integer = i + 1 To 499                              Counter += 1                              Console.Write(i & \":\" & j)                          Next                      End Sub)         Console.Writeline(\"Iteration number: \" & Counter)"}
{"_id": "228691", "title": "Quoting for a project with closed source", "text": "I sit with a project that I need to quote, and until the job is awarded, I can only use \"View source\" to check, and ask a few questions about the system. That makes quoting outright impossible for me to do. My question is: how do one go about quoting for such a project? What kind of questions should I ask? Do I decline to quote? Due to uncertainty, do I pad my quote?"}
{"_id": "232817", "title": "Should I include myself as an author after modifying 3rd-party code?", "text": "It's common practice to make some tweaks or fixes in 3rd-party code (be it a simple gist or an entire library). But it's also common that many of these code have they own licensing rules and eventually a header on every file with copyright informations. After making those modifications what's the correct thing to do next? Keep the licence info untouchable or try to update it including yourself with something like `@author` or `@revision` tags? Another common problem is changing the 3rd-party namespace/package to fit it to your project conventions. Some license types include these kind of information in their license block, can I change it freely? I know the answer for these questions depends on each license type, so to make my question more specific... Considering general license rules (usually they are different in minor aspects, right?), is ethical(or at least allowed) that I freely **add information** to the license block about my modifications and perhaps also **modify how do I refer** to it in my code (e.g use `YACorp.YALib` as `Utils.YALib`)? Actualy my concerns are more about \"respect to the community\" than the legal aspects, I'm asking more about how much we can \"go wild\" remaining ethical if our project can be considered private or personal."}
{"_id": "232818", "title": "Moving data between databases with XML", "text": "I just read this quote online: > XML is a very useful technology for moving data between different databases > or between databases and other programs. However, it is not itself a > database. Which is quoted from the book 'Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML'. I don't understand what you would bother moving data between databases in an XML format. Databases usually contain a lot of data, so wouldn't it be verbose to transform it into an XML format? Is there no way, to just serialize the database data into something less verbose, somehow, instead of bothering with conversions?"}
{"_id": "224103", "title": "J2EE - Session swap", "text": "Application server - JBoss AS 7.1.1   JDK6   J2EE 1.3 My web application is more than 10 years old and facing this session swap problem in my portal. Noticed that swap happens mostly when many concurrent users accessing the portal and underlying windows server is busy (more than 90% CPU usage) To analyse this issue, I logged customer data (customer id, ip address, jsession id) to a table and found that customer having unique jsession id initially has his data and all of a sudden for the same jsession id and ip address receiving different customer data.               customer1  123.123.12.123   jsessionid123    11:10:02     customer2  123.123.12.123   jsessionid123    11:10:04      ip address (123.123.12.123) having jsession id (jsessionid123) somehow gets customer2 data Any order placed by customer1 in ip - 123.123.12.123 gets created for customer2, I confirmed this by calling customer2 and they confirmed that they didn't place the order. customer1 won't realise he placed order for customer2 - all the data gets changed, like basket items, customer object, products etc. Now I need to find a fix for this, but first I need to know which part of my code is creating this problem. Do I have to use a stress test software? or any better mechanism to find out the problematic code?"}
{"_id": "170689", "title": "How is the Linux repository administrated?", "text": "I am amazed by the Linux project and I would like to learn how they administrate the code, given the huge number of developers. I found the Linux repository on GitHub, but I do not understand how it is administrated. For example the following commit: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/31fd84b95eb211d5db460a1dda85e004800a7b52 Notice the following part: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dayjp.png) So one authored and Torvalds committed. How is this possible. I thought that it was only possible to have either pull or pushing rights, but here it seems like there is an approval stage. I should mention that the specific problem I am trying to solve is that we use pull requests to our repo. The problem we are facing is that while a pull request is waiting to get merged, it is often broken by a commit. This leads to a seemingly never ending work to adapt the fork in order to make the pull request merge smoothly. Do Linux solve this by giving lots of people pushing rights (at least there are currently just three pull requests but hundreds of commits per day)."}
{"_id": "39509", "title": "How should I evaluate a training class?", "text": "My company is giving us the possibility to sign up for some offsite training classes on Design Patterns. Browsing through the brochures, I'm _already_ feeling bored (and somewhat repelled by the marketingy buzzwordy silverbulletty enterprisey managerese) - I already know the basics about design patterns (read the GoF book years ago, used a few as needed, read articles on the net, etc.). I'm worried that the training is going be mostly watching a powerpoint with stuff I mostly know, and arguing details over a UML diagram. My programming experience is mostly in games, simple web development and mathy stuff, in Python, C++ or simple scripting languages; I never worked on anything \"enterprisey\", or in Java or .Net (for some reason, Java and .Net seems especially associated with Design Patterns), nor am I planning to in the forseeable future. I'm much more interesting in things like functional programming and Haskell and making micro domain-specific-languages to solve specific problems - I'm closer to the \"hacker\" culture (I'm mostly self- taught) than to the \"enterprise\" culture. But maybe this is just me having too high of an opinion of myself and passing a good opportunity to learn useful stuff. Or being a snob and refusing to learn about different cultures. So, how could I tell if a Design Patterns class is going to be useful? How you found such trainings useful? How you ever felt apprehensive about them?"}
{"_id": "111955", "title": "How to draw a (UML) class diagram when the classes are dispersed across a distributed system?", "text": "Basically how to denote that class foo is from a different server than class bar ?"}
{"_id": "186427", "title": "Is it wise to include something like OpenSSL or GnuTLS with a project in a repository?", "text": "I am currently working on a project that makes use of the OpenSSL library for secure communications. Since this library is a requirement for building the project, I am considering including it in the project's repository. Here are the pros and cons as I see them: **Pros:**   * Self-contained build - with one exception, everything needed for building the project is contained in the repository. It would be nice if the user didn't need to go through the trouble of installing and configuring the development headers / libraries for OpenSSL. **Cons:**   * Security concerns - it goes without saying that the only version of OpenSSL that anyone should be using is always the latest. As soon as a new release is issued, I will need to update the version of OpenSSL in the project's repository. So the question boils down to this: > Is it wise to include a security library with the project that we need to > _always_ ensure gets updated whenever a new release is issued?"}
{"_id": "115277", "title": "Is it a good idea to use something like the Twitter Bootstrap in production?", "text": "I'm interning at a new startup, and I've been tasked with designing the front- end of the site. I really, really want to use the new Twitter Bootstrap (http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/). It's all CSS, looks amazing, works great, and lets me get to designing and not worrying about the little stuff. However, is this a good idea if it's a demo of a webapp that we're building that could become production code? Will it look silly and amateur if I use this instead of coding it all myself? Is the bootstrap too Twitter-ish for a real company's brand?"}
{"_id": "115271", "title": "Communication Between Different Technologies in a Distributed Application", "text": "I had to a incorporate several legacy applications and services in a network- distributed application. The existing services and applications are written using different languages and technologies, including: java, C#.Net and C++; all running on MS Windows machines. Now I'm wondering about the communication mechanism between them. What is the simple and standard way? Thanks! PS. communications include simple message sending and remote method invocations."}
{"_id": "225316", "title": "What's the best way to retrieve a value and a status", "text": "Given that all else is equal, and there are no coding standards defining the best approach, what would be the recommended way in C++ to check that a value exists and return it if it does? For example, something like one of these declarations:               bool getMethod(double& ret);          double getMethod(bool& ok);          void getMethod(bool& ok, double& ret);          pair<bool, double> getMethod();          bool checkMethod(); // eg if (checkMethod())     double getMethod(); //        result = getMethod();      or something else, like return a struct The value may exist about 50% of the time. The existing code already does a lot of the last method, i.e. using a checkMethod() but I was wondering if that's really an efficient way to do it - via two calls (half the time)."}
{"_id": "225311", "title": "Question on Graph", "text": "I am trying to implement a graph data structure in C#. I have the following interfaces:               public interface IVertex<TValue>     {         TValue  Value { get;}                 VertexList<IVertex<TValue>> Neighbours { get;}         int InDegree { get;}         int OutDegree { get;}     }          public interface IWeightedEdge<TValue, TWeight>      {         IVertex<TValue> source { get;}         IVertex<TValue> destination { get;}         TWeight weight { get; }     }      public interface IWeightedGraph<TVertexValue, TEdgeWeight>      {         bool AddVertex(TVertexValue value);         TVertexValue RemoveVertex(IVertex<TVertexValue> vertex);         bool RemoveVertex(TVertexValue value);         bool AddEdge(IVertex<TVertexValue> source, IVertex<TVertexValue> dest, TEdgeWeight weight);         bool RemoveEdge(IVertex<TVertexValue> source, IVertex<TVertexValue> dest);     }      From this, you can see that it is the responsibility of the Vertex class (the class implementing IVertex interface) to tell about its adjacent vertices (Neighbors function), its in degree, out degree etc. While I was designing this, I was told by a friend of mine that the Graph class (the one that will implement IGraph) should take the responsibility of operations like retrieving adjacent vertices ,finding the in/out degrees etc. His point is that the above operations are valid only when a vertex becomes part of a Graph. But my point is that a Vertex is standalone; it can exist even outside of a graph. So, the vertex should provide the operations on it. Which one you think is correct? Please share your thoughts on this."}
{"_id": "91217", "title": "Whether to open-source gigantic idea", "text": "So, I have this idea for a huge game that would take years to develop if I did it on my own (with help from friends) I've learned a lot about game programming, but nowhere near enough to start coding the thing itself. It would still take at least two years if I started a business and hired programmers How much will open-sourcing it speed up the project? Should I open-source it, given that I have no code to show for my learning in this kind of programming? Can an open-source project be directed to keep the original idea alive, or will it often veer away from the creator's original idea? Can an open-source project receive any kind of reliable funding (can we have investors, for example)? Should I make a business and hire programmers to get it moving, and then open- source it? If that ends up being the case, I'd like to send the full specification to anyone who wants to see it."}
{"_id": "180146", "title": "How do we differentiate between a computer and a calculator?", "text": "In this SO Question there is a comment by `starblue` that > A computer without loops is a calculator Is this true?   Is that the only difference?   Is there a set of criteria to differentiate or has the line become very blurred?"}
{"_id": "35214", "title": "I can get visual studio for free through school, should I?", "text": "I am currently using dev++, I am a complete beginner, (Freshman CS major) learning C++. I can get one of the newest versions of visual studio (2008 or 2009 i think) for free through my school. Not sure if it is worth the trouble of getting. thoughts?"}
{"_id": "101703", "title": "What are the boundaries of the product owner in scrum?", "text": "In another question, I asked about why I feel scrum turns active developers into passive developers, and it seems that the overall problem is not scrumy (related to scrum), and rather it's related to the bad implementation of scrum. So, here I have some questions about the scope of the responsibilities of PO (product owner) and the limitations he/she shouldn't pass.   1. Should PO interfere the UI design, when there are designers at work in scrum team? (an example of this which has happened to us, is to replace checkboxes with a drop down list with two items, namely, yes and no; or to make some boxes larger, or to left-align some content instead of centering them on the page, or stuff like that). If yeah, to what extent? Colors? Layout?   2. Should PO interfere in Design and architecture of coding? This hasn't happened to us yet, but I'm really curious about the boundaries. For example does PO has the right to change the platform (moving from ASP.NET MVC to PHP, or something like that), or choosing the count of servers (tier architecture), etc.   3. Should PO interfere in validation mechanisms? For example, this field should be required, or we don't need to get this piece of information from user. Sometimes, analyzers and designers confirm that something can be handled behind the scene, like extracting the user profile info from another source, instead of asking for it in UI.    4. How granular could/should PO get into the analysis and design? For example, a user story might be: \"As a customer, I'd like to be able to buy new domains online\". However, scrum team can implement this user story in a wizard of five steps, or in one single page. To which level PO should monitor, or govern, or supervise the technical analysis, design, and implementation? I asked these questions to judge whether our implementation is right or wrong?"}
{"_id": "136328", "title": "Windows OS design decisions", "text": "I've seen an interview with Richard Stallman some time ago, and he was asked a question about security and Windows OS which he answered saying that there are some relatively bad design decisions that were made when creating the Windows OS. These design decisions (according to R. Stallman) were known at the time for creating security vulnerabilities later on. Can anyone explain what he's talking about ? The video with the interview can be found here http://rt.com/news/richard- stallman-free-software-875/ \\- it starts at 8:30."}
{"_id": "188771", "title": "Building a string translation database for multiple (in-house) projects", "text": "At our company we have an existing translation ms-sql table wich stores strings like this:               Id |     Key     | Language | Value       1 | hello-world |  nl-BE   | Hallo Wereld      2 | hello-world |  en-GB   | Hello World      There are 3 languages in the system and I expect this to grow to a maximum of about 10 in the future This table is read by multiple very different projects (about 60 projects, mostly websites/web applications and some web services), that each open a database connection to the translation database, cache the translations Feedback from the front-end devs is that our UIto input or modify translations 's biggest downside is that they cannot know what project uses what strings. They sometimes modify strings not knowing they are breaking 7 projects with it. Now they just have to type something like `this.Translate(\"Hello World\")` and the system takes care of the rest. I could ofcourse force them to something like `this.Translate(\"Hello World\",\"AwesomeApplication1\")` but that seems like it's going to require quite a lot of refactoring across the many many projects. **How would you go about providing this solution? How would you, as a dev, provide the \"project name\" to the translation? How would you store this in the database?** Important note: the translation re-use is the whole point of the centralised database, so scoping translations to one project by going               1|hello-world|nl-BE|Hallo Wereld|MyAwesomeApplicatoin1     5|hello-world|nl-BE|Hallo Wereld!|MyAwesomeApplicatoin2      is not really a wanted option. I'd prefer something like :               1|hello-world|nl-BE|Hallo Wereld|MyAwesomeApplicatoin1,MyAwesomeApplicatoin2      or a foreign key equivalent of just putting the names in the table. **UPDATE** Based on the advise to normalize the database I have come up with something like this so far: ![](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UQhQ3.png)               //this allows me to distinquish if translations where added by developer or by translator      **UPDATE2:** added edmx instead of text. If people are interested I could github the WCF project i'm wrapping this concept in so other people can test and use it."}
{"_id": "181817", "title": "Should your best programmers have to check everyone else's code into source control?", "text": "One of the differences between svn and git is the ability to control access to the repository. It's hard to compare the two because there is a difference of perspective about who should be allowed to commit changes at all! This question is about using git as a centralized repository for a team at a company somewhere. Assume that the members of the team are of varying skill levels, much the way they are at most companies. Git seems to assume that your only your best (most productive, most experienced) programmers are trusted to check in code. If that's the case, you are taking their time away from actually writing code to review other people's code in order to check it in. Does this pay off? I really want to focus this question on what is the best use of your best programmer's time, not on best version-control practices in general. A corollary might be, do good programmers quit if a significant portion of their job is to review other people's code? I think both questions boil down to: is the review worth the productivity hit?"}
{"_id": "230934", "title": "Securely Validating Software License", "text": "I'm currently developing a product (in C#) that will be available for downloading for free but requires a monthly subscription in order to be used after a specific trial period. What i am intending to do is to let the user register an account on our website and charge it with credits in order to use the application. However a couple of problems faced me as a new comer to the licensing field   * How is this logic usually implemented.   * How to connect my C# application to my website's database and grab the data required (is trial expired, if yes does the user have enough credits).   * How to make sure that i am at least 80% (or so) secure from attackers who might start some MATM attack in order to alter the received packets and gain unauthorized access to my program.   * As i already heard. Using SSL may grantee me that my application is connecting to the right address, But how again to make such connection with my basic website. (Wordpress website or VBulletin). Excuse me if my question seems a little broad but i have crawled the internet searching for a specific answer for my needs and found nothing. So i really need an efficient answer (or maybe a conversation) about this :D. Oh and a small declaimer: by saying grabbing `DATA` and so on i am not asking for a way to grab them i am just giving an example of what i want to achieve. For the sake of narrowing up the things i came up with an idea that i want to know more about.   * Can i use `Wordpress` or VBulletin and create and RSA encrypted login to them and let the response be encrypted too ?"}
{"_id": "206815", "title": "Is there an existing market for software libraries?", "text": "Kinda have the impression library development is either done by big companies like Microsoft that give them away for free, or the open-source community. Is there an existing market to _sell_ software libraries?"}
{"_id": "122485", "title": "Elegant ways to handle if(if else) else", "text": "This is a minor niggle, but every time I have to code something like this, the repetition bothers me, but I'm not sure that any of the solutions aren't worse.               if(FileExists(file))     {         contents = OpenFile(file); // <-- prevents inclusion in if         if(SomeTest(contents))         {             DoSomething(contents);         }         else         {             DefaultAction();         }     }     else     {         DefaultAction();     }        * Is there a name for this kind of logic?   * Am I a tad too OCD? I'm open to evil code suggestions, if only for curiosity's sake..."}
{"_id": "230451", "title": "Fail-fast design", "text": "I recently tend to design my methods in the following way:               if ( 'A' === $a ) {         if ( 'B' === $b ) {             return 'some thing';         } else if ( 'C' === $c ) {             return 'some other things';         }     }          /* If you made it up to here, then something has gone wrong */     return false;      So basically the idea is to check if the first condition is correct, if it is then continue until you reach the first `return` statement to return the expected result, if not, move on to the next condition and so on. The key is that all the method's functionality has already shrunken down and wrapped up in a conditional statement piece by piece, so you should meet at least one condition to take a useful action or if you reach the very last line, then it will `return false`, that means none of the expected conditions were met, that in my design it means the input wasn't in a proper or expected format, data-type, range, etc. so the method were not able to continue processing that. I can achieve the same goal in a couple of different ways, but this one seems to be cleaner as I generally need to write code only for _positive_ conditions (I actually don't know how should I call it) -- unless I need to take a specific action if a certain condition haven't met. And in the end I will get `false` if the method wasn't able to accomplish its job -- with real conditions in place most of the time it's almost like a jump to the end of method when you can't pass through an `if` statement. It's actually designed in a way that you will either pass this `if` and will heading to the either next `if` or a `return` statement or you are very unlikely to match any other `if` statements and will jump directly to the last `return false` statement. Now, my questions are:   1. Is it a (true) fail-fast design, which in this case is only looking for the proper condition to continue and is willing to fail as soon as one fails. Is that correct or am I mixing up things here? If not, is there any specific term for that?   2. Also as I recently generalized this approach for all the new methods I create, I wish to know if there is any drawback or design flaw here that might bite me back later."}
{"_id": "220461", "title": "Keep indentation level low", "text": "I hear a lot that you should not write functions larger than one screen size, that you should extract things into functions if you call things very often and all these coding guidelines. One of them is also keep your indentation level low. Some people told me even I should max indent 4 times. But in every day programming it keeps happening that I need O(n^2) or O(n^3) loops with some flow control, which creates out of nowhere 7 or 8 layers of indentation... Are there any good ways to avoid that? One problem is, if you try to avoid complex if/else statement nesting I tend to do this in one row which can look very terrible and be unreadable and not very easy to maintain."}
{"_id": "127128", "title": "What is the Best Style for Functions with Multiple Returns and If/Else Statements?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Elegant ways to handle if(if else) else In a function where there are multiple returns, what is the best style to use? This style, where there is no 'else' because it is frivolous and you think it is more concise?               f() {         if (condition) {             return value;         }              return other_value;     }      Or this, if you think that 'else' provides nice syntax sugar to make it more readable?               f() {         if (condition) {             return value;         } else {             return other_value;         }     }      Feel free to share whatever other reasons you may have for preferring one over another. EDIT: The above samples are hypothetical, if they were this simple, as Yannis Rizos noted below, the ternary operator ( condition ? value : other ) would be acceptable. However I'm also interested in cases like this:               f() {         if (condition1) {             return value;         } else if (condition2) {             return value2;         }         ...         else {             return other_value;         }     }"}
{"_id": "177488", "title": "Licensing approach for .NET library that might be used desktop / web-service / cloud environment", "text": "I am looking for advice how to _architect_ licensing for a .NET library. I am not asking for tool/service recommendations or something like that. My library can be used in a regular desktop application, in an ASP.NET solution. And now Azure services come into play. Currently, for desktop applications the library checks if the application and company names from the version history are the same as the names the key was generated for. In other cases the library compares hardware IDs. Now there are problems:   * an Azure-enabled web-application can be run on different hardware each time (AFAIK)   * sometimes the hardware ID for the same hardware changes unexpectedly   * checking the hardware ID or version info might not be allowed in some circumstances (shared hosting for example) So, I am thinking about what approach I can take to architect a licensing scheme that:   * is friendly to customers (I do not try to fight piracy, but I do want to warn the customer if he uses the library on more servers than he paid for)   * can be used when there is no internet connection   * can be used on shared hosting What would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "218092", "title": "Not assigning Bugs to a specific user", "text": "My question: Is there a benefit to NOT assigning a Bug to a particular developer? Leaving it to the team as-a-whole? Our department has decided to be more Agile by not assigning Bugs/Defects to individuals. Using Team Foundation Server 2012, we'll place all Bugs in a development team's \"Area\" but leave the \"Assigned To\" field blank. The idea is that the team will create a Task work item which will be assigned to an individual and the Task will link to the Bug. The Team as a whole will therefore take responsibility for the Bug, not an individual, aligning to Scrum - apparently. I see the down side. The reporting tools built into TFS become less useful when you cannot sort by assigned vs unassigned, let alone sorting by which user Bugs are assigned. Is there a benefit I'm not seeing? Besides encouraging teamwork by putting the responsibility on the team-as-a-whole instead of an individual?"}
{"_id": "218093", "title": "Confusion about inheritance", "text": "I know I might get downvoted for this, but I'm really curious. I was taught that inheritance is a very powerful polymorphism tool, but I can't seem to use it well in real cases. So far, I can only use inheritance when the base class is an abstract class. Examples :   1. If we're talking about `Product` and `Inventory`, I quickly assumed that a `Product` **is an** `Inventory` because a `Product` must be inventorized as well. But a problem occured when user wanted to sell their `Inventory` item. It just doesn't seem to be right to change an `Inventory` object to it's subtype (`Product`), it's almost like trying to convert a parent to it's child.   2. Another case is `Customer` and `Member`. It is logical (at least for me) to think that a `Member` **is a** `Customer` with some more privileges. Same problem occurred when user wanted to upgrade an existing `Customer` to become a `Member`.   3. A very trivial case is the `Employee` case. Where `Manager`, `Clerk`, etc can be derived from `Employee`. Still, the same upgrading issue. I tried to use composition instead for some cases, but I really wanted to know if I'm missing something for inheritance solution here. My composition solution for those cases :   1. Create a reference of `Inventory` inside a `Product`. Here I'm making an assumption about that `Product` and `Inventory` is talking in a different context. While `Product` is in the context of sales (price, volume, discount, etc), `Inventory` is in the context of physical management (stock, movement, etc).   2. Make a reference of `Membership` instead inside `Customer` class instead of previous inheritance solution. Therefor upgrading a `Customer` is only about instantiating the `Customer`'s `Membership` property.   3. This example is keep being taught in basic programming classes, but I think it's more proper to have those `Manager`, `Clerk`, etc derived from an abstract `Role` class and make it a property in `Employee`. I found it difficult to find an example of a concrete class deriving from another concrete class. Is there any inheritance solution in which I can solve those cases? Being new in this OOP thing, I really really need a guidance. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "218096", "title": "Writing generic code when your target is a C compiler", "text": "I need to write some algorithms for a PIC micro controller. AFAIK, the official tools support either assembler or a subset of C. My goal is to write the algorithms in a generic and reusable way without losing any runtime or memory performance. And if possible, I would like to do this without increasing the development time much and compromising the readability and maintainability much either. What I mean by generic and reusable is that I don't want to commit to types, array sizes, number of bits in a bit field etc. All these specifications, IMHO, point to C++ templates, but there's no compiler for it for my target. C macro metaprogramming is another option, but, again my opinion, that greatly reduces readability and increases development time. I believe what I'm looking for is a decent C++ to C translator, but I'd like to hear anything else that satisfies the above requirements. Maybe a translator from another high-level language to C that produces very efficient code, maybe something else. Please note that I have nothing against C, I just wish templates were available in it."}
{"_id": "218098", "title": "OOP PHP make separate classes or one", "text": "I'm studying OOP PHP and working on a small personal project but I have hard time grasping some concepts. Let's say I have a list of items, each item belongs to subcategory, and each subcategory belongs to category. So should I make separate classes for category (with methods to list all categories, add new category, delete category), class for subcategories and class for items? Or should I make creating, listing and deleting categories as methods for item class? Both category and subcategory are very simple and basically consist of ID, Name and parentID (for subcategory)."}
{"_id": "128859", "title": "Never written much unit tests, how can I practice more of it?", "text": "I have an interview coming up soon next week and there's a few things on their list of responsibilties for this software development job (the job position title is vague, it says java developer) that I am worried about:   * Unit test features   * Debug new features   * Provide recommendation on test case design (what is this?) I am worried because in my past software projects, I have not bothered writing unit tests. I know how to use JUnit to write tests in Eclipse and the process but it's just that I have not much experience writing tests. For example, I rely on data from the web, which varies a lot from each other, and process this data. How can I write test cases for every single type of data? Also, if the data is from a local database, how would I write a test case that checks that data from tables are being read properly? I've used the debug feature in Eclipse whenever I could, but sometimes, when I am accessing a library which doesn't come ith source code for (e.g. commercial 3rd party Jars), the step into feature would stop. So for most cases, I just System.out.println to discover where the bug is happening. Is there a better method? How can I practice in the short period of time to be somewhat competent in writing unit test?"}
{"_id": "128854", "title": "Is it common to have stored procedures disabled on MySQL managed hosting plans?", "text": "I'm building an app that I think would benefit from the use of MySQL stored procedures. I know stored procedures have a bad reputation, but I think they suit my application well. Using stored procedures would reduce the number of queries per request significantly (mostly inserts), as well as allow me to leverage the procedures across multiple implementations of this software. I think the software will benefit. My concern however, is that pushing functionality into stored procedures may make it harder for users to deploy the software on shared hosting services. Is it common practice to expect users to have stored procedure capability (i.e. allow scripts to create and run stored procedures)? **Edit:** This application is intended for my end user to deploy on her own."}
{"_id": "128856", "title": "JSP, EL, JSTL: learning from a web designer perpective", "text": "I have two books geared toward learning JSP. From what I've read, one motivating feature/benefit is that it is easier for web designers (they apparently don't, as a rule, know Java) to work with dynamic pages via EL/JSTL. From what I've seen so far, learning EL/JSTL requires a basic understanding of Java. I have yet to see an example that doesn't have a Java class to reference. Since that is what I've seen, I wonder if someone can tell me that this is true or not. To make the question clear: Do web designers have to get a grasp, on a very basic level, of how a Java class works (e.g. fields, setters, getters, args, constructors...)? This question is really meant to help me decide whether or not to ask another question; it is a qualifier."}
{"_id": "128851", "title": "Empirical Evidence of Popularity of Git and Mercurial", "text": "It's 2012! Mercurial and Git are both still strong. I understand the trade-offs of both. I also understand everyone has some sort of preference for one or the other. That's fine. I'm looking for some information on level of usage of both. For example, on stackoverflow.com, searching for Git gets you 12000 hits, Mercurial gets you 3000. Google Trends says it's 1.9:1.0 for Git. What other empirical information is available to estimate the relative usage of both tools?"}
{"_id": "145811", "title": "How the Erlang get soft-realtime with GC?", "text": "Generally GC is not a good choice to get a soft real-time attribute. But Erlang is GC based language can be soft real-time. Does it mean Erlang have almost no GC latency? How does it work?"}
{"_id": "187052", "title": "Style for creating IEnumerable unions", "text": "There isn't any cool LINQ sugar for creating unions. The `Enumerable.Union()` method is usually called like this:               var bigList = list1.Union(list2);      The alternative is to call `Enumerable.Union()` which can be more readable:               var bigList = Enumerable.Union(list1, list2);      However neither of these methods are very stylish (more importantly, readable) when scaling out The following is probably the best method:               var reallyBigList = list1.Union(list2).Union(list3);      Which can result in some messy method chaining. Alternatives need incidental variables:               var list1and2 = list1.Union(list2);     var reallyBigList = list1and2.Union(list3);      or               var list1and2 = Enumerable.Union(list1, list2);     var reallyBigList = Enumerable.Union(list1and2, list2);      Is there a clean way of setting up these more complex unions? Would an extension like `Enumerable.Union(params IEnumerable<T> collections)` (used like `var reallyBigList = Enumerable.Union(list1, list2, list3)`) be better?"}
{"_id": "92745", "title": "Separating the database, API, and the interface", "text": "Most of my projects start small. Many times I start with a web page (1 file) that has the code to... select stuff from the database => display it to the user and offer editing => receive the edits (sometimes complex enough that it requires parsing) => update the database all of this in 1 file, of course. As the project grows it always becomes annoying to have so much code in one pile, 50 `if` statements. **Question** : What is a good, proven & intuitive data separation? I guess i'm looking for a diagram that explains which code goes in what file. I would like to keep this language independent, but in case it matters I'm using PHP and MySQL."}
{"_id": "92747", "title": "What are some math concepts to review for an interview?", "text": "What are some good math concepts to review for a software engineering interview? The position is not expected to be particularly math heavy, i.e graphics programming, but I imagine refreshing on some math concepts would help going into an interview for a high caliber company. The more specific the better. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "73444", "title": "Can I redistribute simplified BSD code?", "text": "Here is a plugin I wish to redistribute: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/TextAreaResizer I've written a Jquery plugin that needs the text resizer as a prerequisite. The license type says:               License type: Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License      I did a bit of googling and it said you have to retain all license info, but this plugin doesn't come with any! Can I package a modified version of this (I changed one number in the source) and distribute it with my plugin? Thanks for any insight"}
{"_id": "92740", "title": "How should I plan out my code base?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that's about to reach over 5,000 lines of code, but I never really completely thought out the design. What methods should I use to structure and organize my code? Paper and pen? UML diagrams? Something else?"}
{"_id": "107280", "title": "Reference website for CSS 3 properties (like box-reflect)", "text": "Today, I started reading the book _CSS Mastery 2nd edition_. It is really a good book for anyone who is interested in learning some techniques. On page 151, I discovered the `box-reflect` property from CSS3. I tried to find out more information about which browser suports it and the syntax of the property, but I only found a site that didn't explain much. Can anyone please provide me with a link to a website that is up to date regarding the CSS3 elements? The site should also contain information about browser-support for the different elements. I'm primarily interested in the `box-reflect` property and to update my knowledge of CSS3 properties."}
{"_id": "73449", "title": "Functional programming language for web development", "text": "I want to choose to learn a functional programming language, it should fulfill the criteria:   1. Open source, static typed & fully object-oriented too.   2. Must has web framework because it's for web development.   3. I want to avoid oracle jvm altogether, therefore not scala, clojure.   4. Should be rather popular, i.e. has real-world applications in industry. Please recommend which good language I can use? thanks."}
{"_id": "137165", "title": "Is it possible to combine programming languages?", "text": "I've been programming for a while, I've written some rudimentary programs, and I want to keep learning. I've reached that point where you just don't know what to learn next, and I'd like to ask a question for my own curiosity. The question, in a nutshell, is if you can combine multiple programming languages into 1 result? For example, can this code be possible?               <html>     cout << \"Hello world!\";     </html>      or               import java.util.Scanner;     cout << \"Insert a number from 1 to 10\";     Scanner n = new Scanner(System.in);     System.out.println(\"The value you entered was\" +n.newLine());      This feels like a silly question but I can't possible know if it's possible or not, so that's why I'm asking it. In this question I notice he is using Python code in html code, if my above example is not possible, what did he do?"}
{"_id": "201896", "title": "What is \"short-circuiting\" in C?", "text": "I have heard of the term \"short-circuiting\" being used in C. What does this mean and in what scenario would it be used?"}
{"_id": "205396", "title": "How to remove data redundancy in a table?", "text": "F1  F2  F3  C1  C2  C3     ------------------------------------------------     A   B   C   1            D   E   F   2            A   B   C       3        D   E   F       4        A   B   C           5     D   E   F           6      i have a table like this. i need my table to be free from Data redundancy like this               F1  F2  F3  C1  C2  C3     -----------------------     A   B   C   1   3   5     D   E   F   2   4   6      i am unable to figure out the optimized logic. can someone help me out.?"}
{"_id": "205394", "title": "data stored in dbase (application result dd.mm.yyyy)", "text": "I have a .dbf file (dbase) with data of type \"date\" to read directly via php. I have the application result (format: dd.mm.yyyy) and the stored hex code. I can't interpret the hex data to get the same results or similar results to the application. Which alogrithm is used to get this results? Examples:               app.result=database.hex;     01.01.1000=17 3C 68;     02.01.1000=17 3C 69;     01.02.1000=17 3D 08;     01.01.2000=2E 7C 50;     01.01.1903=2C 58 6F;      Can anybody help me?"}
{"_id": "205391", "title": "License that grants the initial author all rights of derived/modified work?", "text": "_Please note that I do not want to argue about the moral aspect of this question. I know that there are probably many different concerns._ I have been researching for a special license that could be used in a following scenario, but with no success: Let's assume I have a software and want to release its source code, so that others can use it too. Since I don't want others to make changes and keep them closed I could the GPL. But here's the thing: Even if I profit from changes that other people do. I can relicense only my code because I'm not holding the copyrigth any code that not made by me. But I would like to. I want to know if there is a ready-to-use license that will grant me (the initial author) the rigth to relicense any changes or code that was added by others. Or in even shorter terms: A GPL that does not count for me. If you are interessted why I need this: I don't know if I will ever use my software for a commercial product. Probably not, but if I just use the GPL, I migth end up in a situation where I can't remove any other code since there are to many committers."}
{"_id": "44", "title": "Are certifications worth it?", "text": "I am finishing my college degree in programming soon and I'm exploring the next steps to take to further my career. One option I've been considering is getting a certification or a series of certifications in the area of development I want to work in. Are these certifications worth the time and money? Do employers place a lot of value in them?"}
{"_id": "56742", "title": "Are certification courses worth it?", "text": "I'm planning on getting certification in Database Development for SQL Server (MSTC - 70-433). I'm a junior level report writer at a new job and the company is offering to pay the majority, if not all, of training course fees. The course is five days. I noticed that MS has a self-paced training kit (book) that I could use. I'm wondering if this would be a better option because it will allow me to go as quick as possible. I've also heard about video training sessions (Lynda.com) but they seem to go at slow pace. My questions are:   1. What should I expect at a certification course? Is it hands-on training? Small classes with personal feedback or not?   2. Would I be better off learning at my own pace using the training kit? (I'd rather this not turn into a certifications are pointless discussion..)"}
{"_id": "184051", "title": "Would a programming certificate teach me anything?", "text": "I'm 16-years old, and due to being placed in accelerated programs during my whole academic career, I just finished high school over the holiday season. For the past year or so I've been teaching myself web development (front-end, more specifically), and want to go into a career in the field. I have a front- end internship all lined up for the summer (some places don't offer them year- round, I guess), but I want to continue learning between these two periods. More specifically, I want to learn some server-side development so I can understand the interconnection between the front-end and back-end better. My question is, would taking on a programming certification program at my local community college teach me anything, or is the information too outdated to be relevant whatsoever? PHP is the server-side language covered in the certificate (it also covers JS and CSS). I feel like in self-teaching myself I may have skipped over some fundamentals of JavaScript, and I'd really like to have a solid understanding of the language from both a syntax and philosophical perspective (i.e. understanding advantages, distadvantages, etc). Edit: I've been building a portfolio, and am considering skipping going for a degree altogether. I just want to do this for self-improvement."}
{"_id": "125222", "title": "Programming certificates", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are certifications worth it? I'd be glad to hear your opinions on which programming certificates are the most widely recongnized in the industry and how useful are they actually. I've googled a lot this question but I've never asked here and I'd like to gather as many opinions as possible before applying for any. I'm interested mainly in developing business application. I have knowledge in Java, SQL, PHP, some C#. Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "107828", "title": "What are other certifications beside cisco and Microsoft , which put some weight in resume", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are certifications worth it? I want to know which are those certifications which can help in increasing job chnaces more. Although experience is more important than certifications but if there is tie on experience then certifications can matter"}
{"_id": "39032", "title": "Do Microsoft Certifications matter?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are certifications worth it? I'm curious what experience others have had, both from the perspective of an employer and an employee on Microsoft Certifications. I'm kind of sitting on the fence myself on this issue. I tend to have a cynical view of folks with massive amounts of letters following their name, and sometimes think that these certificates are so specialized that they prove a candidate knows \"almost everything about almost nothing\". Deeply specialized knowledge isn't always needed in the real world, especially if it means total ignorance of related subjects. Nobody needs to here \"That's not my specialty - we need to hire another guy on the team\" very often. On the other hand, everybody knows how easy it is to BS through an interview, and nobody wants the experience of hiring an employee and finding out two weeks later that they don't really have a good grasp on what you need them to do."}
{"_id": "178552", "title": "Java Certifications process: Good or Bad idea", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are certifications worth it? I am looking to get into more Java Development after being thrown on a project that required Java development for a month and successfully knocking it out. I still feel as though I could use a little bit more refinement with Java and I thought certifications might be the way to go. I would like to be certified in JPA, Java Web services, and Java Front end development (probably JSF or Spring MVC or something like that). I would like to be an architect at some point as well. I have a couple of questions about what is the best way to go about getting certified. My first question is regarding the Java Certification process itself: 1) Is there a baseline certification that I would need to get before I go out and get certified in JPA , Web Services, Front End development, and Architect certification? 2) Do you think that certification is even a good idea? Do you know of employers that would give someone a leg up if say, he has only worked on one or two Java EE projects but has a certification or two? 3) Is this a good step in terms of career development? Is focusing just on development limiting my self to the basement of some development firms? How can I make myself more valuable as a business asset? Any other thoughts you guys have on certifications and their business worth?"}
{"_id": "204999", "title": "How valuable are master level language certifications like C++ grandmaster?", "text": "My understanding of standard programming/computer certifications is that they show you have some core competency about a specific language or technology. There seems to be a little room for variation here, but for the most part I don't feel like I don't see very many \"expert\" level certifications. How valuable are master level language certifications such as the recent C++ Grandmaster? Do you think they would have a big impact on getting a good job? (I understand that C++ grandmaster is a really extreme, maybe unrealistic, example.) If so, what valuable \"master\" or \"expert\" level certifications exist for specific programming languages? Are certifications more valuable for showing core competency or specific specialty knowledge? I am not very knowledgable about this subject so let me know if I made bad assumptions."}
{"_id": "35521", "title": "Is an SEI certificate worth anything?", "text": "I'm talking about SEI Software Architecture Professional Certificate. I've been web developing for 3 years and I'd like to move into Software Architecture. My work will probably pay the fees for this program if I ask nicely enough. But does the SEI have the reputation to make this \"certificate\" worth having? More importantly, is the training any good? Has anyone done this?"}
{"_id": "179004", "title": "What are the certifications to be need for the Java Architect?", "text": "I'm the senior software developer working in a private company. I want to became the Software Architect in the Java side. Could you please tell me the certifications releated to my scenario?"}
{"_id": "99922", "title": "Should I focus on getting certified?", "text": "I am a graduate in computing and I am on the job hunt at the moment. So I now have an MSc and a Bsc qualification in applied computing. People have been saying get a professional qualification right away while others have said \"not now\". I am really unsure what to think of them at the moment, someone said to me they are bad as it makes you look like you are not open to developing in other environments. For example, if I was to get a MS certification employers might think I am useless outside of a Microsoft environment. Are certifications worth the money? Should I really get them now, so soon after I graduate or wait till I have some experience in the working world?"}
{"_id": "36920", "title": "Is the CakePHP certification worth it?", "text": "I have over 5 years of experience in web technologies\u2014primarily the LAMP stack\u2014and over 2 years in the CakePHP framework. I am considering the CakePHP certification, is it worth it?"}
{"_id": "83079", "title": "If you're a .NET developer, does getting the Microsoft Certified Master SQL Server 2008 cert make sense?", "text": "So I've been working at a job for the past year as a .NET developer/DBA. The job is my first DBA job. Traditionally, I'm a .NET developer and have about 5 years experience in it. Does it make sense for me to continue my certs to get the MCM (assuming I'm eligible)? I'm thinking it doesn't because I've been working with SQL Server for 5 years but only as a DBA for a year. Would it help a developer to have that? Or is it useful only in switching? I became interested in SQL Server because I felt that during the recession, people were looking more and more for developers who could add value across the stack. Now, I'm not so sure..."}
{"_id": "126830", "title": "Is cloudera hadoop certification worth the investment", "text": "I am considering investing time to learn Hadoop and it's related technologies. The problem is that my current day job will not be using Hadoop any time soon and even if I learn from books, blogs personal projects I will not have much to backup when I actually need to show that I have Hadoop experience. So while continuing my job I would like to invest into my own training and I am thinking about Hadoop certification from cloudera. What do you think about it? Please answer from your perspective (if you took the certification and training course or are in the market for hiring new hadoop developers and what do you look for) I am sure that there is no shortcut to becoming an expert in Hadoop, but certification and training seems like a jump start."}
{"_id": "73148", "title": "Thoughts on Agile / Scrum Certifications - Worth it?", "text": "For those involved with the Agile community (either as developers or management) you've all probably heard about the Certified ScrumMaster designation as well as Certified Product Owner, and Certified Scrum Developer. You may have also heard about PMI (Project Management Institute) new \"Agile Certification.\" Isn't Agile (as a philosophy) all about opening up to newer and (possibly) more effective methods of developing? Does there need to be a certification to back up the \"skills?\" What is the best reason to get an Agile certification?"}
{"_id": "182433", "title": "Fundamental Difference between fn() and new fn() in javascript", "text": "In what all aspects, calling a function with and without new keyword differ in javascript? I mean what all things are differing between? `testFn()` vs `new testFn()`"}
{"_id": "231042", "title": "Creating a very basic compiler using Java", "text": "I want to try and create my own very basic language, with it's very basic compiler. All using Java. For now, it will only need to enable to 'programmer' to print things to the screen. I had an idea for how to do this, and what I wanted to know is: Will this be considered an actual 'compiler', an actual 'language', and an actual 'virtual machine'? (All very, very basic of course). My idea was to create a program which will serve as the 'IDE' (editor and compiler), and another one which will serve as the 'virtual machine'. This means that the IDE will not compile the written code to some existing machine code, like the Java Bytecode, but will actually compile to some kind of compiled code made up by me. This compiled code will only be understandable by my 'virtual machine' program, and will only be able to run inside this program. The 'virtual machine' program, will use high-level Java operations in order to understand and execute the compiled code. The 'virtual machine' program will be a Java program, running on the JVM. My question is: **Conceptually** , is this considered a virtual machine, and 'machine code'? If not, is this still considered a 'programming language', even though it's compiled bytecode can only run inside a specific program?"}
{"_id": "182434", "title": "How to practice programming?", "text": "I've been a PHP developer for 5 years now. Before I started working in that field, I've been practicing at home. I've created my own CMS, so I could actually show some of my code to the potential employer. In the final version, it had about 2,000 lines of code, and no one except me was using it. But that was not the case, because I've learned a lot during this project. Lately I've decided to move forward and abandon web developing for sake of C/C++ programming. I've read a few books recommended on stackoverflow, skimmed over a glibc manual, and solved some problems on Project Eurler as adviced. Now it's time to start some project, but I can't come up with anything. What is the next step I should take?"}
{"_id": "124112", "title": "Simulating Agile Software Development", "text": "Looking for a guide or example of where a group facilitator walks a group through an agile software development cycle playing the role of both the event facilitator and the key stakeholder or project owner."}
{"_id": "124115", "title": "what limitation will we face if each user-perceived character is assigned to one codepoint?", "text": "Hi all I was wondering what limitations will we have if Unicode had decided to assign one and only one codepoint to every user-perceived character? Currently, Unicode has code-points that correspond to combining characters. Such characters combine with a previous code-point (or sequence thereof) to present to the user what appears to be a single character. From what I can see, the current standard is full of complexities. Even if I try to avoid any kind of complexities by using an encoding like UTF-32, this problem still **persists**. It's not an encoding issue at all. For example, in Unicode when a grapheme cluster is represented internally by a character sequence consisting of base character + accent, then when the user clicks the `>` button to skip to the next user-perceived character, we had to skip from the start of the base character to the end of the last character of the cluster. Why does it need to be so hard? Why can't we assign a single code point to every user perceived character such going to the user-perceived character is simply a matter of reading the next code point? The unicode website seems to acknowledge this complexity, (although I could not understand what exactly is so rare about having to figure out the number of user-perceived character counts in a string): > In those **relatively rare circumstances where programmers need to supply > end users with user-perceived character counts** , the counts should > correspond to the number of segments delimited by grapheme clusters. > Grapheme clusters may also be used in searching and matching Diacritics are also the reason why things don't work as expected. For example, if I throw 2 \u30d4 characters (japanese katakana PI using the unicode representation `U+30d2 U+309a`) into a String builder and reverse it, I would naturally expect the output to be 2 \u30d4 characters (i.e. \u30d4\u30d4), but it gives an invalid output of \u309a\u30d4\u30d2 ! **If Unicode had assigned individual code points for each user-perceived character and scrapped the idea of grapheme clusters, this wouldn't have happened at all.** What I would like to know is, what exactly is wrong with representing every user-perceived character as one unicode codepoint? Is it likely that doing so would would exceed U+10FFFF possible code points (if it does exceed U+10FFFF code points I see no reason why they couldn't have set the limit to 2^32 in the first place), Even when there is so much spare space to include the whole family of Elf Languages ? Unicode states: > If you wanted, for example, to give each \u201cinstance of a character on paper > throughout history\u201d its own code, you might need trillions or quadrillions > of such codes; But seriously that doesn't make sense at all. Where is the source for making such a claim? A trillion codes is quite an over-statement."}
{"_id": "124118", "title": "New to iPhone Development - iOS5 Storyboard", "text": "I'm new here and pretty new to iOS development. My question is basically, should I learn the old school development methods or just learn how to do things using the latest tools (i.e. Storyboard)? I've had a go with the Storyboard feature of XCode 4.2 and it's very powerful. My only concern is that it requires iOS 5. I don't mind learning the old way of doing things but I've been having trouble finding tutorials/examples for XCode 4.2 that don't use the storyboard. An example would be the with my trouble finding a good tutorial on how to embed a Navigation Controller into a TabBarController. A lot of the material out there seems to be for older version of XCode. Using the storyboard I'm able to set this up with seconds but still haven't managed to get it working without it. So in short :) would you guys suggest I continue my project using the Storyboard or make the extra effort to do things a little more manually?"}
{"_id": "140856", "title": "Certifications for Javascript developers?", "text": "I'm looking for a solid and but fast paced entry in field of javascript development. The following topics come to my mind:   * Javascript advanced concepts, OOP   * jQuery, jQuery-UI, jQuery-Mobile   * backbone.js   * node.js   * BDD and/or TDD The courses of http://www.codelesson.com seem promising. What certificates for Javascript developers exist/can be recommended? What other vendors can you recommend?"}
{"_id": "125648", "title": "Custom heap allocators", "text": "Most programs can be quite casual about heap allocation, even to the extent that functional programming languages prefer to allocate new objects than modify old ones, and let the garbage collector worry about freeing things. In embedded programming, the silent sector, however, there are many applications where you can't use heap allocation at all, due to memory and hard real-time constraints; the number of objects of each type that will be handled is part of the specification, and everything is statically allocated. Games programming (at least with those games that are ambitious about pushing the hardware) sometimes falls in between: you can use dynamic allocation, but there are enough memory and soft real-time constraints that you can't treat the allocator as a black box, let alone use garbage collection, so you have to use custom allocators. This is one of the reasons C++ is still widely used in the games industry; it lets you do things like http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2271.html What other domains are in that in-between territory? Where, apart from games, are custom allocators heavily used?"}
{"_id": "140851", "title": "Is this kind of Design by Contract useless?", "text": "I've just started informatics university and I'm attending a programming course about C(++). The programming professor prefers to connect every topic with a type of programming design that is similar to Design by Contract. Basically, what he asks us to do is to write every exercise with comments that denote the pre-condition, post-condition, and invariants that should prove the correctness of each program we write. But this doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe writing down your thoughts prevent you from making some mistakes, but if this is all an abstract thing, then if your program intuition is wrong, you'll write your program wrong, and then you'll also write pre and post conditions wrong. In the end, you'll be convinced that a wrong program might actually be correct. I had some programming experience before this course and I found myself comfortably with just writing a program and unit testing it. It takes less time to accomplish and is less \"abstract\" than just thinking about what every single piece of your program should do in every case (which is kinda like mentally testing it). Finally, determining the pre and post conditions takes me about 80% of the total time of the exercises. It's harder to think about putting down this pre and post correct than to write the program itself. Am I right in thinking that working with pre-conditions, post-conditions, and invariants aren't worth anything? Should I convince myself that this method is right?"}
{"_id": "125644", "title": "Architecting a multi-technology solution", "text": "I am trying to solve an issue with reusing components. I have some UI components (a mix of JS, CSS, and HTML) that are not specific to any application. These UI components need to be able to be used in multiple applications. One is a RoR application, the other is an ASP.NET MVC application. How can I maintain these components (e.g. with version control, distribution) and still make them accessible to the different platforms that need to consume them? For example, ApplicationA and ApplicationB use UIComponentA, which is not natively a part of their projects or repositories, because UIComponentA lives in its own repository. How can these projects get the dependencies they need while keeping the components reusable and hosted in their own location? Does anyone have experience with a similar situation, and if so, how did you tackle it? If you need further information, don't hesitate to ask, I will update this question."}
{"_id": "219320", "title": "When and how should I use exceptions (in Python)?", "text": "# The Setting I often have trouble determining when and how to use exceptions. Let's consider a simple example: suppose I am scraping a webpage, say \"http://www.abevigoda.com/\", to determine if Abe Vigoda is still alive. To do this, all we need to do is download the page and look for times that the phrase \"Abe Vigoda\" appears. We return the first appearance, since that includes Abe's status. Conceptually, it will look like this:               def get_abe_status(url):         # download the page         page = download_page(url)              # get all mentions of Abe Vigoda         hits = page.find_all_mentions(\"Abe Vigoda\")              # parse the first hit for his status         status = parse_abe_status(hits[0])              # he's either alive or dead         return status == \"alive\"      Where `parse_abe_status(s)` takes a string of the form \"Abe Vigoda is _something_ \" and returns the \" _something_ \" part. Before you argue that there are much better and more robust ways of scraping this page for Abe's status, remember that this is just a simple and contrived example used to highlight a common situation I'm in. Now, where can this code encounter problems? Among other errors, some \"expected\" ones are:   * `download_page` might not be able to download the page, and throws an `IOError`.   * The URL might not point to the right page, or the page is downloaded incorrectly, and so there are no hits. `hits` is the empty list, then.   * The web page has been altered, possibly making our assumptions about the page wrong. Maybe we expect 4 mentions of Abe Vigoda, but now we find 5.   * For some reasons, `hits[0]` might not be a string of the form \"Abe Vigoda is _something_ \", and so it cannot be correctly parsed. The first case isn't really a problem for me: an `IOError` is thrown and can be handled by the caller of my function. So let's consider the other cases and how I might handle them. But first, let's assume that we implement `parse_abe_status` in the stupidest way possible:               def parse_abe_status(s):         return s[13:]      Namely, it doesn't do any error checking. Now, on to the options: ## Option 1: Return `None` I can tell the caller that something went wrong by returning `None`:               def get_abe_status(url):         # download the page         page = download_page(url)              # get all mentions of Abe Vigoda         hits = page.find_all_mentions(\"Abe Vigoda\")              if not hits:             return None              # parse the first hit for his status         status = parse_abe_status(hits[0])              # he's either alive or dead         return status == \"alive\"      If the caller receives `None` from my function, he should assume that there were no mentions of Abe Vigoda, and so _something_ went wrong. But this is pretty vague, right? And it doesn't help the case where `hits[0]` isn't what we thought it was. On the other hand, we can put in some exceptions: ## Option 2: Using Exceptions If `hits` is empty, an `IndexError` will be thrown when we attempt `hits[0]`. But the caller shouldn't be expected to handle an `IndexError` thrown by my function, since he has no idea where that `IndexError` came from; it could have been thrown by `find_all_mentions`, for all he knows. So we'll create a custom exception class to handle this:               class NotFoundError(Exception):         \"\"\"Throw this when something can't be found on a page.\"\"\"          def get_abe_status(url):         # download the page         page = download_page(url)              # get all mentions of Abe Vigoda         hits = page.find_all_mentions(\"Abe Vigoda\")              try:             hits[0]         except IndexError:             raise NotFoundError(\"No mentions found.\")              # parse the first hit for his status         status = parse_abe_status(hits[0])              # he's either alive or dead         return status == \"alive\"      Now what if the page has changed and there are an unexpected number of hits? This isn't catastrophic, as the code may still work, but a caller might want to be _extra_ careful, or he might want to log a warning. So I'll throw a warning:               class NotFoundError(Exception):         \"\"\"Throw this when something can't be found on a page.\"\"\"          def get_abe_status(url):         # download the page         page = download_page(url)              # get all mentions of Abe Vigoda         hits = page.find_all_mentions(\"Abe Vigoda\")              try:             hits[0]         except IndexError:             raise NotFoundError(\"No mentions found.\")              # say we expect four hits...         if len(hits) != 4:             raise Warning(\"An unexpected number of hits.\")             logger.warning(\"An unexpected number of hits.\")              # parse the first hit for his status         status = parse_abe_status(hits[0])              # he's either alive or dead         return status == \"alive\"      Lastly, we might find that `status` isn't either alive or dead. Maybe, for some odd reason, today it turned out to be `comatose`. Then I don't want to return `False`, as that implies that Abe is dead. What should I do here? Throw an exception, probably. But what kind? Should I create a custom exception class?               class NotFoundError(Exception):         \"\"\"Throw this when something can't be found on a page.\"\"\"          def get_abe_status(url):         # download the page         page = download_page(url)              # get all mentions of Abe Vigoda         hits = page.find_all_mentions(\"Abe Vigoda\")              try:             hits[0]         except IndexError:             raise NotFoundError(\"No mentions found.\")              # say we expect four hits...         if len(hits) != 4:             raise Warning(\"An unexpected number of hits.\")             logger.warning(\"An unexpected number of hits.\")              # parse the first hit for his status         status = parse_abe_status(hits[0])              if status not in ['alive', 'dead']:             raise SomeTypeOfError(\"Status is an unexpected value.\")              # he's either alive or dead         return status == \"alive\"      ## Option 3: Somewhere in between I think that the second method, with exceptions, is preferable, but I'm not sure if I'm using exceptions correctly within it. I'm curious to see how more experienced programmers would handle this."}
{"_id": "173569", "title": "Statistical Software Quality Control References", "text": "I'm looking for references about hypothesis testing in software management. For example, we might wonder whether \"crunch time\" leads to an increase in defect rate - this is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. There are many questions on how to measure quality - this isn't what I'm asking. And there are books like Kan which discuss various quality metrics and their utilities. I'm not asking this either. I want to know how one applies these metrics to make decisions. E.g. suppose we decide to go with critical errors / KLOC. One of the problems we'll have to deal with with that this is not a normally distributed data set (almost all patches have zero critical errors). And further, it's not clear that we really want to examine the difference in means. So what should our alternative hypothesis be? (Note: Based on previous questions, my guess is that I'll get a lot of answers telling me that this is a bad idea. That's fine, but I'd request that it's based on published data, instead of your own experience.)"}
{"_id": "229770", "title": "What does the implementation of .NET string.Split(char[], StringSplitOptions) look like from inside?", "text": "That is if we were to see how Microsoft wrote this method what would it look like? I'm mainly interested in the use of the StringSplitOptions enumeration with the other parameter and how they probably structured their code to account for each option."}
{"_id": "134364", "title": "Has anyone thoroughly compared C# common coding standards?", "text": "Most of the C# programmers I know embrace one of the common coding standards. However being aware of the standards is one thing, telling the differences is another. Browsing the common coding standards documents our there on C#, my first reaction was it's more of the same. Admittedly I didn't bother reading everything. Has anyone ever compared them and point out the **major** differences between them?   * **Microsoft's Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries**   * **The IDesign C# Coding Standard, development guidelines, and best practices**   * **Lance Hunt's C# Coding Standards**"}
{"_id": "134362", "title": "Good industry qualifications to aim for as a grad?", "text": "I am a fairly recent grad and have been working for over a year now in software development. I would like to get a couple of professionally recognised exams on my CV. I am currently looking at Oracle certified java programmer. But are there any others that would look good and people would recommend?"}
{"_id": "141104", "title": "\"PHP: Good Parts\"-ish book / reference", "text": "Before I had my first proper contact with Javascript I read an excellent book \"Javascript: The Good Parts\" by Douglas Crockford. I was hoping for something similar in case of PHP. My first thought was this book: \"PHP: The Good Parts\" from O'Reilly However after I read the reviews it seems it totally misses the point. I am looking for a resource that would:   * concentrate on known shortcommings of PHP,   * give concrete examples,   * be as exhaustive as possible I already see that things can go wrong. **Research:** I looked through SO, and Programmers for materials. I obviously found this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/90924/what-is-the-best-php-programming-book It's general, mine is specific. Moreover I'm reading the top recommendation \"PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice\" right now. I find it insufficient -- it doesn't address the bad practices as much as I would like it to. **Motivation:** I don't _dislike_ PHP. I'm not even competent enough just yet to really state that. In 3 months however, I will start a job that will likely involve a lot of development in that language. I do not really know what quality the code will be. I also don't want to be the guy to introduce all the bad practices and then learn everything the hard way. I try to find out about as many traps that I possibly can. In case of Javascript Crockford's lectures really served as a guiding light. I would never feel confident in Javascript without them."}
{"_id": "141108", "title": "Hidden web standards behind Google \"custom searchEngines\"?", "text": "Today while playing with Google Chrome Omnibox, I notice a strange behavior. I guess there's some \"hidden\" web standard behind it, but can't figure it out. Here's how to reproduce:   1. Go to http://edition.cnn.com/   2. Use the search function at the higher right corner, Search a random keyword, for example: \"abc\"   3. Close the tabs.   4. Open a new tab, type until Chrome reminds you about http://edition.cnn.com/, then press \"Tab\"   5. The Omnibox now shows \"Search CNN.com\"! And when you type \"abc\" and press Enter, it uses the CNN search function to do the job, not Google! I also tried it for several different sites. To some it won't work. But to some sites, like CNN, vnexpress.net, it works after I use the search function of that site once. I also learnt about `chrome://settings/searchEngines` (type it in your chrome box and you will see), and learnt about you can add custom search engine in chrome. But the question is, why Chrome can realize the search URL automatically to some pages, and not others? It's not because some site subscribe to Google service, because I can do the same method for my site (http://ledohoanglong.wordpress.com), and I'm sure that there's no subscription. So I guess there's a method to \"expose\" the search function of a site, so that Google Chrome can catch it (after I call the search function of that site once, of courses). Does anyone know about how it works behind the scene?"}
{"_id": "134368", "title": "Assembly in a research paper", "text": "I am doing a research paper on programming, and I need to somehow explain assembly... I've never learned the language, but I understand what it is used for and kinda what it looks like...               MOV A,47     ADD A,B     HALT      And from what I understand, it is used for writing some compilers, small bits of code that need to be really fast, and other tasks... But this is kind of a question for people who have used/studied assembly and understand it fairly well. And no, I'm not asking for you to type up this segment of the research paper for me. That would be selfish. I just need a brief explanation, clarification on the subject (I'm just unsure if what I know is true or not) and a pointer in the right direction. For a research paper (I need to explain this VERY simply...) what is purpose of using Assembly in today's society? Of course it was important back in the day but now with all the high level languages, when is this low level language used?"}
{"_id": "203942", "title": "Why is the game industry, specifically , so harsh on programmers?", "text": "On hackernews and /r/programming I've heard several reports of how the games industry is incredibly harsh on programmers. Someone on this site also linked this blog post in an answer I read recently. According to various reports, programmers in the games industry are severely overworked. Perhaps not when working for small games companies, but definitely when working for places like EA(the place discussed in the blog post). So my question is, why? I'm a developer for a large networking company, I sometimes work more than 8 hours a day, but I wouldn't dream of working 12 hour days 6 days a week like the blog post describes. I'd quit and move on without a second thought. Why does the games industry, specifically, have this problem?"}
{"_id": "125398", "title": "What's the point of camel-case-navigation?", "text": "I heavily use CTRL+ to jump between tokens in code (the `_`s are the navigation points):               _fooBar _+ _barFoo_;      Some editors, like the one in the current version of QtCreator, have (by default or optionally) camel case navigation, which goes like this:               _foo_Bar _+ _bar_Foo_;      What is the rationale behind this? I remember some people back in school saying \"cool\" and \"fancy\", but is that the whole story? I do not think it is cool, I find it very annoying actually."}
{"_id": "125399", "title": "Differences between Design by Contract and Defensive Programming", "text": "Could Designing by Contract (DbC) be a way to program defensively? Is one way of programming better in some cases than the other?"}
{"_id": "135947", "title": "Do CDNs (such as MSFT and Google) act on the referrer header sent by clients?", "text": "Will my site be automatically indexed, or search ranking affected based on my use (or non use) of the Google/MSFT CDN? My clients will be sending them the referrer header which I may or may not want included in search results."}
{"_id": "155055", "title": "Spring MVC vs raw servlets and template engine?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why not Spring framework? I've read numerous articles about the Spring MVC framework, and I still can't see the benefits of using it. It looks like writing even a simple application with it requires creating a big hodgepodge of XML files and annotations and other reams of code to conform to what the framework wants, a whole bunch of moving parts to accomplish a simple single task. Any time I look at a Spring example, I can see how I can write something with the same functionality using a simple servlet and template engine (e.g. FreeMarker, StringTemplate), in half the lines of code and little or no XML files and other artifacts. Just grab the data from the session and request, call the application domain objects if necessary, pass the results to the template engine to generate the resulting web page, done. What am I missing? Can you describe even one example of something that is actually made simpler with Spring than using a combination of raw servlets with a template engine? Or is Spring MVC just one of those overly complicated things that people use only because their boss tells them to use it? **EDIT** : A summarized concrete description would be helpful. For example, \"I used Spring MVC to build an application that did XYZ, and its feature Q saved me from having to do the extra work of A and B and C which would have been necessary with raw servlets and a template engine.\" Simply mentioning marketing buzzwords like \"dependency injection\" doesn't clarify anything."}
{"_id": "42818", "title": "Best ways to sell management on the benefits of Open Source Software?", "text": "I have worked in a few places where the use of Open Source Software in products they produce is strictly forbidden for various reasons, such as:   * no formal support   * lack of trust in something perceived as \"just downloaded from the internet\"   * How can it be professional if it's not supported, we don't pay for it etc etc I'm looking for the best ways to convince/prove to management that things won't fall apart should we use these tools."}
{"_id": "125391", "title": "What is the best way to evaluate new programmers?", "text": "What is the best way to evaluate the best candidates to get a new job (talking merely in terms of programming skills)? In my company we have had a lot of bad experiences with people who have good grades but do not have real programming skills. Their skills are merely like code monkeys, without the ability to analyze the problems and find solutions. More things that I have to note:   * The education system in my country sucks--really sucks. The people that are good in this kind of job are good because they have talent for it or really try to learn on their own.   * The university / graduate /post-grad degree doesn't mean necessarily that you know exactly how to do the things.   * Certifications also mean nothing here because the people in charge of the certification course also don't have skills (or are in low paying jobs). We need really to get the good candidates that are flexible and don't have mechanical thinking (because this type of people by experience have a low performance). We are in a government institution and the people that are candidates don't necessarily come from outside, but we have the possibility to accept or not any candidates until we find the correct one. I hope I'm not sounding too aggressive in my question; and BTW I'm a programmer myself. _**edit:_** I figured out that asked something really complex here. ~~I will un-toggle \"the correct answer\" only to let the discussion going fluent, without any bias.~~"}
{"_id": "85676", "title": "About languages strongly typed with late binding, do they make sense?", "text": "I never learnt anything about VB6 (and I dont want to) but I wanted to search for bad things in computer software, so my first though was VB6. So for example, VB6 was strongly typed with late binding. Makes some sense to have a language with that combination? (I dont think so). I want to know reasons of why VB6 was like this! or why is good idea for a lenguage to be like this. Bad things that happend with a lengugage like this? good things?"}
{"_id": "208575", "title": "What software is used to write functional and non-functional requirements?", "text": "Is there any software which can be used to write functional and non-functional requirements? When writing those, it is essential to:   * Store the document in text format to be able to make diffs and minimize the impact on the version control,   * Apply extensive formatting when creating diagrams would be an overkill,   * Use diagrams, preferably stored in text format as well,   * Cross-link the requirements or the appendixes. Currently, I can only think about three editors which _may_ be used, but which are not truly suitable:   1. **A Markdown editor.** Benefits: text only; easy to add formatting. Disadvantage: not powerful enough: one can add images, but not diagrams; formatting is rather limited; no cross-linking (unless adding much HTML markup).   2. **An HTML editor.** Benefits: text only; ability to add diagrams with HTML 5. Advanced formatting is possible. Disadvantages: markup difficult to change by hand, or if WYSIWYG editor is used, markup is often too verbose and low quality; cross-linking limited to manual only.   3. **A document editor such as OpenOffice or Microsoft Word.** Benefits: ability to apply some advanced formatting; excellent automated cross-linking. Disadvantages: binary format, which means no diff and wasted space in version control. What are my other choices? What is actually used in the industry?"}
{"_id": "208576", "title": "Do you keep your project code names the same in the source tree?", "text": "Sometimes when I start working on a project, I just can't think of a good name, or think of a good name that isn't already taken. As a result, I'll end up picking some sort of code name for the project. My question is, how do you handle name changes in your source code once you find a real name for your project? Should you continue to refer to the code name in your source tree, namespaces, binaries, etc?"}
{"_id": "170912", "title": "Ways to ensure unique instances of a class?", "text": "I'm looking for different ways to ensure that each instance of a given class is a uniquely identifiable instance. For example, I have a `Name` class with the field `name`. Once I have a `Name` object with `name` initialised to John Smith I don't want to be able to instantiate a different `Name` object also with the name as John Smith, or if instantiation does take place I want a reference to the orginal object to be passed back rather than a new object. I'm aware that one way of doing this is to have a static factory that holds a `Map` of all the current Name objects and the factory checks that an object with John Smith as the name doesn't already exist before passing back a reference to a `Name` object. Another way I could think of off the top of my head is having a static Map in the `Name` class and when the constructor is called throwing an exception if the value passed in for `name` is already in use in another object, however I'm aware throwing exceptions in a constructor is generally a bad idea. Are there other ways of achieving this?"}
{"_id": "38569", "title": "Shell independence in programming groups", "text": "Our programming environment is dependent upon certain environment variables being set. For example, to use distcc, one needs to define the `DISTCC_HOSTS` environment variable. The way we handle this is forcing each developer to `source` a global `tcshrc` file upon invoking a new shell. The global `tcshrc` file contains statements to set the environment variables up (among other things). However, this is awfully discriminatory as each developer is forced to use `tcsh` since setting an environment variable is different per shell. The most obvious solution to this problem to have corresponding global `bashrc` and `zshrc` files, but that of course becomes cumbersome since now we have to maintain three different files all containing the same logic. Are there any clean solutions to solve this sort of situation?"}
{"_id": "203490", "title": "Are 3rd-party controls and MVC anathema?", "text": "At http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/552846/Why-s-How-s-of-Asp-Net-MVC- Part-1, I read this: \"You should not use Asp.Net MVC if you rely on 3rd party vendor controls for of the UI.\" The author doesn't seem to say why (maybe the explanation is too subtle, or I'm too dense). Thoughts? Is it true? Why would this be?"}
{"_id": "134092", "title": "Why don't public web applications use ini files for configuration", "text": "Almost every public CMS out there uses a .php configuration file for the database settings and so on. For example WordPress automatically creates a .php config file when you install it. Why don't they just use a .ini file? PHP already has parse_ini_file() and I'm sure other languages have similar functions."}
{"_id": "129796", "title": "How to determine the effectiveness of a code review process?", "text": "We've introduced a code review process within our organisation and it seems to be working well. However, I would like to be able to measure the effectiveness of the process over time, i.e. are we not finding bugs because the code is clean or are people just not picking up on bugs? Currently, we don't have an effective fully-automated test process. We primarily employ manual testing, so we can't rely on defects found at this stage to ensure that the code review process is working. Has anyone come across this issue before or has any thoughts on what works well in measuring code reviews?"}
{"_id": "134097", "title": "Why should I prefer composition over inheritance?", "text": "I always read that composition is to be preferred over inheritance. A blog post on unlike minds, for example, advocates using composition over inheritance, but I can't see how polymorphism is achieved. But I have a feeling that when people say prefer composition, they really mean prefer a combination of composition and interface implementation. How are you going to get polymorphism without inheritance? Here is a concrete example where I use inheritance. How would this be changed to use composition, and what would I gain?               Class Shape     {     string name;     public:     void getName();     virtual void draw()=0;     }          Class Circle: public Shape     {     void draw(/*draw circle*/);     }"}
{"_id": "227654", "title": "Declaring a field name starting with underscore", "text": "Before forming a class in Java or other programming languages that support OOP, should I use underscore (_) in each ( **local** or **private** ) field declaration. More precisely: > private String _customername; Is this a correct declaration?"}
{"_id": "249520", "title": "How do I fix an \"emergent\" bug?", "text": "I'm writing a PDE solver, and I have a bug that only shows up in very large test cases. That is, with small grids the program gives correct answers, but there's a large amount of unaccounted-for error (I've accounted for roundoff, discretization, and other standard types of error that unavoidably occur) that creeps in when my test cases get into the days-to-finish range. I can't run this in a debugger, that would take weeks. And printing out intermediate results is not particularly useful given that I can't manually inspect the output to see what's wrong. **How can I find and fix this \"emergent\" bug?**"}
{"_id": "249522", "title": "Linking to MIT-Licensed dll", "text": "I'm currently working on some closed-source proprietary software that makes use of a library ( **SharpAVI** ) distributed with the MIT License. The SharpAVI source _isn't_ being used directly anywhere in my project, only the unchanged .dll provided for download on the codeplex site linked above. The .dll is referenced in one very small distinct project inside a much larger solution (consisting of a single wrapper class around the functionality provided by SharpAVI). I'm particularly concerned about this wording: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Does the license need to be included in a file with _my_ code, which is linked to the licensed code by .dll, and includes none of the original source? Would this make my wrapper code an MIT-licensed product (that would seem to go against the non-viral nature of the license)? If my wrapper needs to become licensed under the MIT License, wouldn't that propagate to any other code that references it as well? **How do I properly attribute the license information for a linked MIT- Licensed .dll without releasing my own code under the MIT License?**"}
{"_id": "249524", "title": "Why can't C arrays have 0 length?", "text": "The C11 standard says the arrays, both sized and variable length \"shall have a value greater than zero.\" What is the justification for not allowing a length of 0? Especially for variable length arrays it makes perfect sense to have a size of zero every once and a while. It is also useful for static arrays when their size is from a macro or build configuration option. Interestingly GCC (and clang) provide extensions that allow zero length arrays. Java also allows arrays of length zero."}
{"_id": "58824", "title": "Good resources and tools for modern, heavy JavaScript development?", "text": "I am interested in doing some projects that involve heavy use of JavaScript. Namely HTML5 based canvas games, potentially using node.js as well. I am interested in learning modern best practices, tools and resources for JavaScript. JavaScript is tough to research because you end up wading through a lot of really outdated material, hailing from the times that \"JavaScript\" was a four letter word. If you are heavily involved in JavaScript programming...   * What text editor or IDE do you use?   * What unit testing framework do you use?   * Do you use Selenium, or something else?   * What other tools do you use?   * What communities exist that discuss recent advents in JavaScript?   * What books do you read/refer to?   * What blogs do you read?"}
{"_id": "96421", "title": "Is there a book for learning Javascript -> DOM -> jQuery?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  The importance of javascript and the best way to learn it? I would like to learn Javascript, the DOM model and jQuery. I've found many recommendations for books for each subject, but I wonder if there is a single book which teaches the three subjects in order and how they relate to each other. Thanks for any advice."}
{"_id": "18891", "title": "Project Suggestion for computer networks using C#", "text": "I am looking for suggestion for a project in computer networks using C# as the development tool, as part of a university course I am taking. The project should last about a month, involving two people. I'll be happy to hear any intresting ideas you might have."}
{"_id": "236900", "title": "Ruby on Rails Development: updating model attribute using f.association collection", "text": "Im currently working on a rails program. It contains many different databases but to keep things simple I have a people, student, and faculty table. A person can be a student or faculty member and there all connected by the person_id. A faculty member advises students so the student is connected to the faculty member by the id of the faculty. To create a student you need to select a major and a faculty member(faculty_id). Being that the student and faculty members are all people.. in my dropdown I had to use               <div>       <%= f.input :faculty_id %>       <%= f.association :person, label: \"Advisor\", label_method: :to_label ,  value_method: :id, include_blank: false, collection:  Person.where(\"role_id=?\", @role.id)%>          </div>      to limit the people in the drop down to only faculty members. But the issue Im running into now is how would I set the faculty_id attribute of the student with the selected value of the association collection?"}
{"_id": "18895", "title": "How can you write tests for Selenium (or similar) which don't fail because of minor or cosmetic changes?", "text": "I've been spending the last week or so learning selenium and building a series of web tests for a website we're about to launch. it's been great to learn, and I've picked up some xpath and css location techniques. the problem for me though, is seeing little changes break the tests - any change to a div, an id, or some autoid number that helps identify widgets breaks any number of tests - it just seems to be very brittle. so have you written selenium (or other similar) tests, and how do you deal with the brittle nature of the tests (or how do you stop them being brittle), and what sort of tests do you use selenium for?"}
{"_id": "89453", "title": "Is OO-programming really as important as hiring companies place it?", "text": "I am just finishing my masters degree (in computing) and applying for jobs. I've noticed many companies specifically ask for an understanding of object orientation. Popular interview questions are about inheritance, polymorphism, accessors etc. Is OO really that crucial? I even had an interview for a programming job in C and half the interview was OO. In the real world, developing real applications, is object orientation nearly always used? Are key features like polymorphism used A LOT? I think my question comes from one of my weaknesses. Although I know about OO, I don't seem to be able to incorporate it a great deal into my programs."}
{"_id": "18899", "title": "How to get people involved in your project?", "text": "I have many project ideas and unfortunately all require a team of at least 3-5 developers. I've started a project by myself too many times without reaching the end. The point is to involve people in the project with the hope of giving them a share if the project succeeds. I know that the last point however is the hardest and most complicated one. I\u2019m hoping to get some answers that point me in the right direct.   1. Where do I find people that may be interested in the idea?   2. How do I convince people in my network to put time in new ideas? **Update:** Regarding \"projects\" I'm referring to projects in which I have initiated during my career as developer. Of course it wouldn\u2019t be serious of me to launch several simultaneous projects and complain about not to be able to deliver them to the end."}
{"_id": "229774", "title": "How can I layout this class to make it easier to use for API developers?", "text": "I have an application that allows the user to place a string of text into a PDF document. I have three different ways that they can do this:   1. **Use a Form Field.** Then they have four properties to define:      1. Provide field name     2. provide instance of the field     3. provide an X-axis Offset     4. provide a Y-axis Offset    2. **Search for a string of text.** Then they have four properties to define:      1. Provide string of text to search for     2. provide instance of that string of text     3. provide an X-axis Offset     4. provide a Y-axis Offset    3. **Define Page Coordinates.** Then they have three properties to define:      1. Provide page number      2. provide an X-axis Offset     3. provide a Y-axis Offset In my API, I want the object to be setup intuitively so that it is clear they are choose one of the three different methods and then whichever one they choose, they have the options for each. In my old API, all of those options are grouped together as a list of properties like this:               Placement.FormField_FieldName     Placement.FormField_Instance     Placement.SearchText_Text     Placement.SearchText_Instance     Placement.PageCoordinates_PageNumber     Placement.XOffset     Placement.YOffset      I find this to be a little confusing for the developer using the API because you could never use all of the properties together. You would either use **Form Field** like this:               Placement myPlacement = new Placement();     myPlacement.FormField_FieldName = \"MyPdfFormFieldName\";     myPlacement.FormField_Instance = ;     myPlacement.XOffset = 0;     myPlacement.YOffset = 0;      Or use **Text Search** like this:               Placement myPlacement = new Placement();     myPlacement.SearchText_Text = \"My String Of Text\";     myPlacement.FormField_Instance = 1;     myPlacement.XOffset = 0;     myPlacement.YOffset = 0;      Or use **Page Coordinates** like this:               Placement myPlacement = new Placement();     myPlacement.PageCoordinates_PageNumber = 1;     myPlacement.XOffset = 0;     myPlacement.YOffset = 0;      Is there a better way to setup the class (or sub classes) to make it easier for the developer to understand how to use this functionality?"}
{"_id": "250776", "title": "How are mixins or traits better than plain multiple inheritance?", "text": "C++ has plain multiple inheritance, many language designs forbid it as dangerous. But some languages like Ruby and PHP use strange syntax to do the same thing and call it mixins or traits. I heard many times that mixins/traits are harder to abuse than plain multiple inheritance. What specifically makes them less dangerous? Is there something that isn't possible with mixins/traits but possible with C++-style multiple inheritance? Is it possible to run into the diamond problem with them? This seems as if we were using multiple inheritance but just making excuses that those are mixins/traits so we can use them."}
{"_id": "120775", "title": "How to drastically improve code coverage?", "text": "I'm tasked with getting a legacy application under unit test. First some background about the application: It's a 600k LOC Java RCP code base with these major problems   * massive code duplication   * no encapsulation, most private data is accessible from outside, some of the business data also made singletons so it's not just changeable from outside but also from everywhere.   * no abstractions (e.g. no business model, business data is stored in Object[] and double[][]), so no OO. There is a good regression test suite and an efficient QA team is testing and finding bugs. I know the techniques how to get it under test from classic books, e.g. Michael Feathers, but that's too slow. As there is a working regression test system I'm not afraid to aggressively refactor the system to allow unit tests to be written. **How should I start to attack the problem to get some coverage quickly** , so I'm able to show progress to management (and in fact to start earning from safety net of JUnit tests)? I do not want to employ tools to generate regression test suites, e.g. AgitarOne, because these tests do not test if something is correct."}
{"_id": "122014", "title": "What are the key points of Working Effectively with Legacy Code?", "text": "I've seen the book Working Effectively with Legacy Code recommended a few times. What are the key points of this book? Is there much more to dealing with legacy code than adding unit/integration tests and then refactoring?"}
{"_id": "252000", "title": "A container only assets in Rails", "text": "I have multiple segmented Rails apps that are connected to each other:   * App A   * App B   * App C While I try to keep the design, such as header and footer, to look similar, but each app has its own stylesheet, javascript and images in the asset folder. Some of these assets are duplicate, like CSS for footer. It makes maintenance difficult. I'm wondering if I could do something like having App D, where App A, B, and C will just retrieve the assets from App D. So if I need to change anything, I can just change the assets in App D. How do I achieve this?"}
{"_id": "246209", "title": "Use and manage Front End Assets for Web", "text": "I am a beginner and am currently developing a kind of cms using PHP. The number of libraries that we can potentially use in the front end is large. I have a question about properly selecting, managing and using front end asset libraries. I don't think just including a bunch of front end libraries like this is the best approach:               <script src=\"library1\" /></script>     <script src=\"library2\" /></script>     <script src=\"library3\" /></script>     // and soon..      What if we use, let's say 20 ? Is that good practice, declaring the script tags 20 times ? What I do currently is use `Assetic`, a php library for managing assets. I create a dump file (and cache it) for each request to my application before loading a template. My controller (I use MVC) could be something like this:               function indexAction()     {         // some logic              $assetManager = $this->get('assetic'); // get assetic service         $css = $assetManager->createAsset(array(                 '@bootstrap',                 '@jquery_ui'                  // and many other library         ));               $assetContent = $css->dump();               // create asset url, dont mind about this          $data['stylesheet'] = $this->createAssetUrl($assetContent);              return $this->render('index-template', $data);     }      And in the template (index-template), I could put kind of:               <link href=\"<?php echo $stylesheet ?>\" rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\">      I do that in almost every controller to include a bunch of assets to view. But I am not sure if this is the best method. Are there any better practical method that I don't know ?"}
{"_id": "252433", "title": "Where and when should I use RESTful", "text": "When I should use REST? In what kind of web applications? In terms of java in what situation RESTful would be better than ordinary servlets / JSP ? Imagine that I have a web page where users can upload two kinds of files and create some objects that are later saved in DB(current tasks etc). The only think users can download is this two kinds of files. Will RESTful be a good approach in that kind of service?"}
{"_id": "225372", "title": "What did machine code for 4-bit architecture look like?", "text": "I don't know how a 4-bit instruction could be enough to do something so I read about the Intel 4004 and it says that it used 8-bit instructions and then I can understand how opcode and numbers has enough digits. Is it true that there never were any 4-bit instructions and that 4-bit systems use 8-bit instructions?   And that opcode and two numbers in an instruction can be done in 8 bits but not in 4 bits?"}
{"_id": "232027", "title": "Manual dependency injection or abstract factory", "text": "We're starting to use dependency injection in a fairly large, interactive program. It's early yet, but I have a feeling that the majority of the objects being injected are going to want runtime data passed in to their constructors. Prior to this, I've only used DI in web applications where building everything at the composition root isn't a problem. When working with runtime data, it sounds like the options are to use manual injection or abstract factories. Is there anything important to consider when deciding between the two or does it mainly come down to personal preference? I'm using Ninject with the factory extension, so going the factory route isn't too onerous. However, if we end up with factories in every class, is that a sign that we're doing something wrong? Should we prefer manual injection when the power of an IoC container isn't needed? Could it simply mean that we're over-using dependency injection?"}
{"_id": "237058", "title": "Should I be using OOCSS in a CSS theme?", "text": "I have heard of OOCSS some time ago, but never really looked into it. Today I did so, and I thought of the implications of applying OOCSS to a simple CSS theme. One problem I thought of is that, by its nature, OOCSS encourages DRYness and consequently the use of many concise classes that should be applied to elements by the HTML developer. As a CSS theme, I would assume it isn't something significant enough for a developer would go out of his/her way to add specific classes to their elements when writing HTML:               <button class=\"blue rounded no-border $etc\">Button</button>      as opposed to:               <button>Button</button>      Perhaps the HTML developers would be OK with writing the extra code, although it seems there is just as much repeating code on the HTML side as there would be without OOCSS. So, is OOCSS not a one-size-fits-all methodology for writing CSS code, as in this example? Or am I not understanding things properly?"}
{"_id": "215975", "title": "How to handle fine grained field-based ACL permissions in a RESTful service?", "text": "I've been trying to design a RESTful API and have had most of my questions answered, but there is one aspect of permissions that I'm struggling with. Different roles may have different permissions and different representations of a resource. For example, an Admin or the user himself may see more fields in his own User representation vs another less-privileged user. This is achieved simply by changing the representation on the backend, ie: deciding whether or not to include those fields. Additionally, some actions may be taken on a resource by some users and not by others. This is achieved by deciding whether or not to include those action items as links, eg: edit and delete links. A user who does not have edit permissions will not have an edit link. That covers nearly all of my permission use cases, but there is one that I've not quite figured out. There are some scenarios whereby for a given representation of an object, all fields are visible for two or more roles, but only a subset of those roles my edit certain fields. An example:               {         \"person\": {             \"id\": 1,             \"name\": \"Bob\",             \"age\": 25,             \"occupation\": \"software developer\",             \"phone\": \"555-555-5555\",             \"description\": \"Could use some sunlight..\"         }     }      Given 3 users: an Admin, a regular User, and Bob himself (also a regular User), I need to be able to convey to the front end that: Admins may edit all fields, Bob himself may edit all fields, but a regular User, while they can view all fields, can only edit the description field. I certainly don't want the client to have to make the determination (or even, for that matter, to have any notion of the roles involved) but I do need a way for the backend to convey to the client which fields are editable. I can't simply use a combination of representation (the fields returned for viewing) and links (whether or not an edit link is availble) in this scenario since it's more finely grained. Has anyone solved this elegantly without adding the logic directly to the client?"}
{"_id": "87294", "title": "How to explain pointers to a Java/VB programmer", "text": "I am writing a game and my friend has offered to help me as it is a RPG and will take a long time to do the \"scripting\" bit of the game. The problem is IMO he's not that good a programmer :( (add flame war here). He has only programmed in Java and VB and keeps saying really stupid things to me like \"Why don't you drag and drop an onClick event\" to design my UI when I'm using DirectX. I tried explaining pointers to him but his response was, if it's just a variable that holds a memory address, why don't you just use an int? I create an instance of an attack class and give the creature a pointer to it so if several creatures use the same attack there is only one instance of it. He keeps saying why not put if statements in the creature class for every attack class and set true for the ones that are there. He has programmed mainly in VB and a little in Java just to learn OOP. How can I explain advanced C++ concepts like pointers and memory management to him? He just doesn't understand there are no super functions like form.show in C++."}
{"_id": "175244", "title": "Android: Not able to experiment on own?", "text": "I have just started learning Android App Development a few days ago, with prior knowledge of C/C++, HTML and CSS. This is the situation I am facing Repeatedly: I am learning from a Video Tutorial Series, after each video, or each few videos, I say myself: Let's use what I have just learnt in the simple (and also \"meaningless\") app that I have made so far by watching the tutorials. I start implementing it, but then after a few minutes, I realize that I cannot do it because I do not know a few other syntax related to the particular thing, (or) I do not know whether these things can be combined with these other things by the use of . (dot). Whatever I try, I get either an error in eclipse or \"Sorry...the app com.example.simple has stopped unexpectedly....\" when the app runs. Then I search StackOverflow, Google and learn that what I want to implement requires learning about a few more classes, syntax and creating a few more java classes. I am not able to experiment on my own. Is it normal? Is it the HARD-WAY in which one is supposed to learn? Should I first learn Java and then come back to Android - would that be helpful?"}
{"_id": "146452", "title": "Ruby workflow in Windows", "text": "I've done some searching and quite haven't come across the answer I am looking for. I do not think this is a duplicate of this question. I believe Windows could be a suitable development environment based on the mix of answers in that question. I have been developing in Ruby (mostly Rails but not entirely) for about a year now for personal projects on a Macbook Pro however that machine has faced an untimely death and has been replaced with a nice Windows 7 machine. Ruby development felt almost natural on the Mac after doing some research and setting up the typical stack. My environment then included the standard (Linux like) stuff built into OSX, Text Wrangler, Git, RVM, et al. Not too much of a deviation from what the 'devotees' tend to assume. Now I am setting up my new Windows box for continuing that development. What would my development environment look like? Should I just cave and run Linux in a VM? Ideally I would develop in Windows native. I am aware of the Windows Ruby installer. It seems decent but its not exactly as nice as RVM in the osx/linux world. Mercurial/Git are available so I would assume they play into the stack. Does one develop entirely in Windows? Does one run a webserver in a Linux VM and use it as a test bed while developing in Windows? Do it all in a VM? What does the standard Windows Ruby developer environment look like and what is the workflow? What would a typical step through be for adding a new feature to an ongoing project and what would the technology stack look like?"}
{"_id": "182306", "title": "Why is it often said that the test cases need to be made before we start coding?", "text": "Why is it often said that the test cases need to be made before we start coding?   What are its pros and what the cons if we don't listen to this advice? Moreover, does that advice refer to black box testing or White Box testing or both?"}
{"_id": "108848", "title": "Why don't many code review tools seem to be syntax aware or provide more in-depth analysis of changes?", "text": "Why don't many code review tools seem to be syntax aware or provide more in- depth analysis of changes? Is it simply too hard to do? I find this to be a major hole of most programmer's toolkits. From what I have seen, which admittedly is not much, code review tools just compare code line- by-line with many of them not even being able to do syntax highlighting. Is there a solution out there that is smart enough to offer file-level, method-level code review/comparison? One of the simple problems I have is that methods get re-ordered in code and my code review software breaks down completely, but they should be able to do so much more. I'm interested in others opinions/knowledge on the topic of code review/comparison tools."}
{"_id": "89949", "title": "What are the pros and cons of having a CaseInsensitiveString type in Java?", "text": "I'm tempted to create a `final class CaseInsensitiveString implements CharSequence`. This would allow us to define variables and fields of this type, instead of using a regular `String`. We can also have e.g. a `Map<CaseInsensitiveString, ?>`, a `Set<CaseInsensitiveString>`, etc. What are some of the pros and cons of this approach?"}
{"_id": "33526", "title": "Who should pay for fixes/bugs?", "text": "So I just started freelancing both in desktop/web development and this client who already accepted my work, and payed me keeps coming back at me each time he finds a bug etc. And I have found myself spending more time than I thought fixing them for free. Is this alright, or should I start charging a support fee? Which is the best way to deal with fixes on a supposedly accepted and completed work?"}
{"_id": "196946", "title": "Keeping SQL Server DB Up to date in Team environment", "text": "We are working in a Visual Studio Environment using TFS. When developers get the latest source code it includes a copy of the 'update' sql scripts for the database of the application. The challenge is keeping our local copies of the DB up to date. When changes are made to the DB by another developer, we are looking for a way to:   1. indicate to other developers that their version of the DB is out of date   2. indicate to other developers the order in which they should run the update scripts We are looking for suggestions. For point number 2, I have used numbers such as 01_DropCreate_TableX, 02_Create_StoreProcedure_X. etc DH"}
{"_id": "69830", "title": "Picking powers of two for sizes/limits", "text": "A habit I've observed among programmers, and a habit I sometimes subconsciously exhibit myself, is to pick powers of two (or powers of two minus one) when defining a database schema, a data buffer, etc. Have you made the same observation? If I'm not being blatantly subjective, the follow-up questions are: Are there still valid reasons to use powers of two [minus one] in modern technologies? Assuming these habits are mostly vestiges of old technological limitations, I'm just wondering what different flavors of limitations there once were. Some potential reasons I can think of are data structure optimizations and addressing bits. I'm wondering what else was/is out there..."}
{"_id": "203237", "title": "Multi-module web project with Spring and Maven", "text": "Assume we have a few projects, _each_ containing some web resources (e.g., html pages).               parent.pom      +- web           (war)      +- web-plugin-1  (jar)      +- web-plugin-2  (jar)      ...      Let's say `web` is the deployable `war` project which depends on the known, but selectable, set of plugins. What is a good way to setup this using `Spring` and `maven`?   1. Let the plugins be `war` projects and use mavens **poor** support for importing other `war` projects   2. Put all web-resource for all plugins in the `web` project   3. Add all web-resources to the classpath of all `jar` `web-plugin-*` dependencie and let spring read files from respective classpath?   4. Other? I've previously come from using `#1`, but the `copy-paste` semantics of `war` dependencies in maven is horrible."}
{"_id": "87125", "title": "How can one find software development work that involves directly the final end user?", "text": "I've worked in software development for 15 years and, while there have been signficant personal achievements and a lot of experience, I've always felt detached from the man/woman-on-the-street, the every day person, how it affects their lives, in a number of ways:   * the technologies: embedded software, hidden away, stuff not seen by the everyday person. Or process technology supporting manufactured products   * the size of the systems, meaning many jobs, divided up, work is abstract, not one person can see the whole picture   * the organisations: large, with departments dealing with different areas, the software, the hardware, the marketing, the sales, the customer support   * the locations and hours: out-of-town business parks away from the rest of society, fixed locations, inflexible: 9-5 everyday This to me seems typical of the companies I worked for and see elsewhere. Granted, there are positives such as the technology itself and usually being among high calibre co-workers, but the above points frustrate me about the industry because they detach the work from its meaning. How can one:   * change these things in an existing job, or compensate for them?   * find other work that avoids these and connects with the final end user? Job designs tend to focus on the job content and technical requirements rather than how the job aims to fulfil end user needs, is meaningful."}
{"_id": "87124", "title": "Would this be the equivalent of creating a branch, while working with a detached head in Git?", "text": "Let's say I checked out a version different than HEAD. Let's say I made some commits, and so an anonymous branch was created. Afterwards I may have checked out a different branch, so now the only way to get to my commits is via `reflog`. If do this:               >> git reflog | grep -i mycommit     sha1hash     >> git branch reattaching     >> git cherry-pick hash_of_commits     >> git checkout master     >> git merge reattaching      Is it the equivalent of:                  >> git reflog | grep -i mycommit         sha1hash        >> git branch reattaching sha1hash        >> git checkout master        >> git merge reattaching      What happens to the detached head commits, as I think that via cherry-picking, they will exist in 2 places. Will they forever remain in my repository?"}
{"_id": "103501", "title": "Thoughts on Development using Virtual Machines", "text": "I'll be working as a development lead for a startup and I've suggested that we use VMs for development. I'm not talking about each developer having a desktop with VMs for testing/development, I mean having a server rack where all VMs are managed and have the developers work from a microPC (ChromeOS anyone?) locally, or even remotely from their home computer. To me, the benefits are the fact that it's extremely scalable, cheaper in the long run, easier to manage and that we utilize the hardware its maximum potential. As for cons, I can't think of any particular showstoppers other than we'll need someone to setup/maintain said setup. I was hoping that some of you might of had a similar setup at your place of employment and be able to weight in with your opinions. Thanks."}
{"_id": "108435", "title": "Boss wants to convert all developers to virtualized desktops", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Thoughts on Development using Virtual Machines My boss has been singing the praises of leveraging virtualized desktops for all our developers in the company - about 100 people. I think this is a horrible idea and can think of no other companies pursuing a similar course of action. He believes that he can run Word and Outlook much faster over his server hosted virtual machine and has somehow come to believe that this will work for software development just as well. I have grave doubts of this. **Can anyone else provide me with some objective technical and/or business data on this scenario which can be used to dissuade him?** I can see desktop virtualization as a viable option for task based workers who sit in front of MS Office or a LOB app all day, but for software development, I see this as a huge potential blunder. I for one, have no interest in returning to dumb terminals and blind faith in operations to keep the servers and network tuned to our needs. If such a system is instituted, I may very well leave the company... as I see the policy betraying a clear lack of understanding and a diminished perception of value in what the devs are doing..."}
{"_id": "83634", "title": "Leading a team, am I being overbearing?", "text": "I'm in what seems to me a very strange position. I'm \"team lead\" in role for a particular project, Sr. Software Engineer in job title. On my team I have 4 developers, one of whom serves a similar role on another project but now mine has been given priority so he's working on mine. I also have 2 testers, one of whom is a Manager. Another member of the team is the \"Customer Representative\" who is a part of a completely unrelated department. I also have a Manager who is directly above me and I believe also above the Manager of Test that's part of my team...not so sure about that though. I've tried to get clarification on why my role is exactly several times. It's been hard for me to figure out where my authority begins and ends, if I even have any. The answer I'm currently working with is that I am \"technical lead\" of the team. This seems to mean that my authority is over technical decisions regarding architecture, design, and process/coding standards as they pertain to the product code itself. Today something came up and the results of code I delegated to one of the members of my team where shown to the rest of the company in our Scrum show- it-all-off meeting. The customer representative person does the showing off. Something was shown off today that I really disagreed with and nobody had ever even asked me if I wanted to have a say in what happened. In short, in order to provide the ability of a user to display a value in a report in the following manners (\"doc\" units, design units, rounded, not rounded) they provided access fields for each permutation. Thus we have the value in rounded doc units, rounded design units, unrounded doc units, unrounded design units. Each record that the user will be wishing to work with has many such values and each one is permuted in this manner. I really hate this. The people we showed this to want to make sure that the API we use for reports is the same as the way we do things like export data to Excel. Unfortunately, now we're gaining this momentum in a direction that I think is really, really bad. I did get a little upset at the next meeting and I asked the two people who'd done this, \"Why wasn't I involved in this decision??\" It's an issue that keeps coming up and I have a hard time it seems to just get people on the team I'm supposed to be leading to ask me if I want to be involved. Sometimes I do not and I think whatever they come up with will be fine. Other times I do. Unless people ask me though it's hard to even know that something is going on that needs my input and they don't give me that opportunity. Unfortunately, my authority doesn't extend to telling people, \"Next time you go off and do something like this on your own without even talking to me, you're going to be disciplined.\" That's a \"PR\" issue that is one area that's quite clearly not in my scope of authority. That's fine with me actually since I don't want to have to deal with that kind of crap if someone else is willing. Today though, my manager, in front of everyone (which I guess is partly my fault too for bringing it up like that) told me that I can't be involved in every decision and need to delegate. I of course think I'm right....I always do. I don't say things I think are BS. I think I should have been approached about this issue and asked if I had a better idea. My direction for this would have actually been to just decide on ONE value to provide for now, since this was actually the very beginning stages of a new feature, and discuss options for providing further access in the future if so desired. I never would have approved of or recommended the current implementation and I really don't think it should have seen the light of day. The question is, am I the one being unreasonable? * * * Well, the two of us talked about it and agreed that we both \"dropped the ball\" and we seem to be on the same page. Monday mornings... We're going to try to make sure my role is clear in the team and that yeah, I get to decide when there's a design or task change that needs to happen; I get proposed to and either agree or decide I need to look deeper. Then there are some other bits I can try to work on to make sure they know that they can come to me."}
{"_id": "83633", "title": "License key solution in web application, what is the best approach?", "text": "I am stumped by a request from my manager. I work for a small startup and we developed a web application for a fixed rate with a maintenance agreement for a MUCH larger company. Knowing horror stories about how large companies will only pay their bills to the last second we decided that we would like to protect ourselves by being able to license this web application in a way that if we don't get paid the software no longer works. I have seen this done before for desktop applications however this will be a web application that they will host internally and will not be accessible from the Internet. What is the best approach to do this, we would like it to have a small footprint and would like the ability to renew the license key that they have distributed. Has anybody done something similar? Are we completely out of our minds? Does anybody have any better suggestions?"}
{"_id": "252386", "title": "Specific reasons why a top left origin is better/worse than a bottom left origin for computer graphics", "text": "I have been researching why the origins for most graphic applications are located in the top left corner of the screen. From everything I have read, they are located there because that is where the electron gun on a cathode ray tube would start to scan, from top to bottom. _Other than this historical reason, is there any usefulness to having the origin in the upper left hand corner versus (which is personally more natural to me) the bottom left hand corner?_ From my knowledge, I can't think of any reason that one origin might be more useful than the other. In terms of math, I don't think it should make any difference, as long as the relation between the pixels/point in the image stay the same you should be able to apply any mathematical transformation in the same way using either origin. I am specifically looking for examples that show why it would be better to use one origin over the other, and not just for the reason that \"this is the way it was done before\" or \"its easier this way because device x uses it\" because all of those reasons relate back to the historical reason."}
{"_id": "252380", "title": "Alternatives to the use of the Id/Name properties with non-inputs elements in HTML", "text": "I'm migrating a website that use Javacsript/HTML/PHP using reusable javascript code, in certain moment I saw the opportunity to simplify code in functions that use almost the same code. **Let's say** : _I want to display values from the database into various`<span>` or `<div>` elements using AJAX. all the referred elements use the same layout to display the data, the difference only resides in the element id or a minimal procedure to validate data._ **That's all.** However, I quickly came to the conclusion that I don't have a way to refer a specific element in HTML without use the `id` property, and the only alternative that I think was the use of `name` property. I know that this property it's only for `<input>` in a `<form>`,and because this elements are not `<input>` this rule doesn't _apply_ ( _I know that in HTML the rules are not enforced_ ). The basic idea is to stop using `id`s to make my code more reusable. To pass from this:               <div id='sGroupName1'>       +---<div id='elementA1'>       |     +---<span id='txtA1'>       +---<div id='elementB1'>             +---<span id='txtB1'>          <div id='sGroupName2'>       +---<div id='elementA2'>       |     +---<span id='txtA2'>       +---<div id='elementB2'>             +---<span id='txtB2'>      to this:               <div id='sGroupName1'>       +---<div name='elementA'>       |     +---<span name='txtA'>       +---<div name='elementB'>             +---<span name='txtB'>          <div id='sGroupName2'>       +---<div name='elementA'>       |     +---<span name='txtA'>       +---<div name='elementB'>             +---<span name='txtB'>      Doing my code in this way, i think will break the HTML5 conformity rules. I know this isn't a problem _per se_ , because I have solved in not orthodox way, but I want to hear what is the best way to deal with this situations. I know that exist a question related HTML - Alternative for ID when ID is only unique within a certain scope? but in this case I don't want to deal with classes and CSS rules because the current page is using a lot of CSS and there are a lot Javascript function in the page that manipulates the CSS class, using Class as kind of identifier, I think would lead to some bugs (but not so sure)."}
{"_id": "218538", "title": "Why would someone use @Native annotations?", "text": "link : http://download.java.net/jdk8/docs/api/java/lang/annotation/Native.html In Java 8, there will be @Native annotations. > Indicates that a field defining a constant value may be referenced from > native code. The annotation may be used as a hint by tools that generate > native header files to determine whether a header file is required, and if > so, what declarations it should contain. Problem is: **What for?** Do you have any idea on which problematics would be efficiently solved by this feature?"}
{"_id": "202725", "title": "Recommened design pattern to handle multiple compression algorithms for a class hierarchy", "text": "For all you OOD experts. What would be the recommended way to model the following scenario? I have a certain class hierarchy similar to the following one:               class Base {        ...     }          class Derived1 : Base {        ...     }          class Derived2 : Base {        ...     }     ...      Next, I would like to implement different compression/decompression engines for this hierarchy. (I already have code for several strategies that best handle different cases, like file compression, network stream compression, legacy system compression, etc.) I would like the compression strategy to be pluggable and chosen at runtime, however I'm not sure how to handle the class hierarchy. Currently I have a tighly-coupled design that looks like this:               interface ICompressor {        byte[] Compress(Base instance);     }          class Strategy1Compressor : ICompressor {        byte[] Compress(Base instance) {                // Common compression guts for Base class           ...           //                if( instance is Derived1 ) {              // Compression guts for Derived1 class            }           if( instance is Derived2 ) {              // Compression guts for Derived2 class           }                // Additional compression logic to handle other class derivations           ...        }          }      As it is, whenever I add a new derived class inheriting from Base, I would have to modify all compression strategies to take into account this new class. **Is there a design pattern that allows me to decouple this, and allow me to easily introduce more classes to the Base hierarchy and/or additional compression strategies?**"}
{"_id": "202729", "title": "Best practice for storing HTML coming from text fields to a database?", "text": "I have an application that allows users to edit certain parts of text and then email that out. My question is what is the best way to store this in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Right now I have two tables, one holding the HTML data and one holding the plain text data. When the user saves the info, it replaces newlines with br's and puts it in the HTML-conntaining table and then puts the regular text in the other table. This way the text box has the newlines when they go to edit, but the table that contains the HTML data, has the BR's. This seems like a silly way to do things. What would be the best practice? Thanks."}
{"_id": "202567", "title": "Sharing business logic between server-side and client-side of web application?", "text": "Quick question concerning shared code/logic in back and front ends of a web application. I have a web application (Rails + heavy JS) that parses metadata from HTML pages fetched via a user supplied URL (think Pinterest or Instapaper). Currently this processing takes place exclusively on the client-side. The code that fetches the URL and parses the DOM is in a fairly large set of JS scripts in our Rails app. Occasionally want to do this processing on the server-side of the app. For example, what if a user supplied a URL but they have JS disabled or have a non-standard compliant browser, etc. Ideally I'd like to be able to process these URLS in Ruby on the back-end (in asynchronous background jobs perhaps) using the same logic that our JS parsers use WITHOUT porting the JS to Ruby. I've looked at systems that allow you to execute JS scripts in the backend like execjs as well as Ruby-to-Javascript compilers like OpalRB that would hopefully allow \"write-once, execute many\", but I'm not sure that either is the right decision. Whats the best way to avoid business logic duplication for apps that need to do both client-side and server-side processing of similar data?"}
{"_id": "159846", "title": "Why does the C library use macros and functions with same name?", "text": "I am reading 'The Standard C Library' by PJ Plauger which is really interesting. The book explains not only how to USE the library but also how it is implemented. I have finished reading the `ctype.h` section and in the header the functions are declared as both macros AND functions. For example               int isdigit(int);      but also               #define isdigit(c) (_Ctype[(int)(c)] & _DI)      I don't understand why BOTH are used? Also, if I try to recreate my own custom `ctype` header and implementation, I can only compile successfully if I remove the macro (comment out the define). This aspect was not really explained in the book. Can someone please explain?"}
{"_id": "226129", "title": "DI or Factory Pattern ? Both ? or a different apprach?", "text": "Lets say we have an abstract class called `BaseSwitch`, inherited by concrete implementations `Switch A` and `Switch B`, Each Switch representing a real- life switch (A telephony tool which among its responsibilities is writing CDR; all data records of calls hitting the switch). Each Switch in real life writes CDR in a different format and to different sources, say some switch writes to a text file another writes to a MySQL database. The Switches as entities and CDR details are defined by the system's end user My goal is writing `Importer` classes responsible for importing CDR based on the source of the data determined by the switch entity into my system, but hiding the `Importer` from the switch classes. The layer responsible for importing the CDR will loop upon switches, and instatiate an 'Importer' object, based on the CDR format defined in each switch. Can anyone suggest an approach to use ? EDIT : More clarification Below : public class SwitchBase { public abstract string CDRFormat { get; } }               public class SwitchA:SwitchBase     {         public override string abc         {             get { return \"Text\"; }         }               }          public class SwitchB : SwitchBase     {         public override string CDRFormat         {             get { return \"MySQLDatabase\"; }         }     }               public class CDR     { }          public class MySQLImporter     {         ICollection<CDR> GetCDR()         {             //DoSomething         }     }          public class TextImporter     {         ICollection<CDR> GetCDR()         {             //DoSomething         }     }"}
{"_id": "178478", "title": "Benefit of using Data URI to embed images within HTML document and its cross-browser compatibility", "text": "I want to embed an image using Data URI within HTML document so that we don't need image as a separate attachment, we get just one HTML file that contains the actual image. What are its advantages and disadvantages? Does IE10 supports it? Is it useful to have such an implementation? I am working on an application, where we have html documents that link towards images stored in some location. If I use tiny online editor, as images are saved somewhere in the server, while editing the document, i can provide a link towards that image, but can't preview the final document with images from within tiny editor. If I chose to download the file locally, then i will need to download the images from server side. It looks a bit overkill, so I thought if Data URI could be used in such a situation."}
{"_id": "233375", "title": "Euclidean Space Fully Connected Nondirectional Graph: Shortest Path to all nodes", "text": "So this may be a question that is born of my inability to properly express my intentions to Google. In a fully connected non-directional graph such that any three points can be properly represented in a triangle in Euclidean geometry it would seem that a greedy first algorithm which chooses the shortest edge would find the shortest path from a starting point to visit all other points. I can't find a condition under which this is false, but one of my neighbors (another programmer) insists that I am wrong, though still cannot come up with a condition where I am wrong. Edit: I am not sure this question is an instance of of the general TSP, which I know is NP hard, or if it is I thought that all of the constraints on the allowed graphs would have impacted the difficulty. From wiki: TSP is `the shortest possible route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city`. In this problem there is no requirement to return to the origin city. Further, we don't care about selecting the optimal origin city since the origin city is set in our specific example that we were discussing. Additionally, the graph in this problem must conform to the constraints of euclidean distances in either 2 or 3 dimensions so a three node graph such as below (key is the node, val is the distances between other nodes) could not exist since the edge from A to B would make the edges from C to A and B infeasible. ` A:{B:80, C:10}, B:{A:80, C:5}, C:{A:10, B:5} ` Also by fully connected I meant all nodes have edges between them and every other node. Sorry if the description came off as confusing, but I am wondering if given all these constraints, does it become solvable in a more simplistic manner."}
{"_id": "233378", "title": "Porting an open source project from ISC license and public domain", "text": "I have ported libsodium and NaCl to .NET. NaCl is the original project that is in the public domain while libsodium is a derived work from NACL and is using the ISC license. I looked at both projects to port the code to .NET. For my project I prefer to use MPL v2, but I'm not sure I'm allowed to change the original license. I know ISC is a permissive but it's not clear if I can use another license for my work. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "233379", "title": "Developing a virtual machine / sandbox", "text": "I'm interested in learning how a virtual machine/sandbox actually works. I have developed an 8051 emulator and also wrote a dissassembler for x86, so this part of a virtual machine is not really the problem. What I'm interested in, is the sandbox functionality of it. To illustrate what I mean consider this example. Let's assume I have a function which simply opens a file. So nothing fancy.                int fd = open(path);      Now when this code is executed natively it will go to the operating system and opens the file (assuming that it exists). Now when I run this in a virtual machine environment, the specified path is not the one that the operating system sees, but rather something that the VM will substitute, thus redirecting the open call. So what I'm interested in is, how a VM can do this, when the executed code is run natively (like x86 on a x86) because for an interpreted VM it is rather obvious. When I google for virtual machines I either find only links talking about interpreters like Java, LLVM or similar, but nothing that goes into more detail. I downloaded the sourcecode from Oracle Virtual Box, but as this is a rather big codebase, it's quite hard to understand the concept just form digging in that code."}
{"_id": "178470", "title": "What does an interviewer notice most on my resume?", "text": "When applying for a position such as a software developer for a company, what does an interviewer notice **most** on my resume concerning the work i have done? Is he/she concerned with the amount of work i do with others(Open source projects), The specific accomplishments I've made in my field(programs, apps) or the amount of time i spend helping others(forums, mentoring)? For those of you who have applied and work/worked in a position similar to a software developer,In your personal experience, what do you think helped you the most in landing the job? P.s. if 'software developer' is to broad a term, i would specifically enjoy working with teams to create large applications such as dropbox / google / skype etc..."}
{"_id": "178476", "title": "What type of pattern would be used in this case", "text": "I want to know how to tackle this type of scenario. We are building a person's background, from scratch, and I want to know, conceptually, how to proceed with a secure object pattern in both design and execution... I've been reading on Factory patterns, Model-View-Controller types, Dependency injection, Singleton approaches... and I can't seem to grasp or 'fit' these types of designs decisions into what I'm trying to do.. First and foremost, I started with having a big jack-of-all-trades class, then I read some more, and some tips were to make sure your classes only have a single purpose.. which makes sense and I started breaking down certain things into other classes. Okay, cool. Now I'm looking at dependency injection and kind of didn't really know what's going on. Example/insight of what kind of hierarchy I need to accomplish...   * class Person needs to access and build from a multitude of different classes.      * class Culture needs to access a sub-class for culture benefits     * class Social needs to access class Culture, and other sub-classes     * class Birth needs to access Social, Culture, and other sub-classes     * class Childhood/Adolescence/Adulthood need to access everything. Also, depending on different rolls, this class hierarchy needs to create multiple people as well, such as Family, and their backgrounds using some, if not all, of these same classes. Think of it as a people generator, all random, with backgrounds and things that happen to them. Aging, death of loved ones, military careers, e.t.c. Most of the generation is done randomly, making calls to a mt_rand function to pick from most of the selections inside the classes, guaranteeing the data to be absolutely random. I have most of the bulk-data down, and was looking for some insight from fellow programmers, what do you think? **EDIT** Flowchart added. I decided to leave a few things out, but you get the idea.. I didn't really know what types of visuals to use, so I prioritized the boxes importance by size, and the most connections. The non-boxes are flavor text, with no life altering events. ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZdYkq.jpg](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZdYkq.jpg)"}
{"_id": "8034", "title": "License requirements for including open source software", "text": "In an open source project, a number of other open source libraries have been included to implement needed functionality, some as libraries (LGPL), and some as source code (non-LGPL). The new BSD license was selected for the project. The included open source libraries are licensed under the new BSD, MIT, Apache, and LGPL licenses, but no GPL licensed code. How should these other open source libraries be credited?   Do all the library licenses need to be included in the main project license file?   Is it sufficient to just provide links to the project web sites in the Help->About dialog and documentation?   Is any credit _really_ needed?"}
{"_id": "76204", "title": "CRM: In-House vs. OTS", "text": "Many, many years ago, when I was young and naive and wrote everything from scratch unless it came with the language, I was working for a company with two sales people in two locations who were trying to share leads and contacts. I had just discovered a shiny new hammer, PHP, so of course I built them what I would today would describe as a primitive MySQL backed CRM system. They loved it--at this point most in history all their competitors were using local Access databases. I have since learned how much easier life is when you don't try to reinvent the wheel. I am again faced with a growing company that needs an online CRM system. I am roughly aware of what CRM systems do of course, but I am not very familiar with what exactly products like MS Dynamics or SAP offer. I am having a hard time sorting through marketing fluff trying to figure out just what exactly these companies spend tens of millions of dollars and euros developing. Most of them appear to be fairly straightforward enterprise applications with a few bells and whistles that I'm not really interested in, such as Outlook and Sharepoint integration or the ability to create workflows through a click-and-drag interface. So my question is, are you crazy to attempt to develop a custom CRM system from scratch?"}
{"_id": "207801", "title": "What does IE mean by saying \"'console' is undefined\"?", "text": "I like IE's persnicketiness (the debugging tools that take you right to your code is even more user-friendly than what I've found in F12 Chrome Dev Tools), but why does it say, \"'console' is undefined\" re: this line of jQjuery:               console.log(\"entered submit button click\");      How could _console_ be undefined? Neither Chrome nor Firefox complain about it... And ironically, IE shows me this error message where? In the \"Console\" tab! Shirley it couldn't be case-sensitive, and it expects \"Console.log\"? BTW and anyway, I'm impressed with IE's F12 tools; I wonder if it's \"The Avis Effect\" at work - they were #5 (among Browsers) and have thus begun fighting like a rabid wolverine to claw and scratch their way upwards?"}
{"_id": "163981", "title": "Have javac call automatically run java", "text": "I want to be able to call `javac <class file name>`, and then automatically run java on the compiled `.class` file. I thought initially to use a x86 disassembler to hack it (javac.exe) but bumped that idea; I then found the open source code for JDK, and concluded that maybe a batch file would be easier. How can I do this?"}
{"_id": "182066", "title": "does haskell have dependent types?", "text": "The questions all the title. Just to clarify, Haskell already has the ability to parametise a type over another type (this is just like template programming in c++), but can it parametise a type over values - this is a dependent type. So for example you can have a type thats parametised over the integers, for example vectors of size n, matrices of size n x m, etc. If not, why not. And is there any possibility that it will be supported in the future?"}
{"_id": "207804", "title": "Compiler design decision for dynamic method invocation", "text": "I asked about Compiler interpretation of overriding vs overloading on StackOverflow, and got good answers, but this led me to another question that I'm not sure is appropriate for SO, but I think is for here. One should read the original question and accepted answer, but perhaps it's understandable just by looking at the code below:               public static void whatIs(Circle s)     {         System.out.println(\"Circle\");     }     public static void whatIs(Square s)     {         System.out.println(\"Square\");     }      and we attempt to call,               whatIs(shapes[0]); //array of Shape objects (interface implemented by Circle,Square)     whatIs(shapes[1]);      we will get two errors (one for `Square` and one for `Circle`) indicating that: >   * method Driver.whatIs(Square) is not applicable >     * actual argument Shape cannot be converted to Square by method > invocation conversion > As is suggested in my question, using `instanceof` can give the desired results, and as the answered suggested: > The compiler could auto generate code like >   >   >     if (shapes[0] instanceof Circle) >     { >         whatIs((Circle) shapes[0]); //prints \"Circle\" >     } >   **but, it does not**. Just to be clear, I know one can use an abstract class instead of an interface to achieve similar functionality, nonetheless, does anyone know why the Java compiler won't automatically do this for you? I'm not a compilers guy, but I have a feeling that this is not an opinion based question. I assume that there is a good reason for this decision."}
{"_id": "163985", "title": "Why is the concept of lazy evaluation useful?", "text": "It seems lazy evaluation of expressions can cause a programmer to lose control over the order in which their code is executed. I am having trouble understanding why this would be acceptable or desired by a programmer. How can this paradigm be used to build predictable software that works as intended, when we have no guarantee when and where an expression will be evaluated?"}
{"_id": "12589", "title": "Graduate expectations versus reality", "text": "When choosing what we want to study, and do with our careers and lives, we all have some expectations of what it is going to be like. Now that I've been in the industry for almost a decade, I've been reflecting a bit on what I thought (back when I was studying Computer Science) programming working life was going to be like, and how it's actually turning out to be. My two biggest shocks (or should I say, broken expectations) by far are the sheer amount of maintenance work involved in software, and the overall lack of professionalism:   1. **Maintenance** : At uni, we were all told that the majority of software work is maintenance of existing systems. So I knew to expect this in the abstract. But I never imagined exactly how overwhelming this would turn out to be. Perhaps it's something I mentally glazed over, and hoped I'd be building cool new stuff from scratch a lot more. But it really is the case that most jobs are overwhelmingly maintenance, bug fixing, and support oriented.   2. **Lack of professionalism** : At uni, I always had the impression that commercial software work is very process-oriented and stringently engineered. I had images of ISO processes, reams of technical documentation, every feature and bug being strictly documented, and a generally professional environment. It came as a huge shock to realise that most software companies operate no differently to a team of students working on a large semester-long project. And I've worked in both the small agile hack shop, and the medium sized corporate enterprise. While I wouldn't say that it's always been outright \"unprofessional\", it definitely feels like the software industry (on the whole) is far from the strong engineering discipline that I expected it to be. Has anyone else had similar experiences to this? What are the ways in which your expectations of what our profession would be like were different to the reality?"}
{"_id": "59928", "title": "Difference Between Unit Testing and Test Driven Development", "text": "From reading the descriptions, I understand that in TDD tests are done prior to writing the function and in Unit Testing, its done afterwards. Is this the main difference, or the two terms can't even be compared as such. Perhaps, Unit Testing is an integrated part of TDD."}
{"_id": "99735", "title": "TDD - is it just about unit tests?", "text": "Do I understand it right that classical TDD is just about unit tests? Don't understand me wrong: I know the difference between TDD and just unit testing. I am asking whether it is correct to use integration test in TDD workflow. Currently I work on the project where TDD is surely only about unit tests and there is at least one serious problem with it. The majority of our unit tests are behavioural tests which often become false negative (false red) during refactoring (just because some sequence of dependencies calls changed). The project was created in TDD style to make refactoring simple and suddenly refactoring became a hell. Epic fail! The most obvious decision now is to make our test not unit but integrational (but still with TDD). So if previously we stubbed/mocked class dependencies, now we won't do it (at least not all of them). As result most of our tests will become state (instead of behavioural). And state tests become false negative much more seldom (because they test the result but not the workflow of execution). So I would like to know how widespread is an approach of using TDD with integration tests. Is it okay? Would be grateful for any resources on this topic. I have read this article but it is a bit... strange **Update.** Here I will clarify what I mean under unit test and integration test. Unit test is a test which stubs/mocks all class dependencies. Integration test has real implementations of dependencies (although it can stub/mock some dependencies if needed)."}
{"_id": "86657", "title": "How do you successfully hire out a few programmers to make it cost effective?", "text": "Many of us know this situation well: we're a one-man (woman) development team, we need some extra help to keep up with all the tasks, the budget is small and we decide to get some help. But hiring someone is difficult. Either the person is inexperienced and I end up becoming their full-time teacher in the hopes they will produce work they way I want, or the person is skilled but for whatever reason doesn't hand over code within budget that I can just plug in and use without reworking it myself. Any thoughts/ideas?"}
{"_id": "44915", "title": "Is a Model Driven Architecture in Language Oriented Programming (MPS) feasible at this time", "text": "As a side project I am developing some sort of DSL where I describe a data model, and generate desired code files from it. I believe this is called Model Driven Architecture. My partial existing implementation uses C#, CodeDOM, XML and XSLT to do this manually. I discovered there already exist better environments to do this in. The one which fascinated me the most is called MPS, which follows the Language Oriented Programming paradigm. This article, written by a cofounder of JetBrains was a real eye opener for me. I truly believe LOP has a very good chance of becoming the next big programming paradigm once it has broader support. From my short experience with MPS, I noticed it is still mainly Java- oriented. My question is, how feasible is it to generate code files for other (multiple) languages instead of just Java. I don't need full language support from the start, so preferably, I need to be able to implement a language in a agile way. E.g. first support only one type, add access modifiers, ... Perhaps some other (free) environment already provides this out of the box. P.S.: I find it important to have a lot of control over the naming conventions and such of the generated code. This is one of the reasons why I started my own implementation. UPDATE: Judging from the answers it seems like people think I'm only interested in .NET solutions. This is not the case, any other suggestions are highly welcomed!"}
{"_id": "44918", "title": "How should I study programming languages?", "text": "I am a student of computer engineering. I have never done any programming before, and as you can understand, I don't know how to study it or how to make my own programs. My English is weak [edited for clarity - ed], and so if you don't like the choices I list, please feel free to provide others. How should I study? How should I learn programming languages?   1. Study completely from a book.   2. Don't study from a book, just try writing code.   3. A mix of the two; study from a book, then try writing code.   4. Study half the book, then write the code by hand on paper.   5. Listed to the teacher, then try to solve general problems (those not from any specific chapter)."}
{"_id": "95966", "title": "How important are Haskell's advanced concepts like Monads and Applicative Functors for most routine programming tasks?", "text": "I've read the Learn You a Haskell book up to the point where they introduce Monads and stuff like Just a. These are so counterintuitive for me that I just feel like giving up trying to learn it. But I really want to try. I'm wondering if I can at least avoid the advanced concepts for a while and just starting using the other parts of the language to do a lot of practical tasks with the more basic parts of Haskell, i.e. functions, standard IO, file handling, database interfacing and the like. Is this a reasonable approach to learning how to use Haskell?"}
{"_id": "86659", "title": "Does new generation of programmers use Emacs?", "text": "I know that Emacs was very popular a few decades ago, but now - when there are a lot of IDEs and text editors, is it still popular between us?"}
{"_id": "103850", "title": "As a high school student what should I be doing to make myself better/more hireable?", "text": "I'm a year away from university/college at this point in time, I'm currently 17 years old and practice programming as a hobby. I'd like to get a job one day in the market, I -love- programming. And I was wondering what would be my best course of action at the moment to get myself ready for a potential career in programming? I've talked to a couple comp sci majors and it doesn't seem like what they're doing isn't terribly hard (although, I'm sure it differs from school to school). I kind of feel like I'm in an odd limbo where it's gotten a bit stale, because I don't feel like I'm making 'progress'. As far as programming this is my current skill set: Languages: Lua, I know this one very well, I'd put myself at least a little bit past 'moderate' with Lua, I know how to use it's features and what to do, and not to do. C, I know C in a way I'd call a bit below moderate, I can write C but I don't know the best practices, and I often find myself consulting documentation on C. Projects: I've made a couple toy interpreters, I shipped a roleplaying modification for a Garrys Mod (while this doesn't sound like much, I and my friend have produced at -least- 20,000 lines, including comments and such), and I've made a couple small games. Experience: I'm fairly familiar with GNU tools and Linux, I can write a basic makefile etc. I know how to use command line tools, and I use Linux as my day to day operating system, but also have years of experience with Windows. I know how to use Git and SVN (I'm a master at niether, but I can use them well enough to maintain a project.) So if there's anything you guys could suggest? Should I be actively doing things now or just kind of waiting it out for university? I'm feeling lost. Edit: I put \"is\" instead of \"isn't\" terribly hard. What I meant to say is all the Comp Sci major I've talked to said that the material isn't terrible hard if you've got a bit of experience programming."}
{"_id": "194939", "title": "How to prepare for a programming job?", "text": "I'm basically done with my computer science classes in college but I don't seem to be \"ready\" for a computer science job, nor am I in a position to get an internship at the moment. I'm wondering if there is any way to prepare and gain experience I would need for a job without having an actual degree yet. Any certain books I can read or skills I should learn that would help? Thank you."}
{"_id": "219665", "title": "CSS structure for creating responsive websites", "text": "I'm a back-end engineer who works on a small team so occasionally needs to do some front-end. I like to develop a good workflow and project structure before I start anything, so I'm wondering about creating a responsive front-end for a web app. What's a best-practice way to strcture CSS for creating responsive websites that need to \"scale down\" for smaller screens? Specifically: do you create the mobile version first, then expand the code with min-width media queries in the CSS? Or do you do the opposite, creating the desktop-resolution version first? Secondly, do you define multiple element selectors and definitions in the same media query? Or do you define a media query for each element and selector? It would seem that the second method would make for more readable code perhaps -- although it's certainly more frustrating to \"tweak\" a working site to create a new version with media queries rather than simple fence-off the old settings in one media query and re-style the necessary parts from the new version from scratch."}
{"_id": "219662", "title": "NT Kernel Source", "text": "Well, the first question would be: Is it legal to take hold of the NT Kernel Source? If so, proceed to the second paragraph; if not, proceed to the third. The first thing you'd probably ask is \"Why NT Kernel Source?\" The answer is simply, I want to make my own OS compatible with Windows. This is of course, all a hobby, and I'm not planning any large project. Ignore this if it's possible to get an NT Kernel Source: \"ReactOS\" I'm pretty sure that it uses Window's source code itself, with a few minor exceptions, so I'd like to know how they got the code."}
{"_id": "160250", "title": "Implementing cache system in Java Web Application", "text": "I worked with JPA (Eclipselink implementation) and Hibernate. As I understand these two have great caching systems. I am interested in caching in a Web application and in order to better understand the process I'm trying to implement something on my own. Sadly, I cannot find any in depth documentation about this subject. I'm interested in things like high scalability, sharing memory on different machines and other important theoretical matters. Is there any tutorial or open project I could check out? Thank you! *LE: * I want to cache DB information in POJOs just like JPA or Eclipselink"}
{"_id": "138043", "title": "Is Visual Source Safe (The latest Version) really that bad? Why? What's the Best Alternative? Why?", "text": "Over the years I've constantly heard horror stories, had people say \"Real Programmers Dont Use VSS\", and so on. BUT, then in the workplace I've worked at two companies, one, a very well known public facing high traffic website, and another high end Financial Services \"Web-Based\" hosted solution catering to some very large, very well known companies, which is where I currently Reside and everything's working just fine (KNOCK KNOCK!!). I'm constantly interfacing with EXTREMELY Old technology with some of these financial institutions.. OLD LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE.. which leads me to the conclusion that if it works \"LEAVE IT\", and that maybe there's some value in old technology? at least enough value to overrule a rewrite!? right?? Is there something fundamentally flawed with the underlying technology that VSS uses? I have a feeling that if i said \"someone said VSS Sucks\" they would beg to differ, most likely give me this look like i dont know -ish, and I'd never gain back their respect and my credibility (well, that'll be hard to blow.. lol), BUT, give me an argument that I can take to someone whose been coding for 30 years, that builds Platforms that leverage current technology (.NET 3.5 / SQL 2008 R2 ), write's their own ORM with scaffolding and is able to provide a quality platform that supports thousands of concurrent users on a multi-tenant hosted solution, and does not agree with any benefits from having Source Control Integrated, and yet uses the Infamous Visual Source Safe. I have extensive experience with TFS up to 2010, and honestly I think it's great when a team (beyond developers) can embrace it. I've worked side by side with someone whose a die hard SVN'r and from a purist standpoint, I see the beauty in it (I need a bit more, out of my SS, but it surely suffices). So, why are such smarties not running away from Visual Source Safe? surely if it was so bad, it would've have been realized by now, and I would not be sitting here with this simple old, Check In, Check Out, Version Resistant, Label Intensive system. But here I am... I would love to drop an argument that would be the end all argument, but if it's a matter of opinion and personal experience, there seems to be too much leeway for keeping VSS. UPDATE: I guess the best case is to have the VSS supporters check other people's experiences and draw from that until we (please no) experience the breaking factor ourselves. Until then, i wont be engaging in a discussion to migrate off of VSS.. UPDATE 11-2012: So i was able to convince everyone at my work place that since MS is sun downing Visual Source Safe it might be time to migrate over to TFS. I was able to convince them and have recently upgraded our team to Visual Studio 2012 and TFS 2012. The migration was fairly painless, had to run analyze.exe which found a bunch of errors (not sure they'll ever affect the project) and then manually run the VSSConverter.exe. Again, painless, except it took 16 hours to migrate 5 years worth of everything.. and now we're on TFS.. much more integrated.. much more cooler.. so all in all, VSS served it's purpose for years without hick-up. There were no horror stories and Visual Source Save as source control worked just fine. so to all the nay sayers (me included). there's nothing wrong with using VSS. i wouldnt start a new project with it, and i would definitely consider migrating to TFS. (it's really not super difficult and a new \"wizard\" type converter is due out any day now so migrating should be painless). But from my experience, it worked just fine and got the job done."}
{"_id": "127534", "title": "Why do programming language (open) standards cost money?", "text": "Isn't it counter-productive to ask for 384 Swiss franks for C11 or 352 Swiss franks for C++11, if the aim is to make the standards widely adopted? Please note, I'm not ranting at all, and I'm not against paying; I would like to understand the rationale behind setting the prices as such, especially knowing that ISO is network of national standard institutes (i.e. funded by governments). And I also doubt that these prices would generate enough income to fund an organization like that, so there must be another reason."}
{"_id": "65065", "title": "Struggling not to use Hungarian notation", "text": "I've seen arguments for and against Systems Hungarian. For some years I've been working on a legacy project that uses this system by naming every variable, function with a prefix of the variable type eg (strName, intAge, btnSubmit etc) (I know the original Hungarian Apps prefixes by the kind of variable, not the type). I'd like my next project to abandon it fully, but I do find it harder to name similar things uniquely without resorting to it. Lets say I have an webform for collecting email addresses and storing them in a database table, and button which calls the function which save the address to the db. If I'm using Hungarian style notation, I might call the box `txtEmail` the button `btnEmail` and the value contained in the textbox `strEmail`. I might then use a function `storeEmail(strEmail)` to store the email. I have a clear convention here, it's obvious what each variable is. What would be the best practice for naming these variables   * without resorting to Hungarian Systems,   * without making them over long or confusing   * and with a clear convention to use across the whole of my project?"}
{"_id": "65060", "title": "How much to each part?", "text": "I have been involved in a project and now it is coming to an end. The good news is the company will start to commercialize the software which is specific software to ISPs. As a programmer / developer of the project, I intend to still support the project, attend to new custommer customizations, basically the software will still alive and be sold in the market. How much should I charge to stay ON the project? Should I charge per hour? per month? or even by percent over each customer? What is the default for this kind of situation? or How do most programmers/developers deal with that? Thanks in advance, It is a very important question to me."}
{"_id": "158179", "title": "How important is it to implement a caching system in an MVC style framework?", "text": "I am writing my own PHP framework (...waits for the groans to subside) for the purpose of learning (best practices, design principals etc.) as I'm entirely self-taught and consequently there are gaps in my knowledge. I understand that most mainstream frameworks incorporate some form of caching system, which I'm guessing is for keeping regularly used classes and/or other files close by for fast loading (right?). Ideally I envisage a system that is somewhat self monitoring and self managing in that it tracks class/file usage, memory limits and request processing performance, removing items from cache automatically when no longer needed or increasing the cache size when performance drops too low etc. (even some form of basic garbage collection is better than nothing, right?). So my questions are:   * Firstly: Have I understood everything correctly so far?   * How important is it to implement this kind of system over regular include/require methods?   * How can I determine memory usage and other system performance metrics?   * To cache classes do I have to use the '_ _sleep()' and '_ _wakeup()' magic methods?   * I also gather that to be stored a class has to be serialized. Should I use a $_SESSION variable, a temporary DB table or some kind of flat-file / SQLite DB as the cache? Thanks for any and all help / suggestions."}
{"_id": "208168", "title": "Match two strings but allow for a degree of error", "text": "How can I match two strings, but at the same time allow for X number of characters to be incorrect in the match. The number of errors should be a controllable variable. While X number of characters can not match in the string there should be a limit as to how many run in a sequence. Given two strings I might allow 5 characters to be different, but not more than 2 in a row. I'm looking for a recommended algorithm for comparing these two strings, or maybe there is already a known solution for this."}
{"_id": "154849", "title": "Best practice for writing a service", "text": "We currently have a C++ socket server used by a java client. All of the socket code in both C++ and java is stick-built at a low-level with messages passed via JSON strings. Are there cots packages or better techniques commonly used in this situation to reduce the cost of future development and maintenance?"}
{"_id": "163062", "title": "Java exam: prebuilt methods?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is using build-in sorting considered cheating in practice tests? I'm studying for a Java exam at the university. In your opinion, could I use, during the exam,               Arrays.sort(intArray);      instead of creating my own algorithm? How would you judge it, if you were the professor?"}
{"_id": "244875", "title": "How to save and clear Files/PDFs received from web service in iOS apps?", "text": "My web service will send me a PDF and I have to store it locally on my iphone app and share it through whatsapp later. So how can I save this file received in my app for later sharing?   How can I again clear that from local db so that app is not heavy. Thanks"}
{"_id": "244878", "title": "Is there a more intelligent way to do this besides a long chain of if statements or switch?", "text": "I'm implementing an IRC bot that receives a message and I'm checking that message to determine which functions to call. Is there a more clever way of doing this? It seems like it'd quickly get out of hand after I got up to like 20 commands. Perhaps there's a better way to abstract this?                public void onMessage(String channel, String sender, String login, String hostname, String message){                  if (message.equalsIgnoreCase(\".np\")){     //            TODO: Use Last.fm API to find the now playing             } else if (message.toLowerCase().startsWith(\".register\")) {                     cmd.registerLastNick(channel, sender, message);             } else if (message.toLowerCase().startsWith(\"give us a countdown\")) {                     cmd.countdown(channel, message);             } else if (message.toLowerCase().startsWith(\"remember am routine\")) {                     cmd.updateAmRoutine(channel, message, sender);             }         }"}
{"_id": "120621", "title": "How can I permute pairs across a set?", "text": "I am writing a bet settling app in C# and WinForms. I have 6 selections, 4 of them have won. I know that using the following formula from Excel:               =FACT(selections)/(FACT(selections-doubles))/FACT(doubles)      This is coded into my app and working well: I can work out how many possible doubles (e.g., AB, AC, AD, AE, BC, BD, BE, etc.) need to be resolved. But what I can't figure out is how to do the actual calculation. How can I efficiently code it so that every combination of A, B, C, and D has been calculated? All my efforts thus far on paper have proved to be ugly and verbose: is there an elegant solution to this problem?"}
{"_id": "22749", "title": "What advantages do continuous integration tools offer on a solo project?", "text": "If you're doing a solo project - would you use CI tools to build from a repository? I've used Hudson and Cruise Control in a team environment, where it's essential to build as soon as anyone checks anything in. I think the value of version control is still obvious, but do I need to build after every commit, seeing as I would just have built on my local machine, and no-one else is committing?"}
{"_id": "68522", "title": "Correct way to handle sample logins or test accounts", "text": "In my JSP web application, I want to redirect sample users to a different page from the real users. Currently we do something like               if((user.getName().equalsIgnoreCase(\"Sample\")) ...      This is (a) hardcoded and (b) executed for each normal user as well. Is there a better way to handle this logic? I am loathe to redirect these users via Javascript validation - which is one of the suggestions given internally"}
{"_id": "212588", "title": "Loadbalancing and failover in code", "text": "I have HTTPS based webservices (not REST, rather old code). I am generating Java client stubs using Axis & using that to call the webservices. There are around 20 different APIs on the webservice. I have 2 servers hosting the webservices (identical - 2 servers are being used for redundancy) and data is synced between the 2 servers - so that same API called either server produces the same result). I do not have hardware or software load balancers or clusters. So I am planning to implement the failover & loadbalancing in code (the failover is important, it's OK even if I don't do load balancing). I was planning to do this in code i.e if I get a connect exception, I will trap the exception and do the same Webservice call on the other server. I was wondering if there are any known design patterns for this or any pitfalls I should be aware of."}
{"_id": "212587", "title": "Why to have an application with GUI on linux when command line is available?", "text": "If the question appears to be off topic then please migrate to some other suitable domain on stackexchange. **Q.why to have GUI along with CLI, when you already have command line interface?** I'm currently developing an application. As of now application has a command line interface. The target machines for application will be **80% servers and 20% workstations**. I'm considering to provide GUI too for the application. **GUI Use Case:** Product registration is main use case i.e. my product needs license key to run. And after that only some text info will be shown every time its launched. Only 2-3 buttons to perform extended functions. **CLI Use Case:** Product registration will expect some arguments as command line arguments. Later the 2-3 extended functions available in GUI can also be started from command line."}
{"_id": "212585", "title": "Architecture strategies for a complex competition scoring system", "text": "Competition description:   * There are about 10 teams competing against each other over a 6-week period.   * Each team's total score (out of a 1000 total available points) is based on the total of its scores in about 25,000 different scoring elements.   * Most scoring elements are worth a small fraction of a point and there will about 10 X 25,000 = 250,000 total raw input data points.   * The points for some scoring elements are awarded at frequent regular time intervals during the competition. The points for other scoring elements are awarded at either irregular time intervals or at just one moment in time.   * There are about 20 different types of scoring elements.   * Each of the 20 types of scoring elements has a different set of inputs, a different algorithm for calculating the earned score from the raw inputs, and a different number of total available points. The simplest algorithms require one input and one simple calculation. The most complex algorithms consist of hundreds or thousands of raw inputs and a more complicated calculation.   * Some types of raw inputs are automatically generated. Other types of raw inputs are manually entered. All raw inputs are subject to possible manual retroactive adjustments by competition officials. Primary requirements:   * The scoring system UI for competitors and other competition followers will show current and historical total team scores, team standings, team scores by scoring element, raw input data (at several levels of aggregation, e.g. daily, weekly, etc.), and other metrics.   * There will be charts, tables, and other widgets for displaying historical raw data inputs and scores.   * There will be a quasi-real-time dashboard that will show current scores and raw data inputs.   * Aggregate scores should be updated/refreshed whenever new raw data inputs arrive or existing raw data inputs are adjusted.   * There will be a \"scorekeeper UI\" for manually entering new inputs, manually adjusting existing inputs, and manually adjusting calculated scores. Decisions:   * Should the scoring calculations be performed on the database layer (T-SQL/SQL Server, in my case) or on the application layer (C#/ASP.NET MVC, in my case)?   * What are some recommended approaches for calculating updated total team scores whenever new raw inputs arrives? Calculating each of the teams' total scores from scratch every time a new input arrives will probably slow the system to a crawl. I've considered some kind of \"diff\" approach, but that approach may pose problems for ad-hoc queries and some aggegates. I'm trying draw some sports analogies, but it's tough because most games consist of no more than 20 or 30 scoring elements per game (I'm thinking of a high-scoring baseball game; football and soccer have fewer scoring events per game). Perhaps a financial balance sheet analogy makes more sense because financial \"bottom line\" calcs may be calculated from 250,000 or more transactions.   * Should I be making heavy use of caching for this application?   * Are there any obvious approaches or similar case studies that I may be overlooking?"}
{"_id": "46637", "title": "Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being consistent, or not?", "text": "I have to extend an existing module of a project. I don't like the way it has been done (lots of anti-pattern involved, like copy/pasted code). I don't want to perform a complete refactor for many reasons. Should I:   * create new methods using existing convention, even if I feel it wrong, to avoid confusion for the next maintainer and being consistent with the code base? or   * try to use what I feel better even if it is introducing another pattern in the code ? * * * Precison edited after first answers: The existing code is not a mess. It is easy to follow and understand. BUT it is introducing lots of boilerplate code that can be avoided with good design (resulting code might become harder to follow then). In my current case it's a good old JDBC (spring template inboard) DAO module, but I have already encounter this dilemma and I'm seeking for other dev feedback. I don't want to refactor because I don't have time. And even with time it will be hard to justify that a whole perfectly working module needs refactoring. Refactoring cost will be heavier than its benefits. Remember: code is not messy or over-complex. I can not extract few methods there and introduce an abstract class here. It is more a flaw in the design (result of extreme 'Keep It Stupid Simple' I think) So the question can also be asked like that:   You, as developer, do you prefer to maintain easy stupid boring code OR to have some helpers that will do the stupid boring code at your place ? Downside of the last possibility being that you'll have to learn some stuff and maybe you will have to maintain the easy stupid boring code too until a full refactoring is done)"}
{"_id": "132214", "title": "How can I deal with developers who don't use English in code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being > consistent, or not? I'm working on a project for a Greek public organization, as a part for a course semester project. I have to develop a 3-tier application that manages financial data. A professor of mine acts as an advisor and is helping me on the project. I write my own code but there are also pieces of code written by other developers that I can also use, and some the code is also written by my professor. The Greek developers program without using any patterns or conventions, they are generally unaware of phrases like \"best-practices\" and \"programming methodology\". They just write code of pure quality. Most of them are at least 10 years more experienced than me but I am on my way. My professor is a \"pragmatic programmer\" and produces \"clean code that works\" of high quality. The Greek developers speak English as well. The problem is that some of them use greeklish for the various names of variables, classes and methods- obviously greek charachters cannot be used for such purposes. For example, the greek translation of \"user\" is \"\u03c7\u03c1\u03ae\u03c3\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2\" which in greeklish could be written in the following ways:   * xristis,    * xrhsths,    * hristis,    * christis,   * ... As a result, the same meaning can be expressed with different characters. Some of the developers use English in their code, and there are no naming conventions at all. I'm working on this project just for the sake of knowledge and further practice. I would like to apply practices I read in books in software that can also be used and modified by others. Should I keep using greeklish just to be in harmony with the already existing code? In that case, who knows In a few months I may get valuable feedback for my effort, which will eventually make me a better programmer. Or, should I just keep doing the right thing, taking example from my professor? In that case my code might be an one-use throw-away effort because none of the Greek developers would like to follow a new set of conventions."}
{"_id": "96246", "title": "When developing on an old code base, should I use Best Practices or go for Consistency", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being > consistent, or not ? As my experience in programming increases with each project, I look back at earlier projects and cringe at some of the ways the code is structured or how well i have implemented a design pattern. These projects are still utilized in production environments (without issue) and have new features implemented on a yearly cycle. Updating the entire structure is not feasible. When implementing new features should I structure the updates with best practices in mind, or should I keep to existing (inferior) structure to maintain consistency with the rest of the project?"}
{"_id": "213236", "title": "Clarification in steps OS takes during a page fault, related to TLB", "text": "I am reading the book operating systems by Galvin, and there is something I don't understand. Assume that there is a hardware managed Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB). Now when a program requests for a page which is in its own address space, but is not found in the TLB (miss), then which of the following happens? (assuming its not in the page table either) **OPTION 1**   1. OS checks the page table, its not there as the valid/invalid bit is set to invalid.   2. OS selects a victim frame, swaps in the page from disk   3. OS updates page table flags   4. Replace an entry in TLB with the new entry in page table   5. Restart the instruction, which now runs like nothing happened **OPTION 2**   1. When there is a TLB miss, the page table entry for the page is brought into TLB first   2. Instruction is restarted   3. There is TLB hit, but the valid/invalid bit is invalid => page is not in memory   4. Then OS selects victim frame, swaps in page....rest of the steps are same I think the question boils down to **whether only the TLB can be inspected for valid/invalid bit (due to hardware reasons) or the page table itself can be inspected.** Because OPTION 2 is clearly slower. (but a friend insists that that is what must happen) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "155463", "title": "Countour Mapping API", "text": "I have done some searching on Google, but haven't come up with much as of yet. I am wanting to take a set of point data, which I had previously been using to create weighted points for a heat map through the Google API, and turn them into a contour map to overlay on the Google Maps API. I haven't seen anything in Google's code that would let me do this. Does anyone know of a good API to create such an overlay? Or is there possibly something I have overlooked that Google offers?"}
{"_id": "155464", "title": "Organizing code for iOS app development", "text": "I've been developing an app for the iOS platform, and as I've been going along, I've noticed that I've done a terrible job of keeping my files (.h, .m, .mm) organized. Is there any industry standards or best practices when it comes to organizing files for an iOS project? My files include custom classes (beside the view controllers), customized View Controllers, third-party content, code that works only on iOS 5.0+ and code that works on previous versions. What I'm looking for is a solution to keep things organized in a manner that others (or myself in years to come) can look at this and understand the basic structure of the application and not get lost in the multiple files found therein."}
{"_id": "155467", "title": "Selecting a JAX-RS implementation for a new project", "text": "I'm starting a new Java project which will require a RESTful API. It will be a SaaS business application serving mobile clients. I have developed one project with Java EE 6, but I'm not very familiar with the ecosystem, since most of my experience is on the Microsoft platform. Which would be a sensible choice for a JAX-RS implementation for a new project such as described? Judging by Wikipedia's list, main contenders seem to be Jersey, Apache CXF, RESTeasy and Restlet. But the Comparison of JAX-RS Implementations cited on Wikipedia is from 2008. My first impressings from their respective homepages is that:   * **CXF** aims to be a very comprehensive solution (reminds me of WCF in the Microsoft space), which makes me think it can be more complex to understand, setup and debug than what I need;    * **Jersey** is the reference implementation and might be a good choice, but it's legacy from Sun and I'm not sure how Oracle is treating it (announcements page doesn't work and last commit notice is from 4 months ago);    * **RESTeasy** is from JBoss and probably a solid option, though I'm not sure about learning curve;    * **Restlet** seems to be popular but has a lot of history, I'm not sure how up-to-date it is in the Java EE 6 world or if it carries a heavy J2EE mindset (like lots of XML configuration). What would be the merits of each of these alternatives? What about learning curve? Feature support? Tooling (e.g. NetBeans or Eclipse wizards)? What about ease of debugging and also deployment? Is any of these project more up-to-date than the others? How stable are them?"}
{"_id": "211551", "title": "What is the story behind Java Vulnerabilities?", "text": "I always appreciated the Java language. It is known as a very secure platform and many banks use it in their web applications. I wanted to build a project for my school and I discussed the options with some developers. However, one of them said we should ignore Java ecause of vulnerabilities appreared recently in it. For this reason I want to make sure, what is the story behind this and does that mean that Java today considered not much secure as it was previously?"}
{"_id": "81561", "title": "Using an actor model versus a producer-consumer model?", "text": "I'm doing some early-stage research towards architecting a new software application. Concurrency and multithreading will likely play a significant part, so I've been reading up on the various topics. The producer-consumer model, at least how it is expressed in Java, has some surface similarities but appears to be deeply dissimilar to the actor model in use with languages such as Erlang and Scala. I'm having trouble finding any good comparative data, or specific reasons to use or avoid the one or the other. Is the actor model even possible with Java or C#, or do you have do use one of the languages built for the purpose? Is there a third way?"}
{"_id": "48634", "title": "How to self Motivate technically to put my ideas into execution or just getting a job at MNC like google or microsoft", "text": "I mean, > How to self Motivate to get a job at google or create another google in > future. ,as there is no mentor who can guide me on this topic, so asked it here: I'm a Graduate in BE IT,but with less grades,with interest in learning new programming languages, but not yet done anything great like developed some system or anything. And I'm left with 2 more years to prove my worth to someone. So,is their a quick guide to start learning a language and then just go on implementing your ideas and it gets appreciated or I get a good Job ant Big MNC's. By the way, I just build one website for my one client and running my wordpress blog. And I had tried my hands on basic of C++,Java,JS,JSP,PHP,Ubuntu,web designing in past."}
{"_id": "81562", "title": "What does Windows 8 mean for the future of .NET?", "text": "Microsoft showed off a demo of Windows 8, including a new platform that allows developers to use HTML5 and JavaScript. Is this new platform the main way to develop for Windows 8? Is Microsoft phasing out the .NET platform in favor of the HTML 5 stack? What does Windows 8 mean for .NET developers?"}
{"_id": "154596", "title": "Best practices for including open source code from other public projects?", "text": "If I use an existing open source project that is hosted for example on github within one of my projects, should I check in the code from the other project into my public repo or not? I have mixed feelings about this, #1 I want to give proper credit and attribution to the original developer, and if appropriate I will contribute back any changes I need to make. However given that I have developed / tested against a specific revision of the other projects code, that is the version that I want to distribute to users of my project. Here is the specific use case to illustrate my point. I am looking for a more generalized answer than this specific case. I am developing simple framework using rabbitmq and python for outbound messages that will allow for sending sms, twitter, email, and is extensible to support additional messaging buses as well. There is a project on github that will make the creation and sending of SMS messages developed by another person. When I create my own repo how do I account for the code that I am including from the other project?"}
{"_id": "174803", "title": "What is considered third party code?", "text": "Inspired by this question Using third-party libraries - always use a wrapper? I wanted to know what people actually consider as third-party libraries. **Example from PHP:**   If I'm building an application using Zend framework, should I treat Zend framework libraries as third party code? **Example from C#:**   If I'm building a desktop application, should I treat all .Net classes as third party code? **Example from Java:**   Should I treat all libraries in the JDK as third party libraries? Some people say that if a library is stable and won't change often then one doesn't need to wrap it. However I fail to see how one would test a class that depends on a third party code without wrapping it."}
{"_id": "69697", "title": "Scheme vs Haskell for an Introduction to Functional Programming?", "text": "I am comfortable with programming in C and C#, and will explore C++ in the future. I may be interested in exploring functional programming as a different programming paradigm. I am doing this for fun, my job does not involve computer programming, and am somewhat inspired by the use of functional programming, taught fairly early, in computer science courses in college. Lambda calculus is certainly beyond my mathematical abilities, but I think I can handle functional programming. Which of Haskell or Scheme would serve as a good intro to functional programming? I use emacs as my text editor and would like to be able to configure it more easily in the future which would entail learning Emacs Lisp. My understanding, however, is that Emacs Lisp is fairly different from Scheme and is also more procedural as opposed to functional. I would likely be using \"The Little Schemer\" book, which I have already bought, if I pursue Scheme (seems to me a little weird from my limited leafing through it). Or would use the \"Learn You a Haskell for Great Good\" if I pursue Haskell. I would also watch the Intro to Haskell videos by Dr Erik Meijer on Channel 9. Any suggestions, feedback or input appreciated. Thanks. P.S. BTW I also have access to F# since I have Visual Studio 2010 which I use for C# development, but I don't think that should be my main criteria for selecting a language."}
{"_id": "154598", "title": "web server response code 500", "text": "I realize that this may spur a religious discussion, but I discussed this with friends and get great, but conflicting answers and the actual documentation is of little help. What does the 500 series response codes mean from the webserver? Internal Server Error, but that is vague. My assumption is that it means that something bad happened to the server (file system corruption, no connection to the database, network issue, etc.) but not specifically a data driven error (divide by zero, record missing, bad parameter, etc). Something to note, there are some web client implementations (the default Android and Blackberry httpclients) that do not allow access to the html boddy if the server response is 500 so there is no way to determine what caused the issue from the client. What I have been been implementing recently is a web service that returns a json payload wrapped in a response object that contains more specific error information if it is data related, but the server response will be 200 since it finished the actual processing. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "43339", "title": "Is code maintenance typically a special project, or is it considered part of daily work?", "text": "Earlier, I asked to find out which tools are commonly used to monitor methods and code bases, to find out whether the methods have been getting too long. Most of the responses there suggested that, beyond maintenance on the method currently being edited, programmers don't, in general, keep an eye on the rest of the code base. So I thought I'd ask the question in general: Is code maintenance, in general, considered part of your daily work? Do you find that you're spending at least some of your time cleaning up, refactoring, rewriting code in the code base, to improve it, as part of your other assigned work? Is it expected of you/do you expect it of your teammates? Or is it more common to find that cleanup, refactoring, and general maintenance on the codebase as a whole, occurs in bursts (for example, mostly as part of code reviews, or as part of refactoring/cleaning up projects)?"}
{"_id": "43336", "title": "Building a satisfying community at work", "text": "In the influential \"Peopleware\", DeMarco and Lister state that an organisation that builds a satisfying community will tend to keep it's people. We have about 40 programmers at work. How do we go about creating a \"community\" out of them?"}
{"_id": "13673", "title": "Open Source Projects Leading to Uniquely Interesting Opportunities", "text": "Not sure if I asked this at the right place (it's development related). It would be great if you can direct me to the right place if I did ask in the wrong place. I was encouraged by hosts during some company tours to participate in the open-source software community if interested in software. The reasons include showing initiative to contribute useful components to a project while others can evaluate the quality of your design and coding practices. However, other than case studies of CUSP being bought out by Apple Inc., I can't think of other case studies showing the trend of interesting opportunities being attracted over the long term. Do you have any high-profile projects fitting this criteria that comes to your mind? Appreciate it in advance for your suggestions!"}
{"_id": "201408", "title": "Pros of start learning programming with Python if what I really want is Javascript?", "text": "A friend of mine seeks to learn Javascript programming but he never programmed before. I've found Python as a quite nice language that takes most unneeded \"strangeness\" out of learning programming while remaining useful. Personally my first language was Pascal and while experimented a little with C++, C, Java, C#, Php and Javascript, I then found Python and this is actually what I most of the time use for years. I find Python a good language to introduce most programming concepts in a way where you can focus on the concept and not on the language. Actually imho Python has only 1 big gotcha, the significant whitespace, while other languages often feature more that is unnecessary when introducing today's programming itself (like overhead, pointers, implicit conversions, operator overloading, etc.). I've also heard that many instructors use this language to introduce programming concepts, and I tend to agree with this choice. As Javascript has it's own strenghts and weaknesses as an programming- introductory language, I wondered whether it's worth considering using Python instead for learning programming and then learn Javascript, when you already understand many programming concepts. I'm not used to teaching, so I would ask ones who are, what pros and cons would teaching Python first have over teaching Javascript right away, for a newcomer to programming?"}
{"_id": "53302", "title": "Should managers prohibit programmers from using IM in office?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Would you allow your programmers to use Messenger and social networks like > Facebook? A manager may believe that using IM clients in the office is not acceptable, but many programmers use them for legitimate purposes, for example in order to easily contact one another. Do you think the IM chat prohibition is reasonable?"}
{"_id": "154283", "title": "Should I demand unit-testing from programmers?", "text": "I work at a place where we buy a lot of IT projects. We are currently producing a standard for systems-requirements for the requisition of future projects. In that process, we are discussing whether or not we can demand automated unit testing from our suppliers. I firmly believe that proper automated unit-testing is the only way to document the quality and stability of the code. Everyone else seems to think that unit-testing is an optional method that concerns the supplier alone. Thus, we will make no demands of automated unit-testing, continous testing, coverage-reports, inspections of unit-tests or any of the kind. I find this policy extremely frustrating. Am I totally out of line here? Please provide me with arguments for any of the opinions."}
{"_id": "116570", "title": "XML or HTML for User Manual/Help and Why?", "text": "I want to make User Manual/Help to my program. I found two good ways - XML or HTML - which should I use and why? I know how to do it in html (I know how to use js, css and such) but in XML it's harder (or I imagine?) anyway which way should I choose and why?... **Edit** : There's one important thing I forgot to mention: I need it for the army, I can make it only on army's computer and I cannot install anything you said. I can use notepad and that's it."}
{"_id": "116352", "title": "How to manage two major versions using SVN?", "text": "At the company I'm working we support two versions of the software we develop. One version is available for customers, and one version the developers are developing new functionality in. The version available for customers is also changed by developers, to fix the bugs our customers have found. So, for example we have a 4.1 version available for customers, and we are developing 4.2. As soon as we release 4.2, 4.1 gets closed, and we start developing on 4.3. Currently we have two trunks, one for each version that is open for development. Every time a bug is fixed in the released version, we have to merge it in the new version too. This is extra work. Next to this, we would like to work in advance, and have a version already finished 'on the shelf', and already start on a new version. Which would mean if we fix a bug in the released version, we would have to merge it in three trunks! Is there a better way of structuring this, and possibly eliminate the duplicate merges? Are we doing something completely wrong? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "17355", "title": "What are some famous one-liner or two-liner programs and equations?", "text": "I'm experimenting with a new platform and I'm trying to write a program that deals with strings that are no longer than 60 characters and I'd like to populate the data store with some famous or well-known small chunks of code and equations, since programming and math goes along with the theme of my software. The code can be in any language and the equations from any discipline of mathematics, just so long as they're less than a total of 60 characters in length. I suspect people are gonna break out some brainfuck for this one. For example,               #include<stdio.h>     int main(){printf (\"Hi World\\n\");return 0;}      60 characters exactly! Thanks so much for your wisdom!"}
{"_id": "45803", "title": "what do you do to keep learning?", "text": "After the school i think my learning process has been slow(not yet stopped), so give me some advice which will be help me to keep learning. UPDATE: I am a web developer in PHP. I am working in PHP last 2 years."}
{"_id": "10656", "title": "Plagued by indecision - how to choose technologies to use for projects?", "text": "I have always been fascinated with the newest and best technologies available. I graduate from college this year, and over the course of the past few years, I have spent a lot of time learning new programming languages, web frameworks, Linux distributions, IDEs, etc., in an effort to find the best of each. I have installed and played around with Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, Arch Linux, SUSE, VectorLinux, Puppy Linux, Slackware, and Fedora, I have spend a good amount of time in Vim and Emacs, and have played around with Visual Studio, Eclipse, NetBeans, gedit, and several more obscure ones. I have played with all sorts of languages - I started with the common ones like C, Java, Visual Basic, but always heard that they were \"bad\" (for relative definitions of bad). I then discovered the scripting languages and have quite a bit of experience in PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Then I heard that functional languages are where it's at, so I played around with Scheme, Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, and OCaml. I've played around with obscure languages like Forth and J. When I do web development, I go back and forth between frameworks and languages. Should I use plain PHP, Ruby on Rails, Django, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Yii, Kohana, or make my own? I have a very broad and shallow knowledge of computer science. As soon as I have learned a useful amount of one technology, I see something else shiny and go after it. My progression often goes like this: \"Perl is better than PHP, but wait, Python is better than Perl. Oh, but now I see that Ruby has the power of Perl and it is cooler than Python. Well, now that I have seen a little of Ruby, it is too complicated. Python is cleaner. Oh, but it is too hard to deploy Python, so I should use PHP if I want to do real web development.\" And so on and so forth. What technology should I use for projects? Should I just pick one language/framework/IDE and sort of forget about the other things that are available for a while? I don't have all that much in the way of completed projects, because I never stay with something long enough to finish it."}
{"_id": "15449", "title": "How do I get up-to-date on web development technologies?", "text": "I'm a regular user here, but linking my screen name to my real identity is dirt simple, and the question I'm about to ask would lead to a very unpleasant conversation with my current employer were they to see it. So, my apologies for this sock-puppet account; I promise Socky and I won't be voting on each other's stuff, and Socky won't be doing much of anything other than voting on answers to his own questions. I may have an opportunity to work with somebody I've worked with in the past. Short, extremely understated summary: It went well. This time he's looking to bring me on as a partner to a fledgling web venture. My job title isn't defined, but I'd basically be \"the guy\" in terms of the tech side of the company. One of the first things I'd be doing is fleshing out the current and future requirements of the site and determining the best way to meet them -- overhaul the existing site? Scrap the existing site entirely and replace it with something like Drupal? I'd also be tasked with making sure that the site is not only a pleasant user experience, but that it looks and feels like a modern, professional website. One problem: I'm not qualified. At least, not yet. I wasn't really qualified for the last time we worked together, but I taught myself what I needed to know and ... like I said. It Went Well. However, I was a lower-level code wrangler that time around, and a lot of key decisions had already been made. I had more room for error and time to learn as I was going. This outing, not so much. It's been a long damn time since I was completely up-to-date on web programming; my current gig has a healthy dash of web stuff, but the web interface isn't the main business and it's built on old technology. (Technology it honestly doesn't use particularly well.) I just don't spend a lot of time playing with new tech when I'm not at work; I generally spend that time on hobbies and passions I don't get paid to do. But I want this to happen. And I want to do it right. So my question is: what resources would you recommend I use to both get myself up-to-date and stay up- to-date on professional-caliber web programming? I know I need to beef-up my jQuery-fu; I've been exposed to it a little, and holy crap does it make hard jobs easy. I also know I need to acquaint myself with Drupal and other content management systems so that I can accurately gauge whether using one as the foundation for the site would be a good idea or a waste of time. But I'm certain there are other technologies out there that would help me do that job that I don't yet know anything about. What are some good resources for helping me figure out what I don't know? Websites, magazines, podcasts, whatever. I need to figure out how to get back into the game properly. This is scary as hell, but it also feels like it could be a huge step forward in my career. (Assuming it's not a step into a pool filled with laser sharks.) My thanks in advance for any assistance anybody can offer in curing my ignorance."}
{"_id": "221031", "title": "Keeping up to date with the speed of technology", "text": "I am going through 2 ebooks on ASP.NET MVC and SignalR . **SignalR: Real-time Application Development** Released in 2013 **Introducing ASP.NET MVC 4 Fourth Edition** Released in 2012 As i have been going through these books and writing out the code I have been told by visual studio that some of the code is obsolete. With MVC the section was on security and signalR on the main map connection. As of this question Entity Framework has just released its 6th version and now everyone is starting on WEB API as opposed to WCF. This is all very intimidating to say the least. Besides having to learn all these technologies, we also have to keep up to date with new releases every few months. In a standard web app there is ASP.NET /MVC, EF, SQL, jQuery, jQuery Lib( knockoutjs etc), HTML5 + CSS3, WEB API, Deployment environment setup. And these technologies are changes so fast. Its very often i come across old code looking for answers and to realize there are conflicts with other libraries, serious security concerns or bad practice for maintainability and testing. My question is. How can i stay up to date with all of this?"}
{"_id": "92337", "title": "How do you remember numerous API?", "text": "There are lots of other APIs I need to use besides the Selenium test tool to be able to get tests working. Not using them for just one week and the mind has lost all of them. How is it possible to remember zillions of APIs?"}
{"_id": "78234", "title": "How can I learn libraries and stuff faster?", "text": "As a programmer, it seems like I spend half my time figuring out how to use various libraries/frameworks/tools. First Javascript, then Jquery, then canvas, then Backbone, etc, etc. Every tool has its own set of non-obvious idiosyncrasies that you need to be aware of. Mastering them takes a lot of time. Any suggestions on how to speed up the learning process?"}
{"_id": "211511", "title": "How can I prepare for the next software paradigm?", "text": "Throughout the history of programming whenever a new technology was made a **application** for it had to be made. _E.g. When Android came out Android Apps came out ~ giving millions of dollars in revenue to the respective developers who made the apps. (The OS came in 2008)_ The beauty about computers is that it is always changing. You cannot invent a new innovation for writing as most English students learn about Shakespeare while CS students face a ever-changing curriculum.. Programmers have this advantage. **They can make a lot of money if they play their cards right.** So I want to be prepared. I want to be first in line for the next promising innovation. I know many of them will fail but I think my instinct for spotting potential success is high. _But how can I be prepared?_ I am planning to assimilate fellow programmers, friends and offshore developers/contractors. I want to make my own start-up ~ for now as a sole proprietor. There is no way I'm pitching an idea to a large company. I want to get a BN and register a company, I believe it will give more **flexibility**. Plus its **better working with other minds as designing something by yourself without help is a recipe for burnout.** So my question - going more specific is what approach should I take?   * Should I start my own software company, passive as it may be in the   beginning?   * Who should help me? Is it wiser getting internal/external developers to help me with my ideas for the new paradigms? I am a first year CS student, 18 years old with good social skills."}
{"_id": "194497", "title": "How can I cope with every increasing/changing number of frameworks?", "text": "I started coding with php, mysql, html, and javascript back in 2002 and heck that is all you basically needed to create any type of website. Over the years I picked up other languages, but what turned me off were all of the frameworks and JQuery that was popping up every few months and clients (if freelancing) or employers expected you to be an expert on some crap a geek released recently. Because of this I got out of programming since I don't know if I can constantly throw away all of my previous knowledge and replace it with some new hip fad that does the exact same thing but just uses different function names. I miss knowing the core knowledge of PHP and being able to code from scratch and I'm afraid the skill of mastering a technology to completion is obsolescent. Is it right to feel this way, and can any of us feel secure about our programming career in the future?"}
{"_id": "94822", "title": "html/css/js best practices", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should a developer know before building a public web site? Are there any books or resources on html/css/js and web design best practices? There are plenty books which just learn the basics - syntax and other stuff which is not quite difficult, but I can't find use cases, real examples, how professional desginers use them."}
{"_id": "54796", "title": "Best way to acquire a complete comprehensive knowledge of web design and development?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? Assuming one wants to be a professional in web design and development, what technologies would you recommend one learn? In what order should this be done? Any other suggestions. Note : I am interested in finding out about a video training package that contains all the listed technologies."}
{"_id": "35890", "title": "Best Programming Language for Web Development", "text": "I am a Web Developer in PHP, and also know Javascript and some bit of CSS which is needed for web development. I use Symfony framework to build Websites and Web Application. As now i want to learn new Programming Language, which is best for Web Development(like Ruby, Python), as i have heard about Frameworks like Rails and Django. Which language will be best for Web Development apart from PHP or like PHP?"}
{"_id": "46716", "title": "What technical details should a programmer of a web application consider before making the site public?", "text": "What things should a programmer implementing the technical details of a web application consider before making the site public? If Jeff Atwood can forget about HttpOnly cookies, sitemaps, _and_ cross-site request forgeries _all in the same site_ , what important thing could I be forgetting as well? I'm thinking about this from a web developer's perspective, such that someone else is creating the actual design and content for the site. So while usability and content may be more important than the platform, you the programmer have little say in that. What you do need to worry about is that your implementation of the platform is stable, performs well, is secure, and meets any other business goals (like not cost too much, take too long to build, and rank as well with Google as the content supports). Think of this from the perspective of a developer who's done some work for intranet-type applications in a fairly trusted environment, and is about to have his first shot and putting out a potentially popular site for the entire big bad world wide web. Also, I'm looking for something more specific than just a vague \"web standards\" response. I mean, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS over HTTP are pretty much a given, especially when I've already specified that you're a professional web developer. So going beyond that, _Which_ standards? In what circumstances, and why? **Provide a link to the standard's specification.**"}
{"_id": "113688", "title": "What do I need to learn to become a better web programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? I'm 15 years old. I've been programming for 2 years. I suppose I am a good programmer (not designer). I can use PHP(Good), Css(simple), and JQuery(not too bad). What else can I learn related to web development (maybe system programming)? Thanks for your suggestions.."}
{"_id": "55238", "title": "Please guide this self-taught Web Developer", "text": "One of the major regrets in life is that I didn't do something with my introversion. I didn't manage to get past the first year of college because of that. I have chosen the path where there are no video games and other time sinks, all I have is the internet to quench my thirst of learning the ins and outs of the field of Web Developing/Designing. Though currently, I'm taking a Web Design Associate course at one of the best Computer Arts and this is the last month of the class. Even though I'm still a sapling, I love this field so much. So basically, At school I'm learning web design while at home I'm teaching myself web- developing. First thing first, returning to college seems impossible at the moment because of some financial problems. I'm pretty comfortable with CSS and HTML and I'm into PHP/MySQL at the moment. **Could you please provide me a web-development Curriculum to follow.** And do I need to learn about the theories behind? And I think I'm still young(I'm 18 at the time of writing). **Is it a good thing or bad thing for choosing this path?** I'm glad with my decision but in all honesty, **I'm worrying about my future and employment because I'm an undergrad** , coming from a country where companies are degree b!tches, it saddens me so. Thank you. (My questions are the bold parts. )"}
{"_id": "202606", "title": "Junior software developer - How to understand web applications in depth?", "text": "I am currently a junior developer in web applications and specifically in ASP.NET MVC technology. My problem is that the C# senior developer in the company has no experience with this technology and I try to learn without any guidance. I went through all tutorials (e.g music store), codeplex projects and also read Pro ASP.NET MVC 4. However, most of the examples are about CRUD and e-commerce applications. What I don't understand is how dependency injection fits in web applications (I have realized that is not only used for facilitating unit testing) or when I should use a custom model binder or how to model the business logic when there is already a database schema in place. I read the forum quite often and it would very helpful if some experienced developer could give me an insight about how to proceed. Do I need to read some books to understand the overall idea behind web applications? And what kind of application should I start building myself - I don't think it would be useful to create similar examples with the tutorials."}
{"_id": "115951", "title": "Web based applications", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? Where do I start if I want to build a web based application? Books, tutorials, online resources. From a quick look at the web I can see that Html, Css and JavaScript should be the subjects to learn. Do you agree? What would you recommend to a professional C++ programmer?"}
{"_id": "202642", "title": "What must one know when approaching web development?", "text": "I just started working as a novice Web Developer. I know PHP pretty well, as well as some basic jQuery. Anyway, my boss told me I should explore and learn about MVC, Memcache, Design Patterns, how Apache servers work and how to set one up etc. What I want to ask is actually this: What should I learn further? Web Development is a big area and most odds are that I'll never stop learning, but what are the basics I should learn about? What are the fundamentals? Currently I'm focusing on Server Side Development, but a very big part of me also wants to become a front-end ninja, so please consider that in your comments. Thanks in advance, you rock. :)"}
{"_id": "109719", "title": "Website development from scratch v/s web framework", "text": "Do people develop websites from scratch when there are no particular requirements or they just pick up an existing web framework like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, etc. The requirements are almost similar in most cases; if personal, it will be a blog or image gallery; if corporate, it will be information pages that can be updated dynamically along with news section. And similarly, there are other requirements which can be fulfilled by WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. So, Is it advisable to develop a website from scratch and why ? **Update:** to explain more as got commentt from @Raynos (thanks for comment and helping me clearify the question), the question is about:   1. Should web sites be developed and designed fully from scratch?   2. Should they be done by using framework like Spring, Zend, CakePHP?   3. Should they be done using CMS like Joomla, WordPress, Drupal (people in east are using these as frameworks)?"}
{"_id": "111531", "title": "What should a web developer know about HTTP?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? I've heard rumblings on this site that web developers should be familiarize themselves with HTTP. What aspects of HTTP is it beneficial to know as a web developer, and why? **Update** : This is _not_ an exact duplicate of This is not a duplicate of \"What should every programmer know about web development?\" I am asking specifically about the _HTTP protocol_. I am not using HTTP to mean web development in general."}
{"_id": "143271", "title": "What is the best way to maintain our programming experiences?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  how do you remember programming related stuff? During my work experiences, I always met many kind of blocking problems with different technologies. When I remember the efforts I spent to find the solutions I become frustrated and want to find a way to keep all in mind. Generally I keep all the project I made in my Hard Drive, and I usually reuse them when I encounter a problem i already encountered. But this is not to really efficient when you reopen your own code and say: Who is the sucker who wrote this code!? I'm thinking to make my own website in which I can post some tutorials / articles about the problems I met and their solutions. So I keep all in mind and help community. Do you think that it will be a good idea or just a loss of time regarding the actual programming forums?"}
{"_id": "24737", "title": "Beginning Design as a Programmer", "text": "I'm just starting to get in to web development. I'm learning Rails at the moment. I have lots of experience with various programming languages. I've been searching for books to help me get started; I want to focus on writing clean, standards-compliant HTML and CSS. Does anyone know of any modern, standards-based resources I can use, particularly books? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "110638", "title": "How to learn to become a web developer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should a developer know before building a public web site? I have been working in telecommunication companies for more than 3 years, and now I want to try to become a web developer. I use C++ for a long time, and it is my most familiar language, and the platform is Unix or Linux. Because of my programming skills, I tried to apply several positions like C/C++ software engineers which I think require this kind of knowledge. But I failed for all the positions. A majority of the positions I applied really need was C language skills other than C++. And all need strong knowledge about the data structure and algorithm which is a filed that I am not good at. After several trials, I realized that there was a problem. What I am good at is at something like C++, Object Orientated design, and the analysis ability, which is a little high level thing. But the positions I applied require C, algorithm which were a little low level. So is there some positions in web which are suitable for my programming skills? or How many things I need to learn to become a web developer based my programming skills? Thanks."}
{"_id": "125746", "title": "Introductory to Web programming but with Experience", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? I'm not sure where to start with web development. I have experience with HTML and PHP fundamentals and have tried out a little CSS. As of yet, I haven't tried Javascript. Should I focus on one of these or something else?"}
{"_id": "63386", "title": "What is the best way to remember Java APIs?", "text": "I have been doing Java for nearly a year now and I have difficulty remembering Java APIs and method names. What is the best way to remember them?"}
{"_id": "202508", "title": "What concepts/technologies should an ASP.NET developer be familiar with", "text": "I am in the process of filing in the gaps in my knowledge so that I can become a better developer. I am an ASP.NET developer and I sometimes need to do pure back-end stuff too. I ahve compiled a list of things I deem as necessary to know. Please feel free to fill in any gaps:   1. WebForms   2. MVC   3. jQuery   4. HTML5   5. WPF   6. WCF   7. The Repository pattern   8. Dependency injection (Castle.Windsor)   9. NHibernate   10. Entity Framework   11. Asynchronous programming   12. SQL. As in: hardcore SQL with temp tables and groupings and variables and stuff.   13. Unit Tests"}
{"_id": "140423", "title": "how do you remember programming related stuff?", "text": "How do you remember programming related stuff? Have you had the feeling that you've encountered the error you have before you right now, a few years ago and you could swear you knew the cause then but now you've forgotten it? Did you work with the xsl's string parsing some time ago but now you can't remember exactly which are the string functions altogether from xsl and you have to start from scratch? Or perhaps you forget about some feature from Apache Commons like \"filtering a collection by some predicate\" that you surely used in the past. So how do you do it? I tried having a blog but when I develop apps, I never find the time to update the blog or write about my experiences. Also, using a wiki is a nice thing but then I found it difficult to keep a clean separation between them since many times I needed to change a blog post to add new information about that topic. This made me think that I actually should have put this topic in the wiki instead of the blog. Do you have any systems that help you remember about your programming experience? What's your setup?"}
{"_id": "70117", "title": "a few newbie questions about web app development", "text": "1. I have a hosting package with Just Host that I use for my Wordpress blogs. Is this the same as having a \u201cweb server\u201d when referencing web app development? I live-chatted with tech support and they said is has apache installed and I can configure mysql and python. I'm planning on programming my app in python. Do I need something else from another service?   2. Do I need to setup a \u201cdeveloper environment\u201d on my mac just to build my MVP?. I\u2019ve read that I need to download MAMP and this will give me apache and a virtual server, is that true? I\u2019ve download, MAMP and python. My web app will require a database but I\u2019m not sure what to download for that.   3. Is anyone willing to review my idea and give me a sense as to what I need to do and if it would be obtainable or realistic that I could do it myself? My exposure to the tech community is limited (html/css) but I know i can compelete my goals with a few helping hands.  Its learned that people don't know your starving unless you ask for a plate.. so ladies and gents can someone please feed me?"}
{"_id": "29396", "title": "Where to master HTML, CSS and Javascript?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should a developer know before building a public web site? I gotten interested in web-development lately. I am still a student. I learnt basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Then I thought I should improve my server side scripting. So I am learning Struts2 and I am doing better there. Now I have decided I should finally put my skill to some use. So my friend and I have decided to come up with a fun website for our class. But now I am realizing that, though I know server-side scripting to a good extent (not great, just good considering I am a beginner), I am nowhere near good in the basic elements viz. HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I mean, I can't do cool stuff with it. I am aware of w3schools, but it would be great if you can point out a more intuitive place where I can learn to do all the cool stuff in a short time. Some of the problems I am facing are: 1) How should I design the basic layout of my website? 2) How can I use 3rd party APIs like that of Facebook graph?"}
{"_id": "166540", "title": "Web Developer or Web Designer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? I have built 10+ straightforward websites using the Symfony framework and Wordpress. Does this mean I am a web developer or a web designer? I set the sites up in Symfony and wrote the CSS/Javascript/HTML. I had to write themes for Wordpress and move some code about. What experience do I need to to be a web developer and not a designer? What experience distinguishes me from a designer that knows HTML and jQuery?"}
{"_id": "131051", "title": "What should a web designer know?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? I want to be a web designer. I've spent the past few years on ASP.Net MVC. Where should I focus to learn web design? When I think it's only about HTML, CSS, JavaScript - it's not. Can someone tell me how I can take it practically. I already have been writing HTML for the past several past years but not practically (it's not well-design or look better). I feel there is a big chapter in web-design. Can someone explain me how I can start learning then in future if someone give me a works I can do them in better way."}
{"_id": "176302", "title": "How to become an expert web-developer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What should every programmer know about web development? I am currently a Junior PHP developer and I really LOVE it, I love internet from first time I got into it, I always loved smartly-created websites, always was wondering how it all works, always admired websites with good design and rich functionality, and finally I am creating web-sites on my own and it feels really great.   My goals are to become expert web-developer (aiming for creating websites for **small and medium business** , not **enterprise-sized** systems), to have a great full-time job, to do freelance and to create my own startup in future. **General question:** What do I do to be an expert, professional and demanded web-programmer? **More concrete questions:**   1). **_How do I choose languages and technologies needed?_** I know that every web-developer must know HTML+CSS+JS+AJAX+JQuery, I am doing some design aswell cause I like it and I need it for freelance also. But what about backend languages? Currently I picked PHP cause it's most demanded in my area and most of web uses it, but what would happen in future? Say, in 3 years, I am good at PHP and PHP frameworks by than, but what if some other languages get most popular? Do I switch to them? I know that good programmer is not about languages and frameworks but about ability to learn and to aim the goals, but still I think that learning frameworks for some language can take quite some time. Am I wrong? 2). **_In general, what are basic guidelines to be expert web-developer?_** What are most important things I should focus on? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "255542", "title": "What is a good generalization of web development architecture?", "text": "I'm new to web development. From looking at popular open-source frameworks for both front-end and back-end, I have a general idea of what the modern full- stack web setup looks like: Database <-> Back-end language ~ REST API <-> Front-end Notes:   * The back-end language (Python, Ruby, PHP, Java) generates the API, which is the only layer between the back and the front. The API has authentication to protect private data.   * The front-end sends GET and POST requests to the API. A MVC framework can be used, such as Backbone, Angular, or Ember.js. Is my understanding accurate?"}
{"_id": "90877", "title": "Document Database versus Relational Database : how to choose?", "text": "I'm a SQL guy, but I know there is _Not Only SQL_ databases - document- database mostly. As with most technologies there are pro and cons for each technology. I've read some articles, but they were too theorical. What I would like is two real cases :   1. when a switch from relational- to document-database gave an improvement    2. when a switch from document- to relational-database gave an improvement Improvement being any thing that makes better programs - less developpement time, scalabilty, performance, anything that is programming related. There is a caveat for 2. : stories like \" falling back to relational database because everybody knows SQL\" is not good"}
{"_id": "60255", "title": "Reverse engineering airline reservations systems", "text": "I saw an interesting conversation on here about airline reservation systems and the services that connect them (like Sabre). This is an almost identical analog to a problem I've been trying to figure out and I'm looking for the fundamental components required to build a service like Sabre (no this isn't a competing service but something that functions remarkably similar). So the elements of building a Sabre would be: Access to the individual databases (through API I'm assuming) A portal through which a search is entered The question(s): Does it matter if the databases are compatible with one another (i.e. all on oracle etc.)? Just how big a project is this? It seems relatively straightforward to someone who's not a database programmer, but I totally know that's naiive. If my company were working to build a service like this (again, not for airline seats but the mechanism is very similar) what would first steps be? To save everyone the snarky retorts, I understand that this is over my head personally, I'm trying to figure out what resources I'd need to get folks who could do it. No, I don't think I can teach myself, I know I need to hire crazy smart folks to do it. This is an attempt to understand the elements I need to put in place to get a start on this. I genuinely appreciate any help folks can give. PS - two links that describe the essential functions relatively well:   Airline Reservation System   and   Computer Reservations System"}
{"_id": "120082", "title": "Would it be possible to create an open source software library, entirely developed and moderated by an open community?", "text": "Call it democratic software development, or open source on steroids if you will. I'm not just talking about the possibility of providing a patch which can be approved by the library owner. Think more along the lines of how Stack Exchange works. Anyone can post code, and through community moderation it is cleaned up and eventually valid code ends up in the final library. For complex libraries an elaborate system should probably be created, but for a simple library it is my belief this is already possible e.g. within the Stack Exchange platform. **Example** Take a library of extension methods for .NET for example. Everybody goes their own way and implements their own subset of what they feel is important, open- source library or not. People want to share their code, but there is no suitable platform for it. extensionmethod.net is the result of answering this call for extension methods, but the framework hopelessly falls short; there is no order, or structure at all. You don't know whether an idea is any good until you try it, so I decided to create an Extension Methods proposal on Area51. I belief with proper moderation, it could be possible for the site to be more than a Q&A site, and that an actual library (or subsets of it) could be extracted from it. Feel free to give feedback to this particular idea on it's proposal page on area51, but it is just meant to be an example. This question is meant to find an answer to the general idea of creating an open source software library moderated by an open community. **Questions**   1. Is it possible? What would be the main problems to such an approach?   2. Has anything like this been attempted before?   3. Are there platforms better suited for this?"}
{"_id": "60250", "title": "How to write constructors which might fail to properly instantiate an object", "text": "Sometimes you need to write a constructor which can fail. For instance, say I want to instantiate an object with a file path, something like               obj = new Object(\"/home/user/foo_file\")      As long as the path points to an appropriate file everything's fine. But if the string is not a valid path things should break. But how? You could:   1. throw an exception   2. return null object (if your programming language allows constructors to return values)   3. return a valid object but with a flag indicating that its path wasn't set properly (ugh)   4. others? I assume that the \"best practices\" of various programming languages would implement this differently. For instance I think ObjC prefers (2). But (2) would be impossible to implement in C++ where constructors must have void as a return type. In that case I take it that (1) is used. In your programming language of choice can you show how you'd handle this problem and explain why?"}
{"_id": "232261", "title": "Options for client-side encryption of local web databases", "text": "My scenario is as follows:   * Web application, run from the browser, designed for mobile devices.   * Uses WebSQL storage which may contain sensitive data.   * Uses Application Cache to enable offline use where there is no connectivity.   * Can connect to an API where even more sensitive data can be downloaded. Authentication is handled with BASIC Authentication, and unencrypted data is transferred over the wire, as the application shall access the API in the following environments/scenarios:     * On a private, secured, local Wi-Fi network.     * Over the public internet, over a VPN connection.     * Over the public internet, through a HTTPS connection. So far, based on my limited knowledge, the security of sensitive data transferred over the wire is covered. However, the data 'at-rest' in the local WebSQL storage, and formatted in the HTML pages of the web application, is not secure. The current concern is if a mobile device contains sensitive data, and it is lost or stolen, how to minimise the risk of the sensitive data being accessed. As the application needs to be usable without interaction with the server, any software-based encryption would be contained on the client itself. This means that, presumably, attempting to encrypt the WebSQL database will be pointless as if a skilled intruder can bypass the hardware encryption, they can presumably determine the encryption/decryption logic as well? The proposed solution for encryption of data at rest, is to use the built-in hardware encryption that is part of iOS and Android devices, requiring users to enter a password at the lock screen. There are related 'remote wipe' features as well that could be used. **Q: How 'secure' is the proposed solution? If the built-in hardware encryption is not enough, what are the best strategies for implementing client-side encryption of WebSQL data without need of interaction with a server?** Is the implementation of a software-based, data encryption/decryption solution, only going to give a marginal security benefit, as the encryption/decryption code can be accessed and reverse engineered? Is it just me, or is the main benefit of that merely marketing purposes, i.e. being able to 'say' that it is encrypted? Interesting links: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/10529/are-there-actually-any- advantages-to-android-full-disk-encryption Also... > Underlying storage mechanisms may vary from one user agent to the next. In > other words, any authentication your application requires can be bypassed by > a user with local privileges to the machine on which the data is stored. > Therefore, it's recommended not to store any sensitive information in local > storage. > > https://www.owasp.org/index.php/HTML5_Security_Cheat_Sheet#Client- > side_databases Does this mean the only secure option is to produce a hybrid application? E.g. using Phonegap. Is this a great deal more secure, could it just be reverse engineered to view the JavaScript that encrypts/decrypts in the same way anyway?"}
{"_id": "235024", "title": "Arrays' subscripts priority", "text": "I was reading a lecture on arrays for Fortran 90 and I came across this sentence : 'Fortran always stores by columns - the first subscript varies more rapidly than the second, and so on.' What does the author mean to say ?"}
{"_id": "235025", "title": "Dependency Inversion Principle: Understanding how both low level components and high level components depend on abstractions", "text": "I'm learning about the Dependency Inversion Principle. It states that: > High level modules should not depend upon low-level modules. Both should > depend upon abstractions. For a while I tried to understand what it means that both the high level components and the low level components, rely on the abstractions and are _dependent on them_. _I'm assuming both should depend on the **same abstraction** in some way. Please correct me if this is wrong._ I have come to some conclusion about what this means. Please confirm if this is accurate. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/p3IRQ.png) \" **The high level components** are dependent on the abstraction\" - Meaning: The high level components **talk to an interface to communicate with the low level components** , instead of communicating with concrete low level components directly. The low level components implement this interface. \" **The low level components** are dependent on the abstraction\" - Meaning: The low level components are **defined and designed in the terms of the interface.** They are designed to **fit the interface**. They are dependent on the interface, in the way that **the interface defines how they are designed.** (Often low level classes implement that interface). This way, both the high level components and the low level ones are 'dependent on the abstraction', but in different ways. Is this a good understanding?"}
{"_id": "232260", "title": "Can the author of code licensed under CC-NC-ND use it in commercial closed-source software?", "text": "I am working on project on which I need to open-source part of my code in order to simplify extension by the enduser. What I want, is to make an npm module, that will expose part of my code, so my users can build extensions for the product (in JavaScript), but I want a guarantee that this code will not be used for commercial or other development work, beside extensions for my product. I found **Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs** license to be a fit. **My problem:** Can **I** , as the author of this code, use it in a commercial closed-source application? **Disclaimer:** I know this is kind of a legal question, but please, state what you think, no one is holding you accountable/liable for it. Thanks."}
{"_id": "19589", "title": "Do you use Cobertura in the enterprise?", "text": "Cobertura is a reporting tool for code-coverage of unit tests. The license for Cobertura is complicated: Ant tasks are covered under Apache 1.1 (easy enough), but instrumented bytecode involves the GPL. Details are here: http://cobertura.sourceforge.net/license.html In a classic CYA, the conclusion of the license states \"it depends on your interpretation of the license\". How have you interpreted the license? Do you use Cobertura in developing commercial software for the enterprise? i.e. simply using it to report on your JUnit tests. I'm **not** asking about bundling Cobertura with your product."}
{"_id": "19584", "title": "How does one make a cluster capable program?", "text": "In cluster computing, there seems to be two options: task redirection and task splitting. Task redirection seems easy enough, you just have the master dispatch the small calls to other nodes in the cluster for processing (eg webserver clusters (I think)). Task splitting however seems wildly more complex. Since I don't think you can have two threads of the same program run on different machines, meaning you have to split up the work. How though does one split up the work? I can see some stuff like rendering or video encoding just because you can tell each node to work on a different part of the video, but when you want to do things like calculate the 5 trillionth digit of pie, how would you split that up? Or even in science where you need to simulate weather or other resource intensive tasks? In short, how do you split up tasks that aren't really designed for splitting up?"}
{"_id": "64005", "title": "Is having candidates play Portal a good interviewing tactic?", "text": "I read a blog that said something along the lines of: > Some candidates could be inexperienced but with potential to be great. A > good way to test this is to have them solve (non-programming) puzzles to > test their problem solving skills. I wonder if solving the puzzles in the game Portal could be a good way to do this. First of all, its fun, candidates would enjoy the interview and be more enthusiastic about the job. However, many programmers are familiar with this game, and it would only work if they have never played it before. Also, my first time playing it I didn't find it very difficult, but I also love solving puzzles. So maybe its not difficult enough to really test problem solving skills. If this is a bad example, what are some good examples (of problems to solve)?"}
{"_id": "69036", "title": "where to allocate the room for new enviroment variable?", "text": "in unix, i want to modify enviroment variables.   if size of new value is larger than the old one, the room for the new variable is allocated by malloc.   however, is memory for enviroment variables above the stack? (not heap memory) where to allocate the room for new variable?"}
{"_id": "81381", "title": "What is the best way to create and guide an enterprise architecture?", "text": "Wikipedia defines Enterprise Architecture as follows: > An enterprise architecture (EA) is a rigorous description of the structure > of an enterprise, its decomposition into subsystems, the relationships > between the subsystems, the relationships with the external environment, the > terminology to use, and the guiding principles for the design and evolution > of an enterprise. This description is comprehensive, including enterprise > goals, business functions, business process, roles, organisational > structures, business information, software applications and computer > systems. Practitioners of EA call themselves \"enterprise architects.\" > > An enterprise architect is a person responsible for developing the > enterprise architecture and is often called upon to draw conclusions from > it. By producing an enterprise architecture, architects are providing a tool > for identifying opportunities to improve the enterprise, in a manner that > more effectively and efficiently pursues its purpose. As a company grows, the enterprise architecture has a tendency to fracture (if it existed at all) and become a big ball of mud. Unfortunately at that point, any individual development group within a company is usually not structured or positioned properly to create an enterprise architecture, and there is usually little incentive for any particular group to do so since they are focused on their business problems. On the flip side, creating a separate \"architecture group\" that is not closely aligned with the business priorities and delivers from on high what architecture should be isn't sufficient either since the work they do usually falls on death ears by those people doing the \"real work.\" What then is the best way to create and guide an enterprise architecture?"}
{"_id": "81382", "title": "Will any js libraries be updating api's with html5 under the hood?", "text": "So there is a lot of cool stuff in the html5/css3 specs which should be able to replace a lot of the stuff that have been traditionally done with javascript. Does anyone know if any of the major js libraries (jquery, mootools, extjs, etc) or any newer js libraries are going to be implementing their libraries in such a way that an html5 implementation will be used; but defaults to existing implementation (html4/pre-CSS3/js) when older browsers (IE8/FF3.5 and earlier) are used for backwards compatibility? Basically, I'm trying to find out if there is a trend in this direction; or if this is kind of a reset point where completely new libraries are being written as opposed to mashups."}
{"_id": "2235", "title": "Have you ever written anything that made you a lot more efficient (or want to)?", "text": "Sometimes we want to be more efficient and productive, what have you written to reach this?"}
{"_id": "52696", "title": "Open Source Project to learn about systems engineering", "text": "I am a an engineering student and I want to learn more about systems programming . I wanted to know the various open source projects that I have as options to learn from about the same. The Linux Kernel Project is very stable and has a very large code base.I wanted to know about projects that would not take much time to get boot strapped and start contributing. Thanks"}
{"_id": "124259", "title": "Managing expectations", "text": "I am in my senior year of college. I am an intern at a $120 million a year company. I am responsible for maintaining three websites, I'm essentially the dba for the marketing database, and write and support in-house software. I'm booked pretty solid. My issue is that the upper management likes to severely over commit me in about every possible way. For example, the VP of the company told one of our larger customers that we had a cross ref mobile app ready to show them at the meeting a week away. I had not even started such a thing, nor had I ever written a mobile app in my life. It was a fairly simple project, but I still had to kill myself to get something delivered in that time frame on top of my regular responsibilities. It's a double edged sword, if I did not get the app delivered, it would have looked bad on me. However, getting it done gets the VP thinking \"well if that's what you can do in a week...\" The upper management has no idea of the work that goes into IT projects. They seem to think it is magic. I've complained about my situation to a few people and all I ever hear is \"Welcome to _name of our company_ \" I would just leave, but it's a great job in many ways in a growing company. Not a bad place to be when I'm about to graduate. Anyways, my question is: As an intern (low man on the totem pole) how do I get the management to understand what goes into my workday and what is reasonable to accomplish? How do I get them to not commit me to projects with out discussing it with me? I don't know what to say or how to say it to put it into perspective for them without sounding like I am whining or incapable. Make sense?"}
{"_id": "148425", "title": "When Business Object fields should not exactly reflect database columns", "text": "Main advantage with Hibernate annotations is the fact that a simple POJO (also called a Business Object the most of time) can become persistent through Hibernate annotations (or actually JPA) . In the scenario where our conceptual domain model (business objects used by clients) does not exactly reflect the physical model (database), how to deal with? Should I create a \"second\" model that represents the \"true\" business objects used by clients AND a \"data storage object\" containing mapping Hibernate annotations? Of course, with this solution, DAOs will be responsible to convert each BO to Data Object and vice-versa."}
{"_id": "118304", "title": "Common practice for abandonware in SVN", "text": "I have a general repository for small utilities (which were deemed too small at the time to warrant their own repository. 'Nother problem of itself maybe), some of which are deprecated and likely to never serve again. But one rule where I work is to never throw anything away. Deleting from SVN means it's not really deleted, it's just in the history somewhere, but that can still be hazardous in case you need to find that old thing again. What would be the best strategy for keeping deprecated items, but also keeping them out of the way?"}
{"_id": "122026", "title": "migrating product and team from startup race to quality development", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  A simple ways to improve the release quality in RAD environment This is year 3 and product is selling good enough. Now we need to enforce good software development practices. The goal is to monitor incoming bug reports and reduce them, allow never ending features and get ready for scaling 10x. The phrases \"test-driven-development\" and \"continuous-integration\" are not even understood by the team cause they were all in the first 2 year product race. Tech team size is 5. The question is   1. how to sell/convince team and management about TDD/unit testing/coding standards/documentation - with economics.   2. train the team to do more than just feature coding and start writing test units along - which looks like more work, means needs more time!   3. how to plan for creating units for all backlog production code"}
{"_id": "118300", "title": "Free Offline download of MSDN?", "text": "I was doing some searches for MSDN documentation and see it's online for free. It appears now they have a way to download it from the web, but I wasn't able to find out exactly how to do so. For the offline content, do you have to have Visual Studio installed and if so, will the express version work for this? Or can you download and run the MSDN help files standalone?"}
{"_id": "215175", "title": "How to safely run random binary codes?", "text": "Okay, so I am looking for a way to safely run a randomly generated binary code. I also need to be able to decompile the code. Any ideas and all programming languages are welcome. BTW it most be binary code; byte code or source code will not work. This is a research project, so I can't go adding variables."}
{"_id": "210520", "title": "Finding an object on an infinite line", "text": "Question: There is an infinite line. You are standing at a particular point you can either move 1 step forward or 1 step backward. You have to search for an object in that infinite line. Your object can be in any direction. Give an optimal solution My approach:                      Go 1 step forward, 2 step back ward             Go 2 step forward, 4 step back ward and so on       Complexity: Lets say the required object is at point n. Total number of steps:                3 + 6 + 9 + .... n      = 3(1 + 2 + 3 ... n)      = O(n^2)      Is there a way to improve the efficiency?"}
{"_id": "251148", "title": "What are some version control systems based on different concepts than Git, Mercurial etc?", "text": "Most of the version control systems I have used have a lot of similar functionallity for source code files: they work on their text content, diff using well known diff algorithms, the changes contain deleted and inserted lines of text, the whole workflow is based on some form of commits, branches and merging of branches. Several days ago I found and I started playing with Darcs, a version control system created by the Haskell community based on Patch theory. I wonder if there are any other, more esoteric version control systems based on different concepts(e.g. different kind of commits, working on code structure, etc)"}
{"_id": "195493", "title": "Simple method to authenticate human input into a form for relaying via email to a 3rd party", "text": "I put up a webpage advertising a particular birthday party. A simple html page served by apache2 on ubuntu server 12.04. I have a link on the page to a cgi script-Python-that asks the requester to submit text values that will be formatted and relayed in an email to the bithrday boy. What's a simple way to authenticate that a human being is filling out the form, so that I can avoid having the birthday boy receiving spam. Using standard CGI because I do not expect an overload of concurrent requests. I am aware of things like reCaptcha, but am looking for canonical strategies for quick and dirty authentication. Not being paid for this and the site will be up for but 9 days, so I don't want to put time into a solution more robust that what I actually need. Would asking a human answerable question suffice? If so could I get a away with a dropdown box of selectable answers. I want quick and dirty, but I also don't want to wind up with boat loads of spam because I underestimated the intelligence of spam bots."}
{"_id": "251141", "title": "Best pratice for return json in a REST application?", "text": "I'm starting now with REST (using Laravel 4.2) and Mobile (Android, iOS, SP, etc.) applications. Initially I'm checking if the request is ajax/json and then return a json response. But this condition is in a normal action (HTTP), so: **if ajax/json** return json, **else** return the view/template/layout Is it correct to do that in the same action, or is the best practice to create another controller for that? For example:   * PostsController   * PostsMobileController Or   * PostsController   * Mobile\\PostsController (or Json\\Controller) - _using namespaces_"}
{"_id": "195498", "title": "Is it 'safe' to expect myClasses to agree not to only call package Scope methods from other Package scope methods?", "text": "The questions says it all, but a quick overview of the situation. I'm creating a Model which contains classes (all inherriting myObject) which have a large amount of interconnection. I want the controller to be able to create any of these objects any time, without modifying the Model. Only an explicit cal to the model to \"AddToModel\" would 'install' the object into the model (including updating all the connected objects). myObjects will use a factory pattern, if a user tries to create something already represented in the Model the already- instanced object in the model will be returned instead of constructing a new one. To help with encapsulation I want all of my Objects to be effectivly-immutable to the controller, no matter what he does with an object he can't change the Model without calling the Model's add/remove. The model still has to be able to change myObject state; so I would put all of the objects into the Model package. Each object will then have package scope methods for updating state, including add/remove methods which install them in the model and update connected objects. So essentially Package scope methods can change model state, public can't. My concern is that this will all break if any of myObjects calls one of their package scope methods from a public method; messing with my state without explcit calls to Model. I am writing this all, so I can abide by the contract that \"only package methdos can call other package methods\" But what if someone comes by later and tries to call \"addToModel\" from a constructor because they didn't read my comments and don't realize this breaks an assumed contract? Is it 'safe' to expect others to read comments and abide by such an implicit contract when messing with 'my' model? Can I enforce this with some sort of pattern (preferable without too much abstraction/interfaces as it could confuse some of the other developers). ps, I'm using Java if that helps. I think I might even be able to enforce this with the security API, though that may just prove more confusing/complicated since it would result in an obscure runtime exception."}
{"_id": "166852", "title": "Writing a desktop application for progammer from PHP background", "text": "I have a client who wants a tool for him to be able to upload his products, enter orders, and keep track of customer details. There are quite a few highly customised requests, which is why he wants the tool custum made. He does not care much about the interface design - it just has to be usable and provide access to the databade. I've already designed the database. I have no experience of desktop applications and usually write my web apps in PHP with the Yii framework. But hosting this on a server seems like overkill. I also have .net experience from a few years ago. What would be the best options for writing this as a desktop application?"}
{"_id": "166856", "title": "Would a typical corporate firewall block a Java applet having the following behaviour", "text": "I'm thinking of developing a proxy-like program to forward ports on a remote PC to a local PC (for example SSH). Assume that both local and remote PCs are running behind typical firewalls (i.e. consumer broadband router firewall, Windows firewall or corporate firewalls). The program will be a Java program which the user will run on both the remote and local PC. The remote client will periodically poll a central server to determine whether there are pending client connections. A session could be initiated as follows:   1. The local client contacts the central server and request the current connection details for a specific remote client.   2. The central server responds with the remote server's last received IP address and port.   3. The next time the remote server polls the central server, the client's IP address and port are returned. The remote server initiates a connection to the local client using the IP address and port returned by the central server and listens for a response on a random port. The remote server will pass the value of the port it's listening on to central server.   4. Goto 1, if client fails to connect to server. All coomunication with the central server will be via HTTP/HTTPS on ports 80 & 443. Would this work or will a typical firewall block the interactions."}
{"_id": "156883", "title": "What is a normal \"functional lines of code\" to \"test lines of code\" ratio?", "text": "I'm pretty new to TDD approach and my first experiments say that writing 1 line of functional code means writing about 2-3 lines of testing code. So, in case I'm going to write 1000 LOC, the whole codebase including tests is going to be something like ~3500 LOC. Is this considered normal? What is the ratio in code you write?"}
{"_id": "237845", "title": "Unit Testing: How much more code?", "text": "I'm fairly new to unit testing. In school it's always been, \"hey it works, onward!\" But I've started to write professionally, and even at work that's been basically the mantra. However, I've started to see the validity of unit testing and TDD. I've come to a realization, that when I write maybe a 20 line piece of code, I'll usually write a 100-250 lines of code testing those lines of code. Is this about average? Are there better best practices of unit testing that I'm not aware of? Any way, I thought it was an interesting observation and was wondering, on average how much more code do you write when you write your unit tests?"}
{"_id": "162574", "title": "Why do we have to use break in switch", "text": "Who decided, and basing on what concepts, that `switch` construction (in many languages) has to be, like it is? Why do we have to use `break` in each statement? Why do we have to write something like this:               switch(a)     {         case 1:             result = 'one';             break;         case 2:             result = 'two';             break;         default:             result = 'not determined';             break;     }      I've noticed this construction in PHP and JS, but there are probably many other languages that uses it. If `switch` is an alternative of `if`, why we can't use the same construction for `switch`, as for `if`? I.e.:               switch(a)     {         case 1:         {             result = 'one';         }         case 2:         {             result = 'two';         }         default:         {             result = 'not determined';         }     }      It is said, that `break` prevents execution of a blocks following current one. But, does someone really run into situation, where there was any need for execution of current block and following ones? I didn't. For me, `break` is always there. In every block. In every code."}
{"_id": "99521", "title": "Doctoral research and work for a company with similar profile", "text": "What are the common guidelines and best practices for developers who are studying for their master or doctoral degrees, while still working to earn the living in a commercial entity. Especially, if profile of the commercial entity is partially similar to the research topic. The reason for this question is because:   * Master/doctoral students have to publish their findings, therefore releasing information to public domain   * Commercial entities usually have clauses that all work items assigned to their employees, electronically, in spoken, and in written, are actually copyrighted, and the employee is transferring all ownership to a commercial entity   * Most commercial research is considered trade secrets and not to be released to a public domain, NDA, etc. So, for example, if you are employed for a company that simulates turbine parameters using server clusters, while your research topic is, for example, \"Physics simulation frameworks\". The thing suddenly becomes muddy. Yet, at the same time, seems that thousands of people work and publish their findings in conferences while working in the same exact field. What's the catch? How can you keep doing your research work while maintaining rights to your exact research field, and a copyright to implement the proof of concept/prototype/product after graduating if you later decide so. Seems that a lot of people do somehow."}
{"_id": "162573", "title": "Project frozen - what should I leave to the people after me?", "text": "So the project I've been working on is now going to be frozen indefinitely. It is possible that if and when the project unfreezes again, it won't be assigned to me or anybody from the current team. Actually, we inherited the project after it had been frozen before, but there was nothing left by the prior team to help us understand even the basic needs of the project, so we wasted a lot of time getting to know the project well. My question is what do you think we should do to help the people after us to best understand the needs of the project, what we have done, why we've done it, etc. I am open to other ideas of why should we leave some tracks to the others that will work on this project also. Some steps we already have taken:   * technical documentation (not full but at least there is some);   * source-control system history;   * estimations on which parts of the project need improvement and why we think so;   * bunch of unit tests.   * issue tracker with all the tickets we've done ( **EDIT** ) What do you think of what we've already prepared and what else can we do?"}
{"_id": "162578", "title": "What's a good model for continuous manager <-> programmer feedback?", "text": "Is it important for managers to give devs regular feedback on how they're doing and vice versa? I say vice versa because I consider employees to be responsible to their manager, and managers to be responsible to their employees. Everyone seems to think this is a good idea but in practice I rarely see it happen because so many shops are \"agile\" now and that usually means a daily standup plus a weekly kickoff, etc. So one-on-ones just don't happen. In my last position I had my first one-on-one w/ my manager 6 months after I'd been w/ the company. It turned out there was lots of misunderstanding, misalignment and confusion built up and snowballed. Not really surprising when there's no direct personal communication for that long."}
{"_id": "57713", "title": "Why learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) when I can just use Flash Professional?", "text": "I want to learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) because I see so many jobs requesting experience with it. I also just like knowing stuff. I am also very interested in focusing on RIA development now. BUT... can anyone tell me CLEARLY why the heck I would ever use FLEX over Flash Pro? It is a time investment, so is it worth it? All I read are misguided posts about how Flash Pro is for games and banner ads, and Flex is for programmers and RIAs blah blah... this simply isn't so from my 9 years of contracting experience. I'm 99.9% certain that I can build anything a flex developer can build, but using Flash Pro. I can build powerful AS3-driven apps for the desktop, mobile device, or browser, and I can link to databases with XML and I can import text files and communicate with ColdFusion and everything. The advantage with Flash Pro is that I can also easily and clearly animate transitions and build custom elements that look the way I want/need them to look for my specific client. Why would I want to use a bunch of pre-built components that drive my file sizes to the moon? Who is happy with a drag-n-drop button? Is Flex just a thing made for programmer people with no artistic inclination? What is the advantage of using it? It takes me back to Visual Basic class. Seems like a pain to have to use multiple tools to import crap from Flash Pro into Flex and yada yada... why when I can do it all nicely in Flash Pro to begin with. Am I clueless, or missing some major piece of the puzzle? Thanks for any clarity. PS, I couldn't care less about the code editors. It ain't that bad people. They make it out like the thing doesn't even respond to keyboard input or something. Does everything I need it do anyways. Please help out here. If I just don't need to learn it, I don't want to waste the time."}
{"_id": "7942", "title": "What tools are available for remote communication when working from home or with a distributed team?", "text": "My supervisor is allowing my team to dip our toes in the water of working from home. Considering a recent aquisition of another company is requiring some employees to love this new idea which will hack up to an hour off their commute into work every morning, I really want this to succeed. In order to make it a success, we need good tools to make our lives a lot easier. We currently are set up with OpenVPN, and Team Foundation Server 2010 with SharePoint 2010, and use Live Messenger (for SharePoint integration and easier remote desktop) for IM. These are just what we use (and they are currently working well) , but you can suggest other products. So, what are some great tools that will helps us collaborate, communicate, and generally work together when we're hours apart?"}
{"_id": "42176", "title": "Do you Know of Any Audio Podcasts Discussing PHP Standard PHP Library (SPL)", "text": "Do you Know of Any Audio Podcasts Discussing PHP Standard PHP Library (SPL). I'd like to listen to this in the bath."}
{"_id": "198178", "title": "What UML diagram should I use to show a platform's architecture?", "text": "I have been learning UML and have a basic understanding now, but I keep seeing these sort of high level architecture diagrams. Here's one from Microsoft: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nQw2n.jpg) Source: A bad picture is worth a thousand long discussions. Is this a UML diagram? Are there any rules to follow for creating these types of diagrams? I would like to represent something similar, i.e. the realtionship between different installed systems / APIs... i.e. Platform architecture."}
{"_id": "198179", "title": "What aspects should I be wary of when choosing a web development framework?", "text": "I am a relatively new to the world of software development and I've used the Ruby on Rails framework to develop relatively simple applications before. I know that frameworks can be extremely useful in terms of getting applications up and running quite quickly. However I also know about the well documented problems that Rails had in terms scalability, and I was wondering if there were any other factors that I should be wary of before deciding to use a web frameworks in general aside from scalability, particularly when designing non-trivial business applications."}
{"_id": "42171", "title": "What is the convention for skipping lines in programming?", "text": "I was wondering what is the convention for skipping lines? Do we group similar things together, skip no lines or just group everything together except if statements or similar constructs. If there is no convention for this, then tell me how you do it and at the end ill determine if i want to use any. Currently i skip no lines. Languages - C, C++, C#, PHP and Java"}
{"_id": "80389", "title": "Can CSS be considered a DSL?", "text": "According to Wikipedia, CSS is a style sheet language. However, it's pretty much the only such type of language in use (at least from a web developer's perspective). When trying to categorize CSS as a language or technology (e.g. for a r\u00e9sum\u00e9), would it be acceptable to simply call it a domain-specific language? If you don't think it can, why not?"}
{"_id": "198174", "title": "What is a UNiversal IT Test (UNITT) and how do I prepare for one?", "text": "I will be taking an advanced PHP UNiversal IT Test (UNITT) for a position I am applying for. However, I am unfamiliar with the term 'unitt test'. What is a unitt test and how would a company execute one? If anyone is familiar with this, please let me know the best way to prepare"}
{"_id": "80383", "title": "When is an Open Source project ready for production?", "text": "When you find a new open source library / project, what criteria do you look at before incorporating it into your source base.   * Are there legal questions you need to answer?   * Do you look for a certain amount of development velocity?   * Is the community buzz a good enough reason?   * Does your decision change if you are the one on the line for the project?   * Does the complexity of the domain or code change your way you think about it?"}
{"_id": "16913", "title": "Should I be involved in my project's business side?", "text": "Before my current job, I was always involved in the technical aspects of a project like:   * architecture   * design   * performance   * security   * etc Now I'm team lead of a project that's a game on a web site (not mine) and somehow got involved in the business side of the project:   * what users expect   * ads showing in which pages of the site   * mechanics of the game   * etc But I quite don't agree with business people's (customer or product owner if you like) decisions of the directions of the site. Of course I raise my concerns, some of them are taken into account, most of them aren't. I continue my work as usual as I like working here but I feel like the product would be better than what it is now. I think that's because my goal is to make an interesting and challenging game, and theirs is to attract as many people and earn money as possible (it's a paid game). Have you guys ever happened to be in this kind of situation? What are your experiences?"}
{"_id": "97472", "title": "When does implementing MVVM not make sense", "text": "I am a big fan of various patterns and enjoy learning new ones all the time however I think with all the evangelism around popular patterns and anti- patterns sometimes this causes blind adoption. I think most things have individual pros and cons and it's important to educate what the cons are and when it doesn't make sense to make a particular choice. The pros are constantly advocated. \"It depends\" I think applies most times but the industry does a poor job at communicating what it depends ON. Also many patterns surfaced from inheriting values from previous patterns or have derivatives, which each one brings another set of pros and cons to the table. The sooner we are more aware of the trade off's of decisions we make in software architecture the sooner we make better decisions. This is my first challenge to the community. Even if you are a big fan of said pattern, I challenge you to discover the cons and when you shouldn't use it. Define when MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) may not make sense in a particular piece of software and based on what reasons. MVVM has a set of pros and cons. Let's try to define them. GO! :)"}
{"_id": "236598", "title": "Organising models in ASP.NET MVC", "text": "I'm building websites in ASP.NET MVC and I quickly figured out that my models are getting harder to organise as they grow. What I normally do is create one model to add and edit data. But in my add view I have 2 extra properties. So I'm re-using the same model with 2 extra properties but I don't use these my edit view. Now I have a few questions regarding this. How do you organise it?   * Do you create one file class with multiple models in it or is it better to create a new file for each model?   * Is it better to create a new model if you need a few more properties?"}
{"_id": "97478", "title": "Understanding Application binary interface (ABI)", "text": "I am trying to understand the concept of Application binary interface (ABI). From The Linux Kernel Primer: > An ABI is a set of conventions that allows a linker to combine separately > compiled modules into one unit without recompilation, such as calling > conventions, machine interface, and operating-system interface. Among other > things, an ABI defines the binary interface between these units. ... The > benefits of conforming to an ABI are that it allows linking object files > compiled by different compilers. From Wikipedia: > an application binary interface (ABI) describes the low-level interface > between an application (or any type of) program and the operating system or > another application. > > ABIs cover details such as data type, size, and alignment; the calling > convention, which controls how functions' arguments are passed and return > values retrieved; the system call numbers and how an application should make > system calls to the operating system; and in the case of a complete > operating system ABI, the binary format of object files, program libraries > and so on.   1. I was wondering whether ABI depends on both the instruction set and the OS. Are the two all that ABI depends on?   2. What kinds of role does ABI play in different stages of compilation: preprocessing, conversion of code from C to Assembly, conversion of code from Assembly to Machine code, and linking? From the first quote above, it seems to me that ABI is needed for only linking stage, not the other stages. Is it correct?   3. When is ABI needed to be considered?  Is ABI needed to be considered during programming in C, Assembly or other languages? If yes, how are ABI and API different? Or is it only for linker or compiler?   4. Is ABI specified for/in machine code, Assembly language, and/or of C?"}
{"_id": "190782", "title": "When to separate application concerns", "text": "I've worked for a number of companies that have, over time, branched out their core service to provide additional services and/or revenue streams. My question is when is the proper time to separate these concerns into multiple applications, even when they're operating on the same/extensions-of-some data? For example, say a company has a core business application that resolves around a music index/music discovery. If this company later decided to branch out into offering websites for musicians that utilize their existing index, should this be a separate application that receives its data from the core- business-application via API, or is it reasonable to lump this into a module of the existing application, and use existing business objects? It seems to me that the **ability** to lump things into one application shouldn't be reason enough to do so. In Unix, we practice Separation of Concerns, but when it comes to enterprise development, this principal seems to be lost. In the example above, I would feel that these _should_ be separate applications, but in my experience I witness developers lump these together to save time."}
{"_id": "90127", "title": "An Extra-Intellectual search in a large text", "text": "Have you ever seen, met, or worked with a smart/intellectual search library/framework/algorithm during your career? I need a very nice mechanism to search among text, I don't need a \"Personal Google\", just thought that programmers' community have met with such problem and know/can provide a good solution. Is it possible to search by \"meaning\" and could you advice a way/technique/thoughts according this? Thank you."}
{"_id": "133506", "title": "When stuck, how quickly should one resort to Stack Overflow?", "text": "I'm self-learning iOS development through the iTunes U CS193p course, and I often find myself stuck. I've been trying to get unstuck myself, but it might take me hours and hours to figure out what I'm doing wrong, be it missing a method or not really getting a whole concept like delegation. I'm worried that I might be wasting too much time, and I'd be better off going to Stack Overflow shortly after I get stuck so I can move on. In your experience, does quickly asking on Stack Overflow hamper the learning process or improve it?"}
{"_id": "29359", "title": "Will HTML5/JS Eventually Replace All Client Side Languages?", "text": "I'm just wondering about the future of it all. IMHO, there are 4 forces that define where technology goes: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Adobe. It looks like in Apple's iPhone/iPad iADs can now be programmed in HTML5. So does that mean HTML5 will eventually replace objective-c? Also, Microsoft has now shifted it's focus from WPF/Silverlight to HTML5 and I assume Visual Studio 2011 will be all about tooling support for HTML5. Because that's what Microsoft do. (Tools). In a few months IE9 the last major browser will support HTML5. Similarly Adobe is getting on the HTML5 bandwagon and allows to export flash content to HTML5 in their latest tools. And we all know how much in bed Google is with html5. Heck, their latest Operating System (Chrome OS) is nothing but a big fat web browser. Apps for Mobile (i.e., iPhone, Android, WM7) are very hard for a company to program especially for many different devices (each with their own language) so I'm assuming this won't last too long. I.e., HTML5 will be the unifying language. Which is somewhat sad for app developers because now users will be able to play the \"cool\" html5 apps for free on the web and it'll be hard to charge for them. So are strongly-typed languages really doomed, and in the future, say 5-10 years, will client side programming only be in HTML5? Will all of us become javascript programmers? :) Because the signs are sure pointing that way..."}
{"_id": "63255", "title": "How to figure out real life examples of design patterns?", "text": "Hi I am learning design patterns from a book . How to figure out the actual production code where it is implemented . For example , if I am learning strategy pattern , it might be implemented in Spring framework . But how to go and search there and see it . Do you guys have any easy ways of finding such stuff ?"}
{"_id": "53569", "title": "What are QUICK interview questions for the Microsoft stack development jobs?", "text": "I'm looking for your best \"quick answer\" technical interview questions. We are a 100% Microsoft shop and do the majority of our development on the ASP.NET web stack in C# and have a custom SOA framework also written in C#. We use a combination of Web Forms, MVC, Web Services, WCF, Entity Framework, SQL Server, TSQL, jQuery, LINQ, and TFS in a SCRUM environment. We are currently on .NET 3.5 with a very near transition to .NET 4.0. Our interviewing process includes a 55 minute interview with two technical people (usually an architect and a senior developer). The two interviewers have to share the time for questions. That isn't enough time for very many true programming problems so I'm looking for more good questions that have quick, yet meaningful, answers. We are mainly interviewing for Senior Dev positions right now but may interview for some Juniors in the future. Please help? EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION: The should not necessarily be specific to the MS stack. I just don't want questions that are specific to OTHER technology stacks like Ruby or Java."}
{"_id": "63250", "title": "How do you cope with the dynamic nature of high-level software development?", "text": "I consider myself a high level software developer. I enjoy reading a lot, and it's helped me over the course of my career. I think I am doing well. Right now, I spend a lot of time learning new things. I don't suck when it comes to writing code right now, but I'm about to start a family, and I regularly see many seniors with 14-15 years of experience who\u2014because they cut back on learning new things\u2014now suck at programming. They were inspiring figures at some point of time, but they are not anymore. You might argue that basics never change, but it does appear to make a difference when you are coding on Delphi for 10 years and suddenly everyone is using the .NET framework. It's true that an experienced developer will take less time when learning a new framework, but it still **does** demand time and effort. How does a software developer manage the demands of the job while still being able to concentrate on things that necessarily take you out of the job, like starting a family?"}
{"_id": "10512", "title": "What are the major differences when moving from console-based to GUI-based programming?", "text": "I started, like many others, with console-based (as in terminal, not Playstation) programming. But sooner or later, one needs to touch upon GUI- based programming, whether you want to or not. This transition holds many changes in how you need to think about the frontend (and possibly also the backend). So, what are the major differences when moving from console-based programming to GUI-based programming?"}
{"_id": "10511", "title": "What makes a successful development team?", "text": "What are the signs of a successful development team? What qualities does a team of developers need to possess in order to be successful?"}
{"_id": "95183", "title": "If I finish one project, should I wait until the next day to start another one or begin right away?", "text": "There are some days where I feel like I get a lot done. I've finished deploying my most recent project and cleared everything from my TODO list, and still have some time left in my day. I DO have a couple of larger projects I could dive into, but its so hard to when I feel like I've accomplished quite a bit in one morning and know I'll be leaving for the day in a few hours. Its even worse when it's a Friday (like today) In this sort of situation I tend to slack off a bit. Browse SO and answer questions to learn, work on some custom libraries for myself, surf the web for cool and interesting things to learn.... I try to keep it limited to work- related things but I find it really hard to stay focused. My question is, how do I get back on track? Or should I even bother? Is it acceptable to spend the rest of the day learning, or should I just sigh and start wading into another project even knowing that I won't have time to get much done and that I'll have forgotten most of it by Monday?"}
{"_id": "54691", "title": "What makes a good Scrum Master?", "text": "How do I identify a good Scrum Master? Here are some possibilities:   1. The person is agile (doesn't just do agile). Indicators: Blog, volunteer activities   2. The person connects well with others at the level of emotions and needs (not just technical stuff).   3. The person is relentless and fearless when removing impediments"}
{"_id": "142100", "title": "Project life cycle management - Maven vs 'manual' approach", "text": "I have a question concerning the life cycle management of a/multiple project(s), more specific to the advantages/disadvantages of using technologies such as Maven. Currently we work in a continuous-integration environment but lots of things still need to be manually performed (dependency management, deploying, setting up documentation, generating stats, ...). My impression is that this approach often leads to errors, miscommunications or things just are forgotten. I know and have used Maven in the past but in smaller environments and I was always really enthusiastic about it. But I was wondering if someone could share some insights, experiences, pros, contras, ... about the use of Maven (or similar technology) in larger environments and for multiple projects. I would like to use the suggestions made here to start the debate about moving to the next level in project management!"}
{"_id": "223818", "title": "The real difference between web and native apps in mobile and smart devices", "text": "I still don't understand the difference between a native app and web or hybrid apps from the interface point of view. Now, apps such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. Are they native? or web? or hybrid apps? In those apps what is the most code was used? is it HTML and JS? or is it a language such as Objective C or Java? I'm still confused."}
{"_id": "142107", "title": "Syntax logic suggestions", "text": "This syntax will be used inside HTML attributes. Here are a few examples of what I have so far:               <input name=\"a\" conditions=\"!b, c\" />     <input name=\"b\" />     <input name=\"c\" />      This will make input \"a\" do something if `b` is not checked and `c` is checked (b and c are assumed to be checkboxes if they don't have a `:value` defined) * * *               <input name=\"a\" conditions=\"!b:foo|bar, c:foo\" />     <input name=\"b\" />     <input name=\"c\" />      This will make input \"a\" do something if `b`doesn't have `foo` or `bar` values, and if `c` has the `foo` value. * * *               <input name=\"a\" conditions=\"!b:EMPTY\" />     <input name=\"b\" />      Makes input \"a\" do something if `b` has a value assigned. * * * So, essentially `,` acts as logical AND, `:` as equals (=), `!` as NOT, and `|` as OR. The `|` (OR) is only needed between values (at least I think so), and AND is not needed between values for obvious reasons :) `EMPTY` means empty value, like `<input value=\"\" />` Do you have any suggestions on improving this syntax, like making it more human friendly? For example I think the \"EMPTY\" keyword is not really appropriate and should be replaced with a character, but I don't know which one to choose."}
{"_id": "142105", "title": "What's the best way to comment in a code review?", "text": "My team just started using crucible/fisheye for initiating code reviews whenever one of us checks something in. There are only 3 of us, and we're each encouraged to review the code and leave comments where we see fit. My question is, how do I best leave a comment on a line of code I see a problem with? I want to get my point across without seeming abrasive. I don't want to seem like I'm on a high horse and say \" _I've been doing it this way..._ and I also don't want to seem like I'm trying to be authoritative and say something like \" _This should be done this way..._ \" but I still need to get the point across that what they're doing is not very good. **To Clarify:** This is a really good resource for _what_ I should be looking to comment on: code review: Is it subjective or objective(quantifiable)?, but I'm looking for _how_ to comment on it."}
{"_id": "223767", "title": "Auto Transaction Failsafe's, Third Party API's, Coldfusion Schedule Files", "text": "I have an automated invoicing web app and I'm trying to build in some failsafes and a structure that will, under no circumstance, allow an invoice to be double charged. All things working perfectly, the scheduled task runs and everything charges as it's supposed to. But there are a few scenarios we know of that can cause problems. I've had a DB server go down in the middle of a process, which lead to a number of duplicate charges. Also if for whatever reason, the file needs to be checked in a browser, a developer hits refresh before the file is done processing, duplicate charges will occur. There are a few similar scenarios to protect against, so you can see the need for a way to handle this given the sensitivity of the transactions (imaging seeing your power company auto charging you twice on your bank statement). Current configuration:   * Query   * API POST For Transaction              <!--- Parse Reply String --->     if response = \"1\"           - Insert Into Payments           - Update Invoice Amount Due           - Insert Into Transactions           - Email Accepted Notification          else           - Email Declined Notification      There's a few more smaller processes that happen between a few of these, as well as quite a few if statements but those are the heavy lifting parts. What I would like to learn and hear about are what would be the best way to handle safeguarding this with considering the Third Party API for the gateway being there? How would you break it up? One idea I had was flagging each process after it ran to give a record of where it was when it failed, and build out the query to handle it accordingly. Not sure how efficient or more likely how inefficient it would be."}
{"_id": "21406", "title": "Horizontal growth vs vertical growth", "text": "I worked in a lot of different environments since I finished University. I worked as software analyst in optics, numeric control, military and networking environments and learned using a lot of different tools. My main skill is software design (and C++ programming) but I learned Python, Qt, MFC (still used, I couldn't believe...), Bash and Perl. I also learned to configure VPNs, MySQL and tons of other tools and programming libraries. I also developed Linux realtime modules. Since I like a lot to learn new stuff and working on project not for long times (2 years top) I become a consultant: the best way to ensure horizontal growth. I chose this way because of personal preferences but also because my greatest fear was to end working on a sub-sub-sub problem of a sub application domain for 30-40 years of my life. I've met people like that. They have huge vertical skills in the application domain. For example a colleague of mine has been programming automation of machine tools in C++ for 20 years. He knows every single little thing he needs to know for machine tools but polymorphism is the most advanced C++ feature he knows and C++ it's his main language! My fear is basically that the job market could punish me in the long run. Of course my colleague could have the same problem: if his company goes bankrupt I wish him luck finding another job in the same niche. There is a trade off between vertical growth and horizontal growth. How do you cope with that? Do you think that vertical growth has more advantages in the long run? Please think in terms of job market and in terms of personal growth. Is there a way to balance the two kinds of growth?"}
{"_id": "21400", "title": "How large non-OO code bases are managed?", "text": "I always see abstraction is a very useful feature the OO provides for managing the code-base. But how are large non-OO code bases are managed? Or do those just become a \"Big Ball of Mud\" eventually? **Update:**   It seemed everyone is thinking 'abstraction' is just modularization or data- hiding. But IMHO, it also means the use of 'Abstract Classes' or 'Interfaces' which is a must for dependency-injection and thus testing. How non-OO code bases manage this? And also, other than abstraction, the encapsulation also helps a lot to manage large code bases as it define and restrict the relation between data and functions. With C, it is very much possible to write pseudo-OO code. I don't know much about other non-OO languages. So, is it THE way to manage large C code bases?"}
{"_id": "223812", "title": "Best way to keep large amounts of data (no relational database needed)", "text": "I would like to know what should be the best way to keep data on a server related to the following points:   * **Chat** logs   * **Heavy text content**   * **User references** like amounts of ids (1,4,14,524,23220,...) I'm using **PHP** and a **mysql** database but as obvious I know the topics above don't go well into mysql at large scale and maneuvering. So I would like to know how ( **no, i'm not asking for your work, just your 3-line orientation** ) exactly should I keep the data :) * * * Ok basically I keep my users in a sql table and another only for their friendships in which I have a field containing references related, _allegedly_ , to chat logs. Now the thing is I don't actually understand whether I should have that content in a file, keep the file path in that sql field and then retrieve the file when needed, parse it and display it to the user or keep it in a database such as mongodb, raven, couch because I've never used no-sql database and wanted to know of experienced people on it. Same goes for the **heavy text content** and user references. For example, in my users table I have a field containing its friends in the following manner 1,4,5,6,14,51,... and since I've been told this is bad practice and **certainly** should be used whilst dealing with large amounts of data that would need to be changed constantly I came here in a hopeful act of guidance and enlightment."}
{"_id": "48117", "title": "How do software projects go over budget and under-deliver?", "text": "I've come across this story quite a few times here in the UK: NHS Computer System Summary: We're spunking \u00a312 Billion on some health software with barely anything working. I was sitting the office discussing this with my colleagues, and we had a little think about. From what I can see, all the NHS needs is a database + middle tier of drugs/hospitals/patients/prescriptions objects, and various GUIs for doctors and nurses to look at. You'd also need to think about security and scalability. And you'd need to sit around a hospital/pharmacy/GPs office for a bit to figure out what they need. But, all told, I'd say I could knock together something with that kind of structure in a couple of days, and maybe throw in a month or two to make it work in scale. * If I had a few million quid, I could probably hire some really excellent designers to make a maintainable codebase, and also buy appropriate hardware to run the system on. I hate to trivialize something that seems to have caused to much trouble, but to me it looks like just a big distributed CRUD + UI system. So how on earth did this project bloat to \u00a312B without producing much useful software? As I don't think the software sounds so complicated, I can only imagine that something about how it was organised caused this mess. Is it outsourcing that's the problem? Is it not getting the software designers to understand the medical business that caused it? **What are your experiences with projects gone over budget, under delivered? What are best practices for large projects? Have you ever worked on such a project?** **EDIT** *This bit seemed to get a lot of attention. What I mean is I could probably do this for say, 30 users, spending a few tens of thousands of pounds. I'm not including stuff I don't know about the medical industry and government, but I think most people who've been around programming are familiar with that kind of database/front end kind of design. My point is the NHS project looks like a BIG version of this, with bells and whistles, notably security. But surely a budget millions of times larger than mine could provide this?"}
{"_id": "211693", "title": "DDD/SOA Using .NET Message pattern(s) / Request Response with File Saving", "text": "I've done some research on this but I can't find more specific examples to help me with this. I'm new to SOA/Patterns in general please take it easy... :) Can you display an example of using the fileupload control in .net implementing SOA Messaging Patterns?"}
{"_id": "211696", "title": "More efficient way to paginate search results", "text": "I'm making a website in PHP where the user can search a big MySQL database. The user is shown the first result. I want the _next_ button to take the user to the next result, and so on. The trivial solution is for each result page to execute the user's search query _again_ and use OFFSET and LIMIT to get the _n_ -th result that is displayed. But this feels like a Schlemiel the Painter's algorithm: re- executing the same query over and over to get to the _n_ -th result is inefficient. Since others must have faced this situation before: how is this typically solved?"}
{"_id": "208298", "title": "Collecting user information for debugging and support", "text": "I have a Java application that I need to support. I'd like it to collect user information, such as system information: OS and hardware for easier diagnostics and support.   * Are there any security & privacy regulations I need to follow?    * Do I specifically need consent from the user to do this?"}
{"_id": "67579", "title": "How can I teach my co-workers the SOLID principles?", "text": "I've got a group of very talented, yet new, developers on my team. I've fully embraced the SOLID principles in the projects I'm working on, and my fellow developers have seen the wisdom of the ways - but I am not an experienced teacher (nor am I an experienced student - everything I've learned I've learned on my own or from blog posts). I've been given leeway to hold teaching sessions with these guys, but I need to come up with some sort of lesson plan or else I'll probably just confuse and frustrate them and myself. There are plenty of resources on the web that describe or introduce the SOLID principles, but I haven't seen many that go in depth with them, and I've seen none at all that discuss how to _teach_ them. Am I missing some resource that's already out there for this? We're .NET developers, a mix of C# and VB.NET, so while I'll take examples in any language, .NET examples will be the best help as I won't have to translate them before showing them to my team. I should mention that we don't have a budget for books. Feel free to mention them, but bear in mind that if they're not cheap, they'll need to be _really_ compelling for me to consider. I won't be reimbursed in any case."}
{"_id": "187715", "title": "Validation of the input parameter in caller: code duplication?", "text": "Where is the best place to validate input parameters of function: in caller or in function itself? As I would like to improve my coding style, I try to find the best practices or some rules for this issue. When and what is better. In my previous projects, we used to check and treat every input parameter inside the function, (for example if it is not null). Now, I have read here in some answers and also in Pragmatic Programmer book, that the validation of input parameter is responsibility of caller. So it means, that I should validate the input parameters before calling of the function. Everywhere the function is called. And that raises one question: doesn't it create a duplication of checking condition everywhere the function is called? I am not interested just in null conditions, but in validation of any input variables (negative value to `sqrt` function, divide by zero, wrong combination of state and ZIP code, or anything else) Are there some rules how to decide where to check the input condition? I am thinking about some arguments:   * when the treating of invalid variable can vary, is good to validate it in caller side (e.g `sqrt()` function - in some case I may want to work with complex number, so I treat the condition in caller)   * when the check condition is the same in every caller, it is better to check it inside the function, to avoid duplications   * validation of input parameter in caller takes place only one before calling of many functions with this parameter. Therefore the validation of a parameter in each function is not effective   * the right solution depends on the particular case I hope this question is not duplicate of any other, I searched for this issue and I found similar questions but they don't mention exactly this case."}
{"_id": "251853", "title": "Why would the switch from C# to scala make sense in order to take advantage of scala's functional capabilities?", "text": "What is the benefit of using functional program for large scale software projects? I have heard it is pretty performance equivalent to regular OOP. I also have heard that it is more \"mathematically elegant.\" Either way what are the benefits of doing large scale applications functionally? In particular why would the switch from C# to scala make sense in order to take advantage of scala's functional capabilities?"}
{"_id": "187710", "title": "Is it possible to get dynamically generated html in asp.net tags using HTTP Modules?", "text": "I want to know if it is possible to write to a log/text file dynamically generated HTML in asp.net tags in an .aspx page using HTTP modules. By dynamically generated HTML, I mean the html content that asp.net generates in response to statements between the tags <% %> or <%# %> or <%$ %>. So when asp.net renders a page, it essentially converts everything into HTML. There is some static html written in the asp.net page, rest is what i call dynamically genrated HTML. My goal is to dump somewhere all the dynamically generated HTML content. Can it be done using HTTP Modules or any other mechanism ? Example:   If the .aspx page is like this   ...   `<td>Total Credit Line </td>`   `<td><%=creditLimit.ToString(\"C\")%></td>`   ...   I want the HTTP Module to write in a log file, the HTML rendered by the <%=creditLimit.ToString(\"C\")%> asp tag and all other asp tags on the page. The HTTP Module would be generic and can be added to any IIS website. Note that there would be no difference in the output that is seen by a browser."}
{"_id": "251857", "title": "How to tell node.js which javascript code runs on server vs client?", "text": "I am trying to learn the theory of node.js but can't seem to figure out how node.js knows whether to pre process it on the server or send it to browser for execution."}
{"_id": "187713", "title": "Algorithm for deciding change in gesture", "text": "I am developing an application where I am taking dynamic gestures as input and then mapping them to keyboard controls. By dynamic gesture, I mean for example hand moving from left to right or hand moving right to left. I have four gestures: hand moving bottom to top, top to bottom, left to right and right to left. I am able to recognize gestures but the problem is how to decide the start and ending of the gesture on a continuous video input. What is the most efficient and effective algorithm for detecting this on a video input?"}
{"_id": "96987", "title": "Who would be responsive for damage caused after cloning foreign application but NOT running it as freelancer?", "text": "This is just theoretical question, without context. In case   * somebody hire me (as freelancer (I'm A1))   * client (A2) wants to develop **CLONE** of an existing application from B1 company   * after some time I give completed application to my client (A2)   * after some time original owners of application (B1) I cloned want to go to court Who would be responsive for damage caused to B1 company? Me as freelancer (A1) or my client (A2) which runs that site and take money from it?"}
{"_id": "68631", "title": "What are the most cost effective ways of increasing your marketability to employers", "text": "There's a difference between becoming a better developer and showing you're a better developer to potential employers or to your current employer (ie. raises and such). I'm wondering what the most cost effective ways of doing that are. By cost effective, I don't just mean how much money said developer going to have to put out. Most commonly these are money and time. The latter is often more significant. For instance: Having your own blog can really develop you as a programmer, but it _may_ not be seen as a big deal to your current or future developers, and is potentially a lot of work, whereas some certs can go a long way with some employers and is much less work than building up a lot of quality content in a blog or developing a personal/OS project - even if the latter may be more fun. Assuming you're in the .NET space, what are the more cost effective ways that you can increase your marketability to your current or future employers? In an ideal world, we/I would do them all, but for the purpose of prioritizing, one should/could tackle the higher marketability/cost ones first before moving on to the others."}
{"_id": "160049", "title": "JavaScript vs third party libraries", "text": "I program in Java and it doesn't make sense to me to think about learning a Java library or a framework without knowing the actual language the thing is built with. Same goes for C. I always avoided JavaScript simply because I wasn't interested in the client side of things but that has changed now. I'm confused as to how and why do people avoid learning JavaScript and instead jump right ahead with a library like JQuery ? How can I program without knowing the features of JS, what is a prototype based language, functions as first class citizens, OOP, closures, etc. Also, are most of the things today in the client-side world built with the help of third party libraries?"}
{"_id": "160048", "title": "Teaching kids to program - how to teach syntax?", "text": "I've been spending this week teaching kids (11-18) to program. Teaching them the core concepts and the logic has been going fine, but I've noticed one snagging point for them all: syntax. I feel like teaching them the syntax of the language comes a massive second to the core concepts and logic. However, with struggling with the syntax, they aren't learning as effectively. More often than not, their logic is good enough. The problems they have are related to syntax. Does anybody know of an effective way of teaching syntax? I've been thinking about creating a cheat sheet showing the syntax for different statements (assignment, if, while, for, etc) but feel this might be a bit of an information overload, has anybody any experience with using this method? Hopefully this question isn't considered off topic!"}
{"_id": "91340", "title": "Java out of web and without GUI?", "text": "Is java used out of web and without GUI? To develop web applications you have to learn design stuff, html+css+javascript+ajax => it takes really a lot of time to learn it. Developing a GUI application also requires design skills. Is it possible to write something in pure java and what exactly?"}
{"_id": "149483", "title": "Which data structure to represent a triangular undirected graph", "text": "I was wanting to create a graph similar to this in C++: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GtckL.png) The one I will implement will have more edges and vertices, but will use this triangle style. I was wanting to create something that I could perform various search algorithms on in order to find shortest paths to selected vertices (or longest without loops etc.). It is an unweighted graph to begin with; however, I was planning to give the edges weights in the future. I was having some trouble with how I would represent this graph for a couple of reasons: since I want to have more vertices (maybe 105 vertices), any kind of list would be tedious to write out which vertices are connected to which in every object (or is there a way to automate the assignment of members of a vertex object signifying the connectedness?). Also, I was finding it strange trying to implement it in a 2d array because the array is square in nature, and I am dealing with triangles; thinking about the weighting of edges and assigning a value in between two vertices made it even less intuitive with an array."}
{"_id": "157739", "title": "2 Dimensional Arrays in C++", "text": "I started learning arrays in C++ and came over a little side note in the book talking about 2D arrays in breif. I tested it out and i was amazed that it could give the programmer the ability to store data or information and lay it out infront of him in a spread sheet format. In a normal array to access elements i would simply do this:               int matrix[2] = { 1, 15};      But in 2D arrays :The only way it tells me to actually acces elements is by using a loop:               int fly[2][2];     int i = 0;     int n=0;     for(i=0; i<2; i++){         for (n=0; n<2; n++){             fly[i][n] =0;         }     }     for(i=0; i<2; i++){         for (n =0; n<2; n++){             cout << fly[i][n]<< endl;         }     }      I have tried accessing elements the old way:               int fly[2][2] = { 0};      but i noticed that this changes all the elements to 0 So..   1. Can anyone explain when i try accessing this 2D array like this all the elements change.   2. Is there another way to access 2D array elements without using a loop. Thank you all."}
{"_id": "149481", "title": "Reorganizing code based on dependencies", "text": "I'm wondering if there is a tool that can generate a dependency graph between C language object files and then analyze how to turn that graph into a DAG by modifying code that creates cycles, moving it to other source files. I've drawn a dependency graph by hand and I could probably make one by using makedepend or something similar, but the moving of functions also has to be done by hand. Sorry if that's vague, but that's about the best I can describe it right now."}
{"_id": "158908", "title": "Why null pointer instead of class cast?", "text": "In Java:               int count = (Integer) null;      throws a java.lang.NullPointerException. Why doesn't this throw a Class Cast Exception for ease in programmer understanding? Why was this exception chosen over any other exception?"}
{"_id": "103472", "title": "In a javascript only web application, what state information should the URL contain?", "text": "I'm writing a single page web application that talks to a business layer via asynchronous RPC (encoded with json). I'm targeting fairly modern browsers, so I can at minimum control the URL after the hash. However, the URL won't really be what drives the application's state (that will be maintained by a javascript model layer), so I don't _have_ to do anything with it. I could even keep it the same the whole time without any implementation problem. The question is, what _should_ go in the URL? I won't go into the application because I'm hoping the question is generally useful. What kinds of expectations do users have about backward and forward buttons? About typing in a URL? Are there currently any generally applicable best practices yet for this kind of application?"}
{"_id": "209955", "title": "Does macros support make Scala a Lisp dialect?", "text": "I've read recently that macro support in Scala is now official. I checked the documentation page and they are reminiscent to the LISP ones. In one of his essays Paul Graham writes that when \"you add this final increment of power\" to a language it is no longer a new one but a lisp dialect. Is this the case with Scala? It does not seem like a LISP dialect to me and the macro support in Scala is somewhat awkward for me."}
{"_id": "209954", "title": "Force user to extend class or use configuration", "text": "What is better practice: force user to extend abstract class or make class with configuration? Eg. pseudocode:               ClassA{      this.name      this.weight      this.height      this.width           constr(config){       this.name = config.name       this.weight = weight       this.height = height       this.width = width      }     }      or               abstract ClassA{      this.name      this.weight      this.height      this.width     }          ClassB extends ClassA{      this.name = 'Item'      this.weight = 12      this.height = 11      this.width = 14     }      Until now i was using configuration because most libraries use this method, but whats wrong with second method? I recently found that method with extending is producing clearer code but maybe I am missing something?"}
{"_id": "224812", "title": "Alternatives to Perl/python scripts for find & replace", "text": "I'm working in a fairly old yet sufficiently unproductive code base that I need to create a(some) script(s) to help me out. For example:   * we add a version # and timestamp at the header of the file (yes we use a CVS based sys but this is beyond my control).   * we have duplicated layout code for different languages (this is pre-unicode era so we just duplicate things) and when a control's attribute changes in one language that change needs to be cascade to the other ones.  So, my first thoughts were a couple of perl or python scripts to do find & replace to solve those two issues. But I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else had a different approach."}
{"_id": "168548", "title": "Making a design for a Problem", "text": "I have written many codes using OOPS and I am still to understand when is a code good enough to be accepted by experts. The thought procedure of every man is different and so is the design. My question is should I do something in particular to design my programs in such a way that they are good enough to be accepted by people.   Other thing I have also read Head First Object Oriented Design but at last I feel that the way they design the problems is much different I would have designed them."}
{"_id": "24578", "title": "MVC for our application?", "text": "There are some issues about how to manage our program designs and programming styles. I was assigned to find a solution to write reusable code - though, the programming team does not follow the rules. I would rather use MVC to perform a well structured programming style. I found out that a blueprint for next works requires a bunch of experts. The thing is that I have to do it all myself. And the worse part is that I have to use a general MVC platform. I need your helps and suggestions for:   1. Is there a way that I can write a document for MVC - to use it in our design in Java?   2. How can I represent it?   3. How much work does it need?   4. How can I connect the Model, the View, and the controller parts together?"}
{"_id": "151778", "title": "Is it common to declare class properties at the bottom of the class declaration?", "text": "I work in a PHP development shop and several new developers have joined the team. One of the new members insists on declaring class properties at the bottom of the class declaration rather than the at the top, as one would normally expect. In all my 5 years of working in web development, I have never seen this done. Is it a common coding style?"}
{"_id": "168540", "title": "What are the advantages of using the Java debugger over println?", "text": "I always use `System.out.println(...)` to debug my code, and it works pretty well. In which cases do you use the eclipse java debugger? I never had to use it and the little bug symbol is still ab bit mysterious to me. Are there cases where the debugger helps me that I can\u00b4t solve with a println?"}
{"_id": "24574", "title": "Some advice concerning Oracle and Java", "text": "I've seen the news yesterday that Java 7 and Java 8 passed but the majority weren't very happy. Can anyone clarify what consequences does this have on Java and the community ? What licenses did Oracle change to be exact? A lot of people think that this might be the end of Java. Should I go ahead with learning Java or should I maybe move to .NET ? I don't have any preference as to one or the other, but I'm a bit concerned now with all this pressure surrounding the Java ecosystem. Since time is important for everyone and time is what I have less have these days I'd like some advices from the community here."}
{"_id": "54038", "title": "Professional Developers, may I join you?", "text": "I currently work in technical support for a software/hardware company and for the most part it's a good job, but it's feeling more and more like I'm getting 'stuck' here. No raises in the 5 years I've been here, and lately there seems to be more hiring from the outside than promotion from within. The work I do is more technical than end-user support, as we deal primarily with our field technicians who have a little more technical skill than the general user base. As a result I get into much more technical support issues... often tracking down bugs in our software, finding performance bottlenecks in our database schema, etc. The work I'm most proud of are the development projects I've come up with on my own, and worked on during lunch breaks and slow periods in Support. Over the years I've written a number of useful utilities for the company. Diagnostic type applications that several departments use and appreciate. These include apps that simulate our various hardware devices, log file analysis, time-saving utilities for our work processes, etc. My best projects have been the hardware simulation programs, which are the type of thing we probably wouldn't have put a full-time developer on had anyone thought to do it, but they've ended up being popular and useful enough to be used by development, QA, R&D, and Support. They allow us to interface our software with simulated hardware, rather than clutter up our work areas with bulky, hard to acquire equipment. Since starting here my life has moved forward (married, kid, one more on the way), but it feels like my career has not. I still earn what I earned walking in the door my first day. Company budget is tight, bonuses have gone down, and no raises or cost of living / inflation adjustments either. As the sole source of income for my family I feel I need to do more, and I'd like to have a more active role in _creating something_ at work, not just cleaning up other people's mistakes. I enjoy technical work, and I think development is the next logical step in my career. I'd like to bring some \"legitimacy\" to my part-time development work, and make myself a more skilled and valuable employee. Ultimately if this can help me better support my family, that would be ideal. Can I make the jump to professional developer? I have an engineering degree, but no formal education in computer science. I write WinForms apps using the .NET framework, do some freelance web development, have volunteered to write software for a nonprofit, and have started experimenting with programming microcontrollers. I enjoy learning new things in the limited free time I have available. I think I have the aptitude to take on a development role, even in an 'apprentice' capacity if such an option is possible. Have any of you moved into development like this? Do any of you developers have any advice or cautionary tales? Are there better career options I haven't thought of? I welcome any and all related comments and thank you in advance for posting them."}
{"_id": "79726", "title": "GPL Confusion! Can I sell a product with GPL covered components without making the source available?", "text": "I'm really confused.. I'm looking into making a commercial program and there are a few open source, GPL covered components i'd like to use.. Am I allowed to sell my product with the components in without distributing my source? For example.. say i was making a commecial text editor, and my friend has a really awesome GPL free-software text editor.. But i wanted to make a text editor like his but with special features.. Am I allowed to fork his text editor add all my special features and sell it on without having the source code to my special features available to my users?"}
{"_id": "175761", "title": "Does it matter the direction of a Huffman's tree child node?", "text": "So, I'm on my quest about creating a Java implementation of Huffman's algorithm for compressing/decompressing files (as you might know, ever since Why create a Huffman tree per character instead of a Node?) for a school assignment. I now have a better understanding of how is this thing supposed to work. Wikipedia has a great-looking algorithm here that seemed to make my life way easier. Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding: >   * Create a leaf node for each symbol and add it to the priority queue. >   * While there is more than one node in the queue: >     * Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the > queue >     * Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with > probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities. >     * Add the new node to the queue. >   * The remaining node is the root node and the tree is complete. > It looks simple and great. However, it left me wondering: when I \"merge\" two nodes (make them children of a new internal node), **does it even matter what direction (left or right) will each node be afterwards?** I still don't fully understand Huffman coding, and I'm not very sure if there is a criteria used to tell whether a node should go to the right or to the left. I assumed that, perhaps the highest-frequency node would go to the right, but I've seen some Huffman trees in the web that don't seem to follow such criteria. For instance, Wikipedia's example image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Huffman_tree_2.svg/625px- Huffman_tree_2.svg.png seems to put the highest ones to the right. But other images like this one http://thalia.spec.gmu.edu/~pparis/classes/notes_101/img25.gif has them all to the left. **However, they're never _mixed up_ in the same image (some to the right and others to the left)**. So, does it matter? Why?"}
{"_id": "237312", "title": "Where do utility libraries fit in a layered architecture?", "text": "Consider this mock-up of a software stack designed with layered architecture in mind : ![Basic example of a layered-structured software stack.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RQCSF.png) Every application layer is decoupled through API calls, but a memory handling library is used throughout. All layers need to copy, allocate or somehow affect memory. Is this bad use of the layered architecture pattern, or is it one of its pitfall ? On one hand, trying to force the pattern upon the library calls, perhaps by adding memory handling wrappers to every application layers, would create a lot of boilerplate code. On the other hand, letting layers, through library calls, create arbitrary entry points into different layers seems to contradict the very rationale behind layered architecture."}
{"_id": "115074", "title": "Would it be useful for a programmer to get qualified in Prince2", "text": "Even if the programmer wasn't going to perform the function of project manager, would there be any benefit on a small team of one of the devs being Prince2 qualified?"}
{"_id": "179469", "title": "Amnesic Environment", "text": "My team is looking for a technical term which may or may not exist. We are trying to describe an environment, such as a database, which has been built up over time with little or documentation about the change process that has gone into it. Generally these are legacy systems who's original developers have long since moved on and they are in such a tangled and unmanageable state that the only way to recreate the environment, say for testing purposes, is to copy it and do your best guess at re-configuring it for its new purpose. So far the best term we have come up with is `Amnesic`, such as \"setting up the new test environment is going to be a challenge because it is an amnesic db.\" However, we are still not quite happy with the term and were wondering if a better and/or more accepted term for this situation exists."}
{"_id": "179468", "title": "Forking a repo on GitHub but allowing new issues on the fork", "text": "I have previously forked other people's repos on GitHub, and I have noticed that issues stay with the original repo, and that I can't file issues on the forked repo. I now have the following task. I am working for a small business where development was being done by one of the principals on his personal account. He has amicably left the project, and we would like to migrate that project away from his personal account to a new \"role\" account on GitHub. I would naturally fork the repo, in order to preserve the code history, but then I'll end up with a repo where we can't file new issues, which is quite undesirable. How can I make a copy of this original repo into our new account, ideally still preserving code history, but be able to file new issues within this new account?"}
{"_id": "34320", "title": "How do I convince my boss that it's OK to use an application to access an outside website?", "text": "That is, if you agree that it's OK. We have a need to maintain an accurate internal record of bank routing numbers, and my boss wants me to set up a process where once a week someone goes to the Federal Reserve's website, clicks on the link to get the list of routing numbers (or the link giving the updates since a particular date), and then manually uploads the resultant text file to an application that will make the update to our data. I told him that a manual process was not at all necessary, and that I could write a routine that would access the FED's routing numbers in the application that keeps our data updated, and put it on whatever schedule was appropriate. But he is greatly opposed to doing this, and calls it \"hacking the Federal Reserve website.\" I think he's afraid that the FED is going to get after us. I showed him the FED's robot.txt file, and the only thing it forbids is an automated indexing of pages with extension .cf*:               User-agent: *    # applies to all robots     Disallow:   CF   # disallow indexing of all CF* directories and pages      This says nothing about accessing the same data automatically that you could access manually. Anyone have a good counterargument to the idea that we'd be \"hacking\" the FED?"}
{"_id": "178733", "title": "Is it a bad practice to include all the enums in one file and use it in multiple classes?", "text": "I'm an aspiring game developer, I work on occasional indie games, and for a while I've been doing something which seemed like a bad practice at first, but I really want to get an answer from some experienced programmers here. Let's say I have a file called `enumList.h` where I declare all the enums I want to use in my game:               // enumList.h          enum materials_t { WOOD, STONE, ETC };     enum entity_t { PLAYER, MONSTER };     enum map_t { 2D, 3D };     // and so on.          // Tile.h     #include \"enumList.h\"     #include <vector>          class tile     {         // stuff     };      The main idea is that I declare all enums in the game in **1 file** , and then import that file when I need to use a certain enum from it, rather than declaring it in the file where I need to use it. I do this because it makes things clean, I can access every enum in **1 place** rather than having pages openned solely for accessing one enum. Is this a bad practice and can it affect performance in any way?"}
{"_id": "178734", "title": "add a prefix to localhost", "text": "Is there any possibility to add a prefix before localhost? My question is that I want to add a prefix before localhost for my project url (ie. \"dev.localhost/project/default.htm\"). This is for an ASP.NET application running in IIS."}
{"_id": "228903", "title": "HTML markup vs programmatic JS", "text": "I've been thinking about the consequences of using programmatic JavaScript components versus HTML markup. For example I looked into the Enyo Framework, which has its power in composition. One can build components composed of simpler components, and at the end they may be built from tags, but one doesn't write HTML Markup with it. I also thought that it would be possible to develop a swing-like UI library which renders itself on an HTML5 canvas. There also would be no need for any markup. But is there a need for this? Isn't HTML5 capable enough for these goals? I did some brain storming on a webapp similar to draw.io where there would be many Items which need to be resizable and draggable. They would need to be connected, transformed, rotated, etc., and all of that needs to be obvious from varying the borders of items, and other UI clues. Is it possible to achieve this with HTML5, or since I have to code a lot anyway, would there be any harm to use only Javascript components without HTML markup? What are the trade-offs and what yields more pain?"}
{"_id": "145574", "title": "Recommendations for teaching junior programmers good coding style", "text": "I am a big fan of good coding style, producing clean, clear code that runs well and is easy to use and integrate into larger systems. I believe that we programmers are essentially craftspeople who should take pride in our work, every line. I am not fond of code that is inconsistently formatted, cluttered with commented out experimental code, and rife with unhelpful or misleading function and variable names. But I sometimes find it hard to argue with code like this that basically works. If you think that coding style matters, I am looking for recommendations for ways of teaching good, professional coding style to the junior programmers under me. I want them to take pride in their work, but my concern is that they appear to become satisfied when their code just barely works, and seem to have no interest in producing what professionals like me would consider professional code. On the other hand, if you think coding style is not particularly valuable, I welcome your comments and am open to reconsidering my standards and tolerances. I know the usual arguments in favor of good code: comprehensibility, ease of maintenance, etc., but I would also like to hear some rebuttals to arguments like \"it works, what more do you want?\" In our industry we can use the compiler to hide a multitude of sins. Clean code and messy code can both lead to identically functioning programs, so does cleanliness matter, and if so, why? [While there are several existing questions on coding style, I didn't find any that related to teaching methods and ways to instill good coding style in junior programmers.]"}
{"_id": "35052", "title": "Depending on another open source library: copy/paste code or include", "text": "I'm working on a large class and started implementing new features that need graphics. I started writing the graphics functions myself, but I know that open source libraries exist that can provide me with this functionality without me having to write it myself. The problem is that I prefer the class to be self-sufficient and not dependent on any other library. If I don't write it myself, I would have to ask the user to make sure a graphics library is already installed (less user-friendly). If I write it myself, I do a lot more work than I have to. I could also copy/paste some of the relevant code into my own class, but not sure about the disadvantages of doing this (it's an open source library that matches my license, so I'm not concerned with legality, just programming-wise if there are disadvantages). So what should I do:   * copy paste code from the external library   * write the code myself so it's truly self-sufficient   * ask the user to download and install another library"}
{"_id": "165138", "title": "Is it dangerous for me to give some of my Model classes Control-like methods?", "text": "In my personal project I have tried to stick to MVC, but I've also been made aware that sticking to MVC too tightly can be a bad thing as it makes writing awkward and forces the flow of the program in odd ways (i.e. some simple functions can be performed by something that normally wouldn't, and avoid MVC related overheads). So I'm beginning to feel justified in this compromise: I have some 'manager programs' that 'own' data and have some way to manipulate it, as such I think they'd count as _both_ part of the model, and part of the control, and to me this feels more natural than keepingthem separate. For instance: One of my Managers is the PlayerCharacterManager that has these methods:               void buySkill(PlayerCharacter playerCharacter, Skill skill);     void changeName();     void changeRole();     void restatCharacter();     void addCharacterToGame();     void createNewCharacter();     PlayerCharacter getPlayerCharacter();     List<PlayerCharacter> getPlayersCharacter(Player player);     List<PlayerCharacter> getAllCharacters();      _I hope the mothod names are transparent enough that they don't all need explaining._ I've called it a manager because it will help manage all of the PlayerCharacter 'model' objects the code creates, and create and keep a map of these. I may also get it to store other information in the future. I plan to have another two similar classes for this sort of control, but I will orchestrate when and how this happens, and what to do with the returned data via a pure controller class. This splitting up control between informed managers and the controller, as opposed to operating just through a controller seems like it will simplify my code and make it flow more. My question is, is this a dangerous choice, in terms of making the code harder to follow/test/fix? Is this somethign established as good or bad or neutral? I oculdn't find anything similar except the idea of Actors but that's not quite why I'm trying to do. **Edit:** Perhaps an example is needed; I'm using the Controller to update the view and access the data, so when I click the 'Add new character to a player button' it'll call methods in the controller that then go and tell the PlayerCharacterManager class to create a new character instance, it'll call the PlayerManager class to add that new character to the player-character map, and then it'll add this information to the database, and tell the view to update any GUIs effected. That is the sort of 'control sequence' I'm hoping to create with these manager classes."}
{"_id": "148999", "title": "What alogrithm is used on the smart cards for the DNSSEC Trusted Community Representatives?", "text": "I've been doing some reading about DNSSec and am interested in the algorithm that they chose to use when splitting the trusted key up between the 7 Trusted Community Representatives (TCR). I unfortunately can't find any information about the algorithm itself anywhere. Is it just an implementation of the Shamir Secret Sharing Algorithm, or is it using a different approach? A little bit of information can be found here."}
{"_id": "165136", "title": "Why setter method when getter method enough in PHP OOP", "text": "I am practicing OOP with PHP, and I am struck at setter and getter methods. I can directly access the class properties and methods with getter method then what's the use of setter method? See my example.               <?php     class MyClass{         public $classVar = \"Its a class variable\";         public function Getter(){             return $this -> classVar;         }     }     $obj = new MyClass;     echo $obj -> Getter();     ?>"}
{"_id": "197257", "title": "Is it a good idea to format the code in eclipse using auto format", "text": "I use eclipse for coding, and the language which we use is Java. Once it was suggested by someone that to properly format the code, using the auto formatter(CTRL+SHIFT+F) While this command does format the code, but sometimes I feel that overall look becomes weird, and it is not actually very readable. So is this a recommended thing to do? If not what is the better of formatting our code in eclipse ?"}
{"_id": "33020", "title": "When is optimization not premature and therefore not evil?", "text": "\"Premature optimization is root of all evil\" is something almost all of us have heard/read. What I am curious what kind of optimization not premature, i.e. at every stage of software development (high level design, detailed design, high level implementation, detailed implementation etc) what is extent of optimization we can consider without it crossing over to dark side."}
{"_id": "99445", "title": "Is micro-optimisation important when coding?", "text": "I recently asked a question on Stack Overflow to find out why isset() was faster than strlen() in PHP. This raised questions around the importance of readable code and whether performance improvements of micro-seconds in code were worth even considering. My father is a retired programmer, and I showed him the responses. He was absolutely certain that if a coder does not consider performance in their code even at the micro level, they are not good programmers. I'm not so sure - perhaps the increase in computing power means we no longer have to consider these kind of micro-performance improvements? Perhaps this kind of considering is up to the people who write the actual language code? (of PHP in the above case). The environmental factors could be important - the Internet consumes 10% of the world's energy. I wonder how wasteful a few micro-seconds of code is when replicated trillions of times on millions of websites? I'd like to know answers preferably based on facts about programming. **Is micro-optimisation important when coding?** My personal summary of 25 answers, thanks to all. Sometimes we need to really worry about micro-optimisations, but only in very rare circumstances. Reliability and readability are far more important in the majority of cases. However, considering micro-optimisation from time to time doesn't hurt. A basic understanding can help us not to make obvious bad choices when coding such as               if (expensiveFunction() || counter < X)      Should be               if (counter < X || expensiveFunction())      (Example from @zidarsk8) This could be an inexpensive function and therefore changing the code would be micro-optimisation. But, with a basic understanding, you would not have to, because you would write it correctly in the first place."}
{"_id": "79938", "title": "What optimizations are premature?", "text": "I've been here for nearly a month and it seems that people have a tendency to be eager to use the \"Premature Optimization is the root of all evil\" argument as soon as someone mentions efficiency. What is really a premature optimization? What is the difference between what is essentially writing a well designed system, or using certain methods and premature optimizations? Certain aspects that I feel should be interesting topics within this question:   * In what way does the optimization influence code complexity?    * How does the optimization influence development time/cost?    * Does the optimization emphasize further understanding of the platform(if applicable)?    * Is the optimization abstractable?    * How does the optimization influence design?    * Are \"general solutions\" the better choice instead of specific solutions for a problem because the specific solution is an optimization? EDIT / update: Found these two links that are very interesting regarding what a premature optimization really is:   http://smallwig.blogspot.com/2008/04/smallwig-theory-of-optimization.html   http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i24_fallacy.html"}
{"_id": "45259", "title": "Is premature optimization always bad?", "text": "I work in a small sized software/web development company. I have gotten into the habit of optimizing prematurely, I know it is evil and promotes bad code, but I have been working at this firm for a long while and I have deemed this as a necessary evil. It has never caused me an issue so far in the past, but it might if I get partners or a successor. Should I change my current practice now to prepare for that case, or should I not worry about it?"}
{"_id": "119094", "title": "The cross-over between designing for performance/pre-mature optimisation", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When is optimization not premature and therefore not evil? Whilst designing my own .Net SQL access library, I found that I want everything thing to run as fast as possible so I tend to look at the fastest ways of doing things. This often gets criticised as pre-mature optimisation when I am just looking for the fastest way of doing something. My question is there a cross-over between designing for performance and pre- mature optimisation?"}
{"_id": "89536", "title": "How do you control nodes in a server farm?", "text": "I've been reading about hadoop and multi-node setups, and it says in the documentation that you must have a JVM and hadoop software already running on those nodes. My question is, do people install this software on each of these computers individually? or is there a software solution that automates this process? I've also read about KVM switches, but I'm not sure whether this is what people usually use in these situations."}
{"_id": "91984", "title": "How to Evaluate a Programmer's Communication Skills", "text": "If I was interested in interview questions like \"Describe how you explained a difficult technical issue to a non-technical person\" I would use the Googles to search on communication skill interview questions.. But, what I really would like is to have someone actually explain _to me_ some sort of relatively difficult technical issue. So I'm interested in are answers that identify a useful topic for this purpose or examples of what others have do to create scenarios for the purpose of evaluating a candidate's communications. In other words some exercise that actually forces the candidate to communicate something challenging rather than describe some time in their past when they were required to do so."}
{"_id": "91985", "title": "Which language should I use for a computationally intensive program?", "text": "This is a multi-part question. I am writing a computationally intensive program that will perform computations on very large numbers, on the scale of factorial(100) . I'm considering using Java or C++ (that's all I know, and C++ only slightly) but I'm not sure which would be better to use in this context. I know C++ will be faster, but Java has a built-in utility for large numbers, the BigInteger class, and I don't know of any equivalent in C++. So here are the questions...   1. Is C++ so much faster than java as to make it worth it to learn and find a way to handle large numbers?   2. If I should use C++, how would I handle the large numbers?   3. Is it possible to just specify a new data type in C++ that represents a number, but with larger bounds than the int?"}
{"_id": "129375", "title": "Should SpecFlow be used with BDD as a solo developer?", "text": "I am a long time fan of TDD and after reading the RSpec book, would like to transistion to a BDD process. I like the idea of driving from the outside in, as it is presented in the book. What I am having a hard time getting a handle on is how to structure the tests. I have tried SpecFlow, but it seems cumbersome to use when I am the only one really ever going to be looking at the tests. I like the idea of just using straight NUnit, rather then adding another framework, like it is presented here. Is this a good way to try and structure BDD tests? Is there more information out there on comparing the two ways (that may even be more recent)?"}
{"_id": "129379", "title": "Would be semantically correct to make a \u201cLogin\u201d constructor in an api class?", "text": "Since the methods of the class will only work if the user is logged in, is it right or is there some problem that might make my code slow/inneficient?"}
{"_id": "126346", "title": "What is the right way to develop ASP.NET applications in order to separate data access from data visualization?", "text": "I'm currently involved in a migration to TFS from SVN of a large project that is going to be divided into five different sites. This project allows some providers to insert five different product data into the enterprise DB. Like a lot of companies out there, we have a _technological debt_ that should be solved (or at least, reduced) with this new project organization. However, I'm quite new to ASP.NET and also our software is still running 2.0 .NET, so maybe I'm missing something or things should be done in a different way nowadays with 3.5+. One of those five different parts is going to be a new one. This is the one I'm going to develop. In order to achieve high degree of modularity, the code of the current project is divided into several DAO ( _Data Access Object_ ) under App_Code, `*.ascx` modules living in different parts of the project structure, VB classes that inherit from `System.Web.UI.*` (for **each** control that is displayed on the web) under App_Code, and lots of stored procedures for providing data to the controls. Also, we have several `*.aspx` that use `<asp:PlaceHolder />` for displaying each of the controls that inherit from System.Web.UI. The question comes when, for creating a simple `<select>` dropdown list to display a list of providers, I see that I have to do the following steps:   1. Create a class `cProvider` inside the App_Code, that ultimately inherits from System.Web.UI, with a method that calls to the following DAOProvider object.   2. Crate an specific DAO object to connect to the DB I need to.   3. Create another DAO object, called DAOProvider, that inherits from the previous one, with the call to an stored procedure that retrieves the list of the providers.   4. Create that stored procedure in the database.   5. Create an `.ascx` control to display the `<select>` with the options obtained from `cProvider`. If you're still there, here goes my question: Is this the right way to do things? Is this _high_ level of modularity the correct way to develop mantainable .NET applications? Do I have to follow this style and organization or should I take another one (please give me your recommendations)? From my point of view, having to do all those steps to paint a simple dropdown list doesn't follow KISS principles at all, and becomes unmantainable if somebody else has to take this project, knowing that the code is the only documentation we have. EDIT: links to documentation regarding this topic would be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "151194", "title": "Where do you turn for code base improvement on a multi-project scale?", "text": "Are there resources out there for a programmer with a large code base to have professional alalysis performed for the goal of finding the areas of most needed improvement? Logic/Reason tells me there's a limit to what a code review question can absorb, and also that the amount of work involved is not something that should need be free."}
{"_id": "156877", "title": "Approaches to manage related binary files, apart from code", "text": "I'm working on a website for a photographer, the whole code is just a few files, and whole repository is a few MBs without the actual photographs. But, when I add the actual photographs to git and commit, then the repository jumps to 75 MBs. Considering the photos will be updated, the size of the repository is going to grow big as photos gets updated. I know I'm doing something very wrong. Please, share your methods, for managing big binary files separate from source code, and still maintain dependencies. PS: I don't use a db currently, all are plain text files."}
{"_id": "126343", "title": "Large Ecommerce Site Topology and Deployment Guidelines", "text": "## Problem I am a lead engineer for a highly trafficked eCommerce website (upwards of 1m page views an hour). For various reasons we have the opportunity to rebuild large portions of our infrastructure. This brings up a number of interesting problems in balancing flexibility, stability, speed to market, etc... **At a high level I am interested in how others have handled similar situations. In particular I am want to know how others have architected their site to provide stable deploys in fast moving environment.**   * One of the main trade offs I am looking at is breaking our site by functional area and providing them each their own sub domain. The primary driver for this is that we are hosting on Azure and deployments are all or nothing.   * I am also interested in how others have maintained architectural integrity in a fast moving environment and team composed of varying levels of experience. ## Tech We are primarily a Microsoft shop: SQL Server, Windows Server 2008, .Net 4.0, Visual Studio 10, etc... We have also made the decision to host our main site on the Azure platform and are making heavy use of table and blob storage as well as app fabric cache. We are considering using multiple Azure data centers but have not made that final decision as of yet. All static content including JavaScript and CSS will be minified and hosted on our CDN . Our site is built using .Net MVC 3 and is supported by a DDD style architecure. Our data access libraries and business rules are fairly well encapsulated and separate from actual display logic. ## Process While not a true agile shop we iterate very quickly with frequent deployments, multivariate testing, just in time requirements, etc... We are generally very entrepreneurial and have the need to respond quickly to new opportunities as they arise. (code for \"it can get chaotic\") ## Team Our development team is made up of a couple dozen developers with varying levels of skill and experience. While some of the developers can operate independently others need to have very careful code reviews done. The QA team has a very thorough manual review process. They are also beginning to build a suite of QTP tests to automate regression testing. The dev team in turn makes use of Unit Testing and BDD testing when appropriate. ## Not Considerations I know there are a lot of strong opinions out there so to preempt religious wars here are a couple of responses that will not be helpful to me.   * Just use Java, Oracle, PHP, Ruby, etc...   * Just use EC2   * Just ask your developers to be more careful   * Just tell your developers to code faster   * Just tell \"the business\" to slow down   * Just use Google Checkout ## Who I'm looking for feedback from I know there are many engineers who, while very skilled, have never worked on systems that supports more than a few hundred concurrent users. The lessons learned from a site supporting 30,000 concurrent users are very different from those of an internal support app (I've worked on both, btw, and am not disparaging internal apps. They just require a different approach). If you have experience in similar situation I would love to hear how you approached the problem and what the draw backs of your solution where."}
{"_id": "126340", "title": "Alternate string formatting options in C++?", "text": "I'm looking at optimizing some string formatting code that's hit a lot in our code. We had been using ostringstream, and I converted the code to use sprintf (actually Microsoft's more secure sprintf_s). I've traded type safety for run- time performance. But I've debugged enough sprintf related weird crashes to know that sprintf has its own serious flaws that the compile time checking of ostringstream catch. But ostringstream is more than an order-of-magnitude slower then sprintf by my measure, and that's not tolerable in this code. I'm also not thrilled with the readability of C++ stream string formatting, but this may be entirely subjective. So unfortunately when formatting strings in C++ I've got several \"standard\" options that are suboptimal:   1. sprintf -- fast, but not type safe. Can have insidious bugs when the wrong format string is not used.   2. ostringstream -- slow, but type safe. IMO Ugly, too verbose, and difficult to read.   3. boost::format -- a little more readable then ostringstream IMO, but in my performance benchmarks appears to be even _slower_ then ostringstream, so this is out. To summarize, I'm not really satisfied with the \"standard\" options. I'd like something that takes both performance and type safety seriously. What other string formatting options are out there for C++?"}
{"_id": "112047", "title": "Career Switch from testing to Development", "text": "I have few questions regarding the switching from testing to development. 1) Do you think the QA exp wont be counted? 2) Does switching from mnc to startup company for skills development will affect a resume? 3) Does a small profile project looks bad on resume,after 2 years of experience. 4) What does a manager looks in a candidate's profile? previous Company? previous project? or skills he/she has developed? 5) Does a software development in a non-it company counted? Please reply your views."}
{"_id": "110510", "title": "How do you annotate code changes and code authorship", "text": "What is the best way to annotate who authored a file and subsequent changes that were made? I'm a contractor on a new project, one that's just starting, which is using Subversion. The other day I noticed a team member had updated a script written by an outside consultant, and he updated the header from \"Written by X\" to \"Writen by Y and X\" (since he had made a decent number of updates). I didn't think this was a good idea, because others after us may update that script with small or large changes and it'd be unclear when to update the \"Written by\" header (or how to order the names). I pitched the way I had done it at my previous company (with an edit log at the top of each file - which was enforced by whoever verified the changes, we were using Clear Case so changes wouldn't be pushed up until they were verified), but then he mentioned we could just use the \"svn log\" command to see edits and it'd be hard to enforce an edit log. So now I'm not so sure what the best way to annotate authorship and changes is. Files can completely change over time, so I don't like the idea of a stale \"Written by\" header. And a \"Written by\" header that just includes a long list of people with no context doesn't seem useful. There's removing the authorship header, and simply using the subversion change log, but then what do you do about \"Written by\" headers from code that's given to you (from consultants, old code bases, downloaded from the net, etc)? How do other teams handle this?"}
{"_id": "130427", "title": "What is the best way to structure an Android application?", "text": "I am starting a new Android application. What is the best structure to use? I am planning to make it a multi-package design as follows:   1. Main package, including the Activity   2. Service and data layer   3. Entity package, including entity class. Any advice ?"}
{"_id": "151199", "title": "Alternatives for comparing data from different databases", "text": "I have two huge tables on separate databases. One of them has the information of all the SMS that passed through the company's servers while the other one has the information of the actual billing of those SMS. My job is to compare samples of both of these tables (for example, the records between 1 and 2 pm) to see if there are any differences: SMS that were sent but not charged to the user for whatever reason that may be happening. The columns I will be using to compare are the remitent's phone number and the exact date the SMS was sent. An issue here is that dates usually are the same on both sides, but in many cases differ by 1 or 2 seconds. I have, so far, two alternatives to do this:   1. (PL/SQL) Create two tables where i'm going to temporarily store all the records of that 1hour sample. One for each of the main tables. Then, for each distinct phone number, select the time of every SMS sent from that phone from both my temporary tables and start comparing one by one using cursors. In this case, the procedure would be ran on the server where one of the sources is so the contents of the other one would be looked up using a dblink.   2. (sqlplus + c++) Instead of storing the 1hour samples in new tables, output the query to a text file. I will have two text files, one for each source. Then, open the first file and load all of it's content on a hash_map (key-value) using c++, where the key will be the phone number and the value a list of times of SMS sent from that phone. Finally, open the second file, grab each line (in this format: numberX timeX), look for numberX's entry on the hash_map (wich will be a list of times) and then check if timeX is on that list. If it isn't, save it somewhere to finally store it on a \"uncharged\" table (this would also be the final step on case 1) My main concern is efficiency. These samples have about 2 million records on each source, so just grabbing one record on one side and looking it up on the other would not be possible. That's the reason I wanted to use hash_maps Which do you think is a better option?"}
{"_id": "110517", "title": "How often do you use DI container in your ASP.NET MVC application", "text": "While reading a book, I came across DI(dependency Injector) and the subsequent DI Container tool. Previously, I developed an application following a tutorial on asp.net website which never used such tool. So, my question can be summed- up in following two concerns :-   * **How often do you use DI Container ?**   * **What requirements make you do so ?** EDIT : Examples with and without DI Container. I have written the codes to understand which is better approach. _**Without** DI Container_ \\--               LinqValueCalculator lc = new LinqValueCalculator();     ShoppingCart sc = new ShoppingCart(lc);     decimal total = sc.CalculateStockValue();     Console.WriteLine(\"Total: {0:c}\", total);      _**With** DI Container_ \\-- (Ninject is used in this example)               IKernel ninjectKernel = new StandardKernel();     ninjectKernel.Bind<IValueCalculator>().To<LinqValueCalculator>();          IValueCalculator calcImpl = ninjectKernel.Get<IValueCalculator>();     ShoppingCart cart = new ShoppingCart(calcImpl);     Console.WriteLine(\"Total: {0:c}\", cart.CalculateStockValue());      I will be honest, I feel that writing first code was easier and seemed natural. But, your views are what counts as i am just learning the MVC."}
{"_id": "110515", "title": "Knowledge base / questionarie / desicion-tree / decision-making platform", "text": "I am looking for a software platform/programming framework which can do the following:   * INPUT: a user inputs some text   * PROCESS/REFERENCE DATA: the user is then asked to answer a list some questions regarding the INPUT and attribute the answers either to the whole INPUT or to some parts of the INPUT   * OUTPUT: the list of answers attributed to the original INPUT Some clarifications:   * re: REFERENCE DATA: the list of questions should allow for a sub/follow-up question   * re: PROCESS: the answering process should be as flexible as possible (user should be able to skip questions, provide his or her own answers, etc)   * this is NOT meant to be an automatic/machine learning tool - the user (the human) will be classifying the INPUT himself/herself based on the REFERENCE DATA"}
{"_id": "23718", "title": "What's the most used programming language in high performance computing? And why?", "text": "I believe a lot of Fortran is used in HPC, but not sure if that's only for legacy reasons. Features of modern programming languages like garbage collection or run-time polymorphism are not suitable for HPC since speed matters so not sure where C# or Java or C++ come in. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "253179", "title": "Would these two scenarios be good candidates for a NoSQL database?", "text": "I've checked a few other threads around the topic and search around, I am wondering if someone can give me a clear direction as to **_why_** should I consider NoSQL and **_which_** one (since there are quite a few of them each with different purposes)   * Why NoSQL over SQL?   * Is MongoDB the right choice in my case?   * Are NoSQL databases going to take the place of relational databases? Is SQL going away? Like many others - I started with relational databases and been working on them ever since, thus when presented with a problem, the first instinct is to always think of _\"I can create these tables, with these columns, with this foreign keys\"_ , etc My overall goal is **How to get into \"NoSQL\" mindset**? ie getting away from the inclination of always thinking about tables/columns/FKs (I understand that there are cases where RDBMS is still the better way to go) I am thinking of 2 scenarios for example just to get more concrete direction **Scenario 1** Imagine a database to model building a furniture instructions (think of IKEA instructions) where you would have the object \"furniture\" which would have a list of \"materials\" and have a list of \"instructions\"   * Furniture - would simply have a name that have a list of Materials and Instructions   * Materials - would be a name + quantity, may be we can even have \"Material Category\" table as well   * Instructions - would simply be an ordered list of texts My first instinct would go the RDBMS way:   * Create a table called \"Furniture\", \"Material\" and \"Instruction\" and the approppriate columns   * Create the appropriate JOIN tables as necessary and FKs The use of this system can include _searching_ based on materials or may be combination of materials. And may be think of extending the data stored to include information on how many people are required to build it? Difficulty level? how much time it would take? Would something like this be a good candidate for a NoSQL database? **Scenario 2** Imagine a database to model a User database with basic information (eg. name, email, phone number, etc), but you also want to have the flexibility of being able to add any custom fields as you wish. Think of different systems consuming this user database, each system will want to have their own custom attribute to be attached to the user My inclination would go the RDBMS way:   * Create a table for \"USER\" with columns: ID, name, email, phone   * Create a table for \"USER_ATTRIBUTE\" with columns: ID, USER_ID, attr_name, attr_type, attr_value The USER_ATTRIBUTE will allow that customization and flexibility without having to shut down the system, alter the database and restart it. Would something like this be a good candidate for a NoSQL database?"}
{"_id": "59201", "title": "How to REALLY start thinking in terms of objects?", "text": "I work with a team of developers who all have several years of experience with languages such as C# and Java. Most of them are young enough to have been shown OOP as a standard way to develop software in university and are very comfortable with concepts such as inheritance, abstraction, encapsulation and polymorphism. Yet, many of them, and I have to include myself, still tend to create classes which are meant to be used in a very functional fashion. The resulting software is often several smaller classes which correctly represent business objects which get passed through larger classes which only supply ways to modify and use those objects (functions). Large complex difficult-to-maintain classes named Manager are usually the result of such behaviour. I can see two theoretical reasons why people might write this type of code:   1. It's easy to start thinking of everything in terms of the database   2. Deep down, for me, a computer handling a web request feels more like a functional operation than an object oriented operation when you think about Request Handlers, Threads, Processes, CPU Cores and CPU operations... I want source code which is easy to read and easy to modify. I have seen excellent examples of OO code which meet these objectives. How can I start writing code like this? How I can I really start thinking in an object oriented fashion? How can I share such a mentality with my colleagues?"}
{"_id": "150824", "title": "Is the puts function of ruby a method of an object?", "text": "I'm trying to understand how the `puts` function fits in Ruby's \"Everything is an object\" stance. Is `puts` is the method of a somehow hidden class/object? Or is it a free- floating method, with no underlying object?"}
{"_id": "150825", "title": "Web Service - SOAP", "text": "My experience with web services is slim and I'm trying to understand this a little bit more. I have done for instance a web service using visual studio. In order to use it, I add a web service reference in my projects and this creates a proxy and the use is pretty simple. Does this use SOAP? I ask this because i will be now facing a web service that i must communicate using SOAP with attachements and i'm trying to understand the concept behind this and the difference to what i have done so far. Will the proxy still be viable or do i need to create the XML by hand and post it to the web service? This concepts still confuse and so any help is appreciated. EDIT: I'm not developing the service, i will be just using it."}
{"_id": "253176", "title": "Can I use all JetBrains software after purchase", "text": "So I am thinking about buying the Ruby version of the IDEA that JEtBrain is offering. If I buy a personal license for it, does it allow me to also use the license for IntelliJ also so I can develop Java applications too. Or is it required to buy a separate key for each of them? Was not able to find that kind of information on their homepage, so I turned here with my question."}
{"_id": "92186", "title": "Why is filesystem preferred for logs instead of RDBMS?", "text": "Question should be clear from its title. For example Apache saves its access and error logs in files instead of RDBMS no matter on how large or small scale it is being utilized. For RDMS we just have to write SQL queries and it will do the work while for files we must decide a particular format and then write regex or may be parsers to manipulate them. And those might even fail in particular circumstances if great care was not paid. Yet everyone seems to prefer filesystem for maintaining the logs. I am not biased against any of these methods but I would like to know why it is practiced like this. Is it speed or maintainability or something else?"}
{"_id": "73602", "title": "A scrum team for tiny projects", "text": "I have been wondering if it would be smart to form a single scrum team for several tiny projects. I am aware that it would be very hard to state a single sprint goal, if a team is working on several different projects. On the other hand: Putting projects that usually are assigned to single developers in a common team backlog would (IMHO) benefit by the synergies of a scrum team. I should mention, that the projects does not vary that much from a technical perspective. I am in a consultancy department where we have projects of very different sizes. For some time I have been working on a larger project using Scrum. Lately, the team has been disassembled, and I am left with one-man assignments. The idea came to me because I was getting more and more frustrated about not having my old teammates for sparring, QA and good old fashioned team spirit. I realized that about half of my department is working on one-man assignments. Then it dawned on me, that there might be a way out of the solitude: A Scrum of small projects. I am keen to hear your opinion on the matter: What do you think of the idea?   What are the pitfalls?   What are the limitations? How do i convince management that it is a great idea?"}
{"_id": "92189", "title": "Learning the rules of chess", "text": "A similar question asks whether a computer can learn to play optimally in chess by analyzing thousands of games. If a machine can look at the state of the board for a few games of chess (or a few games of checkers) in the beginning and after each move, can it be programmed to learn the rules of the game? If it can, to what extent (e.g., would it be able to account for castling or promotion) would this work? Which machine learning algorithms would make this possible?"}
{"_id": "74054", "title": "What language to use for prototyping and creating quick scripts?", "text": "Right now, I use Python for my quick scripts and prototypes (e.g. algorithms, my pseudocode is very Python-like as well). The oher languages that I am familiar with include Java, C, x86 Assembly and Scheme, and Python is pretty much the best for this among these in my opinion. Perl gets a lot of rep for this over and over again, and I have heard that Ruby isn't bad either, and the Python community praises Python for this too. What language (could be another one than these 3) do you think is the best programming language for:   * Creating quick prototypes of applications or algorithms   * Creating simple scripts for small, repetitive tasks Important features for such languages include:   * Little boilerplate code, not too verbose   * (Very) high-level   * Interpreted   * Good and comprehensive standard library"}
{"_id": "203863", "title": "Modelling a resource that may not be part of the parent resource", "text": "I am designing an API and am having a couple of problems with certain parts of the resource modelling. I have the notion of a `SurveyItem` which as a collective form a `Survey`:               Survey Resource Endpoint:     http://api.somewhere.com/survey          Accessing Survey Items     http://api.somewhere.com/survey/1/surveyitems      Pretty basic and i am not overly concerned with the above. `SurveyItems` cannot exist outside the context of a survey hence the hierarchy. Where i am struggling a little is the next level down. A `SurveyItem` is not necessarily one thing (bear with me) as it is based on an interface which is implemented but you may have something like a \"Simple Survey\" that lets you take notes, a \"Video Survey\" will let you take a survey via video etc, so they are all the all part of the base implementation but could potentially have different sub resources.               Image and note survey type sample endpoints     http://api.somewhere.com/survey/1/surveyitems/1/images     http://api.somewhere.com/survey/1/surveyitems/1/notes          Video Survey     http://api.somewhere.com/survey/1/surveyitems/2/videos     http://api.somewhere.com/survey/1/surveyitems/2/notes      As you can see above a `SurveyItem` may have different sub endpoints depending on the type of SurveyItem it is. I was thinking of modelling it the way above but using a HATEOAS approach of responding with a collection URLs of the available sub endpoints for each individual survey type so they are discover- able by clients. Is this a reasonable thing to do or are there better approaches to handling things like this?"}
{"_id": "253286", "title": "Erlang return value conventions", "text": "Should functions that return tuples, always return tuples? For example, I have a function `is_user_name_allowed` that returns a tuple in this he form if the username is not allowed: `{false, [\"Reason 1\",\"Reason 2\"]}` If the I want to return true, is there any convention/benefit to returning a tuple as opposed to simply returning `true`? (`{true}` vs `true`)"}
{"_id": "253287", "title": "Estimation of space is required to store 275305224 of 5x5 MagicSquares?", "text": "Here are some examples of 5x5 Magic Squares found by the Magic Square Generator by Marcel Roos:               Magic squares 5x5     Sum must be: 65          Solution:             1       1  2 13 24 25       3 23 17  6 16      20 21 11  8  5      22  4 14 18  7      19 15 10  9 12          Solution:             2       1  2 13 24 25       3 23 16  8 15      21 19 10  6  9      22  4 14 20  5      18 17 12  7 11          Solution:             3       1  2 13 24 25       3 23 19  4 16      21 15 10 12  7      22  8  9 20  6      18 17 14  5 11           ...      The number of all possible solutions is 275305224. Since calculation of all solutions takes a very long time, I would like have one person with a high speed computer find all solutions (in a long continues span of time) and then share them on the web for other people. What would be an efficient way to store these solutions, using some sort of compression? **(simple logical trick)by attention to the principle that the sum in all rows and columns and diagonal are equal to 65** **we only need to know the value for only 14 cells of 25 cells as shown below , this cause the storage space almost reduce to half 14/25** legend: **+** means stored value and **x** means skipped value !               + + + + x     + + + + x      + + + + x     x + x + x     x x x x x"}
{"_id": "253285", "title": "Limitations of the Identity Map pattern", "text": "After asking about the implementation in Ruby of the Identity Map pattern because the potential memory leak in long running server apps, I am considering my initial concept of that pattern. Initially I thought it was intended to cache database results AND guarantee that **only one instance of the same object exist in memory**. Is this last assumption right? Within DDD there is the tendency where Entity equality is based on having the same **id** not the same memory address, that fits perfectly with the memory problem, however after using many ORMs I always had the \"feeling\" of having a **unique instance** of my objects. Is this assumption a _dangerous idea_? Should I normally be concerned about my objects having multiple instances? Or even being out of sync with the database?"}
{"_id": "32581", "title": "How do you explain Separation of Concerns to others?", "text": "If you had a colleague who didn't understand the benefits of Separation of Concerns, or didn't understand it quite enough to apply consistently in their daily work, how would you explain it to them?"}
{"_id": "8721", "title": "How do I improve my coding skills?", "text": "Here's a bit information about me, before starting with the question. I am a Computer Science Undergraduate, Java being my primary coding language. The basic problem in my University are the teaching standards. No one is concerned about teaching coding knowledge to students, rather than just theoretical knowledge. The effect being, most of my fellow college mates don't understand programming at all. Even I haven't been able to come out of the traditional programming environment, which limits my coding to an extent. What are the possible ways by which I can develop and expand my programming/coding skills. Also, can you suggest the sources for the same? **Edited** : Sources suggesting development of coding skills."}
{"_id": "137696", "title": "What is the best way to stay on the cutting edge of Software Engineering?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I improve my coding skills? I was asked this ( _What is the best way to stay on the cutting edge of Software Engineering?_ ), and it's really bothered me that I didn't have a good answer. There are really two parts to this question:   1. Where is a good place (websites - magazines) to go to learn about emerging technologies, frameworks, design principles, etc?    2. How can I get a good feel on which emerging technologies will be adopted by \"the industry?\"  I realize the second will be harder than the first since no one has a crystal ball, but any advice would be welcomed."}
{"_id": "15742", "title": "Continuous Professional development \u2013 the best approach", "text": "From my experience in the current working environment, one's professional development is definitely in the hands of the individual. As I see it there are several routes to the same objective based on cost, time and availability   1. External Offsite training Online   2. Training providers (itunes U,Pluralsight etc)    3. Books    4. Specialist /user groups    5. Specialist web sites (Channel9, stackoverflow,dnrtv,codeplex etc) What would you consider to be the best approach (blend) to continued learning and maintaining a professional standard of work?"}
{"_id": "216197", "title": "how to write good programming logic?", "text": "recently I got job as a java developer, and now I have assigned project too. I want to know what is a good logic? when I check in the code my team lead is saying that its a good code. But when it comes to my project manager he is saying that its a bad code. And he is changing my code, after his changes if I see his code its really very very good and even simple. can you please tell me how to develop the good program, good logic? what is the best way to structure a problem in terms of code?"}
{"_id": "124536", "title": "Logical reasoning skill tests", "text": "I'm job hunting so I decided to sharpen a bit of my skills. I've been working on implementing solutions to some of the \"Project Euler\" problems, but I would like to work on stuff which is not specific to programming. Does anyone have good resources with tests that be used to test logical reasoning skills, creativity and those kinds of things? I know some people question their value as a predictor of developer hability, but there are some HR departments which use those kinds of tests, so I wana get some preparation done. Thanks."}
{"_id": "113947", "title": "How I do become a better programmer as a junior developer", "text": "I am a junior developer in South Africa. I just graduated from college last year. My current employers hired me as a developer but they do not give me anything to develop and I've been working here for 8 months now. How I do become a better developer? How do I grow? I do some development at home, but how can I get more exposure? I have looked for another job, but that's not the point. I do not want to give up, I want to become a better developer. How can I improve my skills?"}
{"_id": "117103", "title": "Increasing confidence in personal knowledge about coding", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know > how to program I have been a .net dev for about 3 years at a non-software company, and I want to try and implement unit testing into our software projects. I have been reading blogs about the basics of unit testing and am currently reading The Art of Unit Testing. I feel I have a fairly good understanding of how unit tests can be set up and implemented, but I am wary of implementing it because if things were set up wrong, no one would notice / my team would be writing bad tests thinking they were good tests. I feel that my whole underlying issue is with fear of failure, being in implementing unit testing or in persuading the team to start using / writing unit tests. How do/did you increase your confidence in your own knowledge about coding?"}
{"_id": "119415", "title": "How to Deliberately Practice Software Engineering?", "text": "I just finished reading this recent article. It's a very interesting read, and it makes some great points. The point that specifically jumped out at me was this: > The difference was in how they spent this [equal] time. The elite players > were spending almost three times more hours than the average players on > deliberate practice \u2014 the uncomfortable, methodical work of stretching your > ability. This article (if you care not to read it) is discussing violin players. Of course, being a software engineer, my mind turned towards software ability. Granted, there are some very naturally talented individuals out there, but time and time again, it is those folks who stretch their abilities through deliberate practice that really become exceptional at their craft. My question is - how would one go about practicing the \"scales\" of software engineering and computer science? When I practice the piano, I will spend more of my time on scales and less on a fun song. How can I do the same in developing software? To head off early answers, I don't feel that \"work on an open source project,\" and similar answers, is really right. Sure...that _can_ improve your skills, but you could just as easily get stuck focusing on something that is unimportant to your craft as a whole. It can become the equivalent of learning \"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star\" and never being able to play Chopin. So, again, I ask - how would you suggest that someone deliberately practice software engineering?"}
{"_id": "9598", "title": "What do you do to improve your logical programming skills?", "text": "Do you think that only the programming pratice will help you to improve your logical programming skill or do you train your brain with puzzle games, trying imagine how universe works, playing instruments and so on? Devoting more time with programming, will do you get logical programming skills more fast?"}
{"_id": "43528", "title": "I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know how to program", "text": "I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I see websites like Stack Overflow and search engines like Google and don't know where I'd even begin to write something like that. During one summer I did have the opportunity to work as a iPhone developer, but I felt like I was mostly gluing together libraries that other people had written with little understanding of the mechanics happening beneath the hood. I'm trying to improve my knowledge by studying algorithms, but it is a long and painful process. I find algorithms difficult and at the rate I am learning a decade will have passed before I will master the material in the book. Given my current situation, I've spent a month looking for work but my skills (C, Python, Objective-C) are relatively shallow and are not so desirable in the local market, where C#, Java, and web development are much higher in demand. That is not to say that C and Python opportunities do not exist but they tend to demand 3+ years of experience I do not have. My GPA is OK (3.0) but it's not high enough to apply to the large companies like IBM or return for graduate studies. Basically I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I've learned how to program. I thought that joining a company and programming full-time would give me a chance to develop my skills and learn from those more experienced than myself, but I'm struggling to find work and am starting to get really frustrated. I am going to cast my net wider and look beyond the city I've grown up in, but what have other people in similar situation tried to do? I've worked hard but don't have the confidence to go out on my own and write my own app. (That is, become an indie developer in the iPhone app market.) If nothing turns up I will need to consider upgrading and learning more popular skills or try something marginally related like IT, but given all the effort I've put in that feels like copping out. EDIT: Thank you for all the advice. I think I was premature because of unrealistic expectations but the comments have given me a dose of reality. I will persevere and continue to code. I have a project in mind, although well beyond my current capabilities it will challenge me to hone my craft and prove my worth to myself (and potential employers). Had I known there was a career overflow I would have posted there instead."}
{"_id": "179060", "title": "What are the ways to start making actual/real-world programs using Java/C++ to excel my Programming Skills?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I improve my coding skills?   >  How I do become a better programmer as a junior developer The programming that we learn at university is not that vast, like those are really small exercises to build our logic, but everyone knows that this will not be the scenario when I'll get out in the market as a professional programmer, I really want to make real life programs which would actual make some impacts and will be useful. Tell me in the light of your experience that how should I start making those programs and polish my self as a professional programmer, if there are any sources available for it then kindly also recommend me those."}
{"_id": "200730", "title": "Improving logic/creativeness as a programmer", "text": "I am currently working as a software developer and am getting by ok, but feel that there is something missing from my skillset. Looking at job interview questions and processes of some of the big tech companies there is definitely an emphasis on problem solving and creativeness when tackling software problems. Some of the examples I would not have any chance at all solving. How can these skills be improved/learned? Or is this is simply a natural thing that cant be learned?"}
{"_id": "151317", "title": "Thinking skills to be a good programmer", "text": "I have been programming for last 15 years with non-CS degree. Main reason I got into programming was that I liked to learn new things and apply them to my work. And I was able to find and fix programming errors and their causes faster than others. But I never find myself a a guru or an expert, maybe due to my non-CS major. And when I saw great programmers, I observed they are very good, much better than me of course, at solving problems. One skill I found good in my mid-career is thinking of requirements and tasks in a reverse order and in abstract. In that way, I can see what is really required for me to do without detail and can quickly find parts of solution that already exist. So I wonder if there are other thinking skills to be a good programmer. I've followed Q&As below and actually read some of books recommended there. But I couldn't really pickup good methods directly applicable for my programming work. What non-programming books should a programmer read to help develop programming/thinking skills? Skills and habits to develop to be good at programming (I'm a newbie)"}
{"_id": "212499", "title": "Stepping between learning about programming and actually programming a small project (C#)", "text": "I'm a Games Design Student, aware of the frequent advice that I should be good at something else as well (Programming/Art) so I'm useful when a designer is not required and also for the sake of being more useful - generally as a wish to increase my employability, value in group projects and make me capable of individual projects (which would require Design AND programming AND Art all stemming from what I can produce). As such I wish to complete some minor C# projects. In particular, I wish to write a simple Pong clone over this weekend before term starts up again on Monday. The problem is, when ever I try to write a program, unless it's blindly following instructions (which is simply parroting) I am unable to establish a workflow that moves me forward. If I have an idea or mechanic I wish to document I have some templates I refer to and fill out. If I wanted to produce an art asset I'd consider what asset is (a car, a person) the graphical style (pixel art or drawing or 3d), the technical constraints (resolution/file formats). For a programming workflow I'm under the impression I have my pseudo-code of what I want to make, I go through each item and check a scripting reference to see how I make each step and break them down further as required. However I have, say, \"Draw Paddle_1, Move Paddle1 up/down in relation to input,...\" and I cannot progress. I've been given modules in different languages over the past two years (which I've passed all of - since it just involves parroting instructions) however I am at a loss for picking something to do, how to do it then doing it. How do I make this leap between loose knowledge of programming and knowing basics of structure and the vocabulary towards actually being able to write something (short of copy/pasting bodies of code from googling them - after doing that dozens of times I only end up frustrated and angry and walk away from programming for months, until it comes up again)?"}
{"_id": "129918", "title": "How to improve yourself and grow as a programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I improve my coding skills? I'm a 4 yrs experienced programmer with JAVA being the strong point of mine. I know basics of web, C++ android, blackberry programming. Was wondering how should I improve myself. Does learning new languages help or learning design stuff and learn to become a architect? How do you guys plan yourself for future? May be learn a language every year? or be in touch the the new technologies? How do you guys improve yourself as a core programmer?"}
{"_id": "119253", "title": "Where to go from here, how to improve / learn more", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know > how to program I finished University around 4 years ago double degree in Software Eng/Comp Sci. Got my first job at a startup in my final year, was with them for 2.5 years then started my own business. So far everything is going great, lots of clients and stead work etc, but coming right out of uni and into a start up I never had any form or senior software engineer guiding my work or suggesting improvements etc... Whats the best way for me to improve & learn more? Books? MS Exams? Other? I develop in C#, ASP.NET/MVC. **Update** The problem isn't really with releasing products, I've released quite a few which are up and running with customers happy. It's more with quality of code, best practices, how do I know something I am code is correct, it may work but there may be ways of coding it much more efficiently or by adhering to some kind of standard Cheers for any responses! Matt"}
{"_id": "84278", "title": "How do I create my own programming language and a compiler for it", "text": "I am thorough with programming and have come across languages including BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, LOGO, Java, C++, C, MATLAB, Mathematica, Python, Ruby, Perl, JavaScript, Assembly and so on. I can't understand how people create programming languages and devise compilers for it. I also couldn't understand how people create OS like Windows, Mac, UNIX, DOS and so on. The other thing that is mysterious to me is how people create libraries like OpenGL, OpenCL, OpenCV, Cocoa, MFC and so on. The last thing I am unable to figure out is how scientists devise an assembly language and an assembler for a microprocessor. I would really like to learn all of these stuff and I am 15 years old. I always wanted to be a computer scientist someone like Babbage, Turing, Shannon, or Dennis Ritchie. * * * I have already read Aho's Compiler Design and Tanenbaum's OS concepts book and they all only discuss concepts and code in a high level. They don't go into the details and nuances and how to devise a compiler or operating system. I want a concrete understanding so that I can create one myself and not just an understanding of what a thread, semaphore, process, or parsing is. I asked my brother about all this. He is a SB student in EECS at MIT and hasn't got a clue of how to actually create all these stuff in the real world. All he knows is just an understanding of Compiler Design and OS concepts like the ones that you guys have mentioned (i.e. like Thread, Synchronization, Concurrency, memory management, Lexical Analysis, Intermediate code generation and so on)"}
{"_id": "160896", "title": "I want to create a new language", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I create my own programming language and a compiler for it I want to create a new general purpose language that will compile to JavaScript and I'd like to be able to write it in that same JavaScript. I wouldn't go much into detail about why, but how can I do it? Currently I have professionally coded in JS, Java, Groovy, PL/SQL, PHP among the rest, so I'm covered on the language user side of the story, but I have no theoretical or practical knowledge from the create language side. I have browsed the web for the past week and noticed a soup of acronyms and/or names like RR, LALR, BNF, AST etc. so I figure I need two things:   * Good Book(s) about theory   * Working projects or experiments that I can use to jump start my learning (something free like that narcissus) EDIT: No, this question does not cover the EXACTLY SAME content and it is not on the same topic even worse, even though there are two good answers, they don't answer how I can practically USE JS TO BUILD THE TOOLS (JS TRANSPILER) I NEED FOR THE NEW LANGUAGE. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "115924", "title": "Should the creation of an object implicitly or explicitly create a file?", "text": "I'm creating an object whose sole purpose is to read in a file of one format and create another of a different format. Is it best to create the output file implicitly during object initialization or to have a public method that gives the user the choice when this file will be created?"}
{"_id": "98604", "title": "Invert how to teach programming?", "text": "I was thinking about the responses to my thread on programming Program like a writer..? and most people agreed that you should have some structure and build from there instead of just typing away. New programmers, however, tend to just type, find mistakes, add code, and repeat unti it works. To quote Richard Pattis: > \u201cWhen debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective > code.\u201d This is fine and all, but the problem is that people **repeat their mistakes**. After making a mistake enough times, they eventually learn to avoid it. To give a practical example, consider `warning: control reaches end of non- void function`. Most new programmers will see this, google it, figure out what's wrong, add in `return 0;`, and they're good to go. They don't care about the error; they just want the solution What if we invert this concept? Why not teach them how to mess up first? A possible assignment could be: > Consider the warning \"control reaches end of non-void function\" What causes > this warning to occur? Provide code to demonstrate all the ways this warning > can appear. Evaluate the following code samples and explain why the warning > appears. This way, the programmer learns that all non-void functions need to return something. They would have to write code to create this error (debugging/testing), and evaluate existing code to find the error (code review). I'm not saying we teach this _before_ fundamentals, because you should understand iteration/recursion, loops, assignment, equality, etc before writing significant code. I'm saying that instead of solving errors as rookies make them, why not concentrate this knowledge in the beginning. What do you guys think of this idea? What are the shortcomings of this approach, and can it be feasibly implemented anywhere?"}
{"_id": "256125", "title": "php make dollar optional", "text": "Is there any reason the PHP language could not be updated in a future version to make the $ prefix on variable names optional? Reasons that would break existing code? I'm thinking it would still be required for string interpolation, like \"Hello $name\", but most of the time it would be optional. For example,               $name = 'Bob';     echo \"Hello $name\";      would still be valid, but so would               name = 'Bob';     echo \"Hello $name\";"}
{"_id": "196125", "title": "Is it a good practice to create a ClassCollection of another Class?", "text": "Lets says I have a `Car`class:               public class Car     {         public string Engine { get; set; }         public string Seat { get; set; }         public string Tires { get; set; }     }      Lets say we're making a system about a parking lot, I'm going to use a lot of the `Car` class, so we make a `CarCollection` class, it may has a few aditionals methods like `FindCarByModel`:               public class CarCollection     {         public List<Car> Cars { get; set; }              public Car FindCarByModel(string model)         {             // code here             return new Car();         }     }      If I'm making a class `ParkingLot`, what's the best practice? **Option #1:**               public class ParkingLot     {         public List<Car> Cars { get; set; }         //some other properties     }      **Option #2:**               public class ParkingLot     {         public CarCollection Cars { get; set; }         //some other properties     }      Is it even a good practice to create a `ClassCollection` of another `Class`?"}
{"_id": "115929", "title": "How to account for a bug fixing iteration?", "text": "We have implemented Scrum quite successfully for the past 5 months. Though, we are 3 weeks away from PROD without _ever_ doing any end-to-end integration test. OUCH! I need help. Without tackling the causes of this (at THIS point), we need now to plan the current iteration, which consists of minor improvements and MANY still unknown bug fixes. How do you account for this scenario? How do you plan your iteration to fix bugs yet to be found?"}
{"_id": "196126", "title": "Which technologies to create web interface for scientific instrument?", "text": "I am working on software for some scientific instrumentation. An embedded computer running Windows 7 is inside the instrument, which controls various components of the device; cameras, motors, thermometers, etc. I've written a basic interface in WPF/C# and use remote desktop to test the application. (Reason is safety, the instrument will be used in high radiation areas). What I want: A server runs on the embedded PC. The user accesses a web page at 192.168.x.x (Internet access would be nice, but not necessary) and clicks 'collect data' and the server loads the relevant C# .dll's, acquires data and uploads the data to the user. Speed/scalability is not much of a concern, as data acquisition could take anywhere from minutes to days. What I'm confused about: How do I go about executing my existing C# code from a web application? i.e., which .NET technology(ies) should I look into using?"}
{"_id": "166442", "title": "What is the precise definition of programming paradigm?", "text": "Wikipedia defines **programming paradigm** thus: > a fundamental style of computer programming which is echoed in the descriptive text of the paradigms tag on this site. I find this a disappointing definition. Anyone who knows the words _programming_ and _paradigm_ could do about that well without knowing anything else about it. There are many styles of computer programming at many level of abstraction; within any given programming paradigm, multiple styles are possible. For example, Bob Martin says in _Clean Code_ (13), > Consider this book a description of the _Object Mentor School of Clean > Code_. The techniques and teachings within are the way that _we_ practice > _our_ art. We are willing to claim that if you follow these teachings, you > will enjoy the benefits that we have enjoyed, and you will learn to write > code that is clean and professional. But don't make the mistake of thinking > that we are somehow \"right\" in any absolute sense. Thus Bob Martin is not claiming to have _the correct_ style of Object-Oriented programming, even though he, if anyone, might have some claim to doing so. But even within his school of programming, we might have different styles of formatting the code (K&R, etc). There are many styles of programming at many levels. So how can we define _programming paradigm_ rigorously, to distinguish it from other categories of programming styles? _Fundamental_ is somewhat helpful, but not specific. How can we define the phrase in a way that will communicate more than the separate meanings of each of the two words--in other words, how can we define it in a way that will provide additional meaning for someone who speaks English but isn't familiar with a variety of paradigms?"}
{"_id": "56479", "title": "How does a CS student negotiate in/after a job interview?", "text": "Alright, I've gotten to the second step in the interview process. At this point I'm working under the assumption that I might be offered a position -- flying my butt to Redmond would be quite an expense if they weren't at least considering me for something (*crosses fingers*). So, if one is offered a position, how should a CS student negotiate? I've heard a few strategies about dealing with software companies when you are being considered for a hire, but most of them are considering the developer in a powerful position. In such examinations, (s)he has lots of job experience, and may even be overqualified for what the employer is looking for. (s)he is part of a small job market of qualified developers, because 99% of applications companies receive are from those who are woefully under qualified. I'm in a completely different position. I think I compare favorably to most of my fellow students, and I have been a programmer for almost 10 years, but often I still feel green compared to most of my coworkers. I'm in a position where the employer holds most of the chips; they'd be doing me quite a favor by hiring me. I think this scenario is considerably different than the targets for most of the advice I've seen. Above all, I don't want to be such a prick negotiating that it damages my chances to actually operate in a position, even if it means not negotiating at all. How should one approach a scenario like this? * * * P.S. If this is off topic feel free to close it -- I think it's borderline and I'm of the opinion that it's better to ask and be closed than not ask at all ;)"}
{"_id": "3317", "title": "What's the difference between a \"developer\" and a \"programmer\"?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are the key differences between software engineers and programmers?   >  What is the difference between software engineer and software developer? What's the difference in this terminology? Is one considered more professional than the other? ### Related Questions   * When someone asks you what you do, what do you say (e.g. programmer, developer, code monkey)?   * What is the difference between software engineer and software developer?   * What are the key differences between software engineers and programmers?"}
{"_id": "4951", "title": "What are the key differences between software engineers and programmers?", "text": "What are the key differences between software engineers and programmers?"}
{"_id": "127545", "title": "How to climb up the hierarchy from a programmer (codesmith) to a full-fledged Software Engineer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is the difference between software engineer and software developer?   >  How to move from Programmer to Project Lead Writing code all your life is not really very practical in terms of growth or is it? I have heard professionals of the industry emphasizing upon focusing on UML and System Analysis & Design methodology to new and experienced programmers to grow further and excel to become a Software Engineer. Communication skills also play a vital role to manage teams and projects. Seeking for some good advice here besides learning UML and SAD."}
{"_id": "13892", "title": "How to move from Programmer to Project Lead", "text": "At my job, I'm currently a programmer, but in the next few weeks I'll be taking control my own project. I was wondering if anyone else here has been in the same situation, and if so, what advice you can offer to help me be able to better run my project. Experience in dealing with contractors would be greatly appreciated. A little more info:   * Project will have 3 people including myself, with extra people coming in when needing testing.   * The project has been programmed mainly by 2 people   * I would like to contribute to the programming as I like doing it and think I can add to the program, but am afraid of how the contractors will react. I don't want to create bad feelings which may harm the project. EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'll have to be picking up communications with customers to make sure their needs are met. Any advice on talking to customers cold would be greatly appreciated. EDIT 2: This is not a new project, I'm picking it up around version 6. Sorry that I didn't make it clear before."}
{"_id": "87573", "title": "What is the actual difference between Computer Programmers and Software Engineers? Is this description accurate?", "text": "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this is the difference: > Computer programmers write programs. After computer software engineers and > systems analysts design software programs, the programmer converts that > design into a logical series of instructions that the computer can follow They predict employment to increase for software engineers by 34% but to decline for programmers. Is there actually any such real distinction between the 2 jobs? How can one get a job designing programs (to be implemented by others)?"}
{"_id": "106365", "title": "Software Engineer and IT Professionals", "text": "If you graduated as an Information Technology or a Computer Science student and you have a job that involves computer programming such as developing websites and systems, can you be called Software Engineer?"}
{"_id": "200620", "title": "Why software engineering = programming?", "text": "I live in South America, and here the translation for \"Software Engineering\" is a knowledge for the SWEBOK (Software Engineering Body of Knowledge) subjects, such as: Requirements, Development methods (Waterfall, Spiral, SCRUM, etc..), Tests, Quality, Maintenance, etc.. **Why do English materials such as classes, articles, and even stackoverflow questions about Software Engineering just address (basically) programming?** Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/131571/recommended-books-for- software-engineering Most of recommended books in the answers above are basically programming, and the Software Engineering 'bibles' that have SWEBOK items written by Pressman and Summerville are almost unnoticed. Actually, most of SWEBOK items doesn't have focus in the programming code. Secondary Question: What is the English name for the profession/subject that really needs to know all SWEBOK subjects? (not only 'good programming')."}
{"_id": "198433", "title": "How should I describe myself on my CV? As a software developer? A software engineer? A senior developer?", "text": "I know this has been asked a lot, but I'd like to know what to present myself as on my CV and to future employees. I'm 24, and began as a C#/ASP.NET developer after graduating from University in 2010 (I studied Computer Science). Since then I have worked for a relatively small software development house (about 8 employees), and since early 2012 I've been essentially the most senior .NET developer (the others in the company have more experience but only in drastically different/outdated languages, and are just learning .NET). My roles there are designing and developing applications. I don't usually write the specs, but the specs are essentially the customers requirements - all the technical details including the design of the database and application are up to me. I also have 3 MCTS certificates and I'm working towards an MCPD. As I've essentially only got around 3 years experience, I'm a bit unsure of how to present myself - clearly I'm not what most would constitute as 'senior'! Would you class me as a software developer, or something more?"}
{"_id": "237868", "title": "Computer Science and the IT industry", "text": "I have a Computer Science degree and I'm employed as a software engineer. I'm regularly approached by recruiters on LinkedIn with \"programmer\", \"software developer\", or general \"software and/or computer industry\" propositions. Every now and then though a recruiter will approach me with an \"IT position\" opportunity. I understand that in the absolute general sense anything and everything between the keywords _computer_ and _software_ will at some point include IT, but when it comes to more specific discussions, particularly offers for an interview for an \"IT position\", I often find that to be a bit odd. It often strikes me as if I am being offered to interview for the position of a DBA, sys admin, or an IT staff manager, positions that are as foreign to me as the medical field. To avoid subjectivity, I'll make my question simple. Is a _software engineer_ , _coder_ , _programmer_ or a _software developer_ , in an IT position? IT industry (app development, scientific, multimedia/game)?"}
{"_id": "174815", "title": "Does what I'm doing make me a software engineer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are the key differences between software engineers and programmers? I am a software company owner for 8 years now. After years of operation I figured out that all the while what I was doing was a software engineer's job. There are several questions in my mind that I want to ask from you guys. I know that answers will be subjective. As a software engineer, do you really need to be a seasoned programmer? Is it true that software engineers don't code but just make diagrams, functional specs. and othe related documents? I also noticed that there are no SE standards or board exams to pass and its really a dynamic and situational job. So basically I can just proclaim myself as a software engineer based on experience and product?"}
{"_id": "221503", "title": "Are there any implementations of deterministic regular expressions?", "text": "The question itself is already in the title, so here I will just provide additional details. I call a regular expression \"deterministic\", if, after converting the regular expression into a nondeterministic finite automaton in the obvious way, the result is already a deterministic finite automaton, without performing an explicit nondeterminism removal procedure. For example:   * **Deterministic:** `ab(cb)*`   * **Nondeterministic:** `a(bc)*b` I never use nondeterministic regular expressions. In particular, this means that matching my regular expressions never requires backtracking. I want a regular expression implementation that is explicitly designed to handle deterministic regular expressions, and takes advantage of them in order to match character streams that must be read sequentially, such as C++'s `std::istream`s. My preferred languages are Haskell, Standard ML, Rust and C++11, although I am open to suggestions for any statically typed languages."}
{"_id": "107917", "title": "How long should a sprint planning meeting last?", "text": "In your experience, how long should a planning meeting (SCRUM) last? 8 hours? Or should it be shorter (succinct) and further discussions should be planned as part of the sprint (10 days sprint)?"}
{"_id": "20407", "title": "Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?", "text": "In a post, Joel Spolsky mentioned that 5 digit Stack Overflow reputation can help you to earn a job paying $100k+. How much of that is real? Would anyone like to share their success in getting a high paid job by virtue of their reputations on Stack Exchange sites? I read somewhere that, a person got an interview offer from Google because a recruiter found his Stack Overflow reputation to be impressive. Anyone else with similar stories?"}
{"_id": "4180", "title": "Does having a high \"rep\" on StackOverflow help you get a job? What other community sites do?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job? Just curious, what Web2.0 websites do employers use (if any) to pre-screen potential employees? Does any employer actually refer to a user's online \"reputation\" to get a job?"}
{"_id": "20949", "title": "Will high reputation on Programmers help to get a good job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job? In reference to this question, do you think that having a high reputation on this site will help to get a good job? Aside silly and humorous questions, on Programmers we can see a lot of high quality theory questions. I think that, _if_ Stack Overflow will eventually evolve in \"strictly programming related\" (which usually is \"strictly _coding_ related\"), the questions on Programmers will be much more interesting and meaningful (\"Stack Overflow\" = \"I have this specific coding/implementation issue\"; \"Programmers\" = \"Best practices, team shaping, paradigms, CS theory\"). So could high reputation on this site help (or at least be a good reference)? And then, more o less than Stack Overflow?"}
{"_id": "56477", "title": "What do you wish you had been taught in uni before moving to industry?", "text": "Is there something that you wish you could have learnt, as part of a course or something, in uni, now that you've been in industry for a while? Maybe something such as \"I wish there was a course in time estimation\" or \"I wish I had learnt how to work in large projects\", and so on."}
{"_id": "256121", "title": "How to securely implement Roles in a Windows Form application?", "text": "As an ISV, what is considered best practice for implementing Application Role based security? In other words, only allow users to access certain features in the application based on what Roles they belong to. We currently just use a table in our database to store this, but it has been suggested that for max HIPAA compliance, this isn't secure enough. My first thought was to just use Active Directory Groups, as it would seem that is what they are designed for, however, it just doesn't seem practical to rely on our clients IT departments to create Groups and assign users to them for groups that are specific only to our application. This can't be best practice for ISVs ... At this point it my research, it seems that possibly the best solution might be to use something like Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) (Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services) and possibly AzMan (Windows Authorization Manager)? Again, this is for a Windows Forms Application, not a Web application or in an \"In House\" solution. If it matters, we are also in the process of transitioning our home baked authentication to instead use active directory for authentication. Also of note is this needs to be secure (HIPAA Compliant). All the information i can find on this subjects seems to be for developing applications for in house use, or for web applications, and neither of these approaches feels appropriate for a winform application. (We are using .net for development.) help! :)"}
{"_id": "220676", "title": "Why does Mono for Android cost money if the mono project is opensource and therefore everything based on it must be opensource?", "text": "Why does Mono for Android cost money if the mono project is opensource and therefore everything based on it must be opensource?"}
{"_id": "220670", "title": "Sell product containing purchased GPL software", "text": "I recently purchased a product (a website template, licensed by GNU GPL 2.0). My product, which is a web software, coded in PHP, uses that web template as its appearance. The question is: How can I sell a software which includes some parts of a GNU GPL 2.0 commercial website template? Do I have to pay a license for the website template each time I sell mine? Thanks."}
{"_id": "57782", "title": "What are the preconditions to get an experienced developer from working as a freelancer to owning a small software company?", "text": "I've been a software developer for 8 years. I've worked on about 20 projects, some smaller, some bigger. I know how to help myself by using google magic, msdn, youttube, tutorials, how-to's etc. I'm playing around with the idea to get a friend of mine (who has been a software-developer for 5 years) and start my own software-developer-company. What do you think are the preconditions to get myself from a freelancer to owning my own little company with 2-3 employees?"}
{"_id": "57783", "title": "developing web applications using .NET platform - key features in training?", "text": "I'm working for some polish company and we are going to train programmers in developing web applications using .NET and I'm asking you for your opinion what should be placed in that kind of course. thanks in advance :) PS: I just need little help with research and mostly some kind of discussion about what's needed and what would be useless waste of time depending on yours experience"}
{"_id": "57781", "title": "Do you need to pay $100 a month for a Server when building a website?", "text": "Do you need a virtual or dedicated Server when simply coding? Would you be able to build a website from scratch from your on PC and take a Server only one day befor going live in Beta?"}
{"_id": "142926", "title": "Is there any practical trick to remember the difference between big-endian and little-endian?", "text": "I don't work every day with big-endian and little-endian problems and thus I find very difficult to remember which one is what. Recently I got an interview asking the difference between the two; since I didn't remember I decided to \"guess\" (50% chance, after all) but I failed. So, is there any wide known pratical trick to remember what is the difference between big endian and little endian?"}
{"_id": "142923", "title": "Validating allowed characters or validating disallowed characters", "text": "I've always validated my user input based on a list of valid/allowed characters, rather than a list of invalid/disallowed characters (or simply no validation). It's just a habit I picked up, probably on this site and I've never really questioned it until now. It makes sense if you wish to, say, validate a phone number, or validate an area code, however recently I've realised I'm also validating input such as Bio Text fields, User Comments, etc. for which the input has no solid syntax. The main advantage has always seemed to be: **Validating allowed chars reduces the risk of you missing a potentially malicious character, but increases the risk the of you not allowing a character which the user may want to use. The former is more important.** But, providing I am correctly preventing SQL Injection (with prepared statements) and also escaping output, is there any need for this extra barrier of protection? It seems to me as if I am just allowing practically every character on the keyboard, and am forgetting to allow some common characters. Is there an accepted practice for this situation? Or am I missing something obvious? Thanks."}
{"_id": "117561", "title": "What's the difference between Scala and Red Hat's Ceylon language?", "text": "Red Hat's Ceylon language has some interesting improvements over Java:   * The overall vision: learn from Java's mistakes, keep the good, ditch the bad   * The focus on readability and ease of learning/use   * Static Typing (find errors at compile time, not run time)   * No \u201cspecial\u201d types, everything is an object   * Named and Optional parameters (C# 4.0)   * Nullable types (C# 2.0)   * No need for explicit getter/setters until you are ready for them (C# 3.0)   * Type inference via the \"local\" keyword (C# 3.0 \"var\")   * Sequences (arrays) and their accompanying syntactic sugariness (C# 3.0)   * Straight-forward implementation of higher-order functions I don't know Scala but have heard it offers some similar advantages over Java. How would Scala compare to Ceylon in this respect?"}
{"_id": "227908", "title": "Find possible variations of one item out of multiple baskets.", "text": "I have three baskets of balls and each of them has 10 balls which have the following numbers: > Basket 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 > > Basket 2: 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 > > Basket 3: 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 What would be the possible variations If I were to pick one ball from each basket? I guess this is called as Probability in Mathematics but not sure. How would you write this code in C# (or any other programming language) to get the correct results? Edit: Based on @Kilian Foth's comment, here is the solution in C#:               class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             IEnumerable<string> basket1 = new List<string> { \"1\", \"2\", \"3\", \"4\", \"5\", \"6\", \"7\", \"8\", \"9\", \"10\" };             IEnumerable<string> basket2 = new List<string> { \"11\", \"12\", \"13\", \"14\", \"15\", \"16\", \"17\", \"18\", \"19\", \"20\" };             IEnumerable<string> basket3 = new List<string> { \"21\", \"22\", \"23\", \"24\", \"25\", \"26\", \"27\", \"28\", \"29\", \"30\" };                  foreach (var item1 in basket1)             foreach (var item2 in basket2)             foreach (var item3 in basket3)             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"{0}, {1}, {2}\", item1, item2, item3);             }                  Console.ReadLine();         }     }"}
{"_id": "56786", "title": "What could be my path? Networking, programming, or something else?", "text": "Well first and foremost, I would like to give my brief description: I was an aviation student but I didn't pursue that path because I lost my interest. Now I'm an I.T. student and currently stopped schooling because of confusion. I don't know which path I should choose: could it be programming or networking? Someone told me that on networking the money is easy, the job is easy. Others told me that programming is best suited for me because I'm very skilled and excellent at figures. I want to chose networking, but I can't find my passion for it, my mind tells me but my heart doesn't... and on programming, I don't know which language I should pick or if I like it or not. A good mentor, even if only online, would be a very big plus to me, but I don't think if there are many who could spent their time on teaching a nobody... but I'm very eager to learn. My real passion is gaming! I want to work in the gaming industry, I want to be a man behind those games! I've been a gamer freak since birth. But I don't know how to get in to that industry. I don't know what to do. I don't know which path would really suit me. Sorry if some of you find this a pointless question, but please bear with me, this could be the turn of my life."}
{"_id": "227905", "title": "Use of fixtures in unit testing", "text": "I'm trying to understand the use of fixtures in the context of unit testing models in a web MVC system. The problem I am trying to understand is that fixture data does no give a true representation of the data that the system accepts. A simple example is say I have a user model that has email validation. Fixtures will bypass the validation so the tests maybe testing invalid data. **Edit:** What I'm trying to get at is, wouldn't it make more sense to create the test data through the application business logic? So for the email example, if a developer accidentally created a fixture with an email that would not pass validation, this could cause false negatives in testing (eg testing sending emails would fail because the fixture has invalid data). The email example probably isn't the best, but I hope that makes more sense what I'm trying to get at?"}
{"_id": "227902", "title": "What is stopping people from copy-pasting open-sourced codes into their own projects and releasing only the compiled binaries?", "text": "Hi I'm new to programming, and I've always wondered what would be the point of contributing open-sourced codes if there is no way to ensure everybody who uses the code will adhere to the licenses (or is there?)."}
{"_id": "250481", "title": "Is it a bad practice to give two very different files with the same general purpose the same name?", "text": "Is it a bad practice to give two very different files with the same general purpose the same name, separating them into different directories?               <script src=\"client_scripts/app/player_stats/generator.js\"></script>     <script src=\"client_scripts/app/coach_settings/generator.js\"></script>      I'd like to keep my file names short, and both of the files have the same general purpose without being identical. I'm not sure whether or not this would be considered a bad practice in a professional programming environment. **I'd like to know what the best practice is in this situation.** Alternatively, at the expense of the name's short length, I could use:               <script src=\"client_scripts/app/player_stats/player_stats_generator.js\"></script>     <script src=\"client_scripts/app/coach_settings/coach_settings_generator.js\"></script>"}
{"_id": "127239", "title": "understanding linux kernel", "text": "I want to learn linux kernel, I think it's kinda hard to understand the whole thing as many of you mentioned in other questions, anyway, I'm really interested in the process management part of it. I wanna do something really small first, and I hope one of you can help me do it, which is booting the pc and printing some text and shutdown, Is there a code (bootstrap program) small enough to do this, where I can just copy it to a cd and boot the pc and print something and then shutdown? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "250483", "title": "Potentially justifiable use case for const_cast or bad design?", "text": "I'm designing a data structure in C++, and I want to expose an interface to the user to traverse the structure in some order. Instead of creating several different types of enumerators, I want to keep it simple and provide a single enumerator, while maintaining const-correctness. My design is summarised as follows:               class DataStructureNode; // The basic building block of the structure          class DataStructureEnumerator     {     public:              friend class DataStructure;              DataStructureEnumerator GetNext() { ... }         DataStructureEnumerator GetPrevious() { ... }          private:              const DataStructureNode* m_Node;         ...     };          class DataStructure     {     public:              DataStructureEnumerator GetEnumerator() { ... }              DataStructureNode* GetNodeFromEnumerator(const DataStructureEnumerator& e)         {             // Let's assume this function also ensures the node belongs to this structure             return const_cast<DataStructureEnumerator&>(e).m_Node; // <--- Ooo! const_cast!         }              const DataStructureNode* GetNodeFromEnumerator(const DataStructureEnumerator& e) const         {             // Let's assume this function also ensures the node belongs to this structure             return e.m_Node;         }     };      This design has the benefit that there is only one type of enumerator that handles both mutable and immutable structures. Of course, the alternative (and the conventional) design in C++ is to have two (or more) enumerator classes, such as `DataStructureEnumerator` and `DataStructureConstEnumerator`. The conventional design comes with added code- bloat, more templates, and an uglier interface (in my opinion!), but it's the norm in C++ communities. I'm interested in hearing opinions of the community on this design. Are there any potential pitfalls that I'm missing with my design?"}
{"_id": "250482", "title": "Dynamic programming in Bin packing", "text": "**Problem:** Given a list L of objects of possible sizes from set S={1,2,4,8} and unlimited supply of bins of sizes 16 each and we have to use minimum possible numbers of bins to pack all objects of L.   I am also searching for an optimal (or near optimal) solution using dynamic programming or otherwise in the following scenarios when   1. L is not given offline, instead we are asked to fit objects one by one without knowing future requests(1-D online vector bin packing).   2. sizes can be from SXS and bins are of capacity (16,16) each. (2-D vector bin packing). **Assumption:** Optimal packing means the best possible packing from all possible packing i.e the packing with the minimum numbers of bins used.   Actually generalized vector bin packing is NP-hard, but I think due standard sizes from finite set, more efficient and better solutions may exist. **My approach:** Clearly, 1-D offline can packed in <=optimal+1 using clever pairing of objects .   But I am stuck for the other 2 aspects asked above.   I know about First Fit,Best Fit, First Fit Decreasing algorithms but I am searching for this problem specific solution."}
{"_id": "210442", "title": "Automating database deployment using a CMS", "text": "My team are developing Umbraco websites and looking to improve the automation of our database deployment. Currently we have automated builds and deployments of our source code using Kiln and Team City, but cannot work out how to handle the database deployment. The challenge is applying changes made in the development environment, while keeping new database content that has been added in the live environment via the CMS. Currently our changes are deployed using courier manually, but we aim to convert this into a '1 click deployment' which is what we desire for running our automated tests and ease of deployment. How can we automate this without wiping new content added in the CMS?"}
{"_id": "21870", "title": "Can you be Agile without doing TDD (test driven development)?", "text": "Is is possible to correctly call yourself (or your team) \"Agile\" if you don't do TDD (Test-Driven Development)?"}
{"_id": "253820", "title": "Approach for packing 2D shapes while minimizing total enclosing area", "text": "Not sure on my tags for this question, but in short .... I need to solve a problem of packing industrial parts into crates while minimizing total containing area. These parts are motors, or pumps, or custom- made components, and they have quite unusual shapes. For some, it may be possible to assume that a part === rectangular cuboid, but some are not so simple, i.e. they assume a shape more of that of a hammer or letter T. With those, (assuming 2D shape), by alternating direction of top & bottom, one can pack more objects into the same space, than if all tops were in the same direction. Crude example below with letter \"T\"-shaped parts:               ***** xxxxx      ***** x        *****       *** ooo       *     x    vs    *   x    vs    * x   vs   * x o       *     x          * xxxxx        * x        * x o                                       xxxxx       xxx      Right now we are solving the problem by something like this:   1. using CAD software, make actual models of how things fit in crate boxes    2. make estimates of actual crate dimensions & write them into Excel file (1) is crazy amount of work and as the result we have just a limited amount of possible entries in (2), the Excel file. The good things is that programming this is relatively easy. Given a combination of products to go into crates, we do a lookup, and if entry exists in the Excel (or Database), we bring it out. If it doesn't, we say \"sorry, no data!\". I don't necessarily want to go full force on making up some crazy algorithm that given geometrical part description can align, rotate, and figure out best part packing into a crate, given its shape, but maybe I do.. **Question** Well, here is my question: assuming that I can represent my parts as 2D (to be determined how), and that some parts look like letter T, and some parts look like rectangles, which algorithm can I use to give me a good estimate on the dimensions of the encompassing area, while ensuring that the parts are packed in a minimal possible area, to minimize crating/shipping costs? Are there approximation algorithms? Seeing how this can get complex, is there an existing library I could use? **My thought / Approach** My naive approach would be to define a way to describe position of parts, and place the first part, compute total enclosing area & dimensions. Then place 2nd part in 0 degree orientation, repeat, place it at 180 degree orientation, repeat (for my case I don't think 90 degree rotations will be meaningful due to long lengths of parts). Proceed using brute force \"tacking on\" other parts to the enclosing area until all parts are processed. I may have to shift some parts a tad (see 3rd pictorial example above with letters T). This adds a layer of 2D complexity rather than 1D. I am not sure how to approach this. One idea I have is genetic algorithms, but I think those will take up too much processing power and time. I will need to look out for shape collisions, as well as adding extra padding space, since we are talking about real parts with irregularities rather than perfect imaginary blocks. I'm afraid this can get geometrically messy fairly fast, and I'd rather keep things simple, if I can. But what if the best (practical) solution is to pack things into different crate boxes rather than just one? This can get a bit more tricky. There is human element involved as well, i.e. like parts can go into same box and are thus a constraint to be considered. Some parts that are not the same are sometimes grouped together for shipping and can be considered as a common grouped item. Sometimes customers want things shipped their way, which adds human element to constraints. so there will have to be some customization."}
{"_id": "253821", "title": "How do programmers handle several versions of a same program?", "text": "A lot of apps, for instance, have a free version and pro version. Do programmers, when a new update is released, remove lines of code that shouldn't be available in the free version? As for Visual Studio. Or demos. Or a lot of things actually."}
{"_id": "104752", "title": "Developing an internet-enabled application as a Kiosk on Windows 7", "text": "I am finalizing development of a desktop Java application that communicates with an outside web server, and now I need to start seriously considering deployment. This application will run on a large touchscreen all-in-one workstation running Windows 7. It will be located in a public-area and thus must be LOCKED-DOWN Hanibal Lecter style. Early in the project nobody really concerned themselves with this fact just assuming that we can buy some magical software for Windows 7 that will automatically take care of all this, however I am finding now that this looks to be a LOT more complicated than my manager ever thought. I need to: \\- Lock down the standard hot-keys (ALT+TAB, ALT+CTRL+DEL, etc...)   * Prevent the user from opening ANY programs other than the kiosk application and its spawned executables   * Prevent the user from closing the application   * Start the kiosk application on startup (this can be done without kiosk software)   * Auto-login to Windows on reboot (Windows Updates, power failure, bratty kid pressing the power button, etc...)   * Administrator passcode escape sequence for routine maintenance by desktop support professionals. To my dismay I am having a really hard time finding software that contains the whole package and am finding numerous swaths of competing information on the best way to do this. I am not necessarily looking for free or open source software and am willing to pay for software that can help me achieve this. Have any of you ever wrote kiosk software before and if so what approaches have you taken to do this?"}
{"_id": "104754", "title": "Remake old web forms application in asp.net mvc", "text": "I've inherited the code maintenance of a complex web site for a customer that continuously requests enhancements for it. This application took years to develop and I'm facing increased difficulties to enhance it. It's organized but at the same time the .net code is mixed with ajax, javascripts and old school html that it takes me days to figure out how some pages work. First off, I not new to asp.net but I'm not familiar with the new MVC stuff but from what I've read it seems to be a step in a better direction. The current code is all in one big dll. The application code is divided into multiple folders representing the different departments and each department has it's own pages for handling general stuff like employee management, reports, budget and also their own information. For example, even though each department uses a different webpage for employee information handling, they want different fields and so it was simpler to create different pages than to use a single page that adapts to each department. But it is really a nightmare to maintain right now and I would like to create a parallel project where I could start a fresh project, create a better structure and from there start migrating the old code to this new environment and refactor it as I go. The idea is to migrate the old application to a new web site that has a similar look while maintaining both operating until everything is running in the new site. It may sound insane but it really is used extensively for hundreds of people everyday and it bugs me that I have to modify crappy code to make it work. How would you go about this issue? Thanks [edit] If found this link Things You Should Never Do on another post, very much to the point of my question."}
{"_id": "253828", "title": "How should I design a wizard for generating requirements and documentation", "text": "I'm currently working in an industry where extensive documentation is required, but the apps I'm writing are all pretty much cookie cutter at a high level. What I'd like to do is build an app that asks a series of questions regarding business rules and marketing requirements to generate a requirements spec. For example, there might be a question set that asks \"Does the user need to enter their age?\" and a follow-up question of \"What is the minimum age requirement?\" If the inputs are \"yes\" and \"18\", then this app will generate requirements that look something like this: \"The registration form shall include an age selector\" \"The registration form shall throw an error if the selected age is less than 18\" Later on down the line, I'd like to extend this to do additional things like generate test cases and even code, but the idea is the same: generate some output based on rules determined by answering a set of questions. Are there any patterns I could research to better design the architecture of such an application? Is this something that I should be modeling as a finite state machine?"}
{"_id": "17790", "title": "What are some things to be aware of when getting ready to hand a project off?", "text": "I'm current the sole developer/architect of a fairly large web application (ASP.NET MVC stack, roughly 150K+ lines of code) and the end of development is on the horizon. As such, I'm starting to think about what needs to be done for the hand off of the project and I want to make sure I do the right thing for anyone that has to maintain the project in the future. What are some things to be aware of when getting ready to hand a project off to another developer or team of developers of maintenance?"}
{"_id": "241126", "title": "Where can I find better designed nginx documentation?", "text": "Actually I have a sub-question here:\"Is Nginx official documentation opensourced?\" Nginx is a good software, but I found its official documentation(http://nginx.org/en/docs/ really hard to read, because lack of design. Especially compare with documentations on this site (readthedocs.org). So I decided to move it to readthedocs.org little by little if it's opensourced. And I'm so confused that as the 2nd biggest web-server software on world, aren't there anyone else like me feel its documentation hard to read? Maybe there are many and I just don't know them. If you know any other site which have a better designed nginx documentation, please tell me, so I won't need to do the rebuild task."}
{"_id": "127236", "title": "What is the required background to apply Machine Learning to Finance?", "text": "I'm interested in machine learning in relations to the stock market (predicting future values of stocks etc). What topics would I need to learn - e.g. what branch of AI to look into etc? and what libraries/tools do I need?"}
{"_id": "204605", "title": "Avoid malicious code while dynamically loading classes with ClassLoader", "text": "## Background One of the advantages of decoupled components in systems is that you can extend the system without having to touch the existing code. Sometimes you don't even have to recompile the old code because you can dynamically load classes from disk like this:               clazz = Demo.class.getClassLoader().loadClass(\"full.package.name.to.SomeClass\");      That allows for a kind of plug-in architecture of sorts (give or take). ## Question How do you prevent malicious code from running when dynamically loading a class from disk using `ClassLoader` ?"}
{"_id": "64949", "title": "Programming style: Reoccuring error checks", "text": "Hey, I have a question about programming style, because in my current code I am using a bigger function which calls some smaller functions and all of these need to be error-checked. So something like this:                void bigFunction() {           /* some computations */           if(smallFunction1() == -1) {                free(mem1);                free(mem2);                fclose(file);                unlink(filename);                return -1;           }           if(smallFunction2() == -1) {                free(mem1);                free(mem2);                fclose(file);                unlink(filename);                return -1;           }             if(smallFunction3() == -1) {                free(mem1);                free(mem2);                fclose(file);                unlink(filename);                return -1;           }           /* more computations and stuff in biggerFunction */      }      I think you can clearly see my problem: The code after one of these functions fails is always the same, and I feel like repeating this coder again and again will make my code more and more unreadable. How to deal with this problem? gotos came into my mind, but in my programming courses in university I was told never use gotos (though I forget the reason why...)"}
{"_id": "99959", "title": "Project problems from a Java beginner", "text": "A week ago I asked the question; First big project, how to get started. Make menus, save to harddrive etc. I tried to do everything without doing a GUI with Swing but I realized that for every view I wanted to present to the user I had to make a new class. Right now I have 3 menu classes (the mainMenu, computerCategoryMenu,laptopCategoryMenu) I stopped because I would need to make another 6 menu classes and then another 6 if the user registered and another 6 for the administrator of the site. It doesn't look right to me. Furthermore everything looks too static for me. I don't know how to make the administrator add or delete products. Should I store all my products in a hashmap and then get them to show in different menus? Do you think that doing a GUI with Swing will make things much easier?"}
{"_id": "167792", "title": "Tiling Problem Solutions for Various Size \"Dominoes\"", "text": "I've got an interesting tiling problem, I have a large square image (size 128k so 131072 squares) with dimensons 256x512... I want to fill this image with certain grain types (a 1x1 tile, a 1x2 strip, a 2x1 strip, and 2x2 square) and have no overlap, no holes, and no extension past the image boundary. Given some probability for each of these grain types, a list of the number required to be placed is generated for each. Obviously an iterative/brute force method doesn't work well here if we just randomly place the pieces, instead a certain algorithm is required. 1) all 2x2 square grains are randomly placed until exhaustion. 2) 1x2 and 2x1 grains are randomly placed alternatively until exhaustion 3) the remaining 1x1 tiles are placed to fill in all holes. It turns out this algorithm works pretty well for some cases and has no problem filling the entire image, however as you might guess, increasing the probability (and thus number) of 1x2 and 2x1 grains eventually causes the placement to stall (since there are too many holes created by the strips and not all them can be placed). My approach to this solution has been as follows: 1) Create a mini-image of size 8x8 or 16x16. 2) Fill this image randomly and following the algorithm specified above so that the desired probability of the entire image is realized in the mini-image. 3) Create N of these mini-images and then randomly successively place them in the large image. Unfortunately there are some downfalls to this simplification. 1) given the small size of the mini-images, nailing an exact probability for the entire image is not possible. Example if I want p(2x1)=P(1x2)=0.4, the mini image may only give 0.41 as the closes probability. 2) The mini-images create a pseudo boundary where no overlaps occur which isn't really descriptive of the model this is being used for. 3) There is only a fixed number of mini-images so i'm not sure how random this really is. I'm really just looking to brainstorm about possible solutions to this. My main concern is really to nail down closer probabilities, now one might suggest I just increase the mini-image size. Well I have, and it turns out that in certain cases(p(1x2)=p(2x1)=0.5) the mini-image 16x16 isn't even iteratively solvable.. So it's pretty obvious how difficult it is to randomly solve this for anything greater than 8x8 sizes.. So I'd love to hear some ideas. Thanks"}
{"_id": "153843", "title": "Undefined behaviour in Java", "text": "I was reading this question on SO which discusses some common undefined behavior in C++, and I wondered: does Java also have undefined behaviour? If that is the case, then what are some common causes of undefined behaviour in Java? If not, then which features of Java make it free from such behaviours and why haven't the latest versions of C and C++ been implemented with these properties?"}
{"_id": "153845", "title": "HP openview servicedesk: looking for api information ?", "text": "Good day folks. I am very confused in this situation. I need to implement system which will be based on HP open view service desk 4.5 api. But this system are reached the end of supporting period. On oficial site no information available **I am looking an information about this API(articles, samples etc)**. Now i have only web-api.jar and javadoc. Methods in javadoc is bad documented. If you have any info, please share it with me. Thanks. **Second question: there are methods for api(with huge amount of methods) understanding if it not documented or information is not available?** PS:If it question is not belong here i will delete it."}
{"_id": "167797", "title": "Could Apple and Microsoft allow the GPLv3 on their locked-down devices?", "text": "It seems that both Apple and Microsoft prohibit GPLv3-licensed software in the app stores for their locked-down devices (i.e. iOS, Windows Phone and the Metro part of Windows). I have heard various explanations for this. However: Would they even be able to allow this license in their app stores if they wanted to, or does the GPL's anti-tivoization clause already prohibit this?"}
{"_id": "64944", "title": "Studies on breakdown of various costs associated with a Software project", "text": "I am looking for links and advice on studies done on the breakdown of costs associated with Software development. In particular I am looking on what percentage of effort is testing vs programming, and how it changed with team sizes, duration of project and similar factors."}
{"_id": "167795", "title": "In what practical ways is it good to remember the memory/pointers model?", "text": "A variable refers to a value. A variable is also stored in a memory address. People say that it's good to have this memory model in mind. Is that true? What is some sample code that shows this as beneficial in practice? You dont have to use programming, you can use a real-world analogy if you like. edit: they keep removing the helpful answer i summed up here -- no idea why"}
{"_id": "81976", "title": "Is it possible to refactor inheritance to composition when virtual methods are called inside the base class?", "text": "Let's say I have a class called Country and two subclasses called AI and Player. The Country class has a number of virtual methods to allow player- specific or AI-specific behavior. I want to make it possible for the player to switch countries during a game. To this end, I am refactoring the inheritance relation to composition. Then I will be able to switch out a Player's internal instance of Country for another at any time. But this brings up a bit of a problem: When an _external_ object attempts to call one of these virtual methods on a Player, it is delegated correctly to the Country method after any appropriate processing has been done. But when an _internal_ Country method calls one of the virtual methods, the code in the Player or AI version no longer has a chance to run. So now I'm left with updating every one of those methods to make sure both versions are called, which in itself is not a trivial task (infinite loops, anyone?). This seems much harder than it ought to be. I've done similar refactorings before and never run into this issue. Why? Am I missing some blindingly obvious observation? * * * **Edit** for a concrete example now that I have access to the code again:               class Country     {     public:         virtual void AddMoney(float money)         {             _vMoney += money;         }         void TakeLoan()         {             float loan = ...;             AddMoney(loan); // <-- does not route through AI or Player implementation         }     }                    class AI  // : public Country     {     private:         Country *pCountry;          public:         virtual void AddMoney(float x)         {             pCountry->AddMoney(x); // formerly Country::AddMoney(x)             AllocateMoney(x);         }     }"}
{"_id": "75096", "title": "What can I expect when moving from University to a real programming job?", "text": "I'm about to move into my final year at university, and it's finally kicked in that in just over a year from now, I'll be doing my best to secure a job. Yet I still have no clue about the level of proficiency expected of graduates trying to make their way into the programming industry. I've read that they'll weed out the non-programmers with some fizzbuzz style questions, but after that, what sort of people am I likely to be up against? And what skills would be worth studying to push myself ahead of the competition? I'm currently trying to get comfortable with inheritance / polymorphism, currently just with my own code, the next task I've set myself is gaining confidence in extending existing code. I've studied PHP, Javascript(+JQuery), Actionscript (and probably some others I can't think of off the top of my head) as hobbies, Java at university, and currently pushing my way through C# (in an attempt to kill two large birds with one stone). Is this panicking undergraduate headed in the right direction? D="}
{"_id": "175082", "title": "How do I trust an off site application", "text": "I need to implement something similar to a license server. This will have to be installed off site at the customers' location and needs to communicate with other applications at the customers' site (the applications that use the licenses) and an application running in our hosting center (for reporting and getting license information). My question is how to set this up in a way I can trust that:   1. The license server is really our application and not something that just simulates it; and   2. There is no \"man in the middle\" (i.e. a proxy or something that alters the traffic). The first thing I thought of was to use with client certificates and that would solve at least 2. However, what I'm worried about is that someone just decompiles (this is build in .NET) the license server, alters some logic and recompiles it. This would be hard to detect from both connecting applications. This doesn't have to be absolutely secure since we have a limited number of customers whom we have a trust relationship with. However, I do want to make it more difficult than a simple decompile/recompile of the license server. I primarily want to protect against an employee or nephew of the boss trying to be smart."}
{"_id": "186245", "title": "Good serialization solution for communication between Python AND Haskell programs?", "text": "I found this: http://msgpack.org/ But.. I've never used it, so I don't know what whether it is much good. Anybody has proposals? Basic requirements:   * serialize as many data structures used typically in both languages as possible, have no problem with nesting   * as reliable/unbuggy as possible   * high performance is nice to have, but not critical   * as simple as possible to use, but not simpler"}
{"_id": "167425", "title": "Should a domain expert make class diagrams?", "text": "The **domain expert** in our team uses UML class diagrams to model the **domain model**. As a result, the class diagrams are more of **technical models rather than domain models** (it serves of some sort of technical specifications for developpers because they don't have to do any conception, they just have to implement the model). In the end, the domain expert ends up doing the job of the architect/technical expert right? Is it normal for a domain expert (not a developer or technical profile) to do class diagrams? If not, what kind of modeling should he be using?"}
{"_id": "186247", "title": "I have a previous invention (software / framework) that I plan to use on my new job. What happens to my copyright if I improve it during the job?", "text": "I have filled that standard form where you list your previous inventions before starting your new job so the employer is legally aware you have the copyright over them. But if I want to use this invention (software code / framework) in my new job, would they have any copyright claims on it if for example I change / improve something on my code while working for them? I have heard something like a shared ownership. Something like: you would own what was done before and employer would own any improvements you did on it while employed. That kind of sucks and take away any incentive you would have to do improvements on your product since _once improved, the improvement is gone_. :( Has anyone gone through this situation before and could share some ideas so I can protect my code?"}
{"_id": "186240", "title": "Choosing a open source licence for embedded system library", "text": "I'm writing a few libraries that I want to release as open source projects, but I want to find a licence that means I'll receive the credit when it is used in a project. Im not fussed about anything else, if people want to profit off of it then thats fine. So what licence is most appropriate? The only factor for me is that I receive the credit for producing the library if it is ever used."}
{"_id": "232227", "title": "Composite repository with plugins for multitenant app", "text": "Im working on an app that has flexible storage configuration. For example:               public class Repo1:IRepository     {         public void DoSomething(int tenantId, string someKey)         {           ...         }     }      This repo can be combined in Aggreagate or Composite repositories. Also there are connectors to external aplications:               public class Connector1:IConnector     {         public void DoSomething(string someKey)         {           ...         }     }      Connectors are not aware of tenant they are working in, because each tenant has uniquie combination of connectors configured for it. Currently I wrap connectors in special repo implementation:               public class ConnectorRepo:IRepository     {         public void DoSomething(int tenantId, string someKey)         {             var tenantConnectors = ConnectorProvider.GetConnectors(tenantId);             foreach(var connector in tenantConnectors)             {                 connector.DoSomething(someKey);             }          }     }      Basicaly connector and repo are sharing same method signatures, except repo methods have tenantId parameter. I am thinking of making to repository contracts with and without tenantId, and wrap repos without multitenanct support(ex connectors) with tenant aware facades, but such high level abstraction feels fragile to me. Would be very gratefull for any ideas and suggestions."}
{"_id": "186242", "title": "Is MSDN / Azure Active Directory information available in different formats?", "text": "I'd like to read the documentation of Azure Active Directory on my kindle (or similar device), but don't want to use \"Print to Kindle\" for each and every page. Is the Microsoft documentation for this technology available in other formats? (.chm, PDF, etc). If an alternative format is available, then I can adapt that to my needs. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj673460.aspx"}
{"_id": "232229", "title": "Understanding dependency injection", "text": "I'm reading about dependency injection (DI). To me, it is a very complicated thing to do, as I was reading it was referencing inversion of control (IoC) as well and such I felt I was going to be in for a journey. This is my understanding: Instead of creating a model in the class which also consumes it, you pass (inject) the model (already filled with interesting properties) to where it is needed (to a new class which could take it as a parameter in the constructor). To me, this is just passing an argument. I must have miss understood the point? Maybe it becomes more obvious with bigger projects? My understanding is non-DI (using pseudo code):               public void Start()     {         MyClass class = new MyClass();     }          ...          public MyClass()     {         this.MyInterface = new MyInterface();      }      And DI would be               public void Start()     {         MyInterface myInterface = new MyInterface();         MyClass class = new MyClass(myInterface);     }          ...          public MyClass(MyInterface myInterface)     {         this.MyInterface = myInterface;      }      Could some one shed some light as I'm sure I'm in a muddle here."}
{"_id": "60692", "title": "How do I create a mature SW design before the implementation itself? And how do I cope with changes?", "text": "I am doing a project in my university where, for the first time in my life, I have to create a system architecture/design and I will be the head of a group of 4 students that are in the beginning of the course. Basically, I will be able to do everything: I have almost complete independence to choose what exactly the software should do (goals, features, etc), than I have to design it. Because it is a university project, I do have a lot of time to think about the software concept and design it. My plans are to create a draft of the idea and refine it with the professor. Once we do have a concrete idea, I want to start the SW design itself. And this is the point where my questions arrives: I know that creating a design that contemplates everything and will not change during development is impossible, because of that, I am sure the design will be changed once the implementation begins. However, I want to present a mature design, based in logical decisions and good practices, but, of course, I won't be able to develop the SW to identify the traps I am falling into (this will be the student's task). What tricks do you use to create a mature design and to avoid traps before starting implementing? How do you approach and \"study\" the software proposal to find inconsistencies or points needing clarification? How do you do to include the changes to your design, without ruining it? (Many of my designs start very nicely, but at the end they are ruined by the changes)."}
{"_id": "209182", "title": "Is Java still king of cross-platform compatibility? Is the answer still Swing?", "text": "So basically, my company is looking to create an app that can be distributed on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. We are hoping for a cross platform solution. I have experience working with Java Swing years ago and thought it was reasonable, but not great. It assuredly did however work on all platforms just fine. Is Java and Swing still the end all be all of code once run everywhere, or are there other options for desktop apps?"}
{"_id": "209181", "title": "Diagramming messages on a service bus", "text": "I'm looking for a way to clearly diagram how multiple applications communicate via a service bus. The best I've come up with so far is a sequence diagram, but I really don't like that. Sequence diagrams necessarily relate some sort of sequence, and that's really not what I want. Furthermore, since every service communicates with the service bus and sequence diagrams place each service on a separate column, as the number of services increases, you end up with a lot of overlapping arrows. For example, given 4 services `FOO`, `BAR`, `BAZ`, and `QUX`:   * `FOO` publishes messages of type _publish_ and _regen_.   * `BAR` publishes messages of type _requeue_.   * `BAZ` subscribes to messages of type _publish_ , _regen_ , and _requeue_ , and publishes messages of type _transmit_.   * `QUX` subscribes to messages of type _transmit_.   * Any service can publish any message type at any time (there is no implied sequence). What kind of diagram should I use to clearly and unambiguously represent this information? Here's the best I've come up with so far:   ![Sequence diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Dhhqg.png)"}
{"_id": "57433", "title": "study materials for Mysql certification?", "text": "I'm preparing for MySQL certification, nowadays officially titled:               Oracle Certified Professional, MySQL 5.0 Developer certification      After looking through MySQL forum it looks like most people recommended this book:               http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-5-0-Certification-Study-Guide/dp/0672328127/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299972594&sr=8-1       Which as far as I learned was the official preparation source at the time when MySQL was controlled by MySQL AB and Sun. Now, however - Oracle officially doesn't recommend this book. To be precise, I don't know what they recommend. I could only find this \"value package\": http://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=532 Can someone who got MySQL certification confirm that this book is what they have used? Also, if there is any other moderately priced study materials out there - please let me know. **Update** I passed second one Monday March 28th. I have to say second exam was more complicated. So I have two exams now and waiting for my package from Oracle. Took me approximately 2.5 week total to prepare for both exams. With 0.5 weeks for 1st and 2 weeks for 2nd. Also - to everyone who wants to take it: read the book thoroughly and go through all questions on the CD that comes with that book! This helps immensely. Questions on the exam are very similar to those on the CD."}
{"_id": "26596", "title": "Metric by which to hold developers accountable", "text": "I asked a question on lines of code per hour and got torn a new one. So my matured follow-up question is this: If not lines of code, then what is a good metric by which to measure (by the hour/day/unit-of-time) the effectiveness of remote programmers?"}
{"_id": "203896", "title": "How do you manage a team of software developers?", "text": "I am reading the book \"Cracking the Sales Management Code\", and the book says that sales people can be more or less managed (\"measure\") by measuring whether they are consistently improving on their Sales Objectives, such as the ability to get new sales, close sales cycle length, deal win/deal lost ratio, hitting sales quota and so on. And I wonder, whether is it possible to manage ( or to measure) software developers in this way? Now I am fully aware that managing people by numbers is a very tricky thing to do; it is very possible for the managers to set the wrong metric, and hence result in the mismanaging of the software developers. But still, I wonder whether this there any books/literature that explores this issue? **Note: When I say I want to \"measure\" my developers, I don't mean that I want to use the numbers to penalize them or I want to \"rank\" them. My purpose is simple, I want to have the numbers ( the meaningful numbers) so that I can help them improve their software development skills ( in whatever sense).**"}
{"_id": "45641", "title": "Annual Review: what hard data should a developer bring?", "text": "Many companies have annual reviews and/or performance appraisals for their employees. I've heard that it's generally a good idea to muster up some hard data to analyze and bring to the review. The better the data, the better the chances to help support a promotion or raise. What I mean by hard data, are _tangible numbers_ \\-- something that can be _measured_ and/or _calculated_. Obviously data that a developer would have access to. Something _intangible_ would be how beautiful the code a developer has written. I think this would be very hard to measure, nor would upper management care for it. My question is: For a software developer, **what kind of hard data should be analyzed and brought to a review to help highlight good work that was done?** An example I've been given in the past: The support tickets produced by each project a developer was involved in. Are the numbers low? Are the rate per month getting lower? Etc."}
{"_id": "177167", "title": "How to tell whether your programmers are under-performing?", "text": "I am a team lead with 5+ developers. I have a developer (let's call him **A** ) who is a good programmer, who writes good clean, easy to understand code. However he is somewhat difficult to manage, and sometimes I wonder whether he is really under-performing or not.   1. Our company requires the developers to indicate the work progress in the bug tracker we use, not so much as to monitor the programmers but to keep the stakeholders apprised of the progress. The thing is, **A** only updates a task progress when it is done ( maybe 3 weeks after it is first worked on) and this leaves everyone wondering what is going on in the middle of the development week. He wouldn't change his habit despite repeated probing. ( It's OK, developers hate paperwork, I do, too)   2. Recent 2-3 months he on leave quite often due to various events-- either he is sick, or have to attend a lot of personal events etc. ( It's OK, bad things happen in a string. It's just a coincidence)   3. We define sprints, or roadmaps for each month. And in the beginning of the sprint, we will discuss the amount of work each of the developers have to do in a sprint and the **developers get to set the amount of time they need for each task**. He usually won't be able to complete all of them. (It's OK, the developers are regularly missing deadlines not due to their fault).   4. I am based in Singapore. Not sure if that matters. Yeah, Asians are known to be reticent, but does that matter? If only one or two of the above events happen, I won't feel that **A** is under-performing, but they all happen together. So I have the _feeling_ that **A** is under-performing and maybe-- God forbid--- slacking off. This is just a feeling based on my years of experience as programmer. But I could be wrong. It is notoriously hard to measure the work of a programmer, given that not all two tasks are alike, and there lacks a standard objective to measure the commitment of a programmer to your company. It is downright impossible to tell whether the programmer is doing his job or slacking off. All you can do, is to trust them-- yeah, trusting and giving them autonomy is the best way for programmers to work, I know that, _so don't start a lecture on why you need to trust your programmers, thank you every much_ \\-- but if they abuse your trust, can you know? ## Outcome: I've a straight talk with him regarding my perception on his performance. He was indignant when I suggested that I had the feeling that he wasn't performing at his best level. He felt that this was a completely unfair feeling. I then replied that this was my feeling and I didn't know whether my feeling was right or not. He would have none of this and ended the discussion immediately. Before he left he said that he \"would try to give more to the company\" in a very cold tone. I was taken aback by his reaction. I am sure that I offended him in some ways. Not too sure whether that was the right thing to do for me to be so frank with him, though. * * * **My question is: How can you tell whether your programmers are under- performing? Surely there are experience team leads who know better than me on this?** * * * ## Extra notes:   1. I hate micromanaging. So all that we have for our software process is Sprint ( where tasks get prioritized and assigned, and at the end of the month, a review of the amount of work done). Developers would require to update the tasks as they go along everyday.    2. There is no standup meeting, or anything of the sort. Mainly because we have the freedom to work from home and everyone cherishes this freedom.    3. Although I am the one who sets the deadline, but the developers will provide the estimate for each tasks and I will decide-- based on the estimate-- the tasks that go into a particular sprint. If they can't finish the tasks at the end of the sprint, I will push them to the next. So theoretically one can just do only 1 or 2 tasks during the whole sprint and then push the remaining 99 tasks to the next sprint and still he will be fine as long as justifies this-- in the form of daily work progress updates"}
{"_id": "29062", "title": "What is an example of a good SMART objective for a programmer?", "text": "Following on from this question, I wondered if folk might be able to suggest some samples of what might be considered a \"good\" objective in a periodic review cycle for a programmer? Let's define SMART from the most popular definitions in the Wikipedia entry:   * Specific   * Measurable   * Attainable   * Relevant   * Time-bound"}
{"_id": "142098", "title": "How to measure team productivity in Agile project environment?", "text": "Are there any techniques other than velocity? What are pros and cons of using those from your experience?"}
{"_id": "193282", "title": "How to measure team productivity?", "text": "The upper management at our company has laid out a goal for our software team to be \u201c15% more productive\u201d over the next year. Measuring productivity in a software development environment is very subjective, but we are still required to come up with a set of metrics. What sorts of data can we capture that would measure our team\u2019s productivity?"}
{"_id": "34122", "title": "KPI's for Programmers", "text": "Do you know any Key Performance Indicators for Developers? What should be measured and monitored?"}
{"_id": "194582", "title": "How can one measure contributions to a project?", "text": "Has anyone ever come across this problem? When you have a team of developers working on a project, how can you measure their contributions to said project? Is there a \"formal\" way of doing it? Number of commits? Number of bug fixes? Lines committed? Or maybe on a ticket basis? I'm trying to think of a workflow where a group of developers can work seamlessly interchanging tasks and at the end of the month, getting paid for they contributions (or merit if you will). I hope this question is not entirely out of place here, if it is, feel free to close it."}
{"_id": "62817", "title": "How should developer performance be measured?", "text": "In many companies there is a formal procedure of reviewing employees' work. For example, a salesperson can stay she'll sell one million units at the beginning of the year. When she comes up for review a year later, she says she's sold two million units. Thus, her manager decides to promote her. But what should developer say? I'll fix a million bugs, I'll write a hundred unit tests? I can't imagine many things that can be measured here, especially If you don't have a roadmap for year and if you working on maintenance. What types of solid performance metrics work for programmers? Or are performance measurements not applicable for developers at all?"}
{"_id": "215986", "title": "How long should I wait to autosave user input?", "text": "I have a table where a User can edit data by simply choose a field, then edit its value. I want to fire an update function to automatically save the data to a MySQL database. However, I think that it would be inefficient to fire that function on literally every change, e.g every single keypress. How long should I wait to save my input?"}
{"_id": "101988", "title": "Should developers accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?", "text": "I assume there are many developers in a situation like this:   * you are an employed software architect/engineer   * you are good at your job   * your company needs more good developers than they can find   * there are many options to get a new job or get self-employed   * work is not your first priority (you enjoy family/free time) Aren't we stupid when we still accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments?   I would think employers would need to give in, if we demand better working conditions. What do you think would happen when we all demand better working conditions?"}
{"_id": "228613", "title": "Using module level declared global \"singletons\" in python", "text": "Ok, I know that using singletons is generally a bad practice, but if I do it (for db connection, logging et al.) am I allowed to go (in respect of clean design) with a module defined variable that is initialized during the startup. eg.:               if __name__ == '__main__':         datasources.database.db = DB(dbpath)      where db is declared here, at the top level of a module:               db = None          class DB(object):         def __init__(self, path):              ....      What could be a reasonable compromise between passing the db for each object that uses it in the \"true OO way\" and having the global?"}
{"_id": "18567", "title": "Tablets Running IDEs", "text": "I am new to the tablet market, but i am trying to learn more. Are any current tablets capable of running programming software such as Visual Studio? I understand they'd have to come up with some kind of streamlined version, but I can imagine the programmers out there excited about the possibility. Does anything like that already exist, or are there rumors of it being available in the near future?"}
{"_id": "254021", "title": "Questioning one of the arguments for dependency injection: Why is creating an object graph hard?", "text": "Dependency injection frameworks like Google Guice give the following motivation for their usage (source): > To construct an object, you first build its dependencies. But to build each > dependency, you need its dependencies, and so on. So when you build an > object, you really need to build an object graph. > > Building object graphs by hand is labour intensive (...) and makes testing > difficult. But I don't buy this argument: Even without dependency injection, I can write classes which are both easy to instantiate and convenient to test. E.g. the example from the Guice motivation page could be rewritten in the following way:               class BillingService     {         private final CreditCardProcessor processor;         private final TransactionLog transactionLog;              // constructor for tests, taking all collaborators as parameters         BillingService(CreditCardProcessor processor, TransactionLog transactionLog)         {             this.processor = processor;             this.transactionLog = transactionLog;         }              // constructor for production, calling the (productive) constructors of the collaborators         public BillingService()         {             this(new PaypalCreditCardProcessor(), new DatabaseTransactionLog());         }              public Receipt chargeOrder(PizzaOrder order, CreditCard creditCard)         {             ...         }     }      So there may be other arguments for dependency injection ( **which are out of scope for this question**!), but easy creation of testable object graphs is not one of them, is it?"}
{"_id": "18564", "title": "Whats the greatest most impressive programing feat you ever witnessed?", "text": "Everyone knows of the old adage that the best programmers can be orders of magnitude better than the average. I've personally seen good code and programmers, but never something so absurd. So the questions is, what is the most impressive feat of programming you ever witnessed or heard of? You can define impressive by:   1. The scope of the task at hand _e.g. John single handedly developed the framework for his company, a work comparable in scope to what the other 200 employed were doing combined._   2. Speed _e.g. Stu programmed an entire real time multi-tasking app OS on an weekened including its own C compiler and shell command line tools_   3. Complexity _e.g. Jane rearchitected our entire 10 millon LOC app to work in a cluster of servers. And she did it in an afternoon._   4. Quality _e.g. Charles's code had a rate of defects per LOC 100 times lesser than the company average. Furthermore he code was clean and understandable by all._ Obviously, the more of these characteristics combined, and the more extreme each of them, the more impressive is the feat. So, let me have it. What's the most absurd feat you can recount? Please provide as much detail as possible and try to avoid urban legends or exaggerations. Post only what you can actually vouch for. Bonus questions:   1. Was the herculean task a one-of, or did the individual regularly amazed people?   2. How do you explain such impressive performance?   3. How was the programmer recognized for such awesome work?"}
{"_id": "57619", "title": "Programming Practice/Test Contest?", "text": "My situation: I'm on a programming team, and this year, we want to weed out the weak link by making a competition to get the best coder from our group of candidates. Focus is on IEEExtreme-like contests. What I've done: I've been trying already for 2 weeks to get a practice or test site, like UVa or codechef. The plan after I find one: Send them (the candidates) a list of direct links to the problems (making them the \"contest's problem list) get them to email me their correct answers' code at the time the judge says they have solved it and accept the fastest one into the team. Issues: We had practiced on UVa already (on programming challenges too), so our former teammate (which will be in the candidate group) already has an advantage if we used it. Codechef has all it's answers public, and since it shows the latest ones it will be extremely hard to verify if the answer was copied. And I've found other sites, like SPOJ, but they share at least some problems with codechef, making them inherit the issue of Codechef So, what alternatives do you think there are? Any site that may work? Any place to get all stuff to set up a Mooshak or similar contest (as in the stuff to get the problems, instructions to set up the server itself are easy to google)? Any other idea?"}
{"_id": "106661", "title": "Which is best programming style to start learning to programm POP or OOP?", "text": "If somebody has to start learning to program, where should he/she start? Should he start to write procedure-oriented programs or jump to OOP?"}
{"_id": "216024", "title": "Why can't Java/C# implement RAII?", "text": "Question: Why can't Java/C# implement RAII? Clarification: I am aware the garbage collector is not deterministic. So with the current language features it is not possible for an object's Dispose() method to be called automatically on scope exit. But could such a deterministic feature be added? My understanding: I feel an implementation of RAII must satisfy two requirements:   1\\. The lifetime of a resource must be bound to a scope.   2\\. Implicit. The freeing of the resource must happen without an explicit statement by the programmer. Analogous to a garbage collector freeing memory without an explicit statement. The \"implicitness\" only needs to occur at point of use of the class. The class library creator must of course explicitly implement a destructor or Dispose() method. Java/C# satisfy point 1. In C# a resource implementing IDisposable can be bound to a \"using\" scope:               void test()     {         using(Resource r = new Resource())         {             r.foo();         }//resource released on scope exit     }      This does not satisfy point 2. The programmer must explicitly tie the object to a special \"using\" scope. Programmers can (and do) forget to explicitly tie the resource to a scope, creating a leak. In fact the \"using\" blocks are converted to try-finally-dispose() code by the compiler. It has the same explicit nature of the try-finally-dispose() pattern. Without an implicit release, the hook to a scope is syntactic sugar.               void test()     {         //Programmer forgot (or was not aware of the need) to explicitly         //bind Resource to a scope.         Resource r = new Resource();          r.foo();     }//resource leaked!!!      I think it is worth creating a language feature in Java/C# allowing special objects that are hooked to the stack via a smart-pointer. The feature would allow you to flag a class as scope-bound, so that it always is created with a hook to the stack. There could be options for different types of smart pointers.               class Resource - ScopeBound     {         /* class details */              void Dispose()         {             //free resource         }     }          void test()     {         //class Resource was flagged as ScopeBound so the tie to the stack is implicit.         Resource r = new Resource(); //r is a smart-pointer         r.foo();     }//resource released on scope exit.      I think implicitness is \"worth it\". Just as the implicitness of garbage collection is \"worth it\". Explicit using blocks are refreshing on the eyes, but offer no semantic advantage over try-finally-dispose(). Is it impractical to implement such a feature into the Java/C# languages? Could it be introduced without breaking old code?"}
{"_id": "38604", "title": "Separation of Concern/Single Responsibilty Principle", "text": "I've just been reading through the SOLID principles, and this is one I have real difficulty with when designing software. I am relatively new (4 months professionally) at coding. The idea is simply to encapsulate classes into ones that perform a single task. For example, what if you have a class that creates and populates a Treeview and configures it to your specification. You then want data retrieved from a database when the user clicks on the nodes. Would you say this is two separate concerns?   1. Populate and configure the treeview    2. Obtain data from the database? Also, in the same app. You have a datagridview that is also populated with dynamic data. Would you therefore put that data retrieval in the same class as the treeview data retrieval or would that be yet another completely seperate class? Thanks."}
{"_id": "102752", "title": "Modifying an open source application", "text": "What is the general workflow when I want to add a feature to an open source application I didn't originally write? How do I get to know the code? How do I find the spot that needs to be changed or added? How do I actually make the change without breaking anything else? How do I test that everything is still working?   What are the general guidelines on such a project?"}
{"_id": "232599", "title": "Extracting models into a external dependency", "text": "About 9 months ago, I asked a question about creating a service layer for my application. Unfortunately, in the ensuing time, no progress in that area was made, primarily due to time constraints. As such, I am now re-evaluating this idea, and have another which might be a stopgap with a quicker development time. I work with a large monolithic application that really is made up of two distinct applications (except for the fact that they do, and must, share data). This doesn't sit right with me, and I would like to try to start breaking them apart into separate entities, for a variety of reasons. For example, the test suite is huge (and therefore very slow), and changing something in one \"subapp\" shouldn't affect the other anyhow. Scalability is another consideration, as one \"subapp\" receives significantly more traffic than the other. When I approached this idea last year, I was thinking about separating all the data out into its own layer, that the subapps could query, but as mentioned this seems to be more of a commitment than I could sell at the moment. Instead, what I am thinking now would be to extract the models (or at least the shared models) into a gem (or, I suppose a Rails Engine) that is required by each subapp. The upside would be that each subapp could be developed independently, tested independently, and scaled independently. Also, once in place, it might be easier to rip out an external \"model provider\" and replace it with proper SOA (as at that time, everything will already be split up at least), than making the jump straight from monolithic application. The downsides I can think of center around ease-of-use. New code would require touching multiple repositories, and keeping mental context might be difficult. Similarly, my developers who are less experienced with design might have trouble finding the code they need, or keeping the separation intact. Of course, these can be mitigated with proper tools and code review, and the same downsides likely apply for SOA. Can anyone weigh in on if they think this is a good or bad idea? Is it worth taking the effort for what is clearly an \"intermediary\" step, rather than trying to find time to do it \"properly\" (whenever that will be). Are there any other downsides (or upsides) that I am not considering?"}
{"_id": "102757", "title": "Tool that turns truth table into smallest possible if / else block", "text": "Is there any application or tool that will take a truth table and turn it into a compacted if block? For instance, lets say I have this truth table where A and B are conditions and x, y and z are possible actions:               A B | x y z     -------------     0 0 | 0 0 1     0 1 | 0 0 1     1 0 | 0 1 0     1 1 | 1 0 0      This application could produce this if block:               if(A)     {         if(B)         {             do(x)         }         else         {             do(y)         }     }     else     {         do(z)     }      This is an easy sample, but I frequently have several conditions that combined in different ways should produce different outputs and it gets hard to figure out the most compacted and elegant way to represent their logic in an if block."}
{"_id": "232596", "title": "How to indicate to a web server the language of a resource", "text": "I'm writing an HTTP API to a publishing server, and I want resources with representations in multiple languages. A user whose client GETs a resource which has Korean, Japanese and Trad. Chinese representations, and sends `Accept-Language: en, ja;q=0.7` should get the Japanese. One resource, identified by one URI, will therefore have a number of different language representations. This seems to me like a totally orthodox use of content negotiation and multiple resource representations. But when each translator comes to provide these alternate language representations to the server, what's the correct way to instruct the server which language to store the representation under? I'm having the translators PUT the representation in its entirety to the same URI, but I can't find out how to do this elegantly. `Content-Language` is a response header, and none of the request headers seem to fit the bill. It seems my options are   1. Invent a new request header   2. Supply additional metadata in a multipart/related document   3. Provide language as a parameter to the `Content-Type` of the request, like `Content-Type: text/html;language=en` I don't want to get into the business of extending HTTP, and I don't feel great about bundling extra metadata into the representation. Neither approach seems friendly to HTTP caches either. So option 3 seems like the best way that I can think of, but even then it's decidedly non-standard to put my own specific parameters on a very well established content type. Is there any by-the-book way of achieving this?"}
{"_id": "202520", "title": "GPL code allowing non-GPL local copies of nondistributed code", "text": "I have come across a book that claims that alterations and augmentations to GPL works can be kept close-source as long as these are not redistributed into the wild. Therefore, customizations of websites deriving from GPL packages need not be released under the GPL and developers can earn profit on them by offering their services to their clients while keeping their GPL-based code closed source at the same time. (cf. Chapter 17 of WordPress Plugin Development by Wrox Press). I've never realized this, but essentially, by putting restrictions on redistributable code the GPL says nothing about what can and cannot be done with code which is kept private in terms of the licensing model. Have I understood this correctly?"}
{"_id": "251464", "title": "In general, should an organization adopt a single methodology or decide on a per-project basis?", "text": "I work for a company that, in my opinion, should be doing all of it's web development work in a fully agile manner. We have vague, competing ideas about the product at any given time. And we have strict deadlines. So, in the web arena it seems to make sense to operate in as agile a manner as possible. However, I could conceive of projects on the business apps side -- or even a complex sub-project on the web side (integrating with a pre-existent 3rd party app?) that, at least for the sake of argument, isn't at all changeable in scope. The scope of the integration piece would, for all intents and purposes, be fully specifiable up-front with zero chance for change. In general, is it acceptable to take project X in an organization that is normally attempting to achieve agility and work through it in a waterfall manner? Does it somehow compromise the agility of the organization on a whole? If the organization is truly trying to be agile, should the \"rigid\" project still be \"managed\" in an agile manner?"}
{"_id": "251466", "title": "How do VMs implement function calling?", "text": "I'm reading a compiler textbook that compiles to some form of assembly. Since I don't know this assembly language I decided to invent my own simple \"assembly language\" and implement a basic \"virtual machine\" which will execute these instructions. Currently I'm thinking how I can implement function decleration and function calling in the language and VM. I had the following idea, please tell me what you think: Function declerations would look like simple labels. At the end of a function there's an `end` statement. The 'main program' is a function by itself. For examle:               main:     // some logic     CALL funcA     // more logic     END     funcA:     // .. some logic     END      However the difference between `call <function>` and `goto <label>` is this: `goto` simply sets the 'instruction pointer' (the register that holds the number of the next line to be executed) to the line number of the label. `call` does what `goto` does, but _before jumping_ it pushes the current line number (plus 1) onto a stack. When `end` is reached, the VM pops the top of the stack and jumps to this line number. If there is nothing in the stack, the program terminates. So for example, for the code above this is what happens:               main: // this is where the VM starts     // some logic     CALL funcA // push onto the stack the number 4 (3+1), and jump to the label funcA     // more logic .. this is where we return to from funcA     END // pop the top of the stack and jump to this line number. nothing -> terminate     funcA:     // .. some logic     END // pop the top of the stack (the number 4), and jump to this line number      What do you think of this approach?"}
{"_id": "133302", "title": "std::shared_ptr as a last resort?", "text": "I was just watching the \"Going Native 2012\" streams and I noticed the discussion about `std::shared_ptr`. I was a bit surprised to hear Bjarne's somewhat negative view on `std::shared_ptr` and his comment that it should be used as a \"last resort\" when an object's life-time is uncertain (which I believe, according to him, should infrequently be the case). Would anyone care to explain this in a bit more depth? How can we program without `std::shared_ptr` and still manage object life-times in a **safe** way?"}
{"_id": "146127", "title": "Should a git commit message mention the file that was modified?", "text": "In the first line of a git commit message I have a habit of mentioning the file that modified if a change doesn't span multiple files, for example:               Add [somefunc] to [somefile]       Is this a good thing to do or is it unnecessary?"}
{"_id": "112009", "title": "Small Basic vs Microsoft Small Basic", "text": "Are **Small Basic** ( **SB** ) and **Microsoft Small Basic** ( **MSB** ) related or is this a confusion based upon similar names? I have read that **SB** is written in C and is GPL. The oldest date on SourceForge is 2004 but the facebook group states its over 10years old. **MSB** is written in .NET 3.5 by Microsoft DevLabs. Wikipedia states it originated in 2008. They seem completely unrelated. Is this another Microsoft \"Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish\" tactic? I have read that **MSB** does not allow distribution: > The license is presented when you install the software. Small Basic includes > a command line compiler that can be used as part of the product. You may > install and use any number of copies of the software on your premises to > test how it runs with your programs, distribution is not allowed. Please > review the license terms for additional use rights/restrictions. Thank you. -MSB Forums"}
{"_id": "212694", "title": "Unit of Work pattern", "text": "I have gone through many articles and I am still confused whether to use the Unit of Work pattern or not. I use generic repositories (Repository Pattern) but if my understanding of the UOW pattern is correct, most persistence tools today offer a unit of work pattern already implemented (DbContext, ObjectContext, DbSet). I want to know if, in such cases, we should not try to implement the UOW pattern altogether? or I did see in one of the articles (sorry can't reference it since I missed it somewhere) that they had wrapped the DbContext inside an UOW class and I was left wondering what reason they might have of doing so."}
{"_id": "225439", "title": "Who retains ownership when custom software is commissioned?", "text": "A local business owner wants to hire me (contract) to build custom software for his business and employees. It will likely be a small web app that I'll host on AWS. Who retains IP rights to the system? Do I maintain ownership of the source code and grant him a perpetual license to use it or does the client typically acquire rights? I **know** the agreement can be made to accommodate either strategy but was wondering what industry norms were here."}
{"_id": "194504", "title": "Should my code be DRY or readable if it can't be both?", "text": "I'm writing Ruby code for a simple encryption exercise and have frequently run across this dilemma (the exercise is a solitaire cipher if you must know). It is a question of whether I should pad out my logic with descriptive variables and single step statements that make the function readable instead of a concise, even dense statements that eliminate repetition and/or minimizes opportunities for errors. My most recent example: My program takes input, and because of rigid format guidelines, it can easily determine if input should be encrypted or decrypted. To simplify, once the encryption key and message are converted/generated to be compatible, it's a matter of subtracting the key from the encrypted message or adding the key to an unencrypted message, to get the desired output(think of the key as encryption, message + encryption = code; code - encryption = message). The DRY position says to me that I should convert my encrypted message differently from my unencrypted message so that the function which takes encryption key and applies it to the message never needs to distinguish. I've found that this means I need some nested if statements in the function but the logic appears to be solid. This code, however, is not easily readable. This would require some commenting to be clear. I could, on the other hand, write two different functions that are called based on a flag that is set when the application determines encryption or decryption. This would be simpler to read but would duplicate the high level function of applying the encryption key to a message (causing it to be encrypted or decrypted). Should I lean toward readable code, or concise code? Or have I missed another way to get this functionality and satisfy both principles? Is it a position along a scale in which one must consider the purpose of the project and make the best decisions to serve that purpose? So far, I tend to emphasize concise, DRY code over readable code."}
{"_id": "194503", "title": "Transforming A Physical Algorithm into a Computerized One", "text": "I have realized that its possible to create algorithms that operate physically to solve problems much more efficiently than in a computer itself. Consider the following: Finding the shortest path between 2 points in a connected graph. If one were to physically create the graph with the edge weights correspond to length of physical connectors and the nodes something corresponding ex: wooden balls and yarn both labeled, then it is possible to generate the graph from data in O(N) time and then determining the shortest path between 2 nodes would simply involve grabbing both those nodes and pulling them so a straight line forms between them (or multiple straight lines!) and the rest hanging. That straight line(s) would be the shortest path for obvious reasons. How exactly does one take this physical method of solving the problem and implement it in a computer?"}
{"_id": "790", "title": "Should software patents be legal?", "text": "A really big issue that a lot of people have problems with is software patents. According to Wikipedia, some of the big issues with software patents include:   * Where the boundary between patentable and non-patentable software should lie   * Whether the inventive step and non-obviousness requirement is applied too loosely to software   * Whether patents covering software discourage, rather than encourage, innovation One famous example of questionable software patents is Amazon's patent on 1-Click checkout which was initially granted by the USPTO in 1999, re-examined in 2007 and finally revised in 2010 due to much debate regarding its validity. The idea of simplifying a user's buying experience by reducing the number of actions required to complete a transaction seems like common sense to just about anyone, so why should patents like these be legitimate? As a professional or a hobbyist, how do you feel about software patents? Do they crush innovation by locking down [often] common-sense ideas, or are they a necessity of success and profitability?"}
{"_id": "83380", "title": "What's the business in developing a programming language?", "text": "I was wondering if there's a big, direct revenue in releasing a programming language such as Java or C#? Selling IDE's, licensing your brand for books or gaining enterprise prestige seem bit of a marginal benefit to my eyes compared with the effort that undoubtedly the development took (I could be wrong though, of course)."}
{"_id": "71573", "title": "Quick OOAD Question", "text": "Given the following set of classes:               Camera, Photo, Photoshoot, Subject.      How would they interact to model the following sentence? _The next subject is called and has their photo taken._ I want to see if there is a preferred solution. **Edit:** Sorry I should have said in C#."}
{"_id": "202298", "title": "flow control solutions in Node.js - use async.waterfall?", "text": "Looking at node.js, and avoiding nesting callbacks. I found Async.js, can someone show me how can I rewrite this code using the async.waterfall method?               // db is a mongodb instance     db.open(function(err, client){         client.createCollection(\"docs\", function(err, col) {              client.collection(\"docs\", function(err, col) {                  for (var i = 0; i < 100; i++) {                      col.insert({c:i}, function() {});                  }                  console.log('Insert done OK.');              });         });     });      What problems does this naive solution with inner functions have, over the async method?               db.open(openAndInsert);          function openAndInsert(err, client) {         var myCollection = \"docs\";              client.createCollection(myCollection, openCollection);              function openCollection(err, col) {             client.collection(myCollection, insertIntoCollection);         }              function insertIntoCollection(err, col) {             for (var idx = 0; idx < 100; idx += 1) {                 col.insert({c:idx}, function () {});             }             console.log('Insert done OK.');         }     }      The three levels of nesting in the original code seem like a code smell, but I'm not sure either my home rolled or the async solution are universally better. Would anyone prefer just leaving the nested functions as is? If so, how deep would the nesting have to be before going using some type of flow control?"}
{"_id": "71577", "title": "What is the best value to use for id in an ActiveRecord pattern (PHP)", "text": "What is the best value to use for id in an ActiveRecord pattern (PHP). auto-increment is out of the question. I would like to generate an id value that I can use to create a new record, but will be unique. random values have a chance of creating collision. querying to get the last id used, and then incrementing that value has the chance that another record will be created at approximately the same time with the same id value. what do most use in this situation? what is the best thing to use for this situation?"}
{"_id": "202292", "title": "Dividing a packet protocol into layers", "text": "I work on embedded systems, so frequently, I am required to implement protocols. When I do this I like to make nice clean layers. However, this become difficult where the fields used by different layers are shared. I like to think of the layers as offering a number of services following the spirit of OSI model: **Framing**   1\\. start byte / sequence (SOF)   2\\. length of packet / message   3\\. message integrity (CRC, xor checksum) **Network**   4\\. Source / Destination **Application**   5\\. Command / Response Type (how to interpret payload). (I realize this is not the ISO model, but you get the point I hope.) Sometimes the protocol exists on a point to point link (RS232 or tcp socket) so there is no concept of source and destination. I would typically have a software layer for each of: Framing, Network and Application. The layer is typically a state machine processing bytes, or frames or packets. At the top, there is a hook point for the application specific functionality. Typically as a packet moves up the stack and the layers are stripped off, I simply pass a pointer to the next inner scope. First pointer to SOF, then pointer to network fields and finally a pointer to the application payload. As the fields are parsed they are added to a structure specific to the layer producing it. (A structure with a name like: Frame, Packet, Message / Command / Response) Each structure has a pointer to the packet buffer. At the top I can deallocate the structure by calling free on each layer until at the bottom a pointer is available to free. (or return to a pool) The question is how can I cleanly handle cases where the fields have dual use or are bit fields in a byte. (upper nibble is payload length, lower nibble is packet type, etc...) An example of this is a simple packet format like this:   `<SOF> <CMD> <command specific payload> <CRC>` In this case the length of the packet is implied by the command code. So the CMD field (a single byte in this case) is shared between the framing and application layers. I think in this case the framing layer has a lookup table for command to length and passes a pointer to the CMD field up to the application layer for handling in a structure."}
{"_id": "151866", "title": "Is event sourcing ready for prime time?", "text": "Event Sourcing was popularized by LMAX as a means to provide speed, performance scalability, transparent persistence and transparent live mirroring. Before being rebranded as Event Sourcing, this type of architectural pattern was known as System Prevalence but yet I was never familiar with this pattern before the LMAX team went public. Has this pattern proved itself in numerous production systems and therefore even conservative individuals should feel empowered to embrace this pattern or is event sourcing / system prevalence an exotic pattern that is best left for the fearless?"}
{"_id": "233171", "title": "Need advice on design in Ruby On Rails", "text": "For personal educational purposes I am making a site for a conference. One of the object that exist in a conference is a session, which has different states and in each state it has slightly different attributes:   1. When submitted it has a speaker (`User` in the system), Title and abstract.    2. When under review it has reviews and comments (in addition to the basic data)    3. When accepted it has a defined time-slot but no reviewers anymore. I feel that it is not the best thing to add a \"status\" attributes and start adding many `if` statements...   So I thought it would be better to have different classes for each state each with it's own validations and behaviors. What do you think about this design? Do you have a better idea?"}
{"_id": "150192", "title": "Can a C# developer turned VB developer ever return to C# later in their career without a significant penalty?", "text": "**Background** : IT Recruitment in UK has absolutely exploded over the last five years and I get quite a few calls from recuiters each week with positions. One recruiter offered to put me forward for a great looking position at a great salary in the area I wanted, so I had a phone interview which went very well and genuinely expect the face-to-face interview to go well. Unfortunately, as I do have to sift through quite a few wildly inappropriate positions I either confused two job descriptions or simply didn't read it properly. Anyway it turns out that the job is a VB.NET developer and I am a C#/Java developer. While I'm confident I can do the job, I'm concerned that accepting it might hinder me later in my career if I ever wanted to return to C#. I'm also concerned that many of my peers are quite snobbish about VB and am not sure how popular that position is. **Actual Question(s)** : As as C# developer (with 4 years exp), considering accepting a position as a VB developer, in 5 years will I be able to take another position back in C# (or Java) without having to return to my current level of seniority? Also, if anyone's actually made this transfer - was working in VB disappointing or did it feel limiting?"}
{"_id": "65293", "title": "Is pure oop necessary", "text": "Please don't direct me to this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1551/how-to-think-in-oo. I have read it and still have no answer. I have programmed c++ for years and was taught that everything should be oop in design. i have recently started java and find it to very restricting in the way it makes everything a member or method of a class. Though I agree reusable classed improve code but does everything need to be a class. as an example in a simple space invader game there would be classes for the aliens, the ships and the bullets but there are things like the score and timer that are single instants. I feel these work better as globals rather than a class that will only be used once. I am starting to question whether I am an oop programmer and if I want to be one for that matter. I am not really looking for an clear answer as this in not really a question, I am just wondering if I am doing it all wrong or just differently. Thanks EDIT: Showing my ignorance here but what the hell ... what difference does it make putting all the global stuff into a global class apart from access and duplicity(multiplayer)? Is there an efficiency or memory angle I am not seeing?"}
{"_id": "198750", "title": "JSON vs Foreign Keys", "text": "I'm developing an enterprise website, and I have to define some sections like this:   * I have many sections and each section have many (or one) sub-pages.    * The number of sub-pages vary per section.   * Each sub-page should not be longer than 2500 characters Also, I have to use a relational database (MySQL). I'm in doubt which would be the better in terms of design and/or performance:   1. To store a `JSON` array, with all sub-pages as object, as a single column of the `Sections` table;   2. To create a table `Sub-pages` which references it's parent section by a `Foreign Key`."}
{"_id": "15138", "title": "Is Entity Framework ready for production?", "text": "I'm looking into Entity Framework for a new project that I'm going to be taking on and as part of my research into it I'm asking some industry professionals if it's stable and ready for 'real world' implementation. In the running is:   * EF   * NHibernate   * DevExpress XPO I already have a great deal of experience with XPO, but I'm not particularly happy with it."}
{"_id": "253668", "title": "API Class with intensive network requests", "text": "I'm working an API which works as \"intermediary\" between a REST API and the developer. In this way, when the programmer do something like this:               User user = client.getUser(nickname);      it will execute a network request to download from the service the data about the user and then the programmer can use the data by doing things like               user.getLocation();     user.getDisplayName();      and so on. Now there are some methods like `getFollowers()` which execute another network request and i could do it in two ways:   1. Download **all** the data in the `getUser` method (and not only the most important) but in this way the request time could be very long since it should execute the request to various urls   2. Download the data when the user calls the method, it looks like the best way and to improve it i could cache the result so the next call to `getFollowers` returns immediately with the data already download instead of execute again the request. What is the best way? And i should let methods like `getUser` and `getFollowers` stop the code execution until the data is ready or i should implement a callback so when the data is ready the callback gets fired? (this looks like Javascript)"}
{"_id": "107130", "title": "How is Node.js different from other server-side frameworks?", "text": "I've noticed that Node.js has become very popular, and I've seen several instances of people doing small-scale projects in it. I've also looked at pros and cons lists to get an idea of what Node.js can do, but I'm still not clear on how it differs from other, more mature server-side tech like PHP, Perl, or Ruby on Rails. What, specifically, differentiates Node.js from the current alternatives, and why?"}
{"_id": "225782", "title": "How to discover a class in PHP dynamically much like a plug-in architecture", "text": "I'm encountering a common issue in PHP (and most other languages) at the moment, where systems I'm designing need to be updated in multiple places to add new features, whereas I would like to have a core, where I can add new features, plugin's etc without having to touch the core code. An example would be a a navigation menu, where the menu loads it's items from directory or namespace X. My aim is so once I or another developer adds a new file, extends a MenuItem class, whichever it needs to be, the class loading the menu would discover this new file and display it, without ever having to touch the core menu loading code. The best I have come up with so far is:               function get_menu_items() {         $menu_items = array();         $raw_files = scandir(DOCUMENT_ROOT . '/menu/menu_items');         foreach($raw_files as $file){             require_once($file);             $class_name = substr($file, 0, -4); // cut away the '.php'             $menu_items []= new $class_name();         }         return $menu_items;     }      But the above feels wrong as I shouldn't be checking a directory for existence of files for features! I imagine this is a common design pattern like wordpress would use for plugin discovery? I've been searching for a while but not been able to better the above! Any help would be greatly appreciated!!"}
{"_id": "171457", "title": "What is the point of using DTO (Data Transfer Objects)?", "text": "What is the point of using DTO and is it an out dated concept? I use POJOs in the view layer to transfer and persist data. Can these POJOs be considered as an alternative to DTOs?"}
{"_id": "107136", "title": "How to \"read\" rails apps?", "text": "I've just finished the first rails tutorial and now want to learn something about how other developers use it. So is it possible to \"read\" rails web applications to learn about its architecture and design?"}
{"_id": "251307", "title": "Queue of jobs in a different states and with different services around", "text": "I need to design a 'queue' of jobs (in a a very much UI oriented application) that can be run by a user and I need some other thoughts to pick optimal approach from ground up. My jobs can be in a different states (imported, sent from elswhere, created by user, even to be just simulated with their imported recorded progress - following a whola different workflow), etc. Therefore they can also pass thru the different states of their lifecycle, like being created, running, paused, validated or edited by a user (in case of invalid job parameters), imported or even in the process of being deleted (at least for logging or auditing). Because of this, all jobs have to have their state at each point of time and they need to be managed somehow by a common logic. There are also domain and application rules, that only one can be running/stopped/params edited in a time state, etc... My main question is, whether to implement some kind of monolithic singleton controller for all states where it can answer state guards of each one of them (can/cant transition to other state) for all states and can call actions (other services) upon them, or whether to implement state machines inside of the jobs themselves and somehow call the services and related conditional logic from themselves (delete me/ edit me and so on). I also need to tie this tightly to the UI, so that I have a list of tasks with the states visible for the user but I also have the separation of the concerns (job itself as a domain object of parameters - not states, UI). This is just a brief description of my main problem, so I might update the requirements as suggestion or more questions that I forgot to address arrive."}
{"_id": "198755", "title": "write my own or choose a framework for link sharing website", "text": "I'm a PHP programmer and I've done any projects based on PHP and MySQL without using any framework so far. Now I'm going to create a big link sharing system (excel- able,modular,fast,theme based,secure etc.). But I have no experience to use any frameworks before. I need to know which is better to me.Choose a framework (easy to use and learn it fast) or still do my method?"}
{"_id": "223624", "title": "Should I refactor a F class from code climate?", "text": "According to code climate, a class is `F`, aka the worst mark you could be granted. I did submit a pull request to rearrange it here Which has been refused because the new code is supposedly too abstract. I'm utterly convinced a `F` has a real meaning and should be fixed, above all when it's one of the main class of a project. What's your point of view?"}
{"_id": "33890", "title": "Do the benefits of Resin/Quercus outweigh the overhead?", "text": "Lately, I've been looking more and more into Resin + Quercus as a technology to develop an application of mine. The reason I started looking into it was that this application has high reporting needs, a lot of which cannot (or realistically, should not) be created in real-time. Java would offer a nice backend to queue and generate reports. Also, with Quercus I would be able to develop my data models in Hibernate, and use them \"from PHP\", thus effectively stretching these models across front and back-end. This same concept would also apply to any front/back-end common business logic, which could be developed in Java libraries. Now, the downside is that whichever front-end (PHP) MVC Framework I choose (my goal was Symfony 2), it is unlikely to work without some heavy modification, if it can work at all. Quercus is a pretty close implementation of PHP, and is supposed to be compatible with PHP5.3, so namespaces and closures SHOULDN'T be a problem, but when I tried to run an existing Symfony 1.4 app, I failed miserably. So, my question to you is, do you think the benefits of Resin + Quercus outweigh the overhead of using a not-so-perfect/stable implementation of PHP? If this were your application, and your goal was and end-product, rather than educational purposes, what would you decide?"}
{"_id": "33892", "title": "Suggestions on switching from lamp based web design-development to game design-development", "text": "I have around 2.5 years of experience as a web developer cum designer working mainly on the LAMP platform. Now, I want to try out game development (of the likes of First Person Shooter games like Call of Duty (COD)). It is one of my dreams to some day succeed in making a profitable, popular, commercial game of this type. However, I have never done any kind of business nor even freelancing yet even in the web domain. Okay, first things first, I am just starting and I don't yet have any idea about the technologies, languages, engines (game engines) etc involved in that. I would like this question to be a complete guide for people with similar interests. **Best resources for getting hold really fast** What would be the best approach to get the basic hold of the domain really fast? Any resource(s) for programmers coming from other domains/experienced in other domains would be the ideal ones for me. E.g., if anybody would ask me some good resource for quickly learning PHP/Mysql, I would suggest books like \"How to do everything with PHP & MySql\" - ![How to do everything with PHP & MySql](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8KDz4.jpg) because -   * it introduces all the basics of the domain (not the advanced things which can be later learnt by practice and also a lot by searching in stackoverflow questions)    * it contains some very nice working projects in the end, which help in applying the skills learnt in the chapters of the book. This is the best way for self learners, I feel. I would appreciate some similar resource which connects all concepts together to get the bigger picture. I have read about C, C++, C#, JAVA being used in game programming but not sure which language to go for (I have previously learnt a little of C and JAVA). I have also read about game engines but there would be various other concepts. **Commonly accepted ways of learning**   Should 3D games like these be tried after 2D games? Are there some commonly accepted ways of learning such kind of games? Like in web development, we should go for frameworks after practising well with basic language, AJAX after getting properly done with simple page-reload processing etc. Apart from these, any useful tips (like language choices etc.) would be much appreciated. Like it is highly recommended to contribute to open source web projects for getting recognition, are there similar open source game projects? Thanks,   Sandeepan"}
{"_id": "183596", "title": "Is this an example of recursion?", "text": "I am implementing inheritance of something called Contexts. Each Context holds a link to its parent context. If that Context is the root Context, its parent is null. In order to walk up the inheritance tree and get the data from each Context, I want to do this (in pseudocode)               private Hashtable getDataAsMap() {         Hashtable map  =  this.parent != null  ?                                 this.parent.getDataAsMap()  :                                 new Hashtable();              // add my data              return map;          }      Is this recursion? I'm calling the same method, but on a different object. Does that still count? If not, what would you call it?"}
{"_id": "88524", "title": "CQRS applicability when some commands need to block the UI", "text": "I am working on an app which I would dearly love to transition from a fairly traditional layered architecture to CQRS, for a number of reasons, not least fo which is that having a robust event log will make adding a couple of feature requests I can see barrelling towards me trivial to accomodate. Now, I have a conceptual problem: of around 40 commands the user can initiate, there are three which the user _needs_ to be sure have successfully completed before the UI lets them do anything else. Everything else fits into the \"submit a request, query for success later\" model, except for these three commands. How is this handled in CQRS-land? Do I separate the three blocking commands to effectively a third service, so I have Commands, Queries, and BlockingCommands? Do I have a two-stage event processor with an in-request blocking first stage which only gets used for the blocking commands? Does the existence of these three commands mean that the whole idea of applying CQRS is invalid? Should I just pretend they _aren't_ blocking and poll for success in the UI? I'm sure this must come up on other projects, how is it usually handled?"}
{"_id": "173344", "title": "Is it important to know C/C++ for Android development?", "text": "Is it possible to use only Java (without C++ /NDK) for building good, fast, beautiful Android apps (including 3D development)? When I look for Android developer position requirements (vacancies), I see that knowledge of C/C++/NDK is very important. Some companies even require to build their test tasks using only C++ (OpenGL)."}
{"_id": "234330", "title": "log4net - roll my own singleton, use LogImpl, etC?", "text": "Reposting here... hopefully the better place to seek opinions on the matter. :) Writing my own log4net wrapper class using C#. I want to create a lib such that I can reference it from any project/assembly in a given solution with a minimum of effort. ie: include the reference, maybe throw in a using statement and then make calls like MyLogger.Debug(blahblah); with perhaps a property (MyLogger) being set from a \"main\" method somewhere. From reading the docs, I'm not sure if I should be writing my own or using LogImpl? The latter seems to include all of what I'd want to put in my own wrapper, so, why reinvent the wheel? But, there is also a note in the help that says thast an instance member of type logimpl is not thread safe whereas a static member is... OTOH, if I make my own, I'd be looking at a singleton class I can create once and use throughout my solution (by passing the singleton ref to objects which require it) but I gotta rewrite all those Debug, Error, etc sections. So... not sure what approach to take. What would you folks suggest as a beginning?"}
{"_id": "72217", "title": "Standardised Programming Techniques / Procedures", "text": "I don't know if this is a question, or a start of a conversation or even a completely irrelevant topic. Why isn't programming more standardised? Im really new to this and I find it hellish difficult to find the answer to even basic questions. Things like--   * How do I add validation to multiple texboxes in asp.net c# without using individual validation controls?   * How do I add the input of a texbox to an ongoing array? I'm talking about fundamental things that get used all the time. I would expect answers like \"oh yeah, see jones' validation method (link) or peters' textbox to array function (link). I just thought there would be standard techniques, like in chess, for doing things that are similar. I hope this makes sense and someone can point me in the right direction if there ARE directories of standard programming technniques."}
{"_id": "177859", "title": "Can I sell forked GPL code?", "text": "I know that it is possible to sell GPL code, but I wanted to know if it was possible to sell GPL code that has been forked and modified. The forked and modified code will still be available to use, modify, and redistribute."}
{"_id": "177853", "title": "self referencing tables, good or bad?", "text": "Representing geographical locations within an application, the design of the underlying data model suggests two clear options (or maybe more?). One table with a self referencing parent_id column uk - london (london parent id = UK id) or two tables, with a one to many relationship using a foreign key. My preference is for one self-refercing table as it easily allows to extend into as many sub regions as required. IN general do people veer away from self referencing tables, or are they A-OK ?"}
{"_id": "35501", "title": "Non-English-based programming languages", "text": "The University of Antioquia in Colombia teaches its introductory programming courses in Lexico, a Spanish-based, object-oriented .NET language. The intent is to teach programming concepts in the students' native language before introducing English-based mainstream languages. There are many other Non-English-based programming languages and there is even a related question in Stack Overflow. I have several questions regarding these languages:   * Has anyone on this site learned to program using a non-English-based language? If so, how difficult was the transition to the first English-based language?   * Is there any research-based evidence that non-English speakers learn programming faster/better using languages with keywords in their native language instead of English-based languages?"}
{"_id": "224747", "title": "Is using non-standard single-line comments fine in C?", "text": "I noticed Visual C++ 2010 (my current environment) and XCode both allow non- standard single-line comments in my C programs. Since these are both my target platforms, I assume it's fine to use it? VC++ 2010 doesn't support C99, so I'm limited to C89, though I know C99 added support."}
{"_id": "203114", "title": "Static vs. dynamic memory allocation - lots of constant objects, only small part of them used at runtime", "text": "Here are two options: Option 1:               enum QuizCategory {              CATEGORY_1(new MyCollection<Question>()                         .add(Question.QUESTION_A)                         .add(Question.QUESTION_B)                         .add...),              CATEGORY_2(new MyCollection<Question>()                         .add(Question.QUESTION_B)                         .add(Question.QUESTION_C)                         .add...),               ...              ;              public MyCollection<Question> collection;              private QuizCategory(MyCollection<Question> collection) {             this.collection = collection;         }              public Question getRandom() {             return collection.getRandomQuestion();         }          }      Option 2:               enum QuizCategory2 {              CATEGORY_1 {                  @Override             protected MyCollection<Question> populateWithQuestions() {                 return new MyCollection<Question>()                                     .add(Question.QUESTION_A)                                     .add(Question.QUESTION_B)                                     .add...;             }         },              CATEGORY_2 {                  @Override             protected MyCollection<Question> populateWithQuestions() {                 return new MyCollection<Question>()                                     .add(Question.QUESTION_B)                                     .add(Question.QUESTION_C)                                     .add...;             }         };              public Question getRandom() {             MyCollection<Question> collection = populateWithQuestions();             return collection.getRandomQuestion();         }              protected abstract MyCollection<Question> populateWithQuestions();          }      There will be around 1000 categories, each containing 10 - 300 questions (100 on average). At runtime typically only 10 categories and 30 questions will be used. Each question is itself an enum constant (with its fields and methods). I'm trying to decide between those two options in the mobile application context. I haven't done any measurements since I have yet to write the questions and would like to gather more information before committing to one or another option. As far as I understand: (a) Option 1 will perform better since there will be no need to populate the collection and then garbage-collect the questions; (b) Option 1 will require extra memory: 1000 categories x 100 questions x 4 bytes for each reference = 400 Kb, which is not significant. So I'm leaning to Option 1, but just wondered if I'm correct in my assumptions and not missing something important? Perhaps someone has faced a similar dilemma? Or perhaps it doesn't actually matter that much?"}
{"_id": "133876", "title": "Why is CS taught to be memorized?", "text": "I have been taking Advanced Placement Computer Science for this past year in high school. It seems as though we are taught simply to **memorize** code and functions and **not** how to be resourceful and efficient in using documentation and the like. Practically, I imagine many (if not all) programming jobs would allow you to flip through documentation, review past code and the code of others, essentially doing what my teacher would consider \"cheating.\" While I do agree core concepts are essential to memorize (in any subject matter), it seems superfluous and impractical to me to give a pen-and-paper exam for a CS class, especially when practically you would have a compiler, debugger, reference manuals, and the **entire internet** to refer to in any real-world work situation. **Why is CS taught focusing on the _memorization_ of code and functions as opposed to teaching useful skills including how to use and interpret documentation, sample code, the debugger and such?**"}
{"_id": "224740", "title": "How do I decide what testing framework to use?", "text": "The situation is this. I'm a junior developer for a small government IT project. We don't have anything of continuous integration or a automated testing framework. But the idea is to be developing this kind of thing/improving our developing environment. The product is a data processing algorithm that then displays information to the end user via a webapp. So coming up is a bunch of work modifying the webapp javascript. As such we want to implement a unit testing for the javascript. I've looked at this stack overflow question which outlines several different unit testing frameworks for javascript. The question is - how do I decide between which framework to start using?   * What is a list of criteria for choosing a testing framework?   * Is it practical to try them all out?   * Spend a lot of time reading forums/etc about how they're used?"}
{"_id": "133874", "title": "How effective are programming challenges in the recruiting process?", "text": "I think our company can create challenges designed to find software engineer candidates who are:   * Good at solving problems, not at wowing recruiters.   * More likely to be afraid to come up to us at a career fair.   * More likely to be underutilized in their current programming job but are too introverted to do anything about it. For an example see this article that discusses Facebook hiding an email address in an image using Piet. I just can't find any studies or hard data on whether this actually works or not."}
{"_id": "131434", "title": "How to use a MessageBox using the MVVM pattern?", "text": "I am implementing a UI application using the MVVM design-pattern. The thing is, sometimes when you detect that something is wrong with data that was inputted by the user, you'd like to notify him somehow. The solution I used so far was to have a \"messaging framework\" which allows me to basically show messages in a `ListView` I integrate within the window. However, sometimes the windows get a bit \"overloaded\" with graphical elements, and I would like to be able to show the messages in a message box (basically a modal window). As the `ViewModel` is not supposed to be aware of anything about the UI, I cannot instantiate any window \"explicitly\". Ideally, this modal window would also use the MVVM pattern and hence I would implement a `ViewModel` for that window, which would be instantiated within the \"main\" windows's `ViewModel`, and passed to the modal window through the `DataContext`. I would like to have a \"simple\" example of how to do such thing? Or should this approach be banned from an MVVM application? **EDIT** : Would the use of the Unity Framework be something you recommend?"}
{"_id": "206990", "title": "Dirty hack to avoid GPL licensing", "text": "I've just found something strange in a code written by company which I work for. In an embedded software where dynamic linking doesn't exists, shared library (released on a GPL licence) is copied into an object which is statically linked then. Here is a piece of a makefile:                $(TARGET_DIR)/$(PHOST)_P_LIBxxxxxx.o: $(TARGET_DIR)/$(BINIMAGE)      $(ECHO) --- Storing dynamically linked library as ELF object ---      $(QUIET)cd $(TARGET_DIR) && \\      powerpc-eabi-objcopy --input-target binary --output-target \\      elf32-powerpc --binary-architecture powerpc:common \\        --keep-global-symbol=_binary_$(PHOST)_P_LIB_xxxxxx_start \\        --keep-global-symbol=_binary_$(PHOST)_P_LIB_xxxxxx_end \\        --keep-global-symbol=_binary_$(PHOST)_P_LIB_xxxxxx_size \\        --rename-section .data=.rodata,alloc,load,readonly,data,contents \\        $(BINIMAGE)  $(PHOST)_P_LIBxxxxxx.o      $(RM) $(TARGET_DIR)/$(BINIMAGE)      $(ECHO)      $(ECHO) --- P library ready ---      Does it somehow bypass GPL rules? Or simply it's illegal?"}
{"_id": "131431", "title": "From where did the symbols *args and **kwargs in Python originate?", "text": "I know that `*args` and `**kwargs` are ways to feed more arguments into a function in Python. I am wondering where these terms stem from. Why have all the asterisks in the beginning? What does the kw in kwargs stand for?"}
{"_id": "183626", "title": "what are the main differences between a web server and application server?", "text": "I am new to web development and just started exploring the things. I read about how web page is processed and sent to client by a web server but I got confused with application server. what is the difference between them ? why app. server is needed ? and few examples of both of them ."}
{"_id": "242657", "title": "Is this simple XOR encrypted communication absolutely secure?", "text": "Say Alice and Peter each have a 4GB USB flash memory stick. They meet and save on both sticks two files named `alice_to_peter.key` (2GB) and `peter_to_alice.key` (2GB) which contain randomly generated bits. They never meet again, but communicate electronically. Alice also maintains a variable called `alice_pointer` and Peter maintains variable called `peter_pointer`, both of which are initially set to zero. When Alice needs to send a message to Peter, she does (where `n` is the nth byte of the message):               encrypted_message_to_peter[n] = message_to_peter[n] XOR alice_to_peter.key[alice_pointer + n]     encrypted_payload_to_peter = alice_pointer + encrypted_message_to_peter     alice_pointer += length(encrypted_message_to_peter)      ~~(and for maximum security, the used part of the key can be erased)~~ Peter receives `encrypted_payload_to_peter`, reads `alice_pointer` stored at the beginning of message and does:               message_to_peter[n] = encrypted_message_to_peter[n] XOR alice_to_peter.key[alice_pointer + n]      ~~And for maximum security, after reading of message also erase the used part of the key.~~ \\- EDIT: In fact this step with this simple algorithm (without integrity check and authentication) decreases security, see Pa\u016dlo Ebermann post below. When Peter needs to send a message to Alice they do the reverse, this time with `peter_to_alice.key` and `peter_pointer`. With this trivial schema they can send each day for the next 50 years 2GB / (50 * 365) = ~115kB of encrypted data in both directions. If they need more data to send, they could use larger keys, for example with today's 2TB HDs (1TB keys) it would be possible to exchange 60MB/day for the next 50 years! That's a lot of data in practice; for example, using compression it's more than hour of high quality voice communication. It seems to me that there is no way for an attacker to read the encrypted messages without the keys, because even if they have an infinitely fast computer, with brute force they can get every possible message under the limit, but this is an astronomical number of messages and the attacker doesn't know which of them is the actual message. Am I right? Is this communication scheme really absolutely secure? And if it is secure, does it have its own name? XOR encryption is well-known, but I'm looking for the name of this concrete practical application using large keys on both sides? I am humbly expecting that this application has been invented someone before me. :-) ~~Note: If it's absolutely secure then it's amazing, because with today's low cost large storage devices, it would be much cheaper to do secure communication than with expensive quantum cryptography, and this has equivalent security!~~ **EDIT:** I think this will be more practical in the future as storage costs decrease. ~~It can solve secure communication forever.~~ Today you have no certainty if someone successfully attacks existing ciphers even a year later and makes its often expensive implementations insecure. In many cases before communication occurs, when both sides meet personally, that's the time to generate the keys. I think it's perfect for military communication, for example between submarines which can have HDs with large keys, and military central can have a HD for each submarine. It could also be practical in everyday life, for example to control your bank account, because when you create your account you meet with the bank etc."}
{"_id": "241157", "title": "Question about casting a class in Java with generics", "text": "In Java 6               Class<? extends ArrayList<?>> a = ArrayList.class;      gives and error, but               Class<? extends ArrayList<?>> b = (Class<? extends ArrayList<?>>)ArrayList.class;      gives a warning. Why is (a) an error? What is it, that Java needs to do in the assignment, if not the cast shown in (b)? And why isn't `ArrayList` compatible with `ArrayList<?>` I know one is \"raw\" and the other is \"generic\", but what is it you can do with an `ArrayList<?>` and not with an `ArrayList`, or the other way around?"}
{"_id": "206999", "title": "How to factor in responsive design when providing an estimate for web applications?", "text": "In the past usually I have only had to estimate web applications based on browser support. But for more recent projects device and platform support are also very important as well (screen resolution). I am having a hard time providing an estimate to account for \"responsive design\". How much additional time (estimate only) is needed to account for this over the entire implementation of a web based project?"}
{"_id": "241152", "title": "Is this method pure?", "text": "I have the following extension method:                   public static IEnumerable<T> Apply<T>(             [NotNull] this IEnumerable<T> source,             [NotNull] Action<T> action)             where T : class         {             source.CheckArgumentNull(\"source\");             action.CheckArgumentNull(\"action\");             return source.ApplyIterator(action);         }              private static IEnumerable<T> ApplyIterator<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source, Action<T> action)             where T : class         {             foreach (var item in source)             {                 action(item);                 yield return item;             }         }      It just applies an action to each item of the sequence before returning it. I was wondering if I should apply the `Pure` attribute (from Resharper annotations) to this method, and I can see arguments for and against it. **Pros:**   * strictly speaking, it _is_ pure; just calling it on a sequence doesn't alter the sequence (it returns a new sequence) or make any observable state change   * calling it without using the result is clearly a mistake, since it has no effect unless the sequence is enumerated, so I'd like Resharper to warn me if I do that. **Cons:**   * even though the `Apply` method itself is pure, enumerating the resulting sequence _will_ make observable state changes (which is the point of the method). For instance, `items.Apply(i => i.Count++)` will change the values of the items every time it's enumerated. So applying the Pure attribute is probably misleading... What do you think? Should I apply the attribute or not?"}
{"_id": "159502", "title": "How to prevent intentional over-estimation in user stories?", "text": "I am asking this from a purely hypothetical standpoint. According to the Sprint Planning Meeting section in the Scrum Guide: \"The number of items selected from the Product Backlog for the Sprint is solely up to the Development Team. Only the Development Team can assess what it can accomplish over the upcoming Sprint.\" Questions:   1. What is there to stop the development team from over-estimating intentionally the time it takes to complete user stories?   2. If there is a long-term contact with the product owner and development team, should this be defined in the contract as some sort of violation or breach of contract?   3. Who would be responsible for discovering such a violation?   4. How could the product owner prove that such a violation was taking place? Thank you for reading."}
{"_id": "159503", "title": "What's wrong with relative imports in Python?", "text": "I recently upgraded versions of pylint, a popular Python style-checker. It has gone ballistic throughout my code, pointing out places where I import modules in the same package, without specifying the full package path. The new error message is W0403. > W0403: Relative import %r, should be %r > > Used when an import relative to the package directory is detected. * * * ### Example For example, if my packages are structured like this:               /cake       /__init__.py       /icing.py       /sponge.py     /drink      and in the sponge package I write:               import icing      instead of               import cake.icing      I will get this error. * * * While I understand that not all Pylint messages are of equal importance, and I am not afraid to dismiss them, I don't understand why such a practice is considered a poor idea. I was hoping someone could explain the pitfalls, so I could improve my coding style rather than (as I currently plan to do) turning off this apparently spurious warning."}
{"_id": "159501", "title": "What Exactly is a Model Relative to the ModelAndView Class in Spring", "text": "What exactly does the \"Model\" part mean? Is it the same as the domain model? I've read that it's a map, but I'm having a hard time understanding the concept."}
{"_id": "159507", "title": "What does it mean by expected running time  and average runnnig time of an algorithm?", "text": "Let's say we want to analyze running time of algorithms. Sometimes we say that we want to find the running time of an algorithm when the input size is n and for the worst possible case it is denote it by O(n). Sometimes though I see books/papers saying that we need to find the **expected time** of an algorithm. Also sometimes the **average running time** is used . What is \"expected time\"? In which cases is it useful to find _expected time_ instead of worst case time? **Edit** : I think there is a subtle difference between _expected running time_ and _average running time_ but I am not sure . Through this post I want to know the exact difference if any ."}
{"_id": "195695", "title": "Is Clojure's syntax really simpler than Scala's?", "text": "Argument which is always made in favour of Clojure is that. The syntax is simpler and there is only one way of expressing code with no complicated rules. However Scala has loads of different types of syntax and constructs as compared to Clojure. But from last one week while trying to learn Clojure, I have noticed that the list of inbuilt macros are endless, Even though we write them with the same parenthesis syntax we need to learn how each works. So in what sense is Clojure's syntax simpler ? For LISPers it might be but for people from a different background learning different constructs in Scala seems simpler. So from a neutral point of view, which syntax is simpler and readable?"}
{"_id": "184480", "title": "When creating an api should I stick with small functions and many calls, or a few calls and large functions?", "text": "I have a rails platform that I maintain. It has a lot of different web applications built on top of it. However now a client is asking for an API so that they can keep users on their site, but take advantage of some of the automated tasks we have. The platform is used to build insurance applications and allows for their purchase online, as well as providing ways to download documentation related to your policy. So my question when building the API is this: When I have to do a lot of things, like `validate`, create a `user`, `user profile`, and `policy`, pretty much at the same time. Should I make 4 separate API calls, and make the client build 4 calls on their side. OR should I have one call that excepts a lot of parameters, that validates the client and creates all 3 of those things at the same time, simplifying things for the client? The client, in this case, gets all of the required information at the same time, so its not like there is a natural flow in their application where it pauses and they can make an API call to my platform. Having been on the client side using many API's before, my gut is to make it as simple for the client as possible and have them make just one call. However this is leading to rather large `functions` in the API, which I'm not a fan of either. How do you suggest I tackle this? As a note, I am not very confident in the clients ability to implement a complicated API on their side."}
{"_id": "239127", "title": "Strategies to manage multiple clients able to simultaneously edit same data", "text": "How can I deal with situations when multiple clients might edit same object at the same time? For example, I have a web app with admin console, which lets you edit profile data. Several users want to open the same profile and edit it. If I just let the things go as they do, I`ll get \"the last who saves wins\" situation and all the other users will lose their changes. Blocking object for edit on client, when someone enters edit page, seems relatively easy and overall acceptable for simple objects. However, for complex objects, when different users may want to change different parts of object, merging would be much better. I've read a paper on Conflict-free Replicated Data Types and it seems to be pretty complex and does not cover conflict situations. Are there any other ways to merge objects? Or maybe there are totally different strategies to deal with the situation?"}
{"_id": "239123", "title": "Passing multiple errors back from service layer", "text": "I am using Spring for a web application. To validate a user's input in a form such as for creating a Person entity I user JSR 303 validation to check for not null/empty or valid patterns etc.. Some things however I check in the service layer such as making sure a field is unique in the database and if not throwing an exception. I catch this exception in the controller and add an error to the field. This is basically what Ben J is doing in Option 1 here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3224749/passing-errors-back-to-the-view- from-the-service-layer Service Layer               public Person createPerson(String username, String fullName, String specialCode)             throws DuplicateUsernameException {         // Check if username exists and throw exception otherwise create person.         if (checkUsernameExists(username)) {             throw new DuplicateUsernameException();         }         Person person = new Person(username, fullName, specialCode);         return personDao.create(person);     }      Controller               void createPerson(Form form, Errors errors) {              try {             service.createPerson(form.getUsername(), form.getFullName(),                     form.getSpecialCode());         } catch (DuplicateUsernameException e) {             errors.add(\"username\", \"This username exists\");         }              // render view         ...     }      Up until now this has served me well but I now have a requirement to check two fields are individually unique and want to inform the user. In the above example if I wanted to check the specialCode was also unique I could add another check below the existing one in the service layer and throw a separate DuplicateSpecialCodeException. Service Layer               public Person createPerson(String username, String fullName, String specialCode)             throws DuplicateUsernameException, DuplicateSpecialCodeException {         if (checkUsernameExists(username)) {             throw new DuplicateUsernameException();         }         if (checkSpecialCodeExists(specialCode)) {             throw new DuplicateSpecialCodeException();         }         Person person = new Person(username, fullName, specialCode);         return personDao.create(person);     }      Controller               void createPerson(Form form, Errors errors) {              try {             service.createPerson(form.getUsername(), form.getFullName(),                     form.getSpecialCode());         } catch (DuplicateUsernameException e) {             errors.add(\"username\", \"This username exists\");         } catch (DuplicateSpecialCodeException e) {             errors.add(\"specialCode\", \"This special code exists\");         }              // render view         ...     }      The problem is if the user submits a duplicate Username and a duplicate SpecialCode they will only be informed of the duplicate Username. I want to shown both fields. What is a neat way of doing this? My ideas so far are:   * Throw an exception that contains all the errors.   * Pass the Errors object to the service and added values to this. Both of these methods would rely on the service layer knowing about the name of the fields and a suitable error code which seems to go against keeping the layers separate."}
{"_id": "193170", "title": "What is ASM.js and what does it mean for everyone?", "text": "I'm starting to hear rumblings about this project called ASM.js. Currently their web site is terrible and confusing. Here's what I know from my research on the web.   * It is a subset of JavaScript that can be highly optimized. I'm guessing because it avoids the more dynamic parts of the language.   * Performance of code compiled to ASM.js runs at about half the speed of C (not light).   * The intention is for compilers to make their target language ASM.js.   * Firefox is going to be shipping with ASM.js optimization baked in.   * The Mozilla and Unreal teams ported the _Unreal Engine to the web with it_ and its running in a build of _Firefox_ at near-native speeds. There doesn't seem to be any concrete information on the web about what this really _is_ or the usefulness or ultimate purpose. Is it that I can compile my otherwise server-side code bases and have it run in the browser at close-to- native speeds? What are the ramifications for developers?"}
{"_id": "10313", "title": "Do you consider quitting your job if you cannot add anything new to your resume for a long time?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When do you know it's time to move on from your current job? I just realized that I cannot add any new programming skills to my resume, for like 10 months. I am not sure whether this is a bad sign or not about my current job. How would you interpret this situation if you were a junior .NET developer at the age of 27?"}
{"_id": "86502", "title": "Move on and look elsewhere, or confront the boss?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When do you know it's time to move on from your current job? **Problem:** I had no prior experience when I interviewed, so I didn't know exactly what to ask _them_ about the company when I was hired. I've spotted a number of warning signs and annoyances since then, such as:   * Four developers when I started, with everyone talking about \"Ben\" or \"Ryan\" leaving. One engineer hired thirty days before me, one hired two weeks after me. Most of the department has been hiring a large number of people since I started.   * Extremely limited internet access. I understand the idea from an IT point of view, but not only is Facebook blocked, but so it Youtube, Twitter, and Pandora. I've also figured out that they block all access to non-DNS websites (http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/) and strangely enough Miranda-IM.   * Low cubicles. Which is fine because I like my immediate coworkers, but they put the developers with the customer service, customer training, and QA department in a huge open room. Noise, noise, noise, and people stop to chitchat all day long. Headphones only go so far.   * Several emails have been sent out by my boss since I started telling us programmers to not talk about non-work-related-things like Video Games at our cubicles, despite us only spending maybe five minutes every few hours doing so. Further digging tells me that this is because someone keeps complaining that the programmers are \"slacking off\".   * People are looking over my shoulder all day. I was in the Freenode webchat to get help with a programming issue, and within minutes I had an email from my boss (to all the developers) telling us that we should NOT be connected to any outside chat servers at work.   * Version control system from 2005 that we must access with IE and keep the Java 1.4 JRE installed to be able to use. I accidentally updated to Java 6 one day and spent the next two days fighting with my PC to undo this \"problem\".   * No source control, no comments on anything, no standards, no code review, no unit testing, no common sense. I literally found a problem in how they handle string resource translations that stems from the simple fact that they don't trim excess white spaces, leading to developers doing: getResource(\"Date: \") instead of: getResource(\"Date\") + \": \", and I was told to just add the excess white spaces back to the database instead of dealing with the issue directly. Some of these things I'd like to try to understand, but I like having IRC open to talk in a few different rooms during the day and keep in touch with friends/family over IM. They don't break my concentration (not NEARLY as much as the lady from QA stopping by to talk about her son), but because people are looking over my shoulder all day as they walk by they complain when they see something that's not \"programmer-looking work\". I've been told by my boss and QA that I do good, fast work. I should be judged on my work output and quality, not what I have up on my screen for the five seconds you're walking by So, my question is, even though I'm just barely at my 90 days: **How do you decide to move on from a job and looking elsewhere, or when you should start working with your boss to resolve these issues? Is it even possible to get the boss to work with me in many of these things?** This is the only place I heard back from even though I sent out several resume's a day for several months, and this place does pay well for putting up with their many flaws, but I'm just starting to get so miserable working here already. Should I just put up with it? **Edit:** I appreciate all the responses! First: I'm in the United States, and I'm salaried, and I'm about 5 days away from hitting the end of my 90 day probation. While it is my immediate boss sending out the emails I mentioned, I believe it is actually the department manager doing the majority of the arm-bending. He's also the only one with an office. My immediate boss is a nice guy, he is just complacent. As I mentioned, the Facebook/Twitter/Youtube makes sense from an IT (and management) point of view. Some people _do_ need to have these things limited, otherwise they would waste time on them. However, on occasion, I've come across Youtube videos that very well could be useful, such as when doing Android development (which I am). It would also be useful when it comes to the \"research\" part of the \"R&D\" department I work in. It could just be my naievity here, but I feel people should be judged on their work (speed and quality), not what they happen to be doing when you walk by. If I'm getting my work done, and the work is good, then does it matter what website I'm on? Related to above, but I _do_ understand the reasoning for limiting IM and/or IRC access while at work, and I do understand that they're paying me to be here and can dictate to me what I can and can't do. Though, again, judge me on my work not what's on my screen. Is this really so uncommon in a software development field? It is my understanding and my experience that staring at an IDE for 8 hours, typing all the while, is completely unrealistic. I can chat on IM/IRC, enjoying my time at work more simply because of this, without dumping my \"short term memory\", continuing to work on the problem in my head. I can't do that when Becky from QA stops to talk to me about lunch. I feel I did luck out with this job, and I'm glad I have it. This place does have it's positives: Lax on the dress code, lax on when we have to be to work (before 9am ideally, some leeway here), great benefits. But, I'd seriously take less money if it meant that I could enjoy my day more just in the simple things that, I admit, _are_ mostly me whining about. I just feel that if I'm going to be sitting behind a PC for 8+ hours a day, I'd like it to be as enjoyable as possible."}
{"_id": "86269", "title": "Visualize flowchart diagram with multiple end symbols", "text": "I am looking for a standardize way to visualize the following hierarchical logic: The state of the thread is represented by the answers to the hierarchical set of question You can read this listing like a flowchart, you iterate over the questions decide, go one step deeper and so on. Therefore I thought the best way to visualize it, using a flowchart. The problem is, in this hierarchical set it is possible to end in more than one state and its totally valid. I have never seen a flowchart where you can enter more than one state. Is it still possible and I am missing the right symbol to present this logic or are flowchart not fitting anyway? What other graphical representation could I use, is there something fitting in UML? A non-deterministic state machine seems not to be intuitive enough, transfering it into a deterministic state machine would result in to many states, and so on."}
{"_id": "77061", "title": "\"Super\" vs \"protected method\" for running common code", "text": "In many langauges, `super()` lets you call the parent method which you have overridden. I've been using `super` in my Javascript (with fake object oriented implementation) to run common code for a long time without problems. Now I've finally hit a case where calling a `protected` base class method would have been better than calling `super`. Here's a concrete example. > Grandparent -> Parent -> Kid I needed to add a Kid. It's identical to Parent except for one method called someMethod. Kid's someMethod needed to do Grandparent's common stuff, but not Parent's specific stuff. So Kid's someMethod could not call `super` because that would trigger Parent specific code. Instead of changing my grand class structure, I just made Kid duplicate Grandparent's common code.               Grandparent {      someMethod {       do common stuff      };     }          Parent: Grandparent {      someMethod {       super();       do parent specific stuff      }     }          Kid: Parent {      someMethod {       duplicate of common stuff       do kid specific stuff       }     }      In my book, duplicate code is bad. If only Grandparent wrote its common stuff as a protected method, I wouldn't need to duplicate code.               Grandparent {      protected commonMethod      virtual someMethod     }          Parent: Grandparent {      someMethod {       commonMethod       do parent specific stuff      }     }          Kid: Parent {      someMethod {       commonMethod       do kid specific stuff      }     }       Should I just completely stop using `super` and switch to `protected` methods for running common code? Are there any pitfalls to protected methods for running common stuff?"}
{"_id": "185281", "title": "Custom templating in a web application", "text": "I want to understand the pros and cons in generating dynamic web application controls. The idea is to generate all the controls dynamically based on the database procedure output and populate the controls to a say a grid structure / independent controls. I know that creating user controls and populating to layout is one option. Say, if we don't know what is the structure of controls the procedure is going to generate based on complex logic; what all should be considered in generating a layout structure? Is what I am thinking of is not logical in web application sense? Do I need to tackle the issue in a top down approach than a bottom up approach?"}
{"_id": "185282", "title": "What defines \"software developer\" role", "text": "I am a junior software developer and I have been working for a company less than a year. While I always thought being a software developer means to develop software and CODE something, my tasks are more in administration type of work, such as setting up Jenkins, SQL Replication and etc. Are these type of jobs included in a Developer role, or a developer only develops software? Should I be talking to my manager about this? Is this a common way for companies to evaluate \"developing\" skills?"}
{"_id": "185287", "title": "Appropriate selection of security framework", "text": "I have a web application to be developed using RESTeasy API and for this I have to implement security (Form based authentication). So i am not sure about the most appropriate fit for this. As I googled, I found Apache Shiro, Spring Security, etc. Also I have read something about Rest provided authentication jars. Please help me with this. EDIT: My requirements:   1\\. I should be easily able to use framework with RestEasy API.   2\\. It should provide authentication and authorization at least"}
{"_id": "185289", "title": "Sockets intricacies in TCP and UDP", "text": "I am quite familiar with TCP and UDP. I understand the process by which TCP establishes connections and other theoretical facts about TCP but when reading up about TCP hole punching for NAT Transversal, I have become stumped by how connect(), accept() and listen() is done in TCP. Is it a single or multiple sockets that are used for all this in TCP and is is this done the same way in UDP"}
{"_id": "201176", "title": "Loading chunks around center", "text": "I am making a voxel game like Minecraft. I am able to load chunks using multithreading with the code...               for (int x = 0; x < WorldSettings.WORLD_WIDTH_IN_CHUNKS; x++)     {         for (int y = 0; y < WorldSettings.WORLD_LENGTH_IN_CHUNKS; y++)         {             chunks[x, y].BulidVertexData();             Thread.Sleep(50);         }     }      this works fine, it starts by loading the far away chunk and loads them back and forth like a windshield wiper that gets closer, but I would rather have it load in a circle around the player by loading the near chunks first. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "201175", "title": "Should I use parentheses in logical statements even where not necessary?", "text": "Let's say I have a boolean condition `a AND b OR c AND d` and I'm using a language where `AND` has a higher order of operation precedent than `OR`. I could write this line of code:               If (a AND b) OR (c AND d) Then ...      But really, that's equivalent to:               If a AND b OR c AND d Then ...      Are there any arguments in for or against including the extraneous parentheses? Does practical experience suggest that it is worth including them for readability? Or is it a sign that a developer needs to really sit down and become confident in the basics of their language?"}
{"_id": "181991", "title": "Is looking at random code snippets useful to quickly determine the quality of a project?", "text": "To get an idea of the quality of a project that I've never seen before (usually open source projects that I'm considering whether or not to use), I often start by opening random files and eyeballing fine details of the code. I look for things like:   * Style (does it follow accepted conventions for the language and is it consistent)   * Quality and consistency of comments   * Common language specific gotchas (e.g. consistently not using `===` in javascript)   * Does it _look_ logically structured I find this gives me a good idea of the skill of the developer/s that wrote the code, even if I know absolutely nothing about what the code is meant to be doing. Do people think this is useful? What does one need to take into account for quickly assessing the quality of a project's code base, assuming no knowledge of how it actually works?"}
{"_id": "181995", "title": "How to verify data from localStorage on a server", "text": "On my mobile app, I am storing the username of a logged in person, and downloading some data for the given/stored username. When the user checks for updates to his data content on the server, the server dishes out a delta of the content, based on the username. The app then updates its local display accordingly. The problem is, since I am using localStorage, there is no guarantee that someone will not edit the username stored locally and try to request data meant for someone else. What would be the best way of getting around this possible security hole? Please comment on this method that I am planning to implement:   1. Each time you login, a random string is generated and stored for future checking in a database, along with your username, and date/time of request.   2. Whenever a request to download data for a username comes in, it must be accompanied by the string from the previous attempt. Also, each fresh update for the client is accompanied by a new random string, which is stored in the database and the old one is deemed expired.   3. If the random string is not provided correctly, the user is logged out of the mobile app (as this could potentially be someone tampering with the app). The advantage I see for this method is that I have an audit trail as well for later verification and forensics. What are the flaws?"}
{"_id": "170495", "title": "Bulk commits vs Quick commits", "text": "I know that most of you would advice to go with the strategy and methodology of the project. However I just have a quick question, from Senior point of view, what would be better to see quick small commits from a developer, or large chunk of code pushed to the branch?"}
{"_id": "170496", "title": "Why did the ISO 8601 committee choose Monday as the first day of the week?", "text": "Sunday is considered the first day of the week in the United States and countries that followed the Greco-Roman tradition."}
{"_id": "170490", "title": "I have data that sends in \"bursts\" of 100 records with a significant delay. How do I structure my classes for multithreading?", "text": "My datasource sends information in 100 batches of 100 records with a delay of 1 to 3 seconds between batches. I would like to start processing data as soon as it's received, but I'm not sure how to best approach this. Some ideas I've been playing with include:   * `yield`   * Concurrent Dictionary   * ConcurrentDictionary with INotifyProperyChanged   * Events   * etc. As you can see I'm all over the place, and would appreciate some tested guidance on how to approach this"}
{"_id": "170493", "title": "Tool to identify (and remove) unnecessary website files?", "text": "Inevitably I'll stop using an antiquated css, script, or image file. Especially when a separate designer is tinkering with things and testing out a few versions of images. Before I build one myself, are there any tools out there that will drill through a website and list unlinked files? Specifically, I'm interested in ASP.NET MVC sites, so detecting calls to (and among many other things) @Url.Content(...) is important."}
{"_id": "170492", "title": "Dynamic Forms: Pattern or AntiPattern?", "text": "I'm sure you've seen it. The database has a bunch of tables called `Forms`, `Controls`,`FormsControls`, `ControlSets`, `Actions` and the program that queries these tables has a dynamically generated user interface. It will read all the forms, load a home page that has links to them all, or embed them in some tabbed or paged home page, and for each of those forms it will read the various text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, submit buttons, combo boxes, labels and whatnot from the controls and form-to-control join tables, lay those elements out according to the database and link all the controls to logic according to other rules in the database. To me, this is an anti-pattern. It actually make the application more difficult to maintain because the design of it is now spread out into multiple different systems. Also, the database is not source controlled. Sure, it may make one or two changes go more quickly, after you've analyzed the program anyway to understand how to change the data and as long as you don't stray from the sort of changes that were anticipated and accounted for, but that's often just not sustainable. What say you?"}
{"_id": "124095", "title": "What are my options for selling software independently on Windows?", "text": "I am looking to port a tool from the Mac app store over to Windows, the platform where I spend most of my time these days. I've spoken with the author of the original app and we've begun talking about licensing options should I decide to sell the application, and it seems like it would be feasible. I've never sold software independently, let alone on Windows. That I know of, there is not (yet) an equivalent app store for Windows (maybe one coming with Windows 8). Assuming my product was done today and I was ready to go to market, what options do I have for selling software for Windows as an independent developer or Micro-ISV? I know can sell it through my own website and accept PayPal, but are there options that will offer more visibility, similar to that of the Apple app stores? Any options to avoid?"}
{"_id": "124097", "title": "How can a PHP programmer best prepare for a C++ course?", "text": "I have never programmed in C++, but am going to be taking a class that involves programming in C++ in January. I want to be able to excel in the class, and looking for advice, as I come from a PHP background. How can I best prepare myself for success?"}
{"_id": "124090", "title": "Scrum - What and How meetings", "text": "My team and I are struggling with the what and how meetings. It's hard for us to choose what to work on when we don't know how it is going to be done. Our estimations may be way off when pointing an estimated level of effort. At this point it's being discussed if we should do the how before the what so that pbi's will be at least reasonably well estimated. What are some other options that don't require changing the order of the accepted scrum practices?"}
{"_id": "177143", "title": "Where does the term \"Front End\" come from?", "text": "Where does the term \"front-end\" come from? Is there a particular presentation/talk/job-posting which is regarded as the first use of the term? Is someone credited with coining the term? The Merriam-Webster entry for \"front-end\" claims the first known use of the term was 1973 but it doesn't seem to provide details about that first known use. Likewise, the Wikipedia page about front and back ends is fairly low quality, and cites very few sources."}
{"_id": "177146", "title": "Are all View Models supposed to be accessed through the Main View Model in MVVM?", "text": "I am currently working on a WP8 application. My current design is to have each view bind against a specific view model directly. Looking through the samples though, it seems that another way is to have all the view models accessed through the Main View Model and then have all the views to their view models through the MVM. Is this the correct way to do it (So that it doesn't cause flexibility and other issues in the future)?"}
{"_id": "240688", "title": "Why does VBA / VBScript require \"Set\" prefix", "text": "When I set a variable to an object in VBA / VBScript, I always need to prefix the statement with \"Set\" such as: `Set Dict = CreateObject(\"Scripting.Dictionary\")` If I set a variable to a primitive or array value, I have to omit the \"Set\" such as: `Num = 123` This is different from languages such as JavaScript, PHP, Python etc. Is there some technical reason why they have this requirement in VBA / VBScript?"}
{"_id": "130741", "title": "What is a realistic way to handle customer-specific software patches?", "text": "I'm trying to gather effective ways that others have solved the following problem. At work we've been forced to release a software patch (to be installed on end-user systems) that we only want visible to a specific customer. The custom code is in its own source-control branch. The problem is we have two parallel code lines (and build scripts) to keep in sync, and every time we patch the original code we have to patch and test the customer- specific code. I'm curious, how do other organizations handle this scenario? We're open to business solutions and not _just_ technical (source-control related) ones. For example, we've talked about telling the customer they can't receive updates on that branch. Our branching strategy is like this (based on the Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide, although we're using Subversion for it) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XXtU0.png)"}
{"_id": "150606", "title": "Review quality of code", "text": "I have been asked to quality review two code bases. I've never done anything like that, and need advice on how to perform it and report it. **Background** There are two providers of code, one in VB and one in C (ISO 9899:1999 (C99)). These two programs do not work so well together, and of course, the two suppliers blames each other. I will therefore as a independent person review both codes, on a comprehensive level review the quality of the codes to find out where it is most likely that the problem lies. I will not try to find problems, but simply review the quality and how simple it is to manage and understand the code. **Edit** : I have yet not received much information about what the problem consists of. I've just been told that I will examine the code in terms of quality. Not so much more. I do not know the background to why they took this decision."}
{"_id": "240683", "title": "How to tell SignalR Notifications Hub that there is a new notification without having SignalR poll on that table", "text": "I'm developing a push-notifications system for my ASP.NET MVC app. The idea is to use Redis for queueing, ServiceStack for queue processing and SignalR for push-notifications to implement a system that's able to distribute different types of notifications. I've put together a quick prototype where I have a ServiceStack service which listens on the Redis queue. When it receives a message it looks at the ReplyTo property on the message, which contains the URL of the worker (subscriber) that can process the message. It then formulates a response for that worker and drops it into the Redis queue. Here, essentially ServiceStack is using PUBSUB feature of Redis to notify that worker that it has a new item to process. The worker then begins processing the message. An an example, if it's a connection request message, it'll try to pull all required data from SQL DB based on identifiers in the message. Lastly, it saves the message into a \"Notifications\" table. I'm guessing there would be multitude of these workers, processing different notification types coming out of all kinds of background jobs. Here is the problem. I have no idea how to tell SignalR Notifications Hub that there is a new notification without having SignalR poll on that table. I could use SQL dependencies here, but it seems ugly. Ultimately it'd be cool to hit that Hub with a HTTP request from my worker, but i don't know if that's even possible. What would you guys suggest?"}
{"_id": "240680", "title": "If I unite many web apps into one, will I save resources?", "text": "I'm comparing 2 different approaches of J2EE application architecture:   1. Divide independent parts as modules of one big web app.   2. Divide independent parts as different web apps running on same server. Between these approaches I prefer the second one because it allows me to make changes without redeploying the whole application. Imagine that you want to change something in app2. In the case of one big app you have to redeploy the whole application. In the second case you have to only redeploy app2. But I have some doubts about resources consumption such as memory usage and CPU usage. I personally think that each J2EE application, no matter how large it is, has some minimal limit of memory it will necessary use. This minimal limit is what is needed for context loading, web framework config files, jar libs and other things. My hypothesis sounds like \"Having many web apps running on same server leads to multiplication of wasting of default minimal resources.\" Is the picture below correct? Does one big application save me from default resorces overhead multiplication shown on the picture? ![Description](http://i.stack.imgur.com/j0fgq.png)"}
{"_id": "244501", "title": "Advice on refactoring PHP Project", "text": "I have a small SAS ERP that was written some years ago using PHP. At that time, it didn't use any framework, but the code isn't a mess. Nowadays, the project grows and I\u2019m now working with 3 more programmers. Often, they ask to me why we don\u2019t migrate to a framework such as Laravel. Although I'd love trying Laravel, I\u2019m a small business and I don't have time nor money to stop and spend a whole year building everything from scratch. I need to live and pay the bills. So, I've read a lot about this matter, and I decided that doing a refactoring is the best way to do it. Also, I'm not so sure that a framework will make things easy. Business goals are:   * Make the code easier to new hired programmers   * Separate the \"view\", in order to:     * release different versions of this product (using the same code), but under different brands and websites at the minimum cost (just changing view)     * release different versions to fit mobile/tablet.   * Make different types of this product, selling packages as if they were plugins.   * Develop custom packages for some costumers (like plugins/addon's that they can buy to put on the main application). Code goals:   * Introduce best pratices, standards for everyone   * Try to build my own MVC structure   * Improve validation of data/forms (today they are mixed in both ajax and classes)   * Create automated testing routines for quality assurance. * * * My current structure project:   * class\\   * extra\\   * hd\\   * logs\\   * public_html\\   * public_html\\includes\\   * public_html\\css|js|images\\  * * * ## class\\ There are three types of classes. They are all \u201cautoloaded\u201d with something similar with PSR-0, but I don\u2019t use namespaces. **1\\. class.Something.php** Connects to Database using specific methods. I.e: Costumer->list(); It uses \u201cclass.Db.php\u201d, that it\u2019s an abstraction of mysql on every method. **2\\. class.SomethingProc.php** Do things that \u201cjoin\u201d things that come from \u201cclass.Something.php\u201d. Like IF/ELSE, math operations. **3\\. class.SomethingHTML.php** The classes with \u201cHTML\u201d suffix implements only static methods and HTML code only. **A real life example:** All the programmers need to use $cSomething ($c to class) and $arrSomething (to array). Costumer.php (view)               <?php     $cCosumter = new Costumer();     $arrCostumer = $cCostumer->list();     echo CostumerHTML::table($arrCostumer);     ?>      ## Extra\\ Store 3rdparty projects/classes from others, such MPDF, PHPMailer, etc. ## Hd\\ Store user\u2019s files outsite wwwroot dir. ## Logs\\ Store phplogs and the system itself logs (We have a static Log::error() method, that we put in every method of every class) ## Public_html\\ Stores the files that people use. ## Public_html\\includes\\ Store the main \u201cconfig.php\u201d file and all files that do \u201cajax things\u201d ajax.Costumer.php, for example. ## Help is needed ;) So, as you can see we have some standards, and also for database things. But I want to write a manual of our rules. Something that I can give to any new programmer at my company and he can go on. This is not totally a mess, but it could be better seeing the new practices. What could I do to separate this as MVC, to have multiple views. Could you give me some tips considering my goals? Keep im mind the different products/custom things for specific costumers without breaking the main application. URL for tutorials, books, etc, would be nice."}
{"_id": "230529", "title": "Do software developers write SQL?", "text": "Do software developers write SQL or database developers provide the SQL and the software developers use it? I am a novice to software development. I am just trying to understand the software development process because I have to do an internship this summer. I apologize in advance if this is a basic question."}
{"_id": "185758", "title": "Data structure for fast StartsWith filtering of a dictionary", "text": "I have a list of english words. I'm trying to come up with a data structure that allows me to do fast StartsWith filtering, like:               var words = dictionary.StartsWith(\"foo\");      I was thinking of creating a data structure like this: ![Data Structure](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZhA1A.png) But I wanted to ask first: a) Does the above data structure already have a name? b) Is this the fastest way to implement what I'm looking for? Edit: The data structure will be built at the beginning and not change. I'll only need to do the equivalent of StartsWith and Contains."}
{"_id": "185752", "title": "Should I learn in c++ or c# (for computer science degree)?", "text": "I'm about to start a \"Bachelors of Science (Computer Science)\" degree (in Australia, semester starts in march) and I'm presented with the option to learn c# or C++. First of all, I already know C#, and I love C#. It is just so easy to use. Not having to worry about memory management or garbage collecting makes my brain tingle. I've made plenty of apps / games in C# and I find the syntax easy to follow, I love intellisense (which I think C++ doesn't have), and it seems just to be a nice language in general. I've been trying to wrap my head around C++. First thing I can say... IT'S HARD. Half the time I'm thinking to myself: \"Do I need to include a ^ symbol after String?\", etc. The syntax just seems hard to follow and I get really aggravated over it. This is simply with me trying to teach myself, however, without a teacher. My goal after my degree is to join a game firm, and assist in making games, so that has to be a top factor in my decision making. Can you guys give me some advice? Thanks."}
{"_id": "185750", "title": "SOAP traffic generator", "text": "I'm trying to build a SOAP message generator that will generate SOAP messages of different kinds that I have specified. Each of these messages also has a reply that will be coming back. The meaning of this generator is to generate SOAP messages and measure performance on some equipment that the messages are being sent over. I therefor need to be able to generate messages at a high pace and while sending them I also need to confirm how many messages where dropped, if any. My basic plan in this project is to send and receive the SOAP messages (and replies) in different Threads to allow for maximum performance. I've tried to read up on SOAP by reading the Wikipedia and W3Schools articles here: http://www.w3schools.com/soap/default.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP http://www.w3schools.com/wsdl/wsdl_intro.asp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Services_Description_Language I still haven't got a clear picture on how SOAP works though. **Is it possible to send and receive replies in different Threads? How could this be done?** If it's not possible I guess the SOAP message/reply would have to go through the same \"socket\". **Is it possible to send multiple messages without waiting for a reply over the same \"socket\"? How could that be done? (just keep looping and sending?)** Java and Apache CXF will be used in the implementation. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts, guidelines or general ideas on this subject. EDIT: There are a lot of recommendations on using other tools but however silly it might sound I really would like to invent the wheel again and write my own little performance testing environment. What I really wish to know is about the **message flow** in SOAP. I've clarified the questions a bit."}
{"_id": "230524", "title": "Why doesn't monad take `(M a -> M b)`?", "text": "All apologies -- I'm still very much on the outside of Haskell looking in. Why does the bind for a monad have this signature: > M a -> (a -> M b) -> M b and not > M a -> (M a -> M b) -> M b i.e. a function that takes `M a` instead of just `a` `a` is available to the function in both, but the context that `M` provides is not available to the function in the 1st. Just the lifted value itself. (If that's a silly question, just downvote me a lot & I'll delete it... like I say, still very much on the outside looking in)"}
{"_id": "185757", "title": "Effective design analysis", "text": "Our team redesigns the legacy software and there are a lot of design meetings going on. Many of them are not very effective and lack good analysis of the proposed design. Is there any formal way to approach this kind of discussions to make them more effective? I heard about SWOT for example, but afaik it is used more for business projects."}
{"_id": "181668", "title": "How to write junit test case for the program", "text": "I have a method which has external dependencies within the method. Please help me in writing a junit test case for the below program.                   @Override         public void methodToTest(String user){                //fetch the values from the properties file. Config class has a static method called           //getProperty which reads the values from the environment specific property file.           String url = Config.getProperty(\"serviceurl\");           String username = Config.getProperty(\"serviceusername\");           String password = Config.getProperty(\"servicepassword\");                //Connect to an external service.           Service service = new Service(url, username, password);                //invoke the method on the service.           String returnValue = service.registerUser(user);                if (returnValue.equals(\"failure\")){             throw new Exception(\"User could not be registered\");           }         }      **Note:**   1. The method overrides the superclass method so that I cannot change the arguments to contain the url, username and password.   2. The method also connects to an external service. which is environment specific. The environment details is taken from the properties file."}
{"_id": "241482", "title": "What are the most appropriate algorithms for downscaling images extremely while maintaining recognition?", "text": "I want to create a window icon (128x128 at most, the icon in the corner of the window on Windows is 24x24, I believe) from a large image (1024x768 and more). I've tried several algorithms - nearest neighbor, bicubic interpolation, but they all produce a very soft and barely recognizable image. Do I need content-aware resize for this task?"}
{"_id": "181661", "title": "Handling unexpected features during sprint", "text": "Our team is going to adopt scrum and agile technics. We've got a product, which we develop for multiple customers. This customers supplied us with necessary requirements, so everithing is fine to adopt agile techinics. But at some moment (for example during sprint), new customer apears, and he wants to get a demo of product slightly different from what we have now. This may be some new features or minor differences in behavior. And he wants to get this demo for example during the week. It is very important to show that our product supports this features (because otherwise he will address to our competitors), so we have to develop this features (may be partly) during the week. How we must handle this sort of features with agile? Move them to current sprint backlog? Or split one team to two and create another sprint? Or may be there is another way?"}
{"_id": "240356", "title": "What are some best practices for securing AWS credentials (or other secrets) for large team?", "text": "I was _\"that guy\"_ that pushed his aws keys to github. Ugh. Anyway, I'm doing some research on how to prevent this in the future as this is the third time I've seen this done (my first!) and it was just a headache for the entire company. Everyone gets their own keys that have full access since we need to spin up instances, access s3, etc. Most people store them in environmental variables as do I and when I committed my dot files that's where the issue came in. We'd also like to not have them in code. We can send out memos and make sure people know but accidents will happen so what are some best practices to reduce the risk? I was thinking of storing them password protected and when you decrypt them they go into the environment and maybe providing some git hooks that search for certain keywords. Any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "240357", "title": "Is there just one EventHandler class per application?", "text": "In a game I'm making I was about to add a `MovementEventHandler`, with events like \"pre-character-movement\" and \"post-character-movement\". But this class will do exactly the same as a future `CurrencyChangeEventHandler`. Should I just be creating a `GameEventHandler`, which just handles arbitrary event names? One of the trade offs I can imagine for that is potential clashes in event names, but that's easily handled by namespacing the names of events (prefixing them with something). The benefit is fewer objects hanging around the service container."}
{"_id": "86847", "title": "Best practices for launching a new software version", "text": "I rebuilt a web app to replace a version that we have been using for the last 3-4 years. We have a few thousand clients and a few hundred active users per day. The functionality is basically the same. The new version is a little bit faster with a few enhancement features and there are a lot of behind the scenes changes that the clients will never see. The UI is quite different but ultimately much easier to use and navigate. How should I go about having our clients stop using the old system and start using the new one? I am currently putting together a video that will play on the web site as well as within the app. The video will go through the pages and focus on some key changes. I was also thinking about an intro page that will display once the user logs in and explains some of the features."}
{"_id": "240351", "title": "Using a Simple/Static Factory vs. instantiating directly: new Thing() vs. factory.createThing() - what's the benefit?", "text": "Here are two ways to instantiate an object: **Option 1:**               Thing thing = new Thing();      **Option 2:** _(the factory is a Static Factory, but it could also be a Simple Factory)._               Thing thing = ThingFactory.createThing();      Where:               class ThingFactory(){         public static Thing createThing(){             return new Thing();         }     }      * * * Option 2 is said to be better, because using a factory decouples the client code from the concrete implementation of the class it's instantiating. **However what difference does it actually make if I use`new Thing()` or `factory.createThing()`?** The only difference between the two options is that the instantiation code is moved to a different place. As I explained above I know the 'academic' explanation to why using a factory is 'better', but I don't actually see the practical benefit. In both cases, the client knows exactly what it wants: a `Thing`. **The only difference is the exact line of code:`new Thing()` or `factory.createThing()`.** * * * **More sophisticated factories, I can see their benefit.** For example using the Abstract Factory pattern, I could create different `Factory` subclasses that instantiate different concrete implementations of `Thing`, and inject the suitable `Factory` to the client at runtime, without the client worrying about the concrete implementation it receives. `BlueThingFactory` instantiates `BlueThing`, `RedThingFactory` instantiates `RedThing`, but the client only cares that it receives a `Thing`. This is with more sophisticated factories. **But I'm unable to see the benefit of using a _simple factory_ as in the example I described. _All it does is move`new Thing()` to a different place._ I don't understand the benefit of this.** * * * Please explain to me the actual benefits of using a simple factory."}
{"_id": "86844", "title": "Is it OK to introduce methods that are used only during unit tests?", "text": "Recently I was TDDing a factory method. The method was to create either a plain object, or an object wrapped in a decorator. The decorated object could be of one of several types all extending StrategyClass. In my test I wanted to check, if the class of returned object is as expected. That's easy when plain object os returned, but what to do when it's wrapped within a decorator? I code in PHP so I could use `ext/Reflection` to find out a class of wrapped object, but it seemed to me to be overcomplicating things, and somewhat agains rules of TDD. Instead I decided to introduce `getClassName()` that would return object's class name when called from StrategyClass. When called from the decorator however, it would return the value returned by the same method in decorated object. Some code to make it more clear:               interface StrategyInterface {       public function getClassName();     }          abstract class StrategyClass implements StrategyInterface {       public function getClassName() {         return \\get_class($this);       }     }          abstract class StrategyDecorator implements StrategyInterface {            private $decorated;            public function __construct(StrategyClass $decorated) {         $this->decorated = $decorated;       }            public function getClassName() {         return $this->decorated->getClassName();       }          }      And a PHPUnit test                /**        * @dataProvider providerForTestGetStrategy        * @param array $arguments        * @param string $expected        */       public function testGetStrategy($arguments, $expected) {              $this->assertEquals(           __NAMESPACE__.'\\\\'.$expected,             $this->object->getStrategy($arguments)->getClassName()         )       }          //below there's another test to check if proper decorator is being used      My point here is: is it OK to introduce such methods, that have no other use than to make unit tests easier? Somehow it doesn't feel right to me."}
{"_id": "240358", "title": "Type Safety of Spray.io", "text": "Yesterday I read a tweet disparaging Jersey with JAX-RS due to run-time errors. Spray.io was mentioned in the tweet: > Not even 5 minutes using Jersey / JAX-RS and already a runtime error due to > a missing annotation. That's why I like @sprayio: type safety. https://twitter.com/gbelrose/status/467295643053338626 How does `spray.io` provide type safety? Could you please give an example?"}
{"_id": "240359", "title": "How to bill time working around web hosting issues?", "text": "My client's web hosting company changed some web server security rules which made the site not work properly. I spent 4 hours diagnosing the problem and emailing their tech support back and forth. I'm thinking of billing my client for this, but it could be counterproductive because it doesn't happen that often that I have to work around web hosting issues. On the other hand, I hate working without getting paid. Should I:   1. bill them for working around web hosting issues (they chose the web hosting company)   2. threaten to bill them next time and advise them to change their hosting company   3. let it go and just incorporate any potential web hosting issues into the price for future jobs How do you do it?"}
{"_id": "225006", "title": "Separating UI from logic in JavaScript modules", "text": "I'm refactoring some custom JavaScript modules written to support our mapping functionality. I'm looking to make them much more unit-testable and be able to plug pieces in and out more easily. My question is related to having UI manipulation and business logic be in the same module. I know that having the UI part makes unit testing a little more difficult. I would think also decoupling the UI part would enable other people to add their own UI layer if they wanted to change the look and feel while still keeping the core functionality. **Edit** : I'm more working with Dojo modules since that what the mapping API is built on top of. I figured since Dojo comes with it we would use that. I'm finding that Dojo modules don't lend themselves to being easily tested (I tried using Doh and it is the most unintuitive testing framework I've ever worked with). I'm thinking of making more vanilla JS modules and only tried to use what I absolutely need to from Dojo. That's where I got the idea to maybe separate the UI layer from the logic for each module as well. Does anyone have suggestions on how those can be decoupled?"}
{"_id": "140463", "title": "\"t-sql\" tool for csv files?", "text": "Is there a tool that allows to query files based on the following criteria, and change them?   * creation date   * filenames (e.g. filetypeA_YYYYMMDD_data2.blah)   * file content For the example, the workflow could be the following one:   * Get all files created between date x and date y, where the filename contains z and the file itself contains value x under column zzz.   * Update it to be a different value/another column."}
{"_id": "233952", "title": "How to I write tests for code that's driving Robot and other external features?", "text": "I've got some code I use to take regular screenshots of my screen - it's useful to work out how much of any given day I'm spending on various activities. It looks like this:               /**      * Code modified from code given in      * http://whileonefork.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/java-multi-monitor-screenshots.html following a SE      * question at      * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10042086/screen-capture-in-java-not-capturing-whole-screen and      * then modified by a code review at      * http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/10783/java-screengrab      */     package com.tmc.personal;          import java.awt.*;     import java.awt.image.*;     import java.io.File;     import java.io.IOException;          import javax.imageio.ImageIO;          // TODO: improve screencapture tool by having it not take a photo when the mouse hasn't moved...          class ScreenCapture implements Runnable {            private int minsBetweenScreenshots = 5;       private String workingDirectory = \"\";            public ScreenCapture(String string, int i) {         workingDirectory = string;         minsBetweenScreenshots = i;       }                 private void tryWritingScreenshotToFile(int indexOfPicture) {         try {           Image scaledImg = takeScreenshot();           storeImageToFile(workingDirectory + \"ScreenCapture\" + indexOfPicture, scaledImg);         } catch (IOException e1) {           // skip, move to the next one         } catch (AWTException e) {           // photo didn't work skip and move on.         }       }                 private Image takeScreenshot() throws AWTException {         Rectangle allScreenBounds = getAllScreenBounds();         Robot robot = new Robot();         BufferedImage img = robot.createScreenCapture(allScreenBounds);         return scaleImage(img);       }            private void storeImageToFile(String filename, Image scaledImg) throws IOException {         ImageIO.write(toBufferedImage(scaledImg), \"jpg\",             new File(filename + ActivityLogger.getDateTime() + \".jpg\"));       }            // code from       // http://www.java-forums.org/new-java/2790-how-save-image-jpg.html       private BufferedImage toBufferedImage(Image src) {         int w = src.getWidth(null);         int h = src.getHeight(null);         int type = BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB; // other options         BufferedImage dest = new BufferedImage(w, h, type);         Graphics2D g2 = dest.createGraphics();         g2.drawImage(src, 0, 0, null);         g2.dispose();         return dest;       }            private Image scaleImage(BufferedImage img) {         int scaledWidth = (int) (img.getWidth() * 0.5);         int scaledHeight = (int) (img.getHeight() * 0.5);         Image scaledImg =             img.getScaledInstance(scaledWidth, scaledHeight, BufferedImage.SCALE_AREA_AVERAGING);         return scaledImg;       }            /**        * Okay so all we have to do here is find the screen with the lowest x, the screen with the lowest        * y, the screen with the higtest value of X+ width and the screen with the highest value of        * Y+height        *         * @return A rectangle that covers the all screens that might be nearby...        */       private Rectangle getAllScreenBounds() {         Rectangle allScreenBounds = new Rectangle();         GraphicsEnvironment ge = GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment();         GraphicsDevice[] screens = ge.getScreenDevices();              int farx = 0;         int fary = 0;         for (GraphicsDevice screen : screens) {           Rectangle screenBounds = screen.getDefaultConfiguration().getBounds();           // finding the one corner           if (allScreenBounds.x > screenBounds.x) {             allScreenBounds.x = screenBounds.x;           }           if (allScreenBounds.y > screenBounds.y) {             allScreenBounds.y = screenBounds.y;           }           // finding the other corner           if (farx < (screenBounds.x + screenBounds.width)) {             farx = screenBounds.x + screenBounds.width;           }           if (fary < (screenBounds.y + screenBounds.height)) {             fary = screenBounds.y + screenBounds.height;           }           allScreenBounds.width = farx - allScreenBounds.x;           allScreenBounds.height = fary - allScreenBounds.y;         }         return allScreenBounds;       }            @Override       public void run() {         int indexOfPicture = 1000;         while (true) {           tryWritingScreenshotToFile(indexOfPicture++);           ActivityLogger.waitForNextSampleTime(minsBetweenScreenshots);         }       }          }      The expected behavior of the class is that it takes a full-screen (including external monitors) screenshot every five minutes... I've recently fallen in love with Test Driven Development on other projects and I've come back to this old code. But being honest - I have no idea where I would start with writing tests for it - everything is so tightly coupled to the outside world that simple tests seam impossible - is the a best-practice approach in such situations?"}
{"_id": "140467", "title": "Who are the outspoken critics of Object-Oriented design?", "text": "Sure, object-oriented techniques are great and have stuck around for a while. I know only less than a handful of critics of the OO principles. It seems as though most non-OO designs and architectures are shunned, yet we continue to write a lot of good software in C and solve a lot of data changes via awk/sed and countless other examples. Correct tool for the correct job, yes? I'm having a hard time finding articles, presentations, or published criticisms of OO (even Fred Brooks has blessed information hiding). Are there any well-known, published and/or outspoken critics of OO?"}
{"_id": "233956", "title": "Explanation of the code snippet , keyword operator in , in c++ , use of objects in classes", "text": "class Vector {                public:                 Vector(int s) :elem{new double[s]}, sz{s} { }                double& operator[](int i) { return elem[i]; } //function 2                int size() { return sz; }                       private:                      double\u2217 elem;                       int sz;               };      Code snippet from : the c++ prog. language 4th edition , Bjarne IDE : Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013 My experience : Newbie , have learned a little using turbo c++ before. I noticed while typing function2 that operator is a keyword(shown in blue color) , but when whole function2 is declared , _operator_ turns white , that is it doesn't remain an keyword anymore. If i try using any other name other than \"operator\" , an error pops up , which says Error: array of function is not allowed It would be very helpful if someone can explain what is happening in function2, I want to know all that there is about the keyword operator , why,how and when to use this.Ofcourse from a beginner's perspective. Please refrain from overly complex answers , I am complete _newbie_ I tried searching on internet , couldn't find anything else apart from operator overloading , which is not my question.               double read_and_sum(int s) {                              Vector v(s);                     //line 1                             for (int i=0; i!=v.size(); ++i)                              cin>>v[i];                        //line 3                             double sum = 0;                              for (int i=0; i!=v.size(); ++i)                              sum+=v[i];                              return sum;                             }      Here line1 passes the argument \"s\" of int type needed by constructor of class vector , that's fine. But in line3 how can the statement \"cin>>v[i]\" be valid ? , since the object v isn't declared as an array of objects. Even if it is valid where does the value go..? Basically it is out of my knowledge , please explain line3 in simplest possible manner, and at the same time as exhaustively as possible , so that I can learn. PS: Do not tell me , that i shouldn't be learning c++ , or i shouldn't be using that IDE or anything else like that. If you can , then answer the question, I shall be very thankful."}
{"_id": "233959", "title": "Design of high performance file processing web application", "text": "I'm trying to design a web app with ability to scale but can't wrap my heads around few concepts. I want to design it right but im not a experienced programmer, i have more of a system engineering background. Basic architecture look like this: Web Server -> File processing server -> NoSQL DB -> Search server So the main scenario is follows:   * User uploads a file via site   * File is send for processing to a server(python script)   * Results of processing is send to NoSQL DB   * Results processed by search server and returned to user We can scale web frontends via load balancing. Something like nginx+apache.   Database scaling is taking care by Cassandra or MongoDB. Search scaling is taking care by elasticsearch or sphinx clustering. Now I want to be able to add multiple file processing servers in case file uploaded is too big. So I need to somehow split file into chunks and process it simultaneously on multiple nodes plus if node goes down while working it shouldn't affect anything and data must be saved. So I need something else which will be allocating tasks to my file processing servers, balancing load and control execution of tasks. How to design custom applications for that kind of things? Should I use message queuing?"}
{"_id": "225001", "title": "Generic/Dynamic objects in JSF", "text": "I'm starting to learn JSF and I was wondering how could I implement the following: I have an instance of Spring that contains several beans for logical and database operations, for example I have a Person bean with \"name\", \"lastName\" and \"age\" as attributes with operations for storing said data to a MySQL database. Now I want to add a JSF instance to the project from where I can read any appropriate bean in the Spring instance and make a CRUD of the bean's properties. All of this without creating a new bean in JSF. In detail, in JSF I want to have the following views:   * List objects (list)   * Show an object (show)   * A form for adding or editing the object (form) If I go to the URL: http: // host/person/list JSF should to make a petition for a Person bean to Spring and call the method \"getAll()\" from it and \"dump\" the result in the \"list\" view. That view would have logic to build a table iterating through the results and the properties of the Person object. Now, if I go to the URL: http: // host/dog/list JSF should now make a petition for a Dog bean to Spring and call the same method and dump the results into the \"list\" view. Of course the table displayed should be different since Dog and Person are classes with different attributes. In the URL http: // host/person/new JSF should instantiate a new Person bean from Spring. read its attributes and dump the new object to the \"form\" view which should iterate through its attributes and show a form with inputs for \"name\" \"lastName\" and \"age\". After clicking \"Submit\" JSF should call the \"save()\" method from the Spring bean, which would save the Person with the input values. Is this possible in JSF? If not, what are the alternatives that get closer to this workflow? What is the best strategy that can be followed for this kind of implementation?"}
{"_id": "205215", "title": "Real time data feed, what requirements would I need to gather from the client's system interface?", "text": "How do I go about designing this particular application example below? For example: I have client, who would like to embed my data feed into this GUI interface. The data is made of names and and descriptions fields. If a user comes along and searches a particular name of a products using the client's interface, then the name parameter will be passed down my data feed, and it will return a search for that query name, back to the clients interface, from my database. I assume the my real-time data feed will be constructed as an API service. What requirements would I need to gather from the client's system interface? Would I need to ask them for the list of parameters they require to query through my data feed?"}
{"_id": "236846", "title": "Implicit OAuth2 endpoint vs. cookies", "text": "I currently have an app which basically runs two halves of an API - a restful API for the web app, and a synchronisation API for the native clients (all over SSL). The web app is completely javascript based and is quite similar to the native clients anyway - except it currently does not work offline. What I'm hoping to do is merge the fragmented APIs into a single restful API. The web app currently authenticates by issuing a cookie to the client whereas the native clients work using a custom HMAC access token implementation. Obviously a public/private key scenario for a javascript app is a little pointless. I think the best solution would be to create an OAuth2 endpoint on the API (like Instagram, for example http://instagram.com/developer/authentication/) which is used by both the native apps and the web app. My question is, in terms of security how does an implicit OAuth2 flow compare (storing the access token in local storage) to \"secure\" cookies? Presumably although SSL solves man in the middle attacks, the user could theoretically grab the access token from local storage and copy it to another machine?"}
{"_id": "10358", "title": "If you learned formal methods for software, how useful have you found it?", "text": "If you have been trained in the use of formal methods (FM) for programming:   * How useful have you found it?    * What did your FM training involve (e.g. a course, a book)?    * What FM tools do you use?    * What advantages in speed/quality has it given you compared to not using FM?    * What kind of software do you create with FM?    * **And if you don't directly use FM now, was it at least worth learning??** I'm curious to hear as many experiences/opinions on FM as can be found in this community; I'm starting to read up on it and want to know more. ## Background Programming and software development/engineering are some of the newest human skills/professions on Earth, so not surprisingly, the field is immature \u2014 that shows in our field's main output, as code that is typically late and error- prone. Industry immaturity is also shown by the wide margin (at least 10:1) in productivity between average and top coders. Such dismal facts are well covered in the literature, and introduced by books like Steve McConnell's Code Complete. The use of formal methods (FM) has been proposed by major figures in software/CS (e.g. the late E. Dijkstra) to address (one of) the root causes of errors: the lack of mathematical rigour in programming. Dijkstra, for instance, advocated for students developing a program and its proof together. FM seems to be much more prevalent in CS curricula in Europe compared to the US. But in the past few years, new \"lightweight\" FM approaches and tools like Alloy have attracted some attention. Still, FM is far from common usage in industry, and I'm hoping for some feedback here on why. ## Update As of now (10/14/2010), of the 6 answers below, no one has clearly argued for the usage of FM in \"real world\" work. I'm really curious if someone can and will; or perhaps FM really does illustrate the divide between academia (FM is the future!) and industry (FM is mostly useless)."}
{"_id": "149372", "title": "IPC in C under linux", "text": "I'm building a messaging solution with the followingsetup: all the messages are saved on a DB, two or more reader processes will read from this DB and send data to other process(es) which will send it over the network. My approach is depicted below, The following have 4 sender process with 4 fifos, and 2 readers with 2 fifos reader0 \u2190 read data from DB   reader1 \u2190 read data from DB _sending part_   network_handler0 \u2190 network_handler_fifo0 \u2190 reader0   network_handler1 \u2190 network_handler_fifo1 \u2190 reader1   network_handler2 \u2190 network_handler_fifo2 \u2190 reader0   network_handler3 \u2190 network_handler_fifo3 \u2190 reader1 _receiving part_   network_handler0 \u2192 reader_fifo0 \u2192 reader0 \u2192 write to DB   network_handler1 \u2192 reader_fifo1 \u2192 reader1 \u2192 write to DB   network_handler2 \u2192 reader_fifo0 \u2192 reader0 \u2192 write to DB   network_handler3 \u2192 reader_fifo1 \u2192 reader1 \u2192 write to DB I have few problem with this setup, and please note that the number of processes could be more than that based on the environment, so I could make it 20 readers and 10 network_handlers or it it could as shown above.   1. The size of the buffer is 64K and the message size is 200k, is this small enough to make the write/read to/from fifo atomic?   2. How can make the processes aware of each other, so for example, reader 0 writes to network_handler_fifo0 and network_handler_fifo2, how can I make it start writing on other fifo if the current ones are full or their network_handlers are dea d   3. I thought about making the reader process writing more general in writing, so for example it writes to all network fifos using lock mechanism and stop writing on the one that its process dead, I didn't use it as lock mechanism could slow thing down.  BTW, each network_handler is an SCTP association, so network_handler0 is association 0, network_handler1 is association 1 and so on. Any idea is appreciated. I mean even if I have to change the setup above."}
{"_id": "193647", "title": "How to deal with user interface design and respective feature support in Agile development?", "text": "In an Agile development process usually the main focus is on User stories, but sometimes a single requirement may span several user stories. For example, the client may request a search page for all users in a forum, and there are several actions that can occur on each user such as ban user, delete user, reset Password, etc. We may divide this feature into at least 4 user stories:   1. Search for users   2. Ban user   3. Delete user   4. Reset password How would the user interface designer implement such a user interface? Should he/she work on the first user story and then start incrementing more features to the UI? However, I think the final UI will be messed up! If he decides to work on the whole feature (search + actions), what if the actions where of low priority and would be implemented several iterations after the search functionality was done?"}
{"_id": "166354", "title": "PHP - Auto Code Formatter?", "text": "I am just wonedering is there a tool/software (ideally free) to do a auto code formatting in the PHP for batch of files (not one by one which i can use the IDE for that) Ideally something like this where i can set the settings and it will do the auto formatting for all the files in side that folder ...etc http://beta.phpformatter.com/ this is very useful but issue is i have to do this one by one copy pasting .. thats why i am looking for another tool.."}
{"_id": "236206", "title": "What is the difference between programming for microcontrollers and programming for embedded systems?", "text": "What is the difference precisely between an Embedded System (like Tegra, Raspberry or similar) and a Microcontroller? I understand there is a difference but I'm finding it difficult to understand. What does one intent when he says: \"are you able to develop for microcontrollers\"? Does it mean simply program in C/C++ for an embedded system or something more? What is the difference between programming in C/C++ for Embedded Systems and Microcontrollers? If I commonly program for ARM in C/C++, can I say that I can program microcontrollers or can I apply for such a job?"}
{"_id": "236205", "title": "Delegate method privately called from delegate itself?", "text": "One has established design patterns so ingrained in their brain, that when sometimes somebody does something unexpected, it is a revelation. My colleague in an iOS project did call the delegate method from the delegate class itself. That means the delegator was not involved in invoking this method at all. Does this break some kind of principle or design pattern? Technically the delegate method is just like any other method and it is available in the class to call. But we are used to only delegators calling them. Is he breaking a promise of some kind?"}
{"_id": "176435", "title": "Why does Facebook convert PHP code to C++?", "text": "I read that Facebook started out in PHP, and then to gain speed, they now compile PHP as C++ code. If that's the case why don't they:   1. Just program in c++? Surely there must be SOME errors/bugs when hitting a magic compiler button that ports PHP to c++ code , right?   2. If this impressive converter works so nicely, why stick to PHP at all? Why not use something like Ruby or Python? Note -- I picked these two at random, but mostly because nearly _everyone_ says coding in those languages is a \"joy\". So why not develop in a super great language and then hit the magic c++ compile button?"}
{"_id": "176437", "title": "Help me understand a phrase from the \"Java concurrency in practice\"", "text": "On a page twelve of \"Java concurrency in practice\" there is a phrase > \"A good specification defines invariants constraining an object's state and > post - conditions describing the effect of its operation.\" More or less I undersand the phrase untill the word `\"post\"`, then it becomes a garbage. Can you help please?"}
{"_id": "176438", "title": "In what stage of development should comments be written?", "text": "I'm a student working an internship at a larger company, writing small business apps in C#. I've noticed that I don't comment my code as I write it. Rather, I comment my code when I'm in the debugging stage of development. As I'm tracking down bugs, I'll run across a block that makes me think \"hmm...that might confuse someone in the future. I'd better comment that\", and I'll add the appropriate comments. All of my comments are done this way. Is this an appropriate way of commenting? Should comments be written as the code is written? Or does it really matter when the comments are written, as long as they adequately explain why this block is used?"}
{"_id": "139094", "title": "What's the best practice for async APIs that return futures on Scala?", "text": "I have started a project to write an async PostgreSQL driver on Scala and to be async, I need to accept callbacks and use futures, but then accepting a callback **and** a future makes the code cumbersome because you always have to send a callback even if it is useless. Here's a test:               \"insert a row in the database\" in {            withHandler {         (handler, future) =>           future.get(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS)           handler.sendQuery( this.create ){ query =>  }.get( 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS )           handler.sendQuery( this.insert ){ query =>  }.get( 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS ).rowsAffected === 1       }          }      Sending the empty callback is horrible but I couldn't find a way to make it optional or anything like that, so right now I don't have a lot of ideas on how this external API should look like. It could be something like:               handler.sendQuery( this.create ).addListener { query => println(query) }      But then again, I'm not sure how people are organizing API's in this regard. Providing examples in other projects would also be great."}
{"_id": "139095", "title": "Did I Inadvertently Create a Mediator in my MVC?", "text": "I'm currently working on my first biggish project. It's a frontend facebook application that has, since last Tuesday, spanned some 6000-8000 LOC. I say this because I'm using the MVC, an architecture I have never rigidly enforced in any of my hobby projects. I read part of the PureMVC book, but I didn't quite grasp the concept of the Mediator. Since I didn't understand and didn't see the need for it, my project has yet to use a single mediator. Yesterday I went back to the design board because of some requirement changes and noticed that I could move all UI elements out of the View and into its own class. The View essentially only managed the lifetime of the UI and all events from the UI or Model. Technically, the View has now become a 'Mediator' between the Model and UI. Therefore, I realized today, I could just move all my UI stuff back into the View and create a mediator class that handles all events from the view and model. Is my understanding correct in thinking that I have devolved my View as it currently is (handling events from the Model and UI) into a Mediator and that the UI class is what _should_ be the View?"}
{"_id": "139090", "title": "Why no more macro languages?", "text": "In this answer to a previous question of mine about scripting languages suitability as shells, DigitalRoss identifies the difference between the macro languages and the \"parsed typed\" languages in terms of string treatment as the main reason that scripting languages are _not_ suitable for shell purposes. Macro languages include nroff and m4 for example. What are the design decisions (or compromises) needed to create a macro programming language? And why are most of the mainstream languages parsed rather than macro? This very similar question (and the accepted answer) covers fairly well why the parsed typed languages, take C for example, suffer from the use of macros. I believe my question here covers different grounds:   1. Macro languages or those working on a textual level are not wholly failures. Arguably, they include `bash`, `Tcl` and other shell languages. And they work in a specific niche such as shells as explained in my links above. Even `m4` had a fairly long time of success, and some of the web template languages can be regarded as macro languages.   2. It is quite possible that macros and parsed typing do not go well together and that is why macros \"break\" common languages. In the answer to the linked question, a macro like `#define TWO 1+1` would have been covered by the common rules of the language rather than conflicting with those of the host language. And issues like \"macros are not typed\" and \"code doesn't compile\" are not relevant in the context of a language designed as untyped and interpreted with little concern for efficiency.   3. The question about the design decisions needed to create a macro language pertain to a hobby project which I am currently working on on designing a new shell. Taking the previous question in context would clarify the difference between adding macros to a parsed language and my objective. I hope the clarification shows that the question linked doesn't cover this question, which is two parts:   1. If I want to create a macro language (for a shell or a web template, for example), what limitations and compromises (and guidelines, if exist) need to be done?   2. (Probably answerable by a link or reference) Why have no macro languages succeed in becoming mainstream except in particular niches? What makes typed languages successful in large programming, while \"stringly-typed\" languages succeed in shells and one-liner like environments?"}
{"_id": "122937", "title": "Request Information from iPhone/Php developers", "text": "recently I hired a freelancer to develop an iPhone application for my website, this application will get information from the DB of the website, normally I should give to him the access to the DB to take the information needed. The question is, how to let him take the information needed without safely, i.e preventing the danger from hacking or accessing to the DB of the website or do some modifications on it... What can I do ?"}
{"_id": "122938", "title": "Patterns for Continuous Integration and DVCS", "text": "We currently use Subversion and TeamCity, we're going to move to using Mercurial (specifically Kiln as we're FogBugz users). Obviously this will result in changes - hopefully improvements - in our development patterns (all two of us!) but the one issue I'm stuggling with is how to structure things so that we still enjoy the benefits of continuous integration/our CI server (that there are and will remain benefits is a given, discussion of which is outside the scope of _this_ question). With SVN we are committing to a limited number of central repositories - effectively one per project (more or less one Visual Studio Solution) so its easy to trigger a build and to get the reassurance that all the files have been commited and that there are no stray dependencies etc, etc. But if we're going to take proper advantge of mercurial we're going to want to have more repository instances - where I'd expect changes to generally flow towards a definitive \"live\" repo. The problem I'm struggling with is that the live repo seems to me to be too \"late\" to trigger my CI builds OTOH one CI build per project per developer is probably excessive (and causes other issues). I think that live is too late because - given that we can/should have more repos (clones of) - live should be deployable whereas we want to be building/running tests (unit at commit, integration at scheduled intervals) on development commits. I'm fishing a bit but that's because one of the things that a central subversion repo gives one (me, with our setup!) is a lot of clarity about what to build when. * * * n.b. I'm not asking about the mechanics of using mercurial with continuous integration - I have that working a treat for a personal project, its patterns and structures and working practice/workflow that I'm trying to get my head round."}
{"_id": "6255", "title": "Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite?", "text": "Joel Spolsky said in one of his famous posts: > The single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: > rewrite the code from scratch. Chad Fowler wrote: > You\u2019ve seen the videos, the weblog posts and the hype, and you\u2019ve decided > you\u2019re going to re-implement your product in Rails (or Java, or .NET, or > Erlang, etc.). > > Beware. This is a longer, harder, more failure-prone path than you expect. Have you ever been involved in a BIG Rewrite?   I'm interested in your experience about this tragic topic, and in particular, in any big rewrite that was completed succesfully (if any)."}
{"_id": "65881", "title": "Accessing SAP R/3 from Java", "text": "What do I have to do to write a Java Interface for SAP R/3. I do not have experience with SAP, and they are very slow in their answers, so I just ask here for your experience with them. Can anyone create software that uses SAP for free? Do we have to license the Java Connector? Do we have to become SAP partners? How much is it? Thanks for all information you have."}
{"_id": "247368", "title": "What is a good strategy to develop apps that run in console and as API?", "text": "I develop quite often scripts that are primary used as a console application but later they are used in other scripts, webservices and other things where it is very convenient, to just import the script and call methods directly rather than using a Process and parsing stdout. The question is now, what is a good design strategy to develop such scripts? I have an example here in python:               def main():        # do stuff        print(\"Found several results here:\")        for foo in bar:            print(\"result: %s\" % foo)               if __name__ == \"__main__\"():         main()      this one could be easily rewritten to something like this:               def main():        result = some_function()        print(\"Found several results here:\")        for foo in result:            print(\"result: %s\" % foo)               def some_function():        # do stuff        return bar               if __name__ == \"__main__\"():         main()      But in most of my cases this is not so easy. But how to deal with this problem when the program does quite a lot of output, like different analyses or several steps or the return value of an API function would be something like a list of dict of list of tuples (or even more complicated structures)? Would it be good to encapsulate every step into a single method and run them one after another? What design patterns can be used to write good progamms that can be easily reused as APIs?"}
{"_id": "247369", "title": "Defining property and find substitution for copy function of python in cython", "text": "I want to cythonize a code in python to speed up the code. In the following you can see my attempt to make my python class understandable for cython:               import numpy as np     cimport numpy as np     ctypedef np.double_t DTYPE_T     cpdef double std_G,v_c     std_G=4.3e-9 # Newton's const   in Mpc (km/s)^2 M_sol^{-1}     v_c = 299792.458 #km/s          cdef extern from \"math.h\":         double log(double) nogil         double sqrt(double) nogil               cdef extern from \"gsl/gsl_math.h\":         ctypedef struct gsl_function:             double (* function) (double x, void * params)             void * params          cdef extern from \"gsl/gsl_integration.h\":         ctypedef struct gsl_integration_workspace         gsl_integration_workspace *  gsl_integration_workspace_alloc(size_t n)         void  gsl_integration_workspace_free(gsl_integration_workspace * w)         int  gsl_integration_qags(const gsl_function * f, double a, double b, double epsabs, double epsrel, size_t limit, gsl_integration_workspace * workspace, double *result, double *abserr)          cdef double do_callback(double x, void* params):           return (<ComovingDistMemoization>params).eval(x)                cdef class ComovingDistMemoization(object):          cdef list _memotable          cdef cosmolgy          def __cinit__(self, cosmology, memotable = None):                   if memotable is None:                 self._memotable = []                   self._memotable = memotable              self.cosmology = cosmology          def __call__(self, double z):                      if z in self._memotable:                 return self._memotable[z]                 def eval(z):                      return 1./sqrt(self.cosmology.hubble2(z))             cdef gsl_integration_workspace* w =gsl_integration_workspace_alloc(1000)             cdef gsl_function F                              F.function = &do_callback              F.params = <void*>self              cdef double result = 3, error = 5             cdef double y, err, dist             gsl_integration_qags (&F, 0, z, 0, 1e-7, 1000, w, &result, &error)              y, err = result, error                   gsl_integration_workspace_free(w)                   dist = self.cosmology.v_c * y  #to get proper units, ie to put in the hubble length                  self._memotable[z] = dist                  return dist               cdef class cosmology(object):         cdef comovingdist         cdef public double omega_m, omega_l, h, w, omega_r, G, v_c         cdef double H0, hubble_length         def __init__(self, omega_m = 0.3, omega_l = 0.7, h = 0.7, w = -1, omega_r = 0., G = std_G):                  self.omega_m = omega_m             self.omega_l = omega_l             self.omega_r = omega_r             self.h = h             self.w = w             self.G = G             self.v_c = v_c                  self.comovingdist = ComovingDistMemoization(self)         def __copy__(self):                  return cosmology(omega_m = self.omega_m, omega_l = self.omega_l, h = self.h, w = self.w, omega_r = self.omega_r, G = self.G)              property H0:            def __get__(self):                return 100*self.h  #km/s/MPC              def hubble2(self, double z):             cdef double inv_a             inv_a = 1.+z             return (self.omega_r*inv_a**4 + self.omega_m*inv_a**3 + \\                       self.omega_l*(inv_a**(3*(1+self.w))) + (1 - self.omega_m - self.omega_l - self.omega_r)*inv_a**2)*self.H0**2              property hubble_length:             def __get__(self):                 return self.v_c / self.H0              def rho_crit(self, double z):             return 3.*self.hubble2(z)/(8*np.pi*self.G)                   def angulardist(self, double z, double z2 = None):                 if z2 is None:                 return self.comovingdist(z) / (1+z)                  return (self.comovingdist(z2) - self.comovingdist(z)) / (1+z2)      However one of the places that raises error and I couldn't find so far any substitution and my investigation just reached to this point that the `__copy__(self)` function is not supported by cython. I have read that with `pickle.Pickler`, it is possible to provide a substitution for an **instance** of a class but I don't know how it should produce a copy of a class inside the class?? Update: Is it a right way to replace `__copy__` with the following piece of code:               def __reduce__(self):         return (self.__class__, (), self.__getstate__())     def __getstate__(self):         return (self.omega_m, self.omega_l, self.omega_r, self.h, self.w, self.G, self.v_c)     def __setstate__(self, data):         (self.omega_m, self.omega_l, self.omega_r, self.h, self.w, self.G, self.v_c) = data      My second question is about `property`, have I defined the property in cython or I also need to have a `__set__` function as well? My last question, at this point the code get compiled without any error message but when I call an instance of `cosmology` class in python all them return zero. I am wondering whether the wayI have called for instance `cosmology` class in `ComovingDistMemoization` class and vice versa caused the problem and can not pass info between them ?"}
{"_id": "125051", "title": "confusion between SVN and code backup by month/date/time whenever i make major or important update to the code", "text": "I am working on two different project simultaneously where whenever the changes are made we use   1. Tortoise SVN for project A   2. Backed up by folder for Project B (this is done by me on my system) I find SVN good for maintaining the latest code server machine and update it whenever necessary.   For Project A, I happen to make alot of changes to the project A and I am advice not to commit the changes again and again but just a major change all at once.   But since in not alone on project A I tend to make code backs by folder every time I make an important change so I can go back and return if some conflict occurs. But what should I do in case of the project B?   where most I am on the project (as of now).   Should it be SVN or folder backups? The reason I do folder backups for the project B is that   sometimes the build given to the client fails/buggy so instead of making them wait for it to fix   I just go and open the project and compile the last working build and give the executable so they can carry on their work and not wait for me to fix it (may take long). I am working with Delphi on both the projects."}
{"_id": "246818", "title": "MVC content management framework with an admin panel", "text": "I've lately been developing my own MVC content management system using PHP and, at least in my mind, am a little stuck with the system design. I believe this would apply to building a content management system with an existing MVC framework as well. This is going to be a little difficult to explain, so sorry in advance for the lengthy dilemma. **A little intro to the system:** Currently my routes look a little like this (stored as JSON):               {         \"/admin/:controller/:action/:params\":\"\",         \"/admin/:controller/:params\":\"AdminController\",         \"/admin\":\"AdminController\",         \"/:page?/:subpage?\":\"IndexController\"     }      The routes are the keys, the default controllers are the values. If there isn't a default controller the router falls through to the next rule. I've done this to separate the front end of the site from the admin panel. The controllers are all in one directory for the time being, although this is destined to change. They either return a template that's been populated with data from their respective model or simply modify the request they were instantiated with. **The problem:** My problem is with deciding how to implement separate controllers that concern the same model for the front end and the back end in a modular way. For example, I have a page in the admin panel that allows an administrator to enter some private information that's intended only to be accessible on the front end with a username and password. Imagine this is handled by an `InfoController` in the back end, for editing the private information, matched by the route `/admin/info`. What if I wanted to create a route for the front end, for accessing the private information, with the same name as in the admin panel (`/info`)? The problem makes more sense in context with the solutions I've considered, I think. **Solutions I've considered:**   1. My first thought was to append all admin-related controllers with `Admin` \\- so `AdminInfoController` and `InfoController` \\- but I'm interested in eventually having a modular system where all the routes, controllers and views (and CSS/JavaScript if needed) pertaining to the `Info` model would be in their own directory structure (something like `/modules/info`).    2. With the desire for modularity in mind, I thought about matching routes a bit like `/:module/:controller/:action`, but this would then imply that the admin panel is itself a module, which would need access to all the modules the front end can use. Would that make sense?   3. The design I've thought about the most is to have the admin and front end as two distinguished, core concepts of the framework. They would share modules that contain controllers and views for both. Ultimately I'm looking for input on the best approach here, any alternatives, and whether I'm totally over-thinking this. It feels a bit like I've driven myself crazy with the pursuit of my ideal system design that keeps with the MVC pattern (is it even the right thing for a system like this?). Thanks for reading, I hope it made sense."}
{"_id": "255757", "title": "How do you track what you and your team are working on day-to-day?", "text": "I'm struggling with how to keep track of what myself and people on my team actually do each day. I get a good broad picture by going over completed cards each week and stand-ups help a bit, but I feel like I don't have a good handle on the day-to-day workings of my team. Cards will stay in progress for days on end without an update at the daily stand-up, and some engineers are my team aren't the most communicative. I've thought about implementing some sort of daily record that everyone fills out (via a mailing list or a shared google doc) but this seems fairly cumbersome and manual. Monitoring GitHub activity does an ok job but can be a little bit overwhelming with how many emails it sends out everyday. I've thought about trying to build a digest system for it, but don't have the time to spare. What strategies have you implemented to stay on top of what your team is doing everyday so that you can measure work on \"in progress\" tasks?"}
{"_id": "255754", "title": "What is meant by an HTML5 application?", "text": "Since HTML5 is still only a markup language, what is meant when people say \"HTML5 application\"? Please explain."}
{"_id": "184901", "title": "How to avoid duplication between my issue tracker and the project specification documents?", "text": "I used to work for a professional consulting firm, and we worked under many different contract terms. When we could get a time & materials project, we ran it with SCRUM and tracked the backlog in our issue tracker system. Most of the time, however, we had to deliver under a fixed price contract. This required a specifications document as an appendix to the contract. So we always ended up batch importing work-items (or worse, manually entering) from the spec. Change orders took a lot of time to make sure everything was in sync, especially towards the end of the project. Is there a methodology or software tool out there **that keeps this whole process DRY**? I've done some searching and I'm apparently not using the right terms. Most of my professional network doesn't do fixed price work. I'd be open to:   1. Switching my bug tracker or buying plugins (currently using FogBugz).    2. Following a different development methodology    3. Writing software to manage the specifications and update the bug tracker and specification document (but this sounds like it will be a lot of work for dubious benefit) Lastly, is this really worth solving? It cost us quite a bit on some projects, but on other projects it didn't end up affecting us."}
{"_id": "134116", "title": "Can I share data between two users in an ASP.NET Application?", "text": "I have an issue with `Roles.IsUserInRole` function. It take hell amount of time to just check if the logged-in user is in particular role(typ 3-9 sec). I searched to find a solution and arrived on this but I am not sure If I have fully grasped it. What I got from the above, A new derived class is created. Inside that class, there is a list which retrieves all user at once. The next time you check `IsUserInRole`, you do not use the actual IsUserInRole method but rather use the one you overrode in your class. Is this the correct description? Am I on track? **My question is, can data be share between two different users in ASP.NET application?** If yes, will the shared data exist only if there is at least one user logged in. If all users logs out, that shared data is destroyed? My point is this data will be created only one time whenever a user logs in. For all subsequent users they can use this data and check their roles against the list? I need a detailed answer. My application has users and different roles. We are using ASP.NET roles."}
{"_id": "141733", "title": "What is history and concept of code annotation?", "text": "C# and Java has code attribute and code annotation. I don't know about other languages, but I know the code annotation feature is used to expand language itself. I knew what it is, but I want to know how it developed over time. I want to know its history. How it demanded and how it implemented. Is this possible to implement this in kind of concept on LISP, Smalltalk or C++? And is there a general term to call the concept of annotation?"}
{"_id": "141736", "title": "How important is index size when searching?", "text": "My company has recently began using Apache Solr to search its data. As we learn how to use it we have gone down the path of indexing multiple fields to get the results we need. Most of these are either N-Grammed or Edge-N-Grammed (N-grammed, but only from the edge; for starts-with searching). Gramming by nature takes up a lot of space, which takes more time to search. Space is cheap, but time is less so. Index time is not too important, since a delta-import (only get the changes since last index) is extremely quick and you only pay a penalty on the first import. What we've not been able to determine is what effect the index size has on query times. Obviously a larger index takes longer to search, but the time added by n-gramming a field is difficult to predict. How do you determine whether a field is worth gramming? Can you predict how much longer a query will take when you gram a field?"}
{"_id": "134113", "title": "How can we avoid creating duplicate or conflicting functionality when working on an agile team?", "text": "I'm working in a team where each member is working on an user story. How can we avoid creating duplicate or conflicting functionality? For example, if my user story requires the creation of class A and my team member needs the same functionality and creates a similar class (maybe with a slightly different name), how should we plan our work so that we both move smoothly?"}
{"_id": "45349", "title": "Best practices when creating/modeling databases?", "text": "I learned at the University some steps to model a database:   1. Model the problem using the _Extended Entity-Relationship Model_.   2. Extract the functional dependencies    3. Apply some algorithms to normalize the database ( _3NF_ or _Boyce-Codd_ )   4. Create the database I'm studying **Computer Science** and since I received that course I'm wondering if I always need to do those steps when creating a ~~complex~~ database for an specified problem. For example, do **PHP** / **.NET** / .. programmers always do that? or there are some tools to simplify that process, maybe using another way of represent the problem instead of the _EERM_?"}
{"_id": "184909", "title": "Do people who get paid to write code but score low on the \"programmer competency matrix\" have an ethical duty to find a different kind of job?", "text": "People advise me to \"find a job doing something that you are good at\", but the truth is that I don't believe I am good with anything other than just writing code. I don't think that I can design or structure a program though. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of programmer who can't write a fizz buzz program; I'm more like the kind of programmer who can't do much besides getting the job done. It's not that I have a \"do the bare minimum\" attitude; it's that I'm painfully aware of my limitations as a programmer. For example, implementing a quick sort algorithm is something that I could do only by relying on rote memorization (that is, if I ever find the motivation to spend a good chunk of my day trying to commit the entire algorithm to memory and not just go like \"umm, I see, that makes sense, I can see the logic...\"). When it comes to structuring and designing an application I feel I'm just as helpless. Since I am unable to see the right answer at the start I just make a judgement call which nine times out of ten I later regret. I still manage to obtain job promotions and praise from my coworkers, so others don't necessarily share my opinions. Objectively speaking though, I simply have neither the learning ability nor the sheer brain power to realistically aspire to be anything more than a 'slightly above average' programmer. I wonder whether I actually have an ethical duty to make room for more talented people and find myself another kind of job, even if I'm fairly confident that I would not find another role I am better qualified for. My question then is \"Do average programmers have a place on a team?\""}
{"_id": "249484", "title": "How to update a row in database without ID?", "text": "I've got a table with the following structure :               Col1 | Col2  | Col3     A    | B     | C     A    | C     | B     E    | D     | C      The primary key is (Col1,Col2,Col3). I get the data in another project and display it in view with a grid. When the user edit a row in the grid, for example : A,B,C -> A,B,E, I get (A,B,E) and try to update the database. But I don't know which row must be updated if I don't have the original (A,B,C). What's the proper way to resolve this issue ? Should I create a temporary ID on my second project ? I don't think create an specific ID in the database is a good idea."}
{"_id": "134118", "title": "Why are shortcuts like x += y considered good practice?", "text": "I have no idea what these are actually called, but I see them all the time. The Python implementation is something like: `x += 5` as a shorthand notation for `x = x + 5`. But why is this considered good practice? I've run across it in nearly every book or programming tutorial I've read for Python, C, R so on and so forth. I get that it's convenient, saving 3 keystrokes including spaces. But they always seem to trip me up when I'm reading code, and at least to my mind, make it _less_ readable, not more. Am I missing some clear and obvious reason these are used all over the place?"}
{"_id": "38055", "title": "How to avoid distractions during programming and keep up to date?", "text": "People always need concentration during work tasks, but i feel programming requires even a higher level. In general my biggest problem is getting distracted by my articles feeds, but i also give it a lot importance to keeping up to date.   1. What are recommended habits or tips to avoid distraction during long programming sessions?   2. How to keep up to date with technologies without investing a big amount of time reading and browsing?  Thanks in advanced."}
{"_id": "9", "title": "How do you stay focused at work?", "text": "Sometimes, the things I have to do for my job are interesting and engaging. Sometimes, they aren't. Occasionally, they _really_ aren't. Do you have any particular strategies or tricks for dealing with those dull stretches when your brain would rather be doing anything other than what you're supposed to be doing, particularly when the Internet and its boundless opportunities for interesting Slack beckon?"}
{"_id": "164227", "title": "Design patterns and multiple programming languages", "text": "I am referring here to the design patterns found in the GOF book. First, how I see it, there are a few peculiarities to design pattern and knowing multiple languages, for example in Java you really need a singleton but in Python you can do without it you write a module, I saw somewhere a wiki trying to write all GOF patterns for JavaScript and all the entries were empty, I guess because it might be a daunting task to do that adaptation. If there is someone who is using design patterns and is programming multiple languages supporting the OOP paradigm and can give me a hint on how should I approach design patterns. An approach that might help me in all languages I use(Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby): Can I write good application without knowing exactly the GOF design patterns or I might need just some of them which might be crucial and if yes which one, are there alternatives to GOF for specific languages, and should a programmer or a team make their own design patterns set?"}
{"_id": "164225", "title": "What is the purpose of Console in Sublime text editor?", "text": "I want to know what purpose does console solve in sublime text 2. This is invoked by pressing Ctrl+Shift+` Is this a kind of debugger, or It just helps you to install packages."}
{"_id": "164221", "title": "Understanding binary numbers in terms of real world objects", "text": "When I represent a number in the decimal system, I have an intuitive knowledge of what it amounts to. For example take the number '10': I understand that it means 10 apples or 10 people... i.e I can count in the real world. But as soon as the number is converted to any other system, this understanding no longer applies. For example 10 when converted to binary will be 1010...now what does this represent? Is there a way to understand this number 1010 in terms of counting objects in the real world?"}
{"_id": "179664", "title": "Joomla Secondary Users", "text": "## Background I have a joomla based application. My customers sign up and they register as a user on the site. My customers (primary customers) then have their own space on the site that they can then setup their own customers (secondary customer). ## Question/Problem The problem I am having is that I need to tag each secondary customer to a primary customer. I thought about just creating a new component and having a separate table that includes all the secondary customers. The problem is that I then lose out on all the authentication, session handling and login/logout that the core joomla _users component offers. I then thought about just having all the users in the core _users table and add the primary customer associated with each secondary customer to a field in a profile plugin. This would work for the most part, but this means that primary customers cannot create a secondary customer with a user name that already exists in the _users table. I didn't think this would be an issue, but several of my primary customers (currently only test users) have been confused by the site telling them a username is not available, since they can only see the names of their own secondary customers. Any ideas on some architectural changes I could make to solve this?"}
{"_id": "179667", "title": "Architecting persistence (and other internal systems). Interfaces, composition, pure inheritance or centralization?", "text": "Suppose that you need to implement persistence, I think that you're generally limited to four options (correct me if I'm wrong, please) Each persistant class:   1. Should implement an interface (IPersistent)   2. Contains a 'persist-me' object that is a specialized object (or class) that's made only to be used with the class that contains it.   3. Inherit from Persistent (a base class) Or you can create a gigantic class (or package) called Database and make your persistence logic there. What are the advantages and problems that can come from each of one? In a small (5kloc) and algorithmically (or organisationally) simple app what is probably the best option?"}
{"_id": "138328", "title": "Why does Java define homogeneous methods in Matcher and Pattern classes", "text": "I wonder why java defines homogeneous methods in two distinct classes: java.util.regex.Pattern and java.util.regex.Matcher. For example `split` method defined in `Pattern` class and `replaceAll` method defined in `Matcher` class. I think these two methods are homogeneous, why are they not defined in the same class? Have I understood it wrong? By \"homogenous\", I mean: `split` and `replaceAll` methods are utilities for String, why not defined in a class?"}
{"_id": "175166", "title": "Architecture advice for converting biz app from old school to new school?", "text": "I've got a WinForms business application that evolved over the past few years. It's forms over data with a number custom UI experiences taylored to the business, so I don't think it's a candidate to port to something like SharePoint or re-write in LightSwitch (at least not without significant investment). When I started it in 2009 I was new to this type of development (coming from more low level programming and my RDBMS knowledge was just slightly greater than what I got from school). Thus, when I was confronted with a business model that operates on a strict monthly accounting cycle, I made the unfortunate decision to create a separate database for each accounting period. Also, when I started I knew DataSets, then I learned Linq2Sql, then I learned EntityFramework. The screens are a mix and match of those. Now, after a few years developing this thing by myself I've finally got a small team. Ultimately, I want a web front end (for remote access to more straight up screens with grids of data) _and_ a thick client (for the highly customized interfaces). **My question is:** can you offer me some broad strokes architecture advice that will help me formulate a battle plan to convert over to a single database and lay the foundations for my future goals at the same time? Here's a screen shot showing how an older screen uses DataSets and a newer screen uses EF (I'm thinking this might make it more real for someone reading the question - I'm willing to add any amount of detail if someone is willing to help). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/q2vPb.png)"}
{"_id": "175167", "title": "Is it my responsibility to code for errors on a completely separate website and domain when redirecting or doing a single sign on?", "text": "If my application is responsible for redirecting/doing a single sign on to a destination managed by a third party, in general, where should I draw the line for error handling during this process? If an error happens on the other application's end, is it reasonable for my stakeholder to expect the application I am working with to share responsibility for handling these scenarios? Notes:   * I am going to keep solutions limited to those that entail only one request--I am familiar with the \"do an xmlhttprequest and see how that fares before doing anything else\" approach.    * I am speaking in terms of an enterprise-level application with fairly decent customer traffic."}
{"_id": "175162", "title": "How do I structure code and builds for continuous delivery of multiple applications in a small team?", "text": "**Background:** 3-5 developers supporting (and building new) internal applications for a non- software company. We use TFS although I don't think that matters much for my question. I want to be able to develop a deployment pipeline and adopt continuous integration / deployment techniques. Here's what our source tree looks like right now. We use a single TFS Team Project.               $/MAIN/src/     $/MAIN/src/ApplicationA/VSSOlution.sln     $/MAIN/src/ApplicationA/ApplicationAProject1.csproj     $/MAIN/src/ApplicationA/ApplicationAProject2.csproj     $/MAIN/src/ApplicationB/...     $/MAIN/src/ApplicationC     $/MAIN/src/SharedInfrastructureA     $/MAIN/src/SharedInfrastructureB      **My Goal (a pretty typical promotion pipeline)**   1. When a code change is made to a given application I want to be able to build that application and auto-deploy that change to a DEV server.      * I may also need to build dependencies on Shared Infrastructure Components.     * I often also have some database scripts or changes as well   2. If developer testing passes I want to have an manually triggered but automated deploy of that build on a STAGING server where end-users will review new functionality.   3. Once it's approved by end users I want to a manually triggered auto-deploy to production **Question:** How can I best adopt continuous deployment techniques in a multi-application environment? A lot of the advice I see is more single-application-specific, how is that best applied to multiple applications?   * For step 1, do I simply setup a separate Team Build for each application?   * What's the best approach to accomplishing steps 2 and 3 of promoting latest build to new environments?   * I've seen this work well with web apps but what about database changes"}
{"_id": "175163", "title": "To write or not to write: Frameworks", "text": "Today some friends and I started discussing frameworks.. Some of us strongly believe that in 99.9% of cases, writing a new framework is a bad idea. We believe that probably some of the millions of frameworks out there should fit our problem, and if not, some hack, API, or configuration should be enough. If not, we think that contributing to some framework, suggest features or something like that should be the best solution. The 0.1% is when none of the frameworks fit to our case. But, some of us say that it is better to have an \"internal corporate framework\" (for example), because it's faster to fix issues, creates a 100% fit with the app, because of the \"learning\" factor (when you improve your skills building a framework), etc. I think that to go out coding frameworks like there's no tomorrow is not the right way. I've seen a lot of small teams building their own framework just to spread the word: \"we built our own framework, we rule, bro\". Generally, the framework is crap, without any documentation, and only works for their own applications. Opinions are opinions, devs are devs, without the intention to start any kind of flame war, I ask: What do you think about that? What parameters you consider when building a framework? What do you think about all this?"}
{"_id": "138321", "title": "HTML5/Javascript + Web Services", "text": "If developing web applications using **ASP.NET MVC** or **Ruby on Rails** make the application use the **MVC design pattern** , then if I build my application using only **HTML5/Javascript + backend webservices** (like WCF rest), then which design pattern will my application follow?"}
{"_id": "162977", "title": "What level of detail to use in an interface members descriptions?", "text": "I am extracting interfaces from some classes in .NET, and I am not completely sure about what level of detail of description to use for some of the interface members (properties, methods). An example:               interface ISomeInterface     {         /// <summary>         /// Checks if the object is checked out.         /// </summary>         /// <returns>         /// Returns true if the object is checked out, or if the object locking is not enabled,         /// otherwise returns false.         /// </returns>         bool IsObjectCheckedOut();     }          class SomeImplementation : ISomeInterface     {         public bool IsObjectCheckedOut()         {             // An implementation of the method that returns true if the object is checked out,             // or if the object locking is not enabled         }     }      The part in question is the `<returns>...</returns>` section of the `IsObjectCheckedOut` description in the interface. Is it ok to include such a detail about return value in the interface itself, as the code that will work with the interface should know exactly what that method will do? All the current implementations of the method will do just that. But is it ok to limit the possible other/future implementations by description this way? Or should this not be included in the interface description, as there is no way to actually ensure that other/future implementations will do exactly this? Is it better to be as general as possible regarding the interface in such circumstances? I am currently inclined to the latter option."}
{"_id": "178539", "title": "Is there a design pattern for chained observers?", "text": "Several times, I've found myself in a situation where I want to add functionality to an existing `Observer`-`Observable` relationship. For example, let's say I have an `Observable` class called `PriceFeed`, instances of which are created by a variety of `PriceSources`. `Observers` on this are notified whenever the underlying `PriceSource` updates the `PriceFeed` with a new price. Now I want to add a feature that allows a (temporary) override to be set on the `PriceFeed`. The `PriceSource` should still update prices on the `PriceFeed`, but for as long as the override is set, whenever a consumer asks `PriceFeed` for it's current value, it should get the override. The way I did this was to introduce a new `OverrideablePriceFeed` that is itself both an `Observer` and an `Observable`, and that decorates the actual `PriceFeed`. It's implementation of `.getPrice()` is straight from Chain of Responsibility, but how about the handling of Observable events? When an override is set or cleared, it should issue it's own event to `Observers`, as well as forwarding events from the underlying `PriceFeed`. I think of this as some kind of a chained observer, and was curious if there's a more definitive description of a similar pattern."}
{"_id": "40260", "title": "Can lack of \"bit parity\" between web server and DB server impact performance?", "text": "I had a meeting with a software vendor today about their recommended infrastructure for deploying a particular application. The application needs two servers: an app server for server web pages (.NET, Windows), and a database (SQL Server). The vendor claimed that these two servers had to have \"bit parity\". What they meant by this is that if the app server was 32 bit the SQL Server should be 32 bit, or if the app is 64 bit the SQL Server is 64 bit. Otherwise performance will be negatively impacted. This seems ludicrous to me. The servers are independent and only communicate over a network. Network protocols have nothing to do with the \"bit-ness\" of the processor on either server. Am I in the wrong? Is there a reason where a mismatch actually could negatively impact performance? NOTE: I know that certain apps might run faster or slower in 32 bit vs. 64 bit. But the vendor was saying that the _mismatch_ between web server and DB server causes a problem. This is the statement I'm questioning."}
{"_id": "178532", "title": "Strategy to find bottleneck in a network", "text": "Our enterprise is having some problem when the number of incoming request goes beyond a certain amount. To make things simpler, we have N websites that uses, amongst other, a local web service. This service is hosted by IIS, and it's a .NET 4.0 (C#) application executed in a farm. It's REST-oriented, built around OpenRasta. As already mentioned, by stress testing it with JMeter, we've found that beyond a certain amount of request the service's performance drop. Anyway, this service is, amongst other, a client itself of other 3 distinct web services and also a client for a DB server, so it's not very clear what _really_ is the culprit of this abrupt decay. In turn, these 3 other web services are installed in our farm too, and client of other DB servers (and services, possibly, that are out of my team control). What strategy do you suggest to try to locate where the bottleneck(s) are? Do you have any high-level suggestions?"}
{"_id": "194389", "title": "How can I implement Paxos to develop a project for consensus in distributed systems?", "text": "I have to implement Paxos algorithm, to experiment on consensus in an asynchronous distributed system. Following is a pdf related to Paxos: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/lorenzo/corsi/cs380d/past/03F/notes/paxos- simple.pdf I am confused from where can i start my implementation? I am a Java programmer but my teacher suggested me to use Parsec (http://pcl.cs.ucla.edu/projects/parsec/) , which needs me to code in C. But another problem is, Parsec does not support GUI based implementation. I would like to see my implementation with a GUI. Is there any Java based simulation language for discrete-event simulation where i can implement Paxos algorithm for consensus? If no, then is there any other GUI based simulation language in C to implement Paxos?"}
{"_id": "212283", "title": "Arguments for conforming to PSR-2", "text": "I am trying to convince the lead developer of an open-source project I'm contributing to, to conform to the PSR standards (PSR-2 in particular) created by the PHP Framework Interop Group. He is willing to adopt PSR-0 and PSR-1, but he is opposed to PSR-2. His argument is that PSR-2 is too inconsistent: opening braces for classes and methods MUST go on the next line, but opening braces for control structures MUST go on the same line. I believe that the difference between classes / methods at one side and control structures at the other is not an inconsistency, in fact they are different things. I also believe that consistency between different projects is far more important than treating classes / methods and control structures like they are the same, and that consistancy between projects should outweigh personal preferences... but I can't convince him. Are there any more arguments I can use to try to convince him to use PSR-2, instead of a seperate, yet-another coding standard?"}
{"_id": "212286", "title": "Multiple conditions in a function using PSR", "text": "I'm trying use the PSR conventions in all my projects, but today I view some code of my co-worker and I disagree.               if ($cond == 1 AND $cond == 2) {         // to-do     }      For me, the correct is:               if (($cond == 1) AND ($cond == 2)) {         // to-do     }      **What is the correct use of the PSR?**"}
{"_id": "94912", "title": "Is it better to blindly match the project requirements or to match the spirit of the project requirements", "text": "You know what they're asking for. You know what they really want. However, technically the way they wrote it is with a litmus test of requirements that don't match what they want because they don't understand what they're asking for. Should it be a part of our job to match the spirit of the requirements, or match ridiculous requirements with this gut feeling that the requirements will change once they see the final result? I feel it's more ethical to determine what the user really wants, and find a solution with requirements as a guideline, but often I find others lose patience too much and just wants to give them what they technically ask for."}
{"_id": "121271", "title": "What's a good approach to adding debug code to your application when you want more info about what's going wrong?", "text": "When our application doesn't work the way we expect it to (e.g. throws exceptions etc.), I usually insert a lot of debug code at certain points in the application in order to get a better overview of what exactly is going on, what the values for certain objects are, to better trace where this error is triggered from. Then I send a new installer to the user(s) that are having the problem and if the problem is triggered again I look at the logs and see what they say. But I don't want all this debug code to be in the production code, since this would create some really big debug files with information that is not always relevant. The other problem is that our code base changes, and the next time, the same debug code might have to go in different parts of the application. **Questions** Is there a way to merge this debug code within the production code only when needed and have it appear at the correct points within the application? Can it be done with a version control system like git so that all would be needed is a `git merge`? P.S. The application I'm talking about now is .NET, written in C#."}
{"_id": "122209", "title": "What would you do if your client required you not to use object-oriented programming?", "text": "I am writing a program to simulate the activity of ants in a grid (PDF). The ant can move around, pick up things and drop things. The problem is while the action of the ants and the positions of each ant can be tracked by class attributes easily (and we can easily create many instances of such ants) my client said that since he has a background in functional programming he would like the simulation to be made using functional programming. To be clear, the original words from the client is \"no class\" only, but not \"functional programming\". So I assume he doesn't mean functional programming and I can do it imperatively. Additionally, I have no prior experience in functional programming. However, I think it's beneficial to focus on this question being particularly about a functional programming requirement than just simply \"do it imperatively.\" How would you handle this situation? Would you try to persuade your client that using object-oriented programming is much cleaner, try to follow what he required and give him poor-quality code, or do something else?"}
{"_id": "228209", "title": "Updating an Entity through a Service", "text": "I'm separating my software into three main layers (maybe _tiers_ would be a better term):   * Presentation ('Views')   * Business logic ('Services' and 'Repositories')   * Data access ('Entities' (e.g. ActiveRecords)) ## What do I have now? In Presentation, I use read-only access to Entities, returned from Repositories or Services, to display data.               $banks = $banksRegistryService->getBanksRepository()->getBanksByCity( $city );          $banksViewModel = new PaginatedList( $banks ); // some way to display banks;                                                    // example, not real code      I find this approach quite efficient in terms of performance and code maintanability and still safe as long as all write operations (create, update, delete) are preformed through a `Service`:               namespace Service\\BankRegistry;          use Service\\AbstractDatabaseService;     use Service\\IBankRegistryService;     use Model\\BankRegistry\\Bank;          class Service         extends AbstractDatabaseService         implements IBankRegistryService     {         /**          * Registers a new Bank          *          * @param string $name                  Bank's name          * @param string $bik                   Bank's Identification Code          * @param string $correspondent_account Bank's correspondent account          *          * @return Bank          */         public function registerBank( $name, $bik, $correspondent_account )         {             $bank = new Bank();                  $bank                 -> setName( $name )                 -> setBik( $bik )                 -> setCorrespondentAccount( $correspondent_account );                       if( null === $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank() )                 $this->setDefaultBank( $bank );                       $this->getEntityManager()->persist( $bank );                  return $bank;         }                   /**          * Makes the $bank system's default bank          *          * @param Bank $bank          * @return IBankRegistryService          */         public function setDefaultBank( Bank $bank )         {             $default_bank = $this->getBanksRepository()->getDefaultBank();                    if( null !== $default_bank )                 $default_bank->setDefault( false );                  $bank->setDefault( true );                  return $this;         }     }      ## Where am I stuck? I'm struggling about **how to update** certain fields in `Bank` Entity. **Bad solution #1** : Making a series of setters in `Service` for each setter in `Bank`; - seems to be quite reduntant, increases `Service` interface **complexity** and proportionally decreases it's **simplicity** \\- something to avoid if you care about code maitainability. I try to follow **KISS** and **DRY** principles. **Bad solution #2** : Modifying `Bank` directly through it's native setters; - really bad. If you'll ever need to move modification into the `Service`, it will be pain. Business logic should remain in Business logic layer. **Plus** , there are plans on logging all of the actions and maybe even involve user permissions (perhaps, through decorators) in future, so **all modifications should be made only through the`Service`**. **Possible good solution** : Creating an `updateBank( Bank $bank, $array_of_fields_to_update)` method; - makes the interface as simple as possible, but there is a problem: one should **not** try to manually set `isDefault` flag on a Bank, this operation should be performed through `setDefaultBank` method. It gets even worse when you have **relations** that you don't want to be directly modified. Of course, you can just limit the fields that can be modified by this method, but **how do you tell method's user** what they can and cannot modify? Exceptions?"}
{"_id": "122207", "title": "Best Upper Bound & Best Lower Bound of an Algorithm", "text": "I am studying for a final exam and I came past a question I had on an earlier test. The questions asks us to find the minimum value in an unsorted array of integers. We must provide the best upper bound and the best lower bound that you can for the problem in the worst case. First, in such an example, the upper and lower bound are the same (hence, we can talk in terms of Big-Theta). In the worst case, we would have to go through the whole list as the minimum value would be at the end of the list. Therefore, the answer is Big-Theta(n). Is this a correct & good explanation?"}
{"_id": "122206", "title": "Dissection of Google indexing services", "text": "There are more than a few questions that hop into mind when someone thinks about Google's indexing services. Jeff Atwood wrote about them at The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture and Trouble In the House of Google. I have two questions:   * How does google index dynamic websites? This site has dynamic pages, `QUESTIONS`, `TAGS`, `USERS`, `BADGES`, `UNANSWERED`, `ASK QUESTION`. The content of these pages is dynamically generated, therefore we access the dynamic content and not the physical files on the server. But how does Google shows every question of the site or other dynamic websites?   * What does Google index and keep on its servers? Does it copy the complete page into its server or just the title, meta tags and body?"}
{"_id": "122205", "title": "What is the supposed productivity gain of dynamic typing?", "text": "I often heard the claim that dynamically typed languages are more productive than statically typed languages. What are the reasons for this claim? Isn't it just tooling with modern concepts like convention over configuration, the use of functional programming, advanced programming models and use of consistent abstractions? Admittedly there is less clutter because the (for instance in Java) often redundant type declarations are not needed, but you can also omit most type declarations in statically typed languages that use type inference, without losing the other advantages of static typing. And all of this is available for modern statically typed languages like Scala as well. So: what is there to say for productivity with dynamic typing that really is an advantage of the type model itself? Clarification: I'm more interested in big / medium sized projects than in quick hacks. :-)"}
{"_id": "45969", "title": "Most efficient way for snapshotting Windows (no VM)", "text": "As the software I'm writing is using instrument I/O, I cannot use virtual machines to test my software in different configurations. Therefore I'm looking for the best way to make snapshots at different states, and restore them quickly for tests. What tools do you use? Right now I see:   * Windows system restore   * Clonezilla (not in love with it, sometimes failed for me)   * Acronis TrueImage What are your advice?"}
{"_id": "246018", "title": "Does inserting/removing random characters in a string count as cryptography?", "text": "I'm making an iOS game. All developers need to determine whether their app uses cryptography or not. My game saves files in the Documents folder. They are .plist files representing dictionaries. They are encoded in base 64. From what I gather, encoding is not encrypting. So we're fine there. However, the _values_ inside the dictionary (after decoding) are a bit tricky. Suppose that your score is `250`. In the dictionary the value is a string like:               @2@5@0@      So for the game to read your score, it removes the `@` characters (and when saving the game, it puts them back). That's just an example. Does _that_ count as cryptography? **NOTE** : I'm not asking about Apple's policies. I mentioned it for context."}
{"_id": "55536", "title": "How to promote an open-source project?", "text": "First of all, I apologize if this is the wrong section of network to post this question. If it is, please feel free to move it to more appropriate location... Question: I would like to hear your ideas regarding the ways of open source projects being started and run. I have an open-source content management system project and here some questions arise: How should I act? Shall I come up with a viable pre-alpha edition with working front- and back-ends first and then announce the project publicly? Or shall I announce it right away from the scratch? As a developer I know that one should use versioning system like Git or SVN, which I do, no problems there. And the merit of unit-testing is also something to remember, which, to be frank, I am not into at all... Project management - I am a beginner in that, at best. Coding techniques and experiences such as Agile development is something I want to explore... In short, any ideas for a developer who is new to open-source world, is most welcome."}
{"_id": "14033", "title": "Where Can I List My Opensource Project?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I get the word out about a new (open-source) library I've > developed? I have hosted my latest project, a JVM-based MIDI processor/API called Mjdj MIDI Morph, on Github (here and here). Now I need to bring some interest to it, even if it's negative interest (so I can improve it). I've looked up open source list on Google and end up with such things as this page on Wikipedia, which makes it quite clear that they don't want your project if it's new. Where should I list my project? Short of adwords and talking it up in forums and trade shows, where should I submit my URLs?"}
{"_id": "181837", "title": "I released open source code that is useable to other programmers. How do I let them know about it?", "text": "I have a tiny project (<1k but let's say its <5k of lines). I made it open source and put it on github. I did this once before and I didn't get a single download nor fork but that was very specific and this tiny project is very useable to other programmers. It's open source (let's say LGPL, GPL, public domain or somewhere in between these). What can I do other than let it rot on my computer/online while only I use it? I'll keep this as generic as possible and won't link my stuff."}
{"_id": "219747", "title": "How to make my open source project known?", "text": "I have a simple project, which enable to record the voice and execute associated commands. I think it can be an interesting and useful project. I don't know how to make it known. I already wrote an article and I published it on hackernews but it wasn't very popular. What can I do to make my project known?"}
{"_id": "73832", "title": "How can I get the word out about a new (open-source) library I've developed?", "text": "I'm finishing up a personal project in which I've implemented a library that I expect others may want to use. Without going into too much detail, the library provides a cross-platform interface for parsing a particular type of file, where none had existed before (at least in this language). The project was fun and rewarding in itself, but I think it would be a shame if it were never considered by other developers due to ignorance. How can I appropriately spread the word about this library? My current plan is to:   * Host a webpage with source, documentation, usage, and/or samples   * Respond to SO questions asking the question \"where is this tool?\"   * Contact a few key members of the related field and give them a heads up Do you think these steps are reasonable? What else might you do yourself?"}
{"_id": "134984", "title": "Getting attention for my open sourced project", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to promote an open-source project? I've done quite a lot of work in my spare time on a project that was mostly for my own learning experience and I'm quite pleased with the results. I've used github as a source control management, so the code is already public in a sense. The code in question is a library that is quite specialized in it's application, and pretty well commented and understandable. It would probably be a good resource for students learning about the algorithms being used. What I'm really looking for is the best way to see if there is any audience for what I've done. It's no big deal if there isn't but if there are I'd like people to know about my code, and find it if they are searching for something similar. How to go about this task in the best way? I do have a blog and I intend to introduce the code there, but the audience is so far quite small - mostly co- workers and friends. I'm also unsure about going to specialized sites and advertise, especially as I'm not really part of a community around these types of libraries. Any thoughts and ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for reading. **Edit:** I'm not sure if I should post a link to the project in question on github, or refrain. It's not my intention for this question to come off as advertising. Also, it's amazing how I always find good links _after_ I posted my question. http://producingoss.com/ seems like a good fit."}
{"_id": "111002", "title": "Gremlin -- do I have to know Java/Groovy", "text": "This is the excerpt from the project's Github page. > _Gremlin provides graph traversal related syntactic sugar to Groovy. Groovy > provides dynamic language syntactic sugar to Java. Realize that anything you > can do in Java or Groovy can be done in Gremlin._ The documentation keeps referring to Groovy & Java. I need to learn it but I am not a member of Java family -- and will likely never be. Can I still learn Gremlin? Can someone point me to some docs/articles that explain Gremlin without assuming Groovy or Java acquaintance?"}
{"_id": "111006", "title": "Do You Have To Know CIL To Make A Compiler for .NET?", "text": "Assume one wants to create a simple .NET language, or slightly more difficult, a compiler for an existing .NET language. Do you absolutely **need** to be familiar with the CIL (Common Intermediate Language) to implement a compiler? And do you have to translate the syntax of your language to CIL by hand? Or is there another (more preferable) way? If not, what is the best way to learn CIL and especially to learn how to translate High-Level code to CIL?"}
{"_id": "126585", "title": "What are some examples of \"wartiness\" making a programming language more useful?", "text": "From the accepted answer to \"Why is Lisp useful?\": >  5\\. Wartiness. The real world is messy. Pragmatic coding winds up having to > either use or invent messy constructs. Common Lisp has sufficient wartiness > that it can get stuff done. This thought has occurred to me, too. I'm currently developing an application whose backend I chose to write in Haskell, and whose frontend is in PHP. My experience has been that dealing with messy code in PHP is _much_ easier than dealing with messy code in Haskell. However, it's my own code, and my PHP code probably isn't all that bad. A simple example of \"wartiness\" is PHP's `==` (equality) operator. You know, the type of equality where `'' == 0` is true. Since I'm wary of `==`, I often choose to use PHP's `===` (strict equality) operator instead:               $is_admin = ($gid === 24 || $gid === 25);      However, the above usage turned out to be wrong. The `$gid` value came from the database, and is still a string. This time, the strict equality operator bit me, and I would have saved myself a few minutes by simply saying:               $is_admin = ($gid == 24 || $gid == 25);      Consider another interesting identity:               php> var_dump('0012345' == '12345');     bool(true)      What the heck?! `==` on two strings isn't even string comparison! However, consider if the user is given an ID card that says `0012345`, but the database ID is simply `12345`. Users may have trouble logging in to your application if you chose to use `===`. Sure, you'll get a bug report, and you'll be able to make your application correct rather than relying on this obscure feature. But it'll take more time. I'd rather spend that time outside. It's a really nice day. By contrast, here's an example of wartiness that is _not_ helpful in most cases:               js> parseInt(031);     25      What are some more concrete examples where \"wartiness\" helps you Get Things Done? Please explain why; don't just list features Haskell doesn't have. Another way of putting it: what are some warty language features to be aware of, and how can we use them to save time?"}
{"_id": "66935", "title": "When (and when not) to use Wordpress?", "text": "For the sake of simplicity, my question is focused specifically on Wordpress instead of focusing on all Content Management Systems including Joomla, Drupal, Concrete5, or you-name-it. Wordpress is becoming ever more popular. You can extend it's feature set with widely available plugins or you can simply design your own plugins if you know a little bit about programming. There are more and more \"big\" (read well- known, famous or credible) websites that are built using Wordpress. For some examples, take a look at this link. Abraham Maslow once said, \"It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.\" I see this tendency within the community of Wordpress developers, and while I value their knowledge and advice on what can be done using Wordpress, I'm afraid that asking them my question about \"when to use Wordpress\" will only be met with a blank stare that says \"is there a time you would not use Wordpress?\" This fact is very visible when you do a google search for \"when to use wordpress\". The situation does improve slightly if you search for \"when not to use wordpress\". So my question is, in this year 2011, what criteria should best help a web developer determine whether or not to use Wordpress for a given project? **Edit1:**   After some more searching I found this excellent post on this topic: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/10594/when-should-we-not- recommend-a-client-use-wordpress"}
{"_id": "118561", "title": "Mixing jQuery with JavaScript", "text": "I just asked this question at SO about some bugginess I am experiencing with jQuery and IE8, and someone commented that he was appalled that I would mix JavaScript with jQuery (he has since deleted his comment for some reason). This person had a high reputation, relative to mine (3000+), so I don't want to ignore his criticism. I'm still relatively new to web development, and I mostly work alone, so I wasn't aware that this could be a problem. Why should mixing the two be avoided?"}
{"_id": "126583", "title": "svn - when will I see conflicts?", "text": "I am just starting a new position and using **svn** rather than **git** (my favorite). With **svn** if there are any conflicts will I see them after an svn update or after an (attempt) to svn commit? In other words will an **svn update** merge remote changes into my current (uncommited) working copy? I want to be sure not to mess up before my first **svn commit** if things are not good as I am new to this system! :) Obviously I have also made a manual copy of my new code in case I run into any issues :) fyi, I am on Ubuntu 11.10"}
{"_id": "194386", "title": "How can I ensure a method is called only once when using a API?", "text": "In general, if I am using an API whose methods have side-effects that I only want to occur once, how can I guarantee that my own application only calls them once even if an error occurs before it can register a response? For example, if I am calling a payment processing API once each month for a subscription service, how can I ensure that I don't double-bill if I create a new transaction and the application suffers a fatal error before I get the response from that? It seems like cooperation with the API would be a solution:               t = Transaction.new(user, price, etc);     if(t.persistToLocalDatabase()){ t.beginRemoteProcessing(); }      Is there a way to solve this for the case where I have no control over the API and it begins processing on transaction creation?"}
{"_id": "254938", "title": "Is this a good design in C++?", "text": "Is it a good idea to replace getters and setters with a single function returning a reference? For example, instead of this,               class Person {       std::string name;     public:       std::string GetName() { return this->name; }       void SetName(std::string& toSet) { this->name = toSet; }      };      Is this a good idea,               class Person {       std::string name;     public:       std::string& Name() { return this->name; }     };     ...     ...     Person p;     p.Name() = \"Joe\"; // Write.      std::string local = p.Name(); // Read.      Does the second code have some problem?      But in C#, methods return object by reference. For example,               class Person     {         string name;         public Person(string _name) { this.name = _name;  }         public string GetName()         {             return this.name;         }         public void SetName(string _name)         {             this.name = _name;         }     };          class Company     {         Person manager;         public Company()         {             this.manager = new Person(\"Mr. K\");         }              // The Person object is returned by reference.         // This is equivalent to \"Person& GetManager()\" in C++.         public Person GetManager()          {             return this.manager;         }     };     ...     ...     Company comp = new Company();          // Equivalent to,     // Person& p = comp.GetManager();     Person p = comp.GetManager(); // p is a reference to comp.manager     p.SetName(\"Mr. L\");  // This statement changes comp.manager.name          Console.WriteLine(comp.GetManager().GetName()); // Prints \"Mr. L\"      In the above code, `comp.manager.name` wouldn't have changed if the method `GetManager()` returned `Person` by value. So, this code isn't dependent on return value optimization.   Isn't this code a violation of encapsulation?"}
{"_id": "21512", "title": "How to test my knowledge?", "text": "I am a senior in high school planning on majoring in Computer Science in college. I have been programming for a number of years. However, I have no idea how I stack up to professionals. What would be a way for me to measure my skills in specific languages? I currently use Java, C#, Ruby, and C."}
{"_id": "142065", "title": "Creating database connections - Do it once or for each query?", "text": "At the moment I create a database connection when my web page is first loaded. I then process the page and run any queries against that conection. Is this the best way to do it or should I be creating a database connection each time I run a query? p.s It makes more sense to me to create 1 connection and use it but I don't know if this can cause any other issues. I am using C# (ASP.NET) with MSSQL."}
{"_id": "231001", "title": "Keeping database connection", "text": "Say you are developing a desktop application that extensively uses a database, should you have one handle for the database that the entire app references? Or should you open a connection when you need data, get the data, and then close the connection when data isn't necessary."}
{"_id": "254931", "title": "Giving apprentices appreciation of SOLID principles", "text": "Experienced developers typically have an appreciation of the SOLID (or other) principles - why we have them, how they help, ways of adhering to them etc. This may be as a result of having written poor code in the past, then written good code (where good is adhering to SOLID principles) and seen the tremendous difference it makes, or otherwise had the time and experience to see their value. **How can we begin to instil an appreciation of these things in to apprentice developers?** Currently, at work, I have a group of apprentice developers straight of out college (UK, 18+), with no CS or real programming background. The company has a decent training programme for them to run through, but I feel it lacks the induction to writing high quality code that we would eventually like for them to produce. My current approach to teaching them about these things is to flag it up in code reviews when I see it. For example, when I see a class (or function) which has more than a single responsibility, I do my best to explain the single responsibility principle (why we have it, how it helps), show them where the multiple responsibilities in their code lay, then talk to them about how they might separate that out. However, that approach doesn't seem to be sticking. I'm still seeing plenty instances of exactly the same thing I flagged up in code review. **Are there better ways of explaining and giving appreciation of the SOLID principles? Or is this simply something which comes with time and experience?**"}
{"_id": "254930", "title": "Traffic splitter on a single server for 50+ krps", "text": "I am building a \"splitter\" for web traffic: a web server that will receive an HTTP request, forward it to two backend servers, choose the best response (for which it needs to parse all of them) and return it to the original requestor. (Just to clarify: it is not a proxy with several backends; each request is forwarded to all backends, and then only one response is returned.) It will need to handle at least 50 thousand requests per second (or 50+ krps) on a single server. Together with a colleague we have built several versions of the splitter. Here are the results:   * Node.js (`http` library): goes up to 6.9 thousand requests per second (6.9 krps).   * Go (`net/http` library): up to 12 krps.   * Erlang (`misultin` and `lhttpc` libraries): up to 7.3 krps.   * Clojure (`http-kit`): 13 krps. None of them are even close to the requirement. According to e.g. the single query of the Web Framework Benchmarks by TechEmpower, which might be roughly equivalent to the splitter, there is room for improvement. The big question is, what should we try next? **Technical details:** The server should handle at least 50 krps on a single server, standard hardware. The requests are POST messages with JSON-encoded bodies of about 1~3 KB, and the responses have similar size. Each request does not need to be parsed, but it can be passed along as is; in the response, at least one specific JSON field needs to be parsed. Each request has a very strict timeout that is between 80 and 450 ms, depending on the URL; if any backend takes longer than that, the server should forget about it and use the remaining backend. If no valid responses are received in time, the server will respond with a 204 No content. **Testing details:** For simplicity, let us say that all requests are all coming from an HAProxy server in front of it, so an Apache `ab` or `wrk` load tester is appropriate. It will run on Amazon EC2, so it should use multiple cores efficiently. For reference let us say it is a c3.2xlarge instance. Both backend servers should reside on a different machine than the splitter (possibly two separate servers, if needed), and ideally the load tester should also be on another machine. It is important to ensure that neither the load tester nor the backends are the bottlenecks here, which is as simple as load testing one of the backends directly and verifying that it gives much better results than the splitter. Results for `wrk` testing the servers returning a constant string:   * Node.js (`http` library): 43 krps.   * Go (`net/http` library): 73 krps.   * Erlang (`misultin` and `lhttpc` libraries): 59 krps.   * Clojure (`http-kit`): I don't have the number, but > 20 krps. Some days ago I asked a question about a splitter-like service in Go, and the answer there allowed me to go up to 6 krps. Further optimizations increased this number to about 12k, although I am not sure that the results will hold in the general case. For instance: I was returning a constant response and not parsing the JSON responses. I am not really sure if our results are reasonable, or if we should be getting much better results with the frameworks we have tried. According to the Web Framework Benchmarks, C++ (with CPoll based C++ server pages) and Java (multiple frameworks) are kings of the game when it comes to rps; but given the effort required to set up, build and test the services in each new framework we want to be sure that we are not getting into any dead ends here. The benchmark above is not really equivalent to our problem; and it is hard to get rps numbers for this kind of proxy-like traffic. I should clarify that it _should_ be possibly to reach the goal, since HAProxy can forward 33 krps with a single core; using the 8 cores in a c3.2xlarge instance, and with anything remotely resembling linearity, it should be within the realms of possibility to reach 50 krps doing two forwards of each request. Writing a multicore web server in C is not in our plans except as a last option, though. This question has been interpreted as too broad on StackOverflow and here by eager editors. So I will reformulate with a clear, straightforward question: Have you built or read about anything similar, with peak performance numbers? (For instance a proxy server for HTTP traffic, even though it would only forward each request to one backend.) Please detail in what language, with what library or framework, and how many requests per second were obtained with a single server."}
{"_id": "213886", "title": "ASP.NET MVC create a draft without persisting to DB", "text": "I have a requirement to allow users to suggest updates to their profiles on a site I'm working. They would be able to view their profile details, then click on and \"edit\" button, which would basically make a copy of all their data contained in a handful of one-to-many related DB tables. They can then add or remove items and update various text fields before saving the draft. Upon saving, an administrator would have to approve this change before the new data is actually published onto the live site. I currently have an identical set of tables for live data and drafts (and history, but that's not important). My difficulty is that the client doesn't want an actual draft entry created in the drafts db structure until the user has hit \"save\". A user would be able to perform CRUD operations against all the data, including uploading new images, but I am not allowed to touch the DB unless they're ready to commit these updates. My great problem is that I have no idea how to begin developing what seems to the client to be a very simple thing, even though it's technically quite challenging. I also can't seem to make the client understand that hitting the \"Cancel\" button next to the save button would remove the entry plus all its related data from the DB, making the problem moot in my humble opinion. So, the question is such: is there a way to phrase my objection in such a way that the client can understand what I'm getting at. Or failing that, what would be a good way of developing such a session-stored object?"}
{"_id": "213882", "title": "Keywords for defining constructs in programming languages", "text": "I'm designing a language conceptually similar to Go. In Go, for example, the keyword `func` is used for defining functions:               func abs (a int) uint { ... }      Same for defining types. However, I was thinking of a grammar that doesn't consider these keywords. For example:               abs (a int => uint) { ... }      Or, for structures:               Tree {size int; age int}      What's wrong with such a syntax? Are there some potential problems that could be encountered? For example, I thought that if there was a construct that would use the same grammar as a struct, such as an interface, it would be vague (is this a struct or an interface)?"}
{"_id": "213883", "title": "Creating a compiler in .net", "text": "I have read about compiler construction some concepts. What is understood is that   1. You need a lexer that divides your program statements into tokens.   2. You need to check and identify tokens into known types.   3. You have to create a grammar and check if your tokens fit between the grammar defination.   4. You have to create a AST syntax tree . I am stuck at the parser and AST step , I am trying to create a simple language compiler. How can I create a parser and AST for simple statements like var a = 10 * 20; ... etc."}
{"_id": "151388", "title": "Ongoing confusion about ivars and properties in objective C", "text": "After almost 8 months being in ios programming, I am again confused about the right approach. Maybe it is not the language but some OOP principle I am confused about. I don't know.. I was trying C# a few years back. There were fields (private variables, private data in an object), there were getters and setters (methods which exposed something to the world), and properties which was THE exposed thing. I liked the elegance of the solution, for example there could be a class that would have a property called `DailyRevenue`...a float...but there was no private variable called `dailyRevenue`, there was only a field - an array of single transaction revenues... and the getter for `DailyRevenue` property calculated the revenue transparently. If somehow the internals of daily revenue calculation would change, it would not affect somebody who consumed my `DailyRevenue` property in any way, since he would be shielded from getter implementation. I understood that sometimes there was, and sometimes there wasn't a 1-1 relationship between fields and properties. Depending on the requirements. It seemed ok in my opinion. And that properties are THE way to access the data in object. I know the difference betweeen private, protected, and public keyword. Now lets get to Objective-C. On what factor should I base my decision about making something only an ivar or making it as a property? Is the mental model the same as I describe above? I know that ivars are \"protected\" by default, not \"private\" as in C#.. But thats ok I think, no big deal for my present level of understanding the whole iOS development. The point is ivars are not accessible from outside (given I don't make them public.. but I won't). The thing that clouds my clear understanding is that I can have `IBOutlets` from ivars. **Why am I seeing internal object data in the UI?** * _Why is it ok?_ * On the other hand, if I make an `IBOutlet` from property, and I do not make it readonly, anybody can change it. **Is this ok too?** Let's say I have a `ParseManager` object. This object would use a built in `Foundation` framework class called `NSXMLParser`. Obviously my `ParseManager` will utilize this `NSXMLParser`'s capabilities but will also do some additional work. Now my question is, **who should initialize this`NSXMLParser` object and in which way** should I make a reference to it from the `ParseManager` object, when there is a need to parse something. **A) the`ParseManager`** - **1)** in its default init method (possible here ivar - or - ivar+ppty) - **2)** with lazyloading in getter (required a ppty here) **B) Some other object** \\- who will pass a reference to `NSXMLParser` object to the `ParseManager` object. - **1)** in some custom initializer (`initWithParser:(NSXMLPArser *)parser`) when creating the `ParseManager` object.. A1 - the problem is, we create a parser and waste memory while it is not yet needed. However, we can be sure that all methods that are part of `ParserManager` object, can use the ivar safely, since it exists. A2 - the problem is, the `NSXMLParser` is exposed to outside world, although it could be read-only. Would we want a parser to be exposed in some scenario? B1 - this could maybe be useful when we would want to use more types of parsers.. I don't know... I understand that architectural requirements and language is not the same. But clearly the two are in relation. How to get out of that mess of my? Please bear with me, I wasn't able to come up with a single ultimate question. And secondly, it's better to not scare me with some superadvanced newspeak that talks about some crazy internals (what the compiler does) and edge cases."}
{"_id": "151389", "title": "What are best practices when switching between projects/coming back to projects frequently?", "text": "The nature of my job is that I have to switch back and forth between projects every few weeks. I find that one of the biggest impediments to my productivity is the ramp-up time to getting all the relevant pieces of code \"back in my head\" again after not seeing it for a period. This happens to a smaller and larger extent for briefer breaks / longer breaks. Obviously, good design, documentation, commenting, and physical structure all help with this (not to mention switching between projects as infrequently as possible). But I'm wondering if there are practices/tools that I may be missing out on. What are your specific practices for improving on this?"}
{"_id": "218702", "title": "Notify client about changes in database in java", "text": "I've been searching around for the answer to this question, but haven't been able to find a solution. I am working on a distributed client-server system that uses TCP. The program's functions is to transfer money to an from the server, but also between the clients, a sort of MobilePay. When one client wishes to transfer money to another client, that client will need to accept the transfer before it is succeeded (one of the systems requirements). So, my problem is, i would like the client to get notified (preferably through a message dialog) whenever a transfer is ready to get accepted. All the payments/transfers is stored in a SQL table. I would like the client to get notified when there is a pending payment/transfer in his/hers name, that is, when a new row (with the clients name as receiver) in the transfer table is added, in stead of the client needing to actively see if there is any pending payments (as it is now) Can anybody help my how to get around this problem Thanks in advance Best regards"}
{"_id": "129604", "title": "Is it bad interview practice to have candidates write a linked-list implementation?", "text": "Reading this site and SO I've seen many stories of interview questions and answers saying a candidate had to implement a linked list from scratch. Usually this is a \"gimme\" exercise for programming role candidates like writing FizzBuzz. The idea is that if the candidate can't do this, they can't program and should be rejected almost immediately. However, I can't help but think this could be a poor practice for the following reasons:   * Modern higher level languages like C# and Python natively use lists extensively; writing your own linked list object would be only required under unusual circumstances and even then probably ill-advised.    * Lower level languages like C++ have standard libraries with iterators/list containers and objects.    * In light of the first two points, coders can go years without even thinking about implementing a list (linked, doubly-linked, etc) themselves. Some may not even really see such things since college days.   * Computing power also isn't the factor it was years ago, so efficiency via pointers isn't the issue it used to be (in general).    * A simple web search of something like \"linked list example\" would bring up plenty of code examples that could just be memorized and spat back out, not really indicating the true competence of the applicant.  I should say that using a linked list to lead to **open-ended** questions/discussions of candidates' problem solving/critical thinking abilities is mostly likely a really good interview practice. Any way an interviewer can really see what an applicant is like and how they think is massively beneficial. I think this binary approach of \"no linked list code, no job\" for programmers working on a desktop or web application is a bit outdated. It could also be quite harmful; a candidate who can't remember how to properly work with the head of a list could be an otherwise excellent coder and co-worker and be lost in the mix. Thoughts? **EDIT** : There are many (good) comments suggesting that whether this is a good or bad question to ask depends on the context of the job. I strongly agree, so let me rephrase this question: Implementing a linked-list is a common interview question for a wide range of coding jobs, similar to questions like FizzBuzz or writing a recursive function for calculating factorials. Does this question have enough utility to be used commonly for evaluating programming candidates across the board? Or should considered a bad question to ask except for \"Senior Developer, Embedded Linked Lists Team\" positions?"}
{"_id": "136639", "title": "How to go about bring up the topic of bad programming practices with colleague", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I approach a coworker about his or her code quality? My development colleague is producing numerous blocks of code which I am a bit concerned doesn't really make for easy reading and potential issues in the future. I've tried giving little tips along the way without blantantly saying what I think but his technique never seems to change. I wouldn't normally be worried however we never identified any specific programming standards at the beginning of our project and it's now really starting to effect me a bit as I have to go through his code and try and debug it. A small snippet of just a small part of the code is as such.               foreach(DistributionRecord record in _manager.Distributions)     {         foreach (Engine.Model.DistributionModel.LossFromAtmosphericConditionsEnum NLossAt                         in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Engine.Model.DistributionModel.LossFromAtmosphericStructureEnum)))                         if (record.NlossAt.ContainsKey(NLossAt))                             if (record.NlossAt[NLossAt].ContainsKey(DistributionModel.LossFromAtmosphericConditionsEnum.Atvolat))                                 _indirect[GetIndirectSourceEnumFromEnterpriseType(record)] += record.NlossAt[NLossAt][DistributionModel.LossFromAtmosphericConditionsEnum.Atvolat]                                     * _manager.Scenario.Management.EmissionFactors.EmissionFactorIndirectBackgroundVolatisation;                          foreach (Engine.Model.DistributionModel.LossOffEnum lossOff in Enum.GetValues(typeof(Engine.Model.DistributionModel.LossOffEnum)))                         if (enterprise.NlossOff.ContainsKey(lossOff))                             if (enterprise.NlossOff[lossOff].ContainsKey(DistributionModel.LossTypesEnum.lossleach))                                 _indirect[GetIndirectSourceEnumFromEnterpriseType(record)] += record.NlossOff[lossOff][DistributionModel.LossTypesEnum.lossleach][NutrientEnum.N].Value                                     * _manager.Scenario.Management.EmissionFactors.EmissionFactorN2OIndirectBackgroundLeach;     }      I've talked to the boss and without blatantly saying it explained my concerns etc I don't know what else to do. Not sure if this is appropriate for this forum but any advice would be appreciated basically on how I can tackle this with my colleague. Or perhaps I'm just being unrealistic and gotta get with the real world in that this is just how some people write code and it's ok?"}
{"_id": "213763", "title": "How to code review without offending other developers", "text": "I work on a team that does frequent code reviews. But it seems like more of a formality than anything. No one really points out problems in the code for fear of offending other developers. The few times I've tried to ask for changes were met with very defensive and reluctant attitudes. This is of course not good. Not only are we spending the time to code review, but we're getting literally zero value from it. Is this an issue that needs to be addressed by individual developers, or are there techniques for suggesting changes without stepping on other people's toes?"}
{"_id": "18379", "title": "Starting Up Code Review Process Where there Previously Was None?", "text": "Any tips for a group needing to start code reviews? We have no real software engineering processes currently. I have been working as software engineer for 7 years and have never seen any real processes implemented at the various places I have worked, though many books espouse all kinds of engineering methodologies. The management supports the idea of enabling new processes, though there is some resistance from the senior engineer who has over 20 years of software engineering experience. We are a set of two programmers, with no software engineering manager. We report direct to the managing director of the Company. But we work on numerous software projects. The real reason why we have to begin performing code reviews is because of PA-DSS requirements. Therefore, I am pushing for us to do code reviews all around - not just on the payment application software."}
{"_id": "113593", "title": "How can I tactfully suggest improvements to others' badly designed code during review?", "text": "I'm a great believer in clean code and code craftsmanship, though I'm currently at a job where this isn't regarded as a top priority. I sometimes find myself in a situation where a peer's code is _riddled_ with messy design and very little concern for future maintenance, though it's functional and contains little to no bugs. How do you go about suggesting improvements in a code review when you believe there is so much that needs changing, and there's a deadline coming up? Keep in mind that suggesting the improvements be made _after_ the deadline may mean they'll be de-prioritized altogether as new features and bug-fixes come in."}
{"_id": "72806", "title": "How do you make people accept code review?", "text": "All programmers have their style of programming. But some of the styles are let\u2019s say... let\u2019s not say. So you have code review to try to impose certain rules for good design and good programming techniques. But most of the programmers don\u2019t like code review. They don\u2019t like other people criticizing their work. _Who do they think they are to consider themselves better than me and tell me that this is bad design, this could be done in another way. It works right? What is the problem?_ This is something they might say (or think but not say which is just as bad if not worse). So how do you make people accept code review without starting a war? How can you convince them this is a good thing; that will only improve their programming skills and avoid a lot of work later to fix and patch a zillion times a thing that hey... \"it works\"? People will tell you how to make code review (peer-programming, formal inspections etc) what to look for in a code review, studies have been made to show the number of defects that can be discovered before the software hits production etc. But how do you convince programmers to accept a code review?"}
{"_id": "7559", "title": "Fixing a bug while working on a different part of the code base", "text": "This happened at least once to me. I'm working on some part of the code base and find a small bug in a different part, and the bug stops me from completing what I'm currently trying to do. Fixing the bug could be as simple as changing a single statement. What do you do in that situation?   1. Fix the bug and commit it together with your current work   2. Save your current work elsewhere, fix the bug in a separate commit, then continue your work [1]   3. Continue what you're supposed to do, commit the code (even if it ~~breaks the build~~ fails some tests), then fix the bug (and ~~the build~~ make tests pass) in a separate commit [1] In practice, this would mean: clone the original repository elsewhere, fix the bug, commit/push the changes, pull the commit to the repository you're working on, merge the changes, and continue your work. **Edit:** I changed number three to reflect what I really meant."}
{"_id": "39855", "title": "How to deal with someone who dislikes the idea of code reviews?", "text": "Obviously, if management buy into spending time with code reviews, then everyone has to do it. But there are always those guys (or gals) who resist with every ounce of their being. How do you effectively manage dealing with this scenario when dealing with it as the peer reviewer?"}
{"_id": "195045", "title": "What to do if a team member delivers bad quality code?", "text": "I work as a kind of mixture of a Scrum Master and a team lead. In my team I have the problem that one of the members delivers bad quality. The code he produces is difficult to understand, difficult to maintain by anybody else than the guy himself. The solutions are more a \"hack\" (if not a botch) than a conceptual or elaborated work. And what is worst: he doesn't see it. He thinks he is a quite good programmer, when all the other team members are constantly complaining about his code - when he's not there (which is not so difficult since the guy works remote most of the time). They all avoid to tell him what they think about his work because they don't want to offend or demotivate him. What should I do?   * Try to tell him what the others think in 1-to-1 meeting? But I don't find it right to say \"the others are complaining\" when the others are not there and don't bring up their examples.    * Set up a team meeting and encourage the other members to tell what they think? But this feels like a tribunal to me. (And all against one is not fair.)   * Something else?"}
{"_id": "196648", "title": "How to integrate code reviews to a team", "text": "I work in a team that keeps growing. However, there are no code reviews and I see this as a problem every day. There are people with really limited skills committing code to our repository that I believe should not commit. I'm not the team leader nor am I in a management position. I already proposed code reviews about 6 months ago and there was no feedback received. Nor were there any code reviews. I know code reviews would benefit everyone including the more experienced. Has anyone had any experience trying to integrate code reviews in a team? What did you propose and how did you do it?"}
{"_id": "224528", "title": "How to do structured code reviews", "text": "We need to do pre-check-in code reviews. We are using Visual Studio and TFS. The built in code review functionality, is a bit odd to me. If I \"reject\" a check-in and comments what needs work, the review goes away. When the developer then makes the changes, he requests a new review, and I start all over again. Now, let's just say there are 10 files in this check-in. Maybe 7 of them were originally fine. Now, I have to review them again, as we are doing a brand new review. OR, I can track myself, what I have done. I can also, ONLY compare code with the original version, not the one from the reject review. So, my questions are:   1. what do you guys do?    2. What are your experiences with pre-checkin code reviews?"}
{"_id": "128202", "title": "What does a code review look like?", "text": "I'm writing a code review process document for our team; we've never had a formal process in place although we do do some code review. I've found lots of articles talking about how important code review is, but I have one question in particular that I haven't found the answer to on the web... is the programmer part of the code review? In other words, should a code review be 2 people sitting together, going over what's in the code, or should it be 1 person looking at another person's code? Most often, our projects are done by a team of 2 people, so before it is sent to QA, should those 2 people just sit together and go over the entire project, including what each of them have written? Or, should they just both look at each other's code? I can see advantages to each. Finally, what happens with issues found during code review? Are they noted, and then sent back to the programmer? Or should the reviewer note them and then just fix them? Or is it ever ok to make a change and not even tell the programmer specifically what you found?"}
{"_id": "193723", "title": "What feedback is or is not appropriate for a code review?", "text": "I am interested in hearing some guidelines as to what feedback is or is not appropriate for a code review. My team has a very unstructured review process and I am trying to suggest some ways to improve it. I am no expert so I hope to hear from you experts out there!   1. Should code review comments be limited to actual problems with the code?   2. Are criticisms about other LOC in the file appropriate even if those lines are not being modified? i.e., criticism of pre-existing code?   3. What about suggestions of different ways to solve the same problem? Should I suggest a new way only when a case can be made for it being better? How do I draw the line between contributing ideas but not sounding like a know-it-all?   4. In matters which are purely a difference of opinion, who should get the 'final say'? The author, the person who knows the code base the best, the person with the highest title or someone else?   5. Any other advice for ensuring the code reviews serve their purpose without unnecessarily blocking the developer's progress? Please, if you could, provide reasoning along with any answers. It will help this junior developer be able to really understand the best way to approach a code review."}
{"_id": "251620", "title": "Fixing bugs in other peoples code", "text": "I'm working with another programmer and we are always having issues with refactoring or changing each others code. Recently I had to fix a bug, but I pushed the changes before notifying him. He was very upset about it. Should I have talked to him about it before the push? This is a hobby project btw. What is the best way to change other peoples code when we don't have a project manager or coding standard?"}
{"_id": "216347", "title": "How to make code-review feel less like a way to *shift* the responsibility?", "text": "Sometimes it seems to me that people ask for code-reviews just so they would be able to say \"Xyz reviewed my code!\"(1) when something broke. Question, is that ever the case? (Or is it just my imagination) If it is, how do I handle this? (1): What s/he really meant: It's Xyz's fault or something along those lines."}
{"_id": "237245", "title": "Getting coders to do code review", "text": "I am running a project where I pay developers to contribute to my semi open source project. My problem is that it is easy to hire developers, but it is very difficult to get anyone to do code reviewing. I have repeatedly attempted to get the senior developers to review the code of the junior developers. I have attempted to pay them more, give them higher status etc. But they just seem to want to code instead of reviewing code. Now I am considering forcing all developers that want to code, to also review code, but I have a feeling that it is a bad idea. My question is, therefore, how can I motivate capable people to review the code of others? How is this done in successful open source projects like Linux, PostgreSQL, LibreOffice etc."}
{"_id": "1224", "title": "What's the most effective way to perform code reviews?", "text": "I've never found the ideal way to perform code reviews and yet often my customers require them. Each customer seems to do them in a different way and I've never felt satisfied in any of them. What has been the most effective way for you to perform code reviews? For example:   * Is one person regarded as the gatekeeper for quality and reviews the code, or do the team own the standard?    * Do you do review code as a team exercise using a projector?   * Is it done in person, via email or using a tool?    * Do you eschew reviews and use things like pair programming and collective code ownership to ensure code quality?"}
{"_id": "195107", "title": "How can I deal with a team member who duplicates code?", "text": "One of our team member duplicates code. Code duplication causes confusion among my team members reading his code, it causes bugs down the line when the duplicated segment is fixed in one location and not the others and it bloats the size of his code-base. I have discussed with him not to duplicate code. But he show excuses that it will delay our projects deadline if he refactors all the places where he made code duplication. How better can I deal with him?"}
{"_id": "49202", "title": "How should code reviews be Carried Out?", "text": "My previous question has to do with how to advance code reviews among the developers. Here I am interested in how a code review session should be carried out, so that both the reviewer and reviewed are feeling comfortable with it. I have done some code reviews before and the experience has been very unpleasant. My previous manager would come to us --on an ad hoc basis-- and tell us to explain our code to him. Since he wasn't very familiar with the code base, whenever he would ask me to explain my code, I'd find myself spending a huge amount of time explaining the most basic structure of my code. As a result, each review would last much too long, and the process would leave both of us exhausted. Once I was done explaining my work, he would continue by raising issues with it. Most of the issues he raised were cosmetic in nature ( e.g, don't use `region` for this code block, change the variable name from `xxx` to `yyy` even though the later makes even less sense, and so on). After trying this process for few rounds, we found the review session didn't derive much benefits for either of us, and we stopped. How would you go about making each code review a natural, enjoyable, thought stimulating, bug-fixing and mutual-learning experience? Also, how frequently you do your code reviews - as soon as the code is checked in? Do you allocate a fixed time every week to do this? What are the guidelines that you follow during your code reviews? Finally, the motivation: What I do want my team to get out of the code review? Answer: I want my team members to be able to cover each other's work. That's the primary motivation. Second motivation: I want all the code to be easy to read/ modify/ extended, so that new features can be added easily."}
{"_id": "186217", "title": "How do you deal with discovering bad and false code in your team?", "text": "Every year in january we process a big task with our system. While the performance during the task was above average the maintaince follow up is currently having a lot of trouble with jobs running too long and out of their respective time schedule. Therefore I am tasked with the optimization of those maintaince jobs and I am doing thusly the most thorough code review the system has ever seen. As I am good with analysing code I am also doing a lot of bug fixes. This means I see lots and lots of bad or completely wrong code and implementations. My question is: How can I deal with that in front of my coworkers? I hate it if I cause a bug (which I guess happens to everyone sometimes) and someone else fixes it without telling me about it. Because then I cannot learn from my mistake. On the other hand I do not want to be the guy on the team who is constantly nagging about how everyone else has to do his or her work. Also I am a bit wary of my own hubris. I do not want to find myself in the position that I start looking down on coworkers just because my biased mind thinks my code is superior. Currently I am not checking who has caused a bug I just fix it. I am not sure whether this is the best way to go. I am a Junior level developer and English is not my mother tongue. Any advice (and grammar edits) are highly appreciated. The team follows the Rational Unified Process framework."}
{"_id": "101528", "title": "How do I deal with a slow and undedicated colleague in the team?", "text": "I have been working on a new project. The project works like this: The end user can access a webapp using a link and he can add multiple systems on his network and manage that particular systems details. My part involves the front end and the webserver, which is done in python. My python actually communicates with another project which is entirely done in c & c++. The c/c++ project is the main app which does all the functionality. My python sends the user request to it and displays the response from it to the user. I am very familiar with my work and I will finish it soon. Since that's not much work in it. And I am a person who loves to work. I spends most of the time in office and only go home when I feel sleepy. The c/c++ app is managed by another colleague who has 5+ year experience and can do things much faster than me, but he never does it. May be he doesn't like to do it. His app crashes often when my python communicate with it or returns wrong values. It's full of bugs. Since my app depends on it, I am having a hard time building it. Instead of fixing the bugs, he asks me to slow down my work. He asks me to tell manager that my work needs a lot of time. He is asking me to fool the manager and even forcing me to work slowly like him. During project meeting, when manager asks him about the bugs he says that he fixed everything and it works fine. Since he is my colleague, I couldn't tell anything to the manager. I obviously need to have a good relationship with my colleagues more than my manager, since most of the time we will be with our colleagues, not with the manager. I am not able to tell the manager anything regarding this, since if manager asks him why, then he may think I complained about him to the manager. And he keeps on lying in the meeting. And since he fixes the bug slowly, it even slows down my work. Now I thought of working on the front-end part of my app and finishing it off so that in the mean time he can make his project stable. Now he is asking me to tell the manager that my front end part require a lot of work and I may need more and more time, simply so that he can drag the project down. And the sad thing is our actual manager has gone to the US, so we have a temporary manager and this guy doesn't know about the project much, so the c,c++ just fools him. Can anyone suggest me how I deal with this? I wanted to finish off the project soon. How can I make him work even by maintaining a good relationship with him? ### Responses to comments: > If he's really deliberately misleading the company, you should report him to > management. I am new to this company and the other guy has been there for many years. And I have just started knowing my colleagues. If I directly go and complaint him, I don't think so I can make good relationship with my other colleagues. Even he has the power to mislead them. I am not telling he is a bad guy, he can do the work, but he is not doing it. > Doesn't your company have any kind of bug tracking system ? Here actual bug tracking system isn't there. The company tries to finish off the project as soon as possible and gives it to the QA. And then fixes the bugs reported by QA. > This is why companies should give employees stock / options or some sort of > ownership. That way you can literally tell the guy \"You are costing me > monetary growth... don't you want to make money also?\". The company has the stock options they have given me a 2500 share, mostly he too would have got some more. > Seniority does deserve some benefit of a doubt. You really need to speak to > him first and try to understand the problem. He may be out of his depth, you > may be able to help him, there could easily be variables you are unaware of. > It may be hard now, but you could easily make the situation a lot worse by > jumping the gun. I even does it, first his app wasn't handling multiple requests at a time, he was using a queue to handle the requests I sent to him. I even suggested to him some of my ideas on it. He said he already had these ideas, and will be executing them. His explanations was: \"Everything require certain time to do and this is a project which may need two years to complete and we are asked to finish it in two months\". I used to have a hard time coding during first few weeks because of this bug. But now he fixed it. But he is using a single queue for a user requests and that is now slowing down the app, since it processes one request at a time. > What is QA doing this whole time? Why aren't they reporting/confirming the > status of the project(s)? The manager is the person who decides when to give to the QA. As of now it has not yet given to QA. He said we should give it by this month end."}
{"_id": "118690", "title": "complex numbers in programming?", "text": "Are complex numbers used in programming? If they are what is their significance? What IDEs and languages use them? And would it be recommended to learn how to implement them for a programming job (if so please specify what job)? I've been working in Eclipse and just studied the importance of complex numbers in math and wondered if it correlated."}
{"_id": "195904", "title": "Is there a name for CSS code smell that can be seen in class names like \"float\" or \"white\"?", "text": "I noticed some code in our projects using CSS class names such as `red`, `black` or `float`.   I want to provide some information for people so they know to avoid it. Is there a common name for that code smell so I can reference it?"}
{"_id": "245593", "title": "Broadcast receiver Or Services", "text": "I am creating an \"Alarm Clock\" app in Android. I learned that we can implement `OnReciever()` method and write those things which we want the alarm to do after an intent is fired. But I have now come across the \"Services\" of android which is (might) be useful in the app. Which one should I prefer, keeping in mind the simplicity of using either of them."}
{"_id": "245595", "title": "gcc -S seems a bit misshapen with shifting and ANDing bits", "text": "Example:               int c = 4;     int p = 5;          if (p & (1 << c))        printf(\"ok\\n\");     else        printf(\"nop\\n\");      gcc -S:               movl    -4(%rbp), %eax   /* eax holds the variable c  */     movl    -8(%rbp), %edx   /* and edx holds p  */     movl    %eax, %ecx       /* tmp(ecx) = c  */     sarl    %cl, %edx        /* edx(p) >>= c  */     movl    %edx, %eax       /* eax = p shifted right by c */     andl    $1, %eax         /* eax(p shifted right by c) &= 1  */     testl   %eax, %eax       /* test if p is 0  */     ... jumps and such ...      As you can see, GCC for some reason converted my code to:               p >>= c;     p &= 1     if (p != 0)         ...     else         ...      Something fishy is going on here or I am missing something... It kinda made the operation backwards, although I had brackets around the `1 << c` so it should've done it separately then AND it with `p` correct? Can someone explain why did GCC do this? Is it some sort of optimization (I had no optimization enabled when I compiled this, so doubt it) Or is it how it should be done in assembly?"}
{"_id": "245597", "title": "Is the GPL dangerous to the organisation in terms of exposure of its intellectual property?", "text": "GNU General Public License is a \u2018Viral License\u201d. If an organisation is using Linux and MySQL which come under this license, is it dangerous to the organisation in terms of exposure of its intellectual property? As this license will demand the software that is linked to or that incorporates a GPL program to also be made available in source form under the same license when it is \u201cdistributed.\u201d"}
{"_id": "82172", "title": "How much can you talk about your job experience during an interview", "text": "I recently saw a comment here, that the signs of a bad hire is when he says \"I worked with this and that\", but then doesn't elaborate when asked. And the question is why? Hypothetical scenario: Say you work for company X that develops rockets for space trips, then you walk to an interview for position Z in company Y. Interviewer sees your CV, asks a question - What technologies have you used? You respond, oh, I have used boost library to control the rocket navigation systems. Employer decides that you are a bad hire and doesn't offer you a job. Next he walks home, cross references your previous company X, finds documented bug in boost library and brings the rocket down. BOOM! From one point of view, you didn't said anything of interest, from another point of view, libraries, patterns, and algorithms can come a very long way towards letting malicious people reverse the heck out of the competitors product. Do you have right to talk about previous products, even in abstract way. And does the interviewer has rights to ask you anything about things you've coded for some commercial entity at all?"}
{"_id": "12466", "title": "Which languages use \"paired\" header/implementation files?", "text": "C is ubiquitous, and C++ nearly as much, but I'm curious which other languages follow a similar model of header files. Specifically, in which other languages is it idiomatic to edit pairs or groups of \"header\" and \"implementation\" files? (A group as in multiple headers with one corresponding implementation file or a single header with multiple implementation files, as also seen in C.) For example, the pair \"blah.h\" and \"blah.c\". C's header files are tied into the C preprocessor, but that's not the detail I'm focusing on here. For example, PHP has various include mechanisms, but you don't have a pair/group of \"blah-header.php\" plus \"blah-notheader.php\". Some languages generate a file from source in a one-to-one mapping, such as Java, but that's not what I'm talking about either. I'm interested in cases where the programmer _directly edits_ both/all files in the pair/group. Perhaps to put it another way: which languages have a declaration file (\"header\") and definition file (\"implementation\") such that a person would generally edit both files in tandem?"}
{"_id": "82170", "title": "Example of an agreement with the client", "text": "I've started my company in UK. Used to work as a freelancer, therefore legal issues didn't use to be a big headache. Now, I'd like to see an example of the document a company would sign with a client when starting to build them a website. This should include a project quote, project overview, agreed upon things, deadlines, etc. Anyone is so kind to share such a document?"}
{"_id": "255372", "title": "Logging Exception in multi-tier application", "text": "I'm building a multi-tier enterprise application using Spring. I have different layers: Controller, Business and Provider. Within the application I've built a custom error handling mini-framework that is based on a single RuntimeException which has an error code to discriminate different kind of errors. Error codes are enums implementing this interface:               public interface ErrorCode {         public int getNumber();         public String getDeveloperMessage();         public String getHelpURL();         public boolean isSystemError();     }      So for example I have:               public enum SystemErrorCode implements ErrorCode{         E_UNKNOWN_ERROR(10000, \"Unkwown internal error\", true),         E_MISSING_ARGUMENT(10001, \"Missing argument\", true),         E_INVALID_ARGUMENT(10002, \"Invalid argument\", true),         E_CONTEXT_NO_TENANT(10003, \"No tenant in context\", true),         E_CONTEXT_TENANT_CHANGE(10004, \"Tenant change attempt\", true),         E_CONTEXT_ALREADY_INITIALIZED(10005, \"Tenant already initialized\", true),         E_NOT_IMPLEMENTED(10005, \"Feature not implemented\", true),         ...     }      The exception class itself look like this (getters, constructors, and utility methods are stripped out for brevity):               public class EngineRuntimeException extends RuntimeException {         private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;              private final String incidentReportId;         private final ErrorCode code;         private final Map<String, Object> additionalInfo;              ...              public static EngineRuntimeException wrap(Throwable exception, ErrorCode errorCode) {             if(exception instanceof EngineRuntimeException) {                 EngineRuntimeException se = (EngineRuntimeException)exception;                 if(errorCode != null && errorCode != se.getCode()) {                     return new EngineRuntimeException(exception.getMessage(), exception, errorCode);                 }                 return se;             } else {                 return new EngineRuntimeException(exception.getMessage(), exception, errorCode);             }         }                   public static EngineRuntimeException wrap(Throwable exception) {             return wrap(exception, SystemErrorCode.E_UNKNOWN_ERROR);         }      Using the wrap utility method I can easily encapsulate exceptions in the different layers without loosing the original stack and without having it dirty by rethrowing or incapsulating exception more than once.               try {       if(a == null) {         throw new EngineRuntimeException(SystemErrorCode.E_UNKNOWN_ERROR, \"blah, blah, blah\");       }            // Some other code that can throw exceptions (checked or unchecked),       // these exceptions will be wrapped inside EngineRuntimeException if they       // are not already of that type.          } catch (Exception ex) {         throw EngineRuntimeException.wrap(ex);     }          To recap, each layer has a safety boundary try-catch that wraps Exceptions into EngineRuntimeException, just rethrowing what is already an EngineRuntimeException. The question is: where should I log the exception? I want to log the exception only once so I was thinking about do the logging stuff inside the constructor of EngineRuntimeException class itself. Is that a bad idea? Is it better to do the logging stuff only in the catch blocks of the layer boundaries? Also I don't want to simply log using a log4j but I want to use a service (@Service) injected by spring so that I can decide to do something more than just logging on file system. How can I do that since I can't make spring inject something in a class I have created with the \"new\" instruction."}
{"_id": "82175", "title": "Developing professionally for iOS, Android and web - an insight", "text": "This is not really a question on how to develop all three, I know various cross platform ways and so on. But I more want to know from developer standpoint how hard it is to basically develop iOS, Android and web apps? I am currently in my first job as a mobile/web developer. I have already developed my first iPhone/iPad app and now I have to develop the app for android because the web version I tried just didn't perform as well as needed and web databases just did not seem to make the cut. But I am not sure it's possible to be good at developing all 3 in terms of remembering all the api's etc. I wouldn't say I have an issue with the programming languages just how to use the api's for the various platforms. Also, all the other languages I look at, in my spare time, just feel like I am spreading myself to thin. Is it feasible for one person to be developing ios, android and web apps? Should I think about reducing it to iOS and web based apps? I develop everything by myself, so I have no one to discuss what the best solutions are for everything and I am just trying to workout as I go along. So any cross platform developers out there? Do companies have different teams for different platforms? Any insight would just help me get my head together. Hopefully this question makes sense."}
{"_id": "127184", "title": "Examples of general purpose algorithms that have benefited from running on a GPU?", "text": "I am looking for examples of general purpose algorithms (meaning non-graphics related) that have been proven to run an order of magnitude faster on a GPU than on a CPU. I will use these examples to think creatively about other algorithms that I could implement on a GPU."}
{"_id": "7779", "title": "Any advice from self-taught programmers on competing with more conventional types?", "text": "As a self-taught programmer myself competing in an industry dominated by CS majors, I often find myself intimidated. I have a BA in liberal arts but have found that many \"trained\" programmers tend to look down and assume I have huge holes in my understanding of fundamentals. I tend to not tell anyone, unless I have to, that I learned this way to avoid the stigma. Would it be better to embrace how I learned or would it be more prudent to continue to deliver while being less than open about my background? Edit: I guess I did not mention this, but I actually have taken many CS classes, but I never had the time to get the actual paper with the random requirements attached. I have all the core stuff like data structures and algorithms, etc. I've found that I learned more on my own, however, I was primarily concerned with how this approach was viewed by employers and whatnot. Thanks for all of the great advice though!"}
{"_id": "170452", "title": "Numerous Unexpected Obstacles Ruining any Project Plans", "text": "I am working as software developer and struggling with this problem time and time again for almost thirteen years. There seems not to be any way out of the following problem. And it happens with small projects as well. For example, I plan to write an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio. I dowload learning materials, get some book on the topic and allocate time for learning and development. However, during the development, many seemingly trivial problems arise, for example:   * Why the script refuses to delete the file?   * Why Visual Studio does not register the extension?   * (after two days) OK, it registers it, but now it got broken. How to fix it? each of these \"small\" obstacles usually take 1-5 days to resolve and the project finally consumes several times more man-hours than planned. Maybe it happens only because I am working on Microsoft platform and many of their Frameworks and architectures are bit confusing and badly documented. I would like to have most problems resolved by finding answer in a book or official documentation (MSDN), but the only answer I usually find is on some weird forum or personal blog googled after desperately searching for any relevant information on the topic. Do you have the same struggles? Do you have techniques on how to prevent these problems? I was thinking of simply multiplying projected time for a given project by some factor, but this does not help. Some projects get done briskly and some take months and the guiding factor here are these small \"glitches\" which take programmers whole weeks to resolve. I have to admit that lots of these obstacles demoralizes me and drains me of focus and joy of work (who likes to get back to work when he have to resolve some stupid registry problem or weird framework bug instead of doing creative work?) After the project is finally done, I am feeling like dying from thousand cuts."}
{"_id": "21802", "title": "When are Getters and Setters Justified", "text": "Getters and setters are often criticized as being not proper OO. On the other hand most OO code I've seen has extensive getters and setters. When are getters and setters justified? Do you try to avoid using them? Are they overused in general? If your favorite language has properties (mine does) then such things are also considered getters and setters for this question. They are same thing from an OO methodology perspective. They just have nicer syntax. Sources for Getter/Setter Criticism (some taken from comments to give them better visibility):   * http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-09-2003/jw-0905-toolbox.html   * http://typicalprogrammer.com/?p=23   * http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AccessorsAreEvil   * http://www.darronschall.com/weblog/2005/03/no-brain-getter-and-setters.cfm   * http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/encapsulation_violation_with_getters_and To state the criticism simply: Getters and Setters allow you to manipulate the internal state of objects from outside of the object. This violates encapsulation. Only the object itself should care about its internal state. And an example Procedural version of code.               struct Fridge     {         int cheese;     }          void go_shopping(Fridge fridge)     {          fridge.cheese += 5;     }      Mutator version of code:               class Fridge     {          int cheese;               void set_cheese(int _cheese) { cheese = _cheese; }          int get_cheese() { return cheese; }      }          void go_shopping(Fridge fridge)     {          fridge.set_cheese(fridge.get_cheese() + 5);             }      The getters and setters made the code much more complicated without affording proper encapsulation. Because the internal state is accessible to other objects we don't gain a whole lot by adding these getters and setters. The question has been previously discussed on Stack Overflow:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/565095/java-are-getters-and-setters-evil   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/996179"}
{"_id": "120497", "title": "Why are public and private accessors considered good practice?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When are Getters and Setters Justified Why exactly is having public and private accessors like these:               private string foo;          public string Foo     {         get         {             return foo;         }         set         {             foo = value;         }     }      considered better than just having public ones like this:               public string Foo;      The end result seems to be the same."}
{"_id": "190181", "title": "How to design member access for an Article-type class?", "text": "I am doing a final project in a C++ class writing a _very_ simple usenet-like client/server. I figure that since it's usenet-like I'll have a `NewsGroup` class and an `Article` class, I'm now working on my `Article` class. I can't really decide on a good design, though (this class is not about design patterns and I haven't taken any). This is what I have:               class Article {     public:         const std::string author;         std::string title;         std::string text;         const uint32_t id;         system_clock::time_point timestamp;              Article(const std::string auth&,                 const std::string tit&,                 const std::string txt&,                 const system_clock::time_point&);          private:         Article(const Article&);         void operator=(const Article&);         static uint32_t id_pool;     };      My motivation is this: `author` should never change -> `const` `title` could change if edited -> `non-const` `text` could change if edited -> `non-const` `id` should never change -> `const` `timestamp` could change but probably shouldn't, I'm not sure what to do with it yet. `id_pool` is just where I get IDs from. One specification is that IDs should never be reused so I just increment `id_pool` in the Article constructor. Coming from Java with all the getters and setters that I really don't like, and then some Python with it's \"Everything public\" and properties, that I do like, I'm getting a bit confused here. I mean, I could make the members private and have getters and setters (I can't think of any natural \"verb-methods\" that an Article can \"do\"), but it feels like I would gain very little. I would be thankful for some pointers on good design in this case."}
{"_id": "38423", "title": "Is it a good programming practice to not use getters and setters in trivial parts of code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When are Getters and Setters Justified Is it a good programming practice to not use getters and setters in trivial parts of code?"}
{"_id": "158631", "title": "What is the benefit of using getters and setters on properties in C#?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When are Getters and Setters Justified Why do we use get and set method in C#? And why do we use public and private method property? For example:               public class Date     {         private int month = 7;           public int Month         {             get             {                 return month;             }             set             {                 if ((value > 0) && (value < 13))                 {                     month = value;                 }             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "120828", "title": "Are Get-Set methods a violation of Encapsulation? ", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When are Getters and Setters Justified In an Object oriented framework, one believes there must be strict encapsulation. Hence, internal variables are _not to be exposed_ to outside applications. But in many codebases, we see _tons_ of get/set methods which essentially open a formal window to modify internal variables that were originally intended to be strictly prohibited. Isn't it a clear violation of encapsulation? How broadly such a practice is seen and what to do about it? EDIT: I have seen some discussions where there are two opinions in extreme: on one hand people believe that because get/set interface is used to modify any parameter, it does qualifies not be violating encapsulation. On the other hand, there are people who believe it is does violate. Here is my point. Take a case of UDP server, with methods - get_URL(), set_URL(). The URL (to listen to) property is quite a parameter that application needs to be supplied and modified. However, in the same case, if the property like get_byte_buffer_length() and set_byte_buffer_length(), clearly points to values which are quite internal. Won't it imply that it _does_ violate the encapsulation? In fact, even get_byte_buffer_length() which otherwise doesn't modify the object, still misses the point of encapsulation, because, certainly there is an App which _knows_ i have an internal buffer! Tomorrow, if the internal buffer is replaced by something like a *packet_list* the method goes dysfunctional. Is there a universal yes/no towards get set method? Is there any strong guideline that tell programmers (specially the junior ones) as to _when_ does it violate encapsulation and when does it not?"}
{"_id": "187886", "title": "How important is encapsulation?", "text": "As a student in programming, I learned that encapsulation is one of the most important principles of object-oriented programming. However, I only follow that principle when I feel like it suits my purpose. I sometimes leave internal class variables public if they are intended to be directly read at some time, and only use things like setters and getters when there are actual calculations (and assignments of other variables) involved in the assignment/evaluation of a variable (say, a `getDegrees()` of an `Angle` class that only stores radians internally). If I find that some procedure done with a class involves a lot of modification of internal variables and is easily groupable into a single operation, I will put it into a function of the class rather than having the outside code call multiple smaller functions. However, I will not always _enforce_ this in the interface by making the affected variables private instead. Am I violating any principles by doing this? If so, how severely? The code that does this usually doesn't face outward, as I pay a lot of attention to how out-of-program input is processed."}
{"_id": "202879", "title": "which style of member-access is preferable", "text": "the purpose of oop using classes is to encapsulate members from the `outer space`. i always read that accessing members should be done by methods. for example:               template<typename T>     class foo_1 {       T state_;     public:       // following below     };      the most common doing that by my professor was to have a get and set method.                 // variant 1       T const& getState() { return state_; }       void setState(T const& v) { state_ = v; }      or like this:                 // variant 2       // in my opinion it is easier to read       T const& state() { return state_; }       void state(T const& v) { state_ = v; }      assume the `state_` is a variable, which is checked periodically and there is no need to ensure the value (state) is consistent. Is there any disadvantage of accessing the state by reference? for example:                 // variant 3       // do it by reference       T& state() { return state_; }      or even directly, if I declare the variable as public.               template<typename T>     class foo {     public:       // variant 4       T state;     };      In variant 4 I could even ensure consistence by using c++11 atomic. So my question is, which one should I prefer?, Is there any coding standard which would decline one of these pattern? for some code see here"}
{"_id": "82284", "title": "The New Programming Language & BCL for the Cloud", "text": "Let's say you need to implement a new programming language and BCL designed specifically for operating in the cloud (it won't be used on client machines ever). It should be optimized for cloud computing; easy to learn, fast, efficient, powerful, modern. What it would look like? What would be it's major differences from C#, Java, Ruby, Python, JavaScript? How would it's BCL (base class library) differ from let's say the one in .NET Framework 4.0? .. The same way Silverlight BCL was built for in-browser/multi-platform use, a totally new BCL should be build for a cloud, don't you think so? .. As J\u00f6rg W Mittag mentioned, a programming language created exclusively for a cloud can have it's own advantages over traditional programming languages. For example this language may evolve without breaking existing applications, let's say you rename a method / change it's signature / or move it to another namespace, all the applications in the cloud will be automatically updated to reflect that change. .. Theoretically C# 5.0 could become such a language with it's complier as a service feature. But that still won't eliminate a need for a dedicated BCL for the cloud."}
{"_id": "161301", "title": "Registration: Email hash and verifying only one account per email", "text": "I'm using a registration function that hashes the email in PBKDF2 with a random and unique Salt each time. The hashes email and his salt are saved in the DB. No problem with that. The problem is that now I want to make sure that users only create one single account per email. Obviously to verify that I need to check my DB and that's where the problem starts. I either lose in security or in time. Because as I see it I have 2 choices: 1 - I change my hash method and use a common Salt for all emails. Which make me lose a bit of security. Or 2 - I hash the email with all the Salts from the DB and check for matches. My guess is that this will be horribly slow. So my question are:   * What should I do? Optimize security or \"time\"?   * Maybe hashing emails with unique and random salts in PBKDF2 is too much? If yes, what hashing method should I use?   * Is there any other solution? PS: I didn't post any code because I think this is more of a theory discussion but if code is needed let me know, I will add it."}
{"_id": "82035", "title": "Which open-source license is right for my project?", "text": "I am trying to choose the right license for a project that I would like to release as open-source later this year but I am unsure as to what the most appropriate license would be. I was originally thinking of the GPLv2 license, but I don't think that it is what I am after. I have been working on this project for over a year now (on and off) for my company. I figured that it would be great to give something back to the community and would like to release the project as open-source, but I want to retain full custody of the project. My company will be providing both free, commercial and community contributed content (perhaps with GitHub). Here is basically what I am after:   * Original source can be distributed and re-distributed (verbatim) both commercially and non-commercially as long as the original copyright information, website link and license is maintained.   * License of original source cannot be changed.   * Original source can be modified and distributed (commercially & non-commercially) for a specific application, but cannot be re-distributed without written consent from the original author (me). For example, a developer could change the source for their client, but they cannot redistribute that change. The developer may, however, choose to submit their modifications for integration into the original source.   * Themes and extensions must be covered by an open-source license. It must be possible for any developer to modify, distribute and re-distribute all themes and extensions (commercially & non-commercially) should they choose to do so. I am aware that it is unlikely that there is a license that will cover all of these points, but something along those lines would be fantastic. I have put a lot of hard work into this project and whilst I am happy to share it, I do not want to loose it to a big company who has loads of money to splash at it."}
{"_id": "117765", "title": "What are the recommended resources for learning about the Actor model of concurrent systems?", "text": "The Actor concurrency model is clearly gaining favor. Is there a good book that presents the patterns and pitfalls of the model? I am thinking about something that would discuss, for instance, the problems of consistency and correctness in the context of hundreds or thousands of independent Actors. It would be okay if it were associated with a specific language (Erlang, I would imagine, since that seems universally regarded as the proven implementation of Actors), but I am hoping for something more than an introductory chapter or two. I'm actually most interested in Actors as they are implemented in Scala, if there are any such resources available."}
{"_id": "48401", "title": "Learning C++ properly (not C with classes)", "text": "The typical reason I hear to why people bash C++ is that they don't actually know C++, they just know \"C with classes\", which apparently is different. I am just beginning to learn C++, however, I want to actually learn C++ and not simply \"C with classes\". How can I ensure I learn C++ properly? Some examples would be wonderful."}
{"_id": "118404", "title": "How can I make sure I'm writing C++ like it's meant to be written?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I learn to write idiomatic C++? Besides the obvious answers of \"use g++ instead of gcc, and cout instead of printf\", how can I ensure that my toy project is teaching me proper C++ paradigms and patterns? Backstory: I've never written a line of C++ beyond Hello World, and I've chosen what should be a straightforward (albeit somewhat complicated) sample project to help me learn the language. I've decided that the goal I want to end at is a CLI Huffman encoder. It doesn't have to compete with modern compressors in speed or efficiency, it just seemed like a project that would help me touch many aspects of the language at once. So, before I dive into this project, what are some things I should keep in mind? A lot of what I'm going to be doing is research online, and I have a fear that a lot of tutorials are C-in-C++. I'm looking for answers like: \"if you're using malloc, you're probably doing something wrong\" or \"you should probably be using `boost` or something similar\". I'm also looking for suggestions like \"if I were writing this, I'd use a template around x\"."}
{"_id": "206762", "title": "Find pattern in a string", "text": "How would one approach the following question: We have two strings: a normal alphanumeric string and a pattern string. the pattern string can be composed by alphanumeric chars plus the char \"?\" and \"*\" We want to check if the first string match the pattern, where the ? means that every char (alphanumeric) is permitted in that position, while * allows to have a sequence of alphanumeric chars."}
{"_id": "206764", "title": "Do I need to return error: null in JSON response?", "text": "When designing a RESTful API that uses JSON to respond to requests, I usually return an object like this when an error happens:               {       \"error\": \"Something bad happened\",       \"error_code\": \"XXX\"     }      Do I need to have a `\"error\": \"\"` or `\"error\": null` in my object when there is no error?"}
{"_id": "176545", "title": "Validating User Stories: How much change is too much?", "text": "While the core of requirements development and acceptance criteria would ideally take place during the planning meeting in order to create a better estimate, Scrum encourages continuous interaction with the product owner throughout the sprint to validate and refine user stories.   * What kind of criteria is used to judge if there is too much change being imposed on a user story mid-sprint?   * When is it appropriate to change the requirements of the user story?   * When is it appropriate to cancel the user story / sprint in order to re-evaluate and re-estimate a user story in question?"}
{"_id": "206769", "title": "Would Single Page Apps(thin server-thick client architectures) kill server side languages like Java, C++", "text": "Single Page Apps strips server down to a REST api. If SPAs are the modern and better way of developing web apps, then would someday JavaScript rule the world and server-side languages like Java, C++ etc would not be the prominent skill companies look for? Or are there still parts of huge and prominent web apps like youtube, amazon.com which just can't be all ported to client side JavaScript and would continue to depend upon server-side languages."}
{"_id": "255396", "title": "Sessions in cloud applications dangerous?", "text": "We have a django app hosted on heroku. I had a situation:   1. A user entered an email in a form on page1. If the email existed in the database he was redirected to Login page otherwise to register page.    2. In the register page the form was filled with the same email entered on page1 using request.session that was populated previously. **I was told it was dangerous as using sessions is not recommended in cloud applications. Is this notion correct both generally, and under above scenario?**"}
{"_id": "19267", "title": "The Written Roles of Software Development Manager", "text": "We all know what a software development manager does, but I'm afraid that we only know it _vaguely_. We think we know what he is doing, but to exactly list down what is the job scope is a bit hard. In your opinion, what are the roles of a software development manager?"}
{"_id": "241191", "title": "With AMD style modules in JavaScript is there any benefit to namespaces?", "text": "Coming from C++ originally and seeing lots of Java programmers doing the same we brought namespaces to JavaScript. See Google's closure library as an example where they have a main namespace, `goog` and under that many more namespaces like goog.async, goog.graphics But now, having learned the AMD style of requiring modules it seems like namespaces are kind of pointless in JavaScript. Not only pointless but even arguably an anti-pattern. What is AMD? It's a way of defining and including modules that removes all direct dependencies. Effectively you do this               // some/module.js     define([         'name/of/needed/module',         'name/of/someother/needed/module',       ], function(          RefToNeededModule,          RefToSomeOtherNeededModule) {            ...code...            return object or function     });      This format lets the AMD support code know that this module needs `name/of/needed/module.js` and `name/of/someother/needed/module.js` loaded. The AMD code can load all the modules and then, assuming no circular dependencies, call the `define` function on each module in the correct order, record the object/function returned by the module as it calls them, and then call any other modules' `define` function with references to those modules. This seems to remove any need for namespaces. In your own code you can call the reference to any other module anything you want. For example if you had 2 string libraries, even if they define similar functions, as long as they follow the AMD pattern you can easily use both in the same module. No need for namespaces to solve that. It also means there's no hard coded dependencies. For example in Google's closure any module could directly reference another module with something like `var value = goog.math.someMathFunc(otherValue)` and if you're unlucky it will magically work where as with AMD style you'd have to explicitly include the math library otherwise the module wouldn't have a reference to it since there are no globals with AMD. On top of that dependency injection for testing becomes easy. None of the code in the AMD module references things by namespace so there is no hardcoded namespace paths, you can easily mock classes at testing time. Is there any other point to namespaces or is that something that C++ / Java programmers are bringing to JavaScript that arguably doesn't really belong?"}
{"_id": "97394", "title": "What can I do about multiple coworkers who constantly question my knowledge?", "text": "At my current job, I have coworkers who still throw interview questions at me even though I've been working there for 6 months. I though it would end after I got hired but then it continued on and on. What is appalling is that it is precisely the ones who are poor programmers (the manager and couple other guys) who do this most. How should I handle this situation? P.S. I have certainly seen this at other worksites in the past, but usually there is just one jerk with a chip on his should who does it. Here, it is many people."}
{"_id": "97397", "title": "Do I need an equivalent for MAMP to work as a Ruby Server?", "text": "I am just starting to learn Ruby, and I want to do something that required a DB but I'm unsure whether MAMP would work or do I need something else?"}
{"_id": "158328", "title": "Is it appropriate to make a User Story for removing small pieces of existing functionality?", "text": "For an area of an application that has been developed, the request has come in to remove an item from a menu. I know this is a small thing, but how do you treat it in Scrum? I'm used to using User Stories to add functionality, not to remove it. So my question is, should I create a user story for this, somehow phrased to do with removing the button? Or is there a better way or dealing with this? Thanks, Paul."}
{"_id": "250132", "title": "Is it safe in Haskell to save a data structure to a file using \"show\", and retrieve it using \"read\"?", "text": "Say I have the following types:               type EndsTup = (Int,Int)         -- (0-based index from start or end, Frequency)     type FreqTup = (Char, [EndsTup], [EndsTup])         -- (Character, Freqs from start, Freqs from end)     type FreqData = [FreqTup]         -- 1 entry in the list for each letter      Which I'm using to store data regarding the frequency of a character's position in a word. If I want to then save this to file, is it safe (as in guaranteed not to corrupt if it's written without error) to convert the structure to a string using show, and then read it using something like:               readData <- readFile filePath     let reconstructed = read readData :: FreqData      I'm just asking because that seems \"too easy\". Is this how it's typically done?"}
{"_id": "119779", "title": "How to obtain an affordable electronic paper programmable kit or similar?", "text": "I'm really interested in playing around with the electronic paper technology, but I don't really want to program any commercial device (kindle or whatever). I have some ideas and I want to start. How do I get a screen of electronic paper, a chip and how to start programming for it (language, interface)"}
{"_id": "119778", "title": "Where we should put validation for domain model", "text": "I still looking best practice for domain model validation. Is that good to put the validation in constructor of domain model ? my domain model validation example as follows:               public class Order      {         private readonly List<OrderLine> _lineItems;              public virtual Customer Customer { get; private set; }         public virtual DateTime OrderDate { get; private set; }         public virtual decimal OrderTotal { get; private set; }              public Order (Customer customer)         {             if (customer == null)                 throw new  ArgumentException(\"Customer name must be defined\");                  Customer = customer;             OrderDate = DateTime.Now;             _lineItems = new List<LineItem>();         }              public void AddOderLine //....         public IEnumerable<OrderLine> AddOderLine { get {return _lineItems;} }     }               public class OrderLine     {         public virtual Order Order { get; set; }         public virtual Product Product { get; set; }         public virtual int Quantity { get; set; }         public virtual decimal UnitPrice { get; set; }              public OrderLine(Order order, int quantity, Product product)         {             if (order == null)                 throw new  ArgumentException(\"Order name must be defined\");             if (quantity <= 0)                 throw new  ArgumentException(\"Quantity must be greater than zero\");             if (product == null)                 throw new  ArgumentException(\"Product name must be defined\");                  Order = order;             Quantity = quantity;             Product = product;         }     }      Thanks for all of your suggestion."}
{"_id": "119777", "title": "Legal Applications of Metamorphic Code", "text": "Firstly, I would like to state that I already understand the 'vx' applications for Metamorphic code. I am not here to ask a question related to any of those topics as that would be inappropriate in this context. I would like to know if anyone has ever used 'Metamorphic' code in practice, for purposes other than those previously stated, if so, what was the reasoning for using said concept. In essence I am trying to discover a purpose for this concept, if any, other than circumventing anti-virus scanners and the like."}
{"_id": "81482", "title": "Do developers on a team ever have a \"personal\" version control?", "text": "I'm assuming that after a while, many developers come to know/love a particular VCS. What happens if you find yourself on a team using an incompatible system - do you learn the new system and adapt your workflow to the team's, or do you keep your old system, and try to get both working in tandem? It strikes me that this is either a very common strategy, or a serious faux pas. I'm new to software development, so this question is strictly hypothetical for me so far. While my gut tells me that the decentralized structure and branch- happy nature of git/Mercurial would appeal to me more than the very centralized Vault set up my group uses, I do not know nearly enough about working with version control in general yet to prefer any one system to another, so I will be sticking with whatever the team is running for the foreseeable future. But it does lead me to wonder how common it is for developers faced with learning a new VCS to roll a kind of \"hybrid\" of both systems - using their preferred system locally to manage what they're working on, and really only using the team wide system to commit/update. This of course leads to other questions - is there a set pattern for working with two systems at once? How do you deal with the fact that your local repo doesn't have access to the full history of the project? Etc..."}
{"_id": "81483", "title": "which is best technology to develop UI for Desktop application in java", "text": "I want to develop a Desktop Application using Java. I want to know which are the best technologies to develop User Interface like (swing, swt, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "215817", "title": "Optimising news fetching", "text": "I have a web scraper for scraping news from different sources in wp7. My current appraoch for doing this is:   * load newspapers information from xml file.   * go to the specified sections and fetch the urls of the news items.    * go to each url and fetch headline, image, publisher.    * display using a MVVM architecture of windows phone. The whole thing takes place asynchronously...meaning as soon as url from a section of a newspaper is fetched it is added to the queue, and the second stage consisting of fetching headline, image etc starts... and as soon this is fetched even for one article, it is displayed. Later on as more articles are fetched, they are added on to the list. For the fetching purpose I am using a SmartThreadPool(http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/7933/Smart-Thread-Pool) for windows phone. My problem is that...even for fetching around 80 items (in total) from 9 publications, it is taking more than a minute. How can i speed up the procedure? Note: I have a two stage approach because many times the images are not available with headlines, and are only found in the article."}
{"_id": "81485", "title": "Should I choose C or C++ for an interview?", "text": "I know a bit of both C and C++. I am assuming that many people who know C++ also know C. I am wondering what language I should pick to code in during an interview. C, because it's faster to make a working program in C, because you don't have to worry about thinking what objects your system should have, etc, as in C++ (though many experienced C++ programmers can code their solution in C++ in just the same amount of time)? Or C++, because then you don't worry much about passing parameter by parameter and you can just pass around the object etc and you can leverage on existing string library, etc.?"}
{"_id": "65565", "title": "Are frameworks necessary In PHP?", "text": "Are frameworks really necessary in PHP? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using one?"}
{"_id": "49058", "title": "What to do as a new team lead on a project with maintainability problems?", "text": "I have just been put in charge of a code project with maintainability problems. What things can I do to get the project on a stable footing? I find myself in a place where we are working with a very large multi-tiered .NET system that is missing a lot of the important things such as unit tests, IOC, MEF, too many static classes, pure datasets etc. I'm only 24 but I've been here for almost three years (this app has been in development for 5) and mostly due to time constraints we've been just adding in more crap to fit the other crap. After doing a number of projects in my free time I have begun to understand just how important all those concepts are. Also due to employee shifting I find myself to now be the team lead on this project and I really want to come up with some smart ways to improve this app. Ways where the value can be explained to management. I have ideas of what I would like to do but they all seem so overwhelming without much upfront gain. Any stories of how people have or would have dealt with this would be a very interesting read. Thanks."}
{"_id": "65561", "title": "A Newbie .NET Developer Desperately Seeking for Advice", "text": "I am becoming a little desperate. I am 23 and for the last three months I've been working as a software developer for a British Company who develop a leisure management system. Prior this job, I was never a developer and just did some minor university projects and one ASP.NET project which I didn't complete. I was programming in C# but now I have moved to VB.NET, since most of the project in this company are VB-Based. I know my knowledge is very limited, in software design, development, databases and all. The responsibility here is quiet heavy for a newbie, I am the only developer who is developing the whole package (7 programs, all desktop applications) and the thing is while I am getting better at fixing bugs and adding tasks now I need to add a whole component to two of their systems and now I feel I am hopeless (We did a new release while I was working in this three months). I think I have weakness in Data Binding which is causing me the slow progress of adding that component! While I love coding and I wouldn't get tired of it at all (When I go home I have my home coding for fun too), it came to my mind maybe I am not intelligent enough for this job. Can experienced Developers help me on this issue and provide me some advise for getting better and better? What did youselves do at your first carrer in development? What were the problems?"}
{"_id": "46084", "title": "How to make people new to programming stop asking me questions and distracting me?", "text": "I am at secondary school right now and I'm the only one in my class who is experienced with programming. Because of that, people are constantly distracting me while I'm writing code to ask me to solve a problem. Usually I reply with something like 'I don't know, I never use that' but I don't want to lie to people. Another problem is that I became so well known for this that even students from other classes are asking me questions. I find this damn annoying. Thirdly, if I solve a problem for them they don't learn anything from it. How can I stop people from asking me programming-related questions in a kind way?"}
{"_id": "107899", "title": "What is the best idea to put available OS (linux) and Web application to client?", "text": "After a year programming a web based business management system, I got my idea divided into two differents ways to do what I'm doing... I will try to explain in follow lines: **First I will describe my enviroment:**   * Webserver: _apache, ngynx_   * Programming Language: _PHP, Shell Script, Java Script, SQL_   * Database: _Mysql_   * Operating System: _Linux, UNIX (All Distros) (If manually configured works on windows)_   * Authentication Server: _FreeRadius_ **First situation** I have my application running on this enviroment that I had just described before, as my application is a SaaS app, then I have my own server to run it all and customers pay to use it as a service accessed by webbrowser. **Second Situation** The same as before but with one big difference, everything (environment) is installed in the customer, then I need to cryptography all my codes (It includes PHP and Shell Scripts). I think this situation is most difficulty, but I would like to hear it from different points of view."}
{"_id": "167222", "title": "Examples of non open source projects on Bitbucket or Github", "text": "Need examples to show management that these are used for source control and effectively backup of projects. They will be concerned about having their source code off-site. If there are good examples I think that it may help in convincing them to consider this as an option."}
{"_id": "167223", "title": "PHP Riak in place update", "text": "From what I can see, when using Riak to update an object, I first need to load the object into PHP, then edit the object, then store the object back to the Riak database. I was wondering if there is a way to update a bucket without pulling it into PHP first. That way, it would save on the network I/O and latency of pulling it into the PHP script. Can objects be edited directly on the Riak side of things? Edit: Is there away to push data to the end of a raik object, so if i have an object that is numeric array can i make a push to add subject that i know its not there or no in place updates what so ever"}
{"_id": "28139", "title": "Is a big name computer science degree worth the cost?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do I need to go to a big-name university? I'm currently in High School and trying to look into what I want to do after I graduate. I know that I will be going to college, and that I want a degree in Computer Science, however, I'm not entirely sure where I want to go (I haven't started the application process yet). I already have built up a decent amount of experience in programming (over the summers I have been hired to program at a local university), and I'm pretty capable of teaching myself most of the material I've come across through either books or web documentation. I'm interested in whether it is worth it to get a degree from a major, big- name computer science university for $50,000 each year, as opposed to going to a local state school for only $20,000. For my Bachelor's degree alone, this would be $120,000 _more_ than the state school. I've also heard that where you get your Bachelor's doesn't matter much if you plan to get a Master's degree. Many people recommend going somewhere like a state school for your Bachelor's, and then try to get into a more major school for your Master's. Has anybody found any truth in this? Basically, is going to a big name computer science school for a Bachelor's degree really worth the added expense?"}
{"_id": "35208", "title": "Do I need to go to a big-name university?", "text": "As a soon-to-be graduating high school senior in the U.S., I'm going to be facing a tough decision in a few months: which college should I go to? Will it be worth it to go to Cornell or Stanford or Carnegie Mellon (assuming I get in, of course) to get a big-name computer science degree, internships, and connections with professors, while taking on massive debt; or am I better off going to SUNY Binghamton (probably the best state school in New York) and still get a pretty decent education while saving myself from over a hundred- thousand dollars worth of debt? Yes, I know questions like this has been asked before (namely here and here), but please bear with me because I haven't found an answer that fits my particular situation. I've read the two linked questions above in depth, but they haven't answered what I want to know:   1. Yes, I understand that going to a big-name college can potentially get me connected with some wonderful professors and leaders in the field, but on average, how does that translate financially? I mean, will good connections pay off so well that I'd be easily getting rid of over a hundred-thousand dollars of debt?    2. And how does the fact that I can get a fifth-years master's degree at Carnegie Mellon play into the equation? Will the higher degree right off the bat help me get a better-paying job just out of college, or will the extra year only put me further into debt? Not having to go to graduate school to get a comparable degree will, of course, be a great financial relief, but will getting it so early give it any greater worth?   3. And if I go to SUNY Binghamton, which is far lesser-known than what I've considered (although if there are any alumni out there who want to share their experience, I would greatly appreciate it), would I be closing off doors that would potentially offset my short-term economic gain with long-term benefits? Essentially, is the short-term benefit overweighed by a potential long-term loss? The answers to these questions all tie in to my final college decision (again, permitting I make it to these schools), so I hope that asking the skilled and knowledgeable people of the field will help me make the right choice (if there is such a thing). * * * **Also, please note:** I'm in a rather peculiar situation where I can't pay for college without taking out a bunch of loans, but will be getting little to no financial aid (likely federal or otherwise). I don't want to elaborate on this too much (so take it at face value), but this is mainly the reason I'm asking the question. * * * Thanks a lot! It means a lot to me. * * * **Edit:** Thanks to everyone for your wonderful responses! All thought-out and well-written, and I wish I had the time to write comments on all of them. Hopefully, I'll be able to when I get home from school and work later tonight... * * * **Edit 2:** Wow! Unbelievable that I've gotten this many helpful responses in such a short amount of time! I haven't had the time to properly sit down and respond to many of these, but I really appreciate the effort, and I will do so tomorrow. Big thanks to everyone who posted! * * * **Edit 3:** For those who are interested, I got into CMU, Cornell, and Binghamton, and decided on Binghamton. CMU and Cornell gave me no financial aid whatsoever, while Binghamton, being a state school costs less than $20,000 a year including room and board. When I got the admission letters, the decision was hard, but after visiting Binghamton and realizing just how good of a school it is (state schools are severely underrated in the United States; it's a terrible problem\u2014for what it's worth, it turns out that Binghamton was even more selective than many of the private schools I applied to, not that that inherently means much, but just as a metric), I couldn't pass up. Besides, I visited on a terrible, rainy day, and was still impressed, so I knew it was the one. ;) Doing some actual financial analysis, I realized I would never be able to pay off the $60,000 a year required for CMU or Cornell, only making choosing Binghamton feel even better. While this question is specific to my case, I hope this can help someone else in my position. * * * **Edit 4:** I've recently been made aware that students in a similar position have been stumbling across this question, and I wanted to give a short update. I'm incredibly happy here at Binghamton, and if I had to go through the college process all over again, I wouldn't have chosen any other school. I think most students tend to be happy regardless of where they go, but for me, Binghamton has been a great experience. What I want to tell students is this: I know that it's hard to judge schools without paying attention to their names and reputations \u2014 I doubt Carnegie Mellon will ever be considered a _bad_ school for studying Computer Science \u2014 but don't ignore schools just because you've never heard of them! Don't be afraid to make **practical** choices. I know that Binghamton isn't a world- famous university, but from what I've seen, our curriculum is more rigorous, and lays down a better foundation than many top schools that I've heard of, and for much cheaper. We focus a lot on getting students internship, job, and research opportunities, and we have very strong connections to companies like Microsoft, Bloomberg, IBM, Lockheed Martin, and several others. We're a very _practical_ school \u2014 we might not be famous, but if you come here, you're going to get an excellent foundation for your career, and almost certainly an internship or a job. Plus, we're small enough that students can get to know their professors well (I have several friends who are first-name basis with their professors), which certainly helps if they're interested in doing research, which we do a _lot_ of at Binghamton. I didn't know any of this when I chose Binghamton, and it's one of those things you can only learn about a school once you go there \u2014 details like this won't be stressed on brochures and magazines, and you learn about it through experience. So, what I want to say is, don't go picking schools solely on whether you've heard of them or not, and consider state schools. The better ones, like Binghamton, are very good choices. Take this with a grain of salt: of course, if you're motivated, skilled, and hard-working, and if you push yourself to succeed, where you go doesn't matter as much because you'll be noticed wherever you are. I got very lucky with my internships and job opportunities, and my experiences have definitely been flukes, but if you are constantly improving your skills and apply yourself, you can further yourself much more than your school will ever be able to. If you're a student, and you have any questions about this topic, please don't hesitate to email me. I'd love to help answer your questions: itai@itaiferber.net"}
{"_id": "199098", "title": "Resources for a New Programmer with a Math Background", "text": "I'm almost brand new to programming, but have a fairly strong background in mathematics (primarily algebra and logic -- e.g. universal algebra). I've always heard that there is a strong relationship between math and programming, but the intro programming books I've looked at don't seem to emphasise it. For reference, I started with Java, since that's what I need to be able to use for a job I'm at this summer. I imagine that most authors of these resources assume that if you don't don't have a programming background, then you won't have a math background. It makes sense to me though to use the background in math that I have to help the learning process. All that being said, are there any resources out there for a new programmer (hopefully related to Java) that also reference the mathematical concepts that are being introduced? Perhaps explaining things with analogies to math? Apologies if this question isn't appropriate. I tried searching for such a resource, or an answer to this question on this site already, but have had no luck."}
{"_id": "191371", "title": "How does public API designer come to the conclusion what shall be provided for future and what not?", "text": "Often working with various jars and exploring the features specially in corner cases, I often realize and think that how is that they thought that it might be a useful scenario somewhere in future that it might be used and an API is made handy. So, how do they come to the conclusion what shall be provided and what not? Other problem I faced once was that I was in need of a certain feature and it was missing from the list which struck me with immense drawback of using API's. Shouldn't it be that if some feature is missing then programmer should be able to program it himself rather than depending entirely on APIs all the time?"}
{"_id": "201232", "title": "Zen Coding for Java?", "text": "I just saw a demonstration of Zen Coding. I think it's a great investment on productivity, however my work is 99% backend data processing via Java. So far I only know templates in Eclipse like sysout and foreach (then hit CTRL+SPACE in MS). Is there more Zen Coding for Java?"}
{"_id": "191372", "title": "Why is it so hard to get employees to update the issue tracker?", "text": "I've always had this struggle to get folks to update their issues, both at my company and at work. I've had a few cases when people actually do it from the goodness of their heart, but ~70% of the time I have to be chasing people down. Being the one that generally does some or other form of management (I am firstmost a developer), the main reason I try to give is that I don't want to be chasing people down and interrupting to query on progress, but I don't think in the end people mind that much being asked. In some rare and extreme cases I end up updating their tickets (when I need to create reports). So, have you ran into this problem?, how have you encouraged developers to update the issue tracker frequently?, what degree of success have you had?"}
{"_id": "11473", "title": "Can working with bad code erode your programming skills?", "text": "Can working with bad code erode your programming skills?"}
{"_id": "231250", "title": "How to move away from hardcoded paths in our build processes", "text": "We have a set of Java tools that are built and run locally. Whenever one of the devs commits a change, everyone else (including non-developers) need to do an update and build the tools. Everyone uses windows machines so whoever designed the build processes decided to place everything in a folder called `C:\\build` and dump all of the class files in the appropriate folders. For example, the folder might look something like               C:\\build\\firstTool\\     C:\\build\\secondTool\\     C:\\build\\settings.ini      We also have a huge library folder where all the jars go, and it's placed here               C:\\lib\\      As a result, many classes are simply assuming this is where the files are going to be stored and have hardcoded paths everywhere. What can I do to clean things up? I don't want users to have to build tools, nor do I want them to have to update any checked out repos on their end. Personally, I think developers should be the ones maintaining releases."}
{"_id": "66614", "title": "How can I feel more confident about my programming skills?", "text": "Programming isn't alien to me. I first starting doing markup (HTML, now please don't laugh at me) when I was 12 and a little bit of BASIC when I was 13 (I knew much about Flowcharts, Pseudocodes at this point), but then I was admonished into Biology in high school and hence missed out on \"real\" programming knowledge of languages such as C, Java, etcetera. I took up CS for my UG B.E. (similar to BS, but way more theoretical). I learnt C & C++ (to a lesser extent) on my own (my prof was a total pain and the class was filled with code-jocks (who had already learnt it in school, and hence paid no attention to class and didn't let lesser mortals like me to pay any attention to class either)) and could whip up an awesome addition or multiplication program (ones which now even kinder-gardeners' whip up with way more finesse) and a piss-poor knowledge of Java (which has even grown rusty in recent times). My main problem is that I've always felt inadequate and strangled by my limited programming skills and belittled by the code-jocks (believe me, I've come across this site ages ago, but could just now build up the courage to actually post a question) and have been at times even depressed over said inability. Most people say that Programming isn't necessarily about the language but the state of mind that the person has and the techniques they employ to solve problems/issues. I agree with such sentiments, but can I ever acquire such a \"state of mind\", and if such how should I approach \"Programming/Coding\", and if there are any set ways and steps one most go through to attain the \"Zen of Coding\". How do I do so? Also, it wouldn't hurt if some Saint wanted to mentor this downtrodden piece of $#!^. P.S. I would forever be grateful to any person who considers me worth their time, and as a bonus would name my first piece of Software I ship after them. (If I ever get to ship one, i.e.,) TL;DR: Never really learnt \"Programming/Coding\", can't solve problems even if I try to. Help me!"}
{"_id": "97535", "title": "Who should define, assign, implement, and follow the tasks in Scrum?", "text": "Roles in scrum are Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Scrum Team. A user story should also break down into smaller pieces called tasks. A task seems to have four phases, namely, definition, assignment, implementation, and following. Who should do what in Scrum about tasks? Is it the responsibility of scrum master to update remaining hours of a task, or is it the responsibility of the developer (scrum team)? Should developers assign tasks to themselves or is it the responsibility of scrum master accompanied by product owner?"}
{"_id": "98886", "title": "Why do we need different JS for different browsers", "text": "What exactly are different things we need to take care when writing different JS files, like arrays, variables etc., Is there a book or website explaining differences between different JS engines used for browsers? I was working on something in our application and bumped into a JS issue and was looking for solution and found out that we might need 2 different JS for different browsers to get my exact functionality. Why is that? Is that the browsers use different JS engines so they understand my JS in different ways?"}
{"_id": "197438", "title": "Large teams with layered application", "text": "I work in a fairly large team (~15 developers) which is currently discussing our working methodology. The software we work on is quite feature-rich and expanding rapidly in terms of scope so the number of developers has increased lately and will continue to increase. At the moment the different developers have different focus areas which they happen to be good at. Some focus on user interface, some on business logic and some on backend. But a UI developer may add something to the backend if he feels like doing it. As the number of developers grow, we can no longer work in the same team (it's kind of hard to try to follow what 20 other people are doing). Multiple teams working in the same code base could get messy if people are changing \"other peoples' code\". We are discussing some alternative ways to divide our tasks, and different people argues for different ways:   * Some think that the current way of doing things is good enough. Sure, a guy who focuses on the UI could make changes to the backend business logic and potentially mess things up. But at the same time we trust him not to mess up too much. Reviews of changes could be enough to make sure that the quality stays good.   * Some prefer that a team is assigned to a specific layer. For example, a team (2-3 developers) could be assigned to work only business logic implementation in backend, while another team could be assigned to work on frontend and a third could focus on the persistence stuff. This would encourage people to be experts in their layer. The down side is that if a UI developer needs something in the backend, there's an overhead with planning if the person doing the backend is in another team.   * A third suggested way is to have teams with members knowing all layers. So one team would focus on a specific type of functionality, and then include members knowing about UI, business logic, backend, etc. This would give the benefit that a team won't need to wait for another team to finish to implement a new feature affecting all layers. The downside people see here is that this could lead to more split-focus between the developers, which could lead to lower quality. I'm not sure what I'm asking here, but if someone has experience, or know any about any good reading material about this subject it would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "190429", "title": "What classes to put exactly in a class diagram?", "text": "What classes must I put in a class diagram? Only classes used in Business Layer and associations between them? Or also other classes in the Data Access Layer, Service Layer, etc.?"}
{"_id": "197434", "title": "Visual Studio DBProjects and problem with it running post-build SQL (file too big)", "text": "What I am doing is creating a DBProject.. importing a DB.. then creating scripts in the PostBuild that are DATA scripts for each table (so that the post build can populate the tables after the schema is generated.. Then problem is some of these tables containg 50,000 rows and when you put a 50,000 row insert into ONE .sql file for the post build it fails because it is too big.. so.   1. Is there a better way to achieve this ? (getting a schema and data of a DB created as part of a DBprojects Build/Publish)   2. If this way is valid.. Is the only thing to do is create another post build process that manually breaks the one big .sql file into smaller .sql files ? (so it can build/publish)"}
{"_id": "253599", "title": "FFmpeg: Can I replace libx264 with OpenH264 in order to go LGPL?", "text": "I have some video processing to run and FFmpeg already contains much of what I need. However my videos are all compressed with H.264 video codec and libx264 is a GPL part of FFmpeg. On the other hand, the Constrained Baseline Profile is pretty enough for my application what means I could perfectly use OpenH264. So would it be possible both in theory and in practice to make this replacement?"}
{"_id": "190424", "title": "Login on every page requires SSL on all pages", "text": "Our website has a login form that shows up in the header on every page on the website. This is what my boss wants however we need to get PCI compliant and it says any sensitive form (login/password) requires SSL. So does that mean the entire website has to be running under SSL while a user is not logged in? Another question related to that, we have third party security software scanning and testing our site and it sends HTTP post to the login form on all the pages and reports it is unsecured because it submit's it under HTTP. I am wondering how a company like say Godaddy does it because they have a login/password on their homepage yet I can access it via HTTP and submit my login information just fine. By that logic they are not secure because it allows me to do that right? I feel like I am missing something but not sure what. -EDIT- Some information that came from the security site: _**Description_** A vulnerability exists that allows an attacker to harvest sensitive information (login credentials, etc) that are thought to be SSLsecured. Specifically, a form was found on an HTTP (unencrypted) page that sends information to an HTTPS (encrypted) page. An attacker could leverage cache poisoning (DNS/DHCP/ARP/etc) or another vulnerability (e.g. XSS) to cause the HTTP page to send information to an attacker-controlled website instead of the legitimate HTTPS site. Furthermore, toolkits exist to automate the process of harvesting such credentials, connecting to the legitimate HTTPS site and establishing the attacker as a transparent proxy between the victim and the legitimate host where the attacker sees all information in cleartext (including login credentials, etc). Victim<\\---------HTTP--------->Attacker<\\---------HTTPS--------->Legitimate Site CVSS Score 2.1 _**Solution_** Do not allow any information you want SSL secured to originate from an unsecured page."}
{"_id": "46552", "title": "How to convince a client to switch to a framework *now*; also examples of great, large-scale php applications", "text": "I'm about to start working on a very ambitious project that, in my opinion, has some great potential for what concerns the basic concept and the implementation ideas ( _implementation_ as in _how this ideas will be implemented_ , not as in programming). The state of the code right now is unluckily subpar. It's vanilla php, no framework, no separation between application and visualization logic. It's been done mostly by amateur students (I know great amateur/student programmers, don't get me wrong: this was not the case though). The clients are really great, and they know the system won't scale and needs a redesign. The problem is, they would like to launch a beta ASAP and then think of rebuilding. Since just the basic functionalities are present now, I suggested it would be a great idea if we (we're a three-people shop, all very proficient) ported that code to some framework (we like CodeIgniter) before launching. We would reasonably be able to do that in < 10 days. Problem is, they don't think php would be a valid long-term solution anyway, so they would prefer to just let it be and fix the bugs for now (there's quite a bit) and then directly switch to some ruby/python based system. Porting to CI now will make future improvements incredibly easier, the current code more secure, changing the style - still being discussed with the designers - a breeze (reminder: there are database calls in template files right now); the biggest obstacle is the lack of trust in php as a valid, scalable technology. So well, I need some examples of great php applications (apart from facebook) and some suggestions on how to try to convince them to port soon. Again, they're great people - it's not like they would like ruby cause it's so hot right now; they just don't trust php since us cool programmers like bashing it, I suppose, but I'm sure going on like this for even one more day would be a mistake. Also, we have some weight in the decision process."}
{"_id": "46554", "title": "How do I find fun companies?", "text": "When looking for jobs, I'm not sure how to determine whether the company is fun to work for or not. I want to work in companies that are open, innovative, and make a good contribution to the world of computer science. For example, Dropbox looks like a very fun company and its existence is very important. How do I spot this in job advertisements? EDIT: I should note that I live in Australia, so many of the fun companies that I know does not have any office here. I know only a handful of fun companies in Australia \u2013 including Google in Sydney. But I don't know that many."}
{"_id": "116144", "title": "How can I display a diff result in a single file or document?", "text": "I'm reviewing my peer's code. I use SourceGear DiffMerge as my diff program, on a Windows environment. While I'm using the diff program, I can clearly see the code changes, etc. Is it possible to save the diff display somehow, with all its colorful rendering and strike-throughs so that I can send my comments by mail? In other words, is it possible to export the diff display to a single file (which includes all the relevant data) to be displayed without the actual need to save the two files separately? (Perhaps HTML is fit for this job). Can you recommend on a diff program that can export the diff as a single file? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "211246", "title": "How to find classes that use certain DB tables", "text": "**Problem:**   I'm asked to prepare a document where all our DB tables are listed and I'm supposed to list all Controllers that uses these DB tables for read and another list for Controllers that do write operations. Ex:                    +------------------------------------------+------------+          |            DB table                      | tbl_Orders |          +------------------------------------------+------------+          |Controllers that perform read operations  |    ??      |          +------------------------------------------+------------+          |Controllers that perform write operations |    ??      |          +------------------------------------------+------------+      We are trying to write some documentation for a **legacy** system built using Zend framework. The code is scattered everywhere. There is code in the Controllers, in the models and even in the views.   The application uses PROPEL as an ORM. What makes this really difficult is that the Controller may not be directly calling the table, but it may be instantiating a model class that calls that table. Is there an educated way to approach this crazy task? Note: Searching for the table name won't provide a solution because if a model uses that table I wouldn't know which Controller is using that model."}
{"_id": "52557", "title": "What is meant by \"Repeat Business\"?", "text": "Repeat Business obviously happens because the company has a great product or a great service. In the software industry, do companies make the code base complex enough so that the maintenance comes back to them? I have heard of cases where companies say \"ya this code base has minor errors, let's ship them anyway, and let the customers come back for another change request on these\". Then they would sometimes charge the customer for that. This question is specific to the software services industry. Do these things happen in the real world? I am trying to understand the business process."}
{"_id": "52551", "title": "Forking a dual licensed app: How to license on my end?", "text": "I forked a project that was dual licensed under the GPL and a commercial license. Since my code was open source and the GPL being what it is, I started by releasing my app under the GPL. But now I'm thinking about dual licensing the project and can't figure out what to do. Since I have copyright on a majority of the code (most of the code was either rewritten or new), can I just pick a commercial license or do I have to buy the upstream commercial license since I'm technically a \"derivative\" of the project?"}
{"_id": "211242", "title": "Listener, logger, plotter - what threading arcitecture to choose for this?", "text": "I am constructing a program that does several things.   * **Listens** to a port. Every second a string is received   * When new data is received, it has to be **logged**. No errors or skipped entries are allowed   * When data is received, a **plot** on the screen has to be updated. This is an expensive computation. Missing some updates is not critical.   * Once a month, an **archiving** function shall be called, to backup the logs. This might take unknown amount of time. I am new to threading and would like to ask for _advice on the threading infrastructure_. On one hand, it seems that I need at least 1 additional thread besides the main thread, for the port listener. On the other hand, I am afraid that if I spawn too many a thread:   * Sync problems may occur   * The app may become resource-hungry Here is some proposed code for the listener. * The complexity of the code might rocket up"}
{"_id": "218971", "title": "Using Facebook to find friends of friends in a way similar to Tripadvisor", "text": "I am looking at implementing similar functionality as Tripadvisor has when it comes to browsing hotels. However my site sells classified items. I would like for the the following scenario to take place. Let's assume all users have agreed to share basic information with the classified site. A user John lists an item and user Ann browses to that item. They have a common friend Paul. Ann then sees \"Paul is a friend of this seller\" when she browses to the items page. This assumes John has also linked his site account with Facebook and we have his FB ID. One way would be to store all of John's friends and update that list when ever he visits the site. You would then run a query on this table each time a user visits that listings page to look for matches. Any thoughts on the best way to do this?"}
{"_id": "102517", "title": "How can I comply with Open Source licenses, and yet protect my own work + App Store", "text": "I recently developed an application for an organization (and I'm not charging them). I want to maintain total ownership of the source code and there are various Open Source Project that I've used. I want/need to comply by the rules of the licenses that they use and still keep the project within a few guidelines: >   1. If I ever give the source code out to the organization, It cannot be > modified, redistributed, or shared in any form without my written permission > (which needs to be re-obtained every version). >   2. It should always attribute credits to the developer. >   3. I retain all rights to redistribute/reuse the source code, _since well, > I made it_ >   4. It needs to comply with the App Store's rules (which aren't too open- > source friendly) > The organization has retained the copyright for the compiled application (if that matters) The licenses include: >   1. liberal BSD >   2. Apache License, Version 2.0 >   3. royalty free >   4. public domain (same as 3) >   5. Small amount of artwork from an MIT licensed project > So my question is how can I comply with these licenses but also create a license for my own project that allows me to retain ownership of the source code."}
{"_id": "90628", "title": "Static / Shared Helper Functions vs Built-In Methods", "text": "This is a simple question but a design consideration that I often run across in my day to day development work. Lets say that you have a class that represents some kinds of collection.               Public Class ModifiedCustomerOrders          Public Property Orders as List(Of ModifiedOrders)     End Class      Within this class you do all kinds of important work, such as combining many different information sources and, eventually, build the Modified Customer Orders. Now, you have different processes that consume this class, each of which needs a slightly different slice of the ModifiedCustomerOrders items. To enable this, you want to add filtering functionality. How do you go about this? Do you:   1. Add Filtering calls to the ModifiedCustomerOrders class so that you can say: MyOrdersClass.RemoveCanceledOrders()   2. Create a Static / Shared \"tooling\" class that allows you to call: OrdersFilters.RemoveCanceledOrders(MyOrders)   3. Create an extension method to accomplish the same feat as #2 but with less typing: MyOrders.RemoveCanceledOrders()   4. Create a \"Service\" method that handles the getting of Orders as appropriate to the calling function, while using one of the previous approaches \"under the hood\". OrdersService.GetOrdersForProcessA()   5. Others? I tend to prefer the tooling / extension method approaches as they make testing a little bit simpler. Although I dependency inject all my sourcing data into the ModifiedCustomerOrders, having it as part of the class makes it a little bit more complicated to test. Typically, I choose to use extension methods where I am doing parameterless transformations / filters. As they get more complex, I will move it into a static class instead. Thoughts on this approach? How would you approach it?"}
{"_id": "236323", "title": "Is there a point in using closures for non-fully functional programming languages?", "text": "Maybe I don't understand closures fully but take for example C#, why would I use closures when I can use classes? Am I missing something? Note that I read this one already but my question is specific to closure: Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages"}
{"_id": "195081", "title": "Is a lambda expression something more than an anonymous inner class with a single method?", "text": "There is a new hype with the long awaited lambda expressions in Java 8; every 3 day another article appears with them about how cool they are. As far as I have understood they a lambda expression is nothing more than an anonymous inner class with a single method (at least at the byte-code level). Besides this it comes with another nice feature - type inference but I believe the equivalent of this can be achieved with generics on some level (of course not in such a neat way as with lambda expressions). Knowing this, are lambda expressions going to bring something more than just a syntactic sugaring in Java? Can I create more powerful and flexible classes or other object-oriented constructs with lambda expressions that aren't possible to be built with current language features?"}
{"_id": "60426", "title": "How to show levels of User Roles in ERD?", "text": "I felt this is the best place to ask this, rather than Stackoverflow as it is not related to programming.   Ok. The thing is I need to draw an ERD of a leave management system. Suppose there are three level of user roles there - Level A, B and C.   Where A can manage both B and C; B can manage only C and C is normal users.. Now I've specified an entity named USER in the ERD and thus have to maintain only one table in my database for all type of users and set a role flag and code according to that. But how exactly do I represent this three levels of users in an ERD, as the ERD has only one entity for USER? and role is just an attribute there?   Do I have to make three entities for three types of users and hence create three tables and continue like that? But I can manage all the functionalities with just one table and one flag.   Am a bit confused. Please do guide me. :)"}
{"_id": "251266", "title": "Token based autorization for a web game", "text": "I am lead developer for a multiplayer game in a small startup company. I would like to present here my solution for token based authentication and hear your opinions about possible weak spots. I am not a security expert, far from it actually. I don't expect that I have made something bullet proof. Just want to minimize some obvious risky paths. Game is written entirely in Javascript and HTML5 and it's running NodeJS backend. Game account is authenticated by one the providers (usually OAuth2). This is simple step of clicking on the button, being transferred to provider website where user confirms access. When it gets back to us, I use provided ID of the user and lookup account in our database. New accounts are created right away here. Now having the account detail, I am using JWT to create token that is encrypted by secret key and contains internal account ID and also identity provided from authentication process. This token is then transmitted to the client browser and stored in localStorage. Most of the communication with the game server is over WebSocket. XHR is used sparsely. I am using Socket.IO library as the wrapper, but I have completely bypassed any handshaking process here. What I do is to let client connect with the server and then I am expecting from him token to be sent over WebSocket within small timeframe. If it fails, client is disconnected. Once I receive the token, it's pretty straightforward, just decrypt the token, read the identity information, fetch the account and compare with account ID with the one stored in the token. That's pretty much it so far. I realize one weak spot when someone can perhaps steal the token and store it in it's localStorage. However since content of the localStorage is not transmitted with every request as it happens with cookies, it makes it somewhat harder. Communication through WebSocket is secured by SSL of course putting another big obstacle in the way. Another way would be XSS attack which would allow someone to access localStorage directly. I would like to prevent this by using CSP header. I am also planning to introduce some kind of expiration of the tokens, but I am not yet sure how to approach it. Do you have other ideas what could be a weak spot for this ?"}
{"_id": "235276", "title": "Would Someone explain me this Random Walk Algorithm for Onion Routing?", "text": "The Algorithm below is written in pseudocode and for simplicity the storage of the actual route in the Data structure is not included.                LengthFromSrc   = 0;      LengthFromDest  = 0;      TotalNumberHops = 0;           X = SRC;  /*Last Node Visited from Random walk starting at SRC;*/      Y = DEST; /*Last Node Visited from Random walk starting at DEST;*/           /* Randomly select a route length */      do {         Length = rand( ) % Max;      while( Length < Min );                while( TotalNumberHops < Length ) {                           Next = Toss Coin to Pick Random Walk from Src or from Dest;            if( Next == RandWalkFromSrc ) {           Z = Randomly select an adjacent node to X;           TotalNumberHops = 1 + LengthFromSrc + LengthFromDest                                 + shortest-path from Z to Y;            if( TotalNumberHops > Length )                 break;           X = Z;            /*include the node in the route*/                   Store X in the route data structure                LengthFromSrc++;       }       else {  /* Next = RandWalkFromDest */           Z = Randomly select an adjacent node to Y;           TotalNumberHops = 1 + LengthFromSrc + LengthFromDest                                 + shortest-path from Z to X;            if( TotalNumberHops > Length )                 break;           Y = Z;                               Store Y in the route data structure                LengthFromDest++;       }      }      I would kindly ask if someone could give me a brief analysis of the Graph as i would like to understand it better. My main problem is understanding the first part from do to while (TotalNumberHopse < Length). The if else part is clear to me :) Thank you very much in advance for your help! PS:http://www.onion-router.net/Archives/Route/ \\--> My Source"}
{"_id": "148380", "title": "What is meaning of a HINT when used in software engineering?", "text": "I've seen this now in a number of places and a number of contexts, for example in SQL. I cannot define the meaning of a \"Hint\" which it seems clear has some application as or part of a larger design pattern/technique. What exactly is a Hint when used in software engineering?"}
{"_id": "112642", "title": "What frequency of updates is acceptable for a mobile application?", "text": "It's possible to publish daily updates for your application on Google's Android Market, but I have an assumption that users don't like to get frequent updates. How can I determine when I should publish updates? Is there an optimum interval to balance between delivering new features and bug fixes while not upsetting my user base?"}
{"_id": "212113", "title": "Could someone explain HaXe enums?", "text": "I have AS3/PHP background and some basic understaning of enums from C++. Saying shortly: I read this: > http://haxe.org/ref/enums > > http://haxe.org/doc/cross/more_on_enum And though - good heavens! What the sorcery is this??? Enum Constructors Parameters? Enum Type Parameters?? Could someone explain with working examples (preferable on http://try.haxe.org/ ) the concept of enums in HaXe for someone coming from languages like PHP and AS3? What I tried? Firstly I wrote this:               enum Color3 {         Red;         Green;         Blue;         Grey( v : Int );         Rgb( r : Int, g : Int, b : Int );         Alpha( a : Int, col : Color3 );     }      Then this:               Color3.Grey(5);      And I don't know what to do with this further, and don't know where to search."}
{"_id": "64214", "title": "Free private git hosting", "text": "_Certanly it has been, it must've been, but I just don't seem to be able to find it answered already._ What are some good /or mediocre for that matter/ free private git hosting sites out there for storing some private projects? I would use Dropbox but I've heard bad things about how it can screw up the repo on sync."}
{"_id": "153311", "title": "Are there Negative Impact of opensource on commercial environment?", "text": "My company has a very broad range of products and there are a few that are not strategic to us so I wanted to open source them (so we can focus on what makes us unique and open source the products that every firm has). Our industry(hedgefund) does not open source(we would be the first firm to try this) and the feedback I'm getting from my management team is either 1) we'll destroy the industry or 2) all competitive commercial firms will unite against us and we'll be wiped out either way. It's a big battle in my firm right now between the IT people who have seen the positive effects of sharing and the business people who think we'll be giving up everything (they prefer we sell parts we want to opensource, but in their defense this is standard when divesting something). So what are your thoughts? Does open sourcing apply generally or is it only really applicable to software? Is it overall good for people in the industry and outside? I'm actually more interested in the negativeness effects(although positive are welcomed as well) **Update:** Long story short, although code is involved this is not so much about code as it is more about the idea of open sourcing. We are a mid sized quant hedge fund. We have some unique strategies but also have the standard long/short, arbitrage, global macro, etc.. funds. We are keeping the unique funds we have but the other stuff that everyone else has we are considering open sourcing (We have put in years of work & millions of dollars into. Our funds is pretty popular and our performance is either in first or second quartile so I suspect there will be interest from firms in or thinking of getting into the industry but I don't know to what extent). The goal is not to get a community to work for us, the goal is to let anyone who wants to tinker with it do so and create anything they want (it will not be part of our product line although I may unofficially allocate some our of staff's time to assist any community that grows). Although the code base is quite large, the value in this is the industry knowledge and approaches we have acquired (there are many books on artificial intelligence and quant trading but they are often years behind what's really going on as most firms forbid their staff from discussing what they are doing). Long story short, there maybe value here for people or not but I'm approaching open sourcing as a way to benefit the general public while we divest a product line up. But the flip side, is this is a core product to many other firms and they won't be happy(I think about linux/windows, wikipedia/britannica, google maps/commercial map firms, and so on). I'm fine with people disliking me but I'd rather it not be for unindented consequences and this question is to try to understand what those consequences generally are on industries that get core areas open sourced. For example, its hard to judge what part of the OS market grew because of Linux or was naturally growing on its own and so on. Technology has such fast grow and I'm struggling to understand how open sourced impacted it(and if it was positive or not. I.e. one of our large competitors has very large grants to top universities which obviously helps the schools, would open source limit the need for things like that?). I understand this can seem very specific to me but I'm trying to understand general impact of open sourcing and software seemed like a good place to learn."}
{"_id": "153318", "title": "Is a new build required everytime I make a change to the code?", "text": "I am working on a project that has around a hundred different files (.cpp & .h), and it requires around an hour to build the entire project on MSVC 2008, suppose that I now make a change to any one file, do I need to build the entire project once again, right from the beginning, or is there a way out ? I know it is very very noob like, but I am wasting a lot of time, hence I was wondering"}
{"_id": "64219", "title": "Junior Programmer Looking for Project Management Advice & Experience", "text": "I am a programming intern at a company in Australia. Is it normal for a programmer to be given a project that has to be completed within a week? For example, I have been given a task to create a Facebook app for one of the companies we have, I have 2 years experience at University in a Bachelor of Computer Science & my boss knows I have never developed an application using the Facebook Graph API & its IFrame version of apps. He would like me to finish the app in a week; its an interactive calendar that displays different looks based loosely on the facebook users likes (if no likes are present then a default look is shown) & to charge the user credits if they wish to enter a competition. Plus I am the only person in the software development team, the other people in the company do trading, real estate etc. In my 2 months I have been at this job I have developed a website updater (a java applet & a javascript one), 2 websites(css, javascript, html) & am halfway through a mobile application(using the Moync API & C++). Am I working under the typical Agile Software Development or are these kinds of timetables unrealistic for a one person team? Is this kind of thing normal? I dont believe I can introduce myself to the facebook Graph API & develop the app in a week, but I do believe I could get this done in 2-3 weeks. Is a one week timetable something other software developers would assign to a junior programming intern?"}
{"_id": "191597", "title": "How to train junior programmers for today's (complicated) web environment?", "text": "Currently our company develops applications consisting, most of the time, in Ruby on Rails web servers and a bunch of different REST clients, from kiosk systems in Java to embedded devices in C/C++ (besides the interfaces for standard web browsers). We need to expand our team and, having failed at finding good senior programmers, we decided to put some effort into training junior programmers who would grow together with the company. We've already given them some Ruby and Rails books and asked them to build some toy programs, but I'm now realizing how steep the learning curve for the current state of web programming is. When I started programming 15 years ago I used only Delphi and Source Safe and was able to produce usable software right from the beginning. They were both simple tools and it was easy to delve into the inner workings of the environment. Slowly I started using third-party frameworks, have switched to CVS, SVN and finally Git, learned the pieces which make today's web, like HTTP, JavaScript, CSS, REST etc. Today, even after years of experience, I don't know as much about how Ruby on Rails works inside as I did in the past about Delphi, and for me that was important so I could connect the basic learning blocks to the tools I was using. It seems to me that the programmers I'm hiring will take a long time to integrate with the team and produce something usable, because there's so many things to learn to use a single framework (Rails): Ruby, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, REST, test-cases, database access (with SQL magically built inside the framework!), MVC, three different package managers (apt for Ubuntu, gem and bundler for Ruby), ssh, git, Apache and Phusion Passenger for deploying, etc. I'm feeling lost since it's the first time I need to deal directly with junior programmers. What is the best way to train junior programmers in today's best practices for web development when there are so many choices?"}
{"_id": "148657", "title": "Monopoly game 3D graphical interface", "text": "I have created a Monopoly game with a 2D Graphics in Java for my final exam at college. I feel that the game doesn't look very good and I want to add a 3D Graphics. My problem is that I have never done 3D programming and I don't know how to create 3D objects. Can someone tell me where can I create 3D objects and what library to use for 3D programming that will allow me to create a 3D graphic interface fast? I have only two more weeks to do this. Can this be done?"}
{"_id": "191592", "title": "Python multiple inheritance or decorators for composable behaviours", "text": "I recently discovered (or rather realised how to use) Python's multiple inheritance, and am afraid I'm now using it in cases where it's not a good fit. I want to have some starting data source (`NewsCacheDB`,`TwitterStream`) that gets transformed in various ways (`Vectorize`,`SelectKBest`,`SelectPercentile`). I found myself writing the following sort of code ( _Example 1_ ) (the actual code is a bit more complex but the idea is the same). The point being that for `ExperimentA` and `ExperimentB` I can define exactly what `self.data` is, by just relying on class inheritance. Is this really a useful way of achieving the desired behaviour? I could also use decorators ( _Example 2_ ). Using the decorators would be less code. Which approach is preferable? I'm not looking for arguments of the \"I like writing decorators better\" kind, but rather arguments about   1. readability   2. maintainability   3. testability   4. pythonicity (yes it's a word). * * * ### EXAMPLE 1               class NewsCacheDB(object):         \"\"\"Play back cached news articles from a database\"\"\"          def __init__(self):             super(NewsArticleCache, self).__init__()              @property         def data(self):             # setup access to data base             while db.isalive():                 yield db.next() # slight simplification here          class TwitterCacheDB(object):         \"\"\"Play back cached tweets from a database\"\"\"          def __init__(self):             super(TwitterCache, self).__init__()              @property         def data(self):             # setup access to data base             while db.isalive():                 yield db.next() # slight simplification here          class TwitterStream(object):         def __init__(self):             super(TwitterStream, self).__init__()              @property         def data(self):             # setup access to live twitter stream             while stream.isalive():                 yield stream.next()          class Vectorize(object):         \"\"\"Turn raw data into numpy vectors\"\"\"         def __init__(self):             super(Vectorize, self).__init__()              @property         def data(self):             for item in super(Vectorize, self).data:                 transformed = vectorize(item) # slight simplification here                 yield transformed          class SelectKBest(object):         \"\"\"Select K best features based on some metric\"\"\"         def __init__(self):             super(SelectKBest, self).__init__()              @property         def data(self):             for item in super(SelectKBest, self).data:                 transformed = select_kbest(item)  # slight simplification here                 yield transformed          class SelectPercentile(object):         \"\"\"Select the top X percentile features based on some metric\"\"\"         def __init__(self):             super(SelectPercentile, self).__init__()              @property         def data(self):             for item in super(SelectPercentile, self).data:                 transformed = select_kbest(item)  # slight simplification here                 yield transformed          class ExperimentA(SelectKBest, Vectorize, TwitterCacheDB):         # lots of control code goes here          class ExperimentB(SelectKBest, Vectorize, NewsCacheDB):         # lots of control code goes here          class ExperimentC(SelectPercentile, Vectorize, NewsCacheDB):         # lots of control code goes here      * * * ### EXAMPLE 2               def multiply(fn):         def wrapped(self):             return fn(self) * 2         return wrapped               def twitter_cacheDB(fn):         def wrapped(self):             user, pass = fn(self)             # setup access to data base             while db.isalive():                 yield db.next() # slight simplification here         return wrapped          def twitter_live(fn):         def wrapped(self):             user, pass = fn(self)             # setup access to data base             while stream.isalive():                 yield stream.next() # slight simplification here         return wrapped          def news_cacheDB(fn):         def wrapped(self):             user, pass = fn(self)             # setup access to data base             while db.isalive():                 yield db.next() # slight simplification here         return wrapped          def vectorize(fn):         def wrapped(self):             for item in fn():                 transformed = do_vectorize(item)  # slight simplification here                 yield transformed         yield wrapped          def select_kbest(fn):         def wrapped(self):             for item in fn():                 transformed = do_selection(item)  # slight simplification here                 yield transformed         yield wrapped          class ExperimentA():         @property         @select_kbest         @vectorize         @twitter_cacheDB         def a(self):             return 'me','123' # return user and pass to connect to DB          class ExperimentB():         @property         @select_kbest         @vectorize         @news_cacheDB         def a(self):             return 'me','123' # return user and pass to connect to DB"}
{"_id": "99280", "title": "Successful examples of commercial recommendation engines", "text": "Amazon has been a pioneer in bringing recommendation engines to the mainstream and is still without doubt the biggest name in this area. Netflix has been a more recent successful example, and I can think a few more off the top of my head. What are some others examples of companies that rely heavily on advanced recommendation technology ? Bonus points for companies that have written about their approach, be it on their blog, white papers or other resources."}
{"_id": "125930", "title": "Separating the UI from its event handlers and database queries", "text": "Is it a good practice to separate the handlers and database queries in different classes? There will be a separate class containing all the necessary event handlers, and there would also be another class for database queries?"}
{"_id": "195284", "title": "Toolkit for cross-platform applications in Python", "text": "I would like to develop cross-platform GUI applications, which work on both Linux and Windows systems. I am now confused on which toolkit to use. I asked many of them and each one are saying different toolkits. Should I use GTK or wxPython or Tkinter?"}
{"_id": "229688", "title": "Switch / select case etc. compared to If ... ElseIf ... Else", "text": "I don't understand why the `switch` or equivalent is so popular in languages. To me, it seems like it had a place back in the days when the alternative was lots of nested `if` statements in the `else` part of other `if` statements. Now that we have `else if`, why do we need it? If we take the following:               switch (expr) {       case \"Oranges\":         document.write(\"Oranges are $0.59 a pound.<br>\");         break;       case \"Apples\":         document.write(\"Apples are $0.32 a pound.<br>\");         break;       case \"Bananas\":         document.write(\"Bananas are $0.48 a pound.<br>\");         break;       default:         document.write(\"Sorry, we are out of \" + expr + \".<br>\");     }      It is clearly more readable than below?               if (expr == \"Oranges\") {         document.write(\"Oranges are $0.59 a pound.<br>\");     } else {         if (expr == \"Apples\") {             document.write(\"Apples are $0.32 a pound.<br>\");         } else {             if (expr == \"Bananas\") {                 document.write(\"Bananas are $0.48 a pound.<br>\");             } else {                 document.write(\"Sorry, we are out of \" + expr + \".<br>\");             }         }     }      But how is it more readable than:               if (expr == \"Oranges\") {         document.write(\"Oranges are $0.59 a pound.<br>\");     } else if (expr == \"Apples\") {         document.write(\"Apples are $0.32 a pound.<br>\");     } else if (expr == \"Bananas\") {         document.write(\"Bananas are $0.48 a pound.<br>\");     } else {         document.write(\"Sorry, we are out of \" + expr + \".<br>\");     }"}
{"_id": "165754", "title": "If-Else V.S. Switch end of flow", "text": "I was wondering the if if-else statements, is like a switch statement that **does** have a break statement.               if( boolean_expression_1 )       statement_1     else if( boolean_expression_2 )       statement_2     else        default_statement      Is the same as:               switch( controlling_expression )     {     case: ( boolean_expression_1 )     {          statement_1          break;     }     case: ( boolean_expression_2 )     {          statement_2          break;     }     default:     {          default_statement     }"}
{"_id": "154500", "title": "How is a switch statement better than a series of if statements?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should I use switch statements or long if\u2026else chains? I'm working on a small program that will conduct an Insertion Sort. A number will be inputted through the keyboard and stored in a variable I called \"num.\" I've decided to use a switch statement in order to obtain the number inputted.               switch( e.getKeyCode() ) {              case KeyEvent.VK_0: num = 0; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_1: num = 1; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_2: num = 2; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_3: num = 3; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_4: num = 4; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_5: num = 5; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_6: num = 6; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_7: num = 7; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_8: num = 8; break;         case KeyEvent.VK_9: num = 9; break;     }      I realized one other course of action could have been to use a set of if statements.               if( e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_0 )         num = 0;     else if( e.getKeyCode() == KeyEvent.VK_1 )         num = 1;     etc. for every number up until 9.      I then wondered what the essential difference is between a switch statement and a series of if statements. I know it saves space and time to write, but it's not that much. So, my question is, aside from the space, does a switch statement differ from a series of if statments in any way? Is it faster, less error-prone, etc.? This question really doesn't affect my code that much. I was just wondering. Also, this question pertains to the JAVA language, not any other programming language."}
{"_id": "222145", "title": "If statements vs switch cases? in a JavaScript game and if to use a function", "text": "I am developing a game in JavaScript where you start with a user input, stored in the variable \"controller\". The options for the user consists of start to start the game or about to learn about the game. I was going to use the following code               if(controller === \"start\"){         // Game code sitting here     }     else if(controller === \"about\"){         // All about the Game     }     else{         // Tells the user again to type start to start or about to learn about the game     }      when I realized that I should maybe use switch cases instead... So, my question is when to use switch cases instead of if statements and which I should use in this case. I would also like to know if you think I should store my game code in a function and call it if controller is equal to \"start\" or just have it sitting inside the if statement/switch case as it is atm?"}
{"_id": "15820", "title": "Should I use switch statements or long if...else chains?", "text": "Often when I hear about the switch statement, its put off as a way to replace long if...else chains. But it seems that when I use the switch statement I'm writing more code that I would be just writing if...else. You also have other issues like keeping all variables for all calls in the same scope. Here's some code that represents the flow I normally write (thanks to diam)               String comment;   // The generated insult.     int which = (int)(Math.random() * 3);  //  Result is 0, 1, or 2.          if (which == 0) {         comment = \"You look so much better than usual.\";     } else if (which == 1) {         comment = \"Your work is up to its usual standards.\";     } else if (which == 2) {         comment = \"You're quite competent for so little experience.\";     } else {         comment = \"Oops -- something is wrong with this code.\";     }      Then they want me to replace that with this:               String comment;   // The generated insult.     int which = (int)(Math.random() * 3);  //  Result is 0, 1, or 2.          switch (which) {         case 0:                    comment = \"You look so much better than usual.\";         break;         case 1:                    comment = \"Your work is up to its usual standards.\";         break;         case 2:                    comment = \"You're quite competent for so little experience.\";         break;         default:                   comment = \"Oops -- something is wrong with this code.\";     }      Seems like a lot more code in a much more awkward syntax. But is there really an advantage to using the switch statement?"}
{"_id": "80466", "title": "Using a different App-ID, what are the consequences?", "text": "The company I work for has recently been given an order to improve an App that is previously developed by a different company. They use a bundle identifier like com.theircompany.appname, however, I cannot register that bundle ID for generating an App ID for APNs. I wonder what the consequences are if I change the bundle ID to, say, com.mycompany.appname?"}
{"_id": "195283", "title": "MSMQ Receive Timeout Even With Items in Queue", "text": "Tried posting this on main StackOverflow site, but no replies in 5 days.   I am having ongoing problems trying to implement a very simple MSMQ solution: 2 PCs (not servers) running Win7 and Win8 respectively. Each one monitors data from a hardware system, and periodically saves the data in a local private queue as a DataSet. Old code on a 3rd PC running this code is able to receive or peek the messages fine.               Dim qInfo1 As Object = CreateObject(\"MSMQ.MSMQQueueInfo\")     qInfo1.FormatName = \"DIRECT=TCP:192.168.1.123\\private$\\queue_1\"     Dim q1 As Object = qInfo1.Open(MQ_RECEIVE_ACCESS, MQ_DENY_NONE)          Dim qInfo2 As Object = CreateObject(\"MSMQ.MSMQQueueInfo\")     qInfo2.FormatName = \"DIRECT=TCP:192.168.1.120\\private$\\queue_2\"     Dim q2 = qInfo2.Open(MQ_RECEIVE_ACCESS, MQ_DENY_NONE)          Dim qMessage1 As Object = CreateObject(\"MSMQ.MSMQMessage\")     qMessage1 = q1.Peek          Dim qMessage2 As Object = CreateObject(\"MSMQ.MSMQMessage\")     qMessage2 = q2.Peek      However, when I try the following .Net code, it doesn't work.               Dim q1 As MessageQueue = New MessageQueue(\"FormatName:DIRECT=TCP:192.168.1.123\\private$\\queue_1\", QueueAccessMode.ReceiveAndAdmin)     q1.Formatter = New XmlMessageFormatter(New Type() {GetType(XmlDocument)})     Dim q2 As MessageQueue = New MessageQueue(\"FormatName:DIRECT=TCP:192.168.1.120\\private$\\queue_2\", QueueAccessMode.ReceiveAndAdmin)     q2.Formatter = New XmlMessageFormatter(New Type() {GetType(XmlDocument)})          Dim msg1 As Message = q1.Peek(New TimeSpan(0, 0, 1))     Dim msg2 As Message = q2.Peek(New TimeSpan(0, 0, 1))      Originally I was getting \"Access to the queuing system is denied\". I researched possible fixes, and implemented the following:   * Made sure all PCs are in same domain.    * Turned off firewalls   * Gave Anonymous Login full privileges.   * Allowed Nonauthenticated Rpc on both machines. The \"old\" method also required some of the above changes. It works just fine. After the above changes, the \"new\" .Net method no longer gives me an access denied message, but neither does it retrieve the messages. It always just times out. As I change the timeout parameter, the timeout takes longer or shorter, but always happens, even though there are messages in the queue. During development (with everything on the same PC) either method worked perfectly. Now that I'm peeking remote queues, the .Net method won't work. My work-around is to use the older method, but that is not as robust. There is no timeout parameter, so the receiver program just hangs on the peeks exactly as if there were no messages in the queue. I've made progress, as the .Net method isn't getting access denied errors, but it is not seeing the messages in the queues, hence the timeouts. Any ideas how to solve this?"}
{"_id": "125938", "title": "Is it possible to embed multiple programs into 1", "text": "To be more specific, let me explain my end result goal or more of what I would LIKE to have someday and then you can tell me if its even feasible and if not possibly an alternative method. I really would like to have a tool like `smush.it` it is a website Yahoo runs that optimizes images, it is currently one of the best out there. There FAQ page say they use all these programs to do it... **ImageMagick:** to identify the image type and to convert GIF files to PNG files.   **pngcrush:** to strip unneeded chunks from PNGs. We are also experimenting with other PNG reduction tools such as **pngout, optipng, pngrewrite**. Hopefully these tools will provide improved optimization of PNG files.   **jpegtran:** to strip all metadata from JPEGs (currently disabled) and try progressive JPEGs. **gifsicle:** to optimize GIF animations by stripping repeating pixels in different frames. More information about the smushing process is available at the Optimize Images section of Best Practices for High Performance Web pages. So basically you upload an image and it determines it's file type and runs it through the appropriate programs or programs and returns an optimized image and tell the original size and thew new size of the image. If you search across StackOverflow you will see that many people are searching for an all in one program that can do this, mainly from the command line for Build scripts to use. Now I am curious, is it possible to make a program that could be like 1 package that would include all these other programs into it, so on Windows it would be like 1 exe file or even a jar file would probably work as I know Yahoo has a jar file for Javascript compression that my Build script can use. In my searches I have found 1 project that is similar but I am not sure if it is really what I am after, it is http://trimage.org/ it uses uses OptiPNG, PNGCrush, AdvPNG, JPEGOptim. My problem with this 1 is first of all they do not release it for Windows but they say it's may be able to work on Windows, but mainly I saw the source code and it is just a bunch of Python scripts, also the programs it uses, all have to be installed separately. My goal is to be able to not have to install 4-5 separate programs but to have them as 1 Please tell me if this is just a dream or something that's id possible, I only have a PHP background so hardly the knowledge for a project like this"}
{"_id": "254163", "title": "Can unit tests verify software requirements?", "text": "I have often heard unit tests help programmers build confidence in their software. But is it enough for verifying that software requirements are met? I am losing confidence that software is working just because the unit tests pass. We have experienced some failures in production deployment due to an untested\\unverified execution path. These failures are sometimes quite large, impact business operations and often requires an immediate fix. The failure is very rarely traced back to a failing unit test. We have large unit test bodies that have reasonable line coverage but almost all of these focus on individual classes and not on their interactions. Manual testing seems to be ineffective because the software being worked on is typically large with many execution paths and many integration points with other software. It is very painful to manually test all of the functionality and it never seems to flush out all the bugs. Are we doing unit testing wrong when it seems we still are failing to verify the software correctly before deployment? Or do most shops have another layer of automated testing in addition to unit tests?"}
{"_id": "80469", "title": "How to stand ground when colleagues are neglecting the process?", "text": "The problem I am facing:   1. My team members start working on projects without the functional/technical documents ready - even if our company process dictates these should be there before starting.   2. My team members accept cheap, unstructured solutions and will implement **really** bad hacks into software without thinking twice when project management notes they have 'limited time'.   3. My team members start working on projects that work together with an unfinished project from another team - which is untested and unfinished. (causing alot of extra work).   4. Improvements and entire phase(s) of software aren't properly planned, and often result in front-end / design is not finished when the back-end developer has to start work. These problems have been discussed endlessly for multiple times since I have started working here. Everyone agreed and the bottom line was that we **must** enforce the process, that means the back-end developer won't start until everything is taken care of. These issues keep happening - and I am getting really de-motivated up to the point that I am really annoyed with the work itself and some of my colleagues. My team members complain alot - but only towards each other. `They keep on going - whatever the situation is`. The result?   1. I grow insecure, perhaps it's me?   2. Is this just how things are supposed to go? My question? `How can I say no against work ignoring the process if everyone else seems to mindlessly accept?`. That is without looking like some annoying developer who is just looking for something to bitch all the time."}
{"_id": "254164", "title": "Alternatives to multiple inheritance for my architecture (NPCs in a Realtime Strategy game)?", "text": "Coding isn't that hard _actually_. The hard part is to write code that makes sense, is readable and understandable. So I want to get a better developer and create some solid architecture. So I want to do create an architecture for NPCs in a video-game. It is a Realtime Strategy game like Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command & Conquers, etc etc.. So I'll have different kinds of NPCs. A NPC can have one to many abilities (methods) of these: `Build()`, `Farm()` and `Attack()`. Examples:   **Worker** can `Build()` and `Farm()`   **Warrior** can `Attack()`   **Citizen** can `Build()`, `Farm()` and `Attack()`   **Fisherman** can `Farm()` and `Attack()` I hope everything is clear so far. So now I do have my NPC Types and their abilities. But lets come to the technical / programmatical aspect.   **What would be a good programmatic architecture for my different kinds of NPCs?** Okay I could have a base class. Actually I think this is a good way to stick with the DRY principle. So I can have methods like `WalkTo(x,y)` in my base class since every NPC will be able to move. But now lets come to the real problem. **Where do I implement my abilities?** (remember: `Build()`, `Farm()` and `Attack()`) Since the abilities will consists of the same logic it would be annoying / break DRY principle to implement them for each NPC (Worker,Warrior, ..). Okay I _could_ implement the abilities within the base class. This would require some kind of logic that verifies if a NPC can use ability X. `IsBuilder`, `CanBuild`, .. I think it is clear what I want to express.   But I don't feel very well with this idea. This sounds like a bloated base class with _too much_ functionality. I do use C# as programming language. So multiple inheritance isn't an opinion here. Means: Having extra base classes like `Fisherman : Farmer, Attacker` won't work."}
{"_id": "221096", "title": "How can I structure my code when I have orthogonal arrays of features?", "text": "Example: You have a game with different schools of magic (fire, ice, etc). Each school has a set of properties that pertain to independent features of the game, such as:   * strings to be displayed on the GUI (generic data stored in memory)   * graphics, sounds, and other files to be loaded as necessary   * different behaviours (code), e.g. each school of magic has a different interaction with various terrain types I can think of two designs for implementing this, but I don't particularly like either of them.   1. I could make an abstract `MagicSchool` class that contains all the various properties of a given school. This makes the `MagicSchool` class dependent on many distinct features of the game (GUI, SFX, other areas of game logic etc), which seems like an unnecessary mixing of concerns (something of a god class).   2. I could put the GUI/SFX/etc data for each school in the GUI/SFX/etc systems as arrays. But then the code for the magic schools gets scattered all across the project (albeit in very logical places). So in this case, there are two axes along which to structure code: the various magic schools, and the various features in which the schools feature. In terms of clarity and maintainability, which of the above two solutions should I prefer? Or perhaps there's another way I haven't considered yet?"}
{"_id": "48018", "title": "Do bugs from Fuzzing belong in my system tests?", "text": "I have recently implemented fuzz testing over one of my projects. Several bugs have come up, generally classifiable as (dare-I-say trivial?) input validation bugs, and I've fixed them. In no case so far have the breakages involved business logic, which I guess is reasonable. My question is in the following: When I get a new feature request for the project, I usually write an automated test to describe the desired behavior (using Lettuce, for instance). Do bugs from fuzz testing belong as part of these behavior descriptions? Myself, I've determined that the advantage of writing explicit test cases is **deterministically verifying against regressions.** Fuzz testing tends not to be deterministic, though in our case our tests don't have a whole lot of surprising randomness in them. At the same time, I've written a few of these, and compared with other tests that describe interesting command sequences and results, **security bug tests are boring, to the point of creating noise for the reader.** Consider the following test shape:               Scenario: Some jerk user doesn't fill in the \"home address\" form field.       Given an otherwise correctly-filled form on my web page       And a \"number of hats\" field filled with string \"banana\"       When the user submits the form       The application should not crash       And the user should be redirected back to the form       And the form should display an error          [repeat for each of 10 fields that could have ridiculous input]      Should I leave this sort of check for the fuzzer which is already catching them through black spells and random opportunity? Or should my regression tests reflect every mistake I've ever made or thought of making?"}
{"_id": "156363", "title": "What problems are Java annotations well suited to?", "text": "I've been writing in Java and C# for a while, but I'm having a hard time identifying places where using a custom annotation would be advantageous. I can see that JUnit uses annotations in test classes to identify the order it should run the methods in the test classes, which obviates the need for a configuration of some sort. What are other examples of problems that annotations solve elegantly?"}
{"_id": "99752", "title": "Java without implementation inheritance", "text": "In a recent video on Java, Joshua Bloch states at 4 minutes 20 seconds into the video: > And then there's inheritance, and that was a marketing necessity. You know, > we can argue whether you really need implementation inheritance or not. So I wondered: how would Java look like without implementation inheritance? For example, how would `equals`, `hashCode` and `toString` work? Would Java have needed something like mixins instead?"}
{"_id": "156361", "title": "Advantages and disadvantages to using XAML/C# or HTML5/JavaScipt for Metro apps?", "text": "I was just wondering if there are any major advantages or disadvantages to using either XAML/C# or HTML5/JavaScript for Metro Apps."}
{"_id": "65085", "title": "Importance of CS degree when applying for development jobs?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is a university education really worth it for a good programmer? I'm currently looking for a job as a web developer, and I have ~3 years experience in the field and know PHP and Ruby on Rails fairly well, and HTML/CSS like the back of my hand. I'm also well-versed in jQuery. I'm self- taught in all of these disciplines and I am a voracious learner. I've found several jobs which I think might be good fits, but they all list a BS in Computer Science as a prerequisite to applying, which I don't have. I have a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing. I consider this an asset--not a hindrance--but I'm worried that I won't even be considered since I don't have a BS in CS. How important is a BS in CS when applying for a job for which that is the only prerequisite I don't satisfy? How can I sell myself to these positions not having a BS?"}
{"_id": "5597", "title": "Is a university education worth it for a good programmer?", "text": "I've been doing design and programming for about as long as I can remember. If there's a programming problem, I can figure it out. (Though admittedly Stack Overflow has allowed me to skip the _figuring out_ and get straight to the _doing_ in many instances.) I've made games, esoteric programming languages, and widgets and gizmos galore. I'm currently working on a general-purpose programming language. There's nothing I do better than programming. Is a university education really more than just a formality?"}
{"_id": "207004", "title": "Getting first job without a technical degree", "text": "How difficult would it be for someone with a college degree in social science to land their first job as a junior developer? This is assuming they have experience with open source projects, have a reasonable amount of small projects of their own written in various languages, and a passion for developing software. Would a degree that is not in computer science, electrical engineering, math etc. harm their chances? Thank you."}
{"_id": "193991", "title": "Is it better to have file stored as a zip in cloud service?", "text": "I am developing enterprise iPad application which contained large amount of different bundle data in terms of group of images. Is it worth to stored as a compressed file format or normal set of individual files? I am not worrying about huge amount of data which is reside in the cloud. My concern is that cloud computing provider only charges depending upon the request not about how much data where stored. If I store single file in cloud then it make more request while using the app. So it will cost so much. Is it better to be stored as a compressed file in cloud?"}
{"_id": "95667", "title": "Which tools to use for Embedded Linux C++ development with a fast compiler and possibly cross platform", "text": "I'm not happy with our build environment for our Linux based (Ubuntu 10.04) equipment. It is embedded software we are developing. What I would like is to have the optimal mix of these wishes:   * Use proven tools and libraries   * Be able to develop on both Linux and Windows      * Ideally: use the same tooling on both platforms   * Have a fast development cycles, especially on Windows Note that paying for good stuff is definitely an option. Note also that C++ and Linux are the only two hard requirements, everything else is open for debate. We currently use Boost and STL libraries for obtaining as much platform independence as possible. CodeBlocks is our cross-platform IDE and we use the gcc tool-chain (compiler, linker, debugger, not make). All are excellent open source projects but they have their limitations. Biggest problems with the current environment:   1. Compared with MS Visual C++, I feel gcc is very slow. A lot of time is spent compiling and especially linking. gcc's pre-compiled header support gives you no way near the same performance gain as with VC and with boost you really need it. Also, statically linking a few boost libraries takes forever. (Would using dynamic linking change much?)   2. CodeBlocks has no support for what in VC are property files. This makes it difficult to enforce that build options are the same for all projects in the workspace.   3. Related to build speed: CodeBlocks has no \"compile this project only\" support like VC has. When changing a single source file, CodeBlocks spends too much time checking for the need to compile files I know haven't changed.  Some of my own thoughts so far:   * Biggest issue is having a fast, reliable compiler and linker on all platforms we develop on. If this is solved what about doing development on multiple platforms? Are Intel C++ compilers an option (we don't really need the performance optimization of those compilers)? Should we consider doing cross compilation?   * Should we use a make based build? It seems a solution when it proves difficult to use the same IDE/build tooling on windows and Linux. I find make difficult so that is holding me back.   * Is there a single product of equivalent maturity as Visual Studio (IDE and tool chain) available for Windows and Linux? Or for that matter, for Linux only?   * How much simpler would life be if we decided develop only on Linux? Right now we all use Windows as it is supported by IT, our non-development software is all windows and we have limited Linux expertise in our company. Your thoughts please."}
{"_id": "57909", "title": "Sending username and password in every request from iPhone app", "text": "I'm writing a mobile app & web service combo that requires user to login. The web service will be using SSL, so are there any reasons against sending the user name and password in every web request? I know some sites generate a token after the user logs in, that they can use for authentication, but the token seems equivalent to the username/password pair - so I'm not sure there's much point in doing that. Am I about to make a big mistake in terms of security?"}
{"_id": "216735", "title": "Design pattern for an ASP.NET project using Entity Framework", "text": "I'm building a website in ASP.NET (Web Forms) on top of an engine with business rules (which basically resides in a separate DLL), connected to a database mapped with Entity Framework (in a 3rd, separate project). I designed the Engine first, which has an Entity Framework context, and then went on to work on the website, which presents various reports. I believe I made a _terrible design mistake_ in that the website has its own context (which sounded normal at first). I present this mockup of the engine and a report page's code behind: Engine (in separate DLL):               public Engine     {         DatabaseEntities _engineContext;              public Engine()         {            // Connection string and procedure managed in DB layer             _engineContext = DatabaseEntities.Connect();         }              public ChangeSomeEntity(SomeEntity someEntity, int newValue)         {             //Suppose there's some validation too, non trivial stuff             SomeEntity.Value = newValue;             _engineContext.SaveChanges();         }     }      And report:               public partial class MyReport : Page     {         Engine _engine;         DatabaseEntities _webpageContext;              public MyReport()         {             _engine = new Engine();             _databaseContext = DatabaseEntities.Connect();         }              public void ChangeSomeEntityButton_Clicked(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             SomeEntity someEntity;             //Wrong way:             //Get the entity from the webpage context             someEntity = _webpageContext.SomeEntities.Single(s => s.Id == SomeEntityId);             //Send the entity from _webpageContext to the engine             _engine.ChangeSomeEntity(someEntity, SomeEntityNewValue); // <- oops, conflict of context                  //Right(?) way:             //Get the entity from the engine context             someEntity = _engine.GetSomeEntity(SomeEntityId); //undefined above             //Send the entity from the engine's context to the engine             _engine.ChangeSomeEntity(someEntity, SomeEntityNewValue); // <- oops, conflict of context          }     }      Because the webpage has its own context, giving the Engine an entity from a different context will cause an error. I happen to _know_ not to do that, to only give the Engine entities from its own context. But this is a very error- prone design. I see the error of my ways now. I just don't know the right path. I'm considering:   * Creating the connection in the Engine and passing it off to the webpage. Always instantiate an Engine, make its context accessible from a property, sharing it. Possible problems: other conflicts? Slow? Concurrency issues if I want to expand to AJAX?   * Creating the connection from the webpage and passing it off to the Engine (I believe that's dependency injection?)   * Only talking through ID's. Creates redundancy, not always practical, sounds archaic. But at the same time, I already recuperate stuff from the page as ID's that I need to fetch anyways. What would be best compromise here for safety, ease-of-use and understanding, stability, and speed?"}
{"_id": "241444", "title": "Simplicity-efficiency tradeoff", "text": "The CTO called to inform me of a new project and in the process told me that my code is weird. He explained that my colleagues find it difficult to understand due to the overly complex, often new concepts and technologies used, which they are not familiar with. He asked me to maintain a simple code base and to think of the others that will inherit my changes. I've put considerable time into mastering LINQ and thread-safe coding. However, others don't seem to care nor are impressed by anything other than their paycheck. Do I have to keep it simple (stupid), just because others are not familiar with best practices and efficient coding? Or should I continue to do what I find best and write code _my way?_"}
{"_id": "216733", "title": "Do I have to release the code of a MIT licensed software running a GPL library?", "text": "Lets say I'm using Node-Webkit, an MIT licensed app runtime. Now, let's say I decide to include a Javascript library which is GPL licensed: while I do not modify the downloaded JS file, I do write my own code making use of the library's functions. I plan to sell the final obfuscated executable and I'm wondering: what's the final license of the complete software? Do I only have to release the GPL library or does the GPL license apply for all the code I wrote? What happens to Node-Webkit's MIT license?"}
{"_id": "176375", "title": "\"Programming error\" exceptions - Is my approach sound?", "text": "I am currently trying to improve my use of exceptions, and found the important distinction between exceptions that signify programming errors (e.g. someone passed null as argument, or called a method on an object after it was disposed) and those that signify a failure in the operation that is not the caller's fault (e.g. an I/O exception). How should these two kinds of exceptions be treated differently? Do you think that error exceptions need to be explicitly documented, or is it enough to document the relevant preconditions? And can you leave out the documentation of a precondition or error exception if it should be obvious (for example, `ObjectDisposedException` when calling a method on a disposed object)"}
{"_id": "163216", "title": "Is there any reason why I should use parentheses when calling new in PHP?", "text": "When there are no arguments, we have these two options:               $obj = new MyClass;      vs.               $obj = new MyClass();      I always pick the former, just because. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "150165", "title": "When using method chaining, do I reuse the object or create one?", "text": "When using method chaining like:               var car = new Car().OfBrand(Brand.Ford).OfModel(12345).PaintedIn(Color.Silver).Create();      there may be two approaches:   * Reuse the same object, like this:              public Car PaintedIn(Color color)     {         this.Color = color;         return this;     }        * Create a new object of type `Car` at every step, like this:              public Car PaintedIn(Color color)     {         var car = new Car(this); // Clone the current object.         car.Color = color; // Assign the values to the clone, not the original object.         return car;     }      Is the first one _wrong_ or it's rather a personal choice of the developer? * * * I believe that he first approach may quickly cause the intuitive/misleading code. Example:               // Create a car with neither color, nor model.     var mercedes = new Car().OfBrand(Brand.MercedesBenz).PaintedIn(NeutralColor);          // Create several cars based on the neutral car.     var yellowCar = mercedes.PaintedIn(Color.Yellow).Create();     var specificModel = mercedes.OfModel(99).Create();          // Would `specificModel` car be yellow or of neutral color? How would you guess that if     // `yellowCar` were in a separate method called somewhere else in code?      Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "176379", "title": "What level/format of access should be given to a client to the issue tracking system?", "text": "So, I used to think that it would be a good idea to give the customer access to the issue tracking system, but now I've seen that it creates less than ideal situations, like:   * Customer judging progress solely on ticket count   * Developers denied to add issues to avoid customer thinking that there is less progress   * Customer appointing people on their side to add issues who don't always do a good job (lots of duplicate issues, insufficient information to reproduce, and other things that distract people from doing their real job) However, I think customers should have access to some indicators or proof that there is progress being done, as well as a right to report bugs. So, what would be the ideal solution to this situation?, specially, getting out of or improving the first situation described?"}
{"_id": "79186", "title": "What are some good Photo and Artwork APIs?", "text": "We had an idea for starting a ecards service and were looking into the possibility of populating our site using photo/artwork APIs. Due to legal reasons, Flikr probably won't work, although I've started to scour the web for other options. Basically we just need two functions   1. the user should be able to browse the site's collection and choose a picture    2. we should be able to recall and render a specific picture on our site. From there we should have no problem building our application. The main obstacle is that we're lacking content at the moment. I haven't been able to find too many examples of this being done, so I was wondering if anyone here might know people who have done something similar to what we're trying to do, or know of any leads that might be able to help us out. Suggestions for other APIs that are out there, or forums/communities that might be able to point us in the right direction are also welcome."}
{"_id": "34286", "title": "Picking the right license", "text": "I have some trouble with picking the right license for my works. I have a few requirements:   * Not copyleft like the GNU (L)GPL and allows for redistribution under other licenses   * Allows other people to redistribute your (modified) work but prevents that other people freely make money off my work (they need to ask/buy a commercial license if they want to)   * Compatible with the GNU (L)GPL   * Not responsible for any damage caused by my work Now, I wrote my own little license based on the BSD and CC Attribution- NonCommercial 3.0 licenses, but I am not sure if it will hold in court.               Copyright **< year>** **< copyright holder>**. All rights reserved.          Redistribution of this work, with or without modification, are permitted     provided that the following conditions are met:             1. All redistributions must attribute **< copyright holder>** as the original           author or licensor of this work (but not in any way that suggests that           they endorse you or your use of the work).        2. All redistributions must be for non-commercial purposes and free of charge           unless specific written permission by **< copyright holder>** is given.          This work is provided by **< copyright holder>** \"as is\" and any express or implied     warranties are disclaimed. **< copyright holder>** is not liable for any damage     arising in any way out of the use of this work. Now, you could help me by either:   * Point me to an existing license which is satisfies my requirements   * Confirm that my license has no major flaws and most likely would hold in court **Edit:** Can you define \"compatible with the GNU (L)GPL\"? \"compatible with the GNU (L)GPL\" means that all code licensed under it is able to be imported in a GNU (L)GPL project, but not (necessarily) vice-versa. I used the wording \"non-commercial\" but I mean it should be illegal to ask for money for a (modified) redistribution unless you bought the \"commercial\" license. **EDIT** So basicly I'm asking something impossible. In order of importance for me:   1. Not copyleft like the GNU (L)GPL and allows for redistribution under other licenses   2. Compatible with the GNU (L)GPL   3. Allows other people to redistribute your (modified) work but prevents that other people freely make money off my work (they need to ask/buy a commercial license if they want to) The first and second are perfectly compatible, but the last is not compatible with the second, and going open-source is not compatible with the first. RAAH! This is the new license I'll be using. 10 lines, quick to the point and tight (from a IANAL view).               Copyright **< year>** **< copyright holder>**. All rights reserved.          Redistribution of this work, with or without modification, is permitted if     **< copyright holder>** is attributed as the original author or licensor of     this work, but not in any way that suggests that **< copyright holder>** endorses     you or your use of the work.          This work is provided by **< copyright holder>** \"as is\" and any express or implied     warranties are disclaimed. **< copyright holder>** is not liable for any damage     arising in any way out of the use of this work."}
{"_id": "79085", "title": "How do you organize a medium-sized team with a very large, older codebase?", "text": "There are already few questions here on Programmers about organizing small teams, but we have a bigger (medium-sized?) team, and that's a bit of a different animal. So, my question is this: **How do you organize a medium-sized team with a very large, older codebase**? Or better, let's quantify it a little more clearly: The team has:   * 20 Developers (good mix of senior and junior)   * 7 QA Folks The product is large (2 million lines of code) with 10-12 major modules divided over three major areas (Desktop client, backend server, web). The team needs to do:   * support/maintenance for the existing customer base   * Customize the product to support new sales and existing customers   * Build new features to keep the product moving forward   * provide regression testing for all new features as well as fleshing out regression for technical debt Specific sub-questions:   * What are the thoughts on \"Specific support team\" vs. \"Module teams fix all their bugs\"   * How do you maximize development time and minimize admin time (code reviews, other \"lead developer stuff\")   * How do you integrate/organize the QA people to ensure proper testing and regression suites?    * What non-technical positions (QA Manager, Dev Manager, etc.) might be good for maximizing developer productivity? Your thoughts on the matter are greatly appreciated. EDIT: I should add that I'm not clueless here, I'm just trying to stimulate some ideas. This isn't an easy problem, and so I'm open to the wisdom of you fine people here."}
{"_id": "56940", "title": "Any examples of using Visio to document software?", "text": "I have Visio 2010 and want to learn how to use it to document software. Does anyone have examples of what Visio does well? Are there any things that Visio can do, but there are better tools for the job? What are your experiences?"}
{"_id": "194426", "title": "Identifying Users", "text": "We have a site that allows users to generate their own content. If users generate illegal content, we'll be submitting a report to the authorities. In the event that we do have to report a user, we want as much info as possible on that user. With that said, I have two questions:   * Is tracking the user's ip address enough to identify them?   * And, we track the user's ip address in the sessions table which gets wiped clean periodically. Should we archive the sessions data to retain that info or should we put an ip_address field in the our Post and Comments tables instead?"}
{"_id": "156096", "title": "What came first, the compiler, or the source?", "text": "I'm curious about the birth of the compiler. How did programming begin? Did people first build hardware that recognized a certain set of commands, or did people define a language and then build hardware around it? And on a related note, what was the first programming language?"}
{"_id": "194429", "title": "Who owns code if project cancelled", "text": "The problem: I am working on a freelance marketplace, and I decided to cancel project with one of my clients, because client is impossible to work with with limitless delays and lots of bugs in his backend. I want to give him a partial refund (partial because I worked for two months and there is 3k lines of code, though application still not working due to problems from his backend). The question: who is \"owner\" of code which I have wrote? We did no agreement about it upon project was started. Can I tell him to not use my code? I understand, that he can ignore my forbid anyway, I just want to know if I have formal \"right\" to say so."}
{"_id": "78680", "title": "All around design book for a developer (Javascript dev)", "text": "I have begun doing a lot of javascript development recently, mostly front-end but also using node.js. As I am currently in the transition from large company to startup, they expect me as a front end developer to know how to produce semi decent designs (Which I cannot) I am looking for a book (or set of screencasts) to give me some good well rounded advice on design. I know CSS, but my design are always awful looking, I also know nothing about Photoshop (and am on Linux and have no access to it) What are your picks? I am not looking to be a full time designer I would just like to be able to contribute."}
{"_id": "56945", "title": "Test Interview Question", "text": "If you only had time to test 5 features of a product that had 10 features total, how would you decide which features to test? Another Question: When is it okay to ship a product with a bug"}
{"_id": "147545", "title": "When to use typedef?", "text": "I'm a bit confused about if and when I should use typedef in C++. I feel it's a balancing act between readability and clarity. Here's a code sample without any typedefs:               int sum(std::vector<int>::const_iterator first,              std::vector<int>::const_iterator last)     {         static std::map<std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator,                                    std::vector<int>::const_iterator>,                         int> lookup_table;              std::map<std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator,                             std::vector<int>::const_iterator>, int>::iterator lookup_it =             lookup_table.find(lookup_key);              if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end())             return lookup_it->second;                          ...     }      Pretty ugly IMO. So I'll add some typedefs within the function to make it look nicer:               int sum(std::vector<int>::const_iterator first,              std::vector<int>::const_iterator last)     {         typedef std::tuple<std::vector<int>::const_iterator,                            std::vector<int>::const_iterator> Lookup_key;         typedef std::map<Lookup_key, int> Lookup_table;              static Lookup_table lookup_table;              Lookup_table::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key);              if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end())             return lookup_it->second;                          ...     }      The code is still a bit clumsy, but I get rid of most nightmare material. But there's still the int vector iterators, this variant gets rid of those:               typedef std::vector<int>::const_iterator Input_iterator;          int sum(Input_iterator first, Input_iterator last)     {         typedef std::tuple<Input_iterator, Input_iterator> Lookup_key;         typedef std::map<Lookup_key, int> Lookup_table;              static Lookup_table lookup_table;              Lookup_table::iterator lookup_it = lookup_table.find(lookup_key);              if (lookup_it != lookup_table.end())             return lookup_it->second;                          ...     }      This looks clean, but is it still readable? When should I use a typedef? As soon as I have a nightmare type? As soon as it occurs more than once? Where should I put them? Should I use them in function signatures or keep them to the implementation?"}
{"_id": "142715", "title": "Finding right bug tracker web application", "text": "I'm looking for a bug tracking system (similiar as http://www.mantisbt.org) with these following requirements: * * * Requirement specifications are:   1. Upload picture and different files without any limitaton of the file's space.   2. If user belong to a specific group or businesss group, the GUI:s logotype should be changed into group's logotype after the user has entered user name and password. All user use the same database with different GUI.   3. Right information of unassigned, modified and resolved bug case will be displayed based on what group or business group that the user is assigned to.   4. All information will display after the user has logged in.   5. Enable to create 1 or more super user (administrator) and regular user.   6. Right user with right group or business group will retrieve right information. Non functional requirement:   1. The bugging tracker take place in a webbapplication.    2. All information must use web browser to view all information. * * *"}
{"_id": "147546", "title": "Communication between WCF service [library] and Self-host [Winform]", "text": "**Introduction** : I have a WCF service library and a self-host Winform. Service features is File explorer including _(copy, move, delete, new folder, delete... etc)_ and Task Manager _(run, kill, update list)_. Then now I want to add other features like chatting between self-host and client, send an image from client to self-host so when it received, it is shown in a pictureBox in a new form. Till now I have two endpoints for (Task Manager, File Manager) that runs under one service \"MainService\". And I set up all the connections using DotNet 4.0 WCF Configuration and Wizards, and I'm using netTcpBinding. **Problem** :   I need to know how to communicate with between WCF service lib and self-host, so I can append a received chat from client on self-host form's textbox `TextBoxChat`. And also call a client callback from self-host when Send button clicked, to send the message from self-host textbox `TextBoxMessage`. Let's say this's self-host ChatForm ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/CWL8H.jpg](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CWL8H.jpg) So is it possible to do that in WCF? I would prefer to run ChatEndpoint under MainService, so all Endpoints use one port."}
{"_id": "147549", "title": "How to find your path in the programming world", "text": "It seems like to become a successful programmer one should choose a single language, technology, platform, field and focus on it. The problem is there are so many interesting things in this area I can't stop choosing, I found myself learning basics of a lot of programming languages/technologies and immediately moving to something else. So I'm spending a lot of time with such a little use. I've been .NET/C#/WPF developer for more than a year now, I'm not a bad programmer, but I could be so much better if I were more focused on my current technology stack though I feel like I'll be stuck with making meaningless business application and GUI this case. May be getting a fulfilling job making something useful would help me, but to get this kind of job one should already be proficient in some field. So I desperately need an advice. How to choose your way and be sure you're not making a mistake? How to stop worrying and start programming?"}
{"_id": "250567", "title": "How to evaluate JNI approaches with Java and Fortran?", "text": "Right now we've got about 150k lines of Java broken into two major parts. The first contains an implementation of the algorithms we're hoping to redo in Fortran, and the second has a good chunk of GUI to get them to the point where they can be run. The UI is mostly Swing but new work is JavaFX. The goal is to re-implement (and update) those algorithms in fortran, and tie their current level of integration into the java front-end. The model involves data going both ways accross the bridge between the two languages: configuration data would be supplied from the GUI to the fortran code, and big interesting matrices will be sent back. To complicate things, the configuration data will contain a number of open delegates, typically these delegates take a vector of doubles and spit out a scalar value, but in a number of cases they'll actually perform complex file or network operations which take both time and resources. I've got three thoughts on how we can do it:   1. Create a wide POJO interface into Fortran, use JNI      * The first idea, the simplest, and the fastest to value is to factor out key points in the flow of the fortran code, and have those points issue returns from Fortran through JNI back to java, with result data.      * This is my least preferred option because it will require a good amount of collaboration between the Java front-end and the Fortran back-end whenever we need to change that interface. Further, keeping those critical points in Java might prove impossible as the algorithms in fortran change, and as we want deeper integration with the front-end.   2. Create a callback-based interface into Fortran, use JNI      * This to me is probably the most sophisticated solution since it involves calling familiar object-oriented pub-sub via nasty procedure pointers in fortran. The idea would be fairly typical from the front-end side. Create an interface with a number of \"onInterestingDomainEvent\" message handles with as primitive a set of arguments as possible.      * We've done a little bit of exploration here and haven't gotten the syntax we need: one of our compilers is consistently complaining about something.   3. Create two processes before app start, read/write from pipes in Java & Fortran     * This seems to me to be a good solution that might be a bit heavy handed. I'm a little worried about the performance of this (especially if I cant get at proper named pipes from Java & Fortran).      * I'm worried about a second process for, well, everything that a second process entails, including synchronization, error handling, and security.      * There's a lot of atypical code that has to be written to make this solution work, but I am confident that it can work and that it gives us all of our requirements, aside from the performance worry.  **Where I need help:** I need help in understanding how to evaluate these three approaches or in understanding what I should be looking at instead. My primary concern is performance or throughput between the two applications as I'm trying to minimize bottlenecks. And I know I need to keep the principles of decoupling in mind as well. * * * To address some of the easier solutions / concerns before jumping to JNI:   * We have already optimized the algorithm implementations while using a performance analyzer. They still aren't fast enough, and we have seen similar algorithms written in Fortran perform much faster.   * We don't control the hardware that our clients will deploy our solution on. So we can't just throw bigger and bigger hardware at this problem.   * The research team that develops these algorithms has a lot of Fortran experience and they will be responsible for maintaining this port."}
{"_id": "143040", "title": "Books or guides regarding secure key storage and database encryption", "text": "I have an idea for a SaaS product I want to create, however, this product will store extremely sensitive data that needs to be encrypted at rest. The trouble is not so much the encryption, but the problem of securely storing the keys so that in the event the server was somehow compromised, the keys couldn't just be recovered and used to decrypt the database. Are there any decent books to guides regarding database encryption, and in particular secure key storage? This seems to be a less than straightforward topic and something that is difficult to get right. I'm seeing multiple ways to attack such a system, but unable to come up with one that is secure enough to store highly confidential information."}
{"_id": "131633", "title": "What types of positions might involve improving processes using CMMI and Scrum?", "text": "I'm an IT student and have been working on team based projects for several years. I've read some papers about CMMI and Scrum; this is really interesting to me and I would like to know what kind of jobs involve improving processes inside an organization. What kind of studies can lead someone towards these jobs? Management? I doubt it's only that, as CMMI/Scrum affect management as well, I think it's something above it all, that will hold together the organization."}
{"_id": "143042", "title": "What to answer to a customer who asks which one of two equivalent technologies must be used?", "text": "As a freelancer, I am often asked by my customers what they must choose between similar elements, neither of which being better than another. Examples: > \u201cDo I need my e-commerce website be in PHP or ASP.NET?\u201d > > \u201cDo I need to host this ordinary web service in Cloud or use an ordinary > hosting service?\u201d > > \u201cWhich one is better for my new website: MySQL or Oracle?\u201d etc. There is maybe at most 1% of cases where the choice is relevant, and there is a real, objective reason to use one over another, based on the precise metrics and studies. In all other cases, it doesn't matter at all. It is totally, completely irrelevant, either because there are no implications\u00b9, or because those implications are too small to be taken in account\u00b2, or, finally, because it's impossible to predict those implications\u00b3. If you know one thing and not another one, the answer to those questions is easy: > \u201cYou can either write the application in C# or Java, both being probably > equivalent in your case. Note that I'm a C# developer, so if you choose > Java, I would not be able to work on your project and you would need to find > another freelancer.\u201d When you know both technologies, you can't answer that. In this case, how to explain to the customer that the question he asks is subject to flamewar and has no real consequences on his project? In other words, how to explain that you've chosen to use one technology rather than an equivalent one for the reasons related to human resources, without giving the impression to be unprofessional or to not care about the project? * * * \u00b9 Example: Is MySQL better (worse?), performance-wise, compared to Oracle, for a personal website which will be accessed by, oh, let's be optimistic, two people per day? \u00b2 Example: for a given project, I was asked to asset if Windows Azure hosting would be cheaper than the hosting of the same application on a well-known ASP.NET hosting provider. The cost revealed to be exactly the same. \u00b3 Example: your customer have _an idea_ of a future application (the idea itself being extremely vague). There is no business plan, no requirements, nothing at all. Just an idea. You are asked if Java is better than C# for this app. What do you answer?"}
{"_id": "131636", "title": "Performance of Scala compared to Java", "text": "First of all I would like to make it clear that this is not a language-X- versus-language-Y question to determine which is better. I have been using Java for a long time and I intend to keep using it. Parallel to this, I am currently learning Scala with great interest: apart from minor things that take some getting used to my impression is that I can really work very well in this language. My question is: how does software written in Scala compare to software written in Java in terms of execution speed and memory consumption? Of course, this is a difficult question to answer in general, but I would expect that higher level constructs such as pattern matching, higher-order functions, etc, introduce some overhead. However, my current experience in Scala is limited to small examples under 50 lines of code and I haven't run any benchmarks up to now. So, I have no real data. If it turned out that Scala _does have_ some overhead wrt Java, does it make sense to have mixed Scala / Java projects, where one codes the more complex parts in Scala and the performance-critical parts in Java? Is this a common practice? **EDIT 1** I have run a small benchmark: build a list of integers, multiply each integer by two and put it in a new list, print the resulting list. I wrote a Java implementation (Java 6) and a Scala implementation (Scala 2.9). I have run both on Eclipse Indigo under Ubuntu 10.04. The results are comparable: 480 ms for Java and 493 ms for Scala (averaged over 100 iterations). Here are the snippets I have used.               // Java     public static void main(String[] args)     {         long total = 0;         final int maxCount = 100;         for (int count = 0; count < maxCount; count++)         {             final long t1 = System.currentTimeMillis();                  final int max = 20000;             final List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();             for (int index = 1; index <= max; index++)             {                 list.add(index);             }                  final List<Integer> doub = new ArrayList<Integer>();             for (Integer value : list)             {                 doub.add(value * 2);             }                  for (Integer value : doub)             {                 System.out.println(value);             }                  final long t2 = System.currentTimeMillis();                  System.out.println(\"Elapsed milliseconds: \" + (t2 - t1));             total += t2 - t1;         }              System.out.println(\"Average milliseconds: \" + (total / maxCount));     }          // Scala     def main(args: Array[String])     {         var total: Long = 0         val maxCount    = 100         for (i <- 1 to maxCount)         {             val t1   = System.currentTimeMillis()             val list = (1 to 20000) toList             val doub = list map { n: Int => 2 * n }                  doub foreach ( println )                  val t2 = System.currentTimeMillis()                  println(\"Elapsed milliseconds: \" + (t2 - t1))             total = total + (t2 - t1)         }              println(\"Average milliseconds: \" + (total / maxCount))     }      So, in this case it seems that the Scala overhead (using range, map, lambda) is really minimal, which is not far from the information provided by World Engineer. Maybe there are other Scala constructs that should be used with care because they are particularly _heavy_ to execute? **EDIT 2** Some of you pointed out that the println's in the inner loops take up most of the execution time. I have removed them and set the size of the lists to 100000 instead of 20000. The resulting average was 88 ms for Java and 49 ms for Scala."}
{"_id": "131635", "title": "Node.js, socket.io vs User Initiated Refresh button and Server Load Considerations", "text": "I'm dealing with a situation here on a high volume multi-tenant web app with over 100k users from companies who do not appreciate performance issues. We have a need for \"real-time\" updates.. we're basically sending out a request to a 3rd party system, and we'd like to see the results real-time, there's about 5 statuses returned, and the first three statuses happen very quickly (within a minute or so).. Our current implementation is to have a refresh cycle which happens every five minutes.. (partial page postback with Jquery), the user can override this by clicking on a refresh button.. The reason we went with this approach is because of the potential server load with \"long-polling\", or frequent post backs (every 2 seconds), and the burdon it would put on our server (we have a few Databases and Webservers, so maintaining a changelog is out of the question) at the time we hadnt looked into node.js / socket.io, which brings me to my question: if socket.io only works on modern browsers and has to revert to either Flash or Long-polling if the required functionality is not available in the browser, is there really any benefit to using this technology today (as opposed to 2 years from now when the last of the i.e 6 users are forced to update)? the problem is we dont want to bring the server to it's knees because worst case this thing is going to keep the http connections open for an extended duration and really mess up our users experience (our apps on the webserver, i did not design the system)"}
{"_id": "131639", "title": "Why do we have so many flavors of .NET? Is it a good thing? ", "text": "There are many \"flavors\" of the .NET Framework:   * Full (\"normal\")   * Client profile subset   * Silverlight in web browsers   * \"Silverlight\" on Windows Phone   * Compact framework   * WinRT When C# code is needed on a new platform, it would seem that Microsot prefer to take the full CLR and strip it down to a small subset, creating new assemblies and moving types around, instead of just using existing assemblies such as those in the BCL. Silverlight for example has different classes/methods to WPF (even down to some methods having slightly different signatures or very different implementations), instead of simply referencing the same implementation of `List<T>` as WPF. Is this the ideal architecture, or a sign of legacy? Shouldn't the BCL run on all platforms, with just different presentation/IO libraries on each? Or are the BCL and other libraries too bloated, and splitting them out would create too many backward compatibility problems, to be acceptable? If we started from a blank canvas and weren't worried about backwards compatibility, would the current situation really be the best way to handle multiple platforms?"}
{"_id": "144010", "title": "How can I get started using TDD to code some simple functionality?", "text": "I basically have the gist of TDD. I'm sold that it's useful and I've got a reasonable command of the MSTEST framework. However, to date I have not been able to graduate to using it as a primary development method. Mostly, I use it as a surrogate for writing console apps as test drivers (my traditional approach). The most useful thing about it for me is the way it absorbs the role of regression testing. I have not yet built anything yet that specifically isolates various testable behaviors, which is another big part of the picture I know. So this question is to ask for pointers on what the first test(s) I might write for the following development task: I want to produce code that encapsulates task execution in the fashion of producer/consumer. I stopped and decided to write this question after I wrote this code (wondering if I could actually use TDD for real this time) **Code:**               interface ITask     {         Guid TaskId { get; }         bool IsComplete { get; }         bool IsFailed { get; }         bool IsRunning { get; }     }          interface ITaskContainer     {         Guid AddTask(ICommand action);     }          interface ICommand     {         string CommandName { get; }         Dictionary<string, object> Parameters { get; }         void Execute();     }"}
{"_id": "26643", "title": "Do any programmers use a pen and tablet instead of a mouse? Is it better?", "text": "I've injured my wrist and looking over at the designer sitting across me using his pen and tablet made me think if that's something a web developer (20-40% time spent in photoshop) could use and maybe even be more efficient in the long term? **Are you a developer using pen / tablet and seriously not missing a mouse anymore? Why?** I did a search and found these but they don't answer my question exactly, or in enough detail:   * Development with a tablet (dated 2008)   * One handed coding with tablet   * One guy using a tablet / pen likes it   * Programming with feet?   * A designer switches to a tablet (good comments) But what I did find I can summarise as follows:   * It is easier on the wrist.   * There is a learning curve.   * For pointing intensive work (ala photoshop) it is superior.   * You get better at keyboard shortcuts if you're not already.   * You might hold the pen while you type if you find picking up / putting down harder.   * Tablet to screen mapping is awesome (absolute positioning, i.e. tablet corner = screen corner) I think I've almost convinced myself here :)"}
{"_id": "117684", "title": "What should I put into my online development portfolio?", "text": "Online portfolios are very popular with designers, but what about developers? I'm a Java web developer who also enjoys writing Javascript, and I was thinking of putting up a site with links to a Github repository. What kinds of things do you think would impress a potential employer? Do other programmers put up such portfolios? Can you share links and your experiences?"}
{"_id": "92575", "title": "Dangers of huge monolithic application", "text": "The big project I'm working on for a couple years now is a control (and everything) application of an advanced device, heart of its firmware. The device is quite advanced, with more different functionalities than I could say from memory, and 98% of them are handled by this one huge executable. In one hand, the program is quite maintainable, well modularized inside, properly documented, there's a reasonable separation of functionalities by directories and files and so on. But in the end it gets all clustered into one application that does everything from remote database communication, touchscreen handling, handling a dozen various communication protocols, measurements, several control algorithms, video capture, sunrise time and date of easter (seriously, and they are needed for very serious purposes!)... In general, stuff that is very thinly related, often related only through some data that trickles between some far modules. It could be done as several separate executables communicating with each other, say, over sockets, with more specific purpose, maybe loaded/unloaded as needed, and so on. No specific reason why it is made this way. In one hand, it works, and it works okay. The project is more simple, without maintaining build of multiple binaries. The internal structure is easier too, when you can just call a method or read a variable instead of talking over sockets or shared memory. But in the other hand, the size, the scale of this thing just creeps me out, it feels like piloting Titanic. I was always taught to modularize, and clumping everything into one gargantuan file feels wrong. One problem I know is a heavy crash of one (even insignificant) module crashes all - but code quality assures this doesn't really happen in release versions. Otherwise, internal separation and defensive programming assures this will still run mostly correctly even if half of the internal modules fail normally for some reason. What other dangers did I overlook? Why does this creep me out? Is this just irrational fear of unknown? Is making serious big projects this way an accepted practice? Either calm my fears or give me a good reason to refactor version 2.0 into multiple smaller binaries."}
{"_id": "238909", "title": "Storing session in a static variable?", "text": "I'm currently checking a older piece of C# code used to maintain a login session.               public static ZRWebserviceSession CurrentSession { get { return _currSession; } set { _currSession = value; } }     private static ZRWebserviceSession _currSession;               public static bool IsSessionActive()     {         if (_currentSession == null || !_currentSession.IsOpen || !_currentSession.IsLoggedIn) {              return false;         }         return true;     }      I was always told using globals is bad practice and I'm looking for ways to improve this bit of code by at least getting rid of the static field used to maintain the session. The current situation is as follows: When the application starts the session object is initiated with a server address (taken from a config file) it should connect to. The object then retrieves the session data (token etc.) from the server to store within itself and it is then assigned to the static variable for access through the entire application. This is only done at the start of the application run or when the user explicitly restarts the session. While a session is active other pieces of code can then call methods on the session object to retrieve the session data and make calls to the connected webservice. Can this be improved? Is using globals still a bad practice if used for sessions or something akin to that? EDIT: To clarify what kind of application this is: This isn't a web application but a client application that connects to a webservice. ZRWebserviceSession is a library object that represents a login session for the user currently using the client application. Kind of like the the session object of the Fabebook SDK https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ios/current/class/FBSession/."}
{"_id": "145949", "title": "Limitations of UML?", "text": "I'm currently studying for an examination and one of the sample paper questions is to discuss the limitations of UML. Most of the material I'm finding on the net is relating to a specific UML implementation or language. I'm wondering from a generalists point of view what would you consider the limitations of UML to be?"}
{"_id": "187109", "title": "What's the effect of this assignment (whatever the language)?", "text": "I think my book (Programming Languages: Principles and Paradigms) is wrong. `a` is a vector, assume a C-like language:               b = 0;     a[f(3)] = a[f(3)] + 1;          int f(int n) {         if(b == 0) {             b = 1;                  return 1;         }         else return 2;     }      > It has the effect of assigning the value of `a[1] + 1` to `a[2]` whenever > the evaluation of the left-hand component of the assignment precedes the > evaluation of the right-hand one. For me, it has the opposite effect, that is assigning the value of `a[2] + 1` to `a[1]`. Because the left-hand component is evaluated first, so `f` returns `1` (because `b` is `0`), thus `a[1]`. Then the right-hand component is evaluated, `f` returns `2` (because now `b` is `1`), thus `a[2] + 1`. Am I right and the book is wrong? Unfortunatly there is no errata..."}
{"_id": "180732", "title": "Where do the parser and service objects fit in MVC?", "text": "Do NSURLConnection service objects and XML/JSON parser objects fall within the controller layer or the model layer? Why? Is it OK to have business logic in the controller? Or should it be in the model layer only? Can the model layer be represented by NSArray/NSDictionary objects or should it be strictly structured with custom objects to comply with the MVC pattern, given that my app doesn't require persistent storage."}
{"_id": "50307", "title": "Architecture/pattern resources for small applications and tools", "text": "I was wondering if anyone had any resources or advice related to using architecture patterns like MVVM/MVC/MVP/etc on small applications and tools, as opposed to large, enterprisy ones. EDIT: Most of the information I see on application architecture is directed at large, enterprise applications. I'm just writing small programs and tools. As far as using these architecture patterns, is it generally worthwhile to go through the overhead of using an MVC/MVVM framework? Or would I be better off keeping it simple?"}
{"_id": "90994", "title": "What are the best practices when performing requirements analysis through job observation?", "text": "I'm considering sitting with the end-users and observing them while the work for a day to better understand the software requirements. Before I try this, I'm hoping someone can provide a list of best practices, suggestions on when this approach is more/less suitable than simply interviewing the users, and notes from your own experiences using job observation/shadowing. References to other sites or recollections of your own personal experience are both welcome."}
{"_id": "187102", "title": "At what stage of a project should documentation be done?", "text": "I was assigned to fix some issues in a PHP project. Later on, I was asked to implement some new features, which I did. The project neither uses any framework nor does it use OOP. It lacks a proper structure, except for the use of folders (no sub-folders) to organize files. There was no documentation created by the original programmer. Now, the project's almost complete with some simple testing to be done and the client is asking for documentation. I have a few questions actually.   1. I have always considered documentation as a process which is starts before starting the coding part of project and which continues till the end. So, am I wrong about this? Is the documentation done at the end of the project?   2. What should be my way to go on documenting this project. I've kept a basic \"log like\" documentation on the changes I've made for my personal use. But since there was no initial documentation produced, I didn't bother to create one either.    3. Is there a good documentation template that I could use to reduce my effort? I am talking about or code documentation (not user documentation). Although I'm assuming this since they haven't specified anything."}
{"_id": "230442", "title": "Ruby on Rails database using static lookup tables or constant strings", "text": "In some ruby on rails projects, I have seen instances where strings are used instead of a foreign key reference to a lookup table. I usually code in C#/SQL Server and use lookup tables, but am not particularly experienced in ruby on rails. So my **question** is, should I be using strings instead of lookup tables in my ruby on rails web project (mysql and active record)? Is this something specific to ruby on rails, or to dynamically typed languages? Or for some particular circumstances? Or is it just bad database design? By lookup tables I mean, like the following **UserStatus**               Id    Name     1     Active     2     Disabled      **User**               Id    Username               UserStatusId     1     john.smith@gmail.com   1     1     jane.smith@gmail.com   2      Whereas with just strings **User**               Id    Username               UserStatus     1     john.smith@gmail.com   active     1     jane.smith@gmail.com   disabled"}
{"_id": "23038", "title": "Have you forgotten more than you know, and how much do you make a point of memorizing?", "text": "I'm talking about knowing an area of computer science or a language, and then forgetting it over the years. As I approach the 20 year mark, I'm finding myself realizing that I've forgotten more than I currently know. Is this bad? Is this good? Is there a way to solve this? And if not, which things are worth memorizing? For instance, we all know (I think) that Quicksort provides O(n*log n) in average cases, and we know it can balloon to O(N^2) when fed with the wrong inputs. How many of us, if asked without notice, could write a functioning Quicksort on the whiteboard or in their code editor of choice, without blinking? Is this useful? And if we can do it, does it count if it's a naive implementation, and not the optimized version that was engineered by Bentley & Company? I give that as an example, but it could be anything. C++ has many dark corners, that if not used for some length of time, can be easily forgotten. And let's face it, there are many dark corners in C++ that one prefers to steer clear of."}
{"_id": "136174", "title": "Going further with C for iOS development", "text": "I am an experienced iOS developer amongst other things. I have a good mastery of Objective-C and Apple's frameworks in the language. But when it comes to the C-based frameworks I often hit a ceiling with my knowledge, and often have to look up idioms and syntax. I learnt C from K&R but it's been a while. I did try learning from it again and it was a blast; but by Chapter 6, I got a feeling that its C is a bit archaic, at least idiom- wise. Also, I want to learn C mostly for the sake of iOS development and so a Mac/iOS focused learning process would be ideal. What will be a good way to go about doing this?"}
{"_id": "22349", "title": "What FOSS solutions are available to manage software requirements?", "text": "In the company where I work, we are starting to plan to be compliant to the software development life cycle. We already have, wiki, vcs system, bug tracking system, and a continuous integration system. The next step we want to have is to start to manage, in a structured way, software requirements. We dont want to use a wiki or shared documentation because we have many input (developer, manager, commercial, security analyst and other) and we dont want to handle proliferation of .doc around the network share. We are trying to search and we hope we can find and use a FOSS software to manage all this things. We have about 30 people, and don't have a budget for commercial software. We need a free solution for requirements management. What we want is software that can manage: Required features:   * Software requirements divided in a structured configurable way   * Versioning of the requirements (history, diff, etc, like source code)   * Interdependency of requirements (child of, parent of, related to)   * Rule Based Access Control for data handling   * Multi user, multi project   * File upload (for graph, document related to or so on)   * Report and extraction features Optional Features:   * Web Based   * Test case   * Time based management (timeline, excepted data, result data)   * Person allocation and so on   * Business related stuff   * Hardware allocation handling I have already play with testlink and now i'm playing with RTH, the next one i try is redmine."}
{"_id": "22347", "title": "Deployment: Best Practices (and real practices)", "text": "One thing that I've learnt in my short dev career is that there are best practices (like TDD) and then there are actual practices that occur under pressure, or through budgetary/time constraints. I'm working in a small PHP dev team on a project using Zend framework. The project has the potential to demand a lot of scalability, and so we are trying to establish a good development environment to promote ease of development long term. Architectural patterns/practices aside, I'm looking at trying to automate deployment, checking code quality through svn hooks, possibly even setting up a CI environment. So I'm interested in hearing people's experience of deployment practices. I've checked other examples as they pertain to other languages - but I'm ideally looking to hear from people who have worked in a PHP/Zend environment To make the question less vague: What are people's experiences of using deployment systems like phpUnderControl and rSync?"}
{"_id": "201135", "title": "I want to write a data processing & analysis programming language that compiles to SAS. How to go about choosing a language to write my compiler in?", "text": "As a side project I wrote a simple macro in SAS to add syntatic sugar to SAS code. I hate how verbose SAS is sometimes! So my macro looks like this               %macro md(code);         /* expects a superquoted string */        * append a b;        %if %lowcase(%scan(&code.,1)) = append %then %do;             proc append base = %scan(&code.,2) data=%scan(&code.,3); run;         %end;     %mend;      Instead of writing               proc append base=a data=b; run;      to append two datasets, I can simply write               %md( append a b);      This got me thinking. Since I work with SAS all day and I enjoy programming. Why not (for fun) design a new data processing language that compiles to SAS?! As many of you can guess this idea was inspired by CoffeeScript which compiles to Javascript. I learnt that CoffeeScript was initially written in Ruby? But why? How did the author choose Ruby? What are the things to consider in choosing a language? And what resources are available that might be useful in pursuing this?"}
{"_id": "22340", "title": "Alternatives to Project Euler for improving Excel ability", "text": "I've recently been enjoying using the mathematical problems listed at Project Euler to learn Python. My Excel ability is better than my Python, but I think I'd still benefit from the sort of inductive learning that comes with solving a series of increasingly difficult puzzles using a particular tool. I know Project Euler can be completed using Excel, but are there any other puzzle series similar to this or The Python Challenge specifically tailored for people trying to increase their knowledge of Excel and what it can do? I'm not looking for a \"tutorial\", I know there are plenty of these."}
{"_id": "131183", "title": "Various programming concepts (from a Python viewpoint)", "text": "Ever since I've started lurking on stackoverflow, I keep coming across programming concepts such as abstract classes, virtual functions, contracts, interfaces, etc., from a questions about other languages such as C++, Java, and C#. As far as I can tell, most of these things are related to object oriented programming but aren't typically mentioned in Python tutorials because Python uses a combination of duck typing and magic to make such concepts redundant. Nevertheless, I'd still like to know what they are.   **What are abstract classes, virtual functions, contracts, interfaces, etc. (explained from a Python standpoint?) What other programming/OOP concepts should I know about that Python typically doesn't use or require you to know?**"}
{"_id": "199927", "title": "How do people develop emulators?", "text": "I hope this is right area on Stack Exchange to ask this question. People out there have built emulators for every game console but I don't understand how they do it. I consider myself (and have the professional title of) a senior level developer in several languages including Javascript but I don't have the faintest idea about how to begin writing an emulator in Javascript. How do they figure out how to read the ROMs and emulate the game?"}
{"_id": "77263", "title": "Do you dress formally or casually for a programming interview?", "text": "For the 4 jobs that I have worked at, I dressed formal twice, business casual once and more casual once. How important is the dressing code to programming interviews these days? Will the employer or interviewer not take you seriously if you come in casually: plain shirt and khaki pants with casual walking shoes(non-sneakers)?"}
{"_id": "199928", "title": "Proper Price Markup Formula", "text": "Ok, so this is not the most advanced programming question - and it kind of borders on e-commerce, but it has specifically come up twice in my career - which is only 10 years old, so I figured I would ask it. **Question:** I want to markup a price 10% from its original cost for a website, which is the proper way to do it: **NP = (P * 1.1)** or **NP = (P / 90) * 100** Where P is the original Price and NP is the New Price? **Background:** I am a web developer. I have worked on several e-commerce sites in my time. A few years back, I was building a freelance site for a tool shop. The guy had been in business for years and was moving into online sales. I wrote a script that took his core inventory list, cycled through it and automatically marked up the price 10% before inserting into the Database. I used formula #1. When he reviewed it he said the price was too low and to use formula #2. Using formula #1, a 15 dollar product is now equal to 16.5, using two it is $16.66. His logic was that 15 is 90% of $16.66 and thus 16.66 a 10% markup, by which 16.5 is only about a 9% markup. Flash forward a few years to today and and I hit the same problem. My company has a massive list of inventory that gets marked up and down in a number of ways. Our old DBA was marking up the price for distributors 10%. He was using formula 1. Our new DBA rewrote a stored procedure and started using formula two. A few people flipped out and started saying that the distributor prices were way too high and that the old formula was correct. We sell large quantities of relatively low-cost items, the fear is that our distributors would balk at the cost. Logically it seemed that formula #1 was the proper way to markup, but the experienced business owner told me the other way was. Now I am hearing people say the opposite. EDIT: My Using the original 15 example. It has always seemed to me that 15 is actually a 10% markdown of 16.66 where as 16.5 is the proper 10% markup of 15."}
{"_id": "197194", "title": "Web hosting deciding to pay for hosting or host your own?", "text": "Is there a guide out there on how to choose when to pay for web hosting vs. hosting your own? Assuming that root access is a must I would like to compare things like cost, scalability and personal stress. Here is what I could come up with. Paying for web hosting: Benefits:   * Much cheaper for a small scale. I assume anything under $50 a month would be cheaper than paying for the bandwidth of hosting.   * No stress in dealing with power outages, server restarts or internet going down.   * For the most part less busy work involved with setting up. Negatives:   * Cost goes way up when higher specs are needed (for example monthly cost triples with ability to use 8gb of ram that you can buy for $90 ). This means you have to target a particular ram usage and monitor so your instance stays within the threshold.   * root access for the most part is a premium.   * You may get tied into a vendor specific deployment process. Hosting on own : Positives:   * 100% control of specs and software.   * When you get past paying for the bandwidth you get much more bang for your buck by building your own machine. Negatives:   * Doesn't make financial sense if bandwidth costs are more than web hosting costs.   * Having to deal with power outages, server restarts or internet going down. I think the best of both worlds would be if there was a place that dealt with bandwidth, power outages and server restarts but you provided your own server. Kind of like a 24 hour day care for a server. Does anything like that exist?"}
{"_id": "28613", "title": "Software Developer vs. Project Manager vs. Product Manager", "text": "I've been a software developer for 10 years. I like being a developer and no surprise I strive for sense of achievement. However, I normally find myself doing stuff that needs to get done regardles of it's my job or not. My experience of various managers I've worked with shows a terrible score of like 20% of those that I find competent for the work they do. This makes me think that demand must be high for no-nonsense managers. I'm seriously considering a career shift from a developer position to one of those positions, but my question is: -Is it worth it? I'm assuming that it's more or less undestood what each of these positions mean. The question is only if an above average developer normally earns more than an average manager or not?"}
{"_id": "213811", "title": "The Nature of Spring", "text": "Is it accurate to say that dependency injection manually using java (without spring) is nothing but implementing the strategy pattern (as per this example)? Furthermore, is it correct to say that Spring just provides a declarative way of specifying the dependency as opposed to manual method whereby the dependency need to be created and 'set' using java code?"}
{"_id": "114170", "title": "How can I leverage or 'selling' small-scope skills in a large-scope-heavy environment?", "text": "I've been working for 15 years at a mid-size company (300-400 engineers) doing a mix of embedded software / signal processing / controls engineering / circuit design. And an event has occurred recently that puts my current role in jeopardy. I'm having trouble deciding how to either find a good fit at my current employer, or deciding where to go next. **What I'm wondering is if anyone here relates to the following situation and can recommend a way to leverage or \"sell\" my strengths to my current (or future) employer:** Most of the projects at my company need what I see as strong \"large-scope\" synthesis skills: project X needs a software engineer to take responsibility for area Y in that project, and quickly finish the design, debug, test, and documentation needed to make that area a success, overlapping enough with coworkers so the project as a whole is a success. (or replace \"software engineer\" with \"circuit designer\" or \"controls engineer\", it doesn't matter) That's not my forte, and no matter how hard I try, it always seems to end up in frustration for me. What I'm very good at, is a mix of the following:   * problem solving   * learning   * mathematical analysis   * use of a wide skillset (ee/math/signal processing)   * meticulousness (many projects in our company have been delayed because someone \"finished\" a task quickly but sloppily, so it had to be redone properly later at a much greater risk/cost)   * identifying design process bottlenecks that cause delays/risk/etc., and writing software tools to help overcome those bottlenecks. (for example: we had a case recently where our build process for a C++ software project was missing some dependencies on autogenerated .h files, so sometimes when we did incremental builds instead of fresh builds, one of the .cpp files wouldn't be recompiled and would refer to an incorrect structure definition. I already had a software tool that could read debug data in the executable file, so I improved it to detect and report multiple conflicting structure definitions present in the executable. Works like a charm: we now use it as a step in our automated build process, and it quickly helps us identify missing build dependencies should a new one occur.)    * focusing on synthesis (design/debug/test/documentation) projects of very limited scope   * acting in a supporting role to take on small issues that have other engineers stuck, freeing them up to continue their work What I'm bad at is synthesis on moderate to large projects. I'm not a programmer workhorse. I cannot seem to manage the complexity no matter what kind of organizational tools I try to use, and it feels like I'm running into a case of neural stack overflow: if I take on new tasks, some of the old ones slip away from my brain, I forget about important details which take me a long time to re-acquaint, and I just feel overwhelmed. And on top of that, I have RSI in my wrists and one shoulder, which get aggravated with stress. **How can I state my strengths and weaknesses effectively and briefly with my current employer (or prospective employers), so that I can find a good fit where my skills benefit them and I can find a role that I'm satisfied with?**"}
{"_id": "60926", "title": "Need pointers on my first Windows program", "text": "I'm a Unix programmer and I need to write a (hopefully simple) program for Windows that does the following: (1) Installs from a USB drive (2) Somehow integrates with the OS at a low- level in such a way that it can filter/shape all network traffic in/out of the machine (a la IPSec) I can write in C, asm, Python, Java, but I have no idea about Windows' methods for doing this sort of thing, nor where to start learning. (I could easily do the above with Linux using a kernel module.)"}
{"_id": "95823", "title": "Best starting point for writing small desktop programs for Windows?", "text": "I know how to program for Unix, Mac, and iOS, but I have no clue when it comes to Windows. Now I have a specific project that requires building a Windows version of a Mac OS X desktop app. But I have no idea where to start learning. What languages can I build the app in and how do I package it for download and distribution? What tools can I use? Can I use Vim and something resembling the Unix command line? I can program well in Ruby and Objective C, but I'm guessing I won't be able to use either of these to make a Windows desktop app. Any tips?"}
{"_id": "114175", "title": "Unit testing of \"workflow\" methods", "text": "We are currently developing a public API for our app. The methods on this public API are mostly putting together functionality in different corners of the system. An example would be: (names have been changed to protect the innocent)               public String createAppUser(String app, String name, String email, byte[] pwd) {           Application appl = applicationModule.retrieve(app);          User user = userModule.createUser(name,email);          Digest digest = cryptoModule.createDigest(pwd);          authenticationModule.authorize(user,appl,digest);          accountingModule.createAccount(user,appl);          return user.getId();     }      When unit testing such a thing, the unit test is just a copy of the same workflow, with some additional noise to setup mocks, objects and validate interactions. Although I find unit-test of algorithmic parts of the application essential, in this 'workflow' part, I find unit-test a repetition of the workflow in question form. Following the DRY principle, it feels like a waste of time. What are the best practices in these cases? Given that these methods are part of a public API, I would find more valuable to test them through a client and validate that the system effects have taken place. This is more 'system test' or 'integration test' and beyond the scope of unit test. What would be the best test approach in this context?"}
{"_id": "130585", "title": "open source flash environments", "text": "I have been looking for a really good open source flash development environment with no success. The best I could find would help in the development of pretty much everything, but I still needed to have Adobe Flash Professional in order to compile my work. Is there a way I can develop Flash applications and not need to purchase Flash Pro?"}
{"_id": "35620", "title": "Is nesting types considered bad practice?", "text": "As noted by the title, is nesting types (e.g. enumerated types or structures in a class) considered bad practice or not? When you run Code Analysis in Visual Studio it returns the following message which implies it is: > Warning 34 CA1034 : Microsoft.Design : Do not nest type > 'ClassName.StructueName'. Alternatively, change its accessibility so that it > is not externally visible. However, when I follow the recommendation of the Code Analysis I find that there tend to be a lot of structures and enumerated types floating around in the application that might only apply to a single class or would only be used with that class. As such, would it be appropriate to nest the type sin that case, or is there a better way of doing it?"}
{"_id": "23691", "title": "Why are more programmers not freelance these days?", "text": "Leaving the whole _pie_ to only a few of them, amplifying the huge differences between the two status. Pay is a (huge) one, not having to do overtime is another. I leave the question open to hopefully get many great answers on all the different subjects that affects that feeling and decision not to go. **EDIT** : While this question is really global, I'll be interested in any studies, facts, articles, opinions regarding local markets such as US, India and even Australia in which I'm in love with. **EDIT2** : Bounty of 500 points for anyone that will come with recent studies on the subject. If multiple answers, will pick the one with the most upvotes."}
{"_id": "93628", "title": "Best Practices or Project Standards", "text": "As a software development contractor I've worked on many projects with differing standards and conventions. Quite often these conventions go against the software best practices we know and 'love'. The question is, when you're working on an established project with specific ways of doing things that you know aren't the best ways, do you break the conventions of the project because you know its a better way of doing something, or do you stick to convention meaning that your work will blend into the existing code base? After all, you need to keep in mind someone else is going to stumble across your work one day and if its not consistent with the rest of the project they will have to take the time to work out what you've done differently. So, project convention consistency or best practices?"}
{"_id": "93620", "title": "Inheritance gone wrong", "text": "I have some code where a good inheritance model has gone downhill and I am trying to understand why and how to fix it. Basically, imagine you have a Zoo hierarchy with:               class Animal       class Parrot : Animal      class Elephant : Animal      class Cow : Animal      etc. You have your eat(), run(), etc methods and all is good. Then one day someone comes along and says - our CageBuilder class works great and uses the animal.weight() and animal.height(), except for the new African Bison which is too strong and can shatter the wall, so I am gonna add one more property to the Animal class -- isAfricanBizon() and use that when choosing the material and only override it for the AfricanBizon class. Next person comes and does something similar and next thing you know you have all these properties specific for some subset of the hierarchy into the base class. What's a good way to improve/refactor such code? One alternative here would be to just use dynamic_casts to check for the types but that clutters the callers and adds a bunch of if-then-else all over the place. You can have more specific interfaces here but if all you have is the base class reference that doesnt help much either. Any other suggestions? Examples? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "198057", "title": "How can I benchmark concurrent key-value stores?", "text": "I have some concurrent key-value store implementations that are implemented with hash tables and search trees that I would like to compare. I would like to benchmark them with a real world application where several threads stresses the key-value stores. I already have some micro-benchmark that stresses the key-value stores by executing random operations on the key-value stores in parallel. What I'm interesting in now is applications that do some work that could be useful in the \"real world\" and where one or several key-value stores are important for scalability and speed. I would like to have a benchmark that is easy to set up and that could be run on many different system. I would prefer if it does not involve network communication etc. An example of the kind of applications I'm looking for is the parallel PageRank algorithm. It is used as a benchmark of different key-value stores in the paper \"Concurrent Tries with Efficient Non-Blocking Snapshots (PPoPP'12)\". The reasons why I'm not satisfied with \"artificial\" benchmarks that do X% inserts, Y% deletes and Z% lookups are:   1. It can be more convincing with a benchmark that also solves a real world problem. The risk with an \"artificial\" benchmarks is that they might not correspond to any real world situation.   2. Some usage scenarios that happen frequently in real world applications might not be covered by the artificial benchmark."}
{"_id": "189613", "title": "What could an algorithm look like that iterates through all combinations of two variables to aim at a certain number of entries?", "text": "For background information, see \"Some background\" further down. I have a list that looks like this:               Start-Time-In-Seconds;End-Time-In-Seconds     1;2     4;6     12;15     ...      This works together with a wave file by acting as a cutlist. So the desired parts are 1->2, 4->6, 12->15, ... If the distance between End-Time-In-Seconds of the previous element and Start- Time-In-Seconds of the current element is below a threshold of seconds(I call it _Pausendauer_ ) I merge those two, ie if the threshold is 3 seconds then the list will be               Start-Time-In-Seconds;End-Time-In-Seconds     1;6     12;15     ...      If the distance between Start-Time-In-Seconds and End-Time-In-Seconds is below a threshold of seconds(I call it _Minimall\u00e4nge_ ) I discard this sample, ie if the threshold is 4 seconds then the list will be               Start-Time-In-Seconds;End-Time-In-Seconds     1;6     ...      What could an algorithm look like that iterates (intelligently) through all combinations of _Minimall\u00e4nge_ and _Pausendauer_ to aim at a certain number of entries? Example: The number of entries should be 3. Given the number 3 the algorithm should iterate (intelligently) through all combinations of _Minimall\u00e4nge_ and _Pausendauer_ to output something like this:               Start-Time-In-Seconds;End-Time-In-Seconds     1;12     18;20     50;100      And that should be all. You notice I did not add \"...\" to it as the final list is to only consist of three entries. _Some background_ : The wave file contains several interviews being recorded continuously with pauses in between. A VAD gave me areas where it presumes voice to be. As I know the number of total conversations(f.i. 3, usually more which is why this makes sense) my goal is to determine them automatically. The cutlist is the raw output of my VAD which I want to turn into a usable cutlist for ffmpeg. _PS_ : If you can, share an algorithm in c#."}
{"_id": "210915", "title": "Is blocking an entire web-client due to compatibility a reasonable request?", "text": "A little bit of background, we've made an electronic POS system for registered vendors of items of a well known brand. The vendors are required to login to use the system. Recently, IE has been giving us lots of painful maintenance problems than before. Our boss is getting worried about running into further maintenance problems, so he has asked me to find out a way to automatically install & launch chrome if they try to login with any other browsers (For the record, nearly all of the issues are related to some feature working fine on FF/Chrome/Opera/Safari but doesn't on IE). Let us put aside the ridiculousness of running an external .exe from Javascript, which is practically impossible (And rightfully, I told him so. But he insisted it was possible, so whatever). So my questions are:   * Is this request technically viable? Is there a guaranteed way to block requests from all browsers except for allowed ones?   * Is this request reasonable? IMO, From the standpoint of users, limiting accessibility does more harm than good, but maintenance issue is definitely a valid business concern.   * Has there ever been a case like this where other websites explicitly blocked certain browsers? Edit: Thanks for the answers. We're supporting IE 7+ at the moment and indeed, 7/8 were the ones that caused most of the grief. Just dropping those two will make maintenance significantly easier but my boss thinks the problem has to do with IE itself, not necessarily the versions. I'm going to try to see if I can convince him, but I have a strong feeling he's going to stick by what he thinks."}
{"_id": "181466", "title": "Is this \"anti-pattern\" and should I stop using it or is this clever design?", "text": "I've basically stared to do the following when creating a REST service:   1. HTML is requested   2. service returns the desired web page but without the requested \"resource\", eg. data   3. web page contains JavaScript that issues AJAX request to the same service (different content-type)   4. service then returns the actual data (JSON) and the page displays it On one side it seems inefficient (2 requests) but then were I used this, \"performance is of no concern\", meaning low traffic internal app and the web sites are simple and load fast. The reason I ended up with this is that the web page can then be almost pure Html + JavaScript and almost no server-side stuff is required, especially no loops, to create tables and stuff like that (which I think is very ugly compared to things like slickgrid), e.g. separation of data and view. Now before I get to using this, is this a good idea or should I just stop doing it?"}
{"_id": "165618", "title": "Why is semantic markup given more weight for search engines?", "text": "This question follows directly from the part of an answer of this question - Why would one bother marking up properly and semantically? . I would like to understand why SEO techniques gives more weight to semantically correct mark up?"}
{"_id": "221717", "title": "DbFirst vs Code First? what should I use if I rely on Stored procedures", "text": "This question is asked many times, and I always prefer code-first as I like to keep the logic in code. But now I have a challenge to load screen under 5 seconds and very little time to do things. I have large set of records, and I'm possibly going to retrieve them asynchronously. There are a few doubts in my mind.   * Does using db-first approach have any benefits in performance over code-first?    * Should I write the logic in stored procedures or in code (Linq)?   * Which has less latency: Linq or stored procedures?"}
{"_id": "183916", "title": "Application protocols and state machines: designing a complicated server", "text": "I'm designing and prototyping a server that has the following characteristics:   * during the daemon's initialization it spawns nine \"manager\" servers, each of which solves one part of the overall problem.   * after initialization, the daemon accepts connections from clients, forking a \"slave\" server for each which connects to the managers and then accepts requests from the client, farms them out to the managers, assembles the results, and sends them back to the client, ad infinitum.   * the daemon, the managers, and the slaves all should have the ability to concurrently accept \"control\" connections from a terminal, and receive and process commands (e.g. queries for performance stats).   * the concurrency of each process's socket I/O is being managed by select(). The problem I'm having is the complexity of the coding. For one thing, each program has at least two phases - initialization and main loop - in which it is variously establishing a connection to its parent, or accepting a connections from its children, or sending and asynchronously awaiting data from its children, and so on. At various points I don't want, say, to accept a client connection while I'm initializing, or I do want to accept control sessions even in the midst of regular processing. Not to mention managing the protocol of each such connection. Given enough time, I could probably massage all of this into a reasonably well-factored set of subroutine calls. But I remember having heard of an entirely different approach to this sort of problem, involving libevent, callbacks, and finite state machines. What I'm hoping is that someone reading this might say \"Why, yes! That's a perfect example of where event callbacks and FSMs are far superior to looping on select()s - and a great introductory article about this is ...\" or \"here's what it's all about in a nutshell.\" (Or, possibly, \"that's not what libevent is intended for, at all.\")"}
{"_id": "221710", "title": "Stacking keywords on top of each other - poor style?", "text": "I have always wondered about this, especially in C/Java style languages. For example, consider the first 3 lines of this C# code:               lock (serviceLock)     using (var client = new ServiceClient())     try     {         // Do something         client.DoSomething();     }          catch (System.ServiceModel.FaultException ex)     {         // Handle error         addLog(ex.ToString());     }      This usage has always seemed somewhat questionable to me. However, the alternative is not very practical either (3+ levels deep of indentation for a service call). Apart from pure aesthetics, is there any practical reason to add or not to add the extra brackets in this case?"}
{"_id": "224949", "title": "Better way to familiarize myself with Haskell", "text": "I'm a Haskell beginner. I started learning Haskell around 20-25 days back. With a programming day job I am doing this in my spare time because I wanted to learn about functional programming. **Background** I have been going around stackoverflow to see how I should proceed. I have read the first 6 chpaters of learn you a haskell and around 2 chapters of Real World Haskell and done a bit of Haskell programming. I have no prior experience in functional programming. But I have used Python, which has **_some_** functional programming concepts used. Now I am really confused about how to proceed. I am used to learning to program by writing programs on the go but here in Haskell I am not sure what kind of programming problems to do. I am having trouble thinking the solutions to problems that I already solved in Python or C. I have tried some of the 99 Haskell Problems but their solutions use library functions which I don't know about. Haskell emphasizes recursion but without any kind of looping I don't know how to solve many of the problems. I tried going over the advices that I got when I was learning Python. But this time learning Haskell those are not helping because I am stuck at an even lower level. This time I have lesser time to practice and it is just so different. Is there a way to familiarize myself with Haskell better than the above mentioned method? Does it just take some time coming from imperative background?"}
{"_id": "145058", "title": "Real-world examples of apps written with TDD and good test coverage?", "text": "Are there any open source applications that are developed using test driven development that serve as models of how good unit testing should work? I'd prefer to see examples in C# and .NET. (Note that I mentioned applications, not just libraries.) I'm a mid-tier programmer who really wants to believe in and practice TDD. The app I work on in my day job is pretty complicated--about 1 million lines of code--and I would love to introduce more unit testing. We have some unit tests in place, but my efforts at TDD and with working on code that's already under test have not been encouraging. In my admittedly limited experience, TDD seems to encourage a lot of complexity in the name of decoupling. The bits of the app that are hard to test--and which coincidentally tend to be critical--get pushed out to the periphery, into the realm of integration tests that may or may not ever get written. (I'm thinking of the usual suspects here, file system access, hydrating objects from a database, asynchronous web calls, etc.) The code that's under test tends to involve lots of collaboration among objects, and maybe some simple flow logic, all of which happens in memory and which could arguably be written in a simpler, more understandable way if everything didn't have to be totally decoupled for testing. I understand the techniques for mocking dependencies and such, but in my experience heavy use of mocking leads to very brittle tests. If my first instinct upon seeing a bunch of tests go red is, \"Great, now I have to fix all the mocks,\" then my tests have become a drag rather than a safety net. I'm trying to get past this mental barrier, and as part of that I'm reading Michael Feathers' book, _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_. I it hope will show me some of what I'm missing. I'd also like to study some nontrivial .NET applications with good code coverage, maybe a content management system, or a CRUD app. The FitNesse testing framework that Uncle Bob talks about is something I'll probably look at, but it would be nice to see something written in the language I'm most familiar with. Any suggestions or words of wisdom would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "230039", "title": "Passing around impl-specific tokens in generic algorithms in a static/strong type system", "text": "I was interested in solving several unrelated problems using generic graph search techniques, so after some fiddling around I came up with the following design: have each problem implement a generic \"Problem\" interface which has an initial state, and several methods that take in states and moves, and return new states and moves. For example, I can `getMoves(state)`, `applyMove(state, move)`, or check `isGoal(state)`. All of the problem specific details are then in one place, and the generic algorithms can pass around states and moves as generic \"tokens\" that they don't really care about, using the Problem instance to evaluate their properties. The Problems are also consequently stateless (or what state they have is immutable), which makes their behaviour very easy to reason about. This was all fine and good in a dynamic/duck type system (JavaScript), but in migrating the idea to a static/strict type system (Java), I've run into some issues. The most immediate problem was that these \"tokens\" could really be anything. Arrays, objects, maps, strings, whatever. Javascript didn't care, because the algorithms just passed them around as black-boxes, and the Problems assumed they were being given their own tokens. In Java this is not the case. The first most natural solution is to have all the \"tokens\" implement some empty `State` or `Move` interface. This already has some problems, as if my state is just some data structure, then I need to extend or wrap the structure, but that's _basically_ fine. The next problem is that the tokens are implementation specific, so every time they're given to the Problem, they need to be cast into what they actually are. Lots of casting strikes me as a red flag, so this seems like a bad (certainly unpleasant) approach. To avoid all the casting, I briefly considered something involving tons of templates (State<ChessProblem>, Move<ChessProblem>), but that seemed like a headache which might not even fix the problem. Is there some \"proper\"/standard way to accomplish this in stricter type systems? Is this just a bad pattern to use in them (or a bad pattern overall)? Any insights would be appreciated. Also, while I _am_ using Java, if other static/strict languages have novel tools for this sort of thing, I'd love to hear about them."}
{"_id": "145050", "title": "Which is better for increasing accuracy/visibility of project timelines: a developer and a manager or two developers?", "text": "I'm currently a one person development team. My employer is looking at hiring a manager. They do this because, for the more complicated projects, I tend to take a \"this is how much I've got done - this is how much there is to go\" approach rather than \"this is when it will be done\" and they think it's going to magically change if a manager comes on board. Would I be correct that second developer is more efficient? Could I maybe cite the advent of pair programming as evidence, or is that really a specialized thing?"}
{"_id": "152999", "title": "Setters or constructor for many variables?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are there guidelines on how many parameters a function should accept? I have got class with 30 variables (it is application form), so I wonder what is the best practice to organize class creation. Should I use huge constructor:               MyClass mc = new MyClass(a, b, c, d)      Or setters:               MyClass mc = new MyClass();     mc.setA(a);     mc.setB(b);     mc.setC(c);     mc.setD(d);      What is the best practice in OOP for such situation? I saw similar question, but now I don't need immutability."}
{"_id": "140660", "title": "Data structures in functional programming", "text": "I'm currently playing with LISP (particularly Scheme and Clojure) and I'm wondering how typical data structures are dealt with in functional programming languages. For example, let's say I would like to solve a problem using a graph pathfinding algorithm. How would one typically go about representing that graph in a functional programming language (primarily interested in pure functional style that can be applied to LISP)? Would I just forget about graphs altogether and solve the problem some other way?"}
{"_id": "51163", "title": "What is a correct/polite way to inherit from an abandoned open-source project for a new open-source project?", "text": "My team just tried to contact some guys from an old open source project hosted on code.google.com. We told them that we'd like to join their project and commit to it -- at least to some branch of it -- but no one responded to us. We tried everyone, owners and committers; no one was in any way active, and no one replied. But we have some code to commit and we really would love to continue work on that project. So we need to create a new project. We came up with a name for it which is close to but not a duplicate of the name of the project we want to inherit from. How should we do our first commit, and what should the commit message be? Should we just copy their code to our repository with a comment like \"we inherited this code, we found it here under such and such a license ... now we're upgrading it to this more/less strict license ...\"? Or should we just use their code as our first commit, with updates saying \"we inherited from ... we made such and such changes ...\"?"}
{"_id": "74792", "title": "Why is implicit parallelism/concurrency not more widespread?", "text": "Implicit parallelism^ can take a big burden away from many programmers, placing it on the computer. So... why is it is not more widespread at present? * * * ^ Implicit parallelism is to make a computer be able to figure out itself how to do more than one thing at a time, instead of a programmer needing to do this job using threads and the like"}
{"_id": "214805", "title": "What's the difference between the code inside a finally clause and the code located after catch clause?", "text": "My java code is just like below:               public void check()throws  MissingParamException{         ......     }     public static void main(){         PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();         try {             check();         } catch (MissingParamException e) {             // TODO Auto-generated catch block             out.println(\"message:\"+e.getMessage());             e.printStackTrace();             out.close();         }finally{             out.close();         }         //out.close();     }      Then, my confusion is: what the difference if I put `out.close()` in a finally code block or if I just remove finally code block and put `out.close()` behind catch clause (which has been commented in the code). I know that in both ways, the `out.close()` will be executed because I know that whether the exception happened, the code behind the catch clause will always be executed."}
{"_id": "214801", "title": "Class or Dictionary", "text": "I want to create a immutable `Scale` class in C#.               public sealed class Scale     {         string _Name;         string _Description;         SomeOrderedCollection _ScaleValueDefinitions;         Unit _Unit              // properties         ....         // methods         ContainsValue(double value)         ....              // constructors         // all parameters except scalevaluedefinitions are optional         // for a Scale to be useful atleast 1 ScaleValueDefinition should exist         public Scale(string name, string description, SomeOrderedCollection scaleValueDefinitions, unit)         { /* initialize */}     }      so first a `ScaleValueDefinition` should be represented by to values:   * Value (double)   * Definition (string) these values are known before the Scale class is created and should be unique. so what is the best approach.   1. create a immutable class ScaleValueDefinition with value and definition as properties and use it in a list.   2. use a dictionary.   3. use another way i didn't think of... and how to implement it. for option 1. i can use `params ScaleValueDefinition[] ValueDefinitions` in the constructor, but how to do it for the other options? and as last at what amount of value's (properties) should i choose one option over the other?"}
{"_id": "65976", "title": "Is it bad that you don't program on your spare time while at uni?", "text": "There has been some questions about not programming on your spare time, but they all concern when you're at work. What about when you're studying? Do you also need to learn on your spare time when you're already learning during the daytime (at uni)?"}
{"_id": "61296", "title": "Code Samples and Interviews?", "text": "I've seen a number of questions since I've been here where, in the answer, someone has asserted that they would never use portfolios or code samples coded outside of the interview process to judge a candidate, because there is a possibility of that code having been written by someone else. I find myself surprised by this. The way I see it, if I ask someone to come in and solve a simple problem on the spot, there is very little I can learn from it. I don't work for a company like Google where jobs are sought after and I can demand a day of someone's time. But a substantial piece of hobby-written code can tell me a lot. Yes, there is the possibility of plagiarism, but they're going to have to be very well coached to get through an hour long discussion about that code. And should that be the case, they'll have to be very quick learners to get through their 3-month probation (during which I can get rid of them with no reason and with no notice). If they become good programmers that quickly, fair enough, I've been duped, but I still have a good programmer. In the end, the cost to our company and the benefit to the candidate of plagiarism is very minimal. This got me to thinking about other industries. Artists, photographers, designers all use portfolios and nobody worries too much about plagiarism there. An author will get funded for a book based on chapters he has written in his own time. You wouldn't ask an architect to come in and draw design specs for a house at the interview. So what makes us different? Why is it so important to put someone in front of a computer and make them code up a data merge or a factorial calculator, sometimes without access to the very tools we use day-to-day, like the internet? What is wrong with the idea of a code portfolio? I'm genuinely interested to know, in case I am potentially making a huge mistake which just hasn't burned me yet."}
{"_id": "205054", "title": "Need a transition from my workflow, or make it better / fix it", "text": "This is how I roll with git:   1. I clone/fork something locally   2. I create a new branch `devel`. This is supposed to be a quickfix branch. It is also supposed to be parent to all branches.   3. I create a topic branch (say make a new theme `lex`) I actually create a few more child-topic-branches (say `lex.th2`) to test/see different things. But so now, I have to quickfix (in `devel`) a core functionality (say re- correct database credentials in `wp-config`).   I then have to switch to `lex` and `merge devel`. And then to `lex.th2` and `merge lex`. (So that changes from `devel` could goto `lex` and to `lex.th2`) Doing all this severely messes up my history-graphs ![C:\\\\Program Files \\(x86\\)\\\\Git\\\\bin\\\\wish.exe](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8Hy0H.png) I'll admit that the \"official\" workflow was too much for me and I just took the parts that I liked from it... probably badly. So any suggestions how to make it \"tidy\" while still not complicating or deviating too much?"}
{"_id": "205055", "title": "Provide both RESTful interfaces and Java ones?", "text": "I am writing a RESTful service in Java, of course it's typical HTTP based interface. I am wondering should the service provide Java interface which has same semantic to the RESTful interface? I think Java interface will ease other Java code to call the service. (Client Java code doesn't need to use HTTP client to trigger HTTP requests to invoke RESTful) The problem is it's difficult to write same semantic Java interface to a RESTful one, I mean same semantic. Any advice for the design? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "253327", "title": "Why can't we use IP address instead of cookies in identifying the client in servlets?", "text": "I know we have some extra advantages in using the cookies over IP address, but my question is Why can't the container just remember the IP address of the client in identifying the client when he visit his site again? Is it possible for the container to remember the client with the help of IP address?"}
{"_id": "25526", "title": "Release management software", "text": "We've got a reasonably good release management process. However large parts of it are manual tasks, i.e. Promoting builds to QA, deploying builds to internal groups, tracking releases, etc. The builds and tests are all automated with CruiseControl. Can anyone recommend some good release management / continuous deployment tools that I can use to automate the rest of our process?"}
{"_id": "236051", "title": "What is \"condition testing\" (as defined by the ISTQB Syllabus) actually good for?", "text": "I am currently checking through the syllabus for the ISTQB \"Technical Test Analyst\" certification. This syllabus (henceforth called \"TTA syllabus\") contains a chapter dedicated to _\"condition testing\"_ (apparently this is also called _\"condition coverage\"_ or _\"condition coverage testing_ \".) _Condition testing_ as defined in the TTA syllabus strikes me as an exceedingly strange and possibly anachronistic thing that has more to do with Grandma's Ham Story than with software testing. Let me explain... **What is \"condition testing\" according to the TTA syllabus?** Referring to the \"Advanced Level Syllabus - Technical Test Analyst, Version 2012\" of the ISTQB, available here, \"condition testing\" is defined as follows on page 12: > Compared to decision (branch) testing, which considers the entire decision > as a whole and evaluates the TRUE and FALSE outcomes in separate test cases, > condition testing considers how a decision is made. Each decision predicate > is made up of one or more simple \u201catomic\u201d conditions, each of which > evaluates to a discrete Boolean value. These are logically combined to > determine the final outcome of the decision. _Each atomic condition must be > evaluated both ways by the test cases to achieve this level of coverage._ > > _Applicability_ > > Condition testing is probably interesting only in the abstract because of > the difficulties noted below. Understanding it, however, is necessary to > achieving greater levels of coverage that build upon it. **So let's clarify the words** Suppose we have some software-under-test on which we want to do _whitebox testing_ (i.e. we have the source code). The code naturally contains many of those _decision predicates_ that we all know and love and that show up after strings like `if`, `while`, `until` etc. An example of the decision predicate might be: > `((x>y+z) AND (y<-3)) OR ((z\u00b2+x\u00b2<4) AND (z\u2264y))` ![An example of a decision predicate](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HlZtV.png) This decision predicate accepts a triple _(x,y,z)_ of integer values (say) and outputs a boolean, _b_out_. The first-level functions which map _(x,y,z)_ to {TRUE,FALSE} are called _conditions_ (also _atomic conditions_ ) in the TTA syllabus. **Condition testing coverage** One attains _\"condition testing coverage\"_ by running test cases until all the _conditions_ found in the _decision_ yielded at least once _true_ and at least once _false_. One can thus achieve condition testing coverage by running the following five test cases (for example): ![Truth table achieving condition testing coverage](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nO80z.png) Each of the the _b0_ , _b1_ , _b2_ , _b3_ shows up at least once with _true_ and at least once with _false_. In some test cases, we do not care about a given value as it has no influence on the condition whose output we want to get right. **Addendum: Decision coverage** Incidentally, the truth table shows also that _\"decision coverage\"_ has been attained for this decision, as _b_out_ shows up at least once with _true_ and at least once with _false_ , so both branches of any code would be covered. **And now the question** What is \"condition testing\" as defined above actually good for? It won't help you ascertain the correctness of the decision predicate at all. _That_ is best done by a code inspection, letting a second team write the same expression and comparing outputs or running test cases at \"boundary values\" (e.g. here, for y = -4, -3, -2). Checking the individual conditions strikes me to be more about testing the CPU's ALU or maybe testing the compiler output. It is certainly suitable for checking manually written assembler code or verifying manually assembled logic. And this makes me think that \"condition testing\" could well be a leftover from the days where conditions were actually wired up on panels (for example in the ENIAC) and might thus be subject to wiring bugs. These days, the condition is written in high-level code and is _exactly_ the one you conceptually want. While review might be useful, a testing of the condition is just a waste of time. Or am I missing something? **Addendum: Literature Search** A search of the IEEE Xplore library for \"condition testing\" yields only two papers relevant to software (all the others seem relevant to hardware only), both by K.C. Tai of the Department of Computer Science of North Carolina State University. Checking one of those, Condition-based software testing strategies reveals that the author uses the term _condition_ in the sense of _decision_ above, i.e. in this paper \"condition testing\" is actually \"decision testing\". The _condition_ as used in the TTA syllabus is called _simple condition_. It seems the TTA syllabus definitions are not widely used. From the abstract: > A computer program consist of statements, such as IF and WHILE statements, > that contain conditions, which are combinations of Boolean and relational > expressions. A testing approach, referred to as _condition testing_ , is to > test a program by focusing on testing the conditions in this program. A > number of condition testing strategies have been developed, but they are not > effective for detecting errors in complicated conditions. In this paper, we > define two condition testing strategies, based on the detection of Boolean > and relational expression [i.e. expression of the form E1 _op_ E2, where E1 > and E2 are arithmetic expressions and _op_ is one of six possible relational > operators: < <=, =, !=, >, >=] errors in a condition. For these two > condition testing strategies, we show some theoretical properties and > explain why they are practical and effective for testing programs containing > complicated conditions."}
{"_id": "185613", "title": "MVC Pattern - How to get errors from the model to the controller?", "text": "Say I have a typical MVC setup. The controller passes on some input to the model, and asks it to do something with it. But the validation of the data fails, or there is some other problem. What's the best way of getting these errors passed back to the controller, which will then pass them to the view to be displayed to the user? At the moment, I just have an `errors` array in my model. When any errors occur, I simply add the error messages to this array, and `return false` to the controller, so it knows that errors occurred. And in the controller, I do this:               boolean result = model.process( input );          if (! result)     {        view.displayErrors( model.getErrors() );        return;     }     else        view.displaySuccess();      Is there a better way of handling this?"}
{"_id": "74249", "title": "Is Open Market Code Review a Good Idea?", "text": "I have a huge program that I have been developing for almost 2 years. It will probably go commercial in about 6-9 months, but seeing as it is just me developing it, I'd had almost zero feedback about the code (efficiency, maintainability, proper use of best practices, etc.). I would really like to have someone or several people review it for feedback. So:   1. Are there places that I can get this service. Are sites like oDesk the way to go?   2. Is it safe? Would an NDA be sufficient to protect IP or are there other ways of going about protecting IP?   3. Are there particular qualities I should look at in a reviewer, other than they know the language and maybe some of the issues? In fact, I don't even know if the 3 questions above are the right ones to ask and I should be asking different ones first. Any advice on this subject?"}
{"_id": "185611", "title": "addIfNotExist alternative", "text": "Is there are any standards or conventions on naming methods which add something if it not exist into another something. For example: **Store.instance().addItemIfNotExist(item)** IfNotExist is really ugly part. What workaround may be?"}
{"_id": "139258", "title": "How to set up a one-man research in the difference between BDD and Waterfall?", "text": "Earlier, I asked a question about how to measure the quality of a project. The outcome of that question was that the quality of the project can be divided into two parts:   * Internal quality (code quality, measurable by code quality metrics)    * External quality (Acceptance test, how well the software meets the requirements) So based on that, I want to set up some research and validate the outcome of the project. The problem is, I will conduct this research on my own, so it's not possible to run the project once in BDD style and the other one in waterfall by myself. It's also not possible to compare BDD and waterfall projects on a larger scale, due to the fact that there are not enough BDD projects that can be measured because of the age of BDD. So, my question is: did anybody face this problem? How could I execute my experiment in such a way that it is of scientific value?"}
{"_id": "139256", "title": "Abstract base classes and copy construction, rules of thumb", "text": "Often times it's a good idea to have an abstract base class to isolate the interface of the object. The problem is that copy construction, IMHO, is pretty much broken by default in C++, with copy constructors being generated by default. So, what are the gotchas when you have an abstract base class and raw pointers in derived classes?               class IAbstract     {         ~IAbstract() = 0;     }          class Derived : public IAbstract     {         char *theProblem;         ...     }          IAbstract *a1 = new Derived();     IAbstract a2 = *a1;//???      And now do you cleanly disable copy construction for the whole hierarchy? Declare copy construction as private in `IAbstract`? Are there any rules of three with abstract base classes?"}
{"_id": "166635", "title": "Reasons for Pair Programming", "text": "I've worked in a few shops where management has passed the idea of pair programming either to me or another manager/developer, and I can't get behind it at all. From a developer stand-point I can't find a reason why moving to this coding style would be beneficial, nor as a manager of a small team have I seen any benefit. I understand that it helps on basic syntax errors and can be helpful if you need to hash something out, but managers that are out of the programming loop seem to keep seeing it as a way of keeping their designers from going to Facebook or Reddit than as a design tool. As someone close to the development floor that apparently can't quite understand from a book tossed my way or a wiki page on the subject... from a high level management position, what are the benefits of Pair Programming when dealing with Scrum or Agile environments?"}
{"_id": "39843", "title": "Can I use MSBuild to build old VS6 C++ projects?", "text": "I have a build computer where Visual Studio not installed, only MSbuild which can build VS2008 projcets without having any Visual Studio installed. I wonder whether it is possible to use MSbuild with VC++ 6.0 project files, although I am thinking this could not be possible. In the past I have used it with a VS2008 solution file for C++, but not for building C++ 6.0 dsw file. For Vb6 we have an extension package for Msbuild (MSBuild.ExtensionPack.VisualStudio.VB6). Is anything similar available for C++ 6.0 projects? An alternative could be if there are lightweight build tools that can built VC6++ .dsw files without having to install Visual Studio 6.0 ?"}
{"_id": "39842", "title": "How is the \"evented-io\" in node.js any different from the windows event model", "text": "I'm wondering how the \"evented-io\" in node.js any different from the windows async IO model? Is the callback from node.js executed on a thread, if not, where is it run? I don't mean to question the productivity or awesomeness of node, but specifically to understand if the architectural design differs from what is commonly done in the windows space, say with WCF or ASP.Net."}
{"_id": "39845", "title": "Best way to expose a data-oriented service", "text": "I'm currently tasked with writing a wcf service that, for now, will only used inside the company network, the problem is that I'm not sure how I should handle the operations it exposes. The software that will use this service will have to modify similar tables in different ways. For example a table, that has columns a,b,c and d. Program X only updates columns a and b, while program Y updates b,c and d. I feel that a generic Update method that accepts the whole record is easier to write and makes the service less bloated. But it does feel less secure, and would probably make it harder to understand for new developers. How do I best handle these situations on a service level? edit: Yes the tasks are in a sense unique, but the problem is that it's difficult to figure out how unique the service should be. Do I make a general service to allow access to the data, and let the details of those tasks be handled client-side? Security concerns are not that high. The biggest concern is maintainability and ease of understanding. At this moment we have 20+ databases where some of them have 100+ tables."}
{"_id": "70542", "title": "Why would you want to look at IL code?", "text": "I was reading a blog post over at Channel 9 about the release of an open source .NET/CLR decompiler. I was wondering as to why would you want to decompile a .NET/CLR application and look at its IL code? I'm just curious. **[Edit]** And are there any use for decompilers during the development phase? **[Edit]** I'm a little perverse; I want to know when was the last time you used a decompiler for a software development project, and why?"}
{"_id": "175011", "title": "Are closures with side-effects considered \"functional style\"?", "text": "Many modern programming languages support some concept of **closure** , i.e. of a piece of code (a block or a function) that   1. Can be treated as a value, and therefore stored in a variable, passed around to different parts of the code, be defined in one part of a program and invoked in a totally different part of the same program.   2. Can capture variables from the context in which it is defined, and access them when it is later invoked (possibly in a totally different context). Here is an example of a closure written in Scala:               def filterList(xs: List[Int], lowerBound: Int): List[Int] =       xs.filter(x => x >= lowerBound)      The function literal `x => x >= lowerBound` contains the free variable `lowerBound`, which is closed (bound) by the argument of the function `filterList` that has the same name. The closure is passed to the library method `filter`, which can invoke it repeatedly as a normal function. I have been reading a lot of questions and answers on this site and, as far as I understand, the term **closure** is often automatically associated with **functional programming** and functional programming style. The definition of function programming on wikipedia reads: > In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm that > treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids > state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in > contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in > state. and further on > [...] in functional code, the output value of a function depends only on the > arguments that are input to the function [...]. Eliminating side effects can > make it much easier to understand and predict the behavior of a program, > which is one of the key motivations for the development of functional > programming. On the other hand, many closure constructs provided by programming languages allow a closure to capture non-local variables and change them when the closure is invoked, thus producing a side effect on the environment in which they were defined. In this case, closures implement the first idea of functional programming (functions are first-class entities that can be moved around like other values) but neglect the second idea (avoiding side-effects). Is this use of **closures with side effects** considered functional style or are closures considered a more general construct that can be used both for a functional and a non-functional programming style? Is there any literature on this topic? **IMPORTANT NOTE** I am not questioning the usefulness of side-effects or of having closures with side effects. Also, I am not interested in a discussion about the advantages / disadvantages of closures with or without side effects. I am only interested to know if using such closures is still considered functional style by the proponent of functional programming or if, on the contrary, their use is discouraged when using a functional style."}
{"_id": "231945", "title": "Good strategy to implement a listener processing tasks provided by the database", "text": "Let's assume this conceptual scenario: The database is constantly populated with \"a ton\" of tasks named `PleaseSendAnEmail`. A scheduler/listener in background is aimed to handle those tasks.   Of course, rules are that a specific mail shouldn't be sent more than once and that the handling should be the fastest possible.   Possible status for the task are: `New`, `InProgress`(facultative regarding the strategies below), `Complete` and `Fail`. Various strategies for the listener (I present one process iteration for each): **Single threaded solution:**   * Querying one task whose status is \"New\".   * Sending the task to the worker `EmailSender`.    * When the worker did the job, passing the status to `Complete` Pros of this solution: Safety !   Cons: Slow, very slow.. **Multi-threaded solution:**   * Querying several tasks at once whose status is \"New\".   * Multiple `EmailSender` workers are instantiated: Dispatching all the tasks to them   * As soon as a worker has handled one occurrence, its corresponding status is set to `Complete`.   * Meanwhile the workers are processing, a new query is processed, then tasks dispatched to the worker queues etc.. the whole being asynchronous. Pros: Wow! Fast!   Cons: Potential race conditions, since a same task being currently processed could be retrieve again by the next query since the current worker processing it might not completed yet => More than one mail occurrence could be sent! Bad! **Multi-threaded solution involving the`InProgress` status:**   * Querying several tasks at once whose status is \"New\".   * Updating immediately those tasks with the status `InProgress`.    * Multiple `EmailSender` workers are instantiated: Dispatching all the tasks to them   * As soon as a worker has handled one occurrence, its corresponding status is set to `Complete`.   * Meanwhile the workers are processing, a new query is processed, then tasks dispatched to the worker queues etc.. the whole being asynchronous. Pros: multi-threaded and safety! No more mails than expected!   Cons: Increasing access to database...to mark status as `InProgress`..possible contention on database with a huge number of events. **Multi-threaded solution avoiding queries while at least one worker is still processing:**   * Querying several tasks at once whose status is \"New\".   * Multiple `EmailSender` workers are instantiated: Dispatching all the tasks to them   * As soon as a worker has achieve one task, its corresponding status is set to `Complete`.   * Meanwhile the workers are processing, a new query is processed, then tasks dispatched to the worker queues etc.. the whole being asynchronous. Pros: Multi-threaded, safety! No need to involve a locking status as `InProgress`!   Cons: If for any reasons, one mail takes 8 seconds to be sent, it will delay the next query! Many jobs could be seen as idle, awaiting for the next query... Which solution should I use? Is there any other efficient solution?"}
{"_id": "223628", "title": "Cascading \"Deleted\" records that aren't really deleted", "text": "Just trying to get some ideas on what people do for this scenario. We have a system database(SQL Server 2008 R2) that has tables and every table has a field we can call \"Deleted\". It's basically a bit field if its a 1 the record is deleted, if it is a 0 it is not deleted. The field is not nullable and its default is of course 0. We cannot allow real deletions to the database, so to get around this we set a bit field (Deleted) to true. In our application we end up with queries that look like this: `SELECT blah FROM MyTable WHERE .. AND Deleted=0` Basically we filter for records so we only get non deleted rows. Our issue is related records that need to cascade. What do people prefer, should we be doing this in the server side code so that when you delete a record it delete's (Sets the deleted bit field to true) for all related records? Or should this be a trigger that has to check this field and sets the bit field for all related records to 1? Or are we completely on the wrong path?"}
{"_id": "231948", "title": "Avoid code repetition in CRUD operations", "text": "I'm developing a PHP application and I find myself doing basically the same code for, say, creating an object based on a form filled by the user. The objects are of different classes, but the process is mostly the same: take the data from the form, apply validation, save/return error. Is there a way to automatize this process? I ask also because I intend to write a public API and use the same code to do those operations, instead of just copy/pasting. I thought of making a kind of Factory Method pattern that receives the type and the data from the form (or any array), create an instance and set the data, testing the validation afterwards (each object knows how to validate their own fields). And that for each of the other CRUD operations as well. Is that feasible/good practice? Should I just repeat the similar code? There are any other way to do it? For the record, I'm using ORM already (Doctrine). Still, I think that a lot of `create` functions with pretty much the same code (a bunch of `set*`) is something too repetitive."}
{"_id": "250675", "title": "How to create an algorithm for determining Boolean Tautologies", "text": "So i am right now exploring some topics in a proof course and it occurred to me to try to create a boolean tautology solver. I would like an algorithm that is more efficient than brute force. Problem Statement: given a string of '(', ')', '[and]', '[or]', ! and pieces of text that denote variable names (which by definition cannot include parenthetical marks brace marks or ! marks) which must be surrounded by a pair of parenthesis The words 'TRUE' and 'FALSE' are also reserved determine if the boolean string is well-formed and if so, is it a tautology ex: `(alpha)[and](beta)` is well formed and not a tautology because if: alpha = false and beta = true is a counter example ex: `(alpha)[or]!(alpha)` is well formed and a tautology because `((X)[or]!(X))` is by definition a tautology ex: `((alpha)[or]((beta)[or]!(beta)))` is well formed since `(beta)[or]!(beta)` is true and `((alpha)[or](TRUE))` is always true ex: `((alpha[and](beta))` is not well formed Some ideas I had for this was to begin by forming a parenthetical tree. Since every statement will be encapsulated by parenthesis before it can be applied to a [or], [and], or [!] operator what I can do is partition the string into its separate highest level blocks enclosed by parenthesis (clause1)(clause2) to generate 2 nodes of a tree pointing to the high level node Each node contains information about whether it has a ! attached to it's front, and if it has nodes below, what operator is used to unify those two nodes This tree could be quickly generated to reduce the statement to individual literals and easily verify if the statement is well-formed (are there an equal number of ( as ) and does every [or] and [and] have two statements surrounding and a pair of encapsulating parenthesis around these two statements. Now my plan was to systematically crawl up to nodes that do have a (!) value and distribute the not via DeMorgan's laws. If I am ever forced to do something along the lines (x and !x) I have immediately found a contradiction and can abort. I'm still not perfectly clear what must happen at this stage however"}
{"_id": "141538", "title": "Why to keep wrapping closure in each js-file if it can be added after concatenating?", "text": "At the moment every javasrcipt file in our project includes closure wrapper. Before deploying all files are concatenated and minimized. And i'm asking myself, do we really need all that closures OR one closure added after concatenation will do the job. I can see only one reason not to do that - the variable we are sharing between files will get in the global namespace. But there is no conflict so is don't see any problem. The real question is what other cons may be? Or more generally what approach is better - one closure or many?"}
{"_id": "141539", "title": "Ruby Shoes for non-trivial apps", "text": "I've been taking a look at Ruby Shoes for GUI development with Ruby. So far, it's been a pretty good experience for making simple apps. However, I am quite worried about being able to write large scale applications with it. For example, how would I go about using MVP pattern with this framework? For now, I have not been able to not make presentation concerns leak into the view because of the lack of some kind of \"data binding\". I have code that looks like this :               Shoes.app do         @view = SampleView.new         @presenter = SamplePresenter.new @view              @label = para @view.sample_property              button \"Update sample_property\" do             @presenter.update_sample_property         end     end      Here, the call to `@presenter.update_sample_property` updates `@view.sample_property` but the label is not updated accordingly. For this to work, I would have to make `@presenter.update_sample_property` to return a string, and then call `@label.text = return_value`, but I think that would violate the MVP principle of not having presentation logic in the view. I'm used to work in .Net with the MVP pattern so I don't know if the pattern applies correctly to Shoes like I tried to do. Are there any resources out there for making non-trivial apps with Shoes? Especially using the MVP pattern or something similar? EDIT : I took a look at the shoebox to see what other people have achieved with the framework. Though I did not look through it extensively, at first sight it seems like they are all simple projects with no real purposes. UPDATE : I've finally been able to come up with something that satisfies me. Oh, and by the way, I moved to green_shoes because it is all written in ruby and I can run it from the command line rather than from the Shoes application. Packaging is not an issue for me quite yet."}
{"_id": "141536", "title": "Is Ruby on Rails' Active Record an example of Aspect-Oriented Programming?", "text": "From Clean Code, about Cross-Cutting Concerns: > Note that _concerns_ like persistence tend to cut across the natural object > boundaries of a domain. You want to persist all your objects using generally > the same strategy, for example, using a particular DBMS... Is Active Record an example of aspect-oriented programming? > In AOP, modular constructs called _aspects_ specify which points in the > system should have their behavior modified in some consistent way to support > a particular concern. This specification is done using a succinct > declarative or programmatic mechanism. If Active Record is an example of AOP, what is the \"aspect\"? Is it the class declaration that inherits from Active Record?               class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base"}
{"_id": "227715", "title": "Python for a desktop app", "text": "I currently have a .NET app that I want to convert to being cross platform, as a growing number of my users want a Mac version. Since this forum doesn't seem to like questions that are \"what languages are suitable for these requirements\", I'll focus this question on Python as the language of choice. Will Python be a good fit for the requirements below? Drawbacks?   * Desktop app - many of my users do not have an Internet connection where they use the software, so a web app will not do   * Object oriented   * Store data in a relational database as well as configuration files   * Reporting engine, preferably using templates   * Network connectivity - Some users setup multiple workstations sharing a single data file   * Support RS-232 serial port communications, read and write   * Support video capture   * Play WAV and other sound files   * Simple app installation - too many of my users are not very computer savvy, so the easier the install the better   * Be able to implement a demo or time-limited licensing model I considered Java, but am hesitant being at the mercy of Oracle and many people have had security concerns about the JVM. I also considered the Mono project to keep the app in .NET, but their MoMA utility shows thousands of unsupported items. I really prefer to have just one code base to maintain, instead of one for Windows and one for Mac. Python seems to be what I keep coming back to. For some background on myself, most of my experience has been with VB, VB.NET, C#, and Java with some dabbling in PHP/Javascript/HTML. All of my desktop experience has been with Windows."}
{"_id": "175019", "title": "Music Notation Editor - Refactoring view creation logic elsewhere", "text": "_Let me preface by saying that knowing some elementary music theory and music notation may be helpful in grasping the problem at hand._ I'm currently building a Music Notation and Tablature Editor (in Javascript). But I've come to a point where the core parts of the program are more or less there. All functionality I plan to add at this point will really build off the foundation that I've created. As a result, I want to refactor to really solidify my code. I'm using an API called VexFlow to render notation. Basically I pass the parts of the editor's state to VexFlow to build the graphical representation of the score. _(EDIT: The following diagram is outdated as I began to rework the structure, please see the update at the bottom of the post for the new diagram)_ Here is a rough and stripped down UML diagram showing you the outline of my program: In essence, a `Part` has many `Measure`s which has many `Note`s which has many `NoteItem`s (yes, this is semantically weird, as a chord is represented as a `Note` with multiple `NoteItem`s, individual pitches or fret positions). All of the relationships are bi-directional. There are a few problems with my design because my `Measure` class contains the majority of the entire application view logic.   1. The class holds the data about all VexFlow objects (the graphical representation of the score). It contains the graphical Staff object and the graphical notes. (Shouldn't these be placed somewhere else in the program?)   2. While `VexFlowFactory` deals with actual creation (and some processing) of most of the VexFlow objects, `Measure` still \"directs\" the creation of all the objects and what order they are supposed to be created in for both the VexFlowStaff and VexFlowNotes. I'm not looking for a specific answer as you'd need a much deeper understanding of my code. Just a general direction to go in. Here's a thought I had, create an `MeasureView`/`NoteView`/`PartView` classes that contains the basic VexFlow objects for each class in addition to any extraneous logic for it's creation? but where would these views be contained? Do I create a `ScoreView` that is a parallel graphical representation of everything? So that `ScoreView.render()` would cascade down `PartView` and call `render` for each `PartView` and casade down into each `MeasureView`, etc. Again, I just have no idea what direction to go in. The more I think about it, the more ways to go seem to pop into my head. I tried to be as concise and simplistic as possible while still getting my problem across. Please feel free to ask me any questions if anything is unclear. It's quite a struggle trying to dumb down a complicated problem to its core parts. **UPDATE:--------------------------------------------------------------------------** So I went ahead and started refactoring with my idea from above. Here is an updated Diagram @JW01 I understand why bi-directional relationships are potentially bad (difficult to maintain, increased complexity), however, I do believe the increased flexibility is worthwhile and I have implemented it in a maintainable way. Each notation \"container\" (`Score`, `Part`, `Measure`, `Note` \\- all contain children of some sort) inherits from `Container` (this relationship isn't shown in the diagram because the program I use is shitty and it looks super messy). The `Container.addItem(item)` method mixes in the `Traversable` class methods and `parent` property to the item added. To me this seemed pretty clever and easy to understand. Basically, any item that gets put in a container gets extended functionality. As a mentioned in a previous comment, I may want to pull out a nice music data API out of this, which would allow for \"plug-ins\" to be easily created. Traversing in both directions would be particularly helpful for functionality like that. Plus these classes are small and maintainable, and unlikely to change. However, I understand that the less things that depend on these relationships the better. So it's definitely best if I isolate this traversing functionality for use with the `Selection` module. I'm noticing that my `View` classes are doing a lot now. Building, rendering, formatting and handling click. It would probably be wise to factor out a an abstract View module composed of a ViewBuilder, ViewFormatter, ViewRenderer, ClickBehavior?"}
{"_id": "113256", "title": "What is the difference between btree and rtree indexing?", "text": "I've noticed on MySQLWorkbench that you can choose how to store your indexes before forward engineering your design. The storage types are:   1. BTREE   2. RTREE   3. HASH Researching this, I found some information that was pretty much over my head, so I'm looking for practical information on what the difference is between these and/or why you should choose one over another. Also, I have never chosen a storage type before, so I assume MySQL is choosing a default storage type (BTREE?)"}
{"_id": "113257", "title": "How do document-oriented databases implement references?", "text": "In relational world we have Foreign Keys to reference other entities. But how do document-oriented databases like MongoDb, CouchDb, RavenDb implement references among entities? **Update.** StackExchange related example. We have Question entity and its tags. Each tag, is a separate entity so it has its properties (for example, description). How can I reference tags for some Question?"}
{"_id": "232701", "title": "Solution Checker Algorithm for a Game", "text": "For the moment I'm strictly speaking in Pseudocode. I'd only like to see if i'm on the right track. The game I'm talking about is similar to a application called FLOW.   In this game, you're given a nxn board(Always a square) and need to fill out each slot in the board. Similarly, when a board game is initialized, it will have objects like the set up below...               Board - 1 2 3 1             0 0 0 0             0 2 3 0             0 0 0 0      In this example - the objects are 1 2 and 3. A solution would be as follows...               Board - 1 2 3 1             1 2 3 1             1 2 3 1              1 1 1 1      The whole purpose is to fill out the board game by connecting the starting object to the end object. What I have in mind is the following...               CheckSolution(1d representation of the boards state, int totalcolors) {            // I would loop through the colors, a 0 is not a color - empty.        // If the board has a 0 in the array, I would automatically return a false solution.        // Then, I would call DepthFirstSearch on the color.             // -- I would set a counter on this to count the # of colors, if this isn't equal to the total # of that particular color, I would return false.          // Else, the solution is valid.     }      Does this sound reasonable? Or is the better way to implement a solution checker."}
{"_id": "37411", "title": "What is the point where multitreaded programming becomes slower than the problem?", "text": "I currently try to design an engine at the core level. However, I cannot decide if input thread should be mixed with a rendering thread or any other thread. Would making it an extra thread with all the locks it will require be slower? If it's same or faster, would at least be marginally faster? [Consider the above only an example to the concept.]"}
{"_id": "187926", "title": "Is this a variant of the Module pattern?", "text": "What is this pattern called? Is this a variant of the Module pattern? I remember there's disadvantage to this pattern and it's related to memory usage.               var module = function() {              this.Alert = function() {                 alert(\"I'm a public\");         }              function iamPrivate() {              alert(\"not callable because I'm private\");            }     }          var inst = new module();     inst.Alert();"}
{"_id": "249977", "title": "Is there a term for this coding practice?", "text": "One of the incidental complexities of introducing features to an existing system is that the programmer often has to touch several areas of code that are not immediately adjacent. Over the long haul it can be unclear when looking at a bit of code that it pertains to another bit found elsewhere. It's both ugly design and a maintenance hazard. One of the properties of superior code, in my book, is its ability to keep a concept localized in one place. Sometimes this is built in to an architecture up front making it easy to plug new features into a system. In scripting languages where all classes remain open to extension at runtime, it can be easy to think of the language as its own platform and not go the route of formalizing how things plug in. An app written in a scripting language could accept a module whereby the module reaches out to the various system components and changes them -- adding aspects to functions, wiring into events, and so on. Essentially, because the architecture wasn't properly designed for extension, we utilize a poor-man's plug-in system and oftentimes this suffices. In effect, we eliminate the need to modify several spots directly and instead tweak the system perhaps in similar spots but in an automated fashion. That's what I'm focusing on. We still need to modify things that are spread across our system, but we do so in a way that keeps the entirety of the change localized to a single file (module). In there a design pattern/term for the practice of simply localizing all the code (even if it has tentacles) to a single physical location (its own file)? I'm not sure it's the plug-in pattern or the extensibility pattern because in many cases a scripted system may not have been designed with extensibility in mind; however, it is still possible to localize change. Would this simply be called modularity? I'm really just looking for a shared term that I can use to rightly convey the concept without all the explanation."}
{"_id": "182349", "title": "Name for sanitizing at the right time?", "text": "Recently we had an issue on our site where someone attempted SQL injection via a cookie (we'll call it `lastID`). NOC was in a frenzy and angry about how the cookie as an attack vector could be ignored. They had a developer create a class for managing cookies that will sanitize `lastID` (and eventually other cookies) to check that it is numeric. However, I think that this is wrong. The problem wasn't that `lastID` wasn't numeric, it was that the query that uses it was vulnerable to injection. I'm in charge of the review of the code changes, and I want to bring up the fact that forcing `lastID` to be numeric is not particularly useful and perhaps even undesirable. Is there a term or concept that describes sanitizing at the right time (i.e. sanitizing at query time rather than at cookie retrieval time), or \"over- sanitizing\" (e.g. forcing `lastID` to be numeric) that I can use to describe what's happening/should happen in my review? The second part of Postel's Law seems to apply here in my mind: > Be ... liberal in what you accept"}
{"_id": "3450", "title": "Most readable way to format long if conditions?", "text": "Long winding `if` conditions should be avoided if at all possible, yet sometimes we all end up writing them. Even if it's a very simple condition, the involved statements are sometimes simply very wordy, so the whole condition ends up being very lengthy. What's the most readable way to format those?               if (FoobarBaz::quxQuux(corge, grault) || !garply(waldo) || fred(plugh) !== xyzzy) {         thud();     }      or               if (         FoobarBaz::quxQuux(corge, grault)      || !garply(waldo)      || fred(plugh) !== xyzzy     ) {         thud();     }      or               if (FoobarBaz::quxQuux(corge, grault)         || !garply(waldo)         || fred(plugh) !== xyzzy) {         thud();     }      or               thudable = FoobarBaz::quxQuux(corge, grault);     thudable ||= !garply(waldo);     thudable ||= fred(plugh) !== xyzzy;          if (thudable) {         thud();     }      or any other preferences?"}
{"_id": "249974", "title": "Multiple handlers of an exception, and handling exceptions in the UI", "text": "Related to: Is onError handler better than exceptions? **Premise** I am writing a piece of library code that performs certain tasks, to separate concerns, we decided it should not write to a log or write to the display directly, but instead provide an event registration mechanism that allows interested client code to listen to events of its life-cycle. So far so good. We have an event handler for log, and and event handler for display, they are informed when an event occurs and they write to the log / display independently. So we have so far (pseudo code)               class MyLib(List<MYLibEventHandler> listeners)           class Display implements MYLibEventHandler          class Log implements MYLibEventHandler      **Question** The question that was raised was - how to inform the clients of exceptions? One way of looking at it is that an exception can be looked as just another event. It is something external that happens, and the clients are interested in knowing when it occurs. So we can simply add another event for exceptions that receives the exception object. (we can re-throw the exception to allow any other try / catch constructs to handle it, but the log / display are not really _handling_ the exception, they are just being notified it happened so they can do whatever they want with it. They can't really recover from it) On the other hand, it smells wrong. An exception is not a normal event, it's a break in the flow, so we can say that our \"main\" will catch any exceptions and pass it to the `Display` and `Log` instances explicitly, outside of the event dispatch mechanism. This smells also, because we already have a list of listeners, yet we explicitly call the log and the display to handle the exception. (Perhaps I should not be alarmed that the code is doing something \"exceptional\" when handing an \"exception\". but it still smells that I need to keep track of clients twice) So I'm stuck with a code smell no matter what I choose. Is there a design pattern to handle multiple listeners / handlers for the same exception? try catch is very \"single listener\" / \"hierarchical\" structure, it doesn't seem the right tool for a wide \"dispatch\" like scenario. Perhaps some sort of an AOP pattern? My attempt to answer this is that if I have a remote server, with multiple clients, and the server needs to communicate that a server exception occurred, there would be no question since the client can't really \"try / catch\" the exception. It will be more likely be sent as an event (e.g. in Akka as a Try object). Even in RMI, the exception is sent more as an \"event\" and only then triggers a `RemoteException` locally. Is there a known design pattern to handle multiple, independent, read-only listeners for an exception (e.g. listeners that can't and won't recover from the exception, they just need to know it happened) Perhaps in this case, sending the exception as an event (and then rethrowing it) is the right way to go?"}
{"_id": "249972", "title": "Is it true: use Agile methodology results less planning?", "text": "I am kind of new in agile environment since I always participated in projects before which was only said to be agile while it wasn't. Now I am really in an agile project and I see a setback - if it is setback - of agile methodology, the lack of pre-planning. I see that our BA talks to key users, collects data, which are pretty much just a sketch what they really want. Then we first need to refactor many of things because the real needs are a little bit different. Then there is a second phase when we realize they need a bigger system we expected, following that we need to make bigger refactor and generalize everything afterwards. My questions are: **Is this the way it should be? Given by the information are we doing it in the good way? And if the answer yes, then does the low planning costs match with the higher refactoring and rewriting costs? So to say: profitable?**"}
{"_id": "84756", "title": "Should I devise a FileHandler interface to deal with different Files?", "text": "My background has largely been manual testing and I started learning core java to be able to work with Selenium. I am wanting to write couple of reusable method, like reading/writing data from csv, excel, word etc. I created a class named - FileHandler and created method for this. Hence this class deals with all sorts of files - csv, excel etc. But going by the OOPs concepts (and if I have understood them right) I should be creating an Interface and implementations for this Interface, and instead of directly dealing with specific implementation I should be working with reference of type interface. i.e.               public interface FileHandler {     }          public class ExcelHandler implements FileHandler {     }          public class WordHandler implements FileHandler  {     }      My question - is this right approach in my scenario should I just create one class to handle all file input/output operations? Though I am yet to figure out what goes in interface as methods like -               getExcelData(String filePath, String workSheet, String row, String column)      would be specific to only reference of type - ExcelHandler and does not make much sense keeping them in interface."}
{"_id": "182343", "title": "How to avoid huge functions with made up of enums and if-else or switch case when dealing with server response in iOS?", "text": "in my application, I have a request type associated with variety of API calls I make to the REST server. when the response from server comes in the same delegate method for web engine's response, I have to check the API type in the request object passed as a parameter to the delegate method and then take the corresponding action. The problem is there are around 10-12 different API request types. So the switch case that checks the different enums associated with API Types, takes action based on it. How to get rid of this switch 'tower' ?"}
{"_id": "147974", "title": "How to work in an environment with a 'character assasin'", "text": "This is hard to explain, so I will start with my background. I have been in development for about 8 years (6 commercial), have a MSc in OO Info Systems, have a true passion for development and up until a year ago would spend most of my time learning new things and creating helpful applications for the team. I work at a large investment banking company and this new developer who used to work for one of the larger investment banks joins the team, lots more experience than me, more professional etc... etc... Initially I helped him out when he started (ALOT), my attitude up until recently is a team effort everyone helping each other out, but I think he saw this as a weakness. I was the big cheese up until he arrived, and in hindsight and in present time he now is. We clashed because I take the object-oriented route and focus on good design / documentation etc... whereas he prefers not to do documentation and sort of hates OO prinicples, he would rather create a nice interface than good code, next to no comments, doesn't like unit tests, doesn't like interfaces/abstract/inheritance etc. The problem is what he is good at is pleasing management and I have to give credit where credit is due. Now after 6 months he tried to always surpass me, take my code ideas and call them himself, snipe behind my back etc.. and eventually won favour with the developers and increasingly began criticsing me. I'm now at the point where I am very stressed out because everyone has become hyper-critical of my code but when he or someone else makes a mistake or an error its quickly forgotten. Ergo the pressure is very much with me. I'm not used to this situation and wondered if someone out there has come across this and has advice on how to tackle this situation? Or can share a similar experience that might be useful"}
{"_id": "208224", "title": "Is it better to have one method that takes a bool as a parameter or two methods with different names?", "text": "I'm writing a factory class for a Selenium Web Driver and I came across a choice that I couldn't figure out which is cleaner. Having two methods with the same parameter.               GetWebDriver(string browser)     GetRemoteWebDriver(string browser)      or adding a boolean parameter               GetWebDriver(string browser, bool isRemote)      I would think in this case the first option might be better because there is very likely no reason I need to extend it to more than a boolean of choices and hence two methods. On the other hand, I can see the second one to better for when there is more than two choices or likely many extensions in the second parameter in the future. Which would you choose for Cleaner Code and why?"}
{"_id": "204013", "title": "Best approach for near real time message passing from server to client across router?", "text": "I am developing an application which must run on up to thousands of client systems that I control (Linux) which are connected behind common NAT devices to public Internet. Each of these client devices must receive infrequent messages from a cloud service (1 or 2 per day) and on average, must receive these messages in less than a 500ms. I have full control of both server and client systems to install any operating system, programming languages or applications. However I will not have control of the router and network in between. Otherwise, I could just call a web service running on the \"client\" devices in order to send the messages. I have considered running Node.js on the cloud service, with javascript sockets on the client kept open 24x7. From what I am told Node can handle tens of thousands of open connections, making it an ideal server for this. NAT devices will time out open connections, so dummy keep alive data could be sent. And if the connection is dropped, the client just renews the socket. Other options include Erlang or even a simple c socket with long polling. However I am having a difficult time researching this problem for other approaches. What would be the best approach? Given no restrictions on language or programming."}
{"_id": "204011", "title": "Working in a multi-disciplinary team; with a specific skill set - time management?", "text": "I thought I'd post this here for the anonymity of someone I was speaking too recently at a social event for developers. Amongst the trading of _\"war stories\"_ , he presented the following dilemma.. (Specific questions below) > At the moment I'm working at a start-up - with a handful of developers. I > only really come in to contact with a front-end developer, my manager. This > is perfect when I'm doing front-end specific development - but I'm generally > more suited to back-end work, thus I get called upon to do back-end > development at times. > > I recently undertook a project where the requirements weren't made very > clear, there was no management as per se as my usual manager was on leave > during the development phase - and certain stumbling blocks appeared. > (Technical ones; file parsing and formats etc) There was an intention for > the front-end dev to be completed by my manager upon his return. > > Despite the stumbling blocks, the project was completed. A few bugs were > found, but these were largely ironed out before a handover late on a Friday > evening. My manager came back with several suggestions, some of which he had > made, and requested they be done for 11am on the Monday. The work required > for these changes include: > >   * Database Restructuring (To accomodate new data) >   * Code refactoring (To accomodate the above + a more complex file parser ) > > > To include testing, I'd estimate this was a good 12 hours or so of work. > Brainstorming, development, assorted fixes (was a list of 7 or so points) > and then testing. Now I had commitments over the weekend, so I'm stuck on a > Sunday night working in to the early hours to get this done. > > There are plans to bring on a project manager, but this is just one example > where I've taken my work home (often voluntarily, I will admit.) - and it's > actually eating in to my personal development, and also sucking some of the > satisfaction out of what I do. In my opinion too, it leads to spaghetti code > and bugs - which I've witnessed before.   * **Realistically speaking, how is a work/life balance meant to thrive in a set of circumstances such as the above?**   * **Is the lack of satisfaction possibly a productivity issue in the end?**   * **What can you do when you've been given an unrealistic task, but the situation is such that it's 'do or die'?** (Perhaps when the task was assigned by someone without a complete technical understanding?) I'd really like to hear other peoples views on this, as I'm going to guess it can be quite a interesting (and common) problem. One which involves a fair amount of diplomacy. (Will post my response as an answer, **I will not accept it however** )"}
{"_id": "203042", "title": "Agile bug fixing - what's the preferred process for testing?", "text": "When a bug is fixed, the dev set its status to \"resolved\" and the bug is reassigned back to the person that created it. In our case this is usually the product owner - we don't have dedicated testers. But what's a good process for controlling how/when the PO tests the software? Should he be given the latest build after each bug is resolved/checked-in? Or what about every morning? Or should he only receive a build at (or close to) the end of the iteration, to include all of that iteration's new functionality and bug fixes? We are using TFS by the way."}
{"_id": "209020", "title": "How to loosely couple modules in service oriented architecture", "text": "We're developing a total solution, and we've chosen service-oriented architecture to loosen subsystems. However, now we have a problem. When customer orders something, **Order Subsystem** is responsible to get that order, and register it. However, there are some other modules which are responsible too, in order registration process, and each module should do something on it:   1. Customer Accounting module should check customer's balance, and prevent order registration if there is not enough money in customer's account.   2. Asset Management module should increase/decrease customer's assets   3. Rule Engine should apply some business rules dynamically on it (like preventing a specific customer, or notifying an operator, etc.)   4. CRM should view customer's history, and give good customers some discount   5. ... Right now, we're doing it this way:               public void RegisterOrder(Order order)      {         RuleEngineService.ApplyBusinessRules(order);         // some code here         CrmService.GiveDiscountIfApplicable(order);         // some code here         CustomerAccountingService.CheckBalance(order);         // some code here         AssetManagementService.ChangeAssetCount(order);         // some code here     }      This means that if we add another subsystem (module) that needs to do something on order, we have to **recompile** the code of our OMS (Order Management System) to support it. Also we're coupled to some extent to other subsystems here, and if one of them fail, this registration process fails. One way of making this piece of code dynamic and loosely coupled is to use **interfaces** or **contracts** , like:               public void RegisterOrder(Order order)     {        // Finding a list of all IOrderProcessors.        // Looping over each, calling orderProcessor.Process(order);     }      However, it has two problems:   1. We can't use interfaces over SOAP and HTTP (we don't have access to other subsystems' DLL files)   2. Those need to run in a specified order (rule engine the first one) What should we do here? What are the known patterns and practices?"}
{"_id": "209023", "title": "Selecting an appropriate design for Month/Date Selection", "text": "I have a requirement what seemingly looks very simple (and perhaps strange) but some minor details are giving me troubles. Perhaps I'm overthinking this. I'm building a scheduler application (on WPF) for an embedded device that runs everyday. The scheduler controls when the device can be turned on and off. For example, the embedded device can be scheduled to shut off every weekends and on any holidays, such as July 4th. So I went ahead and designed my datastructure to hold a datetime collection for holidays. Firstly, I don't need to store the time but apparently in C#, there's no other appropriate class that holds just dates. Second, I also don't need to store years but then I have no way of knowing whether it is a leap year or not. (For example, I can schedule the device to be shut off on every February 29th, but that date may not be available on a particular year.) I also need a way for the users to select a month/date. As far as I know, there's no appropriate UI control available to handle my problem. I think I need to look for something like this (Below is photoshopped from a standard calendar control): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XHyeW.jpg) What datastructure/design would you use to handle problems like this? What's a good UI design to have users intuitively select a month/date?"}
{"_id": "209022", "title": "In Objective C, what English words can I conceptually associate to the symbols?", "text": "I'm learning Objective C (from a C# background) and am having difficulty understanding the unusual method signatures and am looking for a shortcut to make the learning curve less steep.   * When reading Objective C code, what English words or phrases can I associate with the symbols? For example, calling a method looks like this:                 @implementation Calculator            -(int) add:(int)a and:(int)b {       }       @end      I would write this code:               Calculator *calculator = [[Calculator alloc] init]];     int sum = [calculator add:10 and:20];      So far in my learning cheat sheet I wrote: `\"[\" means \"do\"` I don't know what curves or bumps I'll run into as I proceed, but I am looking for a conceptual reference handy for a Objective C newbie."}
{"_id": "41330", "title": "What is the typical career path for a Software Development Manager?", "text": "What does the career path of a Software Development Manager typically look like, in terms of years of experience, education, professional background, and so on?"}
{"_id": "204019", "title": "Migrating from python 2 to 3", "text": "It is easy to find questions asking if one should start with python 2 or python 3, and it is a consensus that python 2 is the way to go as it is has more libraries and thus better supported. Python 3 was launched back on 2008 and this question already addressed a migration. As it was too soon, the solution was to wait. 5 years have passed now and a good bunch of libraries already support python 3. At the time I write this question, according to this page 244 packages on pypi support python 3 while 156 does not. On the top 30 most downloaded packages, 24 support python 3 Following this I feel safe enough to start migrating from python 2 to 3 and also avoiding telling people to start on python 2 My reasons explained, the question is: **What concerns should I have when migrating from python 2 to 3?** Not just code syntax and replacements, as its easy to find a conversion tool to do the 80% of the job, but general concerns, like:   * Do virtual environments mechanism changes?   * Building, packaging and distribution differences   * Will I have only cPython? (Looks like Jython has a long way to go to reach python 3)   * Multi threading/processing programming. Always a delicate subject   * Testing. Any changes?   * What common things that I can still do like in python 2 but I should stop and start doing in an other way? I feel that a code replacement tool will change the code to make it just \"runnable\", but it will not use the correct or better option if the option itself involves big changes ps: This question was asked on stack overflow, but was closed as too broad. Anyway, I felt that the correct place is here"}
{"_id": "138123", "title": "How to ensure a single coding standard in .NET with tool support", "text": "Probably, the basic situation is familiar to everyone. You have agreed on certain coding standards in your team and now it is time to make sure that everybody follows them. Some do it via heavy paired programming, others maintain a list of coding standards and do a manual review. Others even use the static code analysis tool from Visual Studio to make sure that coding standards are enforced. What are your best practices to ensure coding standards? Which tools do you use - are there some essential tools every dev should know? How do you integrate the standardisation of your code in your development tools? Thank you! Stefan"}
{"_id": "134463", "title": "Are there open-source JavaScript libraries addressing multiple browser tabs and client state for newer browsers?", "text": "There are a few new HTML5 features that have made it into recent browsers that allow sharing state among tabs, browser windows, same domain windows, etc. So it's probably gotten a little easier to write a web application that keeps a lot of state on the client and also manages state intelligently between tabs and/or windows. There are currently libraries like Backbone.js that can help manage state in a single tab or a single window. Is there anything out there yet that helps with multiple tabs (or windows) managing global state, tab specific state, and cross-tab eventing without relying on the server to sync them all up?"}
{"_id": "202318", "title": "data maintenance/migrations in image based sytems", "text": "Web applications usually have a database. The code and the database work hand in hand together. Therefore Frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Django create migration files Sure there are also servers written in Self or Smalltalk or other image-based systems that face the same problem: Code is not written on the server but in a separate image of the programmer. How do these systems deal with a changing schema, changing classes/prototypes. Which way do the migrations go? Example: What is the process of a new attribute going from programmer's idea to the server code and all objects? I found the Gemstone/S manual chapter 8 but it does not really talk about the process of shipping code to the server."}
{"_id": "235566", "title": "When should I *not* use Unicode?", "text": "Unicode seems that its becoming more and more ubiquitous these days if it's not already, but I have to wonder if there are any domains were Unicode isn't the best implementation choice. Are there any languages or scripts that Unicode will not work well or won't work at all? Are there any technical reasons to use a different system entirely (other than working with legacy systems)? Naturally, I would assume that the answer is to always use Unicode. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "234273", "title": "When is it beneficial to not use utf-8?", "text": "When is it beneficial to use encodings other than UTF-8? Aside from dealing with pre-unicode documents, that is. And more importantly, why isn't UTF-8 the default in most languages? That is, why do I often need to explicitly set it?"}
{"_id": "202314", "title": "JSON or XML for parsing for a Windows Store 8 applicaiton?", "text": "I am getting some data from Gov tracker (http://www.govtrack.us/developers/api) and creating a Windows 8 Store application.. I started out trying to use the HttpClient to get the JSON and then use Json2Charp.com to convert it to classes... But then I had no idea what to do with this giant class and the line                 var contacts = JsonArray.Parse(data);      would not work.. So now I requested it as XML and I am using XML to LINQ to slowly get what I need ..for example..                   var things = from x in xdoc.Descendants(\"person\")                          select new Person                          {                              firstname = x.Element(\"firstname\").Value                          };      But in this case and in general what is the easiest way? Is it using XML for this windows 8 application and using JSON to javascript applications? (since I always hear about how JSON fits so well with javascript) At the moment since I could not get the JSON deserialization to work I guess XML is easier in this case?"}
{"_id": "40060", "title": "Is \"WinForms\" a widely-known and acceptable substitute for \"Windows Forms\" on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9?", "text": "I'm always trying to hone my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 to the bare-bones essentials -- no fluff. I want to keep as many points as possible to a single line, and to this end I have used the term _WinForms_ in several places. I wanted to check my capitalization against other examples, but this term is not used on the official http://www.windowsclient.net site; it doesn't even appear in the Wikipedia entry. Can I reasonably expect someone looking for a .NET developer to _get_ that? Even if they're looking for web developers? Would you write it as I have (WinForms)?"}
{"_id": "86440", "title": "How to transfer teams to an Agile programming methodology", "text": "My group has recently grown in size with the addition of several teams from different projects. We work using an Agile programming methodology: 2 week sprints, deliverable every sprint, 2-3 pushes to production every sprint for each team. How do I \"convert\" the newly added teams to this methodology and way of thinking with as little trauma and resistance from the members of these teams?         Note: I'm not asking if they want to change their methodology, they will have to operate this way to be in sync with the rest of the group. This is a different question than this one as all other teams already work using Agile programming."}
{"_id": "226398", "title": "Decouple GUI & Program logic", "text": "I have some windows c++ code (pure winapi c++, no MFC etc) that I would like to build a GUI for. My code does not know about windows GUI, it is completely decoupled from any type of UI. The question: How could I build a UI around the existing code. Ideally, I am imagining something like this: GUI <\\--> Mediator <\\--> MyExistingCode For example, `MyExistingCode.showmsg(char* msg)` would call `Mediator.MessageBox(0, 0, msg, 0);` I'm stuck at how to design the Mediator class (If that is the correct way of going about this). Is the Mediator an Interface?, Abstract Class?, Other? Is an MVC model the best way to go?"}
{"_id": "226399", "title": "Learning Scala, feeling discouraged", "text": "I'm coming from a Java background and trying to learn Scala. At the moment I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed, there seems to be so much more to learn with Scala, so many different ways of doing the same thing. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on where to start, and how long it took them to feel reasonably competent in the language? Even little things like for loop comprehensions seem really powerful but it's just another piece of syntax you need to remember!"}
{"_id": "219017", "title": "How Stack and Heap is allocated for threads under the same process in Windows?", "text": "Stack for different thread is different.but what about Heap. If Heap is different for different threads, then how they share objects?"}
{"_id": "219019", "title": "Would using rainbow tables to detect weak user passwords feasible?", "text": "As I understand in most security breach where the list of hashed password are compromised, attackers do use brute-force to try to find weak password and, invariably, they always find quite some (like in the recent Github breach). If I'm not mistaken in most cases when a user creates an account, the password is sent, encrypted (due to TLS / SSL), to the website which then adds some salt and stores the hash + salt. Even in most sophisticated cases (like when bcrypt is used), upon account creation there's one point in time at which the server does have the password in cleartext. My question is: couldn't you use, at that very moment when you have the password in the clear that the user is trying to use for his new account, a gigantic rainbow-table on the server side to check for billions and billions of weak passwords in a split-nanosecond? Then if you detect that a weak password is used, you'd simply tell to the user that his password is too simple and that, no, using \"edcrfvtgb1\" isn't smart. I mean: if attackers manage to brute-force weak-password _even though they have to deal with the problem of the salt_ , couldn't servers benefit from the fact that, when the users creates a new account, they do know the password in the clear to simply look it up in a big rainbow table when the user creates his account? This doesn't seem hard to implement and seen harddisk sizes these days, it's probably not problematic to store a big rainbow table on the server side. Am I missing something obvious or would this help catch a _lot_ of weak passwords and, hence, mitigate the endless accounts compromise we keep seeing on a nearly daily basis?"}
{"_id": "235776", "title": "asp.net mvc vs angular.js model binding", "text": "So I've noticed a trend lately of .net web developers using angular.js on the client side of applications and I've become more curious as I play around with angular and compare it to how I would do things in asp.net mvc. I'll give a quick example of what really got me thinking. I recently came across a situation at work (I work in a .net environment) where I needed to create a table bound to a collection of objects that had the ability to add and remove rows/items from the collection. I had an add button that created a new object and appended a row to the end of the table, and a remove button in each row to remove a particular object/row. Using asp.net mvc, I first found myself making an ajax call to the server for each operation, updating the server side model, and refreshing part of the page to show the result in the table. This worked but I didn't really like the idea of calling the server to update the model each time, so I tried to come up with a solution to do this on the client side. It turned out to be quite a task, as I had to generate the html on add with validation and all and the correct indexing for the model binding to work. It got worse on remove, as I ended up with a crazy string replace function to recreate the indexes on each item to satisfy the binding requirements (if an item other than the last is removed, the indexes are no longer correct). Now out of curiosity, I tried to recreate this at home in angular (which I had no experience with) and it took me all of about 10 minutes with simple functions to add and remove items from the client side model. This is just one example, but it seems to me that I'm able to achieve the same results with far fewer calls to the server in angular because of the fact that it binds to a client side model. So my question is, is this a distinct advantage of using a javascript mvc framework or am I somehow under utilizing the power of asp.net mvc and am I right in thinking that these operations should be done on the client and have no business requiring calls to the server?"}
{"_id": "226392", "title": "Placing arguments on their own lines", "text": "This question applies to both parameters and arguments, since I've seen this style used in both. I usually write parameters like this               someFunction(arg0, arg1, arg2)      but I've recently noticed that many people write theirs like this               someFunction(     arg0,     arg1,     arg2     ) // the bracket doesn't have to be on its own line      I have a multi-faceted question here: 1) Is it standard practice, good practice, or negligible to put each argument on their own lines?   2) Are their exceptions to this style, like when there is only one argument?   3) What are the pros and cons of such a design?"}
{"_id": "238559", "title": "Wrapping a map with instance or static method", "text": "I have a `java.util.Map<String, Object>` object which different types of values in it. I don't want to cast whereever I do a get operation over this. To do this, I created different classes wrapping this map and these classes provide different get methods which return values for different keys. There are two options for this:               public class Wrapper1 {         private final Map<String, Object> map;              public Wrapper1(Map<String, Object> map) {             this.map=map;         }              public MyObject getMyObject() {             return (MyObject)this.map.get(\"someKey\");         }     }                       public class Wrapper2 {         private Wrapper2() {         }              public static MyObject getMyObject(Map<String, Object> map) {             return (MyObject)map.get(\"someKey\");         }     }      As you see, in first one I'm creating an instance of Wrapper1 and access MyObject instance by instance method. In second, I give the map to a static method and access same MyObject instance. Which one will you prefer more and why? Also if this is a bad practice, please let me know. Thank you."}
{"_id": "106142", "title": "What is the point of the prototype method?", "text": "I am reading through _Javascript: The Good Parts_ , and struggled to get my head around the section on _prototypes_. After a little google, I came to the conclusion that it is to add properties to objects _after_ the objects declaration. Using this script gleamed from w3schools, I noticed that removing the line adding the prototype property had **no effect**. So what is the point? * * *               //Prototyping          function employee(name,jobtitle,born)     {     this.name=name;     this.jobtitle=jobtitle;     this.born=born;     }          var fred=new employee(\"Fred Flintstone\",\"Caveman\",1970);     employee.prototype.salary=null; //  <---  try removing this line     fred.salary=20000;      document.write(fred.salary);"}
{"_id": "106143", "title": "Can you write a (dynamic) website using only XHTML and CSS?", "text": "I am more of a desktop developer that a web developer. Therefore I only know XHTML and CSS when it comes to the web (and C#, if that is in any way useful). I have a _little_ experience with ASP.NET with C# but I am in no ways an expert in it. Say I want to write a small website to give a preview to any new software I make. Is XHTML and CSS enough to make it? Will I _need_ to learn some server- side language? (or web development framework?) If so any suggestions? I don't want to create something as awesome as Facebook or Stack-overflow. Just a normal website, kind of like http://thenewboston.com."}
{"_id": "15819", "title": "Choosing colors for application", "text": "What is the best way to choose colors for LoB app, i need to style TreeView, dropdown's, textboxes and a pivot grid, so i need a bunch of colors, tried Kuler but it gives only 6 colors. So the question is how to do it without designer? PS. It's a silverlight app."}
{"_id": "102650", "title": "Who becomes the product owner?", "text": "A business has five requirements streams, with a \"stream leader\" (called _Product Manager_ , but this is an in-house term) per-stream and a backlog per-stream. If we wanted to follow Scrum more closely, as I understand it, best practise would dictate the identification of a single product owner managing a single backlog containing requirements from all five streams (it's all just stuff to be done, right?), from which work is pulled by a self-organizing development team. Can anyone lend any insight into how best identify the person to be the product owner and how best to explain and \"sell\" the modified approach to the existing stream leaders? NB: I realize this is a very difficult question."}
{"_id": "232419", "title": "How does package naming affects Android application once deployed", "text": "Are there conventions to follow when naming an application package for an Android application? I'm coding in Xamarin Studio, using .Net, so I feel far from this \"com.myapp.etc\" naming convention. Are there rules to follow when naming a package?"}
{"_id": "15810", "title": "Is there a canonical book on dynamic programming?", "text": "At the moment in college I'm studying dynamic programming and I'm really interested in it. I want to go deeper and fully understand the topic so I can write good dynamic code. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about dynamic programming? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "70898", "title": "Function before design, or a little of both?", "text": "When creating data-driven web pages, do you generally work on: A) functionality first B) presentation first? C) both at the same time I'm learning how to build css sites and wasn't sure of the best approach. There will be ajax calls and updates but that is pretty easy to implement. Thanks for your time and feedback."}
{"_id": "15813", "title": "Any tips to learn how to program with severe ADHD?", "text": "I have a difficult time trying to learn how to program from straight text- books. Video training seems to work well for me in my past experiences with PHP. I am trying my hardest to stay focussed and push through. Specifically I am looking to start indie game development. Over the last two weeks I have been trying to pick the \"right\" language and framework to develop with. I started going through Python, but I am not really enjoying the language so far. I am constantly looking through this website to compare this language to that, and keep getting distracted. Aside from all of this, is it possible to become a programmer when you have trouble focussing? Has anyone been through this that can recommend some advice?"}
{"_id": "232412", "title": "maven release candidate builds", "text": "We build Java applications and use Maven to create snapshot and release builds (via Hudson). Normally, we build/deploy snapshot versions to our lab environment and when we're happy, we do release build and deploy that to prod. We've been wondering if we should also be doing release candidate builds. I'm not sure how a release candidate build actually differs from the snapshot builds. I've read about the release:stage goal in Maven, but not it didn't really answer the question. Do you use release candidate builds? What do you use them for and how do you go from snapshot to release candidate to release?"}
{"_id": "197347", "title": "What are the disadvantages of using stored procedures, SSIS, and SSRS to implement business applications?", "text": "Recently, it was suggested that many projects (where I work) should be implemented using some combination of stored procedures (on SQL Sever / T-SQL), SSIS, and SSRS. In one specific project, SSIS would get a file from a SFTP server. The file contains the daily price of ten stocks. A data warehouse will store the daily price of each stock since inception. As of now, the prices go back twenty-five years. Stored procedures will have the business logic to calculate various performance numbers (i.e. return %) during arbitrary time periods such as the 5 year return at 31 December 2012. These stored procedures would be used by SSRS to create reports for the end users. What are the problems/issues using this approach? I feel that vendor (Microsoft) lock is an issue but I don't see that (unfortunately) being enough to change direction. Also, I have a concern about all the business logic being stored procedures. What are the arguments against/for putting this business logic (i.e. calculation of performance numbers) in stored procedures versus using Java (or some other OO programming language) with ORM (such as myBatis)?"}
{"_id": "238154", "title": "DDD: How to reconcile a BoundedContext with REST/WebService DTO's?", "text": "I'm just starting to learn about DDD, and I'm trying to understand how Bounded Contexts can be reconciled with client facing API's like REST/WebServices that use DTO's. For example: your system exposes it's API to the public with a standard WebService, with CRUD style operations for DTO objects with many fields defined via a WSDL. You create a Bounded Context to handle your Domain's business logic, using a \"non-anemic\" domain model - so that your domain objects don't simply have a bunch of setters and getters - instead they have methods defined using vocabulary from your ubiqitious language. How would one reconcile the difference between their web service DTO and the Bounded Context? It seems to me this could add a huge amount of complexity, and I'm wondering if there are some well defined ways to solve this."}
{"_id": "238156", "title": "Using uniqueness types to implement safe parallelism", "text": "I've been interested in uniqueness types as an alternative to monads in pure functional languages for some time; unfortunately, this is kind of an esoteric area of CS research and online resources about programming with uniqueness types are few and far between. It's obvious how uniqueness types may be used to implement stateful data structures like references (\"boxes\") and arrays, though it escapes me how you might implement other common stateful data structures with them. Is it possible to implement, for example, locking with unique types? Can uniqueness types be used to share mutable data across threads? Is it possible to use unique types to build synchronization primitives (like mutexes), or is message passing necessary?"}
{"_id": "171395", "title": "Is it dangerous to substitute unit tests for user testing?", "text": "Is it dangerous to substitute unit tests for user testing? A co-worker believes we can reduce the manual user testing we need to do by adding more unit tests. Is this dangerous? Unit tests seem to have a very different purpose than user testing. Aren't unit tests to inform design and allow breaking changes to be caught early? Isn't that fundamentally different than determining if an aspect of the system is correct as a whole of the system? Is this a case of substituting apples for oranges?"}
{"_id": "238150", "title": "How to refactor code that has 2 concerns", "text": "Say I have this code:                       if ($this->ship == \"e\") {                 $this->price->addLine($this->price->base * $this->price->e, 0, \"Export\");                 $this->price->total += $this->price->base * $this->price->e;                  } elseif ($this->ship == \"d\") {                 $this->price->addLine($this->price->base * $this->price->d, 0, \"Domestic\");                 $this->price->total += $this->price->base * $this->price->d;             }      I have multiple identical blocks of code like the above. I also have other code (other than `$this->ship`) that is similar in structure. Basically, this code adds a `Line` to a PDF, where the line says \"Domestic\" or \"Export\" along with other options. The code above also computes price for that line and adds it to the total. **My thoughts on refactoring this:** I want to remove duplication. I also want to abide by SOLID principles, i.e. separation of concerns. I see that code above does two things (computes price and adds a line item to PDF). I can surely split this code into two separate functions, but then I still end up with duplicated code -- I need to check if `$this->ship` equals `e` or `d` in both places. That is no good. If I need to add a 3rd option, I have to change code in two places. So then I can move my check for `e` or `d` into the main body of code, but still I have duplication because I will have               switch($this->ship)     {         case 'd': $cost = $this->getShippingCost($this->price->base, $this->price->d);break;         case 'e': $cost = $this->getShippingCost($this->price->base, $this->price->e);break;          }      I get these two long lines of code for basically a single character change. While maybe it is kind of acceptable, I am not quite liking it. If I need to change the number of parameters for example, or base parameter or etc, I will need to change it in more than one place. Basically, so far no matter what way I spin this code, I end up with some duplication somewhere. I mean if it is unavoidable, I guess it's okay. But here I come for advice on seeing if there is a way to separate the concerns, and remove duplication and have minimal number of places (ideally `one`) when I do need to change something. can this be done?"}
{"_id": "18339", "title": "How bad is to have many directories where to save uploaded data instead of one?", "text": "I am using the following structure to save the images that users are uploading for their items:   * Images      * User_dir1        * Item_dir1          * Picture_file1         * Picture_file2     * User_dir2        * Item_dir2          * Picture_file3       * Item_dir3          * Picture_file4 Can I go on with this if I am going to have thousants of users and hundrets of items per user? Talking about performance will the Linux dedicated server have trouble in the future? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "33911", "title": "Do employers prefer software engineering over CS majors?", "text": "I'm in grad school at a university that was one of the first to have a software engineering accredited program. My undergrad is in CS. An employer recently recruited at our university and hired 5 SE majors. None of them were CS. Do employers prefer software engineering majors? The reason I ask is because I can focus on many different areas during my graduate studies and really want to take the classes that will help me land a great job. Right now I'm either going to use CUDA and parallelize an advanced ray-tracer for a graduate project or do research on non-photo-realistic rendering in augmented reality. Pursuing these would leave very little SE classes in my schedule. If I went the software engineering route, I would probably either do research into data-oriented programming or software design complexity. Sometimes I think when I'm 40 and look back will it matter at all? For some reason I'm thinking not."}
{"_id": "14497", "title": "What benefits for the developer does the Ruby language offer that C# does not have?", "text": "What benefits for the developer does the Ruby language have that are not available in C# (preferably with code examples)?"}
{"_id": "230307", "title": "MVC: What is the difference between a model and a service?", "text": "Why in some frameworks the logic layer is called \"Model\" whereas in some it is called \"Service\". Are they different from each other or just different by naming conventions? * * * UPDATE 1 The reason I'm asking is because in Zend Framework, a classical MVC framework, everybody uses the concept of Model. Now I'm learning AngularJS and it seems that the word Model disappeared and was replaced by the word service. What I noticed is that a service is more like a singleton that can be reused again and again (example: a REST client) whereas a model is more related to the data manipulations coming from the controller in the MVC pattern."}
{"_id": "229017", "title": "Difficulties for functional managers in Scrum", "text": "I am a Test/QA manager in an organization that gradually moves to Scrum. I don't appear in daily Scrum meetings because I don't want to interfere with the self-organization of the team. The problem with this is that I am becoming too disconnected with what the 5 testers who report to me do in the day to day. How can I coach and evaluate these testers? What if they don't do good work, or do too little work, how can I know this in a timely basis and act on it?"}
{"_id": "234811", "title": "What is the benefit of offloading email to a transactional mail service?", "text": "Why do so many people recommend offloading email to a transactional service such as Mandrill, Postmark or Sendgrid? Is sending email via smtp really that much slower than sending a request out to said service? I imagine it has something to do with the rendering of the actual message, but I'd like a more informed reason."}
{"_id": "38037", "title": "Should I worry about 'Javascript piracy'?", "text": "If I write a client-side Javascript app (with a little bit of server interaction), how can I prevent people from copying the Javascript files to their own site? Should I, at all?"}
{"_id": "104945", "title": "How can I practice implementing data structures and algorithms?", "text": "I just finished learning the basics on data structures and algorithms using Python and C, completing some of the exercises from the book I read. I feel that it is necessary to implement some of these data structures and algorithms to enhance my understanding about the material that I just learned, such as the red-black tree and priority queue. Are there any good websites with material for me to use when practicing?"}
{"_id": "89042", "title": "Is it realistic to ask your team to take on a 100% automated test coverage goal as a stretch task?", "text": "In a financial services environment - is it realistic to ask your team of ten programmers to take on a 100% automated unit and integration test coverage goal as a stretch task for a legacy java system (>1.5M SLOC)? [as a two year goal in increments]"}
{"_id": "89043", "title": "Is it more difficult to maintain moral ethics in IT industry..?", "text": "is it more difficult to maintain moral ethics in IT industry? or it is just that this industry has its own code of conduct?. I have another profile with karmas close to a thousand. This posting is something personal, so I am posting it as anonymous. I am a software engineer.I quit my job in a service-based IT company nearly 4 months back. I have some mood disorder problem. I worked there for over an year. Worked on one project from kick-off to sign-off and worked on one phase of next very similar project. I quit the job because I needed flexibility in work timings and be able to work from home say once a week or now and then (to cope up with my health issue). This job was very low salary paying for my resume and work was very chaotic and unsatisfying in my project (on which I worked end to end) and had lost hope for better work. I didn't find any mentors or role models in the team.This being service based company, I felt like I was to give status on each day. It is true that I have to struggle to meet deadlines because of my problem. But by working on weekends/late nights, I was meeting these. But people didn't perceive it in that light.And I feel that with time, I am only growing and learning in terms of discipline and my problem is like any other health problem for which people need accommodation at work, but qualify for job. I was sincere in my work. and given this flexibility I can do my job. If not excel then at least meet expectation. I quit it, because when being on the job, my mind was always stressed and I couldn't think of what would be better job for me as a next job move, so I needed time to figure it out. Near the end, I was also feeling burned out from the project and I wanted to work on my health. For 2 months, as planned I took a break (break from career worries and career planning, but I spent my time reading things basic things which I wanted to learn like about country,culture,religion,spirituality etc) makes basis for long term peace. May be I have some degree of attention deficit disorder and I would feel blanked out on such issues. and I wanted to spend one month from my life imprinting such knowledge in my brain. then I studied for a month.(I prepared for Google,took onsite interviews,(and got rejected) so focussed on data structures,algorithms preparation along with general OS concepts) and took my focus off from applying to other places etc. Now, gradually before I realized its been a 4 months gap. When job consultants call me, they ask me why I left my previous company without any job offer in hand. I give them 3 true reasons that I wanted to work for product based company, project was over, and I was looking for a break of 2 months. They don't like these reasons. and some don't even send my resume to HR, I think. it is putting me off. What is code of conduct in IT industry? People don't do their share of work sincerely, leave project in between. get careless in work in their notice period. Is this acceptable? or may be I am surrounding by people who give me such tricks and it makes me feel that in general this is how people think. like a friend joined a company, worked there for 1 month, didnt like it and left it and didn't show it his resume and had other company waiting for him with their offer. I am thinking if I should start working on some open source project, which might count as work.or if I should recourse to a lie (and update my resume accordingly) like I had a fracture when I was about to join a new company and so had to take break and that job offer elapsed or some other health issue (which is not long term like mental health or sth) or a problem in my family consultants openly ask me if I am single or married. and some dont show interest because I am single(and of marriageable age as in India ,going by when I did undergrad) and so they think that soon I will get married and being a female is likely to relocate.some consultants openly ask if I have any other job offer in hand. Some say that companies give and set salary depending on if I am employed or not working. I listen to people saying that it becomes easy to negotiate salary once I have other job offers in hand. Is that more ethical that what I have done? I mean , salary should be set on the basis of ones experience,compatency etc rather than competing offers. I feel its difficult to maintain ones ethics during job hopping, career advancement etc in this industry. I am beginning to feel frustrated and am seeking advice from people who have undergone something similar. I think software professionals all over the world may relate it to some degree. I am based in India, so if somebody also wants to chip in with India specific advice, please feel free."}
{"_id": "235872", "title": "What does HATEOAS offer for discoverability and decoupling besides ability to change your URL structure more or less freely?", "text": "Lately I've been reading about Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS), the constraint that is claimed to make a web API \"truly RESTful\". It boils down to basically including links with every response to the possible transitions you can make from the current state. Let me illustrate what HATEOAS is based on my understanding - and please do correct me if I missed something.               /         GET: {             \"_links\": {                 \"child\": [                     { \"href\": \"http://myapi.com/articles\", \"title\": \"articles\" }                 ]             }         }          /articles?contains=HATEOAS         GET: {             \"_items\": [                 { \"uri\": \"http://myapi.com/articles/0\", \"title\": \"Why Should I Care About HATEOAS?\" },                 { \"uri\": \"http://myapi.com/articles/1\", \"title\": \"HATEOAS: Problem or Solution?\" }             ],             \"_links\": {                 \"self\": { \"href\": \"http://myapi.com/articles\", \"title\": \"articles\" },                 \"parent\": { \"href\": \"http://myapi.com/\", \"title\": \"home\" }             }         }              POST: {             \"title\": \"A New Article\",             \"body\": \"Article body\",             \"tags\": [ \"tag1\", \"tag2\" ]         }          /articles/0         GET: {             \"title\": \"Why Should I Care About HATEOAS?\",             \"body\": \"Blah blah blah\"             \"tags\": [ \"REST\", \"HATEOAS\" ],             \"_links\": {                 \"self\": { \"href\": \"http://myapi.com/articles/0\", \"title\": \"article\" },                 \"parent\": { \"href\": \"http://myapi.com/articles\", \"title\": \"articles\" }             }         }      HATEOAS is claimed to provide two major benefits:   1. The entire service is discoverable starting form the root URI, documentation is no longer needed.   2. The client is decoupled from the server which can now change the URI structure freely. This eliminates the need for API versioning. But in my view, a service is a lot more than its URI structure. To use it effectively, you also need to know:   * what query parameters you can use and their possible values   * the structure of the JSON/XML/whatever documents you need to send in your POST/PATCH/etc requests   * the structure of the response sent by the server   * the possible errors that might occur   * ... Based on the above, HATEOAS only solves a tiny fraction of the discoverability and coupling problems. You still need to document the above four aspects and clients will still be strongly coupled to the server because of them. To avoid breaking clients, you still need to version your API. The only benefit it provides is that you can change your URL structure more or less freely (by the way, what happened to the principle \"Cool URIs don't change\"?). Is my understanding correct?"}
{"_id": "242807", "title": "URIs and Resource vs Resource representation", "text": "URL is an URI which identifies a resource by location. _Resource representation_ is a view of resource's state. This view is encoded in one or more transferable formats, such as XHTML, Atom, XML, MP3 ... URIs associate resource representations with their resources a) So I assume URI identifies a _resource_ and not _resource representation_? b) I've read that relationship between an URI and _resource representation_ is _one to many_. Assuming we're talking about URL, how can a single URL address more than one _resource representation_? thank you"}
{"_id": "89048", "title": "When and how a programmer should start own business?", "text": "The title says it all but here's some explanation of what I want to know: Let's suppose a programmer has around 5 years of experience in multiple, mainstream languages. Also suppose that the programmer has worked in different positions from junior developer to senior s/w engineer to a team lead. How would he know this is the time to stop working for others and start his/her own business. How important the technical skills and requirements are in addition to of-course financial requirements. The second part of question is, if he decides to role own company, how he should take a start? Ok, here's some more info: I am single, have no expenses other than my own mobile bills and university dues. Also there's no house rent for me since we have a joint family system (this is not only common but also appreciable in my culture and community). I noted that most people have supposed that I want to build a new _product_ or _web site_. While I appreciate getting your ideas on this, can you people also throw some light on another aspect? What if I would like to build a new, small software shop (or software house as we call it here)?"}
{"_id": "242809", "title": "How to maintain encapsulation with composition in C++?", "text": "I am designing a class `Master` that is composed from multiple other classes, `A`, `Base`, `C` and `D`. These four classes have absolutely no use outside of `Master` and are meant to split up its functionality into manageable and logically divided packages. They also provide extensible functionality as in the case of `Base`, which can be inherited from by clients. _But, how do I maintain encapsulation of`Master` with this design?_ * * * So far, I've got two approaches, which are both far from perfect: ## 1\\. Replicate all accessors: Just write accessor-methods for all accessor-methods of all classes that `Master` is composed of. This leads to perfect encapsulation, because no implementation detail of `Master` is visible, but is extremely tedious and makes the class definition monstrous, which is exactly what the composition should prevent. Also, adding functionality to one of the composees (is that even a word?) would require to re-write all those methods in `Master`. An additional problem is that inheritors of `Base` could only alter, but not add functionality. ## 2\\. Use non-assignable, non-copyable member-accessors: Having a class `accessor<T>` that can not be copied, moved or assigned to, but overrides the `operator->` to access an underlying `shared_ptr`, so that calls like               Master->A()->niceFunction();      are made possible. My problem with this is that it kind of breaks encapsulation as I would now be unable to change my implementation of `Master` to use a different class for the functionality of `niceFunction()`. Still, it is the closest I've gotten without using the ugly first approach. It also fixes the inheritance issue quite nicely. A small side question would be if such a class already existed in `std` or `boost`. * * * # EDIT: Wall of code I will now post the code of the header files of the classes discussed. It may be a bit hard to understand, but I'll give my best in explaining all of it. ## 1\\. GameTree.h The foundation of it all. This basically is a doubly-linked tree, holding `GameObject`-instances, which we'll later get to. It also has it's own custom iterator `GTIterator`, but I left that out for brevity. `WResult` is an enum with the values `SUCCESS` and `FAILED`, but it's not really important.               class GameTree     {     public:         //Static methods for the root. Only one root is allowed to exist at a time!         static void ConstructRoot(seed_type seed, unsigned int depth);         inline static bool rootExists(){ return static_cast<bool>(rootObject_); }         inline static weak_ptr<GameTree> root(){ return rootObject_; }              //delta is in ms, this is used for velocity, collision and such         void tick(unsigned int delta);                   //Interaction with the tree         inline weak_ptr<GameTree> parent() const { return parent_; }              inline unsigned int numChildren() const{ return static_cast<unsigned int>(children_.size()); }         weak_ptr<GameTree> getChild(unsigned int index) const;         template<typename GOType>         weak_ptr<GameTree> addChild(seed_type seed, unsigned int depth = 9001){             GOType object{ new GOType(seed) };             return addChildObject(unique_ptr<GameTree>(new GameTree(std::move(object), depth)));         }                                                    WResult moveTo(weak_ptr<GameTree> newParent);         WResult erase();              //Iterators for for( : ) loop         GTIterator& begin(){             return *(beginIter_ = std::move(make_unique<GTIterator>(children_.begin())));         }         GTIterator& end(){             return *(endIter_ = std::move(make_unique<GTIterator>(children_.end())));         }              //unloading should be used when objects are far away         WResult unloadChildren(unsigned int newDepth = 0);         WResult loadChildren(unsigned int newDepth = 1);              inline const RenderObject& renderObject() const{ return gameObject_->renderObject(); }              //Getter for the underlying GameObject (I have not tested the template version)         weak_ptr<GameObject> gameObject(){             return gameObject_;         }         template<typename GOType>         weak_ptr<GOType> gameObject(){             return dynamic_cast<weak_ptr<GOType>>(gameObject_);         }              weak_ptr<PhysicsObject> physicsObject() {             return gameObject_->physicsObject();         }          private:         GameTree(const GameTree&); //copying is only allowed internally         GameTree(shared_ptr<GameObject> object, unsigned int depth = 9001);              //pointer to root         static shared_ptr<GameTree> rootObject_;              //internal management of a child         weak_ptr<GameTree> addChildObject(shared_ptr<GameTree>);         WResult removeChild(unsigned int index);              //private members         shared_ptr<GameObject> gameObject_;         shared_ptr<GTIterator> beginIter_;         shared_ptr<GTIterator> endIter_;              //tree stuff         vector<shared_ptr<GameTree>> children_;         weak_ptr<GameTree> parent_;         unsigned int selfIndex_; //used for deletion, this isn't necessary         void initChildren(unsigned int depth); //constructs children     };      ## 2\\. GameObject.h This is a bit hard to grasp, but `GameObject` basically works like this: When constructing a `GameObject`, you construct its basic attributes and a `CResult`-instance, which contains a `vector<unique_ptr<Construction>>`. The `Construction`-struct contains all information that is needed to construct a `GameObject`, which is a seed and a function-object that is applied at construction by a factory. This enables dynamic loading and unloading of `GameObject`s as done by `GameTree`. It also means that you have to define that factory if you inherit `GameObject`. This inheritance is also the reason why `GameTree` has a template-function `gameObject<GOType>`. `GameObject` can contain a `RenderObject` and a `PhysicsObject`, which we'll later get to. Anyway, here's the code.               class GameObject;     typedef unsigned long seed_type;               //this declaration magic means that all GameObjectFactorys inherit from GameObjectFactory<GameObject>     template<typename GOType>     struct GameObjectFactory;          template<>     struct GameObjectFactory<GameObject>{         virtual unique_ptr<GameObject> construct(seed_type seed) const = 0;     };          template<typename GOType>     struct GameObjectFactory : GameObjectFactory<GameObject>{         GameObjectFactory() : GameObjectFactory<GameObject>(){}         unique_ptr<GameObject> construct(seed_type seed) const{             return unique_ptr<GOType>(new GOType(seed));         }     };          //same as with the factories. this is important for storing them in vectors     template<typename GOType>     struct Construction;          template<>     struct Construction<GameObject>{         virtual unique_ptr<GameObject> construct() const = 0;     };          template<typename GOType>     struct Construction : Construction<GameObject>{         Construction(seed_type seed, function<void(GOType*)> func = [](GOType* null){}) :             Construction<GameObject>(),             seed_(seed),             func_(func)         {}              unique_ptr<GameObject> construct() const{             unique_ptr<GameObject> gameObject{ GOType::factory.construct(seed_) };             func_(dynamic_cast<GOType*>(gameObject.get()));             return std::move(gameObject);         }              seed_type seed_;         function<void(GOType*)> func_;     };               typedef struct CResult     {         CResult() :             constructions{}         {}              CResult(CResult && o) :             constructions(std::move(o.constructions))         {}              CResult& operator= (CResult& other){             if (this != &other){                 for (unique_ptr<Construction<GameObject>>& child : other.constructions){                     constructions.push_back(std::move(child));                 }             }             return *this;     }              template<typename GOType>         void push_back(seed_type seed, function<void(GOType*)> func = [](GOType* null){}){             constructions.push_back(make_unique<Construction<GOType>>(seed, func));         }              vector<unique_ptr<Construction<GameObject>>> constructions;     } CResult;                    //finally, the GameObject     class GameObject     {     public:         GameObject(seed_type seed);         GameObject(const GameObject&);              virtual void tick(unsigned int delta);              inline Matrix4f trafoMatrix(){ return physicsObject_->transformationMatrix(); }                   //getter         inline seed_type seed() const{ return seed_; }         inline CResult& properties(){ return properties_; }         inline const RenderObject& renderObject() const{ return *renderObject_; }         inline weak_ptr<PhysicsObject> physicsObject() { return physicsObject_; }          protected:         virtual CResult construct_(seed_type seed) = 0;              CResult properties_;         shared_ptr<RenderObject> renderObject_;         shared_ptr<PhysicsObject> physicsObject_;         seed_type seed_;     };      ## 3\\. PhysicsObject That's a bit easier. It is responsible for position, velocity and acceleration. It will also handle collisions in the future. It contains three Transformation objects, two of which are optional. I'm not going to include the accessors on the `PhysicsObject` class because I tried my first approach on it and it's just pure madness (way over 30 functions). Also missing: the named constructors that construct `PhysicsObject`s with different behaviour.               class Transformation{         Vector3f translation_;         Vector3f rotation_;         Vector3f scaling_;     public:         Transformation() :             translation_{ 0, 0, 0 },             rotation_{ 0, 0, 0 },             scaling_{ 1, 1, 1 }         {};         Transformation(Vector3f translation, Vector3f rotation, Vector3f scaling);              inline Vector3f translation(){ return translation_; }         inline void translation(float x, float y, float z){ translation(Vector3f(x, y, z)); }         inline void translation(Vector3f newTranslation){             translation_ = newTranslation;         }         inline void translate(float x, float y, float z){ translate(Vector3f(x, y, z)); }         inline void translate(Vector3f summand){             translation_ += summand;         }              inline Vector3f rotation(){ return rotation_; }         inline void rotation(float pitch, float yaw, float roll){ rotation(Vector3f(pitch, yaw, roll)); }         inline void rotation(Vector3f newRotation){             rotation_ = newRotation;         }         inline void rotate(float pitch, float yaw, float roll){ rotate(Vector3f(pitch, yaw, roll)); }         inline void rotate(Vector3f summand){             rotation_ += summand;         }              inline Vector3f scaling(){ return scaling_; }         inline void scaling(float x, float y, float z){ scaling(Vector3f(x, y, z)); }         inline void scaling(Vector3f newScaling){             scaling_ = newScaling;         }         inline void scale(float x, float y, float z){ scale(Vector3f(x, y, z)); }         void scale(Vector3f factor){             scaling_(0) *= factor(0);             scaling_(1) *= factor(1);             scaling_(2) *= factor(2);         }              Matrix4f matrix(){             return WMatrix::Translation(translation_) * WMatrix::Rotation(rotation_) * WMatrix::Scale(scaling_);         }     };          class PhysicsObject;          typedef void tickFunction(PhysicsObject& self, unsigned int delta);          class PhysicsObject{         PhysicsObject(const Transformation& trafo) :             transformation_(trafo),             transformationVelocity_(nullptr),             transformationAcceleration_(nullptr),             tick_(nullptr)         {}         PhysicsObject(PhysicsObject&& other) :             transformation_(other.transformation_),             transformationVelocity_(std::move(other.transformationVelocity_)),             transformationAcceleration_(std::move(other.transformationAcceleration_)),             tick_(other.tick_)         {}              Transformation transformation_;         unique_ptr<Transformation> transformationVelocity_;         unique_ptr<Transformation> transformationAcceleration_;              tickFunction* tick_;          public:         void tick(unsigned int delta){ tick_ ? tick_(*this, delta) : 0; }              inline Matrix4f transformationMatrix(){ return transformation_.matrix(); }     }      ## 4\\. RenderObject `RenderObject` is a base class for different types of things that could be rendered, i.e. Meshes, Light Sources or Sprites. _DISCLAIMER:_ I did not write this code, I'm working on this project with someone else.               class RenderObject     {     public:         RenderObject(float renderDistance);         virtual ~RenderObject();              float renderDistance() const { return renderDistance_; }         void setRenderDistance(float rD) { renderDistance_ = rD; }               protected:         float renderDistance_;     };          struct NullRenderObject : public RenderObject{         NullRenderObject() : RenderObject(0.f){};     };          class Light : public RenderObject{     public:         Light() : RenderObject(30.f){};     };          class Mesh : public RenderObject{     public:         Mesh(unsigned int seed) :             RenderObject(20.f)         {             meshID_ = 0;             textureID_ = 0;             if (seed == 1)                 meshID_ = Model::getMeshID(\"EM-208_heavy\");             else                 meshID_ = Model::getMeshID(\"cube\");         };              unsigned int getMeshID() const { return meshID_; }         unsigned int getTextureID() const { return textureID_; }          private:         unsigned int meshID_;         unsigned int textureID_;     };      I guess this shows my issue quite nicely: You see a few accessors in `GameObject` which return `weak_ptr`s to access members of members, but that is not really what I want. Also please keep in mind that this is **NOT** , by any means, finished or production code! It is merely a prototype and there may be inconsistencies, unnecessary `public` parts of classes and such."}
{"_id": "103012", "title": "Should a special version of a website be developed for tablet users?", "text": "Does the desktop browser version of a web site always suffice for the tablet version(assuming no flash)? or is it common for websites to have a special tablet version that is different from both desktop and phone?"}
{"_id": "183830", "title": "Has research been done on the effectiveness of Planning Poker as an estimation technique?", "text": "Although it is a commonly held opinion that planning poker improves the accuracy of project estimations (a small sample of which demonstrated on this question), has any defined research been done on the subject? More specifically, I am looking for non-circumstantial information showing that planning poker would be an improvement over traditional estimation techniques."}
{"_id": "213716", "title": "Can I run both .Net and Java framework in one computer?", "text": "I have .NET 2.5 installed in my computer unit, as a beginner I used VB.net As I went along I've also installed new .dlls that would help me with my VB.net programming Now, I want to study java as well, leading to Android programming. If I install the JDK 7.0, can I still be able to program in VB.net? Will installing JDK overwrite .dlls essential to the .NET framework? Should I get a new developing PC that focuses with JAVA/Android development?"}
{"_id": "205831", "title": "Requirements specification for Multi-Channel website", "text": "The company I'm working on has a RUP-like software development process, with very heavy documentation. Right now we're doing a Multi-Channel web site -it's intended to be seen in Desktop, Tablets and Smartphones- and every version of the site has a particular flow of events and content. I don't see in RUP an artifact were this differences are documented. I'm aware that Uses Cases must be implementation agnostic -we can't mention any device specific terms- so maybe there's something in the Design discipline that serves that purpose. If there's nothing like that in RUP, It would be nice to know how another Software Process document requirements for Multi-Channel sites."}
{"_id": "205834", "title": "When is it appropriate to start using the next revision of a tool when dogfooding?", "text": "Specifically, I am working on a tool that integrates a DVCS and build system, but I image the challenge I am facing would arise for anyone developing a \"meta\" tool (compiler, VCS, build system, test runner, etc.) that they wish to develop through \"dogfooding\". **My question is:** in a scrum-style release process using the branching workflow, at what point do I start using a newer version of the tool in the development cycle of the tool? I'm looking for a process to create balance between:   * constantly use the `develop` version of the tool: I find I am breaking my own development as changes get incorporated.   * constantly use the `master` version of the tool: any issues I uncover through dogfooding are issues that have already been released."}
{"_id": "205835", "title": "How to practice ATDD if design is not yet emerged from TDD?", "text": "Despite being very stakeholders friendly, ATDD aimed to provide a \"stop\" line when a feature has just been done. This avoids wasting time to add non-focused (and sometimes useless) code. That's why some teams start by establishing a walking skeleton of the application, and directly specifying with an acceptance test the first required feature. Let's suppose this first acceptance test (not representing a relevant first acceptance test, just being an example): _**Given Michael has just been created in the application, his status should be left to non-activated._** I want to write my acceptances tests focusing on business logic directly (use- cases), not dealing with GUI for business rules. Thus my question would be...how to write it? since I don't even already know what is a \"User\", what is a status etc... Indeed, shouldn't it be the role of TDD to emerge the design and therefore these components? But if I firstly practice TDD in order to emerge them, the benefit of ATDD (as a stop line) would disappear. I imagine that it would be more consistent to write some acceptance tests (before entering TDD cycle) when the project has well progressed, since all main components would already be designed. To sum up, should I always write my acceptances test BEFORE my TDD cycle?"}
{"_id": "232219", "title": "Read-only class properties", "text": "When is recommended to use `read-only` properties -- if the language allows me? Are _public_ read-only properties meant to replace `getter` methods or at least the _Magic Methods_ like what is available as __get() in PHP for example? What is the use of a _private_ read-only property?"}
{"_id": "137340", "title": "Is it possible to analyse the API surface of a set of class libraries to automatically determine inter-assembly dependencies?", "text": "I'm sure we've all been in the situation where we've inherited code that was \"overly public\", becomes obsolete or needs to be refactored. In these situations, it is easy to spend many days analysing the API surface to see where methods or classes are consumed; with the .Net runtime, it seems logical that it should be relatively trivial to map these inter-assembly dependencies, but there doesn't seem to be any tools out there that do this already? For example, let's suggest that we have a CRM class library that encapsulates the interface to all the customer data; it's not unreasonable that a quotations application may rely on this, but it seems non-trivial to identify on _which bits_. A naive approach would be to say that the public interfaces (types, etc.) is the API surface, but it may be the case that some of these interfaces are only public for consumption in a particular use case, that may become invalid. Is it possible to automatically determine and map the inter-assembly dependencies for a given set of assemblies?"}
{"_id": "181628", "title": "Soft Real Time Internet Aplication", "text": "I am building a tutoring application that multiple students can sign into the same session with a tutor. My question is, for example, if I sent out a command to draw a line, do I need to wait to see that all connected students propagated the command. Now, it relies that requests will be processed in order. But consider this. If I draw one point, drag and draw another point, it will draw a line. But if I don't wait to see if each step propagated to all students' screens successfully, a student might receive an instruction of drag, draw, draw. However, waiting for each connected user's input seems to be a very slow approach. Is there any way I can solve this efficiently? Or is this a problem at all?"}
{"_id": "83198", "title": "Real-time stock market application", "text": "I'm an amateur programmer. I'd like to develop a software application (like Tradestation), to analyse real-time market data. Please teach me if the following approach is correct, ie the procedures, knowledge or software needed etc:   1. Use a DB to read the real-time feed from data provider: what should be the right DB to use? I know it should be a time serious one. Can I use SQL, Mysql, or others? What database can receive real-time data feed? Do I need to configure the DB to do this?   2. If the real-time data is in ASCII form, how can it be converted to those that can be read by the DB and my application? Should I have to write codes or just use some add-ins? What kind of add-in are needed?   3. How should I code the program to retrieve the changing data from the DB so that the analysis software screen data can also change asynchronously? (like the RTD in excel)   4. Which aspects of programming do I need to learn to develop the above? Are there web resources/ books I can refer to for more information?"}
{"_id": "218879", "title": "What is the difference between string.c_str() and &string[0]?", "text": "What are the differences between `string.c_str()` and `&string[0]`? Regarding performance my guess is that `&string[0]` is a little faster than string.c_str() as it doesn't require a function call. Regarding safety and stability common sense tells me that `string.c_str()` should have some checks implemented, but I don't know, that's why I'm asking."}
{"_id": "136436", "title": "Our version of Agile isn't working. Tips?", "text": "I work on a small team of 4 developers. We are implementing a version of Agile that seems to continuously provide us with the same difficulties, week after week, and I'm looking for suggestions that can help us improve our process. The background: We generally do 2 week sprints, and each sprint we tend to underestimate our work, and we get in trouble with our manager because we're behind schedule. We start off each sprint by tasking out the stories that our manager creates for us. Sometimes he throws in the tasks too and we estimate them. We don't use story points. We use the software Urban Turtle to \"manage our sprints\", which is essentially just stories and tasks, and the associated burn down. We don't plan for a release at the end of a sprint. The most common issue that occurs is that we plan for a task in the beginning of a sprint only to discover it's much larger in scope, but still high in the priority, so we need to work additional hours on it. The second most common issue is that one of us runs into a technical problem that slows down the hours burned, causing a roadblock. The only suggestion provided to us is to be more proactive in adjusting our estimates and providing updates during standups in the morning so we can adjust for the extra time needed. However, there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the way we're doing things. Perhaps there's a disconnect between the expectations of the manager on a project level and the expectations on a sprint level. Because we're making these sprint iterations according to a project plan, and therefore extending a sprint or deferring items screws up the project plan. So as developers we are being encouraged to perform Agile by extending estimates when necessary but also complete the sprint on time, which is confusing. This can't be an uncommon problem, so I'm hoping those wiser than I out there have a suggestion or two on how we can stop running into this same problem every sprint. It's frustrating."}
{"_id": "136430", "title": "Coming up with tokens for a lexer", "text": "I'm writing a parser for a markup language that I have created (writing in python, but that's not really relevant to this question -- in fact if this seems like a bad idea, I'd love a suggestion for a better path). I'm reading about parsers here: http://www.ferg.org/parsing/index.html, and I'm working on writing the lexer which should, if I understand correctly, split the content into tokens. What I'm having trouble understanding is what token types I should use or how to create them. For example, the token types in the example I linked to are:   * STRING   * IDENTIFIER   * NUMBER   * WHITESPACE   * COMMENT   * EOF   * Many symbols such as { and ( count as their own token type The problem I'm having is that the more general token types seem a bit arbitrary to me. For example, why is STRING its own separate token type vs. IDENTIFIER. A string could be represented as STRING_START + (IDENTIFIER | WHITESPACE) + STRING_START. This may also have to do with the difficulties of my language. For example, variable declarations are written as `{var-name var value}` and deployed with `{var-name}`. It seems like `'{'` and `'}'` should be their own tokens, but are VAR_NAME and VAR_VALUE eligible token types, or would these both fall under IDENTIFIER? What's more is that the VAR_VALUE can actually contain whitespace. The whitespace after `var-name` is used to signify the start of the value in the declaration .. any other whitespace is part of the value. Does this whitespace become its own token? Whitespace only has that meaning in this context. Moreover, `{` may not be the start of a variable declaration .. it depends on the context (there's that word again!). `{:` starts a name declaration, and `{` can even be used as part of some value. My language is similar to Python in that blocks are created with indentation. I was reading about how Python uses the lexer to create INDENT and DEDENT tokens (that serve more or less as what `{` and `}` would do in a lot of other languages). Python claims to be context-free which means to me that at least the lexer shouldn't care about where it is in the stream while creating tokens. How does Python's lexer know it's building an INDENT token of a specific length without knowing about previous characters (e.g. that the previous line was a newline, so start creating the spaces for INDENT)? I ask because I need to know this too. My final question is the stupidest one: why is a lexer even necessary? It seems to me that the parser could go character-by-character and figure out where it is and what it expects. Does the lexer add the benefit of simplicity?"}
{"_id": "218872", "title": "Where should tests' log files go?", "text": "My application has a rather non-trivial, yet standard, log configuration.   It includes a console appender and a rolling size-based file appender. When I'm running the tests, thru the IDE or with maven, where is the least surprising place to save the log files?"}
{"_id": "136438", "title": "Under which circumstances will development advance faster with many contributors compared to few?", "text": "I saw an interview with Joel Spolsky, where he says that Fog Creek Software intentionally keep their teams small (I believe as in four-five guys). The reason for this is to avoid a lot of the communication needed between the team members if the teams are larger. If one compares this to open source projects, where there can be hundreds (or thousands?) of contributors. Whether they are a team, is, though, arguable. There are probably also examples of something in between, with team sizes of 20 developers. My question is: What kind of software is most suited for getting developed by small teams, and what kind of software is suited for large teams?"}
{"_id": "218877", "title": "How to level up as a PHP developer", "text": "I've been doing PHP for 4 years now. 2 years at school and 2 years at work. But I feel like I'm stagnating. Here are some things that I currently know about PHP:   * Basics (variables, control structures, arrays, loops, sessions, cookies, file manipulation)   * Database Integration (MySQL)   * OOP - I only know of the basics (creating classes, inheritance, objects, private, public and protected class variables)   * MVC   * A few frameworks (CodeIgniter, Laravel)    * PHPUnit (Assertions)   * Templating (Smarty)   * Using PHP with AJAX   * Building Wordpress plugins   * API Integration That's pretty much it. My question is what's next? What do I do to level up my skills as a PHP developer. What are the things that you can recommend that I would do in order to improve (Books, tutorials, etc.). What other PHP tools you can recommend that I should try and use. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "87472", "title": "Legal concern over \"borrowed\" code", "text": "A company my friend works for (let's call him Me) recently unveiled a new face for their internal \"networking\" website. This new face looks remarkably like Facebook, and indeed, examination of the source code reveals that it's almost identical: The code, class names, and even the fonts are the same. There is also no indication that Facebook is in any way involved or aware. I know this is unethical, but is it illegal? I can't find anything concrete about this to help Me decide what to do about it. EDIT: We're talking front-end code. It does not appear to be linking to Facebook in any way."}
{"_id": "15360", "title": "\"Forgot Password\" - How to handle this?", "text": "I read this answer and found a comment insisting not to send password by email: > passwords should not be able to be retrieved by email, I hate that. It means > my password is stored in plain text somewhere. it should be reset only. This raises me the question of handling Forgot Password option? At any cost the raw password must be displayed in any UI so that user will be able to read it. So what would be the way to handle \"Forgot Password\""}
{"_id": "19718", "title": "Real-time collaborative text editing (ie gdocs) - is it a viable software development tool?", "text": "\"Google Docs\" allows for real-time, collaborative document editing. Multiple document viewers are able to simultaneously read and change a document's content so that one user's updates are instantly applied and visible to all other viewers.   * Are there any software/web-app IDEs that facilitate this type of collaboration for writing code?   * Which processes (ie pair programming) stand to benefit from a system like this and which don't?    * Does this model for collaborative editing present a viable alternative to the current source control systems generally used by teams of software developers working on a single code base? Related but less general"}
{"_id": "207156", "title": "What to do with old programming books?", "text": "I have about 1000 or so programming books, but a good selection are on languages/frameworks that are dated, like Django 1.1, Symfony 1.3, or HTML 4 and CSS 2. I just got them all back from storage and was sorting through what ones are of no use to me. So, I was wondering. Dated programming books are unlikey to be of any value to go through the hassle of selling them. Ideally I'd like to give them away but I can't find anywhere online to distribute them. Any ideas on what to do with them?"}
{"_id": "238487", "title": "How are sticky notes used by developers as a project management aid?", "text": "I've seen a lot of offices with sticky notes on whiteboards or even all over the walls. We don't use them in our company, I am currently considering starting using them, but I don't know how. How are sticky notes used by developers as a project management aid?"}
{"_id": "127618", "title": "What implementation do you use when dealing with operators in .Net?", "text": "My question is in a sense a follow up of this post on Time Series in .Net. Ideally, you would like to expand the basic `TimeSeries<T>` class by something like `NumericTimeSeries<T>`, where you would want to make sure that the type `T` implements the common numerical operators `+`, `-`, `*`, `/', ... I am not sure what would be the most intelligent way to do this. My first idea is to create an abstract class `Number`, with abstract methods `Add(Number n1,Number n2)`, `Multiply(Number n1,Number n2)`, `Subtract(Number n1,Number n2)`, `Divide(Number n1,Number n2)` (and so on). I would then call these methods in the operator overloads. I can then create concrete classes such as `IntNumber`, `DoubleNumber`, `MatrixNumber`, `ComplexNumber` (and so on). The problem is that in the methods implementation, I would have to make an awful `switch` to determine what the class of each parameter is, and it's not very elegant. Would you have done it the same way? Has something already be done? In F# I would use and inline functions, or pattern matching using discriminated unions. But what should I do in C#? **EDIT** : There was an awesome answer by Olivier Jacot-Descombes. However, I would like to specify a feature. The numbers can apply the operator between them (you can multiply a matrix with a scalar for example). The problem with this is that you cannot know in advance the type of the result; multiplying a vector (transposed) and a vector returns a double..."}
{"_id": "171646", "title": "good c++ editor", "text": "I'm going to teach teenagers some C++ code. I need an editor which is simple and has built in compiler. We tried CodeBlocks but when we installed it in the machines, the text got reversed, I'm not sure what the reaoson is. I would be great if the file size of the editor will not be large. We need just simple features: **-Text highlight.** **-Compile and run.** **-easy to use** **-Should run on Windows XP.**"}
{"_id": "238481", "title": "Product Owner Role in Scrum", "text": "I am learning about Agile Methodology i.e. Scrum. I have a very basic knowledge of Scrum. Please guide following:   1. What is role of `Product Owner` in daily Scrum, if he/she is part of this meeting?    2. In real world scenario `Product Owner` is the person who is customer. A team member can be nominated as `Proxy` of product owner?    3. Can we say that `Project Manager` who directly interacts with customer is nominated as proxy of `Product Owner`?    4. When we use term `External Stakeholders Engagement`, are we referring to `Product Owner` or else?"}
{"_id": "141847", "title": "How does using a LGPL gem affect my MIT licensed application?", "text": "I am developing an open source ruby application under the MIT license. I am using this license because I don't want to place any restrictions on the users of the application. Also I can actually read and understand this license. I recently started using another ruby gem in my project (require \"somegem\"). This ruby gem is under the LGPL license. Do I have to change anything about my project because I am using this other ruby gem that is licensed with LGPL? My project does not contain the source code for the other gem and it is not shipped with my project. It is simply listed as a dependency so that ruby gems will install it and my project will call into it from my code. Additionally, it would be helpful to know if there are any licenses I need to \"watch out for\" because using them would affect the license of my project. There are some other post about this topic but phrased in different ways. Since I find this license stuff tricky I am hoping to get a answer directed at my situation. Thank you,   Corsen"}
{"_id": "234106", "title": "Designing software functions which are both pausable and restartable", "text": "Consider the following situation: One hardware device, two applications (1 C# application, 1 Firmware). The C# application sends frames to the firmware and the firmware executes scripts.   * C# -> transmit frame[x]    * FW -> receive frame[x]    * FW -> execute script relating to frame[x]    * FW -> before finished, a FW event is triggered forcing moving parts to stop (safety precaution). C# requirement after such events are raised:   * Poll FW for status, if status == stopped, send a resume fame.   * Caveat: the C# logic therefore needs to adjust itself to being \"restarted\". ### So this is the situation I have; but what I'm seeking advice with is how I should design a class which can handle the pausing and restarting of tasks an unlimited number of times. While I can write convoluted methods which are hard to maintain through a chain of logical statements, I'm struggling with finding a design which is reusable and clean. Such scenarios are true for ~50 unique tasks, so finding a solution I can apply everytime would save a lot of headache. Anytime a script is restarted or resumed, a physical user can easily cause a safety trigger stop, therefore a solution needs to be robust. While I'm sure recursion would be a first good step, I'm worried that the stack limits has the potential to introduce errors. ### Clarification: In my bid to simplify things, I seem to have omitted too much. Apologies. **Firmware:** Software running on a physical device which controls the hardware. I have no control over this code-base and it was designed independently while allowing USB communication. **Synchronization:** There is very little or no synchronization between the C# application and the firmware. My C# code will send a frame of bytes which match up to a specification document for the firmware, and if the frame is valid, the firmware will reply saying it received the frame and will begin the work. After that, there is no direct synchronization. A task described by a frame typically has two attributes: the time it takes to execute (need to manually observe) and an end target status (complete with status identifiers). Currently I poll the firmware for the status until the target status is reached or until time-out. **Recursion:** What I meant by that was (`if not complete` -> `callSelfAgain()`) **Pause:** User has done something to the device, wait here until they fix (can happen at ANY time during the time the firmware is running its jobs). **Restart:** The user has amended the state, now start the job from the beginning (or where we left off [task dependent])."}
{"_id": "170515", "title": "Getting my younger brother started on programming", "text": "My younger brother is 13 years old, I started programming when I started to develop Android applications when I was 15, last year my brother gained an interest in it and he would always pestering me about letting him make something himself, so I wrote him a few tutorials and he built himself a small application that had a few buttons that did something, I think you put in your dob and it would tell you what day you were born on, he took a couple of days building up to his final application, maybe even a week, learning everything he needed. Since then he hasn't really done much more because I have been engulfed in work and such where I have my own programming problems to sort out. I told him that when he was my age (I am 17) that he should be better then me, he was a bit sceptical about this however. I dont think he has as much logical reasoning as I would think he needs to solve more complex problems, but shouldnt that just develop over time as it did with me? He has been pestering me for the past week or something to write him more tutorials, but I didn't have time. All I had with me was a playlist I had downloaded from `the new boston` from youtube for C++, it's about 73 videos. He is currently about 20-30 videos in, he has come to ask me a few questions about it and thats it. Should I have really properly started him with C++? Should I stop him now and start him again on python or ruby? I know that C++ shouldn't really be a beginners language, especially for someone who is only 13, by the time this question is answered will probably be up to learning about inheritance or something. * * * Some people may see this as not a real question, but it is, and should be used as a reference for others. I want to know, should I start him on a different language whch is more easy? What language then? And would it be better for me to teach him myself (I would make time) or just continue him with `the new boston`? There are a few more questions throughout this question but these are the main ones. * * * Part of the question people seem to be neglecting is me asking whether I should change what language he is learning to another, or since he is already pretty far through the tutorials should I just leave him with C++ and he can learn the other languages freely by himself?"}
{"_id": "19465", "title": "How can you have normal life when you're too passionate?", "text": "Let me put this straight. I am quite passionate about programming. I am single and have plenty of time outside work. I haven't slept for 5 full hours for at least a month, as I am involved in multiple projects at work (most of them volunteered) and some open-source projects as well. I know that I am not a gifted programmer and work at a slower phase, but I always get a high (like what runners get) when I see my code working and being used by people. This high is driving me work crazy of late, as other aspect of my life like dating, meeting up with friends, workout takes backseat. Apart from a great reputation I enjoy at my work place, there is nothing to show substantial :-( I can barely sleep, as my mind keeps bouncing ideas even when sleeping. Also, I crave for people's attention at work these days to make up for my personal life and this makes me take up other's work as well. Everyday I start telling myself to work for fixed hours and focus on other beautiful aspects of life, but indeed fail miserably. I know all this sounds like a big rambling, but Iam sure there are people in this forum who would've went through a similar phase in life. How did you overcome it? I don't want to be nerd with no friends. I have been working for 6 years after school and 27 years old male. How to maintain normal life when your work and passion has become your obsession and addiction? **Update:**   Thanks for all the wonderful answers posted. It really helped me to put things in perspective. I definitely feel better now and signed up for gym few days back. Also I leave my work laptop at office, to avoid working late at nights:-) Anyway I started sleeping for 8 hrs and it feels good. Working out regularly feels great :-)"}
{"_id": "170519", "title": "How can I improve the workflow between developer and designer with Expression Blend?", "text": "We use WPF and Expression Blend 4. I'm trying to improve our workflow by tutoring one of our designers to use it for styling and animation. Slowly but surely I get the impression Blend in itself is to technical for the designer in question. I myself use it only occasionally (it's great for Visual States for instance) because a lot of things are easier done in code or not possible at all in Blend alone. It seems a developer with design experience is a lot more productive with it than a sole designer. Are there any good resources or advice as to how I can improve this workflow?"}
{"_id": "245069", "title": "Do dependency injection frameworks pose a dependency risk?", "text": "I have been refactoring an existing system to use dependency injection, and that work has been going smoothly. After a while I noticed that a large number of in-house libraries became dependent upon the DI framework I used. As a result the entire project now depends upon this third-party framework. I saw an irony in decoupling all the dependencies by making them dependent upon a shared library. My first reaction was to create a wrapper library around the dependency framework. Therefore, I could replace this framework if needed. After estimating the work involved I realized that the resulting API would be to similar to the existing framework, and therefore make replacing it more difficult. So I abandoned the idea. My concern is that the DI framework I'm using becomes obsolete or needs replacing. Does there exist a development pattern when working with DI that reduces the coupling between a project and the DI framework?"}
{"_id": "229903", "title": "OOP and database applications, Is it worth it? and when do i need it?", "text": "I have been coding small to medium size applications for several years now, mostly business applications or database-driven applications, In each new project i feel tempted to start with the database design and then write the code that sends/retrieves data to/from the database, MVC frameworks are really helpful to organize my code for web applications. But that's it for me. I could argue that any application is more or less the same, stores and retrieves data. And i think having a good database design makes the job a lot easier, **So what else do i need? And why? Any examples?** **I am trying to improve my skills and knowledge to be able to handle bigger projects** , I find OOP, OOAD and software design/architecture really interesting, but i don't know why on earth i would need them in data-driven applications (i know it's me!), I find a lot of articles talk about design patterens, business objects, serive layers, architecture and more, but when i think of any new application, it's always the same, I have a good database design and then i am ready to go, if the client needs more feature, i modify the database strucutre or add new tables/views , add new screens/web pages then i am done. **What is wrong with that approach?** For instance, there was a directory web application i was asked to do, i thought of designing the objects first then converting them into a database structure using ORM, but i found it time consuming, i wondered why i had to design both the objects and the data, and i went for my old approach to save time and effort. I know it's me, I know I am mistaken, but i think having more layers or tiers between the GUI and database is an extra effort and extra time, **so when does it matter? When is it worth it?** so i am asking: **What is the use of OOP in developing business/database applications? Any example would be appreciated** In other words **When do i have to separately design both the objects and the database schema? and what are the benifits? Any example??** thanks"}
{"_id": "231165", "title": "in multi-tenant systems what is the correct practice for segregating each tenants data from each other?", "text": "I am a first-time azure developer and I am taking over a single-tenant cloud system and have been tasked with converting the system to multi-tenant. What is the correct practice to separate each tenant's sql server data? Its a data collection & reporting system. Each tenant will want to build and run their own custom reports on the data. So in multi-tenant, how are tenants prevented from seeing each others data?"}
{"_id": "245068", "title": "The inheritance argument of zope.interface (providedby vs isinstance)", "text": "What limitations does inheritance of an interface through an abstract base class present that are addressed by zope.interface? In the following talk given in 2010 by Jeff Rush about interfaces, at 11:50 Jeff argues that with providedby you are free of the inheritance hierarchy. Why is this important? If I wanted to use an interface and inherit behavior from another base class, Python grants me the opportunity to do so with multiple inheritance. I understand that multiple inheritance should be avoided, and a compositional design to be considered as an alternative, but in this case I'm not inheriting behavior from the abc but rather just an interface, so I'm not really multiple inheriting in the behavioral sense. I don't understand the inheritance argument.. Thanks in advance for sharing your insight."}
{"_id": "127966", "title": "How does someone with a business degree become a software consultant?", "text": "I'm a 4th year computer engineering student from a reputable university in Toronto and i'm curious as to how some of these software consulting positions with the large firms (Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, etc.) accept business grads as well as comp-sci and computer engineers? How does a business grad consult on software without having a background in software? Besides communication skills and other soft skills, what separates me from a business grad for these positions? Thanks."}
{"_id": "200925", "title": "Dollar Sign Blues: Javascript and PHP", "text": "I grew up programming C++ and Java where everything was safe and beautiful. Compilers made sure to keep me in check if I ever strayed. Of course, everyone did a little Perl in college, but I didn't inhale. Kids these days are all about PHP on the backend and Javascript on the front. In trying to be hip, I do the same (for web development). The problem I keep running into is I accidentally add a dollar sign ($) in front of regular variables in Javascript and of course no one says anything because that's legal syntax often used for jQuery objects. Are there any debugging tools or dev tricks to catch this dollar sign confusion? Do you often make the same mistake, and how do you deal with it emotionally? Chrome dev tools don't always see this is a Javascript error. I use PhpStorm and Emacs for development, but those don't catch my stupidity, although I suspect Emacs does but chooses to not tell me about it out of spite. If you think this question is ridiculous, I think you are right. But we live in a world where a variable has a dollar sign in front of it. In such a world, nothing is ridiculous."}
{"_id": "184360", "title": "Can I apply SOLID concepts to entire solution designs rather than just the internal components?", "text": "So maybe the quick answer is 'Yes' absolutely (or no I suppose), but let me explain my question angle to get a better derived answer. We all commonly use SOLID design principals when making up the pieces and parts of our applications. Don't make a _class_ do too many things, don't make an _Interface_ too large, use abstraction not concretions, etc. Is it OK to apply this mentality at an abstract level when thinking about solutions, services, etc.? The main problem: I'm struggling with the request to have a single service do all things related to a specific business domain. Add to this multiple teams would all have their hands in the pot of the same application to add whatever functionality needed. I have a service being built out with many good architecture and design principals in mind and believe totally that lots of 'additional' functionality could be bolted on vertically within the same framework and solution. After all this one of the reasons why we spend time architecting solutions to be loosely coupled and allow scalability with rather ease. So you might say, \"go for it, if the framework can handle it then add away!\" Something is not sitting right with me and I would be concerned with a behemoth of an application/service that tries to do everything. I tried doing searches about \"applications that do too much\" or \"services that have too many responsibilities\" but not much came up. When I start thinking about the SOLID principals, I think having a service that does _everything_ related to a specific business domain might not be a good idea and may cause issues on down the road with maintainability and stepping on each other's toes. Is it correct to use SOLID principals when looking at entire solution functionality? Is creating a service like http://www.mycompany.com/api/[everyMethodPossible] correct, or could I be doing something that is incorrect? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "73974", "title": "Public domain contributions to open source projects", "text": "Are there any gotchas in contributing public domain code to an open source project? My understanding is that the existence of a copyright gives a project the right to enforce its license. And public domain code is, by definition, non-copyrighted. What I'm specifically curious about: If an employee of the US government writes source code while on official duty and the federal agency releases it, that code is by law in the public domain. So, in particular, I'm wondering if there would be any issues if a federal agency/employee wants to contribute to an open source project."}
{"_id": "184364", "title": "Java memory management (thunks/lazyness)", "text": "If I want to create an infinite list of integers in Java like so:               ArrayList<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();     for(int i = 0;;i++){         list.add(i);     }      I run out of memory. My understanding is that we allocate some memory for _i_ , _list_ , and every time we add _i_ to the list, we allocate more memory for it. But, by using a thunk, I can create an infinite list which will not eat all of my memory:               infList(final int start){         return new InfiniteList (          start,          return new InfiniteList.LazyTail(){eval(){return infList(start+1);}}         );     }      (I adapted source from here). How does this work? I know I am delaying the evaluation of the expressions : start+1, start+1, start+1 ... but do I end up with a list of something like this: [start, eval(){start+1}, eval(){start+1}, eval(){start+1} ... ] Are the 'eval(){...}' object references? Do they take up space in memory? Will I eventually run out of memory with this implementation (I tried, but memory allocation was not budging)? Do I only start using memory, say, if I wanted to system.out.print integers, then they would have to be evaluated, and some memory allocated?"}
{"_id": "184365", "title": "Detecting IEnumerable \"State Machines\"", "text": "I just read an interesting article called Getting too cute with c# yield return It made me wonder what the best way is to detect whether an IEnumerable is an actual enumerable collection, or if it's a state machine generated with the yield keyword. For example, you could modify DoubleXValue (from the article) to something like:               private void DoubleXValue(IEnumerable<Point> points)     {         if(points is List<Point>)           foreach (var point in points)             point.X *= 2;         else throw YouCantDoThatException();     }      Question 1) Is there a better way to do this? Question 2) Is this something I should worry about when creating an API?"}
{"_id": "39079", "title": "iOS Development: What are some reasons I should to use XAuth to authenticate a twitter user?", "text": "I see many people using XAuth in their app to authenticate twitter users and I'm wondering what are some situations that I would want to use XAuth in my own apps. Thanks so much for your wisdom!"}
{"_id": "244670", "title": "Array of pointers in C++.", "text": "I am not understanding the output of this ,               #include <iostream>     using namespace std;           // pointers and arrays      char ch1 = 'a' ,  ch2= 'b';          char ch3[6] = {'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g' , 'h'};          char *ptr[3];           int main ()     {         ptr[0] = &ch1 ;              ptr[2] = ch3;         cout << &ch1 << endl;     }         The out put is abcdefgh . isn't &ch1 supposed to give the address of ch1 ? I cannot make sense why the output should be abcdefgh."}
{"_id": "180477", "title": "The Jitter (the just-in-time compiler) in ASP.NET", "text": "I know that C# gets compiled to an IL then after that to a machine code depending on the machine using just-in-time compiler. My question will go to ASP.NET. Is it the same? Does it require 3 steps? First your files is converted or compiled to MSIL then when you open a page for example in the browser it is coverted to machine code using the jitter?"}
{"_id": "224536", "title": "How to handle returns when incorporating coupons or discounts in Point of Sale?", "text": "What is the proper way to handle determining the amount to return to a customer when dealing with coupons and discounts applied to receipts? **[Scenario A]** A receipt contains items each with their own price. A returned item would give back the amount spent for that item.               ItemA $25     ItemB $75     =====     Total: $100          a) Return ItemA: $25     b) Return ItemB: $75     c) Return ItemA, ItemB: $100      **[Scenario B]** What is the proper way to handle calculating the amount to return per item when we include a global discount or coupon applied to the entire receipt?               $10 global coupon for every $100 spent          ItemA $25     ItemB $75     ItemC $120     ItemD $15     =====     Subtotal: $220     Coupons: $20     Total: $200          Return ItemA: $?     Return ItemB: $?     Return ItemC: $?     Return ItemB, ItemC, ItemD: $?      **[Scenario C]** Coupons tied directly to items on receipts make it easy to calculate the amount to return per item like in Scenario A.               $10 coupon for ItemB only          ItemA $25     ItemB $75     --Coupon: $10     ItemC $120     ItemD $15     =====     Subtotal: $220     Coupons: $10     Total: $210          Return ItemA: $25     Return ItemB: $75 - $10 = $65     Return ItemC: $120     Return ItemB, ItemC, ItemD: ($75 - $10 = $65) + $120 + $15 = $200      **Things to think about:**   * Multiple returns per receipt (e.g. Monday return ItemA, Tuesday return ItemB)   * Global discounts - applied to entire receipt   * Item discounts - applied only to specific items   * Coupons that give discount for minimum amount spent - what if a returning part of a receipt negates the minimum requirements?"}
{"_id": "27400", "title": "Is it wise for a high level developer to spend time studying assembly?", "text": "It is clear that the knowledge of low level stuff is very important in our work. But in a situation where you're already developing commercial software on a high level, _and_ when you already have a chosen direction but don't have any assembly skill, isn't it more reasonable to focus on studying stuff related to your direction? Or is there a reason you should spend some time to learn the low-level basics anyway? When is it too late, and when it is not? And if it is _not_ too late, then how would one go about learning optimally (in the sense of not spending excessive time to get some depth and understanding)?"}
{"_id": "240318", "title": "How to handle errors best addressed in a higher abstraction layer and dependent on state inferred in current layer?", "text": "I have a use-case that can be repaired, but the logic for repairing it is best done in a higher level of abstraction. Just throwing exception/failure is ugly because it's hard to pass back up through the stack the information needed for the parent-layer to know how to fix it. To explain the the specifics, I have a program that controls multiple pieces of hardware. The 'top' layer is responsible for calculating how to task each piece of hardware to work together, how to generate 'paths' of data across hardware etc. My next layer includes threads for each individual device. each device thread generates and caches device state (fetched from hardware and config files). Devices process requests from the application, figure out how to update the hardware to make those requests happen, and then will modify the cached state to reflect the changes made. Finally I have plugins which send physical requests to hardware. This works fine usually, requests are sequential to avoid data race issues. We only pass information down layers, we have no way of getting async updates back up the layer. However, it's very unlikely, but possible, that someone could physically change the hardware without going through our control system. We will wait until the plugin detects an error trying to handle a request, and only then try updating our state for that piece of hardware to see if a change caused the failure (constant monitoring is a later feature). My problem is that when a change is detected on one device, that usually means a change was made to connected devices. When I detect this, I want to trace the change to connected device, update their state etc until I found all changes (this doesn't require updating _all_ devices, just connected ones). Each device thread is only responsible for one device, so they can't trace the change through other devices without propagating the exception up a layer. However, I need to know exactly what changes were detected on the device to know which connected devices I should be refreshing the state of. If I just throw an exception, this knowledge is lost and must be recalculated, which is a small but real cost due to time it takes to communicate with hardware. The tempting thing to do is to call a method in my application layer saying \"this change was detected, go update everything else related to it\". However, this makes drivers aware of the layer above them, which is not good. Another option is to simply propagate the error up and let my application layer notice the error and then go back to the same device to ask what changed and update all it's state, then re-calculate the changes to be made and make the request back down to the device level. The first is an obvious code smell, the second seems like more code, redundant logic, and small speed penalties (it takes a little time to get state from hardware). Are there some other options?"}
{"_id": "294", "title": "How can I find a good open source project to join?", "text": "I just started working a year ago, and I want to join an open source project for the same reasons as anyone else: help create something useful and develop my skills further. My problem is, I don't know how to find a project where I'll fit in. How can I find a beginner-friendly project? What attributes should I be searching for? What are warning signs that a project might _not_ be the right fit? Are there any tools out there to help match people with open source projects? There's a similar question here, but that question has to do with employment and is limited to PHP/Drupal."}
{"_id": "64958", "title": "How to find just starting OpenSource project and Join or find programmers for own?", "text": "Is there any place on the web where can I join a team when they are just starting their project? Is there any place where developers can make groups for projects? I know there are some /dev/forums where you can have luck to find something interesting in some topic ... but the chances there are really low. I know that you can find some projects on CodePlex or GitHub but they will be already started projects and it's not so easy to understand and join it ... I want to find some place where new ideas comes to new teams. So ... maybe starting project must already have a good base, but not to big base and then project leader must Promote it and find developers who like the idea ? Sometimes that is really hard to catch such promotions."}
{"_id": "113175", "title": "How does an (experienced) beginner jump into open source?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I find a good open source project to join? I've heard allot about open source software and would love to help the community and gain experience in software development. The problem is, I'm kind of a beginner. I have some experience in Obj- C, Java, and Ruby. How can I be useful, and how can I, say, fix bugs ? Could you recommend some simple software that I could look at and learn from, then try to help?"}
{"_id": "134697", "title": "How should a student go about extra-curricular activities involving programming?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I find a good open source project to join? I'm currently a student in high school, and my passion is in programming and computer science. I love it, and I think I'm fairly good at it (at least compared to the average person of my age). I've taken a number of AP courses, especially in mathematics, and I also have taken AP Computer Science; though I've been reading books on computer science and programming since a fairly young age. I was wondering what an appropriate way would be to go about extra-curricular activities involving programming (or computer science). I'm looking to go to a decent college, and I know many of them look for people who pursue their interests, and I want to find a way to show that I really am pursuing my interests. I've heard that open source projects are a good way, but how can I prove that I actually contribute to a project? And how would I go about finding an appropriate project to join that will allow me to join? Are there any alternatives to open-source projects?"}
{"_id": "150853", "title": "Open Source Projects for Beginning Coders?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I find a good open source project to join? After working as a molecular biologist at the bench for many years, I lost my job last year and am thinking about a career change. I've been using open- source software and doing Linux system administration since the mid 90s, and have written/improved some small shell/Perl/PHP scripts, and am very comfortable building from source, but never progressed to creating non-trivial programs _de novo_. I want to move to actually learning real programming skills and contributing back to the community, with the possible eventual goal of getting into bioinformatics as a career in the future. I'm a stay-at-home dad now, so I have some time on my hands. I've done a lot of research on languages, and have settled on Python as my major focus for now. I'm set up on GitHub, but haven't forked anything yet. I've looked around OpenHatch some, but nothing really grabbed me. I've heard the advice to work on what you use/love, but that category is so broad that I'm having trouble finding any one thing to get started on. What are your suggestions for getting started? How do you pick a project that will welcome your (possibly amateurish) help? With a fairly limited skill set, how do you find a request that you can handle? What are common newbie mistakes to avoid? Any other advice?"}
{"_id": "81133", "title": "Examining source code for maliciousness and security vulnerabilities", "text": "What are some techniques in determining if a particular piece of source code is malicious or vulnerable to malicious attack? I am currently using cppcheck and I am waiting on an install of Rational AppSource. Aside from that and reviewing the US-CERT Secure Coding Guidelines, what else should I be looking at? This is for a very large codebase (150K SLOC)."}
{"_id": "81875", "title": "PHP to Java career change", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Going from PHP to Java I have been working at my current job for about 4 years. I have been doing PHP for twice as long. I am completely self taught (with lots of internet and friends help). I recently found a job posting for a Java developer and I am wondering what I need to know about Java to prepare. I took 2 college course on Java so I am looking a little beyond Hello World stuff (actually just installed Eclipsed and wrote it again). I hear they also do Flex so anything on how Java and Flex work together would be great as well. My first step is going to be to remake a project I built in PHP using Java. This is similar but the answers aren't very specific. Going from PHP to Java Thank you and I apologizes if this should be community wiki."}
{"_id": "159317", "title": "What should one consider in choosing a language for web application development?", "text": "To begin with, this isn't a question about which language one should choose :) We're considering a language switch as our general direction is changing from content-driven web sites to data/action-driven web applications. What sort of factors should one think about in order to successfully evaluate the various languages out there. A few factors I've thought of so far, along with a supposed importance level:   * Level of knowledge of language X within the company [medium/high]   * Tooling available [medium]   * Community size & activity [medium]   * Availability of developers [medium]   * Cost of developers [medium] Frameworks are also an important consideration, however I'm just trying to focus on the language-selection question first :)"}
{"_id": "69247", "title": "Standardization across an organization: Good or Bad?", "text": "Currently I work for an java shop that places a high value on standardization. This includes common things(styles, javadocs, formatting, etc.) on to what I consider slightly more draconian measures(IDE, development OS, toolsets, etc. ). It is common to hear phrases from more old hands like \"it helps when we are all working with the same tools/looking at familiar code\". Sometimes I agree and sometimes I feel like there may be a better way. Also sometimes I encounter older organizational standardization practices that are in direct conflict with more state of the art community practices(most notably accursed bad exception handling practices). I also encounter cases where folks would prefer that code be written in a manner that looks and feels like what has been written there for years (sometimes decades)rather than code that takes advantage of the industry lessons that have been learned in the interim. I understand there are cost and schedule benefits to be realized through standardization. So the question is how can technology managers realize them without stifling innovation and/or turning off developers onboarding from college or other jobs with affinities for toolsets and techniques that are not the \"standard\"?"}
{"_id": "81135", "title": "Is there such a thing as a .NET developer curriculum?", "text": "One of the constructs I miss from academia is a curriculum for what must be covered in order to get a degree in computer science. I started with a .NET shop almost three years ago without having any .NET training. Given my experience with the field and trying to stay up on things via conferences, blogs, podcasts, etc., I feel I'm drowning in a sea of infinite depth. Having some structure works really well for me, so I thought the closest thing would be certification. It appears the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD) would be the closest fit; however, others have said the Microsoft certs aren't really geared for the \"get a book, study, pass the test\" model -- you need to have actual experience. What if my experience is flawed or doesn't exercise techniques that others consider important? The other attractive part of certification is that it is standardized, meaning that both myself and employers know that I have demonstrated knowledge over certain topics. I do C#/WPF development for my job and would love to get my hands on a list of things every .NET/C#/WPF developer should know. Yeah, I get the most common stuff like object-oriented design, events, syntax, etc. But the language (and the framework) has many subtleties -- extension methods, lambda expressions, delegates/events, data binding, threading, operator overloading, weak vs. strong events. Microsoft doesn't seem to offer a language-specific or framework-specific exam, so I'm left to books/blogs/wikis to fill in the gaps. I'm committed to improving my craft through learning and experience. How do you as developers handle this situation? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "154149", "title": "Who should be the architect in an agile project?", "text": "We are developing the agile way for a few months now and I have some troubles understanding the agile manifesto as interpreted by my colleagues. The project we are developing is a framework for future projects and will be reused many times in the next years. Code is only written to fulfill the needs of the current user story. The product owner tells us what to do, but not how to do it. What would be right, in my opinion, because he is not implicitly a programmer. The project advanced and in my eyes it messed up a little bit. After I recognized an assembly that was responsible for 3 concerns (IoC-Container, communication layer and project internal things), I tried to address this to my colleagues. They answered that this would be the result of applying YAGNI, because know one told them to respect that functionalities have to be split up in different assemblies for further use. In my opinion no one has to tell us that we should respect the Separation of Concerns principle. On the other side, they mentioned to prefer YAGNI over SoC because it is less effort to implement and therefore faster and cheaper. We had changing requirements a lot at the beginning of the project and ended up in endless refactoring sessions, because to much has to be adapted. Is it better to make such rather simple design decisions up front, even there is no need in the current situation, or do we have to change a lot in the later progress of the project?"}
{"_id": "100094", "title": "Where to put common shared methods", "text": "I have a bunch of methods that are commonly used everywhere. Right now the codefile is named globals, to represent the fact that they are... in fact... global. However, I do not like this. I want to group these into a class and pass an interface around. I'll make only one instance, but I'm not falling into the singleton trap here. First of all, what should I name the class. I want to avoid the globals name because I'm afraid maintainers would get the wrong idea. Also, how should I consider splitting up such a set of methods so that behavior can change and adapt? The set of methods contains stuff like:   * Conversion tables   * Clipboard interaction   * Managing built fonts   * Common drawing methods   * Providing an interface with access to often used resources"}
{"_id": "154733", "title": "My boss decided to add a \"person to blame\" field to every bug report. How can I convince him that it's a bad idea?", "text": "In one of the latest \"WTF\" moves, my boss decided that adding a \"Person To Blame\" field to our bug tracking template will increase accountability (although we already have a way of tying bugs to features/stories). My arguments that this will decrease morale, increase finger-pointing and would not account for missing/misunderstood features reported as bug have gone unheard. What are some other strong arguments against this practice that I can use? Is there any writing on this topic that I can share with the team and the boss? I find this sort of culture unacceptable to work in but want to try and change it before jumping ship. Any input is appreciated."}
{"_id": "221498", "title": "Is is reasonable to be asked to record defect culpability?", "text": "I fear this question is going to send shivers down the spine, and/or instinctive anathema of the very thought... Basically: **has anyone ever been asked to diagnose and assign individual culpability to defects?** In other words: to be asked to work back through the code, to try and establish who was responsible for the line/function/module that introduced it in some way, and then record that persons name in the ticket so that a report can breakdown defects not only by severity, component, estimate, etc - but also by team member. I\u2019m asking this because - like me - you might want to just try and get inside the mindset of a manager who might propose it, and in so doing, understand why they might think this is extremely useful. Surely, you might ask, this time would be better spent actually fixing the defect?"}
{"_id": "63174", "title": "Bounty points for fixing bugs?", "text": "Ever heard of a company awarding bounty points for bugfixes? Making team members work to do the most, as some bonus money will be dependent on it? Having them split, or pay bounties to others to test, so they don't 'lose' points when it reaches a UAT environment? I heard this from management for the first time today. To me, it sounds like a pretty ridiculous approach to software development. It sounds as if the team members will be competing with each other in a non-productive way, essentially slashing the productivity they've got going now. Any thoughts? Have you ever seen something like this actually work? Did it help or hurt the team? _**UPDATE 4/6/11:_** This approach was cancelled due to feedback from the whole team! I'm happy to learn that it wasn't just me thinking it wasn't a great idea."}
{"_id": "242811", "title": "Is it good practice to analyse who introduced each bug?", "text": "I used to analyse performance of programmers in my team by looking at the issues they have closed. Many of the issues are of course bugs. And here another important performance aspect comes - who introduced the bugs. I am wondering, if creating a custom field in the issue tracking system \"Blamed\" for reporting the person who generated the problem, is a good practice. One one hand it seems ok to me to promote personal responsibility for quality and this could reduce the additional work we have due to careless programming. On the other hand this is negative, things are sometimes vague and sometimes there is a reason such us \"this thing had to be done very quickly due to a client's...\". What to you think?"}
{"_id": "213963", "title": "Assigning Blame for Bugs versus Giving Rewards for Fixes", "text": "In a team that I used to work for, there was a policy that if you introduced a memory or other resource leak, you got a 'dummy of shame' hung on your door until you found the next resource leak. While it was effective at finding resource leaks, I felt like it placed more emphasis on blaming others rather than working together to solve problems as a team. Am I being unreasonable in thinking that this policy contributed to a lower sense of team cohesion? Am I also being unreasonable in thinking that we should have rewarded those people who found and fixed the issue?"}
{"_id": "237731", "title": "Multiple long polling requests: bad idea?", "text": "I am designing a web server that handles multiple things such as a user-to- user chat, a user-to-group chat, friends request, forum etc. The chats have to be real-time chats, the friends requests should be notified in real-time to the user, and the users should be instantly notified about the new topics on the forum. I use Spring and I implemented long polling to lower the latency and the number of requests. In theory long polling works well for one thing (a chat for example). The problem here is that the client has to be notified for multiple reasons: new message on chat, new message on forum, new friend request etc. The naive solution would be to use long polling requests for each action, but it leads to having all the clients opening four or five requests at the same time. Can the server easily handle this or should I manage to create a system so that every notification is returned through only one request? Is there another solution?"}
{"_id": "201037", "title": "Special feautures of each of these languages that make them special", "text": "I interested about C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby and Perl. All this languages are very popular and I believe that each one have something that make people to choose them. What is that special thing that each of this language have that makes people to choose them? I want the answer to be in this form e.g: C# have _this_ and _this_. C# is the best option if you want to do _this_. Note: I don't asking which language is the best, i just want to know the power of each of these languages."}
{"_id": "219837", "title": "How to choose a code style for C++", "text": "When starting to learn one new language, we have to choose perfect code style such as types or file name's first letter should be uppercase or lowercase, etc. But when I started to learn C++, I did not find any official common code style as I did for Java. A popular one is Google's, yet someone told me, we should keep the style of our company. But I think that no one will work in one company for a whole life, so it could be better for him to choose a popular common code style if some company's code style is ugly. How should I choose a code style for C++? Is there any official, common, popular code style that is generally used? Can I write C++ code with the style I use for Java? I think Java's code style is perfect."}
{"_id": "228723", "title": "Do I continue developing an alternative existing solution, or am I wasting of time?", "text": "Almost 2 years ago I had need for a monitoring system, that monitored servers ping times, databases and various other metrics, but also things things like my email inboxes (for unread email), my game servers, webservers, and lots various other stuff. Nagios was the only system I'd used seriously, I liked it's architecture a lot (add a check with a python, bash, ruby, perl script, etc), but hated many things like the interface, the lack of decent remote check support and one of the biggest things was having to restart the service after any configuration change. I Googled around a _bit_ for other solutions, but as a developer, I didn't spend enough time Googling and found it easy to open up my IDE and start writing code for a new solution. After a few hours I had something I thought was promising, had something functional in a few days and after a week or two I released The Upsilon Project (http://upsilon-project.co.uk). I've invested a few evenings and weekends over the last 2 years, but I've got a system that is totally perfect for me. It turned out better than I could have ever expected and I'm mostly happy with the technical functionality (respectable web interface, online configuration reloads, far better scheduler). Now the next stage is pretty simple, it has been open source since the beginning (naturally), so I posted it around a few sites, once including reddit, and got some interesting feedback.   * \"Yet another monitoring _solution_ \"   * \"Ugh, it's Java and XML\"   * $X already does that (in particular, Sensu - http://sensuapp.org/ is eerily similar in architecture and objective) So, I guess the last point is what bugged me the most, but it should not have come as a surprise, I didn't do my research I suppose because writing code is more fun! Now, I'm suppposed to be asking a question, so here it comes; The Upsilon Project _hasn't_ been a waste of time for me, because of this;   * I've learnt a _lot_ , mostly about the process of open sourcing a project (news, how difficult it can be to get interest, a community)   * Stable, effective build pipelines are _ seriously hard_.    * Effective, comprehensive documentation _sucks_ to write.    * Negative feedback really hurts, but it seems a good motivator to improve.    * I've got a perfect system that works for me.  But it now _could_ be a waste of time if I invest more into it;   * Nobody is using my project, and many other solutions (Sensu in particular) are further along and have a community.    * Any features now are surplus to my personal immediate requirements.   * My contributions into other projects could help more, rather than further developing another tool.  My question to you is, **do I continue with the Upsilon Project?**"}
{"_id": "219839", "title": "Best practices for using HTTP sessions(Java)", "text": "My Question is not about how to use HTTP session or how values are being used in session. Question is more oriented about approach. In my current application there are few values being stored in the Session and we require those values every now and than, here are few values we fetching from session   1. Store   2. Language   3. Customer   4. few others I can fetch these values from session like               request.getSession().getAttribute( \"name\" )      I need those values not directly in my Controller, but in other layer (say Facade) so I have 2 options   1. Pass each required values to Facade method by `request.getSession().getAttribute( \"name\" )`.   2. Create a method in each Facade Class like. Method in Facade                private Object getSessionValue(final String key) {         ServletRequestAttributes reqAttr = (ServletRequestAttributes) RequestContextHolder                                 .currentRequestAttributes();                 return reqAttr.getRequest().getAttribute(key);     }      Though both are working find in my case, but with one exception, I need to have this method on each Facade Class or need to fetch each object in Controller. Is there any other way or approach which might be more clean or my current approach is fine"}
{"_id": "224443", "title": "What is an example of a computationally impossible business problem?", "text": "I have coworker who refuses to accept the reality that Turing machines (and Von Neuman machines by extension) cannot solve their own halting problem stating: > You can do anything with enough time and money. He also dislikes theoretical problems arguing that: > In our field, we'll never run into those questions. We're application > developers, not theoretical scientists. Is there a good example of a business problem that is computationally impossible that I could use to help convince him of this?"}
{"_id": "60996", "title": "Question regarding LinkedList in Java", "text": "When I was reading a book for SCJP, I came across the following paragraph. > A LinkedList is ordered by index position, like ArrayList, except that the > elements are doubly-linked to one another. This linkage gives you new > methods (beyond what you get from the List interface) for adding and > removing from the beginning or end, which makes it an easy choice for > implementing a stack or queue. Keep in mind that a LinkedList may iterate > more slowly than an ArrayList, but it's a good choice when you need fast > insertion and deletion.. What makes a LinkedList to iterate more slowly than an ArrayList ?"}
{"_id": "235129", "title": "Does a web application framework require an application level plugin system?", "text": "Does using a web application framework, Spring, CakePHP, Django, etc., mean I do not need a plugin system for my main application, as in I don't have to build, essentially, a framework on framework? Does the framework serve as the entry points for my application, so I can use things like Dependency Injection for better testing? Does a framework provide the environment for me to do this for what I need in my application, or does the application need to build a additional plugin system? EDIT: Is this better for Stackoverflow?"}
{"_id": "209967", "title": "What are the alternatives to resx file", "text": "I am developing a Windows application and I want to store all the text for labels, radio buttons, buttons, check boxes and column headers of grids at one place. I have tried using a class file, an xml file, a database table and a resource file. I found that a class file is the best way to store all these texts, but I want to know is there any alternative way? If I am using a class file then I will have to recompile the project if any text changes. Will a resource file work properly for large amounts data? What about a dictionary or storing data in variables?"}
{"_id": "146312", "title": "Querying types in a co- or contravariant way", "text": "I posted a c# feature request here; however, I do not get a lot of attention there. Therefore I am asking you here, what you think of it. * * * The `in` and `out` keywords in generic type declarations are useful; however, due to their nature, their application is limited to a small number of types. What I am suggesting here, is to be able to use them in declarations of variables, fields, parameters and possibly properties in order to restrict the set of possible operations on any generic type in a dynamic and temporary way. This would considerably increase the cases where co- and contravariance could be used. Examples               // A List of a more derived type can be passed     public void ReadList(IList<out MyType> list)     {         MyType item = list[0];  // OK         list[0] = new MyType(); // DISALLOWED because of \"out\" keyword!         list.Add(new MyType()); // DISALLOWED because of \"out\" keyword!     }          // A List of a less derived type can be passed     public void WriteList(List<in MyType> list)     {         MyType item = list[0];  // DISALLOWED because of \"in\" keyword!         list[0] = new MyType(); // OK         list.Add(new MyType()); // OK     }      \\-- **UPDATE** Taken these declarations               class LessDerived { }          class MyType : LessDerived { }          class MoreDerived : MyType { }      You could use the methods shown above like this               var listOfLessDerived = new List<LessDerived>();     var listOfMyType = new List<MyType >();     var listOfMoreDerived = new List<MoreDerived>();          ReadList(listOfMyType);     ReadList(listOfMoreDerived);          WriteList(listOfMyType);     WriteList(listOfLessDerived);"}
{"_id": "235475", "title": "How can I approach creating an efficient algorithm for maximizing value with these specific constraints?", "text": "I'm having trouble coming up with an approach that isn't n^2 for this problem. Here's a contrived, simplified version I've come up with: Let's say you're a company that needs 4 employees to launch in a new city, a manager, two salespeople, and a customer support rep, and you magically know how much impact every candidate will have and how much salary they require to take the job. Your table of potential employees looks something like this:               Name           Position       Salary     Impact     Adam Smith     Manager        60,000     11     Allison Brown  Salesperson    40,000     9     Brad Stewart   Manager        55,000     9     ...etc (thousands of records)      What algorithmic approach can be taken to find the maximum \"impact\" while still filling all the positions and remaining under, say, a 200,000 budget? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "230486", "title": "Giving team members more decision-making power led to very long arguments, blocking progress since there is no one with the final say", "text": "Currently we use Scrum with the exception that our Scrum Masters sometimes act as project managers rather than facilitators of the Scrum process. About half of the time team members pull tasks on their own, but half of the time the Scrum Master assigns the tasks to team members. I would like us to fully adopt self-organizing teams. However when we tried giving team members more decision-making power, it led to very long arguments between team members, and since there would be no one with the final say, these arguments would block progress. Do you think there is a way to minimize arguments with self-organizing Scrum teams?"}
{"_id": "235473", "title": "Gathering IP address and workstation information; does it belong in a state class?", "text": "I'm writing an _enterprisey_ utility that collects exception information and writes to the Windows Event Log, sends an email, etc. This utility class will be used by all applications in the corporation: web, BizTalk, Windows Services, etc. Currently this class:   * holds state given to it via public properties   * calls out to .NET Framework methods to gather information about runtime details. Included are call to various properties and methods from `System.Environment`, `Reflection` details, etc. This implementation has the benefit of allowing all those callers not to have to make these same calls themselves. This means less code for the caller to forget, screw up, etc. **Should this state class (please what's the phrase I'm looking for [like DTO]?) know how to resolve/determine runtime details (like the IP address and machine name that it's running on)?** It seems to me on second thought that it's meant to be a class that should hold state, and not know how to call out to the .NET Framework to find information.               var myEx = new AppProblem{MachineName=\"Riker\"};          //Will get \"Riker 10.0.0.1\" from property MachineLongDesc     Console.WriteLine(\"full machine details: \" + myEx.MachineLongDesc);          public class AppProblem     {         public string MachineName{get;set;}         public string MachineLongDesc{             get{                 if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.MachineName)                 {                     this.MachineName = Environment.MachineName;                 }                 return this.MachineName + \" \" + GetCurrentIP();             }         }              private string GetCurrentIP()         {             return System.Net.Dns.GetHostEntry(this.MachineName)                          .AddressList.First().ToString();         }     }      This code was written by hand from memory, and presented for simplicity, trying to illustrate the concept."}
{"_id": "188479", "title": "Testing interaction with large CRM database", "text": "In our company we have two large systems, basically they are scoring and CRM. Both have large SQL Server databases running on Windows servers on the intranet. These two databases are managed by other department, which we have a direct contact with. Neither of those systems have any external APIs except for some stored procedures (hereinafter \"SPs\"), which we use to input all the data from our (web-dev team) two applications, which are a public web site and a web-based CRM. **There are problems** which make this kind of integration a nightmare:   1. There are no proper copies of databases for testing. There are some occasional copies which may or may not be up-to-date and being synced manually, which make them practically useless in \"ASAP-situations\" (all the time).   2. All sorts of modifications in stored procedures code are being made straight on the production databases (!!!), which obviously cause us a lot of problems.   3. Stored procedures code is not documented, poorly commented and mostly not well-written. Just to say that I've spent last two days \"decrypting\" two SPs, one of which is ~2400 SLOC long and has many magic numbers and vars like `@str1`. **To make it easier and safer** :   1. We made kind of \"API-server\", which is basically a SOAP server which does queries to SPs and gives back whatever queries return together with some nice status messages. This helps us decouple our apps from the chaos, but it barely simplifies our task when it comes to writing and tesing new functionality.   2. We store some IDs and other constants from these databases in our databases to prevent using magic numbers in our code whenever possible, but still we have to collect and fill in all the data manually with sqlcmd (which is very uncomfortable because of the Windows `cmd` disability to handle copying, pasting and displaying text). I wish we could have some proper process of testing interaction with those databases, but what we have today is just another copy of CRM database which we have to sync manually somehow. **My questions are** :   1. How can we make all the changes made on production databases automatically propagate into testing copies? I can think of something like `.bat`-script, but maybe there are better tools. I doubt (because of previous experience) we can ask other department to do some replication, so I'm asking for something we can make ourselves and convince that other department to use.   2. How can we easily sync some data without copying all the data? For example, we need to have an up-to-date copy of all dictionaries/taxonomies, but not the data about clients (which is a lot of data and will take significant time to copy). Again, I'm thinking of some script, but may there be something with just a bunch of checkboxes to select.   3. What is the best approach for testing the interactions through our \"API-server\"? I mean, suppose I made a request via SOAP with some fake data and no errors occured - how can I be sure the data is there in that external DB and it is consistent? It is sort of black/grey box testing and I don't know how to deal with it."}
{"_id": "17438", "title": "Google review microformats, microdata, RDFa, oh my!", "text": "I'm developing a website which includes a section for reviews. I want to include Google's microformat for review information so that details of the review show up in Google's snippet thingy, like this: ![Review snippet](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Q8RIa.png) However, according this page, Google supports three different formats for the review data, \"microformat\", \"microdata\" and RDFa. They all seem to do exactly the same thing, though, and I have no idea which one to choose... RDFa looks nice - in that the data is fairly separate from the actual content (which makes my life a bit easier). Except it's based on XML namespaces, which isn't going to play well with HTML5 (the site isn't HTML5 yet, but I imagine it will be ported eventually). The \"hReview microformat\" seems to use special CSS classes to denote the various sections of the review, which seems like a bad mix of concerns to me... So I'm kind of leaning towards the \"microdata\" format, which looks like it's closer to the HTML5 way of doing things (i.e. no special namespaces). An example of that would be (from the page I linked above):               <div>       <div itemscope itemtype=\"http://data-vocabulary.org/Review\">         <span itemprop=\"itemreviewed\">L\u2019Amourita Pizza</span>         Reviewed by <span itemprop=\"reviewer\">Ulysses Grant</span> on         <time itemprop=\"dtreviewed\" datetime=\"2009-01-06\">Jan 6</time>.         <span itemprop=\"summary\">Delicious, tasty pizza in Eastlake!</span>         <span itemprop=\"description\">L'Amourita serves up traditional           wood-fired Neapolitan-style pizza, brought to your table promptly           and without fuss. An ideal neighborhood pizza joint.</span>         Rating: <span itemprop=\"rating\">4.5</span>       </div>     </div>      But as I said, all the formats are basically the same, just slightly different... which one should I choose?"}
{"_id": "124687", "title": "Copyright statements in source code", "text": "Ever since I started programming I've seen a header at the top of most code files indicating some sort of copyright: e.g.               /* Copyright (c) 1998 Innotech */      or               /* Copyright (c) 1998-2008 Innotech */      Conceptually I get the idea... depending on your wants/needs it _roughly_ translates somewhere between: > Hey check it out! I made this! I'm awesome! to > Don't copy/redistribute this! Our lawyers will come after you if you do! On the one hand I find the whole thing somewhat humorous as often this is a file that no one outside of in-house developers will ever see, but **_presuming_** this line may actually one day \"mean something\" I'm curious about the date part.   1. Does a single date imply that the author claims copyright of the file from that date until eternity?   2. If a date range is used, and not kept up to date has the developer invalidated his/her own copyright beyond the date range?   3. Without some additional legal filing of some kind - does the copyright header provide any real legal strength of any kind? or are we all just fooling ourselves."}
{"_id": "146315", "title": "Queries about commercial products about using freewares libraries", "text": "I'm looking at developing some commercial product (sell for money, only binaries, no sourcecodes). I have read up on open source licensing, but I just could not understand if what I want to achieve is possible. Will need some bros to walk me through. Like I mentioned, I looking forward to create a simple commercial product, I might be looking at using json for communication. I saw quite a number of favorable comments for Jackson JSON. Is it legally advisable for me to use it's library, but do not distribute my own source code? Or is there any other condition that I have to adhere to before I can sell my product without distributing my own source code? I won't be modifying the Jackson library at all, only calling its method. I definitely have no intention of paying to obtain a separate license to allow me not to distribute my source code. If this is not feasible, any other json library that I can look at? ps:I hope that there will not be answers directing me to read up on the license, as I have read, but do not understand the advise legally."}
{"_id": "124683", "title": "What would a piecework-based payment system for software development look like?", "text": "In software development, a developer is usually paid either annually (by fixed salary) or by the hour. For the most part, it seems like this works. However, I've seen industries where professionals are paid for the task. For instance, in agriculture a worker is paid per bushel. In sales, a worker is paid by commission most commonly. Would it be possible to pay a developer by delivered item? How could we calculate what a single \"item\" of software would be? Would this incentivize more efficient development? Would it be more/less fair to the developer, or the employer? Would this be similar/different from a \"results-only-work- environment\"?"}
{"_id": "218122", "title": "How to ensure that a member variable is initialized before calling a class method", "text": "There's a class with a parametrized constructor that initializes a member variable. All public methods of the class then use this member variable to do something. I want to ensure that the caller always creates an object using the parametrized constructor (there is also a setter for this member variable) and then call that object's methods. In essence, it should be impossible for the caller to call any method without setting a value to the member variable (either by using the parametrized constructor or the setter). Here's the catch - there is just one method that itself generates a value to be initialized in the member variable (and returns it) - and to call that function, one would need a default constructor. Currently, a caller can simply make an object using the default constructor and then call that object's method - I want to avoid checking whether or not the member variable is set in each and every one of the 20-odd methods of the class (and throw an exception if it is not) - except for the one method mentioned above. Though a runtime solution is acceptable (better than the one I mentioned above); a compile-time solution is preferable so that any developer will not be allowed to make that mistake and then waste hours debuggging it! Update: Here's an artist's impression of the current implementation in code:               class MyClass     {     private:     string m_strProperty;          void InternalNonStaticMethod(int iSomeParam);          public:     MyClass(string strValue)     {     m_strProperty = strValue;     }          MyClass() {}          void setProperty(string strValue)     {         m_strProperty = strValue;     }          string MethodOddManOut()     {         /* Do some computations to generate a value for the property */         string strGeneratedValue(\"\");         InternalNonStaticMethod(4);         /* ... */         return strGeneratedValue;  // The value has to be returned and this method cannot simply update the member due to design issues that are beyond the realm of this question     }          void MethodLikeEveryoneElse()     {         /* Do some computation based on the property */         string strTemp = m_strProperty + \"EXTEND\";              /* If strProperty is empty/garbage then this is going to fail miserably            Trying to avoid the following snippet at 20 other similar methods:            if (!strProperty.empty()) {                strTemp = m_strProperty + \"EXTEND\";            } else {                throw exception            }         */     }          void MethodLikeEveryoneElse2()     {         /* Similar to the above method */     }          }      The caller would be a function in some other class using it like this:               void MethodThatUsesThis()     {         MyClass objA;         m_strHandle = objA.MethodOddManOut();  // Save the handle as a member of this object              /* Some other lines of code */              objA.setProperty(strHandle);         objA.MethodLikeEveryoneElse();     }          void AnotherMethodThatUsesThisLater(string strHandle)     {         MyClass objA(strHandle);  // The handle that the above method received was passed to this method since they are in different classes         objA.MethodLikeEveryoneElse2();     }      This code snippet is bound to raise tons of allegations on the horrendous design that is being implemented - but my only defense is, this is legacy code (ha! you saw this coming) and I only have the right to change anything in class A (it's more of an API and a library module) but the caller is not in my jurisdiction."}
{"_id": "178352", "title": "How do you balance between \"do it right\" and \"do it ASAP\" in your daily work?", "text": "I find myself pondering over this question from time to time, again and again. I want to do things the right way: to write clean, understandable and correct code that is easy to maintain. However, what I end up doing is writing patch upon a patch; just because there is no time, clients are waiting, a bug should be fixed overnight, the company is losing money on this problem, a manager is pressing hard etc., etc. I know perfectly well that in the long term I am wasting more time on these patches, but as this time spans months of work, nobody cares. Also, as one of my managers used to say: \"we don't know if there will be a long term if we don't fix it now.\" I am sure I am not the only one entrapped in these endless real/ideal choice cycles. So how do you, my fellow programmers, cope with this? UPDATE: Thank you all for this interesting discussion. It is sad that so many people have to choose daily between a quantity and a quality of their code. Still, surprisingly many, people think it is possible to win this battle, so I am going into the trenches too."}
{"_id": "82159", "title": "Does craftsmanship pay off?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  Prototyping vs. Clean Code at the early stages   >  Frankly, do you prefer Cowboy coding? After working in a number of companies, I am starting to realize that my commitment to writing high quality, well tested software, does not necessarily lead to career advancement, especially when managers with non-technical backgrounds do not see the benefits of maintainable code, and prefer developers who have a semblance of high productivity, while racking up mountains of technical debt. That said I tend to stick to well written code to because I find it intrinsically rewarding - that feeling you get when you know you have done a job well, even though you know you won't get credited for it. In part I can close the productivity gap by adopting different technologies and approaches while still writing clean code - solutions include dynamic languages, polyglot programming, and convention over configuration. But my dilemma remains - does craftsmanship pay off?"}
{"_id": "99794", "title": "Good design: How much hackyness is acceptable?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Prototyping vs. Clean Code at the early stages I'm right in front of a difficult decision. I have a problem in my codebase (it's in C++), which I could solve in two ways:   * A) Add one line of code   * B) Rewrite ~7500 lines of code, adding roughly 1000 for an additional messaging switchboard class Now, at that point any sane person would probably tell me to chose A, **but** : Solution A would be **hacky**. In my case what I mean by this is that it would:   * Involve adding coupling between two classes that normally shouldn't know of each other, and shouldn't interact except over an external manager class   * Lower flexibility   * Cause future classes in the same league to have the same problem, thus creating more hackyness if the solution isn't changed **I'm sorry for the lack of concrete information, but explaining my situation probably would take 1,5 A4 pages of paper - and the decision is really a general one.** So, what do you think:   * Should I choose solution A or B?   * How hacky are things allowed to get in a project where clean and logical code plays a great role?   * Are there any general guidelines on avoiding the phenomenom of \"hacky code\"?"}
{"_id": "204944", "title": "Is it sometimes reasonable to cut corners and expect to re-write software in a couple of years?", "text": "I work for an organization with one developer (me) and one DBA. When I started, the previous developer had developed applications that had bad architectural practices and it was getting and more time consuming after a couple of years to add features, fix bugs as the story usually goes. I came in and started re-writing a couple of apps from scratch. Now being the only developer, it's taking me quite a while to stick with TDD, do good UX, good architectural principles, create common libraries for business logic as it's used by many applications, etc. I'm wondering if in an environment like this it'd be more feasible to cut corners and churn out web applications (I'm not sure about desktop applications) with the intent of re-writing them every 2-3 years. I mean cutting corners in things like unit tests and architecture. I'd expect such applications to be hard to maintain over a long term, and that'd be ok, because we'd just rewrite from scratch and copy and paste any business logic we needed to carry forward - as long as the requirements, documentation, and the data modeling is solid. Anybody see any pitfalls to this? I guess it wouldn't be good for my career in the long term, but from the organizational perspective, I think it makes sense. The pay is kind of low because they're constrained by budget (govt. job) and I think the developer wouldn't last more than 2 years. I'd really appreciate any insights."}
{"_id": "50387", "title": "Why write clean, refactored code?", "text": "This is a question I've been asking myself for a long time. Thought of throwing out it to you. From my experience of working on several Java based projects, I've seen tons of codes which we call 'dirty'. The unconventional class/method/field naming, wrong way of handling of exceptions, unnecessarily heavy loops and recursion etc. But the code gives the intended results. Though I hate to see dirty code, it's time taking to clean them up and eventually comes the question of \"is it worth? it's giving the desired results so what's the point of cleaning?\" In team projects, should there be someone specifically to refactor and check for clean code? Or are there situations where the 'dirty' codes fail to give intended results or make the customers unhappy? Do feel free to comment and reply. And tell me if I'm missing something here. EDIT: **I like to emphasize - What I meant by WHY is not the technical reasons, I'm asking about the motive.** We all are familiar with why we should write clean code in technical point of view. But, imagine in college if I write bad code, I get bad marks (see @TofuBeer 's comment). So in your industrial environment what motivates you and your team to write clean code? And what de-motivates you and team from writing bad code. It's so easy to write a method in a class to get the information you need without looking around and checking if there's a similar method!! result-a 5000 + lines of code with few methods doing almost similar tasks. :-( Do feel free to add comments if you have seen or worked with same code."}
{"_id": "210572", "title": "Developer thinks they do not have to follow standard development process", "text": "How do you deal with a senior developer who does not think that the company standard way of developing software applies to them ? For instance:   1. Will ask other developers to do work by email, rather than assign bugs to them.   2. Will keep copies of documentation and code in their own local area, rather than keeping them in the common area under source control. (and overwrite others changes with theirs) NOTE: This has been flagged to QA people before."}
{"_id": "83167", "title": "Is cowboy programming a senior approach?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Frankly, do you prefer Cowboy coding? By cowboy programming, I mean a programmer just typing the code very fast without a semi-formal process. I have a programmer that codes fast by dismissing revision control, documentation, patterns, tests, and methodologies. We talked about that and she tells me that all the approaches like agile are too academic and disregards them completely. I feel very reluctant to believe that is the consensus among senior programmers. I used to bring samples of big-name-guys like Kent Beck and Alan Kay, but she tells me that those are just authors trying to sell books or professors with no real experience. Yes, it is fast at first, but the time saved by the cowboy approach is paid in debugging. I'm not planning to change her opinion, but if those are bad practices, I don't want to adopt them. See, as a junior level, it is hard to filter good and bad practices because your knowledge is mostly based on books or on people with more experience than you and they might be wrong as well. So to senior programmers, is this a common approach at your league?"}
{"_id": "196441", "title": "Coding style (do more, then simplify)", "text": "I'm a CS student and I have been coding for a few months shy of a year now, and I seem to have developed what I think may be a \"bad\" habit and I'm wondering if anyone does the same (or whether it's a bad habit at all). When I'm coding / solving a problem with code, I find that my initial implementation is lengthy and overly-complicated; in other words, there is a lot of extraneous code (variables, checks) that is simply not needed. When I finish the initial \"draft,\" and make sure the code actually works, I simplify it and make it easier to understand/less verbose. I think the reason I do this is that I have trouble foreseeing what I will need to complete a task and end up over-compensating and creating complexities that should not or need not exist. Anyone have any tips or advice on how to improve this facet of my coding style, or any input as to whether the habit is actually a bad one?"}
{"_id": "238413", "title": "How to deal with team members writing bad code", "text": "Our team consits of junior and senior developers. Problem I am facing is with the code written by seniors. They are not following MINIMUM coding standards. I am also still learning but I wouldn't declare the inline style or give improper names for variables and controls. I tried to mention it indirectly but they were like we can take it up later and since its agile, we should move on. But my problem is when I start working on my task, it makes me feel bad and I would focus more on refactor rather than on my task. I am not sure how to deal with this situation. PS: I am sure this question has been asked many times. But any advise is much appreciated."}
{"_id": "242700", "title": "Follow the deadlines vs Do it right", "text": "I have been given a huge task of migrating few functionalities from jQuery to AngularJS. I have been pretty good at Angular by now. But I want to dive deep and create futuristic, sound architecture. BAs are seating on my neck, wanting to get my tasks as quickly as possible. I prefer doing something once and right vs keeping on patching existing functionalities. And with this attitude, I always keep working more than necessary. Am I missing something? Am I having right approach or am just not convincing enough BAs my point. What's the best approach, in your opinion Thank You :)"}
{"_id": "233040", "title": "What should be the minimal quantity of code production per week?", "text": "I'll try to further explain what I mean. Imagine you are the boss of a company. You have to deal with the tradeoff between the quality of the code and the speed of producing it. Let's assume to measure the coding speed according to Agile Methodologies in Story Points Let's consider the two extremes:   1. Our developers spend a lot of time in formation without writing any line of code. They are getting certified. They know about every technology and pattern, they spend hour in thinking how to better implement something but the productivity goes to 0.   2. Our developers go straightforward to the solution of the problems. They produce a lot of code, they respect the deadlines. But it's really poor quality. A lot of code smells and other problems which will slow down the code in a few time. It' objective that both the two extremes are not optimal. So what's your suggestion and consideration for finding the optimal tradeoff?"}
{"_id": "81083", "title": "Prototyping vs. Clean Code at the early stages", "text": "I'm planning to work/start on a few personal projects that could end up as my daily job. It made me think, which way should I start?   * Just prototype\u2014write just working basic code that could cost me tons of time optimizing and refactoring for easy expansion.   * Write clean, optimized and documented code from the very beginning, keeping in mind that if after some time it won't be cost-effective, it will be dropped. **Update:** Combining YAGNI with sunpech and M.Sameer answers makes perfect sense to me :) thank you everyone for help."}
{"_id": "135845", "title": "When to refactor", "text": "I've read through most of Fowler's Refactoring book and have refactored many applications in my past big and small. One of the harder things I find to teach is \"when\" to refactor. I tend to do this based on a gut feel which has served me remarkably well in the past. However, when getting into discussions with people about whether a piece of code should be left alone or refactored right now it is hard to stand by the \"gut check\". I feel like there should be more rigorous approaches to this, but am not sure what they are. I understand \"code-smells\", red-green-refactor and other thoughts, but often I feel that the best time to refactor is not the first time you write the code, but the second or third time you are using the code and realize that it is actually a problem and is in actual use."}
{"_id": "206802", "title": "Designing new application from scratch, TDD, MVC, OOD based", "text": "I'm about to improve my skills in all that is related to designing applications from scratch using proper OOD principles, involving MVC pattern and using TDD approach to do it. I have a project for that. I also finished reading a book by Matt Zandstra: PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice And my question is still left unanswered... How do I start designing from scratch? Should I start using TDD immediately? It doesn't feels comfortable when u have nothing implemented yet. Should I use code spaghetti just to build working prototype first, understand the scope and needs and only then rewrite all using proper OOD and TDD? I'd love to get any advice, how to work towards something considered \"RIGHT TO DO\", or any book that will actually lay down things of how to build the applications form scratch, or design an architecture and dependencies, rather than just throwing lifeless implementation sample codes of Design patterns like Zandstra did. Thanks! **UPD:** Basically, my question is: Is it a good idea to immediately start new project from using TDD and proper OOD, or first write something that works using the most horrible and fastest ways and then refactor everything or rewrite from scratch after you got some idea of how you want your application to look like?"}
{"_id": "208650", "title": "Should I let my \"beginnerishness\" hold me back? (not rhetorical)", "text": "My situation is that I've been programming for about three years and have learned a lot but still have a long long way to go. I have an idea for an app that I believe would take off, but I'm afraid to build it because it involves architecting a back-end with databases and authenticated payment transactions and user accounts and _I've never done any of that._ I'm afraid that if I hacked it together, people would use it and things would go wrong-- security flaws, data loss, somehow I accidentally drop_table and lose everyone's payment history, etc, because I'm not sufficiently experienced with industry practices in terms of data management, versioning, hosting transitions, and plain old coding. But I really want to build this. Has anyone every been in a similar situation, and do you have any advice?"}
{"_id": "230966", "title": "Lean Startup MVP: Quality Code or Quick and Dirty", "text": "Hello some programmers might know about the lean philosophy, building a minimal viable product Lean Startup MVP. I ask myself (when building Webapps): > \"Should I put effort into writing good reusable code, testing etc.\" or > \"Write quick and dirty code. It just works. The customer does not care what > kind of programming pattern you used etc. He/she just wants to use it.\" So reading the article about a MVP is a bit paradox to me. On the one hand it says: > \"version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount > of validated learning about customers\" on the other: > ...begin the learning process as quickly as possible So which actually has a higher priority? To me this is a trade-off between time and quality. Correct me if I did not understand it. Thanks."}
{"_id": "157251", "title": "How do you disarm a cowboy coder?", "text": "I found a question (code cowboy on the team), but it was more related to \"Ninja Coder\" then the problem that I have. I have a team member who is a pure living example of \" **Cowboy Coder** \". I do understand that one can't change people, but is a way to make him stop behaving like a \"Cowboy Coder\"? He refuses to listen to the team, and he recently stopped code reviews, unit testing, sharing the implementation details, etc. Yes, he \"codes\" fast, but his code is just a bug generator. Other team members and I are in a \"bug fixing phase\" and 80% of bugs comes from his code. I don't want to fix his bugs. And management is blind, or doesn't want to see this, or maybe they like his \"speed\". Is there any way that I (as his younger colleague by age, not his boss) can do something about it? **How can I disarm this cowboy coder?** I feel like I'm the last one who really cares about the project at all."}
{"_id": "99980", "title": "Develop fast and buggy, then correct errors or be slow, careful for each line of code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  Frankly, do you prefer Cowboy coding?   >  Prototyping vs. Clean Code at the early stages   >  Good design: How much hackyness is acceptable?   >  Does craftsmanship pay off? Which is better:   1. Coding fast, not caring about possible errors and limits, maybe forgetting to check the input, NULL returns etc, just to complete the task or to get to the milestone, and then correct all possible errors.   2. Coding slow, checking every line you write many times, writing tests, and checking every possible input to make a code as bug free as you can but taking weeks to write a working program. Actually I'm using the 2nd way but it's frustrating to work, work, work and see only small improvements every day..."}
{"_id": "209311", "title": "Should I be commiting code quickly and testing later?", "text": "I am a web and software developer involved in the creation of mobile apps. I am currently working on a project with a looming deadline. I am wondering if I should be committing code rapidly and large and testing later, or doing tiny commits and testing each one. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "237894", "title": "Does \"write quality code\" advice apply to companies of any scale?", "text": "I carefully followed the \"always write quality code, unless you're writing a prototype\" advice during my career as freelancer and software developer. I was convinced pretty early that avoiding to do code reviews, testing, QA or refactoring doesn't make the project faster, but only slower. Books like The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks or Rapid Development by Steve McConnell confirmed my thoughts. Professional experience in medium-scale companies also showed me how much money and time is wasted by not even trying to do quality work. At the same time, I often heard my colleagues complaining that constantly maintaining good code quality or simply achieving good code quality at all is too complicated for small scale companies and small teams:   * It's just too expensive to get the people able to write and maintain quality code. If the company can hire either two persons for $3 000 per month or one person for $6 000 per month, most managers would consider that two persons will be more productive than one: maybe not by a factor of two, but still. Or the small company can hire one person for $3 000 per month and spend the remaining 3 000 for something else.   * There are too many aspects to take in account in order to be able to do it within a small team. A single person can hardly take care of the style of code, readability, architecture, design, ease of testing, testing itself, reliability, security, ease of use, performance, etc.   * And it doesn't worth it. It's not like a piece of code will remain in the code base for the next fifteen years and will be read thousands of times by hundreds of developers. Chances are, the same person will maintain this piece of software for the next five years, then just throw it away and write a better one from scratch. I usually reply that one should remember the productivity factor of 1:10 among developers and that most of the time is spent not writing code, but maintaining it. This means that low quality code is still ways more expensive. But is it so? Should every company, no matter its scale, try to hire the best possible developers they can afford, and encourage them to write quality code, or there is scale above which code quality becomes just a burden, a waste of time and money?"}
{"_id": "228258", "title": "How far to go when standardizing code", "text": "My small team and I have created a decent sized web application (~50k lines), with a fully featured API, all in Perl. As us perl hackers know.. it is easy to get sloppy. We had to port over a lot of legacy code.. thus perl whale guts code ensued. Long story short, we were under a fairly tight time constraint which now has been pushed back, so we have some time to go back in and standardize code. We quickly found out how nonstandard our code was as our contractor was developing an iOS app where we have account numbers of length 10 some places, 12 in others with prepended data, etc. As I'm going through fixing date formats and data formatting, I'm noticing a ton of really non descriptive variable and hash key naming which came from legacy code - not nice down the road maintaining it. Basically, my question is - given the scenario above or your own experience, how far do you go when cleaning up and standardizing? Is it worth going in and replacing hash key names with longer camel cased ones, and variable names, the way data is handled in results - etc. I know lot more pain can come from breaking working code, and it may not be worth it.. but how do you know how far to go? Get it over with now and then it pays off later, or just live with a bit of \"code debt\"?"}
{"_id": "7217", "title": "Frankly, do you prefer Cowboy coding?", "text": "Most programmers defending methodologies politically correct like Agile, Waterfall, RUP, etc. Some of them follow the methodology but not all of them. Frankly, if you can choose the methodology, you certainly would go to mainstream \"correct\" methodologies or you would prefer the \"easier\" methodology like cowboy programming? Why? I know it depends. Please, explain when you would use one or another. Please, say what advantages do you see on Cowboy coding. See about Cowboy coding on Wikipedia"}
{"_id": "244773", "title": "Is method overriding always a violation of Liskov Substitution Principle?", "text": "Overriding a method originally defined in the super class, by definition means this method will do different things when invoked on an object of the base class or an object of the subclass. So does this mean that overriding methods _always_ means violating LSP? Or are there cases when it doesn't?"}
{"_id": "244771", "title": "Why use Android Fragments?", "text": "I have read the documentation and some other questions' threads about this topic and I don't really feel convinced; I don't see clearly the limits of use of this technique. Fragments are now seen as a _Best Practice_ ; **every Activity should be basically a support for one or more Fragments** and not call a layout directly. Fragments are created in order to:   1. allow the `Activity` to use many fragments, to change between them, to reuse these units... ==> the `Fragment` is totally dependent to the `Context` of an activity , so if I need something generic that I can reuse and handle in many Activities, I can create my own custom layouts or Views ... I will not care about this additional Complexity Developing Layer that fragments would add.    2. a better handling to different resolution ==> OK for tablets/phones in case of long process that we can show two (or more) fragments in the same Activity in Tablets, and one by one in phones. But why would I use fragments **always** ?   3. handling callbacks to navigate between Fragments (i.e: if the user is Logged-in I show a fragment else I show another fragment). ===> Just try to see how many bugs facebook SDK Log-in have because of this, to understand that it is really (?) ...   4. considering that an Android Application is based on Activities... Adding another life cycles in the Activity would be better to design an Application... I mean the modules, the scenarios, the data management and the connectivity would be better designed, in that way. ===> This is an answer of someone who's used to see the Android SDK and Android Framework with a Fragments vision. I don't think it's wrong, but I am not sure it will give good results... And it is really abstract... **====> Why would I complicate my life, coding more, in using them always? else, why is it a best practice if it's just a tool for some cases? what are these cases?**"}
{"_id": "205254", "title": "NHibernate and complex domain model against a legacy database", "text": "I'm trying to refactor (actually, rewrite) an application which currently uses only stored procedures to access the database (hundreds of SPs). My goal is to use Nhibernate and follow a good design as much as possible. But since the database (and the SPs) are used by dozens of other apps, I can't really change the db design. And off course, it's awful. I'm facing a design problem and I can't really find a good solution. I have a table called movies which contains movies, but these movies can be different \"things\". For example, this table contains movies as well as episodes of tv shows and the only way to know the difference is a field named \"episode\" which is set to 0 for movies and 1 for episodes. My objective is to expose the following class hierarchy :               public abstract class Program {}     public class Episode : Program {}     public class Movie : Program {}      Currently, I have mapped the whole movies table to a model class MoviesModel and then I build my Episode/Movie class through AutoMapper and a factory method in the Program class :               public static Program Load(MoviesModel movieModel)         {             if (movieModel.Episode > 0)                 return Mapper.Map<Episode>(movieModel);             return Mapper.Map<Movie>(movieModel);         }      This seems really wrong on many levels : I have an anemic data model since my MoviesModel is totally empty of any business logic, the automapper stuff becomes really hard to maintain when I add many other entities with relations to Movies, and I break the lazy loading with AutoMapper. I heard about the any mapping of nhibernate but it doesn't really solve my issue, it just creates sub components of a class. So my questions are :   * Ideally, where should be my business logic ? I guess in the MoviesModel class but I don't really like the idea to expose my database fields.   * Is there a way with nhibernate to map the same table in different classes based on a field value ?   * Is there a point to wrap the nhibernate objects if I want to provide a \"clean\" public API ? My goal is to build a base library which will be used (hopefully) on other legacy apps so I want to provide a clean API with logical methods and without exposing the database mess even if I still have to deal with it. Thanks for any help to put me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "235126", "title": "What is meant by change the main routine? The C Programming Language", "text": "In exercise 1-16 in The C Programming Language (K & R) it asks for us to: revise the _main routine_ of the longest-line program so it will correctly print the length of arbitrary long input lines, and as much as possible of the text. From what I read here, I get the notion that the main routine is everything inside of `main`, is this correct? I posted the code for the longest-line program below for more context, but I am confused my what I am being asked to do not the code. Thanks!               #include <stdio.h>          #define MAXLINE 1000                /* maximum input line length */          int getline( char line[], int maxline );     void copy( char to[], char from[] );          /* print the longest input line */          main()     {          int len;                /* current line length */     int max;                /* maximum length seen so far */     char line[MAXLINE];     /* current input line */     char longest[MAXLINE];  /* longest line saved here */          max = 0;     while (( len = getline( line, MAXLINE )) > 0)         if ( len > max ) {             max = len;             copy( longest, line );         }            if ( max > 0 )         printf( \"%s\", longest );             return 0;     }          /* getline: read a line into s, return length */      int getline( char s[], int lim )           {         int c, i;              for ( i = 0; i <  lim - 1 && ( c = getchar() ) != EOF && c != '\\n'; ++i )             s[i] = c;                if ( c == '\\n' ){             s[i] = c;             ++ i;         }            s[i] = '\\0';             return i;         }          /* copy: copy 'from' into 'to'; assume to is big enough */     void copy( char to[], char from[] )      {         int i;              i = 0;         while ( (to[i] = from[i] ) != '\\0' )             ++i;     }"}
{"_id": "80268", "title": "How deeply the interviewer goes in these skillls asked in job posting", "text": "I have seen many job posting with normal technical skills required but there are few thing mentioned in them , which i have no idea actually how can i go about improving them or how should i prove them that i know this   1. Software development lifecycle quality control   2. Setting up version control in a traditional dev/test/stage/production environment with firewalls between stage and production.Note: setting up not just using version control.   3. Automating and optimising software release processes   4. Simultaneous database updates and code revisions   5. Releases to distributed server farms in multiple locations   6. Setting up error checking, error reporting processes and alert systems   7. Knowledge of search technologies is highly desirable.   8. Agile Programming Methodology and Unit testing Experience Now i want to know from experienced programmers or job interviewers how much deeply they ask for these things. The reason i am asking this is that if someone can guide how can i learn those so that at least i can have those thing in resume so that i can get an edge over those who have not written anything about it. I don't want to tell lie but what i want to do is apply those small to some websites so that at least i can tell them i covered this here. I have 6 months free time before i go to my country to start applying for jobs, so i am just searching for jobs requirements so that i am capable of write them in my resume."}
{"_id": "256213", "title": "What kind of design pattern for an \"investment\" system?", "text": "I'm developing a browser game with nodejs. I'm trying to make a \"invest\" function with letting users invest according to their balance. The problem is, lets say:               A user came and invested 20 dollar    %40 of bankroll         B user came and invested 30 dollar    %60 of bankroll      Then:               C user played and lose 10 dollar      Worked good so far, now :               A user has 24 dollar    %40 of bankroll   (+4 dollar)     B user has 36 dollar    %60 of bankroll   (+6 dollar)      But, then if a **D** user come and invest some dollars, site profit is dividing to 3 according to my function. **D** user is came last and he **mustn't** get any profit. How can I set up a working and flawless investment system?"}
{"_id": "256210", "title": "Is binary recursion a type of exponential recursion?", "text": "People in this thread state that fibonacci runs in exponential time. This professor on the other hand states that fibonacci sequence is binary recursion. I don't think either of them are wrong, which leads me to conclude that binary recursion is a form of exponential recursion."}
{"_id": "256217", "title": "SPA Applications: AJAX to fetch templates or build from strings", "text": "I'm working on a large angular application and I'm currently using a factory class that builds HTML templates from strings. We don't have to worry about mobile support for the application and I'm wondering from an architectural standpoint, which method would you rather implement and why: static HTML files that are fetched on request, or a class that builds the templates as strings?"}
{"_id": "255090", "title": "How does Facebook manage to allow a user unlimited sessions?", "text": "I could login through the website, android app, iOS app, the browsers on mobile, and when I log out from one, it doesn't log me out of all of them. Traditionally, you would log out of all the services at once because your auth_token would be set to null in the DB. That being said, I don't see a way to do this through Rails and Devise. I only have two solutions so far. The first one is to have separate session tokens, and figure out which to use based on a header. However, if you want unlimited number of sessions, you need some unique ID to follow through on. I'm not sure how you'd achieve this. The second solution is to have a counter in the DB named sessions. It keeps track of how many sessions you currently have logged in. If I'm logged in through the website, Android app and iOS app, it would be 3. Whenever you have more than 1 session open and log-out, the number of sessions would be decremented. If the number of sessions becomes 0, we set the auth_token to null in the DB (nil in Ruby). The only loop-hole I could see in this is that if someone logs out, is still logged in on some other platform, and is code savvy, they could find the auth_token via previous requests on their browser. Then, they could send it in and continue to use it even though they have technically logged out. I don't necessarily see a problem with this, but I don't know if this is a good way to do it. Does anyone else have a good suggestion? Is there a better place to post this?"}
{"_id": "139587", "title": "Converting mysql and SQLServer tables quickly in an update utility", "text": "The requirements are to take an existing list of identical tables (AAA0001 - AAA9999) which generally don't meed our current requirements and need to be swapped out with three tables (XXX0001-XXX999, YYY0001-YYY999 and ZZZ0001-ZZZ999). Currently, the guy who is programming this update which is supposed to take place on our clients machines who run both mysql and microsoft SQL Server is running select and insert queries which is bound to make the next update the slowest and most painful in the history of our product. I'd think we could so something faster by dumping the tables to a database, doing some string manipulation and undumping the database. However, we've never used any database connectors besides ODBC for our program and don't necessarily have the faculties to do both a mysql and a SQLServer dump (unless it's easy). So, what's the speediest way to dump and undump rows over ODBC? If there is no speedy way what's the safest and easiest to implement alternative? * * * We use Delphi XE2 Enterprise, if anyone has any 3rd party DB tools or knows any shortcuts. We've never used datasnap, as we didn't have the \"good version\" of Delphi until we updated to XE2, so I'm clueless as to whether it's got this functionality."}
{"_id": "20128", "title": "Which are the significant algorithms for humankind in past decades?", "text": "Which world most important algorithms have contributed most to humankind in past decades? I thought this is a good general knowledge for a developer to know about. **Update:**   If possible, please keep the answer to a **specific programming algorithm**.   I would like to get a list of the most important ones, only one algorithm per answer.   Please consider to state why the algorithm is significant and important..."}
{"_id": "188475", "title": "BackgroundWorker vs. Async/Await", "text": "I am new to C# development and wish to create a more responsive UI. In my preliminary research, I have seen two methods for achieving this:   1. Multi-threading in conjunction with the BackgroundWorker class.   2. The newer Async/Await modifiers.  Does newer mean better? What's the difference between the two methods? If I wish to create a new project, how do I choose which method to go with? EDIT: Maybe I should specify. I am creating a Windows Forms application, where all necessary data will be saved/loaded on the local disk. I will also be communicating with several USB devices."}
{"_id": "175550", "title": "Fast set indexing data structure for superset retrieval", "text": "I am given a set of sets:               {{a,b}, {a,b,c}, {a,c}, {a,c,f}}      I would like to have a data structure to index those sets such that the following \"lookup\" is executed fast: find all supersets of a given set. For example, given the set {a,c} the structure would return               {{a,b,c}, {a,c,f}, {a,c}}      but not {a,b}. Any suggestions? Could this be done with a smart trie-like data structure storing sets after a proper sorting? This data structures is going to be queried a lot. Thus, I'm searching for a structure that might be expensive in build but rather fast to query. UPDATE: I have finally used a prefix Trie as described in the paper \"A New Method to Index and Query Sets\", by Jorg Hoffmann and Jana Koehler."}
{"_id": "5267", "title": "What should I do when I can't reach my deadline?", "text": "I've founded a startup with my friends a few months ago, and\u2014due to some personal issues like starting college and moving to a new town\u2014I've found that I'm likely going to miss an important deadline for the project we're working on. I'm stressing out about this, and I'm not sure what I should do. How can I handle this stress and communicate the delay to my team?"}
{"_id": "98123", "title": "How to say effectively to a manager that you missed the 'deadline'", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I cannot reach my deadline. What to do? My manager is a very deadline specific person. Even though I am a trainee, he insists on a deadline for every small assignment that he gives. Now it so happens that I miss the deadline. And boy, he doesn\u2019t like that at all! So how do I say that i missed the deadline without inviting his wrath? How to stop getting into his bad books? P.S. I am not being lazy. Just that the assignments that he gives are not easy stuff, plus I am doing it in Delphi, which is new to me."}
{"_id": "140424", "title": "Is it better to build HTML Code string on the server or on the client side?", "text": "The result of the following process should be a html form. This form's structure varies from one to user. For example there might be a different number of rows or there may be the need for `rowspan` and `colspan`. When the user chooses to see this table an ajax call is made to the server where the structure of the table is decided from the database. Then I have to create the html code for the table structure which will be inserted in the DOM via JavaScript. The following problem comes to my mind: Where should I build the HTML code which will be inserted in the DOM? On the server side or should I send some parameters in the ajax call method and process the structure there? Therefore the main question involves good practice when it comes to decide between Server side processing or client side processing. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "118886", "title": "How can I test PHP skills in a interview?", "text": "My company needs to hire a PHP developer, but nobody has PHP knowledge in my company and we find difficult to test for PHP skills. If it were a C/Java developer I would ask him to write a quick implementation of the Game of Life, but PHP is a completely different language. I saw this test with interest: http://vladalexa.com/scripts/php/test/test_php_skill.html Anyone else has more suggestions?"}
{"_id": "125488", "title": "How do you limit whitespace differences for developers using different IDEs/environments?", "text": "I've used UltraEdit for years and never had a problem with sharing code with fellow developers whether they worked on Windows, Mac, Linux, Eclipse, Visual Studio -- what have you... But now I am in an office where some developers are using emacs and they complain profusely about the white space differences my code \"introduces\". I have UltraEdit set to write to files as UNIX-style (no Windows returns), but it seems the whitespace renders differently for the emacs developers. Since I don't use emacs (or vi), its a pain for me to try to figure out why this is impacting them, but I more so just want them to shuttup! lol This is even causing problems in SVN/Diff! Any thoughts on how to fix this? Forget about everyone using Emacs because thats not gonna happen lol."}
{"_id": "142144", "title": "while(true) and loop-breaking - anti-pattern?", "text": "Consider the following code:               public void doSomething(int input)     {        while(true)        {           TransformInSomeWay(input);                if(ProcessingComplete(input))              break;                DoSomethingElseTo(input);        }     }      Assume that this process involves a finite but input-dependent number of steps; the loop is designed to terminate on its own as a result of the algorithm, and is not designed to run indefinitely (until cancelled by an outside event). Because the test to see if the loop should end is in the middle of a logical set of steps, the while loop itself currently doesn't check anything meaningful; the check is instead performed at the \"proper\" place within the conceptual algorithm. I was told that this is bad code, because it is more bug-prone due to the ending condition not being checked by the loop structure. It's more difficult to figure out how you'd exit the loop, and could invite bugs as the breaking condition might be bypassed or omitted accidentally given future changes. Now, the code could be structured as follows:               public void doSomething(int input)     {        TransformInSomeWay(input);             while(!ProcessingComplete(input))        {           DoSomethingElseTo(input);           TransformInSomeWay(input);        }     }      However, this duplicates a call to a method in code, violating DRY; if `TransformInSomeWay` were later replaced with some other method, both calls would have to be found and changed (and the fact that there are two may be less obvious in a more complex piece of code). You could also write it like:               public void doSomething(int input)     {        var complete = false;        while(!complete)        {           TransformInSomeWay(input);                complete = ProcessingComplete(input);                if(!complete)            {              DoSomethingElseTo(input);                     }        }     }      ... but you now have a variable whose only purpose is to shift the condition- checking to the loop structure, and also has to be checked multiple times to provide the same behavior as the original logic. For my part, I say that given the algorithm this code implements in the real world, the original code is the most readable. If you were going through it yourself, this is the way you'd think about it, and so it would be intuitive to people familiar with the algorithm. So, which is \"better\"? is it better to give the responsibility of condition checking to the while loop by structuring the logic around the loop? Or is it better to structure the logic in a \"natural\" way as indicated by requirements or a conceptual description of the algorithm, even though that may mean bypassing the loop's built-in capabilities?"}
{"_id": "168008", "title": "Separating validation from persistence in models?", "text": "Models in an MVC application gets kind of hard to test when validation of data and persistence of data is baked together in the model. I would like to test those separately to prevent doing integration testing instead of actual unit testing. What patterns are available to keep validation and persistence separated?"}
{"_id": "135471", "title": "Organizing single page code well with Notepad++", "text": "I've a c# file that will contain, most likely 10,000+ lines of code. I'd like to break this file into tabbed segments, so I can organize each method into a certain tab and label the tab something like : initial setup, helper functions,execution logic,list structures,global variables, etc. If I were using PHP I would have separate files and use include(); to include the separate files. What can be done, following the same style, with c#?"}
{"_id": "139753", "title": "What's the best way to modularize a User schema so it's generic", "text": "I have a database design question. Basically I want to be able to create a schema for a User model, then use this User model in other models that extend User but I want to design it in such a way that it's generic enough to be used in every application. For example a Profile or Account model might extend User, and in both cases they will be different based on the web application you are designing but the core credentials of User should never be different across any web application. What fields do you think should be in the User model? I think the bare minimum to successfully handle authentication would be:   * email (the login unique identifier)   * salt (obviously!)   * password (duh)   * lostToken (a hash to verify lost password functionality)   * role (member, admin, editor, etc.. IMO this list of roles would differ between sites however it's too important to the User model not to have here?) Now we get into other interesting fields that are still very very useful:   * createdAt (when the account was created)   * ipAddress (track the ip when the account was created)   * refererUrl (which site it came from)   * lastLoggedIn (the last time the user logged in)   * isOnline (is the user currently online) And even more fields that are still pretty useful:   * username (might not be used on every site)   * number of consecutive logins (similar to the stack network) I think anything else like social data (likes, votes, profile views), badges/achievements, the last time they updated their profile/account/whatever, and other info like their name belong in the per- site Profile model. What do you think? Edit: I fully understand that this question is partly subjective but I do think there's definitely room for discussion."}
{"_id": "128606", "title": "Is it OK to use sample code from blogs, GitHub, etc... in commercial applications?", "text": "When searching the web for a solution to a particular problem, I often find a perfect solution posted on someone's blog, or in a public repository (GitHub, Google Code). Most of the time, the code has no copyright information, nor does the author mention any sort of attribution rules. I'm pretty sure short snippets are fine, but what if I copy a handful of classes verbatim (again, no copyright notices, TOS, attribution requests, etc...)? Am I under any legal obligation to the original author?"}
{"_id": "139759", "title": "Is there a performance benefit to using immutable objects in a scripting language?", "text": "As I understand it, writing your objects in an immutable style can help the performance of your program for compiled languages, as the compiler tends to rewrite your code in single static assignment form under the hood anyway. Is there a performance benefit to using immutable objects in an interpreted language like Python or PHP? I understand there may be readability or code quality benefits from immutability, but I am asking specifically about performance."}
{"_id": "163050", "title": "Is it OK to mix C and C++ in an interview?", "text": "If I am asked in an interview to write down some code, should I completely stick with C++ or is it acceptable to \"mix\" the two to write easy code as it comes to my mind? I'll explain it: if I'm asked to create a \"stack\" data type, a C++ class is perfectly suited, while if I need to parse some strings a strtok/sscanf is far easier than STL. On the other hand, if I need a generic container STL and templates are the way to go. Everything can be done in C or in C++, but in an interview I can't code everything or remember every standard/STL function. What is an acceptable tradeoff?"}
{"_id": "168005", "title": "Using \"Google Guava\" in coding interviews", "text": "I attended a in-person interview recently and performed well. But surprisingly I got rejected. When I asked the HR for reason, he contacted the technical interviewer and told me that I was syntactically wrong while coding. I used Google Guava for coding. So my code looked like this: `List<String> items = Lists.newArrayList()` instead of `List<String> items =new ArrayList<String>();` I know that the code will compile and work as expected.Is it ok to use third party libraries like Google Guava in interviews?"}
{"_id": "168004", "title": "Architecture for Social Graph data that has a Time Frame Associated?", "text": "I am adding some \"social\" type features to an existing application. There are a limited # of node & edge types. Overall the data itself is relatively small (50,000 - 70,000 for each type of node) there will be a number of edges (relationships) between them (almost all directional). This, I know, is relatively easy to represent with an SDF store (such as BrightstarDB) or something like Microsoft's Trinity (or really many of the noSQL options). The thing that, I think, makes this a unique use case is that each relationship will have a timeframe associated with it (start and end dates). Right now, I'm thinking of just storing this in a relational structure and dealing with the headaches of \"traversing the graph\", but I'm looking for suggestions on a better approach (both in terms of data structure and server):               Column     ================     From_Node_ID       Relationship     To_Node_ID     StartDate     EndDate      Any suggestions or thoughts are welcomed."}
{"_id": "134705", "title": "How can I teach Java theoretically from distance?", "text": "I will be in the position of teaching Java theoretically, (it will not contain a screen and typing, all things that I will have is a paper and a camera so they can watch my hands while I am writing). Any ideas of what topics I should cover if I'm teaching this way?"}
{"_id": "203527", "title": "Best way for an external (remote) graphics designer to style ASP.NET MVC 4 app?", "text": "My customer has his own graphics designer he wants to use to style his web application we're building in ASP.NET MVC 4. Our solution is in Bitbucket, but if he can't run it what choices do we have? I doubt he uses Visual Studio 2012. One idea is for us to publish to our solution to a file system, send it to him, have him create a local IIS website on his machine (assuming he isn't using a Mac). Mocking data or pointing to a test SQL in Azure isn't a problem. Then he can make changes to .css and .cshtml files. Will this even work? The point is that he needs to be able to test his changes. I know he can modify the views and just check-in. But he needs to deliver a working design. So it seems inefficient. The graphics designer will have access to our test site so he can see how it works, what data we have and fields. Another idea is for him to build a static mock site using just HTML/CSS. Later I'd integrate his styles into customer's solution, split his html into partial views which we use and add Razor syntax. Again, we'd like to leverage graphics designer for all of this. Is there a best practice documented around this subject? How do other teams deal with this situation?"}
{"_id": "179586", "title": "Desktop application, dependency injection", "text": "I am thinking of applying a real dependency injection library to my toy C#/GTK# desktop application. I chose NInject, but I think this is irrelevant to my question. There is a database object, a main window and several utility window classes. It's clear that I can inject the database into every window object, so here DI is useful. But does it make sense to inject utility window classes into other window classes? Example: I have classes such as:               class MainWindow {\u2026}     class AddItemWindow {\u2026}     class AddAttachmentWindow {\u2026}     class BrowseItemsWindow {\u2026}     class QueryBuilderWindow {\u2026}     class QueryBrowserWindow {\u2026}     class PreferencesWindow {\u2026}     \u2026      Each of the utility classes can be opened from MainWindow. Some utility windows can also be opened from other utility windows. Generally, there might be a really complex graph of who can open whom. So each of those classes might need quite a lot of other window classes injected. I'm worried that such usage will go against the suggestion not to inject too many classes at once and become a code smell. Should I use some kind of a service locator object here?"}
{"_id": "253025", "title": "How does std::string in c++ allocate memory?", "text": "I've noticed that the string library doesn't require one to allocate space before writing the input/output. How does the string library allocate that memory dynamically, i know of the 'new' keyword in c++ and 'malloc' in c but when i try something like this, my program stops working.               char* str = new char[strlen(str) + 1];     cin>>str;      i can't get it to work that way, how does the string library work? I also know of vectors in C++ but not a big fan of using them, i would like to know if there's a way to dynamically allocate memory without having to allocate a size before, something close but not as sophisticated as the string.h library. How does the string library get unlimited input from user without the programmer specifying buffer size?"}
{"_id": "59740", "title": "Change management's mind?", "text": "As a programmer working in an insurance office, I have a nasty little management hierarchy which is making programming much harder. At current, our IT department rates a three on The Joel Test, which worries me. I'd like to fix this, but management enforces an insanely aggressive release schedule. Basically every project is due \"yesterday\". As a result basic planning is nearly impossible. Best practices like planning, documentation, and testing are all overlooked on every project we attempt. So far, I've tried a myriad of methods. Everything from trying to frighten them with worst case scenarios, to referring to industry standards for advice on how to proceed on a subject. I'm at the end of my rope. So the question is, what methods have worked for other programmers to change how management views programming. My biggest fear is that it is simply impossible to make them see the light, and the solution is \"work somewhere else\"."}
{"_id": "134700", "title": "Learning to program by immersion?", "text": "I've long realized that the best way to go about learning another (natural) language is by immersion - you can learn Spanish in a classroom, but you'll never be as fluent as someone living in Spain (over an extended period of time who is interested in actually learning Spanish). I was curious if the same was true for people who are new to programming. Now, I know that not all of these are specific to programming, but the general public at least generally associates these things with \"computer geeky\". Would switching to Linux be a good choice? Would using Git (or some other type of VCS) be a good choice? What about joining online forums and IRC? What about writing unit tests or working on larger projects? I know that in the past programming and computer science was introduced in a very sterile environment. You started in a university classroom with a well known curriculum and book (say, _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_ ), say for a few \"hackers\" who started young (and often with BASIC or the like). I've noticed that the actual experience of a software developer is more complicated than just knowing a language (and how to use it), there's a whole lot in between, and a whole lot to learn. Do you think it's better to start programming by immersion? Not necessarily all at once, but rapidly introducing new \"concepts\" that professionals make use of? Or is it better to start slowly and academically?"}
{"_id": "134703", "title": "Can I advance my career in the USA if I lack local networking?", "text": "I'm a web developer with 10 years of experience in the Microsoft stack. I was brought to the US by my company, but my contract has ended. I want to continue pursuing a career in the US, but it seems there's a focus on networking while still in college. Due to my foreign education, my networking occurred elsewhere. However, because of this network effect, it seems most developers in the US only have to apply to one or two jobs throughout their career. Am I handicapped by not having a professional network in the US?"}
{"_id": "164581", "title": "Reading and conditionally updating N rows, where N > 100,000 for DNA Sequence processing", "text": "I have a proof of concept application that uses Azure tables to associate DNA sequences to \"something\". Table 1 is the master table. It uniquely lists every DNA sequence. The PK is a load balanced hash of the RK. The RK is the unique encoded value of the DNA sequence. Additional tables are created per subject. The PK is a load balanced hash, and the RK is the unique value of the DNA sequence. Assume that the quantity of RKs here is many order of magnitudes smaller than the Master table. Each subject has a list of N DNA sequences that have one reference in the Master table, where N is > 100,000. It is possible for many tables to reference the same DNA sequence, but in this case only one entry will be present in the Master table. **My Azure dilemma:** I need to lock the reference in the Master table as I work with the data. I need to handle timeouts, and prevent other threads from overwriting my data as one C# thread is working with the information. Other threads need to realise that this is locked, and move onto other unlocked records and do the work. Ideally I'd like to get some progress report of how my computation is going, and have the option to cancel the process (and unwind the locks). **Question** What is the best approach for this? I'm looking at these code snippets for inspiration: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimoneil/archive/2010/10/05/azure-home- part-7-asynchronous-table-storage-pagination.aspx http://stackoverflow.com/q/4535740/328397"}
{"_id": "161568", "title": "Critique of the IO monad being viewed as a state monad operating on the world", "text": "The `IO` monad in Haskell is often explained as a state monad where the state is the world. So a value of type `IO a` monad is viewed as something like `worldState -> (a, worldState)`. Some time ago I read an article (or a blog/mailing list post) that criticized this view and gave several reasons why it's not correct. But I cannot remember neither the article nor the reasons. Anybody knows? **_Edit:_ The article seems lost, so let's start gathering various arguments here.** I'm starting a bounty to make things more interesting. _Edit:_ The article I was looking for is Tackling the awkward squad: monadic input/output, concurrency, exceptions, and foreign-language calls in Haskell by Simon Peyton Jones. (Thanks to TacTics's answer.)"}
{"_id": "121476", "title": "Hard declarations in Haskell (\u00e1 la C)", "text": "http://susam.in/blog/clumsy-pointers/ How can be solved different declarations puzzles with Haskell? `void x1(int *)` A function which has int * argument and return type void. `void (*x2)(int *)` Pointer to a function which has int * argument and return type void. `void (*x3())(int *)` A function that returns a pointer to a function which has int * argument and return type void. `void (*x4(void (*)(int *)))(int *)` A function which has a pointer to a function that has int * argument and return type void as argument, and returns a pointer to a function which has int * argument and return type void. `void (*x5(void (*[10])(int *)))(int *)` A function which has an array of 10 pointers to functions that has int * argument and return type void as argument, and returns a pointer to a function which has int * argument and return type void. `void (*(*x6)(void (*[10])(int *)))(int *)` A pointer to a function which has an array of 10 pointers to functions that has int * argument and return type void as argument, and returns a pointer to a function which has int * argument and return type void. `char (*(*x7())[])()` Function returning pointer to array[] of pointer to function returning char. `char (*(*x8[3])())[5]` Array[3] of pointer to function returning pointer to array[5] of char."}
{"_id": "163580", "title": "iOS - Unit tests for KVO/delegate codes", "text": "I am going to design a MVC pattern. It could be either designed as a delegate pattern, or a Key-Value-Observing(KVO), to notify the controller about changing models. The project requires certain quality control procedures to conform to those verification documents. My questions:   1. Does delegate pattern fit better for unit testing than KVO?   2. If KVO fits better, would you please suggest some sample codes?"}
{"_id": "11874", "title": "How to you \"sell\" support as an career option", "text": "We find it relatively easy to hire developers to work on various projects. The problem arises when the project is finished but still needs to be supported. We really battle to get people to join the support team. It's seen as dead- end, career-limiting, boring, second-class etc. Currently, we get round this by getting the project team to assign some of their team to the support team for a while. Part of the assignment is to do a \"brain dump\" of the project so that the support team understands it. This works as long as the assignment is only for a fixed period. Trying to hire people to work in support full-time is a problem. There are few applications and the calibre is not particularly high. (The financial reality though is that support can be very lucrative for a company and once you get a reputation, you get approached by other companies to do their support even though you weren't involved in the original development.)"}
{"_id": "176604", "title": "C++ job interview questions?", "text": "I am expecting a job interview for a C++, what kind of questions should I expect? I have been programming with C for 5 years. I know what OOP is and I have been reading about it for some time. But it is most likely I can miss important details because I do not do anything real on C++. Best Regards,"}
{"_id": "176605", "title": "Is Java much harder to \"tweak\" for performance compared with C/C++?", "text": "Does the \"magic\" of the JVM hinder the influence a programmer has over micro- optimisations in Java? I recently read in C++ sometimes the ordering of the data members can provide optimizations (granted, in the microsecond environment) and I presumed a programmer's hands are tied when it comes to squeezing performance from Java? I appreciate a decent algorithm provides greater speed-gains, but once you have the correct algorithm is Java harder to tweak due to the JVM control? If not, could people give examples of what tricks you can use in Java (besides simple compiler flags)."}
{"_id": "176601", "title": "When does \"proper\" programming no longer matter?", "text": "I've been building an android game in my spare time. It's using the libgdx library so quite a bit of the heavy lifting is done for me. While developing, I carelessly selected datatypes for some procedures. I used a hashtable because I wanted something close to an associative array. Human readable key values. In other places to achieve similar things, I use a vector. I know libgdx has vector2 and vector3 classes, but I've never used them. When I come across weird problems and search Stack Overflow for help, I see a lot of people just reaming the questions that use a certain datatype when another one is technically \"proper.\" Like using an ArrayList because it does not require defined bounds versus re-defining an int[] with new known boundaries. Or even something trivial like this:               for(int i = 0; i < items.length; i ++)     {         // do something     }      I know it evaluates item.length on every iteration. However, I also know items will never be more than 15 to 20 items. So should I care if I evaluate items.length on every iteration? I ran some tests to see how the app performs using the method I just described versus the proper, follow the tutorial and use the exact data types suggested by the community. The results: Same thing. Average 45 fps. I opened every app on the phone and galaxy tab. No difference. So I guess my question to you is this: Is there a threshold when it no longer matters to be proper? Is it ok to say - \"so long as it gets the job done, I don't care?\""}
{"_id": "196529", "title": "I should have used a factory method instead of a constructor. Can I change that and still be backwards-compatible?", "text": "**The problem** Let's say I have a class called `DataSource` which provides a `ReadData` method (and maybe others, but let's keep things simple) to read data from an `.mdb` file:               var source = new DataSource(\"myFile.mdb\");     var data = source.ReadData();      A few years later, I decide that I want to be able to support `.xml` files in addition to `.mdb` files as data sources. The implementation for \"reading data\" is quite different for `.xml` and `.mdb` files; thus, if I were to design the system from scratch, I'd define it like this:               abstract class DataSource {         abstract Data ReadData();         static DataSource OpenDataSource(string fileName) {             // return MdbDataSource or XmlDataSource, as appropriate         }     }          class MdbDataSource : DataSource {         override Data ReadData() { /* implementation 1 */ }     }          class XmlDataSource : DataSource {         override Data ReadData() { /* implementation 2 */ }     }      Great, a perfect implementation of the Factory method pattern. Unfortunately, `DataSource` is located in a library and refactoring the code like this would break all existing calls of               var source = new DataSource(\"myFile.mdb\");      in the various clients using the library. Woe is me, why didn't I use a factory method in the first place? * * * **Solutions** These are the solutions I could come up with:   1. Make the DataSource constructor return a subtype (`MdbDataSource` or `XmlDataSource`). That would solve all my problems. Unfortunately, C# does not support that.   2. Use different names:              abstract class DataSourceBase { ... }    // corresponds to DataSource in the example above          class DataSource : DataSourceBase {      // corresponds to MdbDataSource in the example above         [Obsolete(\"New code should use DataSourceBase.OpenDataSource instead\")]         DataSource(string fileName) { ... }         ...     }          class XmlDataSource : DataSourceBase { ... }      That's what I ended up using since it keeps the code backwards-compatible (i.e. calls to `new DataSource(\"myFile.mdb\")` still work). Drawback: The names are not as descriptive as they should be.   3. Make `DataSource` a \"wrapper\" for the real implementation:              class DataSource {         private DataSourceImpl impl;              DataSource(string fileName) {             impl = ... ? new MdbDataSourceImpl(fileName) : new XmlDataSourceImpl(fileName);         }              Data ReadData() {             return impl.ReadData();         }              abstract private class DataSourceImpl { ... }         private class MdbDataSourceImpl : DataSourceImpl { ... }         private class XmlDataSourceImpl : DataSourceImpl { ... }     }      Drawback: _Every_ data source method (such as `ReadData`) must be routed by boilerplate code. I don't like boilerplate code. It's redundant and clutters the code. Is there any _elegant_ solution that I have missed?"}
{"_id": "161694", "title": "How can I multiprocess my program?", "text": "I wrote a program which scrape internet sites. It is pretty straigtforward because it process link one by one. With the limiting factor of the internet speed, the process is rather slow. I wonder, how can I make it multiprocess? The modules of python is confusing. I don't know the difference between subprocess and multiprocess. I've heard that multiprocessing is difficult and ineffective because of the GIL since python 2.x. I am using Python 3.2, so I wonder if things have been improved."}
{"_id": "161699", "title": "Help with DB Structure, vOD site", "text": "I have a video on demand style site that hosts _series_ of videos under different _modules_. However with the way I have designed the database it is proving to be very slow. I have asked this question before and someone suggested indexing, but i cannot seem to get my head around it. But I would like someone to help with the structure of the database here to see if it can be improved. The core table is Videos:               ID       bigint(20) (primary key, auto-increment)     pID      text        airdate  text        title    text        subject  mediumtext     url      mediumtext     mID      int(11)     vID      int(11)         sID      int(11)      pID is a unique 5 digit string to each video that is a shorthand identifier. Airdate is the TS, (stored in text format, right there maybe I should change that to TIMESTAMP AUTO UPDATE), title is self explanatory, subject is self explanatory, url is the hard link on the site to the video, mID is joined to another table for the module title, vID is joined to another table for the language of the video, (english, russian, etc) and sID is the summary for the module, a paragraph stored in an external database. The slowest part of the website is the logging part of it. I store the data in another table called 'Hits':               id      mediumint(10)   (primary key, auto-increment)     progID  text     ts      int(10)      Again, here (this was all made a while ago) but my Timestamp (ts) is an INT instead of ON UPDATE CURRENT TIMESTAMP, which I guess it should be. However This table is now 47,492 rows long and the script that I wrote to process it is very very slow, so slow in fact that it times out. A row is added to this table each time a user clicks 'Play' on the website and then so the progID is the same as the pID, and it logs the php time() timestamp in `ts`. Basically I load the entire database of 'Hits' into an array and count the hits in each day using the TS column. I am guessing (i'm quite slow at all this, but I had no idea this would happen when I built the thing) that this is possibly the worst way to go about this. So my questions are as follows:   1. Is there a better way of structuring the 'Videos' table, is so, what do you suggest?   2. Is there a better way of structuring 'hits', if so, please help/tell me! Or is it the fact that my tables are fine and the PHP coding is crappy?"}
{"_id": "191929", "title": "The problems with Avoiding Smurf Naming classes with namespaces", "text": "I pulled the term smurf naming from here (number 21). To save anyone not familiar the trouble, Smurf naming is the act of prefixing a bunch of related classes, variables, etc with a common prefix so you end up with \"a SmurfAccountView passes a SmurfAccountDTO to the SmurfAccountController\", etc. The solution I've generally heard to this is to make a smurf namespace and drop the smurf prefixes. This has generally served me well, but I'm running into two problems.   1. I'm working with a library with a `Configuration` class. It could have been called `WartmongerConfiguration` but it's in the Wartmonger namespace, so it's just called `Configuration`. I likewise have a `Configuration` class which could be called `SmurfConfiguration`, but it is in the Smurf namespace so that would be redundant. There are places in my code where `Smurf.Configuration` appears alongside `Wartmonger.Configuration` and typing out fully qualified names is clunky and makes the code less readable. It would be nicer to deal with a `SmurfConfiguration` and (if it was my code and not a library) `WartmongerConfiguration`.   2. I have a class called `Service` in my Smurf namespace which could have been called `SmurfService`. `Service` is a facade on top of a complex Smurf library which runs Smurf jobs. `SmurfService` seems like a better name because `Service` without the Smurf prefix is so incredibly generic. I can accept that `SmurfService` was already a generic, useless name and taking away smurf merely made this more apparent. But it could have been named `Runner`, `Launcher`, etc and it would still \"feel better\" to me as `SmurfLauncher` because I don't know what a `Launcher` does, but I know what a `SmurfLauncher` does. You could argue that what a `Smurf.Launcher` does should be just as apparent as a `Smurf.SmurfLauncher`, but I could see `Smurf.Launcher being some kind of class related to setup rather than a class that launches smurfs. If there is an open and shut way to deal with either of these that would be great. If not, what are some common practices to mitigate their annoyance?"}
{"_id": "246821", "title": "Why are F# exceptions generally not suffixed with 'Exception'?", "text": "In .NET, it is idiomatic to suffix exception types with `Exception`. But most, if not all, sources I have seen for custom exception types in F# don't follow this idiom. Most seem to use the suffix `Error`. From F# For Fun and Profit               exception MyFSharpError1 of string     exception MyFSharpError2 of string * int      From Microsoft Documentation*               exception MyError of string      The book 'Expert F# 3.0', co-authored by Don Syme, has an example that doesn't even seem to follow any idiom:               exception BlockedURL of string      Why don't custom exceptions in F# follow the standard idioms for .NET? Is it because of the OCaml heritage? * Link is to Google cache, as I cannot connect to MS at the time of writing."}
{"_id": "191926", "title": "What is the difference, between a server and a mainframe?", "text": "To me, it seems as though \"mainframe\" is a somewhat dated term; is it simply an older synonym of \"server,\" or does it server a purpose more similar to a cluster/supercomputer?"}
{"_id": "191920", "title": "What is a good technique to prevent unauthenticated users from accessing controller methods?", "text": "I have an event(s) controller:               class Event extends CI_Controller{             public function index(){        }             public function foo(){        }             //Shouldn't be able to use this method unless logged in        public function bar(){        }               }      And I'm trying to organise my code so it's fairly tidy and straightforward. Just now I have a controller named `MY_Controller` so that only authenticated users can access the methods(`edit_event()`,`add_event()`) of any controllers extending it. However, some of the methods in my controller need to be accessed by unauthenticated users (such as `get_event()`). What is a good way of handling this? Should I make two completely separate controllers or extend from the basic event controller and add authenticated methods? Previously I've had a manager controller that handled all methods which required authentication such as `add_user`,`delete_user`,`add_doc`,`delete_doc`. But it became blotted very quickly and wasn't easy to update or modify the controller (plus it was messy and didn't seem to follow good programming etiquette)."}
{"_id": "191921", "title": "Converting a user management system to use ajax", "text": "I am currently building a website, which until quite recently was purely PHP. However I am now making trying to have the site use more AJAX, to lessen the page reloads. In PHP I had a lovely object orientated user class with methods for updating data, logging out, and so on. When a user logs on this would be stored as a session variable, and then any page that wishes to do anything the user could just grab it from the session and call it's methods. Clearly this use of php objects and the session doesn't really work with ajax. However I don't want to have to scrap storing the user in an object (which neatens things up somewhat), so don't just want to go down the route of defining a ton of js functions that grab the current username, and use the to do mysql queries through ajax. Am I being stupid here, and what route would people recommend I take."}
{"_id": "67384", "title": "Who Owns an Idea on the Web?", "text": "Let us say that person \"A\" mentioned an idea for a software project on the web (ie. in a forum). Person \"B\" sees this idea and implements it. Can person \"A\" claim ownership of the idea? Has person \"B\" done something illegal by implementing the idea that person \"A\" posted?"}
{"_id": "178183", "title": "TDD in JavaScript", "text": "I'm about to participate in a Coding Kata and I would like to do it in JavaScript. What tools and libraries do I need for TDD in JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "178180", "title": "Strategy for avoiding duplicate object ids for data shared across devices using iCloud", "text": "I have a data intensive iOS app that is not using CoreData nor does it support iCloud synching (yet). All of my objects are created with unique keys. I use a simple `long long` initialized with the current time. Then as I need a new key I increment the value by 1. This has all worked well for a few years with the app running isolated on a single device. Now I want to add support for automatic data sync across devices using iCloud. As my app is written, there is the possibility that two objects created on two different devices could end up with the same key. I need to avoid this possibility. I'm looking for ideas for solving this issue. I have a few requirements that the solution must meet: 1) The key needs to remain a single integral data type. Converting all existing keys to a compound key or to a string or other type would affect the entire code base and likely result in more bugs than it's worth. 2) The solution can't depend on an Internet connection. A user must be able to run the app and add data even with no Internet connection. The data should still resolve properly later when the data syncs through iCloud once a connection is available. I'll accept one exception to this rule. If no other option is available, I may be open to requiring an Internet connection the first time the app's data is initialized. One idea I have been toying around with in my head is logically splitting the integer key into two parts. The high 4 or 5 bits could be used as some sort of device id while the rest represents the actual key. The fuzzy part is figuring out how to come up with non-conflicting device ids that fit in a few bits. This should be viable since I don't need to deal will millions of devices. I just need to deal with the few devices that would be shared by a given iCloud account. I'm open to suggestions. Thanks. Update: After giving this some more thought, I've decided to take the short term hit and do this the right way. Using a GUID is definitely the best long term option for this. Using this approach eliminates the need to do any of the various options to deal with handing out key ranges or translating keys once an Internet connection is made. My original requirement prevented the GUID option because neither SQLite nor iOS support a simple, 128-bit integer type. Since I have a large existing code base that is written such that my keys are simple integer types, it will require a major refactoring of both the code and the database schema. In the end, I've decided that the short term pain of doing this refactoring out weighs the long term issues of dealing with a klunky solution. Taking the hit now gives me a much simpler and less error prone solution that will last the long term."}
{"_id": "178187", "title": "How to add precedence to LALR parser like in YACC?", "text": "_Please note, I am asking about writing LALR parser, **not** writing rules for LALR parser._ ## What I need is... **...to mimic YACC precedence definitions. I don't know how it is implemented, and below I describe what I've done and read so far.** * * * For now I have basic LALR parser written. Next step -- adding precedence, so `2+3*4` could be parsed as `2+(3*4)`. I've read about precedence parsers, however I don't see how to fit such model into LALR. I don't understand two points:   * how to compute when insert parenthesis generator   * how to compute how many parenthesis the generator should create I insert generators when the symbols is taken from input and put at the stack, right? So let's say I have something like this (`|` denotes boundary between stack and input):   1. `ID = 5 | + ...`, at this point I add open, so it gives   2. `ID = < 5 | + ...`, then I read more input    3. `ID = < 5 + | 5 ...` and more    4. `ID = < 5 + 5 | ; ...` and more    5. `ID = < 5 + 5 ; | ...` At this point I should have several reduce moves in normal LALR, but the open parenthesis does not match so I continue reading more input. Which does not make sense. So this was **when** problem. And about **count** , let's say I have such data `< 2 + < 3 * 4 >`. As human I can see that the last generator should create 2 parenthesis, but how to compute this? After all there could be two scenarios:   * `( 2 + ( 3 *4 ))` \\-- parenthesis is used to show the outcome of generator   * or `(2 + (( 3 * 4 ) ^ 5)` because there was more input Please note that in both cases before 3 was open generator, and after 4 there was close generator. However in both cases, after reading `4` I have to reduce, so I have to know what generator \"creates\"."}
{"_id": "255541", "title": "header file to convert speech to text", "text": "I'm doing a project on speech to text with omap processor in utlp kit. There is an API to record my voice and it converts my voice to pcm and is stored in a buffer. I have a few English words which I've recorded and converted into an array now I wanted to know how to compare the spoken word in the form of pcm with the array I have created. Or is there any header file or is it possible to `cprint` the pcm as a text."}
{"_id": "255547", "title": "initializer_list combined with other parameters", "text": "Suppose I have a class which takes a parameter of type `T` and a collection of parameters of type `U` in the constructor. The following solution works:               struct Q     {         Q(T t, std::initializer_list<U> us);     };      Creating an instance of this class would then be: `Q q {t1, {u1, u2, u3, u4} };` But this looks kind of unclean to me. Is there a better solution than this one?"}
{"_id": "224449", "title": "Is good Grammar a prerequisite for your development team?", "text": "I understand that this may be primarily opinion based, but I also think it is an interesting question and would like to hear others' viewpoints on the subject. I recently became the senior developer for a large company, and inherited what I can only describe as a less-than-adequate code-base. Whilst I won't go in to detail as to why most of it was terrible, something that _did_ stand out, was the huge amount of spelling errors. One of the more notable ones, was \"Actual\" spelled \"Acutal\". This was pervasive in functions, classes, stored procedure names, and column names. To me, this is a clear indication of lack of care and due diligence with respect to ones' work. I believe that if code is littered with these kind of things, the programmer in question is not paying attention. I understand there is a caveat if the programmer in question is perhaps not a native-English speaker (in this case, they were) - but simple code reviews should pick these things up. As developers, we spend a lot of time making sure that our work is functionally correct, optimal without over-optimising, and finally - easy for another person to pick up and work with. Code that is littered with spelling errors is a sign (given the caveat mentioned above), that the programmer is not paying attention and that those errors might also indicate a lack of understanding of the problem being _solved_. Much the same way that any spelling errors on a CV is an instant red-flag situation. What do you guys think of this? Should we be bothered about English grammar within the code-base? Does it matter? Is it indicative of the attention-span of the developer, or is there no correlation that could be reliably drawn? (Note: I understand people do program in other countries, and I have used English as an example here. I also respectfully understand that someone whose first language was _not_ English may find it difficult. This question is aimed at those who _should know better_ )"}
{"_id": "111638", "title": "Can I consider interface methods as abstract methods?", "text": "I was thinking about that, and I had some doubts. When I declare an interface, for example:               public interface MyInterface     {        public void method1();        public void method2();     }      Could these interface methods be considered abstract? What I mean is that the concept of an abstract method is: > An abstract method is a method that is declared without an implementation > (without braces, and followed by a semicolon). So, could these methods be considered abstract? They are not \"pure\" abstract methods as I'm not using the `abstract` word, but conceptually, it looks like they are. What can you tell me about it? Thanks."}
{"_id": "252012", "title": "Uses for System.gc() in Java", "text": "In Java, there is a method called `System.gc()`, which calls the garbage collector (or rather, \"suggests\" to the JVM to run the GC). Are there valid reasons to call this method? I'm thinking that it would be evident of bad software design."}
{"_id": "252017", "title": "Avoiding IllegalStateException in MVP when view is not ready yet", "text": "In an effort to improve my coding skills I am trying to make use of the MVP pattern in one of my first Android applications. It is going well but I have hit one issue that I am not sure what is the \"proper\" way to deal with. I have a View class that contains a Google Map object. It also contains a \"spinner\" that allows the user to select among a number of modes for centering the map.   * case 0 is center on a particular user marker   * case 1 is center on the center of the group of markers When the user selects one of these modes the presenter is notified and depending on the mode, works with the model to figure out what new center of the map should be and then tells the View to recenter the map. The problem is that when the device is rotated the whole \"system\" is restarted and one of the first things that happens is the android system sets the spinner to the state it was in before it was rotated. This triggers the recenter method which tries to recenter the map before it is ready. My quick fix for this was to check something in the Model class that should only be true if the map is ready, i.e. there are markers that should have been displayed already.               public void centerOnModeSelected(int position) {         centerOnModeIndex = position;         if (mMapMarkers.size() > 0 ) recenterMap();          }      What I am planning on doing is this: In the presenter constructor, I would have a field               private Boolean mapIsReadyForUpdates = false;      and a method               public void setMapIsReadyForUpdates() {          mapIsReadyForUpdates = true;     }      and then I would have the View call that method after it has added some markers to the map, or whenever I can be sure It is ready to accept the methods that are currently generating the exceptions. I guess the other option is to hold that state in the view itself and then block the calls to the map object based on the view's state. My current methodology is to not have the view maintain state, the presenter is maintaining the state. I am assuming others have dealt with situations in MVP were a view my not be in a state were it can accept calls to particular methods. Can someone help me understand the trade-offs with my 3 solutions, or suggest a better solution? My \"quick fix\" works, but seems like a hack. If there are no markers there is no need to recenter the map, but the fact that markers exist does not mean the map is ready to be updated either. **UPDATE** Since the presenter completely controls the view, it knows when the map is ready to be updated, so all I needed to do was to create a field in the presenter (as mentioned above), and then set it to true, once I was sure I created the map in the view. Then check that field before calling any methods that would try to update the map. I guess this makes perfect sense for the MVP pattern."}
{"_id": "111630", "title": "How should I bring my C++ back up to date with modern developments?", "text": "How should I bring some very rusty C++ up to date, as I'm sure the language and best practices have evolved? I realise this might be close to being off- topic so let my clarify some details. About 10 years ago I think I was quite a good C++ programmer, I'd devoured the Scott Meyers books, I could solve the puzzles in the lint adverts in Dr. Dobbs. I was probably a bit of a language lawyer. I've been programming mostly Java, some python for the last 10 years so my OO skills are still up to scratch. But having joined a company where C++ is common I've realized I have to admit to myself I am both really rusty, and there are language features now which are either new or a lot more common than I remember - things like namespaces etc. I realise reading and writing code (especially pairing) is a good way to get up to speed, but is there any other resource people would recommend in this to give me an accelerated head start. Book? Web-page? Tutorials? To summarize:   * Recommendations for C++ specific refresher resources?   * Not OO/programming generally.   * Things in addition to just reading and writing code."}
{"_id": "141592", "title": "Are there any reasons not to use distributed version control in a corporate setting?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What does SVN do better than git? In an effort to push coworkers toward a distributed VCS, I'd like to first understand why it is **not** a good change from a practical perspective. Why might a centralized VCS be preferred over a distributed one in a corporate setting?"}
{"_id": "154960", "title": "if you were asked to answer to the question \" what is the difference between the English language and a programming language\" how you will respond?", "text": "Basically in both cases you have:   * a well defined vocabulary   * a syntax to respect   * they both can express a business logic   * they can define semantics I don't think that will be fair to say \"A programming language is only useful for a PC\" or something like that. I just can't find a real answer, but we can feel the difference, it's strange."}
{"_id": "154966", "title": "ORM has schema to generate classes, does the reverse exist?", "text": "In Entity-Framework, you can create a DB schema, and then generate your ORM classes. Is there any software that does this in reverse? For example you create a few classes that have relationships, and software generates a database schema with the relevant primary and foreign key relationships?"}
{"_id": "154968", "title": "For a Javascript library, what is the best or standard way to support extensibility", "text": "Specifically, I want to support \"plugins\" that modify the behavior of parts of the library. I couldn't find much information on the web about this subject. But here are my ideas for how a library could be extensible.   1. The library exports an object with both public and \"protected\" functions. A plugin can replace any of those functions, thus modifying the library's behavior. Advantages of this method are that it's simple and that the plugin's functions can have full access to the library's \"protected\" functions. Disadvantages are that the library may be harder to maintain with a larger set of exposed functions and it could be hard to debug if multiple plugins are involved (how to know which plugin modified which function?).   2. The library provides an \"add plugin\" function that accepts an object with a specific interface. Internally, the library will use the plugin instead of it's own code if appropriate. With this method, the internals of the library can be rearranged more freely as long as it still supports the same plugin interface. This could also support having different plugin interfaces to modify different parts of the library. A disadvantage of this method is that the plugins may have to re-implement code that is already part of the library since the library's internal functions are not exported.   3. The library provides a \"set implementation\" function that accepts an object inherited from a specific base object. The library's public API calls functions in the implementation object for any functionality that can be modified and the base implementation object includes the core functionality, with both external (to the API) and internal functions. A plugin creates a new implementation object, which inherits from the base object and replaces any functions it wants to modify. This combines advantages and disadvantages of both the other methods."}
{"_id": "28054", "title": "What languages should I know if I'm interested in building web applications?", "text": "I'm interested in developing for the web and I'm curious what languages should I know besides html, css, javascript, php/python/ruby. I don't know much about c# or java to make a decision whether to learn them or not, are they used much in the field I'm interested in? What other technologies should I look into ?"}
{"_id": "42142", "title": "What are technical writing principles?", "text": "As a programmer, technical writing is an important skill to me. I get a lot of fun from it. I also learned from some good technical articles and books. What I need are technical writing principles or rules to refresh my mind. Any relevant article, tutorial, and presentation are welcome, and your own experience will also be great!"}
{"_id": "218570", "title": "How to properly deprecate methods in Java?", "text": "Today I lost a method that I was using since my co-worker redefined it to take its superclass instead. So after synchronizing with the repository I had trouble. Would it had been better in this case to use some annotation like `@Deprecated` instead of removing the method so that I would get an error message telling my that the method was deprecated? Can a version control system or an IDE work around situations like this by deprecating methods instead of deleting them?"}
{"_id": "151301", "title": "How do I know if I am using Scrum methodologies?", "text": "When I first started at my current job, my purpose was to rewrite a massive excel-VBA workbook-application to C# Winforms because it was thought that the new C# app will fix all existing problems and have all the new features for a perfect world. If it were a direct port, in theory it would be _easy_ as i just need to go through _all_ the formulas, conditional formatting, validations, VBA etc. to understand it. However, that was not the case. Many of the new features are tightly dependant on business logic which I am unfamiliar with. As a solo programmer, the first year was spent solely on deciphering the excel workbook and writing the C# app. In theory, I had the business people to \"help\" me specify requirements, how GUI looks and work, and testing of the app etc; but in practice it is like a contant tsunami of feature creep. At the beginning of the second year I managed to convince the management that this is not going anywhere. I made them start from scratch with the excel-VBA. I have this \"issue log\" saved on the network, each time they found something they didn't like about the excel-VBA app, they will write it in there. I check the log daily and consolidate issues (in my mind) mainly into 2 groups: (1) requires massive change. (2) can be fixed in current version. For massive change issues, I make a copy of the latest excel-VBA and give it a new version number, then work on it whenever I can. For current version fixes, I make the changes in a few days to a week, and then immediately release it. I also ensure I update the same change in any in-progress massive change future versions. This has gone on for about 4 months and I feel it works great. I made many releases and solved many real issues, also understood the business logic more and more. However, my boss (non-IT trained) thinks what I am doing are just adhoc changes and that i am not looking at the \"bigger picture\". I am struggling to convince my boss that this works. So I hope to formalise my approach and maybe borrow a buzzword to confuse him. Incidentally, I read about Agile and SCRUM, about backlog and sprints. But it's all very vague to me still. **QUESTION (finally):** I want to tell him that this is SCRUM! But I want to hold my breath first and ask whether my current approach is considered SCRUM or SCRUM-like? How can I make it more SCRUM-like? Note that I have only myself, there's no project leader or teams."}
{"_id": "164056", "title": "Review before or after code commit, which is better?", "text": "Traditionally we performed code review before commit, I had an argument with my colleague today, who preferred code review after commit. First, here's some background,   1. We have some experienced developers and we also have new hires with almost zero programming experience.   2. We'd like to perform fast and short iterations to release our product.   3. All team members are located at the same site. The advantages of code review before commit I've learned:   1. Mentor new hires   2. Try to prevent errors, failures, bad designs early in the development cycle   3. Learn from others   4. Knowledge backup if someone quits But I've also had some bad experiences:   1. Low efficiency, some changes may be reviewed over days   2. Hard to balance speed and quality, especially for newbies   3. One team member felt distrust As to post-commit review, I know little about this, but the thing I'm most worried about is the risk of losing control due to lack of review. Any opinions? **UPDATE:**   1. We're using Perforce for VCS   2. We code and commit in the same branches (trunk or bug fixing branches)   3. To improve efficiency, we've tried to split code into small changes. We've also tried some live dialog review, but not everyone followed the rule. This is another problem though."}
{"_id": "28651", "title": "How to find a programming mentor?", "text": "I decided to learn programming. I've been reading SO for few days, and I think I will start with C++, as I read some articles. I am aware of loops, arrays, program logic and objects a little and I need someone to look me over and help me with small questions I get when doing my first projects. So here is the question - where do I find such guy? I don't got any friends who program and all. EDIT: 2 years later, I am still looking for mentor. I did not actively code just started 3 months again. I work on Objective-C and iOS programming and game programming with Cocos2d. If you want to become my mentor, drop me a or comment."}
{"_id": "124526", "title": "Finding a Programming \"Mentor\"", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to find programming mentor? I've been programming for a while. I've read several books, have tried out several languages (Perl, Ruby, Python, C++, .NET, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL), and have taken tons of advice and I feel like I have greatly progressed, fast. But I feel like I would've learned more if I had a mentor. Well... not a tmentor. More of someone that can guide me, and somebody that I can ask if I had a problem. Yes, StackOverflow is great, Programmers-SE is amazing, and there are huge community's for languages, but it isn't the same as having a \"mentor\". So, where can I find one? Like I said, I'm not looking for someone who will teach me everything, or somebody who I will have to meet once a week. Just emails here-and-there. Nothing major. Of course I would _like_ it to be free. But where and who? Is there a website or organization that can help me? Somebody you know? Thanks so much!"}
{"_id": "195015", "title": "Do all programmers going through a steep learning curve?", "text": "I don't have many peers who work as a programmer or at least who are social enough to share some parts of their precious knowledge, so I have little to none to compare with. I tend to learn new things by myself, but each time I started to learn A, it got hooked up with B, which ends up hooked up with X, etc. In the end, I learn almost nothing but that programming for a newbie is painful. The first part of the learning curve seems insanely steep for a beginner like me which at some point seems to be irrelevant. Am I a bad programmer to have experienced this? Or is there a fellow programmer out there who has experienced this and survived, and care enough to share how? Edit : Since it marked as duplicate, I checked the question link given. The only thing that is similar between my question and the given one, is we both is quite alone in our programming field. But what I asked is this, is all programmer going through this steep learning curve? And if they do (which means I am not necessarily a bad programmer), how do they survived through it?"}
{"_id": "94898", "title": "Defining a standard", "text": "How would you go about defining a standard? I am defining a protocol for a sort of thing that does not exist yet and I would like to create an RFC for it, and use a well-known port number provided by IANA. How do I start?"}
{"_id": "1985", "title": "How to explain programming to a non-programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you share your craft with non programmers? I tend to think that I might get such a question in the future... How should I answer to it in layman terms?"}
{"_id": "84120", "title": "What to teach a 12-year-old VB programmer about programming in general", "text": "I am mentoring a 12-year old in programming. He has started to do some VB (.net) (2008) and is making simple WinForms programs, but does not get some of the basic concepts (loops, functions, datatypes) Coming form a C/C++ background, I don't know where to start I don't think he's is up to c/c++ or java quite yet"}
{"_id": "13279", "title": "How do you portray to non programmers what programming involves?", "text": "I get casually asked a lot to take a couple days to teach someone how to program. Most people really think they can learn what I know in a few days. When I tell them I have been doing this for many years and I can't teach them to be a programmer in a few days, they look at me like I am being a jerk and just don't want to help them. I think this is because when I say I am a programmer, or I programmed _this_. I truly think most people do not realize that I mean I wrote the code that makes it up. I think that they think I mean I configured it, like when you say, \"I programmed my VCR.\" Does anyone else think this? Whats your experience?"}
{"_id": "104009", "title": "I have a hard time explaining what I learn", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  How do you share your craft with non programmers?   >  How to explain programming to a non-programmer?   >  How do I become more articulate? I love programming and I like to learn everything I read about the subject. However, I'm having a hard time explaining what I've learned to someone who does not know anything about programming or even to a fellow programmer. There is a quote by Albert Einstein that goes something like this:                If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.       or                If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.      Does anyone else find themselves in the situation I'm in? This can also affect my job interviews; when someone asks me to explain some concepts that I know but can't put it well enough in words, they might think I'm not well prepared when in fact I am but I'm crippled by my inability to explain myself. How can I overcome this and be more articulate?"}
{"_id": "1386", "title": "How do you share your craft with non programmers?", "text": "Sometimes I feel like a musician who can't play live shows. Programming is a pretty cool skill, and a very broad world, but a lot of it happens \"off camera\"- in your head, in your office, away from spectators. You can of course talk about programming with other programmers, and there is peer programming, and you do get to create something that you can show to people, but when it comes to explaining to non programmers what is it that you do, or how was your day at work, it's sort of tricky. How do you get the non programmers in your life to understand what is it that you do? NOTE: this is not a repeat of Getting non-programmers to understand the development process, because that question was about managing client expectations."}
{"_id": "216976", "title": "Can Dependency Injection used as an alternative to Reflection for creating instances", "text": "There is a piece of .net C# code which use Reflection to create an instance using `Activator.CreateInstance()`. This is an old piece of code and runs on the top of Enterprise Library. Is it a better idea to replace this with Dependency Injection to create objects? Is there any Pro's and Con's for either approach?"}
{"_id": "129813", "title": "LUA vs Shell scripting vs C for cgi-scripting on embedded devices", "text": "I am going to try CGI scripting for implementing a web based Graphical User Interface on an embedded device. What advantages does LUA scripting have over shell scripting or C for implementing dynamic HTML files? Which one do you think is easy-to-use from developer's perspective. My GUI will comprise of some form based HTML pages. Some times, I would like a C program to run corresponding to an action performed on the GUI and then display result of the program to the user on GUI. Will shell scripting suffice in such a scenario or will I 'have to' use LUA? I have some experience with shell scripting actually."}
{"_id": "114376", "title": "VPN or TLSv1 for securing a programs protocol from field device to mainframe", "text": "I am working on a product that requires devices to exists anywhere in the world hooked up to the internet though cell modems or on WLAN lines which communicates to a server(s) that exists elsewhere in the world. _When deigning the networking portion of the program i cant figure what the best option is for securing the communication between the server and end device._ From my searches iv'e come up with two options. **Option 1:** _Using a host to host vpn connection between the two devices._ **Pros:** VPN software seems to be well tested and does not require extra programming for the network protocol. The IT department is more comfortable with it because of using software that is already tested and they comfortable with vpn. **Cons:** Since my end devices are linux on OMAP platforms cross compiling the vpn software if not already done could be tricky. Dealing with firewalls and routers behind the end devices network. Setup of the connection can be tricky. **Option 2:** _Implementing the TLSv1 protocol in my program to deal with the encryption._ **Pros:** Does not require extra software to be running on the device. Only relies on the encryption libraries as a dependency. Don't have to worry about dealing with nats and firewalls because the protocol will only require one tcp port to be open. **Cons:** Extra coding to the network software. IT is skeptical because our program is responsible for securing the protocol. **FYI:** For implementing the TLSv1 i would use http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/"}
{"_id": "252934", "title": "What should be done on git while migrating new distribution and packet manager?", "text": "In the project I am working, we are using Freebsd and we are creating our software packages for it. Now we are planning to change distribution to Centos and rpm for packet manager. Since our codes are not platform independent, we have to make many change on it. Also we will continue to use freebsd until migration is completed. What is the best git usage way for this type of migration. Should we use a new branch or a new repository?"}
{"_id": "114370", "title": "Softpedia published some of my open source projects \u2014 how to react?", "text": "_(FYI: I've just moved this question over from Stackoverflow on recommendation.)_ I just received a few emails, informing me that softpedia.com has added some of my \"products\" to their \"database of scripts, code snippets and web applications\". My products are in this case some smaller open source projects, which I have hosted and published on github. Now I'm wondering how to react to this. This site is indirectly making money of my free work through ads on three pages before the actual download. They also seem to \"invent\" version numbers and I can't find out if they're hosting the latest or all versions of my projects. \u2014 I can see how this could lead to problems in the future, since I don't control what's \"the latest\" everywhere. On the other hand I don't mind some extra publicity. I want as many people as possible to know about the projects, use them, fork them and hopefully improve them. The projects in questions are really fairly small, but this might not be the case in the future for me and/or other people reading this question. I'm sure that this must have happened to others around here. What's your opinion? Should I try to get the downloads removed? * * * **Update 1** I've requested the removal and mentioned that I don't feel that Softpedia can provide the right environment for this kind of project. Their team got back to me instantly with a friendly email saying, that they'll remove the links for now: > If you are worried that your projects won't be updated, then I must tell you > that I have them bookmarked in my RSS reader, so any version changes will be > forwarded to me when needed. So I promise I'll keep your script up to date > as soon as I see an update in the repository. I have to say, that I appreciate this kind of reaction quite a lot and so I sent them another email, describing in more detail what I'm worried about and what bothers me. I also stated, that I'm aware that my license clearly permits them to host the projects in any case, but that I'd be even happy if they would host the projects as long as they could convince me of a few details and maybe make some small changes to the way the projects are represented. \u2014 Let's see where this goes. * * * **Update 2** After discussing with their contact and requesting some changes regarding display of version (they had given the possibility to do so) and authorship they put the projects back up on their site. All in all a positive and definitely interesting experience."}
{"_id": "160778", "title": "Advice sought: highly technical app idea - do I employ someone or do it myself?", "text": "I'm a TV producer in London but also an enthusiastic amateur coder and web designer. I started with VB6 and then moved onto C/PHP/Obj-C. I've got a couple apps in the app store, I mess around a lot with Arduino, create php CMS from scratch - but I've certainly never worked professionally as a coder. I've got an iPad app idea which I'd like to spend time and money, but it involves animation and modelling, creating a timeline UI, working with multiple camera views. Put simply, it's a complex OpenGL app, well beyond my skills. _To be clear, this isn't a zombie slasher or fantasy adventure clone - it's an app I know that thousands of well-paid TV industry pros and media students would want to spend money on._ I'd like to know from those with experience of taking a complex app from idea to delivery, whether themselves or through a dev agency, if you genuinely believe an app is worth building should you spend 12 months learning the skills and hacking early versions together - or should you get serious and employ people with money raised from various sources. Perhaps a Kickstarter? With the latter in mind, what is a reasonable amount of money you would pay for a pair of programmers to achieve this, in say six months? Standard pay for a competent opengl coder? It may well be a case of using out-of-uni programmers and splitting the company with them, plus modest expenses. I think I'm in a fortunate position that I can at least contribute to the project, through graphics, audio, marketing - just not the real heavy stuff. Any advice genuinely appreciated, Mike."}
{"_id": "160777", "title": "Django application strategy", "text": "I have been working a while on a Django project which has been growing a bit lately. I have been think a bit about what strategy to use to make it easier to handle. One thing I would like to get some input on would be if I should split my application into several smaller applications. That would make my view and model files smaller and separate some of the concerns. One thing that bothers me with this is that in my applications I would have several helper methods that will be used across applications. Also some models will also have to be shared/used across applications. Would this make sense? This doesn't go well with the separation of concerns I was hoping to achieve by splitting my app in several smaller apps. What would be a good approach for sharing helper methods, models etc. across applications?"}
{"_id": "160771", "title": "What degree of low-level programming can be achieved with Languages like Go?", "text": "Go and D provide garbage collection, and yet they claim to be system programming languages. What degree of low-level programming can be achieved with languages having garbage collection? For low-level programming, I mean close to the hardware or being able to:   1. Runs directly in limited memory, with no latency, and performs well. An example would be operating system kernels.    2. It runs on a software base, but still has to perform well. An example would be system utilities."}
{"_id": "160773", "title": "Why this code create object as interface?", "text": "In am reading Spring in Action (3rd edition) and here a snippet from it:               ApplicationContext ctx=new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(\"springidol.xml\");                 Performer performer=(Performer)ctx.getBean(\"poeticDuke\");                 performer.perform();      It doesn't has any problem,however, when the author introduce the init-method and destroy-method:               <bean id=\"poeticDuke\"             class=\"com.springinaction.springidol.PoeticJuggler\"             init-method=\"turnOnLights\"             destroy-method=\"turnOffLights\">      Somehow the output only got the init-method but not the destroy-method. Then I realized that the context call destroy-method upon its close and I tried to code as following:                   ApplicationContext ctx=new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(\"springidol.xml\");                     Performer performer=(Performer)ctx.getBean(\"poeticDuke\");                     performer.perform();     ctx.close();      It doesn't compile because the interface ApplicationContext doesn't have the method close. It only work as following:               ClassPathXmlApplicationContext ctx=new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(\"springidol.xml\");                     Performer performer=(Performer)ctx.getBean(\"poeticDuke\");                     performer.perform();     ctx.close();      Why did the author wrote it that way?"}
{"_id": "207319", "title": "Accurate calculation of a raster image's boundary length", "text": "I have a rasterized image that contains two colors: white and black. The black portion is entirely connected and looks like a big blob. Is there a good way to estimate the length of the boundary between the regions? One method I have considered is to simply count how many \"edges\" of the rasterized grid have a different color on each side. However, for e.g. a purely diagonal line, this will overestimate the distance of the boundary by a factor of sqrt(2). Is there a better method for estimating the boundary length which does not have this problem?"}
{"_id": "207311", "title": "Should I use JavaFx properties?", "text": "I'm usually very careful to keep my Model, View, and Controller code separate. The thing is JavaFx properties are so convenient to bind them all together. The issue is that it makes my entire code design dependent on JavaFx, which I feel I should not being doing. I should be able to change the view without changing too much of the model and controller. So should I ignore the convenience of JavaFx properties, or should I embrace them and the fact that it reduces my codes flexibility."}
{"_id": "207312", "title": "Is creating database index part of design, implementation or optimisation process?", "text": "There are a few questions around this subject:   * Is creating all indexes at the start (design) over engineering?   * In reality, I've added indexes after performance issues were found and we 'explain plan' and add indexes as needed (i.e. not for all relationships). Should I just skip creating indexes before it's needed because performance issues will show up anyway and probably the indexes that's already been created aren't being used?   * Should indexes be treated as part of requirement/specification? Sometimes I see performance requirements, which is usually vague or random. If they're part of specification, then should managing indexes be part of implementation? I want to make it a bit clearer and more background. In development, usually the different phases involve different kinds of people (e.g. architects, seniors and juniors). It'd be unusual for juniors to be responsible for the design, for example. So, when some tasks overlap, it becomes unclear who's responsible if, for example, a query takes 2 second. Defining development phases and responsibilities are also important for non- programmers, e.g. project managers or product owners, because they are needed for planning and costing. A project manager might want to higher an architect to do all database related task only at the start and for a short time. If after product launch, it's found that performance is poor, the PM would like to know who's responsible. I hope you get the idea."}
{"_id": "239201", "title": "How do you let a user choose the app database location?", "text": "Writing software for a client, and one of their requirements was that the user be able to specify where the application database is stored, be it on the local network or in an online repository. I can let them choose where to put it, but how do I store that information in the application? I guess I don't understand how to persist changes in an application that is already deployed. This is my first piece of software, so I've never been through the deployment process. Written in C# for Windows."}
{"_id": "148035", "title": "What metrics should be used to measure memory consumption of a program for performance test?", "text": "I am asked to provide performance statistics for a program, one of them being memory consumption. I noticed that in perfmon or in .NET API there is apparently many variable related to memory usage, such as private bit, working set, page file, etc. What are the difference, and which one should we use for measuring performance? If the vendor claims that the memory consumption of the program is improved in version X, what value can be used to validate this?"}
{"_id": "148037", "title": "Drawbacks to entirely Ajax driven CMS", "text": "I'll try to keep this question as specific as possible.. I'm about to start building an API for an upcoming project. I'm currently thinking PHP/Symfony2. It will be a farily simple HTTP-based api for CRUD on the site's models (and relationships between them). There will also need to be a CMS for users. Traditionally when building a CMS (if it's bespoke) I'd just use some standard MVC based approach, but for this particular project I'm thinking I could build it using Ajax calls to the API that will already exist. My question is essentially to decide which way to go, but to keep it specific I'd like to know what drawbacks there might be. In favour of this, it should reduce duplication of controller logic, why have `/api/model/save/` and `/cms/model/save` doing very similar things? Currently the only two drawbacks I can think of are that:   * It may be hard to support a wide range of browsers. For this particular scenario, this shouldn't be a problem - but who knows what might happen in the future?   * Some parts of the site would require traditional PHP logic or an extension to the API (for any parts not part of the core API itself), for example to handle admin authentication. Is there anything I've missed, some overwhelming reason not to take this approach?"}
{"_id": "44657", "title": "How to find a scaling expert?", "text": "The web application is in ASP.NET and Sql Server and is growing much faster than anticipated. Where can I find an expert who has previously had experience of going from a small website to solution used daily by thousands? Someone who can review our system and give us advice on performance improvements and updating our coding practices."}
{"_id": "220025", "title": "Linux kernel development", "text": "I am trying to understand the linux kernel and there is one thing that is puzzling me for quite a while. As linux is used across variety of platforms (like smartphones,desktop,supercomputers etc) and also on various architectures, so does the same kernel code is used by all or a different one and also since it includes some assembly codes so it must be architecture specific. so do the developers in linux community apply patches to a single kernel or there are multiple versions of kernel each for different architecture and platforms?"}
{"_id": "220022", "title": "What is the most elegant way to handle a loop between two systems integrated remotely by webhook events?", "text": "So I'm developing this small engine that does a remote integration between two systems in order to sync data, both systems have webhooks for create & update events, and both have APIs (one is REST one is XML), so it is an event-based integration rather than a typical batch one. My problem is that if System A creates an entry and fires a webhook that the engine catches, if the engine doesn't find it, then it creates a comparable entry in System B which triggers a create webhook, which then the engine catches as a new request... and you see my problem. Same scenario could happen for an update webhook (actually this one is more likely to happen). I'm guessing I'm not the first person on the earth to encounter this problem, so I'm wondering what would be an elegant way of handling this given that I cannot modify the APIs, nor inject custom metadata in the messages that could help me catch the loop. FYI, the integration is between two issue tracking systems."}
{"_id": "24987", "title": "What exactly is the build number in MAJOR.MINOR.BUILDNUMBER.REVISION", "text": "What I think about Build Numbers is that whenever a new nightly build is created, a new BUILDNUMBER is generated and assigned to that build. So for my 7.0 version application the nightly builds will be 7.0.1, 7.0.2 and so on. Is it so? Then what is the use of a REVISION after the build number? Or is the REVISION part being incremented after each nightly build? I am a little confused here... do we refer to each nightly build as a _BUILD_? The format is mentioned here: AssemblyVersion - MSDN"}
{"_id": "127228", "title": "Should I go to a job interview even though I know I won't get it?", "text": "Here is the opportunity I've been given. I'm currently a freelance web developer and completely self-taught. I have but an NVQ in Business Administration. However, I am passionate and committed to programming and building websites and applications, of which I've been doing for a good 3-4 years. Instead of being offered an interview, I've been offered a day trial for what could turn into a 6 month contract. The pay is good, but I'm more thirsty for the commercial experience. Thing is, I know there are gaps in my knowledge. I lack fundamental programming concepts, I never studied computer science and I use google to find optimal solutions to problems I come across. I feel more experienced programmers in the team will see this almost instantly. But will they sympathize having hopefully been at my level once? I'm thirsty to grow and I've spent a good 15 hours a day working in web development and honing my skills - but they are very particular. I know html, css, javascript, jquery, ajax, php, git...I'm a good developer but I don't think I'm good enough for someone to pay me \u00a3100/day. The way the trial works is during the first half of the day I am introduced to the team and the different departments. During the second half, in the afternoon, I am given a 'live task', a duty I'd perform if I'd be working there. I already know in advance it has something to do with converting a word document into html using php..it seems like they are trying to bend the language to do something it isn't meant to do, and the first place I'd start is Google to research php libraries. Advice? Should I go even though I know I probably won't make it past the first day and probably embarrass myself, just for the experience? Will this help me grow as a programmer? I don't want to waste people's time. I will still give it my all. Appreciate input from people who have been in similar situations."}
{"_id": "61058", "title": "how to deal with clients who don't know any programming skills", "text": "Have you ever handled a Client who doesn't know anything about programming or no technical skills who doesn't even know how to turn on a Computer? What he only have is the idea, which is a great one, but doesn't know how to implement it so he hired some programmers to implement his idea. Some over excited programmers likes the idea and eager to implement it without thinking of any possibilities that a problem might occur. Now both parties (Client and developer) have agreed on something after plotting a timeframe of the project and benifits. And then there comes the part where you are almost finish the project, and your client comes across with another idea and wants to implement it. And as a developer you know the possibilities of implementing that, and you found out that it would destroy 50% of what you've done and needs to extend the timeframe for atleast 50% of the one you agreed on. As for the clients side, it is just a little feature that needs to be added, and because I'm nearly done with everything, he thought it is just a brick that needs to be placed on the wall, unfortunately that brick is in the middle of the wall."}
{"_id": "127225", "title": "100K curl requests", "text": "I am using curl_multi_exec to process over 100K requests. I do 100 requests at a time because curl_multi_exec can only handle 100 requests at a time to eventually get to 100K requests. We have added multiple servers to this system to spread the load [we are using load balancing]. What is the best way to have curl handle 100K requests and make use of these additional servers? What is the downside (other than time) of handling that many requests on one server? How can I use the additional servers to help handle those requests? I was thinking about having each server handle a batch of requests (like one server handles 500 requests, another 500, another 500, etc.. To elaborate- basically, we are using curl to send out over 100K requests to third party servers. The problem with only using 1 server is that there is a memory limit in the number of requests 1 server can handle. So we decided to add additional servers, but we are not sure how to design this system to use curl to handle that many requests.. The third party server is an API like Facebook; they are aware that we will be making that many requests to their servers. For load balancing, we use Rackspace cloud server, basically the load balancer directs incoming requests to separate servers."}
{"_id": "110274", "title": "What the difference of Skills between a Dev Senior and a Software Architect?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Whats the difference between a Software Architect, a Software Engineer, and > a Software Developer (Programmer)? I have had many discussions about the role of a software architect and did not reach a conclusion. So I decided to change the question. What the difference of Skills between a Dev Senior and a Software Architect?"}
{"_id": "39284", "title": "Whats the difference between a Software Architect, a Software Engineer, and a Software Developer (Programmer)?", "text": "I'm reading through the CNN article about the highest paying jobs in America. A software architect is listed as #1. A software engineer listed as #9. And a software developer (programmer) is listed at #35. I think it's valid to replace computer scientist with programmer, right? Prior to this I always saw \"Software Engineers\" as being the title for experienced programmers and team leads. But where then does a \"Software Architect\" fit in and what exactly do they do? I read the CNN descriptions but they don't really satisfy me so I'm assuming I can get more thorough and experienced descriptions from the awesome user base here. Thanks in advance for any and all responses received."}
{"_id": "215996", "title": "\"Do it right, against customer's wishes\" - how is it called?", "text": "We know the optimal situation of negotiating corrections of specifications with the customer, getting the specs to do what the client wanted, not what they said or thought they wanted. That's negotiating, explaining. Sometimes, we're unable to convince the client. We're forced to produce broken as designed. This, called \"demonology\" by merit of mages summoning demons and demons fulfilling their wishes very literally, causing the mage's demise as result, is another approach that will leave the customer very dissatisfied once they realize their error, and of course try to pin the blame on the developer. Now I just faced a very different approach: the customer created simple specs that fail to account for some critical caveat, and is completely unwilling to fix them, admit the obvious errors and accept suggested corrections. The product made to these specs will be critically broken, and possibly might cost human lives. Still, it's too late to drop the contract entirely. The contract has punitive clauses for that, ones we can't really accept. The boss' decision? We do the work right and lie to the customer that we did it according to the specs. The algorithms in question are hidden deep enough under the surface, the product will do the work just fine, won't fail in the caveat situation, and unless someone digs too deep, they will never discover we didn't break it as requested. Is there some common name for this tactics of execution of specs?"}
{"_id": "215998", "title": "Display large amount of data to client through pagination", "text": "I have a web application in which i need to show a big number of data or records for clients. Now i 'll use pagination but i was wondering should I:   1. Load all the data once then pagination, sorting and sarching 'll be easy..But it 'll takes big time(using local DB it takes up to 9 sec.)   2. Or each time i show new page(from the pagination) i make a new request to server and then new request to DB to get the next records..But then what if the client click on `Prev` button, i 'll make a new request to get data that I had previously..Should i cach data that are loaded before and how if that's good technique?  So load all data once or make a new request every time i need data that maybe have been loaded before. I'm using ASP.NET MVC SPA with durandaljs and knockoutjs"}
{"_id": "120792", "title": "Who is responsible for the development of Java?", "text": "When I google about Java, the companies most mentioned are Sun, Oracle and IBM. I know that Oracle bought Sun, and the Java official website is Oracle domain, so I can assume that Oracle is the official Java developer. But after a little research, IBM also provides many tutorials and documents about Java. Why is this? Is IBM also involved in some development of Java?"}
{"_id": "120791", "title": "audio and video data in RTP", "text": "Suppose a user wants to transmit both audio and video to another user, whose formats are AMR for audio and H.264 for video. Does the user have to transmit audio and video packets always separately? Meaning that it is not possible to mix audio and video within the same RTP packed, is that correct? If this is true I guess the RTP protocol will need to know the SSRC of both audio and video to be able to check the sync of the two streams."}
{"_id": "223299", "title": "Compound container for storing output from a parser", "text": "Consider a hierarchical structure like this               directory         [              [item_0;item_1;...;item_n]              [item_0;item_1;inner_directory[...];item_m]              other_directory                  [...]         ]      A directory contains   * An array of strings (delimited by ';' in input data)   * A map from name to sub-directories (the name of the directory is followed by '[')   * An array of unnamed sub-directories The directory can be described by this class:               class Directory         {         public:             //Appropriate operations         private:             std::vector<std::string> items;             std::map<std::string, Directory> named_dirs;             std::vector<Directory> unnamed_dirs;         };      However:   * The Directory class requires three sets of operations, resulting in a large class definition   * A copy operation will be recursive Can the data be stored in a better way avoiding at least the first point?"}
{"_id": "151872", "title": "On mobile is there a reason why processes are often short lived and must persist their state explicitly?", "text": "Most mobile platforms (such as Android, iOS, Windows phone 7 and I believe the new WinRT) can kill inactive application processes under memory pressure. To prevent this from affecting the user experience applications are expected to save and restore their state as their process is killed and restarted. Having application processes killed in this way makes the developers job harder. On various occasions I've seen a mobile app that would:   * Return to the welcome screen each time I switch back to it.   * Crash when I switch back to it (possibly accessing some state that no longer exists after the process was killed)   * Misbehave when I switch back to it (sometimes requiring a restart or tasks killer to fix)   * Otherwise misbehave in some hard to reproduce way (e.g. android service killed and restarted at the _wrong_ time) I don't really understand why these mobile operating systems are designed to kill tasks in this way especially since it makes application development more difficult and error prone. Desktop operating systems don't kill processes like that. They swap out unused pages of memory to mass storage. Is there a reason why the same approach isn't used on mobile? Mobile hardware is only a few years behind PC hardware in term of performance. I'm sure there are very good reasons why mobile operating systems are designed this way. If you can point me to a paper or blog post that explain these reasons or can give me some insight I'd very much appreciate it."}
{"_id": "151873", "title": "scalablity of Scala over Java", "text": "I read an article that says Scala handles concurrency better than Java. http://www.theserverside.com/feature/Solving-the-Scalability-Paradox-with- Scala-Clojure-and-Groovy > ...the scalability limitation is confined specifically to the Java > programming language itself, but it is not a limitation of the Java platform > as a whole... > > The scalability issues with Java aren't a new revelation. In fact, plenty of > work has been done to address these very issues, with two of the most > successful projects being the programming languages named Scala and > Clojure... > > ...Scala is finding ways around the problematic thread and locking paradigm > of the Java language... How is this possible? Doesn't Scala use Java's core libraries which brings all the threading and locking issues from Java to Scala?"}
{"_id": "151877", "title": "questions on a particular algorithm", "text": "Upon searching for a fast primr algorithm, I stumbled upon this:                 public static boolean isP(long n) {          if (n==2 || n==3) return true;          if ((n&0x1)==0 || n%3==0 || n<2) return false;          long root=(long)Math.sqrt(n)+1L;         // we check just numbers of the form 6*k+1 and 6*k-1          for (long k=6;k<=root;k+=6) {              if (n%(k-1)==0) return false;              if (n%(k+1)==0) return false;          }          return true;      }         My questions are:   1. Why is long being used everywhere instead of int? Because with a long type the argument could be much larger than Integer.MAX thus making the method more flexible?   2. In the second 'if', is n&0x1 the same as n%2? If so why didn't the author just use n%2? To me it's more readable.   3. The line that sets the 'root' variable, why add the 1L?   4. What is the run-time complexity? Is it O(sqrt(n/6)) or O(sqrt(n)/6)? Or would we just say O(n)?"}
{"_id": "127522", "title": "How to fit testing in Scrum sprints and how to write user stories in Scrum", "text": "I am the development team lead of a new project at my company. This is the first project where the company will use Scrum. We have a waterfall/iterative SDLC. The BAs write requirements docs, hands over to dev and test, dev start developing and will release to testing in iterations. Testers take long time to test a release by which devs continue development but also bug fixes for the current release. I have a few questions   1. In a sprint with say 5 stories when do you release for testing ? Is it as soon as a story is completed by dev or after all stories are completed but before end of sprint giving test the required time to test.    2. If the BA writes user stories what should be the detail. Traditionally it takes long time to write a spec with all UI layout, behaviour, text etc to be finalised. I guess my question is how to write stories that are implementable and testable.   3. Our test team is non-technical. How important it is to have automated UI testing for Scrum. The UI is based on WPF. I have solid development experience using agile methods (TDD, code reviews, refactoring etc.) but new to scrum. edit: By iterations I mean that if there are 100 requirements we may release to testing when we have finished 30, 35, 35 requirements rather than wait till all 100 requirements have been completed."}
{"_id": "137096", "title": "How do you integrate Testing into a Scrum process?", "text": "This is really perplexing me. We have a 'definition of done' and it includes dev 'done', unit tests 'done', dev test 'done'. However we also have a user acceptance test that needs to be 'done' but the business wants to know when users stories are complete so that they can see stuff (the uat really isnt a priority until release). But because this is outside of the initial done (where we pass our user stories) how can we say its done? And where does this fit into estimating? Where can I find information on integrating testing with a scrum process? I think I need to read up this..."}
{"_id": "195718", "title": "Functional Programming: right ideas about concurrency and state?", "text": "FP proponents have claimed that concurrency is easy because their paradigm avoids mutable state. I don't get it. Imagine we're creating a multiplayer dungeon crawl (a roguelike) using FP where we emphasize pure functions and immutable data structures. We generate a dungeon composed of rooms, corridors, heroes, monsters and loot. Our world is effectively an object graph of structures and their relationships. As things change our representation of the world is amended to reflect those changes. Our hero kills a rat, picks up a shortsword, etc. To me the world (current reality) carries this idea of state and I'm missing how FP overcomes this. As our hero takes action, functions amend the state of the world. It appears to be every decision (AI or human) needs to be based on the state of the world as it is in the present. Where would we allow for concurrency? We can't have multiple processes concurrently ammending the state of the world lest one process base its outcomes on some expired state. It feels to me that all control should occur within a single control loop so that we're always processing the present state represented by our current object graph of the world. Clearly there are situations perfectly suited for concurrency (i.e. When processing isolated tasks whose states are independent of one another). I'm failing to see how concurrency is useful in my example and that may be the issue. I may be misrepresenting the claim somehow. Can someone better represent this claim?"}
{"_id": "163878", "title": "Breaking up a large PHP object used to abstract the database. Best practices?", "text": "Two years ago it was thought a single object with functions such as `$database->get_user_from_id($ID)` would be a good idea. The functions return objects (not arrays), and the front-end code never worries about the database. This was great, until we started growing the database. There's now 30+ tables, and around 150 functions in the database object. It's getting impractical and unmanageable and I'm going to be breaking it up. What is a good solution to this problem? The project is large, so there's a limit to the extent I can change things. My current plan is to extend the current object for each table, then have the database object contain these. So, the above example would turn into (assume \"user\" is a table) `$database->user->get_user_from_id($ID)`. Instead of one large file, we would have a file for every table."}
{"_id": "158848", "title": "How to search for information related to Go programming language?", "text": "If there's something that would kill Go language, then it's name. I find it very hard to find anything in web related just by using \"Go\" in the query. The word is on of the most frequent in English. So I see everything in the result except Go-related stuff. Even Google, who sponsors the language and famous for tracking anything I search, can not track I'm a programmer so interested in the programming language and not English grammar. How to search for information related to the programming language itself, excluding the results related to English grammar? Imagine for example a blog post where someone mentions his observation about Go. He probably won't use the easy-to-search sentence like \"go programming language\", maybe something \"there's one thing I like about Go\"."}
{"_id": "195713", "title": "Why can't we declare 'extern C' for C++ macro's?", "text": "I am new to C/C++. Wanted to know why we cannot declare 'extern C' for C++ macro's similar to methods/functions...which will allow macro's defined in C++ file to be accessed in .c files. Thanks in Advance"}
{"_id": "206044", "title": "SMS verification in web application", "text": "This is my first project related to SMS verification. How to implement SMS verification in online ordering web application? For example:- when we try to reset the password in amazon's website, it sends an sms verification code and after entering the code it proceeds with changing the password. I want to implement the same function in my application, where users will place order, but before the final step it will send an sms verification code to the users mobile and verify the same. The main requirement is SMS Gateway(Transactional Quality). But as I'm completely new in this, so any idea how to proceed, or how can I implement it."}
{"_id": "82323", "title": "Is \"Explain the RAII idiom\" a good C++ screening question?", "text": "A company that I work with has asked me to do candidate phone screenings to make sure they aren't completely embarrassed when sending over someone to a potential client. It turns out that a fair number of people were being placed for a C++ developer role. I don't spend much time in C++, but I have done a few trivial and non-trivial projects in the language. I figured that \"Explain the RAII idiom\" would be a nice softball question that most serious C++ developers could answer while half asleep, and would allow me to move on to more interesting questions about experience. But it turns out people who have 10+ years C++ experience don't recognize the term, even if I expand the acronym to \"Resource Acquisition is Initialization.\" One candidate went so far as to say he felt it wasn't always practical to apply the technique in Windows development, which I thought was an odd sentiment, but I could see a couple of examples that arguably support that line of thought. (But really only _arguably_ ). Even a couple of C++ developers I know well enough to judge their competence said they didn't recognize the term, but upon reading a summary of the technique, said \"Oh, yeah, I didn't know that had a name. I just thought of those things as something you _just have to do_.\" I remember the term from the second edition of Stroustrup's book, even though the full impact didn't sink in at the time. So, is \"Can you explain the RAII idiom to me?\" a fair screening question? Is it reasonable to expect all competent C++ developers to understand it? Is the term more esoteric than I would think? Assuming a candidate doesn't know the term, are there follow up questions that could help me tease out whether they have at least internalized the practices that make RAII work? Are there better alternative \"weeder\" questions that give the candidate some latitude in answering, and help the candidate demonstrate their understanding of C++ development? **Editing to add** : To clarify, I'm not the sort of interviewer that disqualifies people because they don't know buzzwords and acronyms. However, I do think it's reasonable to expect that an experienced C++ programmer has internalized good practices for resource management. I also think that it's important to verify that a candidate understands some \"basics\" about the technology they claim expertise in before moving on to more interesting questions about design, problem solving, etc. I think what I'm looking for is a good way to ask an open-ended question, suitable for use in a short telephone screening, that I can use to judge a candidate's basic understanding of good resource management practices in C++, before I ask \"hard\" questions."}
{"_id": "82321", "title": "Why do people pick the MIT license over BSD, if BSD's \"non-endorsement clause\" is a good idea?", "text": "According to this question and it's replies What is the purpose of the \"non-endorsement clause\" in the New BSD license? it seems smarter to pick the BSD license over the MIT, to prevent people using your name in an unwanted way. If that is the case, why do people still pick the MIT license over BSD license?"}
{"_id": "155377", "title": "Best Architecture for ASP.NET WebForms Application", "text": "I have written an ASP.NET WebForms portal for a client. The project has kind of evolved rather than being properly planned and structured from the beginning. Consequently, all the code is mashed together within the same project and without any layers. The client is now happy with the functionality, so I would like to refactor the code such that I will be confident about releasing the project. As there seems to be many differing ways to design the architecture, I would like some opinions about the best approach to take. **FUNCTIONALITY** The portal allows administrators to configure HTML templates. Other associated \"partners\" will be able to display these templates by adding IFrame code to their site. Within these templates, customers can register and purchase products. An API has been implemented using WCF allowing external companies to interface with the system also. An Admin section allows Administrators to configure various functionality and view reports for each partner. The system sends out invoices and email notifications to customers. **CURRENT ARCHITECTURE** It is currently using EF4 to read/write to the database. The EF objects are used directly within the aspx files. This has facilitated rapid development while I have been writing the site but it is probably unacceptable to keep it like that as it is tightly coupling the db with the UI. Specific business logic has been added to partial classes of the EF objects. **QUESTIONS** The goal of refactoring will be to make the site scalable, easily maintainable and secure.   1. What kind of architecture would be best for this? Please describe what should be in each layer, whether I should use DTO's / POCO / Active Record pattern etc.   2. Is there a robust way to auto-generate DTO's / BOs so that any future enhancements will be simple to implement despite the extra layers?   3. Would it be beneficial to convert the project from WebForms to MVC?"}
{"_id": "105911", "title": "centralized hosted application framework or \"private copies\" for each program?", "text": "We have a centralised business application framework, and it contains all our business logic and provides access to all our back-end systems. It is accessed by a number of different programs and clients through remoting. When we need to do a change in a certain part of the program, we currently have to retest all our different programs and clients. Even assuming we extend our automated testing, we feel that there is no way we can be certain that upon releasing a new version of our application framework all the different programs will work correctly after that change without also manually retesting all these programs. Every time we release a new version of project C, we have to test program A and B as well for unintended changes. Preferably, we would move to a release system where upon releasing project C, we only have to retest program C, and not A and B for possible breaking changes that we overlooked. The idea lives to duplicate our centralised business application framework, one for each sub-project. It would mean for that when we release a new version of program C, we will provide a private version of the application framework. Upon release of program C, nothing will have changed for application A and B, they still communicate with their private application framework - so they do not need to be retested. I came up with the following pro's and con's: Con's:   * We'll have our framework hosted n times for each project    * We'll get confused in what version / project what bug is solved.   * With a major fix / change, we will have to re-release all n versions of the application framework. Pro's:   * Significantly cuts down on testing   * \"Certainty\" that no unintended changes are released for different projects. I must admit I am not a fan of the private copies-approach, but I fail to provide a better alternative, or better arguments against this. Has anyone been in a similar situation, and how was it handled? Is the above approach of \"private frameworks copies\" a solid / accepted approach? Any advice is welcomed. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "215666", "title": "Entity Framework 5, separating business logic from model - Repository?", "text": "I am working on my first public-facing web application and I\u2019m using MVC 4 for the presentation layer and EF 5 for the DAL. The database structure is locked, and there are moderate differences between how the user inputs data and how the database itself gets populated. I have done a ton of reading on the repository pattern (which I have never used) but most of my research is pushing me away from using it since it supposedly creates an unnecessary level of abstraction for the latest versions of EF since repositories and unit-of- work are already built-in. My initial approach is to simply create a separate set of classes for my business objects in the BLL that can act as an intermediary between my Controllers and the DAL. Here\u2019s an example class:               public class MyBuilding     {         public int Id { get; private set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public string Notes { get; set; }              private readonly Entities _context = new Entities(); // Is this thread safe?         private static readonly int UserId = WebSecurity.GetCurrentUser().UserId;              public IEnumerable<MyBuilding> GetList()         {             IEnumerable<MyBuilding> buildingList =                  from p in _context.BuildingInfo                 where p.Building.UserProfile.UserId == UserId                 select new MyBuilding {Id = p.BuildingId, Name = p.BuildingName, Notes = p.Building.Notes};             return buildingList;         }              public void Create()         {             var b = new Building {UserId = UserId, Notes = this.Notes};             _context.Building.Add(b);             _context.SaveChanges();                  // Set the building ID             this.Id = b.BuildingId;                  // Seed 1-to-1 tables with reference the new building             _context.BuildingInfo.Add(new BuildingInfo {Building = b});             _context.GeneralInfo.Add(new GeneralInfo {Building = b});             _context.LocationInfo.Add(new LocationInfo {Building = b});             _context.SaveChanges();         }              public static MyBuilding Find(int id)         {             using (var context = new Entities())  // Is this OK to do in a static method?             {                 var b = context.Building.FirstOrDefault(p => p.BuildingId == id && p.UserId == UserId);                 if (b == null) throw new Exception(\"Error: Building not found or user does not have access.\");                 return new MyBuilding {Id = b.BuildingId, Name = b.BuildingInfo.BuildingName, Notes = b.Notes};             }         }     }      My primary concern: Is the way I am instantiating my DbContext as a private property thread-safe, and is it safe to have a static method that instantiates a separate DbContext? Or am I approaching this all wrong? I am not opposed to learning up on the repository pattern if I am taking the total wrong approach here."}
{"_id": "120244", "title": "Is a code review subjective or objective (quantifiable)?", "text": "I am putting together some guidelines for code reviews. We do not have one formal process yet and are trying to formalize it. And our team is geographically distributed. We are using TFS for source control (we used it for tasks/bug tracking/project management as well, but we migrated that to JIRA) with Visual Studio 2008 for development. **What are the things you look for when doing a code review?**   * _These are the things I came up with_     1. Enforce FxCop rules (we are a Microsoft shop)     2. Check for performance (any tools ?) and security (thinking about using OWASP - code crawler) and thread safety     3. Adhere to naming conventions     4. The code should cover edge cases and boundaries conditions     5. Should handle exceptions correctly (do not swallow exceptions)     6. Check if the functionality is duplicated elsewhere     7. A method body should be small (20-30 lines), and methods should do one thing and one thing only (no side effects and avoid temporal coupling -)     8. Do not pass/return nulls in methods     9. Avoid dead code     10. Document public and protected methods/properties/variables **What other things should we generally look out for?** I am trying to see if we can quantify the review process (it would produce identical output when reviewed by different persons) Example: Saying \"the method body should be no longer than 20-30 lines of code\" as opposed to saying \"the method body should be small\". Or is code review very subjective (and would differ from one reviewer to another)? The objective is to have a marking system (say -1 point for each FxCop rule violation, -2 points for not following naming conventions, 2 points for refactoring, etc.) so that developers would be more careful when they check in their code. This way, we can identify developers who are consistently writing good/bad code. The goal is to have the reviewer spend about 30 minutes max, to do a review (I know this is subjective, considering the fact that the changeset/revision might include multiple files/huge changes to the existing architecture, etc., but you get the general idea, the reviewer should not spend days reviewing someone's code). **What other objective/quantifiable system do you follow to identify good/bad code written by developers?** Book reference: _Clean Code: A handbook of agile software craftmanship by Robert Martin_."}
{"_id": "51986", "title": "Can't work on real projects because I keep thinking about my side projects", "text": "I have a \"real\" project I'm working on to make money from, and a side project that is vastly more interesting. I'm having a problem where every time I go to work on my \"real\" project, all I can think about is ideas for my side project. How do you guys deal with that? Just power through the real work?"}
{"_id": "232245", "title": "Copyright license for an open source project when copying a few files from another project", "text": "I'm working on a library which I'm releasing under the MIT License, but I plan to copy a few useful classes from another open source project which is released under the Apache license. Obviously, I'm going to leave the original license intact, and credit the original project but how does the licensing work? EDIT: What I need to know is - 1\\. Is it okay for me to do this, since there will be two different licenses? 2\\. Will it happen that most of my project will be under the MIT License(the code that I wrote), but those files that I copied from the other project will remain under Apache? EDIT 2: I got my answer here - How to include an apache library with my opensource code? Please vote to close this question."}
{"_id": "251658", "title": "How far can I drift from my original domain model and still have the benefits of an ORM?", "text": "I have the following **domain** models:               public class User     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public ICollection<Product> Products { get; set; }     }          public class Product     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public decimal Price { get; set; }     }      My User entity has a collection of Products, and no Product can be created without an User. I am using EntityFramework Code First approach, which requires me to declare the Foreign Key on my Product entity, thus changing it to:               public class Product     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public decimal Price { get; set; }         public int UserId { get; set; }     }      I dont quite like this because, from the **domain point of view** , it is not interesting to have the User foreign key shown in my Product entity. This, however, does not bring any harm to me and I can live with it. Please, mind that I am using an ORM to simplify my work, so I am okay with it to an extent. Is it okay to my **domain entities** having properties or such things only to satisfy my ORM of choice requirements?"}
{"_id": "210016", "title": "Best practices for rotating large datasets?", "text": "[edit]Turns out there's 1.5 million records... The SQL database is taking about 17-20 seconds to run the query. Would it be best to have Java handle the joins and rearranging in that case? Since this is a web app, if multiple users are getting Excel exports, would the long queries reduce the overall performance of the site?[/edit] I have a dataset that contains roughly 70,000 records. For simplicity's sake, let's say the data currently looks like this: User ID | Question | Answer In our web application, the data needs to be rotated 90 degrees and exported into Excel, such that we have the following: User ID | Question 1 | Question 2 | Question 3 .... I think we end up with around 50 or so columns. Should the data be rearranged on the database side using pivot tables or should it be rearranged on the application side? Which solution would be the easiest to maintain? Which solution would have the greatest performance?"}
{"_id": "251652", "title": "How important is automated testing in rapid release, non-critical (web) apps?", "text": "I think I understand the theoretical benefits of automated testing, especially unit testing. However, I'm not sure what the optimal amount of testing is when the project is a non-critical, rapidly developed (and deployed) web app with a reasonably large user base. My current reasoning goes like this:   * Most of the core functionality of our app can be manually tested in a matter of seconds. (The site is a type of search engine, so basically - run search, get results, it works.)   * Of course, there are many edge cases and options and such that could be tested, as well as unit testing of underlying logic, but if anything significant breaks and isn't caught before it's made live, we literally tend to get email from users within an hour. (Within minutes if it's a major problem, but very rarely does one of those get out.)   * So the consequence of any significant problem going live is that a few people are inconvenienced for a few minutes. Maybe some percentage of new visitors we get in that period would be lost, although the numbers should be very low since the time period is so short.   * Lower impact bugs might take longer for someone to email about - days, or even weeks depending on the severity - but they will also have less of an impact on users, so from a business perspective likely don't \"matter\" as much. Now, I'm not saying that excellent test coverage is useless. Of course it would be nice to catch every issue before it goes live. But in the cost/benefit tradeoff between working on tests and responding quickly to user feedback / adding and refining features, the latter seems to win. The one exception I've found is in code that doesn't directly affect the user. For example, ad serving code, or data collection. These don't directly impact the user's value from the site, so people are unlikely to let us know when they break. They will also be less noticeable in our feature testing. So I can see a strong case for well-defined unit tests there. (And from there, there ironically seems to be a spectrum where good test coverage becomes less important as features become more important, to the point where code that is critical to the site's operation doesn't really need to be tested (in a well defined manner) at all.) So my question is, am I way off base here? Is widespread test coverage and/or test-driven development optimal even in a non-critical, continuous-release environment? And if so, where am I failing in my reasoning? Or, assuming we fix bugs immediately when reported, is it reasonable to focus on rapid, nimble development, knowing that our users will let us know if we break something? (With the exception that we will have formal tests for functionality that is not directly exposed to the user.)"}
{"_id": "251650", "title": "Is it necessary to memorize every line of code when it comes to game development?", "text": "I am currently following along a youtube tutorial here and from what I understand we are starting out by creating an engine to run the game. Should I be able to implement all of this by myself without outside help in the future or should I just make sure to have an understanding of everything that is going on? Would a professional game developer know how to implement everything that it takes to make a game or would he/she just copy and paste certain parts (like creating a buffer, or fps cap) and edit it to their taste?"}
{"_id": "117138", "title": "What keywords are important to speedup the code in C++?", "text": "I'm porting to C++ and adding a lot of functionality to a numerical application written in Fortran 77. While I hate F77, I have to admit that the thing goes very fast. Now, I'm implementing practically the same structure and algorithm, but nevertheless the difference in the execution time is noticeable. Not big, but it's there. And I'm wondering, could it be that I need to pass extra information to the compiler? The only related information that I've been able to find is a recommendation to use the **restrict** key word which is supported by g++, but that's all. Hence, my question: Are there anymore keywords important to speedup code in C++ in numerical applications? or maybe compiler directives? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "149346", "title": "Logging asynchronously - how should it be done?", "text": "In many of the services I work on there are a lot of logging being done. The services are WCF services(mostly) which use the .NET EventLogger class. I'm in the process of improving these services' performance, and I got to think that logging asynchronously would benefit performance. I'm unaware to what happens when multiple threads ask to log, and it if creates a bottleneck, but even if it doesn't I still think that it shouldn't interfere with the actual process being executed. My thoughts are that I should invoke the same log method I call now but do so using a new thread, while continuing with the actual process. **Some questions about that:** Is it ok? Are there any downsides? Should it be done in a different way? Maybe its so fast that it doesn't even worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "105143", "title": "What is the reason for creating the symbols \u221e on the client side?", "text": "Take a look at this link: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/60766/what- is-the-result-of-infinity-minus-infinity What is the reason for transforming the symbols \u221e on the client side? Because if someone disable javascript, this is what they see: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/NXTKY.png) So right now I'm pondering what may be the reasons for that decision _(I was thinking there are bound to be some advantage otherwise the decision wouldn't have been done)_."}
{"_id": "105140", "title": "How to handle technological \"Dogmatism\"", "text": "I left a job (to relocate to another country) where I programmed in Javascript and Haskell (some python) most of the time. I really liked it because people were objective, positive, mathematical, and yet got a bunch of stuff done. This was a truly professional shop. Now I work at an Agile/XP shop. While this is good and all I feel that maybe we are unprofessional when it comes to the selection of technologies and libraries. I feel that our approach to writing software is a bit immature and unstructured. I am trying to read the books I have been offered and they seem to encourage this style ( _ugh_ ). A lot of times we just pick libs off of git hub and use it without any type of review. I get forced to work with someone all the time even if it's a small task for one person. There seems to be a little \"fast\" rule for everything even if the rule can be broken by a trivial counter example (one time I made the mistake of giving that counter example and I was verbally attacked). Is this normal here in the states? How do I handle this dogmatism?"}
{"_id": "117131", "title": "What to do when allowing application to run in an invalid state?", "text": "We currently have a 'global catch all exceptions' section in our application. When an uncaught exception is thrown, the stack trace is displayed and the application continues running. More often than not, this leaves the state of the application invalid going forward. Especially with NullReferenceExceptions, and threading exceptions being the cause. I decided to have the application log the exception in the 'global' section and shutdown and restart. This was met with criticism from management - who asserted that the user should choose to select whether or not to restart under these conditions, since it never shut down before. ( _Though I tried my best to explain that the issue was allowing the app to continue running in the first place)_. I am looking for things to watch out for now, and specific approaches I can take to handle code that is now allowed to continue to run while in an invalid state."}
{"_id": "166348", "title": "Should I use a workflow engine?", "text": "I need to add some new features to a PHP application. It is to follow the steps of a order. A process create some orders, the order goes to confirmation, then if approved is sent to a provider, later the provider confirm that can deliver the order, a request is made to the provider and so on... I need to register when every step is made and send notifications. Also, some steps have a estimate time, and if that time is elapsed I need to send notifications so everybody know about the delay. When a process starts, it have a predefined set of steps, but in a middle the user should be able to create new sub-steps, and delete or skip future steps.. Should I use a workflow engine? Which one do you suggests (free-opensource only)?"}
{"_id": "117136", "title": "Converting a bounded knapsack problem to 0/1 knapsack problem", "text": "I ran across a problem where goal was to use dynamic programming (instead of other approaches). There is a distance to be spanned, and a set of cables of different lengths. What is the minimum number of cables needed to span the distance exactly? To me this looked like a knapsack problem, but since there could be multiples of a particular length, it was a bounded knapsack problem, rather than a 0/1 knapsack problem. (Treat the value of each item to be its weight.) Taking the naive approach (and not caring about the expansion of the search space), the method I used to convert the bounded knapsack problem into a 0/1 knapsack problem, was simply break up the multiples into singles and apply the well- known dynamic programming algorithm. Unfortunately, this leads to sub-optimal results. For example, given cables:   1 x 10ft,   1 x 7ft,   1 x 6ft,   5 x 3ft,   6 x 2ft,   7 x 1ft If the target span is 13ft, the DP algorithm picks 7+6 to span the distance. A greedy algorithm would have picked 10+3, but it's a tie for minimum number of cables. The problem arises, when trying to span 15ft. The DP algorithm ended up picking 6+3+3+3 to get 4 cables, while the greedy algorithm correctly picks 10+3+2 for only 3 cables. Anyway, doing some light scanning of converting bounded to 0/1, it seems like the well-known approach to convert multiple items to { p, 2p, 4p ... }. My question is how does this conversion work if p+2p+4p does not add up to the number of multiple items. For example: I have 5 3ft cables. I can't very well add { 3, 2x3, 4x3 } because 3+2x3+4x3 > 5x3. Should I add { 3, 4x3 } instead? [I'm currently trying to grok the \"Oregon Trail Knapsack Problem\" paper, but it currently looks like the approach used there is not dynamic programming.]"}
{"_id": "10916", "title": "Do speakers get paid for tech talks?", "text": "I'm curious if speakers (bloggers, google employees like Matt Cutts) get paid for speaking at conferences. If they do, how much? If they don't, or they get paid so little that it's as though they don't, why do it? What are the attractions beyond money that lead a developer into public speaking?"}
{"_id": "116840", "title": "How to trim emails for just the body, when using email as input to an external system?", "text": "When an application allows emails to be sent to it to either reply to comments or add todos, trimming those emails for just the relevant text becomes a problem, since there are many different standards. Many times you'll end up seeing things like this: > Hey Joe, good to hear from you. Let me know when you'll be back in town.   >  **_Posted by Bob, 30 minutes ago_** > > * * * > > I'll be back on the 13th. > > \\--   >  Sincerely,   >  Joseph R. Roberts   >  Senior Partner > > This communication is confidential and is property of Whatever Law Firm.   >  **_Posted by Joe, 10 seconds ago_** Signatures are probably the most difficult to get rid of, and quoted text the easiest. I imagine any comprehensive strategy for trimming will be multi- facted, and ideally, learning. I think a good system should:   1. Remove quoted body   2. Remove quote headers (\"On 15 October, Joe wrote:\")   3. Remove signatures   4. Preserve anything that was typed manually. What steps would a system need to take to accomplish this, and what pitfalls should it be aware of? * * * This answer is a good example of a useful answer to a similar question"}
{"_id": "56351", "title": "Architectural patterns for interaction beyond MVC?", "text": "We all know the venerable Model-View-Controller pattern used to design interaction [mostly] with human users. It is the de-facto standard in OOP environment. What are some other architectural patterns of interaction worth mentioning? Non-OOP (functional, logical, etc) approaches welcome, too."}
{"_id": "179626", "title": "Is the separation of program logic and presentation layer going too far?", "text": "In a Drupal programming guide, I noticed this sentence: > The theme hook receives the total number of votes and the number of votes > for just that item, but the template wants to display a percentage. That > kind of work shouldn't be done in a template; instead, the math is performed > here. The math necessary to calculate a percentage from a total and a number is `(number/total)*100`. Is this application of two basic arithmetic operators within a presentation layer already too much? Is the maintenance of the entire system severely compromised by this amount of mathematics? The WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) and its UI mark-up language, XAML, seem to go to similar extremes. If you try to so much as add two numbers in the View (the presentation layer), you have committed a cardinal sin. Consequently, XAML has no operators for any arithmetic whatsoever. Is this ultra-strict separation really the holy grail of programming? What are the significant gains to be had from taking the separation to such extremes?"}
{"_id": "57009", "title": "Do you have any tips to help with applying to an international job?", "text": "I've had some freelance jobs in my country (Brazil), working for different companies. I like to work to Brazillian companies, but I'm looking for some international experiences and I would like some advice. How do you hire foreign developers/professionals? How can I proceed to become more \"visible\" to the international employers? I don't want to leave Brazil for now, so I wonder if its possible to get good freelance jobs outside here. If you have worked like I'm willing to work, I'll be glad if you share your experiences ;)"}
{"_id": "221862", "title": "Help in finding the total time taken by the entire production?", "text": "I have a line object and each line object has an array of tasks associated with it.Each task has a start time and an end time.Each task also has a list of tasks which are its predecessors. **So if all the tasks were independent (no predecessors) I would just calculate the end time of the last task on each line which would be the end time of this line.The time taken by the production would be the maximum of the end time of all lines.** The problem is a task could be dependent on a task (which could be on the same or a different line). So if a task's predecessor is on the different line and its start time is greater than this task's start time,then this task's start time should be updated accordingly. **How can I calculate the correct production time given these predecessor tasks on different lines?** **EDIT:** This is what I have come up with so far.               Cluster{     func* func[n]     };          func{     int executiontime;     int starttime;     int endtime;     func* pred[k]     };          int main{     /Cluster objects were initialized up somewhere.          Cluster cl[4];//An array of four clusters          for(int i=0;i<4;i++){          cl[i].func[0].starttime = 0;          cl[i].func[0].endtime = cl[i].func[0].starttime + cl[i].func[0].executiontime;          for(int j=1;j<n;j++){          cl[i].func[j].starttime = cl[i].func[j-1].endtime;          cl[i].func[j].endtime = cl[i].func[j].starttime + cl[i].func[j].executiontime;          }          }          int productiontime=Max(cl[0].func[n].endtime,cl[1].func[n].endtime,cl[2].func[n].endtime,cl[3].func[n].endtime);          return productiontime;     }      This is what I have done so far.I am stuck at how to modify the code to account for the task predecessors. **EDIT** :After the above loop,I would update the start and end times of each task whose predecessor task is on another line.If the predecessor task's start time is greater than this task's start time then this task's start and end time both would be updated.How should I do this when the problem is that predecessor task's start time might also need to be updated depending on its own predecessor tasks."}
{"_id": "39798", "title": "Being IDE dependent. How can it harm me?", "text": "I am highly IDE dependent developer (NetBeans and Eclipse as I am a JAVA dev). I can code properly if I have an IDE. I can rely a lot on that for development, debugging and deployment. But without IDE I can do nothing. Can code a simple hello world program or some simple UI arranging but I need an IDE to do complex things or long coding of simpler things. Do you think it harms me? Some programmers who have more than 6 years of development experience strongly believe that it can be harm, but I think that if I can do some complex things rapidly and properly why should I stick to notepad and command line tools to perform a time consuming task when IDEs have a button click to do this?"}
{"_id": "193778", "title": "Does a developer really have to know build tools, classpath etc?", "text": "When IDEs like eclipse can handle all the maven, ant, classpath etc related tasks, does a developer really need to learn all these things ? If yes, then why ?"}
{"_id": "179620", "title": "Benefit of C++ to System Administrators", "text": "What benefit could C++ bring to system administrators? I am working on Windows and Ubuntu. If I learn C++, where could I implement it in system administration, Please specify some of its benefits."}
{"_id": "179622", "title": "How do I add restrictions for users to sign up before they can access web site?", "text": "How do I get my webpage not to go back when they hit the back button and are logged out ? how can I add a web page to be blocked like FACEBOOK doesn't let you get into their site with out having a page or a account with them, and if you try to put something in the url and try to go to something on their site it gives you a web page that says \"you have to be logged in first\" ? I mean I don't want someone going to the url of the \"index\" page before they have signed up as a member they need to make an account first then they can have access to the \"index\" page. How do I do this gateway? Consider I have a website so far that has a database and the website has 5 pages so far and two of them which is the login and sign up page which are both used with php and mysql and they work fine. How do I restrict access to the main website by first having the users sign up with me for an account?"}
{"_id": "218633", "title": "Are Extension methods (C#) and categories (Objective-C) the same as traits?", "text": "According to: Something similar to Objective-C categories in other languages? Static extension methods in C# are `basically the same thing` as Objective-C categories, so I'm going to lump these two features together in asking: Are these techniques the same as traits? Also, can these language features be used to solve problems that typically would be solved with Multiple Inheritance? And, if so, specifically how do they avoid the pitfalls of Multiple Inheritance?"}
{"_id": "194850", "title": "Expanding on vendor software?", "text": "I am a SCADA consultant and I work with many software packages. Due to their robust nature they include the capability of executing internal/external activex and vbscript code. Over the years I have written 10's of thousands of lines of code which my clients have utilized happily. I've met a point in my career where I want to go independent with these libraries due to their complex nature. That being said, is it legal for me to advertise \"SoftwareX Expansion libraries\" or \"SCADA expansion libraries for software X/Y/Z\"? What exactly can I state on a website or software package which would not get me swarmed by lawsuits? SCADA is supervisory control and data acquisition. Writing advanced reporting/software for industrial hardware and software. I work with human machine interface(hmi) software which allows internal/external execution of vbscript. Think of it as adobe flash, and how it executes actionscript. In the case of adobe flash, I would want to sell my actionscript libraries. My question is - Is it legal?"}
{"_id": "194609", "title": "How to choose which schema design for a tree structured domain model", "text": "I have the following classes that I want to store.               public class StorableObject     {         public string Id { get; set; }     }          public class User : StorableObject     {         public string Name { get; set; }     }          public class Project : StorableObject     {         public string Name { get; set; }         public User Owner { get; set; }         public ICollection<Task> Tasks { get; set; }     }          public class Task : StorableObject     {         public string Name { get; set; }         public User Owner { get; set; }         public ICollection<Timesheet> TimeSheets { get; set; }     }          public class Timesheet : StorableObject     {         public User Owner { get; set; }         public DateTime Timestamp { get; set; }         public TimeSpan Duration { get; set; }     }      Schema design has a lot to do with which queries you'll be needing, so let me try to explain a bit. I'll need to do fast queries to extract:   * all Tasks on a Project   * all Timesheets on a Task   * all Projects a user owns   * all Tasks a user owns   * all Timesheets a user owns. I also need some summations like get total time spent on a Project or Task in a given time period and total time spend per user in a given period. (MapReduse I suppose) I started out (after reading this blog) with 4 collections (Users, Projects, Tasks, Timesheets), each child would have a parent reference so I could construct my domain model in my business logic. However after watching this I've changed my mind and now going for a more embedded approach.               {        _id: 123456789,        owner_id: 123,        name: \"My Project\",        tasks: [                 {                    owner_id: 123,                    name: \"My Task\",                    timesheets: [                                  {                                     owner_id: 123,                                     ...                                  }                                ]                 }               ]     }      What's your take? Is that a fast schema design?"}
{"_id": "153434", "title": "How to make Ninject inject an MVC view model?", "text": "How do I configure Ninject so it injects an instance in a view model? PS. It is an abstracted service to help with validation, so I am not trying to burden the model with too much responsibilities."}
{"_id": "1095", "title": "How often do you use Formal UML?", "text": "I used ad-hoc MUML (made-up modeling language) to design and explain system fairly frequently. It looks similar to UML and tends to be pretty well understood. However, I've had a professor or two that harped on the use of strict, formal UML, as close to the spec as possible. I always suspected that strict UML wasn't really as common as they claimed. So, how 'bout it- how often do you actually draw out complete diagrams that use all the proper line endings, multiplicity, member type symbols, etc?"}
{"_id": "52189", "title": "What should I concentrate on?", "text": "Let me first give you a small background. I am a high school student in my last year of high school. When I get to college, I want to take up computer science, because I really love software engineering. At home, I do a lot of programming. I never really finish any projects, but I just create all kinds of different \"experimental\" stuff just to learn different programming languages, technologies, and programming methods. I am a big fan of C# and I also am getting more into other managed languages such as Java. I've worked with C++ many times, and I know how the language works. Still, I just can't seem to get anything useful done with it. In C#, I can create a useful app in just a few hours. In C++, I will still be trying to understand different 3rd party libraries to get things done. For instance, I was earlier trying to figure out Qt for C++ GUIs, but in C#, you have Windows Forms right there to help with GUI Development. **So I say all of that to ask** , what is the job market out there currently looking for? I want to get more into C++, but it gives me such a hard time. By the way, I am interested in business application programming. So would it be wise to concentrate on sharpening my C# and Java skills and leave C++ until later? Thanks"}
{"_id": "60097", "title": "Is Software Testing Really Needed?", "text": "I'm a student working on my B.E(CS) and my question is the following:   1. Is testing in the software field needed?    2. If we create a software with great care, then why should we test?    3. After testing can we be **sure** that we have achieved this goal (the product/software works as intended) because we have done the **testing** for it? Is it possible? My question: **Is testing of software needed**?"}
{"_id": "64532", "title": "For open-source licenses with an acknowledgement clause, how obvious does the notice need to be?", "text": "In licenses such as that of libjpeg and freetype, there are clauses like the following: > (2) If only executable code is distributed, then the accompanying > documentation must state that \"this software is based in part on the work of > the Independent JPEG Group\". or: > o Redistribution in binary form must provide a disclaimer that states that > the software is based in part of the work of the FreeType Team, in the > distribution documentation. Is putting a notice in a text file in the installation directory enough? Or is a more obvious notice typically needed? For a non-open-source end application, what's the usual way to display these mandatory acknowledgments?"}
{"_id": "153438", "title": "arrays format (Javascript)", "text": "I have a list of users, with minions, something like this:               User52:            minion10            minion12     User32:           minion13           minion11      I've been keeping in an array where the \"location\" is the id, like this:               Users:            [52]User                    minions:                            [10]minion                            [12]minion            [32]User                    minions:                            [13]minion                            [11]minion      so I can access them easily like this: `user[UserID].minions[MinionID]` (ex: `user[32].minions[11]`). But when I print it or send it by json I get something like this:               {,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,minion,,,,,,,,,,,,,,minion}      But should I keep using like this or should I change to something like this:               User = function(){        this.minions = ...;        this.getMinion = function(value){          for(var m in this.minions){           if(this.minions[m].id == value){              return this.minions[m];              break;           }          }        }      }      and get it like this:               user.getMinion(MinionID);      Question: I get better performance using a \"short\" array but using loops every time I need a minion, or using \"long\" arrays, but no need for loop and getting values directly from the id \"name\"?"}
{"_id": "69728", "title": "Resharper: Do You Use 'Symbol Completion' or 'Smart Completion'?", "text": "@Amir Rezeai says that 'Coding Assistance' is his favorite Resharper feature. I actually just found out about 'Coding Assistance' after watching James Kovacs' most excellent webcast, entitled 'Resharper Tips and Tricks' on Pluralsight.com. My Question is: > Do you use 'Symbol Completion' or 'Smart Completion'? And if so, did it take you a while to get used to [either feature]? * * * These features could potentially accelerate development. But it seems like they require a different mindset.   [I don't know - Maybe it's just me.]"}
{"_id": "152745", "title": "Learn programming backwards, or \"so I failed the FizzBuzz test. Now what?\"", "text": "### A Little Background I'm 28 today, and I've never had any formal training in software development, but I do have two higher education degrees equivalent to a B.A in Public Relations and an Executive MBA focused on Project Management. I've worked on those fields for about 6 years total an then, 2,5 years ago I quit/lost my job and decided to shift directions. After a month thinking things through I decided to start freelancing developing small websites in WordPress. I self-learned my way into it and today I can say I run a humble but successful career developing themes and plugins from scratch for my clients - mostly agencies outsourcing some of their dev work for medium/large websites. But sometimes I just feel that not having studied enough math, or not having a formal understanding of things really holds me behind when I have to compete or work with more experienced developers. I'm constantly looking for ways to learn more but I seem to lack the basics. Unfortunately, spending 4 more years in Computer Science is not an option right now, so I'm trying to learn all I can from books and online resources. This method is never going to have NASA employ me but I really don't care right now. My goal is to first pass the bar and to be able to call myself a real programmer. I'm currently spending my spare time studying Java For Programmers (to get a hold on a language everyone says is difficult/demanding), reading excerpts of Code Complete (to get hold of best practices) and also Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (to grasp the inner workings of computers). **TL;DR** So, my current situation is this: I'm basically capable of writing any complete system in PHP (with the help of Google and a few books), integrating Ajax, SQL and whatnot, and maybe a little slower than an experienced dev would expect due to all the research involved. But I was stranded yesterday trying to figure out (not Google) a solution for the FizzBuzz test because I didn't have the `if($n1 % $n2 == 0)` ~~method~~ **modulus operator** memorized. What would you suggest as a good way to solve this dilemma? What subjects/books should I study that would get me **solving problems faster** and maybe more \"in a programmers way\"? **EDIT** \\- Seems that there was some confusion about what did I not know to solve FizzBuzz. Maybe I didn't express myself right: I knew the steps needed to solve the problem. What I didn't memorize was the modulus operator. The problem was in transposing basic math to the program, not in knowing basic math. I took the test for fun, after reading about it on Coding Horror. I just decided it was a good base-comparison line between me and formally-trained devs. I just used this as an example of how not having dealt with math in a computer environment before makes me lose time looking up basic things like modulus operators to be able to solve simple problems."}
{"_id": "187492", "title": "Why do we need the async keyword?", "text": "I just started playing around with async/await in .Net 4.5. One thing I'm initially curious about, why is the async keyword necessary? The explanation I read was that it is a marker so the compiler knows a method awaits something. But it seems like the compiler should be able to figure this out without a keyword. So what else does it do?"}
{"_id": "113720", "title": "Can a small team enter .NET world while most of them are working on OpenSource languages?", "text": "We are a team of about 15 employees, in a non-IT enterprise. Today, we mainly develop websites, using PHP, MySQL, etc. We run a bit less than 100 linux servers on ourselves. But today, we are confronted with a too-big-for-us-to-code project. We selected a great provider (yes, outsourcing), and now they ask us to choose between C++/Qt and .NET/WPF. The app is highly graphical, and meant to be distributed on Windows systems. .NET is recommanded to us as easier to design and more lightweight. But what about our team ? Can we handle, with our small number, both universes at the same time ? responsibilites :   * during the dev : design the app, review the code   * after the dev : host servers, do maintenance and answer user calls   * in the case we need a v2, we intend to call back the same provider What do you think ? **EDIT** We finally chose C++/Qt. The reasons are :   * the dev time has been tested to be somewhat equal   * it suits us better from a management point of view   * and it increases cross-platform portability"}
{"_id": "63549", "title": "Why do we need method level security?", "text": "In the real world , why do we need to implement method level security ? We either have a web application or a desktop application , where the user accesses the user interface (and therefore directly cannot access the method) . So where does accessing methods directly come into picture here ? edit : I ask this question because I am experimenting with spring security , and I see authorizing users for accessing methods . something like :                @ROLE_ADMIN     public void update() {           //update     }"}
{"_id": "206205", "title": "Adding base-class (inherited) functionality to classes that you don't control", "text": "I have a set of classes from a 3rd party library. These classes use an inheritance structure to share logic. I would like to add a layer of abstraction in the middle of their inheritance tree to add functionality to all of the children (concrete) implementations. Here is a simplified example of the classes in the 3rd party lib:               public interface IAnimal     {         bool IsMammal { get; }     }          public abstract class Animal : IAnimal     {         public abstract bool IsMammal { get; }         public string Name { get; set; }     }          public class Cat : Animal     {         public override bool IsMammal { get { return true; } }         public void Pur() {}     }          public class Dog : Animal     {         public override bool IsMammal { get { return true; } }         public void Fetch() {}     }          public class Snake : Animal     {         public override bool IsMammal { get { return false; } }         public void ShedSkin() {}     }      I would like to add the concept of an `AnimalWithSuperPower`. These types of animals should have 1 additional Property; `SuperPower`. I would like to be able to have classes like `CatWithSuperPower` which derive from `Cat`, `AnimalWithSuperPower`, & `Animal` so that I can access all the functionality of those. Here is the definition of `SuperPower`:               public enum SuperPower { Invisibility, SuperStrength, XRayVision }      My first idea was to use multiple inheritance. But unfortunately, C# doesn't support multiple base classes.               private abstract class AnimalWithSuperPower : Animal     {         public SuperPower SuperPower { get; set; }     }          // doesn't compile because you can't extend 2 classes     private class DogWithSuperPower : AnimalWithSuperPower, Dog {}      My next attempt uses a combination of inheritance, composition, and generics to try to deliver the functionality of the base classes.               private abstract class AnimalWithSuperPower<TAnimalType> : Animal where TAnimalType : IAnimal     {         public SuperPower SuperPower { get; set; }              protected readonly TAnimalType Animal;              protected AnimalWithSuperPower()         {             Animal = (TAnimalType) Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(TAnimalType));         }     }          private class SuperCat : AnimalWithSuperPower<Cat>     {         public override bool IsMammal { get { return Animal.IsMammal; } }     }          private class SuperCatWithPur : AnimalWithSuperPower<Cat>     {         public override bool IsMammal { get { return Animal.IsMammal; } }              public void Pur() // needing duplicate pass-through methods/properties like this is painful :(         {             Animal.Pur();         }     }          private static void ExampleUsage()     {         var invisibleCat = new SuperCat { SuperPower = SuperPower.Invisibility };         invisibleCat.Pur(); // doesn't compile - can't access Pur() method because doesn't extend Cat              var xrayCat = new SuperCatWithPur { SuperPower = SuperPower.XRayVision };         xrayCat.Pur(); // only works because I exposed the method with the EXACT same signature     }      This solution is not very good (IMO) because of these reasons:   * `SuperCat` and `SuperCatWithPur` aren't actually instances of `Cat`   * any method you wish to use from `Cat` needs to be mirrored in the container class   * feels kind of messy: `AnimalWithSuperPower` is an `Animal` but it also takes an `Animal` type parameter I also tried doing it with an extension method but it wasn't any better than the above two attempts:               private abstract class AnimalWithSuperPower : Animal     {         public SuperPower SuperPower { get; set; }     }          private static AnimalWithSuperPower WithSuperPower(this Animal animal, SuperPower superPower)     {         var superAnimal = (AnimalWithSuperPower) animal;         superAnimal.SuperPower = superPower;         return superAnimal;     }          private static void ExampleUsage()     {         var dog = new Dog { Name = \"Max\" };         var superDog = dog.WithSuperPower(SuperPower.SuperStrength);         superDog.Fetch(); // doesn't compile - superDog isn't an instance of Dog     }      If I had control of the 3rd party classes, I could likely do this cleanly by introducing a new class in the middle of the inheritance tree, but I can't **My Question:** How can I model `AnimalWithSuperPower` so that:   * instances are considered of types `Cat` (or appropriate sub-class), `Animal`, & `AnimalWithSuperPower`   * all the methods and properties are available without extra pass-through calls"}
{"_id": "166964", "title": "Why is nesting or piggybacking errors within errors bad in general?", "text": "Why is nesting or piggybacking errors within errors bad in general? To me it seems bad intuitively, but I'm suspicious in that I cannot adequately articulate why it is bad. This may be because it is not in general bad and that it is only bad in specific instances. Why is it detrimental to design error/exception handling in such a way. The specific instance is that of a REST service. There is a desire by some to use http errors (specifically the 500 response) as a way to indicate any problem with specific instances of a resource. An example of an instance resource in this case would be:                 http://server/ticket/80 # instance       http://server/ticket # not an instance      So this is the behavior that is being proposed.   * If `ticket 80` does not exist return a http response code of `500`. Within the body of the error return the \"real\" error as an additional error code and description.   * If the `ticket` resource doesn't exist return a response code of 404."}
{"_id": "166961", "title": "Good example of gprof, for iOS project", "text": "The GNU profiler `gprof`, can be used to profile any application right on the device, allowing real world profiling. As Xcode 4.5 based on LLVM plus it has GNU Debugger, Profiler, and others. I need a better example, implementation example, for iOS projects."}
{"_id": "104571", "title": "How do I make web-application development less frustrating?", "text": "I am fairly new to web-application development. I just can't shake the feeling that it takes me forever to do anything of even remote complexity. In c++ and java I could write the same applications in a matter of hours. On the web debugging is painful (especially if complex json-ajax) is involved. IDEs suck. The languages let everything through without errors until it is doesn't work anymore and you are stuck looking for a bug without any error or warning to guide you (and no real good way to step through the program). Can someone guide me to reading material and/or technologies that would help me find a way to stay sane when developing complex web-applications? Perhaps the answer is to use a good framework (zend?). At work we are not really using a framework except for database models generators and basic add/update/delete page generators."}
{"_id": "94075", "title": "Tips on develop further on a legacy system?", "text": "I was assigned to extend (and eventually maintain) a legacy system (mostly procedural, semi-ball of mud) without MVC. Any tips or suggestions for me going forward? :S"}
{"_id": "116267", "title": "Where does form processing belong in an MVC application?", "text": "I found  this question on stack overflow and I have a question about one of the answers: In Zend Framework, forms are typically objects with decorators, but usually (I thought) processing is done using a combination of controllers and models, with the main objective to keep the controller as lightweight as possible, and each object responsible for its own state. One of the answers said to use the form object itself as the place to encapsulate the form processing members. Is that a good practice? For some reason that seems awkward to me. But it also seems awkward to do most of the work in either the database abstraction layer (Zend_Db_Table/Row) or the controller. Where is the best place to encapsulate form processing? Should you create separate classes for the form itself and another class for processing the form (which then deals with the DBAL)? **Edit:** here is another SO post that asks a similar question, but the OP doesn't get a complete answer. We want to know: where does each part of the form processing logic belong?"}
{"_id": "56975", "title": "Is there any method to estimate the cost for source code verification?", "text": "I am in need of an estimation technique to verify if the source code delivered is appropriate. for example, if the vendor has developed an application and is surrendering the source code, me as a consultant to the client, need to verify if the source code delivered is genuine and appropriate. Question is how to verify and how much to charge for this service?"}
{"_id": "94071", "title": "Is there a canonical book on Monodroid?", "text": "So far I have been living of standard Android books and mainly blogs for Monodroid, but I'm trying to find a definitive resource about the topic and not having any luck. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on Monodroid? What makes that book special?"}
{"_id": "116260", "title": "Middle tier language for interfacing C/C++ with db and web app", "text": "I have a web application requiring a middle-tier language to communicate between an oracle database and math routines on a Linux server and a flex- based application on a client. I'm not a software expert, and need recommendations for which language to use for the middle-tier. The math routines are currently in Matlab but will be ported to C (or C++) as shared libraries. Thus, by default there's some C or C++ communication necessary. These routines rely on FFTW (www.fftw.org), which is called directly from C or C++ (thus, I don't see re-writing these routines in another language). The middle tier must manage traffic between the client, the math routines, and the Oracle database. The client will trigger the math routines aynchronously, and the results saved in the db and transferred back to the client, etc. The middle-tier will also need to authenticate user accounts/passwords, and send out various administrative emails. Originally I thought PhP the obvious choice, but interfacing asychronously multiple clients with the C or C++ routines doesn't seem straightforward. Then I thought, why not just keep the whole middle tier in C or C++, but I'm not sure if this is done in the industry (C or C++ doesn't seem as web-friendly as other languages). There's always Jave + JNI, but maybe that introduces other complications (not sure). Any feedback appreciated."}
{"_id": "22953", "title": "Working with multiple clients", "text": "After applying to multiple contracting positions, I landed a few interviews which I then was accepted to do the work. I am also a full time college student, but I do have about 25-30 hours free a week, so that isn't a problem. My issue is how do I manage that **time efficiently**? One of the contracting position starts next week and I've already started one yesterday. How do you make your schedule to fit your clients to give them the most time a day and not get stuck in a narrow path of working for one until you \"feel\" done? My clients do know that I have other work, but I don't want them to think it'll affect their work nor do I want it to. Also, if you can give advice about similar experience of **things to look out** for or how having multiple clients affected your **quality of work**. I'm hoping this isn't too subjective or too specific, so comment regrading to that so I can fix it . Thanks!"}
{"_id": "235788", "title": "how to separate the logic of different views when using android viewFlipper?", "text": "I use a ViewFlipper in a dialog. I want to fetch the data from the EditText in both of them and also add click listeners to both of them. I can write the whole code in one big file, but i want to separate the logic to different files. since i don't need UI and full life cycle I don't use Activities but plain managers. what should i pass these managers to use `findViewById()`? if i pass context how can i fetch its UI's root view?"}
{"_id": "90985", "title": "What are some ways people handle DB change notifications?", "text": "Multiple clients can modify the DB and all need to be notified if a DB change occurs. Where I work, this is implemented with application threads that poll the DB every second or so. This doesn't strike me as a good way to do it, so I was wondering how do people usually handle this?"}
{"_id": "90984", "title": "Is it OK to reformat another developers code while modifying/adding to a module?", "text": "While developing in a group atmosphere and adding or modifying features in some code base. Is it considered offensive or impolite to reformat the previous developers code to bring it up to current coding standards? I understand that standards have changed, and will probably continue to change, but would any of you get offended if someone came through and changed your code formatting? To be clear, I'm not talking about changing any logic, just messing with tabs and spaces and such. EDIT: I don't only do this for the sake of coding standards, it helps me read through their code and bring it up to date so I can fully understand the logic that has been implemented before I start modifying critical applications."}
{"_id": "162047", "title": "Differences betwen HTML templating systems", "text": "I'm looking at backbone.js and noticed that it supports various templating systems (they specifically refer to Mustache.js, Haml-js, and Eco, but I understand it can support even more)(like Pure and dust.js) My question is really why are there so many of these? What makes one better or different to the others? Can anyone shed light on what their individual strengths and weaknesses are."}
{"_id": "171169", "title": "Where ORMs blur the lines between code and data, how do you decide what logic should be a stored procedure, and what should be coded?", "text": "Take the following pseudocode:               CreateInvoiceAndCalculate(ItemsAndQuantities, DispatchAddress, User);      And say `CreateInvoice` does the following:   * Create a new entry in an Invoices table belonging to the specified User to be sent to the given DispatchAddress.   * Create a new entry in an InvoiceItems table for each of the items in ItemsAndQuantities, storing the Item, the Quantity, and the cost of the item as of now (by looking it up from an Items table)   * Calculate the total amount of the invoice (e.g., shipping and taxes) and store it in the new Invoice row. At a glance you wouldn't be able to tell if this was a method in my application's code, or a stored procedure in the database that is being exposed as a function by the ORM. And to some extent it doesn't really matter. Now technically none of this is business logic. You're not making any decisions - just performing a calculation and creating records. However some may argue that because you are performing a calculation that affects the business (the total amount to be invoiced) that this isn't something that should be done in a stored procedure and instead should be in code. So for this specific example - why would it be more appropriate to do one or the other? And where do you draw the line? Or does it even particularly matter as long as it's sufficiently well documented?"}
{"_id": "102490", "title": "Requiring Programming Portfolios In Interviews/Recruiting", "text": "I've heard about a few mentioning of programming portfolios. A programming portfolio being a significant amount of code or code segments. Is a programming portfolio a good indicator of the quality of a developer? Also, another part of this question is how do you reject an potential employer's request for an portfolio?"}
{"_id": "162043", "title": "Appropriate use of SQL CLR", "text": "We have some back end processes that runs* on our sql server (SQL Server), they involve processing claims. This requires both data manipulation (biz logic) and data read/write to tables. The biz logic contained should never be used by any of our end user (web/fat client) applications, just for this (runs once, nightly) process. * By \"runs\" I mean it runs, but it is slow, full or errors, and is a nightmare to maintain, we're looking to redo this to fix these issues. One thing I'm trying to avoid is writing a 3000+ line Stored Proc (we have a few) that does everything, it isn't maintainable. My initial thoughts/approach is to use:   * SQL CLR (Sql 2012 / C# .Net 4.0) for the biz logic (there will be some complexity to the logic)   * Entity Framework for any simple CRUD read/write   * Stored Procedures for any complex data read/writes. There will be a final step of writing our end results (data) to other companies databases, but that's someone else responsibility. I'd like some thoughts about this approach if it is a good one (is there a better approach?), any suggestions would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "199714", "title": "modify source of copyrighted software", "text": "There is a a program that I want to use that is released in two (fully copyrighted) ways:   1. Stable binary form   2. Beta release, mostly-stable binary form that is easy to derive the source (uses jars) (this version is free) Question:   1. Can I legally download the beta version, make the necessary changes to work properly on my machine, recompile and then use the software?   2. If yes to question 1, can I then explain to people I work with how to do the same thing so that they too can use the product?  In no way would I be giving them the modified software, but rather distributing instructions how to modify it. The original download would still come from the copyright owner. I believe I have done my due diligence searching these and google's forums, but as always, if you find a duplicate question, please let me know (and point to where it is found). It seems odd to me that this hasn't been covered yet."}
{"_id": "235785", "title": "How to handle unexpected schema changes to production database", "text": "Is it a common or normal practice to encounter schema changes, especially renamed or removed columns, in a production database, without having been notified of the change? If unexpected schema changes are anticipated in the production database, how are they guarded against, other than basic exception handling? I've worked mainly with credit union software, DoD software, high volume e-commerce web applications, real estate systems, robotics, and more recently CMMS, GIS, and SCADA systems. Although the '90s and early 2000s were more of the wild west, everything I have been involved with over the last 10 years or so has required change management. Modifications to a production database without change control is not allowed by policy and by security controls. Comments in the accepted answer to this question - Why is \u201cSelect * from table\u201d considered bad practice make me wonder how much of this is academic and how much is reality."}
{"_id": "71922", "title": "How to network with other developers?", "text": "What suggestions would you give to find networking opportunities or to network at user groups and other developer venues? For instance, if you went to a code camp, would you try to network with other developers there? How would you go about doing it? Would you go up to someone you don't know at lunch and introduce yourself? I recently attended a user group meeting and found it somewhat boring. Only a few people really seemed to talk to others. Most attendees seemed to keep to themselves. Is this typical for developers? I've never been good at networking, probably somewhat introverted around people I don't know, so networking isn't my strong point. However, I would definitely like to branch out more and meet other developers."}
{"_id": "210901", "title": "scripting support in a C# application", "text": "what is the simplest and fastest way to support simple scripting in a .Net application? I search a lot but only find many things with practical no documentation or outdated since years. I only need to transfer a simple .Net Object to the script and get a bool result from it."}
{"_id": "108630", "title": "Does anyone have a specific example of using the Flyweight Pattern?", "text": "I have been studying design patterns and came accross the fly weight pattern. I have been trying to see opportunities to use the pattern in my applications but I am having trouble seeing how to use it. Also, what are some signs that a fly weight pattern is being used when I read other peoples code? According to the definition it says: > Use sharing to support large numbers of fine-grained objects efficiently. If I read it right Dictionaries and Hashtables could be instances of fly weights is this correct? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "235784", "title": "using parent child windows - is chrome phasing this out?", "text": "I use child pop ups extensively in my browser based web application. Examples include using child to search for information which is passed back down to parent form that is updated or I use child to update recordset information which then updates and refreshes parent. Current code has been working great in IE for years and until latest Chrome update (version 34.0.1847.116) it was working in Chrome too. Now it doesn't. From what I have read, it appears Chrome is specifically disallowing the ability to pass focus back to the parent from child. I cannot understand why this is the case. Its simple, intuitve and easy. Can someone shed light on this please? And what are the thoughts regarding using parent child in this way as a method? Hope I have made myself clear :) Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "71926", "title": "What's the ideal length of the sprint review/retrospective based on the length of the iteration?", "text": "I've been in several projects using scrum now. The length of the sprint review and/or retrospective has varied from client to client, from project to project. Some of the reviews became too long (2 days). Sometimes, I've lost focus while being in this long meetings and just wanted to go back to my safe and happy place (my chair in front of my computer). What is the ideal length of these meetings? What's the best way to avoid long meetings?"}
{"_id": "198045", "title": "Reading from a file and inserting into a database, a good practice", "text": "I am making an Android application which reads several JSON files and inserts the read information into tables in my database. For instance, there are three files:   1. countries.json { \"countries\": [ { \"name\": \"United States\", \"org_ids\": [ { \"id\": 1 }, { \"id\": 2 }, { \"id\": 3 } ] }, { \"name\": \"China\", \"org_ids\": [ { \"id\": 1 }, { \"id\": 2 } ] }, { \"name\": \"Hong Kong\", \"org_ids\": [ { \"id\": 3 }, { \"id\": 4 }, { \"id\": 5 } ] } ] }   2. orgs.json { \"orgs\": [ { \"id\": 1, \"name\": \"UNO\" }, { \"id\": 2, \"name\": \"Organization of American States\" }, { \"id\": 3, \"name\": \"INTERPOL\" }, { \"id\": 4, \"name\": \"European Union\" }, { \"id\": 5, \"name\": \"The Commonwealth of Nations\" } ] }   3. continents.json { \"continents\": [ { \"id\": 1, \"name\": \"Africa\" }, { \"id\": 2, \"name\": \"North America\" }, { \"id\": 3, \"name\": \"South America\" }, { \"id\": 4, \"name\": \"Asia\" }, { \"id\": 5, \"name\": \"Europe\" }, { \"id\": 6, \"name\": \"Australia\" } ] } Please don't pay attention to the contents of my JSONs, they don't contain real members of the listed international organizations. It's just an example. I see two ways. **THE FORMER WAY.** Store each country with its data to a class instance and define a `SparseArray` contains a country ID as a key and a `CountryInfo` object as a value.               /** Each item contains country's ID (key) and respective data (value) */         private SparseArray<CountryInfo> mCountriesInfo = new SparseArray<JsonParser.CountryInfo>();      After reading everything from the files, the data from the `SparseArray` will be inserted into the database.                   private class CountryInfo {              String mCountryName;         int continentId;         String mContinentName;         /** Contains IDs (keys) and names (values) of organizations */         SparseArray<String> mOrgNames = new SparseArray<String>();          }      **Drawbacks.**   * The more JSONS (or the more complex JSONs) the more complex the class for storing.    * Data duplication. **Benefits**   * Reading and inserting does not depend on each other. **THE LATTER WAY.** Read and insert without preliminary saving. **Drawbacks.**   * Database logic and reading logic are mixed. **Benefits.**   * No any additional classes.    * No data duplication. Which way is a better practice?"}
{"_id": "191577", "title": "How do you deal with pain from typing too much?", "text": "This is probably not the right place for this question, but I figure it is a board visited by thousands of programmers, and I am a programmer, and it is related, so I would try anyway. This is not a technical question, but rather a physical one - targeting mostly programmers, who have, as we all know, an extremely keyboard intensive lifestyle. The constant back and forth of the mouse, the rapid typing, the near expert level fluency over the keys. I can't be the only one who has come down with long term chronic pain from all of this. So I pose the query to other coders, how do you slow down? How do you bring those enormous typing speeds down to levels that let you function in day to day workload? I am currently attempting unfamiliar keyboard layouts, arthritic gloves, restrictive pads, and even word delay tools and I am having a lot of trouble \"training\" myself to type more slowly and not burn my arms up. I apologize if this isn't appropriate content, I just figure a place with all programmers would hold some insight."}
{"_id": "235782", "title": "Persistence frameworks and common sense", "text": "I have studied some persistence frameworks mainly Hibernate, DORM, TMS Aurelius and I'm wondering. In a model of type:               TOrderFiscal < > ----- > Items < > -------- > TOrderItem ------- > TProduct          TOrderFiscal --------- > TSuplier --------- > TCidade -------- > State      Each class of this with countless attributes, all mapped correctly to their corresponding tables and fields. When carrying a note without using \"Lazy Load\" would always be done with several joins select all fields to come from each of these classes. But it would be a waste since the note need only the supplier code and name attributes, the attributes OrderItem need only code, qty name. stock. What solution should be taken to create a specific class supplier of note just with these attributes ? eg               TOrder <> ----- > Items <> -------- > TOrderItem ------- > TNotaItemProduct          TOrder -------- > TOrderSupplier      If this is the solution , what happens when a business rule in TProduct should also be TOrderItemProduct? I duplicate code in both classes? Do heritage, eg TORderItemProduct and TProduct both inheriting from TBaseProduct ? Or is this a concern that we programmers we should not have ?"}
{"_id": "32526", "title": "Is Windows suitable for Ruby development?", "text": "I've read that Windows is not recommended for Ruby development and this is last thing that stops me from starting some projects in Ruby. Are there any changes to this? Or any suggestions to make development less painful? PS. I really like Win 7 as desktop OS, but for production I'm going to use Linux server."}
{"_id": "190670", "title": "C++ library API: new or getters?", "text": "I'm writing a C++ wrapper for my C library (my C++ skills are a bit rusty) and I'm wondering what's preferable: allowing user to construct objects themselves or give them objects via getters? What would be idiomatic C++ equivalent of that C function?               result* process_foo(library_handle*, foo*);      a constructor like this:               Result *res = new Result(library_handle, foo);      or a getter like this? (that basically wraps the above code):               Result *res = library->get_result(foo);      Does the answer change if creation of the result could fail? Getter could return `NULL`, but what should constructor version do on failure? AFAIK some people don't like exceptions. An extra method such as `init()` or `is_valid()` doesn't seem elegant. OTOH the `Result` object sticks to RAII, it's tiny with inline methods, so it might be good candidate for stack allocation."}
{"_id": "233031", "title": "Given two sorted array in ascending order with same length N, calculate the Kth min a[i]+b[j]. Time complexity O(N)", "text": "Given two sorted array in ascending order with same length N, calculate the Kth min a[i]+b[j]. Time complexity `O(N).` Another variant of the question goes like this: given a matrix with sorted rows, and sorted columns, find kth smallest. We can easily formulate an `O(klogk)` solution with minheap, but the challenge is doing the same in `O(N)` time ... The paper below formulates the solution but I could not understand it. Can somebody explain it or any alternative idea? hint: http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~andy/pubs/X%2BY.pdf"}
{"_id": "79930", "title": "When to use MVC", "text": "I'm building a site with PHP and a MySQL backend. But, I am currently not using any type of framework. Should I be using Model View Controller?"}
{"_id": "142695", "title": "How to remember the details (Core APIs) of one computer language?", "text": "I found my self often paused to check a certain usage of one core API when writing either `javascript` or `Ruby`. I am wondering how the other guys doing? Is it necessary to remember every Core API usages? It the answer is **yes** , how did you guy do it **efficiently**?"}
{"_id": "108188", "title": "does quicksort provide less swapping step?", "text": "So far, most of the fastest and common sorting method is quicksort. Although it has its pro and cons. However, i'm thinking that although this sorting method is fast but does it provide shortest swapping step? Because quicksort divide a set of element into 2 and then sorting, will it double up the swapping step?"}
{"_id": "78523", "title": "Managing large number of app.config files", "text": "We have many windows services and web apps which all rely on a lot of common settings. Currently we use just appSettings as needed and they are referenced by key. Some of the settings are app specific and only know by the app team while others are environment specific and only know by the deployment team. Also we have issues when we have to make a change to common setting necessitating the change 100s of files and restarting all corresponding services. With the great variety of settings there are duplicates ones that are no longer used and many that don't mean the same thing to different applications. To solve the problem I had a two fold idea one we would write a custom config sections group for the company with custom config sections for each app and one for common. The common section would be able to accessed by a wcf service and validate that all of its settings are the current settings. My question is am I reinventing the wheel are there any good frameworks/projects/products that are designed to manage many many configurations files in a distributed environment, and if not is the approach I have decided take a reasonable one."}
{"_id": "78525", "title": "Why would Qt be considered harmful?", "text": "A large list of \"harmful stuff\" related to software development is presented on cat -v. Is Qt harmful? What would be the rationale for considering to Qt harmful? Why would Tcl/Tk be presented as a superior alternative?"}
{"_id": "78524", "title": "OS Development in C++ Questions", "text": "As a Master's project, I am designing a simple operating system. It is being designed to run in 16-bit Real Mode on an x86 architecture. Ideally, I would like to develop this OS in C++, and only using assembly where necessary. Thus far, I have a boot loader written in assembly, that loads a kernel that is a mix of C++ and asm. My question is in regards to using C++. As of now, it has compiled and can run, but I have not used any dynamic memory allocation. If I were using C, it would make sense to write malloc functions that would handle memory allocation, but in C++ the new keyword is used. So... **How does 'new' work behind the scenes to allocate memory, and how would I go about handling this?** And as a corollary... **Does it make sense to try to use C++ to take advantage of its higher level abstactions? Or would it be more of a headache to use it and should I stick with C?** Please provide rationale if you believe that C++ would not be a good choice."}
{"_id": "142698", "title": "Why is C++ backward compatibility important / necessary?", "text": "As far as I understand it is a wide-spread opinion within the C++ community that certain features of C++ (including some features inherited directly from C), while still usable in themselves, do not fit well with the most recent C++ _best practices_. For example, I read a comment on this site stating that new / delete should be avoided altogether in favor of smart pointers. In view of this, I often wonder why backward compatibility with C and earlier C++ features is still important: to my knowledge there is no 100% compatibility, but most of C and C++ are contained in C++11 as a subset. So, maybe it would be possible / make sense to drop earlier C++ features (e.g. the mentioned new / delete) from a future C++ standard so that it is impossible to use them in new code. Existing code could still be maintained using the appropriate compiler. Interoperability between legacy and new code would be supported through separate compilation. One could continue to use the earlier standard or adopt the more recent one, only mixing the two would not be possible: a developer /team would have to **clearly choose** which programming style they want to use. The most flexible solution would be to have compiler options to switch on and off certain features (e.g. no new / delete allowed). Would this be a viable strategy for encouraging the adoption of modern C++ practices? Are there technical problems (e.g. compiling existing templates, ABI compatibility) that make such a change too difficult or even impossible? **EDIT** Following the suggestions contained in comments and answers I have shortened and partially reformulated the question. This is **NOT** a C versus C++ question. It is a question regarding C++ best practices and how they can be promoted. **EDIT 2** The number of down-votes suggests to me that the point of the question has not be understood by some. I have changed the formulation to stress the important point even more."}
{"_id": "233036", "title": "How to maintain trade off between number of columns in table vs join operations?", "text": "I have learnt that if there are more columns in table, then get those results using join query. How to decide the max number of columns in table? How feasible is \"Join Operation\" if too many table involved? **And if join operation hurts performance** Can we define all columns in one table to get rid of join operation? I found many developer telling me that its better to have few extra columns if needed frequently in most database operation than to have multiple tables."}
{"_id": "3049", "title": "What decent web-frameworks exists for functional programming?", "text": "I would like to do some web programming using functional programming. What decent web-frameworks exists for functional programming languages?"}
{"_id": "144935", "title": "Real life examples of P, NP, NP hard ,NP Complete problems", "text": "I need to know the real life or real time examples of above mentioned problems thanks!!"}
{"_id": "144934", "title": "Tools for Operating on Large Amounts of Text Data", "text": "I need to handle and process ~5 million news articles, an amount small enough to fit on a commodity desktop but too large to process serially. Thus far, I have been using Python/`pickle` for serialization, but this is easily getting out of hand. However, I do not have a server much less a cluster immediately available for distributed storage. What tools can I use to store, query, and operate on this size of a dataset? The majority of operations I need to do can be formulated as Map operations; the only exception is that the Natural Language Processing portion which is handled by calling Stanford's CoreNLP software suite (it needs a few seconds to load some large parameter files)."}
{"_id": "144939", "title": "At least one database view per database table-Is this good or bad design and why?", "text": "We are building a Windows Mobile based application to interface with a customer's existing web application. We are reading and writing data to the customer's SQL server 2008 database. The customer wants all reads to happen through SQL views, and all writes to happen through stored procedures. But taking a look at their database schema, they have a view of each and every table. And they have a view of each and every query that would be used to read data, instead of using the existing views on their tables. They have 348 tables and 655 views so far. They want us to model our mobile application in a similar fashion i.e. create additional views for all queries that we use to retrieve data. I know this is poor design, but I am unable to list out to the customer why their view based strategy is a poor design. What is the consensus in the community on when to use views? How does having so many views affect performance of the SQL server?"}
{"_id": "67354", "title": "Good resources for learning Rails?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on Ruby on Rails? I just finished working through Peter Cooper's \"Beginning Ruby\". So now I've got a reasonable grounding in the Ruby language and would like to move onto learning Rails. This question's answers give some good pointers, but I'd like to hear some specific reviews of books and online materials. I generally learn best by working through books with good practical/technical examples AND some passive reading content that breaks up the study between practical and reading sessions (this is what made \"Beginning Ruby\" great for me), but I'm worried that RoR is evolving fast and that any printed book I order might be obsolete by the time I get it and work through it. Is this a fair worry? Or can anyone recommend a good Rails 3 book that should be up to date at least for the next year or so? Also, I had a brief look at some of the online resources from the other questions, and Rails for Zombies seems to get a lot of praise. Has anyone here actually used it as their introductory guide to Rails? Basically I'd like to hear first-hand accounts of people who went through this \"Ruby-to-Rails\" learning phase recently and which materials were useful to you."}
{"_id": "117061", "title": "How should I go about learning Ruby and Rails?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on Ruby on Rails? I really want to change my PHP specialization to Ruby. I have some Ruby/Rails experience, and I've already created a few Ruby apps and a few Rails apps, but I want to dig deeper. I have limited time everyday for studying, so I'm looking for an effective way to improve my skills. I want to learn and understand a lot of Ruby-specific topics, e.g.:   * Ruby coding style   * understanding Ruby/Rails internals   * OOP and functional realization   * OO patterns in Ruby Also any other technologies related to Ruby and Rails that intermediate/senior developers should know. I don't want to confuse myself by reading/watching everything without a plan, so I need a good roadmap; I could create this plan by myself, but I would like to hear some advice from more professional developers. **Update: here is what I have so far** :   1. Learn the obscure parts of Ruby syntax; the parts that aren't explained in books that simply cover syntax.   2. Learn TestUnit.   3. Learn TDD and use it every time I write code.   4. Learn Ruby patterns. Ruby's OO architecture is different than PHP/Java/C++, so patterns look different.   5. Learn metaprogramming techniques.   6. Write my own web server that has common features, e.g. process-based, thread-based. Publish it on GitHub and get help from others at stackoverflow etc.   7. Dig into rack.   8. Dig into useful gems and tools such as: rake, haml, sass, rspec, nokogiri, capistrano, cucumber etc.   9. Write my own simple MVC framework that uses several ORMs. Publish it on GitHub and get help from others at stackoverflow etc.   10. Learn Rails by learning every topic from different sources: books, articles, screencasts. For example: learn generators from books, from railscasts, searching at stackoverflow, google groups etc.   11. Read Rails-specific topics in Crafting Rails Applications, paid screencasts from RailsCasts, PeepCode, TekPub, Rails for Zombies v2."}
{"_id": "87182", "title": "Is there a good reference manual for ruby/rails?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on Ruby on Rails? I've found switching from Java to Ruby/Rails to be very difficult. I feel like the rails books and websites that I've seen are program by example, and I have yet to see anything like a complete reference. In the java/spring world there is plenty of examples but also very thorough reference manuals. So even though I can get toy application xyz up and running in an afternoon with rails I'm apprehensive about doing anything of significance. I'm willing to admit that maybe this is because I've done java/spring for a few years and have near zero experience with ruby/rails. Just wondering if anyone else has run into this or if I'm missing something."}
{"_id": "141292", "title": "Rails Book Suggestions", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on Ruby on Rails? I'm looking to learn Ruby on Rails. I already have a small background in Ruby and don't really need a book that covers both, as I ordered the Pickaxe Book a couple days ago. I recently read some of Beginning Ruby on Rails-Steven Holzner, but abandoned that after seeing multiple statements on SO about how terrible the code in it was, and also the fact that it used Rails 1...Just wondering, what is the best book for an ABSOLUTE BEGINNER in Rails?"}
{"_id": "222077", "title": "Legal issues of creating a version of a classic game (Snake)", "text": "I recently created a version of Snake, the classic game popularized by Nokia, and I am planning on using it as an example of my game development skills. I just want to know if there are any copyright issues that could come up if I do this?"}
{"_id": "101282", "title": "Java SE and Java EE?", "text": "I was now talking with some people and they told me that if i was intrested in a job in the future for Java programming i should not spend too much time only learning Java SE i should spend time learning Java EE instead.. Now that brought me to some questions.. Java Enterprise Edition why use this ? What can i make with this that i can't make in Java SE?, And what kind of applications is this good for? Is there any good books out there that i can read to learn the Java EE? If i know Java SE well is it easier to learn Java EE ? Thanks! I will keep browsing the web for some anwears for theese questions.. And if i find anything i wil update this question."}
{"_id": "202675", "title": "What is the difference between Enterprise Java vs Core Java?", "text": "I have some experience in programming in Java but wondering if someone could explain what is the difference between Enterprise Java vs Core Java? Someone asked me a question on whether I use core-Java or Enterprise Java. Now I have to ask is there such thing as core-java?"}
{"_id": "27416", "title": "Distributing Libraries", "text": "How are libraries typically distributed? Because they have to be compiled with the **same compiler** under the **same settings** as the project using it, distributing the `.dll`, `.lib`, etc. seems impractical. Is the source code just made available for download?"}
{"_id": "137103", "title": "What's the difference between computer science and programming?", "text": "I'm new at computer science and programming, and I was wondering, is there a difference between computer science and programming? and do you get to choose to study only one of them at the university, or both of them?"}
{"_id": "67046", "title": "What are the things you put on an impact analysis document?", "text": "So you're fixing bugs, then you encountered one that could affect other modules of the software product. Your data is not enough to support your claim about the effects of the fix and you were asked to create an impact analysis document.   1. Is there a defined process on how to do this?   2. What are the key information needed?   3. Are there any known formats / templates for this document?"}
{"_id": "67044", "title": "Find material for improvement of my SQL ability", "text": "I need lots of training in SQL coding in MS SQL server The following part that is needed to be improved is:   * script    * T SQL    * Procedure    * Function Problem:   Where can I get material to improve my ability in SQL coding? Is there any website for downloading a database with different task/assignment and solution? Where should I go to review lots of SQL code?"}
{"_id": "188448", "title": "Designing status management for a file processing module", "text": "**The background** One of the functionality of a product that I am currently working on is to process a set of compressed files ( containing XML files ) that will be made available at a fixed location periodically (local or remote location - doesn't really matter for now) and dump the contents of each XML file in a database. I have taken care of the design for a generic parsing module that should be able to accommodate the parsing of any file type as I have explained in my question linked below. There is no need to take a look at the following link to answer my question but it would definitely provide a better context to the problem Generic file parser design in Java using the Strategy pattern **The Goal** I want to be able to keep a track of the status of each XML file and the status of each compressed file containing the XML files. I can probably have different statuses defined for the XML files such as NEW, PROCESSING, LOADING, COMPLETE or FAILED. I can derive the status of a compressed file based on the status of the XML files within the compressed file. e.g status of the compressed file is COMPLETE if no XML file inside the compressed file is in a FAILED state or status of the compressed file is FAILED if the status of at- least one XML file inside the compressed file is FAILED. **A possible solution** _The Model_ I need to maintain the status of each XML file and the compressed file. I will have to define some POJOs for holding the information about an XML file as shown below. Note that there is no need to store the status of a compressed file as the status of a compressed file can be derived from the status of its XML files.               public class FileInformation {              private String compressedFileName;         private String xmlFileName;         private long lastModifiedDate;         private int status;              public FileInformation(final String compressedFileName,                 final String xmlFileName, final long lastModified, final int status) {             this.compressedFileName = compressedFileName;             this.xmlFileName = xmlFileName;             this.lastModifiedDate = lastModified;             this.status = status;         }     }      I can then have a class called StatusManager that aggregates a Map of FileInformation instances and provides me the status of a given file at any given time in the lifetime of the appliciation as shown below :               public class StatusManager {             private Map<String,FileInformation> processingMap = new HashMap<String,FileInformation>();                public void add(FileInformation fileInformation) {             fileInformation.setStatus(0); // 0 will indicates that the file is in NEW state. 1 will indicate that the file is in process and so on..             processingMap.put(fileInformation.getXmlFileName(),fileInformation);         }              public void update(String filename,int status) {                     FileInformation fileInformation = processingMap.get(filename);             fileInformation.setStatus(status);         }             }      That takes care of the model for the sake of explanation. _**So whats my question?_** Edited after comments from Loki and answer from Eric : - I would like to know if there are any existing design patterns that I can refer to while coming up with a design. I would also like to know how I should go about designing the status management classes. I am more interested in understanding how I can model the status management classes. I am not interested in how other components are going to be updated about a change in status at the moment as suggested by Eric."}
{"_id": "66394", "title": "Do programmers think differently from non-programmers?", "text": "From reading various comments on this site, surfing the net, and talking to other programmers/non-programmers I find that a recurring theme is that programmers think differently from non-programmers. Do you really think this is the case? Aren't programmers just people who have a skill that can be difficult to explain in detail to non-programmers? Isn't this the same problem that any skilled person has when explaining it to someone unskilled in that same area? Edit 2: Hackers and Painters - This is a link from Michael's answer. Definitely worth reading if you've got a spare 15 mins Edit: Here's a link to clarify my question Programmers think differently than non-programmers The author of this blog holds the stance that programmers don't think differently from others. Does anyone disagree with this? If yes, why?"}
{"_id": "188442", "title": "Unit testing for a scientific computing library", "text": "I've had a bit of experience with unit testing before, in what I call (not pejoratively) the classic software engineering project: an MVC, with a user GUI, a database, business logic in the middle layer, etc. Now I'm writing a scientific computing library in C# (yeah, I know the C# is too slow, use C, don't reinvent the wheel, and all of that, but we have a lot of people doing scientific computation in my faculty in C#, and we sort of need it). It's a small project, in terms of the software development industry, because I'm writing it mostly by myself, and from time to time with help of a few colleagues. Also, I don't get paid for it, and most important, is an academic project. I mean, I expect it to have professional quality some day, because I'm planning on going open source, and hopefully with enough time it will grow a community of developers. Anyway, the project is getting big (around 18,000 lines of code, which I think is big for a one man's project), and its getting out of my hands. I'm using git for source control, and I think I got pretty all right, but I'm testing like old school, I mean, writing full console applications that test a big part of the system, mainly because I have no idea how to do unit testing in this scenario, although I feel that is what I should be doing. The problem is that the library contains mostly algorithms, for instance, graph algorithms, classifiers, numerical solvers, random distributions, etc. I just don't know how to specify tiny test cases for each of these algorithms, and since many of them are stochastic I don't know how to validate correctness. For classification, for instance, are some metrics like precision and recall, but these metrics are better for comparing two algorithms than for judging a single algorithm. So, how can I define correctness here? Finally there is also the problem of performance. I know its a whole different set of tests, but performance is one of the important features of a scientific tools, rather than user satisfaction, or other software engineering metrics. One of my biggest problems is with data structures. The only test I can come up for a kd-tree is a stress test: insert a lot of random vectors and then perform a lot of random queries, and compare against a naive linear search. The same for performance. And with numerical optimizers, I have benchmark functions which I can test, but then again, this is a stress test. I don't think these tests can be classified as unit tests, and most important, run continuously, since most of them are rather heavy. But I also think that these tests need to be done, I can't just insert two elements, pop the root, and yes, it works for the 0-1-n case. So, what, if any, is the (unit) testing approach for this kind of software? And how do I organize the unit tests and the heavy ones around the code-build- commit-integrate cycle?"}
{"_id": "109586", "title": "Couple of questions about sprint in scrum methodology", "text": "Its a general title for the question but I have a couple of questions for the Sprint in a SCRUM methodology.   1. What happens if a HOTFIX comes in the middle of a sprint. e.g - The website crashes or some part of the site that hasnt been worked on for quite some time crashes (like creditcard authorize or webservices etc). How do you incorporate that in the current Sprint(s)?   2. How to tackle bugs at the end of a Sprint. I know we can have Defect tracking sprint but should I plan for that at beginning? Or do I put that sprint back in the product backlog and start planning that from the next sprint planning.   3. How to decide how many sprints are required?  thank you for your help"}
{"_id": "156115", "title": "Drag and drop feature for a website", "text": "I have to design a website which will have drag and drop features for creating an e-card. So you select items from a tool box and drag and drop this item on the card area. Once you have completed the design you can publish the e-card on the web by clicking \"Save and publish\" button. What are the possible technologies for implementing this feature? The requirement is that the application should not degrade the performance of the website, and should not take much time in publishing once the user click \"Save and publish\" button."}
{"_id": "196533", "title": "Is there a factory pattern to prevent multiple instances for same object (instance that is Equal) good design?", "text": "I have a number of objects storing state. There are essentially two types of fields. The ones that uniquely define what the object is (what node, what edge etc), and the others that store state describing how these things are connected (this node is connected to _these_ edges, this edge is part of _these_ paths) etc. My model is updating the state variables using package methods, so all these objects act as immutable to anyone not in Model scope. All Objects extend one base type. I've toyed with the idea of a Factory approach which accepts a Builder object and constructs the applicable object. However, if an instance of the object already exists (ie would return true if I created the object defined by the builder and passed it to the equal method for the existing instance) the factory returns the current object instead of creating a new instance. Because the Equal method would only compare what uniquely defines the type of object (this is node A to node B) but won't check the dynamic state stuff (node A is currently connected to nodes C and E) this would be a way of ensuring anyone that wants my Node A automatically knows its state connections. More importantly it would prevent aliasing nightmares of someone trying to pass an instance of node A with different state then the node A in my model has. I've never heard of this pattern before, and it's a bit odd. I would have to do some overriding of serialization methods to make it work (ensure that when I read in a serilized object I add it to my facotry list of known instances, and/or return an existing factory in its place), as well as using a weakHashMap as if it was a weakHashSet to know whether an instance exists without worrying about a quasi-memory leak occuring. I don't know if this is too confusing or prone to its own obscure bugs. One thing I know is that plugins interface with lowest level hardware. The plugins have to be able to return state that is different than my memory; to tell my memory when its own state is inconsistent. I believe this is possible despite their fetching objects that exist in my memory; we allow building of objects without checking their consistency with the model until the addToModel is called anyways; and the existing plugins design was written before all this extra state existed and worked fine without ever being aware of it. Should I just be using some other design to avoid this crazyness? (I have another question to that affect that I'm posting)."}
{"_id": "245938", "title": "What does it mean when code \"runs on\" the .NET CLR?", "text": "The .NET CLR is not an interpreter, since code gets compiled to native code by the JIT compiler. So I find the usual description of code \"running on\" the CLR confusing. How does the native code interact with the CLR? Does the compiler insert calls into CLR methods at the beginning and end of your methods, for example? I have no idea."}
{"_id": "196536", "title": "Is having my objects so aware of each interconnection a bad thing?", "text": "I'm looking to refactor an existing design; to move a bunch of stuff out of a database and into memory where it should be (There are many reasons the DB approch is dangerous as it is now). My first act was to take all the existing objects and expand more state to them. The previous objects new only their parents, and that was it. From the youngest child you could walk up to find parents, but you couldn't ask \"what edges are on this node\" at all. I changed things to make state more accessible from every object. Now each object effectively knows of it's parent and all of it's children. I thought this was an obvious simplification that would make storing things in memory much easier. The problem is that I need to be able to construct objects without modifying my model, untill addToModel is called, which means I need to be able to construct objects in one state, and then update some of their state to be consistent with the Model's state and properly represent all the interconnectivity (node has to be informed when an edge is added, edge needs to know it's paths etc etc). This proved surprisingly complicated to keep consistent. I end up with either encapsulation issues (like assuming each object knows not to call the package scope methods that change memory from public methods that shouldn't be able to change state), as well as a concern about aliasing (what if someone creates a new Node A with no connections, when my Model says node A should be connected to B, C, and E?). I thought of many approches that work, but none feel 'clean'. Is the issue that I\"m trying to make my objects too aware of state, and thus putting too much effort on my model to maintain this state?"}
{"_id": "196535", "title": "Where to put details about the acceptance criteria of a user story?", "text": "In this blog post about acceptance criteria the author explains that good acceptance criteria should:   * State an intent not a solution (e.g. \u201cThe user can choose an account\u201d rather than \u201cThe user can select the account from a drop-down\u201d)   * Are independent of implementation (ideally the phrasing would be the same regardless whether this feature/story would be implemented on e.g. web, mobile or a voice activated system)   * Are relatively high level (not every detail needs to be in writing) And further details such as:   * The column heading is \u201cBalance\u201d   * The rolling balance format is 99,999,999,999.9 D/CR   * We should use a dropdown rather than checkboxes should be moved to either a _Team internal documentation_ or _Automated acceptance tests_ **However** , I often hear people frowning about using Cucumber or similar frameworks for doing GUI tests. Moreover, using an internal documentation could generate lots of problems due to failure to update the documentation regularly. I'm still struggling to find an effective way to capture such details during the conversation with the customer."}
{"_id": "29049", "title": "How to manage tailored/branded web tools?", "text": "We produce a number of analysis tools which we re-brand and customise for other businesses to include in their websites. The tools are typically product comparison, data/trend analysis and report production (in a very particular sector). At present these tools run as a single instance in house, our clients redirect there traffic to us with a URL param specifying the client for branding and customisation. Up until now we've been using an MVC approach with XSLT views. If a customer wants customisation we add switches in the MVC and/or imports&override in the XSLT. This was manageable for a while but now we have so many versions and customisations for sooo many clients, getting stable builds out the door is becoming a nightmare We are looking to move to MS asp.mvc3 with using Razor for our views but before this I am wondering are there any standard practices or patterns for developing and managing the kind of mess we are sliding towards? Cheers, T"}
{"_id": "245934", "title": "Hot swap/plug components in clojure?", "text": "I'm using OSGi for some time and I **really** like the ability to swap/replace components while my application is running. I simply have to build my module and push it to the OSGi container. Is there a similar concept/framework for clojure? I know about leiningen's dependency management which really helps modularity but I know of no built-in way to hot swap code."}
{"_id": "236475", "title": "REST object with resources", "text": "I am designing a HTTP-based REST API. Let's say I have an entity called `Entity` that has a bunch of properties. Some of its properties are files. Let's say `Entity` has following properties:               name: string     description: string     photos: array of photos     videos: array of videos      API is designed to be used from mobile devices and should work well under conditions of slow or unstable connection. The thing is the object should be not considered as complete until I upload all the resources the client have. What it the best way to construct a new object? * * * For now I come up with the following solution. Add readiness flag `isReady`, first post basic object data within single json:               POST /entities/ {name: \"somename\", description: \"description\", isReady: false}     obtain id of newly created `entityId`      Then upload resources one by one:               POST /entities/{entityId}/photos/ <photo data>     POST /entities/{entityId}/videos/ <video data>      And then update object's readiness flag               PUT /entities/{entityId}/ {isReady: true}      * * * The second solution that comes to mind is to create separate endpoints for photos, videos. Then I'll be able to first post photos and videos and then create `Entity` with references to resources.               POST /photos <photo data>     obtain ids     POST /videos <video data>     obtain ids          POST /entities/ {name: \"somename\", description: \"description\", photos: ids[], videos:ids[]}      The question with the second solution: is it okay for resource to be referenced by multiple `URIs`?               /entities/photos/{photoId}     /photos/{photoId}      * * * Is the first solution correct? Wouldn't the second one be overcomplicated? Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "115182", "title": "What defines an encapsulation properly?", "text": "I find the encapsulation concept a bit confusing. So far I have read that the members of the class should be private and any access to private members must be through getter and setter methods, which are public. Are these the only properties which define a properly encapsulated class? If yes, what about protected class members? We can access protected members in the same package through an object reference -- are classes containing protected members improperly encapsulated? Please give clarification."}
{"_id": "115180", "title": "Managing one-off scripts using DVCS", "text": "As a research scientist, I divide my code broadly into (1) Cohesive projects and (2) one-off scripts that perform an isolated task. I manage code from category (1) using a DVCS like git or hg in tandem with github and bitbucket and this works quite well for me. I would like to use a DVCS for category (2) and I am looking for suggestions on a good strategy to do so. The problem is that all of these scripts are scattered throughout my file system, usually living in a directory related to the data that they work on. It doesn't make sense to have a repo for each script as this would totally clutter my github/bitbucket accounts. On the other hand having one massive repo with random scripts seems like a mess keeping track of where each script contained in the repo is suppose to operate, and giving them descriptive names might be difficult given their specificity. Does anyone have experience managing random scripts in a sensible way that works well for them using a version control system? Suggestions would be most appreciated."}
{"_id": "144271", "title": "Is realtime validation of username good or bad?", "text": "I have a simple form for the user to sign up to my site; with email, username and password fields. We are now trying to implement an ajax validation so the user doesn't have to post the form to find out if the username is already taken. I can do this either on **keyup** event or on text **blur** event. My question is, _which of these is really the best way to do?_ ## Keyup From the user POV, it would be good if the validation is done as and when they are typing, _(on key up event)_ \\- of course, I am waiting for half a second to see if the user stops typing before firing off the request, and user can make any adjustments immediately. But this means I am sending way more requests than if I validated the username on _Blur_ event. ## Blur The number of requests will be much lower when the validation is done on blur event, But this means the user has to actually go away from the textbox, look at the validation result, and if necessary go back to it to make any changes and repeat the whole process until he gets it right. * * * I had a quick look at google, tumblr, twitter and no one actually does username validations on keyup events, (heck, tubmlr waits for the form to be posted) but I can swear I have seen keyup validations in a lot of places too. So, coming back to the question, **will keyup validations be too many for server, is it an unnecessary overhead? or is it worth taking these hits to give user a better experience?** ps: all my regex validations etc are already done on javascript and only when it passes all these other criteria does it send a request to server to check if a username already exists. (And the server is doing a `select count(1) from user where username = ''` \\- nothing substantial, but still enough to occupy some resource) pps: I'm on asp.net, MS SQL stack., if that matters."}
{"_id": "177402", "title": "Tension between the dependency inversion principle and avoiding \"new\" in C++?", "text": "I have seen a lot of advice that it is better to do `Type object;` than               Type* object = new Type();      in C++ whenever possible\u2014i.e., _minimize your use of`new`_. I understand the rational behind this and appreciate it. But according to my understanding, to practice dependency inversion requires pointers, e.g.:               Type* object = new Implementation();      where `Type` is abstract (i.e. contains at least one pure virtual method) and `Implementation` is concrete. It is not possible to do               Type object = Implementation();      because what that means is               Type object;     object = Implementation();      which requires constructing `object` as a `Type` initially\u2014but that cannot be done, since `Type` is abstract. Is there an inherent tension between the dependency inversion principle and avoiding `new` when using C++? If so, what patterns/principles/practices can be used to mitigate this tension?"}
{"_id": "177400", "title": "Render Ruby object to interactive html", "text": "I am developing a tool that discovers network services enabled on host and writes short summary on them like this:               init,1     \u2514\u2500\u2500 login,1560 --         \u2514\u2500\u2500 bash,1629             \u2514\u2500\u2500 nc,12137 -lup 50505     {         :net => [             [0] \"*:50505 IPv4 UDP \"         ],         :fds => [             [0] \"/root (cwd)\",             [1] \"/\",             [2] \"/bin/nc.traditional\",             [3] \"/xochikit/ld_poison.so (stat: No such file or directory)\",             [4] \"/dev/tty2\",             [5] \"*:50505\"         ]     }      It proved to be very nice formatted and useful for quick discovery thanks to colors provided by the `awesome_print` gem. However, its output is just a text. One issue is that if I want to share it, I lose colors. I'd also like to fold and unfold parts of objects, quickly jump to specific processes and what not? Adding comments, for example. Thus I want something web-based. What is the best approach to implement features like these? I haven't worked with web interfaces before and I don't have much experience with Ruby. **Update** : Maybe I didn't write my willings clear enough. I think I want something that behaves like Chromium's chrome://chrome/settings/ (or better, of course). Is there maybe an erb template or manual showing how to implement that? I thought this is a thing needed often enough."}
{"_id": "105927", "title": "Who owns this work?", "text": "I worked for a small company as a long term contractor making websites and other such things. A client comes along, pays what he said was \"A lot of money\" for me to spend a week doing his website. He paid it to the company. I didn't see any of his money, I've since left that job because they owe me months of back pay and it looks like I'm not going to end up getting much of it. (Bad situation) I want to consider the possibility now of exploring who owns any work I did that was unpaid, because if I need to, I can use it as leverage to help get my owed money. The company is still using some work in-house that's unpaid which I'm a lot clearer about contesting rights to. What's I'm struggling with is working out what to do about the clients website. From his POV he paid for it, it's his. From my POV I did it and didn't get paid for it so it's mine. Who owns it? If I do, I wouldn't want to strip it away from him, it seems really unfair, but I would like to use it as leverage if it comes to that."}
{"_id": "177404", "title": "Using machine learning to aim mirrors in a solar array?", "text": "I've been thinking about solar collectors where several independent mirrors to focus the light on a solar collector, similar to the following design from Energy Innovations. ![Solar Array](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zFSwl.jpg) Because there will be flaws in the assembly of this solar array, I am proceeding with the following assumptions (or lack thereof):   * The software knows the \"position\" of each mirror, but doesn't know how this position relates to the real world or to other mirrors. This will account for poor mirror calibration or other environmental factors which may effect one mirror but not the others.   * If a mirror moves 10 units in one direction, and then 10 units in the opposite direction, it will end up where it originally started. I would like to use machine learning to position the mirrors correctly and focus the light on the collector. I expect I would approach this as an optimization problem, optimizing the mirror positions to maximize the heat inside the collector and the power output. The problem is finding a small target in a noisy high-dimensional space (considering each mirror has 2 axis of rotation). Some of the problems I anticipate are:   * cloudy days, even if you stumble upon the perfect mirror alignment, it might be cloudy at the time   * noisy sensor data   * the sun is a moving target, it moves along a path, and follows a different path every day - although you could calculate the exact position of the sun at any time, you wouldn't know how that position relates to your mirrors My question isn't about the solar array, but possible machine learning techniques that would help in this \"small target in a noisy high dimensional- space\" problem. I mentioned the solar array because it was the catalyst for this question and a good example. What machine learning techniques can find such a small target in a noisy high- dimensional space? EDIT: A few additional thoughts:   * Yes, you can calculate the suns position in the real world, but you don't know how the mirrors position is related to the real world (unless you've learned it somehow). You might know the suns azimuth is 220 degrees, and the suns elevation is 60 degrees, and you might know a mirror is at position (-20, 42); now tell me, is that mirror correctly aligned with the sun? You don't know.   * Lets assume you have some very sophisticated heat measurements, and you know \"with this heat level, there must be 2 mirrors correctly aligned\". Now the question is, which two mirrors (out of 25 or more) are correctly aligned?   * One solution I considered was to approximate the correct \"alignment function\" using a neural network which would take the suns azimuth and elevation as input and output a large array with 2 values for each mirror which correspond to the 2 axis of each mirror. I'm not sure what the best training method is though. More thoughts:   * The mirrors do have a coordinate system which the software has access to, but the software doesn't know how this coordinate system relates the the real world. Let's say a mirror is at position (4, 42); what does that mean? I don't know and neither does the software. But I do know that if I move the mirror around and then move it back to (4, 42) the mirror will be in the same position it was previously. Additionally, two mirrors may be at position (4, 42) but be pointing in opposite directions in the real world.   * Yes, with a lot of quality sensors the problem is easy to solve. Energy Innovations is out of business as best I can tell, probably because they used a bunch of really awesome sensors and people said \"I'll just buy solar panels, they're cheaper.\"   * The only sensors in the system are in the collector head."}
{"_id": "180678", "title": "Implementing Glicko Rating in Python", "text": "Recently, I've been trying to implement some working version of the Glicko Rating System for fun. However, I fail to understand how to programmatically isolate `R` in Step 2. As you can see `R` appears on both sides of the equation and for a variable number of instances. How would I programatically solve for `R` using python? Thanks for any help :) EDIT: Actually shouldn't the `R` in step 2 be `R_0` on the right hand side of the equation? Is this a typo? Note in \"The Glicko system\" by Professor Mark E. Glickman, the equations are identical except for all `R`s being on one side and `R'` being on the other."}
{"_id": "180676", "title": "Y combinator and tail call optimizations", "text": "The definition of a Y combinator in F# is               let rec y f x = f (y f) x      f expects to have as a first argument some continuation for the recursive subproblems. Using the y f as a continuation, we see that f will be applied to successive calls as we can develop               let y f x = f (y f) x = f (f (y f)) x = f (f (f (y f))) x etc...      The problem is that, a priori, this scheme precludes using any tail call optimization : indeed, there might be some operation pending in the f's, in which case we can't just mutate the local stack frame associated with f. So :   * on the one end, using the Y combinator require an explicit _different_ continuation than the function itself.   * on the othe to apply TCO, we would like to have no operation pending in f and only call f itself. Do you know of any way in which those two could be reconciled ? Like a Y with accumulator trick, or a Y with CPS trick ? Or an argument proving that there is no way it can be done ?"}
{"_id": "31063", "title": "Can it be a good idea to create a new table for each client of a webapp?", "text": "This is semi-hypothetical, and as I've no experience in dealing with massive database tables, I have no idea if this is horrible for some reason. On to the situation: Imagine a web based application - lets say accounting software - which has 20,000 clients and each client has 1000+ entries in a table. That's 20 million rows which I know can certainly slow down complex queries. In a case like this, does it make more sense to create a new table in the database for each client? How do databases react to having 20k (or more!) tables?"}
{"_id": "72573", "title": "Programmatically create header file", "text": "What's the best way to programmatically create a header file for another project? Here's the specific use case: one program fingerprints the device for discrete information like version number, id string, etc, and then creates a header file populating static structs/program constants. This header file is then consumed by multiple projects to define a type of that class. I thought about reading writing in an xml or flat file, that means consuming projects need to know that structure of the and plug in libraries to read it."}
{"_id": "3951", "title": "How detailed should your report/invoice be for hourly work?", "text": "When working on development projects (like an iPhone app for a client), how detailed should your reports be when providing an invoice? In other words, how specific should you be regarding the **particular development tasks** you were working on at a given time? Just as helpful would be a short example of what one of your invoices looks like, with sample times and tasks that you would typically include."}
{"_id": "154014", "title": "The best way to have a pointer to several methods - critique requested", "text": "I'm starting with a short introduction of what I know from the C language:   * a pointer is a type that stores an adress or a NULL   * the `*` operator reads the left value of the variable on its right and use this value as address and reads the value of the variable at that address   * the `&` operator generate a pointer to the variable on its right So I was thinking that in C++ the pointers can work this way too, but I was wrong. To generate a pointer to a static method I have to do this:               #include <iostream>          class Foo{         public:         static void dummy(void){ std::cout << \"I'm dummy\" << std::endl; };     };          int main(){         void (*p)();         p = Foo::dummy; // step 1         p();         p = &(Foo::dummy); // step 2         p();         p = Foo; // step 3         p->dummy();         return(0);     }      Now I have several questions:   * Why does step 1 work?   * Why does step 2 work too? Looks like a \"pointer to pointer\" for p to me, very different from step 1.   * Why is step 3 the only one that doesn't work, and is the only one that makes some sort of sense to me, honestly?   * How can I write an array of pointers or a pointer to pointers structure to store methods (static or non-static from real objects)?   * What is the best syntax and coding style for generating a pointer to a method?"}
{"_id": "3956", "title": "Best way to save application settings", "text": "In Windows the default way is registry. This allow you to differentiate system-wide and per-user settings. In Unix you should use text files in the /etc folder for system-wide settings (what's the convention for per-user settings?). Many new programs (and especially those designed for being portable) use XML files.   * What's the best way (and location) to store non-BLOB settings?   * Should we follow each system default or have a unified solution?   * And what's the best **portable** way?"}
{"_id": "242724", "title": "How to void checked exceptions in Java?", "text": "I consider checked exception for a design mistake in the Java language. They lead to leaky abstractions and a lot of clutter in the code. It seems that they force the programmer to handle exceptions early although they are in most cases better handled lately. So my question is how to avoid checked exception? My idea is to execute the actual code inside an exception translator using lambda expressions. Example:               ExceptionConverter.convertToRuntimeException(() => {       // do things that could throw checked exceptions here     });      If for example a `IOException` occurs it gets rethrown as an exception with the same name but from a different class hierarchy (based on `RuntimeException`). This approach would effectivly remove the need to handle or declare checked exceptions. Exceptions could then be handled where and if it makes sense. Another solution would be to declare IOException `throws Exception` on each method. What do you think which solution is better? Do you know any better approach to avoid (suppress) checked exceptions in Java?"}
{"_id": "189790", "title": "How to create p2p enviroment in single laptop?", "text": "I'm developing a peer-to-peer dataspace application. For that I want to create a peer-to-peer environment locally (on a single machine, a laptop). Is there a any method or tool to do that?"}
{"_id": "189791", "title": "I/O interface for portable library", "text": "I'm writing a new .NET portable library that can read a file format, and file I/O is not available for portable libraries. The article \"How to Make Portable Class Libraries Work for You\" states that I'll have to write platform-specific libraries to solve this for each platform. That's not a problem. So, I'll have the file format reading code in the portable library, and then some platform-specific libraries to help with platform-specific I/O: one platform-specific library will be written using traditional traditional .NET `System.IO.File`, whereas the Windows Store apps-library will use `Windows.Storage` and the Windows Phone one will use `System.IO.IsolatedStorage`. I know WinRT is all asynchronous, but I only have experience with the traditional .NET `File` and synchronous I/O. Each of these platform-specific libraries will reference the portable library and provide the file format reader with a platform-specific implementation of a data source object:               ISomeDataSource dataSource = new WinRTDataSource(@\"filename.bin\");     var reader = new FileFormatReader(dataSource);      **How do I design the interface (e.g. the`ISomeDataSource` above) such that I can read and seek within the data?** But then platform-agnostic and maybe even asynchronous? I have access to all features of Visual Studio 2012 and C# 5 (`async` and `await`), but since I'm not on Windows 8 I cannot try WinRT."}
{"_id": "189796", "title": "Implementing Context-based Undo/Redo Functionality", "text": "I'm currently implementing an undo/redo mechanism using the Command Pattern. Everything works so far. My problem now is to implement the undo/redo functionality in a way that it is bound to a given context. Assume the following situation:   You have _win1_ and _win2_. In _win1_ you execute _action1_ ; then you switch to _win2_ and you execute _action2_ and _action3_. You \"undo-stack\" would look as follows   * action3   * action2   * action1 Now what happens if _win1_ gets closed/removed and you start performing undos. At _action1_ the program would probably crash as the context is has been executed against previously (i.e. _win1_ ) doesn't exist any more. As such, when _win1_ gets closed, all the corresponding actions should be removed from the \"undo-stack\". My question is on whether there exist already implementations/best practices for implementing such scenario properly? Or do you have any ideas?"}
{"_id": "144202", "title": "Reinforcing Syntax Elements", "text": "I am currently learning Javascript, and there is one element of the syntax that I can just not seem to nail down. That element is adding semicolons at the end of each line. I have learned Python and Ruby, and written a ton of both, so the lack of semicolons is stuck in my mind! Is there a way to drill that (or even any syntax, to make this more useful to future readers) into my brain?"}
{"_id": "221034", "title": "Usage of magic strings/numbers", "text": "This is somewhat controversial topic, and I guess there is as many opinions as there are programmers. But for the sake of it, I want to know what are the common practices in business (or in your work places). In my work place we have a strict coding guidelines. One section of that is dedicated to magic strings/numbers. It states (for C#): > Do not use literal values, either numeric or strings, in your code other > than to define symbolic constants. Use the following pattern to define > constants:   >  **public class Whatever   >  {   >  public static readonly Color PapayaWhip = new Color(0xFFEFD5);   >  public const int MaxNumberOfWheels = 18;   >  }**   >  There are exceptions: the values 0, 1 and null can nearly always be used > safely. Very often the values 2 and -1 are OK as well. Strings intended for > logging or tracing are exempt from this rule. Literals are allowed when > their meaning is clear from the context, and not subject to future changes.   >  **mean = (a + b) / 2; // okay   >  WaitMilliseconds(waitTimeInSeconds * 1000); // clear enough** An ideal situation would be some official research paper showing effects on readability/maintainability of the code when:   * Magic numbers/strings are all over the place   * Magic strings/numbers are replaced by constant declarations reasonably (or in different degrees of coverage) - and please don't shout at me for using \"reasonably\", I know everyone has different idea what \"reasonably\" is   * Magic strings/numbers arereplaced in excess and in places where they wouldn't have to be (see my example below) I would like to do this to have some scientificaly-based arguments when arguing with one of my collegues, who is going to the point of declaring constants like:               private const char SemiColon = ';';     private const char Space = ' ';     private const int NumberTen = 10;      Another example would be (and this one is in JavaScript):               var someNumericDisplay = new NumericDisplay(\"#Div_ID_Here\");      Do you stick DOM IDs on top of your javascript file if that ID is used only in 1 place? I have read the following topics:   StackExchange   StackOverflow   Bytes IT Community   There is many more articles, and after reading these some patterns emerge. So my question is should be using magic strings and numbers in our code? I am specifically looking for expert answers that are backed by references if possible."}
{"_id": "209641", "title": "Should you write automated tests to check that data is correct (the contents of config files, databases, etc.)?", "text": "Simply put: is there a best practice for whether developers should write automated tests to check that data is correct (the contents of config files, databases, etc.)? If so, what is it? Assume that the data is static for a given release, and specified as part of requirements."}
{"_id": "221025", "title": "How should we \"pick the comfortable programming language\" in an interview?", "text": "When they ask you to choose the programming language you are comfortable with **before** an interview, is it to ask questions about the programming language or to check how well you code in it? Like for example, if I don't know what `iterator`s are in Python but I'm comfortable with Python because of its in-built facilities, should I use Python or not? I might have studied everything about Haskell for ages but it takes me longer to write code in Haskell (imagine writing an AVL tree in Haskell). Is Haskell a good choice then?"}
{"_id": "35293", "title": "Failed Project: When to call it?", "text": "A few months ago my company found itself with its hands around a white-hot emergency of a project, and my entire team of six pulled basically a five week \"crunch week\". In the 48 hours before go-live, I worked 41 of them, two back to back all-nighters. Deep in the middle of that, I posted what has been my most successful question to date. During all that time there was never any talk of \"failure\". It was always \"get it done, regardless of the pain.\" Now that the thing is over and we as an organization have had some time to sit back and take stock of what we learned, one question has occurred to me. I can't say I've ever taken part in a project that I'd say had \"failed\". Plenty that were late or over budget, some disastrously so, but I've always ended up delivering SOMETHING. Yet I hear about \"failed IT projects\" all the time. I'm wondering about people's experience with that. What were the parameters that defined \"failure\"? What was the context? In our case, we are a software shop with external clients. Does a project that's internal to a large corporation have more space to \"fail\"? When do you make that call? What happens when you do? I'm not at all convinced that doing what we did is a smart business move. It wasn't my call (I'm just a code monkey) but I'm wondering if it might have been better to cut our losses, say we're not delivering, and move on. I don't just say that due to the sting of the long hours--the company royally lost its shirt on the project, plus the intangible costs to the company in terms of employee morale and loyalty were _large_. Factor that against the PR hit of failing to deliver a high profile project like this one was... and I don't know what the right answer is."}
{"_id": "66027", "title": "Storing sort code / account number on website. Security?", "text": "People in the UK will probably better understand what a sort code is and how sort code & account numbers are used for transfers etc, but the question is relevant to anyone I'm sure. Just to clarify: Giving someone your sortcode and account number allows them to transfer money to your bank... AFAIK there is no way to draw money out of someone's account. So do you still need such a high level of security on a site as you would say for credit card numbers etc? Would the same care you take over this data as you would for card numbers? I ask as a client has requested storing the data in their db - they have no SSL certificate to handle this data, but does that matter? Seeing as all someone could do is transfer you money...? Right?"}
{"_id": "224059", "title": "Does Bootstrap conflicts with jQuery or jQuery Mobile?", "text": "I am developing a web app. I have already used jQuery and jQuery Mobile as plug-ins for the app. Now, I want to include bootstrap. I wanted to ask if there is any possibility that Bootstrap will conflict with jQuery or jQuery Mobile - so that I can be better prepared. Do they conflict?"}
{"_id": "187378", "title": "Context class in Strategy pattern", "text": "I'm trying to understand the _strategy pattern_ and asking myself: is the context class must-have or can I leave it out without compromising pattern's purpose ? I was under the impression I needed some kind of switch for reading different types of files but didn't want to just hack something and later deal with refactoring (although, of course it always happens that code can be refactored but the idea was: try to be as smart as possible in the design beforehand...): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3bqgp.jpg) Image taken from wikimedia Can the client delegate directly to the Strategy interface or is there something I just missed to understand about the context class?               interface Reader {         // read information from file and fill data list field of Client         readFile();     }     class ExcelReader implements Reader{ /* */ }     class PdfReader implements Reader{ /* */}          class Client{         // strategic choice         Reader r;              // data list field         List<Data> data;              // Client Constructor         public Client(){             if(<file ends in .xls>)                 r = new ExcelReader();             else                 r = new PdfReader();             r.readFile();         }     }      So, above depicted is the context class missing. Does the code adhere to the strategy pattern?"}
{"_id": "50119", "title": "Creating an expandable, cross-platform compatible program \"core\"", "text": "Basically the brief is relatively simple. We need to create a program core. An engine that will power all sorts of programs with a large number of distinct potential applications and deployments. The core will be an analytics and algorithmic processor which will essentially take user-specific input and output scenarios based on the information it gets, whilst recording this information for reporting. It needs to be cross platform compatible. Something that can have platform specific layers put on top which can interface with the core. It also needs to be able to be expandable, for instance, modular with developers being able to write \"add-ons\" or \"extensions\" which can alter the function of the end program and can use the core to its full extent. (For instance, a good example of what I'm looking to create is a browser. It has its main core, the web-kit engine, for instance, and then on top of this is has a platform-specific GUI and can also have add-ons and extensions which can change the behavior of the program.) Our problem is that the extensions need to interface directly with the main core and expand/alter that functionality rather than the platform specific \"layer\". So, given that I have no experience in this whatsoever (I have a PHP background and recently objective-c), where should I start, and is there any knowledge/wisdom you can impart on me please? Thanks for all the help and advice you can give me. :) If you need any more explanation just ask. At the moment its in the very early stages of development, so we're just researching all possible routes of development. Thanks a lot"}
{"_id": "151460", "title": "Is there a decent way to maintain development of wordpress sites using the same base?", "text": "We've been churning out wordpress sites for a while, and we'd like to keep a base repository that can be used when starting a new project, as well as updating existing sites with changes to the wordpress base. Am I wrong in assuming this would be a good thing? We take care of updating the sites, so having a common base would make this easier. I've been looking at solutions using git, such as forking a base repository and using it to pull changes to the wordpress base, but committing the site to it's own repository. Or maybe, if it's possible, storing the base as a git submodule, but this would require storing themes and plugins outside of that. Is there any common way to go about this kind of website development?"}
{"_id": "151463", "title": "Do people use const a lot when programming in Objective C?", "text": "Related: \u201csending 'const NSString *' to parameter of type 'NSString *' discards qualifiers\u201d warning Sometimes, I think it's useful though. I may need to pass an a table and want to make sure that the content of the table does not change. However, in most Objective-C program samples, I never see `const`. My question is why?"}
{"_id": "187374", "title": "Making things just work and then improve them, or attempt to make them \"perfect\" from the beginning?", "text": "I don't have any experience working as a programmer - I just code as a hobby so far. Some years ago, I heard a programmer say that I should focus on making my code _just work_ despite being slow (it was for a game, so it was more noticeable if my code was slow or not) and then I would spend my time improving it to make it fast and better. I wonder how often is that advice applied in actual working environments. Do you make something that (barely) works and then spend the rest of the time improving it, or do you make it \"perfect\" (or acceptable) from the very beginning without looking back? I'm assuming that the difference between these is that one is more about writing the first solution that comes to your mind, and the other is about carefully planning and thinking what you're going to write - supposing that the latter is, well, significantly slower than the former."}
{"_id": "189424", "title": "coffeescript vs typescript vs JSX vs dart vs fantom", "text": "TypeScript website offer the following D3 example is there any comparison of the same D3 codes for the following languages available:   * CoffeeScript    * TypeScript   * JSX    * Dart   * Fantom It would be interested to see which one is really easier to use? Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "189425", "title": "Is there a way to support different coding styles in a development team", "text": "The Problem: Two developers => three opinions on indention, braces on new line or not etc. We usually work with three or four people on our projects and each of those has it's own code style. I know, the common solution is to agree on a code style, everybody has to use, but I don't want to force creative programmers in a suit that does not fit them. So the question is: Is there a way to let each programmer live his/her own style, but having a common code base inside the repository? I think of some git/svn/whatever plugin, which changes between personal and common style on checkout and commit. It appears to me, that the tricky part in this approach is to support correct diffs between the versions of a file"}
{"_id": "15515", "title": "Using assertions versus throwing exceptions?", "text": "Often when I write a functions I want to make sure the inputs to it are valid in order to detect such errors as early as possible (I believe these are called preconditions). When a precondition fails, I've always thrown an exception. But I'm beginning to doubt whether this is the best practice and if not assertions would be more appropriate. So when should I do which: when is it appropriate to use an assertion and when is it appropriate to throw an exception?"}
{"_id": "182171", "title": "Should I still use Debug.Assert today?", "text": "I recently came across some newly written code that was interspersed with lots of Debug.Assert (C#). Should we still use this widely despite the usage of TDD, BDD and Unit Testing in general?"}
{"_id": "235702", "title": "Should I assert in packages?", "text": "I have read a few asserts vs exception questions already; I ask specifically about package visible classes though. When you write a package, the classes marked with \"public\" are exposed to the outside world, thus exceptions are used to let users of the package's interface know they're using the package wrong. The classes that are left unmarked are only exposed to the internals of the package, no? So I'm inclined to say that when something goes awry in a package visible class, assertions would be used stop the classes I have built from sending one another bad data. Is this a fine thing to do? I have adopted the idea that objects hold their own data as private to them and methods are public/private as needed to work internally or with other classes. Once the class is identified as doing too much, the class is split into simpler objects meant to work together. At this point, many classes exist, but only some should be exposed to the outside world. So I have reached the conclusion that packages are like super objects, exposing just enough so that the entire \"community\" of classes can work together to solve the problem. This way implementation is hidden but a service is still provided. Is that understanding correct? That is what the question is based on, since the community of classes is created in a \"private to the package\" manner, it is not exposed to the outside, and so, should assertions be used instead?"}
{"_id": "196882", "title": "Assertions vs Exceptions - is my understanding of the differences between the two correct?", "text": "> Design By Contract uses preconditions and postconditions of the public > methods in a class together to form a contract between the class and its > clients. a) In code we implement _preconditions_ and _postconditions_ either as _assertions_ or as _exceptions_? b) We implement _preconditions_ and _postconditions_ in code as _exceptions_ if not fulfilling _preconditions_ or _postconditions_ doesn't indicate logically impossible situations or programming errors? c) we implement them in code as _assertions_ when not fulfilling _preconditions_ or _postconditions_ does indicate logically impossible situations or programming errors? d) Should _preconditions_ and _postconditions_ only be defined on public methods? **EDIT:** Aren't the following checks considered to be part of a normal operation ( and as I already mentioned, I've seen plenty of articles on DbC using similar examples for preconditions, where checks were made against arguments supplied by the user ), since if the user enters bad data, then without checks operation won't be rejected and as such system will stop working according to specs: Link:               public User GetUserWithIdOf(int id,             UserRepository userRepository) {       // Pre-conditions       if (userRepository == null)           throw new ArgumentNullException(               \"userRepository\");       if (id <= 0)           throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(               \"id must be > 0\");            User foundUser = userRepository.GetById(id);            // Post-conditions       if (foundUser == null)           throw new KeyNotFoundException(\"No user with \" +               \"an ID of \" + id.ToString() +               \" could be located.\");            return foundUser;     }"}
{"_id": "238896", "title": "Should you throw an exception if a method's input values are out of range?", "text": "Should you throw an exception if a method's input values are out of range? eg               //no imaginary numbers     public int MySquareRoot(int x)     {         if (x<0)         {         throw new ArgumentOutOfBoundsException(\"Must be a non-negative integer\");          }              //our implementation here           }      Now this method should never be called with a non-negative number, but hey programmers make mistakes. Is throwing exceptions here the right thing to do?"}
{"_id": "138951", "title": "Asserting in public methods", "text": "I'm a fan of using assertions in the code to check for preconditions. The question is whether is it wise to use assertions in public methods to check the precondition? My personal opinion is, that if my method can not handle the absence of a parameter (or some invalid value of it) and it is part of an API but does not rely on user input, then the issue (bad parameter) must be handled during the development process (at least by the integration tests) and not later when the software is used on field. For this reason I do use assertions even in public methods. I mean something like this:               public class SomeMagic implements MagicAPI {              public WoW doSomeMagic( Stuff source ) {             assert source != null : \"Incorrect use of the API\";                  // if assertions are deactivated (should be the case in production environment)             // this line will throw a NpEx              if ( source.isPlainStuff() ) {                 // some magic with a plain stuff             }                  return Wow.beSurprised;         }     }"}
{"_id": "100214", "title": "Do you throw an argumentexception or argumentnullexception from private methods?", "text": "I was just reviewing some code I wrote a while back, and can see that I have a couple of private methods that throw argumentnullexceptions and/or argumentexceptions if there are issues with the methods parameters. I guess my rationale is that helps future proof the application if someone attempts to \"misuse\" the method in future. However, given it is a private method and the people who are likely to call this method can see the associated comments and code, it is just unnecessary to throw this. It certainly doesn't hurt to have them, although it does add clutter. My feeling is that these exceptions are generally more useful on something like a API that is going to be exposed publically."}
{"_id": "189422", "title": "Is there's a way to speed up my php code which parse XML files", "text": "I'm developing a web application and we are using XML as a database and I'm using Linux as a platform and centos 6.5 as a server. Changing some value would make a lot a lot of changes in about six XML files. So here's the problem: Pressing button save after editing, adding, deleting takes about one or one and half minutes or more! This is because my code has to update about six XML files, log files and the crontab file. I wonder if there's any thing similar to threads in PHP? I have my functions and all code I want, I just want to know how php can be used in a new way to make performance better. Can you guide me even by links to read? I don't know what's exactly this problem is called to search about it. I'm still a beginner. here's the update function I'm using :                public static function update($tableName, $fieldsToUpdate, $newValues, $value = NULL) {             //Load XML file             $fileName = G_APP_SCRIPTS_PATH . \"/XMLS/xmls/\" . $tableName . \".xml\";             $xml = new DOMDocument;             $xml->load($fileName);             //Load XSD file             $xsdfileName = G_APP_SCRIPTS_PATH . \"/XMLS/xsds/\" . $tableName . \".xsd\";             $xsd = new DOMDocument;             $xsd->load($xsdfileName);             //Generate Xpath             $path = c_XML::generateXPath($xml, $xsd, $fieldsToUpdate, $value);             $xpath = new DOMXPath($xml);             //Query nodes to update             $nodes = $xpath->query($path);     //        print_r($nodes->item(0));             //If number of new values < number of elements to update,means we have to update             //all specified elements in the XML without any condition             if (count($newValues) < $nodes->length) {                 for ($i = 0; $i < $nodes->length / count($newValues); $i++)                     $newValues = array_merge($newValues, $newValues);             }             //Iterate over the nodes to update             for ($i = 0; $i < $nodes->length; $i++) {                 $oldNode = $nodes->item($i);                 for ($index = 0; $index < count($fieldsToUpdate); $index++) {                     //Find the associated index in the $fieldsToUpdate array                     if (strcmp($oldNode->nodeName, $fieldsToUpdate[$index]) === 0) {                         break;                     }                 }                 //Create new node with the old node's name                 $newNode = $xml->createElement($oldNode->nodeName);                 //var_dump($newNode);                 //if the new value is an array,means we have to update an inner node                 if (is_array($newValues[$index])) {                     //go to the desired node in XSD and get its children elements,                     //to know their format                     $xsdxpath = new DOMXPath($xsd);                     $children = $xsdxpath->query(\"/xs:schema/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element[@name='\" . $oldNode->nodeName . \"']/xs:complexType/xs:sequence/xs:element\");                     //convert the $chlidren node list to an array to pass the createNode function.                     for ($c = 0; $c < $children->length; $c++) {                         $childrenArray[$c] = $children->item($c);                     }                     //create the desired node                     c_XML::createNode($xml, $xsdxpath, $newNode, $childrenArray, $newValues[$index]);                 }                 //If the new value is not an array                 else                     $newNode->nodeValue = $newValues[$index];                 //Replace old node with new node                 $parent = $oldNode->parentNode;                 $parent->replaceChild($newNode, $oldNode);             }             //Validate & save XML             $isValid = c_XML::validateXMLtoXSD($xml, $xsdfileName);             if ($isValid == 1) {                 $xml->save($fileName);                 return true;             }             else                 return false;         }      and when user update a value I use this way in updating other xml files :                 private static function change_value_in_xml_file($old_value, $new_value) {                 $all_nodes = c_XML_h::select(tables::xmlfile, '*');                $nodes = array();                 for ($i = 0; $i < count($all_nodes); $i++) {                    $nodes[$i] = array();     //just get the nodes i want                    $nodes[$i][0] = $all_nodes[$i][0];                    $nodes[$i][1] = $all_nodes[$i][3];                 }                 //find old value and replace it with new value                 foreach ($nodes as $node) {                     $newValues[0] = $new_value;                          if ($node[1] == $old_value) {                         $id_to_update = $node[0];                         $fieldsToSelect[0] = xmlfile:: value;                         c_XML_h::update(tables::xmlfile, $fieldsToSelect, $newValues, $id_to_update);                     }                      }             }"}
{"_id": "200538", "title": "How do you hide error handling?", "text": "Many people consider exceptions to be a problem because they create invisible paths through your code. For example in this snippet:               function writeToFile(text, filename):       filehandle = open(filename)       foreach line in text:         filehandle.write(line)       filehandle.close()      The `write` method could throw an Exception. In that case the function will end prematurely and the filehandle is not closed. Writing exception safe code is hard. On the other hand adding explicit error handling like in C clutters up the code considerably. (This seems to be the \"other\" option if you don't like exceptions.)               function writeToFile(text, filename):       filehandle = open(filename)       if nullptr == filehandle:         return       foreach line in text:         if(!filehandle.write(line)):           filehandle.close()           return       filehandle.close()      Now this is just a simple example. I just wrote code to do some logging and between the abstract concept of \"Just dump data into a file!\" and my implementation is a difference of about 200 lines. So what do people do to keep their code readable in spite of all those corner cases that they need to watch out for and handle? Do we have to resort to literate programming? :)"}
{"_id": "181230", "title": "How to divide work to a network of computers?", "text": "Imagine a scenario as follows: Lets say you have a central computer which generates a lot of data. This data must go through some processing, which unfortunately takes longer than to generate. In order for the processing to catch up with real time, we plug in more slave computers. Further, we must take into account the possibility of slaves dropping out of the network mid-job as well as additional slaves being added. The central computer should ensure that all jobs are finished to its satisfaction, and that jobs dropped by a slave are retasked to another. The main question is: What approach should I use to achieve this? But perhaps the following would help me arrive at an answer: Is there a name or design pattern to what I am trying to do? What domain of knowledge do I need to achieve the goal of getting these computers to talk to each other? (eg. will a database, which I have some knowledge of, be enough or will this involve sockets, which I have yet to have knowledge of?) Are there any examples of such a system? The main question is a bit general so it would be good to have a starting point/reference point. Note I am assuming constraints of c++ and windows so solutions pointing in that direction would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "102819", "title": "How do I isolate difficult to reproduce bugs?", "text": "There's a bug in my program. Doesn't really matter what the platform is. Every so often, a row in a ListView is the wrong color. I tried setting a watchpoint for the variable that is supposed to dictate the color of the row, and it doesn't change... I am guessing it means the problem could be in the framework code. I've only witnessed it happen once.. My client has noticed it though, and wants it fixed. No idea where to start. Someone told me to artificially increase the load of the program. What are some methods for hunting down difficult to find bugs?"}
{"_id": "73194", "title": "How do I get into a career in distributed systems?", "text": "I am enamored by reliable distributed systems and want to spend my career improving them rather than merely using them to write the same CRUD applications over and over. What experience will convince an employer to let me work on their systems project? (Pick any example, say, CouchDB.)   * Presumably writing my own system is the best example, but the scope of that is relatively large and pragmatically speaking it doesn't make a ton of sense to re-invent the wheel.   * Learning the codebase of an existing system and working up to submitting patches seems like a long road to only marginal impact on a project, with little assurance of job payoff.   * Most employers (as far as I can tell) want you busy working on their high-level app and not spending time improving the infrastructure. Are these impressions accurate? How do other people get started working on these systems? **EDIT** : I am indeed willing to start at the bottom and labor for a long time. Are there specific projects/tasks in the distributed systems space that are suitable for a beginner? E.g. it seems like distributed message queues are a good starter project and are not 100% saturated across all platforms yet. Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "73190", "title": "best resource[s] to stay updated on algorithms", "text": "At University I follow 3 course about algorithms. As more and more university give to Internet program and slides about his courses. What are the best resources   \\- university courses put on web   \\- academic journal on algorithms   \\- professor   \\- algorithms specialist   \\- etc, etc ..      to be update in algorithms fields ?      For example if I know the most important person in algorithms field are X professor at Y university.      I can follow the suggested book/reference for his/her university courses and get updated on advance in algorithms.   Someone have some suggestion to follow advance in algorithms fields ?"}
{"_id": "131395", "title": "How do you describe the way LinkedIn handles URL links?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out what all is happening in the LinkedIN links URL. A link from LinkedIN community opens with a window shade (?) containing the LinkedIN site tools much like the alerts here at SE. The target link is embedded in a LinkedIN url as a GET variable. This is a LinkedIN link in three parts (the middle part is the target URL), `http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=5567246644694487049&gid=87719&type=member&item=90729979&articleURL=` **+** `http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nypl.org%2Fblog%2F2011%2F03%2F24%2Fprecarity-readers-guide` **+** `&urlhash=mQ1h&trk=group_most_recent_rich-0-b-shrttl`   1. What is this GUI widget I called \"window shade\" commonly referred to as?    2. What is the technical code reference?    3. What is the term I can use to describe the way LinkedIN uses GET data?"}
{"_id": "131397", "title": "Why use try \u2026 finally without a catch clause?", "text": "The classical way to program is with `try` / `catch` but when is it appropriate to use `try` without `catch`? In Python the following appears legal and can make sense:               try:       #do work     finally:       #do something unconditional      But we didn't `catch` anything. Similarly one could think in Java it would be               try {         //for example try to get a database connection     }     finally {       //closeConnection(connection)     }      It looks good and suddenly I don't have to worry about exception types etc. But if this is good practice, when is it good practice? Or reasons why this is not good practice or not legal (I didn't compile the source I'm asking about and it could be a syntax error for Java but I checked that the Python surely compiles.) A related problem I've run into is that I continue writing the function / method and at the end I must return something and I'm in a place which should not be reached and it must be a return point so even if I handle the exceptions above I'm still returning null or an empty string at some point in the code which should not be reached, often the end of the method / function. I've always managed to restructure to code so that I don't have to `return null` since that absolutely appears to look like less than good practice."}
{"_id": "77436", "title": "Is Google's Go a type-safe language?", "text": "this page http://golang.org/doc/go_faq.html writes: > although Go has static types the language attempts to make types feel > lighter weight than in typical OO languages So my question is exactly is it safely typed with generics (like C#) or loosely typed (like javascript) or optional (like option strict in Vb.Net)"}
{"_id": "77435", "title": "How and when dimensions are filled in a data warehouse schema?", "text": "I'm reading Ralph Kimball's books and I'm currently exploring the following data warehouse schema. ![AdventureWorks 2008 Data Warehouse Schema](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GydiG.png) Are both dimension & fact tables populated during the data warehouse creation/update? How often? What about the DimDate table? Do we populate it with all possible dates or only with date used by facts tables? **What is the standard process of generating a data warehouse?**"}
{"_id": "212457", "title": "Is it feasible to change model relationship mappings and properties in Entity Framework CodeFirst at runtime?", "text": "Here's the situation. I have an enterprise application that uses EF Codefirst to map POCOs to an existing database. This has been working fine so far. In fact I would say that it's been working really well. A situation has been introduced (out of my hands) that involves adding new tables to the database and/or new columns to tables when a customer has purchased an add-on. There aren't clear domain boundaries. So, I find myself in a difficult position because I need to support an entity at the base product level, but then I need to support the same entity (emphasis on this entity being considered the same) with a few new columns. Additionally, the entity may have new relationships to new tables. It appears that it is possible to add entities to a schema (see http://romiller.com/2012/03/26/dynamically-building-a-model-with-code-first/ for a general approach) but it doesn't address properties and relationships. Is it possible or even feasible to change a DbContext's schema and models at runtime? The application is using ASP.NET MVC WebAPI with a repository pattern. So, as a last resort I am considering the possibility that I'll need to stop using EF and replace it with ADO.NET instead, but that (of course) will be a very labor and time intensive process. Thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "212450", "title": "What are some possible alternatives for providing an 'Admin Password' for a desktop application?", "text": "I'm currently managing and re-factoring a piece of software that has been used at my company for over a decade now. One of the elements of this application is a sort of admin or power-user mode which provides things like some additional/internal input as well as the ability to turn off input limits. Historically this mode has been turned on by placing a specifically named file in a specific place in the windows system directory (both of which were hard coded into the application), the file being named 'something.DLL', even though it was an empty ASCII file and not a dll. So I recently added some code and a little modal form that allows the user to enter an admin password to turn this functionality on. It is a set password, not user specific. When the correct password is entered, it does sort of the same thing by creating a 'key file' in the applications root directory so that the program can start in admin mode if that file is present. Now the manager of the department that this software is mostly for doesn't like that idea so much. He thinks that if we have just a simple, preset password that it will easily 'get out', and he doesn't want inexperienced users accessing those extra features. So my question is, what other methods are there for providing this kind of access that would be somewhat more secure? It's pretty much just me when it comes to maintaining and managing this software, so anything that isn't almost completely built in or automated wouldn't help (such as sending requests for 'license keys' or something similar to that). Notes: This application is written in VB.NET (.NET 4.0), and I am currently planning on using click-once deployment when the new version is done."}
{"_id": "208062", "title": "Naming conventions for Java classes that have a static main method?", "text": "After reading gnat's answer to Why a static main method in Java and C#, rather than a constructor? I take his answer to mean that the purpose of a Java class with a static main method is to `define a program entry point` and that it is not meant to be the program itself. There may be a better way to do this, but I usually have the class with the static main method to do something simple like this:               public class MenuLauncher     {         public static void main(String[] args) {             Menu menu = new Menu();             menu.run();         }     }      Would the code above be the best practice for OOP where the class with static main doesn't do much more than launch or start program logic contained within a separate non-static object; after-all main is static so wouldn't the MenuLauncher class itself be very limited? Since main is a starting point I don't see any other purpose for the class other than to be a point of entry. **Is there a Java naming convention commonly used for classes that contain a main method and serve the purpose of being a program entry-point?**"}
{"_id": "208061", "title": "Pushing complete notifications to client", "text": "So with cqrs, we accept that consistency is eventual. However, that doesn't mean that the user has to continually poll, or that eventual means an update has to take more then 500ms to sync. For the sake of UX, we want to at least give the illusion of consistency, or if not possible, be as transparent as possible. With that in mind, I have this setup:   * angularjs web client, consumes    * webapi restful services, sends commands to   * nservicebus command handlers, saves to   * neventstore, dispatches events to   * nservicebus event handlers, sends message to   * signalr hub, sends notifications to   * angularjs web client so with that setup, theoretically   * some initiates a request   * the server validates the request   * sends out the necessary commands In the mean time   * the client gets a 200 response   * updates the view: working on it   * gets message sometime later: done, here's the updated data Here's where things get interesting, each command could spawn multiple events. Not sure if this is a serious no, no, or not, but that's how it is currently. For example, a new customer spawns CustomerIDCreated, CustomerNameUpdated, CustomerAddressUpdated, etc... Which event handler needs to notify the client? Should all of them in a progress bar style update?"}
{"_id": "208066", "title": "Is using protected inheritance to hide (but exploit) implemented interface from the public ok?", "text": "Recently, we had a discussion about code using protected inheritance in order to hide the fact (to client code) a class inherits from a specific base class but to exploit this fact in the implementation. The following code demonstrates this. It compiles with recent versions of GCC and clang++ (it uses C++11 features):               #include <vector>     #include <iostream>          class IObserver     {     public:         virtual void update() = 0;     };          class Model     {         std::vector<IObserver*> m_observers;         int m_number = 0;     public:         void addObserver(IObserver& observer) {             m_observers.push_back(&observer);         }         void setNumber(int value) {             m_number = value;             notifyObservers();         }         int number() const {             return m_number;         }     protected:         void notifyObservers() {             for (auto pObserver : m_observers)                 pObserver->update();         }     };          // We want to hide the fact class 'View' has 'IObserver' interface.     class View : protected IObserver     {         Model* m_pModel;     public:         View(Model& model) : m_pModel(&model) {             model.addObserver(*this); // Exploit the fact we are an 'IObserver'.         }     protected:         void update() override {             std::cout << m_pModel->number() << std::endl;         }     };          int main(int argc, char *argv[])     {         Model model;         View view(model);              //view.update(); // ERROR: 'update' is a protected member of 'View'.              model.setNumber(1);         model.setNumber(2);     }      The 'View' class inherits 'IObserver' interface but uses 'protected' modifier. So correspondingly, the public method 'update' inherited from that interface is protected. In the constructor, class 'View' adds itself as an observer to the 'Model' instance passed in as a parameter. Running the executable will output '1' and '2' in two separate lines, so the code runs as expected. Now this solution was intensely discussed in our team but in the end there were some questions we could not answer with a common agreement:   1. **Is this code actually legal w.r.t. to the C++ standard?** The issue here is that, in the constructor, the 'View' class passes a reference to itself to method 'Model::addOberver' which expects a reference to an 'IObserver' instance with a public 'update' method. However, as the 'View' class uses protected inheritance, this method now is protected. So when 'Model::notifyObservers' method is called within 'Model::setNumber' method, the View's 'update' method will be called \"from outside\" in spite of the fact it is actually protected. (The C++ FAQ Lite states: _\"[protected inheritance] allows derived classes of the protected derived class to **exploit** the relationship to the protected base class\"_. So this sounds like the code above is a corresponding use case.)   2. **Assumed it is legal code, is it also good design?** The fact we discussed a lot and didn't come to a common agreement might be a hint that it is not. Some of our colleagues had the opinion that a class' interface is solely defined by its public methods. And if 'View' class wants to pass a reference to itself to a method expecting an 'IObserver' instance it must use public inheritance. Some others (including myself) didn't agree with this strict definition. The implementation knows about the fact it has (and can provide) an 'IObserver' interface, so why should it not exploit this knowledge and expose the protected interface to code it wants to? In C++ we are able to define both, a public interface for \"normal\" client code and a protected interface for client code that wants to specialize/extend the class. So from this point of view, a class' interface is defined by its public **and** its protected interface. It just depends on which kind of client code \"looks at\" a class' interface.   3. **If the goal is to hide away 'IObserver' interface from the public, is using thepImpl idiom solely for this purpose worth it?** Because we were not able to come to a common conclusion regarding the first two questions we decided to \"workaround\" them by using the pImpl idiom and public inheritance in the implementation class. So we now have a class 'View' that does not inherit from 'IObserver' class at all. Instead, a class 'ViewImpl' now inherits from 'IObserver' publicly. While we agreed that this is \"good design\" it made our implementation more complex, we have one indirection more, and we now have to maintain nearly twice as much code. Furthermore, we need to maintain inheritance hierarchies for both, the public and the implementation classes. (Of course, these are well-known drawbacks from using the pImpl idiom.) I appreciate your opinions regarding these three questions a lot!!! So many thanks in advance :-)"}
{"_id": "208067", "title": "Interviewer gives wrong answers to their own questions", "text": "I have taken some C and C++ interviews in India and I must say I am quite disappointed by the kind of questions Indian interviewers ask. They expect black-n-white answers to questions and wont accept any middle ground. They try to confuse you for even simple questions, unnecessarily trying to complicate simple concepts. I also fail to understand how they will judge someone as a good or bad programmer based on such questions. On top I have had argument with atleast 3 interviewers because they asked me a question and then themselves were giving wrong answers to their own questions. Here are few samples of some really bad questions:   * \"What is p in the following C statement: int const* p\". The interviewer was hell bent on proving that p was a constant pointer to integer (you can clearly see its pointer to a const integer). I explained the difference but she wouldn't budge unless I explained her all possible expressions.   * Another guy asked if a pointer should be checked for NULL before deleting it. I told him that C++ standard guarantees that nothing wrong will happen on deleting a NULL pointer. He argued that its a standard coding practice to check for NULL and that C++ compilers are not reliable (in following c++ standard).    * Another guy asked me a question and then asked whether run-time error will occur or compile-time error. I argued that why would anyone write a code like that and I personally wouldn't write code like that. But he insisted that I choose between runtime or compile-time error.   * Another guy started asking me how to read command line parameters. I explained him that libC provides convenient faciltity to handle command line parameters. But this guy was hell bent in asking me the syntax of the library facilities. I told him to check libC manual and that it is impossible to remember the API details.   * Another guy asked me what will happen if for a singleton class, I remove the static qualifier for the instance pointer and instead just used a member variable which is a pointer to class. I said static getInstance method will throw error because static member functions cannot manipulate non-static member variables(in this case the instance pointer). He kept on insisting that I was wrong and that everything will work fine and kept pestering me to explain how. I didn't agree.   * A classic ridiculous question Indian interviewers ask is on sequence points where they would throw obscure expressions at you (p += ++p * p-- ;) which a programmer will never write and for which behavior is undefined and on top they expect you to come up with perfect answers. Has anybody had similar interviewing experiences where you ran into argument with interviewer or were faced with ridiculous questions. Please share"}
{"_id": "141189", "title": "Teacher demands excessive/unjustified use of Design Patterns", "text": "I study computer science and I have a class called \"Programming Techniques\". Its purpose is to teach (us) good object oriented design principles. During the semester we have homeworks, programs that we must write to demonstrate what we've learned. The lab assistant demands for each of these homeworks that specific design patterns should be used. For example, the current homework is an application used for processing customer orders. We are demanded to use either \"Factory Method\" or \"Abstract Factory\" design patterns for this. It gets even worse: at the end of the semester we must write a program (something more complex) that must use at least one creational pattern, at least one structural pattern and at least one behavioural pattern. Is it normal to demand this ? I mean, forcing us to design our programs in such a way that a specific design pattern makes sense is just beyond what I consider ok. If I'm a car mechanic and have a huge tool box, then I will use a certain tool from that box if and when the situation demands it. Not more, not less. If my design of the application doesn't demand at all the use of \"Abstract Factory\" (for example), then why should I implement it ? I'm not sure yet if the senior lecturer agrees with what the lab assistant is demanding, but **I want to talk to him about it and I need solid arguments to do so. How should I approach this problem with him ?** PS: I'm sure there must be a better way to teach us these things. Maybe making us each week read about 3 design patterns and the next week giving us a test with small but specific programming or architectural situations/problems. The goal in that test would be to identify what design patterns would make sense and how they could be implemented. This way, he can see if we understand them. EDIT: These homeworks are not just 100-line programs, they have quite a lot of requirements and are fairly complicated. This is the reason we have about 2 - 3 weeks of deadline for each of them. I agree that practicing this is the best way to learn. But shouldn't smaller programs/applications be used for this ? Something just for demonstrating purposes. Not big programs with lots of requirements/classes/etc."}
{"_id": "147191", "title": "How would I do a \"Server over capacity\" message with Django?", "text": "This probably isnt' a Django specific question, but I'm wondering how those \"Server over capacity\" messages are displayed. Some examples:   * Twitter's fail whale   * Tumblr's Over capacity slash page   * Drawception's over capacity message when new games are created."}
{"_id": "73224", "title": "Is going into management a bad way to deal with development burnout?", "text": "I'm burnt out on programming. There was recently a job opening in my department for a manager (IT mgr position). The department head encouraged me to apply and thinks I would be a good fit...but I'm not sure. Then again I don't want to be stuck working for a bad boss. What would you guys do? Those of you who have been promoted, would you say that it was a good thing for your career or do you regret it? * * * EDIT: Thanks all for sharing your experiences. Somebody told me that if I have to ask then I'm either not ready to be a manager or don't want the job. Does that sound right? I just like to research what I'm getting into before I actually make a big decision. Honestly there seems to be just as many (if not more) cons than there are pros. * * * I can't make up my mind :( After comparing a list of pros and cons...there seems to be just as many (if not more) cons than pros. The pay is certainly better but I'll be expected to be plugged in 24/7 and possibly work more hours. My goals are currently concrete but they would be more abstract in this role. I hate passing up on an opportunity especially since I was encouraged to apply and there's potential for growth, but I just don't know if it's worth it. If I take the job and it doesn't work out, there's really no turning back if I want to stay in the company. * * * @dauphic - I think you're half right. He probably wants me out of code but not due to performance...he might be planning to outsource."}
{"_id": "184772", "title": "throwing runtime exception in Java application", "text": "I am working as a contractor designing enterprise Java application for my client in the role of a technical lead. The application will be used by end users and there will be a support team who will support the application when we leave. The other technical leads with whom I am working are under the impression that exception handling will make the code dirty. The system should throw checked exceptions only from the Service tier and the rest of the code should throw runtime exceptions from all other tiers so that there is no need to handle the unchecked exceptions. What is a need to ever throw a unchecked exception in a business application? From my experience in the past about runtime exceptions: 1) Unchecked exceptions make the code unpredictable because they do not show up even in the Javadoc. 2) Throwing Unchecked exceptions in a business application is non-sense because when you throw it and it goes straight on Users face, how do you explain it to the user? I have seen enough of web application which show `500 -Internal Error. Contact Administrator` which means nothing for a end user or to the support team managing the application. 3) Throwing runtime exceptions forces the users of the class throwing the exception to walk through the source code to debug and see why the exception is thrown. This can only be avoided if the Javadoc of the runtime exception happens to be excellently documented which I find is never a case."}
{"_id": "184770", "title": "Affero GPL with PHP application and DB keys in localSettings.php", "text": "I want to licence a non-trivial PHP application I have been working on under Affero GPL v3 (because I want every admin, who will use it, also release the source code). However, something troubles me. I have a file localSettings.php, where the admin is supposed to write keys and some more information for MySQL database and some other secret info in the form               $dbPassword=\"mypassword\";      and so on. BUT. Under the AGPL, if he changes this, isn't he obliged to release the changed source code together with the secret credentials? (Because the file localSettings.php is, too, licensed under AGPL.)"}
{"_id": "230976", "title": "About AST construction in LL1 non recursive parser", "text": "I have implemented a LL1 parser in a non recursive approach with a explicit stack. The following algorithm is from the Dragon Book:               set zp to point to the first symbol of w;     set X to the top stack symbol;     while ( X != $ ) { /* stack is not empty */         if ( X is a )             pop the stack and advance zp;         else if ( X is a terminal )            error();         else if ( M[X, a] is an error entry )            error();         else if ( M[X,a] = X -+ Y1Y2 Yk ) {            output the production X -+ YlY2 - . Yk;            pop the stack;            push Yk, Yk-1,. . . , Yl onto the stack, with Yl on top;              set X to the top stack symbol;     }      The book says: > The parser is controlled by a program that considers X, the symbol on top of > the stack, and a, the current input symbol. If X is a nonterminal, the > parser chooses an X-production by consulting entry M[X, a] of the parsing > table IM. **(Additional code could be executed here, for example, code to > construct a node in a parse tree.)** Otherwise, it checks for a match > between the terminal X and current input symbol a. However i need more info on how to construct the expression tree nodes under this approach. I have a node hierarchy of UnaryOperator, BinaryOperator, etc but dont know where to instanciate it. Yet i havent found any simple example of this (with for example the arithmetic language)."}
{"_id": "230971", "title": "Whats a good structure to save and retrieve locations of images?", "text": "I got a java-ee application, where I collect informations about movies. Im my backend I provide data like the name, description, genre and a random uuid. I also got lots of related files, which are stored on a file server. Including some screenshots, the dvd or bluRay cover and video trailers. My current approach is: When saving the files to the fileserver, I retrieve the movies random uuid (which is the primary key btw.). I then rename the files `screenshot_[UUID]_1`, `screenshot_[UUID]_2` ... etc. Now, there are lots of other ways to handle this, like saving all filenames in a database or creating a dir structure on the fileserver for every uuid and, e.g., return all images in the \"[uuid]/screenshots\" folder via REST. I expect about 30k requests a day, so the service has to be pretty performant. Whats the best way to solve this?"}
{"_id": "152965", "title": "Passing compound object for parameters", "text": "I have different data modules, which take a couple of parameters from a configuration list. Do you think it's ok to pass a configuration object as a whole `module1(config)` and let the module pick what it needs, or should I rather pass the individual parameters `module1(config.a, config.c, config.f)`? The first case doesn't require change interfaces in case I need more configuration parameters, but the second case encapsules more?"}
{"_id": "140586", "title": "x86 segmentation and threading", "text": "Is some connection between using x86 segmentation and a possible implementation a thread package? I've been told that usually x86 segmentation is implemented in operating systems these days with an identity function (0 offset, unlimited limit), but can segmentation somehow be useful when dealing with multithreading?"}
{"_id": "51643", "title": "Is it ethical for a programmer to promote his/her own library?", "text": "Fairly recently I started maintaining my own open source JavaScript library. I created it to solve a pretty specific need but fairly regularly see questions that can be solved (in whole/part) by using my library. I post my answer and make sure to always include that I maintain the library. I feel for open source projects this may not be such a big deal but where do you draw the line? (ex: commercial products) Is it ethical for a programmer to promote his/her own library? When is it not?"}
{"_id": "165552", "title": "What is the best policy for allowing clients to change email?", "text": "We are developing a web application with a fairly standard registration process which requires a client/user to verify their email address before they are allowed to use the site. The site also allows users to change their email address after verification (with a re-type email field, as well). What are the pros and cons of having the user re-verify their email. Is this even needed? **EDIT:** _Summary of answers and comments below:_   * \"Over-verification\" annoys people, so don't use it unless critical   * Consider a \"re-type email\" field to prevent typos, but users can still copy/paste, rendering it moot.   * Beware of overwriting known good data with potentially good data   * Send email to old for notification; to new for verification   * Don't assume that the user still has access to the old email   * Identify impact of incorrect email if account is compromised"}
{"_id": "135718", "title": "How to answer \"When will it be done?\"", "text": "We all have it, problems that prove difficult to fix and working out a fix through obscure code and bizarre unexpected functionality. Slowly, logically working your way through trying to find patterns, errors, mistakes. This process takes time and the issues are often not easily understood by the client. How does one answer when asked the question \"When will it be done?\", especially when the client may not understand the inherent complexities of software development?"}
{"_id": "246534", "title": "How bad is it calling println() often than concatenating strings together and calling it once?", "text": "I know output to the console is a costly operation. In the interest of code readability sometimes it is nice to call a function to output text twice, rather than having a long string of text as an argument. For example how much less efficient is it to have               System.out.println(\"Good morning.\");     System.out.println(\"Please enter your name\");      vs.               System.out.println(\"Good morning.\\nPlease enter your name\");      In the example the difference is only one call to `println()` but what if it's more? On a related note, statements involving printing text can look strange while viewing the source code if the text to print is long. Assuming the text itself can't be made shorter, what can be done? Should this be a case where multiple `println()`calls be made? Someone once told me a line of code shouldn't be more than 80 characters (IIRC) so what would you do with               System.out.println(\"Good morning everyone. I am here today to present you with a very, very lengthy sentence in order to prove a point about how it looks strange amongst other code.\");      Is the same true for languages such as C/C++ since each time data is written to an output stream a system call must be made and the process must go to kernel mode (which is very costly)?"}
{"_id": "170996", "title": "How to define a code snippet in Java", "text": "**I know about`static final` equivalent to `#define` , But I am not looking for it** I have used `#define REP(i,n) for(__typeof(n) i=0; i<(n); i++)` in C++ and after that I can use `REP(i,10)` instead of `for(i=0; i<10; i++)` in the whole program. But is there a way to do this in Java? I want a version of `#define REP(i,n) for(__typeof(n) i=0; i<(n); i++)` in Java. I try it with `static final` but can't figure out."}
{"_id": "56019", "title": "to what level should the drawn design match the real web site", "text": "I am working on a web site. The client has drawn it in Microsoft Publisher, and I am using this drawing as a working graphical design. The problem is that there are a lot of places on the web site where a text block's margin differs in few pixels, or an image is few pixels far from where it is in the drawing. I wonder if the drawn design really should match the web site pixel-to-pixel, or is it a common practice to have some things differ in few pixels? I wouldn't really want to spend any time correcting those small errors. This is boring and looks like a time waste."}
{"_id": "98222", "title": "How can I get started on my first non-trivially sized Java project?", "text": "In a month, I have to hand in a Java project. I have to make an e-shop program which has two types of users (admin and normal users). The admin can add/delete/restock stuff in the shop while the normal user can watch products and buy them. In order to buy a product the customer has to make an account in that e-shop. I'm not the best Java student but I've made a plan of what classes I might use and this kind of stuff. But what I can't really figure out is how to:   1. make the users register to the e-shop   2. make different menus without doing a GUI, we are allowed to make a GUI but it is only a bonus and is not really required. By the way I haven't ever tried making a GUI.   3. how to make the program save things like the username and the products on the hard drive. I don't want anyone to do this for me, I just need some guidance, just to find out where to start and what I should look for."}
{"_id": "186957", "title": "Elemental access in arrays", "text": "I was reading up on data structures from Code Complete. This is when I stumbled through this piece about arrays: > **Think of arrays as sequential structures** Some of the brightest people in > computer science have suggested that arrays never be accessed randomly, but > only sequentially (Mills and Linger 1986). Their argument is that random > accesses in arrays are similar to random gotos in a program: Such accesses > tend to be undisciplined, error prone, and hard to prove correct. Instead of > arrays, they suggest using sets, stacks, and queues, whose elements are > accessed sequentially. Does this hold true for `System.Array` class in C#?"}
{"_id": "186959", "title": "Trailing slash in RESTful API", "text": "I have been having a debate about what to do with a trailing slash in a RESTful API. Lets say I have a resource called dogs and subordinate resources for individual dogs. We can therefore do the following:               GET/PUT/POST/DELETE http://example.com/dogs     GET/PUT/POST/DELETE http://example.com/dogs/{id}      But what do we do with the following special case:               GET/PUT/POST/DELETE http://example.com/dogs/      My personal view is that this is saying send a request to an individual dog resource with id = `null`. I think the API should return a 404 for this case. Others say the request is accessing the dogs resource i.e. the trailing slash is ignored. Does anyone know the definitive answer?"}
{"_id": "74165", "title": "Is learning C# easy when you already know C++?", "text": "I want to learn the C# language and I was wondering if prior knowledge of C++ would make it easier to learn? I have a large background in Java and am currently programming in (and therefore constantly improving on) C++. Would knowledge about the C++ syntax and structure help me understand C# more quickly, or is C# more akin to Java?"}
{"_id": "236789", "title": "What does bootstrapping mean in the context of Laravel?", "text": "I see 'the bootstrap process' mentioned in Dayle Rees Laravel tutorial \"Code Bright\" but no explanation of what it actually means. The Wikipedia definitions on Bootstrapping in computing don't seem to have any particular relevance."}
{"_id": "130045", "title": "Non-Managerial Programming Progression?", "text": "I'm contemplating my future career. I have the idea that from a rank-and-file-programmer position, I can advance either along a management track or along a programming track. I'm really not interested in management, so I'd like to know what kind of opportunities there are to advance as a programmer. What kind of jobs are the logical next steps in the progression?"}
{"_id": "128238", "title": "Is it good practice to store framework runtimes under source control?", "text": "I know a lot of software shops keep binaries under source control. However, our shop had come to store entire frameworks on the repository: DirectX runtime, CUDA, nVidia Optix, whatever. It is said to make a dev machine setup easier (supposedly, get latest and start coding). However, it considerably bloats the repository and burdens it with irrelevant history. I've never seen such a usage pattern. Do you consider it a good practice? [EDIT:] I have no problem with source-controlling isolated 3rd party binaries. The question refers to entire framework runtimes, typically consisting in 10+ binaries. As an extreme example, take Windows SDK (which we don't keep on the repository, thank god, but I see no difference in principle)."}
{"_id": "135673", "title": "Is there a canonical book on requirements gathering?", "text": "Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, methodologies, and other helpful information on gathering requirements for software and database projects? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "135671", "title": "Using PHP's ternary operator with only two arguments", "text": "I was recently reviewing some of my code and noticed that in a fit of absent- mindedness, I'd left a structure like the following:               $guid = empty($subscription->guid) ?  : $subscription->guid;      Now, this _wasn't doing what it's supposed to_ and is **wrong** , but since that property is always set now it was working fine, and there's no syntax error since 5.3 because of the following change: > Since PHP 5.3, it is possible to leave out the middle part of the ternary > operator. Expression expr1 ?: expr3 returns expr1 if expr1 evaluates to > TRUE, and expr3 otherwise. I wasn't aware of this change, and now I'm curious if I should be using it or not. This is something I was sorely missing from languages like ruby where you can do eg, `a = b || c` to get either `b` or `c` rather than a 'real' boolean. However, the syntax they've chosen for the ternary operator seems a little counter intuitive to me. Should I be using this in production code? It definitely threw myself when I saw it by accident."}
{"_id": "200273", "title": "How to write integration tests for a component oriented software platform", "text": "**Initial situation:** We are developing a software platform where products can be generated by configuring different components and adding additional ones. The platform is developed several years by a little developer team. Now the platform is more and more used, we get new developers as well as testers. We are currently developing a concept for developer. Cause is, that we do not have much developer tests for our components. The tester team uses automated UI testing tools to test the products emitted by the platform. **Our goal:** We want to motivate our team members to write more tests to achive   * shorten feedback cycles   * reduce bug count for new features   * reduce regressions **The question:** We want to begin figuring out brittle components. After we have found them, we want to write integration tests for the component which describes expected features. Now we have the following problem: We can test the component for itself and mock all dependencies to other components. We can test the component with all directly depend components. We can test the component with the completely dependency structure of it - so its dependencies and their dependencies... We can test the component in the context of different product configurations. Which one would be the best to achieve our goals and at the same time minimize the effort needed by our team members to configure the tests?"}
{"_id": "138983", "title": "Options within OpenCV related to image difference analysis and reporting", "text": "**Scenario:** Stationary view with sequential timestamped samples in 2D-color where the comparison is only done between one pair of neighboring samples. **Background:**   * Have never used OpenCV before,   * Limited understanding of computer vision,   * Moderate experience scripting programs. **Questions:**   * Given the information provided, what additional information would be of use?   * What existing related analysis and reporting solutions within OpenCV should I look into more? * * * **UPDATES:**   * **What is the source of these images?** I've abstracted the intent of a problem to the degree in an attempt to avoid skewing how the answers conceptualize the related solutions. **Disclosure-of-Problem-Domain:** It's possible that I'm wrong about the value of abstracting the problem domain, and since it's already been guessed, I'll confirm the domain is any high-value automated GUI testing that is of relatively low-complexity. Currently, seems like simple regression testing based on pixel-for-pixel change which is then sorted by the percentage of pixels change on a pair-by-pair basis would be quick and produce value, but the template matching suggested by Martin Beckett might allow for cross-platform testing, though again not knowing much about OpenCV, or the domain of computer vision, it's hard to say complex or valuable such an approach might be currently.   * **What is the same?** Depends on the solutions OpenCV offers in the context of image difference analysis and reporting. Any artifacts related to the capture would/should be accounted for in the comparison analysis. Ideally, difference reporting should by default (or predictive coding) only profile material significant state changes in a way that allows the manual response to them to be prioritized.    * **What are the circumstances of the image capture?** All pairs are sampled within a highly controlled environment with the same stationary view/angle, lighting, exposures, focus, etc."}
{"_id": "200279", "title": "Really bad example projects that use sonar", "text": "When consideringen whether to use sonar or not, it would be great to see both good code as well as bad code that use sonar for static code analysis. I have browsed http://nemo.sonarsource.org/ looking for projects that have bad metrics. Unfortunately, I think that the really bad ones will probably not use code analysis at all. I have managed to find a few, but they are not as bad looking as I wanted to find. If one can find a really bad looking one and then compare it to a project with good metrics, then it would be easier to make a case as to why to use sonar in the first place. Are there any horror example projects with really bad metrics out there? I would prefer java projects. I found one with worse metrics than most, but even that isnt all that bad to me: http://nemo.sonarsource.org/dashboard/index/351728?did=1 BRs"}
{"_id": "204197", "title": "Is it possible to encapsulate the object itself within a dynamic property?", "text": "I ask this question out of curiosity. Lets say the class Foo is a singleton and I want to call Foo instead of Foo.Instance to access the static object. Would it be possible to encapsulate the object itself within a dynamic property?   Would C# allow me to create a dynamic property that refers to anything but a property of the said object? Like so:               private static Foo _instance;          public static Foo this {         get {             if (_instance == null) {                 _instance = new Foo();             }             return _instance;         }     }     public void Bar(){}      this would allow me to call               Foo.Bar();        instead of               Foo.Instance.Bar();        If this is possible, then in witch situation would it be viable to encapsulate any kind of object like this whithout using heritage for example instead of:               class Ploof : List{}        we would have:               class Ploof {         private List _list;         public List this { get {  return _list; } }     }"}
{"_id": "84098", "title": "What should a programmer learn first: Algorithms or Design Patterns?", "text": "I have new junior programmers (new graduates) who just joined my team, some of them do not know much about algorithms and design patterns. I am not sure which one should I teach them first?"}
{"_id": "87215", "title": "How to convincing Programmers that 'being in the zone' [coding] isn't always beneficial for the project?", "text": "In this book review: http://books.slashdot.org/story/11/06/13/1251216/Book- Review-The-Clean-Coder?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=twitter > Chapter 4 talks about the coding process itself. One of the hardest > statements the book makes here is to stay out of \"the zone\" when coding. Bob > asserts that you lose parts of the big picture when you go down to that > level. While I may struggle with that assertion, I do agree with his next > statement that debugging time is expensive, so you should avoid having to do > debugger-driven development whenever possible. He finishes the chapter with > examples of pacing yourself (walking away, taking a shower) and how to deal > with being late on your projects (remembering that hope is not a plan, and > being clear about the impact of overtime) along with a reminder that it is > good to both give and receive help, whether it be small questions or > mentoring others. they talk about how 'being in the zone' - can actually be detrimental to the project. How do you convince your team members that this is the case?"}
{"_id": "87217", "title": "Why is Mercurial considered to be easier than Git?", "text": "When looking at comparisons, it seems to me that there could be a 1:1 mapping between their feature sets. Yet, an often cited statement is that \"Mercurial is easier\". What is the basis of this statement? (if any)"}
{"_id": "41270", "title": "How to systematize tagging in code?", "text": "There are several almost standard tags used in comments: **FIXME** , **TODO** , **BUGBUG**. Which other tags do you use and for what? Are there any standards on using them, i.e. format (supplementing with date and initials), revising procedures, etc?"}
{"_id": "246282", "title": "Should a view call a function?", "text": "Should a view call a helper function? Say I pass in data from the DB to the view. The data is a unix timestamp. Should I make a call in my view to convert it to a human readable TS or should I convert it in the controller before passing it in? OR should I make a method in the model that converts... Looking for a \"best practice\" or \"secure coding\" concerned answer."}
{"_id": "218245", "title": "Selenium-Nunit Program Structure", "text": "My office has a suite of web reporting engines written in VB. All in all there's about 300 reports with varying displays depending on the data being input into them. I'm trying to establish an efficient way to deal with such a major diversity, but am struggling with creating a system that won't be a nightmare to code/maintain. What I've considered doing is:   1. On program launch, read the steps required for each test page. This may have multiple tests for the same page with varying inputs.   2. Write each iteration of the test in XML file under $env:temp/testname   3. Use the TestCaseSource attribute of Nunit to funnel every related xml file as a source. My major stumbling block has been how to get that data to the Nunit framework. Is Nunit really appropriate for what I'm trying to do, or is it too static?"}
{"_id": "218249", "title": "Version control and data provenance in charts, slides, and marketing materials that derive from code ouput", "text": "I develop as part of a small team that mostly does research and statistics stuff. But from the output of our code, other teams often create promotional materials, slides, presentations, etc. We run into a big problem because the marketing team (non-programmers) tend to use Excel, Adobe products, or other tools to carry out their work, and just want easy-to-use data formats from us. This leads to data provenance problems. We see email chains with attachments from 6 months ago and someone is saying \"Hey, who generated this data. Can you generate more of it with the recent 6 months of results added in?\" I want to help the other teams effectively use version control (my team uses it reasonably well for the code, but every other team classically comes up with many excuses to avoid it). For version controlling a software project where the participants are coders, I have some reasonable understanding of best practices and what to do. But for getting a team of marketing professionals to version control marketing materials and associate metadata about the software used to generate the data for the charts, I'm a bit at a loss. Some of the goals I'd like to achieve:   1. Data that supported a material should _never_ be associated with a person. As in, it should never be the case that someone says \"Hey Person XYZ, I see you sent me this data as an attachment 6 months ago, can you update it for me?\" Rather, data should be associated with the code and code-version of any code that was used to get it, and perhaps a team of many people who may maintain that code. Then references for data updates are about executing a specific piece of code, with a known version number.   2. I'd like this to be a process that works easily with the tech that the marketing team already uses (e.g. Excel files, Adobe file, whatever). I don't want to burden them with needing to learn a bunch of new stuff just to use version control. They are capable folks, so learning something is fine. Ideally they could use our existing version control framework, but there are some issues around that. I think knowing some general best practices will be enough though, and I can handle patching that into the way our stuff works now. Are there any goals I am failing to think about? What are the time-tested ways to do something like this?"}
{"_id": "133638", "title": "How to estimate sprint velocity with varying team capacity?", "text": "We are a small team of 4 devs rather green in Scrum. Coming from all over the country, we often take odd days off or whole weeks off to go home. Therefore our team capacity changes dramatically from one iteration to another due to annual leaves, which leads to very different velocities from one iteration to another. How do we account for team capacity when estimating velocity at the Planning Meeting? Historical data will reflect very different capacities and we cannot wait one whole year to derive an average for our estimate velocity."}
{"_id": "133637", "title": "How to estimate a timeboxed spike using story points?", "text": "So my team and I are quite new to Scrum and today moved from estimating in Ideal Hours to Story Points. All seems sound rationale, BUT with timeboxed activities. Here is the case, we have an extremelly complex User Story that needs a spike so to explore underlying technical unknowns. With Ideal Hours it would be easy: timebox it to one ideal day (8 ideal hours). Now we want to account the exploratory work towards our velocity. So, the pressing question is how do we give Story Points to a timeboxed activity? Constraint: we do not know how to translate this 1 ideal day into Story Points because our historical data is badly collected and does not reflect reality."}
{"_id": "205573", "title": "Implementing scrum-but for first time: how to deal with technical pre-requisites?", "text": "After working Scrum(ish) in a previous workplace, I am trying to implement it in my new place of work for a brand new project (I am no scrum expert). We have some pre-requisites to code before we can begin working on the stories (which are being groomed in the mean time). Things like database design, api design, etc. We plan to use two week iterations and it's just not clear to me how the first one (or two) can provide something useful to the customer and \"potentially shippable\" if we first have to \"lay down some groundwork\" ? Any ideas on how to treat this? \\-----edit / rephrase----- How do we incorporate initial non client-visible preliminary work (e.g., database design, api, etc) into the Scrum process?"}
{"_id": "42899", "title": "Could anyone suggest me some image manipulation techniques to be added to my image viewer?", "text": "I'm trying to develop a small image viewer just as an exercise to sharpen my programming skills. So far , all the features that I could think of adding to it are zooming in and out, inverting the colors of the image and resizing. Could anyone suggest me a few more features?? You are also welcome to suggest anything which has not been implemented yet. I would like to take it as a learning challenge. Thanks."}
{"_id": "205576", "title": "How should I store an old project?", "text": "As a freelancer, I come across many projects. Its almost impossible to store a backup of all of the projects on my laptop. What are some better options to store them?"}
{"_id": "202085", "title": "How do I create a mutually-incompatible type library in Java?", "text": "Folks, this seems like it should be straightforward, but I'm drawing a blank here. As a simplified example, consider an abstract class called Number with an abstract method add(). I want to create two concrete subclasses, Integer and Float, with method signatures Integer.add(Integer other) and Float.add(Float other). A Float can NOT be added to an Integer. What should the method signature of the abstract add() method in the Number class be in order to enforce this constraint at compile-time?"}
{"_id": "42895", "title": "Why are off by one errors so common and what can we do to prevent them?", "text": "It seems that off-by-one errors are one of the most (if not the most) common programming errors (see What are common mistakes in coding?, and conventional wisdom). What is the reason these are so common, is it something to do with how the human brain works?   What can we do to prevent falling prey to the off by one errors?"}
{"_id": "204222", "title": "register variable in C and C++", "text": "I know the concept of register variable and it's use cases but there are few questions in my mind based on what I have tried.   1. I cannot access the address of a register variable in C though I can do it C++! Why? Is there any issue in accessing the addressing of a register variable?   2. Suppose if I declare a string variable in C++ as register, then where will that variable be stored? What is the point in declaring the storage class of non-numeric data types such as 'string' in C++ to be register?? **UPDATE:** I thought that C++ allows us to fetch the address of a register variable, as I was not getting any error in my program which is as follows:               #include<iostream>     #include<time.h>          using namespace std;          clock_t beg, en;          int main(){              int j, k=0;              beg=clock();         for(register int i=0;i<10000000;i++){             /*if(k==0){                 cout<<&i<<endl;    // if this code is uncommented, then C++ rejects the recommendation to make 'i' as register                 k++;             }*/         }         en=clock();              cout<<en-beg<<endl;              cout<<&j<<endl<<&k;              return 0;     }      What I have observed is, if I make the variable 'i' as register and don't try to print the address using '&i' then C++ accepts the recommendation and stores 'i' in register, this can be infered from running time of for loop which will always be around 4-12 ms if 'i' is in register. But if I try to print address of variable 'i' then though I don't get any error but C++ rejects the recommendation and this can be infered from the time of execution of loop which is always more than 25 if i is not register!! So, basically I cannot fetch address of a variable with storage class as register!! WHY?"}
{"_id": "204225", "title": "What are some standard design methods to add GUI to a command line app?", "text": "I have an embedded linux c application that runs with a simple CLI. I am now tasked with creating a GUI that accomplishes the same functionality as the command line program. I am not an accomplished GUI designer and the majority if my experience is in deeply embedded c coding. My initial thought is to use qtcreator to create the GUI, but there are several issues I'm ruminating over.   * Moving forward I want to maintain both the CL program and the GUI program, and preferably even have them be the exact same executable that can be launched in either mode. Unless this is a bad idea?   * My code is in C so far, and qt is natively c++   * I would like a direct correlation where button presses in the GUI call the same functions that I call from the CLI   * How do I best do this cleanly and efficiently? Is there some other thecnology or library that simplifies this? I don't have to use qt if there is something better."}
{"_id": "39650", "title": "Understanding how Code works is the way to actually 'Learn' programming, right?", "text": "I have a friend who is struggling with learning how to program (he wants to make games; as do I). Several books, tutorials, etc. His mentality is he has to memorize the code itself, as in the exact syntax for a program. I believe he's wrong, and that it's more about understanding what the code does and how to apply it elsewhere. Unfortunately, I'm still in the learning phase myself, so I haven't been much help to him. I'm hoping to get some advice from more experienced programmers on the matter. BTW, The language we're learning is C#, as it's compatible with Microsoft's XNA Framework."}
{"_id": "39656", "title": "Learning C# and stuck in a rut", "text": "I've been learning C#/.NET 4.0 for about 2/3 months, it's my first serious programming language (I've looked at PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and VBA before but never massively in depth) and I'm starting to become a bit stuck:   * I have hit a ceiling with my learning due to lack of a 'big' project...   * Lack of working on complex projects is giving me doubts in my abilities... 2 weeks ago I had an interview for a Junior Programmer job, and managed to answer most of the questions that were answered of me, but I still didn't get the job due to lack of practical experience, I'm unsure of what to do! As I said before, I wouldn't mine contributing to an Open Source project, but I don't know where to start, I presume the 'big' projects only want good coders :( Is there any form of online programming test that will show me how 'good' (or 'bad') I am at the moment? :) Thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "137451", "title": "What is considered best practice for printing usage / help (--help)?", "text": "When writing tools for the CLI of UNIX, how should I make the program print out help and/or usage? I usually use `fprintf(stderr, \"help text here\");`, but there are several issues with that.   * First, I'm not sure, whether I should use `stderr`. Is that OK, or should I use `stdout`?   * As you can imagine, the help text is quite long, depending on how many options the tool has. Now, I usually, just put several `\"strings like that\\n\"` in the second parameter. This however, fills my source code with fifty or more lines of help text. It is not easy manageable at all. What should I do instead?   * When a tool is not written in C or a C-like language, I tend to use here-docs where possible (most prominently with Perl). I can't use that in C, but is there something like that, that I could use?   * I was considering putting it in a `headerfile.h` inside a `#define HELP \"help text here\"`, I've never seen it in the wild, don't know whether I should actually use that. Ideally, I could put the text in an external file, and include it. Using `#include` for that seems wrong, though. What should I do then? The idea is, to have a help text, that is easily manageable. Having it inside the source code isn't really convenient."}
{"_id": "71264", "title": "Conquering Complexity: Valuable techniques", "text": "Software development techniques exist to solve problems. I think a key problem we face is conquering complexity. Also, software developers must often classify and understand complex systems, separating accidental complexity from essential complexity. I believe that sufficiently useful definitions of these terms all exist on Wikipedia. My question is: What techniques are most valuable in conquering complexity, as a professional software developer, and/or software architect? Answer examplar; a blog post on conquering complexity that seems to be coming at things from a java/c++/OOP centric perspective."}
{"_id": "236988", "title": "Inheritance/OO design question", "text": "This will probably wind up being a fairly simple question, but it needs some background first... I'm modelling various hardware switches, which can be turned on and off. The switches are configurable, allowing a user to specify the numeric values that are sent to the hardware to signal that it should turn on or off. This is the `Switch` class:-               public class Switch     {         public Id { get; set; }         public SwitchConfig Config { get; set; }              public void TurnOn()         {             WriteToSerialPort(Id, Config.OnValue);         }               public void TurnOff()         {             WriteToSerialPort(Id, Config.OffValue);         }      }          public class SwitchConfig     {         public int OnValue { get; set; }         public int OffValue { get; set; }     }      So far so good. I now need to model a new type of switch that can not only be turned on and off, but can also have a temperature threshold set, so it seems sensible to inherit from the `Switch` class. The configuration will also need extending to include min/max permitted temperatures, e.g.:-               public TemperatureSwitchConfig : SwitchConfig     {         public int MinTemperature { get; set; }         public int MaxTemperature { get; set; }     }      The specialised switch class will look something like this:-               public TemperatureSwitch : Switch     {         public void SetTemperature(int temperature)         {             var temperatureSwitchConfig = Config as TemperatureSwitchConfig;                  if (temperature < temperatureSwitchConfig.MinTemperature                 || temperature > temperatureSwitchConfig.MaxTemperature)             {                  return;             }                  WriteToSerialPort(Id, temperature);         }     }      It doesn't feel \"right\" where I'm having to cast the `Config` property. I'm sure there must be a slicker OO solution to this, but I think \"analysis paralysis\" has set in and I can't see the wood for the trees! Or am I worrying over nothing - is the casting an acceptable solution in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "22124", "title": "Are 'Architect' and 'Developer' separate roles?", "text": "Is it actually possible to develop software without also architecting it?"}
{"_id": "18813", "title": "Barter vs. Cash for a Retailer's eCommerce Site", "text": "I am putting together a proposal for a local store with both a brick-n-mortar and web presence. It's an upscale shop that also happens to be one of my wife's favorites. I am considering offering the option of barter for part of the payment. I have two questions in this regard: What would be a reasonable \"exchange rate\" for such a transaction? That is, in lieu of $1000 cash money, I should ask for about how much in store credit? **_In your own experience,_** has using barter introduced any complications into the client relationship? Are there particular pitfalls to be concerned about?"}
{"_id": "236986", "title": "Development team roles splitted each time more", "text": "I've been noticing the roles in a development team has been splitted each time more. I remember some time ago, there was a mix between backend and frontend developers. But since the restful APIs has become so popular the tendency seems to be in splits more. Currently in my case, we have a designer who makes the layout, html and css, a javascript developer who only treat with javascript, a Java backend guy and someone on the database side. I know often it depends on the company, there are still several companies which mix the roles. But there is a tendency. How do you see the future of frontend and backend developers? Bearing in mind mobile development, web development. How the frontend and backend will be divided? for who knows about these ones. Is not the technologies such as: JSF and TAGLIBs on Java and others similar in different languages going against the tendency?"}
{"_id": "123325", "title": "Managing UAT / Defect and Bug raising", "text": "I'm looking for assistance in figuring out the best approach to managing User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and how users raise defects/bugs - I've been in the situation before of having to deal with a free for all in that every small error is raised as a bug which takes valuable time from actual bug fix whilst I sift through lots of invalid defects/bugs. Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to short shift users by saying \"not a defect\" but trying to make the process smoother so that things get fixed."}
{"_id": "232606", "title": "How important is it to clean up someone else's code when faced with a tight deadline?", "text": "(I'm talking about HTML / CSS code (not programming languages) but I think we also face the same issue as with programmers.) I am the senior front-end designer in a team and I often have to re-work my juniors' output in tight deadlines. I am faced with 2 problems:   1. Their coding style is a bit of a mess.    2. The aesthetics are not good. Their coding style, I find, is a mixed bag with no proper convention / standard. I am torn between cleaning up the code or just dealing with their code (even copying how they do things). I do find it frustrating to follow their coding style as I feel I might learn bad habits. But then, that is the fastest way of meeting the deadline. For those with much more experience, which is more effective? Should I save the clean-up for later? Or clean-up along the way as I make the changes? (I don't want to sound arrogant though but such is the reality. It will take them more years to write better code. I know, I wrote messy code when I was starting.)"}
{"_id": "232603", "title": "How to include incomplete math grad program on entry-level programming resume", "text": "I am creating a resume so that I can start applying for entry-level programming positions. How can I include my time spent as a graduate student of pure mathematics since I did not complete my degree and am not currently enrolled? Should I attempt to include this? I have been given conflicting advice on this. Also, without this information I have a huge gap in finishing my BS and today. About me: I have a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science. As an undergraduate, I became more interested in pure mathematics than computer science. After graduating, I became a graduate student in mathematics. However, I was forced to drop out mainly due to the university cutting my GA position due to lack of funding (I am from Illinois). It has been nearly three years since I left my graduate program. Since then I have bounced around a bit in dead-end jobs while trying to figure out what sort of career would fit me best. I studied actuarial science, tried to create an internet start-up and spent time trying to figure out how I was qualified to be an industrial engineer."}
{"_id": "232602", "title": "What is this programming style? \"Monoid-ic\"?", "text": "In a moderately old blog post, Conal Elliot makes an interesting (if less than serious) argument that C is a purely functional language, by drawing a parallel between the combination of the C preprocessor and C itself, and that of Haskell's pure expression language and its impure IO action values. It's observed further down that the phase separation between C's components actually makes what `cpp` does quite different from Haskell, though, so `cpp+C` is not monadic after all. In real programming projects, C programmers prefer to minimize their use of `cpp` as far as possible. The macro language may be capable of amazing things, but it's a fairly hostile programming environment. So as far as I can tell this concept is mostly unexplored from a C perspective. However, building on the example of C, we could envisage a language where the primary way of programming is for the developer to write a purely functional program which _builds a fixed sequence_ of action values and strings them together into a finished program. Distinct from Haskell's model in that the functional program only exists at \"compile time\", with a clear separation between the two stages of evaluation and execution; distinct from C's model (or Lisp's) mainly in the emphasis on the \"macro\" stage as the _primary_ programming tool (and with a macro stage that isn't.. y'know, horrible - rather, it looks and runs like the full-fledged language), with the end program consisting of a fixed sequence of \"action\" building-blocks that the developer is discouraged (or even prevented) from authoring directly.   * Does this programming paradigm exist? If so, what is it called and what are existing examples of it? Is there any literature on this topic? (\"Metaprogramming\" is the obvious answer, but that seems too broad and off- target: `cpp` or C++ templates as they're currently lightly-used also fall under that, while Haskell IO doesn't.)"}
{"_id": "123329", "title": "Is there a mature, easy-to-use CQRS framework that is not Azure-specific, not outdated, or not well adopted?", "text": "I've been doing research on .net implementations with CQRS. Either everything I've seen so far is do-it-yourself, azure-specific, outdated (i think), or not well adopted Problems:   * Scritchy - is not well adopted   * NCQRS - appears to be a bit older? it also requires a DIY-ish setup - meaning, you need to create several projects yourself (not all that terrible though).   * https://github.com/gregoryyoung/m-r \\- more of a theoretical demo than a production framework   * LOKAD.CQRS - mostly azure specific   * https://github.com/MarkNijhof/Fohjin \\- again, more of a demo than framework I'm working on a new project. It will be hosted in AppHarbor. I would like to use a CQRS approach. I would prefer to use an awesome framework rather than write/copy it myself."}
{"_id": "44623", "title": "Microsoft's Software Development Engineer in Test position", "text": "I was curious about MS's Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) position. I've heard a lot of people speak negatively and positively about this position. I was wondering if any current or previous SDETs could comment on a couple of issues. 1) Is career development in any way hurt by this position within and outside of MS? 1.5) Is it harder to get hired as a developer at another company after being an SDET? 2) Within MS culture, how is the SDET position viewed with respect to PM or SDE? Is it respected or looked down upon? 3) If you worked as an SDET, did you like it?"}
{"_id": "134564", "title": "Should I add MSDN notes or Stack Overflow links to source code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it OK to put a link to Q&A sites in a program's comments? I'm creating a powershell / C# host and want to add the following comment               // This method cannot be called multiple times on a given pipeline. The state of the      // pipeline must be NotStarted when Invoke is called. When this method is called, it     // changes the state of the pipeline to Running.      // see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms569128(v=vs.85).aspx     if (pipeline.PipelineStateInfo.State == PipelineState.NotStarted)     {         Collection<PSObject> results = pipeline.Invoke();     }      Is this an appropriate comment? What would you improve about it?"}
{"_id": "196673", "title": "Besides polymorphism, what's compelling about OOP?", "text": "When I first came to OOP (at first in Java, and then C++) after years of working in C and VB, it was amazing. The idea of extending existing behaviour and operating generically over things of related types was very appealing, and I almost immidiately saw why it was that I wanted this. That is, my motivation for OOP was subtyping polymorphism and inheritance. Fast forward to today, and I regularly get to use ad-hoc polymorphism solutions (typeclasses and duck typing) which solve the problems subtyping originally appealed to me for in very elegant ways. I have access to parametric polymorphism in most of my environments. Programming generically with these different sorts of polymorphism gives me all the extensabiltiy and re-use inheritance ever did, and more. So, my question is: why should I still care about OOP? What uses of OOP have you found that are really great besides inheritance and subtyping? Also, \"because it's popular and you will have to use it\" does not count. I already am quite familiar with OOP, and use it in my day job because the code base uses it. For a new project, or for myself, that's what I'm asking about."}
{"_id": "37624", "title": "Upgrading in java web development", "text": "I'm a java web developer for nearly 3 years. Always trying to learn more and be better but still I feel that the amount of knowledge is not that good as I want. The knowledge in some places still seems to be non-systematic and don't provide a very strong base to solve the problems as good as I want to do it. The example I have is my senior developer, whose solutions are always more efficient and beautiful. So, the question is rather simple and hard the same time. What is the right way to get my knowlege be more systematic and therefore improve it's quality. I understand that there is no practically good answer for the all java programming, so let's focus on the modern java web or nearly web technologies:   1. JSF 2.0   2. JPA2 and Hibernate as persistence provider   3. Web services   4. and Java SE as a core. What methodologies or books or learning technics lead to the strong knowledge base within the given knowledge area?"}
{"_id": "150566", "title": "WinRT: How usable will it be?", "text": "WinRT: is it really about calling WIN32 (wrapped in COM (exposed as .NET)) via _a proprietary extension_ of C++? That looks like a lot of wrappers and layers between the developer and the actual functionality. Does anyone trying to go with it stand a chance at profoundly understanding the ecosystem (if his last name isn't \"Petzold\")?"}
{"_id": "126924", "title": "Why do certain sites prevent spaces in passwords?", "text": "It seems less common with newer websites, but many websites I need an account on (like for paying bills, etc.) prevent me from creating a password with spaces in it. This only makes things more difficult to remember, and I am aware of no database or programming restrictions on spaces in passwords, encrypted or (heaven forbid) otherwise. Why, then, is the spacebar so commonly discriminated against when it comes to signing up for a site?"}
{"_id": "37629", "title": "Code to simulate a users actions, such as logging in", "text": "I've recently begun working on a PHP application, replacing another developer. I believed the application was using an API to communicate with a remote service but when I looked through the code I found that it was using a set of functions to actually log in, fill out forms and submit them as a user might do in a browser. My intention is to replace this code, to use the services API instead. I've considered leaving the code as is and not replace it. It makes me wonder though is this a common practice in the software industry? To have a programme simulate a users actions in a browser to perform a set of actions? It feels to me that this is clever but poor programming, Have any other developers seen this? Edit: Sorry, should have added this in the first place, the code I describe isn't part of a testing suite, its live code."}
{"_id": "84542", "title": "Advice for an ambitious student on building your own kernel", "text": "I'm a very ambitious university student who wishes to learn pretty much everything there is to know about computers (bash me if you want, I love learning). Recently I thought it would be a fun project (albeit a lengthy one) to design and build my own kernel. I got some basic info and I've gathered that I need to master Assembly and C/C++ to really make this work. While I'm working on those, I'd like to learn HOW a kernel actually works from a programming perspective. I've spent hours browsing the linux kernel's code but that can only take you so far. What are the basic steps in building a kernel? Things you need to address? Order or doing things? I know I'm biting off a lot but I'm determined enough to handle it."}
{"_id": "132945", "title": "What functionality does WebStorm contain which RubyMine does not?", "text": "I am looking at buying Rubymine as I am doing a small amount of ruby, but a large amount of html5/javascript. I was going to get Webstorm as I do have a lot of pure html5/js based frameworks/apps that I am working on, however I then read that WebStorm/PhpStorm/Rubymine etc are all based on their IDEA framework, and made out like each framework contained the functionality of WebStorm anyway, other than a few features which were not there out of the box but could be added through plugins. The main features that interest me about WebStorm are:   * JS Unit testing from IDE   * JS Lint/Hint coverage within UI   * DOM/JS Refactoring/Intellisense   * Coffeescript support   * SVN/Git integration   * FTP and remote sync (although not as important as the rest) So given the above, would Rubymine provide the above functionality too? as I would rather have 1 IDE which I can do both in, than having 2 IDEs which have a lot of overlapping functionality. Is there any specific functionality which is ONLY within Webstorm but not in any of the other IDEs?"}
{"_id": "132940", "title": "Return Types from Service Interfaces in Service Layer: Mapper required for UI Layer objects?", "text": "I am designing a component based system using JSF2 on top of Spring's IoC Container. It is to employ a service layer between a controller and the domain/business layer (I anticipate the controller is nothing more than the JSF Servlet binding in the web.xml file). The rationale for the service layer (which conforms to an interface for each service) is to allow for the services to be changeable. It has occurred to me that the return types of the objects from the service layer objects are likely to be business objects from the business layer, which would then be used in the backing beans for the JSF view to populate the UI components on the pages. _Ideas:_   * Is it acceptable as a standard practice for these business layers,   say a Customer() object coming back from a FindCustomerService, to   just be passed back to a Presentation Layer backing bean? Can the Presentation Layer know about the Business Objects or are these not a part of the Service/defined for use in the Service Interface and therefore part of the contract for a Service implementation?   * Alternatively, should I be thinking about representing components on   the UI using a generic set of UI classes within the backing beans, which are then mapped to the return types coming back from the Service Layer in another layer between the   Controller and the Service Layer? (This would likely require re-engineering if a Service was changed?)   * Perhaps it is a standard practice to return using standard language scalars and object return times from the service layer to avoid the need for a translation layer? First SOA project. Figured this would make a nice question for archive and links to appropriate patterns would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "44998", "title": "When do you use new technology and complicated design principals in an LOB app (using WPF)?", "text": "I'm building an LOB app for a very big and serious client, the app itself is not big but my client is so I have to get it right. I'm generally tempted to always use the latest stuff out there and learn as I go, sometimes this ends up in good productivity. Like when I wrote most of with WCF Data Services over asmx services, and then I used Silverlight over ajax/asp.net, these turned out to be a good decisions although there was initial pain in getting off the ground. Specifically I'm thinking of using WPF over win forms, I've never used WPF, but would the learning curve out-weigh the benefit? Also generally would this kinda thing be a bad move when we're really tight on time? **Second:** When it comes to design principals like for **example** using MVVM in my case. Would that again be an over kill for a small app? (4000 lines as a bad estimate?) Sure my code won't be testable but would I even need such a small app to be testable? Overall I'm trying to keep my base code neat and my UI layer thin. **My question is:** Just generally, I want to know, how many serious devs/small companies out there, move to newer technologies or hard core design patterns, practices, frameworks (Prism, CAB) or models (MVVM) for smaller apps? How do make a call for >> complexity + learning curve _vs_ benefit **Edit** * * *   1. I'm I have about 1-2 months tops, a lot of base code and almost all planning & design is done.    2. Its a fixed fee I'm billing which sucks, but they are starting to have a few plans to build more functionality on top.    3. I (sole dev) will be maintaining it.   4. Partly I want to choose WPF to provide a better more professional look too, to get them to buy more updates/upgrades on functionality from me.   5. I actually tried writing my own crazy MVC framework in win forms, it was a mess, I have a \"feeling\" my code will be better in WPF?   6. Any thoughts on using MVVM Light?"}
{"_id": "71481", "title": "Does pair programming ever turn into lengthy unproductive discussion?", "text": "I was just thinking about pair programming and one thought just crossed my mind that surely at some time two coders are not going to agree and it would kind of turn into a lengthy (maybe heated) discussion about an implementation of a paradigm or algorithm, etc. I expect these might be 'religious' wars over stuff? Does this happen? Having never 'pair programmed' ever, is this something that occurs? Are there processes to stop lengthy discussions?"}
{"_id": "71480", "title": "MVC : Fully populated models or Partially Filled Models?", "text": "This one has haunted me for so long. When doing MVC programming what do you think is the better programming practice? Should one use fully populated models or the partially filled ones, especially when I know that for this particular task I am going to need only 2 fields from the model object which has 5 others? Sometimes it just seems criminal to fill a list of 20 model objects with all values from database when you know that you are going to need only a few of them. Of course partial model means that you will have to write one more method in your DAO apart from the one which fetches everything. Which mean more code to maintain? On the other hand pulling everything from DB with fully populated models means one method serves all but this is obviously going to give you some performance overhead. I can see ORM (such as Hibernate or ActiveRecord of Rails) favoring trends in MVC programming and databases like Google\u2019s BigTable full models is accepted trend. But what if you are still using good old JDBC? Hardware is cheap, development is costly. Is that really true even when the app needs to scale to few hundred thousand requests per hour?"}
{"_id": "178961", "title": "Inheritance from the objects themselves", "text": "Making new inheritance hierarchy with the help of C++ I think about: > Why there is no inheritance from the class objects? Abstract example (on > abstract C++): >   >   >     struct Foo { int v; Foo(int a) : v(a) {} }; >     struct Buz : public Foo(2) { ... } >   > > So, the `Buz` is inherited only from instance of `Foo` \\- `Foo(2)`. Can such idea be useful? Is there any possible implementations or related ideas?"}
{"_id": "44994", "title": "Is Language-Oriented Programming practical?", "text": "I read this article on Language-Oriented Programming. He points out some weaknesses in the modern procedural/OOP approaches to programming, and suggests a new programming paradigm that will solve them I am all for small, loosely coupled program parts: It is much better to learn a lot of small things, all of which you will use, than a couple of big things, that you only use bits and pieces of. Reading the article, I got the impression that the author was promoting one of two things:   * A multitude of easily creatable scripting languages   * A single, easily extensible language that can rewrite itself to meet the programmer's needs If he is suggesting the second, I would reply with \"Already been done!\" and give Lisp as an example. As Paul Graham suggests, languages seem to be continually moving toward this anyway. As far as the first is concerned, I think this is a good idea, if there is an underlying language that ties them all together. That seems to me to be the weak spot: communication between the languages. Would you use calls, which is a procedural concept or message-passing, which reminds me of interprocess communication? I would welcome the opportunity to work with small domain specific languages, if it's easy to use them all at the same time. Would this approach (LOP) be practical?"}
{"_id": "207556", "title": "Parallel Class/Interface Hierarchy with the Facade Design Pattern?", "text": "About a third of my code is wrapped inside a Facade class. Note that this isn't a \"God\" class, but actually represents a single thing (called a `Line`). Naturally, it delegates responsibilities to the subsystem behind it. What ends up happening is that two of the subsystem classes (`Output` and `Timeline`) have all of their methods duplicated in the `Line` class, which effectively makes `Line` both an `Output` and a `Timeline`. It seems to make sense to make `Output` and `Timeline` interfaces, so that the `Line` class can implement them both. At the same time, I'm worried about creating parallel class and interface structures. You see, there are different types of lines `AudioLine`, `VideoLine`, which all use the same type of `Timeline`, but different types of `Output` (`AudioOutput` and `VideoOutput`, respectively). So that would mean that I'd have to create an `AudioOutputInterface` and `VideoOutputInterface` as well. So not only would I have to have parallel class hierarchy, but there would be a parallel interface hierarchy as well. Is there any solution to this design flaw? Here's an image of the basic structure (minus the Timeline class, though know that each Line has-a Timeline): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JEwCv.png) NOTE: I just realized that the word 'line' in `Timeline` might make is sound like is does a similar function as the `Line` class. They don't, just to clarify."}
{"_id": "207553", "title": "How do you unit test a User Interface?", "text": "I use JavaScript with JQuery for a Rails application. I have some dynamic behaviour in this one. As a Ruby developper, I like TDD/BDD, specialy with RSpec. For the moment, I test my JavaScript manualy. It's not the best way because a change, somewhere, can break the code somewhere else. The is a lot of avantages of using TDD. Testing in javascript seems to be complicated because it should test a lot of user interaction. I can test the behaviour in complete integration, with Capybara for example, but my tests will be very slow. For example, I have a form with dynamic behaviour. In this form, I have 5 or 6 dynamic fields which change if I select an option, choose a radio button or check a checkbox. In some cases, there is ajax calls. For this form, I think I can make about 20 tests just for a form. Is it really usefull to have this tests? So, what's your rules for a standard web application?"}
{"_id": "212674", "title": "What is the proper aproach of Subversion when using DLL", "text": "**Background:**   Our team develops a solution and it includes a number of projects. Most of the projects are built as DLLs and those DLLs are used by the rest of the projects. Currently we uses Subversion for our code management and I ask others to remove DLLs from Subversion because we do not need to keep the history of the DLLs. So I ask my team to update their source every morning from Subversion and build each project to get DLL with yesterday submitted changes. **Issue:**   This procedure was very good in the beginning f the project. but now each project of the solution getting bigger and bigger.Also gets more time to compile. now each developer waste around 20 mins each morning for build solution in their local computer. Now I'm thinking again to ask each developer to submit their built DLLs to Subversion at end of the day and the next morning the rest of the users can download these DLLs directly from Subversion. But I feel something is wrong with this procedure. Because Subversion waste space keeping the history records of each DLLs. Now I'm searching for a better solution. Do you guys have any idea over your experience?"}
{"_id": "175826", "title": "Automatic generate code: \"derived work\"?", "text": "For example, I've GPL software. I'm the author of this GPL software. This GPL software has, between its code, Doxygen comments. These Doxygen comments are written to generate a CC-BY-SA html page, in order to upload this generated documentation in my project website under CC-BY-SA license. But, the Doxygen documentation output is a \"derivate work\"? After all, this documentation is based on my GPL source code. In this case, the documentation must be GPL. But, I want the documentation is CC-BY-SA, because it is documentation. GFDL doesn't help. GPL code can't become GFDL (the opposite yes). If this output is really a derivate work, I think, creates a strange situation, because, if I distribute my work, the recipient users can't legally distribute the generated documentation: while with my work I can do I want, the users don't, thus, they have to distribute any derivated work with the same license I offer them. What is the solution?"}
{"_id": "171565", "title": "Why is the code section called a text section?", "text": "The section of an executable that contains code is sometimes called the `.text` section. In segmented memory architectures, a segment mapped as code is sometimes called a text segment. The unix error message \u201ctext file busy\u201d (`ETXTBSY`) means \u201cthis file is a program that is being executed\u201d. How did _text_ come to mean _executable (machine) code_? An ideal answer would: explain the connection between the word and its meaning; provide a citation for the origin or at least the history of the term; give some idea of which communities use it."}
{"_id": "77886", "title": "How to network effectively to get a job", "text": "I have been working for 5 years at the same company now. I want to go and find a new job. Finding jobs or getting interview calls has been difficult, there are have far and few. And to compound the problem I need work permit(H1b) to work. My question is how do network with other programmers and increase my chances of getting a job/interview. And secondly how to increase my network?? thanks"}
{"_id": "77885", "title": "NP hard/complete ", "text": "I have never been very clear on this concept. Please help: At the end of the day, we should want to identify useful problems for which we don't have polynomial solution so far and only have exponential solutions.We want to keep finding if we can find a polynomial solution to these problems and the use of reductions is only to be able to identify new only exponential solvable problems with help of existing known exponential problems.?? Why is concept of determinism and non determinism brought into this whole concept of exponential and polynomial solvable problems?? How is this notion useful? What do we call the problems for which we have only exponential solution so far, but we haven't been able to find reduction to a known NP - hard/complete problems..?? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "77884", "title": "Why Use Scala over Java", "text": "I am totally into Scala as a language ... and still I struggle with why any company should switch from Java to Scala. Is Scala just syntatic sugar on top of the JVM or are there fundamental improvements in Scala over Java that would improve real world applications?"}
{"_id": "18107", "title": "Declarative UML", "text": "I'm looking for something along the lines of WebSequenceDiagram for other kinds of UML diagram types -- use cases and class diagrams in particular. For example, the service would accept plain text input such as:               user = Actor();     admin = Actor();     register = UseCase(user);     post = UseCase(user, admin);     post_poll = UseCase(user, admin).extend(post);      ...and get the corresponding image output, without having me worry about laying out the result."}
{"_id": "170131", "title": "Object behaviour or separate class?", "text": "When it comes to OO database access you see two common approaches - the first is to provide a class (say \"Customer\") with methods such as Retrieve(), Update(), Delete(), etc. The other is to keep the Customer class fairly lightweight (essentially just properties) and perform the database access elsewhere, e.g. using a repository. This choice of approaches doesn't just apply to database access, it can crop up in many different OOD scenarios. So I was wondering if one way is preferable over the other (although I suspect the answer will be \"it depends\")! Another dev on our team argues that to be truly OO the class should be \"self- contained\", i.e. providing all the methods necessary to manipulate and interact with that object. I personally prefer the repository approach - I don't like bloating the Customer class with all that functionality, and I feel it results in cleaner code having it elsewhere, but I can't help thinking I'm seriously violating core OO concepts! And what about memory implications? If I retrieve thousands of Customer objects I'm assuming those with the data access methods will take up a lot more memory than the property-only objects?"}
{"_id": "238724", "title": "What license is HTML released under?", "text": "All products seem to be released with a license, I'm curious to know how one would go about finding out the license of technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "207881", "title": "Encapsulation in Domain Driven Design models?", "text": "I am using EF Code First and I had a model like below.               public class Account     {         [Required]         public string AccountNo { get; set; }         [Required]         public decimal Balance { get; set; }     }      I used a Service class to withdraw and deposit amount to Account. Then I came across this and realised that Account is Anemic. So I happily added Withdraw and Deposit methods to Account.               public class Account     {         [Required]         public string AccountNo { get; set; }         [Required]         public decimal Balance { get; set; }         public void Withdraw(decimal amount)         {             // TODO: Check if enough balance is available             Balance -= amount;          }         public void Deposit(decimal amount)         {             Balance += amount;          }      } I was very happy with this until I realised that this does not implement encapsulation correctly. You should not be able to modify the Balance directly - you should use Withdraw and Deposit methods. But in my solution you can modify the Balance directly. But I cannot make Balance a readonly property as I am using EF code first approach and readonly properties won't result in the column being created in the database table. I thought of leaving Account as anemic and create a higher level Account class which implements encapsulation and Withdraw/Deposit methods. But in that case the higher level class would not have validation data annotations and I won't get the free functionality provided by the framework. What is the solution?"}
{"_id": "158642", "title": "Java solution for mutual authentication with smart card", "text": "I need to develop a Java solution for mutual authentication between Tomcat 6 (server) and SmartCard \"IDGo 300\" (client). In order to do this I thought of the following scheme: 1.Tomcat (server) send to SmartCard (client) the request of his digital certificate (signed by CA). 2.Client enters PIN and selects an available certificate on the smart card, then the Applet sends his certificate (signed by CA) to Tomcat. Tomcat verifies the digital certificate and, if it is correct, sends the certificate back. 3.The applet verifies the certificate of the server, and, if the certificate is correct, sends a confirm to server. The server gives full access to the client to use the web application. I have some questions: 1.Is this scheme feasible? 2.I would like to manage everything through my applet and when the client disconnects the smart card, he loses access to the server."}
{"_id": "208855", "title": "Standard practices for access control (design pattern)", "text": "I'm looking at my interface design and I am struggling to decide which is the most \"correct\" way to implement role-based access control, given a `user` and a `subject` that the `user` would like to access. * * * As far as I can see I have three core options (with a fourth being a bastardisation of the first three and a fifth being a tweak of the fourth):   1. Query the `subject` with a list of permissions that the `user` has - `subject.allowAccess(user.getPermissionSet)`   2. Query the `user` with a list of permissions that the `subject` requires - `user.hasPermissionTo(subject.getRequiredPermissions())`   3. Query a third-party to locate the intersections of permissions - `accessController.doPermissionSetsIntersect(subject.permissionSet, user.getPermissionSet())`   4. _Query either the`subject`/`user`, while delegating the \"decision\" to a third-party class_   5. Have the `user` attempt to access the `subject` and throw an error if access is not permitted * * * I am leaning toward option four - Have the `subject` contain an `accessController` field, where calls to `subject.userMayAccess(User user)` delegate the operation a la:               class Subject {         public function display(user) {             if(!accessController.doPermissionSetsIntersect(this.permissionSet, user.getPermissionSet())) {                 display403(); //Or other.. eg, throw an error..             }         }     }      .. but then this raises further questions:   * should the `accessController` be a field vs a static class..?    * Should a `subject` _know_ what permissions are required to be able to view it?   * where does the principle of least knowledge come into play here, with respect to calling `subject.display()`? Should callers of `subject.display()` ever know that access control is in effect? (where `subject.display()` is a final \"template method\")   * have `subject.display()` manage access control, throwing an exception where the user does not have the required permission? * * * What would be considered \"best practice\" in this situation? Where should responsibility for performing the checks actually occur? As this is somewhat both an academic excercise which will then progress into implementation, references to design patterns would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "230111", "title": "When should I pass value as class variable and when as a method argument?", "text": "Is there a general rule of thumb, when we should pass a value as as class variable and when as a method argument? Or is it just a choice of the developer? For example -- are there any reasons, why following (PHP code):               class SomeClass     {         public function __construct()         {             $this->id = $_GET['id'];             $this->showMessage();         }              public function showMessage()         {             echo 'The ID is '.$this->id;         }     }      is better (or worse?) than this:               class SomeClass     {         public function __construct()         {             $this->showMessage($_GET['id']);         }              public function showMessage($id)         {             echo 'The ID is '.$id;         }     }      Note, that I'm only asking about differences between passing value as class variable vs. passing as method argument. Please, don't point out, that I should never operate directly on superglobals in PHP. I know, that this is wrong. I used it here, to simplify the example."}
{"_id": "230110", "title": "Where or when to start to write your own PHP framework?", "text": "First of all, I know that reinvent the wheel is, _usually_ , a bad idea, but I want to write a PHP framework **to learn OOP in PHP and to understand MVC** in my free time. Said that, I have to do two webs with few and simple database interactions, the basic funcionality of the webs is to show information. I want to use my own framework in those webs, but I don't know where or when to start. Should I start doing the framework first and then the webs? or should I start doing one web, then the framework and then the other web?"}
{"_id": "230115", "title": "Why are dark color schemes in editors so popular?", "text": "Nowadays, almost everybody is using a dark color scheme in their code editor - dark background with light text. Even most web based editors (e.g on Github) feature dark color schemes. I honestly don't see the benefits. The human eye is much better at reading dark text on a bright background. Also, black on white color schemes work much better when you're in a brightly lit environment. I'm currently sitting in an office with the sun shining through the window. I can read the text in my editor (gVim with dark text on white background) just fine, but on the linux console it's much harder. Editing text in console vim is almost impossible for me. The whole thing seems a bit like a strange hype to me, started by the default settings in certain IDEs/editors. But maybe I'm just weird.. ;) Anyway, so why is everybody using these?"}
{"_id": "225580", "title": "Martin Fowler's Refactoring book: switch statement is using other object's data, why is that bad ? A deeper explanation is sought for.", "text": "In the code sample below the Rental object is using Movie's fields to do a switch statement. Martin says : this is a bad idea but he does not give any deeper explanation as to why ? Of course, you can say that this means a lot of coupling between Movie and Rental, or that Movie is badly encapsulated but those are just (almost meaningless) words, again, they don't explain the why? They don't go to the root of the question, so to say. They don't provide much understanding. What I would like to know if there is a deeper, more general design principle why having a switch on Rental is a bad idea ? In other words, how does Martin knows that the switch statement is on the wrong object ? Where does he get this insight from ? What is his thought process ? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZRfY8.png)"}
{"_id": "30076", "title": "Login using email or username?", "text": "Is registration login using email a better idea than username to identify the user?"}
{"_id": "229201", "title": "How to draw a spiral using segments of varying circles?", "text": "I have an old plotter that can't handle printing true spirals. I need help with developing an algorithm to approximate a spiral. Here's a LISP sub-script that I have written which uses semicircles of varying radii to draw a spiral:               (setq inner_radius 1e3)  ; The spiral grows from inner radius to outer radius     (setq coil_thickness 35) ; This is the half-pitch of the spiral, pitch is 70     (setq outer_radius (+ 2.4e3 (* 2 coil_thickness)))     (while (< inner_radius outer_radius)             (setq P1 (list 0 inner_radius))             (setq P2 (list inner_radius 0))             (setq P3 (list 0 (* -1 inner_radius)))             (setq P4 (list (- (- inner_radius) coil_thickness) coil_thickness))             (setq P5 (list 0 (+ inner_radius (* coil_thickness 2))))             (command \"ARC\" P1 P2 P3) ; Draws a 3 point arc through P1, P2 and P3             (command \"ARC\" P3 P4 P5) ; Draws a 3 point arc through P3, P4 and P5             (setq inner_radius (+ inner_radius (* coil_thickness 2)))     )      I am using `AutoCAD` to implement the script. The code here is a cop-out - I can implement a true spiral in `AutoCAD` but the plotter, which will plot this, is dated and is not able to handle a true spiral. It can handle just circle arcs and line segments. I am seeking a method which can implement a better approximation of the spiral. For instance, I tried thinking about quartcircles (instead of the semicircles I have used in the above sub-script) but couldn't come up with a viable scheme."}
{"_id": "225583", "title": "AlienTiles optimistic heuristic function", "text": "Hello I am trying to use the alienTile problem described at www.alientiles.com using the A* algorithm but I cannot find any good heuristic function so far. In alien tiles you have a board with NxN tiles, all colored red. By clicking on a tile, all tiles in the same row and column advance by a color, the color order being red->green->blue->purple, resetting to red after purple. The goal is to change all tiles to the specified colors. The simplest goal state is all the tiles going from red to green, blue or purple. The board doesn't have to be 7x7 as the site suggests. Is there any good point to start because I am completely frustrated about how I am supposed to handle the problem"}
{"_id": "30073", "title": "Should I create Use Cases or create Class Diagrams first?", "text": "So I'm designing an Education Management System(more info)and I'm wondering if I should be creating the Use Cases or the Class Diagrams first?"}
{"_id": "76289", "title": "Java's advantage in shopping cart platform", "text": "Open source PHP shopping carts platform/framework occupy most top list. They are hot, and we want start quick. So, we are going to make decision between Magento and Opencart, PHP programmers would be happy to this end. While my Java programming colleges feel not so happy, they were selling Broadleaf commerce or JadaSite. But more online reading and discussion pushing us to this way. PHP shopping carts get more use and so tested more and they get support multiple shops and multiple vendors. What will be Java's advantage in this open source field? Or should we believe Java can give decent infrastructure in long run?"}
{"_id": "225589", "title": "How to refresh/keep up to date content in the browser without overloading the server", "text": "I am not very educated on this topic of programming so I am seeking any advice/knowledge. I am coding a web app in PHP, and this particular task requires updating the display after the server has new information available. So, one seemingly-bad solution is to have a repeating AJAX request that spams the server on an interval, and updates when it gets new data. This puts a lot of stress on the server, so it seems unviable to me. We attempted to use Ratchet (http://socketo.me/) but could not really figure it out. Is this overcomplicating this, or is there another way we can solve this problem while still keeping server load as \"practically\" minimal as possible. There are websites like Facebook/most social media that dynamically show new data as it's available -- I assume they also use something that minimizes requests to the server? Or is this assumption incorrect?"}
{"_id": "72903", "title": "Help with Seminar on Software Testing", "text": "All, I need to give a small seminar(about 20mins duration) to a class on Software Testing. Given the time constraint, I wanted to seek opinion from everyone as to what primary topics should I cover in this seminar. Also, if any references to software testing documents/videos would be helpful."}
{"_id": "234604", "title": "Are monads a viable (maybe preferable) alternative to inheritance hierarchies?", "text": "I'm going to use a language-agnostic _description_ of monads like this, first describing monoids: > A **monoid** is (roughly) a set of functions that take some type as a > parameter and return the same type. > > A **monad** is (roughly) a set of functions that take a _wrapper_ type as a > parameter and returns the same wrapper type. _Note those are descriptions, not definitions. Feel free to attack that description!_ So in an OO language, a monad permits operation compositions like: > `Flier<Duck> m = new Flier<Duck>(duck).takeOff().flyAround().land()` Note that the monad defines and controls the semantics of those operations, rather than the contained class. Traditionally, in an OO language we'd use a class hierarchy & inheritance to provide those semantics. So we'd have a `Bird` class with methods `takeOff()`, `flyAround()` and `land()`, and Duck would inherit those. But then we get into trouble with flightless birds, because `penguin.takeOff()` fails. We have to resort to Exception throwing and handling. Also, once we say that Penguin is a `Bird`, we run into problems with multiple inheritance, for example if we also have a hierarchy of `Swimmer`. Essentially we're trying to put classes into categories (with apologies to the Category Theory guys), and define semantics by category rather than in individual classes. But monads seem like a much clearer mechanism for doing that than hierarchies. So in this case, we'd have a `Flier<T>` monad like the example above: > `Flier<Duck> m = new Flier<Duck>(duck).takeOff().flyAround().land()` ...and we would never instantiate a `Flier<Penguin>`. We could even use static typing to prevent that from happening, maybe with a marker interface. Or runtime capability-checking to bail out. But really, a programmer should never put a Penguin into Flier, in the same sense they should never divide by zero. Also, it's more generally applicable. A flier doesn't have to be a Bird. For example `Flier<Pterodactyl>`, or `Flier<Squirrel>`, without changing the semantics of those individual types. Once we classify semantics by composable functions on a container -- instead of with type hierarchies -- it resolves the old problems with classes that \"kind of do, kind of don't\" fit into a particular hierarchy. It also easily & clearly allows multiple semantics for a class, like `Flier<Duck>` as well as `Swimmer<Duck>`. It seems like we've been struggling with a impedance mismatch by classifying behavior with class hierarchies. Monads handle it elegantly. So my question is, in the same way that we've come to favor composition over inheritance, does it also make sense to favor monads over inheritance? (BTW I wasn't sure if this should be here or in Comp Sci, but this seems more like a practical modelling problem. But maybe it's better over there.)"}
{"_id": "103194", "title": "How do you report \"startup experience\" on your resume?", "text": "Say you've spent a significant amount of time (5 years) serially starting up companies, with enough success to keep going for 5 years, but not enough to retire rich. And now, with a mortgage and a serious relationship, burned out, you're trying to dust off your resume and get a regular, 9-5 job. How would you record/report on your work experience at the startups? Making a list of technologies sounds silly (it'll get out of hand on account of size), and very incomplete (with very small, early stage startups, there is a _lot_ more work to go around than just hacking away at code). A regular programming job also seems like a waste (with all of the mix of experience that comes from working at a startup, giving up on the additional skills learned along the way doesn't feel quite right) so reporting on the experience as one would on a regular programmers' resume might not be the correct thing."}
{"_id": "96238", "title": "Titles: Programmer Level I, II, and III", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What personal milestones can you use to measure growth in your programming > abilities? I am looking for the criteria of what makes a programmer a level I, II, and III? What are topics that you would expect to be known/understood/mastered at each level?"}
{"_id": "117179", "title": "What is the job title hierarchy amongst software engineers?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What does the suffix after software engineer/developer job titles mean? > (i.e. Software Developer III)   >  work advancement titles I've been struggling to understand job hierarchy in software engineering. The system is further complicated because of the lack of consistent naming conventions when assigning roles: for example, some companies just have a \"senior software developer\" position while others have Software Engineer I, Software Engineer II, Software Engineer III, and so on. Even in the top level positions, we have things like \"Principal Software Engineer\" vs. \"Staff Software Engineer\". What is the standard hierarchy for software engineers? Is there a generally accepted pecking order?"}
{"_id": "39353", "title": "work advancement titles", "text": "After some googling I was unable to find out hierarchy of different titles in career development. Especially the connection between Senior Engineer and Software Specialist is unclear to me. Which one is higher? Most of all I would like to see links pointing to some career development paths from the trainee to the highest boss, and what kind of different routes there are including technical and managerial paths."}
{"_id": "174888", "title": "How to access an encrypted INI file from C on an embedded system with little RAM", "text": "I want to encrypt an INI file using a Delphi program on a Windows PC. Then I need to decrypt & access it in C on an embedded system with little RAM. I will do that once & fetch all info; I will not be consutinuously accessing the INI file whenever my program needs data from the file. Any advice as to which encryption to use? Nothing too heavyweight, just good enough for \"Security through obscurity\" and FOSS for both Delphi & C. And how can I decrypt, get all the info from the INI file - using as little RAM as possible, and then free any allocated RAM? **[Update]** I am currently using an Atmel UC3, although I am not sure if that will be the final case. It has 512kB falsh & 128kB RAM. For an INI file, I am talking of max 8 sections, with a total of max 256 entries, each max 8 chars. I chose INI (but am not married to it), because i have had major problems in the past when the format of a data fiel changes, no matter whether binary, or text. For tex, I prefer the free format of INI (on PC), but suppose I could switch to `line_1=data_1, line_2=data_2` and accept that if I add new fields in future software erleases they must come at the end, even if it is not pretty when read directly by humans. I suppose if I choose a fixed format text file then I never need get more than one line into RAM at a time ... **[Verdict]** I will go with either TEA or AES (tbd). I will split the functionality into two parts: 1) decrypt into a plain text file, 2) parse that as an INI file and if I hit memory problems then change to a `line_1=data_1, line_2=data_2` format. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "47364", "title": "patented algorithm", "text": "What does it mean when an algorithm is patented? Am I allowed to use it as long as I am not making money out of it? I am asking because I am working on a project and I happened to discover a feature detection algorithm that I want to implement, but then it is patented by someone. Can I use the algorithm? It is for a school project"}
{"_id": "47360", "title": "If I wanted to build a search engine, how would I start?", "text": "Can somebody point me into the right direction? I really don't have experience writing code but I'm a fast learner. I'm not trying to say it will be easy but I hope somebody can help me..."}
{"_id": "201487", "title": "What are the pros and cons of HTML5, native and hybrid mobile app approaches?", "text": "I want to develop a mobile application .. I read lately an article on Telerik Forum : it compares among three types of mobile application and I don't know which one should I select to begin with .. [FROM Telerik] ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YA81J.jpg) To make the choice which one I should select, I need to better understands the pros and cons of each architecture choice listed in the above diagram. What are the pros and cons of each architecture approach?"}
{"_id": "11222", "title": "Which algorithms and data structures should a developer absolutely know?", "text": "I want to be a successful enterprise Java developer. With what algorithms and data structures should I be well versed? What books would you recommend to me? To be a successful Java developer, do I need to know all the advanced algorithms such as those given in CLRS? Can you suggest a list of the topics that I should learn in the descending order of their priority? Must I know:   * Searching?   * Sorting?    * Graphs/Trees? etc?"}
{"_id": "208074", "title": "How to manage pair- programming code check in user identification?", "text": "How do you identify users when a programming pair checks in code? I heard a complaint that, often a junior dev will be at the keyboard, using his/her account, but is not going to be the best person to ask questions about the code being checked in (the more senior dev is likely to have the best answer). Is this really a problem? Seems like a programming team could think of some way to identify pairs and get the necessary information in their version control software. I also think they're not benefiting from this process if both programmers don't know what their code does."}
{"_id": "155176", "title": "Single quotes vs double quotes", "text": "I just started a job where I'm writing Python after coming from a Java background, and I'm noticing that other developers tend to quote strings using single quotes (`''`) instead of double quotes (`\"\"`). For example:               line1 = 'This is how strings typically look.'     line2 = \"Not like this.\"      Is there a particular reason for this other than personal preference? Is this the proper way to be quoting strings? Specifically, what I want to know is if there is some type of standard or accepted best practice that drives this style of coding."}
{"_id": "160303", "title": "Best practices / Design patterns for code generation", "text": "I'm working on a ground up code generator project, but I feel I might be reinventing the wheel. Does anyone know where I can find some best practices guidelines or design patterns for code generation?"}
{"_id": "155173", "title": "Tool to visualize values from variables during the execution of a program in C", "text": "I just need to see what is stored, in realtime, in some particular variables and struct used by an application written in C. I need something like the stack tracer that comes with the ADT plugins for Eclipse as part of the Android sdk."}
{"_id": "103228", "title": "Work Item type for refactoring duplicate methods (i.e. turning them into 1)", "text": "Given that you have two identical methods (signatures, body, input/output) that you wanted to refactor into just one, what type of Work Item from the MS Agile template would be most appropriate? Task, Bug, Quality of Service, Risk? Why?"}
{"_id": "19055", "title": "Importance of theoretical knowledge alongside hands-on ability", "text": "I am obsessed with good code practices, clean code and most of all secure. I often find myself searching for the best way to do something, constantly asking for code review and looking for ways to improve my code. In practice I can manage (been doing PHP for a couple of months) but the theoretical part is my weak spot. I know what most of the concepts mean, I understand them but if someone would ask me to explain something I often find it difficult. This means that if I were to look for a job and the interviewer would ask me questions, they would immediately think I don't know much about the subject. Is this going to be a big disadvantage for me? Should I seriously start to learn the theoretical part more?"}
{"_id": "155178", "title": "Can I provide a GPL app, with different licenced logo?", "text": "I want to provide my app under GNU GPL v3, but I would be glad if people couldn't change its name or its logo. Can I provide my app under the GNU GPL v3 licence, while the app's name and logo are under another type of licence like CC BY-NC-ND 3.0? (The logo and name is used in the app source and design.)"}
{"_id": "206684", "title": "Take dynamic PHP array, package up as separate files inside a single zip file", "text": "I have this dynamic data in PHP, but for each array record, I want to allow a downloadable option to save a zip archive of all records (each as a separate file). These are actually DNS zone records that are housed in a database. It wouldn't make much sense if they're in a single text file, so I'm looking to somehow have the data exported as separate files inside the zip. I could save them to disk, but know there's a way in PHP to use the headers to force a download of data as a certain filetype. What I don't know is how to zip that data on the fly. Maybe I can't, and will have to save each to a temp folder, then zip the contents of that folder, then delete the contents after downloaded. Thought maybe the community might have an idea of where to start. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "206683", "title": "when is it necessary or when should a controller be async", "text": "When is it absolutely necessary for a controller to be async? Should all controllers be async or is it bad practice to make all of them async unless it is necessary. Just looking for some general guidelines."}
{"_id": "213104", "title": "What language has integrated \"list insertion\" as part of code *syntax*?", "text": "Many programming languages permit natural manipulation of strings, and some languages permit the manipulations of lists too. More often then not (always?), these operations are done as _procedure_ calls, or as _member_ functions. Many programming languages do implement in syntax the fairly typical set _{prepend, replace, append}_ on **lists** (and/or _strings_ ). I would like to know if there as/was a programming language that has a syntax that minimises/rationalises/orthogonalises the **insertion** syntax of items into a **list** by syntax design? Python - as a simple example - has only: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18033339/python-insert-operation-on-list               mylist.insert(10,'5')      Note: In python _list_ **insertion** is implemented as a _member_ function. **But:** Python **does** have some syntactic sugar for _removing_ elements from a **_list_** : e.g.               del mylist[4:7]      I like to know of any languages actually try to **integrate** (or have **strategy** ) for list **insertion** as part of the **syntax**? **An example of insertion by construction:** Here is some code from a fairly typical \"Brand X\" language, demonstrating typical prepend/replace/append operations {or operators, vis-\u00e0-vis syntatic sugar}, notice there is no obvious syntax for {in place} inserting (or removing) from the middle of a list. {It has to be done \"by construction\", or by calling a procedure}               # Demonstration of prefix, replace and append operations to a string {or list} #     string s := \"23XX78\";     \"1\"    +=: s;    # Prefix a char \"1\" to the string \"in place\" #     s[4:5] := \"46\";  # In place replace a char at pos 2 in a string #     s      +:= \"9!\"; # Append a string \"9!\" char to the string #         #        Although inserting into a list is intuitive,        * it is by construction (hence prone to typos/index-flips)       * it is not \"in place\"       e.g. ...     #     s:=s[:4]+\"5\"+s[5:];          print(s)      Output: \"123456789!\" Another example for strings:               s[:4]+=\"5\""}
{"_id": "213106", "title": "Short function names for often used function or general concept", "text": "I am a bit in a dilemma: Let's suppose I have a very general function and a specialization of it for convenience reasons. Let's also assume that the specialized function is used 90 per cent of the time, hence being \"the common case\". Should I use a shorter function name for the general case (e.g. `do`) and a longer one for the special (`do_something_special`) or the other way around (e.g. `do_something_general` and `do`)? When applying Larry Wall's words (make simple things easy and hard ones possible), I'd use a shorter form for the more often used case. EDIT: Just to make this a bit more clear: in this example, `do` is just a placeholder for a short, descriptive name. Of course it could be longer, e.g. `run_task` or `process_file`. What I want to know is, if I have a function called `run_task_in_specific_way` that is used most of time should actually be called `run_task` (although being more specific) or the general abstraction. EDIT 2: To clarify once more: The functions I am talking about are neither providing more than one functionality nor should they be replaced by a class- based design. The reason is: they _are_ abstract in the same sense as qsort, e.g. taking callable from users to fulfill a specific action. Wrapping them into some auxiliary class does not make much sense."}
{"_id": "213101", "title": "Sleeping Barber Problem (with multiple barbers)", "text": "The Sleeping Barber Problem is a classical synchronization problem that many of you may be familiar with or at least heard of. It's based on the premise that a barber (a thread) sleeps when there are no customers (each customer is a thread) in the waiting room (which is a semaphore). If there is someone, he cuts his hair (symbolizing some processing) and the costumer leaves. If, then, there is no one in the waiting room, the barber goes to sleep. When another customer arrives, he then must wake up the barber. I have made a implementation of this using the following basic-idea (pseudo- code, only using `sem_wait` and `sem_post`1 for smooth reading)               Semaphore Customers = 0;     Semaphore Barber = 0;     Mutex accessSeats = 1;     int NumberOfFreeSeats = N;           Barber {         while(1) {             sem_wait(Customers) // waits for a customer (sleeps)             sem_wait(accessSeats) // mutex to protect the number of available seats             NumberOfFreeSeats++ // a chair gets free             sem_post(Barber) // bring customer for haircut             sem_post(accessSeats) // release the mutex on the chair             // barber is cutting hair         }     }          Customer {         while(1) {             sem_wait(accessSeats) // protects seats so only 1 thread tries to sit in a chair if that's the case             if(NumberOfFreeSeats > 0) {                 NumberOfFreeSeats-- // sitting down                 sem_post(Customers) // notify the barber                 sem_post(accessSeats) // release the lock                 sem_wait(Barber) // wait in the waiting room if barber is busy                 // customer is having hair cut             } else {                 sem_post(accessSeats) // release the lock                 // customer leaves             }        }     }      However, now that I'll implement this problem with multiple barbers, my head got stuck. I went on Wikipedia to see if I could find something about it, but the only thing that I found there was this > _A multiple sleeping barbers problem has the additional complexity of > coordinating several barbers among the waiting customers._ and I couldn't figure this out by myself. In which case I'd have this complexity? By several barbers going to the waiting room to see if there is anyone there and then taking (more than one barber) a single customer? Would I need an extra semaphore here? 1sem_wait() locks the semaphore. sem_post() unlocks it"}
{"_id": "213100", "title": "What's the most effective way to share code between .NET applications?", "text": "In our work, we have several different .net applications that share a lot of base functionality. We've built these applications using a clean n-tier architecture, but we've hit that moment where we realize that we've re- implemented the same functions several different times. Obviously this violates DRY, and we would like to correct that. We're already using Nuget to some success for common glue code (wiring up IoC, logging, settings), but we also would like to share our data and business layers between all our applications. The idea is that the UI would only deal with the parts of the business layer it actually needs. This seems like a straight-forward problem at first, but ongoing development could provide some pitfalls and we're not sure how to proceed. Let's say we make our One Business Layer to Rule Them All. For brevity, I'll call it \"Foundation.\" We port our applications to use the Foundation, and everything is runnding great. The Foundation is distributed to light UI layers via nuget, and we're looking good. But then we start adding features to our applications, and we run into trouble. Let's say we're working on Project A and we add a new feature that requires changes to Foundation. We make the changes to foundation (Foundation-A) and push them out to the nuget feed as an unstable package. Project A gets the latest nuget package, and all is good. Meanwhile, another developer is working on Project B. He gets the latest Foundation from source control, but takes it from a stable branch, so that it doesn't have Project A changes in it. He makes changes and created Foundation-B. And all is good. But then we discover that Foundation-A and Foundation-B implementation functionality that could actually share code, so we combine them. Meanwhile Foundation-C is floating out there with it's own changes. Eventually, Foundation-B is ready for production, so we push it out. But then we need to update Production A, B, & C with the new foundation, so we update the nuget packages and deploy (as long as nothing breaks). This seems like it could work, but we're worried about working with different database schemas and keeping everything synchronized between the various branches of the Foundation repository as well as the Project A, B, and C repositories. It seems like it will probably take a lot of manual work, which opens up the possibility for errors. I would like this as automated as possible. Here's the stack we're using: C#, TFS with Continuous Integration, Nuget. Our applications are all various types of ASP.NET applications. We're willing to look at different SCM's if it will make things easier. I'm looking for ways to keep Nuget sane with our different source code branches. We don't want to accidentally push development code into production because we reference the wrong Nuget Package."}
{"_id": "225054", "title": "Are there any ultra high level languages out there?", "text": "Historically a HLL is something like C, Fortran or Pascal and a VHLL is something like Ruby or Python. I am familiar with the terms 4GL, 5GL, DSL and LOP, and those who aren't should read Wikipedia for the definitions. I'm looking for UHLLs. My question is: are there any computer languages out there which are another order of magnitude more productive, and is anyone working on them? More productive means less authored code and less programmer time to achieve a result, less bugs and less debugging, closer conceptual link between code and requirements, less effort to modify and maintain. The main domain that interests me is general-purpose business and consumer applications, with a GUI or browser front end, data persistence and connections to other systems such as printing and email. Other people might well focus elsewhere. I recognise that some of those languages might be domain-specific, and that they might be little more than the configuration capability of a large and capable application. Excel spreadsheets fall into this category. I recognise that some of those languages might appear general, but might still be narrow in scope and unsuited to many problems. For example, Matlab might not be a good choice for a program that deals mainly with user interaction and textual data. I know some of the features that might be in a UHLL, by analogy with VHLL. I would expect to find one or more of the following (and feel free to add to the list):   * A drawing of a GUI form IS the program for a GUI form   * A table containing rows, columns and headers IS the program for a table in a database   * Declarative logic says what should be done and when, with no IF statements   * Operations on sets of data, with no FOR loops   * Non-sequential execution eg data driven, pattern matching, tree walking The motivation for the question is that I am increasingly fed up with the sheer hard work of translating relatively simple business requirements into large quantities of code to cater for what the computer wants or needs. The question is really about finding others out there who share my pain and are working on raising the level of languages and getting the computer to do more of the hard work. This was a major focus in the 1970s-80s, but is it still happening? These are some suggested answers to my question, provided here to to summarise or enumerate languages I know about, and which in my view fall short. There are many languages that are HLL or VHLL and contain individual features that belong to a higher level. I've used most of them (often badly). They include   * Lisp, with its macros and ability to self-modify   * Haskell, with data dependency and pattern matching   * SQL, which deals in rows and tables   * Rebol, which seems clever but I don't really get it   * APL (and J), with its multi-dimensional arrays and ultra-compact operators   * C# with LINQ   * AWK/Perl/Python/Ruby with wonderful collections and regexes built in These languages have too many low level features to be UHLL. The programmer still has to write many low level constructs for any useful program. There are RAD/4GL packages. I've used some:   * dBase/Foxpro   * Dataflex/Powerflex (my product)   * Access   * PowerBuilder And lots more I haven't used. Mostly the language is HLL at best but the package contains a framework and privileged connections between language and package so that applications can be built fast. I'm not sure why this approach ran out of steam, but in any case UHLL this is not. There are raw frameworks/libraries. I've used a few:   * Rails   * Java awt and swing   * .NET Windows Forms, WPF and ASP.NET. These are currently the state of the art. They leave the programmer firmly trapped in the mire of the implementation language, dealing with complexity at every turn. This is not UHLL, but a UHLL might conceivably be built on top of one of these. There are design tools, like UML and Rational's toolset, which I don't know well. As far as I can see they help articulate business requirements but can never replace the programming step. I don't want to eliminate programmers, just get more done per unit of time and effort. So having eliminated all contenders I can think, I hope someone else can provide a better candidate. Late Edit: I think I have an answer: Wolfram Language. http://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-language/"}
{"_id": "198783", "title": "Why is it a good idea for \"lower\" application layers not to be aware of \"higher\" ones?", "text": "In a typical (well-designed) MVC web app, the database is not aware of the model code, the model code is not aware of the controller code, and the controller code is not aware of the view code. (I imagine you could even start as far down as the hardware, or perhaps even further, and the pattern might be the same.) Going the other direction, you can go just one layer down. The view can be aware of the controller but not the model; the controller can be aware of the model but not the database; the model can be aware of the database but not the OS. (Anything deeper is probably irrelevant.) I can intuitively grasp why this is a good idea but I can't articulate it. **Why is this unidirectional style of layering a good idea?**"}
{"_id": "255687", "title": "What layers reference each other in a multi layer design?", "text": "I'm creating a project and I'm having difficulty and contrasting opinions on how to do things when it comes down to separating layers. I'm not fully sure what layers should reference each other. I have read in certain blogs/posts that the flow should be   * the view references the business layer   * the business layer references the data layer   * the data layer only knows about it self On the other hand I have also seen the following   * the view references the business layer   * the business layer knows only about itself   * the data layer references the business layer Using the second method I have been using the business layer using IOC but im reluctant to progress without more knowledge. I have read a number of posts but the answers seem many and varied. Any clarification would be great. Thanks"}
{"_id": "215468", "title": "Is it bad practice to call a controller action from a view that was rendered by another controller?", "text": "Let's say I have an `OrderController` which handles orders. The user adds products to it through the view, and then the final price gets calculated through an AJAX call to a controller action. The price calculation logic is implemented in a seperate class and used in a controller action. What happens is that I have many views from different controllers that need to use that particular action. I'd like to have some kind of a `PriceController` that I could call an action on. But then the view would have to know about that PriceController and call an action on it. Is it bad practice for a view to call an action on a different controller from which it was rendered?"}
{"_id": "229524", "title": "How to integrate and Program Avatar customization in HTML(5)?", "text": "I am making a Game in HTML5. In one part of it, I want the users to be able to customize the avatar they get by default. For sample, let me share a screenshot from Zombie Lane on Facebook (now this game may not be in HTML5 but that's not the point): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RXseK.png) My question is as to how do I include the images in the HTML5 page and in which format? Whenever a clothing is different shirt is selected, the change is applied immediately. Is it a whole new photo that we see, or is the photo changed somehow by programming? How is it done?"}
{"_id": "143533", "title": "What does \"automating a use case\" mean and  what are the tools to do it?", "text": "What does 'automating a use case 'means and how does the tools that automate helps with that? whats makes automation good to do and does it holds any significance for web developement."}
{"_id": "215465", "title": "Syncing client and server CRUD operations using json and php", "text": "I'm working on some code to sync the state of models between client (being a javascript application) and server. Often I end up writing redundant code to track the client and server objects so I can map the client supplied data to the server models. Below is some code I am thinking about implementing to help. What I don't like about the below code is that this method won't handle nested relationships very well, I would have to create multiple object trackers. One work around is for each server model after creating or loading, simply do `$model->clientId = $clientId;` IMO this is a nasty hack and I want to avoid it. Adding a setClientId method to all my model objects would be another way to make it less hacky, but this seems like overkill to me. Really clientIds are only good for inserting/updating data in some scenarios. I could go with a decorator pattern, but auto generating a proxy class seems a bit involved. I could use a generic proxy class that uses a __call function to allow for original object data to be accessed, but this seems wrong too. Any thoughts or comments?               $clientData = '[{name: \"Bob\", action: \"update\", id: 1, clientId: 200}, {name:\"Susan\", action:\"create\", clientId: 131} ]';     $jsonObjs = json_decode($clientData);               $objectTracker = new ObjectTracker();     $objectTracker->trackClientObjs($jsonObjs);               $query = $this->em->createQuery(\"SELECT x FROM Application_Model_User x WHERE x.id IN (:ids)\");     $query->setParameters(\"ids\",$objectTracker->getClientSpecifiedServerIds());     $models = $query->getResults();          //Apply client data to server model     foreach ($models as $model) {         $clientModel = $objectTracker->getClientJsonObj($model->getId());                   ...      }               //Create new models and persist     foreach($objectTracker->getNewClientObjs() as $newClientObj) {         $model = new Application_Model_User();         ....         $em->persist($model);         $objectTracker->trackNewServerObj($newClientObj['clientId'],$model);     }     $em->flush();          $resourceResponse = $objectTracker->createResourceResponse();          //Id mappings will be an associtave array representing server id resources with client side     // id.     //This method Dosen't seem to flexible if we want to return additional data with each resource...     //Would have to modify the returned data structure, seems like tight coupling...     //Ex return value:     //[{clientId: 200, id:1} , {clientId: 131, id: 33}];"}
{"_id": "216209", "title": "what would be the best data structure for my situation", "text": "I have a list of **unique string**. I don't want to destroy this string i need it.I only need to find out weather an given string S exist in this unique list.What would be the best data structure for this purpose."}
{"_id": "173050", "title": "Relationship DAO, Servlet, JSP and POJO", "text": "I want to implement a `JSP`, `POJO`, `DAO` and `Servlet` in my `J2EE` program. However, I don't fully understand how the relationship between these elements should be. Is the following (MVC) setup the right way to do it?   * Main class creates servlet(controller)   * Servlet has a `DAO` defined in its class   * `DAO` has a `POJO` defined in its class   * `Servlet` communicates with the view (JSP page) Please give your feedback."}
{"_id": "173052", "title": "How can you get constructive criticism for your code?", "text": "My team rarely does code review, mainly because we don't have enough time and people lack the energy and will to do so. But I would really like to know what people think about my code when they read it. This way, I have a better understanding how other people think and tailor my code accordingly so it's easier to read. So my question is, how can I get constructive criticism for my code? My intent is to understand how people think so I can write more readable code."}
{"_id": "231645", "title": "Capture portions of a number using mathematical operations", "text": "Is there a mathematical way to get the following: For the the number 777,888,999 so 777 million and etc etc getMillions(777888999) should return 777 only getThousands(777888999) should return 888 only getHundreds(777888999) should return 999 only This should be done **without using regex and without text processing** but should be achieved using **only mathematical operations**. I'm trying to solve a problem that may be familiar to some which is converting a number expressed in digits to words so 1 -> one, 10 -> ten, 100 -> one hundred etc My thinking is that if I can convert a number up to 999 then the problem is pretty much solved as the rest will only append the words millions and/or thousands so 777888999 will covert to the words: 777 million and 888 thousands and 999 hundred of course the above numbers will expressed in words. This originally was given to me as part of a job interview process about a year ago. I am absolutely not using the solution here for a job application. But the above question is about number manipulation which I'm very interested in."}
{"_id": "231641", "title": "What do you call a tree that grows in both directions?", "text": "![tree representation](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mHAbK.jpg)What would be the technical term for a tree that grows in both the directions, starting from the root in the middle? The central idea being that new elements can be added to the tree (Now, I am not sure if it is even okay to call it one) in both the directions. But, when used for traversal purposes, you need to follow the directed links."}
{"_id": "191706", "title": "Negative test cases confusion", "text": "In the Software testing book from Koirala, Sheihk, they say: > A positive test is when you put in a valid input and expect some action to > be completed in accordance with the specification.   >  A negative test is when you put in an invalid input and receive errors. Part of my question: Let's say there is a requirement: If the customer name==\"James Bond\", do something. Is `name<>\"James Bond\"` negative or still positive test, verifying the requirement? Or a login function:   Is correct login positive test case and incorrect negative?   Or Login failed is just confirmation of requirement that a password must be correct ->confirming invalid pass will not work. > For example, if the program is supposed to give an error when the person > types in \"101\" on a field that should be between 1 and 100, then that is > positive then if an error shows up. If, however, the application does not > give an error when user types 101, then you have a negative test."}
{"_id": "191701", "title": "Why should form inheritance be avoided?", "text": "I remember learning VB4 and dragging a button onto a form, double-clicking on that button, and typing code into that event handler I had just been magically blessed with. Coming from QBASIC I was thrilled with the \"V\" in \"VB\", the visual designer was literally the best thing since sliced bread. Of course you could do all that programmatically but the magic of the \"V\" was so appealing you just couldn't help but drag that button. We were encouraged to take that route. But then a few years ago I started learning about C# and the .net framework and was fascinated by the way everything I thought I knew had just gone out the window. There's a lot of _magic_ going on in VB6 that's completely unveiled in .net: take constructors and the `InitializeComponents` method for example. In the latter you'd find all the control instances you've dragged from the toolbox, all the events you've registered and the properties you've set in the designer. And that's fine... I guess. It's just, I feel like I don't \"own\" what's going on, this code that I can only modify via the designer annoys the heck out of me. Every time you copy a button that says \"Ok\" from one form to another (sometimes along with its brother \"Cancel\"), you are actually duplicating code, and that's a _sin_ isn't it? DRY, don't repeat yourself, says the _Pope_. Religions and schools of thought aside, in all objectivity, shouldn't we derive forms from base forms instead, and have the \"Ok\" button (and all of its friends) live on the base form? Something like a `FormBase` from which derives a `DialogFormBase`; all classes created in no time... by typing code. The buttons are created depending on how the class is instanciated (i.e. a constructor enum argument determines which buttons are to be created), controls are laid out inside an arrangement of split panels and flow layout panels, injected into the form as `Content` that fits into the main content panel. Isn't this what ASP.net does with master pages and content placeholders? I'd derive a form when I need a new \"master page\", but this new \"master page\" still derives from a base form class so the visuals are consistent across the entire application. To me that's _much_ more code reuse than anything else I've ever done with the designer in WinForms, and it wasn't even hard, and code isn't cluttered with a 200-lines method that I have no control over, I can put comments where I like, they won't get overwritten by a designer. I guess it's just a matter of patterns and architecture, which is what brought me to this link: Best design for Windows forms that will share common functionality, where I realized I was spot on, except **the answer there, suggests exactly what I'm doing, but it's advising _against_ form inheritance _because_ of designer considerations. That's the part I don't get**. I would rather advise _against_ using the designer _because_ of code structure considerations, especially in regards with form and control inheritance, which I see no reason to avoid other than _well it breaks the designer_. We can't all be just lazy, so what part am I missing?"}
{"_id": "171024", "title": "\"Never do in code what you can get the SQL server to do well for you\" - Is this a recipe for a bad design?", "text": "It's an idea I've heard repeated in a handful of places. Some more or less acknowledging that once trying to solve a problem purely in SQL exceeds a certain level of complexity you should indeed be handling it in code. The logic behind the idea is that for the large majority of cases, the database engine will do a better job at finding the most efficient way of completing your task than you could in code. Especially when it comes to things like making the results conditional on operations performed on the data. Arguably with modern engines effectively JIT'ing + caching the compiled version of your query it'd make sense on the surface. The question is whether or not leveraging your database engine in this way is inherently bad design practice (and why). The lines become blurred further when all the logic exists inside the database and you're just hitting it via an ORM."}
{"_id": "80653", "title": "How to research a company to work at", "text": "I have been made an offer at a company. How do I research it to find if its somewhere I would like to work, besides asking them questions? Google search gives little results."}
{"_id": "195411", "title": "When people work in different countries and need to work together how to keep code in correct language", "text": "I'm a member of a small new team and with one of our latest builds I noted that, VS2010 code files don't contain language formatting. So for example when I write down a Euro symbol in my code or use a \".\" or \",\" in numbers or use Pounds, Euro or Dollar symbols, those look ok in my code, but for a coder in Russia they don't. I wonder how other people tackle these kind of problems?"}
{"_id": "195413", "title": "How to encapsulate 'global' variables in C#? /best practice", "text": "In C# what is the best practice for encapsulating variables I need to use in multiple methods? Is it OK to simply declare them at the top of my class above the two methods? Also if I am using app settings from my config file should I use a getter? like this...               private string mySetting{ get { return WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings[\"mySetting\"]; } }      What best practice is?"}
{"_id": "97742", "title": "Documentation: What is \"appropriate\" when expressing a valid range for a parameter?", "text": "What is the appropriate method to describe a valid range of a parameter in the documentation of code? Obviously long-form documentation (white papers, API documents, etc) can be more verbose than the actual code but this is really to address issues in the actual code than in the distributed documentation (that every user should read to begin with!) Examples:   * <argument name> where { <argument name> | 0 <= <argument name> <= 255 }   * <argument name> range: [0,255]   * <argument name> is valid between zero and 255 inclusive."}
{"_id": "161881", "title": "What does a good \"definition of done\" for a mature team look like?", "text": "When looking at examples of definitions of done in various sources, they usually include points like   * code completed   * unit tests run   * code peer-reviewed or paired   * code checked in   * documentation updated   * \u2026 In our team, we have a similar list, but nobody ever looks at it because those points seem so blatantly obvious that it wouldn't occur to anyone to skip any of these steps. So we were wondering whether that's mainly a tool for teams transitioning to an agile process and whether we shouldn't just get rid of it. On the other hand, lots of literature claims that all high-performing teams have a strong definition of done. This kind of hints that we might miss an opportunity to improve here. So what are examples of strong definitions of done of a mature team? What kind of points do they include typically?"}
{"_id": "153632", "title": "What are the usual difficulties in concurrent programming and tuning of concurrent programs (shared-memory model)?", "text": "I can list part of the problems that will show up when writing a moderately- sized concurrent application with shared memory:   * Locking granularity   * Choice of synchronization primitive   * Number of threads   * Method for decomposing into threads (data parallelism; task parallelism; how threads are organized, etc) What are other similar problems?"}
{"_id": "153633", "title": "Using a parser to locate faulty code", "text": "Lately I've been working a lot in PHP and have run into an abnormally large number of parsing errors. I realize these are my own fault and a result of sloppy initial coding on my part, but it's getting to the point that I'm spending more time resolving tags than developing. In the interest of not slamming my productivity, are there any tricks to locating the problem in the code? What I'd really be looking for would be a line to put in the code which would output the entire faulty tag in the parsing error, or something similar. Purely for reference sake, my current error is Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in /home/content/80/9480880/html/cache/tpl_prosilver_viewtopic_body.html.php on line 50 (which refers to this):               </dd><dd><?php if ($_poll_option_val['POLL_OPTION_RESULT'] == 0) {  echo ((isset($this->_rootref['L_NO_VOTES'])) ? $this->_rootref['L_NO_VOTES'] : ((isset($user->lang['NO_VOTES'])) ? $user->lang['NO_VOTES'] : '{ NO_VOTES }')); } else { echo $_poll_option_val['POLL_OPTION_PERCENT']; } ?></dd> </dl> <?php }} if ($this->_rootref['S_DISPLAY_RESULTS']) {  ?> <dl> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> <dd class=\"resultbar\"><?php echo ((isset($this->_rootref['L_TOTAL_VOTES'])) ? $this->_rootref['L_TOTAL_VOTES'] : ((isset($user->lang['TOTAL_VOTES'])) ? $user->lang['TOTAL_VOTES'] : '{ TOTAL_VOTES }')); ?> : <?php echo (isset($this->_rootref['TOTAL_VOTES'])) ? $this->_rootref['TOTAL_VOTES'] : ''; ?></dd> </dl> <?php } if ($this->_rootref['S_CAN_VOTE']) {  ?> <dl style=\"border-top: none;\"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> <dd class=\"resultbar\"><input type=\"submit\" name=\"update\" value=\"<?php echo ((isset($this->_rootref['L_SUBMIT_VOTE'])) ? $this->_rootref['L_SUBMIT_VOTE'] : ((isset($user->lang['SUBMIT_VOTE'])) ? $user->lang['SUBMIT_VOTE'] : '{ SUBMIT_VOTE }')); ?>\" class=\"button1\" /></dd> </dl> <?php } if (! $this->_rootref['S_DISPLAY_RESULTS']) {  ?> <dl style=\"border-top: none;\"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> <dd class=\"resultbar\"><a href=\"<?php echo (isset($this->_rootref['U_VIEW_RESULTS'])) ? $this->_rootref['U_VIEW_RESULTS'] : ''; ?>\"><?php echo ((isset($this->_rootref['L_VIEW_RESULTS'])) ? $this->_rootref['L_VIEW_RESULTS'] : ((isset($user->lang['VIEW_RESULTS'])) ? $user->lang['VIEW_RESULTS'] : '{ VIEW_RESULTS }')); ?></a></dd> </dl> <?php } ?> </fieldset></div>"}
{"_id": "153630", "title": "In rails, what defines unit testing as opposed to other kinds of testing", "text": "Initially I thought this was simple: unit testing for models with other testing such as integration for controller and browser testing for views. But more recently I've seen a lot of references to unit testing that doesn't seem to exactly follow this format. Is it possible to have a unit test of a controller? Does that mean that just one method is called? What's the distinction? What does unit testing _really_ means in my rails world?"}
{"_id": "105786", "title": "Should I use one database per application or share a single database amongst multiple applications", "text": "I have multiple applications some that use data from the same sources. Is it best practice (or what are the pros/cons) to:   * leave the data in databases shared by multiple applications     1. saves space as only one database is needed     2. complicates indexing as different applications have different querying needs   * import data daily into per-app databases     1. uses more space as duplicated data exists in per-app databases     2. easier indexing as each app can focus on its individual needs I may have left out other advantages/disadvantages, please list if any, also how is this done at your workplace?"}
{"_id": "120003", "title": "What is the meaning of driven ? (test-driven , data-driven, event-driven and etc)", "text": "I was reading a paper that makes a comparison between ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. While reading it, such as data-driven, event-driven, test-driven are the terms that I see a lot. So what are they used for? when we can call them for a programming language or framework? What do they need to have?"}
{"_id": "153637", "title": "Why are effect-less functions executed?", "text": "All the languages I know of would execute something like:               i = 0     while i < 100000000         i += 1      ..and you can see it take a noticeable amount of time to execute. Why though, do languages do this? The only effect this code will have is taking time. edit: I mean inside a function which is called               function main(){         useless()     }     function useless(){         i = 0         while i < 100000000             i += 1     }"}
{"_id": "153634", "title": "Is it bad practice for a module to contain more information than it needs?", "text": "I just wanted to ask for your opinion on a situation that occurs sometimes and which I don't know what would be the most elegant way to solve it. Here it goes: We have module A which reads an entry from a database and sends a request to module B containing ONLY the information from the entry module B would need to accomplish it's job (to keep modularity I just give it the information it needs -> module B has nothing to do with the rest of the information from the read DB entry). Now after finishing it's job, module B has to reply to a module C if it succeeded or failed. To do this module B replies with the information it has gotten from module A and some variable meaning success or fail. Now here comes the problem: module C needs to find that entry again BUT the information it has gotten from module B is not enough to uniquely find the exact same entry again. I don't think that module A giving more information to module B which it doesn't need to do it's job but which it could then give back to module C would be a good practice because this would mean giving some module information it doesn't really need. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "63702", "title": "Software updating solution for both Linux/Windows platform", "text": "Are you guys aware of any commercial (non-commercial?) online automatic updater that can be integrated with one's software? After quick research I found zillions of them but for Windows only and again only few got C/C++ API. Do this kind of solutions have any update management/statistics features?"}
{"_id": "63705", "title": "Do you care if the person you're interviewing owns or contributes to Open Source projects?", "text": "Do you care if the person you're interviewing has created or contributed to Open Source projects? From the pool of people we've interview over the years at my workplace, I haven't found one person who contributes to an open-source project. In fact I'm the only person in the office that is really interested in the (.NET) OSS scene, but I don't believe that makes me any more competent, and it possibly reflects on my social life more than anything. Does OSS participation make your ears prick up if you see it on a CV/Resume? Or are you apathetic towards it? _(This is what made me think of the question)_"}
{"_id": "95454", "title": "How do I learn Concurrency in Ruby?", "text": "Yesterday I read this great article about Concurrency in JRuby from EngineYard and I realise I need to leverage my skills about concurrency in Ruby, by mentioning Ruby here I mean it could be **all** implementations of Ruby : JRuby, Ruby MRI, Rubinius, Ruby on Parrot / Cardinal except IronRuby, I don't code in Windows Environment. What I learned from Haskell world, especially from Simon Peyton-Jones, he said on his video that OOP is all about state. Note: I'm very very inexperienced when I mention Haskell, I only watched some good videos about Haskell, solved very few (less than 10) euler project in Haskell, read some good Haskell books and tutorials, I've never coded in Haskell professionally, I just read some source codes in Haskell, ex. pugs, Darcs, and some other Haskell codes I don't remember the source. I might want to use Jaskell to trick concurrency as long as I use jruby, but that's for my long term learning plan, I want to maximise my concurrency skill in ruby first, **do you have any suggestions for me to learn concurrency in ruby?** I wish there were a kind of Head First book for me to learn Concurrency in Ruby. Things like strategies / how to tackle concurrency problem in ruby, inspired from EngineYard article and Haskell. Maybe some good downloadable videos that explain step by step to strengthen my fundamental about concurrency generally and then move to concurrency in ruby specifically. Advice? Thank you."}
{"_id": "219976", "title": "What's the difference between robustness and fault-tolerance?", "text": "Systems / programs / distributed algorithms / ... are often described with the predicate **robust** or **fault-tolerant**. What is the difference? * * * Details: When I google for +robust +\"fault-tolerant\", I only get two hits, both unhelpful. When I googlescholar for the terms, I find a lot of papers that have both terms in their title. Unfortunately, they do not precisely define the terms :( But since they use both terms, it seems that neither implies the other."}
{"_id": "151229", "title": "I'm having trouble learning", "text": "I'm only 13 but i'm genuinely interested in CS and would really like it if I could actually accomplish it. I've read books on C++ and C#, but ALL of them are the same!! They all say \"Ok so since you have no prior knowledge in this what so ever, write a snippet that will do this and then make a GUI and then throw it into the Priafdhsu hfad then add the program and then program your own compiler to do some stuff\". It's really getting annoying. I've payed near $40 (via Paypal) on ebooks that supposedly taught people to program with no prior knowledge. ALL OF THEM EXPECT ME TO ALREADY KNOW THE LANGUAGE. Is there something that I'm missing or am I suppose to be born with the property of CS? I would very much appreciate it if someone could explain this to me or possibly refer me to a tutorial on Programming Theory that starts from below ground zero as I have know knowledge in CS at all."}
{"_id": "236513", "title": "Delphi 7 using RAM for database", "text": "I have an existing database app written in D7 with apollo databases. The client has given me a fast desktop with 24gb ram Can I somehow load the database files into ram to speed up processing? With millions of records some procedures take 1/2 hour or more, mostly due to disk read/write"}
{"_id": "176107", "title": "Record management system java web framework", "text": "We're currently reconsidering technologies and frameworks to get more agile with \"simple\" RMS CRUD-based projects. In short, short-living things like this Right now we have a custom extension on top of SmartGWT but after some time it has proven not to be flexible enough. I also personally dislike the java-js compilation process and the whole GWT codebase. Not only is the design ugly, it also makes certain low-level js things very complicated if not completely impossible. So what I'm looking for is:   * closest to **web** as possible, like JSF or possibly Tapestry, it is very important to be able get \"low\" and weave framework if necessary. Happens more often than we thought.   * datagrid capable - Ext.js & PrimeFaces looks pretty good, Vaadin does too.   * db-schema generators (optional, no matter in which way) If it were only on me, I'd probably stick to Ext.js + custom rest-based java solution, possibly generated from database schema (not sure about concrete tooling yet). I only have experience with vanilla Ext.js, vanilla GWT and JSF 2.0 / Seam, so it hard for me to judge or even propose other frameworks. **Whats your experience?** **What are the downsides you've faced?**"}
{"_id": "219971", "title": "How to unit test a web client?", "text": "I am having a lot of trouble understanding how to unit test my web client. I have just finished a project using TDD for the first time - this project hd no external dependencies such as API calls or databases, it was pure C# code. I definitely saw the benefits of using TDD and I would like to continue practising it. My next project involves writing a SOAP client. I'm struggling to get past the first test which is using a simple IClient that logs in to the API successfully. Here is the IClient interface:               public interface IClient     {         bool IsLoggedIn { get; }         bool Login(out string error);     }      I have no idea how I would go about testing this. I'm thinking the unit test method would be something like `Login_WithValidCredentials_ReturnsTrue`, but I'm not sure how I could do this without actually simulating every possible response from the API. Is this code actually unit testable, or should this be left to an integration test. If anyone could give me an example of a simple unit test then I would be very grateful (I am using Moq)."}
{"_id": "176109", "title": "Are there examples of non CRUD approaches?", "text": "I'm a programmer but also have worked as an archivist. As archivist it's a lot about keeping data. I often get into arguments with colleagues when it comes to operations on data. I don't like the U and the D in CRUD too much. Rather then update a record I prefer to add a new one and have a reference to the old record. That way you build a history of changes. I also don't like deleting records but rather mark them as inactive. Is there a term for this? Basically only creating and reading data? Are there examples of this approach?"}
{"_id": "238495", "title": "New to Data Warehouses/ERP", "text": "The organisation I work for is very application rich i.e. there are lots of SQL and Oracle databases. We are thinking about a data warehouse. I believe there is a difference between an Enterprise Resource Planning system and a Data Warehouse. An ERP would involve integrating all the systems together and having one database schema for everything. A Data Warehouse would involve creating a copy database (or copy databases) for analysis reasons. The Data Warehouse could extract information from the original repositories or the ERP system. Have I understood this correctly? Are there Data Warehouse products that are available to but or to you have to use Microsoft tools/Oracle tools e.g. SSIS, SSAS etc to write your own?"}
{"_id": "240444", "title": "Website as an API client vs using the API only when needed?", "text": "I'm developing a website (using **Django** ) which will depend on an API for it's main functionality which is create/update/delete objects. But the API also provides:   * User sign up and login   * User relations to their objects   * User groups and permissions This is great but I'm conserned about fully depending on the API for everything even user sign up and login, so I have 2 choices: **Using the API for everything** : Advantages:   * User authentication, objects, relations, permissions are already managed   * My job is only to query the API and display the results Disadvantages:   * Lots of HTTP requests to the API   * The website will break if the API goes down   * The website rendering time will be slower (will use ajax) **Using the API when needed** : Advantages:   * Fewer HTTP requests   * The website will be a little faster   * If the API goes down, not all the functions of the website will stop Disadvantages:   * I'll have to manage user authentication, permissions and relations to his objects in the API   * Duplicate user data in my database and the API (I'll have a copy of the user objects)   * Worried about the data sync (I'll update the database only on create/update/delete requests to the API) Which one is a better choice and why ? what design is usually used for such cases ?"}
{"_id": "153188", "title": "What non-programming tools do programmers use?", "text": "I'm reading _Code Complete_ with the intention of learning how to better structure my code, but I'm also learning a lot about how many aspects of programming something there are that aren't just writing the code. The book talks a lot about problem definition, determining the requirements, defining the structure, designing the code, etc. What tools are used for these non-writing steps of programming? Is there software that will help me design and plan out what I'm going to write before I do?"}
{"_id": "240442", "title": "Can I use a part of another program without having to give away my rights on my own code?", "text": "I'm currently making a game and want to use some textfiles (lists of names) that are covered under the GNU General Public License (or the Attribution- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License). Do I have to release my whole game under one of these licenses if I only used these (relatively small) files in my game or is it just these files I have to keep licensed like that? If this is not permitted am I allowed to do this anyway if I choose not to actually release my code and only \"hosted\" this game, since it's a web game."}
{"_id": "153184", "title": "Partitioning set into subsets with respect to equality of sum among subsets", "text": "Let's say I have `{3, 1, 1, 2, 2, 1, 5, 2, 7}` set of numbers, I need to split the numbers such that sum of subset1 should be equal to sum of subset2 `{3,2,7} {1,1,2,1,5,2}`. First we should identify whether we can split number(one way might be dividable by 2 without any remainder) and if we can, we should write our algorithm two create s1 and s2 out of s. How to proceed with this approach? I read partition problem in wiki and even in some articles but I am not able to get anything. Can someone help me to find the right algorithm and its explanation in simple English?"}
{"_id": "159129", "title": "Future scope for a mobile Developer", "text": "I\u2019ve started my career as a Software Tester but after 3 years I realized, it didn\u2019t give me the so called job satisfaction and I made a brave decision to jump into software development arena. Finally I have become an Android Mobile developer and completed 1 year of experience. I love my job and I love every bit of it, but going forward I\u2019m wondering what the scope for mobile developers is?? Developers who work with C# or Java have their larger scope and they can become architect etc in future. But as a mobile developer what can I achieve.. Mobile development architect is not something practical because mobile projects are small and it does not require much technical ability like j2ee project needs. Should I change my career track to Java or j2ee or something from mobile?? Any advice is appreciated."}
{"_id": "240448", "title": "How should templates be named?", "text": "In D I can create templates like this:               template Foo(A) {         A add(A a, A b) { ... }         A multiply(A a, A b) { ... }         A concatenate(A a, A b) { ... }     }      What should a template be named ideally? What conventions exist out there? I'm looking to something similar like 'function names must always start with a verb'."}
{"_id": "14956", "title": "Which is best for learning how to do a certain thing: writing your own or looking at someone else's?", "text": "Often when I'm writing code to do a certain thing, I'm faced with either writing my own or using someone else's code. Assume here that this \"thing\" is something that I've never done before and am interested in learning how it's done. **Which would you say is better from a learning perspective: try writing your own solution; or looking at code by someone else?** I've always written my own code if I have an idea on how to do it, but resorted to looking at someone else's when I don't have a clue. I believe that the best is probably a combination of both: make your own attempt and then look at how someone else did."}
{"_id": "21480", "title": "Examples of Java APIs that demand an action sequence", "text": "As part of a research I'm working on, I'm looking for public APIs that only work correctly when you apply a certain sequence of actions on them. For example, the `java.nio.channels.SocketChannel` class, from the Java standard library, only works correctly with sequences such as `open() -> connect() -> read() -> read() -> close()`. A more complete demonstration if how it may be used may be represented in the following graph: ![valid usage of SocketChannel](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zVOq9.png) Additional examples of Java standard library APIs that require certain sequences are `java.io.PrintStream` (very similar to the one above) and `java.util.Iterator` (which requires a `next()` call between every two `remove()` calls, thus enforcing a certain sequence). So, does you favorite API for doing X also behave that way? **I would very much like to know about additional APIs that require a certain method sequence for correct usage** ; especially classes that are not part of the Java standard library. The more complex the sequence(s) required, the better. * * * Some APIs require a sequence that spans across multiple classes, for example:               X x = new X();     x.setup();     Y y = x.createNewY();     Z z = new Z(y);     z.doSomething();      These examples are also interesting, but I'm mostly looking for sequences that all appear in the same class. * * * **EDIT** added bounty for greater visibility. I'm sure many of you have encountered many APIs that will match this description - I would really appreciate some good examples."}
{"_id": "49732", "title": "Types of quotes for an HTML templating language", "text": "I'm developing a templating language, and now I'm trying to decide on what I should do with quotes. I'm thinking about having 3 different types of quotes which are all handled differently:                                    backtick `     double quote \"     single quote '     expand variables         ?              yes                 no     escape sequences        no              yes                  ?     escape html             no              yes                 yes      ## Backticks Backticks are meant to be used for outputting JavaScript or unescaped HTML. It's often handy to be able to pass variables into JS, but it could also cause issues with things being treated as variables that shouldn't. My variables are PHP-style (`$var`) so I'm thinking that might mess with jQuery pretty bad... but if I disable variable expansion w/ backticks then, I'm not sure how would insert a variable into a JS code block? # Single Quotes Not sure if escape sequences like `\\n` should be treated as literals or converted. I find it pretty rare that I want to disable escape sequences, but if you do, you could use backticks. So I'm leaning towards \"yes\" for this one, but that would be contrary to how PHP does it. # Double Quotes Pretty certain I want everything enabled for this one. ## Modifiers I'm also thinking about adding modifiers like `@` or `r` in front of the string that would change some of these options to enable a few more combinations. I would need 9 different quotes or 3 quotes and 2 modifiers to get every combination wouldn't I? My language also supports \"filters\" which can be applied against any \"term\" (number, variable, string) so you could always write something like               \"blah blah $var blah\"|expandvars      Or               \"my string\"|escapehtml      Thoughts? What would you prefer? What would be least confusing/most intuitive?"}
{"_id": "250540", "title": "Why use getters only as opposed to marking things final?", "text": "I'm working in a java role after working a couple years in functional programming. Our company was bought by google and I took a java role after the acquisition. Coming back to java as a polyglot developer, I'm generating getters for immutable objects and I'm seeing it's a total hogwash. Are there any reasons why the 'getField' convention should be used so prolifically? To me it seems almost horrifying at this point that so many libraries expect public getter methods to work with their functionality when simply making a field public and final would have the same effect as making only a getter on a public mutable field. Why isn't it more of a common practice to ditch the setters and just expose a final field? EDIT: I don't think this is actually the right forum as I think this is a discussion point rather than an answer after evaluating the perspectives."}
{"_id": "254535", "title": "Having an inherited function return the derived type instead of the base type", "text": "I am writing two classes in C#:   * A `Matrix` class that represents a general Matrix with n-by-m dimensions    * A `SquareMatrix` class that inherits from `Matrix` and has the constraint of being n-by-n The reason I designed it this way is because square matrices support additional specific operations like calculating the determinant or the inverse, so being able to guarantee that those functions are avaliable with the specific type you're using are nice things to have. Additionally it would support all the regular Matrix operations and can be used as a Matrix I have a function in `Matrix` called `getTranspose()`. It calculates the transpose of the Matrix and returns it as a new `Matrix` I inherited it in `SquareMatrix`, but because the transpose of a square matrix is guaranteed to be square matrix, I also want it to return a `SquareMatrix` I am unsure about the best way to do this.   * I can re-implement the function in `SquareMatrix`, but that would be code duplication because it's essentially the same calculation   * I can use implicit typecast operators, but if I understand correctly that would cause unnecessary allocations (upcast `SquareMatrix` to `Matrix`, create a new `Matrix` as the transpose, create a new `SquareMatrix` during typecasting and throw away the tranposed `Matrix`)   * I can use explicit typecast operators, but it would be stupid to have to typecast the transpose of a `SquareMatrix` explicitly, and it also has the same problem of the implicit operator with unnecessary allocations Is there another option? Should I change the design of having `SquareMatrix` inherit from `Matrix`? This problem also applies to operators. It seems that I have to either implement typecasting operators which might cost in performance, or have to re-implement the same code."}
{"_id": "125560", "title": "Should I take a job working with an esoteric language?", "text": "How worthwhile is it to take a job that will mainly involve working with an esoteric or niche language? Will this limit my prospect of moving back into languages that I prefer working with later in my career, or will the general experience of working in a software engineering job be enough? I suppose this question could be rephrased as: how much do employers care about specific language experience, as opposed to general programming experience and aptitude?"}
{"_id": "158453", "title": "Design Patterns (java) -- Strategy with fields. Ever acceptable?", "text": "Both here on stack overflow and on Java Effective it is suggested that strategy design patterns should be stateless. In fact in the book it is also suggested to make each strategy object a singleton. The problem I have is that some strategies I envision for my program need states/fields. Either because they are path-dependent in their behavior or because I want them heterogeneous (a statistical distribution of similar strategies, if you prefer).   This forces me to break both Java Effective suggestions: I instantiate a new strategy for each user class AND each of these strategies contain its own fields.   Is that very bad? Should it be done differently? It was suggested to me to keep the fields that make the strategy heterogeneous in the class that uses it and then pass it as an argument. I find that very anti-oo. Those fields don't belong to the user class. In fact, if that class uses another strategy it might not need those fields at all. That seems to run against the reason I am using the strategy pattern in the first place.   Mostly I am just very confused * * * I make a simple example here. Imagine you have a class Gambler, which represents somebody making bets on horses. Now this class will require a strategy predictStrategy that will work something like this:               interface predictStrategy{         public Horse predictWinningHorse(HorseRace r);     }      Now, I can have many implementations where the strategy is to choose at random, or pick the white horse or whatever. That's easy.   Imagine though that I implement a strategy that looks at past predictions and somewhat \"learns\" from its past mistakes. Clearly each strategy will have to have its own memory on which to learn. I might have to add one more method to the interface (or make an extension)               interface predictStrategy{         public Horse predictWinningHorse(HorseRace r);              public void addObservation(HorseRace r, Horse oldPrediction, Horse actualWinner);     }      So that the Gambler class calls \"strategy.addObservation(...)\" at the end of each race to improve its predictive power.   Can this be **really** be done with a _stateless_ strategy object? It seems impossible to me."}
{"_id": "190078", "title": "Handling recurring cURL POST request", "text": "I've basically came here for some advise based on my criteria, The application I'm trying to build is built completely from an API. It's like a \"marketplace bidding\" application, what I'm trying to accomplish is an \"Auto bidding\" function, but for this to happen it will have to send a cURL POST request every 3 seconds based on criteria given, then return the JSON result for me to handle server side, I'd basically like a direction on what would be the best way to handle this kind of idea, I got told something called \"polling\" would work but I've never heard of it. Initially the idea is as provided below   1. Load set page \"bid.php\"   2. Enter certain criteria   3. Click submit as to which an \"Ajax\" request of some sort would start   4. The recurring cURL request would be activated through the Ajax.   5. Display the data back from the cURL request every 3 seconds via Javascript. I'm not initially asking for the work to be given to me, I'm just asking the professionals as to which they recon would be the best way I can do this task."}
{"_id": "46907", "title": "What should we tell our unsupported IE6 users?", "text": "In the upcoming version of our web app, we've broken IE6, and we don't intend to fix it. We've had a clear warning posted for IE6 users for some months; we've decided it's time not to support it. My question is: how should we communicate this to our users? Some people here feel that we should block IE6 users who would try to access the web app, because it's not going to work for them. Others feel that we should just leave up a warning, saying \"This doesn't work in IE6,\" but not block them; instead, if they click to dismiss the warning, just let them in to the broken site to see for themselves that it doesn't work. Who is right? Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "220371", "title": "Simplest possible Paxos algorithm (distributed consensus) explanation", "text": "I am looking for a simple explanation of the **Paxos algorithm** that can be used for reaching consensus in a distributed environment (possibly peer to peer network). Every explanation I have encountered so far was a tough reading of multiple pages. I am looking for a simplified explanation that still preserves the core principles."}
{"_id": "178317", "title": "How do I prove or disprove \"god\" objects are wrong?", "text": "**Problem Summary:** Long story short, I inherited a code base and a development team I am not allowed to replace and the use of God Objects is a big issue. Going forward, I want to have us re-factor things but I am getting push-back from the teams who want to do everything with God Objects \"because its easier\" and this means I would not be allowed to re-factor. I pushed back citing my years of dev experience, that I'm the new boss who was hired to know these things, etc, and so did the third party offshore companies account sales rep, and this is now at the executive level and my meeting is tomorrow and I want to go in with a lot of technical ammo to advocate best practices because I feel it will be cheaper in the long run (And I personally feel that is what the third party is worried about) for the company. My issue is from a technical level, I know its good long term but I'm having trouble with the ultra short term and 6 months term, and while its something I \"know\" I cant prove it with references and cited resources outside of one person (Robert C. Martin, aka Uncle Bob), as that is what I am being asked to do as I have been told having data from one person and only one person (Robert C Martin) is not good enough of an argument. **Question:** What are some resources I can cite directly (Title, year published, page number, quote) by well known experts in the field that explicitly say this use of \"God\" Objects/Classes/Systems is bad (or good, since we are looking for the most technically valid solution)? **Research I have already done:**   1. I have a number of books here and I have searched their indexes for the use of the words \"god object\" and \"god class\". I found that oddly its almost never used and the copy of the GoF book I have for example, never uses it (At least according to the index in front of me) but I have found it in 2 books per the below, but I want more I can use.   2. I checked the Wikipedia page for \"God Object\" and its currently a stub with little reference links so although I personally agree with that it says, it doesn't have much I can use in an environment where personal experience is not considered valid. The book cited is also considered too old to be valid by the people I am debating these technical points with as the argument they are making is that \"it was once thought to be bad but nobody could prove it, and now modern software says \"god\" objects are good to use\". I personally believe that this statement is incorrect, but I want to prove the truth, whatever it is.   3. In Robert C Martin's \"Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#\" (ISBN: 0-13-185725-8, hardcover) where on page 266 it states \"Everybody knows that god classes are a bad idea. We don't want to concentrate all the intelligence of a system into a single object or a single function. One of the goals of OOD is the partitioning and distribution of behavior into many classes and many function.\" -- And then goes on to say sometimes its better to use God Classes anyway sometimes (Citing micro-controllers as an example).   4. In Robert C Martin's \"Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship\" page 136 (And only this page) talks about the \"God class\" and calls it out as a prime example of a violation of the \"classes should be small\" rule he uses to promote the Single Responsibility Principle\" starting on on page 138. The problem I have is all my references and citations come from the same person (Robert C. Martin), and am from the same single person/source. I am being told that because he is just one guy, my desire to not use \"God Classes\" is invalid and not accepted as a standard best practice in the software industry. Is this true? Am I doing things wrong from a technical perspective by trying to keep to the teaching of Uncle Bob? **God Objects and Object Oriented Programming and Design:** The more I think of this the more I think this is more something you learn when you study OOP and it's never explicitly called out; Its implicit to good design is my thinking (Feel free to correct me, please, as I want to learn), the problem is I \"know\" this, but but not everybody does, so in this case its not considered a valid argument because I am effectively calling it out as universal truth when in fact most people are statistically ignorant of it since statistically most people are not programmers. **Conclusion:** I am at a loss on what to search for to get the best additional results to cite, since they are making a technical claim and I want to know the truth and be able to prove it with citations like a real engineer/scientist, even if I am biased against god objects due to my personal experience with code that used them. Any assistance or citations would be deeply appreciated."}
{"_id": "186549", "title": "Would it be bad design to abstract a graphics library and wrap it in a single class?", "text": "I'm starting a game project in C++ using the SFML. It provides various classes for handling graphics, input, etc, but I would like to wrap it all up in a single `Media` class. I believe that by doing so, I could simplify my effort and have the class take care of the details, limiting the amount of code I have to write and therefor limiting chances for a bug to sneak past my eyes. However, I have read several times that monolithic, do-it-all classes such as this might not be a good idea. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "220372", "title": "Can I release a script that depends on both proprietary and GPL'd libraries to be run?", "text": "I'm writing my thesis project in GNU Octave. My project basically consists of a bunch of \".m\" files that are written in Octave. I'm also using a proprietary (and unreleased) shared library developed by my supervisor. To be able to access the library, I've written an OCT-file wrapper (dynamic extension for Octave). My question is: am I allowed to distribute my \".m\" files that depend on both Octave internals and the proprietary library? I'm not going to distribute any dependencies nor the wrapper files, just the \".m\" files. Is it illegal to distribute these (I don't mind being forced to release them under a specific license) if they depend on a proprietary piece of software to be fully functional? Even if it's just to document my experiments? I've already asked at the Octave forums, but they were too passionate and aggressive and didn't give any useful arguments. I would like to hear facts, not ideology. PS: I know I could use MEX, which is the only explicitly allowed means of communication with proprietary libraries in Octave. However, it's not possible for technical reasons to use MEX in my case."}
{"_id": "211615", "title": "What's best practice for a SELECT * FROM SQL in PHP?", "text": "I need to make a \"SELECT * FROM\" Sql from PHP, that now returns about 10.000 records, that I insert in an Array and re-utilize in a page to show results in a table. I need to have all that elements also in a hidden input fields, to connect via API to a SMS service to send SMS               <input type=\"hidden\" id=\"destinatariSMS\" name=\"destinatariSMS\" value=\"<?php echo htmlentities(serialize($destinatariSMS)); ?>\" />      Obviously, with 10k elements loading of page is about 10-15 seconds (in a VPS with 2GB ram). I'm worrying because in about two months element will be 12-13k, about 1k elements at the month. I cannot paginate elements because I need all together in that input... In your opinion, what's best practice to no \"destroy\" VPS or browser? Thank you very much"}
{"_id": "211614", "title": "Is it ever a good idea to use the design pattern name in the implementing classes?", "text": "Recently I came across a moderately large python codebase with lots of `MyClassAbstractFactory`, `MyClassManager`, `MyClassProxy`, `MyClassAdapter` etc. classes. While on the one hand those names pointed me to research and learn the corresponding patterns, they were not very descriptive of what the class **does**. Also, they seem to fall within the forbidden list of words in programming: `variable`, `process_available_information`, `data`, `amount`, `compute`: overly broad names, that don't tell us anything about the function **when used by themselves**. _So should there be`CommunicationManager` or rather `PortListener`? Or maybe I do not understand the problem at all...?_"}
{"_id": "53070", "title": "Should I migrate to MVC3?", "text": "I have a MVC2 project, my question is: should I migrate to MVC3? Why? I'd like the opinion of some who already migrated, or at least used MVC3 and MVC2. Already read http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/01/13/announcing- release-of-asp-net-mvc-3-iis-express-sql-ce-4-web-farm-framework-orchard- webmatrix.aspx and I already know about the described tool for migrating: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/marcinon/archive/2011/01/13/mvc-3-project-upgrade- tool.aspx What I'd really appreciate is your valuable insight. Best regards."}
{"_id": "53072", "title": "Start a new project. Where is the inspiration?", "text": "_The question may seem strange at first glance_ ... And **I may be alone** in this situation. But currently I want to improve my skill through learning new framework. however, do a simple \"`HelloWorld`\" application does not satisfy me. I think a **practical project** is required to apprehend the basics of a framework. I know there is many scholar-like project like design a library manager or CMS. But I have recently planned to learn ~3 differents frameworks and I can't find any motivations through \" _unexciting_ \" project. In the end I have not started any framework ... I'm aware of _I do not develop the project of the year_ ... I'm just looking for something **a bit exciting**. **I do not expect any project subject** , anyway stimulation provided by a project is something subjective. But I want to know your inspiration ! (or method to learn framework ^^) I'm talking about web-dev framework but I'm open to any kind information !"}
{"_id": "220374", "title": "Is a senior programmers advice about always using books a good idea?", "text": "I am a junior developer and have only been in the industry for 5 years. At my current company there is a senior let's call him Infestus. Occasionally I am being given opportunity to shine and do something completely brand new from scratch. One of the most recent examples was that I had to make a singleton in the multithreaded application. I have decided to use this method. As soon as Infestus saw it, he quickly proceeded to call me stupid and told me to use this approach. Upon asking him why he just brushed it off as this is better and that's how this and this book about java says it is better. And it is a common pattern, whenever I get a chance to do something new, I quickly get shot down by Infestus and the only reasoning why his method is books written by famous programmers. He is always trying to give me books to read so that I may \"learn\" which ways to program. I have only been programming for money for 5 years, but is it always a good idea to just blindly follow the book on best ways for solving a problem, or should I try experimenting every now and then? The constant barrage of complaints from the Infestus is starting to cause me to never try anything new and follow examples in books. EDIT: I am utterly lost. Yes I know that following anything blindly is a bad idea. But this godlike programmer Infestus who seems to know a lot, tells me that the only way to program properly is by reading books and following everything down to a T. All the rules he imposes are the ones written in books, so I am just wondering if books are the only correct way. EDIT2: Infestus is not my boss. He is just one of senior developers in charge of reviewing the code. And most of his comments after reviews consist of book names where such and such method is wrong."}
{"_id": "204455", "title": "Unit Test - an Enigma?", "text": "I am an objective-c/iOS apps developer and I was wondering if I perform Unit Tests on my code, how should I go about it? What is unit test anyway? Ain't I testing a specific part of code while running the whole app itself? What is its use? I have read few articles, wikipedia etc. but I am not sure whether unit testing is a time consuming or a time saving process. I know the definition but I am in the dilemma about its purpose. Plz guide a new bee here. :) Have already gone through the following: Unit testing best practices for a unit testing newbie"}
{"_id": "90211", "title": "How would I go about changing encryption methods on existing passwords?", "text": "If I have an application that is using a less secure method for storing passwords, such as SHA-1, how would I go about converting to SHA-256 or SHA-512?"}
{"_id": "58624", "title": "How can I move from Java and ColdFusion to Ruby on Rails?", "text": "Currently I work with ColdFusion 9+ and some Java in a Windows environment. Prior to ColdFusion, my background was in Java and JSP. I'm considering a move towards Ruby on Rails, as I think it would be a real challenge, keep things fresh, and provide more job opportunities. In order to get into it, I started to build my personal website in Rails 3.0. But what else can I do to make this transition from what I know now to Ruby and Rails? Are there specific or idiomatic aspects of Ruby or Rails I should keep in mind when switching over from a ColdFusion and Java mindset?"}
{"_id": "181202", "title": "Alternatives to the repository pattern for encapsulating ORM logic?", "text": "I've just had to switch out an ORM and it was a relatively daunting task, because the query logic was leaking everywhere. If i'd ever had to develop a new application, my personal preference would be to encapsulate all query logic (using an ORM) to futureproof it for change. Repository pattern is quite troublesome to code and maintain so i was wondering if there are any other patterns to solve the problem ? I can foresee posts about not adding extra complexity before it's actually needed, being agile etc. but i'm only interested about the existing patterns solving a similar problem in a simpler way. My first thought was to have a generic type repository, to which i add methods as needed to specific type repository classes via extension methods, but unit testing static methods is awfully painful. IE:               public static class PersonExtensions     {         public static IEnumerable<Person> GetRetiredPeople(this IRepository<Person> personRep)         {             // logic         }     }"}
{"_id": "168631", "title": "What is the justification for Python's power operator associating to the right?", "text": "I am writing code to parse mathematical expression strings, and noticed that the order in which chained power operators are evaluated in Python differs from the order in Excel. From http://docs.python.org/reference/expressions.html: _\"Thus, in an unparenthesized sequence of power and unary operators, the operators are evaluated from right to left (this does not constrain the evaluation order for the operands): -1_ *2 results in -1.\"* This means that, in Python: `2**2**3` is evaluated as `2**(2**3) = 2**8 = 256` In Excel, it works the other way around: `2^2^3` is evaluated as `(2^2)^3 = 4^3 = 64` I now have to choose an implementation for my own parser. The Excel order is easier to implement, as it mirrors the evaluation order of multiplication. I asked some people around the office what their gut feel was for the evaluation of `2^2^3` and got mixed responses. Does anybody know of any good reasons or conciderations in favour of the Python implementation? And if you don't have an answer, please comment with the result _you_ get from gut feel - `64` or `256`?"}
{"_id": "168633", "title": "Understanding the levels of computing", "text": "Sorry, for my confused question. I'm looking for some pointers. Up to now I have been working mostly with Java and Python on the application layer and I have only a vague understanding of operating systems and hardware. I want to understand much more about the lower levels of computing, but it gets really overwhelming somehow. At university I took a class about microprogramming, i.e. how processors get hard-wired to implement the ASM codes. Up to now I always thought I wouldn't get more done if learned more about the \"low level\". One question I have is: how is it even possible that hardware gets hidden almost completely from the developer? Is it accurate to say that the operating system is a software layer for the hardware? One small example: in programming I have never come across the need to understand what L2 or L3 Cache is. For the typical business application environment one almost never needs to understand assembler and the lower levels of computing, because nowadays there is a technology stack for almost anything. I guess the whole point of these lower levels is to provide an interface to higher levels. On the other hand I wonder how much influence the lower levels can have, for example this whole graphics computing thing. So, on the other hand, there is this theoretical computer science branch, which works on abstract computing models. However, I also rarely encountered situations, where I found it helpful thinking in the categories of complexity models, proof verification, etc. I sort of know, that there is a complexity class called NP, and that they are kind of impossible to solve for a big number of N. What I'm missing is a reference for a framework to think about these things. It seems to me, that there all kinds of different camps, who rarely interact. The last few weeks I have been reading about security issues. Here somehow, much of the different layers come together. Attacks and exploits almost always occur on the lower level, so in this case it is necessary to learn about the details of the OSI layers, the inner workings of an OS, etc."}
{"_id": "163626", "title": "Suggestions needed on an architecture for a multiple clients and customisable web application", "text": "Our product is a web based course managemant system. We have 10+ clients and in future we may get more clients. (Asp.net,SQL Server) Currently if one of our customers need extra functionality or customised business logic, we will change the db schema and code to meet the needs. (we only have one branch code base and one database schema) To make the change wont affect each others route, we use a client flag, which defined in a web config file, thus those extra fields and biz logic only applied to a particular customer's system.               if(ClientId = 'ABC')     {        //DO ABC Stuff     }     else     {        //Normal Route     }      One of our senior colleagues said, in this way, small company like us can save resources on supporting multiple resources. But what I feel is, this strategy makes our code and database even harder to maintain. Anyone there crossed similar situation? How do you handle that?"}
{"_id": "58629", "title": "Should a programmer \"think\" for the client?", "text": "I have gotten to the point where I hate requirements gathering. Customer's are too vague for their own good. In an agile environment, where we can show the client a piece of work to completion it's not too bad as we can make small regular corrections/updates to functionality. In a \"waterfall\" type in environment (requirements first, nearly complete product next) things can get ugly. This kind of environment has led me to constantly question requirements. E.G. Customer wants \"automatically convert input to the number 1\" (referring to a Qty in an order). But what they don't think about is that \"input\" could be a simple type-o. An \"x\" in a textbox could be a \"woops\" not I want 1 of those \"toothpaste\" products. But, there's so much in the air with requirements that I could stand and correct for hours on end smashing out what they want. This just isn't healthy. Working for a corporation, I could try to adjust the culture to fit the agile model that would help us (no small job, above my pay grade). Or, sweep ugly details under the rug and hope for the best. Maybe my customer is trying to get too close to the code? How does one handle the problem of \"thinking for the client\" without pissing them off with too many questions?"}
{"_id": "168636", "title": "Separating java projects", "text": "I have a large java project, and we use maven for our build cycle. This one project is used extensively - in other projects, in various applications, some of which are contained in it and some which are elsewhere... To be honest, it's a bit of a mess (various bits added on at different times for specific purposes), and I'd like to clean it up a bit. Also, it's not fully tested (lots of bits have been added on without proper unit and integration testing), and there are some tests that take a long time to run or don't actually pass... (uh-oh) - so tests are switched off in the maven build cycle (again, uh-oh). I am thinking about separating this large project into smaller specific projects, such that the 'final' sub-project (or several sub-projects) would pick up the various sub-projects that it would need. My thinking is as follows:   * if I separate the big project into various sub-projects, this makes it clear what each project's responsibility is.    * by separating into sub-projects, I can then clean up the testing of each sub-project individually, and turn on the testing for that sub-project in the maven build cycle. I am slightly concerned about what impact this might have on the build time.   * Would imposing a structure on the large project (i.e. into smaller sub-projects) slow the compiler down? Also, I have a slight concern on what impact this might have editing time in IDEs (we principally use Intellij). Intellij seems to build each project in turn through the dependency tree - i.e. if C depends on B depends on A, and I change A, it won't try to build B unless A compiles, and so on. Arguably that's advantageous, but I have found that if - for example, I change an interface in A that is widely used in B and C, it takes some time to fix all the errors from that change... Another question is how to use factory classes. Some aspects of the project depend on external jars. Occasionally (thankfully not often) these are updated, and we have to migrate. We tend to handle this by using a Factory class which points to the correct versions of the external code (so we don't have to change all the implementations throughout the code base). At the moment this is all in the large project, but I am thinking that by switching to sub- projects, I could develop a new project for the implementation of new external code, make sure that sub-project is fully functional and tested, and then switch the dependencies / factory class in the user project. However, this is made more complicated by the extensive use of interfaces throughout the large project. For example   * sub-project A - contains interfaces   * sub-project B - depends on A for interfaces and old external jar   * sub-project C - depends on B (and thus A and old external jar), and contains a Factory class that uses B's implementations of interfaces If I need to change the external jar of B, I can:   * create sub-project B_ii - again depends on A, and now the new external jar   * once fully functional, I can add C's dependency to B_ii, and change the Factory class to use the new implementations of interfaces.   * when that's all working, I can then remove C's dependency to original B, and if desired, remove sub-project B.   * Is that a sensible way of going about this?  So, in general, my questions are:   * Does anyone have any experience of breaking up large projects? Are there any tips/tricks that you would be willing to share?   * What impact did this have on your development and build times?   * What advice could you offer on structuring such a break-up of such a project?"}
{"_id": "158981", "title": "Most recent vs Most used", "text": "We are building a business application (a laboratory management system to be more precise) mostly for internal company use only. To make it easier for users to find items which they work on we are implementing a list of most used items. We had a little debate on which method would be better to implement: display the most recent vs display the most used. **My arguments on most-recent**   * A little bit easier to implement. I think this is worth to mention because we are dealing with business application which will be sold as a single copy, so this may directly effect application price. Also simpler implementation means less code and may effect maintenance code.      * Counterargument: difference in implementation difficulty in this case is too small   * It is easier for users to guess what will they find in this list so they know if it is worth to look at the list at all.   * Items which were relative yesterday and used a lot might not be relevant today and in recent item list they quickly disappear. **My arguments on most-used**   * Actually it is quite easy to display a mixed version of recently-used and most-used by combining last access date and a number of access something like this `(today - lastaccess) * number_of_access`     * Counterargument: this requires fine-tuning What arguments would you give for one or another?"}
{"_id": "164936", "title": "Why do exclusively outsourcing projects as a company?", "text": "A prospective employer told me they took a company level decision to do only outsourcing projects. I do not understand why they took such a decision and the guy I talked to did not elaborate. He further said only that \"their intention is to build software components\". Since they are growing quite fast and reached around 300 employees, shouldn't they be at least open to the possibility of having a project of their own, maybe? All other companies I've had contact with were at least open to have one in the future. I talked to a few of their employees and some are working in parallel on more than 2 outsourced projects (dividing time something like 4 + 4 hours / day). It seemed like a lot of projects with a period of a few months, maybe half a year come and go. Why would a company choose to provide only outsourcing services like that? How does it work to keep hundreds of people on outsourced projects with a seemingly high project turnover rate?"}
{"_id": "158988", "title": "Why was the Java App store discontinued?", "text": "A Java App Store sounds like a cool idea right? Well, I turned to Google and found some remnants of an app store that Oracle had been developing. It looks like it has since been discontinued, but I haven't been able to find much commentary on why it was abandoned. So why was it discontinued? Links to other references, for instance blog posts discussing the difficulties of Oracle's app store, would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "18212", "title": "Entity Framework book 1st Edition", "text": "I recently purchased the O'Reilly book: Programming Entity Framework by Julia Lerman. Unfortunately it is the 1st edition. I didn't realize that there was a newer edition. Which in hind sight explains the lessor price for the book. So my question... Should I return it and get the 2nd edition or read the 1st edition? The 1st edition spends a lot of time in the version 1 of the EF and the 2nd edition spends a lot of time in version 2 (which is where I want to be). I think I want to return it, but I thought I would ask the question first... Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "96906", "title": "How much documentation should a client expect from a one-man team?", "text": "I work for a small electronics and support software company that just recently got a contract with a large company that's very strict on documentation (I do the support software, essentially Windows or browser applications). Upon reviewing the required documentation from the large company, I realize that I wear more hats than I realized. Namely, we have to produce documentation describing:   * Requirement analysis (me)   * Architectural design (me)   * Detailed design (me)   * (Actual) Software development (me)   * Database design development (me)   * Testing plan, preparation, and results (me)   * Proof of compliance with requirements (me)   * User manual (me) I'll also be doing most (if not all) of the testing myself. And the deployment, training, and customer support. If there's any application technician needs for sales support, that's me too. Is that common? Do small software companies that get big contracts ask that commonly from single programmers?"}
{"_id": "164939", "title": "By what features and qualities are \"free\" and \"premium\"  themes differentiated", "text": "I have a lot of time invested in creating Wordpress templates. I want to release combinations of these templates along with different styles and Fancy Front pages as \"Premium Wordpress Themes\". What I need to know is what does \"Premium\" mean? What do people expect of a GPL theme vs. a Premium theme? Are there features that are considered required to be premium? Are there features that are in demand but considered \"exceptional\" i.e. not part of every premium theme? How can I tell the difference? I have heard tounge-in-cheek answers that say that any theme that makes money is premium, but I mean to ask about what gives an outstanding theme it's quality. Why is it worth more? I am technically able to do many things, but as a lone developer with a family to feed, I can't afford to spend time on features that no one cares about. I have to try to isolate the things that people want. This is serious food and rent to me. How can I get this kind of info so I can make my project successful?"}
{"_id": "120919", "title": "What is jQuery and JavaScript's role in MVC?", "text": "I'm not sure I understand the role of jQuery/JavaScript in MVC. I've found an article about it on _A List Apart_ , but it doesn't clear anything up for me. Does it bridge the communication between the View and the Controller, or does it do something else?"}
{"_id": "124831", "title": "ASP.Net MVC or Web Forms?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why would you use MVC over Web Forms? What is the difference between ASP.Net MVC and Web Forms? Is either preferable? I want to use ASP.Net development as a springboard to teach myself C#. What is the best way to go about this?"}
{"_id": "255666", "title": "Salesforce trigger Prevent duplication", "text": "I have written a trigger which prevent duplicate name. please refer following condition. \" **Test** \" and \" **Te st** \" are same name (which mean don't need to consider any in between spaces.) \" **TEST** \" and \" **test** \" are same name (which mean ignore uppercases and lower cases.) My Question : If I have already one record inserted in system with name \" **Te st** \". and Now I am trying to insert a new record with name \" **test** \"(which is obvious not correct as per duplication). How can i handle this exception? Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "255664", "title": "Is renaming a program considered modifying a program legally?", "text": "If a software license prevents you from modifying a program (i.e \"You may not modify\u2026\") is renaming the program (e.g. changing it from a.exe to b.exe) considered modification legally of the software if the software remains binary identical since all that has really changed is the path to the program? Edit. I am not asking for legal assistance here I am asking what is the case law in this area. What modification is must have been dealt with at some point."}
{"_id": "255662", "title": "Git collaboration with pull request in a company", "text": "I am thinking of a way to do collaboration between coders in a company, suppose we have 2 type of servers: Production and Staging. Now we want to review all changes going to Production via pull-request, at the same time, we want coders to be able to push experimental changes whenever they want to Staging. The objective here is make sure our guys can do experimental stuff and can't (accidentally) mess up with Production. My idea is to just create 2 separate repository for Production (read-only) and Staging (read-write). Will this be the ideal setup? Any other types of setup I should be aware of? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KhtPf.png)"}
{"_id": "246620", "title": "In Java, what are some good ways to separate APIs from implementation of *entire projects*?", "text": "Imagine you have a software module, which is a plugin to some program (similar to Eclipse) and you want it to have an API which other plugins can call. Your plugin is not freely available, so you want to have a separate API module, which _is_ freely available and is the only thing other plugins need to directly link to - API clients can compile with only the API module, and not the implementation module, on the build path. If the API is constrained to evolve in compatible ways, then client plugins could even include the API module in their own jars (to prevent any possibility of `Error`s resulting from nonexistent classes being accessed). Licensing is not the only reason to put API and implementation in separate modules. It could be that the implementation module is complex, with myriad dependencies of its own. Eclipse plugins usually have internal and non- internal packages, where the non-internal packages are similar to an API module (both are included in the same module, but they could be separated). I've seen a few different alternatives for this:   1. The API is in a separate package (or group of packages) from the implementation. The API classes call directly into implementation classes. The API _cannot_ be compiled from source (which is desirable in some uncommon cases) without the implementation. It is not easy to predict the exact effects of calling API methods when the implementation is not installed - so clients will usually avoid doing this.              package com.pluginx.api;     import com.pluginx.internal.FooFactory;     public class PluginXAPI {         public static Foo getFoo() {             return FooFactory.getFoo();         }     }        2. The API is in a separate package, and uses reflection to access the implementation classes. The API can be compiled without the implementation. The use of reflection might cause a performance hit (but reflection objects can be cached if it's a problem. It is easy to control what happens if the implementation is not available.              package com.pluginx.api;     public class PluginXAPI {         public static Foo getFoo() {             try {                 return (Foo)Class.forName(\"com.pluginx.internal.FooFactory\").getMethod(\"getFoo\").invoke(null);             } catch(ReflectiveOperationException e) {                 return null;                 // or throw a RuntimeException, or add logging, or raise a fatal error in some global error handling system, etc             }         }     }        3. The API consists only of interfaces and abstract classes, plus a way to get an instance of a class.              package com.pluginx.api;     public abstract class PluginXAPI {         public abstract Foo getFoo();              private static PluginXAPI instance;         public static PluginXAPI getInstance() {return instance;}         public static void setInstance(PluginXAPI newInstance) {             if(instance != null)                 throw new IllegalStateException(\"instance already set\");             else                 instance = newInstance;         }     }        4. The same as above, but the client code needs to get the initial reference from somewhere else:              // API     package com.pluginx.api;     public interface PluginXAPI {         Foo getFoo();     }          // Implementation     package com.pluginx.internal;     public class PluginX extends Plugin implements PluginXAPI {         @Override         public Foo getFoo() { ... }     }          // Client code uses it like this     PluginXAPI xapi = (PluginXAPI)PluginManager.getPlugin(\"com.pluginx\");     Foo foo = xapi.getFoo();        5. Don't. Make clients link directly to the plugin (but still prevent them from calling non-API methods). This would make it difficult for many other plugins (and most open source plugins) to use this plugin's API without writing their own wrapper."}
{"_id": "255660", "title": "File reading in front end", "text": "Is there any way to ready a file @ the front end itself, which should be supported for IE 8 and IE 9 also. Please provide any suggestions available for this. Looking for code to read an excel file on the front end/javascript code."}
{"_id": "255668", "title": "Rename PDF extracted Pages File from a Single Booklet PDF in correct sequence", "text": "I have huge PDF files which are in booklet format. example, Assume a booklet pdf file has 24 pages which each page contains 2 pages which is in two sides - left side and right side. The first page has 48th page number on the left side and 1st page number on the right side The second page has 2nd page number on the left side and 47th page number on the right side The third page has 46th page number on the left side and 3rd page number on the right side I have vertically cut the Booket PDF files in to separate individual PDF files using bulk operation in separate folder. for example, the cutted PDF file will be as follows in the above case 1st pdf file - 48th page 2nd pdf file - 1st page 3rd pdf file - 2nd page 4th pdf file - 47th page 5th pdf file - 46th page 6th pdf file - 3rd page.. Similarly for other PDF files too....if a PDF file has 95 pages.... the first page has 95th page number on the left side and 1st page number on the right side Now the issue is how to rename and arrange the files correctly in the sequence for EACH PDF file so that we can merge the PDF file as one at last for each PDF file... After renaming correctly in the proper sequence for the above file 1st pdf file should point to 1st page 2nd pdf file should point to 2nd page 3rd pdf file should point to 3rd page... The problem is all the PDF files which we are planning to split will have different set of pages..example PDF1 file - has 48 pages as above -> files should be renamed and arranged as 1, 2, 3, 4...48 correctly PDF2 file - has 96 pages -> files should be renamed and arranged as 1, 2, 3, 4.....96 correctly PDF3 file - has 56 pages -> files should be renamed and arranged as 1, 2, 3, 4.....56 correctly After renaming, the final file will be as follows 1st pdf file - should be pointed to 1st page..i.e 2nd pdf file name should be renamed as 1st pdf file 2nd pdf file - should be pointed to 2nd page i.e 3rd pdf file name should be renamed to 2nd pdf file 3rd pdf file - should be pointed to 3rd page i.e 6th pdf file name should be renamed to 3rd pdf file Could someone help me with a program which will rename the vertically cutted files in a proper sequence?? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "255669", "title": "Why is the use of conjunctions in method names a bad naming convention?", "text": "In my team, we work closely with a few software architects. They approve all design decisions of our projects, do some code reviews etc. Our projects consist mainly of backend functionality implemented in PHP using the Symfony 2 framework. So syntactically, the code, naming conventions and project structure look almost identical to what Java would look like (Symfony 2 encourages such structure). I'm mentioning this because Java-specific conventions also apply in our case (if possible). Recently, they suggested something that I find very strange: all methods should have conjunctions in their name e.g. `getEntityOrNull`, `setValueOrException` etc. Such a naming convention feels very wrong to me, but I can't come up with any concrete arguments or online articles/pages that specifically challenge this. The only things I came up with is:   * such information should be present in the method's annotations, like `@return` or `@throws`   * the use of conjunctions (\"and\", \"or\" etc.) in method names usually suggest that the Single Responsibility Principle is not properly respected What are some other concrete arguments against this naming convention?"}
{"_id": "256002", "title": "This program in Java doesn't stop executing!", "text": "I have written this program but it doesn't stop executing. Can you help me with it?               /*      * To change this license header, choose License Headers in Project Properties.      * To change this template file, choose Tools | Templates      * and open the template in the editor.      */          package inplacesort;          import java.util.*;     /**      *      * @author ASUS      */     public class InplaceSort      {         static Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in);              /**          * @param args the command line arguments          */         public static void main(String[] args)         {             Vector <Integer> intList = new Vector <Integer> ();                  //getting the numbers from the user             char ans = 'y';                  while (ans == 'Y' || ans == 'y')             {                 System.out.print(\"Enter a Number: \");                 intList.addElement(console.nextInt());                      System.out.print(\"Do You Want to Continue?(Y/N)\");                 ans = console.next().charAt(0);             }             System.out.println(intList);             for (int i = 1; i < intList.size(); i++)             {                 //if (intList.elementAt(i) < intList.elementAt(i-1))                 //{                 int j = i - 1;                 while (j > 0 && intList.elementAt(i) < intList.elementAt(j))                 {                     j--;                 }                      for (int k = intList.size() - 1; k >= j; k--)                 {                     intList.insertElementAt(intList.elementAt(k),k + 1);                 }                      intList.insertElementAt(intList.elementAt(i+1),j);                 intList.removeElementAt(i+1);                 //}             }             System.out.print(intList);         }     }"}
{"_id": "256007", "title": "Is it possible to port a python desktop app(command line) into cloud", "text": "I am new to python and cloud computing . As part of my new project i am planing to port a python desktop application(command line) to cloud. is it possible"}
{"_id": "20352", "title": "The Next Step, from Senior Developer to Architect", "text": "**A little background:** Bachelor In Engineering, Master Degree in Comp Sci. Landed junior dev straight out of Uni. 2 years later, left for Senior Dev. Now planning next step... Platform: _.NET, VB,C# (upto 4.0, LINQ, PLINQ) ,F#,Winform,ASP.NET+(usual web tech,js,xslt, dxhtml,etc),WPF, db ->MS T-SQL_ **Question:** What are the next steps I should be thinking about if my goal is to become a .NET Architect? What things do I need to gain experience in, both soft skills + technical. What is the fastest route there? Are there any advice in general related to becoming a Architect? Thanks in advanced."}
{"_id": "256004", "title": "Managing code changes in this coding environment", "text": "I have the following coding environment:   * Three Developers   * Source code resides in Team Foundation Server (2010)   * Development Environment   * Stage Environment   * Production Environment As the Senior Developer, I need to review code before its pushed to the Staging Environment. Once I review the code, it is pushed to Stage where it gets tested by our (small) test team. Once changes are tested and accepted, I move to production. Suppose the following: `Developer A` submits a change, I review it and push to stage. `Developer B` submits a change, I review it and push to stage. During the testing, a user says the change `Developer A` made has bugs and needs to be fixed. But the changes `Developer B` made need to go to production. This happens more than not. Currently, I need to wait for `Developer A` to fix the bugs and test again or have `Developer A` disable their changes. How to solve this dilemma?"}
{"_id": "143435", "title": "What are the disadvantages of naming things alphabetically?", "text": "Let me give you an example of how I name my classes alphabetically:   * Car   * CarHonda (subclass of Car)   * CarHondaAccord (subclass of CarHonda) There are two reasons why I put the type of the class earlier in its name:   1. When browsing your files alphabetically in a file explorer, related items appear grouped together and parent classes appear above child classes.   2. I can progressively refine auto-complete in my IDE. First I type the major type, then the secondary type, and so on without having to memorize what exactly I named the last part of the thing. My question is why do I hardly see any other programmers do this? They usually name things in reverse or some random order. Take the iOS SDK for example:   * UIViewController   * UITableViewController What are the disadvantages of my naming convention and the advantages of their convention?"}
{"_id": "143633", "title": "Should I add old code into my repository?", "text": "I've got an SVN repository of a PHP site and the last programmer didn't use source control properly. As a result, only code since I started working here is in the Repo. I have a bunch of old copies of the full code base saved in _files_ as \"backups\" but they're not in source control. I don't know why most of the copies were saved nor do I have any reasonable way to tag them to a version number. I _do_ have the dates the backups were made, all backups have proper file system timestamps. Due to upgrades to the frameworks and database drivers involved, the old code is quite defunct; it no longer works on the current server configuration. However, the previous programmers had some _unique_ logic, so I hate to be completely without old copies to refer to what on earth they were doing. Should I keep this stuff in version control? How? Wall off the old code in separate Tags/branches?"}
{"_id": "213926", "title": "Using BSD and GPL in one project", "text": "I am an author of project, that consists of two parts: daemon and library. I want to license library under BSD License (or MIT, will decide later), and daemon under GPLv3. I want to permit the library to be linked into closed-source products, but I want daemon to be GPL, as it uses GPL code heavily, and I do not want its commercial forks. The thing is: This library just provides client interface for the daemon, where daemon acts just like sort of server. Is it permitted to license my project using separate licenses for different parts of my project, linked with some sort of RPC protocol?"}
{"_id": "213925", "title": "How to pass parameters to a function in C", "text": "Suppose I'm writing a program in C in which several parameters are asked at the beginning of the execution to the user and then remain costant until the end. Now, I need to pass these parameters to some function. Since they are unchanged through the program, my temptation would be to declare them as global variables, to have them visible to all functions. However, I see that this is not a good practice if the dimension of the program gets big (this has been asked and answered here). However, I neither see the point of creating functions with, say, 6 arguments, when the variable ones are only 2. Is there a more elegant way to do this without compromising too much the manipulability of the code?"}
{"_id": "213924", "title": "Name of the Countdown Numbers round problem - and algorithmic solutions?", "text": "For the non-Brits in the audience, there's a segment of a daytime game-show where contestants have a set of 6 numbers and a randomly generated target number. They have to reach the target number using any (but not necessarily all) of the 6 numbers using only arithmetic operators. All calculations must result in positive integers. An example: Youtube: Countdown - The Most Extraordinary Numbers Game Ever? A detailed description is given on Wikipedia: Countdown (Game Show) For example:   * The contentant selects 6 numbers - two large (possibilities include 25, 50, 75, 100) and four small (numbers 1 .. 10, each included twice in the pool).   * The numbers picked are `75`, `50`, `2`, `3`, `8`, `7` are given with a target number of `812`.   * One attempt is (75 + 50 - 8) * 7 - (3 * 2) = 813 (This scores 7 points for a solution within 5 of the target)   * An exact answer would be (50 + 8) * 7 * 2 = 812 (This would have scored 10 points exactly matching the target). Obviously this problem has existed before the advent of TV, but the Wikipedia article doesn't give it a name. I've also saw this game at a primary school I attended where the game was called \"Crypto\" as an inter-class competition - but searching for it now reveals nothing. I took part in it a few times and my dad wrote an Excel spreadsheet that attempted to brute-force the problem, I don't remember how it worked (only that it _didn't_ work, what with Excel's 65535 row limit), but surely there must be an algorithmic solution for the problem. Maybe there's a solution that works the way human cognition does (e.g. in-parallel to find numbers 'close enough', then taking candidates and performing 'smaller' operations)."}
{"_id": "186426", "title": "User session timeout handling in SaaS apps - discussing several approaches", "text": "I know this has a great chance of being marked as duplicate, but couldn't find exactly what I'm looking for This is a common problem and I'm sure it has some well defined best practice solution # Background   1. A single page SaaS app, has lot's of drag and drop, user can interact with it without much server communication for periods of time    2. Server session only holds user object, using a non persistent session cookie    3. Session expires on the server after X hours   4. Some things are loaded only during log-in # Problem   1. User works on the app, when done, user doesn't log out, just keeps the browser open   2. User comes back after more than X hours (session is invalidated on server)    3. User interacts with the app without needing a server connection (drags and drops things, text edits...)    4. Only on the next server interaction (let's assume there is no auto save) user is thrown to login page and loses some of their work ## Possible solutions Here are some solutions I have in mind, would like to hear if there are any others, and if there is anything fundamentally wrong with any of them. **1\\. Never log the user out**   * **How?** either keep a long session, keep a persistent cookie, or javaScript \"keep alive\" ping   * **Pros** : user doesn't need to worry about anything, fixes the problem for them   * **Cons** : not PCI compliant, not secure, and needs development changes, e.g. things loaded to session only on user log in need to move to either a pub sub model (listening on event changes) or have cache timeout.  **2\\. Local Storage**   * **How?** use new local storage to temporarily store state if logged out, redirect to login page, persist once logged in    * **Pros** : Also base for \"work offline\" support, not just handling session timeout    * **Cons** : harder to implement, need to do state merge of data tree, not all browsers support  **3\\. Auto save** Every user action that changes the model, should persist immediately (or via some sort of a client side queue), e.g. if they check a checkbox, change a text field, or drag and drop something, once they are done, persist the changes.   * **How?** Use an MV** framework (Backbone.js / Knockout.js / Ember.js / Angular.js etc) to bind the model, and persist on changes.   * **Pros** : Seems like a clean solution, session is active as long as user is active, no client side work is done without persisting it.   * **Cons** : The last action user is doing after a session timeout is lost. **4\\. Log the user out after session expires** this can have several approaches   1. Ask the server \"has session expired\" - this is a bit of a catch 22 / Schrodinger's cat, as the mere question to the server extends the session (restarts the timeout),      * **How?** Either have a server that supports such question (I don't know of any, but I come form Java land) or, one can just keep a table of session IDs, and last access time manually, and ask the server by passing the session ID as a parameter instead of the cookie, I'm not sure if this is even possible, but it sounds dangerous, insecure and bad design whatsoever.login page, persist once logged in      * **Pros** : If there was such native support in servers, sounds like a clean, legitimate question (asking if user X still has a session or not without renewing it if they do)     * **Cons** : If the server doesn't support it (and again, I don't know if any server or framework has this functionality) then the workaround has huge security risks potentially.   2. One workaround I've heard is have a short session on the server side, and a keep alive client side ping, that has a maximum number of pings     * **How?** Short session on server, client pings every sessionTimeOut/2, has max retries of Y.     * **Pros** : Kind of fixes the problem, quick and dirty      * **Cons** : Feels like a hack, handling the session renewal yourself instead of letting the server do it   3. Client side timer     * **How?** Have a timer on the client side and sync it with the server one by restarting it on every request to be equal to the max server session timeout minus some padding, after user is not sending any request to the server, UI shows a \"sessions is about to time out, do you want to continue?\" (like you have on online banking )     * **Pros** : Fixes the problem      * **Cons** : Can't think of any except the need to make sure the sync works  # The Question I'm probably missing something in the above analysis, might have some silly mistakes, and I would like your help to correct them. What other solutions I can have for this?"}
{"_id": "241238", "title": "Source control: projects which share a 3rd library which is still under development in RTC", "text": "this is not a new question for source control, but IBM's Rational Team Concert is a slightly different animal than Git, SVN, etc. We have a number of .NET web sites under development with Visual Studio. Each web site is represented by a VS solution. They all share in common a .NET library, also under development. Is there a smart way to set up in RTC so that each web site's repository does not contain its own copy of the common library's source? My first thought was to just set the library up with its own repo in RTC, then have each \"child\" web site solution refer to the common library in sandbox. But I'm new to RTC and not so sure this is the most RTC-ish way, or what trouble I'll encounter later. Thoughts? Thanks for any light shed."}
{"_id": "216340", "title": "Is a Mission Oriented Architecture (MOA) a better way to describe things than SOA?", "text": "I might sound like a troll, but I would like to seriously understand this deeper. The place I work at has started to use the term MOA, versus SOA as we believe it drives more clarity and want to compare it to the true goals of SOA. A Mission Oriented Architecture is an approach whereby an application is broken down into various business mission elements, with the database, file assets, batch and real time functionality all tightly coupled in terms of delivering that piece of the functionality. The mission allows the developers to focus on a specific piece of functionality to get it right, and to build it with the ability for that piece to scale as an independent entity within the overall application. By tightly coupling the data, file assets and business logic you achieve the goals of working on a very large problem in bite size pieces. Some definitions of SOA mix it up with what is essentially a method call on a web service versus a true \"service\". As an architect, I have always found it fun getting everyone on the same page regarding SOA. Is it better to call it a \"mission\" versus a \"service\"?"}
{"_id": "243130", "title": "Appropriate design / technologies to handle dynamic string formatting?", "text": "recently I was tasked with implementing a way of adding support for versioning of hardware packet specifications to one of our libraries. First a bit of information about the project. We have a hardware library which has classes for each of the various commands we support sending to our hardware. These hardware modules are essentially just lights with a few buttons, and a 2 or 4 digit display. The packets typically follow the format `{SOH}AADD{ETX}`, where AA is our sentinel action code, and DD is the device ID. These packet specs are different from one command to the next obviously, and the different firmware versions we have support different specifications. For example, on version 1 an action code of 14 may have a spec of `{SOH}AADDTEXT{ETX}` which would be AA = 14 literal, DD = device ID, TEXT = literal text to display on the device. Then we come out with a revision with adds an extended byte(s) onto the end of the packet like this `{SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}`. Assume the TEXT field is fixed width for this example. We have now added a new field onto the end which could be used to say specify the color or flash rate of the text/buttons. Currently this java library only supports one version of the commands, the latest. In our hardware library we would have a class for this command, say a DisplayTextArgs.java. That class would have fields for the device ID, the text, and the extended byte. The command class would expose a method which generates the string (`\"{SOH}AADDTEXTE{ETX}\"`) using the value from the class. In practice we would create the Args class as needed, populate the fields, call the method to get our packet string, then ship that down across the CAN. Some of our other commands specification can vary for the same command, on the same version, depending on some runtime state. For example, another command for version 1 may be `{SOH}AA{ETX}`, where this action code clears all of the modules behind a specific controller device of their text. We may overload this packet to have option fields with multiple meanings like `{SOH}AAOC{ETX}` where OC is literal text, which tells the controller to only clear text on a specific module type, and to leave the others alone, or the spec could also have an option format of `{SOH}AADD{ETX}` to clear the text off a a specific device. Currently, in the method which generates the packet string, we would evaluate fields on the args class to determine which spec we will be using when formatting the packet. For this example, it would be along the lines of:               if m_DeviceID != null then use {SOH}AADD{ETX}     else if m_ClearOCs == true then use {SOH}AAOC{EXT}     else  use {SOH}AA{ETX}      I had considered using XML, or a database to store String.format format strings, which were linked to firmware version numbers in some table. We would load them up at startup, and pass in the version number of the hardwares firmware we are currently using (I can query the devices for their firmware version, but the version is not included in all packets as part of the spec). This breaks down pretty quickly because of the dynamic nature of how we select which version of the command to use. I then considered using a rule engine to possibly build out expressions which could be interpreted at runtume, to evaluate the args class's state, and from that select the appropriate format string to use, but my brief look at rule engines for java scared me away with its complexity. While it seems like it might be a viable solution, it seems overly complex. So this is why I am here. I wouldn't say design is my strongest skill, and im having trouble figuring out the best way to approach this problem. I probably wont be able to radically change the args classes, but if the trade off was good enough, I may be able to convince my boss that the change is appropriate. What I would like from the community is some feedback on some best practices / design methodologies / API or other resources which I could use to accomplish: Logic to determine which set of commands to use for a given firmware version Of those command, which version of each command to use (based on the args classes state)   Keep the rules logic decoupled from the application so as to avoid needing releases for every firmware version   Be simple enough so I don't need weeks of study and trial and error to implement effectively."}
{"_id": "243133", "title": "Displaying device contacts with an indication that the contact is registered to the app", "text": "We are developing a mobile app that needs to pick up device contacts, display them and indicate if the contact has already registered with this app. We have our DB in the server and the app fetches data using web services. What will be the best approach to implement the above scenario taking performance into consideration. **Option 1:**   Every time user opens the app,fetch the contacts and send the list of email addresses to the server, check with the registered email ids and return the list of registered users in the contact list. In this approach whenever user opens the particular page, he needs to wait for few seconds to load data, but the contacts will be the latest from the device. **Option 2:**   First time when the user opens the app, fetch contacts ,send the entire list of contacts and save it in the DB, retrieve list of registered users in the contacts then save this to local DB.   From now on, data will be fetched from local DB and displayed.   When a new user registers in the app, again check with records in central DB and send list of new users who are in your contacts that have registered to your app.   This list will be added to local DB. and the process continues.   In this case the new contacts added by user will not be updated in the app but retrieval and display of records would be quick. What would be the correct approach? In case there is a better way of doing this, please let me know."}
{"_id": "236668", "title": "What algorithm should I use to create an automatic staff scheduling feature?", "text": "Imagine a small local business (in my case a dog daycare) with a few dozen part-time employees . The goal is to automatically create weekly staff schedules. My question is about what algorithmic approaches to explore for this problem. There are many constraints to keep in mind, chiefly (1) the availability of the staff and (2) the needs of each shift, not just how many staff for each shift but the skills needed for each shift (e.g. for a certain shift, you may need someone who knows how to drive to do pick-ups/drop-off of dogs, for another, someone who know how to give dogs baths, etc). Other constraints include things like avoiding or requiring certain staff combos -- perhaps due to personality conflicts on one hand, or need for training by osmosis from a senior to junior staff on the other. Also, there are preferences to take into account. Some staff prefer mornings, some two days in a row rather than say Monday and Thursday, etc. We know we can't always accommodate everyone's preferences. In fact we have a hierarchy of which employees get first dibs on their choices. I have a hunch that there is a way to reduce or express this problem into an existing, already solved algorithm. But I don't know which algorithms to explore. Which existing, specific algorithms would be most promising?"}
{"_id": "161715", "title": "What are the licensing requirements for shipping Java along with application", "text": "We have an application in Java. Now we want to export this application to clients (free of charge). Can we ship JRE7 along the application (precaution as client might not have Java installed). Is it legal to do this?"}
{"_id": "179791", "title": "Language parsing to find important words", "text": "I'm looking for some input and theory on how to approach a lexical topic. Let's say I have a collection of strings, which may just be one sentence or potentially multiple sentences. I'd like to parse these strings to and rip out the most important words, perhaps with a score that denotes how likely the word is to be important. Let's look at a few examples of what I mean. **Example #1:** > \"I really want a Keurig, but I can't afford one!\" This is a very basic example, just one sentence. As a human, I can easily see that \"Keurig\" is the most important word here. Also, \"afford\" is relatively important, though it's clearly not the primary point of the sentence. The word \"I\" appears twice, but it is not important at all since it doesn't really tell us any information. I might expect to see a hash of word/scores something like this:               \"Keurig\" => 0.9     \"afford\" => 0.4     \"want\"   => 0.2     \"really\" => 0.1     etc...      **Example #2:** > \"Just had one of the best swimming practices of my life. Hopefully I can > maintain my times come the competition. If only I had remembered to take of > my non-waterproof watch.\" This example has multiple sentences, so there will be more important words throughout. Without repeating the point exercise from example #1, I would probably expect to see two or three really important words come out of this: \"swimming\" (or \"swimming practice\"), \"competition\", & \"watch\" (or \"waterproof watch\" or \"non-waterproof watch\" depending on how the hyphen is handled). Given a couple examples like this, how would you go about doing something similar? Are there any existing (open source) libraries or algorithms in programming that already do this?"}
{"_id": "74222", "title": "How to improve programming skills as a Junior without Senior", "text": "At the moment I'm 23 and working as a junior programmer at a software service provider. While I'm really happy with my job and my colleagues, I sometimes would love to have someone who could tell me what is bad about my code (architecture and so on), why it is bad AND what could I do to make it better. As we have no senior java programmers anymore (I'm the last one who can program java), I would love to get your advice about becoming a better programmer. Disclaimer: Sometimes I ask my non java programmer colleagues if my code is \"good\" or \"bad\" but I have the feeling that they can't judge because they aren't java programmers. (They hardly program anything) Are there any communities which are happy to mentor junior developers? Would it help if I read tons of books? Any advice how I can improve my existing skills and learn if what I'm doing is bad or good? Epilog: I didn't even think about switching the employer back in May when I asked this question but what all of you said was stuck in my head and I decided to switch in April. I now found a new employer and I got a position as a junior Java developer at the new company. I hope my professional growth will get better in future with my new employer. I just wanted to say thank you for all of your advices."}
{"_id": "212293", "title": "How should I create a combined interface for two logically independent modules?", "text": "I'm having trouble coming up with a good way to structure the interfaces for two modules that are logically independent but whose implementations may be combined for the purposes of performance or efficiency. My specific situation is the replacement of the separate queuing and logging modules in a message routing application with a combined database-backed implementation (let's call it `DbQueueLog`). It's easy enough for `DbQueueLog` to implement both the `IQueue` and `ILogger` interfaces so clients of the old queuing and logging modules can use it seamlessly. The challenge is that the most efficient and performant implementation of `DbQueueLog` involves combining the `EnqueueMessage(Message m)` and `LogMessage(Message m, List<LogParams> p)` methods into an `EnqueueAndLogMessage(Message m, List<LogParams> p)` method that minimizes the number of cross-process database calls and the amount of data written to disk. I could create a new `IQueueLog` interface with these new methods, but I'm uncomfortable with what that would mean if a future iteration of the application moved back to separate queuing and logging modules. Are there any design approaches to this situation that would allow me to build the efficient, performant `DbQueueLog` implementation now without permanently coupling together the application's queuing and logging modules? Edit: The application is built on Windows using C# in case any there are any platform-specific techniques that might be available."}
{"_id": "179798", "title": "How to create a random generator", "text": "How could a random generator be implemented? I'm not speaking about the invocation of a language _mathRandom()_ method, but the implementation of the routines that lead to generate numbers totally random."}
{"_id": "135383", "title": "Does the use of debuggers have an effect on the efficiency of programmers?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are debugging skills important to become a good programmer? I'm a young Java developer and I make a systematic use of the Netbeans debugger. In fact, I often develop my applications when I debug step by step in order to see immediately if my code works. I feel spending a lot of time programming this way because the use of debugger increase execution time and I often wait for my app to jump from a breakpoint to an other (so much that I've the time to ask this question). I never learned to use a debugger at school, but at work I've been told immediately to use this functionality. I started teaching myself to use it two years ago, and I've never been told any key tips about it. I'd like to know if there are some rules to follow in order to use the debugger efficiently. I'm also wondering if using the debugger is eventually a good practice? Or is it a loss of time and I've to stop now this bad habit?"}
{"_id": "228686", "title": "Is debugging a waste of time?", "text": "I work on a lot of projects for fun, so I have the freedom to choose when I want to finish the project and am not constrained by deadlines. Therefore, if I wanted to, I could follow this philosophy: > Whenever you hit a bug, don't debug. Instead, spend time learning about > topics related to the bug from textbooks and work on other projects until > one day you can come back to the bug and solve it instantly thanks to your > piled up knowledge. However, maybe the 'philosophy' is bad because   1. debugging is a skill that should be practiced so that when I need to finish projects by a deadline I will have acquired the skills necessary to debug quickly.   2. staring at lines of code and _struggling_ to understand them when debugging makes you a much better programmer than writing new lines of code does.   3. debugging isn't a waste of time for some reason which I hope you'll tell me."}
{"_id": "191884", "title": "Do your stories include tasks across disciplines? How do you do capacity planning?", "text": "My organization does web projects and employs a handful of disciplines like backend dev, frontend, BA, UX, graphic design, QA. We've been pushing to have tasks for every discipline in our sprints with explicit dependencies (Can't build a page without comps, can't do comps without wires, etc). I've heard some other organizations say that scrum is only for dev tasks. Are we barking up the wrong tree? And, if not, are there any good tools for doing capacity planning when only certain resources can do certain tasks?"}
{"_id": "143438", "title": "How often do experienced programmers have trouble getting their code to perform its intended purpose?", "text": "I'm kind of inexperienced with programming (ie less than a year) and I have recently been getting discouraged, mostly from not being able to solve problems with my own code (Not forgetting parentheses or syntax issues but more logic based problems). I just wanted to know, is this something that will dissipate with practice and time or does it only get worse as my programs become more complex?"}
{"_id": "178224", "title": "I want to build a Virtual Machine, are there any good references?", "text": "I'm looking to build a Virtual Machine as a platform independent way to run some game code (essentially scripting). The Virtual Machines that I'm aware of in games are rather old: Infocom's Z-Machine, LucasArts' SCUMM, id Software's Quake 3. As a .net Developer, I'm familiar with the CLR and looked into the CIL Instructions to get an overview of what you actually implement on a VM Level (vs. the language level). I've also dabbled a bit in 6502 Assembler during the last year. The thing is, now that I want\u00b9 to implement one, I need to dig a bit deeper. I know that there are stack based and register based VMs, but I don't really know which one is better at what and if there are more or hybrid approaches. I need to deal with memory management, decide which low level types are part of the VM and need to understand _why_ stuff like ldstr works the way it does. My only reference book (apart from the Z-Machine stuff) is the CLI Annotated Standard, but I wonder if there is a better, more general/fundamental lecture for VMs? Basically something like the Dragon Book, but for VMs? I'm aware of Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming which uses a register-based VM, but I'm not sure how applicable that series still is, especially since it's still unfinished? Clarification: The goal is to build a specialized VM. For example, Infocom's Z-Machine contains OpCodes for setting the Background Color or playing a sound. So I need to figure out how much goes into the VM as OpCodes vs. the compiler that takes a script (language TBD) and generates the bytecode from it, but for that I need to understand what I'm really doing. * * * \u00b9 I know, modern technology would allow me to just interpret a high level scripting language on the fly. But where is the fun in that? :) It's also a bit hard to google because Virtual Machines is nowadays often associated with VMWare-type OS Virtualization..."}
{"_id": "59288", "title": "Is using techniques from OpenSource code copyright infringement?", "text": "If I read through the source code of programs in the similar field of application like the one I am working on (e.g.: 3D car racing simulation), and find some techniques or patterns they use better than the ones I am using, and use those in my project - is it theft? (No source code would be directly copied in any way.)"}
{"_id": "237809", "title": "Does implementing algorithms improve your programming skills?", "text": "I have been self studying algorithms and data structures for some time now and currently enjoying it. Whenever I understand an algorithm, I usually try to code them from scratch for fun and I always will discover some logic I've never thought of before. I'm not so sure, but I always think that when I code algorithms, I am maybe practicing my skills in programming. Is this true? I know they are important, but will my programming skills really improve by coding them?"}
{"_id": "53123", "title": "How important is studying algorithms and theory is to becoming a great programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should I keep investing into data structures and algorithms? I'm a CS student. I want to become a really great programmer, what do I need to do to be come a great programmer? Other then writing lots of code, I've heard that studying algorithms and theory (logic!) is help. What do you recommend to become the best? What do I need to read? What do I need to study?"}
{"_id": "122689", "title": "How important is learning Algorithms for high level language programmers", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How important is studying algorithms and theory is to becoming a great > programmer? Today I learned the fast sort Algorithm. I doubt I will ever implement my own version though as C# has its own built in Sort method for lists and arrays. How important is learning Algorithms for high level language programmers? In my example I gained no benifit from knowing the Algorithm but perhaps my example was too trivial to be accurate?"}
{"_id": "79585", "title": "Software License: Open Source, but no distribution (for free or for profit)", "text": "I wrote a program in PHP. I want people to be able to use the code to learn from and even include bits in their own apps but I also want to maintain the right to sell it and make it clear that others are not to distribute copies either for free or for profit. I haven't used anyone elses code so I don't have to worry about license compatibility. Which license out there is right for that? I know I can't stop people from ignoring the license but I just want them to at least know it's there and know they're doing something wrong if they try. I can't find anywhere that explains licenses in plain English and yes, I have tried to read the GNU and BSD licenses but I can't get it. Thanks. Ok so here are the clarifications other have asked for: I am going to sell this program for very cheap. People are free to use as much code as they want from it so long as they have first purchased the program and they do not profit from my code. I wouldn't mind if people just took the whole thing and added on and made it better but then people wouldn't be honest and they would just add something on and give it free and then no one would buy my product. I suppose I should just let people have it and ask for donations. So maybe I should GPL or BSD it. EDIT: I understand why everyone is getting confused. It is contradictory but the thing about legalese is that everything seems black or white. I'm trying to achieve a gray area. I want people to buy this thing from me, not copy it and give it away to people, and even use parts of it. By \"use parts\", what I'd say if someone asked me casually would be \"just be reasonable\". So basically don't use a majority of my code in your work and then totally outshine what I did because you'll have it easy as I did most of the dirty work already! I mean, sure, use my DB connect script in your project, I don't care. OR... use all the code and add to it! But only for personal use and don't you dare start giving it out because I'm going to be making money off this thing and that totally undermines my work. And it'd be nice to show me your additions and I'll give credit but the main thing is don't be redistributing my software that I have to earn a living with. Its hard to put that sentiment into legalese. And I just can't understand all these licenses."}
{"_id": "92108", "title": "Are web best practices so important if they are always violated by large companies?", "text": "Usually, there are a bunch of rules and best practices which help optimizing a website, bring new customers, and in general making user experience fast, smooth and pleasant while (sometimes) reducing the server load. Also, usually, the largest companies don't bother to use those best practices. Except for few companies (like Google), on the largest websites, we can see:   * table layouts, not minified JavaScript, no CSS sprites where they should be, several CSS files, intrusive JavaScript even in situations where it was simple to be unobtrusive, calls to JavaScript files in `<head/>`, etc.   * meaningless errors, annoying popups, register forms with huge amount of fields to fill, UX issues on register\u00b9, stupid questions and situations which make it impossible to use the website\u00b2, confusing situations on key parts of the website\u00b3, multiple redirects, slow pages, etc. On one hand, those companies are paying a huge amount of money to develop, optimize\u2074 and host their websites since their success relies partially\u2075 or completely\u2076 on it; on the other hand, they are constantly violating the best practices while people advocating those best practices explain that following them helps to achieve better UX and faster websites with lesser footprint on environment (which can be non-negligible on websites hosted on thousands of servers). In such a case, it is logical to ask:   * If the large companies which are really successful, do have a lot of money for their websites and competent employees and which care about website optimization violate constantly those best practices, **are those best practices true?**   * Or, in another words, if those best practices are so important and helps so much to optimize websites, **why those companies don't care about them?** Let's take an example of Dell.com. I'm pretty sure they hire the best of the best to create their home page. Their home page use table layouts. Does it mean that people who tell that table layouts are evil are wrong? Does it mean that the best of the best hired by Dell are incompetent? * * * \u00b9 First example: eBay makes it impossible, when registering, to _paste_ your mail address in both fields, making it longer to use the registration form with no reason at all except to annoy users; best practice would be to forbid _copying_ , but allow pasting. Second example: Microsoft Live limits the length of a password to 16 characters, with no apparent reason at all.   \u00b2 For example, when you've not being to Amazon for a very long time, it says that the password is invalid, then, to recover it, asks you the information about your last transaction, which makes the account unusable if you've never done any transaction before with the account.   \u00b3 Dell, for example, makes it impossible to order a rack server without any hard disk, while this can be perfectly valid if you already have the hard disks you want to reuse.   \u2074 Such optimization includes partial flush to send the most important content faster, studies on the relationship between time spent by people waiting for pages to load and the number of people using the website, etc.   \u2075 As for Dell, Microsoft and others.   \u2076 As for eBay or other web-based companies."}
{"_id": "95491", "title": "web development without the knowledge of client side scripting or programming?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How much HTML and CSS should server side developer know? What will happen if someone wants to be a web developer but not interested to learn the client side scripting or programming. I am asking this question, because I think it is not possible, but a few days back, I had an argument with one of my rigid programmer friend. I could not make him understand. Do you guys agree with me? I believe that without the good client side knowledge, it is impossible to be a good web developer."}
{"_id": "50758", "title": "C# Dev - I've tried Lisps, but I don't get it", "text": "After a few months of learning about and playing with Lisp, both CL and a bit of Clojure, I'm still not seeing a compelling reason to write anything in it instead of C#. I would really like some compelling reasons, or for someone to point out that I'm **missing something _really big_**. The strengths of Lisp (per my research):   * Compact, expressive notation - More so than C#, yes... but I seem to be able to express those ideas in C# too.   * Implicit support for functional programming - C# with LINQ extension methods:      * mapcar = .Select( lambda )     * mapcan = .Select( lambda ).Aggregate( (a,b) => a.Union(b) )     * car/first = .First()     * cdr/rest = .Skip(1) .... etc.   * Lambda and higher-order function support - C# has this, and the syntax is arguably simpler:      * \"(lambda (x) ( body ))\" versus \"x => ( body )\"     * \"#(\" with \"%\", \"%1\", \"%2\" is nice in Clojure   * Method dispatch separated from the objects - C# has this through extension methods   * Multimethod dispatch - C# does not have this natively, but I could implement it as a function call in a few hours   * Code is Data (and Macros) - Maybe I haven't \"gotten\" macros, but I haven't seen a single example where the idea of a macro couldn't be implemented as a function; it doesn't change the \"language\", but I'm not sure that's a strength   * DSLs - Can only do it through function composition... but it works   * Untyped \"exploratory\" programming - for structs/classes, C#'s autoproperties and \"object\" work quite well, and you can easily escalate into stronger typing as you go along   * Runs on non-Windows hardware - Yeah, so? Outside of college, I've only known one person who doesn't run Windows at home, or at least a VM of Windows on *nix/Mac. (Then again, maybe this is more important than I thought and I've just been brainwashed...)   * The REPL for bottom-up design - Ok, I admit this is really really nice, and I miss it in C#. Things I'm missing in Lisp (due to a mix of C#, .NET, Visual Studio, Resharper):   * Namespaces. Even with static methods, I like to tie them to a \"class\" to categorize their context (Clojure seems to have this, CL doesn't seem to.)   * Great compile and design-time support      * the type system allows me to determine \"correctness\" of the datastructures I pass around     * anything misspelled is underlined realtime; I don't have to wait until runtime to know     * code improvements (such as using an FP approach instead of an imperative one) are autosuggested   * GUI development tools: WinForms and WPF (I know Clojure has access to the Java GUI libraries, but they're entirely foreign to me.)   * GUI Debugging tools: breakpoints, step-in, step-over, value inspectors (text, xml, custom), watches, debug-by-thread, conditional breakpoints, call-stack window with the ability to jump to the code at any level in the stack      * (To be fair, my stint with Emacs+Slime seemed to provide some of this, but I'm partial to the VS GUI-driven approach) I really like the hype surrounding Lisp and I gave it a chance. But is there anything I can do in Lisp that I can't do as well in C#? It might be a bit more verbose in C#, but I also have autocomplete. What am I missing? Why should I use Clojure/CL?"}
{"_id": "83569", "title": "How to support design decisions?", "text": "There are bad design decisions.   On the same pitch, being a senior engineer can sometimes be hard. Youngsters have awesome and radical ideas, which a senior engineer wonders whether will work on the field, and if it is worth spending all that effort. Experience suggests that these are short-term solutions are very expensive in the long run. However, it might be hard to convince otherwise. How does one go about in this scenario? **Patterns** are a good start, however, it takes a little experience to figure out where to apply a pattern, as a newbie might restate the problem to fit the pattern. Also, patterns do not help at coarser/component levels. Another idea is to **refer to a good design** that _works in the field_ , and is outside the organization. The problem here is that sometimes drawing a parallel might be hard. Are there any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "145778", "title": "Is BSD-License compatible with Apple AppStores?", "text": "I would like to know if it is possible to make an application to be sold on Apple AppStores that is linked (during compilation) to a BSD-licensed library."}
{"_id": "148915", "title": "Impact of Website Redesign on Google Analytics", "text": "I just finished a redesign for a website that is currently using Google Analytics. I want to continue to use Google Analytics, but I'm not sure if I should create a new profile for the new site or simply use the old UA number. The new website has a completely different URL structure and much of the content has been updated/deleted/added."}
{"_id": "148914", "title": "I have one afternoon to extol the benefits of .NET over VB6... what do I say?", "text": "My company is a small twenty-man engineering firm. All the application programming here is done in VB6 by two people, who have taught themselves VB6 from an assembly background while working here for the past 25+ years, and myself. As a result, the VB6 code is riddled with horrendous code smells, like tons of stringly typed variables, terribly long functions, hundreds of public global variables (some of which are preferred over passing around arguments and returning values,) and not a single object class. Refactoring is nigh impossible, and any changes require too much digging through code, and once made, always seem to introduce more holes. My boss is realizing that VB6 is a dead technology, and is willing to listen to my pleas of moving to .NET for new development. We are moving forward to .NET, but he sees it as a way to keep up compatability with the newer Windows OS's, not as a way to write better code. How can I best explain the benefits of .NET language over VB6, beyond mere up- to-date-ness? What can I say to best emphasize that the move to .NET is a good move _but also_ that it means our current programming paradigm should also begin to change? As soon as my boss hears that Visual Basic .NET looks just like VB6, I know that his first instinct will be to simply convert our old code mess to .NET. I understand that it will be impossible to change anyone's mindset in a single afternoon, but how can I at least convince my assembly-toting boss that things like strongly-typed variables, custom classes, and private fields aren't a _total_ waste of time and energy?"}
{"_id": "148918", "title": "Why do trees grow downward?", "text": "Why do trees grow downward in computer science? I have a feeling it goes back to a printer, and that a program traversing a tree first prints the root, and uses the notion of a bottomless stack of paper to express the indefinite levels of recursion that might be encountered. References: > Trees grow downward, having their roots at the top of the page and their > leaves down below From ON HOLY WARS AND A PLEA FOR PEACE. > by convention, trees are drawn growing downwards From the Wikipedia article on tree data structures. > Real trees grow from their root upwards to the sky, but computer-science > trees grow from the root downwards From David Schmidt's lecture notes."}
{"_id": "61392", "title": "free as in free beer", "text": "Some years ago (more precisely in 1998) the confusion english-speaking people start making with the term **free** when applied to software led some members of the free software foundation to create a new term: **open source** ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html ) The great concern was that people was misunderstanding free as in free of speech, with free as in free beer (see wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software ). The free here relates to the the liberty of using and sharing your software, in a way that goes against proprietary \"copyright\" (and patented) software. It was first introduced by Richard Stallman, in 1986. The core is the set of freedoms:   * Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.   * Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.   * Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.   * Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Well, we all know about that (at least those who is following this discussion since ever). In my opinion, the term open-source clarified us. But it was already assured by Freedom 1. In other languages (like spanish or portugese, for instance), we can say free as libre or livre. And the other meaning of free, as in free beer, as gratis. So, for others, there was never a confusion (actually, only when reading english articles about it). Freedom number 2 guarantees my right to redistribute copies at will. I understand that as I don't need to pay the owner any royalties for every copy I give away to my friends or students. And of course, we will agree with that. This, ultimately means, that I **can** give free (gratis) copies, or also I can charge for copies (support, media, etc.). Now, If something can be given away for free (gratis), then it is free (gratis). No matter if someone, or some enterprise, wants to sell, you still have ways (sites, downloads, friends, etc.) to get it for free (gratis). So, in my non-english point of view, we have 3 different things here. The most important, undoubtedly, is the free (freedom, liberty, libre, livre, so you can all the stuff you want) quality of the software. The other, is being open- source (so you can see the code inside). The last one **IS** another **GREAT** quality, that is, there **EXIST** free (gratis, non-chargeable) software. Being free (gratis) does not mean it is forced free (gratis). You can have people who sells, who pays, and who gets/sends for free. Still, it is a quality. What I don't understand is why, after so many years, people from FSF are still cautious to say that there is free (gratis) software also. Yes, free as in free beer. If it is a quality why hide it? Just to prevent confusion? Well, let me tell you the news: confusion was already made since the beginning. I was alive and interested in the subject when it started, and I remember lots of discussions about this free being free of charge, or free of restrictions. After lots of consulting, lawyers helped to write the first \"license\" in terms that could be used in court, introduced the term \"copyleft\", and made it \"clear\" that free is not about price. At that time, because of the novelty, ok, I agree to emphasize this half-part of the free. But now we are over it. Isn't it time to tell people that we ALSO have free as in free of charge. Three qualities is better than two: livre/gratis/open. So, why don't we tell people that free software can be just free? Edited: More objectively: 1- Is a free (freedom) software necessarily free (gratis)? 2- Is a free (gratis) software necessarily free (freedom). The first one is the important question, as the second is just there to hold fast typers (we all know the answer). Another question raised from the discussion: Is free (gratis) a quality? (I assumed that as taken for granted in the question introduction)"}
{"_id": "61394", "title": "Do you see an use for \"Spreadsheet programming\"?", "text": "A while ago I stumbled upon the concept of using spreadsheets (I mean cells and formulas not Macro code) as a way to specify programming logic. The idea is:   * create a spreadsheet with a cleanly defined flow of calculations (which sometimes are better suited to the \"dataflow\" paradigm of spreadsheets instead of procedural or object oriented programming styles)    * define input cells   * define output cells   * compile the whole thing into a stand-alone executable class (or function, procedure, ...)   * use it in normal code within a broader software project   * use the spreadsheet as source code to be maintained over time The idea is to use this technique for problems the really fit into the model and that this would lead to naturally well-documented and easy maintainable code. I am interested in knowing whether you have experienced using the technique and what for. An example application that came to my mind are insurance tariff calculators, that are typically drafted, created and validated by actuaries on Excel sheets and only later coded (it's a painful process) in some hard-to-maintain programming logic."}
{"_id": "61396", "title": "what should i use  running cron or getting by query", "text": "I have a table which has the amount,entrydate and amtperday field , which is to decrease daily. so what is better running the cron job daily to decrease amount. or or at the time of fetching data calculate the amount perday with the date field , i can get the no. of day > amount = amount- no.of day * amtperday so which is good Please suggest ?"}
{"_id": "216833", "title": "Design Patterns - Why the need for interfaces?", "text": "OK. I am learning design patterns. Every time I see someone code an example of a design pattern they use interfaces. Here is an example: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/Articles/2013/06/18/the-facade-pattern-in- net.aspx?Page=1 Can someone explain to me why was the interfaces needed in this example to demonstrate the facade pattern? The program work if you pass in the classes to the facade instead of the interface. If I don't have interfaces does that mean"}
{"_id": "216831", "title": "Simple website with a GPL V3 Framework", "text": "I write web-based software and simple website (\"Home\", \"Who we are\", \"Contact\"). For a simple website I'm using a covered GPL v3 framework. The user surf the website, send an email, take info, etc. I repeat: simple website, not a Joomla or Wordpress. 1) Will the website be covered with the GPL? I don't modify the framework. I'm using his classes in other classes... (OOP). 2) For the point 1, if yes, do I need to add (e.g. in the footer) name of framework and his link? 3) I must permit download of entire website to study code (nothing that a programmer has interest in)? E.g. placing it in Github? 4) If 2 is NO, how you can \"understand\" that we use that framework? In effect no php lines are exposed to the browser... You cannot understand that when you push \"Send email\" the site is calling `$this->send($email)`. If you write me an email \"Are you using XXX framework\"? I can answer NO."}
{"_id": "111462", "title": "browsing with curl instead of firefox (or any other browser)", "text": "My company has 2 Intranets (one technical, and one commercial), I am the administrator of the technical Intranet. We need to see if a client has a contract for a service we offer. As such, for ease of use (for us in the tech department) I made a button in our Intranet that reads data via `ajax->php->curl->dom` from the commercial intranet, gets the type of the contract, and if it's valid prints the contracts into a DIV tag. So we don't have to open a new tab, look up the client, go through all the commercial info in there just to see something as simple as \"yes is ok\" or \"no disable the service\"). Now the admin from the commercial Intranet (the nephew of somebody on the Board) went to the Board complaining that we steal information from them according to this internal decision:               Any addition of new functions, any changes to the current functions or       operating procedures of any service related to commercial databases       provided by the company will be made \u200b\u200bonly with approval from the Board.      But we did not add new functions, we did not modify existing functions or procedures, we just read the data with curl instead of a normal browser. I am into optimizations, efficiency, and user-friendly experience so in our Intranet with 2 or 3 clicks (and max 3 seconds) you get the info you need, otherwise I think I did something wrong and I try to improve. The script we are talking about returns the data to the user in around 1 - 3 seconds, but now the Board forbids us to use it anymore, and our team is slower (you need about 2-5 minutes, and around 8-12 clicks to find a client with the commercial intranet (it's a real mess). In your opinion is there a legal difference betwen using curl of firefox (or any other browser), to read a simple HTML page (no javascript invloved), acording to the decision above or in general ? P.S. I know you are not lawers, just give a programmer point of view. Thank you"}
{"_id": "74764", "title": "How often should I/do you make commits?", "text": "I am a recent (as of yesterday) college grad - BS in Computer Science. I've been a huge fan of version control ever since I got mad at an assignment I was working on and just started from scratch, wiping out a few hours worth of actually good work. Whoops! Since then, I've used Bazaar and Git (and SVN when I had to for a Software Engineering class), though mostly Git to do version control on all of my projects. Usually I'm pretty faithful about how often I commit, but on occasion I'll go for a while (several functions, etc.) before writing a new commit. So my question for you is, how often should you make commits? I'm sure there's no hard and fast rule, but what guideline do you (try to) follow?"}
{"_id": "136596", "title": "Can commits be considered too small?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  git / other VCS - how often to commit?   >  How often should I/do you make commits? The usage of source control is very different from one developer to another and from project to another. Some commit very often; others can spend a whole day or several days without committing (especially when they work on the project alone or they know that other team members are working on very different part of the project). ## Examples Sometimes, I've seen extremely small commits, both in real life and in webcasts and other learning material. Some examples, mostly from real life, are:   * A commit which solves a bug #... or implements a feature #... by changing one line of code. IMHO, it's a perfectly valid case for a commit, especially if the bug tracking system is linked to the version control and is updated automatically according to the revisions. Even without this link, it's useful to track which commit solved what, independently of the number of changes required to solve a bug or implement a feature.   * A commit which changes a single configuration setting (given that in the context, configuration settings must be in source control). IMHO, this could be merged sometimes with another commit, unless the previous setting breaks the build or introduces a bug or can affect other developers (for example a connection string which changed after the test database server was migrated).   * A commit which corrects spelling of a word, for example in a string displayed to the user. IMHO, in most cases, this can be merged with another commit (unless, again, it breaks the build). The only case where it cannot be merged is when, if left, the wrong spelling can be propagated through code and would be too complicated or impossible to change later, as with HTTP _referer_ header.   * A commit which adds a comment to a method (while the method was already explicit enough) or solves another minor style-related rule. Example: in .NET Framework, StyleCop requires to document every method, and the XMLDoc comment for a constructor (which is method too) must begin with: > Initializes a new instance of the <Class name here> class. A commit can enforce this last rule, replacing a comment in legacy code: > Creates a new vehicle with the specified number of wheels. by: > Initializes a new instance of the Vehicle class, using the specified number > of wheels. In other words, the revision has no meaning other than to conform the piece of code to the style standards used in the codebase. IMHO, this can be merged with another commit in every case (after all, style- related rules must be enforced at commits to reject the commits of the code which doesn't match them), unless there are several changes in several places. ## Questions Am I wrong on those points? Is there such a thing as a commit too small, or is a practice of committing very often a best practice? Does it worth it to commit too small changes, given that it would \"pollute\" the revision log and make it more difficult to find the relevant changes among tiny changes nobody cares about and which don't break or unbreak the build, nor affect other developers?"}
{"_id": "210707", "title": "Using Git - better to do lot of incremental updates or one big daily update?", "text": "Ive just started working with Git (Github) in anticipation for an up coming project I'm project managing and designing and developing the front end of. One thing I couldn't work out is, is it preferable to publish each individual change as you make them, ie. updated sidebar js, designed new FAQ page (each as individual commits) and the back end developers would be doing the same ie. added this class, refactored this.. Or is it better to do a daily / half daily commit of all the work you've done? My thoughts were that if you do lots of small commits its easier to roll back, but also at the same time every commit you make the rest of the team has to get locally before they can commit their code. You obviously don't have this problem so much if you do daily or half daily commits, but its a little more complicated to roll back if you need to? Is there a best practice for this or is it down to team preference? Background: I'm using Github via the mac desktop app not the CL."}
{"_id": "209401", "title": "Git for a solo developer", "text": "I'm a developer working on a Wordpress project. I work on this alone and I want to improve the way I use Git but I don't know where to start. Currently, I'm using git to commit all of the work that I've done for the day as long as that specific work is done. Here are some instances where I commit a specific work:   * A specific feature whose code can be written within a day   * A bugfix For bigger features that can take weeks to finish I create a branch for it, then commit the sub-features once they're done. But often times I feel like I'm committing way too much; for example, when I'm trying to solve lots of bugs I do not commit each and every bug that I resolve. Sometimes I also end up working with 2 or more things that should be in there own commits. Then I'll find it hard to just target the specific files within a specific change so I end up putting them all in one commit and end up with a commit message like `add search feature and add caching feature`. What I want to know are the best practices for solo developers working with Git. For solo developers out there you're welcome to answer with your own workflow as well."}
{"_id": "83837", "title": "When to commit code?", "text": "When working on a project, the code may be developed reasonably fast in a single day or bit by bit for a prolonged period of few weeks/months/years. As code commits are becoming to be considered as a measure of project development, it doesn't really mean it has more code written than a project that has lesser commits. So the question is when to really make a commit to the repository so that the commit is justifiable? As a add-on: Is it a correct practice to measure a project's development based on its commits?"}
{"_id": "10793", "title": "When is a version control commit too large?", "text": "I've heard in several places \"Don't make large commits\" but I've never actually understood whats a \"large\" commit. Is it large if you work on a bunch of files even if there related? How many parts of a project should you be working on at once? To me, I have trouble trying to make \"small commits\" since I forget or create something that creates something else that creates something else. You then end up with stuff like this:               Made custom outgoing queue          Bot     -New field msgQueue which is nothing more than a SingleThreadExecutor     -sendMsg blocks until message is sent, and adds wait between when messages get     sent     -adminExist calls updated (see controller)     -Removed calles to sendMessage          Controller     -New field msgWait denotes time to wait between messages     -Starting of service plugins moved to reloadPlugins     -adminExists moved from Server because of Global admins. Checks at the channel,     server, and global level          Admin     -New methods getServer and getChannel that get the appropiate object Admin     belongs to          BotEvent     -toString() also show's extra and extra1          Channel     -channel field renamed to name     -Fixed typo in channel(int)          Server     -Moved adminExists to Controller          PluginExecutor     -Minor testing added, will be removed later          JS Plugins     -Updated to framework changes     -Replaced InstanceTracker.getController() with Controller.instance     -VLC talk now in own file          Various NB project updates and changes          ---          Affected files     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/dist/Quackbot-Core.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/dist/README.TXT     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/nbproject/private/private.properties     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/nbproject/private/private.xml     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/Bot.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/Controller.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/PluginExecutor.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/info/Admin.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/info/BotEvent.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/info/Channel.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Core/src/Quackbot/info/Server.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/dist/Quackbot-GUI.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/dist/README.TXT     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/dist/lib/Quackbot-Core.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/nbproject/private/private.properties     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/nbproject/private/private.xml     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/src/Quackbot/GUI.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/src/Quackbot/log/ControlAppender.java     Delete  /trunk/Quackbot-GUI/src/Quackbot/log/WriteOutput.java     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/dist/Quackbot-Impl.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/dist/README.TXT     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/dist/lib/Quackbot-Core.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/dist/lib/Quackbot-GUI.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/dist/lib/Quackbot-Plugins.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/lib/javarebel.stats     Add /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/lib/jrebel.info     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/nbproject/private/private.properties     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/nbproject/private/private.xml     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/nbproject/project.properties     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/CMDs/Admin/reload.js     Add /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/CMDs/Operator/hostBan     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/CMDs/Operator/mute.js     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/CMDs/lyokofreak/curPlaying.js     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/CMDs/lyokofreak/lfautomode.js     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/listeners/onJoin.js     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/listeners/onQuit.js     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/testCase.js     Add /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/plugins/utils/whatsPlaying.js     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/src/Quackbot/impl/SandBox.java     Add /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/vlc_http     Add /trunk/Quackbot-Impl/vlc_http/current.html     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/dist/Quackbot-Plugins.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/dist/README.TXT     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/dist/lib/Quackbot-Core.jar     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/nbproject/private/private.properties     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/nbproject/private/private.xml     Modify  /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/src/Quackbot/plugins/JSPlugin.java     Add /trunk/Quackbot-Plugins/vlc_http     Add /trunk/global-lib/jrebel.jar      Yea.... So for questions:   * What are some factors for when a commit becomes too large ( _non-obvious stuff_ )?    * How can you prevent such commits? Please give specifics   * What about when your in semi-early stages of development when things are moving quickly? Are huge commits still okay?"}
{"_id": "206979", "title": "How big should a single commit be?", "text": "A discussion has come up at work and I want to get the opinion of other programmers. During my time in college, we only used SVN for sourcecontrol. Everybody commits to the same server and all changes are pulled to all machines. In this system, it's easy when you should push your changes: when you're done with your changes. However, this makes merging changesets by multiple developers a complete nightmare. However, for the past year or so that I've been programming professionally, we've been using Mercurial for source control. At first, I was using it like SVN: work on a featur, commit and push in one go, but only when it's finished. Gradually, my habits started to change. I learned about branches, how commits could be a draft, public or secret and even used a USB stick as a central repository. My commits became smaller, but they increased in quantity. Instead of committing and pushing in one go, I would make commits for every change in a named branch. Here's what the repository for one my personal projects looks like: ![Repository layout](http://i.stack.imgur.com/t0h7X.png) I see a couple of advantages in this approach.   * Small commits mean they are focused on a single subject. Every commit gets a one-line description of the changes, which makes them easy to follow even after weeks of inactivity.   * Named branches keep you on topic. If you're working in the \"refactor-text-rendering\" branch, for example, you shouldn't make changes to the math library, because that's not related to the branch's topic. However, the lead developer is annoyed by my methodology. He feels that the small commits clutter up the repository's history. His preferred methodology is to work in a patch. When the feature is done, he merges the commits and pushes them in one go. So, what do you prefer? A flow of consciousness history of commits or a patch of changes every now and then? Or something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "221582", "title": "What to do if my own opensource code greatly resembles another project's code?", "text": "I'm writing a Java class, part of an opensource game development framework under the Apache 2.0 license. There is another framework, under the same license, that happens to also have a Java class that addresses the same subject as mine. I recently checked it out, and my implementation is extremely similar to that. Heck, even the local variables. The differences are minimal. Since both classes are opensource, I guess it doesn't matter. However, since the codes are so similar, anyone may come to the conclusion that I just modified theirs a bit, and eventually quote the license: >   * You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a > copy of this License; > >   * You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating > that You changed the files; > > Since I wrote my class, there's no need to put their copyright notice in my code. However, it cannot be proven that I didn't just copy their code and modified a bit. What is one supposed to do in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "151118", "title": "Reasons for either 32-bit or 64-bit as development machine", "text": "I'm about to make a new Linux install, which will be primarily used for programming. I've seen benchmarks showing speed improvement of 64-bit version, however, I have hard time of telling how much these benchmarks translate to improvement in every day usage. And of course there are other aspects to consider. Usage I have in mind:   * mainly programming Python, with occasional C, C++ and Java;   * IDEs, which are using Java platforms (Eclipse and IntelliJ);   * on very rare occasions having to compile for 32-bit platform;   * not planning to have more than 64GB of RAM anytime soon (and I don't mind using PAE kernels);    * machine in question has 4GB RAM and Athlon II X2; What are pros and cons of choosing either i386 or x86_64 distro?"}
{"_id": "66679", "title": "Freelancing dilemma.. to do or not to do?", "text": "My current organization has stated clearly that I should not work on any freelancing projects in the fields where the company offers their service. I agreed to that and joined the organization. At the time of joining, I also mentioned that I am a member of an NGO for last two years, not as a programmer but giving my social services there. They agreed to that and everything is working smoothly. But recently my NGO has decided to build their site. I was called to be a part of programming team but I refused because of that condition. The NGO agreed and excluded me from the programming team. But they insisted on me being a translator and requested that I arrange for translators from other languages. I had managed to bring a team of translators. Now my NGO is planning to make me head of translation team because they felt being a programmer and translator both I can be a bridge between two teams. Here is dilemma begins, my company is in website development business but they don't offer translation service. For the NGO website I am going to be credited for translation. Here my company is very strict on freelancing rules. But I am bit optimistic that they will allow me to be part of the NGO project which in sense not going to compete with any of their products. They are strict in freelancing and I am sure that they are not going to allow me. If anything goes wrong, on the other side, I don't see any legal problems in doing this and am excited to be a part of the website. What would you do if you faced this situation?"}
{"_id": "245207", "title": "Sortable listview using SQLite", "text": "I'm implementing a sortable listview using bauerca's library here. This works, but now I need to define some things where I need some help. This is the functionality of my app_ I can create up to 5 names. These names are saved in a SQLite database. Then, in other activity, these names are loaded from the database and shown to select which ones I'm going to use. With 5 names, there are several combinations I can use, but the basic porpouse of this app is that when I select some names, these are shown in a sortable listview where I can sort them. After sorting them, they should be saved in another database to remember the position of each one. For this, the second database has these columns: NAME, GROUP, ORDER. **My approach is this:** if I select for example `NAME1` and `NAME2`, this would be `GROUP2_1`. If I select `NAME1` and `NAME3` this would be `GROUP2_2`... and this with all the posible combinations. Then, in the `ORDER` column, the position of each name in the listview is saved. But seems that this approach with the GROUP column doesn't work... it saves the position of each name, but regardless of the group to which it belongs. So for example, if I have these names:               MARK     PAUL     JERRY      If I select MARK and JERRY, the listview at first time would show them that way:               MARK     JERRY      But now I sort them:               JERRY     MARK      So these combination belongs to GROUP2_1 and JERRY has 1 value in the ORDER column and MARK the 2. If now I go back and I select this other combination:               MARK     PAUL     JERRY      This should be GROUP3_1, and now I sort them this way:               MARK     JERRY     PAUL      So now MARK has ORDER value 1, JERRY 2 and PAUL 3. Now if I go back and load again the first combination, it will load the names with the last asigned ORDER value so instead of loading in this order:               JERRY     MARK      It will load them using the values of the last combinations:               MARK     JERRY      Sorry for such a long explanation, but I dind't know other best way to explain my issue. In resume, the problem is that the ORDER value is asigned to each name, regardless of the GROUP, so this is not a valid approach for what I need to get. **Update -- key definition** Thats my current table:               db.execSQL(\"CREATE TABLE \" + TABLE_NAME + \" (\" +                 TravelOrder._ID + \" INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,\" +                 TravelOrder.NAME + \" TEXT NOT NULL \" +                 \");\");"}
{"_id": "214474", "title": "REST or a message queue in a multi-tier heterogeneous system?", "text": "I'm designing a REST API for a three-tier system like: `Client application` -> `Front-end API cloud server` -> `user's home API server (Home)`. `Home` is a home device, and is supposed to maintain connection to `Front-end` via Websocket or a long poll _(this is the first place where we're violating REST. It gets even worse later on)_. `Front-end` mostly tunnels `Client` requests to `Home` connection and handles some of the calls itself. Sometimes `Home` sends notifications to `Client`. `Front-end` and `Home` have basically the same API; `Client` might be connecting to `Home` directly, over LAN. In this case, `Home` needs to register some `Client` actions on a `Front-end` itself. Pros for REST in this system are:   * REST is human-readable;   * REST has a well-defined mapping of verbs (like CRUD), nouns and response codes to protocol objects;   * It works over HTTP and passes all the possible proxies; REST contras are:   * We need not only a request-response communication style, but also a publish-subscribe;   * HTTP error codes might be insufficient to handle three-tier communication errors; `Front-end` might return `202 Accepted` to some async call only to find out that necessary `Home` connection is broken and there should have been `503`;   * `Home` needs to send messages to `Client`. `Client` will have to poll `Front-end` or to maintain a connection. We are considering WAMP/Autobahn over Websocket to get publish/subscribe functionality, when it struck me that it's already looking like a message queue. Is it worth evaluating a sort of messaging queue as a transport? Looks like message queue contras are:   * I'll need to define CRUD verbs and error codes myself on a message level.   * I read something about \"higher maintenance cost\", but what does it mean? how serious are these considerations?"}
{"_id": "245200", "title": "Why use subtyped functions?", "text": "Say you have arguments A1 >: A2 (contra-variant), and return types B1 <: B2 (covariant). The corresponding functions are such that: A1 => B1 <: A2 => B2 Sometimes, this makes sense to me - I will grasp it in a flash of lateral thinking. And then a few days later it is lost to me until I struggle through it for another hour or so. Using an example from Odersky's Scala MOOC (this is not an assignment spoiler), Empty and NonEmpty are both subtypes of IntSet. I understand that you cannot pass an IntSet into a function expecting a NonEmpty, since the IntSet might be an Empty. Therefore the latter (A2 => B2) cannot be a subtype of the former (A1 => B1). And I understand that you _can_ pass a NonEmpty into a function expecting an IntSet, apparently because the function will only be calling IntSet-specific methods that all subtypes have implemented. Therefore the former _can_ be a subtype of the latter. Similarly, a function that returns an IntSet cannot be a subtype of a function that returns a NonEmpty, because that returned IntSet cannot necessarily do everything the NonEmpty can do. Conversely, a function that returns a NonEmpty _can_ be a subtype of a function that returns an IntSet, since that returned NonEmpty will conform to the IntSet contract. But what I'm having trouble grasping is, if you _can_ pass a NonEmpty into a function expecting an IntSet, and if that function were a subtype of a function expecting a NonEmpty (ostensibly because it is calling NonEmpty- specific methods in its implementation), then why would you ever want to use that subtyped function? Does anyone have examples of this being useful? Why use subtyped functions? To me it just seems dangerous to pass in an IntSet if you know that it is going to call NonEmpty-specific functionality."}
{"_id": "214476", "title": "Rails/Node.js interaction", "text": "I and my co-worker are developing a web application with rails and node.js and we can't reach a consensus regarding a particular architectural decision. Our setup is basically a rails server working with node.js and redis, when a client makes a http request to our rails API in some cases our rails application posts the response to a redis database and then node.js transmits the response via websocket. Our disagreement occurs in the following point: my co-worker thinks that using node.js to send data to clients is somewhat business logic and should be inside the model, so in the first code he wrote he used commands of broadcast in callbacks and other places of the model, he's convinced that the models are the best place for the interaction between rails and node. I on the other hand think that using node.js belongs to the runtime realm, my take is that the broadcast commands and other node.js interactions should be in the controller and should only be used in a model if passed through a well defined interface, just like the situation when a model needs to access the current user of a session. At this point we're tired of arguing over this same thing and our discussion consists in us repeating to ourselves our same opinions over and over. Could anyone, preferably with experience in the same setup, give us an unambiguous response saying which solution is more adequate and why it is?"}
{"_id": "85810", "title": "Distribute No Modify License", "text": "I would like to release some code and some documentation to be distributed freely, but not if it has been modified in any way. Basically, needs to be shared \"as-is\". The reason is I would like to retain control of all modifications without making it it closed source. Is there a commonly available license that allows for this? Thanks"}
{"_id": "127075", "title": "What percentage of code and runtime do you typically allow for testing?", "text": "When I write code, a certain amount of it is just for the purpose of logging, tracing, or otherwise \"testing\" what the program is doing. This not unit testing; this is not when it is running in \"debug\" mode or something similar; it is not things like assert statements that get stripped out by some compiling step. But actual production code and runtime execution for the purpose of knowing what the system is doing and writing it out somewhere. Naturally, there have to be various settings in various places (config files, admin interfaces, etc), that allow for more or less of such things. But even if all settings are at their lowest level, I still like to have my system keep track of its own state and report it in some minimalist manner that I or operations people can use to troubleshoot even without turning on/up the other settings. So here is my question: how much of your code or system run-time do you typically devote to such permanent-troubleshooting purposes? I say both code and run-time as they are two measures: how many lines of code relative to all lines of code, because the more the code the more the maintenance; and how much run-time performance because these things do consume CPU time, however small. And there is not always a direct connection between lines of code and run-time consumption. Personally, I'm happy to devote up to 10% of my code to such things and up to 5% of the run-time. Have you ever read any industry authorities that have an opinion on this? Who? What is your opinion?"}
{"_id": "127071", "title": "Concurrent Data Processing by Multiple People", "text": "Let's say I have a page, accessible by several people concurrently, that lists information that must be processed in some way by the user, after which it is either marked as \"completed\" and effectively disappears, or is left unprocessed and thus left in the list to be tried again later. What is the best way to ensure that only one person is handling a given item in the list at a time, assuming that I must show the list (i.e. no one user/one item requirement, which is what I would prefer), and that any given user can click on any item in the list at any time? This is an issue that has come up several times where I work, and I'm not really satisfied with the solution that I've implemented up until now. I was hoping someone had a better idea. Basically my solution involved creating a table in a database to track who accessed what item and when, and then enabling/disabling features based on that (e.g. not allowing a user to edit info if it's checked out by someone else). It looks something like the following (using Oracle 11g...these are stripped way down for brevity here, with INFO columns acting as a stand in for all other columns that are irrelevant here).               CREATE TABLE \"SOME_INFO\"     (       \"INFO_ID\"       NUMBER(19,0)      NOT NULL ENABLE,       \"INFO\"          VARCHAR2(20 BYTE) NOT NULL ENABLE,       \"IS_PROCESSED\"  CHAR(1)           NOT NULL ENABLE,       CHECK (\"IS_PROCESSED\" IN ('Y', 'N')) ENABLE,       CONSTRAINT \"PK_SOME_INFO\" PRIMARY KEY (\"INFO_ID\") USING INDEX     ); /          CREATE TABLE \"SOME_PERSON\"     (       \"PERSON_ID\" NUMBER(19,0)      NOT NULL ENABLE,       \"INFO\"      VARCHAR2(20 BYTE) NOT NULL ENABLE,       CONSTRAINT \"PK_SOME_PERSON\" PRIMARY KEY (\"PERSON_ID\") USING INDEX     ); /          CREATE TABLE \"PROCESS_HISTORY\"     (       \"INFO_ID\"       NUMBER(19,0)  NOT NULL ENABLE,       \"PROCESSOR_ID\"  NUMBER(19,0)  NOT NULL ENABLE,       \"CHECKED_OUT\"   DATE          NOT NULL ENABLE,       \"CHECKED_IN\"    DATE     ); / \"Checking out\" a record from SOME_INFO for a given user is accomplished by INSERTing a new record into PROCESS_HISTORY with INFO_ID = the selected record's INFO_ID, PROCESSOR_ID = the users PERSON_ID, and CHECKED_OUT = the current time (CHECKED_IN is left NULL). \"Checking In\" is accomplished by simply setting CHECKED_IN to the current time. An automated process is used to periodically check in records that have been checked out for more than some predefined maximum amount of time (the time varies from page to page based on what's involved in processing the info). From this I can tell if a given record is currently checked out or not, and thus alter the page's behavior accordingly. Having said that, I can't help but think there's got to be a better way to do this. I'm hoping it's a common enough problem that there is a standard or semi-standard method of doing this that I simply haven't been able to find."}
{"_id": "127070", "title": "Is there an IDE for python that creates the same kind of reflective environment that Smalltalk provides?", "text": "As anyone who has used Smalltalk knows, one of the main benefits (other than a late-bound language that discourages many poor practices), is that the system is totally transparent and reflective, which makes understanding APIs and existing code easy, and locating functionality pretty easy. Is there anything that creates a similar environment for Python? A few examples of features of a smalltalk development environment, not natively found in python are:   * search class/method/etc names,    * examine inheritance hierarchies   * functionality to show the full interface of a given class/object, and where the properties therein originate   * an integrated graphical debugger which allows one to examine the full state of everything in the system, and see every instance of a given type, as well as all threads.  Note that I use windows, so anything that works well on windows would be particularly useful."}
{"_id": "26354", "title": "Leading Web Application Publications", "text": "Almost every major industry has it's standard publications which are considered \"must reads\" in that particular field. After spending some time on Google looking for web application publications, I've come up empty; are there any high quality web application publications available online or through print that someone can point me to?"}
{"_id": "113379", "title": "Whether to put the business logic in Stored Procedure or Not?", "text": "There is always a debate over the topic - \"Whether to put the business logic in Stored Procedure or Not?\". If we decide not to use the ORM Tool and not to put the Business Logic in Stored Procedure then where would we put the Business Logic? In my previous applications I have always preferred putting all of the Business Logic in Stored Procedures only. Then from .NET code I call these Stored Procedures using Data Access Application Blocks. SQLHelper etc. But this can not be the scenario all the time. So I did some googling but ended up in confusion....... Any suggestionss...?"}
{"_id": "32501", "title": "Where can I obtain a first-generation copy of the classic \u201cSorting out Sorting\u201d?", "text": "I cannot even figure out who made it - even the IMDB page is mostly blank, and Wikipedia does not seem to have any information about it. For such a useful film in CompSci, it strikes me as odd that the only meaningful Internet presence I can find are horrible quality copies or excerpts on YouTube. [Note: SO claims this question was migrated to here, but the URL they provide gives a 404, and I can't find it by searching Programmers.SE, so I'm re- asking...]"}
{"_id": "55706", "title": "Writing Resumes for Internships?", "text": "I'm an undergraduate student starting to look for internships. I understand a lot about how to embellish a real-world resume--emphasizing tasks done at previous jobs and whatnot--but I'm not sure if it will translate well to low- experience internship resumes. Internship Resumes are marked by:   * Few to no past Software-related full-time jobs or internships   * Few to no non-school-involved Software-related activities Obviously if you have no experience or activities to list, you're pretty well stuck. So let's assume we have one of each. I'm basically wondering:   1. What is a company looking for most from Intern candidates? Past work, GPA/coursework, Outside projects (Open Source, etc), certain skill sets (languages)   2. Should I be emphasizing _tasks_ , or _jobs/positions_ when listing my experiences?   3. Are skills important to list? If so, which ones in particular?"}
{"_id": "51082", "title": "Would you use (a dialect of) LISP for a real-world application? Where and why?", "text": "LISP (and dialects such as Scheme, Common LISP and Clojure) haven't gained much industry support even though they are quite decent programming languages. (At the moment though it seems like they are gaining some traction). Now, this is not directly related to the question, which is would you use a LISP dialect for a production program? What kind of program and why? Usages of the kind of being integrated into some other code (e.g. C) are included as well, but note that it is what you mean in your answer. Broad concepts are preferred but specific applications are okey as well."}
{"_id": "165710", "title": "Participate in open source project", "text": "Currently, I am through a very creative phase as a developer. I think it's a good time to contribute to an open source project. Not as \"permanent\" developer to a project but in a \"help wanted\" manner in many projects. The open source hosting services that I know are SourceForge and CodePlex. Any suggestions that will help me on this direction?"}
{"_id": "93275", "title": "Work Item Traceability in TFS 2010", "text": "I have created a Windows Form project (VS solution) under a TFS 2010 project. I may eventually add more solutions to the TFS project. **My question** : Can we create a Use Case WIT for a specific solution within a TFS project? Furthermore, is it possible to create a \"traceability matrix\" that starts at the Use Case level and goes down to the the code level (at least the namespace level) of that particular VS solution?"}
{"_id": "197835", "title": "Fundamental TDD: stuck with writing a test so I can write code that I want", "text": "I have a Season class. This Season has a few properties: among them, a list of Games. This should be populated from the same source that populated the rest of the Season properties. I have a test to ensure all items in that list are of type Game. There is no hard requirement that a Season must contain any Games, so testing that the list is not empty would not be entirely correct -- however, the test Season I'm using has plenty of games in it. Writing \"the minimum amount of code to make a test pass\" is already done, because it is the empty list (so there are no not-Game objects). What would be the _fundamental_ TDD way to get the production code to parse+add games to the Season object? Would the _pragmatic_ way be to test via the size? * * * An alternative would be to generate the list of Games in my test, and see if Season.games == list_of_games The problem with that is that there are a crapload of Foreign relations that will be going into those games, making the test code equivilant to the method that I'm testing -- which I don't think is the way it should work. Or should I build them \"by hand\" from the test data -- instead of parsing it?"}
{"_id": "197836", "title": "In C# what is lifetime or lifespan of constant variable?", "text": "In C# if i declare a constant variable is any memory allocated to it as it acts as a compile time replacement? How long is the variable's life?"}
{"_id": "253503", "title": "Why are packed structures not part of the C language?", "text": "Every C compiler offers the option to \"pack\" C structures (e.g. `__attribute__ ((__packed__))`, or `#pragma pack()`). Now, we all know that packing is required, if we'd like to send or store data in a reliable way. This must also have been a requirement since the first days of the C language. So I wonder why packed structures are not part of the C language specification? They're not even in C99 or C11 even though the necessity of having them is known for decades now? What I am missing? Why is it compiler specific?"}
{"_id": "75362", "title": "Bottom-up or top-down approach?", "text": "Not sure if the title _really_ fits with the question, but figured it was the closest to give an overview of my question.. I'm working on a web application that (fairly heavily) employs the use of browser-specific CSS functions such as -moz-transform) and I'm curious as to what approach those with more experience developing these types of applications use. For context, I'm referringly _solely_ to front end development (my backend pipeline's pretty solid :)). The way I see it, there are two methods of development:   * Get new functionality working in all browsers, only introducing new code once all applicable browsers have all been tested.   * Get your functionality complete in one browser. Once your application is complete, start testing on other browsers and introduce fixes where needed. Generally, I've been following the latter. I feel as though it allows me to concentrate on the core functionality and get more completed faster than if I was essentially halting functional development every time something new was completed to deal with browser nuances. So, what practices do _you_ follow when it comes to client-side development? I don't work professionally as a web developer, so best practices in web development are a little tougher to come by, other than my own trial and error (and scouring w3c recommendations). However, always a good thing to learn from those smarter than you :)."}
{"_id": "3622", "title": "How much credit do you take when you used plugins etc.?", "text": "I often develop an application entirely myself. But did I really? I feel strange about that claim and never know when that is true. I mean I designed it, coded it, but I used XYZ plug-in. Can I still claim that I did it all myself even though I didn't create the plugin I used? Consider this conversation? > **ME:** I designed and developed this app entirely myself. > > **Other:** Cool, how did you program XYZ part? > > **ME:** I didn't program that part I used XYZ plugin. > > **Other:** So you didn't really program it _ALL_ yourself than did you? I mean if I must give them credit for the plug-in I used, then do I have to give the language authors credit for the language I used and the IDE authors credit as well? Where do I draw the line? This is just something that always crosses my mine as soon as I am about to take full credit for a project, and was wondering others opinions on the matter."}
{"_id": "167711", "title": "Forking a GPL dual licensed software with business owned copyrights", "text": "After receiving some threats of the copyrights holder of a dual licensed software(GPL2 and commercial) to buy the commercial version for projects in production, I am thinking to make a fork. In a case of GPL2 and commercially dual licensed with business owned copyrights software, is forking the GPL2 version an option? Also, is forking a good way to deal with such cases? ## Background information The software is a web CMS released under 2 versions a GPL2 free open source edition and a commercial edition including technical support and extra functionality. The problem is that now, basing their argumentation on the \"distribution\" definition of the GPL2, the company holding the copyrights argue that delivering the software and some extensions to a client is considered as a \"distribution\". And that such a \"distribution\" falls under the GPL2 obligation to release the custom made extension code. Custom made extensions are mainly designs, templates and very specific functionality. Basically they give me 3 choices:   1. Buying the commercial licensed edition for projects based on the GPL in production,   2. Deleting all the projects in production based on GPL2 version,   3. Releasing all the extensions as GPL2 code. The first 2 options are nothing realistic for finished projects. The third option could be fine, but as most of the extensions are very specific, cleaning the code to make it usable by other users means lot of works and also I am not sure the clients will appreciate to have their website designs and specific functionality released publicly. The copyrights holding company even contacted some clients directly, giving them the \"choice\". I know that this is a very corporate interpretation of GPL2, and a such action is nothing close to legal, but as an independent developer, I don't want to take the risk to get involved in some long and tiring legal procedures. * * * PS. This question was first asked on Stack Overflow where it felt out of the scope and closed, after reading the present site FAQ, discussing about software licensing seems fine."}
{"_id": "110332", "title": "Is it good or bad form to name a function after the workaround it fixes?", "text": "Lets say you have to write some code to fix a bug that on first glance by another engineer would seem weird or unnecessary. Would it be good or bad form to put the code in a method named for example \"preventWindowFromJumpingWhenKeyboardAppears\" or just name it \"forceSpecifiedWindowPosition\" and then add a comment about why you are doing this when calling the method?"}
{"_id": "110333", "title": "Making an attractive, yet still technical architecture diagram", "text": "Does anyone have any advice for making an \"attractive\" software architecture diagram? My manager told me to make my current architecture diagram (which was built just using Visio and basic icons) more \"attractive\" for a presentation I have to give to executive level types who are non-technical. I'm guessing he meant to have something that you'd show to customers or for marketing people to use. Any specific icon sets or particular tips people have? I cannot post my current diagram for privacy reasons but to get the general idea, it's just text, lines, and server icons (http://www.227volts.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/03/exchange2007visiostencils.jpg) that is the icon set that I am using. I'm honestly confused on how to make something like that \"more attractive\" (hell, I think black and white are always the best color combinations to use :P) Edit: So is something like this http://rollerweblogger.org/roller/resource/linkedin- today.png still considered \"professional\" with all the colors and such? I asked my manager and all he said was just make it more marketable while evading questions about what I should do specifically."}
{"_id": "209276", "title": "Application qos involving priority and bandwidth", "text": "Our manager wants us to do applicaiton qos which is quite different from the well-known system qos. We have many services of three types, they have priorites, the manager wants to suspend low priority services requests when there are not enough bandwidth for high priority services. But if the high priority services requests decrease, the bandwidth for low priority services should increase and low priority service requests are allowed again. There should be an algorithm involving priority and bandwidth. I don't know how to design the algorithm, can anyone assist in getting this right? All these services are within a same process. We are setting the maximum bandwidth for the three types of services via ports of services via TC (TC is the linux qos tool whose name means traffic control)."}
{"_id": "209272", "title": "Architecturally speaking, does a database abstraction layer, such as Microsoft's Entity Framework, void the need for a separate Data Access Layer?", "text": "# The way it was For years, I have organized my software solutions as such:   * Data Access Layer (DAL) to abstract the business of accessing data   * Business Logic Layer (BLL) to apply business rules to data sets, handle authentication, etc.   * Utilities (Util) which is just a library of common utility methods I have built over time.   * Presentation Layer which could of course be web, desktop, mobile, whatever. # The way it is now For the past four years or so I have been using Microsoft's Entity Framework (I am predominately a .NET dev) and I am finding that having the DAL is becoming more cumbersome than clean on account of the fact that the Entity Framework has already done the job that my DAL used to do: it abstracts the business of running CRUDs against a database. So, I typically end up with a DAL that has a collection of methods like this one:               public static IQueryable<SomeObject> GetObjects(){         var db = new myDatabaseContext();         return db.SomeObjectTable;     }      Then, in the BLL, this method is used as such:               public static List<SomeObject> GetMyObjects(int myId){         return DAL.GetObjects.Where(ob => op.accountId == myId).ToList();     }      This is a simple example of course as the BLL would typically have several more lines of logic applied, but it just seems a bit excessive to maintain a DAL for such a limited scope. Wouldn't it be better to just abandon the DAL and simply write my BLL methods as such:               public static List<SomeObject> GetMyObjects(int myId){         var db = new myDatabaseContext();         return db.SomeObjectTable.Where(ob => op.accountId == myId).ToList();     }      I am considering dropping the DAL from future projects for the reasons stated above but, before doing so, I wanted to poll the community here for your hindsight/foresight/opinions before I get down the road on a project and discover a problem I didn't anticipate. Any thoughts are appreciated. # Update The consensus seems to be that a separate DAL isn't necessary but (making my own inference here) is a good idea to avoid vendor lock in. For example, if I have a DAL that is abstracting EF calls as illustrated above, if I ever switch to some other vendor I don't need to rewrite my BLL. Only those basic queries in the DAL would need to be rewritten. Having said that, I am finding it tough to envision a scenario in which this would happen. I can already make an EF model of an Oracle db, MSSQL is a given, I am pretty sure that MySql is possible as well (??) so I am not sure if the extra code would ever grant a worthwhile ROI."}
{"_id": "114658", "title": "Data acquisition, storage and management", "text": "I have a device that can measure different values over time, one sample per second. After one measurement run I can export the data in form of a CSV-file. One row per second with timestamp and about 20 columns (values). The question now is how to store these data masses to make the data accessable. I want to work with it using Matlab. I have for example 50 files of data, each representing one measurement run. Each containing around 120 tsd. samples of 20 values of type float, for example a temperature. It would be great if I could request all samples at the same temperature for example. So actually I am looking for a software that can handle and organize that data or a hint how (and what kind of) database to build. Thank you for your help!"}
{"_id": "118106", "title": "Monitor Process", "text": "I have some previous posts talking about how to use python to \"do something\" when a record is inserted or deleted into a postgres database. I finally decided on going with a message queue to handle the \"jobs\"(beanstalkd). I have everything setup and running with another python process that watches the queue and \"does stuff\". I am not really a \"systems\" guy so I am not sure what is a good way to go about monitoring the process to make sure if it fails or dies that it restarts and sends a notification. Google gave some good ideas but I thought asking here I could get some suggestions from people that I am sure have had to do something similar. The process is critical to the system and it just needs to always work and if its not working then it needs to be addressed and other parts of the system \"paused\" until the problem is fixed. My thoughts were to just have a cronscript run every minute or two that checks to see if the process is running. If not it restarts it. Another script (or maybe just another function of the first) would be to monitor the jobs and if the jobs waiting to be processed hit a specific threshold to also flag that there is a major problem. Specifics about process... The process updates the orders in a legacy system with the qty's of items that are shipped or back ordered from our warehouse. SO if these things are not done then when the order is invoiced it will have incorrect qtys and the people involved wouldn't have a good way to spot this unless they are checking each line. I thought I might also have a flag on the order that says \"yes i have been touched\" and if its hasn't to just notify the invoice agent. This same method is going to be used for updating orders with shipping information based on when orders are shipped from UPS Worldship. I don't know, i think i have a handle on this but it just feels \"kludgy\"."}
{"_id": "57707", "title": "c++ write own xml parser vs using tinyxml", "text": "I am currently in a task to generate an XML file for an srt text file containing timestamps and corresponding text. To generate an exe file which accepts file name input and outputs the relevant XML file to be used as part of an automated script. Is it Advisable to use Tinyxml for this? Edit: your comments regarding this are very much appreciated what's the easiest way to generate xml in c++?"}
{"_id": "43329", "title": "Etymology of \"String\"", "text": "So it's obvious that a string of things is a sequence of things, and so a sequence of characters/bytes/etc. might as well be called a string. But who first called them strings? And when? And in what context such that it stuck around? I've always wondered about this."}
{"_id": "104429", "title": "How do you manage workflow tasks for a distributed team?", "text": "I work for a small software company which is responsible for delivering roughly a thousand custom software packages for roughly 100 customers. We are struggling at tracking the release process. The entire thing is pretty repeatable but, because of the different distribution processes, there are about 2 dozen steps from the time we sign a contract to the point a product goes out the door. To make matters more complicated, we have a few different 'types' of employees that are involved. We have a sales person who gets all requirements and deal terms. We have developers who do any modifications required by the customer. There is another type of employee which does the work of running the final build, testing and distributing the product. I'm looking for ideas on how people manage these sorts of processes as we look to fix some issues which have been plaguing us for a while. Primarily, we are seeing a lot of issues sequencing the events AND communicating the information associated with each product to the build/distribution team. Currently we use SVN(SCM), Jenkins/Hudson(Build) and Redmine(Feature/Bug Tracker). Are there software solutions or is this just an internal process we have to document and understand? I'd really like to find a way to keep everyone aware of what the status of a particular app is and notify people that they are expected to do something."}
{"_id": "225567", "title": "How should a senior programmer monitor another senior programmer?", "text": "I'm working with a new senior programmer who has almost the same amount of experience as me. He his own project to work on -- but I have to make sure he does not mess things up. Now, how can I monitor him since he's not junior? Do I examine his code? Cons of this are that I am not as deep into project as himself so it's time consuming for me (have my own project besides this). Do I only do QA from the perspective of another senior? Any advise here is appreciated. I was recently in the same situation where I relied that another senior will handle all tickets properly, and then it took me 3 weeks to fix his oversights. So I do not want to be in the same situation again."}
{"_id": "116650", "title": "Is there any Boost equivalent library for C?", "text": "Is there any Boost equivalent library for C?"}
{"_id": "106379", "title": "Can the language make us stupid?", "text": "Do programming languages, that we are mainly coding in, really change the way we are thinking about problems? Sort of programming kind of the Sapir\u2013Whorf hypothesis. And if they do, doesn't it really mean, that there **are** programming languages, which can make us, well, not stupid, but narrow-minded? **UPDATE:** this question is actually not about acknowledging the fact that we all should know at least three or four languages. This goes without saying. But what if there are some \"dangerous\" languages, which is better not to learn at all?"}
{"_id": "52066", "title": "Why do people store shipping and handling in the order header and not a line item", "text": "I have worked on several ordering systems. Every one of them has tracked the shipping and handling as part of the order header rather then tracking it as a line item. To me, it would make more sense to keep them with the line items, even if the information is not displayed that way to the user. What are the reasons for keeping them in the header?"}
{"_id": "54397", "title": "Explaining interfaces to beginning programmers?", "text": "I've had discussions with other programmers on interfaces (C#). I tried to use the analogy of interfaces being like a contract between programmers. Meaning that when you design to an interface, you are designing to a \"thought out plan\". This didn't fly. The other programmers (limited experience) couldn't get the concept. Or worse, refused to participate. How do you explain to people like that there **are** reasons to use interfaces? Thanks"}
{"_id": "60118", "title": "Appropriate UML diagram", "text": "What is an appropriate UML diagram if I want to display how user request web page, enters some data, then posts the form (and if the validation has not succeeded, user is redirected back to requested web page)?"}
{"_id": "102869", "title": "How do I avoid \"Developer's Bad Optimization Intuition\"?", "text": "I saw on a article that put forth this statement: > Developers love to optimize code and with good reason. It is so satisfying > and fun. But knowing when to optimize is far more important. Unfortunately, > developers generally have horrible intuition about where the performance > problems in an application will actually be. How can a developer avoid this bad intuition? Are there good tools to find which parts of your code really need optimization (for Java)? Do you know of some articles, tips, or good reads on this subject?"}
{"_id": "60114", "title": "Where can I learn about hardware/software co-design?", "text": "I'm involved in an embedded software project where we also need to specify the target hardware. I come from a mostly software-only background, and would like to learn more about the simultaneous design of software and hardware. Are there any books/resources/courses out there that you would recommend?"}
{"_id": "113028", "title": "When do 'static functions' come into use?", "text": "OK, I've learned what a static function is, but I still don't see why they are more useful than private member functions. This might be kind of a newb-ish question here, but why not just replace all private member functions with static functions instead?"}
{"_id": "9810", "title": "How do you respond to: \"Ever since the update...\" questions from clients?", "text": "Ever since the update, people keep calling and saying \"Ever since the update X, Y and Z are slow, bad and crashing\" This has happened ever since the dawn of updates. What do people expect? Gamma comes after beta, and gamma testing always turns our users into The Incredible Hulks... Perhaps you've never heard this from a client, perhaps you're in college or a FLOSS Dev who can spread the blame around more than 5 or 6 guys, perhaps you unit test your code, perhaps you're not in that interesting situation where customers actually call you requesting the exact time of day you'll be releasing today's patch (I'd love to do that to Microsoft) or perhaps you're a sorry son-of-a-biscuit like me who just shipped a new update and went home and is dreading going back to work tomorrow. Anyway, ya'll are smarter than me anyway. How do you field criticism framed in \"You must be a bad programmer because you're making your software worse\"?"}
{"_id": "132248", "title": "Getting users to write decent and useful bug reports", "text": "Does anyone know a good way to **_get users to write a semi-decent_** (read: _useful_ ) **_bug report_**? We wanted to put up something that would make sense to most users (be easy to read and understand), yet give useful information to developers as well. _**It does not work when I click the blue button! Ahhh, I just lost a week's work ... make it work._** isn't very useful, as it is. I started to fix about a list, but thought to check up with you guys, whether a similar method already exists."}
{"_id": "236016", "title": "How to make sure that reported issues are not caused by wrong credentials or typos of the client?", "text": "I have found myself a few times in the situation where a client reports an issue like ' _I can no longer login to my account_ '. Sure enough when trying to login with the client's credentials myself everything works. After that, you start testing in other environments and situations, but still it works every time. After numerous tests you start to wonder if the user is using the right credentials. Some clients get offended when asking this. Others are so sure that they enter the right credentials, they don't even bother trying the credentials that you send them. How can I make sure that the client is using the right credentials?"}
{"_id": "231891", "title": "Not enough information in Bugs / Tickets", "text": "I work in a small team of developers that supports several pieces of software that a large multi-site company uses. We use Spiceworks to raise issues and support requests throughout the IT department not just developers. We constantly get tickets raised with the following or similar: \"Function X is broken, please fix it, it is urgent\" Now this statement is practically useless to me, and it wastes my time and theirs whilst I try to work out the problem often only to discover it is something they had not realised or that should be assigned to someone else. Now my question is in what ways could I try to get people to write more information in bugs? I have thought of several ideas such as a template but I am pretty sure they would be ignored. The only thing I can think of that would almost certainly work is to refuse to action any tickets not written correctly, but I have my doubts as to whether I would be allowed to do this. Incidentally the people raising the bugs tend to have trouble using basic computer functions so I cant ask them to do anything very technical without a great deal of effort. Thanks all"}
{"_id": "113020", "title": "Is using F# good enough for learning the important functional programming concepts of Haskell?", "text": "I'm coming from Linux and Ruby. I've been interested in learning more functional programming, and in particular the ML-ish style. I've tried reading through the Real World Haskell book and trying some Haskell that way. But it's hard to learn this way for me because Haskell is very weird to me and I don't think I'll manage to really learn it until I try to do something real with it. That's why I'm considering learning F# instead, because I'm guessing that this way I can kill two birds with one stone: learn an ML-style functional language paradigm, and also learn Windows programming APIs (.NET libraries). This seems to be a more productive route than learning the Haskell library counterparts of all the Ruby libraries I've grown to love, but staying within the Linux/OSX universe. My question is, how sound is this reasoning? Is F# an adequate substitute for Haskell if you want to learn the programming ideas and techniques that Haskell teaches you?"}
{"_id": "113026", "title": "Cons of working from home", "text": "I am a software developer for a large corporation, and currently work from home two days a week, and I absolutely love it. However, because of juggling of personnel, my team's office may get shutdown in the next couple of months. I have been asked my thoughts on this, and I'm not entirely sure. I love my two days at home, and wouldn't mind even four; but going to the office I feel is essential. When I'm at the office I have lunch with the other developers, share home cooked goodies, and discuss specifics of work. Because I'm also a fairly new member of the team, I'm still learning a lot, and occasionally one of the other team members have to show me how to do something that would be incredibly difficult to do over the phone or IM. For those of you who work from home full time and don't have an office to meet with your other co-workers, what are some problems that have occurred? How did you deal with them? Side note: I'm not concerned about work/home divide, I've got a spare room setup as my office (with only office stuff in it [standing desk, printer, books, etc]), and I'm in a relationship with no prospects of children, and my partner understands not to disturb me while I'm working)."}
{"_id": "82517", "title": "Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express?", "text": "I just came across this while searching on Google for HTML/CSS tutorials. Does anyone recommend this software for building websites? Or should I just stick to learning pencil and paper hand coding instead? I just want to put my focus in the right area. Heres the link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb964635.aspx"}
{"_id": "246292", "title": "How should object identification be managed?", "text": "I have a java/swing application in (hopefully good) MVC structure. Here is a overview of my model classes: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/egVUN.png) One or more `worker`s may work at one `working location` and one `worker` may work at different `working location`s (not at the same time, of course). A `worker` may have different types of a `date` assigned. The `working location` has a list of all its `worker`s. Each `date` has a reference to its `worker`. All model objects are mutable. For managing purposes I implemented a `Database.java` which is responsible for storing the model classes in java collection classes and at program close saving all objects into an xml file (I use java simple xml framework for this task). It has the following three lists: `List<Working location>`, `List<Worker>` and `List<Date>`. So the procedure is:   1. Load xml file on program start   2. Add/edit/remove model-objects to/in/from database (working with the collections of Database.java   3. Save all model-objects from the Database collections into the xml file on program exit (If there is something bad in my mindset until now, please tell me a better way! I will really appreciate it.) * * * Here is the question:   **What is the proper way of identifying model-objects?** I can think of two possibilities:   1. Use object references      * (+) There is no extra code for handling the generation of new unique ids     * (-) \"Everyone\" can edit the objects (Because this is a private project \"Everyone\" means only me)   2. Use unique IDs for every object      * (-) more code     * (+) database may return copies of the model objects to be edited and only when the controller calls the database's methods with the copyied model objects they will be updated * * * **EDIT:** There was an important part which I forgot to mention: Multi-Threading and Multi-User   Both of them can certainly be answered with \"No\". The application will be some kind of one user planning software to replace the current \"pen-and-paper- planning\". I would say the main requirement is to avoid budgeting workers who are on holiday or not to forget to budget workers who come back from holiday the next day. Because this are the mistakes that often happen. Also there is no need for deeper analysis of the model objects and therefore no need for complex database queries _at the moment_. Therefore I like the idea of using XML to create a standalone application. Or is there a good reason to blow up the code to fulfill unlikely requirements?"}
{"_id": "134838", "title": "any website monitoring library/modules to use in my website?", "text": "I'm trying to build a site which user can add their websites which should be monitored and can view a detailed report and statistics of it. And also it should be able to monitor local webservices (mainly), 1) is there any popular java library to use for monitoring a website? (in sense to ping a website and load some content etc., or to show whether site is up or not kinda) 2) Also to validate a flow of website (if possible)?   Example: Go to login page, find fields , fill fields and submit form and validate for successful login or not. I know this kinda looks big but any small part done can be helpful, I've found several of monitoring projects, but they only do normal websites but not local/other webservices and also they can't validate flow of website."}
{"_id": "2463", "title": "Have you used Grapple mobile?", "text": "I'm looking for a way to easily port content driven applications from one mobile platform to another. And recently I've came a cross a grapple mobile that claims that they can compile one code written in js and css to almost all platforms. Have you used it? Are such apps approved by apple? (AFAIK Apple restricted the development to objective-c, c, c++)"}
{"_id": "134832", "title": "Collaboratively working with a WebDesigner - Best practices", "text": "I'm a programmer. I have always worked by myself. I usually do only back-end, but now I have a webproject that I want to hand the \"View\" part to a designer to make it beautiful. What I'm looking for are suggestions, best practices, recommended literature to make it easy and separate (easy to merge) for both parts. I googled a lot, so what I want is your personal opinion, experience on this subject. 1 - The back-end will be Java. 2 - Besides the back-end I haven't chosen (opinions ???) on what is best (JSF, only HTML (REST)) for the frontend Any help and insight is greatly appreciated Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "132343", "title": "Where do I find collaborators for hobby projects", "text": "I am one of those people who learn by doing, and I often get a new idea for a project beside work, which could be fun and perhaps later on profitable. I have had quite a few ideas, but I usually burn out, which is often because I am alone on the projects. Most of my collegues have kids, or don't want to use their spare time for hobby projects. Therefore it is often hard to find other people who I can work with on my hobby projects. My question is therefore, if there is a good place to find co-developers for small non-open source projects?"}
{"_id": "191064", "title": "A class with extra field", "text": "Let's say I have an animal class...with fields of name, height and weight. I want to create a bird class which is an animal, but it has also, say, wing size. How can I do that? My general idea is creating the animal class, and the bird class which inherits animal, and has additional field ...but then different kinds of birds would inherit that class. **My Questions:**   * Is my solution an appropriate OO approach to this type of problem?   * Is there a known design pattern for handling data modeling problems of this type?"}
{"_id": "156562", "title": "visibility:hidden Vs visibility:collapse", "text": "In CSS, what is the difference between visibility:hidden and visibility:collapse They are given to be separate in W3Schools, but I see no difference in their output. I have tried it in Google Crome."}
{"_id": "191063", "title": "Should classes, enums and other entities be placed in separate files?", "text": "My company's team lead\\architect argues that a large-scale project is easier to understand if \"entities connected by logic\" are placed in one .cs file. I quote:   * \"The whole structure of the logic and the interface and the class can be seen in one place, this is an argument which can't be refute. To see the same thing but with a bunch of files you need to use the tools, class diagram, R# for navigation, etc.\"   * \"Following the poor theory I might scream that an army of separated files is cool, but when it comes to making changes to the existing code, especially if you were not a writer of this code, it's very difficult to understand plenty of scattered files. So on forums, you can write that \"one enum- one file\", but in practice this approach should never be used \"   * \"... As to the separation of code base between developers, nowadays it's not a problem edit simultaneously the same file. The merge is not a problem.\" I heard and read many times that we have to create one .cs file per enum, class and so on and this is the best practice. But I can't convince him. He says that he don't trust to any well-known programmers such as Jon Skeet. By the way here is Skeet's opinion on this topic: Where is the best place to locate enum types? What do you think? Is there a real problem? Or is it a matter of taste and should be regulated by the coding standard of the organization?"}
{"_id": "117304", "title": "Basic premise on counting sort. How is k related to to Big Oh?", "text": "I am reading (Cormen) on counting sort.   I understand the structure of the algorithm but the statement: > In practice, we usually use counting sort when we have k = O(n), in which > case the running time is Theta(n). Is not clear to my mind. k is just the range of integers expected in the input. Why is the asymptotic notation used in this statement for k? I don't get it."}
{"_id": "117301", "title": "How do you structure unit tests for multiple objects that exhibit the same behavior?", "text": "In a lot of cases I might have an existing class with some behavior:               class Lion     {         public void Eat(Herbivore herbivore) { ... }     }      ...and I have a unit test...               [TestMethod]     public void Lion_can_eat_herbivore()     {         var herbivore = buildHerbivoreForEating();         var test = BuildLionForTest();         test.Eat(herbivore);         Assert.IsEaten(herbivore);     }      Now, what happens is I need to create a Tiger class with idential behavior to that of the Lion:               class Tiger     {         public void Eat(Herbivore herbivore) { ... }     }      ...and since I want the same behavior, I need to run the same test, I do something like this:               interface IHerbivoreEater     {         void Eat(Herbivore herbivore);     }      ...and I refactor my test:               [TestMethod]     public void Lion_can_eat_herbivore()     {         IHerbivoreEater_can_eat_herbivore(BuildLionForTest);     }               public void IHerbivoreEater_can_eat_herbivore(Func<IHerbivoreEater> builder)     {         var herbivore = buildHerbivoreForEating();         var test = builder();         test.Eat(herbivore);         Assert.IsEaten(herbivore);     }      ...and then I add another test for my new `Tiger` class:               [TestMethod]     public void Tiger_can_eat_herbivore()     {         IHerbivoreEater_can_eat_herbivore(BuildTigerForTest);     }      ...and then I refactor my `Lion` and `Tiger` classes (usually by inheritance, but sometimes by composition):               class Lion : HerbivoreEater { }     class Tiger : HerbivoreEater { }          abstract class HerbivoreEater : IHerbivoreEater     {         public void Eat(Herbivore herbivore) { ... }     }      ...and all is well. However, since the functionality is now in the `HerbivoreEater` class, it now feels like there's something wrong with having tests for each of these behaviors on each subclass. Yet it's the subclasses that are actually being consumed, and it's only an implementation detail that they happen to share overlapping behaviors (`Lions` and `Tigers` may have totally different end-uses, for instance). It seems redundant to test the same code multiple times, but there are cases where the subclass can and does override the functionality of the base class (yes, it might violate the LSP, but lets face it, `IHerbivoreEater` is just a convenient testing interface - it may not matter to the end-user). So these tests do have some value, I think. What do other people do in this situation? Do you just move your test to the base class, or do you test all subclasses for the expected behavior? **EDIT** : Based on the answer from @pdr I think we should consider this: the `IHerbivoreEater` is just a method signature contract; it does not specify behavior. For instance:               [TestMethod]     public void Tiger_eats_herbivore_haunches_first()     {         IHerbivoreEater_eats_herbivore_haunches_first(BuildTigerForTest);     }          [TestMethod]     public void Cheetah_eats_herbivore_haunches_first()     {         IHerbivoreEater_eats_herbivore_haunches_first(BuildCheetahForTest);     }          [TestMethod]     public void Lion_eats_herbivore_head_first()     {         IHerbivoreEater_eats_herbivore_head_first(BuildLionForTest);     }"}
{"_id": "210209", "title": "Can Scrum use technical specifications in the Product Backlog rather than user stories?", "text": "At the company I am currently working for we started to do Scrum projects. It was not so hard to convince the managers to move from waterfall to Scrum. We're doing a project where we rebuild our platform from scratch. So (most) functionality is known and most improvements are rather technical. In this it could be justified to have technical tasks rather than user stories. Our backlog has got all kinds of technical tasks like:   * Rewrite DB class from MySQL to PostgreSQL.   * Implement system logging.   * Rewrite object cache. Things that come up during the stand-ups include that long \"research tasks\" are wanted, but they are never done. Also, the team members claim in the middle of the sprint that unplanned tasks need to be added. How should a Scrum Master deal with this? Could it be that for this kind of project, Scrum is NOT the way to go?"}
{"_id": "235425", "title": "Best practices for caching search queries", "text": "I am trying to improve performance of my ASP.net Web Api by adding a data cache but I am not sure how exactly to go about it as it seems to be more complex than most caching scenarios. An example is I have a table of Locations and an api to retrieve locations via search, for an autocomplete.               /api/location/Londo      and the query would be something like               SELECT * FROM Locations WHERE Name like 'Londo%'      These locations change very infrequently so I would like to cache them to prevent trips to the database for no real reason and improve the response time. Looking at caching options I am using the Windows Azure Appfabric system, the problem is it's just a key/value cache. Since I can only retrieve items based on keys I couldn't actually use it for this scenario as far as Im aware. Is what I am trying to do bad use of a caching system? Should I try looking into NoSql DB which could possibly run as a cache for something like this to improve performance? Should I just cache the entire table/collection in a single key with a specific data structure which could assist with the searching and then do the search upon retrieval of the data?"}
{"_id": "59692", "title": "Does anyone do hardware benchmarks on compiling code?", "text": "I've seen a bunch of sites that benchmark new hardware on gaming performance, zipping some files, encoding a movie, or whatever. Are there any that test the impact of new hardware (like SSDs, new CPUs, RAM speeds, or whatever) on compile and link speeds, either linux or windows? It'd be really good to find out what mattered the most for compile speed and be able to focus on that, instead of just extrapolating from other benchmarks."}
{"_id": "97227", "title": "Setting $_POST variables as a means of passing data / Not passing parameters in functions", "text": "I've got a legacy PHP web application wherein almost each and every function makes references to $_POST variables - retrieving their values, AND **setting them (or setting new POST variables)** as a means to communicate with the calling code or other functions. eg:               function addevent()     {     ...     $add_minutes=$_POST['minutes'];          ...     $_POST['event_price']='';      ...     }      I would have thought that the straightforward approach would have been to pass to a function all the values that it needs, and return all what they generate. As an old-school programmer, albeit a bit out of touch now, I find this structure grotesquely unsettling - where data is passed arbitrarily all over the place. What do others think? Is the above approach acceptable now? * * * Edit 1 One conceivably genuine use-case is as follows. This is a function which handles embed tags or an uploaded file.               function brandEvent($edit_id='')     {     ...         switch($_POST['upload_or_embed'])         {             case 'embed':             ...             // uses $_POST['embed_video_code']             ...             break;             case 'upload':             ...             // uses DIFFERENT POST variables             ...         }     }      Is this a sensible code structure?"}
{"_id": "97226", "title": "When to mark a user story as done in scrum?", "text": "There is a notion in scrum that emphasizes **delivery of workable units** at the end of each sprint. Each workable unit also maps directly of indirectly to a user story and when in new sprint PO introduces new PBI (new user stories), this means that practically team can't always go back to previous user stories to do the rest of the job, which in turn means that when you implement a user story, you should do it as complete as it's known to the team in that time, and you shouldn't forget anything (something like \"I'm sorry, I've forgotten to implement validation for that input control\" or \"I didn't know that cross- browser check is part of the user story\"). At the other hand, test, backward compatibility, acceptance criteria, deployment and more and more concepts come after each user story. So, when can team members know that the user story is done **completely** , not just for demo, and start a new one?"}
{"_id": "45202", "title": "Learning C, C++ and C#", "text": "I'm sure you guys are tired of this question but after wading through hours of similar posts and questions I've really not made any progress to my specific concerns. I was hoping you guys could shed some light on a couple of questions I have before I decide on a course of action. BACKGROUND: I'm wanting to enroll in some type of program to learn a programming language/get a certificate/degree to work in the field. I've always been interested and bought a book on VB back in high school and dabbled. Now I want to get serious after a huge hiatus. Question 1: I've read it's counter-productive to learn C first, then C++ or C# because you develop bad habits. In a lot of college courses I've looked at, learning C/C++ is mandatory to advance. Should I ever bother learning C? On a related note, I really don't understand the difference between C and C++, or C# for the matter other than it incorporates .NET (which, I understand, is a compilation of tools and libraries that make programming easier and faster). Question 2: Where did you guys learn to program? Where do you recommend? Is it possible to land a job programming being self-taught? Is my best chance an ITT tech or a regular college? I was going to enroll in a JC and go from there but I can't decide what to do. LAST question :) I heard C++ is being \"ported\" to .NET. True? And if so, is this going to make C++ a solid, in-demand language to learn? Thanks for looking. :)"}
{"_id": "41990", "title": "Is learning how to use C (or C++) a requirement in order to be a good (excellent) programmer?", "text": "When I first started to learn how to program, _real_ programmers could write assembly in their sleep. Any serious schooling in computer science would include a hefty bit of training and practice in programming using assembly. That has since changed, to the point where I see Computer Science degrees with assembly, if included at all, is relegated to one assignment, and one chapter, for a total of two weeks' work out of 4 years' schooling. C/C++ programming seems to have followed a similar path. I'm no longer surprised to interview university graduates who have not spent more than two weeks programming in C++, and have only read of C in a book somewhere. While the most serious CS degrees still seem to include significant time learning and using one or both of the languages, the trend is clearly towards less enforced C/C++ in school. It's clearly possible to make a career producing good work without ever reading or writing a single line of C or C++ code. Given all of that, is learning the two languages worth the effort? Are they at all required to excel? (beyond the obvious, non-language specific advice, such as \"a good selection of languages is probably important for a comprehensive education\", and \"it's probably a good idea to keep trying out and learning new languages throughout a programmers' career, just to stretch the gray cells\")"}
{"_id": "191998", "title": "Can one can survive in the IT industry without knowledge of C and C++?", "text": "I am just a graduate from India and I have knowledge of Java, JSP and Servlets, Android application development and some iOS development. I do not have a background in C or C++ and a little weak background in Data Structures and Algorithms. I want to know whether I can make a successful career in the IT industry without knowledge of C or C++ but having a strong grasp on Java and Python (which is what I am thinking of learning next). As for the Data Structures and Algorithms part I am planning to study them again with implementation in Java as I am not fluent in C or C++. Can I go good in future if I know Data Structures through Java?"}
{"_id": "196879", "title": "Jenkins to automate deployment of ASP.NET applications", "text": "Is there any possibility to automate/semi-automate deployments of ASP.NET web applications using Jenkins. It can be under controlled or uncontrolled environments, for uncontrolled user needs to enter userid and password. I am looking out for ways to copy the files from target to destination and run sql scripts in web farm scenario. **Edit** Currently we are using bat files to xcopy/configure app pool/sql cmd, etc to deploy the application. But for this to work, production support team needs to download the source code, build the project and run the bat files to deploy the application. Now, we want to automate the deployment without user downloading the source code and end user just needs to visit a url and fill userid and password parameters and select svn tag and it should get deployed. But Jenkins is running under anonymous login, so the existing bat file will not work since it doesn't have permissions to run the script. So, I would like to know if there exists any alternatives for this kind of situation. It will be good if user context is impersonated by using entered userid and password allowing existing batch file to run without further changes. If it is not possible, we would like to explore other ideas too but we don't have flexibility to choose a automated tool like puppet, etc, we should stick around with these batch files."}
{"_id": "196878", "title": "Custom Alphabetic Sorting of Array in Java", "text": "I have a requirement to read a text file with lines in tag=value format and then output the file with specific tags listed first and the rest sorted alphabetically. The incoming file is randomly sorted with the exception of the first line. The output needs the first two lines to always be the same. For example, given the following tags:               NAME     AGE     SSN     MARITAL_STATUS     NO_OF_DEPENDENTS      The input will always have NAME first and the remaining tags (there are literally hundreds) sorted randomly. The output needs to have SSN first and NAME second and the rest sorted alphabetically so I would end up with:               SSN     NAME     AGE     MARITAL_STATUS     NO_OF_DEPENDENTS        Note: These are just sample tags. The actual file has 13 fields which need to be listed first and the remaining few hundred listed alphabetically. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do the sorting. Right now my plan is to read the lines in the incoming file and marshal them into two List objects. The first will contain the specific tags which need to be placed first and the second will have everything else. I will then sort the second list and merge it into the first list. This seems complicated and I feel like I'm missing an easier or more elegant approach."}
{"_id": "97228", "title": "What are some good online coding log/management tool?", "text": "I am looking for an online, free coding management tool, where I could log my coding process, for example, bugs to be fixed and has been fixed. What are some good recommendation?"}
{"_id": "199523", "title": "Where should I put my method", "text": "I am writing a Java program using the MVC design pattern. I have classes `Item` and `Supplier`. In the database they are connected through a `item_supplier` table. I'm writing a method which will give me all suppliers for a specific item (using itemID): `public ArrayList<Supplier> getItemSuppliers(int itemID)` I have a DB layer as well and I have `DBItem` and `DBSupplier`. Where should this method go? I will use it only (mostly) on my `ItemUI` so I am thinking of `DBItem` as the correct place. \\-- Usually when we have the SalesLineItem pattern (Sales * - 1 SalesLineItem 1 - * Item) we have a separate class, but in that case, do I need such as my only interaction with that table (`item_supplier`) will be with this printing (and one updating) method? Basically, do I need to do a `ItemSupplier` model layer class and respectively `DBItemSupplier` or can I just have those two methods `getItemSuppliers` and `updateItemSuppliers` on either `DBItem` or `DBSupplier` (and if the latter, where?)"}
{"_id": "99043", "title": "Is SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) objective?", "text": "Consider two UI designers who want to design \"user attractive\" designs. \"User attraction\" is a concept that is not objective and only resides in the mind of designers. Thus designer A could for example pick up red color, while designer B picks blue. Designer A create a layout which is entirely different from designer B, and so on. I read about SRP (Single Responsibility Principle) and what I understood was kind of a subjective analysis or break down of responsibilities that can vary from an OO designer to another OO designer. Am I right? In other words, is it possible to have two excellent object oriented analyzer and designer who come up with two different designs for one system based on SRP principal?"}
{"_id": "199529", "title": "How can I choose what to use to write my next webservice in C#?", "text": "I'm about to write some webservices from scratch and I'm a bit confused about the approach to take. The obvious choices were WCF and MVC 4 Web API, but I am having a hard time deciding. The two factors that are important are making it self-describing (eg, MEX etc.) and easy to consume (Maybe RESTful?). I'm struggling to pick which one to discard in favour of the other. The way things are going, I'm hearing more and more about REST so I should probably go in that direction, but apparently that's also possible to implement using WCF. I'm quite torn about how best to proceed, and there isn't a lot of information out there saying \"Oh, these days developers always use X because Y\" so it's tricky to judge the merits of each, and how easy those merits are to implement."}
{"_id": "102288", "title": "Do donations count as \"commercial use\"?", "text": "Lets say I'm building community that uses some webapp. These webapp uses a a modified version a a GPLv2 licensed theme. Additionally the community uses a donation mechanism to fund itself. Donation overheads will be given back to the community in some form, so there is no commercial goal behind it. Questions:   1. Am I required to publish the modified version of the theme if I only use it?   2. Is this \"commercial use\" in terms of the GPL? (I'm not sure it this is the right SE site)"}
{"_id": "99049", "title": "Using a microframework, or rolling your own", "text": "I really like a microframework in Python called Flask. I have used it for the past 2 months, and I find it excellent. Now, I would like to use it in deployment, but, there are a few things I'm afraid of. Firstly, even though its a microframework, it depends on Werkzeug (a WSGI framework type of thing), which, in case I run into a problem, makes it more difficult to debug stuff. Second, its not extremely popular, which means that support would be difficult to get. So, what I was thinking is I could roll my own microframework in Python that doesn't have all the features of Flask, but, only the ones I need, and I would know it through and through and could fix any problems that I might encounter, I estimate this will take 1000-2000 lines, and about 2-3 weeks for me, and probably a lot less with a team of 2. What do you guys suggest?"}
{"_id": "9657", "title": "Programming with Dyslexia", "text": "I have very severe Dyslexia along with Dysnomia and Dysgraphia. I have known about it since I was a child. My reading and writing skills are pretty crippled, but I have learned to deal with it. However, with today's IDEs, I find it very easy to stay focused and in the zone when I code. But when I write text (like this post) I find it much harder to stay focused. In general, do dyslexics find it easier to read and write code compared to general reading and writing? What types of tricks and tools do dyslexics use to help them master programming better than normal reading and writing?"}
{"_id": "194586", "title": "Android game loop in separate thread", "text": "I am about to port a game that was initially written for iOs and I am having some doubts how certain things should be done. I have been looking many of the examples of the game loops for android, and almost everywhere the game loop is designed to run in separate thread and not in main UI thread which seems fine and logical to me. However, my game scene is combination of OpenGL graphics and standard android views (buttons, labels, etc...) and by design, the primary game logic and OpenGL drawing would be done in separate thread and rest of the standard stuff would be done in main UI thread. In many situations, I will need to call functions that should run in game thread from main UI thread and vice versa. As a very basic, simple example, when user performs touch (which is detected in UI thread) the event should propagated and be processed by the game thread. Do you know some good mechanisms or patterns on how to such cross thread interaction? Is there a simpler solution to a game loop, maybe by not running loop in a separate thread?"}
{"_id": "113683", "title": "What are ways I can speed of development time when building applications?", "text": "I noticed that overtime with experience that the curve of learning shifts from trying to learn a language or technology (the way it works) to how to develop applications faster and with less code. I am very interested to see how other developers have minimized the time it takes to get applications to market. I know for a fact that by learning just one thing it can save you a ton of time. For example I started learning lambda expressions and code that normally took 3 lines now only takes 1 and is alot faster to type. Another angle is shortcuts and tools in an IDE itself. For instance I can't believe I didn't know how to remove unused using statements from my source code so I used to do it manually until I found out there was a tool in VS for removing them. Are there any resources for learing faster ways of developing applications? Keyboard Shortcuts, tools, programs, references? Is there like a reference where one can learn these things? If not can you please share how you learned some of these tips? **NOTE:** This question is geared towards .NET, C# and the Visual Studio IDE"}
{"_id": "194580", "title": "How does Javascript code become asynchronous when using callbacks?", "text": "I've been doing a lot of reading online trying to figure out how to write asynchronous JavaScript code. One of the techniques that has come up a lot in my research is to use callbacks. While I understand the process of how to write and execute a callback function, I'm confused why callbacks seem to automagically make the JavaScript execution asynchronous. So, my question is: how does adding in callback functions to my JavaScript code make said code automagically async?"}
{"_id": "194583", "title": "Factory Method: does the Product have to be a different class than the Creator?", "text": "I want to build three sites in PHP. I'm doing this as slowly, thoughtfully and carefully as I can, to learn as much about things like OOP and software architecture as possible. From past experience I already know there will be a time when I will be glad to have logging functionality. I probably want to have different types of logs, by which I mean that in a `.ini` file, I want to be able to specify if logging should go to a text file (perhaps a tab-delimited or CSV file), a database table, or smoke signals. I'd have (let's say) a Logger class, which would define, for example, an AddEntry() method. For each log type, I'd make a subclass that knows how to log to CSV file, write to a database or kindle a fire, respectively. Since I know I will want to have an instance of a subclass, but I won't know which subclass to instantiate until runtime, I figured I'd use the Factory Method pattern. However, When I look at its Wikipedia article I'm noticing that the `Creator` and `ConcreteCreator` have a different type than the `Product`, if I'm reading the UML correctly. My question comes down to this: I want to have the factory method as a static method of the Logger base class itself. If I do that, am I setting myself up for a trap that I'm not seeing yet? Is there a reason why the `Creator` and `ConcreteCreator` should be of a different type than the `Product`?"}
{"_id": "184412", "title": "What's the difference between fault, error and defect?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Difference between defect and bug in testing In computer science technical writing, especially in software engineering, what's the difference between fault, error and defect? I want to quote an answer on Stack OverFlow by Daniel Joseph: > To quote the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge > > Typically, where the word \u201cdefect\u201d is used, it refers to a \u201cfault\u201d as > defined below. However, different cultures and standards may use somewhat > different meanings for these terms, which have led to attempts to define > them. Partial definitions taken from standard (IEEE610.12-90) are: > > Error: \u201cA difference\u2026between a computed result and the correct result\u201d > > Fault: \u201cAn incorrect step, process, or data definition in a computer > program\u201d > > Failure: \u201cThe [incorrect] result of a fault\u201d > > Mistake: \u201cA human action that produces an incorrect result\u201d Based on my understanding of above definition, error is the result of fault, i.e., failure. Could someone explain more clearly?"}
{"_id": "215687", "title": "Difference between bug, defect and flaw", "text": "I was reading \"Software Security: Building Security In\" and in the first chapter I faced with 3 terms: bug, defect and flaw. The author gave a definition for each of them but I couldn't completely understand these. Can someone give me some examples for each term? What is a defect and what is a flaw? I think I know what bug is, a bug is a malfunction of a part of system which produces undesirable result, be it crashing on a wrong input or miscalculating a series of computations. Can someone elaborate more and correct me if I am wrong in this? **UPDATE**   To be more precise in the book I mentioned above, they (the words) are presented in a way to make a distinction, that's why I am asking to know more. In that book there are some examples denoting which sample belongs to what and which category. For example: Buffer overflow is said to be a bug and issues in method overriding (subclassing issues) is being related to flaw category. Again race condition handling issues are considered bugs and Error-handling problems (fails open) are told to be flaws! I want more elaboration on these regards."}
{"_id": "105484", "title": "Would you tell your manager about intent to apply for a growth opportunity elsewhere", "text": "I like the company I am currently with as a .NET Software Developer - high- tech, great atmosphere, great people and great cause. I also have a fair bit of flexibility and resposibility in that I try to keep us up to date with recent technologies and come up with the architecture for our desktop applications, when we have to design something new, a rare occassion. Overall, it is a great place, albiet with mediocre compensation. It has been almost 4 years and things are getting stagnant in terms of growth and challenges. There is currently a good growth prospect with a previous employer that I am entertaining and will have a good chance with sufficient effort. But I have neither asked for a promotion nor thoroughly expressed my career ambitions to my current manager. So there is this feeling I am putting him at a disadvantage. My current manager is a level headed guy which makes me think I can discusss this challenge with him. After all, he could act as a reference for me in the future. Also, I am sure there are good thing to be said about honesty and professionalism and trying to avoid using the other offer to gain internal promotion. I want to grow professionally but cannot affort to jeopardize relationships or burn any bridges. Would you talk to your manager about entertaining a position somewhere else? If I were a manager, I sure would appreciate if one of my employees came up to me to talk about this. If he were one of my key guys, I sure would do what is neccessary to keep him around."}
{"_id": "148688", "title": "When should I backup files?", "text": "At our company we are not using a source control so we do backup manually. My habit is like this: I backup only scripts where I removed code snippets, and those scripts where I only added code snippets I don't backup. Is it reasonable to backup each time when you change something, or there are some conditions for file subversion? And when we backup changed files, should we only backup that file or all the project?"}
{"_id": "112377", "title": "What factors should be evaluated when determining a desktop software price?", "text": "What factors should be evaluated when determining a desktop software price?"}
{"_id": "115680", "title": "random.choice in other languages", "text": "Python has a nice function in the standard library `random.choice` which returns a random element from a sequence. But none of the other languages I've developed in have thought to include such a feature. Do other languages provide such a feature? Why not?"}
{"_id": "115684", "title": "PCI Compliance, FDMS and TransArmor", "text": "So, I've been tasked to work on an integration project where we will ask customers for credit card information and send it over to our integration partners, who will process the payment/cc info and process the rest of the order. So, one the tasks for become PCI compliant. However, the partner is also looking to get PCI compliant, and they said that as part of that process, they cannot accept cc info over the internet from an external source. But then I was reading about it, and found out there is some way to become a TPA (Third Party Accepter) that can allow the passing of the credit card to the partner. I also heard the word FDMS thrown around at the first meeting - some research led me to believe this stands for First Data Merchant Services. What I found is that First Data is a merchant processor, who actually contacts the issuing banks to check the credit cards and then collect payment. The partner wants to achieve a level of PCI compliance where they do not store credit cards, so they said when they take credit cards they will send it to FDMS using something called TransArmor, where they send the CC info to FDMS and they send back a token - and that is what they use to access the CC info. I did my research on this, and there is a lot of information out there, and I cannot find a clear and concise place where I can read about all of this - so I have a few questions on this whole process:   1. Is there one place where I can read what exactly it takes to become PCI compliant?   2. Are there different levels of PCI compliance?   3. Where exactly does TPA fall into all this?   4. Is there an example of how TransArmor works? Lots of loaded questions, but thanks all!"}
{"_id": "125960", "title": "How to manage your functional documentation?", "text": "Our functional / business documentation is spread across Word files on our corporate Intranet. It's difficult to find and update information. There has to be a better way. Any ideas? We had thought a Wiki would work great. Would seem to be an easy way to find information and easy for individual developers and analysts to add bits of documentation quickly and easily. We'd be curious to know if other development (or business analysis) teams use Wiki's with success. The target for this documentation is the internal development team: developers, qa, and to a lesser extent business analysts."}
{"_id": "113977", "title": "Do I need to Clean/Rebuild a project before Debugging/Publishing it in Visual Studio?", "text": "This is probably a stupid question, but do I need to Clean/Rebuild before Debugging or Publishing a Visual Studio project? I see other developers doing it all the time, and at some point I started doing it without even thinking. It seems habit to always go Clean, wait, Rebuild, wait, Publish. I know I didn't always do it.... I think I started to do it after spending a bunch of time debugging an error, only to discover it went away when I Cleaned and Rebuilt the solution. I've had this issue more than once too, so I know it wasn't a one-time thing, but it seems like a huge waste of time to always be cleaning/rebuilding your projects."}
{"_id": "113976", "title": "Why coffeescript instead of javascript?", "text": "I think somehow building a language which compiles to another language feels like a bad idea from the start, instead of learning javascript properly from the start. Look into Douglas Crockfords Good Parts and then are you hooked. And javascript is not hard - writing good code is hard regardless of language! If you write crappy code in javascript, then you propably will write crappy code in coffeescript or lattescript or what the flavor will be of the day. And to say that coffeescript syntax is beautiful passes me. I like my curly braces and C syntax - and would preferably work in a language which is like that (sorry VB!). And more toys and languages and frameworks for doing the same thing all over again feels not like progress to me anymore!"}
{"_id": "112082", "title": "How to handle 'external' dependencies in scrum?", "text": "If you've planned a number of user stories for a sprint and one candidate story is dependent on some external provider delivering something to your team. For example an online service provider adding a new API call to their system or enabling your test account on their system or suchlike. You know it's coming 'soon'. Do you go ahead and add the story to the sprint hoping they'll deliver what is required in time for you to complete your story **or** do you wait till the next sprint, when you know it will be ready and you can start immediately even if it means not starting the story as early as you could. If the former how do you handle 'unearned' story points lost because of the dependency? partial credit (eek!) or take it on the chin."}
{"_id": "197584", "title": "What principle of OOAD is this pattern breaking?", "text": "I'm trying to make a case for not putting the structure in the parent BaseModule class I've shown below. I'm more for a Strategy Pattern, and minimizing inheritance in favor of has-a relationships, but I am not really sure of what principle of OOAD this pattern is breaking. What principle of OOAD is this pattern breaking? Potential Pattern:               public interface IStringRenderer     {         string Render();     }          public class BaseModel : IRequestor     {         public abstract void  Init();         public abstract void Load();     }          public class BaseModule<TModel> : IStringRenderer where TModel : BaseModel     {         public TModel Model { get; set; }              public override string Render()         {             return             string.Join(                 \"\",                 new string[]                 {                     \"<header/>\",                     \"<main-container>\",                         \"<side-nav>\",                             \"<side-navigation/>\",                         \"</side-nav>\",                         \"<main-content>\",                             RenderMainContent(),                         \"</main-content>\"                 });         }              public abstract string RenderMainContent();     }          public class MyModuleModel : BaseModel     {         public List<int> Ints { get; set; }                      ...     }          public class MyModule : BaseModule<MyModuleModel>     {         public override string RenderMainContent()         {             return             string.Join(\",\", Model.Ints.Select(s => s.ToString()).ToArray());         }     }      Preferred Pattern (duplicated some code to be clear):               public interface IStringRenderer     {         string Render();     }          public class BaseModel : IRequestor     {         public abstract void Init();         public abstract void Load();     }          public class MyModuleModel : BaseModel     {         public List<int> Ints { get; set; }              ...     }          public class MyModule : IStringRenderer     {         public MyModuleModel Model { get; set; }              public MyModule(MyModuleModel model)         {             this.Model = model;         }              public override string Render()         {             return             string.Join(                 \"\",                 new string[]                 {                     \"<header/>\",                     \"<main-container>\",                         \"<side-nav>\",                             \"<side-navigation/>\",                         \"</side-nav>\",                         \"<main-content>\",                             RenderMainContent(),                         \"</main-content>\"                 });         }              public string RenderMainContent()         {             return             string.Join(\",\", Model.Ints.Select(s => s.ToString()).ToArray());         }     }      There are parts of this pattern that I'm not trying to focus on, but instead I am thinking about where the 'structure', or the 'tags' are living. In the first example they live in the parent, but in the second example they have been pushed into the derived class. Right now, the examples are pretty simple, but something like 'side-nav' could potentially get complicated, and may need to be controlled by the child anyway. I feel the principle here is that I don't feel like the 'tag' structure shouldn't be in the parent class as in the first example. There are other things I've removed in my 'preferred version' -- namely the generics. (Any suggested reading on good/bad for that choice is welcome). Proponents of the first example's embedded structure like the fact that they can wield changes to large amounts of child classes. I feel offering the flexibility to derived classes is the way to go, and if there needs to be a parent that parent only offers functionality and cross-cutting features, but does not bottle up canned structure."}
{"_id": "182267", "title": "should you always enter a bug in a bug tracking system", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should developers enter bugs into the bug tracking system?   >  Should I log trivial fixes? For a project I'll be doing in school soon I will be working with 6 other people. We will probably be using YouTrack to track our bugs and we can obviously see the value in this system. My question, however, is whether a bug should always be entered in the bug tracking system. In our case, some people will be front-end developers, others will be back-end developers but the complexity of the project will not be of such a high level that back-end developers wouldn't know how to solve a front end bug. By this I don't mean that they will actually solve it but because they (think) they know it's an easy fix, what's stopping them from just letting one of the front-end developers know about the bug by telling him across the table. The main reasons I can come up with are these:   * The bug might at first seem very easy to fix but actually uncover a far larger problem (at this point in time presumably it would be entered, but by the frond-end developer.   * You might take someone of out of the \"zone\" by just casually mentioning they have a bug somewhere, which might be solved in 10 seconds but then requires them 15 minutes to get back in the zone. On the other hand it does seem silly that you'd have to enter a bug which **could** be fixed in 2 minutes, especially if the part you're working on at the time needs that bug to be fixed. I understand this is probably a bit subjective, but I also feel that other people could give very good reasons for doing it one way or the other which is what I would like to hear."}
{"_id": "139893", "title": "Should I log trivial fixes?", "text": "I'm in a code shop of two. And while I understand that a bug tracker is useful where the number of programmers is greater or equal to one, I'm not so convinced that logging bugs, changes, and fixes is worth the time when they're trivial. When I find a simple bug, I understand it, fix it, and run it through some testing. And THEN I realized I need to go log it. I know in theory that bug logging should be done somewhere between finding the bug and fixing the bug, but if fixing it is faster than logging it, it seems like a drag. In larger code-shops, the boss pays attention to who is doing what and it's nice to know where others are mucking about. I find myself describing things that I've already fixed and then instantly closing them. I have doubts that anyone will ever look at this closed bug again. Is it time to trim the process fat?"}
{"_id": "197586", "title": "regular, average programmer - scared of geeks and their skills", "text": "Just like in any other field, 90% of workers do trivial routine things and only less than 10% actually do the most difficult things. Most programmers in the industry are average, and so am I. There are lots of smarties/geeks who have been coding/programming since age 10-12. Obviously they have more experience than me -- I started learning software development/programming at age 20, when I first went to university. I realize that to match their level, I would have to spend all my time for years, just solving problems, making my brains work hard and get used to a developer's mindset. With many other things to do in life, I understand that I will most likely be constantly behind geeks - I can't solve TopCoder/Google CodeJam problems, I'm bad with algorithms etc. I should have studied programming since childhood to match the level of other geeks. In other words, I feel guilty, stupid and most of all envious and scared of geeks! No super brainy geek knows everything about programming but: there are guys who are simply 10x better than me. I feel compelled to study all the time, but I can't and don't want to. I'm sure many developers have had this feeling - when you envy someone much smarter than you. How do you deal with this feeling? I'm really confused, I keep thinking they can steal my job, and I can't even compete with them."}
{"_id": "142229", "title": "What is a generic term for name/identifier? (as opposed to label)", "text": "I need to refer to a number of _things_ that have both an identifier value (used in code and configuration), and a human-readable label. These things include:   * database columns   * dropdown items   * subapplications   * objects stored in a dictionary I want two unambiguous terms. One to refer to the identifier/value/key. One to refer to the label. As you can see, I'm pretty settled on the latter :) For the former, _identifier_ seems best (not everything is strictly a _key_ , and _value_ and _name_ could refer to the label; although, _identifier_ usually refers only to a variable name), but I would prefer to follow an established practice if there is one. Is there an established term for this? (Please provide a source.) If not, are there any examples of a choice from a significant source (Java APIs, MSDN, a big FLOSS project)? _(I wasn't sure if this should be posted here or toEnglish Language & Usage. I thought this was the more appropriate expert audience. Happy to migrate if not.)_"}
{"_id": "142228", "title": "Publish/Subscribe/Request for exchange of big, complex, and confidential data?", "text": "I am working on a project where a website needs to exchange complex and confidential (and thus encrypted) data with other systems. The data includes personal information, technical drawings, public documents etc. We would prefer to avoid the Request-Reply pattern to the dependent systems (and there are a LOT of them), as that would create an awful lot of empty traffic. On the other hand, I am not sure that a pure Publisher/Subscriber pattern would be appropriate -- mainly because of the complex and bulky nature of the data to be exchanged. For that reason we have discussed the possibility of a \"publish/subscribe/request\" solution. The Publish/Subscribe part would be to publish a message to the dependent systems, that something is ready for pickup. The actual content is then picked up by old-school Request-Reply action. How does this sound to you?"}
{"_id": "223510", "title": "Term for an error when code is executed before its ajax response?", "text": "What's the term for an error caused by executing a block of code before its relevant ajax response has come back? e.g., a timeline: **13:00:01** execute getDataViaAjax(); **13:00:02** execute doSomethingWithMyAjaxData(); **13:00:03** ajax data comes back, too late since I forgot to make the code wait for it... I have a feeling I may say \"doh!\" when someone tells me the answer, but I can't for the life of me think what type of error it might be called."}
{"_id": "211150", "title": "What is the benefit of 64 bit A7 in iPhone", "text": "I'm trying to figure out why going to 64 bit processors is such a big deal in an iPhone. I understand that there will be twice as many registers so the processor can work with twice as much data which should increase performance. However I don't see many phones going to more than 4GB of memory any time soon. It seems like overkill and it would negatively impact battery life. Another problem that I see is that most variables now need twice as much memory. This will create problems in a mobile environment with small amounts of memory. I believe that the folks at Apple are intelligent and they probably have great reasons for doing this, I'm just trying to understand them. **EDIT** Don't know much about GPU's but I was told that with 64 bit registers 2 pixels can be loaded into each register and operations can be performed on them individually. Is there a graphical advantage regarding 64 bit?"}
{"_id": "211151", "title": "Should my team use some common well-regarded coding standard as a basis for its own?", "text": "The R&D team I'm in has decided to adopt a coding standard. We have only recently formed, and have too little code and common coding time of our own to base our standards/conventions document on what has developed organically in our team, and on good examples from our own code etc. Now, every one of us has some experience from past workplaces - although none of us is at a state of saying \"let's adopt this here comprehensive document I have found to be fitting for the kind of work we do here\" (*). Plus, some of us (including myself) only have experience from places with no official coding standard, or writing in different languages in a different setting (high- pressure weekly-release production environment as opposed to more research- oriented development work) So, one of the options I've been thinking about is taking a relatively well- known and well-regarded document, snipping off what we don't care about/care for, and making some modifications based on our preferences. Is this a common practice? Do you believe this is a good idea? If so, what would be a reasonable 'baseline' coding standard (don't tell me which is best, I don't want to start a religious conflict here; just point out what would be comprehensive or 'neutral' enough to build upon.) **Notes:**   * We are expecting to work with C, C++, OpenCL, CUDA, Python.   * We are a team of 4 people + manager, expected to grow to about 5-6 within a year or so.   * In our company, teams are almost entirely autonomous and usually don't interact at all (not even by using each other's code - the work is on entirely different projects); so - no company-wide considerations to make.   * Regarding tools, at the moment what we know is that we're going to be using Eclipse, so its code formatter is going to be one tool at least. Ctrl+Shift+F has long been my friend   * When I write Java, I've adopted the practice of adhering as strictly as possible to Bloch's Effective Java. Now, that's not quite a coding standard, but you could call some bricks, cement and mortar for a coding standard. I was thinking of possibly including something like that as part of the 'mix' (minding that we don't do Java).   * I mean coding standards in the wider sense of the word, e.g. adopting suggestions made in the answers to this P.SE question.   * I've found a big list of C++ coding standards documents; maybe I should mine that our baseline.   * (*) That's not quite true, but I don't want to complicate this question with too many specifics."}
{"_id": "211158", "title": "How to do ab testing", "text": "Many books on startups/kanban strongly advocate the use of AB testing to validate product features. I haven't had any experience with this but it sounds like a great idea for some projects. My question is, how does one go about AB feature testing in practice? Say you want to test how registered users interact with a specific feature. Do you create tables to set what batches of users see what features? What about non-registered users. ect. Say it's determined the feature isn't needed based on your tests. Do you go back into the code base and cut that code out?"}
{"_id": "137712", "title": "In scrum, how do you use \"usability testing\" in team?", "text": "I am currently reading some material by Jeff Patton regarding Agile and UX. http://www.agileproductdesign.com/presentations/index.html I was interested to find out from the community what UX design and testing behaviors seemed MOST helpful to their scrum teams to create GREAT and delightful products.   1. hallway usability?   2. paper prototypes?   3. seeing how users actually use the software?   4. others? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "184159", "title": "Newbie ASP.NET developer being forced into MVC4 with WebForms", "text": "I recently got hired on as a new ASP.NET developer (C# code behind). When I arrived, I was told that they were moving to MVC 4, and so I bought two books on that. However, the other day I learned that they are NOT using Razor, but using WebForms. Most of the results via Google returned articles from before the WebForms view engine was apparently selectable as an option instead of Razor, but my question is this:   * Is it possible to learn MVC through WebForms, and not Razor? By possible, I mean is it \"worth the time\", or should I stick with Razor (as covered in both of my books) and slowly adapt that knowledge to WebForms?   * Are there any drastic changes that need to be understood when learning MVC from the WebForms perspective? Thank you for your time."}
{"_id": "137716", "title": "What were the historical conditions that led to object oriented programming becoming a major programming paradigm?", "text": "What were some of the economic (and other historical) factors that led to object oriented programming languages becoming influential? I know that _Simula_ started things off, but was the adoption of OOP languages due to the ever increasing needs of business? Or, was the adoption due more to the new things that could be done with OOP languages? **Edit** I'm really most interested in whether there was some factors going on external to the languages themselves that allowed for them to take hold."}
{"_id": "137715", "title": "A Class named Class?", "text": "This is more of a style question, but it is something I am currently pondering for a project of mine. Assume that you're creating an application which is modeling a school. So there are entities like Student, School, etc. Now this is all fine and intuitive until you get down to Class, as (in most languages) `Class` is a reserved word. So, given that `Class` is a reserved keyword, what would you call such an entity that models a school class?"}
{"_id": "184150", "title": "Need interpretation of section in C# specification", "text": "I am reading the C# specification. I could use clarification on a segment: > C# has a unified type system. All C# types, including primitive types such > as int and double, inherit from a single root object type. Thus, all types > share a set of common operations, and values of any type can be stored, > transported, and operated upon in a consistent manner. Furthermore, C# > supports both user-defined reference types and value types, allowing dynamic > allocation of objects as well as in-line storage of lightweight structures. What does \u201cin-line storage of lightweight structures\u201d mean in this context?"}
{"_id": "251009", "title": "What constitutes a good Database System(Java / SQL related)", "text": "I've given this so much research but still couldn't come to my own conclusion, before continuing this question I would like to give you a rough idea of my current situation. I'm 18 years old and have recently been selected and offered by my school to design and develop a database system for my Psychology department. The system itself is very easy, especially on paper, but after reading so much I'm not sure how to tackle this situation. I've never built a whole system before, I've worked with multiple APIs, game clients, personal programs and small mini projects but never have I done it for someone else. I kindly as for your help to answer my question. I have been coding for a while and Java is my strongest point, I still have alot to learn in regards to other C-Style languages, my school trusts me and I'd feel ashamed to let them down. What constitutes a good Database system? * * * When building a database system what are the first key factors that one ought to consider? I presume it's directly related to the actual skeleton of the system and the layout. That's relatively easy to do or better, not as complicated as the rest to do. This would include a normalized database which is secure and easy to use. This is where my question comes in with Java and SQL joined together. I can obviously(And already have) written a database system entirely in Java, literally no SQL in it, wrote the queries myself and did it all with Java however I don't think that's very satisfactory for most people (I'm not sure why, if someone could clarify would be great). I've read into JDBC and I still have to go a bit more into it as self-teaching it does get a tad tricky every now and then. I however searched more into it and have seen various Java Database Engines, such as: > HypersonicSQL - http://java-source.net/open-source/database-engines \\- Open > source Database Engine How good would it be to work with such engines, is there any security risks run with it or should I just scrap off the idea? I know a lot of you here on StackOverflow are VERY knowledgeable in this field and know alot of you have built your own database systems (offline) so I kindly ask to pass on some knowledge that could prove valuable."}
{"_id": "220965", "title": "How to manage styles on a group of websites", "text": "Up until now the styles were handled by a single CSS file (for each site). I'm customizing it like this:   * opened the site in Firefox   * opened inspector/style editor   * changed CSS values around until I was happy with how the site looks   * copied the generated CSS code and pasted it in the .css file from the server The design is quite outdated, so I decide to upgrade the application that powers the sites and the designs. But now, my developer tells me I'm doing it wrong. He wants to use \"less\", \"compile and cache to css\", create themes and allow me to change only basic stuff like colors and fonts through an administration interface. He says that if I want to customize deeper things I would have to learn CSS and edit the \"less\" files inside a code editor, not Firefox. Is he crazy or what? I don't understand how is this better than what I'm currently doing?"}
{"_id": "157476", "title": "ISC license advice", "text": "Is the ISC license suitable as a MIT or Simplified BSD license replacement? What are the pros and cons of ISC compared to MIT or BSD?"}
{"_id": "157477", "title": "DVCS blessed repo replication among geographically distributed teams", "text": "My company is exploring the move from Perforce to a DVCS and we currently use lots of Perforce proxies because the **software development teams are spread over Germany, China, USA and Mexico** and sometimes bandwidth from one place to another is not that great. Speaking with IT, we started looking for a way to keep things running smooth from the geographically distributed perspective so that everyone gets the latest and greatest without determining what repo server is the source of truth (i.e. **replicating transparently** ). I thought that **maybe we could emulate the DNS mechanism through pre-push and pre-pull hooks**. For example, consider countries A, B, and C. Upon pulling from blessed A, A itself will pull for changes from B, which in turn will pull for changes in C. If B and C have new changes they will fall towards A. Conversely, when there is a push, it could be propagated to all blessed repositories. I'm aware that **generally you only have one blessed repo, however this may not scale globally** and each blessed repository would just be applicable to the teams from a single country. **My question is** : is the conception of DVCS repo replication something used in practice?, has anyone done it succesfully?, if so, what is the correct way to do it?"}
{"_id": "68573", "title": "Generate a productive environment when developers have different opinions", "text": "My question is simple. I'm a developer and work with another developer who's been here for many more years than I have. He has his opinion about implementing stuff; he's more of a do it yourself kind of person. I'm more of a let's not re-invent the wheel kind of person. Recently for example we had a big discussion about how I think we should move to the cloud and how he thinks that we should keep an in-house solution for our servers (to host our websites). Or how I think Java is better suited for what we need, but he likes PHP so that's what we have to use. These are all arguments that people have on the web... some like the cloud, some don't... some like Java, some don't. And I'm totally ok with diverse opinion... however it's come to the point of being unproductive, and without a boss that knows about programming (our boss doesn't know anything about coding, he just manages us) that takes the position of making a decision, it's always a winner towards his opinion, because he's the more experienced developer... which I don't think is productive. Did you ever confront such a team issue? What do you think I should do? What is the best way to create a productive environment?"}
{"_id": "157472", "title": "Is it reasonable to use POCO's that inherit from DTO's?", "text": "I'm designing a tiered .NET application, and I want to use the Code First approach. I'm new to this, so I'm struggling to envision how it ought to be designed. Would the following be a reasonable approach? What problems or limitations might I run into?   * Write DTO classes for my domain. These will be used for data transfer between the server and client over WCF.   * Write a set of POCO classes that inherits from the DTO classes. Use these to generate the database on the server.   * Write another set of POCO classes that inherits from the DTO classes. Use these to generate an SDF database on the client."}
{"_id": "104994", "title": "Transition from engineering to programming", "text": "I got a degree in Chemical Engineering but held a part time job as a PHP programmer the whole time. This has developed into a full-time job. I was wondering how having a Chem-e degree instead of a CS one will affect me progressing further in this career. Does anyone have experience with this and maybe some hints?"}
{"_id": "150045", "title": "What is the point of having every service class have an interface?", "text": "At the company I work at, every service class has a corresponding interface. Is this necessarily? Most of these interfaces are only used by a single class and we are not creating any sort of public API. With modern mocking libraries able to mock concrete classes and IDEs able to extract an interface from a class with two or so clicks, is this just a holdover from earlier times?"}
{"_id": "159813", "title": "Do I need to use an interface when only one class will ever implement it?", "text": "Isn't the whole point of an interface to for multiple classes to adhere to a set of rules and implementations?"}
{"_id": "170009", "title": "Everything has an Interface", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do I need to use an interface when only one class will ever implement it? I am taking over a project where every single real class is implementing an Interface. The vast majority of these interfaces are implemented by a single class that share a similar name and the exact same methods (ex: MyCar and MyCarImpl). Almost no 2 classes in the project implement more than the interface that shares its name. I know the general recommendation is to code to an interface rather than an implementation, but isn't this taking it a bit too far? The system might be more flexible in that it is easier to add a new class that behaves very much like an existing class. However, it is significantly harder to parse through the code and method changes now require 2 edits instead of 1. Personally, I normally only create interfaces when there is a need for multiple classes to have the same behavior. I subscribe to YAGNI, so I don't create something unless I see a real need for it. Am I doing it all wrong or is this project going way overboard?"}
{"_id": "180777", "title": "How do I prevent unknowningly duplicating code?", "text": "I work on a rather large code base. Hundreds of classes, tons of different files, lots of functionality, takes more than 15 minutes to pull down a fresh copy, etc. A big problem with such a large code base is that it has quite a few utility methods and such that do the same thing, or has code that doesn't use these utility methods when it could. And also the utility methods aren't just all in one class (because it'd be a huge jumbled mess). I'm rather new to the code base, but the team lead who's been working on it for years appears to have the same problem. It leads to a lot of code and work duplication, and as such, when something breaks, it's usually broken in 4 copies of basically the same code How can we curb this pattern? As with most large projects, not all code is documented(though some is) and not all code is... well, clean. But basically, it'd be really nice if we could work on improving the quality in this respect so that in the future we had less code duplication, and things like utility functions were easier to discover. Also, the utility functions are usually either in some static helper class, in some non-static helper class that works on a single object, or is a static method on the class which it mainly \"helps\" with. I had one experiment in adding utility functions as Extension methods(I didn't need any internals of the class, and it definitely was only required in very specific scenarios). This had the effect of preventing cluttering up the primary class and such, but it's not really anymore discoverable unless you already know about it"}
{"_id": "34354", "title": "How do you structure your shared code so that it is \"re-findable\" for new developers?", "text": "I started working at my current job about 8 months ago, and its been one of the best experiences I've had as a young programmer. It's a small company, and both my co-developers are brilliant guys. One of the practices that they both have been encouraging is lots of code- reuse. Our code base is mainly C#, and we're using a centralized revision control system. The way the repository is currently structured, there is a single folder in which all shared class libraries are placed (along with unit tests for each library), and our revision control system allows for sharing or linking those libraries out to other projects. What I'm trying to understand at this point is how the current structure of the folder can be made more conducive for finding those libraries again. I've talked to the other developers about this, and they agree that it's gotten a little messy. I find that I am sometimes \"reinventing the wheel\" because I didn't realize that there was an existing piece of code that solved a particular problem. The issue is complicated further by the fact that we're sharing some code between ASP.NET MVC2, WinForms, and Windows CE projects, **and** sharing code between applications built against multiple versions of .NET. How do other people approach this? Is the answer in naming the libraries in a certain way or is it preferable to invest in some code-search software? Is the answer in doc comments? Should we be sharing libraries at all or should we simply branch the class libraries for re-use? Thanks for any and all help!"}
{"_id": "68578", "title": "Who is responsible for software licensing in ITIL?", "text": "In a standard ICT Department who is responsible for managing software licenses? I would start by saying that the ICT Manager is accountable for it. But who gets the responsibility, using ITIL as a standard model for an ICT department would the Service Delivery Manager or Development Manager? The Service Delivery Manager needs to keep things running, but when moving forward with new versions of software does the Development Manager get controlling vote in what to purchase? As it's not just about delivering the service it's about improving it."}
{"_id": "109958", "title": "How to define complex business rules using User Stories?", "text": "A quick and dirty definition of User Story:               \"As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>\"      In this commonly accepted definition there is little space for defining business rules, constraints or user input. Trivial example just to illustrate: > >     As a <librarian>, I want to <register new books> so that <students >   > > can find their availability online> In this silly example, where would one define the fields needed when registering a book? Should it be written anywhere? Or should the required business rules be passed as word of mouth by the Product Owner?"}
{"_id": "76040", "title": "What do you call a \"cell\" in database terminology?", "text": "With \"cell\" I mean the value of a particular column in a particular row. I'm not sure if its called just \"cell\" or this is a spreadsheet thing."}
{"_id": "4272", "title": "What are the best monitors for programming?", "text": "From time to time I have tried some monitors. My main work is coding (work, phd, etc). At work I have an LG Flatron L246WH which I highly recommend. However at home I have an LG W2363V with which I feel pretty uncomfortable when coding. Fonts, subpixels or whatever mess with my minds when using smooth fonts. Currently, what are the best monitors out there, to best fit our needs?"}
{"_id": "4274", "title": "Should I change language to stop becoming stale?", "text": "I'm an ASP.Net/C# programmer using SQL Server as a back end. I am the Technical Director of the company, I'm extremely happy in everything I do and consider the languages and system we use to be perfect for what we do. In the back of my mind though I know that over time programmers can become stale. I remember as a wee youngster that all those \"old\" developers were past it and couldn't keep up with the youngsters. So considering I'm happy in everything I'm doing. What options are there for keeping up with everything and avoiding becoming stale. One particular idea that I use is to let all the new developers use and showcase the things that they think are cool. If anything catches my eye then absolutely it will be something we all use going forward. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "147475", "title": "Build functionality around the design, or the other way around?", "text": "When you build an application, is it better to design the UI first (in Photoshop or whatever), then implement the functionality following the UI you just designed, or do the programming and build the design as you go? Advantages I see using UI as reference:   * the app will end up very UI-friendly :)   * like pdr mentioned, if working for a client, he gets exactly what he imagined Disadvantages:   * the programming will get more complicated, so development time increases any others? :D"}
{"_id": "96729", "title": "What's the difference between working at a software company and a company whose focus is in another field?", "text": "Recently, I was approached by a local ad agency with a job opportunity. They are bringing all web/interactive development in-house and adding to their development team. I'm growing sick of my cushy, yet boring corporate job, and am intrigued by the position. Having only worked for software shops where the primary business was making software, I worry that they may not put emphasis on quality software practices, since development is not the focus of their business. Could anyone with experience at both compare/contrast working at a software company with working at a company that just happens to have an in-house software development team or department?"}
{"_id": "45230", "title": "Do programmers at non-software companies need the same things as at software companies?", "text": "There is a lot of evidence that things like offices, multiple screens, administration rights of your own computer, and being allowed whatever software you want is great for productivity while developing. However, the studies I've seen tend toward companies that sell _software_. Therefore, keeping the programmers productive is paramount to the company's profitability. However, at companies that produce software simply to support their primary function, programming is merely a support role. Do the same rules apply at a company that only uses the software they produce to support their business, and a lot of a programmer's work is maintainence?"}
{"_id": "194795", "title": "Will working in IT limit your career prospects as a programmer?", "text": "I took a job working as an IT guy (SQL programming, helpdesk, etc.) because I had need of a job (to pay back student loans accumulated from school). I'm very happy to have a job, but I eventually want to be a c++ programmer. I'm studying my c++ textbooks in my spare time and starting to do some projects with my newly acquired SQL skills. But the question that keeps rolling around in my head is \"will I be a SQL programmer for the rest of my life now?\" In your experience, will spending a year or two at my current job be a detriment in getting into C++ programming?"}
{"_id": "103422", "title": "Is it a bad practice to stop providing support for outdated software if updates are free and easy?", "text": "Providing support for outdated software is both unexciting and expensive. If people are still using the version which was sold ten years ago, it means that they will find bugs which do not exist in next versions, their software may not work as expected on a new hardware or operating system, etc. The support people must also be trained to use this old version. This is unavoidable in several cases:   * When every next version of the software is paid, you can't force everyone to spend their money every two years to buy the next version. Example: Microsoft has still to support Windows XP, since it is understandable that people don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for Windows Vista, then Seven, then Windows 8.   * When the update is complicated. Example: when you know that installing SP2 of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 may render your server completely unusable, you may want to postpone installing updates and stay with and outdated version which has one strong point: it _works_.   * When legacy systems or security considerations are involved. Example: auto-updating a space shuttle software every week may have some disadvantages. In the same way, you can't update hardware if the legacy software requires the old hardware to run. Now, let's say that the update process is as well done as in Google Chrome. The user doesn't have to bother with the updates; there are no security or legacy reasons to not to update, and the updates are free. In this case, is it a bad practice, for a company, to stop providing any support for the versions outdated for a few months, and ask their customers to update their software first, then contacting the support if the problem persists?"}
{"_id": "72293", "title": "How do you diagram global or shared state?", "text": "Say you're building an FSM for something like a game and you've got states like:   * MainMenu   * Options   * SinglePlayer   * MultiPlayer Your state diagram might look something like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vjxus.png) Now say you have a shared state, `DevConsole`, (shows the console when tilde is pressed and receives KB input etc. I'm sure you've seen it before) such that no matter what state you're in, this state applies. How do you diagram that? _edit_ * An example of how it would function would be like this:               public class StateMachine     {         protected State sharedState;         protected State previousState;         protected State currentState;              public void Update()         {             if(this.hasSharedState)                 this.sharedState.Update();                  if (this.previousState != null && this.previousState.IsExiting)                 this.previousState.Update();             else                 this.currentState.Update();         }              // called by individual states         public void ChangeState<StateType>()         {             // creates a new state adn sets its state machine owner to this machine             this.previousState = this.currentState;             this.previousState.Exit();             this.currentState = StateBuilder.Build<StateType>(this);         }     }"}
{"_id": "79242", "title": "C programming in 2011", "text": "Many moons ago I cut C code for a living, primarily while maintaining a POP3 server that supported a wide range of OSs (Linux, *BSD, HPUX, VMS ...). I'm planning to polish the rust off my C skills and learn a bit about language implementation by coding a simple FORTH in C. But I'm wondering how (or whether?) have things changed in the C world since 2000. When I think C, I think ...   1. comp.lang.c   2. ANSI C wherever possible (but C89 as C99 isn't that widely supported)   3. `gcc -Wall -ansi -pedantic` in lieu of static analysis tools   4. Emacs   5. Ctags   6. Autoconf + make (and see point 2 for VMS, HP-UX etc. goodness) Can anyone who's been writing in C for the past eleven years let me know what (if anything ;-) ) has changed over the years? (In other news, holy crap, I've been doing this for more than a decade)."}
{"_id": "170760", "title": "Protobuf design patterns", "text": "I am evaluating Google Protocol Buffers for a Java based service (but am expecting language agnostic patterns). I have two questions: The first is a broad general question: > What patterns are we seeing people use? Said patterns being related to class > organization (e.g., messages per .proto file, packaging, and distribution) > and message definition (e.g., repeated fields vs. repeated encapsulated > fields*) etc. There is very little information of this sort on the Google Protobuf Help pages and public blogs while there is a ton of information for established protocols such as XML. I also have specific questions over the following two different patterns:   1. Represent messages in .proto files, package them as a separate jar, and ship it to target consumers of the service --which is basically the default approach I guess.   2. Do the same but also include hand crafted wrappers (not sub-classes!) around each message that implement a contract supporting at least these two methods (T is the wrapper class, V is the message class (using generics but simplified syntax for brevity):              public V toProtobufMessage() {         V.Builder builder = V.newBuilder();         for (Item item : getItemList()) {             builder.addItem(item);         }         return builder.setAmountPayable(getAmountPayable()).                        setShippingAddress(getShippingAddress()).                        build();     }          public static T fromProtobufMessage(V message_) {          return new T(message_.getShippingAddress(),                       message_.getItemList(),                      message_.getAmountPayable());     }      One advantage I see with (2) is that I can hide away the complexities introduced by `V.newBuilder().addField().build()` and add some meaningful methods such as `isOpenForTrade()` or `isAddressInFreeDeliveryZone()` etc. in my wrappers. The second advantage I see with (2) is that my clients deal with immutable objects (something I can enforce in the wrapper class). One disadvantage I see with (2) is that I duplicate code and have to sync up my wrapper classes with .proto files. Does anyone have better techniques or further critiques on any of the two approaches? * * * *By encapsulating a repeated field I mean messages such as this one:               message ItemList {         repeated item = 1;     }          message CustomerInvoice {         required ShippingAddress address = 1;         required ItemList = 2;         required double amountPayable = 3;     }      instead of messages such as this one:               message CustomerInvoice {         required ShippingAddress address = 1;         repeated Item item = 2;         required double amountPayable = 3;     }      I like the latter but am happy to hear arguments against it."}
{"_id": "91319", "title": "WebSockets current state on security and browser support", "text": "I found many things when searching, but nothing that seemed both updated and complete. In last quarter of 2010 I remember reading what were very sad news for me, as WebSockets were disabled in most (if not all? can't remember) modern browsers that supported it by default due to security concerns in the proxy protocol the WSP uses. I wonder what's the current state of the issue and if there's any known plans from the next version of browsers to start enabling WS by default. I know that in Chrome 13b I get it enabled and I don't think I enabled it myself, but the same does not happen in the other browsers I use. Also, what draft is being used in the current versions? I will be giving a presentation on HTML5 for a group of developers next month and this is the topic I think I'm the least updated on. I need to implement current protocol to at least feel certain I know what I'm talking about and have no problem answering questions :) As many technical and specific details as possible will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "91318", "title": "Marriage of Lisp and LaTeX - has it been done?", "text": "I like `LaTeX`, but I find its macro system and logic both complex and weak. languages such as Schem/Lisp/Clojure are very good at macros. I imagine the entire document written in a lisp family language, which, when run, would emit LaTeX code and produce a document. Has this been done before? Any links?"}
{"_id": "186742", "title": "Is using '{}' within format strings considered Pythonic?", "text": "I just learned you can write               '{}{}'.format(string_a, string_b)      instead of               '{0}{1}'.format(string_a, string_b)      in Python, i.e. you can omit the numerals for the string format parameters when you want things to slot in one by one in order. Is this considered Pythonic? NOTE: \"Pythonic\" is a commonly used term among Python programmers to mean idiomatic Python code. Within Python culture, there tends to be clear consensus on style questions, especially for very specific ones like this one, given the language's explicit design philosophy of \"There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it.\" This is quoted from \"The Zen of Python,\" a set of aphorisms which goes a long way towards defining what is \"Pythonic\" and which is included with every distribution of Python (at any Python interpreter command line, enter `import this` to see it)."}
{"_id": "115530", "title": "Starting a new startup/web application, how to choose a hosting provider?", "text": "When creating a new startup related to a web application, how to choose a hosting provider ? Assuming the code of the web application is oriented DDDD (Distributed Domain Driven Development) to handle large deployment scenario, the idea is to avoid too much cost for hosting. Basically, the launch of the web app, with its very users will be able to fit on a \"single\" box (DB + APP), maybe two for redundancy. Eventually the apps will grows progressively to more and more users (I hope:)). How can I choose wisely the hosting ? Today, I see three options :   * hosting ourself : not actually an option today as it requires a lot of administrative skills and related task   * hosting on virtual/dedicated servers : maybe a good options as virtual dedicated hosting is quite cheap, but I fear this will quickly limit us in term of scalability   * hosting on cloud (amazon or azure) : probably the best option in the long term, but with a higher cost to start (having to adapt a bit the application, cost of instances) Does anybody have feedback/advise about such requirements ? PS: FYI, the web apps will probably be written with ASP.NET MVC as web framework, and Ncqrs+NServiceBus to target the DDDD pattern in a CQRS style Edit: as a backend, MongoDB is today our probable choice, as NoSQL is marrying well with event-sourcing + CQRS (no need for joins, etc.). However, finding VPS with asp.net AND mongodb can be challenging. I may have to use some traditional RDBMS found on all providers (MS SQL SErver or MySQL)"}
{"_id": "115537", "title": "How to create an extendable web application?", "text": "How would you implement an extendable web application? What I'm thinking about is a web application similar to Jenkins or Hudson which provides plug-in support. While it's obvious to me how plug-ins can be located and loaded, I don't know how they can be integrated within the overall architecture. I'm especially uncertain about the following points. **How can a plug-in change the view, e.g. add input elements to a form?** My first idea would be that a plug-in can register partials / fragments for a certain form. Example: Newsletter plug-in which registers a typical newsletter checkbox fragment which will be rendered in the user registration view. **How can a plug-in react to incoming requests?** Again, a direct approach would be to provide listeners for certain requests or actions, e.g. POST request to /user. **How could a plug-in persist data?** I'm assuming this is a situation where NoSQL data storage solutions would be superior to relational databases. I would appreciate any comments, ideas and experiences (maybe there is even a design pattern) that you have regarding extendable web applications."}
{"_id": "186745", "title": "Using assembly to write to a file", "text": "I am working with a trading application (reading data from the exchange) which generates a bucket load of data on a per second basis. We have different \"log- levels\" but even the minimal log-level generates so much data ! This process of log creation is quite I/O intensive. Since I can write assembly using __asm__ , I was wondering if the operation of writing to the files is coded in assembly, will there be a speedup ? The rest of the code is C++. Also, what are the caveats of doing such a thing ?"}
{"_id": "131924", "title": "How should an administrating web application control a WCF service's entities?", "text": "We have a WCF Service (self-hosted) which can receive several types of calls from the outside, each call encapsulates a business logic procedure. We need to construct a web application which will act as an administrating app, for all users of the service. So we need to have access to all inner-entities of the service and not just the business calls. How should this be done the most effective way? **EDIT:** I wasn't too specific because I see this as a general issue. our Customers are retailers which have clients of their own, so when I say Customer, it's our client and when I say Client - it's our client's client. **Example:**   * Service X allows registered clients of Customers to commit transactions.   * there are several transaction types.   * the service receives the transactions from several different devices.   * The service is a WCF self hosted service. The Customer, needs to register devices for use, register different configurations for different devices and many other registering and administrating which needs to be done. All of this is done in a website. **The website users are the Customers, the Retailers, not the end clients** So as I see it I have these options   1. Reference the dll which holds all service-related entities - this is ok now because the website and the service are on the same machine, but what if this changes? is this a good approach?   2. Make service calls for all of this registering and administrating, which I'm not even sure how it should be done. So, I need your help in understanding the best way to do this..."}
{"_id": "143578", "title": "Localization in php, best practice or approach?", "text": "I am Localizing my php application. I have a dilemma on choosing best method to accomplish the same. Method 1: Currently am storing words to be localized in an array in a php file               <?php          $values = array (                             'welcome' => 'bienvenida'                     );           ?>      I am using a function to extract and return each word according to requirement Method 2: Should I use a txt file that stores string of the same?               <?php     $welcome = 'bienvenida';      ?>      My question is which is a better method, in terms of speed and effort to develop the same and why? Edit: I would like to know which method out of two is faster in responding and why would that be? also, any improvement on the above code would be appreciated!!"}
{"_id": "161167", "title": "Can a single simple language such as Clojure replace Html + JavaScript + CSS + Flash + Java Applets ...?", "text": "Please do not dismiss the idea right away. I know that it is hard to compete with a mainstream approach that already works (mostly), so my question is partly \"academic\". I also am aware that ClojureScript exists and is very cool, but it is a patch on an existing ugly thing, a useful abstraction. Disclaimer: I am a programmer but not a web developer, and this is why I am soliciting other's feedback. Being a developer and using the web every day and reading up on various topic and viewing the html source of a page from time to time I think I have some idea about web development. Anyhow, the problems as I see them:   * The web started out quick and dirty and noob-friendly, but now it takes a great deal of skills to make a good modern interactive web page, and you just have to be good at it in order to be competitive today. This often means that quick and dirty \"learn web in 21 days\" just does not cut it at all.    * Html started out quick and dirty, as a noob-friendly protocol. It is currently a mess.   * JavaScript language is not without its flaws, but ok.   * CSS appears to be a decent attempt to clean things up. It is worth keeping, at least the idea of it - that you can style the appearance in a separate file.   * Putting it all together - JavaScript + Html + CSS becomes rather dirty. There have been good ideas/tools that mitigate the problem such as: AJAX libraries abstract away the specific flavors of the JavaScript. Powerful libraries such as JQuery, Node.js, etc. allow doing cool things in JavaScript as imperfect as it is. Google Web Kit does a very good job of translating a GUI design into a web page. Web MVC frameworks such as ASP.Net, RoR, Django abstract things away and do a lot of leg work for you, **HOWEVER** , these are all abstractions on top of a crappy base.   * The demand for what the web could do today is ever-increasing; Google's ChromeBook is a manifestation of that. You run a browser full screen and everything that you might want to do - keyboard/mouse interactions, sound, video, games, text, images, power point presentations - everything is happening inside of it. Thanks for the fast browsers and fast computers and \"the cloud\", but it could be a lot better! From a graphics point of view, a browser is just a rectangular canvas that you can paint anything on. Currently the browser executable weighs many megabytes because it has to know how to parse Html, JavaScript, CSS and display all of it. If you start from scratch and realize that it is pretty much just a canvas to be painted, then I think the browser can be much smaller and simpler. The price to pay is having to write a valid program for everything in a funky syntax such as Lisp or Clojure, even for the simplest of things such as displaying a label. That used to be the cool part of the html - if you wanted just to type the paragraph, you would type it verbatim. This rarely happens anymore. If all you want is to just type the paragraph of text, you still have to think about inline or CSS styling, placement. The following piece of HTML (found on the front page of this site)               <a href=\"/questions/tagged/programming-languages\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged 'programming-languages'\" rel=\"tag\">programming-languages</a> <a href=\"/questions/tagged/learning\" class=\"post-tag\" title=\"show questions tagged 'learning'\" rel=\"tag\">learning</a>      is not that much easier to craft than some alternative Lispy syntax (and I have not put that much thought into it):               (create-link :target \"/questions/tagged/programming-languages\" :class \"post-tag\" :title \"show questions tagged 'programming-languages'\" :rel \"tag\" :content (text \"programming-languages\"))      This might not be a valid Clojure syntax; I sort of made it up. It does not have to try to mimic html - in fact that is the point of starting from scratch. The huge advantage here would be that `(text ...)` and `(create-link ...)` are not part of the core language that a browser would have to understand. The browser would only need to understand a \"safe\" Clojure (one that cannot wipe your hard drive clean) and be able to draw and play music and listen to keyboard and mouse and similar things, and everything else - drawing text, playing a video, displaying a combo box and interacting with it would be all done in a carefully designed library. Why did I choose Clojure? It is a tiny language that can accomplish a lot, plus the philosophy of building complicated programs out of simple building blocks is very attractive. I do think that being able to support a single powerful language such as Clojure would be enough to accomplish everything that Html and Html5 and CSS and JavaScripts and Silverlight and Flash can accomplish. Somewhat of a tangential discussion - I think the same is true for LaTeX - it could be redone with Clojure as an underlying language, and a source file would be a full-blown program that spits out a PDF or a ps as it executes. I understand that starting from scratch is VERY HARD because a modern browser has lots and lots of useful features. Starting with a clean base can pay off though. What are your thoughts on this crazy idea? I realize that the answers would probably be subjective due to the nature of this question, but I still am curious what you think of this."}
{"_id": "131929", "title": "What is the easiest and cheapest way to distribute apple iOS enterprise app?", "text": "I work as a developer in a company, The company I work with has to deploy the app I made to their client. Number of clients are 3 and each client has around 100 iPads. Now my question is,   * What different ways we can use in order to deploy and distribute app seamlessly?   * How good is AppCentral to distribute applications?"}
{"_id": "225215", "title": "My organization is relatively small; how can I follow ISO9000/1 as a matter of best practice?", "text": "I work for a company of <60 people. I understand that larger companies typically are ISO9000/9001 certified, as a matter of quality assurance. I also understand that for a company my size, such certification is not cost- effective. However, one could still make a case that as a matter of QA best- practice, I think it makes sense to try to follow the ISO standards anyway, at least insofar as reasonably practical. Am I correct in all these beliefs? If all the above is correct, are there any \"high points\" that would be particularly beneficial for a company my size to follow, or any parts of the standards that seem less relevant?"}
{"_id": "97822", "title": "Can someone explain how a GUI works and when I should start using one?", "text": "I've been learning C++ for about a month now, and before I go any further, I'd like to clear up this tedious question I keep on having. I know what a GUI is, but I don't really know how it works, and maybe examples of popular ones? Although I know command line programming is the bare fundamentals, I think it'd be fun messing around with a GUI. Although I have around 3 million other questions, I'll save them :D"}
{"_id": "228428", "title": "Is Interactive the term for web application that respond quickly to user?", "text": "Just a quick question on Web Application attribute, if responsive (which mainly stems from web design) means website that adapts to different screen size, then the closest term I can find for Web Application which is highly 'responsive' to the user input (click, touch, etc.) is interactive? One might call it 'native-like' experience, or great user experience but I find these still too vague. Well here is what I have at the moment: **Responsive Web Application** refers to web applications which adopt responsive design, i.e. changes it layout on different screen sizes to increase user experience (supposedly). **Interactive Web Application** refers to web application which has a lot interactivity to it, i.e. elements that can receive user inputs and reacts accordingly. **Native-like Web Application** refers to web application that offers the same speed and performance as native application (either desktop software or mobile native apps). I might have missed the right term, would love input on this?"}
{"_id": "228429", "title": "Rejecting time bound programming exercises in interview", "text": "I have come across a few hands on programming scenarios at recent job interviews.   1. Implement a queue in C# only using arrays. Call to get an item will take first item out from the queue(write on paper in 15 minutes) Approach: Implemented on time.Take items from index 0 with remaining items pushed up.Put items at lastindex.   2. Implement a program to create a folder tree which has an options for adding nodes to it and display tree to console.console. Shouldn't use any inbuilt collections/library(code on computer in 45 minutes). Approach:Implemented on time with tree implemented with List and traversal is done through recursion. In both scenarios, my solutions were not up-to the mark and I was rejected. I understand the flaws in the solution as I would have done it differently if given ample time. The first solution should not shuffle the array, and the second should not do recursion(subjective). But I am not sure if that was fair to me. It was both pressure situations because it is time bound, and the problems were like \"new\" to me (not really, but I haven't come across such problems at work in the past 10 years, we always use inbuilt collections). In agile development, we estimate our work with lot of focus on quality and all, I am not sure what exactly the point of time bound tests. I would have given a problem with no time limit to the candidate. Would like to know the community's opinion. How to tackle this at the next instance. What about denying to do any time bound tests in interviews offering to do it if it is not time bound?"}
{"_id": "228422", "title": "I'm making a report generator, how should I run it?", "text": "So I've started a project to generate reports for our system. These are reports that we deliver to our end customers and they are so specialized that no existing system can generate them. This is not the problem however, the generator is working just fine. For simpleness I've based it on an ASP.NET-solution that generates HTML that I squeeze through phantomjs to generate PDFs of the result. This also works fine. However, this is a one-shot operation. Right now I have a .BAT-file that runs phantomjs with a specific url, and this generates my PDF. However, I need to make some kind of queue-system, so the generation of reports is automatic when they are ordered. The ordering-system is part of a legacy-system that is scheduled to be renewed, but \"Not Right Now\"(TM). So right now the orders are put in an SQL- table, with a \"status\"-column saying if it's generated or not. What I'm looking for are ideas for a system to run these reports, and maybe in the future even easily switch for a \"real\" queue based system (RabbitMQ or such). I'm not locked to any language/framework as long as it's stable on windows, and can communicate with SQL Server. (I know C# and JS best). I was thinking of just making it with C#, but I'm not quite sure about the robustness of shelling out to phantomjs.. (I'm not sure about the robustness of shelling out to anything as a critical business operation ;) )"}
{"_id": "35316", "title": "What source code organization approach helps improve modularity and API/Implementation separation?", "text": "Few languages are as restrictive as Java with file naming standards and project structure. In that language, the file name must match the public class declared in the file, and the file must live in a directory structure matching the class package. I have mixed feelings about that approach. While I never have to guess where a file lives, there's still a lot of empty directories and artificial constraints. There's several languages that define everything about a class in one file, at least by convention. C#, Python (I think), Ruby, Erlang, etc. The commonality in most these languages is that they are object oriented, although that statement can probably be rebuffed (there is one non-OO language in the list already). Finally, there's quite a few languages mostly in the C family that have a separate header and implementation file. For C I think this makes sense, because it is one of the few ways to separate the API interface from implementations. With C it seems that feature is used to promote modularity. Yet, with C++ the way header and implementation files are split seems rather forced. You don't get the same clean API separation that you do with C, and you are forced to include some private details in the header you would rather keep only in the implementation. There's quite a few languages that have a concept that overlaps with interfaces like Java, C#, Go, etc. Some languages use what feels like a hack to provide the same concept like C# using pure virtual abstract classes. Still others don't really have an interface concept and rely on \"duck\" typing--for example Ruby. Ruby has modules, but those are more along the lines of mixing in behaviors to a class than they are for defining how to interact with a class. In OO terms, interfaces are a powerful way to provide separation between an API client and an API implementation. So to hurry up and ask the question, from a personal experience point of view:   * Does separation of header and implementation help you write more modular code, or does it get in the way? (it helps to specify the language you are referring to)   * Does the strict file name to class name scheme of Java help maintainability, or is it unnecessary structure for structure's sake?   * What would you propose to promote good API/Implementation separation and project maintenance, how would you prefer to do it?"}
{"_id": "23182", "title": ".Net Best Practices : Common Bugs Introduced By Refactoring, Carelessness, and Newbies", "text": "What are the common bugs introduced by refactoring, carelessness, and newbies? I would like to request the experienced programmers here to share their experience and list the bugs they used to introduce when they were inexperienced. In your response, please write a headline mentioning **the kind of bug in bold text** , followed by few linebreaks, and then an explanation, cause of the bug, and finally the fix."}
{"_id": "132741", "title": "Literate programming, good/bad design methodology", "text": "I have recently found the concept of literate programming. And I found it rather intriguing. Yet I have not been encountered with claims that it is a bad way to structure a program. It seems not covered many places. Not even here could I find any questions regarding this. My question is **not** about its flaws or ways of handling documentation. I consider the documentation a side-effect of what it would mean for the flow of literate programming. I know that the design was originally intended for easy documentation as well as the concept of _forward_ programming flow. The concept of dividing the problem into small sentence based problems seems to be really a brilliant idea. It will thus ease the understanding of the program's flow. A consequence of the literate design method is also that the number of functions required will be limited to the imagination of the programmer. Instead of defining a function for a certain task, it could be created as a `scrap` in the literate method. This would yield automatic insertion of the code, instead of a separate function compilation and subsequent requirement of an inter-procedural compilation optimization step to obtain the equivalent speed. In fact Donald E. Knuth first attempt showed an inferior execution time, due to this very fact. I know that compilers can be made to a lot of this, however this is not my concern. So I would like to get feedback of why one should consider this a bad/good design methodology?"}
{"_id": "132747", "title": "Is having public constants \"bad\"?", "text": "Is this:               public MyClass     {         public const string SomeString = \"SomeValue\";     }      worse than this:               public MyClass     {         public static string SomeString { get{ return \"SomeValue\";}}     }      Both can be referenced the same way:               if (someString == MyClass.SomeString)          ...      The second however, has the protection of being a property. But really how much better is this than a const? I have learned over and over the perils of having public fields. So when I saw some code using these constants on public fields, I immediately set about refactoring them to properties. But halfway through, I got to wondering what benefit it was to have the static properties over the constants. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "136048", "title": "Do C library functions generally mimic the Intel assembly language style?", "text": "I'm looking at the basic strcpy function. It is               char *strcpy( char *dest, const char *src );      Which reminds me of assembly language: `MOV DEST, SRC`"}
{"_id": "23189", "title": "How do you avoid being the victim of a syntax pedant on StackOverflow?", "text": "Either I just have bad luck, I am wrong a lot, or there are an increasing number of pedants trolling on StackOverflow. We know that programmers are pedantic (this question), especially toward non- programmers. But as a programmer, when you are trying to help others by answering questions on StackOverflow, what do you do to avoid being called out in comments, voted down, or engaged in a useless argument because of a minor oversight, or worse, something you purposely didn't address to prevent confusing the asker with too much information? **Example** : I recently had someone argue with me about my choice of escaping in a regular expression: I chose `(?<=\\=)` (a look-behind) when apparently `(?<==)` was all that was needed. I felt my answer was more safe (I didn't have a good reference to immediately find out whether the escape was unnecessary or necessary in all regular expression variations) and I thought it was less confusing to someone new to regular expression look-aheads. Should I:   * Be less thorough so that there are less possible points of contention in my answer?   * Burden the asker with more information than they might need at that point in time?   * Just ignore it? _**Note** : I didn't ask this question on meta.SO because I am not talking about the workings of SO, I'm interested in how to improve answers to programming questions in general, for everyone involved--the asker, and other experts who might also be answering or reading my answer._"}
{"_id": "188634", "title": "Why different testing methods are so contradicting topic?", "text": "There are a lot of very smart and experienced people, who claim that if you don't write unit tests then your code will be buggy and God will kill all kittens. On other hand, another bunch of smart people will say that unittesting is counterproductive. So if you will write unittest then kittens will be damned too. Also, I heard very good arguments on both sides for and against integration testings, for and against TDD. Also, there are lot of popular open source projects. Some of them use some automated testings and some of them not. So, why different testing methods are so contradicting topic? _Update 1_ I wrote couple of examples of anti-unittesting sentiments in comments. However, just to be clear there are A LOT of very successful open source projects which doesn't have unittests. This implies that not everybody thinks that unittests are useful. _Update 2_ As soon as we start discussing some particular piece of testing (as example mocking, which came up in the comments), we immediately try to distinguish between being a core value or a mean. However, testing by itself isn't a core value. It's just a way to decrease support cost, which in it's turn, just a way to increase profitability. So, as I see it - unittests are something like 4 connections aways from a profit. _Update 3_ It's interesting that amount of people in \"balanced\" camp is quite small. Most of people have really strong opinion on this topic."}
{"_id": "185207", "title": "How can I build a C# project (installer) for multiple environments", "text": "I would like to propose a solution to our companies problem with building consistent installers for different environments. Our current process is to build an installer for test, perform testing, update app config, build installer for production. Unfortunately this has lead to issues in the past where the installer was not properly updated etc. What can I suggest as a best practice to mitigate this problem?"}
{"_id": "30895", "title": "Should I point out spelling/grammar related mistakes in someone's code?", "text": "While reviewing a coworker's code, I came across some spelling mistakes in function names and also grammatical errors like 'doesUserHasPermission()' instead of 'doesUserHavePermission()' in function and variable names. Should I point these out to him? Or am I being too pedantic to notice these ?"}
{"_id": "181919", "title": "Shipping my first class library. Any gotchas I need to be aware of?", "text": "I'm a Web Developer about to unlock the \"First Class Library Published\" achievement in my career and I'm sweating bullets (literally - I was up all night stressing out). I'd love to tap the experience of the community to see if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for making sure this goes as smoothly as possible. Are there any specifics or gotchas I need to be aware of? Anything special about the build process that can come back to bite me? Here's where I'm at:   * Library is unit tested and has approx 97% code coverage   * API is well documented and xml docs for intellisense support have been created   * I've ensured that public/private class accessors are accurate and correct. The same goes for all getters/setters   * Error handling isn't as graceful as I'd like it to be, but I'm up against a deadline and have accepted that its an \"as good as its going to be\" for now   * No friendly logging. Debug.Writeline was used extensively...I've learned recently that this is a reflection of my inexperience :( Your advice is greatly appreciated! The library will be used to generate reports. Standard hat -- connects to readonly database, performs calcs, formats and outputs data to response stream. * * * I was tapped as a fringe resource to fill in for one of the programmers that quit, and this task was given to me as a \"cut your teeth\" project. The class library is going to be released for other programmers in the company to use while they write production code."}
{"_id": "87826", "title": "Picking Core Language For Large Scale Web Platform", "text": "Now I have work with PHP and ASP.NET quite a bit and also played around few other language for web development. I am now at a point where need to start building a backend platform that will have the ability to support a large set of applications and I am trying to figure out which language I want to choose as my core language. When I say core language I mean the language that the majority of the backend code is going to be in. This is not to say that other languages won't be used because my guess is that they will but I want a large majority of the code (90%-98%) to be in 1 language. While I see to benefit of using the language that is best for the job, having 15% in php, 15% in ASP.NET, 5% in perl, 10% in python, 15% in ruby, etc\u2026 seems like a very bad idea to me (not to mention integrating everything seamlessly would probably add a bit of overhead). If you were going to be building a large scale web platform that need to support multiple applications from scratch, what would you choose as your core language and why?"}
{"_id": "87825", "title": "Is a request for a code sample after a job offer common?", "text": "I was verbally offered a job and the manager insisted that I start the day after the following day from the interview; so two days after the interview. I left the interview unsure of the offer the manager called me later that day and I agreed to take the position. At this point, I was told that I would get an offer letter the following day and would start the day after that. Later that evening I was asked for a code sample. I have yet to receive the offer letter. I've been mostly contracting and usually answer technical questions or show samples at the beginning of the process and find this situation somewhat odd. Is this a common practice?"}
{"_id": "181912", "title": "Database History Table / Tracking Table", "text": "Currently I want to structure a tracking/history table like this:   * PrimaryKey - ID   * OtherTableId - fk   * fieldName - name of the field its tracking   * OldValue   * NewValue   * UserName   * CreateDateTime So basically I want to have a table that will track another tables history, store the column name of the changed field with the new and old value. My question is can anyone poke holes in this? Also, what is the easiest way to ensure that only a column name from the tables its tracking is entered into the fieldName column? Currently my options are to have a enum in the service I'm building, or create another status table and make the fieldName an fk. Any better ideas? **Edit** Goal: There are currently only 2 fields that we care to track. One field will be shown on a web page to display history, the other field will only be accessed by one department and they have access to a view of the database which they\u2019d be able to query. They\u2019d be querying just this one field to get information on who changed the field and what to. This is the reason we wanted to set it where a database field defines the table column rather than having an exact copy of the table record history. We only want two fields tracked with the possibilities of adding or removing fields in the future. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "156700", "title": "in Objective-C, value of type double/float can only be NAN, INFINITY, & normal number?", "text": "I knew double or float value can be not only normal value(-1.3, 0, 1.0, 2.3) but also NAN and INFINITY in Objective-C.   Is there other special values except for NAN and INFINITY for double/float value in Objective-C?"}
{"_id": "156702", "title": "Being relevant and hireable outside of my domain.", "text": "I'm a recent college graduate and have been hired to work for a business software giant. The job by itself is great with amazing perks and a decent pay. Also there is the joy of working in core product development, building something which will be used by millions of people. However a huge problem is that we do most of our development in a proprietary language which is not used in any other product development company outside of here. The only other companies using this language are our partners and customers who would like to implement/customize the software in their business/clients' businesses. Im afraid that working here for a length of time could make me irrelevant as a developer outside the company. While ideally one could say that software development is software development and the language does not matter, the fact is that most companies hire based on past experience, and in this context, my experience would be 0. My apprehensions are supported by the fact that that the attrition rate in this company is much less than the others, so you could find a lot of people who have not changed their job in the past 10-15 years. This is great from the company's perspective and they take a lot of pride in this. However I'm sure that most people do not leave cause they are tied up, since their skills are irrelevant outside of the company. I really love programming and want to remain a programmer in product development rather than being a manager. What should I do to be hireable in a new company if and when I choose to leave my current job? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "180353", "title": "Why do so many namespaces start with com", "text": "I've noticed that a lot of companies use \"reverse domain name\" namespaces and I'm curious where that practice originated and why it continues. Does it merely continue because of rote practice, or is there an outstanding architecture concept I might be missing here? Also note questions such as: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/189209/do-you- really-use-your-reverse-domain-for-package-naming-in-java that sort of answer my question but not 100% (If it makes you feel any better, I'm really curious if I should be using it for my javascript namespacing efforts, but I'm more curious about then when and why, and that should help guide me on the javascript answer, nota bene: \"window\") Example of this practice extending to folders and files: ![http://imgur.com/jtdXo](http://i.imgur.com/jtdXo.jpg)"}
{"_id": "196731", "title": "Looking for a freeware NoSql key-value database to offload a Java HashMap", "text": "I have a Java HashMap with a String key and POJO value in a long-running application, and it's taking up a large chunk of memory (over 500mb, and this number is expected to grow - I'm guesstimating that it will exceed 2GB in two to three months); this is used to memoize the results of an expensive calculation (typically 2-4 seconds, but up to 20 seconds), so I'd like to offload the HashMap to the hard drive rather than replace it with a [Soft/Weak]HashMap with the expectation that external lookup will be less expensive than recalculation; I'd also like to make the map persistent in case the app crashes. My only experience with NoSql databases has been with DynamoDB, but I'd like a freeware database rather than trying to restrict myself to DynamoDB's free tier.   * The app is written in Java, so I'll need a Java API for the database   * The app runs on a single machine, with no expectation of migrating to a distributed architecture   * I prefer the database be strongly consistent, but eventual consistency is acceptable   * The machine has a traditional (non-SSD) hard drive   * The map's keys are strings (length < 40), and its values are POJOs; if need be I can serialize the POJOs to strings with Jackson before persisting them, though I'd prefer the database handle this   * The POJOs belong to several different subclasses with a common abstract parent class; all of the fields are in the parent class (the subclasses only add/override methods, any fields they add are transient)   * There aren't any security requirements - the data I'd be storing doesn't need to be password-protected or anything   * The values in the database won't expire (I'll take care of stale values in application code - if POJO.someProperty != someOtherProperty then I recalculate the POJO)"}
{"_id": "72435", "title": "Why is Google blocking users from accessing their local file system in Chromium?", "text": "The question is based on this issue in Chromium. It is marked as `Won't Fix`. Do you see any reason to block a local html file from accessing another local html file located in the same folder?"}
{"_id": "140173", "title": "Should there be more scientific study of the effectiveness of various hyped-up ideas in software development?", "text": "Everyone seems to implicitly assume that the free market of ideas will eventually converge on the \"right\" solutions in software development. We don't assume that in medicine - we recognise that scientific experiments are needed there - so why should we assume it in software development? I am not arguing for regulation of programmers. It is far too early to even talk about that. Before healthcare could be effectively regulated, there was a need for scientific experiments to establish which treatments worked and which didn't. Software engineering doesn't even have this scientific evidence base to back up touted methodologies such as Scrum or Agile, or programming paradigms like functional programming or MDA. As (a) large software projects are responsible for many government project failures (with the UK government being a really good example) (b) Agile and Lean are being used outside of software development, including in the public sector [of course, Lean originated outside of software development] this is increasingly politically relevant. Government project failures may be influenced by a failure to use a best practice, or even by using something that is considered by some people to be a best practice, but which actually makes things worse, or just costs money without really helping very much. The question is, why is this scientific evidence base (for all intents and purposes) nonexistent? There is a large open source community from which research participants could be drawn. My fear is that the closed-source and in-house software developers would treat with suspicion any research based on this community, fearing (perhaps rightly) that the results would not translate over. And companies that develop closed-source and in-house software would probably not be willing for their developers to participate in any scientific studies. For one thing, it would probably take time away from getting work done; for another, the results could be embarrassing to the company or to senior managers."}
{"_id": "140175", "title": "How to create a code generation tool for Visual Studio", "text": "I'm working on a tool that will generate some C# code, which I hope could prove useable to a wider audience. This tool will read an assembly and a text file containing some data and then generate a bunch of C# classes. The easiest way to do this is of course to simply create a console exe that can be associated with the file type, in the same vein as the code generation tool for XSD files. But I fear that this will be a bit difficult to integrate. I'd much rather have something that feels better integrated. I'll still make the console app anyway, since it's practically a free byproduct and it might be useful for continuous integration. The assembly in question will typically be the **current** assembly that will be generated when the code is compiled, which I suspect normally also will be the assembly where you want the generated files to be hosted. Is there a way of making these kinds of tools? Am I looking into writing a visual studio extension just for this? If the simple exe version is the way to go, is there any way to make it easier on the user by offering installation help along the way, to make it as easy as possible."}
{"_id": "39449", "title": "Dealing with awful estimates", "text": "A recent project I worked on was proven to be severely underestimated by the architect. The estimate was out by at least 500%. Unfortunately I was brought onto the project after the estimate had been signed off with the customer. As senior dev, I quickly realised that the functional and technical spec. contained some huge gaps and uncertanties. As a result I felt compelled to call an emergency meeting with the business and technical directors to let them know the reality. As first and foremost a developer, I found this a very stressful and difficult situation. The \"business\" accused IT of being incompetent and being the messenger I received a few \"bullets\". The customer threatened to cancel the account, however to date the project is still unfinished and I am no longer directly involved with it. The architect was a nice guy socially, but based on this episode was either simply incompetent or there were large sales/business pressures influencing his estimate. So, as programmers, what is your experience of this sort of situation and how would you advise dealing with it?"}
{"_id": "23453", "title": "How Do You Determine Your Hourly Rate?", "text": "In pricing a service or product it is general practice to not merely charge for the effort spent and the costs involved + margin but from the value delivered down. As an independent consultant, how do you set the price of your work? What is the process of determining your hourly rate as an independent software developer? If you have one, what is your hourly rate and how did you arrive at that figure? What factors would you take into account. Is the process of setting a hourly rate only based on balancing demand with supply so that supply (you and your time) doesn't get overwhelmed? When are the good times to raise your rates? Are there projects in which you have had to charge higher than other projects? If so, please cite examples. Do you change your hourly rate based on what kind of development you are doing? (for example, .net programming more, and lesser for php programming) Do you set hourly rates based on what type of business the client is? If so how? If you know of any relevant articles or material on the topic of charging for programming services, please post the same."}
{"_id": "23455", "title": "Relevance of HTML5: Is now the time?", "text": "It seems like most of the jobs I'm receiving, and most of the Internet, is still using standard HTML (HTML 4, let's say) + CSS + JS. Does anyone have any vision on where HTML5 is as a standard, **particularly regarding acceptance and diffusion?** It's easy to find information about inconsistencies between implementations of HTML5 and so forth. What I want to know about is relevance of HTML5."}
{"_id": "109040", "title": "Why do interrupts need to be turned off when inside other interrupt code?", "text": "Simple question that will help me understand my OS class... thanks! Basically, why is it unsafe to have an interrupt within an interrupt? (or exception within exception)"}
{"_id": "109041", "title": "Why is there an emacs vs. vim debate?", "text": "I'm new to the whole scene, so I was wondering why programmers tend to be really passionate about this debate? Thanks. Also, are these referred to as \"text editors\"?"}
{"_id": "92665", "title": "Is there an open source license for this?", "text": "I have written code at home, on my own time and using my own knowledge and equipment, while under no contract or NDA. I want to make this code open source so that I can use it in software I write for an employer, without denying myself the right to use it at home or elsewhere later. I'm not sure if saying it is in the \"public domain\" would fit this purpose, or if I need to find an open source license. I want anyone to be able to use the code in closed source proprietary software with zero requirements for including a license with the source or binary. And I want to minimize the risk of anyone being sued for using it. (I'm aware that one can never be 100% safe from being sued.) Is there an open source license that fits this purpose? To what extent is what I want to do even possible? I wouldn't mind putting the license in comments in the code files themselves, but that obviously doesn't go with the binary."}
{"_id": "107288", "title": "Could spending time on Programmers.SE or Stack Overflow be substitute of good programming books for a non-beginner?", "text": "Could spending time (and actively participating) on Programmers.SE and Stack Overflow help me improve my programming skills any close to what spending time on reading a book like Code Complete 2 (which would otherwise be next in my reading list) will help. Ok, may be the answer to this question for someone who is beginning with programming might be a straight no, but I'd like to add that this question I'm asking in context when the person is familiar with programming languages but wants to improve his programming skills. I was reading this question on SO and also this book has been recommended by many others (including Jeff and Joel). To be more specific, I'd also add that even though I do programming in C, Java, Python,etc but still I'm not happy with my coding skills and reading the review of CC2 I realized I still need to improve a lot. So, basically I want to know what's the best way for me to improve programming skills - spend more time on here/SO or continue with CC2 and may be come here as and when time permits."}
{"_id": "177230", "title": "systems/software engineering design process", "text": "I just developed my first non-trivial android app. It was a complete nightmare. I came up with an idea, build the app, changed my idea, and implemented a lot of input from others on new features. All in all my app took 10 times longer than I think that it should have, it is almost impossible to look the source code and tell what's going on with the classes, and may or may not have unused methods that I'll never be able to find... So I would like an opinion from those of you with experience on how to plan out my designs for the future. I created a flow chart (pencil drawn) of a plan: ![flow chart of plan](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Nyi2U.jpg) I would like constructive criticism."}
{"_id": "177234", "title": "How can I pull data from PeopleSoft on demand?", "text": "I work in IT at a university and I'm working with about 5 different departments to develop a new process for students to apply to a specific school within the university (not the university as a whole). We're using a web-based college application vendor and adding the applicant questions for the school itself to the main university application. Currently the main application feeds into PeopleSoft. The IT staff here is building a new table to hold just our school's applicant data. I want to be able to access that data from PeopleSoft for use in external applications, but our IT staff doesn't really seem to understand what I'm requesting, as they simply tell me I can have access to the PS query tools. The problem is, I don't want to run just ad hoc queries, I want to be able to connect from outside PeopleSoft and show current data within the external app. I am unable to find documentation or get a clear answer to my question. Does PeopleSoft support access via a web services API or anything similar, and does that sound like the right direction for me to take?"}
{"_id": "177235", "title": "How are blocking calls implemented?", "text": "This may be a very simple question. I'm curious how blocking calls are implemented. Specifically, how do they block? Is this just thread.sleep?"}
{"_id": "74550", "title": "Google App. Engine for RoR and Python apps", "text": "I fairly understand that this Q+A site is programmers destination and questions on hosting are not permitted here, but anyone who has heard of Google's App. Engine is well aware that this question is suited for this site only. Google App. Engine supports either Java or Python interpreter. I want to know what type of applications can be hosted on this engine? If my Python or RoR application needs a database behind, will this engine support it? For RoR applications, which interpreter to choose? What are the advantages of Google App.Engine over a local IDE?"}
{"_id": "74553", "title": "Demand of other frameworks in the market. Should a job-seeker go after them?", "text": "I have reading about variety of frameworks for web applications like OpenRasta, Django, CodeIgniter etc. It is a passion of developers to dip their hands on any new technology, but from the job-seeker's point of view, what is the significance of these new buzzes. Is it better for a job-seeker to stick with the standard frameworks like ASP.NET, Rails etc., or devote time on other open-source frameworks as well?"}
{"_id": "6121", "title": "Why am I never completely satisfied with my program?", "text": "For as long as I've programmed, I've never really been entirely satisfied with any projects that I've finished. Sure, they do what I've set out to do, but there has always been _something_ in the code that I, in retrospect, would have done differently but can't be bothered to refactor. Is this just me, or is it a common programming trait?"}
{"_id": "205297", "title": "Where to set the model in this design (service-provider pattern)?", "text": "we are modelling an application using the \"Service-Provider\" pattern, where the service will offer a generic functionality implemented by different providers registered on the service. The responsibility of the service will be to choose the right provider based on certain conditions. The layers we currently have are the following ones: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QjZXP.png) What I don't like about this approach it that the client needs a reference to the providers to access the A definition. I think that normally dependences should go only from one layer to its layer below, right? One solution could be duplicating the model on the service layer but that would mean duplicating ... and of course we should avoid that: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/h4qlF.png) Another solution could be creating a package only for models, but this could be overkill and also breaks the top - down dependency chain: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/k8P3K.png) I'm not happy with any of these solutions but I currently do not have others. What do you think, do you like any, are there others that I have not thought about? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "139545", "title": "Should we do entity-relationship modeling or object-oriented modeling first?", "text": "When building an application from scratch, should I start with the object- oriented (OO) model or the entity-relationship (ER) model?"}
{"_id": "139541", "title": "Best approach for a Java web chat client", "text": "I am trying to add a chat to my web application written in Java. What would be the best solution in this matter? I have read something about JMS, but the pub/sub pattern doesn't seem to be designed for this kind of usage, and for the p2p pattern, I need to build a queue for each user(this doesn't sound right neither). What would you suggest?"}
{"_id": "131210", "title": "Interactive training site for Javascript complete with code challenges", "text": "A few months ago I discovered a cool course called Rails for Zombies. This is a great site that allows us to write code and see the results. It takes us through the paces to get us up to speed with Rails. You have to pass each level (including code challenges) before being taken to the next level, and it gets you grounded in the fundamentals of Rails. I'm wondering if an interactive tutorial site exists for Javascript? One that will walk me through the paces of writing better Javascript, and challenge me along the way."}
{"_id": "240604", "title": "Specification languages vs automated tests", "text": "I recently listened to an episode of Software Engineering Radio in which Leslie Lamport was interviewed. One thing he discussed was his specification language, TLA+. Essentially, he seemed to be arguing that, for programs where correctness is very important, we need to think carefully and specify carefully before writing code, and TLA+ is meant to be a tool to do that. He said a team at Amazon has recently had success using it. Personally, I write executable tests for my code. I see the tests as a specification, which has the huge benefit of **proving** whether the code conforms to it. I assume that Mr. Laport, being a brilliant and accomplished computer scientist, has long known about this, and still sees a need for his language. But why? Are formal specification languages and automated tests complementary approaches, or at odds? Do they lend themselves to different kinds of code?"}
{"_id": "124015", "title": "Reverse Engineering PHP application without reading the (ugly) Code", "text": "I have this new customer, that has this PHP App. It was written by a single developer that wanted to \"make yet another framework\" back in 2005. About 3 Years later the developer left the company, and with him all Knowledge on what this thing is actually doing. Now, as the App already went in production the manager just hired a few more developers / freelancers (that are not available anymore too) to fix bugs here and there and develop some more functionality. Some tried to follow the undocumented guidelines of the software, some did not. You might be able to imagine how the code looks today ... its an utter mess! I talked to the manager and told him what I think of his software and managed to get him to realy think about rewriting the damn thing. But here comes my problem: To be able to estimate the effort needed to rewrite I would need to know what the thing is doing. The manager can tell me from his perspective what it's doing but there is just no technical knowledge about it. And as with all software that grew over years there are these \"special edge cases\". Basically my idea is \"record/log\" the live system for a few weeks to actually get a technical, somewhat complete conclusion of what this thing is doing most of the time and what are the things that rarely get touched/used. E.g. what was the Request and what route did it go to render the results. Reading and trying to understand the code is impossible. It would help though to see which Classes/Functions are called and then read/understand them. So, is there any tool to log/record Http Request/Responses and what call graph of the php app it triggered? Preferably something that would not have to get written into the code? I ditched PHP years ago and am somewhat rusty with my PHP Utility and Standard Library Toolset to know of something that could help me here."}
{"_id": "124017", "title": "Company wants to move its programs to a new framework / concept - what are options?", "text": "So there is an insurance company which wants to move long term its proprietorially written software for different insurance products to a new platform / framework / concept / something. One of the applications is ~700 pages big. We would require some workflow application (ibm websphere products?). Transaction control, historisation, support for running batches, integration of different systems (basically our DB2 is on a host zOs system). The front end is a web gui. The business logic code is written in C++. We would like to move step by step to the new environment. What would be good options?"}
{"_id": "247050", "title": "More idiomatic syntax for 2nd level vector value update", "text": "I'm pretty sure there has to be a more idiomatic way of writing this:               (defn update-2nd-level-vector       [map index value]       (assoc map :key1 (assoc (get map :key1) :key2 (-> map (get-in [:key1 :key2]) (assoc index value)))))      Example of its working:               => (update-2nd-level-vector {:key1 {:key2 [0 1]}} 0 1)     {:key1 {:key2 [1 1]}}"}
{"_id": "121224", "title": "What are binaries?", "text": "I see very often people using term **binaries** in different context. What are binaries? Collection on binary files, installation files, .dll files or what? Or is it just an general term for some collection of files on disk?"}
{"_id": "121225", "title": "What is the best design decision approach?", "text": "I have two classes (named `MyFoo1` and `MyFoo2`) that share some common functionality. So far, it does not seem like I need any polymorphic inheritance but, at this point, I am considering the following options:   1. Have the common functionality in a utility class. Both of these classes call these methods from that utility class.    2. Have an abstract class and implement common methods in that abstract class. Then, the `MyFoo1` and `MyFoo2` classes will derive from that abstract class. Any suggestion on what would be the best design decision?"}
{"_id": "247058", "title": "OpenSSL Client model for half duplex communication over socket", "text": "I have read in this SO question that OpenSSL socket communication can be only half duplex in a single thread. Assuming what I have read is true, I am wondering if I can apply philosopher's dining problem to send SSL_write() and receive SSL_read() on a non-blocking socket in a single thread that communicates with a OpenSSL TCP Server. Both server and client are non-blocking. Would that be a good model? Or should I always set priority to read SSL_read()? What would be the best approach to code? I am using C++ to code this single threaded non-blocking socket model (without BOOST or other libraries)."}
{"_id": "121221", "title": "When to use Constants vs. Config Files to maintain Configuration", "text": "I often fight with myself on whether to put certain keys in my web.config or in a Constants.cs class or something like this. For example if I wanted to store application specific keys for whatever the case may be..I could store it and grab it from my web config via custom keys or consume it by referencing a constant in my constants class. When would you want to use Constants over config keys? This question really applies to any language I think."}
{"_id": "121222", "title": "Is it possible to determine whether my web site is being accessed as a trusted site?", "text": "I am working on site which have a lot of configuration and security settings and I have to check either clients browser is on trusted zone or not using JavaScript. Is it possible to determine whether my web site is being accessed as a trusted site? The reason I'd like to do this is that some functions won't work unless the site is being accessed as a trusted site, and I'd like to be able to warn users. Is there any solution ?"}
{"_id": "182263", "title": "Correlation between college grades and job performance?", "text": "In Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering at the end of fact 2, Robert Glass says: > The problem is\u2014and of course there is a problem, since we are not acting on > this fact in our field\u2014we don't know how to identify those \"best\" people. We > have struggled over the years with programmer aptitude tests and certified > data processor exams and the ACM self-assessment programs, and the bottom > line, after a lot of blood and sweat and perhaps even tears were spent on > them, was that the correlation between test scores and on-the-job > performance is nil. ( **You think that was disappointing? We also learned, > about that time, that computer science class grades and on-the-job > performance correlated abysmally also [Sackman 1968].** ) Is this fact supported by more recent papers?"}
{"_id": "182262", "title": "For small-ish programs, should a single method handle most method calls to centralize program flow?", "text": "I'm fairly new to OOP (and programming in general), but what I find myself doing is that in the event that I don't need to pass a value from one method to another, I'll have my method calls centralized in some class within a Form.cs file. For example:               public void CentralMethod()     {         MethodA();         MethodC();         MethodD();     }      MethodA() will then do some stuff and call MethodB() directly, to which it passes a value. However after MethodB() is done, control reverts back to CentralMethod() and then MethodC() is called, etc. I can see how this is a nightmare on a large project, but is this at all a habit that one should get into on a relatively small project? I didn't necessarily do this by design, but I found myself doing it when it didn't make logical sense to include some method calls within other methods."}
{"_id": "182261", "title": "Can an entire software infrastructure stack be built entirely from source in-house? Is it practical and sustainable?", "text": "I'm a big fan of using open source software but I mostly use community binary releases for the job. I'm wondering about companies that go the extra degree and build everything they use in their production server application infrastructure entirely from source, in-house, in an effort to promote transparency and supportability (instead of relying on binaries). Is it practical and sustainable to do this? It seems that the sheer number of dependencies to maintain and build from source for some of the major open source projects would quickly complicate things."}
{"_id": "231254", "title": "Select custom output formats from database with SQL", "text": "I am planning to make a simple rest service application, and I am currently deciding the architecture. I have decided that I want to write the middle layer in multiple languages, so that it is easy to deploy/integrate with as wide a range of systems as possible. Due to the necessity of porting the code to multiple languages, I want to keep the middle layer logic as simple as possible, to alleviate the coding effort involved. I am planning to put as much code into SQL as possible. For example, traditionally, I might select some data from the database, then loop through the array of results, and process them further before sending back as a well formed response, like perhaps some HTML derived from the data. However, given I want the middle layer to be as simple as possible, I would prefer to do all the processing as SQL. I have prepared sql statements that select from my results by concatenating and using group aggregates for repeating elements. It all seems to work fine, but I have a niggling doubt that I have left the reservation. I am concerned that I have not seen this kind of thing done, so perhaps there is a good reason I have not thought of. My question is... ### Is it a bad idea to write complex formatting logic in SQL instead of application code? In terms of...   1. performance   2. maintenance of code   3. limitations of language   4. anything else **n.b. I don't want to use PL_SQL or anything like that, I am only interested in using very basic SQL commands to achieve my formatting, as I want the database code to be portable between different databases too**"}
{"_id": "173441", "title": "What triggered the popularity of lambda functions in modern mainstream programming languages?", "text": "In the last few years anonymous functions (AKA lambda functions) have become a very popular language construct and almost every major / mainstream programming language has introduced them or is planned to introduce them in an upcoming revision of the standard. Yet, anonymous functions are a very old and very well-known concept in Mathematics and Computer Science (invented by the mathematician Alonzo Church around 1936, and used by the Lisp programming language since 1958, see e.g. here). So why didn't today's mainstream programming languages (many of which originated 15 to 20 years ago) support lambda functions from the very beginning and only introduced them later? And what triggered the massive adoption of anonymous functions in the last few years? Is there some specific event, new requirement or programming technique that started this phenomenon? **IMPORTANT NOTE** The focus of this question is the introduction of **anonymous functions** in modern, main-stream (and therefore, maybe with a few exceptions, non functional) languages. Also, note that anonymous functions (blocks) are present in Smalltalk, which is not a functional language, and that normal named functions have been present even in procedural languages like C and Pascal for a long time. Please do not overgeneralize your answers by speaking about \"the adoption of the functional paradigm and its benefits\", because this is not the topic of the question."}
{"_id": "184636", "title": "What techniques or tools do you use to make your app simpler?", "text": "I've been programming a new iOS app for about 5 months, and I'm pretty much on the final stretch. My team and I agreed to make the app more simple once we were at this point of the development process. This question doesn't really apply to a whole team (where there are people who do design for a living), but more about from a programmer's mind. I tend to dig into every little detail about a personal project, and figure out a way to create a feature for it as I'm sure most other programmers on here tend to do. While that's definitely not bad, it has to be controlled. So what I'm asking is what you all use as far as technique's and tools to help yourself keep things simple. Or in other words, how you control your programmer-type mind from not getting out of hand :P"}
{"_id": "184634", "title": "Git: rebasing on top of a refactor that affects the target rebase branch", "text": "Let's say I have a feature (topic) branch that I keep rebased on top of my development branch. During the course of the project (before merging in my feature branch), I decide that I need to make a large refactor to my project (for example, after updating a 3rd part module). So I do this large refactoring on my development branch. Now I want to rebase my feature branch so I can take advantages of my refactoring. **The problem** There are still things in my feature branch that need refactored to match the changes I made in my development branch. Should I:   1. Go back through my feature branch's history trying to edit commits (with `rebase -i`) to make the branch look as though all of the work had been done after the refactoring.     * The advantage to this is that it keeps the history clean.     * The disadvantage is that this can take a whole lot of time if the changes made in the development branch cause a lot of changes to need to be made in the feature branch.    2. Fix the things that need to be refactored in my feature branch and make a commit for this.     * The advantage here is that it will be much easier to identify and fix things that need to be fixed     * The disadvantage is that now the tree will have _two_ commits in it for the refactor. One for the refactor done for the entire development branch, and a smaller commit done for the feature branch, once merged in it will look a little funny. Which strategy should I go with? * * * **An Example** Lets say on the development branch I rename `functionA` to `functionB`. Now In my feature branch I've never modified the file containing `functionA` (now `functionB` in development). So when I run `rebase development` while on my feature branch it rebases cleanly. The problem is if I've ever made a call to `functionA` in my feature branch, it's going to fail now since it was renamed `functionB`. Now, should I just do a find and replace for `functionA` -> `functionB` and make one commit on the feature branch (option 2). Or should I go back through my history, finding where I introduced the call to `functionA` and rewrite the commit so it is introduced as calling `functionB` (option 1)?"}
{"_id": "141225", "title": "Is it worth it to switch from home-grown remote command interface to using JMX", "text": "Without knowing too much about JMX, I've always assumed that it would be the best approach for building in remote management to our standalone Java server application. Our server application has some minimal remote control capability, using text commands sent via TCP/IP socket to it. Using the home grown approach, it is fairly to add a new command. (Just create new command text, and the code to handle that in the message receiver). On the other hand, we have hardly implemented any commands, even though there are many things we would like to be able to execute remotely. I am trying to weigh the value of moving to incorporating JMX (learning it, and building the interfaces), versus just sticking with the home-grown approach. Does anyone have any experience or advice regarding changing an existing application to use JMX?"}
{"_id": "141223", "title": "How do I balance program CPU reverse compatibility whist still being able to use cutting edge features?", "text": "As I learn more about C and C++ I'm starting to wonder: How can a compiler use newer features of processors without limiting it just to people with, for example, Intel Core i7's? Think about it: new processors come out every year with lots of new technologies. However you can't just only target them since a significant portion of the market will not upgrade to the latest and greatest processors for a long time. I'm more or less wondering how this is handled in general by C and C++ devs and compilers. Do compilers make code similar to `if SSE is supported, do this using it, else do that using the slower way` or do developers have to implement their algorithm twice, or what? More or less how do you release software that takes advantage of newer processor technologies while still keeping a low common denominator?"}
{"_id": "208186", "title": "What's the best way to scale and split an agile team building a web app?", "text": "I've recently joined a company where I'm working as the scrum master on an agile development project building a web app. The team is just about to be the maximum size for an agile team (expecting 9 next week). We have talked about potentially splitting the team into two teams, not so much to shorten standups (which aren't excessive at the moment) but to stop people from being completely bored in sprint planning sessions (which again aren't excessively long). There are two very distinct layers to the project - high technical backend dev (like seriously complex), and UI design/build/integration. It seems that when the backend guys are talking technical the UI guys zone out, and vice versa. It seems like the logical way to split the team if only to be more time efficient, but I have one massive reservation in that all I might really be doing is reducing collaboration and knowledge sharing. The two teams just won't really have a good idea about what the rest of the team are building. Does anyone have any experience in dealing with something like this?"}
{"_id": "238782", "title": "Why prefer non-static inner classes over static ones?", "text": "This question is about whether to make an inner class in Java `static` or not. I searched around here and on StackOverflow, but couldn't really find any questions regarding the design implications of this decision. The questions I found are asking about the difference between static and non- static inner classes, which is clear to me. However, I have not yet found a convincing reason to ever use a non-static inner class in Java - with the exception of anonymous classes, which I do not consider for this question. Here's my understanding of the effect of using static inner classes:   * **Less coupling:** We generally get less coupling, as the class cannot directly access its outer class's attributes. Less coupling generally means better code quality, easier testing, refactoring, etc.   * **Single`Class`:** The class loader need not take care of a new class each time, we create an object of the outer class. We just get new objects for the same class over and over. For a non-static inner class, I generally find that people consider access to the outer class's attributes as a pro. I beg to differ in this regard from a design point of view, as this direct access means we have a high coupling and if we ever want to extract the inner class into its separate top-level class, we can only do so after essentially turning it into a static inner class. So my question comes down to this: Am I wrong in assuming that the attribute access available to non-static inner classes leads to high coupling, hence to lower code quality, and that I infer from this that (non-anonymous) inner classes should generally be static? Or in other words: Is there a convincing reason why one would prefer a non- static inner class?"}
{"_id": "195184", "title": "Stubbing and mocking boundaries", "text": "Suppose I'm building a JSON API and would like to include an endpoint that returns a list of recently created posts. Somewhere in my system is an existing Post model with the following test:   * create a few posts in the db (some new, some old)   * posts = Post.recent   * assert that posts only contains new posts Now I want to test drive the JSON endpoint wrapping this functionality (the \"controller\"). The most obvious way to test this would be a full integration test like:   * create a few posts in the db (some new, some old)   * make a request to /posts   * assert that only the new posts were returned in the response This seems to duplicate much of what is already being tested in the model and will start to slow down the test suite as more code paths need to be tested (i.e. auth, query string params, etc.). The alternatives\u2026   1. Mock the model     * mock Post.recent     * make a request to /posts     * assert that Post.recent was called   2. Stub the model     * stub Post.recent     * make a request to /posts     * assert that the stubbed posts were return in the response Either one of these options alone does not seem sufficient to fully test the controller but when combined seems fairly comprehensive. The piece that remains untested is the agreement between the model and controller about Post.recent. What if I decide to refactor my model and model tests and Post.recent no longer exists\u2026my tests will still pass even though the production system will fail. How does one address this? Are integration tests the only answer? If so, why bother stubbing and mocking at all?"}
{"_id": "135827", "title": "GPL copying copyright notices", "text": "The \"GPL How to\" has the following to say about applying copyright notices of code copied from other programs: > If you have copied code from other programs covered by the same license, > copy their copyright notices too. Put all the copyright notices together, > right near the top of each file. I did a _total_ refactoring of a C# library, which itself was a port from Visual Basic (VB) code. The original VB code is currently released under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), but originally under GPL. The C# library is GPL, continuing work on the older VB library. Basically I only used the same 'technique' they used. I don't care making the library GPL, so that's not the issue. (From this answer I gather my library might be considered a derivative work.) I do however find it cumbersome having to copy the previous copyright notices in every source file. I would rather only reference them in the README file. This question discusses the need to add notices to _every_ source file, but there's no consensus between the answers. Therefore I'd like to add the license to every file as a safety measure. Do I have to include copyright notices **of the projects on which my library was based** in all source files as well?"}
{"_id": "135829", "title": "How DEP and ASLR play role in security?", "text": "Lines from CLR via C#:   A managed module is a standard 32-bit Microsoft Windows portable executable (PE32) file or a standard 64-bit Windows portable executable (PE32+) file that requires the CLR to execute. By the way, managed assemblies always take advantage of Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) in Windows; these two features improve the security of your whole system. Que: I want to know the Security in which context here and what DEP and ASLR does here??"}
{"_id": "200409", "title": "Daily Scrum when the team is just fixing bugs", "text": "I understand all the advantages of Daily Scrum and my team does it when we are working on stories. But sometimes we just have bugs to fix for days, while we're waiting for new stories, and when this happen we put daily scrum aside. Some of developers says that \"There's no need to do a Daily Scrum when we have nothing to discuss\". I don't know if a Daily Scrum when we don't have any new story to develop is necessary. Is there anything interesting we can do on a daily scrum when we just have bugs to fix?"}
{"_id": "208232", "title": "Professional Development: Finding that \"pet project\" to work on - then managing other commitments", "text": "At the moment, like a fair few of you I'd imagine, I spend at least 40 hours working on projects that use a specific set of technologies. Sometimes I'm doing maintenance, and have those technologies enforced, and sometimes I'm doing new builds.. but have the skillset of the team enforced due to maintenance reasons (quite rightly). Yet I've got a growing set of technologies I want to test the waters with; be they custom Javascript frameworks or new Mobile Development techniques. I have no idea how to get to grips with them though! Take for instance the Chromium Embedded Framework; I've always been a fan of the UI of the GitHub app, and also been impressed by both Evernote and Spotify. When I found out how those UIs were produced I naturally tried thinking of a project that I could toy about with and produce over a weekend. (Which, with minimal OS interaction (perhaps simple file manipulations), should be ample) **But I can't think of a single thing to develop.** At work I've been tasked with retraining on Ruby on Rails; not wanting to go in blind - I decided to hammer a few books and try a few techniques. Now aside from the usual Lynda.com examples, and the very good _\"Agile Web Development with Rails\"_ project from the book... **I can't think of a single thing to develop.** Ordinarily I'd consider contributing to some FOSS software, and with frameworks I use regularly I do actually have a few ideas and I belong to the relevant mailing lists - i.e The Apache Cordova mailing list, and have signed the appropriate paperwork where required. (i.e For Apache Licensed projects) **Sometimes it's good to have an idea and run with it from scratch though, especially if you're new to the technology. So how do my fellow programmers manage doing that, and more importantly, how do you get ideas that allow you to use that specific framework/technology? It's hard to shoehorn ideas in to specific technologies at times.** I fear this is half the battle and the other **half is how to keep such a project when work commitments can eat in to your personal time** , and as it is, downtime is quite a valuable commodity!"}
{"_id": "75607", "title": "Is saying \"JSON Object\" redundant?", "text": "If JSON stands for JavaScript Object Notation, then when you say JSON object, aren't you really saying \"JavaScript Object Notation Object\"? Would saying \"JSON string\" be more correct? Or would it be more correct to simply say JSON? (as in \"These two services pass JSON between themselves\".)"}
{"_id": "75606", "title": "Advantages/Disadvantages of NFA over DFA and vice versa", "text": "What are the relative pro's and con's of both DFA's and NFA's when compared to each other? I know that DFA's are easier to implement than NFA's and that NFA's are slower to arrive at the accept state than DFA's but are there any other explicit, well known advantages/disadvantages?"}
{"_id": "208239", "title": "Clean, Modular Code vs MV* Frameworks", "text": "I've been hearing a-lot about the \"new\" MV* frameworks. I've tinkered with KnockoutJS, creating an invoicing application, but I much prefer to write clean, modular code in raw JavaScript - leveraging utility APIs and other libraries when necessary. Given a methodical/structured/SOLID approach to writing a JavaScript application, where OOP, SOC, SRP and other design principles are adhered to, wouldn't the usage of MV* frameworks be superfluous? Are there any articles that express/address these concerns? I've found one in the past _note - i've migrated this question from SO to this site, as its more appropriate for this audience._"}
{"_id": "195181", "title": "Are animations and other eye candies considered non-functional requirements?", "text": "I've seen many lists on the internet that includes many 'ities' (maintainability, scalability, portability, etc), but I'm not sure if animations, screen transitions, and similar features are functional or non functional requirements."}
{"_id": "233548", "title": "Should We Use Surrogate Primary Keys for Every Table?", "text": "We are developing a data model for a marketing database that will import transaction, customer, inventory, etc. files and the directive is ONE process that works for every client. We have been told every client will have different import layouts and different columns that identify a table's primary key. Our initial idea is to get definitions from the client on what columns make each record unique, store those in a mapping table, and then have lookup tables that translate those primary keys to an internal surrogate keys automatically for every destination table so that every table conforms to an integer primary key no matter how many columns/types are used to make up the real pk. The first major problem I saw was when/if have to map back to the lookup tables to get data that we did not store in the main data model, but I have ben assured that anything we ever want to query will be duplicated in the lookup and main tables so that should not be a concern. This kind of flexibility seems like it will cause some serious limitations on:   1. Technology stack (no way to dynamically map these import files in SSIS, need lot of dynamic SQL or java/c#)   2. Scalability (based on previous concern and initial testing, this would be difficult to scale without speed concerns)    3. Complexity (we are already running into some complex code changes when we try to implement all these tables with historical change logging while maintaining mapping to the lookup tables for example) My question - Is this feasible or is there another obvious solution we are missing?"}
{"_id": "138639", "title": "Does Service-Oriented Architecture require the robustness principle?", "text": "I try to migrate more and more of our IT infrastructure to a _Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)_ , that means separation of independent tasks and implementation of this tasks as decoupled services, simply accesible via HTTP. If you don't like the term SOA, just put in another - the basic idea is to put functionality in little modules and expose them by well-defined interfaces. It also means a lot of documentation and communication, because people tend to think in integrated systems. When I combine multiple services to a new component, I always take care to catch errors: if one service fails, the rest of the system should keep on running as best as possible. You probably know the Chaos Monkey, which I keep in mind. However, if other people use services, they tend to think in reliable parts. Does good SOA require the robustness principle? In short, if you use a service, you should not expect to much quality: be aware of any kinds of errors: the service response may not contain all information (missing fields), it may include additional, unknown parts, it may respond very slow, or it may not work at all. Is this a property of loose coupling or am I just to lazy to guaranteeing strict service quality? ;-)"}
{"_id": "134199", "title": "In an MVC project, does the Information Architect define the models?", "text": "The definition of an Information Architect's responsibilities seems to fit neatly with the definition of 'model' in the MVC pattern. But I've never heard the two concepts discussed together. In a large project that has a dedicated Information Architect as well as a team of developers, does the Information Architect actually say \"Model A has properties x, y, and z and has foreign keys to Models B and C...\" etc, or do they just express the concepts more vaguely and let the development team translate this into MVC models? Just wondering what is the most common practice."}
{"_id": "204525", "title": "Do Tech Firms use a lot of Algorithmic Practices that we studied in college?", "text": "I am yet to start my career, I have a profound interest in algorithm design. I somehow fail to understand that, how would a tech firm use the algorithmic paradigm? I mean in real life projects do we actually end up using dynamic programming, greedy techniques, graph algorithms etc. Is there actually a future for people who are good at this subject. I understand that there are a wide variety of projects that are based on java, html5, css, javascript, j2ee etc. that never use algorithms. But are there companies out there using from the algorithmic paradigm for software development/solving complex (business or other) problems or is just for clearing interviews. p.s. I understand that software development is also based on other subjects as well, for example Design Patterns ."}
{"_id": "204529", "title": "Multiple scrum teams moving to single backlog", "text": "We currently have 5 scrum teams that work off their own product backlog for the past year. Each team works on their own dedicated system but underlying technology is the same .Net. There has been a lot of discussion on moving to feature based teams working off a single backlog. The reason is one of our main systems has a significant amount of work coming and their is not enough capacity to deliver all the work in the year. The other reason which I believe is the significant one is it gives greater flexibility to adjust to changes in the portfolio rapidly. A decision been made to change two teams to work on a single backlog but the devs don't have experience on the other systems. One thing we're doing is cross-skilling by moving an experience system developer over to the team. My question is, have you experienced moving to single backlog for two or more different systems. What were your challenges? What did you need to do to get it to work?"}
{"_id": "138633", "title": "Calculate Ellipse based on 4 points", "text": "I need to move an object based on 100 images rotating. The object needs to move in a path that is forming an ellipse when I'm rotating the image based on my gestures. I have **4 points** , _2 pairs of opposite points on X/Y axis_ , on the ellipse but how do I calculate the rest of the points in **code-behind** so that I can **calculate** the new **X/Y Value** of my **next/previous point**? Currently I'm just rotating my object in a circle what is a start but not what I want at all...      ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rhyj2.png)"}
{"_id": "231876", "title": "In Android can we let a fragment know other fragments?", "text": "I think I have found contradictory design guidance within the Google Android documentation on fragmentation. The first statement below advises each fragment be unaware of other fragments and always communicate only to the activity and let the activity decides what needs to be done. > Creating event callbacks to the activity > > In some cases, you might need a fragment to share events with the activity. > A good way to do that is to define a callback interface inside the fragment > and require that the host activity implement it. When the activity receives > a callback through the interface, it can share the information with other > fragments in the layout as necessary. > > For example, if a news application has two fragments in an activity\u2014one to > show a list of articles (fragment A) and another to display an article > (fragment B)\u2014then fragment A must tell the activity when a list item is > selected so that it can tell fragment B to display the article. In this > case, the OnArticleSelectedListener interface is declared inside fragment A: But a second statement later on the same page, a list fragment directly instantiates detail fragment.                  if (mDualPane) {             // We can display everything in-place with fragments, so update             // the list to highlight the selected item and show the data.             getListView().setItemChecked(index, true);                  // Check what fragment is currently shown, replace if needed.             DetailsFragment details = (DetailsFragment)                     getFragmentManager().findFragmentById(R.id.details);             if (details == null || details.getShownIndex() != index) {                 // Make new fragment to show this selection.                 details = DetailsFragment.newInstance(index);                      // Execute a transaction, replacing any existing fragment                 // with this one inside the frame.                 FragmentTransaction ft = getFragmentManager().beginTransaction();                 if (index == 0) {                     ft.replace(R.id.details, details);                 } else {                     ft.replace(R.id.a_item, details);                 }                 ft.setTransition(FragmentTransaction.TRANSIT_FRAGMENT_FADE);                 ft.commit();      So my questions: Are these contradicting each other?   Should this be left to Activity? I feel confused, so any clarification is appreciated."}
{"_id": "231871", "title": "Check some value between each function call", "text": "Can you recommend a nice way of checking a particular value between calls to a set of functions? E.g. something like this in Python (might not be terribly 'Pythonic'):               self.error_code    = 0 # this will be set by each function if an error has occurred     self.function_list = [self.foo, self.bar, self.qux, self.wobble]     ...     def execute_all(self):         while not self.error_code and self.function_list:             func = self.function_list.pop() # get each function             func(error_code) # call it              if self.error_code:             # do something      The idea is that subsequent functions won't be called if `self.error_code` is set and all functions will be called in order if all is good. Anyone can think of a better alternative to that in Python or maybe a language-agnostic approach? I want to avoid having that code in each function call (e.g. `if self.error code: return`) so that I don't end up with the same check across all functions."}
{"_id": "231870", "title": "Why are string resources generally kept external to the code and not inside the code?", "text": "Generally, on many platforms, I'm writing my string resources to a .resx or .xml file, and then I'm getting them using some platform-dependent approach. That is, on iOS, I'm getting them via `NSBundle.MainBundle`, and by using `Context.Resources` on Android. What are the advantages of this approach, and why not having it directly accessible in the code, so, for example:   1. In a cross-platform project, any platform can access it directly, with no integration.   2. There are no concerns during building about whether or not the resources built well.   3. The coder can use functionalities such as multilanguage handling Long story short: what is the reason why string resources are structured that way? [Edit] Let's say that my file is part of a \"core\" project shared between other project. (Think about a PCL, cross-platform project file structure.) And suppose that my file is just totally similar to a .resx/.xml file, looking like this (I'm not a pro in xml, sorry!): Parameters Param\u00e8tres So, this is basically a custom xml, where you point to the key/language to get the proper string. The file would be part of the application just like you add any accessible file inside an app, and the system to access the string resources, coded using PCL. Would this add an overhead to the applications?"}
{"_id": "234000", "title": "ASP.net/IIS runtime envitonment", "text": "I'm not too experienced in the regard of configuring IIS/ASP.net. A client has asked me to extend the functionality of a custom web application I didn't develop. Unfortunately, they don't have the original Visual Studio project/source code. I'm trying to pull the application off of their production IIS server and configure it for development on my machine. I've already setup a new website instance in IIS on my machine and copied the code to it's directory. When I access it (`http://localhost`), I'm currently receiving a null reference in the application. Obviously, this is a pretty generic error the can be caused by a bug, but I feel it's related to IIS's configuration. I've made sure both sites are using the same .NET version and they are also both running in integrated pipeline mode. Any ideas on what else I should look into? Production server: Server 2008 R2 (64bit), IIS 7.5 Development machine: Win7 (64bit), IIS 7.5"}
{"_id": "70383", "title": "Contracting outside of full time contracting job", "text": "I'm a full time consultant for a contracting company. Essentially, I'm just a full time employee and when my current contract is up, I roll to the 'bench' until they find me another contact. One of the independent contractors I'm colleagues with threw a job my way (he's overbooked currently) for a very small company of just a couple employees to do some maintenance on their website. My handbook states \"No individual shall provide consulting services for a fee in competition with [COMPANY]\". But this company isn't a client of my employer (and I doubt ever would be since they're so small). To boot, some of my co- employees for my company either talk on the DL about doing contracts independently, or even have formed companies to do outside contracting with outside clients. Is it safe to do outside contract work even if you're a full time contractor for a consulting firm? (A lawyer question obviously but would love some feedback from anyone with experience)"}
{"_id": "149081", "title": "What sorting algorithm does STL use?", "text": "I recently started using `<vector.h>` library and I was wondering, since all the operations are already implemented, **IF** the method of the sorting algorithm is the most efficient one. Everything runs perfect, there is no doubt, but should I worry about its performance? If I want to sort up to 6-7 million numbers, should I implement my own sorting method using quick sort?"}
{"_id": "70387", "title": "Is there a name for the concept of a hierarchy of many short methods in a class", "text": "A refactoring I commonly do is where I come across a large method such as               public void doSomething() {         // do First thing         doPartA1();         doPartA2();              //now something else         doSomethingElse();         doMoreSomethingElse();         doEvenMore();              // finally do this stuff         someStuff();         someMoreStuff();     }      and use extract method refactoring it to make it like this:               public void doSomething() {         doFirstThing();         doSomethingElse();         doStuff();     }          private void doFirstThing() {         doPartA1();         doPartA2();     }     ...      I know the benefits of this are that duplication tends to be spotted more easily, comments are replaced by descriptive methods and methods can be tested at a finer granularity. Also, in a large class it can be easier to isolate and group a selection of methods/fields as a candidate to extract to a new class. But, I think most importantly it means If I'm looking at doSomething() for the first time, I may only need to read 3 lines of code to know what it does instead of 7. If I don't fully understand doEvenMore(), I can choose to read the method and so on, working down through the class like a hierarchy. Effectively I start reading a short entry point method and only need to read the lower methods in any class when I need to drill down deeper. So, my question - is there a name for this concept in programming and what is the easiest, most concise way to explain or demonstrate it? I have sometimes found it difficult to explain the benefits to colleagues why it's good to split up large methods, even when these new methods are only called from one place. EDIT: I'll try to be clearer: I'm not asking about the concept of extracting methods, I'm asking about the principle that makes extracting methods the right choice in this case e.g. If I had duplicated code in the original method I would extract a method because of the DRY principle. In the case above I don't but it's still good to extract the methods because of the X principle. What is X?"}
{"_id": "70386", "title": "Apache Wave API", "text": "I'd like to create an application based around Apache Wave. Where can I learn more about working with Apache Wave and/or the API for a locally running instance? At the moment, the extent of what I can find seems to be APIs for _Google Wave_ (running off Google's servers) and that it's written in Java."}
{"_id": "101157", "title": "How do you annotate instantiation in UML class diagrams?", "text": "Given this pseudo code:               class B { }          class A : B     {         int val;     };          alpha = new A();      What arrow do I draw between `alpha` and `A` in a UML class diagram? Is this even something UML is meant to do?               +-------+        +-------+        +-------+     | alpha | --??-- |   A   |------|>|   B   |     |       |        |       |        |       |     +-------+        +-------+        +-------+      In my case, I truly do want to express explicitly that `alpha` instantiates `A`. So if there is no way in UML, I'll just make up a way -- which is fine, but I want to know if UML can express it already. My situation is that I'm trying to explain OOP to a friend who is very visual. Therefore, I want to try to visually distinguish the two relationships (inheritance and instantiation) so that he can distinguish it mentally."}
{"_id": "237153", "title": "What is the difference between C# and Visual C#?", "text": "So let's say I want to start learning C# so I can program Unity with it. I look for a good reviewed book and it says \"Learn Visual C#!\". I ask myself, what is the difference between Visual C# and C#? If I know Visual C#, do I also know C#?"}
{"_id": "185589", "title": "More comfortable working on the backend, often referred for role on the front end", "text": "I have applied and have been approached for different roles in web development recently. The one thing that keeps coming up is that I am more suited to front end development than back end development. This makes sense given my background starting out as a designer. The problem is that while I have worked on a large app using ExtJS, I found designing and developing in ExtJS really frustrating. Oddly enough, it was working on this project that landed me in web development because my coding skills were recognized by some senior developers. I highlight that in my CV but I wonder if this might be a mistake. I also use JavaScript quite a bit outside of web development. Specifically in Photoscript and InDesign to create batch operations. It's often assumed that I have expert knowledge in JavaScript, whereas I'm only just getting to grips with the OOP style of JavaScript. I use a lot of procedural code or I just use libraries like jQuery and Google Maps. I have created some experimental apps in Node and Knockout which I fortunately have enjoyed although Node is back end. I used to avoid JavaScript and jQuery in certain web projects since I was focusing on SEO and would only use Javascript if I really needed it. During the interviews, I'm asked questions about JavaScript and front-end development. But I really wanted to talk about PHP and the server side development, so I guess my background shows. How do I address this when I am either contacted for a role or I applying directly without selling my short?"}
{"_id": "185585", "title": "What is the advantage of currying?", "text": "I just learned about currying, and while I think I understand the concept, I'm not seeing any big advantage in using it. As a trivial example I use a function that adds two values (written in ML). The version without currying would be               fun add(x, y) = x + y      and would be called as               add(3, 5)      while the curried version is               fun add x y = x + y      (* short for val add = fn x => fn y=> x + y *)      and would be called as               add 3 5      It seems to me to be just syntactic sugar that removes one set of parentheses from defining and calling the function. I've seen currying listed as one of the important features of a functional languages, and I'm a bit underwhelmed by it at the moment. The concept of creating a chain of functions that consume each a single parameter, instead of a function that takes a tuple seems rather complicated to use for a simple change of syntax. Is the slightly simpler syntax the only motivation for currying, or am I missing some other advantages that are not obvious in my very simple example? Is currying just syntactic sugar?"}
{"_id": "176326", "title": "Anti Cloud Open Source License", "text": "I'm working on a browser based open source monitoring project that I want to be free to the community. What I'm worried about is someone taking the project, renaming it, deploying it in the cloud and start charging people who don't even know my project exists. I know I maybe shouldn't mind, but it just sticks in my throat a bit if someone took a free ride like that and contributed nothing back. Is there any common open source license that can prevent this. I know GPL or AGPL don't."}
{"_id": "36034", "title": "What are the benefits of PHP?", "text": "Everybody knows that people that have prejudices against certain programming languages. Especially PHP seems to suffer from problems of its past and some other things (like loose types) and is often called a non-serious programming language that should not be used for professional applications. In that special case PHP: How do you argue using PHP as your chosen programming language for web applications? What are the benefits, where is PHP better than ColdFusion, Java, etc.?"}
{"_id": "146790", "title": "Combine jquery/jqueryui/qtip/custom javascript into one minified file", "text": "I'm using jQuery, jQueryUi and qTip in my web application alongside custom JavaScript I've written. All three of the JavaScript libraries I mentioned above are licensed under the MIT license. From what I've read, I just need to include a copy of the MIT license for each of those libraries in my web application. Is it OK to put each license as a separate file underneath a \"licenses\" directory of my project? So, I would have a licenses directory with \"jQuery- MIT-LICENSE.txt\", \"jQueryUi-MIT-LICENSE.txt\" and \"qTip-MIT-LICENSE.txt\" in it. Or, do I need to put the licenses right at the top of the JavaScript files? Confused about where exactly these licenses need to be put in my web application... What I'm ultimately looking to do is combine all of the JavaScript files into one minified version for faster loading and I want to put the licenses in whatever is the proper place..."}
{"_id": "122286", "title": "Increase Performance of VS 2010 by using a SSD", "text": "After searching on the internet for performance improvements when using Visual Studio 2010 with a solid state hard drive, I heard a lot of different opinions. A lot of people said that there isn't really a benefit when using a SSD, but in contrast others said the exact opposite. I am a bit confused with the contrasting opinions and I cannot really make a decision whether buying a SSD would make a difference. What are your experiences with this issue and which SSD did you use?"}
{"_id": "18609", "title": "Geocoding for an application unable to show maps?", "text": "We have a situation where our users need to geocode a location (programmatically turn a description into latitude/longitude coordinates) from within an application unable to show a graphic image. Since the Yahoo Geocoding API and the Google Geocoding API both require that the result is used for showing maps (which is a graphic image) this means that we cannot use them immediately. Is there a Geocoding facility available - web service or locally installed (preferred if it does not require network access) - that can be used for such a scenario with a reasonable price model? We can use either Windows applications, Java libraries or remote web services in this particular scenario. Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "122283", "title": "If you develop on multiple operating systems, is it better to have multiple computers + displays?", "text": "I develop for iOS and Linux. My preferred OS is Ubuntu. Now my software shop (me and a partner) is developing for Windows too. Now the question is, is it more efficient to have multiple workstations, one for each target OS? Efficiency and productivity is a higher priority than saving money. I have a 3.4Ghz i7 desktop workstation running Ubuntu and virtualized Windows with two displays, and I'm putting together an even more powerful i7 Hackintosh with 16GB RAM (to replace my weak 2.2Ghz i5 Macbook Pro). My specific dilemma is whether I should sell the first computer and triple boot on the second one, or buy two more displays and run both desktop systems simultaneously. Would appreciate answers from developers who write software for multiple OSes. Running guest OSes in VirtualBox on one system not ideal, because in my experience performance is seriously degraded under virtualization. So the choice is between dual/triple booting on one system vs having two systems, one for OSX+iOS/Windows (dual boot) and the other for Ubuntu (which I prefer to use as my main OS). For much of our work, I write a server-side application in Linux and a client for iOS (or for Windows or OS X) simultaneously."}
{"_id": "122281", "title": "How is the facade pattern different from abstraction layers?", "text": "**I just read about the facade pattern and found this example where a client (user of a computer) invokes a`startComputer()` method which calls on all the complex stuff:** _Source: wikipedia_               /* Complex parts */          class CPU {         public void freeze() { ... }         public void jump(long position) { ... }         public void execute() { ... }     }          class Memory {         public void load(long position, byte[] data) { ... }     }          class HardDrive {         public byte[] read(long lba, int size) { ... }     }          /* Facade */          class Computer {         private CPU cpu;         private Memory memory;         private HardDrive hardDrive;              public Computer() {             this.cpu = new CPU();             this.memory = new Memory();             this.hardDrive = new HardDrive();         }              public void startComputer() {             cpu.freeze();             memory.load(BOOT_ADDRESS, hardDrive.read(BOOT_SECTOR, SECTOR_SIZE));             cpu.jump(BOOT_ADDRESS);             cpu.execute();         }     }          /* Client */          class You {         public static void main(String[] args) {             Computer facade = new Computer();             facade.startComputer();         }     }      Here we can see the client class (You) creating a new facade, calling the `startComputer()` method. This method instantiates several objects and invokes their methods, encapsulating it inside the facade class where it `'glues it together'`. ### Question 1: **But exactly how is this different from layers of abstraction?** Yesterday I made login functionality for a web application where a `doLogin($username, $password)` encapsulated a `'complex'` lower-layer method call that updated login info about the user, set sessions to log in with and instantiated several objects etc. to do this job. This layer would also call another even lower level which would deal with CRUD-like operations such as checking activation status, account existance and other things like processing strings through hashing algorithms. This method _(on model level, look 'layer overview' below)_ would return an array with either a `'success'` key or a `'error_message'` key, acting as a boolean of sorts to the layer calling it. This is what I understand is known as `'abstraction layers'`, hiding complex procedures from the higher-level architecture, but when I read about the facade pattern it seems like I have been using it all along? ### Question 2: **Would my approach to abstracting the login mechanism be a bad choice in a MVC architecture? (if not, please give examples why)** Taken into consideration it should be very easy to decide where the end result goes (HTML, AJAX, etc.), wouldn't this be a wise choice to avoid alot of IFs as this can be dealt with on a controller layer? ### Layer overview: **Controller layer:** `$model->doLogin(POST VARIABLES HERE)` **Model layer:** (Is this a facade?) Sets sessions, updates login information in database etc., calls independent components for information: `$user_id = $user->getId();` and `$session->sessionExists();` **Independent class layer:** Each class on this layer is independent and has little to no coupling. After all, why would it? It's the layer above's job to build the application and lend an API to control it with. ### Question 3: **Is the facade pattern only used for routing calls to sub-classes in an API- like form, or perhaps just most commonly?** _With this I mean:_ Object A instantiates object B and lends a method to control object B's methods through a method of it's own:               <?php          class A {         private $_objectB;              public function __construct()         {             $this->_objectB = new B();         }              public function callMethodB()         {             $this->_objectB->methodB();         }     }          class B {         public function methodB()         {             die('Wuhu!');         }     }          // --------------------------     $objectA->callMethodB(); // Wuhu!      _instead of:_               $objectA->objectB->methodB(); // Wuhu!"}
{"_id": "87003", "title": "Preventing RSI (Repetitive Strain Injuries)", "text": "I am 16 years old and I love to program and playing the piano. It's not uncommon that I'm bashing away on my mouse and keyboard all day long. I do not feel any pains doing so. Yet I am still worried, because I often hear from people that they can never type for longer then 10 minutes again without getting severe pains. Given my two hobbies, programming and playing the piano that worries me **a lot**. My current situation is this:   * G15 keyboard and G5 mouse   * A chair that looks like this (the back of the chair is surprisingly supportive): http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/images/products/torbjorn-bureaustoel__0084333_PE210956_S4.JPG   * In my \"normal sitting position\" the table is around the height of my bellybutton.   * A LG Flatron L194wt screen (too small IMO, getting a new one soon) Should I be worrying about RSI/similar health issues? If yes, what can/should I do about it?"}
{"_id": "87004", "title": "What to do with a 7 button mouse as a programmer?", "text": "I just got a new mouse with 7 buttons. Is there any way to use these extra buttons in eclipse or emacs? Is it possible to have a mouse button for compiling? Do you have any other ideas how to use the extra buttons? I'm using linux, but I'd be interested to hear from windows or mac users too, just to get some ideas."}
{"_id": "246095", "title": "How to test for performance or locking issues of sharing a database with another app", "text": "I have a typical Spring/Hibernate Tomcat webapp that has a user_info table. I\u2019m trying to create another webapp that will do CRUD actions on the user_info table. I'm considering sharing the same database between the two apps. The apps will use C3P0 for database pooling. What is the best way to test the performance and any issues (e.g. locking) that could arise from sharing the db with another app?"}
{"_id": "246094", "title": "Understanding the differences: traditional interpreter, JIT compiler, JIT interpreter and AOT compiler", "text": "I'm trying to understand the differences between a traditional interpreter, a JIT compiler, a JIT interpreter and an AOT compiler. An interpreter is just a machine (virtual or physical) that executes instructions in some computer language. In that sense, the JVM is an interpreter and physical CPUs are interpreters. Ahead-of-Time compilation simply means compiling the code to some language before executing (interpreting) it. However I'm not sure about the exact definitions of a JIT compiler and a JIT interpreter. According to a definition I read, JIT compilation is simply compiling the code _just_ before interpreting it. So basically, JIT compilation is AOT compilation, done right before execution (interpretation)? And a JIT interpreter, is a program that contains both a JIT compiler and an interpreter, and compiles code (JITs it) just before it interprets it? Please clarify the differences."}
{"_id": "203178", "title": "Starting android Development", "text": "I am considering learning android development. I have some basic knowledge in C++. I downloaded the ADT plugin and eclipse. Now while starting from http://developers.android.com I see the codes were in XML. So I googled for learning XML. The best site I found was http://www.w3schools.org but there I found that for learning XML I have to learn HTML and CSS. So I learned the basics of HTML and CSS. But, Now I find in that learning java is a must. So can someone give idea about the sequental languages that I should study now? Should I learn php,mysql too. BTW, I have a dream to work in google :p"}
{"_id": "252262", "title": "Should you ever use private on fields and methods in C#?", "text": "I am somewhat new to C# and just found out that: in C# all of the fields and methods in a class are default private. Meaning that this:               class MyClass     {          string myString          }      is the same as:               class MyClass     {          private string myString          }      So because they are the same should I ever use the keyword private on fields and methods? Many online code samples use the keyword private in their code, why is that?"}
{"_id": "252265", "title": "Why is the JavaScript-language different in different programs/sites?", "text": "I'm kind of new to programming and i have a question that's been bothering me for awhile. Why is the JavaScript-language different in different programs/sites. I've used Codecademy to practice and i've noticed it's different from Eclipse and Unity. For example, in codecademy, you use: var blabla = \"something\" to declare a variable. In eclipse though, you use: int x = 2, String x = \"hey\". Why is it like this? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "252264", "title": "Choosing a class abstraction when multiple viable approaches exist", "text": "I'm having trouble trying to design a class structure for some search functionality. It's quite possible that I'm approaching this incorrectly altogether, but putting that aside I'm curious how other people would approach a situation as follows: We need search functionality that allows users to access parcel information:   * People will be able to search via 3 different search methods -- MethodA, MethodB, MethodC.   (To give some perspective on what I mean by \"method\", lets think of these as things like a one line search that will do some intelligent parsing, another method has specific form fields for entering each parameter, etc.)   * People will be able to search via 3 different search types -- TypeA, TypeB, TypeC. (For example, search by owner, search by parcel address, etc.) The situation isn't terribly complex, but what I'm stuck on is whether I should design my classes around an abstract method object, or an abstract type object. Essentially, should I do this:               public class ConcreteMethodA : BaseMethod      {       public ReturnDataType GetResultsTypeA(){};       public ReturnDataType GetResultsTypeB(){};       //Etc.     }      Or this:               public class ConcreteTypeA : BaseType     {       public ReturnDataType GetResultsMethodA(){};       public ReturnDataType GetResultsMethodB(){};       //Etc.     }      If you do have some advice about how to solve my specific scenario, I will certainly appreciate it. However, I'm more interested in **heuristics** for approaching a design problem of this nature."}
{"_id": "44079", "title": "When to learn the command line version of a programming tool?", "text": "Almost every programming tool has a command line version; many of which also have a gui version. It takes a lot of time and memorization effort to learn the different commands and various options/switches of the command line version. So I have a couple of questions (which are not necessarily mutually exclusive): 1) When would you bother learning/memorizing the commands in the command line version of a tool which also comes in a gui version ? 2) What tools should I learn the command line version of ? .... compilers ? version control system ? etc, etc"}
{"_id": "202807", "title": "A better approach to refactor code when doing A/B Testing", "text": "I'm asked to refactor my component code to support A/B Testing. What is the better approach:   1) Pass a boolean value to the methods and check for that flag inside the method body?               method(flag abTest):             if A_VERSION_ENABLED:            // Do 'A' logic         else            // Do 'B' logic      2) Create dedicated methods for each version?               codeForATest()     codeForBTest()"}
{"_id": "155565", "title": "using static methods and classes", "text": "I know that static methods/variables are associated with the class and not the objects of the class and are useful in situations when we need to keep count of, say the number of objects of the class that were created. Non-static members on the other hand may need to work on the specific object (i.e. to use the variables initialized by the constructor) **My question what should we do when we need neither of the functionalities?** Say I just need a utility function that accepts value(s) and returns a value based solely on the values passed. I want to know whether such methods should be static or not. How is programming efficiency affected and which is a better coding practice/convention and why. PS: I don't want to spark off a debate, I just want a subjective answer and/or references."}
{"_id": "44076", "title": "What's the fundamental difference between the MIT and the Boost Open Source licenses?", "text": "What's the fundamental difference between the MIT open source licence : > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy > of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to > deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the > rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or > sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING > FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS > IN THE SOFTWARE. and the Boost Open Source license : > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization > obtaining a copy of the software and accompanying documentation covered by > this license (the \"Software\") to use, reproduce, display, distribute, > execute, and transmit the Software, and to prepare derivative works of the > Software, and to permit third-parties to whom the Software is furnished to > do so, all subject to the following: > > The copyright notices in the Software and this entire statement, including > the above license grant, this restriction and the following disclaimer, must > be included in all copies of the Software, in whole or in part, and all > derivative works of the Software, unless such copies or derivative works are > solely in the form of machine-executable object code generated by a source > language processor. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT > SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE > FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, > ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER > DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. I'm willing to take an exception to the \"retain this copyright notice\" bit."}
{"_id": "146246", "title": "How can I effectively discuss language limitations with a client?", "text": "I would like to know the ideas that are being used for explaining to the client the limitations of the language used for enhancement of the existing project. Given a scenario was that the project existed in VC++ 6.0 and the client had asked for enhancement that could include transparency (alpha) component in the color part (currently using `gdi`). I found out that `gdiplus` library supports such feature but could not find it for MSVS 6.0 since its already being outdated (could not even find the msdn files for it) did not have support for gdiplus. I had to explain it to my client, so created an application in the newer MSVS and included both `gdi` and `gdiplus` and drew some objects using both the libraries side by side. So gave him an idea that the following point could be fixed if we migrate it to the newer version of code. Since client being a developer himself understood it. But there are cases when the clients are not developers and bearing no knowledge about programming. In such cases it is difficult to explain the problem."}
{"_id": "221442", "title": "What is the name of the following (anti) pattern? What are its advantages and disadvantages?", "text": "Over the last few months, I stumbled a few times over the following technique / pattern. However, I can't seem to find a specific name, nor am I a 100% sure about all its advantages and disadvantages. The pattern goes as follows: Within a Java interface, a set of common methods is defined as usual. However, using an inner class, a default instance is leaked through the interface.               public interface Vehicle {         public void accelerate();         public void decelerate();              public static class Default {              public static Vehicle getInstance() {                  return new Car(); // or use Spring to retrieve an instance              }         }      }      For me, it seems that the biggest advantage lies in the fact that a developer only needs to know about the interface and not its implementations, e.g. in case he quickly wants to create an instance.                Vehicle someVehicle = Vehicle.Default.getInstance();      someVehicle.accelerate();      Furthermore, I have seen this technique being used together with Spring in order to dynamically provide instances depending on the configuration. In this regard, it also looks like this can help with modularization. Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that this is a misuse of the interface since it couples the interface with one of its implementations. _(Dependency inversion principle etc..)_ Could anybody please explain to me how this technique is called, as well as its advantages & disadvantages? **Update:** After some time for consideration, I rechecked and noticed that the following singleton version of the pattern was used far more often. In this version, a public static instance is exposed through the interface which is initialized only once (due to the field being final). In addition, the instance is almost always retrieved using Spring or a generic factory which decouples the interface from the implementation.               public interface Vehicle {           public void accelerate();           public void decelerate();                public static class Default {                public static final Vehicle INSTANCE = getInstance();                     private static Vehicle getInstance() {                     return new Car(); // or use Spring/factory here                }           }      }           // Which allows to retrieve a singleton instance using...      Vehicle someVehicle = Vehicle.Default.INSTANCE;      _In a nutshell:_ it seems that this is a custom singleton/factory pattern, which basically allows to expose an instance or a singleton through its interface. With respect to the disadvantages, a few have been named in the answers & comments below. So far, the advantage seems to lie in its convenience."}
{"_id": "213808", "title": "Why EJBContainer has no methods for managing transactions and other EJB low level services", "text": "I read that the EJBContainer is responsible for things like managing transactions, managing EJB lifecycle, managing bean pools etc. So I took a look at the source code But there seem to be no methods for managing transactions, managing EJB lifecycle, managing bean pools.   So how is this taken care of?"}
{"_id": "213805", "title": "Workflow versioning", "text": "I believe I have a fundamental misunderstanding when it comes to workflow engines which I would appreciate if you could help me sort out. I'm not sure if my misunderstanding is specific to the workflow engine I'm using, or if it's a general misunderstanding. I happen to use Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF). **TLDR-version** WWF allows you to implement business processes in long-running workflows (think months or even years). When started, the workflows can't be changed. But what business process can't change at any time? And if a business process changes, wouldn't you want your software to reflect this change for already started 'instances' of the business process? What am I missing? **Background** In WWF you define a workflow by combining a set of activites. There are different types of activities \\- some of them are for flow control, such as the IfElseActivity and the WhileActivty while others allows you to perform actual tasks, such as the CodeActivity wich allows you to run .NET code and the InvokeWebServiceActivity which allows you to call web services. The activites are combined to a workflow using a visual designer. You pretty much drag-and-drop activities from a toolbox to a designer area and connect the activites to each other. The workflow and activities have input paramters, output parameters and variables. We have a single workflow which sometimes runs in a matter of a few days, but it may run for 5-6 months. WWF takes care of persisting the workflow state (what activity are we currently executing, what are the variable values and so on). So far I think WWF makes sense. Some people will prefer to implement a software representation of a business process using a visual designer over writing all of it in code. **So what's the issue then?** What I don't really _get_ is the following: WWF is designed to take care of long-running workflows. But at the same time, WWF has no built-in functionality which allows you to modify the running workflows. So if you model a business process using a workflow and run that for 6 months, you better hope that the business process does not change. Because if it do, you'll have to have multiple versions of the workflow executing at the same time. This seems like a fundamental design mistake to me, but at the same time it seems more likely that I've misunderstood something. For us, this has had some **real-world effects** :   * We release new versions every month, but some workflows may run for a year. This means that we have several versions of the workflow running in parallell, in other words several versions of the business logics. This is the same as having many differnt versions of your code running in production in the same system at the same time, which becomes a bit hard to understand for users. (depending on on whether they clicked a 'Start' button 9 or 10 months ago, the software will behave differently)   * Our workflow refers to different types of entities and since WWF now has persisted and serialized these we can't really refactor the entities since then existing workflows can't be resumed (deserialization will fail We've received some **suggestions on how to handle this**   * When we create a new version of the workflow, cancel all running workflows and create new ones. But in our workflows there's a lot of manual work involved and if we start from scratch _a lot_ of people has to re-do their work.   * Track what has been done in the workflow and when you create a new one skip activites which have already been executed. I feel that this alternative may work for simple workflows, but it becomes hairy to automatically figure out what activities to skip if there's major refactoring done to a workflow.   * When we create a new version of the workflow, upgrade old versions using the new WWF 4.5 functionality for upgrading workflows. But then we would have to skip using the visual designer and write code to inject activities in the right places in the workflow. According to MSDN, this upgrade functionality is only intended for minor bug fixes and not larger changes. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "41750", "title": "Many user stories share the same technical tasks: what to do?", "text": "_A little introduction to my case:_ As part of a bigger product, my team is asked to realize a small IDE for a DSL. The user of this product will be able to make function calls in the code and we are also asked to provide some useful function libraries. The team, together with the PO, put on the wall a certain number of user stories regarding the various libraries for the IDE user. When estimating the first of those stories, the team decided that the _function call mechanism_ would have been an engaging but not completely obvious task, so the estimate for that user story raised up from a simple 3 to a more dangerous 5. _Coming to the problem:_ The team then moved to the user stories regarding the other libraries, actually 10 stories, and added those 2 points of \" _function call mechanism_ \" thing to each of those user story. This immediately raised up the total points for the product of 20 points! Everyone in the team knows that each user story could be picked up by the PO for the next iteration at any time, so we shouldn't isolate that part in one user story, but those 20 points feel so awfully unrealistic! _I've proposed a solution, but I'm absolutely not satisfied:_ We created a \"Design story\" and put those annoying 2 points over it. However when we came to realize and demonstrate it to our customers, we were unable to show something really valuable for them about that story! _Here the problem is whether we should ignore the principle of having isolated user stories (without any dependency between them)._ What would you do, or even better what have you done, in situations like this? * * * _(a small foot-note: following a suggestion I've moved this question from stackoverflow)_"}
{"_id": "41751", "title": "Does my JavaScript look big in this?", "text": "As programmers, you have certain curtains to hide behind with your code. With PHP all of your code is server side preprocessed, so this never see's the light of day as far as the user is concerned. If you have maybe rushed through some code for a deadline, as long as it functions correctly then the user never needs to know how many expletives you've inserted into the comments. However with more and more applications being written for the web, with a desktop feel implemented by AJAX and popular frameworks like jQuery being banded around to every Tom, Dick and Harry, how can a programmer maintain some dignity and hide his/her JavaScript code without it being flaunted like dirty laundry when the users hit Right Click->View Source or Inspect Element. Are there any ways to hide JavaScript application logic/code?"}
{"_id": "12971", "title": "Defining Rank names for employees", "text": "I want to create a list of ranks for the employees in my company. We are an open source integrator that works usually with existing solutions and also building custom solutions. We don't want to name our employees as normal senior consultant, trainee and we would like give them ranks as forums do to the users. Does anyone have any suggestion for this?"}
{"_id": "218789", "title": "Use cases sequentialy related, how to deal with this?", "text": "I'll express my doubt with an example. Suppose I have the following requirement: > _The customer needs a page in his website that displays all the products he > has with a quantity field on the side of each product. The visitor of the > website must be able to fill in the quantities desired, select one location > and ask for the budgeting. After asking for the budgeting, the visitor must > be taken to a page with the summary of the products asked, together with the > prices and fields to fill in contact informations to proceed the negotiation > if desired_ To organize this I've decided on building two use cases: \"Require budgeting\" and \"Ask for products\". The first one is: > Title: Require budgeting > > Actor: Website visitor > > Scenario: > >   * The visitor selects to see the products > >   * While the visitor want to add products to the budgeting > >     * The visitor fills the desired quantity of a product in the > corresponding field >   * The visitor selects his location to estimate shipping price > >   * The visitor sends the requirement > > After that, the visitor will be redirected to the page with the information about what he asks and the fields to require the products. This is another use case, but there is a close connection with the first one, because it is in the sequnce. I didn't know exactly how to deal with this. So I thought of using precondition: > Title: Ask for products > > Actor: Website visitor > > Precondition: the visitor has asked for a budgeting > > Scenario: > >   * The visitor reviews the products and prices > >   * If he wants to ask for the products > >     * The visitor fills his contact information and sends to the sales > department >   * If not, he exits the page > > But I'm unsure this is the right way to do so, I think that \"extension\" was the right way to express that, but I think I didn't get this yet. How should we proceed when use cases are closely related like that?"}
{"_id": "123487", "title": "Using neo4j for managing project tasks and schedules?", "text": "I am considering using Neo4j to manage project tasks and schedules and compute critical paths. Obviously tasks and milestones would be nodes, and dependencies would be relationships. Are there any best practices, resources, or implementations to which I can refer?"}
{"_id": "123484", "title": "What kind of documentation should UX designers provide to the developer?", "text": "It would be interesting to hear what is used besides sketches from UX engineers during development of a GUI. Unfortunately our UX team provides just a minimum of requirements for GUI screens. I believe that a better solution would be to use some tables with requirements and state machines or may be just some text description of GUI behavior? Is that something you use ? I tried speaking to our UX team but looks like it's impossible to get anything besides graphic sketches from them and I am wondering what others use. Our project is for iPhone currently, but it is could be useful to hear any advice even if you develop for any other platform or even desktop or web. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "218781", "title": "Is it correct to say that CSS is AOP?", "text": "With selectors being a counterpart to pointcuts, and rules pretty much doing the same as advices do, - can we say that cascading style sheets are adhering to aspect-oriented paradigm ? And a corollary of this: \"every CSS coder is doing AOP\"? I found this similarity some time ago, but the brilliant post below reaffirmed my thoughts on this topic: Every time you use CSS, you\u2019re doing Aspect- Oriented Programming > When you write the following CSS statement, you\u2019re injecting the behavior of > the rules into your entire site, without touching the code that\u2019s already > there... > > Aspect-oriented programming is the most misunderstood programming paradigm. > But fundamentally, the reason it exists is the same reason CSS exists \u2014 to > better separate concerns in your code."}
{"_id": "76560", "title": "All possible solutions to equation, where operators are arbitrary?", "text": "Given something like this: 1 5 3 4 = 18 I need to determine (using an algorithm) if there is a combination of operators and brackets that bring me to 18. Only \"+\" and \"*\" and \"(\" and \")\" are allowed. Example: 1 + 5 + ( 3 * 4 ) = 18 Beside brute force, is there any particular algorithm that is able to compute all the possible combo in reasonable time? RPN may help in order to encode the possible solutions, but the same are a lot (4^n ?)."}
{"_id": "76569", "title": "Tips for phone interviews", "text": "I'm about to do my first phone interview in a few days (I'm the one who is being interviewed), and am wondering about how to approach it (how to prepare, what to expect, and so on...). The job is for a software engineer. How do these things usually go? What would you advise for someone about to do a phone interview?"}
{"_id": "123150", "title": "How to get a programmer to apply nice design touches?", "text": "We have a small webdesign firm, and count with one designer. We can currently not afford too much expansion in the design area, so that means that the designer creates the main design of a website (which often means: the homepage), and the programmers then work with this to make it into a website. In general, this works for us. However, I have noticed a big difference between the abilities of different programmers to apply 'nice design touches' to a website. Given that we only have the homepage design, we often need to structure internal sections ourselves. Nothing major, no design program needed, but CSS skills come into play. So let's say we need to show a list of different sections in the website. I will have the content and assign this to two programmers. One will come up with this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jw6Lr.png) And another will do very much his best - and has the same CSS knowledge - but can only come up with something like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aVTiU.png) NOTE: sample image taken from MailChimp website. The second programmer is aware that his 'design' lacks style and that it needs improvement, but he is just not able to create something nice without having it all drawn up by somebody else. He wants to work on this, but I do not know what a good approach would be. Any tips? Anybody with similar experiences?"}
{"_id": "86554", "title": "How do you track third-party software licenses?", "text": "How do you track licenses for third-party libraries that you use in your software? How did you vet the licenses? Sometimes licenses change or libraries switch licenses--how do you stay up to date? At the moment I've got an Excel spreadsheet with worksheets for third-party software, licenses, and the projects we use them on (organized like a relational database). It seems to work OK, but I think it will go out-of-date pretty quickly."}
{"_id": "123159", "title": "What Are The Specific Meanings Of The Terms: Functions, Methods, Procedures, and Subroutines?", "text": "I'm wondering what are the specific differences in the terminology we use for grouping related parts of code. I've sometimes seen the terms used interchangeably: many OO languages even use the keyword \"function\" to define a method. (Why?) If you wanted to be precise, what are the specific meanings of each? Or is it just whatever each language chooses to call it?"}
{"_id": "238394", "title": "Whats the best way to handle errors in code?", "text": "So I'm a little concerned about my error handling... Currently my execution path looks something like this: > Users.aspx -> App_Code/User.cs -> Data Layer/User.cs So now when I try to update a user record, I put my Try/Catch block in the event handler and ensure that only the App_Code class interacts with the data layer. Exceptions that happen on the data layer, to my understanding, should bubble up to the event handler below. In the data layer, I started off with this:               public void Update()     {         var product = (from p in db.products                             where p.productid == id                             select p).FirstOrDefault();              if (product != null)         {             // update the thing         }     }      More info on reddit. After chatting with a friend, he recommended something like this:               public void Update()     {         int count = db.users.Count(u => u.userid == id);              if (count == 0) // no user found         {             throw new ValidationException(String.Format(\"User not found for id {0}.\", id));         }         if (count > 1) // multiple users         {             throw new ValidationException(String.Format(\"Multiple users found for id {0}.\", id));         }              var user = db.users.FirstOrDefault(u => u.userid == id);         // update the user record     }      Then I went onto IRC where they suggested I create my own Exceptions. I can see the pros here, but it seems a bit unnecessary when my friend's option will work just fine. Basically I'm just really confused as to how I should handle this... Obviously my initial option is insufficient, but it seems like creating my own exceptions might be complicating things too much. So what should I do here?"}
{"_id": "171156", "title": "Can higher-order functions in FP be interpreted as some kind of dependency injection?", "text": "According to this article, in object-oriented programming / design **dependency injection** involves   * a dependent consumer,   * a declaration of a component's dependencies, defined as interface contracts,   * an injector that creates instances of classes that implement a given dependency interface on request. Let us now consider a higher-order function in a functional programming language, e.g. the Haskell function               filter :: (a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a]      from `Data.List`. This function transforms a list into another list and, in order to perform its job, it uses (consumes) an external predicate function that must be provided by its caller, e.g. the expression               filter (\\x -> (mod x 2) == 0) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]      selects all even numbers from the input list. But isn't this construction very similar to the pattern illustrated above, where   * the `filter` function is the **dependent consumer** ,   * the signature `(a -> Bool)` of the function argument is the **interface contract** ,   * the expression that uses the higher-order is the **injector** that, in this particular case, injects the implementation `(\\x -> (mod x 2) == 0)` of the contract. More in general, can one relate higher-order functions and their usage pattern in functional programming to the dependency injection pattern in object- oriented languages? Or in the inverse direction, can dependency injection be compared to using some kind of higher-order function?"}
{"_id": "171155", "title": "Is Wordpress more appropriate than Magento/Opencart for site like this?", "text": "The premise of the site is that a user pays a small fee to advertise an item that they want to sell. Therefore the user is responsible for adding the \"products\", not the administrator. The product upload will create a product page for that item. This is a rather common framework that I'm sure you're familiar with. My initial thought was that it would be best suited using Magento - mainly because it needs to accept payments - and the products will grow to form a catalog of categorized products. However - there is no concept of a shopping cart. A buyer does not buy the item online, or go to a checkout. They simply look at the product, and contact the seller if they like it. The buyer and seller then take it from there. For this reason, I then begin to suspect that Magento is perhaps too overkill, or just simply not the right CMS if there is on checkout procedure (other than the uploader making a payment) So then I begin to think Wordpress....Hmmm Feature requirements:   * User's can add content via a form process   * User's can be directed to a payment gateway   * For each product listing - a series of photographs shall be displayed, in thumbnail form Zoom capabilities/rotate on the images would be a welcome feature In short - e-commerce CMS, or something more simple?"}
{"_id": "86754", "title": "Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project?", "text": "There is some code which is GPL or LGPL that I am considering using for an iPhone project. If I took that code (JavaScript) and rewrote it in a different language for use on the iPhone would that be a legal issue? In theory the process that has happened is that I have gone through each line of the project, learnt what it is doing, and then reimplemented the ideas in a new language. To me it seems this is like learning how to implement something, but then reimplementing it separately from the original licence. Therefore you have only copied the algorithm, which arguably you could have learnt from somewhere else other than the original project. Does the licence cover the specific implementation or the algorithm as well? EDIT------ Really glad to see this topic create a good conversation. To give a bit more backing to the project, the code involved does some kind of audio analysis. I believe it is non-trivial to learn or implement, although I was prepared to embark on this task (I'm at the level where I can implement an FFT algorithm, and this was going to go beyond that.) It is a fairly low LOC script, so I didn't think it would be too hard to do a straight port. I really like the idea of rereleasing my port as well as using it in the application. I don't see any problem with that, and it would be a great way to give something back to the community. I was going to add a line about not wanting to discuss the moral issues, but I'm quite glad I didn't as it seems to have fired the debate a bit. I still feel a bit odd about using open source code to learn from. Does this mean that anything one learns from an open source project is not allowed to be used in a closed source project? And how long after or different does an implementation have to be to not be considered violation of the licence? Murky! EDIT 2 -------- Follow up question"}
{"_id": "125649", "title": "Non-OOP languages advantages and good uses", "text": "I'm a C# developer, but I also know Java, JavaScript, XSLT, a little of C and Perl, e some other that I may have forgotten. Still, the paradigm I'm most familiar to is OOP. I have always thought that OOP was the natural evolution of procedural programming, but I wondered if OOP is that perfect. After reading some articles on the web and some questions here, I found that many people don't agree with this, and some say even that OOP is a bad option. While developing, I really appreciate using lambdas, LINQ, anonymous types and really enjoy JavaScript with its prototyping and dynamic nature. But still, I can't think of any scenario where OOP is not an option, or where other paradigms fits better. The only thing I can think of is that sometimes programming with OOP is really boring and slow, like having to declare a class, import some other classes and declaring a method, specifying its parameters, return type and name just to show \"Hello, World!\" on the console screen. But still, for real-life programs, it seems like something that compensates its cost. In what scenarios does other paradigms fits better than OOP? What are its advantages over OOP and were does OOP makes things worse instead of helping? Especially, what are the advantages and in what scenarios do excel procedural and functional programming?"}
{"_id": "212254", "title": "Optimized Special Character Escaper vs Matcher/Pattern", "text": "I need to escape special characters which are sent to apache lucent. Since the code will run on a production server I want the code to be the fastest possible. I've seen multiple ways to do it:               Using Pattern     Using Replace     Using Library      See: http://www.javalobby.org/java/forums/t86124.html I'm wondering:   * For trivial cases such as this, regex or custom?   * Can the below be optimized further.              /*      * Lucene supports escaping special characters that are part of the      * query syntax. The current list special characters are + - && || !      * ( ) { } [ ] ^ \" ~ * ? : \\      *       * To escape these character use the \\ before the character.      */     String query = \"http://This+*is||a&&test(whatever!!!!!!)\";     char[] queryCharArray = new char[query.length()*2];     char c;     int length = query.length();     int currentIndex = 0;     for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)      {         c = query.charAt(i);         switch (c) {                         case ':':         case '\\\\':         case '?':         case '+':         case '-':         case '!':         case '(':         case ')':         case '{':         case '}':         case '[':         case ']':         case '^':         case '\"':         case '~':         case '*':             queryCharArray[currentIndex++] = '\\\\';              queryCharArray[currentIndex++] = c;          break;              case '&':         case '|':                if(i+1 < length && query.charAt(i+1) == c)             {                 queryCharArray[currentIndex++] = '\\\\';                  queryCharArray[currentIndex++] = c;                  queryCharArray[currentIndex++] = c;                  i++;             }         break;              default:             queryCharArray[currentIndex++] = c;                   }                    }          query = new String(queryCharArray,0,currentIndex);          System.out.println(\"TEST=\"+query);"}
{"_id": "238398", "title": "Hide admin menu if no admin option is available", "text": "If you have a menu \"Admin tasks\" and different admin tasks (like 10) that you could separately assign to each user, but there are users who don't have any admin tasks, how would you deal with \"Hiding admin menu\" for those users? I was thinking of 3 ways: 1) Javascript, check if Admin menu is empty and then hide it. 2) Check for all permissions in Admin menu, with a counter, and show it if counter > 0. And then also re-check the permissions for each item to show. 3) Save all permissions in associative array. Test all and assign ' true' to granted items. When building the menu, have a function that tests if there is at least one permission granted. I wouldn't need to re-check permissions against DB, just against the array for each item. Is there any better way?"}
{"_id": "219786", "title": "Identifying how server is authenticating users", "text": "I'm trying to build a bot that will parse the list of classes offered by my university and let me know when the one I'm looking for is open. The problem is that in order to get to the registration/search box, I have to log in with my university username and password. I'm trying to figure out what protocol that my school uses to authenticate me so I can give my bot my credentials and let it log in for me so it can access the registration/search page, so how can I figure out what they are using so I can figure out how to implement it in whatever language I decide to use. I've gone through packet captures but all I can see is the SSL syn/ack, which I guess is the point of SSL haha. Can anyone recommend how to figure out what protocol my school uses to log in users?"}
{"_id": "219781", "title": "shall a vector2 extends a vector3 or is it the opposite?", "text": "Perhaps the question might be tied to a theoritical or mathematical forum, but since it is for programming purpose, i ask here first: In a computer vision context, i write a couple of interfaces intended to be the \"read-only\" part of vectors. So i define \"IVector2R\" and \"IVector3R\" that only contain getters. The question is: does IVector2R extends IVector3R (and the \"y getter\" always returns 0), or is it the opposite: IVector3R extends IVector2R? I would like a conception as close as possible to the mathematic/sets theory... Thank you for your attention"}
{"_id": "219780", "title": "How to refactor a Java singleton to Clojure?", "text": "I'm writing a simple game in Java and I want to learn Clojure, so I've decided to refactor my current Java code to Clojure. The problem is that I've coded so much in object-oriented languages that I cannot _see_ how to do it functionally. To be concrete, I have a `Map<String, Country>` inside a singleton class that can be accessed from anywhere to get a Country instance, update it, and put it back into the map. I implemented this the same way in Clojure. For example, to update a country:               (def countries (do-get-countries))          (defn update-country         [country]         (def countries (assoc countries (get country :name) country)))      Also I've created a `defrecord Country`, but I actually modify these records like               (assoc country :name \"New name\")      These two examples don't look idiomatic in my opinion. Is this actually the correct way to do it in Clojure? If not how would it be more idiomatic? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "126501", "title": "What would be an appropriate algorithm to factorise numbers in the range of a few billion?", "text": "I'm learning Python at the moment and to give me reasons to apply what i'm learning I'm having a crack at some of the problems on Project Euler I'm currently on number 3, which is to determine the highest prime factor of said number. I've deduced I need to probably have two algorithms, one to determine primality, and the second which would involve finding factors of the number. So i've been reading up on Wiki articles. Trying to determine what might be the best algorithm to use and how to go about it. But it's been a while since i've done some hardcore maths based programming and i'm struggling to start somewhere. I was looking at using Fermat's factorization method with inclusion of Trial by Division but I don't want to make something too complicated I'm not after to crack RSA I just want two algorithsm suitable for my problem and there in lies my question. What algorithms would you use for testing for primality / factoring a number that are suitable to the problem at hand? **Edit** Thank you all for your answers and insights they have been most helpful I upvoted all that were useful either through advice or through there own Euler experiences. The one I marked as right was simply the most useful as It gave me a proper place to start from which was a push in the right direction. Thanks again =)"}
{"_id": "229431", "title": "Should processing/filtering be performed client side or server side for catalog based apps", "text": "**Device targeting for product XML catalog** We currently have a webservice that outputs an XML of products based on get parameters in the request. The webservice is consumed from a windows mobile application. In front of the webservice we have an HTTP accelerator/cache that caches the results for identical URLs. The business guys, want a new feature to allow products to be targeted for specific device configurations. We consider a device configuration can be made of parameters such as:   * hardware model   * firmware   * geographic location   * cellular provider   * etc... This may drastically kill the cache hit/miss ratio (efficiency) since we will be sending a param \"deviceConfigId\" which will be different for many devices, but will affect the list of applications outputted. We are talking 10,000 configs minimum. Our hit/miss ratio went from 75% to 40% after adding a few new features and filters via the URL one year ago. Except for using mechanisms such as Edge Server Includes ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5960598/varnish-and-esi-how-is-the- performance/9914643#9914643 ) , one of the ideas we are flirting with is to movie part of the filtering to the mobile devices. **Moving filtering client side** The mobile developers cringe because this may make their mobile devices less responsive. The client devices will need to download all product information(page by page as people scrolll down) but the device will need to filter out entries. Additionally, at the beginning of loading the device must download a list of rules applicable to the specific configuration in order to apply them on all future requests and the products listed in the XML. **Keeping all filtering on the backend** The backend developers cringe with the idea of adding the \"deviceConfigId\" to all the requests. This will require adding even more network infrustructure and resources. The problem can be solved by adding a better load balancer and adding more servers behind it (as well as moving to more distributed technologies later on). If we consider that user experience should be the highest priority and that slower/older devices should function as smooth as possible it seems we should use server side filtering for the product listings. However, newer devices are coming out and older devices are being thrown out continously. Forcing the clients to do some filtering but keeping load off the backend is quite tempting. Are there any other pros/cons, and more importantly solutions to such an issue? Thanks"}
{"_id": "151038", "title": "when should a database table be broken into multiple tables with relations?", "text": "I have an application that needs to store client data, and part of that is some data about their employer as well. Assuming that a client can only have one employer, and that the chance of people having identical employer data is slim to none, which schema would make more sense to use? **Schema 1**               Client Table:     -------------------     id int     name  varchar(255),     email varchar(255),     address varchar(255),     city varchar(255),     state char(2),     zip varchar(16),     employer_name varchar(255),     employer_phone varchar(255),     employer_address varchar(255),     employer_city varchar(255),     employer_state char(2),     employer_zip varchar(16)      * * *               **Schema 2**             Client Table        ------------------      id int     name  varchar(255),     email varchar(255),     address varchar(255),     city varchar(255),     state char(2),     zip varchar(16),          Employer Table     ---------------------     id int     name varchar(255),     phone varchar(255),     address varchar(255),     city varchar(255),     state char(2),     zip varchar(16)     patient_id int      Part of me thinks that since are clearly two different 'objects' in the real world, seperating them out into two different tables makes sense. However, since a client will always have an employer, I'm also not seeing any real benefits to seperating them out, and it would make querying data about clients more complex. Is there any benefit / reason for creating two tables in a situation like this one instead of one?"}
{"_id": "149555", "title": "Difference between immutable and const", "text": "I've often seen the terms `immutable` and `const` used interchangeably. However, from my (little) experience, the two differ a lot in the 'contract' they make in code: Immutable makes the contract that this object _will not_ change, whatsoever (e.g. Python tuples, Java strings). Const makes the contract that in the scope of this _variable_ it will not be modified (no promise whatsoever about what other threads might do to the object pointed to during this period, e.g. the C/C++ keyword). Obviously, the two are not equivalent, unless the language is single-threaded (PHP), or has either linear or uniquness typing system (Clean, Mercury, ATS). First, is my understanding of these two concepts correct? Second, if there is a difference, why are they almost exclusively used interchangeably?"}
{"_id": "214677", "title": "Single Page Web Application and Requiring JavaScript", "text": "I'm under the impression, and I agree with it, that it's bad to create a web application _requiring_ JavaScript to function properly. What if one were to create a single page application? Is it possible to create one that doesn't rely on JavaScript, without being difficult, or full of \"hacks\"?"}
{"_id": "127672", "title": "Is Javascript a Functional Programming Language", "text": "* Is Javascript a functional language? I know it has objects & you can do OOP with it also, but is it also a functional language, can it be used in that way?   * You know how OOP became/seems like the next evolution in programming, does that mean that 'Functional Programming' is the next evolution(Note: this is NOT a prompt for opinion BUT a prompt for a factual evidence based answer, & this note is more for the moderators than the contributors ;) ).   * I learn best through examples, maybe someone could show performing the same task in a OOP way & then in a Functional Programming way for myself to understand & compare what functional programming does/is. I don't really completely understand 'Functional Programming' to be honest :P So comparing Javascript to functional programming may be totally incorrect. To put Functional programming in laymans terms: is it simply the benefit of abstration THROUGH using anonymous functions? Or is that way too simple? In a simple way, OOP is the benefit of abstraction through objects, but I believe thats being a little too simplistic to describe OOP. Is this a good example of functional programming?... Javascript OOP Example:               // sum some numbers     function Number( v )     {        this.val = v;     }          Number.prototype.add( /*Number*/ n2 )     {         this.val += n2.val;     }      Functional programming example:               function forEach(array, action)      {        for (var i = 0; i < array.length; i++)            action(array[i]);     }            function add(array)     {         var i=0;         forEach(array, function(n)         {             i += n;         });         return i;     }          var res = add([1,9]);"}
{"_id": "40401", "title": "Strategic and Tactical direction for IT teams", "text": "In their influential team leadership book, \"Peopleware\", DeMarco and Lister suggest that managers should provide \"strategic but not tactical direction\" for their IT teams. This is intriguing, but they don't go on to explain exactly what they mean! Any thoughts on what this intriguing idea looks like in practice? Is it a good or bad practice?"}
{"_id": "65522", "title": "How can I optimally consume and re-syndicate a REST web service", "text": "I need to write an application which consumes a forum's content via a REST API and stores threads and posts. The application will act as a bridge layer between the forum and write data to a third application periodically - as close to 'real-time'as possible. The platform is PHP 5.3 / MySQL and probably Symfony with the Zend_Rest client. My question is what would be an appropriate / performant architecture be for the bridge layer? I imagine I will need to do an initial import of the forum data which will be slow (may take hours). The bridge application will also have a front-end for selectively adding the forum messages to the third application and adding further meta data e.g sentiment (was the message positive or negative in tone). I realise the data import / export could be done with procedural scripts and cron jobs but am wondering if there is a better way. Many thanks,"}
{"_id": "244930", "title": "Why/how does Java use a controlled mechanism to pause threads for GC?", "text": "I know that Java uses a controlled mechanism to allow threads to be paused. If I understood correctly, they put a read from a protected page at the end of e.g. loops, and change the protection of that page if they want the thread to be paused. What I don't understand is why this is necessary and whether this can even work. The only reason I can think of to make this necessary is that you don't have to have all pointers on the heap, and you can also just have them in registers. However, if you'd use the TSS, wouldn't you have the same data too? However, what I find more interesting is how they handle system calls. What happens when the thread is doing a slow read of a file over e.g. a network? Does the GC way? Does the GC forgo a run and try again a moment later? What happens when the system call takes very long?"}
{"_id": "244931", "title": "How can I find the start of a native method?", "text": "For a hobby project, I'm writing an x86 GC and JIT. For the GC, I need to maintain information about the stack layout (it's a precise GC), for which I need to be able to find out which method the IP currently is in (and the complete call chain of course). How can you do this? The best solution so far was to keep a b-tree of the start addresses of all jitted methods, and use that to look up the current method. However, this looks like a lot of overhead. An alternative would be to use the BSP to find the return address, go back a few bytes and see what address was called. I could then put some data before the entry point. However, that has the issue that the callee may not be a jitted method (there will be native methods on the stack). In that case, the data before the method would be garbage or may not even be valid memory (in some extreme corner cases). What is the usual mechanism of implementing this functionality?"}
{"_id": "136900", "title": "Checking if a method returns false: assign result to temporary variable, or put method invocation directly in conditional?", "text": "Is it a good practice to call a method that returns true or false values in an if statement? Something like this:               private void VerifyAccount()         {             if (!ValidateCredentials(txtUser.Text, txtPassword.Text))             {                 MessageBox.Show(\"Invalid user name or password\");             }         }              private bool ValidateCredentials(string userName, string password)         {             string existingPassword = GetUserPassword(userName);             if (existingPassword == null)                 return false;                  var hasher = new Hasher { SaltSize = 16 };             bool passwordsMatch = hasher.CompareStringToHash(password, existingPassword);                  return passwordsMatch;      or is it better to store them in a variable then compare them using if else values like this                bool validate =ValidateCredentials(txtUser.Text, txtPassword.Text);     if(validate == false){     //Do something     }      I am not only referring to .NET, I am referring to the question in all programming languages it just so happens that I used .NET as an example"}
{"_id": "28979", "title": "good books to get deep into PHP", "text": "I am a PHP developer with ~3 years experience. I want to get deeper into PHP and really understand more low level constructs/functionality. I have mainly done frontend web dev and a little php cron jobs. I want to learn more about stream contexts, closures, process forking, etc. The book I've found that seems closest to this is Expert PHP and MySQL (Wrox). I also found Pro PHP. I know there has to be more out there but I can't seem to find anything. Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "28978", "title": "Is anyone actively developing software to be used with the Emotiv headset?", "text": "Based on the \"featured apps\" section of the main page http://www.emotiv.com/index.php Alot of the so called \"mind control\" apps so far seem to be fairly rudimentary read/scan apps that look to profile a certain activity, or perhaps allow the user to manipulate or control an app in a way loosely analogous to using a mouse/keyboard. I'm just wondering if anyone is currently working on something (assuming they can talk about it) that is a mind blowingly spectacular use of the Emotiv headset? thanks."}
{"_id": "219436", "title": "Infrastructure-related additions in commit comments", "text": "For the sake of this question, let's agree on this definition of \"good commit message\" from here: > Your comment should be brief and to the point, describing what was changed > and possibly why. and accept that referencing a bug/issue in a commit message is a good thing. Now, there are a lot of tools that integrate with VCS repositories and, for them to function, require commit messages to contain various \"control information\" which generally does not add value in the historical sense? Think,   * Amount of time spent fixing an issue (`[Spent: 4h]`)   * A /cc to notify other team members of the changeset (`/cc john, jill`)   * A tag to the CI server to deploy the changeset to development/staging/production (`[deploy: production]`)   * Setting a reviewer (`R: jill`) Granted, this is all very convenient for developers in the short term (why leave console to push a button in the CI interface when I can add a short string to commit message), but I find these messages to clutter changelog too much and way too infrastructure-specific (what if we change to a Time Tracker which uses slightly different syntax?). What's your take on these messages and where do you draw the line on what to accept and what to forbid?"}
{"_id": "226178", "title": "Why is it bad to use redundancy with logical operators?", "text": "I'm moving over to work on a library that a fellow developer has been writing. It's full of `== true` and `== false`, which I find _crazy_ frustrating to read. I've tried asking him to quit doing it, but he just says that it makes it more straightforward to understand what is going on. Is there a good reason why this isn't a great practice? Or is it purely a stylistic thing?"}
{"_id": "241218", "title": "Can I use access used by Visual Basic for building a database", "text": "I am the only programmer where I work (summer job) and I am a student with only a few years of programming experience. So I was asked to build a database and I am very excited about this project because hopefully I can learn a lot from this. Using this database my manager is supposed to be able to assign work (dealing with businesses) to different people within the company using an interface (all workers have a shared drive). When workers are done with that paperwork related to the business, they can check off that its done, add comments at the bottom of the interface, and then move on to the next business. The only experience I've had with databases is some querying with SQL, and I've built GUI interfaces with JAVA. The information on the interface will be populated from Excel so workers know what businesses they are dealing with. I've done some research and I believe the best way to build this would be building a GUI using Microsoft Visual Studio (Visual Basic) first, then figuring out a way to populate the Interface from Excel. Also because the data is pretty straight forward and not complicated I will be using MS Access to store and track the database. I know this won't be easy, but for all you geniuses out there, is this on the right path? Thanks."}
{"_id": "206496", "title": "Display error message with jQuery without reloading page", "text": "I created login form. When user clicks on login button this form shows up with some fade effect (jQuery). What I want to do is to display error message in this form when user inputs invalid data. Before showing any messages, PHP must read data from database, therefore page must be reloaded and when page is reloaded this form fade away. How can I display error message in this login form without reloading page? (I have lots of code so if you need any part of code I will provide)"}
{"_id": "206490", "title": "What to use in UML for included module in ruby?", "text": "I like to create simple class diagrams for my projects. Most of the time I just use composition, inheritence and associations. IMB's basic UML resource tells all about this. However I'm using ruby so I got the option to define a module with some methods. I can just include this module in every class where I want to use these methods. This could be interpreted as an inheritence, however some of my classes are already child classes of an other class and I don't want to mix the meaning of a symbol used in my diagrams. **How should I display an included module in my class diagrams in UML?**"}
{"_id": "213377", "title": "How relevant are \"Requests per second\" benchmarks?", "text": "Whenever a new framework is released it is a given that someone somewhere will benchmark it against other available solutions. One interesting benchmark is the \"Requests per second\" benchmark. For example look it this benchmark: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ea42f.png) Now AFAIK Zend framework and Symfony are 2 of the biggest frameworks out there with major companies supporting them. Did the developers make a mistake when designing the framework that resulted in that (relatively) low threshold? If I'm planning to build a web site/app and expecting (relatively) high traffic, should I pay attention to this benchmark? Will my site/app surely go down at the presented figures? Simply I'm asking you as a software architect how you would strategically take into account this benchmark when planning a new project."}
{"_id": "241214", "title": "Designing a social network with CQRS, graph databases and relational databases in mind", "text": "I have done quite an amount of research on the topic so far, but i couldn't come up with a conclusion to make up my mind. I am designing a social network and during my research i stumbled upon graph databases, i found neo4j pretty interesting for user relations and traversing through nodes. I also thought of using a relational database such as MS-SQL or MySQL to store entity data only and depending on neo4j for connections between entities. Of course this means more work in my application to store and pull data in and out of 2 different sources. My first question : Is using this approach (graph + relational) a good approach for designing my social network keeping in mind that users on social networks don't have to in synch with real data by split second ? What are the positives and negatives of this approach ? My Second question : I've been doing some reading on CQRS and as i understood it is mostly useful for collaborative environments, and environments where users see a lot of \"stale\" data. social networks has shared comments, events, etc .. and many users query or update the same data. Could CQRS be a helpful approach ? Would it give any performance/scalability benefits or non-useful complexity ? Is it fairly applicable with my possible choice of (graph + relational) databases approach mentioned in the question above ? My purpose is to know if the approaches i have mentioned above seem good enough for the business context."}
{"_id": "81403", "title": "How can I become a good project manager?", "text": "I work in mobile development. I've just been promoted to a project manager. The problem is that I just have 4 months of experience in development. This was my first job and I didn't even finished school. I need some advice or maybe some software to help me manage my team and my projects."}
{"_id": "13731", "title": "Will large screen increase develop productivity?", "text": "I am considering to buy a desktop computer, but could not determine which size of LCD should I buy. What's the size of your screen, will large LCD(30 inches+) will do good to develop?"}
{"_id": "69955", "title": "What is Python 20th and final guideline", "text": "Sometimes when my life needs some guiding light, I read the **Zen of Python** by Tim Peters and usually manage to get back on the tracks. Today was one of those days, so I checked it again. I've noticed that the \"abstract\" section says: > Long time Pythoneer Tim Peters succinctly channels the BDFL's guiding > principles for Python's design into 20 aphorisms, only 19 of which have been > written down. What would be this last unwritten aphorism?"}
{"_id": "174928", "title": "Need advice on framework design: how to make extending easy", "text": "I'm creating a framework/library for a rather specific use-case (data type). It uses diverse spring components, including spring-data. The library has a set of entity classes properly set up and according service and dao layers. The main work or main benefit of the framework lies in the dao and service layer. Developers using the framework should be able to extend my entity classes to add additional fields they require. Therefore I made dao and service layer generic so it can be used by such extended entity classes. I now face an issue in the IO part of the framework. It must be able to import the according \"special data type\" into the database. In this part I need to create a new entity instance and hence need the actual class used. My current solution is to configure in spring a bean of the actual class used. The problem with this is that an application using the framework could only use 1 implementation of the entity (the original one from me or exactly 1 subclass but not 2 different classes of the same hierarchy. I'm looking for suggestions / designs for solving this issue. Any ideas? EDIT: only idea I have is to add a parameter to the affected methods that takes a Class object. That would be the easy and pragmatic solution but it seems very ugly?"}
{"_id": "43279", "title": "What features are missing from Python IDE tools?", "text": "What are the most desired features currently lacking in any Python IDE tools? I'm also interested in what's missing in Komodo 6 but available in other tools (I currently use Komodo 6 for Python 3 under Windows). [I am asking for this to be made community wiki if appropriate.]"}
{"_id": "96371", "title": "What is the \"internal syntax\" of a programming language?", "text": "I was reading a paper (PDF) that introduced a term, _internal syntax_ , that I've never heard of. What does this term mean, and how is it different from the _source syntax_? It looks that the _internal syntax_ is used to formally prove some properties about the language (at least in this paper). I'd like to know the exact definition and the background behind this syntax."}
{"_id": "201728", "title": "Shall we always use IoC in our designs?", "text": "I was studying _Mediator Pattern_ and I noticed that to use this pattern you should register the _Colleagues_ into _Mediator_ from the _Colleague_ concrete classes. for that we have to make an instance of _Mediator_ inside _Colleague_ concrete classes which violates IoC and you can not inject the _Colleagues_ into _Mediator_ (as far as I know! whether it is right or wrong) Questions: 1- Am I right about the thing I said? 2- Shall we always use IoC at all or there are some times you can forget about it? 3- If we always have to use IoC, can we say _Mediator_ is an anti-Pattern?"}
{"_id": "96373", "title": "Handling Deprecated Methods", "text": "As many of you already know Apple released a new OS last week so I installed it on my system to see if the project I'm working on works. Well, absolutely nothing works! There are a lot of deprecated methods so I would like some advice on how to tackle updating your code so it is compatible with the new platform."}
{"_id": "201726", "title": "How to ask a programmer a question without getting a solution as the answer", "text": "We've all had the experience. You go to someone who you know has the answer to a question, ask that person the question and they answer with the typical response \"why?\". You explain why you need to know, and they attempt to solve your problem. It takes time, arm twisting and patience to steer the conversation back to the original question and just get that darn answer. Why do programmers constantly do this, and why does the behavior get worse the more senior the programmer becomes? How can you ask a programmer a question in a way most efficient in extracting the answer to the original question? **EDIT** : A lot of the comments pertain to explain why the developer behaves this way, and recommend that the asker perform more research before asking the question. There is also the situation where the developer wants to advise the developer to take another path, but I want to avoid explaining or justifying my decisions. They are unrelated to the question, but the other developer wants to make it related. This is not an answer to the above question. The question is specifically how does one engage with another programmer to ask a question, where the other has the answer and skip the debate about why the question is being asked."}
{"_id": "201724", "title": "Is it normal that I can't keep in my head more than three bugs assigned to me, nor can I understand a thousand lines of spaghetti code?", "text": "I'm working on an old codebase which is... _not perfect_ , in an environment which isn't either. It's not the worst codebase I've seen in my life, but there are still lots of issues: zero unit tests; methods with thousand+ lines of code; misunderstanding of basic object oriented principles; etc. It hurts to maintain the code.   1. Every time I have to debug a thousand lines of a badly written method with variables reused all over, I'm totally lost.   2. Some modifications or refactoring I've done introduced bugs in other places of the application.   3. Lacking any documentation, tests, or an observable architecture and combined with badly named methods, I feel that I fill up all of my available working memory. There is no room left over for all the other things I have to remember in order to understand the code I should modify.   4. Constant interruptions at the workplace disturb me and slow me down.   5. I can't remember more than two or three tasks at a time without a bug tracking system, and I forget all of them over the weekend. My colleagues don't seem to have similar issues.   1. They manage to debug badly written methods much faster than me.   2. They introduce fewer bugs than I do when changing the codebase.   3. They seem to remember very well all they need to in order to change the code, even when it requires reading thousands of lines of code in twenty different files.   4. They don't appear to be disturbed by emails, ringing phones, people talking all around, and other people asking them questions.   5. They don't want to use the bug tracking system that we already have since we use TFS. They prefer to just remember every task they should do. Why does this happen? Is it a particular skill developers acquire when working with badly written code for a long time? Does my relative lack of experience with bad code contribute to these problems / feelings? Do I have issues with my memory?"}
{"_id": "223353", "title": "Python: How to decide which class' methods should provide behavior (functionality) affecting multiple classes", "text": "I have a question about object oriented design that is not specific to Python but since my code is in Python, I tagged it as such. How do I decide which of my classes should be responsible for implementing certain functionality that may affect more than one class? What are some good guidelines >(if any) or considerations? In the below example of a _Town_ class, the behavior of moving to/from a town is split up among the _Town_ class and _Inhabitant_ class. The code works. But I am wondering if there are compelling reasons to assign this behavior to only one class, e.g. allow the _Town_ method _addpeople_ to update the _Inhabitant_ attribute _town_ so it's possible to track each inhabitant's place of residence. Just trying to get a sense of what would be good practice or smart object oriented design.               class Town():              def __init__(self,name):             self.name = name             self.inhab = []              def addpeople(self,person):             self.inhab.append(person)              def removepeople(self, person):             self.inhab.remove(person)               class Inhabitant():              def __init__(self,name):             self.name = name             self.town = \"\"              def move(self,town):             if self.town:                 print self.name,\"is moving from\",self.town.name, \"to\",town.name                 self.town.removepeople(self)             else:                 print self.name,\"is moving to\",town.name             self.town = town             town.addpeople(self)"}
{"_id": "170202", "title": "Pair programming and unit testing", "text": "My team follows the Scrum development cycle. We have received feedback that our unit testing coverage is not very good. A team member is suggesting the addition of an external testing team to assist the core team, but I feel this will backfire in a bad way. I am thinking of suggesting pair programming approach. I have a feeling that this should help the code be more \"test-worthy\" and soon the team can move to test driven development! What are the potential problems that might arise out of pair programming??"}
{"_id": "19158", "title": "Enterprise knowledge sharing?", "text": "I recently read this article on knowledge sharing and immediately recognized the same problem within my own organization. My main goal now is to 'kill peer-to-peer collaboration' as the default method of communication for non- private, system related discussions. Otherwise you end up with all of the historical knowledge living in the heads of individuals, or lost in a massive email system. My question for the group is as follows:   * What methods / software have you used to encourage more 'public' discussions among your developers? Some initial ideas I had.. any feedback would be great:   * Internal news group   * 'better' wiki software (using Sharepoint now)   * Message board (I would love to have an internal instance of StackExchange, but don't think that is an option!) **Note:** As stated above, we already have a wiki, but I dislike the wiki idea because things are usually only added to the wiki after the fact, _if at all_. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "223351", "title": "nodejs chaining with async", "text": "I'm trying to chain a series of methods that are async. I have heard of promises and futures but what I'm looking for is:               obj.setup()         .do_something()         .do_another_thing()         .end()      and not:               obj.setup()         .then(...)         .then(....)      I have come across a tutorial that explains how to do this, but unfortunately the penny hasn't dropped: http://www.dustindiaz.com/async-method-queues/ So I'm looking for a module. This module, https://github.com/FuturesJS/FuturesJS , seems to have `chainify` in its API but there's no documentation on how to use it. In fact I can't find any documentation on how to use modules to achieve what I'm looking for, but plenty on using promises to get `then().then().then()` which is not what I need. Currently my module looks like:               var obj = function(){        this.async_method = function(){}        this.async_method_thingy = function(){}        this.async_method_foo = function(){}     }     var o = new obj()          var _ = {        \"setup\" : function(){           ...           return this        },        \"do_something\" : function(){           o.async_method()           return this        },        \"do_another_thing\" : function(){           o.async_method_thingy()           return this        },        \"end\" : function(){           o.async_method_foo()           return this        }     }          module.exports = _      any help is appreciated ;)"}
{"_id": "116412", "title": "What can and can't the Garbage Collector do?", "text": "Will the GC take care of all memory management issues (memory leaks) ? Is there any case where you don't want the GC to take control of some part of your code ?"}
{"_id": "52267", "title": "Why should i write a commit message?", "text": "Why should i write a commit message? I dont want to and i think its stupid every single time. A gui frontend i use which will go unnamed forces you to do it. I hear other doing it everytime even if they are using the VCS on the command line. If i commit several times a day and havent finish a feature what am i writing about? I ONLY ever write a message after many commits and i feel its time for a mini tag or when i do an actual tag. Am i right or am i missing something? also i am using a distributed system"}
{"_id": "68726", "title": "Should you create a boolean function that does the opposite of an existing function just so its purpose is clear?", "text": "Based on this question. Would you consider it best practice to create a function that does the opposite of an existing function just to give it a different name. Example: If you already have bool In(string input,string[] set) which returns true if the the array set contains the string input and false otherwise, should you create a function like bool NotIn(string input,string[] set) which returns false if the string is in the set or true otherwise?"}
{"_id": "245980", "title": "What's the best way to store options with multiple/boolean choices in an Android app?", "text": "I'm working on an Android social app which connects to a Postgresql database for up-to-date user data and is going to use lookups for dropdown menus, and these lookups will either have multiple options (e.g. for eye color, the menu would show 'blue', 'brown', 'green', 'hazel', 'red', 'white') or boolean options (e.g. for smoking, the menu would show 'non-smoker' or 'smoker'). Should I store these within the app? They're not really high sensitivity/confidentiality. I was originally thinking I would store them in the Postgresql database but in hindsight that seems overkill and would possibly start to affect performance and cause unnecessary hit on the database server. What would be the best way to store these within the app/on the device? For arguments sake, I'm using the current latest Android version (4.4.4, though obviously not only targeting that one)."}
{"_id": "43186", "title": "OOP oriented PHP app source code samples and advice", "text": "The day I have been dreading has arrived. I never felt OOP or good software design was important(I knew they were important, but I thought I could manage without them.). However having read otherwise almost everywhere on the interwebs, I started dreading the day when my client would ask me for new features in an existing app. The day has come and the pain is unbearable! I have never coded my PHP websites \"properly\"(PHP is my primary language and the bulk of my work. I am learning Python (using web2py)) I take care that the website doesn't fall apart in a daily use scenario. I code pages like I was creating a list of static html files with bits of \"magic code\" in each of them(this bugs me a lot). **How do I make the whole app more or less a single object?** For eg. How do I design the object model for an invoicing app? I use a lot of functions for doing any particular thing in the same fashion throughout the app(for eg. validation, generating ids, calculating taxes etc.). I know the basics of OOP in general. Can anyone point me to **source code samples of functional apps** written in php? Or can someone provide pointers so I can recode my existing apps in a more modular way."}
{"_id": "43188", "title": "Is \"as long as it works\" the norm?", "text": "**See my more recent question:** Is programming as a profession in a race to the bottom? My last shop did not have a process. Agile essentially meant they did not have a plan at all about how to develop or manage their projects. It meant \"hey, here's a ton of work. Go do it in two weeks. We're fast paced and agile.\" They released stuff that they knew had problems. They didn't care how things were written. There were no code reviews--despite there being several developers. They released software they knew to be buggy. At my previous job, people had the attitude as long as it works, it's fine. When I asked for a rewrite of some code I had written while we were essentially exploring the spec, they denied it. I wanted to rewrite the code because code was repeated in multiple places, there was no encapsulation and it took people a long time to make changes to it. So essentially, my impression is this: programming boils down to the following:   1. Reading some book about the latest tool/technology   2. Throwing code together based on this, avoiding writing any individual code because the company doesn't want to \"maintain custom code\"   3. Showing it and moving on to the next thing, \"as long as it works.\" I've always told myself that next job I'm going to get a better shop. It never happens. If this is it, then I feel stuck. The technologies always change; if the only professional development here is reading the latest MS Press technology book, then what have you built in 10 years but a superficial knowledge of various technologies? I'm concerned about:   1. Best way to have professional standards   2. How to develop meaningful knowledge and experience in this situation"}
{"_id": "60350", "title": "Who is Responsible for Setting Up An Automated Builds System?", "text": "I am a project manager at my company. I work with a few teams of developers using a standard, well-known version control system known as CVS. I'd like to see continuous integration and automated builds implemented to help prevent problems with the build breaking and with bad deployments sneaking onto the production servers. I am sure I can set this up myself, but I don't want to do this myself for two reasons:   1. I don't have time for it. I have my own responsibilities, which involve marketing, communication to other stakeholders with team members not part of development, communicating with customers, and project planning.   2. Most importantly, I'm the project manager. My purpose is to provide leadership, not to micro-manage the development team. What are some things that I can do to find someone on the development team who would be passionate about setting this up? Is a developer the right person for this task, considering it requires knowledge of Java, Spring, and Google App Engine? What are some tips for helping to promote change where change is feared?"}
{"_id": "235145", "title": "Real time unit testing - or \"how to mock now\"", "text": "When you are working on a feature that depends on time... How do you organize unit testing ? When your unit tests scenarios depend on the way your program interprets \"now\", how do you set them up ? **Second Edit: After a Couple of days reading your experience** I can see that the techniques to deal with this situation usually revolve around one of these three principles:   * Add (hardcode) a dependency: add a small layer over the time function/object, and always call your datetime function through this layer. This way, you can get control of time during the test cases.    * Use mocks: your code stays exactly the same. In your tests, you replace the time object by a fake time object. Sometimes, the solution involves modifying the genuine time object that is provided by your programming language.    * Use dependency injection: Build your code so that any time reference is passed as a parameter. Then, you have control of the parameters during the tests.  Techniques (or libraries) specific to a language are very welcome, and will be enhanced if an illustrative piece of code comes along. Then, most interesting is how similar principles may be applied on any platform. And yes... If I can apply it straight away in PHP, better than better ;) **Let's start with a simple example: a basic booking application.** Let's say we have JSON API and two messages: a request message, and a confirmation message. A standard scenario goes like this:   1. You make a request. You get a response with a token. The resource that is needed to fulfill that request is blocked by the system for 5 minutes.    2. You confirm a request, identified by the token. If token was issued within 5 minutes, it will be accepted (the resource is still available). If more than 5 minutes have passed, you have to make a new request (the resource was freed. You need to check for its availability again). **Here come the corresponding test scenario:**   1. I make a request. I confirm (immediately) with the token I received. My confirmation is accepted.   2. I make a request. I wait 3 minutes. I confirm with the token I received. My confirmation is accepted.   3. I make a request. I wait 6 minutes. I confirm with the token I received. My confirmation is rejected. How can we get to program these unit tests ? What architecture should we use so that these functionalities remain testable ? **Edit** Note: When we shoot a request, the time is stored in a database in a format that looses any information about milliseconds. **EXTRA - but maybe a bit verbose: Here come details about what I found out doing my \"homework\":**   1. I Built my feature with a dependency on a time function of my own. My function VirtualDateTime has a static method get_time() that I call where I used to call new DateTime(). This time function allows me to simulate and control what time is \"now\", so that I can build tests like: \"Set now to 21st jan 2014 16h15. Make a request. Move ahead 3 minutes. Make confirmation.\". This works fine, at the cost of the dependency, and \"not so pretty code\".   2. A little more integrated solution would be to build a myDateTime function of my own that extends DateTime with additional \"virtual time\" functionnalities (most importantly, set now to what I want). This is making the first solution's code slightly more elegant (use of new myDateTime instead of new DateTime), but ends up to be very similar: I have to build my feature using my own class, thus creating a dependency.   3. I have though about hacking the DateTime function, to make it work with my dependency when I need it. Is there any simple and neat way to replace a class by another, though ? (I think I got an answer to that: See namespace below).   4. In a PHP environment, I read \"Runkit\" may allow me to do this (hack the DateTime function) dynamically. What is nice is that I would be able to check I am running in test environment before modifying anything about DateTime, and leave it untouched in production [1]. This sounds much safer and cleaner than any manual DateTime hack.   5. Dependency injection of a clock function in each class that uses time [2]. Is this not overkill ? I see that in some environments it gets very usefull [5]. In this case, I do not like it so much, though.   6. Remove dependency of time in all the functions [2]. Is this always feasible ? (See more examples below)    7. Using namespaces [2][3] ? This looks quite good. I could mock DateTime with my own DateTime function that extends \\DateTime... Use DateTime::setNow(\"2014-01-21 16:15:00\"), and DateTime::wait(\"+3 minutes\"). This covers pretty much what I need. What if we use the time() function though ? Or other time functions ? I still have to avoid their use in my original code. Or I would need to make sure any PHP time function I use in my code is overridden in my tests... Is there any library available that would do just this ?   8. I have been looking for a way to change the system time just for a thread. It seems that there is none [4]. This is a pity: a \"simple\" PHP function to \"Set time to 21st jan 2014 16h15 for this thread\" would be a great feature for this kind of tests.   9. Change the system date and time for the test, using exec(). This can work out if you are not afraid to mess up with other things on the server. And you need to set back the system time after you ran your test. It can do the trick in some situations, but feels quite \"hacky\". This looks like a very standard problem to me. However, I still miss a simple an generic way to deal with it. Maybe I missed something ? Please share your experience ! **NOTE: Here are some other situations where we may have similar testing needs.**   * Any feature that works with some kind of timeout (e.g. chess game ?)    * processing a queue that triggers events at a given time (in the above scenario we could keep going like this: one day before the reservation starts, I want to send a mail to the user with all the details. Test scenario...)   * You want to set up a test environment with data collected in the past - you would like to see it like if it was now. [1] 1 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3271735/simulate-different-server- datetimes-in-php 2 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4221480/how-to-change-current-time-for- unit-testing-date-functions-in-php 3 http://www.schmengler-se.de/en/2011/03/php-mocking-built-in-functions-like- time-in-unit-tests/ 4 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3923848/change-todays-date-and-time-in- php 5 Unit testing time-bound code"}
{"_id": "235140", "title": "Best Practices - separation of concerns and inheritance issues", "text": "Here's the situation: I have a \"common\" Data Access assembly that contains classes used in all my projects. Some of those are abstract classes that are only implemented by my data access layers for each project. In my projects I have a layered approach - separated data access, business layer, and UI. My data access classes may inherit from the abstract classes in Common. These abstract classes contain an \"execute\" method. In my business layer of the project I only reference the data access layer of the project - I don't reference other projects or the Common assembly. But once I put my abstract classes that are reused all the time into Common, my business layer could no longer call the \"Execute\" method without having a reference to common. I hope that's not too confusing. If I don't want lots of interdependencies between assemblies, I need to move the abstract classes back into each project's data access layer. But then I have repeated code and potentially inconsistent behavior between projects. But if I keep it as it is, all my business layers need to be able to access this common data access assembly, which seems wrong. Any thoughts on this architecture? I know some might try to say \"use Entity Framework\" or some other ORM. But my projects are not complex enough to warrant that much overhead, especially given the need for fast performance. I have found that a simple framework of my own directly implementing ADO.Net is remarkably faster. So please just advise me on the separation of concerns and inheritance issues and don't try to talk me into adding an ORM. Example code: In Common: base class               Public MustInherit Class AbstractDatabaseAction         Protected Property Factory As DbProviderFactory         Protected Property Connection As DbConnection         Protected Property Command As DbCommand         Protected Property MessageForExceptions As String         Protected Property ProviderName As String              Protected Sub New(connString As String, providerName As String, messageForExceptions As String)             Factory = DbProviderFactories.GetFactory(providerName)                  'set up connection             Connection = Factory.CreateConnection             Connection.ConnectionString = connString             Me.ProviderName = providerName             'set up command             Command = Factory.CreateCommand                  Me.MessageForExceptions = messageForExceptions         End Sub              Public MustOverride Sub Execute()         Protected Overridable Sub SetParameters()             'nothing         End Sub         Protected MustOverride Sub SetCommandText()         Protected Overridable Sub SetCommandType()             Command.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure         End Sub              Protected Sub BuildCommand()             Command.Connection = Connection             Me.SetCommandText()             Me.SetCommandType()             Me.SetParameters()                  If Me.ProviderName = \"Oracle.DataAccess.Client\" Then                 OracleSpecificCommandEdits()             End If         End Sub              Protected Overridable Sub OracleSpecificCommandEdits()             CType(Command, OracleCommand).BindByName = True         End Sub               End Class      In Common: second base class (I have both a search and a save version, with the save version optionally allowing transactions.)               Public MustInherit Class AbstractSearch         Inherits AbstractDatabaseAction              Protected Sub New(connString As String, providerName As String, messageForExceptions As String)             MyBase.New(connString, providerName, messageForExceptions)         End Sub              Public Overrides Sub Execute()             Try                 Me.BuildCommand()                      Using Connection                     Connection.Open()                          Using Command                         Try                             Dim rdr As IDataReader = Command.ExecuteReader                             Me.fill(rdr)                             rdr.Close()                         Catch ex As Exception                             Throw New Exception(MessageForExceptions & \"->Search\", ex)                         End Try                     End Using                 End Using             Catch ex As Exception                 Throw New Exception(MessageForExceptions & \"->Search\", ex)             End Try         End Sub              Protected MustOverride Sub fill(ByRef rdr As System.Data.IDataReader)              Protected Overrides Sub OracleSpecificCommandEdits()             MyBase.OracleSpecificCommandEdits()                  If TypeOf (Factory) Is OracleClientFactory Then                 Dim p As DbParameter = New OracleParameter                 p.ParameterName = \"results\"                 p.Direction = ParameterDirection.Output                 CType(p, OracleParameter).OracleDbType = OracleDbType.RefCursor                 Command.Parameters.Add(p)             End If         End Sub          Protected Sub AddInParameter(key As String, value As Object)         Dim p As IDataParameter = Command.CreateParameter         p.Direction = ParameterDirection.Input         p.Value = value         p.ParameterName = key         Command.Parameters.Add(p)     End Sub          Protected Sub AddOutParameter(key As String, type As System.Data.DbType)         Dim p As IDataParameter = Command.CreateParameter         p.Direction = ParameterDirection.Output         p.DbType = type         p.ParameterName = key         Command.Parameters.Add(p)     End Sub          End Class      A very simple implementation example of a data access layer implementation:               Public Class IpBlackListSearch             Inherits Common.DataAccess.AbstractSearch                  Private Property IPToSearch As String             Public Property Results As List(Of String) = Nothing                  Public Sub New(connString As String, providerName As String, ipAddressToSearch As String)                 MyBase.New(connString, providerName, \"IpAddressSearch\")                 Me.IPToSearch = IPToSearch             End Sub                  Protected Overrides Sub fill(ByRef rdr As System.Data.IDataReader)                 Results = New List(Of String)                      While rdr.Read                     Results.Add(HelperFunctions.NullScrubber(Of String)(\"ip\"))                 End While                  End Sub                  Protected Overrides Sub SetCommandText()                 Command.CommandText = \"Get_IPBlacklist\"             End Sub                  Protected Overrides Sub SetParameters()                 MyBase.AddInParameter(\"in_ip\", Me.IPToSearch)             End Sub         End Class      The problem would come when in the business layer of my project that would do something like:               Dim srch as new IpBlackListSearch(connstring, providername, \"12.12.12.12.\")     srch.execute      srch.Execute can only compile if the business layer references the common data access assembly. It sounds like from the comments that there is nothing wrong with my business layer containing that reference."}
{"_id": "155704", "title": "Efficient Trie implementation for unicode strings", "text": "I have been looking for an efficient String trie implementation. Mostly I have found code like this: Referential implementation in Java (per wikipedia) I dislike these implementations for mostly two reasons:   1. They support only 256 ASCII characters. I need to cover things like cyrillic.   2. They are extremely memory inefficient.  Each node contains an array of 256 references, which is 4096 bytes on a 64 bit machine in Java. Each of these nodes can have up to 256 subnodes with 4096 bytes of references each. So a full Trie for every ASCII 2 character string would require a bit over 1MB. Three character strings? 256MB just for arrays in nodes. And so on. Of course I don't intend to have all of 16 million three character strings in my Trie, so a lot of space is just wasted. Most of these arrays are just null references as their capacity far exceeds the actual number of inserted keys. And if I add unicode, the arrays get even larger (char has 64k values instead of 256 in Java). Is there any hope of making an efficient trie for strings? I have considered a couple of improvements over these types of implementations:   * Instead of using array of references, I could use an array of primitive integer type, which indexes into an array of references to nodes whose size is close to the number of actual nodes.   * I could break strings into 4 bit parts which would allow for node arrays of size 16 at the cost of a deeper tree."}
{"_id": "155705", "title": "Strategy vs Delegates", "text": "Can the `Strategy` design pattern entirely replace `delegates`? In `Java`, for example, there are no delegates. Is it possible to gain all the features of `delegates` by using `Strategy` design pattern? **Edit** : I see there is some ambiguity in my question. By `delegates` I mean the feature of the language, C# for instance."}
{"_id": "65657", "title": "How to fight absentmindedness", "text": "Do you have any problems with loss of concentration, constant relaxation, etc.? How do you solve this problem? For example, when you are coding or learning something - You understand that it's interesting, but there's also another will to go and do something else. How do you motivate yourself to keep working when you get the urge to distract yourself?"}
{"_id": "150555", "title": "What kind of task should I expect In a PHP job interview?", "text": "I've got a job interview a few days from today (and yeah, I'm dreading it). The job is based in PHP web development. I have 3 years experience with PHP and a few other languages, but I'm only 17 so this is my first computer/programming related interview I've ever had. To be honest, it's not like a huge organization/company so I don't think the interviewer(s) expectations are going to be too high (right?).. The employer did mention on the phone that I will be asked to write some code in the interview. I've had a look around and came across the famous FizzBuzz question, which I found quite easy to do. I'm really nervous about this interview and don't want to mess it up. Can anyone give me some example questions that you would ask a PHP programmer, in an interview. Or even better, if you've been in the same situation, what kind of task(s) were you set?"}
{"_id": "65659", "title": "Using JMeter with a utility that does not support proxies", "text": "Currently I'm checking some client and server software and I wish to expand the testing coverage for it. Specifically I want to increase the quality of the load and stress testing that is performed so that it better reflects user usage. To this end I've been looking at JMeter, however I've encountered an issue. Unlike a web browser, the client does not have support for using a proxy. This presents the problem that JMeter can't monitor the communication between the two systems to build up the test data. Possibly JMeter provides for this very scenario, however it's not been obvious in the documentation that there is any facility for this. Although I have some ideas on how to approach this I can't be the first to have encountered this issue, so I'm putting the question out there: how best would you solve this issue?"}
{"_id": "150558", "title": "Objects in non-OOP languages", "text": "Can we use the word \"object\" for data / functions in e.g. C (or Pascal) which doesn't really have objects? In C, what is an object? A data structure? A named memory area? I spoke to my collegue about \"objects\" in C and he said that there weren't any but in the text I study about C the word object is used as a generalization of either a function or data. For example, if you in C declare a `union` you can say that you have declared place for an object that can be either a function or data. The ADT defined as \"Object\" looks like this in C               typedef enum { Integral, Real } Kind;     typedef struct {       Kind type;       union {         double rvalue;         int ivalue;       } data;     } Object;      Thanks for any reply"}
{"_id": "118022", "title": "Can I use Visual studio for Python and Django development?", "text": "I have been using Visual Studio for quite some time now, in fact from the VS 2005 version. Right now, I am not only comfortable but addict to using it(VS 2010) for all my development needs. Recently I have been learning Python and Django. In that getting the tutorial tasks up and running with IDLE seems very lame and outdated(I am following the Django Book). Therefore, I downloaded and configured Eclipse & PyDev. Eclipse seems good and fine but needs a bit of learning curve for itself. So, I am looking for a way to configure Visual Studio 2010 for Python and Django development if possible. Please tell me if that's possible and How ?"}
{"_id": "118020", "title": "Does it make sense to license unit tests?", "text": "I am wondering if there are any benefits / risks of (not) putting a licence on test code which mostly consists of unit tests. What do you think? I am particularly interested in licensing under (L)GPL, Apache, MIT and BSD. **EDIT** : The assumption is that non-test code is already published under some licence, but test code is not, so the question is whether to publish it and if so whether to put the same licence on it."}
{"_id": "204786", "title": "Do I need unit test if I already have integration test?", "text": "If I already have integration test for my program, and they all passed, then I have a good feel that it will work. Then what are the reasons to write/add unit tests? Since I already have to write integration tests anyway, I will like to only write unit test for parts that not covered by integration tests. What I know the benefit of unit test over integration test are   * Small and hence fast to run (but adding new unit to test something is already tested by integration test means my total test suit get larger and longer to run)   * Locate bug easier because it only test one thing (but I can start write unit test to verify each individual part when my integration test failed)   * Find bug that may not be caught in integration test. e.g. masking/offsetting bugs. (but if my integration tests all passes, which means my program will work even some hidden bug exists. So find/fix these bugs are not really high priority unless they start breaking future integration tests or cause performance problem ) And we always want to write less code, but write unit tests need lots more code (mainly setup mock objects). The difference between some of my unit tests and integration tests is that in unit tests, I use mock object, and in integration tests, I use real object. Which have lots of duplication and I don't like duplicated code, even in tests because this add overhead to change code behavior (refactor tool cannot do all work all the time)."}
{"_id": "224365", "title": "In TDD, is it bad practice to pass a test with code that would pass more than one test?", "text": "**When using TDD, is it bad practice to pass a newly written test with code that could also pass another test?** For example, take the following test (in PHP)               public function WhenSomethingIsNull_ThrowsException()     {         $input = null;         $this->module->someMethod($input);     }      This could be made to pass with the following code               public function someMethod($input)     {         if(!$input)             throw new Exception()     }      This would also pass the test `WhenSomethingIsZero_ThrowsException`. In these cases, should I fix what I know is wrong with this test in the refactoring step? Or only write code which passes this and only this test?"}
{"_id": "224829", "title": "How to manage success dependency between unit tests", "text": "How do you manage the dependency of one unit test on another unit test succeeding? So, supposed I have a class and this class has say 5 methods. I create like 2 dozen unit tests (test methods) for that class. each unit tests tests something specific and unique - so nothing is tested twice. So for instance I have a couple of unit test that checks if the class' constructor is working properly. Maybe testing that the constructor does not throw any exceptions and that the appropriate exception is thrown when no (valid) parameters are passed. Other unit tests may also use the constructor (in the setup stage of the unit test) but non perform any checks on them because there is another unit test that has that job. Now I start to refactor this class and I break some of the unit tests. I click open one test and it is a specific edge-case test that is pretty elaborate. Hard to see what is going wrong and why. If I would have opened the constructor test first, I would have seen that THAT was the problem. So I wasted my time. Granted, in one unit test file it is a trivial example but in a large test suite where success-dependencies may span across file boundaries it gets complex. So my question is first: is this way of unit testing correct - most effecient (not testing the same thing multiple times)? The next question is: How do you manage these success-dependencies between unit tests and how do you make sure you can pinpoint the test case that displays the 'real' problem (by failing)."}
{"_id": "235045", "title": "Do we do white box testing on methods or on an overall program?", "text": "I am very confused about white box testing. A simplified version of the example: the entire system consists of three methods - `methodA()`, `methodB()`, `methodC()`. The program starts from `methodA()`, and `methodB()` requires input from `methodA()` and `methodC()` requires input from methodB(). Do we create 3 white box tests, one for each method, or do we create one white box test for the entire system?"}
{"_id": "221766", "title": "How to structure tests where one test is another test's setup?", "text": "I'm **integration** testing a system, by using only the public APIs. I have a test that looks something like this:               def testAllTheThings():       email = create_random_email()       password = create_random_password()            ok = account_signup(email, password)       assert ok       url = wait_for_confirmation_email()       assert url       ok = account_verify(url)       assert ok            token = get_auth_token(email, password)       a = do_A(token)       assert a       b = do_B(token, a)       assert b       c = do_C(token, b)            # ...and so on...      Basically, I'm attempting to test the entire \"flow\" of a single transaction. Each step in the flow depends on the previous step succeeding. Because I'm restricting myself to the external API, I can't just go poking values into the database. So, either I have one really long test method that does `A; assert; B; assert; C; assert...\", or I break it up into separate test methods, where each test method needs the results of the previous test before it can do its thing:               def testAccountSignup():       # etc.       return email, password          def testAuthToken():       email, password = testAccountSignup()       token = get_auth_token(email, password)       assert token       return token          def testA():       token = testAuthToken()       a = do_A(token)       # etc.      I think this smells. Is there a better way to write these tests?"}
{"_id": "225323", "title": "How should I test the functionality of a function that uses other functions in it?", "text": "Suppose there is a function get-data which returns a map of information about the id of the user passed in. now this function uses 3 functions source-a, source-b and source-c to get three different kinds of maps. now we combine all these maps into one map and return from get-data. when I test get-data, should I test for existence of data for keys ? Does it makes sense for this function to fail unit tests if one of source-a, source-b and source-c fail? If thats function job is to combine data,and its doing it, it should be enough right ?"}
{"_id": "236492", "title": "Implementing TDD for existing code", "text": "I've just been learning Unit Testing and I'm trying to understand how I could incorporate it with a project with existing code. Say I wanted to write tests for a specific class in that project, but that certain class requires an instance of another class for the the methods to be run and/or tested. How should I approach this?"}
{"_id": "232084", "title": "Do I need a suite of unit tests for inner business-logic class? Since it's going to replicate the acceptance test suite for 90%", "text": "I'm new to TDD and wondering about methodolody. Given: A simple project which implements functionality of, for example, a console calculator. It has the following structure:   1. Fairly simple top-level class that takes console input, delegates it to a buisness-logic class and shows output in the console with some fancy formatting.   2. The forgoing buisness-logic class which does all the calculations and which is relatively complex. Also let's assume we have a nice thorough suite of acceptance tests for the whole project, which performs through the user interface. Do I need a suite of unit tests for inner business-logic class? Since it's going to replicate the acceptance test suite for 90%. Additional, but closely related questions:   1. Will the answer for the question remain the same if, for example, that acceptance test suite takes 30 sec to run? 5 mins? 1 hour?   2. If the inner business-logic class is not yet implemented, do I need write that suit of unit tests to guide its development, or it's fine to remain only with acceptance tests?"}
{"_id": "152958", "title": "All unit tests in one executable, or split them up?", "text": "When writing tests for one piece of software, say a library, do you prefer to compile all unit tests into one, or separate them into several executables? The reason I'm asking is because I am currently using CUnit to test a library I'm working on. The tests are split up into separate suites that are compiled into one executable complete with printed output for failures. Now, the build system for that library is CMake (which, despite its name, has little to do with CUnit), which comes with its own testing framework, CTest. CTest allows me to register a list of executables that serve as tests. I'm pondering whether to use CTest for automated testing runs. However, this would require me to split up the tests I've written so far into separate compile targets. Otherwise, I can't really utilize some of CTests advanced features, such as selectively running tests. I realize this is more a question of what tools to use and their handling and conventions, but apart from that, are there any other reasons to prefer a single test executable over separate ones? Or vice versa?"}
{"_id": "152950", "title": "Is this overkill? Using MDX queries and cubes instead of SQL stored procedures", "text": "I am new to Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services Cubes and MDX queries. Where I work we have a daily sales table in SQL Server 2005 that already contains an aggregate of sale information per store per day. At this time it contains only 164,000+ rows. We have a sales cube dedicated to this table that about 15 reports are based off of. Now, I should also note that we generate reports based on our own fiscal year criteria: a 13 period year (1 month equals 28 days etc.). Is this overkill? At what point is it justified to begin using SSAS Cubes/MDX over plain old SQL Server stored procedures? Since I have always been just using plain old SQL am I tragically late to the MDX party?"}
{"_id": "152951", "title": "Passing class names or objects?", "text": "I have a switch statement                   switch ( $id ) {             case 'abc':    return 'Animal';             case 'xyz':    return 'Human';                         //many more                         }      I am returning class names,and use them to call some of their static functions using call_user_func(). Instead I can also create a object of that class, return that and then call the static function from that object as $object::method($param)                   switch ( $id ) {             case 'abc':    return new Animal;             case 'xyz':    return new Human;                         //many more                         }      Which way is efficient? To make this question broader : I have classes that have mostly all static methods right now, putting them into classes is kind of a grouping idea here (for example the DB table structure of Animal is given by class Animal and so for Human class). I need to access many functions from these classes so the switch needs to give me access to the class"}
{"_id": "200898", "title": "Code formatting for variable declarations", "text": "Is it looked down upon or bad to write multiple variable declarations on the same line? As in:                   boolean playMoreGames = true;           int length;         boolean win;                            int bodyparts;         boolean contains;                       char blank = '-';         String word;                            Scanner fileIn;         String guess;                           Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);      vs (standard):                   boolean playMoreGames = true;                    boolean win;                                 boolean contains;            int length;         int bodyparts;         char blank = '-';                String word;                                     String guess;                                    StringBuilder sb_word;         Scanner fileIn;         Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);"}
{"_id": "46003", "title": "How much time do you need in between large projects?", "text": "You've launched a large project at work, something that's been in progress and taken up large chunks of your life for more than 6 months. The post-launch triage is over. Tech support isn't calling you every hour because they don't know how to troubleshoot an issue. Your hours drop from 60+/wk to whatever is normal in your organization (which is hopefully less than 60+!). How much time do you (or your team) need before the next large project begins? I was asked this question at work and I think the ideal minimum is two weeks -- one week to clear your desk and inbox + one week to clear your head and remember what it's like to have a life outside of work. I'd frankly acknowledge that just being asked this question is a huge boon to work/life balance. But I do think it's possible to go _too_ long in between."}
{"_id": "46001", "title": "How can I improve the way I make changes to an Index page?", "text": "We have index pages, running on an Apache Tomcat server, with links to other pages. > Welcome, you. What would you like to do? > > _Goto page x_ > > _Goto page y_ These links are hard coded. I want to be able to manage the index pages in a more dynamic way. So that I don't have to pull down the page, cause temporary down time, change / add links, and then have to redeploy. What route should I take?"}
{"_id": "46004", "title": "Pure virtual or abstract, what's in a name?", "text": "While discussing a question about virtual functions on Stack Overflow, I wondered whether there was any official naming for pure (abstract) and non- pure virtual functions. I always relied on wikipedia for my information, which states that pure and non-pure virtual functions are the general term. Unfortunately, the article doesn't back it up with a origin or references. To quote Jon Skeet's answer to my reply that pure and non-pure are the general term used: > @Steven: Hmm... possibly, but I've only ever seen it in the context of C++ > before. I suspect anyone talking about them is likely to have a C++ > background :) Did the terms originate from C++, or were they first defined or implemented in a earlier language, and are they the 'official' scientific terms? UPDATE: Frank Shearar helpfully provided a link to the description of the SIMULA 67 Common Base Language (1970). This language seems to be the first language to introduce OO keywords as _class_ , _object_ , and also **virtual** as a formal concept. It **doesn't** define _pure/non-pure_ or _abstract_ , but **it does support the concepts**. Who defined them?"}
{"_id": "99201", "title": "is Ada really gone?", "text": "* Do people still use Ada -- (it was mostly used in the Defense Department)   * Are all applications written in Ada \"Legacy\"?   * Does Ada knowledge still sell"}
{"_id": "99202", "title": "Is it called class or object instance?", "text": "I have a wording / precision question. Sometimes I write _\"object instance\"_ sometimes _\"class instance\"_. Isn't it that an _object_ is always an _instance_ of a _class_? Therefore _\"object instance\"_ is not the correct wording, right? Is it common to say so anyway, or just a \"mistake\" of mine? I have the feeling _\"object instance\"_ is superfluous (doubled) because an _object_ is always an _instance_ and would like to know more for clarification of the terms."}
{"_id": "153398", "title": "Big O(n log n) and Quicksort number of operations", "text": "I have an Array with `1,000,000` unsorted elements. I need to calculate expected number of operations that needs to be performed to sort array using `Quicksort` algorithm in common situations (not the n^2 worst case). I am not sure how `(n log n)` is calculated - does it even makes sense to calculate this? If `(n log n)` = `(n*log(some base)n)` what base would be for `Quicksort`?"}
{"_id": "64299", "title": "What is the appropriate level of granularity for services in a distributed or service-oriented architecture?", "text": "Our shop is attempting to move towards a more \"distributed\" architecture. I didn't want to use the term \"SOA\" because I'm not really sure if that's appropriate in our situation. For each new feature that is developed, a new service (WCF in our case) is created specifically for that feature. A feature is defined as new functionality, which can be a brand new application or a new addition for an existing piece of software. As more features are added, the number of services that we need to maintain goes up. Each of these services are hosted in isolation and expose their own endpoint. I don't have a lot of experience with distributed architectures or SOA in general, but this just feels wrong. Is there better way we can do this? Instead of having separate services for each of these features, would it make more sense to logically group and consolidate some of these service into one large service and provide a \"unified\" API? Or would something like this tend to grow too large and become unwieldy/fragile?"}
{"_id": "64296", "title": "Does reflection in Java make its functions \"first class\"", "text": "I am always hearing people talk about how Java does not support first class functions, that it is an advantage you get from functional languages, the only way to simulate it in Java is through the use of anonymous inner classes etc.. However, from what I can see Java does support first functions through the use of its reflection API. For example I can create a method object from a class and then call it on a number of objects of that class. I realize it is not as powerful as first class functions in other languages. For example in Python you can do the following:               class Test:         def __init__(self, num):             self.number = num         def add(self, num):             self.number += num     test = Test(1)     method = test.add     method(2)      You cannot do this in Java because you need to have a reference to the object you want to invoke the method on. However you can still treat the method as an object which is what defines first class functions. I guess the method object is not really the actual function but rather a meta-data object, although using reflection it can be treated as such. Maybe I just need clarification on what defines a first class function."}
{"_id": "153392", "title": "Benefits of classic OOP over Go-like language", "text": "I've been thinking a lot about language design and what elements would be necessary for an \"ideal\" programming language, and studying Google's Go has led me to question a lot of otherwise common knowledge. Specifically, Go seems to have all of the interesting benefits from object oriented programming without actually having any of the _structure_ of an object oriented language. There are no classes, only structures; there is no class/structure inheritance -- only structure embedding. There aren't any hierarchies, no parent classes, no explicit interface implementations. Instead, type casting rules are based on a loose system similar to duck- typing, such that if a struct implements the necessary elements of a \"Reader\" or a \"Request\" or an \"Encoding\", then you can cast it and use it as one. Is there something about OOP as implemented in C++ and Java and C# that is inherently more capable, more maintainable, somehow more powerful that you have to give up when moving to a language like Go? What benefit do you have to give up to gain the simplicity that this new paradigm represents? **EDIT**   _Removed the \"obsolete\" question that readers seemed to get excessively hung up on and infuriated by._ The question is, what does the traditional object oriented paradigm (with hierarchies and such) as frequently seen in common language implementations have to offer that can't be done as easily in this simpler model? Or, in other words, if you were to design a language today, is there a reason you would want to include the concept of class hierarchies?"}
{"_id": "7861", "title": "When deciding on whether or not to work for a new company, what are your dealbreakers?", "text": "I know we've covered what questions you should ask about a company before you would decide to work there. But what do you do with the answers? In other words, what would you consider a dealbreaker? I.e. what would scare you so much about a company that you wouldn't work there, even if everything else was great? For example, if they tell me they don't use version control, I wouldn't work there. End of story."}
{"_id": "191515", "title": "Form validation and file structure", "text": "I have a form (lets say a registration form) and onsubmit, it calls a function to validate as follows:               $.ajax({             url : \"/ajax/validate.php\",             type : \"POST\",             data : $(\".form\").serialize(),             success : function(data) {                 data = $.parseJSON(data);                 $.each(data, function(i, item) {                     $('#' + i).addClass('errors');                 });             }         });      The validate.php looks something like this:               if ($_POST['email'] == '' || filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) == false) {         $errors['email'] = 'Not a valid email';     }     if ($errors) {         echo json_encode($errors);     } else {         // insert to db     }      Now all of this code is specifically for the registration form. I'll have many forms on my site. My question is, do I make a new file (like `validate.php`) for each individual form? Such as `/ajax/save_profile_data.php` etc? Do I keep each form validation separate or is there a clever way to approach this? I don't know if having a validate file for each form on my site is the correct way to do it."}
{"_id": "95556", "title": "What is the advantage of little endian format?", "text": "Intel processors (and maybe some others) use the little endian format for storage. I always wonder why someone would want to store the bytes in reverse order. Does this format have any advantages over the big endian format?"}
{"_id": "191510", "title": "Scrum: What to do with epics once the stories are clear?", "text": "When working on a backlog, you define epics and break them down into user stories. Epics are estimated and kept on the backlog as epics until they become important enough to be planned into one of the next sprints. But once an epic is split into sprintable units, what do you do with the original epic? Do you keep it with the stories until all are done? Do you retire them into some kind of epic archive? Do you just delete them? They seem like unnecessary balast once the splitting is done."}
{"_id": "95552", "title": "Sharding and Cloud computing", "text": "I've read that Facebook uses this technique DB sharding to manage its data volume and that the idea of cloud computing is elastic resources. So I'm wondering does the cloud instance take care of sharding for you automatically? Or do you still have to do that part manually? And if you do have to do it manually - then the DB doesn't seem very elastic to me."}
{"_id": "42639", "title": "How to make profit from freeware application?", "text": "The components that I'm using are restricting me from selling the application. Any ideas how to still make a profit from it? I've seen some freeware apps which set your homepage to some site, I guess they get paid for that."}
{"_id": "198630", "title": "How to persist temporary data over multiple HTTP requests?", "text": "In our webapplication we have a list of questions that have to be answered by the user. These questions are served to the user one by one and will be saved once the last question has been answered. The problem we faced was saving all the 'help'-data that goes with this: storing the index of the last question, returning whether or not you're at the last question, returning the answered questions for the overview, etc. Initially we stored this data each into its own session. This worked, but it also meant we had about 5 different session variables for each type of question list and a bunch of casts. I've removed these session variables by creating a few extra fields in the viewmodel and storing the viewModel in its entirety inside a session. This made sure we had our temporary data persisted troughout requests (each question solved meant a new request), removed a great deal of sessions and made the code more readable. Another example of usage: our local user object gets overwritten every request because it's being obtained from a repository/databasecontext that's re- created every request (ninject). This also meant that we couldn't just keep a temporary list in our user that holds the already answered questions their answers, since it'd be emptied every request. Using this approach we can save this list in the session object, write it to the local user at the start of the action method, perform the action (save a new answer) and afterwards obtain this list and write it to the viewmodel. It's a bit of a workaround, but it made sure we could keep this data. I believed this to be a decent solution, but now one of the project members (it's a school project due tomorrow) expressed his doubt about this method and said it was a very dirty solution (no alternative provided though). We're using ASP.NET MVC 4. Have I approached this the right way? How should I have solved it differently?"}
{"_id": "198637", "title": "Where is it appropriate to do input validation in Erlang?", "text": "I'm writing a module that runs a finite state machine* based on the contents of an array of records passed in at initialization. Each record describes a state and includes instructions on how to act on inputs (i.e., when in state `S1`, input `I` triggers a transition to state `S2`). For the FSM to work correctly, the transitioned-to states need to exist. My quandary is where to validate those transitions. The defensive programmer in me says to do it once as early as possible, such as when the FSM is initialized. This means I can raise an error when I'm first handed bogus data and avoid handing back a process that may fail later as a result. The rest of the implementation won't have to be as defensive because the table is known to be good and any errors that Erlang decides to raise will be a result of implementation rather than having being fed bad data. It will also make debugging easier for those using the module since they'll get a `badarg` or something else back immediately instead of having to paw through my sources later to figure out that it was their mistake and not mine. The Erlang philosophy seems to be that things should be left to run as long as possible, failing only when they have to and letting a supervisor take care of picking up the pieces. On one hand, this makes sense because a given FSM could run forever without encountering the inputs it would take for a bad transition. On the other, failing late puts the onus on the callers to write repetitive tests for something that's easy for me implement once. I know that most rules in this business aren't hard and fast, but is one approach more \"Erlangy\" than the other? Would a fail-early implementation appear out of place if released for others to use? * * * *I am aware of the `gen_fsm` behaviour and that what I'm doing has some comparative shortcomings. This is a learning exercise for some other things, and a FSM happens to be something that incorporates them."}
{"_id": "198636", "title": "foreach over multiple lists at once", "text": "Are there any languages that support foreach over multiple lists at once? Something like this:                foreach (string a in names, string b in places, string c in colors) {           // do stuff with a, b, c      }      Sure, this can be done with a regular for loop:                for (int n = 0; n<max, n++) {           a = names[n]; b = places[n]; c = colors[n];      }      but this loses the abstraction of foreach. My meager google-fu only reveals people asking how to do multi-foreach in various languages that don't support it. I'm guessing that _some_ language uses it, I just can't figure out which one."}
{"_id": "159231", "title": "Would this constitute MVC - even in a very loose sense?", "text": "I've been working on a kind of CRM for the sales guys in our office - not as a job role but as a spare time task type of thing - I don't claim to be a developer or anything like that, but I would definitely like to pursue a career as a web developer down the line, I just think I need a much stronger understanding of OOP principles and design patterns such as MVC before I could even consider it. Basically the way I've developed it each section of the App is a html page, that uses jQuery to listen for events, which then sends ajax requests to the server, which are then redirected to class methods that will perform usually simple CRUD tasks, and send back a JSON response to the client which will then be reflected on the page - would that constitute mvc even in a loose sense, as presentation is completely seperate from things like database interaction and theres a go-between to interact between the two? Like I say i'm in the very early stages of grappling the comprehension of MVC as a whole so any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks."}
{"_id": "240557", "title": "Is it possible to use PNaCl as a plugin framework?", "text": "I am looking to design an extremely modular game engine that allows for portable native plugins similar to the way PNaCl works with chrome. The biggest factors I need would be: cross platform, sandboxed, and the ability to launch an arbitrary number of these plugins based on what folder they reside in. I can't have any internal code expecting a plugin to be there, all plugins will be added and will attach to my own custom API. Is it possible to use PNaCl for this purpose and if not what is a good alternative? Research so far: I know I PNaCl is portable and secure (sandboxed) but I still don't know if I can load a compiled PNaCl based on if it resides in a folder. I haven't seen any examples of it used outside of google chrome and don't know if it can be separated."}
{"_id": "10416", "title": "Do working on open source projects and freelancing count as \"rendering services to another company\"", "text": "My contract explicitly states that I can't render services to another company. I would like to know if working on open source projects or freelancing count as such because I would like to work on some other projects without violating my contract. Freelancing might count as rendering services, but would open source work count too?"}
{"_id": "90008", "title": "Learning Java in a couple of days and preparing interview presentation", "text": "I know its not possible to 'know' or 'learn' Java fully in a couple of days but I really need some help on this guys. I have just graduated from university with a degree in computer science. The languages I would say I am 'proficient' at are: HTML/CSS/PHP. I have a job interview on friday and I have to prepare a presentation and have 3 technical test. Its a junior web developer role and forgive my naivety but I didn't realise Java was a factor in web development as I have only done HTML/CSS and PHP at university. **Presentation details:**   Duration 10 minutes.   Project: Talk about a project you have been involved with that you are proud of   \\- What was your role in the project?   \\- What technologies did you use?   \\- Did anything go wrong in the project and how did you solve it?      Does any one have any hints, tips anything they can draw on from experience to help me out? **Technical test details:**   \\- 20 mins   Part 1: HTML/CSS   Part 2: SQL   Part 3: Java   Number 1 (HTML/CSS) I am fine on.   Number 2 (SQL) I can relate to my knowledge in MySQL, hopefully ill be alright.   Number 3 (Java) BIG WORRY. I have no experience with Java and have never worked with it before. Should I tell them in advanced I have never worked with it before and that my strength is PHP which hopefully can be applied in the job and I will pick it up fairly quickly, or do it simply learn as much as I can in a couple of days and do my best. Thanks for any help guys"}
{"_id": "90005", "title": "do I need French export compliance approval to submit an iOS app that uses encryption?", "text": "My company just (5th July 2011) received the following email from Apple: > Starting in the first week of July, apps that meet the following criteria > are required to comply with French Encryption Laws/Regulations if you intend > to distribute your app in France. > > This requirement applies to apps that use, access, implement, or > incorporate: > > (a) any encryption algorithm that is yet to be standardized by international > standard bodies such as IEEE, IETF, ISO, ITU, ETSI, 3GPP, TIA, etc. or not > otherwise published; or > > (b) standard (e.g., AES, DES, 3DES, RSA) encryption algorithm(s) instead of > or in addition to accessing or using the encryption in iOS and/or Mac OS X > > Apple will require you to upload a copy of your approved French declaration > when you submit your app to the App Store. > > Relevant French encryption regulations can be found at: > > > http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000005789847&dateTexte=#LEGIARTI000006421577 > > http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/archive/fr/reglementation/regl_crypto.html > > http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/site_article195.html > > http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/site_article197.html > > Regards, > > Apple Export Compliance I've had a hunt around the web, developer forums, etc, and cannot find one single English description of exactly what this means. In my case (like many other people) I'm only using the standard encryption components provided in iOS - ie. https/SSL, AES, etc, I can't figure out if I need to do anything or not (beyond the USA encryption ERN that I've already completed). I'm worried it is going to delay submitting my next build though. Does anyone have any further information/links (or speak French)?"}
{"_id": "152668", "title": "Solving programming problems or contributing code?", "text": "What are the best skills to develop for a college graduate?? Should one spend hours/days trying to solve problems on codechef or topcoder or contribute code to open source organizations? My personal experience says solving problems teaches you how to make optimal code and learn new programming techniques (which someone else has researched and made available) to solve problems, whereas contributing to open source teaches you how to organize code (so others can work on it), use coding conventions and make \"real\" use of what you have learnt so far, blah blah!! Also another thing to note is that many companies are hiring today based on one's problem solving skills (Is this something I should worry about?) P.S. I have done little of online problem solving and little of code contribution (via GSoC), but left confused what I should continue doing (as doing both simultaneously isn't easy). I am in final year of my CS degree and I want to make myself good enough before I get employed."}
{"_id": "162744", "title": "Is it a common practice to minimize JavaScript usage when building a website?", "text": "I've been a web developer for almost 10 years and I've gotten into the habit of trying not to use JavaScript whenever possible. I'm not talking about building web apps here, but database driven websites. Is this a good/respected approach?"}
{"_id": "53608", "title": "Using template questions in a technical interview", "text": "I've recently been in an argument with a colleague about technical questions in interviews. As a graduate, I went round lots of companies and noticed they used the same questions. An example is \"Can you write a function that determines if a number is prime or not?\", 4 years later, I find that particular question is quite common even for a junior developer. I might not be looking at this the correct way, but shouldn't software houses be intelligent enough to think up their own interview questions? I've been to about 16 interviews as a graduate and the same questions came up in about 75% of them. This leads me to believe that many companies are lazy and simply Google: 'Template questions for interviewing software developers' and I feel there are doing themselves a disservice in taking this approach. **Question:** Is it better to use a set of questions off some template or should software houses strive to be more original and come up with their own interview material? From my point of view, if I failed an interview and went off and looked for good answers to the questions I messed up on, I could fly through the next interview if the questions are the same."}
{"_id": "163297", "title": "Should a project start with the client or the server?", "text": "Pretty simple question with a complex answer. **Should a project start with the client or the server, and why?** Where should a single programmer start a client/server project? What are the best practices and what are the reasons behind them? If you can't think of any, what reasons do you use to justify why you would choose to start one before the other? Personally, I'm asking this question because I'm finishing up specs for a project I will be doing for myself on the side for fun. But now that I'm finishing this phase, I'm wondering \"ok, now where do I begin?\" Since I've never done a project like this by myself, I'm not sure where I should start. In this project, my server will be doing all the heavy lifting and the client will just be sending updates, getting information from the server, and displaying it. But, I don't want that to sway the answer as I'm looking for more of an in depth and less specific answer that would apply to any project I begin in the future."}
{"_id": "63111", "title": "Which Scala open source projects should I study to learn best coding practices", "text": "What open source projects would you recommend for people to study to learn how the pros write Scala? Some of the attributes that I'm looking for - though they don't all have to be present in every exemplary project:   * Idiomatic use of the language and libraries   * Functional programming techniques   * Concurrency (using Actors or other methods)   * Large scale system with many modules   * Readability   * Java interop   * etc."}
{"_id": "121147", "title": "Throwing and catching exceptions in the same function/method", "text": "I've written a function that asks a user for input until user enters a positive integer (a natural number). Somebody said I shouldn't throw and catch exceptions in my function and should let the caller of my function handle them. I wonder what other developers think about this. I'm also probably misusing exceptions in the function. Here's the code in Java:               private static int sideInput()     {         int side = 0;         String input;         Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);              do {             System.out.print(\"Side length: \");             input = scanner.nextLine();             try {                 side = Integer.parseInt(input);                 if (side <= 0) {                     // probably a misuse of exceptions                     throw new NumberFormatException();                 }             }             catch (NumberFormatException numFormExc) {                 System.out.println(\"Invalid input. Enter a natural number.\");             }         } while (side <= 0);              return side;     }      I'm interested in two things:   1. Should I let the caller worry about exceptions? The point of the function is that it nags the user until the user enters a natural number. Is the point of the function bad? I'm not talking about UI (user not being able to get out of the loop without proper input), but about looped input with exceptions handled.   2. Would you say the throw statement (in this case) is a misuse of exceptions? I could easily create a flag for checking validity of the number and output the warning message based on that flag. But that would add more lines to the code and I think it's perfectly readable as it is. The thing is I often write a separate input function. If user has to input a number multiple times, I create a separate function for input that handles all formatting exceptions and limitations."}
{"_id": "163294", "title": "Is it possible to implement a completely-stateless multiplayer game?", "text": "I'm facing a challenge understanding how to program a web version of a card game that is completely stateless. I create my object graph when the game begins and distribute cards to PlayerA and PlayerB so I lay them out on the screen. At this point I could assume that HTML and the querystring is what holds at least _some_ of my state and just keep a snapshot copy of the game state on the server-side for the sole purpose of validating the inputs I receive from the web clients. Still it appears to me that the state of the game _is by its nature_ mutable: cards are being dealt from the deck, etc. Am I just not getting it? Or should I just strive to minimize the side-effects of my functions to the objects that I take as my input? How would you design a stateless card game?"}
{"_id": "126410", "title": "Why would you ever use Lisp?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why is Lisp useful? Lisp has always stricken me as a very peculiar language... interesting in concept, but it just doesn't seem intuitive as, for instance, Java or C or C++. Why do a lot of people actually use Lisp then?"}
{"_id": "224382", "title": "What is the relationship between an application server, a TCP/UDP client/server library, and a socket?", "text": "Up until now, the only networking concept I have ever implemented are basic sockets that are part of the java.net API. I am now trying to learn some higher-level API's/frameworks in java, and I am having trouble differentiating between TCP/UDP client/server libraries such as Apache MINA or kryonet and application servers such as Tomcat or JBoss. Furthermore, I would appreciate it if I could know the relationship between java.net.Socket and application servers and client/server libraries. My hypothesis is that Application Servers use websockets, which are similar to sockets but are limited by something related to the HTTP protocol. Moreover, I get the feeling that TCP/UDP client/server libraries are just higher-level abstractions of the basic sockets. Is this correct?"}
{"_id": "121149", "title": "Is using Javascript/JQuery for layout and style bad practice?", "text": "Many, but not all, HTML layout problems can be solved with CSS alone. For those that can't, JQuery (on document load) has become very popular.* As a result of its ease, many developers are quick to use JQuery or Javascript for layout and style -- even without understanding whether or not the problem can be solved with CSS alone. This is illustrated by responses to questions like this one. **Is this bad practice? What are the arguments for/against? Should someone who sees this in practice attempt to persuade those developers otherwise?** **If so, what are the best responses to arguments in favor of JQuery saying it's \"so easy\"?** * * * * Example: Layouts that wish to use vertical layout flow of some kind often run into dead ends with CSS alone -- this would include layouts similar to Pinterest, though I'm not sure that's actually impossible with CSS."}
{"_id": "142021", "title": "Differences between software testing processes and techniques?", "text": "I get confused between these terms. For example, should unit testing be listed as a software testing process or technique? I think unit testing is a software testing technique. And how about Test driven development? Can you give me some examples for software testing processes and techniques? In my opinion, software testing process is a part of the software development life cycle. For example, if we use V-Model, the software testing process will be System test, Acceptance test, Integration Test."}
{"_id": "54953", "title": "Nervous about the \"real\" world", "text": "I am currently majoring in Computer Science and minoring in mathematics (the minor is embedded in the major). The program has a strong C++ curriculum. We have done some UNIX and assembly language (not fun) and there is C and Java on the way in future classes that I must take. The program I am in did not use the STL, but rather a STL-ish design that was created from the ground up for the program. From what I have read on, the STL and what I have taken are very similar but what I used seemed more user friendly. Some of the programs that I had to write in C++ for assignments include:   * a password server that utilized hashing of the passwords for security purposes,   * a router simulator that used a hash table and maps,   * a maze solver that used depth first search,   * a tree traveler program that traversed a tree using levelorder, postorder, inorder, selection sort, insertion sort, bit sort, radix sort, merge sort, heap sort, quick sort, topological sort, stacks, queues, priority queues,   * and my least favorite, red-black trees. All of this was done in three semesters which was just enough time to code them up and turn them in. That being said, if I was told to use a stack to convert an equation to infix notation or something, I would be lost for a few hours. My main concern in writing this is when I graduate and land an interview, what are some of the questions posed to assess my skills? What are some of the most important areas of computer science that are prevalent in the field? I am currently trying to get some ideas of programs I can write in C++ that interest and challenge me to keep learning the language. A sodoku solver came to mind but am lost as to where to start. I apologize for the rant, but I'm just a wee bit nervous about the future. Any tips are appreciated."}
{"_id": "212957", "title": "Reason for a reflection error", "text": "I\u2019m working on an Eclipse plug-in project. Using this plug-in, users can create Eclipse Java projects with some specificities. For example, they can add Java classes\u2019 names which will be saved in a file. These Java classes can be created on the src of the project or used from a jar file which must be added to the project classpath. In this case, the plug-in will use reflection to get some data from each class. There are two different test cases that give the same error because the plug- in can't find the class to instantiate:   * A jar contain a class having a name saved in the file is not added to the project classpath. So in this case the classpath is incomplete.   * The user of the plug-in updated a jar in which its old version of the jar contained the named class, but the new version of jar does not (which could happen if class was deleted from the new version of the jar). In this case, the plug-in will not find the class but the classpath is complete. So The plug-in must differentiate between the two test cases when it fails finding the class name using reflection. How that can be done?"}
{"_id": "142024", "title": "Storage of value types and reference types in .net", "text": "In .net, the **value types** are stored on **stack** where as **reference types** are stored on **managed heap**. What is the reason for this one? Is it not possible to exchange their storage locations?"}
{"_id": "142029", "title": "Does using a PHP framework count as experience using PHP to a company that doesn't use that framework?", "text": "I've started working at a company that uses the Yii PHP framework. I'm mostly using Yii but also some frontend stuff like jQuery and Ajax. What I'm worried about is limiting my skill set to a framework that isn't very popular. I mean, if the company I worked for was using Ruby on Rails or even Django, I wouldn't have this feeling of concern for the future. My first question is then, in regards to being able to find a job in the future somewhere else, is my feeling of concern warranted? Secondly, I see a lot of PHP jobs out there but do you think experience using a PHP framework counts as valuable experience to a company that doesn't use that particular framework or any framework at all?"}
{"_id": "142028", "title": "Thick models Vs. Business Logic, Where do you draw the distinction?", "text": "Today I got into a heated debate with another developer at my organization about where and how to add methods to database mapped classes. We use `sqlalchemy`, and a major part of the existing code base in our database models is little more than a bag of mapped properties with a class name, a nearly mechanical translation from database tables to python objects. In the argument, my position was that that the primary value of using an ORM was that you can attach low level behaviors and algorithms to the mapped classes. Models are classes first, and secondarily persistent (they could be persistent using xml in a filesystem, you don't need to care). His view was that any behavior at all is \"business logic\", and necessarily belongs anywhere but in the persistent model, which are to be used for database persistence only. I certainly do think that there is a distinction between what _is_ business logic, and should be separated, since it has some isolation from the lower level of how that gets implemented, and domain logic, which I believe is the abstraction provided by the model classes argued about in the previous paragraph, but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what that is. I have a better sense of what might be the API (which, in our case, is HTTP \"ReSTful\"), in that users invoke the API with what they want to _do_ , distinct from what they are allowed to do, and how it gets done. * * * tl;dr: What kinds of things can or should go in a method in a mapped class when using an ORM, and what should be left out, to live in another layer of abstraction?"}
{"_id": "41473", "title": "How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer?", "text": "Like most people, I think of myself as being a bit above average in my field. I get paid well, I've gotten promotions, and I've never had a real problem getting good references or getting a job. But I've been around enough to notice that many of the worst programmers I've worked with thought they were some of the best. Bad programmers who are surrounded by other bad programmers seem to be the most self-deluded. I'm certainly not perfect. I do make mistakes. I do miss deadlines. But I think I make about the same number of bonehead moves that \"other good programmers\" do. The problem is that I define \"other good programmers\" to mean \"people who are like me.\" So, I wonder, is there any way a programmer can make some sort of reasonable self-evaluation? How do we know whether we are good or bad at our jobs? Or, if terms like _good_ and _bad_ are too ill-defined, how can programmers honestly identify their own strengths and weaknesses, so that they can take advantage of the former and work to improve the latter?"}
{"_id": "173244", "title": "How do you measure yourself as a programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer?   >  How to rate myself as a programmer I am self-learning Python. Everything is going well so far, but how do I measure myself? I mean, how can I say \"I'm a beginner\" or \"I'm intermediate\"? Is there some sort of guideline against which I can measure myself, something I have to learn before I am qualified enough?"}
{"_id": "223692", "title": "How to rate your understanding of a programming language?", "text": "**Background:** (may skip): I am currently in my second year at university studying Computer Science and applying for placement positions for a year of work. One application I have run into is asking me to rate my knowledge of the programming languages I know. quote : \" _rate your understanding and knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest (eg. JAVA=8, C++=6, etc)._ \" Now I feel like I am quite familiar with the languages I know but it is possible I may be over or under estimating my ability in them as I am ultimately still learning. **The Question:** is there a way or systematic approach I can use to give my understanding of a programming language a rating?"}
{"_id": "209055", "title": "Where do my programming skills stand in relation to other programmers", "text": "I am a student currently studying an undergraduate CS course at a crappy university in a third world country. I do however have a continuous desire to improve myself. My Objective is to bring myself up to the standards of programmers in United States. To further that goal i program continuously(4-5 hours daily). But here comes my predicament. I am already considered better than most of my peers in university competitions but due to the really low quality of education the comparison is essentially useless. I have searched the internet for website that rank programmers based on challenges but haven't been able to find any. So the question is. Is there any way i can compare my programming skills with the rest of the world ? And finally while i do understand the SE prefers questions that can be answered and not questions that solicit debate, i would still ask for suggestions of the community. In my country mostly nobody cares about self improvement while this is a very big deal to me."}
{"_id": "96946", "title": "How to rate myself as a programmer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer? I am sure many of us think of themselves as good coders, my question is how to be sure of this? How to know that i am 'above average'? How to compare myself against other coders? I dont mean taking formal tests, on a day-to-day basis, what is the way to evaluate oneself? Thanks for not closing"}
{"_id": "83706", "title": "What are the guidelines and opinions to become a Good Programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer?   >  How to learn PHP effectively? I have a doubt about myself. I think I am not good enough in programming. I was really trying very very hard to learn programming and I am dedicated to it. Can you give me advice on what are the things that I need to master to become a better programmer or the stuff that will help me to improve my programming skills? Do I really need to learn c/c++ or java? I'm a PHP Programmer and I want to master it before learning new language. How can would I know if my skills is enough?"}
{"_id": "50818", "title": "Is it possible to measure if someone is a 'good' programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer? There are a number of questions here about recognising or considering someone as a good/bad programmer. These are all subjective. What I'd like to know is if there is a way to measure this. I realise there will and should be a subjective element to it. But is it also possible to have some actual numbers to back up (or contradict) such an assessment?"}
{"_id": "25707", "title": "How to measure his own skill in a programming language?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer? As many programmers I have worked in several languages. While of course there are some that I am more at ease than other, I do not have a real way to precisely measure my skill in a specific language. So I thought of a system which allows me to help me with that. I am looking for 5 common criteria in programming languages, to which I will have a value from 1 (junior) to 4 ( Senior) to represent my skill. I however have no real idea of the criteria I should choose for that. Does anybody have suggestion ? Thanks."}
{"_id": "129349", "title": "How can I tell bad code from good code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer? I was looking at some posts on language execution speeds (e.g. whether one Language was faster then another or vice versa), and the common answer was that it really depends on how good the programmer is. I was wondering what that actually means. How can I tell bad code from good code?"}
{"_id": "116028", "title": "What is considered \"good programmer\" professionally?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How Can I Know Whether I Am a Good Programmer? Sometimes I hear someone say \"good programmer\" once I saw I guy saying that he was going to promote programmers that were good. My question is: what is the definition of good? I am not asking here how to find good programmers or how to identify one, but just knowing what \"goo programmer\" in professional sense is. 2nd question: How do I know if I am good or bad programmer?"}
{"_id": "212958", "title": "How to prevent fat views in MVC?", "text": "I'm just curious. If I'm a lead dev in a company of a dozens of developers is there any way I can prevent a newbie developer from creating a fat view? By fat view I mean to have an empty controller, empty model and having all database and business logic in the view along with the html/js."}
{"_id": "128142", "title": "What to do with estimation of incomplete story?", "text": "I am part of a development team that is relatively new to `Scrum`, suppose that at the end of the sprint a few large stories are either `in progress` or were not `accepted` by the PO. Firstly, what happens with those user stories? Do you just carry them over into the next sprint? If so, should they be re-estimated? In my view the work remaining on these user stories can be minimal or a lot? If not, why not? EDIT: In my specific case, the stories were not completed because of an impediment that was a few days long, not because of user story underestimation. For those of you that it may help, we are using `VersionOne`"}
{"_id": "48361", "title": "What's the best version control/QA workflow for a legacy system?", "text": "I am struggling to find a good balance with our development and testing process. We use Git right now, and I am convinced that ReinH's Git Workflow For Agile Teams is not just great for capital-A Agile, but for pretty much any team on DVCS. That's what I've tried to implement but it's just not catching. We have a large legacy system with a complex environment, hundreds of outstanding and undiscovered defects, and no real good way to set up a test environment with realistic data. It's also hard to release updates without disrupting users. Most of all, it's hard to do thorough QA with this process... and we need thorough testing with this legacy system. I feel like we can't really pull off anything as slick as the Git workflow outlined in the link. What's the way to do it?"}
{"_id": "62869", "title": "How is client-side javascript covered by the GPL?", "text": "If I used a GPL-licensed Javascript libarary in a web application, would I then have to offer source code of the whole site to anyone who downloaded and executed the Javascript lib?"}
{"_id": "26970", "title": "Perception of a developer that uses a pre-packaged web implementation for their personal site?", "text": "Lets say you're a web developer/programmer and you want to set up a personal portfolio site. Unfortunately, like most people with a full time job and a family, your time is hard to come by. You make the choice to, instead of building your own site from scratch, implement something like WordPress or Drupal. What effect (if any) might this have on people's (potential employers/fellow developers) perception of you as a developer?"}
{"_id": "32442", "title": "What should I learn from Scheme?", "text": "I was wondering what unique features I can learn from Scheme that would help me become a better programmer? I have a lot experience in mainstream languages, and I am looking to expand my horizons and learn about functional aspects that are missing from other languages. I am familiar with closures from javascript, lambda expressions from C#, and I was wondering what I can focus on that is lacking in other languages? Aside from the Lisp syntax, I feel like what I have seen so far I've already encountered in other languages. **What is unique to Scheme/Lisp that will teach me something new?**"}
{"_id": "251952", "title": "When using a programming library for an organization, can it still be a non-profit project?", "text": "I am currently developing a web-application that is to present data stored in a database. For the presentation there is a request for both presenting this in table format and graph format. The table format is straight-forward, simply output the data and voila! However, for the graph format it has proved a little more difficult. I have been reviewing a number of different libraries for visualizing data and it seems that there are quite a few that share licensing agreements; free for non-profit projects or non-commercial use. Now, if I was to create something for a company that later was to sell this, I can clearly distinguish that this is considered to be commercial use. But if I am working for an organization (not a non-profit) on a project that is to be used solely for internal purposes, it won't get anywhere near a customer, is this considered to be a non-profit project? **EDIT:** An example of such a license is Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 3.0."}
{"_id": "251959", "title": "Avoiding polling with components", "text": "Once you create separate components that need to communicate with each other you enter the realm of systems programming where you have to assume that errors could originate at any step in the process. You throw `try-catch` blocks out the window and have to develop robust alternatives for error handling yourself. We have two systems both with REST apis. Both systems have GUIs that users can use to add/update information. When information is added to one system it must be propagated to the other. We have integration software (the middleman) that polls on a minute-by-minute basis, picks up adds/edits and translates them from one system to the other. Each invokation keeps track of the timestamp of the last successful run--we have one timestamp for communication in either direction. In this way, if any part of the system fails, we can resume right where we left off when the issues are corrected. I have heard bad things about poll-based approaches: namely the fact that it runs without regard to whether there is actually work. I have heard that push- based approaches are more efficient because they are triggered on demand. I am trying to understand how a push-based approach might have worked. If either system attempts to push an add/edit, we have to assume that it could fail because the other system is down. It would seem to me that either system would need to maintain its own outgoing queue in order to resume once the issue with the other system is corrected. It seems to me that using a push approach eliminates the middleman, but heaps more responsibility on each system to manage its messages to the other system. This seems to not be a clean way of separating concerns. Now both systems have to take on middleman responsibilities. I don't see how you would redesign the middleman for a push-based architecture. You run the risk that messages are lost if the middleman himself fails. Is there a fault-tolerant architecture that could be used to manage system interactions without the polling? I'm trying to understand if we missed a better alternative when we devised/implemented our poll-based middleman. The software does the job, but there's some latency."}
{"_id": "254709", "title": "How to verify that library assemblies originate from a given Web site?", "text": "How would the following solution be implemented? Would you need to put this code in each library assembly or just in the main assembly that is determining whether it is safe to call the library assembly based on whether or not it originates from a given intranet Web site? Also, who should call the CheckSite method - each library assembly or the main app? Here is the example and solution from a practice exam for the C# Specialist Exam 70-483 that I am referring to: > You are an application developer for a company. You are creating an > application on the company\u2019s Web server that will manipulate confidential > data from business partners. The application relies on many library > assemblies in the company intranet to complete its work. You are required to > verify that every assembly originates from the same intranet Web site. Which > code should you use to verify the current assembly originates from the > company intranet?               public bool CheckSite () {         SiteMembershipCondition site = new             SiteMembershipCondition( \u201chttp://intranet.company.com\u201d );         return site.Check( Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().Evidence );     }"}
{"_id": "49944", "title": "Interop Best Practices: Should I use Static Class, or Normal Classes", "text": "I have a front end C# that needs to call a C++ back end. So interop is needed. I have an \"interop layer\", that converts the C# data structure into C++ structure, and do all the memory freeing grunt work. My question is, should I write this interop layer as a _static_ class, or should I wrap it in a normal class and instantiate it as an object when I need to use it?"}
{"_id": "157672", "title": "What should be the next thing after being accepted as a contributor to an Open Source Project?", "text": "So this is the first time I am trying to work with an `Open Source Project`. I created a `Code Plex` Account browsed for a project that I thought I might become a part of. I sent a request to join the project.The project head accepted my request. I have already `downloaded` the `source code` of the project. Can some one just suggest what should I be doing next? Since I have never worked with `Open Source Projects` the best thing I think for me would be to go through the `code` and just study it and understand how it works. Apart from that I want to know what things many of you do when you are accepted as a contributor. Also the project I choose to work includes `ASP.NET MVC` and a `javascript` library `Raphael.js` which I have no prior experience with. So should I also start looking at it also? Any suggestions are welcome."}
{"_id": "68773", "title": "How can you distinguish a good consulting firm from a body shop?", "text": "It seems to me that most consulting firms do little more than match resumes to positions, typically with insightful criteria such as \"X years experience in technologies Y and Z.\" But there are also some consulting firms that attempt to find talented developers and invest in them. And rather than simply providing staff augmentation, they either partner with a client to accomplish a project, or supply the entire team. How can you effectively (and quickly) determine which is which? Since no one advertises themselves as a \"body shop,\" how do you find and pursue the firm that is actually looking for good developers, and not just resumes? Is there a Joel test for consulting firms? One that can be applied before you are hired? I'm asking as a potential employee here."}
{"_id": "157677", "title": "Is HTTPS enough to avoid replay attacks?", "text": "I am exposing a few REST methods on a server for an mobile app. I would like to avoid that users can sniff how HTTP methods are built (from the mobile app) and then send them again to the server. Example :   * The mobile app send a request   * The user uses a proxy and can check what's going on on the network   * The user sees and save the request that the mobile just sent   * => Now I don't want the user to be able to send over manually that request Is it enough to secure the server over HTTPS?"}
{"_id": "1997", "title": "What are non-programming mistakes that a programmer should avoid?", "text": "People make mistakes, even in the real life... Which should we, geeky programmers, avoid?"}
{"_id": "197479", "title": "How is it possible to build the whole codebase from source at Google scale?", "text": "The first answer to an old, recently active question linked to a video which talks about how Google repository is done. One interesting thing which was mentioned is the fact that **everything is build from source, without relying on binaries.** This helps avoiding issues with dependencies becoming obsolete but still being used in other projects, an issue I indeed encountered a lot. How is it technically possible? If I try the same thing in my company, even considering the huge gap between the scale of my company codebase and the scale of Google's one, it wouldn't be possible for two reasons:   * The IDE (Visual Studio) will quickly become unresponsive, given that is suffers a lot at even small solutions containing, say, 50 projects.   * Any static analysis would be crunched by the size of the whole codebase. For example code metrics or static checking of code contracts would hardly be possible (code contracts would probably take days or weeks).   * With continuous integration, compiling would take a huge amount of time too and would crunch the servers as soon as a project with lots of dependencies is modified, requiring a large tree of projects to be recompiled. How can a small company circumvent those issues and be able to:   1. Use the IDE without being affected by poor performance,   2. Compile the code after each commit without crunching the server, even when the consequences of a change require a large amount of the codebase to be recompiled?"}
{"_id": "142790", "title": "Deprecated Methods in Code Base", "text": "A lot of the code I've been working on recently, both professionally (read: at work) and in other spheres (read: at home, for friends/family/etc, or NOT FOR WORK), has been worked on, redesigned and re-implemented several times - where possible/required. This has been in an effort to make things smaller, faster more efficient, better and closer to spec (when requirements have changed). A down side to this is that I now have several code bases that have deprecated method blocks (and in some places small objects). I'm looking at making this code maintainable and easy to roll back on changes. I'm already using version control software in both instances, but I'm left wondering if there are any specific techniques that have been used by others for keeping the superseded methods without increasing the size of compiled outputs? At the minute, I'm simply wrapping the old code in C style multi line comments. Here's an example of what I mean (C style, psuedo-code):               void main ()     {       //Do some work       //Foo();  //Deprecated method call       Bar();    //New method     }          /***** Deprecated code *****     /// Summary of Method     void Foo()     {       //Do some work     }     ***** Deprecated Code *****/          /// Summary of method     void Bar()     {       //Do some work     }      I've added a C style example, simply because I'm more confident with the C style languages. I'm trying to put this question across as language agnostic (hence the tag), and would prefer language agnostic answers, if possible - since I see this question as more of a techniques and design question. I'd like to keep the old methods and blocks for a bunch of reasons, chief amongst them being the ability to quickly restore an older working method in the case of some tests failing, or some unforeseen circumstance. Is there a better way to do this (that multi line comments)? Are there any tools that will allow me to store these old methods in separate files? Is that even a good idea?"}
{"_id": "142796", "title": "from Java to SAS", "text": "I am a seasoned python,java,...other programmer having a (fairly advanced) mathematical education (so I do understand statistics and data mining, for example). For various reasons I am thinking to switch to SAS/BI area (I am naming SAS because it might be, for me, a possible way to enter in BI). My question, for whoever might have an experience of both: is it, in BI current state, worth it? I mean, the days of big ideas in BI _for business_ seem to be over (there are the APIs, managers think that they know what you can do with them), and my mathematical background might turn out to be superfluous. Also, the big companies now have their data organized, have their BI procedures well established, and trying to analyze it from a different standpoint might not be what they want. Another difference is: while in Java etc. development one codes and codes and codes, I don't know if this is the case for BI; in fact, from what I read on the net, a BI (or OLAP, ...etc) developer, in a big organization, is usually in a state of standby, and does in fact little coding."}
{"_id": "58186", "title": "How was programming done 20 years ago?", "text": "Nowadays we have a lot of programming aids that make work easier, including:   * IDEs   * Debuggers (line by line, breakpoints, etc)   * Ant scripts, etc for compiling   * Sites like StackOverflow to help if you're stuck on a programming problem 20 years ago, none of these things were around. Which tools did people use to program, and how did they make do without these newer tools? I'm interested in learning more about how programming was done back then."}
{"_id": "169848", "title": "Is Reading the Spec Enough?", "text": "This question is centered around Scheme but really could be applied to any LISP or programming language in general. **Background** So I recently picked up Scheme again having toyed with it once or twice before. In order to solidify my understanding of the language, I found the _Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme_ and have been reading through that along with my compiler/interpreter's (Chicken Scheme) listed extensions/implementations. Additionally, in order to see this applied I have been actively seeking out Scheme code in open source projects and such and tried to read and understand it. This has been sufficient so far for me understanding the syntax of Scheme and I've completed almost all of the Ninety-nine Scheme problems (see here) as well as a decent number of Project Euler problems. **Question** While so far this hasn't been an issue and my solutions closely match those provided, am I missing out on a great part of Scheme? Or to phrase my question more generally, does reading the specification of a language along with well written code in that language sufficient to learn from? Or are other resources, books, lectures, videos, blogs, etc necessary for the learning process as well."}
{"_id": "211429", "title": "How to design a log() method that can easily be accessed from the outside of the Console class?", "text": "Recently my team has programmed a custom developer console in a video game which can easily be hidden or displayed, because it's more comfortable and less of a hassle. The Console class contains a log(string) function which should be easily accessible from anywhere outside of it, without having to reference it everywhere. How could we design a method that can be easily accessed from the outside of the class? For example printing a message to the console in C++ is as simple as:               cout << \"Message\";      Well we want something similar at best, maybe Console::log(), but we are clueless how to achieve a _proper_ way of doing it. Cheers."}
{"_id": "193915", "title": "How do I deal with a MIT project with no included copyright notice?", "text": "There's a (possibly abandoned) library I'm using in my project. Its Google Code project page mentions it's MIT licensed. Nowhere in the code itself, nor any of the included files, is there a copyright notice or license specified. The closest thing is the author's name in one of the headers. Since the sole requirement of the MIT license is its inclusion of the copyright notice, which is non-existant in this libary, what's the best manner to proceed?"}
{"_id": "59851", "title": "Career Shifters: How to compete with IT/ComSci graduates", "text": "I am wondering what are the chances of a career shifter (mid 20's), who have maybe 3-6 months programming experience vs. younger fresh IT/Com Sci graduates? You see, even though I really love programming (Java/J2EE), but nobody gives me a feedback when I apply online. maybe because they preferred IT/ComSci graduates vs a career shifter like me. So can you advice on how to improve my chance on being hired? How can I get a real-job programming experience if nobody is hiring me? I can make my own projects (working e-commerce site blah blah) but it is still different from the real job. And my code is working but it still needs a lot of improvement and no one can tell me how to improve it because no one sees it (because I'm doing it alone?). Do you know any open source websites (java/j2ee) / online home-based jobs who accept java/j2ee trainees?"}
{"_id": "211420", "title": "Programming puzzle with constant selection", "text": "THE QUESTION: There is an event where there are N contestants. There are three tasks in the event: A,B,C (say). Each participant takes part in the events in the listed order: i.e a contestant must first complete A and B before beginning C. However, in event A only one person can participate at a time. Any number of people may simultaneously participate in B and C. So the event works as follows. At time 0, the first contestant begins A, while the remaining citizens wait for the first person to finish. As soon as the first person is done, he or she proceeds to event B, and the second citizen begins A. In general whenever a person completes A, the next person begins A. Whenever a person is done with A, he or she proceeds to B immediately, regardless of what the other contestants do. The whole event ends as soon as all the contestants finish all 3 events. So the basic question is given the number of participants N, and the time taken by each person for each of the 3 events, calculate the minimum time in which the whole event might be completed. MY ATTEMPT: This is the algorithm I came up with: LeastTime(people (2d array [n][3] with time of each person for each event, n, front_chosen = false)                   The least time for n people can be broken up into 2 cases:         1. The current guy seated first for event A             1.1 We take t1_1 -> time for current guy in event A + time taken for the rest of the people to finish the whole event with the front taken             1.2 We take t1_2 -> time for current guy in event A + time for his remaining events             1.3 The time taken for the whole event in this case is t1 = max{t1_1,t1_2}.               2 The current guy is not seated first for event A             2.1 We modify people such that the first element is placed last             2.2 t2 -> LeastTime(people, n, false)         3. We return min {t1,t2}      So that is what I came up with. What are some better i.e more efficient solutions? Even Alternate Solutions will be helpful."}
{"_id": "211421", "title": "Why can't SQL return joined tables in a nested format?", "text": "For example, say I want to fetch a User and all of his phone numbers and email addresses. The phone numbers and emails are stored in separate tables, 1-user to many phones/emails. I can do this quite easily:               SELECT * FROM users user          LEFT JOIN emails email ON email.user_id=user.id         LEFT JOIN phones phone ON phone.user_id=user.id      The problem* with this is that it's returning the user's name, DOB, favorite color, and all the other information stored in the user table over-and-over again for each record (users*emails*phones records), presumably eating up bandwidth and slowing down the results (unless I'm mistaken on this?). Wouldn't be nicer if it returned a single row for each user, and within that record there was a _list_ of emails and a _list_ of phones? It would make the data much easier to work with too. I know you can get results like this using LINQ or perhaps other frameworks, but it seems to be a weakness in the underlying design of relational databases. We could get around this by using NoSQL, but shouldn't there be some middle ground? Am I missing something? Why doesn't this exist? * Yes, it's designed this way. I get it. I'm wondering why there isn't an alternative that is easier to work with. SQL could keep doing what it's doing but then they could add a keyword or two to do a little bit of post-processing that returns the data in a nested format instead of a cartesian product."}
{"_id": "211422", "title": "Why did Microsoft abandon IronRuby and IronPython?", "text": "Several years ago, Microsoft announced that Ruby and Python were coming to .net. The projects were called IronRuby and IronPython, respectively. Microsoft said that the projects would be built on top of the .net DLR. WIKIpedia indicates that for all intents and purposes, these projects have been abandoned by Microsoft. Why did Microsoft abandon these projects?"}
{"_id": "169845", "title": "Arranging the colors on the board in the most pleasing form", "text": "Given a rectangular board of height H and width W.   N colors are given and each color occupies Xi percentage of area on the board.   Sum of Xi's is 1. The colors on the board must be placed in rectangles.   An optimal solution has the rectangles' aspect ratios as close to 1 as possible.   An ideal case has the board filled only with squares. What's the best algorithm for laying out the rectangles?"}
{"_id": "203818", "title": "Defining work days and work time", "text": "I'm working on development of SMS parking software, and I'm stuck at one point for a month... I need to implement periods of payment (or work time, of a work day, if you will). Here's the problem: For an example, traffic wardens work from Monday to Saturday. From Monday to Friday, the work times are from 07:00 to 21:00, and on Saturday, the work time is from 07:00 to 14:00. The project request was, that the customer can pay parking by SMS unlimited, which I did, but didn't implement this logic. I started with making a table for this periods of payment, it consists of: dayofweek (INT, for use with mysql function DAYOFWEEK, to tell me which day in week is the current date), work_start and work_stop (DATETIME, for defining starting and ending the work day), but I'm unsure if I should use DATETIME, beacuse of the date, or should I use only TIME. The idea is this: If you send an SMS, at 20:50, Monday, it should be valid until 07:50, Tuesday (it's payed by the hour). Extending the time of payment, regarding the work time in week. Currently, it works with extending time by the hour without this rule. Really would use some help, or some ideas, I'm stuck with this for quite some time..."}
{"_id": "208572", "title": "In embedded, is there any difference between a device driver and a library?", "text": "Assuming a platform with no kernel mode, such as Atmel AVR, is there any difference between a device driver and a library, given that everything is user mode anyway? I ask because I'm thinking about how I want to layer my code. It's like this:               +----------------+     | Business logic |     +----------------+     |   CAN library  |     +----------------+     | MCP2515 driver |     +----------------+     |   SPI driver   |     +----------------+      The SPI \"driver\" has an interrupt handler, and it talks directly to the microcontroller's SPI peripheral, which _sounds_ like a driver, but other than that, I don't see how it's any different to, say, the CAN library, which has high-level functions like \"send this message\"."}
{"_id": "39027", "title": "How do I contribute to open source projects?", "text": "What are the mechanics of contributing to open source projects? How are they managed? What exactly is meant by submitting a patch? Should I do some reading up on advanced version control techniques?"}
{"_id": "243306", "title": "Do objects maintain identity under all non-cloning conditions in PHP?", "text": "PHP 5.5 I'm doing a bunch of passing around of objects with the assumption that they will all maintain their identities - that any changes made to their states from inside other objects' methods will continue to hold true afterwards. Am I assuming correctly? I will give my basic structure here.               class builder {       protected $foo_ids = array(); // set in construct       protected $foo_collection;       protected $bar_ids = array(); // set in construct       protected $bar_collection;       protected function initFoos() {         $this->foo_collection = new FooCollection();         foreach($this->food_ids as $id) {           $this->foo_collection->addFoo(new foo($id));         }       }       protected function initBars() {         // same idea as initFoos       }       protected function wireFoosAndBars(fooCollection $foos, barCollection $bars) {         // arguments are passed in using $this->foo_collection and $this->bar_collection         foreach($foos as $foo_obj) { // (foo_collection implements IteratorAggregate)           $bar_ids = $foo_obj->getAssociatedBarIds();           if(!empty($bar_ids) ) {             $bar_collection = new barCollection(); // sub-collection to be a component of each foo             foreach($bar_ids as $bar_id) {               $bar_collection->addBar(new bar($bar_id));             }             $foo_obj->addBarCollection($bar_collection);             // now each foo_obj has a collection of bar objects, each of which is also in the main collection. Are they the same objects?           }         }       }          }      What has me worried is that `foreach` supposedly works on a copy of its arrays. I want all the $foo and $bar objects to maintain their identities no matter which $collection object they become of a part of. Does that make sense? EDIT: My understanding is that using the `clone` keyword is the only way to really copy an object in PHP 5+. Using the assignment operator basically just creates another reference to the same object. I'm hoping that return values and `foreach` also work that way."}
{"_id": "243307", "title": "Syntax of passing lambda", "text": "Right now, I'm working on refactoring a program that calls its parts by polling to a more event-driven structure. I've created sched and task classes with the sced to become a base class of the current main loop. The tasks will be created for each meter so they can be called off of that instead of polling. Each of the events main calls are a type of meter that gather info and display it. When the program is coming up, all enabled meters get 'constructed' by a main-sub. In that sub, I want to store off the \"this\" pointer associated with the meter, as well as the common name for the \"action routine.               void MeterMaker::Meter_n_Task (Meter * newmeter,) {       push(newmeter);      // handle non-timed draw events       Task t  = new Task(now() + 0.5L);       t.period={0,1U};       t.work_meter = newmeter;             t.work  = [&newmeter](){newmeter.checkevent();};<<--attempt at lambda       t.flags = T_Repeat;       t.enable_task();       _xos->sched_insert(t);     }      A sample call to it:               Meter_n_Task(new CPUMeter(_xos, \"CPU \"));      've made the scheduler a base class of the main routine (that handles the loop), and I've tried serveral variations to get the task class to be a base of the meter class, but keep running into roadblocks. It's alot like \"whack-a- mole\" -- pound in something to fix something one place, and then a new probl pops out elsewhere. Part of the problem, is that the sched.h file that is trying to hold the Task Q, includes the Task header file. The task file Wants to refer to the most \"base\", _Meter_ class. The meter class pulls in the main class of the parent as it passes a copy of the parent to the children so they can access the draw routines in the parent. Two references in the task file are for the 'this' pointer of the meter and the meter's update sub (to be called via this).               void *this_data= NULL;     void (*this_func)() = NULL;      Note -- I didn't really want to store these in the class, as I _wanted_ to use a lamdba in that meter&task routine above to store a routine+context to be used to call the meter's action routine. Couldn't figure out the syntax. But am running into other syntax problems trying to store the pointers...such as                 g++: COMPILE lsched.cc     In file included from meter.h:13:0,                      from ltask.h:17,                      from lsched.h:13,                      from lsched.cc:13:     xosview.h:30:47: error: expected class-name before \u2018{\u2019 token      class XOSView : public XWin, public Scheduler {      Like above where it asks for a class, where the classname \"Scheduler\" is. !?!? Huh? That IS a class name. I keep going in circles with things that don't make sense... Ideally I'd get the lamba to work right in the Meter_n_Task routine at the top. I wanted to only store 1 pointer in the 'Task' class that was a pointer to my lambda that would have already captured the \"this\" value ... but couldn't get that syntax to work at all when I tried to start it into a var in the 'Task' class. This project, FWIW, is my teething project on the new C++... (of course it's simple!.. ;-))... I've made quite a bit of progress in other areas in the code, but this lambda syntax has me stumped...its at times like thse that I appreciate the ease of this type of operation in perl. Sigh. Not sure the best way to ask for help here, as this isn't a simple question. But thought I'd try!... ;-) Too bad I can't attach files to this Q."}
{"_id": "209852", "title": "Architecting Domain Layer and other modules with dependency injection in mind", "text": "I am currently new to Dependency Injection pattern. I am influenced by link by Mark Seemann. **I have a confusion regarding whether an interface for an agent class of some agent module should be included in domain layer?** _by agent I mean a class / module that interacts with external wcf/ webservices._ I have a diagram that shows it. In short, is it Ok to have: IProductAgent interface in Business layer where the actual implementation will be in an Agent Module. The confusion arises by the fact that: **Is calling a service even considered a business rule?** Today a service fulfills a facility, tomorrow there might be some another means of catering this same facility. Liskov's Substitution Principle. Apologies if I am mixing things here."}
{"_id": "160675", "title": "What do you call classes without methods?", "text": "What do you call classes without methods? For example,               class A     {       public string something;       public int a;     }      Above is a class without any methods. Does this type of class have a special name?"}
{"_id": "160677", "title": "The different types of CMS - Pros and cons", "text": "As I understand it, there are three different \"types\" of CMS:   1. **Proprietary** : A CMS built and owned by a company, and altered to meet a client's needs.   2. **Open-Source** : An open/free version of the above. An existing system altered to meet a client's needs. (E.g. Drupal, Joomla, etc.)   3. **Fully Bespoke** : A CMS built from scratch to the client's exact needs. It seems to me that, from a client's perspective, their order of preference (if everything else was equal) would be 3 -> 2 -> 1. There's a danger that option 3 could be riddled with difficult to understand code, but that's a danger with the other two as well. As developers, what's best for our clients? I ask this because a competing agency just pitched to one of our clients that Open-Source CMSes are the preferred solution. While I can see the benefits of using OS software, I can't see how it's better than a Fully Bespoke solution. As a developer blog put it, > \"Adding features to [an existing] CMS is not easy. It takes more time than > to develop the feature alone, because you need to trick the CMS into doing > something it was not designed to do. This is especially true for features > that write to the database a lot, like community features, or features that > have unusual business logic.\""}
{"_id": "58453", "title": "I know how to program, and how to learn how to program, but how/where do you learn how to make systems properly?", "text": "There are many things that need to be considered when making a system, let's take for example a web based system where users log in and interact with each other, creating and editing content. Now I have to think about security, validation (I don't even think I am 100% sure what that entails), \"making sure users don't step on each others feet\" (term for this?), preventing errors in many cases, making sure database data doesn't become problematic through unexpected... situations? All these things I don't know how or where to learn, is there a book on this kind of stuff? Like I said there seems to be a huge difference between writing code and actually writing the right code, know what I mean? I feel like my current programming work lacks much of what I have described and I can see the problems it causes later, and then the problems are much harder to solve because data exists and people are using it. So can anyone point me to books or resources or the proper subset of programming(?) for this type of learning? PS: feel free to correct my tags, I don't know what I am talking about. Edit: I assume some of the examples I wrote apply to other types of systems too, I just don't know any other good examples because I've been mostly involved in web work."}
{"_id": "194340", "title": "why are noSQL databases more scalable than SQL?", "text": "Recently I read a lot about noSQL DBMSs. I understand CAP theorem, ACID rules, BASE rules and the basic theory. But didn't find any resources on why is noSQL scalable more easily than RDBMS (e.g. in case of a system that requires lots of DB servers)? I guess that keeping constraints and foreign keys cost resources and when a DBMS is distributed, it is a lot more complicated. But I expect there's a lot more than this. Can someone please explain how noSQL/SQL affects scalability?"}
{"_id": "109192", "title": "Why NoSQL over SQL?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When would someone use MongoDB (or similar) over traditional RDMS? How well the SQL and NoSQL go head-to-head. I read somewhere that SQL databases are not well for data that is well structured or has some graph- iness associated with it. Is it really the case? Apart form Facebook, Google, and some other big players on the web, I don't know how well small-players and start-ups have used these tools. I found another similar question about the same here. But I couldn't gather much stats from here. These are certain specific cases, and is there a general pattern (like the one mentioned above) for which these NoSQL databases can be used? How wise will it be for a start-up to go for a NoSQL database if the developers know that the amount of data involved will be a little large and is well structured, but requires frequent CRUD operations? Here on stackoverflow, one can find questions about when not to use SQL, but are there any scenarios when one should avoid using NoSQL databases? Also, how effective will it be to use both in parallel so that we get the best of them both? One last question, do these distributed NoSQL databases perform equally well when they are used in a single-node setup?"}
{"_id": "160672", "title": "Wrapping REST based Web Service", "text": "I am designing a system that will be running online under Microsoft Windows Azure. One component is a REST based web service which will really be a wrapper (using proxy pattern) which calls the REST web services of a business partner, which has to do with BLOB storage (note: we are not using azure storage). The majority of the functionality will be taking a request, calling our partner web service, receiving the request and then passing that back to the client. There are a number of reasons for doing this, but one of the big ones is that we are going to support three clients: our desktop application (win and mac), mobile apps (iOS), and a web front end. Having a single API which we then send to our partner protects us if that partner ever changes. I want our service to support both JSON and XML for the data transfer format, JSON for web and probably XML for the desktop and mobile (we already have an XML parser in those products). Our partner also supports both of these formats. I was planning on using ASP.NET MVC 4 with the Web API. As I design this, the thing that concerns me is the static type checking of C#. What if the partner adds or removes elements from the data? We can probably defensively code for that, but I still feel some concern. Also, we have to do a fair amount of tedious coding, to setup our API and then to turn around and call our partner\u2019s API. There probably is not much choice on it though. But, in the back of my mind I wonder if maybe a more dynamic language would be a better choice. I want to reach out and see if anybody has had to do this before, what technology solutions they have used to (I am not attached to this one, these days Azure can host other technologies), and if anybody who has done something like this can point out any issues that came up. Thanks! Researching the issue seems to only find solutions which focus on connecting a SOAP web service over a proxy server, and not what I am referring to here. Note: Cross posted (by suggestion) from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11906802/wrapping-rest-based-web-service Thank you!"}
{"_id": "160673", "title": "Full Trust level: should be a concern?", "text": "**Should I worry about the safety of my application if it runs in Full Trust level?** If yes, why? What damages could be done? If the trust level should be a concern why it is the default level for asp.net applications instead of medium? I know all the _yes_ and _no's_ between medium and full trust levels, but I can't see where this could be a **serious** risk to the application and server. Considering this: My ISP wants to (and will) change the trust level to Medium of an IIS asp.net mvc application running on a **dedicated** server. This simply will break my application, since it relies heavily on `System.Reflection` namespace and it uses 3rd party assemblies which don't have the `AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers` defined. The application runs under a specific user that has read only access to the application directory and only execute permission on stored procedures on the Sql Server. The authentication is via SSPI, so no passwords on web.config. The ISP claims that if they let my application run in full trust they can not guarantee the security of my server. I never heard about a single case when the full trust was the cause to a security break. It seems to me that they are not sure about what they are doing. I can't see a security flaw here. The only securiy flaw I can see in general is the password stealing from the web.config, but this is not possible in my current setup..."}
{"_id": "241599", "title": "How to avoid oscillation by async event based systems?", "text": "Imagine a system where there are data sources which need to be kept in sync. A simple example is model - view data binding by MVC. Now I intend to describe these kind of systems with data sources and hubs. Data sources are publishing and subscribing for events and hubs are relaying events to data sources. By handling an event a data source will change it state described in the event. By publishing an event the data source puts its current state to the event, so other data sources can use that information to change their state accordingly. The only problem with this system, that events can be reflected from the hub or from the other data sources, and that can put the system into an infinite oscillation (by async or infinite loop by sync). For example               A -- data source     B -- data source     H -- hub          A -> H -> A -- reflection from the hub     A -> H -> B -> H -> A -- reflection from another data source      By sync it is relatively easy to solve this issue. You can compare the current state with the event, and if they are equal, you don't change the state and raise the same event again. By async I could not find a solution yet. The state comparison does not work by async event handling because there is eventual consistency, and new events can be published in an inconsistent state causing the same oscillation. For example:               A(*->x) -> H -> B(y->x)         -- can go parallel with     B(*->y) -> H -> A(x->y)         -- so first A changes to x state while B changes to y state         -- then B changes to x state while A changes to y state         -- and so on for eternity...      What do you think is there an algorithm to solve this problem? If there is a solution, is it possible to extend it to prevent oscillation caused by multiple hubs, multiple different events, etc... ? **update:** I don't think I can make this work without a lot of effort. I think this problem is just the same as we have by syncing multiple databases in a distributed system. So I think what I really need is constraints if I want to prevent this problem in an automatic way. What constraints do you suggest?"}
{"_id": "168463", "title": "Sample domain model for online store", "text": "We are a group of 4 software development students currently studying at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Currently, we are tasked with developing a web application that functions as a online store. We decided to do the back-end in Java while making use of Google Guice for persistence(which is mostly irrelevant for my question). The general idea so far to use PHP to create the website. We decided that we would like to try, after handing in the project, and register a business to actually implement the website. **The problem** we have been experiencing is with the domain model. These are mostly small issues, however they are starting to impact the schedule of our project. Since we are all young IT students, we have virtually no experience in the business world. As such, we spend quite a significant amount of time planning the domain model in the first place. Now, some of the issues we're picking up is say the reference between the Customer entity and the order entity. Currently, we don't have the customer id in the order entity and we have a list of order entities in the customer entity. Lately, I have wondered if the persistence mechanism will put the client id physically in the order table, even if it's not in the entity? So, I started wondering, if you load a customer object, it will search the entire order table for orders with the customer's id. Now, say you have 10 000 customers and 500 000 orders, won't this take an extremely long time? There are also some business processes that I'm not completely clear on. Finally, my question is: does anyone know of a sample domain model out there that is similar to what we're trying to achieve that will be safe to look at as a reference? I don't want to be accused of stealing anybody's intellectual property, especially since we might implement this as a business."}
{"_id": "151637", "title": "Is unit testing development or testing?", "text": "I had a discussion with a testing manager about the role of unit and integration testing. She requested that developers report what they have unit and integration tested and how. My perspective is that unit and integration testing are part of the development process, not the testing process. Beyond semantics what I mean is that unit and integration tests should not be included in the testing reports and systems testers should not be concerned about them. My reasoning is based on two things.   1. Unit and integration tests are planned and performed against an interface and a contract, always. Regardless of whether you use formalized contracts you still test what e.g. a method is supposed to do, i.e. a contract.  In integration testing you test the interface between two distinct modules. **The interface and the contract** determine when the test passes. But you always test a limited part of the whole system. Systems testing on the other hand is planned and performed against the system specifications. **The spec** determines when the test passes.   2. I don't see any value in communicating the breadth and depth of unit and integration tests to the (systems) tester. Suppose I write a report that lists what kind of unit tests are performed on a particular business layer class. What is he/she supposed to take away from that?  Judging what should and shouldn't be tested from that is a false conclusion because the system may still not function the way the specs require even though all unit and integration tests pass. This might seem like useless academic discussion but if you work in a strictly formal environment as I do, it's actually important in determining how we do things. Anyway, am I totally wrong? (Sorry for the long post.)"}
{"_id": "168467", "title": "Proper XAML for Windows 8 Applications", "text": "I have been wanting to understand more of proper XAML design since most of my current experience is in what I grew up in: Windows Forms. More specifically, though it is really a specific subset of Xaml, I am interested in Windows 8 Application development. I do have read considerable parts of 70-502 exam book by Microsoft and of course I have visited the Microsoft site to learn how many pixels what where and how is supposed to go to meet Windows 8 design guidelines. All these resources however focus on very small scale problems. How to make a button, how to connect it to a controller... I am looking for resources that teach me how to translate a design into xaml. All the individual components I am aware of, though not indepth. DockPanels, StackPanels, buttons, boxes, borders and styles. But I don't have a resource that tells me how to combine them into a high quality design. Does anyone have resources that teach weilding Xaml on an application scale?"}
{"_id": "94787", "title": "Becoming a better C/Java programmer", "text": "I've currently hit a plateau and want to get better at coding in C and Java. I want to improve, but I think I hit a plateau on my learning curve. I can't find any \"advanced\" tutorials on the net; most of the things that are introductions that I already know. I don't really know where to go from here to get better. How do I get past the plateau? Would reading through the Linux kernel's source help? Is there a site, or something with advanced exercises or tasks to do? Not something that requires expert knowledge, and nothing basic, but something in the middle. Something with programming puzzles or riddles, that take a couple of hours at most, but not months. By advanced, I mean that I already know the syntax pretty well. I haven't mastered it, and still make mistakes here and there, but I wouldn't be completely useless without my IDE of choice (Eclipse). In Java, I have a basic grasp of collections, the Swing library, and the JDBC library. I also have some basic experience with ant and junit. I can make basic 2D games, and utility programs with local database connectivity. I'm reading up on Java's sound API. As for C, it's pretty rusty. I do know the syntax, and know how to use make, but I don't know many libraries. I've tinkered with sqlite3, and made a simple pacman type game that runs on a win32 console a few years ago, but I never really advanced past the basic syntax. Also, I recently learned about function pointers. Basically, I've gotten the lessons most books have in their first few chapters, but don't really know where to go from here. I am aware that the best way to improve is to code, but I don't really know _what_ to code. I don't really want to keep making the same kinds of programs again and again, but I can't think of any short, but new project."}
{"_id": "164745", "title": "Reuse the data CRUD methods in data access layer, but they are updated too quickly", "text": "I agree that we should put CRUD methods in a data access layer\uff0c However, in my current project I have some issues. It is a legacy system, and there are quite a lot CRUD methods in some concrete manager classes. People including me seem to just add new methods to it, rather than reuse the existing methods. Because   1. We don't know whether the existing method is what we need   2. Even if we have source code, do we really need read other's code then make decision?   3. It is updated too quickly. Do not have time get familiar with the DAO API. Back to the question, how do you solve that in your project? If we say \"reuse\", it really needs to be reusable rather than just an excuse."}
{"_id": "62241", "title": "Can I sell apps on the apple's US app store market?", "text": "given Apple's bizarre geographical segregation I was wondering if, as an Italian, I am allowed to create an English application sold on the US app store for $0.99 (regardless of the current USD <=> EUR exchange rates). It seems a really stupid question and I really hope that I can but who knows, since I can't buy them maybe I can't sell them either."}
{"_id": "157019", "title": "What are some good ways for an experienced .NET client developer to start learning web development?", "text": "My background is as follows. I've been programming since I was young, worked in BASIC, then Asm for M68K, then C, C++, and now I've spent the past 5 years in .NET becoming a rather good .NET developer. Somewhere along the line, I realized I have no clue how the internet works, I don't know how TCP/IP works, I have no clue what HTML is capable of, or how PHP plays into the picture, or why Ruby on Rails should make me happy. I have no experience with LAMP or IIS, and I only have an inkling of a clue what Sharepoint is. In short: I'm internetstupid. I am intelligent and a capable developer, but I lack even rudimentary skills (routing, web hosting, hosting a custom DNS for intranet domain resolving, etc.) I have no clue where to start on web development learning. Here's the good news! I know what I'd like to learn to do (at least for now!) I want to be able to develop my own personal domain to host WSDL services, to power my applications, to showcase my work, to host my living resume, to market my brand so to speak. Stackoverflow, I beg you, help this disconnected but talented developer become part of the current era instead of being a relic stuck in the previous great golden age of software! Note: I'd prefer to stay wedded to MS for now for the most part as I'm already familiar with the .NET ecosystem. I'm okay branching out, but not ready to do so (I think?) If you can convince me otherwise that's fine."}
{"_id": "94781", "title": "Handling out of hours support", "text": "This isn't a programming question per se - more about application management. I work for what started out as quite a small company, which has grown rather quickly and become very succesful in a relatively small period of time. Nearly all trade happens online, and our IT team is very small relative to the amount of money that gets pumped through the site (it's me and two others). There are occasionally \"blips\" in the framework outside of hours, which inevitably results in either myself or one of my colleagues receiving a phone call. Our call centre aren't particularly great at analyzing errors etc.. and 99% of the time the solution is actually a data entry / user training issue. 1% of the time it's a real bug. Our company is now insisting that we three developers figure out an on-call rota where we can be contacted with assurances that we won't be out of town etc. unpaid whether we are called or not, in case something goes wrong out of hours. Not all of our skills overlap, so I may not be able to quickly diagnose and fix a problem that one of the others could (e.g. database timeouts would need the DBA, email issues would need our infrastructure guy, website issues would need me). None of us are particularly happy about this, so I was wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience and how you dealt with the situation? EDIT: Thanks all for the suggestions - I've marked one as the right answer purely on the basis as it made me feel a bit better, but all suggestions are pretty much bang on what we've been discussing internally. We do feel like it's a little unfair we now have to give up our weekends so everyone else can get rich. We are attempting to push towards a more mature development process to minimize bugs too, but that would require the rest of the company to change too and they _really_ don't want anything to change outside of IT!"}
{"_id": "79006", "title": "How to maintain VCS changeset/revision simplicity in the face of accidental partial commits?", "text": "Working on a project with a couple of classmates, and I've noticed that we get a lot of partial commits which are then corrected:               Rev 249 Log: committing change foo, yeah!     Rev 250 log: oh dear, forgot these files!     Rev 251 log: oh my, how could I possibly forget another file in the *same* change?      The obvious answer is to be more careful. But as of 2011, programmers are still (almost) human, and are error prone. The problem is that this causes ambiguity when reverting or merging. Do we leave them there? Do we modify the commit history?"}
{"_id": "34208", "title": "How to convince boss to start using Codeigniter or YII at work?", "text": "i work for a web development company and during the one year i have spent here, there were no improvements in the technologies we used to built our websites. I introduced jquery to them (buying the Novice to Ninja by Sitepoint) and now, i want to get rid of all these crappy PHP from scratch and use a PHP framework instead. So what reasoning i can use to convince my boss to switch, and how to convice the other developers too?"}
{"_id": "34209", "title": "Would a multitouch capable PC allow me to do Android development simulating the touch UI without an Android device?", "text": "I recently purchased a Samsung Galaxy Tab as a reference implementation (phone and first gen Android tablet), of Android 2.x for app development. I have noticed a slew of Android 3.0 slates being talked about at CES 2011 (Motorola XOOM, etc.). If I had a multitouch PC with the Android SDK/Emulator on it, would this allow me to more closely approximate device simulation by allowing user input via the multitouch screen ? Would it work via touch just like Windows 7 recognizes touch as mouse style input ? Has anyone done this ?"}
{"_id": "237456", "title": "Design review: how well does my object oriented design fit the SOLID principles?", "text": "_This thread will be long, but I will try to make it as short as I can. Thank you._ I have recently implemented a relatively simple program. What this program does is generate a simple piece of music and play it. I will describe the object oriented design of the program and would like to hear your review of the design. **Especially how well it fits the SOLID principles** , where it doesn't, and how I can improve my design to be more SOLID in the future. _(If there's something in the description that isn't clear enough, please tell me.)_ I have divided my design into two parts. **1-** The \"behind the scenes\" system that generates the content - a series of notes and chords (as will be explained later) - and is responsible for playing it. **2-** The system that provides a UI to control the \"behind the scenes\" system. This system tells the other system when to create new music and when to play it. I will describe each system separately. * * * **System 1 - responsible for the generating and playing music.** The way music is created is by first generating a chord progression (a series of chords to be played one after the other), and then generating a melody based on that progression. I will describe how this is designed 'from the bottom up'. **Generating a chord progression**. Class `Note`: the most basic class. Responsible for playing sound files, and is set in instantiation to play a specific sound (C, D, etc.). It has an interface to play() and to stop() the playback. It also has a method `getName()` to identify it (the name is fed to the Note through the constructor). Class `Chord`: this class is instantiated with an array of three `Note` objects and a name. For example, a `Chord` named `cMajor` will be instantiated with the Notes `c`, `e`, and `g` and the string \"CMajor\". `Chord` has an interface to play() and stop() the notes it's composed with, has a method `getName()` and a method `getNotes()` that returns the array of Notes. Class `Progression`: this class is instantiated with an array of `Chord` objects, and has logic to play and stop them one after the other in a particular tempo (speed, in BPM - beats per minute). It has a method `play(int bpm)` and a method `getChords()` that returns the array of Chords. Class `ProgressionGenerator`: implements an algorithm to create a particular series of `Chord` objects, and instantiate a `Progression` with these chords. To summarize: a Progression is composed of Chords, which are composed of Notes. The ProgressionGenerator instantiates a Progression with a particular series of Chords. **Generating a melody**. Class `MelodyNote`: composed with a single `Note`. It has an attribute `double duration` which specifies for how long this note is to be played relative to a measure/bar of music (e.g. 'half note' is specified as 0.5, 'quarter' as 0.25). It has a method `getDuration()` and an interface to play() and stop() it's inner `Note` (basically delegates to the Note). Class `Melody`: composed with a series of `MelodyNote`s. Has logic to play the series of notes in a particular speed. It uses each `MelodyNote`'s `duration` to know when to stop a note and play the next one. Class `MelodyGenerator`: implements an algorithm to generate a series of `MelodyNote`s and instantiate a `Melody` with it. It does this based on a `Progression`. The method signature is `Melody generate(Progression prog)`. **So to summarize:** Progression **\\--> composed with** Chords **\\--> composed with** Notes Melody **\\--> composed with** MelodyNote **Each object controls it's inner objects and exposes them.** For example Chord has logic to play it's inner Notes, and has a method `getNotes()` that returns them to whoever needs to know. For example, `MelodyGenerator` uses `progression.getChords()` in order to build a melody according a particular series of chords. It also uses `chord.getNotes()` when choosing what notes to place over a chord. **One last thing:** the generators use the singleton class `NotesAndChordsSupplier` to get the Note and Chord instances they need. It hands them existing instances. * * * **System 2 - responsible for providing a UI to control the creation and playback of music.** This system is designed using the **MVC pattern.** The Model encapsulates the creation and playing of music. The View is the UI that provides buttons to tell the Model to play and make new music. The Controller is notified by the View when buttons are pressed and invokes the proper actions on the Model. **The Model** The Model contains a `Progression`, a `ProgressionGenerator`, a `Melody` and a `MelodyGenerator`. When it's told to generate new music, it simply delegates the task to the generators. When it's told to play music, it delegates the task to the melody and progression. Simplified code:               public void makeNewMusic(){         progression = progGenerator.generate();         melody = melodyGenerator.generate(progression);     }          public void playMusic(){ // this actually starts two separate threads, but irrelevant.         progression.play();         melody.play();     }      The Model is connected (in a loosely-coupled manner) to two objects: it's `Melody` and the `View` \\- both via the Observer pattern. The Model implements two interfaces: `Observer` and `Observable`. It's registered as an observer to the Melody, and the View is registered as an Observer to the Model. When the Melody finishes it's playback, it notifies it's observer - the Model. When the Model is notified, it notifies it's own observer - the View. This way, the View gets notifies when playback is finished, so it can re- enable it's UI buttons that were disabled during playback. **The View** The View is the UI and it has two buttons: `Play` and `New Tune`. They invoke `playButtonPressed()` and `newTuneButtonPressed()` on the Controller, respectively. The View also features `enableButtons()` and `disableButtons()` methods. As I said, the View is registered as an Observer to the Model. It is notified when playback of the music is finished, so it can re-enable it's buttons that were disabled by the Controller when playback started. **The Controller** When the View calls `newTuneButtonPressed()` on the Controller, it simply delegates to the Model: `model.makeNewMusic()`. When the View invokes `playButtonPreesed()` on the Controller, two things happen. 1- The Controller calls `disableButtons()` on the View. 2- The Controller calls `playMusic()` on the Model. All buttons on the View are disabled by the Controller when music playback starts. The Controller registers the View as an observer to the Model, and the Model as an observer to it's member Melody. * * * **UML class diagram to illustrate the architecture** _(Please note: in this post I ommited a class`Scale`, which isn't important. Ignore it in the diagram)._ ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Xi0mc.png) * * * **Thank you for reading all of this. I will appreciate any kind of criticism of the object oriented design of the program.** **Especially, how well are SOLID and OO principles integrated in my design, and how can I design more in the spirit of SOLID on the future.**"}
{"_id": "237453", "title": "How can I identify a namespace without using a string literal?", "text": "My team has a lot of IOC conventions that look something like...               if (type.Namespace == \"My.Fun.Namespace\")     {         // do stuff     }      Of course, maintaining this kind of thing becomes brutal after awhile, and we would rather not. The only option I could think of was to store these all in one place, as string constants or something of that nature, but that isn't a lot better... We have been considering making classes that basically serve as namespace identifiers in order to have almost an anchor type to key off of, like, say...               if (type.Namespace == typeof(My.Fun.Namespace.MarkerClass).Namespace)     {         // do stuff     }      But that just feels weird. So is there another way to solve this one that we just don't know about? If not, has anyone had any luck with the whole marker class concept?"}
{"_id": "34200", "title": "How would you advocate not using a shared spreadsheet to track bugs / issues?", "text": "In our company, the developers want to use a proper bug tracking tool to manager issues in our application. The management however insists on using a shared spreadsheet (formeerly a shared excel file, now a spreadsheet on a web base solution allowing concurrent access). Their argument is that the spreadsheet allow them to have a more highlevel view of the state of the project as they can see how many bugs are open with a quick glance. This also allow them to see who is working on each bug, and get estimation of the time required to close them all (as developer are required to fill time estimation of the bug they are working on). As you can understand, this is not really practical to use for the developers (bug tracking software were invented for a reason). So how can I advocate bug tracking software to ease the work of the developer ? As a bonus, which software would you recommend that would allow the management to be able to get their feedbacks (number of bugs opens, who is working on them, time estimation) with a high level view ?"}
{"_id": "143777", "title": "Compatibility Test and other testing method to use while building software", "text": "I will be adding a feature to the software and have to update or modify some of public API of the present open source software. What are steps which could be taken to ensure the compatibility of the software. what are the testing methods which are used in open source world to test the newly added features?? Open Source program is: Xapian"}
{"_id": "175644", "title": "New grad; To overcome complete lack of experience, should I ditch a creative pet project in lieu of one that would demonstrate more applicable skills?", "text": "I am currently working on a project on github that I think would be a good demonstration of my initiative, creativity and enthusiasm. It is an educational game I am developing in pygame that enables the user to learn to improve their development productivity by using vim, specifically with python, though learning to code faster with vim should be transferable to any language. I think this is something that might have a mass appeal and benefit to a lot of people in a measurable way. -However- I am graduating from college in a month (my degree is computer science with a minor in English), with no experience that is relevant to helping me get any kind of job in the field, and a gpa that doesn't tout my merits. I could pursue a career in game development, but it's not necessarily what I'm most interested in, and see myself applying to startups around the country. To the places I am looking at applying, showing that I have experience with pygame is going to be largely irrelevant, except in demonstration of my ability to code, period. A lot of skills that ARE more marketable, such a data modeling, GIS, mobile application, development, javascript, .net framework, and various web development technologies, are not going to be showcased by this project (on the upside, employers do like to see familiarity with git and python). I'm wondering if I should sink all my free time in the next couple of months into this project, since I'm motivated and interested in it, and if the value of being able to demonstrate ambition and 'good ideas' (for lack of a better term, and in my own opinion) will compensate for the absence of demonstrating more sought-after skills. I am probably at a point where I should either commit fully to this project now, or put it on the backburner in favor of something else, and I am leaning towards continuing with what I am already working on, because I think it's a great idea, and something achievable to me with enough dedication over the next couple months. But the most important thing to me is being able to get a job out of college, which I am exceedingly concerned about as the professional landscape which I am navigating for the first time is a lot more intimidating than I could have anticipated, with almost every job (even short-term contract positions) requiring years of experience which I lack. ## So in brief, the common denominator to answering the question \"How can I overcome experience requirements for a job\" seems to be \"Show off your own project.\" I want to know WHICH project I should work on to best increase my chances of getting a job out of college, keeping in mind that I have no experience. I believe this question is applicable to any new grad that lacks demonstrable experience."}
{"_id": "175641", "title": "Assignment of roles in communication when sides could try to cheat", "text": "Assume two nodes in a peer-to-peer network initiating a communication. In this communication, one node has to serve as a \"sender\", another as a \"receiver\" (role names are arbitrary here). I'd like the nodes to assert either role with approximately equal probability. That is, in N communications with various other nodes a given node would assume the \"sender\" role roughly N/2 times. Since there's no third-party arbiter available, nodes should agree on their roles by exchanging messages. The catch is that we can encounter a rogue node which would try to become the \"receiver\" in most or all cases, and coax the other side to always serve as a \"sender\". I'm looking for an algorithm to assign roles to sides of communication so that no side could get a predetermined role with high probability. It's OK for the side which is trying to cheat to fail to communicate."}
{"_id": "203492", "title": "When to use HTTP status code 404 in an API", "text": "I am working on a project and after arguing with people at work for about more than a hour. I decided to know what people on stack-exchange might say. We're writing an API for a system, there is a query that should return a tree of Organization or a tree of Goals. The tree of Organization is the organization in which the user is present, In other words, this tree should always exists. In the organization, a tree of goal should be always present. (that's where the argument started). In case where the tree doesn't exist, my co-worker decided that it would be right to answer response with status code 200. And then started asking me to fix my code because the application was falling apart when there is no tree. I'll try to spare flames and fury. I suggested to raise a 404 error when there is no tree. It would at least let me know that something is wrong. When using 200, I have to add special check to my response in the success callback to handle errors. I'm expecting to receive an object, but I may actually receive an empty response because nothing is found. It sounds totally fair to mark the response as a 404. And then war started and I got the message that I didn't understand HTTP status code schema. So I'm here and asking what's wrong with 404 in this case? I even got the argument \"It **found** nothing, so it's right to return 200\". I believe that it's wrong since the tree should be always present. If we found nothing and we are expecting something, it should be a 404. # More info, I forgot to add the urls that are fetched. Organizations               /OrgTree/Get      Goals               /GoalTree/GetByDate?versionDate=...     /GoalTree/GetById?versionId=...      My mistake, both parameters are required. If any versionDate that can be parsed to a date is provided, it will return the closes revision. If you enter something in the past, it will return the first revision. If by Id with a id that doesn't exists, I suspect it's going to return an empty response with 200. ### Extra Also, I believe the best answer to the problem is to create default objects when organizations are created, having no tree shouldn't be a valid case and should be seen as an undefined behavior. There is no way an account can be used without both trees. For that reasons, they should be always present. # also I got linked this (one similar but I can't find it) http://viswaug.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/http-headers-status1.png"}
{"_id": "35159", "title": "Haskell Using Source File Problems", "text": "I recently started using Haskell Platform. I created a source file using Wordpad and named it add. I tried double clicking it so I can open it in ghci but I get <[1 of 1] Compiling Main (C:\\add.hs,interpeted) C:\\add.hs:1:6: parse error on input '\\' Failed modules loaded: none.> What do I do so I can use my source file?. Should I use another text editor?. Thanks"}
{"_id": "35152", "title": "Distributed Development Tools -- (Version control and Project Management)", "text": "I've recently become responsible for choosing which source control and project management software to use for a company that employs me. Currently it uses Jira (project management) and Subversion (version control). I know there are many other options out there -- the ones I know about are all in this article http://mashable.com/2010/07/14/distributed-developer-teams/ . I'm leaning towards recommending they just stay with what they have as it seems workable and any change would have to be worth the cost of switching to say github/basecamp or some other solution. Some details on the team:   * It's a distributed development shop. Meetings of the whole team in one room are rare.   * It's currently a very small development team (three developers).   * The project management software is used by developers and a product manager or two. What are you experiences with version control and project management web applications? Are there any you would recommend and you think are worth the switching cost of time to learn new services / implementing the change? Edit: After educating myself further on the options it appears DVCS offer powerful benefits that may be worth investing in now as opposed to later in the company's lifetime when the switching cost is higher: I'm a Subversion geek, why I should consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?"}
{"_id": "35151", "title": "Common mistakes which lead to corrupted invariants", "text": "My main source of income is web development and through this I have come to enjoy the wonders of programming as my knowledge of different languages has increased over the years through work and personal play. At some point I reached a decision that my college education was not enough and that I wanted to go back to school to get a university degree in either computer science or software engineering. I have tried a number of things in my life and it took me a while before I found something that I feel is a passion and this is it. There is one aspect of this area of study that I find throws me off though. I find the formal methods of proving program correctness a challenge. It is not that I have trouble writing code correctly, I can look at an algorithm and see how it is correct or flawed but I struggle sometimes to translate this into formal definitions. I have gotten perfect or near perfect marks on every programming assignment I have done at the college level but I recently got a swath of textbooks from a guy from univeristy of waterloo and found that I have had trouble when it comes to a few of the formalisms. Well at this point its really just one thing specifically, It would really help me if some of you could provide to me some good examples of common mistakes which lead to corrupted invariants, especially in loops. I have a few software engineering and computer science textbooks but they only show how things should be. I would like to know how things go wrong so that it is easier to recognize when it happens. Its almost embarrassing to broach this subject because formalisms are really basic foundations upon which matters of substance are built. I want to overcome this now so that it does not hinder me later."}
{"_id": "35150", "title": "How to organize large Rails application?", "text": "I am working on a large(ERP level) Rails project. We have 150 tables and more than 150 models. It takes minutes to find a model. Should we add all models under the models folder or should we put them in different subfolders? Same thing goes for controllers and views."}
{"_id": "28693", "title": "Role of Microsoft certifications ADO.Net, ASP.Net, WPF, WCF and Career?", "text": "**I am a Microsoft fan and .Net enthusiast.** I want to align my career in the lines of current and future .Net technologies. I have an MCTS in ASP.Net 3.5. The question is about the continuation of certifications and my career growth and maybe a different job! **I want to keep pace with future Microsoft .Net technologies.** My current job however doesn't allow so.So i bid to do .Net based certifications to stay abreast with latest .Net technologies. My questions:   1. What certifications should i follow next? I have MCTS .Net 3.5 WPF(Exam 70-502) and MCTS .Net 3.5 WCF(Exam 70-504) in my mind so that i can go for Silverlight development and seek jobs related to Silverlight development.   2. What other steps i need to take in order to develop professional expertise in technologies such as WPF, WCF and Silverlight when my current employer is reluctant to shift to latest .Net technologies? I am sure that there are a lot of people of around here who are working with .Net technologies and they have industrial experience. I being a new comer and starter in my career need to take right decision and so i am seeking help from this community in guiding me to the right path."}
{"_id": "197118", "title": "Spoiled by Python convenience- and productivity-wise, spoiled by C++ speed-wise. Now unhappy with both", "text": "I'm currenetly struggling with choosing how to proceed as a programmer. I mainly programmed games and would like to continue. And for about 5 years or so I just used C++ and OpenGL, so I spent a lot of time on infrastructure, strange bugs, and mostly getting basic things to work. A friend of mine then recommended python and after initially being aversed by it being not as explicit and formal as I was used to I was shocked by how much more productive I could be and how much progress I could actually make in a very small amount of time. So currently I'm working on a multiplayer-shooter and repeatedly I find myself struggling with python being not as fast I might want it to be. I know that that I have to approach writing efficient code in python very differently now, but even with a little help from friends that are more experienced with python there is just too much going on sometimes (and extrapolating this, I know that I will end up stuck). There are a lot of things I really like about my \"home-language\" C++, but after knowing how many hours I could be wasting I don't really want to go back. What language can you recommend which offers high-productivy, is memory-safe (I really hated this) and as high-performance as I can get, but is still mature enough to be used for kind of serious projects (games-related) and maybe even mature enough to have people already having spent some time on OpenGL-Bindings or various libraries for Sound and similar (alternatively easy access to shared libraries written in C). Easy cross-plattform is a big plus! So no .NET please. Is this even possible?"}
{"_id": "28697", "title": "Code cleanup methods and/or code coverage tools", "text": "I have an application at work, which I started work on about 7 years ago. This was my first engagement in ASP.NET web applications, and coming from a Win32 background I had a hard time adjusting. All this time, both the project and myself have \"matured\" and now most parts of it are well defined, properly structured and readable. However, there is a significant piece of it, that is \"old junk\". By that I mean old obsolete code, that was not working well, or was not properly structured, which has been replaced, but left in the source files instead of being removed. I must note here, that I was not the sole developer, but did most of the coding throughout. What I want to do, is whenever I have free time at work, to remove the old obsolete and unused code. Are there any techniques/methodologies that I can use/follow in order to do this more efficiently? Any tools perhaps? **EDIT: (clarification based on feedback)** The code I am talking about is not used anywhere, and is not called from anywhere in the project. What I need is way to find out where the code resides, since we are talking about a large codebase. So something in terms of code coverage tools would help. Any suggestions for asp.net projects? (the particular case is in Web Site project form)"}
{"_id": "197116", "title": "What data structure is suitable for implementing dynamic huffman encoding and decoding on a piece of text?", "text": "Some pseudo code or resources will be appreciated.I was thinking if implementing it in form of a BST stored in an array. However,not all operations can be performed easily using this approach. I am open to using STL's for this purpose as well.My main purpose is to implement it in the simplest manner possible."}
{"_id": "148894", "title": "How to use unit tests as a source of information?", "text": "A colleague of mine was once at a seminar about agile development, where he heard it is possible to use unit tests as technical documentation. Something like using unit tests as an example of how to use the class. A quick Google search provided _TDD and Documentation_ , which proves it should be possible. But looking at our code, I see that we obviously failed to implement unit tests in such a way. In my opinion unit tests are there to test code as a minimal unit, even with help of mock and fake classes and functions. So, the questions are:   * Isn't it the task of functional tests to show how a class (or set of classes) should be used?   * If it is possible to use unit tests as technical documentation, are there some guidelines on how to implement such unit tests?"}
{"_id": "222953", "title": "A Web Service to collect data from local servers every hour", "text": "I'm trying to find a way to collect data from different servers around the world. Here are the details: There is only one single PowerShell script on servers that encrypts data (simple csv file) and sends with preferred method (HTTP/HTTPS Post could be) There is no more control on that servers. Can't install any service, process etc. Just I can configure script to execute every hour. This script also will have encrypted username/password/license key for every server. Script will compress data and send to me with these information. So I need a service (I'm not sure if Web Service is the rigth solution) on the cloud that will help me to: Will get data that is sent from servers using a method. Will authenticate request to recognize sender using license key/username/password and most importantly, Will redirect/send this filecab to my SQL Server on the cloud (Azure). Also it should seperate data according to customer information in license key. So every data for every customer will be stored in dedicated DB/Tables on my SQL All the processes above should be completed automatically. No way for manual steps. Question: A Web Service (SOAP or Restful) is the rigth solution for that?"}
{"_id": "222956", "title": "What is the accepted practice for string resource management in java?", "text": "In Android, final strings are stored in a `strings.xml` file, which makes it easy to update text, reuse strings and to translate an app to a different locale -- because everything is in one place. However, in all the examples that I have seen of desktop applications all the strings have been hardcoded into each class. Is hardcoding strings into files standard practice for desktop applications? Or is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "222957", "title": "Recommended architecture for an interactive table widget with multiple behaviors in Javascript / jQuery", "text": "Use case:   For an administration UI, I want an interactive table widget with a number of behaviors:   * Collapse / expand (yes, this means the rows are a hierarchy)   * Update of data in a child cell based on a parent cell.   * Hiding or revealing of a row or an entire sub-tree based on a value update.   * Two or more form elements in each row, that may depend on each other. E.g. a checkbox that will mess with the value of a text field in the same row.   * DOM manipulation on newly created rows. E.g. the checkbox might be turned into a more visual kind of widget. Or  In another use case, I have the following additional behaviors:   * Adding and removing rows, manually or automatically.   * Drag and drop of rows. (probably not in combination with the collapse/expand, but who knows) The problem:   * Ideally, we want each of these behaviors to be implemented as a separate and independent module / plugin. BUT   * If one behavior changes the DOM, then other behaviors need to know about it. E.g. if you insert a row, then the collapse/expand needs to know, to decide whether the new row should be shown or hidden. And the newly added row needs new event listeners from various other behaviors.   * There might be behaviors that are triggered by the state of other behaviors. E.g. each row might contain a text field, and depending on the value, the row must be moved up or down (drag/drop). The question: I had to deal with this kind of problem a few times and I generally managed to get it work. However, I always hated the architecture that came out of it. What I'd like is an approach that allows to create the different behaviors as independent modules, and then somehow plug them together. Some more specific questions:   * Where should each of the behaviors keep its state information   * What about state information for a specific table row? Should it be stored as a variable on the DOM element? (e.g. `$('tr')[5].isExpanded = true`) or rather in a data container in the module itself?   * How can modules know about DOM updates?   * How should modules talk to each other?   * How should the code of each module be structured? What kind of API should it expose?   * How to handle multiple instances of this kind of widget on one page? (In this case, global instances don't work) Example: https://drupal.org/project/multicrud (sorry, all I have atm is Drupal modules)"}
{"_id": "222958", "title": "Win loss code that does not make 1-0 record better than someone like 20-3", "text": "ok, am just looking for a win loss code example. This can be for any language, just wanting the outline. Fairly new to programming, so dummy it up for me :) I can do (win-loss/total of win loss). Guessing that is a good standard win loss ratio, but I don't want a new person that has 1-0 to be ranked higher than someone that has 20-3. Any help is appreciated and thank you. EDIT: The chess styles are a little more than needed. Just want a ranking system with win/loss. so lest say 20-3 is top in league right now. he is, say 23 weeks in so far. if one guy comes in and wins first match against anyone, I don't want him to take #1 spot over people thats been there longer and have a great winning record. To respond to ampt... maybe he will be best in league, but I don't want him instantly there cause he had one good match. Not sure if that clarify any more. Didn't really follow Doc all the way. Looks as if he is hindered in list up to his 11th game. Not sure if thats what you ment there. Thanks again for all reasponses."}
{"_id": "252700", "title": "Creating fast, realtime dialogue search for television scripts", "text": "We have a database of television scripts and we'd like to search it, getting results as we type. We often remember words or snippets of dialogue but can't remember exactly what was said or what episode it was said in: \"What was the episode where George goes against his instincts and walks up to the girl at the diner and tells her he's unemployed?\" With this tool you'd type \"George unemployed\" and the result with context (and possibly other hits) would pop up:               EPISODE: \"The Opposite\"          George : Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice that you were looking in my direction.     Victoria : Oh, yes I was, you just ordered the same exact lunch as me.     ( G takes a deep breath )     George : My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.     Victoria : I'm Victoria. Hi.      My question is about the best way to design a data structure to implement this kind of search?   My idea so far is store a lookup table in an in-memory data store such as redis. To create the table, first I'd give each script (episode) an id, and then i'd parse the script into lines based on the person speaking. So a particular piece of dialogue could be located with an episode id paired with a line id. Next I would process each line, creating a data structure indexed by all words appearing in any script, and storing the episode/line location of every instance the word was used.               apple -> [                 { scriptid: 9, lines: [11,99] },                { scriptid: 21, lines: [103,211,214] }              ]     orange -> [                  { scriptid: 2, lines: [101] }               ]      We could pair this data structure with a simple scoring algorithm, so that when a user searched for multiple words, we'd only show matches where both words occured in the same script, and give higher rank to locations where the words appear closer to one another. There are other details that, ideally, would be accounted for, such as matching plurals and mispelled words. Is this a reasonable approach? How could it be improved? What other details should I consider?"}
{"_id": "67740", "title": "Is having decrypted compressed files in iPhone is a problem on submission?", "text": "I am about to submit an iPhone application. I do download Encrypted Zip files from a remote server and of course I do decrypt the files to view them to the user. Does that mean I need to answer YES for               Does your application have encryption?      when I upload my Binary?"}
{"_id": "252702", "title": "How do you make decorators as powerful as macros?", "text": "Quick background: I am designing a Pythonic language that I want to be as powerful as Lisp while remaining easy to use. And by \"powerful\", I mean \"flexible and expressive\". I've just been introduced to Python function decorators, and I like them. I found this question that suggests decorators are _not_ as powerful as Lisp macros. The third answer to this question says that the reason they're not is because they can only operate on functions. But what if you could use decorators on arbitrary expressions? (In my language, expressions are first-class, just like functions and everything else, so doing that would be fairly natural.) Would that make decorators as powerful as Lisp macros? Or would I have to use syntax rules, like Racket and Honu, or some other technique? **EDIT** I was asked to provide an example of the syntactic construct. For an \"expression decorator\", it would simply be a decorator on an expression (where \"$(...)\" creates an expression object):               @Decorator(\"Params\")     $(if (true):         printf(\"Was true\")     else:         printf(\"Wasn't true\"))      Also, if I _do_ need to use syntax rules, as mentioned above, it would use a pattern matching syntax:               # Match a bool expression, a comma, and a string.     macro assert(expr:bool lit string) { e , s }:         if (!e):             error s         else:             printf(\"All good\")      The above would match this:               assert i == 0, \"i should have been 0\"      That's a rough sketch, but it should give you an idea."}
{"_id": "252704", "title": "Lazy-initialization vs preprocessing in image-based iOS app", "text": "I am making an iOS app which contains museum gallery: user can look through exhibits and then select info about it, etc.   On the exhibit screen I have two ScrollViews that are different, but are being fed by common data source. Each view is a set of images. Two top grey squares are the previews and the bottom one (where you can see the picture) is the main view. All scrollviews are lazy-loaded.   The question is, do I need to transform preview images to proper size on-the- go, or somehow pre-process them to make loading faster and use that pre- processed and resized images in previews? The benefit of lazy-initialisation here is lower waste of resources, but slower loading, compared to ready images. On the other side, preprocessed images will waste storage and network (images will be loaded only once and then will be stored locally). What would be better from performance point of view, taking in account that app has to run smoothly down to iPhone 4 (oldest with iOS 7)? Is it good idea to combine two methods and cache lazy-loaded images?"}
{"_id": "252707", "title": "what data storage method should I use?", "text": "I am currently writing a program and among other things need to store data. The program listens to two computers talking to each other in a known protocol (the program know what protocol it is,the user give the program the protocol structure ), if the packet that arrived to the program has unseen value in one or more of the fields it add it to the database. I am not sure what data storage method(such as sql server,xml etc.) to choose since I don't know whether the data stored in the database would be large or not, it depends on the computer's conversation Also I will need to be able to get all the data from the database with no trouble and might need to extract some data and not the other (for example all the packets with the value 24 in field x) By protocol I can't just give you one because the user of the program defines which protocol the conversation is in. By conversation I mean that two computers talk to each other it doesn't matter if a user operate the computers or not. The maximum number of entries in the database would be the number of variations that the packet in the certain protocol can be. I mean if the protocol is 8 bytes long the maximum number of entries would be 2^64 but if the header is longer the number goes up, but the number of entries could be less depending on the conversation and it is out of my control. The program will only store unique headers, I mean that the same combinations of values in the header won't be in the DB twice, the program store the header if it is unique and it isn't stored in the DB I thought of using a sql server such as mysql but I am not sure what data storage method would suit this situation the most?"}
{"_id": "252708", "title": "Find common ancestor", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GtimL.jpg) Given X number of leaves (the ringed leaves in the picture) in an unbalanced tree with depth aroun 100-1000 and total number of nodes around 15 000 000. I'm looking for the first common ancestor for those leaves. What is the most efficient way to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "250699", "title": "How comes the C++ standards committee introduces a keyword like nullptr and gets away with it?", "text": "That must have broken a lot of peoples code bases right? Everyone who had a variable named \"nullptr\" (which I think would have been fairly common) has to find \"nullptr\" and replace with \"something_else\" before being able to compile with c++11. Does the standards committee assume that people will do that much \"adjusting\"?"}
{"_id": "89817", "title": "Can Hadoop be made production-stable on a Windows platform?", "text": "Is anybody using **Hadoop** on **Windows** (Win32 or Win64) in **production** for serious work?   * If you've tried it and rejected this combination can you give your (top) reasons?   * If you managed to make it stable can you give an impression of how much work it took? * * * **Background:** My company is 100% Windows. There's not much I can do about this other than use the tools I'm given. According to the Hadoop documentation **only** UNIX-like platforms are recommended for production environments. Windows environments are currently considered to be experimental. I've tried some of the basic Hadoop Set-up on win32, and there seem to be a lot of gotchas, and I'm starting to suspect that this might be a foolish line of research. I understand that Hadoop scripts depend to some extent on UNIX features such as Bash, Rsync, SSH which could be provided by Cygwin - however I'm not planning on becoming a pioneer. I'd like to run something which is somewhat standard. I want a decent chance of being able to get some community support if there's something I cannot solve all by myself. I'm willing to invest some time to get this working on the company systems, but I'd like some reassurance from more pioneering types who have been there before. Alternatively I'd like some good advice from somebody who knows it's not worth bothering with!"}
{"_id": "130508", "title": "When and how to use the advanced features of git?", "text": "I'm not exactly a new git user but I have never used any of its advanced features such as tags, branches, merging and others. I haven't even used anything equivalent features from other VCS software. My projects have been so simple that I have only needed commits and sometimes diffs. Now I'm planning to open-source a server project of mine which probably will get a lot bigger and it probably needs to be organized better. Git can probably help me with that but how? The development methods are scrum and TDD if that matters."}
{"_id": "89811", "title": "Design question: Is this good case for proxy pattern, or \"over done\"?", "text": "Working on a major enhancement for legacy code, I have been wrestling with myself over whether this is a good case to use the Proxy pattern, and more specifically whether a good case to use the Java Dynamic Proxy API. **BACKGROUND** We have a \"FIXConnection\" class used to send orders to a destination. The application maintains 1 to n FIXConnections for sending (a specific object is selected based on what the user specified on the order). Normally, the order would be sent straight out to the market. The enhancement is to see whether order could be filled by other orders already sent to market before sending, and if it can be filled, execute totally different logic (i.e. not send). If not, it delegates to current logic. This feature will only be used by one client, so it is turned on/off dynamically (or by configuration setting). It feels like this is a good use for the Proxy pattern/Dynamic Proxy, because it would allow designing a block of code to intercept requests to the existing FIXConnection.send method (and also its processResponse method), only in the case whether the feature is enabled. The Proxy could either execute the new logic (if warranted), or dispatch to existing logic. **PROS AND CONS**   _PRO_   * Using Proxy avoids any issues with Class hierarchy (we occasionally subclass this FIXConnection class). If we handled this by subclass, then other children might need to be moved to this under this as a parent.   * We don't need to update the existing top level class with any flag to check if this feature is enabled, and to conditionally execute code. (i.e. not create code for one special case, which would now be hit by all cases).   * Single point of control  _CON_   * Existing class exposes public variables, all would need to be refactored into getter/setter methods, and need to extract an interface (so that Dynamic Proxy could be used). i.e. a ripple throughout other classes.   * Binding between the proxy and legacy method could be a little cheesy (e.g. method.getName().equals(\"send\"). There are ways of more tightly binding, but ... (yuck?)   * Is this making things unnecessarily complicated? In general I try to subscribe to doing \"the simplest thing that could work\". This doesn't quite feel like it. Would love to hear anyone's thoughts about how they might handle this design question."}
{"_id": "151098", "title": "What is really happening when we change encoding in a string?", "text": "http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-convert-encoding.php Say I do:               $encoded = mb_convert_encoding ($original);      That looks like simple enough. WHat I am imagining is the following `$original` has a pointer to the way the string is actually encoded. Something like `char *` kind of thing. And then there are things like what the character actually encoded. It's probably somewhere along UTF-64 kind of thing where each glyph is indeed a character. Now when we do               $encoded = mb_convert_encoding ($original);       several thing can happen:   * the original internal representation doesn't change however it is REINTERPRETED so that the code that show up differs   * the original string that it represent doesn't change however the ENCODING change. Which one is right?"}
{"_id": "151099", "title": "Will TSQL become useless because of new ORMs?", "text": "By introducing LINQ to SQL, I found myself and my .NET developer colleagues gradually moving from TSQL to C# to create queries on the database. Entity Framework made that shift almost permanent. Now it's nearly 2 years that I use LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities and haven't used TSQL that much. Yesterday, a colleague encountered a problem (he had to create a SP) and we went to help him. But we all found that our TSQL knowledge was diminished for sure, and a simple SP that seemed trivial to us 2 or 3 years ago, was a challenge to be solved yesterday. Thus it came to my mind that while TSQL's life is attached to SQL Server, and logically as long as SQL Server lives and doesn't change it's SQL language, TSQL would also live, practically it might die, and soon very few people might know it. Am I right? Do existence of ORMs like Entity Framework threaten TSQL's life and usability?"}
{"_id": "65081", "title": "How do you convince management to \"invest\" in unit tests?", "text": "How did you convince your manager to let you unit test? By \"use\", I mean being allowed to develop, check-in to source control and maintain the unit tests over time, etc. Typical management objections are:   1. The customer didn't pay for unit tests   2. The project does not allow time for unit testing   3. Technical debt? What technical debt? Do you know other objections? What were your answers? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "225296", "title": "How do I stress the importance of unit tests to my manager", "text": "I've recently started a new job, & I've been tasked with completing a feature that another developer didn't finish before he left the company. The existing tests are out of date (i.e useless)...technical debt everywhere. I think it would be a very bad idea to implement features without tests, I've put this across to him a few times and he keeps saying that we'll complete this feature and then I can do tests. But the previous developer didn't get around to updating the tests, so it seems that my manager just says that, but doesn't mean it and keeps pushing for more features. This latest feature is a big one, and I think it would be a really bad idea to finish it without writing tests for the whole application first. I understand that my manager has his own deadlines/pressures etc, but this feature needs to be done right, or it could come back to haunt both of us. So how can i put this across to him in a way that will sink in how important this issue is? I should also mention that I'm the sole developer, and the manager is non- technical."}
{"_id": "230311", "title": "Layers and layers of SOAP", "text": "I am designing the back-end to a SOAP web-service and have a question about how I am thinking of doing it. I am going to go with a simple layered design which consists of 3 separate layers.               Layer 1 -> Layer 2 -> Layer 3      **Layer 1 :** Will implement the SOAP skeleton interface, so this will be the main entry point of my application. This layer will pull data from the SOAP request and pass it to the business logic layer as a business object. It will get back business objects from the business logic layer with which it will populate a SOAP response. **Layer 2 :** Business logic layer that implements the business logic behind the web-service. It will be passed data from Layer 1 and interact with Layer 3, the DAO layer. **Layer 3 :** DAO layer which will preform CRUD operations on my DB. With populating SOAP response objects in my code, the implementation might be a bit messy in Layer 1, so I came up with the following 3 options. Option 1 - Three layers is enough, any more layers would be overkill. SOAP objects are always going to be messy looking, just get over it. Option 2 - Create an extra layer between Layers 1 and 2. This layer would take data from the SOAP request, populate a business object which it would then pass to the business logic layer. This would keep the methods in Layer 1 neat and tidy. It would look something like this :               Layer 1  ->  SOAP Request   ->  Layer 1.A  ->  Business Object  ->  Layer 2     Layer 1  <-  SOAP Response  <-  Layer 1.A  <-  Business Object  <-  Layer 2         Option 3 - Do not create any more layers. Simply create a utility object with a method that takes a SOAP request and returns a business object. I could then pass the business object to Layer 2. The same utility object could then be used in Layer 2 to pass a SOAP response back to Layer 1. Or does this approach kind of blur the lines and make my design less modular?"}
{"_id": "211205", "title": "project with 2 types of interfaces performing different jobs, should they use the same BLL and DAL?", "text": "i am working on a project that has two interface (web and desktop), they are not performing the same tasks but they use the same BLL and DAL, the web part using 100% of the BLL and DAL, while the desktop only needs to know about 20% of the BLL and DAL. do you think it is a good idea to let the desktop use the same BLL and DAL as the web, which consequently will lead to ditributing thos BLL and DAL with the desktop application? or you think i'd better create new BLL and DAL projects just to serve the desktop app? but in this case i will fall in the trap of maintaining two copies of the same code!"}
{"_id": "51473", "title": "Is it wise for a programmer to move into management?", "text": "Many times, a developer has suggested that I become a team leader because I'm motivated, but during my career in the IT industry, I've seen so many people who are great at programming, move into management and they are miserable. I've also seen many managers return to programming stating \"I'm a technical person, I like technical problems\". If this is such a common thing, why do developers feel compelled to leave the technical domain and move into management? Sure you'll have more money and more control, but if you don't enjoy your work and take your problems out on your team, that's hardly economic of your time. Secondly, I've been asked in developer interviews, \"Would you consider leading a team?\" and I'm always tempted to cite the Peter Principle based on what I've seen. I am interested in furthering myself, but not in the way the company may want i.e \"Vice President of department blah\". To be honest, I've seen this more often in the corporate world than in small development houses and it's always put me off ever going back to a corporate environment. I just feel that this is becoming more and more the norm and it's impacting team morale and degrading the quality of the work. Question: Based on what I've said, Is it a smart move for a technical person to move into management?"}
{"_id": "59326", "title": "How do you think about using `//` for JSON comment?", "text": "I'm considering extending JSON by adding comment. For just my own project, internally. If JSON got a comment, I think its syntax should be `//`~`\\n` style, JavaScript syntax. How do you think?"}
{"_id": "59322", "title": "How to explain that writing universally cross-platform C++ code and shipping products for all OSes is not that easy?", "text": "Our company ships a range of desktop products for Windows and lots of Linux users complain on forums that we should have been written versions of our products for Linux years ago and the reason why we don't do that is   * we're a greedy corporation   * all our technical specialists are underqualified idiots Our average product is something like 3 million lines of C++ code. My and my colleagues analysis is the following:   * writing cross-platform C++ code is not that easy   * preparing a lot of distribution packages and maintaining them for all widespread versions of Linux takes time   * our estimate is that Linux market is something like 5-15% of all users and those users will likely not want to pay for our effort when this is brought up the response is again that we're greedy underqualified idiots and that when everything is done right all this is easy and painless. How reasonable are our evaluations of the fact that writing cross-platform code and maintaining numerous ditribution packages takes lots of effort? Where can we find some easy yet detailed analysis with real life stories that show beyond the shadow of a doubt what amount of effort exactly it takes?"}
{"_id": "59320", "title": "Sucking Less Every Year?", "text": "Sucking Less Every Year -Jeff Atwood I had come across this insightful article.Quoting directly from the post > I've often thought that sucking less every year is how humble programmers > improve. You should be unhappy with code you wrote a year ago. If you > aren't, that means either A) you haven't learned anything in a year, B) your > code can't be improved, or C) you never revisit old code. All of these are > the kiss of death for software developers.   1. How often does this happen or not happen to you?    2. How long before you see an actual improvement in your coding ? month, year?   3. Do you ever revisit **Your** old code?   4. How often does your old code plague you? or how often do you have to deal with your technical debt. It is definitely very painful to fix old bugs n dirty code that we may have done to quickly meet a deadline and those quick fixes ,some cases we may have to rewrite most of the application/code. No arguments about that. Some of the developers i had come across argued that they were already at the _evolved_ stage where their coding doesn't need improvement or cant get improved anymore.   * Does this happen?    * If so how many years into coding on a particular language does one expect this to happen? Related: Ever look back at some of your old code and grimace in pain? Star Wars Moment in Code **\"Luke! I am your code!\" \"No! Impossible! It can't be!\"**"}
{"_id": "55351", "title": "How should I manage my time?", "text": "There are times when just one bug that keeps eating away your time like hell ... for example this one. I generally end up wasting hours and realize I've gone terribly behind my schedule and not completed other tasks. With n number of tabs open in the browser, I end up posting the question in stackoverflow as a last resort. What are some time management techniques that lets you stop, rewind and get back in action when faced with a road block?"}
{"_id": "161108", "title": "Object-Oriented Design: What to do when responsibility of the class is big", "text": "I applied principles of the GRASP and ended up having a class called Environment. This class's responsibilities are to:   * Keep information about services in the environment,i.e. environment definition (Service is another class)   * Start/stop services meeting some criteria   * Apply configuration changes to different service and keep list of updated services   * Restart services with configuration change   * Revert configuration changes at the end of session   * Search/Give Service class based on criteria (name etc.) According to OOD, this is not a problem: _very cohesive responsibility is assigned to this class_.   But on the other hand it's a problem since the _class is too big_ , even though all responsibility assigned to it makes sense. If I want to divide this responsibility to between separate classes, then all these classes need to know about \"environment definition\", which makes coupling worse and those classes will have _\"feature envy\"_. What design patterns are applicable for such situation? Or what other principals can be applied to have cohesive, less coupled classes? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "73725", "title": "What uses IronPython has?", "text": "I've been wondering to myself, what uses does IronPython have in a .NET environment? what can it do that can't be done with VB, C# or F#? It seems kind of strange to go through all the trouble of making the DLR and enabling dynamic languages on the clr just to add another language.   What do people use IronPython for?"}
{"_id": "73729", "title": "What are the best things to put in my portfoilo to demonstrate my Java skills and make me more marketable?", "text": "I have studied Java for quite a while and written a lot of small SE programs. I have a good grasp on the language at this stage but unfortunately I do not work in the area of Java programming (as of yet). I would like to develop a portfolio of Java programs for the purposes of moving into this area. This is also vital in most interviews. I also would like to develop this portfolio to further my learning (maybe in the area of Java EE). Can anybody recommend a starting point? GF"}
{"_id": "141485", "title": "What is the difference between Static code analysis and code review?", "text": "I just wanted to know what the difference is between static code analysis and code review. How are each of these two done? More specifically, what are the tools available today for code review/static analysis of PHP? I would also like to know about good tools for code review for any language."}
{"_id": "230785", "title": "Why is my page load time so closely correlated with number of database queries?", "text": "Whenever I'm doing web development, and a page takes longer than half a second to be generated, I know that somewhere my code is hitting the DB too many times. The normal way to fix this situation is to ask the DB for all the information all at once instead, by doing JOINs and the like. My question is: Why do many database queries make a page slow? There must be considerable overhead to each query, but what is it? **EDIT** : Alright, let's take an example (it's a bit silly and small, but it'll do) `people` table:               | name | football_team_id |      +------+------------------+     | jim  | 1                |     | mike | 3                |     | carl | 2                |      `football_team` table:               | id | color |     +----+-------+     | 1  | red   |     | 2  | blue  |     | 3  | green |      We all know that this is slow:               SELECT name,football_team_id FROM people;     # start rendering the page, realise we need colors     SELECT color FROM football_team WHERE id=1     # oops, need mike's color     SELECT color FROM football_team WHERE id=3     # oh, and carl's     SELECT color FROM football_team WHERE id=2      This is a bit better:               SELECT name,football_team_id FROM people;     SELECT id,color FROM football_team WHERE id IN (1,3,2)      This is best:               SELECT name,football_team_id,color FROM people JOIN football_team ON people.football_team_id=football_team.id      In each example we're getting the same amount of data, but the latter is easily the fastest. You wouldn't expect the same behaviour if you were reading from a file descriptor, for example."}
{"_id": "78846", "title": "The definition of C-based language", "text": "What is the definition of C-based language?   Is C# considered to be C-based?   Is Java considered to be C-based? Furthermore, what does it mean for a language to be based on another language anyway?"}
{"_id": "78844", "title": "What's the correct approach for passing data from several models into a service?", "text": "I have an `AccountModel` and a page where the user can upload a file. What I would like to have happen is when the user uploads the file. The `PageController` does something like the following. this is a quick attempt just written in the question to illustrate my question.               public class PageController : Controller {       private Service service;           public ActionResult Upload(HttpPostedFileBase f){              service.savefile(f,_AccountModel_whatever.currentlyloggedinuser.taxid)          }     }               public class Service     {     // abunch of validation and error checking to make sure the file is good to store     }      Wouldn't this approach be in bad practice? Since I'm making my controller dependent on the existence of th AccountModel? This will become a **HUGE** program over the next few years, and I really want to maximize the quality of the framework now."}
{"_id": "196249", "title": "Capturing mobile device system (output) audio", "text": "I'm trying to figure out a way to capture the system audio of an Android and/or Windows Phone. The idea is to provide a stream based on the music I'm currently playing on my phone. What I'm not sure about is what the best approach would be for sending the audio. Preferably I'd like to capture all the device audio (same as when connected to a bluetooth device). But I'm not sure whether this is possible with Android or Windows Phone. For Android I found this article http://xzpeter.org/?p=254, he states this is'nt possible without making your own Android build. Which isn't an option for me. For Windows Phone I can only find ways to capture audio from the mic. Not directly from the system. The only alternative I can come up with is to let the app provide all the audio, meaning I would have to build all the basic mediaplayer functionality into the app. But this would mean I have to put much more work into the app, and I wouldn't be able to use other apps like Winamp and YouTube to provide audio. Did I maybe overlook a way to capture all the audio of the device? Or maybe there's a way to capture audio from specific applications? **Edit** After doing some more research, I really doubt I can capture all system audio. Or maybe it's possible to simulate an bluetooth audio device? For the Windows Phone I was going for the alternative solution: selecting songs which would then be streamed to the server. But it seems that for Windows Phone it's not even possible to get physical access to the songs: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16251400/stream-a-xna-framework-media-song- to-a-server"}
{"_id": "214889", "title": "Is an event loop just a for/while loop with optimized polling?", "text": "I'm trying to understand what an event loop is. Often the explanation is that in the event loop, you do something until you're notified that an event occurred. You than handle the event and continue doing what you did before. To map the above definition with an example. I have a server which 'listens' in a event loop, and when a socket connection is detected, the data from it gets read and displayed, after which the server goes to the listening it did before. * * * However, this event happening and us getting notified 'just like that' are to much for me to handle. You can say: \"It's not 'just like that' you have to register an event listener\". But what's an event listener but a function which for some reason isn't returning. Is it in it's own loop, waiting to be notified when an event happens? Should the event listener also register an event listener? Where does it end? * * * Events are a nice abstraction to work with, however just an abstraction. I believe that in the end, polling is unavoidable. Perhaps we are not doing it in our code, but the lower levels (the programming language implementation or the OS) are doing it for us. It basically comes down to the following pseudo code which is running somewhere low enough so it doesn't result in busy waiting:               while(True):         do stuff         check if event has happened (poll)         do other stuff      * * * This is my understanding of the whole idea, and i would like to hear if this is correct. I am open in accepting that the whole idea is fundamentally wrong, in which case I would like the correct explanation. Best regards"}
{"_id": "118640", "title": "Write a directory structure (pseudo code)", "text": "I am writing a wiki article and wondering what is the proper way to write a directory scheme? I am doing something like               main folder     - sub folder     - sub folder     ...      But I'm stuck after that. Any help?"}
{"_id": "115808", "title": "Got made redundant after three months - should I include this in my resume?", "text": "In my last job, I was hired for a specific project which the company lost before I even got a chance to start work on it: four people were made redundant on the same day. I spent three months there and while I did learn new dev skills (I worked on a minor project while waiting to start on the main one), I cannot consider myself an expert in the speciality of this company (barely passing familiar). As a developer, should I maintain this on my resume? Do I even say that I was made redundant or is it best to leave it out entirely? Rob :)"}
{"_id": "214887", "title": "Calculating WPM given a variable stream of input", "text": "I'm creating an application that sits in the background and records all key presses (currently this is done and working; an event is fired every keydown/keyup). I want to offer a feature for the user that will show them their WPM over the entire session the program has been running for. This would be easy if I added a \"Start\" and \"End\" button to activate a timer, but I need to detect only when the user is typing continuously - ignoring all one-time keyboard shortcuts and breaks the user takes from typing. How in the world do I approach this? Is this even realistically & accurately possible?"}
{"_id": "214886", "title": "How to deal with data on the model specific to the technology being used?", "text": "There are some cases where some of the data on a class of the domain model of an application seems to be dependent on the technology being used. One example of this is the following: suppose we are building one application in .NET such that there's the need of an Employee class. Suppose further that we are going to implement relational database, then the Employee has a primary key right? So that the classe would be something like               public class Employee      {          public int EmployeeID { get; set; }          public string Name { get; set; }          ...      }      Now, that EmployeeID is dependent on the technology right? That's something that has to do with the way we've choose to persist our data. Should we write down a class independent of such things? If we do it this way, how should we work? I think I would need to map all the time between domain model and persistence specific types, but I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "197120", "title": "How to implement multi-theme PHP application", "text": "I am developing an application which will handle many virtual stores and I would like to have many themes that the user could choose anytime. I would to know what's the main ideia to implement it. I will be developing it using Symfony 2. I was thinking about implementing own views and assets for each theme   * Resources      * views        * theme 1          * Product            * List.html           * Detail.html           * ...       * theme 2          * Product            * List.html           * Detail.html           * ...       * theme 3          * Product            * List.html           * Detail.html           * ...     * public        * theme 1 assets          * js         * css         * images         * ...       * theme 2 assets          * js         * css         * images         * ...       * theme 3 assets          * js         * css         * images         * ... And in the database each user would have own preferences(theme name, color, etc...). I am looking for an implementation which will allow me to add any kind of theme. For exemple, one theme, in main page the cart icon will go cart page and another theme, cart icon will pop up a window showing products. What's the best approach to implement multi theme web application? What I am missing?"}
{"_id": "145326", "title": "REST Service Authentication/Authorization", "text": "I have a WCF rest service that will be consumed by multiple clients. The information returned by the client requires me to know who they are, so that I can return information specific to them. Is the best way to approach this type of design to authenticate them and return a token for their session, then pass this token along with every request? Thanks."}
{"_id": "145323", "title": "When should you use bools in C++?", "text": "We had an assignment for our class where we had to create a _Tic-tac-toe_ game. People like to complicate themselves, so they wrote complex games which included menus. At the end of the game, you had to have the option to play again or quit the program. I used an `int` variable for that, but I noticed some classmates using BOOLs. Is it more efficient? What's the difference, between storing an answer that should only store two values in an `int` rather than storing it in a bool? What is the exact purpose of these variables?"}
{"_id": "92314", "title": "Multistream Project v/s Single Stream project", "text": "If we want to have code reviews before a developer delivers his work, then can you suggest whether multi stream project { i.e., each developer create his own stream and view and later deliver to single stream.} or single stream { i.e., all developers work on same stream } which is advisable."}
{"_id": "162165", "title": "Combining multiple events into one action/ Defer refreshing", "text": "So in a GUI program I have multiple events that trigger a update of a workspace. This update call is costly so I would want it to not happen very often. A user might pick something from a dropdown ( triggers a refresh ) and then put a check in a checkbox (also triggers a refresh ). If he does this in a short time interval this might result in the first refresh to be irrelevant. One way to handle this would be to have a refresh button for the user to press, or a toggle to set whether to automatically refresh. But I wouldn't want to put this in the hands of the user. Is there any other strategy to do this that is proven to be effective and error free? PS. I'm specifically using .Net 4.0 -> C# -> WPF -> Caliburn.Micro but would like to hear of any method that could be reproduced using .net 4"}
{"_id": "92312", "title": "Questions about what professional C++ programming is like", "text": "I currently program professionally in C#, and since I started in 2008 I've been curious about what unmanaged, C++ programming is like. I've looked at the obvious answer -to look at the job descriptions online - but they're high- level descriptions and job requirements that don't really go into the details of what professional programming in C++ is like. If you're a Windows programmer, does this usually involve working with CLI, MFC, or ATL? How many jobs are about maintaining legacy code vs. innovating something new? Is the extra attention to memory management an interesting challenge or a tedious task? Are the standard and Windows/UNIX libraries enjoyable to work with? How often do you see a programmer go from a more \"high-level\" language background like C# or Java to C++, and how often do you see programmers move in the other direction? What do you think will drive demand for future generations of C++ programmers (e.g. game development or maintaining legacy systems)?"}
{"_id": "165909", "title": "How to manage document format changes with local storage?", "text": "I'm programming a Javascript application which saves \"documents\" in localStorage. As the app evolves, naturally there are changes in the document format. I've tried searching but not found anything \u2013 probably (at least partly) because of search term ambiguities. What is a good practice in managing document format versions/upgrades with local storage implementation approach?"}
{"_id": "55936", "title": "Programming language and database concurrent locking primitives", "text": "I am writing an article about both programming language locking primitives (which are really wrappers for OS primitives) and database locking primitives. Are there any short wide-spread titles for these two types of locking? For example, \"code locking\" and \"database locking\"?"}
{"_id": "55934", "title": "What defines a standard?", "text": "What defines a standard like HTML5, C++0x, etc.? Is it just that you hand something in to W3C/ANSI/ISO/..., they produce a couple hundred pages long document and suddenly it's a standard? Can't I, as an individual, create something and standardize it by myself? I surely could produce a couple hundred pages long document which describes my creation in every detail. So what is the benefit of               publisher: W3C          Stand...      ?"}
{"_id": "51291", "title": "Is it true that first versions of C compilers ran for dozens of minutes and required swapping floppy disks between stages?", "text": "Inspired by this question. I heard that some very very early versions of C compilers for personal computers (I guess it's around 1980) resided on two or three floppy disks and so in order to compile a program one had to first insert the disk with \"first pass\", run the \"first pass\", then change to the disk with \"second pass\", run that, then do the same for the \"third pass\". Each pass ran for dozens of minutes so the developer lost lots of time in case of even a typo. How realistic is that claim? What were actual figures and details?"}
{"_id": "104382", "title": "How to get better at testing your own code", "text": "I am a relatively new software developer, and one of the things I think I should improve is my ability to test my own code. Whenever I develop a new functionality, I find it really difficult to follow all the possible paths so I can find bugs. I tend to follow the path where everything works. I know this is a well known issue that programmers have, but we don't have testers at my current employer and my colleagues seem to be pretty good at this. At my organization, we do neither test-driven development nor unit testing. It would help me a lot but it's not likely that this will change. What do you guys think I could do in order to overcome this? What approach do you use when testing your own code?"}
{"_id": "104381", "title": "Why do XSLT editors insert tab or space characters into XSLT to format it?", "text": "All XSLT editors I've tried till now add tab or space characters to the XSLT to indent it for formatting. This is done even in places within the XSLT where these characters are significant to the XSLT processor. XSLT modified for formatting in this way can produce output very different to that of the original XSLT if it had no formatting. To prevent this, _xsl:text_ elements or other XSLT must be added to a sequence constructor to help separate formatting from content, this additional XSLT impacts on maintainability. Formatting characters also adversely impact on general usability of the tool in a number of ways (this is why word-processors don't use them I guess) and add to the size of the file. As part of a larger project I've had to develop a light-weight XSLT editor, it's designed to format XSLT properly, but without tab or space characters, just a dynamic left-margin for each new line. The XSLT therefore doesn't need additional elements to separate formatting tab or space characters from content. The problem with this is that if XSLT from this editor is opened in other XSLT editors, characters will be added for formatting reasons and the XSLT may therefore no longer behave as intended. Why then do existing XSLT editors use tabs or spaces for formatting in the first place? I feel there must be valid reasons, perhaps historical, perhaps practical. An answer will help me understand whether I need to put compatibility options in place in my XSLT editor somehow, whether I should simply revert to using tabs or spaces for both XSLT content and formatting (though this seems like a backwards step to me), or even whether enough XSLT users might be able to persuade their tools vendors to include alternative formatting methods to tabs or spaces. **Note:** I provided an XSLT sample demonstrating formatting differences in this answer to the question: _Tabs versus spaces\u2014what is the proper indentation character for everything, in every situation, ever?_"}
{"_id": "104386", "title": "What do you think of opening brace comments in source code?", "text": "I have developed a habit of writing comments in my code by putting the comments on the same line as the opening brace, after the brace. I've found that this saves vertical space. It also leaves a hint why something was done, but I'm wondering if it's readable for others. Example:               void DoSomeInterestingImageManipulation(char *pImage)     {//This will convert the image to formatABC which allows x% space savings for storage         if(pImage && pImage[0] == 0xFF)         {//Process the extra case where image internal format needs decompression             ++pImage;             //...             //...             //...         }              //Proceed normally         *pResult = Foo(pImage);     }      Do you consider it easier to read or harder to read?"}
{"_id": "104865", "title": "Managing SQL Stored Procedures' Version", "text": "I am working with a team of 5 persons. We are using SQL Server as our database. Since long time I want to store the Stored Procedures in SVN so that the versions can be maintained. Is there any tool which can be used as a plugin with SQL Server Management Studio and allows checkin from there."}
{"_id": "149855", "title": "Software Optimization vs. Hardware Optimization - what has the bigger impact?", "text": "I was wondering how software optimization and hardware optimization compare when it comes to the impact they have on speed and performance gains of computers. I have heard that improving software efficiency and algorithms over the years has made huge performance gains. Obviously both are extremely important, but what has made the bigger impact in the last 10, 20 or 30 years? And how do hardware changes affect the software changes? How much of software optimization is a direct result of hardware improvements and how much is independent of the hardware? To be clear, I am asking about software optimizations at the level of compilers and operating systems. Obviously using better high level-algorithms will result in the largest speed ups (think: quick-sort vs. bubble-sort), but this question is about the underlying reason why computers are faster today, in general."}
{"_id": "142805", "title": "How to remove the boundary effects arising due to zero padding in scipy/numpy fft?", "text": "I have made a python code to smoothen a given signal using the Weierstrass transform, which is basically the convolution of a normalised gaussian with a signal. The code is as follows:               #Importing relevant libraries       from __future__ import division       from scipy.signal import fftconvolve        import numpy as np           def smooth_func(sig, x, t= 0.002):            N = len(x)            x1 = x[-1]            x0 = x[0]                   # defining a new array y which is symmetric around zero, to make the gaussian symmetric.           y = np.linspace(-(x1-x0)/2, (x1-x0)/2, N)            #gaussian centered around zero.           gaus = np.exp(-y**(2)/t)               #using fftconvolve to speed up the convolution; gaus.sum() is the normalization constant.           return fftconvolve(sig, gaus/gaus.sum(), mode='same')      If I run this code for say a step function, it smoothens the corner, but at the boundary it interprets another corner and smoothens that too, as a result giving unnecessary behaviour at the boundary. I explain this with a figure shown in this image This problem does not arise if we directly integrate to find convolution. Hence the problem is not in Weierstrass transform, and hence the problem is in the fftconvolve function of scipy. To understand why this problem arises we first need to understand the working of fftconvolve in scipy.   The fftconvolve function basically uses the convolution theorem to speed up the computation. In short it says:               convolution(int1,int2)=ifft(fft(int1)*fft(int2))        If we directly apply this theorem we dont get the desired result. To get the desired result we need to take the fft on a array double the size of max(int1,int2). But this leads to the undesired boundary effects. This is because in the fft code, if size(int) is greater than the size(over which to take fft) it zero pads the input and then takes the fft. This zero padding is exactly what is responsible for the undesired boundary effects. _**Can you suggest a way to remove this boundary effects?_** I have tried to remove it by a simple trick. After smoothening the function I am compairing the value of the smoothened signal with the original signal near the boundaries and if they dont match I replace the value of the smoothened func with the input signal at that point.   It is as follows:               i = 0      eps=1e-3     while abs(smooth[i]-sig[i])> eps: #compairing the signals on the left boundary         smooth[i] = sig[i]         i = i + 1     j = -1          while abs(smooth[j]-sig[j])> eps: # compairing on the right boundary.         smooth[j] = sig[j]         j = j - 1      There is a problem with this method, because of using an epsilon there are small jumps in the smoothened function. _**Can there be any changes made in the above method to solve this boundary problem?_**"}
{"_id": "149852", "title": "What is the point of using the private access modifier for C# class members?", "text": "From MSDN... > The access level for class members and struct members, including nested > classes and structs, is private by default. If class members are private by default then why use the private access modifier for them? I see it all the time in code examples and open source projects including the ASP.NET MVC source. I even use it in my own projects but I'm left wondering why."}
{"_id": "112680", "title": "Multiple projects - similar platforms or as different as possible?", "text": "When working on multiple projects simultaneously (for the sake of simplicity let's say half time each on two projects), which is better? Should the two projects   * Use the same language? Same/similar frameworks?   * Use entirely different languages? Additionally, is it best if they are target for similar platforms, or different (web v. desktop v. mobile v. utility library for internal use)? The first responses that come to mind are   * They should be similar, and play to the strengths of the developer to help him handle managing both of them   * They should be as different as possible to help the developer keep organized Since I've never done this in a professional setting, I was hoping more experience programmers could shed some light on the best way to go about doing this. **EDIT** :   This question is assuming the existence of multiple other projects, each of which is underway (I think some underway and some brand new with no design decisions yet made would be too broad for one question). When choosing between existing projects for a second project, should a developer consider how similar his new project is to his current project, and how should that affect the decision?"}
{"_id": "52486", "title": "Learning to program in C (coming from Python)", "text": "If this is the wrong place to ask this question, please let me know. I'm a Python programmer by occupation. I would love to learn C. Indeed, I have tried many times, but I always get discouraged. In Python, you write a few lines and the program does wonders. In C, I can't seem to be able to do anything useful. It seems to be very complicated to even connect to the Internet. Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to learn C? Are there are any good websites? Any cool projects? Thanks"}
{"_id": "223333", "title": "Extending user registration in Django site that uses both site admin tables and my own module?", "text": "I'm writing a Django site that registers a particular type of user and this is done by the resources that come with the framework, the site administration. The issue: I'd like to create a new model with a foreign key to an admin site table and loaded from a excel cvs that augments the data from the user registration form. I'd like to do this in a database agnostic way without sql. Just using models, urls, forms, template language etc. I do not know how to check the contents of the user registration form against the new table? **forms.py**               from django import forms     from django.contrib.auth.models import User     from django.contrib.auth.forms import UserCreationForm     from django.core.mail import send_mail     #     # Called by register_user view.     #     class MyRegistrationForm(UserCreationForm):         email = forms.EmailField(required=True)              class Meta:             model = User             fields = ('username',                        'password1', 'password2',                        'email', 'first_name', 'last_name',)              def save(self, commit=True):                  # create and load user object             user = super(MyRegistrationForm, self).save(commit=False)             user.email = self.cleaned_data['email']             user.first_name = self.cleaned_data['first_name']             user.last_name = self.cleaned_data['last_name']                         if commit:                 user.save()                 send_mail('Your Provider Enrollment Registration',                           'You are now an authenticated provider!',                            'donfox1@mac.com',                           [user.email], fail_silently=False)                              return user      **models.py**               class NPIdata(models.Model):         '''          NPI data is associated with admin site User accounts.         '''         NPI = models.IntegerField(max_length=10)         lastname = models.CharField(max_length = 20)         firstname = models.CharField(max_length = 20)         Credential = models.CharField(max_length = 15)         user = models.ForeignKey(User)"}
{"_id": "52925", "title": "Can I use silverlight for building SocialNetworking applicaiton?", "text": "I am wondering: how feasible it would be to start developing a social networking website entirely based on silverlight; This has been fairly discussed over the years in favor of HTML. Has something changed with silverlight improvements over the years? What about:               * Performance       -- active users       -- technology used, MVVM + MEF (possibility of lags, server memory overflow...)     * Security       --- WCF Ria Services & EF      What are your thoughts on this subject?"}
{"_id": "227824", "title": "How to comment on a PEP?", "text": "Proposals for new Python features are collected in documents called PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals). There's a master list at http://www.python.org/dev/peps/ which links to (for example):   * Labeled break and continue http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3136/   * Asynchronous IO support http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3153/   * Remove Backslash Continuation http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3125/ It's great that proposals are published publicly for the community to read. However, how is the community supposed to participate? The pages don't allow comments. It strikes me as weird the Python developers would make proposals public then deliberately exclude the community from discussion. Have I missed something? In particular, I'd like to read other people's comments on http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0453/ and add my own. * * * For comparison, Ruby feature proposals are made as posts to its bug tracker. You can read everyone's comments below, and add your own (after making an account)   * Refinements and nested methods https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/4085   * Frozen string syntax https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8579   * Exception#cause to carry originating exception along with new one https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/8257 Nodejs feature requests are plain GitHub issues, which is probably the most inclusive. It's very easy to join GitHub and post a comment.   * https://github.com/joyent/node/issues?labels=feature-request"}
{"_id": "197785", "title": "Interaction between programs", "text": "I am writing an interactive program in which it takes speech input from the user for a specific list of commands. The list of commands will be stored locally in a graph and based on the usage their weight will be modified. The speech input is taken and processed into text and then it's executed by bash scripts. I am thinking what I should use to interact (synchronize) between the speech recognition engine and then the list and the bash program. I am using C++ and Bash on a Unix system. I thought of `mutex` but the problem is what if the user gives multiple inputs then I'll have to buffer it and then process it sequentially and that will make the system slower. The bash script is used to call the system utility commands as requested by the user. Should I only use C++ or Bash too? I am thinking of storing the graph in a binary format. Is this the best way to store the graph? Please suggest alternatives."}
{"_id": "227820", "title": "How to convince my company (operating in the financial sector) to switch from PHP to Java", "text": "My company is in the financial sector and it is using PHP as programming language. I am a PHP developer myself. I am leading a big project started from almost scratch. I can see how PHP is not the best candidate for building robust platforms. I want to convince my company to _gradually_ switch to Java (which I have experience with). I was trying to find as many supporting arguments as possible. Can you help with this? So far I have found these:   * Most of the competitors are using Java (anyway not PHP)   * Most financial companies use Java rather than PHP   * On average, Java developers are better prepared (on average!)   * The compilation process catches a lot of problems before the software runs in production   * Strong typing makes everything more robust as contracts between interfaces is well defined Any other points I am missing? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "242999", "title": "Best Practice Method for Including Images in a DataGrid using MVVM", "text": "All, I have a WPF `DataGrid`. This `DataGrid` shows files ready for compilation and should also show the progress of my compiler as it compiles the files. The format of the `DataGrid` is               Image|File Path|State     -----|---------|-----        *    |C:\\AA\\BB |Compiled     &    |F:PP\\QQ  |Failed     >    |G:HH\\LL  |Processing     ....      The problem is the image column (the *, &, and > are for representation only). I have a `ResourceDictionary` that contains hundreds of vector images as `Canvas` objects:               <ResourceDictionary xmlns:x=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml\"                           xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation\">     <Canvas x:Key=\"appbar_acorn\" Width=\"48\" Height=\"48\" Clip=\"F1 M 0,0L 48,0L 48,48L 0,48L 0,0\">         <Path Width=\"22.3248\" Height=\"25.8518\" Canvas.Left=\"13.6757\" Canvas.Top=\"11.4012\" Stretch=\"Fill\" Fill=\"{DynamicResource BlackBrush}\" Data=\"F1 M 16.6309,18.6563C 17.1309,8.15625 29.8809,14.1563 29.8809,14.1563C 30.8809,11.1563 34.1308,11.4063 34.1308,11.4063C 33.5,12 34.6309,13.1563 34.6309,13.1563C 32.1309,13.1562 31.1309,14.9062 31.1309,14.9062C 41.1309,23.9062 32.6309,27.9063 32.6309,27.9062C 24.6309,24.9063 21.1309,22.1562 16.6309,18.6563 Z M 16.6309,19.9063C 21.6309,24.1563 25.1309,26.1562 31.6309,28.6562C 31.6309,28.6562 26.3809,39.1562 18.3809,36.1563C 18.3809,36.1563 18,38 16.3809,36.9063C 15,36 16.3809,34.9063 16.3809,34.9063C 16.3809,34.9063 10.1309,30.9062 16.6309,19.9063 Z \"/>     </Canvas>     </ResourceDictionary>      Now, I want to be able to include these in my image column and change them at run-time. I was going to attempt to do this by setting up a property in my View Model that was of type `Image` and binding this to my View via:               <DataGrid.Columns>         <DataGridTemplateColumn Header=\"\"                                  Width=\"SizeToCells\"                                  IsReadOnly=\"True\">             <DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>                 <DataTemplate>                     <Image Source=\"{Binding Canvas}\"/>                 </DataTemplate>             </DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>         </DataGridTemplateColumn>     </DataGrid.Columns>      Where in the View Model I have the appropriate property. Now, I was told this is not 'pure' MVVM. I don't fully accept this, but I want to know if there is a better way of doing this. Say, binding to an enum and using a converter to get the image? Any advice would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "221797", "title": "Reasoning behind the syntax of octal notation in Java?", "text": "Java has the following syntax for different bases:               int x1 = 0b0101; //binary     int x2 = 06;     //octal     int x3 = 0xff;   //hexadecimal      Is there any reasoning on why it is `0` instead of something like `0o` like what they do for binary and hexadecimal? Is there any documentation on why they went this route?"}
{"_id": "26497", "title": "For in-house programmers (non-project managers), do you normally receive project instructions written out in advance?", "text": "I'm fairly new to working as a programmer, at least working as a regular employee in-house for a company. I often become frustrated with my company's management style as they basically just pick out whatever random tasks catches the lead developer's fancy that day, or the day before, and give me the task (with tasks usually lasting less than 1 day). A lot of the tasks I have now are fairly small and are for adding enhancements to a web application, fixing bugs, etc. I am bothered, however, by the fact that they don't plan ahead so as to give me an written outline of projects a few days in advance so that if, for example, I am rusty on something I can at least familiarize myself with it on my own time or at least have a more relaxed approach to the job so that everything doesn't have to be so reactionary on my part (where I can mull things during off-time over before starting work on them, etc) I guess I'm just curious if this is the norm or if most development jobs value clearly laid out specifications for tasks and are able to prepare them somewhat in advance. I would be interested to hear anyone's experience / opinions, etc. Thanks"}
{"_id": "60830", "title": "Where to find open source volunteers?", "text": "We have an open source Java project (REMPL) and actively looking for volunteers. What is the best way to find them? Junior programmers are OK for us."}
{"_id": "60831", "title": "A good tool set for ASP.NET development", "text": "What are some good (or must have) ASP.NET development/debugging tools in addition to Visual Studio IDE? So far the only trick in my pocket is .NET Reflector, that has come in handy before. (I would limit browsers add-ons to IE if possible, since I'm working on a corporate intranet and using FF is not always an option)."}
{"_id": "253944", "title": "Is it good practice to use NoStackTrace in scala?", "text": "I came across the `NoStackTrace` mixin for Exceptions in scala. Is it good practice to use it, or should it be considered \"internal\" to scala and left alone?"}
{"_id": "220448", "title": "Is a 'God' ViewModel desired in WPF", "text": "My application has user controls within user controls. Please see a screen shot of one of the most beautiful applications of all time (UC = user control): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EEvpd.png) All the properties live in the MainWindow code behind, there are none in my UserControls. To bind to my properties I use               DataContext=\"{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Mode=FindAncestor, AncestorLevel=1,AncestorType=Window}}\"      This works fine but, it does mean all binding properties are in my MainWindow code behind (or the MainWindow ViewModel). Is this desired in a MVVM (or should I say WPF) approach, in that all the children share the same ViewModel?"}
{"_id": "147480", "title": "Should one check for null if he does not expect null?", "text": "Last week, we had a heated argument about handling nulls in our application's service layer. The question is in the .NET context, but it will be the same in Java and many other technologies. The question was: should you always check for nulls and make your code work no matter what, or let an exception bubble up when a null is received unexpectedly? On one side, checking for null where you are not expecting it (i.e. have no user interface to handle it) is, in my opinion, the same as writing a try block with empty catch. You are just hiding an error. The error might be that something has changed in the code and null is now an expected value, or there is some other error and the wrong ID is passed to the method. On the other hand, checking for nulls may be a good habit in general. Moreover, if there is a check the application may go on working, with just a small part of the functionality not having any effect. Then the customer might report a small bug like \"cannot delete comment\" instead of much more severe bug like \"cannot open page X\". What practice do you follow and what are your arguments for or against either approach? Update: I want to add some detail about our particular case. We were retrieving some objects from the database and did some processing on them (let's say, build a collection). The developer who wrote the code did not anticipate that the object could be null so he did not include any checks, and when the page was loaded there was an error and the whole page did not load. Obviously, in this case there should have been a check. Then we got into an argument over whether every object that is processed should be checked, even if it is not expected to be missing, and whether the eventual processing should be aborted silently. The hypothetical benefit would be that the page will continue working. Think of a search results on Stack Exchange in different groups (users, comments, questions). The method could check for null and abort the processing of users (which due to a bug is null) but return the \"comments\" and \"questions\" sections. The page would continue working except that the \"users\" section will be missing (which is a bug). Should we fail early and break the whole page or continue to work and wait for someone to notice that the \"users\" section is missing?"}
{"_id": "64926", "title": "Should a method validate its parameters?", "text": "Say you are designing a Square root method sqrt. Do you prefer to validate the parameter passed is not a negative number or do you leave it up to the caller to make sure the param passed is valid. How does your answer vary if the method/API is for 3rd party consumption or if it is only going to be used for the particular application you are working on I have been of the opinion that a method should validate its parameter, however, Pragmatic Programmer in its Design by Contract section (chapter 4) says it's the caller responsibility to pass good data (pg 111 and 115) and suggests using Assertions in the method to verify the same. I want to know what others feel about this."}
{"_id": "168204", "title": "Does (should?) changing the URI scheme name change the semantics?", "text": "If we take:               http://example.com/foo      is it fair to say that:               ftp://example.com/foo      .. points to the _same_ resource, just using a different mechanism for resolving it (and of course possibly a different representation, but perhaps not)? This came to light in a discussion we were having surrounding some internal tooling with Git. We have to process some Git repositories, and they come to use as \"git@{authority}/{path}\" , however the library we're using to interface with them doesn't support the `git` protocol. I suggested that we should make the service robust in of that it tries to use HTTP or SSH, in essence, discovering what protocols/schemes are supported for resolving the repository at {path} under each {authority}. This was met with some criticism: \"We don't know if that's the same repository\". My response was: \"It had better be!\" Looking at RFC 3986, I see this excerpt: > URI \"resolution\" is the process of determining an access mechanism and the > appropriate parameters necessary to dereference a URI; this resolution may > require several iterations. To use that access mechanism to perform an > action on the URI's resource is to \"dereference\" the URI. Which makes me think that the resolution process is permitted to try different protocols, because: > Although many URI schemes are named after protocols, this does not imply > that use of these URIs will result in access to the resource via the named > protocol. The only concern I have, I guess, is that I only see reference to the notion of changing protocols when it comes to traversing relationships: > it is possible for a single set of hypertext documents to be simultaneously > accessible and traversable via each of the \"file\", \"http\", and \"ftp\" schemes > if the documents refer to each other with relative references. I'm inclined to think I'm wrong in my initial beliefs, because the `Normalization and Comparison` section of said RFC doesn't mention any way of treating two URIs as equivalent if they use different schemes. It seems like schemes named/based on IP protocols ought to have this notion, at least?"}
{"_id": "105381", "title": "suggesting large changes/a rewrite as an intern", "text": "**The context:**   * it's an internal project (that I don't think a lot of people use)   * it's old   * we're updating it **The issues:**   1. it abuses the mvc framework (no use of models, business logic in views, etc)   2. what we're being asked to do is small, but because of the low cohesion we have two options:      1. continue to botch things     2. move large chunks of code around or rewrite the thing **The solutions (I see):**   1. continue working with it, ignore best practices in favor of being done soon and not introducing new bugs by refactoring/rewriting   2. refactor/rewrite I guess my question is really: if I want to make large changes to this project, how do I do propose that without insulting anyone? Or would it be better for me to simply go with the flow even if that means (metaphorical) duct-tape sometimes?"}
{"_id": "240877", "title": "How significant is the impact of the type system (static/dynamic) on the overall design of programs?", "text": "Coming from Java, I've never used a language with dynamic typing. I'm very used to the static-typing way of thinking. My question is, how much does the use of dynamic typing as opposed to static typing influence the overall design of programs written using languages with that kind of typing? **Does the kind of typing (static/dynamic) influence the design of programs significantly?** Working with a dynamically-typed language, would you structure your application differently than working with a statically-typed language? **Or is it merely a language characteristic that affects mainly local implementation details, but doesn't affect overall designs?**"}
{"_id": "227794", "title": "C API in C++ with RAII, two alternatives to implement error handling (Exceptions)", "text": "I have an API written in C, which produces a result by returning a pointer to allocated memory.   For using it with C++ (C++11) I've wrapped the function calls in objects, which keep the result in a `std::shared_ptr`. So far so good. However, the C library features _two_ functions for every operation. One produces possibly an error, the other never. Let's call them   `some_pod * do_it_with_error(Parameter ..., Error **)`   and   `some_pod * do_it_without_error(Parameter ...)` I can pass in the address of an `Error *` pointer to the first function and if there's an error it won't be `NULL` afterwards. For solving this I thought of two different implementations.   First, I could SFINAE for choosing between the `with_error` and `without_error` functions, like so:               template<typename NoThrow = void>     struct do_it {       public:         void operator()(...)         {           Error * error = NULL;           m_result = std::shared_ptr<some_pod>(do_it_with_error(..., &error));           if (error) {             throw(MyExceptionWithError(error));           }         }       private:         std::shared_ptr<some_pod> m_result;     };          template<>     class do_it<std::nothrow_t> {       public:         void operator()(...) noexcept         {           if (! m_result) {             m_result = std::shared_ptr<some_pod>(do_it_without_error(...));           }         }       private:         std::shared_ptr<some_pod> m_result;     };      Usage:               do_it<> di_error;     try {       di_error(...); // might throw     } catch (...) {}          do_it<std::nothrow_t> di_no_error;     di_no_error(...); // won't throw for sure      However, since the result is wrapped in a `std::shared_ptr` there will also be a `get()` method:               const std::shared_ptr<some_pod> & get(void) { return m_result; }      For error checking I could just implement a another method `check`.   The default implementation would now look like this:               struct do_it {       public:         // will never throw         const std::shared_ptr<some_pod> &         get(void) noexcept         {           if (! m_result) {             m_result = std::shared_ptr<some_pod>(do_it_without_error(...));           }           return m_result;         }              // might throw         do_it &         check(void)         {           if (! m_result) {             Error * error = NULL;             m_result = std::shared_ptr<some_pod>(do_it_with_error(..., &error));             if (error) {               throw ...;             }           }           return *this;         }            private:         std::shared_ptr<some_pod> m_result;     };      Usage:               do_it di_error;     try {       auto result = di_error.check().get();     } catch (...) {}     do_it di_no_error;     di_no_error.get();      So, both implementations seem to be equally good (or bad) to me.   How could I decide which one to use.   What are the Pros and Cons?"}
{"_id": "198367", "title": "Find common functionalities or functions between 2 programs", "text": "I've been facing a problem recently, in which I want to optimize two programs. For that, I wanted to create some kind of \"Common Interface\" which I could reuse between my two programs. However, the code of these are approximately 1000 lines, and I don't want to spend a big amount of time checking if this or that function is the same as this one and whatsoever. So I used BOUML to check the similarities between class diagrams. But I wonder if there is a global way to do such a study ?"}
{"_id": "55998", "title": "how to express alternative flows in activity diagram", "text": "I want to express the below events in an activity diagram:   * An alternative flow, such as \"at step x of basic flow, user clicks cancel instead of ok\".   * An alternative entry to the use case, such as \"instead of click the bold button, use can press Ctrl-B\".   * An error, such as \"when user clicks save, the system is unable to save the file to disk.\" How can I do these? Thank you."}
{"_id": "168206", "title": "Under which circumstances (if any) does it make sense to work for a startup, for free?", "text": "I've been bumping around the startup world for a while, and most startups I've seen seem to have (amongst other things) two things in common:   1. A lack of money   2. An inability to, reliably, hire good quality developers This means that, for startups, the ideal hire is someone who is free - where they can wait until they've both raised money and found out that the hire is worth his price tag. When (if ever) is this a win win situation? For you, as a programmer or software developer, when would this make sense?"}
{"_id": "75442", "title": "How would you teach C# delegate to a newbie?", "text": "I was reviewing Andrew Troelsen book on C# 4.0. The part that explains delegates starts as smooth as:               public class SimpleMath     {         //declare delegate         public delegate int BinaryOp(int x, int y);              public static int Add(int x, int y)         {         return x + y;         }     }          class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {         //create delegate which points to Add method         BinaryOp b = new BinaryOp(SimpleMath.Add);              //Invoke Add method using delegate         Console.WriteLine(\"10 + 10 is {0}\", b(10,10));         Console.ReadLine();         }     }      than gets as complicated as               public class Car     {         public int CurrentSpeed {get;set;}         public int MaxSpeed {get;set;}         private bool carIsDead {get;set;}         public Car() {MaxSpeed=10;}         public Car(int maxSpeed, int currentSpeed)         {             MaxSpeed = maxSpeed;             CurrentSpeed = currentSpeed;         }         //declare delegate         public delegate void CarEngineHandler(string msgForCaller);         //define member of this delegate         private CarEngineHandler listOfHandlers;         //add registration function for the caller         public void RegisterWithCarEngine(CarEngineHandler methodToCall)         {             listOfHandlers = methodToCall;         }              public void Accelerate(int delta)         {                 if (carIsDead)                 {                         if (listOfHandlers!=null)                                 listOfHandlers(\"Sorry, the car is dead\");                 }                 else {                         CurrentSpeed+=delta;                         if (10== (MaxSpeed - CurrentSpeed) && listOfHandlers!=null)                         {                                 listOfHandlers(\"Gonna blow!\");                         }                         if (CurrentSpeed >= MaxSpeed)                                 carIsDead = true;                         else                                 Console.WriteLine(\"Current Speed = {0}\", CurrentSpeed);                 }         }     }      If we try to pick that content and teach somebody else, we are going to find a hard time, since it becomes tricky. How would you teach C# delegates in a way he/she is able to understand clearly when to use them?"}
{"_id": "26143", "title": "Debugging, performance tracing, profiling, tools, etc. - suite?", "text": "My client is looking to standardize on its \"helper\" tools suite of applications to aid developers of a very large .NET project in debugging, profiling, finding memory leaks and performance bottlenecks, etc. kinds of issues All developers use VS2010, target .NET 4.0, and support a large distributed system: Winform UI client (CAB framework), SQL2008 Backened, CSLA app-tier with Dataportal & remoting, and there is a large job-processing layer with Compute cluster pack (CCP) as well as a few dozen other peripheral technologies. To give you an idea of the size, the system is probably north of 5M lines of code, has about 100 developers around the world and has been in development & production support for the last 5 years with this same team size. Over the years, client did not have a single strategy that revolved around profiling tools of kinds. Client bought the tools when programmers said: \"oh, this looks nice to trouble-shoot this particular problem I'm having\".. So, now the client wants to standardize on a suite of tools. What has worked so far: Ants for memory profiling. dotTrace for performance profiling. There is currently a serious consideration being given to CA Wiley for production monitoring. VS2010 profiling has been deemed not good enough and not working well enough within the current system. Can anyone recommend a single suite of tools that would be a good substitute for ALL the tools mentioned above? Integration with VS2010 is a must. All sorts of bells & whistles and ease-of-use and ability to drill-down into deepest levels to find the weirdest problems is required. Thank you for your suggestions"}
{"_id": "204726", "title": "When there is no API", "text": "When it is necessary to integrate with a web application, and an API is unavailable, is it a viable solution to simulate a web browser interacting with the web application as a real user would interact with it? UPDATE Some context. Web App belongs to a vendor/partner. Their timeline for building a proper API will not meet our needs. Scraping for data is the least used part. Full CRUD for interacting with the app is required. As a developer, I can see that it will work, but I want to be able to address concerns that others may raise about this approach. Would you base a mission critical business application on this approach? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "204729", "title": "What's the difference between college-level and corporate programming?", "text": "I have just completed my Bachelors degree in IT field. I have deep interest in coding and really want to be a professional in it. Now, apart from college courses, I have been learning programming(C#) on my own (college level programming is too basic). Now I feel I need a little more time to be close to professional programmer. But some of my seniors say that corporate world programming is too different from bookish programming, hence there is no point in wasting time. (They are not programmers themselves, this may be probably what they heard). Would I benefit by reaching an advance level of C#? or as mediocre level is sufficient to break interviews, higher levels do not matter to firms because they rely on their training purely to teach how things work in corporate world and learning more won't help me much? Please if there are some professional programmers who can help, I promise this is something which about every student interested in programming want to ask at my stage. \"How do you actually change from learner to professional in field of programming?\" - keep learning until you are perfect or joining a firm is must once basics are covered?"}
{"_id": "196934", "title": "Unique Value Object vs Entity", "text": "Trying to convert some entities into value objects I am stuck in a case where what seems a value object must be unique within an aggregate. Suppose we have a **Movie** entity which makes the root of an aggregate. This **Movie** entity is related with some set of **AdvertisementEvent** objects with the role of displaying an advertisement at certain timestamp. The **AdvertisementEvent** contains a link to some **Banner** that must be displayed, the coordinates and some effect filters. Since **AdvertisementEvent** is just a _collection of configuration parameters_ I am not sure if I should care about its identity and treat it like just a large value object. However I do care that within a **Movie** there must be only one **AdvertisementEvent** at a certain timestamp, probably even _around_ the timestamps. I find hard to split my doubts in multiple independent questions, so there they go:   1. Does a _collection of configuration parameters_ sounds like a value object?   2. Am I mixing the concept of uniqueness of **AdvertisementEvent** within **Movie** and transactional integrity rule?   3. Does _any_ of the choices in point (2) implies that **AdvertisementEvent** must be a member of the aggregate made by **Movie**?   4. Is my **AdvertisementEvent** object an Entity, a Value Object or an Event Object? (I used the _Event_ suffix in the name to highlight my confusion)   5. Are large value objects like this a design smell? I guess that I am not dealing with an Event in the sense of DDD because it is not something that just _happens_. The real DDD event should be something more like _AdvertisementEventReached_"}
{"_id": "194353", "title": "Internship along with Google Summer of Code?", "text": "I am wondering about how much time Google Summer of Code typically takes. I do have an internship lined up for this summer, but GSoC seems like quite an awesome experience. I also really want to get into Open Source development. It states in the FAQ that it's not a good idea to attempt both, but it doesn't give any specifics. I'm wondering if it's feasible to do both. Or would I be better off by trying to work on open source in my spare time? Thanks for all your help!"}
{"_id": "139831", "title": "What are benefit/drawbacks of classifying defects during a peer code review", "text": "About 3 months ago, our engineering group rolled out Review Board to be used for all peer code reviews. Today, I had a discussion with one of the people involved in that process and found out that we are already looking for a replacement (possibly something commercial) because of several missing features. One of the features that is apparently asked by many people is the ability to classify/categorize each code review comment (i.e. is it a style issue, coding convention, resource leak, logic error, crash... whatever). For those teams that regularly practice code review, is this categorization a common practice? Do you do it? have you done it in the past? Is it good/bad? On one hand, it gives the team some more metrics and possibly will indicate more specific areas where developers may potentially need to be trained in (at least that seems to be the argument). Are there other benefits? And on the other hand, and this is my concern, is that it will slow down code review process that much more. As a team lead, I've done a fairly large share of reviews, and I've always liked the ability, to highlight a chunk of code, hammer off a comment and move on as fast as possible. Although I haven't tried it personally, I have a feeling that expanding that combo box every time and scrolling/searching for the right category would feel like something is tripping you. Also if we start keeping metrics on this stuff, my other concern is that valuable code review meeting time will be spent on arguing whether something is a logic error or if it should be classified as a crash."}
{"_id": "207057", "title": "How can I help myself focus on a project when there is a more fun one I can work on?", "text": "I suffer from adult ADHD. Sometimes I get bored with projects or work items assigned to me at work because they aren't particularly interesting. I end up inventing more interesting work and working on that instead, not getting my assignments done on time. I do end up making useful software, but not what I committed to making. I know that I need to \"suck it up\" and \"just do it\", however the ADHD makes it difficult for me to choose what to think about. As a result, I get distracted often and don't deliver on time. Are there any techniques I should try to help stay on task, especially when there is more fun work I could be doing?"}
{"_id": "2051", "title": "What is the (craziest, stupidest, silliest) thing a client/boss asked you to do?", "text": "See title, but I am asking from a technical perspective, not > Take my 40 year old virgin niece on a date or you're fired."}
{"_id": "199222", "title": "Designing a SQL-like encapsulation object for programmatic use", "text": "In the last few weeks, I have been working on a Data Mapping Library, which has involved lots of research, experimentation, crying, blaming the whiteboard for not being big enough, and more research. But now I have a full idea of what I'm trying to do. I have decided that before working on any data source adapters, I need to build a SQL expression library. The queries are not assembled with a string of text, but in the form of an instantiated object, containing multiple other objects associated with which part of the query it pertains to. As such, a `SELECT` query object will have objects for the `columns`, `table from`, `joins`, `where clause`, `group bys`, `having clause`, `order bys`, and `limit`. These objects are then passed to the data source adapter, which will take the input and turn it into a query (or use it in other ways) so that it can fetch the data in a common fashion. Although this is good enough for simple queries, when it comes to more complex queries, where the join reference, or a condition within the where clause is a nested select query (i.e. `SELECT * FROM tblA INNER JOIN (SELECT * FROM tblB WHERE foo = 'bar')`, or `SELECT * FROM tblA WHERE alice IN (SELECT * FROM tblB WHERE foo = 'bar')`), I am having trouble designing an interface where such a thing could be defined, which would later be passed to the adapter that could use it in whatever way it needs to. So, can anyone propose a design that would allow for such queries to be defined in abstract which could be interpreted into a sql query, or into a nosql programmatic interface function call? **EDIT** The design of the system is such that all the tables and columns are defined as objects (separately, but with named associations for linking). Here is an example of the coding I am hoping to be able to execute:               tblA::select()         ->where(new inCondition(                                'tblAfooCol',                                 tblB::select()->where(new isNullCondition('tblBbarCol'))                                )                )         ->fetch();      Now, instead of this being directly translated into SQL (which is very easy), I am trying to plan a way that this can be returned to the data source adapter (internally through the `fetch` function). So far, the system I have built can handle the commands for a single `SELECT` query being parsed, but it is when sub queries are used in conjunction with the query that will be passed to the adapter. I am having problems determining how to encapsulate the sub query so the adapter can process it itself. As said before, converting it directly into SQL works great, but if I want to use it with a special adapter that does not use SQL (i.e. an XML or MongoDB adapter), without a function to convert the SQL into commands (or if it is SQL, converting some of the syntax to a valid specification for that rmdbs) that can be used may become very processor intensive (only for certain queries) and cost quite a lot of performance."}
{"_id": "204099", "title": "Encryption Cannot Be Reversed?", "text": "I am under the impression that an encrypted string cannot be decrypted so the original value is lost forever. However, if the following string **always equals** \"dominic\" (my name), then can't there be some logical way to reverse it; being as it's not random nor is it based on the date/time, but there is a logical method to it?               0WrtCkg6IdaV/l4hDaYq3seMIWMbW+X/g36fvt8uYkE=      No matter what or how many times I encrypt \"dominic\" (string), it always equals as above. So, shouldn't there be some way to decrypt a string like that? Example of what I'm talking about:               public string EncryptPassword(string password)     {         return Convert.ToBase64String(             System.Security.Cryptography.SHA256.Create()             .ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(password)));     }"}
{"_id": "199227", "title": "Recompiling dll's and adding more during run time - what are my options?", "text": "I want to compile custom functions during run time based on user written scripts. I'll give a hypothetical example that should demonstrate exactly what I need to do. This is the best way for me to describe the problem. I'd like a little input/ideas in how I can solve this. At the bottom I give you my ideas. I have 2 classes, one with public int x and y. Another with public int x,y,z. There can be more than one instance of each class running. The thing with these classes though (and here comes my problem) is that they need to be updatable via a user written and then compiled function during run time, that then gets added to a list of update functions that gets run once per cycle/event. Which could be at the touch of some button or something. Example: The user has written a script to update the public members of Class A. He has written A.X = B.Y + C.Z. The variables here are public, never private. This method needs to be compiled, and added to some list of functions to call each cycle. Obviously this method needs access to class B and C, as well as A. So pointers to those need to be passed in. The function returns nothing. When I say class A, B, and C. I mean these as some instances of any classes. 'A' could be class Q, while both B and C could be from class T. Or any other variation. These classes do not need recompilation/user written or anything like that. I just need help with coming up with options and how to compile a function that gets passed in some pointers and does something with them. But with all of that defined run time, what the function does, what gets passed into it, ect. \\---- What I think I can do --- I'm jumping extremely far in knowledge but it is what I always do. So I am just switching from C# to C++ and have little to go on for now while I know little. So all i can do is guess solutions and research them. I'm guessing I could compile a late loading dll for each function, and I'm guessing the dll has to know something about the data structures passed into it so I think it could work to have them in a separate normal dll usable by any program. (The A,B, and C class thingies, or rather Q, and T classes which A,B,and C were instances of in my little demo). So now both the normal program and the dll functions knows all about the classes, and all I have to do is compile the dlls during runtime, load them, and somehow get a pointer to them that my main application has and can call with the appropriate arguments. Then if the user changes the script, the dll unloads, recompiles, loads again, and a new pointer is gotten? Any help is greatly appreciated. If you can help direct my learning/research I'll learn a lot faster and be able to implement this. Thank you so much!"}
{"_id": "199224", "title": "Algorithm, AI, or intelligent agent suggestions for ingesting poorly-formatted & variable data from different document types", "text": "Thanks for looking! # Background I have been tasked with writing a program to normalize and ingest data from various sources to a common database. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that the program is for a public library system, and that they are wanting to maintain a database of all books currently lent out of their various branches. Let's further assume that the branches are not linked to a common network or database (silly, I know, but please bear with me). The task is to accept submitted data from the various branch managers, and then automate the process of normalizing that data and storing it into the common database. ## Variable raw data formats The **raw data** may be submitted in the form of a MS Excel file, a .csv, a tab-delimited file, a plain text file, possibly even just a simple email, a field delimited file, etc. ## Loosely related data contents The contents of the raw data files will _generally_ contain these fields:   1. Book ID   2. Book Title   3. Author   4. Is Checked Out?   5. Days Overdue   6. ISBN   7. Due date . . .and so on. The problem is that some of the submitted data files will have these fields in column headers and some will not (so will need to infer from data what the field is). Further, the field names will not always be consistent. One library branch may call the boolean field for whether a book is checked out \"OnLoan\", while another branch calls it \"IsCheckedOut\". ## Common data repository All of this data will be ingested to a common database with normalized data that has been cleaned up during the ingest process. So, hopefully, we have something like this in the final DB:   1. BranchId   2. BookId   3. Title   4. CheckedOut   5. ISBN   6. DueDate   7. DaysOverdue . . .and so on. ## Automation of Ingest Process Let's assume that there are thousands of branches and that they must each issue this report to the Library HQ once monthly. Obviously, my client can hire a bunch of data-entry people to do this job (in fact, that is how it is done today). The request from them however, is to automate as much of this as possible to cut data-entry costs. ## So here is my plan, please suggest or criticize away:   1. **Standardize the file submission process.** This will be handled by creating a web page with a file upload dialog, DONE!   2. **Determine the file type.** I will be using C# (not that language matters) and it has a pretty easy way of getting the file type but sometimes I will simply get a `.txt` that turns out to be tab or pipe-delimited _so I need an algorithm to detect this_. I am thinking of using a _Bayes Classifier_ or _Artificial Neural Network_ for this.   3. **Attempt to parse the data into memory.** Now I have hopefully determined if I have an excel file, a tab-delimited, a csv, etc. I will run the file through the correct parser to get it into memory but now need to determine if the **file has headers** or if I can **infer what the headers should be by the value**. For this I hope to again use a **Bayes Classification system** and perhaps calculate a **Levenshtein Distance** from the value to items in an array of known/standardized header names. But what about header inference from the data? How would I identify one column as containing due dates and one as containing ISBN numbers?   4. **Glean, clean and submit the values in each column.** If I am lucky enough to have gotten this far (I know what the headers are), then I need to loop through the values in each column and clean/normalize them. For example, some library branches may enter an ISBN value as \"ISBN12-345-67-89\" whereas another branch enters \"123456789\". I need to catch that difference and normalize them. Is this a case for just a plain ol' expert system or `if. . .then`? Is there a better way?   5. **Submit normalized data to database.** This step is not as trivial as it sounds because some library branches may report a book title as \"Algorithms for Dummies\" while another reports it as \"Algorithms for Dummies, 1st Edition\". Let's assume for a second that I don't have an ISBN to tie the two books together (though they are the same), **what method might be suitable for deducing that these books are the same and assigning them a common primary key int the related`Books` table**? # Many, Many thanks for your suggestions!!!"}
{"_id": "167508", "title": "Is there any real-world practical problem where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do?", "text": "_Please, if you feel that question is big and does not deserve your attention (tl;dr) do not downvote it or ask for closing it being based on that._ The problem 1.1-5 in the book of Thomas Cormen et al Introduction to algorithms is: \"Come up with a real-world problem in which only the best solution will do. Then come up with one in which a solution that is \u201capproximately\u201d the best is good enough.\" I'm interested in its first statement. And I would like to develop my (mis)understanding of the question and ask to name a real-world problem where only the **exact** solution will work as opposed to a real-world problem where good-enough solution will be ok. So what is the difference between the exact and good enough solution. Consider some physics problem for example the simulation of the fulid flow in the permeable medium. To make the computer simulation happen some simplyfing assumptions have to be made when deriving a mathematical model. Otherwise the model becomes at least complex and unsolvable. Virtually any particle in the universe has its influence on the fluid flow. But not all particles are equal. Those that form the permeable medium are much more influental than the ones located light years away. Then the mathematical model needs to be solved and an exact solution can rarely be found unless the mathematical model is simple enough (wich probably means the model isn't close to reality). We take an approximate numerical method and after hours of coding and days of verification come up with the program or algorithm which is a solution. And if the model and an algorithm give results close to a real problem by some degree that is good enough soultion. Its worth noting the difference between exact solution algorithm and exact computation result. When considering real-world problems and real-world computation machines I believe all physical problems solutions where any calculations are taken can not be exact because universal physical constants are represented approximately in the computer. Any numbers are represented with the limited precision, at least limited by amount of memory available to computing machine. I can imagine plenty of problems where good-enough, good to some degree solution will work, like train scheduling, automated trading, satellite orbit calculation, health care expert systems. In that cases exact solutions can't be derived due to constraints on computation time, limitations in computer memory or due to the nature of problems. I googled this question and like what this guy suggests: there're kinds of mathematical problems that need exact solutions (little note here: because originally the question is taken from the book \"Introduction to algorithms\" the term \"solution\" means an algorithm or a program, which in this case gives exact answer on each input). But that's probably more of theoretical interest. So I would like to narrow down the question to: **Are there any real-world practical problems where only the best (exact) solution algorithm or program will do (but not the good-enough, suboptimal, you call it solution)?** I want to clarify my understanding of _\"good enough\"_. The _best_ solution **is** _good enough_ **but not every** _good enough_ solution **is** the _best_ (exact, fastest, etc..) one. So I\u2019m asking for a kind of a problem for which no solutions can be considered good-enough unless the solution is the best. There are problems like breaking of cryptographic ciphers where only exact solution matters in practice and again in practice the process of deciphering without knowing a secret should take reasonable amount of time. Returning to the original question this is the problem where good-enough (fast-enough) solution will do. There's no practical need in instant crack though it's desired. So the quality of \"best\" can be understood in any sense: exact, fastest, requiring least memory, having minimal possible network traffic etc. And still I want this question to be theoretical if possible. In a sense that there may be example of computer X that has limited resource R of amount Y where the best solution to problem P is the one that takes not more than available Y for inputs of size N. But that's the problem of finding the particular solution for P on computer X which is... well, good enough. During formulation of this question I came to conclusion that we live in a world where it is required from programming solutions to practical purposes to be good enough. In rare cases (like shuttle maneuvering) very very good ones. I could not find any problems that require only the best solution. If there is such problem of practical interest solved or unsolved can you provide any example of it? Or does there exist any proof that no such problem can exist?"}
{"_id": "204097", "title": "Dynamic form builder forms and database design?", "text": "Say your users can create their own web-based forms (textboxes, selects, etc) and publish them on the web for their users to fill out. Does anyone have a resource or any advice on how to architect the database to tie into the dynamic forms? For example, would you create a child table for each form, or different versions of a given form?"}
{"_id": "104653", "title": "Should the domain model  include all the domain entities in my project?", "text": "I have currently reading Grails and I love it. In order to get hands on experience with Grails I decided to create a web application for some Management System. Ya as you can guess there are plenty of entities that goes into the domain model for my web application. Any how as a novice in Web development, I just thought of creating a homepage first of all. Now here comes the problem, I sat for an hour and drawn my domain model(for my homepage alone!). After that I had a doubt that whether we have to enter all the entities(i.e my whole web app entities like user, profile, tasks and their relationships etc) in Domain model first and then start coding or draw domain models for each page in our web app and at last connect all the domain models? Well, what I do is wrong? This is my first project that ever started in my life. Thanks for your advices."}
{"_id": "105524", "title": "is it realistic to make use of HTML5 local storage to store CSS, and JavaScript", "text": "The idea is to make use of HTML5 local storage to store frequently accessed CSS and JavaScript. For example (pseudo-code):               var load_from_cdn = true;     if (detect local storage)       {       if (cache of css, js found)       {          load the local storage cache          load_from_cdn = false;       }     }     if (load_from_cdn)     {        document.write('<script>...');     }      Is this possible or realistic? I do aware browser cache, there will be still some header access checking,   I assuming no HTTP access is better (in my _thinking_ ) PS : It seems that local storage only support **key-value pair** , can someone prove it ?   (best with some examples)"}
{"_id": "105527", "title": "What is the correct definition of Moore's law", "text": "I see different sources that say the number of transistors will double every 24 months or every 18 months. Does anyone have a credible source?"}
{"_id": "105520", "title": "Is it better to develop apps using a platform specific technology or web technologies?", "text": "I happened to read an interesting article the other day that talked about building mobile applications using Javascript and HTML5. One interesting point they brought out was how this approach worked across multiple platforms, different hardware (ex. screen size) and software (ex. iPhone, WP7, Mac, Windows). I also noticed something interesting posted on Microsoft's Build Website for their upcoming conference. They seem to put a lot of emphasis on HTML5 and JavaScript. It does seem ideal to develop a single application (of course it would still require minor modifications) and have it work on tablets, PCs, mobile devices, TVs or pretty much any internet-capable device. Is this a shifting trend? Obviously it's no fun learning a technology just to find out a year later that it's getting shut down. In my opinion it seems rather difficult as it stands to do certain functionality like animations or data-binding (my favorite!) with HTML5 and JavaScript when compared to Silverlight. In this case the tools alone make it a better choice (Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2010). I am concerned though because it has been getting easier to do things on the web that just a few years ago didn't seem possible. Is there still a place for technologies like Flash and Silverlight when it comes to developing applications or should we be aiming to gear our apps toward web-specific technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "222177", "title": "Using a \u201cspherical frustum\u201d for 3D projection", "text": "I am currently writing a transformation from model space to clip space for use in OpenGL. From what i have seen, programmers typically use a traditional rectangular frustum to define the clipping boundaries in their model space. I personally had in mind a shape like a frustum, except the near and far planes are spheres centered at the apex of the frustum (the camera). So something that looks like this: ![Circular sector](http://i.stack.imgur.com/i05pA.png) The yellow region corresponds to OpenGL's clip space, and the two spheres (depicted as circles in this cross-section image) correspond to OpenGL's z=-1 (inner sphere) and z=1 (outer sphere). Is this a more realistic way to model the projection, or should i stick with the traditional rectangular frustum when designing my projection matrix?"}
{"_id": "134975", "title": "Should internal code be shared with non-developers in an organisation?", "text": "Where I work, we have a lot of developers and an awful lot of code running our proprietary applications used by staff & customers alike. We also have a lot of smart support staff that like to understand the inner workings of our systems to better support our customers, and perhaps even submit a patch from time to time. Should we open up our code for our non-development staff to be able to read? What factors should we take into account when making this decision? I have come across a bunch of arguments and counter-arguments each way & would like to make a decision based on the experience of others as well as well- understood risks. Some arguments thus far:   * Passwords in VCS are exposed (solution: get rid of the passwords - they shouldn't be there to begin with)   * Code is open to white-box security attacks (counter-argument: this only keeps out the honest/lazy attackers)   * Support staff can ask developers \"how\" things work (counter: teach a man to fish, etc) Does anyone open their code to staff at their organisation? Has it caused any problems?"}
{"_id": "36543", "title": "Guidance for Web XML Api's", "text": "I have to create an API for our application that is accessible over HTTP. I envision the API's responses to be simple XML documents. It won't be a REST API (not in the strict sense of REST). I am fairly new to this space - of course I've had to consume some Web API's in my work, but often they are already wrapped in language native libraries (i.e., TweetSharp). I'm looking for information to guide the design of an API. Are there any articles, blog posts, etc. that review and expound upon the design choices to be made in a Web API? Design choices would be things like how to authenticate, URL structure, when users submit should the URL they POST to determine the action being performed or should all requests go to a common URL and some part of the POST'd data is responsible for routing to a command, should all responses have the same document root or should errors have a different root, etc., etc. Ideally, such articles or blog posts would enumerate through the common variations for any given point of design and expound on the advantages and disadvantages, such that they would inform me to make my own decision (as opposed to articles that simply explain one single way to do something). Does anyone have any links or wisdom they can share?"}
{"_id": "222906", "title": "Is it normal for a manager/developer to feel technically lesser than the architect or senior developers?", "text": "I am an average coder in my eyes but a good developer, in the past year I've felt that my technical knowledge of our products design is being questioned by our senior developers/architects, is this normal? should I focus more on the technical nitty gritty and design? I've been working with the same team and much the same project for the past 7 yrs, in the last 4 I was appointed manager/scrummaster. I spend 30% of my time managing the project tasks and quality, the rest I spend bug fixing, I usually leave the design tasks to our architect. Should I focus more on the design of the product? it does feel like I would gain more respect if I had the architects knowledge, however I doubt if this is even achievable in the long run. Is this a general issue for developers with all architects? And should senior developers be outstanding coders?"}
{"_id": "146003", "title": "Is it inefficient to concatenate strings one at a time?", "text": "I recall back from my days of programming in C that when two strings are joined, the OS must allocate memory for the joined string, then the program can copy all the string text over to the new area in memory, then the old memory must manually be released. So if this is done multiple times as in the case of joining a list, the OS has to constantly allocate more and more memory, just to have it released after the next concatenation. A much better way to do this in C would be to determine the total size of the combined strings and allocate the necessary memory for the entire joined list of strings. Now in modern programming languages (C# for instance), I commonly see the contents of collections being joined together by iterating through the collection and adding all the strings, one at a time, to a single string reference. Is this not inefficient, even with modern computing power?"}
{"_id": "36546", "title": "Constructive ways to answer \"What was your most challenging project? and why?\"", "text": "I am asked this question many times in the interviews. > What was your most challenging project -- and why? I get confused about which project to tell them and why some project would look challenging or non-challenging. What are they looking for in the answer? Any software is a challenge before it gets started and it becomes a normal software engineering task after it has finished. All softwares I made were challenging until they got finished. Do I misunderstood the word \"challenge\"? What's wrong in my thinking? What's an appropriate and constructive way to approach this question?"}
{"_id": "146009", "title": "A single language to learn to develop desktop and mobile phone applications?", "text": "Is there a language that is capable of developing apps to cross platform OSs (win,*nix) and mobile apps (IOS, android) .. I'm a pro web developer but want to explore more environment to deploy my code into... Python ? Ruby ?"}
{"_id": "251547", "title": "What is Object Services class purpose?", "text": "I'm reading a book on TDD: (btw this question has nothing to to with TDD) link to the book on amazon   Author often mentions/uses Service Classes For example we would have a Person Object Person would would have:   \\- a \"regular\" class for deifining the entity **Person**   \\- a data access class (lets say we have a db for data persistance) using for example a repository patter **PersonRepository**   \\- a \"service\" class (PersonServices) **PersonServices** as author himself explains: > A PersonService class serves as the business domain class that works with > Person objects from a standpoint of enforcing business rules and using > Person in business work fl ows. My question would be is that a way to go with your classes? In the past I would put everything from **Person** class and **PersonServices** into one class. What type of functionality would go into **Servieces** classes for my objects? I'm not sure if I understand the quote above (maybe I'm missing the point?)"}
{"_id": "251546", "title": "Design of active or passive class domain", "text": "Sorry if my (simplified) example is too broad. Given this model (written in C#):               class Ball     {     }      Let's assume that a ball can be launched. To implement this feature, I can define something like:               class Ball     {         void Launch();     }      or something like:               class BallLauncher     {         void Launch(Ball ball);     }      In which situations is better use first approach and which the second one? In fact, this example tries to simplify an actual real underlying model. In that model, I need to upload files (`Package`) to a repository. Then, I don't know if the repository should upload (physical copy) a package (files) to itself or it is the package who should upload itself to a repository."}
{"_id": "63878", "title": "Agile - Learning & Practicing Agile alone", "text": "I am learning new technologies and doing some small projects to practice these technologies alone. And I want to learn the agile methodolgy along the way but don't know if it's a good or bad idea to learn it alone and how far I can go with it. Another thing what good resources to learn it (books/articles)?"}
{"_id": "112124", "title": "What is the best path for a CS graduate who wants to end up doing creative research-like development?", "text": "## Background: This question came to mind after I ignorantly came to the conclusion that I was driven to go into game development, because it is the only place I can do creative development without the hinderance of clients wanting things tweaked, or security needing to be extreme, or deadlines pushing away research. I'm not talking about all cases, I'm talking about \"in the end\", where I've found my \"final\" kind of job. Game development I speak of here is indie development, where original intuitive design is important. As far as I know, this form of game development is the only way a person with only a bachelors can do research level development [AI, original UI (like voice commands / NLP), advanced graphical development]. With a phD I understand i could do any research, but I'm still unsure that is the path I wish to take. ## Question: What type of jobs or industry can allow someone with only a bachelors degree to do virtually unhindered creative research and development? This is subjective, so I'm mainly looking for opinions and RL accounts."}
{"_id": "194265", "title": "Self Debuggable systems", "text": "For example, in case of GDB it is possible to debug itself by itself. I have not been able to find any JVM that can debug itself or even allows debugging on source level. I was just wondering if someone can suggest on how the systems are made self debuggable. If you have references, please paste it here. I wanted to read on it in detail."}
{"_id": "194266", "title": "Where to put Administrative Features", "text": "Right now we have our administrative features located at www.mysite.com/admin. It is locked down by UN/PW but it still seems like an insecure place to have it. Is there a better place to put it? Perhaps at another domain?"}
{"_id": "83263", "title": "Deprecation considered harmful?", "text": "I've just been compiling some of my own code with the `-std=c++0x` flag in GCC, as I want to vaguely keep up with what all the young folks are doing (provided they stay of my lawn), and I ended up with a load of warnings about `auto_ptr` being deprecated. Of course, I knew that `auto_ptr` was deprecated in C++0x, but... Isn't deprecation a waste of time and effort? Reasons for not deprecating (with auto_ptr as an example):   * there is an ocean of code out there that still needs to be supported, producing millions of warnings will only tempt people to turn warnings off.   * `auto_ptr` is a bit naff, but it does actually do what it says on the tin.   * if we really want to deprecate things, I nominate `printf()`. But just imagine the squeals that would ensue. `auto_ptr` doesn't have too many friends, but in at least my C++ code it is used more than `printf`, which isn't used at all.   * the committee have a bad record of getting this right - they deprecated static at namespace scope, and now it seems to have been undeprecated - I wouldn't be surprised if `auto_ptr` made a similar come-back   * lastly, whatever the committee say, the compiler implementers ignore them - they simply can't risk breaking their customers code, all they can do is issue irritating warnings. So my question - do you consider deprecation (of anything, not just auto_ptrs, and not just in C++) a good idea, and if so, why?"}
{"_id": "13439", "title": "What defines a software architect?", "text": "At what point does a developer stops being simply a developer and turns into a software architect. Or in other words , whats the minimum job description of a software architect?"}
{"_id": "216296", "title": "What Is The Relationship Between Software Architect and Team Member", "text": "I work for a small company which has less than 100 persons. Several months ago, this company offered me position of SA and I accepted. There are three teams in this company, and I work for one of them. This is the first time I work as a SA. During the past months, I find I don't have any power of management, I even can't let the team member do things (coding-related) in the way which is correct and more efficient. The team members argue with me on very very basic technical questions and I have to explain to them again and again. Though some members did take my advice, other members stubbornly program in their way which frequently proved wrong finally. Recently I feel a little tired and confused. I wonder what is correct relationship between a Software Architect and team members including the team leader? Besides, is software architect also leaded by the Team Leader?"}
{"_id": "108923", "title": "Has there been any formal work comparing ease of maintenance at the programming language level?", "text": "Is there any formal work attempting to measure ease of maintenance for complex programs, comparing at the programming language level? Are there any formal measures for ease of maintenance, at any level? I'm looking for a method to obtain formal measurements of ease of maintenance (or any related work) for a pet project."}
{"_id": "198575", "title": "What is the name of \u03bbx.\u03bbf.fx (like reverse apply) in lambda calculus? Does the corresponding function have a standard name in programming?", "text": "What is the name of \u03bbx.\u03bbf.fx in lambda calculus? Does the corresponding function have a standard name in functional programming languages, like Haskell? In object oriented programming, is there a usual name for a method `foo` which takes a function as an argument, such that `x.foo(f)` returns `f(x)`?"}
{"_id": "71638", "title": "Legal Requirements for Software Makers", "text": "Since the Legal site of Stack Exchange isn't ready quite yet, I figured this would be the best place to ask this question. What are, if any, the legal requirements (or online resources for finding this info out) that I must uphold if I wish to sell an application that acts as a Personal Account/Information Manager, which:   1. Stores (optionally, but preferably) personally identifiable information, and;    2. Stores (optionally) bank account information, such as existing and current balance, and transaction history, entered by the user. With regards to encryption, is there a legal standard of encryption that we as developers must use for securing this type of information?"}
{"_id": "148615", "title": "What is upcasting/downcasting?", "text": "When learning about polymorphism you commonly see something like this               class Base { int prv_member; virtual void fn(){} }     class Derived : Base { int more_data;  virtual void fn(){} }      What is upcasting or downcasting? Is `(Derived*)base_ptr;` an upcast or downcast? I call it upcast because you are going away from the base into something more specific. Other people told me it is a downcast because you are going down a hierarchy into something specific with the top being the root. But other people seem to call it what i call it. When converting a base ptr to a derived ptr is it called upcasting or downcasting? and if someone can link to an official source or explain why its called that than great."}
{"_id": "114128", "title": "How do you handle ever-growing piles of issues to be resolved \"somewhen\"?", "text": "We're using JIRA to keep track of issues in our software projects. One effect we noticed is that we often create a new issue but we don't knw yet when/if the problem is going to be fixed at all. So we invented a fake 'Distant Future' milestone which such issues get assigned to. As it happens, the pile of issues assigned to this milestone keeps growing all the time so it seems this is not a good approach. There are so many of them by now that it became quite a lot of work to review all of them for validity. Some of them became invalid since the component they are related to you was removed. Some of them were duplicated by other issues. Some of them have such a poorly phrased description that nobody really knows what they are about anymore. How do other software development teams deal with issues which are valid, but which might not get fixed anytime. Do you bother recording them at all? Do you assign them to the next planned version and then look at them again as the next release approaches? Something else?"}
{"_id": "15670", "title": "async & await - poll for alternatives", "text": "Now that we know what is in store for c#5, there is apparently still an opening for us to influence the choice of the two new keywords for 'Asynchrony' that were announced by Anders Heijsberg yesterday at PDC10.               async void ArchiveDocuments(List<Url> urls) {         Task archive = null;         for(int i = 0; i < urls.Count; ++i) {             var document = await FetchAsync(urls[i]);             if (archive != null)                 await archive;             archive = ArchiveAsync(document);         }     }      Eric Lippert has an explanation of the choice of the current two keywords, and the way in which they have been misunderstood in usability studies. The comments have several other propositions. _Please - one suggestion per answer, duplicates will be nuked._"}
{"_id": "15673", "title": "Is 37Signals Basecamp a hype?", "text": "What's so unique about it? Heard great things about it, used it, found that beside the Google Apps Integration there's nothing really special about it. Maybe I just don't get it? So, what's your reason to use basecamp?"}
{"_id": "76365", "title": "What's a good javascript library for drawing shapes and connections", "text": "What is a good javascript library (for use with Ruby on Rails) for drawing shapes and dynamic connections (lines connecting shapes that adjust as you move the shapes)?"}
{"_id": "76367", "title": "What are some fun (and very easy) C++ programs for a 10 year old kid to write?", "text": "It might be a bit young to be learning C++, but I've been hired to tutor a ten year old and I will happily oblige! I'm struggling to think of some fun but easy programs to work on. Ideally, I'm looking for something that can be done with a basic understanding of if statements, while loops, variables, vectors, input, and output. I came up with the idea of writing a \"Mad Libs\" style program, where it asks the user for input (adjectives, nouns, etc) and then outputs a story with that input filled in. However, he didn't seem very interested in this idea since he does not like \"Mad Libs\". I feel like he might be particularly interested in writing a program that has a visible effect on his computer. For example, he loves figuring out key presses to do things like invert his computers color, etc. Any ideas for a fun/easy C++ program for a 10 year old?"}
{"_id": "76366", "title": "What is your go-to application when you start learning a new language?", "text": "What \"application\" do you write to understand a programming language? I have used a calculator (regular + equation solver). But I think it's too easy. I am planning to learn Haskell and was curious, what is your \"go-to application\" when you start to learn a new programming language? One of my friend uses XML parser as his go-to application. Any other suggestions which will include comprehensive use of data structures and other important constructs?"}
{"_id": "171315", "title": "Optimal buffer size for fread/fwrite", "text": "What buffer size should I choose for read/write files via POSIX fread/fwrite functions?"}
{"_id": "107679", "title": "How to design a system that allows for multiple parallel extensions of the same \"component\"?", "text": "As a player, I found the following problems about creating and using \"extensions\" (aka mods) for games: > 1) Whenever the game is updated, all the mods break. > > 2) Most mods don't work with each other, so the player \"has to choose\" > > 3) If you ever de-install a mod, your \"saved games\" almost always become > unusable. I want to design a game in Scala/Java that does NOT exhibit those issues. I need help with point 2. I want to write it such that it is maximally extensible. My problem is I cannot nail down properly how I should do this, and since the whole design reside on top of the component/service/plugin architecture, than I can't move forward until I solved this problem. The design qualities I want to achieve are: > 1) For any \"service\", there should be a single object (at any given time) > that implements it. Since it is a cycle-based simulation, I can safely \"swap > implementation\" between the cycles. > > 2) It should be possible for a \"third party\" to create a \"bundle\" which > either modifies or more likely extends the functionality of a \"service\", and > \"bind\" it into the existing application at runtime, _without recompilation_. > > 3) It should be possible to load and unload those bundles at runtime, > because they will be used in a long-running server. > > 4) Developing extensions should be easily possible, even for a \"junior\" > programmer, without requiring extensive knowledge of some complex framework. > > 5) It should be possible for _several_ bundles to extend/modify the same > service at the same time, as long as they follow a certain set of rules > preventing most conflicts. I was first planning to use OSGi, but I can't really see how to get this to work. OSGi solution is to let many bundles register the same service and use a \"filter\" to choose one in the client code. Making the code aware that at any given time, there can be several objects that implements different variations of the same service, and that those instances can come and go, would make everything much too complicated and brittle. My plan was to register every service as a generic \"handle\", which the user of the service can use to get the real instance and cast to what they want. The handle content could change over time, but the handle object itself would be valid for the duration of the program, therefore bypassing the constant querying of the registry, with associated filtering. I think OSGi can solve 2 to 5, but only by using multiple instances of the same service, which is in contradiction to 1. I think that 1 an be achieved either by using composition, or by fusing all the different implementation of a service into a single object through byte-code manipulation. A look at Javaassist showed me that \"rebasing\" a class does not seem too difficult, if they all extend the same base-class and take the same constructor parameters. Composition, on the other hand, seem to put much more work on the hands of the third-party extensions developers, which is in contradiction to 4, and generally is a clunky solution at best. If I implement the byte-code manipulation strategy, than I have to basically do almost everything myself, and loose most of the benefits of OSGi. Also, I cannot really create the fused service until _all bundles_ have been activated, so they cannot register a \"real\" service instance at activation time, which is what OSGi is about (?). Do I even know from OSGi when it's \"done\"? Is the only way of achieving those designs goal to create my own component framework, or can I still do it using OSGi, or some other system? Reinventing the wheel at that level sound like a stupid (and time consuming) idea, but I can't see how to solve those problems with OSGi. Maybe another service/plugin framework can do it? Or by using a specific well-defined design strategy? UPDATE: It will a be an Internet Client-Server (Cluster) model running on OpenGL. I am mostly \"framework unencumbered\", that is, I can choose whatever fits my needs, but I want to stick to the JVM. OSGi is an attempt at standardizing \"components\" (called bundles) for the JVM."}
{"_id": "171316", "title": "two ways of doing the same thing, what is preferred?", "text": "I have some `context`   then I can do:   with `context.getError(Object): ErrorHolder` `holder.addError(error)` OR `context.setError(Object, error)` `setError` will probably have this implementation:   `context.getError(Object).addError(error)` what approach should I choose and why?"}
{"_id": "107677", "title": "What is the difference between artificial intelligence (AI) and swarm intelligence?", "text": "I understand that when we try to implement swarm intelligence, it basically has multiple independent units communicating and with each other. What I am unsure of is if swarm intelligence an extension of artificial intelligence or if it is a discipline in and of itself."}
{"_id": "233729", "title": "Dividing database between MySQL and NoSQL", "text": "Mine is a typical website developed with LAMP stack. Due to scalability issues we are planning to incorporate NoSQL for the application. For the implementation, we are planning to implement hybrid solution: using NoSQL only for few of the high volume tables in database and keep on using MySQL for all the other. So, we are splitting the database in two with two different servers which use different database technology. We are weighing pros and cons for this approach. For example, with this approach we will have to depend on the web application to maintain data integrity. There will be 2 points of failure due to 2 DB servers, instead of one. Is it a usual practice? What are the pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "233728", "title": "Can I build a closed source plugin for a LGPL library?", "text": "If I link a program dynamically to a LGPL library (here GTK+/GLib), I'm allowed to distribute the program on my own terms (non-copyleft). Now, the LGPL library provides loadable modules. Place a shared library (.so, .dll, .dylib) in a certain directory, and it will attempt to load it, using a well-defined interface. **Am I allowed to distribute the plugin module (dynamically loaded by the LGPL library) as closed-source, according to the terms of LGPL?** I'd take care that I don't use code from the LGPLed library in my plugin, and only include such headers that would be permitted by the license, and which I could as well use in a closed-source program (\"3. Object Code Incorporating Material from Library Header Files.\"). * * * Disclaimer:   I am well aware that you shouldn't take legal advice from strangers on the internet. I am asking this mainly because I'm curious. No code has been written, and no business commitments have been made at this point. Before I do anything real I probably should ask a lawyer (but they're quite expensive for just satisfying your curiosity!). I do have confidence though that I can get a good answer - maybe someone has done exactly this thing and can report on their experience. Maybe there is a definite answer from the horse's mouth (FSF) that I overlooked. I'm writing this disclaimer so that you don't have to, so please don't tell me to ask my legal department (which I don't have as an individual). And if this rather belongs on Programmers.SE, please feel free to move. I posted this here because there might be some technical (linking) issues that are important."}
{"_id": "33991", "title": "Visual Studio Load Tests Virtual Users Simulation", "text": "I'm currently working on writing a load testing application that takes advantage of Load Test using Visual Studio 2010. The load test will simulate 20 users on the same machine, and I need some data to be shared in-memory between all simulated users. I was suprised I couldn't find documentation answering the following question: What seperates each virtual user's running context from the other? Does each virtual user runs the tests in its own process? Maybe in its own app domain? Or just on its own thread? I need to know because if each user is running tests in its own process then all the in-memory cache isn't shared and is created for each user instead of one time for all of them, which is bad for me."}
{"_id": "223495", "title": "English term for \"Naive user test\" or \"idiot test\"", "text": "In usability testing, it's common to select a set of users who have never used the software before. I've heard this process described by programmers as the \"idiot test\", or sometimes \"naive user test\" or \"ignorant user test\". Unfortunately all these terms have insulting connotations in English. Is there a term to describe this type of usability test that does not insult?"}
{"_id": "78012", "title": "SOA Release management strategy", "text": "Currently I have been asked to propose an automated release management solution for a large oracle SOA project. All code is stored on SVN repository and it would be nice if I could suggest something that would build, deploy, run test cases and produced reports for all projects on trunk. I know that I could do that by creating ant or maven scripts, but I would like to know if there is an open source alternative that handles all these complex stuff, without the need of so much coding."}
{"_id": "78016", "title": "How do you effectively compete with an open source project?", "text": "A company with a solid open source project competing against a traditional closed-source product seems impossible to beat. I read this article wherein the author lays out this scenario: > Suppose one could divide a software market\u2014say network management\u2014between > two products. One did everything possible and cost $1 million, and the other > only did 10% as much, but was free and open. > > The price tag of the commercial solution would automatically filter out a > large number of users, and those people would have to turn to open source. > But some users would be satisfied with the 10% functionality and choose it > outright. > > For example, I have an original Macintosh computer on my desk. It runs a > word processor called MacWrite. It does everything, with the exception of > spell check, that I need a word processor to do. I can format paragraphs, > choose fonts, make text bold or italic, and even paste in pictures and > graphs. All in a \"what you see is what you get\" user interface. > > It takes up 76K of disk space. That's \"K\" as in \"kilobyte.\" > > Compare that to Microsoft Word. I think the last time I installed just Word > it was around 30MB, many times larger than MacWrite, but I don't use it for > much more than I use MacWrite. Like me, many users are happy with basic > functionality. They don\u2019t need all the bells and whistles. > > But back to my analogy. In the beginning, the commercial company would > probably ignore the open source project. It represents no threat to their > revenue stream, so why should they pay attention to an upstart? > > If this project is healthy and sustainable, however, in a year or so perhaps > it does 15%-20% of what the commercial product does. This should bleed a few > more users from their business, and maybe now they start to pay attention. > > Most likely, this attention would take the form of marketing against the > project. They would claim it is too small or too underpowered to take > seriously. And in the short run this would probably work. But the mere fact > that they acknowledged the project would pique interest. Some people would > determine for themselves that it was neither too small nor too underpowered > and would start using it. > > Another year or two goes by and now the project is up to 50% of the > functionality of the commercial product. People start joining the project in > droves. The commercial company now has to do something. What do they do? > They add more features. > > Remember, the commercial product already did 100% of what people needed. So > what kind of features could they add? Unnecessary ones. They might change > the look of the user interface or add features outside of network > management. In any case, this development will cost money, and that will > start to eat into the company's margins. > > Finally, with a healthy community and this influx of new users, the open > source project will eventually approach 80%-90% of what the commercial > product does. Having exhausted all avenues of generating revenue, the > commercial company still has one final option: put the screws to their > remaining customers. Find ways to charge them more, to eek out what they can > from their investment, which ultimately will drive their clients away. > > Farfetched? I don't think so. There are only two main requirements: > > First, find a market where open source provides a compelling alternative, > such as network management. > > Second, build a sustainable community around the open source project. It seems very plausible. If you were the closed-source company, how would you compete??"}
{"_id": "115474", "title": "Why should I know concurrent programming?", "text": "Concurrent programming is quite difficult to me: even looking at a basic slide seems challenging to me. It seems so abstract. What are the benefits to knowing Concurrent programming concepts well? Will it help me in regular, sequential programming? I know there is a satisfaction to understanding how our programs work, but what else?"}
{"_id": "229639", "title": "Objects as parameters: Is there a simple way that explain this?", "text": "I tried to understand how objects can be passed as parameters but it was difficult for me. How can we pass an object as a parameter to a method of another object? I need to understand the idea behind this. **updated:**               public class Student {}          public class Admin {              private ArrayList<Student> students;               public void enrollStudent(Student newStudent)           {            students.add(newStudent);         }     }"}
{"_id": "231479", "title": "Using an issue tracker as a single programmer", "text": "If this is tl;dr, scroll down to \"The Question\" ### Why this is not a duplicate: The linked question talks about version control (which I have), a one step build script (which I have) and to \"have an issue tracker at all\" (which I have, but I'm having trouble optimizing), none of the answers to that question answer any of my questions. This question is not about \"minimum subset\", it is about practical issues in a specific real world situation. ### Background: I am the sole developer at my company, which is only 5 people. Only one of my coworkers has any development experience, and he is not working on any of the production code. He is my boss, but he doesn't have any interest in the details in specific issues. My job is honestly more of a side project of one of the partners (my boss's boss), the company already makes money from things that have nothing to do with me. He is reluctant to give me more resources until I can prove that this project has viability; once I do, he plans to give me a lot more resources, but until then this is my situation. ### The issue: As a result, I am finding it challenging to use my project management platform (currently Redmine). I think that if there were more programmers or even testers, it would be a great communication tool. However, because I am doing 100% of the development work and 95% of the testing, it just seems like a massive time sink to keep the cases up to date, and sometimes even to create them! Most of the time, when I find a bug, I just fix it immediately. The only time it ever makes it into the issue tracker is if it's not something I can fix and test in less than half an hour. As the only programmer, there is no code review. No one who works here is interested in using my redmine server; I'm lucky if I get a bug report via email, usually they just walk over to my desk and tell me - and even that is rare. I have tried to get my boss to use the server by making him watcher of many of the cases, and having it email him when I make changes, but he hasn't even logged onto it in the last 3.5 months. Before I was using redmine, I was using Wunderlist - and honestly that seemed to be a much better fit. It was definitely inferior from a features standpoint, but it did the job - I could make notes of things much more quickly. Note: I am comfortable with my version control routines, most of the time; this is much more about issue tracking and communication with the non- developers. ### The Question: I would appreciate input on any of these questions:   * As a lone programmer, do you prefer a full featured issue tracker like redmine or a simpler personal organization system like Wunderlist or Evernote? \\-- If you use redmine or similar, do you use most of the features?   * Any tips for getting YOUR BOSS who has had zero interest in using an issue tracker in the past to start using it?   * When testing existing code (assume code that was not written with TDD), if you find a bug, in what situations to you add the issue to the issue tracker?   * Any other advice that seems relevant for me."}
{"_id": "173227", "title": "What is the origin of the phrase \"SaaS\"?", "text": "Recently I heard someone say they built a \"SaaS\" application. At first I thought \"this guy knows something new\", and I figured SaaS was some hyped enterprise framework or design pattern, but after looking up the SaaS Wikipedia page I realized it's similar in meaning to \"web app\". What is the origin of the phrase \"SaaS\"? When was it first used?"}
{"_id": "229633", "title": "Should you implement a repository pattern with an MVVM javascript framework?", "text": "When coding a MVVM pattern I use Dependency Injection (DI) and try and code against interfaces. One of the common patterns is a Repository pattern, so I can swap my data storage provider. If I'm creating a web server side REST/ODATA API to server data to a MVVM/JavaScript/HTML UI, should I need to include a repository pattern in my MVVM JavaScript client code or just leave the repository pattern at the Web Server API level? I just can think of a 'Use Case' which would have me swapping out the Web Server API for another API at this stage. What do others do? In my case I've chosen to implement AngularJS as the HTML/JavaScript MVVM client framework and Microsoft MVC WebAPI as the data/business logic service for Angular."}
{"_id": "137694", "title": "Is there an easy way to map directory structure to a MongoDB schema?", "text": "I'm trying to store a directory structure, including files and their content, in MongoDB. The work is part of a synching app, and is using in Node/Mongoose. Now, I'm new to Mongo, and it's late here - is the idiomatic implementation as easy as it looks - ie, something like this?               var FileStoreSchema = new Schema({       fullPath: {         type: String,         index: { unique: true }       },       filename: String,       [Metadata and other useful fields]       });"}
{"_id": "146916", "title": "Losing a lot of motivation at work. Help?", "text": "For the longest time (about 5 years out of school now), I've been fairly motivated enough to go to work each day and do actual quality work. Lately I've been losing a ton of motivation. I'm starting to realize that this is really affecting my performance at work for the last several months now. I just don't enjoy doing this anymore. It's just too tedious (especially my current project). I think I might be able to work on easier projects or just do maintenance type work (like fixing bugs or things that don't require an elaborate design document). I think I could be fine doing that sort of thing instead. I really have no idea what is causing my loss of motivation. It just sort of happened recently and now I find myself really struggling to even work on my current task. Help? Maybe I should finally just quit and start working on an iPhone app or something. lol."}
{"_id": "137693", "title": "Getting to the big leagues & managing time as a novice game developer?", "text": "I'm a 23-year-old novice game developer who just got his first job in the industry a year ago. Unlike most programmers I know, I started programming pretty late, during my second year in college, and I didn't work on any projects of my own until a couple of months ago. I feel like I'm doing quite well and picking things up quickly, but what intimidates me the most is just how many \"prodigies\" there are in the industry. If you read the biographies of any set of randomly-picked indie developers, you'll almost certainly find that they started programming at the age of 8, that they made 20 games before starting their latest successful venture, that they got together with a group of friends to start a company straight out of college, that they do music and art in addition to programming, etc. Especially now that I no longer have the free time afforded by a lack of responsibilities, I'm starting to get scared that I'm running out of time. So my question is this: how important, really, is this time differential? Does it actually take 10 years to \"catch up\" to a developer who's been programming since they were a kid, or does that difference matter less when you're programming professionally? And more generally, if you're less experienced than your peers, how on earth do you juggle expanding your technical knowledge, networking with fellow developers, working on side projects, planning a business, maintaining a social life, and retaining a job while at the same time not dying of exhaustion? Apologies if this isn't a good question \u2014 I'll delete if I see downvotes."}
{"_id": "146913", "title": "Teaching programming by solving puzzles?", "text": "I'm going to teach the basics of programming to a group of young kids (c.a. 10 year old) and was wondering if asking them to solve puzzles or play simple games with programming might be a clever thing to do? For example by asking them to write down the though process behind playing Tic-Tac-Toe. (1. Can I make a line? Then put a marker there 2. Can the enemy make a line? Then put a marker on that line. 3. Otherwise just put a marker anywhere.) Or something like that? If so are there any specific puzzles or simple games that are more suited to simple algorithms? Or should I just do it the traditional way by explaining variables, conditionals, etc. using examples and a console program?"}
{"_id": "228322", "title": "Outline for technical software documentation", "text": "Say I have a software project for which the technical documentation should include   * A license document   * A list of used terminology   * An introduction about what the software does   * A short quick-start guide   * Complete documentation of tools covered by the project   * Documentation of file formats and protocols   * An API Reference   * A list of known bugs   * A todo list   * A set of examples What is a good order of these points? How can these points be organized into chapters, sections, subsections, and subsubsections? One of the tools has an hierarchical configuration structure. Should this structure be represented in the documentation outline (this will result in a really deep outline) or should it be flatted in some way?"}
{"_id": "228327", "title": "Trying to get a better understanding of object-oriented design's performance pitfalls", "text": "I'm currently in a high-performance computing class taught in C++. Usually, I do work in C#, meaning everything is taken care of for me, and optimization comes behind maintainability and higher-level features. It's like... a nice productivity furnace that keeps me nice and warm in the programming project winter at the expense of my CPU cycle/cache miss electricity bill. However, now that I'm in C++ and efficient algorithm land, that stuff takes a back seat to optimization. Since most of my work has been in C#, object-oriented programming is sort of my style. However, I have been reading/hearing more and more about how object- oriented code is an enemy of performance. As my understanding of software architecture shifts from being exclusively about class structure and encapsulation to understanding how things are disposed of from L1 cache and pipelining, I'm trying to understand the real reasons why object-oriented design (especially as it applies to C++) causes waste of hardware resources. Can you guys give me a few basic reasons why it impacts computer performance? I know there are other debates about OOP, but I'd like to just keep it to performance on a hardware and algorithmic level."}
{"_id": "228326", "title": "Custom class for monetary amount (money value) instead of BigDecimal", "text": "On StackOverflow I found multiple advices to stick with `BigDecimal` in Java instead of reinventing the wheel. Despite that, I decided to create my custom class, and I would ask if that was a good idea and pros or cons about my design in comparsion to BigDecimal. The reasons to choose custom implementation and characteristic of my design are:   * no double/float constructors like in BigDecimal (risk of mistake) - **`long` internally with 8 decimal places** \\- this restrics min/max to ~10 bilion but system is cryptocurrency-targeted so typical values are small.   * no difference in \"0.0\" and \"0.00\" as BigDecimal have   * simple SQL compatibility by BIGINT column   * hard connection to currency object/code - cannot create amount wihtout currency and also cannot do arthimethic/comparsion of two values in different currencies   * Control of creation possible values to not overflow long (-10 bilion to 10 bilion)   * internal overflow protection on computations **Do you think that those reasons as good to choose custem implementation instead of BigDecimal?** To minimize risks I have cover very lot of situations by unit test and also use BigDecimal for initial conversion from string:               BigDecimal decimal = new BigDecimal(value);     ... check MIN/MAX allowed values ...     BigDecimal multiplied = decimal.multiply(new BigDecimal(String.valueOf(DECIMAL_DIVIDER)));     long internalResult = multiplied.toBigInteger().longValue();     return new Amount(internalResult, cryptoCurrency.getInternalCode());"}
{"_id": "21148", "title": "What is the best way to learn programming if you've never done so before?", "text": "Like the title says, what is the best way to learn programming if you've never done so before? Should one start explaining variables, sequential execution, objects, algorithms; where does one start? Of course, this may differ from person to person, but maybe there is a best \"average\" way which helps the most amount of people on average. I myself don't actually remember the time when I started programming, which is why I'm interested of this. Also, I've often wondered how programmering to newcomers should be taught in the best way."}
{"_id": "47515", "title": "Is there such a thing as having too many private functions/methods?", "text": "I understand the importance of well documented code. But I also understand the importance of _self-documenting_ code. The easier it is to visually read a particular function, the faster we can move on during software maintenance. With that said, I like to separate _big_ functions into other smaller ones. But I do so to a point where a class can have upwards of five of them just to serve one public method. Now multiply five private methods by five public ones, and you get around twenty-five hidden methods that are probably going to be called only once by those public ones. Sure, it's now easier to read those public methods, but I can't help but think that having too many functions is bad practice. **[Edit]** People have been asking me why I think having too many functions is bad practice. The simple answer: it's a gut feeling. My belief is not, for one bit, backed by any hours of software engineering experience. It's just an uncertainty that gave me a \"writer's block\", but for a programmer. In the past, I have only been programming personal projects. It's just recently that I moved on to team-based projects. Now, I want to ensure that others can read and understand my code. I wasn't sure what will improve legibility. On one hand, I was thinking of separating one big function into other smaller ones with intelligible names. But there was another side of me saying that it's just redundant. So, I'm asking this to enlighten myself in order to pick the correct path. **[Edit]** Below, I included two versions of how I _could_ solve my problem. The first one solves it by _not_ separating big chunks of code. The second one _does_ separate things. First version:               public static int Main()     {         // Displays the menu.         Console.WriteLine(\"Pick your option\");         Console.Writeline(\"[1] Input and display a polynomial\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[2] Add two polynomials\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[3] Subtract two polynomials\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[4] Differentiate two polynomials\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[0] Quit\");     }      Second version:               public static int Main()     {         DisplayMenu();     }          private static void DisplayMenu()     {         Console.WriteLine(\"Pick your option\");         Console.Writeline(\"[1] Input and display a polynomial\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[2] Add two polynomials\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[3] Subtract two polynomials\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[4] Differentiate two polynomials\");         Console.WriteLine(\"[0] Quit\");     }      In the above examples, the latter calls a function that will only be used once throughout the program's entire runtime. Note: the code above is generalized, but it's of the same nature as my problem. Now, here's my question: which one? Do I pick the first one, or the second one?"}
{"_id": "189829", "title": "Design pattern for sharing Social Authentication across subdomains?", "text": "Right now building an app that authenticates using either email or different social accounts. Because it is going to function on multiple subdomains and domains, I'm wondering if there's a design pattern that's been used in the past to accomplish this without issue. Basically, it's for authentication only as we are using profile information stored locally. I was originally thinking of doing something like an iframe pointed to `accounts.domain.com` that could always check login status of social accounts. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "229989", "title": "What process should I follow to implement (code) a web site in HTML5/CSS?", "text": "The title question is unfortunately pretty vague (or at least may be asking differently than what I intend)... but let me elaborate. I know basic HTML5 and CSS. I don't need to learn the tags and how they work. What I'm looking for is some information on what sort of process to follow when actually coding a professional style website. I want to make a portfolio website for myself from scratch (that is, not to use turnkey software such as Wordpress and such) but I don't know what to do as a process to making a clean site from the start. I'm a CS student and my skill set is in Java/C#, but I do want to learn web development as well. I know that HTML is for the content of the site, CSS is for the look, and Javascript is for the behavior. Do I need to have an idea of what the site is ultimately going to look like before I start the HTML? Can I just write the HTML to describe the content and worry about the look of the site afterward, or do I have to write the HTML knowing what I want the site to look like as I write it? If I want a horizontal nav bar at the top, do the links have to be side by side in the HTML code? These are all things I don't know... how to actually **build** a proper website. I know how to make basic pages with text and links and headers and all that, but to make a professional website is foreign to me. Every page I find on Google is either too high level (giving a design and implementation process without giving examples of how to implement once you know what you want) or is too beginner (trying to teach me HTML and CSS when I already know what I need to know in that regard)."}
{"_id": "144515", "title": "Why were frames deprecated in HTML5, but not iFrames?", "text": "Why were frames deprecated in HTML5, but not iFrames? After all, there is almost no difference between the two. In many instances using either of them would give the same output (pardon me if I am wrong)?"}
{"_id": "183704", "title": "Preventing override of methods in Objective-C", "text": "Objective-C lacks private methods or java-esque final methods. This means that it is possible for a subclass to (accidentally) override some of the internals of a superclass. How does one prevent overriding methods in Objective-C?"}
{"_id": "241054", "title": "Is it alright to create another reference to a javascript object just for ease of access", "text": "I have a use case where I need to create say two javascript objects & use their properties in one another. eg -               var Object1 = {       settings: {        property1: 'someValue',        property2: 'someValue'       }     }          var Object2 = {       foreignProperty: Object1.settings.property1;     }      I wanted to know if its alright to use a reference object for settings if I know that I will be using the settings property a lot. eg-               var Object1Settings,         Object1 = {           settings: {           property1: 'someValue',           property2: 'someValue'         }     }     var Object1Settings = Object1.settings;          var Object2 = {       foreignProperty: Object1Settings.property1;     }      Is this approach acceptable in terms of right ways of coding & performance? Thanks"}
{"_id": "241057", "title": "OSS dual licensing / market segregation", "text": "I have an open-source project, which I would like to commercially license to various types of businesses. xGPL licenses do not work for me since they don't allow any conditional addenda. What I'm seeking to achieve is:   * require commercial licensing for businesses   * allow use and changes under some OSS license for individuals   * allow free use (same as above) to specific business branches on individual selection basis (e.g. educational institutions). I'm really confused about how to achieve this and don't violate the terms of the OSS part of license at the same time. **Edit** : I'm looking for an existing free license, which doesn't explicitly forbid dual licensing like GPL family does."}
{"_id": "137520", "title": "why do some job posts say \"high pressure environment\"?", "text": "Why would there be any pressure if everyone knows what they are doing and the projects are accurately estimated? If there's pressure, or even high pressure, then it implies what they are currently doing is not working, why would any good programmer want to join a team like that? Are these kind of job posting failed at trying to show off or are they really just being honest? Or is there really some good reasons for having pressure?"}
{"_id": "100544", "title": "The best method to get personal projects done", "text": "I have numerous personal projects I've begun and never seem to finish because I get sidetracked with other ideas. I was wondering what the best method to get personal projects done is? Any tricks or tips to it? The problem is I get a spurt of inspiration on some projects, and I don't wanna lose track of my ideas and right now my method of \"saving my ideas\" is to just get as much stuff done on the ideas as possible in one night and then store some GitHub issues as to dos. I find that this makes me never get back to older projects tho."}
{"_id": "121829", "title": "I want to sell my software [C# desktop application] but I was Stuck in licencing", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  if I use .NET Framework for my application, do I have to pay anything to > Microsoft? I have developed a desktop application called \"Institute Management System\" which has modules like Class manager, Subject manager, Topics manager, Student inquiry manager Student admission manager, Fees manager, Exam manager etc. using C# for the front end and MS Access for the back end. The main problem is that I want to sell it and earn some money but I heard that my application needs to be registered at Microsoft, and I would have to get a license from them for selling, and have to pay them money too. I have spent four months developing it at my own expense, and worked very hard to develop it. So I want some tips, advice, any suggestion for the same. Please also tell me the procedure for all of the required registrations and payment issues. And I also want to ask you if you **Can you suggest any other technology where I develop my application and sell it without worrying about licencing and related issues?** I am now more confused about that \"MS technology is open source or not? \""}
{"_id": "108214", "title": "Intermediate to advanced book for improving VIM knowledge and understanding", "text": "I use `vim` already for quite a while and every day try to learn new things. But, somehow I yet don't feel that I own it. I'm looking for some intermediate to advanced books on `vim` which may be used as a reference as well in every day development. What I look for in the book is more explanations of concepts and general background philosophies than cheat sheet style lists of actions. Maybe it could cover some commonly used plugins and plugin development as well."}
{"_id": "196654", "title": "Where did the convention of naming command line arguments as 'argv' come from?", "text": "It seems like Python, PHP, and Ruby all use the name \"argv\" to refer to the list of command line arguments. Where does the name \"argv\" come from? Why not something like \"args\"? My guess is that it comes from C, where the v would stand for \"vector\". Wikipedia has a footnote that says: > the vector term in this variable's name is used in traditional sense to > refer to strings. However, there isn't any source for this info. Really, I'm curious if it has roots that trace even farther back. Did C use it because something before that used it?"}
{"_id": "170047", "title": "How to find people to help translate my open source project?", "text": "I'm a big StackOverflow fan, but I think this question belongs here, correct me if I'm wrong. So basically I'm trying to localize my plugin in as many languages as possible. I posted a section on the docs to reach people that wants to help translating but I only got one contributor that attached a German translation. So far I got 4 languages, English, Spanish, French and German. So my question is, how do you guys translate your projects? Where do you find people interested in contributing? Does anybody use Google translate to do the job?"}
{"_id": "86340", "title": "Useful Pre-requisites for Operating Systems course?", "text": "How important is knowledge of data structures and algorithms for an Operating Systems and Systems Programming course where we will be required to design and implement a kernel of a real-time operating system (done using C and 68K)? How useful will programming experience implementing data structures like linked lists, queues, binary trees etc. in C++ be for this type of course? thanks!"}
{"_id": "224859", "title": "When do rounding problems become a real problem? Is the least significant digit being one off really a big deal?", "text": "If I do `.1 + .1 + .1` in Python, I get `0.30000000000000004`. (I am not asking about Python in particular, and do not want Python specific answers.) The only problem I can see with this is `0.30000000000000004 != 0.3`, so I need to take care in how I compare floats. Are there any other problems I need to be aware of with float rounding? I can't imagine that last digit being much of a problem in real life. For example, if I ask for a \"0.30000000000000004 meter metal rod\", I'm not going to later complain that \"this rod is 0.00000000000000004 meters too long!\" (I can just cut the extra off, right? :) Even with a lot of float calculations going on, I can't imagine the rounding getting so far off that it matters. Am I missing something? When do floating point rounding errors really matter?"}
{"_id": "62948", "title": "What can be done to programming languages to avoid floating point pitfalls?", "text": "The misunderstanding of floating point arithmetic and its short-comings is a major cause of surprise and confusion in programming (consider the number of questions on Stack Overflow pertaining to \"numbers not adding correctly\"). Considering many programmers have yet to understand its implications, it has the potential to introduce many subtle bugs (especially into financial software). What can programming languages do to avoid its pitfalls for those that are unfamiliar with the concepts, while still offering its speed when accuracy is not critical for those that _do_ understand the concepts?"}
{"_id": "81902", "title": "Python Class Layout - Conventions", "text": "What is the proper or standard way to layout a class. If a class where to have attributes, methods, private attributes, private methods, class property (methods), and class methods. I am done 99% of my coding procedurely and beyond working with ORM haven't focused to much on OOP. I am changing that in a current project and was just curios what the standard way of organizing your classes was.               Class MyClass():        attr1 = value1        attr2 = value2        _attr3 = value3        def __init__(self):           do some stuff        def do_something(self):           do some more stuff             def __do_something_else(self):           more stuff        @property()        def attr4(self):            return do_some_stuff_else()             @classmethod()        def generator_a_bunch_of_these(cls):            do_some_more_things"}
{"_id": "225049", "title": "Can I use machine learning for screening experimental data?", "text": "I am a experimental physicist. In our research, we have our experimental data in a 400*400*400 matrix(x, y, z axis of a 3d space), each entry is associated with a value(\"brightness\"). We expect the brightest entries will form a closed path in the 3d space. But some portion of the path is always too dark to identify, also there are some noise in the space(random bright lines). Our current algorithm generates random seed points into the space, they are attracted by the brightness of the data. After certain amount of time, they will be trapped in the path. If we record the seed points position we can get the path. Our current algorithm does a fairly good job while I still need to manually add those relatively dark points to the path. I am not familiar with machine learning, but I am wondering if it can be used on this case? For example, is it possible that I tell the program which data points are on the path, the program will know how to choose the data points for the path in the future. Or if there is some other method we can use? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "234188", "title": "Question/Answer for multiple Users - How should I design it?", "text": "I'm wondering about a good way to deal with a Question/Answer - Model for multiple Users. My goal is to have an efficient and readable model where all the results of my users are stored. Every user has the same questions/answers! At the moment I have three classes, `Question`,`Answer` and `User`. A `user` has a `Set of Questions`. A `question` has a `Set of Answers` and an extra field `selected_value` which is the answer the user clicked. Every user has a copy of the same set of questions. Therefore I can easily see what a user has clicked. This is an unnecessary overload because I need to store the questions/answers more than once. But the good thing about this approach is the availability of my questions/answers in my user-model as I need to see what every user clicked. It's also easy to extract this information (e.g. via xml) doing just a loop around every user and his questions. But what kind of approach would you recommend to use? Should I create a model \"result\" inside of my User-Model where I simply store a list of pairs like \"QuestionId, AnswerId\"? Is there any more accepted way to do so?"}
{"_id": "170594", "title": "Github Workflow: Pushing small fix branches to remote, or keep them local?", "text": "In Scott Chacon's workflow (explained eg in this SO answer), with essentially two silos (`development`, and `master`), if, say I have a small bug to fix (e.g. can be fixed with a few characters) is the optimal way of doing that: a) branch off of `development` a branch called e.g. `fix_123`. Push this branch to origin as I work on it. When it's done, code-reviewed, whatever, merge into `development` and push `development` to origin. b) Same as above, but without pushing `fix_123` to origin."}
{"_id": "177069", "title": "Help with algorithmic complexity in custom merge sort implementation", "text": "I've got an implementation of the merge sort in C++ using a custom doubly linked list. I'm coming up with a big O complexity of n^2, based on the `merge_sort()` > `slice` operation. But, from what I've read, this algorithm _should_ be `n*log(n)`, where the log has a base of two. Can someone help me determine if I'm just determining the complexity incorrectly, or if the implementation can/should be improved to achieve `n*log(n)` complexity? If you would like some background on my goals for this project, see my blog. I've added comments in the code outlining what I understand the complexity of each method to be. _Clarification_ \\- I'm focusing on the C++ implementation with this question. I've got another implementation written in Python, but that was something that was added in addition to my original goal(s)."}
{"_id": "177061", "title": "Best way to use GIT to maintain web application template", "text": "I am a sole developer and I have a web application template that I have created in Visual Studio. I am using GIT for source control, but only on my development machine. Presently I have a master and I create branches for new features, merging them back in to the master as I complete the features. I am at a point now where I am ready to use the template for deployments, and of course I want to continue adding new features via branching/merging. My question is: what would be the typical/recommended way for me to create application deployments based on the master? Should I clone the repository into a new directory that is for a particular web application? Or should I also use branching to do project development based on the main project? The projects would never be merged back into the master. However, it would be nice if I could merge future features into the master and have the ability to incorporate them into previously completed projects if desired. For more specific details of my environment: I am using TortoiseGIT in Windows 7, Visual Studio 2012, ASP.NET Web Pages. Obviously the main differences between deployments would simply be differing pages, CSS files and jQuery scripts. * * * I found this post as I was writing this one. In order to do this should I clone the master repository and checkout from it?"}
{"_id": "177060", "title": "map data structure in pacman", "text": "I am trying to make a pacman game in c#. I have done some basic work and have previously replicated games like copter-it and minesweeper. I am confused about how to implement the map in pacman. Which datastructure to use, so it can be used for moving AI controlled objects and check collisions with walls? I thought of a 2d array of ints but that didn't make sense to me."}
{"_id": "245173", "title": "How much time should you allow for clock skew?", "text": "We are writing a B2B application that uses OAuth 2.0. Before a token expires we want to refresh it since it faster to refresh a token, than request a new one. However, we want to build in some resilience in the system to clock skew so we want to consider a token expired a few seconds/minutes before it would actually expire. How many seconds/minutes is it reseasonable to expect two servers connected to the internet, in different locations, to be?"}
{"_id": "230403", "title": "Why did the Microsoft developers did not put T4MVC (or its working) in the core MVC?", "text": "What T4MVC does makes complete sense to us. It converts the simple string input into strongly typed input, which eases things for the developer. Like this -               return View(\"foo\");       to               return View(Views.foo);  // better (T4MVC)      What could be a reason as to why the MS people are NOT doing it this way?"}
{"_id": "230401", "title": "Confused about the definition of 'abstraction' in OOP", "text": "I am trying to understand the definition of 'abstraction' in OOP. I have come across a few main definitions. Are they all valid? Is one of them wrong? I'm confused. (I re-wrote the definition with my own words). **Definition 1:** Abstraction is the concept of taking some object from the real world, and converting it to programming terms. Such as creating a `Human` class and giving it `int health`, `int age`, `String name`, etc. properties, and `eat()` etc. methods. **Definition 2:** A more general definition. Abstraction is a concept that takes place **anywhere** in a software system where **_'making things more general/simpler/abstract'_** is involved. A few examples:   * An inheritance hierarchy, where the higher classes are simpler or more general, and define more general and abstract implementation. While the lower classes in the hierarchy are more concrete and define more detailed implementations.   * Using encapsulation to hide the details of implementation of a class from other classes, thus making the class more 'abstract' (simpler) to the outside software world. **Definition 3** Another general definition: Abstraction is the concept of moving the focus from the details and concrete implementation of things, to the types of things (i.e. classes), the operations available (i.e. methods), etc, thus making the programming simpler, more general, and more abstract. (This can take place anywhere and in any context in the software system). It takes place for example when encapsulating, because encapsulation means to hide the details of implementation and only show the types of things and their more general and abstract definitions. Anotehr example would be using a `List` object in Java. this object actually uses the implementation details of an `ArrayList` or a `LinkedList`, but this information is abstracted using the more general name `List`. Is any of these definitions correct? (I am referring to the **most conventional and accepted** definition)."}
{"_id": "185018", "title": "MVC exposes database primary keys?", "text": "I'm going through a MVC tutorial, and I notice that convention seems to be to expose a tables primary key on detail pages/urls (ie. /Movies/Details/5 as an example from the tutorial). It's obviously not a problem for things like a movie record or a SO post, but it might be a bit different for an invoice or transaction with confidential information on it if the key was sequential or guessable. So, is it just this tutorial or do MVC apps typically expose a tables primary key? Is there a common library or pattern for hiding the key if you don't want to expose it?"}
{"_id": "201824", "title": "DB connection Dependency Injection and static creator methods", "text": "I often use static \"factory\" methods to create objects from database.               class Job {       protected $objDb;       public function __construct($objDb) {         $this->objDb = $objDb;      }           public static function LoadArrayByProjectId($intProjectId, $objDd) {        //some code that loads the jobs        $objJob = new Job($objDb);        $arr[] = $objJob;        //end of loop        return $arr;      }           public static function LoadArrayByUserId($intUserId, $objDb) {        //similar code      }      } So I try to use Dependency Injection by passing into the constructor the $objDb. The problem is the $objDb param in the static functions. It's very annoying to pass the param around. How do you handle this case? Are there better solutions?"}
{"_id": "101634", "title": "What's it like to work in a large programming team?", "text": "I've always felt lucky to work in a small programming team. I think the most I've worked with is 11 programmers. What is it like working on a project with hundreds of developers? Thousands? What does scale and what doesn't? EDIT: Thanks for all the responses! There seem to be very few positives:   * possible to work on mega-large codebases   * better internal career development   * employee protection against abusive management (this is more -ve on small than +ve on large) Is there any other benefit to large teams?"}
{"_id": "245176", "title": "Subscript/assignment binary operator in C++", "text": "I was designing a kind of a parser when I thought that it would be nice to have an operator overload like this: `operator[]=(subscipt_type s, rvalue_type val)`. For example we have a class:               //collection of Foos     class FooCollection     {     public:              //assume class Foo is defined         Foo& operator[]=(int i, const Foo& val);         //.....     };      And we need to assign a subscripted value:               Foo value;     FooCollection c;     c[42] = value;      then the last line of this code will resolve into               c.operator[]=(42,value);      The advantage of this operator in comparison to existing `Foo& operator[](int i)` is that we know the rvalue of assignment during the subscripting, so we can do something that could be unwished in ordinary `operator=`. For example, I tried to design a parse tree consisting of polymorphic nodes with minimal interface. This is the basic node class, all other node types are inherited from it:               class AnyNode     {     public:         virtual AnyNode& operator=(const AnyNode& op)         {             //Takes almost no actions here.             //Overloaded in each subclass to take some sensible actions         }              virtual AnyNode& operator[](int i)         {             //Returns special null value of AnyNode type.         }     };      The AnyNode class is not pure virtual, so it's possible to construct `AnyNode` objects. One of the syntax elements that I try to parse is a python-like list, which may contain heterogenous values and may be subscripted with an integer. A class for it:               class ArrayNode : public AnyNode     {     public:          AnyNode& operator[](int i)         {             //Returns a reference to i-th element         }     };      So what will happen when we try to assign something to the array cell, which was not assigned before and it's concrete type was not defined? `AnyNode& operator=(const AnyNode& op)` from `class AnyNode` will be called and no actions will be taken. But I want to know the `AnyNode&` rvalue just after subscripting, so that it could be possible to deduce it's concrete type with RTTI and take some sensible actions. Subscript/assignment operator could look like this:               AnyNode& operator[]=(int i, const AnyNode& val)     {         //AnyNode::getType() is provided and it returns a value of the predefined enum.         //stor is an underlying container that holds pointers to AnyNode,          //assume it's possible to reference stor[i].         //NodeNumber is another subclass of AnyNode.         switch(val->getType())         {         case nodetypeNumber:             stor[i] = new NodeNumber();//Also we may need to delete stor[i] before new allocation.             //Process further specific initialization of stor[i].             break;         //................         }         //Or we could use dynamic_cast instead of switch(val->getType())     }      I suppose, such kind of subscipt/assignment operator can be easily and consistently built into language. Moreover, it delimits the pieces of code which execute when the subscripted expression is an lvalue and when it's an rvalue: with it the usual subscript operator should be called only when the subscription is rvalue. Of course, if the proposed operator is not defined, but a `operator[]` is defined, the code should execute in a usual way. So my questions are: what pitfalls could I miss about this operator and why does it not included into the language? Can it break language consistency in any way or can it bring up any ambiguity into the language?"}
{"_id": "196781", "title": "Versioning an API", "text": "I'm starting a side project, the first stage will be a building a web application with MVC, in later stages we will be adding clients for mobile platforms. My thought was to create one API that all of the applications (web and mobile) go through to get/save data. Because these different platforms will be on different release cycles I'll need a way for, say IPhone, to work with one version of the API while the website is using an updated version. What's the best way to do that? My ideas so far are:   * Create a separate project to host the MVC Web API and host that in a subdomain or in a subfolder of the root site. Then either reference the DLL directly or reference it through the web (seems like an unnecessary http call)   * House the API within the MVC project that will be the website and try to version it based on url in there. I did some quick testing with that this morning and wasn't able to get it to work, it always resided at \\api (I couldn't get it to reside at \\api_v2)"}
{"_id": "115482", "title": "Is it true that websites don't need to use an event driven framework given the stateless nature of the web?", "text": "I feel like it's critical to use an event driven architecture with a lot of application types that aren't web sites. However, when coding web sites(which are stateless at the most basic level) it seems like it isn't really necessary to use an event driven architecture. Is this true? Do most web frameworks not use events to communicate between objects?"}
{"_id": "213137", "title": "Entity Framework and distributed Systems", "text": "I need some help or maybe only a hint for the right direction. I've got a system that is separated into two applications. An existing VB.NET desktop client using Entity Framework 5 with code first approach and an ASP.NET Web Api client in C# that will be re-factored. It should be possible to deliver OData. The system and the datamodel is still evolving and so migrations will happen in undefined intervals. I'm struggling how to manage my database access on the web api system. My favoured approach would be use Entity Framework on both systems but I'm running into trouble while creating new migrations. Two solutions I've thought about: Shared Data Access dll The first idea was to separate the data access layer into a separate project and reference from each of the systems. The context would be the same as long as the dll is up to date in each system. This way both soulutions would be able to make a migration. The main problem is that it is much more complicated to update a web api system than it is with the client Click Once Update Solution and not every migration is important for the web api. This would cause more update trouble and out of sync libraries Database First on Web Api The second idea was just to use the database first approach an on the web api side. But it seems that all annotations will be lost by each model update. Other solutions with stored procedures have been discarded because of missing OData support and maintainability. Has anyone ran into similar conflicts or has any advice oon how such a problem can be solved!"}
{"_id": "196785", "title": "Can I charge for closed source J2EE .ear module relying on GPLed EJBs?", "text": "A customer asked me to add a (fairly generic monitoring and notifications) functionality to the in-house solution he has assembled on top of JBoss and couple of GPL-licensed components (downloadable from the open source vendor as EARs). I am using JMS and JMX to communicate with these components. Do I have to provide the source and redistribution rights to my customer to satisfy GPL restrictions? In other words, does configurable code that uses JMX and JMS mechanisms constitutes a derivative work? I would actually prefer to open source my code, but part of it relies on a patented third party logic that is unwilling to GPL it, but would gladly supply it to this customer. I am not asking for a legal advice, just for the opinion in terms of best practices / fair use."}
{"_id": "124601", "title": "How can I inspire engineers to positively conduct telephone interviews", "text": "Our (mid-size) company (with 150 employees) has witnessed considerable growth since last year, and as a result we have been conducting lots of interviews to hire more and more engineers to bring new projects in motion. To begin with, following is our interview process   1. Screening resume by HR   2. Telephone technical interview (conducted by senior engg)   3. Final technical + HR interview (conducted by team-lead/PM) After some analysis we found that telephone interviews are not really becoming effective, due to which we are not able to find good number of engineers in final interview. My analysis revealed that engineers don't consider interviewing as important/serious activity, since it's internal and non- billable. Also I see that engineers don't find it really prestigious to carry a label of \"interviewer\" (at-least telephone interviewer). We do have set of good experienced engineers in company who can take any interview very effectively, but since number of telephonic interviews is large, this pool is not sufficient. Hence we try to use other engineers as well. What can be done to inspire engineers to conduct telephone interviews seriously and positively (not treating this as mundane job)? * * * [Update-2011/12/28] Thanks for sharing your valuable opinions. It really helped me to look at problem from variety of different angles. Alongside I was discussing issues with few colleagues as well and I personally feel that there is no single silver bullet for such issue. I will need to think recruitment process as a whole unit and plan to improve different areas/stages in it."}
{"_id": "124603", "title": "Correct For Loop Design", "text": "What is the correct design for a `for` loop? Felix currently uses               if len a > 0 do       for var i in 0 upto len a - 1 do          println a.[i];        done     done      which is inclusive of the upper bound. This is necessary to support the full range of values of a typical integer type. However the for loop shown does not support zero length arrays, hence the special test, nor will the subtraction of 1 work convincingly if the length of the array is equal to the number of integers. (I say convincingly because it may be that 0 - 1 = maxval: this is true in C for unsigned int, but are you sure it is true for unsigned char without thinking carefully about integral promotions?) The actual implementation of the for loop by my compiler does correctly handle 0 but this requires two tests to implement the loop:               continue:       if not (i <= bound) goto break       body       if i == bound goto break       ++i       goto continue     break:      Throw in the hand coded zero check in the array example and three tests are needed. If the loop were exclusive it would handle zero properly, avoiding the special test, but there'd be no way to express the upper bound of an array with maximum size. Note the C way of doing this:               for(i=0; predicate(i); increment(i))      has the same problem. The predicate is tested after the increment, but the terminating increment is not universally valid! There is a general argument that a simple exclusive loop is enough: promote the index to a large type to prevent overflow, and assume no one will ever loop to the maximum value of this type.. but I'm not entirely convinced: if you promoted to C's size_t and looped from the second largest value to the largest you'd get an infinite loop!"}
{"_id": "74453", "title": "Distributed Version-Control for Small Projects", "text": "When it comes to very small projects (just a few devs), how effective are distributed version-control systems (e.g., git) compared to systems with a central repository? I like the idea of having a central repository because it seems much more elegant and organized. However, after watching Linus Torvalds's Google Talk, I have my doubts. Are all those benefits really noticeable with such a small project, though?"}
{"_id": "42030", "title": "Does learning to develop for iOS create a lock-in?", "text": "If I begin my career (first job) with developing on the iOS platform, does that lock me in into iOS and Mac OS X development only? By locking me in I mean will that create barriers for me to switch technologies as I would be mainly working with Objective-C. If yes, does that make my career choices limited? I'm interested in comparing this with Android development, which if pursued will leave me with Java skills (correct me if I'm wrong) which I can use elsewhere."}
{"_id": "42036", "title": "Should I use a Class or Dictionary to Store Form Values", "text": "I am working on a C# .NET Application, where I have a Form with lots of controls. I need to perform computations depending on the values of the controls. Therefore, I need to pass the Form values to a function and inside that function, several helper functions will be called depending on the Control element. Now, I can think of two ways to pass all the Form values: i) Save everything in a Dictionary and pass the Dictionary to the function or ii) Have a class with attributes that corresponds to each of the Form element. Which of these two approaches , or any other, is better?"}
{"_id": "128921", "title": "UI Developer Interview Question", "text": "I keep getting the following question in interviews; and judging from the reactions I've gotten, I'm not giving the best answer. \"What methodology do you use for developing user interfaces?\" Which seems like a rather broad question. Besides dividing work between markup, stylesheets, and javascript (control logic), what are the best practices? What am I missing in this question? Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "201962", "title": "Can I fork Linux source code, change it around to suit my desires, and claim it as my own kernel without doing any of the originating work?", "text": "Is it acceptable form to take Linux kernel source from any version, change it, claim it is mine, and then distribute it for monetary gain? In such a case open-source software is entitled to a sort of \"grab, change, sell\" mechanism in which anyone can just tinker with something to look different from the original source, make it work their way, and sell it as if they made it entirely themselves. Isn't that illegal?"}
{"_id": "201968", "title": "When writing an interpreter, how should the type inference algorithm change the parsed AST? Should it?", "text": "_When writing an interpreter, how should the type inference algorithm chance the parsed AST? Should it?_ Or parsing and inference are done necessarily simultaneously? I have implemented a strongly typed functional language interpreter, in which each function can be declared only one time (i.e., with no signature variants). As soon as the non-typed implementation parser was concluded and working, I have written the type inference algorithm, feeded by the parser's resulting AST. Hindley- _Damas_ -Milner is working like a charm, but the program use it and if the type checking passes, it just forgets about the matter and pass the AST to the interpreter. To the moment, the \"target language\" (i.e., the one in which the interpreter is written) have satisfied the interpreter type needs, but **I am wondering if this approach is usual: to discard all the type inference fruits after an \"ok\" result.** Also, would writing a compiler instead of an interpreter make any difference is this sense?"}
{"_id": "121389", "title": "Eloqua API Full Code Example in JAVA", "text": "**Is there anyone out there who has mastered to retrieve some data programmatically from Eloqua?** First of all, I'm more or less a newbie, as far as JAVA. I can follow tutorials, take directions and will Google till my fingers bleed. I understand the basics and am slightly familiar with OOP. My main problem is that I have a Friday deadline (and tomorrow is Thanksgiving). At any rate, all the Eloqua code snippets (that I've been able to find) illustrate one aspect of a specific issue, and that's it. In my case, **I would greatly appreciate a JAVA project of some sort** , with all the necessary files to do web services (WSDL, SOAP and perhaps WSIT) and the main class and all that included. No, I don't want you to do my work for me! Just give me enough to find my way around, enter the information I need to retrieve and all that. I'll take it from there. Any pointers, links or suggestions?"}
{"_id": "218533", "title": "What's up with the Class::get(id) idiom in PHP", "text": "I am a new PHP developer (coming from .NET). The experienced php dev that I work with said that calling a static get method on a PHP class with an ID as a parameter is common in PHP. Is there a name for this idiom? Is there a reason why developers do this? Can someone point to a link to an example class? I would like to understand more of what he is saying. He is talking about code like this I think, to pull car #1 from the database:               $car = Car::get(1)"}
{"_id": "6352", "title": "Is Java \"dead in the water\" as a consequence of Oracle buying Sun and subsequently suing Google", "text": "Google has led many useful Java features (guava, gson); now that Oracle has purchased Sun, will it affect its future enhancements and utilization as a development language? What exactly, or even approximately, are the legal ramifications? I thought Java was open source and would therefore remain unaffected ... ? Should Google just buy Oracle to get rid of the whole mess, that would be cool wouldn't it ? Do you think this is the beginning of the end for Java as a widely used language ? Its continued success as an open source/free technology is now doubtful?"}
{"_id": "80054", "title": "General rules for writing a X compiler to Z in Y", "text": "Suppose X is the input language, Z is the output language, then f is the compiler, which is written in language Y.               f = X -> Z      Since f is only a program, I think Y can be any language, right? So we can have compilers f1, f2, each written in Y1, Y2.               f1 = f Y1         f2 = f Y2          g = Z -> M     h = g . f    # We get a compiler X -> M      Take cpython compiler for example, X is Python, Z is the Python VM code, Y is C.               cpython = Python -> PythonVMCode C     interpreter = PythonVMCode -> Nothing     interpreter2 = PythonVMCode -> MachineCode      Python sources are compiled to the Python VM code, the .pyc files, then interpreted by the interpreter. Looks like it's possible there exists a compiler which can directly do Python -> MachineCode, though much hard to implement:                  hardpython = interpreter2 . cpython       We can also write another compiler do the work Python -> PythonVMCode, in another language, say Python itself.               mypython = Python -> PythonVMCode Python     mypython2 = Python -> PythonVMCode Ruby      Now, here is the complicated example PyPy. I'm just a newbie of PyPy, correct me if I'm wrong: PyPy doc http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/architecture.html#pypy-the-translation- framework > Our goal is to provide a possible solution to the problem of language > implementers: having to write l * o * p interpreters for l dynamic languages > and p platforms with o crucial design decisions. We can think l is X, p is Y. There exists a program which translates all RPython programs to C:                rpython_compiler = RPython -> C  Python           pypy = Python -> Nothing RPython           translate = compile the program pypy written in RPython using rpython_compiler           py2rpy = Python -> RPython  Python      py2c = Python -> C Python       py2c = rpython_compiler . py2rpy      RPython programs are just like VM instructions, rpython_compiler is the VM. **q1.** pypy is the interpreter, a RPython program which can interpret Python code, there is no output language, so we can't consider it as a compiler, right? Added:   * I just found that even if after the translating, pypy is still a interpreter, only this time written in C.   * If we look deep into the interpreter pypy, I believe there must exist some kind of compiler, which compiles the Python sources to some AST, then execute like this:               compiler_inside_pypy = Python -> AST_or_so      **q2.** Can compiler py2rpy exist, transforming all Python programs to RPython? In which language it's written is irrelevant. If yes, we get another compiler py2c. What's the difference between pypy and py2rpy in nature? Is py2rpy much harder to write than pypy? **q3.** Is there some general rules or theory available about this? More compilers:               gcc_c = C -> asm? C  # not sure, gimple or rtl?     g++ =   C++ -> asm? C     clang = C -> LLVM_IR  C++     jython = Python -> JVMCode java     ironpython = Python -> CLI C#      **q4.** Given f = X -> Z, a program P written in X. When we want to speed up P, what can we do? Possbile ways:   * rewrite P in more efficient algorithm   * rewrite f to generate better Z   * if Z is interpreted, write a better Z interpreter (PyPy is at here?)   * speed up programs written in Z recursively   * get a better machine ps. This question is not about the tech stuffs of how to write a compiler, but the feasibility and complexity of write a certain kind compiler."}
{"_id": "236124", "title": "The optimal recipe problem", "text": "Suppose I have a list of Ingredients In My Fridge which are going off soon, and a list of Recipes which use up various Ingredients. (Some of which I don't currently have.) Is there an algorithm which produces the optimal set of Recipes, where an optimal set maximises the number of Ingredients In My Fridge used up and minimises the number of Ingredients I Have To Buy From The Store? (Alternate formulation: In a card game, I can combine some Cards according to various Rules; I can also obtain new Cards in various ways. How do I find the best set of Rules to use up the most Cards I have for the minimum effort in obtaining new Cards?)"}
{"_id": "236125", "title": "Gevent - Make blocking calls non-blocking", "text": "I have the blocking code shown below. Is calling `monkey.patch_all()` enough/optimal to make it non-blocking? Does Gevent handle iterations like these?               # front page     def front_page():         database = db.posts.find() # find all items in posts collection              return render_template(                                'index.html',                                 database=database                               )               # single post     def single_post(slug):         post = [v for k,v                      in db.posts.find_one(                                          {'slug': slug}                                         ).iteritems()                ] # iterate over found items and store it as post              return render_template(                                'post.html',                                 title=post[3],                                 body=post[0],                                 slug=post[2]                               ) # extract the title, slug and body"}
{"_id": "236129", "title": "Can this argument be enough?", "text": "We have two C++ classes named `Important` and `Small` The class `Small` use a few methods and attributes from the class `Important`, but not all. Since our application is performance critical, instead of copying all attributes (possibly pointers) of `Important` that are needed by `Small` and redefine the few methods in `Small`, we decided to just let `Small` hold a pointer on `Important`. Can performance justify such a design choice?"}
{"_id": "70229", "title": "GRE CS Subject Test: Can you recommend the top books to read?", "text": "I am a long time professional C programmer planning to get admitted for a Masters degree in Computer Science. The University requires that I submit GRE CS subject test scores. I'm planning to sit for it this coming October, and have until then to prepare for it. I do not have a CS undergraduate degree, so suggestions of reading my undergraduate texts wouldn't be helpful. Which books would you recommend for me to purchase and read that will cover maximum percentage of the test topics? The test breakdown includes: > **I. SOFTWARE SYSTEMS AND METHODOLOGY \u2014 40%** > > A. Data organization > > Data types > > Data structures and implementation techniques > > B. Program control and structure > > Iteration and recursion > > Procedures, functions, methods and exception handlers > > Concurrency, communication and synchronization > > C. Programming languages and notation > > Constructs for data organization and program control > > Scope, binding and parameter passing > > Expression evaluation > > D. Software engineering > > Formal specifications and assertions > > Verification techniques > > Software development models, patterns and tools > > E. Systems > > Compilers, interpreters and run-time systems > > Operating systems, including resource management and protection/security > > Networking, Internet and distributed systems > > Databases > > System analysis and development tools > > **II. COMPUTER ORGANIZATION AND ARCHITECTURE \u2014 15%** > > A. Digital logic design > > Implementation of combinational and sequential circuits > > Optimization and analysis > > B. Processors and control units > > Instruction sets > > Computer arithmetic and number representation > > Register and ALU organization > > Data paths and control sequencing > > C. Memories and their hierarchies > > Performance, implementation and management > > Cache, main and secondary storage > > Virtual memory, paging and segmentation > > D. Networking and communications > > Interconnect structures (e.g., buses, switches, routers) > > I/O systems and protocols > > Synchronization > > E. High-performance architectures > > Pipelining superscalar and out-of-order execution processors > > Parallel and distributed architectures > > **III. THEORY AND MATHEMATICAL BACKGROUND \u2014 40%** > > A. Algorithms and complexity > > Exact and asymptotic analysis of specific algorithms > > Algorithmic design techniques (e.g., greedy, dynamic programming, divide and > conquer) > > Upper and lower bounds on the complexity of specific problems > > Computational complexity, including NP-completeness > > B. Automata and language theory > > Models of computation (finite automata, Turing machines) > > Formal languages and grammars (regular and context-free) > > Decidability > > C. Discrete structures > > Mathematical logic > > Elementary combinatorics and graph theory > > Discrete probability, recurrence relations and number theory > > **IV. OTHER TOPICS \u2014 5%** > > Example areas include numerical analysis, artificial intelligence, computer > graphics, cryptography, security and social issues."}
{"_id": "10166", "title": "Introducing \"20% time\" at a workplace", "text": "20% time it's the culture of an employer allowing it's employees to spend 20% of their time working on projects that they find interesting - it may be inventing a new app, or improving an existing process, etc. Some people _may_ know this as skunk work, however that term may not mean anything (or something entirely different) to you. There are many documented cases of great products being born out of 20%/skunk work at a company. It seems like a win/win situation; the company potentially gain a great new product or application, and the developer has the opportunity to flex his/her creative muscles and innovate. I tried on numerous occasions to introduce some form of 20%/Skunk working at my previous employer with no success. How can I better justify it to management? What's the \"right\" way to approach this kind of work arrangement?"}
{"_id": "247245", "title": "A vector of pointers to different derived classes of the same base class", "text": "I am writing a game in C++ which has different enemy types. I have defined a base **_Enemy_** class and I also have derived classes **_enemy1_** , **_enemy2_** etc. Now for updating these enemies in each iteration of the game, I want to have an array: **_EnemyArray_** with its elements pointing to the existing enemies so that I can make sure to update them all with their own version of **_update()_** , etc. One way of doing this, would be to define separate arrays for each enemy type and that would be a clean way of solving the problem. However, I was wondering if the fact that these enemy classes are all derived from the same base class makes it possible to somehow have my EnemyArray as an array of **_Enemy_** 's and do some modifications later."}
{"_id": "72093", "title": "What is a Neural Network in simple words", "text": "Can you please explain neural networks in _simple words_ with an example?"}
{"_id": "255010", "title": "Single responsibility: how does this code cause problems?", "text": "Given the following interface               interface Modem {         public void Dial(string pno);         public void Hangup();         public void Send(char c);         public char Recv();     }      Uncle Bob writes > However, there are two responsibilities being shown here. The first > responsibility is connection management. The second is data communication. > > ... > > Should these two responsibilities be separated? That depends upon how the > application is changing. If the application changes in ways that affect the > _signature of the connection_ functions, then the design will smell of > Rigidity because **the classes that call _send_ and _read_ will have to be > recompiled and redeployed more often than we like**. Can anyone explain to me how is the highlighted statement true? Why would I have to recompile code that calls the sending/receiving methods if the connection signature changes? I could have injected a ready made connection to the code using it."}
{"_id": "255015", "title": "Mobile App Development-Architecture/Platform: Main performance concern: device/UI responsiveness", "text": "I am currently investigating different alternatives for building a mobile instant messaging application for iOS and Android, using an XMPP server (probably ejabberd) as the back-end. Main requirements are a nice UI and of course good performance on most devices. I have identified three different alternatives, two of which include using the Marmalade SDK Option A): Use Marmalade C++, creating the UI with Marmalade Libraries such as IwNUI/INUI. In this option, the UI is created in C++ code. My assumption is that this should be good in performance, however I am not sure how easy it is to achieve a nice, custom UI that has a good/modern feel to it, such as other high-quality apps. Another advantage: This would target iOS/Android with one code base. Option B): Also Marmalade, using the C++ s3eWebView api to load local web pages packaged in the application package. UI would be designed in these web pages using HTML/CSS/JavaScript. For the application logic, JavaScript or C++ can be used, as there is a JavaScript Bridge (http://docs.madewithmarmalade.com/display/MD/The+Javascript+interface) to communicate between C++ and JavaScript code. Would also target iOS/Android in one go. Option C): Non-Marmalade: Go with two code bases. Use Objective-C (i.e. \"standard way\") for iOS, and Google Android SDK for Android. Build the app twice. I am currently leaning towards Option B, as this would allow for use of one code base, and leverage existing HTML5/CSS/JavaScript technologies (nice especially for UI), together with the ability to use C++. However, my concern is whether device/UI responsiveness will be acceptable with this. I have run some preliminary tests for simple things such as loading CSS3 dropdown menus into an s3eWebView via C++, and this seems fairly responsive (i.e. menu drops down quickly and smoothly)."}
{"_id": "219217", "title": "How deterministic are SessionIDs from SHA'd GUIDs?", "text": "Assume I'm using the following code to generate pseudo-random sessionID's:               sessionID = SHA-512(GENERATE-GUID())      The GUIDs are pretty deterministic, i.e. I see lots of GUIDs with a lot of the same hexadecimals. My simple question is: How deterministic are my resulting sessionID's? The algorithms for SHA are supposed to create very different hashes even if a small number of bits are different due to its cascading effect, so how easily could you \"guess\" (within reasonable time) another sessionID from the resulting hashes?"}
{"_id": "255018", "title": "Is it possible to modify a native executable and change (dynamic) library it depends on?", "text": "Say I compile a simple application called `myproggy` that depends on the `libfoo` dynamic library. Assuming I have another dynamic library `libbaz` that implements absolutely the same interface (in other words it has definitions of the same functions as libfoo), is it possible to modify the `myproggy` to depend upon `libbaz` without the need for rebuild? I can easily do this in the case when I can dynamically load the library, but what if I can't, and I also can't re-compile the library? I am also aware of the security issues related to this."}
{"_id": "219213", "title": "How should this relationship be structured in a relational database?", "text": "In a recent project I was asked to implement an events system. An `Event` had to have a `Location` which was originally specced out as simply a physical location with some optional extra notes. Then the spec changed (as they have a habit of doing) and we needed to have \"online\" events too. These would not have a physical address but would still need notes on how to attend (e.g. the URL, joining instructions). We decided to adapt the existing Location table by adding an `IsOnline` field and it wound up looking like this:               +-----------------+     +---------------+     |      Event      |     |    Location   |     +-----------------+     +---------------+     | Id              |  .--+ Id            |     | Name            |  |  | Name          |     | Summary         |  |  | Address       |     | Date            |  |  | Postcode      |     | Capacity        |  |  | IsOnline      |     | LocationId      +--'  | Notes         |     +-----------------+     +---------------+      An example of a physical and an online entry in the Location table look like this:               +----+----------------+--------------------------------------+----------+----------+---------------------------------------+     | Id |      Name      |               Address                | Postcode | IsOnline |                 Notes                 |     +----+----------------+--------------------------------------+----------+----------+---------------------------------------+     |  1 | Physical Event | 10 Downing Street, London            | SW1A 2AA |        0 | Ask the policeman to let you in       |     |  2 | Online Event   | http://programmers.stackexchange.com | null     |        1 | You will need a stackexchange account |     +----+----------------+--------------------------------------+----------+----------+---------------------------------------+      It works (currently) for our simple use case but it is clearly a bit of a hack and it got me thinking - what would be the correct, normalized way to model this kind of relationship (Where an entity must have an A or a B but not both)?"}
{"_id": "45261", "title": "If I were to claim I knew C++, what libraries would you expect me to know?", "text": "I'm unsure as to the definition of knowing a programming language, so I'm picking C++ as an example. How much does it take to someone to be qualified as knowing C++?   * Should they just know the basic syntax?   * Template and generic-programming?   * Compiler flags and their purposes (Wall, the difference between O1, O2 and O3)?   * STL?   * Garbage collection strategies?   * Boost?   * Common libraries like zlib, curl, and libxml2?"}
{"_id": "184865", "title": "Integrated PowerShell Console Window", "text": "I would like to have a tab open for PowerShell inside of my VS2012. There are other consoles that I have access to, such as \"Command Window\" and \"Package Manager Console\" Is there any way to get a Powershell console window open? I've attached an image that shows where I would like the PS window.![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zgwn8.png) http://i.imgur.com/kDs9Yhv.png"}
{"_id": "141073", "title": "Simple C: How do I scan this information in properly?", "text": "OK this is a simple question but for some reason I just can't get it right. I have to scan from a file hundreds of lines of code and store it in a array (which I can normally do a ok job with) however At one point the code will specify a number that then corresponds to the next batch of chars ints and floats going into various arrays. As I know I am not describing this correctly here is a example. one line of the file I am reading will contain something close to this. > 0221 T 2 S P 850 150 0.90 0.75 500 24 2 2012 G A 7 9600.00 0.1 1000 > Name_of_place > > 0104 L 1 F 400 1.00 0.75 500 24 2 2012 G A 7 9600.00 0.1 1000 Ballroom the problem I am having is This part here > 0221 T **2 S P 850 150** 0.90 0.75 500 24 2 2012 G A 7 9600.00 0.1 1000 > Name_of_place > > 0104 L **1 F 400** 1.00 0.75 500 24 2 2012 G A 7 9600.00 0.1 1000 Ballroom The rest after this is Generally the exact same however at this point the number at the front descides all the values that are going in. I am almost completely lost on how to write a way that can scan this and store the data into arrays correctly"}
{"_id": "184862", "title": "How to name a variable when the word is both a noun and a verb", "text": "I have run into a corner-case problem with the general guidance of:   * nouns for variables   * verbs for functions Specifically, I have a case where the word is ambiguous - it can be either a verb **_or_** a noun. And in some cases when we're discussing the application, it will be used _both_ ways in the same sentence. My intent is to make sure the program will remain readable to future developers as well as myself when I return to sections of code months later. One of the examples is with a `battery`. A `battery` has a `charge` and you can also `charge()` a battery. I think that having both `Battery.Charge` and `Battery.Charge(value)` will be confusing to future developers. My current solution is to simply pick a different word for one or both of those cases (the variable and the function). My problem with that approach is the `Battery` object's variable and function for `charge` won't align with design discussions involving the `Battery`. **My question is if there is another / better way to handle this conflict in naming convention?** * * * Some additional reading on the subject. None really addressed the particular of my question.   * Meaningful concise method naming guidelines   * Naming conventions for variables   * The selected answer from What naming guidelines do you follow?"}
{"_id": "184861", "title": "Custom maven mojo and tools", "text": "I'm writing maven plugin which depends on several java tools. I'm quite happy with it and want to share it with the community. I'm interested in correct way to handle dependency to these tools:   1. Use usual dependency way - put to central repository. But I'm not owner of these tools and I'm not going to maintain them. But I could start discussion with author   2. As I saw like several other plugins require for user to download these tools and provide path to them through configuration. But they are java tools, as well this is much less convenient for the end users I'm asking community what would be the best and \"right\" in maven way to handle this."}
{"_id": "184860", "title": "RESTful Design: Multiple Relationships Between the Same 2 Entities", "text": "I am in the process of designing RESTful web services and got stuck at one point. The design is very simple with 3 entities:               - Project     - Status     - Employee      The part I am having trouble with is capturing the relationships:               - A project has a current status (1 to 1 between Project and Status).     - A project has multiple 'possible subsequent status' (1 to many between Project and Status).      The Visual Studio designer does not allow these two different relationships to be defined between these two entities. I am aware that it is just a modelling tool but at the same time, I am willing to know if this is the right approach. Also, with this design, I am not sure how to access the Status entities using these two relationships.               http://serviceRootURL/Project(2)?$expand=Status // For current status     http://serviceRootURL/Project(2)?$expand=SubsequentStatus // For subsequent status      Is it possible to use arbitrary relationship names with the expand keyword? _(The question probably touches OData a little bit as well since I am trying to make my library OData-compliant.)_"}
{"_id": "10791", "title": "Are there advantages to using a DVCS for a solo developer?", "text": "Right now, I use visual svn on my server, and have ankhsvn/tortoise on my personal machine. It works fine enough, and I don't have to change, but if I can see some benefits of using a DVCS, then I might give it a go. However, if there's no point or difference using it without other people, then I won't bother. So again, I ask, are there any benefits to using a DVCS when you're the only developer?"}
{"_id": "125261", "title": "Getting my feet wet with open source - creating a small project on my own VS contributing to a big one?", "text": "I want to contribute to the open source community, but I've never done it before, and I have some concerns regarding the collaboration process - I am afraid that I will just \"get in the way\" of other developers, and since (I assume) that they are pretty polite guys, they will feel bad about telling me to bug off. I imagine things like adding the feature X in 1.3.0, just to realize that there was actually such thing in 1.1.5, but it was intentionally removed in 1.1.8 because of Y. Being an independent contractor (a freelancer) I work very rarely with other developers, as a team, and I do understand that the software collaboration is a complex area (I've read a couple of books on management of big teams, seems to be a delicate area, at least to me). To my actual question - should I start with something small (that I will create), and wait for other contributors to join it (ones that will know how \"the stuff works\", so I can slowly get my head straight on the collaboration part), or I should try to join a big project, which has a lot of activity in it, so I can see the big picture (but risking to be a pain for them) ?"}
{"_id": "125262", "title": "Should I encourage junior developers to use explicit or implicit typing?", "text": "I am looking to solicit the community's opinion on whether or not it would be advisable to teach junior developers to code with implicit typing (using var) or should I encourage the use of explicit types. This is not really a question about the advantages or disadvantages of implicit typing. Junior developers (at least the ones that I deal with) tend to develop very long lasting coding habits in their first years as professional developers and I am trying to think through the potential downside of starting a developer off with the implicit typing approach. Are there specific scenarios that would warrant the advocacy of explicit typing? What about as part of the discipline of TDD? **And on the issue of ReSharper...** @Eben Geer mentioned ReSharper in his answer. Should we keep the default suggestion to use implicit typing in the inspection templates that our junior developers use?"}
{"_id": "205307", "title": "Feature code + infrastructure code - how to structure the commits / JIRA issues?", "text": "Say that you work on a feature described by a **single JIRA ticket** and during the work, you:   1. Create **feature-specific code** like the GUI or specific use-case behavior.   2. Some of the code was generic so you placed this **infrastructure code** in a shared library. As an example (deliberately simple), say that the ticket is about changing a message somewhere in the application and that the message should contain the current year somewhere in it. So you first amend your PHP code where the message is and also create a helper function `getCurrrentYear()` in your `DateUtils` library. What is the best practice now to store these changes to a source code repository and assign those code changes to JIRA ticket(s)? (Assigning commit to a JIRA ticket means in our case adding a tag to a commit message, for instance _\"Implemented feature #123\"_.) As I see it, there are these main options:   1. Create one commit and assign in to the given JIRA ticket.   2. Create two commits (one for the use-case logic and one for the infrastructure code). Assign both of them to the single JIRA ticket.   3. Assign only the feature-specific commit to the JIRA issue and leave the other unassigned (when viewing the ticket in JIRA, only the first commit will be visible in the \"source code\" tab).   4. Similar to 3 but you have a generic ticket like \"Infrastructure improvements\". Is there a best practice / recommended way? What are some of the benefits and problems of the various possibilities?"}
{"_id": "200612", "title": "Database Design - Optimise Relationships", "text": "I am about to embark on a redesign of an application, one where querying the database is particularly annoying. I intend to redesign the database as much as possible but the data shape cannot change too much. The database has a main table and 10 other tables each representing a record type. The main table has all of the data the record types have in common. Record ID, DateLogged etc. Around 30-40 columns in total. The other tables are all completely different as each record type is very different from another. They all have about 20-30 columns each. The main table has a column called type, which is an int. However nowhere does it reference what record types the type numbers refer to. You can just figure it our by looking at the procedures. The main table has to join with each type table to allow searching. I have added an image representing what I am trying to describe. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FbdZp.png) Is there a better way to create these relationships? I would like to ditch the verbose stored procs used with ADO.NET and move to EF. I need to think of a better way to relating the data so people in the future wont need to work out the relationships by scouring stored procedures for clues."}
{"_id": "200618", "title": "Designing a robust architecture for multiple export types?", "text": "I'm looking for patterns or architectural guidance for an upcoming feature I'm designing. Basically, it's an export feature with multiple export targets, and I'm looking to find a way to make it generic enough where plugging in new export targets don't require a lot of core changes. By export targets, I'm simply referring to different types of output, whether that be PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, RSS, etc. I have a base set of data, which is represented in JSON and XML. This data are used to construct images (using any number or export types [e.g., PNG, JPG, GIF, etc), graphs, textual representations, tables, and more. I'm trying to find a way to abstract all the rendering and layout into some kind of rendering or layout engine that handles the addition of further export targets. Any help/suggestions/resources as to how to approach this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. For a pictorial representation of what I'm trying to achieve. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aAvE9.png)"}
{"_id": "84252", "title": "TDD: What happens before the first unit test?", "text": "I mostly understand the theory of TDD, but I can't figure out how to get started. I sit down to write a unit test for a personal project and realize . . . I have no idea what I am testing. What objects, what functionality, etc. E.g., let's say I want to write an app to help our family manage chore assignments. Here are some questions in my mind: How do I go from this idea to my first test? How much should be decided before I start, and how much do I figure out after I start writing tests? When do I make decisions like whether to store data in a text file or a database? Should I have user acceptance tests before I get started? Should I have the UI designed? Should I have a spec? (I do realize at least some of these example questions are probably in a \"gray area\"). In addition to the title question about getting to the first unit test, could you also give an example of what the first unit test for a project like the sample project might look like?"}
{"_id": "170863", "title": "How to handle multi-processing of libraries which already spawn sub-processes?", "text": "I am having some trouble coming up with a good solution to limit sub-processes in a script which uses a multi-processed library and the script itself is also multi-processed. Both, the library and script are modifiable by us. I believe the question is more about design than actual code, but for what it's worth, it's written in Python. The goal of the library is to hide implementation details of various internet routers. For that reason, the library has a \"Proxy\" factory method which takes the IP of a router as parameter. The factory then probes the device using a set of possible proxies. Usually, there is one proxy which immediately knows that is is able to send commands to this device. All others usually take some time to return (given a timeout). One thought was already to simply query the device for an identifier, and then select the proper proxy using that, but in order to do so, you would already need to know how to query the device. Abstracting this knowledge is one of the main purposes of the library, so that becomes a little bit of a \"circular- requirement\"/deadlock: To connect to a device, you need to know what proxy to use, and to know what proxy to create, you need to connect to a device. So probing the device is - as we can see - the best solution so far, apart from keeping a lookup-table somewhere. The library currently kills all remaining processes once a valid proxy has been found. And yes, there is always only one good proxy per device. Currently there are about 12 proxies. So if one create a proxy instance using the factory, 12 sub-processes are spawned. So far, this has been really useful and worked very well. But recently someone else wanted to use this library to \"broadcast\" a command to all devices. So he took the library, and wrote his own multi-processed script. This obviously spawned `12 * n` processes where `n` is the number of IPs to which he broadcasted. This has given us two problems:   1. The host on which the command was executed slowed down to a near halt.   2. Aborting the script with `CTRL`+`C` ground the system to a total halt. Not even the hardware console responded anymore! This may be due to some Python strangeness which still needs to be investigated. Maybe related to http://bugs.python.org/issue8296 **The big underlying question** , is how to design a library which does multi- processing, so other applications which use this library and want to be multi- processed themselves do not run into system limitations. My first thought was to require a pool to be passed to the library, and execute all tasks in that pool. In that way, the person using the library has control over the usage of system resources. But my gut tells me that there must be a better solution. * * * **Disclaimer:** My experience with multiprocessing is fairly limited. I have implemented a few straightforward which did not require access control to resources. So I have not yet any _practical_ experience with semaphores or mutexes. **p.s.:** In the future, we may have enough information to do this without the probing. But the database which would contain the proper information is not yet operational. Also, the design about multiprocessing a multiprocessed library intrigues me :)"}
{"_id": "170867", "title": "Generic rule parser for RPG board game rules - how to do it?", "text": "I want to build a generic rule parser for pen and paper style RPG systems. A rule can involve usually 1 to N entities 1 to N roles of a dice and calculating values based on multiple attributes of an entity. For example: Player has STR 18, his currently equipped weapon gives him a bonus of +1 STR but a malus of DEX -1. He attacks a monster entity and the game logic now is required to run a set of rules or actions: Player rolls the dice, if he gets for example 8 or more (base attack value he needs to pass is one of his base attributes!) his attack is successfull. The monster then rolls the dice to calculate if the attack goes through it's armor. If yes the damage is taken if not the attack was blocked. Besides simple math rules can also have constraints like applying only to a certain class of user (warrior vs wizard for example) or any other attribute. So this is not just limited to mathematical operations. If you're familiar with RPG systems like Dungeon and Dragons you'll know what I'm up to. My issue is now that I have no clue how to exactly build this the best possible way. I want people to be able to set up any kind of rule and later simply do an action like selecting a player and a monster and run an action (set of rules like an attack). I'm asking less for help with the database side of things but more about how to come up with a structure and a parser for it to keep my rules flexible. The language of choice for this is php by the way. **Edit I:** Let me refine my goal: I want to create a user friendly interface (that does not require somebody to learn a programming language) to build more or less complex game rules. The simple reason: Personal use to not need to remember all the rules all the time, we simply do not play that often and it's a stopper to look them up each time. Also: Looks like a fun task to do and learn something. :) **What I've tried so far:** Just thinking about a concept instead of wasting time building a wrong architecture. So far I have the idea to allow a user to create as many attributes as they want and then assign as many attributes as they want to any kind of entity. An entity can be a player, a monster, an item, anything. Now when calculating something the data is made available to the rule parser so that the rule parser should be able to do things like if Player.base_attack + dice(1x6) > Monster.armor_check then Monster.health - 1; The question here is about how to create that parser. **Edit II:** Here is an example of pretty basic value but to calculate it properly there are lots of different things and variables to take into account: > Base Attack Bonus (Term) Your base attack bonus (commonly referred to as BAB > by the d20 community) is an attack roll bonus derived from character class > and level. Base attack bonuses increase at different rates for different > character classes. A character gains a second attack per round when his base > attack bonus reaches +6, a third with a base attack bonus of +11 or higher, > and a fourth with a base attack bonus of +16 or higher. Base attack bonuses > gained from different classes, such as for a multiclass character, stack. A > character\u2019s base attack bonus does not grant any more attacks after reaching > +16, cannot be less than +0, and does not increase due to class levels after > character level reaches 20th. A minimum base attack bonus is required for > certain feats. You can read it here http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Base_Attack_Bonus_(Term) including the links to classes and feats which have again their own rules to calculate the values that are required for the base attack. I began to think that keeping it as generic as possible will also make it pretty hard to get a good rule parser done."}
{"_id": "84259", "title": "how to patent software", "text": "I am interested in patenting a piece of software that I have created with a group of people. I live in europe. I have no idea how to go about it, but I have multiple users tell me that I should have it patented for safety. So I was wondering where do I start? There are so many links online giving me a whole load of information. I was just hoping for a more straight forward answer. If more info needed, please let me know, happy to share."}
{"_id": "164509", "title": "How are operators organized in memory", "text": "How are operators organized/saved in the memory in context of a programming language. Are they procedures/functions saved somewhere and compilers just manipulate things to call these procs whenever the operators are used in the program?"}
{"_id": "237293", "title": "How Byte loading/storing is implemented By the CPU?", "text": "I know that in 32bit machine, cpu read from memory 32bits at a time. since the registers in this case is 32bit in size too, I can understand how this works. What I don't understand is how the cpu implement load instructions of 1 byte. does it load the whole word where the single byte is located to the register, then perform some kind of \"byte shifting\", or does the cpu can load a single byte, in this case when does the byte masking happen, is it until the byte got loaded in the register, or it happen when byte is send through the data bus ? P.S. The cpu Im using is MIPS, the instructions Im talking about are: lb or lbu"}
{"_id": "237295", "title": "Would form keys reduce the amount of spam we receive?", "text": "I work for a company that has an online store, and we constantly have to deal with a lot of spam product reviews, and bogus customer accounts. These are all created by automated systems and are more of a nuisance than anything. What I am thinking of (in lieu of captcha, which can be broken) is adding a sort of form key solution to all relevant forms. I know for certain some of the spammers are using XRumer, and I know they seldom request a page before sending us the form data (Is this the definition of CSRF?) so I would think that tying a key to each requested form would at least stem the tide. I also know the spammers are lazy and don't check their work, or they would see that we have never posted a spam review, and they have never gained any revenue from our site. Would this succeed in significantly reducing the volume of spam product reviews and customer account creations we are seeing? EDIT: To clarify what I mean by \"Form Keys\": I am referring to creating a unique identifier (or \"key\") that will be used as an invisible, static form field. This key will also be stored either in the database (relative to the user session) or in a cookie variable. When the form's target gets a request, the key must be validated for the form's data to be processed. Those pesky bots won't have the key because they don't load the javascript that generates the form (they just send a blind request to the target) and even if they did load the javascript once, they'd only have one valid key, and I'm not sure they even use cookies."}
{"_id": "237294", "title": "Is it better to pass the whole object or use a setter?", "text": "Here is my initial code that I would like to modify by using strategy design pattern.               class Bar     {       int a;       int b;       ...     }          Class Foo     {       Bar *bar;            bool action1(){          // this function does a lot of work that only uses \"bar.a\"       }       bool action2(){          // this function does also a lot of work that only uses \"bar.a\"       }       void command(){         ...         Bar bar2 = new Bar();          bar = bar2; // this function modifies the attribute bar.         ...       }            ...     }      I am trying to separate the code of both action1 and action2 from the class Foo by creating a strategy object that will implement those actions. I don't know which of those implementations is better. First Solution:               class ActionStrategy {       Bar *bar;            bool action1();       bool action2();     }          Class Foo     {       Bar *bar;       ActionStrategy strategy            bool action1(){          strategy.action1();       }       bool action2(){          strategy.action2();       }       void command(){         ...         Bar bar2 = new Bar();          bar = bar2; // this function modifies the attribute bar.         ...       }            ...     }      Second Solution:               class ActionStrategy {       int a;            bool action1();       bool action2();     }          Class Foo     {       Bar *bar;       ActionStrategy strategy            bool action1(){          strategy.action1();       }       bool action2(){          strategy.action2();       }       void command(){         ...         Bar bar2 = new Bar();          setBar(bar2); // this function modifies the attribute bar.         ...       }            void setBar(Bar* target) {         bar = target;         strategy.a = target->a;       }            ...     }"}
{"_id": "237299", "title": "UML class diagram: how to annotate observer-subject relationship?", "text": "How can I annotate in a UML class diagram that an instance of ClassA is registered as an observer of an instance of ClassB? (Both implement the appropriate interfaces). This doesn't really belong in a class diagram, because they are static, but if this is something that is important to the design - how can you annotate it in this type of diagram? Edit: To clarify: I know how to annotate the Observer pattern in UML. My question is more specific. ClassA being registered as an observer to ClassB is important for the design, however I'm not sure if an association relationship between the two classes is appropriate, since **ClassA and ClassB don't know about each other. They're totally decoupled, and only connected through the Observer pattern**."}
{"_id": "179501", "title": "Which are the fundamental stack manipulation operations?", "text": "I'm creating a stack oriented virtual machine, and so I started learning Forth for a general understanding about how it would work. Then I shortlisted the essential stack manipulation operations I would need to implement in my virtual machine:               drop ( a -- )     dup  ( a -- a a )     swap ( a b -- b a )     rot  ( a b c -- b c a )      I believe that the following four stack manipulation operations can be used to simulate any other stack manipulation operation. For example:               nip  ( a b -- b )       swap drop     -rot ( a b c -- c a b ) rot rot     tuck ( a b -- b a b )   dup -rot     over ( a b -- a b a )   swap tuck      That being said however I wanted to know whether I have listed all the fundamental stack manipulation operations necessary to manipulate the stack in any possible way. Are there any more fundamental stack manipulation operations I would need to implement, without which my virtual machine wouldn't be Turing complete?"}
{"_id": "134782", "title": "Is chartership important for software engineers?", "text": "I'm based in the UK and have been developing software for over 10 years so think I am a reasonable way through my career. On and off in various jobs I have had I have been members of various institutions, the BCS and the IEE being the main ones. At the moment I am not a member of either. I have tended to work in areas where most people are system engineers rather than software engineers but there has generally been a push to try and get everyone chartered at a level or other. However I actually do not know what use chartership has for me. Many senior people I have worked with say hat they have never bothered. It has never been part of any interview I have been one and it seems to make no difference to pay/training/conditions etc. So, can anyone tell me if looking at chartership for software roles is useful or important and if so, should I be looking at BCS or IEE?"}
{"_id": "178678", "title": "How to get initial API right using TDD?", "text": "This might be a rather silly question as I am at my first attempts at TDD. I loved the sense of confidence it brings and generally better structure of my code but when I started to apply it on something bigger than one-class toy examples, I ran into difficulties. Suppose, you are writing a library of sorts. You know what it has to do, you know a general way of how it is supposed to be implemented (architecture wise), but you keep \"discovering\" that you need to make changes to your public API as you code. Perhaps you need to transform this private method into strategy pattern (and now need to pass a mocked strategy in your tests), perhaps you misplaced a responsibility here and there and split an existing class. When you are improving upon existing code, TDD seems a really good fit, but when you are writing everything from scratch, the API you write tests for is a bit \"blurry\" unless you do a big design up front. What do you do when you already have 30 tests on the method that had its signature (and for that part, behavior) changed? That is a lot of tests to change once they add up."}
{"_id": "230613", "title": "JSF problems due to shared server-side state", "text": "On it's latest technology radar, the guys at ThoughtWorks recommended avoiding JSF because it's attempt to create statefulness over HTTP ends up \"causing a whole host of problems involving shared server-side state\". I've been using JSF 2.x for almost a couple years now, I like it and I can't say I've encountered any problems like that. But I don't have that much experience with it and much less with alternatives, so I would like to understand what are those \"whole host of problems\"? Questions about JSF usually raise some heated discussions, so I think it pays to be clear: this is about JSF 2.x, but not about it being better or worse than X or Y, whether it's architecturally right to put state in HTTP, or anything like that. I'd just like to know what are those problems since the radar doesn't go on specifics."}
{"_id": "82663", "title": "How can you filter out irritable programmers in interviews?", "text": "So I've had a few situations now where programmers have passed the interview teams with flying colors, only to find when they arrive on scene, they demonstrate an extreme touchiness any time any criticism is leveled their way. I'm not talking about off-day irritability, but a 24/7 bruised ego thing. For certain employees this pertains to code review feedback, but others it can even include debugging suggestions (even if they're right). How do you filter out touchy candidates during the interview process in a manner that won't get you in trouble with HR? (I'm thinking something far short of Blade Runner here). Additionally, how can you help those types of programmers better deal with both real and perceived criticisms?"}
{"_id": "202615", "title": "What are some techniques I can use to refactor Object Oriented code into Functional code?", "text": "I've spent about 20-40 hours developing part of a game using JavaScript and HTML5 canvas. When I started I had no idea what I was doing. So it started as a proof of concept and is coming along nicely now, but it has no automated tests. The game is starting to become complex enough that it could benefit from some automated testing, but it seems tough to do because the code depends on mutating global state. I'd like to refactor the whole thing using Underscore.js, a functional programming library for JavaScript. Part of me thinks I should just start from scratch using a Functional Programming style and testing. But, I think refactoring the imperative code into declarative code might be a better learning experience and a safer way to get to my current state of functionality. Problem is, I know what I want my code to look like in the end, but I don't know how to turn my current code into it. I'm hoping some people here could give me some tips a la the Refactoring book and Working Effectively With Legacy Code. * * * For example, as a first step I'm thinking about \"banning\" global state. Take every function that uses a global variable and pass it in as a parameter instead. Next step may be to \"ban\" mutation, and to always return a new object. Any advice would be appreciated. I've never taken OO code and refactored it into Functional code before."}
{"_id": "178676", "title": "Design Patterns - Service Layer", "text": "I currently reading a lot about Design Patterns and I have been watching various Pluralsight videos from their library. Now so far I have learnt the following:   1. Repository Pattern   2. Unit of Work Pattern   3. Abstract Factory Pattern   4. Reading the awesome \"DI in .NET\" book Now I read lot about **Services** and **Service Layers** and wanted some advice about the best place to read up and learn about these. I presume this fits into Domain Driven Design and I should start there? The term \"Service\" just seem to be used widely within IT and it can be confusing the exact meaning. So my questions is:   1. What is the **Service Layer**   2. Where is the best place to learn about them. I know there are probably tonnes of interweb/books/blogs on the subject, but some good areas to start from would be nice. If I'm being too vague, let me know."}
{"_id": "162830", "title": "Inheritance, commands and event sourcing", "text": "In order not to redo things several times I wanted to factorize common stuff. For Instance, let's say we have a cow and a horse. The cow produces milk, the horse runs fast, but both eat grass.               public class Herbivorous     {        protected int Quantity;             public void EatGrass(int quantity)        {           var evt= Build.GrassEaten                         .WithQuantity(quantity);           RaiseEvent(evt);        }             public void Apply(GrassEaten evt)        {            _quantity= evt.Quantity;        }     }          public class Horse : Herbivorous     {        private bool _HasFastRun;             public void RunFast()        {           var evt= Build.FastRun;           RaiseEvent(evt);        }             public void Apply(FastRunevt)        {            _HasFastRun= true;        }     }          public class Cow: Herbivorous     {        private bool _IsMilkProduced;             public void ProduceMilk()        {           var evt= Build.MilkProduced;           RaiseEvent(evt);        }             public void Apply(MilkProduced evt)        {            _IsMilkProduced= true;        }     }      To eat Grass, my application receives a command in Json or xml, or whatever that deserialise into this class:               namespace Herbivorous     {        public class EatGrass : CommandBase        {           public Guid IdHerbivorous {get; set;}           public Guid CommitId {get; set;}           public long Version {get; set;}           public int Quantity {get; set;}        }     }      The command handler should be :               public class EatGrassHandler : CommandHandler<EatGrass>     {        public override CommandValidation Execute(EatGrass cmd)        {           Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>(cmd != null);           Herbivorous herbivorous= EventRepository.GetById<Herbivorous>(cmd.Id);           if (herbivorous.IsNull())              throw new AggregateRootInstanceNotFoundException();           herbivorous.EatGrass(cmd.Quantity);           EventRepository.Save(herbivorous, cmd.CommitId);        }     }      so far so good. I get a Herbivorous object , I have access to its EatGrass function, whether it is a horse or a cow doesn't matter really. The only problem is here :               EventRepository.GetById<Herbivorous>(cmd.Id)      Indeed, let's imagine we have a cow that has produced milk during the morning and now wants to eat grass. The EventRepository contains an event MilkProduced, and then come the command EatGrass. With the CommandHandler, we are no longer in the presence of a cow and the herbivorious doesn't know anything about producing milk . what should it do? Should I have explicit contextual command like :               namespace Herbivorous.Cow         {            public class EatGrass : CommandBase            {               public Guid IdHerbivorous {get; set;}               public Guid CommitId {get; set;}               public long Version {get; set;}               public int Quantity {get; set;}            }            public class ProduceMilk : CommandBase            {               public Guid IdHerbivorous {get; set;}               public Guid CommitId {get; set;}               public long Version {get; set;}            }         }      This would mean that the external component that asks my herbivorous to eat grass should know that in this bounded context we talk about a cow. in the former command, we were talking about a general Herbivorous behavior, so the context of my call was not important. We knew that we needed herbivorous to eat grass that was all. This is my main problem possible leakage of domain specific from one bounded context to another. Actually It might mean too that I cannot support abstraction when working on interfaces between several applications. I wonder... Or I could just accept any event when rebuilding my herbivorous. It means that if it does not find a method to apply this event to, he will goes just fine trying to apply the next one of its stream. This is the real simple solution, but it does not put me at ease to know that events might not be applied ( and not producing errors) when rehydrating my object. (Actually the more I think about it the less I feel guilty..) Thanks for your help, I am just beginning with these kinds of problem, and I would be glad to have some news from someone more experienced."}
{"_id": "207067", "title": "Why large projects with big budgets are more likely to fail?", "text": "I have heard two reasons why information systems projects fail.   1. Large projects with big budgets are more likely to fail   2. When there are two isolates teams, one doing the software design and the other implementation. These two failure reasons are described as recipes for disaster, but I don't understand that. Can anyone explain why these are recipes for disaster?"}
{"_id": "207066", "title": "LGPL and commerical application in PHP", "text": "I have rather specific question about licensing but first of all I would just like to state that I already read a lot of Q&A's here but I'm still not sure about the problem in that particular scope. As I've understand from other Q&A's, you are allowed to distribute your commercial application even with LGPL library as long as this library can be replaced by another version of it by user himself. That means that you pack it as .dll or whatever. The rest of the application remains proprietary licensed. This is clear at all for compiled software. But my question is: how this relate to software which is not compiled (which is distributed as source code but still proprietary) like all PHP applications? To be really clear I will show you exact example. I'm building a CMS applications for various purposes. All of them are different but most of them share the same \"basic element\" - JavaScript WYSIWYG editor. I would like to use one which is GPL/LGPL/MPL licensed. So there are several questions:   * Can I use this LGPL editor at all so that rest of my application remains proprietary?   * What I have to do to be able to do that?   * Are there any special \"ways of distributing\" the library like separated ZIP archive or something like that? As for non-native English speaker it's really hard for me to read the licenses in their original form. I just don't want to get in any trouble."}
{"_id": "207063", "title": "Book recommendation and advice on Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models", "text": "I am a software developer, and have knowledge of oo design, e.g. SOLID, and looking for a good book on object-oriented modeling. Is the book below still good to read? Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models Martin Fowler Publication Date: October 19, 1996"}
{"_id": "5473", "title": "Does anyone prefer proportional fonts?", "text": "I was reading the wikipedia article on programming style and noticed something in an argument against vertically aligned code: > Reliance on mono-spaced font; tabular formatting assumes that the editor > uses a fixed-width font. Most modern code editors support proportional > fonts, and the **programmer may prefer to use a proportional font for > readability**. To be honest, I don't think I've ever met a programmer who preferred a proportional font. Nor can I think of any really good reasons for using them. Why would someone prefer a proportional font?"}
{"_id": "207060", "title": "Are bugs part of technical debt?", "text": "Our Scrum Master keeps referring to bugs as technical debt. Is he right, are bugs considered to be technical debt in the world of Agile?"}
{"_id": "14266", "title": "Use of mind-mapping software in project/task management", "text": "I've recently \"discovered\" mind mapping and even found some people here recommending it. It seems like a real handy tool, but I'm not really sure how to apply it to my work and/or hobby projects. I _really_ want to organize my time and work, because I feel like my projects are stagnating lately, and that doesn't really feel nice. So I'm interested in any tips you have if you're using mind maps, how do you organize your projects, TODOs, ideas..? For example: do you keep separate mind maps for projects, tasks, ideas, or do you have separate mind maps for each project? How do you organize your project mind maps? Please share your thoughts and ideas. (Feel free to suggest alternative methods if you think mind maps suck, but state your reasons) _[Can we make this community wiki since there is no \"right\" answer?]_"}
{"_id": "205004", "title": "Is PHP actually a web framework?", "text": "I was reading an article/interview ( _Language War: PHP vs. Ruby_ (by Jeffrey Way; Mar 2011)) by a developer for Envato using Ruby. He says, \"PHP is a web framework disguised as a language.\" He didn't expound on that statement, so it got me wondering if that is true, and if so how. I did a bit of research but couldn't turn up any information on this topic. I'm wondering how this statement is true and what makes PHP not a programming language. And why do other languages like python or ruby not fit in that category?"}
{"_id": "111938", "title": "Which is a better practice - helper methods as instance or static?", "text": "This question is subjective but I was just curious how most programmers approach this. The sample below is in pseudo-C# but this should apply to Java, C++, and other OOP languages as well. Anyway, when writing helper methods in my classes, I tend to declare them as static and just pass the fields if the helper method needs them. For example, given the code below, I prefer to use **Method Call #2**.               class Foo     {       Bar _bar;            public void DoSomethingWithBar()       {         // Method Call #1.         DoSomethingWithBarImpl();              // Method Call #2.         DoSomethingWithBarImpl(_bar);       }            private void DoSomethingWithBarImpl()       {         _bar.DoSomething();       }            private static void DoSomethingWithBarImpl(Bar bar)       {         bar.DoSomething();       }     }      My reason for doing this is that it makes it clear (to my eyes at least) that the helper method has a possible side-effect on other objects - even without reading its implementation. I find that I can quickly grok methods that use this practice and thus help me in debugging things. Which do you _prefer_ to do in your own code and what are your reasons for doing so?"}
{"_id": "175337", "title": "How can you become a real programming polyglot?", "text": "I work as a Java programmer, but C and C++ were always my favourite languages during studies. Unfortunatelly I don't have an opportunity to work with them as often as I would like to. As a result I sometimes get realized that I don't remember something quite important (today example: inherited protected members cannot be accessed in derived class constructors). The other example could be Python and Haskell which I enjoy using but don't use everyday. I got an idea to write my own wiki with easy to forget things (e.g. bash tricks & tips) but I find no sense in writing there everything I can forget about coolest programming languages. I know that the best way would be having a side projects (I want to start working on some C/C++ open source project after graduation), but currently I have to write my graduation thesis and work so I merely don't have time to do this. How do you stay sharp in languages that you don't use everyday?"}
{"_id": "246112", "title": "DDD with entities with no relations", "text": "_Disclaimer: I'm not 100% sure I understand some of the practices and concepts in DDD, so this question may actually be answered by clarification of the ideas_ I'm working in a legacy system (written in PHP) in which the database tool provides no object relational mapping, and thus objects coming out of the database access layer tend to be, more or less, mirrors of the rows returned by the query. For newer modules, I'm trying to apply DDD. However, I'm struggling with how to build a rich domain model when my entities have no relations. Take for example the following requirement: `users can see the messages they have previously accepted`, where a message being accepted is, internally, recorded by a single new row in a database table. Were I using an ORM and did my entities have relations, I may write something akin to `$user->getAcceptedMessages()`, which would return a collection of message entities. However, since I don't have that, I'm torn between two approaches:   1. Populate the relations as part of the building of the entity in the repository. The queries could get big, unwieldy and hard to maintain as the number of relations grows and the schema changes.   2. Create services for actions such as this, which depend on the repository and a take a user, eg `UserMessageAcceptanceService`. However, I suspect this might lead to an anemic domain model. Is either approach sensible in this scenario? Or is some form of ORM a requirement for applying DDD effectively?"}
{"_id": "175334", "title": "What would be a non-contrived reason to have an object with Private Copy Constructor as well as Assignment Operator?", "text": "Looking for non-conceptual/non-contrived reasons of when one would need to use an object with both a `private` copy constructor and a `private` assignment operator? _As in what problem does this technique/practice solve, that some other technique couldn't solve?_"}
{"_id": "246114", "title": "GPL+FE license also applies to fonts used for the UI of a software?", "text": "The GPL font exception allows the font to be embedded within a digital \"document\" file without requiring the \"document\" itself to also be shared with GPL. Now I wonder, what is considered a \"document\"? If the GPL+FE font is embedded in a software to render a user interface, the software can be released with a non-GPL license?"}
{"_id": "246118", "title": "Good architecture for passing data to multiple APIs", "text": "* I have a hypothetical scenario where I need to pass data to APIs from multiple different providers, depending on the 'vendor identity' provided by one of the pieces of data.   * If I have the data as objects within an enumerable parent object, what would be a good way to pass the objects to the appropriate API in a reasonably loosely coupled way?   * Even if the API definition was more tightly hardcoded somehow, what would be a good way to actually pass the objects through to the API?   * I'm writing the solution in C# although it's the general architecture that matters not the specific implementation"}
{"_id": "94816", "title": "What steps can I take to ensure that I successfully integrate new functionality to an existing app?", "text": "I may potentially have some work to implement new features to a client's existing web application. (I didn't write the original app). I've never made an app that wasn't written from scratch, and I'm worried about integrating the new features without disrupting the service for too long (or at all). I don't think the client has an existing code repository set up. I was thinking that my development process should take the following path:   * Create an SVN repository and store all the current code in there, including (or making them if needed) SQL files that would be needed to create the current database structure.   * Get the client's app functioning as it is on a test server with mock-data in the test-server's database.   * Work as far as possible in cycles to write the code for one feature at a time and then migrate this across to the live app. _This is the bit that I'm most unsure about. There will be a short period of time when I'll be uploading some new files and users will most likely experience usability problems (crashes). Should I just display a \"working on the server\" page while I'm doing this? How would I do that?_   * Also, it seems to me that adding one feature at a time may cause problems, because some of them expect other features to be there to work properly. I suppose the answer to this is to only add a collection of features that can exsit as a stand alone module.   * Obviously I'd be testing the new code to the max before I migrated it across. I'd be grateful for any pointers or gotchas, or comments on what I've written above. I really want this to run smoothly for my client (and for me!) Cheers"}
{"_id": "122126", "title": "Good, simple reasons for having multiple environments", "text": "Throughout my career I had worked at companies that had a collection of different environments for different purposes. We always had more or less our desktop environment, a test environment, a QA environment, a staging environment and a production environment. This went for both servers/applications and any data sources we were using. When I started at my current company I found that 90% of the apps were either developed on a desktop environment against production data sources or developed directly on the production server depending on the platform. This wasn't particularly surprising, as I was hired in part to make changes to improve the way the development team functioned, which was clear from my interview process. We slowly started to turn the philosophy and pretty soon, most of the apps could be run in either a desktop, test or production environment. Not too long after that staging came around as well. Now most of our developers see the benefit of this methodology and defend it vigilantly. However, we have a number of legacy apps that never got migrated. We also have a number of legacy programmers who think of this as a waste of time. Unfortunately, we got lip service but never full buy-in from management. We got what we thought was a commitment to invest substantially in this about a year ago, but nothing materialized despite the considerable planning that we put into it. Now we are finding that we need more and more environments. We need help from the server/network administration teams for setup and we need participation from the business stakeholders to support the release cycle. We are at a place now where a project can function what reasonable developers would consider \"normally\" only if you have the right people on the project and the time to set up the proper environments. I'd love to present a complete argument, but management really has no time and interest in hearing me out until there is a critical issue. I can't really articulate the benefits simply as it always just seemed second nature to me. I was wondering if there are any **good, simple, irrefutable reasons for the separation of environments that would get managers lacking development experience to support this idea**. Are there any good resources/literature on the topic?"}
{"_id": "5153", "title": "What are the things necessary to become good technical architect", "text": "I was just curious to know about how to become a good technical architect Or what are the things makes a Developer good architect. Please share your insights and articles."}
{"_id": "232117", "title": "About protection for important actions on the server", "text": "We developing a web service. And need our important actions (i.e. money transfer) to be protected from accidental calling. In frontend we asking user to confirm such actions. Ok. But how to prevent accidental calling in case of developer mistake? Is it good idea, that action require some confirmation token from developer to proceed?"}
{"_id": "232115", "title": "Design questions for a Node.JS based Dashboard", "text": "I checked with meta and apparently this is the best place to ask! The company I work at have many environments, and as such, many Nagios/Icinga etc boxes in each environment. We currently have a dashboard, but it was created quickly many moons ago and needs replacing. It currently scrapes the HTML of every box, builds a static HTML file and repeats. I put together a proof of concept using PHP/MySQL (as I'm good at it) which has a page which is dynamically generated from a MySQL DB, and then there's a background script which fetches data from Nagios/Icinga API's (or resorts to scraping where no API present). This works fine, but I've been itching to learn Node.JS and from what I've read it's good for dashboards - especially as I may want interaction in future. So, my question is where abouts in this does Node.JS site, and where abouts does it not sit? For example, should I be using Node.JS for the dashboard itself sat on something like MongoDB (never used it, but would like to try NoSQL for once) to show people the current problems etc and then I have a script in the background in PHP/Perl that does the fetching scraping? Or (option 2) does Node do the dashboard AND the fetching of data? Do I have two instances of Node? I'd also like to have a web-based config page (like an admin settings page) rather than flat file settings - again, is this something easily done in the same Node structure or is Node quite single purpose (just display a dashboard, just fetch, just do forms etc) I could accomplish all of the above with PHP/MySQL fairly easily and quickly, but Node.JS and MongoDB seem really popular nowadays and I feel like I'm missing out."}
{"_id": "232111", "title": "Documentation required for commissioned software (product)", "text": "The company I work for has commissioned a software company to produce a compliance software for several big companies. As part of our contract it is required of them to provide us with src code and documentation in case in the future we want to take over and further develop the project in house or have another company take over. What are the best practices for software documentation in this case? I.e. What shall I ask of them to provide us for if a 3rd company in the future were to take over? Right now they just provided us the src code and a auto-generated class document (not even class diagram, just a list of all classes, parameters etc). I hope someone can point me in the right direction so that I can produce a small document with what our requirements are."}
{"_id": "252541", "title": "Is it considered bad practice to make a DAO call in an object's constructor?", "text": "I am trying to figure out the best design for instantiating an object which requires two separate calls to the data layer through a DAO. The object is not usable until these calls have been made (because it requires the data retrieved from the database). I have come up with three possible solutions:   1. Create a method in the DAO itself that gets the necessary data from the database, and then pass the data to the object's constructor. The object is passed back as the return value.   2. Create a method in the class that is using the object. This method would make both calls to public methods in the DAO, then instantiate and return the object as in step 1.   3. Pass the DAO as a parameter to the constructor of the object. The constructor would then make both necessary calls to the DAO, setting its own member variables without the need for Setters. The DAO is not used other than in the constructor. Examples, if SomeObject is the object I want to create, and Foo is the class that will make use of it: 1 - DAO Contains the logic:               public SomeObject getSomeObject(){ // this DAO method called by Foo class          data1 = getData1();          data2 = getData2();          return new SomeObject(data1,data2);     }      2 - Class that uses object contains the logic:               public class Foo {         ...              public void useSomeObject() {                   SomeObject obj = createSomeObject();                   obj.doStuff();              }                   private SomeObject createSomeObject() {                   data1 = dao.getData1();                   data2 = dao.getData2();                   SomeObject someObject = new SomeObject(data1,data2);                   return someObject;              }      }      3 - SomeObject takes DAO as parameter and uses it in constructor:               public class SomeObject {     ...           public SomeObject(DAO dao) {                data1 = dao.getData1();                data2 = dao.getData2();           }     ...      }      Hopefully these examples are sufficient to convey my point. Are any of these solution considered better design than the others? If not, what solution is considered best practice? Thanks."}
{"_id": "238212", "title": "Is VB.Net deprecated by Microsoft?", "text": "I have come to this web page from Sony: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/scripting_in_vegas_pro_and_sound_forge > We suggest you use C# for your scripts, since although you can currently > write scripts in Jscript and Visual Basic.NET, those two languages have been > deprecated by Microsoft, meaning they may cease to be supported at some > point in the future. AFAIK VB.Net is pretty healthy, and I have been unable to find any other source for that claim. FWIW, the page seems to be pretty old (screenshots have a 2008 date in their names). Can anyone shed some light on this?"}
{"_id": "238214", "title": "Agile retesting", "text": "I wrote some code about two years ago, which was deployed to the production environment. The code deletes information that is six years old from a system. When it was first deployed there were only 300 records deleted (because only 300 were six years old). Now there are now 10,000 - 10,000 records become six years old tomorrow. I want to retest the code but the project manager is against this (because it takes time - one day). The deletion routine is very complex (the six year rule is only one of the rules but is the main rule). The system has evolved over the last two years. Is it reasonable to set some time for retesting or should I assume that is it worked at the time then it will work now (as the project manager assumes)? Is there an Agile process that describes this sort of testing?"}
{"_id": "207391", "title": "Strategy with using SVN to switch between test and production server. (with maintaining configuration files)", "text": "I would like to know your opinion about my setup right now, how I do things with SVN and if you could find some better solution for me. I'd appreciate it very much if someone could come up with some better solutions for my problems. I would like to do it the best way possible and the most efficiently. My situation is as follows: I'm maintaining a PHP website which is connected to mysql database. I have a subdomain on which I'm testing everything. There are also two databases: first for testing purposes, second for the production server. I have a project in Netbeans and I'm connected to ftp with it so every change I make is directly transferred to the website. Also I'm connected to SVN server and the testing part of the website is in trunk directory. Every time I want to upload the changes to the server I'm commiting my trunk and then I'm copying it to tags. After that I got another project in Netbeans prepared, already connected to the same SVN, but to the last tag copy. After I copy the trunk to tag directory, I switch to the second project and switch to the newest version in tags. Now I have in some another directory every configuration file prepared in proper directory structure - I copy it to my production project. After that I click \"Run\" in Netbeans and that opens a window which allows me to accept the transfers to the sftp, but this time to the production part of the website. My question is: is it the best way? Aren't there any more intuitive tools or options in SVN, so I don't have to copy the configuration files every time?"}
{"_id": "207392", "title": "Is PGM (Pragmatic General Multicast) viable to achieve reliable message delivery with IP multicast?", "text": "I have a server application that distributes stock quotes to a number of clients on our internal network. As the number of clients has grown, unicast (TCP) connections between the server and the clients do not scale anymore. Hence, I have been looking into multicasts. Because of the inherent unreliability of IP multicast, I have been looking into reliable multicast and found Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM). Things like NAK suppression, forward error correction etc. sound like just the things I need and would have to implement myself when using raw UDP. Before I convert a mission critical application to this protocol, there are a couple of questions:   * **How widely used is PGM?** There aren\u2019t many hits for it on Stack Overflow, Server Fault or the new Network Engineering Stack Exchange site. The RFC is from 2001 and a paper on the Microsoft Research site is from 2003. Why hasn\u2019t this been adopted as a standard already?   * **How viable is the Microsoft implementation of PGM?** The documentation is extremely sparse and most projects using PGM (e.g. zeroMQ) seem to be built on top of OpenPGM. But using a socket API that comes with the operating system and that I am already familiar and that has good support in Delphi and C# (the languages I use) seems better than having to rely on additional libraries that need to be built separately and have their own dependencies. Are there any drawbacks of MS-PGM that I should be aware of?   * **What are the alternatives?** Are there other protocols that bring reliability to multicast programming, but e.g. allow for reordering of packets? That wouldn\u2019t be a problem but actually a feature, because it would allow me to continue processing some instruments even when packets for others have been lost."}
{"_id": "255314", "title": "Reducing dependency cycles and reducing coupling", "text": "I'm trying to learn how to produce quality object-oriented code and have been studying concepts like SOLID. I'm currently working on an entity-component- process system for a small game engine. Currently, I have it implemented as such:   * There is a `ScreenStack` which contains a stack of `Screen`s   * Each `Screen` has an `EntityManager` and `ProcessManager`.   * The `ProcessManager` updates all `Process`es given entities from the `EntityManager`.    * A `Process` handles all game logic, so it needs to be able to use `ScreenStack` to possibly push and pop screens. It can also create, remove, and change entities, so it needs the `EntityManager` from `Screen`. Basically a `Process` needs to know everything about the game since it affects so much of it, but it feels wrong. How do I go about implementing this better? It seems like everything has a clear dependency hierarchy until you get to a process, where it gets thrown out the window. There also seems to be tight coupling when I would want to push a new screen. Say, for example, I have a process in a `MainMenu` screen that checks for menu choice. If \"New Game\" is clicked, I need to push a new screen, which gets created at that moment. I've read that I shouldn't randomly throw in `new` which this seems to be doing."}
{"_id": "207399", "title": "Will a MQ topic persist messages when one of the consumers is down", "text": "If I have a websphere MQ topic and 3 listeners have subscribed to the Topic. One listener is down when a message comes in the Topic. Other listeners consume the message. When the listener comes back up, will the message still be there? My gut feel is no, but i cannot say for sure."}
{"_id": "254875", "title": "How do you set and check a single bit in a programming language that does not support bitwise operations?", "text": "I'm using a programming language (more a scripting language) that does not support any bitwise operators like AND, OR, XOR, NOT (and shift as well). Common arithmetic and logical operations like + - * / % > >= < <= == !=, logical AND, OR, NOT and control flow (while, for, if,...) are supported however. It is like a \"subset of C\", but without these binary operators. My question does not target that particular language anyway. I was wondering if there is any (mathematical ?) way to set and check a bit at a specific position in a programming language that does not support bitwise operations :               a = 0;               //00000000b     a = togglebit(a, 5); //00100000b     a = togglebit(a, 2); //00100100b               a = 0xFE;            //11111110b     bool result = checkbit(a, 4); //true      For example, there is a way to perform a left or right binary shift using integer multiplication or division :               a = a * 2; //similar to left  shift : a = a << 1;     a = a / 2; //similar to right shift : a = a >> 1;      I'm looking for something similar but for setting or checking a flag."}
{"_id": "7347", "title": "What simple techniques do you use to improve performance?", "text": "I'm talking about the way we write simple routines in order to improve performance without making your code harder to read... for instance, this is the typical for we learned:               for(int i = 0; i < collection.length(); i++ ){        // stuff here     }      But, I usually do this when a `foreach` is not applicable:               for(int i = 0, j = collection.length(); i < j; i++ ){        // stuff here     }      I think this is a better approach since it will call the `length` method once only... my girlfriend says it's cryptic though. Is there any other simple trick you use on your own developments?"}
{"_id": "244664", "title": "Global variable in a Linux shared library", "text": "Suppose we have the following setup under Linux, .so library named \"libcnt.so\" and 3 user space apps: \"app1\", \"app2\", \"app3\". This library does 1 simple thing, it says to the app (app dynamically links the library at runtime) by how many apps it is already linked. Apps should have access to link counter. My knowledge in C and Linux is somewhat limited in this aspect, but as I understand this information should be stored in a global variable inside the shared object. Something like: in libcnt.h extern int cnt_loads; in libcnt.c int cnt_loads = 0; // where each linking increments this counter or something... So, my question is how it should be declared and/or defined inside .so library to guaranty that multiple apps from user space get the same instance of that variable counter?"}
{"_id": "252099", "title": "Licencing GNU GPlv3 - sofware provides a service - not distributed", "text": "I have a couple questions with regard to the GNU GPLv3 license. My application is closed-source and I do not intend to actually release it to the public. However, it does _generate_ commercial items. The use of dlls licensed under the above license are used and _linked_ to the software that generates these commercial products. I would just like clarification, that because the software is not actually being distributed - only what the software generates. Therefore, no release of source etc would be required. The licensed dlls are not modified in any way. Secondly, out of interest. When a GNU GPLv3 is used by commercial software (let's say this software is released). This time the licensed material is a EXE and not a .DLL and therefore not actually _linked_ to the code of the software. Rather the software is executing the licensed software directly and sending it command line style arguments and using what the exe returns. Would the source code have to be released? Thanks, I am new to the realms of these licenses and slightly confused."}
{"_id": "218626", "title": "Is Pure Fabrication (GRASP) only about 'behaviour' , is it the 'representational gap', or is it about actual 'reality'?", "text": "Does Pure Fabrication refer to the increased representational gap only in terms of behavioural responsibilities i.e. the software classes added to the domain model to handle ONLY behaviour, or does it include any software class which represent something which does not exist in the domain model? If it is the second option, does this mean that all Pure Fabrications together actually ARE the representational gap? Or does Pure fabrication refer to any class which represent something which does not exist in the real world? Which would mean that the separation of Pure Fabrications and other classes becomes a very scientific distinction. The trigger of this question was the text below in case some background information might help to understand my confusion. > Pure Fabrication: Problem: what object should have the responsibility, when > you do not want to violate High Cohesion and Low Coupling or other goals, > but solutions offered by Expert (for example) are not appropriate? There are > many situations in which assigning responsibilities only to domain layer > software classes leads to problems in terms of poor cohesion or coupling, or > low reuse potential. > > Solution: Assign a highly cohesive set of responsibilities to an artificial > or convenience class that does not represent a problem domain concept. > ...something made up, to support high cohesion, low coupling and reuse. Such > a class is fabrication of the imagination. E.g. a database handler. This > object will be a front-end fa\u00e7ade on to a large number of back-end helper > objects. (persistentStorage is not a domain concept, but something made up > or fabricated for the convenience of the software developer.) > > The design of objects can be broadly divided into two groups: > >   1. Those chosen by representational decomposition. (supports the goal of > low representational gap) > >   2. Those chosen by behavioural decomposition (convenience class conceived > by the developer to group together some related behaviour or methods. > > > > (Applying UML and Patterns, Addison Wesley Professional, 2004)"}
{"_id": "129724", "title": "Is it possible to write application-level logic in an XML or plain text format?", "text": "For example, a system where the developer does not need to write source code any more, instead they can using XML or some defined text to construct the application-level logic."}
{"_id": "129727", "title": "How do I encrypt the source code on the webserver?", "text": "I have a web application developed using Python, HTML, CSS & JavaScript. The customer installs it in any of their own Machine and uses it through their LAN. In short the customer sets up the webserver in any of their own machine. Since its a web application, all the source code is open for the customer in the document root directory of webserver. I want to encrypt the whole source code in the document root directory in such a way that it should not effect the working of the web application. Is there is any way to encrypt the Python, HTML, CSS & JavaScript for this purpose."}
{"_id": "218629", "title": "DevOps versus Software Engineers", "text": "I am aware that all the DevOps definitions are fairly vague, and this question is subjective, but it's still something I couldn't find an answer to. Is there any difference, prestige-wise, between DevOps and Software Engineers? Is the experience interchangeable? Are N years of DevOps experience interchangeable for N years of software engineering experience? Or do I even view the question in the wrong light?"}
{"_id": "156836", "title": "Release Management versions control?", "text": "We recently experienced a deployment issue where it turned out that the version objects were not in sync in one of the environments. We have a large database group and different teams have different responsibilities and ownerships - I might code on schema X, Y, Z but I also will have dependancies on objects owned by other groups. This is the same no matter what technology - java libraries having different versions and what not. My aim is to have _something_ be in a webpage or a database table or something that I can see that for object A I have version X installed in Production, X + 1 in UAT and QA, and X + 2 installed in DEV. How do other folks handle this? How do you pick up version changes? Do you rely on SCM? Build numbers? Hash value of the source code? I'm interested in managing version consistency across technologies - java to db for instance."}
{"_id": "252096", "title": "How would you approach errors notification?", "text": "Recently we had a discussion with my colleagues caused by my intentional attempt to generate user friendly message about occurred error (business logic) at the server side. They insisted on putting all string localizable resources inside web client assembly and not server one. The argument is to let client decide how to generate and present messages to the user. I can't but agree with the requirement of such flexibility for public services, however we develop intranet back-office system and we develop client part as well (both thin and thick client). Frankly speaking the code I've seen so far does nothing more as generating the message (identical to the code I tried to put in BL). There is no particular controls highlighting, accurately positioned popups or something like that. But now the logic is duplicated: web client + win client. My point is that It's better to adhere to DRY and YAGNI principles. Copy paste is evil. The second argument is encapsulation. If error occurred inside Business Logic then it's BL who knows how to describe the error and what additional information should be collected and presented to the user without compromising security or revealing implementation details to the client part. For example, in case of concurrent changes we return `ConcurrenAccessError` from the server and client then converts this to \"bla bla bla, object was changed by someone else, edit once again, please.\" Now, to add user name and timestamp of the changes I need to extend `ConcurrentAccessError` class with additional properties and change code of message generation in two places. I would ask whether client should even know about concurrency as a special error type if it does nothing about it besides user notification. System is not designed for conflict resolving via merge. I believe that high granularity of errors is important only when such structured information allows system somehow help user to make corrections. (Highlighted and focused email input field is better than just a message below the form) Well, eventually I did not manage to persuade my colleagues. I had to follow the conventions. Yet I need more pro and contra arguments to continue the discussion or agree with them. I'd like to know which strategies of error notification you usually use and why. Where do you put the logic of constructing the message?"}
{"_id": "47654", "title": "Is your company thinking of transitioning from java to another technology?", "text": "As every Java developer knows, Oracle bought Sun and the future of java looks quite unclear, specially since Oracle wants to monetize the JVM. Java as a language has also been stale in the last few years, the non-inclusion of closures is one example (which might be included in java 1.8) At the same time, some new technologies such as Ruby, Scala and Groovy are being used to deliver complex sites. I'm wondering if there are companies or organizations which are talking, doing spikes or starting to use a different technology, with the idea to stop using java for green field projects, in the same way that 15 years ago companies migrated form C++, perl and other technologies to Java. I'm also interested to know what are the impressions of this happening, for example: planning to migrate to a different technology in 2 years. To be clear, I'm not asking which technology is better. I'm asking if your organization is thinking to leave Java for another technology."}
{"_id": "118798", "title": "Avoiding new operator in JavaScript -- the better way", "text": "_Warning: This is a long post._ Let's keep it simple. I want to avoid having to prefix the new operator every time I call a constructor in JavaScript. This is because I tend to forget it, and my code screws up badly. The simple way around this is this...               function Make(x) {       if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) )       return new arguments.callee(x);            // do your stuff...     }      But, I need this to accept variable no. of arguments, like this...               m1 = Make();     m2 = Make(1,2,3);     m3 = Make('apple', 'banana');      The first immediate solution seems to be the 'apply' method like this...               function Make() {       if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) )         return new arguments.callee.apply(null, arguments);            // do your stuff     }      This is WRONG however -- the new object is passed to the `apply` method and NOT to our constructor `arguments.callee`. Now, I've come up with three solutions. My simple question is: which one seems best. Or, if you have a better method, tell it. **First** - use `eval()` to dynamically create JavaScript code that calls the constructor.               function Make(/* ... */) {       if ( !(this instanceof arguments.callee) ) {         // collect all the arguments         var arr = [];         for ( var i = 0; arguments[i]; i++ )           arr.push( 'arguments[' + i + ']' );              // create code         var code = 'new arguments.callee(' + arr.join(',') + ');';              // call it         return eval( code );       }            // do your stuff with variable arguments...     }      **Second** - Every object has `__proto__` property which is a 'secret' link to its prototype object. Fortunately this property is writable.               function Make(/* ... */) {       var obj = {};            // do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this'       // use the variable arguments here            // now do the __proto__ magic       // by 'mutating' obj to make it a different object            obj.__proto__ = arguments.callee.prototype;            // must return obj       return obj;     }      **Third** - This is something similar to second solution.               function Make(/* ... */) {       // we'll set '_construct' outside       var obj = new arguments.callee._construct();            // now do your stuff on 'obj' just like you'd do on 'this'       // use the variable arguments here            // you have to return obj       return obj;     }          // now first set the _construct property to an empty function     Make._construct = function() {};          // and then mutate the prototype of _construct     Make._construct.prototype = Make.prototype;      * * *   * `eval` solution seems clumsy and comes with all the problems of \"evil eval\".   * `__proto__` solution is non-standard and the \"Great Browser of mIsERY\" doesn't honor it.   * The third solution seems overly complicated.  But with all the above three solutions, we can do something like this, that we can't otherwise...               m1 = Make();     m2 = Make(1,2,3);     m3 = Make('apple', 'banana');          m1 instanceof Make; // true     m2 instanceof Make; // true     m3 instanceof Make; // true          Make.prototype.fire = function() {       // ...     };          m1.fire();     m2.fire();     m3.fire();      So effectively the above solutions give us \"true\" constructors that accept variable no. of arguments and don't require `new`. What's your take on this. **\\-- UPDATE --** Some have said \"just throw an error\". My response is: we are doing a heavy app with 10+ constructors and I think it'd be far more wieldy if every constructor could \"smartly\" handle that mistake without throwing error messages on the console."}
{"_id": "212745", "title": "Should a RESTful API provide data for an entire form?", "text": "Let's say I have a JavaScript web application which entirely uses a RESTful API for data. Let's say this application has a data form, and let's say I'm editing a record at /product/12345. When building the form, I make a RESTful request to /product/12345 and get JSON data:               {       \"id\": 12345,       \"name\": \"Some Product\",       \"active\": true,       \"sales_user_id\": 27     }      _So, my form obviously may have a dropdown list for selecting a sales person. I need to populate this list._ **Where should the data come from?** What's the most common approach? Would it make sense to make it part of the /product/12345 request response?               {       \"id\": 12345,       \"name\": \"Some Product\",       \"active\": true,       \"sales_user_id\": 27,       \"sales_users\": [         {\"id\": 1, \"name\": \"Anna Graham\"},         {\"id\": 2, \"name\": \"Dick Mussell\"},         {\"id\": 3, \"name\": \"Ford Parker\"},         {\"id\": 4, \"name\": \"Ferris Wheeler\"},         {\"id\": 5, \"name\": \"Jo King\"}       ]     }      What about when creating a new record? Should my API also respond to GET /product/new, with the following?               {       \"sales_users\": [         {\"id\": 1, \"name\": \"Anna Graham\"},         {\"id\": 2, \"name\": \"Dick Mussell\"},         {\"id\": 3, \"name\": \"Ford Parker\"},         {\"id\": 4, \"name\": \"Ferris Wheeler\"},         {\"id\": 5, \"name\": \"Jo King\"}       ],       \"categories\": [         {\"id\": 1, \"name\": \"Category 1\"},         {\"id\": 2, \"name\": \"Category 2\"},         {\"id\": 3, \"name\": \"Category 3\"},         {\"id\": 4, \"name\": \"Category 4\"},         {\"id\": 5, \"name\": \"Category 5\"}       ],       \"etc\": [ ... ]     }"}
{"_id": "126715", "title": "Right multi object dependance design", "text": "I need some help with a correct design. I have a class called `BufferManager`. The `push()` method of this class reads data from a source and pushes it to a buffer repeatedly until there is no more data left in the source. There are also consumer threads that read data from this buffer, as soon as new data arrives. There is an option to sort the data before it comes to buffer. What I do right now is that `BufferManager`, instead of pushing data to the buffer, pushes it to another \"sorting\" buffer and starts a sorting thread. `SorterManager` class reads the data, sorts it in files and `push()`es the sorted data into the buffer. There will be a bottleneck (I use merge sort with files) but this is something I can't avoid. This is a bad design, because both `BufferManager` and `SorterManager` push data to a buffer (that consumers read from). I think only `BufferManager` should do it. How can I design it?"}
{"_id": "126710", "title": "Choosing language to write general library in", "text": "I'm about to start writing a library to support machine learning algorithms (decision trees, ANNs, Bayes nets, etc.), and I'm planning on making this a very general library. By this, I mean I want to be able to plug this module into as many languages as possible. To clarify, here's why I've started writing it in C++ (Windows headers):   * I know I can import C++ libraries into C#, and I've heard you can import C++ into Python. So, obviously, the library can be used in 3 languages, possibly 4 if I don't use system-specific headers.   * Is there a language where I can cover a wider spread, weighted by popularity of languages? (For example, C# and C++ have pretty high weight to me because I use both frequently, Python less so.)"}
{"_id": "194463", "title": "Which one is the fastest Message Broker in case of a single machine?", "text": "I would like to know, which Message Broker I should choose in case of communication among apps within a single PC, considering speed. Among Apache ActiveMQ , MSMQ , RabbitMQ , OpenAMQ which one is the fastest in case of communication among multiple apps on a single PC?"}
{"_id": "48932", "title": "Constructor should generally not call methods", "text": "I described to a colleague why a constructor calling a method can be an antipattern. example (in my rusty C++)               class C {     public :         C(int foo);         void setFoo(int foo);     private:         int foo;     }          C::C(int foo) {         setFoo(foo);     }          void C::setFoo(int foo) {         this->foo = foo     }      I would like to motivate better this fact through your additional contribute. If you have examples, book references, blog pages, or names of principles, they would be very welcome. Edit: I'm talking in general, but we are coding in python."}
{"_id": "195829", "title": "HTML5 PhoneGap Mobile development?", "text": "I want some suggestions about the project concepts/ideas on HTML5 PhoneGap mobile app development. I want to develop some app that can be a learning curve to get to know about these technologies. Any specific app concepts wherein I can get myself accustomed with using features like camera, geolocation, accelerometer, etc and implement those as a coherent part of the project work? Apologies if this might not be appropriate forum to ask such question. But I could not find any relevant stackexchange site for this."}
{"_id": "195825", "title": "Why do we need \"callback functions\"?", "text": "I am reading the book `programming in Lua`. It said that > Closures provide a valuable tool in many contexts. As we have seen, they are > useful as arguments to higher-order functions such as sort. Closures are > valuable for functions that build other functions too, like our newCounter > example; this mechanism allows Lua programs to incorporate sophisticated > programming techniques from the functional world. Closures are useful for > callback functions, too. A typical example here occurs when you create > buttons in a conventional GUI toolkit. Each button has a callback function > to be called when the user presses the button; you want different buttons to > do slightly different things when pressed. For instance, a digital > calculator needs ten similar buttons, one for each digit. Y ou can create > each of them with a function like this:               function digitButton (digit)       return Button{label = tostring(digit),                     action = function ()                       add_to_display(digit)                       end}     end      It seems that if I call the `digitButton`, it will return the `action` (this will create a closure), so, I can access the `digit` passed to `digitButton`. My question is that:               Why we need call back functions? what situations can I apply this to?      * * * The author said: > In this example, we assume that Button is a toolkit function that creates > new buttons; label is the button label; and action is the callback closure > to be called when the button is pressed. The callback can be called a long > time after digitButton did its task and after the local variable digit went > out of scope, but it can still access this variable. according to the author, I think a similar example is like this:               function Button(t)       -- maybe you should set the button here       return t.action -- so that you can call this later     end          function add_to_display(digit)       print (\"Display the button label: \" .. tostring(digit))     end          function digitButton(digit)       return Button{label = tostring(digit),                     action = function ()                                add_to_display(digit)                                end}     end          click_action = digitButton(10)     click_action()      thus, `the callback can be called a long time after digitButton did its task and after the local variable digit went out of scope.`"}
{"_id": "48938", "title": "What is a single word I can use to describe a non-query SQL statement?", "text": "I'm trying to come up with a good name for a data access object that executes non-query SQL statements. I know DML is a valid term, but I wanted to make sure it is the best. Right now we have OracleNonQuery, but I'm hoping to find something better. **UPDATE:** OracleDML or OracleDMLStatement are good suggestions. I'll probably go with one of those unless someone has a better term."}
{"_id": "129892", "title": "Find all points within a certain distance of each other?", "text": "Let's say, we have... 50k points randomly allocated in 3D space, according to some volumetric function, so that in some parts of the space, points are closer together, but in other parts, they are further away. Every point has a random color (represented by an integer, for example) I would like to find all points that:   * Are within a certain (general) distance of each other, and   * are of different color. What is the fastest way to compute this? Further, non-mandatory details: My end goal, is to remove all points with the same color, until there are no more collisions. I would like to remove as few colors as possible, however, this is not _mandatory_ I could simply remove all colors that are involved in any collisions AT ALL, though, it could result in a lower quality result. The distance does not need to be exact. For instance, if an exact \"collision radius\" represents a perfect sphere, then I would be fine with the collision radius being the shape of, say, a cube. I am also fine with a trigger-happy solution. That is, I am fine if points get \"detected\" even if they are not too close. I just don't want this to happen very often, and I _cannot_ accept points that are to close _not_ being detected. Also, I'm sure there is a family of algorithms devoted to this, but I can't for the life of me come up with any names... Knowing the name of an algorithm of this type would be immensely helpful."}
{"_id": "129890", "title": "Is there a difference between merges in svn compared to git or mercurial?", "text": "From my understanding SVN is 'Easy to branch. Difficult to merge'. Why is that? Is there a difference how they merge?"}
{"_id": "245495", "title": "Complexity of ArrayList of LinkedHashSet", "text": "I get input strings from the console like this:               while ((currentLine = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null ) {         StringTokenizer string = new StringTokenizer(currentLine, \" \");         while (string.hasMoreTokens()) {             // Create a new LinkedHashSet for every token and then add it to the ArrayList.             LinkedHashSet<String> linkedHashSet = new LinkedHashSet<String>();             linkedHashSet.add(string.nextToken());             setOfStrings.add(linkedHashSet);         }     }      I'm always getting different strings from input, never the same. After finishing filling in the data structures I have this situation:   * An `ArrayList<LinkedHashSet<String>>` which contains one LinkedHashSet for each string split.   * Inside each `LinkedHashSet` I have a string that is different from any other string present in the other LinkedHashSets - in other words, its unique. For example, I can't have this inside the ArrayList:              Set x : [foo]     ...     Set y : [foo]       **After doing that, I call the function below many times to make different merges.**               public void mergeSets(ArrayList<String> operations, ArrayList<LinkedHashSet<String>> setOfStrings) {         String toMerge = operations.get(1);         String fromMerge = operations.get(2);         boolean enteredFirstToMerge = false;         boolean enteredFirstFromMerge = false;         // Temporary LinkedHashSet reference used to merge two sets.         LinkedHashSet<String> subSetToMerge = null;         LinkedHashSet<String> subSetFromMerge = null;         for (Iterator<LinkedHashSet<String>> iterator = setOfStrings.iterator();                 iterator.hasNext(); ) {             LinkedHashSet<String> subSet = iterator.next();             if (subSet.contains(toMerge) && subSet.contains(fromMerge))                 break;             else {                 if (subSet.contains(toMerge) && !enteredFirstToMerge) {                     enteredFirstToMerge = true;                     subSetToMerge = subSet;                     iterator.remove();                 } else if (subSet.contains(fromMerge) && !enteredFirstFromMerge) {                     enteredFirstFromMerge = true;                     subSetFromMerge = subSet;                 }             }             if (enteredFirstFromMerge && enteredFirstToMerge)                 break;             }             if (enteredFirstFromMerge && enteredFirstToMerge) {                 subSetFromMerge.addAll(subSetToMerge);             }         }      Explanation: For example, if I have as operation `merge foo bar`, I have to do these steps:   * First of all, I have to find where `foo` and `bar` are located:     * Inside `setOfStrings`, I can have this situation:                              position x : [bar, tree, hotel]             ...             position y : [foo, lemon, coffee]           When I find them, I have to **_`combine the set which contains foo with the set that contains bar`_** this way:                           position x : {bar tree hotel foo lemon coffee}                 ...                 position y : {} -> deleted from the arrayList      This function takes as parameters an `arrayList` of operations and an `arrayList<LinkedHashSet<String>>`: For the `ArrayList` of `operations`, I always get a specific position:   * `operations.get(1)` refers to the set to merge (foo in this example)   * `operations.get(2)` refers to the set where to add the foo set (bar in this example) With this for loop, I iterate the ArrayList to search the to sets,`for (Iterator<LinkedHashSet<String>> iterator = setOfStrings.iterator(); iterator.hasNext(); )` This `if` statement checks if the iterator is in the specific set:               if (subSet.contains(toMerge) && !enteredFirstToMerge) {         enteredFirstToMerge = true;         subSetToMerge = subSet;         iterator.remove();     } else if (subSet.contains(fromMerge) && !enteredFirstFromMerge) {         enteredFirstFromMerge = true;         subSetFromMerge = subSet;     }      **_My question is: Could I have collisions with this type of algorithm that I implemented?_** If not the time complexity is only O(n) -> the size of the arrayList."}
{"_id": "245490", "title": "php and mysql hosting service that fulfills my registeration system", "text": "Kindly tell that how to make a registration system that work with php and MySql . I tried the demo that is here but how it works with the online web hosting . I have registered the free hosting at here   I have also created the database at here but cannot know how to use php files and upload at and use the mysql database that I created here . I want online registration system that uses php and mysql with the free hosting that serves my purpose. The registration system creates the user and sends confirmation email to user\u2019s email address and after confirmation user can log inn to the web application and further work will be done here after registration. Kindly guide me in the above scenario or tell another free hosting service that fulfills my purpose."}
{"_id": "129899", "title": "One-use variables - has any language ever had them?", "text": "A principle that I follow is that, when an identifier is established, it should be a signal to the reader that the value referred to is indeed an abstraction which will be used more than once. That is, the identifier is defined or assigned once, and the value is read more than once. However, a common idiom exists whereby, in order to increase readability, parts of a complex expression are factored out into variables. These variables will only be used once, violating the principle. Thus, a special separate class of identifier should be used to indicate a one- use variable. This principle applies to any identifier. So you might have one-use functions, one-use methods, one-use variables, etc. Has there ever been a programming language which supported one-use variables?"}
{"_id": "245493", "title": "Is it beneficial to study past the basics of a core language when the primary goal is to rely on its framework?", "text": "Please keep in mind this is not another 'How much [ _insert programming language here_ ] should I know before moving onto [ _insert framework here_ ]?' What I'd like to know is how beneficial is it to learn the those advanced concepts of a programming language when your intention is to heavily rely on its framework the majority of the time. So for example I've began to use jQuery and first took the time out to really grasp the core concepts of Javascript. Additionally I have a few _beyond the basics_ books (Secrets of a Javascript Ninja for instance) on the shelf that really delve into the language. As I skim through the pages though I find that a fair bit of it doesn't carry over to jQuery being that my main intention is DOM manipulation. The same can be said for Ruby and RoR. Will these books make me a better programmer overall? Probably. Can these topics help me become that much better with its framework? That's what I'm having a hard time understanding."}
{"_id": "7349", "title": "How would you rank these programming skills in order of learning them?", "text": "As a **general purpose** programmer, what should you learn first and what should you learn later on? Here are some skills I wonder about...   * SQL    * Regular Expressions    * Multi-threading / Concurrency    * Functional Programming    * Graphics    * The mastery of your mother programming language's syntax/semantics/featureset    * The mastery of your base class framework libraries    * Version Control System    * Unit Testing    * XML    * Do you know other important ones? Please specify them... On which skills should I focus first?"}
{"_id": "171058", "title": "Storing Attendance Data in database", "text": "So i have to store daily attendance of employees of my organisation from my application . The part where I need some help is, the efficient way to store attendance data. After some research and brain storming I came up with some approaches . Could you point me out which one is the best and any unobvious ill effects of the mentioned approaches. The approaches are as follows   1. Create a single table for whole organisation and store empid,date,presentstatus as a row for every employee everyday.   2. Create a single table for whole organisation and store a single row for each day with a comma delimited string of empids which are absent. I will generate the string on my application.   3. Create different tables for each department and follow the 1 method. Please share your views and do mention any other good methods"}
{"_id": "207935", "title": "Benefits of setting PHP memory_limit to lower value for specific PHP script?", "text": "I need to execute just few lines of PHP code on every single page of my website. This PHP code does not require more than 4MB memory. That is why i want to allocate just 4MB memory to all pages by using following code :               ini_set('memory_limit','4M');      Does it give any benfits in any of the following areas :   1\\. Website speed   2\\. Bandwidth optimization   3\\. Optimizing server memory usage"}
{"_id": "117644", "title": "Where to find a good mobile robot simulator?", "text": "I would like to learn more about robotic mobile, could anyone recommend some easy and stable one? **EDIT** If possible in C, C++ or Java as programming languages. It could run in linux or windows."}
{"_id": "117643", "title": "How does a movie theater seat booking system prevent multiple users from reserving the same seats?", "text": "In the movie theatre I go to they have ticket kiosks that allow you to select the seats you want; they also have a website that does the same (the website also has a countdown timer of like 30 secs in which you must choose a seat). While I understand things such as database transactions and other techniques for handling multiple simultaneous users, I just can't get my head around how multiple people can be allowed to select a seat at the same time; is it as simple as the first one to press BUY gets the seats and the other person will get an error message, or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "195790", "title": "Why do we write our specs in different files from our source?", "text": "The D Programming Language supports writing unit tests inline with source. There's a Ruby gem called test_inline that lets you write specs in the same file as your code. Why is it generally conventional to keep source code in a completely separate directory from test code?"}
{"_id": "160991", "title": "How to create a common interface for classes with different subsets of members", "text": "Don't know how to put it, But I'll try to be as clear as possible I have a project in which I am creating lots of classes and those classes have some common properties and methods but those methods could have different code in them, So I decided to make an interface so that I could inherit that in all classes and all classes would have same methods in them like `insert, update, delete` with different code inside those those methods but this trick flopped when I discovered that not all classes have same structure like some have insert method but not update and if I inherit interface I have to provide a public declaration for all members of that interface which I don't want. Trick two I thought about abstract classes created one too but same problem all the abstract members has to be implemented with public. So long story short **I want to create a common inheritable structure which would work as a non instance-able blue print for classes and could be inherited into lots of classes but in many classes I don't want to implement all of the members of that structure** NOTE : I can do no-op(empty methods that do nothing, or return a null, for example) as some guys suggested me but that ain't the solution I am looking for because those unnecessary members will be visible during intellisence and that's what i want to avoid. How can I do that ?"}
{"_id": "207939", "title": "Handling a request to override browser behaviors (Back and Refresh)", "text": "I'm a new guy in this company and I've been tasked to research on possible workarounds with the browser behaviors to cater to the demands of our client. A little background; what they want is to display a 'custom' dialog whenever a user would like to navigate away from a page (not the browser default) that has a form, just as how facebook does it. I've found a workaround with the `Back` button in the form of browser states and have it integrated in my local build of the web app. Works like a charm, though I'm not convinced this is good practice. (more of a trick if you ask me) The problem is the `Refresh` event. All my research (here's one) tells me I should give up. Sigh... So I'm looking for a way to convince my superiors that this it's a bad practice to override browser behaviors or how it's virtually impossible to override the refresh behavior; diplomatically as much as possible. (if I could do citations on articles that would further prove my point, that would be great) Or do I continue looking for possible workarounds in the internet? (too much research effort but not much accomplishment if you ask me, but hey, what do I know?)"}
{"_id": "161022", "title": "Is there a downside to installing Visual Studio Ultimate if I don't need all the features?", "text": "Microsoft released today the final builds of Visual Studio 2012 on MSDN. I'm trying to decide from this version comparison page which edition to install (I can install any edition I want for free). I'm a solo developer who develops mostly web apps and console apps in C# and Python. Some of the features in Ultimate/Premium look potentially cool (like UML and \"historical debugging\"), but most of the features I will not need, or have never heard of. On the one hand, it would be nice to have the features in case I want them someday. On the other hand, for some software products, the extra features cause the higher end editions to (1) be slower and use more memory, and (2) have a more cluttered UI. Is this the case with Visual Studio?"}
{"_id": "193303", "title": "Team switching from TFS Source Control to TFS with Git, not sure how to handle complex project structure", "text": "I've used git for my personal projects for years, but that's always working alone, not needing to branch much, etc.   Our development team at work has decided we are definitely switching to git, and as one of the most experienced git user on the team I have the task of figuring out our project structure. Our current structure has a single Source Control, with many Projects. Those source control \"projects\" may contain multiple folders which contain multiple Visual Studio Solutions which can contain multiple Visual Studio Projects, some of which are shared.   An example:   * Main Directory      * Folder 1        * Solution 1          * Project 1         * Shared Project 1     * Folder 2        * Solution 2          * Project 2         * Project 3       * Solution 3          * Project 4         * Shared Project 1         * Shared Project 2     * Folder 3        * Solution 4          * Shared Project 1         * Shared Project 2 I am not sure at all how to translate this to git properly. The main concern that has been mentioned to me is that if we use git submodules, when checking in changes it has to be applied to multiple repositories. Is there a way around this? Does TFS in Visual Studio handle this in an easy to manage way?   Anyone have any good information about this kind of thing?"}
{"_id": "247144", "title": "Full signed part of two complement long", "text": "I am reverse engineering a data file (from a synthesizer). It seems that e.g. -1 is written as FF FF FF FF, so in four bytes. while +1 is written as 00 00 01 (--), so only three bytes. Is something like this common? I only heard about either a 3 or 4 byte format, but not 3 OR 4 depending on the sign. And is there some way to handle this in C#? BitConverter class is a bit too limited for this."}
{"_id": "110141", "title": "What is the legal status of old reference material?", "text": "I am in the very, very early stages of writing an Amiga 500 emulator, and would like to include the hardware documentation either alongside my source code or in a separate `doc` package. As one example, here is the copyright notice from the Commodore Amiga A500/A200 Technical Reference Manual: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4nOx4.png) That doesn't sound promising. Other documents I'd like to include are the Motorola 68000 Programmer's Reference Manual, the AmigaDOS Technical Reference Manual, and perhaps others in the future. Do I need to tackle these documents one-by-one, or is there a \"Yes you can\" or \"No you can't\" umbrella that covers all of them? If there is a broad-brush answer, it does not need to be specific to my documents in particular. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "7547", "title": "Testing minor browser version compatibility", "text": "I develop a web application and we test it on browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer. During our development we test the application on Firefox 3.5. **2** and our testing team tests the same on 3.5. **6** and found the UI looks good. But all of the sudden the client complains that it doesn't look good in 3.5. **8**. How do we handle these minor version issues? How can we check the browser compatibility during development and during testing? Is there any tool to test the application on 3.5. **X** , X being all the minor versions?"}
{"_id": "19344", "title": "Aspect oriented programming and implicitness", "text": "Lets suppose that I have a class which represent an image and has a number of methods.               class Image     {         circle(x,y,radius,color);         square(x,y,w,h,color);         floodfill(x,y,color)         clear();     }      Furthermore, I want to have undo functionality. A simple way of implementing this is to keep a list of all the actions that have been performed. When I undo, I just rerun all of the actions. One solution would be to implement an aspect, something like this:               aspect ImageUndo     {         on Image::circle, Image::square, Image::floodfill         precall(object, args)         {              object.actions_list.add(args)         }     }      Essentially, this aspect has now modified the behavior of Image. That gives me concern. In particular, another programming unfamiliar with the existence of ImageUndo aspect may run into the following problems:   1. He adds a method, and it does not work with the undo functionality.   2. Attempting to debug the undo mechanism, it is not clear where the actions_list get added to. On the other hand we could have               class Image     {         @undoable_action         circle(x,y,radius,color);              @undoable_action         square(x,y,w,h,color);              @undoable_action         floodfill(x,y,color)              @undoable_action         clear();     }      Which does not bother me as much because it gives an idea of where to look for the undo code and makes is so that the new coder will probably notice it an automatically add it to a new method. To summarize: aspects (at least those like the one I showed) seems to bring \"implicit magic\" into what code does. It seems to me that the implicitness is dangerous and we should really make it explicit. Are there good reasons for the implicitness? Do people who actually use AOP write code that does this sort of modification? Note: this is a reworking of Is Aspect-Oriented Programming a good idea? which was closed because my previous version came across, unintentionally, as ranting."}
{"_id": "16137", "title": "Effective ways to make your OSS project popular?", "text": "After writing a few (relatively obscure) OSS frameworks, I've learned the hard way that writing a good framework isn't enough--there has to be some time spent marketing your framework as much as the time you spend coding it. So here's my question: What are some effective ways for making your OSS project become well-known? Aside from blogging, how do I gain the most market attention for my code with the least amount of effort as humanly possible? (EDIT: I'm a lazy programmer and I hate documentation, but I'm biting the bullet. I want to be famous)"}
{"_id": "16135", "title": "What makes C developers so curious if \"i++ == ++i\"?", "text": "Just a random observation, it seems that on StackOverflow.com, there are questions about if \"++i == i++\". That question gets asked all the time though, I think I saw it asked about 6 or 7 times in the past 2 months. I just wonder why C developers are so interested in it? The same concept/question exists for C# and Java devs as well, but I think I saw only one C# related question. Is it because so many examples use ++i? Is it because there is some popular book or tutorial? Is it because C developers just love to cram as much as possible into a single line for 'efficiency'/'performance' and therefore encounter 'weird' constructs using the ++ operator more often?"}
{"_id": "255831", "title": "Should the Presenter depend on the View or the vice versa?", "text": "So far, I have used the **MVP** architecture pattern a few times. Every now and then, I wonder whether my `Presenter` should depend on my `View` or vice versa, that is the `View` depends on my `Presenter`. **NOTE** > Though the sample code provided is in C#, I don't mind about the language. > My question targets more precisely the **MVP** pattern. Additionally, it was > provided off the top of my head solely to help illustrate my concern. It may > not compile. Here's a short sample of what I'm used to do:               public interface IHasUiHandler<H> where H : IUiHandler {         H Handler { set; }     }          public interface IView {         void Close();         void Hide();         void Show();     }          public abstract class Presenter<V> where V : IView {         protected Presenter(V view) { this.view = view; }              public void CloseView() { view.Close(); }         public void HideView() { view.Hide(); }         public void ShowView() { view.Show(); }              private readonly V view;     }      And let's say I'm creating a Customer Management feature.               public interface ICustomerManagementUiHandler : IUiHandler {         Customer CreateNewCustomer();         IList<Customer> ListCustomers();         void RemoveCustomer(Customer customer);         Customer UpdateCustomer(Customer customer);     }              public class CustomerManagementPresenter : Presenter<ICustomerManagementView>                                              , ICustomerManagementUiHandler {         public CustomerManagementPresenter(ICustomerManagementView view             , CustomerManagementService service)              : base(view) {             view.Handler = this;             customers = service;         }              public Customer ChangeExistingCustomer(Customer customer) { return customers.Update(customer); }         public Customer CreateNewCustomer(Customer customer) { return customers.Add(customer); }         public IList<Customer> ListCustomers() { return customers.List(); }         public void RemoveCustomer(Customer customer) { customers.Remove(customer); }              private readonly CustomerManagementService customers;     }          public interface ICustomerManagementView : IHasUiHandler<ICustomerManagementUiHandler> {             }          public class CustomerManagementForm : Form, ICustomerManagementView {         public CustomerManagementForm() { }              public ICustomerManagementUiHandler Handler {              private get { return handler; }              set { if (handler == null) handler = value; }          }              private void changeCustomerButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {             if (Handler == null)                  throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Can't change customer. No handler specified.\");             Handler.ChangeExistingCustomer(current);         }              private void createCustomerButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {                                     if (Handler == null)                  throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Can't add new customer. No handler specified.\");             Handler.CreateNewCustomer(); // No parameters for sample simplicity sake.         }              private void deleteCustomerButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {             if (Handler == null)                  throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Can't add new customer. No handler specified.\");             Handler.RemoveCustomer(current);          }              private readonly ICustomerManager manager;         private ICustomerManagementUiHandler handler;     }      I feel like the `View` should depend on the presenter, so that there would be no need for a `Handler` property in the `View` itself. Then the `Presenter` could depend on the data access service or the like to handle the business entities and the like. This would wave away the **Method Injection**, which is a benefit, IMHO. Plus it seems to reduce complexity for waving away both the `IHasUiHandler` and `IUiHandler` interfaces. This makes it a easily testable code because the `Presenter` is an easily-tested class. However, this way I'm afraid that the `Presenter` has no real handle over the view which it should be able to either show or hide. So this is where I'm growing confused about which shall depend on which."}
{"_id": "255837", "title": "How to format Android view IDs", "text": "I struggle with this every time I work on a project. I am not entirely sure what the standard conventions are for creating view ids. I usually use something like               view_more_button      but then if we have, let's say, multiple dialogs with a view more button then I'll start doing               view_more_button_dialog1      and from there it just spirals downward. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "255836", "title": ".Net build and deploy solutions for desktop and Web applications", "text": "My employer is still in the dark ages when it comes to software development, test, build and deploy. Our development to deployment application lifecycle is:   1. Once development/changes are done we build an msi package using a visual studio setup and deployment project.   2. Msi is placed in a network folder   3. instructions are given to relevant team to deploy package.  A deploy for a windows application can consist of an msi, Sql scripts and application configuration changes, and the deployment of these is all manual. We are now looking to automate the build and deployment process for our Windows and Web applications. Most of our apps don't have unit tests which can be run automatically but going forward we will. What is the best way to do this?"}
{"_id": "150293", "title": "Where could Distributed Version Control Systems currently be in Gartner's hype cycle?", "text": "**Edit** : Given the recent downvoting (+8/-6 at this point) it was made clear to me that Gartner's lifecycle is a biased metric from a programmer's perspective. This is something that is part of a paper I'm going to present to **management** , and management types are part of Gartner's audience. Giving DVCS exposure & enthusiasm (that \"could\" be deemed as hype, **or at least attacked as such** ), think about the following question when reading this one: **\"how could I use Gartner's hype cycle to convince management that DVCSs are ready (or ready-enough) for us, and that it is not just hype\"** Just asking if DVCSs is hype wouldn't be constructive, Gartner's hype cycle is a more objective instrument than just asking that (even if this instrument is regarded as biased). If you know any other instrument please, by all means, mention it. **Edit #2** : I agree that Gartner's Life Cycle is not for every technology, but I consider it may have generated enough buzz to be considered hype by some, so it maybe deserves to be at least evaluated/pondered as such by using this instrument in order to prove/disprove it to whatever degree. I'm an advocate of DVCS, BTW. **Edit #3** : Thanks for your answers. Bounty goes to Caleb for answering my question with detail and practical advise. Accepted answer goes to philosodad for providing another useful instrument and answering beyond my question. * * * I'm doing research for a whitepaper I'm writing in favor of DVCS adoption at company and I stumbled upon the concept of social proof. I want to prove that the social proof of DVCS adoption is not necessarily cargo cult and doing further research I now stumbled upon Gartner's hype cycle which describes technology maturity in 5 phases. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CnhKu.gif) My question is: what could be an indicator of the current location of Distributed Version Control Systems (I mean git, mercurial, bazaar, etc. in general) at a particular phase in the hype cycle?... in other (less convoluted) words, **would you say that currently expectations of DVCSs are a) starting, b)inflated, c)decreasing (disillusionment), d)increasing (enlightenment) or e)stabilizing (mature) and (more importantly) _why_?** I know it is a hard question and there is subjectivity involved, but I'll grant the answer (and the traditional cookie) to the clearest argument/evidence for a particular phase."}
{"_id": "255838", "title": "What should I expect from a developers guide?", "text": "I'm willing, with some friends, to make a developers guide for an open source point of sale written in Java. The thing is I have never written anyone and so I don't know exactly what to put in there to meet standards. I'm thinking about putting UML, and using Java doc but still I don't know what are the expectations of developers towards a developers guide. How can we say a developer's guide is truly worth?"}
{"_id": "150294", "title": "Why C++ to write a compiler?", "text": "I was wondering why C++ is a good choice to write a compiler. Of course C is good for this purpose too, because many compilers are written either in C or C++ but I am more interested in C++ this time. Any good reasons ? I was looking for that in the Internet, but I cannot find any good reasons."}
{"_id": "153922", "title": "Implementing a \"state-machine\" logic for methods required by an object in C++", "text": "What I have: 1 hypothetical object/class + other classes and related methods that gives me functionality. What I want:   1. linking this object to 0 to N methods in realtime on request when an event is triggered   2. Each event is related to a single method or a class, so a single event does not necessarily mean \"connect this 1 method only\" but can also mean \"connect all the methods from that class or a group of methods\"   3. Avoiding linked lists because I have to browse the entire list to know what methods are linked, because this does not ensure me that the linked methods are kept in a particular order (let's say an alphabetic order by their names or classes), and also because this involve a massive amount of pointers usage. Example: I have an object `Employee Jon`, Jon acquires knowledge and forgets things pretty easily, so his skills may vary during a period of time, I'm responsible for what Jon can add or remove from his CV, how can I implement this logic?"}
{"_id": "120716", "title": "Difference between REST and CRUD", "text": "I learned REST and it feels a lot like CRUD (from what I have read about CRUD). I know they are different, and I wonder if thinking they are similar means I don't understand them. Is it that REST is a \"superset\" of CRUD? Does everything CRUD does and more?"}
{"_id": "64822", "title": "Do job postings exaggerate their requirements?", "text": "I feel like a reasonably qualified programmer, but a lot of job postings I run into make me feel otherwise. Almost all of them separate qualifications into requirements and desirables, but even the requirements part can be daunting. I've seen a lot of postings that say they require several years (2 or more) experience in a relatively small technology or library, something specific to their company. Other times I see 5 or even 7+ years experience required for a language. On their own some of these would be ok, but it gets ridiculous when a small town company says you need 3 years in 2 languages, proficiency in network programming, scripting, databases, and stuff like \"experience with large highly redundant business critical systems\" all at the same time. Do they really expect to find someone who has extensive experience working with exactly the same technology set they use? I have a hard time finding a single posting where I don't have at least 1 or 2 holes in my skill set. I've heard over and over that most places value your ability to learn quickly and will teach you on the job, but then why say it's required? Are they just trying to discourage the bottom of the barrel (FizzBuzz failures) from applying?"}
{"_id": "153926", "title": "Non-zero exit status for clean exit", "text": "Is it acceptable to return a non-zero exit code if the program in question ran properly? For example, say I have a simple program that (only) does the following: Program takes N arguments. It returns an exit code of min(N, 255). Note that any N is valid for the program. A more realistic program might return different codes for successfully ran programs that signify different things. Should these programs instead write this information to a stream instead, such as to stdout?"}
{"_id": "223634", "title": "What is meant by \"Now you have two problems\"?", "text": "There is a popular quote by _Jamie Zawinski_: > Some people, when confronted with a problem, think \"I know, I'll use regular > expressions.\" Now they have two problems. How is this quote supposed to be understood?"}
{"_id": "215918", "title": "How to charge in agile iterative approach?", "text": "I have a doubt about budgeting when working with agile iterative approach. If I understood well, in agile at the end of each iteration we have usable product, so we have some of the requirements met and then some part of the software will be already working. How do we charge for our work in this methodology? Do we charge per iteration, i.e. charge per major requirements being met, or just charge the customer when the software is indeed finished and then receive for everything at once?"}
{"_id": "215910", "title": "Does the method of adjustment matter, or just the final calibration?", "text": "A company produces software (and hardware) that is used to both perform automatic _adjustments_ on electronic test equipment as well as perform _calibrations_ of the same equipment. The results of the calibrations are put onto a certificate of calibration that is sent to the customer along with the equipment. This calibration certificate states various conditions of the calibration, such as what hardware (models/serial numbers) and software (version) was used to perform the calibration, as well as things like environmental conditions, etc. Making the assumption that the software used to produce the data (and listed on the calibration certificate) used on the certificate of calibration must have gone through a \"test/release\" process and must be considered \"released\" software - does this also mean that the software used for adjustment must also be released? I believe that the method (software/environmental conditions/etc) used or present during adjustment doesn't matter, all that really matters is the end result of the calibration, the conditions _present during the calibration_ , and whether or not the equipment was within the specifications. The real question I'm hoping to get answered: _Is there a reputable source (e.g. NIST or somewhere similar) that addresses this question?_ (I have searched...) The thinking is that during high volume production runs, the \"unreleased\" system can be used to perform adjustments, as long as a released system is used to perform the calibrations, since the time required to perform the adjustments is much longer than the calibration. This unreleased system will eventually become released for use, but currently is not. Also, please not that there is a distinction between \"adjustment\" and \"calibration\". The definition from BIPM International vocabulary of metrology, 2.39: > Operation that, under specified conditions, in a first step, establishes a > relation between the quantity values with measurement uncertainties provided > by measurement standards and corresponding indications with associated > measurement uncertainties (of the calibrated instrument or secondary > standard) and, in a second step, uses this information to establish a > relation for obtaining a measurement result from an indication. Followed by NOTE 2 (emphasis in original text): > Calibration should not be confused with **adjustment of a measuring system** > , often mistakenly called \"self-calibration\", nor with **verification** of > calibration As a side note, I'm not sure why this got down voted. It's regarding software and it's use before and after release for use. I believe there is a best practice that can be applied and this is (hopefully) not primarily opinion based."}
{"_id": "150742", "title": "Am I deluding myself? Business analyst transition to programmer", "text": "Current job: Working as the lead business analyst for a Big 4 firm, leading a team of developers and testers working on a large scale re-platforming project (4 onshore dev, 4 offshore devs, several onshore/offshore testers). Also work in a similar capacity on other smaller scale projects. Extent of my role: Gathering/writing out requirements, creating functional specifications, designing the UI (basically mapping out all front-end aspects of the system), working closely with devs to communicate/clarify requirements and come up with solutions when we hit roadblocks, writing test cases (and doing much of the testing), working with senior management and key stakeholders, managing beta testers, creating user guides and leading training sessions, providing key technical support. I also write quite a few macros in Excel using VBA (several of my macros are now used across the entire firm, so there are maybe around 1000 people using them) and use SQL on a daily basis, both on the SQL compact files the program relies on, our SQL Server data and any Access databases I create. The developers feel that I am quite good in this role because I understand a lot about programming, inherent system limitations, structure of the databases, etc so it's easier for me to communicate ideas and come up with suggestions when we face problems. What really interests me is developing software. I do a fair amount of programming in VBA and have been wanting to learn C# for awhile (the dev team uses C# - I review code occasionally for my own sake but have not had any practical experience using it). I'm interested in not just the business process but also the technical side of things, so the traditional BA role doesn't really whet my appetite for the kind of stuff I want to do. Right now I have a few small projects that managers have given me and I'm finding new ways to do them (like building custom Access applications), so there's a bit here and there to keep me interested. My question is this: what I would like to do is create custom Excel or Access applications for small businesses as a freelance business (working as a one- man shop; maybe having an occasional contractor depending on a project's complexity). This would obviously start out as a part-time venture while I have a day job, but eventually become a full-time job. Am I deluding myself to thinking I can go from BA/part-time VBA programmer to making a full-time go of a freelance business (where I would be starting out just writing custom Excel/Access apps in VBA)? Or is this type of thing not usually attempted until someone gains years of full-time programming experience? And is there even a market for these types of applications amongst small businesses (and maybe medium-sized) businesses?"}
{"_id": "207802", "title": "In what order are rows fetched absent ORDER BY clause?", "text": "One programmer is testing and comparing the same application which uses the same database structure, and the same data, only in two separate databases, one with Oracle 8 and one with Oracle 9. The app runs a query with **no** `ORDER BY` clause. **He pretends the ORDER-BY-less query should return the rows in the same order in both databases.** I tell him there's no warranty of the same row order **unless you explicity provide an ORDER BY clase.** The database has the same indexes and keys. But the explain plan shows that in one of the databases the engine is using the key or one of the joined tables whereas in the other database it's using another's. He insinuates that the two DB environtments are not equal, which is so because they have different statistics, different rdbms engines, etc., but not because I failed to replicate every index the original database has. I tell him he must explicity provide an `ORDER BY` clause if the order is really that important. ## The question So I can explain him better: **In what order does a query fetch rows when you don't explicity write an ORDER BY clause, and why doesn't that query return the rows in the same order ?**"}
{"_id": "155510", "title": "Debugger for file I/O development?", "text": "Okay, the question title may be a bit cryptic. But it aptly describes what I'm looking for: I think every experienced coder went through this numerous times: You get a binary file format specification, you implement the reader for it, and\u2026 nothing works like expected. So you run your code in the debugger, go execute through the code line by line, every header field is read in seemingly correct, but when it comes to the bulk data, offset and indices no longer match up. What would really help in this situation was a binary file viewer, that shows you the progress of your file pointer, as you step through the code, and ideally would also highlight all memory maps. Then you could see the context of the current I/O operations, most notably those darn \"off-by-one\" mistakes, which are even more annoying when reading a file. Implementing such a debugger should not be too hard. traces on the process' file descriptors/handles and triggers on the I/O functions, to update the display. Only: I don't know of such a kind of debugger to exist. Do I just lack knowledge about the existance of such a tool, or is there really no such thing?"}
{"_id": "155513", "title": "How to verify that all files are intact prior to install?", "text": "I'm working on my CMS (in PHP platform) for a long time now. The main program is done and I'm currently developing the Installer part. Installation itself will be fairly simple:   1. Upload all files   2. Verify that the \"content/\" dir has correct permissions   3. Check if ALL files are intact and not modified [This is the subject of this question]   4. Insert the config data and first settings   5. Run install (Generate all DB tables and insert sample data etc.) Now the question-mark is at step 3. How do I verify ALL files? Verification itself should compare all CMS root-directories files against a list from remote location. List should contain filename, filesize and filetype. This way the user can check, that there are no unnecessary or corrupted files, that could indicated a breach in the software. I have seen some software installers do that, but I cannot find any right now and there for I'm clueless on the most optimal method for this. Of course there always is a simple `array` trick, but there surely must be a better and faster method?!"}
{"_id": "214351", "title": "Using Dynamic LINQ to get a filter for my Web API", "text": "We are considering using the Dynamic.CS linq-sample included in the \"Samples\" directory of visual studio 2008 for our WebAPI project to allow clients to query our data. The interface would be something like this (In addition to the normal GET- methods):               public HttpResponseMessage List(string filter = null);      The plan is to use the dynamic library to parse the \"filter\"-variable and then execute the query agains the DB. Any thoughts if this is a good idea? Is it a security problem?"}
{"_id": "214353", "title": "Why would one prefer C# (ASP.NET MVC) or Java (JSP) instead of PHP for web applications/projects", "text": "I'm wondering, why would one (consider it not just a single developer, but a company) prefer C# or Java for web applications? What's their considerations regarding the question. I mean, a company, has an assignment to make a web- site for customer, or online game, or web-portal, how does the project management or/and the software architect (and the core team) came to the conclusion - \"we will do it in ASP.NET MVC\" for example? I know it's specific, but what are the common reasons? Especially, why instead of PHP? As PHP is purely designed for web. Maybe if it is for a single web-site, there are much CMS's where the customer is familiar with, but let's say PHP also has a lot of CMS's, and most of the ASP.NET ones are as spaghetti as wordpress is. Also, as I'm aware, the common webserver is a windows webserver, back in the days I started with computers, everyone was saying the administration in windows is worse than in unix-based platforms. I really don't see the point. For me is just like waste of resources, I think you will need twice better machine running on Windows for the same achievements. C# for desktop - thumbs up, but for web - why? Same for JSP. Its common server is cross platform, so no need of Windows, but still isn't it also waste of resources? And the question is the same as the paragraph - how a company would decide to use JSP. The question was raised, because of lots of the sites rising in ASP.NET nowadays. To be honest, I have seen too few sites in JSP. P.S.: Sorry, I didn't find the relevant tag for this, so I tagged the languages and the involved stuff"}
{"_id": "235623", "title": "How to avoid errors and not miss anything", "text": "I have a problem that is more serious than it might seem. I've been programming for about three years , and I have learned and improved a lot , I read the code easily to others, understand the problems and transform them into code, I easily adapt to new technology and I love to learn how it all works . That's all fine . The problem I have is that I often forget small details , which then turn out to be critical . For instance , yesterday, after changing a database query to retrieve some data filtering by twenty fields , forgot to load all the data ( the query returned only the data of the primary key of the whole object ) . Other times are smaller things that do not make the whole process fails, but still I am afraid to fail at something serious , that my superiors grow weary of my mistakes , etc. . I would like to know how I can schedule the job to not forget anything or at least soon realize that I have forgotten something or have missed something ..."}
{"_id": "199021", "title": "Why is Feature Driven Development considered an Agile methodology?", "text": "In several places Feature Driven Development (FDD) is called an Agile methodogoly - e.g. the Wikipedia entry on FDD. Yet in general, to be considered FDD it seems the following requirements have to be satisfied:   * Coloured UML **has to be used** (but documentation isn't necessary);   * Instead of pair programming the team is divided by software features;   * **refactoring is discouraged** or, at least, isn't a task with explicit scope;   * **unit testing is discretionary** , the team leaders can decide;   * the work flow has to pass through the five FDD phases; On the flip side it seems to me that Agile is   * UML is an **optional** tool   * Tests are documentation   * Tests are **obligatory**   * **refactoring** is a consequence of the change requests of the customer and it **isn't discouraged**. Am I wrong with my understanding of either concept?"}
{"_id": "199020", "title": "Practice examples", "text": "I hold a bachelors in CS, but generaly, i call myself a beginner in programming. With an emphasis in focusing on learning to code and make Android Apps. I have gone through this common (http://developer.android.com/training) tutorial. Read through, and close to the end so as to get a general understanding. Done their example of Hello world. The next i want is a set of codes that i can go through, practice with them so as to build my skill to a harder level. I really want this so bad, and i want to do App development as a carrier. I appreciate any advice given."}
{"_id": "199024", "title": "Converting an empty string to a number", "text": "If you are designing a function which should conver a string to an integer, how would you convert an empty string? The question is only about this one particular input value (empty string). Between throwing an `ExcStringIsEmpty` exception and converting to `0` options I prefer the first. It seems more logical to me. Because when you perform an opposite conversion from integer `0` you will hardly convert it to an empty sting but to a string `0` instead."}
{"_id": "240973", "title": "What is a good way to share internal helpers?", "text": "All my projects share the same base library that I have build up over quite some time. It contains utilities and static helper classes to assist them where .NET doesn't exactly offer what I want. Originally all the helpers were written mainly to serve an internal purpose and it has to stay that way, but sometimes they prove very useful to other assemblies. Now making them public in a reliable way is more complicated than most would think, for example all methods that assume nullable types must now contain argument checking while not charging internal utilities with the price of doing so. The price might be negligible, but it is far from right. While refactoring, I have revised this case multiple times and I've come up with the following solutions so far:   1. **Have an internal and public class for each helper**   The internal class contains the actual code while the public class serves as an access point which does argument checking.   Cons:     * The internal class requires a prefix to avoid ambiguity (the best presentation should be reserved for public types)     * It isn't possible to discriminate methods that don't need argument checking     2. **Have one class that contains both internal and public members (as conventionally implemented in .NET framework).**   At first, this might sound like the best possible solution, but it has the same first unpleasant con as solution 1.   Cons:     * Internal methods require a prefix to avoid ambiguity     3. **Have an internal class which is implemented by the public class that overrides any members that require argument checking.**   Cons:     * Is non-static, atleast one instantiation is required. This doesn't really fit into the helper class idea, since it generally consists of independent fragments of code, it should not require instantiation.     * Non-static methods are also slower by a negligible degree, which doesn't really justify this option either.  There is one general and unavoidable consequence, alot of maintenance is necessary because every internal member will require a public counterpart. A note on solution 1: The first consequence can be avoided by putting both classes in different namespaces, for example you can have the real helper in the root namespace and the public helper in a namespace called \"Helpers\"."}
{"_id": "140691", "title": "Programming Challenges for a beginner", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to > program? I'm in an unusual situation. A colleague of mine wants to \"learn programming\" and, being a developer I have been tasked with teaching him \"programming\". Personally, I am self taught, and have never taught any sort of skill to anybody else before so I am not quite sure where to start. Also, I still have a heck of a lot to learn myself (although don't we all)! I write in C# but is C# a good language for a beginner? I was thinking that Visual Basic .Net would be a better starting point, so was considering getting him setup with Visual Studio Express 2010, teaching him a few basics (variables, functions, classes etc) then finding some programming challenges and asking him to work through these. Does anybody have a good source of these sorts of challenges? Also is this a good strategy? Finally, what are your experiences of teaching programming to somebody else and what advice would you give?"}
{"_id": "136005", "title": "What is the best way to teach beginners?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to > program? I was recently asked by an older friend working on the city council if I would be willing to teach a summer programming course, targeting middle school to high school aged students with either minimal or no prior programming experience. I'm a senior in high school, but I've been programming since a young age, and I've worked locally with my city on various projects requiring programming. The first thing is, I don't want to teach something that can easily be learned anywhere online. If I spent all day over two weeks teaching only basic HTML with bits of CSS, I'd feel like I'm ripping them off (since the class is planned to be $30.00 per person, although I won't receive any of the money). Furthermore, there's actually already a web design class being taught, and I got the impression that I wasn't meant to focus on web development. If it was all up to me (which it's not, I have to create a plan and present it in front of the summer programs board for approval), I would spend the first week teaching Haskell, and the second week using it to solve math problems (like those seen on Project Euler). Unfortunately, I'm probably the only one who would be interested in taking such a class, and I should probably focus more on programming rather than mathematics. I've seen in this thread that Java was not well liked, and I've seen in virtually any other thread that people loved Lisp dialects (especially Scheme, and I suspect this is somewhat related to the love of books like SICP). I have the problem of trying to make the course interesting and engaging, while educational. I don't necessarily need to \"sell\" programming to them, since they should be somewhat self-motivated applicants, but I also don't want to bore them and \"ruin\" programming for them. What should I do? What should I teach?"}
{"_id": "96503", "title": "How do I know how much to ask for in salary?", "text": "I'm heading into my first job (i.e. they're bringing me on for a full position) in Software Development and am quite nervous about how the whole salary negotiation thing goes. Glassdoor.com says that my position for my (lack of) experience offers something ridiculously high like 85k. Salary.com says that Software Developers with no experience in my location get about 65k. From some research, I know I shouldn't say a number before they do. But let's say they offer me _Xk_. What should I counter with? Do I say things like \"My research shows that people around my experience level for this position at this company earn much more...\", etc?"}
{"_id": "201579", "title": "Recompiling a java project while it is running", "text": "I have a Java program that takes about an hour to run. While it is running, if I change the source code and recompile it, will this affect the above run?"}
{"_id": "191236", "title": "Where do I start to build this?", "text": "I'm a real estate professional and part of my job is to scan a database day in and day out searching for properties for a prospective investor buyer to purchase. I am pretty sure a program can be made that will scan this database for me, and alert me when one pops up that I should look at. I make the decision on what they buy based on a few pieces of data. Things like square footage, beds baths etc. Basically what I do is compare a prospective distressed property to properties that match criteria to determine how close they are, and then come up with a likely after repair value based on the other sold nearby houses. I theorize that my program should be able to scan the DB, gather all new properties added. Take each property. determine which other sold properties are most comparable and come up with a likely after ARV. Then compare that ARV to the list price, if it is within a certain range, alert me. So far I've gone and confirmed that I can get a feed for this data. I think it will be in xml but won't know the structure of the data until i apply for a feed license. My problem is I have no idea where to start on this. I've been tinkering around with little website building and very basic html and php for about 10 years but never really became a master of it. Is this too much for a newb to build? should I pay? or suck it up and learn?"}
{"_id": "201574", "title": "How can I improve my productivity in Linux?", "text": "I have been mostly using Windows but I know my way around a Linux system but I am not as productive as in Windows. I am looking for some \"survival\" guidelines on what should I focus to be able to improve my productivity in Linux (mainly, being more efficient with the command line interface)."}
{"_id": "191231", "title": "How many `malloc` calls is too many? If any?", "text": "I'm implementing a system in C, implemented partially as a library. The library does most of the memory management itself, with the application layer just having to call `*_destroy` functions on the top-level objects. While checking for memory leaks, I noticed that the number of calls to `malloc` seemed quite high, relative to the size of the application code. The performance of the code seems fine, but I've been bitten by \"fast enough\" code before when trying to scale. The number of allocations roughly matches the number of objects created, including child objects of the top-level ones. So creating a single top-level object might trigger 7 malloc calls, since it needs one for itself and then a couple for it's children that may also need a few children. Unfortunately, I'm relatively new to C programming, though generally experienced as a programmer, and have no idea whether or these numbers are normal or not. So what would a good rule-of-thumb be for number of allocations? I know that less would generally be better, but changing the code to allow it would introduce complexity that I'm not willing to add without a significant increase in performance. Also, should I worry about the performance of `malloc/free` or is that the realm of real-time performance (games etc.)?"}
{"_id": "190546", "title": "A good C Variable Length Array example", "text": "This question got rather a freezing reception at SO, so I decided to delete it there and try here instead. If you think it does not fit here either, please at least leave a comment on suggestion how to find an example I'm after... **Can you give an _example_ , where using C99 VLAs offers a real advantage over something like current standard heap-using C++ RAII mechanisms?** The example I am after should:   1. Achieve an easily measurable (10% maybe) performance advantage over using heap.   2. Not have a good workaround, which would not need the whole array at all.   3. Actually benefit from using dynamic size, instead of fixed maximum size.   4. Be unlikely to cause stack overflow in normal use scenario.   5. Be strong enough to tempt a developer needing the performance to include a C99 source file in a C++ project. * * * Adding some clarification on the context: I mean VLA as meant by C99 and not included in standard C++: `int array[n]` where `n` is a variable. And I am after an example of use case where it trumps the alternatives offered by other standards (C90, C++11):               int array[MAXSIZE]; // C stack array with compile time constant size     int *array = calloc(n, sizeof int); // C heap array with manual free     int *array = new int[n]; // C++ heap array with manual delete     std::unique_ptr<int[]> array(new int[n]); // C++ heap array with RAII     std::vector<int> array(n); // STL container with preallocated size      * * * Some ideas:   * Functions taking varargs, which naturally limits item count to something reasonable, yet is without any useful API-level upper limit.   * Recursive functions, where wasted stack is undesirable   * Many small allocations and releases, where heap overhead would be bad.   * Handling multi-dimensional arrays (like arbitrarily sized matrices), where performance is critical, and small functions are expected to get inlined a lot.   * From comment: concurrent algorithm, where heap allocation has synchronization overhead. Wikipedia has an an example which does not fulfill my criteria, because the practical difference to using heap seems irrelevant at least without context. It is also non-ideal, because without more context, it seems item count could very well cause stack overflow. Note: I'm specifically after an example code, or suggestion of an algorithm which would benefit from this, for me to implement the example myself."}
{"_id": "76528", "title": "Preparing to release code as open-source", "text": "I have developed a fully functional tool which I would like not only to share with anyone interested but also get support from the community. This tool is cross-platform, written in C++ with Qt, the code is well commented but I still lack any documentation. There are also some small issues and improvements to be made before I can call it a stable, final version. What are the first steps that I have to take to release code as open-source and attracting people interested in contributing? This is my first serious attempt to release open-source code and I really don't know where to start. Should I just push it to Github put together a small wiki and pray for the best?"}
{"_id": "211322", "title": "How to deal with pointers from child to parent?", "text": "I have a class that represents a file in specific binary format on disk (the parent in the title) and another class that represents an object inside that file (child). When the object changes, it sometimes needs to relocate to a new position in the file and the file class has to be notified about this new position. To do this, I have added a `weak_ptr` field to object, which points to the file. Except that means there has to be a `shared_ptr` for file, so I'm using a `static` factory method instead of public constructor for it. And object now can't be initialized in the constructor, so I'm using `unique_ptr` for it. In code, it looks something like this:               class File;          class Object     {     private:         std::weak_ptr<File> file;          public:         Object(std::weak_ptr<File> file)             : file(file)         {}              void modify();     };          class File     {     private:         std::unique_ptr<Object> object;         std::shared_ptr<File> self;              File()         {}          public:         void setObjectPosition(std::uint64_t newPosition);              static std::shared_ptr<File> create();     };          void Object::modify()     {         std::uint64_t newPosition = \u2026;              file.lock()->setObjectPosition(newPosition);     }          void File::setObjectPosition(std::uint64_t objectPosition)     {         // store objectPosition     }          std::shared_ptr<File> File::create()     {         auto file = std::shared_ptr<File>(new File());              file->self = file;         file->object = std::unique_ptr<Object>(new Object(file));              return file;     }      Is this this the right approach to do this? Or is there a better/more idiomatic solution? I feel like I'm using `*_ptr` too much, but I can't think of anything better."}
{"_id": "211321", "title": "How can web development bootcamps deliver on their promise?", "text": "I came across the concept of web development bootcamps, these 9-10 week intensive crash courses claim to teach beginners web development and help them get 80k starting salary jobs. Many of you might have heard of these. Is what the bootcamps promise feasible? Is it possible for web technologies like Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS, and Javascript to be taught from scratch in such a short period? And to people without a technical background?"}
{"_id": "211440", "title": "Python -- when should a class have-a rather than be-a?", "text": "This is related to \"Extends is evil\" vs. OCP? but separate because the idea of \"implement the interface\" doesn't exist in Python. I'm writing a class to pull some data off a webpage. It's going to need to hold on to a cookie for authentication, so I'm going to use a `requests.Session` object in some form. I'm never sure how to approach this -- what's the appropriate choice here?               class FooFetcher(requests.Session):         def __init__(self):             super.__init__()      or               class FooFetcher(object):         def __init__(self):             self.session = requests.Session()      ? The former seems to end up with `FooFetcher` having way more public methods than it needs to. The latter looks like it might be unnecessarily convoluted, since pretty much every method of `FooFetcher` is going to involve a call to a method of that `Session` object, plus maybe some parsing of JSON that it finds."}
{"_id": "199799", "title": "Should a repository be passed in to the User Interface", "text": "In Mark Seeman's Dependency Injection in .NET he injects a repository into his UI layer. I believe that he is doing this so that he can store everything in the UI configuration, however this just strikes me as bad design. Wouldn't it be better to pass the service reference into the UI? What is to stop a future developer from using the repository directly? Also, he says that he is building this as an n-tier architecture. But, he has now coupled the data layer to the UI layer (no matter if DI is used or not). What if he wants to host all three layers on different self-contained servers. While his approach COULD work, it just seems wrong to me. So, I wanted to see what the general community has to say. Am I right in my thoughts, or am I missing something? Simplified version of the code:               public class UI     {       IRepository _repo;       public UI(IRepository repo)        {         _repo = repo;       }            public stuff UIMethod()       {         var svc = new Service(_repo);         return svc.GetStuff();       }     }          public class Service     {       IRepository _repo;       public Service(IRepository repo)       {         _repo = repo;       }            public stuff GetStuff()       {         var persistenceStuff = _repo.GetStuff();         //Do some business logic here         return persistenceStuff.ToServiceStuff();       }     }"}
{"_id": "167070", "title": "Differences between TypeScript and Dart", "text": "Microsoft recently unveiled Typescript, a new JavaScript-like programming language. Some time ago, I heard about Dart, a new programming language created by Google to solve problems related to Javascript like performance, scalability, etc.. The purpose of both new languages seem the same to me.. What do you think? Are the purposes of the languages the same? What are the real differences about them?"}
{"_id": "90903", "title": "What is beautiful code in C++, and why do most programmers care that much?", "text": "As most projects use a C++ API, they deal with constraints of the API and constraints of the project itself. I'm a beginner at programming, I don't like to use OOP at all because nobody clearly managed to explain to me WHY it's is so important to restricting yourself with private scope to prevent others programmers to break data organisation consistency of some kind. I still can be ok with OOP, since it still allows to make some great things like Qt and Ogre3D, but those are only APIs, not applications, and those codes need to be perfect so nobody can criticize the work. I don't understand why do most programmers, since they make apps and not APIs, want to do perfect code like they design some genius piece of code, and waste time on this."}
{"_id": "90902", "title": "Great companies using FPA as cost estimation", "text": "Anyone know if great enterprises (Google, Oracle, SAP) uses Functional Point Analysis to estimate software building effort?"}
{"_id": "165543", "title": "How to write a very basic compiler", "text": "Advanced compilers like `gcc` compile codes into machine readable files according to the language in which the code has been written (e.g. C, C++, etc). In fact, they interpret the meaning of each codes according to library and functions of the corresponding languages. Correct me if I'm wrong. I wish to better understand compilers by writing a very basic compiler (probably in C) to compile a static file (e.g. Hello World in a text file). I tried some tutorials and books, but all of them are for practical cases. They deal with compiling dynamic codes with meanings connected with the corresponding language. How can I write a basic compiler to convert a static text into a machine readable file? The next step will be introducing variables into the compiler; imagine that we want to write a compiler which compile only some functions of a language. Introducing practical tutorials and resources is highly appreciated :-)"}
{"_id": "138089", "title": "What would be the best way to learn about compilers, and executable formats?", "text": "I want to write my own compiler for my own language. Yes, it's going to be hard, and it will take long, but I think it will be worth it. I have looked into OSDev.org, and read about executable formats there, but they aren't much help. I am looking for information beyond what they have there. So, anything will help. Books, websites, PDFs, anything. I am looking into 32-bit, not 64- or 16-bit."}
{"_id": "237597", "title": "Implementing a first basic interpreter: what should I learn first?", "text": "I'm about to implement my own very simple programming language, and an interpreter to execute code in that language. The language will be very basic. Example code:               var x = 3     if x > 2 print x     if x < 2 print \"hello\"      The language wouldn't feature anything more complex than single-line `if` statements. This is because it's the first time I'm attempting something like this, so I'm starting small. The interpreter will be written in Java, and thus execute the code with Java operations. My question is this: I know that the topic of creating compilers and interpreters is very complex. But since I'm new to this, I believe I should start with basic techniques and approaches. **What should I learn before starting to work on this project? Especially what kind of knowledge regarding parsing and interpreting should I learn before starting?** Is it enough to just 'break down the text into substrings, and then more substrings', or should I learn more advanced techniques and apply them? **The knowledge and experience I acquire are meant to allow me to later build more knowledge on top of it when I continue learning and implementing interpreters. But shouldn't be 'too much' for a first attempt.**"}
{"_id": "235330", "title": "What is \"the refactoring method\" for understanding code wrote by someone else?", "text": "I wrote code, but I myself many times don't even understand the code i wrote. I heard people using \"refactoring method\" to help them to understand others' code. I just knew a very little about refactoring. That is using the combined key **Alt Shift R** in eClipse, but it will automatically change all the related code & thus does not make any benefit for understand code. So, what is \"the refactoring method\" (for understanding code wrote by someone else) that people talk about?"}
{"_id": "235337", "title": "In Git, is the use of a 'PRODUCTION' branch necessary and/or would it be feasible to have more than one of them?", "text": "**A short summary of how we do branch managing** : From the MASTER branch one or many feature branches can be made (for mid to long term development), when deploy-able changes have been merged to MASTER then release branches are made. Release branches are kept for maintaining deployed version until the next release occurs and they are merged to PRODUCTION in order to build TAGS which are deployed to Live Environments. **First verse of the question** : Is it actually necessary to have the PRODUCTION branch step? Surely TAGS can reliably be created off a Release Branch at the same point that it would have been merged to the PRODUCTION branch? If they are worth having then the **second verse of the question** : Would it be a suitable source control to have more than one PRODUCTION branch while having just one MASTER? **The motivation** : We will soon have an internal project starting that will (hopefully) be a \"white-label\" product we can use to replace three separate internal applications we use currently (as well as for any future applications). It would be one back-end, one library, one API but three teams using it and managing their own User Interfaces and adding reusable functionality to the back-end. A thought was the project could be one repo with one MASTER, various feature branches for any of the teams as they need to develop things (mid- to long term). But should we then have a PRODUCTION branch for each of the three 'versions' of the product or just TAG off from the respective Release branches? So that they could deploy independently from each others' sprints and requirements (as long as they do not break the shared infrastructure). PS: Each of the three applications deploy to independent Live environments and used by different departments in the company. PPS: If you know of any other versioning-flows which would be better suited please tell me! [EDIT - After reading jhr's answer] Think of this as one BIG project/application. But instead of having one BIG team working on the sections used by 3 departments (each with their own required UI flows and features etc) we may be split into three teams, each working on a department's features, on the same code base (repo). This is not a technical spec question per-say but rather one for opinion, experience or preference etc."}
{"_id": "123059", "title": "Boss is afraid to use a version control system for new project, should I anyway?", "text": "See Superior refusing to use subversion My question is similar, but here are the main differences in my scenario:   * We are starting a new project from scratch, using PHP and web tech. There would be no down time in development as we would be adopting it from the beginning, if I have my way.   * My dev team consists of me, and my boss. We are the \"IT\" Department of a relatively small firm. There is another IT worker who does desktop support but no development.   * My job title is Programmer; my boss's is IT Manager. The upper echelon of management likes my boss. They like me too, but probably not enough to give me the authority to override him. The web app will replace a legacy FoxPro application with absolutely no source control. In fact, due to legal requirements, the decision was made (before I was hired) to fork the app into 7 completely separate programs - not just the files that calculate things which can vary by state - but I mean the entire directory was copied, 7 times, and different states were given to different developers. Things diverged from there. My boss's idea of version control is to copy and paste entire source files from the state he's working in, into all the other states, thus overwriting those files. Small tweaks are recorded in text files manually, and must be copied and pasted by the developer for the target state. This doesn't always work so nicely. I get blamed for changing things and causing it to break when these files are pasted over. My boss's proposal, directly pasted from an email:   * Updates should be submitted as packages in the SUBMISSIONS folder. The package should contain all relevant files as well as an \u2018UPDATE.NFO\u2019 file that contains a description of the update, a list of all new files included (with descriptions), and a list of all modified files with modification details.   * Update packages should focus on an individual element and not stray from its intended purpose. Code should be designed to be modular and reusable whenever possible.   * All submitted packages should be installed in each developer\u2019s test environment soon after submission. Each developer is to review the new addition and voice any concerns over its installation to the production environment. A standard package update should be held for a minimum of 3 business days for this review process before being loaded into the production environment. High priority updates/fixes can skip this requirement. (end email) The reason source control was invented is to make all that automatic, right? I suggested subversion, because that's what I used in college. Boss doesn't like subversion because \"It makes a mess of the code\" and people on the internet told him it was bad. (Where is he looking???) I don't know whether he dislikes only subversion, or all source control products (he hasn't replied to that question yet). I am not asking for a compare/contrast of different systems like svn vs git, I can do that myself. I am looking for a third party who can present a logical argument for the use of SOME form of version control. Please, fellow coders, help me. If something you can say, addressed to my boss, would have an affect on my plight, I beg you to come forth. My boss can be reasoned with if a logical argument is presented. I am putting forth my own effort on the side to convince him, through research and demonstration, but if people from the development community are overwhelmingly on my side, I think he might reconsider. To be fair, I must also ask those opposed to version control to speak up. RSVP. Or am I wrong altogether? Is source control really necessary in my situation? This is our main business-critical software we're talking about, so it will end up huge no doubt. But there's only 2 developers (now). MY ACTUAL QUESTION: If I can't convince him, would there be any point to me using it only for myself? I am speaking as someone with very limited experience actually using svn; all I really know is checkout and commit. What are the features of source control (may include other products than svn) that would aid in my individual development effort? And please no \"Get another job\" comments. I know, people, believe me I know. Before it even comes up, you may assume that I am insane. Maybe I'm just a sucker for challenge or a plain old masochist. But just consider it not an option."}
{"_id": "95969", "title": "How does an online game continue after the host leaves?", "text": "**Note:** This is a question about networking, not gaming. I'm using StarCraft merely as an example. The game _StarCraft_ (not StarCraft 2) supports online play. One person hosts, and other people join. If the host leaves during the game, the game can continue indefinitely without the host. How does that work? Consider the following scenario:   * I host a 3 versus 3. Note that, for people to be able to join, my router has to be configured to port forward 6112, TCP and UDP (see Blizzard Support).   * Five people join. Everyone (myself included) is behind a router. I start the game.   * Three minutes into the game, about twenty zealots pour into my base. Nobody helps me.   * My base is eliminated, so I leave (the game doesn't give you a choice).   * The game continues without the host (the home team has two players left). How do the remaining five clients (who didn't need 6112 forwarded) remain connected? If I understand correctly: if two programs want to talk to each other, one of them has to be a \"server\" and listen for connections on a port, while the other has to be a \"client\" and initiate a connection request on that port. They can't simply start sending packets to each other (and I don't even know how they would, if both are behind routers). Someone hosting a game is a server, while those joining it are clients. It's easy to see how the clients can start communicating with the server. What I don't get is: how do the clients start communicating with each other without going through the server? Does the Internet Protocol allow a server to initiate connections between clients? It's entirely possible that, in the case of StarCraft, game traffic goes through Battle.net servers. StarCraft does maintain a connection to Battle.net during games (for messages from friends, etc.). However, I doubt game traffic goes through it, because if it did, why would hosts need to port forward 6112? My question is: can a server, with multiple clients connected to it, initiate connections between them?"}
{"_id": "215006", "title": "Organisation GitHub account. Secure to use for personal projects?", "text": "So a large client of mine gave me access to their Organisation GitHub account.   With it came a login for myself (on github.companyname.com) and of course access to certain repos on their company account (by switching the user to the company via the button in the top left). Now I was wondering, since I can create private repos for myself, is it safe for me to use these for non-related projects or can the company administrators access my user's repos despite being private? My understanding of Github is limited as it is, so this extra layer of complexity from the organisation account isn't helping too much. Thanks,   Mike **UPDATE:** Thanks to all of you who posted answers and wrote comments, all were really helpful. I have decided to no host any personal projects on their enterprise account as suggested, and again, as recommended I now host my repos on a private provider like bitbucket. Mike"}
{"_id": "215005", "title": "For asp.net mvc is this a three tiered solution?", "text": "I am a asp.net mvc programmer and if I want to start a project I do this:   1. I make a class library named `Model` for my models.   2. I make a class library named `Infrastructure.Repository` for database processes   3. I make a class library named `Application` for business logic layer   4. And finally I make a MVC project for the UI. But now some things are confusing me. Am I using 3-tier programming? If yes so what is n-tier programming and which one is better? If no so what is 3-tier programming? Some where I see that the tiers namings are DAL and BIZ. Which one is correct according to the naming convention?"}
{"_id": "215003", "title": "Is there much difference between X86 Assembly language on Windows and Linux?", "text": "I'm a complete beginner at Assembly, and my aim is to learn as much as I can to do with Assembly to one day I can reach expert level (I know I'm way off right now, but you never know). My only problem is this: I've got two books which both teach assembly, one on a Linux and the other on Windows. They are Jeff Duntemann's Assembly Language Step By Step (the linux one) and Introduction to 80x86 Assembly Language and Computer Architecture (the windows version). If I want to get the best out of assembly, should I do this on linux and windows? Also, is the syntax the same on Windows and Linux or will I have teach my self again when learning on the other OS( which is my main concern, I want to be able to use assembly on windows and linux)."}
{"_id": "27943", "title": "Are companies in certain locations (big city vs small town, etc) more likely to offer telecommute contract programming work?", "text": "I'm interested in taking on more contract projects for programming and, although it'd be nice to find clients just in my area, I want to expand my search a bit to other areas where a company may allow me to telecommute. I'm wondering if anyone who has experience with this has noticed that whether a company would be more likely to be open to this based on if they are in a bigger city vs a smaller town. I would think that companies in smaller areas may have trouble finding programmers for some things and therefore would be more willing to outsource but maybe I am wrong. Any info is appreciated, I'm just trying to get an idea as to how to concentrate my efforts with networking with people form different areas, etc."}
{"_id": "60679", "title": "Industry has no place for passionate programmers?", "text": "I've been interning at a place where my manager believes that if you are in a,   * _product company_ , then you generally spend time tweaking the product and sometimes adding some features, or   * _service company_ , then you keep doing repetitive things which makes me feel industry is no place for someone who likes to do create news things and solve difficult problems. So is the industry not a place for a passionate programmer? Does this change from country to country? * * * **Update to clear some things that can be understood differently than what they were meant.** Tweaking here is making sure your product has tables with the number of rows and columns the client wants, etc. Customize it for the customer. New \"feature\" isn't new functionality here. Just aesthetic-level changes. And it's sometimes. I'm not sure what he meant by repetitive though. He was like, you have to make the UI again and again every time. (I see no repetition there though. If a different UI is needed then a _different_ UI needs to be designed. If you can use the old one then you don't need to do much anyway.)"}
{"_id": "250920", "title": "Is it a bad idea to use mutable for pre-allocated temporaries?", "text": "Let us assume I have the following C++ class:               class MyFastMessageEncoder     {     public:         MyFastMessageEncoder() :             m_fieldEncoder(ENCODING_STYLE_DEFAULT)         {         }              void set_encoding_style(const EncodingStyle encodingStyle)         {             m_fieldEncoder.set_encoding_style(encodingStyle);         }              EncodingStyle get_encoding_style() const         {             return m_fieldEncoder.get_encoding_style();         }              void encode(const UnencodedFieldList &unencodedFieldList, Message &message         {             for (UnencodedFieldList::const_iterator it = unencodedFieldList.begin(), end = unencodedFieldList.end(); it != end; ++it)             {                 m_fieldEncoder.set_raw_data(*it);                 message.add_field(m_fieldEncoder.encode());             }         }          private:         FieldEncoder    m_fieldEncoder;     };      The `MyFastMessageEncoder` class is required to be extremely efficient (encoding will be performed on tens of thousands of messages per second), the time required to instantiate the `FieldEncoder` object is a non-negligible cost, so to solve the issue, I have defined the `FieldEncoder` object as a class member, and initialized it inside the constructor just once. My issue is that `FieldEncoder::SetRawData()` is a non-const method, which means that the `MyFastMessageEncoder::encode` method must also be non-const. _However_ , if I were to make the FieldEncoder object a temporary inside the method, `MyFastMessageEncoder::encode` could be flagged as const. This means that every object that calls `MyFastMessageEncoder::encode` is also non-const, which (to me) just starts ruining the program's const-correctness. Now I understand how the `mutable` keyword works works, and how I could use it to solve this problem, but my question is: **Would doing so be considered bad form, since the internals of the object are technically being modified?** Other considerations:   * Thread-safety is not a concern, this is guaranteed to only run in a single thread (although the `MyFastMessageEncoder` may be created on multiple threads)   * The `set_raw_data` method does not impact the `FieldEncoder` class outside the `MyFastMessageEncoder::encode` method. Any data that is set is cleared or overwritten the next time the `set_raw_data` method is called."}
{"_id": "27947", "title": "How much can I charge for this a little job?", "text": "I started doing freelancing. I got my first job to create a set of reports. The business team has provided me with the sample reports and also some sample codes. My job is to query the database and generate output as pdf using iText. There are around 25 such reports with different complexities. I am not sure how much to charge them. Can some one please help me in this?"}
{"_id": "27944", "title": "How can I transition to a job using the Microsoft stack?", "text": "I graduated from university with a computer science degree (BSc), having done some C, C++, Java, Python, and Oracle along the way. I did some freelancing while I was at university and carried this into a full time job when I graduated, and I've been working full time for a year now. PHP isn't really what I want to do, and I think it's limiting my opportunities the longer I stay along this path. It's not a language I like to use on a daily basis, and I would like to work in a larger organization, where it doesn't seem PHP has much use. I want to stay in web development, and there seems to be plenty of jobs for the Microsoft stack: C#, SQL Server, and ASP.NET MVC. But beyond a half semester writing common-line C++ in Visual Studio, I have no experience with Microsoft technology. Where do I start to make the transition to landing a job in a Microsoft shop? Are there any specific certifications I should be focusing on, or university courses I should be taking? What are employers or recruiters looking for? What can I do besides creating a pet project in my spare time?"}
{"_id": "191495", "title": "How do objects fit into modern C++ (stl, policy-classes, functional) style?", "text": "I'm a bit confused so the question is a bit confusing. TL;dr: how to mix STL and OOP? From the comment to Best overview to modern C++ paradigms? and http://www.boost.org/community/generic_programming.html there isn't much about objects-oriented programming. (boost guidelines mention object generators). When planing a program, it seems that STL and objects should fit well together. You think of an algorithm and how to do things, then you think of what are the things you want to work with and what properties/characteristics they have. You express those things in terms of tuples and containers and you apply algorithms to them. From my understanding, that's STL style of thinking. Now this is where objects come in. They are things that you do stuff with that contain data, algorithms that change that data and interfaces. But that overlaps with idea of stl where you separate data and algorithms. In OO you combine data and algorithms and in STL you separate it. Although mathematically and generically STL make more sense (when you can apply the algorithm to anything), it is easier to think conceptually in OO style when you have a lot of different objects and algorithms -- you get a better organization. For example, qt-style advocates using minimal and orthogonal interfaces specific to a class as oppose to general algorithms. I said specific because their objects are different and they ask for minimal interfaces meaning objects won't share the same interfaces. So the question is: \"can you get away with STL in modern C++ or should you use objects? and if you have to use objects then how?\" Other relevant questions at Stack Overflow:   * What is so great about STL?   * C++: Alternative to STL and Boost?"}
{"_id": "191499", "title": "Calling blocking functions and execute code when result is ready, but without callbacks", "text": "I am designing an application that has some scripting capabilities: the host application may call the scripts to perform some operations when some events occur. To keep it easy and newbie-friendly, there is a single thread for everything: this means that if the script calls something blocking, the entire application hangs. So, I either use callbacks or polling to wait for a result of a blocking call to be ready. What is ugly in this approach, is that a function that happens to call a blocking function, has to be split in parts. For polling, I'd have               function do something part 1         blabla         launch something lengthy         schedule do something part 2     end          function do something part 2         if result not ready then schedule do something part 2         use result         blabla     end      Callbacks are only slightly better:               function do something         blabla         launch something lengthy, when done call callback     end          function callback         use result         blabla      end      If one has several blocking calls, and each one depends on the result of the previous, code gets uglier and uglier. What I'm looking for is for some programming language that have some builtin support for this pattern. Something like               function do something         blabla         launch something lengthy         when done:    //fictional keyword         use result         blabla         ....          //more and more blocking calls     end      Of course if there are better solutions I'm glad to listen."}
{"_id": "195104", "title": "How can I say that programming language compiles to other languages?", "text": "How can I say in english, that programming language can be compiled to other programming languages? The example can be Haxe. On the website the language is decribed as \"Multiplatform\": > Multiplatform: Haxe can be compiled to all popular programming platforms > with its fast compiler \u2013 JavaScript, Flash, NekoVM, PHP, C++, C# and Java > (soon) but multiplatform can be misunderstood as hardware or software platforms (win, mac, linux). So what is the most suitable word describing this ability?"}
{"_id": "134213", "title": "XAML code styling", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What's the recommended control naming convention for XAML markup? Because the old answers now doesn't apply any more as Google Group(s) no longer exists I'm looking for some other resources about this topic. I usually do it like this   * Location (where I place the control)   * Look (how it looks beside its position)   * Behaviour (other bindings like commanding etc.) And this worked fine for me but still I was wondering if there was an actual standard or even recommended guidelines I could follow."}
{"_id": "224869", "title": "Summary of C# naming conventions (official Microsoft conventions)", "text": "I am struggling with naming convetions in C# I do not know when to use PascalCase or camelCase. I have read Microsoft's naming convention, but I got lost ther http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229045(v=vs.110).aspx As far as I know this is correct:               public int Number;     private int number;     public void Method();     private void method();     int number;//for any local variable      But in context of that above how should I name components in XAML: `x:Name=\"Button\"` or `x:Name=\"button\"`. They seems to be private field so I should use camelCase, but on the other hand everywhere on the examples I see PascalCase for `x:Name` I do not ask about one's habits, but orthodoxic/official/C# guru style."}
{"_id": "210645", "title": "Program design with multiple data sets, algorithms and results", "text": "I have a question regarding the design of my software. There are four different data sets and three consecutive algorithms operating on the data sets and on the results from the previous algorithm runs. Let D1 - D4 be the set of data sets, A1 - A3 the set of algorithms and R1 - R3 the set of results from the respective algorithms. A1 uses data sets D1, D2 and D3 and has to run on n different parameters. A2 uses data sets D1 and D3 as well as R1_1 - R1_n. A3 uses data sets D1, D2 and D4 as well as R2.                 D1    D1    D1       D2    D3    D2       D3          D4            |     |     |       v     v     v          n*A1    A2    A3          _     _       |  /| |  /| |       v /   v /   v          R1_1    R2    R3     ...     R1_n      Each of the results R1_1 - R1_n, R2 and R3 should have some output functionality. So my question is how to organize the program and its classes. I guess I would want to create separate classes for each of D1 - D4, A1 - A3 and R1 - R3 and make the data and result objects attributes of the algorithm objects? Are there any reasons for or against creating n objects R1_1 - R1_n instead of one object R1 containing an array of n results? Should the data classes include their own respective 'readFromFile' functions or would it be better to have a global utility class that reads all data from file and generates the data objects? The same goes for output functions, should they be placed in each of the result classes or should they be globally organized? Kind regards!"}
{"_id": "148875", "title": ".NET Dependency Management Systems", "text": "I have some .NET projects that are starting to get large enough to merit looking into Dependency Management solutions, so we don't have to copy binaries from one project to another. Here's what I've found so far:   * NPanday is based on a port of Maven. I can't tell how recently it was worked on, but the last release was in May 2011.   * NuGet seems to be under active development, and it appears to have support directly from Microsoft. Some people complained that it \"only addresses dependency resolution,\" but I don't know what else it should address, or whether it has added more features since that point. It does appear to have recently added the ability to import binaries as part of the build process so we don't have to commit them to our repositories.   * Refix appears to still be in Beta, after having received no attention since Sept 2011. Would somebody with recent experience using any of these dependency management tools (or any others that work well) share your experience? Is NuGet mature enough to use it for dependency management? If not, what does it lack?"}
{"_id": "254005", "title": "In MVC, why can't a model create a view?", "text": "I have a web application written in Perl with a controller, some \"views\" and some \"Models\". Each \"Model\" is corresponding to one \"View\". The controller (one file) creates an Model object corresponding to each view (view is a CGI argument) then retrieve the view from the module it has just created. Indeed, this should be bad thing but can you argue a bit more about it. My first idea was that since the object \"Model\" depends upon the \"view\", then the \"model\" is actually a view. But also the fact that ALL the cgi parameters are passed to the Model causes the \"Model\" to become not truelly a view but to loose all interest, since it is only related to the current implementation of the web apps. On other words, that the \"Model\" keep model but loose its \"comprehensiveness\" (\"Model\" is not easily understandable). I'm am quite new in project analysis, so please do not be too harsh. Why is this bad? I have made a prototype with the main structures I have understood of this web application, made as short as possible.               #Model.pm     package Model;     import {         # this requires an attribute called \"view\"         # and this require an argument which is the cgi params     }     ...          #View1.pm     package View1;     ...          #Model1.pm     package ModelView1 ;     base Model;     use View1;          sub new {         my $class = shift;         my $arg   = shift;         Model::DoSomething($arg);         $self->view = new View1($arg);         ...     }          #controller.cgi     my $model = 0;     ...          $model = new Model1( cgi_param => params() );          #there is severall models here     ...     print $model->get_view()->get_html();"}
{"_id": "254004", "title": "Git-based storage and publishing, infrastructure advice", "text": "I wanted to get some advice on moving a system to \"the cloud\" ... specifically, I'm looking to move into some of Windows Azure's managed services, as right now I'm managing a VM. Basically, the system operates on some data stored in a github git repository. I'll describe the current architecture: Current system (all hosted on a single server):   * GitHub - configured with a webhook pointing at ...   * ASP.NET MVC application - to accept the webhook from git. It pushes a message onto ...   * Azure service bus Queue - which is drained by ...   * Windows Service - pulls the message from the queue and ...    * Fetches the latest data from the git repository (using GitLib2Sharp) onto the local disk and finally ...   * Operates on the data in git to produce a static HTML website hosted/served by IIS. The system works really well, actually ... but I would like to get out of the business of managing the VM, and move to using some combination of Azure web and worker roles. But because the system relies so heavily on the git repository on the local filesystem, I'm finding it difficult to figure out how to architect in the cloud. I know you can get file system access, so in theory I could just fetch the repository if there's nothing on disk ... but the performance/responsiveness of the system sort of depends on the repository being available and only having to fetch diffs, which is relatively quick. As opposed to periodically having to fetch the entire (somewhat large) git repository if the web or worker role was recycled, or something. So I would love some advice on how you would architect such a system :) Ultimately, the only real requirement is to be able to serve HTML content that's been produced from the contents of a git repository (in a relatively responsive manner, from a publishing perspective) ... please feel free to ask any clarifying questions if there's something I omitted. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "205232", "title": "Is node.js a good fit for background processing?", "text": "I'm slowly learning `node.js` and have a small project I want to start. The project will have a lot of background processes (downloading data from external sites, parsing CSV files, etc.). A big \"win\" for me and node is the fact it uses JavaScript for both client and server. I code in Java and JavaScript in my day job but am also pretty good at Ruby. But, like I said, it seems attractive to use one language everywhere and JS seems to fit that bill. However, I haven't had much experience in using JS for running background jobs. Ruby seems to excel at this. And I'm not opposed to using it. So what are your thoughts on going 100% JS for this? I realize very large projects require custom solutions. I'm just wondering if it's worth the effort. Or, should I just stick with Ruby on those kind of chores? Opinions appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "27491", "title": "Black box or white box testing - which do you do first?", "text": "On a very small team, where the black box and white box testing is done by the same person, which should the tester do first?"}
{"_id": "45742", "title": "How to decide on a price for the project as a freelancer", "text": "I have seen similar question on this SE site but none comes close to a sure shot answer and many are rather subjective. So i am taking a website as an example to be more objective for you to decide its development price i should quote for the complete work.I would like to have specific figures. In past I have developed many projects for my classmates (Computer science and few .net) when i was in college and there i just arbitrarily quoted the price i will take depending on my mood and customer's ability to pay.. usually ranging from Rs.500 (about $10 USD) to Rs. 1500 (about $30 USD). I have also developed few websites but that was open-source and free. But this time impressed by my work i have got a client that wants to get a website developed similar to this: [ http://www.jeetle.in/ ]. So taking this website as an example tell me how much should i charge for complete work from designing to payment gateway implementation (Excluding the charge the payment gateway provider will take). * * * Few information you might like to consider. I am the only developer on this project if that makes any difference. And i would be using ASP.Net and MSSQL Express for server side processing and jQuery on client. Time period for development offered is about 4 to 6 Weeks. * * * Its like i know my work but not how much I'm worth"}
{"_id": "122826", "title": "Naming Rules: Standards, Reserved, and what do they depend on?", "text": "I want to know the rules of naming (AlwaysCapitalize, _underscore, firstSmallLetter, etc...) for each of Namespaces, Classes, Interfaces, Exceptions, Data Members, Methods, Variables, etc.... also I would like to know:   * Are they standards?   * Do they differ According to the access modifiers? (public, private.....)   * What about compiler and library reserved formats?   * Also are they Language, IDE, or Framework relative? I only know that these rules exist, but don't actually know any. Any help would be appreciated. * * * **EDIT:** OK, if the question is really wide, then I have to narrow my question: What are the naming rules of Classes, Interfaces, Data Members, and Methods in C# (and Java if possible). Also, inspired by Renesis's comment, I've created a wiki to write Coding Conventions, here's the link: http://codingconventions.referata.com/"}
{"_id": "122824", "title": "How do you define, organize, and document your data?", "text": "Please feel free to suggest a better name or way of explaining this question - I wasn't quite sure what to call it. The situation is one that may just come under the heading of \"be organized\" but I often find myself passing around either big blobs of data or many smaller sub-blobs (blob in the non-technical meaning of the word =o), to be used in various parts of my web apps. For example, building a small task manager that allows someone to create a task that ends up being represented like this:   * With a title, initial date, user, client, etc. (simple attributes).   * Zero or more temporal expressions that represent \"schedules\" for when the task must be done - periodically, by day of week, by day of month, etc.   * A tree-list of sub-tasks that can be nested to any level. This is all easy enough to represent in the database with a few tables. It's also easy enough to pack into a series of arrays and pass around (for example, passing an array of a task template, subtasks, and schedule data via JSON to a jQuery object that will build a tasklist on the client side. Between creating, updating, displaying, etc., the tasks, tasklists, etc., there are any number of places where I might find myself passing a big collection of data from one place to another (especially working with AJAX with much client-side processing), and it often looks pretty much the same - just a big array that says \"here is the data for your task and related 'stuff'\". How do you (or would you) keep this organized? For example, below is an array that has been pulled out of a \"Task Template\" object, and will be passed via JSON to a JS object that will dynamically build and display a list of tasks on the client side. I guess the question is whether and how you define the structure of such an 'object' outside the database, code, etc., and how you document it. For example, while the nested subtasks are pretty explanatory (and duplicate data, available only for convenience), it's not readily apparent that the \"SubTasks\" array MUST have each subtask appear in the array AFTER (higher index than) it's parent subtask, and BEFORE (ie: with lower index than) any child subtasks, so that they arra can be processed in order with the assurance that each subtask can be appended to it's already existing parent subtask. There are a number of rules like that here, and if a \"relatively\" similar array is used in 9 different places, documenting in comments/class documentation, etc sort of ends up sucking.                [43] => Array         (             [Meta] => Array                 (                     [SubTaskCount] => 6                     [TemporalExpressionCount] => 3                     [NumInstances] => 0                     [OutOfSync] => 0                 )                  [Fields] => Array                 (                     [UserID] => 1                     [ClientID] => 1                     [StatusID] => 1                     [Title] => Keep Testing                     [Body] => How are you?  Because I am a potato.                     [UserName] => Wheatley                     [ClientName] => Wheatley Laboratories                     [BodyHTML] => Etc.                 )                  [Sched] => Array                 (                     [TemporalExpressions] => Array                         (                             [0] => Array // Every Monday every month                                 (                                     [type] => dw                                     [ExpressionID] => 1                                     [ord] => 0                                     [day] => 1                                     [month] => 0                                 )                                  [1] => Array  // Every Tuesday every month                                 (                                     [type] => dw                                     [ExpressionID] => 2                                     [ord] => 0                                     [day] => 3                                     [month] => 0                                 )                                  [2] => Array  // The last of every month                                 (                                     [type] => dm                                     [ExpressionID] => 3                                     [day] => -1                                     [month] => 0                                 )                              )                          [TaskInstances] => Array                         (                            // This would have data on \"complete\" status of tasks by date...                         )                          [InitialDate] => 2011-12-02                     [DueTime] => 14:55:00                     [SchedDates] => Array                         (                             [1322812800] => 2011-12-02                             [1323072000] => 2011-12-05                             [1323244800] => 2011-12-07                             [1323417600] => 2011-12-09                             [1323676800] => 2011-12-12                             // ... List of dates between externally defined date range parameters...                         )                      )                  [SubTasks] => Array                 (                     [1355] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1355                             [ParentST] =>                              [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1356] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1356                             [ParentST] => 1355                             [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1357] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1357                             [ParentST] => 1355                             [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1358] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1358                             [ParentST] => 1355                             [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1359] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1359                             [ParentST] =>                              [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1360] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1360                             [ParentST] =>                              [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                      )                  [SubTasksNested] => Array                 (                     [1360] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1360                             [ParentST] =>                              [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1359] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1359                             [ParentST] =>                              [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                         )                          [1355] => Array                         (                             [SubTaskID] => 1355                             [ParentST] =>                              [RootT] => 43                             [UserID] => 1                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                             [Body] =>                              [DueDiff] => 0                             [UserName] => Eli                             [SubTasks] => Array                                 (                                     [1358] => Array                                         (                                             [SubTaskID] => 1358                                             [ParentST] => 1355                                             [RootT] => 43                                             [UserID] => 1                                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                                             [Body] =>                                              [DueDiff] => 0                                             [UserName] => Eli                                         )                                          [1357] => Array                                         (                                             [SubTaskID] => 1357                                             [ParentST] => 1355                                             [RootT] => 43                                             [UserID] => 1                                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                                             [Body] =>                                              [DueDiff] => 0                                             [UserName] => Eli                                         )                                          [1356] => Array                                         (                                             [SubTaskID] => 1356                                             [ParentST] => 1355                                             [RootT] => 43                                             [UserID] => 1                                             [Title] => New Subtask Title                                             [Body] =>                                              [DueDiff] => 0                                             [UserName] => Eli                                         )                                      )                              )                      )                  [TemplateID] => 43         )"}
{"_id": "122822", "title": "Functional Low-Level language that can use a webkit view", "text": "# TL;DR: I need to develop an app which should look kind of the same on desktop and as a website incarnation. Since I am a web dev and have never developed for desktop, I want to use a language that can embed a webkit view so I can use the same HTML/JS front-end for both usages, and minimize the learning curve for GUI at least. C++ and Java can both use webkit, however, I am looking for alternatives where functions are first-class citizens, because I prefer prototype-based languages by far. # Long Version I am mainly a web developer; I'm at ease with js/as3/php/python. Lately however, I had ideas that need other languages to get done. Namely, I have an idea for a software that is part custom-database and part GUI. So I began tackling desktop oriented languages such as Java and C++. I discovered Java is basically super-easy and C++ kind of ok (though it gets complex when I try to use GTK and the docs are sparse and dispersed). I can use this; one thing bugs me though: As fond as I am of PHP as a project and as a community, I've grown a dislike for imperative languages and find myself much more at home with ECMA-style languages. I was happy in web dev lately with the rise of node.js and how I could begin developing server-side functionality with javascript. # My question I need a language that has the following features:   * Functional. By \"functional\", I mean a large definition. This includes any language where functions are first-class citizens (where \"actions\" are more important than \"actors\").   * Portable: I picked C++/GTK or Java because of easy portability and no license restrictions. So portability here means _os-independent_ (with realistic limits) as well as _open license_.   * Can use a webkit view:(like in GTK,or in Java) or similar; I intend to leverage my knowledge of web apps to build a beautiful, usable, gui in html5. The same interface will be used in the online version of the app. Therefore, I need the language to have a way to embed and interact with HTML5   * Can use JS: ideally, through V8, although rhino or a similar tool is ok. If a _window_ js object could be exposed to the js code (so I can use standard libs such as jQuery), it would be perfect.   * Low-level: I need the database part to be fast. Could code my db in C and my GUI in whatever-language-it-will-be, but ideally, I'd like to use one toolset for both   * Less important, but: if the language could be a derivative of ECMA script, so I can leverage my js skills, it would be cool. **My Current Options**   * Titanium, which has all the above features and uses js as it's primary code; However, I dislike being tied to a particular SDK and I'd rather use independent open-source libs that I can read.   * Your suggestion?"}
{"_id": "211581", "title": "Planning relational database - one or two tables?", "text": "I'm currently planning the database structure of a used car's advertisements site. Each advert contains information about a vehicle, and a vehicle can be advertised multiple times over its lifespan (granted, quite unlikely). I'm unsure which approach to take - a single table, or two separate relational tables, each has their pros and cons. Schema 1               Adverts Table:     -------------------     id            int     make          varchar(255),     model         varchar(255),     year          int,     transmission  varchar(255),     fuel_type     varchar(255),     body_type     varchar(255),     engine_size   int,     colour        varchar(255),     doors         int,     location      varchar(255),     price         int,     owners        int,     mileage       int,     description   longtext      Schema 2               Adverts Table     -------------------     id            int     location      varchar(255),     price         int,     owners        int,     mileage       int,     description   longtext     vehicle_id    int          Vehicles Table     -------------------     id            int     make          varchar(255),     model         varchar(255),     year          int,     transmission  varchar(255),     fuel_type     varchar(255),     body_type     varchar(255),     engine_size   int,     colour        varchar(255),     doors         int      Personally, I'm thinking taking the second approach will benefit in the future, but it's proving tricky to work with. I'm using Laravel, a PHP framework. Because most of the \"search\" options are applied to the vehicle (parent), rather than the advert (child), a lot more code is required, which is starting to seem counter-intuitive. Schema 1 is far simpler to work. Am I missing any extensive benefits of going with schema 2? In a nutshell, the first approach requires much less code, but isn't relational. The second approach is relational, but it's requiring far more code (and time), reducing the brevity of my adverts controller in particular, which is actually querying the vehicle's attributes more than the advert's. It's also making \"sorting\" quite tricky, as user's can sort by \"make\", \"model\", \"location\", \"price\", etc - attributes which jump between model."}
{"_id": "193898", "title": "Duplicating documentation on interface implementations/overrides good or bad?", "text": "So we have an interface like so               /// <summary>     /// Interface for classes capable of creating foos     /// </summary>     public interface ICreatesFoo     {       /// <summary>       /// Creates foos       /// </summary>       void Create(Foo foo);       /// <summary>       /// Does Bar stuff       /// </summary>       void Bar();     }      Recently, we played a documentation story which involved generating and ensuring that there is plenty of XML documentation like above. This caused a lot of duplication of documentation though. Example implementation:               /// <summary>     /// A Foo Creator which is fast     /// </summary>     public class FastFooCreator : ICreatesFoo     {       /// <summary>       /// Creates foos       /// </summary>       public void Create(Foo foo)       {         //insert code here       }       /// <summary>       /// Does Bar stuff       /// </summary>       public void Bar()       {         //code here       }     }      As you can see the method documentation is a straight rip from the interface. The big question is, is this a bad thing? My gut tells me yes because of duplication, but then again maybe not? Also, we have other similar documentation duplication with `override` functions and `virtual` functions. Is this bad and should be avoided, or not? Is it at all worthwhile even?"}
{"_id": "220416", "title": "\"Enterprise\" version of GPL'd code?", "text": "I know that there are a number of discussions about the GPL on this site but I just ran in to an interesting case of apparent misuse that I (surprisingly) haven\u2019t seen discussed anywhere. The CFEngine configuration management program is apparently distributed under the GPL (it even appears to be an FSF project) but the original author also distributes an \u201cEnterprise edition\u201d which is blatantly non-free. This appears to be an obvious violation of the GPL. The official response to this question (from the CFEngine FAQ) is: > As copyright holders we are free to license CFEngine under any terms we > choose. The files that belong to both the community edition and enterprise > editions are consequently licensed under both sets of terms. The licensee of > the Enterprise edition is therefore free to choose the terms that are deemed > most desirable. Which, as I understand the issue, is just not true. As copyright holders they are of course free to **change** the license (for future releases), but distributing code with **both** licenses is contradictory at best and illegal at worst. Am I missing something here or does this seem wildly hypocritical?"}
{"_id": "99414", "title": "Where can I read the original C# introduction paper by Microsoft?", "text": "When Microsoft presented .NET Framework and C# language in 2002, what was the first article to introduce C#? I'm looking for some paper published on MSDN or Microsoft website that would explain the need for another language, talk some background and maybe have some code samples. Also, I'm interested in the original C# introduction, not in a generic .NET Framework document. I remember that early .NET papers were rather foggy and while it is a fair share of fun to re-read them, I aim for a language-centric document."}
{"_id": "186132", "title": "In agile development, should I try persistence in flat file before database?", "text": "Somebody explained to me that since in agile development, policy and the application logic should be more important than details such as persistence method, persistence decision should be taken at the end. So it might be a good idea to start with simpler persistence such as flat files, until we reach the point the weakness of this method become apparent, and only then we change the persistence, e.g. by using relational database. Is this true, or did I misunderstood the concept? Is this how agile team usually build application? What are the rationales for it and when I should not take this approach?"}
{"_id": "186136", "title": "Hardware key removal on a test system", "text": "One of my company's applications still requires a hardware key to run, but we're currently in the process of removing that requirement and replacing it with an online check. The issue we are having is that we allow our customers to set up test systems with copies of their live databases. With the hardware keys, that isn't a problem as they get a special key that tells the software it is a test, but we're trying to figure a way to do this with a software only check. Our only idea so far is to check the hardware against a registered list in the database, but before we implement this, I want to ask how others have solved similar problems?"}
{"_id": "241223", "title": "Where do the responsibilities of build tools end and those of CI tools start?", "text": "In the delivery of software, and within the sense of the deployment pipeline, where do the responsibilities of build tools, like Maven, end, and the responsibilities of CI start? As a rough _example_ of a problem that arises; should build tools have any responsibility to the configuration and execution of acceptance tests when they are further down the pipeline than actually building the artifact? I'd like an answer that addresses in the sense of deployment lifecycle phases rather than in specifics, like my example. Although examples would help bolster the answer."}
{"_id": "95749", "title": "When job hunting, what grabs your attention about a job posting", "text": "The small company I work for is currently looking for a few good programmers. We have posted job listings in a few places and hit up the local user group boards, but haven't really gotten anything back on any of that. As a developer what elements of a job posting would make you respond:   * Company Name (i.e. Microsoft, Oracle, or in our line of work BAE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin).   * Type of work (This seems kind of obvious, but would be like ROR or Java, etc.)   * Work Environment   * Computers used (MacBook PRO for everyone)   * Salary range   * Other It's a little hard to believe that given the overall job market that we don't even get resumes. We are in a hot market (DC area), but it still seems a bit hard."}
{"_id": "95743", "title": "Organizing a code retreat", "text": "I am keen on organizing a code retreat in my city. It's actually at my home with around 4-5 people. I have read some good inputs here, but I have some questions.   * Should I think of some programming samples/puzzles or should it be a small proto/poc of an idea?   Ex: Creating a twitter client, working with oData, etc.   * Should all the people present there by aware of the programming language being selected? Or is it expected that they'll come there, browse the net and learn and code?   * Should the end result be something that can be showcased/demoed or can it be some piece of code that we can forget about?   * Time duration for the code retreat: Is one day good enough or should I keep it for two days? Will two days become overkill?"}
{"_id": "78258", "title": "How to handle workload in a better way", "text": "I am a fresher working in a software company. I am working on a project all alone. Though I studied CS, I dont seem to grasp things (concepts, code, etc.) easily. Most of what I read is forgotten!!!!:(:( I want to improve but it seems like there are too many things to learn and there's less time... One more factor is that I am handling a project on my own which adds to my tension, when things don't work and my mind is unable to troubleshoot or look for alternatives... Also, I can't go to others for doubts as they are busy with their work and they don't know about my app... It's really stressing me out... I have to do everything on my own. I feel bad at the end of the day since I don't meet the expectations of my peers as well as myself... How do I improve myself and handle things effectively? Suggest to me books on not just coding but also on designing. Also how can I effciently manage my work as well as practice more to get the concepts more clearer?"}
{"_id": "149868", "title": "What is the proper way to do REST?", "text": "Everybody nowadays does SOA, even if some don't actually understand what is all about. So they do it wrong. Using that as an analogy I know what REST is (or at least I think I do) and want to do some of it. **But I want to do it right.** So my question is what's the proper way to do REST? I'm open to any resource, the path to follow, a REST bible book or something."}
{"_id": "78250", "title": "Working with Linux for Job Requirements", "text": "It is seen on many Job Qualification Requirements about being familiar with Linux(*nix, as the way its posted). With so many variants of Linux, which one should one focus on. From what I know, the Big Organizations use their own Hacked version of Linux, so one could not be familiar with the exact System used at the Industry by different organizations. Should someone just select one of the Variants and work with it, trying to acquire deep knowledge about it and should be able to adapt with a different variants with little effort."}
{"_id": "195076", "title": "MIT licence copyright notice for derived works", "text": "We're thinking of using some open-source MIT-licensed software in one of our web projects (a jQuery datetime plugin). The first line of the MIT licence is: > Copyright (c) [year] [copyright holders] If we include the plugin as-is (without making any changes), I understand we need to include the licence with only the original author (though the actual copyright notice at the top of the js file doesn't specify a year): > Copyright (c) 2013 Keith Wood If we make changes to the plugin, what does the copyright notice become? > Copyright (c) 2013 Keith Wood, 2013 [My name/Company name] Do you need to include all previous authors or is there another way of handling such a notice?"}
{"_id": "210985", "title": "As a senior project manager, should I still keep learning new skill in programming?", "text": "If I'm a senior project manager, should I still keep learning new technology? For example, every month every year, most language updates themselves, and a lot of new programming concepts become popular. Many new frameworks and patterns are created and make things easily. But you have to spend a lot of time to keep up with. If there's language which is proved more efficient and you aren't familiar with it, will you plan to learn it and let team members take this language to develop the project? If there's new framework, most people say that it's helpful to our project, but you know nothing about it, would you learn it and decide it? But as a PM, you should be a senior level or maybe busier than before. Are you willing to learn something 'not so senior'??"}
{"_id": "219663", "title": "Boolean properties in Class A control availability of members in Class B: Design Pattern?", "text": "Given the following code:               class AnimalDescriptor {         String species;         boolean hasLegs;         boolean hasTeeth;         boolean hasHair;              public AnimalDescriptor(String species, boolean hasLegs,                                  boolean hasTeeth, boolean hasHair) {             this.species = species;              this.hasLegs = hasLegs;              this.hasTeeth = hasTeeth;              this.hasHair = hasHair;     }          class Animal {         AnimalDescriptor control;         String name;         int numberOfLegs;         int numberOfTeeth;         String colorOfHair;     }          class doStuff {         public void go() {             AnimalDescriptor dog = new AnimalDescriptor(\"dog\", true, true, true);             AnimalDescriptor pirahna = new AnimalDescriptor(\"pirahna\", false, true, false);                  Animal fido = new Animal();             fido.control = dog;             fido.name = \"Fido\";             fido.numberOfLegs = 4;             fido.numberOfTeeth = 42;             fido.colorOfHair = \"black\"; //All good here                  Animal bob = new Animal();             bob.control = pirahna;             bob.name = \"Bob\";             bob.numberOfTeeth = 42; //So far so good             bob.numberOfLegs = 2; //This should pass compilation, but fail                                    //validation at run-time, since it is                                    //nonsensical     }      Is there a pattern name for what I'm doing here? I've tried searching variations on my question title but haven't gotten anywhere. Obviously, this is an extremely simple and abbreviated example, AnimalDescriptor should have a `bool .validate(Animal a)` method, as well, and Animal should have an `.isPropertyAvailable(String propertyName)` method, among other additions. I didn't want to bog everything down with a 500-line minimal-case example. There's no way that I'm the first or only person to do this, and I'm mainly looking for something I can latch on to for further research into best practices, implementation pitfalls, etc. EDIT: To provide a little more clarity, in my system, there are ~20 booleans in the \"control\" class (AnimalDescriptor). I'm tracking ~106 items (Animals) in ~103 categories (AnimalDescriptors) that share a pool of common properties, but each item only has the properties that are designated by its \"control\" configuration. Plus, the system should be able to expand to, say, 104 categories (AnimalDescriptors) over the next 5 years. We have a functional (if ugly) implementation, so I don't need validation or exception how-tos -- I'm more interested in how this problem has been approached in other domains/applications, benefits of implementation in a functional (as opposed to object-oriented) context, best practices, etc. It seems like there should be a name for this, but I don't know what it is."}
{"_id": "179261", "title": "Idea to develop a caching server between IIS and SQL Server", "text": "I work on a few high traffic websites that all share the same database and that are all heavily database driven. Our SQL server is max-ed out and, although we have already implemented many changes that have helped but the server is still working too hard. We employ some caching in our website but the type of queries we use negate using SQL dependency caching. We tried SQL replication to try and kind of load balance but that didn't prove very successful because the replication process is quite demanding on the servers too and it needed to be done frequently as it is important that data is up to date. We do use a Varnish web caching server (Linux based) to take a bit of the load off both the web and database server but as a lot of the sites are customised based on the user we can only do so much. Anyway, the reason for this question... Varnish gave me an idea for a possible application that might help in this situation. Just like Varnish sits between a web browser and the web server and caches response from the web server, I was wondering about the possibility of creating something that sits between the web server and the database server. Imagine that all SQL queries go through this SQL caching server. If it's a first time query then it will get recorded, and the result requested from the SQL server and stored locally on the cache server. If it's a repeat request within a set time then the result gets retrieved from the local copy without the query being sent to the SQL server. The caching server could also take advantage of SQL dependency caching notifications. This seems like a good idea in theory. There's still the same amount of data moving back and forward from the web server, but the SQL server is relieved of the work of processing the repeat queries. I wonder about how difficult it would be to build a service that sort of emulates requests and responses from SQL server, whether SQL server's own caching is doing enough of this already that this wouldn't be a benefit, or even if someone has done this before and I haven't found it? I would welcome any feedback or any references to any relevant projects."}
{"_id": "109501", "title": "What's the most important trait of a programmer desired by peer programmers", "text": "Questions here talk about most important programming skills someone is supposed to possess, and, a lot of great answers spring up. The answers and the questioners seem mostly interested on qualities related to getting a better job, nailing some interview, things desired by boss or management, or improving your programming abilities. One thing that often gets blown over is the genuine consideration for what traits peers want. They don't much value things like you're one of those 'gets things done' people for the company, or you never miss a deadline, or your code is least painful to review and debug, or you're team player with fantastic leading abilities. They probably care more if you're helpful, are a refreshing person to talk to, you're fun to program in pair with, everybody wants you to review their code, or something of that nature. I, for one, would care that I come off to my peers as a pleasurable programmer to work with, as much as I care about my impression on my boss or management. Is this really significant, and if yes, **_what are the most desirable traits peers want from each other_**."}
{"_id": "179269", "title": "Why does Clang/LLVM warn me about using default in a switch statement where all enumerated cases are covered?", "text": "Consider the following enum and switch statement:               typedef enum {         MaskValueUno,         MaskValueDos     } testingMask;          void myFunction(testingMask theMask) {         switch theMask {             case MaskValueUno: {}// deal with it             case MaskValueDos: {}// deal with it             default: {} //deal with an unexpected or uninitialized value         }     };      I'm an Objective-C programmer, but I've written this in pure C for a wider audience. Clang/LLVM 4.1 with -Weverything warns me at the default line: > Default label in switch which covers all enumeration values Now, I can sort of see why this is there: in a perfect world, the only values entering in the argument `theMask` would be in the enum, so no default is necessary. But what if some hack comes along and throws an uninitialized int into my beautiful function? My function will be provided as a drop in library, and I have no control over what could go in there. Using `default` is a very neat way of handling this. Why do the LLVM gods deem this behaviour unworthy of their infernal device? Should I be preceding this by an if statement to check the argument?"}
{"_id": "10206", "title": "Does this list of management behaviors actually appeal to software developers?", "text": "I came across this list of management behaviors (http://suven.posterous.com/dos-and-donts-leading-software-development-te). I think it has some gems, but I'm not 100% on some of them. I've marked those ones with italics and my name. Do you, as a software developer, think that these are appealing? Which three would be your TOP \"gotta have 'em\" items from your management? **Don't**   * Don't scale teams vertically by adding more people   * Don't create a team with more that 10 people   * Don't call people resources, its not cool and is really offensive   * Don't assume that people in teams are interchangeable   * Don't compare teams to each other when highlighting weaknesses   * Don't pitch teams against each other   * Don't create fake deadlines   * Don't force standardisation of tools and processes across teams _(I think this one can be argued for some situations - Todd)_   * Don't hire product managers who don't have a clue about software development   * Don't exclusively use KPI's to drive your teams _(Not only is it ineffective, but developers will find ways to drive the KPI metrics - \"You want lines of code? I've got your lines of code!\" - Todd)_   * Don't force your teams to work overtime, even asking is bound to create tension   * Don't assume that double the people equals half the time **Do**   * Do scale horizontally by creating more teams of about 5-8 people   * Do have a vision for the product and team   * Do appreciate that every team is different, so allocate projects appropriately   * Do motivate your teams _(Wow - that is one slippery, hard-to-define one. I agree with the sentiment, but it's like saying \"Be effective\" with no guidelines. -Todd)_   * Do allow people to move between teams   * Do have sessions to discuss the product vision, strategy, technology and process   * Do involve the team when determining the team/product name   * Do allow your teams to make their own decisions especially if they are the ones with the expertise   * Do involve your team on any decision that impacts how or what they work on   * Do encourage a development methodology that matches the team and the project   * Do pay attention to every individual's personal development plan"}
{"_id": "53410", "title": "Cuda vs OpenCL - opinions", "text": "Interested in peoples opinions of Cuda vs openCL following NVidia's Cuda4 release. I had originally gone with openCL since cross platform, open standards are a good thing(tm).   I assumed NVidia would fall into line as they had done with openGL. But having talked to some NVidia people, they (naturaly) claim that they will concentrate on CUDA and openCL is hampered by having committees and having to please everyone - like openGL.   And with the new tools and libs in CUDA it's hard to argue with that. -I'm in a fairly technical market so I can require the users to have particular HW."}
{"_id": "10208", "title": "Effectiveness of \"what is your greatest strength/weakness\" interview questions", "text": "As someone who is now finding himself on the other end of the interview table, I'm wondering how useful these questions are from an employer's perspective. Some of my coworkers think they're good because you can see \"how they respond,\" but I'm not convinced it tells you anything useful, for several reasons:   * It's not a very comfortable question and can lead people to twist their answers, even if not on purpose   * People may not fully know their greatest strengths or weaknesses (i.e. judge them by their peers)   * Explaining what a strength is isn't as good as showing it   * I still don't know any more about the candidate afterwards The rationale of my coworkers is that it can help weed out people that give ridiculous responses, like one guy that said his greatest strength was \"his intellect\" or people that try to turn the weakness question into a strength like \"I work too hard.\" But I think there's more effective ways to determine such things. If you want to see if someone's smart, ask them technical questions. If you want to see if someone is productive, look at their work history. If you want to see how someone reacts under stress or change, ask them how they've dealt with it and ask for concrete examples. What are people's thoughts on these questions, from the perspective of an interviewer? What do they really tell you about a candidate, and what are better alternatives? How do I convince my colleagues of this?"}
{"_id": "236560", "title": "Linking against LGPL - How to share the code?", "text": "I'm working on an Open Source software project (LGPL) which uses another LGPL- licensed software. To make it easier for users and developers I'm delivering and linking against the compiled thirdparty. As far as I know I have to include the sources and license-statements of LGPL software if I'm delivering and using it in binary form. However this would mean that I have to put the compiled version as well as the code of that thirdparty into my repository. Not only would that make the checkout take ages, it would also be somewhat redundant. Are there any techniques or best practices on how to solve this issue? My project is available on Github if that matters. Update:   * Link to Project   * Link to Thirdparty"}
{"_id": "223968", "title": "Time-complexity of nested for loop", "text": "I have loops like this:               for(int i = 0; i < n; i++) {         for(int j = 0; j < i; j++) {             sum += 1;         }     }      It's O(n * ), but I'm not sure what the j < i loop is. I have some tests that I ran,               n = 10, runs = 45          n = 20, runs = 190          n = 40, runs = 780          n = 80, runs = 3160          n = 10, runs = 12720      It seems to be converging onto .5*n^2, but I'm not quite sure."}
{"_id": "255357", "title": "Scope of VB6 Programmer in todays market", "text": "Myself Rameez. Today I successfully complete my 5 years experience in VB6 platform as programmer. I want to know from expert that Is any demand of VB6 programmer remains in market and in future? And also I want to know Which technology I have to switch and Way to change it successfully? More about my technical skill set is I have learned ASP.net,c#, core java in my academic year. I have also knowledge how to write the code in these technologies. But I dont have any industrial project experience in these language. I have faced some interview in earlier for .net developer but can not go further. Because of not having experience in .net. So please show me a right way. Your feedback is very valuable for me. Its really help me in my future. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "255355", "title": "Is 'design with types first' ultimately the same as 'design with interfaces first'?", "text": "In Object Oriented Programming, we're taught to think in terms of Polymorphism (the idea that the implementation is decoupled from the interface - and that it makes sense to think of the interface first). This is expressed by Eric Gamma (author of Gang of Four Design Patterns Book) > Program to an interface, not an implementation Later we learned that this is a way of solving The Expression Problem. Other languages such as Clojure address 'The Expression Problem' using protocols. Now coming out of Scala (and perhaps influenced by Haskell) we're seeing a design movement that says _\"Design your Types First\"_. When I heard that - I thought I'd heard it before. My question is: **Is 'design with types first' ultimately the same as 'design with interfaces first'?**"}
{"_id": "149646", "title": "What do I need for Java Socket programming?", "text": "I am trying to learn Socket programming in Java to make a game I created playable via network. I have never done much network programming so the subject is a bit confusing. In php I use apache to test my aplications on a local server. What do I need to install to be able to run network applications with Java?"}
{"_id": "149649", "title": "Design: Calling back to the parent class", "text": "When modelling an object with children it's common to include the children via composition, as a member of the parent class. Sometimes however the children need to tell the parent something, they need to call a function of the parent. How can this be accomplished using C++? Some options are:   1. Make the parent class global therefore the child objects will be able to call member functions of the parent object.   2. Inject the parent object as a, pointer or reference, into every child object. Then when the child needs to tell the parent object something, it can always do so because it has a member variable that it can use. What are other methods of doing this? Is there a general design pattern or name for this sort of thing? Note that I'm interested in ideas and solutions in C++ because the details are going to be different in other object-oriented languages. For example point 2 above mentions 'pointers or references' and both are only possible in C++. C++ has language features that are not present in other languages therefore implementations of a solution to the problem will potentially incorporate these language features making the solution different from what someone might come up with in another language."}
{"_id": "194111", "title": "Are there any disadvantages to using the Agile methodology?", "text": "It seems most companies are practicing Agile methodologies these days for software development. I'm curious to know if there are any downsides to using Agile, does it have shortcomings, is it always the right methodology to use? Do you any of you have experiences of using Agile and it didn't really work, maybe it was due to the type of project, or the team?"}
{"_id": "147222", "title": "WCF to Java webservices interop seems surprisingly problematic. Any good resources?", "text": "With a recent project our .Net based dev team has been tasked with integrating with a whole host of java based web services around the world, and we really have had a surprisingly (well, we are certainly not surprised any more) large amount of issues because the XML generated by WCF is not accepted by the java services. It also seems that there is not really that much good information to find on the subject, we have gotten some good tips from Yaron Nave's excellent WCF blog, http://webservices20.blogspot.com, and also on the MSDN WCF forum http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/threads. Are there anyone here who really feel that they got this down, and know the definitive resource on the subject? Would be interested in tips on books, blogs or any websites. Edit:   I am torn on setting the answer accepted on this thread, because each of the two best answers has some value:   1\\. We will probably end up with doing more HTTP Webrequest implementations instead of fighting WCF.   2\\. But the WCF Express Interop Bindings 1.0 was also a very sensible tip."}
{"_id": "142611", "title": "Synchronize Azure SQL (cloud) with Azure SQL Emulator (local)?", "text": "We have an Azure service (web role) that heavily depends on the database. For offline development/testing, we'd like to have the app+db run offline within the emulators. Running the webrole itself within the emulator is straightforward but doing so for the Azure SQL isn't so. What is the simplest way to ensure that the cloud Azure SQL database and the emulator/local Azure SQL database are in sync? We can afford some level of staleness for simplicity of sync operation (meaning it's ok for the local copy to be a few hours stale versus mirroring every write as soon as it happens) Thanks"}
{"_id": "34439", "title": "Use a GUI designer or write it yourself for the desktop?", "text": "Writing a GUI for a program has always been a daunting, depressing, and frustrating task. It doesn't matter which language, its extremely hard to get what I want. Especially in compiled languages like Java where a change takes a minute or two to build. The result is that I increasingly use GUI designers for some of my project. Sure there is some spagetti code, but as long as I leave the configuration and a note saying \"This was designed with X\" I have no qualms with doing this. Is this an okay way to design a GUI? More importantly, is this what most people do? Or is the common way to just sit down and write it out?"}
{"_id": "34438", "title": "What are the advantages of using Adobe Flex?", "text": "I've used Adobe Flex to develop a web application and I simply don't have an opinion of it, it looks good to the user and the code can't be seen for most users, but, is that it? What other advantage does Flex has?"}
{"_id": "115105", "title": "What procedures or audits should be used to assess the security of a software system?", "text": "Are there any standardised security procedures or auditing techniques that can be used to assess the security of a piece of software? I'm specifically interested in auditing software written in Java, but other tips for other languages as well as general practices would be useful to know about as. A list of frequent identified security vulnerabilities would be helpful, as well. I'm looking for things that are specific to software engineering practices, rather than, for example system administrators."}
{"_id": "144753", "title": "How do you make an open source website and profit?", "text": "I'm not asking from a business sense exactly, but for example, both reddit and Twitter are completely open source. It is my understanding that at least the large majority of their profit comes from advertising on their website. So what exactly is to prevent someone from copying their code and making their own website with some small but effective changes? I ask this because I have a website, and I want to make money on it through advertising. I also want the code to be open source, just to be nice, but I don't want this to happen to me. My site is not (and will probably never ben close to) an institution like Twitter or reddit. I'm not sure if they're just so big they're not worried about someone copying their site, or if they actually have some protection in spite of being open source. reddit uses CPAL, and Twitter uses the Apache license -- does this offer the protection they need or is there something else I'm not getting?"}
{"_id": "153507", "title": "What is expected of me as a recent graduate?", "text": "I just recently graduated and now work as an entry level software developer. I've been there for 2 weeks. Is it normal for me to feel like I'm the stupidest person in the room? I feel like the interns there know what they're doing better!"}
{"_id": "26723", "title": "Security by obscurity - whats the equivalent for deleting data?", "text": "Unsure if I'm asking this in the right place but here goes: **Security by Obscurity** is the process of making data so _obscure_ it therefore becomes _secure_ as no one can read/understand it. My question is what is the \"term\" for deleting data in order to make sure it is secure (i.e. deleting old e-mails)? I understand deleting could be argued as obscuring the data, but is this the correct term?"}
{"_id": "194672", "title": "Best Practices for Maintaining Uppercase vs Proper Case Data", "text": "We have several years of customer data that has been collected over time. I'd guess that 95% of the data (Names, Business Names & Addresses) is in all UPPERCASE format. The data entry tool used within our organization offers an \"Export as Proper Case\" function. We do not have the ability to modify this data import function. It's an all or nothing switch. We flipped this switch on in January 2013 and since then have discovered numerous data abnormalities:               Original Data          Proper Case Import     -------------          ------------------     McDonald               Mcdonald     MacDonald              Macdonald      O'Neil                 O'neil     My First LLC           My First Llc     my.email@test.com      My.Email@Test.Com     John Smith III         John Smith Iii      Our data is stored within a closed environment on an iSeries. We have a web interface that allows for single record changes to the data. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to run an update database query to update our data and make mass changes. What are the **Best Practices** that you have adopted within your organization with regard to maintaining Proper Case Data vs UPPERCASE Data? I've got two or three people in the organization that are pushing for Proper Case data on the system. The majority of other people want UPPERCASE data on the system. I'm trying to put together a presentation that states how unrealistic it is to move to a total Proper Case data environment. What are some good talking points or arguments that support all UPPERCASE data?"}
{"_id": "194675", "title": "How to show an \"or includes\" relationship - UML Use case diagram", "text": "I haven't come across this issue before and can't find it in my Schaum's Outline UML book and was wondering if someone here could help. I'm making a use case diagram for e-commerce, and in it I want to describe that in order to add a book to your shopping basket, you have to either search products (using the websites search engine) or browse products (using navigation). But the thing is that it can be either one, and not both. Is there a way to show that adding a product to the basket needs to include either this or that? Because otherwise it would look like it needs to include both. Or should I join the two use cases (search products and browse products) into one?"}
{"_id": "144361", "title": "Anyone know about AppDynamics? Does Microsoft already have something similiar? Event viewer? Im confused", "text": "We have a big collection of java (80%) and .Net (20%) apps.. And the people in charge want a way to monitor the applications somehow. So they told me they are interested in AppDynamics? I have spent a bit looking into it but I still don't get it. Can someone tell me what its about ? From my understanding it seems like you would someone inject the AppDynamics API in your code to tell about differnt events that occur? So sounds like Event Viewer ? I am on the .NET side of this and seems to me we can just write data to a log and report off of that data.. I don't get what the additional complexity of using'AppDynamics' does. Maybe it is overkill ??"}
{"_id": "66313", "title": "Measuring an enterprises reliance upon software", "text": "In bidding a complex project for a client, I wanted a way to determine their reliance upon software. They have many people doing manual entry and Excel spreadsheets power many pieces as well as legacy code and some off the shlef solutions that do not interact in any way. Its one thing to say \"You need software to run your business\" but how do you create a measure of this to be able to say something like \"You are currently 68% reliant upon software\" its time to take it seriously before the expanding complexity costs more to maintain than to re-write?"}
{"_id": "24378", "title": "Type Casting variables in PHP: Is there a practical example?", "text": "PHP, as most of us know, has weak typing. For those who don't, PHP.net says: > PHP does not require (or support) explicit type definition in variable > declaration; a variable's type is determined by the context in which the > variable is used. Love it or hate it, PHP re-casts variables on-the-fly. So, the following code is valid:               $var = \"10\";     $value = 10 + $var;     var_dump($value); // int(20)      PHP also alows you to explicitly cast a variable, like so:               $var = \"10\";     $value = 10 + $var;     $value = (string)$value;     var_dump($value); // string(2) \"20\"      That's all cool... but, for the life of me, I cannot conceive of a practical reason for doing this. I don't have a problem with strong typing in languages that support it, like Java. That's fine, and I completely understand it. Also, I'm aware of--and fully understand the usefulness of--type hinting in function parameters. The problem I have with type casting is explained by the above quote. If PHP can swap types _at-will_ , it can do so even after you _force cast_ a type; and it can do so _on-the-fly_ when you need a certain type in an operation. That makes the following valid:               $var = \"10\";     $value = (int)$var;     $value = $value . ' TaDa!';     var_dump($value); // string(8) \"10 TaDa!\"      So what's the point? Can anyone show me a practical application or example of type casting-- **one that would fail if type casting were not involved?** I ask this here instead of SO because I figure **practicality** is too subjective. ### Edit in response to Chris' comment Take this theoretical example of a world where user-defined type casting _makes sense in PHP_ :   1. You force cast variable `$foo` as `int` \\--> `(int)$foo`.   2. You attempt to store a string value in the variable `$foo`.   3. PHP throws an exception!! <\\--- That would make sense. Suddenly the reason for user defined type casting exists! The fact that PHP will switch things around as needed makes the point of user defined type casting vague. For example, the following two code samples are equivalent:               // example 1     $foo = 0;     $foo = (string)$foo;     $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo;          // example 2     $foo = 0;     $foo = (int)$foo;     $foo = '# of Reasons for the programmer to type cast $foo as a string: ' . $foo;      ### UPDATE Guess who found himself using typecasting in a practical environment? Yours Truly. The requirement was to display money values on a website for a restaurant menu. The design of the site required that trailing zeros be trimmed, so that the display looked something like the following:               Menu Item 1 .............. $ 4     Menu Item 2 .............. $ 7.5     Menu Item 3 .............. $ 3      The best way I found to do that wast to cast the variable as a float:               $price = '7.50'; // a string from the database layer.     echo 'Menu Item 2 .............. $ ' . (float)$price;      PHP trims the float's trailing zeros, and then recasts the float as a string for concatenation."}
{"_id": "187661", "title": "Why do some programmers keep values in global variables or member variables but not reused?", "text": "I am talking about normal PC applications, memory should be sufficient. They declare global or member variables. In each function/method, they use the same global/member variables. At the beginning of each method, the variables are re-initialized so the old value is never used. Why do they keep the variables but no chance to reuse the old value?               class A     {         List<Car> carList;         public List<Car> M()         {             // always re-init variable             this.carList = new List<Car>();             // ...             // fetch from DB             return this.carList;         }              public List<Car> N(string id)         {             // always re-init variable             this.carList = new List<Car>();             // ...             // fetch from DB             return this.carList;         }     }"}
{"_id": "158836", "title": "Storing plaintext passwords for detecting fraud", "text": "I am well aware of best practices for storing user passwords:   * Never store passwords in plaintext   * Never store encrypted passwords; always store password hashes   * Always salt your password hash to deter brute force attacks   * Always use unique salts to deter attacks using rainbow tables. However, I have recently came upon on a potentially legitimate use case for keeping plaintext (or plaintext-accessible encrypted) user passwords: fraud detection. For example, if we have a system that needs to restrict purchases to 1 (or a small number) per person, we have observed that fraudsters often use the same password over and over, so if we have detected fraudulent purchases on one account, we can use the fact that password matches as a useful signal in a fraud detection system. But implementing such a system requires breaking all the best practices for password storage. Question: **If it is determined that the fraud-detection ability of being to retrieve passwords is necessary, what are the best practices for storing passwords securely but in a way that is plaintext-accessible?**"}
{"_id": "68924", "title": "Is it a good idea to take a dev job knowing you'll be leaving shortly?", "text": "I'm currently in a very stable, comfortable dev position where most of my growth as a developer is solo. My current team doesn't really discuss software development and not everyone is interested in it enough to grow as a group. Nevertheless, I love the people I work with and we have the opportunity to work on fun projects (most of the time). Through a recruiter, I've been offered a very exciting job with a bunch of super-smart devs that love to discuss, improve, grow. However, (and the employer doesn't know this), I'm planning on leaving the area in **just over a year**. These plans are pretty definite, so the mentality of _\"Hey, anything could happen in a year,\"_ while true, doesn't feel applicable. There are other factors to consider (a **much** longer commute, longer working hours, etc), but the one that is really bothering me is I don't know how I feel about starting something so life-changing, only to start making plans to leave in ~9 months. Personally, I want to feel like I'm settling into a job, not hopping around. Granted, I also can't help but consider the needs of the employer; I don't want to be the guy that stayed for just a year, forcing them to restart the hiring process. Especially in the field of software development, I feel there's an investment made in the employee that is hired. _(Training in the business domain, training in the specific practices of the organization, training in the tools, etc.)_ I'm the kind of developer that wants to give back on that investment -- otherwise I feel I have nothing to show for myself. So, do you think **a year is enough time to give back on that investment**? **Edit:** I appreciate all of the answers I've received, but I wanted to clarify that I wouldn't be leaving in 9 months, I'd be leaving in 12-13 months. 9 months was just an approximation of how long until I had to start _thinking_ about leaving."}
{"_id": "157825", "title": "Designing a 3-phase commit web service", "text": "We already have a fully operational web service which caters requests from multiple paltform devices. Each device sends only one request at a time and immediately after a response for the request the device sends an applicative ACK, this ack message is like a regular request message, and it's all via http. During a performance/load test we discovered that the following situation happens alot: regular requests gets processed ok but when the ack message is sent, it is thrown because the server can't handle too many requests. We accept the case that the server throws requests because of overload, but we do not accept throwing ack messages. So essentially we want the server to process 2 requests at a time for each device, is there anyway to do it in the current situation? if not, what kind of changes do we need to do?"}
{"_id": "136636", "title": "How do software engineers deploy applications?", "text": "Interested to know how people deploy software to their customers I have the following requirements:   1. Customers on various OS's prob. linux and Windows   2. Can't release the source code   3. Ideally want option to develop GUIs not just cmd line stuff   4. Can't assume anything is pre-installed on customers machines   5. Would like to use a nice,high productivity language I've used python for various stuff but am not sure how you could deploy it without releasing source code and without knowing your customers have python installed I know you can make exes but its not really designed for that and your effectively compiling in the interpreter each time Is there another similar high level language that can be properly compiled and distributed as a binary, possibly with a few supporting shared libs or something?"}
{"_id": "89158", "title": "Do you have to be good at math to be a good programmer?", "text": "It seems that conventional wisdom suggests that good programmers are also good at math. Or that the two are somehow intrinsically linked. Many programming books I have read provide many examples that are solutions to math problems, or are somehow related to math as if these examples are what make sense to most people. So the question I would like to float is: do you have to be good at math to be a **good** programmer?"}
{"_id": "139821", "title": "How to learn Math to increase Programming skills?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What degree of mathematical knowledge should a programmer have?   >  Where should I start learning math with regards to programming I need an advice. Im a web developer and currently working in an IT Company. PHP is my language of choice. But i dont want to become just a PHP Programmer i want to learn new things i want to learn also Game Programming and Other programming languages that uses Math skills. Im not good in math and honestly forgot important math concepts but im willing to learn it from the scratch. Maybe its takes time month,or years but i want to be (good,better,best) at it. My problem is that i dont know where i should start. I want to know what kind of math i need to know to accomplished this goal. I want to start from the very first if necessary in order for me to know all the things that will be needed in programming that uses math. Please help and thanks.."}
{"_id": "136987", "title": "What does mathematics have to do with programming?", "text": "I just started a diploma in software development. Right now we're starting out with basic Java and such (so right from the bottom you might say) - which is fine, I have no programming experience apart from knowing how to do \"Hello World\" in Java. I keep hearing that mathematics is pertinent to coding, but how is it so? What general examples would show how mathematics and programming go together, or are reliant on one another? I apologize of my question is vague, I'm barely starting to get a rough idea of the kind of world I'm stepping into as a code monkey student..."}
{"_id": "200960", "title": "What kind of maths do I need to become an excellent programmer", "text": "I am looking to become a app/video game developer or a website developer. What kind of maths do I need to know and do I have to know it well. Do I need to know calculus, statistics and modeling, what kind?"}
{"_id": "213267", "title": "Can you be succesfull as a programmer without being good in math?", "text": "I have never been good in maths at high school. But I started a study app development. And I'm curious if you need to be awesome in maths, if you want to become a professional developer."}
{"_id": "205248", "title": "Web Developer and Math", "text": "I have just learned HTML/CSS and I practice everything I read to make it more understandable to me and I really enjoy it. My goal is to be a Modern Web Developer both front and back-end, so I won't stop learning. I'm planing to jump on JavaScript now but what I would like to know is how important is math to being a Web Developer.   1. Do I need to know math?   2. If so, what kind of math should I know and understand?"}
{"_id": "137088", "title": "How important is maths depending on what your coding?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What does mathematics have to do with programming?   >  How often do you have to solve pure mathematical or algorithmical problems? I heard that math can be very important in programming. I am a confident python programmer, and have started C++. So far I have not encountered anything where I need to use any real math.   I have had to use logic and a bit of problem solving, but that's about it. I also wanted to know: does a particular part of coding (software engineering or game development) use maths more?"}
{"_id": "55481", "title": "Do we have to learn Mathematics to be a good Programmer?", "text": "Do we have to learn Mathematics to be a good Programmer?"}
{"_id": "136994", "title": "Where should I start learning math with regards to programming", "text": "I've created several systems already, a web based menu system, a payroll system and I am currently developing a patient administration system, I know java,C,C++ C#, javascript PHP and other languages. but the thing here is that I feel I lack knowledge of good math. I am still studying in college but it seems to me that I need to know more about math that concerns programming, what or which part of mathematics should I study for me to improve my programming skills? Algorithm designs? Algorithms? What branch of mathematics?"}
{"_id": "143259", "title": "Using Clojure instead of Python for scalability (multi core) reasons, good idea?", "text": "After reading http://clojure.org/rationale and other performance comparisons between Clojure and many languages, I started to think that apart from ease of use, I shouldn't be coding in Python anymore, but in Clojure instead. Actually, I began to feel irresponsisble for not learning clojure seeing it's benefits. Does it make sense? Can't I make really efficient use of all cores using a more imperative language like Python, than a lisp dialect or other functional language? It seems that all the benefits of it come from using immutable data, can't I do just that in Python and have all the benefits? I once started to learn some Common Lisp, read and done almost all exercises from a book I borrowed from my university library (I found it to be pretty good, despite it's low popularity on Amazon). But, after a while, I got myself struggling too much to do some simple things. I think there's somethings that are more imperative in their nature, that makes it difficult to model those thins in a functional way, I guess. The thing is, is Python as powerful as Clojure for building applications that takes advantages of this new multi core future? Note that I don't think that using semaphores, lock mechanisms or other similar concurrency mechanism are good alternatives to Clojure 'automatic' parallelization."}
{"_id": "67951", "title": "Should framework classes (e.g. .NET, Java) be included in UML diagram?", "text": "Say in a UML Sequence diagram, I am showing a call to the database using ADO.NET. Do I need to include the SqlConnection, SqlCommand, SqlDataReader object in the diagram? Is it just preference determined by the level of depth/detail?"}
{"_id": "25969", "title": "Should I bother to develop for JavaScript disabled?", "text": "Should I bother to develop for JavaScript disabled? I feel that my time is better spent developing for the majority."}
{"_id": "193509", "title": "Bothering to cater to non-JavaScript clients?", "text": "Considering that it's April, 2013; do I still need to worry about non- JavaScript capable/enabled clients? Note: This question excludes having helper text with: _JavaScript is required to view this page, upgrade to a modern browser or modify your settings_ BTW: Just to be clear, in order to cater to non-JavaScript capable/enabled clients; I will have to: prerender (cache) a version of my decoupled (JavaScript on the client-side consumes my RESTful API) website. Because of framework limitations this will result in far less functionality for the non-JavaScript user."}
{"_id": "23535", "title": "How important is graceful degradation of JavaScript?", "text": "Should web developers continue to spend effort progressively enhancing our web applications with JavaScript, ensuring that features gracefully degrade, thereby ensuring accessibility? Or should we spend that time focused on new features or other areas of development? The subtext of that question would be: How many of our customers/clients/users utilize our websites or applications with JavaScript disabled? Do you have any projects with requirements that specifically demand JavaScript functionality (almost all of mine do), and do those requirements also demand graceful degradation? For the sake of asking this question, I pulled up programmers.stackexchange.com without JavaScript enabled, and I was greeted with this message: \"Programmers - Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled\". It was difficult to log in, albeit the site seemed to generally work okay. (I wasn't able to vote up any questions.) I think this is a satisfactory approach to development. Imagine the effort involved in making all of the site's features work with plain old HTML and server-side logic. On the other hand, I wonder how many users have been alienated by this approach. We've all been trained (at least the good developers among us) to use progressive enhancement and to ensure our web applications' dynamic features degrade gracefully. Is this progressive enhancement just pissing into the wind, or do some of our customers actually utilize certain web services without JavaScript enabled?"}
{"_id": "77341", "title": "is GAE an infrastructure capable of hosting an app used by millions of active users?", "text": "I would like to know with the restrictions of GAE listed below, is it even possible to build a great social app (like Facebook) by hosting that app on GAE? In other words is GAE an infrastructure capable of hosting an app used by 600 million active users? Restrictions I've dugged out from a couple of forums / blogs (please feel free to add to the list if you find anything missing):   1. HTTP Request/Response     * Max request size: 32 MB     * Max response size: 32 MB     * All requests must respond within 30 seconds otherwise GAE will throw DeadlineExceededException     * Each cron job must be executed within 10 minutes     * Cron jobs cannot utilize map reduce     * Every GET or POST to another site is aborted after 5 seconds. You can configure it to wait till 10 seconds max. (intermediate servers would be necessary to work with Twitter and Facebook many times)     * Client can not connect to GAE through FTP (only HTTP and HTTPS).     * No https for custom domains. Only for your-app-id.appspot.com domains.     * If you get an influx of users, you get \"over quota\" error   2. Database     * Database behavior is not the same in the local development than in the actual servers.     * GQL. Nothing else.     * No query can retrieve more than 1000 records (sucks seriously if you want to allow your client to have a one-click-go-offline-now button)     * If you need linear access to a massive amount of records to perform an operation, you are out of luck (Google's systems are massively clustered)     * Memcache values max size is 1 MB.     * Can't do simple text search     * You can't join 2 tables.     * Slow (You have to read about how to separate tables using inheritance so that you can search in a table, get the key and then obtain its parent in order to avoid deserialization performance)     * \"Too many indexes\" runtime exception     * An entity can at most have 5000 property values in an index     * Key names of the form ***** (start and end with two underscores) are reserved, and should not be used by the application.     * Key names are limited to 500 bytes (UTF-8 encoded, I guess)   3. Language     * python or java or Go (or languages that uses the JVM like Groovy, Scala and others)   4. Server Issues     * No static IP (may have throttling and quota problems calling third party APIs)     * Each application is limited to 3000 files     * No control of OS or hardware running the web app"}
{"_id": "67959", "title": "How to Identify Bugs", "text": "Sometimes I come across something that doesn't entirely work right or just doesn't make sense to me and I often refrain from thinking it is a bug in the library or code I am using. For instance today I discovered that Java's TrayIcon slightly alters some of the RGB values of the image it displays. It is not enough to alter the image but just an R that is one higher or a G that is lower. I am a self-taught 18 year old (with ~5 years) and so I always think that I am just missing some piece of information of how some part of the computer operates and that is why a given situation does not make sense. So when you do not necessarily know everything about a given area of a computer and how it operates, how can one identify a bug and know it is a bug with absolute certainty?"}
{"_id": "111373", "title": "How do I avoid the complexity concerns of frameworks while keeping my team marketable?", "text": "When deciding upon how to design a software project with my colleagues, most suggestions tend to be for using specific frameworks \"because it's popular in the job market\" or \"that's the framework that gets recruiters on the phone,\" and never what I'm looking for which is, \"because it's a good fit for the project as it makes the system more adaptive to future changes and makes life easier for developers.\" I didn't start looking at projects in this way until I started reading up on domain-driven design. I've found that the actual domain is hidden deep under the frameworks used and it's hard to learn the business processes that have been implemented by the software product. Is there a way to marry the two competing goals: getting exposure as a development team while still being able to avoid complexity? Are frameworks that compromise, or are there other solutions out there?"}
{"_id": "111375", "title": "Steps to ensure important details aren't edited out of technical documents?", "text": "Like many here, I'm sure, my company has a person that acts as liason between development and most other areas of the company, as well as our clients. Most communication regarding new releases, fixes, known issues, etc. goes through this person. However, because this person is not a developer and not deeply involved in the development projects, sometimes what developers submit for dissemination is edited for brevity or simplicity, and in the process, key details or subtleties are lost. I've been pushing for a review process that includes the author of the original document, whatever it was, before the material is released. Among other things this would, I feel, allow the person with the greatest technical knowledge about what's being talked about (the one who actually wrote the code for the new program, feature or fix) to weigh in on anything that may have been oversimplified or been given a factual error by the editing process. The person handling the communication, for their part, feels that the problem is education; the person is relatively new to the company and doesn't have extensive experience with all of the software applications and other products that development produces and supports. The person feels that as they gain this experience through training and reading the material that comes through their hands, the problem will resolve itself. They also feel that the back- and-forth would waste time. I think there's merit both ways. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "213826", "title": "Is it crazy to develop a TUI today?", "text": "I'm starting to develop a new program. It's basically a database interface, run a few queries, show the data in a nice way and be able to easy input new data (like this website). Thinking about which programs I use daily I realise that only my web-browser is a GUI program, the rest is TUI (in this case TUI is Text User Interface, as in ncurses). So I plan to write this in ncurses with a vim/mutt-like interface. This program will only be used by experienced users and speed is much wanted. I've found one study about this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2655855/ All other studies I've found has only looked at novice users and for them GUI is better. For an experienced user that will work daily with the program what is best? This is sligthly similar but the difference is that this question was about a non-interactive program:   Is the development of CLI apps considered \"backward\"?"}
{"_id": "94596", "title": "Can we price a software based on its lines count, language, technology and stuff like that?", "text": "Recently a friend of mine bought an inventory application from a vendor, who used an statement like \" **built based on 10000 lines of codes** \" as a marketing slogan to increase its market share. I've also seen other software claiming to being built with a special language (C#, PHP, Java, etc.), or based on a special technology. My question is that, **can we morally and logically price a software based on these factors?** I mean, does it matter to the end user how many lines of code have we written? Or which programming language did we use? A factor like platform seems to be logical in this case, because some users want an application to be executed on Windows, or Mac for example. But what about other factors like technologies used, architecture, lines of codes, programming language, even database?"}
{"_id": "72643", "title": "How do you handle dependant stories in scrum?", "text": "In the company I currently work on, we've noticed that sometimes, some stories are bound to each other (as in too coupled). This might be that they belong to the same overall feature, or that they're different features but there are some of them that need to be finished first in order to continue with the next ones, etc. How do you handle this cases, without stopping the workflow of the iteration? Are we doing something wrong?"}
{"_id": "79612", "title": "How much risk is involved to launch a smartphone application initially for non iOS phone? What are the advantages?", "text": "I am working on an idea as a hobby project, and I have almost finished it in android and about to finish in Java ME platform, and we are also planning it on other smartphones including blackberry, iOS and symbian phones. But coding on these platform is not started yet. Here are my questions regarding to that **Is it a wise step to release this application for a non iOS device first and wait for good reviews before I start for iPhone and other platform?** I choose this because what android[read a non iOS] version needs is good packaging and some finishing work. But I fear that it will not be that much popularize and even there may be less downloads than expected only because this application will not get attention between too many applications. Or **It's better to develop iOS release first and than release a non iOS version?** I may get better attention because of popularity of apple among developers and users, but I don't feel it good to market an original android [non iOS] application as porting of iPhone one while the reality is reversed. **What are advantage to release a non iOS version first and than port it to iOS?**"}
{"_id": "79615", "title": "HTML text editor with DOM manipulation?", "text": "While editing a static HTML file today, I realized, that many things I did using search and replace with regular expressions, would be much easier using JavaScript (and possibly a DOM library like jQuery) and DOM manipulation. I could, of course, load the file into a browser, type some JavaScript into the console and copy and paste the manipulated source code back to the editor. But this would be much easier if the HTML text editor supported this directly, because it could automatically load jQuery, you could store and reuse scripts, the chance that formatting gets lost is smaller, etc. Does anyone know if something like that exists? Preferably for Windows, but suggestions for other operating systems are ok, too."}
{"_id": "72644", "title": "Correct architecture for running and stopping complex tasks in the background", "text": "I'm having trouble working out the correct architecture for the following task. I have a GUI in Windows Forms that contains a `ListBox`, listing certain architectural layouts. One an item in this list is selected, a custom `Control` displays an interactive visualization of the selected layout. Drawing of this interactive diagram is a CPU-intensive task, and can take up to a second on my machine. The kind of functionality I'm trying to achieve is that if a user wants to quickly scroll through the layouts in the `ListBox` (say, holding down the down arrow key), I don't want my computer to sit there thinking about how to draw the layout before it allows the user to do anything else. The obvious answer is, of course, to run the layout calculations in a separate thread. But how do I make that thread return a whole control? How do I make sure I'm not running two layout calculations at once? I'm fairly new to this complex GUI business. So the real question is what is the right architecture to implement something like this? This seems like something people do all the time, but finding any suggestions on how to do it properly is really difficult."}
{"_id": "106884", "title": "Should I unit test", "text": "Most of the logic for my webservice involves talking to our suppliers webservices. (checking availability ordering ect) They dont have a test environment and the majority of calls cant be run arbitrarily (for example a cease would be run once and would actually stop a service). Is it feasable to run unit tests in this environment? I could simulte typical responses but im worried that hardcoding supplier responses would undermine the point of unit tests."}
{"_id": "92298", "title": "Should I implement functionality for an xml file+schema?", "text": "I am working on a script to get data from excel spreadsheets to a database. The data is from surveys conducted by our office where the data comes in with very little formatting. At the moment, the data is manipulated with a lot of copy and paste, then analysed 'by hand' (ie. someone clicks and drags in excel and does pivots and copy pastes into other software).This leads to messy file structures and missing or incorrect/incomprehensible data. enter the need for a database. I have got a solution working which will accept csv files. It will parse the data and insert it correctly as long as each column header is correct. But my superior is pushing me to accept xml files with an xsd schema so I can validate the data. My argument would be that whether or not I use xml, the user will have to save the original file as another file type and I can validate the data within my script based on column headers anyway. The counter argument is that if they decide to include a new data set (ie, new table layout) my script might break. Either way, if the data type is incorrect, the user will have to go back to the file and edit it before any solution will work. So the answer I'm looking for is whether or not I should bother to set up xml functionality. [note, I am using php to script as I am not familiar with vba and I'm on a student placement so I do not have enough time to learn a new language.] [ASIDE - am I taking the wring approach to this?]"}
{"_id": "145489", "title": "Turning in code you developed in your company as homework assignments", "text": "I'm currently running a start-up with a buddy and I noticed that some of my university assignments could be finished by simply copying some code from some of the programs we've developed. Are there any legal troubles I could run into? Or is this just a bad idea in general(as it is starting to feel right now)? Sorry if this is in the wrong place I wasn't sure whether to place this here or in stackoverflow."}
{"_id": "145485", "title": "Procedure or Event Driven Language For Education", "text": "I am here to ask a question that has been asked **many times** before. What programming language should I learn to become a intelligent conceptual programmer? Many people agree, you do not have to learn any one programming language; you need to learn programming as a concept itself (Most of us can become semi proficient in a language under a few weeks). Would it be better to learn procedure or event driven languages for conceptual purposes? Why? Let me be even more precise with my question above on this. I have written lots of basic code and program examples. I feels I have a firm root on basic concepts and now am ready to try some more complicated task like programming a graphic rendering engine or compiler. From what I understand C/C++ should teach me more of the important principles that I may carry over to fields like electrical engineering."}
{"_id": "165008", "title": "Can I get a C++ Compiler to instantiate objects at compile time", "text": "I am writing some code that has a very large number of reasonably simple objects and I would like them the be created at compile time. I would think that a compiler would be able to do this, but I have not been able to figure out how. In _C_ I could do the the following:               #include <stdio.h>          typedef struct data_s {         int a;         int b;         char *c;     } info;          info list[] = {         1, 2, \"a\",         3, 4, \"b\",     };          main()     {        int i;        for (i = 0; i < sizeof(list)/sizeof(*list); i++) {          printf(\"%d %s\\n\", i, list[i].c);        }     }      Using #C++* each object has it constructor called rather than just being layed out in memory.               #include <iostream>     using std::cout;     using std::endl;          class Info {         const int a;         const int b;         const char *c;     public:         Info(const int, const int, const char *);         const int get_a() { return a; };         const int get_b() { return b; };         const char *get_c() const { return c; };     };          Info::Info(const int a, const int b, const char *c) : a(a), b(b), c(c) {};          Info list[] = {         Info(1, 2, \"a\"),         Info(3, 4, \"b\"),     };          main()     {         for (int i = 0; i < sizeof(list)/sizeof(*list); i++) {             cout << i << \" \" << list[i].get_c() << endl;         }     }      I just don't see what information is not available for the compiler to completely instantiate these objects at compile time, so I assume I am missing something."}
{"_id": "181545", "title": "Represent actions(verbs) in REST URI", "text": "I have a print operation to perform for my customer documents. I need the other standard operations to be performed as well, like add,update, delete. so, I have following:   * For creating new customer:   URI = /customer/{id}, type = POST, Methodname = CreateCustomer()   * For updating:   URI: /customer/{id}, type = PUT, method = UpdateCstomer()   * For Delete customer:   URI = /customer/{id}, type = DELETE, Methodname = DeleteCustomer()   * For View:   URI: /customer/{id}, type = GET, method = GetCustomer() Now, if I need to print a document for that customer, I need a print function. My URI may look like this: /customer/{id}, type = POST , method = PrintCustomer(). But I have used that URI and POST type for CreateCustomer. I wanted the URI to look like this: /customer/Print/{id}, type = POST , method = PrintCustomer(). But I cannot have \"Print\" verb in my URI. Whats the best way to do this? I thought about /customer/document/{id} as the URI... but I will run into the same issue. I would have the CRUD operations on the \"document\". So, again I run out of what I would used for \"print\". Please advise."}
{"_id": "32872", "title": "Materials on structural languages design?", "text": "There is plenty of material about designing software for object oriented programming. Do you know of any good materials for pure structural programming? I am working purely in C and while I can use some experiences from object oriented programming I found out, that I know few tricks about good structural design."}
{"_id": "32877", "title": "Why can't we capture the design of software more effectively?", "text": "As engineers, we all \"design\" artifacts (buildings, programs, circuits, molecules...). That's an activity (design-the-verb) that produces some kind of result (design-the-noun). I think we all agree that design-the-noun is a different entity than the artifact itself. A key activity in the software business (indeed, in any business where the resulting product artifact needs to be enhanced) is to understand the \"design (the-noun)\". Yet we seem, as a community, to be pretty much complete failures at recording it, as evidenced by the amount of effort people put into rediscovering facts about their code base. Ask somebody to show you the design of their code and see what you get. I think of a design for software as having:   * An explicit specification for what the software is supposed to do _and how well it does it_   * An explicit version of the code (this part is easy, everybody has it)   * An explanation for how each part of the code serves to achieve the specification (e.g, a relation between spec fragments and code fragments)   * A _rationale_ as to why the code is the way it is (e.g., why a particular choice rather than another) What is NOT a design is a particular perspective on the code. For example [not to pick specifically on] UML diagrams are not designs. Rather, they are properties you can derive from the code, or arguably, properties you wish you could derive from the code. But as a general rule, you can't derive the code from UML. Why is it that after 50+ years of building software, why don't we have regular ways to express this? (Feel free to contradict me with explicit examples!) Even if we do, most of the community seems so focused on getting \"code\" that design-the-noun gets lost anyway. (IMHO, until design becomes the purpose of engineering, with the artifact extracted from the design, we're not going to get around this). What have you seen as means for recording designs (in the sense I have described it)? Explicit references to papers would be good. Why do you think specific and general means have not been succesful? How can we change this? [I have my own ideas that flesh out the bulleted viewpoint above, but I'm interested in other people's answers... and its hard to implement my scheme [[and maybe that's the real problem :-]] ] EDIT 2011/1/3: One the answer-threads hints that \"documentation\" (presumably textual, in particular not-formal) might be adequate. I guess I should clarify that I don't believe this. CASE tools appeared on the scene starting in the 80s, but the early tools mostly just captured pixels for the diagrams of whatever you drew; while the tools were arguablly commercially successful, they really weren't very helpful. A key insight was, that if the additional \"design\" artifacts are not formally interpretable, you can't get any serious tool help. I believe the same insight applies to any long-term useful form of design capture: if it hasn't got a formal structure, it won't be of any real use. Text documents pretty much fail this test."}
{"_id": "165002", "title": "Purpose of NOP instruction and align statement in x86 assembly", "text": "It has been a year or so since I last took an assembly class. In that class, we were using MASM with the Irvine libraries to make it easier to program in. After we'd gone through most of the instructions, he said that the NOP instruction essentially did nothing and not to worry about using it. Anyway, it was about midterm and he has some example code that wouldn't run properly, so he told us to add a NOP instruction and it worked fine. I asked I'm after class why and what it actually did, and he said he didn't know. Anybody know?"}
{"_id": "165003", "title": "Legally, can I re reuse code for different customers?", "text": "The company I work for develops custom factory automation applications for multiple customers. Even though each application is custom, they contain common code which is re-used across projects. One of the customers is now looking for the source code to their application, which has caused a major storm in the company. Management have decided that we can't give them the source to the shared components as they are used by other customers. I've been asked to modify the shared components 'enough' so as they aren't common. So my questions are: 1) Legally, should there be any problem with re-using common components for different customer? 2) If I really need to modify the common components, then how much is 'enough' ? (I know this sucks, but I either do this or hand in my notice). Oh yeah, and my company has no license in place with any of these customers."}
{"_id": "93742", "title": "Application design question regarding saving files", "text": "I am working on an application in C# and I am having some extreme difficulty solving this design issue. Basically the application allows users to create cook books. A user can click \"new book\" and the application will create a book with a given name. Now the user is allowed to add \"recipes\" to that book. The user can save the book at any time. They can load this book on other computers with the application. Only one book can be open at a time in the application. So if they user wants to create a new book or open a different book, the application will need to close the current book and then open the next book. My question is, what would be the best way to solve this problem?   * How would I check if a book is open?   * How would I have the application create the new book?   * How would I have the application \"close and forget\" the book that was closed, so that the only open book is the new one? What I was thinking is that I would have a CookBook class and a Recipe class. The CookBook class would hold the information pertaining to the new book that was created and it would hold a list of all the recipes in that CookBook. I am just having a hard time figuring out the best way to give the user the ability to create a new CookBook and close the current cook book so the user can create a new one. The CookBook class will have a function that wil write the contents of the CookBook and the recipes of the CookBook to a file. There will also be a function in CookBook that will populate the application's user interface based on the contents of a CookBook that is loaded/opened by the user."}
{"_id": "181548", "title": "Streaming data from a microcontroller to a server?", "text": "Edit *We have a heart monitor hooked up to to an msp430 with a roving networks wifi module. I would like to connect send some type of a datastream to a webserver so that someone could watch it offsite. I would like to have a datastreaming connection or something to the webserver because I was thinking it is more natural than trying to do a post request every .5 seconds. (I know this isn't super specific but this is the level I am at right now.) I'm trying to figure out how to stream data (not video or anything big) from a microcontroller to a webserver and forward it to an iOS app. My buddy has a wifi module for our MCU and he claims we just write UART and the wifi module broadcasts our UART signal. So I want to stream that data to a webserver (php). Is there any type of wifi protocol for sending a stream of data to the server? What is the protocol for establishing a datastream connection on the MCU end? What kind of server side code do I need to recieve the datastream?"}
{"_id": "144280", "title": "Why don\u2019t UI frameworks use generics?", "text": "One way of looking at type safety is that it adds automatic tests all over your code that stop some things breaking in some ways. One of the tools that helps this in .NET is generics. However, both WinForms and WPF are generics-free. There is no `ListBox<T>` control, for example, which could only show items of the specified type. Such controls invariably operate on `object` instead. Why are generics and not popular with UI framework developers?"}
{"_id": "110426", "title": "Using Microsoft Office software as part of my web service backend?", "text": "What licensing issues arise if I install and use Microsoft Office software (in this case Visio) as part of my web service backend? My company's flagship piece of software can convert Microsoft Visio files for use in their environment, but of course requires a local install of Visio to decode the files. The system I'm to create is to offer a sort of web service where people can upload their Visio files, and then we can show off one of the benefits of buying our full price software. In order to do this I'd need an install of our software on the server, as well as Visio. What I'm a little concerned about is technically any visitor to the site is technically using Visio. I can't really find any other examples when searching online so any advice would be greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "35471", "title": "Is it common to print out code on paper?", "text": "I like to keep my lines of code under 80 characters because:   * I don't have to do any horizontal scrolling;   * I know the line is probably too complicated if it exceeds this limit; and   * it prints out nicely on paper. Concerning the latter, I've met only a few who actually print out code to look at (I'm one of them). So how common is it to print out code?"}
{"_id": "209376", "title": "Is there a correlation between the scale of the project and the strictness of the language?", "text": "Explaining the difference between strictness of languages and paradigms to a colleague of mine, I ended up asserting that:   * Tolerant languages, such as dynamic and interpreted languages, are used best for prototypes and small projects or medium-size web applications. When choosing elegant dynamic languages such as Python or JavaScript with Node.js, the benefits are:     1. Fast development,     2. Reduced boilerplate code,     3. Ability to attract young, creative programmers who flee _\u201ccorporate languages\u201d_   like Java.   * Statically typed/compiled languages are best for applications which require higher strictness such as business-critical apps or apps for medium to large-size apps.     1. Well-known paradigms and patterns developed for decades,     2. Ease of static checking,     3. Ability to find many professional developers with decades of experience.   * Strict languages such as Haskell, Ada or techniques such as Code contracts in C# are better for systems which favor safety over flexibility (even if Haskell can be extremely flexible), such as life critical systems and systems which are expected to be extremely stable. The benefits are:     1. Ability to catch as many bugs as possible at compile time,     2. Ease of static checking,     3. Ease of formal proofs. However, by looking at the languages and technologies used for large-scale projects by large corporations, **it seems that my assertion is wrong**. For example, Python is successfully used for large systems such as YouTube or other Google applications which require an important amount of strictness. Is there still a correlation between the scale of the project and the strictness of the language/paradigm which should be used? Is there a third factor that I've forgotten to take in account? Where am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "244870", "title": "Testing complex compositions", "text": "I have a rather large collection of classes which check and mutate a given data structure. They can be composed via the composition pattern into arbitrarily complex tree-like structures. The final product contains a lot of these composed structures. My question is now: How can I test those? Albeit it is easy to test every single unit of these compositions, it is rather expensive to test the whole compositions in the following sense:   * Testing the correct layout of the composition-tree results in a huge number of test cases   * Changes in the compositions result in a very laborious review of every single test case What is the general guideline here?"}
{"_id": "221618", "title": "Should I return Collection or ImmutableCollection from a method?", "text": "When writing an API in Java, returning an immutable collection of some sort, I've got the option of returning `Collection` (or `List`, `Map`, etc) from the method, or guava's `ImmutableCollection` (or `ImmutableList`, `ImmutableMap`, etc):               private final ImmutableMap<> _immutableMap = ...          public Collection<T> getValues() {         return _immutableMap.values();     }      or               public ImmutableCollection<T> getValues() {         return _immutableMap.values();     }      Which is better? Setting the return value as `ImmutableCollection` constrains me to use that exact type forever more, so that I can't swap out `_immutableMap` for my own immutable type later on that returns, say, an immutable view of the values that isn`t an ImmutableCollection` (constructing one requires copying the values, and I can't subclass it to provide an immutable view of a mutable collection). But there is benefit to people calling the method to see the return value is actually immutable, and have the `add` and `remove` methods marked as deprecated, rather than trying to add or remove items and have it fail at runtime. Generally, I like to return the most-specific interface type from a method, so that I can change the underlying implementation later on if necessary without breaking contract. But there is benefit to callers returning an `ImmutableCollection`, at the cost of constraining future development of the method and causing future possible performance problems due to copying all the values into an `ImmutableCollection` rather than providing an immutable view."}
{"_id": "104442", "title": "Multitasking how to keep track of what you're doing", "text": "I'm in a long debugging task, I need to figure out where to hook up some extra functionality I need. It's cumbersome work, and I've been debugging 2 whole days, and I'm on my third, but I work in multiple projects, and I'm returning to this after almost a week, and it's been hard to get back to the point I left at, and remember what was all this about, and what conclusions had I already arrived at. How do you keep track of what you were doing/thinking in this kind of scenario where comments aren't actually the \"right thing\" to do? I do some comments in my testing code, plus some informative git/hg commit messages but that's kind of dirty.. written paper might be the answer..."}
{"_id": "100833", "title": "Need to make a stock inventory application", "text": "I need to make an application for my dad to keep track of stock trading inventory. He trades shares for himself and for his clients and would like to keep the records, things like buy/sell price of shares, profits, loss, date etc etc for his shares and his client shares and would like various kind of reports/views. He uses windows. I want to provide a local html page where he will enter new information and this should go to a local database and from his html page, he can choose reports etc and the reports will be displayed on the webpage etc.. I am thinking of using struts (and windows,tomcat) and mysql to make this application. I know some stuff from college days, but would look into the tutorials to setup things and program. Does this selection of technology looks good enough or something more easier and equally good exist? **update:** This is what I have settled for: Used mysql/windows, navicat lite and populated database/tables, and wrote some procedures taking some inputs. Like one procedure takes date and stock name as input and gives you quantity you have of that stock by that date and profit/loss so far, effective buy price of each share of that stock. This is for individual basis usage..and it looks like this will suffice for now -- very very simple, but I could custom create tables,custom create queries/procedures..Dad gets \"contract notes\" from his broker containing his daily transactions and I could get these notes online, compile these of last 2-3 years into one table and so the thing is in working state..very primitive, but works for his requirements for now. and yes, made 2 accounts (one read-only priviledge account using which he will run his queries,procedures etc) and other root, which he will use when populating his tables say once or twice in 15 days."}
{"_id": "145159", "title": "Architectural considerations for a new black box program", "text": "I see an emerging trend in \"cloud\" computing to move work load to a third- party server and get charged pennies for amount of work done in this way. This could be anything from file hosting to user authentication. So I thought about this for a bit and thought, why can't these services be offered in a peer-to- peer way rather than the traditional client-server way. So my idea is to create (to the best of my abilities to describe it) a black box virtual machine. Some program which hosts a web service on that computer which allows any other computer with this software to ask it to perform calculation of any kind, with the condition that the same can be asked from the host, with no financial \"cost\" of any kind. Obviously, it would be a security risk without proper precautions, therefore the following must be observed:   1. This software has the power to refuse execution requests or halt execution at any time.   2. Parameters are passed which request certain access permissions, among which include but are not limited to:      * Memory usage - How many megabytes are going to be at the program's disposal.      * Disk usage - How much disk space can be consumed.      * Namespace - Context for this program, which determines if it'll have access to disk space written by other programs with this namespace.     * CPU usage - Maximum % of the CPU which can be used during idle moments and non-idle moments.   3. \"Disk\" access is a black box with root \"/\" which is simulated, hiding actual disk contents. When a program is executed, a folder is created with its name under \"/prog/\" and is given free reign to read and write in any folder (including folder of other programs, perhaps with a parameter which requests it explicitly). Only other programs under the same namespace can see each other, but a program can be under multiple namespaces.    4. Some sort of analysis framework which statistically determine if porting multi-threaded jobs to other black box virtual machines is convenient and if so, will automatically attempt it. However it won't ask any work from a computer with resource parameters higher than the resource parameters it itself provides other computers. Meaning, you only get what you give in short.   5. If no limits are placed on certain types of resources, some sort of fail safe to ensure that the stability of the computer is not put at risk.   6. Some sort of powerful module system which allows people to write programs to work with this system.       * These modules would have a friendly way to install themselves from installations on peer computers or alternatively a way to download and install itself from an internet site.      * These modules would have to follow the same guidelines as a program executed on this sytem. My question is, a) what if anything, exists already which does this to some extent and 2) what language, platform, operating system would you advise to build this program? I was leaning towards Java, since a virtual machine has complete access to how its programs are run, hence I would only have to rework how files are read/written to the file system, however nothing is written in stone. Any advice would be appreciated, even if it is advice which suggests this type of thing is not possible. Also, if anyone has a good name for this program, I'm all ears. :)"}
{"_id": "107824", "title": "What is the Startup spirit?", "text": "I keep hearing from Net and people around me that Startups are the place where you get to learn a lot, and Also, I come across term 'Startup Spirit' . What is the Difference between working culture of a startup and a corporate . I would like for people to clarify in the programming context."}
{"_id": "74697", "title": "Can software performance monitoring/profiling be automated to a high degree, as in unit testing?", "text": "Unit testing consists of executable code which exercise a certain functionality and then assert some conditions. The results are either Pass or Fail.   * The objective is always to have all tests passed. Software performance profiling usually requires help from some automated test/profiling tool, but the results seem to always require human interpretation, because:   * There are no clear pass/fail objectives.   * There are many facets (dimensions) in software performance, and one needs to consider the overall performance profile (the full picture; no pun intended) in order to interpret the result and make a decision.   * There are many pitfalls in software profiling, such as results skewed by profiling overhead, unintended interactions between modules or operating system, test cases not representative of needs of customers. Now that unit testing has been heralded as a major breakthrough in promoting the credibility of software engineering, is it possible to find the next silver bullet for the software performance issues? **Clarification** on \"automated to a high degree\":   * What I mean is that unit tests that were written long time ago (and updated as the software is developed) will remain useful indefinitely. During the better part of the software's production lifetime, there is little to no need of modifying the unit tests unless there are big changes to functionality.   * On the other hand, performance testing seems to require adjustments and re-running continuously, even well into the production stage. **Related:**   * How is performance testing integrated into your product lifecycle?"}
{"_id": "244872", "title": "What if(event) statement means in JavaScript?", "text": "I'm rather new to JavaScript and programming in general so I am pretty much only used to seeing if statements that have some kind of comparison operator like, `if (x < 10)` or `if(myBool)`. I have seen an `if` statement checking against an `event`, but I don't understand what or why the `event` is being checked like that. What's the semantic meaning behind that check or comparison? Here is the code in question:               if(event){         event.preventDefault();     }"}
{"_id": "74691", "title": "Is performance engineering a different specialization from general software development?", "text": "A major objective of software development is to focus on delivery of features implemented in good quality code. **Knowledgeable developers are supposed to write software with good performance** to the extent of their understanding (that is, **in the software module** they are working on). For example, they should be able to use appropriate algorithms and data structures when implementing various parts of the system. In other words, the first implementation which they wrote to satisfy a unit test would have the good performance characteristic that the final product is supposed to have. **However, when the system is large and complex** , consisting of many components written by different people/teams and include multiple vendors, is it more productive for a company to separate the roles of performance engineering from software developers, so that software developers can focus on features and correctness that meet specification, and the performance engineer can focus on measuring and improving performance without affecting feature and correctness? Put simply, are there two different hats, requiring two different mind-sets? **Motivation:** From the answers I got from another question An alternative to requiring red in TDD: reverting code change?, it dawns on me that during the main software development time, meeting functional requirements is a **must-have** while software performance is a **nice-to-have**.   * Tests on functional requirements have deterministic outcomes, usually Pass/Fail, or Accept/Reject.   * Performance characteristics don't have a fixed Accept/Reject target, but do have a metric which can drive the performance-optimizing effort.   * Future changes in functional requirements may make it necessary to sacrifice/adjust certain performance objectives.    * Personally, I do agree that there should be a quick feedback cycle between feature implementation and software performance monitoring.    * In this question I'm arguing whether these two are separate specializations - although some people might be specialized in both. **Possible outcomes** When feature implementation and optimization are done by different developers:   1. They will go into conflicts and nothing gets done. (contributed by @quant_dev)   2. The resulting software has better performance.   3. The resulting software has poor performance. **Related:**   * What skills do you think a performance engineer should have?   * _(Will ask in a separate question soon.) Is it possible that software performance issues can arise from large software systems that cannot be forecast even by the very knowledgeable software developers? Will a dedicated performance engineer be able to solve it?_"}
{"_id": "130330", "title": "Is it good practice to keep the main function separate in its own file?", "text": "Is it good practice to have a main.c file that just has the main function in it and no other functions so that all other functions can be interfaced? If there is no definitive rule, when is it good to do so and not to do so?"}
{"_id": "130173", "title": "How is Scala scalable?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why is Scala more scalable than other languages? The Wikipedia page on Scala says: > The name Scala is a portmanteau of \"scalable\" and \"language\", signifying > that it is designed to grow with the demands of its users. I've also read that: > And that's Scala's dirty little secret. Scala is only scalable in the sense > that it runs on the reliable, high-performing JVM platform. and also that \"languages don't scale, platforms scale.\" How does Scala grow with demands of its users? Isn't it true to say that Scala \"actually is scalable\"? And as per line just above, isn't every language scalable?"}
{"_id": "74699", "title": "Can you Improve your programming skills by learning other language paradigms?", "text": "If so, can you tell me how learning a new paradigm changed your approach for solving programming problems even if the problem is in another paradigm/language/technology? I will really appreciated If you can tell me in a specific manner, how your X (ie: JAVA/C#/C++) programming skills improved by learning Y (ie: Scheme/Prolog/Lisp). Also, what paradigms do you suggest helps the most to become a good programmer? My experiences are only structured - OOP, imperative - procedural, and into some extent template meta-programming, but my goal is not to learn another language, but rather to learn different approaches for solving problems. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "140504", "title": "How often are comments used in XML documents?", "text": "I'm currently developing a web-based XML managing program for a client (though I may 'market' it for future clients). Currently, it reads an XML document, converts it into manageable Javascript objects, and ultimately spits out indented, easy to read XML code. **Edit:** The program would be used by clients that don't feel like learning XML to add items or tags, but I (or another XML developer) may use the raw data for quick changes without using an editor. I feel like fundamentally, its ready for release, but I'm wondering if I should go the extra mile and allow support for remembering (and perhaps making) comments before generating the resulting XML. Considering that these XML files will probably never be read without a program interpreting it, should I really bother adding support for comments? I'll probably be the only one looking at raw files, and I usually don't use comments for XML anyway. So, are comments common/important in most XML documents?"}
{"_id": "23800", "title": "Learning programming, suggestions for a roadmap", "text": "Some background first: I am new to programming and have discovered it rather late in life; Like many hobbyists, my introduction to the subject has been through PHP/jQuery (yes, I know the popular mood around here... they-are-not- real-programminng-languages ;-) ). I like to believe that I am reasonably competent at what I do in my other life and this developing addiction to coding has taken a **very** heavy toll on my professional prospects. This is the question:   * What programming languages next? (No plans to ditch PHP in the immediate future, that will involve rewriting much of my code.)   * Any absolutely essential books I must read?    * Is it necessary to join a college/university course?    * Do I need to ditch my other profession to continue serious learning? My goals are:   * Develop a solid understanding of the science and art of programming.    * Continue to work on my own web application. (Hands on learning suits me best.) I am something of a generalist interested in everything from UI to database performance."}
{"_id": "116266", "title": "Does objective-c's method overhead make a 'many small methods' design approach inadvisable?", "text": "I generally favour using small methods, as recommended by, amongst others, Bob Martin in _Clean Code_. I've also read enough about Objective-C's internals to have at least some idea about how its message dispatch works (bbums series is particularly informative on this). Premature optimisation concerns notwithstanding, I'd like to know if all that work that Objective-c does with objc_msgSend is, in practical terms, significant enough for the 'many small methods' approach to be inadvisable for Objective-C projects. Empirical findings are particularly welcome (maybe I'll set up a test myself sometime). Experience from anyone who has written large objective-c projects would also be great. _Clarification_ The general tone of the question is intentional. I'm not asking about performance tuning of specific apps (which is why I ask here rather than on SO), but more about whether Objective-C's language characteristics discourage a certain design approach. I have observed that much of the code I've seen from Apple, and other parties (on github etc) tends towards large methods (and classes), and I'm wondering if this is a bias that has crept in because of the language itself. Of course I may have been reading the wrong code, or it may be cultural rather than technical factors that have led to the tendency if it exists. (For what it's worth, I am currently writing Objective-C, and I'm using small methods) _Further request_ I agree with both the answers that have been given. One further thing I'd like is for someone to point me to a (hopefully substantial) open-source (or otherwise visible) Objective-C codebase that uses nice short methods (and small classes). I haven't seen anything in Objective-C yet to compare with (for example) the fitnesse source."}
{"_id": "81310", "title": "How to make money from a small opensource utility?", "text": "I've got an idea for a tiny utility program that seemingly nobody has thought of before. I've no idea what the demand for it would be, but I'm certain that it would be 0 if you had to pay for it. And I like opensource. :) That said, it'd still be nice to get a few euros for my effort. How can this be done? My first idea was to put some non-intrusive adverts in the program (somewhere in the side), but I can't find any advertising programs that would allow you to put adverts in Win32 applications. Google AdSense certainly forbids it. Of course, a \"Donate\" button is always useful, and I think I will make one, but I doubt that many people will want to donate anything anyway. Any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "27133", "title": "What is a good environment for learning like?", "text": "I have a feeling that lately I haven't improved much as a programmer. I may have learned a few bits regarding some technologies and acquired some domain knowledge, but it isn't much. In general programming skills there has been very little that I have learned. I haven't gotten better at reading legacy code. I still struggle with it. My design skills have not improved. I have hard time making design decisions. I have a limited experience of different workplaces and so I'm asking that how much does the working environment affect ones learning and what things in it specifically? I guess there are things that affect ones motivation to learn, but also things that make it possible to learn. Please share your experiences."}
{"_id": "27134", "title": "Can we assume that all users today have Internet access?", "text": "As the Internet is pretty much ubiquitous, can we as developers assume that all users have Internet access? Now I don't mean that the code is written in such a way that if there is no connection then the whole program crashes due to lack of error code. What I mean is, can programs today be developed under the assumption that its users will always have access to the Internet? You may ask \"What do we gain by assuming that?\" The reason why I'm asking is because at uni we use quite a few programs which require Internet access due to the way it checks the licenses (it checks your IP address -- if it's not an address at campus, then you you're not allowed to use it). Note that the program itself should work fine without Internet access; it's just needed for license checking. **EDIT:** I'm talking about desktop applications here. **EDIT2:** From some of the answers I get a feeling of being accused of exploiting the users in unethical ways. I'm _not_ endorsing what I've described in this question -- I'm just asking about it because the developers of some of the programs we use at uni have done this. Personally I think doing this is plain out stupid and wrong."}
{"_id": "25403", "title": "What are the differences between a programmer and a webmaster?", "text": "I thought they were 'the same' but now I realize they are not (two different sites in stackexchange). However I don't know the differences, what does a webmaster do (and don't) and the same for a programmer (or coder or developer?)"}
{"_id": "139118", "title": "How to handle encryption key conflicts when synchronizing data?", "text": "Assume that there is data that gets synchronized between several devices. The data is protected with a symmetric encryption algorithm and a key. The key is stored on each device and encrypted with a password. When a user changes the password only the key gets re-encrypted. Under normal circumstances, when there is a good network connection to other peers, the current key gets synchronized and all data on the new device gets encrypted with the same key. But how to handle situations where a new device doesn\u2019t have a network connection and e.g. creates its own new, but incompatible key? How to keep the usability as high as possible under such circumstances?   1. The application could detect that there is no network and hence refuse to start. That\u2019s very bad usability in my opinion, because the application isn\u2019t functional at all in this case. I don\u2019t consider this a solution.   2. The application could ignore the missing network connection and create a new key. But what to do when the application gains a network connection? There will be several incompatible keys and some parts of the underlying data could only be encrypted with one key and other parts with another key.   3. The situation would get worse if there would be more keys than just two and the application would\u2019ve to ask every time for a password when another object that should get decrypted with another key would be needed.   4. It is very messy and time consuming to try to re-encrypt all data that is encrypted with another key with a _main_ key. What should be the main key at all in this case? The oldest key? The key with the most encrypted objects? What if the key got synchronized but not all objects that got encrypted with this particular key? How should the user know for which particular password the application asks and why it takes probably very long to re-encrypt the data? It\u2019s very hard to describe encryption \u201cissues\u201d to users. So far I didn\u2019t find an acceptable solution, nor some kind of generic strategy. Do you have some hints about a concrete strategy or some books / papers that describe synchronization of symmetrically encrypted data with keys that could cause conflicts?"}
{"_id": "205646", "title": "In Java, why were protected members made accessible to classes of the same package?", "text": "From the official documentation...               Modifier    Class   Package Subclass    World      public      Y       Y       Y           Y      protected   Y       Y       Y           N      no modifier Y       Y       N           N      private     Y       N       N           N       The thing is, I can't remember having a use case where I needed to access protected members from a class within the same package. What were the reasons behind this implementation? **Edit:** To clarify, I'm looking for a specific use case where both a subclass and a class within the same package needs to access a protected field or method.               package some.package;     public class A {      protected void protectedMethod(){       // do something      }     }          package another.package;     public class B extends A{      public void someMethod(){       // accessible because B is a subclass of A       protectedMethod();      }     }           package some.package;     public class C {      public void anotherMethod(){       // accessible because C is in the same package as A       protectedMehtod();      }     }"}
{"_id": "139111", "title": "Interception vs Injection: a framework architecture decision", "text": "There's this framework that I'm helping to design. There are some common tasks that should be done using some common components : Logging, Caching and raising events in particular. I am not sure if it's better to use dependency injection and introduce all of these components to each service (as properties for example) or should I have some kind of meta data placed over each method of my services and use interception to do these common tasks? Here's an example of both: **Injection:**               public class MyService     {          public ILoggingService Logger{get;set;}          public IEventBroker EventBroker{get;set;}          public ICacheService Cache{get;set;}          public void DoSomething()     {     Logger.Log(myMessage);     EventBroker.Publish<EventType>();     Cache.Add(myObject);     }          }      and here's the other version: **Interception:**               public class MyService     {          [Log(\"My message\")]     [PublishEvent(typeof(EventType))]          public void DoSomething()     {          }     }      Here are my questions:   1. Which solution is best for a complicated framework?    2. If interception   wins, what are my options to interact with internal values of a method (to use with cache service for example?)? can I use other ways rather than attributes to implement this behavior?   3. Or maybe there can be other solutions to solve the problem?"}
{"_id": "253595", "title": "comparison of an unsigned variable to 0", "text": "When I execute the following loop :                unsigned m;      for( m = 10; m >= 0; --m ){             printf(\"%d\\n\",m);         }      the loop doesn't stop at m==0, it keeps executing interminably, so I thought that reason was that an unsigned cannot be compared to 0. But when I did the following test                 unsigned m=9;     if(m >= 0)         printf(\"m is positive\\n\");     else         printf(\"m is negative\\n\");      I got this result:               m is positive       which means that the unsigned variable m was successfully compared to 0.   Why doesn't the comparison of m to 0 work in the for loop and works fine elsewhere?"}
{"_id": "253592", "title": "Should I use nested matrices or dictionaries?", "text": "As per Should I ask my question about which data structure to use here? I'm asking this here. Hopefully this isn't too implementation specific. I'm currently developing a program that will represent chemical structures (and eventually allow manipulations/reactions of them). I've hashed out two different systems of storing this data but I'm not sure how to pick which one. # Option 1: Nested matrices Chemicals have (more or less) definite structures and relative positions of items, and it seems as though it would be easier to represent something like that with a matrix - then I can assign definite 'coordinates' to each atom or bond. Unfortunately, you end up with some overlap if you have a structure that branches out a fair bit. To solve this I ended up working out a solution that used nested, 5x5 matrices.               [[None,  None, [CH3], None, None ],      [None,  None, Bond,  None, None ],      [[CH3], Bond, C,     Bond, [CH3]],      [None,  None, Bond,  None, None ],      [None,  None, [CH3], None, None ]]      Here `C` represents the element carbon (this could be represented a couple different ways, and isn't particularly relevant here). `Bond` represents a bond, and `[CH3]` represents another 5x5 matrix. This is the uppermost (`[0][2]`) `CH3`               [[None, None, H,    None, None],      [None, None, Bond, None, None],      [H,    Bond, C,    Bond, H   ],      [None, None, Bond, None, None],      [None, None, Root, None, None]]      Here the lowermost `Bond` is a reference to the same object as the uppermost `Bond` in the first structure, while `Root` is (some undetermined) way of relating that this is where the matrix connects to the next level up. If this were a more complex structure, one of the `H`s would be replaced by another matrix, such as an additional `[CH3]`. **Advantages of this method:**   * Everything is explicitly laid out, including structure, which is good according to The Zen of Python.   * When these chemicals are (eventually) represented graphically it will (theoretically) be much easier to make sure everything is in its place  **Disadvantages:**   * This isn't readable at all if you have a more complex structure   * This is nested, not flat   * This is going to require a lot of recursion to walk through # Option 2: Dictionaries Another way I could represent these with significantly less nesting and better readability would be using dictionaries. Each molecule would be a key in a dictionary `{Molecule1 : Data, Molecule2 : Data}` and the data would be dictionaries as well `Atoms: Data, Bonds: Data`. This requires quite a bit less nesting, but would require a little more work when I eventually want to display them. # Closing thoughts Before asking this question, and indeed while writing it, I've been pretty set on dictionaries. It seems like a cleaner and easier method of storing this data, and won't require figuring out a really nasty recursive technique to walk through a molecule. However I wouldn't be surprised if I missed something which is why I'm asking here. If this seems too implementation specific please let me know what you think I should change and I'll do my best to make it more general"}
{"_id": "253590", "title": "How can I set a time limit for a game?", "text": "I am learning the multi-threading and timer in C# now. But it seems I can't find a good solution. For example, I would like to see how many addition problems that I can solve within 1 min. I would like my program to have   1. A digital clock to count for 60 seconds in the top of my Console.   2. Print a math problem in the middle of my console wait for my input.   3. When 60 seconds is done, stop the math problem challenges immediately (most of time, it is still waiting for my input, but we will stop it immediately).   4. Count how many correct problems that I have solved. Two challenges of the program now.   a) how can we make sure the print time and math problem do not mess up.   b) how can we stop the math challenges part immediately after time is up"}
{"_id": "139114", "title": "What are the most important OO skills to show off in the job hunt?", "text": "I am in the market for new employment, and found a position were they asked me to create a programming sample based off an assignment. I blew the sample trying to get it done quickly one night, and got declined - only to be given a second chance recently. The concern was that I didn't really demonstrate object oriented knowledge. I've rethought my approach but I figure it's worth asking: if you were hiring someone for an OO position, what skills would you most want to see them demonstrate they had a firm grasp on? I want to be sure that I'm missing anything important this time around."}
{"_id": "75878", "title": "How difficult would it be to migrate a Struts/JSP application to Groovy?", "text": "I have taken over development of a JSP/Struts application. Right now it's a bit of a mess, and I'm finding the JSP pages with Struts tags to be insanely verbose. Has anyone migrated a Struts application to Groovy/Grails? Can it be done incrementally, page by page? @4bu3li: I was thinking of replacing the JSPs one by one with Groovy HTML builder code. IMO struts tags are a masterpiece of verbosity and obfuscation, and I'm tired of matching open and close tags. Right now the team is just me and one other guy, and I know Groovy better than I know JSPs and Struts. We are reworking the entire site, so it's all going to be rewritten somehow. But I can't stop maintenance, so I need to incrementally rewrite it page by page. Could I just start reworking Struts action methods to return Groovy-generated content?"}
{"_id": "98734", "title": "Are my team's processes out of control?", "text": "I'm a software dev team leader (I recently took control of a new team), and ultimately responsible for maintaining high productivity, good quality and organized priorities. I have 6 senior developers in my team, but things feel like a mess here. The situation is that I have to deal with JIRA requests from about 10 different points of contact in our company, and they all represent different business units, or clients. The problem I have is that my job mainly consists of putting out fires the whole day and making sure that everyone's problems are being worked on. Unfortunately, the culture in our company has been high productivity (fast releases) but low quality (production bugs), and our clients won't accept a sudden delay in results. What are some good ways of handling this? I have tons of theories, but I'm looking for an answer from someone who actually has working experience in a situation like mine. Here is a small list of how things work:   * Each developer is responsible for a specific application and services interacting with it;   * Releases are typically tested by the client in a simulated production server, and then deployed to the live server;   * Each application is used by an average of 50-80 people, with 8 applications in total. Thanks"}
{"_id": "75873", "title": "Coming up with a version control strategy for SVN", "text": "Off the clock I'm going to try and come up with a strategy for version control for my company; we currently use SVN but there's no structure to it - we basically only have a trunk and only commit to that. Recently the development manager started a second repository that acts as our \"tag\", but it has to be manually merged with the \"trunk\" since it's not part of the same repository but a totally separate one. In effect there is just one folder, called \"Dev\" (there's actually different \"Dev\" folders at different dates but just \"Dev\" is the main one) and under that is everything else; all the other projects. It's not organized by project at all, it has no concept of branches/tag/trunk or anything. The person who set it up initially (long gone, of course) seemed to not know how to set SVN up at all, and since then nobody has bothered to learn how to do things properly for fear of breaking something. We don't use any kind of CI (or automated testing, unfortunately). First, should we have it separated by project? For instance, we have: Two ASP.NET web sites (not Web Applications, Web Sites), a Web Service, a deployment folder for all the table scripts and stored procedures, two command-line clients for external projects that get called by the WebSites and a shared folder that has common business objects and the like. Should each of these be their own project with a branches/tag/trunk setup, or should it be like this:               dev/       branches/       tags/       trunk/           Site1/           Site2/           WebService/           SharedCode/      and have all the branches and everything have a copy of the entire Dev folder? That approach might be easier to swallow since we often have situations where we need to make changes in the shared code library and at least one (usually both) of the web sites as well. Second, we do regular releases (\"pushes\" in our parlance) to our dev server and live server. From what I've read the best way to handle this would be that all development goes into trunk/, branches are \"temporary\" and used for adding a new feature that might affect trunk, and tags are for releases? So, we push every month let's say, and I'm working on a brand new module. I would branch trunk, and use that branch for my code, writing and testing it and whatever. When the module is done, I'd merge it back into trunk (and maybe delete the branch), and when we are ready to deploy we would tag it (\"May2011\" let's say). If we have a bug fix after it goes live, it would be fixed in the May2011 tag and merged into trunk (so trunk gets the fix as well), and then May2011 would be pushed out again with the fix? Is this the intention of tagging?"}
{"_id": "75874", "title": "How quickly should I adopt new technology, i.e. new .NET versions, new VS versions, etc.?", "text": "I'm never sure how quickly I should be adopting new technology. I often just don't until there is a need from a client, or I have a new project that makes it easy to just start with a new version. How often do others adopt new technology? Is there a reason to jump right in? Is there a good reason not to? Are there some good rules of thumb, or guidelines? Approaches?"}
{"_id": "254301", "title": "Algorithm to generate N random numbers between A and B which sum up to X", "text": "This problem seemed like something which should be solvable with but a few lines of code. Unfortunately, once I actually started to write the thing, I've realized it's not as simple as it sounds. What I need is a set of X random numbers, each of which is between A and B and they all add up to X. The exact variables for the problem I'm facing seem to be even simpler: I need 5 numbers, between -1 and 1 (note: these are rational (floating point) numbers), which add up to 1. My initial \"few lines of code, should be easy\" approach was to randomize 4 numbers between -1 and 1 (which is simple enough), and then make the last one `1-(sum of previous numbers)`. This quickly proved wrong, as the last number could just as well be larger than 1 or smaller than -1. What would be the best way to approach this problem? PS. Just for reference: I'm using C#, but I don't think it matters. I'm actually having trouble creating a good enough solution for the problem in my head. * * * I also wanted to provide my current solution to the problem, _but do remember that it's quite imperfect and it was created as a quick fix to the initial problem_!   * Generate 4 random numbers between -1 and 1   * Create a \"final\" number `X=SUM(previousNumbers)`   * If the final number is >1 or <-1, then:      * Get the \"amount\" over 1 / under -1 and make the last number a 1 / -1     * Find another number which can accept this amount and still inside the brackets     * If no number can take the amount (it's too large / too small) then divide the amount in half and try again for each half   * Randomize the order of the generated numbers and return them This works in the sense that this algorithm generates 5 numbers which are between -1 and 1 and their sum is 1. However the downside is that quite often one of the generated numbers is a 1 (or -1), which doesn't feel very random."}
{"_id": "223109", "title": "Which is better API: table.add_row() or table.rows.add()?", "text": "I'm writing a library to create and manipulate Word .docx files in Python. In general, I take a lot of influence from the Microsoft VBA/C# API for Word in designing the API, figuring they've given it a lot more thought than I'll ever be able to. Several times I've found the wisdom in designing it the way they did only after getting much further down the road. A table has the properties `.rows` and `.columns`, each of which is a sequence of the `Row` and `Column` instances in the table, respectively. In the MS API, the methods for adding a new one are `Table.rows.add()` and `Table.columns.add()`. I'm inclined to believe this is more complicated than necessary, making my API harder for beginners to learn without really providing any benefit. I'm thinking `Table.add_row()` and `Table.add_column()` would better suit. As it happens, it also simplifies the code somewhat; that's not a motivator, just an observation that I wonder might be trying to tell me something. Is there an argument for preferring the former?"}
{"_id": "158423", "title": "Considerations for developing a large scale system that needs to be both traditional web accessible and mobile accessible", "text": "I am trying to begin planning of a system that would be both client management, and document management, with tools built in to do analysis on all of the transactions, etc. I'm wondering what are the considerations I need to be mindful of at the beginning stages so that when I need to scale up I haven't shot myself in the foot in the beginning. I also need to make sure that it is mobile accessible and not just traditional web accessible. I've never done a large scale system like this and I have ample time to plan so any suggestions are much appreciated. **Edit** I also need to make sure that the handling of data would be secure because it would be sensitive client data."}
{"_id": "243179", "title": "How to design database having multiple interrelated entities", "text": "I am designing a new system which is more of a help system for core applications in banks or healthcare sector. Given the nature of the system this is not a heavy transaction oriented system but more of read intensive. Now within this application I have multiple entities which are related to each other. For e.g. Assume the following entities in the system   1. User   2. Training   3. Regulations Now each of these entities have M:N Relationship with each other. Assuming the usage of a standard RDBMS, the design may involve many relationship tables each containing the relationships one other entity (\"User_Training\", \"User_Regulations\", \"Training_Regulations\"). This design is limiting since I have more than 3 entities in the system and maintaining the relationship graph is difficult this way. The most frequently used operation is \"given an entity get me all the related entities\" . I need to design the database where this operation is relatively inexpensive. What are the different recommendations for modelling this kind of database."}
{"_id": "26264", "title": "Why isn't it possible to switch between header and cpp in Visual Studio?", "text": "For the last eight years I wait for Microsoft to add the basic C++ functionality of switching back and forth between .h and .cpp files, and it keeps astonishing me it is still not supported in Visual Studio 2010. Does anyone know why they refuse to add this essential feature?"}
{"_id": "75143", "title": "Developer survey of code quality", "text": "I know it's almost impossible to define and/or measure code quality. Instead of trying to measure it I would like to survey the other developers to see how they _perceive_ the current quality of the code. I would like to stress that I want each developers opinion of the code, not a statistical measure of it. I'm thinking of asking them to rate the code in a few categories like maintainability, consistency, and stability. In addition I'd like to ask them what they think is going well and what they think needs the most improvement. Is this an effective way to get a perception of the code base from the other developers? Am I asking the correct questions? Will this provide useful information or is a useless exercise?"}
{"_id": "141674", "title": "Which programming language for text editing?", "text": "I need a programming language for text editing and processing (replace, formatting, regular expressions, string comparison, word processing, text analysis, etc.). Which programming language is more powerful and has more functions for this purpose? Since I work PHP for my web projects, I currently use PHP, but the fact is that PHP is a scripting language for web applications; my current project is offline. I am curious if other programming languages such as Perl, Python, C, C++, Java, etc. have more functionality for this purpose, and worth of shifting the project?"}
{"_id": "141676", "title": "Recommendable reads about programming history?", "text": "As much as I love to code, as little do I know about the history of programming. I know some names (Turing, Ritchie, Linus) - but that's it. I know roughly what they did and I'm a bit ashamed. This, and because I want to know more, I'm asking for recommendable reads (be it books, e-books, articles, w/e) on this topic."}
{"_id": "141670", "title": "How to make money by making JavaScript libraries?", "text": "There are lots of JavaScript libraries. Why people create them, if it's not for money? If it is, how do they make money on something anybody can copy, since the code source is available publicly?"}
{"_id": "56092", "title": "Why don't xUnit frameworks allow tests to run in parallel?", "text": "Do you know of any xUnit framework that allows to run tests in parallel, to make use of multiple cores in today's machine? If none (or so few) of them does it, maybe there is a reason... Is it that tests are usually so quick that people simply don't feel the need to paralellize them? Is there something deeper that precludes distributing (at least some of) the tests over multiple threads?"}
{"_id": "101873", "title": "What's the difference between an API and an SDK?", "text": "I was looking through various APIs and SDKs, when I realized that I couldn't really tell the difference between something called an API and something called an SDK. Both of them are, conceptually, a way for your program to interface with and control the resources provided by another piece of software, whether that other software is a web service, an end-user app, an OS service or daemon, or a kernel device driver. So, what is the semantic difference between an SDK and an API?"}
{"_id": "57329", "title": "Faq and Best tips Regarding Learning Database?", "text": "For a programmer with no prior exposure to databases   1. What would be a good database to learn Oracle vs SQLserver vs MySQLvs PostgreSQL?   2. I have come across lot of discussion MySQL and PostgreSQL and frankly I am confused on which to start with. Are these very different, in the sense if one had to switch, would the exposure to one be counter-productive to learning the other?   3. Is working with databases heavily platform dependent?   4. **What exactly do people mean by Data base programming vs. administration?**   5. Do people chose databases based on the programming language used for the application developed?   6. In general, Working with databases is it implicit that we work with some server?    7. Does the choice of databases differ when it comes to game development? If so what factors does it differ by?    8. What are the Best Tips that you have found to be useful when learning databases  Edit: Some FAQ i had and found the same on SO   1. What should every developer know about databases?   2. Which database if learning from scratch in 2010?   3. For a beginner, is there much difference between MySQL and PostgreSQL   4. What RDBMS should I learn/use? (MySql/SQL Server/Oracle etc.)   5. To what extent should a developer learn database?   6. How are database programmers different from other programmers?   7. what kind of database are used in games?"}
{"_id": "67696", "title": "Performance issues when parsing code", "text": "I was wondering about performance issues when parsing a source file that is being edited by the user (for example, when you need to give a syntax highlight).   I think that the simplest approach is to parse every time the code changes, get the results, and replace the current code with the highlighted one. With large files this may be a problem though. Is there a better way to do that? I suppose a solution may be to parse just the \"area\" where there was the last edit. Is this a good idea?"}
{"_id": "113194", "title": "Using a TFS Build Process Template (Workflow) for Deployment", "text": "I'm thinking of using TFS Build workflows for complex deployments. We have some that may need to deploy:   1. Web applications and services   2. Database   3. SSRS Reports   4. SSIS Packages   5. Who knows what else I like the fact that I can give the workflow some basic parameters like which build to deploy and it would just run. Potentially, some parts might need human approval, and I know that workflow can handle that too. An example is that we might use the workflow to create a change script from our Visual Studio Database Projects, but the DBA group will want to approve the script before it is run. I'm interested to know whether others have used \"builds\" for this in the past, and what problems were found."}
{"_id": "249838", "title": "Approach to managing multiple services like Evernote, Google drive, dropbox in iOS", "text": "I'm trying to think up a scenario when I'd have three different forms of NSData (or whatever) to be sent to three different services like Evernote, Google drive, Dropbox. Granted, each of those has there own SDKs to be bundled into the iOS app, and thats okay. Now, I want to create a single Class that serialises the both sending and receiving data to and from the above services. My mind is taking me to a `singleton`, a shared class with `NSOperationQueue` at its foundation. I'd periodically add `{send:\"this data\" to:dropbox}` into an `NSOperationBlock` and add it to the `singleton`. At any given time say the following operations could be within the `singleton`'s `NSOperationQueue`.   * `{send:\"this data\" to:dropbox}`   * `{send:\"this number\" to:evernote}`   * `{send:\"this dude\" to:googledrive}` The `singleton` would need to handle internet reachability, app sessions etc. This class would be connected to **Dropbox** , **Evernote** and **GDrive** and their respective SDK bundles. So, in reality the only thing this class would do is, hand over the data to the respective SDKs to handle it on their own (which is like saying, handle it and let me know if it was a success or failed.) I'd really like suggestions/critique on the approach i'm taking. I have little experience with `NSOperationQueue`, I don't know if I'm making the right choices here. Some clues to a good API pattern would really be helpful. ## UPDATE It was suggested I create a wrapper for each service. But If can stress that theres little to do in a `Dropbox Wrapper` classes, Since in iOS everything is handled in their own SDK. For example, **Evernote** extends only a simple `[ENSession .. uploadNote..]`. All I wanted to do, is serialise my uploads into a single global queue and then dispatch the single methods to either `Dropbox` or `Evernote` or wherever. If suppose there is a service that requires some form of data handling, I'd then use a _wrapper_ and dispatch its own thread. I'll add this into the question too. Its the serialising & queueing I want.Sounds reasonable?"}
{"_id": "75257", "title": "Open/Closed principle and reopening Ruby Classes", "text": "In OOP there is the Open/Closed principle that states that > \"software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for > extension, but closed for modification\". Taking in consideration that in Ruby it is to possible to reopen a class, don't you think that this breaks the Open/Closed principle? When do you think we should favor reopening classes instead of just extending them? What do you think that are pitfalls in reopening classes?"}
{"_id": "204118", "title": "I want to build a java client library, where do I start?", "text": "I'm in my second java course at school and am thinking of developing a web service client library for one of my projects. I'd like the library to be able to query the MusicBrainz web service and have it return a data object or search results depending on the query. Does anyone have any advice or a reference that I can be pointed to? Specifically, I'm looking for advice on how to structure my code (e.g. how do I break up my classes) as well as help understanding how communication should flow from some external app, my library, the web service, and back. There is an existing MB java client library, but I am trying my hardest not to go rummaging through it. I want to have the satisfaction of building my client from scratch and not just copy/pasting code and ideas from the existing app. **Edit:** Just to be clear, I'm not saying that I want to avoid looking at other libraries. What I meant above is that I know that there is already a library that does what I'm looking for, but since I'm fairly new at this stuff I want to avoid the temptation of just blindly copying ideas when I get stuck or when I'm not sure which direction to go in. Having multiple references would hopefully put me in a better position to know what to do. What I'm looking for is some kind of reference guide I can use to build my own library. I haven't found much on my own so I thought posting a question on here might give me a few ideas or some new things to check out."}
{"_id": "204119", "title": "NodeJS: Freeze dependences before testing and deployment? Check in node_modules?", "text": "Suppose you have a NodeJS application. A release could consists of multiple steps:   1. Automated and/or manual tests   2. Deployment   3. (if something goes wrong) Rollback to the last stable version There are some desirable requirements regarding the application's dependencies:   * When you have done your testing, you want to deploy _exactly_ the version that you tested with, including all dependencies.   * The same goes for rollbacks: You want to restore not only your own code, but all external dependencies, too. My question is about best practices to meet this goals. **What is the recommended way to create a snapshot of all dependencies of your NodeJS application?** Here are three options that I can think of:   1. In this article, the author recommends to put the `node_modules` directory under source control. (Not for all modules, but only for modules that will be deployed.)   2. One alternative, which the same article describes as an anti-pattern, is to use explicit version locking. His argument seems reasonable: When you lock, for example, Express to a certain version, you still cannot control that one of its dependences hasn't introduced a subtile bug, later.   3. Just don't care and always use the most recent version of all external modules. * * * My thoughts so far (but I don't have much experience with NodeJS yet):   * 3) seems to be too reckless.   * I tend to 1), but I'm not sure where to put the `node_modules`. When you just check it along with your normal code, I fear that workflows like `npm link` to your local modules will no longer work. Additionally, there is always the problem of annoying merge conflicts."}
{"_id": "134541", "title": "How to do best practice development as the single IT guy in a small company", "text": "For the best part of the last decade I have been working as the only IT guy in tiny company. At it's peak this company employed about 8 staff. It's now down to 4, one of them part time. So the going is tough - but given its size it always has been. I enjoy working with the people there which is why I am still there and my employees have never blamed me for poor code or anything. They are entirely supportive of my work. However I struggle intensely with the whole \"do it properly\" idea. For the first 6 years of working there I largely worked on our in-house web based CMS. This is from just before the times of Ruby On Rails setting the tone as an example of an efficient web application stack or Wordpress setting the blogging standard. At the time we surveyed the available options and decided that nothing offered what we wanted with respect to standards, accessibility and usability (big mistake in hindsight, but such is life). So we (read I) set out developing our own CMS. The code I churned out is just awful, awful stuff. It got written in a haste as we were always playing catch-up with features or hastily meeting client deadlines. Our system became slower and unpredictable, changes difficult and so on. As you'd expect really. I got more and more frustrated as I am aware of TDD, refactoring and so on, but there just never seemed to be the time. Also note that being the only IT guy also means maintaining the office network, providing desktop support, technical support in writing proposals and last but not least maintaining our servers and the 50-60 websites that run on them using our CMS. I've rarely felt confident to even approach TDD as it IS a lot slower in the first instance. This has been constant source of real, and I really mean REAL, deep frustration. I know I am doing it the wrong way, but there appears to be no chance to do it the right way. Maybe I am just too weak, not a risk taker. I don't know. But how have others coped in such a situation? I am frequently at the point of throwing in the towel. Probably would have done if there weren't the tiny issue of having to support a family. Moving jobs would be difficult as it will likely mean moving countries (but that's by the by). I sometimes wonder whether this whole TDD stuff is something which is almost the exception rather than the norm. We've recentlty jumped ship to Wordpress as we will never be able to get to that quality with just one IT guy. Having peaked into the code base, Wordpress doesn't look much clearer than what I coded up, and lets not talk about many of the plugins. But it doesn't seem to matter because Wordpress as a platform is rock solid, well documented and obviously has an outstannding QA procedure. And since moving to Wordpress most of my work appears to be around integrating plugins and coding up a few lines to hook it all together. Not much development at all really. Which leaves me with even less opportunity to do real satisfactory agile development. I am particularly keen to hear from others in similar situation to me. Do you just write it off as part of the life of a developer in a tiny SME? I've really lost confidence in my ability to develop software as opposed to simply hack it all together. How do you go about doing best practice agile web development when you're the only guy on the team. EDIT: good answers so far. I'd like to hear from others who are or have been in similar situations. ie working as the sole IT guy in a very small company. How do you cope with the constant demands for your time with no-one else to realistically help you out? Thanks."}
{"_id": "134540", "title": "Are utility classes with nothing but static members an anti-pattern in C++?", "text": "The question Where should I put functions that are not related to a class has sparked some debate over whether it makes sense in C++ to combine utility functions in a class or just have them exist as free functions in a namespace. I come from a C# background where the latter option does not exist and thus naturally trend toward using static classes in the little C++ code I write. The highest voted answer on that question as well as several comments however say that free functions are to be preferred, even suggesting static classes were an anti-pattern. Why is that so in C++? At least on the surface, static methods on a class seem indistinguishable from free functions in a namespace. Why thus the preference for the latter? Would things be different, if the collection of utility functions needed some shared data, e.g. a cache one could store in a private static field?"}
{"_id": "203721", "title": "Using Power of 2 numbers to represent types", "text": "Let's say that we have some values, represented by power of 2:               TYPE_1 = 1     TYPE_2 = 2     TYPE_3 = 4     TYPE_4 = 8     ...      I need to store some of these types in one value. Example: To represent `TYPE_1` with `TYPE_3`, the value is `5`. What operation is used to identify that value `5` represent `TYPE_1` with `TYPE_3`?"}
{"_id": "202459", "title": "pcre case insensitivity: handle escape sequences as raw bytes?", "text": "Consider the following regex (no unicode):               Example:\\x04\\x05\\x41      Suppose you search this regex case-insensitively. Would you expect it to search the final \\x41 in case-sensitive manner? People whom I ask actually expect such behavior. And such expectations are wrong. Perldoc says: > Note that a character expressed as one of these escapes is considered a > character without special meaning by the regex engine, and will match \"as > is\". Which basically means that if the character escaped is printable non special character it's equivalent to just typing that character. And that's how it actually behaves. However if regex is case insensitive alphabetic characters do have a special meaning of \"this character or same character in opposite case\" and such special meaning is not ignored in \\x sequences. Escape sequences have \"raw byte\" semantics, but not always. Does it seem to you like a design awkwardness? Is there a way to cause pcre to treat \\x sequences as raw bytes that ignore case sensitivity? Perhaps as a flag? As non standard patch? If no how if at all pcre engine code can be modified to provide such functionality?"}
{"_id": "113441", "title": "Do we need test data or can we rely on unit tests and manual testing?", "text": "We're currently working on a medium/large PHP/MySQL project. We're doing unit testing with PHPUnit & QUnit and we have two full time testers that are manually testing the application. Our test (mock) data is currently created with SQL scripts. We have problem with maintaining scripts for test data. The business logic is pretty complex and one \"simple\" change in the test data often produces several bugs in the application (which are not real bugs, just the product of invalid data). This has become big burden to the whole team because we are constantly creating and changing tables. I don't really see the point of maintaining the test data in the scripts because everything can be manually added in the application in about 5 minutes with the UI. Our PM disagrees and says that having project that we can\u2019t deploy with test data is a bad practice. Should we abandon maintenance of the scripts with test data and just let the testers to test the application without data? What\u2019s the best practice?"}
{"_id": "86525", "title": "Mobile web development rudiments", "text": "How does one get started with web development for mobile devices (including phones)? I know some old good HTML & JS, but I'm wondering what the modern way is. To make it concrete, I need to implement a client for an enterprise app. Think of a login-protected dashboard for managers. Given that I only have basic knowledge and have never implemented such applications, what do I need to take into account when choosing platform and technology?   1. Shall I go for Android / iPhone, or HTML & JS, or HTML5? What are the general pros and cons that I need to consider?   2. How can I test an Android app on desktop without using a phone?    3. Same question about testing HTML/JS or HTML5 (the mobile version needs to be different from desktop, and I would like to see it exactly as if it was a phone).   4. What resources (preferably online) do you recommend for learning the rudiments? I mean especially HTML & JS: What does the site need to be like to work great on smartphones (and not only on desktops)? I mean possible UI glitches, limited support for some HTML/JS features, page size, and whatever other important details are there."}
{"_id": "159975", "title": "Zend Framework View Helper Composition", "text": "So I'm reviewing a piece of code that is a perfect candidate to be abstracted away into a view helper. However at the moment, the piece of code uses two other view helpers to get the final display. Now my question is, if a new view helper is created, is it recommended to inject the two helpers being used already, into the one created to get the final result needed? I've not seen anything for or against, my initial feelings were that the code probably needs refactoring, but I don't think the dev will be willing to, so what I have outlined seemed like a nice middle ground."}
{"_id": "14069", "title": "Learning embedded systems development without supervision", "text": "I have graduated this year and got my first job involved with C programming, Linux administration and embedded systems development. I feel quite content with my job, but I'm afraid I won't become a successful programmer in this field. I'm a lone developer on my job now, with my teammates being hardware experts, there is no one to guide me or teach me in the ways of embedded programming, I have to study all on my own. So here are my questions. Is it possible to become a good embedded systems developer starting from an entry level position without any supervision by senior programmers? How could I become one (perhaps with the help of forums, IRC channels, good textbooks)? How long would it take? **UPDATE:** So far, I have received a handful of helpful answers, but I realized that I need some specific pointers on the subject. So, here are my particular questions:   1. What are some good textbooks one can use to learn embedded development?   2. What specialized online communities can be helpful for an aspiring embedded developer (not counting general stuff like Stack Overflow, Reddit and so on)?   3. What are the most interesting blogs dedicated to embedded development?"}
{"_id": "14066", "title": "Is it a bad practice having experience of anti-technologies?", "text": "I had this doubt since a long time , having enclosed in CV the experience or knowledge of technologies that are 'anti' to each other or rivals in real world. For e.g. - A guy having RHCE certification **and** MCSE certification will be preferred or rejected at sight ? In my view - he is having experience of both technologies so I'd prefer this guy `but I've heard that` people with this kind of CV are considered like- they didnt had it in their mind \" What they want to do in future, What are their interests \" etc etc ..."}
{"_id": "182158", "title": "Relationship between user story, feature, and epic?", "text": "As someone whose still new to agile, I'm not sure I completely understand the relationship or difference between a user story, feature, and epic. According to this question, a feature is a collection of stories. One of the answers suggest that a feature is actually an epic. So are features and epics considered the same thing, which is basically a collection of related user stories? Our project manager insists that there's a hierarchical structure: Epic -> Features -> User stories ... basically all user stories must fall within this structure. Therefore all user stories must fall under an umbrella feature and all features must fall under an epic. To me, that sounds awkward. Can someone please clarify how user stories, features, and epics are related? Or is there an article that clearly outlines the differences?"}
{"_id": "219117", "title": "Object oriented parser model review", "text": "First time I make use of Code Review. At the moment I'm creating an Android application and the company I'm developing it for, has a specific file format that can be used to give text based data specific formatting rules. See it as an rich text format especially build and designed for their use. # **The File format to work with** The file format was or at least is in my opinion designed to be used for pure formatting reasons and is actually not very well designed for data access. The Android application I'm writing depends very strongly on data access, that being said I had to design a smart parser which is capable of transforming the formatted text to some kind of data model which could still have the formatting included. A typical file could exist out of 600 lines of text having a total of 60000 characters. And could look like this:               \\id sit amet     \\ide UTF-8     \\rem File version: 2013-06-18     \\rem Copyright 1995-2012     \\t Lorem ipsum     \\h 1     \\st Nunc at urna     \\p     \\v 1 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.     \\v 2 Suspendisse ac turpis quis diam elementum cursus sit amet non urna.     \\pq Vestibulum vulputate \\nd dui\\nd* eget pharetra adipiscing.     \\pq Suspendisse viverra metus quis feugiat rutrum.     \\v 3 Nunc at urna vehicula, luctus quam convallis, adipiscing metus.     \\v 4 Integer sit amet neque condimentum, laoreet neque ut, feugiat tellus.     \\h 2     \\v 1 Nam commodo orci et magna eleifend imperdiet.     \\v 2 Cras a lorem ac nunc interdum lacinia.     \\v 3 Integer vestibulum mauris id scelerisque lacinia.     \\st Ut molestie nibh     \\p     \\v 4 Duis aliquam \\nd diam\\nd* nec nisl hendrerit posuere.     \\v 5 Donec eget sapien id purus sollicitudin elementum non eget arcu.     \\b     \\v 6 Fusce auctor justo vitae aliquam luctus.     \\v 7 Phasellus eget nisl at dui dignissim pharetra.     \\v 8 Mauris iaculis mi at augue mattis, eu bibendum nunc placerat.      The `\\h` marker and the `\\v` marker are the most important markers they are used to identify the data using the integer behind it. The other makers are mostly irrelevant (like the `\\id, \\ide, \\rem` markers), and some like `\\pq` are used to append their data to the line above it but with some formatting applied to it. And some markers are \"in-text\" like the `\\nd` marker. Of course there are a lot of rules how the tags can be used in a valid file, but it's totally irrelevant for the review I think. (Or is there someone willing to read 90 pages?) # **The structure of the parser** So I came up with the following (Object oriented) parsing model: The parser has to be:   * **Able to separate DATA from FORMATTING**   * Fast    * separate the data and the formatting so both can be easily accessed   * Able to parse a subset of data or a specific range of data from a file A selection of data is often referred as: File - Level - Sub-level(actual data) Where the `file` is just a file to parse, the `level` an integer which can be found in the file by the `\\h` marker and the `Sub-level` just like Level with the `\\v` maker. The parser I wrote returns an object which holds two lists - one with all the formatting and one with all the data.               public class ParseResult {         protected ArrayList<FileData> data = new ArrayList<FileData>();         protected ArrayList<FileFormat> format = new ArrayList<FileFormat>();     }      The `FileData` object and the `FileFormat` object can be extended to create numerous different formats and data objects. This is the structure I use in the parser I wrote: For data:               FileData           -FileDataLocation extends FileData               -FileDataText extends FileDataLocation               -FileDataThing extends FileDataLocation           -FileDataAnotherThing extends FileData        For formatting:               FileFormat           -FileFormatLevel extends FileFormat           -FileFormatTitle extends FileFormat           -FileFormatSubLevel extends FileFormat           -FileFormatSpecialTokens extends FileFormat       To use data from the parsed file I use the data `ArrayList`. To print the data formatted I loop trough the format `ArrayList` which is sorted so that the beginning of the file would be at the 0 index of the list and the end of the parsed file the last index of the list. **Each formatting object has a reference to a data object in the data list. So that when using the formatting objects the data is always accessible. The formatting objects only hold information what peace of data the format should be applied to and what kind of formatting.** # **Parsing method** When parsing a file the parser reads the file line by line and constantly keeps track of the `\\h` and `\\v` markers, and starts capturing data in the `ParseResult` object when a specific combination of the markers is found (Lets call that a location). To check what type of marker the parser is dealing with I scan the line until I find the first whitespace. When a whitespace has been found a substring can be made from the start of the line to the location of the whitespace. Comparing the substring with a list of known makers tells the parser what to do with the line. After the marker is found the line is processed using regex. This is an example regex for a line with the `\\v` marker:               \\v\\s(([0-9]{1,3})(?:-([0-9]{1,3}))?)\\s{1}(.+)[\\n\\r$]*      # **Review?** The performance of the parser is not bad at all, the largest files take about 600ms to process completely (9000 lines, 280000 characters). Things I would like to know   * Data is now (after parsing) stored in just a list, searching for a specific peace of data is not very well optimized. Are there other structures I could use, which I can search using `file(string) - level(integer) - sub-level(integer)` so I can quickly get a specific data object.   * When looping trough the formatting list I must check what instance an object belongs to, and then cast the object so I can use the specific methods and functions. Is there a better, other, alternative method?   * The file format is pretty basic, should I consider removing all regex functions and parse it whole by just regular code?"}
{"_id": "219110", "title": "Can someone help me in creating a dynamic programming solution to this problem?", "text": "I have some function names which are assigned to some nodes. I have to decide which functions to move to other nodes to increase speed. Why do I have to move the functions to other nodes? If communicating functions are on same nodes they take less time as compared to if communicating functions are on different nodes. A function might be communicating with several functions (all could be on different nodes). The question is which node do I move it to, to maximize the global performance. I need to find a globally optimal solution using dynamic programming. I have the following information   1. The integer value of the amount of data transferred between functions    2. The amount of time it takes to transfer data between nodes. Initially all functions have been assigned to some nodes. Can somebody help me in mapping this problem to the assembly line scheduling algorithm (Dynamic programming) or creating some other dynamic programming solution to this problem? The hard metric is the execution time of the entire program.The independent running time of a function is calculated by any timer API (We already have it). Its (function's) actual running time would be equal to its independent running time + the running time of all the functions which are producing data consumed by this function + the communication time between this function and other functions on same node + the communication time between this function and functions on other nodes. The program's running time would then be the sum of the running time of all the functions in the program. I have to minimize the execution time of the program which is the sum of the execution time of all the functions.Each functions execution time is the sum of its own time(precalculated) and the sum of all functions which will will execute before it and its sum with its time spent communicating with other functions(same or different nodes)."}
{"_id": "106065", "title": "Opposite term of indent", "text": "We say that we indent code. I'm writing a string builder which can add/remove tabs to indent code. Sample:               builder.Add(\"<ul>\");     builder.Indent();     builder.Add(\"<li></li>\");     builder.Dedent(); // <-- what should this be named.     builder.Add(\"</ul>\");         What should I name the method?"}
{"_id": "174806", "title": "AJAX Requests & Client-Side JavaScript", "text": "I am new to AJAX and trying to understand a question I've been given: A HTTP request is generated by a form which contains some drop-down list. When the form is submitted, a new web page is displayed with some relevant text information (which is dependent on the list item selected). Now, the same parameters are sent to the server via an AJAX request, and the same text information is returned. Q. What tasks would the client-side JavaScript have to do to ensure a valid request was constructed and sent? Any useful links or quick explanations greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "3241", "title": "What amount of time should be spent on bugs vs original development?", "text": "This question is a little abstract but I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. My question is what amount of time can one expect to devote to a software project's bugs in relation to the original development time. I realize there are a huge number of determining factors that go into but I was hoping for a typical or average breakdown. For example, if Project A takes 40 hours to complete and an additional 10 fixing bugs then this project would have a 4:1 ratio. If another Project (B) takes 10 hours to complete but another 8 on bugs then it would have a 5:4 ratio. Is this a documented/researched concept? ### UPDATE Thanks for all the informative answers. I understand that it's impossible to put a standard to this kind of metric due to all the variables and environmental factors involved. Before I assign an answer I'd like to know if this metric has an agreed-upon name so I can do further research. I would like to get to a point where I can understand the measurements necessary to generate the metrics myself and eventually come up with a baseline standard for my project."}
{"_id": "167331", "title": "programming contract work and copyrights", "text": "Quick question guys. It may be country dependent so this question is more directed towards EU citizens. If I did a programming job, raised an invoice but never got paid, am I still holding the copyrights and can disallow use of the software? No specific contract regarding copyrights was signed upfront. I don't know if you can help, but though asking you guys may be worth a shot"}
{"_id": "102996", "title": "Reuse Other Company's Content For Same Client", "text": "Here's the scenario: a client of mine (lets call them Company A) had a website built by someone else (let's call them Company B). They then asked me (Company C) to configure a third party framework to look and feel exactly the same as what Company B built for them. Would it be legitimate for me to use content (including images, CSS, and even HTML) from the site Company B built for Company A? It's worth mentioning Company A's name is in the copyright notice in the footer of the site Company B made for Company A."}
{"_id": "232359", "title": "Understanding \"programming to an interface\"", "text": "I have come across the term \"programming to an interface instead of an implementation\" a lot, and I think I kind of understand what it means. But I want to make sure I understand it's benefits and it's possible implementations. \"Programming to an interface\" means, that when possible, one should refer to a more abstract level of a class (an interface, abstract class, or sometimes a superclass of some sort), instead of refering to a concrete implementation. A common example in Java, is to use: `List myList = new ArrayList();` instead of `ArrayList myList = new ArrayList();` . I have two questions regarding this:   1. I want to make sure I understand the main benefits of this approach. I think the benefits are mostly flexibility. Declaring an object as a more high-level reference, rather than a concrete implementation, allows for more flexibility and maintainablity throughout the development cycle and throughout the code. **Is this correct? Is flexibility the main benefit?**   2. Are there more ways of 'programming to an interface'? Or is \"declaring a variable as an interface rather than a concrete implementation\" the the only implementation of this concept? **EDIT: Clarification** \\- I'm **not talking about the Java construct Interface**. I'm talking about the OO principle \"programming to an interface, not an implementation\". In this principle, **the world \"interface\" refers to any \"supertype\" of a class** \\- an interface, an abstract class, or a simple superclass which is more abstract and less concrete than it's more concrete subclasses."}
{"_id": "102990", "title": "Should I take a C# certification course to learn C#?", "text": "I'm looking to learn C# mainly so i can get into XNA. I know the basics of programming and I've tooled around with GameMaker, which has it's own scripting language. I'm not really looking to jump into the industry and honestly I'm not sure I would ever want to program for a living. However, I'm having a hard time teaching myself with tutorials and I thought taking a class might be worthwhile. The school I'm looking to attend is a community college and they offer a certification course in C# and I might take it if I find it worth the price. My question is, **will it be worthwhile**? I know it depends largely on the school and the instructors but by taking a certification course will I learn any more than I would by just shelling out the same amount of money into some decent books?"}
{"_id": "39940", "title": "Asked to put in extra hours", "text": "I'm working through exactly what the best approach is to being asked by an employer as a team to put in extra hours both during weekdays but also an additional day on weekends (6-8 hours). No additional compensation (overtime, additional time off, etc...) is a part of the arrangement; I think from their perspective it's about being able to keep the job. We work in 6 week cycles, so the duration of this \"crunch time\" is the length of the cycle. The entire project team are salaried (exempt), not hourly. After the cycle is complete if it is judged that the project is in \"better shape\" then we will go back to our normal expected hours of the typical 40-hour work week. Any thoughts, advice, or previous circumstances like this from which you might have emerged the better?"}
{"_id": "123044", "title": "Should I start developing in Python 3?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should we use python 2.6 or 2.7 or 3.x? Now that Django runs on Python 3, I think it's time to ask that all-important question: Should I start using Python 3 instead of Python 2? It really seems that though 3 has a lot of awesome new helpful features, everyone's sticking to 2. Are Python 2 libraries forward-compatible with Python 3? For example, will I lose all of my Django apps which have been developed for Python 2?"}
{"_id": "232350", "title": "Does designing a method that changes the argument's (if was object) values a good practice?", "text": "The premise is using a language (e.g. C#, javascript) which passes an object by reference into a method. Assume there is an object \"Player\" which has a property \"Level\" and there is a method takes Player as parameter and its function is to increase the player's level by 1. The method can be designed something like (c# syntax):               void AddLevelBy1(Player player)     {      player.Level +=1;     }      The concern was this method changed the value of the argument and I could not find a generic way to indicate (or may prevent?) this. One might get some hints from the method name \"AddLevelBy1\". But such a way is not reliable and if the method was name \"foo\" then it becomes even more ambiguous. So is there a solution / convention for this case (indicate whether arguments get changed)? Or such method design was considered a bad practice? **Added:** Try to describe my case more clearly:   1. I have an object \"Player\" which was not defined by myself (cannot change).   2. I wrote a method (AddLevelBy1() in this example) which takes \"Player\" as parameter (I know what happened).   3. I also pass this \"Player\" to some other methods (e.g. foo()) which were not written by me (so this is no way to know whether the \"Player\" got changed). Thanks for some answers below but what if the codes were designed in the manner I described above. I have added a demo of the case I described: http://jsfiddle.net/54sun/srhHt/9/"}
{"_id": "230264", "title": "can a software be an ERP and CMS simultaneously", "text": "I was reading about CMS and ERP. And got confused at this point that whether a system can both be an ERP and a CMS? is it possible?"}
{"_id": "71409", "title": "How do programmers deal with low level software development in high level languages?", "text": "I am somewhat new to programming and the best way I can ask this question is with an example. I know how to do basic things in Java and C#. Things like a small windows forms application or make a generic class. I've basically been learning and haven't tried to do anything big yet. Anyways, I've always been curious about how things are done \"under the hood\" I guess you could say. I know it all gets boiled down to 1s and 0s and that assembly languages basically give commands to patterns of 1s and 0s, but its seems like there's this jump from there to: use a library for this a library for that. It seems to me like all C# can do without a library is arithmetic and binary logic. To get input or output, you use libraries, etc... I know this question probably seems obvious to some and I know that I have a lot to learn but I don't even know where to begin with a question like this. Thank you. So my question is this: > If someone were going to make a virtual machine or a Playstation emulator, > or an operation system, or a driver, or add mp3 support to a media player, > or make your own file type, etc... How? I can't see the way that would be > done with C# or Java. In other words, if I read a book like Professional C# by WROX or Programming C# by OReilly, would I know how to do these things? Or do you have to learn assembly language or something more low level like C++?"}
{"_id": "230261", "title": "Is there a web-specific reason for the design choices behind the JavaScript language?", "text": "With the advent of \"the web is the platform\", JavaScript is fast becoming the most widely used programming language in the world. However, many tasks that are easy to accomplish in other modern languages are difficult or puzzling in JavaScript, because the language design is so \"unique\":   * JavaScript has a **prototype-based OOP system** ; most other modern languages have an inheritance-based one   * JavaScript has such a **weird typing system** that it doesn't fall into any of the standard categories (plenty of examples on WTFJS)   * JavaScript is **extremely lenient in how it parses the syntax** (semicolons are optional etc.) From a developer's point of view, most of these design decisions make developing in JavaScript harder. Conceptually, the JavaScript language seems one step behind Java, and two steps behind Python and Ruby. But since I don't believe that the people behind JavaScript are striving to create a language that is difficult to use, I can only reason that those design points must have something to do with the intended use of JavaScript as a scripting language for web sites, deeply connected to the DOM. **How (if at all) do these design points cater to the intended use cases of JavaScript? What reasoning is behind those seemingly random design decisions?**"}
{"_id": "238052", "title": "How to link the data of MongoDB and Neo4j?", "text": "I want to implement a system which store the profiles of employee and the resources that they have. There are many types of resources, such as the documents they produced, the techniques they have...etc. I store the properties of nodes and relationships on MongoDB, and only store the relationship on Neo4j. But I face a problem, how could I link these two database? For example, when I want to find A's friends who get JAVA license in 2012, I have to find the id of people on MongoDB, and use this id the find the friends on Neo4j, and then I have to check who have JAVA license in 2012 on MongoDB... I think it is very complex and have some performance issue, how could I solve it? The probable solution I think is storing data both on MongoDB and Neo4j. When I want to do complex search, I can only use Neo4j. The point of having properties in Mongo is that it has better performance on search by properties, and I think it is better to manage data on MongoDB."}
{"_id": "238053", "title": "Methods for structuring JavaScript SDKs", "text": "I've built a REST API and have been using Backbone models throughout a couple different applications to communicate to it. I would really like to build a single JS SDK that can be used in any application that contains that reusable code. I have started by creating an npm, bower, and component.json so that it can be easily installed. From what I can gather the goal is to create a single object attached to the `window` for access within other applications. At which point everything in is encapsulated. I have a couple questions and concerns:   1. Is there anything I need to avoid to prevent conflicts with other libraries?   2. How do I handle dependencies? Should I encapsulate them or let the user know they have to add it?   3. Are there any methods of structuring SDKs that provide similar benefits to, say, MVC within a web app? **NOTE:** If this is question doesn't follow the guidelines for programmers.stackexchange.com please provide guidance on how to change it rather than just closing it. Thanks much."}
{"_id": "231199", "title": "Are all race conditions worth fixing?", "text": "I just wrote the following piece of code (in delphi):               procedure Update(Value: Integer);     begin       // If the last update was yesterday, replace yesterday value       if CompareDate(FLastUpdate,Now) <> 0 then       begin         FYesterdayValue := FTodayValue;       end;       FTodayValue := Value;       FLastUpdate := Now;     end;      And I realized that it contains a small, but real race condition. Imagine that the first time the \"Now\" function is called it's one millisecond before midnight, the if-statement is skipped and the timestamp is updated with another call to \"Now\" which is now one millisecond AFTER midnight. Now the timestamp has the wrong value and the FYesterdayValue will not get the correct value. In practise, I think the chances of this ever happening is almost non existent because a) the code is typically called ~1 / minute and b) the cpu time between the two call will be EXTREMELY small. However it's a bug and I'm curious if you would fix it if you stumbled upon it in a project."}
{"_id": "38774", "title": "Are there any contracting agreement templates online?", "text": "Contracting is fairly common, so I imagine that there's some pre-fab templates for software contracting agreements out there. I'm looking for one that I modify for my needs, pass through my lawyer and supply to clients. Does anyone know of any resources available?"}
{"_id": "208763", "title": "Is it a good idea to use Twitter Bootstrap 3 for production?", "text": "So in the past few weeks I was introduced to Bootstrap 3-RC1. I made some web sites using it, and I actually enjoyed it. Then, recently, I discovered Twitter Bootstrap has already released version 3-RC2. It makes me wonder if it's okay for me to use Bootstrap RC2 for production now? Is it wise if I used it considering it still in RC phase or should I just wait for the official, completed version 3?"}
{"_id": "38772", "title": "Contractor vs Consultant", "text": "For a programmer, two of the most common terms that seem to be overloaded are contractor and consultant?   Is there a difference between the two?"}
{"_id": "208766", "title": "Methods to identify and resolve memory leaks in the JVM", "text": "As the data is migrated via the object level, there has been a slow upwards trend in memory usage. I can see the periodic gc activity, but the memory trend is still going up slowly. I have currently for my application set the starting and max heap at 14GB in production, however if we might need a large data set, my concern is the we will eventually hit the limit and then the application will slow down (which was what happened). What are some effective ways and proving strategies to help identify and remedy a potential memory leak in a running Java process?"}
{"_id": "232686", "title": "Twitter Bootstap: Backwards compatibility?", "text": "I work for a university Digital Services team. Our university's main website uses the Ektron CMS (I have my own thoughts about this, but that's irrelevant). Because we maintain a university website, we need to make sure our website is extremely backwards compatible. We are trying to make a decision as to whether Twitter Bootstrap is conducive to what we're trying to do. Upon review, I've found that Bootstrap uses the CSS preprocessor \"*Less Css*\". We're currently using *SASS*, which we compile via terminal using Ruby Compass. The downside I'm wondering about while using *Less Css* would be that it compiles using Rhino and Node.js. Would this create issues because   1. Less CSS uses Node.js to compile; if someone does not have js enabled in their browser, will it not display the CSS?    2. the CSS has to compile each time a page is rendered, will it slow down a pages load time? What is most appealing to use is the grid system/glyphs/ and js plugins that comes with Bootstrap, which is good because we often have to create new content for events and other things happening in the university. However, it's extremely hard for us to give up cross compatibility. What are benefits of Bootstrap?   What are draw backs of Bootstrap?"}
{"_id": "232680", "title": "Beginning Data Mining", "text": "For simplicity, my database has entities and transactions. Each transaction has a DateCreated and a foreign key to the entity. I'd like to have the ability to find entities that have had a recurring number of transactions within a close time proximity of other entities. Simply, if entity A has had a transaction within 10 minutes of entity B, 5 different times. The more I research on this topic, the more confused I'm becoming. I ran through the Data Mining Algorithms and their AdventureWorks data mining tutorial. I _think_ I need a clustering approach. Mostly I'm looking for guidance on how this type of problem is typically approached. In the end, my goal is to allow the user to select X minutes and Y occurrences, and display the result data back to them. If I can offer any more information please let me know."}
{"_id": "83545", "title": "What is the best way to manage Hibernate sessions in a Struts-1 application?", "text": "I am now the owner of a Struts-1 application, and the Hibernate session management is all over the place. I have searched online documentation but have not found a clear explanation of the best way to manage Hibernate sessions in a Struts application. Presumably a Hibernate Session should be created (or fetched) at the start of each action, and a transaction opened, and then the transaction committed or rolled back at the end of the action. Is that correct? How can this be managed for all actions without duplicating code in each action? Should each Action fetch objects from the DB, call model functions, and then save the objects, ala Ruby on Rails?"}
{"_id": "83544", "title": "C++ GUI Design & Programming", "text": "I am familiar with the basics and fundamentals of C++ and now I would like to move on to designing and coding GUI features of it, interactive dialogues, etc... like VB or Delphi Where do I start (self teaching text book, online tutorial)? Thanks"}
{"_id": "83540", "title": "Web-Development preparation and entire project workflow", "text": "I work as a lone programmer on web-development projects(front and back-end) - I have completed a couple of projects, so I'm fairly new at this, I have read and tried a few approaches and reached a way of going about them. The question and my description is fairly long so please be patient. What I am looking for, is :   **1.** Preparation/Planning that would be typically done before you start development, once you know exactly what needs to be built.   **2.** From your experience please give me feedback/suggestions on the process I follow currently.   The clients I work with are generally startups and have limited budgets so I can't charge them on a per/hour basis(I think that is how large companies usually bill their clients[on man/hours] for development projects) and have to work with a fixed budget. **This is the process I currently follow :**   **1.** Gauge the scope of the project and try to understand what they are trying to accomplish in a couple of meetings.   **2.** Give them a rough ball-park figure with a quotation that describes in general what they expect to get from the project, I try to be specific about features, but, I'm not putting too much time into this because I know the client may just be asking around for quotes, and not actually convert.   **3.** I follow Jeff Atwood's suggestion for payment & work :   **15%** payment - Upfront before starting any work   During this phase HTML mockup of the end website is made, a flowchart(with yEd) describing the website in as much detail as possible and a document that mentions other features that are not there in the flowchart. This is done by going into all the details of the project and finalizing the bits that will fit in and stuff that is too much work to implement for the agreed price. Because specifics are not discussed earlier, portions of these are also more or less a negotiation on what they will actually get. Because this is a fixed budget project, there needs to be fixed requirements, else, my price keeps going down as more features are added.   A color scheme, design wireframe and design PSD is also finalized.   **35% payment** \\- Start Development   The project is fixed, begin development. I Host the site on my server, where the client can access the front-end, but, doesn't have access to any code.   **30% payment** \\- Shift code to client's server/give client the server access details   Make the site live.   **20% payment** \\- Couple of weeks after the site goes live, once all the bugs have been fixed.   * * * **Questions :**   **1.** Once you know exactly what you are going to build, what sort of planning would you do before you begin coding?      **2.** From your experience, what parts of the whole process would you do differently?"}
{"_id": "47497", "title": "Where to publish articles about open source?", "text": "I've been developing a free, open source Java database abstraction project (jOOQ) and I have released first stable releases from November 2010 onwards. Feedback has been quite good and constructive, and I am very motivated to continue my work. In the mean time, to get more attention and feedback, I have published articles on   * http://java.dzone.com/   * http://www.theserverside.com/   * http://www.infoq.com/ (they didn't publish my article, though) These are some sample articles so you know the type of article I want to publish:   * http://java.dzone.com/announcements/simple-and-intuitive-approach   * http://java.dzone.com/articles/2011-great-year-stored What other resources would you recommend? Where else should I publish, knowing that   * I want to reach Java/SQL developers and architects / technology decision makers   * I can publish in English, German, French   * I think that my project is suitable for both beginners and pro's (in Java and SQL, or programming in general)"}
{"_id": "147144", "title": "JAAS - What is the required control flag used for?", "text": "The Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) defines that if a login module has the flag \"REQUIRED\", the authentication should proceed down the login module list on success or failure, and that the module is required to succeed for the overall authentication process to succeed. The question is: What could this flag be used for? Since the login module is required to succeed, why does the authentication process need to continue down the login module list when a REQUIRED module fails to authenticate a Subject?"}
{"_id": "230193", "title": "2D movement of an object based on speed and new vector", "text": "I am writing a small game where a sea vessel (like a battleship) can be moved in a 2D place based on orders that it receives. I wanted to know if someone can help direct me to a post or example code that will help me move a ship from one location to another based on the speed and new vector. So, if I had a ship that is moving in a south westerly direction (say 120 degrees) and it receives new orders to turn to a new vector of 020 degrees, how can I calculate the turn. I don't want it to just turn on a dime and head in the new direction. I want it to make the wide turn (as if it were in water) and then when it reaches the new vector, start heading in that direction. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "230195", "title": "Jira Agile how to specify what branch or version a improvment or story goes in", "text": "First off this is a copy of my post on pm exchange PM Post. I believe that board is very new and I would also like input from my fellow developers that may not be watching the PM boards. Pasting the other message below. Thanks guys! ..... How do you handle telling your developers where to put the change wether it be a bug or new feature using JIRA? Here is why I ask... For Issues/Bugs I think the use of the Affects and Fix version fields are a no brainier if fix version is 2.5 I know the code needs to go into the 2.5 branch. However to me the wording at least doesn't fit these fields for stories and improvements. An improvement could affect a future version but it doesn't \"Fix\" something. Using the fields differently between bugs and improvements seems like a bad idea too? I think this would be confusing to the users? Here is an example of what I mean Bug/Issue: set Fix version to the versions you want this bug to fix. Story/Improvement: set the Affects version to where you would like this new feature to go. For both of these scenarios you are saying where to put the code. Using different fields... and if you want to start spelling out WHERE the bug exists (version 1 and 2 but not 1.5) you then use BOTH fields for a bug and one differently for an improvement."}
{"_id": "112713", "title": "In-process SOA?", "text": "Can DI/IoC be used for a simplified, local SOA? I have been reading up on SOA (examples: here, here and here) and it seems that at first a lot of the attention was at interoperability and enabeling distribution of tasks by using standard message-formats and transfer-protocols (web- _services_ ). Later the crux has been to achieve loose coupling: To find principles for partitioning business-logic, manage dependencies and how and when to share data between parts. Is this a correct description? How is this related to DI/IoC? For a system with low performance requirements would it be a simplification to use DI as a \"message broker\", and asynchronous events to do \"pub/sub\" and only break out a service and go across an ESB or such as required by integrations?"}
{"_id": "230197", "title": "Creation of an Assembler", "text": "I've always been interested in how programming languages are created, so for the past 8 months I've been researching, practicing and more about the creation of compilers. I've been able to quite easily write front ends for languages and withing the past couple months have been reading more about the back end pieces of a compiler. On top of this I've been reading about and practicing things with the x86 instruction set. It has been my dream to write a compiler and I would like to make my first big step of understanding back ends, this being attempting a simple x86 assembler. My goal for this is to learn more about code generation, x86 instruction set, executables and figure out the best algorithms and techniques (don't answer anything about the front end, I have this down lol). Eventually to be satisfied in my progression I would like it to output an executable for my platform (Ubuntu Linux amd64, ELF executable) written in the assembly language. This is a daunting task, though I feel I'm ready with some blood, sweat, and tears. So, my question is: what and in what way does my assembler need to do things? I know it needs to process the actual source, the what? From all I've gathered after processing the source I need to, write out a ELF header and then output the generated x86 code after this correct? I can't find much in depth information on how the x86 code is stored in the executable or even relocatable object files. I know there's sections of some sort but I can't find out how these are expressed, and what they're for. Anyone willing to answer any of these questions or point me in the right direction is awesome, I've been working on this a long time."}
{"_id": "112711", "title": "Moving from VS 2005 to VS 2010 what to learn for web apps?", "text": "Just moving from Visual Studio 2005 webforms to 2010. Bit confused of lately about what to learn on the new version. I will just be doing web applications only   1. Should I learn entity framework or MVC framework for my new applications moving from simple webforms?   2. What would you guys advice to learn as top priority moving to Visual Studio 2010 which will benefit me the most?"}
{"_id": "207819", "title": "How to see what parts of your java code are run most often?", "text": "I would like to be able to see what code in thousands of lines of source code is run most often and takes the longest. The purpose of this would be for optimization. Being able to see what parts of the code are run most often is important for optimization, because those parts are where I should focus to speed up. At the same time of course, some code is run very often but takes virtually no time, so its also important to be able to see what code takes the longest. I guess the best of both worlds would be a program that adds up the amount of time a piece of code takes, including ALL of the times it was run (therefor figuring out what slows down your code most overall). Is there a kind of tools for this?"}
{"_id": "89723", "title": "Design pattern for a multi-threaded URL fetcher in java", "text": "I'm looking for hints and suggestions on a design for a multi-threaded URL fetcher in java. Specific requirements are:   * To fetch each one of around 1,000 URLs periodically   * The interval between each fetch will be URL specific   * Intervals are likely to be 2 mins to 1 hour I'm imagining I will need a bunch of fetchers each running in their own thread that get pushed the next URL to fetch when in a \"ready\" state. I will need to handle errors, e.g quit querying a specific URL if it repeatedly times out or 404s. Any ideas much appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "18180", "title": "What is dependency Analysis and how is it done?", "text": "I saw this in a job posting for an ASP.net developer. \"An understanding of basic software development practices such as ...and Dependency Analysis.\" I read the wikipedia entry for Dependency Analysis and understand that it basically means one thing depends on the other so you can't reorder or parallelize them. What does this mean in practice? Is there a tool that is used to do a Dependency Analysis? What should I know about it for an interview and in practice if I get the job?"}
{"_id": "112718", "title": "Are there any scientifically rigorous studies of coding style principles?", "text": "Is a coding style principle - e.g. the single-exit principle - really a good thing? Always, or just sometimes? How much difference does it really make? Whatever your opinions, these are obviously subjective questions. Or are they? Has anyone attempted to make an objective, scientifically rigorous study of coding style principles? I can't imagine how anyone would do a double-blind study of readability, but maybe double-ignorant might be possible - use students who don't know about the principle being studied as subjects, and non-programmers to administer the study."}
{"_id": "103113", "title": "How does css3 hardware acceleration work?", "text": "Can anyone tell me how some css3 code (transitions/transformations) get hardware accelerated? In other words, what actually happens when the browser sees css3, what is the pipeline/process involved?"}
{"_id": "103110", "title": "Backend programming portfolio", "text": "For most of my development years I have been a _Java backend developer_ , mostly for web applications. Usually for regular jobs I have described my duties in previous ones during the interview, expanding what's on my resum\u00e9. Now for a possible freelance job I was asked for a portfolio, and then we'd have the interview. Never done it before, I'm in doubt of how to do it, as putting in written form requires quite a lot more of thought:   * Should I use **UML diagrams** to describe what parts of the project I've worked on? Besides having to learn UML, I have two issues here: having to remember the exact work from several years ago, and wondering if I can get into trouble for displaying internal parts of systems not owned by me. Those UML diagrams should be, low level (sequence diagrams) to high level (application architecture, or class diagrams). The frameworks I used on those jobs is already on my resum\u00e9.   * Should I link to the resulting web sites? Like, _go to that site, create a user and then do the following actions_ , and you'll see what parts I've worked on.   * How do I show the parts of my job that don't involve coding? Like leading other people, managing a project, testing, running scripts, checking the database that everything is ok, etc.   * Also, sometimes I had to do frontend development, using Javascript. I've read other questions regarding portfolios here, from which I got that I have to avoid putting my open-sourced pet projects on my resum\u00e9, unless they are popular and widely used (which they are not)."}
{"_id": "85878", "title": "How do you demonstrate performance in paired-programming environments?", "text": "Performance reviews have come up recently at my work, and I was put in an interesting position. Our team does a lot of pair programming, which has a tendency of averaging out the skill differences between team members (especially considering we rotate pairs). Generally, when doing performance reviews, you look back at the work you've done, and demonstrate what you've accomplished, and how you've exceeded expectations to try to negotiate a raise or other benefits. How do you demonstrate (or even measure) individual performance in an environment like this?"}
{"_id": "72987", "title": "How do I subcontract with another programmer?", "text": "Another programmer wants to subcontract me to write, test, and document code. If anyone has nuggets of wisdom they could share regarding the business arrangement, I sure would appreciate the advice. My present plan is to go through specification and break it down into fixed-price deliverables, with the definition of \"done\" being passing the pre-specified test."}
{"_id": "85871", "title": "Why do people think SOAP is deprecated?", "text": "While browsing SO today I found this question here and it starts with this: > Sure, you're gonna tell me that SOAP is depracated and all, well i'm forced > to use it Found lots of statement like this one on SO up till now, this one just triggered me to ask this question. REST has its uses, SOAP has its uses, in some places they intersect as functionality but they are not replaceable to one another. So I wonder, why do people think SOAP is \"deprecated\"? Is it ignorance? Complexity of SOAP and WS-* specs? REST hype? What? If you think SOAP is deprecated please tell me why. I'm curious!"}
{"_id": "152020", "title": "Is constantly looking for code examples a sign of a bad developer?", "text": "I am a CS student with several years of experience in C and C++, and for the last few years I've been constantly working with Java/Objective C doing app development and now I have switched to web development and am mainly focused on ruby on rails and I came to the realization that (as with app development , really) I reference other code way too much. I constantly Google functionality for lots of things I imagine I should be able to do from scratch and it's really cracked my confidence a bit. Basic fundamentals are not an issue, I hate to use this as an example but I can run through javabat in both java/python at a sprint - obviously not an accomplishment and but what I mean to say is I have a strong base for the fundamentals I think? I know what I need to use typically but reference syntax constantly. Would love some advice and input on this, as it has been holding me back pretty solidly in terms of looking for work in this field even though I'm finishing my degree. My main reason for asking is not really about employment, but more that I don't want to be the only guy at a hackathon not hammering out nonstop code and sitting there with 20 Google/github tabs open, and I have refrained from attending any due to a slight lack of confidence... Is a person a bad developer by constantly looking to code examples for moderate to complex tasks?"}
{"_id": "247084", "title": "Is reading+modifying existing code better than making your own?", "text": "I'm an inexperienced programmer. I have been assigned to develop a Firefox plugin with no prior experience. So I followed the tutorial at MDN. I learned so many things, it's exciting and overwhelming at the same time. When I finally started programming, I ended up using extension the tutorial gave me, and modify it. And after realizing there are tons of code out there which pretty much does everything my extension has to do, I ended up analyzing these codes and implant them to mine with some modifications to suit my own needs.... So yeah, basically what I'm asking is: Will spending a lot of your time observing people's code and modifying them instead making my own improve my skill as a programmer in general?"}
{"_id": "97879", "title": "Does searching documentation and samples look bad?", "text": "I am starting a new job in a company with many developers and media people, the layout of the place is open with computers around a skinny oval, I have worked in small teams and programming embedded C, the jobis for objective C I'm still in a medium stage, so I know what I don't know (haha), that means I have to google it and then implement it, So the question is how bad does it look if the guy next to you does lot of searching for coding I mean, at the end of the day I will get the job done, but want to look professional too!"}
{"_id": "32840", "title": "Am I copy/paste programmer?", "text": "When ever I am stuck with a particular problem, I search for a solution in Google. And then I try to understand the code and tweak it according to my requirement. For example recently I had asked a question Reading xml document in firefox in stack overflow. Soufiane Hassou gave me a link to w3schools, where I found a example on parsing xml document, I understood how the example works, but I copied the code and tweaked it according to my requirement, since I don't like typing much. So does this make me a copy/paste programmer? How do you say if a person is a copy/paste programmer ? Thanks."}
{"_id": "191524", "title": "Is Googling every code a bad practice?", "text": "I just came from an interview in which they asked me several questions about programming and problem solving. Regarding the programming questions, I asked them to let me Google so I can see the code (I quoted that logic is the thing to learn, not the language). At the end of the interview they told me that my skills very good but what would I do if Google has been blocked around our country(It can happen in Pakistan, Youtube is yet blocked). Is it really that a programmer should know the code too?"}
{"_id": "206863", "title": "Am I required to memorize coding in a work space or can I fall onto references to provide me edge to finishing my development?", "text": "I would like to know if I am expected to memorize coding in a workspace or am I allow to fall into references whenever I am unsure. In a week of non-stop self learning, I feel I can understand the basics html and CSS, but am I required to memorize every single code once I get a position in this field or is it fair to use references to provide you the edge to finish your development. I was always under the impression you had to hand- code everything but I am wondering if I'll be looked as less of a developer if I fall to references. Understanding that if I do memorize most things, it will save me the time it will take me to code something but I don't want to feel penalized if I need to refer back to a code because I need refresh myself. This Programmers question held a lot of good answers, but they don't quite fit for me. My role is as a graphic designer/illustrator not a developer, and I am still relative new with how the process works. I'll definitely like a strong input to make sure I go along the right path in my learnings Because HTML and CSS are just a starting point, I want to excel in other areas as well. Thanks for taking the time to read my post. P.S (if you have any other additional references or advice, I'll gladly appreciate it)"}
{"_id": "43211", "title": "Programmer performance", "text": "I am a PHP programmer with 1 year of experience. As I am just starting my career, I am learning a lot of things now. I can say I am a little bit of a perfectionist. When I am assigned a problem I start off by Googling. Then, even when I find a solution, I keep trying for a better one until I find 2-3 options. Then I start learning it and choose the best performing solution. Even though I am learning a lot, this process gets me labeled as a low performer. My questions:   1. As a novice, should I continue to use this learning process and not worry about my performance?    2. Should I focus more on my performance and less on how the code performs?"}
{"_id": "13497", "title": "What has been your experience with commercial third-party libraries?", "text": "I am thinking of purchasing an Infragistics library for a project I'm working on, but I've never used a third-party library in my code before. Is it something you would recommend? Have you ever had any problems with them? What should I watch out for?"}
{"_id": "202187", "title": "Is there a kind of programs to illustrate most features and usages of different programming language?", "text": "We all know \u201cThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog\u201d used as benchmark for printing and fonts. I wonder if there is a similar \u201cLazy Dog\u201d for Programming Languages. There are so many different programming languages, with all kinds of features and syntaxs, similar or different. The problem is: the user will be confused when using different languages at the same time. Although plenty of differences between different languages, there must be something in common, i.e. a task or routine. If we implement the same task in different languages, and try to cover most frequently used features, then the language learning or comparison will become much more easy. This kind of programme doesn't need to be very long, just like a tutorial but be common and abstract enough. Does it exist?"}
{"_id": "171296", "title": "@staticmethod vs module-level function", "text": "This is not about `@staticmethod` and `@classmethod`! I know how `staticmethod` works. What I want to know is the proper use cases for `@staticmethod` vs. a module-level function. I've googled this question, and it seems there's some general agreement that module-level functions are preferred over static methods because it's more pythonic. Static methods have the advantage of being bound to its class, which may make sense if only that class uses it. However, in Python functionality is usually organized by module not class, so usually making it a module function makes sense too. Static methods can also be overridden by subclasses, which is an advantage or disadvantage depending on how you look at it. Although, static methods are usually \"functionally pure\" so overriding it may not be smart, but it may be convenient sometimes (though this may be one of those \"convenient, but NEVER DO IT\" kind of things only experience can teach you). Are there any general rule-of-thumbs for using either staticmethod or module- level functions? What concrete advantages or disadvantages do they have (e.g. future extension, external extension, readability)? If possible, also provide a case example."}
{"_id": "202181", "title": "Storing data in 2 different systems/database structures", "text": "My company is an online retailer, and we use an homebrew ecommerce platform. In the last year or so, we've partnered with a accounting software vendor, as our homebrew solution was unable to produce reports as needed, or otherwise satisfy the requests of banks and investors. We're off to a rocky start with the software, but I'm wondering if it's our approach. Currently, we store a complete set of data in the database connected to our ecommerce platform. Nightly, we send the necessary API calls to sync our entities in the accounting software (orders, POs, invoices, etc), and each morning, I've created scripts that validate that the data is correct between the two systems. This collective system has been a nightmare, as any minor chages to the ecommerce platform cascade in violent and horrible ways to system B. It's resulting in a TON of work on my part to make corrections on a daily basis. Is there a correct way to approach this problem? Or does the problem really lie upstream, in our decision to duplicate the data between the two systems. Has anybody successfully done something similar? It has been a non-stop fire drill for 3 months now, and any advice would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "83091", "title": "Use Dependency Injection For Data Objects?", "text": "I'm just learning about dependency injection, and am stuck on something. Dependency Injection recommends sending dependent classes through the constructor, but I'm wondering if this is necessary for data objects. Since the Unit-Testability is one of the main benefits of DI, would a data object, that only stores data, and not any procedures ever be unit tested, making DI an unnecessary layer of complexity, or does it still help in showing dependencies even with data objects?               Class DO{         DO(){             DataObject2List = new List<DO2>();         }              public string Field1;         public string Field2;         public List<DO2> DataObject2List;     }          Class DO2{         public DateTime Date;         public double Value;     }"}
{"_id": "83090", "title": "Would it be realistic for an amateur programmer to obtain a CS degree in 2~2.5 years at a state university?", "text": "Would it be realistic for an amature programmer to obtain a CS degree in 2~2.5 years at a state university assuming time and money is available?"}
{"_id": "171299", "title": "J2EE - Field level Role-based security for a complete web application", "text": "I have a complex website designed using Spring MVC and MyBatis. User Interface is very complex and we have lot of custom made widgets - calenders, lists, graphs etc. If we were to implement field level role-based security what are the options available both from front-end and back-end perspective?"}
{"_id": "202189", "title": "License: free to use but not free to modify or redistribute", "text": "I am releasing an application at no cost, but I am not granting users the right to modify or redistribute the code. How should I call this? I initially used the term \"free license\", but on second thoughts I find this confusing because free can have several meanings, and in people's mind it is often associated with open source. Is there a better terminology for my case?"}
{"_id": "136570", "title": "How do you handle minor change in source code causing discontinuity in version tree?", "text": "For instance, I have a file with poor indentation (at least incoherant with the rest of the project). If I correct the indentation and commit, there will be a serious change in the file at a certain point in time, causing the diffs between versions before and after that serious change to be hard to read. How do you handle that king of minor logical modification causing major diffs ?"}
{"_id": "136573", "title": "How do I refer to the smallest possible non-zero value?", "text": "Back in my C programming days I thought there was a constant or function (I can't remember what it was called, let's call it `SMALL`) whose value was the smallest possible positive value. (Imagine the LSB=1 and all other bits = 0.) It was used to avoid a divide by zero error. For example, let's say you want to compute `z = x/y`. Then you could calculate   `z = x / (y + SMALL);` Is there a built-in function in MS EXCEL that implements `SMALL`? For that matter, does it exist in C/C++ or am I going crazy?"}
{"_id": "136574", "title": "Young career with job offer - keep current job or leave for new one", "text": "I recently interviewed for a position at a large Fortune 500 company at the recommendation of a friend. Yesterday, they made me an offer for 55k. I currently work at a small, 35 person company making 50k. I interned there for six months, and was converted officially to a full time employee a year and two months ago (I worked full time as an intern but had no benefits). Pros about the company I'm currently with:   * Small, I can talk to the boss directly or pull him aside whenever   * Wide array of responsibilities - I can go from doing .Net development to working on a database at any given time. May program one minute and talk to our customer for clarification the next.    * Very comfortable. I love the people I work with. We get a lot of awesome small benefits that would come with a small company. Family atmosphere - very close to who I work with.    * Excel at the job. I do what I do very well. There's a future in terms of job security.    * Passionate. I love what I work on - aeronautics. I find it fascinating. The big company works with trading stocks, and I have no care for that field at all - I fear I'll get bored because of that.   * Vacation hours. 24 vs. 12 at new company. Pros of big company:   * Work alongside two great friends. They have personally attested to really enjoying the job.    * Better pay, better benefits.    * Much more accelerated skill set development. Where the small company lets me flex a wide array of skills, this company will ultimately make me a better programmer, as I feel that I'm not quite learning as much as I should - they aren't entirely up to date on some higher level programming concepts.    * Recognizable name may get foot in the door later for better jobs elsewhere. The decision has me wrecked. I'm not quite sure what to do. Advice? I don't plan on staying at the small company forever, as I'd like to go somewhere that pushes me harder and allows me to learn a lot, but I'm just not sure if this is the place I want to jump to. Should I, or should I keep looking?"}
{"_id": "3139", "title": "What do you put in the \"Computer Skills\" section of your resume?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  At which point do you \"know\" a technology enough to list it on a resume I'm having trouble selecting exactly what to put in the computer skills section of my resume. I feel the need to list a lot of languages and the IDEs I work with, and perhaps mention that I use Mercurial too. But this seems, well, kinda fake; after all, where do I draw the line in the list of languages? Sure, I learned a little C in a class, I can conquer some simple printf and getchar projects, but I don't really think that counts as being able to list it on my resume. I seem to recall Joel or Jeff addressing this but I can't find it now. But I'm pretty sure they said something along the lines of don't put it on your resume if you don't want to be drilled on it. Well, I sure wouldn't want to be drilled on C... But is there no justification in my listing languages like C# that I don't work with daily but could pick back up after a short refresher? I mean, I wouldn't want to be drilled on the internals of .NET either, but I think I am justified in listing it in a list of languages I have used... How do you decide? What do you have in your 'Computer Skills' section of your resume? (and can you please find the Joel/Jeff posts I'm thinking of, if they exist?)"}
{"_id": "130412", "title": "How much should I know about Hibernate before I add it to my CV/Resume?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  At which point do you \"know\" a technology enough to list it on a resume I have been holding off adding Hibernate to my CV (resume, for American readers),but we are just coming to the end of a project where we have used it successfully and it might be time to add it. I don't know if we covered all the usual parts of this product, because it was my first such project. Could someone come up with a list of the major features, without knowledge of such, I would come to grief in a hypothetical job interview?"}
{"_id": "87737", "title": "Metrics: Comments vs Documented API", "text": "I've been asked to run some code metrics in order to assess the quality of the code. One of the metrics was vaguely specified as \"comments\". I ran Sonar on my code, and while I got 10% on the \"comments/loc ratio metric\", I got 50% on the \"documented API\" metric (which gives you the number of methods/classes/instance variables with javadoc comments). I will try to convince the manager and the client that the \"documented API\" metric is more relevant than the first in estimating the quality of the code, especially that the metrics' goal is to assess the maintanability of the project in case another team took it. Do you have studies/opinions about which of these two metrics is more relevant to assess the quality and maintanability of the code? I could use them as persuation tools. Thank you"}
{"_id": "6530", "title": "How to improve myself as a web developer?", "text": "What technologies, techniques and mindsets would be most beneficial to web developers? I'm a relatively new developer with only 3 months working for an actual web development company. Since I've started, I've learned the wonderful world of version control using Git and how useful the command line can be. I've also learned the world of good a decent editor such as Eclipse can do with it's RegEx Search and Find and few other features I actually use. What I'm wondering is what are some other things you've learned over the years that have been been really helpful and might apply to a web developer? I work primarily in PHP and front end languages (HTML/CSS/JS)."}
{"_id": "206608", "title": "Why does pkg_resources not find bloom in my virtualenv?", "text": "I'm trying to hack on the ROS bloom build system (https://github.com/ros- infrastructure/bloom). After I've made some edits, I build it and install it to a virtualenv to test using               python setup.py build     python setup.py install --root /path/to/my/virtualenv      However, once in my virtualenv, it doesn't work since pkg_resources fails to find the module. What am I doing wrong here?               (virtual-bloom)[asinha@localhost  virtual-bloom]$ yolk -l     Python          - 2.7.5        - active development (/usr/lib64/python2.7/lib-dynload)     bloom           - 0.4.4        - active     pip             - 1.3.1        - active     setuptools      - 0.6c11       - active     wsgiref         - 0.1.2        - active development (/usr/lib64/python2.7)     yolk            - 0.4.3        - active     (virtual-bloom)[asinha@localhost  virtual-bloom]$ ./bin/bloom-generate     Traceback (most recent call last):       File \"./bin/bloom-generate\", line 5, in <module>         from pkg_resources import load_entry_point       File \"/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py\", line 2805, in <module>         working_set.require(__requires__)       File \"/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py\", line 696, in require         needed = self.resolve(parse_requirements(requirements))       File \"/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pkg_resources.py\", line 594, in resolve         raise DistributionNotFound(req)     pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: bloom==0.4.4     (virtual-bloom)[asinha@localhost  virtual-bloom]$ ls     bin  include  lib  lib64  usr     (virtual-bloom)[asinha@localhost  virtual-bloom]$      I'm guessing it's still looking at the system site-packages for some reason. I did use the `--no-site-packages` flag while creating the virtualenv:               virtualenv virtual-bloom --no-site-packages --verbose"}
{"_id": "206609", "title": "How do I design a card game?", "text": "I can not come up with a good architecture for my card game. I need help to understand how games usually are designed. First, I will describe game rules. ### Game Rules Setup   * There are four players, each two player form a team.   * Each player gets 12 shuffled cards   * There are 4 blinded cards on table(river)   * Players order are like this  ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/F0Av1.png) Betting   * Each player can pass or select a number greater than current bet between 100 to 160   * Betting starts from first player and circles until a team pass   * Once a player pass they can't bet anymore   * The team that wins the betting round should at least collect points equal to their bet in order to win the game   * The team that lost the betting round should not allow the their team achieve their goal   * If the team that won betting round gets all the points the other team will get negative points equal to their bet   * if the team that lost the betting round collects all the points the other team will get double negative points ### Game flow and collecting points   * Player that won betting round ( **the king** ) gets four remaining cards on the table.    * Then she/he can save a set of four cards in their team cards bank without even playing them.   * The king will pick a suit as the **ruler suit** and let others know that   * King starts the game by putting a card from his/her hand on table. Each other player should play in this order      * if they have the same suit of that card in their hand, they have to play one of those cards     * if they don't have it, they can play any other suit   * After all other players played their hands, winner of the round will be:      * The one who has highest card if all cards are the same     * The one who has highest \"ruler\" card if there is any   * Winner of the round will collect cards and put it in their bank   * Player who won previous round will start the next round   * This will continue until everybody's hand is empty ### Counting points   * Winning each round has 5 points. This means every 4 cards has at least 5 points.   * Having Ace, 10 or 5 in bank each adds 5 points # My Design ## Classes               class Card {        string suit;        string rank     }     class Deck {       List cards = [];       List suits = ['S', 'H', 'D', 'C'];       List ranks = ['1', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', '10', 'J', 'Q', 'K', 'A'];       private void init(){..}       void shuffle(){...}     }          class Game{       Deck deck = new Deck();       Player player1;       Player player2;       Player player3;       Player player4;       int _isOn = 0;            Game(this.player1, this.player2, this.player3, this.player4){         deck.makeCards();         deck.shuffle();         start();       }            void start(){         player1.cards.addAll( deck.cards.getRange(0, 12) );         player2.cards.addAll( deck.cards.getRange(12, 24) );         player3.cards.addAll( deck.cards.getRange(24, 36) );         player4.cards.addAll( deck.cards.getRange(36, 48) );         deck.cards.removeRange(0, 48);       }            String toJson(){       }            String toString(){       }     }     class Player{       String name;       int points;       List cards = [];            Player(this.name, {this.points});            String toJson(){}            String toString(){}     }      ### My Problem Now that I've defined all these classes I don't know how to bind this definitions to a database (like Mongo) and control the game flow.   * Where should all that logic go?   * How should I keep state in a server/client scenario? Note: I'm using Dart to program this but I don't necessary want answers be written in Dart."}
{"_id": "206604", "title": "Garbage collectors and pointers/ reference", "text": "I am a little confused on both pointers and reference. From my understanding pointers are addresses in memory. If I pass a variable using pointers and reference to a function, any manipulations of the variable in the function will change the original variable. I read online that passing by reference is not encouraged because it can get messy code easily. I also read here (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7058339/c-when-to-use-references-vs- pointers), that we should avoid pointers if we can. My question is when should pointers and reference be used? I know pointers are used in Xcode for strong references and reference counting. Since, higher level languages like c# have garbage collector, does that mean we shouldn't ever use pointers and reference in them?"}
{"_id": "206606", "title": "Is a PHP file secure enough on a GoDaddy Server to hard code an AES salt into the file?", "text": "So I am creating a web api for an app I am making. The data is sanitized before it is sent to my web api and then encrypted before it is stored in my MySql server. The phone app sanitizes then behind the scenes calls -> web php api which encrypts aes style with a hard coded salt then calls -> server My question is if I hard code a salt value into the php page is it at risk on a go daddy server? I mean I know NOTHING is truly secure however what are the odds that someone would be able to hack a go daddy server and see my php source code. Assuming they disassemble my app and see the URL call to the api. Since php code executes on the server I am assuming that there is no way to extract it?"}
{"_id": "206607", "title": "Pure C Vector Implementation", "text": "I am implementing a vector in C. I am doing this for the fun of programming, for the fun of learning, and for the use of the data structure in later projects. This is not homework. My question is regarding methodology, not necessarily implementation, therefore I am not really looking for a code review. Now, I have read over many implementation examples and most of them take the size of an individual element as an argument to the `Vector_create()` function, and use this for later `memmove()`/`memcpy()` calls and what not and more or less keep (for instance) the vector's elements in contiguous memory. In other words, the underlying array is essentially a single `void*`. In the implementation I wrote before doing a lot of looking at how other people have done it, I allow(force) the client code to allocate an \"object\" and pass that as a pointer to the `Vector_append()` function. So my underlying array is a `void**`. _So I guess the real question I am asking is if this is wrong._ Wrong as in best practices wrong. I see that the \"normal\" way of doing this doesn't use an array of pointers and instead just copies the memory of a struct (for example) into the underlying `void*` array and thereby keeping the actual data of the elements contiguous, as mentioned earlier. My way avoids a crap load of `memmove()`/`memcpy()` because I just copy pointer values, however, I am forcing the client to `malloc()` everything that is sent to the vector, and thereby do a bunch of screwing around on the heap. Along those lines, I do call `free()` on the underlying data item when the item is removed, so the vector library does a `free()` that the vector library never did the original `malloc()` on. _Is this bad practice too?_ The only trouble I seem to get into is if there was a member variable (for lack of a better term) that points to dynamic memory within the struct. It then becomes the client responsibility to `free()` that data, but again, the struct itself is freed from within the vector library call `Vector_remove()`."}
{"_id": "206600", "title": "High traffic chat - how to check if there is new message and show it for all users", "text": "I already had question about this but obviously it was not accepted very well, apparently too long when it's actually more information so you could have given me better answer. Ok, I will be much clearer now. Best possible logic to develop scalable chat in terms of stability, storing/reading messages on chat, updating chat on new message for all users etc.? I have most of this developed, the logic I think I miss is --> check if there is new message and show it for all users. I have this implemented but it crashes the site due to its traffic of 300k-400k people, so that's my main question. The chat is PHP based and uses Pusher (www.pusher.com) for instant messaging but it lacks what I need because it's more like a websocket. * * * I'm using hardcoded files to keep messages (want to avoid database as much as possible). It's a no extension type of file, I'm sure you know. I'm getting crash with               $fp = fopen(..., \"w\"); // pretend ... is the path and filename     fwrite($fp, $msg); //hardcode the message     fclose($fp);      where `$msg` is the message itself. I'm having 1 file per message. I show last 150 messages = 150 file accesses and reads, yeah it's too much I guess. I have better logic now which I'm pursuing and that is 1 file with last 50-100 messages at all time. Sure it should be much better. How does it crash, that's the trickiest part because everything seems ordinary, believe me it is difficult to determine what exactly crashes the site, but in like 5 minutes when I try to open the site it's gone, then I put the old content without chat and is back online again. I'm having jquery post every 1 second to check if there is new message. I'm using timestamp in a special file where I keep the time last message was sent and `if ((time() - time in file) <= 2)` = reload last 150 messages including the last one. Too much input/output, write/read or however to say it I think is what crashes the site."}
{"_id": "233554", "title": "scipy.stats.percentileofscore() wrong?", "text": "i'm a data scientist and python noob, but I seem to have found a bug with scipy.stats.percentileofscore. it may be \"by design\" but please bear with me. if you have an array, you will get an upper bound of 100, but never a lower bound of 0. The lowest percentile you will get is 100/len so if I have an array of 30 items the lowest percentile I'll get is 100/30 ==> (3) so I have a workaround to allow a zero percentile result. is my workaround valid? is there something I\"m doing wrong? please suggest. also note the following i put the numbers in the 0.0 to 1.0 range (I don't like using 0 to 100 for percentages)               stochState.kSlopePercentile = scipy.stats.percentileofscore([stochHist.kSlope for stochHist in stochState.history],stochState.kSlope)  / 100.0     invHistLen= 1.0/len(stochState.history)     if(stochState.kSlopePercentile < 1.0):         stochState.kSlopePercentile -= invHistLen * (1-stochState.kSlopePercentile+invHistLen)      the above code subtracts up to 1/len from the percentile (more the closer the percentile is to zero)"}
{"_id": "77801", "title": "Coping with an unfixable endless project", "text": "We have a large (1200+ hours) website that has **a lot** of technical debt. This is mainly caused by the following (usual) reasons.   1. Multiple programmers who come and go during development.   2. Change of specifications during development.   3. Numerous added functionalities added (in a short time). The customer wants alot of new functionalities, and that basically comes down to working on this project **weekly** for 10+ hours. Due to the technical debt, we spend **A LOT** of hours fixing or investigating problems, that usually find their origin in one of the following:   1. A shameless, silly bug that makes people cry.   2. A new feature results in the above because we hadn't foreseen all the places the new feature would have an influence.   3. Some other problems we have faced (f.e. server migration, upgrades) We have issues **daily** and we have tried to following things to put this to an halt:   1. Created technical documentation regarding the import, payment and general working of the website.   2. Have meeting at the start of the week - discussing the current issues or improvements and how they should be tackled.   3. Have a test-plan. Programmer A test B, B tests C and C tests A. Then our Project Manager will throw in some tests. Regarding the impact of the feature we throw it on a staging environment and let the customer check for itself. The problem is that the problems keep happening...and somehow we can't get a grip on it. New features still cause bugs, and old bugs keep saying hello. Somehow - perhaps due the size of the project - we can't seem to get a grip on this project. I assume there are alot of programmers working on larger projects then this. That is why I come to my question: What can we do, or what do **you** do to avoid these problems on large projects? Minor edit, extra info:   1. We use version control (SVN).   2. We have DTAP development process."}
{"_id": "234025", "title": "What is the meaning of MODULE_LICENSE_BSD_LIKE in Android source code?", "text": "In Android source code, we see files like MODULE_LICENSE_APACHE2, MODULE_LICENSE_BSD_LIKE, MODULE_LICENSE_W3C. An outside observer would think that these specify the intended license that applies to the source code tree where this file resides. Take the JSON module, for instance. It has an empty file MODULE_LICENSE_BSD_LIKE, which might indicate that the JSON module is licensed under one of BSD licenses. However, sources themselves say that they are licensed under Apache License 2.0, as seen in JSON.java. Packagers of this library for Fedora, as well as other operating systems like Debian, consider the library to be licensed as Apache License 2.0. This seems reasonable, as an empty file bears no legal weight. However, MODULE_LICENSE_BSD_LIKE is apparently there for a purpose. What is that purpose?"}
{"_id": "234024", "title": "Unit testing behaviours without coupling to implementation details", "text": "In his talk TDD, where did it all go wrong, Ian Cooper pushes Kent Beck's original intention behind unit testing in TDD (to test behaviours, not methods of classes specifically) and argues for avoiding coupling the tests to the implementation. In the case of behaviour like `save X to some data source` in a system with a typical set of services and repositories, how can we unit test the saving of some data at the service level, through the repository, without coupling the test to implementation details (like calling a specific method)? Is avoiding this kind of coupling actually not worth the effort/bad in some way?"}
{"_id": "234026", "title": "Forking GPL project: Do I have full rights on the new fork or still dependencies with the original owner(s)", "text": "I am considering the creation of a fork to a small project licensed under GPLv2, and I have some very specific questions I did not manage to answer in my research on various sites and foras. When I fork the code, I am forced to release the new project under the same license (GPL) as I will do, but could I also decide to release it under a dual license, one of them commercial? When forking the project, do I automatically own the copyright of the whole thing? This is relevant when, for example, deciding a future change in the license, or to be able to enforce the GPL license to a 3rd party Thanks!"}
{"_id": "202950", "title": "Loose Coupling in Object Oriented Design", "text": "I am trying to learn GRASP and I found this explained (here on page 3) about Low Coupling and I was very surprised when I found this: > Consider the method `addTrack` for an `Album` class, two possible methods > are: > > `addTrack( Track t )` > > and > > `addTrack( int no, String title, double duration )` > > Which method reduces coupling? The second one does, since the class using > the Album class does not have to know a Track class. In general, parameters > to methods should use base types (int, char ...) and classes from the java.* > packages. I tend to diasgree with this; I believe `addTrack(Track t)` is better than `addTrack(int no, String title, double duration)` due to various reasons:   1. It is always better for a method to as fewer parameters as possible (according to Uncle Bob's Clean Code none or one preferably, 2 in some cases and 3 in special cases; more than 3 needs refactoring - these are of course recommendations not holly rules).    2. If `addTrack` is a method of an interface, and the requirements need that a `Track` should have more information (say year or genre) then the interface needs to be changed and so that the method should supports another parameter.    3. Encapsulation is broke; if `addTrack` is in an interface, then it should not know the internals of the `Track`.   4. It is actually more coupled in the second way, with many parameters. Suppose the `no` parameter needs to be changed from `int` to `long` because there are more than `MAX_INT` tracks (or for whatever reason); then both the `Track` and the method need to be changed while if the method would be `addTrack(Track track)` only the `Track` would be changed. All the 4 arguments are actually connected with each other, and some of them are consequences from others. Which approach is better?"}
{"_id": "170656", "title": "Is using dirname(__FILE__) a good practice?", "text": "Looking at the code of Joomla I see that in the first line of the index, it defines the base path of installation with `dirname(__FILE__)`. Is this a possible risk for the site? If a non controlled error message show the internal path of the Joomla directory, because of, for example a failed include, can it be used to perform some kind of attack to the site? If yes, is it convenient to use this function?"}
{"_id": "170655", "title": "How best to implement HTML5 support for my validation library", "text": "I have created an annotation-based validation library called regula. There seems to be some amount of interest around the framework and the next thing I'd like to do is to support HTML5 validation. Originally I figured that I would check to see if the browser supported the HTML5 validation that has been specified and to either emulate or delegate to built-in regula equivalents. This is trivial for things like `required`, but once you start getting into the date-validation, it gets tricky (date widgets, localization, etc.). So I have a few options in front of me:   * Full HTML5 Shim along with widgets (for date stuff etc.): I feel like this is overkill and essentially reinventing the wheel since this is already covered by things like modernizr.    * Use HTML5 validation if available (either native, or provided by shim; otherwise ignore): What this means is that if HTML5 validation is available (natively or through a shim) I will use it, otherwise I will ignore it. I'm leaning towards the latter since currently if someone wants to use HTML5 validation, they will most probably require a shim since not all browsers support HTML5. Which option do you think is better?"}
{"_id": "170653", "title": "How to implement string matching based on a pattern", "text": "I was asked to build a tool that can identify if a string match a pattern. Example: > {1:20} stuff t(x) {a,b,c} would match:   * `1 stuff tx a`   * `20 stuff t c` It is a sort of regex but with a different syntax   * Parentheses indicate an optional value   * {1:20} is a interval; I will have to check if the token is a number and if it is between 1 and 20   * {a,b,c} is just an enumeration; it can be either a or b or c Right now I implemented this with a regex, and the interval stuff was a pain to do. On my own time I tried implementing some kind of matcher by hand, but it turns out it's not that easy to do. By experimenting I ended up with a function that generates a state table from the pattern and a state machine. It worked well until I tried to implement the optional value, and I got stuck and how to generate the state table. After that I searched how I could do this, and that led me to stuff like LL parser, LALR parser, recursive-descent parser, context-free grammars, etc. I never studied any of this so it's hard to know what is relevant here, but I think this is what I need:   * A grammar   * A parser which generates states from the grammar and a pattern   * A state machine to see if a string match the states So my first question is: Is this right ? And second question, what do you recommend I read/study to be able to implement this ?"}
{"_id": "170650", "title": "Is it correct to add booleans in order to count the number of true values in a vector?", "text": "Is it conceptually correct to sum a vector of booleans? From a mathematical point of view, I would argue it's not: `True + True != 2`. But it's quite practical to do so still! Example using the vectorised `Python` library `numpy`:               In [1]: X = rand(10)          In [2]: large = X>0.6          In [3]: large.dtype     Out[3]: dtype('bool')          In [4]: large.sum()     Out[4]: 7      I don't like it, but it's very practical. Is this a good practice? **Update** : the aim is to count the number of true values in a vector.\\ **Update 2013-02-18** : I just discovered the numpy function `count_nonzero` does _exactly_ what I need in a proper way. That means that as far as `Python` is concerned, there is no need to use the \"dirty\" way."}
{"_id": "88454", "title": "Slow developer machines - approach with vmware good?", "text": "we are using slow developer notebooks. They come equipped with vista and 2 gb rams, which slows down everything. Someone decided a good resolution would be to use vmware clients instead of faster pc hardware. VMWare clients would run on dual core xeon cpu's. What do you think of that and what backdraws will probably result out of it?"}
{"_id": "133900", "title": "How would you use Redis for Exception Handling?", "text": "I was reading this transcript of an interview with a GitHub developer and he was describing how they use Redis: > Q: You mentioned using Redis. How do you use that?   >  A: **We use Redis for exception handling** and for our queue. We tried a > lot of Ruby-based queuing mechanisms. Chris wrote an abstraction to the > queuing mechanism. We used to use BJ and DJ and in the super early days we > tried out Amazon SQS and a lot of queuing mechanisms and they all fell over > at one point or another with the amount of traffic that we were doing on > them and the types of queries that we were trying to get from them. > Eventually we moved to a Redis space that Chris also wrote, called Resque. Can anyone guess to what that means to use Redis for exception handling? Does it mean the logging of exceptions or something else? You can see the video of him saying it here."}
{"_id": "184242", "title": "What monad is the opposite of the error monad in haskell", "text": "In the error monad, the first failure halts any execution further just carrying the fault through any following binds. What monad halts on success only carrying forward successes, and basically swallowing any faults and trying the next bind disregarding the failure of the previous one? The error monad could maybe be used for this treating failure like success, but I'm curious if the default libraries have a monad for this specific purpose, almost like an Or monad in my mind \"Do this, or that\" Edit: Behaviour would be:               Left \"fail\" >>= (\\x -> Right \"win\") >>= (\\x -> Left \"ahh neener\") >>= (\\x -> Right (x + \" yay\"))      In the error monad the first left value is just carried forward, so the result of that is `Left \"fail\"`. The behaviour I want is where the above returns `Right \"win yay\"` it's a trivial monad to implement I could write myself, but figured something existed to do such (maybe not using Either, but that's the first thing that comes to mind for such behaviour)."}
{"_id": "35800", "title": "What are the external dependencies of a Python executable?", "text": "I guess there is a tool called Py2Exe to convert a Python application into an executable file. Since I am also using PyQt4 for GUI apps., what are the external dependencies for such an executable? What type of files I need to bundle along with my Setup? Is there any Python Setup Builder tool?"}
{"_id": "103803", "title": "What does GWT not provide that straight AJAX coding gives?", "text": "For an experience core Java programmer with no AJAX and very little Javascript experience, the GWT is attractive. But, what will I be missing if I just use GWT?"}
{"_id": "103806", "title": "How to deal with TODO List Overflowing?", "text": "Seriously... I need more time, and I can't find it. I've got my **main project** and I spent most of my time on it. I'm trying to, BUT I got a **lot of** minor projects, old projects support. I'm **very interested** in self-improvement because I'm still being sort of a young programmer and I spend lot of time discovering new technologies. Also, I'm part of some of linux distribution core teams (after all I'm a linux newcomer) and I'm spending time for it too (my main project is win-only though). I'm getting better in all directions. But slowly, because I'm doing everything at the same time ... Many times, I feel like this : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KrhC6.gif) And I don't want to leave the stuff I'm interesting in, I just need more time... But there is no more time. I also have my private life, working at home and working at work isn't so easy. Living at work is also not the solution. So finally I'm searching for a way to optimize (Hard optimize) my TODO list because the time is not a thing you can increase."}
{"_id": "103807", "title": "What is negative code?", "text": "I was reading the Wikipedia article on Douglas McIlroy and found a quote that mentions > \"The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code.\" What does that mean?"}
{"_id": "84836", "title": "How do I handle this job situation?", "text": "I am a recent college graduate. I recently interviewed for a Software Developer position. I really like the environment. I got offers from other places but this place just feels really comfortable for me, I am familiar with the frameworks that they are using. Recently, recruiter told me that the team might think that I am a little under qualified. They want someone with a 1-2 year experience now. They are interviewing others with that experience. But I really want this job. I emailed the recruiter that I am willing to do what ever it takes to get this job. I don't mind spending lots of extra time to increase the pace of my learning. I really like that environment and that position. But I think he is out of town. Is it Ok email the manager and tell them about how I feel. I will be willing to do what ever it takes to make this work. I.E take couple of thousand less, or spend extra time. Like I said, I got offers from other places but this place jut feels right and comfortable for me. They got everything I need."}
{"_id": "204930", "title": "TFS - Explaining the difference between Product Backlog Item and a Task", "text": "I've run into this challenge a couple of times and I'm hoping someone can provide some references, training or advice on how to explain the difference between a Product Backlog Item and a Task in TFS. I understand and have explained that a Product Backlog Item is the \"What\" and the Task is the \"How\". I have also explained that the PBI is the requirement and the Task is how the requirement is met. I'm repeatedly met with blank stares and head scratching when I explain this. It seems that the Software Engineers I explain this to can not make the distinction. It is all the same to them. I believe my other challenge is that I am not able to effectively illustrate why it is important to make the distinction."}
{"_id": "224361", "title": "How to approach design to minimize conflicts when distributing individual locations to merchants", "text": "One of my potential customers is operating an open market in their town. From what I'm told, they make a decent profit by renting out the individual locations on that market to small merchants who come there every day to sell produce and other goods you normally find in such places. Each merchant needs to pay some fixed amount up front to receive a seasonal contract that grants them the right to sell their goods on the market during given season. The contract does not, however, specify at which micro-location the merchant will be stationed, or indeed, on which days they will be present. The only thing the contract grants them, is the right to sell certain types of goods and during which season. For each day that they are actually present on the market, a cashier comes to their spot and collects the daily rent for that spot. Now, certain micro-locations have more traffic than others, so there is bound to be some competition. Which is good, normally. Established merchants wish to retain their spot so their loyal customers can find them. The problem is that the existing \"mechanism\" of reservation is basically first-come, first-(re)served. In reality, this means at around 02:00 AM, merchants start appearing and placing all their stuff on their sweet spots in order to prevent others from doing the same. At times, competition can be quite literal. Things escalated into a physical altercation a couple of times in the past, so an overseer is now required to be present during the night before busiest days of the season. The customer has now asked me to come up with a software-based solution for this problem. An idea for a web and/or mobile app has been tossed around, but whatever the form, it would have to support the following features:   * merchant authentication,   * selection of a preferred micro-location for the next day,   * advance payment of the daily rent via some online method. While I was reading through the requirements, one thing immediately jumped out at me: **I cannot possibly do this in an app form**! Here's what I think it will happen, if I do anyway: In the first days and weeks, merchants that know about and use the app, will have an unfair advantage over merchants that don't. It would be easy to assume this problem will self-correct quickly enough, but it would be a wrong assumption, IMHO. Many of the small merchants are in reality older, computer- illiterate people. Imagine a kind, old lady selling flowers, for example. She will never use the app, because it's space technology to her. But she _will_ continue to show up at 02:00 AM and happily place her flowers on the same spot as the day before. Only to learn 4 hours later that _someone else_ had already reserved and payed for that spot yesterday, from their home, using a computer! How is she to compete with that? But things don't end here... Let's assume that, somehow, she does learn to use the app (or gets someone else do do it for her, which is more likely). Now, everyone is using the app to reserve their spot. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and this is what we get: Joe S. Merchant logs into the app at 05:10 PM, 10 minutes after the reservations for the next day have opened. To his surprise, almost all the spots have already been taken, including his usual one. Now he can either hope someone will not show up so he can take their spot at the last minute, or he can accept he's been too late and he lost a whole business day because of this confounded computer thing! Naturally, I've explained my views to the customer... And they agree it's a problem. They wouldn't want to make a bad situation worse just to have a more convenient way of collecting daily rent. We both believe the present system could stand improvement. The basis of present system is competition and that is probably here to stay. The problem is that currently the competition is directly based on physical effort (i.e. how early a person is willing to wake up and travel to the market place to get the spot). This effort is in turn a natural limiting factor on the (un)fairness of the whole competition. By introducing **ANY** software substitute, this key factor is effectively gone! It reduces the problem to who is faster in the first minutes when reservations start. There's no real effort involved anymore which automatically appears unfair! So we feel like the rules have to be adjusted somehow. We've tossed around some ideas that could make the online competition more fair. Ideas like: **1\\. Building a reputation based system** This one brings in a lot of extra complexity, not to mention responsibility of tracking and assessing the various factors that contribute to reputation score. Most of these cannot be automated which means they would incur extra cost to the customer. **2\\. Randomizing the start of each day's reservation window** This one has the potential of lessening the competition pressure in the first minutes of the reservation window, giving it an _appearance_ of being more fair. Yet, I fear it would only annoy the merchants. What both me and my customer agree about, is that we absolutely **CANNOT** implement a reservation mechanism based on bidding. That would be in violation of financial laws the customer's company must abide by which call for a fixed rent in this situation. I refuse to believe that the best solution is the one that presently exists, even if merchants are used to coming in at 02:00 AM and waiting 4 hours for the market to actually open. **I turn to this community to ask: How can I earnestly better the present system with a software component? What options am I missing?**"}
{"_id": "152654", "title": "Reasons NOT to open source not-for-profit code?", "text": "I am a big fan of open source code. I think I understand most of the advantages of going open source. I'm a science student researcher, and I have to work with quite a surprising amount of software and code that is not open source (either it's proprietary, or it's not public). I can't really see a good reason for this, and I can see that the code, and people using it, would definitely benefit from being more public (if nothing else, in science it's vital that your results can be replicated if necessary, and that's much harder if others don't have access to your code). Before I go out and start proselytising, I want to know: **are there any good arguments for _not_ releasing not-for-profit code publicly, and with an OSI- compliant license?** _(I realise there are a fewsimilar questions on SE, but most focus on situations where the code is primarily used for making money, and I couldn't much relevant in the answers.)_ **Clarification:** By \"not-for-profit\", I am including downstream profit motives, such as parent-company brand-recognition and investor profit expectations. In other words, the question relates only to software for which there is NO profit motive tied to the software what so ever."}
{"_id": "61091", "title": "To Open Source or Not to Open Source, that is the question", "text": "So, I have a couple of projects that I have been working on and I am trying to decide if I want to open source them or provide them for free as closed source. I have never \"owned\" an open source project before and I would love to hear thoughts on the pros and cons of both options. Any horror stories of deciding on either approach are acceptable too."}
{"_id": "154625", "title": "Who owns the code, who owns the algorithm, who owns the idea?", "text": "This question got me thinking what products of the programming effort belong to the employer, and what don't. The two extremes are (0) the code - it apparently belongs to the employer and (1) the learned personal and technical skills. But what is in between? Who owns the pseudocode/algorithm? Who owns the general idea of the algorithm? Who owns the know-how that such an algorithm may serve some useful purpose (e.g. on this site questions are values, as well as answers)? Also: Who owns an idea on the web?"}
{"_id": "69524", "title": "How to practice typing of programmer keys such as tilde, pipe and programmer quote?", "text": "It is nice that there are services such as TypeRacer where you can practice casual writing but I want to practice programmer keys, covers more numbers and keys not used by regular typist. There was some tutor with which I practiced some programmer keys and noticed that my speed dropped dramatically from 70-80 wpm to even about 15-30 wpm, it also trains different muscles. So how can I practice just programming keys with programming texts or just random code pieces?"}
{"_id": "159211", "title": "How do I tell the cases when it's worth to use LINQ?", "text": "Many things in LINQ can be accomplished without the library. But for some scenarios, LINQ is most appropriate. Examples are:   1. `SELECT` \\- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11883262/wrapping-list-items-inside-div-in-a-repeater   2. `SelectMany`, `Contains` \\- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11778979/better-code-pattern-for-checking-existence-of-value   3. `Enumerable.Range` \\- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11780128/scalable-c-sharp-code-for-creating-array-from-config-file   4. `WHERE` http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13171850/trim-string-if-a-string-ends-with-a-specific-word What factors to take into account when deciding between LINQ and regular .Net language elements?"}
{"_id": "214530", "title": "Storing a value vs calling reference for repeated use in Java", "text": "I have an old habit of avoiding calling references multiple times, both for easier to read/maintain code, and for possible efficiency. But I'm wondering which is more efficient (memory, performance, both?). For example when working with XML using a VTD parser               if( vn.toString( vn.getCurrentIndex() ).equalsIgnoreCase( \"broken-label\" ) == false )             {                 do                 {                        if( parentNode != null )                     {                         currentNode = parentNode.addChildNode( vn.toString( vn.getCurrentIndex() ) );                     }                     else                     {                         currentNode = new xmlNode( vn.toString(vn.getCurrentIndex()), null );                         treeNodes.add( 0, currentNode );                     }      Does not store the value, perhaps saving some overhead for creating space to save a local variable and also lowering the burden on the garbage collector (assuming this section of code is repeated thousands of times in quick succession. My habit of cleaner/efficient code would be to replace the above with the simple change of               String label = vn.toString( vn.getCurrentIndex();          if( label ).equalsIgnoreCase( \"vsled-image\" ) == false )             {                 do                 {                        if( parentNode != null )                     {                         currentNode = parentNode.addChildNode( label ) );                     }                     else                     {                         currentNode = new xmlNode( label, null );                         treeNodes.add( 0, currentNode );                     }      While this is obviously easier to read and maintain. Are there any non-human benefits?"}
{"_id": "201379", "title": "Best way to share (make accessible) to the world a maybe useful self-written utility script/program?", "text": "Throughout my life I've accumulated a fair share of scripts that have proven to be useful to me in many cases and might be useful to many others. I look at things like todo.txt (which probably started off as just someone's personal text file manager) and even simpler ones online and sometimes I feel like I want to put my stuff out there for people who are looking for it to be able to use, open source. What's the best way to just put things out there where people who might want to find it would find it? Should I start a well-read blog? post in forums? I don't want to advertise or spam it, just have it in some kind of way where anyone who would might be looking for something of similar functionality would find it through google or something."}
{"_id": "201375", "title": "Any tips in tackling extremely complex problems like the Hanoi Tower problem?", "text": "People often give me the \"divide and conquer\" tip, but I think for some problems it's not nearly enough. The problem with such a complex problem as the Hanoi Tower problem is that you can't even simulate or abstract parts of the problems even if you divide it into parts if you know what I mean. So, can anyone give me a step-by-step approach in tackling such a complex and difficult problem?"}
{"_id": "201374", "title": "How come javascript, being a prototype based language, doesn't have an easy way to access the prototype?", "text": "May be this is a stupid question, but I'm kind of intrigued. Being JavaScript a prototype based language, with its pseudo-class function constructors sort of half baked (remember JavaScript: The Good Parts ...) I wonder how is it possible that it didn't have, right from the start, some easy way to access the prototype of each object. By easy way I mean something like object.prototype, or object._prototype (and not the dirty proto) For what I know, the Object.getPrototypeOf(obj) was just added in late 2008, almost 13 years after JavaScript was launched. I'm asking this because I always wondered if JavaScript was ever meant to be used as a pure prototype based language, I mean, without using any function to construct objects (in other words, never using the new operator)."}
{"_id": "201371", "title": "Build website using a known language or a new one?", "text": "So there is a website that I want to build. It will be a review aggregator and probably a bit more. I want to build this website for three reasons:   1. I really think this website will be used by a reasonable amount of people    2. I want to practice my programming skills since currently at my job I am doing mostly scripting    3. Maybe learn a new language. I am currently torn though since my immediate reaction is that I want to use Java since I know it relatively well, like it, and feel it will allow me to put something up as quickly as possible. I would also like to use an existing Web Application Framework. If I don't end up going with Java I would probably go with one of the following:   * C#/.NET - I prefer static languages, and this is similar to Java.   * Python - I use this at my job superficially and it seems that a lot of people are using it.   * Ruby - Seems to have a very well established framework   * Scala - Has some similarities to Java but from what I read it's a different paradigm So I guess my question is under these circumstances do you think that I should build a website using a known language or a new one?"}
{"_id": "116358", "title": "What can I do to prevent taking on an unethical development project?", "text": "Back in my self-employment days, I've once taken on a small and rather well- paid project: \"A newsletter system\", the spec stated. Everything was fine, invoices were paid with each milestone reached, me was a happy developer \u2026 Until Mr. Client started demanding mail header spoofing and a bunch of other functionality eventually leading me to the conclusion that I was building quite the sophisticated spam mailer. To make a long story short: Financial considerations made me finish what I had started. I resent having taken on the job in the first place to this day \u2013 if I had bothered to google my client's name, I would've been warned. What strategies can I use to avoid ending up coding stuff I'd rather not see in someone's hands?"}
{"_id": "241575", "title": "Is it good practice to keep 2 related tables (using auto_increment PK) to have the same Max of auto_increment ID when table1 got modified?", "text": "This question is about good design practice in programming. Let see this example, we have 2 interrelated tables:               Table1     textID - text     1      - love..     2      - men...     ...          Table2     rID - textID     1   - 1     2   - 2     ...      Note: In Table1:   * `textID` is auto_increment primary key  In Table2:   * `rID` is auto_increment primary key & `textID` is foreign key   * The relationship is that 1 `rID` will have 1 and only 1 `textID` but 1 `textID` can have a few `rID`. So, when table1 got modification then table2 should be updated accordingly. Ok, here is a fictitious example. You build a very complicated system. When you modify 1 record in table1, you need to keep track of the related record in table2. To keep track, you can do like this: **Option 1** : When you modify a record in table1, you will try to modify a related record in table 2. This could be quite hard in term of programming expecially for a very very complicated system. **Option 2** : instead of modifying a related record in table2, you decided to delete old record in table 2 & insert new one. This is easier for you to program. For example, suppose you are using option2, then when you modify `record 1,2,3,....,100` in table1, the table2 will look like this:               Table2     rID   - textID     101   - 1     102   - 2     ...     200   - 100      This means the **Max** of auto_increment IDs in table1 is still the same (100) but the **Max** of auto_increment IDs in table2 already reached 200. what if the user modify many times? if they do then the table2 may run out of records? we can use `BigInt` but that make the app run slower? Note: If you spend time to program to modify records in table2 when table1 got modified then it will be very hard & thus it will be error prone. But if you just clear the old record & insert new records into table2 then it is much easy to program & thus your program is simpler & less error prone. **So, is it good practice to keep 2 related tables (using auto_increment PK) to have the same Max of auto_increment ID when table1 got modified?**"}
{"_id": "241574", "title": "Is it RESTful to resume terminated POST operation on a GET request?", "text": "I have a RESTful API, one of the resource has a state that is determined collectively by multiple servers, not all of them belong to us. One of the operation on this resource will have to modify the state of multiple servers. The client sends a POST request to do this operation to our API server and our API server sends requests to the other servers to fulfil the request. Due to the nature of the whole operations, not all of the operation can be done in a single transaction. The APIs for the participating servers mostly do not support 2-phase commit, but most do have some idempotence guarantee, although not all of them are RPCish rather than RESTful. If any error happens during this operation, the resource is left on an intermediate state, but the server should be able to repeat the operations from the point it has left off to fix the resource's state. Would it be a bad idea or would it conflict with REST principles if the server transparently resumes unfinished operations the next time the client reloads the state of the request (with a GET) rather than requiring the client to discover the resource is in an intermediate state and send another request to fix the situation before continuing anything else. One one hand, GET is supposed to be a safe operation, but on the other hand, letting GET resolve the situation simplifies the client as it doesn't have to deal with this situation. Note that the users also interacts with the other participating servers directly (i.e. not just through our client) so they may see some of the effects of the operations if a resource is left in an intermediate state."}
{"_id": "135083", "title": "Is it possible to use C++ with the .NET framework?", "text": "I've read many comments about GUI programming, in both, C# and C++. And I noticed that Microsoft's .NET framework is powerful for GUI programming. So is it possible to use C++ and .NET framework? I think it will be a great combination since C++ is powerful language, and .NET framework is preferred for GUI programming on Windows, as I've read. Is it possible to write the GUI in C# and the functionality in C++?"}
{"_id": "135085", "title": "In which format should I sent the values in database in PHP?", "text": "I am developing an application which is based on the quiz contest for competetive exams. The user can give different categories of tests, which will contain different types of questions of following types:   1. Single select,   2. Multiple select,   3. Match making,   4. Comprehension (the quetion will be a paragraph and on the basis of that there will be questions),   5. Free text (the user will have to type the answer),   6. Range (the user have to select a number from 1 to 10). My concern is that while creating questions from admin site, how can I manage the database for above type of questions? I have one answer column in the question table but there are six type of questions so what should be the convenient way for saving answers in the databse so that when user will give answer, I can easily check if the answer matches? I am thinking of saving the answer in the form of XML tags. Will this be a good approach?"}
{"_id": "208386", "title": "What should be the sense to use strict comparison to this specific string: 'final'", "text": "In a code review that I was doing to a coworker, I said that here:               if (someValue === 'final'){      There is no sense to use strict comparison because the only way to pass it as true is with other string value equals to final. I think that it is enough:               if (someValue == 'final'){      His argument is that an object could have a toString method that returns that string but strictly it does not have the same datatype. While that is true, as a computer(that are not intelligent as human), in the other hand, there is not sense, as at the end of the way the only way to pass this as true is with a string equals to final. This was his sample code:               Test = function(){}     Test.prototype.toString = function () { return 'final'; }     var disagreeDaniel = new Test();     document.getElementById('foo').innerHTML = (disagreeDaniel == 'final');      So my point here guys, is that I need you get better explanation to him why there is not sense of the strict comparison on a fixed strict like 'final' because there is no way to pass it as positive with a value different than 'final'.(his example at the end return the string) For me strict comparison is useful for booleans, nulls, undefined, zero, where those could pass all as false in some cases. I want to hear your opinions. **====== Update ==========** It is easy to identify that people does not read. My question was the sense of use === to compare to 'final'. I got a lot of explanations of things nothing to do. For compare to null, false, zero etc, I said that I used === for THOSE cases but not for long strings. but people tried to explained me about null, false, zero, etc. The verdict until now is that there is not a SOLID argument(there are some good ones but not solid) that demonstrate why using === for compare to 'final' should be better than use ==(read again, is just this use case, I'm talking about one specific use case). I also spoke with my coworker, I gave him the +1 to the code. I do not have problems with ===, my problem never had to use it, my point always was and is, and will be, what should be the **sense** , and looks like it would be a question with nevertheless answer. ps. other thing that I learned time ago, is to never be aggressive with other opinions; \"technical topics\" for several programmers, are like religion for religious(and some guys here just remembered me it). ps2. I marked as solved to be democratic, I do not want to demonstrate anything, just thought this site is for good discussions, and I got that. :D"}
{"_id": "238335", "title": "foreach in list or foreach in list.where", "text": "I don't know what to call this question. This is my example:               foreach (var item in lstItem.Where(item => stock.ItemCode == item.ItemCode))     {          stock.ItemName = item.ItemName;          stock.ItemUnitName = item.ItemUnitName;          stock.BrandName = item.BrandName;          stock.FamilyName = item.FamilyName;     }      or               // Assume list has items     var list = lstItem.Where(item => stock.ItemCode == item.ItemCode);     foreach (var item in list)     {          stock.ItemName = item.ItemName;          stock.ItemUnitName = item.ItemUnitName;          stock.BrandName = item.BrandName;          stock.FamilyName = item.FamilyName;     }      Which one is better?"}
{"_id": "233399", "title": "Where should I declare variables used in for-loops in Java for maximum efficiency?", "text": "I'm talking hypothetically but I'll use an example of what I worked on in a programming class a while ago. There's a better way to actually perform the operation, but that's not the point. An example to show what I mean I want to take a BufferedImage and individually manipulate each pixel. So something like this:               for(int x = 0; x < out.getWidth(); x++)     {         for(int y = 0; y < out.getHeight(); y++)         {             int color = in.getRGB(x, y);             int r = (color & 0xff0000) >>> 16;             int g = (color & 0x00ff00) >>> 8;             int b = (color & 0x0000ff);             //Do something with r             //Do something with g             //Do something with b             color = (r << 16) | (g <<8) | b;              out.setRGB(x, y, color);         }     }     return out;      Would this loop be more or less efficient if I declared color, r, g and b outside of the for loops?"}
{"_id": "252419", "title": "Where are C variables declared", "text": "I see a lot of code with variables declared right after the function, but when I post something like that people end up mad and say it is better to declare them when they are used. I assume this all compiles to the same executable, so it is simply a matter of style. As far as I can tell, pretty much all C code (99.9% that I've seen) declares them near the beginning and this is how it has been done for many years. So why do people keep suggesting that they are declared closer to the block that uses them?"}
{"_id": "56585", "title": "Where do you declare variables? The top of a method or when you need them?", "text": "I am in sort of a dilemma (in a geekish way of course). I **love** to declare variables at the beginning of my methods, and usually order them in some logical way. The problem is, when the list gets long, it sort of gets out of hand. Should I just declare them **when I need them**?"}
{"_id": "167938", "title": "Does it make a difference if I declare variables inside or outside a loop in Java?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where do you declare variables? The top of a method or when you need them? Does it make a difference if I declare variables inside or outside a loop in Java? Is this               for(int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {        int temp = doSomething();        someMethod(temp);     }      equal to this (with respect to memory usage)?               int temp = 0;     for(int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {        temp = doSomething();        someMethod(temp);     }      And what if the temporary variable is for example an ArrayList?               for(int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {        ArrayList<Integer> array = new ArrayList<Integer>();        fillArray(array);        // do something with the array     }      EDIT: with `javap -c` I got the following output Variable outside the loop:                 public static void main(java.lang.String[]);         Code:            0: iconst_0                  1: istore_1                  2: iconst_0                  3: istore_2                  4: iload_2                   5: sipush        1000            8: if_icmpge     25           11: invokestatic  #2                  // Method doSomething:()I           14: istore_1                 15: iload_1                  16: invokestatic  #3                  // Method someMethod:(I)V           19: iinc          2, 1           22: goto          4           25: return        Variable inside the loop:                 public static void main(java.lang.String[]);         Code:            0: iconst_0                  1: istore_1                  2: iload_1                   3: sipush        1000            6: if_icmpge     23            9: invokestatic  #2                  // Method doSomething:()I           12: istore_2                 13: iload_2                  14: invokestatic  #3                  // Method someMethod:(I)V           17: iinc          1, 1           20: goto          2           23: return              And for the interested, this code:               public class Test3 {         public static void main(String[] args) {             for(int i = 0; i< 1000; i++) {                 someMethod(doSomething());             }            }         private static int doSomething() {             return 1;         }         private static void someMethod(int temp) {             temp++;         }     }      produces this:                 public static void main(java.lang.String[]);         Code:            0: iconst_0                  1: istore_1                  2: iload_1                   3: sipush        1000            6: if_icmpge     21            9: invokestatic  #2                  // Method doSomething:()I           12: invokestatic  #3                  // Method someMethod:(I)V           15: iinc          1, 1           18: goto          2           21: return         But the optimization happens at runtime then. Is there a way to look at the optimized code? (Sorry for the long EDIT)"}
{"_id": "233695", "title": "Where should variables be declared", "text": "Considering I have a `for` loop in a method of a class. Should the incremented variable be declared as `member of the class`, or should it be declared `in the method` it uses it(or even in the `for` loop, directly)? While declaring it inside the method seems easier and cleaner, doesn't declaring it at the start of the class makes you have more control over it? Something like declaring it `int var_used_for_loop_in_method_x`. What is good programming practice? Note that I'm not asking specifically for the `for` loop. I am asking if we should try to put most variables as class members as much as possible or not."}
{"_id": "222383", "title": "Writing a unit test for a platform dependent unit", "text": "I have a method to be tested which depends on the OS, what's the best approach for testing the method depending on the OS? Is it to test on every OS that I have I require? Is there a better approach for running the tests on only one system? Some more specific information is that I have a method which is dependent on the OS using Python's `platform.system` method in a if-else statement and I need to test that which all the possible outcomes from this method. This method looks like:               def updateString():         if platform.system() == 'Darwin':             return \"http://download.com/to/OSX/version\"         elif platform.system() == 'Linux':             return \"http://download.com/to/Linux/version\"         elif platform.system() == 'Windows':             return \"http://download.com/to/Windows/version\"         else:              return \"Seek advice on how to update.\""}
{"_id": "19631", "title": "What's the best documentation you produce and why?", "text": "I think it's safe to assume that for most programmers, producing documentation is not as fun as actually coding. I think it's also safe to assume that most good programmers recognize the need for useful documentation, and the code that they write is not an exception by any stretch of the imagination. So, I'd like to know: what's the best documentation you produce (and source code doesn't count). Answer can be anything from comments to unit tests. The bigger question is _why_ is that the best documentation you produce?"}
{"_id": "229653", "title": "Is array dependence on previous terms considered recursive?", "text": "For example, take the case of Fibonacci number to calculate nth number you require `n-1` and `n-2` term. If I do it with bottom up approach, is it recursion as `f(n)` depends on `f(n-1)`?"}
{"_id": "41956", "title": "DBMS agnostic - What to name the COUNT column from a SQL Query", "text": "I have trouble naming the COUNT() column from SQL queries and will swap between various variants   * _Count   * [Count] (sql, or \"count\" or backticks for MySQL etc)   * C   * Cnt   * CountSomething (where \"something\" is the field being counted, or \"CountAll\")   * NoOfRows   * RowCount   * etc Has anyone come up with any name that you are happy with and always use without hesitation?   This is bothering me because after joining SO just recently, my answers have shown this tendency of flip-flopping with no consistency.   I need to get this sorted. Please help. (While we're at it, what do you use for SUM etc?) **Note:** Before you close this question, consider that this one was not: What's the best name for a non-mutating \u201cadd\u201d method on an immutable collection?"}
{"_id": "235643", "title": "What's the difference between model for test and model for development?", "text": "What's the difference between model for test and model for development? Is it that the model for test contains only what we should test? Do we use the same diagrams in model for test and model for development? For example, if we use sequence diagrams for generating test cases, these diagrams will not be used for coding? I speak in the context of Model Based Testing (MBT)."}
{"_id": "218041", "title": "How to develop an app for a smartphone to access a web app?", "text": "My colleague developed an internal web application. This app works only in Internet Explorer, which means that I can't access it from my smartphone. Is there any way to develop an application which will serve as a bridge between my smartphone and this web app, enabling me to use the web app from any other browser/mobile device?"}
{"_id": "254242", "title": "What do I have to do when using libraries with BSD license?", "text": "I am making a game using LWJGL and this is their license. What I don't understand is what must I do? I plan on making a game and distributing it, not the source code just the .jar file and maybe sell it for a few dollars. It said that I must retain the copyright, so would that mean I must include the doc folder that the library comes with in the jar or do I have to make something in-game like credits and say \"made with LWJGL\"?"}
{"_id": "235644", "title": "Functions returning either \"OK\" or \"error message\" instead of procedures", "text": "I have joined writing middle-size multi-purpose database application as co- lead. It currently has about 150 tables (and growing) and overall functionality you can imagine as very small ERP. At many places in code, functionalities which would normally belong into procedures (I mean functions without return value) like `DeleteAttachment` or `SaveRecord` are put into functions with return value reporting their exit status in string. They return either `\"OK\"` on success or messages like `\"Deletion failed because .......\"` or `\"Insufficient privileges for .......\"`. At the end, often the end user is presented with message they provided. On one hand, this is effective mechanism of tracing of potential problems. On the other hand, I'm not sure whether I should encourage this approach of writing the inner business logic. I understand that putting non-fatal problems into exceptions is also not very good way to go (`EInsufficientUserPrivileges`, `ERecordAlreadyExists`). Should we stick with current approach or is there some other which is more suitable for applications using a many checks and business logic?"}
{"_id": "148108", "title": "Why is Global State so Evil?", "text": "Before we start this, let me say I'm well aware of the concepts of Abstraction and Dependency Injection. I don't need my eyes opened here. Well, most of us say, (too) many times without really understanding, \"Don't use global variables\", or \"Singletons are evil because they are global\". But what really **is** so bad about the ominous global state? Let's say I need a global configuration for my application, for instance system folder paths, or application-wide database credentials. In that case, I don't see any good solution other than providing these settings in some sort of global space, which will be commonly available to the entire application. I know it's bad to **abuse** it, but is the global space really **THAT** evil? And if it is, what good alternatives are there?"}
{"_id": "246225", "title": "Passing central objects around or having global instances?", "text": "Having a larger WinForms application with several classes I currently pass references to several \"central\" objects around to function calls. This leads to more method parameters. Example:               public static class Program     {         private static MyCentral _central;              ...     }          ...          public class SomeController     {         public object SomeFunction(MyCentral central)          {             // Do something with the MyCentral instance.         }     }      Now I'm asking myself whether I should ditch this approach and instead use singletons for those central objects so that everyone can always access these objects and I do not need to pass them around anymore. Example:               public static class Program     {         public static MyCentral Central { get; private set; }              ...     }          ...          public class SomeController     {         public object SomeFunction()          {             // Do something with the Program.Central singleton.         }     }      **My question:** Are there any rules-of-thumb whether the singleton approach or the \"passing objects around\" approach should be prefered?"}
{"_id": "192000", "title": "Should I use extern global variables or static global variables with \"get\" and \"set\" functions in C", "text": "I am working on one of my first projects in C (microcontroller code) which is split up into multiple C files. I noticed some inconsistency in my coding where I had some variables declared as extern global variables and would just access them directly (ISR and some other places), and others declared static global variables, and would then accesses them from different files using function calls. What is the best way to do this? Should I always keep the scope as small as possible even if it means adding extra functions just to set or read the values? Or should I just make them global across all files and just access them directly."}
{"_id": "244433", "title": "Indefinite loops where the first time is different", "text": "This isn't a serious problem or anything someone has asked me to do, just a seemingly simple thing that I came up with as a mental exercise but has stumped me and which I feel that I should know the answer to already. There may be a duplicate but I didn't manage to find one. Suppose that someone asked you to write a piece of code that asks the user to enter a number and, every time the number they entered is not zero, says \"Error\" and asks again. When they enter zero it stops. In other words, the code keeps asking for a number and repeats until zero is entered. In each iteration _except the first one_ it also prints \"Error\". The simplest way I can think of to do that would be something like the folloing pseudocode:               int number = 0;     do     {         if(number != 0)         {             print(\"Error\");         }         print(\"Enter number\");         number = getInput();     }while(number != 0);      While that does what it's supposed to, I personally don't like that there's repeating code (you test number != 0 twice) -something that should generally be avoided. One way to avoid this would be something like this:               int number = 0;     while(true)     {         print(\"Enter number\");         number = getInput();         if(number == 0)         {             break;         }         else         {             print(\"Error\");         }     }      But what I don't like in this one is \"while(true)\", another thing to avoid. The only other way I can think of includes one more thing to avoid: labels and `goto`s:                   int number = 0;         goto question;     error:         print(\"Error\");     question:         print(\"Enter number\");         number = getInput();         if(number != 0)         {             goto error;         }      Another solution would be to have an extra variable to test whether you should say \"Error\" or not but this is wasted memory. Is there a way to do this without doing something that's generally thought of as a bad practice (repeating code, a theoretically endless loop or the use of `goto`)? I understand that something like this would never be complex enough that the first way would be a problem (you'd generally call a function to validate input) but I'm curious to know if there's a way I haven't thought of."}
{"_id": "233474", "title": "Should my boss decide what IDE I should use?", "text": "I just have a simple Question: Should/could my boss decide/dictate what kind of IDE i should/must use for my development? Background: I have been developing software for 10 years, using diffent IDE's for diffrent languages. But, for the last years I have settled with using Eclipse. This is mostly because I use it both for Android (Java) and PHP and Web development. I know its not the newest, and does not got all the new cool features that other IDE's got, but I feel quite comfortable with it, and I specaially like the SVN plugin and Android tools it got. I'm kind of new in this company and the choice of IDE have always been my own decicions when working for other companies. My previous employers have never tried activly to change my choice of IDE. But, my new boss want me to change to something called PHPStorm, which I have tried, and found a bit to \"busy\" for me. It just got too much features for me. My boss says he don't want to force me, but uses every chance he got to mention the PHPStorm, and seems a little annoyed because I still use eclipse. That is the feeling I get. In my opinion, what kind of IDE I use is not \"his table\". It should be my personal choice. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm being arrogant ? It does not help that all other team members have moved to PHPStorm (away from intelliJ, netbeans, etc). My boss want \"One-Ide-Too-Rule-Them-All\". This way the code will become more consistent and we can learn from each-other he says. That said, I like my boss, so this is strictly a IDE issue. So, yes, I feel a bit annoyed about the situation. What do you think, how would you feel, what would you do in this situation ?"}
{"_id": "152509", "title": "Am I personally liable for bugs in medical software I've developed as an employee?", "text": "Some background: I'm employed at a small, Australia-based web agency that is dipping it's toe into Mobile Application development (iOS). The project that I'm working on provides a way for users to save medication dosage information which is sync'd with a backend server. Users must agree to ToS, Disclaimer etc before using the application. This is my first iOS application, and the project is currently over budget. As a result, management is not devoting the resources to Q&A and is pushing instead for more features. I am an employee of the agency, that has been contracted by a non-for-profit. The application will probably be released under our agency's name, but we also have the option of releasing it as the not-for-profit. My question is, if there are bugs found in the application, and as a result a user takes an incorrect dosage of a medication, am I personally liable? Is there anything that I can or should do in order to protect myself personally?"}
{"_id": "101409", "title": "Does Scrum turn active developers into passive developers?", "text": "I'm a web developer working in a team of three developers and one designer. It's now about five months that we've implemented the agile scrum software development methodology. But I have a weird feeling I just wanted to share in this site. One important factor in human life is decision-making process. However, there is a big difference in decisions you make. Some decisions are just the outcome of an internal or external force, while other decisions are completely based on your free will, and some decisions are simply something in between. The more freedom you have in making decisions, the more self-driven your work would become. This seems to be a rule. Because we tend to shape our lives ourselves. There is a big difference between you **deciding what to do** , or **being told what to do**. Before scrum, I felt like having more freedom in making the decisions which were related to development, analysis, prioritizing implementation, etc. I had more feeling like **I'm deciding what I'm doing**. However, due to the scrum methodology, now many decisions simply come from the product owner. He prioritizes PBIs, he analyzes how the software should work, even sometimes how the UI and functionality should be implemented. I know that this is part of the scrum methodology, and I also know that this may result in better sales of product in future. However, I now feel like **I'm always getting told to do something, instead of deciding to do something**. This syndrome now has made me more passive towards the work.   1. I tend to search less to find a better solution, approach, or technique   2. I don't wake up in the morning expecting to get to an enjoyable work. Rather, I feel like being forced to work in order to live   3. I have more hunger to work on my own hobby projects after work   4. I won't push the team anymore to get to the higher technological levels   5. I spend more time now on dinner, or tea-times and have less enthusiasm to get back to work   6. I'm now willing more for the work to finish sooner, so that I can get home The big problem is, I see and diagnose this behavior in my colleagues too. Is it the outcome of scrum? Does scrum really makes the development team feel like they have no part in forming the overall software, thus making the passive to the project? How can I overcome this feeling?"}
{"_id": "140260", "title": "Ubuntu, OpenSuse, the world of linux for a web-developer", "text": "I'm learning web development. My main OS is windows 7 but I've used Linux and currently dual-booting with Ubuntu. My Linux knowledge however, is pretty limited. I can work with the command line on simple tasks but that's pretty much it. I don't do any shell scripting, don't know very well the most important commands, nor the system in general. I am interested in web development. Should I get myself familiarized more with Linux ? Is it a must for future job positions considering my field of interest?"}
{"_id": "128889", "title": "RESTful HTTP OPTIONS request content", "text": "I'm having trouble determining what I might put in the body of a response to an `OPTIONS` request? are there conventions? standards? What do you put? do you just provide a list of other METHODS? should you give the representation?"}
{"_id": "128888", "title": "Are separate parsing and lexing passes good practice with parser combinators?", "text": "When I began to use parser combinators my first reaction was a sense of liberation from what felt like an artificial distinction between parsing and lexing. All of a sudden everything was just parsing! However, I recently came across this posting on codereview.stackexchange illustrating someone reinstating this distinction. At first I thought this was very silly of them, but then the fact that functions exist in Parsec to support this behavior leads me to question myself. What are the advantages/disadvantages to parsing over an already lexed stream in parser combinators?"}
{"_id": "125874", "title": "How can I learn about optimising for the CPU cache (in C)?", "text": "Reading these two questions, I see that understanding CPU caching behaviour can be important when dealing with large amounts of data in memory. I would like to understand the way the caching works to add another tool to my optimisation toolbox. How can I learn about the way the CPU cache works so I can write code that uses it sensibly? Relatedly, is there a way to profile code to see if poor cache use is slowing things down?"}
{"_id": "101400", "title": "Into which artifact does one package intermediate classes?", "text": "We have modularized our API into some independent components. Independent meaning these can be built via Maven and used as dependencies for other projects such as webapps. Now, to use this API, there needs to be an _intermediate processing class_ which does a _translation of the client data model into the callee (component) data model_. The question is does this handler/processor class belong and need to be packaged along with the client application JAR/WAR or is it part of the component JAR. What is the convention?"}
{"_id": "128881", "title": "New to Programming/objective c", "text": "I've recently started to work on some iPhone apps, starting from a base where I had essentially no programming experience (I studied Maths & had very few programming modules) I worked my way through Beginning Mac Programming: Develop with Objective-C and Cocoa and found it useful, while it gave me the feeling that I needed to quickly address my lack of a real foundation in programming. For the forseeable future my work will involve developing iPhone apps - I want to have a real grasp of objective-c before things get more pressurised in the coming months. Is my best bet to study c first of all, before worrying about the finer points of objective-c? If so has anyone had any experience teaching themselves through an online resource? It would be great if someone could recommend a website with which to self-teach c. Sorry if this covers some old ground but nothing in the similar questions quite answered my question. Any help is greatly appreciated :)"}
{"_id": "20607", "title": "Is Ruby on Rails a suitable framework for a desktop application?", "text": "I was wondering if there are obvious advantages and disadvantages to using Ruby on Rails to develop a desktop application. RoR has great infrastructure for rapid development, proper implementation of specs and automated acceptance tests, an immense number of popular libraries and the promise of being actively developed and maintained in the future. The downsides I can see are mostly about usability - installation of a Rails app as a local service and launching of a browser when it needs to be active may not come naturally to many users... or be technically easy to implement and support for different platforms."}
{"_id": "81929", "title": "Is it \"normal\" for people to not work?", "text": "After graduating from college I was hired as a junior programmer a little over a year ago. I quickly noticed that I was degrees of magnitude faster than all the other programmers; this seems to be because I simply don't waste time \"in general\". The majority of other people however seem to enjoy staring at the ceiling, browsing YouTube, Facebook, and random websites, and in general doing in a day the work I usually do in an hour. I'm 100% sure they would be able to do that work in an hour too if they focused. I've been quickly promoted to senior developer and more recently to team leader and now I replaced a lot of those people with new hires (still a couple to go). The situation is now more acceptable, but still I think it could be much better. I can't help but notice though, that everyone seems to behave like this is \"normal\". All my bosses aren't concerned about this and they too seem to work little to nothing. I always have a very hard time finding them, they arrive much later than they are supposed to and leave early. Obviously there is nothing I can do in this case since they're above me, but is this is the \"norm\" in all companies, or did I simply end up in a very bad one (this is my first work experience)? Also, will I \"become like them\" in a few years?"}
{"_id": "124479", "title": "How to implement Continuous Delivery with Java webapp?", "text": "I've been reading about Continuous Delivery and it sounds awesome to automate the deployment process. I've been reading about possibilities how to do this with Java Webapps, but usually it ends up with CI server or maven plugin deploying to Tomcat WITHOUT restarting the Tomcat using Tomcats management API. But that leads to OutOfPermGenSpace issues and so I wouldn't use those solutions for production. In addition it is a hassle to kill an out of control Tomcat. Is there any technology that would make it easy to deploy Java web apps to production? I use maven to build my artifacts and deploy to nexus repository. EDIT: I'm not trying to find ways to prevent Permgen space issues. I'm trying to automatically deploy to production. There should be no manual steps beyond choosing a version and clicking a button(or giving a version number to a commandline script). I want to find out if I have to create this kind of setup manually, or if there is a ready made solution for this. Thus far LiveRebel seems to be the only solution so far that doesn't require me to implement everything myself."}
{"_id": "237645", "title": "Classes shouldn't call other classes?", "text": "I've just finished reading The Art of Unit Testing, by Roy Osherove. It was an interesting book, but I'm having trouble with something he mentions near the end (section 11.2.2): > Identifying \"roles\" in the application and abstracting them under interfaces > is an important part of the design process. An abstract class shouldn\u2019t call > concrete classes, and concrete classes shouldn\u2019t call concrete classes > either, unless they\u2019re data objects (objects holding data, with no > behavior). This allows you to have multiple seams in the application where > you could intervene and provide your own implementation. Specifically, I don't understand what he means when he says that concrete classes shouldn't call concrete classes. Consider the following examples in C#:               double roundedAge = Math.Floor(exactAge);      Is this not considered a call to a class because Math.Floor is a static method? Or is Osherove saying that the line of code above is bad design? Another example:               using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(path))     {         // do things     }      Is this bad design due to the use of a StreamReader? Or is this instance of StreamReader simply an object that holds data, as described in the quote above? Rather than starting a discussion on whether or not it's bad practice to have classes call other classes, my goal here is to try and better understand what Osherove means in the passage I've quoted. Does he really mean that the code in the two examples above should be avoided? Thanks in advance for any replies. EDIT: Below is an illustration from the book which is possibly elucidating. ![Nice](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7Jb0F.png)"}
{"_id": "120997", "title": "How to \"back track\"?", "text": "I find that I start projects and, due to my lack of experience, find that old database structures and huge blocks of code are inefficient and memory-costly. However, by the time I realize a re-design of the entire project is needed, the project has grown to such a size that it is simply too late to go back and modify the project in its current state and requires a completely new project file and the whole shebang. **How should I prevent ruts such as this one, where it is too late to go back and modify the current project to fit specifications modified far down the road from the creation of the project?** (Apologies in advance for confusing grammar, it's been a long day here... as you can probably tell.)"}
{"_id": "237647", "title": "Sharing on Github", "text": "Over the past couple weeks I have gotten a lot of help from StackOverflow users on a project, and rather than keep the finished product to myself I wanted to share it unencumbered by licenses, but don't want there to be so much legwork during installation that users shy away from trying it. I am about to post it to Github and choosing public domain licensing. I would like to to be super simple for users to make use of and just FTP it up and go. That being said, do I need to make sure I remove things like the JQuery file, and other GPL / MIT licensed dependencies that I didn't write but that my code depends on? I haven't removed any copyright notices from the other code and all of it open source, it would just be nice if users could download everything at once while of course not trying to represent that I am the license holder of the dependencies. Inside my files are also some snippets, do those have to be externalized with installation instructions or can it be posted as is? Here is an example, my nav.php file is 115 lines long and I have these at the top:               <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"./js/ddaccordion.js\">     /***********************************************     * Accordion Content script- (c) Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com)     * Visit http://www.dynamicDrive.com for hundreds of DHTML scripts     * This notice must stay intact for legal use     ***********************************************/     </script>     <link href=\"css/admin.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\">     <script type=\"text/javascript\">         ddaccordion.init({         headerclass: \"submenuheader\", //Shared CSS class name of headers group         contentclass: \"submenu\", //Shared CSS class name of contents group         revealtype: \"click\", //Reveal content when user clicks or onmouseover the header? Valid value: \"click\", \"clickgo\", or \"mouseover\"         mouseoverdelay: 200, //if revealtype=\"mouseover\", set delay in milliseconds before header expands onMouseover         collapseprev: false, //Collapse previous content (so only one open at any time)? true/false          defaultexpanded: [], //index of content(s) open by default [index1, index2, etc] [] denotes no content         onemustopen: false, //Specify whether at least one header should be open always (so never all headers closed)         animatedefault: false, //Should contents open by default be animated into view?         persiststate: true, //persist state of opened contents within browser session?         toggleclass: [\"\", \"\"], //Two CSS classes to be applied to the header when it's collapsed and expanded, respectively [\"class1\", \"class2\"]         togglehtml: [\"suffix\", \"<img src='./images/plus.gif' class='statusicon' />\", \"<img src='./images/minus.gif' class='statusicon' />\"], //Additional HTML added to the header when it's collapsed and expanded, respectively  [\"position\", \"html1\", \"html2\"] (see docs)         animatespeed: \"fast\", //speed of animation: integer in milliseconds (ie: 200), or keywords \"fast\", \"normal\", or \"slow\"         oninit:function(headers, expandedindices){ //custom code to run when headers have initalized             //do nothing         },         onopenclose:function(header, index, state, isuseractivated){ //custom code to run whenever a header is opened or closed             //do nothing         }     })       </script>"}
{"_id": "81925", "title": "Interested in Feedback on QA System Design", "text": "I'm in the beginning phases of creating a QA system and I want to make sure that the design decisions that I'm making now make sense and won't bite me in the butt later on. If you have even the slightest nit-picky thing or whatever, please post, I'd appreciate hearing any feedback about this (I'm quite new to it all). **QA solution folder:**   * Assembly For Regression Tests (Class Library)   * Assembly For Integration Tests (Class Library)   * Assembly For Unit Tests (Class Library)   * Assembly for QA related Utilities (Class Library) **Each assembly has this basic structure:**               [TestFixture]     public class SomeComponent{         [Test]         public void SomeComponentFunction(){             bool someBool;             //Some stuff             Assert.IsTrue(someBool,\"\");         }         [Test]         //etc.     }      **Some specific things I'm wondering** (but I'm open to feedback about anything)   * Are class libraries the appropriate project type to use? I can see the advantage of using console applications so you can run these tests independent of NUnit (but I don't know why you'd do that instead of just using NUnit).   * I'm having a difficult time understanding the difference between regression level tests and system level tests. For a system level test, it seems like you run an end-to-end test, and compare the final result with some \"Standard\" result. Isn't that just regression testing?"}
{"_id": "80034", "title": "How valid is ITJobsWatch data?", "text": "_(I've been wondering all day whether to ask this question here - my biggest concern would be that it would be seen as off-topic, or not relevant. It's not relevant to the US, this is true, but it is VERY relevant the UK market.)_ My question is: do hiring managers / IT decision makers in the UK use data from ITJobsWatch in their decision making process, how valid is the data and how accurate do you perceive it to be. (as a secondary, more worldwide question: do people use salary aggregation sites in their decision making/negotiation process) A couple of disclaimers! I don't work for them, I have nothing to do with them. I invite (genuine) comments from representatives of the site about how they collect the data (I've read the small paragraph on their website already). I also wouldn't consider that I'm pimping the site here - I imagine any UK hiring manager worth his stuff will already know about it! I've been asked whether the data on the site is valid and relevant, and I'm curious as to the response from the UK market."}
{"_id": "80036", "title": "How do you guys handle translation for software localization?", "text": "Most of the software I have written over my career has been built for English speaking customers, but recently I've been working on a project where localization of the UI for a wider range of languages is desired. I am just curious how other programming shops obtain the translations. Do they use the notoriously flawed online translation engines? I know there are for-hire translators out there, but am I going to have to track down and contract like a dozen of them to do a thorough job of localizing my interface? Are there services that specialize in doing this for a wide range of languages? Perhaps using something like Amazon's Mechanical Turk would be an option, but I have no idea how diverse the available workforce is on that site. I'd imagine not very."}
{"_id": "118968", "title": "Multiuser System With Encrypted Database", "text": "I am currently developing a hosted solution in ASP.NET using MVC3 and Entity Framework. This product will then be made available to a number of clients as a hosted solution. As the data stored by each client will be critical to their business, we anticipate that many of them will insist that the data is stored in an encrypted form in the database. We are therefore designing the system with this in mind. Are there any recommended procedures for doing this? How would one go about encrypting the clients data in such a way that even us with root access to the database cannot possibly access their data? I believe there is no built in support in EF for encrypted data, is this true? And if so, how would one encrypt/decrypt the data?"}
{"_id": "80032", "title": "How to gather critique on a highly specific or niche application?", "text": "I'm currently developing, on an independent basis, an application that is highly domain specific; a niche application if you will. This is all well and good, of course; but there is one problem; I'm not in a situation where I have a natural tester group. The issue is not really one of finding testers for technical accuracy; the application in question has the twin benefits of being (at least for now) dead simple in design and implementation, and having a developer that is also has the appropriate domain knowledge. Despite my relevant knowledge, however; I am not actually in the target audience for the application, leading to problems in identifying useful features for future implementation, among other things. What then, are the avenues to explore with regards to actually finding end users?"}
{"_id": "118962", "title": "Is it normal to think about a design problem for days with no code written?", "text": "Sometimes I stare blankly into space or sketch ideas and write some pseudo codes on paper. Then I scratch it out and start again, then when I think I have the correct solution for the problem I begin writing the code. Is it normal to think for days without writing any code? Is this a sign that I am approaching the problem entirely wrong? It makes me nervous to not getting any tangible code written in my IDE."}
{"_id": "139650", "title": "How is CoffeeScript influenced by Haskell?", "text": "I've been using CoffeeScript for a while now. On Wikipedia, it is said that CoffeeScript is influenced by Haskell. But after I check out the syntax of Haskell, I have found little resemblance from CoffeeScript. Which aspect of CoffeeScript is influenced by Haskell?"}
{"_id": "205327", "title": "Restart button in Python", "text": "I am having trouble with python. I am making a text-based adventure game, and I am trying to make a restart function when you die. I am trying to count deaths by doing deaths = deaths + 1 whenever you die, but the only way to restart is to re-run the entire script, which resets the death counter. Does anyone know how to restart a script without re-running the program?"}
{"_id": "46981", "title": "Where to find clients?", "text": "My main area: web development. Of course, I don't expect anybody give away their 'gold mine' or whatever but I am struggling to see where I should be advertising my services. I have one other developer I work with and we have a lot of happy clients - on freelance websites. Thing is, freelance websites just seem to suck the life out of you when you're being out-bidded by ridiculous rates. I want to attract customers who are more concerned about quality and accountability than price. Any suggestions at all? I'm so lost with this. EDIT: Added bounty of 200 - all of my 'reputation'. EDIT: Added second bounty of 50 I did hear of a novel idea. Do work for an opensource project and get featured in their 'trusted developers' section, if they have one. Input?"}
{"_id": "139654", "title": "REST - Tradeoffs between content negotiation via Accept header versus extensions", "text": "I'm working through designing a RESTful API. We know we want to return JSON and XML for any given resource. I had been thinking we would do something like this:               GET /api/something?param1=value1     Accept:  application/xml (or application/json)      However, someone tossed out using extensions for this, like so:               GET /api/something.xml?parm1=value1 (or /api/something.json?param1=value1)      What are the tradeoffs with these approaches? Is it best to rely on the accept header when an extension isn't specified, but honor extensions when specified? Is there a drawback to that approach?"}
{"_id": "200132", "title": "Disadvantages of functional intermediate form", "text": "I'm writing an optimizer for a language similar to JavaScript, and need to choose an intermediate code representation. The obvious/typical choice these days is Static Single Assignment (SSA). However, _Modern Compiler Implementation in C_ also discusses functional intermediate form, which basically means going pure functional for the intermediate representation (pure in terms only of local variables, heap data is still mutable, and not CPS, just straightforward `let` blocks and tail calls) and has some advantages in terms of being easier to reason about. Presumably it's not a no-brainer or everyone would already be using such a representation, so my question is, what disadvantages does functional intermediate form have compared to SSA?"}
{"_id": "85003", "title": "What is the best way to deal with legacy code not in version control?", "text": "What is the best way to develop and maintain legacy code not in version control? Adding it to version control is of course the obvious answer, but if you can't, for some reason, what would you do? A few reasons I can think of why version control wouldn't be possible are:   * Management is against it (doesn't understand it, thinks it would take to much time, isn't worth it, etc.)   * You don't have the administritative privileges to install the required software.   * The code runs/is stored on legacy systems with limited capabilities for version control. So, if real version control isn't available, what do you do? Set up some regular backup system? Or perhaps create version-named folders?"}
{"_id": "163155", "title": "How much detail is in a good UI regression test?", "text": "We use a detailed step-by-step user-interface regression test for our commercial web application. It has a \"backbone\" test for the most used / most important parts of the system, with optional tests for specific areas of functionality. Using this plan has definitely helped us ensure high quality software. But, having very specific tests can be counter-productive. The tester concentrates on following the test and will completely miss usability issues, or not notice fairly obvious problems such as the bottom part of a page that is missing. By contrast, some of the best UI testing happens when building a demo of a new feature. I often do my own best testing by pretending to demonstrate the system to an imaginary prospect. Yet when I tell the testers, \"Just demonstrate the system to yourself\" they don't cover nearly as much functionality as they do with a detailed point-by-point test. I'm repeatedly asked to provide more and more detail in the test plan so that a new untrained tester can test with it without asking any questions. Yet details seem to be counter-productive. How much detail do you put in a regression test to make it effective? How do you write tests that make the tester focus more on the system than on checking off items on the test?"}
{"_id": "203446", "title": "Can web apps allow fast data-typists to \"type-ahead\"?", "text": "In some data entry contexts, I've seen data typists, type really fast and know so well the app they use, and have a mechanic quality in their work so that they can \"type ahead\", ie continue typing and \"tab-bing\" and \"enter-ing\" faster than the display updates, so that in many occasions they are typing in the data for the next form before it draws itself. Then when this next entry form appears, their keystrokes fill the text boxes and they continue typing, selecting etc. In contexts like this, this speed is desirable, since this persons are really productive. I think this \"type ahead of time\" is only possible in desktop apps, but I may be wrong. My question is whether this way of handling the keyboard buffer (which in desktop apps require no extra programming) is achievable in web apps, or is this impossible because of the way web apps work, handle sessions, etc (network latency and the overhead of generating new web pages ) ? **Edit:** By \"type ahead\" I mean \"keyboard type ahead\" (typing faster than the next entry form can load), not suggets-as-you-type-like-google type ahead. > Typeahead is a feature of computers and software (and some typewriters) that > enables users to continue typing regardless of program or computer > operation\u2014the user may type in whatever speed he or she desires, and if the > receiving software is busy at the time it will be called to handle this > later. Often this means that keystrokes entered will not be displayed on the > screen immediately. This programming technique for handling user what is > known as a keyboard buffer."}
{"_id": "134064", "title": "Is there a difference between the quotes in `help',``help\", 'help' and \"help\"?", "text": "Sometimes I find in the source code files comments have quotation marks like these ,notice the ` :               `help'     ``help\"      For example, these are comments from GNU cat source code file, cat.c:                 /* Plain cat.  Copies the file behind `input_desc' to STDOUT_FILENO.  */      >                 /* Select which version of `cat' to use. If any options (more than -u,          --version, or --help) were specified, use `cat', otherwise use          `simple_cat'.  */      >               /* Suppress `used before initialized' warning.  */      While in other parts, \"\" is used :                 /* Determines how many consecutive newlines there have been in the          input.  0 newlines makes NEWLINES -1, 1 newline makes NEWLINES 1,          etc.  Initially 0 to indicate that we are at the beginning of a          new line.  The \"state\" of the procedure is determined by          NEWLINES.  */      What does ` mean? and what is it used for?"}
{"_id": "155994", "title": "Java: \"Heap pollution\"", "text": "A \" **Heap Pollution** \" as in Non-Reifiable Types (The Java\u2122 Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Generics (Updated)) Why is it called that way?"}
{"_id": "155997", "title": "Object Oriented programming and modelling", "text": "I am taking course in OOA/D this semester. In academic they teach till now about Object Oriented Programming. I have some doubts regarding this.   1. Is it true that Object Orinted programming can be done without any specific modelling like OMT.   2. What are the models available for object Oriented software development?"}
{"_id": "203442", "title": "URL Naming Convention for with Repetitive Letter", "text": "What is a good practice to name an URL if it contains repetitive letters. For example, `/info/foossite` The two **s** looks kind of odd and if this was access point for a `Web- Service`, this could lead into misspelling. In most programming languages, we have `Camel` notation. However, as URLs are case insensitive, we don't have that luxury here. So, what is the best practice in this regard?"}
{"_id": "256083", "title": "Managing complex relationships with Entity Framework", "text": "I'm using Entity Framework with POCO's and change tracking enabled. I started off using CASCADE DELETE relationships, but in some situations, due to cyclic or multiple-possible-cascade-paths, SQL Server prevented me from adding CASCADE DELETE... so I need to manage those deletions myself. Take for example the following situation:   * A site has many chassis   * A chassis has many cards   * A card has many ports   * A link has two ports (`PortAId` and `PortZId`) (and a port may participate in multiple links). The first 3 relationships have CASCADE DELETE, however the final (`Link`) relationship has \"multiple cascade path\" on the `Link.PortAId` and `Link.PortZId` attributes. Because of this, I _couldn't_ add the CASCADE DELETE relationship. * * * My **problem** is that when a port gets deleted, a foreign key constraint gets thrown because there are still `Link`'s referencing the deleted port. * * * I tried looking through the `ChangeTracker` on `SaveChanges()` for `Port`s which were deleted, and deleting their respective links; _but_ a port deleted implicitly (through CASCADE DELETE) doesn't show up in the ChangeTracker; so I have to look for cards as well, and chassis, and sites... it becomes untenable. I then tried adding `TRIGGER`s to the database, such as:               CREATE TRIGGER delete_port_links ON Ports FOR DELETE AS        DELETE FROM Links WHERE PortAId IN (SELECT Id FROM deleted) OR PortZId IN (SELECT Id FROM deleted)      ... however `FOR` triggers fire _after_ the foreign key constraint has been checked (and failed). I can't use `INSTEAD OF`, because the table has a foreign key. * * * So I'm really stuck in terms of what direction to go down to solve this. What techniques, patterns or features of EF would allow me to detect when a Port (directly or implicitly) been deleted, such that I can delete the Links as well?"}
{"_id": "134069", "title": "libavcodec/libavformat question", "text": "I've seen this code referenced in two different places, yet I haven't seen anybody bring this up, but it seems that on line 00339 there is an empty if block and I just copied the code to compile try it out but it won't even compile cause of that.               if (frame_count >= STREAM_NB_FRAMES) {      /* no more frame to compress. The codec has a latency of a few         frames if using B frames, so we get the last frames by         passing the same picture again */     } else {      Any idea or explanation why it is like that. Is it a mistake on the author's part when copying it? What is supposed to be going on in that if block anyways?"}
{"_id": "256081", "title": "Autosave in web development tools", "text": "I'm working on a new web based development tool (version management based on git). Usability tests showed that developers are used to manual save. I asked 15 developers that are used to work with Eclipse or Visual Studio to develop in my web based code editor. After a short mission I asked them if they feel their code is saved. They all said no, and looked for a save button, and didn't notice a \"saved\" label turning on and off at the top right corner. I'm wondering if auto save will be a better experience, and something developers will get used to, like in google docs?"}
{"_id": "132403", "title": "Should I use friend classes in C++ to allow access to hidden members?", "text": "Here is my situation (a simple example). Say I have a class called `HiddenData`   Then I have another class called `StoreHiddenData`   And finaly a class called `OperateHiddenData` Here's the thing, my class called `HiddenData` has private members that I don't want to be visible to the rest of the world, but I still need classes to be able to operate on private members of this `HiddenData` class (`StoreHiddenData` and `OperateHiddenData` for example). I would like to be able to pass this object around to different classes that do different things on it. Another thing I was thinking of is to create a form of handle to these `HiddenData` objects, but I can't think of a way to use handles without using friend classes again (as to give the other classes access to a table that contains what the handles point to, without exposing it to the rest of the world as well). I was reading this question on this site just a while ago as I was researching the use of friend classes, and it has me thinking if using friends is the best way to go. If anyone has any suggestions for how to accomplish this task without the use of friend classes in C++, or if the use of friend classes is an OK OOP practice, please provide me with any suggestions. Thanks. EDIT: I figure I should add a little bit more information about my problem. For one thing, I am trying to create an API that consists of several classes that hide their functionality from the outside and only allow public functions to be accessed. On the inside I have data structures (or classes, doesn't really matter), that need to be passed around to these different classes with public functions. I don't want the outside to have access to anything inside these data structures other than being able to pass them around to functions of the API. I kind of think of it like the Windows API, where you pass around Handles to API functions, but you can't actually dissect the handles in your own code. Well I would like to do something very similar, but while remaining object oriented, and NOT passing these private data structures around by value because they will be BIG. Thanks again."}
{"_id": "256086", "title": "Segmentation fault with a c++ file handling program", "text": "I am learning file handling c++. This program read words from a file and inserts them in a vector alphabetically as they are entered. When I am executing this program, I am getting segmentation fault. Can someone spot the error in the program?               #include <iostream>     #include <string>     #include <vector>     #include <algorithm>          using namespace std;          int main(int argc,char *argv[])     {         if(argc!=2)         {         cerr << \"Incorrect number of arguements in Usage\" << endl;         return 1;         }            ifstream fin(argv[1]);              if(!fin)         {         cerr << \"File \" << argv[1] << \" not found\\n\";         return 1;         }            vector <string> v;       string word;       int i;              fin >> word;         v.push_back(word);              while(fin >> word )         {                 i=0;                 while( word.compare(v[i])<0 && i<v.size() )                 i++;                      v.insert(v.begin()+i,word);         }              for(i=0;i!=v.size();i++)         cout << v[i] << \"  \" ;         cout << endl;              return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "256085", "title": "Is 'lazy' the correct term for timestamp-based skipping?", "text": "(1)   * The old`make`utility looks at timestamps, and if the output is newer than the input, it skips (pointless, time-consuming) re-compilation of e.g. C files.   * The same is true for many languages and compilers. \u201cLazy\u201d thumbnail generation in web aplications skips those thumbs that are newer than the source image.   * \u201cSmart\u201d file syncing tools do the same, looking at time stamps, to reduce transfer volume. I used to refer to this as **\u201clazy\u201d**. However, looking at web citations, the term \u201clazy\u201d in Computer Science seems to actually mean something different: \u201edo something as late as possible\u201c.   * only load that extra part when it's necessary   * initialize lazily, aka as late as needed   * only evaluate that part of the equaption, when you get to it... So is my term wrong? And what would be more correct, for all that \u201eis-newer- based\u201c skip optimizations?"}
{"_id": "188597", "title": "Preventing Liskov Substitution violation", "text": "I am reimplementing some component and noticed that the original version has a Liskov Substitution violation. It's not all that critical, though I'd like to get rid of it in the new implementation . It is however not clear to me how to do this. I have a component defining very simple value classes used by the system. This component has a DataValue interface and a dozen implementations such as NumberValue and GeoCoordinateValue. The component I'm reworking is a storage layer meant for indexing data so it can easily be queried against. This component contains a set of classes that provide storage information for a particular DataValue implementing class. This information are things such as which fields a table needs to have to contain the DataValue in question, which field should be used for sorting, and what indexes should be placed. These classes all implement some DataValueHandler interface. The LSP violation occurs for two particular methods in this DataValueHandler interface:               getWhereConditions( DataValue $dataValue )          getInsertValues( DataValue $dataValue )      The interface defines these methods take a DataValue. The implementations however expect the DataValue for which they provide information. For instance, the NumberValueHandler expects a NumberValue, and will throw an exception if it gets a GeoCoordinateValue. So how can I get rid of this? (Before anyone suggests it: putting info of some specific storage backend in DataValue is not going to happen, as this would be worse design wise then the current LSP violation.)"}
{"_id": "252978", "title": "Scheduling a few CPU-intensive tasks", "text": "I need to schedule a small number of CPU-intensive tasks to run every so often, reading from shared data and writing to dedicated buffers. I don't necessarily want to roll my own scheduling, but am unsure if libraries like Quartz are appropriate for this small of scale. I'm using Java 8 in a server environment, but with isolated nodes and it doesn't matter if a few iterations are lost every now and then. **Problem detail:** I have 5 buffers of data of binary data to process. Before processing each buffer, I allocate an empty destination and the function writes to that destination. Each buffer needs to be processed on a different schedule with a different function, although all the functions can handle missing an iteration and calculating double on the next go. The first buffer is ~30mb and takes ~200ms to process, and needs to be processed every 500ms. The remainder are around ~6mb each and take ~50ms to process, and need to be processed every 1000ms. The processing functions must only write to the destination buffer and are stateless, but may read any of the existing buffers. The whole process will at least have its own thread, and may have multiple threads. None of this is critical, it won't be clustered, and will be maintained almost exclusively in- memory. **Example:** A fairly dumb implementation might be:               for (layer in parent.layers) {         new thread(() => {             while (true) {                 buffer = new int[layer.data.length]                 process(layer.data, buffer, parent)    // remember, this can access other layers                 layer.data = buffer                 sleep(layer.increment)             }         }     }          Running each layer on its own thread makes the processing fairly simple, so long as nothing in the middle is locked. Grabbing each layer the processing function cares about when it begins an iteration and releasing them at the end should work, since they are read-only and I'm not worried about another thread replacing the reference. **Question:**   1. Are there any issues with Timers for this kind of work? Do they provide a way to discard or wait on the previous iteration?   2. Is Quartz a viable choice, or simply absurd?   3. Can something as simple as `System.nanoTime` suffice at this precision?"}
{"_id": "252977", "title": "Cleanest way to report errors in Haskell", "text": "I'm working on learning Haskell, and I've come across three different ways of dealing with errors in functions I write:   1. I can simply write `error \"Some error message.\"`, which throws an exception.   2. I can have my function return `Maybe SomeType`, where I may or may not be able to return what I'd like to return.   3. I can have my function return `Either String SomeType`, where I can return either an error message or what I was asked to return in the first place. My question is: **Which method of dealing with errors should I use, and why?** Maybe I should different methods, depending on the context? My current understanding is:   * It's \"difficult\" to deal with exceptions in purely functional code, and in Haskell one wants to keep things as purely functional as possible.   * Returning `Maybe SomeType` is the proper thing to do if the function will either fail or succeed (i.e., there aren't different _ways it can fail_ ).   * Returning `Either String SomeType` is the proper thing to do if a function can fail in any one of various ways."}
{"_id": "252975", "title": "GPL and non GPL software common installer", "text": "From my vague understanding of this subject I assumed that if I make an installer for my program and it contains a GPL library my code would have to fall under GPL. However, I noticed yesterday when installing Ubuntu that its installation had checkboxes (selected by default) to install non free software. This question specifies about programming behavior and says that my program wouldn't fall under GPL as long as the library can be seem as separated programs but it does not say anything about making a common installer for the package. I saw this answer saying about common installers in StackOverflow in Portuguese and it does say about a common installer making the code fall under GPL. **If I create an installer for the library and put my non-free program that uses that library there as an option my program wouldn't fall under GPL ?**"}
{"_id": "247166", "title": "Adding new functionality to all of shelve.Shelf's subclasses in Python", "text": "In order to avoid the overhead associated with the shelve module's `writeback` option I'm interested in putting together a shelf class that only accepts hashable values, with hashability being a proxy for immutability. So I'd like to subclass `shelve.Shelf` and override the `__set__` method. The catch is that `shelve.open` can return one of a number of different classes (e.g., `Dbfilenameshelf`), and I'd like my code to allow `shelve` this flexibility. Ideally a solution would have the following properties:   1. No need to wrap every function that `Shelf` provides, as in: `def keys(self): return self._shelf.keys()`   2. Will not break if Python adds new methods to `Shelf` or new subclasses of `Shelf`   3. Avoiding fragility, by which I mean doing something complicated that could easily trip up someone (conceivably me) who is modifying or using the code months or years down the road. An example in this context would be reassigning `Shelf.__set__`, as in `Shelf.__set__ = my_func`. To me defining a new `__getattr__` as @Winston hesitantly offers seems moderately fragile--I take it that's why he suggests it only with hesitation Less important but still desirable would be:   1. Consistent with object-oriented design principles. It seems to me that the new class here _is a_ shelf, not that it _has a_ shelf. And probably not both (it's not a shelf which contains another shelf)"}
{"_id": "190880", "title": "strategies for dealing with machine epsilon", "text": "Say you have a situation where you divide and then multiply a float, and you need to guarantee that it survives macheps (ie multiplication output equals division input). What are known strategies for guaranteeing this? Rounding would work, but anything else?"}
{"_id": "7364", "title": "Is it acceptable for projects to go over budget?", "text": "This question is something that's been bugging me for the past 3 months since I switched from being a freelancer to working at a Web Design firm. Our sales people often ask us something similar to the following series of questions:   * How much does it cost to program a widget   * How many hours will it take to convert this website to this software.   (Without knowing what the website currently runs)   * etc * * *   1. How can we give a quote without any information? ( **No, I can't ask for more info!** ) I have another question if a project goes over budget it's bad. Recently, I missed an entire menu when calculating the cost of transferring a website over to a new platform so the project went over budget. My boss was not happy at all, and it's my opinion that some things like this can't be avoided. 2\\. What is the general practice for dealing with going over budget   and do projects like web development often go over budget? If you work at a web development/design/similar company: 3\\. How does your billable hour system work? For me, we have a time tracking application that we record how many hours we spend on which project and if they are billable or internal (AKA non- billable). If don't meet xx billable hours a week we can get in trouble/fired eventually. Work you do for the company or for clients that isn't billable isn't part of this system, and we often _have_ to do internal work, so I'm wondering if any alternative systems exist. **EDIT:** Ok I am a developer at this firm not a designer :) Second, I am paid salary, but here is how management looks at it. You have 35 hours a week that you must work. You could be doing work that they bill to clients in that 35 hours and you should. If they figure out a project will take 50 hours and I take 55 hours, that 5 hours could have been spent on another project that wasn't over budget so we just \"lost\" money. Another example is that if I only have 1 project, that is due in two weeks and I spend a day doing internal work, some how we lost money because I wasn't working. If I worked that day, I would finish a day early and still have no work. Either way, the work is contract so we will get paid the same amount regardless of which days I work!"}
{"_id": "190881", "title": "Kiln - Mercurial and Git limitation", "text": "According to this blog post: Kiln now supports repositories accessible from both Git and Mercurial > We decided that the awesome way would be to make Kiln fully bilingual. It > stores every repo in both formats. It automatically converts everything back > and forth, always. The translation is 1:1, reversible, and round-trippable. > Whatever you do to a Kiln repository using Git will be immediately visible > to Mercurial users and vice versa. I can't imagine that everything runs smoothly. What limitations does this have?"}
{"_id": "255194", "title": "Why aren't we building and using parallel processors *meant* for general computation?", "text": "We all know GPUs are much faster than CPUs for a wide range of applications. When someone asks why we are not just programming for GPUs at all, one of the most common answers is that GPUs are not good for everything - i.e., they fail to do some things that CPUs do easily. Well, no wonder: after all, they are not **meant to be used for general computations**. GPUs are strongly tied to games and graphical applications, not only having specialized functions for those, but often being advertised for them. My question is: why, then, aren't we building and using processors that are **actually designed for parallel programs**?"}
{"_id": "255196", "title": "What is the legality of making a mobile app version of an existing card or board game?", "text": "I see that the market is full of mobile apps based on card/board games. For example, do a search for \"Taboo\" and there are many results which are not published by Hasbro Inc. Is this legal? The top \"Taboo\" result says in the description that they are not associated with Hasbro--does this absolve them of infringement issues? I can think of a few games that I could make mobile versions of that could be successful, but I'm wary of publishing (and monetizing) a game based on another, especially if it has the same name. Note: I noticed this useful thread, which hints that it is legal to create such games, but that the original owner may fight to have similar games removed and might win. If I develop such a game and have to pull it down, would I be able to resubmit it after making some changes?"}
{"_id": "255190", "title": "how does semantic versioning apply to programs without API", "text": "In http://semver.org/ \u2014which in my perception seems to be the most widely used convention in versioning\u2014 it is recommended to increase the major version number when a change that breaks/modify the API is introduced. There are two related scenarios I don't see how to apply this guideline though:   1. What if my code doesn't offer any API? How should I version my code?   2. What if my code starts offering an API in a late stage of its development?"}
{"_id": "176728", "title": "Learning by doing (and programming by trial and error)", "text": "How do you learn a new platform/toolkit while producing working code and keeping your codebase clean? When I know what I can do with the underlying platform and toolkit, I usually do this:   1. I create a new branch (with GIT, in my case)   2. I write a few unit tests (with JUnit, for example)   3. I write my code until it passes my tests So far, so good. The problem is that very often I do not know what I can do with the toolkit because it is brand new to me. I work as a consulant so I cannot have my preferred language/platform/toolkit. I have to cope with whatever the customer uses for the task at hand. Most often, I have to deal (often in a hurry) with a large toolkit that I know very little so I'm forced to \"learn by doing\" (actually, programming by \"trial and error\") and this makes me anxious. Please note that, at some point in the learning process, usually I already have:   1. read one or more five-stars books   2. followed one or more web tutorials (writing working code a line at a time)   3. created a couple of small experimental projects with my IDE (IntelliJ IDEA, at the moment. I use Eclipse, Netbeans and others, as well.) Despite all my efforts, at this point usually I can just have a coarse understanding of the platform/toolkit I have to use. I cannot yet grasp each and every detail. This means that each and every new feature that involves some data preparation and some non-trivial algorithm is a pain to implement and requires a lot of trial-and-error. Unfortunately, working by trial-and-error is neither safe nor easy. Actually, this is the phase that makes me most anxious: experimenting with a new toolkit while producing working code and keeping my codebase clean. Usually, at this stage I cannot use the Eclipse Scrapbook because the code I have to write is already too large and complex for this small tool. In the same way, I cannot use any more an indipendent small project for my experiments because I need to try the new code in place. I can just write my code in place and rely on GIT for a safe bail-out. This makes me anxious because this kind of intertwined, half-ripe code can rapidly become incredibly hard to manage. How do you face this phase of the development process? How do you learn-by-doing without making a mess of your codebase? Any tips&tricks, best practice or something like that?"}
{"_id": "255198", "title": "How do you send a new command using NSTask to a unix executable file?", "text": "I'm trying to learn how to use NSTask, NSPipe, and NSFileHandler to make use of unix executable files in Xcode. I've already written a program that both renders chess and plays it against a user, so I now I want to make a chess GUI with Stockfish, which I have included in my Xcode project as a unix executable file. To this end, I've written the following program, but I've gotten stuck in sending new commands to Stockfish; that is, I can send it a command when I launch the NSTask, but I can't send it commands once the task is running. When I send these commands via Terminal, Stockfish responds perfectly, but for some reason, it ignores any commands I send it after launch (i.e. with [self sendCommandToStockfish]). If I send it a command, it simply ignores it and continues executing the original command while the input-pipe continues executing perfectly. How can I continue to send commands with NSTask after launch? Here's the code I've got so far:               //     //  AppDelegate.m     //  CommandLineToolRunner     //     //  Created by Thomas Redding on 8/28/14.     //  Copyright (c) 2014 Thomas Redding. All rights reserved.     //     #import \"AppDelegate.h\"     @implementation AppDelegate     - (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification     {         // Insert code here to initialize your application              self.myTimer = [NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:0.1f                                                     target:self                                                   selector:@selector(timerFired:)                                                   userInfo:nil                                                    repeats:YES];              // set up task         self.task = [[NSTask alloc] init];         [self.task setLaunchPath:[[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@\"stockfish\" ofType:@\"\"] copy]];         [self.task setArguments:@[@\"go infinite\"]];              // set up output-pipe         [self.task setStandardOutput:[NSPipe new]];         NSNotificationCenter* notificaitonCenter = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];         [notificaitonCenter addObserver:self selector:@selector(getReadData:) name:NSFileHandleReadCompletionNotification object:[[self.task standardOutput] fileHandleForReading]];         [[[self.task standardOutput] fileHandleForReading] readInBackgroundAndNotify];              // set up input-pipe         [self.task setStandardInput:[NSPipe new]];         [self.task launch];              self.frame = 0;     }          - (void) timerFired:(NSTimer *)timer {         // do stuff         self.frame++;              if(self.frame == 20) {             // write             NSLog(@\"[[Sending Commands]]\");             [self sendCommandToStockfish:@\"stop\"];             [self sendCommandToStockfish:@\"position fen rnbqkbnr/8/8/8/8/8/8/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1\"];             [self sendCommandToStockfish:@\"go infinite\"];         }     }          - (void) getReadData:(NSNotification *)notification     {         NSData *data = [[notification userInfo] objectForKey:@\"NSFileHandleNotificationDataItem\"];         NSString *response = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];              [[notification object] readInBackgroundAndNotify];              NSLog(@\"%@\", response);     }          - (void)sendCommandToStockfish:(NSString *)string     {         NSLog(@\"[[%@]]\", string);         NSString *strWithNewLine = [NSString stringWithFormat:@\"%@\\n\", string];         NSData *myData = [strWithNewLine dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];              @try {             NSLog(@\"((START TRY))\");             [[self.task.standardInput fileHandleForWriting] writeData:myData];             NSLog(@\"((END TRY))\");         }         @catch (NSException * e) {             NSLog(@\"((ERROR))\");             if ([self.task isRunning]) {                 NSLog(@\"^^^\");                 [self.task terminate];             }             else {                 NSLog(@\"***\");             }         }     }     @end      When I run this, I get the following output logged (I terminate the program on my own):               2014-09-02 15:02:18.474 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] Stockfish 140714 64 SSE4.2 by Tord Romstad, Marco Costalba and Joona Kiiski     2014-09-02 15:02:18.713 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 1 seldepth 1 score cp 85 nodes 27 nps 27000 time 1 multipv 1 pv e2e4     2014-09-02 15:02:18.714 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 2 seldepth 2 score cp 6 nodes 155 nps 77500 time 2 multipv 1 pv d2d4 d7d5     2014-09-02 15:02:18.715 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 3 seldepth 3 score cp 64 nodes 386 nps 128666 time 3 multipv 1 pv d2d4 d7d5 g1f3     2014-09-02 15:02:18.717 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 4 seldepth 4 score cp 25 nodes 1082 nps 216400 time 5 multipv 1 pv e2e4 e7e5 d2d4 b8c6     2014-09-02 15:02:18.724 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 5 seldepth 5 score cp 53 nodes 3129 nps 284454 time 11 multipv 1 pv b1c3 g8f6 d2d4 d7d5 g1f3     2014-09-02 15:02:18.729 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 6 seldepth 6 score cp 26 nodes 4702 nps 313466 time 15 multipv 1 pv e2e4 e7e5 d2d4 g8f6 b1c3 b8c6     2014-09-02 15:02:18.732 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 7 seldepth 7 score cp 58 nodes 6866 nps 343300 time 20 multipv 1 pv e2e4 d7d5 e4e5 b8c6 d2d4 e7e6 f1b5     2014-09-02 15:02:18.754 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 8 seldepth 8 score cp 12 nodes 14656 nps 396108 time 37 multipv 1 pv e2e4 d7d5 e4d5 g8f6 d2d4 d8d5 b1c3 d5a5     2014-09-02 15:02:18.791 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 9 seldepth 11 score cp 33 nodes 24157 nps 402616 time 60 multipv 1 pv e2e4 d7d5 e4e5 c7c5 d2d4 c5d4 d1d4 b8c6 f1b5 d8a5 b1c3 a5b5 c3b5 c6d4 b5d4     2014-09-02 15:02:18.807 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 10 seldepth 14 score cp 28 nodes 44269 nps 465989 time 95 multipv 1 pv e2e4 e7e5 b1c3 b8c6 g1f3 f8c5 c3a4 d7d6 a4c5 d6c5     2014-09-02 15:02:18.839 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 11 seldepth 15 score cp 41 nodes 75424 nps 593889 time 127 multipv 1 pv e2e4 e7e5 b1c3 b8c6 g1f3 f8c5 f3e5 c5f2 e1f2 c6e5 d2d4     2014-09-02 15:02:19.002 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 12 seldepth 16 score cp 28 nodes 254305 nps 879948 time 289 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 e2e3 b8c6 d2d4 c8g4 f1b5 g8f6 e1g1 a7a6 b5c6 b7c6     2014-09-02 15:02:19.042 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 13 seldepth 16 score cp 34 nodes 309418 nps 937630 time 330 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 e2e3 e7e6 d2d4 g8f6 f1d3 f8e7 e1g1 b8c6 c1d2 e8g8 b1c3     2014-09-02 15:02:19.224 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 14 seldepth 18 score cp 22 nodes 524342 nps 1024105 time 512 multipv 1 pv e2e4 e7e5 b1c3 b8c6 g1f3 g8f6 f1b5 f8b4 e1g1 e8g8 b5c6 d7c6 f3e5 d8e7 d2d4 b4c3 b2c3 f6e4     2014-09-02 15:02:19.603 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 15 seldepth 19 score cp 24 nodes 1002076 nps 1125928 time 890 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 d2d4 g8f6 c1f4 b8c6 e2e3 c8f5 f1d3 f5d3 d1d3 e7e6 d3b5 d8c8 b1c3 a7a6 b5a4     2014-09-02 15:02:19.769 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 16 seldepth 19 score cp 24 nodes 1213245 nps 1148906 time 1056 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 d2d4 g8f6 c1f4 b8c6 e2e3 c8f5 f1d3 f5d3 d1d3 e7e6 d3b5 d8c8 b1c3 a7a6 b5a4     2014-09-02 15:02:20.311 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 17 seldepth 20 score cp 22 nodes 1878116 nps 1174556 time 1599 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 d2d4 e7e6 c1f4 f8d6 f4d6 c7d6 b1c3 g8f6 e2e3 b8c6 f1d3 e8g8 e1g1 c8d7 a2a3 a7a6     2014-09-02 15:02:20.471 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] [[Sending Commands]]     2014-09-02 15:02:20.471 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] [[stop]]     2014-09-02 15:02:20.472 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] ((START TRY))     2014-09-02 15:02:20.472 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] ((END TRY))     2014-09-02 15:02:20.472 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] [[position fen rnbqkbnr/8/8/8/8/8/8/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1]]     2014-09-02 15:02:20.472 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] ((START TRY))     2014-09-02 15:02:20.473 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] ((END TRY))     2014-09-02 15:02:20.473 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] [[go infinite]]     2014-09-02 15:02:20.473 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] ((START TRY))     2014-09-02 15:02:20.473 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] ((END TRY))     2014-09-02 15:02:20.823 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 18 seldepth 20 score cp 23 nodes 2495624 nps 1182760 time 2110 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 d2d4 e7e6 c1f4 f8d6 e2e3 g8f6 f1e2 e8g8 e1g1 b8c6 f3e5 c8d7 b1c3 a7a6 a2a3 c6e5 d4e5     2014-09-02 15:02:21.756 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove d2d4 currmovenumber 5     2014-09-02 15:02:21.951 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove d2d3 currmovenumber 6     2014-09-02 15:02:21.960 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove c2c3 currmovenumber 7     2014-09-02 15:02:21.966 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove f2f3 currmovenumber 8     2014-09-02 15:02:22.010 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove b2b4 currmovenumber 9     2014-09-02 15:02:22.015 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove g1h3 currmovenumber 10     2014-09-02 15:02:22.022 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove a2a3 currmovenumber 11     2014-09-02 15:02:22.029 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove f2f4 currmovenumber 12     2014-09-02 15:02:22.036 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove g2g4 currmovenumber 13     2014-09-02 15:02:22.037 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove b2b3 currmovenumber 14     2014-09-02 15:02:22.044 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove c2c4 currmovenumber 15     2014-09-02 15:02:22.086 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove h2h3 currmovenumber 16     2014-09-02 15:02:22.091 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove g2g3 currmovenumber 17     2014-09-02 15:02:22.095 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove a2a4 currmovenumber 18     2014-09-02 15:02:22.098 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove b1a3 currmovenumber 19     2014-09-02 15:02:22.101 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove h2h4 currmovenumber 20     2014-09-02 15:02:22.107 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 seldepth 23 score cp 17 upperbound nodes 4113455 nps 1211621 time 3395 multipv 1 pv g1f3 d7d5 d2d4 g8f6 c1f4 c8f5 e2e3 e7e6 f1d3 f5d3 d1d3 b8c6 e1g1 f8d6 f4d6 c7d6 b1c3     info depth 19 currmove g1f3 currmovenumber 1     2014-09-02 15:02:22.410 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove e2e4 currmovenumber 2     2014-09-02 15:02:23.133 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove b1c3 currmovenumber 3     info depth 19 currmove d2d4 currmovenumber 4     info depth 19 currmove e2e3 currmovenumber 5     info depth 19 currmove d2d3 currmovenumber 6     info depth 19 currmove c2c3 currmovenumber 7     info depth 19 currmove a2a3 currmovenumber 8     info depth 19 currmove c2c4 currmovenumber 9     2014-09-02 15:02:23.158 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove b2b4 currmovenumber 10     info depth 19 currmove f2f3 currmovenumber 11     info depth 19 currmove g2g4 currmovenumber 12     2014-09-02 15:02:23.159 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 currmove h2h3 currmovenumber 13     info depth 19 currmove a2a4 currmovenumber 14     info depth 19 currmove g1h3 currmovenumber 15     info depth 19 currmove b1a3 currmovenumber 16     info depth 19 currmove b2b3 currmovenumber 17     info depth 19 currmove f2f4 currmovenumber 18     info depth 19 currmove g2g3 currmovenumber 19     info depth 19 currmove h2h4 currmovenumber 20     2014-09-02 15:02:23.160 CommandLineToolRunner[49999:303] info depth 19 seldepth 23 score cp 27 nodes 5442993 nps 1223969 time 4447 multipv 1 pv e2e4 e7e5 b1c3 b8c6 g1f3 g8f6 f1c4 f8c5 d2d3 a7a6 e1g1 e8g8 a2a3 d7d6 b2b4 c5a7 c1e3 a7e3 f2e3     info depth 20 currmove e2e4 currmovenumber 1"}
{"_id": "70417", "title": "Why does the Perl community have such a bad reputation?", "text": "I'm still fairly new to programming. I spend most of my time in Ruby, and I'm discovering a certain fondness for playing with regular expressions. That being said, I'm considering taking a look at Perl, just as a hobby. However, I've heard a lot about the Perl community, and none of it good. I've heard the community described as extremely elitist and resistant to inexperienced programmers. Is this true? If it is, why is that the case?"}
{"_id": "161798", "title": "Is it easier to write robust code in compiled, strictly-typed languages?", "text": "I'd like to read the opinion of experts on whether compiled, strictly-typed languages help programmers write robust code easier, having their backs, checking for type mismatches, and in general, catching flaws in compile time that otherwise would be discovered in runtime ? Has unit testing in loosely typed, interpreted languages need to be more thorough because test cases need to assess things that in a compiled languages wouldn't simply compile ? Need the programer in compiled, strictly-typed need to write less code since he/she doesn't have to constantly check for correct types ( instance of operator ) since the compiler catches those things ( the same applying to misspelled variable names or uninitiated variables ) ? **NOTE: by strictly typed language I mean languages that force you to declare variables and assign a type to them in order to be able to use them, and once a variable is declared, you cannot change its type or assign incompatible type values.**               int myInt = 0;     String myString = \"\";     myInt = myString; // this will not fly in a strictly typed language     myInte = 10;   // neither will this ( myInte variable doesn't exist )"}
{"_id": "70410", "title": "Starting new project with TDD", "text": "I'm studying TDD and I read that it also helps you to define the design of the app, correct? So I decided to start creating a new project to help me understand it better. I want to create a simple user registration system that will ask for its name, email address, country (will pick one from a list) and phone number. So the question is... I created a new solution in VS 2010, added a new Test project and I just don't know what tests to write! Since it will help me define the design, what tests could I write here? Thanks for any help!"}
{"_id": "161794", "title": "Is it a good idea to design an architecture thinking that the User Interface classes can be replaced by a command line interface?", "text": "In Code Complete page 25, it's said that it's a good idea to be able to easily replace the regular user interface classes by a command line one. Knowing its advantages for testing, what about the problems it may bring? Will this extra work really pay off for web and mobile projects? What about small and medium projects; do the same rules apply? What if it makes your design more complex?"}
{"_id": "161797", "title": "Using a GPLv3 library in a freemium business model", "text": "I read several related questions about the use of GPLv3 in a commercial app but they don't say anything about a freemium app. I would like to use a GPLv3 library in two apps, a free one (with limited features) and a paid one. Basically, the free app will allow to use the library without limitations, and the paid one will include it as well as other unrelated features. I will release the free app under GPLv3 but do I need to release the paid one under the same license? I don't want to release the whole source code of my paid app (for obvious reasons), as the other features don't use the library in any way. It would just be more convenient for users who bought the full version to have all features in a single app instead of putting the library in a separate one."}
{"_id": "70419", "title": "How Do I Become a More Autonomous and Self-Sufficient Programmer?", "text": "The single largest factor in what is holding me back from being a stellar developer is my reliance on others. I feel like I ask too many questions because I fear the consequences of breaking everything and holding everyone back. So I'm overly cautious by asking so many questions that I basically get the answers after enough questioning. I've recognized that's bad but I want to stop it. Part of it comes that there are times where I simply don't know the code (either it's a branch I've never worked with or it's a brand new product), but I want to rely on others less. To preface, these kinds of questions are not the ones about generic patterns or languages: usually my questions revolve around how we do code at our company, and how we get things to work in our ecosystem. I want to be able to take specs and roll with them without having to feel like I need to get help every step of the way. Is this normal? Have you been through this, and if so, how did you get over it?"}
{"_id": "161791", "title": "Is it frowned upon to release works in progress to github/sourceforge/bitbucket/etc?", "text": "Long story short, I've spent the last two years in an entirely new career, transitioning from academia to a data analyst role (working towards a data scientist). Before starting at my current company, I knew next to nothing about coding, save for teaching myself SQL for a few hours per week over a couple of months. Besides SQL, I have since become conversant in Perl, have used PHP a bit here and there, and have made some headway into learning other languages (primarily Java and C). So, I still have a lot of catch-up work to do. In order to teach myself things, I've built a few side projects--a lot more sophisticated than `\"Hello World, my name is $name.\"`, but not as complicated as, say, Minecraft or a device driver. I'd like to release the code for them in order to learn from constructive feedback and to build a portfolio to sit alongside my resume. However, a lot of these things are works in progress and, to be honest, I feel some trepidation at putting code out there for all to see that's not completely, 100% \"done\" and polished. Am I worrying over nothing? If not, is there some minimal polish threshold a project should have before releasing it as open source?"}
{"_id": "179713", "title": "Good practice about Javascript referencing", "text": "I am fighting about a web application script optimization. I have an ASP.NET web app that reference jQuery in the master page, and in every child page can reference other library or JavaScript extension. I would like to optimize the application with YUI for .NET. The question is, I should put all the libraries reference in the master page or to compress all the JavaScript code in a single file, or I should create a file for every page that contains only the code useful to the page? Is there any guidance to follow?"}
{"_id": "191809", "title": "Should I use a formal grammar for my interpreted scripting language", "text": "I have a scripting engine I just published as an open source project. It's been sitting on my harddrive waiting for about a year. My engine of course isn't complete in any way, but it does work for simple scripts. It has a javascript-ish feel to it, but I don't wish to abide by the ECMA spec or anything. Now, the big thing I'm working on is improving code quality while leaving the language working as it is(which I have a few regression tests to \"prove\"). It doesn't have a formal grammar at all and works like so:   1. Preprocess/Tokenize. At this point it removes whitespace and cuts everything into \"tokens\", which is basically just a structure containing a string and a rough \"hint\" as to what the token is (Number, Identifier, Operation, etc) and some debugging info such as line number   2. A ScriptingEngine class which takes the list of tokens and actually parses them and executes them   3. An \"ExpressionEvaluator\" class which will take a subset of the tokens list and build a specific tree of operations, values, and then execute operations and such and collapse the tree down into a single value My engine has the goals of being portable(works everywhere .Net does) and self-contained. So far, this \"works\", but the code is terrible and I'm pretty sure that I'm going about it the wrong way. I'm wondering if a formal grammar and everything that goes with it might help Some benefits I've heard of being more formal with grammar   * Unambiguous specification of the language   * Easier to maintain/change   * More traditional/Bigger community support?  And some of the disadvantages   * Some languages can be very difficult to reduce to a formal grammar, ie Perl.   * A learning curve for someone not in the know(ie, me)    * Generally rely on tools such as yacc and ANTLR, which introduce another step in your workflow and/or add dependencies(which I'd like to avoid) Although this project is in .Net, it could equally apply to any other implementing language. Should I use a formal grammar? Can someone expand on the pros/cons of both sides?"}
{"_id": "225705", "title": "What's the best way to show some of my code during an interview?", "text": "I realize that there are already a couple of questions about this, but they mostly are about _if_ you should bring code to the interview, which is not the case here. I have a job interview (at a startup) coming up next week and they _requested_ to bring some code to the interview. I have two smaller open-source projects and a closed-source Android app, which I mentioned (and linked) in my skill sheet I sent along, so I wanted to show them some code of those projects. It's my first job after graduating, so I don't have any sources from previous employments and there won't be any issues regarding \"spying\", licensing issues, confidential code etc. All the code is completely mine and written by me. I guess I have pretty much three options: print some interesting parts of the code on paper or have everything on my tablet or laptop to show. The latter two have the advantage that I can bring all my projects and basically show them everything they want to see. However you can't directly make notes/underline stuff etc. as if I had printed it out and it's less convenient than just handing out paper. What's the best way to handle this professionally and do this as hassle-free as possible? I currently tend to print out some of the parts that I think are both interesting and well written, but have everything on my tablet in case they want to see more."}
{"_id": "191807", "title": "How do these technologies go together?", "text": "* Ruby on Rails    * Twitter Bootstrap    * Html5Boilerplate    * Backbone.JS or Knockout.JS I sort of understand what each one is individually, but my understanding isn't strong enough to understand whether some of them sort of overlap in functionality and whether any subset of that list contains items you wouldn't use together because they play similar roles. I'm fairly clear on RoR-- it's mainly the latter three that I'm not sure how they play together."}
{"_id": "176890", "title": "How to plan/manage multi-platform (mobile) products?", "text": "Say I've to develop an app that runs on iOS, Android and Windows 8 Mobile. Now all three platforms are technically in different program languages. The only 'reuse' that I can see is that of the boxes-and-lines drawings (UML :) charts and nothing else. So how do companies/programmers manage the variation of the same product across different platforms especially since the implementation languages differ? It's 'easier' in the desktop world IMO given the plethora of languages and cross-platform libraries to make your life easier. Not so in the mobile world. More so, product line management principles don't seem to be all that applicable - what is same and variant doesn't really matter - the application is the same (conceptually) and the implementation is variant. Some difficulties that come to mind:   * **Bug Fixing** : Applications maybe designed in a similar manner but the bug identification and fixing would be radically different. A bug on iOS may/may-not be existent for that on Android. Or a bug fix approach on one platform may not be the same on another (unless it's a semantic bug like `a!=b` instead of `a==b` which would require the same 'approach' to fixing in essence   * **Enhancements** : Making a change on one platform would be radically different than on another   * **Code-Design Divergence** : They way the code is written/organized, the class structures etc., could be very different given the different implementation environments - leading to further reuse of the (above) UML models. There are of course many others - just keeping the development in sync and making sure all applications are up to the same version with the same set of features etc. Seems the effort is 3x that of a single application. So how exactly does one manage this nightmarish situation? Some thoughts:   * Split application to client/server to minimize the effect to client side only (not always doable)   * Use frameworks like Unity-3D that could take care of the cross-platform problem (mostly applicable to games and probably not to other applications etc.) Any other ways of managing a platform line? What are some proven approaches to managing/taming the effects?"}
{"_id": "121642", "title": "Carpool logical architecture", "text": "I'm designing a carpool system (drivers can publish their routes and passengers can subscribe to them) with WebServices(axis2) and Android clients (ksoap2). I have been having problems with the logical architecture of the system and I wondered if this architecture is fine. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mmyUf.png) And another question: for that architecture (if it is ok), how would be the packages structure? I suppose something like that: (In android)   `package org.carpool.presentation`   *All the activities here (and maybe mvc pattern) (In the server)   `package org.carpool.services`   *Public interfaces (for example: register(User user), publishRoute(Route route) ) `package org.carpool.domain`   *Pojos (for example: User.java, Route.java, etc) `package org.carpool.persistence`   *Dao Interface and implementation (jdbc or hibernate)"}
{"_id": "253369", "title": "There's a most performant way to check that a collection has exactly 1 element?", "text": "I came up with this solution :               if (Take(2).Count() == 1)      is there any more performance solution (or better syntactical sugar) to do this check ? I want a performance way because this will be an extension used on Linq To Entites and Linq to Objects. I'm not using `SingleOrDefault` because that will throw and exception if it has more than 1 element. Based on @Telastyn answer I came up with the following:               public static bool HasOne<T>(this IEnumerable<T> enumerable) {         var enumerator = enumerable.GetEnumerator();         return enumerator.MoveNext() && !enumerator.MoveNext();     }      another implementation (slighly slower but 100% sure will work effectivly on Linq to Entities) would be :               public static bool HasOne<T>(this IEnumerable<T> enumerable) {         return !enumerable.FirstOrDefault().Equals(default(T)) && !enumerable.Skip(1).Any();     }      I'm not sure if the `MoveNext` one works with IQueryable on Linq to Entites. (any takers? I don't know how to test that) After some test, `Take(2).Count() == 1`; is the fastest. :S"}
{"_id": "121640", "title": "How to develop complex applications", "text": "I want to know the approach in developing big complex application regardless of which programming language to use. I want to know how developers make such big applications such as internet banking, API's and big database management application. How should one approach to make such applications. I have only 1 year programming experience so far and I work as a freelancer so when I saw such applications lots of questions came in my mind. How to understand the basic need of information technology. What actually it is? How it can be useful for common people of small towns. I want everyone to make use of technology no matter they are educated or not, rich or not. Please post some suggestions."}
{"_id": "211875", "title": "Is it good practice to return an array of objects?", "text": "If I have an ItemContainer class that contains, for example, items in an order, where each item is an Item object; is it best to have a method like:               ItemContainer->getItems()       that returns an array containing Item objects, or is it better practice to do something like:               ItemContainer->getItem($itemNo)       which returns a single item object for that item number, and forgoes the array. I realise this may be a trivial question or simply one of preference, but I'd like my app to adopt best practices from the start and I'm unsure which way to proceed. I'm writing in PHP, but I figured this pretty much applies to any OOP language."}
{"_id": "122569", "title": "What to bring to a programming interview?", "text": "I have just completed my Master's degree in Computer Science and have gotten my first job interview as a developer. I do not have much experience in large scale development projects, but I am hoping my university education counts for something. I am wondering, what materials should I bring that would impress my interviewers? What do most interviewers expect, especially from a new graduate? **Edit: The job interview went OK, except I forgot my pants. Thanks for all the great advice!"}
{"_id": "122598", "title": "What are the relative merits for implementing an Erlang-style \"Continuation\" pattern in C#", "text": "What are the relative merits ( _or demerits_ ) for implementing an Erlang- style \"Continuation\" pattern in C#. I'm working on a project that has a large number of `Lowest` priority threads and I'm wondering if my approach may be all wrong. It would seem there is a reasonable upper limit to the number of long-running threads that any one Process 'should' spawn. With that said, I'm not sure what would signal the tipping-point for too many thread or when alternate patterns such as \"Continuation\" would be more suitable. In this case, many of the threads do a small amount of work and then sleep until woken to go again ( _Ex. Heartbeat, purge caches, etc..._ ). This continues for the life of the Process."}
{"_id": "119362", "title": "What are some best practices for cookie based web authentication?", "text": "I'm working on a small side project using CGI and Python (scalability is not an issue and it needs to be a VERY simple system.) I was thinking of implementing authentication using cookies, and was wondering if there were any established best practices. When the user successfully authenticates, I want to use cookies to figure out who is logged on. What, according to the best practices, should be stored in such a cookie?"}
{"_id": "15949", "title": "When do we need to apply a software development methodology?", "text": "There are many software development methodologies - SCRUM, agile, XP, etc. - and they all have there advantages and disadvantages I suppose. But when do we really need to apply them? Surely they are not necessary for small 1-man projects, but for large 50+ teams you can most certainly not go about ad-hoc:ing the whole thing. So what's the line for when to use and when to not use such a methodology, if there indeed is one?"}
{"_id": "42792", "title": "Staying OO and Testable while working with a database", "text": "What are some OOP strategies for working with a database but keeping things unit testable? Say I have a User class and my production environment works against MySQL. I see a couple possible approaches, shown here using PHP:   1. Pass in a $data_source with interfaces for `load()` and `save()`, to abstract the backend source of data. When testing, pass a different data store.              $user = new User( $mysql_data_source );     $user->load( 'bob' );     $user->setNickname( 'Robby' );     $user->save();        2. Use a factory that accesses the database and passes the result row to User's constructor. When testing, manually generate the $row parameter, or mock the object in UserFactory::$data_source. (How might I save changes to the record?)              class UserFactory {         static $data_source;              public static function fetch( $username ) {             $row = self::$data_source->get( [params] );                  $user = new User( $row );             return $user;         }     }      I have _Design Patterns_ and _Clean Code_ here next to me, but I'm struggling to find applicable concepts."}
{"_id": "129675", "title": "Write Unit test for heavily-database application?", "text": "I'm currently developing a Spring-based web-application, in which almost every operation create/update/delete something in the database. The logic mostly about checking condition so as to we should create/update records in the database or not. The reason I want to try unit test is that we often meets regression errors when request changes or refactor. Most the bugs comes from Database changes, when I doesn't fully reflect those changes in the code. I have some experience in web-development now, but it seems that's not enough to stop them appear. My controller/service is actually not too complex. I just take the binding object submited from the HttpRequest, **check the condition** & record in DB. Sometimes the system must read the Database, take out some records & manipulate them, then update some other records.Much of the coding effort lies on the interface(HTML/CSS/Javascript) too. I'm investigating unit test, and I heard that when it comes to database operation, it's no longer unit test, since the test will be slow. Is that true? So that if my project is heavily database-operation, I shouldn't use unit test? I also heard about DBUnit & some in-memory database which can quicken the test. Should I use them? And how I can write good unit test for database operation?"}
{"_id": "156978", "title": "What pattern to use for this 'constructor'? Decorator vs Factory?", "text": "I'm developing a programme to generate LARP characters in java and I've hit a snag. Initially I had planned to use a decorator to iterate through the potential 'roles' (effectively classes), and then from that work out the costs for each skill depending on the combination of roles and store that in the character. I.e you might be a Java Coder/Nerdfighter, if those are your two roles, or you might just have the SysAdmin role etc. I then prototyped out a way to buy a skill that required looking up skills in a data base that contained their name and cost. Here is the snag: If I've preworked out the costs then I don't ever need to look up the database, so no changes in the db are pushed through (if the skill costs on a SysAdmin go down I'd like to know). As well as this, I may only buy a fraction of the available skills so I'll be storing unnecessary data on skill costs, and besides the character should only know about their skills, not all skills. More over, the decorator would only decorate the skill costs, nothing more. Instead I feel I need a factory that has two options for constructing the character, something like:               public static CharacterFactory multiRolePlayerCharacter(Role firstRole, Role secondRole) {         /*Some code goes here*/     }     public static CharacterFactory singleRolePlayerCharacter(Role role) {         /*Some more code goes here*/         }      But this seems far less extensible compared to the decorator. If the game ever changes so that you can multirole morethan twice (and Java Coder/Nerdfighter/SysAdmin is an allowed role) then I need to rework from the top to add a new factory in. Also I don't quite know how each factory differs besides perhaps a flag to say if it's multirole or not, and another variable to hold the secondRole. Which doesn't seem much. So it seems either way I lose: Decorator adds extensibility for the long run whilst bogging my classes/objects down, and Factory will work to start with but will resist change. So how do I know which one to pick? Is there some way to combine the two?   **Edit** : I'm really interested in learning about the _whys_ and _hows_ of this, so I know next time which option to go for."}
{"_id": "119365", "title": "iphone application give up rights", "text": "Is it possible to give up an iphone application rights to another person or company? I mean, you make an application, you sell it for a while, and then you don't need it anymore and you give or sell it to another person or company to continue develope it. And in this case, how persons who already bought a copy of it can continue to receive next updates? I hope I'm clear."}
{"_id": "252357", "title": "Should I put extension methods of an interface in the interface.cs file?", "text": "Imagine this set up:               public interface IMass{         double Mass {get;}     }          public static class IMassExtension {         public static double ToKg(this IMass massObject) {             return massObject.Mass / 1000.0;         }              public static double CalculateInteractiveGravity(this IMass massObject, IMass otherMassObject)                   {              return blah;         }     }      Is it ok to put the extension class in the same file as the interface (i.e. IMass.cs) or should it be in a separate file (IMassExtension.cs)? * * * A base class is not possible here. Imagine               public class Person : Animal, IMass {}      and               public class House : Building, IMass {}"}
{"_id": "15943", "title": "not checking in from the project root", "text": "Whenever I do a check-in, I always check in from the **root** of the project... i.e. check in **all** the files in my working copy, so after the check-in the source control repo contains exactly the same set of files that I just finished testing in my local copy. I also make sure my source control is set to flag local files that are **not** under source control. In general, there are **none** of these files... if there are, I either add them to source control or mark them as \"ignored\". I also check in all my changes together in one check-in. A lot of colleagues check in much differently. They carefully select each file to check in, as if they are a master jeweler selecting only the very best gemstones to set into the royal crown, and they check in each one as a separate check-in. They rely only on their memory to figure out which files need to be checked in, or especially **added** to source control. The results are quite predictable... frequent broken builds because they forget to add their new files to source control or forget to check in a changed file (especially changed project files). I have mentioned this to them and they never seem to change. When I mentioned it to the team lead he said, \"this is just a different way of working\". To which I may respond: What if I want to drive my car with my eyes closed? Is that just \"a different way of driving\"? Am I right in being bothered by this practice?"}
{"_id": "124254", "title": "What can be the cause of new bugs appearing somewhere else when a known bug is solved?", "text": "During a discussion, one of my colleagues told that he has some difficulties with his current project while trying to solve bugs. \"When I solve one bug, something else stops working elsewhere\", he said. I started to think about how this could happen, but can't figure it out.   * I have sometimes similar problems **when I am too tired/sleepy to do the work correctly** and to have an overall view of the part of the code I was working on. Here, the problem seems to be for a few days or weeks, and is not related to the focus of my colleague.   * I can also imagine this problem arising on a **very large project, very badly managed** , where teammates don't have any idea of who does what, and what effect on other's work can have a change they are doing. This is not the case here neither: it's a rather small project with only one developer.   * It can also be an issue with **old, badly maintained and never documented codebase** , where the only developers who can really imagine the consequences of a change had left the company years ago. Here, the project just started, and the developer doesn't use anyone's codebase. So what can be the cause of such issue **on a fresh, small-size codebase written by a single developer who stays focused on his work**? What may help?   * Unit tests (there are none)?   * Proper architecture (I'm pretty sure that the codebase has no architecture at all and was written with no preliminary thinking), requiring the whole refactoring?   * Pair programming?   * Something else?"}
{"_id": "156970", "title": "How to ease the maintenance of event driven code?", "text": "When using an event based component I often feel some pain at maintenance phase. Since the executed code is all split around it can be quite hard to figure what will be all the code part that will be involved at runtime. This can lead to subtle and hard to debug problems when someone adds some new event handlers. Edit from comments: Even with some good practices on-board, like having an application wide event bus and handlers delegating business to other part of the app, there is a moment when the code starts to become hard to read because there is a lot of registered handlers from many different places (especially true when there is a bus). Then sequence diagram starts to look over complex, time spend to figure out what is happening is increasing and debugging session becomes messy (breakpoint on the handlers manager while iterating on handlers, especially joyful with async handler and some filtering on top of it). //////////////   Example I have a service that is retrieving some data on the server. On the client we have a basic component that is calling this service using a callback. To provide extension point to the users of the component and to avoid coupling between different components, we are firing some events: one before the query is sent, one when the answer is coming back and another one in case of a failure. We have a basic set of handlers that are pre-registered which provide the default behavior of the component. Now users of the component (and we are user of the component too) can add some handlers to perform some change on the behavior (modify the query, logs, data analysis, data filtering, data massaging, UI fancy animation, chain multiple sequential queries, whatever). So some handlers must be executed before/after some others and they are registered from a lots of different entry point in the application. After a while, it can happens that a dozen or more handlers are registered, and working with that can be tedious and hazardous. This design emerged because using inheritance was starting to be a complete mess. The event system is used at a kind of composition where you don't know yet what will be your composites. End of example   ////////////// So I'm wondering how other people are tackling this kind of code. Both when writing and reading it. Do you have any methods or tools that let you write and maintain such code without to much pain ?"}
{"_id": "252350", "title": "Naming: StartDate or StartDateTime when working with DateTimes", "text": "I am using a lot of DateTimes in my application. Now I usually name it like StartDateTime, EndDateTime, etc, to imply there is also a time involved. I am getting a bit tired of this (it is tiresome to read), and _most of the time_ it is quite logical there is a time compartment to it anyway. Now I'm thinking about ditching `StartDateTime` in favor of the shorter `StartDate`, despite that there is also a time part included. **Question** What is better: easier to read _vs_ being more explicit about that there is a time included? (ps: I guess this has a lot to do with C# not having separate objects for `Date` and `DateTime`, so that's where the need for Hungarian comes from)"}
{"_id": "153107", "title": "Can I do a git merge entirely remotely?", "text": "My team shares a \"work\" branch and a \"stable\" branch. Whenever a particular work branch is approved for further testing/release/etc, we merge it into stable. No code is ever checked directly into the stable branch. Because of this, merge conflicts simply won't happen, and it seems silly to pull down the work branch and the stable branch, merge them, and then push the changes back. Is there a git command to ask a remote git server to commit a merge of two branches that it already knows about?"}
{"_id": "154332", "title": "How should I structure a solution for a long term project?", "text": "I'm about to create a do-everything dashboard for my team and am still having second thoughts about my project/solution structure. Since this could be a long ongoing project, I want to get the structure right from the beginning. This is what I had in mind:   1. Create a solution named \"doEverythingDashboard\"   2. Delete the project named \"doEverythingDashboard\" under the solution \"doEverythingDashboard\"   3. Create winform project named \"interface\"   4. Create console applications projects for each functionality of \"doEverythingDashboard\"   5. Reference each console application in \"interface\" Does this make any sense? Would it make more sense to just have one project and create a class per functionality instead of an entire project?"}
{"_id": "211886", "title": "How can I indicate if an object operates with another one in an UML class diagram?", "text": "Suppose I want to draw a class diagram of a DAO and an Entity. The DAO is used to load instances of the Entity from the database. How can I represent this relationship on my class diagram? Is this considered one? I think it should be displayed on the diagram somehow: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HUL9D.jpg) **TL;DR** : should I draw something between them or not?"}
{"_id": "124251", "title": "Does a webapp need a connection monitoring feature?", "text": "I developing a client using Flex and ActionScript that is run in the browser and communicates with our server backend. There has been concern that the application \"needs\" to have a graphic indicator to show whether the client has a connection to the server or not. Part of the problem of this requirement is that is coming from a high-level perspective that because the interface looks \"broken\" (i.e. doesn't update properly). I have an idea where the problem is, but that doesn't mean that the error is in the interface. I believe that a connection monitor feature is unnecessary because:   1. Users won't be able to do squat. Our user base is largely non-technical.   2. Flex generates HTTP error events but does not specify what happened. I can't tell what _real_ problem is which could be:      * The user actually has no network connection.     * The application server code is broken in some way.     * The server itself is messed up (i.e. \"Oops, I broke the Apache config\").     * Server load is too high and becomes unresponsive.     * There is a some other problem (e.g. network or hardware) beyond my or users' control. How do I convince that this feature is not valuable to develop? If it is something worth keeping, what are alternatives to showing a \"network status\" or server connection problem in the client? I would rather spend the time to dig at the root of the problem and _prevent_ it from happening rather than creating an additional \"feature\" that doesn't solve anything."}
{"_id": "126032", "title": "Creating crossplatform TCP proxy/gateway that would handle maximum possible clients simultaneously on 1GB ethernet pipe?", "text": "So what I wonder about is preaty simple - having in mind next architecture:                        -> computing unit \"A\"             /      gateway --> computing unit \"B\" same as A             \\              -> computing unit \"C\" same as A      We do not care to which unit to forward request so we should forward them one by one to A than to B than to C and than to A, etc. I wonder in what language, using what framework it is possible to create such crossplatform TCP proxy/gateway (not ethernet card dependent) that would redirect incoming requests into internal nodes via simple rool, and would be capable to get as much as possible from ethernet cable load in/out capabilety - receive and send as much as possible? I started to wonder after I read this nice 2003 article..."}
{"_id": "164313", "title": "Who are 'users' in testing?", "text": "Having e.g. a system for booking flights, during UAT it is not being tested by real users (customers who will buy tickets) rather than people from the client side who will just simulate this. Are there any more specific terms to distinquish between real users (like end user) and users doing the UAT?"}
{"_id": "250817", "title": "Writing a simple code validator", "text": "I know that programming languages can be defined in EBNF which can be converted into regular expressions. Right now I am working on a very simple BASIC interpreter for a project. The code has to be entered in a gui which should validate the syntax to later transfer the code to an embedded system where it is executed. I was googling to find an article or tutorial on writing a validator for this job but I could not really find such a thing. Is it just defining the regular expressions and try to match them? Note: the GUI part is written in Java while the embedded code is written in C++."}
{"_id": "215655", "title": "Main activity design too busy", "text": "I have a main activity that contains many buttons. I don't want to have a list of buttons like this. I know this looks bad, only cause I threw this together to show you what I have. As you can see, I really don't even have enough room. I don't want a `scrollView` in my main Activity. Does anyone have suggestions on building my activity to look sleek and simple? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JrZbM.png)"}
{"_id": "1034", "title": "Is there any real benefit to Microsoft's application certification programs?", "text": "I'm developing a server application and am looking at Windows 2008 R2 **application** certification located here. Does application certification really make a difference to your application? Has anything tangible ever come from it in your experience? Are there any other certifications I should consider?"}
{"_id": "245738", "title": "What do I need to make a messaging app?", "text": "I was wondering how to make a messaging app like whats app? What are the resources I need? What will I need yo know? I want to make it for iPhone's. I know some obj-c but that's really it..."}
{"_id": "129912", "title": "Why is local copy writable by default in SVN, but readonly in Perforce/TFS?", "text": "I have some experience with Perforce, SVN, and TFS. For SVN, The source files were by default writable after synchronization. However, they were readonly for Perforce, as well as TFS if memory served me.   Meanwhile, 'checkout' means source sync for SVN but its meaning is quite different for other popular tools. I'm wondering which is more 'correct' behavior and why these tools behave differently.   Thanks."}
{"_id": "129917", "title": "Trimming script size by using array notation for frequently accessed properties", "text": "I noticed some redundancy in a script I ran through Google Closure Compiler.               (function(){function g(a){var k;if(a){if(a.call)a.prototype=j,a.prototype[e]={}}else a=     {};var c=a,b,c=(a=c.call?c:null)?new a(a):c;b=c[e]||{};var f=b.extend;b=b.a;var      d=c.hasOwnProperty(\"constructor\")?c.constructor:b?b:f?g.b(f):new Function;if     (f)b=d.prototype,k=new h(h.prototype=f.prototype),f=k,h.prototype={},d.prototype=f,i     (d.prototype,b);i(d,a);i(d.prototype,c);return d.prototype.constructor=d}function i(a,c)     {for(var b in c)c.hasOwnProperty(b)&&\"prototype\"!=b&&b!=e&&(a[b]=c[b])}var h=new Function,     e=\"decl-data\",j={extend:function(a){return(this[e].extend=a).prototype},a:function(a)     {return(this[e].a=a).prototype}};g.c=function(a){e=a};return g})().b=function(g){return      function(){g.apply(this,arguments)}};      It looks like a big sea of `prototype` and `constructor`, doesn't it? I was was able to get it to about 6/7 of the size of the original by storing \"constructor\" and \"prototype\" strings and using array notation everywhere to access prototypes and constructors. The size savings should grow as the size of the script grows. Here's what it looks like after the change:               (function(b,h){function i(a){a?a.call&&(a[b]=l,a[b][f]={}):a={};var d=a,c,d=(a=d.call?     d:null)?new a(a):d;c=d[f]||{};var g=c.extend;c=c.a;var e=d.hasOwnProperty(h)?d[h]:c?c:g?i.b     (g):new Function;if(g){c=e[b];var m=b,g=new j(j[b]=g[b]);j[b]={};e[m]=g;k(e[b],c)}k(e,a);k(e     [b],d);return e[b][h]=e}function k(a,d){for(var c in d)d.hasOwnProperty(c)&&c!=b&&c!=f&&(a     [c]=d[c])}var j=new Function,f=\"decl-data\",l={extend:function(a){return(this[f].extend=a)     [b]},a:function(a){return(this[f].a=a)[b]}};i.c=function(a){f=a};return i})     (\"prototype\",\"constructor\").b=function(b){return function(){b.apply(this,arguments)}};      Is it worth it to **damage readability to save a few bytes?** It's hard to know when to stop... `hasOwnProperty` only appears twice, I might use it once more. So, should I replace `.hasOwnProperty` with `[_has]`? Should I just stop here? Or should I put it back the way it was, and not worry about the few extra bytes? On the other hand, **maybe this doesn't damage readability** at all, and could just be looked at as convenient shortcuts. Another alternative would be abstracting the behavior **using macros** ; write `.prototype` and have it converted to `[_p]` at build time, of course declaring `_p` somewhere. But that seems overly complicated for a relatively minor size optimization. Speaking of which, I wonder why closure-compiler doesn't do something like this already? I'm curious what the community thinks about this. * * * For reference, the un-minified source before the size optimization:               var decl = (function(){          var Clone = new Function(), // dummy function for prototypal cloning         /** dataKey                  The name of the property where declaration objects'              metadata will be stored. If you want to pass objects to decl              instead of functions, put the metadata (parent, partial, etc.)              in this property.         */         dataKey = 'decl-data',              /** proto                  This object is used as a prototype for declaration objects,             so all properties are available as properties of `this`             inside the body of each declaration function.              */         proto = {                /** extend                    Perform prototypal inheritance by calling `this.extend(ParentCtor)`               within your decalration function.                    @param {Function} ctor to extend.                    @return {Object} prototype of parent ctor.           */           extend: function (ctor) {              return (this[dataKey].extend=ctor).prototype;            },                /** augment                    Finish a partial declaration.               TODO: test for bugs, possibly retroactively fix child classes when augmenting parent.                    @param {Function} ctor to augment.                    @return {Object} prototype of partial ctor.           */           augment: function (ctor) {              return (this[dataKey].augment=ctor).prototype;            }              };               /** decl              Create a prototype object and return its constructor.              @param {Function|Object} declaration     */     function decl (declaration) {       if (!declaration) {         declaration = {};       }       else if (declaration.call) {         declaration.prototype=proto;         declaration.prototype[dataKey]={};       }       return getCtor(declaration);     }          /** setDataKey              Sets the name of the property where declaration objects'          metadata will be stored. If you want to pass objects to decl          instead of functions, put the metadata (parent, partial, etc.)          in this property.              @param {String} String value to use for dataKey     */     decl.setDataKey = function (value) { dataKey=value; };          /** clone              Create a copy of a simple object.              @param {Object} obj              @return {Object} clone of obj.          */     function clone (object) {       var r=new Clone(Clone.prototype=object);       Clone.prototype={};       return r;     };          /** merge              Merge src object's properties into target object.              @param {Object} target object to merge properties into.              @param {Object} src object to merge properties from.              @return {Object} target for chaining.          */     function merge (target, src) {        for (var k in src) {         if (src.hasOwnProperty(k) && k!='prototype' && k!=dataKey) {             target[k] = src[k];         }       }       return target;     };          /** getCtor              Prepare a constructor to be returned by decl.              @param {Function|Object} declaration              @return {Function} constructor.          */     function getCtor (declaration) {           var oldProto,           declFn = declaration.call ? declaration : null,           declObj = declFn ? new declFn(declFn) : declaration,            data = declObj[dataKey] || {},           parent = data.extend, partial = data.augment,            ctor =  // user-defined ctor                    declObj.hasOwnProperty('constructor') ? declObj.constructor :                    // ctor already defined (partial)                     partial ? partial :                    // generated wrapper for parent ctor                   parent ? decl.wrap(parent) :                    // generated empty function                   new Function();             // If there's a parent constructor, use a clone of its prototype       // and copy the properties from the current prototype.       if (parent) {         oldProto = ctor.prototype;         ctor.prototype = clone(parent.prototype);         merge(ctor.prototype, oldProto);       }            // Merge the declaration function's properties into the constructor.       // This allows adding properties to `this.constructor` in the declaration function       // without defining a constructor, or before defining one.       merge(ctor, declFn);            // Merge the declaration objects's properties into the prototype.       merge(ctor.prototype, declObj);            // Have the constructor reference itself in its prototype, and return it.       return (ctor.prototype.constructor=ctor);     };          return decl;          }());          // This is outside of the main closure so wrapper functions     // will have as short a lookup chain as possible.          /** wrap              Generate wrapper for parent constructor.              @param {Function} parent constructor to wrap.              @return {Function} child constructor.          */     decl.wrap = function (parent) {       return function(){ parent.apply(this, arguments); };     };      And after:               var decl = (function(_p, _c){          var Clone = new Function(), // dummy function for prototypal cloning              /** dataKey                  The name of the property where declaration objects'              metadata will be stored. If you want to pass objects to decl              instead of functions, put the metadata (parent, partial, etc.)              in this property.         */         dataKey = 'decl-data',              /** proto                  This object is used as a prototype for declaration objects,             so all properties are available as properties of `this`             inside the body of each declaration function.              */         proto = {                /** extend                    Perform prototypal inheritance by calling `this.extend(ParentCtor)`               within your decalration function.                    @param {Function} ctor to extend.                    @return {Object} prototype of parent ctor.           */           extend: function (ctor) {              return (this[dataKey].extend=ctor)[_p];            },                /** augment                    Finish a partial declaration.               TODO: test for bugs, possibly retroactively fix child classes when augmenting parent.                    @param {Function} ctor to augment.                    @return {Object} prototype of partial ctor.           */           augment: function (ctor) {              return (this[dataKey].augment=ctor)[_p];            }              };               /** decl              Create a prototype object and return its constructor.              @param {Function|Object} declaration     */     function decl (declaration) {       if (!declaration) {         declaration = {};       }       else if (declaration.call) {         declaration[_p]=proto;         declaration[_p][dataKey]={};       }       return getCtor(declaration);     }          /** setDataKey              Sets the name of the property where declaration objects'          metadata will be stored. If you want to pass objects to decl          instead of functions, put the metadata (parent, partial, etc.)          in this property.              @param {String} String value to use for dataKey     */     decl.setDataKey = function (value) { dataKey=value; };          /** clone              Create a copy of a simple object.              @param {Object} obj              @return {Object} clone of obj.          */     function clone (object) {       var r=new Clone(Clone[_p]=object);       Clone[_p]={};       return r;     };          /** merge              Merge src object's properties into target object.              @param {Object} target object to merge properties into.              @param {Object} src object to merge properties from.              @return {Object} target for chaining.          */     function merge (target, src) {        for (var k in src) {         if (src.hasOwnProperty(k) && k!=_p && k!=dataKey) {             target[k] = src[k];         }       }       return target;     };          /** getCtor              Prepare a constructor to be returned by decl.              @param {Function|Object} declaration              @return {Function} constructor.          */     function getCtor (declaration) {           var oldProto,           declFn = declaration.call ? declaration : null,           declObj = declFn ? new declFn(declFn) : declaration,            data = declObj[dataKey] || {},           parent = data.extend, partial = data.augment,            ctor =  // user-defined ctor                    declObj.hasOwnProperty(_c) ? declObj[_c] :                    // ctor already defined (partial)                     partial ? partial :                    // generated wrapper for parent ctor                   parent ? decl.wrap(parent) :                    // generated empty function                   new Function();             // If there's a parent constructor, use a clone of its prototype       // and copy the properties from the current prototype.       if (parent) {         oldProto = ctor[_p];         ctor[_p] = clone(parent[_p]);         merge(ctor[_p], oldProto);       }            // Merge the declaration function's properties into the constructor.       // This allows adding properties to `this.constructor` in the declaration function       // without defining a constructor, or before defining one.       merge(ctor, declFn);            // Merge the declaration objects's properties into the prototype.       merge(ctor[_p], declObj);            // Have the constructor reference itself in its prototype, and return it.       return (ctor[_p][_c]=ctor);     };          return decl;          }('prototype', 'constructor'));          // This is outside of the main closure so wrapper functions     // will have as short a lookup chain as possible.          /** wrap              Generate wrapper for parent constructor.              @param {Function} parent constructor to wrap.              @return {Function} child constructor.          */     decl.wrap = function (parent) {       return function(){ parent.apply(this, arguments); };     };"}
{"_id": "220", "title": "Agile for the Solo Developer", "text": "How would someone implement Agile process concepts as a solo developer? Agile seems useful for getting applications developed at a faster pace, but it also seems very team oriented..."}
{"_id": "50658", "title": "Using Agile development in a one person team", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Agile for the Solo Developer I am going to be starting a project soon and plan to use as much of agile methods as I can (CI, TDD etc.). What have been people's experiences doing agile development when working solo? I want to get good practices in place now while its a one person team so when I scale up to having several people the basics are in place."}
{"_id": "105917", "title": "Agile methodology for a single developer working on a prototype", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Agile for the Solo Developer For my thesis I will be working on a user interface prototype during a 6 month period. I am required to pick a strategy and create a precise planning. While reading through different descriptions of agile methodologies I felt like I'm in buzz-word heaven. Instead of just picking one because it's famous, I was hoping someone could give some insight into which one/or which parts of it might be useful. Are there any agile methodologies specifically suitable (or scalable) for single developers?"}
{"_id": "141818", "title": "How can a single developer make use of Agile Methods?", "text": "I am a freelancer and work as a single developer. In all cases, I am the person wearing different hats. I am the Scrum Master and I am the only person in the development. What I am not is the Product Owner? Are there any Agile Methods and free tools that a freelancer can make use of?"}
{"_id": "222389", "title": "How can a single person use agile method? for software application", "text": "I am looking to do a personal project on a web application. on my methods section I'm finding it difficult to choose just one Agile Method so here is the list I am trying to combine those or just a few of those to one method that works best for me.   * Scrum (I noticed for this one it requires a team of minimum of seven)   * XP (Extreme Programming)   * Crystal   * FDD (Feature dive n development)   * DSDM (Dynamic System Development Method)   * Adaptive Software Development   * RUP (Rational Unified Process) for example I was thinking something like split from scrum simple design (KISS) from eXtreme Programming only 19 weeks for this project so DSDM and TIMEBOXING USE cases etc.?"}
{"_id": "250925", "title": "Whats the best way to build a HTML/AJAX site that requires login?", "text": "Let's say that hypothetically you wanted to build a website that delivered content to the visitors entirely using HTML and Javascript (AJAX to fetch server side data). The site would require login for certain functions. Let's also say, for the sake of discussion, you have the ability to create necessary web service methods that would be called from AJAX (for authenticating a user, getting data from a database, etc). What would be the best way to implement this site? Would there be any advantages / drawbacks compared to building a site using a server side language like ASP.NET or PHP? **EDIT 1** First, thanks to everyone that has replied so far. I didn't properly phrase my question so I'm getting responses that aren't addressing my question. I've built many sites using traditional methods - a database backend and a frontend that was a mix of server side languages (.NET or PHP) and client side scripting JavaScript / jQuery. Let's say I'm going to build an environment that has a database server, a web services server, and a web server. My web services server has all the methods I need to interact with the database (authentication, CRUD operations, reporting, etc). The web server does not support any server side languages (like PHP or ASP.NET). I know it would be possible to build the site entirely in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (jQuery). A user could be authenticated via AJAX, the authentication token could be stored in a cookie, and then token could be used on all subsequent AJAX requests. My questions are:   1. What would be the advantages / drawbacks of such an approach?   2. What challenges would be faced with authentication and security?   3. Would this solve any of the problems typically faced when building a website?   4. If your boss was asking you to use this environment, would you argue against it? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "82957", "title": "Tips and Tricks on Web Page Design on ASP.NET MVC (Razor Syntax)", "text": "I am a newbie in web development and have started studying ASP.NET MVC. I noticed that cshtml replaces aspx when using Razor syntax and design view is not supported. Now designing ASP.NET MVC webpages is difficult without design view. How do you handle your web page fesigns in your projects without it?"}
{"_id": "207219", "title": "Reading CSV files located on a Linux server and updating the tables in a SQL Server database", "text": "I was wondering how we could ingest CSV files located on a Red Hat Linux server into SQL Server database tables. I know we can write a stored procedure/bulk insert to read the files that are located on the same Windows server as SQL Server and update the database, but not sure how to do it when the files are present on a Linux server. Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "8660", "title": "Good naming convention for named branches in {DVCS} of your choice", "text": "We're integrating Mercurial slowly in our office and doing web-development we started using named branches. We haven't quite found a good convention as far as naming our branches though. We tried:   * FeatureName (Can see this causing problem down the line)   * DEVInitial_FeatureName (Could get confusing when developer come and go down the line)   * {uniqueID (int)}_Feature So far the uniqueID_featureName is winning, we are thinking of maintaining it in a small DB just for reference. It would have: branchID(int), featureName(varchar), featureDescription(varchar), date, who etc... This would give us branches like: 1_NewWhizBangFeature, 2_NowWithMoreFoo, ... and we would have an easy reference as to what that branch does without having to check the log. Any better solution out there?"}
{"_id": "111176", "title": "Prefer class members or passing arguments between internal methods?", "text": "Suppose within the private portion of a class there is a value which is utilized by multiple private methods. Do people prefer having this defined as a member variable for the class or passing it as an argument to each of the methods - and why? On one hand I could see an argument to be made that reducing state (ie member variables) in a class is generally a good thing, although if the same value is being repeatedly used throughout a class' methods it seems like that would be an ideal candidate for representation as state for the class to make the code visibly cleaner if nothing else. Edit: To clarify some of the comments/questions that were raised, I'm not talking about constants and this isn't relating to any particular case rather just a hypothetical that I was talking to some other people about. Ignoring the OOP angle for a moment, the particular use case that I had in mind was the following (assume pass by reference just to make the pseudocode cleaner)               int x     doSomething(x)     doAnotherThing(x)     doYetAnotherThing(x)     doSomethingElse(x)      So what I mean is that there's some variable that is common between multiple functions - in the case I had in mind it was due to chaining of smaller functions. In an OOP system, if these were all methods of a class (say due to refactoring via extracting methods from a large method), that variable could be passed around them all or it could be a class member."}
{"_id": "209408", "title": "What is the definition of pointer?", "text": "Conceptually a \"pointer\" is just something that \"points\" to something else;Is this definition is sufficient to tell exactly what a pointer is in programing languages? Does it need to have any other features? Programmers who come from specific language may have pre-conceived ideas of what constitutes a 'pointer' based on how it is used in the language So let say if he is from **c/c++** language, he say's pointers supports pointer arithmetic.Is pointer arithmetic an essential feature of a pointer? **Go** has pointers and does not support pointer arithmetic. Is the ability to \"dereference\" the pointer essential to the concept of a pointer? So what is the precise definition of a pointer that I can give as an answer, irrespective of any specific programming language?"}
{"_id": "111171", "title": "When does switching to a framework mid-project make sense?", "text": "Some of my friends and I started a PHP project some weeks ago. In the beginning, I suggested we use a PHP framework such as CodeIgniter or Zend. But my friends wanted to start clean and without the overhead or extra complexity. But as time has passed, the project has become more and more complex. At first, we wrote all the code in the view files, in code blocks before the HTML output. Eventually, we changed direction and started to use controllers that did most of the work. But as you can see there is a coding difference here. At this point, we're trying to determine how to proceed before the project becomes more complex. When does it make sense to start over and use a framework? Or is it possible to formulate a simple way to introduce an MVC pattern to our existing code without having to start from scratch?"}
{"_id": "111178", "title": "What should I do when my project manager does not care about implementation details?", "text": "My project manager, when providing requirements for specific tasks, does not care about the implementation details. Although he has a programming background and has some knowledge of the MVC framework, he does not consider the perspective of the developer. For example, I was given a task to create a simple form in ASP.NET MVC. This form should be pluggable - that is, the customer should choose which fields do or do not exist and which fields are required. If this were a simple form with validation, I would easily be able to implement it using ASP.NET validations. However, the problem is not simple and requires design and architecture first. The time that I have to implement the solution, which is not well understood, is very restricted. Not having sufficient time will not let me come upwith a solution that meets the requirements, but also benefits myself and any future developers. What should I do in this situation? Do you feel that given requirements in the example can be expected from a single developer?"}
{"_id": "40172", "title": "Should newbies use IDE autocomplete (Intellisense)?", "text": "I often encounter this when I am helping out someone who is new to programming and learning it for the first time. I'm talking about really new newbies, still learning about OOness, constructing objects, method calls and stuff like that. Usually, they have the keyboard and I am just offering guidance. On the one hand, the autocomplete feature of the IDEs helps to give them feedback that they are doing it right and they quickly get to like and rely on it. On the other hand, I fear that early dependence on the IDE autocomplete would make them not really understand the concepts or be able to function if they one day find themselves only with a simple editor. Can anyone with more experience in this regard please share their opinion? Which is better for a newbie, autocomplete or manual typing? **Update** Thanks for the input everyone! Many answers seem to focus on the main use of autocomplete, like completing methods, providing methods lookup and documentation etc. But IDEs nowadays do a lot more like.   * When creating an object of List type, an IDE autocompletes to new ArrayList on right hand side. It may not be immediately clear to a newbie why it cannot be new List, but hey it works, so they move on.   * Filling method parameters based on local variables in context.   * Performing object casts   * Automatically adding 'import' or 'using' statements and much more. These are the kinds of things I mean. Remember I'm talking about people who are doing Programming 101, really just starting. I have watched the IDE do these things which they have no idea about, but they just carry on. One could argue that it helps them focus on program flow and getting the hang of things first before going in-depth and understanding the nuances of the language, but I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "114727", "title": "Forgetting basic language functions due to use of IDE, over reliance?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should newbies use IDE autocomplete (Intellisense)?   >  Is it wrong or bad to use autocomplete? Having used an IDE for the last 3-4 years, the other day a few of my coworkers and I came to a fairly sad realization that we had forgotten some basic Java methods/functions because we always relied on our IDE (Eclipse/STS/IntelliJ) to complete them for us (such as what a function takes in terms of parameters), is this a sign that our skills are deteriorating, that we're over relying on IDEs? (This whole discussion came about us talking about taking the Oracle Java 7 EE certification test and looking over a few practice questions, questions such as, what parameters does function X take, etc) If so, how do you guys fight off this sort of thing? Just re-read books and stuff? I myself can't imagine not coding with an IDE because in all honesty, it does make me code a lot faster with things such as auto complete, etc while some of my co-workers suggested we code sans IDE for a few months. I do realize that sometimes one doesn't need to know everything about a function, but I do remember a college professor telling us that IDEs are terrible because when the time comes that you need some sort of function, you'll have to waste time looking it up instead of just banging out the code from rote memory."}
{"_id": "100480", "title": "Is there any evidence that Intellisense reduces productivity?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should newbies use IDE autocomplete (Intellisense)? I was having a conversation with another developer the other night about the pros and cons of Visual Studio. He was of the opinion that Intellisense reduces productivity. Of course I thought that was insane but I could be wrong. Is there any evidence to support the idea that Intellisense reduces productivity?"}
{"_id": "201457", "title": "Does relying on intellisense and documentation a lot while coding makes you a bad programmer?", "text": "Is a programmer required to learn and memorize all syntax, or is it ok to keep handy some documentation? Would it affect the way that managers look at coders? What are the downside of depending on intellisense and auto-complete technologies and pdf documentation?"}
{"_id": "197983", "title": "Do programmers (using an IDE) need to know namespaces?", "text": "I got into a discussion with a coworker over an interview question that was asked of a potential employee. \"Name some namespaces/what do they do/what namespace is involved with x\". I'm of the opinion that programmers don't really need to know that kind of stuff, especially with the use of an IDE and extremely accessible documentation. He feels that a programmer with experience should be able to name namespaces. This is valid, I suppose, especially if you're looking to hire someone into a more experienced position. They don't particularly need to memorize namespaces, but anyone that has experience should be able to rattle off some namespaces and what their purpose is. What are your thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "137252", "title": "Is it a good idea to generate code with the help of your IDE?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should newbies use IDE autocomplete (Intellisense)? Since I moved on to actual IDEs for C++, Java and Python, I noticed they automatically try to complete my code. For example if I write `System.out.pr[...]` I am automatically offered a list from which I can select the item I want to use. As a beginner I avoided using this feature as I thought I should learn the syntax by typing. Was I correct in thinking that? From a more experienced programmer's point of view, I'd see no harm in using this feature."}
{"_id": "126690", "title": "What should I learn in Java SE before proceeding to Java EE?", "text": "Currently, I've learned the following in Java SE:   * Logical Operations   * Loops   * Inheritance   * Polymorphism   * Abstract Classes   * Interface I'm currently learning Strings, Characters and Regular Expressions. What are things that I should learn before proceeding to Java EE?"}
{"_id": "126691", "title": "Academic programming languages?", "text": "Back in the day, there were a lot of academic programming languages (okay, maybe not a _lot_ , but it seems like there were more than today). I distinctly remember spending time in both high school and college learning languages like Basic, Ada, Pascal, Prolog, Haskell, Scheme, and Turing. While it's unfair to call all those languages solely academic, it's also unfair to say they are industrially equivalent to an enterprise language like Java (or even C or Smalltalk back in the day). My question is, what academic languages are still in use (and still taught today)? It seems like there's a lot of Java schools, and a rising number of Python schools, and even some that teach languages like C as the first programming language - but what would be the modern equivalent to something like Pascal?"}
{"_id": "89440", "title": "What can I gain from examining others code?", "text": "I recently downloaded some large code bases and have had light reads through them, but what can I gain from this? How can I be sure what the author is doing is the right way to go about things? (One of the the code bases was the Zeus Trojan source code ;D)"}
{"_id": "160545", "title": "What do employers look for in self-taught applicants?", "text": "I'm a self-taught programmer about to enter the job market. What I want to know is what is the best way to show my experience to employers? What do employers want to know about my programming experience? Do employers want to look at code I wrote or could they want to see the software in action? Or do they only care how much my software is being used/how much it has created revenue? Should I write about my design and programming style? My background: I recently graduated from a university where I studied foreign languages, and it was during this time when I found out that programming is the thing I really want to do. Currently I'm a garage programmer, developing a software for a client for commercial use while continuing to self-teach myself, but my aim is to start a \"proper\" employment and career. As an added twist I live in Finland at the moment, but I'm looking for employment in China or Japan (I learned both languages while studying abroad). Any help is greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "66843", "title": "Kind of project for pair programming interview", "text": "As discussed in the SO question Pair Programming for a job interview, there are mixed feelings on the usefulness of this approach. For those that have used this approach, what kind of projects are useful? From my limited experience with this as an interviewee, a key seems to be a well chosen task that the candidate can understand quickly and be able to contribute to (and the latter may depend somewhat on the candidate's background). I've gone through a couple days of pairing interviews and found some periods to seem like a few hours were wasted: one because the developer wasn't working on something that lent itself to pairing (messy code that the developer wasn't very familiar with and was already interacting with someone about) and involved a tech I wasn't very familiar with. Another case was because an unexpected build issue prevented much useful work for a long while. One shop trying this approach wasn't sure if they should have someone outside the company work on a customer's project - any thoughts on this? They also worried that explaining the domain and system would take too long, though without that the candidate may not be able to contribute much. So they chose an open source project the employee was working on, though that's likely not an option for everyone. Recently, there have been a lot of folks working on _coding katas_ for various things. I'm wondering if this would be a useful thing to use. Some sites even have them in multiple languages and multiple skill levels (e.g. http://codingkata.org), which could be useful for candidates and/or employees with different backgrounds. [I guess coding katas could be used even for coding exercises in non-pairing interviews - I'll ask a separate question on that: What coding katas are good for interview exercises]"}
{"_id": "66842", "title": "Reading SICP with F#?", "text": "I've been meaning to read the SICP book for a while, and am finally about to get around to it (now that I can read it on Kindle :) I'd like to learn a functional language, and I use C# at work so thought it might be a good idea to go through the book with F# in my mind rather than Scheme. (That is, do the exercises in F#.) I wonder though, will there be much mental disjoint between Scheme and F#? Maybe it's better to go through with Scheme on the first pass?"}
{"_id": "51003", "title": "Should a .NET, JavaScript and SQL Web App developer learn Perl?", "text": "I'm a front and backend .NET web developer (most solutions use MS SQL Server) and I won't be using any non-MS solutions for a while. Will Perl be useful for situations that require scripting in an MS product environment?"}
{"_id": "220104", "title": "We have a custom program that generates all the stored procs and classes for the Data Tier. Where will I put the generated classes?", "text": "This is more of an architectural question regarding MVC and Data Access: We have a custom program that generates all the stored procs and classes for the Data Tier from the MS SQL database. It's pretty nice as it generates a base class with the basic CRUD operations which includes ForeignKey reads. It also generates the plural version of the class to return the collections of objects. For the next phase of our application we are planning on using MVC but we were hoping to continue using this great tool. Where will I put the generated classes in my new MVC application? I have seen people create an Infrastructure folder for their data access logic. Is it a good idea to continue using this tool or should we be converting to the Entity Framework? Also if the DAL is returning my objects and lists of objects what will I put in my Model layer?"}
{"_id": "214968", "title": "Principles of an extensible data proxy", "text": "There is a growing industry now with more than 30 companies playing in the Backend-As-A-Service (BaaS) market. The principle is simple: give companies a secure way of exposing data housed on premises and behind the firewall publicly. This can include database data, as well as Legacy PC data through established connectors; SAP for example provides a connector for transacting with their legacy systems. Early attempts were fixed providers for specific systems like SAP, IBM or Oracle, but the new breed is extensible, allowing Channel Partners and Consultants to build robust integration applications that can consume whatever data sources the client wants to expose. I just happen to be close to finishing a Cloud Based HTML5 application platform that provides robust integration services, and I would like to break ground on an extensible data proxy to complete the system. From what I can gather, I need to provide either an installable web service of some kind, or a Cloud service which the client can configure with VPN for interactions. Then I can build in connectors, which can be activated with a service account, and expose those transactions via web services of some kind (JSON, SOAP, etc). I can also provide a framework that allows people to build in their own connectors, and use some kind of schema to hook those connectors into the proxy. The end result is some kind of public facing web service that could securely be consumed by applications to show data through HTML5 on any device. My gut is, this isn't as hard as it sounds. Almost all of the 30+ companies (With more popping up almost weekly) have all come into existence in the last 18 months or so, which tells me either the root technology, or the skillset to create the technology is in abundance right now. Where should I start on this? Are there some open source projects I can leverage? A specific group of developers I can hire? I'm confident someone here can set me on the right path and save me some time. You don't see this many companies spring up this rapidly if they are all starting from scratch with proprietary technology. The Register: WTF is BaaS One Minute Video from Kony on their BaaS"}
{"_id": "127344", "title": "How do you test a data load?", "text": "I'm working on a project that involves loading batches of 3000+ files to several dozen tables. There is no user interface, and the tables are simply available for querying. What are the best practices for testing this type of process?   * Loading a small set of data and validating each and every member?   * Loading all the data and validating a subset?   * Loading all the data and validating counts, averages, and other metrics? Are there other types of testing that can be done, or is some combination best?"}
{"_id": "120698", "title": "Diagram that could explain a state machine's code?", "text": "We have a lot of concepts in making diagrams like UML and flowcharting or just making up whatever boxes-and-arrows combination works at the time, but I'm looking at doing a visual diagram on something that's actually _really_ complex. State machines like those that parse HTML or regular expressions tend to be very long and complicated bits of code. For example, this is the stateLoop for FireFox 9 beta. It's actually generated by another file, but this is the code that runs. How can I diagram something with the complexity of this in a way that explains flow of the code without taking it to a level where I draw every single line- of-code into it's own box on a flowchart? I don't want to draw \"Invoke loop, then return\" but I don't want to explain every last detail. What kind of graph is suitable to do this? Is there already something out there similar to this? Just an example of how to do this without going overboard in complexity or too-high-level is really what I want. * * * If you don't feel like looking at the code, basically it's 70 different state flags that could occur, inside an infinite loop that exists to a label based on some conditions, each flag has it's own infinite loop that exists to a label somewhere, and each of those loops has checks for different types of chars, which then runs off into various other methods."}
{"_id": "244883", "title": "Algorithm to reduce calls to mapping API", "text": "A random distribution of points lies on a map. This data lies behind an API, and I want to grab the complete set of points within a given bounding box. I can query the API with the bounding box and the API will return the set of points that fall within that box. The problem is that the API will limit the result set to 10 items, with no pagination and no indication if there are more points that have been omitted. So I made a recursive algorithm that takes a bounding box and requests the points that lie within it. If the result set is exactly 10 items, then I split the bounding box into four quadrants and recurse. It works fine but my question is this: if want to minimize the number of API calls, what is the optimal way to split the bounding box? Splitting it into quadrants was just an arbitrary decision. When there are a lot of points on the map, I have to drill down many levels before I start getting meaningful results. So I imagine it might be faster to split the box into, say, 9, 16, or more sections. But if I do that, then I eventually get to a point where a lot of requests are returning 0 results which isn't so efficient. Also, does the size of the limit on the results set affect the answer? (This is all assuming that I have no prior knowledge of nominal point density in the bounding box)"}
{"_id": "244887", "title": "Should XmlDocument.xml be Included in Source Control", "text": "In a Web API 2 project, in the project properties, I have enabled the output of an XML documentation file. By default, Visual Studio 2013 wants to check this into TFS. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to exclude it, but wondered what the general opinion is on this?"}
{"_id": "149871", "title": "Confused about modifying the sprint backlog during a sprint", "text": "I've been reading a lot about scrum lately, and I've found what seem to me to be conflicting information about whether or not it's ok to change the sprint backlog during a sprint. The Wikipedia article on scrum says it's not ok, and various other articles say this as well. Also my Software Development professor taught the same thing during an overview of scrum. However, I read Scrum and XP from the Trenches and that describes a section for unplanned items on the taskboard. So then I looked up the Scrum Guide and it says that during the sprint \"No changes are made that would affect the Sprint Goal\" and in the discussion of the Sprint Goal \"If the work turns out to be different than the Development Team expected, then they collaborate with the Product Owner to negotiate the scope of Sprint Backlog within the Sprint.\" It goes on to say in the discussion of the Sprint Backlog: > The Sprint Backlog is a plan with enough detail that changes in progress can > be understood in the Daily Scrum. The Development Team modifies Sprint > Backlog throughout the Sprint, and the Sprint Backlog emerges during the > Sprint. This emergence occurs as the Development Team works through the plan > and learns more about the work needed to achieve the Sprint Goal. > > As new work is required, the Development Team adds it to the Sprint Backlog. > As work is performed or completed, the estimated remaining work is updated. > When elements of the plan are deemed unnecessary, they are removed. Only the > Development Team can change its Sprint Backlog during a Sprint. The Sprint > Backlog is a highly visible, real-time picture of the work that the > Development Team plans to accomplish during the Sprint, and it belongs > solely to the Development Team. So at this point I'm altogether confused. Thinking about it, it makes more sense to me to take the second approach. The individual, specific items in the backlog don't seem to me to be the most important thing, but rather the sprint goal, so not changing the sprint goal but being able to change the backlog makes sense. For instance if both the product owner and the team thought they were on the same page about a story, but as the sprint progressed they figured out there was a misunderstanding, it seems like it makes sense to change the tasks that make up that story accordingly. Or if there was some story or task that was forgotten about, but is required to reach the sprint goal, I would think it would be best to add the story or task to the backlog during the sprint. However, there are a lot of people who seem quite adamant that any change to the sprint backlog is not ok. Am I misunderstanding that position somehow? Are those folks defining the sprint backlog differently somehow? My understanding of the sprint backlog is that it consists of both the stories and the tasks they're broken down into. Anyway I would really appreciate input on this issue. I'm trying to figure out both what the idealistic scrum approach is to changing the sprint backlog during a sprint, and whether people who use scrum successfully for development allow changing the sprint backlog during a sprint."}
{"_id": "118185", "title": "Why can't we get anything done?", "text": "I work on a small team, in a medium-sized company, most of which isn't involved in software development. I'm the newest and least-experienced developer and had no professional or academic background in software before starting, but I'm quite pleased with how respected my input is and am grateful for being taken seriously at such an early stage in my career. Still, I feel like I should be doing more with this generous amount of airtime. As a team, we seem to have trouble getting things done. I'd like to be able to suggest something to improve the situation, and I think I'd be listened to if it was a good idea, but I'm at a loss for what to suggest. Things I can identify as being issues include:   * Specification of the tasks at hand is sparse. This is partly because management is a bottleneck and we don't have the money or people to commit to working out detailed requirements as much as we'd like. It's also partly because the software we're developing is investigative and the precise method isn't clear until it's demonstrated and used to determine its effectiveness.   * The Lead Dev is very fond of what he calls 'prototyping' to the point that he's lately started insisting that everything is 'prototyped', which to the rest of us looks like writing bad code and giving it to the modellers to play with. It isn't clear what he expects to come out of this exercise in many cases. The 'actual' implementation then suffers because of his insistence that good practice takes too much time from the prototyping. I haven't even begun to be able to untangle this twisted logic and I'm not sure I want to try.   * The modellers are expected to tell us everything about the desired methodology in precise detail, and it's taken on absolute trust that what they come out with is theoretically flawless. This is hardly ever true, but no action is taken to rectify this situation. Nobody on the modelling side raises any concerns in a structured way that is likely to be acted upon, nor do they seek guidance in applying best practices. Nothing is done about their passivity either.   * I've tried to push TDD in the team before, but found it difficult as it's new to me and while those with oversight of my work were willing to tolerate it, no enthusiasm has been forthcoming from anyone else. I can't justify the amount of time I spend wallowing and not finishing features, so the idea has - for the moment - been abandoned. I'm concerned it won't be picked up again, because nobody likes to be told how to do their job.   * We now have a continuous integration server, but it's mostly only being used to run multiple-hour regression tests. It's been left open that it ought to be running full-coverage unit and integration tests as well, but at the moment nobody writes them.   * Every time I raise the issue of quality with the lead dev, I get an answer to the effect of 'Testing feature A is straightforward, feature B is much more important to the user but too difficult to test, therefore we shouldn't test feature A'. Once again I've made no headway in trying to untangle this logic.  ....phew. When I phrase it like that, it looks much worse than I thought. I suppose, as it turns out, this is a cry for help."}
{"_id": "126966", "title": "What visualization method would you recommend for event driven programs?", "text": "What visualization method would you recommend for event driven programs? Are there industry standard diagrams, such as flowcharts?"}
{"_id": "83716", "title": "How to properly understand django framework?", "text": "I have decent knowledge of php, i.e., I can take a framework, read its code and if the docs are adequate, understand what its doing. Main reason for that is that php is actually a very easy language which is literally made for web- dev.   I have been trying to learn django for a week now, can knock up a basic app with it, but there are just too many things which go over my head, i.e, look like magic, reason for that , i think is that the whole interaction with the server thing is part of django, which is all handled by your server in php, I want to read more about this part, i.e. what all topics should i cover to 'get' this. please suggest some books too"}
{"_id": "166165", "title": "Identifying languages used by particular industries", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What technologies are used for Game development now days? I am new to programming and I don't know the differences between the major languages. I desperately want to get into the gaming industry because I have so many stories I want to tell and so many experiences I want to create. I currently do 3D modeling/animation, so any similarities would be helpful. What steps should I take to investigate an industry (gaming) and the companies within that industry? How do I identify what programming languages they use, so I can study them?"}
{"_id": "200739", "title": "Beginner programmer wants to work his way up to game development", "text": "I've taken a course in computer science that covered basics about java and programming from conditionals and loops to inheritance and interfaces. I also got Head First Java from a friend who didn't write in it. After I finish that book, what should I do before I head into developing games? Also, I've been just making command line games and math programs for now. Is that good practice? I'm just worried that I will only be repeating things that I already know, and that I won't be learning anything new."}
{"_id": "163930", "title": "How relevant is UTF-7 when it comes to parsing emails?", "text": "I recently implemented incoming emails for an application and boy, did I open the gates of hell? Since then every other day an email arrives that makes the app fail in a different way. One of those things is emails encoded as UTF-7. Most emails come as ASCII, some of the Latin encodings, or thankfully, UTF-8. Hotmail error messages (like email address doesn't exist or quota exceeded) seem to come as UTF-7. Unfortunately, UTF-7 is not an encoding Ruby understands:               > \"hello world\".encode(\"utf-8\", \"utf-7\")     Encoding::ConverterNotFoundError: code converter not found (UTF-7 to UTF-8)          > Encoding::UTF_7      => #<Encoding:UTF-7 (dummy)>       My application doesn't crash, it actually handles the email quite well, but it does send me a notification about the potential error. I spent some time googling and I can't find anyone that implemented the conversion, at least not as a Ruby 1.9.3 Encoding::Converter. So, my question is, since I never got an email with actual content, from an actual person, in UTF-7, how relevant is that encoding? can I safely ignore it?"}
{"_id": "163931", "title": "Is using a bigger buffer useful?", "text": "I use buffer for quite a long time when I need to copy a stream or read a file. And every time I set my buffer size to 2048 or 1024, but from my point of view a buffer is like a \"bucket\" which carries my \"sand\" (stream) from one part of my land (memory) to an other part. So, increase my bucket capacity will in theory allow me to do less travel? Is this a good things to do in programming?"}
{"_id": "155239", "title": "Are all languages basically the same?", "text": "Recently, i had to understand the design of a small program written in a language i had no idea about (ABAP, if you must know). I could figure it out without too much difficulty. I realize that mastering a new language is a completely different ball game, but purely understanding the intent of code (specifically production standard code, which is not necessarily complex) in any language is straight forward, if you already know a couple of languages (preferably one procedural/OO and one functional). Is this generally true? Are all programming languages made up of similar constructs like loops, conditional statements and message passing between functions? Are there non-esoteric languages that a typical Java/Ruby/Haskell programmer would not be able to make sense of? Do all languages have a common origin?"}
{"_id": "163934", "title": "How to correctly write an installation or setup document", "text": "I just joined a small start-up as a software engineer after graduation. The start-up is 4 year old, and I am working with the CEO and the COO, even if there are some people abroad. Basically they both used to do almost everything. I am currently on some kind of training phase. I have at my disposition architecture, setup and installation internal documentation. Architecture documentation is like a bible and should contain complete information. The rest are used to give directions in different processes. The issue is that these documents are more or less dated, as they just didn't have the time to change them. I will be in charge of training the next hires, and updating these documents is part of my training. In some there is a lot of hard-coded information like:                Install this_module_which_still_exists          cd this_dir_name_changed          cp this_file_name_changed other_dir_name_changed          ./config_script.sh           ./execute_script.sh      The issues i have faced :   * Either the module installation is completely different (for instance now there is an rpm, or a different OS)   * Either names changed, and i need to switch old names by new names   * Description of the purpose of the current step missing.   * Information about a whole topic is missing Fortunately these guys are around and I get all the information I want and all the explanations I need. I want to bring a design to the next documents so in the future people don't feel like they are completely rewriting a document each time they are updating it. Do you have suggestions? If there is a lightweight design methodology available online you can point me to it's nice too. One thing I will do for sure is set up a versioning repository for the documents alone. There is already one for the source code so I don't know why internal documents deserve a different treatment."}
{"_id": "253753", "title": "What are the difference between: agent, actor, dataflow based programming?", "text": "What are the difference between the following terms?   * agent-based programming   * agent-based programming with microagents   * actor-based programming   * actor-based programming with lightweight actors   * dataflow based programming It is hard to find comparing articles and they are very similar. Afaik they have different constraints and they are implemented on a different abstraction level, but I need some reassurance..."}
{"_id": "245284", "title": "PHP - Repository matrix pattern?", "text": "I'm trying really hard to refactor some of my legacy code in the project using best practices and design patterns + DDD so I'd love some feedback on an issue I'm currently having. Let's assume that I have two entity classes:               class Dog     {         protected $name;              function __construct($name)         {             $this->name = $name;         }              /**          * @return mixed          */         public function getName()         {             return $this->name;         }              function bark()         {             echo 'Rawr';         }     }          class Husky extends Dog     {         /**          * @var Sledge          */         protected $sledge;              function __construct($name, Sledge $slegde)         {             parent::__construct($name);             $this->sledge = $slegde;         }              function pull()         {             echo $this->sledge->pull();         }     }      `Dog` is my regular entity and his only responsibility is to map database fields. `Husky` on the other hand has same responsibilities as dog but also delegates `Sledge` pulling. Normally, both entities would have different repositories (should they? Since one inherits from one another) to call for, however business requirement implies that client does not have to specify dog's type (so it can either be a \"basic\" `Dog` or special `Husky`), just its name `http://localhost/animal/fluffy`. What is more, currently they both reside in the same database table (recognized by `type` field) and right now there are no technical plans to change that (performance and time reasons). What is the best way to do it?   * Should I create some `AnimalRepository`, pull the data and treat it as DTO, detect it's type and then create appropriate class?   * Should I create some kind of higher abstraction level mapper? How should it look like?"}
{"_id": "245287", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of splitting teams by architecture tier rather than by product?", "text": "As the title states; what are the advantages and disadvantages of splitting teams by architecture tier rather than by product? **_For example:_** **Organization A** has three teams:   * Team Web and Front End   * Team APIs, Web-Services and Data Stuffs   * Team Embedded Stuffs _Organization A_ teams, over time, have become more specialized in their work rather than being truly full-stack developers. **Organization B** has three teams:   * Team Product Alpha   * Team Product Beta   * Team Product Charlie _Organization B_ has fostered an environment of full-stack developers that are all fairly interchangeable among one-another. What will **Organization A** be able to do better (and not so better) than **Organization B** , and vice versa? You don't necessarily need to take the examples to heart, as they were just to get the point of my question across."}
{"_id": "213464", "title": "What does \"because IL offers no instructions to manipulate registers, it is easy for people to create new languages\" mean?", "text": "I am reading CLR via C# and came across this sentence in the first chapter and I did not understand what exactly it meant. Full line here: > because IL offers no instructions to manipulate registers, it is easy for > people to create new languages and compilers that produce code targeting the > CLR. What does it mean? I ventured a guess that it means IL is a bit low level, but not too low so that it is easy to create languages on top of it."}
{"_id": "195632", "title": "Creating alien symbols or signs that look natural", "text": "I was reading some Cthulhu Mythos stuff and started to think about those various signs and symbols that are used in the texts. Of course those are made by humans but point is that they look natural to human eyes. So, what kind of algorithm would be needed to create natural looking symbols and signs? How this problem could be approached? I guess Golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers are in key role."}
{"_id": "215700", "title": "What is the best approach for deploying apps to companies", "text": "What is the best approach for the following scenario: 1) A publicly available app (available in app stores) which is used by end users to make use of services offered by multiple companies. 2) These companies maintain their services also using a mobile app. I'm not sure on how to solve the second part. Having one app for both enduser and admin functionality, secured by username/password doesn't sound like a good idea. This would leave the only option of developing a separate admin application for the companies. What is the best approach to deploy \"admin\" like mobile apps to companies only, for Android, iOS and Windows Phone? Some additional information: > Public App ----> Servers -----> Multiple Company Apps The public app shows all companies offering their services. An end user uses the public app to order something from a specific company. The order is sent to our servers. Our servers send the order to the associated company. This order is displayed on the company's admin app and given the option to accept the order."}
{"_id": "2776", "title": "What do you think about the Joel Test?", "text": "The Joel Test is a well known test for determining how good your team is. What do you think about the points? Do you disagree with any of them? Is there anything that you would add?"}
{"_id": "195633", "title": "Good approaches for packaging PHP web applications for Debian", "text": "Many PHP web applications follow this model for installation and upgrade:   1. Un-tar a source tar ball.   2. Point Apache at the source.   3. Navigate a web browser to the home page.   4. Go through several web pages of set-up (e.g., checks for existence of libraries, asks for database connection information, creates or updates database schema, etc.).   5. User renames an `install/` directory to something else so that application knows it has been installed. I don't see any (simple) way to create a Debian package out of this without making the user installing the package go through many of the above manual steps. Note that I am not a developer on the application so I am not in a position to make direct change to how the application installation works. What is the typical approach to packaging such an application?"}
{"_id": "215706", "title": "Variable declaration versus assignment syntax", "text": "Working on a statically typed language with type inference and streamlined syntax, and need to make final decision about syntax for variable declaration versus assignment. Specifically I'm trying to choose between:               // Option 1. Create new local variable with :=, assign with =     foo := 1     foo = 2          // Option 2. Create new local variable with =, assign with :=     foo = 1     foo := 2      Creating functions will use `=` regardless:               // Indentation delimits blocks     square x =         x * x      And assignment to compound objects will do likewise:               sky.color = blue     a[i] = 0      Which of options 1 or 2 would people find most convenient/least surprising/otherwise best?"}
{"_id": "136236", "title": "Assigning development work effectively to enable parallel development", "text": "I am currently doing my 1st accademic project where we have to work in groups of 4 to develop an application (java ...). Anyways, how might work be assigned so that there is less dependencies on each other and we can work separately instead of waiting on one another? I suggested 1 person develop 1 layer: Model, View, Controller, Data Access. I am working on Data Access but I find I need Model classes: For example My `EventsDataAccess` has a `findEventByName(String name)` that returns an `Event`, which is developed by another person. How should I proceed? Here `Event` is a very small class so it shouldn't take long, but suppose its big, it might be a long wait? How is work usually split up for developers in a small to medium sized team? Its so much easier to work in say a very small familiar team with, say 2 persons only"}
{"_id": "255975", "title": "Multiple burndown charts on TFS project page", "text": "we work with Scrum in TFS2013, with one main project and multiple teams. What I want to do is make the homepage for the project display each teams burndown chart, so management can easily see all teams progress. Currently it rolls up all the burndown charts into a single burndown, and if I create charts I can only get line / bar / pie charts that are far less effective at displaying the same information. Is it possible to pin burn down charts to home pages? Thanks."}
{"_id": "193517", "title": "Functional document from code", "text": "I am a Sr java Developer and have recently joined a new team. Here I have been asked to create a functional document looking at the code of a legacy application. This application was written about 8-10 years back, which is currently running in live environment but due to lack of documentation it is difficult to be setup and run on local development box. I consulted some of the old team members who support it, but none was able to run it on their dev boxes. Now I have to create a functional document out of it (with running it only looking at the code) which will act as a base to re-write this application with new technology and some enhancements. Kindly suggest what would be the best way to move forward? I tried to find out from testers and found that there is no tester currently allocated to this application as it's an old running app on live. There are not much enhancements or bugs coming up. Ans as this re-write project is already queued up, the management is looking into aligning any coming bugs to this new app."}
{"_id": "255973", "title": "C++ : Association, Aggregation and Composition", "text": "I'm beginning to study OOAD and I'm having difficulty finding a `C++` code example that'd illustrate how `Association`, `Aggregation` and `Composition` are implemented programmatically. (There are several posts everywhere but they relate to C# or java). I did find an example or two, but they all conflict with my instructor's instructions and I'm confused. My understanding is that in:   * **Association:** Foo has a pointer to Bar object as a data member    * **Aggregation:** Foo has a pointer to Bar object and data of Bar is deep copied in that pointer.    * **Composition:** Foo has a Bar object as data member. And this is how I've implemented it:               //ASSOCIATION     class Bar     {         Baz baz;     };     class Foo     {         Bar* bar;         void setBar(Bar* _bar)         {             bar=_bar;         }     };          //AGGREGATION     class Bar     {         Baz baz;     };     class Foo     {         Bar* bar;         void setBar(Bar* _bar)         {             bar = new Bar;             bar->baz=_bar->baz;         }     };               //COMPOSTION     class Bar     {         Baz baz;     };     class Foo     {         Bar bar;         Foo(Baz baz)         {             bar.baz=baz;         }     };      Is this correct? If not, then how should it be done instead? It'd be appreciated if you also give me a reference of a code from a book (so that I can discuss with my instructor)"}
{"_id": "255971", "title": "Entity design for a blackjack game - should I make Card an entity?", "text": "I am creating a simple blackjack game backed by database In my Card is               public class Card{      private Face face;      private Suit suit;           //setters.. getters     }      where `face` and `suit` are enums I have an entity `Bet` with the following               @Entity     public class Bet{        private Player player;        private String cards;        //...     }      Currently when I'm dealing cards I parse the suit and face to string and concatenate them in the cards field and then parse the cards if I want to calculate the score. I find this cumbersome so I want to change my field \"cards\" to List in the Bet Entity. Now, if that's the case I would have to make the Card class an entity as well. But my `cardService`, which is where I get my cards, does not rely on the database, it just creates random cards so it does not make sense to make card an entity - am I right?"}
{"_id": "166268", "title": "How secure (or insecure) is it to install Node packages globally?", "text": "Should I be concerned with security when installing Node packages globally? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "82593", "title": "Javascript Ternary Operator vs. ||", "text": "I was taking a look at some node.js code earlier, and I noticed that the guy who wrote it seemed to favour the following syntax:               var fn = function (param) {         var paramWithDefault = null == param ? 'Default Value' : param;     }      Over what I consider to be the more concise:               var fn = function (param) {         var paramWithDefault = param || 'Default Value';     }      I was wondering if the second form is actually more socially acceptable JavaScript syntax, I've seen it out in the wild more times than the ternary operator for this purpose. I note that in the first example he's using the double equals (not the triple equals) which means it will count \"undefined\" as null, which would reduce one impact that I could think of. However, I've read in numerous places that == is a rather evil operator in JavaScript (JSLint is very much against it, IIRC)."}
{"_id": "116961", "title": "Is it unethical to track app usage through REST API calls?", "text": "I am building an app that communicates with my website with ASIHTTPRequest to a PHP-based REST API on the server side. Naturally, in my app I have different endpoints on the server side, and usually return JSON data. Is it unethical to log counters on how many times each endpoint was hit? I'd like to capture how the app was used capturing what endpoint was hit, the user agent, time of day, possibly their IP (to group visits etc). Should I ask permission to do this?"}
{"_id": "116965", "title": "Why aren't VM languages compiled just once?", "text": "(First of all, I should make clear that compilers and virtual machines (aka) are a completely unknown field for me) As I understand it, every time a Java/C#/... application is run, a VM is invoked and translates intermediate code (bytecode, CIL, etc) to machine instructions. But why can't this operation done only once - at install time?"}
{"_id": "10816", "title": "\"G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach\" still valid today?", "text": "I have just completed a course on computability and logic which was an interesting course. The lecturer recommend a few books on his slides, which include \"G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach\". I can see the book is quite famous, and looks very interesting. But I have a few questions to ask regarding its content.   1. Is the content still valid today? I guess most theoretical stuff doesn't change over night, but are there any major points which no longer hold today that I should be aware of?   2. I assume we actually HAVE made some progress in the last 30 years or so. Can any of you recommend a book on the subject which includes this progress (logic, AI, computability)? _Another question:_ Do I have to know about Escher and Bach?"}
{"_id": "116969", "title": "iPad app architecture with very large files", "text": "I am working on an iPad app. It needs to contain some very large files. I could put them into the app, but they would push it well over 20MB, which means that it would not be downloadable over the air -- only via iTunes. Is there a way around this without too much pain for me? I don't have a server or anything like that."}
{"_id": "56254", "title": "Studentworker - being a superhero?", "text": "A couple of weeks ago I got a new job as a studentworker for a webagency. The job is 15-20 hours of week. Even though I am new in the company, I feel right at home and I enjoy working with my co-workers. To start of with, I was assigned to work on an internal tool in the company, in order to learn their systems and their development platform. The deadline for this project is this week, and I am right on time. But today (wednesday at noon) I received an email from my boss, asking me to do a new project that has a deadline at friday morning. The new assignment alone will be hard to finish on time, and on top of that I need to finish the other assignment on time. My question is: How do I handle my boss expecting me to be a superhero? **EDIT:** I will talk to my boss about delaying one of the projects. But another problem is that the new assignment will be hard to do on time (friday morning). I didn't have a say on the deadline - I just got a mail telling me the deadline. I am new in the company and want to stay, but I don't want to start off on the wrong foot with the boss."}
{"_id": "194058", "title": "Structuring the XML Response", "text": "I'm designing an XML response for a consuming application to take in, and I'm weighing two different designs. Currently I have a design as follows (where the Product element can repeat):               <Response>         <AccountType>         <ProductType>         <Products>            <Product>                <ProductID />                <ProductStatus />                <ProductName />            </Product>            <Product>                <ProductID />                <ProductStatus />                <ProductName />            </Product>         </Products>     </Response>      An alternate design is:               <Response>         <AccountType>         <ProductType>         <Product>             <ProductID />             <ProductStatus />             <ProductName />         </Product>         <Product>             <ProductID />             <ProductStatus />             <ProductName />         </Product>     </Response>      In the first design I have a master element called Products, under which each Product element exists and can repeat within Products. The second design is a little flatter - where Product exists under the main Response node. Which one of the two is more optimal for a consuming application to read from and process?"}
{"_id": "194050", "title": "Why Object.clone() is able to \"see\" fields defined in subclasses?", "text": "I was wandering how can Object.Clone() access field fields that are actually defined in the subclasses, and not the actual implementation of this feature. What is bothering me is that I cannot see the logic to allow base class (even if it is \"special\") to access the fields defined in the subclasses - doesn't this breaks whole object inheritance concept? Consider this:               class Test implements Cloneable     {         private String test_field;              public Test()         {         }              public Test clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException         {            return (Test)super.clone();         }     }      Here, calling `Test.clone()` will copy the `test_field` also. Things are even getting weirder for me when it comes to the situation where `Test` is declared as an abstract class - calling `clone()` will allow me (in some way) to get the instance of the abstract class."}
{"_id": "194057", "title": "Using a DAO to abstract our ORM from the rest of the application", "text": "We're using MySQL with Sequelize.js as the ORM. What we're wondering is whether a DOA layer of abstraction is worthwhile. Here are our options:   1. To use the Sequelize models throughout the application.   2. To abstract Sequelize by building a layer that converts Sequelize models to Backbone models so that we're using Backbone throughout the rest of the application instead. Is abstraction important in this case or is it normal to use Models from the ORM throughout the other layers?"}
{"_id": "150466", "title": "How to test a program in an efficient way?", "text": "I know that a writing test case is one of the way to do some programming level testing, but how to test some careless mistake? or how to reduce? For example, a `buttonA`, should perform `ActionA`, but sometime, just human mistake, the `buttonA` perform `ActionB`. And it requires the human test, it seems can't automatic the testing process, any hints to do so? Thanks."}
{"_id": "16308", "title": "Why is it you never get as much done as you'd planned?", "text": "I always start the day thinking \"I'll easily get this done by the end of the day\" and set what looks like a realistic target. So why do I never hit it? The task always ends up taking 3x longer due to unforeseen bugs, last minute changes etc. Is it just me? I don't seem to be getting any better predicting what can be done in a day."}
{"_id": "65762", "title": "Is there a canonical resource on ERP?", "text": "For a while I've been wanting to learn ERP. What I would like to do is set up a system, and then practice running a business doing things like generating invoices, raising purchase orders, producing monthly accounts, and keeping track of fixed assets. Then look at enhancing the system further by adding custom code. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on ERP? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "16301", "title": "Tips for working fast", "text": "What are some tips for helping to design and construct applications faster?"}
{"_id": "193287", "title": "Term for a Class with Multiple Interfaces", "text": "Say I have a class that implements multiple interfaces. I pass the same instance around using a different interface, depending on what the consumer is interested in. I am trying to remember what this is called. I know there is a fancy name for it - I thought it was \"interface partitioning\", but I'm not finding any hits. The official name and perhaps a link to a site explaining what it is would be handy. In case I haven't explained myself well enough, here is a real world example. I have a class, call it `ContextManager`, that is responsible for providing access to configuration settings, session variables, user information and other utilities. Instead of passing the object around as a `ContextManager`, I might pass it around as an `IConfigurationManager` in one spot and as a `IUserManager` in another. This prevents the client from accessing things they shouldn't care about and allows me to reuse code within the class. I just want to know what it is called?"}
{"_id": "117382", "title": "What programming language is most suitable for handling unstructured data?", "text": "I'm trying to automate the application of metadata to huge amount of text, but I'm not sure what language would make this task easier (if there is one). What programming language is most suitable for handling unstructured text? Why? If the answer is \"it depends\", what are a few examples of why you would use one language over another?"}
{"_id": "158255", "title": "How to store data in Gujarati language in SQLite?", "text": "I am developing an Android application for Gujarat's farmers. So this app should be in Gujarati also. Is there any way so that I can store my data in Gujarati in SQLite?"}
{"_id": "158251", "title": "Do you estimate all user stories in iteration zero?", "text": "After our product backlog is created and prioritized, are we meant to briefly estimate all the stories in the product backlog? I assume they have to be in order to create a product burndown chart, however if you have a lot of stories this could take a long time initially. Additionally, should a user story have acceptance criteria when added to the backlog or are those criteria added when the story transfers from the product backlog to the sprint backlog? It would be harder to estimate without them."}
{"_id": "105779", "title": "Common to use linear programming?", "text": "I have read about linear programming and its content and I wonder if this way of programming is common to use in the market? I often hear about object oriented programming but not linear programming. I would like to hear a discussion about it."}
{"_id": "214495", "title": "adding data gathering to a utility app and publish it to partners?", "text": "I've been working on a utility app for a while, and when we're in the final phases the boss is asking for adding user behavior and location tracking and was explicit about publishing them to 3rd party developers to make use of them. He seems to have set his mind about it, is there anything I can/should do about it? Clarify: if you are an app developer who's asked to add data gathering of the app users and publishing it, is there anything you should say against it ?"}
{"_id": "105771", "title": "Should I make public my implementation of a published algorithm?", "text": "My company has problem A, lets say, face recognition. We find a nice algorithm like this one. We implement it and go home happy. Problem is, once home I cant sleep because I wonder if we should make the implementation public. After all the algorithm was public. Someone did intensive research and did half ( or more ) the work for us. I feel like we should help back and make our efforts public too. But then our commercial product would not be very _commercial_ , just image our banner: > Hey customer please buy our grunt master 6000 software, its only $1,000.00 ! > Oh by and by the way, you can download the main algorithms here for free ! Is there some sort of licence of derivative work from these academic research papers ? Is it my duty to make my implementations public ? Or is it up to me ? Can I make money from the algorithm ?"}
{"_id": "124864", "title": "What does \"automated build\" mean?", "text": "I'm trying to add Continuous Integration to a project. According to Wikipedia, one major piece of CI is automated builds. However, I'm confused about what, exactly, that means, as the CI and build automation articles seem to disagree. **Specific points of confusion: what does \"automated build\" mean _in the context of:_**   * a project using an interpreted language, such as Python or Perl?   * building from source on an end-user's machine?   * an application that has dependencies that cannot be simply pre-compiled and distributed, such as a database in an RDBMS local to the user's machine?"}
{"_id": "120527", "title": "ResourceSerializable: an alternate to ORM and ActiveRecord", "text": "A few opinionated reasons I don't like the traditional ORM and ActiveRecord patterns:   * **They work only with a database.** Sometimes I'm dealing with objects from an API and other objects from a database. All the implementations I have seen don't allow for that. _Feel free to clue me in if I'm wrong on this._     * **They are brittle.** Changes in the database will likely break your implemenation. Some implementations can help reduce this, but a few of the ones I've seen don't.     * **Their very design is influenced by the database.** If I want to switch to using an API, I'll have to redesign the object to get it to work (likely).   * **It seems to violate the single-responsibility pattern.** They know what they are and how they act, but they also know how they are created, destroyed and saved? Seems a bit much. **What about an approach that is somewhat more familiar in PHP: implementing an interface?** In php 5.4, we'll have the `JsonSerializable` interface that defines the data to be `json_encode`d, so users will become accustomed to this type of thing. What if there was a `ResourceSerializable` interface? This is still an ORM by name, but certainly not by tradition.               interface ResourceSerializable {         /**          * Returns the id that identifies the resource.          */         function resourceId();              /**          * Returns the 'type' of the resource.          */         function resourceType();              /**          * Returns the data to be serialized.          */         function resourceSerialize();     }      _Things might be poorly named, I'll take suggestions._ **Notes:**   * **`ResourceId` will work for API's and databases.** As long as your primary key in the database is the same as the resource ID in the API, there is no conflict. All of the API's I've worked with have a unique ID for the resource, so I don't see any issues there.   * **`ResourceType` is the group or type associated with the resource.** You can use this to map the resource to an API call or a database table. If the `ResourceType` was `person`, it could map to `/api/1/person/{resourceId}` and the table `persons` (or `people`, if it's smart enough).   * **resourceSerialize() returns the data to be stored.** Keys would identify API parameters and database table columns.   * **This also seems easier to test than ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations.** I haven't done much automated testing on traditional ActiveRecord/ORM implemenations, so this is merely a guess. But it seems that I being able to create objects independently of the library helps me. I don't have to use `load()` to get an existing resource, I can simply create one and set all the right properties. This is not so easy in the ActiveRecord / Orm implemenations I've dealt with. **Downsides:**   * **You need another object to serialize it.** This also means you have more code in general as you have to use more objects.   * **You have to map resource types to API calls and database tables.** This is even more work, but some ORMs and ActiveRecord implementations require you to map objects to table names anyway. **Are there other downsides that you see?** **Does this seem feasible to you?** **How would you improve it?** _Note: I almost asked this on StackOverflow because it might be too vague for their standards, but I'm still not really familiar with programmers.stackexchange.com, so please help me improve my question if it doesn't shape up to standards here._"}
{"_id": "124860", "title": "Is there a formal anti-pattern to describe the scenerio?", "text": "Some code is written to generate Excel Spreadsheets (Office Interop).   * The code performs very poorly.       * A subsystem is designed to generate the files at night. Performance isn't a concern at night.        * A function is created to pick the correct file from the 100 different files available depending on a chosen set of parameters.       * Because physical files exist, an archival system is added to backup these files (There is no reason to archive. These files should be generated on the fly).       * This system doesn't include a configuration file, instead it has a hard coded \"server picker\" function that simply reflects upon the server the code is running upon.       * A scheduled task is necessary to support and run this service. This boils down to a single problem. The original code performs far too poorly to run in a production environment. Had the performance problem been resolved, the subsystem and subsequently archiving system, \"file picker factory function\", hard coded failure point and the maintenance of the scheduled task and its added point of failure have no need to exist. This is a \"cascading failure\" if you will. The original problem led to more bad code, more bad solutions and unnecessary overhead. Is there a formal anti- pattern or general term to describe it?"}
{"_id": "154543", "title": "Should i expect real world questions from interviewing agency ?", "text": "I started coding almost a year ago. By \"coding\" I mean HTML(5), CSS(3), and only few times I implemented some AJAX and JavaScript. I am interviewing for a position that expects me to know HTML, CSS, JS, JQuery, and AJAX. I feel confident in HTML5/CSS3 subject area and somewhat ok with javascript. Will agency expect from me to write some code during the interview? I do have a live website as an example which contains snapshots of past projects which were sent to them. I am little nervous, so any tips or recommendations are welcome."}
{"_id": "60198", "title": "Would PMP or CEH(Certified Ethical Hacker) course be more useful to a junior ASP.Net web developer?", "text": "Only recently i moved into doing Asp.net web development work, with quite a fair bit on Asp.net MVC. I'm thinking of taking up some courses to further build up my profile. I'm having a touch decision between taking PMP or CEH. Would course would benefit my current career more or maybe in the upcoming 1-2 years? Thanks."}
{"_id": "250226", "title": "How to handle hidden folders on deployed website", "text": "Our security team at work did a security scan of our soon-to-be-deployed website and one of the items that was found was \"Hidden Directory Detected\". It shows up for 3 different folders, aspnet_client, scripts, and content. The software recommends to throw a 404 instead of a 403, or to remove the folders completely. First, are the folders actually needed? How can I determine which folders in my visual studio project are actually needed in order for the site to actually run (without removing folders one-at-a-time and trying to access the site)? What is the proper way to handle this/resolve the security scan alert? Do I need to add special routing rules in the routeconfig.cs for when these paths are accessed? Edit, I should note that this is WebApi/REST service, not a regular MVC site. (Therefore, using the CustomErrors configuration section will not work)"}
{"_id": "154549", "title": "How do you handle measuring Code Coverage in JavaScript", "text": "In order to measure Code Coverage for JavaScript unit tests, one needs to instrument the code, run the tests and then perform post-processing. My concern is that, as a result, you are unit testing code that will never be run in production. Since JavaScript isn't compiled, what you test should be precisely what you execute. So here's my question, how do you handle this? One thought I had was to run Unit Testing on the production code and use that for my pass fail. I would then create a shadow of my production code, with instrumentation and run my unit tests again; this would give me my code coverage stats. Has anyone come across a method that is a little more graceful than this? **EDIT** I don't want to use browser plugins, because I then need to use a browser in order to run my unit tests."}
{"_id": "120529", "title": "What's the real benefit of meta-modeling?", "text": "After reading several texts about meta-modeling I still do not really get the practical benefit. Sometimes I think it is only an interesting mind game but no useful tool. Sure it is wise to clarify your modeling vocabulary: some may say _class_ where others say _entity_ or _concept_ , but this is just simple documentation your modeling terminology. Meta-modeling, as I understand it, is more complex, as it tries to formalize and abstract modeling. Some good examples are Keet's formal comparison of conceptual data modeling languages (UML, ERM and ORM) from academia and the Meta Object Facility (MOF) from industry. To me MOF looks as impractical as CORBA, which was also created by OMG. In theory you could use meta-modeling to transform and integrate models in different modeling languages, but is anyone actually doing this?"}
{"_id": "69648", "title": "Questions and Concerns About Using Java/Tomcat and Apache", "text": "I am having to use Java due to needing one backend library. Is it still considered good practice to set up Apache as the front-facing server and have Tomcat behind it? I am spending a lot of time configuring mod_jk. Also, what do people usually use for CMS or web-page templating in such a setup? I wanted to use Drupal, but was advised that since I'd have to set up mod_jk and jump through extra hoops configuring it, it might not be a good approach. Could you guys please suggest some common considerations or good approaches in this sort of a situation? Thanks, Alex"}
{"_id": "63421", "title": "How to handle a 'bad code' interview?", "text": "A 'bad code' interview is one where the interviewee is shown a snippet of 'bad code' and asked to correct it or point out things that are wrong with it. I have trouble with these interviews because it takes me some time to read the code, figure out what its doing, and point out the flaws. In a situation where there's time pressure, I tend to freeze up and I see that the code 'should' work, even when it doesn't. What's a good way to handle this sort of interview, and, more generally, what are some good techniques to read and understand code _quickly_?"}
{"_id": "63424", "title": "Clojure Web Application: EC2 or GAE?", "text": "I am developing a web application written in Clojure using the Compojure framework. My question is, should I deploy to Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine? I've read this article on running Clojure code on GAE, but I am still a bit concerned about the limitations on GAE. I am going to be running sandboxed Clojure code, which means I might end up needing to tinker with the JVM security policies. With EC2, I'll obviously have full control of everything. The downside is that this means more of an effort from a sys admin perspective. I'm not sure which option makes more fiscal sense. I am not expecting too much traffic initially, and suspect that I'll operate pretty close to the \"free\" tier/quotas on either service. I've had a lot of success working with EC2 in the past, but at the same time I'd love to get some experience with Google App Engine (which I've never used). So whats your vote: Amazon EC2 or Google App Engine?"}
{"_id": "187595", "title": "Setting up a development standardization guide for in-house/vendor programmers", "text": "I was recently hired by a large multi-national corporation to head up mobile development for their sales operation/support team. In a company of close to 10,000 people I am, at least in the America's, the only mobile developer. They are testing the waters and phase 1 (temp-to-hire) went well enough for them. Now they are considering expanding to other developers for their other sales operations/support teams and I've been tasked with assisting/leading the writing of a standardization guide for iOS programming. I am a big believer in giving people the freedom to work in the manner they most feel comfortable in but at the same time, I have been the creator of and on the receiving ends of big balls of mud applications. Having learned through experience I have several standards that I follow religiously such as commenting, at times almost every line - just short things but enough to let someone else know what is going on and using #pragma mark - DESCRIPTION to block off like minded methods, indentation, naming classes with a prefix to avoid name space conflicts, etc. etc. So I guess what I am looking for is not to tell another programmer how they should iterate through an array but rather some basic standardization so anyone can jump into anyone else's project and find their way around with little learning curve. I'd love to see what other means people use to maintain control over a software development group."}
{"_id": "63429", "title": "Real world Agile practices and estimates", "text": "In a perfect world, we tell the client we follow an agile methodology where we allow the scope to increase/decrease as the requirements change and we bill per hour for each iteration. In reality, estimates need to be delivered before the project starts, and there is always pressure to hit that estimate number while being flexible with scope changes. I'm wondering what sort of real-word agile practices people have applied to the de-facto waterfall based billing/estimating that we sometimes get stuck in. Can you \"break-in\" a client to agile mid project, after you have acquired trust, or are there any other techniques to transition a client to agile. *side note: in my \"real world\" situation I run a recently founded development company that does not have the luxury of forcing clients to use our method and process. Many times we have to bend our backs to use theirs, but I see it as a burden all businesses face when starting. I'm wondering how best to deal with it."}
{"_id": "187599", "title": "Is it possible to use a \"non-commercial\" REST API in a for-pay app?", "text": "I am interested in integrating the results of 3rd-party news API's into my for-pay application. The APIs would be a very small part of the app (e. g. the app is not just reselling the APIs). I have found that many APIs such as Yahoo have \"non-commercial\" conditions like the following: > YOU SHALL NOT: Sell, lease, share, transfer, or sublicense the Yahoo! APIs > or access or access codes thereto or derive income from the use or provision > of the Yahoo! APIs, whether for direct commercial or monetary gain or > otherwise, unless the API Documents specifically permit otherwise or Yahoo! > gives prior, express, written permission... (from Yahoo Local Search API page) Does this prevent the API from being used as part of any app which costs money to use? For example, if I charge you to get into my site, and then display some content from this API, is that OK? If I let you see the content from the API for free, but then charge you to do something else on the site, is that OK? I'm obviously not expecting specific legal advice. Instead, I'd like to know about either: (1) a good reference on this topic that can answer my question (2) an \"answer by example\", i. e. an example of a real-world app that does something similar"}
{"_id": "137941", "title": "Should a method do one thing and be good at it?", "text": "\"Extract Till You Drop\" is someting I've read in Uncle Bob's blog, meaning that a method should do one thing alone be good at it. **What is that one thing?** When should you stop extracting methods? Let's say I have a login class with the following methods:                public string getAssistantsPassword()      public string getAdministratorsPassword()      These retrieve the respective accounts password in the database. Then:                public bool isLogInOk()      The method compares the password that has been called or selected, and sees if the password the user provided is in the database. Is this an example of \"Extract Till You Drop\"? **When will you know when you are doing too much of extracting?**"}
{"_id": "210372", "title": "Why are we supposed to use short functions to sectionalize our code?", "text": "I've seen an increasing trend in the programming world saying that it is good practice to separate code blocks into their own functions. Obviously, if that code block is reusable, you should do that. What I do not understand is this trend of using a function call as essentially a comment that you hide your code behind if the code is not reusable. That's what code folding is for. Personally, I also hate reading code like this because it feels like it has the same problem as the GOTO statement - it becomes spaghetti code where if I'm trying to follow the program's flow I'm constantly jumping around and can't logically follow the code. It is much easier to me to follow code that is linear but has a single comment over sections of code labeling what it does. With code folding, this is essentially the same exact thing, except the code stays in a nice linear fashion. When I try to explain this to my colleagues, they say comments are evil and clutter - how is a comment on top of a block of folded code any different from a function call that will never get called more than once? How is overusing functions different than overusing comments? How are frequent use of functions different from the problems with GOTO statements? Can someone please explain the value of the programming paradigm to me?"}
{"_id": "195989", "title": "Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else?", "text": "Lately I've been trying to split long methods into several short ones. **For example:** I have a `process_url()` function which splits URLs into components and then assigns them to some objects via their methods. Instead of implementing all this in one function, I only prepare the URL for splitting in `process_url()`, and then pass it over to `process_components()` function, which then passes the components to `assign_components()` function. At first, this seemed to improve readability, because instead of huge 'God' methods and functions I had smaller ones with more descriptive names. However, looking through some code I've written that way, I've found that I now have no idea whether these smaller functions are called by any other functions or methods. **Continuing previous example:** someone looking at the code might think that `process_components()` functionality is abstracted into a function because it's called by various methods and functions, when in fact it's only called by `process_url()`. This seems somewhat wrong. The alternative is to still write long methods and functions, but indicate their sections with comments. Is the function-splitting technique I described wrong? What is the preferred way of managing large functions and methods? **UPDATE:** My main concern is that abstracting code into a function might imply that it could be called by multiple other functions. **SEE ALSO:** discussions on reddit at /r/programming (provides a different perspective rather than most of the answers here) and /r/readablecode."}
{"_id": "206366", "title": "How to avoid peppering the code with IFs", "text": "I need to add a new payment type to an existing code base. That means that I'm going to have a few methods looking like this:               if (old payment type)         process old type of payment     else         process new type of payment      Now, if this could have been determined beforehand, I would have this method point to an interface implementing a common Pay method and then that interface would be implemented by one of two classes. Unfortunately, I only know which method the customer chooses at runtime, which means I need a way to determine which branch to use. Is there another way except for just having `if`s spread through the code?"}
{"_id": "209822", "title": "Are too many if-else statements for validation bad?", "text": "From the book Professional Enterprise .Net, which has 5 star rating on Amazon that I am doubting after having a read through. Here is a Borrower class (In C# but it's pretty basic; anyone can understand it) that is part of a Mortgage application the authors built:                   public List<BrokenBusinessRule> GetBrokenRules()         {             List<BrokenBusinessRule> brokenRules = new List<BrokenBusinessRule>();                  if (Age < 18)                 brokenRules.Add(new BrokenBusinessRule(\"Age\", \"A borrower must be over 18 years of age\"));                  if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(FirstName))                 brokenRules.Add(new BrokenBusinessRule(\"FirstName\", \"A borrower must have a first name\"));                  if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(LastName))                 brokenRules.Add(new BrokenBusinessRule(\"LastName\", \"A borrower must have a last name\"));                  if (CreditScore == null)                 brokenRules.Add(new BrokenBusinessRule(\"CreditScore\", \"A borrower must have a credit score\"));             else if (CreditScore.GetBrokenRules().Count > 0)             {                 AddToBrokenRulesList(brokenRules, CreditScore.GetBrokenRules());             }                  if (BankAccount == null)                 brokenRules.Add(new BrokenBusinessRule(\"BankAccount\", \"A borrower must have a bank account defined\"));             else if (BankAccount.GetBrokenRules().Count > 0)             {                 AddToBrokenRulesList(brokenRules, BankAccount.GetBrokenRules());             }             // ... more rules here ...             return brokenRules;         }      Full code listing on snipt.org . What is confusing me is that the book is supposed to be about professional enterprise design. Maybe I am a bit biased because the author confesses in chapter 1 that he didn't genuinely know what decoupling was, or what SOLID meant until the 8th year of his programming career (and I think he wrote the book in year 8.1) I am no expert but I don't feel comfortable with:   1. Too many if else statements.    2. The class both serves as an entity _and_ has validation. Isn't that a smelly design? (You might need to view the full class to get some context) Maybe I am wrong, but I don't want to pick up bad practices from a book which is supposed to be teaching an enterprise design. The book is full of similar code snippets and it is really bugging me now. If it _is_ bad design, how could you avoid using too many if else statements. I obviously do not expect you to rewrite the class, just provide a general idea of what could be done."}
{"_id": "148849", "title": "Style for control flow with validation checks", "text": "I find myself writing a lot of code like this:               int myFunction(Person* person) {       int personIsValid = !(person==NULL);       if (personIsValid) {          // do some stuff; might be lengthy          int myresult = whatever;          return myResult;       }       else {         return -1;       }     }      It can get pretty messy, especially if multiple checks are involved. In such cases, I've experimented with alternate styles, such as this one:               int netWorth(Person* person) {       if (Person==NULL) {         return -1;       }       if (!(person->isAlive))  {         return -1;       }       int assets = person->assets;       if (assets==-1)  {         return -1;       }       int liabilities = person->liabilities;       if (liabilities==-1) {         return -1;       }       return assets - liabilities;     }      I'm interested in comments about the stylistic choices here. [Don't worry too much about the details of individual statements; it's the overall control flow that interests me.]"}
{"_id": "198337", "title": "Is it a good practice to write a method that gets something and checks the value?", "text": "Occassinally I have to write methods like this:               string GetReportOutputDirectoryAndMakeSureExist()     {         string path = Path.Combine ( ... ) //whatever logic          if(!Directory.Exists(path)) Directory.Create(path);         return path;     }      or               string GetAndVerifyExistenceOfReportConfigurationPath()     {         string path = Path.Combine ( ... ) //whatever logic to find the configuration         if(!File.Exists(path)) throw new Exception(\"Report configuration not found\");         return path;     }      or               Customer GetCustomerAndVerifyActive(int id)     {         Customer customer = Db.GetCustomerById(id);         if(!customer.IsActive) throw new Exception(\"Customer is not active\");         return customer;     }      Is it a good practice? I am told that it is normally not a good idea for a method to do more than one things, or for a method to have side-effects (like creating directory). But if I split, for example the last metod to GetCustomer(id) and VerifyActive(customer), I will have to do:               var customer = GetCustomer(id);     VerifyActive(customer);      consecutively at several places, and I think it counts as violation of DRY. Is this a good idea? Any idea how to help with the long method names?"}
{"_id": "220888", "title": "How to do a clean refactoring of an If Else Code without leaving any free blocks?", "text": "if(condition1)     {        Statement1A;        Statement1B;     }     else if(condition2)     {       Statement2;     }     else if(condition3)     {       Statement3;     }     else      {        Statement1A;        Statement1B;     }             return;      I would like to refactor that code so that I do not duplicate Statements. I **always** need to check condition1 before any other condition. (So I cannot just change the order of the conditions). I also do not want to write `&&!condition1` after every other condition. I solved it like this               if(condition1)     {     }     else if(condition2)     {       Statement2;       return;     }     else if(condition3)     {       Statement3;       return;     }          Statement1A;     Statement1B;     return;      However I do not think an empty if condition will be easily understandable by others (even by me after a while). What is a better approach?"}
{"_id": "211363", "title": "Until what point should I refactor?", "text": "What do you think until what point should a programmer refactor the code? Basically having               def method       do_something     end      Pieces of code would be handy, but they increase spaghetti code until the point where you have to remember the path of more than 8-10 methods. So wouldn't be easier to have no more than 3 methods spaghetti code, despite the fact that the method is longer than it suppose to be"}
{"_id": "191208", "title": "Approaches to checking multiple conditions?", "text": "What is the best practice for checking multiple conditions, in no particular order? The example in question needs to check four distinct conditions, in any order, and fail showing the correct error message. The examples below use a C-like syntax. ## Option 1: Check all at once This method isn't preferred because the reasons why the condition failed aren't easy to discern.               if (A && B && C && D) {         // continue here...     } else {         return \"A, B, C, or D failed\";     }      ## Option 2: Nested Conditions In the past, I used to use nested conditional statements, like so. This can get really confusing.               if (A) {         if (B) {             if (C) {                 if (D) {                     // continue here...                 } else {                     return \"D failed\"                 }             } else {                 return \"C failed\";             }         } else {             return \"B failed\";         }     } else {         return \"A failed\";     }      ## Option 3: Fail-early This is the current method I use, which I like to call _fail-early_. As soon as a \"bad\" condition is hit, it returns.               if (!A) {         return \"A failed\";     }          if (!B) {         return \"B failed\";     }          if (!B) {         return \"C failed\";     }          if (!D) {         return \"D failed\";     }          // continue here...      # Option 4: Collect Errors One last approach I can think of is a sort of _collection_ of errors. If the conditions to test for are completely separate, one might want to use this approach.               String errors = \"\";     if (!A) {          errors += \"A failed\\n\";     }          if (!B) {         errors += \"B failed\\n\";     }          if (!C) {         errors += \"C failed\\n\";     }          if (!D) {         errors += \"D failed\\n\";     }          if (errors.isEmpty()) {         // continue here...     } else {         return errors;     }      What are the best practices for checking multiple conditions? In terms of expectations, it ideally behaves like example 4, where details of all the failures are returned."}
{"_id": "254235", "title": "Avoid Code Repetition in Condition Statements", "text": "I have been programming for over 15 years now. I consider myself a very good programmer, but I understand (like all of us) there are things that I need to work on. One of these things is code repetition when dealing with conditions. I will give a generic sample:               if(condition1)     {          //perform some logic          if(condition2)          {               //perform some logic               if(condition3)               {                    //Perform logic               }               else               {                    //MethodA(param)               }          }          else          {               //MethodA(param)          }     }     else     {          //MethodA()     }      Now, I cannot make it easy by doing the following:               if(condition1 && condition2)     {          }     else     {          }      I cannot do this since I need to perform some logic if condition1 is true and before I test condition2. Is there a way to structure if...else blocks to where if you need to call a method in each else blocks, you are not repeating yourself?"}
{"_id": "252568", "title": "Eliminate duplicate code in nested IFs without creating a function", "text": "Let's say we have two ifs that depend on each other:               if var exists {         if var is array {             //Do stuff with var         } else {             //Resolve the problem         }     } else {         //Resolve the problem in the exact same way as above     }     //Continue execution with the assumption that var is in the appropriate state      How can I refactor this to remove the duplicated code without using gotos or functions/methods?"}
{"_id": "94429", "title": "Refactoring into lots of methods - is this considered clean or not?", "text": "So, I watched as my colleague complained a bit about a project he has inherited from someone who is, shall we say, not very experienced as a programmer (intern left to his own devices on a project). At one point there was duplicate code, about 7-8 lines of code duplicated (so 14-16 lines total) in a method of say 70-80 lines of code. We were discussing the code, and he spotted a way to refactor this to remove the duplication by simply altering the structure a bit. I said great, and then we should also move the code out to a separate method so the large method gets a little more readable. He said 'no, I would never create a method for just 7-8 lines of code'. Performance issues aside, what are **your** input on this? Do you lean against using more methods (which in c# pads code with about 3 lines) or larger methods, when that particular code will probably not be used anywhere else? So it is purely a readability issue, not a code-reuse one. Cheers :)"}
{"_id": "47789", "title": "How would you refactor nested IF Statements?", "text": "I was cruising around the programming blogosphere when I happened upon this post about GOTO's: http://giuliozambon.blogspot.com/2010/12/programmers-tabu.html Here the writer talks about how \"one must come to the conclusion that there are situations where GOTOs make for more readable and more maintainable code\" and then goes on to show an example similar to this:               if (Check#1)     {         CodeBlock#1         if (Check#2)         {             CodeBlock#2             if (Check#3)             {                 CodeBlock#3                 if (Check#4)                 {                     CodeBlock#4                     if (Check#5)                     {                         CodeBlock#5                         if (Check#6)                         {                             CodeBlock#6                             if (Check#7)                             {                                 CodeBlock#7                             }                             else                             {                                 rest - of - the - program                             }                         }                     }                 }             }         }     }      The writer then proposes that using GOTO's would make this code much easier to read and maintain. I personally can think of at least 3 different ways to flatten it out and make this code more readable without resorting to flow-breaking GOTO's. Here are my two favorites. 1 - Nested Small Functions. Take each if and its code block and turn it into a function. If the boolean check fails, just return. If it passes, then call the next function in the chain. (Boy, that sounds a lot like recursion, could you do it in a single loop with function pointers?) 2 - Sentinal Variable. To me this is the easyest. Just use a blnContinueProcessing variable and check to see if it is still true in your if check. Then if the check fails, set the variable to false. How many different ways can this type of coding problem be refactored to reduce nesting and increase maintainability?"}
{"_id": "213284", "title": "Making some methods mostly contain method calls, while others doing \"the lowest level\" work", "text": "So I thought about this, and I don't know if it's included or not in any methodology. I think the advantages of this coding style is that, at the lowest level, the code is extremely testable, and then the integration tests should also be very easy to build. I also think this would make the code more readable and the UML would be understood faster. So here's my example:               class CoolObject{     var member1; //needed for instance in lifecycle events     var member2; //same comment             //This method could be for instance an event handler        //Notice this contains only assignments and method calls. No library calls or lower level stuff        [public] method high_level(params...){          var local_var1;         var local_var2;         local_var1 = call method lower_level1(param1,param2);         local_var2 = call method lower_level2(param1, local_var1);         member1 = call method lower_level3(local_var2);        }             //Notice this contains only library calls and lower level processing        [private] method lower_level1(param1, param2){         return param1 + param2 + libraryXXY123.function142(current_date);        }             //Notice this contains only library calls and lower level processing        [private] method lower_level2(param1, param2){          var return_value;          loop over param2{             if(condition){                add param1 to return_value;             }          }          return return_value + libraryASDF123.function3132(system_user);             }          }      Please note that this is not written in any specific language, as I only wanted to illustrate the concept. So do you know some methodologies that use this, or that warn against it? Please elaborate on the answer, as I think this would be a good idea, and would like this either confirmed, or the opposite."}
{"_id": "205803", "title": "How to tackle a 'branched' arrow head anti-pattern?", "text": "I recently read this question that features, the arrow anti-pattern. I have something similar in code I'm trying to refactor except that it branches. It looks a little something like this:               if(fooSuccess==true&&barSuccess!=true){         if(mooSuccess==true){                .....         }else if (mooSuccess!=true){                .....         }     }else if(fooSuccess!=true&&barSuccess==true){         if(mooSuccess==true){                .....         }else if (mooSuccess!=true){             if(cowSuccess==true){                         .....             }else if (cowSuccess!=true){                         .....             }         }     }     ......      In short it looks like this               if        if          if            if              do something            endif         else if          if            if              do something             endif         endif         else if          if            if              do something             endif         endif      endif      Outline borrowed from Coding Horror article on the subject And the code goes on through different permutations of true and false for various flags. These flags are set somewhere 'up' in the code elsewhere, either by user input or by the result of some method. How can I make this kind of code more readable? My intention is that eventually I will have a Bean-type object that contains all the choices the previous programmer tried to capture with this branching anti-pattern. For instance, if in the outline of the code above we really do only have three, I have an enum set inside that bean:               enum ProgramRouteEnum{         OPTION_ONE,OPTION_TWO,OPTION_THREE;              boolean choice;         void setChoice(boolean myChoice){             choice = myChoice;         }         boolean getChoice(){             return choice;         }     }      Is this an acceptable cure? Or is there a better one?"}
{"_id": "214327", "title": "Using Functions for Never-Repeated Code", "text": "What are some best practices for using functions to break up large blocks of code into discrete chunks of logic when those functions are only ever going to be used once within the lifetime of a function? The canonical example for web development is the initialization of a home page. When the page loads, you might do something like check some credentials and authentication, make an API call to get some data, and parse that data. Naturally, this could all be written in a procedural format within a large function called initialize(). None of the logic will foreseeably be re-used anywhere else within the program. When I'm confronted with such scenarios, my initial instinct is to divide each piece of logic into a discrete function and simply call the functions from an initialize() function, with a few lines of code within initialize() performing some clean up and tear down duties. So I'd have something like an authenticate(), get_data(), and parse_data() function, as well as perhaps a few helper functions for the main functions. In my opinion, that makes the code easier to understand from a high level, makes unit tests more meaningful, and helps organize your thinking as you're writing your code. However, I recently clashed with a guy who essentially thinks the opposite. He feels too many functions lead to \"annoying jumping around\", functions should never be used if code is not going to be re-used, and that the over-use of functions/classes/modules/any kind of modularity amounts to over-engineering. I was put off by his argument and felt that it leads to the shitty procedural PHP that so often makes web development a nightmare, but perhaps there is some validity in what he's saying?"}
{"_id": "205425", "title": "Should I repeat condition checking code or put it in a function?", "text": "I have a bunch of calls to a method that may or may not need to be made depending on whether certain features are enabled or not. As such, I've wrapped these calls in `if` blocks checking the enabled statuses. The arguments to the method in each of these calls use some long variable names, so I've broken them out into different lines for readability / to adhere to our line-length coding standard. These large method-call blocks, combined with the condition checks to see if they should be run (exacerbated by the mandate that we enclose all `if` blocks in braces), are quite noisy. So I have something like this:               if (FeatureSettings.FeatureXIsEnalbed)     {         this.TheMethodImCalling(             FeatureSettings.ReallyLongFeatureXSettingAName,             FeatureSettings.ReallyLongFeatureXSettingBName,             ...);     }          if (FeatureSettings.FeatureYIsEnalbed)     {         this.TheMethodImCalling(             FeatureSettings.ReallyLongFeatureYSettingAName,             FeatureSettings.ReallyLongFeatureYSettingBName,             ...);     }          if (FeatureSettings.FeatureZIsEnalbed)     {         this.TheMethodImCalling(             FeatureSettings.ReallyLongFeatureZSettingAName,             FeatureSettings.ReallyLongFeatureZSettingBName,             ...);     }      To reduce the noise and redundancy in this code I was thinking of taking the `if` block structure and putting it _inside_ `TheMethodImCalling`, then passing in the `...IsEnabled` value along with the rest of the arguments. This seems somewhat silly though as I would effectively be calling the method and telling it \"Don't do anything.\" when a feature wasn't enabled. Now, I could probably make the code a bit more readable by assigning the long settings to shorter temporary variables or even fields of an `Arguments` class that I would then pass to the method, but those don't address the core question: **Should I repeat the condition checking code or put it in the function?** Or is there an alternative I should consider? (Both options seem somewhat smelly...)"}
{"_id": "255817", "title": "Which is a better pattern (coding style) for validating arguments - hurdle (barrier) or fence?", "text": "I don't know if there are any accepted names for these patterns (or anti- patterns), but I like to call them what I call them here. Actually, that would be **Question 1:** What are accepted names for these patterns, if any? Suppose there is a method that accepts a bunch of parameters, and you need to check for invalid input before executing actual method code:               public static void myMethod (String param1, String param2, String param3)      ## Hurdle Style I call it so because it's like hurdles a track runner has to jump over to get to the finish line. You can also think of them as conditional barriers.               {         if (param1 == null || param1.equals(\"\")) {             // some logging if necessary             return; // or throw some Exception or change to a default value         }              if (param2 == null || param2.equals(\"\")) {             // I'll leave the comments out             return;         }              if (param3 == null || param3.equals(\"\")) {             return;         }              // actual method code goes here.     }      When the checks are for a certain small section in a larger method (and the section cannot be moved to a smaller private method), labelled blocks with `break` statements can be used:               {         // method code before block              myLabel:         {             if (param1 ... // I'll leave out the rest for brevity                 break myLabel;             if (param2 ...                 break myLabel;             ...                  // code working on valid input goes here              } // 'break myLabel' will exit here              // method code after block     }      ## Fence Style This surrounds the code with a fence that has a conditional gate that must be opened before the code can be accessed. Nested fences would mean more gates to reach the code (like a Russian doll).               {         if (param1 != null && !param1.equals(\"\")) {             if (param2 != null && !param2.equals(\"\")) {                 if (param3 != null && !param3.equals(\"\")) {                          // actual method code goes here.                      } else {                     // some logging here                 }             } else {                 // some logging here             }         } else {             // some logging here         }     }      It could be re-written as follows too. The logging statements are right beside the checks, rather than being after the actual method code.               {         if (param1 == null || param1.equals(\"\")) {             // some logging here              } else if (param2 == null || param2.equals(\"\")) {             // some logging here              } else if (param3 == null || param3.equals(\"\")) {             // some logging here              } else {                  // actual method code goes here.              }     }      **Question 2:** Which style is better, and why? **Question 3:** Are there any other styles? > I personally prefer _hurdle style_ because it looks easier on the eyes and > does not keep indenting the code to the right every time there's a new > parameter. It allows intermittent code between checks, and it's neat, but > it's also a little difficult to maintain (several exit points). > > The first version of _fence style_ quickly gets really ugly when adding > parameters, but I suppose it's also easier to understand. While the second > version is better, it can be broken accidentally by a future coder, and does > not allow intermittent code between conditional checks."}
{"_id": "198565", "title": "Is this pattern bad?", "text": "I notice that when I code I often use a pattern that calls a class method and that method will call a number of private functions in the same class to do the work. The private functions do one thing only. The code looks like this:               public void callThisMethod(MyObject myObject) {         methodA(myObject);         methodB(myObject);  // was mehtodB before     }          private void methodA(MyObject myObject) {         //do something     }           private void methodB(MyObject myObject) {         //do something     }      Sometimes there are 5 or more private methods, in the past I have moved some of the private methods into another class, but there are occasions when doing so would be creating needless complexity. The main reason I don't like this pattern is that is not very testable, I would like to be able to test all of the methods individually, sometimes I will make all of the methods public so can I can write tests for them. Is there a better design I can use?"}
{"_id": "201636", "title": "How to handle complex conditions?", "text": "We are working on project where we have to manage these conditions. i.e.: A User can save an order under these conditions:   * User has permission \"SaveOrder\"   * Order is in state \"shipped\"   * Online Shop is opened. This condition is for example - I would like to point out, that we have three conditions from different areas(role and permissions, inner state of object order and state of another domain object). In a previous project we used this code:               public static bool CanSaveOrder(Order order)     {        return        CurrentPrincipal.HasPermission(Permissions.SaveOrder) &&        order.State == States.Shipped &&        OnlineShop.IsOpen();     }      But I feel that there can be a more elegant/dynamic solution. I have read something about a \"business role engine\". Is it a right way to manage this condition?"}
{"_id": "243331", "title": "calling methods if previous call success", "text": "I my c# program I have to perform 5 steps(tasks) sequentially. basically these five should execute one after the other only the previous task performed is success. Currently I have done it in following style. But this is not very good code style to follow.               var isSuccess=false;     isSuccess=a.method1();          if(isSuccess)         isSuccess=a.method2();          if(isSuccess)         isSuccess=a.method3();          if(isSuccess)         isSuccess=a.method4();          if(isSuccess)         isSuccess=a.method5();      How can I re factor this code. What is the best way I can follow?"}
{"_id": "107669", "title": "One-line functions that are called only once", "text": "Consider a parameterless ( _edit:_ not necessarily) function that performs a single line of code, and is called only once in the program (though it is not impossible that it'll be needed again in the future). It could perform a query, check some values, do something involving regex... anything obscure or \"hacky\". The rationale behind this would be to avoid hardly-readable evaluations:               if (getCondition()) {         // do stuff     }      where `getCondition()` is the one-line function. My question is simply: is this a good practice? It seems alright to me but I don't know about the long term..."}
{"_id": "218429", "title": "Which is preferred coding style to validate and return from a method", "text": "Which of the below is a preferred coding style (in c# .net)               public void DoWork(Employee employee)     {       if(employee == null)         return;            if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(employee.Name))        return;            // Do Work          }      **or**               public void DoWork(Employee employee)     {       if(employee != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(employee.Name))        {         // Do Work        }     }"}
{"_id": "201804", "title": "Is using subprocedures to logically separate my code a bad idea for structured programming?", "text": "Most of my programming experience is in OOP where I have fully embraced the concepts thereof including encapsulation. Now I'm back to structured programming where I have a tendency to logicaly seperate my code using subprocedures. For example, if I have a large switch case (30 cases or more), I'll put that in it's own procedure so the main method looks a little \"neater\". Generally, subprocedures are used to help keep things _DRY_ , but in some instances these logical seperations I create usually amount to being used only once. Some of my code was being reviewed, and it was mentioned that this is a bad idea. His backing to this claim is that it muddies the water and \"unecessarily hides\" code. Instead, he insists that a subprocedure MUST be used more than once to merit making a subprocedure out of a section of code. While this idea of \"hiding code\" is a common place in OOP, he does admit to having little to no understanding of OOP concepts and has only ever worked with structured programming. **Is there any backing to his claim or is this merely programming dogma?**"}
{"_id": "187478", "title": "Always pull out common cases and branch separately?", "text": "We had a disagreement in a code review. What I had written:               if(unimportantThing().isGood && previouslyCalculatedIndex != -1)     {         //Stuff     }     if(otherThing().isBad && previouslyCalculatedIndex != -1)     {         //Otherstuff     }     if(yetAnotherThing().isBad)     {         //Stuffystuff     }      The reviewer called that ugly code. This is what he expected:               if( previouslyCalculatedIndex != -1)     {         if(unimportantThing().isGood)         {             //Stuff         }         if(otherThing().isBad)         {             //Otherstuff         }     }     if(yetAnotherThing().isBad)     {         //Stuffystuff     }      I'd say it's a pretty trivial difference and that the complexity of adding another layer of branching is equivalently bad as one or two logical-ands. But just to check myself, is this really a grievous coding sin that you would take a firm stance over? Do you _always_ pull out the common cases in your if statements and branch on them separately, or do you add logical-ands to a couple of if statements?"}
{"_id": "166887", "title": "What does (Lua) game scripting mean?", "text": "I've read that Lua is often used for embedded scripting and in particular game for scripting. I find it hard to picture how it is used exactly. Can you describe why and for which features and for which audience it is used? This questions isn't specifically addressing Lua, but rather any embedded scripting that serves a _purpose similar to Lua_ scripting. Is it used for end-users to make custom adjustments? Is it used for game developers to speed up creation of game logic (levels, AI, ...)? Is it used to script game framework code since scripting can be faster? Basically I'm wondering how deep between plain configuration and framework logic such scripting usage goes. And how much scripting is done. A few configuration lines or a considerable amount?"}
{"_id": "166882", "title": "Reconstruct a file from a TCP stream", "text": "I have a client and a server and a third box which sees all packets from the server to the client (but not the other way around). Now when the client requests a file from the server (over HTTP), the third box sees the response. I am trying to reconstruct the file there. I am using `libpcap` to capture TCP datagrams and trying to reconstruct the file there. Here is what I did   1. Listen for packets on an interface   2. Group all packets which have the same ACK number   3. Sort the group based on SEQ number   4. Extract data from each packet and combine them and write to the disk The problem is, the file thus generated is not exactly the same as the original file. Their sizes are the same each, but when I open the images in an image viewer, they look different. time Does everything sound correct here? **EDIT**   Hexdump of first 512 bytes of the recovered file               0000000 009a 0095 0090 008b 0086 0081 007c 0077     0000010 0072 006d 0068 0063 005e 0059 0054 004f     0000020 004a 0045 0040 003b 0037 0032 002d 0028     0000030 0023 001e 0019 0014 000f 000a 0005 0000     0000040 0400 0000 0000 0000 7276 6375 5420 4352     0000050 0000 0000 6720 7369 0000 0000 0000 0000     0000060 0000 0000 0002 0000 028f 0000 0000 0000     0000070 0001 0000 0000 0000 6173 6d65 1fe7 0057     0000080 0000 0050 0956 004c 0000 0000 5a20 5859     0000090 0001 0000 5c9e 0003 130b 0004 edcc 0003     00000a0 cf14 0010 5f2e 0014 a4fe 0013 0000 0000     00000b0 6577 7669 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     00000c0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 2e31 2d32     00000d0 3636 3139 4336 4945 6e20 2069 6f6e 7469     00000e0 6469 6f6e 2043 6e67 7769 6965 2056 6365     00000f0 656e 6572 6566 2c52 0000 0000 0000 0000     0000100 0000 3100 322e 362d 3936 3631 4543 2049     0000110 696e 6e20 696f 6974 6e64 436f 6720 696e     0000120 6577 5669 6520 6e63 7265 6665 5265 002c     0000130 0000 0000 0000 7363 6465 0000 0000 0000     0000140 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     0000150 4742 7352 2d20 6520 6163 7370 7220 6f75     0000160 6f6c 2063 4742 2052 6c74 6175 6566 2044     0000170 2e31 2d32 3636 3139 2036 4543 2e49 0000     0000180 0000 0000 0000 0000 4200 5247 2073 202d     0000190 6365 7061 2073 7572 6c6f 636f 4220 5247     00001a0 7420 756c 6661 4465 3120 322e 362d 3936     00001b0 3631 4320 4945 002e 0000 0000 0000 7363     00001c0 6465 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     00001d0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     *     00001f0 6368 632e 6965 772e 7777 2f2f 703a 7474     0000200      Hexdump of first 512 bytes of the original file:               0000000 d8ff e0ff 1000 464a 4649 0100 0101 2c01     0000010 2c01 0000 e2ff 6d1c 4349 5f43 5250 464f     0000020 4c49 0045 0101 0000 5d1c 694c 6f6e 1002     0000030 0000 6e6d 7274 4752 2042 5958 205a ce07     0000040 0200 0900 0600 3100 0000 6361 7073 534d     0000050 5446 0000 0000 4549 2043 5273 4247 0000     0000060 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 d6f6 0100     0000070 0000 0000 2dd3 5048 2020 0000 0000 0000     0000080 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     *     00000a0 0000 0000 0000 0000 1100 7063 7472 0000     00000b0 5001 0000 3300 6564 6373 0000 8301 0000     00000c0 6c00 7477 7470 0000 ef01 0000 1400 6b62     00000d0 7470 0000 0302 0000 1400 5872 5a59 0000     00000e0 1702 0000 1400 5867 5a59 0000 2b02 0000     00000f0 1400 5862 5a59 0000 3f02 0000 1400 6d64     0000100 646e 0000 5302 0000 7000 6d64 6464 0000     0000110 c302 0000 8800 7576 6465 0000 4b03 0000     0000120 8600 6976 7765 0000 d103 0000 2400 756c     0000130 696d 0000 f503 0000 1400 656d 7361 0000     0000140 0904 0000 2400 6574 6863 0000 2d04 0000     0000150 0c00 5472 4352 0000 3904 0000 0c08 5467     0000160 4352 0000 450c 0000 0c08 5462 4352 0000     0000170 5114 0000 0c08 6574 7478 0000 0000 6f43     0000180 7970 6972 6867 2074 6328 2029 3931 3839     0000190 4820 7765 656c 7474 502d 6361 616b 6472     00001a0 4320 6d6f 6170 796e 6400 7365 0063 0000     00001b0 0000 0000 7312 4752 2042 4549 3643 3931     00001c0 3636 322d 312e 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     00001d0 1200 5273 4247 4920 4345 3136 3639 2d36     00001e0 2e32 0031 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     00001f0 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000     0000200      Some more details:   1. I am using C++   2. The packet data is being stored as `std::vector<char>`   3. I did change the byte order while reading the ack number and seq number from the packet using `ntohl`   4. I am not sure if I need to change the byte order for the data as well. I tried to reverse the data from each packet before combining them, even that did not work. Is there something I am missing? **EDIT**   Original file:   ![Original](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rlLU4.jpg) Recovered file:   ![Recovered](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8blIG.jpg)"}
{"_id": "21212", "title": "Physical effects of long term keyboard use- what does the science say and what factors affect it?", "text": "This question asks about the ergonomics of a particular keyboard for long programming hours, what I would like to know is about the ergonomics of using a keyboard in general. What are the most significant risks associated with it and how can they best be mitigated? Do the \"ergonomic\" keyboard designs make a difference and if so which design is most effective? If not do other factors such as wrist-rests, regular exercise or having a suitable height of chair or desk make a difference? Do you have any direct experience of problems deriving from keyboard use and if so how did you resolve them? Is there any good science on this and if so what does it indicate? Edited to add: Wikipedia suggests that there are no proven advantages to \"ergonomic\" keyboards, but their citation seems pretty old- is that still the current state of play?"}
{"_id": "166888", "title": "How to setup the c++ rule of three in a virtual base class", "text": "I am trying to create a pure virtual base class (or simulated pure virtual) my goal:   1. User can't create instances of BaseClass.   2. Derived classes have to implement default constructor, copy constructor, copy assignment operator and destructor. My attempt:               class Base     {     public:         virtual ~Base() {};         /* some pure virtual functions */     private:         Base() = default;         Base(const Base& base) = default;         Base& operator=(const Base& base) = default;     }      This gives some errors complaining that (for one) the copy constructor is private. But i don't want this mimicked constructor to be called.   Can anyone give me the correct construction to do this if this is at all possible?"}
{"_id": "21217", "title": "Which Internet places are popular for commercial Java product announcements?", "text": "For Java libraries (which I wrote in the past years) I found not so many places iin the Internet where developers could announce new releases. So I use paid advertising (banner campaigns) at the moment. Are there known and popular online forums or newsgroups which welcome advertising for products for the Java platform?"}
{"_id": "116385", "title": "How to handle manipulation of data after a db record is written from outside my program", "text": "I have written a warehouse management web app. The application handles batch picking, warehouse routing, packing, and the final piece is handled by UPS worldship to \"ship\" the packages. Worldship will write a record to my postgres db after every shipment or void. I need a way to cleanly see that the record was written/deleted and then \"do stuff\". The easy answer is to have a program just monitor the database and when it sees a record written to do its thing but something is nagging at me that there is probably a better way to go about this that doesn't have a program polling the table and comparing it to what was there last. EDIT: How i was going to approach this... The table is setup with a status field. My program would on intervals read the table for any records that have a null status, if records are found \"do stuff\" then mark the status as complete. TIA"}
{"_id": "99522", "title": "randomized management?", "text": "I saw an article a few months ago that explain a company's practice of randomly choosing management via lottery. The employee would manage his peers for some fixed amount of time until the next management raffle. The writer went on to explain in detail why this worked better than the traditional expert-manager model. I'm completely unable to remember where I read this, and unable to get useful results from Google. Does anyone recall seeing this? I'd really like to find it again. \\--buck"}
{"_id": "116382", "title": "Shouldn't we count characters of code and comments instead of lines of code and comments?", "text": "Counting lines of code and comments is sometimes bogus, since most of what we write may be written in one or more lines, depending column count limitations, screen size, style and so forth. Since the commonly used languages (say C, C++, C# and Java) are free-form, wouldn't it be more clever to count characters instead? **Edit:** I'm not considering LOC-oriented programming where coders try to artificially match requirements by adding irrelevant comments or using multiple lines where less would be enough (or the opposite). I'm interested in better metrics that would be independent of coding style, to be used by honest programmers."}
{"_id": "167139", "title": "What makes for a good JIRA workflow with a software development team?", "text": "I am migrating my team from a snarl of poorly managed excel documents, individual checklists, and personal emails to manage our application issues and development tasks to a new JIRA project. My team and I are new to JIRA (and issue tracking software in general). My team is skeptical of the transition at best, so I am also trying not to scare them off by introducing something overly complex at the start. I understand one of JIRA's strengths to be the customized workflows that can be created for a project. I've looked over the JIRA documentation and a number of tutorials, and am comfortable with the how in creating workflows, but I need some contextual What to go along with it.   * _What makes a particular workflow work well?_   * _What does a poorly designed workflow look like?_   * _What are the benefits/drawbacks of a strict workflow with very specific states and transitions to a looser workflow, with fewer, broader defined states and transitions_"}
{"_id": "167134", "title": "Are there any specific workflows or design patterns that are commonly used to create large functional programming applications?", "text": "I have been exploring Clojure for a while now, although I haven't used it on any nontrivial projects. Basically, I have just been getting comfortable with the syntax and some of the idioms. Coming from an OOP background, with Clojure being the first functional language that I have looked very much into, I'm naturally not as comfortable with the functional way of doing things. That said, are there any specific workflows or design patterns that are common with creating large functional applications? I'd really like to start using functional programming \"for real\", but I'm afraid that with my current lack of expertise, it would result in an epic fail. The \"Gang of Four\" is such a standard for OO programmers, but is there anything similar that is more directed at the functional paradigm? Most of the resources that I have found have great programming nuggets, but they don't step back to give a broader, more architectural look."}
{"_id": "199612", "title": "Javascript behavior depends only on browser or browser + OS?", "text": "Generally for a javascript application, compatibility is mentioned in terms of browser types and browser versions it supports. Frameworks/Libraries like ExtJs also mention about the browser versions they are compatible with. **Does this mean that if my javascript application can run on Google Chrome 10+ version, then any operating system where Google Chrome 10+ can be installed will be able to run my javascript application without any glitches?** Or does type of operating system also have an effect on Javascript execution? The reason behind asking this is to evaluate the scope of testing of javascript applications before making any commitment to the end user. Thanks in advance for any guidance provided."}
{"_id": "167133", "title": "How do most sync programs monitor file changes?", "text": "Do sync programs like Dropbox typically track file changes by doing byte by byte comparisons, or using hashes, or using `diff` / keeping local commit logs like version control, or what?"}
{"_id": "199611", "title": "Idea of the binary search main theorem", "text": "This link really provided some insights into the idea that binary search implications into the optimization problems by giving the main theorem. I am not really confident that I get the idea of the main theorem suggested there. Are there any easy explanations, for the ideas, expressed in that tutorial?"}
{"_id": "183645", "title": "Pair programming when driver and observer have different skill level and experience", "text": "I know pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, writes code while the other, the observer, reviews each line of code as it is typed in. But I just wonder the strategy still work in the case. For example   * if they have a very different programming skill level.    * if one never experience in the problem domain while another have.   * Is it still OK if they have low programming skill level? Could you suggest the pair programming strategy in the case above?"}
{"_id": "197509", "title": "Which design pattern would be best for this case?", "text": "I have a class, called PolicyProvider, at present with the following (abridged) interface:               public interface IPolicyProvider     {         List<Policy> GetRenewalPolicies(Client client, int financialYear);     }      The purpose is quite obvious - every year, the insurance renews for the client, and they will get a number of new policies. The thing is, the policies change year by year. Therefore, a concrete implementation of the class needs to be changed every year (or amended with lots of ugly little \"if's\" evaluating the financial year). I can see that over time this will become horrendous. In this case, what design pattern is most appropriate?"}
{"_id": "157161", "title": "What do you say in a code review when the other person built an over complicated solution?", "text": "The other day I reviewed code someone on my team wrote. The solution wasn't fully functional and the design was way over complicated-- meaning stored unnecessary information, built unnecessary features, and basically the code had lots of unnecessary complexity like gold plating and it tried to solve problems that do not exist. In this situation I ask \"why was it done this way?\" The answer is the other person felt like doing it that way. Then I ask if any of these features were part of the project spec, or if they have any use to the end user, or if any of the extra data would be presented to the end user. The answer is no. So then I suggest that he delete all the unnecessary complexity. The answer I usually get is \"well it's already done\". My view is that it is not done, it's buggy, it doesn't do what the users want, and maintenance cost will be higher than if it were done in the simpler way I suggested. An equivalent scenario is:   Colleague spends 8 hours refactoring code by hand which could have been automatically done in Resharper in 10 seconds. Naturally I don't trust the refactoring by hand as it is of dubious quality and not fully tested.   Again the response I get is \"well it's already done.\" What is an appropriate response to this attitude?"}
{"_id": "197501", "title": "DDD - Domain Object calling a web service", "text": "Is it ok to call a webservice from a Domain object?. As I write the question I am thinking that you should never do that, as it is poor design, but the situation is the following: I have a domain object called Postman that works very closely with a Message object. This Message is provided by a web service. Without the Message, the Postman object could not do its business logic. I understand that this code doesn't smell good but, since the Postman depends on the Message, it seems logical to call the web service in order to get the Message. There is no other way to get the Message without the web service."}
{"_id": "197502", "title": "Can I use select2 in my website?", "text": "I am working on project that deals in customer support. This website actually sells products ( so it is commerical ), and provides customer support. So in this project/website I was about to use select2 . Select2 License: > This software is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the \"Apache > License\") or the GNU General Public License version 2 (the \"GPL License\"). > You may choose either license to govern your use of this software only upon > the condition that you accept all of the terms of either the Apache License > or the GPL License. Can I use this in the website?   Ask me if any other info is also required."}
{"_id": "197504", "title": "What is the best way to construct your CSS documents?", "text": "Normally I start a project working on a site, I'd do the basic html skeleton and then start tweaking the styles using CSS. Slowly I'd just add one CSS rule after another with no \"organized structure\" or groupings in the CSS rules. And at the end of the project I look at the CSS document and the abomination I have created. Often spending quite some time trying to search for the spot in the document where I added a certain style. Is there some type of 'rule-of-thumb' that one can use in laying out and getting more organized in your CSS documents? And I'm not just talking about adding comments..."}
{"_id": "190737", "title": "How do I make a cloud based web app accessible internally in the event of an internet outage?", "text": "I have a Java Web application backed by a database. Both are hosted in Amazon EC2. If the Internet is down, I need to allow internal users to be able to continue to work and somehow update the hosted service when the Internet is available again. Is this possible? How would I design such a solution."}
{"_id": "116038", "title": "Why is there usually a reference to Java when when people talk about C#?", "text": "I don't know much about C# but I've been programming in Java for a few months now. I had always heard what C and C++ were, but was a little curious about where C# came from. I'm a little confused about the C# language since even though it's one of the 'C' languages (C, C++, C#), on the other hand all of my professors seem to line it up against Java, and not the others. If anyone can clarify that would be great :)"}
{"_id": "116036", "title": "BitBucket - what's the catch? (TANSTAAFL, right?)", "text": "The BitBucket capabilities, and pricing (up to 5 users for free) left me wondering what the catch was... there is no such thing as a free lunch, after all. What is BitBucket getting out of my unpaid participation, besides a handsome man to freely include in their promotional materials (per the TOS)?"}
{"_id": "94620", "title": "How to hire a good C# developer if I don't know C#?", "text": "I'm a C++ developer. I know how Windows works on the native level, but I'm not a big expert in C# and .NET. Now I need a C# developer in my team (all my developers are C++). How can I hire a great C# developer if I don't know C# at good level? How to ask questions, how to test whether answers are great or are with silly mistakes?"}
{"_id": "116032", "title": "Besides Waterfall, what are other plan-driven software development methodologies?", "text": "I just read Balancing Agility and Discipline. Poor title aside, it contrasted a plan-driven project team that was employing PSP/TSP and an agile team using Extreme Programming. When the authors provided an example of a plan-driven methodology, they used Personal Software Process/Team Software Process. Although, out-of-the-box, these are plan-driven methodologies, they are also designed to be used as process frameworks and ultimately only specify what types of things to do and not how to do them, whi ch makes them potentially useful even in an agile environment. It's possible to be agile and still adhere to the PSP principles, and I'm not familiar enough with the TSP to say for sure, but my understanding is that it is very similar. At one point in the book, they list a number of methodologies and rank them in terms of agility. Methods like Scrum, Lean, Crystal, and XP are at the top. The bottom (from most to least agile) consists of the Rational Unified Process, the Team Software Process, Feature-Driven Development, CMMI, Software CMM, the Personal Software Process, and Cleanroom. Watts Humphrey, in PSP: A Self-Improvement Process for Software Engineers, dedicates a chapter to process definition, and specifically modifying the Personal Software Process. The common theme is that processes are prescriptive (they say what to do) and not descriptive (how to do it). I would surmise that the TSP is very much the same way. CMMI has also been used in conjunction with agile methods, and the SEI has a book on it (which I have not yet read). Feature-Driven Development is often touted as an agile approach to project management, yet the authors choose to rank it as a less agile methodology. RUP is an iterative framework. Although I'm not incredibly familiar with it, the fact that it's a framework lends me to group it with SW-CMM, CMMI, and PSP/TSP in that it could be implemented either as an agile or as a plan-driven methodology. The only other example that the book provides that I agree with is Cleanroom Software Engineering. The key components of Cleanroom are the use of formal methods, statistical quality control, and statistically-sound testing. I don't see why these couldn't be used in an agile (iterative/incremental) method, with added the time and cost overhead. Just to clarify what I'm looking for, the family of agile methods includes specific implementations of an abstract idea in the form of Scrum and Extreme Programming. These realize the concepts of iterative and incremental development, responding to change, people (individuals and teams), frequent delivery of working software, collaborating with the customer, and so forth. They clearly specify roles, artifacts, meetings, timeboxes, and other practices and to \"do Scrum\" or \"do Extreme Programming\" means to take the package. Even so, they allow for tailorability and the creation of new processes (but then you aren't \"doing Scrum\" or \"doing XP\"). However, I haven't found the \"do X\" of plan-driven methodologies - most of the work appears to be toward frameworks that could be agile or plan-driven. So, my question: What are examples of more plan-driven software development methodologies? A number of the process frameworks (PSP/TSP, SW-CMM, CMMI, RUP) allow for plan-driven or agile development, as well, but none are descriptive. But are there any truly plan-driven methodologies, that are, for example, direct counterparts to Scrum and Extreme Programming?"}
{"_id": "116031", "title": "How do you organize an ASP.NET MVC 3 application with potentially hundreds of views but with only a few entry points?", "text": "**Assumptions:**   * Minimalist ASP.NET MVC 3 application for sending emails where the view represents the contents of an email.   * Over 500+ email types. I would NOT like to have 500+ actions in my controller corresponding to each email type.   * Email types are stored in an enum named MailType, so we could have:      * MailType.ThankYouForYourPurchase, MailType.OrderShipped, etc.   * The view name is the same as the mailType name:      * MailType.OrderShipped would have a corresponding view: OrderShipped.cshtml   * Some views would directly use an Entity while others would use a ViewModel. So, given that I have 500+ email types, what is the best way/pattern to organize my application? Here is what I was thinking, **Controller:**                   public class MailController : Controller         {             public ActionResult ViewEmail(MailType mailType, int customerId)             {                 string viewName = mailType.ToString();                      var model = _mailRepository.GetViewModel(mailType, customerId);                      return View(viewName, model);             }                  public ActionResult SendEmail(MailType mailType, int customerId)             {                 ...             }         }      **MailRepository Class:**                   public class MailRepository         {             private readonly CustomerRepository _customerRepository;             private readonly OrderRepository _orderRepository;                  //pretend we're using dependency injection             public MailRepository()             {                 _customerRepository = new CustomerRepository();                 _orderRepository = new OrderRepository();             }                  public object GetViewModel(MailType mailType, int customerId)             {                 switch (mailType)                 {                     case MailType.OrderShipped:                         return OrderShipped(customerId);                     case MailType.ThankYouForYourPurchase:                         return ThankYouForYourPurchase(customerId);                 }                      return _customerRepository.Get(customerId);             }                  public Order OrderShipped(int customerId)             {                 //Possibly 30 lines to build up the model...                 return _orderRepository.GetByCustomerId(customerId);             }                  public Customer ThankYouForYourPurchase(int customerId)             {                 return _customerRepository.Get(customerId);             }         }      But then this would lead to my MailRepository class becoming extremely large unless I somehow broke it up..."}
{"_id": "148496", "title": "Tool that can do semantic search in a body of C code", "text": "I'm looking for a tool that can do semantic search in a body of C code.   Example query: \"give me all references to field y in struct x defined in file z.h\". I would prefer an open source, command line driven tool. C++ support is an advantage. Is there such a tool other than cscope? cscope doesn't preserve the type of tags. In hostapd for example there are more than 900 references to the tag \"ifname\". However, I'm only interested in the ifname field of a specific struct. cscope can't filter tags according to type."}
{"_id": "102205", "title": "Should UTF-16 be considered harmful?", "text": "I'm going to ask what is probably quite a controversial question: \"Should one of the most popular encodings, UTF-16, be considered harmful?\" Why do I ask this question? How many programmers are aware of the fact that UTF-16 is actually a variable length encoding? By this I mean that there are code points that, represented as surrogate pairs, take more than one element. I know; lots of applications, frameworks and APIs use UTF-16, such as Java's String, C#'s String, Win32 APIs, Qt GUI libraries, the ICU Unicode library, etc. However, with all of that, there are lots of basic bugs in the processing of characters out of BMP (characters that should be encoded using two UTF-16 elements). For example, try to edit one of these characters:   * \ud834\udd1e (U+1D11E) _MUSICAL SYMBOL G CLEF_   * \ud835\udd65 (U+1D565) _MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK SMALL T_   * \ud835\udff6 (U+1D7F6) _MATHEMATICAL MONOSPACE DIGIT ZERO_   * \ud840\udc8a (U+2008A) _Han Character_ You may miss some, depending on what fonts you have installed. These characters are all outside of the BMP (Basic Multilingual Plane). If you cannot see these characters, you can also try looking at them in the Unicode Character reference. For example, try to create file names in Windows that include these characters; try to delete these characters with a \"backspace\" to see how they behave in different applications that use UTF-16. I did some tests and the results are quite bad:   * Opera has problem with editing them (delete required 2 presses on backspace)   * Notepad can't deal with them correctly (delete required 2 presses on backspace)   * File names editing in Window dialogs in broken (delete required 2 presses on backspace)   * All QT3 applications can't deal with them - show _two_ empty squares instead of one symbol.   * Python encodes such characters incorrectly when used directly `u'X'!=unicode('X','utf-16')` on some platforms when X in character outside of BMP.   * Python 2.5 unicodedata fails to get properties on such characters when python compiled with UTF-16 Unicode strings.   * StackOverflow seems to remove these characters from the text if edited directly in as Unicode characters (these characters are shown using HTML Unicode escapes).   * WinForms TextBox may generate invalid string when limited with MaxLength. It seems that such bugs are extremely easy to find in many applications that use UTF-16. So... Do you think that UTF-16 should be considered harmful?"}
{"_id": "90710", "title": "Clarification of pseudo random number generator", "text": "I am asked to create a pseudo-random number generator using the following algorithm: > The generator will generate every integer from `1` to `N-1` exactly once > > The algorithm for `N=2^n` > >   * Initialize an integer `R` to be equal to `1` every time the tabling > routine is called and then on each successive call for a random number: >   * set `R=R*5` >   * mask out all but the low-order `n+2` bits of the product and place the > result in R >   * set `p=R/4` > What does the algorithm mean when it says mask out all but the low order `n+2` bits of the product?"}
{"_id": "53339", "title": "What's better than outputdebugstring for windows debugging?", "text": "So, before I came to my current place of employment, the windows OutputDebugString function was completely unheard of, everyone was adding debug messages to string lists and saving them to file or doing showmessage popups (not very useful for debugging drawing issues). Now everybody (all 6 of us) is like \"What can I say about this OutputDebugString?\" and I'm like, \"with much power comes much responsibility.\" I kind of feel as though I've passed a silent but deadly code smell to my colleagues. Ideally we wouldn't have bugs to debug right? Ideally we'd have over 0% code coverage, eh? So as far as petty debugging is concerned (not complete rewriting of a 3 million line Delphi behemoth) what's a better way to use debug running code than just adding OutputDebugString all over?"}
{"_id": "146594", "title": "REST and redirecting the response", "text": "I'm developing a RESTful service. Here is a map of the current feature set:               POST /api/document/file.jpg    (creates the resource)     GET /api/document/file.jpg     (retrieves the resource)     DELETE /api/document/file.jpg  (removes the resource)      So far, it does everything you might expect. I have a particular use case where I need to set up the browser to send a POST request using the multipart/form-data encoding for the document upload but when it is completed I want to redirect them back to the form. I know how to do a redirect, but I'm not certain about how the client and server should negotiate this behavior. Two approaches I'm considering:   1. On the server check for the `multipart/form-data` encoding and, if present, redirect to the referrer when the request is complete.   2. Add a service URI of `/api/document/file.jpg/redirect` to redirect to the referrer when the request is complete. I looked into setting an X header (X-myapp-redirect) but you can't tell the browser which headers to use like this. I manage the code for both the client and the server side so I'm flexible on solutions here. Is there a best practice to follow here?"}
{"_id": "168378", "title": "How far should an entity take care of its properties values by itself?", "text": "Let's consider the following example of a class, which is an entity that I'm using through Entity Framework.               - InvoiceHeader         - BilledAmount (property, decimal)         - PaidAmount (property, decimal)         - Balance (property, decimal)      I'm trying to find the best approach to keep Balance updated, based on the values of the two other properties (BilledAmount and PaidAmount). I'm torn between two practices here:   1. Updating the balance amount every time BilledAmount and PaidAmount are updated (through their setters)   2. Having a UpdateBalance() method that the callers would run on the object when appropriate. I am aware that I can just calculate the Balance in its getter. However, it isn't really possible because this is an entity field that needs to be saved back to the database, where it has an actual column, and where the calculated amount should be persisted to. My other worry about the automatically updating approach is that the calculated values might be a little bit different from what was originally saved to the database, due to rounding values (an older version of the software, was using floats, but now decimals). So, loading, let's say 2000 entities from the database could change their status and make the ORM believe that they have changed and be persisted back to the database the next time the SaveChanges() method is called on the context. It would trigger a mass of updates that I am not really interested in, or could cause problems, if the calculation methods changed (the entities fetched would lose their old values to be replaced by freshly recalculated ones, simply by being loaded). Then, let's take the example even further. Each invoice has some related invoice details, which also have BilledAmount, PaidAmount and Balance (I'm simplifying my actual business case for the sake of the example, so let's assume the customer can pay each item of the invoice separately rather than as a whole). If we consider the entity should take care of itself, any change of the child details should cause the Invoice totals to change as well. In a fully automated approach, a simple implementation would be looping through each detail of the invoice to recalculate the header totals, every time one the property changes. It probably would be fine for just a record, but if a lot of entities were fetched at once, it could create a significant overhead, as it would perform this process every time a new invoice detail record is fetched. Possibly worse, if the details are not already loaded, it could cause the ORM to lazy-load them, just to recalculate the balances. So far, I went with the Update() method-way, mainly for the reasons I explained above, but I wonder if it was right. I'm noticing I have to keep calling these methods quite often and at different places in my code and it is potential source of bugs. It also has a detrimental effect on data-binding because when the properties of the detail or header changes, the other properties are left out of date and the method has no way to be called. What is the recommended approach in this case?"}
{"_id": "147380", "title": "Where does Objective-C come from? C++ or C?", "text": "I am very confused about this programming language, Objective-C, which I heard is used to develop iOS applications. I know that it uses the principles of OOP. Would it be easier to learn if I already knew C++? What about it's name? is it a combination between the C programming language and the OOP principles I use in C++?"}
{"_id": "108063", "title": "Is there a fundamental reason for keeping file systems and versioning systems separate?", "text": "I've done some work looking at Next3 and ext3cow, and a few other file systems that provide snapshots and/or file versioning. It seems a bit strange to me that file systems only go part-way with version control, though. Are there **fundamental** reasons for keeping the two separate? How challenging would it be to, for example, build a version of the ext3 file system which includes a git-like interface for managing file versions?"}
{"_id": "168372", "title": "In dependency injection, is there a simple name for the counterpart of the injected object?", "text": "In tutorials and books, I have never seen a single word describing the object that the injected object is injected into. Instead, other terms are used, like \"injection point\" which don't denote the object containing the injected object. And nothing I can think of sounds right, except maybe \"injection target\" - but I have never read it anywhere. Is there a single word or a simple expression for it, or is it like the \"He- Who-Must-Not-Be-Named\" from a recent fantasy book series?"}
{"_id": "240740", "title": "A small project but I want to use design patterns to do it right", "text": "I've got a project coming up, a very a small system, but one that needs to be extended in the future. Here's how I've designed it so far. It's 3-tier: presentation, business and data. For the presentation layer there will be ASP.NET webforms with user controls (.ascx). There are .NET validator controls on the usercontrols. In the business layer there will be a domain model, probably an Active Record- based object for _each_ type of business entity (e.g. class Trainee, class Course etc). These objects will contain the relevant data (user input or DB) in properties but also have behaviour such as CalculateCost(), Validate() and Save(). When a page passes input to a business object for processing, the object will validate the input. Any validation failures will be stored within a collection within the object. If the data is valid, the business object's Save() method can be called. Save() will call a Data Mapper which transforms the business object's data to a DTO, the Data Mapper then passes the DTO to a table data gateway. The Table Data Gateway takes the DTO and performs CRUD operations with it. Any data to be returned from the DB is tranformed into a DTO, passed to the mapper, and then returned to the relevant business object. Would you recommend the above approach for any future small TDD projects that are probably likely to be extended, or is it overkill? Any advice is appreciated. Even if it is to say \"I have no idea what you're talking about\" :)"}
{"_id": "104919", "title": "Daily Scrum Meeting (Burndown chart)", "text": "Here is an example: early in the morning of the second day of the Sprint (during the stand up) I go to the board and see that the story I worked the previous day (first day of Sprint) contains a big \"1 IDEAL DAY\" written on it (estimate). Right now (early in the second day of Sprint) the story is not completed and I guesstimate it will take half a \"REAL DAY\" to complete it. Question: so to track progress and update the burndown right now, shouldn't I update that \"1 IDEAL DAY\" on the card with _something else_ (recap.: original estimate in 1 ideal day, remaining work in 1/2 real day)? What would be that _something else_ in this particular example?"}
{"_id": "99594", "title": "Fast Learning: Is it bad?", "text": "As many of you must have noticed, learning to program is not an overnight thing, it takes years of hard work (I really should refer here to this wonderful article of Peter Norvig). But there's a lot you can do to make an impressive fast progress, you can use the online tutorials, websites like projecteuler or CodingBat, Stackoverflow help, or any other quickie stuff that can give you the ability to actually get something done... You may not need all the very basic things that you will get if you go to school or learn by some formal way. They might be skipped, and if nothing goes wrong, your work will be done without dealing with them (I'm not talking about making a kernel or some huge thing, but things like making a website, a program to sort files, basic database management scripting, or anything else that may actually gets you to be hired or brings money somehow)... So, the question is: To what degree can you get by fast learning?? What are the benefits of all the things that is taught in schools about programming? (and here I mean the theoretical stuff of how internal stuff works and philosophy of programming techniques or any abstraction articles, not the practical part), and is it possible for a person to keep going and up- progressing this way or he has to switch to the slow-steady way if he wish to progress?? Thank you.. Any personal experience or link to a personal experience will be highly appreciated... EDIT: and an important question: if you think fast learning makes a person a low-level or medium level, but not gonna take him to the high level or architect level, how can he catch up to what he missed of principles or theoretical sides on-the-go, while he is progressing?? like a top-down approach of learning practically then dig deeper at the principles he missed,, how can that be achieved ??"}
{"_id": "99593", "title": "Is exception handling a cross-cutting concern?", "text": "I don't see much of a difference between the concerns of exception handling and logging in that both are cross cutting concerns. What do you think? Shouldn't it be handled separately on its own rather than interleaved with the core logic a method is implementing? **EDIT** : What I am trying to say, is that in my opinion a method implementation should only contain the logic for the successful path of execution and exceptions should be handled elsewhere. This is not about checked/unchecked exceptions. For example, a language might handle exceptions in a fully checked way by using constructs like this:               class FileReader {            public String readFile(String path) {         // implement the reading logic, avoid exception handling       }          }          handler FileReader {             handle String readFile(String path) {           when (IOException joe) {             // somehow access the FileInputStram and close it           }        }          }      In the above conceptual language, the program won't compile in the absence of `FileReader` _handler_ , because the `FileReader` _class_ 's readFile is not throwing the exception. So by declaring the `FileReader` _handler_ , the compiler can ensure that it is being handled and the program then compiles. This way we have the best of both of checked and unchecked exception problems: robustness and readability."}
{"_id": "115609", "title": "What happens when a company says/pretends that it uses a version control system (or any other tool/methodology), but doesn't?", "text": "This question might look like a mix of Is it unusual for a small company (15 developers) not to use managed source/version control? and How to convince a teammate, who sees oneself as senior, to learn SVN conceptual basics?. My interest is purely academical, since the company mentioned here does not exist any more, but it keeps popping up in discussions, so I would really like to hear the community's thoughts on how to behave in such situation. It has happened to me twice, with the most recent example being more interesting: I visited a company for a interview and was being asked for subversion experience. After that I got into an extensive QnA related concepts such as branching/merging, access rights etc. At the end I got the job. From my first day there, I saw that everyone was using a shared drive where they coded. Because subversion was used as a backup, people had to commit from their local machines, on a windows shared drive, which made each commit sometimes to last more than 30 minutes (I do not know the internals of why), while sometimes encountering locks or any othere issues where encountered. There was a template project from which we did a \"branch\". No merges anywhere. So once confronting my line manager about it I got told that we have an svn installation and that we use it properly, obviously we did not. So what should the appropriate action for developer/employee do in such case(s)?   * Nothing, accept it as a difference in perspective,   * Leave   * Try to educate the team"}
{"_id": "143864", "title": "Java Application for handling records(CRUD)", "text": "I am new to JavaEE and am faced with a tight situation here. I have to develop a Java application for (CRUD) handling records and saving and loading an XML concerning that record. Obviously, I won't be asking you to do this for me. What I would be asking you is to give me some hints/pointer. Initially I thought JAXB would be enough for this but after putting a lot of time learning it and implementing the program I realized that it just can create the XML and read it but for update, delete I would have to do something else. Even if it wasn't for update and delete features requirement for my project I would still think that by just using JAXB is not a good implementation. I was wondering if \"REST with Java (JAX-RS) using Jersey\" should do the trick for me. ?"}
{"_id": "186071", "title": "What's the point of those technique detailed interview question for Senior dev?", "text": "I've had an internal promotion interview for gain a higher level programmer title, something like Senior plus. And I've been interviewed by around 7 people using different technology, and people using the same technology with me(.Net) tend to ask very technique detailed question which can actually easily been found via Google, like what is JIT, how GC works, difference between List and Array, abstract class and interface, delegate and event, even what is the class name when you process Upload file, etc. And I've got only one question asked about one of my design idea in my project and just simple discussion. But for most other my design choice they seems just not interested. I didn't get the result yet and it would be about late this week, but here is my concern: I personally think when I play as a senior programmer, I mainly solving problems, and I just need to know there are some certain way can make it happen but I may not remember every detailed thing, and that's should be why we have those detailed reference documentation like MSDN. I feel it fine if you found I've not too much experiences around this area like Junior to Intermediate level, but when tend to interview higher level guy, isn't you should more focus to see how this guy logical thinking is and how good is he/she at solving problems? Does everybody just think if you know every detailed small point tech stuff then you are a Senior+. And by checking those interview question books I found there are more those kind of questions. If I spend 5 days go through those interview question list book I can easily make those guys feel a wow, but does that really mean anything? This kind of interview can easily let those guys good at remember things gain higher salary even they have no idea how to solve difficulty problem. So why is this happening on the world, is that just cause problem solving skills, design skills are hard to measure? I've serve this company for years and only had few interview with other companies so I wonder is that every company doing the same thing? Or is this actually just my own problem that I should try harder to remember everything in MSDN in my mind so that I can work even without it and internet? **EDIT** For better explain my situation regarding Frank's concern about job tasks. Sorry it's my bad didn't clarify those background. There actually will be no specifically job's task changes, I personally think what I've done already played as a senior, like code review, mentor members, review BA's doc and give technique opinions, design architecture of new projects, it's just my title still stayed without senior and I asked to get one to reflect pay slip and lead to such an interview. This is a Saas company so people stay in one project as long as that product is still alive, this leads they need people be able to design more new features based on current product, fixing technique difficulty on live servers, design/code review/mentoring members And higher level title based on technique would be Architect and we do not have any job similar with Technical Expert. And I agree if you want to play Technical Expert role you should know more detail about the tech you use. Sorry it's my bad didn't clarify those background."}
{"_id": "148720", "title": "Is this awkward spacing some type of style?", "text": "In reading another programmers code, he uses a format I have never seen. E.G.                   namespace MyNs.HereWeAre              {//tab here for some reason              public class SomeClass                    {//here's another tab                    public string Method()                         {//yet another tab                         string _variable = \"\";//no tab implementation                         return _variable;                         }                    }//eof - class  (Yes these eof comments are on every file)             }//eof - namespace     // eof - file      I'll admit...this code makes me angry. It is difficult to achieve this style. One needs to fight the default formatting provided by the IDE, visual studio. I could swallow this pill a little easier if I knew that there was a good reason for this style. Does this style stem from some other programming language/IDE?"}
{"_id": "137020", "title": "Encapsulating a class within another class to hide its exposed properties and details", "text": "I have essentially a data model class that represents an XML data structure that we use to model our system. The model class is in a shared project that is used by a number of different solutions in order to generate a common XML data structure for usage by any number of applications. In one application I am involved in we have provided a wrapper class for one of these XML model classes as we wish to perform a number of operations on the model data. However other parts of my program also needs to access this data for calculations they need to do. At the moment I have this setup (note this is an example only but represents my code structure) 1)               public class ModelWrapper     {         private readonly ModelClass _model;              public int PropertyX          {            get            {               return _model.PropertyX;           }         }              public ModelWrapper(ModelClass model)         {            _model = model;           }              // and other methods we need that uses the properties we have exposed e.g         public void PerformOperation()         {             if(this.PropertyX > 10)                // do something             else                // do something else         }     }      This appears ok, but I've run into the problem where I or another programmer has un-intentially used the private _model variable. It seems to me that we could end up with hidden issues in this method in the fact that there are two ways to get to the same data and if we put some logic in the public exposed get property then we could miss that if we directly reference the private variable. The other alternative I thought of was 2)               public class ModelWrapper     {         public readonly int PropertyX;              public ModelWrapper(ModelClass model)         {            PropertyX = model.PropertyX;              // set other properties here we wish to expose on the ModelClass ...         }              // and other methods we need that uses the properties we have exposed e.g         public void PerformOperation()         {             if(this.PropertyX > 10)                // do something             else                // do something else         }     }      Or another option after reading some posts about this is: 3)               public class ModelWrapper     {         private readonly int _propertyX;         public int PropertyX          {            get { return _propertyX; }         }              public ModelWrapper(ModelClass model)         {            _propertyX = model.PropertyX;           }              // and other methods we need that uses the properties we have exposed e.g         public void PerformOperation()         {             if(this.PropertyX > 10)                // do something             else                // do something else         }     }      Why do this? I thought it would be a good idea to hide the model from the our code as we wanted a wrapper class anyway to do the methods so why then expose the model as well? I thought it might be overkill but it does save in other parts of the code going something like **ModelWrapper.Model.PropertyX** etc So to the question. Which method if any would be a better solution. Is it overkill or are there better practices out there for this? EDIT: I added another option (3) as it there is no need to set the properties I am exposing so I didn't necessarily want to have a private set as it's only being set in the constructor. Hence the readonly private variable that is used in the get part of the exposed property? I've also found a stack overflow question about this at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2249980/c-immutability-and-public-readonly- fields but it doesn't necessarilly say which was better/preferred solution with the current c# limitations. Any ideas on the 3 implementations as to the best practice?"}
{"_id": "148722", "title": "Rails solution for mobile-specific content filter?", "text": "To note, I'm not interested in simply 'hiding' content for mobile devices, I want to filter out that content completely. I'm also not trying to address the issue by building a mobile specific interface (mob.example.com). There was another question regarding something similar: How do I prevent useless content load on the page in responsive design? The solution, in that post, was to set a session during the initial request, and then use the session to filter content on subsequent requests. I primarily develop in Rails, and I'm wondering if there are any gems or ruby- specific solutions to this problem?"}
{"_id": "137028", "title": "Business Objects within a Data Access Layer", "text": "So I've been creating a data access layer via TDD and have approached somewhat of a concern. I'd rather not start down the wrong path, so I figured I'd ask you guys to see if my thoughts were in line with a clean architecture. The methods within my Data Access Layer (DAL for short), are pretty simple. They are in line with the stored procedures in the database (no other way to call into it to keep things clean), and they contain those same parameters that the procedures do. They then just connect to the database, and return the query result. Here's one example:               public int DeleteRecord(int recordId)     {         recordId.RequireThat(\"recordId\").NotZeroOrLess();              List<SqlParameter> parameters = new List<SqlParameter>();         parameters.Add(new SqlParameter { ParameterName = \"@RecordId\", SqlDbType = SqlDbType.Int, Direction = ParameterDirection.Input, Value = recordId});              return this.ExecuteNonQuery(\"DeleteRecord\", parameters.ToArray());     }      This works perfectly for this type of method because I am not doing anything meaningful with the result set. I just want to make sure the command worked, so I will return the result of the non-query, which is just the rows affected, and I can verify the logic using that number. However, say in another DAL method, I want to load a record. My load procedure is going to be executing `selects` against a bunch of tables and returning a `DataSet`, but I am battling with whether my DAL should create the Business Objects within the method using the `DataSet`, _or_ if my Business Objects themselves should just have a `Load()` method that gets the `DataSet` from the DAL, and then basically fills itself in. Doing it through the DAL would result in less logic in the Business Objects (even though this is just select logic, it's still logic), but would crowd the DAL a little bit and make it feel like it really is doing something that it shouldn't be doing. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "132210", "title": "Difference between Controller and Dispatcher in MVC for web frameworks?", "text": "In MVC applied to WSGI or Java EE, is the Servlet a controller, dispatcher, or both? I think I've seen system diagrams where the controller and the dispatcher are different. Could the controller control SQL statements which should not be in the dispatcher? Thank you"}
{"_id": "142408", "title": "Advice on whether to use scripting, run time compile or something else", "text": "I work in the prodution area at my works and I design and create the software to run our automated test equipment for testing our products. Everytime I get involved with a new machine I end up with a different and (hopefully) better design. Anyway I have come to the point where I feel I need to start standardizing all the machines with the same program. I see a problem when it comes to applying updates as at the moment the test procedures are hard coded into the program at each station. I neeed to be able to update the core program without affecting the testing section. The way I see it is that this will mean splitting the program into 2 sections.   1. Main UI - This is the core that talks to everything on the machine such as cameras, sensors, printer etc and is a standalone application.   2. Test Procedure - This is the steps that is executeted everytime the machine runs through a test. The main UI will load the test procedure and execute when ever a test is required. My question is what is the best approach to this in terms of having an application load a file and execute the code with in? Take into account that the code in the test procedure will need access to public methods on the UI/core system to communicate to sensors etc. I have heard about MS Roslyn and had a quick look, would this solve my issue?"}
{"_id": "136776", "title": "How can I document someone else's past work?", "text": "We're in a bad situation of having very little documentation on customization our past workers made to a business critical system. Lots of changes were done to Crystal Reports, database entities, and proprietary configuration/programming files for our ERP software. The current documentation generally reads something like this: > This program is run before invoicing. Known bugs: none. > > Run this program after installing software X. > > Changed the following fields in this report: (with no explanation of how or > why) Our IT shop is small, and in the case of the ERP software, most work was lumped on one person (that's me now) so no one else here knows what all we did. The IT and accounting department know bits and pieces (occasionally quite helpful ones) but it's not enough. Another problem is our Accounting department seems to _think_ we're well documented. It's true that we kept lots of records of what went _wrong_ , but very little explains what (if anything) was done to fix these problems. We have hundreds of papers explaining bugs, but the documents explaining changes (as shown above) are almost useless. **How can I go about documenting past changes when I don't know what all was done?** I can start with documenting _what_ we've changed: Files, database tables ect which we need to have for the system to work. I can also document what we _do_ ; when reports are run, why people were told to use X report/program. But when one of these customized things has a problem, I'm always back to square one. How can I proactively document this stuff for myself and others?"}
{"_id": "142405", "title": "DAO/Webservice Consumption in Web Application", "text": "I am currently working on converting a \"legacy\" web-based (Coldfusion) application from single data source (MSSQL database) to multi-tier OOP. In my current system there is a read/write database with all the usual stuff and additional \"read-only\" databases that are exported daily/hourly from an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system by SSIS jobs with business product/item and manufacturing/SCM planning data. The reason I have the opportunity and need to convert to multi-tier OOP is a newer more modern ERP system is being implemented business wide that will be a complete replacement. This newer ERP system offers several interfaces for third party applications like mine, from direct SQL access to either a dotNet web-service or a SOAP- like web-service. I have found several suitable frameworks I would be happy to use (Coldspring, FW/1) but I am not sure what design patterns apply to my data access object/component and how to manage the connection/session tokens, with this background, my question has the following three parts:   1. Firstly I have concerns with moving from the relative safety of a SSIS job that protects me from downtime and speed of the ERP system to directly connecting with one of the web services which I note seem significantly slower than I expected (simple/small requests often take up to a whole second). Are there any design patterns I can investigate/use to cache/protect my data tier?   2. It is my understanding data access objects (the component that connects directly with the web services and convert them into the data types I can then work with in my Domain Objects) should be singletons (and will act as an Adapter/Facade), am I correct?   3. As part of the data access object I have to setup a connection by username/password (I could set up multiple users and/or connect multiple times with this) which responds with a session token that needs to be provided on every subsequent request. Do I do this once and share it across the whole application, do I setup a new \"connection\" for every user of my application and keep the token in their session scope (might quickly hit licensing limits), do I set the \"connection\" up per page request, or is there a design pattern I am missing that can manage multiple \"connections\" where a requests/access uses the first free \"connection\"? It is worth noting if the ERP system dies I will need to reset/invalidate all the connections and start from scratch, and depending on which web-service I use might need manually close the \"connection/session\""}
{"_id": "136775", "title": "Should I include multiply license header notice in dual license software?", "text": "Is it necessarily if a software released under both of LGPL3 && GPL3 terms have to include both license header notice top of each file? Or just put GPL header notice? or simply put LGPL3 license text in some file like COPYING.LESSER ? EDITED: I am the copyright holder of the project!"}
{"_id": "222247", "title": "Why isn't exponentiation hardware-implemented?", "text": "Why is there no exponentiation operation in hardware, even though many languages have builtin operators for it? Is it because even hardware implementations would need to use the same algorithm as software (i.e. no hardware implementation could be significantly more efficient), or because it is rarely used, or another reason?"}
{"_id": "106451", "title": "Lists & Collections in MVVM - which approach to take?", "text": "I'm currently working on a Silverlight app using Caliburn.Micro. At present, we have Views (eg: `PeopleView`) and View Models (eg: `PeopleViewModel`) that equate to 'pages' of the application. `PeopleView` might contain a `ListBox` (\"`People`\") which is bound to an `ObservableCollection` of `Person` objects, and has an `ItemTemplate` assigned to denote how each `Person` object should be displayed. However, one of my colleagues has begun to implement a list in another way, where each `Person` is a View Model (ie: `PersonViewModel`) and has an associated `PersonView` to determine how that `PersonViewModel` should be displayed in the `ListBox`. The latter seems more MVVM (or at least has more mention of V and VM!) but I'm not sure whether there's a particularly large advantage to doing one over the other. Are both of these ways valid? Is either better than the other?"}
{"_id": "48708", "title": "What issues carry the highest risk in a software project?", "text": "Clearly, software projects are different from other industries in terms of many things like for instance, quality assurance, project progress measurement, and many other things. Unique characteristics of software projects also makes the risk management process unique. Lots of issues in a project might lead it to unacceptable delay or failure to deliver business value. They might even make a complete disaster in the project. What are the deadliest risk factors in a software project? How to analyze, prevent and handle them? Particularly, I'm interested in the issues that you can detect from the beginning and you should keep an eye on (for example, you might be told about a third-party API that the current application uses and lacks documentation). Please share your experiences if they are relevant."}
{"_id": "245583", "title": "Use of malloc in C", "text": "Is it necessary to call free function every time we use malloc in C. I am asking this because I have seen many times that it is not called . Thank you"}
{"_id": "216429", "title": "Is it better to have constructors with or without parameters?", "text": "Is it better to have constructors with or without parameters and why?               public NewClass( String a,  String b, int c) throws IOException     {         //something     }      _OR_               public NewClass()      {         //something     }"}
{"_id": "216428", "title": "Testing a codebase with sequential cohesion", "text": "I've this really simple program written in C with ncurses that's basically a front-end to sqlite3. I would like to implement TDD to continue the development and have found a nice C unit framework for this. However I'm totally stuck on how to implement it. Take this case for example: A user types a letter 'l' that is captured by ncurses getch(), and then an sqlite3 query is run that for every row calls a callback function. This callback function prints stuff to the screen via ncurses. So the obvious way to fully test this is to simulate a keyboard and a terminal and make sure that the output is the expected. However this sounds too complicated. I was thinking about adding an abstraction layer between the database and the UI so that the callback function will populate a list of entries and that list will later be printed. In that case I would be able to check if that list contains the expected values. However, why would I struggle with a data structure and lists in my program when sqlite3 already does this? For example, if the user wants to see the list sorted in some other way, it would be expensive to throw away the list and repopulate it. I would need to sort the list, but why should I implement sorting when sqlite3 already has that? Using my orginal design I could just do an other query sorted differently. Previously I've only done TDD with command line applications, and there it's really easy to just compare the output with what I'm expected. An other way would be to add CLI interface to the program and wrap a test program around the CLI to test everything. (The way git.git does with it's test-framework). So the question is, how to add testing to a tightly integrated database/UI."}
{"_id": "137798", "title": "WCF Data Services (OData) Vs ASP.NET Web API? Hypermedia?", "text": "I'm desiging a distributed application that will consist of REST services and a variety of clients (Silverlight, iOS, Windows Phone 7, etc). I was ready to decide that I would implement my REST services using WCF Data Services (OData) but now the the MVC 4 Web API has made me question that decision. What I liked about OData was the URI querying and hypermedia capabilities you get for free. What I disliked was the verbosity of the OData payload; lots of unnecessary characters coming over the wire. What I like about the Web API is that the payloads are much more concise and it has the URI querying capability of OData, however it seems to be lacking hypermedia (out of the box, at least). My boss is also pushing for the Web API because \"the powers that be at Microsoft are backing it and OData hasn't been getting traction.\" So I have two questions: 1) Can anyone comment on the backing/traction of the Web API and OData? 2) Is the Web API expected to natively support hypermedia by release time or are there any off-the-shelf implementations or examples I should look into? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "137793", "title": "Scheduling Algorithm for Scheduling Life", "text": "I am trying to write some code to schedule a set of real life tasks that are input by the user. These tasks are stored in an sqlite database. And at the moment, the only parameters I am taking into consideration are the, `The project to which a task belongs to --> p`   `The name of the task itself --> t`   `And the due date for this task --> d` The `project` and `due date` parameters are optional. But assuming that the user will always input at least the `task name` and `due date` for every task.. I was wondering if it is possible to schedule the set of tasks using a scheduler like the `Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS)` for example!. I realize that the CFS was written for scheduling tasks with much finer granularity(nanoseconds) than the set of tasks being proposed for this purpose... But I realized that it might be possible and maybe more efficient if I can modify it to work with tasks that are on the same time scale as our perception of time. A typical entry in the database would be in the format (p, t, d). 'p' is optional. Here are a few examples.. `(_, 'Call home', 29/2/2012)`   `(Work, 'Meet boss', 14/3/2012)`   `(Work, 'Ask for raise', 18/3/2012)`   `(_, 'Book tickets', 10/3/2012)`   `(Work, 'Quit', 14/4/2012)`   `(Personal, 'Get botox injections', 10/3/2012)`   `(Personal, 'Get breast implants', 10/10/2012)`   `(_, 'Dad bday', 7/10/2012)` Here is a situation to consider. I would like to wake up in the morning. Run this \"yet to be coded\" algorithm on the set of tasks.. like the ones given above.. and I would like to receive a schedule for the rest of day, that maximizes throughput. At a later stage, I would like to pass arguments to this algorithms that would allow me to control the scheduler to return a set of tasks depending on my current situation. Like if I am at work, I want to be able to pass arguments to the algorithm, to ask it to only return tasks that can be completed at work.. I hope I am able to convey the gist of it. I understand that the `due date` alone is not sufficient to schedule tasks using the CFS for example.. but if there are other parameters that I should consider, please do let me know. And any suggestions for the kind of scheduling algorithm to employ would be helpful. Thanks."}
{"_id": "216422", "title": "Is creating a separate pool for each individual png image in the same class appropriate?", "text": "I'm still possibly a little green about object-pooling, and I want to make sure something like this is a sound design pattern before really embarking upon it. Take the following code (which uses the Starling framework in ActionScript 3):               [Embed(source = \"/../assets/images/game/misc/red_door.png\")]     private const RED_DOOR:Class;          private const RED_DOOR_TEXTURE:Texture = Texture.fromBitmap(new RED_DOOR());          private const m_vRedDoorPool:Vector.<Image> = new Vector.<Image>(50, true);     .     .     .     public function produceRedDoor():Image     {         // get a Red Door image     }          public function retireRedDoor(pImage:Image):void     {         // retire a Red Door Image     }      Except that there are four colors: red, green, blue, and yellow. So now we have a separate pool for each color, a separate produce function for each color, and a separate retire function for each color. Additionally there are several items in the game that follow this 4-color pattern, so for each of them, we have four pools, four produce functions, and four retire functions. There are more colors involved in the images themselves than just their predominant one, so trying to throw all the doors, for instance, in a single pool, and then changing their color properties around isn't going to work. Also the nonexistence of the static keyword is due to its slowness in AS3. Is this the right way to do things? * * * **EDIT:** One individual piece of the puzzle is whether I should be trying to throw all of these pools into the same class, with brand new functions and everything for each and every pool. That is somewhat related to another question I asked recently. Even though the accepted answer of that question didn't necessarily address this particular scenario, getting more classes, variables, abstractions, etc. is going to create more overhead, and when you're trying to do something like object pooling, I'm not sure whether neatening up the class design like that is going to introduce \"too much\" overhead. This is only one individual part of what I'm asking though, as the question is ultimately much more general."}
{"_id": "216425", "title": "Advice on designing a robust program to handle a large library of meta-information & programs", "text": "So this might be overly vague, but here it is anyway I'm not really looking for a specific answer, but rather general design principles or direction towards resources that deal with problems like this. It's one of my first large-scale applications, and I would like to do it right. **Brief Explanation** My basic problem is that I have to write an application that handles a large library of meta-data, can easily modify the meta-data on-the-fly, is robust with respect to crashing, and is very efficient. (Sorta like the design parameters of iTunes, although sometimes iTunes performs more poorly than I would like). If you don't want to read the details, you can skip the rest **Long Explanation** Specifically I am writing a program that creates a library of image files and meta-data about these files. There is a list of tags that may or may not apply to each image. The program needs to be able to add new images, new tags, assign tags to images, and detect duplicate images, all while operating. The program contains an image Viewer which has tagging operations. The idea is that if a given image A is viewed while the library has tags T1, T2, and T3, then that image will have boolean flags for each of those tags (depending on whether the user tagged that image while it was open in the Viewer). However, prior to being viewed in the Viewer, image A would have no value for tags T1, T2, and T3. Instead it would have a \"dirty\" flag indicating that it is unknown whether or not A has these tags or not. The program can introduce new tags at any time (which would automatically set all images to \"dirty\" with respect to this new tag) This program must be fast. It must be easily able to pull up a list of images with or without a certain tag as well as images which are \"dirty\" with respect to a tag. It has to be crash-safe, in that if it suddenly crashes, all of the tagging information done in that session is not lost (though perhaps it's okay to loose some of it) Finally, it has to work with a lot of images (>10,000) I am a fairly experienced programmer, but I have never tried to write a program with such demanding needs and I have never worked with databases. With respect to the meta-data storage, there seem to be a few design choices: **Choice 1** : Invidual meta-data vs centralized meta-data **Individual Meta-Data** : have a separate meta-data file for each image. This way, as soon as you change the meta-data for an image, it can be written to the hard disk, without having to rewrite the information for all of the other images. **Centralized Meta-Data** : Have a single file to hold the meta-data for every file. This would probably require meta-data writes in intervals as opposed to after every change. The benefit here is that you could keep a centralized list of all images with a given tag, ect, making the task of pulling up all images with a given tag very efficient"}
{"_id": "137794", "title": "Offshoring a Software Project -- Conflict Resolution", "text": "I had been tasked with managing a project which was outsourced to some Ukrainian developers. The company hired them through Elance at a **fixed price**. At that point my boss left me _alone_ to handle them and get the work done. I created a detailed specification of the complete thing that needed to be done. The project involved dealing with such things as XMPP, RabbitMQ, and Database. In my first meeting with them (always IM) I explained **thoroughly** what they needed to do. They seemed to understand it -- and they were very confident that it would be done easily. So far so good. But after one week, when we met again, they were full of misunderstandings about what needed to be done. When I asked one of the developers if he knew XMPP, he said he was working with it for the first time. At our first meeting I'd very specifically mentioned the complexity of the project and the technologies involved. Plus, I had repeatedly asked them to write a functional specification of exactly HOW they would do it. But they said NO, and insisted that they would rather write the code. I said OK. The project completed after 3 weeks and they delivered what was needed. At that point I started to review the code. It was okay for the most part, but there ware some important problems:   * they hard-coded some of the things that needed to be separated out into a config file   * there were multiple config files that I needed to be consolidated in one   * they wrote absolutely NO documentation   * some other minor changes I asked them to make these changes (except documentation) -- And, we had an argument. They said, since the price was fixed, I was being unfair in asking them to make any changes once they completed the working code. That they had worked for unreasonable amount of time on the project and now it was completely wrong to ask for anything. Finally now they have made the changes, and the project is over. But it leaves some questions in my mind...   * They did what was needed but I needed it **properly done** , and hence the changes. was I really unfair?   * Why did I agree on letting them code without having a functional specification?   * Why did I not make sure that they understood everything the first time? Does anyone find themself in the same position? Do you think there is a better way to manage outsourced projects? _**\\-- UPDATE --_** Thanks for all the opinions -- after reflecting upon entire experience, I can conclude...   * Although I wasn't vague in the specifications from my side, I certainly didn't make them _ironclad_ as suggested. So the take away is: always be as much specific as possible -- read your specs from their perspective too and see if you missed something. Repeat it at least three times.   * Just specifying what the code should do it not enough. You must specify what the code is supposed to look like. What the directory structure will be; even the file names if possible. This will save you from lot of annoyance later. Strictly specify the coding guidelines, variable naming conventions, internal documentation format, etc. See to it that they abide by those guidelines, and if not, scream.   * Demand a functional specification from their side -- insist that it be written before any code. This will get a lot of confusions and misunderstandings out of the way.   * Review the code as it is being developed so that you identify the anomalies earlier and get them corrected. Talk to them at least once every other day.   * Lastly, try to make a good rapport with them. Make them feel that you appreciate their work. Don't push them exaggeratedly to fit your guidelines -- instead request them to do so and tell them that it would make maintaining the code so much easier for you once they complete the project."}
{"_id": "170573", "title": "Long lines of text in source code", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is the 80 character limit still relevant in times of widescreen monitors? I used to set a vertical line set at 80 characters in my text editor and then I added carriage returns if the lines got too long. I later increased the value to 135 characters. I started using word wrap and not giving myself a limit but tried to keep lines short if I could because it took a lot of time shortening my lines. People at work use word wrap and don't give themselves a limit.. is this the correct way? What are you meant to do ? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "79798", "title": "System analysis at the begining of the project", "text": "When I want to develop a new application, first I'm going to design a UML and specify project details and definition. But when I start development process, I determine that I should change some parts of my idea in order to become more popular software or easier logical steps for my users or simpler process or anything else. Then, I change my code, redesign some parts of my UML and start/continue development process one time again and sure that this time I have a perfect project definition and UML, but after a while ( this time takes longer ) i determine again I should change something again ! So I get back and change my UML( sometimes not ! just continue the project without changing UML ) and so on. This process will happen over and over until I become tired or find (almost) the best state of the project or have time limitation problem! So my question is:   * _'Can I design a perfect UML at the beginning of my project so that describe the best state ever !?'_ or _\\- 'Should I swear in God never ever change my UML ( and project definition ) even if there is a better one and write current state to the end!'_ Another question \"Is changing some parts of a new idea, even if analyzed with hands of the best analyzer in the world, is inevitable ?( in order to find the best state )\". I mean we can't fully simulate user experience, can we? We should see it in action."}
{"_id": "198171", "title": "Choosing how to approach Geocoding Requests", "text": "I am about to begin writing a program in c# that will read Addresses from a source file create a Geocoding request, sent it to Google Maps API, get the response choose the coordinates from the xml and then store them in a database. My question is what is the proper type of source file considering performance and easy implementation. I have the option to supply the source addresses as txt file or xml file. The number of addresses need to get geolocated is about 100.000 which is a big number so what is the proper approach to handling this kind of requests? Should i provide the addresses source file as txt or xml or something else?"}
{"_id": "196362", "title": "How to keep unit tests independent?", "text": "I've read it at many places that unit tests should be independent. In my case I have a class that does data transformation. These steps must be done sequentially, otherwise they don't make sense. For example,               load_data     parse_float     label     normalize     add_bias     save_data      For example, I cannot normalize the data before I label it, because then values have changed and I don't have access to the original values of my data anymore. Or I cannot save the data before I actually loaded it. So my test class looks something like this               class TestTransform(Testcase):       def setUp(self):         self.trans = Transform()            def test_main():         self.load()         self.parse_float()         self.label()            def load(self):         self.trans.load()         assert ....            def parse_float(self):         self.trans.parse_float()         assert ....      In this case, my unit tests clearly depend on each other, but I can't see how else I could do it. As an alternative, I could write something like this                 def test_normalize(self):         # setup         self.trans.load()         self.trans.parse_float()         self.trans.label()         # test begins here         self.trans.normalize()         assert ....      But in this case, I run a lot of code multiple times, which is inefficient and makes my tests run a lot longer. So does the best practice of keeping unittests independent apply in this case or not?"}
{"_id": "196361", "title": "Best way to create draw with limitation", "text": "I'm writing a program to automatically make the draw for a competition. There are four objects: `Debate` `Judge` `School` `Team` Each Debate has two teams and a judge. Each team participates in three debates. With this, there are the following rules: 1) A team cannot face someone from their same school 2) A team cannot face another team from the same other school (As in if they play a team from a school once, they cannot play again against someone from that school) 3) A judge cannot come from the same school as a team they are judging. So how would I create a draw? A draw looks like a table (I just need the data, but when you write it it looks like this) with a column for judges and then three other columns for each round of debates (the three debates each team participates in). Right now I'm basically choosing a random team, finding an opposing team that hasn't played the school of the first team before and doesn't come from the same school and then finding a judge from neither of those schools. Then I do the same thing until I have all the debates. The problem is the program sometimes gets into ruts where there is no other team/judge that fits. A human would then shift things around and try to find a way to move other judges around to figure it out, but how can I do that with a program. If I run the program again it figures it out just because it's random which teams it chooses for what. Basically, I'm wondering what the best solution is to the problem?"}
{"_id": "7927", "title": "How to reduce the number of bugs when coding?", "text": "No one's perfect, and no matter what we do, we are going to produce code that has bugs in it from time to time. What are some methods/techniques for reducing the number of bugs you produce, both when writing new software and changing/maintaining existing code?"}
{"_id": "60231", "title": "How to be more logical? (less bugs/errors)", "text": "I have been programming for 6 years and I am in high school (I prefer not to disclose my age). I have dabbled in many different languages. Just to list a few: Java, PHP, C++, Python, Autohotkey, Mathematica and many more. I have a very good understanding of the basics of general programming. The only problem is I _still_ create bugs all the time. I think too often. Do you have any hints _besides continuing_ to program that will help me become a better programmer and make less errors?"}
{"_id": "128023", "title": "How to make code writing more accurate?", "text": "I am trying to practice writing code for a long period of time before compiling and write unit test (if possible) for what I wrote (the language is C++). Of course, I got the IDE support (Emacs or Eclipse for on the fly error detection and code completion) with minimal or no error. I practice this ability because the pattern \"trial and error\" in which a bit of code is written and then build/run to check the correctness is not productive as I feel. However, isn't what I am doing counter the purpose of testing? Maybe, the point of my practice is not to assure 100% logic correctness, but rather, 100% or close to 100% syntax correctness, in order to vastly improve productivity. I will try to practice with the small piece of code first, and then improve gradually as time passes. What's your opinion on code writing and productivity in general? Do you practice like I do or do you have much better method? (Aside from being in the \"flow\", or extremely concentration). I concern this matter because I heard that some people are an actual human compiler, and it seems like they can directly translate the logic to code as their natural language. **Edit:** I was a bit wrong when I mentioned not to improve logical correctness. Yes, logical correctness counts as well. What I want is to practice programming to the point where I can keep writing code for a long period of time with minimal mistakes (such as I can write 1000 lines of code,a and only a few trivial errors occur).In case of C++ or any language, using external libraries require you to understand many dependencies of the libraries to use it correctly in your code. For example, if you use Spring framework in Java, you have to make sure the xml, the server etc... are set up correctly. I consider this is also a form of syntax, and one way to achieve \"syntax correctness\" is to practice it frequently to the point when you can minimize the most mistakes written by hands. This is similar to when we first start learning programming, sometimes/often we miss the semicolon. Then we learn the mistake and improve it."}
{"_id": "72611", "title": "How do you stop yourself from making mistakes?", "text": "I used to pride myself with the high quality of the code I delivered. Today I made a mistake that wiped the grin off my face. It was a null reference exception caused by a hasty fix to an edge case that was caught during testing. I didn't have proper unit tests and I didn't regression test after making the fix. So my question is, what do you do to force yourself to follow best practices? I know you should write tests (unit, integration, acceptance, etc.) and run them to validate any changes. But when the pressure's on and you're rushing to put out a fire, how do you keep yourself focused and sticking to those best practices? Physical exercise? Religious TDD?"}
{"_id": "196369", "title": "How can I learn to like C++?", "text": "I'm a wimpy web programmer by trade -- I enjoy programming in JavaScript, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, and Ruby. I have to program in C++ for my computer science degree, and it frustrates me. I don't much like the syntax and I feel that it's more verbose than it could be. I think I've roared \"I hate C++\" at least once per CS project. I don't need to _love_ C++, but I wonder if someone who adores the language can tell me what I can do to ease my pain. C++11 and Syntastic for Vim have certainly helped, but I'm wondering if there's something more than that -- a specific tool or an abstract philosophy."}
{"_id": "63786", "title": "Have you tried Usability Audit for your company's website?", "text": "We had a security audit and it was brilliant. Are there companies that do web usability audit?"}
{"_id": "109334", "title": "Are there any studies of cross-functional teams vs. domain-based teams (e.g. project-based vs. software/mechanics/etc)?", "text": "I work in an organization which creates many integrated systems products - i.e. it is complete products with mechanical/system/electronics/software being designed and manufactured. At the moment most teams are organized around projects in a cross functional way. The advantage of an organization like this is that people who are working closely together for a common goal are close. The disadvantages come from the isolation of engineers from their peers. Typically a project is assigned only one software engineer. This means that the projects have a high truck factor, minimal knowledge sharing and best practices, and technical development is limited. So my question is: are there any studies comparing the cost/benefits of these two approaches?"}
{"_id": "73830", "title": "Is it legal to disassemble a Microsoft dll and post the result on my blog?", "text": "I'm writing an article for my blog about undocumented functions which exist in the _dwmapi.dll_ library. I want to post the result of the disassembled code to explain how the names and parameters of these functions are obtained, something like the article from this blog. **This is only for educational purposes** to show a couple of samples using these undocumented functions. So the question is: _Can I post the disassembled code of this library on my blog?_ **UPDATE :** There exist a couple of applications like Aura which uses these undocumented functions (DwmGetColorizationParameters, DwmSetColorizationParameters), obviously the authors in some point disassembled the _dwmapi.dll_ file in order to get the parameters and functions names. But they (the authors) only publish the final source code to access to these functions. This makes me think that _I can disassemble in private a Microsoft dll and then publish an application or source code based in this research_. Is this correct?"}
{"_id": "194739", "title": "Why do some of object oriented languages let programmer use primitive types?", "text": "Why do some object oriented languages let the programmer use primitive data types? Aren't classes like Integer, Boolean, etc. enough?"}
{"_id": "73838", "title": "Job in other country - relocation package", "text": "I have the opportunity to work in an 'overseas' country. I have passed the technical interviews and I am at the 'offer' stage. Everything is ok, except for the fact that I am expected to pay for my plane ticket, which is almost 2000 EUR (an aprox 8000 km distance). I've discussed this with the possible future employer and they said that the plane ticket is my expense. What I'm asking you is: Shouldn't they pay me for the plane ticket? Or give me a relocation package? Do you accept this kind of offer? What relocation package would you have asked for if you were in my shoes? PS: Destionation country is Singapore. I am a Delphi Developer with 5 years of experience in SD, and overall 8 years in IT."}
{"_id": "194730", "title": "Good Version Control Guidelines from a Development/Collaboration Perspective?", "text": "At our company we have started outsourcing some of our development. This has worked somewhat well. However, we are having a hard time getting them to properly use version control. They are familiar with SVN and know how to use it. However, for some reason they don't commit regularly, instead they work with 16 things simultaneously and make a huge commits every 2 weeks, if we are lucky maybe with a few comments. Which makes it very difficult to both following and review their work, collaborate and also fix bugs. I have tried to explain to them to do their work as one small task at a time and regularly commit each of these with appropriate comments. Without much success, either they don't understand the concept or they are lazy. My question is, what would be good guidelines describing how one should work with version control, not from a technical perspective (they know SVN), which seems to be the only thing I'm finding online, but from a development/collaboration/project perspective?"}
{"_id": "209896", "title": "call a function and never wait for it in C#", "text": "I have a controller in my mvc4 web application in which there is an action that needs to call another function. What happens in that function i.e. the return value is not important for my action. How i can call that function and never wait for it to be executed? I think it can be done by async but my point is not to use resources, just call the function and never wait for it what ever happens. Please give me some advise."}
{"_id": "139360", "title": "Looking for a digital developer book service", "text": "I just started managing a small team of developers for my company and I would like to give them access to a library of books that would help them improve their skills. Before I buy a bookshelf worth of books I was wondering if anyone was aware of any services that would fill this need. Something that anyone with an account could log into and get access to the latest books on programming and software development. Ideally, something like a shared kindle account, but would be happy to hear about other experiences or ideas that would also help fit my need. Or even if you think I am dreaming and should just shell out some money for the books."}
{"_id": "78777", "title": "Where should I include comments in my \"self-documenting code\"?", "text": "I'm currently developing a web-app by myself and have made it a point to use descriptive variable and method names (sometimes at the expense of brevity) in order to minimize commenting. The plan was to code each method using this strategy, then comment after I've completed the method I was currently working on. However, I've found that after (more or less) all of the methods I've completed, in-line comments seemed superfluous. I still follow Javadoc conventions for classes and methods, but as of now my code is for the most part, completely devoid of any in-line comments. Fortunately, I'm still relatively early in the development process and all of the methods' workings are fresh in my head, should a situation arise where I need to write in-line comments. Is this a good strategy? If not, where should I include in-line comments? I've included one of my methods below in order to illustrate how self-documenting it currently is. (I'm using Pelops, which is a Java library used to access a Cassandra database. Without going in too deep in to Cassandra's data model, a row basically corresponds to a relational database tuple, and a column corresponds a column in a relation database table). I'd like to think that even without knowledge of Pelops or Cassandra, that one will be able to understand what is going on in the code. Is this the case? If not, where can I insert comments to make it crystal clear? I hope to abstract any suggestions on comment placement in this code in to all the other methods I've written so far.               /**          * Gathers a user's ID and first name from the database, creates a random activation code for that user and stores          * it in the database, and sends an activation e-mail to that user.               * @param eMail                           a String representation of the e-mail of the user that the e-mail is being sent for          * @throws MyAppConnectionException      if any of the queries is unable to be executed or a problem arises because of one, or if a problem arises while sending the e-mail          */         public static void generateAndSendActivation(String eMail) throws MyAppConnectionException, MyAppActivationException         {             eMail = eMail.toLowerCase();                  try             {                 Selector userIDSelector = Pelops.createSelector(pool);                 Column userIDColumn = userIDSelector.getColumnFromRow(\"Users_By_Email\", eMail, \"User_ID\", ConsistencyLevel.ONE);                 String userIDString = new String(userIDColumn.getValue());                      Selector firstNameAndStatusSelector = Pelops.createSelector(pool);                 SlicePredicate firstNameAndStatus = Selector.newColumnsPredicate(\"First_Name\", \"Status\");                 List<Column> firstNameAndStatusColumns = firstNameAndStatusSelector.getColumnsFromRow(\"Users\", userIDString, firstNameAndStatus, ConsistencyLevel.ONE);                      char statusChar = Selector.getColumnValue(firstNameAndStatusColumns, \"Status\").toChar();                      if(statusChar == 'N')                 {                     String firstNameString = Selector.getColumnStringValue(firstNameAndStatusColumns, \"First_Name\");                          String activationCode = createRandomCode();                     String activationHash = BCrypt.hashpw(activationCode, BCrypt.gensalt());                          Mutator storeActivationHashMutator = Pelops.createMutator(pool);                     storeActivationHashMutator.writeColumn(\"Users\", userIDString,                             storeActivationHashMutator.newColumn(\"Activation_Code\", activationHash)                             );                          storeActivationHashMutator.execute(ConsistencyLevel.ONE);                     sendEmail(firstNameString, userIDString, eMail, activationCode, \"sendActivationCode\");                 }                 else                 {                     throw new MyAppActivationException(\"User with ID \" + userIDString + \"tried to activate an already activated account\");                 }                  }             catch(NotFoundException nfe)             {                 MyAppQueryException bqe = new MyAppQueryException(\"Account for user with e-mail \" + eMail + \" not found. Cannot send activation code\", nfe);                 bqe.accountDoesNotExist = true;                 throw bqe;             }             catch(PelopsException pe)             {                 MyAppQueryException be = new MyAppQueryException(\"Unable to carry out one of the operations required to generate and store activation code\", pe);                 throw be;             }             catch(MyAppMailException bme)             {                 throw bme;             }         }"}
{"_id": "114957", "title": "Does directly accessing an applications database break the license agreement?", "text": "We have purchased a fairly light-weight application that uses a database on SQL Server for its back-end. This application has no API. There is a small web-based feature we need to add, that can easily be added by connecting to the database directly. **Generally speaking, and all issues relating to future schema changes aside, is this typically allowed by the software license?** A co-worker made the argument that in the spirit of the software license, we are reverse-engineering their code. I hold the belief that it is our data in the database that we would be accessing and potentially modifying, no license is required for the actual data. In addition, since we still pay for a license to use the software, that means we also have a license to use its schema, as the schema is part of the software. It is also my understanding that it is common practice (at least, everywhere I have worked) to access an application's database directly for reporting purposes. Which is considered correct? I am interested in input from both a legal standpoint, and an industry commonly understood standpoint. _I also understand that this will vary from license to license. I am looking for a general answer that will apply to most software. Thank you._ * * * **Edit:** Perhaps another way to look at it... What is generally considered acceptable? Throw out the license agreement, since the legal question cannot be properly answered without the license. **As a developer, would you be unhappy with your users accessing the database directly?**"}
{"_id": "114953", "title": "What's the best Java equivalent to Linq?", "text": "Are there any libraries in Java that come close to providing the functionality of Linq?"}
{"_id": "114951", "title": "How can I get my startup working with Agile development?", "text": "In our startup, we've worked until now using the traditional waterfall model, but we want to try our next project using Agile Methodology. We are pretty much alien to the entire Agile process, so considering this, what is the best way to understand Agile (resources and a practical handbook can be of help), decide on a specific methodology (Scrum, etc), and start it in our next project?"}
{"_id": "222866", "title": "Which methods should be put in an interface and which in abstract classes?", "text": "I have seen many frameworks and modules and their standard they follow is like this   1. `UserInterface` which have some predefined methods   2. `AbstractUserClass` which implements `userInterface`   3. Then `GenericUserClass` which extends from `AbstractuserClass`   4. Then other classes extending from that generic Now I have seen that abstract class has additional functions to the interface, and the generic class also has additional functions.   1. So I am confused which methods should go where   2. Sometimes I see `class A extends Abstractuserclass` and sometimes `class A extends Abstractuserclass implements UseraInterface`. What is the difference if `Abstractclass` already impelements `Userinterface`"}
{"_id": "79422", "title": "Which professional positions combine Computer Science and Marketing?", "text": "I would like to find a job that combines Computer Science with Marketing, ideally in a position where you get to meet a lot of people and travel a fair bit. After having worked as a Front/Back Web App Developer I am getting a degree in Management of Technology, which also includes an element of Marketing. How can I combine my two interests, Computer Science and Marketing, professionally, in a sensible way? Which positions should I be aiming for?"}
{"_id": "91970", "title": "What is a buffered write scheme?", "text": "I received this response from Jeff while researching hit counters. He said page hits are incremented in a `buffered write scheme,` and that a views table does not exist. Can you explain what a buffered write scheme is, please? I would appreciate answers not too heavy with technical jargon. In particular I'm interested in how such a scheme can be implemented to track page hits. I'm curious how hit data gets persisted since it is needed to prevent users from simply refreshing a page to increment page hits."}
{"_id": "5232", "title": "Am I a bad programmer, or does everyone have this feeling?", "text": "I tend to understand things rather quickly, but after 2 years of programming in Python I still stumble across things (like Flask today) that amaze me. I look at the code, have no idea what's going on, and then feel very humbled. I feel like an absolute expert each time this happens, up until the moment it happens. Then, for about a 2 week period I feel like an absolute beginner. Does this often happen, or does it indicated that I have so much more to learn before I can even be considered a \"good\" programmer?"}
{"_id": "222860", "title": "Nested Classes or Namespace", "text": "Why do need namespaces when we have nested classes. What can be done through namespaces, can also achieved through nested classes. so I don't understand the reasoning of having namespaces ?"}
{"_id": "144128", "title": "How to separate sensitive data in database(MySql)", "text": "I need to design a database that will contains information about personal disease of users. What can be the approach in order to implement the columns of the DB's tables: encrypt the information, separate data within two differents DB, one for sensitive data and another for not sensitive data, or both or another approach?"}
{"_id": "67852", "title": "Do you also forget the code after getting the task done?", "text": "I'm a new programmer and want to ask senior programmers (programmers who have some experience in the real world). I do my work and after coding, my project gets completed but honestly speaking I don't remember the code, classes and frameworks name and their properties. Sometimes even I doubt myself that did I made this? Is this normal with all programmers or am I the silliest programmer who couldn't remember the code and classes/properties names? **Edit:** I think many of programmers are getting me wrong here. I said I forget frameworks names, classes' names, property names but I start remembering my own code once I start working on it again. My question is do you remember syntax and classes/property etc. names?"}
{"_id": "131746", "title": "How to correct a junior, but encourage him to think for himself?", "text": "I am the lead of a small team where everyone has less than a year of software development experience. I wouldn't by any means call myself a software guru, but I have learned a few things in the few years that I've been writing software. When we do code reviews I do a fair bit of teaching and correcting mistakes. I will say things like \"This is overly complex and convoluted, and here's why,\" or \"What do you think about moving this method into a separate class?\" I am extra careful to communicate that if they have questions or dissenting opinions, that's ok and we need to discuss. Every time I correct someone, I ask \"What do you think?\" or something similar. However they rarely if ever disagree or ask why. And lately I've been noticing more blatant signs that they are blindly agreeing with my statements and not forming opinions of their own. I need a team who can learn to do things right autonomously, not just follow instructions. How does one correct a junior developer, but still encourage him to think for himself? Edit: Here's an example of one of these obvious signs that they're not forming their own opinions: > Me: I like your idea of creating an extension method, but I don't like how > you passed a large complex lambda as a parameter. The lambda forces others > to know too much about the method's implementation. > > Junior (after misunderstanding me): Yes, I totally agree. We should not use > extension methods here because they force other developers to know too much > about the implementation. There was a misunderstanding, and that has been dealt with. But there was not even an OUNCE of logic in his statement! He thought he was regurgitating my logic back to me, thinking it would make sense when really he had no clue why he was saying it."}
{"_id": "255954", "title": "Selecting the main version of a linux library", "text": "I am looking to use cracklib library for testing password security in my C/C++ linux applications. But I cannot find the original author, nor the official code that hasn't been forked."}
{"_id": "224161", "title": "GPL - Writing an exception for a plugin interface under section 7 of GPLv3", "text": "## The problem I've written a application for Android licensed under GPLv3 which needs to use Google Play Services, a proprietary library, as a plugin to the app. Now I'd also like to add libspotify as a plugin. For all of the proprietary libraries used I'm providing alternative open source plugins but they are not as good as the proprietary ones, not even close. The user should then be free to disable all proprietary parts either at compile or runtime. ## Possible solutions The GPLv3 has a section \"7. Additional Terms.\" under which you can add a \"classpath\" exception. I'd like to use this exception to do the following. The idea of a classpath exception is explained in the GPLv3 FAQ here:   * Linking over a controlled interface: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingOverControlledInterface   * http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs ## The basic idea Implement these interfaces:               interface Plugin {}          interface ProprietaryPlugin extends Plugin {}          interface XYZ_1 extends Plugin {         public void someHook();         public void someOtherHook();         ...     }          interface XYZ_2 extends Plugin {         public void someHook();         public void someOtherHook();         ...     }          XYZ_3, 4, ...      The above interfaces are part of the project and are under GPL. But I'd like to let all code that extend some subinterface of Plugin except ProprietaryPlugin to be able/allowed to be proprietary given that they mark themselves as ProprietaryPlugin. My intention is to make tight plugin hooks that all proprietary plugins must follow and a way to indicate to the user which plugins that we can remove at runtime. Also, I want the \"bridge\" code, the implementation of the plugin interfaces to be open source and under a GPLv3 compatible license. And the source code must provide at least one GPLv3 implementation, hopefully creating a concrete wall between the GPLv3 and proprietary code. ## Visual explanation ![visual explanation with UML and licenses](http://i.stack.imgur.com/NmkP5.png) Is this possible to do? I know that most guys here are not lawyers, but I find asking developers first enlightening. ## A suggestion from irc.gnu.org#gnu The guys at irc.gnu.org#gnu gave me the following suggestion: https://raw.github.com/qcad/qcad/master/gpl-3.0-exceptions.txt It states that:               As a special exception, the copyright holders of QCAD hereby grant permission      for non-GPL compatible plug-ins and script add-ons to be used and distributed      together with QCAD, provided that you also meet the terms and conditions of the      licenses of those plug-ins and script add-ons.      Is \"non-GPL compatible plug-ins and script add-ons\" vague / a loophole, or is it clear and does it apply to my case? ## A second suggestion I got a second suggestion at #gnu: http://roundcube.net/license/ It states that:               This file forms part of the Roundcube Webmail Software for     which the following exception is added:      Plug-ins and Skins which merely make function calls to the Roundcube Webmail Software,     and for that purpose include it by reference shall not be     considered modifications of the software.          If you wish to use this file in another project or create a modified version that will      not be part of the Roundcube Webmail Software, you may remove the exception above and      use this source code under the original version of the license.       What do you think about this one? ## My attempt at a \"classpath exception\" My first idea was to add the classpath-exception to Plugin with something like the following... does it accomplish my intent or is it filled with loopholes, etc.?               Additional permission under GNU GPL version 3 section 7          0. Definitions          \"FSF\" means the Free Software Foundation, Inc.          \"Compatible License\" means any license the FSF      considers to be compatible with the GNU GPL version 3.          \"Plugin interface\" means any interface definition file in the Corresponding Source     containing - in the file's header - the words      \"The licensors of this Program designates this particular file as a Plugin interface\"          \"Proprietary interface mark\" means any interface definition file in the Corresponding Source     containing - in the file's header - the words      \"The licensors of this Program designates this particular file as a Proprietary interface mark\"\"          \"Allowed library\" means any library that is linked or combined with this Program,      or any covered work that creates a derivative work of a      subinterface of a Plugin interface not directly linking with the library.     Such a subinterface provides at least the source code      of one working implementation licensed under This License.     The derivative work of the subinterface linking to the      Allowed library implements a Proprietary interface mark.     Such a derivative work is referred to as a \"Proprietary plugin implementation\".     A Proprietary plugin implementation is licensed under a Compatible License.          1. Exceptions          If you modify this Program, or any covered work, by linking or combining it      with any Allowed library (or a modified version of those libraries),     containing parts covered by the terms of those libraries, the licensors of this      Program grant you additional permission to convey the resulting work.     {Corresponding Source for a non-source form of such a combination shall include      the source code for the parts of any Proprietary plugin implementation     used as well as that of the covered work.}"}
{"_id": "180026", "title": "What are tangible advantages to proper Unit Tests over Functional Test called unit tests", "text": "A project I am working on has a bunch of legacy tests that were not properly mocked out. Because of this the only dependency it has is EasyMock, which doesn't support statics, constructors with arguments, etc. The tests instead rely on database connections and such to \"run\" the tests. Adding powermock to handle these cases is being shot down as cost prohibitive due to the need to upgrade the existing project to support it (Another discussion). My questions are, what are the REAL world tangible benifits of proper unit testing I can use to push back? Are there any? Am I just being a stickler by saying that bad unit tests (even if they work) are bad? Is code coverage just as effective?"}
{"_id": "180025", "title": "PHP best practice in return values", "text": "For PHP, best practices, I have read somewhere that if you assign your data to a variable it takes almost no memory or resource. So let's say I have this function that return a count.               public function returnCount($array){         return count($array);     }      or if this is better?               public function returnCount($array){         $count = count($array);         return $count;     }"}
{"_id": "145832", "title": "Find a \"hole\" in a list of numbers", "text": "What is the fastest way to find the first (smallest) integer that doesn't exist in a given list of **unsorted** integers (and that is greater than the list's smallest value)? My primitive approach is sorting them and stepping through the list, is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "180020", "title": "Guidance in naming awkward domain-specific objects?", "text": "I'm modeling a chemical system, and I'm having problems with naming my elements / items within an enum. I'm not sure if I should use:   * the atomic formula   * the chemical name   * an abbreviated chemical name. For example, sulfuric acid is H2SO4 and hydrochloric acid is HCl. With those two, I would probably just use the atomic formula as they are reasonably common. However, I have others like sodium hexafluorosilicate which is Na2SiF6. In that example, the atomic formula isn't as obvious (to me) but the chemical name is hideously long: `myEnum.SodiumHexaFluoroSilicate`. I'm not sure how I would be able to safely come up with an abbreviated chemical name that would have a consistent naming pattern. There are a few problems that I'm trying to address through naming the enum elements.   The first is readability, with the longer names presenting an issue.   The second is ease of picking up the code for new maintainers, and here the shorter names present an issue.   The next issue is the that business owners usually refer to the full chemical name, but not always. The \"mouthful\" chemicals are referred to by their formula.   The final concern is making sure it's consistent. I _don't_ wan't a mixed naming convention as it will be impossible to remember which to use. **From a maintenance point of view, which of the naming options above would you prefer to see and why?** * * * _Note: Everything here below the line is supplementary | clarifying material. Please don't get bogged down in it. The main question regards naming the awkward objects._ _Atomic Option_               public myEnum.ChemTypes     {          H2SO4,        HCl,        Na2SiF6     }      _Chemical Name Option_               public myEnum.ChemTypes     {        SulfuricAcid,        HydrochloricAcid,        SodiumHexafluorosilicate       }      * * * Here are some additional details from the comments on this question:   * Audience for the code will be just programmers, **not** chemists.    * I'm using C#, but I think this question is more interesting when ignoring the implementation language.   * I'm starting with 10 - 20 compounds and would have at most 100 compounds, so I don't need to worry about _every_ possible compound. Fortunately, it's a fixed domain.   * The enum is used as a key for lookups to facilitate common / generic chemical calculations - which means that the equation is the same for all compounds but you insert a property of the compound to complete the equation.     * For example, Molar mass (in g/mol) is used when calculating the number of moles from a mass (in grams) of the compound. FWIW, Molar Mass == Molar Weight.      * Another example of a common calculation is the Ideal Gas Law and its use of the Specific Gas Constant A sample function might look like:               public double GetMolesFromMass(double mass_grams, myEnum.ChemTypes chem)     {       double molarWeight = MolarWeightLookupFunctionByChem(chem); //returns grams / mole       double moles = mass / molarWeight;  //converts to moles            return moles;     }          //Sample Call:     myMoles = GetMolesFromMass(1000, myEnum.ChemTypes.Na2SiF6);     //*or*     myMoles = GetMolesFromMass(1000, myEnum.ChemTypes.SodiumHexafluorosilicate);                    public double GetSpecificGravity(myEnum.ChemTypes chem, double conc)     {       //retrieves specific gravity of chemical compound based upon concentration       double sg = SpecificGravityLookupTableByChem(chem, conc);       }      So the enum of the compound name is used as a key and to provide consistency in referencing the compound with the related functions."}
{"_id": "107325", "title": "Patterns for ajax-heavy web applications", "text": "Up until now, I've been a great fan of the MVC pattern for developing web applications. For the web, I've developed mostly in PHP (with the Kohana and CodeIgniter frameworks) and Ruby (RoR). As my applications become heavier on the Ajax side (single-page apps etc) I noticed that I can't help but betray the very basic concepts of MVC: Javascript is doing most of the works; calling controllers just to ask for views or more js/json code seems wrong. After striving for keeping all the routing jobs in the controllers, now I've fundamentally split it between them and Javascript (that is, from the framework's PoV, part of the views). When asking for json the MVC subversion looks even more obvious: the js code doing the request _is_ the controller; the framework's controller is merely acting as proxy for the model's data - what I'm actually asking for. So, what should I look into? I was thinking about pure-javascript applications, for instance with backbone.js and a document-based, json-spitting database (couchDB) as backend, but I love my relational databases. Another option would be the following: I'd just make \"routed models\" in PHP/ruby/go/whatnot. Those will analyse the request, call the db, give back some json. This approach looks interesting to me but it lacks any substantial documentation or academic analysis, so I'm a little afraid of the leap. Ideas?"}
{"_id": "38597", "title": "Where and how to mention Stackoverflow participation in the r\u00e9sum\u00e9?", "text": "I think I have good enough reputation on SO now. Well, this may not be that much as compared to so many other users out there but I am happy with mine. So, I was thinking of adding my profile link on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 - just the profile link and not that \"I have this much reputation on SO\". Those who haven't seen, can see this question Would you put your stackoverflow profile link on your CV / Resume? How would this look like? > **Forums/Blogs/Miscellaneous others** > > No blogging as yet but active participant in Stackoverflow. My profile link > - `http://stackoverflow.com/users/userId/username` I think of putting this section after **Project Details** and **Technical Expertise** sections. Any tips/advice? **Update** MKO has made a very good point \\- > do you really want a potential employer to be able to evaluate in detail > everything you've ever written on SO I thought of commenting but it would be too long -   In my questions/answers I put a lot of statements like - \"AFAIK ...\", \"following are my assumptions so far ...\", \"am I correct to conclude that... ?\", \"I doubt if it is possible to ...\" etc. when I am not sure about something and I rarely involve in fights with other users. However I do argue on topics sometimes if I feel it is necessary and if I have a valid point. I do accept my mistakes and apologize for the same. As we all know nobody is perfect. I must have written many things which may be judged as wrong by a potential employer. But what if the same employer notices that I have improved in the quality of content by comparing old content with new one? Isn't that great? I also try to go back to older questions/answers and put corrective comments etc. when I feel I was wrong or if I can improve my post. Of course there are many employers who want you (potential employees) to be correct each and every time. They immediately remove you from consideration when you say a single incorrect thing. I have personally met such an interviewer few months back. He didn't even care to listen to any good thing I had done after he found a single wrong thing. Now the question is do you really care to work with such people? Or do you like those people who give value to the fact that you are striving to improve every day. I personally prefer the latter."}
{"_id": "107321", "title": "Learning in the Classroom", "text": "I am currently taking an Assembly programming class, and I honestly find it extremely boring and tedious. While I've programmed some assembly before as part of a C++ program, I find what we are doing to be completely different than actual assembly code I've worked with (we are using a program called MARS MIPS, found here). Since we are using the MIPS architecture, which from what I gathered is hardly used any more, I find what we are learning hardly applicable to anything outside of the class. Likewise, I find myself not retaining the material we cover in class due to detachment from real world applications as well as the classroom setting itself. I've been trying to write my some code outside of the classroom to get familiar with it, but without any obvious real world applications, I find myself unmotivated to do so. **Is there any advice for trying to learn a programming language (such as assembly) for a class when I don't seen any real world application of it?** Or perhaps a more specific question to this problem would be: **Is there any real world application to the MIPS architecture which I am unaware of?** **EDIT:** I found the following information on StackOverflow concerning MIPS: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2635086/mips-processors-are-they-still-in- use-which-other-architecture-should-i-learn"}
{"_id": "145839", "title": "What is the alternative to frequent manual verification?", "text": "I was thinking, is there a particular time in your coding where you verify that it works? Say, after coding a function, or an entire class, or an entire section of an app, or after every 'significant' block of code? I ask this, because I tend to verify my app too often, sometimes after every 3rd or 4th change. This is a habit which has proven very hard to shake. It appears to be counter productive to do this repeatedly and manually. Is there another solution? It seems to be either be a more competent programmer and essentially 'know' the return of the majority of your code, or have your IDE check the return periodically, or only test the return via TDD."}
{"_id": "66103", "title": "How should a ViewModel be named?", "text": "While starting work on a brand new ASP.net MVC application we've learned that we should have all of our available data pushed to make it easy to create a full view. While learning this we've started using a concept of a ViewModel, or a complex object full of properties from other basic data transfer objects. Now our problem has been in naming these ViewModels. We've run across the idea of using a name created from the DTO object names like MemberContactViewModel. while this is okay, I feel that names should be more unique or more related to what the complex object will be doing rather than what it's made up of. What are your thoughts. How should a complex ViewModel be named, based on the data it holds, or the view where it will interact with. Thanks for the input."}
{"_id": "189509", "title": "Where can I turn to if I can't fix a bug?", "text": "I am looking for resources to turn to when I don't have the answer for something. I lead a team of software developers. We have been rolling out new software releases on a monthly basis. When there is a bug that my team cannot fix, it lands on me. Most of the time I can resolve the issue, but there are times when I get stuck. Unfortunately, I'm the top of the line at our company. There is nobody I can ask for help or assistance in figuring something out. Do you happen to have any recommendations or guidance for situations like this?"}
{"_id": "189508", "title": "Git submodule vs Git clone", "text": "I am working on an opensource project on github. It has a subdirectory /Vendor in which it has a **copy** of several external libraries. Original maintainer of the project updated this directory with newer copy of external library once in a while. One developer send me a pull request with idea to replace this **copy** by **git submodule**. And I am considering whether it's good idea or now. Git submodule Pros:   * Submodules were specifically designed for similar scenarios   * It removes possibility of accidental commit to Vendor which will be overwritten while next update Git submodule Cons:   * It looks like git submodules pushes complexity from maintainer to a person who will clone/pull the project (additional steps required after you clone to start working with the project: \"git submodule init\", \"git submodule update\" What's your opinion on this? One more thing. This problem is reasonably small size library with very limited external dependencies. I think any build tool would be overkill for it for now."}
{"_id": "131293", "title": "Personal Software Process (PSP1)", "text": "I'm trying to figure out an exercise but it doesn't really makes to much sense.. I'm not asking someone to provide the solution. just to try and analyse what needs to be done in order to solve this. I'm trying to understand which PSP 1.0 1.1 process I should use. PROBE? Or something else? I would greatly appreciate some help on this one from someone that has experience with the Personal Software Process Methodology.. Here is the question. > For the reference case (\u201ccode1.c\u201d), the following s/w metrics are provided: > >   * man-hours spent in implementation phase (per-module): 2,7 mh/file >   * man-hours spent in testing phase (per-module): 4,3 mh/file >   * estimated number of bugs remaining (per-module): 0,3 errors/function, 4 > errors/module (remaining) > > > Based on the corresponding values provided for the reference case, each of > the following tasks focus on some s/w metrics to be estimated for the test > case (\u201ccode2.c\u201d): [25 marks] > >   1. (estimated) man-hours required in implementation phase (per-module) [8 > marks] >   2. (estimated) man-hours required in testing phase (per-module) [8 marks] >   3. (estimated) number of bugs remaining at the end of testing phase (per- > module) [9 marks] > > > Tasks 4 through 6 should use the data provided for the reference case within > the context of Personal Software Process level-1 (PSP-1), using them as a > single-point historic data log. Specifically, the same s/w metrics are to be > estimated for the test case (\u201ccode2.c\u201d), using PSP as the basic estimation > model. > > In order to perform the above listed tasks, students are advised to consider > all phases of the PSP software development process, especially at levels > PSP0 and PSP1. Both cases are to be treated as separate case-studies in the > context of classic s/w development."}
{"_id": "59294", "title": "Visual web page designer for Django?", "text": "I'm just starting my Django learning so pardon me if any part of this question is off-base. I have done a lot of web searching for information on the equivalent of a visual web page designer for Django and I don't seem to be getting very far. I have experience with Delphi (Object Pascal), C, C++, Python, PHP, Java, and Javascript and have created and maintained several web sites that included MySQL database dependent content. For the longest time I've been using one of the standard WYSIWIG designers to design the actual web pages, with any needed back end programming done via Forms or AJAX calls that call server side PHP scripts. I have grown tired of the quirks, bugs, and other annoyances associated with the program. Also, I find myself hungry for the functionality and reliability a good MVC based framework would provide me so I could really express myself with custom code easily. So I am turning to Django/Python. However, I'm still a junkie for a good WYSIWIG designer for the layout of web pages. I know there are some out there that thrive on opening up a text editor, possibly with some code editor tools to assist, and pounding out pages. But I do adore a drag and drop editor for simple page layout, especially for things like embedded images, tables, buttons, etc. I found a few open source projects on GitHub but they seem to be focused on HTML web forms, not a generic web page editor. So can I get what I want here? The supreme goal would be to find not only a web page editor that creates Django compatible web pages, but if I dare say it, have a design editor that could add Python code stubs to various page elements in the style of the Delph/VCL or VB design editors. Note, I also have the Wing IDE Professional IDE, version 2.0. As a side note, if you know of any really cool, fun, or time-saving Python libraries that are designed for easy integration into Django please tell me about them. \\-- roschler"}
{"_id": "24658", "title": "REPL - Do You Find It Useful?", "text": "Recently I started learning Clojure and downloaded Clojure-Box for Windows which came with SLIME and have been fiddling around with Clojure using the REPL mode. Now, I have starting learning many languages that have REPL available (F#, Python, Haskell) but have never used it until I started with Clojure and I realized how much of a help it is. I was wondering how many people use REPL for the languages that have them available. If you don't use them, what is your reasoning not to? If you do use them, do you use them for testing code or just for learning languages?"}
{"_id": "3853", "title": "How to set up Unit Testing in Visual Studio 2010?", "text": "I'm doing my first big project and I don't have a lot of experience in a professional programming environment. While researching anything programming- related I often see references to Unit Testing, but I am still unclear as to how to set those up or even if it would be beneficial to me. Can someone explain unit testing to me, and how to set it up in a Visual Studio 2010 solution that has multiple projects? Is it something that occurs within your project's solution, or is it a separate solution? And is it something you'd recommend for a small development team or is it just a waste of time to setup? Right now I just run the entire program to test whatever I am currently working on, but occasionally I have run into problems that are not easy to debug and it would be useful to run subsets of the code elsewhere... Sometimes I do setup another project with some of the libraries referenced to test a small part of the program, but I feel more time is wasted setting that up then just running the entire program because of all the dependencies involved"}
{"_id": "3851", "title": "When would someone be considered a bad programmer?", "text": "How would you consider that a programmer is bad at what he or she is doing? If possible... How should he/she improve?"}
{"_id": "151251", "title": "Scrum in a consulting environment?", "text": "Is it possible to introduce scrum to a consulting environment? On any given week I might belong to 4 different teams, each with a different PM, BA and dev team (I am a designer). It doesn't seem feasible, time wise, to be able to be part of that many teams/projects as there would need to be daily stand-ups for each, sprint reviews, etc. I should add these projects are not necessarily software, but mainly ecommerce web projects. Can someone who has done this speak to how you approach it? _Edit_ I think my situation is different and I should have discussed it further. Our dev team is in India, so finding a time in the US morning/India evening for daily stand-ups are hard, especially when we almost always have client calls in the US morning/India evening so dev can be present if necessary. Instead, what our PM's have done is have 1 daily meeting for the US team (BA, Design). However, they go through ALL the projects at once. So, if you're not on that project, you're screwed and have to wait till your project comes up. This can be 30min-75min a day, for me. Insane. This does NOT cancel our weekly status call (30m-1h) with the client (x however many projects you are on). This is obviously not scrum, as there are no devs present during any of this and it's just action items being listed for the US team. However, I'd love to get to a point where our 'scrum-like' dev team (they develop in sprints and have sprint planning meetings) can be part of daily standups with the US team and we transition to an actual scrum framework."}
{"_id": "197281", "title": "Why the ugly keywords in C11?", "text": "I am currently reading a draft of the C11 specification. The new introduced keywords: `_Bool, _Alignof, _Atomic` all feel like custom extensions, instead of standard reserved keywords like `struct, union, int`. I realize that the standard basically consists of standardized extensions ... but still, this is awful! Maybe we will soon end up with `__Long_Long_Reallylong_Integer_MSVC_2020_t` creeping in the standard! _Is the backward compatibility of nonstandard code the only reason of the new style of the keywords?_"}
{"_id": "22762", "title": "Tips for a novice PHP developer to drive down long-term maintenance costs", "text": "I'm an experienced Java developer who is just starting up a project for an NGO. I will be working on the project for at least 6 months, following which the NGO will have to pay or find a volunteer to maintain the project. Seeing as they already have people working on their website in PHP, I figured PHP was the obvious choice to make sure the skills are still available (it is webby) - eliminated Java because Java devs are typically expensive. Unfortunately I have next to zero experience with proper PHP development (just a few months spending a small percentage of my time on a Drupal project without any real coding). What are some things I can do to ensure that the code I leave behind is maintainable by a relatively low-skilled PHP developer (eg a teenager wanting to make some holiday cash)? Do I go with a CMS? Are Drupal developers cheap? Any other CMS / Framework I should look at? Background: the project is a website that people will search for educational information, with some simple user-management to only allow some users to create content, restrictions to specific content-types etc. The CMS vs write myself question is not the only thing I'm interested in hearing. I'm also interested in any tips about code style, anything you think my Java experience would push me towards that is going to make it difficult for the hypothetical volunteer etc. There's probably things about this scenario that I haven't thought through - so anything related to keeping maintenance costs low would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "208109", "title": "Reading a specific type of input from file", "text": "I have a software that reads from a file. Each object in the software takes 7 inputs viz.      `string string string float string float int`      I have an input file. It contains a number of input values. If input for one object is like: `hss cscf \"serving cscf\" 32.5 ims 112.134 124`      (Note: when an object's variable needs multi word string, I used \"....\", for single word string, it is without quotes) How can I read it using ifstream? (I searched google but didn't find.) I tried to read entire line using getline and but again got stuck when it came to find out whether its a single word or multi word input! I thought to read a line and then search char by char. If its '\"', I know its a multi word. But I stuck when it comes to an integer or float. For `char`, you can use      `if(line[i]>='a'&&line[i]<='z')`      but how to go ahead when integer or float is the next value? Please give some suggestions for this."}
{"_id": "22769", "title": "What programming language generates fewest hard-to-find bugs?", "text": "What language, in your opinion, allows the average programmer to output features with the least amount of hard-to-find bugs? This is of course, a very broad question, and I'm interested in very broad and general answers and wisdoms. Personally I find that I spend very little time looking for strange bugs in Java and C# programs, while C++ code has its distinct set of recurring bugs, and Python/similar has its own set of common and silly bugs that would be detected by the compiler in other languages. Also I find it hard to consider functional languages in this regard, because I've never seen a big and complex program written in entirely functional code. Your input please. Edit: _Completely arbitrary clarification of hard-to-find bug: Takes more than 15 minutes to reproduce, or more than 1 hour to find cause of and fix._ Forgive me if this is a duplicate, but I didn't find anything on this specific topic."}
{"_id": "75936", "title": "Explain Cloud computing to Grandmother", "text": "Technically I understand what is cloud computing, but I'm having difficulties when trying to explain it to a layman. I am wondering if there are any good examples which could easily explain it."}
{"_id": "75933", "title": "Are there any Phone Interview equivalents to FizzBuzz?", "text": "I think FizzBuzz is a fine question to ask in an in-person interview with a whiteboard or pen and paper handy to determine whether or not a particular candidate is of bare-minimum competence. However, it does not work as well on phone interviews because any typing you hear could just as easily be the candidate's Googling for the answer (not to mention the fact that reading code over the phone is less than savory). **Are there any _phone-interview_ questions that are equivalent to FizzBuzz in the sense that an incompetent programmer will not be able to answer it correctly and a programmer of at least minimal competence will?** Given a choice, in my particular case I am curious about .NET-centric solutions, but since I was not able to find a duplicate to this question based on a cursory search, I would not mind at all if this question became the canonical source for platform-agnostic phone fizzbuzz questions."}
{"_id": "204831", "title": "Good coding problem/s to use in an interview", "text": "I've read a lot of different articles on how to locate good programmers, including the Joel Spolsky and Steve Yegge stuff. Overall I feel we have a pretty good interview process. We ask good questions and we have a coding test problem that we give to candidates to help screen out people that can't actually code; this problem takes a little while and is a \"take home\" where the candidate is given a few days to return a solution. Overall this process has worked fairly well with us, but we have still landed an occasional dud on the programming front. In at least one case I now suspect that the solution provided was not the candidate's own, but there would be no way to prove this out; nor would it matter as such. We are in an environment where once someone is hired it is incredibly difficult to let them go, so this makes it all the more critical we end up with a good candidate. So I would like to add a **coding exercise** into the actual interview and have the candidate work through a solution in a **pairing style environment** with an existing team member. I'm looking for something that is not terribly complex; something any **competent programmer could solve in about an hour** , but also something a little more difficult that the fizz-buzz problem. * * * I've looked at the following questions as well as other similar questions, but most are slightly different in that they are not asking for specific problems that could fit within the time constraints and are well suited to pairing, or I haven't really seen good answers provided. Code During Interview Favorite Interview Question Passionate Programmer? Fizz Buzz, really? And many many others..."}
{"_id": "77688", "title": "How to protect yourself from being sued by patents?", "text": "I've had a few software ideas before that could probably be patented.(decided not to pursue any of them, however). Basically, I don't want these ideas patented though. I don't care if someone else implements them, I just don't want to get sued later by some patent troll who patented the idea I had and implemented 5 years ago. Would posting your idea to public websites, and using the poor man's patent technique ensure that even if someone else patents your idea, you have protection from being sued, and possibly the ability to invalidate their patent?(assuming the reform bill doesn't pass)"}
{"_id": "204837", "title": "Component design: getting cohesion right", "text": "I currently have a set of components named DataValues, ValueParsers, ValueFormatters and ValueValidators. The first one defines an abstract base class DataValue and contains a whole load of implementations. The 3 other components each define in interface similar to their name (minus the \"s\"), and also contain a bunch of implementations of those. These 3 depend on DataValues. There are no further dependencies. In other words, each component currently contains a whole inheritance hierarchy. I recently re-watched EP16 of Robert C. Martin's Clean Coders, where he points out this is one of the most common mistakes made in package design. This made me realize that this exact thing is going on for the here described packages. The question then is how to best improve upon the current component design. Luckily none of those components have seen their first release yet, so things can still be moved around, and boundaries can still be redefined. Releases for these are on the horizon though, so I better get it right now. What I'm thinking of doing now is to create a new component to hold the mentioned abstract class and interfaces for all these components. It would also contain the Exceptions of these components and perhaps some trivial implementations of the interfaces. This new component would then be needed by all the current ones, and by all the ones needing the current ones. Then again, in this later category, there will be a number components that can just depend on the new and get rid of their current dependency on the much more concrete and unstable ones containing all the interface implementations. This is great for the stable dependencies principle, and equally nice for the reuse release equivalence principle. It's however doing rather bad when it comes to the common closure and common reuse principles. Concretely this means that components that need the ValueParsers interface but don't care about the ValueValidators one will still depend on it as it is in the same package. They can thus be affected by it for no good reason. Then again, considering how abstract/stable this new component ends up being, I don't really see this causing much problems. I'm looking for ideas on how to better draw the component boundaries and concerns or suggestions about the alternative I described."}
{"_id": "125414", "title": "How to deal with people who don't want to share knowledge?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you deal with an information hoarder? Often, in IT teams knowledge equals power. This is fine as long as (IT-)knowledge is equally accessible by all members of the team and company specific know-how is well documented. Sometimes personnel in an IT department build up a tremendous amount of know-how _without_ documenting it. By doing so they think that they ensure their position. Often these people like it when people specifically have to ask them how to do a job. How do you get these programmers, database administrators or other IT staff to **_DOCUMENT_** their work and make it accessible to the company they work for? EDIT: It's a relief that so many of you _know_ this type of person. That it is not me bumping into them everywhere I do projects. On the other hand it makes me sad, such talented people but in many ways behaving as a child. I have seen the behavior in men and women btw. It is hard to pick one answer as the best and accept. Will do after more re-reads."}
{"_id": "77686", "title": "Architectural Patterns for a Game", "text": "So I've got a solution that contains a few big projects, which I'm trying to break down into smaller projects with more isolated responsibilities. This is a game I'm tinkering with -- I'm mainly a LOB developer and I think the principles are universal, so I'm hoping to learn something here. The dependencies in some of the objects are a bit too tightly intertwined, and I'm hoping for some help on how to untangle them. Or maybe some sort of pattern or abstraction that might make them more manageable. **Ares.Core.World** has classes in it like Creatures, Items, etc. All of them inherit from Entity, which is aware of what cell on the map it exist at. It accomplishes this by holding a reference to a Ares.Core.UI.MapControls.MapCell... And you can see that the wires are already getting crossed. **Ares.Core.UI.MapControls** contains Map and MapCell, each of which contain Lists of creatures and items that they contain. MapCell also inherits from Ares.Core.World.Entity since that solved a few early problems very elegantly -- for instance, all Entities have inventory. I would like to find a way to split UI and World out into seperate projects ( **Ares.World** and **Ares.UI** ) since UI and the overarching world should probably be seperate concerns. But as you can see, the way it is now the two projects would need to reference each other, and circular references are not allowed. I'm wondering if there are any architectural patterns out there that might help in this situation. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "197473", "title": "A backlog of \"bite-size\" tasks in parallel to the \"main\" feature backlog?", "text": "After over two years of working in a highly siloed, \"lone-wolf\" development department structure, we're adopting Agile SCRUM. Great. I like Agile; as a dev it keeps you focused, busy, and productive without having myriad stakeholders shoving project after project down your throat with the expectation they all be done yesterday. There is, however, one aspect of moving to SCRUM versus our current \"model\", that I think people outside Development are not going to like in the slightest. That is their current ability to have us do small changes \"while you wait\". A large portion of our development is for in-house consumption only, and we're mostly all in the same building. So, it's been common practice for years for a department lead or manager elsewhere to come to the \"codebase owner\" of a particular application and ask for small stuff (sometimes not so small, but we're pretty good about not taking on three-week projects based on these \"drive-bys\"). Even our boss sometimes relays things brought up to him in this way. Very often, if we're working in the codebase in question at the time, we can simply pop up the source file, make the change, and run it with them looking over our shoulder to verify the change is what they want, before checking it into Subversion for inclusion in the next build. With a basic Agile SCRUM methodology, these tweaks would either be logged as defects (we didn't meet a requirement specified in a story previously consumed) or new small stories (we met all stated requirements, but those requirements were incomplete, vague or incorrect, or they changed after delivery once the users saw the new features). Either way, the vast majority would be one-pointers at most if not zeroes, and of relatively low priority (the system is usable in its current state, but it would be _so_ much cooler if...), making them unlikely to be brought into a sprint when working the backlog top-down. This possibility was raised at a dev meeting as being a source of active opposition to our Agile process by other departments, who would see it as less \"agile\" than our current ability to make small tweaks on request. It's a valid concern IMO; the stakeholders behind the PO don't always agree on what things are most important, because they don't all have the same point of view, yet it's typically only the managers who make the final decision, and therefore their bias is the one that shows in the product backlog. A solution was then proposed, which was tentatively called the \"candy jar\" (another term thrown out was the \"gravy boat\"). Small tweaks requested by the \"little guys\" in the various departments, that are not defects in an existing story, that are estimated by consensus or acclamation within the team to take less than one-half of a developer-day, and that would have an immediate, significant, positive impact on the user experience in the opinion of the end user, are put on a list in parallel to the primary backlog. They'd be identified as \"stories\", but would be kept separate from the primary backlog of \"big\" stories subject to prioritization. If, at any time during the normal progress of a sprint, we happen to be working in an area of the system in which one of these tweaks can be made, making the tweak trivial, we can bring the tweak into the sprint and code it alongside the larger story. Doing this _must not_ jeopardize the completion of the larger story or any other committed work. The PO would also have access to this list, and if they were working on an upcoming user story touching the basic feature involving the tweak, they could fold it into the story as a requirement and then we'd meet the requirement as we would any other. This, it was thought, would make tweaks more likely to be worked on sooner than later. This triggered the reaction among those of us with ScrumMaster training of \"uh-uh\". There is _one_ backlog. Two backlogs introduces the question of which #1 item is _really_ the most important, which list's items determine _real_ velocity, and which of the two backlogs a story actually belongs in (any demarcation of size/complexity is going to have some cases that fall relatively arbitrarily to one side or the other). \"Let the process work\", we said; if the change really is significant to the end users, they'll make enough noise to get the department heads making time/money decisions on board, and it'll get bumped up into the dev team's consciousness toward the top of the backlog. I thought I'd pose the question to the floor: **In your opinion, would a parallel list of \"bite-size\" stories have value in getting small, useful but ultimately low-priority changes made faster, or is it overall a better decision to fold them into the main backlog and let the basic process govern their inclusion in a sprint?**"}
{"_id": "230830", "title": "Doing localization each Sprint", "text": "We need to support 5 languages for our product. This means that in order to have a potentially shippable product we need to translate all text new to the Sprint to all these languages. It doesn't make sense to me because the text might change after a few Sprints during which the users will use the application and give feedback. So paying the translating company for translating text that will most likely change doesn't seem to be a wise decision. So what do you do with localization in Scrum?"}
{"_id": "95328", "title": "Should one time contributors be listed as an Author?", "text": "When working on open source projects should one time contributor's (I mean like single or minor patchset, nothing that would be considered a major contribution ) be listed as an Author? or should they simply get listed in say an acknowledgement section somewhere? If you contribute a small patch to a project where do you want to get listed?"}
{"_id": "121027", "title": "Why is a linked list implementation considered linear?", "text": "Typically, computer memory is always linear. So is the term non linear used for a data structure in a logical sense? If so, to logically achieve non linearity in a linear computer memory, we use pointers. Is that right? In that case, if pointers are virtual implementations for achieving non linearity, why would a data structure like linked list be considered linear, if in reality the nodes are never physically adjacent?"}
{"_id": "230838", "title": "Is it common to use code you don't understand?", "text": "I have been working on a project recently that uses a pretty comprehensive framework built by someone else. The framework is free to use commercially and privately as anybody sees fit, so there are no legal reasons not to use it. I do find myself, however, uncomfortable about the fact that I'm creating projects and submitting them without fully understanding everything that goes into a project. The entire framework of the project is built by someone else and I haven't had the time to go through it all and what I have gone through is slightly confusing. I'm a (ground up) kind of person by nature so building something off of another project makes me nervous, but is this a common practice to do even if you don't fully understand how or why the code you're using works? I'm mainly wondering if using other peoples code is a common practice when:   * You don't have the time to go through said code to fully understand what its doing, but you know it works (via tests and other reviews)   * You are submitting a project based on said code, but have only been exposed to the top layer you wrote yourself."}
{"_id": "230839", "title": "What does this duration reported by ffmpeg mean?", "text": "When I run ffmpeg on an mp4 file, it says the duration is:               00:03:57.54      What is the unit that `54` represents ? I am interpreting it as 0.0054 seconds (54 milliseconds)."}
{"_id": "101248", "title": "Will my communication skills be wasted in a software engineering career?", "text": "I've been in the financial engineering arena (after BA Math and BA Computer Science) for about 5 years (20% analysis/programming, 80% communicating) and take pride in my ability to communicate with people and discuss technical problems (i.e. interacting with a team). I love this part of my job. Going to the white board to draw abstract ideas and brainstorm. However, for many reasons, I want to transition my career into a technology company (software engineering) but I'm deeply afraid that I will fall into a stereotypical programming job where programmers code with big headphones on. I certainly know this is only a stereotype but I've witnessed similar environments before (at startups) and it scares me to think that I would be migrating to a career of isolation. I love coding and thinking algorithmically, but I don't want to give up interacting with people. I understand that having communication skills is only a positive, but am I setting myself up for career-happiness failure by transitioning into software engineering. I'd love to hear any clarifications and/or advice."}
{"_id": "121025", "title": "A programming language that does not allow IO. Haskell is not a pure language", "text": "Are there any 100% pure languages (as I describe in the Stack Overflow post) out there already and if so, could they feasibly be used to actually do stuff? i.e. do they have an implementation? I'm not looking for raw maths on paper/Pure lambda calculus. However Pure lambda calculus with a compiler or a runtime system attached is something I'd be interested in hearing about."}
{"_id": "32624", "title": "Do you develop with localization in mind?", "text": "When working on a software project or a website, do you develop with localization in mind? By this I mean e.g.   * Externalizing all strings, including error messages.   * Not using images that contain text.   * Designing your UI with text expansion in mind.   * Using pseudo-translation to test your UI's early in the process.   * etc. On projects you work on, are these in the 'nice to have' category and let the localization team worry about the rest, or do you have localization readiness built into your development process? I'm interested to hear how developers view localization in general."}
{"_id": "51763", "title": "What programming languages have you taught your children?", "text": "I'm a C# developer by trade but have had exposure to many languages (including Java, C++, and multiple scripting languages) over the course of my education and career. Since I code in the MS world for work I am most familiar with their stack and so I was excited when Small Basic was announced. I immediately started teaching my oldest to program in it but felt that something was missing from the experience. Being able to look up every command with the IDE's intellisense seemed to take something from the experience. Sure, it was easy to grasp but I found myself thinking that a little more challenge might be in order. I'm looking for something better and I would like to hear your experiences with teaching your children to program in whatever language you have chosen to do so in. What did you like and dislike? How fast did they pick it up? Were they challenged? Frustrated? Thank you very much!"}
{"_id": "165211", "title": "Authentication for users on a Single Page App?", "text": "I have developed a single page app prototype that is using Backbone on the front end and going to consume from a thin RESTful API on the server for it's data. Coming from heavy server side application development (php and python), I have really enjoyed the new different design approach with a thick client side MVC but am confused on how best to restrict the app to authenticated users who log in. I prefer to have the app itself behind a login and would also like to implement other types of logins eventually (openid, fb connect, etc) in addition to the site's native login. I am unclear how this is done and have been searching - but unsuccessful in finding information that made it clear to me. In the big picture, what is the current best practice for registering users and requiring them to login to use your single page app? Once a user is logged in, how are the api requests authenticated? Can I store a session but how do I detect for this session in the API calls? Any answers to this would be much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "101241", "title": "Did jQuery kill the JavaScript discussions?", "text": "There are over 100,000 questions on Stack Overflow tagged as questions relating to JQuery troubleshooting/usage. Compare this to the 124,000 questions on stack overflow that are tagged for JavaScript issues. We are very close to almost half of all JavaScript related questions on Stack Overflow being attributed to JQuery (plus or minus any margin for the few other JS frameworks that get questions on SO). What I'm getting at is, jQuery is not a language and it is not the be all and end all of frameworks that must be applied to every scenario in which JavaScript is present, yet it is quickly catching (and I predict will soon eclipse) JavaScript as a source of discussion/inquiry on sites like Stack Overflow. Is jQuery killing the JavaScript star? Is there no longer a firm grasp by the next generation of web developers regarding the power, simplicity and use of JavaScript as a means for DOM manipulation? Is this just the natural evolution of things and the viewpoint I'm presenting typical of the coder's ego (i.e., is this how assembly programmers view the .NET/Java/Web crowd?) or is this really the beginning of the end of the true JavaScript developer?"}
{"_id": "101243", "title": "Any ideas for a good way to get HTML Text-To-Speech?", "text": "We do online e-learning without using any third party tools like Adobe Captivate / eLearning suite, and it would be great to (somehow) get some text- to-speech going. Is there any way at all to get this working for free (or very cheap, some plans are just ridiculous such as http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech- interactive-demo.html) Ideally what we need is for the user to select their language, however happy to start with just English, then just start reading the HTML on the page.. Or am I just barking up the wrong tree here, if people NEED TTS, they would just be using their own software or the ones the come with O/S...right? Edit: The requirement is to make the content a little more engaging. Also, it aids some people if they are slow readers. The reason I was thinking TTS over a proffesional Voice Over is that is should be easier to implement? Having a VO linked to each text \"snippet\" will require cutting up hundreds of MP3 files and then programming the elearning framework to do this. Having an automated TTS system should be easier for that, especially if in multiple languages However, I think it does need to be a professional VO. thanks for your thoughts/inputs"}
{"_id": "101246", "title": "Silverlight - modularity. Best way to physically separate binaries?", "text": "We are working on LoB app with lot's of content. XAP download will be rather large I think for one time download. I'm planning to break solution into separate projects. Not sure why - but I DO NOT like many many projects in solution. IMO it is not very good idea. Even when we were working as a large team - it was pain with many projects. Even now when I'm using MEF/PRISM - there still going to be some core dependencies like:   1. PRISM libraries   2. Interfaces   3. Navigation   4. Shell/Bootstrapper   5. App styles   6. Converters/Commands/Validators   7. etc. And than I'm going to have modules that will use all that CORE stuff. Modules will have following inside them:   1. RIA Services client side   2. ViewModel's   3. Views Those modules will be loaded on demand using MEF. I think size-wise all those modules will be larger than core module because of ammount of logic in them. I expect to have about 5-6 modules and CORE. I think that will give me reasonable number of client-side projects and libraries/XAPS and it will be manageable solution to work with. Do you see any issue with breakdown like this? Some online videos will make 7+ projects out of CORE module. What's a point? I think it adds to complexity. Than they show 3-4 DLL out of module. One for views, one for viewmodels and so on. They still need to be loaded together so why? I'm looking for do's and dont's from you guys who went through this.. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "51769", "title": "Is Android a language or a framework/platform?", "text": "I know that Android uses the Java language with a limited Java SDK and that Google claims it isn't Java. But is it right to say that Android is a Programming language? Or is it more right to say that Android is a framework in Java? Or is both true?"}
{"_id": "198458", "title": "Working in a company that does not comment their code at all?", "text": "I work for a small software development house (10~ developers, a few product managers and a few support staff) that sells various products and services to organisations internationally through resellers. I arrived in the job 7 months ago into a role opened up by a developer who left after 3 years. The company has maybe been around for 10 years. Basically they have about 30+ separate products (in 30 separate .NET solutions which may consist of 10+ projects within each of those solutions). I would estimate each project or solution to be of medium to large size. **In each project there is absolutely no source code comments at all**. There's also no architecture diagrams or documentation for how the application is designed or the code hangs together. There's some business analysis (use case) type documentation for how the program is supposed to work, when it was first created, but that's it. As a new person to the company, for the past 7 months I've been thrown into various projects and had to fix bugs in these various products. I have an IT degree and I'm perhaps intermediate-senior level in HTML5/PHP/web development, also junior-intermediate level in .NET development. They recruited me for my web development skills and wanted to progress my .NET skills. I accepted as it was paying more than my old job in PHP and thought it would be useful for my career and more job options to have some more .NET development background. However each day I feel as though I'm floundering in the deep end and treading water. For starters to get anything done, reading the code is mostly pointless as you've got no baseline from where to start or find or fix a bug in this new project you've just been assigned. I end up talking to one of the other senior programmers to get an idea of where to start. By senior, I mean they've been there for 4 years and have a general idea of how a particular program might work. Even they didn't even write most of the software, a lot of it was written by a few older guys that have since retired and left the company. The code itself is very complex in my opinion. Maybe it's just because I'm not that skilled in .NET but there seems to be lots of unnecessary layers of complexity. You might have your basic 3 layers for MVC. Then whoever wrote the application added in more layers of code for the project, maybe to structure the application. For example, the front controller calls a few classes which bootstraps the application, then that calls the controller, then a method there might call a model then that model calls a business layer, then that calls a business logic layer, then that calls a data layer, then the data layer calls a service which has more classes to call stored procedures and get the data from the database. This is a far cry from my experience in PHP which even in complex web apps would still be as simple as the front controller calling a controller which calls the model, the model retrieves data from the database and renders it to the view/webpage. I mean what benefit are all these extra layers adding? Another thing, there might be a class, then they create an interface for just that class. There's no other classes using that interface or inheriting from it. They just create an interface for every class pretty much. As far as I can see there's no unit tests using the interfaces either. I'm sure it must've made sense to the senior developer writing it, but the meaning is lost on me. The other thing they like to do is because they don't have many developers in house, they write up some specs/documentation for a system they want, then outsource the project to another company to develop. Then once it's finished they bring it back in house for the local developers to maintain it. One company they outsourced it to was a local development services company, but that company in turn outsourced the development efforts to some developing country. Now I'm back here maintaining their code base, and it doesn't have any comments either. The program itself is probably the size of say Photoshop as an example. There's literally multiple layers of complexity and large parts of the code are commented out in chunks. Why is it commented out? Do they think they'll use that code in the future? No idea. No-one else knows either. The people that worked on it in the outsourced company have since left that company and disappeared. Early on when I joined the company, I was reading some convoluted project code and added some comments into the code so I could make sense of it later on if I had to come back to the project. A few days later one of the more senior developers there came and asked me some questions about that project. I found the thing he was trying to figure out was actually the thing I had figured out the other day. I had written a comment in the code explaining what it did and I showed him. Then he immediately deleted the comment without reading it, scrolled up the code and asked me another question. Then I said, well that can be explained in the comment below which you just deleted. He goes back and undoes the deletion then reads the comment... then he finally understands. I asked him why none of the code has any comments and his rationale was that the comments get outdated and become pointless. Well yeah, comments are supposed to be maintained along with the code. You update the code, you update the comment at the same time. The development manager's rationale for no comments was that good code should be understandable without comments. OK so they've got these hugely complicated systems and the only people that have some idea of how they work are the people that were there in the beginning or who have been working on them for many years. Basically if these people leave it would practically ruin the company in my opinion because no newcomers coming along will understand the code base and be able to maintain it. When I get asked to do something there, like add a new feature into the system, I think I could probably knock it out in HTML5/jQuery/PHP in a few days no problem. In this company, I've got to first figure out the system, then understand how the code works with no comments, then figure out where to put my code, then code it. Days turn to weeks. It's like searching for a needle in a haystack. My philosophy is to design and code something well the first time, in the simplest way possible to get the job done, while making the code easily maintainable and understandable so if a new person had to pick it up they can just run with it straight away. But that seems very contrary to what this company does. So my questions:   * **Is not commenting code a common practice in the software industry?**   * **Why is there so much aversion to commenting code?**   * **How can I perform my job well in this environment?**   * **Should I recommend they start commenting their code or leave them to it?**"}
{"_id": "226488", "title": "Commenting MVC applications", "text": "I've recently realised that my workplace doesn't comment their ASP.NET MVC applications. By 'doesn't document', I mean there is probably 1 line of comment per model/view/controller. No file purpose, date created etc. The excuse is that the MVC should be self documenting, with skinny controllers, self-documenting view code etc. This is a fine explanation, but several things affect this statement:   * Javascript technologies are also being implemented alongside the view code with no documentation as to their integration (the javascript code is also undocumented)   * There are multiple databases and providers serving internal and external content (undocumented)   * There is regular confusion daily amongst the programmers of what exactly is going on in any particular module. THis takes about 3-4 minutes of a co-worker's time to clear up. Is this commenting practice lazy and bound to cause more problems than it's worth? Or am I just not adept enough at reading self-documenting code? As a side question, should MVC applications be less rigid in their commenting standards since the separation of concerns should make code obvious?"}
{"_id": "51307", "title": "Self Documenting Code Vs. Commented Code", "text": "I had a search but didn't find what I was looking for, please feel free to link me if this question has already being asked. Earlier this month this post was made: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/why-youre-a-bad-php-programmer/ Basically to sum it up, you're a bad programmer if you don't write comments. My personal opinion is that code should be descriptive and mostly not require comment's unless the code cannot be self describing. In the example given               // Get the extension off the image filename       $pieces = explode('.', $image_name);       $extension = array_pop($pieces);   The author said this code should be given a comment, my personal opinion is the code should be a function call that is descriptive:               $extension = GetFileExtension($image_filename);      However in the comments someone actually made just that suggestion: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/why-youre-a-bad-php-programmer/comment- page-2/#comment-357130 The author responded by saying the commenter was \"one of those people\", i.e, a bad programmer. What are everyone elses views on Self Describing Code vs Commenting Code?"}
{"_id": "137177", "title": "/*To Comment or Not To Comment...*/", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  Self Documenting Code Vs. Commented Code > > \u201cComments are a code smell\u201d > > Best practices in comment writing and documentation Is commenting code useful, or just a waste of time? It seems so trivial but I've partaken in several quite heated discussions on this topic as well as it being a long-standing point of contention between my own learned philosophies and those of our local university. After reading Bob Martin's Clean Code I chugged the \"self commenting code\" kool-aid and subsequently flew in the face of everything I was taught in my undergrad years regarding commenting my code. Does anyone find thoroughly commenting code good for anything other than obligatorily fulfilling your development group's coding standards? I'm very curious to hear everyone's take on this, from both sides. :)"}
{"_id": "56757", "title": "XML and Registry", "text": "Which method is considered to be best practice for setting storage for applications: XML or Registry? What are the benefits/downsides of using either of these?"}
{"_id": "75689", "title": "are f# computational expressions a form of aspect oriented programming?", "text": "are monads, or more specifically f# computational expressions, a form of aspect oriented programming? Update: f# workflow builders have methods other than bind and unit. They have hooks for lots of keywords. see Creating a New Type of Computation Expression."}
{"_id": "56752", "title": "Blocked Sites at work (that aren't even bad)", "text": "So here recently, i've been using google to look up information for basically random programming things (i was just hired on a month or so ago). So here recently I was actually looking up some information about RAW_SOCKETS (but thats beside the point) Anyways some of the tutorials sites/explaining how to use them and explaining the protocol sites are actually blocked. (and our manager sent out an email saying that if u run into a site just to email her just in case). Now obviously...w/e sys admins probably see these 'blocked' sites in their reports. But should I be worried? I mean....I literally am not trying to be devious Im just trying to learn stuff. I guess programming websites are sometimes labeled as \"hacking\". sometimes blogs get labeled like that, but alot of the time blogs have USEFUL information. This apparently happens alot of my other co- workers and they don't even bother emailing our manager.....but should I be worried? Or has this happened to you guys before?"}
{"_id": "56753", "title": "Sending out a \"Request for Comment\" when establishing a new guideline", "text": "Do you send out a \"request for comment\" when establishing a new company guideline or standard? Companies need to establish consistent guidelines on things like development process, version control, release procedures, etc. Is it worth the effort to solicit feedback prior to publishing the final guidelines? What do you need to watch out for? In certain cases, such as when you have experienced engineers who can draft the guidelines, or where guidelines can be revised over time, I think the answer could be \"No\". Benefits   * Resolve corner cases or ambiguities prior to publication   * Better acceptance/adoption because the people that will use the guidelines were involved Drawbacks   * Takes time   * May not get useful feedback"}
{"_id": "63991", "title": "Who pays for learning curve?", "text": "For those of us in consulting OR settings where you bill your hours whats the consensus on this? Should a client be billed for a certain amount of the learning curve? Should your employer be picking up the tab on overhead? Should it be you yourself the developer? Or perhaps a combination of all 3? I am conflicted on this - I've heard it being said both ways - that a client (or project budget) should not have to include the inefficiency of a lesser experienced programmer. And again I've heard it being argued that people learn on the job so projects should include a certain amount of training budget. I usually find that I (and other devs that I work with) work off hours or weekends reading up on technology , design patterns etc, sometimes struggling with a small piece that may go beyond contingency budgets - so most projects that we work on take up a bit more of our un-billed time than whats budgeted. I thought I'd open it up to the Stack-exchange hive mind for more insight from folks with much more experience. I am going to post the same question on the Project Management StackExchange and look at the delta."}
{"_id": "98502", "title": "How to deal with Project Leader who doesn't involve himself in project in any way?", "text": "Our division is a small offshore development-only unit (not more than 25 members) but we develop many projects. Our main focus is development. Developers are grouped under Project Leaders, and they in turn report to a Project Manager. I'm stuck with the most lamest Project Leader. Our team has 4 developers under this one guy, and we handle 4 projects. Some of his characteristics are:   * Doesn't contribute anything during design/coding   * Doesn't do any managerial tasks (such as getting us read-only access to servers, or getting us software to be installed, filling out forms, etc)   * Doesn't do any co-ordination work (such as giving instructions to QA team regarding requirements, co-ordinating with middleware team for deployment, etc)   * Doesn't respond to client emails, just forwards it back to us. In case he responds, he messes up things because he is not involved in the projects for too long   * Doesn't attend conference calls. Even in the rare case he does, he has nothing to contribute   * Doesn't troubleshoot any issue (doesn't even care to see the logs) in developer's absence   * DOES stock trading/researching from morning to evening   * DOES involve himself in success parties/calls for our projects   * DOES demand rating 1 for himself Overall, his title is \"Project Leader\" but he is not at all involved with the project. We developers do everything including the full grunt of design, development, co-ordination and support activities. He is quite vocal about it too. He says it is not his responsibility, and his full existence is to get work done from others. I can agree this, but as a Developer my work is to develop and deliver (heck we have so much development work), but I can't do support and co-ordination at the same time, sitting in phone calls and internal chat rooms and sending/receiving emails. I have explicitly said him that \"I will do coding, you do support\" but he just said he won't. In fact, during our last meeting when deciding about a new project - he explicitly said \"Make sure it has no dependency on me\". What can I say? He has been in the company for too long, nearly everyone who joined with him are in much higher ranks. He has been given this promotion recently just because of this one fact. The Project Manager too knows very well, but he is a new person and is afraid to act against a \"veteran\". I've tried a lot of things, like trying to talk with him about this (\"I do coding, you do support\"), talking with the PM, touting him in emails, etc. But he doesn't nudge. I'm not low enough to report this to higher management in US - but anyway they won't understand what's going on here. Due to his \"communication\" skills, they have a big impression of him. What do I do? Any traps that I can lay? Edit: More info: My growth is locked to his. Only if he becomes a manager and makes some way, I can fill up his place and become the Leader. But the whole problem is that he is content to just sit around without any aspirations, while we ambitiously do all his work without getting anything in return."}
{"_id": "186852", "title": "Is this an implementation of the promise pattern?", "text": "I am writing a library in C++ (making use of many C++11 features) that (as far as I can tell) implements the promise pattern. The library consists of a class that makes asynchronous network requests. When a user of this class invokes a method that issues a network request, an instance of another class (we'll call it the \"promise class\") is returned that provides methods for canceling the request. Since this application uses the Qt framework, the promise class also emits signals when certain events happen, one of which is the successful completion of the request. Because the result of the network request is often included when the signal is emitted, I feel that this class implements the promise pattern. According to the Wikipedia article: > \"In computer science, future, promise, and delay refer to constructs used > for synchronizing in some concurrent programming languages. They describe an > object that **acts as a proxy for a result** that is initially unknown, > usually because the computation of its value is yet incomplete.\" > > * emphasis mine Have I missed anything? Does my class indeed implement the promise pattern?"}
{"_id": "224837", "title": "Interpreting Date formats", "text": "Let's say I have a `DatePicker` control and I allow my US clients to type something like `\"1/1\"` in it and hit tab go to next control. So I will parse that date for them as \"01/01/2014\" and some more similar patterns. But they are all US-based so they are               \"MM/dd/yyyy\"      Now my question is about other formats? What If I want to support a country format that is like `\"yyyy/mm/dd\"` . How do those countries interpret such patterns?"}
{"_id": "139321", "title": "How do I review my own code?", "text": "I'm working on a project solo and have to maintain my own code. Usually code review is done not by the code author, so the reviewer can look at the code with the fresh eyes \u2014 however, I don't have such luxury. What practices can I employ to more effectively review my own code?"}
{"_id": "224834", "title": "Is it good or bad practice to provide separate classes for an object: one to build it, and one to use it?", "text": "Suppose I'm writing some C++ code to visualize \"Foo\" objects. I have two ways of getting a \"Foo\": computing it from data, or from taking the pieces of a precomputed \"Foo\" and building a new \"Foo\". Now, once a \"Foo\" is computed it's guaranteed to be good for visualization, but changing it may break this assumption. Therefore, I've decided to represent \"Foos\" in my code by a `Foo` class that has no mutating methods: once it is constructed and initialized, it doesn't change. But there's a second way to make a \"Foo\": build it from a precomputed \"Foo\"'s components. I've come up with several methods of building a `Foo` from precomputed data: ## Method 1: Constructor/Static methods Perhaps the most obvious method would be to add a new constructor or a static method to `Foo`, call it`fromPrecomputed`, that would read the components of the precomputed Foo and make a new `Foo` object, checking that it is valid. To explain why I'd like to shy away from this, I have to complicate my example: Let's say that one component of a \"Foo\" is a collection of \"Bars\". Now, in terms of implementation, sometimes a \"Bar\" is represented as a `std::vector<std::vector<Bar> >`, sometimes as a `Bar array[][2]`, sometimes as a `std::vector<std::pair<Bar,Bar> >`, and so on... I could have the user reorganize their data into a standardized form and have a single constructor for this standard, but this might require the user to perform an extra copy. I don't want to provide a static method for each format: `readPrecomputedFormatA`, `readPrecomputedFormatB`, and so on: this clutters the API. ## Method 2: Make `Foo` mutable If I exposed the `addBar(Bar)` method of `Foo`, then I could allow the user to iterate over their collection of \"Bars\" in their own way. This, however, makes `Foo` mutable. So I could compute a `Foo` that makes sense for visualization, then use `addBar` to add a `Bar` that makes the `Foo` no longer a \"Foo\". Not good. ## Method 3: Make a friend \"builder\" class I make a class called `FooBuilder` which has the `addBar(Bar)` method exposed. I make `FooBuilder` a friend of `Foo` and add a constructor to `Foo` that takes a `FooBuilder`. On calling this constructor, it checks to make sure that `FooBuilder` contains a valid \"Foo\" object, then swaps its empty representation of a Foo with what is inside the `FooBuilder`. Everybody is happy. The only \"messiness\" about method #3 is that it requires a friendship, but it's worth it to maintain encapsulation I think. But this has got me thinking: is this an established pattern? Or is there another, _better_ way of doing this that I don't know about?"}
{"_id": "224833", "title": "Programming PHP without MVC, classes or framework: rewrite or continue on new features?", "text": "I have been programming for several years now, and back then (learning PHP) I've didn't learn to program using classes, MVC-logic or using any frameworks. I found my self solving my problems very well using my own functions. Eight months ago I was recruited to a start-up, to develop a huge social platform. I have been working there for several months now, and built up a huge website with various complicated features (+35k lines of code I guess), and I could see my self continue like this. Everything is coded without any framework, no classes or with MVC-logic, since I didn't have the time to learn it (we had to move fast). I do write everything in functions, and put a lot of effort in well documenting/describing my code as well as organizing it beautifully and easy- to-read. However, it _is_ top of my list to learn Classes > MVC > Laravel (or any other) framework. But I just can't see my self stopping now, learning above list, and then rewrite all code. This would simply push us back in time, and in the start-up we're moving fast and have many deadlines for new features/ideas/development. I've spoken with many people regarding this, and people say a lot of different things. Some say it's a matter of taste, and you'll be able to move on with it. Others say it's incredibly stupid, you're not scaleable, you're never get serious funding, you're the only one who ever be able to work on the project, you should stop and start learning it now, etc. Am I doomed? I feel lost. My personal opinion on this is, that even though it is a huge system already, it is still a MVP and I guess at some point in the future we would rewrite the code anyways. This is, if we're at such a successful stage in our venture and growing very fast / getting funding / etc."}
{"_id": "183823", "title": "Holding mutable data in a single place", "text": "Given a **mutable** property, it generally makes sense to _only hold/store that property in a single place_. When the data needs to change you only need to update a single field, and you can completely avoid bugs where the different fields get out of sync. An extremely simple example could be: The 'right' approach:               class Owner {         String name;     }          class Dog {         Owner owner;              String getOwnersName() {             return owner.name;         }     }      The 'wrong' approach:               class Owner {         String name;     }          class Dog {         Owner owner;         String ownerName;              String getOwnersName() {             return ownerName;         }     }      Experience has taught me that it's very seldom a good idea to break this rule of thumb. The risk of bugs being introduced and the increased effort required to understand the code almost always outweighs any benefit. My question is, is there a name for this rule/principle? Bonus points for linking to articles/blogs/etc. which make the argument for this clearly. Double bonus points for counter-arguments!"}
{"_id": "4550", "title": "Are innovative programming languages too dangerous?", "text": "This question is a result of the question Which programming language do you really hate? where, unsurprisingly, all of the most popular languages are listed. Most of the top 15 are extremely common programming languages. One comment brings up **haXe** as an alternative to ActionScript, a language that can target Flash, PHP, JavaScript or native applications. Another similar alternative to JavaScript is GWT. I worked at a company a year ago that decided to adopt GWT for our next product. That didn't pan out as well as hoped because GWT hasn't really taken off. There's little example of best practice, limited support libraries, and some features are so immature that they are ridiculously difficult to use. And, worst of all for something like haXe or GWT, it's nearly impossible to find programmers who are already familiar with the platform and are ready to go, let alone bring their own expertise when you lose a developer (or want to grow). With a language like Java, it's not terribly difficult to find a rock star programmer to jump in and immediately make a difference. So my question is, even though there are many complaints about established languages, and many innovative improvements, variations, or completely new languages, are the alternatives simply too dangerous or costly for the corporate environment? If so, how will these innovative languages ever become adopted? It seems like technology moves too fast for innovations, even really good ones, to have time to build a following big enough to stay around when things start to change."}
{"_id": "190152", "title": "In which order should I do comparisons?", "text": "I'm a strong proponent of writing if statements like this:               variable == constant      Because to me it just makes sense, it is more readable than the inverted:               constant == variable      Which seems to be used a lot by C-programmers. And I see the use, namely that the interpreter or compiler will throw an error and let you know if you're not doing a comparison. But still it is less readable, and for that reason alone I don't think comparisons should be written in the manner of the second example. **The actual question is:** > **Does it exist a general best practice for this, or is it different > depending on language/religion/age/etc..?** I'm happy that so many seem to understand why you'd want to do as in the latter example, but that is not what I'm asking about."}
{"_id": "188384", "title": "coding style for If condition", "text": "I came across below style of writing if statements in C#, on msdn code examples. Usually when I write if statements, the conditions I would write `(Customer != null) I want to know if there is any difference/gain in writing statement like below:               Customer customer;     if (null != customer)     {       // some code     }      Or               if (\"\" != customer.Name)      {       // some code     }"}
{"_id": "212781", "title": "Boolean condition before variable", "text": "I have noticed this style from time to time:               if ( 0 == myVar )      Rather than:               if ( myVar == 0 )      Is this just the individual programmers idiom? A defensive programming style? Does anyone know if it originated in some canonical text?"}
{"_id": "236501", "title": "True/false on the left or the right?", "text": "I have heard that generally, an expression like: `if (true === $variable)` is faster than: `if ($variable === true)` My question is about the performance, not the readability. Questions such as this one do not mention explicitly in any of their answers whether there is a performance difference between the two. Is it true? Is the first form really faster than the second?"}
{"_id": "104147", "title": "Ideas on writing a meaningful resume which is not a compilation of buzz words?", "text": "I'm am about to commence redesigning my resume all over. What I'm stuck with is where should I draw the line between writing _everything_ down and writing too little. I don't want my resume to be a pack of buzzwords nor do I want to seem to not know any of the things I do know. Keep these thoughts in mind and wanting to write a _meaningful_ resume, how do I go about it. Someone reading my resume should be able to tell if I'm a hacker culture person or someone who went to computer school just for the heck of it. **Edit:** In view of answer majorly focusing on buzzwords I would like to point out I'm also looking for things that make my resume more meaningful - I want the reader to be able to tell the difference between a hacker person and just another guy who went to computer school."}
{"_id": "128573", "title": "Who is Configuration Manager?", "text": "I would like to ask members of the community about the role of Configuration Manager, as you see it. I'm not asking what Configuration Management is, as long it had been asked before. What I need to know is:   1. What tasks do you think Configuration Manager should perform (or performs) in your team?    2. What is primary responsibility of Configuration Manager?   3. What are secondary/auxiliary responsibilities of Configuration Manager?   4. Does Configuration Manager need to be in charge of development processes on the project/company or he should be told what to do?   5. What are relations between Configuration Manager, Build Manager, Release Manager, Deployment Engineer, CI Engineer roles? Aren't they all the same - Configuration Management?   6. Maybe term Configuration Management is redundant and Technical/Team Lead should do all the related work instead? It would be really great if you could share your vision and experience."}
{"_id": "130161", "title": "Should I refactor this rails application?", "text": "I have taken over the code base for a ruby-on-rails application which relies very heavily on ActiveRecord callbacks to perform domain rules. The application can be compared to a bank application, where a customer has an Account. On each account you can register a Transaction (an amount of money that is either inserted or removed from the account). The Account has an account_balance that is updated every time a transaction is created. This update happens as an ActiveRecord callback.               class Account < ActiveRecord::Base            has_many :transactions            def update_account_balance         account_balance = 0         self.transaction_logs.each do |transaction|           account_balance = account_balance + (transaction.amount + transaction.commission)         end         self.account_balance = account_balance       end     end          class Transaction < ActiveRecord::Base            belongs_to :account            after_save :update_account_value            def update_account_value         self.account.update_account_balance         self.account.save!       end     end      I find that this way of coding makes it very difficult to figure out what happens (and what goes wrong when a bug occurs). Also, since the account needs to load all transactions, this will be heavier as more and more transactions are added. Had I been developing an application like this in .NET (in which I am much more familiar) I would have created something like this:               public class Account {            public void AddTransaction(decimal amount) {         this.Transactions.Add(new Transaction(amount));         this.AccountValue += amount;       }     }      And then made sure that a Transaction object is immutable. I am very tempted to refactor the system into something like that. But should I? Would that be the \"rails way\"? The drawback, as far as I can tell, is that my controller needs to explicitly handle controlling database transactions, something which happened implicitly in the Transaction.save! call currently called in the application. Are there other factors I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "130165", "title": "How could I implement multitouch gestures without a start event?", "text": "While working on multitouch, one of the problems I've run into is the fact that nobody seems to do gesture recognition without some kind of init event, whether it's a mouseclick or contact with a capacitive touchscreen. Is it possible to do an \"always listening\" gesture handler? If so, how to do it without mirroring input in realtime and thereby imposing gloomy processor overheads? Is there some kind of downsampling (ie take every nth input from the cursor)?"}
{"_id": "74089", "title": "Does anyone have insight into whether MonoDroid is really dead?", "text": "My company just recently invested in the Mono for Android tools for Visual Studio as we have a lot of .NET developers and were impressed with how powerful the monodroid tools seemed. After reading the ZDNet Post I was saddened to see that this project may be dead. Is there anyone out there who might know anything more about this than what is listed in that article? Apparently legions of developers were let go from the mono project but I'm wondering if it's true. Any information would be greatly appreciated. We just bought the Enterprise 5 license, which was pretty costly and I'd be pretty mad if it died after I just bought this thing and started learning it!"}
{"_id": "253254", "title": "Why do people nowadays use factory classes so often?", "text": "I've seen the history of several \u0421#/Java class library projects on GitHub and CodePlex, and it seems like a trend. Why do people nowadays use factory classes so often for almost everything? I.e. We have pretty good library, where objects are created the old-fashioned way - by invoking public constructors of classes.. Now, in the last commits the authors quickly changed all of the public constructors of thousands of classes to internal, and also created one huge factory class with thousands of CreateXXX static methods that just return new objects by calling the internal constructors of the classes. The external project API is broken, well done... Why? What is the point of such \"refactoring\"? What is a great benefits from replacing calls to all public class constructors with static factory method calls? Is having public constructors something like \"bad practice\" now?"}
{"_id": "27301", "title": "Writing Unit Tests in the Middle", "text": "Is unit testing a 100% or not at all kind of deal? I was browsing through my old projects and started adding features, this time with unit testing. However, is this ultimately worthless if I'm going to be re-using past components that do not have unit tests? Do I need to write unit tests for all the previous classes and not bother at all, or is it OK to only write unit tests for the new stuff I'm adding?"}
{"_id": "135534", "title": "Generalized VS Specialized technical solution; what to take into account?", "text": "We recently had a discussion in the office because of conflicting views between developers. One side (side S) argued technical solutions -generally- need to be a specific as possible, while the other side (side G) argued generalized solutions are preferred. I'll try to keep it short; we deal with file transfers and we need to start saving three files (log.txt, details.txt, receipt.pdf) for each transfer. We already have a files table that we'll use but we all agree that we need a different table to create a one-to-many relationship between transfers and files. Side G proposed creating general resource_attachments table that can attach files to any type of resource it would look something like this;   resource_attachments   \\- id : int   \\- entityId : int   \\- entityType : string   \\- fileId : int   \\- kind : string Side S disagreed and proposed creating a specialized transfer_attachments table, something like this;   transfer_attachments   \\- id : int   \\- transferId : int   \\- fileId : int   \\- kind : string One argument of side S is that any resource should be as specific as possible so its role and its attributes and their possible values are clear, so any new developer will have no trouble understanding it. An argument of side G was that a more generalized approach would provide a broader range of functionality; you can attach files to any resource, whatever their role will be. Though the practical differences are very small, there is some fundamental stuff going on here (this is where it gets philosophical); one person in the room sharply observed that the generalizer is the ruby expert, while the specializer is the java expert. Ruby is an interpreted language with dynamic typing while java is a compiled language with static typing. I found the matter wildly interesting and was wondering which approach is preferred; specialized or generalized solution, and what matters should be taken into account? Note that we're only talking about a the technical part of the solution, this has nothing to do with the end-user experience."}
{"_id": "135537", "title": "Is Spring + Hibernate prefered instead of EJB 3?", "text": "It is my perception that whenever new JEE projects start (where these technologies would be applicable), people prefer to use a combination of Spring + Hibernate instead of EJB 3. It seems junior programmers are even advised to go for that instead of EJB. Is this personal preference or are there pertinent reasons for it? (e.g. personal scars created by earlier EJB versions which caused mistrust in EJB or technology bloat versus performance reasons or learning curve)?"}
{"_id": "135539", "title": "Program/library to match string patterns", "text": "I've city names, like Newyork. Somebody may misspell it and write it as Newyoork. I want an algorithm or library which can match such patterns with some confidence level. Any idea how to do it or if any pattern recognition library is present? It is same as when we type something in Google with spelling mistake in it but instead it automatically corrects the mistake."}
{"_id": "181087", "title": "Do you use Instant Messaging to communicate during your day with your fellow devs?", "text": "Hello Fellow Programmers: I run a small business and we typically communicate over IM during the say. We sign on to IM when we arrive and stay on all day. It seems to be quite distracting, in my opinion, and could detract from work. I'm interested in how other small businesses use IM. Do you use IM? If so, do you stay on all day or only come up when there is a question initiated by e-mail? I'm trying to create the most productive and effective work environment for geographically separated programmers. Interested in your opinions. Thank you."}
{"_id": "140717", "title": "interpreted languages vs compiled languages (from deployment point of view)", "text": "I many times read that if you keep updating your website you may consider an interpreted language to be better for this case. I want to understand why interpreted server side language is better if I keep updating my site (such as adding new features or change some functionality).?"}
{"_id": "181082", "title": "Can I use a GPL licensed piece of JavaScript on a commercial website?", "text": "I'm looking at plupload for some upload features on a website I'm developing. Now plupload is GNU GPLv2 licensed and that implies that all derivative software should also be GPL licensed (right?). Therefore I run the plupload through my minifier, the single minified js file will violate the license, and upon request, I must make _all_ the sources of my page available (right?). I'm curious about:   * can I use the plupload API without having to open source my code?   * does the license exclude minified code somehow? See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3213767/minified-javascript-and- bsd-license"}
{"_id": "203687", "title": "Implicit or explicit database save actions", "text": "I'm writing a web app that requires the usage of drag and drop as well as other jQuery/HTML5 features. There are two options for saving a user's changes to a database   * Implicit: database save on the end of an event, such as drop, hover, ect.    * Explicit: save changes to local array and submit on submit button click event Currently, the only difference between the two is that implicit saves hooked to user events results in many more POST/GET data requests as compared to the explicit save. Other than that, is there a major distinction between the two, and what are the reasons for choosing either option?"}
{"_id": "134669", "title": "Sharding with IoC", "text": "I've come across a situation where I need to shard a database (Oracle, but that doesn't particularly matter). The gist of the problem is I have written a large-scale system in a fairly standard TDD-style, with repositories and services hidden behind interfaces. Dependency injection is used to implement particular versions of the services and repositories at runtime, with this functionality allowing for crazy client requirements (for example we migrated from MSSQL to Oracle in under a week, which would not have been possible if the architecture was not properly decoupled!). The problem now arises that I need to shard off a large portion of the data into a separate archival system, for performance reasons. The table structure has to remain the same due to time constraints, and I would like the purity of the architecture to remain the same, with no one section of the system having knowledge of the inner workings of another. The system will need to be switched from one shard to another dynamically via a user input (what input this is is yet to be finalised). So, the two ways I can think of to approach this issue are: 1 - Pass in the required connection string on creation of a repository. This is not ideal as it means that the service layer, or worse, the UI, needs to know about the underlying sharding. This will make the design very inflexible in future, and require things like the sit-in-front caching layer (a write- through cache implementation on top of the IService) to be updates so their methods take a connection string as a parameter, which just seems _wrong_. 2 - Create a new IConnectionProvider subsection of the system that abstracts the connection information for the repository. This would be more ideal, as the repositories would remain self-contained, but I cannot think of a good way to switch this implementation without having to specify the relevant interface as a parameter to each method call, which goes back to the service layer specifying which connection to use. Does anyone have any experience with this issue, or any opinions on a preferably low-labor yet still fairly pure implementation in this situation?"}
{"_id": "134664", "title": "In Scrum, should tasks such as development environment set-up and capability development be managed as subtasks within actual user stories?", "text": "Sometimes in projects we need to spend time on tasks such as:   1. exploring alternate frameworks and tools    2. learning the framework and tools selected for the project   3. setting up the servers and project infrastructure (version control, build environments, databases, etc) If we are using User Stories, where should all this work go? One option is to make them all part of first user story (e.g. make the homepage for application). Another option is to do a spike for these tasks. A third option is to make task part of an Issue/Impediment (e.g. development environment not selected yet) rather than a user Story."}
{"_id": "146715", "title": "What is an effective way to obtain use case information from preoccupied professionals?", "text": "When designing a novel system in a hospital or other clinical setting, I think it would be important to gather information from doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technicians, et al on use cases for the system. Aside from the fact that all of these are also busy professionals, what is a good way to get them to share information pertinent to their (possibly chaotic and time sensitive) workflow that would be usable in a software engineering design?"}
{"_id": "185503", "title": "What can I do to strengthen up my pen and pencil coding skills?", "text": "I want to better write code with pen and paper. Whether it'll be in pseudocode or real code, doesn't matter. Could you kindly advise me sources for this?"}
{"_id": "9991", "title": "What to do when the programming activity becomes a problem?", "text": "I once saw a program (can't remember which) where it talked about people \"experiencing flow\" when they are doing something they are passionate about. When \"in flow\", they tend to lose track of time and surrounding, concentrating only on their activity at hand. This happens a lot for me when I program; most particularly when I face a problem. I refuse to give up until it's solved. This usually leads to hours just rushing by and I forget to eat lunch, dinner gets pushed into far into the evening, and when I finally look at the clock, it's way into the wee-hours of the night and I will only get a few hours of sleep before having to rise early in the morning. (This is not to say that I'm in flow _only_ when facing a problem - but I find it particularly hard to stop programming and step back when there's something I can't solve immediately.) I love programming, but I hate it when it disrupts my normal routines (most importantly eating and sleeping patterns). And sitting still for so many hours, staring a screen, is not healthy. Please, any ideas on how I can get my rampant programming activity under control?"}
{"_id": "148969", "title": "Scuttlebutt Reconciliation in the paper \u201cEfficient Reconciliation and Flow Control for Anti-Entropy Protocols\u201d", "text": "I am reading the paper \"Efficient Reconciliation and Flow Control for Anti- Entropy Protocols\"! , I couldn't clearly understand Section 3.2 \"Scuttlebutt Reconciliation\". Here I extract out some sentences from the paper, which especially confuse me.   1. If gossip messages were unlimited in size, then the sets contains the exact differences,just like with precise reconciliation.   2. Scuttlebutt requires that if a certain delta (r; k; v; n) is omitted, then all the deltas with higher version numbers for the same r should be omitted as well.   3. Scuttlebutt satises the global invariant C(p;q) for any two processes p and q:"}
{"_id": "74334", "title": "how to use version control", "text": "I'm developing a web site in php in localhost and as modules of it gets completed, I upload it on the cloud so that my friends can alpha test it. As I keep developing, I've lots of files and I lose track of which file I've edited or changed etc. I've heard of something as 'version control' to manage all those but am not sure how it works. So, my question is: Is there an easy way/service/application available to me to track all the edits/changes/new files and manage the files as I develop the website. As Soon as I'm done with a module, I want to upload it on the cloud (I'm using Amazon Cloud Service). If something happens to the new files, I might want to get back to the old file. And maybe, in a click or two, I get to see the files which I've edited or changed since the last one I've uploaded?"}
{"_id": "200486", "title": "Is Code First with Migrations or SQL Server Data Tools a better fit?", "text": "I have been given a spec to create a new MVC4 website, it will not be too large a project at first but I suspect it will grow as the business gets new ideas for it. Using .NET 4.5 ASP.NET MVC4 and EF I have to choose between code-first with migrations or Sql Server Data Tools (SSDT) for handling my database. With the SSDT I can control my database in a project as part of my solution and handle the changes all the way from dev through to production and beyond using dacpac files. My experience of code-first from MVC3 was not to use it beyond development due to the limited database options. It would always end up with dropping the Db on model change or handle the Db changes manually. However I am led to believe with MVC4 Migrations that is no longer the case and I can now push updates to the Db. So my question is which one is the most efficient to use based on saving time/effort in development but also scalable and able to handle production changes. I liked code-first and the ability to generate my Database from Models, does the introduction of migrations now make it viable in production?"}
{"_id": "200480", "title": "Does learning to play an instrument improve programming ability?", "text": "I've seen plenty of questions asking if _listening_ to music boosts productivity, etc. but I haven't been able to find one about _performing_ music. Learning to play the piano has been on my to-do list for a while, partly because I have a sneaky suspicion that learning to deal with the relationships, recursions, etc. inherent in music will make me a better programmer (plus it looks fun). Does anyone know of any research on, or have first-hand experience with, learning a musical instrument having any sort of noticeable effect on one's programming or mathematical ability? Most of what I've been able to find seems to be interested in the effects of learning music at a very young age on boosting overall mental ability. I would also be interested in the other direction, aka learning to program improving one's ability with an instrument."}
{"_id": "200481", "title": "Which closely represents Aggregation?", "text": "I know Aggregation is a has-a relationship, but I encountered a question in a test which did not make sense (and had grammatical mistakes as well) Which of the following statements correctly describe the concept of aggregation in OOP?   * **A** Splitting a class into a several sub classes   * **B** Creating one piece of code that works with all similar objects   * **C** Accessing data only through methods   * **D** Combining several classes to create a new class   * **E** Creating a new class from an existing class I think;   * **A** Could be true.   * **B** Sounds like inheritance.   * **C** Seems like property.   * **D** Could be true.   * **E** Could be true. I'm uncertain how the has-a relationship translates into actual code in these statements. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "166748", "title": "What is consultant application development?", "text": "Recently I got a job offer from csc as consultant application development. Currently I am working as a software engineer. Can somebody enlighten me on what is consultant application development career growth , job type, security and what is there role ?"}
{"_id": "241083", "title": "Architecture or Pattern for handling properties with custom setter/getter?", "text": "**Current Situation:** I'm doing a simple MVC site for keeping journals as a personal project. My concern is I'm trying to keep the interaction between the pages and the classes simplistic. Where I run into issues is the password field. My setter encrypts the password, so the getter retrieves the encrypted password.               public class JournalBook     {         private IEncryptor _encryptor { get; set; }      private String _password { get; set; }              public Int32 id { get; set; }         public String name { get; set; }         public String description { get; set; }         public String password       {           get         {                 return this._password;          }             set             {                 this.setPassword(this._password, value, value);             }         }         public List<Journal> journals { get; set; }              public DateTime created { get; set; }         public DateTime lastModified { get; set; }              public Boolean passwordProtected         {             get             {                 return this.password != null && this.password != String.Empty;             }         }              ...          }      I'm currently using model-binding to submit changes or create new JournalBooks (like below). The problem arises that in the code below `book.password` is always null, I'm pretty sure this is because of the custom setter.               [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Create(JournalBook book)     {         // Create the JournalBook if not null.         if (book != null)             this.JournalBooks.Add(book);              return RedirectToAction(\"Index\");     }      **Question(s):** Should I be handling this not in the property's getter/setter? Is there a pattern or architecture that allows for model- binding or another simple method when properties need to have custom getters/setters to manipulate the data? To summarize, how can I handle the password storing with encryption such that I have the following,   * Robust architecture   * I don't store the password as plaintext.   * Submitting a new or modified `JournalBook` is as easy as default model-binding (or close to it)."}
{"_id": "204309", "title": "Are there algorithims for polling optimization?", "text": "I have a web-application with an async HTTP backend, which gets called by the client by AJAX requests. The client has to start a job and then polls for the result. I started with a simple 150ms polling interval, which was fine for small jobs, but big jobs, which could take several minutes, threw many failed requests to the server. Currently, I just add 1000ms to the delay after every poll, so the polling gets slower over time for longer requests, but never longer than 10 seconds. **Are there some formulas, statistics, or algorithms that I could use to dynamically optimize the polling time?**"}
{"_id": "87081", "title": "Criteria When Evaluating Middleware", "text": "What are some suitable criteria for evaluating a list of Companies complimentary middleware? I am doing a trade study on several Company's middleware implementations and so far I have came up with the following criteria:   1. Cost   2. Ease of Development/Ramp Up Time   3. Licensing   4. Support   5. Quality of Tools"}
{"_id": "35276", "title": "The advantages & disadvantages to be had from using a Web Framework?", "text": "This question is focused on **extracting the advantages and disadvantages of using Web based Frameworks** : such as Cake PHP, Zend, jQuery, ASP.NET). This question is completely _language agnostic_. Let me start with the notion of _\"Standing on the shoulders of Giants_ \". ## Advantages:   * **Empowers Developers** \\- by taking features that would have previously have taken 100's of lines of code and compressing them into one simple function call empowers developers to integrate more complex features into their Web Sites.    * Allow for **Quicker development** of applications - this is very relevant for people that need websites created in a very small window (has anyone any examples of this?)   * **Lower Costs** \\- allows programmers to pass cost savings onto the customer, a whole new range of customers generated that wanted a website but previously could not afford the higher development costs. ## Disadvantages:   * **Lost Understanding** \\- by relying on the features of a framework a developer is in danger of loosing understanding on how things work (underneath the hood).    * The configuration cliff - once you go further than the configuration of your framework your productivity drops right off, it can be difficult to implement features outside of a frameworks configuration.    * **Developer tramlines** \\- you (the developer) has to do things the way that the developer want you to do things.  I wonder what people make of my points, and whether anybody disagrees with them? Also if people have additional points I would be grateful."}
{"_id": "101937", "title": "How do I cluster strings based on a relation between two strings?", "text": "_If you don't know WEKA, you can try a theoretical answer. I don't need literal code/examples..._ I have a huge data set of strings in which I want to cluster the strings to find the most related ones, these could as well be seen as duplicate. I already have a set of couples of string for which I know that they are duplicate to each other, so, now I want to do some data mining on those two sets. The result I'm looking for is a system that would return me the possible most relevant couples of strings for which we don't know yet that they are duplicates, I believe that I need clustering for this, which type? Note that I want to base myself on **word occurrence comparison** , not on interpretation or meaning. * * * Here is an example of two string of which we know they are duplicate (in our vision on them):   * The weather is really cold and it is raining.   * It is raining and the weather is really cold. Now, the following strings also exist (most to least relevant, ignoring stop words):   * Is the weather really that cold today?   * Rainy days are awful.   * I see the sunshine outside. The software would return the following two strings as most relevant, which aren't known to be duplicate:   * The weather is really cold and it is raining.   * Is the weather really that cold today? Then, I would mark that as duplicate or not duplicate and it would present me with another couple. * * * How do I go to implement this in the most efficient way that I can apply to a large data set?"}
{"_id": "1189", "title": "What should I do to be language-agnostic?", "text": "By now I work with asp.net and C#. I have done a decent work in Java as well. I am planning my career in such a way I should be language-agnostic someday. What are the things that I need to learn? First would OOP paradigms as its speaks about the Class design. Are there any others?"}
{"_id": "101931", "title": "Is Groovy going away?", "text": "I am sure this question has been asked many times. However, I like to ask it again with the intention of what is the future of these languages. I was first introduced to Groovy and really liked it. I felt the syntax was simpler and it was much closer to Java and I was able to quickly learn Grails. Then there was Scala, and the web frame work Lift. I am still learning Scala and I find the syntax very difficult at times. However, I still wonder what is the future of Groovy. When the author of Groovy says he would have never created groovy if he knew about Scala, then it makes me wonder if there is a future at all. Of course Groovy has came a long way and Grails is used today by many large companies. If one was to look at Grails vs Lift today, then Grails would be clear winner. More companies are using it. But given everything I have said so far, I am interested to know if one should invest in Groovy? Is Groovy going away and Scala the better choice? If the CEO of BMW says he drives a Mercedes then one would wonder why shouldn't we all drive Mercedes too, right? (I understand if this question is really broad and might be closed. I hope to make it an open Wiki for others though.)"}
{"_id": "127919", "title": "Smallest lexicographical rotation of a string using suffix arrays in O(n)", "text": "I will quote the problem from ACM 2003: > Consider a string of length n (1 <= n <= 100000). Determine its minimum > lexicographic rotation. For example, the rotations of the string \u201calabala\u201d > are: > > alabala > > labalaa > > abalaal > > balaala > > alaalab > > laalaba > > aalabal > > and the smallest among them is \u201caalabal\u201d. As for the solution - I know I need to construct a suffix array \\- and let's say I can do that in O(n). My question still is, how can I find the smallest rotation in O(n)? (n=length of a string) I'm very interested in this problem and still I somehow don't get the solution. I'm more interested in the concept and how to solve the problem and not in the concrete implementation. Note: minimum rotation means in the same order as in an english dictionary - \"dwor\" is before \"word\" because d is before w. EDIT: suffix array construction takes O(N) LAST EDIT: I think I found a solution!!! What if I just merged two strings? So if the string is \"alabala\" the new string would me \"alabalaalabala\" and now I'd just construct a suffix array of this (in O(2n) = O(n)) and got the first suffix? I guess this may be right. What do you think? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "71302", "title": "How can I get free artwork for my free software?", "text": "So many free software projects have beautiful art, specially websites, that I wonder where the coders meet their artists. Is there some place to ask for this besides the local art majors' schoolboard? I thought of IRC, but I fear that one might actually bother the small and frequent userbase by asking it there."}
{"_id": "84193", "title": "Sr. Dev made a database I disagree with.  Advice sought", "text": "I need to run to work soon, so this will be brief. I've only been with the company for a couple weeks. It is a good company, this is a contractor who just happens to be twice my age. I am new to the professional programming field. This database does exactly what wikipedia says not to do for 1NF. It repeats telephone columns in various tables. That is one strike. Strike two: Some data is duplicated across tables. Flat out duplicated. Strike three: Not vital, but he turned all the keys into bigints. All the \"FK_\" are also nullable. Wtf? We have not started using this database YET, but there has been a big time crunch to meet the client's needs and timeline since I joined and the current timeline will put it into use, say, tomorrow. It was okay for me to sit back while he made a mess since I did not have deal with it directly, but it sounds like I'm going to be taking over this section of the code while he's needed to architecture something else. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My boss is a great man, but is also very, very busy and more stress is the last thing he needs. **Update:** Sorry this came off as a rant and less of a proper question. I really do appreciate all of the responses and they've helped me start viewing the \"problem\" more analytically. There's also some benefit to them being generalized in that the same advice will still apply to future \"problems.\" Thank you. **Second Update:** So I kindly tried to figure out why he did what he did and for the most part he even admitted he didn't have a very good reason. We ended up spending some time and cutting almost all of the duplicated columns. For the rest of the oddities, I can bite my cheek well enough since they're just annoying and won't potentially wreak havoc if every duplicated field isn't updated. All in all a good day. PS I'm having a hard time choosing a best answer since there are so many good ones."}
{"_id": "33170", "title": "How to deal with WYSIWYG editors?", "text": "There are now lots of WYSIWYG editors, however whenever we use one on a CMS- based website we consistently have issues. The biggest being users pasting content from Word or other online sources and all the various formatting rules being added in \"behind the scenes\". How do you deal with these editors on a live production website? I love Markdown, however its target market is most definitely the tech industry."}
{"_id": "123406", "title": "What are some FizzBuzz-type questions for web or SQL developers?", "text": "After a while, we are hiring again, and I'm reviewing tests for programmers; some of them are a bit out of date. What are some of the FizzBuzz-type questions for web developers and SQL? That is, not too trivial, but still solvable in five to ten minutes with pen and paper and without Google? I typically eliminate about two thirds or more of the candidates based on CV, and then all but a few really good candidates in a one-hour interview (which can be over the phone). At this point the candidate is writing a personality test and has a chance to write a bit of FizzBuzz-like code. So, I'm not trying to eliminate a bunch of candidates, but I am trying to validate my initial assessment that candidate is hireable and able to code."}
{"_id": "232522", "title": "Web API architecture design", "text": "I'm learning and diving into Web API. I've used web services before but not specifically with web API. Below is how I am designing it so far and I was curious on the feedback. I have a ReturnMessages object. This basically is a standard object that gets returned from any of the API calls, correctly executed or an error happens. Within each API method I have a try catch. if everything is alright, I specify the values I need within my ReturnMessages object and than `Ok(_returnMessages)`. Now if an error happens I fill in the ReturnMessages object with the error information and once again return `Ok(_returnMessages)`. The ReturnMessages object contains a ReturnClass field to hold any type of other objects I may need to return. A single object or an Array. It also has a return code, return message, friendly message for the end user in case something wrong happens and than a generic string list of data that was passed in that I can send off and use for testing purposes to try and re-create the error. Below is a code sample from one of the methods that shows off what I am talking about. Is this approach ok with always returning Ok with the object I'm returning or am I missing potential pieces within the Web API that I should be utilizing? I've seen the NotFound exceptions and all that other fun stuff. **EDIT: I made some changes in terms of what I was passing back for when things don't work out. I took out the ReturnMessage and also the ReturnData and wrote that to the Application event log for a new string value for this particular web api. Taht occurs in the _lw code line which is just a LogWriter class that uses the values passed in to write to the application event log.               public IHttpActionResult method1(string arg 1= null, string arg2 = null, string arg3 = null)             {                 try                 {                     clrObject1 varClrObject = (from p in db.clrObject1                                                 where p.column1 == arg1                                                 select p).SingleOrDefault();                          if (varClrObject == null)                     {                         _returnMessages = new ReturnMessages                         {                             ReturnCode = 204,                             FriendlyErrorMessage = \"Nothing found matches the supplied values.\"                         };                             _lw.SetupEventLog(\"No data was found that matched the information supplied.\\n\\nParameters:\\narg1: \" + arg1 + \"\\narg2: \" + arg2 + \"\\narg2=\" + arg2, \"Warning\");                     }                     else                     {                         _returnMessages = new ReturnMessages                         {                             ReturnCode = 200,                             ReturnClass = varClrObject,                             ReturnMessage = \"Information Successfully Retrieved\"                         };                     }                 }                 catch (Exception e)                 {                     _returnMessages = new ReturnMessages                     {                         FriendlyErrorMessage = \"An error has occurred while getting your information. Please try again in a few minutes.  A notification was already sent to the company about this issue.\",                         ReturnCode = 400                     };                          _lw.SetupEventLog(\"Parameters:\\narg1: \" + arg1 + \"\\narg2: \" + arg2 + \"\\narg3=\" + arg3, \"Error\", e);                 }                      return Ok(new { Response = _returnMessages });             }"}
{"_id": "7008", "title": "What security practices should you be aware of when writing software?", "text": "What different types of security do there exist? Why and when should they be implemented? Example: SQL Injection Prevention"}
{"_id": "7000", "title": "How much effort should we spend to programming for multiple cores?", "text": "Processors are getting more and more cores these days, which leaves me wondering... Should we, programmers, adapt to this behaviour and spent more effort on programming for multiple cores? To what extent should we do and optimize this? Thread? Affinity? Hardware optimizations? Something else?"}
{"_id": "159830", "title": "Nearest color algorithm using Hex Triplet", "text": "Following page list colors with names http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors. For example #5D8AA8 Hex Triplet is \"Air Force Blue\". This information will be stored in a databse table (tbl_Color (HexTriplet,ColorName)) in my system Suppose I created a color with #5D8AA7 Hex Triplet. I need to get the nearest color available in the tbl_Color table. The expected anaser is \"#5D8AA8 - Air Force Blue\". This is because #5D8AA8 is the nearest color for #5D8AA7. Do we have any algorithm for finding the nearest color? How to write it using C# / Java? **REFERENCE**   1. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5440051/algorithm-for-parsing-hex-into-color-family   2. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6130621/algorithm-for-finding-the-color-between-two-others-in-the-colorspace-of-painte **Suggested Formula:** Suggested by @user281377. Choose the color where the sum of those squared differences is minimal                (Square(Red(source)-Red(target))) + (Square(Green(source)-Green(target))) +(Square(Blue(source)-Blue(target)))"}
{"_id": "226158", "title": "Short Sequential Search vs. Regular Sequential Search", "text": "Assuming a list of elements is sorted in ascending order, we search sequentially from the first element comparing the target to successive elements either until we find the target (succeed) or until the current element is greater than the target or we reach the end of the list (fail). **Is Short Sequential Search ever more efficient than regular sequential search? If so, when?**"}
{"_id": "226155", "title": "How do I traverse a tree without using recursion?", "text": "I have a very large in memory node tree and need to traverse the tree. Passing the returned values of each child node to their parent node. This has to be done until all the nodes have their data bubble up to the root node. Traversal works like this.               private Data Execute(Node pNode)     {         Data[] values = new Data[pNode.Children.Count];         for(int i=0; i < pNode.Children.Count; i++)         {             values[i] = Execute(pNode.Children[i]);  // recursive         }         return pNode.Process(values);     }          public void Start(Node pRoot)     {         Data result = Execute(pRoot);     }      This works fine, but I'm worried that the call stack limits the size of the node tree. How can the code be rewritten so that no recursive calls to `Execute` are made?"}
{"_id": "742", "title": "Good furniture for programmers", "text": "What are some good furniture offerings for those of us that sit around all day every day? I'm interested in chairs, desks, etc... Bonus points for posting images. P.S. Is the GeekDesk really as great as Stack Overflow would have us believe? That's a lot of cheddar for an adjustable table."}
{"_id": "745", "title": "Staying alert and awake while coding", "text": "What methods do you use to stay awake and alert while working? Personally I drink coffee non stop throughout the day. But I've also heard of this thing called exercise that should help too. Does anyone else have tips and tricks to stay more awake and alert while working? Redbull? Maybe a magic pill that won't require me to sleep?"}
{"_id": "159789", "title": "How can rotating release managers improve a project's velocity and stability?", "text": "The Wikipedia article on Parrot VM includes this unreferenced claim: > Core committers take turns producing releases in a revolving schedule, where > no single committer is responsible for multiple releases in a row. This > practice has improved the project's velocity and stability. Parrot's Release Manager role documentation doesn't offer any further insight into the process, and I couldn't find any reference for the claim. My first thoughts were that rotating release managers seems like a good idea, sharing the responsibility between as many people as possible, and having a certain degree of polyphony in releases. Is it, though? Rotating release managers has been proposed for Launchpad, and there were some interesting counterarguments: >   * Release management is something that requires a good understanding of > all parts of the code and the authority to make calls under pressure if > issues come up during the release itself >   * The less change we can have to the release process the better from an > operational perspective >   * Don't really want an engineer to have to learn all this stuff on the job > as well as have other things to take care of (regular development > responsibilities) >   * Any change of timezones of the releases would need to be approved with > the SAs > and: > I think this would be a great idea (mainly because of my lust for power), > but I also think that there should be some way making sure that a release > manager doesn't get overwhelmed if something disastrous happens during > release week, maybe by have a deputy release manager at the same time (maybe > just falling back to Francis or Kiko would be sufficient). The practice doesn't appear to be very common, and the counterarguments seem reasonalbe and convincing. I'm quite confused on how it would improve a project's velocity and stability, is there something I'm missing, or is this just a bad edit on the Wikipedia article? Worth noting that the top voted answer in the related \"Is rotating the lead developer a good or bad idea?\" question boldly notes: > **Don't rotate.**"}
{"_id": "250208", "title": "Do immutable objects that constantly change impact memory/performance?", "text": "I'm writing a program that goes into a loop and keeps changing the state of some models (similar to a game). Naturally, many things are mutable. However, I'm also writing some classes that are immutable because they're inherently treated like values (for example: vectors, matrices, etc.) However, these values change on every loop (maybe 50-100 times a second). Does this mean that on every change, the program would need to allocate a new chunk of memory? If I'm using managed code, does this mean that the memory usage will build up very quickly? How does this impact determinism, performance, and garbage collection in languages such as C# and Java, especially when many garbage collectors have to pause the entire program in order to clear the memory?"}
{"_id": "52698", "title": "Putting books read in resume", "text": "Is it a good idea if I put the books I read on my resume, or at least those related to software development?"}
{"_id": "202227", "title": "Do I go by ID or by Label while programming?", "text": "Suppose I have a table \"Progress\" with two columns. One column is ID which is identity. Another column is Progress_Label ID Progress_Label 1 Submitted 2 Approved by user 3 Rejected by leadership 4 Cancelled 5 Completed **What is the best programming practice** , should I go by ID or by label? In my stored procedures, functions, or in programming code methods etc should I search records by the ID = 3 for example or should I type \"Where progress_lable is Rejected by leadership\" ? If somebody would want to edit the labels, all the code would stop working if I go by the label? At the same type if I type the label, code looks more understandable since it says right in the code what is it we are looking for? Are there any articles regarding this?"}
{"_id": "159787", "title": "Replacing Multiple Inhertance with delegation", "text": "I was going through \"Object Oriented Modelling and Design\" by James Rumbaugh et al and it said that in languages where multiple inheritance is not supported like Java three mechanisms can be used as workarounds   1. Delegation using aggregation of roles    2. Inherit the most important   3. class and delegate the rest Nested Generalization I couldnt understand the examples given in the text. Could any one please explain this with an example. I know that \"diamond problem\" is a problem within multiple inheritance and java supports multiple inheritance of interfaces."}
{"_id": "47860", "title": "Why does the word \"Pythonic\" exist?", "text": "Honestly, I hate the word \"Pythonic\" -- it's used as a simple synonym of \"good\" in many circles, and I think that's pretentious. Those who use it are silently saying that good code cannot be written in a language other than Python. Not saying Python is a bad language, but it's certainly not the \" ** _end all be all language to solve ALL of everyone's problems forever!_** \" (Because that language does not exist). What it seems like people who use this word really mean is \"idiomatic\" rather than \"Pythonic\" -- and of course the word \"idiomatic\" already exists. Therefore I wonder: Why does the word \"Pythonic\" exist?"}
{"_id": "208488", "title": "How to maximise chances of success in an HR interview?", "text": "I was recently rejected for a Junior Web Developer role after a first interview with two members of HR staff. Personally, I think it's crazy that someone who hasn't written a single line of code in their life can make hiring decisions about programmers - the interview was an hour and a half long and they didn't ask a single technical question! However, this is not about opinions. So leaving opinion aside, my questions are:   1. How common is it for hiring decisions to be made by non-technical staff?   2. And more importantly...what can a programmer do to emphasise their skills and make a positive impact in an HR interview?"}
{"_id": "219700", "title": "Is it Typical for Large Software Companies to Not Document or Refactor Code?", "text": "I have begun working at a large software company and was assigned to a project that is over a million and a half lines of code. It's part of a program suite that is sold to clients (not an in-house project) and the source code can be purchased if they desire (although given the extra fees associated with it, this seems rare). They've been doing software design for years and their current products are intended to be continued for the foreseeable future. To my surprise, the million and a half lines of code are almost completely lacking in documentation. Moreover, there are some areas of code that are incredibly messy to follow or could use some refactoring to become much easier to understand (for instance, an improvement in the programming language came out 10 or so years ago that would make large portions of code much cleaner, not to mention less prone to bugs). There doesn't seem to be any efforts to rectify this and my offers to do so for the parts I'm working with have met with resistance, for which I've never really gotten a clear answer. Are these practices common in a large business in the software industry? Or is my company unique in its lack of refactoring and documentation? Addendum: Based on some of the comments, I'd like to clarify what I'm looking for. I understand that my company has technical debt and this is bad. I'm not looking to determine whether or not my company is worse off because of this, I am just wanting to know whether or not this lack of documentation and resistance to refactoring is a fact of life within the programming world that I'll have to deal with if I continue working in it."}
{"_id": "179904", "title": "Is asking for control totals on a file an outdated means of verifying a file?", "text": "I'm in a new position where I need to process a flat files on a regular basis. The last time I did this was 5 or 6 years ago but as part of the file layout I received control totals. It gave me simplistic information on the file like the total number of records as well as sums of the important fields. This helped me during testing then also during production to verify the file arrived and has correct information. I have asked for similar data for this new project and have hit a wall of no. Is this no longer a standard practice? Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "76659", "title": "How is a \"Software Developer\" different from a \"Software Consultant\"? What makes a consultant?", "text": "I have seen a lot of people claiming themselves to be a \"software consultant\". These consultants do what a normal software developer does, write code, estimate tasks, fix bugs and attend meetings etc. The only difference being the financials, consultants end up earning more. Then how is a software developer different from a \"consultant\"? In addition to the main question, I would like to know how can a software developer become a consultant? Are there any specific guidelines for a consultant? Do they need to amass certifications and write up research papers? Please do not confuse the software consultant with a management consultant. Software consultants I have seen are not managers."}
{"_id": "165532", "title": "Multiple attribution in Python, JS, ...?", "text": "I accidentally discovered this `a=b=c=d=e=f=2` in python(2.7)(and JavaScript a few minutes later) interpreter . Is this a feature or just the way the interpreter works, if is a feature how it is called ? Do other languages have this feature ?"}
{"_id": "171485", "title": "What is the concept of software wear and tear?", "text": "I have heard that over time, software can begin to show signs of wear and tear. What does wear and tear of software mean? Software itself not being a physical entity, so how can there be wear and tear?"}
{"_id": "171481", "title": "Unable to debug an encodded javascript?", "text": "I\u2019m having some problems debugging an encoded javacscript. This script I\u2019m referring to given in this link over here. The encoding here is simple and it works by shifting the unicodes values to whatever Codekey was use during encoding. The code that does the decoding is given here in plain English below:-               <script language=\"javascript\">     function dF(s){     var s1=unescape(s.substr(0,s.length-1)); var t='';     for(i=0;i<s1.length;i++)t+=String.fromCharCode(s1.charCodeAt(i)-s.substr(s.length-1,1));     document.write(unescape(t));     }     </script>      I\u2019m interested in knowing or understanding the values (e.g s1,t). Like for example when the value of i=0 what values would the following attributes / method would hold                   s1.charCodeAt(i) and s.substr(s.length-1,1)      The reason I\u2019m doing this is to understand as to how a CodeKey function really works. I don\u2019t see anything in the code above which tells it to decode on the basis of codekey value. The only thing I can point in the encoding text is the last character which is set to 1 , 2 ,3 or 4 depending upon the codekey selected during encoding process. One can verify using the link I have given above. However, to debug, I\u2019m using firebug addon with the script running as localhost on my wamp server. I\u2019m able to put a breakpoint on the js using firebug but I\u2019m unable to retrieve any of the user defined parameters or functions I mentioned above. I want to know under this context what would be best way to debug this encoded js. **EDIT** @blueberryfields Thanks for the neat code review. However, to clarify this is no homework its something i picked from a website about encoding and javascript.The material just looked interesting and decided to give it a go. I don't see the point of using the intermediate variables as I was hoping to make use of those already define (s1,t,i). Usually these variable types are seen in firebug way too often like the enumerable types. Beside, using a good breakpoint and the right place i can always step over these values in the loop. I changed my focus as someone on stackexchange told me to use dragonfly (opera) as i did I was able to retrieve the variable and their values with the breakpoint statement. For other values i just did `document.write` to get desired results. Here is the link of the screenshot. link. I was more interested in understanding the part of coding that actually tell the program to shift-back the unicode character based upon code key value. That part of code was `s.substr(s.length-1,1)`. He just extracted the last character which is the codekey number and then use it in calculating the matching charcode value. If you unescape this shift-1 code `%264DTDSJQU%2631MBOHVBHF%264E%2633kbwbtdsjqu%2633%264F%261Bbmfsu%2639%2638Ifmmp%2631Xpsme%2638%263%3A%264C%261B%264D0TDSJQU%264F%261B%261%3A%261%3A%261%3A1` you would get `&4DTDSJQU&31MBOHVBHF&4E&33kbwbtdsjqu&33&4F&1Bbmfsu&39&38Ifmmp&31Xpsme&38&3:&4C&1B&4D0TDSJQU&4F&1B&1:&1:&1:1` Although those last chars not required but were intentionally added so it helps in decoding."}
{"_id": "40488", "title": "How to proceed when a bug in open source libraries is suspected?", "text": "We are using some open source libraries in our projects. Sometimes there are some issues found in some of them (most likely library bugs, but it may also be a wrong usage from our side, especially when sometimes documentation is not exactly 100 % complete). As the libraries are often quite complex, debugging them to pinpoint the source of the problem is sometimes quite hard. Can you help me to summarize what other options are there and how to exactly proceed with them? I have just recently hit some strange problems when using TCMalloc (Google scalable memory allocator) on Windows, so I would most welcome answers which would apply to this particular library, but more general answers are good as well. 1) Ask the maintainer/owner of the project for assistance. How can this be done? 2) Hire someone to identify and fix the issue. How to do this? How can I find someone with enough expertise in some particular library? ... any other options?"}
{"_id": "171483", "title": "Steps to manage a large project", "text": "Software development is an area where parallel development to its fullest form is very difficult to achieve, although you could get reasonably close with the right design. This is especially true for game development. That being said, if you are designing a game from scratch from engine to front end, what steps should be taken in order? How would you efficiently manage your project and your team? I'm asking because several people and I are interested in working on a relatively large project for learning purposes. Initially, we were going to use a proprietary engine like Unity, but since we wanted to learn how the engine works, we're going to start from bottom. I'd appreciate any suggestions that you guys can provide me."}
{"_id": "171488", "title": "Which things I need to purchase to develop and distribute application to customer in .Net", "text": "This is the first time I got one customer and I am developing one application for him in c#.net and winforms. I want to distribute .net framework with my application since customer may not have it installed so I want to give it with my application so that while installing it will see if framework is installed or not and install it accordingly. I want to know, if I want to distribute this application to this customer as well as several other customers in future, which things or licenses I need to purchase like .net framework, visual studio etc. You can consider that I am going to start my small software firm and going to make more of such applications and sell them to various customers."}
{"_id": "40483", "title": "What can I use instead of Interfaces in Ruby (or any other dynamic language)?", "text": "My goal is to define contracts between classes. I like duck typing and all but I'd like also to define an interface between different layers of my application to clearly define which are the method to call from the external, and which are accessory methods that shouldn't be used by the other layer. For example in Java I can define a Persistor interface with methods like get() and save() and then define a JdbcPersistor class with all the methods I need to persist on database. And maybe another RestPersistor with other methods for saving on a remote restserver. I'm not asking for interfaces in Ruby, just to know if there is a neat way do keep this distinction. I like Ruby but I worked only on small projects with it."}
{"_id": "18026", "title": "Migrating from one PHP framework to another", "text": "I'm working with a web company that's approaching a point where it will likely need re-think the product as a V2 - due to outgrowing some of its V1 foundations and principles that have been built into virtually everything, from the data model to the user interfaces. For various reasons, this evolution might involve a migration from CakePHP (with which the V1 has been built) to Symfony or Zend. I would like to ask for some experienced views on how people might have managed a transition like this for a website that has significant traffic and generates revenue. I don't want to open up a discussion on the pro's & con's of different PHP frameworks, or why this migration might be needed. Rather, I would be very interested in hearing whether there are some practical alternatives to essentially building a V2 from scratch alongside the V1 for a couple of months - and locking up precious coding time for the duration of this intense period. An example of such an alternative might be migrating an app in parts over a longer period of time. I'd be grateful for any views from people who might have managed or been involved in such transitions. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "230016", "title": "Does producing potentially shippable product make you less agile?", "text": "The cost of developing a feature in Agile is very high because it needs to be ready for shipment. It includes:   1. Significant bug fixing   2. Writing/updating and executing tests   3. Writing/updating the user manual   4. Polishing the UI design (placement of controls, color schemes, etc...)   5. Updating the documents for FDA (in our organization) When the cost is that high you are less likely to change the feature once you implement it. So does it make your less agile?"}
{"_id": "89685", "title": "Apple Enterprise Developer Account Query", "text": "My employer is looking to purchase an enterprise account in the belief that it will enable us to develop and distribute apps for large clients of ours - however online it clearly states that the Enterprise account should only be used to distribute apps to the employees of the company that own the account. So my question is this: If we want to distribute in-house apps to \"Company X\" should we ask them to purchase an Enterprise account to distribute the app we made for them, or do we buy the account under our organisation instead? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "108509", "title": "Certified Scrum Master exam", "text": "I have just finished two days of the CSM course and I feel pretty excited about the upcoming online exam. What is your experience with the exam? How much did you get? And can you recommend any good online tests sample?"}
{"_id": "102353", "title": "Why do we love using i?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why do most of us use 'i' as a loop counter variable? Maybe this questions seems to be extreamly stupid but I wonder why we use i as variable in most cases in for loops (and not other letter). This might be a historical cause. eg.               for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++)"}
{"_id": "127934", "title": "Any standards for naming variables in for loops (instead of i,j,k)", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why do most of us use 'i' as a loop counter variable? I was just writing a nested loop and got to the point where I was using l and m as variables to control for loops, and I realized this could get very confusing; Ive already had a few bugs when I copied blocks of code to different levels. So I was thinking instead of using i,j,k I would use iSomething,iSomethingelse. So if I were going over a 3D model Id use               for(int iMesh=0;iMesh<numMesh;iMesh++)         for(int iVertex=0;iVertex<meshes[iMesh].numVertex;iVertex++)      or maybe use the name of the variable Im iterating over: for(int iMeshes for(int iVerts So I was wondering if there are any other standard or commonly used practices for doing this? EDIT: Im wondering if there ARE any standards, not if its OK to do this"}
{"_id": "18029", "title": "Working with clients who don't know what they want", "text": "I have recently started a job that has me working on an existing system. It requires tweaks and updates as well as new code. I have done several maintainance/feature adding projects now, and several of them have ended up being significantly different from what was actually requested. So, I had to program the item several times to get it to where the requester wanted. Now, I don't mind reprogramming the feature if that's what needs to be done. However, I would like to decrease turnaround time on my projects. The bottleneck seems to be in the requester's perception of what needs to be done. Do you have any ideas on what I could do to figure out what the requester needs more quickly?"}
{"_id": "254780", "title": "How should be the approach to start thinking about multi thread programming", "text": "I am an experienced java developer.Of now I have started learning multithreading in java.I am able to grasp most of the concepts but still I am unable to visualize applications running on threads.I know the concept but somewhere if I am given a problem statement, I am unable to think or visualize it in threads.How should my approach be in order to start visualizing applications in threading and start coding the applications in threads?"}
{"_id": "207767", "title": "Quickly prune and create valid data combinations", "text": "I am really struggling with a problem where I need to \"prune\" down available scenarios to those that a user has defined as valid. Below is a small example of the problem I am trying to solve in .Net (C#). Given the levels / values shown below, the user could pick that there are only a few valid combinations, but if you imagine the levels below being 30-40 levels of data instead of the 5 I have shown, you could see my dilemma. I could need to go through millions to billions of NOT VALID combinations to get to the Valid combinations. There will be cases where all values in the level are applicable and some where only those combinations that the user has specified are. Current Levels / Values of data: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/K7mfs.png) Users have said that the valid combinations are:               *Notice all from level 4 are valid     Receiver -> Sony -> 500 -999 -> Retail     Receiver -> Sony -> 1000 - Up -> Retail        Results expected from the given 5 levels of information:               Receiver -> Sony -> 500-999 -> Open -Box -> Retail     Receiver -> Sony -> 500-999 -> New -> Retail     Receiver -> Sony -> 1000-Up -> Open -Box -> Retail     Receiver -> Sony -> 1000-Up -> New -> Retail      The things I have tried are performant with small sets, but if I was to have a lot of levels and big gaps in the combinations which wouldn't allow me to prune the valid combinations until I was deep into the levels, I am running into major performance problems. I am obviously not tackling the problem incorrectly. Any other views or suggestions on tackling the problem would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "207763", "title": "How can I deal a team member who is irresponsible and shows no commitment?", "text": "I am handling a team of a few guys working on a software module in a large project. As per our estimates our module is getting delayed by a week. Since we can not have this delay, our client and our manager arrive at a decision that we need to work on few weekends (3-4) to try to finish the work. All members of the team are aware of this and understand this and since its just a matter of 3-4 extra days, so we decide to work on weekends to meet the deadline. But one of the team members is not following this. From last three weekends he has some or the other reason to not come on weekend. He is not even willing to put up extra hours during weekdays. Personally I don't care about the number of hours he works as long as he/(any one) can finish their work to meet the deadline. Please let me know how to handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "30737", "title": "Pythonic Java. Yes, or no?", "text": "Python use of indentation for code scope was initially very polemic and now is considered one of the best language features, because it helps ( almost by forcing us ) to have a consistent style. Well, I saw this a post where someone posted Java code with `; y {}` aligned to the right margin to look more pythonic.               int foo()                                     {         int sum                                   ;         bar()                                     ;         for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++)              {             sum += i                              ;}         return sum                                ;}      It was very shocking at first ( as a matter of fact, if I ever see Java code like that in one of my projects I would be scared! ) However, there is something interesting here. Do we need all those braces and semicolons? How would the code would look like without them?               class Person       int age            void greet( String a )           if( a == \"\" )             out.println(\"Hello stranger\")         else             out.printf(\"Hello %s%n\", a )            int age()           return this.age          class Main          void main()              new Person().greet(\"\")      Looks good to me, but in such small piece of code is hard to appreciate it, and since I don't Python too much, I can't tell by looking at existing libraries if it would be cleaner or not. So I took the first file of a library named: jAlarms I found and this is the result: ( **WARNING** : the following image may be disturbing for some people ) http://pxe.pastebin.com/eU1R4xsh Obviously it doesn't compile. This would be a compiling version using right aligned {} and ; http://pxe.pastebin.com/2uijtbYM **Question** What would happen if we could code like this? Would it make things clearer? Would it make it harder? I see braces, and semicolons as help to the parser and we, as humans have get used to them, but do we really need them? I guess is hard to tell specially since many mainstream languages do use braces, C, C++, Java, C# JavaScript Assuming the compiler wouldn't have problems without them, would you use them? Please comment. **UPDATE** By the way I have just remember about this language that does something similar for JavaScript."}
{"_id": "229126", "title": "Snapchat clone: How do I secure pre-downloaded notifications so that they cannot be opened outside of the app?", "text": "Say I'm making a snapchat clone app for Android and iOS. Let's say that I get a snapchat from Baz. I want to pre-download the audio for this snapchat. However, as the developer, I want to secure this audio from being viewable outside of the app. I've been thinking of encrypting it using AES with an IV and key that are both generated from a pseudo-random function that takes the user's unique ID as input. However, if an attacker found out that this was the way we encrypt our files, and had access to our PRF, he would easily be able to decrypt it and store it permanently. The thing is, I don't have enough background in cryptography or android programming to tell if that's really a concern or not. The attacker has to learn a lot about our cipher in order to break it, but he could gain pretty much all of that from looking at the unobfuscated source of our app. Is my suggested approach cryptographically secure? What other, better or simpler approaches could I take to solving this problem?"}
{"_id": "228296", "title": "Android Data persistence question", "text": "I have an android app in which users have sets of items, and each item has about 10 properties. What I do at the moment:   * items are stored in the server database   * when the user logs in, I get all the items (say 37) via the API and put them in a LinkedHashSet< UserItem > (UserItem is a POJO with setters and getters)   * then I get the 37 items from the set and put them in the local SQLite database   * when the user opens \"My Items\" screen in the app, i get the 37 items from the local SQLite DB I was thinking, is this a good practice? Could I circumvent Step 3(storing items in the local database), but instead maintain the life of that LinkedHashSet object and get the items directly from there. If Im right with this suggestion, how do I do that? I asked a similar question at Stack Overflow but I was told that I should come here and ask it."}
{"_id": "171734", "title": "Difference between a socket and a port", "text": "Could someone please explain quite clearly the difference between a port and a socket. I know that a port serves as a door into the network for an application process and that the application process uses a socket connection to the given port number to handle network communication but when you have multiple processes listening on a single port number, I am finding it difficult to understand the difference between the socket and the port and how they all fit together."}
{"_id": "171731", "title": "What is meant by namespaced content and what advantages does it have?", "text": "I was reading this blog by James Bennett regarding HTML vs XHTML . He writes : > I don\u2019t have any need for namespaced content; I\u2019m not displaying any complex > mathematical notation here and don\u2019t plan to, and I don\u2019t use SVG for any > images. So that\u2019s one advantage of XHTML out the window. I also don\u2019t have > any need for XML tools; all the processing I need to do can be handled by > HTML-parsing libraries like BeautifulSoup. That\u2019s the other advantage gone. What does he mean by `namespaced content` and what advantage does it provide us ?"}
{"_id": "132153", "title": "Help me understand how to stream video", "text": "I'm an experienced PHP web developer that is looking to understand the options available for streaming video. _What I have_ : a video processing system (this one) that can provide output to various streaming servers / CDNs / HTTPs. _What I want_ : the ability to embed streams on multiple sites, with the ability to enable/disable the stream based on the visitor's session. What options exist for meeting these requirements? Feel free to be broad or recommend reading, as I have a relatively low understanding of this field. I'm open to both paid services as well as implementing some of this myself. Low cost is of relative importance."}
{"_id": "251850", "title": "Permutation tests for large sequences", "text": "I would like to perform a permutation test on a particularly large data set, i.e. around 4 million entries. Basically, I need to get some number of random permutations of this data set. Usual way to do this, is a Fisher-Yates shuffle, but it's pretty much limited by period of a PRNG. That is, to a sequence no longer than around 2080. Is there a solution to randomly permuting much larger sequences? EDIT: Here is an interesting related discussion on random shuffle algorithms and how much are they limited by RNG."}
{"_id": "5748", "title": "Are there tools to determine code similarity?", "text": "I'm not talking about a diff tool. I'm really looking to see if a project contains code that may have been \"refactored\" from another project. It would be likely that function names, variable names and whatnot would be changed. Conditionals might be reversed, etc."}
{"_id": "5749", "title": "Working as the sole programmer at a non-tech company", "text": "I work as the back-end developer, front-end developer, systems admin, help desk and all-around 'guy who knows computers' at a small marketing company of about 15 people. I was wondering if others could share their experiences flying solo at companies that aren't necessarily inclined toward the technology industry. I originally took the job in order to transition from front-end developer/designer to full-time coder. It's been a good experience to a point. I definitely get to occupy the role of 'rock star' programmer - because frankly, no one really understands my job. Lately, it feels like a very solitary position. I rarely get to bounce ideas off of people, and everyone looks to me like I have magic powers that will make all the computers work and land us first on Google searches. I've also felt a strong disconnect versus between what we say we want (projects with large, months-long development schedules) versus what we actually do (copy- edit our sites over and over). So who else finds themselves being the 'tech guy' in a company that thinks technology is all a bit magical, and what is your take on your situation?"}
{"_id": "252172", "title": "Better way for creating a 2D map?", "text": "I have an idea for a game map and have researched some into it. What i'm going to do is have a 2D map(s) that a GM can pick from, or they can create their own using predefined images or images of a particular size they can upload. From what i've seen, people are using a 2-Dimensional Array, but this is for tiles. So what my question would be, is there a better way of doing this, for Hexagon? Not necessarily easier, but better. Something that can be used on a large scale, say 1000x1000 hex (100x100 px, 50 radius) Edit: I found this site that explains a way to draw out the hexagons. I think i might follow it, unless someone knows a better way."}
{"_id": "155033", "title": "Is there any well-known commercial project which is currently an open source ?", "text": "I mean is there some open sourced projects that were started as closed source and were commercially successful also? I am also interested in any story behind open sourcing them."}
{"_id": "205945", "title": "Modern practices for stored procedure-based applications", "text": "I work in a fairly large and old solution that has many entry points for different kinds of clients, with web sites for public access, web sites for internal access, some web sites and web services for partner companies access, etc. All those applications use different (Microsoft-based) technologies, such as Classic ASP, ASP.NET WebForms, MVC 3, ASMX, DTSX, etc. The code has no standard, and many programmers with no experience on the codebase and in the business have coded their own way. The central point of all the applications is a SQL Server database with tons of stored procedures that implement all the business rules. The applications are usually just a shell for the database. The data access is done with no framework or ORM (using pure ADO.NET, usualy rewriting everything from creating a connection to iterating through a data reader on each method, function or whatever). What are the most modern best practices for creating an productive data access layer based on stored procedures? For business reasons, we cannot rewrite the older applications (the customer won't pay for that, and the volume of daily work is too large for doing that internally). We also cannot use any third-party ORM (the architects are against it for \"security reasons\"). So, the improvements must be more like refactorings."}
{"_id": "155035", "title": "New insights I can learn from the Groovy language", "text": "I realize that, for a programmer coming from the Java world, Groovy contains a lot of new ideas and cool tricks. My situation is different, as I am learning Groovy coming from a dynamic background, mainly Python and Javascript. When learning a new language, I find that it helps me if I know beforehand which features are more or less old acquaintances under a new syntax and which ones are really new, so that I can concentrate on the latter. So I would like to know which traits distinguish Groovy among the dynamic languages. What are the ideas and insights that a programmer well-versed in dynamic languages should pay attention to when learning Groovy?"}
{"_id": "155039", "title": "Scrum and Google Docs burndown chart", "text": "There is a tutorial on how to create a burndown chart for Scrum in the Google Docs application: http://www.scrumology.net/2011/05/03/how-to-create-a-burndown-chart-in-google- docs/ The problem with it though is, it has only a place to update progress once per sprint but the burndown is supposed to be updated with daily progress, right? How can one modify this chart to be able to put daily progress on it? I mean to be able to plot two lines (ideal and actual) with data such as (story points 255, velocity 24): Actual Google Docs document (free to edit): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuPWErnOiLTUdElJVzJZaE5EWEZ2S2xCelF6Z2lzaUE ![Sprint Data](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3MV6i.png) ![Sprint Chart](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WbQGZ.png)"}
{"_id": "170286", "title": "How to initialize object which may be used in catch clause?", "text": "I've seen this sort of pattern in code before:               //pseudo C# code          var exInfo = null;  //Line A          try     {       var p = SomeProperty;         //Line B       exInfo = new ExceptionMessage(\"The property was \" + p);           //Line C     }     catch(Exception ex)     {       exInfo.SomeOtherProperty = SomeOtherValue;  //Line D     }      Usually the code is structured in this fashion because exInfo has to be visible outside of the try clause. The problem is that if an exception occurs on Line B, then exInfo will be null at Line D. The issue arises when something happens on Line B that must occur before exInfo is constructed. But if I set exInfo to a new Object at line A then memory may get leaked at Line C (due to \"new\"-ing the object there). Is there a better pattern for handling this sort of code? Is there a name for this sort of initialization pattern? By the way I know I could check for exInfo == null before line D but that seems a bit clumsy and I'm looking for a better approach."}
{"_id": "213668", "title": "Script language native extensions - avoiding name collisions and cluttering others' namespace", "text": "I have developed a small scripting language and I've just started writing the very first native library bindings. This is practically the first time I'm writing a native extension to a script language, so I've run into a conceptual issue. I'd like to write glue code for popular libraries so that they can be used from this language, and because of the design of the engine I've written, this is achieved using an array of C `struct`s describing the function name visible by the virtual machine, along with a function pointer. Thus, a native binding is really just a global array variable, and now I must obviously give it a (preferably good) name. **In C, it's idiomatic to put one's own functions in a \"namespace\" by prepending a custom prefix to function names,** as in `myscript_parse_source()` or `myscript_run_bytecode()`. The custom name shall ideally describe the name of the library which it is part of. Here arises the confusion. Let's say I'm writing a binding for `libcURL`. In this case, it seems reasonable to call my extension library `curl_myscript_binding`, like this:               MYSCRIPT_API const MyScriptExtFunc curl_myscript_lib[10];      But now this collides with the `curl` namespace. (I have even thought about calling it `curlmyscript_lib` but unfortunately, libcURL does not exclusively use the `curl_` prefix -- the public APIs contain macros like `CURLCODE_*` and `CURLOPT_*`, so I assume this would clutter the namespace as well.) Another option would be to declare it as `myscript_curl_lib`, but that's good only as long as I'm the only one who writes bindings (since I know what I am doing with my namespace). As soon as other contributors start to add their own native bindings, they now clutter the `myscript` namespace. (I've done some research, and it seems that for example the Perl cURL binding follows this pattern. Not sure what I should think about that...) So how do you suggest I name my variables? Are there any general guidelines that should be followed?"}
{"_id": "213669", "title": "What are the advantages of converting empty strings to evaluate to true as compared to false?", "text": "When converting a string to a boolean, what are the advantages of having a programming language evaluate an empty string as true and what are the advantages of having it evaluate it to false?"}
{"_id": "245049", "title": "Should I released my plugins AGPL", "text": "I am using ownCloud - which is AGPL license - and only create few custom modules, and a theme, the core is not touched at all so:   1. should I allow download source for the whole app ( owncloud and my modules/theme ) ? ( as it is agpl based )   2. or should I only provide link to download owncloud code ( the original code ) ?   3. Or don't have to allow download at all ( optional )? Considering that, I am building a commercial app, where users will pay for the service? Please advice,"}
{"_id": "120315", "title": "What do you do when working with multiple languages with different capitalization schemes?", "text": "I'm making a webapp using Django. The Python convention for naming variables is lowercase_with_underscores, but the Javascript convention is camelCase. In addition, I've seen many people use lowercase-with-hyphens for CSS identifiers. Would you suggest using all three naming conventions where appropriate, or picking one and using it, even if the other two recommend something else? Switching back and forth isn't a huge problem, but it can still be mental overhead."}
{"_id": "225711", "title": "To store data or not?", "text": "I'd like to ask you about one simple thing. I have class A that do something (for example counts something ). There is also one class B that handle some parameters to this class (class A is member of class B). Class B calls one method of class A that does something and writes value to database. Class A uses parameters that got from Class B. Class A has few methods to made clean code (it's good I think). But... Is it ok to save parameters as private members?? It's not necessary. I don't have to remember them after writing to Database. But if I don't have private data I have to handle it to every private method as parameters (during processing). I think that it's ok to save this parameters as members of this class. Am I right? Or maybe I should avoid this when it's not necessary (when I don't have to remember them)? When I don't have private members my publicMethod (called from class B) is looked something like that:               void publicMethod(int param1, int param2, int param3, int param4)     {         privateMethod1(param1, param2, param3, param4);         privateMethod2(param1, param2, param3, param4);         privateMethod3(param1, param2, param3, param4);     }      and in private methods I call other private method and I have to handle parameters.... I think it doesn't look good... Am I right? When I have private members it looks like:               void method(int param1, int param2, int param3, int param4)     {         privateMethod1();         privateMethod2();         privateMethod3();     }      It's better I guess. But I'm not professional and I'm not sure... (I write in C++)"}
{"_id": "245042", "title": "How about using a DTO class as a property in the corresponding BO class?", "text": "I was reading this blog post and liked the idea of using the DTO class for an entity and using it as a property in the corresponding business object class like so:               public class Person : BALBase     {             public PersonDTO Data { get; set; }      This also can eliminate the need for a mapping tool like AutoMapper (mapping between POCO and DTO). I am thinking of using this concept in my app. My app is layered using straight assemblies with no web services/REST/WCF calls. What can be the disadvantages of using this concept?"}
{"_id": "245041", "title": "Writing Models in PyroCMS/Codeinighter Models", "text": "In `Pyrocms` there are `Admin` views and `User` views. Im developing a complex module where my model file is getting to be rather large. Should I be abstracting logic in my model files to also be User models, and an admin models of my database. Currently I have a large Model file called `products_m.php` Should I split this up in 2 files   * products_admin_m.php    * products_user_m.php or should the admin inherit the user model (using PHP include). Where **products_admin_m** extends **products_user_m.**"}
{"_id": "213663", "title": "C# Design for SQL connection and commands", "text": "Currently I'm working on system that works with database, and I would like to have it done elegant way. So I have abstracted DBConnection into one class, DBCommands into another class. (DBCommands : DBConnection) There is also a class SQLUsage in which I'm creating new thread that works in a loop, it checks all the time if there's any object in BlockingCollection to take care of, if there is that thread is processing it, and it uses DBConnection and DBCommands for it. I am having a problem accesing DBCommands from SQLUsage, since the DBCommands object is created in DBConnection (I have to pass MySqlConnection object into DBCommands) Is that good solution? Or I should change the design, I would like to use those classes in another app as well (part of same, bigger system). I'll tell you bit more about this app. It is a server app that handles connections from multiple clients. Each client sends some info to server, that is stored in `BlockingCollection<thatinfo>`. Another thread is using items from `BlockingCollection<thatinfo>` to communicate with mysql server, and insert some data to it, according to `objects<thatinfo>`. And I'm having problem with design. So far I have a main class, class for handling TCP/IP connections, `thatinfo` class, SQLUsage, DBConnection and DBCommands class. Since BlockingCollection is initiated in main class and it is passed to both TCP/IP handling class and SQL Handling class it is not a problem. My problem is to properly design SQLHandling classes. I want it to be done in elegant way. So I figured out it would be good to abstract connection and commands from the class where I process the info. So I already have working SQLConnection class, I had some commands in it as well and it worked. But next step was to abstract commands in another class, since there will be many overloaded methods (for example Insert with 1 arg, Insert with 2 args etc.) So my question is not about the code, I know how to create it, it's more about design. If abstracting sql commands in another class was good idea or not? Should both DBConnection and DBCommands inherit from SQLHandling class? or only DBConnection : DBCommands ? And another question, probably easier to answer, is there more elegant way to do sql commands than just overloading methods? Like 1 universal INSERT method that handles all arguments? For now having few overloaded insert methods seems to be a good idea since in this app I'm working on, there will be only 2 different kinds of inserts (just different amount of arguments), but in another app I wanted use the same classes I could really use universal Insert method."}
{"_id": "213667", "title": "How to offer programming/database contract services?", "text": "If you are an independent consultant/contractor, working for multiple clients, how do you sell your services? Do you believe applying to job offers for regular positions and offering your services to the hiring manager is a good strategy? My opinion is that a contractor is a great idea to see if you really need to take in a full-time employee, and thought if I could explain this to managers they would be open. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "228740", "title": "How to make it obvious that a function is being accessed from the outside?", "text": "This is a C specific question. I am trying to keep everything possible inside the translation unit boundaries, exposing only a few functions through the `.h` file. That is, I am giving `static` linkage to file-level objects. Now, a couple of functions need to be called by other modules, but not directly. My module/file/translation unit subscribes to the other modules, passing a pointer to a function. Then, upon a specific event, the pointer is called with some arguments. So I am wondering how to make it very obvious that those functions are called from some obscure location.   * Should they be `static` or `extern` (and expose them in the `.h`) ?   * Should I include some hint in the name of the functions?   * Or is it enough to put a comment \"called by X\"?"}
{"_id": "228743", "title": "Non-Recursive vs Recursive Locks?", "text": "I am thinking of using non-recursive locks; I have found them to be having performance superiority over the standard recursive locks (e.g. SimpleRWSync). I have mainly been using critical sections but in highly threaded environments, locking was producing significant delays.   1. What are the benefits and/or pitfalls?   2. Do the non-recursive ones make coding harder comparatively?"}
{"_id": "228745", "title": "Code Duplication in Multi-Module Project", "text": "I've about seven modules arranged like so:   * Service   * Processing   * Common   * Account   * Email   * Scheduling I try to make it my policy to restrict code to the module that actually uses it. Code that is shared by multiple projects (3+) is sent to common. However, there are a few classes that are only used by two projects. In my most recent example, both Account and Processing need some Image Processing done. Is it a code smell two have the same classes found in two modules? Should I move duplicate code into common as soon as it it's used more than once?"}
{"_id": "125135", "title": "How do you find errors related to undeclared variables in php?", "text": "If I copy a piece of code from somewhere that looks like so               $blah = array(1,2,3,4);     foreach ($blah as $i)            echo ($i);      and rename the variables but forget to do it correctly like so               $apple = array(1,2,3,4);     foreach ($blah as $i) <--- notice $blah instead of $apple            echo ($i);      Then my NetBeans IDE doesn't complain and I get an error at runtime when I run this. Is there a way to catch errors like this without running the code? Which IDE does it? Which plugin? Or the whole PHP development world is living without this?"}
{"_id": "239196", "title": "Using commit messages for time tracking", "text": "Some products can parse a special syntax in commit messages to extract additional data, such at time tracking information: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/FISHEYE/Using+smart+commits To me, this seems like the misuse of one tool to activate a feature on another, but I'm having trouble articulating my reasoning. It seems similar to the process smell of storing issue tracking information in code comments. Is there anything fundamentally wrong with using commit messages as a time tracking mechanism?"}
{"_id": "47130", "title": "How do I use an API?", "text": "### Background I have no idea how to use an API. I know that all APIs are different, but I've been doing research and I don't fully understand the documentation that comes along with them. There's a programming competition at my university in a month and a half that I want to compete in (revolved around APIs) but nobody on my team has ever used one. We're computer science majors, so we have experience programming, but we've just never been exposed to an API. I tried looking at Twitter's documentation, but I'm lost. Would anyone be able to give me some tips on how to get started? Maybe a _very_ easy API with examples, or explaining essential things about common elements of different APIs? I don't need a full-blown tutorial on Stack Overflow; I just need to be pointed in the right direction. ### Update The programming languages that I'm most fluent in are C (simple text editor usually) and Java (Eclipse). In an attempt to be more specific with my question: I understand that APIs (and yes, external libraries are what I was referring to) are simply sets of functions. ### Question I guess what I'm trying to ask is how I would go about accessing those functions. Do I need to download specific files and include them in my programs, or do they need to be accessed remotely, etc.?"}
{"_id": "241290", "title": "If a library doesn't provide all my needs, how should I proceed?", "text": "I'm developing an application involving math and physics models, and I'd like to use a Math library for things like Matrices. I'm using C#, and so I was looking for some libraries and found Math.NET. I'm under the impression, from past experience, that for math, using a robust and industry-approved third party library is much better than writing your own code. It seems good for many purposes, but it does not provide support for Quaternions, which I need to use as a type. Also, I need some functions in Vector and Matrix that also aren't provided, such as rotation matrices and vector rotation functions, and calculating cross products. At the same time, it provides a lot of functions/classes that I simply do not need, which might mean a lot of unnecessary bloat and complexity. At this rate, should I even bother using the library? Should I write my own math library? Or is it a better idea to stick to the third party library and somehow wrap around it? Perhaps I should make a subclass of the Matrix and Vector type of the library? But isn't that considered bad style? I've also tried looking for other libraries but unfortunately I couldn't find anything suitable."}
{"_id": "241296", "title": "Store scores for players and produce a high score list", "text": "This question is derived from an interview question that I got for a job I was declined. I have asked for code review for my solution at the dedicated Stack Exchange site (http://codereview.stackexchange.com/q/51842/43237). But I hope this question is sufficiently rephrased and asked with a different motivation not to be a duplicate of the other question. Consider the following scenario: You should store player scores in the server back end of a game. The server is written in Java. Every score should be registered, that is, one player may have any number of scores for any number of levels. A high score list should be produced with the fifteen top scores for a given level, but only one score per user (to the effect that even if player X has the two highest scores for level Y, only the first position is counted and player Z has the second place). No information should be persisted and only Java 1.7+ standard libraries should be used. No third party libraries or frameworks are acceptable. With the number of players as the primary factor, what would be the best data structure in terms of scalability and concurrency? How would you access the structure to register a single score given a level and a player id? How would you access the structure to compile the high score list?"}
{"_id": "87505", "title": "Is it OK to learn an algorithm from an open source project, and then implement it in a closed source project?", "text": "Reference The post that started it all In order to clear up the original question I asked in a provocative manner, I have posed this question. If you learn an algorithm from an open source project, is it OK to use that algorithm in a separate closed sourced project? And if not, does that imply that you cannot use that knowledge ever again? If you can use it, what circumstance could that be? Just to clarify, I am not trying to evade a licence, otherwise I would not have asked the question in the first place."}
{"_id": "173396", "title": "Deprecated vs. Denigrated in JavaDoc?", "text": "In the JavaDoc for `X509Certificate` `getSubjectDN()` it states: > **Denigrated** , replaced by getSubjectX500Principal(). I am used to seeing Deprecated in the for methods that should not be used any longer, but not Denigrated. I found a bug report about this particular case where it was closed with comment: > This isn't a bug. \"Deprecated\" is meant to be used only in serious cases. When we are using a method that is _Deprecated_ , the general suggested action is to stop using the method. So what is the suggested action when a method is marked as _Denigrated_?"}
{"_id": "173394", "title": "Can working exclusively with niche apps or tech hurt your career in software development? How to get out of the cycle?", "text": "I'm finding myself in a bit of a pickle. I've been at a pretty comfortable IT group for almost a decade. I got my start here working on web development, mostly CRUD, but have demonstrated the ability to figure out more complex problems. I'm not a rock star, but I have received many compliments on my programming aptitude, and technologists and architects have commented on my ability to pick things up (for example, I recently learned a very popular web framework that shall remain nameless since I don\u2019t want to be identified). My problem is that, over time, my responsibilities have been shifting towards work such as support or \u2018development\u2019 with some rather niche products (afraid to mention here due to potential for being identified). Some of this work, if it includes anything resembling coding, is very menial scripting in languages such as Powershell or VBScript. The vast majority of the time, however, a typical day consists of going back and forth with the product\u2019s vendor support to send them logs and apply configuration changes or patches they recommend. I\u2019m basically starved for some actual software development. However, even though I\u2019m more than capable of doing that development work (and actually do a much better job at it than anything else), our boss is more interested in the kind of work I mentioned above, her reasoning being that since no one else in the organization wants to do it, it must mean job security. This has been going on for close to 3 years, and the only reason I have held on is on the promise that we would eventually get more development projects assigned to us. Well, that turned out not to be true at all. A recent talk with the boss has just made it more explicitly clear, as she told me in no uncertain terms that it\u2019s very likely that development work (web or otherwise) would go to another group. The reason given to me is that our we don\u2019t have enough resources in our group to handle that. So now I find myself in the position that I either have to stay in what has essentially become a dead end IT job that is tied to the fortunes of a niche stack of apps, or try to find a position that will be better for my long term career. My problem (is it a problem?), however, is that compared to others, my development projects in the last three years are very sparse in number. To compound things, projects using the latest and most popular frameworks, amount to the big fat number of just one\u2014with no work of that kind in the foreseeable future. I am very concerned that this sparseness in my resume is a deficit, and that it will hurt my chances of landing a different job. I\u2019m also wondering how much it will hurt me, and whether that can be ameliorated with hobby projects of my own. I guess I\u2019m looking for opinions. Thank you very much for reading."}
{"_id": "155783", "title": "Can I make a good career with VC++  programming?", "text": "I'm addicted to VC++ since 2008, and I begin to work for my current company from 2011 when I graduated in Mathematics. Now I still love VC++, it is a wonderful programming language. I'm a little confused whether it's a good idea to continue with Windows Programming. I'm in Beijing, China. Of course, I come from China. I want to find a work in Silicon Valley, America in the future. Can anyone tell me is it possible for me to find a VC++ work in Silicon Valley someday in the future? And what should I do in the recent years?"}
{"_id": "177888", "title": "Weird UIView transforms in Retina iPhone", "text": "I'm having a problem I don't understand. I'm developing an OpenGL app for iOS. Because at some points I want to force the orientation of the view programatically, and Apple for whatever reason doesn't make it easy (or even possible), I'm doing it by hand. I return always NO in `shouldAutoRotateToInterfaceOrientation`, and when I want to change the orientation (to portrait, for example), I do something like this in the UIView:               [self setTransform:CGAffineTransformMake(1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0)];     [self setBounds:CGRectMake(0, 0, 768, 1024)];      This works fine. In order to support Retina devices, I started checking `[UIScreen mainScreen].scale`, and setting `self.contentScaleFactor` accordingly. I also modified the code above to account for the new dimensions, like this:               [self setTransform:CGAffineTransformMake(1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0)];     [self setBounds:CGRectMake(0, 0, 2*768, 2*1024)];      Same rotation, different size. The weird result with this is that I get a \"screen\" with the right size, but offsetted half a screen to the bottom and the left. To correct for this, I need to do the following:               [self setTransform:CGAffineTransformMake(1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0)];     [self setBounds:CGRectMake(-768, -1024, 2*768 - 768, 2*1024 - 1024)];      This works, but it's ugly, I also need to make similar corrections when I get touch coordinates, and worst of all, I don't understand what's going on or why the above \"correction\" works. Can anyone shed some light on this issue?"}
{"_id": "206414", "title": "choice of design for OO-linear algebra library", "text": "I'm writing a library for sparse linear algebra computations as a backend for my thesis work and I've come to a bit of a crossroads. I'm using modern Fortran (don't groan, it's had inheritance and polymorphism and all that jazz for 10 years now). From a software design standpoint, my main issue was making iterative solvers be able to use sparse matrices without knowing what storage format they're in. The only functionality that an iterative solver has to know about is how to multiply a matrix by a vector. I did this by having an abstract class `sparse_matrix` with a virtual method `matvec` for matrix-vector multiplication; then there were several child classes, representing each storage format, which override the parent matvec with their own implementation. I believe this is called the \"template\" pattern yes? I'm considering refactoring my code to use composition over inheritance. To that end, a sparse matrix consists of an underlying graph with some extra data -- sometimes it's an array of real or complex numbers, sometimes an array of dense matrices, etc. There are multiple different sparse matrix formats which use the same underlying graph storage scheme. Every sparse matrix has a `graph` object as an attribute, and has a collection of function pointers which change to use that graph in different ways. Before, I had to effectively redefine the same graph storage scheme for each sparse matrix format that used it. The advantages I can discern are:   1. fewer classes make it easier to hook my code up to C/C++/Python   2. easy to choose different parallel implementations of the same algorithm; write every implementation and redirect function pointers at runtime. Before I had to use big conditional blocks.   3. I think this design will be easier when the underlying graph is better thought of as a hyper-graph, and matrices as heterogeneous compositions of several matrices in possibly different formats. (This happens in some PDE applications.) Can anyone think of a good reason why I should stick with the old inheritance- based design? If the new approach is more sensible, any advice beyond what's said in GoF would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "177882", "title": "OOD: All classes at bottom of hierarchy contain the same field", "text": "I am creating a class diagram for what I thought was a fairly simple problem. However, when I get to the bottom of the hierarchy, all of the classes only contain one field and it is the same one. This to me looks very wrong, but this field does not belong in any of the parent classes. I was wondering if there are any suggested design patterns in a situation like this? A simplified version of the class diagram can be found below. _Note, fields named differently cannot belong to any other class_                                       +------------------+                             |   NoteMapping    |                             |------------------|                             | String noteId    |                             | String content   |                             |                  |                             +---------+--------+                                       |                       +---------------+----------------+                       |                                |              +--------|--------+              +--------|--------+              |     UserNote    |              |    AdminNote    |              |-----------------|              |-----------------|              | String userId   |              | String adminId  |              |                 |              |                 |              +--------+--------+              +--------+--------+                       |                                |                       |                                |              +--------|--------+              +--------|--------+              |  UserBookNote   |              |  AdminBookNote  |              |-----------------|              |-----------------|              | String bookId   |              | String bookId   |              |                 |              |                 |              +-----------------+              +-----------------+      _ASCII tables drawn usinghttp://www.asciiflow.com/_ ### Edit I have added some class and field names to the class diagram above. The reason `bookId` cannot exist in any of the parent classes is because it is used to create a `OneToOne` relationship with another class - which is not something that we always want to do."}
{"_id": "177881", "title": "Why do I always think I know much less than others?", "text": "I have been in programming since primary 6. Since the time DOS comes, I have been doing programming in quickbasic 4.5, then to VB 6, then to C#. In between I also do programming in C++. But every time I open Stack Overflow and trying to help others answering their problems, it seems that I know nothing. I feel that I am so stupid even I have been in programming for so long. I would shock reading all the questions and unable to find any clue. Is technology moving too fast that left out me? I feel that technology changes too fast and I can't keep up, when I know ASP.NET web form, MVC is out, when I know MVC, android/iphone/HTML5 app is popular. It seems that I am chasing something and never reach 'it'. I don't know whether this is correct place for me to talk about this. I just wish to listen to opinion like you, how do you think technology should grow instead of recreating language, adding bug here and there to let programmer figure it out, while big company share the solution among themselves. This is exactly how I feel. The simple example is how do you think why doesn't `Dictionary<>` in .NET provide iterating the object using index? Why must we use Key or GetEnumerator(). Developer has to google and read wasted hour of hour of time to find pieces of hack code to use reflection to achieve reading from index. Where developer will keep it as collection and valuable code. HOwever when times come, everything changes again, developer has to find answer for new silly problems again! Yes, I really hate it! I hate how many big companies are playing with the developer by cutting a big picture into small puzzle and messing it up and asking developer to place it together themselves. As if they are creating problems for us to solve it, so we are unable to grow upfront, we are being manipulated by those silly problems they have created. Another sample would how difficult to collect Cookies from CookieContainer without passing the URL, yes without the URL and I WANT to get all cookie in the cookiecontainer without knowing the URL, I want to iterate all. Why does micros0ft have to limit me from doing that?"}
{"_id": "177880", "title": "Efficient way to check for changes to the contents of folders", "text": "I am creating an application that maintains a database of files of a certain type in a given folder (and all subfolders) Initially the program will recurse the folders and add any file it finds of that type to the database. I want the application to have the ability to re-scan the folder and add any files that were not there the last time the folders were scanned. It can't use the date created property of the file because there is a high chance of a file being added to the folders that isn't a new file. I am wondering what the most efficient way of doing this is, and if there is a way that doesn't involve checking each file is in the database already (which, if there are 5000 files would mean 5000 queries of a list 5000 items in size, or 25 million 'checks' for the sql engine to perform) I suppose a more specific question to acheive the same goal would be - is there a property of a file (in Microsoft Windows) that will reliably tell you when that file arrived in that folder. **Edit:** The app would not be running all the time, so monitoring the folder for change events is not an option. A typical scenario might be. Run the app. get new files. close the app. A week later (after normal computer usage and files being added to the folder) run the app again, look for changes since the app was last used."}
{"_id": "219056", "title": "Multiple APIs, or one API with a \"chooser\" parameter?", "text": "Say you have a web service, which adds business logic on top of a data source. What each API of this service pretty much looks like is - given a set of constraints, give me the items from the data source that satisfy these constraints. You can say you get a \"view\" of the data source back from the API. Now, over time you get asked to return different kinds of views over the data source. You have the option to either add new APIs for each \"sufficiently distinct\" view, or to switch gears and provide a getFooDataView() API, which takes a parameter that specifies what kind of view you want. You have several competing pressures for deciding which way to go:   * The existing big client of your service would prefer to be lazy, and not have to code up to new APIs when new views over the data are needed.   * But, some of your request parameters (constraints) only make sense for some views, and not for others - you'd have to make your API contract looser by saying \"well if you want XYZ view, setting the \"foo\" parameter will have no effect\", with the unfortunate side effect that you can't make \"foo\" a required parameter even if it is so for some of the views.   * It's becoming more and more the case that new clients want to leverage your service. You can't decide which would be more confusing to them - having to pick between different, but tighter-defined APIs, and one API where they have to know what combination of parameters really gives them what they want. To distill this, when do you draw the line that something should be its own API as opposed to a variation of an existing API? Different people you have to work with have different views about what makes two client requests semantically distinct, so it can be hard to drive consensus about this matter. You also want to make sure that your service isn't prohibitively difficult for future clients to consume. What are some best practices arount making this kind of choice?"}
{"_id": "252063", "title": "Copying and Selling Apache Licensed Software?", "text": "**Questions in bold:** I've read the Apache Software License 2.0... What I gather is that all a person needs to do when redistributing the licensed software is include their name in all the parts they've modified(if any), include some notices and whatnot, and you're away. You don't even need to follow along with the license in all your additions/edits, because you can sub-license. The thing I don't really get is, **why would anyone want to use this kind of license** , honestly? Am I missing something? One more thing, **does #include-ing(or similar) a licensed library mean that you are making a derivative of the licensed source** , therefore binding you to the terms and conditions of the license?"}
{"_id": "239220", "title": "Use a custom value object or a Guid as an entity identifier in a distributed system?", "text": "## tl;dr I've been told that in domain-driven design, an identifier for an entity could be a custom value object, i.e. something other than `Guid`, `string`, `int`, etc. Can this really be advisable in a distributed system? ## Long version I will invent an situation analogous to the one I am currently facing. Say I have a distributed system in which a central concept is an egg. The system allows you to order eggs and see spending reports and inventory-centric data such as quantity on hand, usage, valuation and what have you. There area variety of services backing these behaviors. And say there is also another app which allows you to compose recipes that link to a particular egg type. Now egg type is broken down by the species--ostrich, goose, duck, chicken, quail. This is fine and dandy because it means that users don't end up with ostrich eggs when they wanted quail eggs and whatnot. However, we've been getting complaints because jumbo chicken eggs are not even close to equivalent to small ones. The price is different, and they really aren't substitutable in recipes. And here we thought we were doing users a favor by not overwhelming them with too many options. Currently each of the services (say, `OrderSubmitter`, `EggTypeDefiner`, `SpendingReportsGenerator`, `InventoryTracker`, `RecipeCreator`, `RecipeTracker`, or whatever) are identifying egg types with an industry- standard integer representation the species (let's call it `speciesCode`). We realize we've goofed up because this change could effect every service. There are two basic proposed solutions:   1. Use a predefined identifier type like `Guid` as the `eggTypeID` throughout all the services, but make `EggTypeDefiner` the only service that knows that this maps to a `speciesCode` and `eggSizeCode` (and potentially to an `isOrganic` flag in the future, or whatever).   2. Use an `EggTypeID` value object which is a combination of `speciesCode` and `eggSizeCode` in every service. I've proposed the first solution because I'm hoping it better encapsulates the definition of what an egg type is in the `EggTypeDefiner` and will be more resilient to changes, say if some people now want to differentiate eggs by whether or not they are \"organic\". The second solution is being suggested by some people who understand DDD better than I do in the hopes that less enrichment and lookup will be necessary that way, with the justification that in DDD using a value object as an ID is fine. Also, they are saying that `EggTypeDefiner` is not a domain and `EggType` is not an entity and as such should not have a `Guid` for an ID. However, I'm not sure the second solution is viable. This \"value object\" is going to have to be serialized into JSON and URLs for GET requests and used with a variety of technologies (C#, JavaScript...) which breaks encapsulation and thus removes any behavior of the identifier value object (is either of the fields optional? etc.) Is this a case where we want to avoid something that would normally be fine in DDD because we are trying to do DDD in a distributed fashion? ### Summary Can it be a good idea to use a custom value object as an identifier in a distributed system (solution #2)?"}
{"_id": "16549", "title": "How do you feel about those companies that try to use the newest technologies?", "text": "Two days ago I got a suggestion to pass test of HTML 5 (I am looking for a job). I was shocked because modern web browsers don't support some features or support its partially. Other side of situation: I worked for a some company that still using SQL Server 2000 (now is available 2005, 2008) on her production. So my question is: how do you feel about those companies that try to use newest technologies? The newest is evil of good? **SUMMARY** We continue using old technology because of it predictability (this applies to critical systems in particular). A lack of productivity, low expansiveness, difficulties of deployment, implementation, testing of old technology are picking us to choice a new one. Even if we know that a new technology can be unsupported and now it is untested, raw and has low documentation, simple human curiosity is pushing us to use it. Any way we should be oriented on our target audience, people which are using our IT solutions. Other important things should be taken into account:   * time to implement    * time and cost to learn   * ease of deployment, implementation, testing   * faster and easier to use"}
{"_id": "200813", "title": "Video streaming, with minimum delay", "text": "My goal is to stream a video from my pc, to a smartphone. However, i want the latency between us to be minimal. VIDEO -> ENCODING -> TRANSFER -> DECODING -> VIDEO I already know that the transfer will take approximately 50ms. What i want to know is different methods of encoding/decoding and how fast they are. The decoding smartphone will of course have limited computing power, and limited bandwidth available as well. As far as i can understand, less time encoding/decoding means more bandwidth usage. The whole operation above should take maximum 200ms, preferably less. EDIT: @gnat I'm just looking for some numbers on how fast a coder/decoder can work. I'm not very experienced with this kind of theory at all, seeing as i only know very basic c#. That is why i asked here, and not on stackoverflow. I've searched around quite a lot but haven't really found anything about coding/decoding speed at all, and all i wanted was some example numbers like Per was kind enough to provide. Other then that, this was a very theoretical question, as i have used VLC media server for the purpose above. I just found it easier to ask with a simple example."}
{"_id": "160041", "title": "How do I add a Help system to my WinForms project?", "text": "I have pretty much completed work on a Winforms application, and would like to add a Help feature for users. I cannot send users to a website, and am thinking along the lines of the kind of help you get when you click on Help in IE (or hit F1). I believe this is compiled html or something, but am not sure what tools are available to assist in building this kind of thing, or how many options are out there. Anyway, how about some suggestions?"}
{"_id": "157450", "title": "Why all classes in .NET globally inherits from Object class?", "text": "Its very interesting for me which advantages gives \"global root class\" approach for framework. In simple words what reasons resulted the .NET framework was designed to have one root **object** class with general functionality suitable for all classes. Nowadays we are designing new framework for internal use (the framework under SAP platform) and we all divided into two camps - first who thinks that framework should have global root, and the second - who thinks opposite. I am at \"global root\" camp. And my reasons what such approach would yields good flexibility and development costs reduction cause we will not develop general functionality any more. So, I'm very interested to know what reasons really push .NET architects to design framework in such way."}
{"_id": "16544", "title": "Build/deployment tools for a small (1) development effort", "text": "What build or deployment tools are available for a 1 person development effort, in the .NET space, that are capable of producing project outputs? I'm not looking _necessarily_ looking for a CI server (though I can't think of anything else that does what I'm looking for) but I am looking for it to:   * produce and publish documentation from xml comments   * produce and publish the project (web and/or clickonce app)   * handle basic versioning (automatic build number incrementing)   * work from a sln file   * be easy to setup (< 8-16 hrs for someone who knows little to nothing about the tool(s))   * do this at the push of a button (after configuration obviously) Things I don't need:   * source control integration : I can point it to a sln if need be. Not a huge deal.   * unit testing : I run test suite before commits   * static analysis : again, I also run these before commits I know that msbuild is capable of most or all of this, and I do have my msbuild book(s) with me, but I'm still very new to it and I don't have the time at the moment to learn it well enough to do what I want."}
{"_id": "88229", "title": "How do I write a software product definition?", "text": "I would like to learn how to write a software product definition. Therefore I am looking for online materials or books which would help me to learn more about this topic. I would like to learn, for starters:   * what must be included in such a document   * what must not to be included in such a document   * how to make a product definition to sell internally the product    * finding balance between use case descriptions (the _why_ ), and feature descriptions (the _how_ ).  I am aware that it is not something that can learn in 15 minutes but I think such a discussion could help me to have a good start."}
{"_id": "173648", "title": "Is it possible (and practical) to search a string for arbitrary-length repeating patterns?", "text": "I've recently developed a huge interest in cryptography, and I'm exploring some of the weaknesses of ECB-mode block ciphers. A common attack scenario involves encrypted cookies, whose fields can be represented as (relatively) short hex strings. Up until now, I've relied on my eyes to pick out repeating blocks, but this is rather tedious. I'm wondering what kind of algorithms (if any) could help me automate my search for repeating patterns within a string. Can anybody point me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "173642", "title": "keeping connection open all time in sql", "text": "I have developed a Windows application in c# in which multiple users can add some numbers and their name and can view the data entered. The problem that I have is that the sever is on my laptop and every time I log off or close my laptop, they are losing connection to the DB and can not add or view any more. It seems that the port is closed or something. Is there a way to keep the port and their connection established all the time even when I'm logging out?"}
{"_id": "84979", "title": "How are developing countries affecting the web design and development field?", "text": "While searching ELance.com I noticed that companies from developing countries, such as India and Pakistan, were snatching up a lot of the freelance jobs at a low pay. How are foreign countries affecting web design and development jobs in general?"}
{"_id": "161966", "title": "Term for 24-bits", "text": "Is there a term for a 24-bit (3-byte) integer? I know uncommon bit counts (such as a _\"nibble\"_ or _\"nybble\"_ for 4 bits) have names, and having 24-bits in both video and audio technology, for instance, is very common."}
{"_id": "88227", "title": "What Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) methodology or methodologies are used by Google?", "text": "Does anyone know or have information about which Software Development Life Cycle methodologies are used by Google?"}
{"_id": "161964", "title": "What is a \"behavior rich object\" and why would it be advantageous?", "text": "I am referring to the article _Mocks aren't Stubs_ by Martin Fowler. When naming cases when he think \"mockist\" TDD will be advantageous, he said > It's particularly worth trying if you are having problems in some of the > areas that mockist TDD is intended to improve. I see two main areas here. > [...] The second area is if your objects don't contain enough behavior, > mockist testing may encourage the development team to create more behavior > rich objects. My question, what does he mean by \"behavior rich objects\", objects that \"contain enough behaviour\", etc? And why does it matter if an object contains many behaviour or not, if it works correctly?"}
{"_id": "100650", "title": "How to organize Javascript and AJAX with PHP?", "text": "My javascript is getting out of hand for my PHP application. I have 20 tags that link to various javascript files in a javascript folder. Each javascript file basically controls one element on the DOM. And, if the javascript file uses AJAX, then it will have a corresponding PHP file that the AJAX will call. For example, a js file might control a button on the page:               $(document).ready(function () {       $(\"#button\").live('click', function() {         $.ajax({           type: \"POST\",           data: ...           url: \"button_click.php\",         });       });     });      As you can see, this gets out of hand. What is the best way to organize all of the javascript?"}
{"_id": "69481", "title": "Why do Wordpress & Drupal serialize the DB data?", "text": "I've recently went through manually editing some tables on a Wordpress website.   I've also had some experience with database internationalization so I know that serializing   is not the best (IMO) option to apply multiple languages.   So why is it done?"}
{"_id": "154781", "title": "Copyrighting software, templates, etc. under real name or screen name?", "text": "My question is hopefully simple--should I copyright my work (art, software, web design, etc.) under my real name or my screen name? My real name and screen name are also easily connected with a bit of searching, so does it really matter in the end? I'm not a professional (at this point). I read this question: Is it a bad idea to sell Android apps in the Android Market under your real name? and they recommended releasing on the app market under a company name. I also read this question: On what name should I claim copyright in open source software?, but that didn't answer my question. I know it probably matters for big projects, but for little projects, does it matter?"}
{"_id": "120321", "title": "Is ORM an Anti-Pattern?", "text": "I had a very stimulating and interessting discussion with a colleague about ORM and its pros and cons. In my opinion, an ORM is useful only in the rarest cases. At least in my experience. But I don't want to list my own arguments at this time. So I ask you, what do you think about ORM? What are the pros and the cons?"}
{"_id": "154786", "title": "Is a blob more efficient than a varchar for data that can be ANY size?", "text": "When setting up a database I want to use the most efficient data type for potentially fairly long data. Currently my project is to store song titles and thoughts pertaining to that song. Some titles might be 5 characters or longer than 100 characters and the thoughts could run pretty long. Is it more efficient to use a varchar set to 8000 or to use a blob? Is using a blob the same as a varchar, in that there is a set size it is allocated regardless of what it holds? or is it just a pointer and it doesn't really use much space on the table? Is there a certain set size of a blob in KB or is it expandable?"}
{"_id": "154785", "title": "Should I provide fallbacks for HTML5/CSS3 elements in a web page at this point?", "text": "I'm wondering if I should bother providing a fallback for HTML5 tags and attributes and CSS3 styling at this point in time. I know that there's probably still a lot of people out there who use older versions of browsers and HTML5/CSS3 are still fairly new. I read this article: Should I use non-standard tags in a HTML page for highlighting words? and one answer mentioned that people kind of \"cheat\" with older browsers by using the new tags and attributes, but styling them in CSS to ensure they show up right. This question: Relevance of HTML5: Is now the time? was asked about two years ago and I don't know how relevant it is anymore. For example, I want to use the `placeholder` and `required` attributes in a web form I'm building and it has no labels to show what each `<input>` is. How do I handle this, or do I bother?"}
{"_id": "69488", "title": "Approaches that cater for poor connectivity", "text": "First off some background info My company has a software as a service model where people log onto our servers and do work. In order to support that application we have a utility application that lives on the client machine, and copies binary data from our servers to their machines. The first iteration of this software polled the database and then generated the information on the client side. This approach was done away with because we thought there where some fundamental flaws   * Polling the database to see if any work had to be done   * Opening up our SQL port to the world    * Pulling all the data from the database and generating it on the client side. Our second iteration of the software generated the data on one of our servers and sent it on to the client via the Java Messaging Service. The advantages being seen as   * Event Driven   * No polling   * SQL port is closed   * Data is not being generated over the WAN The above is to illustrate the approaches we've used in the past. The problem that we have is that our clients often have poor connectivity to us (packet loss, poor response times etc) JMS was supposed to handle that as it should reconnect when the line comes back up but this doesn't always happen. What are the best approaches to deal with poor client connectivity? **EDIT** To explain what I mean about JMS not working as expected. My expectation of JMS is that it works reliably. What I mean by this is that if a line goes down, or is losing packets, or misbehaving in any other manner that the JMS implementation will continue to try send the message until it succeeds. As an example I see on an almost daily basis a JMS queue with consumers attached, yet no messages being sent or received, restarting the client normally resolves the issue. I can speak about more specifics, however for the sake of this conversation lets leave JMS out as potential answer **EDIT 2** I wanted some other possible solutions to my problem, but the general consensus seems to be that my current one (JMS) is the best. So here are 2 of my current cases where I am having issues with JMS _Case 1_ Client connects to the queue succesfully sends and receives multiple messages, after a variable time (between several hours and several days) the client no longer receives any messages. The main queue shows the consumers connected, but the client never receives the messages. The resolution is to restart the client application _Case 2_ The client never connects to the queue. The client continually tries to reconnect but the reconnection always fails. The resolution for this is to try again in a few hours Our setup is fairly simple   * One public server   * OpenMQ   * The clients are low volume, ranging from 10 messages a day to a 1000 messages a day   * Clients never initiate a 'message conversation', the queue initates and the clients reply   * Messages are small, all pure text, no binary data   * config is as follows:              connectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory();     connectionFactory.setProperty(ConnectionConfiguration.imqAddressList, connectionURL);     connectionFactory.setProperty(ConnectionConfiguration.imqReconnectEnabled, \"true\");     connectionFactory.setProperty(ConnectionConfiguration.imqPingInterval, \"30\");     connectionFactory.setProperty(ConnectionConfiguration.imqReconnectAttempts, \"-1\");     connectionFactory.setProperty(ConnectionConfiguration.imqReconnectInterval, \"30000\");"}
{"_id": "154789", "title": "Generate sequence of string of 4 characters", "text": "I'm facing problem with generating character sequence for SMS tracking. there should be a easy to enter code send with all the outgoing messages. Reply SMS will map with that code. I can't generate next sequence of code from database because multiple clients may have read at ones and may end up with same code. is there any workaround for this? **EDIT**   Database is Informix."}
{"_id": "177775", "title": "Strategy for clients to retrieve real-time log from HTTP server", "text": "I have an HTTP Server Service application which has its own logging mechanism. It's written in Delphi. I would like to provide a way for multiple clients to connect to this service and get a real-time update of the log. The log in the service moves rather fast, there's a lot of things to log. There may be up to 50 messages within 1 second at times. The existing log which is already implemented is not saved, it's only kept in the memory of the server service - where I will need to distribute it to any client which needs it. Once all clients have a log message, it should be deleted. I intend to use HTTP to \"ask\" the server for the log, and respond with an XML packet. The connections are not keep-alive. The only problem is, the server should only send the client those log records which it needs, not everything. I have no way of the server pushing the log to the clients in real-time, so each client needs to repeatedly ask the server for the latest log records. This HTTP Server is very lightweight, and there is no session management. There isn't even any type of authentication. The only way I see is for a client to register its self on the server, and whenever a log is issued on the server, it creates a copy of the log for each client, where each client has a log queue (string list). However, suppose there are 100 clients connected and expecting to receive this log. That means the server must create 100 copies of each log, add this log to the end of each client log queue, and wait for the client to request it. At that point, when the server replies with the XML log, it should flush (delete) whatever's in the queue. I'm worried however that this could cause memory issues. Each client log queue might get 100 log messages before the client requests the latest logs. How should I go about doing this in the fastest way possible without hindering the performance of the server? I'm trying to avoid having to create a copy of each log for each client."}
{"_id": "224448", "title": "How maintainable are automated refactorings?", "text": "Resharper offered to turn my loop:               foreach (JObject obj in arr)     {         var id = (string)obj[\"Id\"];         var accountId = (double)obj[\"AccountId\"];         var departmentName = (string)obj[\"DeptName\"];         i++;     }      ...into a LINQ statement. I acquiesced, and it produced this:               int i = 1 + (from JObject obj in arr let id = (string) obj[\"Id\"] let accountId = (double) obj[\"AccountId\"] select (string) obj[\"DeptName\"]).Count();      Gee whillikers, jumpin' Jehoshaphat, and Heavens to Murgatroid! This makes me wonder if the robots becoming smarter than me is a good thing; how maintainable is that? Answer: it's not, since I can't understand it; R# may just as well have converted it to machine code, for all I can grok it. I have to admit, though, it's \"cool.\" At what point does the perfect become the enemy of the good in this kind of scenario? ## UPDATE On a second pass through, R# tells me for that line of LINQ, \"Local variable \"i\" is never used\" Letting it remove it, the line becomes:               var arr = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<JArray>(s);      Hmm! Now that's grokkable; the reason I was breaking the elements down into individual vars before was so that I could see what was in them:               MessageBox.Show(string.Format(\"Object {0} in JSON array: id == {1}, accountId == {2}, deptName == {3}\", i, id, accountId, departmentName));      ...but with that messagebox commented out, I guess the above is better after all."}
{"_id": "215548", "title": "Implementing new required feature after software release", "text": "**Fake Scenario** There is a software that was released 1 year ago. The software is to map and register all kind of animals on our planet. When the software was released, the client only needed to know the scientific name of the animal, a flag if it is in risk of extinction and a scale of dangerous(that is a fake software and specification, I don't want to discuss this here). There are already 100.000 animals records saved on DB. **New Feature** One year later, the client wants a new feature. It is really important to him to know the animals classes, and this is a required field. So he asks me to put a field to input the animal class, and this field is required. Or maybe where this animal was discovered. **Problem** I have already 100.000 recorded animals without a class or where it was discovered, but I need to insert a new column to storage this information and this column can't be null. I don't have a default value for this situation (there isn't a default animal class or where it was discovered). I don't want to keep the requirement rule only on my software, my DB must have this requirement too(I like to keep business rules on DB too). What are the alternatives to solve this situation? _I am on a situation that this new feature cannot be previewed or reviewed for the existing records. The time already passed and I can't go back on time to get it_"}
{"_id": "19845", "title": "Coding Style And defects", "text": "Over the years I have developed several style based techniques which I use to keep my from make Error `if(const == lvalue)` rather then `if(lvalue == const)` since the first can't fall victim to the classic accidental assignment goof. I recently worked on a project with very unusual style standards and I found that I had much greater difficulty reading code. Has anyone seen any statistics on a particular coding style and its defect levels or have any experience with changing style alone to improve defect rates."}
{"_id": "22073", "title": "Is functional programming actually used to create applications?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are some well known applications written in F#? I see a lot of people talking about how cool functional programming is, how awesome Lisp and Haskell and F# are, etc, but what I don't see is them actually being _used_. Just about every program on my computer is written in either something in the C family, Delphi, or Python. I see tutorials talking about how easy it is to use functional languages to do complicated math problems, but no one talking about using them to do things most people actually care about using computers for, like business applications and games. Does anyone have any examples of actual programs that people have heard of and are using, written in a functional language? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Abuse, from almost 15 years ago. (Things like Emacs, where the core program is written in C with a functional language scripting layer on top, don't count.)"}
{"_id": "214462", "title": "Object oriented immutability: final classes or final methods", "text": "One of the things you see in numerous places in the standard java library is final classes. It is claimed that this is for immutability which I understand...to an extent. Suppose you have a class:               final public class ImmutableTest {         private String value;         public ImmutableTest(String value) {             this.value = value;         }         public String getValue() {             return this.value;         }     }      You can say that the value is immutable because it can't be adapted after creation. However this limits usability of the class as no one can extend it (for example to use as a drop-in for a bad interfaceless design...). Now suppose you have this class:               public class ImmutableTest {         private String value;         public ImmutableTest(String value) {             this.value = value;         }         final public String getValue() {             return this.value;         }     }      The \"value\" is still immutable but now at least people can extend the class. Someone once interjected: but if you extend it, the extended class is not guaranteed to be immutable! While this is true, I think it is immaterial to the class itself. If user A uses my ImmutableTest class everywhere in his code, he only has access to the \"value\" anyway which **remains immutable**. Unless he does explicit casting (in other words: he's aware that he's trying to access other stuff) he can't access a \"mutable\" part of the actual instance which means from the developer's point of view the class is as immutable as it should be, even if the actual instance has other mutable variables. So in short: my opinion is that final classes are superfluous as final methods are all you need. I would love to hear arguments to the contrary though! **UPDATE** To clarify: I'm not claiming that adding \"final\" to a class or its methods makes it immutable. Suppose you have a class that is designed to be immutable but you do not make the methods or class final, a subclass can of course make it mutable again. This argument is used as to why some classes in the standard library are final. My opinion is that it should've been enough to finalize the accessor methods to the immutable part and leave the class non-final. This may leave the window open to the child objects **adding** mutable fields but the original set of fields would remain immutable hence satisfying the \"immutable\" requirement for the initial set of methods. **UPDATE2** The conclusion being that final classes have no real purpose except perhaps brevity which in itself is not enough of a reason to lose extensibility in my opinion."}
{"_id": "236411", "title": "what are the things to take in consideration when designing a database that likely will be distributed after some time?", "text": "We are small start-up now, we don't have a DBA.   if our project succeed, it will have a lot of data that will likely need to be distributed over several machines.   So we want to make that step easier, so what we should take in consideration now to make it so?   What we can think of now is using uuid instead of autoincrement ids, but even that we don't know how much that will affect performance? So i using uuid is right choice? and what else we should do?"}
{"_id": "241430", "title": "What are the benefits of using a 'decorator factory' that decorates objects?", "text": "In a project I decided to implement the Decorator pattern. I have a class `Thing` with `methodA()`, and a class `AbstractDecorator` that inherits from `Thing` and that all decorators inherit from: `ConcreteDecorator1`, `ConcreteDecorator2`, etc. All of them of course override `methodA()` to add some functionality before delegating to the wrapped `Thing`. Usual Decorator implementation. I decided to implement a `WrappingFactory` (for a lack of a better name): it receives `Thing` objects and wraps them with a specified decorator. Some of the decorators require a parameter in the constructor, and `WrappingFactory` takes care of that too. Here it is:               public class WrappingFactory{              public static void addSomeFunctionality(Thing thing){             thing = new SomeDecorator(thing);         }              public static void addFunctionalityWithParameter(Thing thing, int param){             thing = new DecoratorWithParameter(thing, param);         }              public static void addSomeAwesomeFunctionality(Thing thing){             thing = new AwesomeDecorator(thing);         }          }      I did this but actually I don't know why. Does this have benefits as opposed to having the client instantiate decorators directly? If this has benefits, please explain them to me."}
{"_id": "132691", "title": "Is there an alternative to bits?", "text": "Is there an alternative to bits as the smallest unit of data? Something that won't be only 0 or 1, but actually hold many possible states in between? Wouldn't it be more natural to store floats like that?"}
{"_id": "241439", "title": "If Scheme is untyped, how can it have numbers and lists?", "text": "Scheme is said to be just an extension of the Untyped Lambda Calculus (correct me if I am wrong). If that is the case, how can it have Lists and Numbers? Those, to me, look like 2 base types. So I'd say Racket is actually an extension of the Simply Typed Lambda Calculus. No? ## Question:   * **Is Scheme's type system actually based or more similar to Simply Typed or Untyped Lambda Calculus?**   * **In what ways does it differ from Untyped and or Simply Typed Lambda Calculus?** (The same question is valid for \"untyped\" languages such as Python and JavaScript - all of which look like they have base types to me.)"}
{"_id": "245959", "title": "How viable is to create a mini documentation inside the source code", "text": "So, I work as a developer. We are a small team. The majority of the people (everyone except the project manager and the senior developer) are still in university. We have very flexible work hours, sometimes I don't see some of the people for 3-4 days. You can imagine that communication is key here. We write a lot of emails and use a bug tracking system and as long as you are somewhat connected to the task you can be well informed. (as long as you read all the correspondence). One of the weak points of the team is the documentation that people leave behind. The code is reasonably well written and as long as you take the time to read it in it's entirety you will understand it. (problem: this usually takes quite a bit of time when tackling modules of a couple of thousand lines of code) Note: There is very good documentation for the users which is written to the end users, however we are discussing the documentation shared between the programmers. When a new person has to enter some of the things a part of the team is working on, or when someone has to modify old code or someone's old code things get a bit complicated. As I mentioned before sometimes we don't see eachother for days so unless the project manager knows(and remembers) the details of the code the newcommer will have the following options: 1 Read the source 2 Read the old emails with the discussions. When you have to refactor large pieces of the code This is fine (esp the first thing) however when an algorithm needs to be changed or someone just has to use an old module as part of new module or script or whatever you can imagine that waiting to meet the guy who created the module or reading tons of emails will **waste time**. I have started adding small documentation in the beginning of each module. It consists of:   1. 2-3 sentences about what the module does   2. A bit of information for each function that is not a part of another function. Basically what it does and some specific information about the arguments it takes if the arguments are objects. If they aren't I just write \"see the source for more on the arguments\" Since I don't know if I am on the right track the question is simple: What should such a minimal documentation contain so it can give a general idea about what the module does and how people can use it?"}
{"_id": "119913", "title": "How can I learn to effectively write Pythonic code?", "text": "Doing a google search for \"pythonic\" reveals a wide range of interpretations. The wikipedia page says: > A common neologism in the Python community is pythonic, which can have a > wide range of meanings related to program style. To say that code is > pythonic is to say that it uses Python idioms well, that it is natural or > shows fluency in the language. Likewise, to say of an interface or language > feature that it is pythonic is to say that it works well with Python idioms, > that its use meshes well with the rest of the language. It also discusses the term \"unpythonic\": > In contrast, a mark of unpythonic code is that it attempts to write C++ (or > Lisp, Perl, or Java) code in Python\u2014that is, provides a rough transcription > rather than an idiomatic translation of forms from another language. The > concept of pythonicity is tightly bound to Python's minimalist philosophy of > readability and avoiding the \"there's more than one way to do it\" approach. > Unreadable code or incomprehensible idioms are unpythonic. What does the term \"pythonic\" mean? How do I learn to effectively apply it in practice?"}
{"_id": "249603", "title": "Rendering STL file to STL viewer which is in new page", "text": "I've uploaded a STL file as an additional file for a product. And it gets downloaded in frontend as shown in screen shot. ![associated files](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pgDsQ.png) When I click on that link for STL Downloader, then that STL file will be downloaded successfully. Tried and tested too many times and it worked like a charm. But I don't want that STL file to be downloaded. I want it to be rendered to a STL viewer which I built. That STL viewer is in another web page. So clicking `Click here to download associated STL file` link should render the STL file to the STL viewer which is in another web page. How can I do it? I don't want users to download STL files because it is the intellectual property of my company. Whole thing should be done in PHP only."}
{"_id": "245950", "title": "Is template \"metaprogramming\" in Java a good idea?", "text": "There is a source file in a rather large project with several functions that are extremely performance-sensitive (called millions of times per second). In fact, the previous maintainer decided to write 12 copies of a function each differing very slightly, in order to save the time that would be spent checking the conditionals in a single function. Unfortunately, this means the code is a PITA to maintain. I would like to remove all the duplicate code and write just one template. However, the language, Java, does not support templates, and I'm not sure that generics are suitable for this. My current plan is to write instead a file that generates the 12 copies of the function (a one-use-only template expander, practically). I would of course provide copious explanation for why the file must be generated programmatically. My concern is that this would lead to future maintainers' confusion, and perhaps introduce nasty bugs if they forget to regenerate the file after modifying it, or (even worse) if they modify instead the programmatically- generated file. Unfortunately, short of rewriting the whole thing in C++, I see no way to fix this. Do the benefits of this approach outweigh the disadvantages? Should I instead:   * Take the performance hit and use a single, maintainable function.   * Add explanations for why the function must be duplicated 12 times, and graciously take the maintenance burden.   * Attempt to use generics as templates (they probably don't work that way).   * Yell at the old maintainer for making code so performance-dependent on a single function.   * Other method to maintain performance and maintainability? P.S. Due to the poor design of the project, profiling the function is rather tricky... however, the former maintainer has convinced me that the performance hit is unacceptable. I assume by this he means more than 5%, though that is a complete guess on my part. * * * Perhaps I should elaborate a bit. The 12 copies do a very similar task, but have minute differences. The differences are in various places throughout the function, so unfortunately there are many, many, conditional statements. There are effectively 6 \"modes\" of operation, and 2 \"paradigms\" of operation (words made up by myself). To use the function, one specifies the \"mode\" and \"paradigm\" of operation. This is never dynamic; each piece of code uses exactly one mode and paradigm. All 12 mode-paradigm pairs are used somewhere in the application. The functions are aptly named func1 to func12, with even numbers representing the second paradigm and odd numbers representing the first paradigm. I'm aware that this is just about the worst design ever if maintainability is the goal. But it seems to be \"fast enough\", and this code hasn't needed any changes for a while... It's also worth noting that the original function has not been deleted (although it is dead code as far as I can tell), so refactoring would be simple."}
{"_id": "249608", "title": "Multiple intranet/internet systems partially working on same data - database strategy", "text": "We are starting rewritting our apps (Internet portal, millions of unique users and few CRM/ERP systems, few hundred users) and we have a huge decision to make now. We are going to write them mostly (90-95%) in `Symfony2` with `Doctrine`, and some background services (e.g. mailing) in `Java`. Database - `MySql`/`MariaDb`. also lot of additional technologies (`redis/memcached`, `load balancing`, `varnish`, `replication` and so on). Most important (in this case) are - `symfony2`, `mysql/maria` and `doctrine`. The thing is - it will be best for few systems to work on same tables. For example: internet portal with job offers + CRM system for managing clients that pay for posting those offers (there are many similar cases). Also having functionality of one login for our users between every system is important. I see two approaches here:   1. We have one big database, having few hundred of tables. I used to work with 200+ tables, but not with that high amount of traffic. So if traffic goes up, sharding/partitioning will be involved.   2. We have many databases, each for one app. If there is need for one app to communicate with another `DB`, we will write special services to deliver that functionality. Now, what I'm worried about: 1\\. ease of development - it's easier to just have one database 2\\. ease of configuration/assuring redudancy 3\\. performance One thing I know now that database will be hosted on three machines with `master-slave` replication, which is supported nicely by `Doctrine`. What are your thoughts? What are your pro's and con's? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "245956", "title": "Should a variable name be changed if its purpose changes?", "text": "I'll change my personal code often and not worry about going back and changing the associated variable names. Should variable names be maintained in case of meaning changes?               var accountCurrentValue = x;     var accountYesterdayValue = y;     var accountValueChange = accountCurrentValue - accountYesterdayValue;      \\--> `accountPastValue` becomes instead the previous month's value               var accountCurrentValue = x;     var accountLastMonthValue = y;     var accountValueChange = accountCurrentValue - accountLastMonthValue;"}
{"_id": "81228", "title": "Learning Sparx Enterprise Architect", "text": "I have a basic working knowledge of Enterprise Architect with 6 months experience. But I would like to learn how to use more of it. Anyone have a recommendation for a learning source or course?"}
{"_id": "159008", "title": "What is a good starting point for small scale PHP development and would a framework be overkill?", "text": "I'm a web development intern working on a small PHP application (just a few pages with a little database access) which has fast become a couple of very non-DRY, non-OO, individual scripts. A framework seems like overkill (maybe not?) but I was wondering what some best practices for code / folder structure and general solo, small-scale PHP development. What is your starting point for a small application such as this?"}
{"_id": "159007", "title": "Are fluent interfaces more flexible than attributes and why?", "text": "In a EF 4.1 Code First tutorial the following code is given:               public class Department     {         public int DepartmentId { get; set; }         [Required]         public string Name { get; set; }         public virtual ICollection<Collaborator> Collaborators { get; set; }     }      Then it is explained that the fluent interface is more flexible: > Data Annotations are definitely easy to use but it is preferable to use a > programmatic approach that provides much more flexibility. The example of using the fluent interface is then given:               protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder modelBuilder)     {         modelBuilder.Entity<Department>().Property(dp => dp.Name).IsRequired();         modelBuilder.Entity<Manager>().HasKey(ma => ma.ManagerCode);         modelBuilder.Entity<Manager>().Property(ma => ma.Name)             .IsConcurrencyToken(true)             .IsVariableLength()             .HasMaxLength(20);     }      I can't understand why the fluent interface is supposedly better. Is it really? From my perspective it looks like the data annotations are more clear, and have more of a clean semantic feel to it. My question is why would a fluent interface be a better option than using attributes, especially in this case? (Note: I'm quite new to the whole concept of fluent interfaces, so please expect no prior knowledge on this.) Reference: http://codefirst.codeplex.com/"}
{"_id": "153062", "title": "What term is used to describe running frequent batch jobs to emulate near real time", "text": "Suppose users of application A want to see the data updated by application B as frequently as possible. Unfortunately app A or app B cannot use message queues, and they cannot share a database. So app B writes a file, and a batch job periodically checks to see if the file is there, and if load loads it into app A. Is there a name for this concept? A very explicit and geeky description: \"running very frequent batch jobs in a tight loop to emulate near real time\". This concept is similar to \"polling\". However polling has the connotation of being very frequent, multiple times per second, whereas the most often you would run a batch job would be every few minutes. A related question -- what is the tightest loop that is reasonable. Is it 1 minute of 5 minutes or ...? Recall that the batch jobs are started by a batch job scheduler (e.g. Autosys, Control M, CA ESP, Spring Batch etc.) and so running a job too frequently would causes overhead and clutter."}
{"_id": "153067", "title": "Designing configuration for subobjects", "text": "I have the following situation: I have a class (let's call it Main) encapsulating a complex process. This class in turn orchestrates a sequence of subalgorithms (AlgoA, AlgoB), each one represented by an individual class. To configure Main, I have a configuration stored into a configuration object MainConfig. This object contains all the config information for AlgoA and AlgoB with their specific parameters. AlgoA has no interest to the information relative to the configuration of AlgoB, so technically I could have (and in practice I have) a contained MainConfig.AlgoAConfig and MainConfig.AlgoBConfig instances, and initialize as AlgoA(MainConfig.AlgoAConfig) and AlgoB(MainConfig.AlgoBConfig). The problem is that there is some common configuration data. One example is the printLevel. I currently have MainConfig.printLevel. I need to propagate this information to both AlgoA and AlgoB, because they have to know how much to print. MainConfig also needs to know how much to print. So the solutions available are   1. I pass the MainConfig to AlgoA and AlgoB. This way, AlgoA has technically access to the whole configuration (even that of AlgoB) and is less self-contained   2. I copy the MainConfig.printLevel into AlgoAConfig and AlgoBConfig, so I basically have three printLevel information repeated.   3. I create a third configuration class PrintingConfig. I have an instance variable MainConfig.printingConfig, and then pass to AlgoA both MainConfig.AlgoAConfig and MainConfig.printingConfig. Have you ever found this situation? How did you solve it ? Which one is stylistically clearer to a new reader of the code ?"}
{"_id": "153065", "title": "IValidatableObject vs Single Responsibility", "text": "I like the extnesibility point of MVC, allowing view models to implement IValidatableObject, and add custom validation. I try to keep my Controllers lean, having this code be the only validation logic:               if (!ModelState.IsValid)         return View(loginViewModel);      For example a login view model implements IValidatableObject, gets ILoginValidator object via constructor injection:               public interface ILoginValidator     {         bool UserExists(string email);         bool IsLoginValid(string userName, string password);     }      It seems that Ninject, injecting instances in view models isn't really a common practice, may be even an anti-pattern? Is this a good approach? Is there a better one?"}
{"_id": "81221", "title": "Why do companies tell me they want me as an in-house employee, not as a contractor?", "text": "## Context Money is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is independence and to make sure I will contribute by working at my field of expertise, tactfulness, and ensuring everyone's expectations are in-line. Companies that are trying to develop new software products tell me they want me as an in-house employee, and not as a contractor. After just finishing my PhD, I am an expert in a very specialized kind of data analysis, not in general programming. My programming skills were gained as a by-product of my academic research. I believe I am called a 'domain expert' rather than a 'software engineer'. My coding is focused on implementing a specific class of data analysis algorithms, so I consider myself more of an a academic excelling at thinking of creative ways of developing tools to solve problems, who programs to test and implement these new ideas, rather then being a corporate programmer. I am looking for work as a contractor in my field of expertise and would prefer to earn less money and have less benefits working as a short-term contractor helping people with what I am an expert in rather than being a in- house employee. Some of the problems they have discussed seem perfectly suited for me to work with them for only a few months and then move on and let their real coders take over. I have helped academics in this manner. I am in the USA. ## **The problem:** Companies say I need to be an in-house employee for intellectual property reasons. ## **The question:** Wouldn't it be easy for them to just have me sign a contract saying all my work is owned by them? If I work as a contractor, they can let me go when my value diminishes and save lots of money and I could just focus on what I think is a fun way to work --moving from problem to problem. What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "63198", "title": "Discrete Mathematics Refreshers Course?", "text": "I graduated 8 years ago and did a discrete mathematics course in my 2nd year, but I've been told that I'll likely be asked discrete maths questions in an upcoming interview. Is there a simple webpage/document that I can use to refresh my memory? I understood the concepts when I took the course 10 odd years ago, but my memory is a bit rusty and I'd like to just refresh it."}
{"_id": "135272", "title": "Lines of Code vs. Optimal Language", "text": "I was wondering whether it is possible to give any advice as the the maximum number of lines of code at which one should consider switching from say MATLAB to a more low level language? Is it even the case that at a certain point it makes more sense to manage a certain degree of complexity of a given program in a proper object oriented language rather then MATLAB? I should say I am a newbie in both MATLAB and Java, so I have no hidden agenda in this question even though I m aware of the heated discussions that people sometimes engage in over whether MATLAB is a proper programming language. I'm not experienced enough to even think about participating in such an exchange and I'm just looking for advice whether there is a cut off point where one really needs to go to a different language? Also I should add I understand the code may become longer when you move to lower level, however I was under the impression that object oriented programming makes it easier to manage the complexity of bigger programs. (Maybe lines of code was a bad choice as a proxy for complexity?) Is the choice of low vs. high level just one of performance? (which in the end you have to pay for with a bigger programming task at your hands for the low level language?)"}
{"_id": "49674", "title": "open source database project", "text": "What is the best way to build an open source database? I would like to build a database of all vehicles and their related maintenance information (i.e Oil Weight, Quantity, Tire Pressure, Windshield wipers etc). Currently this information is fragmented or just not put on-line in an easily accessible manner. As soon as collection begins, I would like to import this data into the DB and make it available freely to anyone. Is there a process (site or group) that I can start gathering this information in a reliable and verifiable way? In addition to this, are there any issues that I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "63193", "title": "Storing bugfixes as local changes rather than in SVN branch", "text": "We are deploying and upkeeping web-sites to different customers. Normally we wait for newest changes to stabilize, then tag subversion version as release, and install than version to customer. Then we receive support requests, and sometimes are forced to make quick bugfixes between releases. I find it troublesome to upkeep these bugfixes in branches, and wonder why not store them as \"local changes\" in some \"Release X.Y\"-folder (on build-machine)? Can this work, or is branching the only way? Reasons for this change are:   * it seems much easier to use WinMerge-utility for merging newest bugfixes into some \"Release X.Y\"-folder, than using tortoise-svn's \"branch integration\". WinMerge offers you much finer control over which changes to merge and which not (on file-basis, not commit-basis).   * when keeping bugfixes as \"local changes\" you have three-way comparison: in \"Check for modifications\" you can see all the bugfixes in current release, and with WinMerge you can see all the newest trunk-changes (if compare \"Release X.Y\" with \"trunk\"-folder)   * also it seems over-obsessive to keep everything in SVN. IMO SVN should serve the user and not the other way around.   * also branch re-integration never merges only those files that have actually changed. It takes along whole bunch of unnecessary files, which make it difficult to track anything in SVN-log."}
{"_id": "204417", "title": "What is the most optimal algorithm for counting lines of text in a file?", "text": "File > 5Gb, simply with lines like apache access.log. Need to get number of lines. Any constructions like               file(filename).read().counter('\\n')      Would read all of files and it would be very long time. e.g.               os.stat(filename).st_size      Works very fast. It is possible to get at least hypothetically number of lines, by size of first lines in bytes and total size of file. Is there more accurately way?"}
{"_id": "149037", "title": "Why is the folder name \"bin\" used in some frameworks and languages?", "text": "I have been learning Java. And still after a prolonged time I don't know **why the name of the folder is \"bin\"** where one find all the tools for java? Is there is any logical reason behind that? I have also noticed the same in .Net framework also."}
{"_id": "45574", "title": "Should Development / Testing / QA / Staging environments be similar?", "text": "After much time and effort, we're finally using maven to manage our application lifecycle for development. We still unfortunately use ANT to build an EAR before deploying to Test / QA / Staging. My question is, while we made that leap forward, developers are still free to do as they please for testing their code. One issue that we have is half our team is using Tomcat to test on and the other half is using Jetty. I prefer Jetty slightly over Tomcat, but regardless we using WAS for all the other environments. My question is, should we develop on the same application server we're deploying to? We've had numerous bugs come up from these differences in environments. Tomcat, Jetty, and WAS are different under the hood. My opinion is that we all should develop on what we're deploying to production with so we don't have the problem of well, it worked fine on my machine. While I prefer Jetty, I just assume we all work on the same environment even if it means deploying to WAS which is slow and cumbersome. What are your team dynamics like? Our lead developers stepped down from the team and development has been a free for all since then. Walter"}
{"_id": "41855", "title": "What approaches can I take to lower the odds of introducing new bugs in a complex legacy app?", "text": "Where I work I often have to develop (and bug fix) in an old system (.NET 1) whos code is complete spaghetti - with little thought given to variable names, program structure nor comments. Because of this it takes me ages to understand what bits need changed, and I often 'break' the existing software because I've made a modification. I really _really_ want to spend a couple of months (with colleagues) going through it to refactor but existing developers both can't see the need - nor think theres time for this (the system is massive). I dread having to work on its code as it takes days to fix something only to find out I've broken something else. This obviously makes me look incompetent - so how can I deal with this?"}
{"_id": "41854", "title": "A list of the most important areas to examine when moving a project from x86 to x64?", "text": "I know to check for/use asserts and carefully examine any assembly components, but I didn't know if anyone out there has a fairly comprehensive or industry standard check-list of specific things at which to look? I am looking more at C and C++. note: There are some really helpful answers, I'm just leaving the question open for a couple days in case some folks only check questions that don't have accepted answers."}
{"_id": "162438", "title": "Returning an IQueryable from an IRepository", "text": "Using the Repository pattern, is it proper to return an IQueryable of a data set (table), for generic usage? It is very handy in many cases, especially when using external libraries that leverage that interface, for example some plugins that sort/filter and bind to ui elements. However, exposing an IQueryable sometimes seems to leave the design prone to errors. This, coupled with a wrong usage of lazy loading could lead to severe performance hits. On the other hand, having access methods for every single usage seems redundant and also a lot of work (considering unit tests etc)."}
{"_id": "162439", "title": "Is there any way to remove this redundancy?", "text": "I currently have the following HTML code                 <time datetime=\"2012-08-23\">         23. August 2012       </time>      I have that because I felt the \"23. August 2012\" format was easier for website visitors to read than               <time>2012-08-23</time>      Both of those HTML5 examples validate at w3, but the first one is obviously redundant, and I like to cut out markup I don't need. Is there another date formate that I can use in the second example that is (1) easy for website visitors to read, and (2) w3 valid?"}
{"_id": "162432", "title": "Why aren't there native Javascript interpreters for Windows/Mac/Linux?", "text": "It seems to me it would be very useful to use Javascript for general server side scripting tasks as it has more or less the same features as Perl and Python. But AFAIK there are no generally available Javascript interpreters for the major machine architectures. I guess the other problem may be lack of libraries but surely these would come if the interpreters were there. Google's V8 maybe could be a starting point. Does anyone think we'll see this soon?"}
{"_id": "162435", "title": "How to unit test a function that is refactored to strategy pattern?", "text": "If I have a function in my code that goes like:               class Employee{              public string calculateTax(string name, int salary)         {             switch (name)             {                 case \"Chris\":                     doSomething($salary);                 case \"David\":                     doSomethingDifferent($salary);                 case \"Scott\":                    doOtherThing($salary);                           }     }      Normally I would refactor this to use Ploymorphism using a factory class and strategy pattern:               public string calculateTax(string name)     {         InameHandler nameHandler = NameHandlerFactory::getHandler(name);         nameHandler->calculateTax($salary);     }      Now if I were using TDD then I would have some tests that work on the original `calculateTax()` before refactoring. ex:               calculateTax_givenChrisSalaryBelowThreshold_Expect111(){}         calculateTax_givenChrisSalaryAboveThreshold_Expect111(){}          calculateTax_givenDavidSalaryBelowThreshold_Expect222(){}        calculateTax_givenDavidSalaryAboveThreshold_Expect222(){}           calculateTax_givenScottSalaryBelowThreshold_Expect333(){}     calculateTax_givenScottSalaryAboveThreshold_Expect333(){}      After refactoring I'll have a Factory class `NameHandlerFactory` and at least 3 implementation of `InameHandler`. How should I proceed to refactor my tests? Should I delete the unit test for `claculateTax()` from `EmployeeTests` and create a Test class for each implementation of `InameHandler`? Should I test the Factory class too?"}
{"_id": "160362", "title": "What's the benefit of a singleton over a class in objective-c?", "text": "They both seem to take about the same amount of effort to use: Singleton: needs a .h and .m file, has to be imported into any class you want to call it from and then has to be instantiated How is that any different than a class?"}
{"_id": "160363", "title": "When you won't need a language anymore, should you still use it?", "text": "My first main language was Java. However, over the years I've dropped Java in favor for Python, JavaScript, bash, etc. I still have advanced reading knowledge of Java, but since I haven't coded in it for so long, my writing knowledge is intermediate at most. The other day, while looking at some old code written in Java, I got inspiration to re-write it as a learning experience to reacquaint myself. It was at that point that I stopped to think that if I wrote this in Java, it would be nice, but when the renewed inspiration had hit me, I wanted to implement it as a web app (it was a game), so other people could play it. So now here's the dilemma: Do I re-write (and heavily refactor) the code I've previously written in Java, and _then_ in JavaScript (for the web version), or do I just forget about Java altogether and re-write it in JavaScript? EDIT: I have no problem writing in Java first and then JavaScript, but I'm more likely than not going to need Java anymore for a long while. What I'm trying to ask is whether or not I should rewrite the old code in Java first, to practice a skill I may not need in the future. The actual languages are less important than that question."}
{"_id": "190240", "title": "Do context diagrams have levels?", "text": "I heard that the context analysis diagram has different levels. I couldn't find this in .Net, but I have seen that a DFD has different levels. Do context diagrams have any levels (`level0`, `level1`, `level2`)? If yes, please suggest some examples."}
{"_id": "54485", "title": "In a multidisciplinary team, how much should each member's skills overlap?", "text": "I've been working in embedded software development for this small startup and our team is pretty small: about 3-4 people. We're responsible for all engineering which involves an RF device controlled by an embedded microcontroller that connects to a PC host which runs some sort of data collection and analysis software. I have come to develop these two guidelines when I work with my colleagues:   1. Define a clear separation of responsibilities and make sure each person's contribution to the final product doesn't overlap.   2. Don't assume your colleagues know everything about their responsibilities. I assume there is some sort of technology that I will need to be competent at to properly interface with the work of my colleagues. The first point is pretty easy for us. I do firmware, one guy does the RF, another does the PC software, and the last does the DSP work. Nothing overlaps in terms of two people's work being mixed into the final product. For that to happen, one guy has to hand off work to another guy who will vet it and integrate it himself. **The second point is the heart of my question.** I've learned the hard way not to trust the knowledge of my colleagues absolutley no matter how many years experience they claim to have. At least not until they've demonstrated it to me a couple of times. So given that whenever I develop a piece of firmware, if it interfaces with some technology that I don't know then I'll try to learn it and develop a piece of test code that helps me understand what they're doing. That way if my piece of the product comes into conflict with another piece then I have some knowledge about possible causes. For example, the PC guy has started implementing his GUI's in .NET WPF (C#) and using LibUSBdotNET for USB access. So I've been learning C# and the .NET USB library that he uses and I build a little console app to help me understand how that USB library works. Now all this takes extra time and energy but I feel it's justified as it gives me a foothold to confront integration problems. Also I like learning this new stuff so I don't mind. On the other hand I can see how this can turn into a time synch for work that won't make it into the final product and may never turn into a problem. **So how much experience/skills overlap do you expect in your teammates relative to your own skills? Does this issue go away as the teams get bigger and more diverse?**"}
{"_id": "54487", "title": "What's the best way of marketing to programmers?", "text": "Disclaimer up front - I'm definitely not going to include any links in here - this question isn't part of my marketing! I've had a few projects recently where the end product is something that developers will use. In the past I've been on the receiving end of all sorts of marketing - as a developer I've gotten no end of junk - 1000s of pens, tee-shirts and mouse pads; enough CDs to keep my desk tea-free; some very useful USB keys with some logos I no longer recognise; a small forest's worth of leaflets; a bulging spam folder full of ignored emails, etc... So that's my question - **What are good ways to market to developers?** And as an aside - are developers the wrong people to target? - since we so often don't have a purchasing budget anyways!"}
{"_id": "160368", "title": "Why is the use of abstractions (such as LINQ) so taboo?", "text": "I am an independent contractor and, as such, I interview 3-4 times a year for new gigs. I am in the midst of that cycle now and got turned down for an opportunity even though I felt like the interview went well. The same thing has happened to me a couple of times this year. Now, I am not a perfect guy and I don't expect to be a good fit for every organization. That said, my batting average is lower than usual so I politely asked my last interviewer for some constructive feedback, and he delivered! The main thing, according to the interviewer, was that I seemed to lean too much towards the use of abstractions (such as LINQ) rather than towards lower- level, organically grown algorithms. On the surface, this makes sense--in fact, it made the other rejections make sense too because I blabbed about LINQ in those interviews as well and it didn't seem that the interviewers knew much about LINQ (even though they were .NET guys). **So now I am left with this question:** If we are supposed to be \"standing on the shoulders of giants\" and using abstractions that are available to us (like LINQ), then why do some folks consider it so taboo? Doesn't it make sense to pull code \"off the shelf\" if it accomplishes the same goals without extra cost? It would seem to me that LINQ, even if it _is_ an abstraction, is simply an abstraction of all the _same_ algorithms one would write to accomplish exactly the same end. Only a performance test could tell you if your custom approach was better, but if something like LINQ met the requirements, why bother writing your own classes in the first place? I don't mean to focus on LINQ here. I am sure that the JAVA world has something comparable, I just would like to know why some folks get so uncomfortable with the idea of using an abstraction that they themselves did not write. ## UPDATE As Euphoric pointed out, there isn't anything comparable to LINQ in the Java world. So, if you are developing on the .NET stack, why not always try and make use of it? Is it possible that people just don't fully understand what it does?"}
{"_id": "13212", "title": "Can the ScrumMaster and other team members be managed by the Product Owner?", "text": "Our team is switching to Scrum. I would be the ScrumMaster (in addition to being a developer), and another developer would become Product Owner (in addition to our product marketing guy). All members of the team, including me, would be managed by the would-be Product Owner. By that I mean that the guy would be the one deciding about our yearly evaluation, raises, etc. Would this hierarchical link be prone to introduce issues? How do organizations typically map hierarchical structure onto agile teams? I suppose it's quite common that the ScrumMaster has a hierarchical link to the other developers in the team. Here it would be the Product Owner. Is this different?"}
{"_id": "90887", "title": "choosing an opensource license for a software", "text": "i am glad to say that we are going to make Advanced Electron Forum (anelectron.com) an Opensource project, since we have a lack in developers and we think that this will make the development wheel turn much much better, we are going to post the source code to public in github, but we are not sure about the license that we are going to use, GPL gives too much freedom we don't want, the only thing we want to prevent the user from doing is the forking, we don't want any forks or redistribution of the code without permission, so what to chose ?"}
{"_id": "90080", "title": "Is it common for developers to deal with extensive change control procedures?", "text": "This question requires a bit of setup, please bear with me. Last week my company rolled out a new change management procedure. Any change destined for production requires a change control record; this policy was already in place and I don't disagree with it. The new procedure, however, involves a highly convoluted, server-intensive web app for creating the records. As an added bonus the servers are in Europe (I'm in Seattle), which often results in latency issues. **Any** given change record requires (at a minimum) a business justification, requirements document, pre-implementation plan, pre-implementation test plan, execution plan, execution test plan, post-implementation plan and post- implementation test plan. These plans have to be typed manually into the aforementioned web app. After creating the record, the developer making the change is required to attend an hour-long phone conference with the Change Advisory Board to justify the change. Nevermind that the change request passed through four layers of management before hitting our desks; it's on us to justify the work. I'm of the opinion that any work that lands on my desk should have been justified long since, preferably by the person/department requesting the work. This may end up being a deal-breaker for me. My question is, how common is this practice in the programming shops of non- software companies? **Edit:** There's a lot of good feedback here. It sounds like the solution is to join a software company that isn't involved in finance, healthcare or government. :) Thanks to everyone for the responses."}
{"_id": "120817", "title": "Where do other programming languages fit in Windows 8 development model?", "text": "Today, Windows applications can be developed in numerous languages and frameworks. But in the upcoming Windows 8, with the introduction of WinRT, the development model is going change at a large scale. So, where do other programming languages fit in this model?"}
{"_id": "179034", "title": "Design pattern for isomorphic trees", "text": "I want to create a data structure to work with isomorphic tree. I don't search for a \"algorithms\" or methods to check if two or more trees are isomorphic each other. Just to create various trees with the same structure. Example:                 2 - - - - - - - 'a' - - - - - - - 3.5       / \\              / \\               / \\     3   3           'f' 'y'           1.0 3.1        / \\              / \\               / \\       4   7           'e' 'f'           2.3 7.7      The first \"layer\" or tree is the \"natural tree\" (a tree with natural numbers), the second layer is the \"character tree\" and the third one is the \"float tree\". The data structure has a method or iterator to traverse the tree and to make diferent operations with its values. These operations could change the value of nodes, but never its structure (first I create the structure and then I configure the tree with its diferent layers). In case of that I add a new node, this would be applied to each layer. Which known design pattern fits with this description or is related with it?"}
{"_id": "193953", "title": "How many regression bugs from refactoring is too many.", "text": "Recent QA testing has found some regression bugs in our code. My team lead blames recent refactoring efforts for the regressions. My team lead's stance is \"refactor, but don't break too many things\", but wouldn't tell me how many is \"too many\". My stance is it's QA's job to find bugs that we can't find, and refactoring usually introduces breaking changes. So sure, I can be careful, but I don't knowingly release code with bugs to QA. I do it because I don't see them. If the refactoring was necessary, how many regression bugs should be considered too many?"}
{"_id": "201756", "title": "How to sync clocks over networking for game development?", "text": "I'm writing a game that has a lot of time based aspects. I use time to help estimate player positions when the network stalls and packets aren't going through (and the time between packet's being received and not). It's a pacman type game in the sense that a player picks a direction and can't stop moving, so that system makes sense (or at least I think it does). So I have two questions: 1) How do I sync the clocks of the games at the start since there is delay in the network. 2) Is it okay NOT to sync them and just assume that they are the same (my code is time-zone independent). It's not a super competitive game where people would change their clocks to cheat, but still. The game is being programmed in Java and Python (parallel development as a project)"}
{"_id": "244608", "title": "Maintaining Two Separate Software Versions From the Same Codebase in Version Control", "text": "Let's say that I am writing two different versions of the same software/program/app/script and storing them under version control. The first version is a free \"Basic\" version, while the second is a paid \"Premium\" version that takes the codebase of the free version and expands upon it with a few extra value-added features. Any new patches, fixes, or features need to find their way into both versions. I am currently considering using `master` and `develop` branches for the main codebase (free version) along side `master-premium` and `develop-premium` branches for the paid version. When a change is made to the free version and merged to the `master` branch (after thorough testing on `develop` of course), it gets copied over to the `develop-premium` branch via the `cherry-pick` command for more testing and then merged into `master-premium`. Is this the best workflow to handle this situation? Are there any potential problems, caveats, or pitfalls to be aware of? Is there a better branching strategy than what I have already come up with? Your feedback is highly appreciated! P.S. This is for a PHP script stored in Git, but the answers should apply to any language or VCS."}
{"_id": "235852", "title": "Scrum task over estimation", "text": "In my current company we're using Scrum with 2 week iterations and a regular planning session. How planning normally works in our company is that we take a predefined , prioritized (by PO before the planning) product backlog of user stories / PBIs, take PBIs from the top one by one and break it down to tasks to then estimate them in hours (using poker planning and fibonacci) until we reach a given team's capacity. While this works for most of the teams, there is one 2-person team where I'm a SM, that tends to systematicaly overestimate the tasks by far (as those developers are being paid by an hour in this project, and from the record of working with them in another project I know for a fact they have a far better velocity). Not being a part of this team as a developer, trying to adhere to Scrum I'm refraining from influencing those estimates by any means, however as we approach the deadlines in the project this situation is becoming more and more troublesome. My question is - is there a way / good practice in such situations, to keep the team on the edge of their velocity and not influence their estimations, or maybe we're doing sth wrong in the process ?"}
{"_id": "235851", "title": "Why Num&sizeMinusOne faster than num&(size-1)", "text": "I've been told that when I have a hash table of size `m` and `m=2^k`, I can use the `&` operator as `num & (size-1)` instead of `num % size`, to fit the hashCode to my table size. I've also been told that the the command Num&sizeMinusOne is more than twice faster than `num & (size-1)`. My question is, why? And isn't the operation of creating a variable called SizeMinusOne takes time too?"}
{"_id": "132395", "title": "How to find extra work outside of full time job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do you work contract projects in addition to your full-time job? I currently work as a C++ developer full time (not a contract). I'm seeking extra opportunities outside of work. So far, I've been doing small gigs for people on sites like Craigslist or ODesk.com on the side for extra cash but they are just never lucrative enough. My first question is ... is it possible to find a contract type position that will allow me to work outside of normal hours (i.e. evenings and weekends)? How would you even find a job like that? I'm also worried about potential conflicts of interest. If the contract was in a completely different field, is there any reason that I have to report this to my employer? Should I get the help of a recruiter to find these type of jobs? If it's too difficult to find something like that ... where do you guys go to find extra work outside of your full time job? I know a lot of people do their own projects but I just don't have any of my own ideas for an iPhone app or anything like that. :P I have had the most luck with Craigslist in the past but there has to be better sites out there somewhere. Anyone willing to reveal the secret place? ;) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "53680", "title": "How do you get people to use a bug tracker?", "text": "This is actually a question I should've asked a while ago(as in, I don't even work at this job) but I thought it to be an interesting question nonetheless. Our team was basically just 1 developer(me!). The manager also developed sometimes, but was mostly just business. He thought we should have some sort of bug tracker, so we installed some open source tracker on our server. I initially did not use this bug tracker. Then, another developer was hired. He doubled as a tester(sometimes) and it seemed like every morning(His shift was scheduled like 2 hours earlier than mine by preference) I'd come into work, he'd have about 2 pieces of paper full of bugs and possible bugs. I'd go through each item, mark them off as a fixed them, or wrote by-design, or fix later. Anyway, then I'd come in another morning.. another list of bugs. About 6 of the 15 bugs listed were duplicates, or extremely related to bugs I'd previously said by-design or fix-later on. So, I started using the bug tracker on our server. It wasn't hard to use(required only a bug title), but it wasn't great either. I told the other developer that he should start entering bugs there and I will check the bugs he submits when I come in. This way it'd be easier to track. I come in the next morning, and lo and behold another piece of paper on my desk listed with bugs. At this point about 11 out of 13 listed bugs were duplicates. I didn't even bother writing on the paper. (this continued basically for about 4 months, until I was layed off) **TL;DR:** What should I have done to convince this other developer to use the bug tracker?"}
{"_id": "255784", "title": "Competitive Programming", "text": "I think this may just be one of the most frequently asked questions by a novice (like me) on this site. Please pardon me for that. My question is I wish to get better at solving the harder problems of competitive programming which almost always are very tough dynamic programming formulations, dynamic data-structure manipulations and hard combinatorial object manipulations. How should I go about training myself to not only gain confidence but also gain an expertise in these areas. Yes, I know the obvious answer is practise! But, I'd want to know say books or materials that I should look up to before hitting a programming site like say spoj, hackerrank, codechef, codeforces and the like."}
{"_id": "112828", "title": "How to fit beta versions into a numeric versioning scheme?", "text": "Some tools force developers to adopt a version scheme of a certain form, form instance \"major.minor.build.revision\", where each field must be a number. How do I fit in betas in there? For instance, what version should I choose for version \"2.0 beta2\"? Should it be of the form \"1.99.x.y\" (it's not yet 2.0 stable) or \"2.0.x.y\" (2.0 beta introduces breaking changes with 1.x)."}
{"_id": "219581", "title": "Definition of a type", "text": "Conceptually, I used to think of types as sets. However, I think I've seen people wishing to distinguish types `A`, `B` even if they represent identical collections of values. So I figured a better definition of type is a pair `(type_name, set)`, where two different types cannot have the same first element. Then I ran into a different situation. I thought a function is just a set of pairs `(x, y)`. But then a function `A->B` (where `A, B` represent the same collections of values) cannot be distinguished from a function `B->B` or `A->A` or `B->A`, and again I think I've seen people want to distinguish them. So how do I define a function? As a tuple `(A, B, (x1, y1), (x2, y2), ...)`, where each element of `A` appears exactly once as the first element in the pairs, and where each second element is of type `B`? And the type `F` that represents all functions that takes `A->B` is then `(F, ((A, B, (a1, b11), (a2, b12), ...), (A, B, (a1, b21), (a2, b22), ...), (A, B, (a1, b31), (a2, b32), ...)))`, where `a1, ...` are all the values represented by A, and `b?1, b?2, ...`, for any `?`, are some of the values represented by `B`. This all seems rather cumbersome, am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "176912", "title": "Hierarchical View/ViewModel/Presenters in MVPVM", "text": "I've been working with MVVM for a while, but I've recently started using MVPVM and I want to know how to create hierarchial View/ViewModel/Presenter app using this pattern. In MVVM I would typically build my application using a hierarchy of Views and corresponding ViewModels e.g. I might define 3 views as follows: ![View A](http://i.stack.imgur.com/eHsn6.png) The View Models for these views would be as follows:               public class AViewModel     {         public string Text         {             get { return \"This is A!\"; }         }              public object Child1 { get; set; }             public object Child2 { get; set; }     }          public class BViewModel     {         public string Text         {             get { return \"This is B!\"; }         }     }          public class CViewModel     {         public string Text         {             get { return \"This is C!\"; }         }     }      In would then have some data templates to say that BViewModel and CViewModel should be presented using View B and View C:               <DataTemplate DataType=\"{StaticResource local:BViewModel}\">         <local:BView/>     </DataTemplate>     <DataTemplate DataType=\"{StaticResource local:CViewModel}\">         <local:CView/>     </DataTemplate>      The final step would be to put some code in AViewModel that would assign values to Child1 and Child2:               public AViewModel()     {         this.Child1 = new AViewModel();         this.Child2 = new BViewModel();     }      The result of all this would be a screen that looks something like: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/hXGz7.png) Doing this in MVPVM would be fairly simple - simply moving the code in AViewModel's constructor to APresenter:               public class APresenter      {         ....         public void WireUp()         {             ViewModel.Child1 = new BViewModel();             ViewModel.Child2 = new CViewModel();          }      }      But If I want to have business logic for BViewModel and CViewModel I would need to have a BPresenter and a CPresenter - the problem is, Im not sure where the best place to put these are. I could store references to the presenter for AViewModel.Child1 and AViewModel.Child2 in APresenter i.e.:               public class APresenter : IPresenter     {         private IPresenter child1Presenter;         private IPresenter child2Presenter;              public void WireUp()         {             child1Presenter = new BPresenter();             child1Presenter.WireUp();             child2Presenter = new CPresenter();             child2Presenter.WireUp();                  ViewModel.Child1 = child1Presenter.ViewModel;             ViewModel.Child2 = child2Presenter.ViewModel;         }     }      But this solution seems inelegant compared to the MVVM approach. I have to keep track of both the presenter and the view model and ensure they stay in sync. If, for example, I wanted a button on View A, which, when clicked swapped the View's in Child1 and Child2, I might have a command that did the following:               var temp = ViewModel.Child1;     ViewModel.Child1 = ViewModel.Child2;     ViewModel.Child2 = temp;      This would work as far as swapping the view's on screen (assuming the correct Property Change notification code is in place), but now my APresenter.child1Presenter is pointing to the presenter for AViewModel.Child2, and APresenter.child2Presenter is pointing to the presenter for AViewModel.Child1. If something accesses APresenter.child1Presenter, any changes will actually happen to AViewModel.Child2. I can imagine this leading to all sorts of debugging fun. I know that I may be misunderstanding the pattern, and if this is the case a clarification of what Im doing wrong would be appreciated. **EDIT** \\- this question is about WPF and the MVPVM design pattern, not ASP.NET and MVP."}
{"_id": "187556", "title": "While running an application the error occurs, while debugging it doesn't", "text": "There is an issue which appears while running the application. It is not an Exception, but the desired UI change is not been implemented. While debugging to find the code which should be changed to fix this problem, the UI changes can be seen correctly, To be specific, if we put one breakpoint in the class where it is called, and press the Continue in NetBeans, the problem occurs. But if we step over to the next lines and try to see the state at the end of the debug, the component seems to work perfectly. How can these kind of issues be resolved?"}
{"_id": "109418", "title": "How does an interviewer get a glimpse of a candidates thought process during an interview?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you interview someone with more experience than you?   >  How can I really \"wow\" an employer at an interview? I am a bit puzzled by the whole technical interview process. I have been on a few interviews recently and I keep hearing certain phrases during the interviews. And I want to get more insight into the mind of the interviewer and the process itself. Can anyone please shed some light into this? What do they really want? I am convinced that it is not the actual correct answer to the problem one is presented with because getting the right answer hasn't gotten me a job. How do they \"get a glimpse into my thought process\"? EDIT: I am adding this to the question because I think I might help. During the interview when you are writing code on the white board and they ask you to explain the process or approach are they expecting me to act like a player on who want to be a millionaire? Do I need to explain every little detail or reason for doing something?"}
{"_id": "98688", "title": "Interviewing a Senior Dev when they will be far more competent at programming than the interviewer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you interview someone with more experience than you? Next week i'll be interviewing some contractors for a 6-month senior Dev position on a project. I'm an OK programmer myself, but nothing special, and at the moment i'm struggling to think of what questions to ask them, or what coding challenges i'd set, since the answers would likely go over my head anyway. The project is an ASP.NET MVC application for an intranet. My personal thought was to have them write a trivial MVC app that pulls some data from a DB during the interview, showing that they can implement a testable, loosely coupled application, but i don't know if this is _too_ trivial. From it i would expect them to have implemented a couple of tests, set up dependency injection, and probably use a repository instead of fat controllers. Any ideas, or is what i'm suggesting a bad idea? The coding part of the interview would likely last about 40 minutes. I timed myself doing what i'd planned and it took me just over half an hour. The candidates would have seen the requirements for the application a couple of days prior to the interview. From thinking about it a bit more, perhaps i should start off with a tightly coupled app, and ask the candidates to refactor it instead, and implement some tests? Edit: With respect to Rob's comments below, i'd like the answers to more focus on what i'd got planned (But all answers gratefully received)"}
{"_id": "196865", "title": "What to expect from a 'peer interview' for a new grad position?", "text": "I apologize if something like this has been asked, I did try to look for something similar. I am graduating May 16th, and I applied for a position posted as '.NET Application Developer' requiring 1-2 years experience and a Bachelor's in CIS. I had the phone screen, which went well. They brought me in Friday for an interview with the head managers which consisted of a written 20 question test, and other behavioral like questions and oddball ones such as \"How would you make an M&M?\" That seemed to go well too, they took me on a tour of the campus and said they usually will get back to the candidate, if they decide to proceed, in a week or so. Well, that following Monday at 9:00 am sharp they called me back for a third and final 'peer interview'. **This is where I am stuck - I have no idea what to expect here? How do I prepare?** Is this like the 'Hey let's see if you are culture fit\" or \"Lets put him through the paces with whiteboard coding\" or what? Any advice would be HIGHLY appreciated. I have been practicing whiteboard coding just in case, and will come in with a humble, \"I want to learn from you guys\" kind of attitude."}
{"_id": "186372", "title": "What are some interview questions I can expect for a technical evaluation?", "text": "I am 20 years old and I've been doing some web development work for about 2 years or so. I have an interview for a Junior Web Developer position and the company knows that but I'll still be going through a technical interview and since I haven't been on one before I am not sure what kinds of questions I'll expect. I will be interviewed on PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. What are some popular or rather important questions that I might be asked in those four language areas? I know the questions might vary greatly but just to get an idea. Eager to see some of your responses. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "1947", "title": "How to prepare yourself for programming interview questions?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Really \"wow\" them in the interview Let's say I appear for an interview. What questions could I expect and how do I prepare?"}
{"_id": "93384", "title": "How can I really \"wow\" an employer at an interview?", "text": "I'm a top-notch programmer, but a notoriously bad interviewee. I've flunked 3 interviews consecutively because I get so nervous that my voice tightens at least 2 octaves higher and I start visibly shaking -- mind you, I can handle whatever technical questions the interviewer throws at me in that state, but I think it looks bad to come off as a quivering, squeaky-voiced young woman during a job interview. I've just got the personality type of a shy computer programmer. No matter how technical I am, I'm going to get passed up in favor of a smooth talker. I have another interview coming up shortly, and I want to really impress the company. Here are my trouble spots:   1. **What can I do to be less nervous during my interview?** I always get really excited when I hear I have a face-to-face interview, but get more and more anxious as the interview approaches.   2. **How long or short should I keep my answers?** Interviewers want me to explain what I used to do at my prior employment, but I'm a very chatty person and tend to talk/squeak for 10 minutes at a time.    3. **What exactly is my interviewer looking for when asking about prior jobs?**   4. During the interview, I'll be asked if I have any questions for the interviewer. I _should_ , but **what kinds of questions should I ask to show that I'm interested in being employed?**   5. **How can I sugarcoat \"I want to make more money\" into something that sounds nicer?** Interviewers always ask why I'm looking for a new job. The real reason is that my current salary isn't that great, and I want to make more money: otherwise the work environment is fine.   6. I have only one prior programmer job, and I've worked there for 18 months, but I have the skill of someone with 4 to 6 years of experience. **What can I say to compete against applicants with more work experience?**"}
{"_id": "80065", "title": "Preparing for Interviews", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to prepare yourself for programming interview questions? Could someone give me pointers on how go to about preparing for a technical interview? As a CS graduate, I guess one must be thorough with the following topics: **Data Structures:** Array, Linked List, Stack, Queues, Heap, Hash Table, Binary Tree, Binary Search Tree, Self Balancing Binary Tree (AVL, Red Black Tree), B-Tree, Tries/Suffix Tree **Algorithms:** Sorting (Bubble Sort, Insertion Sort, Selection Sort, Shell Sort, Quick Sort, Merge Sort, External Sorting), Searching (linear and logarithmic time searching), Graph Theory (Adjacency List, Adjacent Matrix, DFS, BFS, Topological Sort), Dynamic Programming, Greedy Algorithms, Divide and Conquer. **Adhoc Algorithms:** Select Algorithm, Fisher Yates Card Shuffle, Reservoir Sampling and list is endless. **Databases:** SQL Queries **Programming and Design:** C,C++, Java, scripting languages (Perl, Python), (OOPS basics, virtual functions, deep and shallow copy, copy constructor, assignment operator, STL, memory management, pointers/reference, interface, abstract classes **Operating Systems:** Thread Synchronization (Mutex, Conditional Variables, Semaphores, Deadlocks), Memory Management (Segmentation, Paging, TLB, Caching Mechanisms) * * * Also it would be great if we all could compile the resources available on internet to brush up these topics. I will add some of these: Linked List and trees: http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/103/ Please help me out to find useful resource to prepare for these topics, also I would appreciate if you could add in to these topics."}
{"_id": "54375", "title": "Doing practice jobsearch/technical interviews?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I really \"wow\" an employer at an interview? I graduated college last year & I've never gone through the interview process - my current programming position evolved out of projects I did in school, but in a few months I'm making a clean break and moving across the country so I'm going to have to face a \"grown-up\" jobsearch. I'm kind of scared of technical interviews - I think I'm pretty good at my job and my hobby programming projects ... but what if it turns out I'm part of that group that thinks they're qualified, but really just cause despair at the state of education in the hearts of interviewers? So, I'm thinking of doing a \"practice\" job hunt in my current city to get an idea of what it's like and what kind of experience/expertise employers are really looking for. Is this a dick move ethically (applying to/interviewing for jobs I can't take)? If so, is there another good way to prepare for technical interviews, especially those little trick puzzle-type questions?"}
{"_id": "74650", "title": "c# interview with a programming task", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to prepare yourself for programming interview questions? I am going for c#-sql server job and I was looking for some link where I could download some questions and answers to have look at.Googling I have found many but because there is no download you have to click and navigate for each question and answer which makes the process very intense. Do you know a link where I can download some good c#/sql server questions? Also I am told I will be given a programming task. I have no idea what that might be. I hope is not some silly math algorithm that I know I will fail or some bubble sort stuff that I have never used in my c# programming life. Any ideas or examples people have been asked? Or is there a place where managers go to get this stuff? It's not a case of cheating but I find some questions not really pratical in the real world. typical silly question for a c# in my view is What's the difference between a stack vs heap? Now tell me whether as a c# programmer you are really bothered about the stack and heap. If you do some unboxing the compiler will tell you have an error.etc.. Why they keep asking that question.Even the agency the other day asked me that question. thanks a lot for any suggestions"}
{"_id": "155814", "title": "Need help eliminating dead code paths and variables from C source code", "text": "I have a legacy C code on my hands, and I am given the task to filter dead/unused symbols and paths from it. Over the time there were many insertions and deletions, causing lots of unused symbols. I have identified many dead variables which were only being written to once or twice, but were never being read from. Both blackbox/whitebox/regression testing proved that dead code removal did not affected any procedures. (We have a comprehensive test-suite). But this removal was done only on a small part of code. Now I am looking for some way to automate this work. We rely on GCC to do the work. P.S. I'm interested in removing stuff like:   1. variables which are being read just for the sake of reading from them.   2. variables which are spread across multiple source files and only being written to. For example:               file1.c:     int i;          file2.c:     extern int i;     ....     i=x;"}
{"_id": "246601", "title": "How do programming languages integrate with OS runtimes", "text": "For example, Objective-C, Swift and Ruby (i.e. RubyMotion) integrate with the Cocoa framework. Is this done via linked libraries? I assume they call functions in existing binaries instead of simply recreating some common interface."}
{"_id": "246605", "title": "GUI app with Web Technology that can take screenshots", "text": "I was given a task to prototype a Desktop Application with the ff. requirements:   1. Must use javascript, nodewebkit, node.js   2. Must be multi platform specially Windows and OSX   3. Can take a screenshot of a certain area where a use can point and drag   4. Must be able to watch multiple directories for changes Mostly `1,2,4` are possible but I can't get my head around (3) how I will take screen shots on specific areas depending on user point and drag input with only web technologies? What are ideas on this? I also plan to use angularJS/css for the UI."}
{"_id": "155812", "title": "How to learn new technologies without live projects", "text": "I have a year of experience in .Net but I have knowledge in basic stuffs like framework 2.0, java script and basics of sql server. But in Industry there is no need of these basic stuffs, they want more than these but as we don't have live project, How to go about that...?"}
{"_id": "122413", "title": "Pros and cons of using Grails compared to pure Groovy", "text": "Say, you (by you I mean an abstract guy, any guy in your team) have experience of writing and building java web apps, know about filters, servlet mappings and so on, and so on. Also, let us assume you know pretty well any sql db, no matter which one exactly, whether it mysql, oracle or psql. At last, let pretend we know Groovy and its standard libraries, for example all that JsonBuilder and XmlSlurper stuff, so we don't need grails converters. The question is - what are benefits of using grails in this case. I'm not trying to start flame war, I'm just asking to compare - what are ups and downs of grails development compared to pure groovy one. For instance, off the top of my head I can name two pluses - automatic DB mapping and custom gsp tags. But when I want to write a modest app which provides small API for handling some well defined set of data, I'm totally OK with groovy's awesome SQL support. As for gsp, we does not use it at all, so we are not interested in custom tags as well."}
{"_id": "94705", "title": "Fault tolerance through replication of SQL databases", "text": "Suppose the middle tier servers are replicated 3 way and the backend database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc...) is replicated 3 way. A user request ends up creating some user data in the middle tier servers and I would like to commit this to the backend database in a way resilient to failures. A candidate attempt solution, for example, if I send the data to one SQL database and have it replicate the data to the other databases then if the one SQL database has the harddrive crash before it can replicate the data, the data is lost. What is the best practice solution for fault tolerance that is used in the actual real world."}
{"_id": "94704", "title": "Data Structures to represent logical expressions", "text": "Here is a logical statement:               term1 AND (term2 OR term3) OR term4      What is an effective way of storing this information in a data structure? For example, should I use a graph, with a property on each edge defining the operator to the next term? (This suggestion doesn't make sense IMO, but it's a data structure that might be useful for this)"}
{"_id": "122417", "title": "Organizing your Data Access Layer", "text": "I am using Entity Framework as my ORM in an ASP.Net application. I have my database already created so ended up generating the entity model from it. What is a good way to organize files/classes in the data access layer. My entity framework model is in a class library and I was planning on adding additional classes per Entity(i.e per database table) and putting all the queries related to those tables in their respective classes. I am not sure if this is a right approach and if it is then where do the queries requiring data from multiple tables go? Am I completely wrong in organizing my files based on entities/tables and should I organize them based on functional areas instead."}
{"_id": "252836", "title": "Explain what this means, \"Bulldozer Code\"", "text": "I ran across an article on things programmers should avoid doing and came across this term: Bulldozer Code. The author defined it at as \"giving the appearance of refactoring by breaking out chunks into subroutines, but that are impossible to reuse in another context\". I interpret that as him saying to avoid creating procedures for code that can't actually be used in more than one place, which confuses me a little because I have an instructor prefers using procedures for the purpose of 'cleaner' code. So what exactly is bulldozer code and why should I avoid it?"}
{"_id": "168177", "title": "What can be done to decrease the number of live issues with applications?", "text": "First off I have seen this post which is slightly similar to my question. : What can you do to decrease the number of deployment bugs of a live website? Let me layout the situation for you. The team of programmers that I belong to have metrics associated with our code. Over the last several months our errors in our live system have increased by a large amount. We require that our updates to applications be tested by at least one other programmer prior to going live. I personally am completely against this as I think that applications should be tested by end users as end users are much better testers than programmers, I am not against programmers testing, obviously programmers need to test code, but they are most of the times too close to the code. The reason I specify that I think end users should test in our scenario is due to the fact that we don't have business analysts, we just have programmers. I come from a background where BAs took care of all the testing once programmers checked off it was ready to go live. We do have a staging environment in place that is a clone of the live environment that we use to ensure that we don't have issues between development and live environments this does catch some bugs. We don't do end user testing really at all, I should say we don't really have anyone testing our code except programmers, which I think gets us into this mess (Ideally, we would have BAs or QA or professional testers test). We don't have a QA team or anything of that nature. We don't have test cases for our projects that are fully laid out. Ok, I am just a peon programmer at the bottom of the rung, but I am probably more tired of these issues than the managers complaining about them. So, I don't have the ability to tell them you are doing it all wrong.....I have tried gentle pushes in the correct direction. Any advice or suggestions on how to alleviate this issue ?"}
{"_id": "254787", "title": "Implementing a generic/dynamic custom property system in C#", "text": "I have an architecture design problem which I think is appropriate for this site. _Note that I have made an_ **EDIT** _to this post below, reflecting my latest potential solution to this problem._ **General problem description:** My primary goal is to design a software library/program (C#) to automate a very particular type of microscopy experiments. Our experimental setups consists of many distinct hardware devices that generally fall into a limited number of categories:   * Point detector   * XY sample stage   * Autofocus device   * ... The natural choice is to design an interface `IDevice` with some basic properties shared by all devices such as e.g. `IDevice.Initialize()`, `IDevice.Name`, ... We can even design an abstract class, inheriting `IDevice`, e.g. `DeviceBase` implementing some functionalty common to all devices. Likewise, we can also design interfaces for specific devices, each time implementing the common stuff (`IXYSampleStage` might hold e.g. `IXYSampleStage.Move(posX, posY)` or `IXYSampleStage.AxisXStepSize`). Ultimately, I can implement all these interfaces in the final classes representing specific devices. I think I know what to do there. However, not all devices of a class are exactly the same. Some manufacturers offer rich functionality on top of the standard stuff. An XY Stage might have e.g. any number of optional/non-standard parameters to set such as e.g. channel delays, PID control values or whatever. To tackle this, > I need a mechanism to add additional properties (not methods, properties > will suffice) to specific device classes. Higher level code, interacting > with the devices should understand these added properties, be able to > get/set them, however many there might be. So much for the basic design problem. **What exists already** There is an OS software program, Micro Manager, which has such a system implemented, be it in C++ (full source here and no, I cannot use this SW directly for my purposes):               class PropertyBase     {     public:        virtual ~PropertyBase() {}             // property type        virtual PropertyType GetType() = 0;             // setting and getting values        virtual bool Set(double dVal) = 0;        virtual bool Set(long lVal) = 0;        virtual bool Set(const char* Val) = 0;             virtual bool Get(double& dVal) const = 0;        virtual bool Get(long& lVal) const = 0;        virtual bool Get(std::string& strVal) const = 0;             // Limits        virtual bool HasLimits() const = 0;        virtual double GetLowerLimit() const = 0;        virtual double GetUpperLimit() const = 0;        virtual bool SetLimits(double lowerLimit, double upperLimit) = 0;             // Some more stuff left out for brevity        ...     };      Subsequently, the `Property` class implements some of the pure virtual functions related to the limits. Next, `StringProperty`, `IntegerProperty` and `FloatProperty` implement the Get()/Set() methods. These kinds of properties are defined in an enum which allows only these three kinds of property. Properties can next be added to a `PropertyCollection` which is basically a kind of dictionary that is part of a device class. This all works nicely. We use MM a lot in the lab for other types of experiments but when trying to do similar things in my C# solution I stumbled about a few more fundamental questions. Most of these have to do with not being quite sure how to leverage specific features offered by C#/.NET (generic but definitely also dynamics, ...) to perhaps improve the existing C++ implementation. **The questions:** _First question_ : To limit the types of properties allowed, MM defines an enum:                   enum PropertyType {           Undef,           String,           Float,           Integer         };      Whereas C# has reflection and a lot of built-in support for types/generics. I therefore considered this:               public interface IProperty<T>     {        public T value { get; set; }             ...     }      I could next do an abstract `PropertyBase<T>` and ultimately               IntegerProperty : PropertyBase<int>     StringProperty : PropertyBase<string>     FloatProperty : PropertyBase<double>      But this gets me in trouble when trying to put them into a collection because in .NET following is not possible:               PropertyCollection : Dictionary<string, IProperty<T>>      Unless, perhaps, I adopt this strategy, i.e. have a non generic base class that only returns a type and then yet more base classes to actually implement my property system. However, this seems convoluted to me. **Is there a better way**? I think that utilising the generic language features might allow me to do away with needing all these Get()/Set() methods in the MM example above, as I would be able to know the backing type of my property value. I realise this is a very broad question but, there is a big gap between understanding the basics of some language features and being able to fully make the correct design decisions from the outset. _Second question_ I am contemplating making my final device classes all inherit from a kind of `DynamicDictionary` (e.g. similar to the one from here):                   public class DynamicDictionary : DynamicObject         {             internal readonly Dictionary<string, object> SourceItems;                  public DynamicDictionary(Dictionary<string, object> sourceItems)             {                 SourceItems = sourceItems;             }             public override bool TrySetMember(SetMemberBinder binder, object value)             {                 if (SourceItems.ContainsKey(binder.Name))                 {                     SourceItems[binder.Name.ToLower()] = value;                 }                 else                 {                     SourceItems.Add(binder.Name.ToLower(), value);                 }                 return true;             }             public override bool TryGetMember(GetMemberBinder binder, out object result)             {                 if (SourceItems != null)                 {                     if (SourceItems.TryGetValue(binder.Name.ToLower(), out result))                     {                         return true;                     }                 }                 result = null;                 return true;             }         }     }      but instead of `<string, object>` I would then like to use `<string, MyPropertyBase>` where the string would be the alias for my property (which would correspond to the design choice from Q1). Would doing such a thing make sense from a design standpoint? I would actually only need to add custom properties to devices at design time (i.e. when writing a custom device driver). At runtime, I would only need to inspect my custom properties or get/set their values. the C++ MM solves this by using a bunch of `CreateProperty(\"alias\", Property)` methods in the device constructor, which again, works so maybe using dynamics here is overkill. But again, I am wondering if somebody could provide insight in possible advantages but certainly also disadvantages of going down the dynamic route. **To summarize** Are there .NET features (4.5) which I could leverage to implement some of the MM concepts in a more elegant way with a focus on the above mentioned specific matters? Again, I do realise this is a very broad question and perhaps some of the possible answers are more a matter of taste/style than anything els but if so (this making the question unsuited for this platform), please provide feedback/comments such that I can adjust accordingly. **EDIT** I have spent some more thinking about this and tried to solve it in the following way: First, an enum specifying the allowed propertytypes:               public enum PropertyType     {         Undefined,         String,         Float,         Integer     }      Second, an interface `IPropertyType` that is responsible for checking values fed to a property of a specific type:               public interface IPropertyType     {            Type BackingType { get; }              PropertyType TypeAlias { get; }              bool IsValueTypeValid(object value);     }      Then, a base class implementing `IPropertyType`:               public bool IsValueTypeValid(object value)         {             if (value == null)             {                 return true;             }                  Type type = value.GetType();                  if (type == this.BackingType)             {                 return true;             }                  return false;         }          ...          public Type BackingType         {             get             {                 switch (this.TypeAlias)                 {                     case PropertyType.Integer:                         return typeof(long);                     case PropertyType.Float:                         return typeof(double);                     case PropertyType.String:                         return typeof(string);                     default:                         return null;                 }             }         }      I then have three `IPropertyType`: `StringPropertyType`, `IntegerPropertyType` and `FloatPropertyType` where each time, the property `PropertyTypeAlias is set to one of the enum values.` I can now add my IPropertyType to `IProperty` types:               public interface IProperty     {         string Alias { get; }              /// If we want to limit the property to discrete values.         Dictionary<string, object> AllowedValues { get; }              bool HasLimits { get; }              bool HasValue { get; }              bool IsReadOnly { get; }              /// Callback for HW operations using the property value.         Func<PropertyFuncType, bool> PropertyFunction { set; }              PropertyType TypeAlias { get; }              object Value { get; set; }              void AddAllowedValue(string alias, object value);              void ClearAllowedValues();              // On numeric properties, it might be usefull to limit the range of values.         void SetLimits(object lowerLimit, object upperLimit);              // These will do stuff on the HW...         bool TryApply();              bool TryUpdate();     }      Here, the Value setter will run the validation on input value as defined by the `IPropertyType`. `IProperty` is almost fully implemented in `PropertyBase` which also has a field of `IPropertyType` which gets set upon instance creation (and cannot be changed thereafter; a property cannot change type. From the base class e.g.:                   public object Value         {             get             {                 return this.storedvalue;             }                  set             {                 if (this.propertyType.IsValueTypeValid(value) && this.IsValueAllowed(value))                 {                     this.storedvalue = value;                 }             }         }      That only leaves specific `IProperty` classes: `StringProperty`, `IntegerProperty` and `FloatProperty` where there is only one override, `SetLimits()` because it relies on comparison of values. Everything else can be in the base class:               public override void SetLimits(object lowerlimit, object upperlimit)         {             // Is false by default             this.HasLimits = false;                  // Makes no sense to impose limits on a property with discrete values.             if (this.AllowedValues.Count != 0)             {                 // If the passed objects are in fact doubles, we can proceed to check them.                 if (this.IsValueTypeValid(lowerlimit) && this.IsValueTypeValid(upperlimit))                 {                     // In order to allow comparison we need to cast objects to double.                     double lowerdouble = (double)lowerlimit;                     double upperdouble = (double)upperlimit;                          // Lower limit cannot be bigger than upper limit.                     if (lowerdouble < upperdouble)                     {                         // Passed values are OK, so set them.                         this.LowerLimit = lowerdouble;                         this.UpperLimit = upperdouble;                              this.HasLimits = true;                     }                 }             }         }      This way, I think I have a system that allows me to have a collection of `IProperty` that can actually hold data of different types (int, float or string) where for each type of `IProperty` I have the ability to implement value limits etc (i.e. stuff that is different, depending on the data type)... However, I still have the impression that there are either better ways to do this sort of thing or that I am over engineering things. Therefore, any feedback on this is still welcome. **EDIT 2** After more searching online I believe the last bits of code posted here in the previous edit are leaning towards the Adaptive Object Model \"pattern\" (if it really is that). However, most resources on this topic seem to be quite old and I'm wondering if there are now better ways to achieve these types of things."}
{"_id": "44627", "title": "What are some small, but extendable game ideas to use for inspiration?", "text": "I recently came across the game Dopewars(or more generically, Drugwars). Now this is an extremely simple game to implement. A trivial basic implementation could be done in a couple of days, at the most. And it's extremely extendable. Now, my question is what other games are out there that follow this same kind of \"difficulty level\" for implementation? A game that is actually entertaining, yet trivial to implement, and can easily be extended?"}
{"_id": "164292", "title": "Can jQuery be used server side?", "text": "I know that you can use JavaScript server side with node.js, but can we use jQuery for backend as well? Or will I just have to learn CoffeeScript instead of jQuery?"}
{"_id": "255438", "title": "How do browsers paint a render tree to the screen?", "text": "I'm interested in building a browser-like rendering engine. I understand a bit about how OpenGL and GUI toolkits work. But how do browsers actually put pixels on the screen? Are they like software rasterizers that scan every line and paint whatever's in the render tree? Or do they act like GUI toolkits and call functions to display elements at certain coordinates? Are there any libraries that focus specifically on the painting portion of the browser's critical rendering path?"}
{"_id": "255437", "title": "Best RAD Tools for Web Application", "text": "I am planning to develop a web based **invoicing** application. It will be used by individuals to log and review their invoices. Their data must be saved to a common database but kept separate from other logins (ie data must not shared across users/logins). I suspect I will need the following...   1. a login page / authentication   2. forms to enter an individual's unique customers and items   3. a form to enter invoices   4. solid reporting tools / dashboard capabilities The current knowledge base is Microsoft suite (ie C#, .Net) **Can anyone advise the best RAD Tools / environment to achieve this outcome? Cheers!**"}
{"_id": "255436", "title": "How to connect a Django app with a Java Web app using JMS", "text": "I'm dealing with my DB systems course project, it's a stock exchange simulation app using Oracle 10g, the deal is that the support is for Java, but i'm going to do this in Python. The last iteration for the project is to connect two apps using message queues (MQ Protocols), if both apps are in Java the TA proposed to connect them using JMS, can you advise me on how to connect a Django app (my app) with a Java app (partner's app). I have found that MQ Protocol is based on a universal standard, so that must not be a hard problem to solve. Another option i've looked is Spring Pytthon, a framework that facilitates this connection. So ehat is the best option."}
{"_id": "255432", "title": "In Agile, should I create a code-review task?", "text": "My team uses Agile as a development approach. Currently, each task has four states which are todo, in progress, testing, and done. We've just started doing code reviews, and I wonder if I need to create a code-review task or I should add time for code-review to the estimation?"}
{"_id": "255430", "title": "How to execute a file within a subdirectory", "text": "So I have a small setup file that needs to install a few run-time files. The files are located within sub directories of the root of the drive. The drive letter will be different on every customers machine, so I was trying this and several other methods to no avail.                           // File is being ran from D:\\ \"eg: D:\\setup.exe\"                 // All my runtimes are in the Tools\\Runtime direcorties                 string path = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();                 string ext = \"/q /norestart\";                 string location = \"\\\\Tools\\\\Runtimes\\\\Net\\\\\";                 string step1 = \"dotnetfx35.exe\";                 var process = Process.Start(path + location + step1 + ext);                 process.WaitForExit();      As you pros and more experienced programmers know, for some reason... It doesn't work I keep getting file not found."}
{"_id": "179699", "title": "What's the problem with Scala's XML literals?", "text": "In this post, Martin (the language's head honcho) writes: > [XML literals] Seemed a great idea at the time, now it sticks out like a > sore thumb. I believe with the new string interpolation scheme we will be > able to put all of XML processing in the libraries, which should be a big > win. Being interested in language design myself, I'm wondering: Why does he write that it was a mistake to incorporate XML literals into the language? What is the controversy regarding this feature?"}
{"_id": "252789", "title": "Best practices for geolocation", "text": "We are writing a flight search engine. We want to pre-fill the departure airport for mobile users with the closest one to their location. To do that, our plan is to   1. Find a list of airports with their latitude/longitude.   2. Find the user geolocation using something like HTML5 Geolocation (which asks the user for permission).   3. Calculate the distance between the user's location and every airport to find the closest one.   4. Fill the departure form. Is this a standard way of proceeding? I am a junior programmer and I am not used to this kind of problem. Is there any obstacle I should bear in mind while developing my solution? I have the feeling the algorithm to calculate the distance between one point and 300 locations might get a bit heavy."}
{"_id": "156549", "title": "PHP - Internal APIs/Libraries - What makes sense?", "text": "I've been having a discussion lately with some colleagues about the best way to approach a new project, and thought it'd be interesting to get some external thoughts thrown into the mix. Basically, we're redeveloping a fairly large site (written in PHP) and have differing opinions on how the platform should be setup. **Requirements:** The platform will need to support multiple internal websites, as well as external (non-PHP) projects which at the moment consist of a mobile app and a toolbar. We have no plans/need in the foreseeable future to open up an API externally (for use in products other than our own). **My opinion:** We should have a library of well documented native model classes which can be shared between projects. These models will represent everything in our database and can take advantage of object orientated features such as inheritance, traits, magic methods, etc. etc. As well as employing ORM. We can then add an API layer on top of these models which can basically accept requests and route them to the appropriate methods, translating the response so that it can be used platform independently. This routing for each method can be setup as and when it's required. **Their opinion:** We should have a single HTTP API which is used by all projects (internal PHP ones or otherwise). **My thoughts:** To me, there are a number of issues with using the sole HTTP API approach:   1. It will be very expensive performance wise. One page request will result in several additional http requests (which although local, are still ones that Apache will need to handle).   2. You'll lose all of the best features PHP has for OO development. From simple inheritance, to employing the likes of ORM which can save you writing a lot of code.   3. For internal projects, the actual process makes me cringe. To get a users name, for example, a request would go out of our box, over the LAN, back in, then run through a script which calls a method, JSON encodes the output and feeds that back. That would then need to be JSON decoded, and be presented as an array ready to use.   4. Working with arrays, as appose to objects, makes me sad in a modern PHP framework. **Their thoughts (and my responses):**   1. Having one method of doing thing keeps things simple. - _You'd only do things differently if you were using a different language anyway._   2. It will become robust. - _Seeing as the API will run off the library of models, I think my option would be just as robust._ **What do you think?** I'd be really interested to hear the thoughts of others on this, especially as opinions on both sides are not founded on any past experience."}
{"_id": "216155", "title": "Releasing a project under GPL v2 or later without the source code of libraries", "text": "I wrote a system in Java that I want to release under the terms of GPL v2 or later. I've used Apache Maven to deal with all the dependencies of the system, so I don't have the source code of any of the libraries used. I've already checked, all the libraries were released under GPL-compatible licenses (Apache v2, 3-clause BSD, MIT, LGPL v2 and v2.1). Can I distribute my work under GPLv2 or later and provide the libraries on the same package as **separate works** , without having to apply GPL on them (as stated by **GPLv2 sec 2** ), even if they are necessary to compile and run the system? If so, I know I am bound only by the original licenses of each one, and than I know what to do."}
{"_id": "216154", "title": "Is it possible to access javascript return value outside of function?", "text": "How would one access javascript function's return value outside of the function? For example could you tell a function to return something somewhere else in the code? Theoretical example:               milkmachine = function(argument){         var r;         var k;         //do something with arguments and variables         return r;     }     var rainbow = milkmachine(); //rainbow == r     milkmachine.return(k);     var spectrum = milkmachine(); //spectrum == k"}
{"_id": "156541", "title": "What is the correct order to read these books?", "text": "I'm a junior C# developer, I learned at home and now I got my first job :) I want to buy these books. But what is the correct order to read these books? Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship Pragmatic Programmer"}
{"_id": "220170", "title": "Is it best practice to create a back door for testing a web service?", "text": "We have a public RESTful web service which exposes functionality to third parties. We are writing automated tests against it. In order to set up all scenarios on it we need to change the data behind it. We also have a private RESTful web service which exposes functionality to other systems owned by us. However, this web service does not expose endpoints required to set up all the scenarios for the public web service. In this circumstance is it best to create extra endpoints, not needed in normal operational behaviour, on the private web service in order to support the testing of the public one? Or should we set up our data using other means such as sending SQL commands?"}
{"_id": "163479", "title": "Dealing with Fanboys", "text": "We've all probably met someone like this, that developer who just _knows_ that his language is the one true language and won't shut up about it. How do you deal like someone like this? I don't want to offend anyone (especially since the fanboy in my workplace is the senior developer). But I want to be able to use my own choice of scripting language when I have to write a throwaway script that never makes it to the repository and no one else need know existed. Thoughts that I had to dealing with this:   1. Laugh it off - \"Haha yeah maybe language X is a bit easier, I guess I'm a masochist!\"   2. Go with it - I'd really prefer to avoid this as I can't afford the drop in productivity associated with picking up a new language.   3. Hide my language - Become a closet programmer and hide my monitor whenever I'm scripting or automating something. What would you suggest for this situation?"}
{"_id": "178343", "title": "What is the best practice, point of view of well experienced developers", "text": "My manager pushes me to use his self defined best practices. All of these practices are based on is own assumptions. I disagree with them and I would like to have some feedback of well experienced people about these practices. I would prefer answers from people involved in the maintenance of huge products and people whom have maintained the product for years. Developers with 15+ years of experience are preferred because my manager has that much experience himself. I have 7 years of experience. * * * ## Here are the practices he wants me to use:   * never extends classes, use composition and interface instead because extending classes are unmaintainable and difficult to debug.    * What I think about that   Extend when needed, respect \"Liskov's Substitution Principle\" and you'll never be stuck with a problem, but prefer composition and decoration. I don't know any serious project which has banned inheriting, sometimes it's impossible to not use that, i.e. in a UI framework. Design patterns are just unusable. * * *   * In PHP, for simple use cases (for example a user needs a web interface to view a database table), his \"best practice\" is: copy some random php code wich we own, paste and modify it, put html and php code in same file, never use classes in PHP, it doesn't work well for small jobs, and in fact it doesn't work well at all, there is no good tool to work with. Copy & paste PHP code is good practice for maintenance because scripts are independent, if you have a bug somewhere you can fix it without side effects.   * What I think about that:   NEVER EVER COPY code or do it because you have five minutes to deliver something, you will do some refactoring after that. Copy & paste code is a beginners error, if you have errors you'll have the error everywhere any time you have pasted it's a nightmare to maintain. If you repsect the \"Open Close Principle\" you'll rarely get edge effects, use unit test if you are afraid of that. For small jobs in PHP use at least something you get or write the HTML separately from the PHP code and reuse it any time you need it. Classes in PHP are mature, not as mature as other languages like python or java, but they are usable. There is tools to work with classes in PHP like Zend Studio that work very well. The use of classes or not depends not on the language you use but the programming paradigm you have choosen. I'm a OOP developer, I use PHP5, why do I have to shoot myself in the foot? * * *   * When you find a simple bug in the code, and you can fix it simply, if you are not working on the code where you have found it, never fix it, even if it takes 5 seconds.   * He says to me his \"best practices\" are driven by the fact that he has a lot of experience in maintaining software in production (14 years) and he now knows what works and what doesn't work, what the community says is a fad, and the people advocating such principles as never copy & paste code, are not evolved in maintaining applications.   * What I think about that:   If you find a bug fix it if you can do it quickly inform the people who've touched that code before, check if you have not introduced a new bug, ideally add a unit test for it. I currently work on a web commerce project, which serves 15k unique users per day. The code base has to be maintained and has been maintained this way since 2005. * * * Ideally you include a short description of your position and experience in terms of years effectively maintaining an application which has been in production for real."}
{"_id": "17053", "title": "What is Java used for these days?", "text": "Java is fifteen years old. It started life as an alternative to C++ with a comprehensive standard library. Riding on the coattails of the Internet boom, it was popular for writing web applets. Its supposed portability was touted as a way to write desktop apps that would run on any platform. Now it's 2010. Applets are long gone. Desktop apps are giving way to web and mobile apps. Scripting languages are very popular, as is Flash, especially among web-centric developers. People have been chanting \"Java's death is near\" for several years. Yet a quick job search shows that Java is still a desired skill among programmers. So what is Java used for these days? What kinds of apps are you writing in Java? This should give us an idea of the \"state of Java\" today. Has the Java tide shifted from Swing desktop apps to Android mobile apps? If you write programs in a JVM language (such as Scala or Groovy), mention it."}
{"_id": "208605", "title": "Do sigils make source code easier to read?", "text": "In most programming languages, variables do not have identifying characters like they do in PHP. In PHP you must prefix a variable with the `$` character. Example;                var $foo = \"something\";      echo $foo;      I'm developing a new scripting language for a business application, and my target users do not have a programming background. Do these characters make code easier to read and use? One reason PHP uses the `$` is because without it PHP can't tell if a name is a function reference or variable reference. This is because the language allows strange references to functions. So the `$` symbol helps the parser separate the namespace. I don't have this problem in my parser. So my question is purely on readability and ease of use. I have coded for so many years in PHP that when I see `$foo` it's easy for me to identify this as a variable. Am I just giving a bias preference to this identifier?"}
{"_id": "164125", "title": "What resources are there for facial recognition", "text": "I'm interested in learning the theory behind facial recognition software so that I can hopefully implement it in the future. Not just face tracking, but being able to recognize individuals. What papers, books, libraries, or source is available so that I can learn more about the subject? I have found libface which seems to use eigenfaces for recognition. If there are any practitioners out there, please share any information that you can. Edit: I found a good post on the subject here."}
{"_id": "164128", "title": "Entity Framework with large systems - how to divide models?", "text": "I'm working with a SQL Server database with 1000+ tables, another few hundred views, and several thousand stored procedures. We are looking to start using Entity Framework for our newer projects, and we are working on our strategy for doing so. The thing I'm hung up on is how best to split the tables into different models (EDMX or DbContext if we go code first). I can think of a few strategies right off the bat:   * **Split by schema**   We have our tables split across probably a dozen schemas. We could do one model per schema. This isn't perfect, though, because dbo still ends up being very large, with 500+ tables / views. Another problem is that certain units of work will end up having to do transactions that span multiple models, which adds to complexity, although I assume EF makes this fairly straightforward.   * **Split by intent**   Instead of worrying about schemas, split the models by intent. So we'll have different models for each application, or project, or module, or screen, depending on how granular we want to get. The problem I see with this is that there are certain tables that inevitably have to be used in every case, such as User or AuditHistory. Do we add those to every model (violates DRY I think), or are those in a separate model that is used by every project?   * **Don't split at all - one giant model**   This is obviously simple from a development perspective but from my research and my intuition this seems like it could perform terribly, both at design time, compile time, and possibly run time. What is the best practice for using EF against such a large database? Specifically what strategies do people use in designing models against this volume of DB objects? Are there options that I'm not thinking of that work better than what I have above? Also, is this a problem in other ORMs such as NHibernate? If so have they come up with any better solutions than EF?"}
{"_id": "164129", "title": "Is deserializing complex objects instead of creating them a good idea, in test setup?", "text": "I'm writing tests for a component that takes very complex objects as input. These tests are mixes of tests against already existing components, and test- first tests for new features. Instead of re-creating my input objects (this would be a large chunk of code) or reading one from our data store, I had the thought to serialize a live instance of one of these objects, and just deserialize it into test setup. I can't decide if this is a reasonable idea that will save effort in long run, or whether it's the worst idea that I've ever had, causing those that will maintain this code will hunt me down as soon as they read it. Is deserialization of inputs a valid means of test setup in some cases? To give a sense of scale of what I'm dealing with, the size of serialization output for one of these input objects is 93KB. Obtained by, in C#: `new BinaryFormatter().Serialize((Stream)fileStream, myObject);`"}
{"_id": "179968", "title": "Wiki/markup in enterprise as documentation", "text": "Why it is less common to use wiki/markup in enterprise as documentation? They use Word document instead. Wiki/markup are in text format, which is version control friendly."}
{"_id": "161189", "title": "Macintosh OS10.8 user experience with 'identified developer' downloads?", "text": "I work on a Windows/Mac cross platform application that is sometimes downloaded from web sites. It is sometimes re-branded by and sold by third parties. I'm the 'windows guy', my Mac counterpart is on vacation. I'm getting some questions from a customers about what the Mac user experience will be if we sign the Mac installer with an Apple Developer certificate in our build system with our company name. For some reason this customer doesn't want to sign the app themselves, but doesn't want our company name to pop up in front of the user. Assuming the user's OS 10.8 Gatekeeper is set to allow downloads from both the Apple App Store and from 'identified developers', does the user see any warning dialog that provides certificate information similar to he Windows User Access Control prompts? In my tests it looks like internet downloaded Apple signed apps are just trusted by OS10.8, and will run without anything resembling a Windows UAC prompt. The user experience seems to be: 1) Download application from internet signed by an 'Apple identified developer'. 2) Click the application on web browser download list or using finder. 3) Application installer runs with no warning or caution dialogs. Is this correct? Also, is there some way on OS10.8 for the user to view in human readable form the 'identified developer' certificate information of a signed file?"}
{"_id": "161184", "title": "Using captured non-local variables in C++ closures", "text": "On this wikipedia page I have found the following sentence regarding closures in C++11: > C++11 closures can capture non-local variables by copy or by reference, but > without extending their lifetime. Does this mean that an existing closure might refer to a non-local variable that has already been de-allocated? In such a case, is there any special care / best practice that one has to follow when using captured non-local variables inside a C++ closure?"}
{"_id": "179966", "title": "Requesting quality analysis test cases up front of implementation/change", "text": "Recently I have been assigned to work on a major requirement that falls between a change request and an improvement. The previous implementation was done (badly) by a senior developer that left the company and did so without leaving a trace of documentation.      Here were my initial steps to approach this problem:     1. Considering that the release date was fast approaching and there was no time for slip-ups, I initially asked if the requirement was a \"must have\". Since the requirement helped the product significantly in terms of usability, the answer was \"If possible, yes\".   2. Knowing the wide-spread use and affects of this requirement, had it come to a point where the requirement could not be finished prior to release, I asked if it would be a viable option to thrash the current state and revert back to the state prior to the ex-senior implementation. The answer was \"Most likely: no\".   3. Understanding that the requirement was coming from the higher management, and due to the complexity of it, I asked all usability test cases to be written prior to the implementation (by QA) and given to me, to aid me in the comprehension of this task. This was a big no-no for the folks at the management as they failed to understand this approach. Knowing that I had to insist on my request and the responsibility of this requirement, I insisted and have fallen out of favor with some of the folks, leaving me in a state of \"baffledness\". Basically, I was trying a test-driven approach to a high-risk, high-complexity and must-have requirement and trying to be safe rather than sorry. Is this approach wrong or have I approached it incorrectly? P.S.: The change request/improvement was cancelled and the implementation was reverted back to the prior state due to the complexity of the problem and lack of time. This only happened after a 2 hour long meeting with other seniors in order to convince the aforementioned folks."}
{"_id": "179965", "title": "Functional programming compared to OOP with classes", "text": "I have been interested in some of the concepts of functional programming lately. I have used OOP for some time now. I can see how I would build a fairly complex app in OOP. Each object would know how to do things that object does. Or anything it's parents class does as well. So I can simply tell `Person().speak()` to make the person talk. But how do I do similar things in functional programming? I see how functions are first class items. But that function only does one specific thing. Would I simply have a `say()` method floating around and call it with an equivalent of `Person()` argument so I know what kind of thing is saying something? So I can see the simple things, just how would I do the comparable of OOP and objects in functional programming, so I can modularize and organize my code base? For reference, my primary experience with OOP is Python, PHP, and some C#. The languages that I am looking at that have functional features are Scala and Haskell. Though I am leaning towards Scala. Basic Example (Python):               Animal(object):         def say(self, what):             print(what)          Dog(Animal):         def say(self, what):             super().say('dog barks: {0}'.format(what))          Cat(Animal):         def say(self, what):             super().say('cat meows: {0}'.format(what))          dog = Dog()     cat = Cat()     dog.say('ruff')     cat.say('purr')"}
{"_id": "119288", "title": "Guidance for a C# developer to become better UI developer", "text": "I am a C# developer and had developed simple websites in regular asp.net(with asp.net controls) and a wpf application. Nowadays, I am trying to learn Asp.net MVC3 and I have been exposed to HTML with the Razor view Engine. To be honest, my knowledge of HTML and CSS is limited. Therefore, I keep posting questions now and then on SO for very simple tasks. This has made me very tired of the this Q&A development process. So, now i am thinking of learning the basics of HTML, CSS and maybe some Javascript. Therefore i would request you to guide me to become an efficient enough developer for these technologies. Something that won't take much time and get me up and running fast."}
{"_id": "115073", "title": "Is it Ok to change estimates in the middle of an iteration?", "text": "We have started using Agile/Scrum in a team of 4 developers. We did our story estimations and ordered the stories Primed stories in the product backlog. We started with the point based estimation on the complexity from 1 to 5, instead of usual 1,2,3,5,8,13.... and so on After working on a couple of the stories we felt that some of the stories that was estimated at 4 point should only be 2 while the other which were estimated at 2 are a lot more complex and should have been estimated as 5. I would like to know:   * Is it Ok to change our story estimates in the middle of the iteration?    * Is it Ok to use the current estimation points from 1 to 5, instead of usual 1,2,3,5,8,13.... and so on Although I personally feel that it should be no for both the cases but I need to back myself up as my own understanding is not very clear.(Any good ref material would be good though!)"}
{"_id": "148811", "title": "DB technology for efficient search in tabular data?", "text": "We have a repository of tables. Around 200 tables, each table can be thousands of rows, all tables are originally in Excel sheets. Each table has a different scheme. All data is text or numbers. We would like to create an application that allows free text search on all tables (we define which columns will be searched in each table) efficiently - speed is important. **The main dilemma is which DB technology we should choose.** We created a mock up by importing all tables to MS SQL Server, and creating a full text index over them. The search is done using the CONTAINS keyword. This solution works well for a small number of tables, but it doesn't scale. We thought about a NoSQL solution, but we don't yet have any experience in it. Our limitations (which unfortunately I can not effect): Windows servers only. But we can install on them whatever we want."}
{"_id": "98990", "title": "Using Quadratic Bezier Curves to generate a cave that stays within certain bounds", "text": "I'm working on a project that generates a series of quadratic bezier curves and connects them together, maintaining slope from the end of one segment to the beginning of the next to make the transition smooth. The problem is that while the path is smooth, it tends to go off screen frequently. The way this is done currently:               P0 = new Point(0, gapStart);       P2 = new Point(wallWidth, gapEnd);       P1 = getAnchorPoint();      where:   GapStart is the P2.y of the previous curve   wallWidth is a constant   gapEnd is the one and only random aspect of the cave generation It's the Y value that the curve will end at. The getAnchorPoint function takes points 0 and 2 and generates an anchor point so that the slope at the beginning of this segment is the same as the end of the previous segment. So the main question is, what values can gapEnd be to ensure that the next curve has a gapEnd that won't send the curve off the screen? In other words, how do I determine the min and max values of gapEnd so that the next curve is safe? In addition, it's important that these values don't box the following curve in to being impossible: i.e. they cannot allow for the next curve to not have a possible solution that would allow for continued curve generation. Image of cave generation process"}
{"_id": "238907", "title": "In what situation do Entity Framework enums become useful?", "text": "I am working on a project where there will be plenty of static options being stored in the database. I looked at using Enums for this, but do not see how they could be useful. They do not create any kind of look-up table, just reference a number in the table which can be used in code as an enum option. The number is meaningless to anyone creating SSRS reports and if you need to add an extra option, you need to recompile. Is there a situation where these have a genuine purpose and are a better fit than an entity. Or are they generally a bad practice for the above reasons?"}
{"_id": "111706", "title": "Is it better to use pre-existing bad practices, or good practices that don't fit well with old code?", "text": "I was thinking of this because I was trying to write an extension for an existing 3rd party software, and their database is horribly denormalized. I needed to use their existing tables and add a bunch of new fields. I had the option of either creating new tables in their design style (which consists of almost all the propeties being in one big table), or creating a new set of tables alltogether and using something extra such as Triggers to synchronize data between the new and old tables. I ended up going with the first option of using the existing poor design style, but I was left with this question: **Is it better to go with pre- existing bad practices, or to implement good practices that do not play nicely with existing code? Is there some situations where I should choose one over the other?** NOTE: Many answers so far have to do with slowly refactoring the bad code, however I am unable to do that. The code is not ours, and it frequently gets updated by the vendor. I can only build onto it."}
{"_id": "175766", "title": "How are requirements determined in open source software projects?", "text": "In corporate in-house software development it is common for requirements to be determined through a formal process resulting in the creation of a number of requirements documents. In open source software development, this often seems to be absent. Hence, my question is: how are requirements determined in open source software projects? By \"determining requirements\" I simply mean \"figuring out what features etc. should be developed as part of a specific software\"."}
{"_id": "119131", "title": "Security issues with freelancing work on an existing website", "text": "I currently have a website that has been recently completed. I'm contemplation using a freelance service such as SO for all future components. There is a considerable amount of work to be completed on-top of the existing infrastructure. I've tried searching for an answer to this question, but it's so generic in terms that it's difficult. My site is fairly complex using relational databases, MySQL, PHP, Javascript, JQuery, and Ajax. I'm concerned about using a freelance worker on the site in regards to giving them admin access to the server and allowing them to access the existing databases. Is there a tried and true way to handle / manage this? I'm open to allowing it, but what safety precautions and other ideas do you have to prevent mischief?"}
{"_id": "130863", "title": "How to apply DRY to files shared by repositories?", "text": "I've got a few files which are used in several of my repos:   * `functions.sh`, shell library to for example print a colored warning/error message or the documentation of a script file.   * `Makefile`; a standardized one which installs the file `$(CURDIR)/[dirname].sh` to `$(PREFIX)/[dirname]` and references a test script.   * `LICENSE`.   * `tools.mk`; Makefile commands to for example print all the variable definitions in the parent `Makefile`. These are more or less stable, and some are used in probably over a dozen repos. I've been thinking _how to keep this DRY_ , but none of the options so far seem satisfactory:   1. Keep doing it like now, creating a **copy for each new repo.** This keeps the code together with all its dependencies (avoiding bugs when the general solution is not general enough), but changes which are applicable in multiple places have to be applied in each separately.   2. Add an **executable** to each of the repositories to **download the files** needed. This means that developers and end users will have to run an extra command to get all the relevant files, and it breaks the possibility for developers to modify and `commit`/`push` the included files.   3. Use **`git submodule` or equivalent.** This at least keeps the repositories connected, but in the Git case it seems like it's restricted to \"a dedicated subdirectory\", so no top-level files, and no mixing with parent repository files which belong in the same directory. This could be circumvented with symlinks, but that's an ugly workaround for the obvious ideal situation. The _ideal solution_ should:   1. **Communicate with the correct repository** when doing an operation on a file.   2. Allow includes in the **same directories as the parent directory**.   3. **A single, simple command** should be enough to update the entire repository and all includes, no matter how many or how deeply nested.   4. Allow includes in the **top-level directory**.   5. **Not incur** significant developer or user **constraints** (must be online while installing) or **extra work** (running a \"pre-install\" command separately from the \"install\" command).   6. Allow **\"cherry-picking\" of files** to include. Many projects might need a different `Makefile`, for example, and including one which is not used is just ugly (and would get uglier as more files are added). Is this sort of thing possible with current software?"}
{"_id": "162985", "title": "Windows 8 development in Mac", "text": "Is there any way to start programming for Windows 8 mobile on Mac OS X platform. I'm already programming for iOS and want to developing for Windows 8 mobile but don't want to install Windows."}
{"_id": "162987", "title": "Is scanning the ports considered harmful?", "text": "If any application is scanning the ports of other machines, to find out whether any particular service/application is running, will it be considered harmful? Is this treated as hacking? How else can one find out on which port the desired application is running (without the user input)? Let's say I only know the port range in which the other application could be running, but not the exact port. In this case, my application ping each of the port in range to check whether the other application is listening on it, using already defined protocol. Is this a normal design? Or is this considered harmful for the security?"}
{"_id": "221465", "title": "Random access (read/write) in datastructures", "text": "Certain datastructures, like Python's Dictionary, are unordered/random read/written. As programming in python is iterative (and programming in general is?), how do these unordered datastructures work? I understand that Python's Dictionary is in essence a hashtable. But I figured that the datastructure gets stored in the memory by order of inserting, and are thus read, when iterating over the full datastructure, in a similar order. But this is not the case. Aside from not understanding how this works, I also wonder of the benefit of this. But that may be all too clear when I understand how it works :) ps. Didn't think this was a StackOverflow Question, so put it here..."}
{"_id": "212271", "title": "Is such modification allowed by GPL? Which licences allow this which not?", "text": "Assume that I have **library X** which contains **class A** with **method b** and that library X is realeased under **GPL licence**.               public class A {       public void b() {          // this is an example of b method's body. But assume that the body of method b           // is very complex          System.out.println(\"operation a\");          System.out.println(\"operation b\");          System.out.prinltn(\"operation c\");        }         }      Assume that I am using library X and that I need a behaviour similar to the behaviour of the method b but with one addtition which I cannot achieve by simple extension of class A and overriding some of theirs methods. **The first question is:** May I extend class A and override method b in shown below way and is it really still allowed by the GPL licence.               public class AExt extends A {       public void b() {          // this is an example of b method's body. But assume that the body of method b           // is very complex          System.out.println(\"operation a\");          System.out.println(\"operation b\");          doOperationINeed();          System.out.prinltn(\"operation c\");        }         }      **The 2nd question is:** Which from the common used opensource licences allow such extension and which do not?"}
{"_id": "116050", "title": "Filesystems that use logging: If you're writing the data in the log (on disk), and in the actual locations themselves (also on disk) then...?", "text": "Aren't you essentially writing the same data twice, to the disk? Doesn't this cause a slowdown of a factor of ~2x? What optimizations can be made to minimize the cost of having to write things twice?"}
{"_id": "151011", "title": "SQL Strings vs. Conditional SQL Statements", "text": "Is there an advantage to piecemealing sql strings together vs conditional sql statements in SQL Server itself? I have only about 10 months of SQL experience, so I could be speaking out of pure ignorance here. Where I work, I see people building entire queries in strings and concatenating strings together depending on conditions. For example:               Set @sql = 'Select column1, column2 from Table 1 '          If SomeCondtion         @sql = @sql + 'where column3 = ' + @param1     else         @sql = @sql + 'where column4 = ' + @param2      That's a real simple example, but what I'm seeing here is multiple joins and huge queries built from strings and then executed. Some of them even write out what's basically a function to execute, including Declare statements, variables, etc. Is there an advantage to doing it this way when you could do it with just conditions in the sql itself? To me, it seems a lot harder to debug, change and even write vs adding cases, if-elses or additional where parameters to branch the query."}
{"_id": "151013", "title": "What is the best C++ source code to read for a beginner?", "text": "I'm trying to improve my c++ coding technique by reading c++ source code. Which open source project would you recommend? Is the code of Boost C++ Libraries a good one?"}
{"_id": "189079", "title": "Storing in-text metadata in a discrete data structure", "text": "I am developing an application which will need to store _inline_ , _intext_ metadata. What I mean by that is the following: let's say we have a long text, and we want to store some metadata connected with a specific word, or sentence of the text. What would be the best way to store this information? My **first thought** was to include in the text some kind of **`Markdown` syntax** that would then be parsed on retrieving. Something looking like this:               Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit,     sed diam __nonummy nibh__[@note this sounds really funny latin]     euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.      This would introduce two problems I can think of:   1. A relatively small one, is that if said syntax happen to be fortuitously on the said text, it can mess with the parsing.   2. The most important one is that this doesn't maintain this metadata **separate** from the text itself. I would like to have a discrete data structure to hold this data, such a different DB Table in which these metadatas are stored, so that I could use them in discrete ways: querying, statistics, sorting, and so on. * * * **EDIT:** Since the answerer deleted his answer, I think it might be good to add his suggestion here, since it was a _workable_ suggestion that expanded on this first concept. The poster suggested to use a similar syntax, but to link the metadata to the `PRIMARY KEY` of the `metadata` database table. Something that would look like this:               Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit,     sed diam __nonummy nibh__[15432]     euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.      Where `15432` would be the `ID` of a table row containing the necessary, queriable information, as per example below. * * * My **second thought** was to store information of this kind in a DB Table looking like this:               TABLE: metadata          ID    TEXT_ID    TYPE    OFFSET_START    OFFSET_END    CONTENT     1     lipsum     note    68              79            this sounds really funny latin      In this way the metadata would have a unique id, a `text_id` as a foreign key connected to table storing the texts and it would connect the data with the text itself by using a simple character **offset range**. This would do the trick of keeping the _data_ separated from the _metadata_ , but a problem that I can immediately see with this approach is that the text would be fundamentally _not editable_. Or, if I wanted to implement the editing of the text after the assignation of metadata, I would basically have to calculate characters additions, or removal compared to the previous version, and check whether **each** of this modifications adds or remove characters before or after **each** of the associated metadata. Which, to me, sounds like a really unelegant approach. Do you have any pointers or suggestions for how I could approach the problem? * * * ### Edit 2: some XML problems Adding another case which would make quite necessary for this separation of data and metadata to happen.   * Let's say I want to make it possible for different users to have **different metadata sets of the same text** , with or without the possibility of each user actually displaying the other user metadata. Any solution of the _markdown_ kind (or HTML, or XML) would be difficult to implement at this point. The only solution in this case that I could think about would be to have yet another DB Table which would contain the single user version of the original text, connecting to the original text table by the use of a `FOREIGN KEY`. Not sure if this is very elegant either.   * **XML has a hierarchical data model:** any element which happens to be _within_ the borders of another element is considered as its _child_ , which is most often not the case in the data model I'm looking for; in XML any _children_ element must be closed before the _parent_ tag can be closed, allowing for no overlapping of elements. Example: > `<note content=\"the beginning of the famous placeholder\">` _Lorem ipsum > dolor sit_ `<comment content=\"I like the sound of amet/elit\">` _amet_ > `</note>`, _consectetuer adipiscing elit_ `</comment>` _,_ `<note > content=\"adversative?\">` _sed diam_ **`<note content=\"funny latin\">`** > _nonummy_ `</note>` _nibh_ **`</note>`** _euismod tincidunt ut laoreet > dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat._ Here we have two different problems:   1. **Different elements overlapping:** The first comment starts within the first note, but ends after the end of the first note, i.e. it's not its child.   2. **Same elements overlapping:** The last note and the boldfaced note overlap; however, since they are the same kind of element, the parser would close the lastly opened element at the first closure, and the first opened element at the last closure, which, in this circumstance, is not what is intended."}
{"_id": "245563", "title": "Is there a standard way of cleaning data files?", "text": "Having spent quite a lot of time working in software companies that deal in medium to large data sets, I've seen that a choke point in their processes is often prepping data files for loading into databases. For example, searching for formatting errors, peculiar whitespace or line-end characters, wrangling with Unicode formats, that sort of thing. Everyone I've ever known deals with this in a bespoke manner because the requirements are so varied and often unique to the companies involved. I normally just fiddle about in a combination of hex editors, excel, powershell and SQL to get the job done. But this is such a perennial problem that I find it hard to believe that there isn't some standards already in place to take some of the basic grunt-work out of the process. Is there a standard technique that is tailored for the purpose of cleaning data files?"}
{"_id": "245564", "title": "Broadcasting - Listening to replies", "text": "We use JS by the way, but I think it's language agnostic. I'm open to ideas. We have this \"pub-sub\" framework that we use at work to fix the problem of tightly-coupled code. Works fine. Modules listen to events, things run, broadcasts events, more things run. It's amazing. However... For instance I wanted to click on a link to open a modal, modify the passed data, and send it back to the called. Sending it to the modal would be as simple as broadcasting an event with the data. Modal, subscribed to the event, responds and does some alteration to the data. The problem is getting the data back to the caller. Scenarios:   * Module broadcasts an event, and at the same time listens to an event in the hopes of a response (event from another module). How would I know that the response was in effect of the event that was broadcast just before it?   * Another is that I plan to send out a callback function with the data sent through the event. That way, the receivers can just call the callback with the data from their side. However, the module would be receiving an unknown amount of callback calls, depending on how many subscribers. The scenario is more of directed messaging, which is somewhat contradictory to the fire-and-forget nature of a broadcast. Are there any patterns which still maintains loose coupling, modularity and the \"unknown to the other\" type of architecture?"}
{"_id": "114662", "title": "So many alternative languages available, is it good to read and implement application using those?", "text": "I meant alternative languages not in sense **if not Java use C#**. But I meant **if not Java use Groovy, Jruby etc, if not HTML use HAML** and so on. Yes, there are many alternative languages available, which makes coding fun and reduce the developers works. Trying these languages is good or bad? Well learning new things never going to hurt, these alternative languages are pretty easy to read and write them. As a student for example, using Groovy I can create a Swing based application easily and it would take very less lines of code when compared to Java. When I enter into a IT company where they use Java to build the Swing applications, will it be tough for me to build in Java(because I have used alternative languages a lot in my college days)? ### Note: Example is given with Java and Groovy, but I need an answer that is common. Hope my question is clear enough!"}
{"_id": "189073", "title": "How to deal with too much pragmatism in the project?", "text": "My team and I took over a medium sized codebase over a year ago when the previous tech lead left the company. Originating from the lack of man power I fear we favored _pragmatic_ solutions over best practices a little too much. Now, I have to deal with a constant decline in code quality and some kind of _organic growth_ of day-to-day processes. I regret that when asked for code conventions a year ago I basically gave _common sense_ as the only rule. Soon I had programmers using different syntactic styles and failing to see the difficulties this induces in a merge process. Another example is my push for database migration scripts. I tried to incorporate Flyway into our process but after only a week I was quickly overruled by my boss. Even despite me warning them about the upcoming mandatory use of database migration scripts and providing them with as many clues, hints and tools to mitigate the problem of not starting applications because of missing or failing migrations they decided that it would be best do complain to my boss about them not being able to do their work. I forcefully disabled Flyway again and we now live with migration steps in arbitrary named SQL files on a network share that you have to remember to apply to the respective database at the right time. One problem in our process was that we never did formal code reviews. So a lot of _hacks_ went under the radar and into the code base without someone noticing on time. Nowadays I tend to read checkins of my team mates when there is time (that's not often the case) but there is no automatic process to prevent unwanted changes. It is up to me to go to the developer in question and try to ease them into acknowledging why their code is bad. I thought to introduce lint-like tools like FindBugs and Checkstyle but I fear I would face the same psychological problems like I did with the database migrations. After all I would make their jobs harder for them and I can understand why this might lead to misunderstandings. So my question is: How can I go about improving our process and our code quality in an environment where _getting the job done_ is valued much higher than _doing it right_?"}
{"_id": "142882", "title": "Submitting software to a competition, it becomes their property?", "text": "So I'm about to submit a game to a competition, but as I looked through the rules a chunk grabbed my attention: > All Entries become the sole and exclusive property of Sponsor and will not > be acknowledged or returned. Sponsor shall own all right, title and interest > in and to each Entry, including without limitation all results and proceeds > thereof and all elements or constituent parts of Entry (including without > limitation the Mobile App, the Design Documents, the Video Trailer, the > Playable and all illustrations, logos, mechanicals, renderings, characters, > graphics, designs, layouts or other material therein) and all copyrights and > renewals and extensions of copyrights therein and thereto. Without > limitation of the foregoing, each Eligible Entrant shall and hereby does > absolutely and irrevocably assign and transfer all of his or her right, > title and interest in his or her Entry to Sponsor, and Sponsor shall have > the right and may authorize others to use, copy, sublicense, transmit, > modify, manipulate, publish, delete, reproduce, perform, distribute, display > and otherwise exploit the Entry (and to create and exploit derivative works > thereof) in any manner, including without limitation to embody the Entry, in > whole or in part, in apps and other works of any kind or nature created, > developed, published or distributed by Sponsor and to and register as a > trademark in any country in Sponsor\u2019s name any component of the Entry, > without such Eligible Entrant reserving any rights or claims with respect > thereto. Sponsor shall have the exclusive right, in perpetuity, throughout > the Territory to change, adapt, modify, use, combine with other material and > otherwise exploit the Entry in all media now known or hereafter devised and > in any manner, in its sole and absolute discretion, without the need for any > payment or credit to Entrant. So the game will become the sponsor's property; however, they don't ask for source code. So will I still own the rights to the source code, whatever that means? And if it doesn't win said competition, will I be able to publish it myself without their trademarks? I am very new to software legality stuff, so I would appreciate any clarification. Since there's a possibility I won't even own the source, is it possible to make the game core engine open source software with a not-very-restrictive license and include that in the project, so I at least still own the game engine? Or does it not work that way?"}
{"_id": "22568", "title": "What's the best way to explain branching (of source code) to a client?", "text": "The situation is that a client requested a number of changes about 9 months ago which they then put on hold with them half done. They've now requested more changes without having made up their mind to proceed with the first set of changes. The two sets of changes will require alterations to the same code modules. I've been tasked with explaining why them not making a decision about the first set of changes (either finish them or bin them) may incur additional costs (essentially because the changes would need to be made to a branch then if they proceed with the first set of changes we'd have to merge them to the trunk - which will be messy - and retest them). The question I have is this: How best to explain branching of code to a non-technical client?"}
{"_id": "142880", "title": "Why do HDFS clusters have only a single NameNode?", "text": "I'm trying to understand better how Hadoop works, and I'm reading > The NameNode is a Single Point of Failure for the HDFS Cluster. HDFS is not > currently a High Availability system. When the NameNode goes down, the file > system goes offline. There is an optional SecondaryNameNode that can be > hosted on a separate machine. It only creates checkpoints of the namespace > by merging the edits file into the fsimage file and does not provide any > real redundancy. Hadoop 0.21+ has a BackupNameNode that is part of a plan to > have an HA name service, but it needs active contributions from the people > who want it (i.e. you) to make it Highly Available. from http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/NameNode So why is the NameNode a single point of failure? What is bad or difficult about having a complete duplicate of the NameNode running as well?"}
{"_id": "189077", "title": "Managing Alerts in Web Application Using RESTful API", "text": "I have designed a RESTful API and I am now working on creating a web application to use the service. One thing I am struggling with is how to manage alerts in the web application (similar to the alerts stackoverflow gives in your profile for a new answer, response etc). Basically the web application is a workflow between a user and his clients. Certain tasks have to be completed in order, and the web application alerts both the user and his clients of any actions. The user also gets alerted to any client actions that are outstanding. The way I have my architecture setup at the moment is that the API has no knowledge of alerts. It simply stores the resources that are retrieved by the web application. To work out if an alert needs to be displayed, the web application looks at all the resources, and based on a set of rules, decides what alerts need to be displayed. The problem I have is that I'm not sure this is a very efficient way to do things. There are a number of different alerts that can be displayed, and they depend on different API resources which will all need to be retrieved when a user or client logs in. My question: Is this the best way to achieve what I want, or are there other methods which are better to use and will help decrease web application load time and api calls?"}
{"_id": "189074", "title": "How Do Computers Process Conditional/Input/ Event Based Code?", "text": "I understand that computers are basically a complex system of electrical signatures that can calculate based on logic boards, and some sort of gate mechanism, but how do computers process something like if the number produced by the keyboard is less than 10, or if a mouse is clicked two times in a certain amount of time it equals a double click?"}
{"_id": "233416", "title": "How to compare and relate together the concept of DBMS to the concept of Cloud Storage system?", "text": "I am a student of Computer Science and I am writing my disseration on a **Cloud Storage** application developed in the company for wich I work. My problem is the following one: my supervisor (the teacher that is that oversee my work) ask me to execute a **comparison** between the **Database Concept** and the **Cloud Storage system** that I am presenting in the disseration. He raccomended to me to focus on the **ACID** property that have to be guaranteed in a DBMS concept but, in some way, also in a Cloud Storage application (for example if I put a new file into my Cloud Storage account this operation have to be durable in time, and so on for the others ACID properties) My problem is how to link together the DBMS concept with the Cloud Storage concept. I have write some pages following this street (and I ask you if it could be a good way to link togheter these 2 arguments that, in my opinion, are pretty different...):   1. I describe wath is a **DBMS** as something that decouples the data model seen by applications from the physical representation of the same data on the hard drive.   2. I describe the **Relational Model** (and the concept of **RDBMS** as the classic model to access data). In this section I introduce the concept of relational algebra and I speack about of the **limits of the Relational Model** in the Cloud Context speacking about of **scalability problems** and about **low performance when accessing data in particular contexts** (mainly caused by the **JOIN** operator).   3. Starting from the previous problem of _low performance when accessing data in particular contexts_ * I explain why the **JOIN** operator is the cause and I speack about of the **Object Oriented Databae** as possibile solution of this problem (an object attribute could be the reference to another object and so I often no need the use of JOIN operator to relate together 2 objects but simply I have to follow a pointer, in this way the temporal complexity is dropped from **O(n)** to **O(1)** ensuring performance incredibly higher when the number of data access is hight).   4. Then I put in relaction the presented concept of **Object Oriented Database** to the **Cloud Storage System** developed, stating that they could be see as similar tools because the server that implement our Cloud Storage System use an **object storage architecture** designed to manage petabytes of information and billions of objects across multiple geographic locations as a single system. An **Object storage** is a storage architecture that manages data as objects...and this concept is pretty similar to how **Object Oriented DBMS** see the data.   5. Finally I speack about the **ACID** properties explaining the importance of these properties in the transaction managment of a DBMS (both RDBMS and OODBMS) and traslating these properties into the **Cloud Storage** context. (for example if I put a new file into my Cloud Storage account this operation have to be durable in time, and so on for the others ACID properties). What do you think about this way to relate the DBMS topic with the Cloud Storage Topic? it makes sense or is it a stretch? Other ideas are welcome Tnx Andrea"}
{"_id": "114289", "title": "Ethics of collecting non-identifiable information on install", "text": "I wrapping up an application I'm writing that I'm hoping will get a decent user base. It will be free and open source, but I'm interested in collecting some analytic data on the install base. Essentially a small version of Google Analytics, but for a desktop application instead of a website. Details I would like to collect are:   * Previous App Version (if any)   * Current App Version   * OS Version   * Regional Geographic Location (Country/City level only, probably IP based).   * Unique System Hash (To determine # of unique installs) I have a feeling that the first three could probably be done with no real worries as they are data points gathered by pretty much EVERY website in existence without ever asking permission. Geographic location I'm still fairly comfortable is OK. Again, collected by every website out there... and heck, they even get your actual IP. I wouldn't get this, but actually resolve the geo location client side and send ONLY that. All this data would probably be submitted to a google docs form, so I wouldn't have IP access even at the collection level. I'm a little more worried about the unique system hash as people might see this as identifiable. However, my current thought is to gather the systems motherboard and CPU serial, concatenate them together and then create a hash (probably MD5) out of that string. Same thing that's done with passwords, no way to reverse it so really NO way to discern who the data actually belongs to. You'd have to have that specific hash from every computer along with their owner info to match them up. So, I'm probably fine, but I just want to cover my ass here. Any thoughts from the community as to if the data I want to collect is reasonable or if there are some data points I should not collect (or none at all). As previously mentioned, the application will be totally open source, so they would be more than able to look at the code and verify that no questionable data is sent. The only thing I might be tempted to \"hide\" is the actual address of the collection form, purely so someone doesn't decide to spam it with bogus data (maybe I'm being to paranoid). As it is, the app uses some web APIs for which I have personal keys that cannot be given away in the checked in source, so I have a file that is omitted from source control that contains things like those API keys. The application still works without them, just in a more limited fashion and anyone could get a key of their own and compile to make it full featured. I figure I could put the form URL in this section. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "165453", "title": "What is the right way to group this project into classes?", "text": "I originally asked this on SO, where it was closed and recommended that I ask it here instead. I'm trying to figure out how to group all the functions necessary for my project into classes. The goal of the project is to execute the following process:   1. Get the user's FTP credentials (username & password).   2. Check to make sure the credentials establish a valid connection to the FTP server.   3. Query several Sharepoint lists and join the results of those queries to create a list of items that need to have action taken on them.   4. Each item in the list has a folder. For each item:      * Zip the contents of the folder.     * Upload the folder to the FTP server using SFTP     * Update the item's Sharepoint data.   5. Email the user an Excel report showing, e.g.,      * Items without folder paths     * Items that failed to zip or upload Steps 2-5 are performed on a periodic basis; if step 2 returns an invalid connection, the user is alerted and the process returns to step 1. If at any point the user presses a certain key, the process terminates. I've defined the following set of classes, each of which is in its own .cs file: `SFTP`: file transfer processes `DataHandler`: Sharepoint data retrieval/querying/updating processes. Also makes and uploads the zip files. `Exceptions`: Not just one class, this is the .cs file where I have all of my exception classes. `Report`: Builds and sends the report. `Program`: The main class for running the program. I recognize that the DataHandler class is a god object, but I don't have a good idea of how to refactor it. I feel like it should be more fine-grained than just breaking it into Sharepoint, Zip, and Upload, but maybe that's it. Also, I haven't yet worked out how to combine the periodic behavior with the \"wait for user input at any point in the process\" part; I think that involves threads, which means other classes to manage the threads... I'm not that well-versed in design patterns, but is there one that fits this project well? If this is too big of a topic to neatly explain in an SO answer, I'll also accept a link to a good tutorial on what I'm trying to do here."}
{"_id": "235504", "title": "Branch per feature: What are the actual benefits (and risks)?", "text": "I've read quite a lot of posts lately about different branching strategies (e.g a lot of links from To branch or not to branch?), and while almost every article explains on how to do this or that strategy they rarely explain the why. Currently our team is investigating whether or not to switch to \"feature branches\". We're currently using a \"everyone commits to trunk\" model and we have release branches, which we use to do hotfixes to previous releases. All in all, this model has worked very well in the past. So actually I'd say - if it ain't broken, don't fix it. However, there might be a point that I'm missing, so I'd like to ask: What are actual tangible benefits of using a feature branch strategy over \"everyone commits to trunk\"? What are the drawbacks of feature branches in your experience?"}
{"_id": "114282", "title": "What can I do to keep my skills sharp without the internet?", "text": "This probably sounds like a funny question from the graybeards out there, but I seriously don't know what I'm supposed to do without the Google to offer help. Long story short, I'm planning on being pulled away for a deployment overseas. Things I can expect from this:   * lots of downtime   * effectively no internet   * probably electricity I will be bringing a laptop with me, but I'm making an assumption that what little internet access I do have will probably be spent talking to my kids and family via Skype and IM. To add to that, the internet overseas is controlled tightly, so no USB sticks, external HD, or connecting my laptop up. What I can see on the screen will be probably all I can take away from it (when or if I have it at all). * * * I'm looking for ideas on things I can download on my laptop for a lengthy time away from the internet. I'm not too concerned which platform, language, or kit I download, since I will have alot of time to get proficient at anything. I really just want a fairly self-contained, well-documented and rich environment that I could download the whole thing and not feel the internet is even necessary to code in it. Am I asking too much in this always-on Internet connected world?"}
{"_id": "207296", "title": "How do you learn to take a more OO approach to problems?", "text": "I have been learning C# and am trying to tackle some common projects / works of my own to become even better. Currently I am working on understanding the Mars Rover Problem. I read the description and have seen several solutions, they seem nice and follow the principles of OO design.   * How do you come to understand what classes you need to make for a project?   * Is there a book I can read to grasp the concept of OO design better? I understand in theory, but I just don't get how and what I would do when actually given a problem. For instance I see the Mars Rover problem and instantly in my head I think Ok I can get that done with just 3 classes, a Rover, Grid and a CommandCenter class. Then I look at online examples and there are a lot more classes, interfaces and overall breakdown."}
{"_id": "172917", "title": "Learning good OOP design and unlearning some bad habits", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What books or resources would you recommend to learn practical OO design > and development concepts? I have been mostly a C programmer so far in my career with knowledge of C++. I rely on C++ mostly for the convenience STL provides and I hardly ever focus on good design practices. As I have started to look for a new job position, this bad habit of mine has come back to haunt me. During the interviews, I have been asked to design a problem (like chess, or some other scenario) using OOP and I doing really badly at that (I came to know this through feedback from one interview). I tried to google stuff and came up with so many opinions and related books that I don't know where to begin. I need a good through introduction to OOP design with which I can learn practical design, not just theory. Can you point me to any book which meets my requirements? I prefer C++, but any other language is fine as long as I can pick-up good practices. Also, I know that books can only go so far. I would also appreciate any good practice project ideas that helped you learn and improve your OOP concepts."}
{"_id": "117957", "title": "Local Stack vs Call Stack", "text": "On the matter of Recursion: When you create a recursive function, you create a call stack. Ok, no problem; However, a comment on this page (look for comments by \"LKM\") triggered my curiosity (and google was no help):   * What is a local stack?   * Why would it be faster than a call stack?   * How would you actually implement it (pseudo-code, js/php/ruby/python are ok)? Subsidiary question (might deserve another question, but I don't know on which (.*\\\\.)?stack.*\\\\.com to ask): In these conversations about programming, I often see the \"recursion\" theme and how bad/newbie programmers don't grok it. I'm self-taught, and I never understood what the big fuss is all about. I use recursion a lot in my everyday coding, both for solving problems and sometimes just because I think they are beautiful. But these articles make me feel like maybe there is something there I just don't see. So:   * What's all the fuss about recursion? What's there not to grok?"}
{"_id": "117956", "title": "Many small scripts, one repository or multiple?", "text": "A co-worker and myself have run into an issue that we have multiple opinions on. Currently we have a git repository that we are keeping all of our cronjobs in. There are about 20 crons and they are not really related except for the fact that they are all small python scripts and essential for some activity. We are using a `fabric.py` file to deploy and a `requirements.txt` file to manage requirements for all of the scripts. Our issue is basically, do we keep all of these scripts in one git repository or should we be separating them out into their own repositories? By keeping them in one repository it is easier to deploy them onto one server. We can use just one cron file for all the scripts. However this feels wrong, as the 20 cronjobs are not logically related. Additionally, when using one `requirements.txt` file for all the scripts, it's hard to figure out what the dependencies are for a particular script and they all have to use the same versions of packages. We could separate all of the scripts out into their own repositories but this creates 20 different repositories that need to be remembered and dealt with. Most of these scripts are not very large and that solution seems to be overkill. A related question is, do we use one big crontab file for all cronjobs, or a separate file for each? If each has their own, how does one crontab's installation avoid overwriting the other 19? This also seems like a pain as there would then by 20 different cron files to keep track of. In short, our main question and issue is do we keep them all closely bundled as one repository or do we separate them out into their own repository with their own requirements.txt and fabfile.py? We feel like we're also probably looking over some really simple solution. Is there an easier way to deal with this issue?"}
{"_id": "55423", "title": "Month long creative challenges for programmers?", "text": "Does anybody know of any one month creative challenges for programmers, sort of like National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMonth) but for programmers. One month in which you must create something, not just a series of challenges for you to overcome, or problems for you to solve. Something like: National Website Building Month (NaWebBuMo), or National Game Building Month (NaGaBuMo), but real instead of fabrications spun from my mind? I'm looking for something that asks that you have a (relatively) finished product at the end of thirty days."}
{"_id": "32421", "title": "Distance Education in Computer Science - HCI", "text": "I have been a software engineer / graphic designer for a few years and have recently been considering furthering my education in the field. (It was actually a very generous Christmas present) I would primarily be interested in something like Human Computer Interaction or a similar \"creative technology\" that involves heavy UI/UX Design, prototyping or Information Architecture. Anyways - I still plan on working full-time and was looking into part-time distance programs and was wondering if anyone had some experience with pursuing a similar degree (either from a distance or in-person) and could share their experiences. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "207401", "title": "Writing Tests for Existing Code", "text": "Suppose one had a relatively large program (say 900k SLOC in C#), all commented/documented thoroughly, well organized and working well. The entire code base was written by a single senior developer who no longer with the company. All the code is testable as is and IoC is used throughout--except for some strange reason they did not write any unit tests. Now, your company wants to branch the code and wants unit tests added to detect when changes break the core functionality.   * Is adding tests a good idea?   * If so, how would one even start on something like this? **EDIT** OK, so I had not expected answers making good arguments for opposite conclusions. The issue may be out of my hands anyway. I've read through the \"duplicate questions\" as well and the general consensus is that \"writing tests is good\"...yeah, but not too helpful in this particular case. I don't think I am alone here in contemplating writing tests for a legacy system. I'm going to keep metrics on how much time is spent and how many times the new tests catch problems (and how many times they don't). I'll come back and update this a year or so from now with my results. **CONCLUSION** So it turns out that it is basically impossible to just add unit test to existing code with any semblance of orthodoxy. Once the code is working you obviously cannot red-light/green-light your tests, it usually not clear which behaviors are important to test, not clear where to begin and certainly not clear when you are finished. Really even asking this question misses the main point of writing tests in the first place. In the majority of cases I found it actually easier to re-write the code using TDD than to decipher the intended functions and retroactively add in unit tests. When fixing a problem or adding a new feature it is a different story, and I believe that this is the time to add unit tests (as some pointed out below). Eventually most code gets rewritten, often sooner than you'd expect--taking this approach I've been able to add test coverage to a surprisingly large chunk of the existing codebase."}
{"_id": "67295", "title": "How do you learn to program?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  I still can't figure out how to program?   >  I'm graduating with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I know > how to program I don't known if you guys have super brains specifically for programming but I would like to know how you do manage to learn, understand and apply Java programming. I am in grade 11 and we have learnt statements, objects, classes and arrays. We get programming test each week and I'm failing them. Now we have a project to do BlackJack using a JPanel form. Also memorizing the while loop is not the problem; I think that the problem is applying it to the situation (my friend never programs the same way as the teacher but still gets the same results)."}
{"_id": "207408", "title": "Is it necessary to map integers to bits in a genetic algorithm?", "text": "From what I've read, genetic algorithms are usually (always?) applied to chromosomes of bits. So if a problem involves maximizing a function that takes integer values, the integers are first encoded as bits. Is this mapping necessary? It seems that you could take chromosomes of integers and apply crossover and mutation directly. So, if I have a function that takes 35 integer inputs, I can just apply the genetic operators to those integers, rather than on the 35xB bits (where B is the number of bits needed to encode an integer). Is there a reason this isn't done? Perhaps the algorithm would suffer because the problem is defined more coarsely (that is, a problem can be defined with shorter chromosomes if we're not using bits), but I'm curious if anyone has a better answer."}
{"_id": "98340", "title": "Is there a license where all rights are granted?", "text": "The licenses I know, including open source and the less restrictive ones like BSD, make it mandatory to:   * Retain the copyright notice, and/or:   * Indicate that the precise part of source code was written by the original author. Let's say I want to share source code I've written and I want to grant all rights, including the right to:   * Remove the copyright notice or substitute another one,   * Sell the source code or use it in a commercial product with no restrictions,   * Never indicate that this source code was written by me\u00b9, but at the same time disclaim any warranty as it is the case in BSD license. Are there licenses which match this case? Note: public domain is not a solution, since the term is unclear and change from one country to another. * * * \u00b9 Why would anyone do that? Because we all have pieces of code which are not worth real licensing, but still useful for the community (example: removing diacritics from a text). Providing it \"completely free\" is in this case much for friendly that saying that in order to use your code, the person must read a few paragraphs or pages of an UNREADABLE ALL CAPITAL text, understand it, accept it, and then copy-paste your name and copyright notice every time the code is used."}
{"_id": "102452", "title": "Switch to Java?", "text": "I have been doing .NET and MS tech/arcitecture for 4+ years. I have reached a dead end in my current job and is considering moving to a new job. Most of the current available jobs in my city are Java based. J2EE and the like. Is it wise to leave all those years of experience and start from scratch in the Java world?"}
{"_id": "88714", "title": "Possibility to switch over to Java from .Net", "text": "I am an MCA fresher and will be working on dot Net for next few months (almost 10-12 months). After that I want to switch over to Java. How is the possibility that I can switch over to it? What type of preparation I am supposed to do? I am also planning to appear for SCJP but don't have any knowledge how to get registered an registration fees. Please also guide me what is company's approach towards the candidates switching their technologies. What are the things that companies look for?"}
{"_id": "110076", "title": "Planning Poker and wordy developers", "text": "My team is composed of 4 developers; all seasoned and skilled. One of them is a wordy, well intended chap who insists on defining the technical solution to our stories before we put down our estimates with Planning Poker. He refuses to estimate if he doesn't have a rough idea of the agreed technical solution (which sounds reasonable, right?). The problem is that our estimating sessions are taking forever to finish!! In your experience, how do you deal with this kind of personality when playing the planning poker?"}
{"_id": "110071", "title": "How should I implement Transaction database EJB 3.0", "text": "In the CustomerTransactions entity, I have the following field to record what the customer bought:               @ManyToMany     private List<Item> listOfItemsBought;      When I think more about this field, there's a chance it may not work because merchants are allowed to change item's information (e.g. price, discount, etc...). Hence, this field will not be able to record what the customer actually bought when the transaction occurred. At the moment, I can only think of 2 ways to make it work.   1. I will record the transaction details into a String field. I feel that this way would be messy if I need to extract some information about the transaction later on.   2. Whenever the merchant changes an item's information, I will not update directly to that item's fields. Instead, I will create another new item with all the new information and keep the old item untouched. I feel that this way is better because I can easily extract information about the transaction later on. However, the bad side is that my Item table may contain a lot of rows. I'd be very grateful if someone could give me an advice on how I should tackle this problem. **UPDATE:** I'd like to add more information about the current design.               public class Customer implements Serializable {         @OneToMany         private List<CustomerTransactions> listOfTransactions;     }          public class CustomerTransactions implements Serializable {         @ManyToMany         private List<Item> listOfItemsBought;     }          public class Merchant implements Serializable {         @OneToMany         private List<Item> listOfSellingItems;     }"}
{"_id": "209532", "title": "name convention for variables in C#", "text": "I'm watching a video on C# about Variables. The author declares a variable inside a method and he named it like this: string MyName =\"James\"; my question is: which convention is recommended by .Net Framework. Is it Pascal casing as in the above example or is it camel case?"}
{"_id": "209537", "title": "How/Where do I give my github commit a version?", "text": "I 'm just learning to give project versions. I understand writing details about the changes in my project when committing, but where should I put my version number for my project?"}
{"_id": "92937", "title": "what is storing data in constant space?", "text": "\"bloom filter allows us to store data in constant space\" Can someone explain what exactly does that sentence means?"}
{"_id": "118661", "title": "Why would I learn C++11, having known C and C++?", "text": "I am a programmer in C and C++, although I don't stick to either language and write a mixture of the two. Sometimes having code in classes, possibly with operator overloading, or templates and the oh so great STL is obviously a better way. Sometimes use of a simple C function pointer is much much more readable and clear. So I find beauty and practicality in both languages. _I don't want to get into the discussion of \"If you mix them and compile with a C++ compiler, it's not a mix anymore, it's all C++\" I think we all understand what I mean by mixing them._ Also, I don't want to talk about C vs C++, this question is all about C++11. C++11 introduces what I think are significant changes to how C++ works, but it has introduced many special cases, exceptions and irregularities that change how different features behave in different circumstances, placing restrictions on multiple inheritance, identifiers that act as keywords, extensions of string literals, lambda function variable capturing, etc. I know that at some point in the future, when you say C++ everyone would assume C++11. Much like when you say C nowadays, you most probably mean C99. That makes me consider learning C++11. After all, if I want to continue writing code in C++, I may at some point need to start using those features simply because my colleagues have. Take C for example. After so many years, there are still many people learning and writing code in C. Why? Because the language is good. What good means is that, it follows many of the rules to create a good programming language. So besides being powerful (which easy or hard, almost all programming languages are), C is regular and has few exceptions, if any. C++11 however, I don't think so. I'm not sure that the changes introduced in C++11 are making the language better. So the question is: **Why would I learn C++11?**"}
{"_id": "93043", "title": "Where does \"method\" as a special term in OOP originate?", "text": "\"Method\" is a special term in Object-Oriented Programming. Does anyone know when the word began to be used in this particular sense, and in connection with what programming language or other branch of quantitative learning?"}
{"_id": "165985", "title": "Serializing network messages", "text": "I am writing a network wrapper around `boost::asio` and was wondering what is a good and simple way to serialize my messages. I have a message factory which can take care of dispatching the data to the correct builder, but I want to know if there are any established solutions for getting the binary data on the sender side and consequently passing the data for deserialization on the receiver end. Some options I've explored are: passing a pointer to a `char[]` to the serialize/deserialize functions (for serialize to write to, and deserialize to read from), but it's difficult to enforce buffer size this way; building on that, I decided to have the serialize function return a `boost::asio::mutable_buffer`, however ownership of the memory gets blurred between multiple classes, as the network wrapper needs to clean up the memory allocated by the message builder. I have also seen solutions involving `streambuf`'s and `stringstream`'s, but manipulating binary data in terms of its string representation is something I want to avoid. Is there some sort of binary stream I can use instead? What I am looking for is a solution (preferrably using boost libs) that lets the message builder dictate the amount of memory allocated during serialization and what that would look like in terms of passing the data around between the wrapper and message factory/message builders. PS. Messages contain almost exclusively built-in types and PODs and form a shallow but wide hierarchy for the sake of going through a factory. Note: a link to examples of using `boost::serialization` for something like this would be appreciated as I'm having difficulties figuring out the relation between it and buffers."}
{"_id": "118666", "title": "How do you run a sprint retrospective to maximize participation and honesty? And what about follow up on action items?", "text": "I've seen it done as a free-for-all where the scrum master just asks everyone to throw out comments. Or a time-boxed session where \"anonymous\" comments are posted on the walls bucketed by category. My current team is constrained by being spread out, so it has be done online/over the phone. What is everyone's best experience with soliciting constructive feedback? And how do you follow through on action items for improvement?"}
{"_id": "96030", "title": "How analysis is different from design?", "text": "I'm sure you all have heard managers saying that \"we need an analyzer\", or \"we need a designer\". While I'm a .NET developer, I hardly can differentiate an analyzer from a designer (not web designer or UI designer). Who is analyzer? Who is designer? Do they overlap?"}
{"_id": "93049", "title": "Are \"Proactive\" designs on new projects useful?", "text": "When starting a new project, are \"proactive\" designs useful? I mean, if you create a UML diagram/Activity diagram/Use Case/Class diagram/etc. for anything and everything can think of, then when you _think_ you're done, you start coding. Afterwards, you realize an important feature or method was left out. All your spiffy UML diagrams are nice stacks of worthless paper now. Is it easier/better to design one class, work on it a bit, refine it, then work on it more?"}
{"_id": "165988", "title": "I think client's project will be a flop; should I discuss with him?", "text": "I have a meeting with a prospective client tomorrow for a certain e-commerce project he wants to commission. I had an overview of it over the phone and from what I understand there are gazillion such concepts already floating and most of them are disasters and I have reasons to believe that his project is significantly likely to have the same fate. Should I raise/discuss the commercial feasibility of his idea with him or simply accept the project, give my best and leave out all the rest?"}
{"_id": "117481", "title": "Is it best to minimize using pointers in C?", "text": "I think most people would agree that pointers are a major source of bugs in C programs (if not the greatest source of bugs). Other languages drop pointers entirely for this reason. When working in C, then, would it be best to avoid using pointers whenever practical? For example, I recently wrote a function like this:               void split(char *record, char *delim, int numfields, int fieldmax, char result[numfields][fieldmax]);      While not as versatile as a dynamically allocated variable, in that it requires the programmer to know the number of fields in advance and anything over `fieldmax` is truncated (which is sometimes acceptable), it eliminates the need for memory management, and the potential for memory corruption. I think this is a pretty good trade, but I was wondering what the opinions of other programmers on this were."}
{"_id": "117480", "title": "Should non-interface code be hidden from the client?", "text": "I am working on a library which had several headers that are meant to only be used by the library itself. I also have a few classes and functions in headers that I do not want the client to use. For instance, I have a header that contains debugging functions, but they should not be used outside of the library as it could cause problems. Should this code be hidden from the client? If so, how?"}
{"_id": "81624", "title": "How Do Computers Work?", "text": "This is almost embarrassing ask...I have a degree in Computer Science (and a second one in progress). I've worked as a full-time .NET Developer for nearly five years. I generally seem competent at what I do. **But I Don't Know How Computers Work!** Please, bare with me for a second. A quick Google of 'How a Computer Works' will yield lots and lots of results, but I struggled to find one that really answered what I'm looking for. I realize this is a huge, huge question, so really, if you can just give me some keywords or some direction. I know there are components....the power supply, the motherboard, ram, CPU, etc...and I get the 'general idea' of what they do. But I really don't understand how you go from a line of code like `Console.Readline()` in .NET (or Java or C++) and have it actually _do_ stuff. Sure, I'm vaguely aware of MSIL (in the case of .NET), and that some magic happens with the JIT compiler and it turns into native code (I think). I'm told Java is similar, and C++ cuts out the middle step. I've done some mainframe assembly, it was a few years back now. I remember there were some instructions and some CPU registers, and I wrote code....and then some magic happened....and my program would work (or crash). From what I understand, an 'Emulator' would simulate what happens when you call an instruction and it would update the CPU registers; but what makes those instructions work the way they do? Does this turn into an Electronics question and not a 'Computer' question? I'm guessing there isn't any practical reason for me to understand this, but I feel like I should be able to. (Yes, this is what happens when you spend a day with a small child. It takes them about 10 minutes and five iterations of asking 'Why?' for you to realize how much you don't know)"}
{"_id": "253495", "title": "Is it ok to write \"extra\" unit tests?", "text": "My understanding of how TDD should work is that you write a failing test for the next bit of functionality you want to add to a function or object, code until the test passes and then write the next test. Is it ever ok to write tests that pass with the code as is? One example of that happened today. I was writing a function that could Manchester encode an arbitrary number of bits. I wrote failing tests for encoding one single bit and coded until it passed, then wrote a failing test for passing two bits to the function and coded until it passed. But the solution I used to handle two bits made the code work for any number of bits. Because passing a byte to the function will be it's most common use, I added a unit test to make sure it worked for 8 bits, which did in fact pass. Did I violate TDD principles? Is there anything wrong with adding redundant tests just for my peace of mind? I understand part of the problem is that I could have written a faulty tests and would never know because it didn't fail in the first place, but I'm not sure what the alternative is."}
{"_id": "117486", "title": "Creating a webservice API - how much \"credit\" should I give the client/developer", "text": "When creating a web service API, how much should I count on the developer to act by my rules? We are really aimed on creating an API so the developers shouldn't develop client side logic too much... for example, if in one of my methods we require the client to send us a unique ID - we are relying on the client that the ID sent is really unique - so the client should also keep track of it's requests and add logic to it's code. is it ok or should we try to solve ths kind of issues in a different more transparent ways?"}
{"_id": "220731", "title": "Split skilled Scrum team", "text": "A Scrum team has been forced together and is feeling very uncomfortable. They are constantly saying that it is not working for them and that they are fed up with hearing the words _Agile_ and _Scrum_. They are feeling that the business if simply forcing a new buzz word on them. They don't have any Agile experiance before this, including the Scrum master. Also, the team consists of a very disconnected skill set.   * 1 manual tester   * 1 .NET developer   * 2 Cobol developers   * A BA turned PO   * The scrum master The .NET dev doesn't want to learn Cobol and the Cobol devs don't want to learn .NET. I've been asked to help out with making them more Agile, however, one of the main tennets of Agile is that the power for change must lie with those with the domain knowledge. Kanban could help, but it wouldn't tackle the broken skill set. _Any advise on where to start?_ Currently my plan is to start with the PO and see how stories are being written, but I am not sure where to go from there."}
{"_id": "253499", "title": "Uniform variable naming across HTML, CSS and JS", "text": "I'm sorry if this is opinion based, but how do you guys make sure that HTML, CSS and JS have uniform variable naming? I use vim, but I don't know if IDEs are smart enough to do this on their own. In case it's not clear, the issue is that if I change a variable name in HTML, I need to go and change the variable names in CSS and JS."}
{"_id": "253498", "title": "What's a \"Polymorphic method\"?", "text": "Sometimes people use the phrase \"Polymorphic method/function\". Does it mean:   1. A method that takes a Polymorphic type as a parameter, and performs some operation on it. By \"Polymorphic type\" I mean a super-type with multiple sub-types.   2. An abstract or virtual method in a super-type, with multiple sub-types that implement/override the method differently."}
{"_id": "222467", "title": "Are 'The Pragmatic Programmer' and 'The Mythical Man Month' good books for people with limited practical experience programming", "text": "I was once told to read the books titled 'The Pragmatic Programmer' and 'The Mythical Man Month'. I have very little experience programming (basic HTML, CSS and JS). If I were to purchase these books, read through them, would it be beneficial to me with such a limited understanding or would I benefit from them? I ask because I am currently learning HTML5 and CSS3 from an online source and want some general reading material to add to my kindle."}
{"_id": "222465", "title": "Designing online exam", "text": "I need to design an online exam server for an exam like GRE in which question difficulty increases if you answer correctly and decreases if you answer wrong. > Questions are multiple choice questions > > Difficulty scale of question is 1-10, 1 being the easiest and 10 being the > hardest. > > If two continuous questions are answered wrong, decrease the difficulty by 1 > and if two questions answered right increase the difficulty by 1. > > Test starts with a question of difficulty level of 4. > > Question carries marks equal to its difficulty. **My question is** : Which data structure should I use to store the questions? Which is the best algorithm to fetch the question by its difficulty, etc.? I am currently considering a doubly linked-list:               struct node {              int data;         node *prev;         node *next;         int n         int MAX;     };      Here, 2 n's we need to store. One is MAX (actual size) and n is possible random size to pick questions from n - MAX we selected already for each double linked list you can add extra int data where you can store prev link, next link, pointer to array, int Maxdata(MAX size), int n(current size). Each node is a pointer to an array of questions for each level. If the answer is correct, it moves next node and picks the random questions from that list, otherwise it moves to the previous node and picks a question. For example, let's say an array has 10 questions 1 - 10. Since the array size is n = 10, you know that   1. now you selected a random question rand() % 10 = 6 th questions   2. now swap the question number 6 & 10, make n-- and return the 6th question   3. now n = 9 so next time 10th will not be considered   4. random will return 1 - 9 only Is there any better way of doing it?"}
{"_id": "222468", "title": "Is there a difference learning VBA on Mac vs Windows", "text": "I'm a programmer who'd like to learn VBA, but I don't have a Windows box. However, I have a MacBook Pro with the latest version of MS Office for Mac on it (2011 I think). Since I work in a .Net shop, I'd like to learn VBA. Is there anything I'm missing out on not having a Windows machine to learn it on?"}
{"_id": "167588", "title": "Why isn't functional language syntax more close to human language?", "text": "I'm interested in functional programming and decided to get head to head with Haskell. My head hurts... but I'll eventually get it... I have one curiosity though, why is the syntax so cryptic (in lack of another word)? Is there a reason **why it isn't more expressive** , more close to human language? I understand that FP is good at modelling mathematical concepts and it borrowed some of it's concise means of expression, but still it's not math... it's a language."}
{"_id": "151900", "title": "Assignments in mock return values", "text": "(I will show examples using php and phpunit but this may be applied to any programming language) The case: let's say we have a method `A::foo` that delegates some work to class `M` and returns the value as-is. Which of these solutions would you choose:               $mock = $this->getMock('M');     $mock->expects($this->once())          ->method('bar')          ->will($this->returnValue('baz'));          $obj = new A($mock);          $this->assertEquals('baz', $obj->foo());      or               $mock = $this->getMock('M');     $mock->expects($this->once())          ->method('bar')          ->will($this->returnValue($result = 'baz'));          $obj = new A($mock);          $this->assertEquals($result, $obj->foo());      or               $result = 'baz';     $mock = $this->getMock('M');     $mock->expects($this->once())          ->method('bar')          ->will($this->returnValue($result));          $obj = new A($mock);          $this->assertEquals($result, $obj->foo());      Personally I always follow the 2nd solution, but just 10 minutes ago I had a conversation with couple of developers who said that it is \"too tricky\" and chose 3rd or 1st. So what would you usually do? And do you have any conventions to follow in such cases?"}
{"_id": "25037", "title": "What would you think about a new Java persistence tool, that's not really an ORM?", "text": "## Persistence in Java Over the past years, I have gathered experience in the field of persistence abstraction in Java, using concepts such as EJB 2.0, Hibernate, JPA and home- grown ones. They seemed to me to have a steep learning curve and lots of complexity. In addition, as a big fan of SQL, I also thought that many abstraction models provide too much abstraction over SQL, creating concepts such as \"criteria\", \"predicates\", \"restrictions\" that are very good concepts, but not SQL. The general idea of persistence abstraction in Java seems to be based on the Object-relational model, where RDBMS are somehow matched with the OO world. The ORM-debate has always been an emotional one, as there does not seem to exist a single solution that suits everyone - if such a solution can even exist. ## jOOQ My personal preference of how to avoid ORM-related problems is to stick to the relational world. Now the choice of data model paradigm should not be the topic of discussion as it is a personal preference, or a matter of what data model best suits a concrete problem. The discussion I would like to start is around my very own persistence tool called jOOQ. I designed jOOQ to provide most of the advantages modern persistence tools have:   * A Domain Specific Language based on SQL   * Source code generation mapping the underlying database schema to Java   * Support for many RDBMS Adding some features that few modern persistence tools have (correct me if I'm wrong):   * Support for complex SQL - unions, nested selects, self-joins, aliasing, case clauses, arithmetic expressions   * Support for non-standard SQL - stored procedures, UDT's, ENUMS, native functions, analytic functions Please consider the documentation page for more details: http://www.jooq.org/learn.php. You will see that a very similar approach is implemented in Linq for C#, although Linq is not exclusively designed for SQL. ## The Question Now, having said that I'm a big fan of SQL, I wonder whether other developers will share my enthusiasm for jOOQ (or Linq). Is this kind of approach to persistence abstraction a viable one? What are the advantages / disadvantages you might see? How could I improve jOOQ, and what's missing in your opinion? Where did I go wrong, conceptually or practically? ## Critical but constructive answers appreciated I understand that the debate is an emotional one. There are many great tools out there that do similar things already. What I am interested in is critical but constructive feedback, based on your **own experience** or articles you may have read."}
{"_id": "167580", "title": "What is the aim of software testing?", "text": "Having read many books, there is a basic contradiction: Some say, \"the goal of testing is to find bugs\" while other say \"the goal of the testing is to equalize the quality of the product\", meaning that bugs are its by-products. I would also agree that if testing would be aimed primarily on a bug hunt, who would do the actual verification and actually provide the information that the software is ready? Even e.g. Kaner changed his original definition of testing goal from bug hunting to quality assessment provision but I still cannot see the clear difference. I perceive both as equally important. I can verify software by its specification to make sure it works and in that case, bugs found are just by products. But also I perform tests just to break things. Also what definition is more accurate? Note above I am primarily referring to software testing as a process."}
{"_id": "25033", "title": "Should I still consider using Appcelerator Titanium for building mobile apps if I don't have any web dev skills?", "text": "I'm an experienced desktop developer who's recently begun writing iOS apps and would like to venture into Android development as well. I've been hearing a lot of talk surrounding the Appcelerator Titanium framework lately, but I'm not sure I fully understand it's purpose. As I understand it, it's a framework for building native mobile apps using web technologies. If I don't have any web dev skills, are there any ways that using Appcelerator Titanium would benefit me? Thanks for your thoughts, I'm going to continue researching this right now."}
{"_id": "112458", "title": "Forking an open source project nicely", "text": "It's time. You've worked long and hard to add your vision to the open source project you love, on which you've worked, debated, and to which you've contributed inestimable amounts of code and insight. But it's not going to work out with the existing developers. **You finally need to fork the code.** How do you do this and remain on the best terms possible with the existing project? How do you not say, \"Oh yeah? Fork you!\" Aside from the mechanics of cross-polination and assuming that the reasoning for forking is sound, logical, and acceptable, what issues come up? Competition? Resource sapping? User poaching? How do you go through this arguably difficult and long process until you've diversified enough that these are no longer seen as problems? Rather than discussing the reasoning behind the decision, please assume that you have already been convinced that forking the code is the best overall solution, and now the point is to move forward in the best way possible."}
{"_id": "150050", "title": "What is the name for a NON-self-calling function?", "text": "I have a collection of normal functions and self-calling functions within a javascript file. In my comments i want to say something along the lines of \"This script can contain both self-calling and XXX functions\", where XXX is the non-self-calling functions. \"Static\" springs to my mind, but feel that would be incorrect because of the use of static methods in PHP, which is something completely different. Anyone any ideas? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "82251", "title": "Types of databases", "text": "I read that there exists three main types of databases               * Transactional (Client-Server database// OLTP database)     * Decision support system (DSS) (Data warehouse database // Data mart // Reporting database)     * Hybrid      What is the type of database considered for a social network, like Facebook or Twitter? I guess the category is:               Transactional > Client -Server database.      From the book: **A transactional database is a database based on small changes to the database (that is, small transactions).The database is transaction-driven. In other words, the primary function of the database is to add new data, change existing data, delete existing data, all done in usually very small chunks, such as individual records.** But, as I said, I am not sure."}
{"_id": "225947", "title": "How to unit test a missing case in a switch statement where all cases are true", "text": "I often use `enum` types in my code with a switch to apply logic to each type. In these cases it's important that each `enum` has code implemented. For example;               public enum eERROR     {         REQUIRED,         DUPLICATE,         UNKNOWN,         MISSING_VALUE     }          public void Error(eERROR pError)     {         switch (pError)         {             case eERROR.REQUIRED:                 // ......                 return;             case eERROR.DUPLICATE:                 // ......                 return;             case eERROR.MISSING_VALUE:                 // ......                 return;             case eERROR.UNKNOWN:                 // ......                 return;         }              throw new InvalidArgumentException(\"Unsupported error type\");     }      At the bottom I've added an exception as a last resort check that a programmer remembered to add any new `enum` types to the `switch` statement. If a new type is added to `eERROR` the exception _could_ be thrown if the code is not updated. Here is my problem. The above code generates unit test coverage of only **99%** because I can not trigger the exception. I could add a generic `unhandled` to `eERROR` and call `Error(eERROR.unhandled)` just to get **100%** coverage, but that feels like a hack to solve something that is not a problem just to get full coverage. I could remove the line but then I don't have the safety check. Why is _99%_ a problem? because the code base is so large that any uncovered method doesn't move coverage to _98%_. So I always see _99%_ and don't know if I missed a method or two. How can I rewrite `Error()` so that all newly added enums that are not added to the switch will be caught somehow by the programmer, and also be covered by tests. Is there a way of doing it without added a dummy enum?"}
{"_id": "24922", "title": "How to deal with Interviews where HR is missing?", "text": "The situation: Person X, who already has a full-time job, applies to Company A. Money is good at A, but the real reason X had applied is 'cause the work at A really excites X. Next someone from the technical dept. from A calls up X, gives some assignment and holds a round of technical interview over phone. X does very well in all of it so far. Finally, X asks the tech guy from A \"What's next?\" The guy says we'd get back to you in 3-4 days time and then doesn't call up in the next 3-4 days. X is confused. He's got the mail-id of the tech guy but not sure if he should inquire -- this is no HR after all. In fact HR was never anywhere in this process. What should he do? **My Take** : Don't mail. You already have a full-time job and this shows desperation. **The Problem** : This isn't me and people tell me that some companies wait for candidate to get back just to double check their interest level. * * * **Update** Mailing the engineering team proved very useful, they apologized for being busy and now I am told the next round is early January."}
{"_id": "153503", "title": "Which is more important in a web application code promotion hierarchy? production environment to repo resemblance or unidirectional propagation?", "text": "Lets say you have a code promotion hierarchy consisting of several environments, (the polar end) two of which are development (dev) and production (prod). Lets say you also have a web application where important (but not developer controlled) files are created (and perhaps altered) in the production environment. Lets say that you (or someone above you) decided that the files which are controlled/created/altered/deleted in the production environment needed to go into the repository. Which of the following two sets of practice / approaches do you find best:   1. Committing these non-developed file modifications made in the production environment so that the repository resembles the production environment as closely and as often as possible.   2. Generally ignoring the non-developed production environment alterations, placing confidence in backups to restore the production environment should it be harmed, and keeping a resolution to avoid pushing developments through the promotion hierarchy in the reverse direction (avoiding pushing from prod to dev), only committing the files found in the production environment if they were absolutely necessary in other environments for development. So, 1 or 2, and why? PS - I am currently slightly biased toward maintaining production environment to repository resemblance (option 1), but I keep an open mind and would accept an answer supporting either."}
{"_id": "153506", "title": "Question about modeling with MVC (the pattern, not the MS stuff / non web)", "text": "I'm working on an application in which I'm looking to employ the MVC pattern, but I've come up against a design decision point I could use some help with. My application is going to deal with the design of state-machines. Currently the MVC model holds information about the machine's states, inputs, outputs, etc. The view is going to show a diagram for the machine, graphically allowing the user to add new states, establish transitions, and put the states in a pleasing arrangement, among other things. I would like to store part of the diagram's state (e.g. the x and y state positions) when the machine information is stored for later retrieval, and am wondering how best to go about structuring the model(s?) for this. It seems like this UI information is more closely related to the view than to the state-machine model, so I was thinking that a secondary model might be in order, but I am reluctant to pursue this route because of the added complexity. Adding this information to the current model doesn't seem the right way to go about it either. This is the my first time using the MVC pattern so I'm still figuring things out. Any input would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "191380", "title": "Alternative Scripting Language to Lua?", "text": "I would like to add scripting support to an applications and with plenty scripting languages available I am a bit overwhelmed. At first I thought about Python but I guess Python is a little too big for my taste and the application (although I like it very much, it gets a lot of things right in my opinion while the syntax is clean and simple especially if you are not doing heavy OOP). I am also very fond of Lisps. I like scheme and it is the perfect extension language - at least in some ways, but I would like to stay syntactically more conservative. I remember having heard a lot of positive things about Lua and indeed Lua seems a good possibility. Unfortunately there is this one thing that really \"turns me off\": Its the `local` keyword for local binding. This is really ugly to my taste and I frankly do not quite grok why languages are still designed this way and in essence knowing about `local`. This is also a major drawback of JavaScript in my opinion and I feel like it all boils down to bad language design. My major concern is, that a user might just override a function from just within her/his function just by omitting `local`. But then Lua gets a lot of things right, size, speed, and it is surprisingly scheme-esque. Yet I am really afraid that it is not suitable for non- programmers who have no sense of scope.   * Any alternatives on the horizon?   * Might hacking the Luacore to make local the default be an option? Lua sources appear to be quite decent and modular, so this would be an interesting project ;)"}
{"_id": "188840", "title": "Is it safe to assume that one controller will only ever use one primary model?", "text": "So, I'm designing an MVC framework. In the name of keeping everything statically typed and non-magical, I've come to quite a problem with \"automatically\" passing models to a controller. So, traditionally, I usually see no more than one model used at a time in a controller as far as automatic-population. For instance, take this tutorial. There is a method like this in the controller:               [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Create(Movie newMovie)     {              if (ModelState.IsValid)         {             db.AddToMovies(newMovie);             db.SaveChanges();                  return RedirectToAction(\"Index\");         }         else         {             return View(newMovie);         }     }      My concern is passing a `Movie` model to the `Create` method which is populated by FORM values \"magically\". In my API, this should be easily possible and would look something like this at routing:               var movie=router.Controller((context) => new MovieController(context))                      .WithModel(() => new Movie());     movie.Handles(\"/movie/create\").With((controller, model) => controller.Create(model));      My concern with this is that it is much harder to have multiple models because of limitations with C#'s type system. Of course, the controller can always manually create the models from FORM values and such, but it's not nearly as pretty. So, my question: Is it common to have something like `Foo(Movie model)` and `Bar(SomeClass model)` in the same controller class? Is it a good idea for me to attempt to support such a scenario, or is it just a symptom of putting too much unrelated logic in a single controller? Note: if you're concerned about how this fluent API is even possible, the answer is generic delegates.. lots and lots of generic delegates :) (but so far very little reflection)"}
{"_id": "188843", "title": "How to develop a Delete command through Behavior Driven Development?", "text": "I am trying to develop a Delete command through BDD that will simply delete an user from the database, given user_id as a parameter. What can be some possible behavioral tests that will drive me to write a proper implementation for the command?"}
{"_id": "194154", "title": "Writing OOPS code in Non Object Oriented Language", "text": "I was reading some article on the internet as I was preparing for interview and I found out below statement- > Writing object oriented code, even in non-object oriented language? Is this statement true?? Can anybody provide an example to justify the above statement if somebody asked me this question in the interview. And when do we write object oriented code in non object oriented language? I mainly worked in Java. So any example corresponding to that will be helpful. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "117220", "title": "Is the market of small-scale development/production tools that difficult?", "text": "I was wondering, is there an economic rationale in developing and marketing a small tool (standalone or rather plugin)? Of course, let's assume that the tool does indeed solve a real problem from the production process. And by small, I mean an application that can be developed by 1-2 developers within 2 years. Do you know any contemporary success stories? I have two observations that make me wonder:   1. Anyway I turn around people ask for free and preferably open-source tools. Even when the price is low, and the software is worth its price, I see this big reluctance to spend any money on commercial development software. An application author would probably have to assume that only a very small percentage of all people who might find his application useful, will actually purchase it.   2. I've seen a few good commercial software examples that after some time started offering free licenses. The most notable example for me was gDEBugger from Graphic Remedy. Last time I checked it didn't even had any worthy competitor (commercial or noncommercial) in the market of OpenGL debuggers. I have no idea what might have made them do that, other than poor sales."}
{"_id": "210127", "title": "Should I fork for a major re-write that uses a small amount of the original code?", "text": "I'm writing a library. It's a completely rewritten version of another one, to suit my needs (PCL compatibility, mainly). However, the API will be completely rewritten, as I'll need to change a lot of stuff around for PCL compliance. Also, as it is a rewrite, I won't be able to just start from the library and just change it bit by bit, as I typically see with forks. I tried that, but it just didn't work. So what should I do? Should I fork here or should I make a new library?"}
{"_id": "198864", "title": "Deploy PHP project without giving away the source code?", "text": "I am working on developing range of web based software solutions. But the problem is that for some clients we need to deploy the applications in their local intranet. In such a situation I have to stick with Java as development language as I cannot give away the source code of the project. Now in order to tap on more consumers we put these solutions online. Now considering the fact that Java hosting is more expensive than PHP we are left with no choice but to again re develop the entire solution in PHP. Thus we end up having two version of same solution for maintenance and upgrading in different platforms. So can any point us to some good solution in which we can have the online solution and also have a deployable version of the application in which we can ship the application without its source code and at the same time we also need the application to be cost effective from hosting point of view?"}
{"_id": "198865", "title": "How to find method and class usages along git repositories", "text": "We got some code in a git repository that's used along different projects (with git different repositories), the problem is that we got now so many different projects that's difficult to track which projects will be affected and how when there is a change in the shared module. Is there any way to find classes and methods usages along different git repositories? Or who would you manage an architecture like that?"}
{"_id": "198862", "title": "Is it possible to shuffle team in between a sprint?", "text": "We are working on scrum framework. Now a situation arise that we have to shuffle 2-3 scrum team members in between sprints. Is it possible to shuffle sprint team members in between a sprint? What are the potential drawbacks of doing this?"}
{"_id": "198861", "title": "Migrating Web based projects from Java to PHP", "text": "At our work place after hours of coding, testing and QA we have successfully added a couple of software tools in our product line. We specialize in web based software solutions so in order to tap on more users we are now considering putting our developed solutions online for hosting and providing online access to all our clients for their products. But what is coming in our way is that we have developed all these solutions in Java and compared to PHP Java hosting is very expensive. So we are now planing to migrate all these solutions to PHP while also maintaining their Java counterpart. How we should start with these migration task? We used AJAX in all our Java based solutions. Tech specs are   1. Front end web pages in JSP   2. Back end server side in Java using Apache Struts2   3. Database in MySQL   4. PDF report generation using iText PDF lib. for Java NB: We have started a little with Code Igniter Framework in PHP."}
{"_id": "101659", "title": "Java Frameworks", "text": "I would just want to ask what Java frameworks are worth learning, specially when it comes to web applications, but other frameworks are welcome too. Could you please state:   * The learning curve    * The availability of resources   * The performance of that framework   * Would you recommend it or not I want to study frameworks on my free time. If it's not too much a bother thanks to those that will answer! If it's too vast: How about for web applications? Should I learn Spring or Struts 2? iBatis or Hibernate? Stuff like that Still if it's vast: What frameworks would you recommend out there? Really. Anything. I want to learn and I'm used as a JEE guy now so if it's related with web app then I would take that as a bonus."}
{"_id": "97344", "title": "Can You Make An Entire Website With JavaScript?", "text": "I have looked at the aims of Java-script and it intends to `provide and enhanced user-interface and dynamic websites`. I am trying to get into the Web Development Business and am learning Javascript. But unfortunately, I have never seen an entire website implemented in Java script. Javascript is usually just used for Ads. People use things like PHP or ASP .NET (and C#) for serious web development. So will learning Javascript seriously enable me to make **Dynamic Websites** , and are there any good websites made with Javascript. Is Javascript a good choice for making websites? Is it even possible?"}
{"_id": "193726", "title": "How do you keep consistent self confidence while coding?", "text": "As the number of bugs in a codebase increases, that number not only decreases the quality of the code, it also affects the mindset of the developers. Developer self-confidence falls when things are not going well. If self- confidence is not right, things more easily become a mess. How do you guys keep your self confidence up in these situations?"}
{"_id": "193727", "title": "What algorithm should I use to find the shortest path in this graph?", "text": "I have a graph with about a billion vertices, each of which is connected to about 100 other vertices at random. I want to find the **length** of the shortest path between two points. I don't care about the actual path used. Notes:   * Sometimes edges will be severed or added. This happens about 500 times less often than lookups. It's also ok to batch up edge-changes if it lets you get better performance.   * I _can_ pre-process the graph.   * If it takes more than 6 steps, you can just come back with infinity.   * It's acceptable to be wrong 0.01% of the time, but only in returning a length that's too long.    * All edges have a length of 1.   * All edges are bidirectional. I'm looking for an algorithm. Psuedocode, english descriptions, and actual code are all great. I could use A*, but that seems optimized for pathfinding.   I thought about using Dijkstra's algorithm, but it has a step which requires setting the shortest-path-found attribute of every vertice to infinity _(If you're wondering about the use-case, it's for the Underhanded C Contest.)_"}
{"_id": "193729", "title": "What is watershed in the context of image processing?", "text": "I am new to image processing using Python. Now I am learning OpenCV and the mahotas module in Python. Many functions in these modules are related to watershed of an image. I don't know what watershed means for an image. Here is an example from the OpenCV documentation: http://docs.opencv.org/search.html?q=watershed&check_keywords=yes&area=default"}
{"_id": "203093", "title": "Naming conventions used for variables and functions in C", "text": "While coding a large project in C I came upon a problem. If I keep on writing more code then there will be a time when it will be difficult for me to organize the code. I mean that the naming for functions and variables for different parts of the program may seem to be mixed up. So I was thinking whether there are useful naming conventions that I can use for C variables and functions? Most languages suggest a naming convention. But for C the only thing I have read so far is the names should be descriptive for code readability. EDIT: Examples of some examples of suggested naming conventions:   * Python's PEP 8   * Java Tutorial I read some more naming conventions for java somewhere but couldn't remember where."}
{"_id": "99120", "title": "How can this all fit into 64kb?", "text": "So, I am here at assembly 2011 and there was this demo played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Xjc7eklxE&feature=player_embedded It's one single file only, it says that in the rules. So I repeat, how have they made this to fit into so small file?"}
{"_id": "36896", "title": "Looking for a large collection of XML files", "text": "Hey, I'm writing a program that I need to test with 1000s of XML files - any idea where I can get some?"}
{"_id": "99123", "title": "What is the clause in an employee contract that says they own all your code?", "text": "I am looking at my employee contract and I can't seem to figure out where it might say that they own all the code that I write, be it at work or at home. Any examples of what the wording could be like?"}
{"_id": "36890", "title": "stackoverflow induced passivity - how to cope?", "text": "After not _really_ working on my pet project for a while, I discovered Stackoverflow and upon perusing it more intensely I was quite amazed.   I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so when I found eye-openers here highlighting many of the mistakes I made, I first wanted to fix everything.   However, it's a **pet** project for a reason: I'm self-taught and I'm studying psychology, so programming skills can never become priority one (though it often helps, even in this field). Issues that stuck out were   * numerous security issues (e.g. CSRF-prevention and bcrypt eluded me)   * not object-oriented (at least the PHP part, the JS-part _mostly_ is)   * no PHP framework used, so many of my DIY takes on commonly-tackled components (auth, ...) are either bad or inefficient   * **really** poor MySQL usage (no prepared statements, mysql extension, heard about setting proper indices two days ago)   * using mootools even though JQuery seems to be _fashionable_ , so there's more probably always going to be better integration with services I'd like to use (like google visualization) So, my SO-induced frenzy turned into **passivity**. I can't do it all (soon) in the rather small amount of spare time I can spend on working on my project.   I can leave some of the issues be in good conscience (speed stuff: an unfinished & unpublished project will never become popular, right?).   No clear conscience without good security though and if I don't use a framework for _auth_ and other complex stuff I'll regret having to do it myself. One obvious answer would probably be going open-source, but I think the project would need to become more impressive before others would commit to it. I can't afford to employ someone either. I do think the project deserves being worked on, though. How should I tackle it **anyway**? What's the best practice for little-practice people? * * * I couldn't edit my question, because it was transferred. I would have emphasised, that I have a working product, but like so many pet projects it will _never be finished_ , so I intended to make things easier for myself in the future too. Some of you mis-guessed my problem as being afraid to get started, but I couldn't react up here, sorry. I'm surprised that no one seems to think that using a framework would be a good way to relieve myself of some responsibilities (such as implementing an authorization module that conforms to these specs.   Or is it just too hard to turn to something like an MVC when you have been working process-oriented before?"}
{"_id": "99128", "title": "Build automation: Is it usual to use QMake for non-Qt projects?", "text": "So, I'm planning to write a C++ library and I want it to be cross-platform, and as this library won't deal with UI and I want it to have as little dependencies as possible, I won't be using Qt (actually Qt won't really help me to achieve what I want, all I plan on using is STL and Boost). Now when it comes to build a cross-platform project, I really like QMake as it's extremely easy to use and I have experience with it. I also heard good things about CMake, though I really doubt it's as easy to use as QMake. Anyway, here is my question: Should I stick with build automation tool that I know or is QMake just out of context for a non-Qt project? Should I take this as an opportunity to learn CMake? Or is there a better alternative to these two?"}
{"_id": "199405", "title": "What information should be in the github README.md?", "text": "What information would you expect to see in the github README? Should everything go in the README? i.e.   * Introduction   * Installation   * Versions   * User Guide   * Implementation   * Testing   * Related Resources Or should you just put certain things in the README (Introduction, Installation, Versions) and the other information is best placed in the Github wiki?"}
{"_id": "199400", "title": "Cold, neutral attitude to programming languages - sign of a pro developer or not", "text": "A profesional developer Zed Shaw says this: > Which programming language you learn and use doesn't matter. Do not get > sucked into the religion surrounding programming languages as that will only > blind you to their true purpose of being your tool for doing interesting > things. So, being neutral to languages is a sign of a good/pro developer? We see worshipping and holywars what language is better. The good coder does not care about tools, he only thinks what software he writes (like writer does not care about pen he uses - he thinks about the BOOK content)   1. should a programmer develop total ignorance to language as tool he uses?   2. **is it a sign of pro developer** , if he does not care what language to use?"}
{"_id": "191658", "title": "How to create a Web app that \"interacts\" with email?", "text": "I have a web host that supports cPanel and email addresses. I'm interested in creating a web app that checks for email messages, reads their contents and then does something with them, like interact with a database. For example, Bob with email bob@gmail.com links his email address to his account on my web app. He sends an email to storethis@webapp.com with subject \"Shopping List\" and message \"Apples, bananas, kiwis, milk\", along with an attachment. The web app receives this email, and then parses the email's contents and stores this data into a database. How can I implement this?"}
{"_id": "107545", "title": "How a port \"listens\", pull or push?", "text": "When you write a code to listen from a port, like 80 for example, what happens under the hood? Is the method the OS uses to listen is pull, or push? In other words, does the OS checks that port every x milliseconds for example? I just don't get it. The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that it can't be anything other than pulling. I mean, even if OS set a callback function, still something should understand that new information has arrived to call that callback function. That **something** still should use pull to understand the arrival of the new data. How a port listens?"}
{"_id": "191653", "title": "Why many programming languages have only 2 data-structures: arrays and hashes?", "text": "Many programming languages have only those 2 structures, and even some languages that have more structures still only provide special syntax for those 2; usually, `[]` and `{}`. Why is this? Is there anything special about those datatypes that is necessary for the completeness of the language?"}
{"_id": "191651", "title": "Program Structure for Table Cells Representing Objects", "text": "So I have a program with \"cue\" objects and each have their own table cell. The thing is that the table cells have loading bars on them that represent the progress of the cues. This presents the following question: How should I structure the program? Should the objects representing the Cues store pointers to the table cells, allowing them to update the table cells themselves, or would some other program structure work better. Sorry if this question is too general, but I couldn't really find anything at all about this when I searched around on google and the website. I fairly new to iOS development and my programs structure is already getting chaotic. The suggestion I gave was just my initial instinct, but it's probable wrong..."}
{"_id": "107542", "title": "Warning-free Objective C code", "text": "I am currently creating my first iPhone app in Objective C and getting a lot of warnings because I've in many places taken advantage of the fact that Objective C is a dynamically typed language. I get a lot of 'class' may not respond to '-message:' warnings. Should I strive to remove all these warnings? If yes, then what's the benefit of having a dynamic language at your disposal?"}
{"_id": "102079", "title": "How can be get sure that we're not implementing micromanagement in the field of software development?", "text": "As I got the feedback of developers about scrum methodology in this question, on whether it turns active developers into passive developers or not, I encountered the word **micromanagement**. However, Wikipedia doesn't explain this term in the context of specific and tangible examples, and this, can result in different interpretations of micromanagement. Can anyone point to some well-known micromanagerial issues in the world of development (of course, with reference)? What practices could be regarded as micromanagerial? How can we get sure that we're not implementing micromanagement in our working environment?"}
{"_id": "113830", "title": "Scrum taskboard with QA stage", "text": "I've been reading this article by Mike Cohn about Scrum task boards. One query I have is how this fits into a workflow where there is QA stage performed by testers who aren't developers. It seems that many tasks could not easily be QA'd in isolation. A practical alternative could be that the \"To Verify\" process should be carried out by another developer in the team, and then to have an additional stage after DONE to QA the whole story (probably after deployment to a stage/test environment). Does this seem right?"}
{"_id": "200205", "title": "\"A line comment acts like a newline\"", "text": "I'm reading the Go language specification. The section on comments states: > Line comments start with the character sequence `//` and stop at the end of > the line. A line comment acts like a newline. What is the point of specifying that a line comment acts like a newline? Couldn't line comments simply act like empty strings? Lines (except the last) end in a newline anyway, so any line (except the last) will act like two consecutive newlines. If the last line has a line comment, then it can also safely act like an empty string."}
{"_id": "113839", "title": "Explain to a non-technical manager that the tool he chose isn't apt", "text": "My non-technical manager just paid for a license to use a tool which designed to pick mentions of your brand name at blogs, \"social media\", comments, etc. and gauge the sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) of the post. What he wants me to do is use it to do a task which can only be achieved with a certain level of natural language processing and hence shows up unrelated results for whatever query you can try. I want to be able to explain to him that this tool is designed for task X and what we are trying to do is task Y. Y cannot be modelled as X. And all the success of the tool he cites as proof is proof of X which is not Y."}
{"_id": "225620", "title": "What is the meaning of bootstrapping in software development?", "text": "In some articles and books that I read, I some time see the term 'Bootstrapping'. For example I see this sentence \"Bootstrapping X.JS\" in angular js document: http://docs.angularjs.org/tutorial/step_00 > Bootstrapping AngularJS apps automatically using the `ngApp` directive is > very easy and suitable for most cases. In advanced cases, such as when using > script loaders, you can use imperative / manual way to bootstrap the app... What is the meaning of bootstrapping in software development?"}
{"_id": "9043", "title": "Server and MySQL safety for Java / JDBC applications?", "text": "I have an external java application which use JDBC as to reach an MySQL database. This will be used by many people and is going to store all the people's data on the same server / MySQL. As I bet people will be able to crack the .jar and see the source, I expect them to be able to cheat the program by editing it and making it get information from other users even when they are not allowed to reach said information. Is there any standard way to protect a server so people should only be able to reach the information their account is connected to even if said people are able to change the source? Cheers, Skarion"}
{"_id": "37278", "title": "Should I use native android junit framework?", "text": "Can anybody share a reason (or list of reasons) of not using the native android junit framework but a standalone one like robolectric or something like that? I'm just trying to understand what framework to learn."}
{"_id": "98834", "title": "Address validation service for a public website", "text": "Given the following scenario:   * There is a public website (with about 50-100 visitors a day)   * Visitors register for the services offered by the company who owns the website   * Visitors tend to give wrong information regarding address and phone number that slows down the process of their registration, therefore their transactions and general happiness about the services of the company   * Generaly the address validation adds value to the website I am looking for a service for a reasonable price, that has:   * Up to date postcode and address database    * Easy to integrate API   * Address validation check    * All this with a reasonable price I am looking specifically looking in the UK. What I have found so far are companies having these services for on ridiculously high price. We are also considering buying the PAF database from RoyalMail and implement such a service for ourselves. Any help, suggestion is very much appreciated and thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "24079", "title": "What are the common mistakes when you are a good coder in C and PHP and you start coding in Java ? What are good tips when switching?", "text": "What apsects of Java are the most diificult to learn when coming from such a background? What common mistakes do people make ? What are the top timesaving and produtivtity increasing tricks ? If you had a room of C/PHP coders who were about to start development using Java what advise would you give ? This is my list of topics so far (in no particular order):   * Use jodatime instead of the standard library , and also less importantly the guava library.   * Arrays are zero indexed   * I'd also highlight the pass-by-value/reference aspects of Java, and the fact that > >     String s1 = new String(\"test\"); >     String s2 = new String(\"test\"); >     if(s1 == s2) // will be false >     if(s1.equals(s2)) // will be true >     * Introduce the concept of design patterns and give a quick overview.   * Introduce Spring (it will be used) and the concept of dependency injection Is there anything obvious I am missing."}
{"_id": "98833", "title": "What are the steps in beginning a large project, when all I have is a big idea?", "text": "I am computer engineering student. I've been thinking about how I can handle a big project. What should be my first step to reach my goal in a more efficient and effective way? When I come up with a project, I don't know how I should start working on it. Many times, I just ignore it. However, I don't want to ignore my project ideas anymore. Now, I am asking to all of you, can anyone share his/her experiences? How should I start a project when all I have is an idea?"}
{"_id": "223410", "title": "Payment Gateways and RESTful API", "text": "I have a RESTful API that offers eCommerce functionality. One area I'm struggling to decide on the correct implementation is how to process payments. Lets say I have the following URI GET .../checkout/{id}/payment. This resource provides details to the client application of what details needs to be submitted to make a payment. The specifics of the information in the resource depends on the implementations below **Implementation 1** The resource contains basic payment fields to be filled in like card number, billing address etc. The data is sent to the API using POST .../checkout/{id}/payment. The API then submits a request to the payment gateway (e.g. paypal), waits for the response, and then sends an appropriate response back to the client application. **Implementation 2** The resource contains details of how to submit a request directly to the payment gateway (e.g. paypal). The client submits the payment to the gateway, waits for a response, and then sends the payment reference (normally always provided by a payment gateway) back to the API using POST .../checkout/{id}/payment. The problem I am having is that both have pros and cons. Implementation 1 I would say is the more fail safe method as everything is contained in one request to the API. The API can then update backend tables once the payment has been processed, and return success or failure status to the client. Since the API is sending a response to the gateway, it knows the response it receives is genuine. Implementation 2 frees the API from having to process the payment which is great, but requires the client to make two requests. One to the payment gateway and one to the API with the reference. Additionally, how can I validate the payment reference on the API without calling the gateway? A dishonest client could send any reference back to the API which then may be incorrectly marked as paid. Just wanted to throw my ideas out there, but if anyone has a really good solution for implementing Payment Gateways and RESTful API web services that would be great. **UPDATE** Just thought of an **Implementation 3**. I could actually create a separate smaller API to handle the payments. It would work in a similar way to implementation 1 except that the client application doesn't post to api.site.com/.... but posts to gateway.site.com/... This give me a degree of security as I control the code on gateway.site.com and ensures that api.site.com isn't being bogged down by waiting for the payment provider to respond. The gateway api then essentially becomes a client of the main API and posts the payment success details to it. Any thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "37271", "title": "What to watch out for when writing code at an Interview?", "text": "I have read that at a lot of companies you have to write code at an interview. On the one hand I see that it makes sense to ask for a work sample. On the other hand: What kind of code do you expect to be written in 5 minutes? And what if they tell me \"Write an algorithm that does this and that\" but I cannot think of a smart solution or even write code that doesn't semantically work? I am particularly interested in that question because I do not have that much commercial programming experience, 2 years part-time, one year full-time. (But I am interested in programming languages since nearly 15 years though usually I was more concentrated in playing with the language rather than writing large applications...) And actually I consider my debugging and problem solving skills much better than my coding skills. I sometimes see myself not writing the most beautiful code when looking back, but on the other hand I often come up with solutions for hard problems. And I think I am very good at optimizing, fixing, restructuring existing code, but I have problems with writing new applications from scratch. The software design sucks... ;-) Therefore I don't feel comfortable when thinking about this code writing situation at an interview... So what do the interviewers expect? What kind of information about my code writing are they interested in?"}
{"_id": "24077", "title": "Are short identifiers bad?", "text": "Are short identifiers bad? How does identifier length correlate with code comprehension? What other factors (besides code comprehension) might be of consideration when it comes to naming identifiers? Just to try to keep the quality of the answers up, please note that there is some research on the subject already! **Edit** Curious that everyone either doesn't think length is relevant or tend to prefer larger identifiers, when both links I provided indicate large identifiers are harmful! **Broken Link** The link below pointed to a research on the subject, but it's now broken, I don't seem to have a copy of the paper with me, and I don't recall what it was. I'm leaving it here in case someone else figure it out.   * http://evergreen.loyola.edu/chm/www/Papers/SCP2009.pdf"}
{"_id": "157088", "title": "Best practices: Ajax and server side scripting with stored procedures", "text": "I need to rebuild an old huge website and probably to port everyting to `ASP.NET` and `jQuery` and I would like to ask for some suggestion and tips. Actually the website uses:   * `Ajax (client site with prototype.js)`   * `ASP (vb script server side)`   * `SQL Server 2005`   * `IIS 7 as web server` This website uses hundred of stored procedures and the requests are made by an `ajax call` and **only 1 ASP page** that contain an huge `select case` Shortly an example: JAVASCRIPT + PROTOTYPE:               var data = {         action:     'NEWS',         callback:   'doNews',         param1:     $('text_example').value,         ......:     ..........};     AjaxGet(data); // perform a call using another function + prototype      SERVER SIDE ASP:               <% ......     select case request(\"Action\")     case \"NEWS\"         With cmmDB             .ActiveConnection = Conn             .CommandText = \"sp_NEWS_TO_CALL_for_example\"             .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc                   Set par0DB = .CreateParameter(\"Param1\", adVarchar, adParamInput,6)             Set par1DB = .CreateParameter(\".....\", adInteger, adParamInput)             ' ........ ' can be more parameters                  .Parameters.Append par0DB             .Parameters.Append par1DB                  par0DB.Value = request(\"Param1\")             par1DB.Value = request(\".....\")                  set rs=cmmDB.execute                  RecodsetToJSON rs, jsa ' create JSON response using a sub         End With     .... %>      So as you can see I have an `ASP` page that has a **lot of CASE** and this page **answers to all the ajax request** in the site. My question are:   1. Instead of having many `CASES` is it possible to create dynamic `vb` code that parses the `ajax` request and creates dynamically the call to the desired SP (also implementing the parameters passed by JS)?   2. What is the best approach to handle situations like this, by using the advantages of `.Net + protoype or jQuery`?   3. How the big sites handle situation like this? Do they do it by creating 1 page for request? Thanks in advance for suggestion, direction and tips."}
{"_id": "245315", "title": "Alternatives to foreach iterators involving ref and out", "text": "I am trying to make a flexible particle system for my XNA game, and I've got these interfaces:               public interface IParticle : IUpdateable     {         bool Alive { get; }         float Percent { get; }     }          public interface IParticleEffect<T>         where T : IParticle     {         void Apply(GameTime time, ref T particle);     }          public interface IParticleEmitter<T> : IUpdateable         where T : IParticle     {     }          public interface IParticleRenderer<T> : IDrawable         where T : IParticle     {     }      The idea behind this system is that the client code only needs to derive from `IParticle`, then make a compatible subclass from `IParticleEmitter` and `IParticleRenderer`, and everything else just automagically works behind the scenes. (I'm actually in the middle of writing everything at the moment, but the latter two would have an abstract base class available.) Anyways, some particle systems like to use mutable structs for optimization purposes, and that's perfectly reasonable. My system only provides the skeleton, and if the client decides that \"Hey, structs are the way to go!\", then my system should support whatever the client code throws at it. This is why my `IParticleEffect.Apply()` method takes a particle by **ref** \\-- it's cheaper to pass a struct by reference than it is to copy it. Unfortunately, it breaks when collections are involved, because the foreach iterator doesn't play nicely with objects passed by **ref** or **out**. Eric Lippert explains why here. So, now I have a design decision to make:   1. Completely disregard structs, and change my constraint to `where T: class, IParticle`. This potentially hurts future optimizations, but makes it much easier to work with collections.   2. Change anything that uses `ICollection<T>` or `IEnumerable<T>` to `IList<T>` so I can manually poll it via an indexer. This makes it potentially more powerful, but at the cost of using a deeper interface (list) to store my objects.   3. Something else I hope this question isn't too \"it depends\", but I am curious as to what strategies I can apply here to make it work the way I want. * * * **EDIT** : I realized that I could also include a local variable such as:               foreach (var particle in SomeParticleCollection)     {         var p = particle;         SomeEffect.Apply(ref p);     }      However, `p` would still have the net effect of copying it, which is also not ideal."}
{"_id": "68183", "title": "When is it appropriate to use a bitwise operator in a conditional expression?", "text": "First, some background: I am an IT teacher-in-training and I'm trying to introduce the boolean operators of java to my 10th grade class. My teacher- mentor looked over a worksheet I prepared and commented that I could let them use just a single & or | to denote the operators, because they \"do the same thing\". I am aware of the difference between & and &&.   & is a bitwise operator intended for use between integers, to perform \"bit- twiddling\".   && is a conditional operator intended for use between boolean values. To prove the point that these operators do not always \"do the same thing\" I set out to find an example where using the bitwise between boolean values would lead to an error. I found this example               boolean bitwise;     boolean conditional;     int i=10, j=12;     bitwise = (i<j) | ((i=3) > 5); // value of i after oper: 3     System.out.println(bitwise+ \" \"+ i);     i=10;      conditional = (i<j) || (i=3) > 5 ;  // value of i after oper: 10     System.out.println(conditional+ \" \"+ i);     i=10;      bitwise = (i>j) & (i=3) > 5;   // value of i after oper: 3     System.out.println(bitwise+ \" \"+ i);     i=10;      conditional = (i>j) && (i=3) > 5;  // value of i after oper: 10     System.out.println(conditional+ \" \"+ i);      This example shows that if a value has to be changed by the second half of the expression, this would lead to a difference between the results, since bitwise is an eager operator, while the conditional behaves as a short circuit (does not evaluate the second half, if the first half is false in the case of && and true in the case of ||). I have an issue with this example. Why would you want to change a value at the same time as you do a comparision on it? It doesn't seem like a robust way to code. I've always been averse to doing multiple operations in a single line in my production code. It seems like something a \"coding cowboy\" with no conscience as to the maintainability of his code would do. I know that in some domains code needs to be as compact as possible, but surely this is a poor practice in general? I can explain my choice of encouraging the use of && and || over & and | because this is an accepted coding convention in software engineering. But could someone please give me a better, even real-world, example of using a bitwise operator in a conditional expression?"}
{"_id": "211295", "title": "Apps being portable", "text": "I haven't found much on this, but what I did find doesn't explain it well enough (at least for me). What makes the application I make portable?   Or what defines a portable application?   Is there a specific difference that makes an app portable or not? I always thought if I just made an executable file and some images I could just copy that folder and take it to another computer on a flash drive. But, if you could what is the purpose of having \"portable\" apps? I know I have asked a range of questions, but I suspect an answer that addresses one of the questions will cover them all."}
{"_id": "245314", "title": "Random forest ML algorithm suitable for use on cluster based HPC?", "text": "I need help in identifying a better algorithm. I have developed a script using pythons scipy package to analyse a rather large model that I wish to solve. The model contains over 12GB of data including over 500 parameters. The problem is that when I run small simulations of about 0.5GB of data with 20 parameters it can take my computer a decent amount of time if I allow a reasonable number of iterations through the random forest classifier. Currently my script is only using one core, so I guess that making the script multi-threaded would be the first step. But I do not believe this will be enough given how complex the model is. I am willing to explore the use of a cluster based HPC solution but I am not sure how to go about this. Are there better algorithms I can use, or is there a cluster based algorithm that would be more appropriate?"}
{"_id": "211292", "title": "How to solve \"train wreck\" properties problem that violates Law Of Demeter?", "text": "I've been reading about law of Demeter and I would like to know how to solve this traversing model properties problem that I see a lot on Objective-C. I know that there is a similar question but in this case I'm not calling a method from the last property that do some calculations, instead, I'm just setting values (Ok, I know that getter are methods but my intention here is just to get the value, not to change the state of some object). For example:               self.priceLabel.text = self.media.ad.price.value;      Should I change that for something like:               self.priceLabel.text = [self.media adPriceValue];      and inside the Media.m               - (NSString *)adPriceValue {         return [self.ad priceValue];     }      and inside the Ad.m               - (NSString *)priceValue {         return [self.price value];     }      Is that a good solution? Or Am I creating unnecessary methods?"}
{"_id": "68184", "title": "Dealing with bad job description and interviewing applicants", "text": "My employer has been looking for a new web developer as well as a DBA for a while now with little success. I just saw the job description, and now I can understand why we are getting no interest - they have lumped together three jobs into 1 position: web developer, DBA, and marketing SEO/Analytics expert all under the title of \"Webmaster\". It's hard enough to find someone who can do any of those individual things well, let alone somebody who can do it all (or wants to be called \"Webmaster\" these days). Part of their motivation is, no doubt, saving money by hiring 1 person to do three jobs and underpaying that person. But now I have to deal with interviewing people for this position (that is, if we ever get an applicant), and trying to figure out what this person is _really_ going to be doing once hired. Have you had experience with this sort of thing? Either as an applicant or as an interviewer. And how did you deal with it? Assuming that rewriting the job description to something more realistic isn't an option, what would be the best way of handling this (finding the right person, interviewing them effectively, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "186053", "title": "How to better performance", "text": "In one of my interviews I was asked a vague question, I'm still not sure of the answer. We have a client and a server they are placed apart. The network that connects them has high latency, which is dominating the performance. How can we improve the performance. Note that we can't change the network's topology. I was thinking of caching, breaking the request to multiple smaller requests and opening multiple connections with the server. Any ideas? Please note that the question description is vague and I wasn't supplied with more information about the situation. **Clarified question:** How should the client-server communication be designed in order to get the best performance on a network that has big latency?"}
{"_id": "146990", "title": "Any Course/Lecture videos on Design Patterns", "text": "I am planning to read some design patterns and I took the book on \"design patterns in C++' by gang of four. However, I am not really some one who reads book and prefers reading slides/watching course lectures and then apply and read the book. I cannot find any course lecture videos on net(yeah, its not that important a course as algo/OS). Any one know any course website, preferably on C++"}
{"_id": "137611", "title": "Add a unit test for each new bug", "text": "In my job all developers that resolve a bug have to add a new unit test that warns about this type of bugs (in the case it occours again). If a unit test is not possible (for example, a webpage design issue), then QA department has to create a test case to manually check it. The idea behind this is that if a defect has not been detected before the product release is because there isn't an appropriate unit test to detect it. So the developer has to add it. The question is: is this common in any software development methodology? This technique has a name? I would like to learn more about it, but I need some information to start with it."}
{"_id": "71859", "title": "Developing Android apps for someone else", "text": "We have developed several apps and published them on Android Market. We are now writing an app that another company will brand and sell through their own publisher account. The other company has no experience with Android Market or with Android development. I'd appreciate any insights from others who have faced similar situations. I'm specifically concerned about the following areas:   1. **Signing the app**   The alternatives we see are: sign with our usual key; create a signing key pair specific to the other company and sign with that; or help the other company install a development system, generate a key pair, and do the signing themselves. The latter would require us sending them the project sources, which presents its own problems. Other than our concern about sending the source, does the choice matter in any way?   2. **Licensing**   Since the license check will be done against their account, the code will need to embed their public key for decrypting the license response. Is there any reason they should be concerned about sharing that key with us? Are there any alternatives to them sharing the key with us?   3. **Publishing**   The other company is responsible for all marketing and sales; we are responsible for the app development. From what we can tell, Android Market is not set up to allow a clean separation of these roles. (It assumes that the developer will also be the publisher.) This makes it difficult to work out a division of responsibilities for the publication process. Our initial thought was to deliver the .apk file to them and let them handle it from there. The licensing issue was the first indication that we were being naive about this. The publishing process itself is rather technical, and we see two alternatives: walk them through all the steps or ask them to give us access to their publisher account and do it ourselves. What do others do?"}
{"_id": "108742", "title": "Source code and project documentation requirements for legal agreement", "text": "# Question What kind of documentation and other artifacts would you expect to get in case of taking over existing Java webapp (probably it uses JBoss Seam framework) made _in-house_? I would expect to get:   * Source code in form ready to open in specified IDE.   * All external elements (i.e. DB schema as SQL scripts, installation scripts).   * Configuration files (both for devel, testing and production environments).   * All external libraries needed by project.   * All external tools used in project or at least their description (i.e. make program, version control software).   * Detailed info about:     * How to compile project (IDE, libraries, their versions, compilers, OS),     * How to setup development environment (database version, OS, DB schema),     * How to install and run application -- server specification (OS, database, versions, minimal hardware, configuration both app and DB),  Probably it would be also nice to have:   * Archive of the whole version control system (to make possible checking changes from the past).   * UML diagrams or other form of _big picture_ of application design.   * DB schema. What I miss? # Some background details Friend works as a lawyer for a company which needs legal agreements with people who develop applications for them. Just in case something goes wrong. In general -- the company wants to have source code deposited somewhere. But source code is not enough to maintain or even compile and run webapp, so they also needsome documentation which helps maintain the app. I've never taken someone else's project in a similar case (no access to previous developers), and I am not Java developer, so I expect there are a lot of things to miss. ## More details added after a few answers The bosses of company (named it **A** , small corporation), which ordered and uses the app and company (named it **B** , a few people) which writes the app, are friends. Development is _in-house_. No formal spec, no written specification. All features are discussed over mail or on meetings. Everything, including hosting the app, is managed by **B**. Friend (who is also one of heavy users of the app -- let's say she is _product owner_ ) doesn't trust developers from **B** at all. Friend also doesn't believe in **B** competencies (believe me -- she should not). So to protect **A** business friend wants written legal agreement with **B** in case **B** would go away with **A** data and app... As MSalters wrote -- don't laugh -- it happens :(. **A** already made **B** to make and provides backups."}
{"_id": "108743", "title": "Resolving merge conflicts due to refactoring", "text": "I got involved in a discussion recently on how to handle refactoring in general (which is an interesting topic in itself). Eventually the following question was brought up: **How does one handle merge conflicts that occured due to that someone did a refactoring of a part of the code, while someone else was working on a feature for the same piece of code?** Basically, I have no idea how to deal with this in an efficient manner. Are there any best practices that one should follow regarding this? Is there any difference on how one should handle this for a system with tons of legacy code?"}
{"_id": "108740", "title": "Can we replace XML with JSON entirely?", "text": "I'm sure lots of developers are familiar with XML and JSON, and they've used both of them. Thus no point in explaining what they are, and what is their purpose, even in brief. If we try to map their concepts, we can say (correct me if I'm wrong):   1. XML tags are equivalent to JSON `{}`   2. XML attributes are equivalent to JSON properties   3. XML tag collection is equivalent to JSON `[]` The only thing I can think of, which doesn't exist in JSON, is XML Namespaces. The question is, considering this mapping, and considering that JSON is highly lighter in this mapping, can we see a world in future (or at least theoretically think of a world) without XML, but with JSON doing everything XML does? Can we use JSON everywhere XML is used? PS: Please note that I've seen this question. It's something entirely different from what I'm asking here. Thus please don't mention **duplicate**."}
{"_id": "71851", "title": "Dependency Injection and method signatures", "text": "I've been using YADIF (yet another dependency injection framework) in a PHP/Zend app I'm working on to handle dependencies. This has achieved some notable benefits in terms of testing and decoupling classes. However,one thing that strikes me is that despite the sleight of hand performed when using this technique, the method names impart a degree of coupling. Probably not the best example -but these methods are distinct from ... say the PEAR Mailer. The method names themselves are a (subtle) form of coupling               //example     public function __construct($dic){         $this->dic = $dic;     }          public function example(){         //this line in itself indicates the YADIF origin of the DIC         $Mail= $dic->getComponent('mail');                 $Mail->setBodyText($body);         $Mail->setFrom($from);                 $Mail->setSubject($subject);     }      I could write a series of proxies/wrappers to hide these methods and thus promote decoupling from , but this seems a bit excessive. You have to balance purity with pragmatism... How far would you go to hide the dependencies in your classes?"}
{"_id": "197718", "title": "What \"jobs\" benefit by having someone with a programming background perform them?", "text": "What non-programming jobs should someone look for who doesn't have the passion for programming? There are a percentage of people who make it through a computer science type of degree but do not have the passion for programming. I have worked with many people who have a programming background but became a project manager or tester and it has made my job as a programmer easier... and our products better. This is not a failure of the system or person... they are just finding where they fit. So, I wonder what non-programming jobs benefit from having someone in them that is a programmer and why does it make that person a stronger or weaker candidate for that job? For instance: Programmers make good project managers because they may be able to express requirements in a detailed fashion that makes sense to the programmers that will work on those requirements. But they may be to accustom to talking about things in a technical way that the customers may not understand and they may have a tendency to try to communicate a design for a solution instead of presenting the problem in a raw fashion."}
{"_id": "68233", "title": "Namespaces just seem to be making things more complicated. Am I missing something?", "text": "Now that I am using namespaces in my php files which match the file's path, I have to append a namespace to pretty much every class instantiation. The namespaces definitely help my autoloader find files, but the code is becomming harder to read/write. aren't namespaces supposed to simplify my code? why is it making things more complicated? Am I using it wrong? Not sure I see how using a namespace is much better than having super long class names... example: file: /root_path/init.php               <?php         namespace root_path;         $foo = new \\sub_path\\bar();     ?>      file: /root_path/sub_path/bar.php               <?php         namespace root_path\\sub_path;         class bar {              }     ?>"}
{"_id": "157337", "title": "Are Design Patterns SuperSet of OOP or SubSet?", "text": "Initially I started learning OOP and later started grasping concepts of Design Patterns. I wonder whether it is the Design Pattern which is the SuperSet of OOP or it is the OOP itself."}
{"_id": "104892", "title": "Which language and GUI toolkit would you use for a prototype program?", "text": "Suppose, I have an idea and I have to put it into code quickly. And then I am presenting it to someone who is not so computer savvy. Which language should I use for quick and dirty coding? And which GUI toolkit should I use so that the the computer semi-literate find it easy to use (read shiny-eye-candy). It is a desktop application."}
{"_id": "197710", "title": "How to use GPL v3 with Apache License 2.0?", "text": "Based on this page, I can see that only Apache License 2.0 is compatible with GPL v3. Now my question is, in layman's term, how do I make those two work together? My current situation is that I am developing an application that is made from a GPL v3 licensed programming language. I want to put some form of security on the application and figured I can achieve that via a web service. However, I don't want to expose my web service's code as GPL v3 since it is part of a larger system that I am working on which will be closed source. Is there any way to use the Apache License 2.0 in this scenario? EDIT: For clarity's sake, the programming language I am going to use is LiveCode."}
{"_id": "157339", "title": "Unit testing C++: What to test?", "text": "**TL;DR** Writing good, useful tests is hard, and has a high cost in C++. Can you experienced developers share your rationale on what and when to test? **Long story** I used to do test-driven development, my whole team in fact, but it didn't work well for us. We have many tests, but they never seem to cover the cases where we have actual bugs and regressions - which usually occur when units are interacting, not from their isolated behaviour. This is often so hard to test on the unit level that we stopped doing TDD (except for components where it really speeds up development), and instead invested more time increasing the integration test coverage. While the small unit tests never caught any real bugs and were basically just maintenance overhead, the integration tests have really been worth the effort. Now I've inherited a new project, and am wondering how to go about testing it. It's a native C++/OpenGL application, so integration tests are not really an option. But unit testing in C++ is a bit harder than in Java (you have to explicitely make stuff `virtual`), and the program isn't heavily object oriented, so I can't mock/stub some stuff away. I don't want to rip apart and OO-ize the whole thing just to write some tests for the sake of writing tests. So I'm asking you: What is it I should write tests for? e.g.:   * Functions/Classes that I expect to change frequently?   * Functions/Classes that are more difficult to test manually?   * Functions/Classes that are easy to test already? I began to investigate some respectful C++ code bases to see how they go about testing. Right now I'm looking into the Chromium source code, but I'm finding it hard to extract their testing rationale from the code. If anyone has a good example or post on how popular C++ users (guys from the committee, book authors, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, ...) approach this, that'd be extra helpful. **Update** I have searched my way around this site and the web since writing this. Found some good stuff:   * When is it appropriate to not unit test?   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/109432/what-not-to-test-when-it-comes-to-unit-testing   * http://junit.sourceforge.net/doc/faq/faq.htm#best Sadly, all of these are rather Java/C# centric. Writing lots of tests in Java/C# is not a big problem, so the benefit usually outweights the costs. But as I wrote above, it's more difficult in C++. Especially if your code base is not-so-OO, you have to severely mess things up to get a good unit test coverage. For instance: The application I inherited has a `Graphics` name space that is a thin layer above OpenGL. In order to test any of the entities - which all use its functions directly - I'd have to turn this into an interface and a class and inject it in all the entities. That's just one example. So when answering this question, please keep in mind that I have to make a rather big investment for writing tests."}
{"_id": "30135", "title": "Does syntax really matter in a programming language?", "text": "One of my professors says \"the syntax is the UI of a programming language\", languages like Ruby have great readability and it's growing, but we see a lot of programmers productive with C\\C++, so as programmers does it really matter that the syntax should be acceptable? I would love to know your opinion on that. Disclaimer: I'm not trying to start an argument. I thought this is a good topic of discussion. Update: This turns out to be a good topic. I'm glad you are all participating in it."}
{"_id": "211742", "title": "What is the exact semantic of reduce in clojure?", "text": "The Clojure docs regarding `(reduce f val coll)` state: > If val is supplied, returns the result of applying f to val and the first > item in coll, then applying f to that result and the 2nd item, etc. So I tried:               (reduce str [\"s1\" \"s2\"] \"s3\")      Which leads to:               \"[\\\"s1\\\" \\\"s2\\\"]s3\"      However, when I try               (apply str [\"s1\" \"s2\"])      I get:               \"s1s2\"      So why does the vector get converted into its string representation?"}
{"_id": "211745", "title": "Why do some websites showing 0 bytes in Chrome's developer tools", "text": "I am doing a page speed optimization for my website and studying how other websites do it. I noticed that some websites such as as Facebook or Ringgitplus show 0 bytes for some of their resources in Chrome's developer tools, Network tab, while the real content size is several kilobytes. ![The screenshot of Network tab showing 0 bytes for some resources](http://i.stack.imgur.com/asvBh.png) I read some articles that says that _size_ is the amount being fetched and _content_ is the actual size of the response. So when size is 0 bytes, it means it served from cache. But the same thing happened when I open the page using Incognito or clearing all my cache. How is this possible and how can I achieve the same thing for my websites?"}
{"_id": "130426", "title": "Need help with deciding elements for icon creating application", "text": "I'm trying to practice programing by creating a simple application which, I think, I can manage to do in .Net C# in VisualStudio 2010. I'm working on simple application which will let me to create small pictures (icons) in sizes such as 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 (ect) pixels. I will be creating a grid representing each size by scaling to amount of pixels. Each pixel will be represented in a small square which will be able to click to change color ect. So here's my question regarding what elements such app should have:   * What VS tool would let me to create a grid for my project? Keeping in mind that each small square should be generated automatically by using X/Y size provided by user and boxes should be clickable. Also, I probably should be able to be able to click one pixel and drag mouse to select other pixels.   * What simple functions should such small app have? Ex. choosing colors.   * What minimal functions should I have? I hope this is place for such question. I'm trying to get the general idea of how to make such small app work and what user might expect when opening small, icon creating, application."}
{"_id": "78636", "title": "What's the best way to cache a growing database table for html generation?", "text": "I've got a database table which will grow in size by about 5000 rows a hour. For a key that I would be querying by, the query will grow in size by about 1 row every hour. I would like a web page to show the latest rows for a key, 50 at a time (this is configurable). I would like to try and implement memcache to keep database activity low for reads. If I run a query and create a cache result for each page of 50 results, that would work until a new entry is added. At that time, the page of latest results gets new result and the oldest results drops off. This cascades down the list of cached pages causing me to update every cache result. It seems like a poor design. I could build the cache pages backwards, then for each page requested I should get the latest 2 pages and truncate to the proper length of 50. I'm not sure if this is good or bad? Ideally, the mechanism I use to insert a new row would also know how to invalidate the proper cache results. Has someone already solved this problem in a widely acceptable way? What's the best method of doing this? EDIT: If my understanding of the MYSQL query cache is correct, it has table level granularity in invalidation. Given the fact that I have about 5000 updates before a query on a key should need to be invalidated, it seems that the database query cache would not be used. MS SQL caches execution plans and frequently accessed data pages, so it may do better in this scenario. My query is not against a single table with TOP N. One version has joins to several tables and another has sub-selects. Also, since I want to cache the html generated table, I'm wondering if a cache at the web server level would be appropriate? Is there really no benefit to any type of caching? Is the best advice really to just allow a website site query to go through all the layers and hit the database every request?"}
{"_id": "85760", "title": "What steps should be taken to ensure that an open source database gets ready for production?", "text": "I am considering using GridSQL in a production environment. However, I do have some indications that it is not ready. One is that it got excluded by the offering of EnterpriseDB a while ago, and the forums seem to report a few wrong results and relatively severe bugs. The alternatives to GridSQL, however cost around 100.000$ to buy, so I was thinking to utilize some of this money to ensure that GridSQL gets ready for production. At the same time, I could risk spending 50.000$ and months of work on the development of GridSQL, just to discover that the design was flawed and that a complete rewrite is needed. Then I would have to buy the commercial alternatives to GridSQL and the existence of my startup would be at risk. **Question** What steps would you take to ensure that there is as little risk as possible that the worst case scenario described above would happen? It is unrealistic that I could do much testing nor code review/coding myself (I am also not the best developer), so please describe where to find the guys that would need to do the work."}
{"_id": "3131", "title": "Hiring \"off-platform\" - what are the indicators for successful candidates?", "text": "When looking for candidates you often want to have people with direct experience with the technologies and platforms you are using today. However, that may not always be a possibility. The particular requirements may involve niche tech, outdated tech, or your team has already drained the local area of everyone with that particular tech (not everyone works in Silicon Valley, some of us work and live in some smaller metro area for reasons unrelated to the profession). So often that can leave you with hiring people who are \"off-platform\" like Dot-Net people for a Java project, or Cobol programmers for an iPhone app (or vice versa). Or even just a language switch, from Visual Basic to Scala or JavaScript to C. My question is what qualities, attributes, and experience would you look for as in interviewer to indicate that the candidate can successfully switch platforms or languages, and what are the indicators as to the level of success and timeframe. Also, decent \"war stories\" related to this would get a solid upvote from me."}
{"_id": "81718", "title": "How should I approach developing a Java based client-server application?", "text": "I have been asked to develop a client-server application (requires database) for a company. I am very handy with java so would like to go with it. Its up to me how I develop the application. It may be an JSP web application or Java Swing GUI based application. I have following queries/doubts. So if I go on to develop a web application, I have to teach the company personnel     1. How to install Tomcat   2. How to load the web application Tomcat   3. How to start the server to start the application. If I go on to develop a Java Swing GUI based application,   1. It should start when the computer starts up. i.e it should be auto added into the service start-up of the OS on installation   2. Have application shortcut in quick launch, tray bar on installation. On Database Part: I would like to have MS-access like DB but free one. This is because,   1. No need to worry about installation of DB engine (like we have to take care in-case of MySQL).   2. DB would maintained in some Drive (like .mdb file in case of MS-Acess) unharmed even if their OS crashes. Please guide me how should I approach in developing the software."}
{"_id": "106792", "title": "What are the (or some) tenets of software security?", "text": "When developing security, what tenets should you keep in mind and follow in order to practice due diligence?"}
{"_id": "106791", "title": "Writing a game engine using javascript", "text": "..by this I mean a logic handler for a chess game. Basically validating a move and checking if somebody has won. Now ignore the complexity of the game(if you can..) I'd like some sort of psuedo code on how it would look using callbacks in javascript. For arguments sake imagine once a move is completed in the browser it sends a JSON object of the piece that has been moved and to which space it has been moved to. On the server we have access to a JSON object which contains data for the complete board. With this information I expect to pass it in to my engine and determine from the output if the move is valid..and if so is it a winning move? I'm not looking for any specific logic on how to determine a move in chess -> just a kind of psuedo example/template of the flow of the game using the above paragraph as a guide to what must be done. The reason for this is I would like to understand how callbacks can be used to produce something of this nature as opposed to synchronous code."}
{"_id": "225145", "title": "Best practice or design patterns for retrieval of data for reporting and dashboards in a domain-rich application", "text": "First, I want to say this seems to be a neglected question/area, so if this question needs improvement, help me make this a great question that can benefit others! In my experience, there are two sides of an application - the \"task\" side (where the users interact with the application and it's objects where the domain model lives) and the reporting side, where users get data based on what happens on the task side. On the task side, it's clear that an application with a rich domain model should have business logic in the domain model and the database should be used mostly for persistence. Separation of concerns, every book is written about it, we know what to do, awesome. What about the reporting side? Are data warehouses acceptable, or are they bad design because they incorporate business logic in the database and the very data itself? In order to aggregate the data from the database into data warehouse data, you must have applied business logic and rules to the data, and that logic and rules didn't come from your domain model, it came from your data aggregating processes. Is that wrong? I work on large financial and project management applications where the business logic is extensive. When reporting on this data, I will often have a LOT of aggregations to do to pull the information required for the report/dashboard, and the aggregations have a lot of business logic in them. For performance sake, I have been doing it with highly aggregated tables and stored procedures. As an example, let's say a report/dashboard is needed to show a list of active projects (imagine 10,000 projects). Each project will need a set of metrics shown with it, for example:   1. total budget   2. effort to date   3. burn rate   4. budget exhaustion date at current burn rate   5. etc. Each of these involves a lot of business logic. And I'm not just talking about multiplying numbers or some simple logic. I'm talking about in order to get the budget, you have to apply a rate sheet with 500 different rates, one for each employee's time (on some projects, other's have a multiplier), applying expenses and any appropriate markup, etc. The logic is extensive. It took a lot of aggregating and query tuning to get this data in a reasonable amount of time for the client. Should this be run through the domain first? What about performance? Even with straight SQL queries, I'm barely getting this data fast enough for the client to display in a reasonable amount of time. I can't imagine trying to get this data to the client fast enough if I am rehydrating all these domain objects, and mixing and matching and aggregating their data in the application layer, or trying to aggregate the data in the application. It seems in these cases that SQL is good at crunching data, and why not use it? But then you have business logic outside your domain model. Any change to the business logic will have to be changed in your domain model and your reporting aggregation schemes. I'm really at a loss for how to design the reporting/dashboard part of any application with respect to domain driven design and good practices. I added the MVC tag because MVC is the design flavor du jour and I am using it in my current design, but can't figure out how the reporting data fits into this type of application. I'm looking for any help in this area - books, design patterns, key words to google, articles, anything. I can't find any information on this topic."}
{"_id": "106795", "title": "How to tackle complex business rule and logic?", "text": "I have a domain expert to work with, but he would throws a lot of details to me verbally. The business logics are complex, business rules change often, the business process is long and multi-ending / intermediate wait-state. There are a lot of cases to deal with (because there are many states for the account, product and subscription). What's the best way to deal with it? BPMN diagram isn't even low level enough to explain. Written documentations are time consuming to write and read. UML state diagram can become crazily complex very soon. Any advice would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "234276", "title": "Using a progress dialog and multi threading", "text": "My .NET Windows desktop application creates an HTML report, and has 3 main phases. It may create multiple reports. I show a progress bar so the user knows (estimates) how long it will take (as well as reassure the system didn't crash by an updating GUI). So, if I needed to generate 3 reports, there would be a total of 9 phases (3 phases * 3 reports). The issue I now have, is the process is taking too long. As such, I need to use threads so I can start on phase 1, then open a new thread which completes phase 2 and 3. Whilst phase 2 and 3 are in progress, the next item on the list begins with phase 1 and the process continues. I'm hoping this makes sense. So I'm now thinking what to do with the progress bar since multiple phases will be being run at once. At the moment, the only logical thing I can think of is               Report 1. Start phase 1. New thread -> Phase 2 and 3          Check to see if Report 2 is last report. It isn't, so, during Report 2 phase 2, start Report 2 phase 1. New thread -> Phase 2 and 3          Check to see if Report 3 is last report. It is. So, during report 2 phase 2, start Report 3 phase 1, then continue on the same thread with phase 2 and 3      The above will mean I update the Progress Dialog during phase 2 and 3 of the last Report (and I guess I need to add some checks to ensure the other phases are actually finished). I can't imagine I'm doing any thing new or different to what has been before and as such, I was wondering if there is already a pattern for dealing with type of situation?"}
{"_id": "234271", "title": "Am I bound by the license of a library that is used in my project but is not distributed with it?", "text": "I want to publish a small open source project on GitHub. I'd like to release it with either MIT or Apache license. The project has unit tests that use JUnit library. JUnit is released with the Eclipse Public License v1.0. JUnit is not distributed in the project - it is downloaded and used at build time by Maven, the build tool. Am I bound by the license of a library that is used in the project but is not distributed with it? If I am, can I use a library released with the Eclipse Public License in MIT or Apache licensed projects? **My own thoughts (the most pessimistic scenario)** As the unit tests use JUnit, the project is a derivative work of JUnit, even though JUnit is not distributed with it. Distributing the project automatically means distributing JUnit. The Eclipse Public License (the JUnit's license) says: > A Contributor may choose to distribute the Program in object code form under > its own license agreement, provided that \u2026 its license agreement: There is a list of four requirements here that sound trivial but which, perhaps, are not fully addressed in the MIT and Apache licenses (disclaiming all warranties, excluding any liability, a statement about additional provisions, a statement about availability of the source code). So, the Eclipse Public License may not be compatible with the MIT and Apache licenses, and I may not be able to use JUnit."}
{"_id": "80318", "title": "Checked vs Unchecked vs No Exception... A best practice of contrary beliefs", "text": "There are many requirements needed for a system to properly convey and handle exceptions. There are also many options for a language to choose from to implement the concept. Requirements for exceptions (in no particular order):   1. **Documentation** : A language should have a mean to document exceptions an API can throw. Ideally this documentation medium should be machine usable to allow compilers and IDEs to provide support to the programmer.   2. **Transmit Exceptional Situations** : This one is obvious, to allow a function to convey situations that prevent the called functionality from performing the expected action. In my opinion there are three big categories of such situations : 2.1 Bugs in the code that cause some data to be invalid. 2.2 Problems in configuration or other external resources. 2.3 Resources that are inherently unreliable (network, file systems, databases, end-users etc). These are a bit of a corner case since their unreliable nature should have us expect their sporadic failures. In this case are these situations to be considered exceptional ?   3. **Provide enough information for code to handle it** : The exceptions should provide sufficient information to the callee so that it can react and possibly handle the situation. the information should also be sufficient so that when logged this exceptions would provide enough context to a programmer to identify and isolate the offending statements and provide a solution.   4. **Provide confidence to the programmer about the current status of his code's execution state** : The exception handling capabilities of a software system should be present enough to provide the needed safeguards while staying out of the way of the programmer so he can stay focused on the task at hand. To cover these the following methods were implemented in various languages:   1. **Checked Exceptions** Provide a great way to document exceptions, and theoretically when implemented correctly should provide ample reassurance that all is good. However the cost is such that many feel it more productive to simply bypass either by swallowing exceptions or re-throw them as unchecked exceptions. When used inappropriately checked exceptions pretty much looses all it's usefulness. Also, checked exceptions make it difficult to create a API that is stable in time. Implementations of a generic system within a specific domain will bring it's load of exceptional situation that would become hard to maintain using solely checked exceptions.   2. **Unchecked Exceptions** \\- much more versatile than checked exception they fail to properly document the possible exceptional situations of a given implementation. They rely on ad-hoc documentation if at all. This creates situations where the unreliable nature of a medium is masked by an API that gives the appearance of reliability. Also when thrown these exceptions loose their meaning as they move back up through the abstraction layers. Since they are poorly documented a programmer cannot target them specifically and often needs to cast a much wider net than necessary to ensure that secondary systems, should they fail, do not bring down the whole system. Which brings us right back to the swallowing problem checked exceptions provided.   3. **Multistate return types** Here it is to rely on a disjoint set, tupple, or other similar concept to return either the expected result or an object representing the exception. Here no stack unwinding, no cutting through code, everything executes normally but the return value must be validated for error prior to continuing. I have not really worked with this yet so cannot comment from experience I acknowledge it resolves some problems exceptions bypassing the normal flow but still it will suffer from much the same problems as the checked exceptions as being tiresome and constantly \"in your face\". So the question is : What is your experience in this matter and what, according to you is the best candidate to make a good exception handling system for a language to have ? * * * EDIT: Few minutes after writing this question I came across this post, spooky !"}
{"_id": "254333", "title": "redimension multidimensional arrays in Excel VBA", "text": "Take a look at the following code. What my problem is is that I can't figure out how to redimension the n integer and the b integer. What I'm doing is the array sent1 is already working and it is populated with about 4 sentences. I need to go through each sentence and work on it but I'm having trouble. ` dim sent1() dim sent2() dim n as integer, b as integer, x as integer dim temp_sent as string b = 0 For n = 1 to ubound(sent1) temp_sent = sent1(n) for x = 1 to len(temp_sent1)               code               if a then     b = b + 1      **THIS IS THE PART OF THE CODE THAT IS NOT WORKING**               redim preserve sent2(1 to ubound(sent1), b)     sent2(n,b) = [code]          next      next `"}
{"_id": "146505", "title": "Service Registry - is it needed?", "text": "Suppose you develop a system that has multiple services (implemented by different teams, in different countries, using different technologies including java, php, c#, c++ and more). Let's assume that despite using different technologies, somehow you have agreed to integrate using RESTful APIs. Does such a system need a Service Registry? I understand that basically it's not mandatory, since each service may have its own configuration where the service it uses are located. However, creating a central location makes the life of operations easier: they don't need to configure the same service multiple times. But creating a Service Registry may be complex. It's another system in the solution and it requires resources and even more important ownership. Who will owner it? I can think about more pros and cons of a Service Registry. So what do you think?"}
{"_id": "185363", "title": "POST/Redirect/GET with invalid form submission?", "text": "In the field of web development, is it good practice to do a POST/Redirect/GET when fields in a form submission are invalid, as well? Typically, no sensitive transaction would have taken place, in this event. However, can an argument be made that, nonetheless, it is still good practice to utilize the POST/Redirect/GET pattern?"}
{"_id": "185360", "title": "Copying (forking) an open source project to your own repository", "text": "I'm currently using an open source project called CodeFirstMembership for one of my projects. There's a critical issue that I need to get past, and the more I use it, the more I find things I need to modify. It's extremely useful, except it doesn't look like the developer has much time to update it (totally cool, we've all been there). I'm wondering about the etiquette and legality and general \"hey, you stole my code you jerk\" responses I'd get if I copied the source, moved it to github and made my own fork. On Github, we do this all the time, forking projects, but it FEELs less jerk- ish because there's a connection to the original. Is there anything wrong with me doing this, whether legal or otherwise since there's no copyright notice or license associated with this library?"}
{"_id": "180784", "title": "is it okay to remove copyright info from a free, open source API even if you are explicitly told not to do so?", "text": "Just wondering if text such as the following, which appears inside the source files of a free, open source API, means anything in a court of law                   // Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy         // of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to deal         // in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights         // to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell         // copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is         // furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:         //         // The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in         // all copies or substantial portions of the Software.         //         // THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR         // IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,         // FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE         // AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER         // LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,         // OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN         // THE SOFTWARE."}
{"_id": "147643", "title": "Splitting an image into many pieces to improve perceived performance? Good or Bad?", "text": "Time to time, I have to work on a website that involves a huge background in size and resolution (1920 x 1080 in resolution, over 2mb in size). I've been using preloaders and it worked very well, except that users have to wait a little bit. I noticed that google map splits a big image into many pieces. I researched about it and found out that it actually increases perceived performance. Is this true?"}
{"_id": "147645", "title": "What is the difference between an Array and a Stack?", "text": "According to Wikipedia, a stack: > is a last in, first out (LIFO) abstract data type and linear data structure. While an array: > is a data structure consisting of a collection of elements (values or > variables), each identified by at least one array index or key. As far as I understand, they are fairly similar. So, what are the main differences? If they are not the same, what can an array do that a stack can't and vice-versa?"}
{"_id": "144594", "title": "Do I suffer from encapsulation overuse?", "text": "I have noticed something in my code in various projects that seems like code smell to me and something bad to do, but I can't deal with it. While trying to write \"clean code\" I tend to over-use private methods in order to make my code easier to read. The problem is that the code is indeed cleaner but it's also more difficult to test (yeah I know I can test private methods...) and in general it seems a bad habit to me. Here's an example of a class that reads some data from a .csv file and returns a group of customers (another object with various fields and attributes).               public class GroupOfCustomersImporter {     //... Call fields ....     public GroupOfCustomersImporter(String filePath) {              this.filePath = filePath;              customers = new HashSet<Customer>();              createCSVReader();              read();              constructTTRP_Instance();          }          private void createCSVReader() {         //....     }          private void read() {         //.... Reades the file and initializes the class attributes     }          private void readFirstLine(String[] inputLine) {         //.... Method used by the read() method     }          private void readSecondLine(String[] inputLine) {         //.... Method used by the read() method     }          private void readCustomerLine(String[] inputLine) {          //.... Method used by the read() method     }          private void constructGroupOfCustomers() {         //this.groupOfCustomers = new GroupOfCustomers(**attributes of the class**);     }          public GroupOfCustomers getConstructedGroupOfCustomers() {         return this.GroupOfCustomers;     }      } As you can see the class has only a constructor which calls some private methods to get the job done, I know that's not a good practice not a good practice in general but I prefer to encapsulate all the functionality in the class instead of making the methods public in which case a client should work this way:               GroupOfCustomersImporter importer = new GroupOfCustomersImporter(filepath)     importer.createCSVReader();     read();     GroupOfCustomer group = constructGoupOfCustomerInstance();      I prefer this because I don't want to put useless lines of code in the client's side code bothering the client class with implementation details. So, Is this actually a bad habit? If yes, how can I avoid it? Please note that the above is just a simple example. Imagine the same situation happening in something a little bit more complex."}
{"_id": "144591", "title": "When is it acceptable to NOT fix broken windows?", "text": "In reference to broken windows, are there times when refactoring is best left for a future activity? For example, if a project to add some new features to an existing internal system is assigned to a team that has not worked with the system until now, and is given a short timeline in which to work with - can it be ever be justifiable to defer major refactorings to existing code for the sake of making the deadline in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "103673", "title": "What are linkers and loaders? How do they work?", "text": "I am trying to understand things like linkers and loaders better. What area of computer science do they belong to? Compiler, Operating System, Computer Architecture? Where do linkers and loaders come into play during development?"}
{"_id": "156060", "title": "Constructs for wrapping a hardware state machine", "text": "I am using a piece of hardware with a well defined C API. The hardware is stateful, with the relevant API calls needing to be in the correct order for the hardware to work properly. The API calls themselves will always return, passing back a flag that advises whether the call was successful, or if not, why not. The hardware will not be left in some ill defined state. In effect, the API calls advise indirectly of the current state of the hardware if the state is not correct to perform a given operation. It seems to be a pretty common hardware API style. My question is this: Is there a well established design pattern for wrapping such a hardware state machine in a high level language, such that consistency is maintained? My development is in Python. I ideally wish the hardware state machine to be abstracted to a much simpler state machine and wrapped in an object that represents the hardware. I'm not sure what should happen if an attempt is made to create multiple objects representing the same piece of hardware. I apologies for the slight vagueness, I'm not very knowledgeable in this area and so am fishing for assistance of the description as well!"}
{"_id": "186558", "title": "How can I work on different projects without losing focus?", "text": "I'm doing a full-time job (developer) and at the end of the day, I work on my part-time job (developer). How do you work, with different projects, without loosing focus? Often, my focus on the full-time job still remains at my head when working on my part- time job or the other way around."}
{"_id": "156066", "title": "How to do MVC the right way", "text": "I've been doing MVC for a few months now using the CodeIgniter framework in PHP but I still don't know if I'm really doing things right. What I currently do is: **Model** \\- this is where I put database queries (select, insert, update, delete). Here's a sample from one of the models that I have:               function register_user($user_login, $user_profile, $department, $role) {              $department_id = $this->get_department_id($department);         $role_id = $this->get_role_id($role);              array_push($user_login, $department_id, $role_id);              $this->db->query(\"INSERT INTO tbl_users SET username=?, hashed_password=?, salt=?, department_id=?, role_id=?\", $user_login);         $user_id = $this->db->insert_id();                  array_push($user_profile, $user_id);              $this->db->query(\"                 INSERT INTO tbl_userprofile SET firstname=?,                  midname=?, lastname=?, user_id=?             \", $user_profile);     }      **Controller** \\- talks to the model, calls up the methods in the model which queries the database, supplies the data which the views will display(success alerts, error alerts, data from database), inherits a parent controller which checks if user is logged in. Here's a sample:               function create_user(){         $this->load->helper('encryption/Bcrypt');         $bcrypt = new Bcrypt(15);               $user_data = array(             'username' => 'Username', 'firstname' => 'Firstname',             'middlename' => 'Middlename', 'lastname' => 'Lastname',                 'password' => 'Password', 'department' => 'Department',                  'role' => 'Role'         );              foreach ($user_data as $key => $value) {             $this->form_validation->set_rules($key, $value, 'required|trim');         }              if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE) {             $departments = $this->user_model->list_departments();             $it_roles = $this->user_model->list_roles(1);             $tc_roles = $this->user_model->list_roles(2);             $assessor_roles = $this->user_model->list_roles(3);                  $data['data'] = array('departments' => $departments, 'it_roles' => $it_roles, 'tc_roles' => $tc_roles, 'assessor_roles' => $assessor_roles);                  $data['content'] = 'admin/create_user';                      parent::error_alert();                 $this->load->view($this->_at, $data);                  } else {             $username = $this->input->post('username');             $salt = $bcrypt->getSalt();             $hashed_password = $bcrypt->hash($this->input->post('password'), $salt);             $fname = $this->input->post('firstname');             $mname = $this->input->post('middlename');             $lname = $this->input->post('lastname');             $department = $this->input->post('department');             $role = $this->input->post('role');                      $user_login     = array($username, $hashed_password, $salt);                 $user_profile   = array($fname, $mname, $lname);             $this->user_model->register_user($user_login, $user_profile, $department, $role);                  $data['content'] = 'admin/view_user';                      parent::success_alert(4, 'User Sucessfully Registered!', 'You may now login using your account');                       $data['data'] = array('username' => $username, 'fname' => $fname, 'mname' => $mname, 'lname' => $lname, 'department' => $department, 'role' => $role);             $this->load->view($this->_at, $data);         }          }      **Views** \\- this is where I put html, css, and JavaScript code (form validation code for the current form, looping through the data supplied by controller, a few if statements to hide and show things depending on the data supplied by the controller).               <!--User registration form-->     <form class=\"well min-form\" method=\"post\">         <div class=\"form-heading\">             <h3>User Registration</h3>         </div>              <label for=\"username\">Username</label>         <input type=\"text\" id=\"username\" name=\"username\" class=\"span3\" autofocus>              <label for=\"password\">Password</label>         <input type=\"password\" id=\"password\" name=\"password\" class=\"span3\">              <label for=\"firstname\">First name</label>         <input type=\"text\" id=\"firstname\" name=\"firstname\" class=\"span3\">              <label for=\"middlename\">Middle name</label>         <input type=\"text\" id=\"middlename\" name=\"middlename\" class=\"span3\">              <label for=\"lastname\">Last name</label>         <input type=\"text\" id=\"lastname\" name=\"lastname\" class=\"span3\">              <label for=\"department\">Department</label>         <input type=\"text\" id=\"department\" name=\"department\" class=\"span3\" list=\"list_departments\">              <datalist id=\"list_departments\">             <?php foreach ($data['departments'] as $row) { ?>                 <option data-id=\"<?php echo $row['department_id']; ?>\" value=\"<?php echo $row['department']; ?>\"><?php echo $row['department']; ?></option>             <?php } ?>         </datalist>              <label for=\"role\">Role</label>         <input type=\"text\" id=\"role\" name=\"role\" class=\"span3\" list=\"\">              <datalist id=\"list_it\">             <?php foreach ($data['it_roles'] as $row) { ?>                 <option data-id=\"<?php echo $row['role_id']; ?>\" value=\"<?php echo $row['role']; ?>\"><?php echo $row['role']; ?></option>             <?php } ?>         </datalist>              <datalist id=\"list_collection\">             <?php foreach ($data['tc_roles'] as $row) { ?>                 <option data-id=\"<?php echo $row['role_id']; ?>\" value=\"<?php echo $row['role']; ?>\"><?php echo $row['role']; ?></option>             <?php } ?>           </datalist>              <datalist id=\"list_assessor\">             <?php foreach ($data['assessor_roles'] as $row) { ?>                 <option data-id=\"<?php echo $row['role_id']; ?>\" value=\"<?php echo $row['role']; ?>\"><?php echo $row['role']; ?></option>             <?php } ?>           </datalist>              <p>             <button type=\"submit\" class=\"btn btn-success\">Create User</button>         </p>     </form>          <script>         var departments = [];         var roles = [];              $('#list_departments option').each(function(i){             departments[i] = $(this).val();         });              $('#list_it option').each(function(i){             roles[roles.length + 1] = $(this).val();         });              $('#list_collection option').each(function(i){             roles[roles.length + 1] = $(this).val();         });              $('#list_assessor option').each(function(i){             roles[roles.length + 1] = $(this).val();         });              $('#department').blur(function(){                  var department = $.trim($(this).val());              $('#role').attr('list', 'list_' + department);         });              var password = new LiveValidation('password');         password.add(Validate.Presence);         password.add(Validate.Length, {minimum: 10});         $('input[type=text]').each(function(i){             var field_id = $(this).attr('id');             var field = new LiveValidation(field_id);             field.add(Validate.Presence);             if(field_id == 'department'){                 field.add(Validate.Inclusion, {within : departments});             }             else if(field_id == 'role'){                 field.add(Validate.Inclusion, {within : roles})             }         });     </script>      The codes above are actually code from the application that I'm currently working on. I'm working on it alone so I don't really have someone to review my code for me and point out the wrong things in it so I'm posting it here in hopes that someone could point out the wrong things that I've done in here. I'm also looking for some guidelines in writing MVC code like what are the things that should be and shouldn't be included in views, models and controllers. How else can I improve the current code that I have right now. I've written some really terrible code before(duplication of logic, etc.) that's why I want to improve my code so that I can easily maintain it in the future. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "193563", "title": "How safe & trustworthy are hosting sites such as sourceforge, github or bitbucket for closed-source projects?", "text": "I am considering using sourceforge, bitbucket or github for managing source control for my business. I have open projects and I participate in open projects such as gcc. But I also have a business where I develop closed-source software for my living. How trustworthy are sourceforge, github or bitbucket in terms of keeping software secure from prying eyes? How stable is the hosting in terms of data loss prevention? Has anyone out there based their business logic with such an outfit? Has anyone out there surveyed several of the hosting solutions? Thank you"}
{"_id": "185093", "title": "Do I really want a dynamic Enum, or something else? Better caching? A Struct?", "text": "This question is asked on SO and this site often it looks like. \"How do I do a dynamic enum?\" Answers range from you shouldn't to possible compile time solutions. Now my question is do I want a dynamic enum that is generated from look up tables in the DB, or do I want something else that is similar? I have a solution using T4 at build time to generate enums from DB tables, that works fine. But now some of the look up tables have an 'active' flag on them. Does this mean they are not look up tables anymore? If that is changed I want to somehow regenerate my code without having to redeploy. These tables will not change often. Currently the app when it wants to populate a dropdown or something will query the DB. But if the values mostly remain static, why go to the DB every time, hence the use of enums. It also has the added benefit of getting rid of magic strings and numbers. Would static structs be better? Some sort of caching for the look up tables? Any advise welcome."}
{"_id": "66737", "title": "Can you recommend good quality online master's programs?", "text": "I've been looking at online master's degree programs in software engineering. Have you completed a master's program online? If so, where? Did you like it? Was it relevant or out of date?"}
{"_id": "185094", "title": "Better to use error monad with validation in your monadic functions, or implement your own monad with validation directly in your bind?", "text": "I'm wondering what's better design wise for usability/maintainability, and what's better as far as fitting with the community. Given the data model:               type Name = String          data Amount = Out | Some | Enough | Plenty deriving (Show, Eq)     data Container = Container Name deriving (Show, Eq)     data Category = Category Name deriving (Show, Eq)     data Store = Store Name [Category] deriving (Show, Eq)     data Item = Item Name Container Category Amount Store deriving Show     instance Eq (Item) where       (==) i1 i2 = (getItemName i1) == (getItemName i2)          data User = User Name [Container] [Category] [Store] [Item] deriving Show     instance Eq (User) where       (==) u1 u2 = (getName u1) == (getName u2)      I can implement monadic functions to transform the User for instance by adding items or stores etc, but I may end up with an invalid user so those monadic functions would need to validate the user they get and or create. So, should I just:   * wrap it in an error monad and make the monadic functions execute the validation   * wrap it in an error monad and make the consumer bind a monadic validation function in the sequence that throws the appropriate error response (so they can choose not to validate and carry around an invalid user object)   * actually build it into a bind instance on User effectively creating my own kind of error monad that executes validation with every bind automatically I can see positives and negatives to each of the 3 approaches but want to know what is more commonly done for this scenario by the community. So in code terms something like, option 1:               addStore s (User n1 c1 c2 s1 i1) = validate $ User n1 c1 c2 (s:s1) i1     updateUsersTable $ someUser >>= addStore $ Store \"yay\" [\"category that doesnt exist, invalid argh\"]      option 2:               addStore s (User n1 c1 c2 s1 i1) = Right $ User n1 c1 c2 (s:s1) i1     updateUsersTable $ Right someUser >>= addStore $ Store \"yay\" [\"category that doesnt exist, invalid argh\"] >>= validate     -- in this choice, the validation could be pushed off to last possible moment (like inside updateUsersTable before db gets updated)      option 3:               data ValidUser u = ValidUser u | InvalidUser u     instance Monad ValidUser where         (>>=) (ValidUser u) f = case return u of (ValidUser x) -> return f x; (InvalidUser y) -> return y         (>>=) (InvalidUser u) f = InvalidUser u         return u = validate u          addStore (Store s, User u, ValidUser vu) => s -> u -> vu     addStore s (User n1 c1 c2 s1 i1) = return $ User n1 c1 c2 (s:s1) i1     updateUsersTable $ someValidUser >>= addStore $ Store \"yay\" [\"category that doesnt exist, invalid argh\"]"}
{"_id": "188065", "title": "Attended (CEH or other) course but have no certification", "text": "Last summer I attended course for \"Certified Ethical Hacker\" led by Mr. Wayne Burke. The course was great. Mr. Burke was awesome, flashing with energy all the time, he would stay hours late just to share another piece of his experience with us. I learned a lot of new things, took lot of notes (to which I keep returning), and most importantly, it pushed my way of thinking in a direction. However, due to unfortunate circumstances, I did not attend the actual certification exam, therefore I do not hold the certificate. Now I'm looking for a job (in QA, not necessarily security-related) and while updating my CV, I ask myself: Should I mention the course in the CV? I'm thinking about two possible final effects:   * positive, since I _have_ been there, seen it, understood most of it---better than nothing, well?   * negative, as it could be perceived as failure, so why remind it? Plus, I definitely don't want to look like someone who is boasting with CEH and then turns out he did not make it Is there a recommended rule of thumb on these situations? Does anyone have similar experience? Note: Frankly (aside from what should be considered rational in context of career market), personally I _do_ feel strongly enlightened by the course, and I _do_ believe it helped me a lot in my growth. I don't even consider the missing cert as a personal failure: compared to the actual course, the (preview) questions were a bunch of numbers and tool names to cram up my head. **Update:** Finally I decided to list the course, in spirit as @tdammers wrote about. Anyway, in of interview I've been to, I was not given questions about C|EH-- neither technical ones nor \"where is your ~~homework~~ certificate\", which is not surprising since as I have pointed out, I wasn't looking for particularly security-centered position. Now I have a new job--just as exciting as I hoped for."}
{"_id": "130820", "title": "What are some games involving recursion?", "text": "I need to introduce a group of 5-15 people to recursion and I would like to do so by using a physical game/dance/activity they can play to get a feeling for recursion. The class is not so much focused on CS than general concepts so anything computer or programming related is out (but programmers are still the best people I could think of to bombard with such as question). I was thinking about using some kind of clap game such as teenie girls like to play that includes recursion but couldn't come up with one yet. The game/dance might well be ridiculous, it should just be interactive and get them some intuitive feeling for what recursion is and how omnipresent it is in our surroundings. Looking forward to your suggestions!"}
{"_id": "151541", "title": "Is version history really sacred or is it better to rebase?", "text": "I've always agreed with Mercurial's mantra 1, however, now that Mercurial comes bundled with the rebase extension and it is a popular practice in git, I'm wondering if it could really be regarded as a \"bad practice\", or at least bad enough to avoid using. In any case, I'm aware of rebasing being dangerous after pushing. OTOH, I see the point of trying to package 5 commits in a single one to make it look niftier (specially at in a production branch), however, personally I think would be better to be able to see partial commits to a feature where some experimentation is done, even if it is not as nifty, but seeing something like \"Tried to do it way X but it is not as optimal as Y after all, doing it Z taking Y as base\" would IMHO have good value to those studying the codebase and follow the developers train of thought. My very opinionated (as in dumb, visceral, biased) point of view is that programmers like rebase to hide mistakes... and I don't think this is good for the project at all. So my question is: have you really found valuable to have such \"organic commits\" (i.e. untampered history) in practice?, or conversely, do you prefer to run into nifty well-packed commits and disregard the programmers' experimentation process?; whichever one you chose, **why does that work for you?** (having other team members to keep history, or alternatively, rebasing it). * * * 1 per Google DVCS analysis, in Mercurial \"History is Sacred\"."}
{"_id": "207423", "title": "When should we clean up old, no longer used GIT branches?", "text": "We have several bugfix branches that are starting to pile up. They have been merged into master, and deployed to production. Is there a good benchmark for when these branches should be cleaned up? Should they ever be cleaned up, or is it good to have the historical data?"}
{"_id": "183836", "title": "Why does git allow you to \"change history\"?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When should the VCS history of a project be deleted? I am experienced using svn and recently started learning git. I was quite shocked to learn that git has features that allow you to \"rewrite history\". Coming from svn, I had accepted as sacrosanct the source control principle that once a change is committed, there is no way to \"undo\" the commit itself... the most one can do is execute a later commit that effectively \"reverses\" the changes made in the earlier commit, but one can always reproduce the state of any commit that had been done in the past. What is the rationale for changing this \"principle\"? Is there something different about git that makes this OK, or does the design of git reflect a different \"philosophy\" of source control that differs with the \"philosophy\" of svn?"}
{"_id": "175150", "title": "Syntax Memorization", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Programmers forgetting syntax   >  Do programmers need a good memory? I'm a new web developer. I began learning HTML/CSS around June of this year. I picked them up easily, now I'm moving on to Javascript. My problem is this. I understand the concepts that the training material are teaching but I find myself coming up short when it's time to apply those lessons. Mainly it's due in part to the syntax. I memorize a function, apply it, test it, move on then forget it a few days later (the syntax, not the concept). My question is this. Should I be spinning my wheels trying to remember everything, or is knowing the concept enough. I know this has been addressed before but I couldn't find any real definitive real world answers. Feel free to discuss what methods worked for you when you started out."}
{"_id": "95213", "title": "Do programmers need a good memory?", "text": "It seems one has to remember all sorts of syntax to be able to program. If one don't have a good memory for remembering names, will it be more difficult to learn to program?"}
{"_id": "140036", "title": "Is it a good idea to do UI 100% in Javascript and provide data through an API?", "text": "My primary day job is making HTML applications. With that I mean internally used CRUD-type applications with lots of editable gridviews, textboxes, dropdowns, etc. We're currently using ASP.NET webforms, which do get the job done, but the performance is mostly dismal, and quite often you have to jump through hoops to get what you need. Hoops which are hung from the ceiling and set aflame. So I'm wondering if it perhaps would be a good idea to move all UI to the JavaScript side. Develop a strong set of reusable controls which are tailored specifically to our needs, and only exchange data with the server. Yes, I like the \"control\" (aka \"widget\") paradigm, its quite well suited to such applications. So on the server side we would still have a basic layout simliar to our current ASPX markup, but that then would get sent to the client only once, and the Javascript part would take care of all the subsequent UI updates. The problem is I've never done this before, and I've never seen anyone doing this either, so I don't know what the problems would be. In particular, I'm worried about:   * **Performance** still. Benchmarking shows that currently the main delay is on the client side, when the browser tries to re-render most of the page after an AJAX update. ASP.NET webforms generated markup gives a new meaning to the word \"web\", and the rich Devexpress controls add their own layer of Javascript complexity on top of that. But would it be faster to recalculate all the necessary changes on Javascript side and then update only what needs to be updated? Note that I'm talking about forms that have several editable gridviews, lots of textboxes, many dropdowns each with half-a-zillion filterable items in them, etc.   * **Ease of development**. There would be a lot more Javascript now, and it would probably mix with the HTML markup of the page. That or some kind of new view engine would have to be produced. Intellisense for Javascript is also a lot worse than for C# code, and due to the dynamic nature of Javascript it can't be expected to get a lot better. Coding practices can improve it a bit, but not by much. Also, most of our developers are primarily C# developers so there will be some learning curve and initial mistakes.   * **Security**. A lot of security checks will have to be done twice (server-side and UI-side), and the data-processing server side will have to include a lot more of them. Currently, if you set a textbox to be read-only on server side, you can depend on its value not changing through the client roundtrip. The framework already has enough code to ensure that (through viewstate encryption). With the data-only approach, it gets harder, because you have to manually check everything. On the other hand, maybe security holes will be easier to spot, because you will have only data to worry about. All in all, will this solve our problems, or make them worse? Has anyone ever attempted this, and what were the results? Are there any frameworks out there that help in this sort of endeavor (jQuery and moral equivalents aside)?"}
{"_id": "136254", "title": "What data structure should I use for this caching strategy?", "text": "I am working on a .NET 4.0 application, that performs a rather expensive calculation on two doubles returning a double. This calculation is performed for each one of several thousand _items_. These calculations are performed in a `Task` on a threadpool thread. Some preliminary tests have shown that the same calculations are performed over and over again, so I would like to cache _n_ results. When the cache is full, I would like to throw out the least- ~~often~~ recently used item. ( **Edit:** I realized least-often doesn't make sense, because when the cache is full and I would replace a result with a newly calculated one, that one would be least often used and immediately replaced the next time a new result is calculated and added to the cache) In order to implement this, I was thinking of using a `Dictionary<Input, double>` (where `Input` would be a mini-class storing the two input double values) to store the inputs and the cached results. However, I would also need to keep track of when a result was used the last time. For this I think I would need a second collection storing the information I would need to remove a result from the dictonary when the cache was getting full. I am concerned that constantly keeping this list sorted would negatively impact performance. Is there a better (i.e. more performant) way to do this, or maybe even a common data structure that I am unaware of? What kinds of things should I be profiling/measuring to determine the optimality of my solution?"}
{"_id": "155679", "title": "Programming knowledge vs. programming logic", "text": "Is there any difference between the two topics? I have seen companies asking for _Good Programming knowledge_ some _Good Programming logic_. I have seen this in Job profiles for a developer \u2013 for e.g. \"good Programming logic\", \"strong Programming knowledge\". I believe that Programming knowledge is related to knowledge about the language in consideration and Programming logic is problem solving logic using programming (in general).   Please correct me if I am wrong. Also what is more important? **Edit:** Do selection of components for application, designing interfaces validating user inputs fall under programming knowledge or Programming logic?   Does programming logic simply imply problem solving, or is there anything else which it should comprise of?"}
{"_id": "105855", "title": "What is the best way to maintain software tool chains?", "text": "**Short Question**   What is the best way to create, maintain, and distribute software development tool chains? **Background**   I am trying to develop a workflow / process to create an isolated environment in install and deploy software tool chains for embedded targets. Each tool chain typically would contain an IDE, compiler, and a small set of common tools. I have looked into two solutions but the both have their limitations and I hope to find a solution that has the best of both implementations. The rational behind a stand alone tool chain is so that all developers would be able to build the exact same code (matching CRC etc..). As well as be able to rebuild the same code after X number of years to support legacy code. A third option would be to use a central build server, which we plan on doing for nightly builds, but we still need to be able to build 'on the fly' when working on a test bench or remotely. So only using a build server will not suffice. **Ideal Goals for Deployed tool chain**   * Work on Windows XP, Vista, and 7 (excluding drivers)    * Contain all required information to run use the tool chain (excluding drivers)  **\\------------------ Possible Options ------------------** **Option 1: Full Stand alone Virtual Machine**   _Pros_   * Open Source packaging via Virtual Box   * 100% isolation    * Guarantees the tools can interact with one another  _Cons_   * Licensing multiple copies of windows   * At best only one developer could **legally** use a Windows VM at a time.    * Running the same VM on **physically** different lap tops (Macbook Pro, Dell 830, Dell E6500, etc...). Typically when Windows see's a new CPU or motherboard it will force a re-activation.    * _Very_ large files to maintain **Option 2: Virtualized Application**   _Pros_   * Through packagers like Cameyo, applications can run on nearly all versions of Windows. (Note that Cameyo is also free)   * Little to no licensing issues for most tools / IDEs. Purchased compilers might have additional restrictions, all of our current compilers do support this type of usage.    * Smaller files to maintain via a SCM, such as SVN or GIT.  _Cons_   * Difficult, if even possible, to get a single file that contains the entire tool chain    * Difficult, if even possible, to get the tools to see / work with one another. I have seen this very issue with Cameyo.  **Closing Thoughts**   There may not be a solution that meets all of my design goals, but I would like to find out if anyone else been successful in this type of deployment."}
{"_id": "105854", "title": "Is it better to team up with a designer, or to piece out design work to a contractor?", "text": "I am clueless when it comes to design but I am proficient in programming. If you are a programmer who lacks visual design skills, what has worked best for you -- to pair up with a graphic designer or to do all the programming and then piece out specific work? I have done some piecing out of work but I am not completely satisfied because I see too much of my influence come out in the design. I guess this happens since I have to be explicit in what I want with contractors, and they are limited in creativity by the architecture I have created. It feels like having a partner would allow for greater collaboration, but I have read plenty of entrepreneur books that warn against partnerships."}
{"_id": "105851", "title": "Favoring Immutability in Database Design", "text": "One of the items in Joshua Bloch's Effective Java is the notion that classes should allow mutation of instances as little as possible, and preferably not at all. Oftentimes, the data of an object is persisted to a database of some form. This has led me to thinking about the idea of immutability within a database, especially for those tables that represent a single entity within a larger system. Something I have been experimenting with recently is the idea of trying to minimize the updates I do to table rows representing these objects, and trying to perform inserts instead as much as I can. A concrete example of something I was experimenting with recently. If I know I might append a record with additional data later on, I'll create another table to represent that, sort of like the following two table definitions:               create table myObj (id integer, ...other_data... not null);     create table myObjSuppliment (id integer, myObjId integer, ...more_data... not null);      It is hopefully obvious that these names are not verbatim, but just to demonstrate the idea. Is this a reasonable approach to data persistence modeling? Is it worth trying to limit updates performed on a table, especially for filling in nulls for data that might not exist when the record is originally created? Are there times when an approach like this might cause severe pain later on?"}
{"_id": "143593", "title": "What is the value of the Cloudera Hadoop Certification for people new to the IT industry?", "text": "I am a software developer with 8 months of experience in the IT industry, currently working on the development of tools for BIG DATA analytics. I have learned Hadoop basics on my own and I am pretty comfortable with writing MapReduce Jobs, PIG, HIVE, Flume and other related projects. I am thinking of taking the exam for the Cloudera Hadoop Certification. Will this certification add value, considering that I have less than 1 year of experience? Many of the jobs I've seen relating to Hadoop require at least 3 years of experience. Should I invest more time in learning Hadoop and improving my skills to take this certification?"}
{"_id": "109162", "title": "Is all industry experience equal (for the most part)?", "text": "I graduated not too long ago with a degree in computer science. I've been working for a software company for a couple of months, but the work that I'm doing doesn't seem to fall into any defined category (at least the categories that exist in my mind - developer, tester, project manager). My job will occasionally require me to do a bug fix in Java (5%), but the majority of it seems to consist of either querying a client's database and adding/editing/deleting information (60%), or troubleshooting and then giving the response, \"You forgot to do such and such before you submitted the form, and that's why you got an error\" (35%). My worry is that down the road if I try and apply to some other company for a more senior developer/tester/PM position, they'll look at my work experience and say, \"You seemed to have dealt more with database management / technical support than the actual software development cycle\". Is this a valid concern on my part? **EDIT** Since the consensus seems to be that it's low-end/support, I have another question. I've been here a relatively short amount of time, and I've had offers for interviews at a couple of other companies (residual contacts from posting my resume online) where I would be doing development (which is what I'd prefer to be doing). I took this position because they were the first to make an offer (the pay is pretty decent) and I'm hoping to go to graduate school in the next year or so, so I wanted to start saving money. Would it be worth it to pursue these other interview offers (who are going off my resume of me coming straight from university), and just act like these last couple of months didn't happen (resume wise)."}
{"_id": "177579", "title": "Is testable code actually more stable?", "text": "A google scholar search turns up numerous papers on testability, including models for computing testability, recommendations for how ones code can be more testable, etc. They all come with the assertion that more testable code is more stable, however I can't find any studies which actually demonstrate this. I tried looking for studies evaluating the effect of testable code vs. quality, however the closest I can find is Improving the Testability of Object Oriented Systems, which discusses the relationship between design flaws and testability. Is testable code is actually more stable? And more importantly, how strong is this relationship? Please back up your answers with references or evidence to back up your claim. For example, there is a lot of study regarding the relationship of cyclomatic complexity and defect rate. Troster finds a correlation of `r = .48` There are metrics for \"testability\", such as code coupling. I'm looking for research conclusions relating these to defect rate. Ideally I would love a graph plotting some measure of testability vs. defect rate."}
{"_id": "135130", "title": "How to provide a solid explanation that no two software should have same version number?", "text": "We are an outsourcing company. We develop firmware and software for our client. They have a hardware engineer team with whom we, firmware developers, work. Our client has a **strictly defined process** to release a firmware. A change in firmware version number has a big impact in that process. When we release a firmware to them for testing, the hardware engineers test it first. Then another SQA test it. Finally, the product is released to customers. Sometimes, when the change is minor in a new release, our client insist to keep the version number same as the last one. Say, latest release from developers (not released to the customers) had version number 10. Then we found a place for optimization. Or may be slightly change in behavior of the firmware in a very special case which may or may not be visible from outside. When we propose them that we found these places for minor improvements, they insist us to do the changes but keep the version number 10. We insist that every firmware we release must have distinct version number. We pointed out several common pitfalls if we don't change the firmware version number with every release. They say that they understand why it is necessary. Yet they force us to keep the version number same. Keeping the version number same will help their **strictly defined process** of releasing firmware to customer end. We manage the code in our own repository (SVN). We strictly tie a given version number to a given revision number. The version number is stored in the EEPROM of the product our client release. There is defined 2 bytes where the version number is stored. The PC software that reads version number always reads the 2 bytes and display the version number in PC monitor. There is no other way to define version number. They won't change the software that read version number and they won't allocate more memory to introduce another version number that developers can only use. I'm about to change a firmware and release with the modifications today. I've got another request to keep version number same as previous one. I want to email several unbeatable arguments again what problems we might face if we keep the version number same as previous release. How can I convince my client not to use same version number?"}
{"_id": "224284", "title": "How do I find which line connected two squares?", "text": "In the Permissive Field of View algorithm, a destination square is _visible_ from a source square if any unobstructed line can be drawn from the source square to the destination square. The algorithm works by defining a series of view fields (essentially, triangles) and checking if the destination square exists inside of a view field. Unfortunately, the algorithm does not make available the actual line that it found between the source square and the destination square; it only tells you whether such a line is guaranteed to exist. How can I find the line, presuming it is guaranteed to exist? I've tried plotting lines between the edges of the source square to the edges of the destination square, but this apparently is just an approximation (it can fail to find the line)."}
{"_id": "92582", "title": "Multi sourced search in WPF app", "text": "If I\u2019m using the MVVM pattern \u2013 this one for my WPF application And my project requires a search function on different sources \u2013 say clients, accountants, cases. What would be the best way to go about it so that I only have one search view and the search results shown in the ListView are \u2018dynamic\u2019 in that they could be result for clients or accountants or cases Should I have a base search view model and specific view models for clients, accountants, cases that then somehow set as the datacontext for the search view Or try to build the grid dynamically in a code behind for the search and then somehow get the data back into the view model without the search view knowing about the view model. **For clarification** The searches are separate and will not need to be combined, I would only every return results for clients or accountants or cases."}
{"_id": "92581", "title": "Customer wants to modify the .properties files packaged in our WAR file", "text": "I have a customer who wants the ability to modify the .properties files packaged in the web applications WAR file so that they have the control to modify environments at settings. They will be hosting this site on their own servers so I can't say I blame them but I am a little unsure what the best course is. I would think that any adminstrator of a Java EE application server should know how to drill into the WAR package with a zip tool and find and modify the properties files themselves. I am unsure if this is common knowledge or not. I have typically always packaged my build artifacts with the property files appropriate for a given environment, but this is kind of an oddball case where WE build the WAR and hand it off to the customer. I might try to keep the property files external from the WAR but then it gets messy because of classloader issues (JBoss classloader, Tomcat classloader, etc...) I am thinking that as a convenience we maintain properties files for THEIR environments and change and build these on their requests. My manager likes this idea because it keeps us in control but the customer doesn't like this. What would you do?"}
{"_id": "228504", "title": "Translate soap input of one web service into input of another", "text": "We need to support a legacy web service using a new web service implementation. At a given time the old input as well as new input should work. So here is what we need to achieve > Old SOAP input -> translate -> New SOAP input -> New WS -> New WS output -> > translate -> Old SOAP output. For now, I have created xslt for translating input and output But looks like that has little use if I implement a webservice to handle old input Given that we know the input and output XSD for all formats involved, how to implement a web service that will take old soap input, translate it (using XSLT) and call the new service? What tools (spring ws,cxf ..) are most suited?"}
{"_id": "42045", "title": "Will they release a Wrox Box 4?", "text": "does anyone know if there will be a Wrox Box 4? I would love to get something like that, but the latest collection of Wrox books seems to be the release for 3.5. I really need to get up to date with the latest version of .NET. I'm not sure if there will be a Wrox Box 4 though, because it looks like Wiley is now publishing Wrox books under Wiley, and not Wrox anymore. So it looks like I'm going to have to go with Professional ASP.NET 4 in C# Instead of the Wrox Box 3.5"}
{"_id": "77184", "title": "Anyone using Intel Performance Primitives library (IPP) with Delphi?", "text": "I'm considering purchasing the Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) library for use with my Delphi applications. I'm interested in the signal processing functions. Mainly for re-sampling and FFT. Has anyone used IPP with Delphi? How did it go? I'm wondering how easy it will be to begin using the library. I don't have any experience using non-Delphi code/libraries with Delphi."}
{"_id": "77185", "title": "How do open source projects deal with complex setup and deployment?", "text": "At most of my corporate clients they have very complex systems with multiple entities to be deployed and tested. (e.g. client software, user database, system, database, identity manager application, etc). They usually don't have an easy way to deploy all this. Neither in production nor for development. I wonder how open source projects/applications deal with this? Do open source projects tend to be smaller in scope therefore less complex to setup? Do they manage to avoid complexity as no-one pays for their time wasted in setup? I wonder what complex open source projects are there in terms of complexity. I thought about a couple of examples. Neither of them perfect for my purpose. **Wordpress** \\- The .com site is probably quite complex in terms of deployment but AFAIK the version that can be downloaded from .org is quite simple. It cannot be distributed to multiple servers. **Wikipedia** ? Most of the software it is using is open source but it is not itself a downloadable open source project so it does not really fit. Details of their system can be found on Wikipedia **Diaspora** \\- the Facebook replacement is not working yet but it might become such project. **Dreamwidth** is originally a LiveJournal fork. Dreamwidth is mostly open source. Its wiki page has information with some production notes. I got some input from them in IRC that I posted on their forum to get further clarifications. So I am interested in further examples of open source applications/system that are complex in terms of deployment and testing."}
{"_id": "194961", "title": "Performance considerations when using Go for my project", "text": "I'm looking at using Go (aka golang) for a project (a SQL database, but that mostly doesn't matter here) where performance is critical, but under low load the primary bottleneck will be I/O to disk. In this case, I think Go would be great! Under high load or while hitting cache a lot, CPU and memory utilization will increasingly become bottlenecks, and I'm worried that Go could make the high- end of the performance spectrum significantly lower than what C/C++/D might provide. Can anyone with experience working in Go give some insight into how quickly that bottleneck is reached (networking applications are subject to the same bottleneck, typically) and what you can do to relax it in Go other than rewriting the bottleneck in a faster language? * * * Note my question was sufficiently different that I asked it anyway after reading related question:   * What kind of software is done best with The Go Programming language? I have a specific application I'm asking about, and I've limited my concerns to performance (not usability, library support, development tools, etc)."}
{"_id": "171800", "title": "Why doesn't Java's BigInteger class have a constructor capable of taking a numeric literal?", "text": "Why doesn't Java's BigInteger class have a constructor capable of taking a numeric literal? Every single time I use BigIntegers, and many times I merely think about them, I wonder this. What reason could the designers of java have had to exclude one despite the overwhelming convenience of one should it exist?"}
{"_id": "171805", "title": "Does 'Me' in VB.NET refer to the instantiated object only?", "text": "Does 'Me' in VB.NET refer only to an instantiation of the type? Just occurred to me that since I can reference properties in my VB.NET class without using 'Me', that I don't see a reason for using it for this purpose. Will referencing the variable either way always refer to the actual stored value for the property at runtime?"}
{"_id": "171807", "title": "How get and set accessors work", "text": "The standard method of implementing get and set accessors in C# and VB.NET is to use a public property to set and retrieve the value of a corresponding private variable. Am I right in saying that this has no effect of different instances of a variable? By this I mean, if there are different instantiations of an object, then those instances and their properties are completely independent right? So I think my understanding is correct that setting a private variable is just a construct to be able to implement the get and set pattern? Never been 100% sure about this."}
{"_id": "171809", "title": "Are elements returned by Linq-to-Entities query streamed from the DB one at the time or are they retrieved all at once?", "text": "Are elements returned by Linq-to-Entities query streamed from the database one at the time ( as they are requested ) or are they retrieved all at once:                   SampleContext context = new SampleContext(); // SampleContext derives from ObjectContext         var search = context.Contacts;              foreach (var contact in search)         {            Console.WriteLine(contact.ContactID); // is each Contact retrieved from the DB                                                   // only when foreach requests it?         }      thank you in advance"}
{"_id": "241315", "title": "Relation between objects", "text": "For a few weeks I\u2019ve been thinking about relation between objects \u2013 not especially OOP\u2019s objects. For instance in **C++** , we\u2019re used to representing that by layering pointers or container of pointers in the structure that needs an access to the other object. If an object `A` needs to have an access to `B`, it\u2019s not uncommon to find a `B *pB` in `A`. But I\u2019m not a **C++** programmer anymore, I write programs using functional languages, and more especially in **Haskell** , which is a pure functional language. It\u2019s possible to use pointers, references or that kind of stuff, but I feel strange with that, like \u201cdoing it the non-Haskell way\u201d. Then I thought a bit deeper about all that relation stuff and came to the point: > _\u201cWhy do we even represent such relation by layering?_ I read some folks already thought about that (here). In my point of view, representing relations through explicit graphes is way better since it enables us to focus on the _core_ of our type, and express relations later through combinators (a bit like **SQL** does). By _core_ I mean that when we define `A`, we expect to define what `A` is _made of_ , not what it _depends on_. For instance, in a video game, if we have a type `Character`, it\u2019s legit to talk about `Trait`, `Skill` or that kind of stuff, but is it if we talk about `Weapon` or `Items`? I\u2019m not so sure anymore. Then:               data Character = {         chSkills :: [Skill]       , chTraits :: [Traits]       , chName   :: String       , chWeapon :: IORef Weapon -- or STRef, or whatever       , chItems  :: IORef [Item] -- ditto       }      sounds really wrong in term of design to me. I\u2019d rather prefer something like:               data Character = {         chSkills :: [Skill]       , chTraits :: [Traits]       , chName   :: String       }          -- link our character to a Weapon using a Graph Character Weapon     -- link our character to Items using a Graph Character [Item] or that kind of stuff      Furthermore, when a day comes to add new features, we can just create new types, new graphs and link. In the first design, we\u2019d have to break the `Character` type, or use some kind of work around to extend it. What do you think about that idea? What do you think is best to deal with that kind of issues in **Haskell** , a pure functional language?"}
{"_id": "131153", "title": "What are the common approaches & practices for big applications?", "text": "Developing big applications requires huge effort. There may be teams for each phase of development and they must use different design patterns and go through the whole SDLC. I have two years of experience as a software developer on small applications and I'm interested on what are the common approaches & practices for big applications? Especially from a project management perspective. How can I adopt such working practices?"}
{"_id": "92059", "title": "Is there a such thing as a Program Manager for Outsourcing Companies?", "text": "Accordingly to the first paragraph of Joel's post, a Program Manager is a very good thing to have in products. But what about having a Program Manager for a company that doesn't have a product, but have projects? The only coincidence that I'd see if you ask me and ask me to answer right away is that a Program Manager for an outsourcing company would be someone that oversees all the projects that the company have, ensuring that the things are being done aligned to the company strategy, from a technical point of view."}
{"_id": "92058", "title": "Independent Developer Pre-Coding Planning/Design/Architecture", "text": "For the independent developers, or the weeknight/weekend developers, when you are about to begin a large/enterprise project, what are you first steps to take when hashing out the pre-coding details and designs? What are the tools you use? Do you find it easiest to keep with the traditional mechanical pencil and pad of paper? Do you use a text editor to get your ideas and requirements in a bulleted format? Do you use UML? What my question is, is what's the first step you take when designing a large application? What medium do you use to record your notes? And when are you typically content to start writing code?"}
{"_id": "187205", "title": "How to write useful Java programs without using mutable variables", "text": "I was reading an article about functional programming where the writer states > >     (take 25 (squares-of (integers))) >   > > Notice that it has no variables. Indeed, it has nothing more than three > functions and one constant. Try writing the squares of integers in Java > without using a variable. Oh, there\u2019s probably a way to do it, but it > certainly isn\u2019t natural, and it wouldn\u2019t read as nicely as my program above. Is it possible to achieve this in Java? Supposing you are required to print the squares of first 15 integers, could you write a for or while loop without using variables? > **Mod notice** > > This question is _not_ a code golf contest. We are looking for answers that > explain the concepts involved (ideally without repeating earlier answers), > and not just for yet another piece of code."}
{"_id": "180250", "title": "Would using Quercus make my code fall under the GPL?", "text": "Quercus is an implementation of PHP written in Java, and released under the GPL. If I use it, does my PHP code fall under the GPL? What about my Java code? Assuming I write new Java code, and new PHP code, and use Quercus to run my PHP code on the JVM and call into my Java code, which pieces fall under the GPL? Also, assume that the result is commercial software that I want to distribute."}
{"_id": "50601", "title": "What do you think was a poor design choice in Java?", "text": "Java has been one of the most (the most?) popular programming languages till this day, but this also brought controversy as well. A lot of people now like to bash Java simply because \"it's slow\", or simply because it's not language X, for example. My question isn't related to any of these arguments at all, I simply want to know what you consider a design flaw, or a poor design choice in Java, and how it might be improved from your point of view. Something like this."}
{"_id": "221108", "title": "Obstacles to using Git Flow in Subversion", "text": "My team at work is starting a new project, using Subversion as our VCS (you may consider this set in stone for the purpose of this question). We're still in the early stages of the project and are trying to agree on a branching model. Our previous project was based on a non-standard version model that led to issues when managing hot-fixes and patches to existing releases. I've found different branching models to be rather complicated, but one model that I do understand fairly clearly is git flow. I'm curious how hard/undesirable it would be to implement a variation of this in Subversion. Obviously there would some difference in terms of people collaborating on branches. The feature branches would have to be centralized rather than limited to local repositories, but the other concepts of the model should be reproducable in Subversion as I understand it. What would be the drawbacks or challenges to this approach. What I've heard is that in SVN \"merging is expensive\" relative to Git. But I'm not completely clear on what this means in practice or how it would effect our ability to use a git flow like branching model. What would be the biggest concerns with this approach. Is there a similarly clear approach that is more natural in Subversion?"}
{"_id": "187208", "title": "What is a practical level of abstraction in a web application?", "text": "(Originally asked on StackOverflow - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14896121/what-is-a-practical-level-of- abstraction-in-a-web-application) I still consider myself a newcomer to OO programming, especially in php, so forgive me if I have missed some fundamental principle! Say I have an intranet application with a `staff` object with properties and methods unique to being a member of staff:               class staff {         ...         private $job_title;         private $start_date;         etc...     }      In the quest to keep the maintainable parts of my code in one place, make my data model more intelligent and make my code less tightly-coupled, is it reasonable to abstract each object property to another level? For example, I expect each property to have a `value`, but to complicate matters, I'm also interested in what `label` and `description` to use when referring to it in human-readable applications. More of interest is which `type` it is, as well as the capability of the object to validate itself, if its member properties can validate themselves also. It seems then, that properties of the majority of objects have a lot in common. So, the `$start_date` property might actually be an object in itself:               abstract class property {         public $value = NULL;         protected $label; // A simple label which can be used on user forms, reports, etc.         protected $description; // Some detail to describe what this property is used for         protected $type; // Helps choose the right HTML form control and validate user input         protected $regex; // Regular expression to prompt user entry and validate return value         protected $unique = FALSE; // If TRUE, check for duplicates in the persistence layer         protected $default_value; // Prompt the user when entering new values         protected $HTML_form_element; // Which form element suits this field best?         etc....     }          class start_date extends property {         ...         public function __construct(){             ...             $this->label = 'Start date'; // Might be an i18n entry             $this->description = 'Enter the date on which the contract starts for this staff member'; // Might be an i18n entry             $this->type = 'VARCHAR(512)'; // Better to use persistence layer's requirements?             $this->regex = '/^([0-9]{1,2})[/.-]([0-9]{1,2})[/.-]([0-9]{2,4})$/'; // UK date             $this->default_value = date('Y-m-d'); // Depends on the business policy of the company             $this->HTML_form_element= 'datepicker'; // Chooses the correct HTML element when building forms automatically             ...         }         etc...     }          class staff {         ...         public function __construct(){             ...             $start_date = new start_date();             ...         }         etc...     }      In previous applications, these related things have lived in different places; random global variables, commented code, decorator objects, a config file, embeded in HTML, a database table, a scrap of paper. It makes sense to bring all an objects properties together in one place, but is this the right way?"}
{"_id": "181125", "title": "How to extract operators from the grammar productions for conflict resolution in LALR parser?", "text": "Is there some standardized or widely accepted algorithm for picking up operators in shift/reduce conflicts in LALR parser? The question is naive, my problem is not with implementing my solution, but implementing the solution is already widely used. For shift the operator is the next input token, for reduce, it depends -- I consider all already read symbols (for given production) declared as operators:   * if there is one -- it is the operator   * if there are more than one -- I report grammar error   * if there is none I use the input token as operator So for example:               E ::= E + E     E ::= E * E     E ::= num      in case of               E + E | * num      Considering first production I read `+`, and since it is the only one operator read I pick this one for reduce operator. `*` is the first token in input so it servers as shift operator. But is my algorithm correct (i.e. the same as normally used for LALR parsers)? I am especially worried for the point when I have more than 1 operator in the read tokens. * * * ## Update What I **NOT** am asking here I don't ask how to resolve shift/reduce conflict once you have the operators. I don't ask how to set the precedence for operators. What I **am** asking here I ask how to extract operators from the \"stream\" of tokens. Let's say user set some precedence rules for `+`, `-` and `*`. The stack is: `-` `E` `+` `E` and input is `E`. Or the stack is `E` and input is `*`. What is the operator for reduce in first case? And in the second? Why? _The stack is really entire right hand side of production._"}
{"_id": "181127", "title": "Custom error handling", "text": "I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle custom errors in my application. Option 1:               if(expr) {     } else {         $_SESSION['error'] = \"Some message describing the error\";     }      Option 2:               if(expr) {     } else {         $_SESSION['error'] = 2;     }      In option 1, the same error might be recycled in multiple situations. If I ever decide to change the message then I'll have to dig through my code and find every occurrence. In option 2, I give a numerical value which could reference a master list of errors. This seems to solve the problem associated with option 1 but makes the code harder to read. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "181123", "title": "C++ name mangling and linker symbol resolution", "text": "The name mangling schemes of C++ compilers vary, but they are documented publicly. Why aren't linkers made to decode a mangled symbol from an object file and attempt to find a mangled version via any of the mangling conventions across the other object files/static libraries? If linkers could do this, wouldn't it help alleviate the problem with C++ libraries that they have to be re-compiled by each compiler to have symbols that can be resolved? List of mangling documentations I found:   * MSVC++ mangling conventions   * GCC un-mangler   * MSVC++ un-mangling function documentation   * LLVM mangle class"}
{"_id": "234500", "title": "Issue with My.Settings using Visual Basic", "text": "For my A2 Computing project I have created a game using Visual Basic. For the leaderboard section, I have used the My.Settings feature to store the scores when the game closes, but only one or two actually save. My teacher doesn't know and I can't find anything helpful after a google search of the problem"}
{"_id": "140699", "title": "How to camel-case where consecutive words have numbers?", "text": "Just wondering if anybody has a good convention to follow in this corner- corner-corner case. I really use Java but figured the C# folks might have some good insight too. Say I am trying to name a class where two consecutive words in the class name are numeric (note that the same question could asked about identifier names). Can't get a great example, but think of something like \"IEEE 802 16 bit value\". Combining consecutive acronyms is doable if you accept classnames such as `HttpUrlConnection`. But it seriously makes me throw up a little to think of naming the class `IEEE80216BitValue`. If I had to pick, I'd say that's even worse than `IEEE802_16BitValue` which looks like a bad mistake. For small numbers, I'd consider `IEEE802SixteenBitValue` but that doesn't scale that well. Anyone out there have a convention? Seems like Microsoft's naming guidelines are the only ones that describe acronym naming in enough detail to get the job done, but nobody has addressed numbers in classnames."}
{"_id": "189333", "title": "Modern analog of DDD (Data Display Debugger)", "text": "I if there are visual applications for debugging code in popular languages (like C, Pytho, Javascript). By visual I do not mean debugger with UI which is bundled with almost every IDE, I'm rather talking about a debugger that can visualize data and process of changing this data over time. E.g. imagine you're implementing a sort algorithm. It would be very cool to have an application that would save states of the array at each iteration and then would allow you easily go back and forth between states with good animation of insertion/deletion and move. I understand that there maybe no general utility for that. Insetead I expect some environment (like R or MatLab) that can be used to easily create such debugging applications."}
{"_id": "189337", "title": "Looking for feedback on my approach to implement an algorithm", "text": "We've recently worked with a mathematician to build us an algorithm. The algorithm will look at click data and will continuously update data associated with the user, the content, and the content's category and then pair the user with relevant content. With that said, I have never implemented an algorithm before but I'm guessing that our current environment (PHP, MySQL) is not entirely suitable for continuously crunching and updating data. **Looking for feedback on whether the following approach is on the right track?**   * Write algorithm in Java (or other compiled language) for best performance.   * Store user, content, and category data on a NoSQL server (or use memcache).   * Use Gearman (or equivalent) to submit click/user data to a job server.   * Run jobs on separate worker server that contains the algorithm.   * Update user, content, category data. If this is not on the right track, can you explain why would that be?"}
{"_id": "77724", "title": "How does java resolve class names in a lot of jars?", "text": "Recently I found one of my Maven project have 100+ jar dependencies. FWIK a zip archive doesn't have index at all, so it should scan the whole zip to determine if it contains a specific path. But I found Java resolve class names against so many jars rather fast, why?"}
{"_id": "86920", "title": "What would be a good set of first programming problems that would help a non-CS graduate to learn programming?", "text": "I'm looking at helping a friend learn programming (I'm NOT asking about the ideal first language to learn programming in). She's had a predominantly mathematical background (majoring in Maths for both her undergrads and graduate degree), and has had some rudimentary exposure to programming before (in the form of Matlab simulations/matrix operations in C etc) - but has never been required to design/execute complex projects. She is primarily interested in learning C/C++ - so, with respect to her background, what would be a set of suitable problems that would both engage her interest ?"}
{"_id": "86921", "title": "Convert filenames to their checksum before saving to prevent duplicates. Is is a smart thing to do?", "text": "TL;DR:what the title says * * * I am developing some sort of image board in PHP. I was thinking of changing each image's filename to it's checksum prior to saving it. This way, I might be able to prevent duplicates.   I know this wouldn't work for two images that are the same but differ in size or level of compression or whatnot, but this method would allow for an early check.   What bugs me is that I never saw this method implemented anywhere, so I was wondering if there is a catch to it. Maybe it is just more efficient to keep the original filename and store the hash in DB? Maybe the whole method is just not useful and my question is moot?   What do you think? On a side note, I don't really get how hashes are calculated so I was wondering, **if** my first question checks out, if it would be possible to calculate the likeness that two images are similar by comparing hashes (levenshtein or something of the sort)."}
{"_id": "184574", "title": "Why is Today() an example of an impure function?", "text": "It seems like, when reading something like this Wikipedia article about \"pure functions\", they list `Today()` as an example of an impure function but it seems pretty pure to me. Is it because there is no formal input argument? Why is the actual time of day not treated as the \"input to the function\" in which case if you gave it the same input, i.e. executed `today()` twice at the same time, or traveled back in time to execute it again (maybe a hypothetical :) ), the output would be the same time. `Today()` never gives you a random number. it always gives you the time of day. The Wikipedia article says \"different times it will yield different results\" but that's like saying for different `x` `sin(x)` will give you different ratios. And `sin(x)` is their example of a pure function."}
{"_id": "57811", "title": "Embedded Web Server Vs External Web Server", "text": "So I've thought of creating a web application in either Lisp or another functional language and was thinking of embedding the web server into the application (have my application handle the HTTP requests). I don't see any issues with that, however, I'm new to creating web applications (and in the grand scheme of things, programming as well). Is there any drawbacks to handling HTTP requests within your program instead of using a web server? Are there any benefits?"}
{"_id": "184570", "title": "How to make an ASP.NET MVC site modular", "text": "I'm in the planning stage for an employee intranet system to be built with ASP.NET MVC 4. We'd like the site to consist of separate \"modules\", each of which provides a different feature: messaging, payroll changes, etc. I'd like these modules to be able to be enabled or disabled at compile time. The homepage will display some kind of navigation that will link to each module that is loaded. That's easy so far, but I don't want the navigation feature to have to know about the modules beforehand. In other words, I want the modules to be dynamically discoverable; I want to be able to write the code for a new module and then have a link added to the navigation bar with no code changes anywhere else in the source. Each module should have some way of registering itself with the navigation bar, and--more importantly--this should be done for each module as it's loaded. I believe that this precludes using MVC's Areas, since those are designed for the case when the layout of the site is known beforehand. MEF seems like it might be appropriate, although people seem to have had mixed success in combining MEF with MVC. Is MEF actually the way to go here, or is there a better way to accomplish what I need?"}
{"_id": "43927", "title": "How to handle Real Time Data from a database perspective?", "text": "I have an idea in mind, but **it still confuses me the database area**. Imagine that **I want to show real time data** , and using one of the latest browser technologies ( _web sockets_ \\- even using older browsers) it is very easy to show to all observables (user browser) what everyone is doing. **Remy Sharp** has an example about the simplicity about this. But I still don't get the database part, **how would I feed** , let's imagine (using Remy game Tron) that I want to save **the path for each connected user** in a database and if a client wants to see what is going on with a **5 sec delay** , he will see that, not only the 5 sec until that moment but **the continuation in time** ... how can I query a DB like that?               SELECT x, y FROM run WHERE time >= DATEADD(second, -5, rundate);      is not the recommended path right? and pulling this x in x time ... this is not real data feed correct? If can someone help me understand the Database point of view, I would greatly appreciate."}
{"_id": "219295", "title": "Is It Common For a Company to Have Their Own Definition of Job Titles such as Software Architect", "text": "Recently I am very confused about my position in the company. Months ago, this company offered me the position of Software Architect and I accepted. But about one year passed and I came to realize that this \"Software Architect\" title in this company is almost totally different from the one I used to know and the one I see people discussing here. Below are several items what a software architect is responsible for. They are from This Post:                  A Systems Architect should:        1. Specify the high-level architecture        2. Participate in code reviews        3. Approve technologies used        4. Assist the developers in their coding effort        5. Maintain and monitor the development schedule        6. Produce SA artifacts, such as UML diagrams, Gantt charts and the like.      But as a \"Software Architect\" in this company, I can only touch the 6th Item together with a lot of coding. So this title in my company is more like a Senior Developer rather than a Software Architect. My questions are:   1\\. Is it common for a company in IT industry to have their own definition of Job Titles?   2\\. If the answer to question 1 is No, then is it legal for a company to do that? **Update**   The reason why this issue became a problem recently is that, our General Manager seems to want me to be responsible for a project which is being developing by many members, but he **never** authorizes me to lead other team members or coordinate between teams (coordination among teams is a must especially when are developing software suites). Instead, he just came to me and blame me when the project didn't get progressed as expected. Though I designed all the interfaces and classes of some modules for other members to work and did lots of coding, pushing and guaranteeing the progress is beyond my responsibility especially when this Software Architect is not the usual one we see, I feel it is so unfair to me\uff01"}
{"_id": "205771", "title": "Is PHP \"list()\" language construct a bad convention?", "text": "PHP supports the `list()` language construct which, in short, allows you to return multiple values from a function and then attach them to different variable, eg:               function myBigReturn(){         return array(\"foo\", \"bar\");     }     list($fooer, $barer) = myBigReturn();     echo $fooer; // echoes \"foo\"     echo $barer; // echoes \"bar\"      I have failed to find much info about such a language construct and I am curious - is usage of PHP `list()` construct considered a bad coding convention? Are there any serious articles/literature on this subject?"}
{"_id": "219292", "title": "wpf and mvvm printing report startegy", "text": "I am developing a WPF application and I need some clarity on printing in WPF and MVVM (I am using MVVM-Light). I want to create standard looking reports for my application and I don't want to have to code each one from scratch. But I want to write this solution myself, without stuff like crystal reports etc. But I am open to other open source examples of course. 90% of my reports will be generated from datagrid itemsources. I want to have a report footer and header and then the \"records\" that get paged in a content section. **My idea is:** use Fixed document as report wrapper (with header and footer properties), use a listview for records in report content, and generate report to xps that gets opened in document viewer for user to review and print etc. But I have never created reports from WPF before and it looks like there are lots of options and no clear best practice. I am looking for some suggestions or advice on which direction to go from someone with some experience creating custom reports in WPF and keeping MVVM. What was you strategy?"}
{"_id": "135708", "title": "Is there a pattern that will help with this data structure", "text": "I'm doing a java project. My main structure contains 2 lists with elements of type A the other type B. B itself contains a list of objects which may contain elements of A. It must be that when an element from list of A is removed it must be removed from all subelements in list B. also if an possible member of list A is added to a B it should also be added to A. And also I need some way to find the parent objects containing an A. So far I have a \"working\" implementation - using lots of loops. I am wondering - can you suggest patterns that will help me in this task? * * * more details. I think my main issue is boils down to that i have objects A that have multiple parents. And when I add/remove from one parent I need to adjust some other parents. I can't help but believe such a problem is solved already. * * * to clarify: I have a main `List<A>` , and each `B` contains a `List<A>` When a A is removed from the main list it must be removed from all B. But not when it is removed from a B. It's essential that all A used in the application are present in the main list."}
{"_id": "135709", "title": "What are the best resources for learning about concurrency and multi-threaded applications?", "text": "I realised I have a massive knowledge gap when it comes to multi-threaded applications and concurrent programming. I've covered some basics in the past, but most of it seems to be gone from my mind, and it is definitely a field that I want, and need, to be more knowledgeable about. What are the best resources for learning about building concurrent applications? I'm a very practical oriented person, so if said book contains concrete examples the better, but I'm open to suggestions. I personally prefer to work in pseudocode or C++, and a slant toward game development would be best, but not required."}
{"_id": "139287", "title": "what is the difference between Soak testing and Stress testing?", "text": "Can anybody explain the difference about soak and stress testing? I googled about them and found that both are about to test the software beyond its limits. Is it right for both testing strategies?"}
{"_id": "140967", "title": "how should I design Objects around this business requirement?", "text": "This is the business requirement: \" A Holiday Package (e.g. New York NY Holiday Package) can be offered in different ways based on the Origin city:   * From New Delhi to NY   * **From Bombay to NY**   * NY itself ( Land package ) (Bold implies default selection) **a.** and **b.** User can fly from either New Delhi or Bombay to NY.   **c.** NY is a Land package, where a user can reach NY by himself and is a standalone holidayPackage. \" Let's say I have a class that represents **HolidayPackage** , **Destination** (aka City).               public class HolidayPackage{         Destination holidayCity;         ArrayList<BaseHolidayPackageVariant> variants;         BaseHolidayPackageVariant defaultVariant;     }          public abstract class BaseHolidayPackageVariant {         private Integer variantId;         private HolidayPackage holidayPackage;         private String holidayPackageType;     }          public class LandHolidayPackageVariant extends BaseHolidayPackageVariant{     }          public class FlightHolidayPackageVariant extends BaseHolidayPackageVariant{         private Destination originCity;     }      What data structure/objects should I design to support:   * options   * a default within those options Sidenote: A HolidayPackage can also be offered in different ways based on Hotel selections. I'd like to follow a design which I can leverage to support that use case in the future. This is the backend design I have in mind."}
{"_id": "139281", "title": "Training a company to use a DVCS coming from a CVCS mindset, is it as hard as one would think?", "text": "So, I'm preparing to consider the outcome of training a lot of people (>25) to use **Mercurial** coming from a centralized mindset. I've done it with **individuals** and had success with it, although the time invested in each one has been different and most of them have been both proactive and open to trying something new. I was wondering if there was someone here with experience giving such training to a large group of people **as I would like to find out what are the do's and don'ts... of course, this would be more oriented towards dealing with those resistant to change** , and a don't I can come to think of is telling them to avoid cheat-sheets mapping commands, as Joel Spolsky suggests."}
{"_id": "135697", "title": "Why is it so difficult to make C less prone to buffer overflows?", "text": "I'm doing a course in college, where one of the labs is to perform buffer overflow exploits on code they give us. This ranges from simple exploits like changing the return address for a function on a stack to return to a different function, all the way up to code that changes a programs register/memory state but then returns to the function that you called, meaning that the function you called is completely oblivious to the exploit. I did some research into this, and these kinds of exploits are used pretty much everywhere even now, in things like running homebrew on the Wii, and the untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.3.1 My question is why is this problem so difficult to fix? It's obvious this is one major exploit used to hack hundreds of things, but seems like it would be pretty easy to fix by simply truncating any input past the allowed length, and simply sanitizing all input that you take. **EDIT: Another perspective that I'd like answers to consider - why do the creators of C not fix these issues by reimplementing the libraries?**"}
{"_id": "194026", "title": "Suggestions to improve small team workflow (CI / Deployment)", "text": "I'd like to improve my team's workflow and architecture. Right now we have a LAMP dev server on which every member of the team has a subdirectory. We work directly in this directory via LAN. There is also a \"release\" directory for when we're ready to upload via FTP to the production server. We use a github private repo that serves as a centralized repo. Example of a programmer's current daily workflow : Choose a user story to work on after a quick daily meeting Open a git branch named after the user story Work, commit some changes Push to github When I decide to deploy, I pull the changes, perform a code review, change the needed variables for production and upload via FTP. If changes were made to the dev database I replicate them on the production server's database as well. Any ideas where I should begin to improve this situation ? Current issues :   * Members of the team can't easily work from home since they'd have to edit on the dev server directly (lag issues)   * Deployment process is awful (changing variables manually and FTPing to production) EDIT : I'll try to add better questions.   * Setting up subdirectories for each developer on a common dev server : good idea or not ? Possible alternative : each developer setups his own dev environment (using WAMP or similar) and pushes to test server.   * For the deployment aspect I feel manually changing config variables and FTPing to production is a bad idea. Possible alternative : setting up git on production server, set config files in .gitignore (maintain them manually directly on production server) and git pushing the changes.   * For remote developers, should they replicate the dev environment (again, WAMP or similar) but work on the dev server's database ? I think it's better than copying the database on local machines."}
{"_id": "249720", "title": "Deny use of my library to compete a certain company", "text": "I'm developing a library for reading/writing a file format of a program created by a certain company. The guys from that company were so kind that they provided me with a documentation for their format, which I'm really grateful for. I'm intending to release the library as open-source under a license \"derived\" from MIT, the difference being that the library must not be used to create a program that would compete with the original program, as an expression of my gratefulness to the company. What I'm asking: is adding this rule to the license legally possible?"}
{"_id": "99487", "title": "Good way to learn how to solve questions on InterviewStreet", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I adapt to pre-interview challenge questions? InterviewStreet is a new company that essentially acts as a filter for companies to find programmers that can code. My problem is my math is fairly weak and I'd like to study it, even if it's from the ground up, to be able to solve questions such as this one, that is found on their site: `Find the no of positive integral solutions for the equations (1/x) + (1/y) = 1/N! (read 1 by n factorial) Print a single integer which is the no of positive integral solutions modulo 1000007` Now, please do NOT post the answer to that question, it is taken directly from InterviewStreet and should not be posted here. It is not the answer I'm seeking for in this thread. What I'm asking is a more fundamental question which probably can be answered by some of the hackers in the SO community. How does one prepare for such a question? What resources are available for me to study/learn how to solve this type of problem? Is this covered on MIT open courseware? Khan Academy? Any particular books? I'm not even sure where to begin to start solving the problem above and I'd like to learn what steps I can take to do so."}
{"_id": "194027", "title": "Does Text Editor Sign The Files?", "text": "As images have EXIF data which provide info about where and how they are created, do any Text Editors append such kind of descriptive details to code files? For example I use Coda for my programming works. Does Coda sign any files created by itself? Is it possible to find out the author of two different projects by just looking at the inners of the files?"}
{"_id": "75767", "title": "How hard is Python to learn?", "text": "I'm on the list of the tutors in my university _(for PHP, MySql, CSS, etc)_ but someone contacted me asking me to teach them entry level Python. Would I be able to be up quickly enough and be able **to teach it to someone else?** (I've coded in PHP, Java, C#, Javascript, jQuery, tiny bit of C++ and ASP.NET. I'm a Computer Science student. Just finished my third year.)"}
{"_id": "134252", "title": "How can a child state machine relinquish control back to the parent state machine?", "text": "My top level state machine has some states and edges. I will call this the parent state machine.               A ----> B ----> C      Any state within the parent state machine can be a state machine too. I will call these children state machines.                          ___________              /            \\     A ----> |  B0->B1->B2  | ----> C              \\____________/      If the parent state machine transitions from A to B, B's state machine takes over. Once B is done running, how should it relinquish control to the parent state machine and transition to state C? Which design pattern do you use? If you're wondering, I have children state machines within parent state machines because my exact project is quite complex and it is natural to encapsulate the internal workings of a child state."}
{"_id": "138775", "title": "choosing a functional language platform for a new project", "text": "I have been writing code for a few years now and I don't believe I can claim to have a complete knowledge in this job yet. My experience primarily rolls around C# related areas with a decent knowledge on Silverlight and Asp .Net MVC as well. I tend to use Sql server and Postgres for normal RDBMS related tasks with Mybatis or LinqtoSql as ORM (and Cassandra as well for NoSql). Given that background, I am looking to building a new project which is a normal application using database and user interface screens. It is considerably a big project which we plan to be rolled out as a product. In recent times, I see a lot of noises being made about functional programming like Haskell and F#. I am wondering \\- if it is worth to build the new system using Haskell \\- or just stick to a regular application building model using Silverlight/Prism with a layering similar to onion architecture I understand the benefit of staying with the same technology background as it is always good to work on a familiar technology. I also heard that by moving towards a functional language like Haskell we get cleaner code, improved testability etc., Is it really worth considering a move to build new systems in Hasekll? Or it is yet to be proven in production environments? Simply put would I be safe if I build the new project using Haskell and my preferred database or it is too risky at this point in time to choose Haskell. Any help appreciated. Edit: I have already viewed a few other threads like the following and a few more as well, but did not get a definitive answer. Choosing a functional programming language"}
{"_id": "5160", "title": "How does a one-person ISV handle software patent research? What due-dilligence is required?", "text": "I'd like to sell software, but I'm worried about infringing on software patents. What should I do/research prior to writing code?"}
{"_id": "198274", "title": "Introducing Fowler's Table Data Gateway to refactor poorly designed systems", "text": "I am developing an application, which currently has about 150,000 lines of code. The previous developer didn't really use any discipline when writing code. Application is in production but is continually developed. I have read Martin Fowler's book (Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture) and it talks about 'Transaction Scipt' and 'Data Access Objects'. These are the patterns used i.e. there is a class called Person, which contains everything Person related and a class called Order with everything Order related. The functions are not reusable because they contain everything i.e. data access logic, business logic etc. For example, Person.GetPerson will connect to the database find the person, check the age of the person, get all the orders linked to the person etc. I am thinking about introducing what Martin Fowler terms a Table Data Gateway. I am seeing this as a longer term refactor project. The problem is that this will mean inconsistency to begin with i.e. data access logic will be contained in the new Gateway, but also in the Transaction Script classes (where the other developer put it)? Is it a bad idea to go against the original developers style of coding?"}
{"_id": "200692", "title": "Is there a comparative study of the memory consumption of programming languages runtimes, correlated with expressiveness and production bug ratios?", "text": "There are many comparative studies and available online when it comes to the runtime performance of applications built using one language or another. Some driven by corporations, some academic, some just personal experiment reports. We also get a decent share of comparative studies on side-effects of a programming language and its tooling, like:   * build times,   * likelihood of post-production bug detection,   * expressive power,   * etc... However, I've recently been more and more bummed out by the memory consumption of my programs more than anything else. This might come from the fact that while Moore's Law is on our side for raw performance, we have come to realize that other bottlenecks matter more. That, and I don't tend to update my hardware every so often, and I have some \"old\" (read 2005-2006 3.6GHz Pentium 4 with 4GB of RAM) that nowadays are hard-pressed to be useable for large applications without requiring me to go through great trouble to squeeze every bit of juice out of them (choice of OS, UI, tweaking of services and daemons, choice of applications to use for a task or another...). Quite honestly, sometimes I fire up `top` or `procexp` and weep at the sight of the memory used by the most innocent programs. I can address this by keeping to push in the direction listed above, and essentially trying to limit myself and the programs I use (I have a dear love for cli programs for that reason, I guess), but I also cannot help but to think that maybe we're doing it wrong. ### Modern Tools for Modern Needs Of course, higher-level languages are arguably better and justify their worth of dead weight. Some design choices were made for good (or supposedly well- intended) reasons at the time, in many toolchains. Shared libraries, memory models, pre-processors, type-systems, etc... But some might be more viable than others with our modern hardware, and I'd be curious to read a few serious studies on the matter. So, my question is, is there a pendant to the Benchmarks Game and others that focus on a comparison of the languages' base runtime memory consumption? And even further, are there some studies that cross-reference this with other parameters (similar to what this article did, for instance, for other criteria, also based on the Benchmarks Game)?"}
{"_id": "246444", "title": "How should one implement the dependency-injection for a geocoding client that aggregates different coordinate provider implementations?", "text": "I am new to DI and I would like to know how DI might be used to help resolve this problem. If I have an `ILatLongLocation` which implements a `Latitude` and `Longitude`, then given two of these I can produce a `Distance` using a variety of algorithms, but I can also reasonably pick one of these as the \"best\" algorithm at design-time without losing any sleep. However, since users will rarely input physical coordinates, I may need to instead compare by zip codes or something similar. Now, in order to resolve zip codes to coordinates, I could apply a naive algorithm that uses string concatenation, etc to do a rough guess as to the physical coordinates, I could pick a random set of coordinates, etc. But in all likelihood, I will need to resolve the zip codes by using some sort of database mapping zip codes to coordinates. So being new to DI, I would like to know if the following is a reasonable application of DI and/or if I am overthinking it. `ILocatable` has `ILatLongLocation` `ILocatableProvider<T> : ILocatable` has a `T RawLocatable` and can return an `ILatLongLocation`. `IZipCodeLocatableProvider : ILocatableProvider<string>` has a `string RawLocatable` and returns an `ILatLongLocation`. `NaiveZipCodeLocatableProvider` is an implementation that just uses patterns in zip codes that are well-known to provide a best-effort guess as to the coordinates. `DbZipCodeLocatableProvider` is an implementation that uses a database (maybe through a `DbContext` or somehow else) to return the coordinates. Now `DbZipCodeLocatableProvider` itself must depend on some sort of repository or context or connection or something to access a database (unless it is literally hard-coded)... so then this means I need to have a `DbContext` or something similar... here is where I get lost. Am I thinking about this the right way? Is this a legitimate scenario for dependency injection? And how do I discriminate between, say different connection strings vs different strategies altogether for resolving zip codes to coordinates? Edit: ...and don't forget about `WebServiceZipCodeLocatableProvider` ... there's another (realistic) option."}
{"_id": "246445", "title": "Is it safe to rely on static analysis to \"reproduce\" concurrency bugs reliably?", "text": "I've inherited some Java code which I suspect harbours some concurrency bugs when synchronizing between a thread that queries data and an IO event that updates the same data. I'm trialling a static analysis tool called ThreadSafe which indeed detects various concurrency issues (i.e. field accessed from asynchronously invoked method without synchronization and Inconsistent synchronization of accesses to a collection). After discovering how difficult it is to reproduce data races reliably by writing unit tests, I wondered if it's advisable to depend on ThreadSafe to \"reproduce\" the bugs reliably? What I'm asking is, is it safe to depend on the static analysis tool to tell me when I've fixed the bugs? (Of course, to fix the bugs I will need to understand each one in context)."}
{"_id": "237213", "title": "Maze generation given intersection tree", "text": "**Background Information:** I'm building a 2D maze generator. I have tried Prim's algorithm, Wilson's algorithm, and a recursive backtracker algorithm for generating my maze, however was not satisfied with the difficulty of any. I have decided to create my own. I decided that two things make a maze hard. First, mazes can have lots of intersections and choices to make. Second, they can be disorienting and cause you to lose your way. I decided to create a tree to represent the intersections and dead ends in a maze and connect each node in the tree with a randomly generated path to disorient users. **The problem:** If I begin to generate the cells in the maze for the tree, I may find that a node doesn't have the room it needs to connect to or create its children. How do I fix or avoid this problem? **My Thoughts:** There seems like there might be a way to do this by dividing the maze into sections and subdividing them, but that still doesn't guarantee enough room at the end of the division. I could also try to start small and work my way up, sectioning off smaller areas and then creating connections between them, but that could still run into pathing issues with not having enough room to connect the sections together or even creating really long paths between sections. I am using a hexagonal grid, but any solution you guys come up for rectangular grids should be easy to transfer to a hexagonal one. I wasn't sure if this should be posted in the theoretical computer science section or here, and opted for the more general one."}
{"_id": "128304", "title": "Is there any way to test how will the site perform under load", "text": "I have made an Asp.net MVC website and hosted it on a shared hosting provider. Since my website surrounds a very generic idea, it might have number of concurrent users sometime in future. So, I was thinking of a way to test my website for on-load performance. Like how will the site perform when 100 or 1000 users are online at the same time and surfing the website. This will also make me understand whether my LINQ queries are well written or not."}
{"_id": "125151", "title": "Should the deploy script be an artifact of the build?", "text": "This is a web project written in Java. So, I'm writing the build and the deploy scripts. To create the build, I used ant. The continuous build is done with Jenkins. The build generates 3 different artifacts:   1. The war file   2. A zip with layouts   3. A zip with images So far, so good, but now I need to write the deploy script, which should:   * Deploy the war (artifact 1) to the tomcat running at _server 1_   * Place the artifact **2** at _server 1_ in a specific directory   * Place the artifact **3** at _server 2_ in a specific directory So I was talking with my colleague and he said that we should also generate an artifact (maybe _deploy.xml_ ) that deploys these artifacts when placed at the correct server. So there would be another script, that would:   * Download the jenkins artifacts   * scp to each server and place the deploy.xml there   * remotely invoke the deploy.xml What makes me a little uncomfortable is the act of having the deploy.xml as a build artifact. The motivation behind this would be to be able to make a deploy without needing to have access to the VCS repositories, so a build would be self-contained, ie, any build could go into production only with what was generated by Jenkins. Where should the deploy scripts be placed? Should they be **only** at the VCS or should they be build artifacts too?"}
{"_id": "128300", "title": "Right Tools For The Job? One Location vs Multiple?", "text": "I'm currently using Codebase for all my project management (where I'm learning Agile). I use it for tracking bugs, user stories (via tickets), wikis, files and git hosting. However, I'm looking to improve on this and find some tools better suited to things like bug tracking, managing stories, git hosting, collaboration, client feedback etc. I'm part of a small team of 3 or 4 developers. Does anyone have any recommendations? My initial thoughts based on research was:   * Project Management: JIRA   * Bug Tracking: JIRA   * User Stories and Agile: Pivotal Tracker   * Git hosting: JIRA   * Storage: Dropbox However it seems this is quite disjointed in that it could prove more work than its worth. Appreciate any advice on the above or tools which you've used and found work great for small-medium teams and suit Agile. My SPECIFIC requirements are: Bug tracking, managing stories, git hosting, remote team collaboration, client feedback, time tracking, storage, build management, project lifecycle progression data... I also found Assembla which seems excellent. One of my team members believes in \"the right tool for the job\" and that there is no single tool to manage all of this. I was hoping for a central location."}
{"_id": "128302", "title": "Move from Curl to Aria2?", "text": "We have a crawling engine that uses curl and caters to about 400,000 ppl / month. Although curl supports concurrent downloads, it does not support bandwidth limiting ( only in php 5.4.0 ) which is why my boss wants me to move to aria2. He also says Aria2 is faster ( which seems to be true to me as well ) Aria2 would require a large amounts of changes to the system. Right now we have crawling system which does not crawl in a conconrrent manner. Would moving to aria2 be a good decision?"}
{"_id": "146692", "title": "Why do popular websites store very complicated session-related data in cookies -- and what does it all mean?", "text": "As web developers, we all learn that sessions help overcome the problems related to the stateless nature of HTTP. We create a unique session id, and send it to the browser -- and when the browser sends the same id back to us, we identify the user easily. All this sounds pretty straightforward, and NOT so complicated to implement in any language. ## NOW Look at the following screenshots I took. These show the kinds of cookies popular websites store. It looks like they are storing multiple session IDs, or they are trying the hide the actual id by setting so many cookies, or, it is something very specialized security measures they're taking to prevent session hijacking and other related problems. Or, whatever. ## Gmail (before login) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RKLmL.jpg) ## Gmail (after login) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9pWMf.jpg) ## Facebook ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/f760r.jpg) ## StackExchange ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CIXd4.jpg) (Don't worry, you can't steal my session -- it's stale and incomplete :)) So, my question is -- what purpose does this complicatedness serve? Please explain what these different cookies mean (in general), and for what purposes these are set. Lastly, hint on how I can do it (and whether I should) in my own apps. One more question: In a lot of instances, the values in the cookies look like they are URL-encoded -- why so?"}
{"_id": "146690", "title": "Call stack starts at bottom or top?", "text": "A stack is something that piles bottom-up. Hence a call stack adds new items on the stack when functions are called with items being removed from the stack as each function ends until the stack is empty and then the program ends. If the above is correct, why do people refer to control moving \"up\" the call stack? Surely control moves _down_ the call stack until it reaches the bottom."}
{"_id": "125159", "title": "Selling LINQ To Management", "text": "I recently started working at a new company that currently doesn't use linq, but does use C# and the .net framework. I'm coming from a LINQ background, so I'm biased, but I still think there are a lot of advantages to using linq. That being said, it's still going to be hard to influence change as I'm still very new. What suggestions do you have to sell this to management? The database systems are still relatively new, so I think now, as things are still developing, would be the best time to try convincing people to use this. This is both a technical and political question. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "146695", "title": "Isolated environment for software stacks", "text": "I was sure that I would find this question, but I couldn't. How to create an isolated development environment? It other words, a sandbox, where I can install different combinations of web servers, databases, other software packages and play with them, without cluttering my system packages and without manually downloading packages from official websites. Something for software stacks as virtualenv + pip is for Python. Before that I tried to install OSes inside QEMU/KVM, but that is an overkill and a bit complicated (couldn't set up bridging, for example). Is it possible to create isolated virtual environments without running virtual machines with full-blown operating systems? I use Debian GNU/Linux. **Edit (01.08.12):** A similar question on Unix.SE with more elaborated answers - http://unix.stackexchange.com/q/31136/11397"}
{"_id": "84784", "title": "Inspirational software for end-users written in Haskell?", "text": "I think great technology is invisible. Besides the usual suspects (GHC, Xmonad, proprietary trading software) what great examples are there of end-user software written in Haskell? I think good examples are FreeArc, Hledger and \"Nikki And The Robots\". Do you have more examples (full blown GUI apps, small CLI tools, etc)? **Edit:** For example, I am fascinated by Wings3D, because, while it's written in Erlang, users cannot tell that. It just works. Among Haskell's weak spots are cross-platform GUIs. There are not many GUI apps written in Haskell in general and most of them are not easy to use, install or even compile. What are good examples to learn from how to make hard things look easy?"}
{"_id": "76467", "title": "How to interpret programmer salary survey data, especially concerning different job titles?", "text": "I've been trying to understand how my compensation stacks up against the competition. I understand that this can be a bit of a localized question, so I'll do my best to avoid local issues. There are a number of web sites that provide salary survey data about different jobs. I've been looking at the data on careerbuilder.com in particular. I would like to use this data to understand how much salary I would be wise to ask for in negotiation, but it seems impossible to interpret. Let me start with job titles. I have a background in mathematics and computer programming. I am currently doing database-driven web development using mostly SQL, .net, and Javascript. I do much more programming than I do web design. In my current position, I was told that I would be a \"Web Developer\". I was told that I would be junior to the \"Application Developers\", but senior to \"Junior Developers\". That was fine with me. After several months lapsed, I received (with no prior notice) a new nameplate for my cube that bore the title \"Application Developer\". The developers who had been previously called \"Application Developers\" are now called \"Sr. Systems Analysts\". As far as I know, these new nameplates did not accompany any actual organizational change or pay differences. However, when I go to the salary surveys on careerbuilder.com and enter in \"computer programmer\", \"application developer\", \"web developer\" and other seemingly similar titles, I get wildly divergent results. Even more divergent are the results on Glassdoor.com, which reports survey results from individual companies. Consider this example: ( http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/net-salary-SRCH_KO0,3.htm ) that has differences of over 100% salary between different companies for the same title!"}
{"_id": "232190", "title": "Regarding interfaces of classes in OOP", "text": "When one says \"a class' interface\": Does he/she refer to all of the get and set methods - or do they refer only to the methods' signatures and return types, without the inner implementation of these methods? (Aka, the implementation of a 'get' method isn't considered part of the interface, but rather part of the inner implementation of the class. The interface is the return type for that method and the signature of that method)."}
{"_id": "129478", "title": "Guide developers to not forget their obligations", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  What is the Best Way to Incentivize a Team of Developers?   >  How do you motivate peers to become better developers? Aside developer's tasks, there are minor stuff that each developer should do. In our company, the project leader spends some time with each developer to guide them on how to do several stuff, especially on inexperienced ones. Of course each developer has their tasks, but also they have notes that either they or the project leader noted. Those tasks can be like:   1. You should change the flow of this method,    2. I don't like the way you solve this issue,   3. Consider a faster solution   4. etc. Those notes of course can be noted! But laziness is an issue, even if the developer has the abilities required. My question is: How do we 'force' them to become more hypochondriacal than lazy?"}
{"_id": "246196", "title": "Is using MultiMaps code smell? If so what alternative data structures fit my needs?", "text": "I'm trying to model nWoD characters for a roleplaying game in a character builder program. The crux is I want to support saving too and loading from yaml documents. One aspect of the character's is their set of skills. Skills are split between exactly three 'types': Mental, Physical, and Social. Each type has a list of skills under if. My Yaml looks like this:               PHYSICAL:         Athletics: 0         Brawl: 3     MENTAL:         Academics: 2         Computers      My initial thought was to use a Multimap of some sort, and have the skill type as an Enum, and key to my map. Each Skill is an element in the collection that backs the multimap. However, I've been struggling to get the yaml to work. On explaining this to a colleague outside of work they said this was probably a sign of code smell, and he's never seen it used 'well'. Are multiMaps really code smell? If so what alternate data structures would suit my goals?"}
{"_id": "36662", "title": "Finding the time to program in your spare time?", "text": "I've got about a dozen programming projects bouncing about my head, and I'd love to contribute to some open source projects, the problem I have is that having spent the entire day staring at Visual Studio and or Eclipse (Sometimes both at the same time...) the last thing I feel like doing when I go home is program. How do you build up the motivation/time to work on your own projects after work? I'm not saying that I don't enjoy programming, it's just that I enjoy other things too and it can be hard to even do something you enjoy if you've spent all day already doing it. I think that if I worked at a chocolate factory the last thing I'd want to see when I got home was a Wonka bar."}
{"_id": "85789", "title": "Why profile applications using AOP?", "text": "When tuning performance in a web application, I am looking for good and light- weight performance profiling tools to measure the execution time for each method. I know that the easiest profiling method is to log the start time and end time for each method, but I see more and more people using AOP to profile (add @profiled before each method). What's the benefit of AOP profiling compared to the common \"log\" way? Thanks in advance Vance"}
{"_id": "133704", "title": "When calling a method should we use base.methodname and this.methodname?", "text": "In C#, with an inherited class set -- when calling a method should we use keywords 'base.methodname and this.methodname'... irrespective of whether it is a overridden method or not? The code is likely to undergo changes in terms of logic and maybe some IF-ELSE like conditions may come in at a later date. So at that time, the developer has to be compelled to revisit each line of code and ensure that he/she makes the right choice of which method is being called --- base.methodname() or this.methodname() ELSE the .NET framework will call the DEFAULT (I think its base.methodname()) and the entire logic can go for a toss."}
{"_id": "85780", "title": "Should I buy Clean Code after reading The Clean Coder?", "text": "I\"m currently reading _The Clean Coder_ by Robert C. Martin. It's a great book and I'm learning a lot from it. My objective is to become a \"professional\" programmer so I'm trying to learn the most I can when I'm not at my office. I was wondering if I should buy _Clean Code_ from the same author. Is it the natural \"sequel\" to _The Clean Coder_? Does it cover much the same ground to make its purchase not worthwhile?"}
{"_id": "85783", "title": "Technology Selection for a dynamic product", "text": "We are building a product for Procurement Domain in JAVA. Following are the main technical requirements.   1. Platform Independent   2. Database Independent   3. Browser Independent In functional requirements the product is very dynamic in nature. The main reason being the procurement process around the world is different from client to client. Briefly we need to have a dynamic workflow engine and a dynamic template engine. The workflow engine by which we can define any kind of workflows and the template engine allows us to define any kind of data structures and based on definition it can get the user input through workflow. We have been developing this product for almost 2 years. It has been a long time till we can get down with the dynamics of requirements. Till now we have developed a basic workflow and template engine and which is in use at one of the client. We have been using following technologies.   1. GWT-Ext (Front End Framework)   2. Hibernate (Database Layer) In between we have faced some issues with GWT-Ext (mainly browser compatibility) and database optimization due to sub classing in hibernate. For resolving GWT-Ext issue, which a dying community so we decided to move to SmartGWT. In SmartGWT we faced issues related to loading and now we are able to finalize that GWT 2.3 will be the way to go as the library is rich and performance is upto the mark. We are able to almost finalize GWT-Spring based front and middle layer. In hibernate, we found main issues with sub-classing due to that it was throwing astronomical queries and sometimes it would stop firing any queries for 5-10 seconds or may be around 30 seconds and then resume again. Few days back I came to one article related to ORM. I am a traditional .Net SQL developer and I have always worked with relational database. Reading through this article, I also found it relating to the issues I face. I am still not completely convinced of using hibernate and this article just supported my opinion. Following are the questions for which I am looking for an answer.   1. Should we be going with Hibernate in case of dynamic database requirements and the load of the data will be heavy in future? How can we partition the data, how we can efficiently join the data, how we can optimize the queries? If the answer is no then how do we achieve database independence?   2. Is our choice related to GWT and Spring proper or do we need to change that too?   3. Should we use any other key value pair database if the data is dynamic in nature and it is very difficult to make it relational?"}
{"_id": "202922", "title": "Documenting mathematical logic in code", "text": "Sometimes, although not often, I have to include math logic in my code. The concepts used are mostly very simple, but the resulting code is not - a lot of variables with unclear purpose, and some operations with not so obvious intent. I don't mean that the code is unreadable or unmaintainable, just that it's _waaaay_ harder to understand than the actual math problem. I try to comment the parts which are hardest to understand, but there is the same problem as in just coding them - _text does not have the expressive power of math_. I am looking for a more efficient and easy to understand way of explaining the logic behind some of the complex code, preferably in the code itself. I have considered TeX - writing the documentation and generating it separately from the code. But then I'd have to learn TeX, and the documentation will not be in the code itself. Another thing I thought of is taking a picture of the mathematical notations, equations and diagrams written on paper/whiteboard, and including it in javadoc. Is there a simpler and clearer way?    * * * P.S. Giving descriptive names(`timeOfFirstEvent` instead of `t1`) to the variables actually makes the code more verbose and even harder too read."}
{"_id": "41655", "title": "Inspiring Computer Science College Student Stories?", "text": "After watching \"The Social Network\", a movie about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, I had a productivity spike as it inspired me to learn many different languages and software. That spike has been deteriorating somewhat and I don't feel like watching the movie all over again so I was wondering if anybody had any other similar success stories/links/articles/whatever. Mainly about successes that started for people in college."}
{"_id": "203345", "title": "Vernon's book Implementing DDD and modeling of underlying concepts", "text": "Following questions all refer to examples presented in Implementing DDD In article we can see from Figure 6 that both **BankingAccount** and **PayeeAccount** represent the same _underlying concept_ of _Banking Account_ **BA** **1.** On _page 64_ author gives an example of a _publishing organization_ , where the life-cycle of a book goes through several stages ( _proposing a book_ , _editorial process_ , _translation of the book_ ... ) and at each of those stages this book has a different definition. Each _stage of the book_ is defined in a different _Bounded Context_ , but do all these different definitions still represent the same _underlying concept_ of a **Book** , just like both **BankingAccount** and **PayeeAccount** represent the same _underlying concept_ of a **BA**? **2.** a) I understand why `User` shouldn't exist in **Collaboration Context** ( CC ), but instead should be defined within **Identity and Access Context** IAC ( _page 65_ ). But still, do `User` ( IAC ), `Moderator` ( CC ), `Author` ( CC ),`Owner` ( CC ) and `Participant` ( CC ) all represent _different aspects_ of the same _underlying concept_? b) If yes, then this means that CC contains several _model elements_ ( `Moderator`, `Author`, `Owner` and `Participant` ), each representing _different aspect_ of the same _underlying concept_ ( just like both **BankingAccount** and **PayeeAccount** represent the same _underlying concept_ of a **BA** ). But isn't this considered **a duplication of concepts** ( Evan's book, page 339 ), since several _model elements_ in CC represent the same _underlying concept_? c) If `Moderator`, `Author` ... don't represent the same _underlying concept_ , then what _underlying concept_ does each represent? **3.** In an **e-commerce system** , the term **Customer** has multiple meanings ( page 49 ): When user is browsing the **Catalog** , **Customer** has different meaning than when user is placing an **Order**. But do these two different definitions of a **Customer** represent the same _underlying concept_ , just like both **BankingAccount** and **PayeeAccount** represent the same _underlying concept_ of a **BA**? **UPDATE:** 2. > 2a) As with the book, they refer to the same identity but express different > aspects of that identity in a specific context. Sort of like a single object > implementing multiple interfaces which embody the roles that object plays. a) Does having two _model elements_ ( both within same **BC** ) , each representing _different aspect of the same underlying concept_ , result in what _Evans_ calls **duplicate concepts**? b) I thought terms \" _representing different aspects of an identity within particular BC_ \" and \" _representing different aspects of the same underlying concept within particular BC_ \" are interchangeable ( ie they mean the same thing )? If not, how do they differ? c) > Sort of like a single object implementing multiple interfaces which embody > the roles that object plays. I assumed each _role_ represents a _particular aspect of the underlying concept_ , but you're saying it doesn't? What then does _role_ model and how is the thing that role models conceptually different from _an aspect of the underlying concept_? **2\\. UPDATE:** **2.** a) > > Does having two model elements ( both within same BC ) , each representing > different aspect of the same underlying concept, result in what Evans calls > duplicate concepts? > > I don't recall what Evans called duplicate concepts so not sure. On page 339 Evans describes **Duplicate concepts** as being one of the two conceptual splinters that cause the unification of a model to break down. Here's the quote: > Combining elements of distinct models causes two categories of problems: > duplicate concepts and false cognates. Duplication of concepts means that > there are two model elements ( and attendant implementations ) that actually > represent the same concept. Evry time this information changes, it has to be > updated in two places with conversions. Every time new knowledge leads to a > change in one of the objects, other has to be reanalyzed and changed too. > Except the reanalysis doesn't happen in reality, so the result is two > versions of the same concept that follow different rules and even have > different data. b) and c) > This may be a linguistic issue. The way I see it, an identity can have > different concepts associated with it depending on the context. > > Again this seems to be a linguistic issue. You use \"underlying concept\" to > refer to identity which I think isn't clear enough to distinguish from > simply \"concept\" which by itself isn't sufficient. Perhaps the following will make my questions clearer: By _underlying concept_ I'm referring to _an aspect of reality_ ( ie the thing ) which we try to model. thanks"}
{"_id": "175939", "title": "Internationalization messages based in views or in model entities", "text": "I have a small webapp in java and I am adding the internationalization support, replacing texts with labels that are defined in dictionary files. While some texts are obviously unique to each view (v.g. the html title), other refer to concepts from the model (v.g. a ticket, the location or status of such ticket, etc.) As usual, some terms will appear many times in different locations (vg, in both the edition page and in the search page and in the listings I have a \"ticketLocation\" label). My question is: can I organize the labels around the model concepts (so I have a `ticket.location` label and I use it everywhere such field is labeled) or should I make a different label for each (so `form.ticketLocation` and `filter.ticketLocation` and `list.ticketLocation`). I would go for the first option; I have searched for tips and the only thing that I see that could hinder me is due to the length of the string disrupting the design, and even for that I would prefer having to add a `ticket.locationShort` for places where there is not much space. What is your opinion/tips/experience?"}
{"_id": "137930", "title": "how to find out if spelling mistakes in source code are a serious issue or not?", "text": "I find very troubling amount of spelling mistakes I see everyday in our codebase, from which I will reproduce a very short but representative example:               ArgumnetCount     Timeount     Gor message from queue       Unfortunately this is in no way limited to one person. There is a lot of non- native English speakers in our team who contribute to that, however I can also pinpoint some of the worst spelling mistakes to our Software Architect who is American, born and raised. These are also to be found even in emails, presentations, documents, whatever piece of written information we have in a software development company. I'd like to know how to find out if it is a serious issue or not? I've always met these spelling mistakes with concern, but my own, personal, **official** policy is that we are not paid to spell things right, we are paid to get things done, so inside the company I never really criticized anyone about it. But I have raised this issue with some of my close friends, and never settled it for good."}
{"_id": "202691", "title": "Design pattern for logging changes in parent/child objects saved to database", "text": "I\u2019ve got a 2 database tables in parent/child relationship as one-many. I\u2019ve got three classes representing the data in these two tables:               Parent Class     {         Public int ID {get; set;}         .. other properties     }          Child Class     {         Public int ID {get;set;}         Public int ParentID {get; set;}         .. other properties     }          TogetherClass     {         Public Parent Parent;         Public List<Child> ChildList;     }      Lastly I\u2019ve got a client and server application \u2013 I\u2019m in control of both ends so can make changes to both programs as I need to. Client makes a request for ParentID and receives a Together Class for the matching parent, and all of the child records. The client app may make changes to the children \u2013 add new children, remove or modify existing ones. Client app then sends the Together Class back to the server app. Server app needs to update the parent and child records in the database. In addition I would like to be able to log the changes \u2013 I\u2019m doing this by having 2 separate tables one for Parent, one for child; each containing the same columns as the original plus date time modified, by whom and a list of the changes. I\u2019m unsure as to the best approach to detect the changes in records \u2013 new records, records to be deleted, records with no fields changed, records with some fields changed. I figure I need to read the parent & children records and compare those to the ones in the Together Class. Strategy A: If Together class\u2019s child record has an ID of say 0, that indicates a new record; insert. Any deleted child records are no longer in the Together Class; see if any of the comparison child records are not found in the Together class and delete if not found (Compare using ID). Check each child record for changes and if changed log. Strategy B: Make a new Updated TogetherClass               UpdatedClass     {         Public Parent Parent {get; set}         Public List<Child> ListNewChild {get;set;}         Public List<Child> DeletedChild {get;set;}         Public List<Child> ExistingChild {get;set;} // used for no changes and modified rows     }      And then process as per the list. The reason why I\u2019m asking for ideas is that both of these solutions don\u2019t seem optimal to me and I suspect this problem has been solved already \u2013 some kind of design pattern ? I am aware of one potential problem in this general approach \u2013 that where Client App A requests a record; App B requests same record; A then saves changes; B then saves changes which may overwrite changes A made. This is a separate locking issue which I\u2019ll raise a separate question for if I\u2019ve got trouble implementing. The actual implementation is c#, SQL Server and WCF between client and server - sharing a library containing the class implementations. Apologies if this is a duplicate post \u2013 I tried searching various terms without finding a match though. * * * Update based on comments from svick and TimG: To track change would the base class be something like:               public class ChangedRowBase         {             public enum StatusState             {             New, Unchanged, Updated, Deleted         };              protected StatusState _Status;              public StatusState Status         {             get             {                 return _Status;             }         }              public void SetUnchanged()         {             _Status = StatusState.Unchanged;         }              public void SetDeleted()         {             _Status = StatusState.Deleted;         }          }      Then my Child class would have something like:                   public int SomeDumbProperty         {             get;             set             {                 base.Status = StatusState.Updated;                 // Missing line here to set the property itself             }         }              private int _SomeIntelligentProperty;              public int SomeIntelligentProperty         {             get { return _SomeIntelligentProperty; }                  set             {                 if (value != _SomeIntelligentProperty)                 {                     _SomeIntelligentProperty = value;                     base.Status = StatusState.Updated;                 }             }         }      The idea being that the intelligent one detects if there has indeed been a change; otherwise using the dumb one the client app would need to either detect change and only update if there has been a change, or use the setter anyway flagging a change which actually didn't occur. I also know that my dumbproperty doesn't work (or compile) right now. If I want code in the getter or setter, does this mean I need to define a separate private variable myself ? I know the short hand {get; set;} does this behind the scenes."}
{"_id": "137934", "title": "How to learn the basics", "text": "I have been programming for 2 years in python, Java and C#. I have developed two programs that is being used by a IT-company I worked for and use programming/a programmers mind to solve almost every problem I counter. But still I feel I am missing something in my curriculum (selftaught mostly). When programming I usally do the most often mistake of never changing my solutions to problems in my code. Because I dont know the lowest principals in programming. I often give up on new projects I start because of this. I see codes from others and I shiver when I think back to my code afterwards. What are the basics in programming? How can I learn this? And which principals in programming is the building blocks to actually become a better programmer?"}
{"_id": "40389", "title": "What file extension do you use for your template/view files in PHP?", "text": "I'm building a Model-View-Controller framework, and it has come time to decide how I will be creating and using view templates and layouts. Some frameworks use special extensions for these files. CakePHP uses `.ctp`. I have heard-of/seen `.tpl` files, though I've never used them myself. There is the `.inc` extension, which doesn't feel right, and of course, I could stick with plaon ol' `.php`. For that matter why not `.awesome`? What do you use for your template files? Is there any benefit to using a special file extension for these files? Are you partial to a certain extension for nostalgia or convention alone? They're typically (and will be in my project) already in their own directory, so I assume there must be _some_ reason they are differentiated by their extension in projects like CakePHP."}
{"_id": "83787", "title": "Is there a canonical resource on bouncycastle?", "text": "It doesn't matter if it is Java or .NET. Is there a resource out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices and other helpful information on bouncycastle? What about that resource makes it special?"}
{"_id": "236173", "title": "Where does one draw the line between inspiration and plagiarism?", "text": "Suppose one would like to use in an iOS app only one function from a GPLv3 library that contains a large number of them. One cannot simply link the whole library beacuse otherwise the resulting software, having to be GPLv3, would be incompatible with the App Store. Can one \"take inspiration\" from the source code of the library to write a function that would perform the same task? I understand that this is a fine line, but I wonder if there is a rule of thumb."}
{"_id": "166444", "title": "Figuring out the Call chain", "text": "Let's say I have an `assemblyA` that has a method which creates an instance of `assemblyB` and calls its `MethodFoo()`. Now `assemblyB` also creates an instance of `assemblyC` and calls `MethodFoo()`. So no matter if I start with `assemblyB` in the code flow or with `assemlyA`, at the end we are calling that `MethodFoo` of `AssemblyC()`. My question is when I am in the `MethodFoo()` how can I know who has called me? Has it been a call originally from `assemblyA` or was it from `assemlyB`? Is there any design pattern or a good OO way of solving this?"}
{"_id": "15536", "title": "What technologies or techniques senior developers of today should *unlearn*", "text": "Many questions here about learning new things. But what about `unlearning`? When we used to develop software 10 or 20 years ago very differently, we counted RAM in bytes, libraries were very rare, IDE was an unknown word and Merise was king. **What should we unlearn today? What bad habits we should get rid of?** EDIT: **unlearn** doesn't mean **forget**. Rather to use old techniques that was useful in the past, use the new technologies (such as GC for memory management). But your past knowledge will always be useful today."}
{"_id": "76449", "title": "Starting a User Group C#/.net", "text": "Inspired by this question, I have looked into user groups within my area in England, and there does not seem to be one at all for a few hundred miles. I would like to look into the possibility of setting one up in a local city, but I have no idea what the format should be. My questions are: What is the purpose of a user group? Is it to simply network or are there expectations for presentations, informal learning, etc? How and where does one promote a user group? Is it run as a free enterprise or is there usually a charge to allow for investment back into the meetings? Thanks."}
{"_id": "76445", "title": "Is it necessary to make a portfolio website for web developer", "text": "I have worked on around 15-20 sites . I have used different skills / languages on there. So i am confused how should write those in my resume . Or should i create a portfolio website where i have screen shots of those sites where i have wroked. Then do i need to mention about sites or just give the link in my resume"}
{"_id": "175919", "title": "Is there an open source license that prohibits public hosting, so I can avoid competition?", "text": "I am thinking about open sourcing my project, but I want to prohibit public hosting, so noone will put up an alternative website with my code on it, and compete with my site. Internal networks, like libraries etc. would be welcome to use it. Are you aware of such a license? I guess this would be even more restrictive than AGPL."}
{"_id": "10136", "title": "What are the Vital Things noticed in an Experienced Programmer Resume by a firm?", "text": "Hai Friends, Tell me or share with me , i am developer with one year experience, now i want to modify my old fresher resume to an experience resume, so i want to know what are the primary things must be in an experienced resume which is attracted by the firm."}
{"_id": "237968", "title": "Manage the persistence of entities on iOS in several places: CoreData on the device, iCloud and on a REST API", "text": "For the needs of a project, I would persist the datas contained in Core Data in several places depending on the state of the user.   * If the user is logged to my API -> Persist the datas on my API.    * If the is logged on iCloud -> Persist the datas on iCloud    * In all case -> Persist the datas on the device. Indeed, with this schema, the datas could be saved on the device, on iCloud and on my API. We need to duplicate datas to be able to keep the last datas avalaible even if the user is not logged on iCloud or the API. * * * Here is an implementation of how I think this feature will be implemented. To uniformise the process of executing CRUD requests I think to create a `PersistenceManager` which permits to execute CRUD requests for entities depending the sate of the user. (If he's logged on the API or on iCloud or nowhere). Here there are some methods that the `PersistenceManager` will implement: **Save request** This method will save an entity depending on the state of the user. If the user is logged to the API: persist on the API If the user is logged to iCloud: save on iCloud In all case -> Save on the device with Core Data. Each datas stored will have a timestamp to be sure to get the last version of the data. **Read request** This method will retrieve entities only from de device in asynchronous mode. For each Save, Update or Delete request executed, if the user is logged to the API or with iCloud, one or both will send a notification to clients application where the user is logged to retrieve datas from API or iCloud and store them into Core Data. Then the data that the user want to read is returned by Core Data. To retrieve notification from the API, I think use socket through my API and my iOS app to communicate. But I don't know how can I do the same mechanism for iCloud. Any suggestion ? **Update request** Same mechanical than for the save request but for update datas. **Delete request** Same mechanical than for the save request but for delete datas. * * * I'm not familiar with these problematics, and I would like have your advices on it. Thanks a lot !"}
{"_id": "123210", "title": "Decoupling Threads", "text": "It's not uncommon to hear of decoupling the UI from program logic, or database design/access from program logic...or even program logic from itself. However, I've never heard of an approach to generalizing or abstracting away the details of threading tasks to the logic (aside from Tymeac, an Android- specific package). Honestly, with all of the details going into managing threads, I don't expect many solutions to work well anytime soon, so... My question is, how do you write threads that aren't joined at the hip to the processes that use those threads? What do you normally do when requirements change in an already complicated multi-threaded application? Is there a design approach to this that I should read? I ask this because we are the dawn of the \"bagillion\"-core era in computing. Eventually, a good methodology will have to exist to manage 1k+ cores and even more threads here in the next couple of decades."}
{"_id": "237961", "title": "Interface hierarchy design for separate domains", "text": "There are businesses and people. People could be liked and businesses could be commented on:               class Like     class Comment          class Person implements iLikeTarget     class Business implements iCommentTarget      Likes and comments are performed by a user(person) so they are authored:               class Like implements iAuthored     class Comment implements iAuthored      People's like could also be used in their history:               class history     class Like implements iAuthored, iHistoryTarget      Now, a smart developer comes and says each history is attached to a user so history should be authored:               interface iHistoryTarget extends iAuthored      so it could be removed from `class Like`:               class Person implements iLikeTarget     class Business implements iCommentTarget          class Like implements iHistoryTarget     class Comment implements iAuthored          class history          interface iHistoryTarget extends iAuthored      Here, another smart guy comes with a question: How could I capture the `Authored` fact in `Like` and `Comment` classes? He may knows nothing about `history` concept in the project. By scalling these kind of functionallities, interfaces may goes to their encapsulated types which cause more type strength, on the other hand explicitness suffered and also code end users will face much pain to process. So here is the question: Should I encapsulate those dependant types to their parent types (interface hierarchies) or not or explicitly repeat each type for every single level of my type system or ...?"}
{"_id": "123218", "title": "F# performance vs Erlang performance, is there proof the Erlang's VM is faster?", "text": "I've been putting time into learning functional programming and I've come to the part where I want to start writing a project instead of just dabbling in tutorials/examples. While doing my research, I've found that Erlang seems to be a pretty powerful when it comes to writing concurrent software (which is my goal), but resources and tools for development aren't as mature as Microsoft development products. F# can run on linux (Mono) so that requirement is met, but while looking around on the internet I cannot find any comparisons of F# vs Erlang. Right now, I am leaning towards Erlang just because it seems to have the most press, but I am curious if there is really any performance difference between the two languages. Since I am use to developing in .NET, I can probably get up to speed with F# a lot faster than Erlang, but I cannot find any resource to convince me that F# is just as scalable as Erlang. I am most interested in simulation, which is going to be firing a lot of quickly processed messages to persistant nodes. If I have not done a good job with what I am trying to ask, please ask for more verification."}
{"_id": "233247", "title": "Why did the Sun engineers decided to make Java only call by value?", "text": "Is there any specific reason they decided to go with Call by value? Is it for simplicity?"}
{"_id": "233240", "title": "Server side C# MVC with AngularJS", "text": "I like using .NET MVC and have used it quite a bit in the past. I have also built SPA's using AngularJS with no page loads other than the initial one. I think I want to use a blend of the two in many cases. Set up the application initially using .NET MVC and set up routing server side. Then set up each page as a mini-SPA. These pages can be quite complex with a lot of client side functionality. My confusion comes in how to handle the model-view binding using both .NET MVC and the AngularJS scope. Do I avoid the use of razor Html helpers? The Html helpers create the markup behind the scene so it could get messy trying to add angularjs tags using the helpers. So how to add ng-model for example to @Html.TextBoxFor(x => x.Name). Also ng-repeat wouldn't work because I'm not loading my model into the scope, right? I'd still want to use a c# foreach loop? Where do I draw the lines of separation? Has anyone gotten .NET MVC and AngularJS to play nicely together and what are your architectural suggestions to do so?"}
{"_id": "159668", "title": "Database-stored configuration management", "text": "Developing database-backed software, often one finds it convenient to store stuff in the database which one might traditionally express in code, but which is useful to store in the database (so that it can be changed without requiring a reload of the application). For instance, one might have processes which send automated email using a template; it makes sense to store this template in the database, so that the text can be tweaked by the users without having to change the code/redeploy/etc. However, these templates are \"important\"- they are required for the correct operation of the system, and for instance, if they become malformed or missing, the underlying functionality would probably stop working. As they live now in the database, they don't outside version control- you might add audit tables to have change history about this information, but revisions/etc. are separate and independent from your main code's revisions. How do you handle this kind of stuff? Not putting this kind of stuff in the database and make changes go through development/change control/deployment cycles? Or something else? Cheers, \u00c1lex"}
{"_id": "159637", "title": "What is the Mars Curiosity Rover's software built in?", "text": "The Mars Curiosity rover has landed successfully, and one of the promo videos \"7 minutes of terror\" brags about there being 500,000 lines of code. It's a complicated problem, no doubt. But that is a lot of code, surely there was a pretty big programming effort behind it. Does anyone know anything about this project? I can only imagine it's some kind of embedded C."}
{"_id": "240294", "title": "What language do companies like NASA use to create their applications?", "text": "So obviously NASA need programmers to develop applications for them, be it VOIP applications, applications for control of machines and AI, etc. But in what language do they actually use for this? I'm 15 and plan on studying Software Engineering in University and my dream job is to program for NASA, astronomy is a huge hobby of mine. I have a need to learn things before I am of the \"recommended\" age, for example I have been studying post-grad Astrophysics in my free time. As a result of this I would like to know what programming language NASA use so I can begin to learn the basics and see if it is something I may enjoy. Please do not say `Live you life as a kid` as I have seen people say such things before, this is how I enjoy to live my life and absolutely love programming. I just feel that, like in many things, if I learn it at a younger age I will have greater experience when I am older - yes I have aspirations like you wouldn't believe (Haha). I am thinking of learning how to program an Arduino, or Engduino as we may be witnessing in my Computer Science classes, but is this at all related to the type of programming NASA do. I understand that NASA will be programming MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more advanced programs than I, but to just get the sense of bringing a inanimate object to life would be an achievement to me. So yeah, what programming language do they use, what would you recommend I study in University to follow up such a dream?"}
{"_id": "238299", "title": "Serpent Algorithm thats implement Cipher", "text": "How must i change the Standard Implemplementation of the Serpent Algorithm that i can use it with the javax.crypto.CipherInputStream or javax.crypto.CipherOutputStream? I must implement/extends the Cipher class and when i do it, what must i change? The Original Implementation of the Serpent Algorithm is here http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/serpent.html Exist a Implementation of the Serpent Algorithm that's implement Cipher? I found the Java implementation of the Algorithm on the Page of its Creator. The Problem in this is: i can't use it with javax.crypto.CipherInputStream or javax.crypto.CipherOutputStream. I try to use the ObjectOutputStream to write a Configuration File, but i would like to encrypt it with the Serpent Algorithm. The same is with the reading of this Configuration file. I don't want to use API's like the BouncyCastle and flexiprovider because they create a to heavy boilerplate which i don't need. What is the best practice to use a finished (final and tested) Algorithm that dont extends/implements Cipher and it should be used in javax.crypto.CipherXxxStream?"}
{"_id": "7635", "title": "Are you able to close your eyes and focus/think just on your code?", "text": "I have some colleagues at work, they arrive at the morning, switch off email, phone, close the door, etc. Then they close their eyes and during 30 minutes try to focus on their programming (C++, C, etc) and remember what they did yesterday. Then and somehow the process or imagine the code on they mind, with closed eyes. And some time later they just grab pencil and dump code on a sheet of paper or on their IDE (Kdevelop, Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc). Some of these guys are really effective and develop very complicated code. Me, I can not do this and I wonder if some of you can do something similar, and in case, if you could give some advice on how to be able to focus so deep in a codde or problem. Thanks"}
{"_id": "242632", "title": "What should be used to diagram an application's internal architecture?", "text": "I have an application that has several dependencies, including a Matlab library and a Microsoft Windows Media Player ActiveX control. How would I graphically depict the internal architecture of this application for documentation purposes? Would a UML structure diagram be appropriate? If so, would it be as simple as the following: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/77xN8.png)"}
{"_id": "242637", "title": "Help with MVC design pattern?", "text": "I am trying to build a java program for user login but I am not sure if my MVC design is accurate. I have the following classes:   * LoginControl - servlet   * LoginBean - data holder java class with private variables getters and setters   * LoginDAO - concrete java class where I am running my SQL queries and doing rest of the logical work.   * Connection class - java class just to connect to the database   * view - jsp to display the results   * html - used for form Is this how you design a java program based on MVC design pattern? Please provide some suggestions?"}
{"_id": "226343", "title": "Is masking really necessary when sending from Websocket client", "text": "The current Websocket RFC requires that websocket clients mask all data within frames when sending (but server is not required to). The reason the protocol was designed this way is to prevent frame data from being altered by malicious services between the client and server (proxies, etc). However, the masking key is still known to such services (it is sent on a per frame basis at the beginning of each frame) Am I wrong to assume that such services can still use the key to unmask, alter, and than re-mask the contents before passing the frame to the next point? If I'm not wrong, how does this fix the supposed vulnerability?"}
{"_id": "226341", "title": "Email Content creation | Proper design", "text": "Working on an E commerce application where we need to send so many email to customer like   * Registration email   * Forget Password   * Order placed There are many other emails that can be sent, I already have `emailService` in place which is responsible for sending email and It needs an Email object, Everything is working find, but I am struck at one point and not sure how best this can be done. We need to create content so as it can be passed to `emailService` and not sure how to design this. For example, in Customer registration, I have a `customerFacade` which is working between `Controller` and `ServiceLayer`, I just want to delegate this Email Content creation work away from Facade layer and to make it more flexible. Currently I am creating Registration email content inside `customerFacade` and some how I am not liking this way, since that means for each email, I need to create content in respective Facade. What is best way to go or current approach is fine enough?"}
{"_id": "35582", "title": "Standards for how developers work on their own workstations", "text": "We've just come across one of those situations which occasionally comes up when a developer goes off sick for a few days mid-project. There were a few questions about whether he'd committed the latest version of his code or whether there was something more recent on his local machine we should be looking at, and we had a delivery to a customer pending so we couldn't wait for him to return. One of the other developers logged on as him to see and found a mess of workspaces, many seemingly of the same projects, with timestamps that made it unclear which one was \"current\" (he was prototyping some bits on versions of the project other than his \"core\" one). Obviously this is a pain in the neck, however the alternative (which would seem to be strict standards for how each developer works _on their own machine_ to ensure that any other developer can pick things up with a minimum of effort) is likely to break many developers personal work flows and lead to inefficiency on an individual level. I'm not talking about standards for checked-in code, or even general development standards, I'm talking about how a developer works locally, a domain generally considered (in my experience) to be almost entirely under the developers own control. So how do you handle situations like this? Are the one of those things that just happens and you have to deal with, the price you pay for developers being allowed to work in the way that best suits them? Or do you ask developers to adhere to standards in this area - use of specific directories, naming standards, notes on a wiki or whatever? And if so what do your standards cover, how strict are they, how do you police them and so on? Or is there another solution I'm missing? [Assume for the sake of argument that the developer can not be contacted to talk through what he was doing here - even if he could knowing and describing which workspace is which from memory isn't going to be simple and flawless and sometimes people genuinely can't be contacted and I'd like a solution which covers all eventualities.] **Edit:** I get that going through someone's workstation is bad form (though it's an interesting - _and likely off-topic_ \\- question as to precisely why that is) and I'm certainly not looking at unlimited access. Think more along the lines of a standard where their code directories are set up with a read- only share - nothing can be changed, nothing else can be seen and so on."}
{"_id": "229378", "title": "Do validate non-input data from a client?", "text": "One of our developers has an opinion that all client data should be validated before using it. Even non-input data. Say, our web service has an internal protection against database injections. Examples: machine generated codes, various integers, indexes, calculated values. We use ORM (Django). As I know there is a next approach in Django: validate only values entered as primary strings (usually via web forms). For example: is there any reason to create validation rules to validate numbers if we know that there is 500th error (if the data are wrong) in the beginning of handling request? I think no. But probably I'm wrong. Do my position requires to be changed?"}
{"_id": "245366", "title": "What is the name of this design pattern?", "text": "I have been using this \"design pattern\" (may or may not be an \"official\" design pattern) for a while and I wanted to know if it had a name (so that I could name my classes after it). Example in PHP code (though applies to any language) (the example is stupid please don't mind):               interface Formatter {         public function format($variable);     }          class IntFormatter implements Formatter {         public function format($variable) {             echo (string) $variable;         }     }          class StringFormatter implements Formatter {         public function format($variable) {             echo '\"' . $variable . '\"';         }     }      Now the pattern I want to know if for this class:               class FormatterDispatcher implements Formatter {         private $formatters = [];              public function setFormatter($type, Formatter $formatter) {             $this->formatters[$type] = $formatter;         }              public function format($variable) {             $type = gettype($variable);                  return $this->formatters[$type]->format($variable);         }     }          // Now in the code:     $formatter = new FormatterDispatcher();     $formatter->setFormatter('int', new IntFormatter());     $formatter->setFormatter('string', new StringFormatter());          $formatter->format($variable);      As you can see, it's just a proxy to other implementations of the interface. It will select the implementation to use based on the class of the parameter (here I used primitive types for simplicity's sake). So what is the name of this pattern? PS: in a language that supports Generics, the code would definitely look better, but I guess the spirit would be the same."}
{"_id": "245364", "title": "Laravel 4: Binding/linking two users together", "text": "I'm building a unittest system. At some point I want to bind two users together in order to make an assignment for those two. So when the admin chooses to link two students together the system should figure out how to, maybe using the ID numbers of the both users. I have an idea on how implement this, but not very clear."}
{"_id": "100587", "title": "How do I get a job as a game developer?", "text": "I'm an entry-level programmer just out of college. As I've found out, I don't really enjoy working on \"boring\" applications like networking, firewalls, and such. My dream job would be something like a game developer. What should I be focusing on to move into games development? Are there specific technologies or languages that I should know?"}
{"_id": "245362", "title": "calculate complexity of LinkedHashSet", "text": "I have an `ArrayList<LinkedHashSet<String>> setOfStrings` for example this arraylist internally is composed like:               positionX[hello,car,three,hotel,beach]     positionY[.....]     ...      I want to find car inside this data-structure, so I did it               for (Iterator<LinkedHashSet<String>> iterator = setOfStrings.iterator(); iterator.hasNext();) {          LinkedHashSet<String> subSet = iterator.next();         if (subSet.contains(\"hotel\"))             System.out.println(\"found\");     }      The for iterate over the entire `arrayList` and the complexity in the worst- case is O(n), but I'm confused on the complexity of the method `contains()` of set. In according of `javadocs` this method is executed in **constant time** , but I've heard that in certain cases the complexity might become `O(n)`. Saying that, I'm not sure about the complexity of this snippet algorithm. Can someone provide me an explanation of that?"}
{"_id": "245360", "title": "Rectangle class java.lang.Object", "text": "Can someone please explain to me the difference or benefits rather to using the rectangle class               ex. Rectangle r1 = new Rectangle(x,y,w,h);       versus the graphics class drawRec method?               g.drawRec(x,y,w,h);      I'm thinking that you can create a new object outside of paint() or paintcomponent() which gives creating an object more options and maybe the associated methods is a bonus? I'm just speculating though because the tutorial I was going through switched from using one to the other without explaining why. I believe I understand how to use them just not when it's better to use which. Please try to keep your responses at the beginner level seeing as how I'm just starting out but of course any assistance is GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!! Here is a code segment of what I'm working with:               public void paintComponent(Graphics g){          g.drawImage(yellowBall, xCoor, yCoor, this);         Rectangle r1 = new Rectangle((boardXSize/2), (boardYSize/2),50, 50);         g.setColor(Color.red);         g.fillRect(r1.x, r1.y,r1.width, r1.height);              repaint();          }"}
{"_id": "44866", "title": "finding high end software contracting jobs", "text": "I've been contracting for about 3 years now. I am currently a contractor for a web firm. This is a hourly position. I want to find larger projects. I had read that some people are able to only do one or two jobs a year and be set on that. I want those types of jobs, and I want to hire people to take on these jobs as well, but I have no idea where to start. I highly doubt places like odesk post these types of contracts. Where can I find them? How can I make good money and live comfortably while working for myself?"}
{"_id": "56471", "title": "What would the ultimate developer training class look like?", "text": "I think today's typical/traditional 3-5 days developer training classes aren't so great, as you tend to forget half of it shortly after. It's too much one way communication and not enough interaction. Also brain research has shown that this kind of setup is usually not optimal for efficient learning. For clarification, I am referring to professional, commercial, paid classes. However this could also be applied for any kind of studies. How could the ultimate developer training package be setup to really make sure you learn what you are supposed to learn? Would that be more:   * Multimedia?   * Exercises?   * Homeworks?   * Spread out over time instead of 3-5 compact days?   * Group projects?"}
{"_id": "178899", "title": "Can a Guy with Embedded System Background go into Game Development", "text": "Well, I finished my Masters in Embedded Systems, and I am working in GUI development, and working with graphic tools and images and GUI's keep me glued to my seat more than working on code for MUP/MUC . And I want to give game development a Fair chance, try out developing a game from scratch using basic libraries then tryout the same in a free/open source game engine and there is a good chance I may fall in love with it, but it is poissible for a person with an Electrical and Electronics Bachelors and Embedded Systems Masters ( just a years experience in the field) go into game development and be successful in the profession. And I asked the same question @ stackoverflow.com (wrong place to ask ) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13794822/can-a-guy-with-embedded-system- background-go-into-game-development/13794943#13794943 And I received good but a very generic answer. I would be happy to know the actual pro's and con's of a master's in embedded systems migrating to Game Dev"}
{"_id": "178898", "title": "Difference between Atomic Operation and Thread Safety?", "text": "From the discussion I've seen it seems that _atomic operation_ and _thread safety_ are the same thing, but a lot of people say that they're different. Can anyone tell me the difference if there is one?"}
{"_id": "86142", "title": "What exactly do I need to do if I use a LGPL licenced library?", "text": "I have read this questions and answers, but I still don't understand what exactly do I need to do if I dynamically link with a library that uses a LGLP licence (the SDL library in my case). If I understand LGLP text correctly, I need to somehow provide the source for the library. Is this enough? If not, what else needs to be done?"}
{"_id": "83003", "title": "How do you make a manager understand Agile?", "text": "I have a problem with a senior director who doesn't understand iterative development (much less Agile). He is insistent that our software design specification (SDS) be complete before any line of code is written. Complete, to him, means all functional detail is there. Also, being a former Cobol programmer, he wants to see \"modules\" and flowcharts. This is a Java web app for crying out loud! Anyway, I'm trying to find a simple place to gently point him to show that the SDS need not be 100% complete before we begin coding (nor can it be complete). Any suggestions? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "86145", "title": "Is it acceptable to decompile someone else's code for the purpose of learning what they did, and how they did it?", "text": "I am not talking about stealing code, or reusing someone's for profit. But I am assuming that if a program or plugin is distributed in a format where I can't readily view the source, that is a deliberate action on the part of the programmer. Is it acceptable to look anyway, for the purpose of learning? And if so, are there limitations to that freedom?"}
{"_id": "208697", "title": "What percentage of change is considered artistic license vs. a clone in video game development?", "text": "I'm a \"weekend coder\" developer making mobile apps and games and I've had the desire to make my own version of a game made for the Commodore 64 back in the early 80's by a small publisher e.g. Not EA Games or similar. The game hasn't been ported / released on any platform since. I want to make my version because it was fun to play but I can obviously create much better graphics now (the original had 8 colors at most, and requires a good imagination to transform a character image in the game into something with 4 limbs and a head). Since it will take effort to make from scratch, and the game will be different when done I'd like to charge 99 cents to users... But I have fears of being sued should the original developer pop out of the woodwork from somewhere. Here's a breakdown of original vs. My game intentions. Original game was a 2D side view game (think original Mario bros) with 3 screens that flipped when you crossed the edge. You could collect items, there were AI players that \"chased\" you, ladders, and some ride-able objects... All within a specific theme. My version would also be a 2D sideview, but be a sidescroller with at least 3 but maybe 4 or 5 \"screens\" worth of content. Images would be all original, have a nice 3D look to them, full color, shadows and lighting effects. You would still collect items but they would be all different, and you'd still get chased etc. but I'd try as best as possible to make my game unique... and of course it would have a different name. To a video game enthusiast that played this game in the early 80's they'd be able to proclaim...\"oh man this game reminds me of **___ _**!\" I don't think they would declare it to be a \"ripoff\" or \"just a clone\" though. Are there documented cases where a developer has been sued successfully for copying another game?.. And if so just how close was it? Likewise is there a statute of limitations?... This game is pushing 30 years old... Or is the answer just build it and see?"}
{"_id": "208690", "title": "Queues and threading", "text": "I am developing a new project where I will be constantly checking a webpage for data and adding this data to a queue for processing. This data will then be removed from the queue and added to a list if it hasn't already been added. This list will then be stored in the database. I was wondering about how to use threads as I am relatively new to programming? I think it would be ideal if I had a thread constantly checking the webpage for data, a thread processing the queue and a thread for processing the list. Any suggestions on whether this method is the most effective or not and how to achieve this would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "219576", "title": "Comparing strings against a pool of words", "text": "I am creating an app where the user enters 8 characters. After he enters the string I have to see if it is an eight letter word. If not, check if contains a seven letter word etc. I am checking against a given pool of 150k+ words. I only care about the longest possible match. Is there a better way then this one:   * WordPool.Contains(word.substring(0,8))   * WordPool.Contains(word.substring(0,7)),    WordPool.Contains(word.substirng(1,7))   * WordPool.Contains(word.substring(0,6)),    WordPool.Contains(word.substirng(1,6)),   WordPool.Contains(word.substirng(2,6))   * etc... _Edit_ I forgot to add that I am checking against an english dictionary. So far I am using this:               for(i = 8; i >= 3; i--)       for(j = 0; j <= 8 - i; j++)           if(words.contains(word.substring(j, i))              //do something      **Edit 2** I have been using the approach defined above just with a minor change. I am using a few background agents which all search for a word of a certain length. They all then return a result and I just pick the one which gives the user the highest score."}
{"_id": "115520", "title": "Should I reuse variables?", "text": "Should I reuse variables? I know that many best practice say you should not do it, however later when different developer is debugging the code and have 3 variables that look a like and only difference is that they are created in different places in the code he might be confused. unit-testing is a great example of this. However I do know that best practice are most of the time against it. For example they say not to \"overide\" method parameters. Best practice are even are against nulling the previous variables (in Java there is Sonar that has warning when you assign null to variable that you don't need to do it to call garbage collector since Java6. you cant always control what warnings are turned off, most of the time the default is on)"}
{"_id": "213368", "title": "Is it OK to use same variable to store similar stuff sequentially?", "text": "Say I have a variable name `len` in a function and several strings. Can I use this to store length of those strings one after the other or should I create separate variables? Basically this:               size_t len;     len = string1.size()     ....//some code     len = string2.size()     ...//more code      versus               size_t str1len, str2len;     str1len = string1.size()     ....//some code     str2len = string2.size()     ...//more code      All are local variables within a function BTW."}
{"_id": "131832", "title": "Topics that should  be learned before graduating with a CS Degree", "text": "Feeling slightly underwhelmed with the content in my degree path of Computer Science at my University, I have been attempting to learn on my own. I am looking for direction into topics that will be helpful to know when going into the working world. As a senior I've learned basics of data abstraction, and basics of C++, vb.net, and php."}
{"_id": "206593", "title": "Real world analogy for a clustered index", "text": "A db index is analogous to a table of contents. This helps me understand db index in an easy way. My question is are tehre any real world analogies for a clustered index?"}
{"_id": "206594", "title": "Apache License 2.0 and source code recompile", "text": "I am not a licenses expert so I got confused a bit... The license Apache 2.0; Does it allow to get source codes and modify them for new projects? I mean modify source codes (some its parts) and recompile them?"}
{"_id": "158049", "title": "Is it wrong to push messages from server to client in a client-server application?", "text": "I practically never see any web application where server pushes messages to the client. While pushing messages from server to client is hugely used in multiplayer games, why this model is so underused in web apps? Is it wrong? Does it destroy the client-server model?"}
{"_id": "158044", "title": "Can testers peer review the developers' design and code?", "text": "I am a junior developer for a small business using scrum / agile development. A long-term goal of ours is to be appraised at CMMI lvl 2. We have a team of 3 senior developers who implement user stories and a handful of junior developers for support. We are moving towards a \"three amigos\" methodology, especially in regard to separating the duties of development and testing (the third amigo being the product owner / business stakeholders). This way our senior developers can focus on implementation and our junior developers can focus as impartial testers. We are using peer reviews as a specific practice for verifying work products, such as source code. This paper, http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1208&context=sei, describes on p. 19 that an optimal peer review process for design and code ranges from 50-65% of the time spent designing and coding. **My question is this** : is it appropriate for our testers to peer review the developers' design and code? An advantage would be that the developers can spend more time implementing user stories. A disadvantage would be that the testers may sacrifice their objective/impartial view of the system, since peer reviewing creates a shared ownership of the code."}
{"_id": "206599", "title": "Is it valid to initialize an instance of a class within the same class?", "text": "I was wondering if it's valid to initialize an instance of a class within the same class? For example:               public class Person()     {         string name;        string age;        public Person getPerson()        {             Person p1=new Person();            //some logic here            return p1         }     }      I ended up doing that for a part of my code at work and thus wanted to know if there are any potential problems with doing something like this."}
{"_id": "121403", "title": "When defining Product Backlog items, is it s a bad idea to describe what will be part of the user experience?", "text": "First, I am using the TFS 2010 SCRUM template. I am wondering if this is a bad idea... I started defining a PBI for User Interface Elements. Basically, this will hold all the tasks that developers will be assigned when developing UI elements for a web application. Since this has to do with user interaction and usability I was thinking it may be OK, however my struggle is that it also can be considered functionality and may not fit as a PBI."}
{"_id": "213035", "title": "What is the best way to estimate when using Agile with Scrum? Hours or Story Points?", "text": "I was at a company that switched us over from Hours to Story Points for our estimations. I remember it being difficult to understand it, and we all chaffed against the idea. However, once we figured out how to do it and started doing it, I think our estimations became much more accurate. We were much better able to complete our sprints on time and to better be able to estimate duration of remaining work. Once a couple weeks had passed, we had a good idea of our individual teams\u2019 velocities and could then translate the story points into days and weeks of work. We then used that to know what we could complete within a given time-span. I guess the same could work if estimating in hours, as long as it is understood that each team will have a different number of hours per week in their velocity. One team may do 200 hours, while another may do 150 hours on average. This doesn't mean one team is working any harder than the other, it just means that they estimate hours differently, or that some team members may not have as much time available to work on the project, for instance, they may always be pulled into bug fixes, or help on other projects, which reduces their available time for this project. Anyway, what do you think? And why? Which is best? Hours, or Story Points?"}
{"_id": "158043", "title": "Searching in a repository", "text": "I'm very new to source control management and one thing puzzles me: is it possible to search through the whole repository for a string? For example I'm tracking one file, which has 100 commits and I would like to see all the version of the file which contain \"xyz\" inside. Is this possible? I'm using various GUI clients and non of them has this..? Yes, they can search trough commit messages but I want to find a version even when the commit message does not contain the string. To put it differently, which GUI client has such a feature? I don't care about which SCM it uses - git, hg, bazaar, all are fine."}
{"_id": "238434", "title": "Should I use branches for example uses of a github repo?", "text": "I'm working on a Github repo called Designemplate at https://github.com/benwatkinsart/Designemplate and was thinking of developing some example uses of the CSS file to show how it's used. Should I use a branch called examples and store them there?"}
{"_id": "238430", "title": "Do you have to have boxing of primitives in OO language?", "text": "Is boxing of primitives required in OO languages to keep them consistent with the rest of the object system (generics etc.)? Or is it avoidable - is it possible to avoid any additional performance cost of having both primitives and objects in a language? One solution I can come up on the spot is having references big enough to store values of every possible primitive type. Are there other (better) solutions and are there implemented in popular languages?"}
{"_id": "69858", "title": "Unit testable code: method visibility vs test complexity", "text": "I can't decide how to refactor code right. Let's say I have a complex hypothetical logic piece:               public class ImageService     {          public void UploadImage(VectorData data) {              var image = ConvertVectorDataToImage();              var thumbnail = CreateThumbnail(image);              SaveThumbnail(thumbnail);              SaveImage(image);              SendEmail(image);              ...          }     }      _(If something in example is out of single responsibility, let's pretend, that I could make up a better example)_ If I make UploadImage visible (public), then writing tests become complicated. They tend to be long, hard to read and if you would like to avoid code duplication, then logic in tests appears. If I make all those small pieces visible, the API becomes messy (because in my example, the only interesting thing to everyone is UploadImage method). Even worse, after some time people will tend to use those small methods, because they are public, not because they should be used outside the class. So my question is, how do you balance between visibility and test complexity? Or am I doing something wrong in first place?"}
{"_id": "69856", "title": "Is 'Aurora' a good release paradigm?", "text": "As we all know, there is 'alpha', and 'beta' release status. Mozilla Firefox, however, labels its releases differently: 'nightly', 'aurora', 'beta'. Is this an example to follow? Is aurora the new alpha? Does it create confusion, since it is basically public beta testing with a cool name and cool icon?"}
{"_id": "238439", "title": "The best way to open source my website", "text": "I'm creating a website where trust is a big issue, I want to prove by making it open source I actually do what I claim. Question 1. If I make my source code open, how can I prove the actual website runs on this code? But I also have a dilemma, it is a commercial project and I don't want others to run off with it and claim it theirs. So I think I need a correct license. Question 2. What license is best for me? Currently I'm thinking about GPL v3."}
{"_id": "231577", "title": "Are object oriented programming languages procedural?", "text": "Procedural programming means coding the application is a series of tasks. Do A, then do B, then Do C. And often wrap these tasks in procedures or functions that can be easily called and run several times in the code. Object Oriented Programming is also often done by doing A, then doing B, then doing C. But objects are used (and correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not sure) as sophisticated ways to store, manipulate and hide data. This affects significantly the design of the program. But the overall flow of the application is still do A, then do B, then do C. Do you agree? If so, would you say that OOP is essentially a type of Procedural Programming?"}
{"_id": "160913", "title": "Validating best practices, property vs dto, simple type vs object", "text": "Consider a user profile page. User can add many emails to his/her profile (something like GitHub's profile page). So, theoretically, user hits the plus button, then enters an email address, and clicks the save button. Now we have some dispute in our team over how to validate this email address. Some developers (including me) believe that we should validate this simple string via an extension method:               bool isValid = newEmail.IsEmail();      They argue that any validation mechanism other than a single method call would be overhead, and an anti-pattern (against KISS principal). While others argue that this email should first be added to a new instance of `UserEmail` DTO, then that DTO should be passed to a the relevant validator:               UserEmail userEmail = new UserEmail() { Email = newEmail };     bool isValid = new UserEmailValidator().Validate(userEmail);      The second group argues that validating a single property makes no sense, because a property can't exist on its own. Thus we should always validate an object, not a property (I mean, value type properties, like strings and integers, etc.) I searched but didn't find good resources on the net in favor or against these methods. What disadvantage could each approach have? I would be grateful if somebody point me to the right direction and show us best practices for validation."}
{"_id": "121496", "title": "Discovering elegant ways of coding", "text": "I read this thread on programmers today and thought that looked like a really elegant way of coding. I would like to discover more neat methods of coding. What are the best ways of discovering new elegant ways of coding? (Im already aware of the standard design patterns)"}
{"_id": "170364", "title": "What are programmers made to do in spare time in jobs?", "text": "Well, with no prior job experience I am completely ignorant of how things happen at software companies. I want to know what programmers are made to do when there is nothing to do? Lets consider Facebook or Twitter. Now it is quite improbable that Facebook people have something or other feature in mind to be implemented. So software developers are quite expected to have some time when there is nothing to do. Are they free to do anything in this?"}
{"_id": "234738", "title": "Observer pattern: \"Web of observers\" - Is this ever in use?", "text": "I had an idea (which I'm sure already exists), to create a sort of 'network of observers/subjects'. I would like to describe how it works and than ask several questions about it. Say we have 5 objects: Objects **A** , **B** , **C** , **D** and **E**. Objects **D** and **E** need to observe objects **A** , **B** and **C**. With the regular Observer pattern, both **D** and **E** would register as observers to **A** , **B** and **C**. This means both **D** and **E** would have to register three times as observers, creating **six** observer-subject relationships total. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OR0ii.png) The idea is to add another object in the middle, let's call it Object **O**. It implements both the Observer and Observable interfaces. It registers as an observer to objects **A** , **B** and **C**. Objects **D** and **E** register as observers to object **O**. Whenever objects **A** , **B** and **C** notify object **O** , object **O** notifies it's own observers - **D** and **E**. Thus creating a sort of network. This network has a total of **five** observer-subject relationships. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4LjjX.png) **As I see it, this has two main benefits:**   * **The less important benefit:** This solution allows for less observer-subject relationships, and thus (I think) creates less complexilty in the system. In this simple description the number of relationships only gets reduced by one, but the more observers and subjects there are, the bigger the benefit.   * **The more important benefit:** Please consider an application with two groups of objects, group A and group B. **All objects in group A need to observe all objects in group B.** If we decide to add an object to group B, than using regular Observer we'd have to update a lot of code to register all objects in group A as observers to the new object. With the 'network' solution (which I'm sure has a different name), we only register the 'middle' object (object **O** ) as an observer to the new object in group B, and all objects in group A would be notified when the new object in group B changes state. **My questions:**   1. **Is this solution ever in use in professional projects?** Did you **ever encounter this** in use? Or is it just a cool idea but never used in practice?   2. What would you say are this pattern's disadvantages?   3. Does it have more advantages that I'm not aware of?   4. Does this have a name?"}
{"_id": "38318", "title": "Where do I start to learn systems analysis?", "text": "Though I learned Systems Analysis in college, I feel like I am out of date. All I really remember is certain aspects of the SDLC which I realize is a little pass\u00e9. I've been on the implementation end of the development process for the past five years, and I am wanting to explore design and perhaps do a few projects of my own. So I have two questions. What is the most popular design methodology? And what book would be a good place to start for someone who wants to learn that methodology. I know quite a lot of methodologies and patterns (PRISM, MVVM, UML, etc..), but I am having a very hard time picturing the overall process of design. Also, is there a website that offers sample requirements documents? That's the hardest part of starting your own projects is finding something to do."}
{"_id": "165861", "title": "Unit testing and Test Driven Development questions", "text": "I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC website which performs relatively complex calculations as one of its functions. This functionality was developed some time ago (before I started working on the website) and defects have occurred whereby the calculations are not being calculated properly (basically these calculations are applied to each user which has certain flags on their record etc). Note; these defects have only been observed by users thus far, and not yet investigated in code while debugging. **My questions are:**   * Because the existing unit tests all pass and therefore do not indicate that the defects that have been reported exist; does this suggest the original code that was implemented is incorrect? i.e either the requirements were incorrect and were coded accordingly or just not coded as they were supposed to be coded?   * If I use the TDD approach, would I disgregard the existing unit tests as they don't show there are any problems with the calculations functionality - and I start by making some failing unit tests which test/prove there are these problems occuring, and then add code to make them pass? Note; if it's simply a bug that is occurring that can be found while debugging the code, do the unit tests need to be updated since they are already passing?"}
{"_id": "116519", "title": "The need for Explicit Type Conversion in C#", "text": "Consider the following code:               DerivedClass drbObj = (DerivedClass)obj;      Here `obj` is of type `Object` and this is reasonable since Object is the base type of every Class in C#. Here, since the type of `derObj` is defined at compile time, what is the need to explicitly use type conversion here. Can't the compiler predict on it's own that it will be of `DerivedClass`. I understand that, the Conversion type doesn't have to match the `Derived` type, but for practical purpose, it will only be as useful as the `Derived` type. Could someone explain with a small, hypothetical example, as to why the Explicit Type Conversion is necessary when a reference of type Object is being assigned to a derived class. From what I know, in C, there is no need to do perform Explicit type conversion from `void*` to any pointer and the compiler can handle it, based on the type of the pointer to which the converted value is being assigned."}
{"_id": "116510", "title": "How can I overcome the communication problem(oral language)", "text": "I am a junior developer who living in Korea. I think I am quite passionate and active. and I want to be one of famous developer all over the world. For spreading my area, I try to join Open Source Projects. But the problem is always _English_. I often can't understand what the member are speaking at the IRC channel. As all you know, for resolving an issue We have to discuss in detail. So English is a big problem for me. And there's no oriental among my Opensource members. How can I solve this communication problem? if you know someone who can overcome this problem, please give me your opinions. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "192038", "title": "How do I share different files in a git repo with different people?", "text": "In a single directory with a Git root folder, I have a bunch of files. I am working on one of those files, X.py, with my friend Alice. The other files I am working on with other people. I want Alice (and everyone else) to have access to X.py. I want Alice to only have access to X.py though. How can I achieve this with Git? Is there a way I can split a directory into two repos? That sounds rather cumbersome. Maybe I could add a remote repo that Alice can access containing X.py?"}
{"_id": "114782", "title": "Is it necessary to understand what's happening at the hardware level to be a good programmer?", "text": "I'm a self-taught programmer, just in case this question is answered in CS 101. I've learned and used lots of languages, mostly for my own personal use, but occasionally for professional stuff. It seems that I'm always running into the same wall when I run into trouble programming. For example, I just asked a question on another forum about how to handle a pointer-to-array that was returned by a function. Initially I'm thinking that I simply don't know the proper technique that the designers of C++ set up to handle the situation. But from the answers and discussions that follow I see that I don't really get what happens when something is 'returned'. How deep a level of understanding of the programming process must a good programmer achieve?"}
{"_id": "192035", "title": "method to allow me ability to freely modify my classes, but make them immutable to others?", "text": "I am creating the model part of an MVC architecture. My one class will provide all the accesses to allow one to fetch system state. I want most of this state to be immutable as it shouldn't be changed and I don't want anyone accessing my model to be able to break the state by making a foolish change. However, The objects representing the state have a bit of a tree structure. object A contains a set of B which contains a set of objects C which contain a set of Object D etc etc. Due to the nature of how I have to fetch the data I can't build the structure from the bottom up; the bottom most 'chid object' will be generated after all the others are completed. This is making it rather inconvenient to build the immutable objects in an intuitive manner, I want to add a set as my last phase of building but I can't if I already built immutable objects. I know of three approaches, but not sure I like any. One is a builder patern, but keeping track of all the builders for a complicated structure until I'm done seems like it could be very ugly. Second is to have a sort of 'clone' method that builds a new immutable object by cloning the old but adding a newly provided set to it (what is this pattern called again?). This gets ugly when I try adding the child most element to the set since I need to pretty much rebuild the entire tree with 'new' immutable objects to add one value. The third, and so far easiest, solution is to just get rid of the tree structure and make them make a call to my model to get the data they want. so instead of calling myObject.getChildren they call Model.getObjectChildren (myObject). This one will work, but darn it I wanted the pretty tree structure for my immutable state. Is there some other way to conveniently build up my state in a manner where my Model can freely modify the state while being built; but still have in immutable when it's finally published to the Controller? ps. I'm running in java if that matters."}
{"_id": "5951", "title": "How do you efficiently keep your tests working as you redesign?", "text": "A well-tested codebase has a number of examples, but testing certain aspects of the system results in a codebase that is resistant to some types of change. An example is testing for specific output--e.g., text or HTML. Tests are often (naively?) written to expect a particular block of text as output for some input parameters, or to search for specific sections in a block. Changing the behavior of the code, to meet new requirements or because usability testing has resulted in change to the interface, requires changing the tests as well--perhaps even tests that are not specifically unit tests for the code being changed.   * How do you manage the work of finding and rewriting these tests? What if you can't just \"run 'em all and let the framework sort them out\"?   * What other sorts of code-under-test result in habitually fragile tests?"}
{"_id": "219220", "title": "Testing for equivalence of two programs in different architectures (Sequential, Multi Processor, Multi Core)", "text": "I've found a question that I'm having trouble to realize. It's as follows: Consider the program               P ::           x := 1;           y := 1;           z := 1;           u := 0;          and the program          Q ::           x,y,z,u := 1,1,1,1;           u := 0;      Which of the following is true? (only 1 option is correct)                1. P and Q are equivalent for sequential processors.      2. P and Q are equivalent for all multi processor models.      3. P and Q are equivalent for all multi core machines.      4. P and Q are equivalent for all networks of computers.      5. None of the above.      At a first glance it appears that option (1) is true. But in order for P & Q to be equivalent, their respective instructions are to be executed sequentially, they themselves can be executed in any order (even parallelly). Which holds true for options (1) & (2) [or even with option (3)]. > E.g: P is being executed on processor-1 & Q is being executed on processor-2 > (parallelly), but their individual instructions are being executed > sequentially on their respective processors. In such a case both of them are > equivalent, which makes option (2) true. Here is where ambiguity comes in. Can anybody help me ?"}
{"_id": "96589", "title": "Ruby on Rails: Converting a Rails 3 app to Rails 2?", "text": "I just recently learnt ruby on rails using ruby 1.9.2 and rails 3 using Michael Hartl's tutorial. I'm making an application which I wanted to host on my preexisting server. However, I found that they still do not support rails 3 as it breaks compatibility with mongrel. My question is: How difficult will it be to port my whole Rails 3 app onto Rails 2 if need be? Keep in mind that although I understand rails 3 quite well by now, I have never used rails 2 and do not have any idea of the differences between them."}
{"_id": "96585", "title": "Good coding problem for teaching and practicing how to write good unit tests?", "text": "Every once and a while I find myself teaching others some techniques useful for writing effective unit tests (usually in Java where many people find writing tests challenging). However, I have yet to find a small-but-not-too- small problem to use to demonstrate the techniques. Likewise, I have not yet found a great problem we can use to practice writing tests. Some problems I have tried have felt completely unrealistic or irrelevant to real life. Does anyone know of a great problem I can use which is small but complex enough and realistic enough to use to teach and practice with? In this case _small_ = _low enough complexity to be a approachable for most developers_ , not necessarily _easy to finish in a short amount of time._ It is okay if we don't finish implementing a solution during the workshop."}
{"_id": "96580", "title": "Is experience in business analysis useful when moving into a programming career?", "text": "_**Note: If you want the gist of this post, skip to the last two paragraphs._** Before expanding on the question, just a short preamble:   * I figured that the Programmers Q&A network was a better place to ask this question than StackOverflow. **I might be wrong**.   * This is cross-post of a question I asked on Quora some time ago. The general gist of the answers was that, **even though it might not necessarily help you to actually land a job in programming, experience in business analysis will most likely benefit a programmer**. Main reasons for this included:     * the \"ability to understand and empathise with the business side of [a] company's operations\";     * the idea that the business analysis skill and mindset \"might map pretty well to [programming] and help you pick up skills more quickly\"; and     * that \"analytical skills are critical to being a good programmer\".   * Someone elsewhere on this network asked whether \"[i]s it more important to focus on a business domain or programming stack/technology\". This question resonates with one element of my question, as it asks about whether to focus on specific domain knowledge (e.g. beer brewing) versus specific technology stacks (e.g. barrel ageing, double dropping, etc.). The other element contained in my question (additional to the value of specific domain knowledge) is the value of **general analytical thinking (that can be applied to any business domain) for a programmer**.   * Another guy on this network (sorry, can't paste the hyper-link as I'm already capped at 2 per post at my current reputation level) asked \"[h]ow much system and business analysis should a programmer be reasonably expected to do?\". He states that in most jobs he held there were no formal business or systems analysis roles. The programmers were expected to play those roles. Consequently, he would often **\"lose out to guys who may be average programmers but have a much better understanding of the business processes\"**. I guess that, by merit of asking the question, the asker already contributed toward answering mine - business analysis knowledge (i.e. both general analytical thinking skills as well as specific business domain knowledge) and experience (\"embracing and internalising a customer-oriented approach\" as stated in one answer) is useful to a programmer. So here's **my question in a bit more detail** : I currently work as a consultant for a consulting house. I primarily do business analysis work in the financial industry (to get a good idea about what it is I actually do, consider looking at what the International Institute of Business Analysis has to say). I have been at it now for one and a half years, straight out of university, where I obtained a degree in informatics (which is a fancy word for business analysis). **I am considering a career move into programming**. The question: will my qualification in business analysis, and one and a half years of experience working as a business analyst, add any value to a prospective career in software development. **Another question that naturally follows** : I do realise that, as pointed out by the answers on Quora, that it might not actually help me to _land_ a job in programming. So what _would_? (Obviously I do have a plan, but I'm keen to hear what the community has to say.) Feel free to ask questions or recommend edits to the question, and thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "88694", "title": "Is there an Editor that I can run code using SSH", "text": "I need an editor where I can edit my code client side, then highlight part of it and run the highlighted code on the connected server. An Example of this would be SQL management studio, but I need it for shell scripts and other languages. UltraEdit does something close with a copy-paste mechanic, are there any others?"}
{"_id": "65110", "title": "Facebook contest and vote(like) exchange", "text": "**UPDATED** we are running a contest using a facebook application to connect with facebook and identify users. a user follows through the standard facebook procedure to allow the application and login. the user then can vote for any entry only once. the vote is saved to avoid the same user voting twice. since the contest has a cash prize we face the problem of vote exchange. vote- exchange is the process where one individual goes to a group-page-forum-etc and trades his voting to another contest, for people voting for his entry in our contest. in essence \"buying\" votes. they achieve higher number through fake profiles (another problem) so we are faced with:   1. how to detect this vote exchanging    2. how to detect fake facebook profiles   3. in general how to safeguard such a procedure (with or without facebook) right now we are looking for the blindingly obvious violations   1. Very similar emails(john1@ , john2@)   2. Sudden spike in votes (in terms of timing and vote count)"}
{"_id": "82493", "title": "Community blog sites", "text": "I'm considering writing a blog about my experiences while programming. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll be able to post regularly. What I'm wondering is if there are any good software development blogging sites that incorporate posts from multiple people, allowing each one to post at their own rate and, because there's a number of them, wind up with enough content that it's worth visiting them? Context: There are three types of posts that I'd likely create:   * Personal thoughts on various topics (I think language feature X is important because..., etc)   * Personal experience with a given language/framework/etc (I had problems with framework X because...)   * Personal experience trying to solve a specific problem (Here's what I needed, here's the problems I ran into, and here's how I solved it) Edit: Of course, I mistyped the title as \"community glob sites\" at first. That doesn't bode well for my blogging performance ;)"}
{"_id": "127446", "title": "version control workflow for environment with shared code", "text": "I work at a company that is looking into \"upgrading\" our version control system. We have about 200 websites that operate in their own directories. However, all of these websites use the same shared code. We basically use the 200 directories for the display code (html/css) and then the shared code for the processing and database queries. Its a little more detailed but I'll leave it at that for now. We also have a backend system that primarily uses shared code only. We currently have multiple programmers and multiple coders/designers that all need access to the code on a regular basis. Unfortunately our shared code isn't exactly modular, so it is hard to split something off into a \"project\" when something needs done since so many files are hit. I am basically looking for suggestions on the best workflow available for a version control system. As far as we can tell from research, git seems to be the way to go. But being the version control newbies that we are, we still have concerns on general workflow. Can anyone give me any advice on this topic? **Edit:** I'm trying to be a little more detailed, hopefully I answer some questions from the comments. Pretty much anyone is allowed to change any code at any time. If a change is made to shared code then it is immediately applied to the central code base. We don't really have a versioning scheme. We used to in the past but it was never enforced when new developers were brought on board. The shared code is clearly separated from the rest of the code. There are a few files in our system that get edited a lot. We are constantly \"stepping on each other's toes\" with these files. These files are very important to our system. I'll be the first one to say this is not an ideal work situation. We are well aware these files need to go. We are in the planning process of modularizing them but we would still need to consider them when choosing a versioning system. I guess another good thing to mention is the fact that we have a large number of files. This isn't ideal either but its happened primarily from not having a sound version control system put in place. Many developers over the years would just save a back up of a file if making a significant change. This is another reason we want to move away from the current scheme. Thanks for your responses already."}
{"_id": "127447", "title": "Recommendations for implicit versus explicit line joining", "text": "I would like to know recommendations about Implicit Line Joining versus Explicit Line Joining in Python. In particular, do you favor one form over the other? What do you recommend as the general default? What criteria do you have for choosing one over the other, and if you do have a preference of one, when do you make exceptions for the other? I have an answer in mind for this question that reflects my own biases, but before I post my own answer I would like to know what others think... and if you can have a better set of criteria than what I have in mind, then I'll certainly accept your answer over my own. Some of the recommendations may be generalized to this choice in other programming languages, but my own bias is somewhat stronger in Python due to some language-specific features, so I'd like to know both the general and the Python-centric reasoning you may have on this topic. For some background, the discussion happened around a particular question on stackoverflow, but I thought it was more appropriate to move the discussion over to here as a question to avoid cluttering up the answer on SO with this tangent since it has veered off-topic from the original question. You can look at that question and its answers for the example code snippets that got the discussion going. Here is a simplified example:               join_type = \"explicit\"     a = \"%s line joining\" \\         % (join_type)     # versus     join_type = \"implicit\"     b = (\"%s line joining\"          % (join_type))"}
{"_id": "82496", "title": "Is defining every method/state per object in a series of UML diagrams representative of MDA in general?", "text": "I am currently working on a project where we use a framework that combines code generation and ORM together with UML to develop software. Methods are added to UML classes and are generated into partial classes where \"stuff happens\". For example, an UML class \"Content\" could have the method DeleteFromFileSystem(void). Which could be implemented like this:               public partial class Content     {         public void DeleteFromFileSystem()         {             File.Delete(...);         }     }      All methods are designed like this. Everything happens in these gargantuan logic-bomb domain classes. Is this how MDA or DDD or similar usually is done? For now my impression of MDA/DDD (which this has been called by higherups) is that it severely stunts my productivity (everything must be done The Way) and that it hinders maintenance work since all logic are roped, entrenched, interspersed into the mentioned gargantuan bombs. _Please refrain from interpreting this as a rant - I am merely curious if this is typical MDA or some sort of extreme MDA_ **UPDATE** Concerning the example above, in my opinion Content shouldn't handle deleting itself as such. What if we change from local storage to Amazon S3, in that case we would have to reimplement this functionality scattered over multiple places instead of one single interface which we can provide a second implementation for."}
{"_id": "150216", "title": "Software design approach for large relational database", "text": "I am working on a personal side project that will utilize a complex and large relational database. During the design of the database I had some co-workers give advice to how I should approach my application; they advised to use the entity framework. From what I've read and what I am watching it sounds like the entity framework is the right tool for the job. However what I have come to programmer.stackexchange for is to ask whether or not somebody who has just going going in their career should do. Let me rephrase; I have 3 years web design / development experience (html/css/js/php/mysql) and now about 1 year experience with actual software engineering C#/VB. So the question is should I utilize the entity framework or should I build this rather complex and ambitious project without the entity framework; ergo building all the SQL that will handle massive amounts of relational data? The reason why I ask is because I want to get the most ROI (knowledge and experience) from the project. Once again... thanks!"}
{"_id": "82499", "title": "From a design perspective, what are the best practices for logging?", "text": "I want to add logging to an application I'm currently working on. I've added logging before, that's not an issue here. But from a design perspective in an object-oriented language, what are the best practices for logging that follow OOP and patterns? _**Note:_** I'm currently doing this in C#, so examples in C# are obviously welcome. I would also like to see examples in Java and Ruby. * * * **Edit:** I'm using log4net. I just don't know what's the best way to plug it in."}
{"_id": "233265", "title": "How to use the Decorator pattern to add little functionality to big objects?", "text": "This question regards the usage of the Decorator pattern to add little functionality to objects of large classes. Following the classic Decorator pattern, please consider the following class structure: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FCyEd.png) For example, imagine this happens inside a game. Instances of `ConcreteCharacterDecorator` are meant to add little functionality to the `ConcreteCharacter` they are 'wrapping'. For instance, `methodA()` returns an `int` value representing the damage the character inflicts on enemies. The `ConcreteCharacterDecorator` simply adds to this value. Thus, it only needs to add code to `methodA()`. The functionality of `methodB()` stays the same. `ConcreteCharacterDecorator` will look like this:               class ConcreteCharacterDecorator extends AbstractCharacterDecorator{              ConcreteCharacter character;              public ConcreteCharacterDecorator(ConcreteCharacter character){             this.character = character;         }              public int methodA(){             return 10 + character.methodA();         }              public int methodB(){             character.methodB(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }          }      This is no problem with small classes containing two methods. **But what if`AbstractCharacter` defined 15 methods?** `ConcreteCharacterDecorator` would have to implement all of them, even though it's only meant to add little functionality. I will end up with a class containing one method that adds a little functionality, and another 14 methods that simply delegate to the inner object. It would look like so:               class ConcreteCharacterDecorator extends AbstractCharacterDecorator{              ConcreteCharacter character;              public ConcreteCharacterDecorator(ConcreteCharacter character){             this.character = character;         }              public int methodA(){             return 10 + character.methodA();         }              public int methodB(){             character.methodB(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodC(){             character.methodC(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodD(){             character.methodD(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodE(){             character.methodE(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodF(){             character.methodF(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodG(){             character.methodG(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodH(){             character.methodH(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodI(){             character.methodI(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodJ(){             character.methodJ(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodK(){             character.methodK(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodL(){             character.methodL(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodM(){             character.methodM(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodN(){             character.methodN(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }         public int methodO(){             character.methodO(); // simply delegate to the wrapped object.         }          }      Obviously, very ugly. I'm probably not the first to encounter this problem with the Decorator. How can I avoid this?"}
{"_id": "60544", "title": "Why do game developers prefer Windows?", "text": "Is it that DirectX is easier or better than OpenGL, even if OpenGL is cross- platform? Why do we not see real powerful games for Linux like there are for Windows?"}
{"_id": "60545", "title": "How to tell client I no longer want to work on his project", "text": "This is probably going to sound messed up, but here it goes. I've been working on a project for a client for a while now. I wasn't given any details except for \"It has to be an XYZ plugin and interface with ABC product\". Which was fine, but now we're towards the end (I think) and it's just dragging out. I don't have any time to spend on it and I'm already over schedule by 3 months. Trying to get the client to describe to me how he would like to be able to navigate the data (a UI issue) is just difficult. I've submitted mock ups on what I think he wants but his latest response is \"you should look at XXX product\", it has similar functionality. Of course, I looked at it and it looks similar to what I submitted, but I don't think that the way I've built the framework is going to support what he is now describing to me. We've had good communication throguh out the process but he doesn't know what he wants. I explained how I was going to build the framework and he agreed, so it isn't a bad choice on my part about design. When I go over what I think are finalized modules, he says, \"You should have done it this way\" which requires me to go back and rework code and UI. Some smaller items could have been better thought out by me, but the big things are how I interpreted his requirements and I've gone over this module several times during development. I've already received final funds last month so i'm working for free at this point. I no longer want to deal with this project. I've already received payment. I've done other successful projects with this client before and he has a lot of other projects he wants to do. What the heck should I do? I don't want to work on this project anymore. I don't want to ask for any more money (money isn't really the issue). I don't want to make him mad either. I know it looks like I want to have my cake and eat it too. If you think I should call it quits, how should I do it given the circumstances?"}
{"_id": "64644", "title": "Is the rule of 10% code is comments still valid?", "text": "I've used some older languages before C# and I always felt the need to comment what I was doing so it is clear for anyone who reads the code. But now that I use C# decently, I often feel that it's a pain to write most of the comments because I feel like I state the obvious. So unless I do complicated formulas or algorithms, I'm not sure how I should comment. Microsoft has reached such a readability in C#, I'm mesmerized. Do you have the same feeling? How do you write your comments so they are not pure redonduncy? Have you changed your commenting habbits / best practice?"}
{"_id": "153744", "title": "Books or help on OO Analysis", "text": "I have this course where we learn about the domain model, use cases, contracts and eventually leap into class diagrams and sequence diagrams to define good software classes. I just had an exam and I got trashed, but part of the reason is we barely have any practical material, I spent at least two good months without drawing a single class diagram by myself from a case study. During the exam the teacher gave us the domain model, two or three use cases on some vital system operations and a glossary. We had to model up a class diagram and some sequence diagrams for these. The thing is, the jump from real-life modeling to OO classes didn't seem clear to me.      I handle the GRASP principles pretty well, but I lack practice. I could use something that gives a pre-made analysis and asks you to draw the OO design in form of class diagrams or something. I know it varies from one person to another, but some concepts should always make sense. I'm not here to blame the system or the class I'm in, I'm just wondering if people have some exercise-style books that either provide domain models with glossaries, system sequence diagrams and ask you to use GRASP to make software classes? I could really use some alone-time practicing going from analysis to conception of software entities. I'm almost done with Larman's book called \"Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, Third Edition\". It's a good book, but I'm not doing anything by myself since it doesn't come with exercises. I've been programming in OO for four years now in Java and C++. It was oriented on business applications. I've also spent 6 months on UML syntax in a crash course in college. It's just that I don't understand how they can expect me to define software entities from use cases into class diagrams if I've done like one or two in my life."}
{"_id": "60549", "title": "How strictly do you follow the \"No Dependency Cycle\" rule (NDepend)", "text": "A bit of background: As a team lead I use NDepend about once a week to check for the quality of our code. Especially the test-coverage, lines of code and cyclomatic complexity metrics are invaluable for me. But when it comes down to levelization and dependency cycles I am a bit ... well concerned. Patrick Smacchia has a nice blog post which describes the goal of levelization. To be clear: Under \"dependency cycle\" I understand a circular references between two namespaces. Currently I am working on a Windows CE based GUI framework for embedded instruments - just think of the Android graphics platform but for very low end instruments. The framework is a single assembly with about 50.000 lines of code (tests excluded). The framework is split into the following namespaces:   * Core Navigation & Menu Subsystem   * Screen Subsystem (Presenters / Views / ...)    * Controls / Widget Layer Today I spent the half day on trying to bringe the code to proper levels [thanks to Resharper no problem in general] but in all the cases some dependency cycles exist. So my question: How strictly do you follow the \"No Dependency Cycle\" rule? Is levelization really that important?"}
{"_id": "153742", "title": "Using XSLT for messaging instead of marshalling/unmarshalling Java message objects", "text": "So far I have been using either handmade or generated (e.g. JAXB) Java objects as 'carriers' for messages in message processing software such as protocol converters. This often leads to tedious programming, such as copying/converting data from one system's message object to an instance of another's system message object. And it sure brings in lots of Java code with getters and setters for each message attribute, validation code, etc. I was wondering whether it would be a good idea to convert one system's XML message into another system's format - or even convert requests into responses from the same system - using XSLT. This would mean I would no longer have to unmarshall XML streams to Java objects, copy/convert data using Java and marshall the resulting message object to another XML stream. Since each message may actually have a purpose I would 'link' the message (and the payload it contains in its properties or XML elements/attributes) to EXSLT functions. This would change my design approach from an imperative to a declarative style. Has anyone done this before and, if so, what are your experiences? Does the reduced amount of Java 'boiler plate' code weigh up to the increased complexity of (E)XSLT?"}
{"_id": "245383", "title": "How to comment the file system?", "text": "When certain parts of code are unusual or unclear, common practice is to leave a comment explaining why it is so. However, sometimes a filesystem may have unusual configuration, such as a directory with 0477 privileges. **Is there any convention for leaving comments about this?** I am writing a 'Developers Wiki' for the company as that would be the place for such things. However I would prefer something **more standard if it exists** and more accessible when, for instance, the next guys has to SSH in from home in the middle of the night and he might not think to check the wiki (or even have access to it)."}
{"_id": "97181", "title": "Is it true that \"Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.\"?", "text": "> Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.   >  (Larry Wall). As far as I can make out, Mr. Larry Wall is trying to say that to a real programmer any language can have the same functionality as ASM. But I seriously do not understand. How can you write assembly code in high level languages like Perl, Python, Java and C#? Languages like Perl and Python don't even have pointers. Or Does he mean something else? What is Mr. Wall actually trying to say?"}
{"_id": "200998", "title": "How would I make a compiler in C++?", "text": "This probably been asked for but I can't google \"How to make a compiler in C++\" because I will just get \"How to compile C++\" as the results. Anyway, for my question, I'd like to make a simple programming language in C++. Now I understand basic file IO stuff but what I don't get is how to build a EXE. The problem here is I don't know how EXEs exactly are \"planned out\", granted that most people don't. I was going to simply parse the language into assembly and assemble it using an assembler. But I don't want to do that, I want to actually compile it directly into a EXE. Does anyone know how this would be done? PS: To all you people who say making a compiler is virtually impossible, it's a fairly fast process, it's just implementing OOP features that's hard"}
{"_id": "97187", "title": "Can you actually produce high quality code if you are sleep deprived?", "text": "I have heard about programmers coding for two days without sleep and drinking coffee and Red Bull. Also in movies like The Social Network, in a scene they show that Mark Zuckerberg has been programming for 36 hours. Also it's said that in companies like Facebook, Google, foursquare, etc. they can code for more than 24 hours without sleep. Is this really true? Can you actually produce high-quality code if you are sleep deprived? _Can things like Red Bull make up for sleep?_"}
{"_id": "155594", "title": "What are the best practices to use NHiberante sessions in asp.net (mvc/web api) ?", "text": "I have the following setup in my project:               public class WebApiApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication     {         public static ISessionFactory SessionFactory { get; private set; }              public WebApiApplication()         {             this.BeginRequest += delegate             {                 var session = SessionFactory.OpenSession();                 CurrentSessionContext.Bind(session);             };                       this.EndRequest += delegate             {                 var session = SessionFactory.GetCurrentSession();                      if (session == null)                 {                     return;                 }                      session = CurrentSessionContext.Unbind(SessionFactory);                 session.Dispose();             };         }              protected void Application_Start()         {             AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();                  FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);             RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);             BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);             var assembly = Assembly.GetCallingAssembly();             SessionFactory = new NHibernateHelper(assembly, Server.MapPath(\"/\")).SessionFactory;         }     }          public class PositionsController : ApiController     {         private readonly ISession session;              public PositionsController()         {             this.session = WebApiApplication.SessionFactory.GetCurrentSession();         }              public IEnumerable<Position> Get()         {             var result = this.session.Query<Position>().Cacheable().ToList();                  if (!result.Any())             {                 throw new HttpResponseException(new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NotFound));             }                  return result;         }              public HttpResponseMessage Post(PositionDataTransfer dto)         {             //TODO: Map dto to model             IEnumerable<Position> positions = null;             using (var transaction = this.session.BeginTransaction())             {                 this.session.SaveOrUpdate(positions);                      try                 {                     transaction.Commit();                 }                 catch (StaleObjectStateException)                 {                     if (transaction != null && transaction.IsActive)                     {                         transaction.Rollback();                     }                 }             }                  var response = this.Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.Created, dto);             response.Headers.Location = new Uri(this.Request.RequestUri.AbsoluteUri + \"/\" + dto.Name);             return response;         }              public void Put(int id, string value)         {             //TODO: Implement PUT             throw new NotImplementedException();         }              public void Delete(int id)         {             //TODO: Implement DELETE             throw new NotImplementedException();         }     }      I am not sure if this is the recommended way to insert the session into the controller. I was thinking about using DI but i am not sure how to inject the session that is opened and binded in the BeginRequest delegate into the Controllers constructor to get this                   public PositionsController(ISession session)         {             this.session = session;         }      **Question:** What is the recommended way to use NHiberante sessions in asp.net mvc/web api ?"}
{"_id": "200990", "title": "Are you allowed to \"copy\" the GUI/Features of another application", "text": "I'm making a app which is based heavily on another application that serves a similar purpose. I'm not actually planning on selling it, but I'm wondering whether it would even be legal for me to sell it. I don't borrow graphics from the other application, but I have a very similar color scheme, virtually the same features (I added a few, but not really significant), and a very similar interface layout. Obviously, I'm not borrowing any code (It's written in Objective-C and mines written in Java). Again, I'm not actually planning on selling it, I was just wondering in the hypothetical. I'm not sure whether it's just the code that's copyrighted or the actually design itself."}
{"_id": "153298", "title": "Should I swap from WCF to NserviceBus", "text": "We have a central server that sends and recieves messages from a number of PCs that are located on client networks in various locations. To facilitate this, currently I'm using WCF with TCPNetBindings, using duplex communication secured with certificates. Now, we have a number of issues with this - mainly that we are being asked to support \"disconnected mode\" (we need to be fault tolerant). From what I know, there is no simple way to do this using the WCF stack - we'd need to implement something and perhaps use msmq. I've been looking at NServiceBus lately, and from I can see it seems to fit the bill well - fault tolerance, messages can be sent over the internet via a simple http gateway, etc. I know it's well respected in the community, and I can see why from looking into it. So, my question is...Does employing NServiceBus sound like a sensible idea, or does anyone have any other suggestions / real world experience that relate to this? I guess I'm worried of introducing a new tech that I know relatively little about, and facing problems with things like securing it, setting everything up in a reliable way, gotchas along the way.. I'm also wary of \"gold-plating\" the architecture, and choosing something shiny that will end up bogging me down in implementation versus sticking with WCF and just making it work for me.. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "215088", "title": "Effective and simple matching for 2 unequal small-scale point sets", "text": "I need to match two sets of 3D points, however the number of points in each set can be different. It seems that most algorithms are designed to align images and trimmed to work with hundreds of thousands of points. My case are 50 to 150 points in each of the two sets. So far I have acquainted myself with `Iterative Closest Point` and `Procrustes Matching` algorithms. Implementing `Procrustes algorithms` seems like a total overkill for this small quantity. `ICP` has many implementations, but I haven't found any readily implemented version accounting for the so-called \"outliers\" - points without a matching pair. Besides the implementation expense, algorithms like `Fractional` and `Sparse ICP` use some statistics information to cancel points that are considered outliers. For series with 50 to 150 points statistic measures are often biased or statistic significance criteria are not met. I know of `Assignment Problem` in linear optimization, but it is not suitable for cases with unequal sets of points. Are there other, small-scale algorithms that solve the problem of matching 2 point sets? I am looking for algorithm names, scientific papers or C++ implementations. I need some hints to know where to start my search."}
{"_id": "64396", "title": "Watson Encoding Information", "text": "IBM's Watson has alot of book information encoded into a 'database' that Watson searches in real time. Does anyone know how that information is coded? I mean no one could type in all of those rules."}
{"_id": "124364", "title": "Implicitly or explicitly sorted elements?", "text": "So, I've got the following problem: I have a number of ordered elements, ordered in the following way:   * Type 1: Must be the first element. (only one possible, always present)   * Type 2: Must be the second and following elements, if present.   * Type 3: Must be the ordered last. Stated a bit more succintly / pseudoregex: `12*3+` Now, when constructing these elements, I do so in a method, where it is easy to do something like:               public List<IElement> CreateElements(...)     {         var list = ...;         list.Add(new Type1());         list.AddRange(GetType2Elements());         list.AddRange(GetType3Elements());     }      However, there is no explicit semantic ordering - it's just a list, that I happen to construct in a certain way. A more explicit way is to have IElement implement IComparable, and then use an explicitly sorted list and returning that instead. That would carry the \"sortedness\" out of my construction method, and sort the entities irregardless how they are created. However, it is suddenly a bit less trivial, since atleast 3 different Compare methods must be implemented. What would you choose?"}
{"_id": "64394", "title": "Too many seniors in one team?", "text": "Can having too many senior programmers in one team turn out to be a bad thing? Having like say, 4-5 senior programmers in a team of 6-7 people. What is the optimal number/ratio in these kind of situations? Can this lead to too much philosophy and arguments about ideas? Has anyone had such an experience, that can share it with me?"}
{"_id": "191419", "title": "Configuration file that can be modified by user in C#", "text": "I want to create a configuration file (text file preferred) that can be modified by user. A windows service will read from that file and behave accordingly. Can you recommend a file format for this kind of process? What I have in my is a config file like the game config files, but could not imagine how to read from it. My question is very similar to INI files or Registry or personal files?, but my question is different because I need to consider user editing."}
{"_id": "179624", "title": "Could a programming language work as well without statements?", "text": "As programming in JavaScript, I've noticed everything that can be done with statements and blocks can be done with expressions alone. Can a programming language work fine with only expressions? And, if yes, why are statements used at all?"}
{"_id": "254088", "title": "MVC helper functions business logic", "text": "I am creating some helper functions (mvc.net) for creating common controls that I need in almost every project such as alert boxes, dialogs etc. If these do not contain any business logic and it's just client side code (html, js) then it's ok. My problem arises when I need some business logic behind this helper. I want to create a 'rate my (web) application' control that will be visible every 3 days and the user may hide it for now, navigate to rate link or hide it for ever. To do this I need some sort of database access and a code that acts as business logic. Normally I would use a controller for this, with my DI and everything, but I don't know where to put this code now. This should be placed **in the helper function** or **in a controller** that responds objects instead of ActionResults?"}
{"_id": "118276", "title": "How can I charge money for open source targeted at individuals?", "text": "Most questions like this only seem to apply for big pieces of software for companies with money. I'm developing a small application targeted at individuals. Informally speaking, I want to sell the application to users, but allow them to fix and modify it(but not redistribute). Practically and legally speaking, how would I do this?"}
{"_id": "195568", "title": "QT-C++ vs Generic C++ and STL", "text": "Been brushing up on my C++ lately, on Ubuntu QQ. I love the Qt framework for everything, especially building GUI's. I became quite familiar with it when using PyQt over the last few years. When using PyQt, I had some issues that are now more pronounced when using C++ with Qt: **Qt has many extensions to C++ that are Qt specific** \\- QString being just one common example, not to mention automated garbage collection. It is possible to write Qt applications using C++ without knowing much at all about C++ and the STL. I may have to hit the job market again soon and I'd like to be able to consider C++ positions - but I'm afraid binding myself too much to Qt will limit my abilities to work with generic C++, which were once quite formidable but are now long dormant and rusty. Should I avoid Qt? Would I be better off using WxWidgets or GTK++ for building GUI's? What's the best GUI framework to use that allows/requires the most use of generic C++ and the STL? How do I make myself most marketable as a C++ programmer when it comes to GUI frameworks, etc?"}
{"_id": "195561", "title": "Best option to send image from javascript client to SQL server", "text": "From a client (browser), using javascript I want to send an image to sql server ( and store with user profile) (sql server), along with other data such as user id or name. Which option is better? Send image as img / jpg? Or convert it to base64 and send everything as json format?"}
{"_id": "46299", "title": "PDF or ebook Java API documentation", "text": "Since I have a long train ride to and from work I was wondering if there is a version of the Java API documentation floating around that I could put on my Kindle. It would be nice on the rare occasion I get something in my head that I want to think about some more. I know I can browse the web through the Kindle but coverage is spotty and slow. I know that the API docs are not really designed for a sequential reading format but I'm curious to see if anyone else has thought about this and given it a shot. Note I am not reading the Java API to learn how to program Java but to review classes I plan to use. The differences between things like FileReader and FileInputStream are subtle and best gained from reviewing the API and not reading a chapter in a book that will tell me a lot of stuff I already know."}
{"_id": "119896", "title": "How to populate a private container for unit test?", "text": "I have a class that defines a private (well, `__container` to be exact since it is python) container. I am using the information within said container as part of the logic of what the class does and have the ability to add/delete the elements of said container. For unit tests, I need to populate this container with some data. That data depends on the test done and thus putting it all in setUp() would be impractical and bloated -- plus it could add unwanted side effects. Since the data is private, I can only add things via the public interface of the object. This runs code that need not be run during a unit test and in some cases is just a copy and paste from another test. Currently, I am mocking the whole container but somehow it does not feel that elegant a solution. Due to Python mocking frame work (mock), this requires the container to be public -- so I can use `patch.dict()`. I would rather keep that data private. **What pattern can one use to still populate the containers without excercising the public method so I have data to test with?** Is there a way to do this with mock's `patch.dict()` that I missed?"}
{"_id": "119893", "title": "How is this \"interface\"-like structure/pattern called?", "text": "Let's assume we have an `XmlDoc` class that contains basic functionality for dealing with an XML data structure and saving/loading data to/from a file. Now we have several subclasses, `A`, `B` and `C`. They all inherit from `XmlDoc` and add component-specific methods for setting and getting lots of data. They are like \"interfaces\" but also add an implementation for the signatures. Finally, we have an `ABCDoc` class that joins all the \"interfaces\" via virtual multiple inheritence and adds some `ABCDoc`-specific stuff, such as using `XMLDoc`-methods to set an appropriate doc type. We may also have an `ADoc` class for only saving `A` data. How is this pattern called? \"Interface\" is not really the right word since interfaces usually do not contain an implementation. Bonus points for C++ code conventions."}
{"_id": "52459", "title": "how do you manage application performance reviews", "text": "I have been trying to figure out ways to effectively do performance reviews before an install happens for all releases done by our team. Do you usually make this a part of code review process or do you handle it as a separate review task? FYI - we do not have a dedicated performance testing team. It is up to the developers to make sure the app performs well. The apps I am referring to are web applications."}
{"_id": "255067", "title": "Beginning a sentence with a function name?", "text": "Occasionally while typing something up that relates to a case-sensitive programming language I end up starting a sentence with a function name. Now the rules of English state that the first word in a sentence needs to be capitalized; the function name is lowercase, though. If you are wondering what could I be saying that would result in the first word being a function name, take this example: > Your fread implementation is broken. fread needs to return how many bytes > were read. I understand that I could change the second instance of _fread_ to _It_ but I want to know the best way of handling this other than just rewriting the sentence. Should I capitalize the function name? The only way I would like to hear \"rewrite the sentence\" as an answer is if starting the sentence with a function name violates some English rule that I am not aware of. Edit: I really thank everyone for these answers. They have changed and improved my insight into the issue. I have learned quite a bit from this. I am very surprised that I did not think of these simple but good solutions. I do think my stance on alternating the sentence was too tough and now I realize due to these good answers that overall altering the sentence appears to be the best option for dealing with these cases be it adding parenthesis after the function or saying The function before the function name and if available using formatting for the function name."}
{"_id": "99498", "title": "How should a web API handle misspelled/extra parameters?", "text": "**Question:** For a public facing web API(send HTTP Get/Post requests, get JSON/XML data back), how should parameters be handled that are either misspelled or are extra. It seems to me that if the incorrect parameters are ignored, an error in the caller's code may go unnoticed since they would be getting back a valid result. This may be especially true in situations where it wouldn't be obvious by looking at the results returned. **I am referring to optional parameters only.** Obviously if a required parameter is misspelled, then the parameter will be considered missing and an error will be returned.    **As an example** , the Place Search API call has four required parameters(location,radius,sensor and key) and several optional parameters(types is one of them). I can run these commands(with an API key) and get back valid results:               curl \"https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=45.47554,-122.794189&radius=500&sensor=false&key=<api_key>&type=bakery\"          curl \"https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/search/json?location=45.47554,-122.794189&radius=500&sensor=false&key=<api_key>&types=bakery\"      The first command has the \"types\" parameter in the singular form which is an invalid key name. The API ignores that parameter and returns all types of entities. In this case the error is obvious, but there may be times(and other API calls) where it won't be."}
{"_id": "131545", "title": "How to become certified in Objective C?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  iOS Programming Certifications I am interested in Objective C certification or any certificate than can support me as an iOS developer, what do you recommend?"}
{"_id": "235952", "title": "Implementing Rules-type logic without a rules engine (like Drools)?", "text": "I have a system that must output decisions and alerts based on input read from a messaging queue. This system will hold state about all objects in memory and update this state based on input from the messaging queue. Logic must be applied to data flowing into the system and as the data updates the system's working memory. Example: > I have 50 quad-rotor drones that report their current state to a RabbitMQ > queue. This includes a (latitude,longitude) location property, a 'time left > on battery' property, and an integer battery charge percentage property. The > rules run on each drone message would look like:               if (drone.charge_left < time_to_home_from(drone.location)) {       drone.state = EMERGENCY; // land immediately       send_alert(\"Drone must be recovered!\"); // put an alert on another messaging queue     } else if (drone.charge_percentage < some_threshold) {       drone.state = RETURN_HOME;       send_alert(\"Drone is coming back for recharging\");     }          ... and so on      Drools seems like a decent candidate for this task but only because few rules engines seem to be still under development, and it has the biggest name so to speak. On the flip side, the architecture of Drools seems heavyweight and outdated. I've seen a lot of use cases in the financial domain, which is fairly far from my use case. I'm leaning towards using a graph db based solution (ex. Neo4j), where each of the rules is a node containing an MVEL predicate and some type of Alert that is sent out when the rule's predicate evaluates true. How would you architect a system like this in 2014? EDIT: I forgot to add that only the engineering team would ever look at or modify these rules, but it would be desirable for values like `some_threshold` to be tunable by non-technical teammates through some web interface."}
{"_id": "9200", "title": "Is there a canonical book on Scala?", "text": "I'm interested in learning Scala, but due to is relative newness, I can't seem to find a whole lot of books about it. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on Scala? What makes that book special?"}
{"_id": "99496", "title": "Recent graduate with an idea, but I need some starting out advice", "text": "As the title says, I am a recent graduate with a mathematics degree, looking to develop software as a career. The job hunting has not resulted in a job yet but over the past couple of months I have picked up quite a bit of Ruby/Rails and Objective-C, as well as learning git and deployed a simple web-app to Heroku. I want to continue to build my resume and feel making a simple app and contributing to open source projects would look really good. Which leads me to my idea: My girlfriend is a botanist with the California Native Plant Society, and they just put together this really cool rare plant database. So I'd like make a simple iPhone app which would allow the user to query that database. Eventually it would be neat to do other stuff, but just getting a prototype together that would allow lookup via scientific names of different plant species is my first goal. I'm looking for any advice or resources as I'm not even sure what to google. I'm not sure if my app is physically filling in the text fields or if there is some other way to query an Internet database which I am unfamiliar. CNPS is a pretty great not-for-profit and it would be neat to give back to them in some way. I plan to host this on github as well if anyone else is interested. Thanks"}
{"_id": "235959", "title": "Developing a platform or mass-scale application - where does it all start?", "text": "I notice that a ton of platforms are developed nowadays. I have always wondered where it all begins - What choices has to be made, reasons why certain platforms are chosen, why certain places choose to use Open Source, or Microsoft products. I am at the stage of my .NET Development career where I would like to write something big, and make a platform out of it utilizing many different technologies to comprise a single solution. This question is probably double sided too. **Where does platform development start?** **What needs to be researched and known by the developer before he embraces the challenge of writing a mass-scale application** **Is it a good idea to involve communities in the project, even if you plan not to fully use open-source technologies?** These are just a couple of questions which boggles my mind. I am a young developer seeking to improve my skill in developing, creating and building applications. Not always fun when millionaires depend on me for my hard work where I can use my own work to make ends meet more comfortably. Thanks"}
{"_id": "163393", "title": "What's so bad about pointers in C++?", "text": "To continue the discussion in Why are pointers not recommended when coding with C++ Suppose you have a class that encapsulates objects which need some initialisation to be valid - like a network socket.               // Blah manages some data and transmits it over a socket     class socket; // forward declaration, so nice weak linkage.                class blah     {       ... stuff        TcpSocket *socket;     }          ~blah {        // TcpSocket dtor handles disconnect        delete socket; // or better, wrap it in a smart pointer     }      The ctor ensures that `socket` is marked NULL, then later in the code when I have the information to initialise the object.               // initialising blah     if ( !socket ) {        // I know socket hasn't been created/connected        // create it in a known initialised state and handle any errors         // RAII is a good thing !         socket = new TcpSocket(ip,port);     }          // and when i actually need to use it     if (socket) {        // if socket exists then it must be connected and valid      }      This seems better than having the socket on the stack, having it created in some 'pending' state at program start and then having to continually check some isOK() or isConnected() function before every use.   Additionally if TcpSocket ctor throws an exception it's a lot easier to handle at the point a Tcp connection is made rather than at program start. Obviously the socket is just an example, but I'm having a hard time thinking of when an encapsulated object with any sort of internal state shouldn't be created and initialised with `new`."}
{"_id": "247455", "title": "how to approach pharmacy software project", "text": "I would like to complete a pharmacy software proof concept. But I have a few questions I do not know. **Physician information** In order to refill or dispense a new RX the software needs to have access to a database of current doctors, is there a downloadable database or a service I can interact with to get a list of current practicing doctors ? **Medication information** needs to access a database of medications, which I believe companies like Medispan offer for a price. How much does interacting with these kinds of companies cost. **Billing** How can I interface be it with an insurance company, medicare, medicaid, etc for billing ? I have seen these programs are able to submit orders and get a response automatically for how much was billed and how much was paid etc. **What I have done** I started to just work on basic windows form application which would be the client and then I imagine I would have to connect it to my server in order to perform authentication etc before I billed for them from the server. Are the client applications connecting with the APIs directly or just an intermediary web service which in turn does all the work ? I also found one open source project http://www.anshealth.com/ but it seems like its pretty complicated to setup and there isn't much documentation. There hasn't been a post in their forums since last year. **Edit** I edited my question in order to make it more specific, I have asked specifically three questions."}
{"_id": "247450", "title": "Single page app permissions represented through RESTful APIs", "text": "I'm trying to figure out the right way to handle permissions in a single page app that talks directly to several RESTful APIs, that implement HATEOAS. As an example: \"As a user of my application I can view, start and pause jobs but not stop them.\" The underlying rest API has the following resource:               /jobs/{id}       Which accepts GET and PUT. The GET returns a job model and the PUT accepts a job model as a _request body_ in the form:               {      \"_links\" : {          \"self\" : \"/jobs/12345678\"      }      \"id\" : 12345678,      \"description\" : \"foo job\",      \"state\" : \"STOPPED\"     }      Accepted job states can be: dormant | running | paused | stopped. The requirement says that on the UI I must have the buttons: START, PAUSE, STOP ... and only display based on the logged in user's permissions. From the API perspective everything works as the underlying logic on the server makes sure that the user cannot update the state to a STOPPED state when a request is made (a 401 is returned maybe). What is the best way to inform the app / UI of the user's permissions, so it can hide any buttons that the user has no permission to action? **Should the API provide a list of permissions, maybe something like :**               {      \"_links\" : {          \"self\" : \"/permissions\",          \"jobs\" : \"/jobs\"      }      \"permissions\" : {           \"job\" : [\"UPDATE\", \"DELETE\"],           \"job-updates\" : [\"START\", \"PAUSE\"]        }     }      **OR should the API change so that the permissions are reflected in the HATEOS links maybe something like :**               {      \"_links\" : {          \"self\" : \"/jobs/12345678\",          \"start\" : \"/jobs/12345678/state?to=RUNNING\",           \"pause\" : \"/jobs/12345678/state?to=PAUSED\",       }      \"id\" : 12345678,      \"description\" : \"foo job\",      \"state\" : \"DORMANT\"     }      **Or should it be done in a completely different way?**"}
{"_id": "63016", "title": "Parameterized tests - When and why do you use them?", "text": "Recently at work we've been having some differences of opinion with regard to Parameterized testing. Normally we use a TDD-style (or at least try to) so I understand the benefits of that approac. However, I'm struggling to see the gain parameterized tests bring. For reference, we work on a service and it's libraries which are exposed via a RESTful interface. What I've seen so far is tests that are, at least using JUnit within Eclipse:   * Lacking in detail - when a test fails it's very hard to see the parameters which caused it to fail   * Often complicated to create   * Tend to be created after the code has been written - strictly not a drawback as such but do people set out with parameterized tests in mind when they start a piece of code? If anyone has any examples of where they are really useful or even any good hints for using them that would be fantastic. I want to make sure I'm not just being obstinate because I personally don't choose to use them and see whether they are something we should consider being part of our testing arsenal."}
{"_id": "247458", "title": "What does neo4j's licensing guide mean?", "text": "There are three versions of Neo4j apparently, called Community, Advanced, and Enterprise. Neo4j's Licensing Guide says that Community is GPL3 (which I confirmed from the LICENSE file in the tarball) and the Advanced/Enterprise seems to be dual licensed under AGPL3 and a proprietary license. What exactly does statement of the guide mean?: > If you\u2019re using Neo4j to build closed-source online applications that are > central to your business, then you\u2019ll want to talk to us about commercial > licensing of Neo4j Advanced or Enterprise editions. What exactly is meant by a closed source application in the context of server software? Does writing software that merely talks to neo4j over RPC trigger the AGPL under Neo's interpretations? If so, that's vastly differently from how the 10gen treats MongoDB (AGPL). The above wouldn't be as confusing if it weren't for the following statement: > ... you\u2019re free to use the Community edition of Neo4j Server under a GPL > license \u2013 which means you can use it anywhere you would use something like > MySQL. _Used in this way, only changes you make to the Neo4j software itself > should be open-sourced and shared with the community._ That last sentence is not required of GPL3 software modified for an organization but never distributed and only ever made available as a web application. In fact that's the exact reason AGPL3 was invented, to plug that gap. Further, the following statement makes no sense since a public domain project is a project without copyright: > We love open source development: so you are free to use all Neo4j components > for your open-source, public domain project under either the GPL (for > Community edition) or the AGPL (for Advanced and Enterprise)."}
{"_id": "236603", "title": "Most Appropriate Authentication Type for MVC5 project", "text": "I am about to start a new ASP.NET MVC5 project and I am planning the authentication / authorization requirements at present. The client wants Windows authentication, to prevent their users having to remember another new password. The site is web facing, so the downside would be an ugly pop up box asking for their credentials when they are accessing it offsite. Worse yet, on mobile, this box would be a problem. The Active Directory Authentication options from out of the box are new to me, but after some reading appear to be more about controlling roles and authorization through your AD groups. I intend to keep all authorization concerns internal to the application. Ideally, users will have Window authentication but with a nice login page where they can select their domain from a dropdown box and enter their domain login credentials. From some reading I thought possibly ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider is the answer. However with the new available options I want to be sure there is not other options before blindly taking this route."}
{"_id": "236601", "title": "How to choose parameter for Golomb coding?", "text": "I am trying to implement Golomb coding, but I don't understand how it's tuned to obtain optimal code. It is said that > Golomb coding uses a tunable parameter M to divide an input value into two > parts: q, the result of a division by M, and r, the remainder. The quotient > is sent in unary coding, followed by the remainder in truncated binary > encoding. I don't understand how should I choose the parameter _M_ \\- I can't see how the explanation in Wikipedia relates to actual data. I believe it should be related to statistical moments, is that true? For example, if I have this example set:   {3,4,4,4,3,1,2,2,3,1,2,1,4,1,2,2,2,2,1,1,2,2,1}   I believe _M_ should be very small for this kind of data. I bet it's either 1 or 2. It's mean is ~2.2 and standard deviation is ~1.1. My intuition would tell me to choose 2. Another dataset here:   {2,7,11,19,6,2,6,13,11,1,5,2,19,7,6,9,6,7,2,4,5,12,3}   This time the mean is ~7.2 and standard deviation is ~5.0. Is 7 the right value in this case? And should I prefer Rice code (use 8 as it is a power of 2) if I get a value like 7? I understand that division will be easier if I use Rice coding, but are there any benefits in NOT using it? I mean - 3 bits will be used for remainder in either case, how could pure Golomb code be more optimal then? One more nuance - Golomb code is for nonnegative integers. If I have positive integers instead, should I save x-1 instead? It would change a lot for the first of the mentioned datasets."}
{"_id": "176035", "title": "Are Scrum and XP comparable things or are they used for different things", "text": "Are Scrum and XP comparable things or are they used for different things? what is the main features of each of them? how do they overlap? I've been reading about both XP and Scrum over the past weeks and something is vague about them for me. Scrum does have a definitive official rulebook but for XP I'm not sure where to look."}
{"_id": "54856", "title": "Should validation messages contain punctuation?", "text": "When building an application should all validation messages have punctuation?"}
{"_id": "236609", "title": "Visitor only applicable when using the Composite pattern?", "text": "For a long time I've tried to get my head wrapped around the visitor pattern, and somehow this thing keeps being rather fuzzy to me. I'm currently under the impression it is only useful to apply operations on objects that implement the Composite pattern. At least as far as PHP is concerned. Is that an accurate observation, or am I missing something? I'm in the process of reimplementing some functionality, and this includes computing a diff between two Entities. These Entities contain various value objects. Different derivatives in the type hierarchy of these Entities have different value objects. Originally the diff code was contained in the entities themselves, though this caused quite some clutter, so I'd rather move it out into dedicated service objects. The Visitor pattern sprung to mind, though I do not see how I can actually sanely apply it. Would all the value objects need to implement some EntityElement interface? That seems bad. Is this a case where the Visitor pattern indeed does not apply, or am I simply failing to see how it would be applied nicely here?"}
{"_id": "176033", "title": "Using table-styled divs instead of tables", "text": "I was referred here from stackoverflow as my question was apparently too broad. I'm working on a template, and I know using CSS is preferred over HTML tables for positioning... But, is it acceptable to get the best of both worlds and use table-like styles on my divs? For example:               display: table;      This not only helps solve the sticky footer problem, but it also avoids the pains associated with using floats. Somehow it feels dirty, but I can't logically explain why because it works without any \"tricks\" or ugly hacks, which is how it should be, right? Is this technically incorrect, or does it ultimately boil down to just a matter of opinion? ...Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "120169", "title": "is there a term for doing this: func1(func2(), func3());", "text": "I know that `obj.func1().func2()` is called method chaining, but what is the technical term for:               func1(func2(), func3());      Where return of a function is used as an argument to another."}
{"_id": "53498", "title": "What is the philosophy/reasoning behind C#'s Pascal-casing method names?", "text": "I'm just starting to learn C#. Coming from a background in Java, C++ and Objective-C, I find C#'s Pascal-casing its method-names rather unique, and a tad difficult to get used to at first. What is the reasoning and philosophy behind this? I'm guessing it is because of C# properties. Unlike in Objective-C, where method names can be exactly the same as an instance variables, this is not the case with C#. I would guess one of the goals with properties (as it is with most of the languages that support it) is to make properties truly indistinguishable from variables and methods. So, one can have an \"int x\" in C#, and the corresponding property becomes X. To ensure that properties and methods are indistinguishable, all method names I'm guessing are also therefore expected to start with an uppercase letter. (This is just my hypothesis based on what I know of C# so far--I'm still learning). I'm very curious to know how this curious guideline came into being (given that it's not something one sees in most other languages where method names are expected to start with a lowercase letter) (EDIT: By Pascal-casing, I mean PascalCase (which is basically camelCase but starting with a capital letter). Method names typically start with a lowercase letter in most languages)"}
{"_id": "254622", "title": "Best way to deal with Floors and Ceiling when using substitution method to solve Recurrences", "text": "I'm currently using substitution method to solve recurrences. The problem I'm having is dealing with T(n) that have either ceilings or floors. For example in the following example see example here. They end up using the guess: `T(n) \u2267 c(n+2) lg(n+2)` My first guess was `T(n) \u2267 n lg(n)`, which turns out to not work but my problem is I end up having to play around with guess to try get one to work. So questions are as follows:   1. What is the best way to deal with these floors and ceiling in general?   2. With regards to guesses, does this come with practice or are there betters ways of deducing the correct guess off the first shot without having to use Recursion Trees. (PS not sure how to write equations in math notation, its my first time using this forum)"}
{"_id": "233461", "title": "Strategies to troubleshoot an error that only happens on a specific device", "text": "As an Android developer, the target market I create apps for is very fragmented. While I can specify certain requirements - e.g. my app only supports Android version x.x or above, sometimes errors may occur that are only evident on one specific phone model. **Are there any strategies to handle device-specific errors, without buying the phone in question?** We maintain a suite of phones for testing, but can't afford to go out and buy a new phone when 2 or 3 users report that there's a bug that only occurs for their model of phone. I'm sure other Android developers have encountered similar issues in the past, and I'm curious what cost-effective strategies are available to help squish device-specific bugs. **Update to add a few details:**   * I use Bugsense to capture bug reports, so whenever exceptions are thrown I will know the model of the phone, the stack trace, the number of times it has happened to my users, and a few other details.    * The users may be located in different countries, so I can't assume I'll ever be able to borrow their phone. **Imagine a scenario like this:** 100 users have installed the app, but three people complained that a button doesn't work properly when pressed. None of the models of phone I have for testing experience the problem. There doesn't appear to be an emulator for the problem phone model."}
{"_id": "53493", "title": "Javascript business model", "text": "Does anyone know anything about slidedeck's business model (see link below)? These guys are a javascript component that they sell online. As the tech savvy know - It's very difficult to sell javascript online, because it's pretty much like selling source code. But check out: http://www.slidedeck.com/pricing-b/ These guys give away a \"GPL Branded\" branded version of their code and then sell two premium \"unbranded\" versions that allow licensing of servers. They have some impressive clients. I'm just about done with a project of my own that is similar. I was just going to open source it and then use that source to create a demo to go and find financing for a bigger server side project (with a more clear cut monetization strategy), but seeing this made me take pause. I'm thinking - could I monetize the client source in the short run and raise less money? This seems like an option - but it also raises lots of questions: 1) If slidedeck's code is \"GPL Branded\" - how do they enforce that it's branded? Couldn't I just remove the branding, release my update to the community? (That would be a crappy thing to do, but would it be illegal or against GPL?) 2) While it's quiet obviously - the right thing to do - Outside of premium support models what are the main drivers for companies to license this code outside of the honor system? 3) Given Slidedeck is GPL what protections do they have from flat out plaugerism and people coying their code and selling it for less? Are there legal measures that can be taken to prevent this? How could they enforce this? Copyright perhaps?"}
{"_id": "118850", "title": "AVL Tree Balancing Problem", "text": "Take the following tree:                         50                              40            30          20        10       Which node will be balanced first? 50 or 30 **Case 1: 50**   The tree is                            30               20    40            10          50      **Case 2: 30**   The tree is                             40                 /   \\               20     50            10    30       Well, both are AVL Trees, so are both correct?"}
{"_id": "21571", "title": "Is COM truly dead?", "text": "I have previously worked on COM, however I have observed for quite sometime that hardly any company asks for COM exp. Is COM dead or reports of its demise are highly exaggerated?"}
{"_id": "46832", "title": "C/C++: Who uses the logical operator macros from iso646.h and why?", "text": "There has been some debate at work about using the merits of using the alternative spellings for C/C++ logical operators in `iso646.h`:               and        &&     and_eq     &=     bitand     &     bitor      |     compl      ~     not        !     not_eq     !=     or         ||     or_eq      |=     xor        ^     xor_eq     ^=      According to Wikipedia, these macros facilitate typing logical operators in international (non-US English?) and non-QWERTY keyboards. All of our development team is in the same office in Orlando, FL, USA and from what I have seen we all use the US English QWERTY keyboard layout; even Dvorak provides all the necessary characters. Supporters of using the `iso646.h` macros claim we should them because they are part of the C and C++ standards. I think this argument is moot since digraphs and trigraphs are also part of these standards and they are not even supported by default in many compilers. My rationale for opposing these macros in our team is that we do not need them since:   * Everybody on our team uses the US English QWERTY keyboard layout;   * C and C++ programming books from the US barely mention `iso646.h`, if at all; and   * new developers may not be familiar with `iso646.h` (this is expected if they are from the US). /rant Finally, to my set of questions:   * Does anyone in this site use the `iso646.h` logical operator macros? Why?   * What is your opinion about using the `iso646.h` logical operator macros in code written and maintained on US English QWERTY keyboards?   * Is my _digraph and trigraph_ analogy a valid argument against using `iso646.h` with US English QWERTY keyboard layouts? EDIT: I missed two similar questions in StackOverflow:   * Is anybody using the named boolean operators?   * Which C++ logical operators do you use: and, or, not and the ilk or C style operators? why?"}
{"_id": "21575", "title": "How do you cope with ugly code that you wrote?", "text": "So your client asks you to write some code, so you do. He then changes the specs on you, as expected, and you diligently implement his new features like a good little lad. Except... the new features kind of conflict with the old features, so now your code is a mess. You _really_ want to go back and fix it, but he keeps requesting new things and every time you finish cleaning something, it winds up a mess again. What do you do? Stop being an OCD maniac and just accept that your code is going to wind up a mess no matter what you do, and just keep tacking on features to this monstrosity? Save the cleaning for version 2?"}
{"_id": "49827", "title": "Parallel programming against a database: managing locks and transactions", "text": "I have first experience of parallel programming of code which actively works with relational database. I find it interesting to combine .NET parallel programming primitives with database locks/transactions and I'm interested in articles on this topic. Could you please advice some (.NET is optional)?"}
{"_id": "152163", "title": "How do you stay in touch with a programming language?", "text": "I'll be starting work for the first time in the IT Industry on the 18th of this month. I'll be working mostly with Microsoft technologies such as C#.NET and MS Dynamic CRM. I spent the last year working with C++. Developing small applications to automate taks and organize my notes. During this time I have developed a good basic understanding of the language. My question is how do you guys stay in touch with a programming language that you love when you need to use something else at the office?"}
{"_id": "152162", "title": "0.00006103515625 GB of RAM. Is .NET MicroFramework part of Windows CE?", "text": "The .NET MicroFramework claims to work on 64K RAM and has list of compatible targets vendors. At the same time, same vendors who ship hardware and create Board Support Packages (vendors like Adeneo) keep releasing something named Windows 7 CE BSP for the same hardware targets. Obviously the OS as heavy as WinCE needs more than 64K RAM. So, somehow .NET MicroFramework is relevant to WinCE, but how ? **Is it part of bigger OS or is it base of it, or are both mutually exclusive ?** Background: 0.00006103515625 GByte of RAM is same as 64Kbyte of RAM. I am looking for possiblity to use Microsoft development tools for small target like BeagleBone. http://www.adeneo-embedded.com/About-Us/News/Release-of-TI-BeagleBone Nice. Now .. where is a MicroFramework for the same beaglebone ? Is it inside the released pile ?"}
{"_id": "157531", "title": "Issues Tracker for both developers and end users", "text": "currently, we have a closed source project on hand. However, we would like to have a communication channel together with our end users.   * We would like to have our end users to know, what features we are currently working on, and what features they are going to get in next release.   * We would like to know users' thought, on our planned features. They may always provide input/suggestion on our planned features.   * We do not planned to host on our own server. Hence, a ready-available service is welcomed.   * **But we would like to remain our source code in closed model** Is there any web based service available for this purpose? Free or commercial doesn't matter."}
{"_id": "157536", "title": "How can I write a set of functions that can be invoked from (almost) any programming language?", "text": "I'd like to find a way to write an API that can be accessed from any other programming language via language bindings (or some other framework). Is it possible to do this? If so, which programming language would be the most suitable for writing a \"cross-language\" API? My goal is to create a single set of functions that I can access from any programming language that I'm working with, so that I won't need to manually re-write the entire API in each language."}
{"_id": "68439", "title": "Any programming language can be mastered easily if the fundamentals of programming are strong. A fact or a myth?", "text": "Is it true that a person with fairly good fundamentals in programming can easily learn any programming language? Well, when I say programming languages, I refer to the agile and dynamic languages like PHP, Perl, Ruby, etc but not the former programming languages of the distant past. I've worked only on java, groovy and flex to some extent. So considering the fact that I am an amateur programmer but a fast learner, on a rough basis, how long would it take to get a foothold on any one of such languages?"}
{"_id": "13397", "title": "Is it unreasonable to write user documentation in the style of a technical book?", "text": "Tell me if this sounds familiar: > something something something... as seen in figure 1-1 on the next page... It's in practically every book I've ever read about programming. So when I was writing a small instructional booklet on how to use some in-house software, which had images of the screen that the user will be on at this certain step I wrote something like \"The screen that pops up looks like the one shown in figure 1-1 below.\" But I'm thinking: I'm used to that style of writing, but if my target audience is the 'average person' are they going to be confused? So, more generally, are there any common practices in technical books that should be avoided when writing documentation for average people?"}
{"_id": "13396", "title": "What tools do you use to manage requests from users?", "text": "I'm drowning in user emails and I'd like to implement a better way to manage all these requests I get and put them in a queue where those people on a team, as well as users, have access to them and can make common notes. I'm thinking about some sort of task management tool that would allow multiple tasks to be created under a project where emails, comments, ideas, etc. could be dropped/entered and easily accessible. I need something that all parties can be involved in - users, managers, team leaders, developers. I'm looking for a tool that can allow:   * Users to just drag/drop an email to submit a request for maintenance or enhancement.    * Developers to just see their queue and the weighted priority of each task/project.    * A team of developers to see what everyone is working on in real-time.    * Management to keep a a log of time spent on each task. I I am starting to look in more of a Agile/Scrum direction for solving this problem. I found list of scrum agile sofware project management open source tools. Since I am limited on time, has anyone used these? Which one should I test to see if it will meet my needs? TeamPulse is a good direction, but think it is a little too bloated. I need something simple for all parties."}
{"_id": "13391", "title": "How to prioritize tasks when you have multiple programming projects running in parallel?", "text": "Say you have 5 customers, you develop 2 or 3 different projects for each. Each project has Xi tasks. Each project takes from 2 to 10 man weeks. Given that there are few resources, it is desired to minimize the management overhead. Two questions in this scenario:   1. What tools would you use to prioritize the tasks and track their completion, while tending to minimize the overhead?    2. What criteria would you take into consideration to determine which task to assign to the next available resource given that the primary objective is to increase throughput (more projects finished per time unit, this objective conflicts with starting one project and finishing it and then moving on to the next)? Ideas, management techniques, algorithms are welcome"}
{"_id": "193815", "title": "How to time the sprints in Scrum to allocate time for TDD?", "text": "We have sprints of 4 weeks duration. What I have been doing is 3 weeks dev time and 1 week of pure manual/automated testing, stabilization and shipment assurance testing. How to manage TDD within dev time? In my previous experience writing tests and getting 80% coverage requires round about 50% of the development time. Following the same we would get only 1 and a half week of development which is not enough. My actual problem is how to allocate time for TDD? I want to make TDD a mandatory but with these it becomes really difficult for me. Do you think this is correct approach we are using or are we missing something and alter our approach to Scrum?"}
{"_id": "243229", "title": "Naming in Security Protocols: Alice, Bob and Eve", "text": "Among computer scientists and programmers, there's the common habit of naming people in the context of security protocols e.g. `Alice`, `Bob` or `Eve`. Descriptions of more elaborate attack vector sometimes refer to `Charlie` (as does this XKCD strip), but is there a convention for additional participants?"}
{"_id": "168707", "title": "Making simple forms in web applications", "text": "How do you work with forms in your web applications? I am not talking about RESTful applications, I don't want to build heavy front-end using frameworks like Backbone. For example, I need to add \"contact us\" form. I need to check data which was filled by user and tell him that his data was sent. Requirements:   * I want to use AJAX.   * I want to validate form on back-end side and don't want to duplicate the same code on front-end side.  I have my own solution, but it doesn't satisfy me. I make an AJAX request with serialized data on form submit and get response. The next is checking \"Content-type\" header.   * **html** -> _It means that errors with filling form are exists and response html is form with error labels._ -> I will replace my form with response html.   * **json** and **response.error_code == 0** -> _It means that form was successfully submited._ -> I will show user notification about success.   * **json** and **response.error_code != 0** -> _Something was broken on back-end (like connection with database)._   * **other** \\- I display the following message : > We have been notified and have started to work with that problem. Please, > try it later. The problem of that way is that I can't use it with forms that upload file. What is your practise? What libraries and principles do you use?"}
{"_id": "168701", "title": "Design pattern and best practices", "text": "I am an iPhone developer. I am quite confident on developing iPhone application with some minimal feature. I would consider myself as a fair application developer but the code I write is not so much structured. I make very little use of MVC because I don't seem to find places to impose MVC. Most of the time, I create application with viewcontrollers and very few models only. How could I improve the skill for making my code more reusable, standard, easy and maintainable. I have seen few books on design patterns and tried few chapters myself but I don't seem to skip my habit. I know few of them but I am not being able to apply those patterns into my app. What is the best way to learn the design patterns and coding habit. Any kind of suggestion is warmly welcomed."}
{"_id": "243221", "title": "Why is String Templating Better Than String Concatenation from an Engineering Perspective?", "text": "I once read (I think it was in \"Programming Pearls\") that one should use templates instead of building the string through the use of concatenation. For example, consider the template below (using C# razor library)               <in a properties file>     Browser Capabilities     Type = @Model.Type     Name = @Model.Browser     Version = @Model.Version     Supports Frames = @Model.Frames     Supports Tables = @Model.Tables     Supports Cookies = @Model.Cookies     Supports VBScript = @Model.VBScript     Supports Java Applets = @Model.JavaApplets     Supports ActiveX Controls = @Model.ActiveXControls      and later, in a separate code file               private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)     {         BrowserInfoTemplate = Properties.Resources.browserInfoTemplate; // see above         string browserInfo = RazorEngine.Razor.Parse(BrowserInfoTemplate, browser);         ...     }      From a software engineering perspective, how is this better than an equivalent string concatentation, like below:               private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)     {         System.Web.HttpBrowserCapabilities browser = Request.Browser;         string s = \"Browser Capabilities\\n\"             + \"Type = \"                    + browser.Type + \"\\n\"             + \"Name = \"                    + browser.Browser + \"\\n\"             + \"Version = \"                 + browser.Version + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports Frames = \"         + browser.Frames + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports Tables = \"         + browser.Tables + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports Cookies = \"        + browser.Cookies + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports VBScript = \"       + browser.VBScript + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports JavaScript = \"     +                  browser.EcmaScriptVersion.ToString() + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports Java Applets = \"   + browser.JavaApplets + \"\\n\"             + \"Supports ActiveX Controls = \" + browser.ActiveXControls                    + \"\\n\"         ...     }"}
{"_id": "243220", "title": "How to solve linear recurrences involving two functions?", "text": "Actually I came across a question in Dynamic Programming where we need to find the number of ways to tile a 2 X N area with tiles of given dimensions.. Here is the problem statement Now after a bit of recurrence solving I came out with these.   F(n) = F(n-1) + F(n-2) + 2G(n-1), and   G(n) = G(n-1) + F(n-1) I know how to solve LR model where one function is there.For large N as is the case in the above problem we can do the matrix exponentiation and achieve O(k^3log(N)) time where k is the minimum number such that for all k>m F(n) does not depend on F(n-k). The method of solving linear recurrence with matrix exponentiation as it is given in that blog. Now for the LR involving two functions can anyone suggest an approach feasible enough for large N."}
{"_id": "243224", "title": "Liskov substitution principle with abstract parent class", "text": "Does Liskov substitution principle apply to inheritance hierarchies where the parent is an abstract class the same way if the parent is a concrete class? The Wikipedia page list several conditions that have to be met before a hierarchy is deemed to be correct. However, I have read in a blog post that one way to make things easier to conform to LSP is to use abstract parent instead of a concrete class. How does the choice of the parent type (abstract vs concrete) impacts the LSP? Is it better to have an abstract base class whenever possible?"}
{"_id": "163538", "title": "Efficient way to find unique elements in a vector compared against multiple vectors", "text": "I am trying find the number of unique elements in a vector compared against multiple vectors using C++. The vectors are in sorted order and it can be of size 2,000,000. Suppose I have,               v1: 5, 8, 13, 16, 20     v2: 2, 4, 6, 8     v3: 20     v4: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7     v5: 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15      The number of unique elements in v1 is 1 (i.e. number 16). I tried two approaches.   1. Added vectors v2,v3,v4 and v5 into a vector of vector. For each element in v1, checked if the element is present in any of the other vectors.   2. Combined all the vectors v2,v3,v4 and v5 using merge sort into a single vector and compared it against v1 to find the unique elements.  Note: sample_vector = v1 and all_vectors_merged contains v2,v3,v4,v5               //Method 1     unsigned int compute_unique_elements_1(vector<unsigned int> sample_vector,vector<vector<unsigned int> > all_vectors_merged)     {         unsigned int duplicate = 0;         for (unsigned int i = 0; i < sample_vector.size(); i++)         {             for (unsigned int j = 0; j < all_vectors_merged.size(); j++)             {                 if (std::find(all_vectors_merged.at(j).begin(), all_vectors_merged.at(j).end(), sample_vector.at(i)) != all_vectors_merged.at(j).end())                 {                     duplicate++;                 }             }         }         return sample_vector.size()-duplicate;     }          // Method 2     unsigned int compute_unique_elements_2(vector<unsigned int> sample_vector, vector<unsigned int> all_vectors_merged)     {         unsigned int unique = 0;         unsigned int i = 0, j = 0;         while (i < sample_vector.size() && j < all_vectors_merged.size())         {             if (sample_vector.at(i) > all_vectors_merged.at(j))             {                 j++;             }             else if (sample_vector.at(i) < all_vectors_merged.at(j))             {                 i++;                 unique ++;             }             else             {                 i++;                 j++;             }         }         if (i < sample_vector.size())         {             unique += sample_vector.size() - i;         }         return unique;     }      Of these two techniques, I see that Method 2 gives faster results. 1) Method 1: Is there a more efficient way to find the elements than running std::find on all the vectors for all the elements in v1. 2) Method 2: Extra overhead in comparing vectors v2,v3,v4,v5 and sorting them. How can I do this in a better way? [edit] Vectors are in sorted order."}
{"_id": "112981", "title": "From Slashdot: Does being a loyal developer pay?", "text": "I saw this question posted on Slashdot and thought it would make a great question here on Programmers.SE. _It's not my question, nor my situation._ Here goes: > \"As a senior developer for a small IT company based in the UK that is about > to release their flagship project, I know that if I were to leave the > company now, it would cause them some very big problems. I'm currently > training the other two 'junior' developers, trying to bring them up to speed > with our products. Unfortunately, they are still a long way from grasping > the technologies used \u2013 not to mention the 'interesting' job the outsourced > developers managed to make of the code. Usually, I would never have > considered leaving at such a crucial time; I've been at the company for > several years and consider many of my colleagues, including higher > management, to be friends. However, I have been approached by another > company that is much bigger, and they have offered me a pay rise of \u00a37k to > do the same job, plus their office is practically outside my front door (as > opposed to my current 45 minute commute each way). This would make a massive > difference to my life. That said, I can't help but feel that to leave now > would be betraying my friends and colleagues. Some friends have told me that > I'm just being 'soft' \u2013 however I think I'm being loyal. Any advice?\" What are your thoughts on this Anonymous Slashdotter's situation?"}
{"_id": "112980", "title": "How do I package a J2SE app for sale to a market of buying customers?", "text": "Currently, I enjoy my Java 101 class. I have some ideas for apps that I'd like to make and with time and work I think the process of developing an application from the ground up will work out fine. When I get my Java app(s) up and running - will it be easy to find a place where I can offer them for sale? In the Enterprise labor marketplace, I see ads for developers with expertise with J2EE, WebSphere, Hibernate, Spring, etc. As a Java newbie, I'm aware that I can forget about ever qualifying for those jobs. An alternative for me might be to make something that I can build a micro- business with. Is there a straightforward way of doing that?"}
{"_id": "11889", "title": "Is a MSDN subsciption worthwhile for personal use?", "text": "I code primarily in .net at work, but was wondering if home MSDN subscriptions were available/worthwhile as a tool to stay in touch with the latest technology for Microsoft development?"}
{"_id": "164629", "title": "What is the impact of CSS Validation Failure?", "text": "I am developing a asp.net website. When I used the CSS property \"word-wrap\", VIsual Studio 2010 is showing a warning: Validation (CSS 2.1) 'word-wrap' is not a known CSS property name. When I tested the website, it is working fine. However, can there be any issue in using this property ignoring the warning?"}
{"_id": "237552", "title": "How can I keep Web services requests in a DAO layer without tying the code to the DOM?", "text": "I'm working on a single page application on the node-webkit desktop app platform, which means 99.9% of all of the logic is written in JavaScript. Since this is a reboot of a project we're working on, I wanted to approach the architecture from more of an MVC approach on the client side. I'm planning on creating a DAO layer for access to localStorage, IndexedDB, as well as Web services via REST requests. The problem is, the first tool I reach for to make HTTPS requests to the server is jQuery AJAX. It feels a bit weird to use jQuery in the DAO layer, even though I don't plan to manipulate the DOM, but it works really well on node-webkit and is a tried and tested tool for retrieving and sending data to the servers. Despite the popularity of certain JavaScript application frameworks that have a certain _way_ of doing things, we're not planning on using any frameworks other than JavaScript libraries that are fairly lightweight and unobtrusive, such as jQuery, Underscore, Mustache, Node.js modules, but nothing that forces us to unequivocally exclude certain technologies. I'm planning to inject jQuery into the DAO layer for the purposes of making calls via AJAX to the Web services. My question is this:   * How should I approach Web services? Do I treat Web services as just another data source like the local database?    * Or do I just simply use the raw XMLHttpRequest object? What's the proven method for dealing with this architectural problem on the client side, **_without JavaScript frameworks_**?"}
{"_id": "237554", "title": "Should we use any JS framework which makes HTML as scripting language", "text": "After studying HTML 5, I learnt that HTML is purely for defining semantics of data. And it has provided various tag for each purpose. Although we can create our own tags, can provide styling and it will work still we use standard tags because they are known at global level. And all search engines can understand them. JS frameworks like AngularJS provide the way of creating own directive/tags. Which are non-standard tags. Moreover, I believe that programming logic should be kept apart from HTML :ng- if, ng-repeat etc. It makes HTML page very difficult to understand by a pure UI designer. I would say these frameworks make a HTML page developer friendly not designer friendly. If we put all the logic on a HTML page, there would not be any difference between a server side page & a HTML page. I believe **there should not be any non-standard tag and no programming logic** (like conditional or looping statements) **presents on HTML page**. Instead JS should handle/control HTML from outside. Please tell me if I am incorrect somewhere. Or give me some positives views So I can think about using such frameworks."}
{"_id": "237556", "title": "Should we encapsulate everything in a try{} block in a Try object?", "text": "Why can't I make a class for a `Try` including what I try and then run that in the `try {}` block? Why is it impractical?               class DBConnectTry extends Try {           TryResponse response[] attempt(TryObject o[]...){          //try to connect to database       }         }      Then in a `try ... catch` I could invoke only the `DBConnectTry.attempt`. Would that improve readability / clarity / modularization or is it not a good idea?"}
{"_id": "178139", "title": "What is the good way of sharing specific data between ViewModels", "text": "We have IAppContext which is injected into ViewModel.   This service contains shared data: global filters and other application wide properties. But there are cases when data is very specific. For example one VM implements Master and the second one - Details of selected tree item. Thus DetailsVm must know about the selected item and its changes. We can store this information either in IAppContext or inside each concerned VM. In both cases update notifications are sent via Messenger. I see pros and cons for any of the approaches and can not decide which one is better. **1st:**   \\+ explicitly exposed shared proerties, easy to follow dependencies   \\- IAppContxt becomes cluttered with very specific data. **2nd:**   the exact opposite of the first and more memory load due to data duplication. May be someone can offer design alternatives or tell that one of the variants is objectively superior to the other cause I miss something important?"}
{"_id": "223529", "title": "DDD: Can immutable objects also be entities?", "text": "I've read countless posts on differences between Entities and Value objects and while I do think that at least conceptually I understand how the two differ, it appears that in some of these posts authors consider a particular domain concept to be a VO simply because it is immutable ( thus its state will never change, at least within that particular domain model ). Do you agree that if the state of an object will never change within particular domain model, then this object should never be an entity? Why?"}
{"_id": "199882", "title": "C++ Using Intrinsics in a Cross-platform Manner", "text": "I have a cross platform math library that I am working on and I want to make sure that some common operations are performed in an optimized manner, so I wish to use some intrinsic functions wrapped in inline functions to compute things such as sqrt(float/double). I should mention that at this point I only plan on targeting a select few platforms which are mentioned in the source below. I have started a single prototype of the a sqrt() function but before I proceed any further I want to know if I am doing anything blatantly wrong. I am following the documentation at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/ff471376%28v=vs.85%29.aspx   http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Other-Builtins.html Also, you will note I have a blank line under the pound define for macintosh. I know the newer versions are using clang/llvm. How do you get access to intrinsic functions under the newer versions of mac os and its associated compilers?               #ifndef INTRINSICS_H_INCLUDED     #define INTRINSICS_H_INCLUDED          #if defined(_WIN32)     #elif defined(__gnu_linux__) || defined(__linux__)     #elif defined(__ANDROID__)     #elif defined(__CYGWIN__)     #elif defined(macintosh)     #else     #include <cmath>     #endif          #if defined(_WIN32)     #pragma function( sqrt )     #endif     template<typename T>     inline float sqrt(T &val)     {     #if defined(_WIN32)       return sqrt(val);     #elif defined(__gnu_linux__) || defined(__linux__)       return __builtin_sqrt(val);     #elif defined(__ANDROID__)       return __builtin_sqrt(val);     #elif defined(__CYGWIN__)       return __builtin_sqrt(val);     #elif defined(macintosh)       // How do I do this     #else       return std::sqrt(val);     #endif     }     #if defined(_WIN32)     #pragma function( sqrt )     #endif     #endif"}
{"_id": "199880", "title": "What level of queries should I expect from an interviewer regarding my official software tasks?", "text": "_**Assumption:_**   Post that I am applying for: _Software developer_   Experience in years: _5_ _**Background:_** > I have been working with a robotics company and I am not a robotics person. > I haven't handled a \"project\" by myself yet. So, the kind of work that I > have handled so far are \"small\" C++ programming related stuffs in the > projects. > > _Tiny examples:_   >  1\\. Someone has already made classes and written socket programming for > this software X with UDP. My job was to add the TCP code using Qt API.   >  2\\. I had to add a \"callback\" functionality (using C++ templates) somewhere > in the project for some reason. > > _Another somewhat bigger example:_   >  I had to set up a functionality of message exchanging between two > components (according to a standard protocol) in C++. Both these example tasks are related to the proprietary software of this company. _**What kind of questions (in which depth) should I expect the interviewer to ask regarding these example tasks?_**"}
{"_id": "178136", "title": "Should the analyst define the programmers and their seniority needed by the project?", "text": "It might be obvious, but I am not sure. Should the analyst who interview the client, gather and analyse requirements then give an estimate, also specifies how many and with how much experience developers should be required to develop it? Maybe I'am not so sure on how I go about this allocation thing, maybe this is just not my work."}
{"_id": "199886", "title": "Should I \"Fight\" to use development environment I want to use and how?", "text": "I am the only developer for some of projects. I used to pick environment I like, alike C# and C++. But this time new task could come from another department head who used to write programs ~20 years ago. That person reject all the new technologies alike .net and even C++ with no sane reason. Sure everything could be written in C and it could be fast and stable but forcing me (as only one developer) to write large scale-able project in plain C is not anyhow sane for me.   * Must developers aware of directions like that?   * Must developers fight to pick development environment? My current position is a bit weird. I don't like the situation and I say that I'm able to go and start project in C but I will not tell any development time only apparent minimum and I guess this time will not be anyhow acceptable. That could make me look as really bad developer.   * What will you suggest me in such situation?   * Have you experienced such situations?"}
{"_id": "199884", "title": "How to convince team members of the existence of a \"mandelbug\"", "text": "We are developing an application; it includes a library developed by another coder, this library communicates with server via multiple network connections, and this involves multiple threads working together. The server side code is quite complicated, and we don't have access to the source code. Recently I've discovered a mandelbug making application crash sometimes. I could reproduce it once and got a stack trace, so I opened a bug report. The bug itself is easy to fix (uncaught web exception in one of background threads, that makes CLR terminate the program). The problem is that developer is refusing to fix the bug, because \"he is not convinced it exists\". Unfortunately for me the boss is siding with him and says this bug cannot be fixed unless I make a \"solid test case\" to prove existence of the bug, and to make unit test verifying that it's gone. What is basically impossible due to a nature of the bug. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "54145", "title": "I don't really understand \"Backend/Serverside\" when it comes to web-development?", "text": "In the Web development world, what exactly do backend/server-side programmers do? I guess I don't really understand the whole concept. I've done the HTML/CSS layouts and website design and a little bit of SQL with PHP (still enhancing my skills, it's more of a side project for me). I've also done a small amount of JavaScript/JQuery. But I don't understand the \"backend\" work, such as the scripting languages (Rails/Python/etc) and such. What exactly do you \"do\" with them? Are there any books on the subject? I'm not even sure what it means. Is it kinda like what Web Application Frameworks do? Or not so much?"}
{"_id": "133134", "title": "Is Model-View-Presenter (MVP) scheme useful for Android?", "text": "How to separate View and Presenter in Android, while the reactions on the user actions (Presenter part of MVP) are set into the same activities that shows GUI elements (View part of MVP). \"In model view presenter just as Martin Fowler or Michael Feathers [2] say, the logic of the UI is separated into a class called presenter, that handles all the input from the user and that tells the \"dumb\" view what and when to display\" (cited from here). Till now I thought that one of the main features of Android is the **_smart_** Activity that takes actions, reacts to them and shows the results. Is MVP scheme in contradiction with Android philosophy? Has it sense to try to realize it on Android? If yes, how could it be done?"}
{"_id": "175075", "title": "Why is Java version 1.X referred to as Java X?", "text": "I saw that Java 1.2 is also known as Java 2. Do \"Java 1.x\" and \"Java x\" (for example \"Java 1.6\" and \"Java 6\") refer to the same version of Java? And if yes, why the need for this duality?"}
{"_id": "62058", "title": "Does having to scroll horizontally make code less readable?", "text": "Well, does it? Is it considered bad practice? IMO, it is less readable. I hate having to scroll to the right, then back left, right, left, and so on. It makes coding more painful and confuses me sometimes. For example, anytime I am coding a long string, I will do the following...               bigLongSqlStatement = \"select * from sometable st inner join anothertable at\" +     \"on st.id = at.id\" +     \"and so on...\" +     \"and so on...\" +     \"and so on...\""}
{"_id": "62059", "title": "Simple approach to Rails", "text": "I recently got into web development through the PHP framework, CodeIgniter. I knew some PHP before I started learning that framework and overall I found it very easy to learn. The CodeIgniter documentation made it really easy to get started and figure out what each specific helper/library/function accomplished and how it was used. After making a somewhat basic CMS/Forum in the framework, I decided to start learning Rails and see which one I liked more. Needless to say, I've had a somewhat difficult time understanding Rails. I'm not sure if Rails just takes more time to learn, doesn't fit my way of thinking, or if I'm using the wrong book to learn. I've been working through http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ with little success. I understand many of the main points, but I feel as though I lack any real understanding. There seems to be a lot going on 'under the hood' with Rails compared to CodeIgniter. I tried looking at the Rails API for help, but didn't find much help there. I'm more or less looking for a book or reference sheet that clearly outlines what each specific line of code is doing or what's going on behind the scenes. Something similar to the CodeIgniter documentation or a book that has less words and more basic examples for each aspect of the framework. I've also tried reading through Why's poignant guide to Ruby, but that had far too much talking and not enough examples or clear documentation. I feel like it's the easiest for me to learn something when it's heavily tied to basic logic/math. In the end I believe that it will just end up being a combination of the Rails API and spending more time working with the framework; however, I'm hoping that someone learns the same way that I do and has a suggestion. Again, I'm very new to programming and haven't spent more than 40 or so hours working with PHP/Ruby combined, so I apologize if my question doesn't make sense or if it's just a matter of putting a lot more time into it. If Ruby doesn't seem like the right language for me, would Python be a better option? My plan was to build something basic with PHP/Python/Ruby and decide which I liked the best. **TLDR:** Trying to learn Rails in limited free time. Finding that it's taking a lot longer to learn than CodeIgniter. Not sure if I just haven't been able to find a book/reference sheet similar to the CI documentation. Looking for suggestions or advice. Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions."}
{"_id": "175070", "title": "Pattern for a class that does only one thing", "text": "Let's say I have a procedure that _does stuff_ :               void doStuff(initalParams) {         ...     }      Now I discover that \"doing stuff\" is quite a compex operation. The procedure becomes large, I split it up into multiple smaller procedures and soon I realize that having some kind of _state_ would be useful while doing stuff, so that I need to pass less parameters between the small procedures. So, I factor it out into its own class:               class StuffDoer {         private someInternalState;              public Start(initalParams) {             ...         }              // some private helper procedures here         ...     }      And then I call it like this:               new StuffDoer().Start(initialParams);      or like this:               new StuffDoer(initialParams).Start();      And this is what feels wrong. When using the .NET or Java API, I always never call `new SomeApiClass().Start(...);`, which makes me suspect that I'm doing it wrong. Sure, I could make StuffDoer's constructor private and add a static helper method:               public static DoStuff(initalParams) {         new StuffDoer().Start(initialParams);     }      But then I'd have a class whose external interface consists of only one static method, which also feels weird. Hence my question: Is there a well-established pattern for this type of classes that   * have only one entry point and   * have no \"externally recognizable\" state, i.e., instance state is only required _during_ execution of that one entry point?"}
{"_id": "20225", "title": "Is it correct to fix bugs without adding new features when releasing software for system testing?", "text": "This question is to experienced testers or test leads. This is a scenario from a software project: Say the dev team have completed the first iteration of 10 features and released it to system testing. The test team has created test cases for these 10 features and estimated 5 days for testing. The dev team of course cannot sit idle for 5 days and they start creating 10 new features for next iteration. During this time the test team found defects and raised some bugs. The bugs are prioritised and some of them have to be fixed before next iteration. The catch is that they would not accept the new release with any new features or changes to existing features until all those bugs fixed. The test team says that's how can we guarantee a stable release for testing if we also introduce new features along with the bug fix. They also cannot do regression tests of all their test cases each iteration. Apparently this is proper testing process according to ISQTB. This means the dev team has to create a branch of code solely for bug fixing and another branch where they continue development. There is more merging overhead specially with refactoring and architectural changes. Can you agree if this is a common testing principle. Is the test team's concern valid. Have you encountered this in practice in your project."}
{"_id": "62053", "title": "What's a good light-weight source repository for local development?", "text": "I'm doing some prototyping locally that I would like to keep in source control (for backup and revert purposes) but I don't necessarily want to publish it as open-source or make available online for others to view. What source control system would you recommend for local development? Any setup or walk through for my scenario is greatly appreciated. I'm looking for:   * Easy setup and administration. As this is my local machine, I'm constrained to Window OS and would really like to minimize the amount of environment configuration changes and necessary learning curve. There will only be one user, so I don't want to configure access rights, etc.   * Low resource overhead, I want to host locally on my developer machine, so I don't want it sucking up my CPU. I don't plan on storing massive amounts of data, either.   * Familiar. I've used SVN clients before. Visual Studio integration is a nice-to-have.   * Portable. If I have to move it to a external drive or to another machine.   * Free. Yes I want it all and don't want to have to pay for it."}
{"_id": "256173", "title": "Should `setX(Object o)` methods perform deep or shallow copies of objects?", "text": "My particular situation is related to Java, but I believe this is a more general OOP question than _just_ Java programming. **The Question:** Should \"mutator\" methods perform _deep_ or _shallow_ copies? **An example:**   Let's assume my object has the following structure:               public class MyObj {       ArrayList<Integer> myList;       //constructors, etc.            public void setMyList(ArrayList<Integer> list) {         this.myList = list; //Option 1         //OR         this.myList = new ArrayList<Integer>(list); //Option 2       }     }      My assumption is that Option 2 is best. This is because it prevents an external class from having direct access to `MyObj`'s list. For example, if I did:               public class SomeOtherClass {       public static void main(String[] args) {         ArrayList<Integer> exampleList = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3));              MyObj a = new MyObj();         a.setMyList(exampleList);              exampleList.add(4);       }     }      At the end of `main`, Option 1 means that `a.myList` contains `4`, while Option 2 means `a.myList` still consists of `1, 2, 3`. To me, the second seems preferable. Is there a standard/convention regarding this situation?"}
{"_id": "106806", "title": "Is wrapping third-party API calls a design smell?", "text": "Five methods within my API call the same third-party method. In trying to abide by DRY, does it make sense to wrap this call in a private method?"}
{"_id": "256171", "title": "I have this App idea, what technologies can I use/need to learn?", "text": "It's pretty straight forward: You have an object (let's say a car, or house, or clothes, or whatever), and all you want to do is to add different kind of textures to it (Let's say one can add 5-10 different types of textures to the object) The object will pretty much be static (in movement), and I'd like a pretty fast rendering time. The textures can be uploaded by the user, or picked from a DB. Sounds like a really easy project, but I'm very new to app programming. I've done some programming before, but mostly just Windows(C#,Java,Python) and microcontroller stuff(C). Where should I start? From similar products that I've seen, they seem to use everything from Asp.net to Flash for their solutions(these are websites, though)."}
{"_id": "106804", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various git modes available for emacs?", "text": "I just started using git, and because I tend to live in emacs, I want to use one of the emacs integration packages. Looking at this list, I see that there are a lot of packages available, but the blurbs for each of them don't explain very much about their capabilities, especially since I don't know git very well. Which git modes for emacs have you used, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?"}
{"_id": "67663", "title": "Where can I test my Silverlight/WPF knowledge online?", "text": "Do you of know any sites where I can take a quiz on Silverlight/WPF that isn't Braindumps?"}
{"_id": "156668", "title": "How to mix different styles of programming on several languages?", "text": "I know that Senior Developer doesn't use only one language and only one platform or IDE. Can you advise how to mix different styles of programming to make efficient code? For example, **best** mixing is **Perl + Objective-C**. `$ObjectiveCLongNameOfVariablesAndMethods` are worst for Perl-style, but good for iOS-team. `[self method:[[NSArray alloc] initWithobjects:[hash objectForKey:name]]]` style is weird for an eye, but not for perl simple-looking arrays and hashes and autovivification. Also, i try to mixing **SAS + Objective-C style** , but here i have a trouble. **SAS** doesn't support names long names, only 32 symbols. So, big trouble to naming variables. Another difficulty is features of current language. So, if I can't use current language for a task, that it can **solve 'like a BOSS'** , I become angry and see weird code. Using libraries is good, but it makes code not natural, 'cause eating soup with fork is strange'. And at the end: where can I trust compiler and interpreter of language? So, **C++-style** is best for pointers (you make destructors, constructors, etc.), but many languages now support mechanism like **ARC in Objective-C** or don't use pointers (like **C#** )."}
{"_id": "156669", "title": "Is code reviewing good practice?", "text": "When the company I work in hired new managers, they offered us to overview someone's code on every meeting. We have meetings every two weeks, so each time one of developers was to show his/her code on the projector, and others were going to discuss it. I thought this would be great: each developer would be more careful when writing code and we could share our experience better. But somehow we forgot about this and the offer just remained an offer. What are the benefits of this and are there any drawbacks?"}
{"_id": "252663", "title": "What is the appropriate amount of guidance and mentorship a junior programmer should receive?", "text": "I'm a junior software developer, and just got this job working with a very small group of engineers. I've been coding for a few months in this group in a professional settings - before I just coded at school - and it's definitely been a learning experience. I feel like I'm taking a long time to learn - things like the design patterns, the different methods of different classes throughout the codebase - I make a lot of mistakes in my code and need to ask a lot of questions. I also think that I don't have the greatest mentorship and this is where I'm wondering if it's me being slow or I'm not in the best learning environment. Currently there's one lead engineer that reviews everyone's code and sends back feedback. In a code review, I will often get short comments such as \"use XXX method here\". Usually the XXX method is a method in our code base which I have never used or seen, on an object in our code base that I'm not familiar with. I'll have to ask for more clarification and extend the review process. In a case like this - is it entirely up to me to find this method and try to figure out what it does? I feel like these types of comments should have more explanation - why I should use that method and what I did wrong - but instead it's more along the lines of \"do XXX\". Of course I go and try and find the method, but most of the time I don't have enough experience and context to fully understand the issue. Another issue is that when I have questions and the lead engineer comes over, they tend to interrupt me, shush me (literally - they say \"no, no, shhh shh\" if I'm still explaining the question), take over my mouse and keyboard and just fix the issue after looking at it for a second. Usually my question will have the underlying reason for the problem I'm having (I misunderstood a concept), and if I can't express it and show the engineer where I have a wrong idea or concept then how will I be able to improve and learn? I feel like they're not correcting me and teaching me - they're just fixing the problem on my screen - but since I'm not learning, I tend to repeat it again. This is not helpful for me - I'd rather they sit with me and let **me** drive with the keyboard mouse, let me ask the question with my own words, and explain to me with words what I did wrong instead of just changing my code. Am I asking for too much? At the end of the day, I'm definitely learning and getting better, it's just been taking a long time. I'm frustrated with the lack of mentorship and guidance I have. I'm confused and feel that sometimes I'm expected to know everything that the lead engineer who's been building up this codebase on their own for the past 4 years knows. I feel like a burden when I do have questions. So, I'm wondering what is the right amount of help and guidance a junior engineer should have? Obviously I know how to use SO, I know how to search google. I'm talking about learning our code base, our patterns, and the way we do things for our product. Is my experience normal? Or am I building this all up in my head?"}
{"_id": "27644", "title": "Do designer tools degrade the programming experience?", "text": "I've been looking around lately, specifically at some of the MS tools that are available, and I'm noticing a big focus on designer tools and wizards. Not just for UI development but for everything.   * Entity Framework has the modeller   * RIA Services has the DomainService wizard(s)   * Workflow has the whole workflow designer thingy... (I don't know, haven't really used it) There's more, but I think you get the idea. There's lots of designer tools. Using some of these I find that: **They complicate matters beyond the prescribed use cases** (ie all of the tech demo videos) I have been evaluating some of these technologies recently, and trying to work with them I end up having to dissect exactly what the designers, modellers and wizards are doing for me... otherwise I'm lost when I actually have to try to do something with whatever was created. This ends up being a case where I have to fight the tool, or fight its output enough such that I could have just done the whole thing myself without it - and had a _much_ stronger understanding of what's going on. I find this particularly infuriating with the silverlight designer and RIA services domain service wizard. I find myself asking \"What good is this tool if I have to figure out its inner workings or re-write half of its output in order to use it?\" **They're not as fast** The selling point of these tools is to increase productivity and this point may change over time using the tool, and doesn't necessarily apply to UI designers (though, in some cases it still does -> I'm looking at you silverlight designer). I find that I can hack some code much faster than I can drag-and-drop, resize, move, whatever in a designer. **The UI gets in the way of the model** Maybe this is just me, but when I am using anything reminiscent of a UML design tool I end up spending more time laying everything out so that my lines don't cross and so that I can see it all on the screen than modelling what I'm trying to achieve. **They're no fun** Half of the reason that I code for a living is that I enjoy it. Clicking checkboxes and selecting comboboxes and then fixing everything that comes out isn't fun. **I don't appear to be alone** The community seems to _not_ want these tools either. The best example I can think of at the moment is Entity Framework Code-First. So I ask:   1. Do designer tools _actually_ improve productivity?   2. Are they fun-killers?   3. Is 'the community' _actually_ asking for more designer tools, or are vendors just thinking we are?"}
{"_id": "51538", "title": "How should I name the language data files?", "text": "Recently I decided to add some translations to my program. I wonder how I should name the language files?   1. in the culture's name of the language (example: english = en, french = fr, italian = it, etc...)   2. in the name of the language [in english] (example: english = english, french = french, italian = italian, etc..) I know you'll choose the second way because you dont have to detect which filename it is because both have the same name. But the problem is this - I show the name of the languages in its langauge (example: english = english, french = fran\u00e7aise, italian = italiano, etc..) so I still need to detect which filename it is. The main question is which way I should choose? the name of the language in english or the culture name? and why?... Thanks!"}
{"_id": "51537", "title": "Evaluating a Programmer for Startup", "text": "I have sorted through the previous questions and couldn't find a specific answer to the following (and thank you in advance): I have fully developed my idea on paper and am looking to move forward with it, create it, and grow it. Since I am non-technical, I am looking to either partner or employ (I would pay for his/her services) for a very talented and well-rounded programmer to help create and develop the project. I am looking for someone that can act as a IT manager/CTO and get the job done while I use my resources to develop and deploy the strategy, deal with the business side of things, raise capital, grow, etc. However, due to my lack of IT knowledge, it is always hard for me to differentiate between a good and bad programmer and therefore only find out if he/she is good or not when it is too late. So my question that I have been asking everyone around me is \"How do I assess whether the programmer is good or not if I cannot evaluate them myself?\" and \"Is there any website that reviews and rates programmers?\" I have asked many to refer me to talented programmers but all are either not local (important for me to work side by side with them), happily employed or working on their own startup. I have also asked these programmers to help me find others but none seem to be able to help. Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thank you so much, HelpJ"}
{"_id": "51531", "title": "What is the best way to handle different TimeZones?", "text": "I'm working on a web application where there will be many different users from all over the world making updates. I'm wondering what the best way to handle timezones would be? Ideally, as an event happens, all users view it using their local times. Should the server OS time be set to GMT, physical location time, or my development location time? Should the application logic (PHP) and database (MySQL) be set to store data as GMT or local time (local to users)? Is there an industry standard or even a simple/obvious solution that I'm just not seeing?"}
{"_id": "161660", "title": "Can a loosely typed language be considered true object oriented?", "text": "Can a loosely typed programming language like PHP be really considered object oriented? I mean, the methods don't have returning types and method parameters has no declared type either. Doesn't class design require methods to have a return type? Don't methods signatures have specifically-typed parameters? How can OOP techniques help you code in PHP if you always have to check the types of parameters received because the language doesn't enforce types? Please, if I'm wrong, explain it to me. **When you design things using UML, then code classes in PHP with no return- typed methods and no-type parameters... Is the code really compliant with the UML design?** **You spend time designing your software architecture, then the compiler doesn't force the programmer to follow your design while coding, letting he/she assign any object variable to any other variable with no \"type- mismatch\" warning.**"}
{"_id": "161662", "title": "Openfire licensing with custom code", "text": "I am thinking of integrating the openfire chat server with my custom website. Openfire server and the smack client library is licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0. If I decide to use openfire, will it require my website source code to be also made available under the Apache license? Tried going through the licensing terms, but the legal language is a bit confusing. Thanks in advance for any insights! Rohit."}
{"_id": "59040", "title": "Valid reason for employer to breach freelance contract", "text": "Please don't close this as offtopic. According to the FAQ I can post programming related questions. I was working on a project and when it was half way completed (1 weeks work), the employer backs out and refuses to pay me. Shortly before this he was being very rude. He was having problems configuring the server and he told me it was my fault and that I had to fix it. After I spent several hours trying to figure out the problem, it turned out to be his fault. After this when I put the code on the server. He found 1 bug that I had missed. He freaked out, accused me of being a bad programmer and told me that the code was shit and that he couldn't use it. He said that if there is a bug in the code, that means the code is bad and he can't use it. He would have to throw the code away and hire someone else. His kept reiterating his argument: \"why should I pay for code that I can't use\". And I kept telling him the code was fine and urged him to have another programmer give him a second opinion. But he would have none of that. He said he would compensate me for my troubles by paying me 250$. Then he changes his mind and lowers that to 200$. Then a third time he changes his mind and says he doesn't want to compensate me at all. I'm left frustrated because besides being rude, he did not at any time tell me he was unhappy with the work that I was doing. So my question is; Is the above a valid reason to back out of a verbal contract in your opinion?"}
{"_id": "59044", "title": "Would you consider using training/mentoring from LearnersParadise.com?", "text": "My initial question deserves some explanation. I signed up for an account at learnersparadise.com. After signing up I couldn't login so I opted to use their \"send password\" feature. Upon receiving my password in my email I confirmed two things A) They trimmed off 2 of the last digits of my 10-digit password without informing me and saved it that way in their database B) my password is not saved in their database using a one-way hash since they were able to email me my password. I'm quite certain that both of these are perfectly awful programming practices. I suspect that the mentors/trainers at learnersparadise are not necessarily affiliated with the website and it's design since they are basically people like you and me (hopefully more skill than me) who have signed up to become mentors. However, I'm still uncertain about signing up for training/mentoring at a site that uses such poor programming practices themselves? Would you let learnersparadise poor programming practices affect your opinion of their trainers/mentors?"}
{"_id": "161668", "title": "Passing the data of a certain page to another page. Windows Phone 7", "text": "The user will fill out information in page 1, and the data will be seen in the other page listed in a listbox. Is it advisable to use data binding? I've been studying/researching about data binding already for about 2 days and still couldn't understand it. Simple example would really help."}
{"_id": "214005", "title": "Sync / send data between front end and back end systems for an Ecommerce site", "text": "A client recently had a new backend .net stock management system developed that hooks into their EPOS and allows their stores to keep track of orders, products, customers, etc from a single central database that utilizes MS SQL Server 2003. The client hopes to use this as an opportunity to renew/re- develop their site to also utilize this centralized back end database. I have experience with e-commerce, but this is my first time developing a site that needs to work with the companies back end systems. I had been hoping to use an off the shelf platform such as Magento to make the development process smoother and allow for easy upgrades and the use of plugins/modules in the future. However, having looked at the schema for their new backend systems it is apparent that there could be several problems. Their database has a lot of design issues, the tables are badly normalized, and their approach to the database design seems dated to me. If I was to use an off the shelf platform like Magento, the only way I can see it working is to re-create all the products/categories/customers in the front end DB, this may have to be done manually because of the differences in schema between the backend (centralized db) and frontend(magento db). That would be a mamoth task, and would create a new problem of how to deal with the replication of data (products, stock levels, prices, orders, order statuses). The client currently manages all the products and order data on their .net system and wants to continue to do so, so there would need to be a way to update the sites db when they make changes to their back end systems (E.G in the case order has been shipped/canceled/etc). Like wise the centralized database would need to be updated from the front-end when a customer makes an order, updating stock levels, etc. These are just two examples of data that will need to be synchronized, but their are countless other scenarios. Does anyone have experience working with Magento or other platforms in situations similar to the above? How did you deal with data replication and sending data between the back end centralized db and Front end db? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the best setup/architecture for a site like this, any pointers in the right direction would be really appreciated. In retrospect I can't help but feel the best solution would be to create an in-house platform from scratch that can directly connect to their centralized database instead of using an off the shelf platform and worrying about syncing data between backend/frontend. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "219871", "title": "How effective are code signing certificates when it comes to customer behavior or acceptance?", "text": "Whenever a potential customer downloads a copy of my software they get the \"Unknown Publisher\" warning message. I understand that if I purchase a code signing certificate this message goes away and the customer does not get the scary warning. I'd like to know if anyone has information on how effective these code signing certificates are with regard to customer behavior. What difference did you see in customer behavior or acceptance after you signed your code using a certificate?"}
{"_id": "255898", "title": "Why did the creators of the Internet Protocol decide to use IP addresses to identify a particular computer?", "text": "Why did the creators of the Internet Protocol decide to use IP addresses to identify a particular computer? Why not just have a unique ID assigned to each computer upon manufacture, then use that ID for identification of the computer?"}
{"_id": "236693", "title": "An efficient way of starting an arbitrary number of consumer threads?", "text": "I have a Producer/Consumer implementation where the number of consumers is configurable (this is a form of configurable throttling). The producer and consumer are kicked off like this:               var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();     var processCancelToken = cts.Token;          Task.Run(() => Parallel.Invoke(new ParallelOptions() { CancellationToken = processCancelToken }                                    , producer                                    , consumer                                    )                    , processCancelToken);      The producer action is quite simple and just populates a BlockingCollection with objects that are derived from System.Threading.Tasks.Task (yes it is possible!). Here is a simplified example:               var pollingInterval = 30000;          var producer = new Action(() =>     {         Random rnd = new Random(DateTime.Now.Second);         while (!processCancelToken.IsCancellationRequested)         {             for (int ii = 0; ii < 10; ii++)             {                 var r = rnd.Next(2, 15);                 _mainQueue.Add(new Task(() =>                 {                     //this is a dummy task for illustrative purposes                     Console.WriteLine(\"        Queued task starting, set to sleep {0} seconds, ID: {1}\", r, Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);                      Thread.Sleep(r*1000);                 }));                 Console.WriteLine(\"    Producer has added task to queue\");                  }             System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(pollingInterval);         }         Console.WriteLine(\"Exiting producer\");     }      For this example it creates an anonymous task that sleeps for a random number of seconds between 2 and 15. In the real code this producer polls the database, extracts data entities representing work items, then transforms those into executable tasks that are added to the collection. I then have a consumer task that uses a `Parallel.For()` to start _n_ instances of an anonymous action which then dequeues a task from the collection, then starts and waits on the task, then repeats:               var numberConsumerThreads = 3;          var consumer = new Action(() =>     {         Parallel.For(0, numberConsumerThreads, (x) =>         {             //this action should continue to dequeue work items until it is cancelled             while (!processCancelToken.IsCancellationRequested)             {                 var dequeuedTask = _mainQueue.Take(processCancelToken);                 Console.WriteLine(\"   Consumer #{0} has taken task from the queue\", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);                      dequeuedTask.Start();                 while (!processCancelToken.IsCancellationRequested)                 {                     if (dequeuedTask.Wait(500))                         break;                     Console.WriteLine(\"   Consumer #{0} task wait elapsed\", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);                 }             }             Console.WriteLine(\"Exiting consumer #{0}\", Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId);         });     }      **The question:** is this an efficient way to start and operate an arbitrary number of consumers? Or is there a more efficient way of using PLINQ from within the main consumer action that both continues to execute queued tasks, blocks while there isn't any, and can still be cancelled using `processCancelToken`? (Note: `processCancelToken` is operated separately to cancel tokens contained within the queued tasks - they are independently cancelable. This all runs within a Windows service and `processCancelToken` is used to cancel everything if the service is stopped)."}
{"_id": "129206", "title": "Make or Buy: Web Based Accounting App Advice needed\u2026", "text": "My company has a client (in the US) that currently offers small businesses web-based payroll software. They want to offer small businesses a web-based accounting package that integrates well with their current web-based offerings. The company does have a CPA on staff which is a bonus. To this point they have said it needs to be a double-entry accounting system, GL, subledger, sales invoicing, cash receipts processing, payables entry and payment processing. So my question is \u2026 Should we try and write this ourselves from scratch with the on-staff CPA, try the open source path and see if we can adjust it to what we need or is there a different option that I\u2019m not thinking of? Any advice in any direction would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "213055", "title": "Module system for OOP language", "text": "I'm designing a simple OO programming language. It's statically typed, compiled, and executed by a VM - similar to Java. The difference is that I don't want to have such a strong emphasis on OOP. The code itself will mostly resemble C++ (classes, functions, and variables allowed in the file scope). One of the things that I need to have is a module system. I have the following figured out:   1. Every file is a module (once compiled) - like Python   2. Programmers must import a module with the `import` keyword, which causes the compiler to search for modules in standard directories and the file directory (the VM has to do this at runtime as well) And now I have no idea how should I introduce the concept of submodules and module hierarchy. One option, for example, is to depend on the directory hierarchy, so that `import engine.graphics.renderer` would expect to find a directory called \"engine\" in the working directory, and inside a directory called \"graphics\", with a module called \"renderer\". What are the drawbacks of such a design? Am I missing anything?"}
{"_id": "23885", "title": "How is quality important to the programmer, the person?", "text": "I didn't ask how the quality of the software is important to the product itself, the customers/users, the manager or the company. I want to know how it is important to the **programmer** that build it. I'll be interested in any **books** (please specify the chapter), **articles** , **blog post** , and of course your **personal opinion** on the subject regardless your experience."}
{"_id": "74611", "title": "How to present self-taught knowledge?", "text": "I work as a senior software engineer (5+ years of exp) at the moment at my company, developing some networked systems. Since a year, I've noticed that I'm becoming increasingly interested in distributed/high-performance file systems (like apache hdfs, GFS) , cloud- scale databases (like azure table storage, hypertable) and that led me to start reading a lot about it. I've started buying books, playing with existing similar open-source software, reading their source code and modifying them as an exercise. To sum up, I've read around 10 books on that topic (including topics that are somehow relate to DFS, like low-level high-performance IO optimization techniques, to minimize the hardware-related latency), spent approximately 15-25 hours per week hacking some code in that area, implementing some small proof-of-concept projects for a whole year. It was pretty fun. But as it is said that the appetite grows with eating, and now I want to start spending all my days working on such systems - in short, change my job and start developing a commercial, widely used DFS. Now, is there a way other than going back to school and doing a PhD on that topic, to find a job that would be related to an area that has not been on my resume (commercial experience) for the past five years? How to convince an employer that I have managed to gain more knowledge than my resume is showing in that area? I am aware that I would be applying for a much less senior position that currently I'm holding."}
{"_id": "141478", "title": "Will javascript be in the HTML5 standard ", "text": "I'm pretty new to the web development scene, and I just want to be absolutely clear on this because I've read a few conflicting statements. I was under the impression that \"html5\" is a particular way of constructing xml to represent data for a webpage and \"javascript\" is a programming language that runs as client-side code in the browser. But left and right I see APIs for javascript (workers, geolocation, local storage, etc.) being referred to as an \"html5 technology\". Wikipedia says that html5 doesn't have a standard yet, so I can't look it up to see if it somehow mandates stuff about javascript. So will APIs for javascript somehow be apart of the html5 standard? Or has it become a common bad practice to label javascript APIs \"html5 technology\"?"}
{"_id": "253049", "title": "Best practice: Secure Android app online authentication", "text": "Currently, I develop an Android App needing online authentication for login (and registration). The main focus is on **security**. I\u2019m amaing for:   * keeping the users\u2019 passwords safe and   * preventing MITM attacks. Secondary aims are performance and user experience. Besides, I\u2019d prefer not to use third-party solutions. I studied a lot about different approaches[1][2][3]. My problem is now how to _combine_ these ideas into _one_ secure mechanism. To put it differently, **have I overlooked something?** Long story short, I came up with the following: ![Flowchart. Basically, if an authToken is present, it is sent to the server and checked there. If successful, the login process is completed. Else or if no token was present, the user has to enter his credentials. His/Her password is hashed, sent to the server which generates a token and doing so completes the process and enables the user to login automatically the next time.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZnxZO.png) The illustration you see shows the login process performed by the app\u2019s background Service before it downloads notifications for this user. The idea is to send the hashed user password only once and then to work with a server- side generated authentication token which is kept in an encrypted **KeyStore** on the phone and renewed on every login process. Further information: The app\u2013server communication is done over **HTTPS**. The hash is a randomly **salted** **bcrypt** created on the phone. The database table consists only of `id`, `username`, `hash`, `salt`, `authtoken`. What do you think about these considerations?   I am looking forward to your critism and feedback. Qdeep _Some ideas were \u201cstolen\u201d in theThe definitive guide to form based website authentication here on SO. Others found by searching for `android secure authentication`._"}
{"_id": "253047", "title": "Better support for controlling printing options like headers and footers from Javascript", "text": "Why is it that browsers do not provide a mecanism to set the printing defaults regarding headers and footers from within the app? Web apps are fully fledged apps nowadays, and modern browsers are capable of sending a very well formatted page to a printer (or even download it as a PDF), but web apps cannot rely on this method because browsers don't allow them to control the metadata completely. Current possibilities don't allow websites to store the printing settings along with the report or file on the server. Each browser provides it's own mandatory dialog form to set printing settings that could be replaced when needed by a more convenient experience: in-app options, adapted to the use case, cloud-persistent and consistent along different browsers. The options that are currently available are:   1. Delegating part of the work on the user (i.e., having him/her change the metadata options and paper size/orientation themselves).   2. Using other methods that can quickly become too expensive and complicated, like generating PDF's on the server for the user to download. Opting for number 1 is not always our decision. As professional web developers, the final users are usually not our direct clients, but our client's target audience. Also, we would be forcing the final user to do extra work. Experience says that it wouldn't be done and reports will be printed with the default settings of the browser, usually with headers and footers that the user don't really want (and the associated paper waste if he/she decides to print it againg without them). Option 2 --generating server side PDF's-- is becoming less of an option every day. Modern web apps are heavy users of javascript, and reports benefit from excellent plotting libraries made with JS that can generate charts in HTML canvas elements that could be printed right away if we weren't using this \"do it all over again on the server\" approach. The resulting reports never look the same, and programmers have to maintain two versions of every report.   Moreover, generating PDF's on the server can be really slow and resource consuming. So, is there a compelling reason why browsers programmers opted not to support this kind of customization?"}
{"_id": "84263", "title": "What was Java enterprise programming like before Eclipse?", "text": "I'm your standard Java/Oracle developer at a large software firm and Eclipse 3.6 is what I spend most of day in. Java is incredibly verbose and that can be painful (but we don't need another blog post explaining this), but Eclipse eases a lot of that pain with one-click renaming, auto-completion, dynamically adjusting your classpath, etc. I cannot imagine trying to do my job without a tool like Eclipse at my disposal. So for those of you who were around before my time, what was it like? The disadvantages are obvious, but were there any advantages?"}
{"_id": "107884", "title": "To branch or not to branch?", "text": "Till recently my development workflow was the following:   1. Get the feature from product owner   2. Make a branch (if feature is more than 1 day)   3. Implement it in a branch   4. Merge changes from main branch to my branch (to reduce conflicts during backward merging)   5. Merge my branch back to main branch Sometimes there were problems with merging, but in general I liked it. But recently I see more and more followers of idea to not make branches as it makes more difficult to practice continuous integration, continuous delivery, etc. And it sounds especially funny from people with distributed VCS background who were talking so much about great merging implementations of Git, Mercurial, etc. So the question is should we use branches nowadays?"}
{"_id": "243205", "title": "Understanding branching strategy/workflow correctly", "text": "I'm using svn without branches (trunk-only) for a very long time at my workplace. I had discovered most or all of the issues related to projects which do not have any branching strategy. Unlikely this is not going to change at my workplace but for my private projects. For my private projects which most includes coworkers and working together at the same time on different features I like to have an robust branching strategy with supports long-term releases powered by git. I find out that the Atlassian Toolchain (JIRA, Stash and Bamboo) helped me most and it also recommending me an branching strategy which I like to verify for the team needs. The branching strategy was taken directly from Atlassian Stash recommendation with a small modification to the hotfix branch tree. All hotfixes should also merged into mainline. ![Planned Branching Strategy](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zOdcE.png) **The branching strategy in words**   * _mainline_ (also known as _master_ with git or _trunk_ with svn) contains the \"state of the art\" developing release. Everything here was successfully checked with various automated tests (through Bamboo) and looks like everything is working. It is not proven as working because of possible missing tests. It is ready to use but not recommended for production.   * _feature_ covers all new features which are not completely finished. Once a feature is finished it will be merged into _mainline_. Sample branch: `feature/ISSUE-2-A-nice-Feature`   * _bugfix_ fixes non-critical bugs which can wait for the next normal release. Sample branch: `bugfix/ISSUE-1-Some-typos`   * _production_ owns the latest release.   * _hotfix_ fixes critical bugs which have to be release urgent to _mainline_ , _production_ and all affected long-term *release*es. Sample branch: `hotfix/ISSUE-3-Check-your-math`   * _release_ is for long-term maintenance. Sample branches: `release/1.0`, `release/1.1` `release/1.0-rc1` * * * I am not an expert so please provide me feedback. Which problems might appear? Which parts are missing or slowing down the productivity?"}
{"_id": "213959", "title": "Web API Development and SVN", "text": "We are planning to develop a ASP.NET Web API project starting soon. For source control we use svn. We typically follow the pattern of the trunk being stable and doing all of our work in the branches. Most of the time we are lucky that one developer is working on the project. For this Web API project there are at least two, possibly three developers working on different parts. By this I mean that one may be working on a set of controllers for working with document models while the other developer is working on a controller or controllers for user authentication and maintenance. Seeing that these two should not have overlapping work what are advantages/disadvantages to both developers working on a single branch with daily \"updates to latest version\" to keep both working copies consistent versus each developer working on an individual branch and merging the two branches back into the trunk when they are complete? It seems to me that a single branch would be better in that the daily updates will keep each developer up on what the other is doing and this can possibly help share code. My main concern is with performing trial and error coding. What happens when some code is committed that really probably should not be pulled down by the other developer? Should that even be a concern? Another thought I had was that with each developer having their own branch if either developer has code that the other can use that is stable enough we merge that back to the trunk. Then the developers would update daily from the trunk instead. Finally I had a thought that maybe we create one branch for this \"feature set\" and then each developer branch from that branch. They would then push stable features back to the main branch and update daily from the main branch. This would keep the trunk clean and stable until the feature set is released. Those are my thoughts and sorry for the long question. I really want to start this project right and any guidance would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "183819", "title": "Can branching ever be considered a bad practice?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  To branch or not to branch? A co-worker is against branching. I use branching all the time. I put the team onto a basic 3 branch system. I create my own feature branches. Said co-worker tends to have good ideas, follow best practices and I tend to agree with him on many such things. Except this. The successful software shops I've read about: Microsoft, Google, fogcreek all use branching. My co-worker argues that because of the way our shop runs (medical field), branching causes problems. Instead, he says we should create many small project's (*.csproj files) and never work on the same code at the same time. I agree, we have issues with merging. I argue the root cause of these issues are a lack team communication and a lack of knowledge on how to correctly use our source control system to full effect (TFS). I consider his approach to be programming in Silo's and a DLL management nightmare. Are there situations where Branching is a bad idea? Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "252712", "title": "Develop in trunk and then branch off, or in release branch and then merge back?", "text": "Say that we've decided on following a \"release-based\" branching strategy, so we'll have a branch for each release, and we can add maintenance updates as sub-branches from those. Does it matter whether we:   1. develop and stabilize a **new** release in the trunk and **then** \"save\" that state in a new release branch; or    2. first create that release branch and only merge into the trunk when the branch is stable? I find the former to be easier to deal with (less merging necessary), especially when we don't develop on multiple upcoming releases at the same time. Under normal circumstances we would all be working on the trunk, and only work on released branches if there are bugs to fix. What is the trunk actually used for in the latter approach? It seems to be almost obsolete, because I could create a future release branch based on the most recent _released_ branch rather than from the trunk. **Details based oncomment below:**   * Our product consists of a base platform and a number of modules on top; each is developed and even distributed separately from each other.    * Most team members work on several of these areas, so there's partial overlap between people.   * We generally work only on 1 future release and not at all on existing releases. One or two might work on a bugfix for an existing release for short periods of time.   * Our work isn't _compiled_ and it's a mix of Unix shell scripts, XML configuration files, SQL packages, and more -- so there's no way to have push-button builds that can be tested. That's done manually, which is a bit laborious.   * A release cycle is typically half a year or more for the base platform; often 1 month for the modules."}
{"_id": "246826", "title": "Git branches avoided by the office where I work", "text": "The place I work at does the following:   1. They manage a dev version of an app    2. They manage another replicate version of that app, they call this the rep version   3. The live version of the app that is running   4. They believe branches are evil We are asked to manually copy paste the code from one version to another. What are the circumstances under which git branches are considered harmful?(we all add code to master)"}
{"_id": "119073", "title": "Values, types, kinds, and\u2026?", "text": "We all know what a value is. A type is the type of a value. A kind is (loosely) the type of a type. A type constructs a value; a kind constructs a type. So what is the type of a kind, a thing that constructs kinds? Is there such a thing? Does it have a name? Is it useful?"}
{"_id": "145406", "title": "How should the cppcms template hierarchy be used", "text": "I understand that the hierarchy, in cppcms for templates, goes skin (topmost, representing a namespace), then view (representing a class) and finally template (representing a function). I want to know when I should use a skin and when I should use a view; would each page be a skin or would it be a skin per application, etc. Could you explain when each should be used and could you give some examples?"}
{"_id": "145404", "title": "Replace Type Code with Class (From Refactoring [Fowler])", "text": "This strategy involves replacing the likes of this:               public class Politician     {         public const int Infidelity = 0;         public const int Embezzlement = 1;         public const int FlipFlopping = 2;         public const int Murder = 3;         public const int BabyKissing = 4;              public int MostNotableGrievance { get; set; }     }      With:               public class Politician     {         public MostNotableGrievance MostNotableGrievance { get; set; }     }          public class MostNotableGrievance     {         public static readonly MostNotableGrievance Infidelity = new MostNotableGrievance(0);         public static readonly MostNotableGrievance Embezzlement = new MostNotableGrievance(1);         public static readonly MostNotableGrievance FlipFlopping = new MostNotableGrievance(2);         public static readonly MostNotableGrievance Murder = new MostNotableGrievance(3);         public static readonly MostNotableGrievance BabyKissing = new MostNotableGrievance(4);              public int Code { get; private set; }              private MostNotableGrievance(int code)         {             Code = code;         }     }      Why exactly is this preferable to making the type an enumeration, like so:               public class Politician     {         public MostNotableGrievance MostNotableGrievance { get; set; }     }          public enum MostNotableGrievance     {         Infidelity = 0,         Embezzlement = 1,         FlipFlopping = 2,         Murder = 3,         BabyKissing = 4     }      There is no behavior associated with the type and if there was you would be using a different type of refactoring anyways, for example, 'Replace Type Code with Subclasses' + 'Replace Conditional with Polymorphism'. However, the author does explain why he frowns on this method (in Java?): > Numeric type codes, or enumerations, are a common feature of C-based > languages. With symbolic names they can be quite readable. The problem is > that the symbolic name is only an alias; the compiler still sees the > underlying number. The compiler type checks using the number 177 not the > symbolic name. Any method that takes the type code as an argument expects a > number, and there is nothing to force a symbolic name to be used. This can > reduce readability and be a source of bugs. But when trying to apply this statement to C#, this statement doesn't appear to be true: it won't accept a number because an enumeration is actually considered to be a class. So the following code:               public class Test     {         public void Do()         {             var temp = new Politician { MostNotableGrievance = 1 };         }     }      Will not compile. So can this refactoring be considered unecessary in newer high-level languages, like C#, or am I not considering something?"}
{"_id": "215423", "title": "What is lightweight lock in distributed shared memory systems?", "text": "I started reading Tanenbaum's Distributed Systems book a while ago. I read about two phase locking and timestamp reordering in transactions chapter. While having a deeper look from google I heard of lightweight transactions/lightweight transactional memory. But I couldn't find any good explanation and implementation. So what is lightweight memory? What are the benefits of lightweight locks? And how can I implement them?"}
{"_id": "202626", "title": "Truth condition testing with BOOL", "text": "BOOL myBool;     myBool = YES;     ...     if (myBool) {       doFoo();     }      I have read that because there are instances where the above does not actually call the `doFoo()` function, it is best to instead always test against `YES`, as such:               if (myBool == YES)      But for the most part this just makes my code wordy and repetitive. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "223278", "title": "APIs, Versioning and Models", "text": "I have my (JSON) API structured like this (which I'm pretty happy with): ### API Project               /_V1         /Controllers             V1EntityController.cs        // Applies to version 1 only     /_V2         /Controllers                   V2OtherEntityController.cs   // Applies to versions 2 and below     /Controllers/         EntityController.cs              // Applies to versions 2 and above         OtherEntityController.cs         // Applies to versions 3 and above      ### Core Project               /Data/Entity.cs     /Data/OtherEntity.cs      But as the project has progressed both the `Entity` and `OtherEntity` classes has become full of legacy properties and a bunch of `ShouldSerializexxx` methods. They also then also contain properties and sub-classes which are only for serialization. Would a better solution for this be to create \"Models\" in the API project like so: ### API Project               /_V1         /Controllers             V1EntityController.cs         /Models             V1EntityModel.cs     /_V2         /Controllers                   V2OtherEntityController.cs         /Models             V2OtherEntityModel.cs     /Controllers         EntityController.cs         OtherEntityController.cs     /Models         EntityModel.cs         OtherEntityModel.cs      Then convert to and from the classes in the core project? What's the industry recognised practice for handling this scenario?"}
{"_id": "166570", "title": "Programming vs Planning", "text": "Recently, I have been tasked with more high-level planning assignments due to the lead developer of my team leaving. I hate long-term planning. My brain just doesn't naturally seem wired for it, and I am not interested enough in it to spend the time to learn it (it is hard enough to keep up with the programming side of the picture). Can one still be a good programmer without being a high-level planner, too? As a senior programmer, is one expected to be good at planning out the entire product and picking a date of completion?"}
{"_id": "22685", "title": "What is Configuration Management?", "text": "In all projects that I have been involved with that have had input from an outside consultant the question has been asked about what sort of Configuration Management we were using. In none of these cases has the consultant been able to define Configuration Management. So what is it?"}
{"_id": "111512", "title": "How to deal with an outsourcing company that brings your production system down?", "text": "We have a high load SAAS product and due to lack of resources the board has outsouced reporting and OLAP & Warehouse work to a 3rd Party Company. When we started working with them, they accidentally DOS'ed our production system, now they have made too many long running queries on the production databases and slowed the system down to unuseable. They are about to deliver and we have a maintainence contract with them. How do you deal with 3rd companies you can't really trust no to bring your production system down? And what do you do about it when they do? Has anyone any experience of this? (note they have a test environment set up to do everything they need to on). I'm not looking for answers on how to prevent someone bringing down our system, I'm after what to do with the 3rd party company itself."}
{"_id": "189136", "title": "Unit testing in Django", "text": "I'm really struggling to write effective unit tests for a large Django project. I have reasonably good test coverage, but I've come to realize that the tests I've been writing are definitely integration/acceptance tests, not unit tests at all, and I have critical portions of my application that are not being tested effectively. I want to fix this ASAP. Here's my problem. My schema is deeply relational, and heavily time-oriented, giving my model object high internal coupling and lots of state. Many of my model methods query based on time intervals, and I've got a lot of `auto_now_add` going on in timestamped fields. So take a method that looks like this for example:               def summary(self, startTime=None, endTime=None):         # ... logic to assign a proper start and end time          # if none was provided, probably using datetime.now()              objects = self.related_model_set.manager_method.filter(...)              return sum(object.key_method(startTime, endTime) for object in objects)      How does one approach testing something like this? Here's where I am so far. It occurs to me that the unit testing objective should be _given some mocked behavior`by key_method` on its arguments, is `summary` correctly filtering/aggregating to produce a correct result?_ Mocking datetime.now() is straightforward enough, but how can I mock out the rest of the behavior?   * I could use fixtures, but I've heard pros and cons of using fixtures for building my data (poor maintainability being a con that hits home for me).   * I could also setup my data through the ORM, but that can be limiting, because then I have to create related objects as well. And the ORM doesn't let you mess with `auto_now_add` fields manually.   * Mocking the ORM is another option, but not only is it tricky to mock deeply nested ORM methods, but the logic in the ORM code gets mocked out of the test, and mocking seems to make the test really dependent on the internals and dependencies of the function-under-test. The toughest nuts to crack seem to be the functions like this, that sit on a few layers of models and lower-level functions and are very dependent on the time, even though these functions may not be super complicated. My overall problem is that no matter how I seem to slice it, my tests are looking way more complex than the functions they are testing."}
{"_id": "196058", "title": "Wise way to implement a website login and database tables for a small shop", "text": "Im building this website for a small store and I was told that its better **not** to keep the login and the rest of the users information on the same table. Now im wondering, what is the best way to implement this website's database? Some of the database tables are:   * Customers   * Providers   * Products   * Etc.. I need to have different users, after someone is logged in the site, depending on their rights they can do a series of things:   * If they are a customer they can order stuff   * If they are employees they can order stuff, manage stock, add customers, etc   * If they are the owner or administrator they can add employees and everything else. Should I keep the login and the rest of the information of the user in the same table?"}
{"_id": "61080", "title": "How to (professionally) back up reasons for choosing open source technologies in a large project", "text": "I know the title is a bit vague so I'll try to be more precise in explaining what's my actual question (I apologize in advance if this is a duplicate). I work for a small company (8 people) that works with Linux / PHP / MySQL to deliver various solutions (CRM amongst everything) to several larger financial institutions. The process of actually winning the contracts was always painful and I was tasked with explaining why use MySQL and not MSSQL or PostgreSQL or Oracle 11g, why use PHP and not a compiled language or ASP.NET or Java and the list goes on. And this is the problem - I really am not proficient enough with mentioned commercial solutions (databases). I've done some worth with mentioned databases, but that was simple testing, such as how to create view in this RDBMS opposed to MySQL, how to do a trigger here, how to declare a stored procedure here, how to profile a query - but, I've never worked with any of the mentioned databases extensively as much as I have with MySQL. On the other hand, I've been introduced to MySQL in early 2000. only to be more and more proficient with it, its quirks and even extending it trough UDFs or hacking the source code in order to see how things work behind the scene - so, as I like to think, I know how MySQL works, what to expect of it and how to add functionality we require. A few days ago we started initial negotiations with our next-to-be client who is in need of bespoke solution for client / business management. They have their own team, however those people didn't succeed in delivering what the company actually needs - which is where my company enters. Naturally, first thing I wanted to know was what kind of technology was used to build systems that are currently running and keeping the client's company running - and I saw things from Postgres for smaller apps to MSSQL for the actual client database. Of course, as the company isn't satisfied with their current system(s), that implies something is going wrong. Currently, there's no way of synchronizing data between the main company and its branches, thus - there's no unified client database. It's incredibly hard to track expenses, again - due to disparate systems. And here is what I have problems with - as soon as I mentioned technology we use, the company's development team frowned upon us and belittled us saying that open source technologies are insecure, buggy, prone to hacking, slow opposed to commercial ones (without any actual proof). Just for argument's sake, I've worked with larger datasets built upon MySQL (25TB+) that stores various information and I've been able to keep up with any requirement I had so far when it comes to response times and performance of the application built upon MySQL. But, since I am not experienced enough with other databases - I'm unable to provide actual facts representing that technology I use is at least on par (if not better + cheaper!) than commercial solutions. How would you defend your (my) position when faced with a technical person who favors Microsoft's software over open source one in a company that employs several tens of thousands of people with over 10 million customers? Would you even choose MySQL for the database behind a system that should be powering such a large company? If not, what would you choose and why? Sorry for the wall of text :)"}
{"_id": "26599", "title": "What are some good examples of using pass by name?", "text": "When I write programs I using pass by value or pass by reference always seem to be logical methods. When learning about different programming languages I came across pass by name. Pass by name is a parameter passing method that waits to evaluate the parameter value until it is used. See Stack Overflow pass by name question for more information on the method. What I would like to know is: what are some good examples and/or reasons to use pass by name and should it be re-introduced into some more modern languages."}
{"_id": "167799", "title": "Pulling changes from master to my work branch?", "text": "There's two of us working on something. We're using this branch structure   * master   * dev-A   * dev-B We both work on separate branches (dev-A,B) and whenever we're done - we promote our changes to master. But the drawback of this is we can't get changes the other developer makes. Everything exists in the master tree - but we can't get the latest updates the other developer made. Is there a way to resolve this or should we change our branch structure (per feature?)?"}
{"_id": "60970", "title": "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Selection Criteria[SO?]", "text": "How are Microsoft's MVPs selected? I read somewhere that most of the professionals are selected on the basis of the usenet(other communities) performance. Is is true for SO as well. Can someone be elected as MS MVP on the basis of his/her stackoverflow performance?"}
{"_id": "221696", "title": "How to represent a geometric line programmatically?", "text": "I have been trying to design a library to do some simple geometric computations in an Euclidean space regardless of its dimension. While it is easy to represent points, vectors, hyperspheres and hyperplanes in a generic fashion, I am still unable to find a generic way to represent a (infinite) line, even though lines share properties across dimensions. My best guess is that I could store some of the parameters of its parametric equation since it is easy to extend a parametric equation to a line in a space of any dimension:               x = x0 + at     y = y0 + bt     z = z0 + ct     // can be extended to any dimension      But even with this equation, I can't find what should be stored and what should not be in order to compare lines. With an ideal solution, two objects of type `Line`:   * would be programmatically equal (with `operator==`),   * would have equal representations in the memory. What should I store in order to achieve that?"}
{"_id": "60974", "title": "Feeling of Despair before programming?", "text": "When I have a programming assignment or some program that I have to start on I sometimes have this feeling of despair, I just do whatever to starting and then I just start feeling like crap, and that makes me not start even more...it's like a vicious circle. All my friends seem to just get things done...Is it just me or are there others that have this problem? Am I not a in \"love\" with programming? If there are others, how do you overcome this feeling and just start? EDIT: @Kennith it's actually kinda hard to describe but it kinda like very mild depression, i think it may be because the work required of us is so challenging. I remember in high school I loved programming because after learning the synthax of a language(ie java) you felt like an expert and could do a lot of programming. But in university the there is just so much complexity to programming and so many little things that I never considered before, log time, data structures, insane algorithms, graphs, np problems, etc.that I think I've lost that confidence that I once had. I don't think I've had to do any programming over the last 3-4 years where I knew much about what I was doing (had an overview but it was all new territory), every single project I work on is new material, new concepts, language, theory, etc. It's good for learning...in hindsight, but when your learning it's hard and frustrating. But you sort of never feel like your progressing or actually accomplishing anything. You feel good for a little while after finishing one proj, but as soon as you look the next one...its back to ground zero. What I love(d) about programming is that feeling of mastery, that was motivation enough, now when you're always doing something new, its really hard to get that feeling back."}
{"_id": "150157", "title": "Plagued by multithreaded bugs", "text": "On my new team that I manage, the majority of our code is platform, TCP socket, and http networking code. All C++. Most of it originated from other developers that have left the team. The current developers on the team are very smart, but mostly junior in terms of experience. Our biggest problem: multi-threaded concurrency bugs. Most of our class libraries are written to be asynchronous by use of some thread pool classes. Methods on the class libraries often enqueue long running taks onto the thread pool from one thread and then the callback methods of that class get invoked on a different thread. As a result, we have a lot of edge case bugs involving incorrect threading assumptions. This results in subtle bugs that go beyond just having critical sections and locks to guard against concurrency issues. What makes these problems even harder is that the attempts to fix are often incorrect. Some mistakes I've observed the team attempting (or within the legacy code itself) includes something like the following: **Common mistake #1** \\- Fixing concurrency issue by just put a lock around the shared data, but forgetting about what happens when methods don't get called in an expected order. Here's a very simple example:               void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status)     {         m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status);     }          void Foo::Shutdown()     {         m_pBar->Cleanup();         delete m_pBar;         m_pBar=nullptr;     }      So now we have a bug in which Shutdown could get called while OnHttpNetworkRequestComplete is occuring on. A tester finds the bug, captures the crash dump, and assigns the bug to a developer. He in turn fixes the bug like this.               void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status)     {         AutoLock lock(m_cs);         m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status);     }          void Foo::Shutdown()     {         AutoLock lock(m_cs);         m_pBar->Cleanup();         delete m_pBar;         m_pBar=nullptr;     }      The above fix looks good until you realize there's an even more subtle edge case. What happens if Shutdown gets called _before_ OnHttpRequestComplete gets called back? The real world examples my team has are even more complex, and the edge cases are even harder to spot during the code review process. **Common Mistake #2** \\- fixing deadlock issues by blindly exiting the lock, wait for the other thread to finish, then re-enter the lock - but without handling the case that the object just got updated by the other thread! **Common Mistake #3** \\- Even though the objects are reference counted, the shutdown sequence \"releases\" it's pointer. But forgets to wait for the thread that is still running to release it's instance. As such, components are shutdown cleanly, then spurious or late callbacks are invoked on an object in an state not expecting any more calls. There are other edge cases, but the bottom line is this: **Multithreaded programming is just plain hard, even for smart people.** As I catch these mistakes, I spend time discussing the errors with each developer on developing a more appropriate fix. But I suspect they are often confused on how to solve each issue because of the enormous amount of legacy code that the \"right\" fix will involve touching. We're going to be shipping soon, and I'm sure the patches we're applying will hold for the upcoming release. Afterwards, we're going to have some time to improve the code base and refactor where needed. We won't have time to just re-write everything. And the majority of the code isn't all that bad. But I'm looking to refactor code such that threading issues can be avoided altogether. One approach I am considering is this. For each significant platform feature, have a dedicated single thread where all events and network callbacks get marshalled onto. Similar to COM apartment threading in Windows with use of a message loop. Long blocking operations could still get dispatched to a work pool thread, but the completion callback is invoked on on the component's thread. Components could possibly even share the same thread. Then all the class libraries running inside the thread can be written under the assumption of a single threaded world. Before I go down that path, I am also very interested if there are other standard techniques or design patterns for dealing with multithreaded issues. And I have to emphasize - something beyond a book that describes the basics of mutexes and semaphores. What do you think? I am also interested in any other approaches to take towards a refactoring process. Including any of the following:   1. Literature or papers on design patterns around threads. Something beyond an introduction to mutexes and semaphores. We don't need massive parallelism either, just ways to design an object model so as to handle asynchronous events from other threads **correctly**.   2. Ways to diagram the threading of various components, so that it will be easy to study and evolve solutions for. (That is, a UML equivalent for discussing threads across objects and classes)   3. Educating your development team on the issues with multithreaded code.   4. **What would you do?**"}
{"_id": "65250", "title": "As a professional .NET developer, should you learn to work with MSIL using reflection?", "text": "I was reading through the code of StackOverflow's new SQL Object Mapper. And I noticed at the bottom of the SqlMapper.cs there is some code that I had never seen before. After reading some of the documentation on MSDN and a tutorial on MSIL this feels a little over my head. As a professional .NET developer (6 years), should I invest time to learn this? What is the advantage of understanding the ILGenerator? I hope I'm not confusing things and the question is clear. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "150150", "title": "Generic Handler vs Direct Reference", "text": "In a project where I'm working on the data access layer I'm trying to make a decision how to send data and objects to the next layer (and programmer). Is it better to tell him to   1. reference my dll, OR   2. should I build a generic handler and let him take the objects from there (i.e. json format) If I understand correctly, In case of 2. he would have to handle the objects on his own, whereas in case 1. he will have the entities I've built. Note: It is very probable that other people would need to take the same data, though, we're not up to that yet. Same question here - should I make it into a webservice, or have them access the handler?"}
{"_id": "65252", "title": "Migrating large system from WebForms to MVC", "text": "I'm looking for advice from people who have actually migrated a large system from WebForms to MVC. What are the things to watch out for? The literature says that both can co- exist for the same system but was it really that easy? Was managing authentication between the two seamless? Was maintenance easier/tougher after that? Thanks."}
{"_id": "220560", "title": "Storing a mailing address in a database: What structure should I use for International apps?", "text": "I will have international users use my database, but I don't know how the mailing system operates outside of the US. Are the concepts \"City\", \"State, Country and possibly \"Zip\" sufficient to capture any hierarchy (even if it was only 2 levels deep: (city/country)"}
{"_id": "220564", "title": "How exactly can I check for new rows in sql with ajax?", "text": "How do certain services, just like google plus and facebook, check for new content without reloading the page? Whenever you are on any of those websites a new notification of a post related content just pops up without the need to refresh the page. Can someone give me some tips on how this works? :)"}
{"_id": "150159", "title": "Fear of releasing a hobby project - how to overcome?", "text": "I don't know if this question is strictly related to software development, but still I'll give it a try: Like a lot of programmers, I love to work on hobby projects. Sometimes, seemingly good ideas turn out to be not so good, so I drop the project. But sometimes, something useful comes out of the project. So, I could release it, present it to the world, right? Wrong. Somehow, I don't seem to be able to make this step. I fear that my code is not good enough, I can always think of things which are suboptimal, of features which could be added. So, I don't release anything, I lose interest, and at one point abandon the project. Is this normal? How do you overcome such a situation?"}
{"_id": "227695", "title": "How do I better engage the users who starred my project on GitHub?", "text": "I recently put up a project, called Hebel, that I've been working on to GitHub. It's a framework for GPU accelerated deep learning written in Python and Nvidia CUDA. I posted about it on Google+ and soon afterwards it was picked up on Hacker News and went slightly viral for a few days. I later posted about it again in the Machine Learning subreddit as well and altogether my project picked up 822 stars and 47 forks on GitHub, which was really exhilarating. 822 stars means my project is in the top 200 Python projects on GitHub and in fact has more stars than some high profile and widely used Python projects like virtualenv. Despite the considerable interest for my project, I'm very disappointed with the actual engagement I have seen so far. None of the 47 forks of my projects have ever had any commits, I haven't received any pull requests, and only three issues submitted were submitted by two people. It seems that my project is potentially very interesting to many people, but they only star or fork it once and then never return to it again or use it on a continuous basis. How can I improve engagement in order to have users either submit bugs or enhancement requests or have contributors submit changes?"}
{"_id": "75566", "title": "Static Methods in Business Layer to achieve data from DAL! Yes? No?", "text": "Some advice here, I've run into a system where the DAL contents of hundreds of sql command calls are split up on a class per table. There are also a Business layer which get it's data from this DAL, recieving it further to other methods and layers in other places. Nearly 100% of those Business Methods are pure forwarding of data. Few of them contain logic that affect the data (because the data are already sorted/evaluated or somewhat in the sql-commands/stored-procedures. **Now to the real question.**   All of those methods in business layer are static.   This is easy because I can call them from everywhere without instantiation.   Is static methods really preferrable?   Why and how do you think? I mean static methods need to be in heap and so far I really can't se the cosmetic profit because of it. I also feel the whole system is very hard to debug, especially now because the system has V E R Y high variety of response time, without many changes in load from users."}
{"_id": "75562", "title": "Is reusability roughly synonymous with good design?", "text": "Reusability is a feature of good software design. Is reusability an acceptable gloss (\"brief notation of the meaning\") for good software design? Why?"}
{"_id": "75563", "title": "Software background building tools", "text": "I develop a cross-platform project (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) and use CMAKE, some python and platform-dependent scripts (sh, bat) for construction. Nevertheless I find the process of construction before release rather boring and annoying. Switching between computers, typing commands, copying binaries, eeww. Does anyone use some kind of building daemon? Something which can build project in the background by request or by reading special git/svn commit message."}
{"_id": "215349", "title": "Switch vs Polymorphism when dealing with model and view", "text": "I can't figure out a better solution to my problem. I have a view controller that presents a list of elements. Those elements are models that can be an instance of B, C, D, etc and inherit from A. So in that view controller, each item should go to a different screen of the application and pass some data when the user select one of them. The two alternatives that comes to my mind are (please ignore the syntax, it is not a specific language) 1) switch (I know that sucks)               //inside the view controller     void onClickItem(int index) {         A a = items.get(index);              switch(a.type) {              case b:                  B b = (B)a;                  go to screen X;                  x.v1 = b.v1; // fill X with b data                  x.v2 = b.v2;               case c:                  go to screen Y;              etc...         }     }      2) polymorphism               //inside the view controller     void onClickItem(int index) {         A a = items.get(index);         Screen s = new (a.getDestinationScreen()); //ignore the syntax         s.v1 = a.v1;   // fill s with information about A         s.v2 = a.v2;         show(s);     }          //inside B     Class getDestinationScreen(void) {         return Class(X);     }          //inside C     Class getDestinationScreen(void) {         return Class(Y);     }      My problem with solution 2 is that since B, C, D, etc are models, they shouldn't know about view related stuff. Or should they in that case?"}
{"_id": "250539", "title": "MVC class modeling", "text": "I have following requirement and I am trying to design class diagram. This is the first time I am creating class diagram so I would like to get some advice from experts.. :) This is a simple login functionality implementation using mvc. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zssbk.jpg) I have a login controller that take login and logout request from the view. It uses security module class to authenticate users, check if the user already logged in or not and holds the list of logged in users. Would you consider this as a valid approach? and also if you can point out the room for improvement, I would really appreciate. Thanks.. :)"}
{"_id": "117114", "title": "Do you think university is a good learning environment or is it better to be autodidact?", "text": "I'm currently a student in software engineering and I am very passionate in computer science. In my university we learn how to design an application with design patterns and a bunch of other techniques to have a good software. But I have a really bad problem: I want to know everything. I'm currently writing a little game engine in c++ while I write an application for iOS5 while building a website for a client while doing my homework, and my homework takes a lot of time for not that much learning. I Recently came to a conclusion: I can't achieve all my projects. Some of my friends tell me to drop university so I can learn faster because I will be able to work my other projects at my _fast_ rhythm. Do you think university is a good learning environment or is it better to be autodidact?"}
{"_id": "31753", "title": "Do I need a degree in Computer Science to get a junior Programming job?", "text": "Do I need to go to Uni to get a job as a Junior C# coder? I'm 26 and have been working in Games (Production) for 6 years and I am thinking of a change, I've had exposure to VB6, VBA, HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript over the past few years and did a web design NCFE at College, but other than that, nothing else! I'm teaching myself C# at the moment with books and I was wondering 'how much' I need to learn and also how I can improve my chances of getting a programming job! Am I a late started to learn coding? (I know many people who started at a very young age!) Thanks for the help :)"}
{"_id": "250534", "title": "Onion Architecture Structure", "text": "I am looking to understand and implement the Onion Architecture and have a vague idea on how to structure everything but need help to clear up some of my confusion. ![Onion Architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iyWBg.png) Based on different examples and articles I Have read I created the above structure. One of my main confusion comes when I look at \"02-Service: Services Interfaces\". Lets take the IUserService.cs. I assume this interface would contain different signatures like RegisterUser(), LoginUser(), BanUser(), ModifyUser(), ChangeAuthenticationLevel() and so on? Is this correct? If not what other examples would we find? And are these considered Domain Services or Application Services?"}
{"_id": "250530", "title": "Preventing ip resolvers in a skype-like program", "text": "I'm currently in the process of creating a Skype-like program, that uses a hybrid peer to peer system to communicate between users (i.e. server contains all users IPs, a client that wants to connect to a friend will tell the server, that will then send each client the other's IP so they could start hole punching to establish a connection between them). I know that with Skype, there are many websites that allow you to enter a username and easily get his IP address. My question is, what is the best way of preventing such an exploit? Here are a few solutions I could think of:   * save each and every users' friends lists on the server (so the server can just drop IP requests from users that aren't in the requested client's friends list)   * whenever the server is asked for a client's IP, ask that client if the asker is on their friends list (if not, don't reply)   * have each client use some secret key to communicate with the server (so only registered clients will be able to send IP requests) Feel free to add a different solution, again, these are just solutions I could think of off the top of my head while writing this question. In addition, a related question that I wanted to ask - what would be the best practice in such a program: Have each client store his friends' IPs and make the server notify him whenever they are changed -VS-  Have the client ask the server for a friend's IP whenever he wants to start a direct connection with him (keep in mind that the client anyway has to tell the server whenever he's trying to connect to someone, in order for the hole punching to work). P.S. I've never created such a program and I'm not following any tutorial or such. If there's any better way of doing something I wrote, or if I got anything wrong, I'd be very glad if you could mention it."}
{"_id": "25489", "title": "What's more important for advancement writing lots of code (maybe only bug patches) or learning more CS?", "text": "I'm currently a graduate student in Computer Science. I've had a few jobs before coming back (doing some coding for the Army while in) and working in an Oracle shop. Both jobs could be done by monkeys with a semester of computer science. I want to be a great programmer. So, right now I'm back in school working on my master in computer science and I'm looking to do my thesis in data mining and natural language processing. I have limited time and right now I'm using my free time to work through Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Machine Learning, OpenGL SuperBible (to learn the basics of graphics) and Cormen's Intro to Algorithms during the break before Winter quarter starts. I'm writing most of the programming projects that go along with those books too. Does this seem like a good use of my time, or should I cut my time in half on that and start trying to do bug fixes for some open source project (I've never done open source stuff and barely have the vaguest idea of how to get started)? If you recommend open source how should I go about getting started (really, step by step would be nice, I haven't done any so far because I literally don't know how to start) or if continue studying what should I focus on? Thanks."}
{"_id": "197907", "title": "Migration to embedded systems", "text": "My company has so far been developing a medical device, which is connected via USB to a desktop system (running x64 Windows 7) to run the image analysis and do everything GUI related. I am familiar with both Windows and Linux programming, C, C++, C++11 and C#, but now our new project coming from management would be a handheld, embedded system, and since I am the only software engineer, I have absolutely no idea how embedded systems work. Is it totally different from the \"normal\" programming job, should I recommend hiring someone with embedded experience, are there good ressources for introduction to embedded computing? I am at a loss here, since I do not know what exactly to expect (it'll be in theory the same as with the desktop systems, a sensor acquiring an image, and the software doing analysis). Can someone help me get an idea what I would have to expect for this? Edit: there is no framework, as to what hardware to use. We can use whatever we want, as long as it is small enough to be handheld. We will be using a third party sensor (either photo-sensor, or acoustic sensor, thats not been established yet), but again, we are pretty much free to decide, so my guess will be that it will have a well established API. I don't even really know what embedded systems are, I have experimented privately with an Arduino, does that count as embedded already?"}
{"_id": "25486", "title": "What is convention based framework?", "text": "I'm reading about ColdBox, and I came across this word. So what is meant by convention based framework?"}
{"_id": "25487", "title": "Who can learn to program?", "text": "I always hesitate when talking to professors about trying to improve the percentage of people who graduate with a CS type degree compared to the number that start out thinking that is what they want. On one hand I really do think it is important for professionals to be involved and give this feedback, on the other hand it would be better if less sub-par students ended up with CS degrees. I don't think every mind is built for this field and you have to be a good life long student. You have to have a high degree of patience and problem solving skills just to eek by. If you do have the \"right\" kind of brain, those hard problems are what drives you to continue. If you just get a long list of easy problems you get bored so these people are actually not good at more repetitive jobs. I don't need to go into all the details... if you are reading this you probably know what I'm getting at. So the question is: How do you find the balance of a degree program that is accessible to enough people to be funded and considered successful but also doesn't turn out people who aren't really cut out for the job? Maybe a better question is, what metric do you use to know if the changes you are making in a degree program are making it better? I don't know that a higher graduation rate is a good metric. And it seems that the feedback that you could try to capture many years later about the jobs that the graduates hold would be too far delayed. I've struggled with this question for a long time, mostly because I don't think there is an answer. But I thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows of any research that has actually been done on it. Addition: I recently had a very wise professor remind me that not everyone who graduates with a CS degree even wants to be a full-time programmer once they have actually discovered what that means. But, with the education that they received they could possibly make great Project Managers, Managers, system admins, etc. I think this was a very good point that I hadn't thought to consider here. There are a very high percentage of people who don't end up working in the field they majored in, CS isn't an exception to that. Having the extra folks helps not only in budget for the degree but also to expand the percentage of non-programmers who still know enough about it to work with programmers."}
{"_id": "166391", "title": "Visual C++, CMap object save to blob column", "text": "I have a MFC CMap object, each object stores 160K~ entries of long data. I need to store it on Oracle SQL. We decided to save it as a blob. Since we do not want to make additional table, we also thought about saving it as local file, with the SQL column pointing to that file. We would prefer to just keep it as blob on the server and clear the table every couple of weeks. The table has a sequential key as ID, and 2 column of time. I need to add the blob column in order to store on every row that CMap. Can you recommend a guide to do this approach (read/write Map to blob or maybe a clob)? Thanks."}
{"_id": "166390", "title": "How to prevent duplicate data access methods that retrieve similar data?", "text": "In almost every project I work on with a team, the same problem seems to creep in. Someone writes UI code that needs data and writes a data access method:               AssetDto GetAssetById(int assetId)      A week later someone else is working on another part of the application and also needs an `AssetDto` but now including 'approvers' and writes the following:               AssetDto GetAssetWithApproversById(int assetId)      A month later someone needs an asset but now including the 'questions' (or the 'owners' or the 'running requests', etc):               AssetDto GetAssetWithQuestionsById(int assetId)     AssetDto GetAssetWithOwnersById(int assetId)     AssetDto GetAssetWithRunningRequestsById(int assetId)      And it gets even worse when methods like `GetAssetWithOwnerAndQuestionsById` start to appear. You see the pattern that emerges: an object is attached to a large object graph and you need different parts of this graph in different locations. Of course, I'd like to prevent having a large number of methods that do almost the same. Is it simply a matter of team discipline or is there some pattern I can use to prevent this? In some cases it might make sense to have separate methods, i.e. getting an asset with running requests may be expensive so I do not want to include these all the time. How to handle such cases?"}
{"_id": "3713", "title": "What would be the best way to handle errors in parallel programs?", "text": "With parallel algorithms knocking at the door, it might be a good time to think about error handling. So at first there were error codes. Those sucked. It was free to ignore them, so you could fail late and produce hard-to-debug code. Then came exceptions. Those were made impossible to ignore once they occur, and most people (except Joel) like them better. And now we got libraries that help parallel code. Problem is, you can't handle exceptions in parallel code as easily as you could with non-parallel code. If you asynchronously launch a task and it throws an exception, there's no stack trace past it to unwind; best you can do is capture it and register it on the task object, if there's such an object. However, it defeats the primary strength of exceptions: you have to check for them and _you can ignore them without any additional effort_ , whereas in single-threaded code an exception will necessarily trigger the appropriate actions (even if it means terminating your program). How should language implementations or libraries support errors in parallel code?"}
{"_id": "166392", "title": "In PHP, what are the different design patterns to implement OO controllers as opposed to procedural controllers?", "text": "For example, it's very straightforward to have an index.php controller be a procedural script like so:               <?php          //include classes and functions          //get some data from the database     //and/or process a form submission          //render HTML using your template system          ?>      Then I can just navigate to http://example.com/index.php and the above procedural script is essentially acting as a simple controller. Here the controller mechanism is a basic procedural script. How then do you make controllers classes instead of procedural scripts? Must the controller class always be tied to the routing mechanism?"}
{"_id": "200037", "title": "What encoding is used by javax.xml.transform.Transformer?", "text": "Please can you answer a couple of questions based on the code below (excludes the try/catch blocks), which transforms input XML and XSL files into an output XSL-FO file:               File xslFile = new File(\"inXslFile.xsl\");     File xmlFile = new File(\"sourceXmlFile.xml\");     TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();     Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(new StreamSource(xslFile));     FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(new File(\"outFoFile.fo\");     transformer.transform(new StreamSource(xmlFile), new StreamResult(fos));      inXslFile is encoded using UTF-8 - however there are no tags in file which states this. sourceXmlFile is UTF-8 encoded and there may be a metatag at start of file indicating this. am currently using Java 6 with intention of upgrading in the future.   1. What encoding is used when reading the xslFile?   2. What encoding is used when reading the xmlFile?   3. What encoding will be applied to the FO outfile?   4. How can I obtain the info (properties) for 1 - 3? Is there a method call?   5. How can the properties in 4 be altered - using configuration and dynamically?    6. if known - Where is there info (web site) on this that I can read - I have looked without much success."}
{"_id": "105089", "title": "Difference between free and open software?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Open Source but not Free Software (or vice versa) I recently was at talk were Stallman was the keynote speaker, and he stated he hated the term open software, because it was geared to confuse people. Now, I have since then read on to understand his stance, but I am unable to draw a line where free software becomes open source, and which licenses can be considered in each group. For example I know that GPL, LGPL are free software licenses, but they are also open source licenses as well. Is there a pure open source license? like MIT license? or is it all shades of grey. Can a line be drawn? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "116890", "title": "'Recommended' file length and line widths", "text": "I was curious if anyone knew of a recommendation from a reputable source for the max number of lines of code for a given file. For example, Google's Closure Linter recommends that each line should not exceed 80 characters."}
{"_id": "190376", "title": "Why is black box called functional testing when it tests also non functional?", "text": "This has been bothering me for a while. Security, performance tests etc. are all done typically using the black box approach. But these are nonfunctional,while black box is called functional testing. Is it because it judges the function and it is just a naming or there is an inconcistency? References:   Software Engineering by Salleh   Software Engineering and Testing by Gupta,Tayal   Software Engineering by A.A.Puntambekar   Software Testing : a Practical Approach by Sandeep Desai,Abhishek Srivastava I cannot see the reason for downvote as obviously many are confused as I am (from the comments saying \"I have never seen it before\"."}
{"_id": "99860", "title": "How important is it for a programmer to know how to optimize code, solve complex puzzles, answer technical questions quickly?", "text": "So I'm in the process of looking for a job. And I have had plenty of test and just recently someone sent me a puzzle. It's the crackless wall problem and I have no idea how to approach it. I could cheat and google the answer, but I'm an honest fellow and it's taken me 2 days and still no solution. Also performance is a key issue as well. Should I take some time to master solving programming puzzles? Or should I focus on learning the language first, then master optimization techniques? I'm having issues choosing the best approach. Just today I found out from a previous interview that they chose someone else over me because that candidate seemed more knowledgeable than me because during the technical interview this candidate was a bit more snappy with his/her responses. I knew all the answers but I wasn't fast enough with them. Does this matter with all interviewers? Should I invest time in mastering core concepts in java so I can have just as fast recall? (To shed some light on my background: I am a recent graduate with a little over a year of java programming experience under my belt. I only have a bachelors degree. I know this is irrelevant, but I'm also 23.)"}
{"_id": "255037", "title": "Decorating a class that calls its own public methods", "text": "I've written a system that calculates discounts for a shopping cart based on a set of rules. Each rule is implemented with the following interface (C#):               interface IRule     {        bool IsActive();        bool IsApplicableTo(IShoppingCart cart);        decimal CalculateDiscount(IShoppingCart cart);     }      A concrete implementation might look something like this:               class Rule : IRule     {        bool IsActive() { return true; }             bool IsApplicableTo(IShoppingCart cart)        {            if (!IsActive())               return false;                 return TestIfApplicable(cart);        }             decimal CalculateDiscount(IShoppingCart cart)        {            if (!IsApplicableTo(cart))               return 0m;                 return CalculateStuff(cart);        }     }      Now I'm trying to introduce some logging to the system. To keep things clean, I don't want to jam it into the Rule class. So I thought I'd make a Decorator for IRule, which handles the logging:               class LoggingRule : IRule     {         IRule decoratedRule;              bool IsActive()         {             LogImportantThings();                  return decoratedRule.IsActive();         }              //And so on.     }      The issue that I'm running into here, is that the Rule class actually calls the IsActive and IsApplicableTo methods itself. When that happens, the decorator is simply passed by, and nothing is being logged. I suppose I could make the LoggingRule a subclass of Rule. It would mean that I would have to make a LoggingRule variant for every IRule implementation. That could potentially cause a lot of duplication. I could also put the logging into a base class, and use the Null object pattern when I don't want to log anything. But then again, 99 out of 100 times I don't want to log anything. And when these methods are called many many times, is it worth the potential overhead? So neither solution seems particularly elegant, and I'm struggling to find a better alternative... Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "167627", "title": "How show Attributes which appear In Many To Many association", "text": "As we know a many to many association are shown by two asterisks in both end of association. Now I have a association between two entities \"Good\" and \"Invoice\" so Good and Invoice have a many to many association but I want to show the \"count of each good\" in each invoice on class diagram. How can I show it?"}
{"_id": "222583", "title": "How to prevent re-checking already-checked data?", "text": "I have a class with a `validId($id)` method that is called by the constructor and by `public function load($id)`. The method queries the database to see if the id exists and returns true/false. The constructor optionally takes an `$id` (if no $id, then the object will be empty). The constructor checks the $id with `validId($id)`, and if it passes, then it calls `load($id)`. I should not take `validId()` out of `load()` because `load()` is public and the input has to be checked! The same goes for the constructor. How do I avoid calling `validId()` twice? I was thinking I could add a parameter to `load($id,$check_id)`, but that would be ridiculous. You can't give clients the option to not validate data! I could add a protected property like `$id_is_valid` that gets set to true by `validId($id)`. But how do I know the value that was valid is the same one being received by my `load()` method? I'm using PHP. Hopefully this isn't a stupid question."}
{"_id": "160215", "title": "How do I make the most of the chance to meet one on one with a programming guru?", "text": "So, I'm not a programmer, though I've been writing code all of my life. As is my habit, I attempt to contact well know experts in almost any domain I find of interest, and interestingly, I get a lot of meetings, which I value a great deal. So, here's the deal -- a meeting has been set for me to meet a very well known programmer and I would like advice on how to make the most of it. They've written a number of books, some of which I've read, but nothing strikes me as a point of conversion; meaning they know I'm not a real programmer, though I am very interested in talking to them about their advice for becoming a programmer. Should I attempt to have a potential coding topic, set of code to review, etc -- or just show up and get general advice?"}
{"_id": "222586", "title": "How should you cleanly restrict object property types and values in Python?", "text": "I have been learning python from no long time ago. But nearly at the beginning I stumbled on simple question: how to set a restriction (limitation) on object value or object's properties without making a difficult class description. There is no problem with python's unstrict typification. I search for the methods to control not only the variable types, but the variable value diapasons also. For example let creating the classical educational class - \"Circle\". A Circle - object should have three properties: two origin coordinates (some x, y) and a radius, in that (in our human visible world) x and y should be real numerical, a radius should be real positive numerical. I somehow solved this task, correspnding method of \"Circle\" class below:               def __setattr__(self,name,value):         def setting_atr(name,value):             if isinstance(value,(float,int)):                 if name=='radius' and value<0:                     raise ValueError(\"Attribute 'radius' should be no negative\")                 self.__dict__[name]=value             else:                 raise TypeError(\"Attribute should be numerical\")         if len(self.__dict__)<3: #number of object attribute             return setting_atr(name,value)         elif name not in self.__dict__:             raise AttributeError(\"'Circle' object has no such attribute\")         else:             return setting_atr(name,value)      Nevertheless I utterly displeased with way I have done that. The code is huge for so small conception, and it's almost no reusable (I know about the descriptors - it will give the near same result). I would prefer some declarative stile. When I had been starting search for an alternative my first thought was to add my own operator. But after hard googling I realized that it impossible to make that in python itself (if I'm still wrong - please correst me). Such as I only newbie, and entering in python developers team or forked python ( :)) is no way for me, I gave up for this thoughts. The another possibly path in declarative stile is writing something like:               radius=radius if isinstance(radius,(float,int)) else raise TypeError(\"Attribute should be numerical\")     radius=radius if radius>=0 else raise ValueError(\"Attribute 'radius' should be no negative\")      of course it not work, because we haven't ability to use 'raise' by that. I should be able calling errors object as function to brought it for reality. The simplest way to do that it wrote the error-raised function like this:               def SomeError(exception=Exception, message=\"Something don't well\"):     if isinstance(exception.args,tuple):         raise exception     else:         raise exception(message)      So it allow to write:               radius=radius if radius>=0 else SomeError(ValueError(\"Attribute 'radius' should be no negative\"))      I also thought about followed form:               @dfValueError(['isinstance(radius,(float,int))'],\"Attribute should be numerical\")     @dfTypeError(['radius>=0'],\"Attribute 'radius' should be no negative\")     def fun_radius(x)         return x      The small problem with this approach is in the more complex and less informatively evident error outing print. At the first the error message lead to the fake error raised function, the place where \"oops\" actually occurred only in second lines. My goal is to make possibility raise exception from lambda functions and code lines like has showed above, to make code more evident. To do this I should create my own exceptions class with call method implemented. Problem: inherited class didn't see itself in own name spase, so method               __call__(self):         raise self #yes ha-ha      give in result:               TypeError: __call__() missing 1 required positional argument: 'self'      So my question is simple: is it possible to make error object be callable? If yes, what I should read, to do it. And also, if someone solve this small problem, I would be happy. P.S. I know samples (about radius variable declaration) showed above can't be implemented in this \"circle\" class as is. I give it only as example to show my thoughts track. Please, don't pick on it. **Afterword (by Marat)** Thank very much who wrote and voted in this topic. After readed answers, I thought very long, and finaly raised myself to add some augment to this topic (even if it entail some risk to infringe rules). For the first. Some people have wrote that we dont't need care about errors at the object creation state, and even no need to control variable types at all (inasmuch as it no has implemented in python by default). Although I have been no long time in object oriented programming, before that I had (and still have) been work on calculation a technical processes and devices. So I'm very confident about this words: \"Possible error should be localized as soon as possible (I didn't say improved)\". Many algorithms for calculation a real physical processes use iterations and recursions so if you slip out (for later handle) some occurred mistake it could brought a hard detectable error in final result. So, there is python, from this point of view. Python's \"Duck Typing\" is great for quick prototyping and simplifying applied programming. But \"Duck Typing\" is not a religion demand. Nevertheless Python's unstrict typification it isn't a bizarre thing to add a type control, if you think you need that. But the style which Python impose to perform it differ from the style in the static typification languages as C++, Java and etc. In Python we can control the object only in some \"control points\". This guide us to the \"System Oriented Programming\" principles (Therm is mine, but I didn't check if it exist in press, so it may has differ meaning from the same of another authors, and what I mean may also has another name). We should (if will) set the \"control points\" at the inlet and outlet of the elements of ( **main** ) system. What is for the system elements? It should be any object who has own name space and can interact with outside as function (by methods also). The simplest version of inlet controlling for function element is:               def func(a,b,c):         #just like this         a=int(a)         b=str(b)         c=list(c)      More comlexity and interesting approach shown here: Type-checking decorator for Python 2 Separately, about method that was suggested by my co-author. \"Property\" decorator use the same methods as descriptor, so it emulate **object** attributes by **class** methods. This mode should be used carefully because in python the objects of same class are shared the class name space. I let myself rewrote the same programm that have wrote by @Izkata with `__setattr__` (again):               filter_function_for_radius=lambda value: value if value>0 else SomeError(ValueError, 'Radius cannot be negative')     class Circle(object):         def __init__(self, x=0, y=0, radius=1):             self.x = x             self.y = y             self.radius =radius         def __setattr__(self,name,value):             if name=='radius':                 value=filter_function_for_radius(value)             self.__dict__[name]=value      ...and if you need some another (perhaps complex or negative) radius for some hipothetical circle you don't need to inherit or redefine the class, just \"change filter\". But that advantage of function style may be obtain only by using `__setattr__` or by creating own metaclass. And once more thank you, for answering."}
{"_id": "104513", "title": "When developing algorithms, is skipping the pen&paper phase a bad habit?", "text": "I heard many people saying that when developing algorithms you should first use pen and paper, flowcharts and what not, so that you can focus on the algorithm itself, not worrying about the implementation of said algorithm (i.e., you deal with one problem at a time). However, most of the time I find it easier to actually develop my algorithm on the fly. That is, I think a bit about the problem until I know the general direction to take, and then I start writing code and making changes until the algorithm emerges and works. Is this a bad habit that I should try to change?"}
{"_id": "94054", "title": "How to transition from a web developer to an embedded developer?", "text": "I've been doing web development, and backend Java development, professionally for about 5 years now. My passion has always been closer to the metal though. Applying to embedded jobs has not been successful, and I believe it's because I lack experience. Perhaps there are open source projects I should undertake to show that I'm serious? How does one make a transition from being a web developer to an embedded developer?"}
{"_id": "163090", "title": "What is the meaning of 'high cohesion'?", "text": "I am a student who recently joined a software development company as an intern. Back at the university, one of my professors used to say that we have to strive to achieve \"Low coupling and high cohesion\". I understand the meaning of low coupling. It means to keep the code of separate components separately, so that a change in one place does not break the code in another. But what is meant by high cohesion. If it means integrating the various pieces of the same component well with each other, I dont understand how that becomes advantageous. What is meant by high cohesion? Can an example be explained to understand its benefits?"}
{"_id": "105645", "title": "Is there a reason for initial overconfidence of scientists and engineers working on artificial intelligence in the 1960s?", "text": "I just started an AI & Data Mining class, and the book. AI Application Programming, starts off with an overview of the history of AI. The first chapter deals with the history of AI from the 1940s to present. One particular statement stuck out at me: > [In the 60s] AI engineers overpromised and underdelivered... What was the reason for the overconfidence? Was it because of mathematical prediction models showing that a breakthrough was around the corner, or due to the ever-increasing hardware capability to take advantage of?"}
{"_id": "105647", "title": "When inheriting from a class in C#, which naming convention is preferred?", "text": "If you inherit from Tile, for example, should the subclass be called CollisionTile or just Collision? What about for painting tools in an application like Paint? PenTool or just Pen? Are there any published guidelines for this?"}
{"_id": "141899", "title": "When is a requirement considered complete?", "text": "Which elements must a requirement contain that it can be considered complete? Or if this works better - which questions should I ask about a requirement to find out if it is complete. I am not talking about the implementation of the requirement but the requirement itself. I am asking this from the perspective of an analyst who wants to make sure that his requirements are complete before passing them on to the design team."}
{"_id": "222639", "title": "What's the best way to undo a Git merge that wipes files out of the repo?", "text": "So imagine the following the happens (and that we're all using SourceTree):   1. We're all working off origin/develop.    2. I go on holiday for a week.   3. My coworker has been working locally for the past several days without merging origin/develop back in to his local develop branch.   4. He tries to do a push, gets told he has to merge first, and then does a pull.   5. He gets a conflict, stopping the automatic commit-after-a-merge from proceeding.   6. Assuming that Git is like SVN, my coworker discards the \"new\" files in his working copy and then commits the merge - wiping those \"new\" files from the head of origin/develop.   7. A weeks worth of dev work goes on on top of that revision.   8. I come back from holidays and find out that several days of my work is missing. We're all very new to Git (this is our first project using it), but what I did to fix it was:   1. Rename \"develop\" to \"develop_old\".   2. Merge develop_old into a new branch \"develop_new\".   3. Reset the develop_new branch to the last commit before the bad merge.   4. Cherry pick each commit since then, one by one, resolving conflicts by hand.   5. Push develop_old and develop_new up to the origin. At this point, develop_new is, I'm hoping, a \"good\" copy of all of our changes with the subsequent weeks worth of work reapplied. I'm also assuming that \"reverse commit\" will do odd things on a merge, especially since the next few weeks worth of work is based on it - and since that merge contains a lot of things we _do_ want along with stuff we don't. I'm hoping that this never happens again, but if it does happen again, I'd like to know of an easier / better way of fixing things. Is there a better way of undoing a \"bad\" merge, when a lot of work has gone on in the repo based on that merge?"}
{"_id": "60028", "title": "Is there any evidence that lisp actually is better than other languages at artificial intelligence?", "text": "There seems to be a long-held belief (mainly by non-lispers) that lisp is better than most languages at AI. Where did this belief originate? And is there any basis in fact to it?"}
{"_id": "113117", "title": "Are any top software products outsourced? (offshore or otherwise)", "text": "Is there any software that is both ahead of the competition and outsourced? By that I mean software products which are big sellers and which are highly reviewed, and developed by an entity outside of the entity that owns the product itself. The \"outside entity\" could be a domestic or foreign business, performing development work on a contractual basis. I am excluding open source here, as the process is more democratized than the typical product (where the product owner dictates the design and requirements directly). I'm thinking desktop software like:   * Adobe Creative Suite   * MS Office   * Aperture   * Visual Studio   * ReSharper Or web apps/sites like:   * Yelp   * Pandora   * 37 Signals apps   * Zendesk   * Salesforce   * Amazon I'm looking for data points, here, and not subjective ideas about what's popular. We can measure popularity by sales or Google rank or other metrics."}
{"_id": "36460", "title": "Comparison of languages by usage type?", "text": "Does anyone know of a good place to go find comparisons of programming languages by the intended platform/usage? Basically, what I want to know, is of the more popular languages, which ones are meant for high level application development, low level system development, mobile development, web, etc. If there's a good listing out there already, I'm not finding it so far. Does anyone know of a place that would have this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "36466", "title": "Accessing a Web Service: Learning Resource needed", "text": "I have been searching for resources to learn (Java) Web Services. Although I have found a lot of resources and tutorials on JWS, I am confused with the version numbers, the abbreviations and Metro. Plus the last update to Metro was in 2008. Is it a worthwile thing to learn? I wanted to learn how to access Web Services, since an upcoming project is about accessing one. I have some experience with OAuth on Twitter(using code available). Things I know about the project:   I have to access a Web Service.   Java is the preferred platform to use(Although I know I can use any).   Axis can be used to access the Web Service(I have never used Axis) I have a meeting scheduled to learn more, but I sure don't want to look silly since I am no Java expert, have never created or accessed Web Services using Java. My Questions: 1.Can someone point me to a tutorial which will help me learn how to access a already running Web Service (Preferably SOAP(?), not REST. It's XML based)   2\\. Will you recommend using PHP or Python to do the work of accessing the web service? I am expecting a lot of nay saying, but I hope I get some answers too. I will clarify things if needed."}
{"_id": "220956", "title": "Do I have to include the Copyright notice from the original author?", "text": "I'm using some codes that I modified, from Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming to create another project, the project is released under GPL V2. The License agreement is written here, it says: Copyright \u00a9 1998-2002 by Peter Norvig. My question is: Were's almost in 2014, do I still have to include that license or did it expire and therefore I may use the codes anyway that I like?"}
{"_id": "146324", "title": "Handling database schema changes when pushing new versions", "text": "During times of heavy development, the database schema changes both rapidly and continuously, and by the time our weekly push to the beta build comes around, the schema has changed so much that the only sensible option is to nuke all of the tables I can and copy the new versions from my dev database. Obviously, this isn't going to work once we launch, since nuking production data is a recipe for disaster, so I was wondering what strategies were out there for managing database schema changes from one version/revision to another? Some I've found or experienced:   1. Straight nuke-and-dump from one database to another (what I am doing now)   2. Maintaining an UPDATE.sql file with SQL statements that get run either via script or by hand.   3. Maintaining an update.php file with a corresponding \"db-schema-version\" value in the active database The third option seems to be the most sensible, but there still exists the possibility of a badly constructed SQL query failing mid-script, leaving the database in a half-updated state, necessitating a restoration of a backup. It seems like a non-issue, but it does happen, since we as a team, we use phpMyAdmin, and I can't seem to even rely on myself remember copying the executed SQL statement to paste into the update.php file. Once you navigate to another page, I have to re-write the SQL statement out by hand, or reverse my change and do it again. I guess what I am hoping for is a solution that doesn't impact our established development workflow?"}
{"_id": "186371", "title": "Practical reference for learning about graph reduction", "text": "Are there any practical references (with actual examples) for getting started implementing a small, lazy functional programming language with graph reduction? A reference that included the lexing and parsing steps would be especially helpful. So far I've read most of the _Implementation of Functional Programming Languages_ by Simon Peyton Jones and the Wizard book (SICP)."}
{"_id": "143943", "title": "Database Table Prefixes", "text": "We're having a few discussions at work around the naming of our database tables. We're working on a large application with approx 100 database tables (ok, so it isn't that large), most of which can be categorized in to different functional area, and we're trying to work out the best way of naming/organizing these within an Oracle database. The three current options are:   * Create the different functional areas in separate schemas.   * Create everything in the same schema but prefix the tables with the functional area   * Create everything in the same schema with no prefixes We have various pro's and con's around each one but I'd be interested to hear everyone's opinions on what the best solution is. Edit: Thanks for all the answers. It's hard to pick a right answer seems it is very subjective so I'll go for the one with the most votes (it helps that it matches what I was thinking! ;-)"}
{"_id": "102916", "title": "Is there a canonical book on x86 assembly?", "text": "There are lots of books on assembly. However, they usually deal with ISAs about which I don't care, such as MIPS or ARM. I don't deal with these architectures; there's no reason for me to try to learn them. But x86 assembly books seem... nonexistent. Let's say for example I'm trying to build a toy compiler generating Windows Portable Executable files. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on x86 assembly? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "170246", "title": "How to prevent code from leaking outside work?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to manage a Closed Source High-Risk Project? I'm working on an institution that has a really strong sense of \"possession\" - each line of software we write should be only ours. Ironically, I'm the only programmer (ATM), but we're planning in hiring others. Since my bosses wouldn't count the new programmers as people they can trust, they have an issue with the copies of the source code. We use Git, so they would have a **entire** copy of _each_ of the projects they work on, when they clone the repository. We can restrict access to them to a single key with Gitolite and bind that to their PC's, but they can copy those keys to another computer and they would have the repository access in another PC. Also (and the most obvious method) they could just upload the files somewhere else, add another remote, or just copy the files to an USB drive. Is there any (perhaps clever) way to prevent events like these? **EDIT:** I would like to thank everyone for their insights in this question, since it has been not only _more_ eye opening, but also a firm support of my arguments (since you basically think like me, and I've been trying to make them understand that) against my bosses in the near future. I am in a difficult situation work-wise, with my coworkers and bosses (since I'm basically in the middle) being like two gangs, so all this input is greatly, greatly appreciated. It is true that I was looking for a _technical_ solution to a _people_ problem - both the management and the employees are the problem, so it can't be solved that way (I was thinking about some _code obfuscation_ , perhaps working with separate modules, etc., but that wouldn't work from my developer POV). The main problem is the culture inside and outside the company - development is not taken seriously in my country (Venezuela) so naivity and paranoia are in fact a real issue in here. The real answer here is an NDA (something that here in Venezuela doesn't completely work), because that's the _people_ solution, because no sane developer would work in those conditions. Things will get ugly, but I think I will be able to handle that because of your help. Thank you all a lot! <3"}
{"_id": "118740", "title": "How to protect source code from remote developers?", "text": "My company is going to hire an external developer to create some new modules and fix some bugs in our PHP software. We have never hired an external developer by the hour before. How can we protect the source code? We are not comfortable giving out source code and were thinking that everything remained under a surveillance enabled VPN which external developer would log in to. Has anyone solved this problem before? If so, how? Edit: We want the developer to see/modify the code but under surveillance and on our machine remotely. Does anybody have a similar setup? Edit 2: NDA is just a formality. IMO, even people who are in favor of NDAs know that it'll do nothing to protect their property. Edit 3: Let me clarify that we aren't worried about the developer copying an algorithm or a solution from the code. Code is coming out of his brain, so naturally he is the creator and he can create that again. But our code is built over several years with tens of developers working on it. Let's say I hire an incompetent programmer by mistake, who steals our years of work and then sells it to the competitor. That can make us lose our cutting edge. I know this is rare, but such a threat has to be taken under consideration if you're in business. I'll make points of my comments so its easy for everyone to communicate:   1. Why NDA sucks? Take this scenario, if anyone is capable of suggesting a solution to this scenario I will consider the NDA effective. Ok, here goes: We hire 2 external developers, one of them sells our code as it is to someone else after a year. You are no longer in touch with any of the developers, how are you supposed to find out who ripped you off? NDA does provide a purpose, but you can't rely completely on that. At least we cannot.    2. I did not meant to offend anyone while I was posting this question, even though unintentionally I did. But again to people answering/commenting like 'I will never ever work with you' or that Men-in-black-gadget thingy: It's not about you, it's a thread about how feasible a given technical solution would be. And if anyone in this community has worked under such an environment.   3. About 'Trust', of course we won't hire anyone we do not trust. But is that it? Can't someone be deceitful at first? We all trusted a lot of politicians to run our country, did they not fail us ever? So, I'm saying 'trust' is a complete other layer of protection like NDA, and my question was not directed to it. My question is rather directed towards technical measures we can take to avoid such a thing from happening."}
{"_id": "205162", "title": "How to Protect Intellectual property violations from one's own team", "text": "I have an android app idea, I want to make the app along with a few batch- mates in my collage. (1) How do I make sure that these guys will not compromise the intellectual properties involved? In the sense that they will not leak out confidential information, new theories, new ideas, new features descriptions either freely on any medium or to some other company developing similar software. Also, these people will most likely have access to the entire source code (with comments) of the project, how do I make sure that in the future they will co- operate with me, (2) will not release any part of the code, (3) Will not freely release alpha versions containing features meant only for premium users. Also, (4) is there way to effectively work without granting them access to the entire source code? I am open to all kinds of answers: trust, technical, managerial - leadership, good friendship - relationship with collegues. UPDATE: We all live in India."}
{"_id": "10736", "title": "How to manage a Closed Source High-Risk Project?", "text": "I am currently planning to develop a J2EE website and wish to bring in 1 developer and 1 web designer to assist me. The project is a financial app within a niche market. I plan to keep the source closed. However, I fear that my would-be employees could easily copy the codebase and use it or sell it to a third party. The app development will take 4-6 months, perhaps more, and I may bring in additional employees after the app goes live. But how do I keep the source to myself. Are there techniques companies use to guard their source? I foresee disabling USB drives and DVD writers on my development machines, but uploading data or attaching the code in email would still be possible. My question is incomplete. But programmers who have been in my situation, please advice. How should I go about this? Building a team, maintaining code- secrecy,etc. I am looking forward to sign a secrecy contract with the employees if needed too. (Please add relevant tags) **Update** Thank you for all the answers. I certainly won't be disabling all USB ports and DVD writers now. But I think I should be logging activity(How exactly should I do that?) I am wary of scalpers who would join and then run off with the existing code. I haven't met any, but I have been advised to be wary of them. I would include a secrecy clause, but given this is a startup with almost no funding and in a highly competitive business niche with bigger players in the field, I doubt I would be able to detect or pursue any scalpers. How do I hire people I trust, when I don't know them personally. Their resume will be helpful but otherwise trust will develop only with time. But finally even if they do run away with the code, it is service that matters after the sale is made. So I am not really worried for the long term."}
{"_id": "102912", "title": "Iterators versus 'cursors' in Java", "text": "In Java, most people expect that each call to `Iterator.next()` will return a distinct object. This has led some of us to define an alternative model which we called a 'cursor'. (Note that others use the term 'cursor' to draw a different distinction.) The pattern of a cursor is:               class SomeCursor {         boolean hasNext();         void next();         type1 getItem1();         type2 getItem2();      }      In other words, it is perfectly clear that the same object evolves at each step in the iteration. The problem on my hand right now is to also support situations, like web services, in which we absolutely do want distinct objects so that we can ship a collection of them around. It pains me to imagine pairs of classes (a cursor and a bean) that have to be maintained in parallel, and I'm casting about for alternatives. Here's one idea, and I wonder if anyone else out there has seen a better one.   1. You make an interface consisting of the 'get' methods for an object with all the items in it.   2. You define the cursor as implementing that interface and also hasNext & next.   3. You dynamically create the bean objects using one of the major dynamic code-gen libs on the fly to create a class with the obvious fields and get methods, plus set methods if needed to make something like JAX-B happy. edit: for those who are not following, I recommend a read of http://lucene.apache.org/java/2_4_0/api/org/apache/lucene/analysis/TokenStream.html. Also compare with http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/sql/ResultSet.html, which is an example of this 'cursor' approach. Note in Lucene an API that iterates over a sequence of objects, allow the caller to specify whether to deliver the new data to a new object or the same old object each time. Yes, it is possible to define an `Iterator<T>` that returns the same thing ever time, but we have concerns that people will use this as a gun to shoot their toes off. Thus the preference for the JDBC-ish pattern."}
{"_id": "255663", "title": "JSP vs templates", "text": "I did some research on using server side templates vs JSP, could not find information on it. Can someone please provide information on pros and cons using server side templates vs JSP and vice versa."}
{"_id": "34828", "title": "How to search for a tester?", "text": "As a freelance developer, a few times I tried to find some testers to be able to let them test my software/web applications. If I try to find them, it's because most of the customers are not intended to hire external testers and don't see why this can benefit to them, so products are UI-untested and buggy. I tried lots of things. Discussion boards for IT people, specific websites for people who search for a job. Every time I clearly precise that I'm looking for product testers. I completely failed to find anybody for this job. I found instead two types of people:   * Non IT people who try to qualify as testers, but don't have enough skills for that, and don't really know what testing is and how to do it,   * Programmers, who are skilled _as programmers_ , but not as testers, and who mostly don't understand neither what testing is about (or think it's the same thing as _code review_ , or it consists in _writing unit tests_ ). Of course, they submit general programmers resumes, where they describe their high experience in Assembler and C++, but don't tell anything about anything related to the job of a tester. What I'm doing wrong? Isn't it called \"tester\"? Is there at least a tester job, different from general programming job? Is there any precise requirement to require from each candidate which can eliminate non IT people and general programmers?"}
{"_id": "207050", "title": "Is there a way to prevent the editing of HTML and CSS contents in a page using Firebug-like tools?", "text": "Is there a way to prevent the editing of HTML and CSS contents in a page using Firebug-like tools? I found that some users are editing some values in hidden fields and some contents which written between a div or span tag for gaining some profits. They are doing mostly by editing with help of tools like firebug. Is there any way to identify such modifications? The problem here is that the values they are editing is generated when the page is compiled. The page is developed in PHP. The editing is done mostly in between the tags."}
{"_id": "34820", "title": "What threading pratice is good 90% of the time?", "text": "Since my SO thread was closed i guess i can ask it here. What practice or practices are good 90% of the time when working with threading with multiple cores? Personally all i have done was share immutable classes and pass (copy) data to a queue to the destine thread. Note: This is for research and when i say 90% of the time i dont mean it is allowed to fail 10% of the time (thats ridiculous!) i mean 90% it is a good solution while the other 10% it is not so desirable due to implementation or efficiently reasons (or plainly another technique fits the problem domain a lot better)."}
{"_id": "34827", "title": "Recruiters intentionally present one good candidate for an available job", "text": "Maybe they do it without realizing. The recruiter's goal is to fill the job as soon as possible. I even think they feel it is in their best interest that the candidate be qualified, so I'm not trying to knock recruiters. Aren't they better off presenting 3 candidates, but one clearly stands out? The last thing they want from their client is a need to extend the interview process because they can't decide. If the client doesn't like any of them, you just bring on your next good candidate. This way they hedge their bet a little. Any experience, insight or ever heard of a head-hunter admit this? Does it make sense? There has to be a reason why the choose such unqualified people. I've seen jobs posted that clearly state they want someone with a CS degree and the recruiter doesn't take it literally. I don't have a CS degree or Java experience and still they think I'm a possible fit. Edit: I'm asking this question because there are many posts that assume recruiters cannot recognize talent, but maybe it is not in their interest to recognize too many talented candidates and make it harder for clients to decide. Eliminate the confusion. There is one candidate. Make that person an offer. It's a win, win, win. Maybe this falls under the theory of Too Many Choices?"}
{"_id": "251375", "title": "Combining 3rd party javascript libraries with my code, then using Closure Compiler", "text": "I'm using multiple third party javascript libraries in my website, and right now I'm keeping each third party library as a separate .js file, with its own `<script>` tag. But I would like to use the Closure Compiler with Advanced Optimizations. This requires that I either concatenate all the javascript in my website together or make a lot of modifications to my code. Obviously, I would prefer to simply concatenate all the javascript together then run it through Closure Compiler, but then where would I put the licenses and attribution for this code? Not only that, but the actual 3rd party code will be modified as it runs through the Compiler. All the third party libraries either use MIT, BSD, or CC0 1.0 Universal."}
{"_id": "194346", "title": "Forcing ExtJS application updates after deployment", "text": "I work on an ExtJS application with a Django backend, and we keep running into issues when we push new code. Our users seldom refresh their browsers, so after a code push we end up with users using the same (now outdated) version of our ExtJS application for days at a time instead of the new, updated version. How do other people deal with this issue? (I haven't found anything online about this, so I probably haven't found the right keywords yet.)"}
{"_id": "251378", "title": "If statements in \"generic\" assembly?", "text": "I'm reading a relatively 'friendly' and simple book about compilers named \"Let's Build A Compiler\" (originally a series of articles). The compiler written in the book generates instructions in some assembly language (68000 assembly). Since I don't know this assembly language, I decided that my compiler will also generate 'assembly' instructions (e.g. `MOVE #4,D0` has the same meaning: \"put the number 4 in register `D0`\"), only they will be executed by a program I will write, instead of by a physical computer. A kind of \"virtual machine\". So far I think this shouldn't be a problem, but I have a question regarding this: What is a \"generic\" way to handle `if` statements in assembly? For example, what would be the simplest assembly translation for this code:               if(a>b){         // do stuff     }"}
{"_id": "15730", "title": "What are good source control check-in strategies for large tasks?", "text": "The general rule is to keep check-ins small and check-in often. But sometimes the task requires large changes to the underlying framework. Then checking in before compeleting the task will break the project until you check in the finished work. So what strategies do people use to reduce the risk of losing work, or deciding something you are doing is the wrong approach, then changing your mind after removing the code and trying another approach? When I can, I'll check-in half done work commented out, or if it compiles and nothing is using new files I'll check them in. The larger the change the more likely I am to branch the project and then merge back when I have everything working again. Another option if the source control system allows is shelf sets, which are basically small branches. So when I finish for the day or come to a decision point, I'll shelve my changes, and then if something catastrophic happens, or I want to come back to that point, I can."}
{"_id": "6827", "title": "What's the worst technology decision you have ever seen?", "text": "This includes architecture decisions, platform choices or any situation where a such a bad choice led to negative consequences."}
{"_id": "232224", "title": "Design: Mixed XML / Relational or Pure Relational?", "text": "Is it acceptable to model a very complex object graph using XML in the database, but leave the rest of a system in relational tables? I'd like to gauge opinion on this as I've hit a bit of a conundrum. Many thanks ## \\-------------------- **Background** I'm building a financial application which, although not at all large in terms of data storage ( <= tens of megabytes initially), will have a very complex data model. Specifically, users will be working within the context of a \"Project\" entity, which will contain various sub-entities and lists. The users will be able to add formulae to diverse parts of this object graph and they will be continuously recalculated in realtime. The complexity comes in two parts:   1. No matter where in the class hierarchy a formula is located, it will be able to reach any other part of the same parent project entity using a path-like syntax. This will include the results of other formulae, and I will be implementing all of this with an in-memory dependency tree on a middle tier.   2. I'd like all the formulae to have the same basic structure, metadata, etc. To accomplish this, all formulae will be represented by the same class structure in code, regardless of which part of the data graph they are attached to. I'd much rather have the whole thing in a document - it would mean much less time spent fussing with database design, and I'd be able to have a much richer object model for the same amount of effort. I'm worried though about relational integrity - I'd still want to store my static data in relational tables. **Technologies**   * SQL Server 2012.    * .Net 4.5 (via C#)    * Entity Framework (database first) on the middle tier   * Simple auto-generated DTOs over WCF for services   * WPF with Prism on the client. I've not considered NoSQL storage ideas, largely because I don't have enough experience of them for a project with tight timelines. I've also not considered Entity Framework code-first, for the same reason."}
{"_id": "107733", "title": "Removing elements of an 'at least one' association", "text": "let's assume - regardless from technology and programming languages - you have a type and the type has an association to another type. This association has the complexity of 'at least one' (1..n). How would you specify the behavior, when removing elements from this association based on a predicate? Say, the predicate fits to all elements, thus the removal would violate the 1..n constraint, would you remove all elements but one or would you rather not remove any element in this case (and have a transactional-like behavior)?"}
{"_id": "171216", "title": "Should I use structure from a core library graphic toolkit in my domain?", "text": "In java (and many other programming language), there are often structure to deal with graphic element : Colour, Shape, etc. Those are most often in a UI toolkit and thus have a relatively strong coupling with UI element. Now, in the domain of my application, we often deal with colour, shape, etc, to display statistic information on an element. Right now all we do with it is display/save those element with little or no behaviour. Would it make sense to avoid \"reinventing the wheel\" and directly use the structures in `java.awt.*` or should I make my own element and avoid a coupling to this toolkit? Its not like those element are going away anytime soon (they are part of the core java library after all), but at the same time it feel weird to import `java.awt.*` server side. I have no problem using `java.util.List` everywhere. Should I feel different about those class? What would be the \"recommended\" practice in that case?"}
{"_id": "145277", "title": "Overloaded high transaction SQL Server database Solutions", "text": "The current sql server database is overloaded and many transactions are failing. The powers that be have a proposed solution to build a separate database to handle/store transactions and then asynchronously insert them into the current system. Specifically persist new transactions to a new database then build routines to insert the data from the new database into the current/old database. I'm looking for best method to implement this solution... should I use a non- indexed table in the proposed new db for fast inserting, then use bulk inserting from newdb -> olddb to move the data back into the main database? Is this best done @ scheduled intervals or real time? I was also wondering if scaling up/out would help here (budget permitting)? My initial thought was to recommend purchasing a second server and configuring a cluster to reduce the load. To be honest I thought the web transactions would just timeout and not fail (but I guess that's ultimately the same)?"}
{"_id": "107735", "title": "How do I go about data deduplication at scale?", "text": "I need to develop, or at least conceptualize a module that does _efficient_ data deduplication. Say we have millions of data records already. Insertion of another 100 mn records, making sure that there are no duplicate records in the resultant dataset, is what the module needs to do, at the top level. Now this may mean comparing on a field(s) that decides whether records are duplicate or not. But this approach, taken serially, is really naive, when we're talking millions of records. What do you think can a viable approach be? Hashing? using divide and conquer type algorithms to exploit parallelism? I have these in my head, but it really gets giddy at such scale. Also, please post any pointers to resources on the Web I can use - I could only find debates and vendors saying things about their db's \"supreme data deduplication features\". Thanks, Yati Sagade"}
{"_id": "33652", "title": "Can you recommend a good test plan template?", "text": "Can you recommend a good test plan template for an agile testing team? I know there are templates for testing on the web and have already looked at some found by search engines, but I could really use something lightweight and something that has already been tried by skilled testers and is known to work well. Many templates I've seen give me the feeling that writing test documents is expected to be a third of the work that those testers are doing, but my team really prefers to use less documentation and more actual test writing. We use a wiki for documentation, so an approach that lends itself to living documents would be great. My hope is that using a more structured approach to test planning will increase the usefulness of my test plan while reducing the effort to create it by allowing me to think about the tests, and not the format and structure of the plan. My workplace does not have something already on hand, so whatever I start doing might be adopted by the company."}
{"_id": "37339", "title": "Choosing between two programmers: experience vs. passion", "text": "I am in a position where I have to hire a programmer and have the option of 2 candidates, the first has experience but he doesn't have a passion for coding and he says so while the second doesn't have the experience but he has the passion, he did well in the interview and is certified. We have the resources to train someone, but I really don't want to blow this process and hire someone who will be disappointing. Can anyone help me as to how to approach this situation?"}
{"_id": "232228", "title": "What is a O(n) algorithm to solve this puzzle?", "text": "We are going to hold a meeting where everybody will speak in clockwise direction around a table. There are n people with n spots. Each person has a position preference (e.g. some want to go first, some last, etc). Everyone is seated randomly and cannot move from their position. How shall we compute the best starting position on the table to satisfy the most people? I have an O(n^2) solution: See how many people would be satisfied having assumed each of the positions 1..n as start positions; then return the position that gave the maximum value."}
{"_id": "145270", "title": "Data migration to a single shared SQL table", "text": "We have three internal web applications we use at my company. Unfortunately none of my predecessors had the foresight of sharing tables amongst those apps. It has become necessary to share some company data among the three internal web apps. As an example, each of the three websites have a `companies` table in their respective databases. _Website A Companies Table_               id | name     ---------     1  | Sprockleys Sprockets     2  | Goobers Gadgets     3  | Nancys Necklaces      _Website B Companies Table_               id | name     ---------     3  | Sprockleys Sprockets DENVER     22 | Gooburrs Gadgets     30 | Nancyies Necklaces      I want to somehow merge all of this data together into a single shared database table. Unfortunately the ID's of the companies do not match up at all and other tables have foreign keys that map products and users to those companies. What are some ideas for merging data like this?"}
{"_id": "136860", "title": "What is the difference between APIs, Libraries, Runtime systems, and frameworks?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Library vs. framework vs API? I am having hard times understanding what these concepts really mean. This software stack thing is very confusing. Can you please help me with this question, or if you can refer me to some article/book where I can learn in details about this software stack and how they interact together. I tried wikipedia but there is not enough explanations there and the confusion still exists."}
{"_id": "231538", "title": "How do I deal with global variables in existing legacy code (or, what's better, global hell or pattern hell)?", "text": "So... We have this fairly complex project (~10k LOC, but there's duplicated code so it's hard to tell) with hundreds of global variables. The project has more dependencies on other projects, and many other projects depend on it too. I have mostly inherited the responsibility to refactor just a part of this project by myself, an \"enclosed section\" of modules. None of the original developers remain. I have devised a way to structure the routines in classes (breaking up megamoths, forming some class hierarchies, a little Strategy here and there, nothing too fancy (I hope); the objective is to make it easier for other developers to add functionality and make it possible to add proper unit tests). My new classes provide calculations applied to currently-global arrays of data that are updated, and the calculations themselves need to maintain a state (a sum, the last value of the last processed vector, etc). You could see them as functors. I'm unsure on how to deal with globals, though. I don't think I will be able change all globals to non-global because of the dependencies to other modules, which I'm not going to refactor just now. Also, many of my new classes will need to share data. So, I can...   * For the globals that _are not shared_ between my new classes, leave them as they are. I was thinking of using a Registry, or at the very least use some #define's or other variables to limit scope and provide context wherever they're used.   * For the globals that _will be shared_ between my new classes, either make a base class with the references, or use a Singleton to pass them around, or a combination of both. I'm not sure if using these patterns will do more harm than good. So, my question is: **what's better, live with existing global variables or aggressively tune them with patterns like Singleton or Registry? Do you have any suggestions to these schemes, or have a better scheme?**"}
{"_id": "15086", "title": "Why doesn't Visual Studio auto increment your version number?", "text": "This question asked how to auto update version number in VS 2010 : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4025704/publishing-in-net-produces- application-files-myapp-someversionnumber-how-to-ge The answer was, You have to update both Assembly Version AND File version manually Shouldn't the version number increment each time I publish? Why should I do it manually? Is this is a conscious decision by MS to do it this way? What's the thinking behind having people manually update their own version number?"}
{"_id": "231536", "title": "Design for creating a menu based on user type", "text": "**Problem**   I am building a PHP application which has a main menu, which in turn contains various \"sections\" or \"subheadings\" with various links. There are several user types such as SuperAdmin, Admin, Teacher, Student, etc, and each type should see a potentially different menu structure. It seems that my client would like to add more types down the line. Currently I have a huge if/elseif/... block that checks what user type you are and creates an array with arrays for all the sections, containing yet more arrays for each link (these arrays contain the url, class and caption of the url). It's about 700 lines long at the moment. As you can see, this is becoming quite complex and tiresome to get working. So what I've attempted to do is use some design patterns (of which my knowledge is not that amazing). **Failed attempts**   Firstly I attempted to create a few _Builder_ implementations: one for the link itsself, one for the \"section\", and finally one for the menu itself. Then I attempted implementing a _Strategy_ pattern to check current user type, and add links to sections and these sections to the menu. The final attempt was to serialize this menu object to the DB and just read it from there (as some user types can have dynamically configured sections/links) **The real question**   I have no clue whether my rationale is even remotely correct in this regard, because I've created and completely deleted all my code about 4 times now as it becomes complex to comprehend just what must go where. So I guess my actual question is this: **If you had to build this kind of implementation for menus (or anything where multiple objects are built into another object, and multiple objects of that type are built into yet another object), how would you go about it?** What patterns would be useful and how would one structure them to work together without killing your brain? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "109824", "title": "Controller vs Model: Where do I put the processing of user input?", "text": "I'm new to MVC and I'm not using a framework (and I'm not going to). I'm designing my new web application using MVC. I have the user input received in Controller. Suppose I have form `data` and an `action` to do with it, which can be \"insert\", \"delete\" or \"update\". Must I have process that action in Controller or in the Model? That is: must I do:               # Controller     if (action == \"insert\") Model.insert(data)      or               # Controller     Model.process(data, action)          # Model.process     if (action == \"insert\") self.insert(data)      (language-agnostic example). What is the \"MVC way\" to do it?"}
{"_id": "231531", "title": "how is ORM an example of message coupling?", "text": "In this slideshow on slide 26 it mentions ORM as an example of message coupling. How is that so? With an ORM, certain code will call the ORM via an API, but that sounds like \"control coupling\". Also the ORM's api will take parameters to specify what you want, but that sounds like data coupling. How is ORM an example of message coupling? maybe other examples of message coupling will help me understand."}
{"_id": "212111", "title": "How to find bottlenecks in an application?", "text": "I'm building an application with lots of components, a lot of which are third- party so I only know what I can get from their documentation. From time to time, by pure luck, I find out one of these components was pretty heavy and had an option to cache stuff. I can't stop thinking that if I weren't lucky, one of these components would end up killing the performance of my app and I wouldn't have a clue what to do. I would end up adding more hardware like an idiot. So how do you find these kind of bottlenecks? I mean I wouldn't have a nice report saying \"this part is slow\", like it happens with the database. For example, today I found that a serializer I was using was heavy and wasn't being cached. Are there repeatable steps I could have followed to discover that the serializer was slowing things down?"}
{"_id": "146814", "title": "Connecting mobile apps to a web service; What is it called and where do I start?", "text": "I have some basic knowledge of iOS development and I want to now start connecting my apps to databases hosted on the internet, so that users will have access to remote / public data that pertains to my app. My problem is that after searching the internet for some advice, I realised I don't even know what this type of programming is called? From my perusing it doesn't even appear to have a common moniker, and this is making it really difficult for me to find any advice on how to even begin learning to connect my apps to a web database. So my questions are, what on earth is this discipline called? And, how can I get started in learning it?"}
{"_id": "192018", "title": "Asp MVC section and partial views", "text": "I have a question regarding ASP sections and partial views. What ser the benefit of using one over another? Because if I have a menu, i guest that it could be both as a section, but also as a partial view. So what is the difference?"}
{"_id": "226634", "title": "Creating a window to draw pixels in", "text": "I'm creating a fictional architecture and other fictional components for this computer/emulator. I'm facing an issue, this being the virtual display. I need to be able to create a Window in which my program has access to all pixels contained inside, this is to emulate video memory/access. For the best speed I was thinking the best way to do this is to use native system API and conditional compilation for cross platform support, but I don't know if this is the best option. So essentially I just need some sort of way to create a cross platform window in which I can draw pixels in. I'm writing in the D language but almost any solution in C can be translated to D with C linkage. Thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "157277", "title": "Indentation: is there any evidence to show whether 2 or 4 spaces is more readable?", "text": "At the company I work for, we're trying to standardize our development practices, and we want to make the right call regarding indentation. **Is there any empirical evidence (preferably research articles in HCI or something) which demonstrates the effect that whitespace can have on code readability?** Alternatively, I'd be interested in a study which evaluates various styles of indentation in code for use in a team environment, across editors, screen resolutions, and operating systems."}
{"_id": "68376", "title": "What are the pros and cons of Node.js?", "text": "I'm designing a web application that is locally focused on JSON objects to do all the data stuff (and after that I would pass it to a server to cloud synchronize). However, somebody in an answer from another question suggested me to use Node.js to up/download data directly formatted as JSON. I read some stuff at the developer's website, and they claim it's as a web server. However, I'm not sure if it's just a data server (which makes sense to me) or it could be a replacement to Apache (I would go for no). I'm aware that your answers depend on the needs of my application, so, to sum up: _it should be able to dispatch data from a database ([No]SQL, whichever) and synchronize it back when I choose (either in the background or by direct action). The client-side should store the data as a mid-step (before syncing and after downloading the stuff) in JSON. Eventually in the future, it should need to synchronize across a bunch of accounts at the same time (you know, team modifications, just like Google Docs and so)._ And now, back to the question: **Which are the pros and cons of Node.js?** I'm pretty sure that the direct use of JSON objects from the server to the client and the _pushing_ calls are pretty good reasons to choose Node.js. However, I'm not sure if security (either my code or the data itself) or concurrent connections are mature enough, or I should go for a typical Apache with PHP files querying a MySQL, and in the early future poll instead of push (or find a pushing server). I know the question may sound easy to answer if you're already on one side (just node, node+Apache, just Apache), but these days I'm from nowhere. Thanks for your answers, mates."}
{"_id": "68370", "title": "Case studies for successful service (project) based software development businesses without constant overtime from its employees", "text": "I work for an IT company that is primarily services (project) based rather than product based. All software engineers are salaried. The company has set new expectations that everyone should work 48 hours per week instead of 40. Note, this isn't occasional overtime due to crunches. This is the new 40. The reasoning is that this enables the company to provide benefits to its employees such as monetary incentives and training because the company is more profitable. more hours worked = more billable hours = larger profit I understand the need for profitability and the occasional crunch time and have put in the extra hours when it was needed and beneficial to the project. However, I am also very sensitive to work life balance and have raised my concerns about the the new expectation. My employer is open to other methods to increase profitability so I hold hope that we can turn things around before it becomes a horrible place to work. How does a services based company become more profitable without increasing the number of hours expected from it's salaried employees? Are there any case studies showing the pros and cons of consistent overtime? Are there any case studies for a successful service based business model (for software development companies) that does not require consistent overtime from its employees?"}
{"_id": "142318", "title": "Duck checker in Python: does one exist?", "text": "Python uses duck-typing, rather than static type checking. But many of the same concerns ultimately apply: does an object have the desired methods and attributes? Do those attributes have valid, in-range values? Whether you're writing constraints in code, or writing test cases, or validating user input, or just debugging, inevitably _somewhere_ you'll need to verify that an object is still in a proper state--that it still \"looks like a duck\" and \"quacks like a duck.\" In statically typed languages you can simply declare \"`int x`\", and anytime you create or mutate `x`, it will always be a valid `int`. **It seems feasible to decorate a Python object to ensure that it is valid under certain constraints, and that every time that object is mutated it is _still_ valid under those constraints.** Ideally there would be a simple declarative syntax to express \"hasattr length and length is non-negative\" (not in those words. Not unlike Rails validators, but less human-language and more programming- language). You could think of this as ad-hoc interface/type system, or you could think of it as an ever-present object-level unit test. **Does such a library exist to declare and validate constraint/duck-checking on Python-objects?** Is this an unreasonable tool to want? :) (Thanks!) * * * Contrived example:               rectangle = {'length': 5, 'width': 10}          # We live in a fictional universe where multiplication is super expensive.       # Therefore any time we multiply, we need to cache the results.          def area(rect):         if 'area' in rect:             return rect['area']         rect['area'] = rect['length'] * rect['width']         return rect['area']          print area(rectangle)     rectangle['length'] = 15     print area(rectangle) # compare expected vs. actual output!          # imagine the same thing with object attributes rather than dictionary keys."}
{"_id": "112794", "title": "Verification naming confusion", "text": "According to Martin Fowler classical article, there are two types of verification: state and behaviour verification. At the same time I often see people telling about implementation vs. behaviour verification. So I guess we speak about pretty same stuff here and \"state\" in the first classification is \"behaviour\" in the second; \"behaviour\" in the first equals to \"implementation\" in the second. What I don't like is that \"behaviour\" word appears in both namings but on contrary sides which causes a lot of confusion. Which naming do you prefer?"}
{"_id": "142314", "title": "JavaScript Phone Screen", "text": "For a simple phone screen question we generally always ask about scoping rules. It's clearly one of the biggest gotchas of JavaScript. Out of everyone we ask almost everyone insists that in an if or for loop a variable is scoped to that block as opposed to the function. Is this an unreasonable question?"}
{"_id": "112792", "title": "source code file system layout for 2 very similar projects (with git)", "text": "we're working on \"two\" android apps that are very similar; in fact, they're the same apps with different graphics and color schemes, slightly different configuration and one or two unique activities that are not in the other project - but the functionality is 95% the same. the plan was to work on one app until it is as complete as possible and then change the images and the other /res(ource) files. of course it's not that easy; we're still working on the shared code, and patching the same code in different projects (or repositories) is - in my opinion - out of the question. we're all using git and eclipse. is there the \"definitive guide\" about handling such a situation? my thoughts about it: ### three repositories rep1 for the unique files of application1, rep2 for the unique files of application2, and rep3 for the shared files. if there is a way to push files in one folder (the project folder) to different repositories ... i mean, cloning rep1 automatically pulls the files from rep1 AND rep3, and pushing automatically pushes files back into to the right rep? my teammates are suspicious; no one of us knows git very well and we're afraid of spending too much time repairing our dcvs mistakes. ### 2 repositories if the first option isn't possible, our plan was to have 2 repositories. rep1 for the complete app1 and rep2 only for the rep2-specific files. a build script would replace the files from app1 with those of app2. imo this is an \"accidental overwrite\" minefield, and i don't like it. but as long as we don't have a better solution, this is the way to go. ### eclipse maybe there is some kind of eclipse-specific hack that would make this painless? ### (edit) branching!? i don't have any experience with branching. but this be a possible solution? note: these are android projects; android demands a specific file layout. e.g. the name and structure of the \"res\" folder is pretty much fixed. this means that there are directories which contain files both app-dependent and shared files. i don't know if git can handle this."}
{"_id": "112793", "title": "Storing stop/start points in a database", "text": "Let's say I am storing start and stop points per user into a database table. For example... let's say in a chat system, a user only needs to see lines 24-293, and 500-512. (Let's say he logged off for the night, and was not present between lines 294-499). Saving each start and stop point as a discrete row would lead to a huge ballooning table, which isn't exactly ideal. I wouldn't be searching on these points, so indexing is not necessary. How would I save this kind of information in the database? I was thinking of saving it in JSON:               accountID   |   lines             1   |   [24,293,500,512]      Where each odd value denotes a start, and each even value denotes an end. My only worry is that highly active users will be joining and leaving a chat, and would quickly fill up the row if `lines` was of type VARCHAR. So perhaps `TEXT`, or even `LONGTEXT`. Am I heading down a path of hurt, or is this a viable method? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "112791", "title": "How to reach to the advanced level in SQL?", "text": "I think I have a good grasp of SQL and the most features it has, but sometimes when I've done some more advanced Reporting Services a fellow developer has helped me with some stuff and when I open some existing procedures in T-SQL I understand that I have some learning to do. I think I have focused more in later years at application code (C# and javascript mostly) and somehow my SQL skills aren't there where It should be. Because at work the most stuff is very database centric with procedures, so I think I need to get better at SQL. But when I google around about features and look in books about SQL I know the most stuff, but somehow getting better at SQL ain't so easy any more. Does anybody have any advice how to become an advanced SQL programmer? What books to pick up? By the way I work exclusively with SQL Server. I've done tons of basic procedures with inserts, updates, selects with joins and group by and so on. But doing bigger problems I've always done a more application-centric approach with arrays and collections, but sometimes (Reporting) there's no choice than do it in SQL and work with temporary tables and so on. I'm tempted to do cursors because then I can loop through everything but that kills database performance (how about looping through a half million rows with a cursor?)."}
{"_id": "67345", "title": "Silent Crash of WPF/VB.net 2010 based application", "text": "I have an application built in WPF and VB.net. It works on several Windows XP computers that I've tested it on, however, my animator's computer doesn't seem to like it. At first, the program would work up to a certain point, where the program would play a video. However, as she was missing the codec to play the video, it threw an exception. We installed the codec, and now the program silently fails all together, without so much as an error message or crash notification. These are the prerequisites that are required. All of these are installed on her computer. Assume prereqs for these items are also installed.   * .NET 4 Framework    * SQL Server Compact Edition 2006   * Windows Media Player v. 11   * Theora DirectShow codec Her computer is running Windows XP Home Edition SP3. What is going on? How can we get this program working on her system?"}
{"_id": "34178", "title": "Are today's general purpose languages at the right level of abstraction?", "text": "Today Uncle Bob Martin, a genuine hero, showed this video In this video Bob Martin claims that our programming languages are at the right level for our problems at this time. One of the reasons I get from this video as that Bob Martin sees us as detail managers and our problems are at the detail level. This is the first time I have to disagree with Bob Martin and was wondering what the people at programmers think about this. First there is a difference between MDA and MDE MDA in itself hasn't worked and I blame way to much formalisation at a level you can't formalize these kind of problems. MDE and MDD are still trying to prove themselves and in my mind show great promise. e.g. look at MetaEdit The detail still needs to be management in my mind, but you do so in one place (framework or generators) instead of at multiple places. Right for our kind of problems ? I think depends on what problems you look at. Do the current programming languages keep up with the current demands on time to market ? Are they good at bridging the business IT communication gap ? So what do you think ?"}
{"_id": "34179", "title": "After an outsourced/offshored application is \"completed\", who will do the maintenance?", "text": "What is the typical arrangement for the maintenance of applications that are not developed in-house? Note: by maintenance, I mean bug fixes, optimizations, small modifications and future extensions."}
{"_id": "235925", "title": "Parameterless & Empty-Paren methods in Scala", "text": "I'm learning Scala at the moment via Odersky's Programming Scala (2nd). I'm upto chapter 10 where he starts introducing parameterless and empty-paren methods. I just can't get my head around it. So far, all I understand is that I should use empty-parens if a method has side-effects and parameterless methods otherwise. I can't figure out what is the advantage of this convention. I read the posts on Stack Exchange, but to be honest, when the posts start discussing this topic in some depth I was lost. I'm looking for a simple explanation of what are typical use cases for this language feature and what are the advantages to help me understand it better."}
{"_id": "7482", "title": "What's your view on using other people's code?", "text": "As per this question: I decided to implement the BitTorrent spec to make my own client/tracker. Now, I was going through the spec, I was about 70% done implementing the BEncoding when I found a link to an implementation of BEncoding in C# written by someone else. Normally, if I were working on production code, I'd use it as a reference to check my own work against, and a baseline to write some tests to run my code against, but I found myself thinking \"I'm making this, it's a for-fun project with no deadlines; I should really implement it myself - I could learn a lot\" but some voice in my head was saying \"Why bother re-inventing the wheel? Take the code, work it so that it's you're style/naming convention and you're done.\" So I'm a bit conflicted. I ended up doing the latter, and some parts of it I found better than what I had written, but I almost feel like I 'cheated'. What's your take? Is it cheating myself? Perfectly normal? A missed opportunity to learn on my own? A good opportunity to have learned from someone else's example?"}
{"_id": "222285", "title": "Are projects using frameworks not as good as projects using pure programming?", "text": "I've been a Rails developer for a year now (originally self taught), and am at the point where I want to improve. I've been reading books on how to improve the quality of my Ruby code (I read Design Patterns and Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby). I'm trying to improve the quality of my code and to add to my portfolio, but I'm having trouble thinking of anything motivating to do with just Ruby since in my head it feels cooler or more usable to have a Sinatra app (I'm thinking about learning Sinatra) and a browser to interact with the app than having to run a pure ruby app through the console with `$ ruby my_app.rb` and have it spit out some info. I know the results are really similar, but still. My question is, do employers think lesser of projects that use frameworks than projects (Rails, Sinatra, etc) that are built from complete scratch (just the programming language itself)?"}
{"_id": "193161", "title": "Is it bad to reuse other programmer's code libraries that can perform generic tasks?", "text": "Reusing large amount of helpful codes made by other programmers is very tempting for me. I specifically refer to codes that can perform generic tasks, such as Data Access Layer (DAL) codes. I am just beginning a project using a newly familiar language, and I don't think programming from scratch is feasible. I can understand the semantics and many other concepts of that language, it is just the case that maybe I'm too lazy to start over and wanted to dive in to the task of coding a specific business logic. So given that using a code library of others is perfectly legal, is it bad to acquire a large portion of somebody's work and use it as a foundation of mine?"}
{"_id": "144410", "title": "Incorporating libs into module pattern", "text": "I have recently started using require.js (along with Backbone.js, jQuery, and a handful of other JavaScript libs) and I love the module pattern (here's a nice synopsis if you're unfamiliar: http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/3/JavaScript-Module-Pattern-In-Depth). Something I'm running up against is best practices on incorporating libs that don't (out of the box) support the module pattern. For example, jQuery without modification is going to load into a global jQuery variable and that's that. Require.js recognizes this and provides an example project for download with a (slightly) modified version of jQuery to incorporate with a require.js project. This goes against everything I've ever learned about using external libs - never modify the source. I can list a ton of reasons. Regardless, this is not an approach I'm comfortable with. I have been using a mixed approach - wherein I build/load the \"traditional\" JS libraries in a \"traditional\" way (available in the global namespace) and then using the module pattern for all of my application code. This seems okay to me, but it bugs me because one of the real beauties of the module pattern (no globals) is getting perverted. Anyone else got a better solution to this problem?"}
{"_id": "34171", "title": "Clearcase: Find out files checked in with the current snapshot view", "text": "If you have used clearcase before, then this question is for you. How do you determine all the files and their corresponding checkins?, given a snapshot view."}
{"_id": "144416", "title": "Which architecture should I choose for this project?", "text": "I have a project. The server which based on a phone PCI-board is responsible for received phone calls from the customer and then redirect the phone calls to the operators. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bQEMN.png) I have decided to code the server using c++ programming language and qt framework because the PCI-board SDK's interface is c/c++ originated and for the sake of portability. The server need to send the information of the the customer to the operator while ringing the operator and the ui interface of the operator client should be browser-based. Now the key problem is how could the server notify the operator that there is a phone call for he/she. One architecture I have considered is like this, ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9PdY5.png) The operator browser client use ajax pooling the web server to check whether there is call to the client; the web server pooling the database server to check whether there is call; the desktop server(c++) wait for the phone calls and set the information in the database. The other operations such as hang up the phone call from the client, retransfer the phone call to the other operator also use this architecture. Then, is there any way other than pooling the server(js code `setInterval('getDail', 1000)`) to decide whether there is a call to the operator? Is this architecture feasible or should I use some terrific techniques that I do know such as web services,xml-rpc, soap??? * * * The Caller center is for 8~300 operators and the operators do not seperate geographically. Moreover, I have figured out that we need provide interface for customer programmer, so this thing is so called middleware? Then some new questions, how could we expose interface to customer, COM? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "144417", "title": "Performance analysis of C++ programs", "text": "How can I measure the performance of my C++ programs using C++? Specific metrics I want to measure are:   * Memory used ( **space** )   * Duration taken ( **time** )"}
{"_id": "100429", "title": "What workflow do you use with asp.net web forms development and your design department", "text": "I work at a place that has a clear separation between designers and developers. We're a fairly new start-up and we're trying to figure out what would be the best workflow for our team. We're a small company with a total of about 11 employees, three of which are designers (they deal with the HTML, CSS, some jQuery), and three developers primarily working with ASP.NET Web Forms. I am one of the developers and don't have a knack for design, but I am comfortable enough with CSS and jquery/Javascript to understand the mechanics and whatnot. So, currently we wait for the designers to provide us with HTML structure clobbered together with server-side includes, js, jquery, css, etc. Typically we try to work around their stuff and begrudgingly try to keep their structure roughly the same with the consequence of forcing us to have a lot of hacks in place to work with it. Yes, this means using their Server-Side Includes mixed in with our .aspx pages, amongst other things that seem to go against the general asp.net web forms flow. There have been times when I have changed the includes into a user control and had their common HTML out in master pages, etc. All of which was consequently followed by a lot of barking from the design team. Their main complaint being that master pages and user controls make their maintenance of the site more difficult. I can see their point of view, and I wouldn't like it either if people messed with my workflow either, which I guess I am doing so with them. I have tried several times to approach them about moving site structure that complements the asp.net web forms environment we programmers are working with, but every time the subject of working with master pages comes up, the design team throws a near tantrum. Our current approach is simply forcing us to put together a lot of hacks and work-arounds so that it gels with their design and frankly it's getting frustrating and just adding more unnecessary technical dept to our projects. My question is simply this: what workflow works best for you and your design team? Do your designers know how to use master pages, etc. Is it unreasonable to have designers understand the mechanics of how master pages and user controls work, and in general how ASP.NET puts a page together? (I don't feel this is an unreasonable expectation of them...) So, what do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "224679", "title": "Example of a javascript app using immutable data structures?", "text": "JavaScript is functional but not in a strict sense. It does not rely on immutable data and side-effect free functions. There are a few libs that provide immutable data structures, so I believe it should be possible to write a more strictly functional program using JavaScript. I know ClojureScript exists but I am not interested in transcompilation. Are there any open source projects that use JavaScript in a more strictly functional sense with nothing but immutable data? I am interested in whether this is practical in a language not built with this in mind."}
{"_id": "100422", "title": "How applicable would an Automata class be to professional development?", "text": "Would it be worth taking Automata over Databases or Networking assuming no immediate plans on a Masters degree in Computer Science? I'd assume I'd learn things in there that would somehow be real work applicable like complexity theory but is it more useful immediately out of school or better to do a course somewhere post baccalaureate and take something more obviously applicable in its place? I've limited slots left or I'd take all of them."}
{"_id": "133984", "title": "How should I plan and start a project?", "text": "Every time I start a project, I decide at crucial moments to completely change the core classes and get caught up in obscure errors. I try planning in advanced and usually start off on a good foot but then I go to it another day and decide I would like to do it 'another way'. Is there a standard, of sorts, when starting a project such as mapping out classes and starting with unit tests? What is a good convention when planning and starting a medium project. The last project and started was a projectile motion simulator - I know, predictable."}
{"_id": "137402", "title": "Is code pruning related to obfuscation?", "text": "From my research, many obfuscation/optimization packages include a feature called **pruning** where the software will remove dead code during processing. The following packages include both obfuscation and code pruning as a feature (to name a few):   * RedGate SmartAssembly (.NET)   * Preemtive Dotfuscator (.NET)   * Inquartos Obfuscator (.NET)   * ProGuard (Java) I see the common thread that both operations require scanning and analyzing an assembly, but I'm curious if the two features are or even could be fundamentally related. The reason I am asking is that we are considering disabling code pruning in our environment (unrelated issue), but our concern is that it could potentially decrease the effectiveness of the obfuscation process and thus protect our Intellectual Property less. Does or could code pruning influence obfuscation, and how?"}
{"_id": "133980", "title": "Why is SQL known as a relation-based / functional language?", "text": "We're learning that most languages are classified as either of the two, \"relation based\" or \"high level\". I've never used SQL before, but from reading its syntax it seems more like the imperative/high-level syntax than functional/relation-based (Lisp, Haskell)?? Or it could just be that my interpretation of my professor's lecture notes is wrong... but it definitely lists SQL as one of the relation-based languages (as opposed to high level), and it equates relation-based with functional... or perhaps it's that I don't understand **why the fact that SQL deals with relational databases makes a functional language the way it should be implemented? (and why 'relation-based' equates with 'functional' when categorizing programming languages?)** Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "169917", "title": "The C++ web stack, is there one?", "text": "Java would be jsps and servlets (or a framework such as Spring) running on the JVM and tomcat (or glassfish etc). C# would be asp and C# running on dot.net framework and IIS ? (I have no experience with this please correct and improve my terminology) Is there an equivalent for C++ ? I could happily call some C++ from a java servlet/controller but was wondering if there are existing frameworks and libraries out there specifically for creating business logic in C++ with a web front end."}
{"_id": "169913", "title": "Are there any good python libraries for programming GUI's on MAC and Windows?", "text": "Need a a toolset / framework that I can use to build GUI apps on both Mac and Windows, without too much stuffing around. Any obvious candidates?"}
{"_id": "170167", "title": "How to learn & introduce scrum in small startup?", "text": "In a few months, a friend will establish his startup software company, and I will be the software architect with one additional developer. Though we have no real day-to-day experience with agile methods, I have read much \"overview\" type of material on them, and I firmly believe they are a good - if not the only - way to build software. So with this company, I want to go for iterative, agile development from day 1, preferably something light-weight. I was thinking of Scrum, but the question is: what is the best way for me and my colleagues to learn about it, to introduce it (which techniques when etc) and to evaluate whether we should keep it? Background which might be relevant: we're all experienced developers around the same age with similar professional mindset. We have worked together in the past and afterwards at several different companies, mostly with a Java/.NET focus. Some are a bit familiar with general ideas from the agile movement. In this startup, I have great power over tools, methods and process. The startup's product will be developed from scratch and could be classified as middleware. We have some \"customer\" contacts in the industry who could provide input as soon as we get to an alpha stage."}
{"_id": "170163", "title": "Am I permitted to use an LGPL library without releasing the source to the rest of my application, if I dynamically reference the library?", "text": "I am a bit confused as to what I am/am not allowed to do with a LGPL Library that I intend on using in a small scale commercial C++ Application that I am developing. My current understanding, although I don't know if I am correct, is that I am permitted use the library without releasing the source to the rest of my application if I dynamically reference the library. Does anyone know if this is correct? Are there any restrictions as to how I reference the library? Thank You! I am not a native English speaker and don't understand the licence entirely."}
{"_id": "170162", "title": "Non-english programming languages", "text": "Is there a definitive listing of programming languages which don't use English for the keywords and statements in the language code? For example, I know that Russians back in the Cold War were developing their own computers on their architecture. I'm interested if there is a listing of programming languages that are not English based?"}
{"_id": "206860", "title": "Why are methods considered the class attributes in Python?", "text": "I read in a book that both _methods_ and _fields_ are considered the _attributes_ of a class in Python. However, recently I was told by a friend of mine that methods may **not** be considered the _attributes_ of a class. Then I decided to check this out again, and found this question mentioned on Wikipedia saying that this is a Python \"tradition\" to refer to methods as attributes, in contrast to other object-oriented programming languages. So my question is: why are methods considered the class atributes along with the fields in Python in contrast to other languages? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "125569", "title": "Dynamically generating HTML and CSS", "text": "I find writing CSS by hand to be extremely tedious. Coming across a concept such as _fluid_ , makes me want to write all my websites so that the CSS resizes nicely and looks the same in different browsers. My question to you is: **Can my design be generated programmically?** e.g.:               #include <css>     #include <html>     #include <vector>     #include <string>          int main(void) {         HTML::HTML page;         page.title(\"my title\");         page.heading.font(15);         std::vector<std::string> para = <vector of paragraphs>;              CSS::CSS layout;         layout.grid(2,2);         layout.fill(xcoords_as_percentage, ycoords_as_percentage);              page.use_css(layout);         for(int i=0; i<para.size() && y!=grid.y.size()+1; i++, x++) {             if(x==grid.x.size()) x=0, y++;             page.grid[x][y]=para[i];         }         page.header1(\"I am header1\");         page.footer(\"I am page footer\");         layout.order(page.header1[0], page.grid.all(), page.footer());              generate_html(\"index.html\");         generate_css(\"layout.css\");     }      This will allow me to concentrate on the actual contents, abstracting away from \"Oh, IE7 doesn't support this option, so do this hack...\" FYI: I am coding the actual site in Django (Python), so the HTML/CSS generator doesn't have to be in C++. I am aware of work being done in this direction in the C++ Wt framework"}
{"_id": "232845", "title": "Claim to get my source code used GPL code", "text": "I'm running public web site based on Drupal. Drupal is GPL 2 or 3 licence. Of course I wrote custom code which interacts with Drupal code (modules). Can anybody write me an e-mail and ask for the source code of that my custom code? In other words, have I to publish that my code somewhere?"}
{"_id": "232844", "title": "Processing csv files (alternative to business logic in DB)", "text": "We are working on a fulfillment system for an online book store. Everyday we receive tens of CSV files (about 90 files) with data about purchased orders.   **Example:**               OrderId    |    BookTitle    |    Quantity    |    Price    |    BuyerName    |    ...     1          |The hunger games |        1       |     10      |    John Doe     |    ...     1          | The Exorcist    |        2       |     25      |    John Doe     |    ...     2          |   Superman      |        1       |     5.5     |    Jane Nose    |    ...      **What we currently do:**   The data need to be translated to our domain to `Order` entity, `OrderItem` entity,...etc. We load the file into dummy tables then use very complex queries to populate the `Orders` table and `OrderItems` table. **Problem:**   All the business logic is in the database (in the queries) so unit testing them is a nightmare. In addition we were requested to change the database we are using (not exactly, but something terrifyingly similar) **What we tried:**   We are moving to a DDD approach where the domain model is the core of the application that holds all the logic and validation. We tried to parse the file line by line and create the respective entities and validate them accordingly then save them to the database.   This resulted in thousands of calls to the database and sometimes the server runs out of memory coz of the thousands of records (around 90 thousand record/file) in a single file. I know this domain is dead old and someone must have found a better way to handle such task. How do you process such huge files in your domain without suffering from performance? UPDATE   * We are using a MySql database with PHP and Apache.   * The CSV file is loaded into a dummy table using something similar to this:               load data local infile 'orders.csv' into table dummyOrders fields terminated by ','       enclosed by '\"'       lines terminated by '\\n'         (orderId, bookkTitle,Quantity, Price, BuyerName,...)"}
{"_id": "232847", "title": "How to handle static-ish content from a CDN with authentication?", "text": "I have a website that allows user uploads of content. Part of the design, to date, involves storing the user content on a NAS that has been configured with a separate app pool in IIS that has scripting disabled, shorter lifespans, no cookies, etc for CDN-type behavior as a subdomain (static.domain.com vs. www.domain.com). I have complete control over this process and all the instances. The design decision behind this was to allow for cheaper storage of uploaded documents (instead of wwwroot or a DB) and help mitigate some security concerns by disallowing scripting. The concern I have now is that CDNs, and this setup, are by nature very permissive and do next to no checking or validation. Are there any _reasonably effective_ measures to discourage idle sharing of this user content? I know nothing will stop determined or malicious people, but I want to at least prevent this user content from being available at large to the general populous. All of the links to the content will be behind a paywall at the 'www' subdomain, but the content itself will be behind the 'static' subdomain. Ideas I had so far:   1. HTTP Referer checking    2. Obfuscated filenames (I know, I know...)    3. Cookie testing with URL rewrite? (IIS8)    4. ...    5. Ask stackexchange"}
{"_id": "232840", "title": "xml serialization and deserialization complex situation", "text": "I'm considering passing xml back and forth for error messages but each error has different scenarios. one situation at hand is passing diffed text comparison while others are as simple as passing a text message. What kind of serialization/deserialization strategy could I use for such a scenario? The main issue with a scenario like this is that the object is different from case to case and there needs to be a mechanism for identifying what type it is. Serializing xml is pretty straight forward:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11283040/deserialize-xml-string-to-complex-type   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1212742/xml-serialize-generic-list-of-serializable-objects Three sloppy ideas pop into my mind from the start:   1. Make some super class that contains every possibility of contained types.    2. Make some mechanism for reading the xml first to identify what's in it.    3. Use option 2 and convert the inner body xml to an object. A more elegant approach would be to implement some kind of Action pattern, where, once the object was identified you could create the proper action to take with it. Some ideas consist of the Action/Executor pattern or IoC:   * http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc984279.aspx   * http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa973811.aspx Here is an example pattern idea that runs parrallel to what I'm thinking:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/298976/is-there-a-better-alternative-than-this-to-switch-on-type Not for data persistence but for error handling by the client: The client decides how to handle the error once received based on the Action from a base library that takes place after deserialization. my considered xml format would be something like this: diff error:               <errorMessage>     <header>The header is not correct</header>     <body>          <diffErrorArray>     <diffItem message=\"NoChange\">     <customMessage>Correct</customMessage>     <source>HeaderColumn1</source>     <destination>HeaderColumn1</destination>     </diffItem>          <diffItem message=\"Replace\">     <customMessage>Changed</customMessage>     <source>HeaderColumn1</source>     <destination>Header_Column_1</destination>     </diffItem>          <diffItem message=\"AddDestination\">     <customMessage>Unknown</customMessage>     <source></source>     <destination>Header_Column_1</destination>     </diffItem>          <diffItem message=\"DeleteSource\">     <customMessage>Missing</customMessage>     <source>HeaderColumn2</source>     <destination></destination>     </diffItem>          </diffErrorArray>          </body>     </errorMessage>      string error:               <errorMessage>     <header>Bad news</header>     <body>     <stringErrorMessage>Something really bad happened.</stringErrorMessage>     <body>     </errorMessage>"}
{"_id": "254717", "title": "Is it anti-pattern to mix unit test and web test?", "text": "It is a language agnostic question, e.g. I have a unit test like               # Unit test     User user = User.create('john');     assertEquals(\"User name is john\", \"john\", user.getName());          # Web test start from here     goTo(\"/user/john\");     assertTitleEquals(\"john\");      Do you think it is an anti-pattern? Although I can write a full selenium test suites to do the same thing, but using the above code save much of my time (e.g. no more click('Login'); waitUntil etc, and I don't need to worry if my UI is changed at all, sound like it is a quick and more stable approach to test?"}
{"_id": "198691", "title": "when to mock in unit testing", "text": "I am trying to write unit tests in javascript for an application made in nodejs. What I want to know is - Say there is a class Vehicles which is dependent on another class Roads.   1. Should I mock the Roads class and send it as a parameter to Vehicles for unit testing? OR Should I just create a new object and send it as a parameter to Vehicles?   2. If I change the Roads class I will have to change the mocking every where?   3. Should I use a factory to create mocked objects?"}
{"_id": "65477", "title": "(Why) is it important that a unit test not test dependencies?", "text": "I understand the value of automated testing and use it wherever the problem is well-specified enough that I can come up with good test cases. I've noticed, though, that some people here and on StackOverflow emphasize testing **only** a unit, not its dependencies. Here I fail to see the benefit. Mocking/stubbing to avoid testing dependencies adds complexity to the tests. It adds artificial flexibility/decoupling requirements to your production code to support mocking. (I disagree with anyone who says this promotes good design. Writing extra code, introducing things like dependency injection frameworks, or otherwise adding complexity to your codebase to make things more flexible/pluggable/extensible/decoupled without a real use case is overengineering, not good design.) Secondly, testing dependencies means that critical low-level code that's used everywhere gets tested with inputs other than those that whoever wrote its tests explicitly thought of. I've found plenty of bugs in low-level functionality by running unit tests on high level functionality without mocking out the low-level functionality it depended on. Ideally these would have been found by the unit tests for the low-level functionality, but missed cases always happen. What's the other side to this? Is it really important that a unit test doesn't also test its dependencies? If so, why? Edit: I can understand the value of mocking _external dependencies_ like databases, networks, web services, etc. (Thanks to Anna Lear for motivating me to clarify this.) I was referring to _internal dependencies_ , i.e. other classes, static functions, etc. that don't have any direct external dependencies."}
{"_id": "103516", "title": "Does every ASP.NET Web Application has a Single Application Domain?", "text": "I am bit confused. Is there only one application domain for every single ASP.NET Web Application or there can be anywhere between 1 to 100 application domains present in a single application pool of a web application"}
{"_id": "103517", "title": "How do you learn a language's standard framework/API/functionality?", "text": "I understand how to code. I know how to get around the basics of the languages I use regularly. I know how to write slightly-above-basic regular expressions, I can talk to databases, I can accept input, print output, handle files, etc. I'm more or less assured of my basic ability to spit out the source code for moderately complex program. My problem is that I never feel like it's enough. I feel like I only know a small portion of the standard library of my language, and that until I understand it all, at least in passing, I have no right to even try to get a job using it. I'm just out of (community/junior/whathaveyou) college, and my friends are getting jobs in the industry, but I still feel like a fake or a poser and that I'm just not good enough. Is there a decent marker for \"I know enough\" that I could use to assure myself that I can code? Should I take the fact that I'm at least capable of coding up a FizzBuzz as an indicator that it's alright to apply for things? How can I learn more of these standard libraries, frameworks, and/or APIs relatively easily? I code on a regular basis, I read books, but my knowledge still feels so shallow. HELP!"}
{"_id": "239099", "title": "_variable - why that underscore at the beginning?", "text": "Sometimes I see people writing variable names like this: > int _variable; IMO That's really ugly. What's that about?"}
{"_id": "239098", "title": "Most efficient way to store this collection of moduli and remainders?", "text": "I have a huge collection of different moduli and associated with each modulus a fairly large list of remainders. I want to store these values so that I can efficiently determine whether an integer is equivalent to any one of the remainders with respect to any of the moduli (it doesn't matter which, I just want a true/false return). I thought about storing these values as a linked-list of balanced binary trees, but I was wondering if there is a better way? **EDIT** Perhaps a little more detail would be helpful. As for the size of this structure, it will be holding about 10s of thousands of (prime-1) moduli and associated to each modulus will be a variable amount of remainders. Most moduli will only have one or two remainders associated to it, but a very rare few will have a couple hundred associated to it. This is part of a larger program which handles numbers with a couple thousand (decimal) digits. This program will benefit more from this table being as large as possible and being able to be searched quickly. Here's a small part of the dataset where the moduli are in parentheses and the remainders are comma separated:               (46) k = 20     (58) k = 15, 44         (70) k = 57             (102) k = 36, 87         (106) k = 66             (156) k = 20, 59, 98, 137          (190) k = 11, 30, 68, 87, 125, 144, 182      (430) k = 234     (520) k = 152, 282     (576) k = 2, 11, 20, 29, 38, 47, 56, 65, 74, ...(add 9 each time), 569      I had said that the moduli were prime, but I was wrong they are each one below a prime."}
{"_id": "239092", "title": "Track time spent on site", "text": "We are going to track user engagement (i.e. time spent on site, most viewed part/page of the system, etc). I don't see Google Analytics / MixPanel being able to do this, since we have to analyze based on factors only present in OUR backend (such as users who go to specific school, users who are a specific type, etc) - not the general stuff like Country, Gender, etc. I can think of a REALLY simple solution, but I am not sure if it is, serverwise, bad. You have a table that looks something like this:               CREATE TABLE `log` (       `id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,       `uri` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,       `date` timestamp NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,       `user` int(11) NOT NULL,       PRIMARY KEY (`id`)     ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;      And then whenever a page is loaded, a row is added to the \"log\" table, with current timestamp, the user id and the uri. Now I got the data I want, which is great. I can figure out when the user was last online and how many minutes people spend in average. BUT. Is this bad for the server? It is going to add a row each page load, which is a lot of rows, if you have 500 or 1000 active users. But will it matter? What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "239096", "title": "Benefits of caching the count of items in a data structure versus on-demand calculation?", "text": "Given a data structure, I want to provide an API method `Size` which returns the number of items. I am vacillating between 2 approaches:   1. Maintain a count and increment/decrement it in response to Add/Delete calls respectively   2. Perform a traversal to calculate the count when `Size` is called. Approach #2 will take O(n) vs O(1) for approach #1. Other than performance, any other benefits of #1 over #2 ?"}
{"_id": "239095", "title": "Generating PDF files using individual template components", "text": "**EDIT: Updated flow diagram to better explain the (likely unnecessary) complexity of what I'm doing.** * * * We at the company I work for are attempting to **create complex PDF files using Java iText** (the free version 2.1 line). The documents are **built piece-by-piece from individual \"template\" files** , which are added to the final document one after another using the `PdfStamper` class, as well as filled using AcroForms. ![Visual Example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9pyck.png) The current design performs a loop which runs for each template that needs to be added in order (as well as the custom logic needed to fill each). In each iteration of the loop, it does the following:   1. Creates a `PdfReader` to open the template file   2. Creates a `PdfStamper` that reads from the `PdfReader` and writes to a \"template buffer\"   3. Fills AcroForm fields, as well as measures the height of the template by getting the location of an \"end\" `AcroField`.   4. Closes the `PdfReader` and `PdfStamper`   5. Creates a `PdfReader` to read a \"working buffer\" that stores the current final document in progress   6. Creates a `PdfStamper` that reads from the `PdfReader` and writes to a \"storage buffer\"   7. Closes the `PdfReader`, opens a new `PdfReader` to the \"template buffer\"   8. Imports the page from the \"template buffer,\" adds it to the `ContentByte` of the `PdfStamper`   9. Closes the `PdfReader` and `PdfStamper`   10. Swaps the \"storage buffer\" with the \"working buffer\" in order to be ready to repeat. Here is a diagram visually explaining the above process, which is performed for each iteration of the \"loop\" that performs each template: ![Flow diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FUSSn.png) However, as discovered through this Stack Overflow question (where example code can also be viewed) and the response by iText author Bruno Lowagie, this methodology of using the `PdfStamper` can cause significant issues. \"Abusing\" the `PdfStamper` by creating and closing the stamper too many times can cause corruptions in the resulting file that only effect some programs, generating a seemingly good document that may fail in certain contexts. **What is the alternative?** Mr. Lowagie's response suggests that there is a simpler or more direct way to use `PdfStamper`s, though I do not quite understand it myself yet. Could this be done using only a single stamper? Could it be done without using a rotating series of buffers?"}
{"_id": "250619", "title": "Best practices / reasons for String constants in JavaScript", "text": "In static languages like Java/C#, I commonly make use of constants for strings or numbers, rather than insert them into the code alone. However, I tend to avoid this practice in JavaScript. More recently, as some other coders around me have taken this approach in JS, I decided I should probably solidify either my, or their, reasoning. There is no actual \"const\" declaration syntax in JavaScript. We usually just settle for an informal policy of not changing uppercase properties. But my opinion is usually to avoid them altogether, because most of their benefits are lost in JavaScript. In Java, a misspelt string will cause the program to fail when you try to run it, at which point you correct it and move on. Having a static checker where both instances are pointing to the same constant eliminates that problem, as it can be found at compile-time. But JavaScript will simply have that problem all over the place, as you're ALWAYS going to discover your spelling's correctness _at run-time_ :               Library = { doThing: function() }     setTimeout(function()       Liberry.doThing()       // No such object: Liberry     }, 0);      The best safeguard against this, usually, is \"use strict\". For developers that prefer it, I'm fine with them using that to find issues with undeclared variables more quickly. But my opinion has been that providing string constants for REST APIs, etc., doesn't actually safeguard you against anything. Another example:               CompanyAPI.constants.ENROLL_URL = \"/rest/enroll\";     CompanyAPI.constants.FIRST_NAME = \"firstName\";          ajax({url: CompanyAPI.constants.ENROLL_URL,     data: CompanyAPI.constants.FIRST_NAME     });     // vs.     ajax({url: \"/rest/enroll\",     data: \"firstName\"     });      ...You meant to write the above, but then made typos. Whoops.               ajax({url: CompanyAPI.constants.ENROL_URL,       data: CompanyAPI.constants.FIRS_NAME     });     // vs.     ajax({url: \"/rest/enrol\",       data: \"firsName\"     });      The constant-based one will still provide _undefined_ , while \"firsName\" is no better. To that end, I tend to just see this as a benefit of static languages, and not bother having a system to fix it (besides maybe starting to use \"use strict\" for debugging). Can some other people tell me what their preferred practice for string/integer constancy is? EDIT: To clarify, my preference is usually to put strings like \"firstName\" directly inline with no top-level constant declaration - the penalties for misspelling it are the same either way. Strings that might get long, like a REST URL, I'll tend to define at the top of the file."}
{"_id": "225207", "title": "Why should a builder be an inner class instead in it's own class file?", "text": "Many `Builder Pattern` examples make the `Builder` an inner class of the object it builds. This makes some sense since it indicates what the `Builder` builds. However, in static a static type language we know what the `Builder` builds. On the other hand if the `Builder` is an inner class, you _should_ know what class the `Builder` builds without looking inside of the `Builder`. Also, having the builder as an inner class reduces the number of imports since it can be referenced by the outer class--if you care about that. And then there are practical examples where the `Builder` is in the same package, but not an inner class, like `StringBuilder`. You know that the `Builder` _should_ build a `String` because it is named so. That being said, the only good reason I can think of for making a `Builder` an inner class is that you know what the class' `Builder` is without knowing it's name or relying on naming conventions. For example, if `StringBuilder` was an inner class of String I probably would have known it existed sooner than I did (speculative). Are there any other reasons to make the `Builder` an inner class or does it just come down to preference and ritual?"}
{"_id": "224096", "title": "Simple avenues for dynamically building Windows executables", "text": "I'm trying to build a Firefox add-on which lets you create executable files which can be associated with a default program or added to the \"Open With\" list and possess its own icon. I was hoping to avoid having the add-on compile files into exes, but...   1. It does not seem batch files can have their own icons.   2. Although one can pass batch instructions to cmd.exe via shortcut (and shortcuts can have their own icons) and a shortcut can even accept arguments (as in dropping files onto it), one apparently cannot add shortcuts to the \"Open with\" menu (the Open With dialog treats the shortcut as equivalent to the referenced executable, in this case, .exe, and without the extra parameters). So, I'd like to know what other approaches might be available to me for building executables (or something that really functions like an executable) in a simple and transparent manner? I am leaning toward packaging an open- source batch-to-exe converter like http://sourceforge.net/projects/bat2exe/ (though I'd really hope to find one which itself can be controlled via command line) so I can build a batch file programmatically and then turn it into a full-blown executable with icon. **UPDATE** The primary reason I want to do this is for the sake of https://github.com/brettz9/webappfind . WebAppFind lets you open desktop files (while you are on your desktop) into web applications and currently comes with pre-built executables which can be associated with a given file extension (to work with Open With or as a default handler). These executables will be used to call Firefox (and my add-on, WebAppFind) with certain flags that allow WebAppFind to open the file in a web app (as determined by other factors like a filetypes.json file in the same directory as the file or a previously registered protocol handler correlated to the file extension, as explained at the repo). However, what I cannot pre-build into the executable are all possible configuration directive combinations a user might wish to supply to the add-on or, more importantly, the specific Firefox profile in which they wish the app (with desktop file) to load. The ability to open a web app in any profile can allow for web apps to work more like executables--they get their own icon in the task bar, they don't have to force the user to load a bunch of tabs or add-ons if, e.g., they just want to have open in a separate process their local HTML file in a JavaScript-based WYSIWYG HTML editor or their SVG file in an SVG-edit web app (And I also don't want users to have to go through the trouble of associating an icon with the exe manually.)"}
{"_id": "33722", "title": "What is the difference between requirements Elicitation and Requirements Analysis in the real world?", "text": "My question aim to draw a fine line between Requirements Elicitation and Requirements Analysis. What is the difference between these two?"}
{"_id": "100284", "title": "How to reconcile my support of open-source software and need to feed and house myself?", "text": "I have a bit of a dilemma and wanted to get some other developers' opinions on it and maybe some guidance. So I have created a 2D game for Android from the ground up, learning and re factoring as I went along. I did it for the experience, and have been proud of the results. I released it for free as ad supported with AdMob not really expecting much out of it, but curious to see what would happen. Its been a few of months now since release, and it has become very popular (>250k downloads!). Additionally, the ad revenue is great and is driving me to make more good games and even allowing me to work less so that I can focus on my own works. When I originally began working on the game, I was pretty new to concurrency and completely new to Android (had Java experience though). The standard advice I got for starting an Android game was to look at the sample games from Google (Snake, Lunar Lander, ...) so I did. In my opinion, these Android sample games from Google are decent to see in general what your code should look like, but not actually all that great to follow. This is because some of their features don't work (saving game state), the concurrency is both unexplained and cumbersome (there is no real separation between the game thread and the UI thread since they sync lock each other out all the time and the UI thread runs game thread code). This made it difficult for me as a newbie to concurrency to understand how it was organized and what was really running what code. **Here is my dilemma:** After spending this past few months slowly improving my code, I feel that it could be very beneficial to developers who are in the same position that I was in when I started. (Since it is not a complex game, but clearly coded in my opinion.) I want to open up the source so that others can learn from it but don't want to lose my ad revenue stream, which, if I did open the source, I fear I would when people released versions with the ad stripped, or minor tweaks that would fragment my audience, etc. I am a CS undergrad major in college and this money is giving me the freedom to work less at summer job, thus giving me the time and will to work on more of my own projects and improving my own skills while still paying the bills. So what do I do? Open the source at personal sacrifice for the greater good, or keep it closed and be a sort of hypocritical supporter of open source?"}
{"_id": "35228", "title": "Which Provides a better Foundation Java or .Net (C#, ASP.NET)?", "text": "I am not asking this question to start arguments (people often consider Java and .Net as religions) but which provides a better foundation and helps to gain real programming skills (of Computer Science and Web Development), I have worked with ASP.NET and C# but most of my time spends on Dragging and Dropping i am a C++ programmer and Drag and Drop irritates me.I haven't tried Java so i want to ask is Java also like .Net family (Drag and Drop)?"}
{"_id": "244348", "title": "What alternative is better to diagram this scenario?", "text": "I was creating and discussing a class diagram with a partner of mine. To simplify things, I've modify the real domain we're working on and made up the following diagram: ![one](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8Q7WX.png) Basically, a company works on constructions that are quite different one from each other but are still constructions. Note I've added one field for each class but there should be many more. Now, I thought this was the way to go but my partner told me that if in the future new construction classes appear we would have to modify the Company class, which is correct. So the new proposed class diagram would be this: ![two](http://i.stack.imgur.com/C2cCj.png) Now I've been wondering:   1. Should the fact that in no place of the application will there be mixed lists of planes and bridges affect the design in any way?   2. When we have to list only planes for a company, how are we supposed to distinguish them from the other elements in the list without checking for their class names?   3. Related to the previous question, is it correct to assume that this type of diagram should be high-level and this is something it shouldn't matter at this stage but rather be thought and decided at implementation time? Any comment will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "185114", "title": "Are \"conditional\" caching policies ever actually useful?", "text": "I'm designing an abstraction over ASP.Net's built in caching to make it not so horrible to use. One design decision I'm having to look at is if I should restrict people to using just one cache policy on each item. For example, say you're caching the HTML generated by your blog post or some such. Would you ever want to cache it sometimes for 30 minutes and sometimes for 2 hours? Note: this isn't cache invalidation. These are the policies available:   * Priority   * Absolute expiration   * Sliding expiration (where each access bumps the expiration by this much) Are there any use cases where someone would want to add an item to the cache with one set of policies and in another portion of the web application use a different set of policies when it gets added(but of course, if it already exists keep with the old policy)? Are there any real world uses to allowing this?"}
{"_id": "230723", "title": "Why might I switch from ASP MVC to Node/Express?", "text": "So I've been wanting to try Node and Express. Not to mention Jade and Stylus. Webstorm has in my opinion an amazing user experience and I want to use it and these technologies. Here is where I get hung up though. ASP has some nice built in features that don't seem to exist in this other world. I will pick on authentication. Authentication can be a pretty complex in depth thing. Frankly it is nice to have something built in, tested, and robust for something so critical to some applications. Or if Authentication is too petty. How about compiled code? Why would I WANT to use JavaScript on the server side if I know c#. Isn't type safety a nice to have? What am I missing? these technologies are popular for a reason but I just don't see the draw? I would like to though."}
{"_id": "230720", "title": "Is refactoring for the purpose of unit testing a code smell?", "text": "Let me preface this question by saying that I get the need for unit testing. I painfully get it. You have to do it to ensure that future modifications don't adversely affect the application in ways you did not expect. It's also good practice to utilize a test driven methodology to ensure your current modifications work as expected while providing a solid testing base for adding edge cases (bugs) later. I also understand that testing is a requirement for any company that will, or plans to be, subject to an IT audit. And finally, I get that if your code is testable, it is probably written using solid design principles. The quandary that I have is that coding to an interface for the purpose of supporting unit testing alone, seems like a contrived complexity. Take the case where you have a database application that does not have the requirement to be database agnostic. You've already coded a DAL that communicates with that database and BL that uses that DAL for persistence. Integration tests are in place with the current architecture that utilize a development database for test data. To support 100% code coverage on unit tests you would now need to introduce interfaces for both the DAL and the BL, have concrete implementations of those interfaces, and use dependency or constructor injection to utilize those interfaces based on the context of the runtime. Does that not introduce a contrived complexity? A side question I guess is where is the line drawn between unit and integration testing in these cases? It's certainly feasible that the data model can change and you'd want integration testing in addition to unit testing because it's clear that unit testing will succeed where integration testing can fail in that case."}
{"_id": "185117", "title": "Visitor pattern", "text": "I was recently given the following task, and failed, the reason given that I misunderstood the question               Create a 'LibraryItem' interface.     Create 3 concrete implementations of LibraryItem: 'Book', 'CD', 'DVD'.     Apply the visitor pattern to your data model.     Write a MaximumBorrowTimeVisitor that computes the maximum time you can borrow a LibraryItem.     Create an arbitrary instance of a data model and apply the MaximumBorrowTimeVisitor.      I thought this was simple, and yet I failed the task. How would you solve this task?"}
{"_id": "188742", "title": "Is it a good practice to have a remote branch for each developer?", "text": "Is it considered a good practice to have a remote branch for each individual developer in the project? We're using Git with the following branches:   * master   * release   * develop If each developer had their own branch, they could push code into their branches and others could merge these changes into their own branches."}
{"_id": "188740", "title": "Do any LOP languages exist?", "text": "I have read a few of the articles related to the **Language Oriented Programming** paradigm. Therefore, I concluded that LOP paradigm can let programmers be more productive because of it's extensibility. Are there any programming languages that are already implemented LOP or in development status?"}
{"_id": "230725", "title": "Approach to coding algorithms to minimize rework", "text": "I find myself reworking my code quite a bit, especially when learning to write algorithms that involve keeping track of multiple attributes and labels. I feel that having the pseudo-code written up, having a small numerical example worked out, and a few test cases is usually a good approach. Yet, I find myself making mistakes and reworking code constantly. Is there a better approach or a structured methodology that I should follow? Greatly appreciate the advice."}
{"_id": "130985", "title": "Is it possible to write software that doesn't need to be continually modified?", "text": "I have written a lot of software in many different languages, and I've also \"written\" hardware for use with FPGAs using Verilog and VHDL. I tend to enjoy writing hardware more than software, and I think one of the primary reasons is that it is possible to write hardware that is \"done\" and never needs to be modified: you define the interfaces and the functionality, write a test bench, implement the hardware module, then test the heck out of it using a simulator. Then you can rely on that hardware module as a building block to create something bigger and better: if you need to add a feature to that module, you create a second module and add the functionality there. You never throw away the original module since it is working just fine and can still be useful. One of my main frustrations with software is that it is never \"done\". There is always another feature to add. Often when adding a feature it introduces a bug somewhere else that was working just fine before. This doesn't happen in hardware as long as the interfaces are not violated. To be clear, I'm not advocating building one version of something with a list of features and that's it forever: I'm in favor of iterations and multiple releases over time to add new features. I just don't want to poke the code on the left and find a bug on the right, and this seems to happen after adding a new feature. Is it possible to write software in a similar way in which hardware is \"written\"? Is there a good software development methodology that allows forward progress to always be made and allows new functionality to be added without needing to rewrite existing code and introduce new bugs?"}
{"_id": "130983", "title": "What are some possible accreditations I could get over 4 months toward being a software developer?", "text": "We have a family business and I need to be in India, Delhi for 4 months as a part of a business trip. I won't be doing much all day. I already have a degree in economics, but I also love software. Over the years I have taken different courses. I even took a degree in software engineering, completed the first 2 years but then I left for family reasons. It did not affect me as I already had a degree and also the family business. Now I am thinking what are some of the things I can do in the 4 months that I will be there. Programming lessons is one of them, in some of the languages that I am not familiar with, but what else? Are there any certifications I can get?"}
{"_id": "101779", "title": "When writing a library, how much should the end user do?", "text": "First off, this question goes beyond my example (don't want this to be too localized or migrated to Stack Overflow) but I've come across this when thinking about something I wanted to try in C so I thought I'd use that as an example. So my idea is to create a generic linked list in C and started it last night and it is coming along pretty well for being new in C. The issue I ran into is type casting and it leads me to this question: how much work should a library designer expect the end user to do when using the library? If you take my example, right now, I don't perform any casts and return an Object (which is a typedef of void*). Is it reasonable to make sure that the end user keeps track of their types or should the library designer make sure that the list is type safe (I think I have a general idea on how to implement that for at least the built in data types)? Is it reasonable, when designing a library to expect a certain amount of work on the end users part to use the library or should it be dumbed down as much as possible? Are there factors that would affect this decision, such as language?"}
{"_id": "132638", "title": "What are the features required for Object Orientation?", "text": "I am just wondering, what exactly are the features a language or a library must provide in order for it to be defined as 'Object Oriented'. Is Object Orientation something that can, more or less, be achieved in **any** general- purpose programming language with decent features? Or is it something that can only be achieved in languages that specifically advertise that they support Object Oriented Programming? For example, look at the following C code:               SDL_Surface* screen = SDL_SetVideoMode( 640, 480, 16, SDL_HWSURFACE);     SDL_FreeSurface( screen );      or the code discussed here. Now the above code does not use inheritance , runtime-polymorphism ( ? ) , virtual functions etc. But it seems pretty much OOP to me. Is Object-Orientation simply writing code which is based on creatable and destructable data structures such as objects, classes, structs etc. which does not require on any special pattern or features provided by the Programming Language or a library ?"}
{"_id": "103518", "title": "What is an efficient way to retrieve product counts at multiple levels of a hierarchy?", "text": "I'm working on an e-business website to sell books and also want to display the number of available books in the category list. The category list contains the genre and the format (pocket, ebook, audiobook etc). In each element in genre and format I would like to display the number of available products from the stock list. Of course, when you go deeper into the hierarchy, you retrieve more specific information of available books at that level. For instance there are 2000 available books in the \"medicine\" genre and if I select the \"pocket\" format then there are 200 available books left. In other words, you have combined \"pocket\" and \"medicine\" and you know now that there are 200 available pocket books in total in the \"medicine\" genre. My question is: How do you create that functionality without making lots of effort to ask the database about the amount of available products in each element? Do you need to buy a special application or plugin? Please remember that there are millions of books in the database. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MJ4eh.png)"}
{"_id": "87959", "title": "How to determine number of resources to be allocated in a software project?", "text": "Last day I have been interviewed and the interviewer asked me as given the outline of a project, how can we determine the number of resources to be needed for the same? I don't know to do so. Is there any standard way of doing so? or is it based on the experience? Or how? I am pretty new in this activity and my knowledge is zero at present .... so any clear explanation with some example(simple) will help me(and people like me) to understand this."}
{"_id": "234386", "title": "Cloud differential backup", "text": "I am responsible for the design and development of a cloud backup application. Currently we are using xDelta to do differential backup so that only the changed parts of the files gets uploaded. This cuts cost for both us the company and the user. One issue we are having with this approach is that in order to do a differential backup the modified file needs to be compared to the original file. To solve this we opted for a quick solution and that is to cache the original files on the users' computer for a quick reference. Now this solution works brilliantly for desktop/home users where the file sizes are relatively small. The problem arise when say a server administrator tries to backup an sql database for example that is 100GB in size. Though currently we cache the file on disk, this is definitely not appreciated by server administrators since we are filling their drives with cached files. I am wondering if there is any other approach to do differential backups without the need of having the original files on disk permanently."}
{"_id": "43883", "title": "Top bad practices in MySQL", "text": "There was another post allowing people to post their top bad practices in PHP, I had a gripe about MySQL practices and thought it'd be an interesting topic to hear the top bad practices in MySQL. Up vote the ones you agree with"}
{"_id": "43886", "title": "What are the standard directory layouts for source code?", "text": "I'm in the process of proposing a new standard directory layout that will be used across all the projects in our organization. Projects can have compiled source code, setup scripts, build scripts, third-party libraries, database scripts, resources, web services, web sites, etc. This is partly inspired by discovering Maven's standard layout. Are there any other standard layouts that are generally accepted in the industry?"}
{"_id": "124160", "title": "What (free) on-line conferences or video sites about tech stuff do you know?", "text": "Instead of TV, I prefer to watch (free) on-line conferences or videos. As a software developer, my favorites are:   * InfoQ   * MSDN Channel 9   * Google TechTalks   * LinkedIn TechTalks   * TED   * Business Of Software blog (I like entrepreneurship too) Maybe I'm losing other valuable sources (about software and startups) of these kind of content. So, can you suggest other specialized sites like these?"}
{"_id": "124161", "title": "Does it make sense to use a personal Amazon Cloud Drive to host an SVN repository?", "text": "I have 5GB of free storage on Amazon's Cloud Drive service that I'm not using, so I'm wondering: is it possible to create an SVN repository and be able to commit/update through TortoiseSVN? I have an account at Assembla.com and use it for all my personal/school projects and love it, but Assembla has a 2GB limit."}
{"_id": "175510", "title": "Hibernate set up for beginner", "text": "I am learning Hibernate (OR Mapping). I am using Maven for project management. However, I am currently reading a Hibernate book by O'Reilly, and they use ANT for their example. So my question is are there any difference between setting up hibernate with ANT and Maven? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "130679", "title": "typedefs and #defines", "text": "We all have definitely used `typedef`s and `#define`s one time or the other. Today while working with them, I started pondering on a thing. Consider the below 2 situations to use `int` data type with another name:               typedef int MYINTEGER      and               #define MYINTEGER int      Like above situation, we can, in many situations, very well accomplish a thing using #define, and also do the same using typedef, although the ways in which we do the same may be quite different. #define can also perform MACRO actions which a typedef cannot. Although the basic reason for using them is the different, how different is their working? When should one be preferred over the other when both can be used? Also, is one guaranteed to be faster than the other in which situations? (e.g. #define is preprocessor directive, so everything is done way earlier than at compiling or runtime)."}
{"_id": "130677", "title": "How should repetitive calendar tasks be stored in the database?", "text": "This is for a small personal project for micro-management. Basically, I store tasks in a SQLite3 database that looks like this:                   id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT         label TEXT         deadline INTEGER      So each task has a due date (deadline) that is stored as a Unix Time Stamp. So far so good, I can do entries such as \"tomorrow: visit grandma\" and a new row gets created with \"visit grandma\" as the label and _tomorrow_ transformed as Unix time for deadline. Now I would like to enter new type of tasks: routines - tasks repeated on a time pattern, like \"everyday: clean kitchen\". How can such tasks be stored or modeled? For the moment, I am thinking that, in the case of a task that needs to be done everyday, to generate new rows in my table that would have the same label, and the deadline field incremented by one day. In this case, I need to fix a limit in the future. For example, if I create a routine for every day, it creates a new row for everyday of the remaining year. Is there a simpler way to do this? Am I missing some obvious database design principles?"}
{"_id": "116289", "title": "What techniques should I keep in mind in order to design efficient algorithms in PHP?", "text": "I am trying to solve programming challenges on www.interviewstreet.com using PHP. Are there certain techniques I should keep in mind that will optimize the efficiency of the algorithm? For example, I read that using PHP's language constructs versus function calls are faster. Is this true? Any other tips?"}
{"_id": "135008", "title": "Delegates and events", "text": "What is the difference between               public delegate void SecondChangedHandler(Object clock, TimeInfoEventArgs ti);     public event SecondChangedHandler OnSecondChanged;      and               public event EventHandler<TimeInfoEventArgs> OnSecondChanged;      When should you use which and is there any best practice?"}
{"_id": "177301", "title": "Calculating 3d rotation around random axis", "text": "This is actually a solved problem, but I want to understand why my original method didn't work (hoping someone with more knowledge can explain). (Keep in mind, I've not very experienced in 3d programming, having only played with the very basic for a little bit...nor do I have a lot of mathematical experience in this area). I wanted to animate a point rotating around another point at a random axis, say a 45 degrees along the y axis (think of an electron around a nucleus). I know how to rotate using the transform matrix along the X, Y and Z axis, but not an arbitrary (45 degree) axis. Eventually after some research I found a suggestion: Rotate the point by -45 degrees around the Z so that it is aligned. Then rotate by some increment along the Y axis, then rotate it back +45 degrees for every frame tick. While this certainly worked, I felt that it seemed to be more work then needed (too many method calls, math, etc) and would probably be pretty slow at runtime with many points to deal with. I thought maybe it was possible to combine all the rotation matrixes involve into 1 rotation matrix and use that as a single operation. Something like:                [ cos(-45)    -sin(-45)         0]      [ sin(-45)     cos(-45)         0]      rotate by -45 along Z       [    0            0             1]      multiply by                [ cos(2)          0       -sin(2)]      [    0            1            0 ]      rotate by 2 degrees (my increment) along Y      [ sin(2)          0        cos(2)]      then multiply that result by (in that order)                [ cos(45)      -sin(45)         0]      [ sin(45)       cos(45)         0]      rotate by 45 along Z       [    0            0             1]      I get 1 mess of a matrix of numbers (since I was working with unknowns and 2 angles), but I felt like it should work. It did not and I found a solution on wiki using a different matirx, but that is something else. I'm not sure if maybe I made an error in multiplying, but my question is: this is actually a viable way to solve the problem, to take all the separate transformations, combine them via multiplying, then use that or not?"}
{"_id": "177308", "title": "Can I use a project code which has New BSD license but uses a GPL license library?", "text": "I want to use the ICSOpenVpn project source code in my commercial application. If we see the ICSOpenVpn project, it states that its license is New BSD but the libopenvpn.so library it uses is under GNU GPLv2 license. As per FAQ for version 2 of GNU GPL \"If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that any program which uses it has to be under the GPL?\" The answer says: \"Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library.\" Also, how could ICSOpenVpn change the license to New BSD?"}
{"_id": "201843", "title": "Open source licensing of derived works", "text": "I derived an open-sourced work, Service-Nucleus, based on Netflix's Karyon (Apache License) and Google's AngularJS (MIT License). I want to make sure proper licensing and copyrights are in place, and I am not sure how to honor those projects and move forward legitimately at the same time. I've researched this to some length and it's a soupy mess out there. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I currently provide the Apache License from NetFlix at the root."}
{"_id": "84822", "title": "Overwhelmed at Internship", "text": "My best friend just started his internship a month ago. The problem is he is discouraged. He was a good A+ student at school, and he is feeling that he doesn't know anything at all. The issues he is working on, although they are on languages he feels comfortable in, seem so alien to him, he said. He's getting really discouraged, like he does not know the code base at all. I keep trying to tell him that it will just take time and that he is expected to have lots of questions. What should I tell him?"}
{"_id": "233826", "title": "Run a function when a function in a list is executed?", "text": "**Goal** : I'm currently doing an MVC project and I have this method to update the ViewBag (based on previous actions of the user). I would like to call this function whenever a certain list of MVC Actions are called (most of them). **Questions** :   1. Would an observer pattern fit my problem? (I'm reading about them at the moment, starting to sound like it would).   2. If so, would it be overkill for something so simple or would it be in good practice?   3. Am I looking in the right direction or is their a better way to reach my goal? The user has an \"ActiveEntity\" in the session once they select one and I need to display the entity's name, date, etc. when most pages are loaded (as part of the header information). The catch is that I'm using other data for the model as I have a large hierarchy of data to display (parts/levels at a time) and the ViewBag is an acceptable location to store the data that acts similar to header-information(I think?). Is my approach correct? Might someone be able to point me in a good direction?"}
{"_id": "233820", "title": "When using \"Github Flow\", what if my next feature depends on code from a pending Pull Request?", "text": "We are experimenting with \"Github Flow\", as defined here. In short, every change starts off as a well-named branch off of master. When it's done, you open a PR for that branch, it gets reviewed, and then gets merged into master. It's a very simple workflow. However, we have run into this a couple of times: I develop feature X, and open a PR for it. While I'm waiting for the PR for X to be reviewed, I want to start work on another feature Y, but I need the code from PR X. Should I just start a branch from the feature X branch, or if I've already started feature Y, just merge feature X into the feature Y branch? It seems so, but I wanted to check with other teams that are following this model to see how they handled multiple PRs and features that are dependent upon each other."}
{"_id": "85087", "title": "SVN - Is it OK to use any flavor of SVN amongst the team?", "text": "Is it OK if, within a team, developers use different flavors of SVN? Say one using Tortoise SVN and other using Versionsapp.com SVN?"}
{"_id": "85084", "title": "Windows Azure vs GAE vs AWS - for process based application", "text": "I am writing an application that will crawl web pages and analyze data, and I'm wondering if I can host this as a cloud-based service. The main reason I'm looking at cloud hosting is that users may process thousands of pages at once, and I need to return data as quickly as possible. The user will have software installed on their computer that will communicate with this application. If, for example, each page takes 10 seconds to process, is it possible to set up auto scaling so that a user can process 1, 10 or 10,000 pages in the same amount of time (ie: 10 seconds) by simply adding and removing instances as needed? Note: Each process requires little RAM/CPU resources, so it will be possible to process multiple pages in a single instance but for this example, I'll simplified it to 1 instance per process. If so, which cloud-based service is best suited for this task?"}
{"_id": "142632", "title": "Does not documenting code result in job security?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should you write good documentation and clean code to increase the \"Bus > Factor\"? I often ask young programmers why they are not documenting their code. Their responses, perhaps jokingly, frequently include \"job security.\" I hear this from experienced professionals, too. And not just in programming; network engineers and system administrators widely subscribe to this belief. Can you really ensure job security by holding the details of your work in your head rather than on paper (or in files)? What's your experience?"}
{"_id": "233828", "title": "Initialization of objects in a system using dependency injection", "text": "This is a follow up question to the following post: Injecting dependencies (DI) in c++ applications In a system that uses DI, someone, somewhere should be responsible to create the various objects and \"wire\" them. I find it difficult to figure out who should do this. I read about one option that it should be the \"root class\". However, in that case it seems that the root class might be responsible for creating a very large number of objects. I though of an option to use smaller builder classes that will be used the root class - is that a good way to do it? Note: I tagged 'C++' in this question because I am developing in C++. I am not sure if it makes any difference to the answer."}
{"_id": "252049", "title": "Pattern to safely establish a one to one bidirectional relationship", "text": "Let suppose we have 2 classes, `Pilot` and `Plane`, being in an optional one- to-one relationship. So a `Plane` might have a pilot when it's flying, but when it's standing in its hangar, it has none. Similar for the `Pilot`. It would be just logical to hold a pointer to the `Plane` in the `Pilot` and a pointer to the `Pilot` in the `Plane`, accessible via getters and setters. Constructing the setters so that a call on any of them establishes the bidirectional relationship is surprisingly hard. I was even more surprised that I couldn't find a suitable solution on the web as this construct seems to be common to me. Does anyone know of concepts that would encapsulate such a relationship inside a class? Or an idiom to stick with normal getters/setters and still establish the relationship with one setPilot/setPlane call?"}
{"_id": "182464", "title": "Which past version of Netbeans IDE that has lightness almost equal or better than Eclipse Indigo?", "text": "Currently, I'm a long Eclipse user because my past and current companies always deal with eclipse. Recently I met some example java codes created using netbeans. I downloaded and tried Netbeans 7.x and 6.9.x, but they're more heavier and eating memory resources than Eclipse Indigo. So anyone know which past version of Netbeans IDE that has lightness almost equal to or better than Eclipse Indigo (3.7) but can support Java SDK v1.6?"}
{"_id": "182467", "title": "Restrict access to backend", "text": "This might be one of those \"not answerable\" or \"just opinions\"-questions but I thought I'd give it a shot. I'm developing an app with health care information with a friend who's a doctor. The basics of app are done and the information in the database is shaping up so now I've come to the question of wether, and if so how, I should restrict access to that information to just my app. The question of if is one I can answer, but any opinions are welcome. The question of how is where I need your help. The app is written in Java on Android and the backend in Django, what ways do you see for restricting access to the backend so that other scripts/apps can't access it? One idea I had was for the phone to request an api key on first start and bind it to the IMIE number which I think is unique for each phone, then keep track of those tuples on the server. We(as in I) will likely port this to iOS at some stage, so it needs to be fairly cross-platform, I thought about binding to google accounts instead of IMIE number before."}
{"_id": "6014", "title": "Is Linq having a mind-numbing effect on .NET programmers?", "text": "A lot of us started seeing this phenomenon with jQuery about a year ago when people started asking how to do absolutely insane things like retrieve the query string with jQuery. The difference between the _library_ (jQuery) and the _language_ (JavaScript) is apparently lost on many programmers, and results in a lot of inappropriate, convoluted code being written where it is not necessary. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I swear I'm starting to see an uptick in the number of questions where people are asking to do similarly insane things with Linq, like find ranges in a sorted array. I can't get over how thoroughly inappropriate the Linq extensions are for solving that problem, but more importantly the fact that the author just _assumed that the ideal solution would involve Linq_ without actually _thinking_ about it (as far as I can tell). It seems that we are repeating history, breeding a new generation of .NET programmers who can't tell the difference between the language (C#/VB.NET) and the library (Linq). What is responsible for this phenomenon? Is it just hype? Magpie tendencies? Has Linq picked up a reputation as a form of magic, where instead of actually writing code you just have to utter the right incantation? I'm hardly satisfied with those explanations but I can't really think of anything else. More importantly, is it really a problem, and if so, what's the best way to help enlighten these people?"}
{"_id": "231098", "title": "Can I remove a company's logo from a software licensed under Mozilla Public License Version 1.1?", "text": "I have tried looking for an answer to this question, but I couldn't find anything related. To put it in a nutshell, I want to fork the existing Komodo Edit project, which is licensed under MPL Version 1.1, and create a new derived project/software. I would like to remove certain features from the current project, including ActiveState's logo, but I do not understand the technical jargon on the license. Also, I plan to keep the derived project completely free and open-source. I'd be really grateful, if someone could explain it to me. Here is the link to the license : https://github.com/Komodo/KomodoEdit/blob/trunk/LICENSE.txt"}
{"_id": "121539", "title": "Handling Indirection and keeping layers of method calls, objects, and even xml files straight", "text": "How do you keep everything straight as you trace deeply into a piece of software through multiple method calls, object constructors, object factories, and even spring wiring. I find that 4 or 5 method calls are easy to keep in my head, but once you are going to 8 or 9 calls deep it gets hard to keep track of everything. Are there strategies for keeping everything straight? In particular, I might be looking for how to do task x, but then as I trace down (or up) I lose track of that goal, or I find multiple layers need changes, but then I lose track of which changes as I trace all the way down. Or I have tentative plans that I find out are not valid but then during the tracing I forget that the plan is invalid and try to consider the same plan all over again killing time.... Is there software that might be able to help out? grep and even eclipse can help me to do the actual tracing from a call to the definition but I'm more worried about keeping track of everything including the de-facto plan for what has to change (which might vary as you go down/up and realize the prior plan was poor). In the past I have dealt with a few big methods that you trace and pretty much can figure out what is going on within a few calls. But now there are dozens of really tiny methods, many just a single call to another method/constructor and it is hard to keep track of them all."}
{"_id": "121533", "title": "What should I learn after Python?", "text": "I am 12 years old and have mastered the basics of Python with Learn Python The Hard Way by Zed Shaw (I think) and it has done me well. What should I do next? Do you have any recommended books or good website tutorials? What do you need to know before learning C?"}
{"_id": "219310", "title": "Benefits of using object document mapping (ODM)", "text": "I am creating a web app on Flask and was planning to use mongodb. Most of the examples using this stack that I've come across have used an ODM of some kind and was wanting to figure out whether or not I should as well. I have worked with ORM for a Java web app before and found its utility to be limited and apart from preferring just using JDBC and writing the sql myself, we came across a few instances where our own hand written queries increased performance noticeably. I realize that the NoSQL db is a different beast, so I was just wondering if there are many parallels between ORM and ODM and the issues I observed with ORM. Might there be performance hits in some instances using an ODM with mongodb? Is the only benefit ease of use/natural translation between code and db objects? I have no quarms about Essentially, I am wanting to know if I am missing out on too much by just using plain old `pymongo` in the flask application rather than an ODM? PS. If it is important, I expect my application to be high volume but balanced read/right in nature."}
{"_id": "117572", "title": "MIT and copyright", "text": "I am contributing to a library that is licensed under the MIT license. In the license and in each class file it has a comment at the top saying: > Copyright (c) 2011 Joe Bloggs <joe.bloggs@example.com> I assume that he owns the copyright to the file, and can change the license of that file as he sees fit. If I contribute to the library with a new class entirely write by me, can I claim copyright of that file. And put: > Copyright (c) 2011 Petah Piper <petah.piper@example.com> at the top?"}
{"_id": "236377", "title": "Splitting and hiding headers in a static library", "text": "I am writing a static library for C/C++ (personal project). As my headers became rather large, I thought that splitting my headers would be a good idea. Right now a header looks like this:   * **MainClass.hpp** :     * namespace impl: implementation details enclosed in a namespace `impl`     * forward declarations of classes declared below (when needed)          * `MainClass` declaration     * `MainClass` free functions declarations     * `MainClass` specialization declaration     * `MainClass` specialization free function declarations     * `AuxiliaryClass1` declaration     * `AuxiliaryClass1` free functions declarations     * \u2026     * `AuxiliaryClassN` declaration     * `AuxiliaryClassN` free functions declarations          * `MainClass` definition     * `MainClass` free functions definitions     * `MainClass` specialization definition     * `MainClass` specialization free function definition     * `AuxiliaryClass1` definition     * `AuxiliaryClass1` free functions definitions     * \u2026     * `AuxiliaryClassN` definition     * `AuxiliaryClassN` free functions definitions Where:   * `AuxiliaryClassK` is a class logically or structurally related to `MainClass` (e.g. an iterator for `MainClass`, a nested class within `MainClass`, a derived class of `MainClass` etc.)   * `ClassX` free functions as recommended in How Non-Member Functions Improve Encapsulation and Monoliths \"Unstrung\"   * definitions are in header because they are templates. This is becoming very crowded and difficult for me to navigate so I thought that splitting across multiple headers would help. However I do not know how to do it right. Here is how I think the structure could look like:   * **MainClass.hpp** :     * forward declarations (when needed)     * small classes/structs definitions & declarations     * `#include` the other headers   * **_Class.hpp** :     * `_Class` declaration     * `_Class` free functions declarations   * **_Class.inl** :      * `_Class` definition     * `_Class` free functions definitions With a `_Class` for each: `MainClass`, `MainClass` specialization, `AuxiliaryClassK`. My questions are:   * Is it reasonable to want to split a header (all are functionalities of `MainClass`) (I have headers over 1000 lines long and I foresee even longer ones) or should I leave it as it is?   * Is the above split scheme ok? Should I further split a class and the free functions related to that class? Are there other solutions to make the code more maintainable?   * How to hide the other headers (not in a sense of obfuscating / making the code unavailable, but avoid exposing the headers the users see (e.g. in a GUI with autocomplete)? They should include and be aware only of `MainClass.hpp`. Seeing other headers without being clear that they are behind\u2013the\u2013scenes headers will produce unnecessary confusion. One idea is to add a prefix like an `_` (underscore) or to put them in a `impl` folder. (Again, this is not about hiding classes (I do that with a namespace), but to hide the split behind a header they should use)."}
{"_id": "236376", "title": "Java Singleton fields implementation", "text": "I have singleton in Java and I have realized, that I could make its fields static and it would work same way as regular instance fields. Would there be a performance / optimization difference? If so, what would turned out better? Is there a preferred way to implement singleton fields? (again, I am talking fields, not methods)"}
{"_id": "219314", "title": "Resources for understanding a programming language and its specifications and grammar deeply", "text": "I'm a computer engineer and all the courses we have had about programming and computer languages were an introduction to C/Java and OOP. Now I feel like reading Java language specification to learn a deep understanding on Java language but I understand that there are something like grammar description in the specifications which I have no idea about. What should I study to be able to understand a programming language deeply(Especially specification elements such as grammar)? Have I missed some computer science courses? or I should understand all intuitively? I was pondering about reading some books about compilers but I thought it'd be better asking it from the experts!"}
{"_id": "224854", "title": "How to name arrays or list when the nouns are both singular and plural?", "text": "Generally variables are named in the singular `Car car;` and arrays and list with the pluras: `List<Car> cars;` or `Car[] cars;` But what about nouns like `fish` or `media`* that are already plural? *already lost the battle to have the class called `Medium`."}
{"_id": "203993", "title": "Scrum: How much can the Product Owner shake up the Product Backlog?", "text": "For the last 3 sprints or so, I've observed our Product Owner suddenly shoving new stories -- stories not previously in the Product Backlog -- at the top of the Product Backlog. Because of this, the existing items in the backlog never get worked on. New stories continuously take over the helm and make into our Sprint Backlog. My question is - how much can the Product Owner really shake up the Product Backlog? Is it really fair game to ignore what's already in the backlog and keep on shoving new stories at the top? I've tried to argue that this is hogwash, but I often hear counter-arguments such as \"adapting to frequently changing business needs,\" \"we're moving so fast - we're super agile\" and I don't know what to say to those arguments, although I feel it is not how Scrum was meant to be. EDIT: I understand that the product owner owns the product backlog. What I am observing at my team though, is that the PO constantly puts new items at the top of the backlog, ignoring the existing backlog items completely. For instance, say we're building a car and PO creates 10 stories to make it happen. We decide to take on 3 stories in our sprint backlog - thus 7 stories still remain in the product backlog. Everything is good so far. At the next sprint planning, however, the PO now claims that we need to build a baseball bat and creates 5 stories around that - which are then placed at the top of our backlog (i.e. highest priority); nevermind those car stories we already had in the backlog."}
{"_id": "203991", "title": "Which style to use for repetitive code (in java)", "text": "I have a project written in Java that required some repetitive code. Basically the gist of it is that I'm taking one object and copying it into two different objects -- Which I would just use clone() for but it involves moving some exterior mappings. My question is, in a language like Java, if you are doing a long series of similar actions on two objects, which of the following ways (or perhaps another way) is more desirable: Either grouping by the ACTION being performed...                   UnitStack usStart = new UnitStack(type, (int)Math.ceil(str / 2d), owner);         UnitStack usStop  = new UnitStack(type, str / 2, owner);              Map<String, Cloneable> logStart = usStart.getActionLog();         Map<String, Cloneable> logStop  = usStop.getActionLog();              logStart.putAll(usOrig.getActionLog());         logStop .putAll(usOrig.getActionLog());              MoveFlags mfStop = (MoveFlags) logStop.get(\"move\");         mfStop = ((mfStop == null) ? new MoveFlags(usStop) : mfStop.clone());         mfStop.addMoves(b.distanceBetween(begin, end, owner));         logStop.put(\"move\", mfStop);              hcStart.setUnit(usStart);         hcStop .setUnit(usStop);      Or should I group by the object being worked on?                   UnitStack usStart = new UnitStack(type, (int)Math.ceil(str / 2d), owner);         Map<String, Cloneable> logStart = usStart.getActionLog();         logStart.putAll(usOrig.getActionLog());         hcStart.setUnit(usStart);              UnitStack usStop  = new UnitStack(type, str / 2, owner);         Map<String, Cloneable> logStop  = usStop.getActionLog();         logStop.putAll(usOrig.getActionLog());         hcStop.setUnit(usStop);              // Reflect that the move took place...         MoveFlags mfStop = (MoveFlags) logStop.get(\"move\");         mfStop = ((mfStop == null) ? new MoveFlags(usStop) : mfStop.clone());         mfStop.addMoves(b.distanceBetween(begin, end, owner));         logStop.put(\"move\", mfStop);      Obviously I could contrive some way to write a loop, or maybe extract it into a method but in a case like this, I don't really feel like those would be good solutions. (I have removed many things from both of these -- comments mostly, as well as context, since neither are relevant to the question)"}
{"_id": "134359", "title": "Lexical Analysis without regular expressions", "text": "I've been looking at a few lexers in various higher level langauges (Python, PHP, Javascript among others) and they all seem to use regular expressions in one form or another. While I'm sure regex's are probably the best way to do this, I was wondering if there was any way to achieve basic lexing without regular expressions, maybe some sort of direct string parsing or something. So yeah, is it possible to implement some sort of basic lexing in a higher level language* without using regular expressions in any form? *Higher level languages being things like Perl/PHP/Python/Javascript etc. I'm sure there is a way to do it in C"}
{"_id": "141133", "title": "What is meant by Scope of a variable?", "text": "I think of the scope of a variable as - \"The scope of a particular variable is the range within a program's source code in which that variable is recognized by the compiler\". That statement is from \"Scope and Lifetime of Variables in C++\", which I read many months ago. Recently I came across this in _LeMoyne-Owen College_ courses: ![http://sankofa.loc.edu/CHU/WEB/Courses/Cosi350/Ch4/scope.13.gif](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Krcsi.gif) What exactly is the difference between the scope of variables in C# and (C99, C++, Java) when > However a variable still must be declared before it can be used"}
{"_id": "136864", "title": "Why can't an AVL tree be recreated using pre-order traversal?", "text": "Given a binary search tree, I understand why I can use breadth-first and pre- order traversal to list the entries of the tree in such a way as to reconstruct the tree in the order in which its traversed. However if we now consider an AVL tree and we want to traverse the tree in such a way as to recreate the same AVL tree (similar as to what we did with the plain binary tree) then why does breadth first traversal always work and why does pre-order not work with this case given that it works for standard binary trees?"}
{"_id": "246877", "title": "Why shouldn't an object reference have access to a static member in C#", "text": "Context of my question:   1. I am reading C#.   2. Trying to understand Static keyword.   3. I understand that when Static is applied to a member of a class, it can only be modified by the class and not the class object references. I will take an example here.               public class BluePrint     {        public static string BluePrintCreatorName;     }      If I need to know the BluePrintCreator's Name, I can call               BluePrint.BluePrintCreatorName;      But if a house that is created from the blueprint wants to know the BluePrintCreator's Name, it does not have access.               BluePrint NewHouse = new BluePrint();     NewHouse.BluePrintCreatorName; //This is not accessible      Compiler error says:               Member 'AccessModifier.BluePrint.BluePrintCreatorName' cannot be accessed with an instance reference; qualify it with a type name instead         I understand this is the way it works. But I want to know the basic concept to why Static keyword was required at all? What will go wrong if a class object reference would have access to the static member?"}
{"_id": "134353", "title": "Which NoSQL repository is most suitable for a Twitter-type architecture?", "text": "In an upcoming project I need to create a Twitter like web application where the basic idea is to read / write short messages and status updates (similar to tweets) and group these messages (just like hashtags) Also users can have followers and can see their status updates. I'm estimating between 10 - 50 million message writes in a span of 1 - 2 months, and for reads it could be anything in the millions. Reads will surely be higher than writes. **I already decided that some kind of NoSQL is probably the best approach to storing this data, but I don't know which one would be the best fit for my needs.** **I looked at Hadoop / Cassandra / HBase but it seems a little bit of overkill. I'm also considering MongoDB.** The whole web app will be setup on Nginx, PHP with a RESTful architecture (front-end only on mobile phones)"}
{"_id": "141134", "title": "Dealing with the customer / developer culture mismatch on an agile project", "text": "One of the tenets of agile is ... _Customer collaboration over contract negotiation_ ... another one is ... _Individuals and interactions over processes and tools_ But the way I see it, at least when it comes to interaction with the customer, there is a fundamental problem: _How the customer thinks is different to how a software engineer thinks_ That may be a bit of a generalisation, yes. Arguably, there _are_ business domains where this is not necessarily true---these are few and far between though. In many domains though, the typical customer is:   1. Interested in daily operational concerns--short-range tactics ... not necessarily strategy;   2. Understandably, only concerned with the immediate solution;   3. Practical thinkers, not abstract thinkers;   4. Much more interested in \"getting the job done\" than considering how the solution will support future concerns. On the other hand, _in the ideal_ , software engineers who practice agile are:   1. People who think alot about quality;   2. Individuals who appreciate how a little bit of upfront work can save a ton in effort down the line;   3. Experienced, analytical thinkers. So there seems to be a culture discrepancy that tends to inhibit \"customer collaboration\". What's the best way to address this?"}
{"_id": "125345", "title": "Eclipse teaching: on new projects, which mode: debug or release?", "text": "I'm asked to teach to my students Eclipse. The lectures are already done, and I see that the teacher asks the students to **always** start a new project in \"Release\" mode. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/p8mqk.jpg) Is that normal? If \"yes\", or if \"no\", why?"}
{"_id": "125348", "title": "two approaches to database modeling - which one to use when", "text": "recently I have noticed a new approach to data modeling vs what I have used so far. This seems to be a way to address modeling of an entity that has a very large set of fields and quite often many of them are empty. First approach - the one I used previously:   * Main table for the main set of fields (a,b=1,c=2)   * Additional table with a subset of fields (a,e='foo',f='bar',...) - linked to Main one by a 1-1 relation   * Yet another Additional table with a subset of fields (a,j=3,k='baz',...) - linked to Main one by a 1-1 relation   * And one more with the rest of the fields (a,n=12.4, o='foobarbar', ...) - linked to main one by a 1-1 relation The one I have seen recently is:   * Main table with almost no data except for an ID (a)   * Table that lists all the fields possible (b,'this is parameter b')    * a table that links the Main one with all the fields it has (a,b,1) and (a,c,2) and (a,e,'foo') and so on.  I understand you can query same results from both models, but I do not understand what is the rationale for the second one - are there clear cases where one of those should be used vs other? Thanks for your advice. PS. The second one is being used on Oracle 11 - my last real life experiences with SQL were in the times of Postgres 7.x might be things changed meanwhile :)"}
{"_id": "114496", "title": "From TFS to Git", "text": "I'm a .NET developer and I've used TFS (team foundation server) as my source control software many times. Good features of TFS are:   1. Good integration with Visual Studio (so I do almost everything visually; no console commands)   2. Easy check-out, check-in process   3. Easy merging and conflict resolution   4. Easy automated builds   5. Branching Now, I want to use Git as the backbone, repository, and source control of my open source projects. My projects are in C#, JavaScript, or PHP language with MySQL, or SQL Server databases as the storage mechanism. I just used github.com's help for this purpose and I created a profile there, and downloaded a GUI for Git. Up to this part was so easy. But I'm almost stuck at going along any further. I just want to do some simple (really simple) operations, including:   1. Creating a project on Git and mapping it to a folder on my laptop   2. Checking out/checking in files and folders   3. Resolving conflicts That's all I need to do now. But it seems that the GUI is not that user friendly. I expect the GUI to have a `Connect To...` or something like that, and then I expect a list of projects to be shown, and when I choose one, I expect to see the list of files and folders of that project, just like exploring your TFS project in Visual Studio. Then I want to be able to right click a file and select `check-in...` or `check-out` and stuff like that. Do I expect much? What should I do to easily use Git just like TFS? What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "200710", "title": "MVC seems to create dependencies that just \"don't feel right\"", "text": "I might be misunderstanding MVC, so forgive me if that is the case. This is my program structure (Java/Swing): I have a JTable (View) that is pointed to by a custom linked list (Model). When the user tries to add something to the JTable, the action listener (Controller) updates the linked list (Model) which updates the JTable (View). Here's my issue: The linked list should be able to function independently of the JTable, but it doesn't. Let's say I decided to get rid of the user interface and just use the linked list for internal stuff within the program (The linked list has other properties and functions outside the scope of MVC). That should be able to work, because the linked list's FUNCTION is independent of the JTable's function, yet I would have to edit a lot of code to do so (or have a bunch of code that no longer does anything) because of MVC. So am I misunderstanding MVC completely, just a little bit, or are the dependencies a price I have to pay? NOTE: This is a simplified view of my project. In real life, there are other objects in the model and more than just a JTable in my interface. Also, the linked list has other thigns that get updates other than the number of objects."}
{"_id": "140734", "title": "is there a formal algebra method to analyze programs?", "text": "Is there a formal/academic connection between an imperative program and algebra, and if so where would I learn about it? The example I'm thinking of is:               if(C1) { A1(); A2(); }     if(C2) { A1(); A2(); }      Represented as a sum of terms:               (C1)(A1) + (C1)(A2) + (C2)(A1) + (C2)(A2) = (C1+C2)(A1+A2)       The idea being that manipulation could lead to programatic refactoring - \"factoring\" being the common concept in this example."}
{"_id": "135917", "title": "How easy it is to update Entity Model from database when enough code has already been written?", "text": "I am new to Entity Framework. I know there is an option to update model from the database, but I want to know how easy and successful is this task. I may need to update my model in a few weeks but till that time many lines of code has already been pushed inside. Is it difficult to track changes and make code work?"}
{"_id": "136865", "title": "Is it possible to check that MS word file is hand written or auto generated by using some converter?", "text": "I got one project with some requirements. Basically my client provide data entry work. In that he converts image files(scan copy of articles, forms etc) to document file (MS word) by typing manually. For maintaining quality of that work he set some roles on documents text formatting like specific font, font size, paper size etc., and he compare image files with specific document for proofreading which is very time consuming task, and his some **smart employ** use some image to word converter for that conversion rather then typing manually. He pays a lot in the Data entry and he don't want automated converted files using some conversion software. So basically he want two functionality in his project that,   1. to automate standard format proofreading process and    2. to automatically reject image to word converted files. this is the all scenario and now **my question** is that   1. Is it possible to find out which file is manually type by employ and which is converted by using some conversion software?   2. Is it possible that we can check file for specific standard format?"}
{"_id": "135914", "title": "Why was dependency injection pattern not included in the Gang of four?", "text": "Why was the dependency injection pattern not incluided in the gang of four? Did GOF pre-date widespread automated testing? Is dependency injection now considered a core pattern?"}
{"_id": "135911", "title": "Why \"programmer\" is defined as designers and \"developer\" as creator?", "text": "While I was looking to the definition of some common terms in _en.wiktionary.org_ , I was surprised to what I found. It define the **programmer** as > One who designs software. - _wiktionary.org_ and **developer** as > A software developer; a person or company who creates or modifies computer > software. - _wiktionary.org_ I have a bachelors degree in IT and has a professional work in an IT department for almost a year, and I do always thought that their definitions are opposite. Is this the real definition of a programmer and a developer or is it just because it is shortly-defined _(but still, it seems to me like it should be the opposite)_?"}
{"_id": "42826", "title": "C# class architecture for REST services", "text": "I am integrating with a set of REST services exposed by our partner. The unit of integration is at the project level meaning that for each project created on our partners side of the fence they will expose a unique set of REST services. To be more clear, assume there are two projects - project1 and project2. The REST services available to access the project data would then be:   /project1/search/getstuff?etc...   /project1/analysis/getstuff?etc...   /project1/cluster/getstuff?etc... /project2/search/getstuff?etc...   /project2/analysis/getstuff?etc...   /project2/cluster/getstuff?etc... My task is to wrap these services in a C# class to be used by our app developer. I want to make it simple for the app developer and am thinking of providing something like the following class.               class ProjectClient       {         SearchClient _searchclient;         AnalysisClient _analysisclient;         ClusterClient _clusterclient;              string Project {get; set;}         ProjectClient(string _project)         {           Project = _project;         }       }      SearchClient, AnalysisClient and ClusterClient are my classes to support the respective services shown above. The problem with this approach is that ProjectClient will need to provide public methods for each of the API's exposed by SearchClient, etc...               public void SearchGetStuff()     {       _searchclient.getStuff();     }      Any suggestions how I can architect this better?"}
{"_id": "228294", "title": "Binary Search seems superior, why did the committee of C++ still have Find in the algorithm library?", "text": "I wish to search for an integer in a vector of integer. I have two candidates for the job:   1. Binary Search   2. Find It seems that **Binary Search** is the best candidate for the job as although I have to sort the vector, the total running time will be `O(NLog2N)` assuming quicksort take `O(NLog2N)` and searching takes `O(Log2N)`. The running time for **Find** will be `O(N)`. It seems such clear cut that **Binary Search** is superior to **Find** , why did the committee of C++ still have Find in the algorithm library? I am sure the C++ committee had their reasons for including **Find** , what benefits of **Find** am I missing or how is **Find** superior to **Binary Search**? EDITED : Changed running time of quicksort to NLog2N"}
{"_id": "164420", "title": "How do I hire testers by giving them a buggy app for testing their efficiency?", "text": "My boss wants to recruit testers based on their testing efficiency (number of bugs identified). So, he's shortlisted 5 people and I need to give them an app full of bugs and see how they fare in reporting obvious bugs, and hidden bugs. I know.... it kind of sounds weird. I guess, this is just like the coding world, where you hire a programmer by assessing his/her programming ability (which is a little easier). Once hired, these testers would be testing a java swing app, so their familiarity of testing frameworks/tools is not really required. So, my question here is - How do I go about finding buggy apps (web/non-web), preferably java ones, that I can have the shortlisted testers have a go at? How would you go about this task if your boss asks you to do so? I am kind of clueless at this point - I googled a bit, thought about finding new apps on sourceforge with lots of bugs, but both approaches didn't work for me."}
{"_id": "164424", "title": "How are Java ByteBuffer's limit and position variable's updated?", "text": "There are two scenarios: writing and reading   **Writing** :   Whenever I write something to the ByteBuffer by calling its `put(byte[])` method the `position` variable is incremented as: `current position + size of byte[]` and `limit` stays at the max.   If, however, I put the data in a view buffer then I will have to, manually, calculate and update the `position`   Before I call the `write(ByteBuffer)` method of the channel to write something, I will have to `flip()` the Bytebuffer so that   `position` points to zero and `limit` points to the last byte that was written to the ByteBuffer.   **Reading** :   Whenever I call the `read(ByteBuffer)` method of a channel to read something, the `position` variable stays at 0 and the `limit` variable of the ByteBuffer points to the last byte that was read. So, if the ByteBuffer is smaller than the file being read, the `limit` variable is pushed to max   This means that the ByteBuffer is already flipped and I can proceed to extracting the values from the ByteBuffer.   **Please, correct me where I am wrong** :)"}
{"_id": "164427", "title": "Is it possible to outsource design properly?", "text": "I work in a company going through a downsizing process. It is assumed that a lot of \"let go\" developers jobs will eventually be outsourced. Some of those programmers had some design to do. Is it possible to outsource both design and creation/coding properly? I feel that by outsourcing design, we lose any in-house capability of really \"owning\" the code. It will be very difficult to maintain. Also we'll have a hard time ensuring a proper development. How can I address those issues?"}
{"_id": "164429", "title": "What am I missing about PHP?", "text": "It's like this mythical thing that a dominating portion of developers say is just the best option for back-end development, a part of development about which I know virtually nothing beyond the absolute basics. So I've looked up PHP tutorials a bunch of times, trying to figure out why it's so powerful and common, but it's annoying as hell-- all the tutorials treat you like a new programmer. You know, this is how you make an If Else statement, here's a for loop, etc. The \"Advanced Topics\" show you how to make POST and GET statements and whatnot. But there must be more to it! I don't get it! That's practically no different from JavaScript. What am I missing about this language? What else can it do? Where's the power and versatility? I've heard it called a function soup; where are all the functions? Please chide me. I'm clearly missing something."}
{"_id": "170946", "title": "handling a GET error properly", "text": "I have a website that takes two primary get strings:               ?type=GAME&id=SomeGameID     ?type=SCENARIO&id=SomeScenarioID      for reasons unknown, I have recently begun receiving requests for erroneous get strings from both Yandex and Baidu. They are always in the form of:               ?type=GAME&id=SomeScenarioID      None of my users are triggering these errors, so I am (sort of) confident that this is not due to an HTML template error somewhere on my part. There is also no HTTP_REFER showing up in the $_SERVER array, so I'm guessing these are direct requests from bad dbase data on their part. I see two options for dealing with these bad requests, and would like to know which is recommended... or if there are other, better options I have not thought of:   1. simply 404 the request, since it is incorrect   2. redirect the request to `?type=SCENARIO&id=SomeScenarioID` because the scenario IDs are always valid, the breakage is due to asking for the wrong type."}
{"_id": "170945", "title": "Why does XCode convert PNGs to CgBI format?", "text": "According to the research done here http://imageoptim.com/tweetbot.html, Xcode's conversion of PNGs to the proprietary Apple CgBI format does not create a noticeable performance improvement. Their claim is that the conversion only reduces PNG loading speed by 1 nanosecond. If this is true, why does apple bother with the CgBI format at all? Has anyone else benchmarked loading CgBI images vs regular PNG images on iOS devices to see if they perform differently?"}
{"_id": "138529", "title": "Senior Engineers: Go Back to Coding?", "text": "This is a question regarding engineers with 20+ years experience, but it is a question for everybody, as it has to do with career development. I'm in a surprisingly long job hunt, and the problem seems to be that employers will not accept me as a coder. Yes, I have done lots of things, had my own company, sold it too early, etc. But the world always needs productive workers, and my skills are current and sharp. The market I am in has fewer openings for senior people, and I don't mind taking a step or two back if I can find a place to contribute. What are your thoughts about career management that prepares the 40, 50 year-old for a sudden career disruption?"}
{"_id": "204418", "title": "Dependencies between services in pipeline", "text": "I am working on creating a new data processing system, where there are multiple steps each fulfilled by different services. For example, there is a scheduling service that kicks of something, an analysis service that does the processing, and a notification service that summarizes and emails out results. Data flows through in that order My main question which design would be better, should the analysis service have to know about the notification service? Or should the notification service have to know about the analysis? My initial thought is that by using a service bus, the notification service can simply be subscribed to any analysis results that get broadcast. That way if the notification service is replaced or changed there wouldn't need to be any change to the analysis service. This also means a client that wants to start an analysis and get a notification would have to call the notification service first to tell it how to handle the result it will eventually get before kicking off the actual analysis. The opposing idea is that the analysis service should simply call directly into the notification service, so the analysis service needs to know what to do to create a call into notification. This means the client would have to bundle up notification specific instructions that get passed into the analysis service for it to later look at to know what to pass to the notification call. It seems like the service bus approach of the notification service getting and processing analysis results would be better because we could also add other services in the future that then do something with a result without having to change the analysis service to call it explicitly. Can anyone provide some insight on which approach would work better to be both easier to develop, maintain, support?"}
{"_id": "138521", "title": "Is JavaScript interpreted by design?", "text": "I am cautious of asking this question because it might appear overly fastidious. I just opened up JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, and it states of the first page of chapter 1 > \"JavaScript is a high-level, dynamic, untyped interpreted programming > language\u201d So am I to take it that the interpreted part is a requirement in the language specification, or is it misleading to say that the language is an interpreted programming language when respecting the difference between a language and its many implementations? There are no static compilers for JavaScript apparently - Is there a native machine code compiler for JavaScript? so maybe it's just a reflection of this."}
{"_id": "138520", "title": "What are the restrictions on derived works of EPL licensed software?", "text": "I am contemplating paying a software consulting firm to provide my company with some enhancements to a piece of software that is licensed under the Eclipse Public License (EPL). I'm wondering what rights we will have to what they produce, and whether they can tie us to paying them royalties forever.   * What rights we will have to modify and redistribute what they provide us?   * Can they insist on a royalty payment when we distribute it to 3rd parties? Before I start negotiating, I need to understand what we're getting - and ideally get this sort of thing explicitly agreed in the contract. I know I should consult a lawyer."}
{"_id": "204413", "title": "What's the difference between \"Add to home screen\" safari HTML5 webapp vs HTML5 webapp wrapped in UIWebView?", "text": "Someone asked me this. The answer he gave was HTML5 in `UIWebView` can cache the app data so it can run offline. I thought the same thing can be achieved using safari add to home screen, no?"}
{"_id": "206734", "title": "Using GPL code with MPL code", "text": "I've done a spot of Googling, and all I can find is information on using code under the MPL in a larger GPL licensed project. What I really want to know is: can I included GPL(v3) licensed code(/binaries) in a larger MPL(2.0) licensed project? My understanding so far is that I can't, and that any project which uses GPL software must also be released under the GPL. Is this correct? If this is correct, can I write software and release it under the MPL, even if it depends on a GPL library, as long as I don't distribute the GPL licensed parts with my MPL licensed parts? And, if I then want to distribute both parts as a \"larger work\", how would the overarching GPL affect my MPL code?"}
{"_id": "202717", "title": "Writing Large Portions Of Code Then Debugging?", "text": "Lately I have been writing a game engine, and I have been writing a lot of \"foundation stuff\" (standard interfaces, modules, a message system ect.), but I have noticed a pattern, a lot of the stuff is interdependent and I can not debug until everything is done, hence I do not debug for about 3 to 5 hours at a time. I am wondering if this is an acceptable practice for this part of the project, and if not, if anyone can give me some advice? \\-----Update-----: I downloaded some code metrics tools, and my programs cyclomatic complexity is 1.52 which as I understand it is good, and should correlate to high cohesion, if I am wrong please correct me/"}
{"_id": "5331", "title": "Contract Billing - How would you handle 'learning time'?", "text": "So you take a contract where you have solid experience with 75% of the technology necessary. How do you handle your time to learn the other 25%? Work it into the billing time? Expose the 25% in the contract as 'research'? Do the learning on my own time (not billed)? Not take the contract (too large of an unknown for me _and_ the customer)? On the extreme end of this, I keep hearing a story about Mark Cuban (Dallas billionaire who started broadcast.com and sold it to Yahoo!) when he was at Indiana University. Someone asked him if he could build a business app for them and he immediately said \"Yes\"... he had no idea how. So he bought a book, stayed up nights, studied and coded... He finished it (I'm sure it was ugly), it worked and he kept going. I'm not suggesting doing contracts this way (the stress!), but there's a middle ground. What is it, and how would you (or would you?) bill for the unknown?"}
{"_id": "236959", "title": "Implementing Syncing between localStorage and SQL database?", "text": "I have made a simple web app, which runs completely offline - all data is saved in HTML5's localStorage. Now, I want the data to get synced with the server, so that the user is able to use the app on multiple devices at a time. What I have done so far is:   1. For each operation the user performs, a log entry is added.   2. When the user is online, all logs are transferred from localStorage to PHP through AJAX.   3. Corresponding changes are made in the SQL Database.   4. All logs are deleted from the localStorage. So, all the localStorage data is getting \"backed up\" on the server properly. Anyhow, changes made from one device is not being reflected to the other device and vice-versa, to do this, we would have to get some data from SQL to the localStorage. Now, my question is as to what will be the appropriate and best way to do this? After the four steps above, do I   1. Clear all localStorage data and save the SQL data into localStorage.   2. Keep a log of changes made in the database, and do them on the localStorage.   3. Any other approach. Also, what about timestamps? What if there are conflicts?"}
{"_id": "164398", "title": "How can I be prepared to join a company?", "text": "There's more to it than that, but this title was the best way I could think of to sum it up. I'm a senior in a good computer science program, and I'm graduating early. About to start interviews and all whatnot. I'm not a super-experienced programmer, not one of those people who started in middle school. I'm decent at this, but I'm not among the best, not nearly. I have to do an awful lot of googling. So today I'm meeting some fellow for lunch at a campus cafe to discuss some front-end details when this tall, good-looking guy begs pardon, says he's new to campus, says he's wondering if we know where he can go to sign up for recruiting developers. Quickly evolves into long conversation: he's the CEO of a seems-to-be-doing-well start-up. Hiring passionate interns and full-times. Sounds great! I take one look at his site on my own computer later, immediately spot a major bug. No idea how to fix it, but I see it. I go over to the page code, and good god. It's the standard amount of code you would expect from a full-scale web application, a couple dozen pages of HTML and scripts. I don't even know where to start reading it. I've built sites from scratch, but obviously never on that scale, nor have I ever worked on one of that scale. I have no idea which bit might generate the bug. But that sets me thinking: How could someone like me possibly settle into an environment like that? A start-up is a very high-pressure working environment. I don't know if I can work at that pace under those constraints-- I would hate to let people down. And with only 10 employees, it's not like anyone has much time to help you get your bearings. Somewhere in there is a question. Can you see it? I'm asking for general advice here. Maybe even anecdotal advice. Is joining a start-up right out of college a scary process? Am I overestimating what it would take to figure out the mass of code behind this site? What's the likelihood a decent but only moderately-experienced coder could earn his pay at such a place? For instance, I know nothing of server-side/back-end programming. Never touched it. That scares me."}
{"_id": "175277", "title": "Pythonic use of the isinstance function?", "text": "Whenever I find myself wanting to use the isinstance() function I usually know that I'm doing something wrong and end up changing my ways. However, in this case I think I have a valid use for it. I will use shapes to illustrate my point although I am not actually working with shapes. I am parsing XML configuration files that look like the following:               <square>       <width>7</width>     </square>     <rectangle>       <width>5</width>       <height>7</height>     </rectangle>     <circle>       <radius>4</radius>     </circle>      For each element I create an instance of the Shape class and build up a list of Shape objects in a class called the ShapeContainer. Different parts of the rest of my application need to refer to the ShapeContainer to get certain shapes. Depending on what the code is doing it might need just rectangles, or it might operate on all quadrangles, or it might operate on all shapes. I have created the following function in the ShapeContainer class (the actual function uses a list comprehension but I have expanded it here for readability):               def locate(self, shapeClass):       result = []       for shape in self.__shapes:         if isinstance(shape,shapeClass):           result.append(shape)       return result      Is this a valid use of the isinstance function? Is there another way I can do this which might be more pythonic?"}
{"_id": "246258", "title": "Adding a Short-Term Developer to a Rework of an Old Project", "text": "## Background I work in the Language Resource Center on my campus. It's a relatively small lab, and our job is to help students, not code software. Being a Computer Science student, I took the initiative to start coding useful utilities to make our jobs as lab assistants easier. Recently, Google declared a shut-down of our data storage mechanism, so I decided that it was time to completely rework the entire system that I've built (alone) over the past year. I have more experience now, and I want to do it correctly with the ( _better_ ) tools that are now available to us. There is another CS student that works with me in this lab, who will continue working with me for **one more semester** (e.g. a 4-month period). I never asked him to contribute to the **original** project because I started it last summer when he wasn't scheduled to work. The goal of this project is to build an integrated 'manager' application for our staff and my boss; the utility is a web service built using HTML/CSS/JavaScript. My coworker doesn't have any experience with JavaScript, HTML nor CSS. This developer also has no experience with the code base that I built previously (purely JavaScript), which would need to be re-worked (albeit slightly) to work with the new system. Again, this is **not a required duty in our positions**. I enjoy coding things to automate menial tasks, and to make our jobs easier. _It was never a requirement._ ## Deadlines There is a hard deadline of mid-August, when faculty will start submitting requests to us again. The old system has to be rebuilt (some parts retrofitted) before then. ## Why ask? My boss suggested that this coworker of mine contribute to the new project to speed up development. I worry that my coworker (and boss, for that matter) might take it as a slight if he doesn't help develop this system. On the other hand, there was a 9-month period where he could have contributed to the previous project, and a 4-month period that he could have taken over management of said project (I was in France) - he has never shown interest in actively contributing to the previous project, and I have no problem with that. I'm concerned because I feel that helping him learn HTML, CSS and JS, as well as Google's API and toolset will _really_ slow things down. We essentially have two months to re-construct the old system, and I feel that the time it would take to get him acquainted with the tools and languages used in this project, I could have built it myself. ## Is there a protocol? I've come up with the following as my options in this situation:   1. Just start working on the new project alone, assuming that my coworker does not want and/or never wanted to contribute.   2. Ask my coworker if he wants me to help him learn HTML/CSS/JS and start showing him the previous code base as well as the current project's plan.   3. Ask my coworker if he has any interest in helping with the new project (he doesn't _need_ to have an interest, but would he take that as _You **must** work on this!_?) ## The question Is it worth the time/effort, given the deadline, to have my coworker work on this project with me? Or would I detriment progress by having him co-develop?"}
{"_id": "164392", "title": "MVVM - child windows and data contexts", "text": "Should a child window have it's own data context (View-Model) or use the data context of the parent? More broadly, should each View have its own View-Model? Are there are any rules to guide making that decision? What if the various View-Models will be accessing the same Model? I haven't been able to find any consistent guidance on my question. The MS definition of MVVM appears to be silent on child windows. For one example, I have created a warning message notification View. It really didn't need a data context since it was passed the message to display. But if I needed to fancy it up a bit, I would have tapped the parent's data context. I have run into another scenario that needs a child window and is more complicated than the notification box. The parent's View-Model is already getting cluttered, so I had planned on generating a dedicated VM for the child window. But I can't find any guidance on whether this is a good idea or what the potential consequences may be. FWIW, I happen to be working in Silverlight, but I don't know that this question is strictly a Silverlight issue."}
{"_id": "246255", "title": "Design Patterns for creating tasks", "text": "I am developing software where each action in my entities need create tasks that will be execute in my infrastructure. When I create a task it is only records in the database. Afterwards, a windows service will execute it. Actually, I use a Service and my Entities are Anemic, then when I change the state of my entity I also create my tasks to infrastructure.                   public void CreateMachine(string name){           var machine = new Machine(){                               Name = name,                               Status = Status.Releasing;     };           var tasks = new List<Task>(){                        new Task(\"CreateMachine\", machine.Name),                       //infrastructure task                        new Task(\"ChangeMachineSize\", machine.Name, machine.Foo),      //infrastructure task                        new Task(\"ActivateMachine\", machine.Bar),                      //infrastructure task                          new Task(\"SetMachineEntityStatusToReleased\", machine.Name)     //business task (go to my database)           _db.Task.Add(tasks);           _db.Msachine.Update(machine);           _db.SaveChanges();          }        }      But I want use rich domain, because my services are getting too complex.                   Public Class Machine{                  public Machine(string name)             {                 Name = name;                Status = Status.Releasing;               //Can I Create Tasks for create machine here?             }                  public void Stop(){               Status = Status.Releasing               //Can I create Tasks for stop machine here?             }                       [Required]             [StringLength(50)]             public string Name { get; set; }                  public Status Status { get; protected set; }        }      Is there a design pattern or best practice for this design? I am violating the Single Responsibility Principle if I add the task creation inside my entity?"}
{"_id": "255508", "title": "Intentionally incorrect use of language features, specifically \"ref\" in C#, as a hint to colleagues", "text": "I recently came across a piece of code something like this (roughly C#):               public bool ValidateStuff(ref ArrayList listOfErrors, Stuff thingsToValidate)     {         if (!thingsToValidate.isValid() )         {             errors.add(\"New error!\");         }     }          ArrayList errors = [];     bool valid = ValidateStuff(ref errors, stuffToValidate);      The key thing is the \"ref\" keyword - there is no need to use that keyword given the functionality here, and when I asked why it was there I was told that it had only been added as a kind of warning that the _errors_ parameter is manipulated by the method, it's not purely used as input. This immediately seemed wrong to me ( _ref_ has a purpose, and here it is not being used according to its purpose), but the idea of forcing (since you **have** to use _ref_ when calling the method) a reminder of slightly counter- intuitive usage seemed reasonable, and I couldn't immediately think of a better way, apart from liberal use of comments. What do you think? Extra credit: how could this method be better? Perhaps by simply returning a new List of errors which is added to the main List in the calling code? By providing two methods, one for the test and one for the errors? Or is it fine as it is?"}
{"_id": "246250", "title": "IllegalStateException vs. IllegalArgumentException", "text": "In have written a function which expects the caller to pass in a configuration file like XML. Then I parse this given file and extract something which i then return. In this function (at least) two \"bad\" things can happen:   1. The given file does not exist or is not accessible in any way   2. While parsing/validating the file some unexpected content is found The first thing is clearly an `IllegalArgumentException`. I am however not sure what kind of exception the second case would be. Is that also an `IllegalArgumentException` because i expect (by documentation-contract) that the input is in a valid form? Or is it rather an `IllegalStateException` as the given parameter is formal correct but only after parsing I can't do any further steps as it would result in unwanted behaviour? Or is it even something else?"}
{"_id": "252469", "title": "Is it faster to query using linq-to-entities or a data adapter?", "text": "I'm creating an MVC application in VS2012 and I reverse-engineered the models from existing Oracle tables. The tables are part of a MASSIVE database. Besides the main tables that I need to insert, update and delete from I also (on a whim) selected a few tables and views that my application only needs to read from. Now I am doubting my decision and considering deleting the less- important models. It is definitely neater to query using linq-to-entities instead of creating an oracle connection, creating an adapter, filling a dataset and reading what I need, but which is faster?"}
{"_id": "70498", "title": "Preparation for Ph.D", "text": "I am going to start Ph.D (software security research) very soon. How can I prepare for that. Please recommend any tools or softwares that I need to familiarize with before stating the Ph.D. Any advices other than softwares?"}
{"_id": "123975", "title": "Guidelines for using BOOST", "text": "I am planning to use boost libraries, as it is quiet rich, and will save lots of time. But my question is, what are the guidelines i have to follow, so that   1. I can replace some part of boost with standard C++ as and when they are supported, considering so many new features are coming in C++11.   2. Also, how to encapsulate them in a way so that i have to change least when i change platform/compiler/boost version.   3. Also is there a category which suggest, which portion of the library to use and avoid, considering stability and standard."}
{"_id": "70495", "title": "Notification service for software version updates", "text": "There are a lot of (open source) projects that I'm interested in - dozens at least. I'd like to get a notification whenever a new version is released. Is there a service that does this?"}
{"_id": "232013", "title": "How do I licence my OS project, which uses other (differently-licenced) projects?", "text": "I've got a library up on GitHub, with some of the binaries also distributed on NuGet: https://github.com/relentless/Http.fs I'd ignored licencing up until now, but somebody's asking about it so I though I should put something on. I want to keep it permissive, and having done a little research MIT seems like a good one to use. However, my library references/uses three other libraries, all with different licences, so I'm not quite sure what I need to do. It includes the binaries of:   * FsUnit, which has it's own licence (similar to the BSD 3-clause): https://github.com/fsharp/FsUnit/blob/master/license.txt   * NancyFx, which uses MIT: https://github.com/NancyFx/Nancy/blob/master/license.txt And a source file from:   * FSharpX, which uses Apache 2.0: https://github.com/fsprojects/fsharpx/blob/master/LICENSE.md The MIT of Nancy doesn't seem to be a problem. The Apache of fsharpx and the FsUnit one both say I need to include the licence text in my project. So my questions are:   1. What do I do with the other licences, just copy the files into the root of my source? I assume I can rename them and add a comment specifying which part of my project this licence refers to.   2. Assuming I go for MIT, could I reasonably describe my project as having an MIT licence? Or is the reality that it's a mixed MIT/Apache 2.0/Random licence?"}
{"_id": "252467", "title": "Architecture for dashboard", "text": "I'd like to know if my Architecture idea, is the best approach following some pattern. I'll create a Dashboard for my company, and I never will delete or update data in my database, just read the data from database. Nowadays we just work with our SQL Server database, but I want a solution that will provide a easy way to implement a new feature, like a new database compatibility. **THE APPLICATION** This is a dashboard for all my clients, where I'll get the data from my database server making a filter for his company, and then plot some charts and show informations about her rentability, financial information, etc. Will be web-based and must work in any screen size (smarthphones, TV's, desktop, etc). I want to use NHibernate as ORM **IDEA** My idea was in the user interface, use MVC 4 Web Application and all request from the User Interface to my Business Layer will be through REST. My Business Layer it's a MVC Web API, to desacouple the User Interface from my Business Layer. The Business Layer will access Repository (Repository Pattern), with CRUD operation (in my case it's just 'SELECTS' because I just need show the data, never update, never insert). It's a DDD approach, working with NHibernate. Sometimes I think it's to much for a dashboard, where we can't insert nor update data. I'd like to know what are common architectural pattern for this problem. I said some pattern's here, but maybe someone with more experience then me could see a better approach to this kind of application."}
{"_id": "237023", "title": "Pattern matching in Clojure vs Scala", "text": "What are the key differences between pattern matching in these two languages? I am not referring to syntax, but capability, implementation details, range of use cases and necessity. Scala applications (eg. Lift and Play) speak proudly about the languages pattern matching prowess. Clojure, on the other hand has a library, core.match, and built in destructuring, which also seems powerful. *note: The reason I was inspired to ask this question is because of a blog post I saw in which a programmer, as an experiment, built a lisp interpreter using both Scala and Clojure. He said that the Clojure matches broke after a certain length, but could not explain why, but I am really curious to know. You can find this post here: http://www.janvsmachine.net/2013/09/writing-simple-lisp-interpreter-in-clojure.html"}
{"_id": "232017", "title": "How to decouple simple factory and default implementation?", "text": "I have a simple factory ~~class~~ (`FileResources`) with static factory methods providing a default implementation (`DefaultFileResource`).               public final class FileResources {         private FileResources() {}         public static FileResource get(Path path) {             return new DefaultFileResource(path);         }     }      The problem with this class is that it is tightly coupled with the default implementation (`DefaultFileResource`). Given a new requirement that classes part of the API (`FileResources`) cannot directly depend on classes not part of the API (`DefaultFileResource`) I figured that the only solution is inversion of control, either dependency injection or a ~~service provider~~ service locator. Is it possible to decouple FileResources from the default implementation (`DefaultFileResource`)? As far as I know this is only doable by injecting the dependency into FileResources through a constructor, field or setter method.   The main problem is that the constructor of FileResources is private, furthermore it only has static factory methods. The alternative is the factory method pattern. There would be an abstract factory (an API class), and there would be concrete factories (non-API classes) that could be even injected to decouple the API and non-API classes. Either way a dependency container is necessary to handle the wiring. What do you think? Am I overthinking this?"}
{"_id": "232014", "title": "Heuristic Approach for Flexible DIFF Implementation", "text": "I have created a DIFF implementation to compare document revisions at work. It is based on _An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and Its Variations_. One thing that has become important is to take the list of changes and interpret them into human readable text. While the current algorithm is very efficient, it is so much so that it is difficult to expand upon. ## Short Question I was thinking about trying to use A* and a heuristic that adds penalties for \"turns\". The idea being to _smooth out_ unnecessary \"add, delete, add, delete, add, delete\" so that it is easier to parse into something a human can read. Basically, turn my _shortest path_ problem into a _simplest path_ problem. And of course not create output that is always \"Delete _everything_ , Add _everything_ \" Does this sound reasonable? Is there any precedence for using a heuristic in a DIFF implementation? What is the heuristic? ## The Problem: If a long sentence is deleted and another long sentence removed, but they do share at least one word, say \"with\". Leaving the common word alone (by not both adding and deleting it) will create the shortest path. However, this really just obfuscates the context of the change to a human trying to read a print out of the changes. Example with current DIFF:   * **Old text:** Clean: Powerwash and blow dry with shop air.   * **New text:** Clean: Wipe with acetone and a lint free cloth.   * **Change Note List:**       * Change \"Powerwash and blow dry\" to \"Wipe with acetone\"     * Change \"shop air\" to \"acetone and a lint free cloth\" _Note: \"Change\" is used instead of_ \"delete 'shop air', add 'acetone'\" As you can see, the second note loses ALL context and without still looking at the full old and new text sets of text you cannot understand what it means. ## Note about Punctuation: I have delimited punctuation as separate \"words\" so that I would get   * Add \"(\" instead of   * Change \"Repair\" to \"(Repair\" because this was obnoxious. However, that means that if there is even a comma in both texts (as opposed to the word \"with\" in the previous example) the same thing happens. ## Possible Solution: I think I could use a different path finding algorithm instead that can give me the flexibility to add weight to different change \"paths\" that might make more sense to a person. Maybe, I could even make traveling to nodes containing punctuation have little weight (not sure how this would effect other things). Then I could get the previous example to list the following:   * **Change Note List:**       * Change \"Powerwash and blow dry with shop air\" to \"Wipe with acetone and a lint free cloth\" _See! Much clearer!_ I know I would take a performance hit, and I might have to do a fairly major overhaul of my program, but it's more important to have the final result I want. ## Bottom Line: Again, is there any precedence for using a heuristic in a DIFF implementation, and what is it? Other thoughts? A reasonable time investment? Other ideas? Other algorithms? Thanks in advance! **EDIT:** I tried to clarify/solidify my question and generalize my question to adding a heuristic to my algorithm, rather than using A*. Basically the same thing in this instance, but I still think more accurate now. This post was insightful."}
{"_id": "252462", "title": "How do you make a service stateless?", "text": "When doing Domain Driven Design it is advised that services should be stateless. There are several kinds of services when doing DDD:   * Application services.   * Domain services.   * Infrastructure services.   * Factories, Repositories, Specifications,...etc. How exactly do I make a service stateless? Does that mean I shouldn't have any instance variables in a class? Is there any guidelines on making a service/class stateless? I could really use a code sample that illustrate the difference between a stateful and stateless service. Example: (Is this class stateful or not?)               Class DataToCsvFileGenerator{              private String filePath;         private ResultSet data;              public String createCsv(ResultSet data){            this.data=data;                 this.createLocalFile();            this.loadDataIntoFile();                 return this.filePath;         }              private void createLocalFile(){                 this.filePath=//... logic to create file             }              private void loadDataIntoFile(){                 //function uses this.filePath to load data             }     }      Notice that any successive calls to `createCsv()` won't be affected by any prior invocation."}
{"_id": "18737", "title": "How to pick a great working team?", "text": "I've just finished my master and I'm starting to dig into the laboral world, i.e. learning how programming teams and technology companies work in the real world. I'm starting to design the idea of my own service or product based on free software, and I will require a well coupled, enthusiast and fluid team to build and the idea. My problem is that I'm not sure which would be the best skills to ask for a programming team of 4-5 members. I have many friends and acquaintances, with whom I've worked during my studies. Must of those ones I have in mind are very capable and smart people, with a good logic and programming base, although some of them have some characteristics that I believe that could influtiate negatively in the group: lack of communication, fear to debate ideas, hard to give when debating, lack of structured programming (testing, good commenting, previous design and analysis). Some of them have this negative characteristics, but must of them have a lot of enthusiasm, nice working skills (from an individual point of view), and ability to see the whole picture. The question is: how to pick the best team for a large scale project, with a lot of programming? Which of these negative skills do you think are just too influential? Which can be softened with good leadership? Wich good skills are to be expected? And any other opinion about social and programming skills of a programming team."}
{"_id": "33517", "title": "What are the best practices for exception handling in n-tier applications?", "text": "What are the best practices for exception handling in n-tier applications? The application is a fat client based on MVVM pattern with .NET framework."}
{"_id": "89994", "title": "Is LinqPad site quote \"Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?\" accurate?", "text": "I was struck by the heading > Tired of querying in antiquated SQL? on http://www.linqpad.net/. I am a N-Tier application developer and learnt my trade in a company that worked with a lot of data, so became fluent with SQL, but mostly for DALs. My finac\u00e9e is a SQL developer so I've had an exposure of the SS/SSAS/SSRS/SSIS suite too. Other than the LinqPad team writing antiquated SQL themselves, or only using PROCs for application DALs rather then data heavy tasks, I can't think why the the LinqPad team think SQL is antiquated?"}
{"_id": "71727", "title": "How does a website become hackable?", "text": "I know websites are hacked because of loose ends but how are they hacked via a form? Is it because the website owners didn't validate the form and the way they structured?"}
{"_id": "122372", "title": "Is browser fingerprinting a viable technique for identifying anonymous users?", "text": "Is browser fingerprinting a sufficient method for uniquely identifying anonymous users? What if you incorporate biometric data like mouse gestures or typing patterns? The other day I ran into the Panopticlick experiment EFF is running on browser fingerprints. Of course I immediately thought of the privacy repercussions and how it could be used for evil. But on the other hand, this could be used for great good and, at the very least, it's a tempting problem to work on. While researching the topic I found a few companies using browser fingerprinting to attack fraud. And after sending out a few emails I can confirm at least one major dating site is using browser fingerprinting as but one mechanism to detect fake accounts. (Note: They have found it's not unique enough to act as an identity when scaling up to millions of users. But, my programmer brain doesn't want to believe them). Here is one company using browser fingerprints for fraud detection and prevention:   http://www.bluecava.com/ Here is a pretty comprehensive list of stuff you can use as unique identifiers in a browser:   http://browserspy.dk/"}
{"_id": "122378", "title": "What's the point of initializing a variable with the same value twice?", "text": "I was reading Ben Cherry's \"JavaScript Module Pattern: In-Depth\", and he had some example code that I didn't quite understand. Under the _Cross-File Private State_ heading, there is some example code that has the following:               var _private = my._private = my._private || {}      This doesn't seem to be different from writing something like this:               var _private = my._private || {}      What's happening here and how are these two declarations different?"}
{"_id": "253274", "title": "is a new change request on a user story a different user story", "text": "We have completed a user story for a sprint. Near the end of the sprint there was a new functional addition requested for the same user story. Here the user story will remain the same. ie As a i want to <> so that <> will remain the same. Only difference is that there is a new value add that is to be done. So should this be taken as a new user story for the next sprint or should this be taken as a backlog? We have met the done definition we had for the user story and this new feature is a new requirement which wont have any change in the user story definition. I am adding an example to make it more clear take a feature say create profile, in that user can update his name,address, phone no, photo etc and its done. now if the customer wants to have facebook link or add country code to phone number, is that change request a new user story"}
{"_id": "87177", "title": "Planning a 3d file viewer using qt. Please suggest a 3d engine", "text": "I am planning a 3d file viewer with option to view 3d files (both geometry and mesh viewer). I would also like to put an option to convert between geometry and mesh. I am well versed with c++/qt. But novice in the field of 3d programming. What would be the ideal 3d engine, any open source projects already existing, matching my details? And why it would be a good example of what I plan to do?"}
{"_id": "87171", "title": "What if you don't have code samples to give a prospective employer?", "text": "What do you do when you don't have any good code samples available when asked by a prospective employer? I like to consider myself a fairly capable developer but I can't share any of the software I've been writing for my company the last few years. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the time to put much work in my personal projects either. Basically, I don't think I can find any code samples that are a good representative of my skills that I can share. Any ideas? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "137875", "title": "Would the concept of source code layers be of any use?", "text": "I'm talking about something like layers in photoshop, except they apply directly to the source code. For example, in pseudo-code... inventing what some project might look like - say a computational fluid dynamics program: [base layer]               cfdTime runTime(0);          fieldVariable U;     fieldVariable p;     U.initialize();     p.initialize();          while (runTime.run())     {         U.solve();         p.solve()         runTime++;     }      [turbulence layer]               turbulenceModel turbulence;     scalar nu(readScalar(turbulence.dictionary(\"nu\"));          while (runTime.run())     {         turbulence.update();     }      [base layer + turbulence layer]               cfdTime runTime(0);          fieldVariable U;     fieldVariable p;     U.initialize();     p.initialize();          turbulenceModel turbulence;     scalar nu(readScalar(turbulence.dictionary(\"nu\"));          while (runTime.run())     {         U.solve();         p.solve()         turbulence.update();         runTime++;     }      You get the idea. Obviously a lot of things would need to be worked out. I'm all over object-oriented programming (OOP). This idea strikes me as an awkward alternative to OOP... and I don't think it's worth much... but I thought I'd toss it to the community... there just might be something useful in it that I'm not quite seeing. It may be useful from a GUI-only perspective - creating layers in the GUI for complex functional programming... while the underlying code is always the same. Or it may be useful for code optimisation, perhaps an alternative to #ifdef that developers won't run screaming from. Or, it may be an entire alternative to OOP. Your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "129446", "title": "What type of interview questions should you ask for \"legacy\" programmers?", "text": "We have recently been receiving lots of applicants for our open developer positions from people who I like to refer to as \"legacy\" programmers. I don't like the term \"old\" because it seems a little prejudiced (especially to HR!) and it doesn't accurately reflect what I mean. We are a company that does primarily .NET development using TDD in an Agile environment, we use Git as a source control system, we make heavy use of OSS tools and projects and we contribute to them as well, we have a strong bias towards adhering to strong Object-Oriented principles, SOLID, etc, etc, etc... Now, the normal list of questions that we ask doesn't really seem to apply to applicants that are fresh out of school, nor does it seem to apply to these \"legacy\" programmers. Here is how I (loosely) define a \"legacy\" programmer.   * Spent a significant amount of their career working almost exclusively with Assembly/Machine Languages.   * Primary accomplishments include work done with TANDEM systems.   * Has extensive experience with technologies like FoxPro and ColdFusion It's not that we somehow think that what we do is \"better\" than what they do, on the contrary, we respect these types of applicants and we are scared that we may be missing a good candidate. It is just very difficult to get a good read on someone who is essentially speaking a different language than you. To someone like this, it seems a little strange to ask a question like: > What is the difference between an abstract class and an interface? Because, I would think that they would almost never know the answer or even what I'm talking about. However, I don't want to eliminate someone who could be a very good candidate in their own right and could be able to eventually learn the stuff that we do. But, I also don't want to just ask a bunch of behavioral questions, because I want to know about their technical background as well. Am I being too naive? Should \"legacy\" programmers like this already know about things like TDD, source control strategies, and best practices for object- oriented programming? If not, what questions should we ask to get a good representation about whether or not they are still able to learn them and be able to keep up in our fast-paced environment? **EDIT** : I'm not concerned with whether or not applicants that meet these criteria are in general capable or incapable, as I have already stated that I believe that they can be 100% capable. I am more interested in figuring out how to evaluate their talents, as I am having a hard time figuring out how to determine if they are an A+ \"legacy\" programmer or if they are a D- \"legacy\" programmer. I've worked with both."}
{"_id": "129447", "title": "Document overall business architecture", "text": "I\u2019m looking to document my business\u2019 overall system architecture. I want to capture what system/s everything starts in, what systems it flows into and why, and where everything ends up. As part of this I also want to identify the processes that allow the data to flow from one system to another including why and how. Being unfamiliar with documenting on this level, I really don\u2019t know where to start. I want it to be easy to read but detailed as well. To give a little bit more information, I\u2019m not really concerned with what happens to the data inside each system, just the inputs and outputs. How can I document this?"}
{"_id": "47991", "title": "Where is this from (originally)?: \"80% of the lifetime cost of a piece of software goes to maintenance\"", "text": "In the Sun Java coding conventions document (here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/codeconv-138413.html), it states: \"80% of the lifetime cost of a piece of software goes to maintenance\" Does anyone know where this statistic is sourced from? I don't doubt the assertion, but I can make up statistics without attribution as well and I'd like to know where this came from before I start using it as a basis for other statements."}
{"_id": "118451", "title": "Difference between various Collection Generic Interfaces in C#", "text": "I have been playing around with C# for Windows and ASP.net MVC development for some time now. But I am still unclear on a few areas. I am trying to understand the basic difference between and performance issues with using and interchanging similar kinds of Generic Collection Interfaces. What is the basic difference between `IEnumerable<T>`, `ICollection<T>`, `List<T>(Class)`? I seem to use and interchange them without seeing any problem in my applications. Also, are there any more similar generic collections like these that can be interchanged with those three?"}
{"_id": "126614", "title": "How effective are \"game programs\" in interviews?", "text": "I write business applications for a living. Often, for whatever reason, an interviewer asks me to write up a program to solve some kind of game like problem. I find this to be an inappropriate question for two main reasons:   1. Games often deal with constructs that are rarely used in business dev. E.G. Multi-dimensional arrays. Store player locations on a checkerboard for instance. (Maybe it's just me, but I never use these things in biz)   2. My usual tools like BL/DL, ORMs and even designing the entities themselves don't translate well. So I often end up with some goofy lookin code to start. This is especially awkward if the interviewer is looking over your should to determine how \"well you code\". Horribly uncomfortable, because...well I don't code like that...I don't write games for a living either. Do you folks use them in your interviews and have they been effective for learning about a business apps dev?"}
{"_id": "118456", "title": "C/C++ Best indentation length?", "text": "I was reading a Vim tutorial ( http://www.oualline.com/vim-cook.html#drawing ), and came across this: > This is very useful if you use a 4 space indentation for your C or C++ > programs. (Studies at Rice University have shown this to be the best > indentation size.) Is there any truth in these studies? Note-- i didn't mean for a flame war in indentation -- just whether anyone else has come across tis study before? **EDIT: @MaR I made a poll** http://poll.fm/3d5kg"}
{"_id": "126617", "title": "Code Correctness (?) Annotations for Java (and other languages)?", "text": "After writing my billionth null check in Java code, I started wondering why the ability to null check method arguments wasn't already built in to Java. For example, for some methods, I want to throw an IllegalArgumentException if some (or all) of the arguments are null. It would be great if I could mark up the code, and have the compiler generate the validation which throws an informative Exception if the validation fails. Is there anything already in Java where you can specify some correctness parameters for method arguments (e.g. _int_ has to be within certain range, or _Object_ has to be not null), and have the Compiler auto-generate the code? In Java it seems like this should be handled with annotations. (I guess in C/C++ you could define some nice macros to do this for you.) In searching the web on this issue, I saw reference to JSR 305, but this seems targeted toward use with IDE tools, and not with the Java compiler. I'm guessing this already exists in other programming languages. So I would be interested to hear about how this may work in these languages, as well as what might exist (or be coming up) in Java."}
{"_id": "175891", "title": "Build one to throw away vs Second-system effect", "text": "On one hand there is an advice that says \"Build one to throw away\". Only after finishing a software system and seeing the end product we realize what went wrong in the design phase and understand how we should have really done it. On the other hand there is the \"second-system effect\" which says that the second system of the same kind that is designed is usually worse than the first one; there are many features that did not fit in the first project and were pushed into the second version usually leading to overly complex and overly engineered. Isn't here some contradiction between these principles? What is the correct view over the problems and where is the border between these two? I believe that these \"good practices\" are were firstly promoted in the seminal book _The Mythical Man-Month_ by Fred Brooks. I know that some of these issues are solved by Agile methodologies, but deep down, the problem is still the principles still stand; for example we would not make important design changes 3 sprints before going live."}
{"_id": "196319", "title": "MVC shared model different required fields on different type", "text": "I have a model called Car and depending on what type of Car the user select the view is presented differently. For example the user selects from a grid of different cars and depending if it is a Volvo or a Kia or a Ford the view must allow different fields to be editable. For example with a Volvo the color is editable and is mandatory but with a Kia it is not. I would like to use the one Car class to bind the view but want the client side validation to pick up the required fields based on what type of car. I want to go only to one Action method for the Update what is a good way to approach this problem...? create a base class and inherit from it? will this give me binding problems..?"}
{"_id": "175899", "title": "Is there such a concept as \"pseudo implementation\" in software development?", "text": "I'm looking for a label to describe the practice of using human-based computation methods or other means of \"faking\" an algorithm for the sake of getting a product or demo off the ground quickly without spending the time to develop an technical/scalable/analytical solution? Eg: using Amazon Turk to count the number of empty tables in a restaurant. I'm also looking to learn more about this subject, but not sure what to search for. Human-based computation is only one method, I'm interested in the general idea of pseudo-implementation. Any ideas, recommended reading? Thanks"}
{"_id": "123396", "title": "Should code review be performed before or after unit tests", "text": "I am debating with my colleague on when to perform code review - before or after unit tests. What is the best practice? Some factors we might need to take into account (there may be more):   * Size of code change - a big change means more changes will result from the code review. If these changes are big than, if UT was before code review, you'll need to repeat most of your UTs again.   * Time required to perform unit test   * Is it new functionality or a bug fix"}
{"_id": "129993", "title": "How to correctly chain overloaded functions?", "text": "Assuming you have functions which take an increasing number of optional parameters (and a pseudo language which does not allow optional parameters and an arbitrary number of parameters) like this:               function doStuff(Param a)     function doStuff(Param a, Param b)     function doStuff(Param a, Param b, Param c)      What is a good way to unify them to a single call? I can imagine two designs: Fall through everything:               function doStuff(Param a)         doStuff(a, defaultB)          function doStuff(Param a, Param b)         doStuff(a, b, defaultC)          function doStuff(Param a, Param b, Param c)         // magic goes here        * The Upside: Not much code duplication, easy changing of a single default parameter.   * The Downside: Many function calls, might render Stacktraces harder to read or useless. Or directly call the 'last' function:               function doStuff(Param a)         doStuff(a, defaultB, defaultC)          function doStuff(Param a, Param b)         doStuff(a, b, defaultC)          function doStuff(Param a, Param b, Param c)         // magic goes here        * The Upside: Not many function calls, not worries if a new function is added into the chain.   * The Downside: Much code duplication, especially the default values. What did I not think of?"}
{"_id": "129997", "title": "Help choosing between two C# books", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What books would you recommend to someone who wants to learn C# > programming? I'm getting into .Net development, I'm pretty much a beginner programmer, except for an intro class I took in college and just playing around at home. I intend to watch videos online to go along with the book. I have decided on two books, **Learning C# 3.0** by O'Reilly or **Beginning Visual C# 2010** by Wrox. I like the O'Reilly book better, it just has a friedlier and nicer style of writing but it only covers C# 3.0, and the Wrox book obviously covers C# 4.0. Is it a bad idea to go with C# 3.0? I will I be missing out on a lot of stuff? Any advice will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "123390", "title": "What did Bill Gosper mean by saying a data structure is just a stupid programming language?", "text": "There's a quotation by Ralph William Gosper, Jr that says: > A data structure is just a stupid programming language. What did he mean by this? Alas, all I can find in Google about it is relentless copy/pastes of the quotation itself, without any context."}
{"_id": "129999", "title": "Is there a way to handle nested Collections more elegantly?", "text": "My question is rather a design question. In my program I got to a data structure that looks something like this:               private ConcurrentHashMap<A, ConcurrentHashMap<B, ConcurrentHashMap<Integer, C>>> services  = new ConcurrentHashMap<A, ConcurrentHashMap<B, ConcurrentHashMap<Integer, C>>>();      Is there a way to handle such a data structure more elegantly? Thanks! **edit** : A, B and C are business classes. An A instance \"can have\" (as association) many Bs and a B \"can have\" many mappings Integer-C."}
{"_id": "245757", "title": "Is it possible to have a single code base for a desktop GUI and a web application?", "text": "The required user interface is fairly simple; basically, two tables that \"interact with each other\", e.g. certain rows in one table get highlighted when a row in the other is clicked, plus maybe a panel with charts. Is it possible to have a (largely) single code base for a desktop app and a web app implementing this interface? For a few reasons, it would be good to have both versions, but I would hate to implement the GUI twice. The details of my particular case are as follows:   1. This is an academic research problem, so I don't have strict constraints in terms of tools and the coding style (or users!). On the other hand, I do have quite some time constraints.   2. It has to run on bare JVM, but any language/framework would be welcome (Java, Groovy, Scala, Clojure, etc.).   3. There is no persistent state, i.e. no strict need in a shared DB or any server part whatsoever.   4. I would be willing to go through some design hoops to make it work (by design hoops I mean some unconventional application architecture). Is it completely crazy to even think about something like that? If no, what would be the tools to pull it off?"}
{"_id": "178446", "title": "Looking to create website that can have custom GUI and database per user", "text": "I have developed an MS Access database for a company to track data in regards to production of a certain commodity. It has many many tables, forms, reports, etc. These were all done as the user requested, and resemble the users previously used system, mostly printed worksheets and excel workbooks. This has created a central location for all information and has allowed the company to compare data in a new way. I am now looking to do this for other companies, but would like to switch it to a web application. Here is my question. What is the best way to create unique solutions for individual companies that can have around 100 users each? I would love to create one site that would serve all parties, but that would ruin the customizable nature of what I am developing. I love the ability to create reports, excel sheets, pdf, graphs, etc with access, but am tired of relying on my customers software, servers, etc. I have some experience with WAMP, but I am far better at VBA. I was okay at PHP, and was getting a grasp on JavaScript a few years back. I am also trying to decide whether to go with WAMP or LAMP, if web is the best choice. Also, should I try set up one site for all users that after log-in goes to company specific pages, or individual sites for each company? Should I host or use a service?"}
{"_id": "207871", "title": "When to act on impediments?", "text": "During the meeting, each team member answers three questions:   1. What have you done since yesterday?   2. What are you planning to do today?   3. Any impediments/stumbling blocks? Any impediment/stumbling block identified in this meeting is documented by the Scrum Master and worked towards resolution outside of this meeting. No detailed discussions shall happen in this meeting. In the last question, it states that \"Any impediment/stumbling block identified in this meeting is documented and worked towards resolution outside of this meeting\". From my experience, just about every \"impediment\" results to slippage. So how would you, the average Scrum Master respond to such slippage? Do you assume that only a day slippage in a two or three week sprint is normal and hope for the best? Do you assume that a three day slippage is reason to assign help? What would 'your' tolerance level for slippage normally be? Do you have a formula you stick to (ie: if the slippage is 20% late you automatically assign someone to help)? I'd just like to get a better understanding of this third rule."}
{"_id": "195690", "title": "How to word user stories which have been split from a larger epic", "text": "I have an epic which involves creating a mobile application which retrieves a user's data they have previously created in a web application and act on it locally. It seems logical to split the epic as follows;   1. Mobile app which acts on local, mocked up data   2. Mobile app which downloads data from the web app's api but with no authentication   3. Mobile app which downloads data from the web app's api _with_ authentication I'm struggling to word these stories. 1 is a scenario which would never happen for the end user, he wouldn't have any local data if it hadn't already been retrieved previously. How would I word this? If 2 is 'As a user I want my mobile device to act on the [entities] which I previously created via the web interface' then what would 3 be? 'As a user I want my mobile device to act on the [entities] which I previously created via the web interface _trusting they have been retrieved securely_ '??"}
{"_id": "207873", "title": "Patterns for Integrating search (ex. Lucene) into a .NET desktop application", "text": "I am making a .NET desktop application (WinForms+Local PostgreSQL Server) for managing sales in a small store. I wish to integrate Lucene search facilities into the 'Product Search' module of my software. Are there any good patterns for integrating such Information Retrieval Libraries into existing applications? Note : The application is still in development and I can always modify the architecture to integrate Lucene. Note : I know how to use Lucene and have created a simple demo app to test it's capabilities. I am only looking for patterns that integrate such search functionality into Desktop Applications. Note : Also the main requirement of the integration is to enable the user to quickly search for products/brands/etc and provide a google autocomplete'esque system in the UI."}
{"_id": "195696", "title": "Create a database for database tables", "text": "I'm working on a project where I have to give users the ability to build their own tables, each user can create more than one table. (the type of all data is string). The user can create a table and specify what columns he wants inside it. What is the best way to do that:   1. to create databases dynamically   2. to have a table for tables (key,value ...).   3. something else Another issue is: is it better to separate my database into two, so one is for the internal use (users, accounts,....) and the other is for the tables of the users (or for the table of tables)?"}
{"_id": "207875", "title": "longest list of words with matching start and end letters", "text": "My friend gave me a problem that he says is easy, but I can't figure out a good algorithm to use to do it. You are given an input of 100 random English words. You have to find the longest string of words where the last letter in one word matches the first letter in the next word. You can only use each word once. For example, if you were given the words \"cat\", \"dog\", \"that\", the longest string you could make would be \"cat -> that\". If you were given the words \"mouse\", \"moose\", \"unicorn\", the longest string you could make would just be one word (since none of those words link). If you were given the words \"bird\", \"dish\", \"harb\", the longest string you could make would be \"harb -> bird -> dish\" (or \"dish -> harb -> bird\" or \"bird -> dish -> harb\"). I came up with the idea of modeling this as a directed cyclic graph. Each node would just be a word, with vertices going to each word/node that started with the letter this word ended with.               +-------+         \\ +------+     |  cat  |-----------| that |     +-------+         / +------+         |                  |        \\|/                 |     +-------+ /            |     |  the  |--------------+     +-------+ \\      This problem appears to be a longest path search, which is NP-Hard. Is there a better way to do it? Or even some sort of approximation algorithm that could be used? Or some way to exploit qualities of English to reduce the search space?"}
{"_id": "29720", "title": "Web Framework for Education Management System", "text": "_Please note that I'm moving my original question from StackOverflow to here, because I think it's more on-topic here_ So, I'm working on an idea and I'll go into a brief overview of that but my question is, What are some good web frameworks for this situation? I have some experience in the following languages:   * C#    * Python I have considerably more experience in C# than Python, however I am expecting to learn new things. My idea is this, a completely web-based community-oriented Education Management System that focuses on making students and teachers day-to-day lives easier. For students it will provide a centralized place for them to do homework, study for tests, and reinforce concepts learned previously in class. For teachers it will give them a centralized place to handle assignments, attendance, homework, tests, and all other major parts of classroom management. All of that, but in a community-oriented fashion. Everything a teacher does is shared and open to constructive criticism, allowing other teachers to use their assignments/tests and for students or other teachers to comment, rate and criticize their assignments. This encourages an environment of openness that will allow teacher's to focus on teaching and student's to focus on learning. And that community wouldn't be limited to one school or school-district, this system would be completely school-independent. _Also note that I have no problem with hearing constructive criticism on this idea, however I would prefer if this post was more focused on my question._ I have somewhat explored about the following options:   1. Django    2. ASP.NET    3. Ruby on Rails   4. Silverlight (1) I have Django installed and I played with it for a little bit, I really like how easy setting up databases are and how it handles the database completely for you. I don't really know how to use it very well and I don't quite understand the Model-View-Controller paradigm(?) for it yet but I haven't thought about it much. I also like the fact that it uses Python. (2) I don't really like Visual Studio for developing in ASP.NET, I hate the way the web-designer works and it just feels clunky and old. I like the server-side development part though. I don't like how expensive ASP.NET and overall Visual Studio is, even if I do get it for free for now using DreamSpark (3) I haven't been able to explore much with this, I could not get Rails (or maybe Ruby) properly installed. I first installed it within RadRails and that didn't work so I uninstalled RadRails and then installed the latest version of Ruby off the official Windows Installer and then installed Ruby on Rails through gem and even after all that it still didn't work, so I installed Netbeans and attempted to use it there but it still did not work (4) I like Silverlight in some extents, I've played with this one the most, it's very similar to WPF (which I've used the most) in a lot of ways but I don't like how database connectivity works, at least in comparison to Django. I also dislike how expensive everything with Microsoft is, even if I get it for free for now with DreamSpark. **I would like to hear some suggestions from experienced web-developers as to what I should use and why, or at least what some good options are for my scenario**"}
{"_id": "195699", "title": "Create Offline Demo Environment Database Substitute", "text": "I would like to know if there is a best practice for creating demo environments that substitutes database interaction into other forms of resource i.e. creating .json files containing the data that was supposedly returned from a webservice call. I wanted to know if there is already a standard way of obtaining the same result. Thanks"}
{"_id": "216062", "title": "More elegant way to avoid hard coding the format of a a CSV file?", "text": "I know this is trivial issue, but I just feel this can be more elegant. So I need to write/read data files for my program, lets say they are CSV for now. I can implement the format as I see fit, but I may have need to change that format later. The simply thing to do is something like               out.write(For.getValue()+\",\"+bar.getMinValue()+\",\"+fi.toString());      This is easy to write, but obviously is guilty of hard coding and the general 'magic number' issue. The format is hard-coded, requires parsing of the code to figure out the file format, and changing the format requires changing multiple methods. I could instead have my constants specifying the location that I want each variable to be saved in the CSV file to remove some of the 'magic numbers'; then save/load into the an array at the location specified by the constants:               int FOO_LOCATION=0;     int BAR_MIN_VAL_LOCATION=1;     int FI_LOCATION=2     int NUM_ARGUMENTS=3;          String[] outputArguments=new String[NUM_ARGUMENTS];     outputArguments[FOO_LOCATION] = foo.getValue();     outputArgumetns[BAR_MIN_VAL_LOCATION] = bar.getMinValue();     outptArguments[FI_LOCATOIN==fi.toString();          writeAsCSV(outputArguments);      But this is...extremely verbose and still a bit ugly. It makes it easy to see the format of existing CSV and to swap the location of variables within the file easily. However, if I decide to add an extra value to the csv I need to not only add a new constant, but also modify the read and write methods to add the logic that actually saves/reads the argument from the array; I still have to hunt down every method using these variables and change them by hand! If I use Java enums I can clean this up slightly, but the real issue is still present. Short of some sort of functional programming (and java's inner classes are too ugly to be considered functional) I still have no obvious way of clearly expressing what variable is associated with each constant short of writing (and maintaining) it in the read/write methods. For instance I still need to write somewhere that the FOO_LOCATION specifies the location of foo.getValue(). It seems as if there should be a prettier, easier to maintain, manner for approaching this? Incidentally, I'm working in java at the moment, however, I am interested conceptually about the design approach regardless of language. Some library in java that does all the work for me is definitely welcome (though it may prove more hassle to get permission to add it to the codebase then to just write something by hand quickly), but what I'm really asking is more about how to write elegant code if you had to do this by hand."}
{"_id": "193225", "title": "Anonymous function performance - setTimeout", "text": "According to Gregory Baker & Erik Arvidsson (Google), creating a named function and then passing that to setTimeout is actually faster than creating an anonymous function (reference: Optimizing JavaScript code -> Avoiding pitfalls with closures): > Creating a closure is significantly slower then creating an inner function > without a closure, and much slower than reusing a static function. For > example: > > <snip>                   function alertMsg() {           var msg = 'Message to alert';           alert(msg);         }      > is slower than:                   function setupAlertTimeout() {           window.setTimeout(alertMsg, 100);         }      In my testing, there does not appear to be any significant difference (jsPerf here), so why do they claim that creating a whole named function is faster than simply making an anonymous function? EDIT: note that I am specifically referring to the last two examples, the first one has been removed for clarity."}
{"_id": "12556", "title": "How can I bootstrap a software development community at my school?", "text": "I'm a student at the University of South Florida who's frustrated with the educational environment in the Computer Science program. Right now, I'm taking \"Program Design.\" I should be learning how to organize my source code into functions and modules in order to make my programs readable and maintainable; instead, I'm learning about arrays and recursion in C. Next semester, I have to take \"Object-Oriented Design,\" which is taught through C++ ( _shudder_.) Two years ago, I fell in love with programming, and I've been learning as much as I could since then. The prospect of taking another C++ class bores me almost to tears. For that reason, I thought I would start a programming club in order to meet similarly ambitious students, learn new languages, discuss software development topics, and work with other students developers. However, I'm beginning to realize that there may not be any other students who share my software development experience. It's not because of a lack of motivation but a lack of opportunity: I know of only one other programming class (\"Programming Languages\") and no classes on real-world software development. Everybody else only has experience writing trivial scripts in C and C++. I've realized that if I want to work with other student software developers, I'm going to have to train them myself. Now, I'm planning to make the club a software development bootcamp, teaching members how to develop software with modern tools and languages. Obviously, starting an unofficial software development course is a monumental task with many possible approaches. My question to you, dear reader, is **What's my plan of attack?** Should I   * lecture the club myself, trying to balance club work with homework?   * ask the CS faculty to teach on topics within their expertise which may be less than relevant to members?   * try to find a sympathetic, experienced developer inside or outside the school who can share my workload?   * show video lectures (from MIT OpenCourseWare, Google Tech Talks, etc)?   * hold hands-on programming workshops?   * assign homework?   * do something else?"}
{"_id": "82047", "title": "Function locals: variable used in just one function", "text": "In OOP, **static scope** means the scope is linked to the class, and **instance scope** is linked to a specific instance of the class. Some languages support **static locals** , which allow a value to be retained from one call of a function to another, however still in static scope. As you might conclude from some other posts by me here, you can tell I'm a big fan of **encapsulation**. Sometimes I use a certain **instance** variable within a class, **only within one method**. E.g. a flag indicating whether a certain method has already been called. My convention (following good standards) is to place these variables right before the function, close to their usage. Ideally, I would be able to place them **within the function scope**. Following the naming scheme of static locals, let's call this hypothetical scope **function locals**. Darien reworded this very clearly in a comment: > Ah, so what you really want is something beyond even private protection, > which is so closely protected that it is only visible to a single method > within a single instance. Now I know you could say, following the Single Responsibility Principle, this method and the associated variables should most likely be split into a separate class. To verify this - and I challenge you to do the same - I looked into some random code files and quickly found source files (even < 100 lines) where such a 'function local' could be used. Actually, C# offers a solution to this for one common scenario out of the box. Auto-implemented properties hide the backing field. This idea might be far-fetched, but somehow I feel it would make sense. Does anybody know of any language which supports this?"}
{"_id": "82043", "title": "I don't understand the Halting Problem", "text": "I just ran across an answer to another question that references the Halting Problem. He starts with this snippet:               def halts( code_block ):         # Some magical code          def whistler():         while halts(whistler):              sys.whistle( 1 )      and then explains how the routine `halts` cannot be defined correctly because it essentially ends up being logically equivalent to \"this sentence is false\". Aside from the Python-style syntax, this is basically the standard explanation of the halting problem, and I've never understood the concept. Every time I look at that type of example, I think \"but why in the world would anyone approach the problem in that way in the first place?\" If I wanted to determine a difficult property of a piece of code, such as answering the question of whether or not it halts, there's no way I would put the analysis _inside the code to be analyzed!_ First off, that leads to contradictions like this example, and second, adding analysis code changes the nature of the thing being analyzed. I would almost certainly go about looking for the answer to the question with external tools, not internal ones. So yes, I understand that there's no way to write a correct implementation of `halts` in the example above. But let's restrict ourselves solely to the realm of code that actually can be written correctly, instead of hypotheticals. What's an example of code that can actually be written and executed, for which it is impossible to determine by external analysis whether the code will end up in an infinite loop or whether it will terminate?"}
{"_id": "76858", "title": "How important is it to finish projects?", "text": "I'm a student (yet to go to uni) and I've been programming for about 5 years now. Over that time, I've flitted around from language to language, from API to API, and project to project. I've tried setting myself on one thing, but I lose interest. My entire PC is full of half finished projects (and at least four times as many have been formatted off my disk). I start to wonder if my lower motivation towards programming for the fun of it (it is one activity I really enjoy) is because I never get a finished project at the end. I can't tell if I just have too open ended goals, or just a low attention span. I tried doing some smaller projects just to finish them, but they do not interest me at all. Could this be a cause for my drop in motivation? Also, when I apply to go to uni (and in the future hopefully, a software job) is it likely to be an issue? **In summary:** _How important is it to finish side/hobby projects, be it for career, motivation, or education?_"}
{"_id": "95952", "title": "Learning MFC: Pre-2010 vs 2010 and beyond", "text": "First, some background: I've been programming for about 12 years now. I am intermediate to advance in C# and a couple other managed languages, but never messed with anything native. I understand the concepts, just never had the time to dip into C/C++ and the like. Now, I am currently enrolled in the Game & Simulation Development course at DeVry, which gave me access to VS2010 (Finally!). After playing around with it, I noticed the default templates for MFC are...well, beyond words. (In a good way. - Referring to the wizards that generate a VS or Office-like interface for you.) Now that I've seen what is possible with MFC, I would love to learn how to use it to make awesome tools, but I don't know where to get started. The MSDN tutorials are pretty much useless, and I've been told that Ivor Horton's VC++ 2010 book is the best, but it doesn't seem to take into account (at least to me based on the more complext UI) the complexity that's added with what the new wizards generate. So I really have 2 questions:   One, is what is taught in his book sufficent for MFC in general? That would assume the \"complexity\" I'm perceiving is just cold feet. Two, does anyone know of a good resource to learn how to work with MFC that use the new VS and Office-like interfaces? Thanks ahead of time. **UPDATE** : It seems most of you guys are vehemently opposed to using MFC, so I'll add a bit to this question. The reason I want to use MFC is because the Visual-Studio-like interface seems like a very efficient way to lay out a lot of tools like the property view and such. The MFC wizard in VS2010 gives me all this by default. My ultimate goal is to create an application similar to GameMaker, but with a VS-like interface. (Personal improvement project; I know it's been done to death.) So with that said, is there a way to create a Visual Studio-like shell application without MFC (maybe using Qt, or even with the VS2008 shell)?"}
{"_id": "95956", "title": "Options for a lead programmer who prefers programming to leading?", "text": "At the beginning of this year I was promoted to a lead developer role after our team's lead developer moved to a different department. I have about 5 years of job experience and due to availability and past performance I was management's primary choice for leading the project. I was a little apprehensive but decided it was a good opportunity for career advancement and experience, so I accepted. But my conclusion so far is that I don't enjoy it nearly as much as my previous developer position. Though I have successfully led a team of 5 developers through several releases, I almost never touch any code. Instead I perform planning and design and team management, along with code reviews. The need to keep track of many more things, and have tasks planned so they can be assigned to the team, literally gives me headaches most every day. Even though I rarely work overtime, I feel burnt out most every day when I leave work, and don't think I have even enjoyed off-work time as much as a result. So my question: **how would you handle, or how have you handled, such a situation?** For people in similar situations, did you find ways to better manage your team, tasks and time that made you enjoy the work? Or did you find a way to transition back into a more development-oriented position? I know that lead developer positions almost always pay a higher salary, but I can see myself getting to a point where I care less about money and promotions than I do about my enjoyment of my current job. I have not discussed this with anyone in management as I thought I should try to adjust for at least a year."}
{"_id": "123029", "title": "Multithreaded file copy", "text": "There is an utility we have which is used to upload files (and perform other operations on the file) to a network shared location.   The file size tends to vary from a few mb to 500 mb.   A suggestion has come up that we should maybe support multi-threading when uploading the files to the shared location - not required to do it in byte chunks - each thread should pick one file and try to upload. I am not so sure if multithreading can speed up IO operations like this. Is my hunch valid? If indeed we are required to build this functionality I was wondering what would be a good design approach for the copy file engine?   Would it make sense to use a tool like robocopy (I read the newer versions support multithreading)? Edit: Apologies for the delay and missing some vital information.   This utility is built using C# (.Net 2.0) and any future update also has to be using .Net (framework version is not a constraint). The utility is installed on the machines of the users (around 20 all on WinXP). The target share is on Win2k3 server. Edit 2: have decided to run some tests with a simple application implementing the file upload through TPL. Post this analysis we will decide whether to go ahead or not. Thanks everyone for the help extended."}
{"_id": "150391", "title": "In programming light, what is special about the number 1223?", "text": "Just came across this post on reddit, where someone was charged $1,223 for a \"FREE STEAK SALAD\". ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yK7sy.jpg) I was trying to figure out 'Why 1223?' thinking that this might be a programming error somewhere. But 1223 seems to be pretty much an ordinary number (= 100110001112). Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "150393", "title": "Should the database of a web application be considered an actor?", "text": "I'm just learning about use-case analysis and use-case diagrams and am a little confused whether or not the MySQL database of a web app should be considered an actor. Is the databased considered outside of \"the system\" or my application, because it is its own server, most probably on another physical machine? On the other hand, the database in a basic web application won't ever initiate a use case."}
{"_id": "16070", "title": "What is abstraction?", "text": "Is there a generally agreed upon definition for what a **programming abstraction** is, as used by programmers? [Note, programming abstraction is not to be confused with dictionary definitions for the word \"abstraction.\"] Is there an unambiguous, or even mathematical definition? What are some clear examples of abstractions?"}
{"_id": "193592", "title": "Criteria for selecting MigLayout for GUI code?", "text": "It seems to be easier to use and more feature rich than standard swing layouts. It looks like a do it all replacement for all standard layouts. If you are making simple code to just show the time in a window, then MigLayout is probably not useful. But, if you are making a flight cockpit panel, then MigLayout might be the best. However, even if your project is \"complex\" (like the flight panel example), how do you decide if you can do it well with the standard layouts instead of Mig ? How do you know when you should use MigLayout and when you should not ? Is it so good that one should use it right away for big projects without even considering the standard layouts ? These are the kind of points I am looking for - **(1) (fictional)** \\- Mig can be slow for \"big projects\". If you want a fast loading GUI, then use the standard layout. **(2) (fictional)** \\- Mig is still not as mature a project as the standard layouts. If you are making a mission critical app, i'd suggest not using Mig."}
{"_id": "214721", "title": "Rails: Law of Demeter Confusion", "text": "I am reading a book called Rails AntiPatterns and they talk about using delegation to to avoid breaking the Law of Demeter. Here is their prime example: They believe that calling something like this in the controller is bad (and I agree)               @street = @invoice.customer.address.street      Their proposed solution is to do the following:               class Customer              has_one :address         belongs_to :invoice              def street             address.street         end     end          class Invoice              has_one :customer              def customer_street             customer.street         end     end          @street = @invoice.customer_street      They are stating that since you only use one dot, you are not breaking the Law of Demeter here. I think this is incorrect, because you are still going through customer to go through address to get the invoice's street. I primarily got this idea from a blog post I read: http://www.dan-manges.com/blog/37 In the blog post the prime example is               class Wallet       attr_accessor :cash     end     class Customer       has_one :wallet            # attribute delegation       def cash         @wallet.cash       end     end          class Paperboy       def collect_money(customer, due_amount)         if customer.cash < due_ammount           raise InsufficientFundsError         else           customer.cash -= due_amount           @collected_amount += due_amount         end       end     end      The blog post states that although there is only one dot `customer.cash` instead of `customer.wallet.cash`, this code still violates the Law of Demeter. > Now in the Paperboy collect_money method, we don't have two dots, we just > have one in \"customer.cash\". Has this delegation solved our problem? Not at > all. If we look at the behavior, a paperboy is still reaching directly into > a customer's wallet to get cash out. EDIT I completely understand and agree that this is still a violation and I need to create a method in `Wallet` called withdraw that handles the payment for me and that I should call that method inside the `Customer` class. What I don't get is that according to this process, my first example still violates the Law of Demeter because `Invoice` is still reaching directly into `Customer` to get the street. Can somebody help me clear the confusion. I have been searching for the past 2 days trying to let this topic sink in, but it is still confusing."}
{"_id": "214787", "title": "Law of Demeter confusion", "text": "I am reading a book called Rails AntiPatterns and they talk about using delegation to to avoid breaking the Law of Demeter. Here is their prime example: They believe that calling something like this in the controller is bad (and I agree)               @street = @invoice.customer.address.street      Their proposed solution is to do the following:               class Customer              has_one :address         belongs_to :invoice              def street             address.street         end     end          class Invoice              has_one :customer              def customer_street             customer.street         end     end          @street = @invoice.customer_street      They are stating that since you only use one dot, you are not breaking the Law of Demeter here. I think this is incorrect, because you are still going through customer to go through address to get the invoice's street. I primarily got this idea from a blog post I read: http://www.dan-manges.com/blog/37 In the blog post the prime example is               class Wallet       attr_accessor :cash     end     class Customer       has_one :wallet            # attribute delegation       def cash         @wallet.cash       end     end          class Paperboy       def collect_money(customer, due_amount)         if customer.cash < due_ammount           raise InsufficientFundsError         else           customer.cash -= due_amount           @collected_amount += due_amount         end       end     end      The blog post states that although there is only one dot `customer.cash` instead of `customer.wallet.cash`, this code still violates the Law of Demeter. > Now in the Paperboy collect_money method, we don't have two dots, we just > have one in \"customer.cash\". Has this delegation solved our problem? Not at > all. If we look at the behavior, a paperboy is still reaching directly into > a customer's wallet to get cash out. Can somebody help me clear the confusion. I have been searching for the past 2 days trying to let this topic sink in, but it is still confusing."}
{"_id": "120613", "title": "What version control system can manage all aspects?", "text": "A few months ago I dug into Subversion and GIT and was disappointed. They handle SOURCE CODE fine but not other aspects. For example, a web site under version control needs to manage file/directory ownership, file/directory read & write access, Access Control Lists, timestamps, database contents. and external links. Is there a version control system that can do as perfect a reversion as reloading from a month-old backup?"}
{"_id": "10899", "title": "What are questions to test a programmers knowledge of SQL?", "text": "What are questions to test a programmers knowledge of SQL? What is the answer to the question? And what would a lack of an correct answer mean in terms of time likely to understand the concept(s) related to the question? **GOOGLED:** sql challenge"}
{"_id": "154895", "title": "How do you deploy your ASP.Net MVC3 application to the production server?", "text": "I just want to find out the best practice to deploy your MVC3 application and what tool you use to get the job done. I am using Visual Studio 2010. I publish my web site, then manually backup whats on the production server, then upload the new one there. It's tedious and error prone. What should I do to make this job easier?"}
{"_id": "160892", "title": "What is the relevance of resumes in the age of GitHub, Stack Exchange, Coursera, Udacity, blogs, etc.?", "text": "My resume is no longer relevant. It can no longer contain an adequate description of my technical abilities. One can get a much better sense of what I am capable of by looking at my GitHub repositories, my Stack Exchange profiles, and the various courses that I am taking at Udacity and Coursera. The problem is that I have no idea how to tell employers that those are the places to look if they want an accurate description of what I can do. Every time a recruiter contacts me I gently nudge them towards all the resources I just mentioned and I also provide a link to a publicly visible Google doc that contains my resume along with links to all those resources. Yet, they keep coming back asking for a more descriptive resume. How can I make it even more blatantly obvious that if somebody wants to hire me then they can save themselves a whole bunch of trouble by just clicking on a few links and browsing around?"}
{"_id": "244807", "title": "Reconciling the Boy Scout Rule and Opportunistic Refactoring with code reviews", "text": "I am a great believer in the Boy Scout Rule: > Always check a module in cleaner than when you checked it out.\" No matter > who the original author was, what if we always made some effort, no matter > how small, to improve the module. What would be the result? I think if we > all followed that simple rule, we'd see the end of the relentless > deterioration of our software systems. Instead, our systems would gradually > get better and better as they evolved. We'd also see teams caring for the > system as a whole, rather than just individuals caring for their own small > little part. I am also a great believer in the related idea of Opportunistic Refactoring: > Although there are places for some scheduled refactoring efforts, I prefer > to encourage refactoring as an opportunistic activity, done whenever and > wherever code needs to cleaned up - by whoever. What this means is that at > any time someone sees some code that isn't as clear as it should be, they > should take the opportunity to fix it right there and then - or at least > within a few minutes Particularly note the following excerpt from the refactoring article: > I'm wary of any development practices that cause friction for opportunistic > refactoring ... My sense is that most teams don't do enough refactoring, so > it's important to pay attention to anything that is discouraging people from > doing it. To help flush this out be aware of any time you feel discouraged > from doing a small refactoring, one that you're sure will only take a minute > or two. Any such barrier is a smell that should prompt a conversation. So > make a note of the discouragement and bring it up with the team. At the very > least it should be discussed during your next retrospective. Where I work, there is one development practice that causes **heavy** friction - Code Review (CR). Whenever I change anything that's not in the scope of my \"assignment\" I'm being rebuked by my reviewers that I'm making the change harder to review. This is especially true when refactoring is involved, since it makes \"line by line\" diff comparison difficult. This approach is the standard here, which means opportunistic refactoring is seldom done, and only \"planned\" refactoring (which is usually too little, too late) takes place, if at all. I claim that the benefits are worth it, and that 3 reviewers will work a little harder (to actually understand the code before and after, rather than look at the narrow scope of which lines changed - the review itself would be better due to that alone) so that the next 100 developers reading and maintaining the code will benefit. When I present this argument my reviewers, they say they have no problem with my refactoring, as long as it's not in the same CR. However I claim this is a myth: (1) Most of the times you only realize what and how you want to refactor when you're in the midst of your assignment. As Martin Fowler puts it: > As you add the functionality, you realize that some code you're adding > contains some duplication with some existing code, so you need to refactor > the existing code to clean things up... You may get something working, but > realize that it would be better if the interaction with existing classes was > changed. Take that opportunity to do that before you consider yourself done. (2) Nobody is going to look favorably at you releasing \"refactoring\" CRs you were not supposed to do. A CR has a certain overhead and your manager doesn't want you to \"waste your time\" on refactoring. When it's bundled with the change you're supposed to do, this issue is minimized. The issue is exacerbated by Resharper, as each new file I add to the change (and I can't know in advance exactly which files would end up changed) is usually _littered_ with errors and suggestions - most of which are spot on and totally deserve fixing. The end result is that I see horrible code, and I just leave it there. Ironically, I feel that fixing such code not only will not improve my standings, but actually lower them and paint me as the \"unfocused\" guy who wastes time fixing things nobody cares about instead of doing his job. I feel bad about it because I truly despise bad code and can't stand watching it, let alone call it from my methods! Any thoughts on how I can remedy this situation ?"}
{"_id": "213206", "title": "Suggestions designing an XML polling deamon in python", "text": "I'm about to take on a new project for a client designing a server-side python program that will poll a number of XML streams at regular intervals and populate a Postgresql database with results. The system will basically act as an XML cacheing daemon and populate a database. That database will then be accessed by a separate program which will serve that data in JSON to a public- facing website. I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions as to the high-level design of the python caching/polling program. I'm thinking something class-based where a number of classes (one for each XML stream to be polled) descend from a common parent class, check for new content and then grab any if found. I'm thinking to have a table for each of the XML streams on the database, a column for each of the XML fields, and another table to keep track of the \"last access\" for each stream. For this I'm planning on using Python 2.7, pyscopg, and ElementTree for XML processing. Does anyone have any thoughts or criticism on my design or toolchain at this point? Is parsing my XML values to store in a Postgres database more work than is worthwhile? The front-end program that will be serving that data will be turning it into JSON rather than XML by the way."}
{"_id": "241327", "title": "Which approach would lead to an API that is easier to use?", "text": "I'm writing a JavaScript API and for a particular case, I'm wondering which approach is the sexiest. Let's take an example: writing a `VideoPlayer`, I add a `getCurrentTime` method which gives the elapsed time since the start.   1. The first approach simply declares `getCurrentTime` as follows:              getCurrentTime():number      where `number` is the **native number** type. This approach includes a `CURRENT_TIME_CHANGED` event so that API users can add callbacks to be aware of time changes. Listening to this event would look like the following:              myVideoPlayer.addEventListener(CURRENT_TIME_CHANGED, function(evt){         console.log (\"current time = \"+evt.getDispatcher().getCurrentTime());     });        2. The second approach declares `getCurrentTime` differently:              getCurrentTime():CustomNumber      where `CustomNumber` is a **custom number** object, not the native one. This custom object dispatches a `VALUE_CHANGED` event when its value changes, so there is no need for the `CURRENT_TIME_CHANGED` event! Just listen to the returned object for value changes! Listening to this event would look like the following:              myVideoPlayer.getCurrentTime().addEventListener(VALUE_CHANGED, function(evt){         console.log (\"current time = \"+evt.getDispatcher().valueOf());     });      Note that `CustomNumber` has a `valueOf` method which returns a native number that lets the returned `CustomNumber` object being used as a number, so:              var result = myVideoPlayer.getCurrentTime()+5;      will work! So in the first approach, we listen to an object for a change in its property's value. In the second one we directly listen to the property for a change on its value. There are multiple pros and cons for each approach, I just want to know which one the developers would prefer to use!"}
{"_id": "213204", "title": "efficient way to count number of swaps in insertion sort", "text": "I am browsing some online coding challenge online and got struck somewhere . Objective of program is to find maximum number of swaps required in sorting an array via insertion sort in efficient time the first approach that is brute force approach gives the O(n^2) complexity The next i can think of is merge sort algorithm the code i use for that is               #include <cmath>     #include <cstdio>     #include <vector>     #include <iostream>     #include <algorithm>     using namespace std;          int mergesort(int *,int);     int _mergesort(int *,int *,int,int);     int merge(int *,int *,int,int,int);          int mergesort(int arr[],int n)     {         int temp[n];         return _mergesort(arr,temp,0,n-1);     }          int _mergesort(int arr[],int temp[],int left,int right)     {         int mid,count=0;         if(right>left)         {            mid=(left+right)/2;           count=_mergesort(arr,temp,left,mid);           count+=_mergesort(arr,temp,mid+1,right);           count+=merge(arr,temp,left,mid+1,right);         }         return count;     }          int merge(int arr[],int temp[],int left,int mid,int right)     {       int i, j, k;       int count = 0;       i = left;        j = mid;         k = left;        while ((i <= mid - 1) && (j <= right))       {         if (arr[i] <= arr[j])         {           temp[k++] = arr[i++];         }         else         {           temp[k++] = arr[j++];           count = count + (mid - i);         }       }       while (i <= mid - 1)         temp[k++] = arr[i++];       while (j <= right)         temp[k++] = arr[j++];       for (i=left; i <= right; i++)         arr[i] = temp[i];            return count;     }          int main()     {         int n,tc,i;         cin>>tc;         while(tc)         {           cin>>n;           int arr[n];           for(i=0;i<n;i++)               cin>>arr[i];             cout<<mergesort(arr,n);           tc--;         }         return 0;        }          The example test case is      Sample Input:     2     5     1 1 1 2 2     5     2 1 3 1 2          Sample Output:     0     4      this gives me a complexity of nlogn Initially the program reads number of test case that is 2 and followed by two test case the algorithm works fine for small range of values but show time limit exceeded error in some test case . What is the most efficient way of doing this i cant find out any suggestion or edits would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "155414", "title": "Should this code/logic be included in Business Objects class or a separate class?", "text": "I have created a small application which has a three tier architecture and I have business object classes to represent entities such as `User`, `Orders`, `UserType` etc. In these classes I have methods that are executed when the Constuctor method of, for example, User is called. These methods perform calculations and generate details that setup data for attributes that are part of each User object. Here is the structure for the project in Visual Studio: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/TijRU.png) Here is some code from the business object class User.cs:               Public Class User     {         public string Name { get; set; }         public int RandomNumber { get; set; }         etc                  public User             {                 Name = GetName();                 RandomNumber = GetRandomNumber();             }                  public string GetName()             {                ....               return name;             }                  public int GetRandomNumber()             {                ...                return randomNumber;             }              }      Should this logic be included in the Business Object classes or should it be included in a Utilities class of some kind? Or in the business rules?"}
{"_id": "213201", "title": "If someone changes their license, does it apply to previously forked projects under the prior license?", "text": "* Say someone puts their code on GitHub, under the MIT license.   * Then I forked it and use it in my project.   * Then they change the license so that it has a strict license that does not give permission to modify, sell, etc... Would the new license apply to my code, since the code I have was from before they changed the license?"}
{"_id": "155419", "title": "Can the Clojure set and maps syntax be added to other Lisp dialects?", "text": "In addition to create list using parentheses, Clojure allows to create vectors using [ ], maps using { } and sets using #{ }. Lisp is always said to be a very extensible language in which you can easily create DSLs etc. But is Lisp so extensible that you can take any Lisp dialect and relatively easily add support for Clojure's vectors, maps and sets (which are all functions in Clojure)? I'm not necessarily asking about _cons_ or similar actually working on these functions: what I'd like to know is if the other could be modified so that the source code would look like Clojure's source code (that is: using matching [ ], { } and #{ } in addition to ( )). Note that if it cannot be done this is not a criticism of Lisp: what I'd like to know is, technically, what should be done or what cannot be done if one were to add such a thing."}
{"_id": "214259", "title": "Story Point Estimation vs Ideal Days Estimation", "text": "In my project we assign 4 hours for 1 story point and estimate based on story point. So in this case one ideal day of work will be done in 2 elapsed days. From an agile standpoint are we doing story point estimation or ideal days estimation or none of these?"}
{"_id": "213209", "title": "Lucene + Joins == RDBMS?", "text": "Now that Lucene supports joins (at indexing time and at querying time) can one use Lucene as a databse (a NoSQL one, with Eventual Consistency)? Note: I was pondering on that for sometime and this is an idea that comes around again and again from time to time and there are proof that on actually can do that - to some extent (RavenDB). Besides I think referential integrity is over-rated - I never use foreign keys in a RDBMS when I work on a big, fast changing project with a small team; from experience it's pure maintenance headache and kills productivity. The only thing that seems to me a hurdle in building up this mindset is the lack of transactions - and yes; you can have 2 step transactions (with say MongoDB and Lucene uses that for some internals) but that's lots of work; and I do not know how that would be possible with Lucene."}
{"_id": "119463", "title": "Why did visual programming never take off and what future paradigms might change that?", "text": "As the number of \"visual\" OS's such as Android, iOS and the promised Windows 8 are becoming more popular, it does not seem to me that we programmers have new ways to code using these new technologies, due to a possible lack in new visual programming languages paradigms. I've seen several discussions about incompatibilities between the current coding development environment, and the new OS approaches from Windows 8, Android and other tablets OS's. I mean, today if we have a new tablet, it's almost a requirement for coding, to have, for instance, an external keyboard (due it seems to me it's very difficult to program using the touch screen), exactly because the coding assistance is not conceived to \"write\" thousands of lines of code. So, how advanced should be the \"new\" visual programming languages paradigms? Which characteristics these new paradigms would be required?"}
{"_id": "95212", "title": "When to favor ASP.NET WebForms over MVC", "text": "I know that Microsoft has said > ASP.NET MVC is not a replacement for WebForms. And some developers say WebForms is faster to develop on than MVC. But I believe speed of coding comes down to comfort level with the technology so I don't want any answers in that vein. Given that ASP.NET MVC gives a developer more control over their application, why isn't WebForms considered obsolete? Alternatively, when should I favor WebForms over MVC for new development?"}
{"_id": "215782", "title": "Is this a secure solution for RESTful authentication?", "text": "I need to quickly implement a RESTful authentication system for my JavaScript application to use. I think I understand how it should work, but I just want to double check. Here's what I'm thinking -- what do you guys think? **Database schema** users   * id : integer   * first_name : varchar(50)   * last_name : varchar(50)   * password : varchar(32) (MD5 hashed)   * etc. user_authentications   * id : integer   * user_id : integer   * auth_token : varchar(32) (AES encrypted, with keys outside database)   * access_token : varchar(32) (AES encrypted, with keys outside database)   * active : boolean **Steps** The following happens over SSL. I'm using Sinatra for the API.   1. JavaScript requests authentication via POST to /users/auth/token.   2. The /users/auth/token API method generates an auth_token hash, creates a record in user_authentications, and returns auth_token.   3. JavaScript hashes the user's password and then salts it with auth_token -- SHA(access_token + MD5(password))   4. POST the user's username and hashed+salted password to /users/auth/authenticate.   5. The /users/auth/authenticate API method will verify that SHA(AES.decrypt(access_token) + user.password) == what was received via POST.   6. The /users/auth/authenticate will generate, AES encrypt, store, and return an access token if verification is successful; otherwise, it will return 401 Unauthorized.   7. For any future requests against the API, JavaScript will include access_token, and the API will find the user account based on that."}
{"_id": "215784", "title": "Theory Of A Weird Thought - Forms Submission", "text": "In theory, if you were to open two computers that were perfectly synced together on a website that has a form. This form has fields where say for example the username has to be unique. Assuming both computers have the same information on the form, and in theory let's say that the submit button was pressed at the same time, and that these two computers have the exact same build and internet speed and the same response time from the server, whose information would be submitted to the database and whose information would be denied knowing the username field is unique."}
{"_id": "81538", "title": "\"Interface\" vs. \"layer\"", "text": "In computer science, what are the differences in meaning between _interface_ and _layer_? For example, an interface between A and B must belong to either A or B or both, while a layer between A and B must be a third thing that is neither part of A or of B?"}
{"_id": "81536", "title": "Is there anything like chorewars for programming?", "text": "Chorewars gives rpg style rewards for household chores. Does anyone do this for programming? I know about coderwall and workforpie."}
{"_id": "2783", "title": "Space around operators? a=b/2; or a = b / 2; What are the arguments?", "text": "Personally I prefer space around operators. For me it makes the code much more readable. What are the arguments not have space around them? Line length? An example from the Python style guide (I agree with this): Yes:                 i = i + 1       submitted += 1       x = x * 2 - 1       hypot2 = x * x + y * y       c = (a + b) * (a - b)      No:                 i=i+1       submitted +=1       x = x*2 - 1       hypot2 = x*x + y*y       c = (a+b) * (a-b)"}
{"_id": "201439", "title": "Why would universities educate IT leaders who lacks IT interest?", "text": "I am not sure if there is an obvious answer to this, but this question has somewhat baffled me from the first time I started thinking about it. My university's IT department educates managers and IT leaders with the slogan that \"IT leaders will be able to perform their job better if they have an understanding of how the technology works\". This course includes multiple technical classes alongside the typical business related classes. However, what I have started to notice is that the students that apply for this course have either a very lacking understanding of IT, or dislike technological classes such as software engineering and programming, and as thus get very poor exam results. This begs the question: Why would someone with no interest in deeper understanding of technology want to work as an IT leader? Or magnitudes more importantly; Why would anyone working as a developer want to have a boss who has no understanding whatsoever of what they're actually leading? It just feels very wrong to have someone lead you who lacks the experience of understanding why certain things are better done in certain ways. IT leaders who never programmed or cared about it won't understand why concepts such as technical debt really hurts and why it is important to avoid. To quote Uncle Bob: \"A system architect should also be a programmer, that way they get to experience the mess they make for everybody else.\""}
{"_id": "201431", "title": "Isn't GPL enough to make a software free as in free speech?", "text": "## Background I have read people rebutting the fact that a certain software is free as in free speech, even when it is licensed under GPL. Some say Java isn't free because to obtain a professional certification you must get it from Oracle. Some say Java JDK is not free to re-distribute. Some people even say the openJDK is not free or open. But Java is officially GPL. ## Questions   1. Doesn't GPL explicitly mean you are free to re-distribute ?   2. Isn't GPL enough to make a software free as in free speech ?   3. How can Java be both GPL and not-free as in free speech ?   4. Is there is any license that trully makes a software free beyond any possible subjetive point of view? **EDIT: These question is not about names or trademarks, it's about the code.**"}
{"_id": "201437", "title": "How to construct UML activity diagram reflecting real programmed source code as docs", "text": "Please, tell me the things I must use for modeling an (Enterprise Architect) activity diagram of               object1.method1() calls object2.method2()      I'm able to dragndrop a method of a class from model tree-view to my diagram, and it appears as new action there. But there is no hint about its belonging object. Also I don't get it which arrow type I must use to model that one calls the other. My feeling is it's not very appropriate for constructing documentation of typical call scenarios of my application. You know I want to create UML docs for what we've programmed until now."}
{"_id": "166808", "title": "Looking for a dynamic programming solution", "text": "Given a sequence of integers in range 1 to n. Each number can appear at most once. Let there be a symbol X in the sequence which means remove the minimum element from the list. There can be an arbitrarily number of X in the sequence. Example: 1,3,4,X,5,2,X The output is 1,2. We need to find the best way to perform this operation. The solution I have been thinking is: Scan the sequence from left to right and count number of X which takes O(n) time. Perform partial sorting and find the k smallest elements (k = number of X) which takes O(n+klogk) time using median of medians. Is there a better way to solve this problem using dynamic programming or any other way ?"}
{"_id": "161853", "title": "How can you tell whether to use Composite Pattern or a Tree Structure, or a third implementation?", "text": "I have two client types, an \" **Observer** \"-type and a \" **Subject** \"-type. They're both associated with a **hierarchy of groups**. The Observer will receive **(calendar) data** from the groups it is associated with throughout the different hierarchies. This data is calculated by **combining data from 'parent' groups** of the group trying to collect data (each group can have **only one parent** ). The Subject will be able to create the data (that the Observers will receive) in the groups they're associated with. When data is created in a group, all 'children' of the group will have the data as well, and they will be able to make their **own version of a specific area of the data** , but still linked to the original data created (in my specific implementation, the original data will contain time-period(s) and headline, while the subgroups specify the rest of the data for the receivers directly linked to their respective groups). However, when the Subject creates data, it has to check if all affected Observers have any **data that conflicts** with this, which means a huge recursive function, as far as I can understand. So I think **this can be summed up** to the fact that I need to be able to have **a hierarchy that you can go up and down in** , and some places be able to _treat them as a whole_ (recursion, basically). Also, I'm not just aiming at a solution that works. I'm hoping to find a solution that is relatively easy to understand (architecture-wise at least) and also flexible enough to be able to easily receive additional functionality in the future. Is there a design pattern, or a good practice to go by, to solve this problem or similar hierarchy problems? **EDIT** : Here's the design I have: ![Class diagram with methods included. The \"Group\" class is the hierarchy](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JXMBt.png) The \"Phoenix\"-class is named that way because I didn't think of an appropriate name yet. But besides this I need to be able to **hide specific activities for specific observers** , even though they are attached to them through the groups. * * * **A little Off-topic** : Personally, I feel that I should be able to chop this problem down to smaller problems, but it escapes me how. I think it's because it involves multiple recursive functionalities that aren't associated with each other and different client types that needs to get information in different ways. I can't really wrap my head around it. If anyone can guide me in a direction of how to become better at encapsulating hierarchy problems, I'd be very glad to receive that as well."}
{"_id": "116308", "title": "Is it an appropriate use of #define to make typing repeated code easier?", "text": "Is there any view on whether using the #define to define full lines of code for simplifying coding is good or bad programming practice? For example, if I needed to print a bunch of words together, I'd get annoyed typing               << \" \" <<      To insert a space between words in a cout statement. I could just do               #define pSpace << \" \" <<      and type               cout << word1 pSpace word2 << endl;      To me this neither adds or subtracts from the clarity of the code and makes typing slightly easier. There are other cases that I can think of where typing will be much easier, usually for debugging. Any thoughts on this? EDIT: Thanks for all the great answers! This question just came to me after doing a lot of repetitive typing, but I never thought there would be other, less confusing macros to use. For those who don't want to read all the answers, the best alternative is to use the macros of your IDE to reduce repetitive typing."}
{"_id": "56832", "title": "DB Schema for ACL involving 3 subdomains", "text": "I am trying to design a database schema for a web app which has 3 subdomains: a) internal employees b) clients c) contractors. The users will be able to communicate with each other to some degree, and there may be some resources that overlap between them. My primary question is if I should split up the roles into separate tables for each domain, as in internal_roles, client_roles, and expert_roles, or if I should just keep them in the one roles table, with a user_type field to differentiate the roles. Also, I'm wondering if having this type field will cause it to violate the 3rd normal form? Really appreciate your time and thoughts on this. Cheers! * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `locations` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `locations` ( `id` bigint(20) NOT NULL, `name` varchar(250) NOT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `privileges` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `privileges` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `resource_id` int(11) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=10 ; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `resources` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `resources` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `user_type` enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `roles` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `roles` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `name` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `type` enum('position','department') NOT NULL, `parent_id` int(11) DEFAULT NULL, `user_type` enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3 ; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `role_perms` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `role_perms` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `role_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `privilege_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `mode` varchar(250) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `users` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` ( `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `email` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `password` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `salt` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `type` enum('internal','client','expert') NOT NULL, `first_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `last_name` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `location_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `phone` varchar(255) NOT NULL, `status` enum('active','inactive') NOT NULL DEFAULT 'active', PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=4 ; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `user_perms` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `user_perms` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, `user_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `privilege_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `mode` varchar(250) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (`id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=2 ; * * * \\-- ## \\-- Table structure for table `user_roles` CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `user_roles` ( `id` int(11) NOT NULL, `user_id` int(11) NOT NULL, `role_id` int(11) NOT NULL ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;"}
{"_id": "116303", "title": "How to design a performance comparison between two data structures", "text": "I want to compare the performance of two search trees of integers (an AVL tree and a RedBlack tree). How should I design/engineer the tests to accomplish this? For example, let's consider the _insert_ operation; what steps should I follow in order to state that on average this operation is faster in the RB case? What considerations should I take to correctly measure CPU time? Should both implementations be optimized, or may I compare an optimized implementation of AVL vs a straightforward implementation of RB? Any links or papers would be very helpful."}
{"_id": "52395", "title": "Are the only types of data \"sources\" static and dynamic?", "text": "Thinking that there might be others, but not sure -- but before getting into that, let me explain what I mean by static and dynamic data sources.   * **Static** (or datastore) - Meaning that the data's state is non-changing, and if was changed, that would be a new state, and the old data would be considered stateless; meaning it no longer is known to exist, or not exist. Another way of possibly looking at a static data source might be that if read and written back without modification, the checksum for before and after should be exactly the same regardless of the duration of time between the reading and rewriting of the data. **Examples:** Photos, Files, Database Record,   * **Dynamic** (or datastream) - Meaning that the data's state is known to be in flux, and never expected to be the same per input. **Example:** Live video/audio feed, Stock Market feed, First let me say, the above is a very loose mapping of the concepts, and I'd welcome any feedback. Next, onto the core of the question, that being are these the only two types of data sources. My guess, is that yes, they are -- but that there are **hybrid** versions of the two. That being, streaming data that has a fixed state. For example, the data being streamed has a checksum given and each unique checksum is known to be a single instance of static data. On the flip side, static data could be chained via say a version control system; when played back, each version might be viewed as a segment of a stream; thing is, the very fact that it can be played back makes the data source static. Another type might be that the data source is being organically discovered, and it's simply **unknown** what the state is. Questions, feedback, requests -- just comment, thanks!!"}
{"_id": "11769", "title": "Approach to a programming task", "text": "All, Given a problem statement, when I start of with the analysis and design, I tend to think too much about the various functionalities associated with the task (sometimes not even mentioned in the task). My point is, I get diverted from the main task at hand thinking about various scenarios that I should consider while coding and this tends to demotivate me because I am often very confused in the end. What approach should I take in this case since thinking a lot on all possible scenarios comes naturally and I only try hard not to."}
{"_id": "63936", "title": "Usage of Repository Pattern", "text": "I'm using the Repository pattern in my application right now. It is a console- based batch processing tool. Essentially I need the repository to be able to randomly access the data. The trouble I am having is that my data needs to be:   1. read in once (from flat-file)   2. accessed randomly from the repository   3. written out once. I handle this in the code by using a guard clause to see if the records have been accessed yet, and if not then read them in. A simple example below.               public IUnit GetById(int id)     {         if (!ReadIn)         {              ReadAllUnitsFromFile();         }         return _listOfUnits[id];     }      My question is this: Would it be a bastardization of the Repository pattern if I had a module that ran before the rest of my program to read the data into the repository, and another module that ran afterward to write data out of the repository? Is this an anti-pattern? Is there a better pattern to suit my situation? Thanks"}
{"_id": "16384", "title": "Difference between visibility of the project and micro-manage", "text": "Here is my situation. My boss wants to know everthing I am doing. We are using Scrum so we do 15 minutes daily meeting and I attend everyday.. I am perfectly fine with this and actually interested in this agile that my company started to practice.. My concern is my boss also want to be reported almost every issue I am handling for production and QA. If some production issue escalated to me and my boss is not included in the e-mail trail, she would storm me and escalate it to the director. If I fix one bug and deploy QA, she would like to know,,, in written. I stand up to the team once saying I attend daily scrum meeting and explain my status as detail as possbile, why I should send out e-mail again? I feel being micro managed. I feel there is no ownership for any task for programmers even we are practicing Agile. But would it be just my emotion? Maybe all she wanted is visibility of the task I am doing.. What do you fellow programmers think the difference between visibility of the task and micro-management."}
{"_id": "96798", "title": "Why does Microsoft charge a fortune for its developer tools?", "text": "Microsoft charges thousands of dollars for most versions of Visual Studio. Compare this with companies like Apple and Google and with organizations like GNU and Eclipse that give away developer tools for free, it makes me wonder where the difference lies. The rationale behind Apple and Google giving away the tools for free is to make it easier for developers to develop for the platform, which in turn results in increased unit sales. Is Windows considered so ubiquitous that it doesn't need additional promotion, and can instead be leveraged by Microsoft to make money on the tools to develop for it? Is it simply because they _can_ charge as much as they do and that some people are willing to pay it? I'm also curious if the high cost of the tools has limited the number of small software shops that developing for Windows, if the existing shops either use the free (crippled) version, or other, less expensive tools."}
{"_id": "96794", "title": "How did Delphi influence the .NET Framework?", "text": "As opposed to influence on the C# language, did Delphi influence the .NET Framework too? At first glance .NET is Microsoft's version of Java, but .NET has properties similar to Delphi. Are there other influences?"}
{"_id": "96793", "title": "In what specific ways did Delphi influence the C# language", "text": "I am specifically looking for language influences (as opposed to framework). At first glance C# seems to be an evolution of C/C++ or Java. But we know C# has the same designer as Delphi, and he even acknowledged some similarities and said \"good ideas don't just go away.\" The one example I see of something in C# that is not in Java or C/C++ is properties. Is that it? Are there others?"}
{"_id": "166989", "title": "FP for simulation and modelling", "text": "I'm about to start a simulation/modelling project. I already know that OOP is used for this kind of projects. However, studying Haskell made me consider using the FP paradigm for modelling a system of components. Let me elaborate: Let's say I have a component of type A, characterised by a set of data (a parameter like temperature or pressure,a PDE and some boundary conditions,etc.) and a component of type B, characterised by a different set of data(different or same parameter, different PDE and boundary conditions). Let's also assume that the functions/methods that are going to be applied on each component are the same (a Galerkin method for example). The object's mutable state would be used for non-constant parameters. If I were to use an OOP approach, I would create two objects that would encapsulate each type's data, the methods for solving the PDE(inheritance would be used here for code reuse) and the solution to the PDE. On the other hand, if I were to use an FP approach, each component would be broken down to data parts and the functions that would act upon the data in order to get the solution for the PDE. Non-constant parameters would be passed as functions of something else (time for example) or expressed by some kind of mutability(emulation of mutability,etc.) This approach seems simpler to me assuming that linear operations on data would be trivial. To conclude, would implementing the FP approach be actually simpler and easier to manage (add a different type of component or new method to solve the pde) compared to the OOP one? I come from a C++/Fortran background, plus I'm not a professional programmer, so correct me on anything that I've got wrong."}
{"_id": "97442", "title": "How to find a software developer position in Europe", "text": "I live in a small Baltic country and I've been working as a software developer for 5+ years, with coding experience of 10+ years. Mainly specializing in C/C++. The problem is that the projects I had to work on, were really tiny in global scale, and also involved some switching to .NET and that likes. I want to keep growing, and try working on bigger things, with larger teams, environments with new methodologies, with teams following best practices, things like code reviews, and with super-star developers so that I could learn from them, and try to be like them. During the last few years, I've run into a situation where I only develop solutions, but I don't see any career opportunities or a way how I could learn more. I do read books in my free time, but I have a feeling they won't help me much to find a better position or extremely challenging projects. There are still things I want to learn, I want to find a challenging position that would allow me to learn how to write even more amazing things in C/C++, but I don't know how to search for these positions. Does anyone have any tips on where to start? It feels like I'm stuck where I am, but I still want to grow."}
{"_id": "240708", "title": "Why encapsulate container variables?", "text": "I wasn't sure how to formulate the title, but there's something that's made little sense to me in OOP I understand the idea of encapsulation, which is to create a layer of protection, and abstraction, so that there's no direct access to a given variable. However, there are cases where encapsulation doesn't make any sense to me, allow me to demonstrate using a simple C# class:               public class Person     {         public int Age { get; private set; } // makes sense, the setter is isolated         public string Name { get; private set; } // same story         public string ZipCode { get; set; } // doesn't make sense         public string Country { get; set; } // doesn't make sense either              public string City // also makes sense         {             get { /*some logic that gets the city based on zip code and country */ }             private set;         }     }      My issue here is that, according to good OOP practices, variables without any special rules, must also have separate accessors and mutators, but why should they if all you do anyway is set and get data to and from them? In the case of `Age` and `Name` it makes sense to encapsulate it, because the setter is private, you can't mutate it outside the scope of the class, likewise with the `City` field, that has a special getter, that gets the data based on special rules. What difference does it make if I wrap `ZipCode` and `Country` in a property or not? I can fully access and mutate the variables in either case. Could someone clarify this?"}
{"_id": "64056", "title": "What tools do you as [web] programmers use to help your design skills?", "text": "As a programmer, I enjoy embarking on small personal projects and I have a load of open source scripts that I host on github. I am very much a **programmer** and not a **designer**. However, it is inevitable that sometimes I am forced to _design_. These are usually cases where there is no point in paying for a designer, but it would be nice if the page looked good. Some examples are:   * Creating personal pages, _e.g. blog, showcase_   * Landing pages for my github scripts _(gh-pages)_   * Designing personal pages for friends These are all situations that have come up and I end up creating spaghetti style css sheets. So... what tools, tips, hints, general advice do you have to offer for us programmers who have little creative imagination?"}
{"_id": "153153", "title": "How to start embedded development for developing a handheld game console?", "text": "I work as a iPhone app developer now, so I know a bit of c, c++ and objective c. Also have fiddled with Java and many other. All of them have been just high level application/games development. My final goal is to make a handheld game console. More like a home made NES/SNES handheld console or even an Atari. I have found out about RaspberryPI and Arduino. But I need more information about how to approach this.   1. How Do I learn to pick the best board/cpu/controller/GPU/LCD screen/LCD controller etc?    2. Will learning to make a NES emulator first help me understand this field? If so are there any tutorials?"}
{"_id": "251170", "title": "API Key DDOS protection", "text": "Hi I just wanted some feedback on a DDOS preventing php script that I'm designing. It is quite simple and I wanted some feedback on whether you guys think it would be effective. I'm currently using the ulogin framework as a base and have implemented API Keys. At the moment the user will send a request with a key. This key is checked against the database to see if it correct. So if the key is not correct the program will return. If the key is correct then some statistics are going to be calculated. The first thing is to increment the counter. The average hit per second will be calculated from the time they started requesting to the current time. Also there is a window of X seconds in which the counter will be reset (Lets say 300). The programmer specifies the max number of requests that should be allowed in this window. If the key is over the limit of requests per stats reset (Window) or over a certain amount of requests per second, they will be blocked and not given access. However the counter still increments but another counter is started (blockcount). When the counter is set to 0 at the end of the window, the count for the next window will be set to what ever the blockcount is and the blockcount will be set to 0. If the user doesn't use the API key for X (window) seconds then both counters will be reset to 0. I have added a transferpenalty variable (0-1) that will take a percentage of the blockcount on to the next window instead of the entire block count but I don't think that it is neccessary to have this. Is this already being done? Would this protect against a sniffed API key being used to (D)DOS a server? What are your thoughts :)"}
{"_id": "251171", "title": "How does code coverage work?", "text": "Specifically, what is contained inside code coverage data (.nccov or xml file) and how is an html report generated by this? Does the coverage data not include the actual percentage of code covered? Is this only generated when the report is made from the coverage data? Is the coverage data sort of a guideline for the reporting process? Do coverage files need access to assemblies to create a report?"}
{"_id": "251176", "title": "Should I add a key to the items of my REST API response?", "text": "I have an REST API endpoint which the JSON response looks like:               {         \"products\": [             {\"id\": 1040, \"price\": 2.95, ...}             {\"id\": 4545, \"price\": 3.95, ...}         ]     }      One of my colleagues suggested that I should add a key for each item in the list. He said it should make it easier to browse the API. He suggested is something like:               {         \"products\": {             \"1040\": {\"id\": 1040, \"price\": 2.95, ...}             \"4545\": {\"id\": 4545, \"price\": 3.95, ...}         }     }      Making it will not be harmful for my API's performance and I can understand how it should help the ability to browse it. Should I do that? Is there any example of public API that does something similar?"}
{"_id": "118338", "title": "Becoming a polyglot programmer", "text": "I know a few programming languages. The most marketable ones being Java, Javascript, as well as non-trival stored procedures. I also know some Python, Actionscript and a few dinosaurs language. I am starting up a toy project with Scala/lift. I enjoy each language for its own features and the paradigms they encourage. I am interested in the concept of a polyglot programmer and becoming one. What are the steps to being a true polyglot programmer? (I.E. I don't just know different languages, I know them well, and know good design patterns for them.) Is this something that can be made marketable?"}
{"_id": "235564", "title": "Again MVVM / MVP story , passing interface of a view to its view model why it is bad?", "text": "I have used WPF for an Enterprise solution (hundreds views heavily used Data inputs and validation) in MVP pattern (it was a clean solution usually small amount of code behind forms and main code was in pretension layer which we called it user interface process or UIP layer ) For the next small projects I used WPF with MVVM. generally some ideas of MVVM looks nice like commands and bindings especially the concept of ViewModel (having a special version of Model dedicated for View) But I did not like so much the concept of Messaging and event aggregator I usually try to minimize usage of this patterns (for example between ViewModels I use ordinary Object oriented function call or from a View to ViewModel (I have ViewModel in my View so I use them to call ViewModel from View) but for a call from a view model to view I use messaging. though sometimes in place of sending messages (from ViewModel to View) I send an Interface of view to its ViewModel and use that interface to call a function in a view. Any body can tell me is this practice an anti pattern and why it is bad?"}
{"_id": "148415", "title": "When and how to commit?", "text": "I'm getting used in working with git at the moment. And I'm touching an issue that is unclear to me. I feel compelled, if I think of commiting after a change and making a documenting description. I don't know exactly _when_ I should commit, because that's very relative and there's always something under construction. I tend to commit, when I fear to hose something. But then the summaries look like \"Backup before trying this and that\" or just \"Backup\". What do you do? Is there a better way, or is my practise common?"}
{"_id": "118332", "title": "How can a programming novice identify poor code written by another?", "text": "I recently started to learn how to program and am looking to hire a Python developer. How can I separate good code from not so good code?"}
{"_id": "118333", "title": "How to measure when a software project is complete?", "text": "I have very limited experience in software project management roles, and I was asked this question by another engineer and I was sort of stumped. How do I measure when a software project is complete? The part I'm struggling with is the \"measure\" part. I know there are measurements such as EVM, but they are more focused on overall project performance. For instance, having a low SPI or low CPI can indicate performance/allocation issues, but it doesn't really indicate how complete a project is. Is there a rule of thumb here to say my project is XX% complete or am I overthinking this?"}
{"_id": "148411", "title": "How can a client authorize us to collect their data from a service provider?", "text": "Our clients need to authorize our partners to release data to us. We can collect this data via a push/pull mechanism. Since our partners have never shared data before, they don't have OAuth implemented. What is the best way for clients to tell their service providers (our partners) to release data to us without having each partner bear the overhead of implement OAuth. Is there a standard practice for this sort of an authorization? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "21291", "title": "What is the role of a Software Architect in the Test-Driven Development process?", "text": "As I understand it, Test-Driven Development is about writing tests to define the program specifications (you can correct me if I'm wrong). If there is someone responsible for writing the specifications (including a public API) for the software (let's call him the Software Architect), does that mean that the Software Architect must write all of the tests? Or does the Software Architect write the specifications, and then hand them over to the developers to write tests against? Or do you allow the specifications to grow organically by allowing all of the developers to write their own tests, and forget about having a Software Architect?"}
{"_id": "46315", "title": "How can a programmer work effectively with a remote web designer", "text": "I'm a programmer who understand html & css, but got no taste. My company decided to redesign our e-commerce website with new UI and move to ASP.Net MVC. They want a really good design, so they hire 2 designers to work with me, remotely. First designer to create design mockups (PSD/PNG) Second designer another one to slice the design into HTML/CSS/Images/etc.. Then, my part is to use the HTML/css as the template files (as View files in ASP.Net MVC project) Usually, even if the designer get involved in the project since the beginning, I still have to discuss many things with designer. sit together with the designer drawing something on papers and then see it directly the designer working with Adobe Fireworks, while the designer can ask if the change is feasible or not. Now I will work with designers, remotely, to redesign exisiting website. so, I will need to explain many things about this website with both of them, remotely. I would ask any of you who used to work with designer, remotely and have tips to share on how to make the collaboration more effective? Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "49168", "title": "Teamwork 101 for the solo newbie", "text": "Forgive my newbishness but I have a question to ask about teamwork...mainly because I stink at it. Most of my projects up until this point have been solo so I have a very limited experience with teamwork. I did make graphics for a game that was being developed by several people, but that was _completely_ different than _programming_ with several different people. Right now I'm working with someone else on an indie MMO along with a few other team members. I've already made some pretty stupid mistakes, (like rewriting EVERYTHING) so I have two questions for you guys: 1) What are some of the most common mistakes that people make in a team environment and how can they be avoided? 2) How can the structure of your program be altered to allow for multiple teams members to work on different parts of the program at the same time? P.S. Is this the right stack exchange site for this type of question? (if not, where does it go? Thanks)"}
{"_id": "152824", "title": "Organizing my products database", "text": "I\u2019m developing a web-based store in MVC (very closely based on the SportsStore example in Pro ASP.Net MVC 3 Framework http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9781430234043-0). I\u2019m using a SQL database and accessing it through System.Data.Entity.DbContext I have a table that describes the products that I\u2019m selling, with columns for name, description, price \u2013 this seems to work fine. However, I also want to include images. I\u2019ll probably have between 3 and 6 images per product that are about ~150KB each. I think it would be convenient to store these images as binary data into another table in the database and include a column that identifies which product they\u2019re related to. This should work but it seems inelegant \u2013 **do you have a better suggestion**? I\u2019d really like to keep the images in the database, that seems easier than storing paths to images in the database and separately uploading the images to a webserver."}
{"_id": "45660", "title": "Strategies for managing use of types in Python", "text": "I'm a long time programmer in C# but have been coding in Python for the past year. One of the big hurdles for me was the lack of type definitions for variables and parameters. Whereas I totally get the idea of duck typing, I do find it frustrating that I can't tell the type of a variable just by looking at it. This is an issue when you look at someone else's code where they've used ambiguous names for method parameters (see edit below). In a few cases, I've added asserts to ensure parameters comply with an expected type but this goes against the whole duck typing thing. On some methods, I'll document the expected type of parameters (eg: list of user objects), but even this seems to go against the idea of just using an object and let the runtime deal with exceptions. What strategies do you use to avoid typing problems in Python? Edit: Example of the parameter naming issues: If our code base we have a task object (ORM object) and a task_obj object (higher level object that embeds a task). Needless to say, many methods accept a parameter named 'task'. The method might expect a task or a task_obj or some other construct such as a dictionary of task properties - it is not clear. It is them up to be to look at how that parameter is used in order to work out what the method expects."}
{"_id": "99510", "title": "Who is responsible for doing a patent search?", "text": "If a client requests that a particular feature is added into their website software, who is responsible for searching and recognising that a patent royalty has to paid?   1. client   2. web developer This question is aimed at freelance web developers. When a client says (for example) add a shopping cart to my site. This is a relatively straightforward task, but who is responsible for searching for and licensing patents? I was talking to another developer the other day and this came up. It sounds like an awfully large burden to be required to take on. Especially when it comes to offering clients quotes. When a client makes a request what is the general process for the freelance web developer?"}
{"_id": "80377", "title": "Separating Data and Implementation", "text": "I'm working on a project that has frequent changes on the database and the implementation layers. I was releasing both the code and the database under the same release version, but since the database changes are more frequent than the core implementation, I'm thinking of separating their release/plan. Is this the normal way to do it?"}
{"_id": "80372", "title": "How do I know what tools I can download in my country?", "text": "I've seen a spate of questions on Stack Overflow and elsewhere about downloading programming tools and where to find them. Sometimes developers can't find a download link or availability in their country. Rather than encouraging them to violate laws, I think general education for these users is of the utmost importance. ## How do I know what tools I can download in my country? ## Why can't I download all tools for software development in my country? Acceptable answers will indicate why users can't download tools in their country. Any links to resources to make tools available in countries where they should not be available will be deleted without haste, and will likely result in a short ban-period for the poster. This is a how and why question."}
{"_id": "81439", "title": "Career path for software QA / Test engineer", "text": "I have been working as a software QA analyst for 6 years. I will be finishing a Masters degree in computer science this year. I\u2019m just not sure how to advance my career after my graduation. I like programming, solving puzzles, but in the meantime, I don\u2019t dislike software testing that much. Actually, sometimes it\u2019s fun to find a bug and to be able to track it down to its root cause. I\u2019m quite good at what I\u2019m doing. Usually, I find 2 or 3 times as many defects as other tests can find in our team. However, sometimes, it\u2019s a bit boring to test the same application over and over again, repetitive and monotonous. Although I did some automation tests in the past which are more interesting, still, the majority of the bugs are found manually. I think I have 2 options here, either continue doing software testing, but doing more automation tests which involve coding and scripting. To do this, I think I have to find a place where most tests are carried out using automated tools, like in Google (from their tester job description). Option 2 is to opt to the dev side to do full time programming which I always like. The downside of option 2 is I have to start from scratch as most of my past experience is in testing side. Anyone have any similar experience or advice?"}
{"_id": "198128", "title": "How to genericize foreign key references in table?", "text": "I am trying to design a table to store references to multiple tables as a \"target\" of the item in each row. An example should clarify what I am trying to do: Imagine you have 4 tables (images, videos, comments, likes) with `likes` being similar to               CREATE TABLE `likes`     `target` int(11),     `user_id` int(11),     `created_at` timestamp      How do you make it so the \"target\" could be a row of images, videos or comments (eg, you like an image, video or comment) Also how would you go about representing this within your code? (abstract class Like and concrete classes for LikeImage, LikeImage, LikeComment?) or maybe have an interface ILikeable and then the Like object has a ILikeable object on hand? I'm running into this pattern more and more often making things such \"like\" (like an object) or \"subscribing\" (subscribe to changes on an object) to various targets and generating \"notifications\" (notify a user of a change on an object) that are generically able to target objects. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. **Update** :: Is there a nosql way to easily achieve this?"}
{"_id": "12234", "title": "What level of understanding should programmers have about OO?", "text": "More specifically, what do you feel Junior, Intermediate, and Senior programmers should know about OO design and programming? I'm hoping that having some appropriate expectations will help us during the recruiting process."}
{"_id": "42124", "title": "Learning a scripting language", "text": "I believe every programmer must learn about a core programming language and a scripting language. Seriously I've no hand in any languages like Python, JavaScript, JScript, CScript etc. I'm native Windows Developer and which scripting language would be the best one to do some automation/web related stuffs."}
{"_id": "141834", "title": "How is a Java reference different from a C pointer?", "text": "C has pointers and Java has what is called references. They have some things in common in the sense that they all point to something. I know that pointers in C store the addresses they point to. Do reference also store the address? How they are different except that pointer is more flexible and error-prone?"}
{"_id": "207196", "title": "Do pointers really exist in Java?", "text": "I read quite a few resources on the internet and now I am quite confused about the existence of pointers in Java. Some claim that there are pointers and some claim that there is no such concept. So what is the truth?"}
{"_id": "228095", "title": "Difference between a pointer and a reference?", "text": "In Java and other high-level languages, a reference leads to an object. In C++, as far as I know, a pointer can also lead to an object. So what's the difference between a reference leading to an object, and a pointer leading to an object?"}
{"_id": "223471", "title": "Why do C++ and Java both use the notion of \"reference\" but not in the same sense?", "text": "In C++ a reference argument to a function allows the function to make the reference refer to something else:               int replacement = 23;          void changeNumberReference(int& reference) {         reference = replacement;     }          int main() {         int i = 1;         std::cout << \"i=\" << i << \"\\n\"; // i = 1;         changeNumberReference(i);         std::cout << \"i=\" << i << \"\\n\"; // i = 23;     }      Analogously, a constant reference argument to a function will throw a compile time error if we try to change the reference:               void changeNumberReference(const int& reference) {         reference = replacement; // compile-time error: assignment of read-only reference 'reference'     }      Now, with Java, the docs say that functions arguments of non-primitive types are references. Example from the official docs:               public void moveCircle(Circle circle, int deltaX, int deltaY) {         // code to move origin of circle to x+deltaX, y+deltaY         circle.setX(circle.getX() + deltaX);         circle.setY(circle.getY() + deltaY);              // code to assign a new reference to circle         circle = new Circle(0, 0);     }      > Then circle is assigned a reference to a new Circle object with x = y = 0. > This reassignment has no permanence, however, because the reference was > passed in by value and cannot change. To me this doesn't look at all like C++ references. It doesn't resemble regular C++ references because you cannot make it refer to something else, and it doesn't resemble C++ const references because in Java, the code that would change (but really doesn't) the reference does not throw a compile-time error. This is more similar in behavior to C++ pointers. You can use it to change the pointed objects values, but you cannot changes the pointer's value itself in a function. Also, as with C++ pointers (but not with C++ references), in Java you can pass \"null\" as value for such an argument. So my question is: Why does Java use the notion of \"reference\"? Is it to be understood that they don't resemble C++ references? Or do they indeed really resemble C++ references and I'm missing something?"}
{"_id": "92656", "title": "Which computer science subjects are required to follow introductory course in compilers?", "text": "I am non computer science undergraduate and work as a web-developer(java, python, AS3 etc.) as a professional. I take 1 course per semester at my local university. I had taken Artificial Intelligence(comprising logic, context free grammar, CYK parsing, introductory NLP, markov chains, HMM etc.) last semester. I am planning to take an introductory course in compilers in the coming semster which covers the following syllabus: > Lexical Analysis, Syntax Analysis, Semantic Analysis, Run-Time Environment, > Intermediate Representations, Code Generation, Register Allocation, > Instruction Selection and Scheduling, Introduction to Local and Global Code > Optimizations, Data Flow analysis My question is that, are there any computer science subjects which I should know before taking this course? If yes, it would be great if you could please list those courses."}
{"_id": "167865", "title": "What topics do I need to study for *web* client server programming?", "text": "I know about client server programming through _sockets_ in C/C++. **What topics do I need to study for _website_ related client server programming?** The database which we'll be using will be either _MySQL_ or _PostgreSQL_.   The platform will be _Linux_.   I don't know which language should be preferred here? Besides language, what are the **_topics_** that I need to know to get this done?"}
{"_id": "167867", "title": "Tips about how to spread Object Oriented practices", "text": "I work for a medium company that has around 250 developers. Unfortunately, lots of them are stuck in a procedural way of thinking and some teams constantly deliver big Transactional Script applications, when in fact the application contains rich logic. They also fail to manage the design dependencies, and end up with services which depend on another large number of services (a clean example of Big Ball of Mud). My question is: Can you suggest how to spread this type of knowledge? I know that the surface of the problem is that these applications have a poor architecture and design. Another issue is that there are some developers who are against writing any kind of test. A few things I'm doing to change this (but I'm either failing or the change is too small are)   * Running presentations about design principles (SOLID, clean code, etc).   * Workshops about TDD and BDD.   * Coaching teams (this includes using sonar, findbugs, jdepend and other tools).   * IDE & Refactoring talks. A few things I'm thinking to do in the future (but I'm concern that they might not be good)   * Form a team of OO evangelists, who disseminate an OO way of thinking in differet teams (these people would need to change teams every few months).   * Running design review sessions, to criticise the design and suggest improvements (even if the improvements are not done because of time constraints, I think this might be useful) . Something I found with the teams I coach, is that as soon as I leave them, they revert back to the old practices. I know I don't spend a lot of time with them, usually just one month. So whatever I'm doing, it doesn't stick. I'm sorry this question is spattered with frustration, but the alterative to write this was to hit my head on the wall until I pass out."}
{"_id": "179185", "title": "When do domain concepts become application constructs?", "text": "I recently posted a question regarding recovering a DDD architecture that became an anemic domain model into a multitier architecture and this question is a follow-on of sorts. My question is when do domain **_concepts_** become application **_constructs_**. My application is a local client C# 4/WPF with the following architecture: **Presentation Layer**   * Views   * ViewModels **Business Layer**   * ??? **Domain Layer**   * Classes that take the POCOs with primitive types and create domain concepts (e.g. image, layer, etc)   * Sanity checks values (e.g. image width > 0)   * Interfaces for DTOs   * Interface for a repository that abstracts the filesystem **Data Access Layer**   * Classes that parse the proprietary binary files into POCOs with primitive types by explicit knowledge of the file format   * Implementation of domain DTOs   * Implementation of domain repository class **Local Filesystem**   * Proprietary binary files When does the MyImageType domain class with Int32 width, height, and Int32[] pixels become a System.Windows.Media.ImageDrawing? If I put it in the domain layer, it seems like implemenation details are being leaked (what if I didn't want to use WPF?). If I put it in the presentation layer, it seems like it's doing too much. If I create a business layer, it seems like it would be doing too little since there are few \"rules\" given the CRUD nature of the application. I think all of my reading has lead to analysis paralysis, so I thought fresh eyes might lend some perspective. **Update 1:** To clarify that the application is not a strictly CRUD, the domain layer would also contain signal processing functions and image transform settings. The signal processing functions must be applied on the raw pixel values directly from the DAL, while the image transform settings are stored with the domain objects to be applied by WPF as part of the presentation."}
{"_id": "200930", "title": "Why complex is better than complicated?", "text": "In python, when you \"import this\", you can get The Zen of Python. It says \"Complex\" is better than \"Complicated\". Why is that? What's the difference between complex and complicated in programming (or in general)?               Beautiful is better than ugly.     Explicit is better than implicit.     Simple is better than complex.     Complex is better than complicated. <--     Flat is better than nested.     Sparse is better than dense.     ..."}
{"_id": "29367", "title": "Is using a lot of free third party libraries a good thing?", "text": "For your proprietary projects at work? Problems I can imagine are: more dlls (can be a problem when for example you have to include a big DLL but you only need few functions in that library), a lot of license statements you have to take care of when releasing your product, the reliability of the library, etc. Any other potential problems? What is your opinion? (info: I'm using .NET at work)"}
{"_id": "156253", "title": "Java Transaction Service without the application server", "text": "Is it possible to have a Java standalone application (no application server attached) that exposes some operations that a client can call and be the one to manage the transactions? I was thinking this application to expose JNDI resources and get a hold of a java:comp/UserTransaction from there, get also a bean from there and call methods A, B and C on it and coordinate the transaction from the client? The application I'm writing isn't complex enough so that I need a big application server around it so I'm thinking to have a standalone JTS inside it that the client could interact with from a transactions point of view. I don't have much experience with distributed transactions and don't really know how to tackle the issue. Is it even possible? Am I getting myself into something beyond what a mere mortal (programmer) can handle? How can I approach this?"}
{"_id": "10569", "title": "What writing rules are different for humans and code?", "text": "It seems that some rules of writing code are in direct contradiction with the rules of human writing. For example in code it's advisable to define each piece of information in only one place and in writing for humans it's normal to repeat important points (though usually phrased differently). **What rules of writing good code contradict the rules of good writing?**"}
{"_id": "95179", "title": "How do you decide to Queue/Dispatch events Sync or Async? (in Observer Pattern)", "text": "Consider the following elements in an event-driven architecture:   1. Observable Object   2. Event Dispatcher   3. Observer(Listener) Now, we have two messages:   1. From Observable Object to Event Dispatcher   2. From Event Dispatcher to Observer(s). How do you decide to pass these messages Sync or Async? Do you use any particular API (in Java) to implement that? For example, in Java JFC/Swing, the first is Async and the second is Sync. The former is the reason that you can still fire more events even if the program is processing another event. The latter is the reason that you should avoid long operations in your listeners since they block the event dispatcher."}
{"_id": "21436", "title": "Managing Production Issues during a Scrum Sprint", "text": "The question of managing bugs in production has been a large feature in my mind of late. Sprint's are not meant to have any items added into them, but for **critical** bugs, this is simply unavoidable. How does one go about managing this break in the sprint? Do you simply give a sprint a percentage \"allowance\" of time, thus only filling say 80% of the schedule with sprint items \"just in case\"? Thanks, Kyle"}
{"_id": "78444", "title": "Looking for quality sites built with JavaScript (not jQuery) to learn from their example", "text": "I'm new to JavaScript. I've read JavaScript: The Good Parts and half of Professional JavaScript for Web Developers. Now I want to follow this advice - find the best sites and look at their code. As suggested by Crockford in Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming I want to find the best sites programmed with only JavaScript not jQuery because I want to look at their code and learn from them."}
{"_id": "223849", "title": "How can I automatically test a large, complex spreadsheet?", "text": "So, I've inherited one of those \"Engineer's Special\" spreadsheets -- the kind developed by Mort the Engineer, with lots of hairy VBA and WTF, complicated calculations, and no documentation. Fortunately, most of the primary inputs and outputs are on a single page. Maybe not enough for full test coverage, but a start. I'd like to create a quick, poor-man's regression test framework for Excel, but I haven't quite figured out the best method. My gut tells me to create some code that:   1. Has a macro that \"saves\" a the \"main\" I/O spreadsheet's values to another workbook, basically creating a user-named, value-only copy of the main input sheet. This \"scenario\" workbook would have, as its first tab, a list of all of the saved sheets, with metadata.   2. Has a separate macro that \"loads\" a given set of inputs from said sheets, but does not overwrite the cells used for output, headers, instructions, etc.   3. Has a third macro which is run from the scenario summary table. It would, in turn, load each scenario's inputs into the main workbook, compare each saved output to the current output, and record whether everything matches or not. It would run unattended until it reached a failure to match, then stop so the user can go look at the differences (which would be highlighted). The two caveats: (1) this requires manual synching of the master sheet and scenario sheets when the design of the master changes enough to reposition/add/remove inputs or outputs, and (2) this doesn't scale well if each scenario includes inputs/outputs to test on a multitude of workbooks. Saving/loading named ranges for each I/O cell rather than entire sheets might help with both situations, but has its own drawbacks. Has anyone come up with some other novel way to effectively regression test arbitrary spreadsheets?"}
{"_id": "236030", "title": "Design Pattern: Algorithm varies according to the input arguments", "text": "I will give a simple example to help you understand my question. Suppose we have a rectangle and a Utility class with a method that creates a buffer arround a shape. The `.createBuffer` method has required and optional arguments:   * required: radius   * optional: direction (for example \"inside\" or \"outside\", default is \"outside\") ... maybe more arguments ... Every combination of arguments needs a different algorithm. Which design pattern is appropriate for solving similar problems?"}
{"_id": "176208", "title": "What makes Java so suitable for writing NoSQL Databases", "text": "Looking at this page that aggregates the current NoSQL landscape, one can see that the majority of these projects are written in Java. Databases are complex systems software dealing with the file system, and so C/C++ would be a better choice than Java for this. (that's my thinking which might be flawed) Secondly, databases deal with transferring large amounts of data from disk to RAM -- which they call a working set. The JVM takes non-trivial amount of RAM for it's own purpose -- so it would be more efficient to use a platform that leaves lots of memory for data instead of hogging it for its own operations. The major relational databases are ALL written in C/C++               MySQL              C, C++     Oracle             Assembler, C, C++     SQL Server         C++     PostgreSQL         C     SQLite             C      So what makes Java so popular in NoSQL world."}
{"_id": "147303", "title": "How to script the creation & configuration of a portable (vm-based?) Windows 7 dev environment?", "text": "I'm getting a new computer and would like to minimize the time spent configuring and maintaining dev environments on my various machines. To that end, I'm thinking that creating a vm with my preferred ide and configuration and using that vm for development on all my machines. I'd like to use Windows 7 as the vm's os. For those who have tried or currently use an approach like this,   1. How can I keep the disk image synchronized without resorting to a thumb drive? What are pros/cons (if any).   2. As I do this first configuration manually, should I record my steps in the interest of scripting them later?   3. If so, what approach would you recommend for scripting? Cygwin + bash? Ant? Something else? Why?   4. Are there potential difficulties I should be aware of re: sharing a filesystem? For instance, in A) accessing vm files from the host machine or B) accessing the vm's HTTP server from the host machine?"}
{"_id": "176200", "title": "Can Clojure's thread-based agents handle c10k performance?", "text": "I'm writing a c10k-style service and am trying to evaluate Clojure's performance. Can Clojure agents handle this scale of concurrency with its thread-based agents? Other high performance systems seem to be moving towards async-IO/events/greenlets, albeit at a seemingly higher complexity cost. * * * Suppose there are 10,000 clients connected, sending messages that should be appended to 1,000 local files--the Clojure service is trying to write to as many files in parallel as it can, while not letting any two separate requests mangle the same single file by writing at the same time. Clojure agents are extremely elegant conceptually--they would allow separate files to be written independently and asynchronously, while serializing (in the database sense) multiple requests to write to the same file. My understanding is that agents work by starting a thread for each operation (assume we are IO-bound and using `send-off`)--so in this case is it correct that it would start 1,000+ threads? Can current-day systems handle this number of threads efficiently? Most of them should be IO-bound and sleeping most of the time, but I presume there would still be a context-switching penalty that is theoretically higher than async-IO/event-based systems (e.g. Erlang, Go, node.js). If the Clojure solution can handle the performance, it seems like the most elegant thing to code. However if it can't handle the performance then something like Erlang or Go's lightweight processes might be preferable, since they are designed to have tens of thousands of them spawned at once, and are only moderately more complex to implement. Has anyone approached this problem in Clojure or compared to these other platforms? (Thanks for your thoughts!)"}
{"_id": "112551", "title": "Should we (still) consider a synced XMLHTTPRequest bad practice?", "text": "As you may know, `XMLHTTPRequest` can be used synchronously or asynchronously, but synchronized requests have always been considered bad practice, and I've always agreed with that. Not only is the ideology of modern JS development heavily based on an event model, but there were also some more prosaic reasons to avoid synchronized requests. For example, old Internet Explorer versions could just freeze suddenly. Today I saw a synchronized request in Liferay source code and thought \"What a shame, how dare they. Don't they know that it is wrong?\". But then I asked myself what is actually wrong with this approach in modern times, and I wasn't able to give an accurate, logical answer. For example, on the server side it is common practice to use synchronized HTTP requests. Of course all the data could be fetched asynchronously, and perhaps should be fetched that way, but we often need data that will be used to fetch another chunk of data, so in that case the request must be synchronized. So, should this still be considered bad practice? **PS** : I haven't used the term `AJAX` since the first A stands for asynchronous. :)"}
{"_id": "176204", "title": "Parsing stdout with custom format or standard format?", "text": "To integrate with other executables, a executable may launch another executable and capture its output from stdout. But most programs writes the output message to stdout in custom format and usually in human readable format. So it requires the system integrator to write a function to parse the output, which is considered trouble and the parser code may be buggy. Do you think this is old fashioned? Most Unix-style programs do that. Very few programs write to stdout in standard format such as XML or JSON, which is more modern. Example: Veracity (DVCS) writes JSON to stdout. Should we switch to use modern formats? For a console program, human readable or easy parsable: which is more important ?"}
{"_id": "179458", "title": "What tasks should an Architect NOT do or limit to be effective?", "text": "There are plenty of questions/answers about what an architect does, but what should someone in an Architect role NOT do? What are the boundaries/limits to maintain to be an effective Architect? I'm thinking here of Architect vs Developer and Architect vs Project Manager For example, I'm finding myself in a role where my title is Architect but I am also the coding/development lead and project manager on multiple small enterprise projects. I'm struggling with all the task switching and now I want to limit task switching. Trying to wear every hat just isn't working. What tasks should an Architect not do at all? What tasks should an Architect limit? I do think an Architect needs to keep coding, but how to define an appropriate limit for coding work?"}
{"_id": "115029", "title": "What are the pros and cons of directly exposing a Table/View entity class to the client?", "text": "I'm developing a multi-tier application. We separate our project into three logical layers: client, service and data access. However, almost all methods in the service layer don't do anything except returning table/view from DAL to the client and then the client continues processing data. More than 50% of the returned data is bigger than it really needs to be. For example the client needs a username and an email-address but the service layer returns way more data. This is the coding standard in my team. I tried to change this by shaping classes that return what the client really needs but they wanted me to change it back after I had done it. I'm curious what are the pros and cons of doing things that way?"}
{"_id": "67582", "title": "BizSpark and SQL Server already present. Can and should we move to OSS?", "text": "I am starting a new role running engineering in a young startup. The stuff they have is in SQL Server / Windows. I get the feeling we should think about moving to an OSS architecture, main reasons being cost, the ability to test new tools on the fly as they come out, and integrate with leading technologies like RoR and Python easily. Anyone has any suggestions on this? Can it get ugly if we keep our DB backend on SQL Server / Windows and build a Linux / OSS architecture on top of that? Or is the software BizSpark gives you access to enough for anything you need while you stay in the MSFT world? Are tools like LINQ and SSRS good enough? Don't mean to start a fire here, just a real issue our company is struggling with. Thanks for any replies."}
{"_id": "144652", "title": "Is monkeypatching considered good programming practice?", "text": "I've been under impression, that monkeypatching is more in quick and dirty hack category, rather than standard, good programming practice. While I'd used from time to time to fix minor issues with 3rd party libs, I considered it temporary fix and I'd submit proper patch to the 3rd party project. However, I've seen this technique used as \"the normal way\" in mainstream projects, for example in Gevent's `gevent.monkey` module. Has monkeypatching became mainstream, normal, acceptable programming practice? See also: _\"Monkeypatching For Humans\"_ by Jeff Atwood"}
{"_id": "143687", "title": "Why is a database represented as a cylinder in architecture drawings?", "text": "I'm a young upstart programmer and I've never actually seen a database. But computers in large part come in boxes, not in cylinders so I was wondering why they are always represented as a cylinder when people show their architecture drawings. Is there a reason why or is it just tradition to draw them like that?"}
{"_id": "144656", "title": "Best practices for App Idea ownership and shares", "text": "I am developing apps on my sparetime. I am the sole developer, and two non- programmer friends of mine provide vision, content, algorithms and ideas. We always agree happily on all the features, todos and prioritizations. But naturally, coding it is the biggest part. When selling, we agree on **splitting profit equally** , that is 33% each. But version 1.0 naturally does not sell much. And I go on to try to make the app more viral. This includes tons of stuff where the others are of little help. Examples: Adding support for sharing, facebook connect, gameifying, letting users add content, home page, support, maintenance, server services to make it easier for to update content. The list is long. Suddenly I will be doing 100% of a lot of work but only \"own\" a third of the income. My friends may either \"fade out\" of the project after 1.0, or they continue to contribute, but with less value and I would rather exchange them for more programmers or graphic designers. The effort they made to version 1.0 is worth a lot to the app and I realize I would have never done it without them. But **I am doing all the work** in the end. It is hard to negotiate about splitting 90, 5, 5 instead of 33% each, because the idea is still theirs. How to solve this? What are the best practices to regard the ownership of the app? What kind of agreements could I make that make it beneficial and motivational for me to continue developing the app?"}
{"_id": "179455", "title": "Which VCS is more applicable for our workflow?", "text": "Currently we have code stored on a shared network drive and do not use any kind of VCS. The code stored on our shared network drive is always being backed up. We would like to keep things as close to they are now as possible, while using some kind of VCS software. I am envisioning a centralized workflow with each developer having a local copy of the code on his/her machine. We don't do any branching or working offline. Typically when we spin off a new version we would just copy the current working directory to a new directory. I believe we would continue doing this and just create a repository for the new version. I would rather not get into an argument over which VCS is better, just hoping to get some opinions for which is best suited and most applicable for what we are trying to do."}
{"_id": "251820", "title": "Does lots of Instance Variables within my class suggest flawed Design?", "text": "Ok so I am setting out to consolidate some learning I have been doing. What I am going to do is create a small game relating to a game I enjoy called Persona. For reference a persona you can think of as a pokemon. Basically I want the flow to be user chooses a character, a weapon, and a persona (from a list of predefined personas and people i.e. predefined stats and spells for the persona and predefined weapons, stats and personas for the characters). They will choose and I will use maths/ifs/whiles etc to calculate winners. I currently have a Characters class (with Persona, Stats and Weapon instance variables), a Character Stats class (health, mana etc IVs), a Persona class(with persona stats and name iv), a Persona stats class (agility strength etc IVs) (later I will make the PersonaSpells class) and a Weapons class (attack, hit etc IVs), as well as a Duel class (where all the calculations will be run and methods for player select, enemy selection etc. Additionally with my current implementation all character objects, persona objects and weapon objects etc will be defined in this class and assigned using for example using Character char = new Character(Name, Health, Persona, Weapon, ...), with constructors for persona and weapon defined before this. Finally a main class where I will effectively use an object of the duel class to run the game, and keep the main class and method clearer. My question is, is this design flawed in that, I end up having to declare loads of objects (as IVs) from constructors of my classes. (So I have an object of all 20 weapons, all 10 characters, all 20 Personas, all 10 character stats, all 20 persona stats) All within my Duel class. Code example below:               private Weapon deusXiphos = new Weapon();     (x 20 more like this)          private PersonaStats artemisiaStats = new PersonaStats();     (x 20 more like this)          private Persona artemisia = new Persona();     (* 20 more like this)          private CharacterStats mitsuruStats = new CharacterStats(400, 250);     (* 10 more like this)          private Character mitsuru = new Character(\"Mitsuru\", artemisia, deusXiphos, mitsuruStats);     (* 10 more like this)"}
{"_id": "251821", "title": "When copy/pasting private methods is it necessary to carry along the Javadoc?", "text": "So, unfortunately, I'm stuck with code where I'm doing this:               @Override     method A{         //calls private methods 1-8     }          private method 1{         //copy/pasted     }      And so on for all of the private methods. I'd have preferred if the developers of the method I'm overriding had made the private methods protected, but I can't change that now. All of these private methods have javadoc along with them - should I carry this along with the copy/pasted functions in my class and adjust them accordingly, or not waste my time since it is documented in the original file?"}
{"_id": "251823", "title": "Effective Repository in C# - Where to put methods?", "text": "I'm trying to build a new application using the Repository pattern for the first time and I'm a little confused about using a Repository. Suppose I have the following classes:               public class Ticket     {          }     public class User     {        public List<Ticket>AssignedTickets { get; set; }     }     public class Group     {        public List<User> GroupMembers { get;set; }        public List<Ticket> GroupAssignedTickets { get;set; }     }      I need methods that can populate these collections by fetching data from the database. I'm confused as to which associated Repository class I should put those methods in. Should I design my repositories so that everything _returning_ type T goes in the repository for type T as such?               public class TicketRepository     {        public List<Ticket> GetTicketsForGroup(Group g) { }        public List<Ticket> GetTicketsForUser(User u) { }     }     public class UserRepository     {       public List<User> GetMembersForGroup(Group g) { }     }      The obvious drawback I see here is that I need to start instantiating a lot of repositories. What if my User also has assigned Widgets, Fidgets, and Lidgets? When I populate a User, I need to instantiate a WidgetRepository, a FidgetRepository, and a LidgetRepository all to populate a single user. Alternatively, do I construct my repository so that everything _requesting_ based on type T is lumped into the repository for type T as listed below?               public class GroupRepository     {         public List<Ticket> GetTickets(Group g) { }         public List<User> GetMembers(Group g) { }     }     public class UserRepository     {        public List<Ticket> GetTickets(User u) { }     }      The advantage I see here is that if I now need my user to have a collection of Widgets, Fidgets, and Lidgets, I just add the necessary methods to the UserRepository pattern and don't need to instantiate a WidgetRepository, FidgetRepository, and LigetRepository class every time I want to create a user, but now I've scattered the concerns for a user across several different repositories. I'm really not sure which way is right, if any. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "187742", "title": "How to handle committed and merged code that has no tests?", "text": "When developing an application in a team not everyone on this team will be equally good developers. Some will be skilled in some things and some in others and some not at all. As a team working in an agile process you usually have a definition of 'done' to follow. In our DoD it says never to merge code that is not documented and have proper tests. Sometimes though, a feature is so critical to some team member so the code has to be merged without tests. Sometimes a lazy developer might merge and call it a weekend. A merge like this means that when other team members pull the code, they will receive code that may or may not function properly and since there are no tests it is hard to verify. It can be very cumbersome to walk through that code to make sure it works before the team member can work on their task. It has happened on several occasions that the code that was committed without tests has been broken by other team members without them noticing. So my question becomes:   * How would you handle issues like this?    * Does it point to bad planning rather then bad behaviour?   * Who is to \"blame\" if code that lacks tests is broken?"}
{"_id": "209565", "title": "When did the term \"snake case\" come into use?", "text": "Many people use the term Snake Case to describe variables or other symbols `with_the_form_of_underscores`. When did this term enter into use?"}
{"_id": "26801", "title": "Natural Language Processing (NLP) open source algorithms", "text": "I am looking for a way to give an algorithm (service) a sentence, and it will tell me if its positive context or negative or even neutral. Does such a service exist?"}
{"_id": "164982", "title": "Password Validation using regular expressions in html 5", "text": "this question may sound stupid, but no one has ever taught me this. I have an HTML input for a password field, and you can only log on with one specific password with JS. Could someone please give me a syntax on assigning a variable to document.getElementById(\"\"); syntax or a different syntax? Thanks."}
{"_id": "157705", "title": "Practices for navigating and changing \"long\" code files?", "text": "Many a times I have to deal with code files which are quite long - about 5 screen pages at the minimum. Almost always there is something _towards the top/bottom_ that I need to refer when I'm at the bottom/top (respectively). It's a mammoth overhead to constantly scroll back-n-forth between the file parts. It's a cognitive overload to just remember each and everything throughout the file and it's quite necessary to be able to refer to parts of the file. Yes, the _Outline_ view in some editors like Eclipse/NetBeans helps, but sometimes they will work well only for parts recognizable by that parser. Sometimes outline views don't show up e.g. when coding in CoffeeScript or JavaScript using closures/namespaced functions etc. The fallback is then just manual scroll overhead. So as programmers what are some of the techniques/practices that can be employed to reduce this ridiculous overhead? Yes, I can _shorten_ the files, but specifically javascript libraries like Backbone.js etc. are all as one file since you really can't split them into multiple file due to lack of Java-like _packages_. So under the constraints of inability of splitting a file and the outline views not working, what are some of the techniques I can use to navigate through long source files? I work a lot on Eclipse/Netbeans and Aptana and sometimes Vi (but seldom in production environments). It'd be great to be able to split a window into two and see the same file on one side and code in the other. Not doable with Eclipse/NB/Aptana IMO. Vi, yes but can't use it all the time. PS: As of now, I split the file among multiple editors e.g. Eclipse and Aptana. It'd be great to have it at one place, but is that the best that we can do? :) **UPDATE** \\- Seems Eclipse _has_ way for doing this and can be found here"}
{"_id": "68601", "title": "What is the datastore used by Google for Google Instant?", "text": "My understanding is that Google is not using MapReduce for Google Instant, but I can't find anywhere that states what they're using as the datastore for Google Instant. What is the datastore used by Google for Google Instant?"}
{"_id": "157703", "title": "Saving Passwords To The Local Device", "text": "So In my app (iOS), you have to register in order to use the service (a food service). But in order to change details about your account (username, password, and email), you have to reenter your password. Except for if the user logged out, this is the only time you need your password to use the app. So I was wondering, since the user basically never uses their password, and its likely they would forget it the one time they might need it, is it ok if I store their password to their local device (in `NSUserDefaults`)? Since their password would only be on their local device, it doesn't seem like a security risk. If the app was hacked, the only password they could get would be their own. Further, I was planning on just storing it as a string (no encryption). Would it make a difference if I hashed it or encrypted it before saving the password to their defaults? Thanks in Advance."}
{"_id": "164988", "title": "Why would one bother marking up properly and semantically?", "text": "> Note that I (try) to mark up as semantically as possible because I like they > way it looks and feels, but not because I'm aware of any other stunning > advantages. The point of my question is to be able to educate others Well, I've seen a lot of articles and tutorials which often state \"Let's mark this up in the most semantic possible way\". But a strange thought came to me, **why?** Why would one need (or want) to bother with the specific elements which convey the correct semantic meaning? Specifically, I'm referring to the new HTML5 elements, such as `<time>`, `<output>`, or `<address>`. Especially, if the page \"works\" (it renders nicely in all browsers). Why would I want to use elements like `<time>` or `<address>`, where nothing at all (or at the worst case, a generic `<span>`) works just as nicely? I'm asking this because I'm seeing a multitude of (very popular) websites (this one included) which does not follow these so-called best practices."}
{"_id": "168517", "title": "Recovering an anemic domain model into a multitier architecture", "text": "I have spent the past several days learning about domain driven design and attempting to apply it to a current project. I decomposed the problem domain into the canonical logical components: domain, infrastrucutre, and presentation. Having completed a first pass, I stepped back and realized that the architecture I created resulted in virtually all of the business logic being contained in the application services, which is the tell-tale sign of the anemic domain model code smell. After further consideration, domain driven design may not be the correct fit for my application, and even if it is, given the small number of business logic rules in my application, the layering overhead may not be worth it. Since I have only written UML and psuedo code I haven't invested too much time and effort, but I would like to leverage what I can if it's possible. My architecture consists of 4 physical components:   1. The \"domain\" project: abstractions and CRUD methods for the data type I use   2. The \"infrastucture\" project: the logical representation and methods to be performed on the data   3. The \"presentation\" project: the user interface (WinForms or WPF)   4. The \"services\" project: coordiates the domain and infrastucture objects according to business rules If I were to use the components as designed in a multitiered architecture, my presentation layer would only hold references to 3 or 4 services to handle all application functionality. Is this a valid approach?"}
{"_id": "149190", "title": "Should the most recent date be named 'start' or 'end'?", "text": "So I have a function that takes two dates. The SQL query gets all the results between the two dates. I currently have my function setup as such:               function myFunc(start, end)      Where start is the most recent date and end is the oldest date. Is this intuitive/correct or is there another naming/ordering convention I should be using?"}
{"_id": "209922", "title": "Formal name for left/right-hand-side of an expression", "text": "Given an expression, such as `int x = y + 5`, we'd call `int x` the `left-hand side` (or `LHS`), and `y + 5` the `right-hand side` (or `RHS`). The whole expression is called, of course, an `expression` (or `equation`), but is there a generic term for a \"side\" of an expression? `LHS` and `RHS` don't quite cut it when it comes to an expression such as `int x = y = 5` (gloss over the fact here that such assignments are generally bad practice!). I'm toying with the term `component` to describe any \"side\", but was interested to see if there was a formal standard term already in use. Wikipedia only has \"Sides of an equation\", any better suggestions?"}
{"_id": "168518", "title": "Any tips/tricks/resources on actually TEACHING a class on OOP?", "text": "I may slowly be getting into teaching an Object-Orientated Programming class at my school in a year or two. I just graduated and work at my school as an Application Programmer. I'd first start off as a TA/grader and then slowly move into the Professor role. The class would be in Java. I always see resources on this fine site about HOW to program, but does anyone know any tips/tricks/resources on how to TEACH a programming class? It would be full of all different skills levels(but still semi-technical) so it would have to be a little more understandable than if it was just CS kids."}
{"_id": "127494", "title": "Not okay to take notes at meetings?", "text": "I started working at a new job, and have made it a point to take notes at every meeting, of 2 to many people. So far it's worked well for me. It helps me organize and refactoring concepts, a useful exercise for a programmer. I take notes so often and end up rewriting them in e-mails or documentation that I have decided to buy a netbook/notebook/chromebook for this purpose. I recently had a conversation with a colleague about this and note-taking. He said that while he was working as a software consultant in the past, note- taking was frowned upon in some settings. Why would this be? Using the machine as a distraction is one thing, but the benefits to taking notes are so many that I don't see why anyone would be against doing so. **Other considerations** In settings where there's a high value placed upon actual retention and learning from the discussion (e.g. a university lecture, requirements- gathering) taking notes is common and even expected. So is studying those notes later. A lot seem to argue here in favor of pencil-paper vs. machine. There must be some merit to this argument. But by analogy, we could insist programmers develop w/ Notepad (instead of Visual Studio) and without an internet connection. That should remove distractions, but then it's questionable how much productivity is gained through limitations such as this. From reading some of the answers/comments given here, it's interesting that one of the reasons note-taking is discouraged is when they _don't_ want people to walk away with anything after the meeting, e.g. intellectual property that's worth holding a meeting on, but."}
{"_id": "151703", "title": "Do reactive extensions and ETL go together?", "text": "I don't fully understand reactive extensions, but my inital reading caused me think about the ETL code I have. Right now its basically a workflow to to perform various operations in a certain sequence based on conditions it find as it progresses. I can also imagine an event driven way such that only a small amount of imperative logic causes a chain reaction to occur. Of course I don't need a new type of programming model to make an event driven collaboration like that. Just the same I am wondering if ETL is a good fit for potentially exploring Rx further. Is my connection in a valid direction even? If not, could you briefly correct the error in my logic?"}
{"_id": "151705", "title": "How should I start refactoring my mostly-procedural C++ application?", "text": "We have a program written in C++ that is mostly procedural, but we do use some C++ containers from the standard library (vector, map, list, etc). We are constantly making changes to this code, so I wouldn't call it a stagnant piece of legacy code that we can just wrap up. There are a lot of issues with this code making it harder and harder for us to make changes, but I see the three biggest issues being:   1. Many of the functions do more (way more) than one thing   2. We violate the DRY principle left and right    3. We have global variables and global state up the wazoo.  I was thinking we should attack areas 1 and 2 first. Along the way, we can \"de-globalize\" our smaller functions from the bottom up by passing in information that is currently global as parameters to the lower level functions from the higher level functions and then concentrate on figuring out how to removing the need for global variables as much as possible. I just finished reading Code Complete 2 and The Pragmatic Programmer, and I learned a lot, but I am feeling overwhelmed. I would like to implement unit testing, change from a procedural to OO approach, automate testing, use a better logging system, fully validate all input, implement better error handling and many other things, but I know if we start all this at once, we would screw ourselves. I am thinking the three I listed are the most important to start with. Any suggestions are welcome. We are a team of two programmers mostly with experience with in-house scripting. It is going to be hard to justify taking the time to refactor, especially if we can't bill the time to a client. Believe it or not, this project has been successful enough to keep us busy full time and also keep several consultants busy using it for client work."}
{"_id": "94493", "title": "What are the career options in Delphi", "text": "I am a fresher working in an Antivirus company in India. We work in Delphi 7. now i know that delphi is not very widely used. My concern is that I will be something of a pariah in the industry dominated by Java and C etc. Also, my company is not that great. I would like to switch to a bigger company in near future. Can you tell me some companies (mnc) which do their projects in delphi? Thanks"}
{"_id": "94492", "title": "Interview: Review another developer's code", "text": "One of my colleagues recently left and I've been asked to review the code of an interviewee coming in to replace him. I have no idea what code he'll bring along with him and moreover have never been given this sort of responsibility before, so am eager to give some useful and fair input. Can anyone provide a succint list of things to look out for?    _I understand this is a very broad question, but this does equally seem like a very appropriate forum for asking it._"}
{"_id": "34379", "title": "How could multiple people work on one website?", "text": "Hey guys, I recently watched The Social Network, and this might be a stupid question, but how is it possible for multiple people to work on one website? I mean, if they're working on the same page, how is that possible? And also, is it possible to upload files to an online host without making them live? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "88522", "title": "Distributing my Application inside a Debian Virtual Machine Image-- How to meet GPL obligations?", "text": "I have a Linux application I've developed, and I have created a standalone VMWare Image that people can download to try out the application without needing to install and configure a Linux Server. I created this VMWare Image by starting with a base Debian system, installing a bunch of packages and then configuring all the packages and daemons my application depends on. Upon load, the VMWare Image boots right into an X Server running only my application and no Window manager, so its more of a \"Virtual Appliance\" than a normal Linux Desktop environment. Users generally will never see a command prompt or any application other than my own. (My application itself I have a handle on the licensing issues of) Now I would like to distribute this image, but I'm not sure how to meet my GPL (and other licenses the various Debian components are released under) Obligations. As I understand it, I have two primary obligations to meet.   1. Providing Copyright and License Information for each component I use. As I understand it, all the information I am required to present is located in the /usr/share directory in the Debian, but since my users generally will never touch a console or terminal, they will never see this. Does providing a text file containing a concatenation of all the files inside /usr/share meet this obligation   2. Making source code available for all components I distribute. Since I am not creating the image from source, but from binary packages, I can't provide the actual source code that results in exactly my image being generated. Does providing an ftp mirror and an offer to send that mirror on DVDs of the Debian source debs for all the packages I use meet this obligation?   3. Anything Else I'm required to do to legally distribute this image?"}
{"_id": "234343", "title": "Best way to search through directory structure", "text": "I'm working on a python program which organizes a music library. The program will basically help me detect misspelled file or directory names, wrong FLAC tags or unknown/superfluous files. It will also make sure that the FLAC files are named correctly according to their FLAC tags etc. The structure I though of looks as follows (`/` being the root of the music library):               /         [category]             [artist]                 [year] - [release]                     [track number] - [title].flac                     [...]                     [artist] - [release].jpg                     [artist] - [release].cue                     [artist] - [release].log             Various Artists                 [artist_0 [, artist_1 [, ...]]] - [year] - [release]                     [track number] - [title].flac                     [...]                     [artist_0 [, artist_1 [, ...]]] - [release].jpg                     [artist_0 [, artist_1 [, ...]]] - [release].cue                     [artist_0 [, artist_1 [, ...]]] - [release].log             [...]         [...]      I started writing some code but pretty soon I noticed that this is actually not a too easy problem to solve. I wrote 4 functions, `category`, `artist`, `release` and `file`, which are called accordingly while iterating through all the directories. Basically like that (pseudo code):               func category:         do some checks         for each file in this directory:             artist(file)          func artist:         do some checks         for each file in this directory:             release(file)          func release:         do some checks         for each file in this directory:             file(file)          func file:         do some checks (FLAC tags etc)          for each file in the root directory:         category(file)      Now I'm wondering, are there any known algorithms or techniques which could be used to solve this problem in an elegant way?"}
{"_id": "228931", "title": "Why lifting of binary function into the list monads goes over all the element combinations?", "text": "Say, if I want to create a cartesian product of two lists, I could do (here in Haskell, but I can do the same e.g. in Scala or any other FP-able language)               cartesianProd = liftM2 (,)      then               >cartesianProd [1,2] [3,4]     >[(1,3),(1,4),(2,3),(2,4)]       Obviously, using (lifting) `+` instead of tuple pairing, will produce list of sums of all combinations. By FP definition, \"lifting is a concept which allows you to transform a function into a corresponding function within another (usually more general) setting.\" The way I understand it, if I have monadic arguments, I can transform my binary function to work with them via liftM2. Where does the cartesian product comes from, though? Intuitively, I would expect `[(1,3), (2,4)]` from the example above."}
{"_id": "73654", "title": "PHP Interview test. Any advice?", "text": "I am going to be doing a short PHP test/project (20-30 mins) at an interview very soon. The job is at a junior to mid-weight salary (although no specific knowledge level is in the job spec) at a media agency. I am looking for any advice on where to concentrate my revision? Should I focus on core concepts (design patterns) or more on method syntax recall? I am not sure if I will have web access during the test, is this normal? any example of a what a small project might mean? Any advice at all would be gratefully received."}
{"_id": "228939", "title": "How to improve upon Bloch's Builder Pattern, to make it more appropriate for use in classes that may be extended and sub-extended many times over?", "text": "I have been greatly influenced by Joshua Bloch's Effective Java book (2nd edition), probably more so than with any programming book I've read. In particular, his Builder Pattern (item 2) has had the greatest effect. Despite Bloch's builder getting me much farther in the couple of months than in my past ten years of programming, I am still finding myself hitting the same wall: Extending classes with self-returning method-chains is at best discouraging, and at worst a nightmare--especially when generics come into play, and _especially_ with **_self-referential generics_** (such as `Comparable<T extends Comparable<T>>`). There are two primary needs that I have, only the second of which I'd like to focus on in this question:   1. The first problem is \"how to share self-returning method chains, without having to re-implement them in every...single...class?\" For those who may be curious, I've addressed this part at the bottom of this answer-post, but it's not what I want to focus on here.   2. The second problem, which I am asking for comment on, is \"how can I implement a builder in classes that are themselves intended to be extended by many other classes?\" Extending a class with a builder is naturally more difficult than extending one without. Extending a class that has a builder _that also implements`Needable`, and therefore has significant generics associated to it_, is unwieldy. So that is my question: How can I improve upon (what I call) the Bloch Builder, so I can feel free to attach a builder to _any_ class--even when that class is meant to be a \"base class\" that may be extended and sub-extended many times over-- _without discouraging my future-self, or users of my library_ , because of the extra baggage the builder (and its potential generics) impose on them? * * * _**Addendum_**   My question focuses on part 2 above, but I wanted to elaborate a bit on problem one, including how I've dealt with it: The first problem is \"how to share self-returning method chains, without having to re-implement them in every...single...class?\" This is not to prevent _extending classes_ from having to re-implement these chains, which, of course, they must--rather, how to prevent _non-sub-classes_ , that want to take advantage of these method chains, from having to re-implement every self- returning function in order for _their_ users to be able to take advantage of them? For this I've come up with a needer-needable design that I'll print the interface skeletons for here, and leave it at that for now. It has worked well for me (this design was years in the making...the hardest part was avoiding circular dependencies):               public interface Chainable  {           Chainable chainID(boolean b_setStatic, Object o_id);           Object getChainID();           Object getStaticChainID();       }     public interface Needable<O,R extends Needer> extends Chainable  {         boolean isAvailableToNeeder();         Needable<O,R> startConfigReturnNeedable(R n_eeder);         R getActiveNeeder();         boolean isNeededUsable();         R endCfg();     }     public interface Needer  {         void startConfig(Class<?> cls_needed);         boolean isConfigActive();         Class getNeededType();         void neeadableSetsNeeded(Object o_fullyConfigured);     }"}
{"_id": "73652", "title": "Microsoft Certification : 70-511 Is Practice test sufficient to manage an exam?", "text": "After reading the Self-Paced Training kit **Microsoft Windows Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4** , I ran the Microsoft Press Training Kit Exam Prep. I would like to know if it sufficient to pass and manage the 70-511? **EDIT** Ok, I did not pass the Exam this morning. So I Disencourage people which want to pass a certification without a meaningful experience. For your information, here my result : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BmVEq.png) As we can see, I've failed in two exam objectives :   * \"Building a User Interface by Using Basic Techniques\" which covering these chapters :      * Choose the most appropriate control class     * Implement screen layout by using nested control hierarchies.     * Create and apply styles and theming.     * Manage reusable resources.     * Implement an animation in WPF.    * \"Enhancing the Functionality and Usability of a Solution\"      * Integrate WinForms and WPF within an application.     * Implement asynchronous processes and threading.     * Incorporate globalization and localization features.     * Implement drag and drop operations within and across applications.     * Implement security features of an application.     * Manage user and application settings.     * Implement dependency properties. I really don't understand why I've failed the first objectif. I think to know the fundamentals of WPF. One the other hand, I know why I've failed the second objectif exam : this is an aspect I don't masterize. This exam shows me my weakness. Now I will focus on them."}
{"_id": "73651", "title": "The Programming Mindset", "text": "I'm going to start off by saying that I'm in my second year as a Software Engineering major at R.I.T in New York. I had no experience programming in high school and ever since attending college I have been programming my ass off. I have had some struggles trying to think things through from a logical programming stand point and I was curious, for all of you professionals and people that have been programming from an early age: How do you approach situations? Do you get implementation ideas from past experience or does it just come to you?"}
{"_id": "165164", "title": "Should I be using a JavaScript SPA designed when security is important", "text": "I asked something kind of similar on stackoverflow with a particular piece of code however I want to try to ask this in a broader sense. So I have this web application that I have started to write in backbone using a Single Page Architecture (SPA) however I am starting to second guess myself because of security. Now we are not storing and sending credit card information or anything like that through this web application but we are storing sensitive information that people are uploading to us and will have the ability to re-download too. The obviously security concern that I have with JavaScript is that you can't trust anything that comes from JavaScript however in a Backbone SPA application, everything is being sent through JavaScript. There are two security features that I will have to build in JavaScript; permissions and authentication. The authentication piece is just me override the Backbone.Router.prototype.navigate method to check the fragment it is trying to load and if the JavaScript application.session.loggedIn is not set to true (and they are not viewing a none authenticated page), they are redirected to the login page automatically. The user could easily modify application.session.loggedIn to equal true (or modify Backbone.Router.prototype.navigate method) but then they would also have to not so easily dynamically embedded a link into the page (or modify a current one) that has the proper classes, data-* attributes, and href values to then load a page that should only be loaded when they user has logged in (and has the permissions). So I have an acl object that deals with the permissions stuff. All someone would have to do to view pages or parts of pages they should not be able to is to call acl.addPermission(resource, permission) with the proper permissions or modify the acl.hasPermission() to always return true and then navigate away and then back to the page. Now certain things is EMCAScript 5 like Object.seal() or Object.freeze() would help with some of this however we have to support IE 8 which does not support those pieces of functionality. Now the REST API also performs security checks on every request so technically even if they are able to see parts of the interface that they should not be able to, they still should not be able to actually affect any data. The main benefits for me in developing a JavaScript SPA application is that the application is a lot more responsive since it is only transferring the minimum amount of JSON data for the requested action and performing the minimum amount of work too. There are also other things that I think are beneficial like you are going to have to develop an API for the data (which is good if you want expand your application to different platforms/technologies) or their is more of a separation between front-end and back-end however if security is a concern, it is really wise to go down the road of a JavaScript SPA application for the front-end?"}
{"_id": "165163", "title": "How can I send audio input as chunked HTTP?", "text": "I am trying to create an interface with an external server, and don't know where to start. I would need to take audio as input to my computer, and send it to the remote server as a chunked HTTP request. The API that I'm trying to connect to is described here p1-5 http://dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com/public/Help/HttpInterface/HTTP_Services_for_NDEV_v1.2_Silver_Version.pdf I have never worked with audio programmatically, so don't know what would be the most straightforward way to go about this? Are there solutions that exist out there that already do this? I've come across references to Shoutcast, VLC, Icecast, FFMPeg, Darkice, but I don't know if those are appropriate for what I'm trying to accomplish or not."}
{"_id": "197208", "title": "Encoding to ASCII where original encoding of string is not known", "text": "Given that we do not know the encoding of a string what is the best way to make sure that it is transformed to say ASCII? Also in such situations we are willing to accept potential loss of data."}
{"_id": "28187", "title": "I believe my solution is better than my boss's, so should I ignore him?", "text": "I'm working with php and sql. I think that my method of implementing functions is better than what my boss proposes. Just now he explained me how to do a check on a list of email addresses, and I do not like his idea. I proposed mine which is better and quicker to implement, but he disagreed. Now I think I will go ahead and implement my idea, because his idea was not clear enough to me. Do you think he will be mad?"}
{"_id": "234331", "title": "In an if statement, what are an \"if clause\" and a \"then clause\"?", "text": "I am a bit confused about the nomenclature for the parts of an _if_ statement. Consider the following example:               1:  if condition then     2:      statement_1;     3:  else     4:      statement_2;     5:  end if;      What is the \"if clause\" in this statement? Here are a few possibilities:   * Is it lines #1 and #2?    * Is it line #1?    * Is it line #2?    * Is is the _condition_ in line #1? And in the same example, what would be the \"then clause\"?   * Is it line #2?    * Is it the _then_ keyword, plus line #2?   * Is it just a synonym for \"if clause\"? My main reference is Code Complete 2nd Ed., but the author seems to use exclusively the term \"if clause\", with the meaning being lines #1 and #2 in this example."}
{"_id": "225879", "title": "What is ServletUtilities?", "text": "The answer in this question suggests creating a ServletUtilities class to handle text conversion between Java strings and XML text. > Generally when you create a JEE web application you put together a class > that handles general conversions like this in a class named > ServletUtilities. I did a bit of a google for ServletUtilities, but I can't find much about it. Is having a ServletUtilities class a convention? How common is it? When should you have one? When should it be used?"}
{"_id": "143353", "title": "Starting an HTML canvas game with no graphics skills", "text": "I want to do some hobby game development, but I have some unfortunate handicaps that have me stuck in indecision; I have no artistic talent, and I also have no experience with 3D graphics. But this is just a hobby project that might not go anywhere, so I want to develop the stuff I care about; if the game shows good potential, my graphic \"stubs\" can be replaced with something more sophisticated. I do, however, want my graphics engine to render something approximate to the end goal. The game is tile-based, with each tile being a square. Each tile also has an elevation. My target platform (subject to modification) is JavaScript rendering to the HTML 5 canvas, either with a 2D or WebGL context. My question to those of you with game development experience is whether it's easier to develop an isometric game using a 2D graphics engine and sprites or a 3D game using rudimentary 3D primitives and basic textures? I realize that there are limitations to isometric projection, but if it makes developing my throwaway graphics engine easier, I'm OK with the visual warts that would be introduced. Or is representing a 3D world with an actual 3D engine easier?"}
{"_id": "125182", "title": "database migration: upgrade schema deployed on client machines", "text": "I'm working on an application, which when deployed is installed locally on client machines, and uses a local database server. Stupidly, I didn't plan for schema changes -- and now it needs to change. Perusing lots of SO and Programmers questions, and googling, I've found a few strategies:   * **many SQL files.** One for each version. When upgrading, use version number to decide which SQL file(s) to execute   * **one SQL file.** No `drop`-statements, tables created with `create table if not exists -- so when upgrading or installing the first time, simply run this file. Everything already in the db will be fine, all new tables etc. will be created   * **blow away, then rebuild db.**       1. make a copy of all the data     2. drop the entire schema     3. load in the new schema     4. reload the data   * **auto-generated diff file.** Seems to be mistrusted by some; tool for generating such a file costs money (??) I'm looking for advice to help decide between these strategies. An additional note: the data is upwards-compatible (if that's the right term): none of the schema changes involve dropping tables or columns, or changing FK/PK relationships."}
{"_id": "143359", "title": "Developing assistance tools for games, is it legal against the game creator?", "text": "Imagine if for a realtime strategy game, for reaserch and some fun a tool has been made which monitors the minimap of the game and warns the user if the enemy movement is being detected. Does selling and/or distributing such stuff have legal issues, against the game creators ToS or such (Considering its usage in multiplayer)?"}
{"_id": "114045", "title": "Javascript frameworks for large development teams", "text": "My company is reevaluating what kind of web framework we want to use. We are currently using the Ext 4.0 framework but there are questions being raised that it may not be the right framework to use. I like what Ext has to offer (rich GUIs, data package and class system) are there other frameworks out there that are similar? Are there frameworks out there tailored to medium/large software companies? Info: Potentially 100's of developers converting thick client screens to the web. Data modeling is important and well as rich GUI support. Maintainability and uniformity across multiple products important as well. Any info is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "130474", "title": "Private interfaces within a package", "text": "This is basically the same as Coding to interfaces, but played out in the real world of com when there are various engineering complexities such as immutability of published interfaces and implementations, etc. * * * Consider the following situation: A OS-level object-oriented library with a set of published interfaces and an implementation provided by the OS. Some extension points are provided so that third parties can extend specific behaviors by implementing a subset of the published interfaces and registering them with the OS. A programmer looks at the whole set of published interfaces, and says to self, \"it seems like I can re-implement most of the functionalities (with better algorithms), including those areas which aren't designated as extensible.\" And so the programmer worketh. Only when the programmer's own implementation mash up (COM-style) with the OS implementation and fails miserably, did the programmer realize that the **suite of objects** as implemented by the OS rely heavily on communications using non-published interfaces, because the published interface was minimalistic and blocked many opportunities to optimizations(*). (*) In encoding/decoding/trans-coding (of data/image/sound/video compression) tasks, it is well known that certain pipelines stages can cancel each other if they perform the exact opposite operation / inverse, e.g. `G(F(x)) == x`. A typical interaction is like:   1. Consumer asks Producer if it implements a special interface X that only vendor V knows.   2. If yes, Consumer talks to Producer using interface X and see if they are exact opposite (#1).   3. If yes, Consumer asks Producer for its \"upper stage\" (i.e. bypassing Producer) (#2) so that in effect both are being cancelled out. (#1) and (#2) are capabilities that are missing in the minimalistic published interface. On first glance it seems that the vendor might have a chance to provide them as well, but choose not to. It might also be the case that providing those performance-oriented interfaces would severely pollute the namespace. * * * The end result is that whenever a programmer provides its own implementation of a certain class, it would either (i) fail miserably, or (ii) perform very slowly, because it could not interact with the rest of the _suite_ using the performance-enhanced internal interfaces only known to that _suite_. Is this a more frequent problem with some flavors of Object-Oriented technology? Or is it more common with some flavors of Component-based Engineering? Advocates of OOP will argue that Refactoring and Publishing those interfaces would solve the problem. This assumes that it is possible to distribute a new version of the library along with new set of interface. For some technology this is not possible. * * * The way it matters to com is that its `QueryInterface` method allows run-time query (and run-time response) of additional interfaces implemented by a class. Its Java equivalent would be like a library that makes heavy use of `instanceof` for interfaces internal to the package. _To Reviewers: I'm open to suggestions on trimming down the question to its essence._ The correct term seems to be Mixin, thanks to this question. * * * This answer is partly relevant, but my example focuses on the lost opportunities for optimizations within a single library. Basically, if a third-party implementer didn't do both:   1. Implement both encoder and decoder   2. Implement its own proprietary interface on both the encoder and decoder, in order to detect and bypassing operations that cancel out each other Then the implementation will only get \"baseline performance\" when inter- operating with different encoders/decoders from other vendors."}
{"_id": "110541", "title": "Value of maintaining debug outputs", "text": "A developer on our team litters his code with debug outputs. He passes many parameters into methods that are only used for debugging. Personally I find this clutters up the code. If I need to debug something I prefer to use breakpoints and the watch window instead of reading through all the debug output. I am making major changes to several classes written by this other developer, should I maintain his debug outputs or can I justify removing them? I have only been in this team for a few months and don't want to upset this developer but also I expect he will rarely be updating this part of the system."}
{"_id": "221558", "title": "Licensing libraries (which do code generation, etc) and GPL boundaries", "text": "I want to really opensource a project that did start as a personal hobby, but I'm an ignorant of licensing details. This project, provides some libraries for a given $language, and some wrapper command line utilities for those libraries. Those libraries, across many things, do generate more code in the same language, code which can be reused by the caller. On my drafts, I always used a MIT style license for the sake of brevity, but it's unreleased copies I'm reviewing right now to merge on a finally released version. I would like to use GPL style policies for usage/contribution of _my code_ (lets call it a framework). But. Could choosing GPLv2 (3?) for my project, limit the things that a given user can do with the code generated or managed by my libraries/utilities? (i.e. commercial profit of such generated code without release her improvements/changes to my code) Is there something to consider (in a plain language) when licensing code that generates code ? **Update:** To try to answer some comments:   1. _What do you wish to accomplish with your license?_   The best goals for the project health (from the view point of a community- based opensource project).   2. _Who do you want to use your code?_   Anybody   3. _What do you want to happen to changes?_   To be back-ported to the project as much as possible.   4. _What do you want to happen to generated code?_   To don't be affected by my licensing choice. It belongs to the user who generated it.   5. _What about money - if the user makes money do you want that to affect the licensing?_   If the user makes money from the generated code, great. If the user makes money _modifying_ my code, I would like to force to publish the changes. I did a group-therapy with those answers. Now, choosing GPL (2? 3?) I could be ok or not? **Update2** > So they have to bundle/compile your library in with theirs when they deploy > it, in order for it to run? yes, the library needs to be installed previously, or bundled with the result (there is an option for this)."}
{"_id": "145219", "title": "How can I monitor the JVM memory in a proper way?", "text": "I'm thinking of how we do JVM memory monitor in a low overhead way in production environment even under busy hour. Suppose I have two tomcat app server in production, load balance set up behind them. If I can see the jvm memory statistics I can tell load balance to stop sending the request to the server which will encounter OOM issue. Do this make sense? Jconsole or VisualVM eats more performance resourse is not my choice."}
{"_id": "221552", "title": "GUI programming - who should be an owner", "text": "I know nothing about gui programming. I try to learn. I have simple question... For example, I have small program. I have class that extends JFrame with main Window (MyWindowClass) and my \"logic\" class (MyClass) that do something (for example calculate something and I want to display it in window). Should I implement this like:               class MyClass {         // ...         // ...         MyWindowClass window;     };      Or like this:               class MyWindowClass extends JFrame {        // ...        MyClass c;     };      I don't know which class should be an owner and which class should be have main method... Please help me... I try to write in Java (Swing) but this is general question I guess."}
{"_id": "130478", "title": "What copyright date for an update to an open-source project from last year?", "text": "In 2011, I released some open-source code that was licensed using the Apache license. As such, all the source files have this boiler plate message at the top:               /*        Copyright 2011 My Name             Licensed under the Apache License... <blah blah>     */      So now it's 2012, and I am readying to release a version 1.1. As such, most all of the source files have been touched in some way. And some new source code files have been added. How do I update the copyright date on the existing files? Is the following the correct update to each source file? (i.e. change 2011 to \"2011-2012\")               /*        Copyright 2011-2012 My Name             Licensed under the Apache License... <blah blah>     */      Do the new source files get `Copyright 2011-2012` applied equally as well? Or does the new code just get `Copyright 2012`?"}
{"_id": "165292", "title": "Branching strategy for parallel development that won't be in the same release?", "text": "My team is working on a product, which for business reasons needs to be released on a regular schedule. An issue has arisen where we want to do development in parallel for the upcoming release, as well as the 'next' release. This is to become standard practice, so it's not as straightforward as cutting a feature branch for the new work. We'll continually have 2+ teams working on different releases of the same product. Is there an SCM best practice for this sort of arrangement?"}
{"_id": "165294", "title": "What are the advantages of using a template language?", "text": "I work on a CakePHP app and the views consist of raw html with embedded php echo statements, which over time has gotten rather messy. Before I go in and rewrite the code, I'm wondering if it makes sense to rewrite the views with a template engine, such as Twig or Smarty, but I don't have experience with template engines. What are all the advantages of using a template engine?"}
{"_id": "181377", "title": "Constructing a Finite State Automaton", "text": "I have an exam question that I am unsure of the answer. The question is: > In organisation X valid user names have the following structure. The user > name can be either the employee\u2019s name followed by a colon and then the > department name or a string of one or more alphanumeric letters consisting > of lower case, upper case letters and digits from 0 to 9. All user names end > with a period (\".\"). The employee\u2019s name is expressed as \ufb01rst name followed > by an underscore and then the surname. The \ufb01rst name and the surname must > begin with an uppercase letter and is followed by an arbitrary number of > lower case letters. All department names are an arbitrary number of lower > case letters. Express the language for valid user names as a regular > expression. The answer I have is, > [A-Z][a-z]+\"_\"[A-Z][a-z]+\":\"[a-z]+\".\" | [A-Za-z0-9]+\".\" The next question is: > Construct a deterministic \ufb01nite state automaton for recognising the user > names as described in Question 1. For which I have this:![finite automata](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4ukWq.jpg) I am under the impression this is wrong because [A-Z] is a subgroup of [A-Za-z0-9] and a DFA cannot have the same symbol going from one state. Does anybody have an idea how to solve this / is it correct? Thanks !"}
{"_id": "189582", "title": "How is an IDE compiled?", "text": "I'd like to know the general procedure of how an IDE is built/compiled/created. Additionally, what are some tools/scripts used to create an IDE? I don't mean to say that compiling IDE **needs** an IDE. It was just a general assumption made by me that since IDE is just a piece of software too so it sounds logical to me that they may use the previous version of IDE to build the next one. I want to understand how the IDEs are built."}
{"_id": "25728", "title": "Anybody use the Team Software Process (TSP) and/or Personal Software Process (PSP)?", "text": "More info on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Software_Process What has your experience been?"}
{"_id": "25727", "title": "Concepts: API Level Testing", "text": "I'm college grad, soon to be graduating. SO i have started my job search. So my question is for New Grad who is interested in QA (API Level testing in particular). What is level of knowledge in **JAVA** required? I'm not that great in Java but can rate myself 5/10. So do companies expect candidate to have extensive coding knowledge in java or just basic java Again if its just basic java, what concepts should i focus more on ? Thanks"}
{"_id": "255807", "title": "How to update a file in exe", "text": "I am converting HTML5 file to .exe using HTML EXECUTABLES converter. After converting to exe, the total size comes around 70 to 80MB. So the problem is when i update a single CSS file I have to convert the whole project again to a exe and give it to my Client and every time i have to upload 80MB file for very small changes. Is there any other alternate option to update a certain file instead of converting again to exe."}
{"_id": "209206", "title": "Python datetime timedelta attributes", "text": "In the python `datetime` module, `timedelta` objects take weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, and microseconds as arguments upon instantiation. However, after the `timedelta` is created, the only two attributes it has of the former listed are days, seconds, and microseconds. Why is this?"}
{"_id": "74008", "title": "As a solo developer, how can I use a whiteboard in programming effectively?", "text": "I have been programming for a while and I often find myself writing my thoughts down because I've found that it helps me to focus on the solution. It feels like I am wasting a lot of paper. On the other hand, I feel insecure about getting a white board installed in my personal cube because it feels like a whiteboard is more specifically used to discuss solutions with other developers. What is your experience with note taking? Is a whiteboard useful outside of collaborative situations?"}
{"_id": "74003", "title": "How do you track common, but rarely used code?", "text": "General OO teaches us to encapsulate and best practices teach us organization. So we end up with re-useable self-documenting code that relieves us of any details regarding implementation. So, if I need to invoke the windows command line I use my command line class.               class CommandLine     {        CommandLine(){}        Invoke(string command) {}        CloseAsync(){}        Close Sync(){}     }      Over time these simple encapsulations turn into libraries. We may even have further classifications via Namespaces. This works very well in the same language. Especially when its a language the developer commonly uses. But, I often run into situations, especially in lesser used languages, where I need to recall a simple common concept that may not actually be a class at all. For example, I don't write a lot of jQuery, but I write enough where I get tired of looking up the proper syntax for `$(document).load`...or is it               $(document).ready()      or...               $(document).read(function(){});...      This kind of boiler plate code, which I understand well the purpose of, but lack the experience and regular usage of the language to remember the syntax is where my problem lies. I have seen some developers write a blog to simply remember the idea. My usual approach is... > Google \"document load\"   >  GOogle \"document load jQuery\"   >  ...find some snippet   >  Google \"Document Ready jquery\"...done   > And this has usually been fine. But, I have also noticed that on SO, some of the top answerers, say Jon Skeet, seem to pull boiler plate answers very quickly...so quickly I wonder if they have built up some sort of reference material to quickly search and slap together this code on the forum, piecemeal or in full. I would like to use this same concept (if it exists...) to store my \"document.ready\" snippets so that I may use them for my own coding. So, does an effecient storage and lookup exist?   What is the best way to store and organize these irregular, but common useful snippets? Bonus...its even more interesting to note how my coding approach does not lend itself well to white-board interviews (where we have no google, but are expected to write code). How do you handle this issue when facing the \"lesser used\" languages in your vocubulary?"}
{"_id": "198945", "title": "May I keep my program closed source if I link it against a static library of which the source is GNU GPLv2?", "text": "I'm putting much work in my program and after it's done I want to just setup a small website and sell each copy of the program but I don't want any legal issues. Do I have to look for another library or can I \"safely\" link to it?"}
{"_id": "75436", "title": "Relicense BSD 2/3-clause code to GPL", "text": "Suppose I release some source code under the new BSD license. Is it allowed for someone else to take this code, make modifications to it and distribute it under the terms of the GPL? From Wikipedia: > _Many of the most common free software licenses, such as the original MIT/X > license, BSD licenses (in the current 2-clause form), and the LGPL, are > \"GPL-compatible\". That is, their code can be combined with a program under > the GPL without conflict (the new combination would have the GPL applied to > the whole). However, some free/open source software licenses are not GPL- > compatible._ I'm assuming this implies that one can relicense new-BSD licensed code to GPL?"}
{"_id": "165836", "title": "Proper Use Of HTML Data Attributes", "text": "I'm writing several JavaScript plugins that are run automatically when the proper HTML markup is detected on the page. For example, when a `tabs` class is detected, the tabs plugin is loaded dynamically and it automatically applies the tab functionality. Any customization options for the JavaScript plugin are set via HTML5 data attributes, very similar to what Twitter's Bootstrap Framework does. The appeal to the above system is that, once you have it working, you don't have worry about manually instantiating plugins, you just write your HTML markup. This is especially nice if people who don't know JavaScript well (or at all) want to make use of your plugins, which is one of my goals. This setup has been working very well, but for some plugins, I'm finding that I need a more robust set of options. My choices seem to be having an element with many data-attributes or allowing for a single `data-options` attribute with a JSON options object as a value. Having a lot of attributes seems clunky and repetitive, but going the JSON route makes it slightly more complicated for novices and I'd like to avoid full-blown JavaScript in the attributes if I can. I'm not entirely sure which way is best.   1. Is there a third option that I'm not considering?   2. Are there any recommended best practices for this particular use case?"}
{"_id": "165831", "title": "What is the advantage of assigning a function to a var?", "text": "Given this Javascript example I found               var sum = function() {       var i, sum = 0;       for(i = 0; i < arguments.length; i += 1) {         sum += arguments[i];       }       return sum;     };      What advantage is there in assigning a function to a var?"}
{"_id": "165833", "title": "What is the best way to diagrammatically represent a system threading architecture?", "text": "I am yet to find the perfect way to diagrammatically represent the overall threading architecture for a system (using UML or otherwise). I am after a diagramming technique that would show all the threads in a given system and how they interact with each other. There are a few similar questions - Drawing Thread Interaction, UML Diagrams of Multithreaded Applications and Intuitive UML Approach to Depict Threads but they don't fully answer my question. What are some of the techniques that you've found useful to depict the overall threading architecture for a system?"}
{"_id": "117530", "title": "Where should I put my utility methods?", "text": "I am very new to Visual Studio and C# and am wondering how best to create a repository of sorts for utility methods. For instance, we need a method that returns the current fiscal year and other company specific values. Would it be best to create utility class file that is imported into every project? Or, create a new project with the these methods and add it to the current solution? In python, for instance, I created an egg that has all the utility methods that I then install into the site-packages."}
{"_id": "55808", "title": "What research topics can I tackle with only a year of experience?", "text": "I've been looking to get into research, but I'm not sure I can do when I've only taken two quarters of Computer Science. I go to the University of Washington, if it's relevant. This is a page on research. I find that I'm not able to judge what is possible for a first year looking through the website. Most things look intimidating, but I'm sure I could somewhere on some problem if I actually attacked it."}
{"_id": "98580", "title": "Whats the work flow with 2 people on a project", "text": "I come to you as a newbie programmer who's been working on his own project (which is progressing nicely). My co-founder has also been learning how to program and has reached a point where he could probably start fixing some things and making some things happen. He asked a very good question, which was \"how will this work\". Something I could only theorize about as I've never programmed with someone else. Could you advise me on the best work flow. We use git. Should we own specific parts of the system? Checking code in? Code review? How do you work with >1 dev?"}
{"_id": "98584", "title": "Learning Groovy vs learning Python, Ruby or Perl to get some insight on dynamic languages programming", "text": "I would like to explore programming in dynamic languages, and I found that Groovy would be really easy to learn because it is heavily based on Java. won't I miss anything important regarding dynamic languages proggramming if i take Groovy path instead of say Ruby or Python? I don't intend to program in dynamic language too much, it is mostly for learning purposes. thank you for help."}
{"_id": "142977", "title": "Shelving code in Team Foundation Server (TFS)", "text": "I'm pretty new at using TFS and I'd like to know how you or your team use the \"shelve\" function of tfs. We have the following guidelines in using TFS: \\- perform a \"Get Latest\" before you check in and try to build/compile \\- do not check in code that does not compile \\- at the end of the day, if your work is not complete/partially done, you should \"shelve\" your pending changes The first two make sense but I don't really get the last one. I asked my mgr and he said that its so he knows that you actually did some work for that day, which does kind of makes sense but still, I'm wondering what other teams use the \"shelve\" function for?"}
{"_id": "98588", "title": "How do you think about and architect programs?", "text": "I'm a QA guy and designer and i'm coming to development. How do most developers architect programs? With design I build up with a vague idea of what I have in mind and adapt my design to keep in moving forward and looking good. With coding, I'm trying the same methodology. I'm constantly testing and debugging my code and I make forward moving tweaks to my code. The problem is, I dont think this is how it's done. When I look at good Javascript for example, everything is broken out into evenly distributed functions. I don't architect my code in this way. Do you normally have to sit out and draw out your classes and functions before you start writing?"}
{"_id": "142970", "title": "Best way to handle product and supplier relationship", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  best way to handle a many to many relationship? The relationship between product and supplier is many to many with a new class to be created? Or is it many to 1?"}
{"_id": "223025", "title": "Best practice mapping an external id on my system", "text": "I've done some searches for \"id mapping\" and \"external id mapping\" and I can't find anything meaningful on the site or google, so, here's my question/scenario. I'm developing an application which will match some records from our internal system with the \"same\" records from an external (outside the company) system. The data-exchange (receive the data from external system) is irrelevant (could be TXT, CSV, XML, Excel, etc...). At some point I'll have to match our internal customer id with the external customer id. The thing is: I know **my id is immutable** , but **I don't know id the external id is mutable**. And there's no way to know, because the external system is out of my control and can be changed without my knowledge anytime. So I have 2 scenarios:   * Best case: the external ID is immutable;   * Worst case: the external ID is mutable (within the constraints below); So I'm developing a mapping table with the following attributes:   * Internal System Customer ID;   * External System Customer ID; Pretty standard stuff. The real question is: **What should I add on this table in order to prepare for worst-case scenario ?** Constraints:   * If the ID is mutable, it'll be on a daily basis, so there can't be a 1-to-many internal-to-external ID on the same day (this is a business rule that can be enforced);   * The external ID can be anything from an integer to a GUID or a zip-code. But nothing bigger than a GUID;"}
{"_id": "223024", "title": "How should dependencies be managed across a modular application?", "text": "Let's say that we have a structure like this:               Application         -- Modules             --Module1                 -- Controller                 -- PublicHelper                   --Module2                -- Controller                -- PublicHelper      Whereby a module's Public Helper can provide helper functions. In nearly every module helper, the helper needs to access another module's public helper methods. Let's say for instance, in a PHP application: Module1 provides functionality to create a sale, and as part of the               class Module1PublicHelper extends AbstractModuleHelper {              public function createSale($customerId, $param, $param)         {              $userPublicHelper = // grab an instance of the user public helper              $currentUser = $userPublicHelper->getCurrentUser();         }     }          class Module2PublicHelper extends AbstractModuleHelper {              public function getCurrentUser()         {              //do something              return $user;         }     }      In this situation, the method needs to obtain an instance, either new or whatever of the user public helper. Given that all of Module Public Helper classes are instantiated with a minimum set of constructor params, e.g. EntityManager, what would be the best way to get a copy of it? Obviously, we can't really inject the user public helper class into the class containing `createSale` One solution would be to use a service locator or registry, however, testing the application isn't exactly easy."}
{"_id": "42200", "title": "Should a developer always use version control", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Version control for independent developers? I've heard statements to the effect of: \"Well it's just me working on this project so I don't need to put it under source control\" as well as, \"There is no need to work version controlled on this project, it's so small\". It is my opinion that no matter how small the project is, so long as it's adding value to the client (and they are paying for it too) that we, the developer(s), should version control it; especially since its company policy. Am I insane or does my standpoint make sense. Question: Should development work always be version controlled?"}
{"_id": "110452", "title": "how do you backup your code on your local computer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Version control for independent developers? I have a folder containing all my code (working code, experiment code). I'd like to back it up to a zip file on an external hard drive or whatever is best. How do you guys backup your code?   Do you setup your own source control server?   Do you use a script to zip all files?"}
{"_id": "27147", "title": "Version control for independent developers?", "text": "Do you think it's worth it to use version control if you are an independent developer, and if so, why? Do you keep the repository on your own computer, or elsewhere, where it can serve as a backup?"}
{"_id": "108476", "title": "Team of 1: Do I need Project Management & Versioning Software?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Version control for independent developers? I work as a Junior Programmer in a team of 1. I am looking for suggestions of what open source/free Project Management(I cant remember the correct term?) programs, ie things like Github would be suitable for my & the companies needs. I create websites using just javascript, HTML & CSS, I create cross platform mobile applications using Mosync C++ API & I create Facebook iFrame apps using HTML, javascript, css & their Graph API. The boss is really not willing to purchase a subscription from a \"Project Management Program\"(BTW whats the correct term?) so I would be looking for a free service. I currently use DropBox because it allows me to work from anywhere & gives a limited ability to go back to an older version of a file but I have found that I have made a change in a project & it broke something else so I needed to go back to the old version of a file & it was not there in dropbox(maybe they only keep the last version before a save). **If you were on a team of one do you think it would be necessary to even use this? And if yes, what service would you use?**"}
{"_id": "85612", "title": "What is the best local version control tool for personal use?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Version control for independent developers? I was wondering if there is a tool out there which acts as Visual Source Safe but only on local machine. Basically I would like to check in and check out on my local machine when I am codeing on my personal project from home."}
{"_id": "209015", "title": "Version Control for One Man Dev Team?", "text": "I recently began work at a small company as a lone software developer. Before I came no true documentation/version control/etc. was in place. The best they have is Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets to keep track of everything the engineering team produces. Personally, among other things, I'd like to institute version control for my own sake, but they're extremely hesitant about it. My question, is version control sane for a lone developer? What are some of the benefits of version control to a lone developer? Also, what are some of the benefits to, say, a 2-3 man team? And, being that it is a private company, would Github or a private Git server be best?"}
{"_id": "145583", "title": "Should I use a code repository if I am the only one working on a project?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Version control for independent developers? I am not sure if I should use a code repository when I am the only one working on a project."}
{"_id": "26385", "title": "Infix vs Prefix Notation - Which do you prefer?", "text": "I have been learning Clojure and looking at Scheme and CL which introduced me to the world of prefix notation. At first I didn't like it but it is still starting to grow on me. To be honest though, there are still long calculations that are difficult for me to understand but I think that is an issue of me needing more exposure/practice and I'll get it. But that leads me to the question: Which type of notation do you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "104720", "title": "Is there a name for the not given/null/empty-problem?", "text": "I work with code, where data is stored/exchanged in Hashtable/Dictionary/Associative-Array-like structures, like this               {        'alpha': None,        'bravo': '',        # 'charlie' is not given     }      there is not much standartization, which field is 'given', and when given, if it may be given as None/Null/Nil or an empty string. As a result, the code is littered with checks like `if hasattr(obj, 'alpha')` and default fallbacks. **Is there a name or slang term for this kind of (imho) anti-pattern?** UPDATE: it seems, currently there is no name, so i'd like to hear suggestions. Currently we have these:   * Incorporeal Horde (credits to psr)"}
{"_id": "224746", "title": "Security concern regarding web service", "text": "I'm currently working on a pet project with two of my buddies. This web service will provide basic functionality such as Login/Password Modification/Registration etc. All of us are comfortable with jQuery and ASP.NET. My friend's idea is to - `Set up a web service on the same domain and send it data for registration, validation and password retrieval through jQuery ajax.` This same process is going to be used for other CRUD ops as well. I'm not sure though, isn't this a huge security risk? Couldn't a normal person write some code that could create thousands of dummy users in our application? Would setting up a secondary web service that handles authorization (OAUTH 2.0 or something like that) and calls the web service that connects directly to the database reduce the security risk?"}
{"_id": "247040", "title": "How to structure a program into classes", "text": "So after a while of working in programming field I still haven't figured it out how exactly should programs be structured, in a large set I mean. Which I think it's also because of working in an enterprise development. Say that I want to write a program, a messenger for a LAN network. How do I really know what classes to make for this program? How to divide the program into smaller pieces and classes in the best and most efficient way? This is just an example. I don't mean specifically for this problem set, it's the general approach that I am wondering about. EDIT: I have asked this question here because it exactly says in the help center: > What topics can I ask about here? > > Programmers Stack Exchange is a Q&A site for professionals and students in > software development and related fields who are interested in getting expert > answers on conceptual questions about software development. > > If you have a question about... > > software requirements > > software architecture and design > > algorithm and data structure concepts My question, according to my understanding, refers to the to the _software architecture and design_. It's not a specific coding question otherwise it would have been asked on Stackoverflow. It is a **conceptual question** which should be fit here. The comments and answers are referring to that there are a lot of books covering this topic. I'd accept even a book name for an answer if the book answers my question. If the answer does not fit into this form of Q&A, at least I could be pointed to the right direction. After all we're all here to learn something."}
{"_id": "113093", "title": "Finding all nearby points in a point cloud", "text": "What's the best way to store 3D point cloud data, optimising for time it takes to find **all** the points in a sphere of 3D space, and also for time it takes to insert new data points into the data set? Background: I have a cloud of 3D point data (with each point also including some further attached data), and need to be able to query it to quickly find all the points within a user-specified sphere of 3D space, as well as to quickly add points to the data set. My current implementation uses a naive linear array of data points, but unsurprisingly, that's not scaling well as my data set grows. My priority is speed, both for finding points in the cloud and for inserting new points into the cloud (I'd really like to avoid needing to rebalance trees after every insertion, if I can). I never delete points from the data set, so speed for point removal isn't important at all. Memory usage also isn't important -- I'm quite happy to throw memory at this problem, if it'll speed things up!"}
{"_id": "57402", "title": "ROI in choosing a CMS solution", "text": "At the company I work for we need a CMS. We have to choices, first one, work with an existing CMS ( Drupal, Joomla, whatever ) or develop our own. I know for sure that developing our own is the right approach. We need all the flexibility we can get, and developing our own is the best way to accomplish this. But I need to sell this based on ROI to upper management ( my boss ). Basically in terms of time and money. I can convince upper management that developing our own is the best way to go even without mentioning ROI, but I would also like to present this data to him. So I'm trying to investigate on the ROI of using already existing CMS solutions VS developing our own customized CMS ( based on a open source library or not ). After a search on google I found this: Choose between a commercial, open source, or customized CMS, but the link is from 2003, it has some truth's, but the world changed a lot from 2003. And I can't seem to find anything else about it. I've developed my own CMS ( actually I'm still developing it, it's always a work in progress ), so I know it's not the most easy thing to do, and that it takes time. Can someone give me any tips? On the ROI of one solution VS the other?"}
{"_id": "186605", "title": "A new language's chances", "text": "I am creating a new language, with some nice features like OOP, static typing, imperative, etc. The main reason for making a language was to learn more about compiler construction. My question is, what are the chances for my language to be known? What can I do to make my language used by many? I know there are lot of similar projects, and much better than mine, but I want to make this project a success. The project is almost completed. I think it comes with useful tools such as automatic memory allocation, memory manager, pointers, and few others. I would like to know if my project can have a future or shall I just drop it like many others? Thank you."}
{"_id": "228242", "title": "Working with static constructor in Java", "text": "I didn't get a complete understanding of static constructors in Java. If it is allowed, why it is allowed? In what scenarios would you use it? What purpose would it serve? Can someone give me a simple example please?"}
{"_id": "24890", "title": "How to become comfortable with javascript and its libraries(jQuery)?", "text": "I am a php lover,working with php for last 2+ years also freelancing in different php producus like wordpress,joomla,drupal.I feel comfortable with php, I tried to learn javascript and its other libraries but feeling uncomfortable.Can not become productive also. So would any one give suggestion how i can learn the javascript?"}
{"_id": "141443", "title": "Secure Open Source?", "text": "I want to make a delicate application of mine (an antivirus actually) open source but I want to have a control on who really obtains the source or not. Preferably they should apply and I or administrators approve their applications. Is there any online platform for this? The main reason for the control/security is to possibly prevent malware makers to easily discover how to bypass the stealth checking methods it utilizes for malware detection. Edit: I am looking for advice - possibly to hear from someone who has done something similar. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "84119", "title": "License compatibility question", "text": "I have a question regarding software licenses. I plan to put a license to a framework that I have written. My intention is that the license should be open, in order to maintain a community. To be clear I will explain how I expect things to work. The framework will define some common API for certain functionality as well as a Proxy class that will invoke an implementation of that API. The proxy will be part of the framework, but it will internally call an actual implementation which will be developed mostly by someone else. So, basically I want to be able to:   * Distribute my library as free and open-source   * Allow use of my library in commercial software   * Allow commercial products to depend on my library i.e. provide a derived work as long as it is a result of linking to my framework API (not using the source code directly in (un)modified form), and license their derived work as they choose.   * Provide legal means of respecting the licenses of any third party implementations invoked trough my library. This means a commercial application should be able to use my library an another commercial library designed to work with my library as long as it respects my licensing terms and those of the other commercial license."}
{"_id": "152103", "title": "TDD: Write a separate test for object initialization or relying on other tests exercising it", "text": "This seems to be the common pattern that's emerging in some of the tests I've worked on lately. We have a class, and quite often this is legacy code whose design can't be easily altered, which has a bunch of member variables. There's some kind of \"Initialize\" or \"Load\" function which would put an object into a valid state. Only after it is initialized/loaded, are the members in the proper state so that other methods can be exercised. So when we start writing tests, first test is \"TestLoad\" and all we put in there is exercising initialization logic. Then we might add one (or few) TestLoadFailureXXX tests and those are definitely valuable. Then we start writing tests to verify other behaviors but all of them require the object to be loaded. So they all start by running exactly the same code as \"TestLoad\". So my question: Is TestLoad even necessary? Do you take it out and let other tests simply exercise the loading? Or leave it so things are more explicit? I know that each unit test function should have no (or as little as possible) overlap with other test functions, but it seems like in cases of loading, this is unavoidable. And whether we like it or not, if something in the loading code breaks, we will end up with a whole test suite of failures. Is there another approach that I might be missing here? * * * Thank you for the responses. It definitely makes sense that you want to see \"InitializationTest\" and if that fails you know where to start looking. In case it matters, this question is mostly about C++ and we use CppUnit framework. And now, thanks to sleske, I'll be constantly wishing that CppUnit supported test dependencies. Might have to hack something in one of these days :)"}
{"_id": "84114", "title": "Is python a good choice to develop UIs? If so, wxPython or Tkinter?", "text": "I am looking forward to develop a desktop application using python. I am a beginner and I do not have sufficient expertise in python. I am a java programmer. Although I have some experience in building UIs using swings, I see that apps developed on swings are too damn slow. Well this might be one reason why many of the major implementations are done in C/C++ as in browsers/games etc. Developing a UI in C++ might be a better option but I prefer to chose a high level programming language over C/C++. So I have opted for python presuming that it would perform well over java swings as python itself is natively build on C/C++. So can I go ahead with this assumption that python is better than java swings to develop a UI? Or do you suggest a language that is better than python to develop UIs? If at all I go ahead with python, which toolkit should I use Tkinter or wxPython and why? please help me."}
{"_id": "64932", "title": "What does \"abstractions should not depend on details\" actually mean?", "text": "Most readers will be familiar with Bob Martin's famous dependency inversion principle, which states -   1. High-level modules should not depend on low-level modules. Both should depend on abstractions   2. Abstractions should not depend upon details. Details should depend upon abstractions I believe I understand it all pretty well, except for the first sentence in the second line - \"Abstractions should not depend upon details\". What does this mean exactly? What would be a simple example of an abstraction being dependent upon a detail?"}
{"_id": "153833", "title": "How should an undergraduate programmer organize his time learning the maximum possible?", "text": "I started programming lately(pre-final year of a CS degree) and now feel like there's a sea of uncovered treasure for me out there. So, I decided to cover as much as is possible before I look out for a job after graduation. So, I started to read books (The C++ Programming Language, Introduction to Algorithms, Cracking the Coding Interview, Programming Pearls,etc ) participate in StackExchange sites, solving problems (InterviewStreet and ProjectEuler), coding for open source, chatting to fellow programmers/mentors and try to learn more and more. **Good,then what's the problem??** The problem is I am trying to do many things, but I am doubtful that I am still utilizing my time properly. I am reading many books and sometimes I just leave a book halfway (jumping from one book to another), sometimes I spend way too much time on chatting and also in getting lost somewhere in the huge internet world, and lastly the wasteful burden of attending classes (I don't think my teachers know good enough or I prefer learning on my own) May be some of you had similar situation. How did you organize your time? Or what do you think is the best way to organize it for an undergraduate? Also what mistakes am I making that you can warn me of"}
{"_id": "204659", "title": "How do I implement classes in my scripting language?", "text": "Let's suppose I have a code file that reads (I'll use Java-ish syntax) and it is being interpreted. Kind of like a ruby script.               class A{         int fieldName = 4;         A(){...}              void doSomething(){...}          }          A instanceOfA = new A();     A.fieldName = 7;      This is what I understand to happen when this file is interpreted.   1. File is lexed and parsed   2. AST or Parse tree is generated   3. Parse tree is walked to generate code in the runtime to represent the class.   4. Then what happens? How is the definition turned into an instance? And what kind of internal representation is require to represent the class? Does the interpreter keep the AST for the class around for re-processing each time an instance is created or is some other form created? I've been following the patterns in Terrence Parr's Language Implementations Patterns book. I think understand how to build the symbol table and scope objects. I'm just a little fuzzy on how take a structure like a class and create an instance of it."}
{"_id": "153835", "title": "How to define a natural id in database?", "text": "There are a lot of manuals. I am trying to create an database to hold information of these documents. But, there is a small problem. How can I give meaningful id to the manuals? Are there any standard or logic behind the giving meaningful id to the documents? If there is no standard, can you tell me how I should do that? example:                table :                   manual id | manual name      EDIT:               Not Meaningful ID                1        or  M1        or   foo          2            C2             bar          3            P123           name         ...           ...            ...          (i)          (ii)            (iii)      (i) Not meaningful for me because if some item deleted, there can be gap. ex 1 33 100. (ii) random character can be confusing when one try to give a name to new manual (iii) Why giving name is not preferred is because finding a name to the manual as ID is hard after 500 manuals. Meaningful : New ID               * Can be easily produced even if after 1000 manuals     * Should not be so complicated"}
{"_id": "250702", "title": "Need an open-source license with a small commercial addition", "text": "I'm working on an open-source project and people can use it and modify it, no problems here. The only thing that I don't want to allow is that people exploit it and earn money using my work (because that's what my plans are!) What kind of license should I use to cover these requirements?"}
{"_id": "203602", "title": "How many threads should access the file system at the same time?", "text": "We have a module in an application which stores data in multiple files and multilevel directories and access them from multiple threads (both reads and writes). The directory structure is based on a splitted hash value, like:               b1/94/6a/92/a.txt     b1/94/6a/ee/a.txt     a1/0e/db/bb/b.txt     ...      If a caller removes a file the module deletes empty directories immediately. How much should be the concurrency level of the module? Is it worth to create and delete folders from multiple threads at the same time? Can filesystems handle these effectively? Is it worth to use a multi-threaded module? (It would be much easier to write a single-threaded one.) (The application is written in Java and mainly runs on Windows, NTFS, non-SSDs but I'm also interested in other operating and filesystems if there are differences.)"}
{"_id": "250700", "title": "What would you avoid re-inventing at all costs?", "text": "We recently had to re-invent a high-availability queueing engine like RabbitMQ (for various reasons). Naturally this turned out to be more time consuming and expensive than expected. What type of things would you avoid rebuilding at all costs? Which types of components should rather be reused?"}
{"_id": "26037", "title": "How to describe styles and approaches of C++ programming?", "text": "How can I say more than just \"C++\" on my resume, reports or other writings, to convey clearly what kind of C++ programming I've been doing? Are there well-defined styles of C++? (\"Styles\" might not be quite the right word.) Examples: using C++ as an \"improved C\" taking advantage of stronger typechecking, syntactic niceties, but little or lightweight use of classes; using heavy OO techniques where almost everything is made into a class (and there could be different styles of that) - but staying away from templates and advanced techniques; and heavy use of metaprogramming and every cutting edge advanced C++ feature. I've seen code where there's such heavy use of computer science terminology and advanced features only a CS PhD would be able to understand it, and code so clean and straightforward that EEs and physicists with modest programming skills can understand it. This isn't about literally coding styles - fussy details about brackets, indentation, commenting and all that - but one's philosophy of what good code is, the approach to organizing it all, and degree of fanaticism or reluctance to use various major techniques, procedural vs OO vs functional and so forth. Can such variations be categorized in a meaningful way? How to name these for someone not expert at software development, with an amount of knowledge to be expected of a good executive or recruiter (never mind the PHBs)? Ideally, there'd be a way anyone can say on their resume \"C++ in blah-blah style\" or \"mumbleific C++\" and land jobs or freelance projects in that category/style of C++. An improved-C++ coder could avoid projects full of heavy template-bloated code. (To some extent this question may be more general than C++, but C++ being around for years and being multi-paradigm, leads to the most confusion.)"}
{"_id": "88158", "title": "Changing jobs and leaving a project without a leader (aka, me)", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  At what point during a project is it unreasonable to leave? I'm the lead on a project that has been underway for about a year and a half. Two of us have been working on it. One is the database guy. I'm the javascript/ui guy. Which is to say, essentially no overlap in code knowledge. Here's the thing. Someone is about to offer me a sweet job with a nearly 30% bump in pay. Though I am perfectly happy with my current job and love the project, the new one would be better and I can't imagine saying no. The big problem is that my project is supposed to go into production starting in a few weeks. I will consider the new guys to have disqualified the new job by being bad people who would ruin my life if they won't cooperate and let me start after deployment. Since they seem like decent, ethical people, I don't expect that to be a problem. The current project will be brutalized by my absence. I take some comfort in the fact that I have emphatically requested an understudy for at least six months. That puts a little of the responsibility on the boss's head, but still, it's going to be a really bad thing. What do others of you do when you are a critical to a project when it's time to move on? Do I owe any obligation to stick around even though something better shows up? I know my spouse would object if I found someone else. Does that apply to work? I do have an understudy now, though he's fresh out of college. He's not going to replace me anytime soon. It's a small shop and the boss is going to be crushed. I am traumatized in anticipation of telling him and feel guilty about the practical consequences. I'm looking for some solace and some strategy about how to deal with this transition. Thank you for listening. =========================Subsequent notes ========================= @ChaosPandion, Chance: No, I can't stay to finish the project. I will insist on a compromise where I finish the current sprint (about a month from now) but there is at least a half year, probably a year of solid, full-time, work still to be done. I wouldn't expect the new employer to hold the job that long."}
{"_id": "215874", "title": "How you return to a code when you don't remember what you were doing?", "text": "Well, I have some problems with procrastination and whatnot, but those get infinitely worse, when I cannot remember what I should be doing. I mean, I know my project, I wrote 100% of the code so far, and I knew more or less what I was doing, but I don't remember exactly what, I don't remember what file I was editing and why. How I get back on track? (because right now my technique of opening the source code and staring at it is not working)"}
{"_id": "26033", "title": "An example of a beginner-level Algorithm, intermediate level Algorithm and a complex/expert level Algorithm?", "text": "I'd like to get a sense for the range of complexity that algorithms fall into. I think it would be interesting and helpful for those, like me, trying to better understand how algorithms are formulated and how to deconstruct them. Can you offer a basic algorithm with explanation, an intermediate algorithm with explanation, and maybe an expert level one (with or without) an explanation?"}
{"_id": "139904", "title": "What can I do to make sure my code gets maintained in a developer light environment?", "text": "I am a contract data analyst, so I bounce between jobs every 3-6 months, which I find to be a good fit for me, but it leads to some problems when it comes to coding. I mostly do statistics (I've asked a similar question on cross validated, but the answers there are not relevant here), but I have also found out that the business world loves excel and loves copying and pasting the same thing over and over again even more. This led me to learn how to write VBA scripts and then VB.NET programs to automate as many of these reports as I can. I am certain my programs are not the most elegant, but I put a good bit of effort into making sure they work under as many cases as I can test, I add in exceptions and try to code so the program can handle changes in the files that it processes, but there is a limit, if you remove a huge portion of the data, there is a good chance my program is going to trip up, which I accept will inevitably happen. Usually a pretty minor change in the code fixes the problem and I do try and comment my code and make it readable under the assumption that some other person will have to read it some day. My problem is that I generally get put on teams of folks with essentially no experience with programming (like VBA would be a huge stretch for anyone I work directly with). I am wondering what I should be doing as the person that wrote the code to do my best to keep it maintained. I have two approaches in mind (outlined next), but would be very happy to get any advice. Solution 1: Find the more tech savvy coworkers and run them through the programs and what basic changes can be made. Honestly automating excel is about as easy as it can get when it comes to programming, so I feel like I could teach someone the basics of maintaining it pretty quick. Solution 2: Get in touch with the IT department and show them what is going on and maybe they will be able to help. The problem here is that the IT department is constantly swamped (as I'm sure many of you know) and I feel like kind of a jerk for dumping more things on them. I do leave my personal email address with places and am willing to answer quick questions via email, but I view the need for more exhaustive maintenance as something of an inevitability and would like to make sure I do my due diligence to make sure it gets done. I imagine some combination of the two approaches outlined there, but is there any kind of heads up I should give IT? I feel like I would be annoyed if I started getting requests to fix a program that I had never seen from some random guy that is no longer there."}
{"_id": "202559", "title": "How to refactor to cleaner version of maintaing states of the widget", "text": "**Backstory** I inherited a bunch of code that I'd like to refactor. It is a UI application written in javascript. **Current state:** We have main application which consist of several UI components. And each component has entry fields, textboxes, menus, etc), like \"ticket\", \"customer information\", etc. Based on input, where the application was called from, who is the user, we enable/disable, hide, show, change titles. Unfortunately, the app grew to the point where it is really hard to scale, add new features. Main the driver (application code) calls set/unset functions of the respective components. So a lot of the stuff look like this Main app unit               function1() {        **call_function2()**        component1.setX(true);        component1.setY(true);        component2.setX(false);     }          call_function2() {             // it may repeat some of the code function1 called      }      and we have a lot of this in the main union. I am cleaning this mess. What is the best way to maintain the state of widgets? Please let me know if you need me to clarify."}
{"_id": "139903", "title": "Can any programmer have 4-5 years of experience on Android in March, 2012?", "text": "Today I was reading a job circular that came into our internal yahoo group. It stated **Android developer needed with 4-5 years of experience**. I am not a developer with that amount of experience. I have started to learn android recently. The point here that caught my eyes is _4-5 years_. I thought android is very new. No one should have 4 years experience. So I google to find the history of android. And found this on ctoedge.com, > The Android SDK was first issued as an \u201cearly look\u201d release in November > 2007. In September 2008, T-Mobile announced the availability of T-Mobile G1, > the first smartphone based on the Android platform. A few days after that, > Google announced the availability of Android SDK Release Candidate 1.0. In > October 2008, Google made the source code of the Android platform available > under Apache\u2019s open source license. Now could you tell me what type of programmers would have 4-5 years of experience in this March, 2012? Do they really exists? To me its something like _Experienced Java programmer needed with 18-20 years of experience_"}
{"_id": "139909", "title": "SOLID vs. static methods", "text": "Here's a problem I frequently run into: Let there be a web shop project that has a Product class. I want to add a feature which allows users to post reviews to a product. So I have a Review class which references a product. Now I need a method that lists all reviews to a product. There's two possibilities: (A)               public class Product {       ...       public Collection<Review> getReviews() {...}     }      (B)               public class Review {       ...       static public Collection<Review> forProduct( Product product ) {...}     }      From looking at the code, I'd choose (A): It's not static and it doesn't need a parameter. However, I sense that (A) violates the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) and the Open-Closed Principle (OCP) whereas (B) doesn't:   * (SRP) When I want to change the way reviews are collected for a product, I have to change the Product class. But there should be only one reason why to change the Product class. And that's certainly not the reviews. If I pack every feature that has something to do with products in Product, it'll soon be clattered.   * (OCP) I have to change the Product class to extend it with this feature. I think this violates the 'Closed for change' part of the principle. Before I got the customer's request for implementing the reviews, I considered Product as finished, and \"closed\" it. What is more important: following the SOLID principles, or having a simpler interface? Or am I doing something wrong here altogether? **Result** Wow, thanks for all of your great answers! It's hard to pick one as official answer. Let me summarize the main arguments from the answers:   * pro (A): OCP is not a law and readability of the code matters as well.   * pro (A): the entity relationship should be navigable. Both classes may know about this relationship.   * pro (A)+(B): do both and delegate in (A) to (B) so Product is less likely to be changed again.   * pro (C): put finder methods into third class (service) where it's not static.   * contra (B): impedes mocking in tests. A few additional things my colleges at work contributed:   * pro (B): our ORM framework can automatically generate the code for (B).   * pro (A): for technical reasons of our ORM framework, it will be necessary to change the \"closed\" entity in some cases, independently from where the finder goes to. So I won't always be able to stick to SOLID, anyway.   * contra (C): to much fuss ;-) **Conclusion** I'm using both (A)+(B) with delegation for my current project. In a service- oriented environment, however, I'll go with (C)."}
{"_id": "37789", "title": "Software development process for a part time University project for 1 developer?", "text": "I will be doing a part time University project soon and the time frame for it is around 8 months with approximately 10-15 hours a week spent working on it, with a review by a tutor each quarter. My question is what software development process would you recommend using when the course requires you to work on your own in order to manage yourself as well as the project? I wanted to use a weekly or bi-weekly iterative approach to my work but a lot of the processes seem tailored to teams of people. I am looking at XP (Extreme Programming) OR Scrum as something that is less than the norm for University work but again Scrum I don't know a lot about yet, and a question I have is; can you say you are doing XP without pair- programming? because my tutor seems to think that I have to stick to all the practices otherwise I can't do it (nevermind if I am working alone). We can have external user input as well but due to the small timescales with part time work it may be more beneficial for myself to be the user as well, which is not what I prefer considering how I can get lost in the design."}
{"_id": "75062", "title": "Developing a Code Library", "text": "So I am in the middle of making (and maintaining) my own code library with quick snippets to make life easier. I'm assuming a lot of other people do this to help. My question is, what sort of things do you store in this so called library Also, Do you use any tools to organise this library?"}
{"_id": "75061", "title": "isn't number localization just unnecessary?", "text": "I've just read this page http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/10/jquery-globalization-plugin- from-microsoft.aspx One of the things they did was to convert the arabic date to the arabic calendar. I'm wondering if it is a good idea at all to do so. Will it actually be annoying/confusing for the user (even if the user is Arabic). Also, my second question is that do we really need to change 33,899.99 to 33.899,99 for some cultures like German? I mean it doesn't hurt to do so since the library already does it for us but wouldn't this actually cause more confusion to the user (even if he is German, etc). I'm sure whatever culture these people come from, if i give you a number 33,899.99 there's no way you'd get that wrong right? (unless my website/application is the first website/application you've ever used in your entire life, which arguably is possible but the probability is just that low) I meant \"universal\" as the format that everyone will see and know what it means. It doesn't have to be some standard written in black-and-white and the like. As long as everyone can read it and know straightaway without confusion what the text is representing, that's universal. To be sure, 1.234,00 is definitely not universal. I mean i'm very sure you can find someone who in their entire lifetime, has been using computers yet have never came across this number format at all. Since most websites/apps had been using 1,234.00 without changes to accommodate localization, I believe that it has been the de-facto (the universal format that everyone will see and know what it means). As for dates, if we write 01/02/03 I'm sure there's no way anyone will know (straightaway, rightaway, without ambiguity) what date it is. But no one can get Jan 2 2003, Feb 1 2003, Feb 3 2001 wrong if we wrote them as such isn't it? Btw this question is targeting localization, don't tell me stuff like \"Hey not everyone reads English alright!\" because that is a matter of internationalization (which is beyond this topic). Let's stick to the discussion on localization."}
{"_id": "147845", "title": "Should I provide a language reference in addition to a formal specification for the programming language I am designing?", "text": "I am designing a programming language, and I would like to provide a complete documentation for it. So far, I have planned to write the following documents:   1. An initial design outline, mostly as a reminder of the design and proposed changes to it, as well as an aid to construct all the other documents when the design phase has been completed.   2. A formal specification of the language's syntax and semantics, both in English and in a suitable formal mathematical notation.   3. A tutorial. I have found that some languages have references, and I have found on Wikipedia that language references and language specifications are not quite the same, references being usually less detailed due to being aimed at users of the language rather than implementors of it. However, I would like to know...   1. What parts of a language specification are usually omitted in a language reference?   2. Is it really useful to provide a language reference when ultimately a good programmer should consult the language specification as their definitive source of information?   3. In case the answer to the preceding question is \"Yes\"... Is it really worth the risk of introducing contradictions between the language specification and the language reference?"}
{"_id": "182057", "title": "Why do we use story points instead of man days when estimating user stories?", "text": "In agile methodologies (e.g. SCRUM), the complexity/effort needed for user stories are measured in Story points. Story points are used to calculate how many user stories a team can take in an iteration. What is the advantage of introducing an abstract concept (story points), where we can just use a concrete measurement, like estimated man-days? We can also calculate velocity, estimate coverage of an iteration, etc. using estimated man-days. In contrast, story points are harder to use (because the concept is abstract), and also harder to explain to stakeholders. What advantage does it offer?"}
{"_id": "147841", "title": "How to handle file access transactions properly?", "text": "I'm looking for good practices or any advice regarding **file access transaction mechanisms**. We will have multiple instances of an application spread over a redundant network (cloud) watching a directory on a 100% available NAS. I'm also looking for any alternative architecture that may be more appropriate.   * We will have thousands of mobile devices accessing the system every minute. The devices produce a binary file (picture for example) that is sent to a RESTful service without transformation. The device must do the job quickly to preserve battery.   * Since RESTful service must take the input as fast as possible, the binary file is currently written directly as a file in a 100% availability NAS.   * If an error occurs (file not being written correctly), the client is notified and can try again. We must build a worker service that will _watch_ the file folder for new files to process them. The worker will convert them to another format then move them to another folder on the NAS. We will use as many instances as possible to handle load. My main concern is about file access. The RESTful service is writing to a temporary file with an extension that the worker service is ignoring (.tmp), then after the last byte is written, the file is renamed. The process is quick, but we can't afford the case where 2 or more worker services access the same file at the same time. We need some transaction mechanism or any other entreprise architecture pattern. **Is there any kind of file system transaction mechanism that scales?**"}
{"_id": "182053", "title": "How to handle the input file provided in programming contests?", "text": "In programming contests like Google CodeJam, Facebook Hacker Cup, each question is provided with an input file for testing one's code for that program. I get struck at this point only. I don't understand whether that input file should be read by my program or it is just for testing the correctness of my program for various test cases given in that input file and I can copy past each test case given in the input file one by one manually and see whether the output provided by my program is right or wrong. It would be very helpful for me if anyone who has been actively participating in such competitive contests can share their views."}
{"_id": "204387", "title": "Best Practice: Should error messages be handled by the API or by the App?", "text": "I am designing an application that interacts with a RESTful API. When returning error messages like `Unable to sign up user` Should the error message be generated by the app? or by the API? I am looking for best practices."}
{"_id": "222777", "title": "Fully Stable, In-Place Unique Algorithm in O(n)", "text": "Is there an algorithm that, given a sorted array, _swaps_ all the _first_ unique elements to the beginning of the array and the duplicates to the end, while remaining stable for _both_ the unique subarray and the duplicate subarray, and that runs in `O(n)` swaps (and preferably one pass)? It should return the length of the unique portion of the array. Contrived example input/result (Using python because it's easy to read):               >>> A = [1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5]   # already sorted     >>> r = Unique(A)     >>> r     5     >>> A     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]     >>> A[:r] # the sorted portion     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]     >>> A[r:] # the duplicates portion     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]      Stability means that even if two or more keys compare equal, the ordering of the keys in the result persists. E.g. if `A[i] == A[j] == A[k] and i < j < k` in the original array, all of those properties hold in the whole array after running the Unique algorithm. (Even though `A[i]` might be in the unique subarray and both `A[j]` & `A[k]` are in the duplicates subarray.) My failed attempt is a one-pass that tracks the current unique element while iterating through the array. The next unique element is swapped with the element after the end of the current unique subarray:               def Unique1(A):         if len(A) <= 1:             return 0         i = 0         for j in range(1, len(A)):             if A[i] < A[j]:                 i += 1                 if i < j:                     A[i], A[j] = A[j], A[i]         return i + 1      It swaps the first unique elements of a sorted array to the beginning of the array, runs in one pass (so is `O(n)`), and is stable for the unique subarray, **but** this does not satisfy the requirements because it scrambles the duplicates subarray:               >>> A = [1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5]     >>> r = Unique1(A)     >>> A[r:]          # duplicates part     [3, 2, 4, 1, 5]    # not sorted      While the changes the algorithm makes to the unique subarray is somewhat obvious, I can't \"see\" what's happening to the duplicates subarray, but I have a feeling that it could be reversed if we knew or stored more information about the duplicates. Note, just re-sorting the duplicates subarray is a non-starter because 1: it's `O(n log n)` not `O(n)` and 2: it breaks the stability. I can also think of another algorithm that swaps newly found unique items all the way down to the next position. While it would satisfy the other conditions, it would have `O(n^2)` swaps. Is such a unique algorithm possible? And if not, why not?"}
{"_id": "138053", "title": "Subscribe/Publish Model in Web-based Application (c#) - Best Practices for Event Handlers", "text": "I was recently exposed to a desktop application that uses an publish/subscribe model to handle commands, events, etc. I can't seem to find any good examples of using this in a web application, so I wonder if I am off base in trying to use this for web based development (on the server side)? I'm using asp.net c#. My main question in regards to the design is: When using a publish/subscribe model, is it better to have generic commands/events that pass no parameters and then have the subscribers look at static context objects that contain the data relevant to the event? Or is it better to create custom arguments for every event that contain data related to the event? The whole concept of a global container seems so convenient but at the same time seems to break encapsulation. Any thoughts or best practices from anyone who has implemented this type of model in a web based application? Even suggestions on this model out of the scope of my question are appreciated."}
{"_id": "138054", "title": "Adding scripting capability to a .NET application", "text": "I already have a working implementation that adds scripting to an application. The application currently generates and compiles scripts from C# snippets (taken from different user provides configuration files) into assemblies using the CodeDOM. As it sounded like a good idea at first I ran into following issues:   1. difficult AppDomain handling and need for Serialization   2. performance issue => frequent script changes trigger a recompilation   3. changes cannot be made in-place in the scripts while running   4. difficult to provide a GUI for debugging (breakpoints), the script writer actually needs a debugger... I \"hacked\" a solution against 1 by loading everything in the main AppDomain. The problem is that nothing can be unloaded... After some time the memory use is huge. For this reason I eventually would consider to switch to an interpreted solution but want to remain near to a C# language because of the existing code-base. There is a bunch of libs around Vsa, S#, Script.NET, ... I need to access objects in my application from the scripts and also run methods in the scripts from my application. Do you also think that switching to an interpreted language the right strategy or should I try to add a debug mode to the existing concept by injecting code like calling a method between each line of the script to allow a step by step execution.... However the AppDomain handling remains a nightmare to handle. It is certainly not the first time someone runs in such a situation. I could not find any FOSS wrapper/helper library to make the CodeDOM handling easier nor GUI elements to provide building blocks for a minimal debugger. Currently I built ma own GUI and step over calls in the scripts and show changes in the application objects (before/after calls) inside the GUI. Please only refer to FOSS source/libs."}
{"_id": "204380", "title": "What is the advantage of using UI binder in GWT?", "text": "Mention the **pros and cons** of UIBinder in _GWT_. I want to develop a big project. Is it flexible to use **UIBinder** for my project?"}
{"_id": "138058", "title": "Which commit to add issue/bug tracking ticket # to", "text": "I have been committing changes in git for a project over the last several months. I would like to start integrating Trac into my workflow. Generally, I have the 'git flow' style of git repository. I maintain a master and develop, and I branch features and bug-fixes from the develop branch. I see from answers in Which commit should close a Github issue when multiple commits are responsible? that I want to link the \"merge commit\" to the ticket. Since I already have several features in the git repository, I'd like to go \"back in time\" to associate them with a ticket that was entered in Trac. At this point, I have two choices:   1. Re-write history. I can use `git rebase --interactive --preserve-merges`. Then add the ticket information to the message.   2. Use `git notes add <rev>` to _add_ a note. **I am looking for opinions on which is the better option.** 1\\. allows me to be more in keeping with defacto-standards, while 2. allows me to keep ticket management separate from the code repository. I have complete control over the repository, Trac server etc. Solo developer, no pushes (other than to a \"backup\", but I can rebuild that from the local)"}
{"_id": "204389", "title": "How to test functions or the code inside $(document).ready() using Jasmine?", "text": "I have multiple functions and a lot of code inside `$(document).ready(function())`. I am using jasmine to test the functions inside the ready function as well as the code inside `ready()` but when the test cases inside describe are executed it is not able to access the code inside the `ready` function.               $(document).ready(function () {         function testMe(){             testVar = true;         }     });      Jasmine test suite               describe(\"test suite\", function(){         beforeEach(function () {             testme = false         });         it(\"Test Alert Box Message For Change Modal\", function() {             expect(testme).toEqual(true);         });     });      Kindly suggest what approach needs to be taken for the above approach."}
{"_id": "36787", "title": "The Underlying Value of Aspect-Oriented Programming", "text": "I recently got into PostSharp, an AOP tool for weaving in code. I've been finding a lot of resistance with other developers over giving up writing code to perform the tasks the weaving was meant to simplify. For instance, I'm finding logging or error-handling code where I have postsharp already doing that. I can understand why its happening, since its hard to remember everything that weaving was setup to do (I'm applying a global attribute definition). With that said, factoring in levels of experience, etc, is AOP beneficial to a project? What is your opinion? Thanks."}
{"_id": "102894", "title": "Can software licensed under GNU General Public License v3 be sold by the original author?", "text": "As I know, softwares licensed under the GNU GPL is totally free and not allowed for sale. However, today I found this program called Minitube and it is sold even though it is licensed under GPLv3. Does the original author has a permission to sell his own software, even if he releases it under the GPLv3?"}
{"_id": "167479", "title": "Can the following Domain Entity contain logic for creating/deleting other entities?", "text": "a) As far as I understand it, in most cases _Domain Model_ **DM** doesn't contain code for creating/deleting _domain entities_ , but instead it is the job of layers ( ie _service layer_ or _UI layer_ ) on top of **DM** to create/delete _domain entities_? b) _Domain entities_ are modelled after _real world entities_. Assuming particular _real world entity_ being abstracted does have the functionality of creating/deleting other _real world entities_ , then I assume the _domain entity_ abstracting this _real world entity_ could also contain logic for creating/deleting other entities?               class RobotDestroyerCreator     {              ...              void heavyThinking()              {                       ...                       if(...)                              unitOfWork.registerDelete(robot);                       ...                            if(...)                       {                              var robotNew = new Robot(...);                               unitOfWork.registerNew(robotNew);                         {                       ...               }     }      Thank you"}
{"_id": "234536", "title": "Team logistics to build a cloud service API from a Matlab prototype", "text": "My objective is to get from an algorithmically sound software prototype to a SaaS API product. To give a similar and illustrative example, suppose that I have prototyped scalable facial recognition software in a high level language like Matlab; this algorithm takes a real world image as input and detects and recognizes, say, celebrity faces. It's accurate and decently optimized, running about ~2 seconds per image on a 2.4 GHz processor. In C, it should run ~0.5 seconds per image. The goal is to get from a Matlab prototype to a cloud based API service that can scale massive amounts of image data. An initial test product should be to handle ~100 calls per second, but in the long term it should be able to handle >10,000 calls per second. This will eventually be combined with a web crawling application to scale all the web's image data. Given the source code of the prototype, how to build, test and deploy this in a scalable way? My background is math and algorithms rather than software and systems engineering."}
{"_id": "102898", "title": "How do I appropriately license my open-source project?", "text": "I have just recently completed my first open source project and while it is mostly a tool I still want to release it as open source considering it is C# so if someone wanted to they could decompile it. Also, I'm not looking to sell it. I was researching licensing but the wording is a bit over my head. Mostly I'm just looking for a license that recognizes me as the creator and does not allow anyone else to put their name on it and \"steal it.\" I'm most likely going to use either google code or sourcefourge to host the project and ideally I could have a donation button. I'm not sure if or which software licenses would prevent that sort of thing? Also, I'm not really sure how licenses and copyrights \"work.\" Do I just choose a license and paste it at the top of every source file? Should I include my name as well? Do I also put the licenses in the project's root directory? How does one obtain a copyright? It seems like most people just stick it on their stuff. Is there an actual process to obtaining one? As for software licenses I've looked at so far, it seems like Apache 2.0 or MIT/BSD is what I'm looking for but I'm not exactly sure. Basically I just don't want anyone to steal my program and put their name on it. Other than that I'm fine with people looking at the source code, modifying it, or taking pieces from it, as long as they credit me."}
{"_id": "167474", "title": "What are some really simple rules to keep a PHP codebase organized?", "text": "I'm new to PHP in a professional context. I want a few macro thumb rules to keep me on the enlightened path. Here are a few I'm proposing to myself:   * no absolute paths in include|require(_once)? statements   * no `..` `dirname(foo)`, or other means of walking up in include|require(_once)? statements   * put libs on the include path, not in subdirectories You can see that all of this is focusing on managing dependencies, because that is the problem I've encountered thus far. What other thumb-rule solutions to macro level problems do you have?"}
{"_id": "167471", "title": "Amazon Kindle - Whispersync implementation?", "text": "For those who are not aware of Kindle's whispersync, here is how it works (from amazon.com): \"...Whispersync synchronizes the bookmarks and furthest page read among devices registered to the same account. Whispersync is on by default to ensure a seamless reading experience for a book read across multiple Kindles.\" Can anyone give some details on how the Whispersync feature is implemented in Kindle and in the Backend of Amazon? I am guessing this implementation involves a very simple hashmap for each user account. Each hashmap maps Books with satellite information about the book. Satellite information contains bookmarks, furthest page read, device on which it was read, etc.. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "199310", "title": "In languages that don't allow underscores in integer constants, is it a good practice to create a constant for 1 billion?", "text": "In languages that don't allow underscores in integer literals, is it a good idea to create a constant for 1 billion? e.g. in C++:               size_t ONE_BILLION = 1000000000;      Certainly, we shouldn't create constants for small numbers like 100. But with 9 zeros, it's arguably easy to leave off a zero or add an extra one in code like this:               tv_sec = timeInNanosec / 1000000000;     tv_nsec = timeInNanosec % 1000000000;"}
{"_id": "14650", "title": "What are some things you have read that inspired and guided you as a programmer?", "text": "For example, being a beginner, I find a lot of inspiration and direction from reading this post by Bryan Woods."}
{"_id": "71526", "title": "Why are websites (even this one) sometimes \"Down for Maintenance\"?", "text": "I have personally never done this. I don't understand why so many sites do, if you do your development on a development server why would you ever need to shut down your production site? I have always wondered about this. What are they doing during this time, what requires doing this?"}
{"_id": "208404", "title": "Deciding how to model customer when it can be both natural and legal person", "text": "Suppose that we are developing some application that requires us to be able to manage customers and that those customers can be both natural and legal person. There are some different ways on which we can deal with it and I'm not sure which of them is the best regarding extensibility, code reuse and so on. The first thing I thought was to construct two classes \"NaturalCustomer\" and \"LegalCustomer\". Then, the shared properties would be moved to a base class \"Customer\" and both NaturalCustomer and LegalCustomer would inherit from it. The second thing I thought was \"consider every customer as a natural person, and consider that a legal person customer is just a natural person that has one or more companies\". In that case I would create a class \"Customer\" and then a class \"CustumerCompany\". If there are other companies in the application that share properties with CustomerCompany I would build a new class Company and inherit from it. In this approach there would be a zero-to- many relationship between Customer and CustomerCompany: a customer can have one or none companies. I'm not really sure how to deal with this kind of problem. I'm just beginning with object oriented analysis and design and I'm still confused. The main problem is that if I select the first approach I wouldn't be really reusing lots of code. For instance, there could be other kinds of natural person in the app like \"Employee\" and it would share lots of properties with NaturalCustomer, and the same for companies, there could be companies like \"Supplier\" and it would share lots of properties with LegalCustomer and still I wouldn't be reusing it - so if I have to make a change on data that should be stored for companies I would have to change everywhere. How do we deal in this kind of situation when multiple inheritance isn't allowed (that is I cannot make LegalCustomer inherit _both_ from Customer and LegalPerson)? Thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "208400", "title": "What to name a new interface that is replacing an existing one?", "text": "We're redesigning our application's plugin interface, so we're using the Adapter pattern with our proof-of-concept design to show that the new interface will function without committing to using it in the application itself. We don't know what to call this new interface. It serves the same purpose as the old one - let's call that one `CAbstractAppPlugin`. Furthermore it will likely be, like its predecessor, an abstract class rather than a pure virtual interface (C++) indicating that we should still use \"CAbstract\" instead of \"I\". Slapping a \"New\" or \"2\" onto the name seems silly, but adopting a very similar name could lead to confusion until the old one is deprecated. So how do you name a thing X that's replacing thing Y?"}
{"_id": "134888", "title": "How to structure an application which reads UPC barcodes", "text": "I have no previous experience on creating a project for a seller which will use barcode reader. I am trying to put together a small project but I cannot figure out how the pieces should glue together. I will create a sample with Motorola Scanner SDK to read barcodes and from that point, I have couple of questions:   * How UPC barcodes work in general? AFAIK, a barcode stores the manufacturer and product info but no price data.   * Should I store price information inside a database which corresponds to barcode data? I would really appreciate if you can guide me here."}
{"_id": "134889", "title": "New to Back End Development where to start?", "text": "I am an student learning web development by my own, I am very interested in back end development where can i start to learn?"}
{"_id": "172979", "title": "Are non Turing-complete languages considered programming languages at all?", "text": "Reading a recent question: Is it actually possible to have a 'useful' programming language that isn't Turing complete?, I've come to wonder whether non Turing-complete programming languages are considered programming languages at all. Since Turing-completeness means a language has to have variables to store values as well as control structures ( for, while )... Is a language that lacks these features considered a programming language ?"}
{"_id": "172974", "title": "Should static parameters in an API be part of each method?", "text": "I am currently creating a library that is a wrapper for an online API. The obvious end goal is to make it as easy for others to use as possible. As such I am trying to determine the best approach when it comes to common parameters for the API. In my current situation there are 3 (consumer key, consumer secret, and and authorization token). They are essentially needed in every API call. My question is should I make these 3 parameters required for each method or is there a better way. I see my current options as being:   1. Place the parameters in each method call              public ApiObject callMethod(String consumerKey, String consumerSecret, String token, ...)      This one seems reasonable, but seems awfully repetitive to me.   2. Create a singleton class that the user must initialize before calling any api methods. This seems wrong, and would essentially limit them to accessing one account at a time via the API (which may be reasonable, I dunno).   3. Make them place them in a properties file in their project. That way I can load the properties that way and store them. This seems similar to the singleton to me, but they would not have to explicitly call something to initialize these values. Is there another option I am not seeing, or a more common practice in this situation that I should be following?"}
{"_id": "106650", "title": "Does C99 make the K&R book outdated? If so what to recomend in its place?", "text": "C99 has been with us for a while now. It introduces a lot of features that are not in K&Rs The C Programming Language. None of them are particularly radical. However, even small features like being able to intermingle declarations and code change how one organizes code. While I still consider the K&R book an invaluable reference, and like its writing style, is there a better book that takes into account the C99 standard? I'd buy a third edition of K&R in a heartbeat, but I don't think that is going to happen."}
{"_id": "172977", "title": "Should I continue teaching old Java input methods alongside the new ones?", "text": "I've been imparting a Java introduction course for several years. Some slides explain how to read from files and keyboard using `BufferedReaders, InputStreams, FileInputStreamReaders` etc. I'm adding slides explaining how to achieve this using newer approaches like `Scanner`. Should I leave out the old `BufferedReaders, InputStreams and FileInputStreamReaders` slides altogether, and teach only the new methods, or should I continue to teach these methods for the sake of completeness ? Will my students benefit from learning how to read from files and keyboard the old way ?"}
{"_id": "134886", "title": "Is it a good habit to use C expressions in C++ code?", "text": "At school we started learning C this year, despite the fact I'm way ahead of class, and I learned Java, C++ and C while the class is at the base of C. Anyhow, I've been documenting myself, reading books, articles, and I've asked my teacher why I should learn C, and she said it was the foundation of C++. When I first started programming I found C++ alot easier, I later on learned C. But In books you can see that C code works in C++ yet it doesn't go vice- versa. My question is pretty straightforward ~ Is it a good habit to use C expressions in C++? Let me give you an example: Should this code               #include <stdio.h>     #include <iostream>          int main() {     int x;     scanf(\"%d\", &x);     cout << \"The number you entered is \" << x << \"And it's double is \" << x*x;     return 0;     }      Be more efficient or better in any way than this:               #include <iostream>          int main() {     int x;     cin >> x;     cout << \"The number you entered is \" << x << \"And it's double is \" << x*x;     return 0;     }      I have already done some easy documentation on this in some dusty old books, and from what I could find, using scanf instead of cout also flushes the stream or something like that, so I'm basically asking if it's better to use scanf and in what contexts. This also applies to file IO as I've always found FIle IO to be easier in C than in C++. This question goes for pretty much every general expression in C applied to C++. It's also notable that I'm using a modern compiler and nevertheless this should not matter as I'm asking if it's a good programming habit to use C expressions in C++ code. There are probably cons and pros of doing this, but I'm only looking for a yes/why, no/why type of answer. Also if there are any details I've left out post a comment."}
{"_id": "188974", "title": "What is the difference between PHP and ASP.NET Web Forms in page size?", "text": "I plan to program web applications for small companies. When I read about ASP.NET Web Forms, I liked its way of building dynamic sites. However, I have heard from a friend that Web Forms could increase the size of the pages because of ViewState output. Will the difference between the size of PHP pages and the generated HTML of ASP.NET pages be dramatic?"}
{"_id": "188970", "title": "main() function prototypes", "text": "As far as I know,               main ()      function has the following prototypes:                   int main();         int main(int argc, char **argv);      Now, C does not support overloading, then how are multiple prototypes of                   main ()      supported?"}
{"_id": "211529", "title": "Should I include test runner module as a dependency in my module?", "text": "My module has no dependency on its own but for running tests you need to install `jasmine-node` module. Should I include that module as a dependency?"}
{"_id": "188978", "title": "Security and code execution", "text": "If I am taking data from a website, for example status updates from Facebook and showing them on my website. What possible damage can be caused if I am not taking into account that the code written as status update would execute on my website? For example, Mr. Simon has putted his status update,               \"<p style=\"color:red;\">I love to code</p>\"      Now, when I display this on my website, it transforms into the text **I love to code** written in red."}
{"_id": "112054", "title": "How to save images into files in a web application and avoid removing them with every build?", "text": "I am building a web application and users will be able to upload pics. And I want to store these images into files instead of storing them into the DB. But if I saved these pics into relative paths to the web application, they will be removed with each build. So how I can handle this and the best practices related to this issue."}
{"_id": "112057", "title": "Open Source Project and Revenue", "text": "I started an open source project in 2010 and the project is gaining some visibility. We are now 2 active committers and we hope to engage more contributors in the future. We received today the second offer to \"partner\" with a company. This time is a hosting company that wants us to offer a hosting plan with a automatic installation of the software and receive a affiliate payout for each (the company is well-known). The question is: **Is there a way we can share the revenue within the project contributors?** Our main goal for now is to have more contributors and make better software, not profitability... PS: We are also in the process to assign the project to the Outercurve Foundation."}
{"_id": "89601", "title": "Unusual languages for numerical analysis", "text": "This question is inspired by these questions (here and here). I do mostly numerical work, and I usually use C++, Fortran, and occasionally Numpy. I'm trying to broaden my horizons, and I'm looking for programming languages that are good for numerical work (have bindings for BLAS/LAPACK; fast, lightweight, multidimensional arrays; etc.) but are a little bit outside the mainstream. Which \"unusual\" languages are good for getting new ideas about numerical programming?"}
{"_id": "230090", "title": "jQuery UI Widget Factory namespace limitations", "text": "As I can read in this tutorial, \"There is a limitation that namespaces be exactly one level deep \u2013 that is, we can't use a namespace like nmk.foo\". What isn't clear to me (and something I was unable to find an explanation for in any documentation) is the _why_ behind this reasoning. Coming from languages like Java and C#, the possibility to further subdivide namespaces seems almost blatantly obvious, yet in the `Widget Factory`, this is limited by design, so reserving namespaces to implement some sort of logical separation in types of widgets is not possible. Can someone provide some insight into this limitation? Is there a technical reason for it?"}
{"_id": "89606", "title": "Working at home for a junior developer", "text": "I just recently got my first development job, and consider myself lucky to be working from home. However, I need advice... What should I be doing in order to make sure I get the most out of my new job, how can I make sure that I succeed, and what are some particular pitfalls I might run across? I have already set aside a distraction free home office, where should I go from here? Note: I have been reading up on some of the more general work from home stuff here but I am interested in what to watch out for as a junior developer."}
{"_id": "241150", "title": "End user query syntax?", "text": "I'm making a command line tool that allows end users to query a statically- schemed database; however, I want users to be able to specify boolean matchers in their query (effectively things like \"get rows where (field1=abcd && field2=efgh) || field3=1234\"). I did Googling a solution, but I couldn't find anything suitable for end users--still, this seems like it would be a very common problem so I suspect there is a standard solution. So:   1. What (if any) standard query \"languages\" are there that might be appropriate for end users?   2. What (if any) de facto standards are there (for example, Unix tools that solve similar problems).   3. Failing the previous two options, can you suggest a syntax that would be simple, concise, and easy to validate?"}
{"_id": "225462", "title": "Do I need any licence to develop web applications in asp.net?", "text": "My goal is to develop web applications for small companies, medical clinics, small supermarkets, etc. Do I or my customers need any license?"}
{"_id": "38189", "title": "How do you bridge the generational gap between managers and developers?", "text": "Typically, managers tend to be older and have more experience than the developers working under them. While young developers are often more knowledgeable about \"newer\" technologies/patterns (like .NET, Rails, SOLID, etc.), managers are more familiar with older technologies (COBOL, ASP). However, the manager often has proven experience in problem solving and providing value to the customer. Furthermore, many of the principles of good programming remain static. This generational gap can produce tension between the manager and the developer. A developer may feel that the manager has no idea what they are talking about and is outdated, while the manager feels the developer is naive and just going along with the current tech fads. How can this generational gap be bridged so that there is a healthy trust and respect between developers and managers even across age differences? How have you dealt with this issue?"}
{"_id": "38188", "title": "How to deal with non-licensed software", "text": "I work for a very large fortune 500 company who is subcontracted to another fortune 500 company on a DoD contract. As you can guess the red tape is tremendous to do anything. We have simply shared a VM that is loaded up with Microsoft dev tools from someone elses MSDN subscription. When I have questioned our MSDN licensing, each time I was always told it is in the works. This has been going on for over a year now. We also have other products that we are using that have a 30 day trial. One developer found an exploit to extend the 30 day trial infinitely, this approach has been encouraged by our management while they get the licensing \"worked\". I have contacted 4 levels of managers on this program. No tangible action in over a year now. What should I do? Report them to Microsoft and the other appropriate software vendors? Contact my companies ethics hotline? STFU and go with the flow? Thanks"}
{"_id": "234965", "title": "As an lone, Agile (PXP/PSP) developer what is the proper structure for a formal project post-mortem?", "text": "**Question** : **As an lone, Agile (PXP/PSP) developer what is the proper structure for a formal project post-mortem?** **Scenario** I'm using a PXP methodology (which is a blend of extreme programming and the personal software process) to work on an undergrad project. The project revolves around computer vision and architecture. Although the project has a lot of potential for future improvement, I need to write a project retrospective for this release. I'm used to working with an SRS (requirements specification) and DSD (design specification document) with a structure like : Introduction   * Purpose   * Scope   * Definitions, acronyms etc. Description   * Product perspective   * system interfaces   * interfaces   * Hardware Interfaces   * Software interfaces... constraints etc. Requirements   * Performance, interfaces etc...   * Attributes for security, portability etc. DSD   * system overview -Design consideration   * Architecture   * detailed system design ... etc. However, agile project as we know revolve more around stories than functional requirements, and firm designs. A recommended non-agile structure for this final report is : Introduction : \\- Literature review : \\- planning : - statement of the methodology used. Design :   * requirements   * design aims Implementation - language choices, coding guidelines etc. Evaluation - evaluation of how good the algorithms are. I've not been able to find an example online of a definite project postmortem structue for a PSP project (even the documentation 1 does not mention how it should be structured)."}
{"_id": "38185", "title": "What practices exist for locale-specific unit testing?", "text": "We recently discovered a locale specific issue in our application and while it was easy to fix (once we figured out what was going on), it got the team I'm on thinking about unit testing practices in this regard. We would like to catch these issues sooner, ideally before they're discovered by a customer, and we want to protect ourselves from reintroducing locale specific bugs in the future, but duplicating every unit test in at least one other culture seems like a lot of overhead. How do you or how would you approach multi-locale unit testing?"}
{"_id": "234967", "title": "Speeds of << >> multiplication and division", "text": "You can use `<<` to multiply and `>>` to divide numbers in python when I time them I find using the binary shift way of doing it is 10x faster than dividing or multiplying the regular way. Why is using `<<` and `>>` a lot faster than `*` and `/`? What are the behind the scene processes going on to make `*` and `/` so slow?"}
{"_id": "234961", "title": "How to document a file format specification", "text": "For a project, I need to work with varying types of files from some old games and related software--configuration files, saves, resource archives, and so on. The bulk of these aren't yet documented, nor do tools exist to work with them, so I must reverse-engineer the formats and build my own libraries to handle them. Although I don't suppose there's great demand for most of it, I intend to publish the results of my efforts. Are there any accepted standards for documenting file formats? Looking around, there are several styles in use: some, like the .ZIP File Format Specification, are very wordy; others, like those on XentaxWiki, are much more terse--I find some of them difficult to read; the one I personally like best is this description of the PlayStation 2 Memory Card File System, which includes both detailed descriptive text and several 'memory maps' with offsets and such--it also most closely matches my use case. It will vary a little for different formats, but it seems there should be some general principles that I should try to follow. Edit: I seem not to have explained very well what I want to do. Let me construct an example. I may have some old piece of software which stores its configuration in a 'binary' file--a series of bitfields, integers, strings, and whatnot all glued together and understood by the program, but not human-readable. I decipher this. I wish to document exactly what is the format of this file, in a human- readable way, as a specification for implementing a library to parse and modify this file. Additionally, I'd like this to be easily understood by other people. There are several ways such a document might be written. The PKZIP example above is very wordy and mostly describes the file format in free text. The PS2 example gives tables of value types, offsets, and sizes, with extensive comments on what they all mean. Many others, like those on XentaxWiki, only list the variable types and sizes, with little or no commentary. I ask whether there is any standard, akin to a coding style guide, which provides guidance on how to write this kind of documentation. If not, is there any well-known excellent example that I should emulate? If not, can anyone at least summarize some useful advice?"}
{"_id": "182314", "title": "Recursion or while loops", "text": "I was reading about some development interview practices, specifically about the technical questions and tests asked at interviews and I've stumbled quite a few times over sayings of the genre \"Ok you solved the problem with a while loop, now can you do it with recursion\", or \"everyone can solve this with a 100 lines while loop, but can they do it in a 5 lines recursive function?\" etc. My question is, is recursion generally better than if/while/for constructs? I've honestly always thought that recursion is not to be preferred, because it's limited to the stack memory which is a lot smaller than the heap, also doing a great number of function/method calls is suboptimal from a performance standpoint, but I may be wrong..."}
{"_id": "243090", "title": "Recursion VS memory allocation", "text": "Which approach is most popular in real-world examples: recursion or iteration? For example, simple tree preorder traversal with recursion:               void preorderTraversal( Node root ){         if( root == null ) return;         root.printValue();         preorderTraversal( root.getLeft() );         preorderTraversal( root.getRight() );     }      and with iteration (using stack):               Push the root node on the stack     While the stack is not empty         Pop a node         Print its value         If right child exists, push the node's right child         If left child exists, push the node's left child      In the first example we have recursive method calls, but in the second - new ancillary data structure. Complexity is similar in both cases - O(n). So, the main question is memory footprint requirement?"}
{"_id": "242889", "title": "Are there advantages for using recursion over iteration - other than sometimes readability and elegance?", "text": "I am about to make two assumptions. Please correct me if they're wrong:   1. There isn't a recursive algorithm without an iterative equivalent.   2. Iteration is always cheaper performance-wise than recursion (at least in general purpose languages such as Java, C++, Python etc.). If it's true that recursion is always more costly than iteration, and that it can always be replaced with an iterative algorithm (in languages that allow it) - than I think that the two remaining reasons to use recursion are: elegance and readability. Some algorithms are expressed more elegantly with recursion. E.g. scanning a binary tree. However apart from that, are there any reasons to use recursion over iteration? Does recursion have advantages over iteration other than sometimes elegance and readability?"}
{"_id": "89841", "title": "Advantage or disadvantages between recursive functions and for-loops", "text": "Whats the difference between the two procedures? When should I be using a recursive function instead of a normal for-loop?"}
{"_id": "225468", "title": "Mapping 40 unique integers to 41 and back", "text": "This was a question proposed by a friend of mine. Define an algorithm that, given 40 unique integers in the range 1-1000, returns 41 unique integers in this range. Given these 41 integers, we must then be able to map them back to our original 40. Does anyone have any insights? I have an idea, but it definitely isn't eloquent. Thanks! EDIT: I think I may need to clarify with an example. One naive solution would be: find the largest number in the set of 40. Increment it by 1 and this is your 41st number. When converting back, just get rid of the largest number. This obviously fails when the largest number in the set is 1000."}
{"_id": "225791", "title": "Which is better: a bunch of getters or 1 method with a selection string parameter?", "text": "Our knowledge domain involves people walking over a pressure-recording plate with their bare feet. We do image recognition which results in objects of the 'Foot' class, if a human foot is recognized in the sensor data. There are several calculations that must be performed on the foot's data. Now, which API would be better:               class Foot : public RecognizedObject  {        MaxPressureFrame getMaxPressureFrame();       FootAxis getFootAxis();       AnatomicalZones getAnatomicalZones();            // + similar getters for other calculations            // ...     }      Or:               class Foot : public RecognizedObject {       virtual CalculationBase getCalculation(QString aName);            // ...     }      Now, there are a lot of pro's and con's I can come up with, but I can't really decide which are the most important. Note, this is an end-user application, not a software library we sell. Any advice? Some pro's for the first approach could be:   * KISS - everything is very concrete. The API, but the implementation as well.   * strongly typed return values.   * inheriting from this class is fool-proof. Nothing can be overridden, only added.   * API is very closed, nothing goes in, nothing can be overridden, so less can go wrong. Some con's:   * The number of getters will grow, as every new calculation we invent gets added to the list   * API is more likely to change, and if breaking changes are introduced, we need a new API version, a Foot2.   * in case of re-use of the class in other projects, we might not need every calculation Some pro's for the second approach:   * more flexible   * the api is less likely to change, (assuming we got the abstraction correct, if not, changing will cost more) Some con's:   * loosely typed. Needs casts on every call.   * the string parameter - I have bad feelings about that (branching on string values...)   * There is no current use case/requirement that mandates the extra flexibility, but there might be in the future.   * the API imposes restrictions: every calculation needs to derive from a base class. Getting a calculation will be forced through this 1 method, and passing extra parameters will be impossible, unless we devise an even more dynamic, super-flexible way of passing parameters which increases complexity even more."}
{"_id": "109987", "title": "Creating public API definition for existing application", "text": "Let's say there's a successful open source application (written in PHP if it matters), which provides its users with multiple ways to extend it (think about something like Drupal or Wordpress, lots of custom plugins, etc.). Now let's say unfortunately there's no formal definition what constitutes the public API for this application, and we want to define such a public API, so that we could a) control application development and refactoring and know we don't screw up the extensions with the next version and b) give extenders some idea what they can safely use and what they better not use. So the question is - how is it best to approach this and what should be there? For example, some specific questions:   1. Should all classes be part of public API or should we mark those are public or mark those that aren't?   2. Should protected methods be part of the API (if somebody creates derived custom class, they will be relying on it) and if so - should we be explicitly marking those that we don't want others to use, or those we're allowing to use?    3. Should public properties be part of the API too? How about protected ones?   4. If we want to make change/refactoring which can't be backwards-compatible (e.g. old API was too buggy or doesn't really fit in the app anymore), how we best approach it?   5. If we want to remove some class/method completely, what should be the process? I imagine we want to make it deprecated first, and then remove in later versions, but for example should we give some warnings when deprecated, but still existing functionality is called? The problem here is we can't warn to aggressively as it may break the application, but if we're not agressive people would ignore the deprecated mark until we remove the old API piece and then they'd get major breakage.  Any other advice is welcome too, and references for good papers/examples/etc. on the topic."}
{"_id": "225798", "title": "Creating bonus incentives, reward structure - For yourself", "text": "Where I work, management knows **zero** whenever it comes to programming & design. I want everyone to understand before reading the question that this is not a technical company, they are retail sales people that like the idea of custom software. I was told that they want to create a incentive structure with bonus opportunities based of what I am working on. The flip side is I need to share goals with them in detail of what I want to have completed within xx amount of time to create this reward system. I would like to set this up the correct way instead of making easily achievable goals / deadlines. As attractive as that sounds, I would like to use this as an opportunity for the company to move in the right direction whenever it comes to this department. They have had a hard time with talent fleeing in the past due to bad management, no incentives, and a poor environment. I am happy to see them trying new things for improvement down the road. We all use github for version control and offsite repositories, one developer works in rails and cakephp, I work in c# and vb. My thoughts were to base the incentives on project completions - which they wanted more detailed specifics. But they do not understand actual code, terms, etc. Example: They would think that more code is always better because it's more, instead of realizing if you lessen the code in a function it may be more efficient and easier to read. What would you do, or have you done in a similar situation?"}
{"_id": "109985", "title": "How to implement a lightweight clustered architecture for a distributed application", "text": "I currently have a distributed application that runs on multiple embedded PCs. The whole application is composed of one master server and several nodes. Each node is an embedded PC that runs Windows 7 Embedded and has a dual core CPU with 2GB of RAM. The application (by definition) only works if the master is up and running, controlling all the nodes. The master server has a SQL Express database where it keeps information about every node it's supposed to control and how they are organized. The nodes have no persisted state. Once the master and the nodes are up and running they will be manipulated and put into a certain state which is only kept in memory at this point. The master can be controlled by a WinForm client UI that connects to it and can read its state and send commands that will change it's state (it's basically a bunch of web services exposed using .NET WCF). The state kept inside the master (in memory) is what matters. The state inside each node can be regenerated if a node restarts for example. If the master is restarted it loses its current state (and the node states as a consequence). This means after a restart of the master server the configuration will be reloaded and a 'fresh' state will be set. Typically a setup of this application consists of one master and 9 nodes (this is a 3x3 setup). At any point a node can fail and the application will continue without it (as long as the master is up). If the node that failed comes back the master detects it and put it back to the desired state. I've been asked to improve the architecture of this application so the master server can run inside one of the nodes. So instead of a 9+1 setup we will have only 9 embedded PCs with one elected to be a master. According to our tests the hardware of the node has enough power to support both the node and the master piece together. However the embedded PC can't be trusted and will fail much more often than a regular server we've used to host the master so far. Because of that I was asked to come up with a redundancy solution. It's my understanding that the proper solution would be to put two or more embedded running in clusters so if the node running the master piece fails then another one will assume it's place. **Now, the question is: how to implement a lightweight cluster that can run in those conditions?** There are two main concerns that must be solved:   1. Data Persistency: not only the configuration must be saved but also the master state. That way when the master node goes down another node can assume as master without resetting the entire state of the application.   2. WCF Clustering: at any point if the master node fails another one must assume and all connected clients (the WinForm client UI) must be able to automatically reconnect to the new re-elected master node. This doesn't have to be really transparent to the user, but the clients must be able to reconnect automatically (doesn't matter if the new IP address will be the same or not). There are several limiting factors to a possible solution:   * There is no way to have a data storage shared between the nodes (each node has it's own HD and a private gigabit network between them)   * Hardware upgrades are out of question   * The solution have to be light enough so it runs on a embedded PC. So installing a cloud server or a clustered DB probably won't be fast enough (if you think MySQL clustered will work to solve the data layer, I'll be interested in hearing your thoughts)   * The solution can't involve buying an expensive piece of software   * The overall platform of this application must be Windows based The best solution I thought so far was to use something like Prevayler to keep the master state persisted and then implement a sync of every command the master received into the other nodes. That will solve the persistence problem across all nodes (maybe something similar can be implemented using memcache, I'm not sure). I have no solution yet to solve the WCF service problem. Because this will involve a huge lot of development and proper testing I thought I should hear from you guys before implementing anything. I think a solution could be put together either by using a framework or some sort of open source software that solves part of the problem. Please feel free to ask anything so I can improve the text of this question to make it more clear."}
{"_id": "103386", "title": "Is this considered repeating code?", "text": "C#/ASP.net:               /// <summary>     /// Is a group in the basket already?     /// </summary>     public static bool isItemInBasket(List<BasketItem> BasketItems, int GroupID)     {         return BasketItems.Where(c => c.GroupID == GroupID).SingleOrDefault() != null;     }     public static bool isItemInBasket(List<BasketItem> BasketItems, int GroupID, DateTime ArtworkDate)     {         return BasketItems.Where(c => c.GroupID == GroupID && c.ArtworkDate == ArtworkDate).SingleOrDefault() != null;     }      Some people I spoke to consider this to be repeating code, whereas I don't consider it to be repeating essentially because the repeating code are all things you would have to pass to a method anyway if you wanted to adopt another technique. I don't think it's possible this can be simplified, or broken up into a more simplified version any further, therefore it's not repeated code. Is this a reasonable thing to say?"}
{"_id": "103385", "title": "How do I handle refactoring that takes longer than one sprint?", "text": "I work with a code base that is over 500K lines of code. It is in serious need of refactoring. There have been refactoring efforts identified that will take longer than the normal two week sprint. These can't be broken up into smaller tasks as I have seen suggested in other answers on this site. The product needs to work at the end of the iteration, and partial refactoring will leave the system in an unusable state as the dependency between items is horrible. So what would be the best way to approach this hurdle? Again I mention, breaking it down into smaller pieces is is not an option, that has already been done. Update: People seem to need an explanation of why this can't be fit into a 2 week sprint. There is more involved in a sprint than just writing code. We have a policy of no code without tests. That policy did not always exist and a large portion of the codebase does not have them. Also some of our integration tests are still manual tests. The issue is not that the refactoring itself is so large. It is with the fact that small changes have an effect on many parts of the system, and we need to ensure that those parts still operate correctly. We can't put off or extend a sprint because we have monthly hotfixes. So this change extending past a sprint cannot stop the other work being added to the hotfix. Refactoring vs Redesign: Just because our development process is not efficent enough to handle this refactoring in a two week cycle does not warrant renaming it to a redesign. I would like to believe that in the future we could accomplish the exact same task within a two week cycle as our process improves. The code in question here has not had to change in a very long time, and is quite stable. Now, as the direction of the company is becoming more adaptable to change, we want this portion of the code base to be as adaptable as the rest. Which requires refactoring it. Based on the answers here, it is becoming apparent that there is missing scaffolding necessary to make this refactoring work in the time frame of normal sprints. Answer: I am going to do the branch and merge approach that Corbin March suggested the first time so we can learn more about these problem areas and how to identify the missing tests. I think moving forward, we should take the approach that Buhb suggested of identifying the areas that are missing tests and implement those first, then do the refactoring. It will allow us to keep to our normal two week sprint cycle, just like many here have been saying should always be the case for refactoring."}
{"_id": "233611", "title": "Is displaying an HTML email a security risk?", "text": "I am writing a simple webmail where I want (obviously) to display the emails. I'm wondering if I should take any precaution while displaying HTML emails: is dumping the email content into a `<div>` a security risk? I'm guessing that yes since the email could contain anything (could it contain Javascript?). But then how should I proceed? How do other webmails do? I'm thinking that stripping dangerous HTML tags would be a bad solution since it's impossible to think of all the cases."}
{"_id": "171408", "title": "Approach for developing software that will need to be ported to multiple mobile platforms in the future", "text": "I am currently doing the preliminary design for a new product my company will be pushing out soon. We will start on Android, but then we will need to quickly develop the IPhone, IPad.... and then the Windows 8 ports of the application. Basically the only code that wouldn't be reusable is the view specific code and the multimedia functions. This will be an SIP client (of course the user of the app will not know this) with several bells and whistles for our own business specific purposes. My initial thought is to develop all of the engine in C and provide a nice API for the C library since JAVA and .NET will allow native invoking, and I should just be able to directly link to the C lib in objective-C. Is there a better approach for vast code reuse which also remains close to the native platform? I.e. I don't want dependencies such as Mono-droid and the like or complicated interpreter/translator schemes. I don't mind re-coding the view(s) for each platform, but I do not want to have multiple versions of the main engine. Also, if I want to have some good abstraction mechanisms (like I would in say, C++) is this possible? I have read that C++ is not allowed for the IPad and Iphone devices. I would love to handle the media decoding in the C library, but I assume that this will be platform dependent so that probably will not be an option either. Any ideas here?"}
{"_id": "196257", "title": "Does following Agile methodology contradict programmers should have quiet working conditions (one of the Joel test)?", "text": "My organization is moving to Agile process of software development. As part of it, the developers and quality engineers will sit together with the cubicle walls scaled down. I am just wondering how does it satisfy one of the Joel's test - **programmers should have quiet working conditions**. Does it not contradict it? If yes, is it taken as granted while adopting Agile ?"}
{"_id": "132952", "title": "Studies on how noise affects productivity of programmers", "text": "Does anyone have any links to studies that show how noise affects the productivity of programmers? Specifically I would like to see how/if productivity rises when noise levels decrease. As pointed in comments, the nature of the programming workflow is such that you go in and out of focus all the time -- so it's likely to be affected by noise differently than other lines of work. The reason I think that this is programmer specific is that I am also interested in mathematics. In a noisy place, if I start thinking about maths, the noise goes away and I find myself lost in a world of pictures. In fact my favourite place to do maths was always The Copper Kettle cafe, a busy tourist place. For programming it's completely different. While programming I'm usually thinking verbally, and any talking whatsoever destroys my train of thought. I'm literally incapable of programming anywhere where there is audible conversation. I've talked to other programmers who don't even notice noise that disables me, and they say that they think mainly in pictures. Which is why I'm wondering whether there are any actual academic studies into whether programming is particularly noise-affected compared to say maths or lawyering."}
{"_id": "171407", "title": "What does it mean that StAX parsers aren't complete or correct?", "text": "I've been browsing the net and found theses two slides on site of XOM (XML object model):   * slide1   * slide2 Where they refer to SAX(push) and StAX(pull) parsers. So I'm wondering, what does it mean that a StAX parser isn't complete or correct in practice?"}
{"_id": "173314", "title": "Efficient way to sort large set of numbers", "text": "I have to sort a set of 100000 integers as a part of a programming Q. The time limit is pretty restrictive, so I have to use the most time-efficient approach possible. My current code -               #include<cstdio>     #include<algorithm>     using namespace std;          int main() {         int n,d[100000],i;         for(i=0;i<n;++i) {                          scanf(\"%d\",&d[i]);         }         sort(d,d+n);         ....     }      Would this approach be more efiicient?               int main() {         int n,d[100000],i;         for(i=0;i<n;++i) {                          scanf(\"%d\",&d[i]);                          sort(d,d+i+1);         }         ....     }      What is the most efficient way to sort a large dataset? Note - Not homework..."}
{"_id": "173312", "title": "How Visual Studio could help to avoid duplicating code?", "text": "I work within a team of developers. Everyone is making their changes without carrying too much if the same thing is already implemented in the codebase. This leads to classes constantly growing and to severe duplication. I want to add line items to class definitions from which a developer could judge what this class has.   * Would it help?   * How to do it in Visual Studio?   * If it wouldn't help, what would be the better alternative to encourage the developers to check if something exists before implementing it?"}
{"_id": "239116", "title": "How to find out if a tile is being covered by a polygon?", "text": "Given a (intersecting) polygon, I'd like find out which tiles are being covered by the polygon. **Example** : ![example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xpNvv.png) **Details** :   * Tiles are square, 1 unit wide/high   * The grid begins in (0,0)   * The corners of the polygon can have floating point coordinates (i.e. 3.433, 5.234)   * In general, an edge of the polygon might be as long as 1000 - 10000 tiles I tried to iterate over all tiles and check whether they are in the polygon, however as I have to iterate over 10000\u00b2 tiles it takes a quite a long time. I'm interested in a solution which allows me to quickly answer \"Is tile (x,y) covered by the polygon?\" without recomputing everything from scratch for each question. Any solution/approach/pseudo-code/hint which leads me to a correct solution will be accepted."}
{"_id": "239110", "title": "How to hide AOP implementation dependency without breaking encapsulation?", "text": "I have the concept of a `SlowLoading` thing:               public interface SlowLoading {       boolean hasLoaded();     }      I also have a component `MyComponent`:               public interface myComponent{       void doSomething();     }      My implementation covers both:               public class MyComponentImpl implements SlowLoading, MyComponent {        // omitted for brevity     }      I have a container (interface omitted for brevity) which returns `MyComponent`:               public class MyContainerImpl implements MyContainer{       @Inject private MyComponent component;            @Override           public MyComponent doSomething(){         // magic happens         return myComponent;       }     }      I also have an AOP component that intercepts the return of slow loading things and implicitly waits for them to load before returning:               @Pointcut(\"execution(SlowLoading+ *(..) )\")       public void returnsSlowLoadingThing() {     }      However, at present the `MyContainer` method is not proxied, since the return value does not implement `SlowLoading`. What is the best way to encapsulate this behaviour? Options I've considered:   * Make `MyComponent` extend `SlowLoading`. This feels like a code smell and breaking of encapsulation - bleeding implementation into the interface. A client does not care if it is slow loading or not.   * Inject `MyComponentImpl` directly into my container and return it explicitly (co-variant returns). Again, this feels like it is breaking encapsulation and the point of programming to interfaces, but feels better than the above, since it is done at a lower level and hidden behind the interface (implementation detail). However it is breaking the encapsulation of the AOP functionality which should be orthogonal and transparent.   * Perform the AOP wait before invoking a method on a `SlowLoading` thing. This seems the most appropriate, but I've not been able to get this working so far."}
{"_id": "239111", "title": "Collaboration between a Graphic Designer and Expression Blend developer?", "text": "I'm new to the programming world and also a little bit confused. My brother would like to work with me on some program. I'm a graphic designer so he asked me for UI and all it's elements. I would really help him as much as it's possible so I have found Expression Blend for Visual Studio. At first it looked great but after few minutes I've started to understand that I totally don't know What to do with my project. Lets assume that I have already made an Interface. Even made in Blend. Now, how can I give it to him so he could implement the UI? How to export and how to give it to him. For example, He works on separate PC and I need to export the project and give it to him for implementation. I know everything about Graphic Design but nothing about coding. I know that he uses Visual Studio :) I have been working in a web company so my workflow was very easy. It was only to send well prepared PSD file. With Blend I don't know what's next after the design part is finished."}
{"_id": "177806", "title": "Decision for Unchecked Exceptions in Scala", "text": "As a java programmer, I have always been critical of Unchecked Exceptions. Mostly programmers use it as an en-route to coding easiness only to create trouble later. Also the programs (though untidy) with checked exceptions are much robust compared to unchecked counterparts. Surprisingly in Scala, there is nothing called Checked Exceptions. All the Java checked and unchecked are unchecked in Scala. What is the motivation behind this decision? For me it opens wide range of problems when using any external code. And if by chance the documentation is poor, it results in KILL."}
{"_id": "15292", "title": "A programmer should concentrate on at least how many languages?", "text": "For me I am C# and Java person. I find these 2 languages are quite similar so its easier for me to crossover each other. I'm not sure if its good idea to pick up other different languages. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "88556", "title": "How to make Classic ASP interesting if you are stuck with it?", "text": "I used to work on a really small outsourcing company (4 programmers and the boss), then when the stress and the frequent long shifts made the situation unbearable I made the switch to a better paid job with a more relaxed schedule that allows me some more free time. The problem, however, is that for the most part, everything is coded in Classic ASP that interfaces with a custom made C++ queueing system that stores everything in AS400 systems. My boss used to be one of the developers that made the initial efforts towards this, and naturally won't ever approve a switch to another languages / technologies despite the increasing difficulty that represents developing today business needs with yesterday tools. I'm pretty much stuck coding with Classic ASP in the foreseeable future, and I'm struggling to find ways to make it at least interesting, as I used to work with .NET and Java previously, and I feel like I'm going backwards... Any advice?"}
{"_id": "133825", "title": "How do I \"hand over the keys\" to a webserver I'm hosting?", "text": "I only have a verbal hosting agreement in place with a customer. Unfortunately the relationship has deteriorated to the point of no return, and I'd like to end the hosting agreement and hand them over the root password. This is a virtual dedicated server I pay for, and then they pay me. They are fine with this, but the problem is I don't trust this client even a little bit. Can I get them to sign something saying they release me from liability to changes made on the server once I give them the password? How is the root password usually given to clients who request it while making sure they don't come back later on and blame you for breaking the server? Does simply the act of giving them the root password infer that you are handing over complete control and thus complete responsibility?"}
{"_id": "133824", "title": "Is it significantly costlier to fix a bug at the end of the project?", "text": "In a blog post by Andrew Hay, the following axiom was posited: > It costs significantly more to fix a bug at the end of the project that it > does to fix the same bug earlier in the project. However, this doesn't seem certain, especially after reading a blog post on Less Wrong, and the data I've seen to back it up is extremely old. Is this still axiom accurate today?"}
{"_id": "124912", "title": "how to ask in the interview if the project is new development or maintenance?", "text": "How do you ask the potential employer in the interview if the project you will be working on is Support and Maintenance or new development? Last time in the interview I asked this question and I was told its a support + new development but it turned out to be support + enhancements. I don't want to make the same mistake again and get into something like this. Most of the time people interviewing will tell its a support + new development but thats not what it turns out to be after accepting the job. So what kind of questions will get the right answer if the project is really a new development or its just support and patching and hope it works kind of a project."}
{"_id": "228211", "title": "How do I pass a variable's value from one class into another? (C++)", "text": "I have a class (\"Class A\", we'll call it) which calculates the value of a private variable (which we can call numLoaves) with a public function. I need to use the value of numLoaves in a public function in Class B. What is the best and most efficient way to pass in this value? I'm new to programming and have been looking for a solution for hours with no luck. Note: The function in Class B is void and must be this way. I can't use global variables or objects, pointers, friend functions or friend classes. The variable must be private. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "191269", "title": "Java serialization - advantages and disadvantages, use or avoid?", "text": "Serialization is used for persistence in Java. It may be okay to persist a few objects using serialization. But, for a large number of objects, ORM, Database etc might be better. It seems that serialization is useful only for small jobs. May be I am wrong. So please tell me what are the advantages of serialization over non-serialization methods ? When should it be used and when should it be avoided ? This question came to my mind after seeing DZone article Is Object Serialization Evil? And these are the lines that gave rise to my question: > If you look at Java and its session objects, pure object serialization is > used. Assuming that an application session is fairly short-lived, meaning at > most a few hours, object serialization is simple, well supported and built > into the Java concept of a session. However, when the data persistence is > over a longer period of time, possibly days or weeks, and you have to worry > about new releases of the application, serialization quickly becomes evil. > As any good Java developer knows, if you plan to serialize an object, even > in a session, you need a real serialization ID (serialVersionUID), not just > a 1L, and you need to implement the Serializable interface. However, most > developers do not know the real rules behind the Java deserialization > process. If your object has changed, more than just adding simple fields to > the object, it is possible that Java cannot deserialize the object correctly > even if the serialization ID has not changed. Suddenly, you cannot retrieve > your data any longer, which is inherently bad. > > Now, may developers reading this may say that they would never write code > that would have this problem. That may be true, but what about a library > that you use or some other developer no longer employed by your company? Can > you guarantee that this problem will never happen? The only way to guarantee > that is to use a different serialization method."}
{"_id": "201549", "title": "Can I create and publish an iPhone app by building it in a second hand Mac?", "text": "I have never published an app to app store. I have a chance to buy an apple mac from someone. Is it possible to use that to publish to app store? What if the first owner was also a developer? If I buy Mac with the only intention of publishing an app should I only go for a new one to get developer license or I can do it in a second hand Mac also?"}
{"_id": "211173", "title": "In-house framework", "text": "Recently I graduated from university/college and immediately landed myself a job. The company has versions of software it gives to it's clients, however the software is largely, or rather entirely, built on an in-house framework. This in-house framework almost abstracts everything from the 'developer' in terms of lean Java code and instead provides helper methods for almost EVERYTHING. For example, creating a UI and interfacing with the back-end is done entirely on top of their framework using their 'API' if you will. My immediate thoughts are now - Do a year of experience and get out otherwise I will be locked in and too afraid to leave in the future. My questions are: Is this common practice in the industry? Will this stagnate my skills? Should I bail?"}
{"_id": "194820", "title": "Writing your own framework or using an existing one?", "text": "I know there are similar questions to this one, and I've read most of them. Most of the answers to these questions are talking about \"cost-effectiveness\" and \"time-saving\" aspects of the frameworks, which are huge reasons in favor of using frameworks. I'm a pretty new .NET developer and I'm trying to learn stuff like WPF, MVVM, layered architecture design, dependency injection, logging, database access, test-driven development, and many more different technologies/techniques. Most of the resources that I find regarding such topics start with an extremely simple example to \"show\" why you should use given technology/technique, which honestly looks quite ok with that simple example, but **_doesn't really make sense for someone who didn't deal with real-world problems these technologies/techniques help with_**. After the simple example that makes me wonder what that specific technology/technique really solves, they usually go on and say \"Hey, you know what, there's a framework for that called ..., let's just use it for the rest of the examples.\" Dependency injection? Just use Ninject. You want to fake stuff? C'mon just use Moq. MVVM? You're kidding me? just use MVVM Light Toolkit! Which is great, really. All these tools, I'm sure, make the life easier for all the developers out there. But my problem is,   1. I'm trying to use TDD, but I have never experienced the problems people experienced while they were developing stuff without TDD, which in the end made them come up with such a technique. I understand the concept behind, theoretically I can see why it was created, but in practice I am not experienced enough to see a code that would benefit from TDD. Because I haven't seen much.   2. I have never had problems developing a huge application that I needed to de-couple stuff and went \"Oh my god! That is ridiculous! I need to find a technique so that I won't have this much trouble next time.\" and found out about \"Dependency Injection\". All the small things that I have developed so far worked fine without the need of dependency injection.   3. I have never written a WPF application that made me feel like things should be easier, presentation layer should be separate, there should be data binding. Hell, I haven't even written one WPF application! So all these things make me think like I am going to use all these tools, without experiencing first-hand any real world situation that cultivated the creation of them. But at the same time, I can't try to write a huge business application in WPF without using MVVM or a good layered-design and experience all the problems people experienced in the past to appreciate all these new technologies/techniques. Because there are people out there developing stuff, getting further ahead, releasing things that work. I'll be left behind because of my obsession with trying to learn everything out there to learn. And besides, **_these things are not easy to learn without first experiencing the problems yourself._** But then, at the same time I have those nightmares that I start working in a new company and people tell me \"You can't code your own MVVM framework? You always need to use Prism? Hahahahaha!\" and they go around pointing and laughing at me in circles. I feel like I'm a lesser programmer. I feel like I don't have what it takes to create a framework on my own. I feel like I am only able to put things together, which are created by other \"better\" people. I would like to ask all the experienced people out there, what strategies have you used throughout your career? Do you always use existing frameworks? Do you create pet projects to learn about why those frameworks exist? To make a long story short, what constitutes the thin line between using a framework and creating your own? And more importantly, how do you close the knowledge gap that automatically comes up if you use a technology/technique without seeing the real-world problems they help with?"}
{"_id": "38165", "title": "How often have you switched stacks in your career? Has it hurt your career progress?", "text": "I started my career writing C#. However after an year I moved to Java and then after 6 months back to C# where I've been more around 3 years now. I strongly believe that although the basic principles do not change and are reapplied learning a new stack (and the supporting frameworks) is always a big investment. How often have you switched stacks in your career? Has it ever hurt your career progress? Do you like working with people who have worked on multiple stacks but have lesser knowledge of the respective stacks or with people who have worked on a single stack and have a deeper understanding of the ins and outs of it?"}
{"_id": "127816", "title": "User friendly scheduling feature", "text": "I'm trying to add a scheduling feature to my web scraping application that will let the user schedule scraping jobs so he can, for instance, perform a job every Monday, or every 2 hours or stuff like that. On one end, I could make a very simple scheduler that let you pick a specific date and time and pick a time interval that would indicate how often to execute the job starting at the specified date and time. So if, for instance, I pick Dec 31 at 2:00 pm and choose 1 day as my interval, the job would run every day at 2:00 pm starting Dec 31. But what if he wants to run the job every Saturday and Sunday, or three times a day on Sundays? On the other end, I could embed some kind of scripting language that will let the user use any logic he wants, but this would be overkill for me and for the user. He _doesn't_ need to run a job every day of the month that is prime number or anything like that. So this is a common sense question, not a programming one. How would you implement this, or, do you know any similar kind of scheduling job in any other kind of application? I looked at the scheduler in my antivirus but this one is extremely plain and simple."}
{"_id": "184475", "title": "Using Subversion as an artifact repository vs a specific artifact management tool", "text": "TL;DR: Why use something like Apache Archiva or Sonatype Nexus as an artifact repository instead of Subversion? The build system I use currently has a lot of binary blobs (images, sound files, compiled binaries, etc), both as input and output to our builds. Our system for managing these is very ad hoc; some are checked into our Subversion repository alongside our code, some are stored elsewhere outside any formal version control. I'm looking at consolidating this, so we have something that's more self- consistent and easy to use, and which separates binary artifacts from code. Google tells me there are a selection of artifact repositories available (Archiva, Nexus, Artifactory, \u2026), but from reading around, I can't see any advantage to using these over Subversion. That will look after the binaries for us \u2013 it already does that for some of our binaries, we'd just want to rearrange the repository layout to separate them from code \u2013 and has the notable advantage that we already have Subversion servers and expertise. So. What's the advantage of using a dedicated artifact management system over using a general version control tool like Subversion?"}
{"_id": "184470", "title": "How to design website workflow?", "text": "I have been thinking about this for really long time without reaching an optimum answer. First of all, I'm a medical doctor who loves programming but never really studied it, except for home learning and lots of years of playing around with code in my free time. Currently I'm trying to build a small project to manage my clinic, to do that I started by created a list of options I want to be able to do. Example:   1. active patient record.   2. authentication with different roles (eg. patient,nurse,dr)   3. appointment schedule (include calendar to schedual vacinations/surgeries etc with a reminder)   4. allow doctor to create his own plugins.   5. dashboard for doctor to view his statistics Then I started with codeigniter/mysql/php/jquery and started coding. My steps during development:-   1. 1st database. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/51QXJ.png) I started by creating all my tables that I will need.   1. Created all my models to handle these tables (1 master model that handle basic read/write/update/verify while also considering my table relations After that I start to code my views and controllers. I first created view HTML, then create controller that will handle this view, and started coding functions to make the view interactions work. Example when coding the appointment view(controller booking.php): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CM6BO.png) created this layout and made table td's clickable, when user click : jquery get (booking/add_patient_form) and pop it up when user save : post to booking/save -it save appointment then reload index() function etc.. and I continued same steps of creating view then its controller -that contain all the logic this view needed - to accomplish whole project. At the end I had all my target functions working fine, but since there was **no PLAN from beginning** and as the whole project was punch of brain storming and debugging with no what so ever plan, after I went so far in this project i find my self stuck with maintainability and flexibility! and unable to link them together. I have feeling that every page on website is completely isolated from other and I can't even recall how each page is loaded and what functions are inside without peeking! Is there anyway I can recover this and get a design out?"}
{"_id": "184473", "title": "How does authentication work with ASP.NET (using Live ID and\\or Windows Authentication)", "text": "I'm primarily a .NET desktop app programmer. Coming into the web world has been difficult. I'm trying to convert one of my Silverlight apps into HTML. But I'm having a hard time figuring out the authentication system. I'm trying to read up on Live ID authentication and Windows Authentication but I'm having a hard time putting it all together in my head. Perhaps you can help? # My App Framework My client application is a TypeScript (javascript) HTML page (or pages). And the server is a WCF Data Services REST API hosted in ASP.NET. The service works with a SQL database. # The Problems (Claims Based) When I look at something like Live ID authentication, it's known as claims- based authentication, right? So if I had this implemented correctly, someone comes to the website, I need to verify that they are logged in. How do I do that from a client-side HTML page? Do I have a recurring timer that is validating the login every 30 seconds or something? Or is that done server- side on each call to the service? I know that if they aren't logged in, I need to send them to the live login page, once they log in, the live page will redirect them to my server with the authorization token in the query string (or something like this). At this point though, what do I do 5 minutes down the line when they make a call to the webservice for data? Is that token sent on every call to the server some how? How do I validate that when they call the service, it is actually them? Do I have to wrap every service call in a ValidateUser() method or something? I have a user ID in the database that I would have to match with their user token somehow. # The Problems (Windows Authentication) The previous problem still exists here. How do I know that every call from the client is still them? Additionally though, I need to understand what do I do from the HTML side to the server side to authenticate them and then continue the authentication. # Conclusion I cannot really find any sort of explanation that conceptually explains all of this information and gives me the big picture of how it all works. I'm really hoping someone here can fill in these gaps and give me a better idea on how to implement the client and server authentication. Thanks! # Update I found a great book that really explains a lot of this. It's entitled \"A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control\". It's part of the patterns & practices series. Thanks to all for your answers and put me on the right track."}
{"_id": "131466", "title": "What advantages does developing applications for smartphones have over developing the same application as a web application?", "text": "Let's take the Facebook application as an example. Why did they develop an application when the users could just access to their page and do the same? For me that represents more maintenance and more cost because for each feature added to the web application that feature will have to be added to the smartphone application as well. So why would I want to develop more than once (for each patform iOS, Android, etc) when I could just have one web application? What benefits do I get? The only one that comes to my mind is GPS feature. **EDIT** : My question is more oriented towards business applications that are going to be used only by some members of the company, it's not about selling the application (private use). So contrary to what some answers say about that by developing as a smartphone application it will benefit from more sells because of the \"smartphone stores\" for me this point is not important because the application is for private use. By developing the application as a web application it means that it can be accessed through smartphone browser and also in a PC (any capable browser), but developing as a native application would limit this to only some kind of smartphone so we would be limiting the use. On the other hand developing it as a web application means that in order to access the application an Internet connection must be available. So keeping this in mind how would you convince your boss to write the application for a given smartphone platform (iOS/Android) vs developing it as a web application?"}
{"_id": "184478", "title": "Tutorial dependency -- how to do I learn to code by myself?", "text": "Here's the thing: I have been learning to code in jQuery (not raw JS) and PHP for about 3 months now. During this time, I have learned a lot of different things, discovered how a web application is built, how web servers work, how databases work, and how I should really learn JavaScript rather than leaning on jQuery. But, I have found myself depending on tutorials and online guides to accomplish a given task; and this really affects my sense of accomplishment, so to speak. I'd never be content with myself, even after building the whole script, because someone had to point it out to me. Because I couldn't get it right by myself. Basically, I have no clue how to \"begin\" building something from scratch unless I see someone else's implementation first. How do I achieve such a mindset where I will be able to recognize which steps do I have to take in order to go about coding an idea, application, function, etc., without any need of tutorials or examining foreign code. How to move on to the next step, so to speak. TL;DR: How to stop depending on tutorials and write code without someone telling you what to do."}
{"_id": "184479", "title": "Retrieving hierarchy of tree-nodes stored in relational database", "text": "I have a hierarchical ADT that I want to store in a database. Nodes have exactly one parent element that is a node as well. Multiple nodes can have the same parent node. My current approach uses an adjacency list with a table structure similar to the following:               +----------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+     | Field          | Type             | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |     +----------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+     | node_id        | int(10) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |     | node_name      | varchar(255)     | NO   |     | NULL    |                |     | parent_node_id | int(10) unsigned | YES  | MUL | NULL    |                |     +----------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ where parent_node_id stores other node_id values and cascades on update and delete. To display a node's hierarchy, I implemented a loop in my script that queries for the respective parent_node_id, which can result in 5 to 10 database queries for a node. This struck me as incredibly inefficient, but I am at a loss as to how to avoid this. From my limited understanding of the inner workings of relational databases, I have deduced that stored procedures is not necessarily the way to go, since the issue seems to be with my approach to how I am storing my ADT.   I looked at discussions on how to store trees in databases, but couldn't find anything that addressed my specific needs, which are:   * The integrity of the node hierarchy is important, which to me rules out storing the complete hierarchy in a column (Path Enumeration.)   * Whenever I retrieve a node, I will also need to query for it's complete hierarchy."}
{"_id": "180544", "title": "How to get rid of my \"Factory\" class' countless else if statements", "text": "This is a web application based on actionscript 3. I have all of my modules enumerated in a class, but I never know which modules actually come from database. Let's say I have 20 modules in my application, but the user only has access to 10 of them. All I get are 10 strings from database (the module names) whenever the user clicks a module this string goes through the twenty else if statements until it matches the enumerated value and then it is displayed on screen. Is there a way to optimize this? The modules are not flex modules per say, they are just lazy instantiated components."}
{"_id": "180546", "title": "algorithm to extract \"possibilities\" from a tree", "text": "From a given tree, subsequent trees have to be generated. Nodes can be marked as \"variant\" in the given tree (the example uses an asterisk to mark the node). All possible combinations between the variants form the resulting trees. From the following tree:               - Product         - Packaging *             - Small box             - Heavy box *                 - Eco                 - Non-eco         - Delivery *             - Standard             - Express      The following 6 trees should be generated:               - Product         - Packaging              - Small box         - Delivery             - Standard          - Product         - Packaging             - Small box         - Delivery             - Express          - Product         - Packaging             - Heavy box                 - Eco         - Delivery             - Standard          - Product         - Packaging             - Heavy box                 - Eco         - Delivery             - Express          - Product         - Packaging             - Heavy box                 - Non-eco         - Delivery             - Standard          - Product         - Packaging             - Heavy box                 - Non-eco         - Delivery             - Express      Is there an elegant algorithm for this (recursive solution)?"}
{"_id": "240834", "title": "How to handle passing multiple dependencies in a module hierarchy", "text": "So I have my application consisting of a number of modules in a module hierarchy. Furthermore let's also assume each module is a class and we have a tree of classes where the classes at the top are using the classes below, to make it more simple. A `class A1` at the very bottom may depend on some input parameters. `class B1` is above `class A1` and is creating and using instances of `class A1`. Therefore it has to pass the dependencies needed by the instances of `class A1` into them. If it can't create these dependencies from some operations, `class B1` now has it's on dependencies but additionally the dependencies of `class A1`. The higher we go the more these dependencies will add up so that the toplevel `class` will need to know all the dependencies unless they can be created at a lower level. This means if `class A1` my program is dependent on the current `temperature`, I have to pass this to the toplevel `class` which then passes it to the next `class` and so on until it arrives at the very bottom in `class A1`. If I do that, I make the state explicit but it also means that I have methods or classes that take many parameters. **Variables** What if the `temperature` is may change while the application is running - is there a way to avoid passing it all the way down the class tree without giving away explicit state? How would you guys handle this? **Constants** What if the `temperature` is a constant that will never change while the program is running? Does this give us more options to avoid passing it always as an argument? I could see someone using a global configuration (singleton) but it will make it harder to test right? I could also pass not the `temperature` itself but a configuration object. This would mean `class B1` does not receive for example a `temperature` and a `airpressure` parameter but gets a configuration object passes it to `class B1` and `class B2` where `class B1` only needs the `airpressure` and `class B2` only needs the `temperature`. Is that a good approach? What are the pros/cons?"}
{"_id": "240836", "title": "global try-catch in presentation layer", "text": "I have a 3-layered app structured as follows.   * Presentation Layer (ASP.NET MVC project)   * Business Logic Layer (Services for controllers in PL)   * Data Access Layer (Repositories) Each Controller in PL interacts with its service in BLL, which in turn has access to Repositories in DAL. Is it a good practice to do a \"global\" try-catch in the PL? That way if exception is thrown in DAL, for example, I can display the error message to the user. Or is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "154703", "title": "When would I use pseudocode instead of flowchart?", "text": "I'm a student working with various techniques of programming, and I've come across pseudocode and flowchart. I know that these are both used in order to think through the problem before actually programming, but I have a few questions with this.   1. When would I use pseudocode to plan out and when would I use flowcharts? Or is it better to do both before actually programming. Particularly for a small arcade sort of game in JAVA since that is my next project.    2. I've noticed that pseudocode is very similar to the actual code rather than flowcharts. Would this make pseudocoding better because you essentially copy/paste the pseudocode into your program (of course, you have to change it to fit the language. I understand that part).   3. Is it practical to use both of these while programming? Particularly the same game mentioned earlier. Thanks."}
{"_id": "159554", "title": "Dependency injection ; good practices to reduce boilerplate code", "text": "I have a simple question, and I'm not even sure it has an answer but let's try. I'm coding in C++, and using dependancy injection to avoid global state. This works quite well, and I don't run in unexpected/undefined behaviours very often. However I realise that, as my project grows I'm writing a lot of code which I consider boilerplate. Worse : the fact there is more boilerplate code, than actual code makes it sometimes hard to understand. Nothing beats a good example so let's go : I have a class called TimeFactory which creates Time objects. _For more details (not sure it's relevant) : Time objects are quite complex because the Time can have different formats, and conversion between them is neither linear, nor straightforward. Each \"Time\" contains a Synchronizer to handle conversions, and to make sure they have the same, properly initialized, synchronizer, I use a TimeFactory. The TimeFactory has only one instance and is application wide, so it would qualify for singleton but, because it's mutable, I don't want to make it a singleton_ In my app, a lot of classes need to create Time objects. Sometimes those classes are deeply nested. Let's say I have a class A which contains instances of class B, and so on up to class D. Class D need to create Time objects. In my naive implementation, I pass the TimeFactory to the constructor of class A, which passes it to the constructor of class B and so on until class D. Now, imagine I have a couple of classes like TimeFactory and a couple of class hierarchies like the one above : I loose all the flexibility and readability I'm suppose to get using dependancy injection . I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a major design flaw in my app ... Or is this a necessary evil of using dependancy injection ? What do you think ?"}
{"_id": "154707", "title": "How to show or direct a business analyst to do data modelling?", "text": "Our business analysts pushed hard to collect data through a spreadsheet. I am the programmer responsible for importing that data. Usually when they push hard for something like this, I never know how well it will work out until a few weeks later when I have time assigned to work on the task of programming the import of the data. I have tried to do as much as possible along the way, named ranges, data validations, etc. But I usually don't have time to take a detailed look at all the data and compare to the destination in the database to determine how well it matches up. A lot of times there will be maybe a little table of items that somehow I have to relate to something else in the database, but there are not natural or business keys present that would allow me to do so. Make the best of this, trying to write something that can compare strings and make a best guess at it and then go through the effort of creating interfaces for a user to match the imported data to the destination. I feel like if the business analyst was actually creating a data model, they would be forced to think about these relationships, and have an appreciation for the need of natural or business keys to be part of the spreadsheet for the purposes of smoothly importing the data. The closest they come to business analysis is a big flat list of fields, and that would be fine if it were like any other data dictionary and include data types+relationships, but it isn't. They are just a bunch of names. No indication of what type of data they might hold, and it is up to me to guess. When I have pushed for more detail, they say that it is just busy work. How can I explain the importance of data modelling? How can I tell them what it is and how to do it? It feels impossible, because they don't have an appreciation for its importance. They do however, usually have an interest in helping out in whatever way they can, it's just this in particular has never gotten a motivated response."}
{"_id": "180549", "title": "sqrt c# vs sqrt c++", "text": "An idea why the c# version of sqrt (System.Math.Sqrt) is ~10 times slower than c++ version ? Futhermore, C# version seems to have one extra digit of precision. I have run my test under MSVC2012. I have used double and call System.Math.Sqrt once before doing the bench in order to force Jit"}
{"_id": "69407", "title": "Is there an accepted term for a DSL implemented in a \"standard\" programming language?", "text": "The Wikipedia article for domain-specific languages seems only to refer to actual _languages_. However, I've heard the term \"DSL\" used to refer to unique-looking coding paradigms encouraged by libraries in \"standard\" languages. From Ruby on Rails, for example (from here):               create_table :posts do |t|       t.string :name       t.string :title       t.text :content            t.timestamps     end      That is Ruby code. It's not it's own language, but it's a unique coding style encouraged by a library in order to make coding in a specific domain more readable. Is there a separate term for this?"}
{"_id": "218942", "title": "Interface Dependencies or Abstract Classes", "text": "I have a decision to make and I am wondering what would be the better solution. I am refactoring an older application and intend to really get into the nuts and bolts of it. There are 8 report types currently and one of the modifications are to allow different reports to be \"saved\" in different ways. My two thoughts on it were   1. Have an Abstract Class with an abstract save method, then each report type can define its own way of doing things. Possibly have other abstract classes inheriting from that one, each implementing a virtual `Save()` method. Then the report classes can inherit from the one with the relevant save mechanism.   2. Have a report interface, which has a method signature like               void Save(ISaveMechanism saveMechanism);      Then have an interface with a `Save()` method, then each report type can use `saveMechanism.Save();` and just use the concrete implementation required. Would either solution cause more issues/drawbacks than the other? This project doesn't currently have any associated unit tests but if given time, it would be good to add some later."}
{"_id": "158853", "title": "Coincidence or rule?", "text": "I was reading about Assemblies (modules, which Microsoft CLR works with). The Assembly contains so called Manifest, which by definition describes a set of files in the Assembly. I know that Android applications also contain a file called Manifest, which also describes a set of files contained in the application. Is this simply a coincidence? Or are there some commonly accepted rules in software development to name \"special\" files?"}
{"_id": "46268", "title": "Would knowing Python help with creating iPhone applications?", "text": "Here is what the apple site says: > With Snow Leopard, Mac OS X makes it easy to use scripting languages as full > application development tools. Snow Leopard ships with support for the > RubyCocoa Bridge and the PyObjC bridge. These two bridges give developers > access not only to system APIs, but to Cocoa frameworks such as AppKit and > Core Data, enabling you to build fully native Mac OS X applications in Ruby > or Python. The RubyCocoa and PyObjC bridges allow you to freely mix code > written in Objective-C with code written in the scripting language. You can > quickly build prototypes and then optimise by implementing performance- > critical pieces in Objective-C. How could Python help in this case?"}
{"_id": "157880", "title": "How far should I expose this status enum?", "text": "I wrote a little app to manage an arbitrary series of tasks (e.g., call a SQL sproc and capture out-vars, run another app, run an SSIS package) with dependencies between tasks. Each task has a status (waiting to start, failed and waiting to retry, failed and abandoned, succeeded, etc.). Internally, each `Task` object has a field of the `TaskStatus` enum type. There's a `TaskManager` object which starts tasks and monitors their successes and failures, and a `Dashboard` WinForm which displays progress. Should I expose each `Task`'s status as an enum throughout the app, or only to `TaskManager`, or always expose only the string value? My approach has been to expose the status as an enum, but this means that not only `TaskManager` but also `Dashboard` has a dependency on the possible values for `TaskStatus`. I almost posted this question on code review, but on balance I think it fits better here, sense it's mostly a matter of principle. `Dashboard` only interacts with `Task.Status` in a two places. First, its value is displayed in a `DataGridView` which summarizes all tasks, and this really should use a text value instead, if only to allow for prettier values. Second, status values are compared when the Status column is sorted, and obviously this will work either way. `TaskManager` is the iffy part. For example, a `TaskManager` has props `NumTasksRunning`, `NumTasksComplete`, and `NumTasksWaiting`. Originally, with `Task`s exposing their statuses directly, I put this logic in `TaskManager`:               public int  NumTasksRunning   { get { return _tasks.Count(t => t.IsEnabled && (t.Status == TaskStatus.Running || t.Status == TaskStatus.Aborting || t.Status == TaskStatus.FailedAwaitingRetry)); } }     public int  NumTasksComplete  { get { return _tasks.Count(t => t.IsEnabled && (t.Status == TaskStatus.Succeeded || t.Status == TaskStatus.FailedAbandoned)); } }     public int  NumTasksWaiting   { get { return _tasks.Count(t => t.IsEnabled && (t.Status == TaskStatus.Waiting)); } }      I could move this logic to properties in `Task`, protecting `TaskManager` from needing to know about the enum:               public bool  IsRunning   { get { return _status == TaskStatus.Running || _status == TaskStatus.Aborting || _status == TaskStatus.FailedAwaitingRetry; } }     public bool  IsComplete  { get { return _status == TaskStatus.Succeeded || _status == TaskStatus.FailedAbandoned; } }     public bool  IsWaiting   { get { return _status == TaskStatus.Waiting; } }      However, there are other places where the code is much simpler if `TaskManager` can see tasks' statuses directly:               public void  Abort(Exception ex)         {         State = TaskManagerState.Aborting;              foreach (Task task in _tasks)             if (task.Status == TaskStatus.Running && task.CanAbort)                 task.Abort(ex);         }      Of course I could add a new property to `Task`, maybe called `CanAbortNow` (`CanAbort` means the task can be aborted in principle, separate), but this is just one of several touch points. If I end up with an \"IsX\" property for every possible value of `TaskStatus`, have I really made the code any easier to maintain? This app is for my personal use, so the choice really only matters in that I'd like to know the \"right\" way - if there is any consensus."}
{"_id": "79146", "title": "In my API, how can I make knowing implementation details unnecessary?", "text": "Is it feasible that we have a layer of API simply for the reason so that people in the team don't have to understand the actual implementation of the individual components each of us are working on? I had this thought because I started to find that some times when working a project with a team of people (I am new to working in a group), it is kind of difficult to know where to start from. We want to split a huge application into parts so that each of us can concentrate on our own part while at the end of the day, we still want these parts to all work together without having every member to know thoroughly about the actual implementation of every parts. But an API to me, usually serves as an interface for \"external\" developers to extend on or build new things from our work without having to go directly into the core part. Since we all working in a team, having an API for each components just for us to work among ourselves seems a little overkill and funny. So what is the usual practise when it comes to situations like this? Although I am using Java in my case, I think a correct practise for such situations work for projects of all languages, right?"}
{"_id": "77036", "title": "Is it worth reading the language specification?", "text": "I'm wondering if it is worth reading language specifications/standard documents (e.g. The Java Language Specification) if you aren't going to write a compiler/interpreter for the language or something similar? I understand that reading such a book shouldn't be anyone's first exposure to the language, but it could be a great way to learn the finer details of it. Have you ever bothered, and should others?"}
{"_id": "249680", "title": "Refactoring a Single Rails Model with large methods & long join queries trying to do everything", "text": "I have a **working** Ruby on Rails Model that I suspect is **inefficient** , **hard to maintain** , and **full of unnecessary SQL join queries**. I want to **optimize** and **refactor** this Model (Quiz.rb) to comply with Rails best practices, but I'm not sure how I should do it. The Rails app is a game that has `Missions` with many `Stages`. `User`s complete `Stage`s by answering `Questions` that have correct or incorrect `Answers`. When a `User` tries to complete a stage by answering questions, the `User` gets a **`Quiz`** entry with many `Attempt`s. Each `Attempt` records an `Answer` submitted for that `Question` within the `Stage.` A user completes a stage or mission by getting every `Attempt` correct, and their progress is tracked by adding a new entry to the `UserMission` & `UserStage` join tables. All of these features work, but unfortunately the `Quiz.rb` Model has been twisted to handle almost all of it exclusively. The callbacks began at 'Quiz.rb', and because I wasn't sure how to leave the `Quiz` Model during a multi-model update, I resorted to using _Rails Console_ to have the `@quiz` instance variable via `self.some_method` do _all_ the heavy lifting to _retrieve every data value_ for the game's business logic; resulting in large extended join queries that \"dance\" all around the Database schema. ## The `Quiz.rb` Model that Smells:               class Quiz < ActiveRecord::Base       belongs_to :user       has_many :attempts, dependent: :destroy            before_save :check_answer       before_save :update_user_mission_and_stage            accepts_nested_attributes_for :attempts, :reject_if => lambda { |a| a[:answer_id].blank? }, :allow_destroy => true            #Checks every answer within each quiz, adding +1 for each correct answer        #within a stage quiz, and -1 for each incorrect answer            def check_answer         stage_score = 0         self.attempts.each do |attempt|           if attempt.answer.correct? == true             stage_score += 1           elsif attempt.answer.correct == false             stage_score - 1           end         end         stage_score       end            def winner        return true       end            def update_user_mission_and_stage         #######         #Step 1: Checks if UserMission exists, finds or creates one.         #if no UserMission for the current mission exists, creates a new UserMission           if self.user_has_mission? == false             @user_mission = UserMission.new(user_id: self.user.id,                                mission_id: self.current_stage.mission_id,                               available: true)             @user_mission.save           else             @user_mission = self.find_user_mission           end              #######         #Step 2: Checks if current UserStage exists, stops if true to prevent duplicate entry           if self.user_has_stage?             @user_mission.save             return true           else              #######         ##Step 3: if step 2 returns false:          ##Initiates UserStage creation instructions           #checks for winner (winner actions need to be defined) if they complete last stage of last mission for a given orientation             if self.passed? && self.is_last_stage? && self.is_last_mission?               create_user_stage_and_update_user_mission               self.winner                #NOTE: The rest are the same, but specify conditions that are available to add badges or other actions upon those conditions occurring:           ##if user completes first stage of a mission             elsif self.passed? && self.is_first_stage? && self.is_first_mission?               create_user_stage_and_update_user_mission                    #creates user badge for finishing first stage of first mission               self.user.add_badge(5)               self.user.activity_logs.create(description: \"granted first-stage badge\", type_event: \"badge\", value: \"first-stage\")                #If user completes last stage of a given mission, creates a new UserMission             elsif self.passed? && self.is_last_stage? && self.is_first_mission?               create_user_stage_and_update_user_mission                    #creates user badge for finishing first mission               self.user.add_badge(6)               self.user.activity_logs.create(description: \"granted first-mission badge\", type_event: \"badge\", value: \"first-mission\")                  elsif self.passed?               create_user_stage_and_update_user_mission                  else self.passed? == false               return true             end           end       end            #Creates a new UserStage record in the database for a successful Quiz question passing       def create_user_stage_and_update_user_mission         @nu_stage = @user_mission.user_stages.new(user_id: self.user.id,                                                    stage_id: self.current_stage.id)         @nu_stage.save         @user_mission.save              self.user.add_points(50)       end            #Boolean that defines passing a stage as answering every question in that stage correct       def passed?         self.check_answer >= self.number_of_questions       end                 #Returns the number of questions asked for that stage's quiz       def number_of_questions         self.attempts.first.answer.question.stage.questions.count       end            #Returns the current_stage for the Quiz, routing through 1st attempt in that Quiz       def current_stage         self.attempts.first.answer.question.stage       end            #Gives back the position of the stage relative to its mission.       def stage_position         self.attempts.first.answer.question.stage.position       end            #will find the user_mission for the current user and stage if it exists       def find_user_mission         self.user.user_missions.find_by_mission_id(self.current_stage.mission_id)       end            #Returns true if quiz was for the last stage within that mission       #helpful for triggering actions related to a user completing a mission       def is_last_stage?         self.stage_position == self.current_stage.mission.stages.last.position       end            #Returns true if quiz was for the first stage within that mission       #helpful for triggering actions related to a user completing a mission       def is_first_stage?         self.stage_position == self.current_stage.mission.stages_ordered.first.position       end            #Returns true if current user has a UserMission for the current stage       def user_has_mission?         self.user.missions.ids.include?(self.current_stage.mission.id)       end            #Returns true if current user has a UserStage for the current stage       def user_has_stage?         self.user.stages.include?(self.current_stage)       end            #Returns true if current user is on the last mission based on position within a given orientation       def is_first_mission?          self.user.missions.first.orientation.missions.by_position.first.position == self.current_stage.mission.position       end                 #Returns true if current user is on the first stage & mission of a given orientation       def is_last_mission?          self.user.missions.first.orientation.missions.by_position.last.position == self.current_stage.mission.position       end          end      ## My Question Currently my Rails server takes roughly 500ms to 1 sec to process single `@quiz.save` action. I am confident that the slowness here is due to sloppy code, not bad Database ERD design. What _does_ a better solution look like? And specifically:   1. Should I use _join_ queries to retrieve values like I did here, or is it better to instantiate new objects within the model instead? Or am I missing a better solution?   2. How should **`update_user_mission_and_stage`** be refactored to follow best practices? * * * ## Relevant Code for Reference: **`quizzes_controller.rb` w/ Controller Route Initiating Callback:**                 class QuizzesController < ApplicationController         before_action :find_stage_and_mission         before_action :find_orientation         before_action :find_question                 def show       end            def create         @user = current_user         @quiz = current_user.quizzes.new(quiz_params)         if @quiz.save           if @quiz.passed?              if @mission.next_mission.nil? && @stage.next_stage.nil?                redirect_to root_path, notice: \"Congratulations, you have finished the last mission!\"              elsif @stage.next_stage.nil?                redirect_to [@mission.next_mission, @mission.first_stage], notice: \"Correct! Time for Mission #{@mission.next_mission.position}\", info: \"Starting next mission\"              else                redirect_to [@mission, @stage.next_stage], notice: \"Answer Correct! You passed the stage!\"              end           else            redirect_to [@mission, @stage], alert: \"You didn't get every question right, please try again.\"           end              else           redirect_to [@mission, @stage], alert: \"Sorry.  We were unable to save your answer.  Please contact the admministrator.\"         end         @questions = @stage.questions.all            end            private                 def find_stage_and_mission         @stage = Stage.find(params[:stage_id])         @mission = @stage.mission       end            def find_question         @question = @stage.questions.find_by_id params[:id]       end            def quiz_params         params.require(:quiz).permit(:user_id, :attempt_id, {attempts_attributes: [:id, :quiz_id, :answer_id]})             end            def find_orientation       @orientation = @mission.orientation       @missions = @orientation.missions.by_position       end          end      **Overview of Relevant ERD Database Relationships:** **Mission -> Stage -> Question -> Answer ->** Attempt **< \\- Quiz <\\- User** **Mission ->** UserMission **< \\- User** **Stage ->** UserStage **< \\- User** * * * **Other Models:** **`Mission`.rb**               class Mission < ActiveRecord::Base       belongs_to :orientation                 has_many :stages            has_many :user_missions, dependent: :destroy       has_many :users, through: :user_missions            #SCOPES       scope :by_position, -> {order(position: :asc)}            def stages_ordered         stages.order(:position)       end                 def next_mission         self.orientation.missions.find_by_position(self.position.next)       end            def first_stage         next_mission.stages_ordered.first       end          end      **`Stage`.rb:**               class Stage < ActiveRecord::Base       belongs_to :mission            has_many :questions, dependent: :destroy            has_many :user_stages, dependent: :destroy       has_many :users, through: :user_stages                 accepts_nested_attributes_for :questions, reject_if: :all_blank, allow_destroy: true            def next_stage         self.mission.stages.find_by_position(self.position.next)       end     end      **`Question`.rb**                   class Question < ActiveRecord::Base           belongs_to :stage           has_many :answers, dependent: :destroy                accepts_nested_attributes_for :answers, :reject_if => lambda { |a| a[:body].blank? }, :allow_destroy => true         end      **`Answer`.rb:**               class Answer < ActiveRecord::Base       belongs_to :question            has_many :attempts, dependent: :destroy     end      **`Attempt`.rb**:               class Attempt < ActiveRecord::Base       belongs_to :answer       belongs_to :quiz     end      **`User`.rb:**               class User < ActiveRecord::Base                 belongs_to :school       has_many :activity_logs            has_many :user_missions, dependent: :destroy       has_many :missions, through: :user_missions            has_many :user_stages, dependent: :destroy       has_many :stages, through: :user_stages            has_many :orientations, through: :school            has_many :quizzes, dependent: :destroy       has_many :attempts, through: :quizzes                      def latest_stage_position         self.user_missions.last.user_stages.last.stage.position       end          end      **`UserMission`.rb**               class UserMission < ActiveRecord::Base            belongs_to :user       belongs_to :mission            has_many :user_stages, dependent: :destroy          end      **`UserStage`.rb**               class UserStage < ActiveRecord::Base            belongs_to :user       belongs_to :stage       belongs_to :user_mission     end"}
{"_id": "159096", "title": "Return magic value, throw exception or return false on failure?", "text": "I sometimes end up having to write a method or property _for a class library_ for which it is not exceptional to have no real answer, but a failure. Something cannot be determined, is not available, not found, not currently possible or there is no more data available. I think there are three possible solutions for such a relatively _non- exceptional_ situation to indicate failure in C# 4:   * return a magic value that has no meaning otherwise (such as `null` and `-1`);   * throw an exception (e.g. `KeyNotFoundException`);   * return `false` and provide the actual return value in an `out` parameter, (such as `Dictionary<,>.TryGetValue`). So the questions are: _in which non-exceptional situation should I throw an exception?_ And if I should not throw: _when is returning a magic value perferred above implementing a`Try*` method with an `out` parameter_? (To me the `out` parameter seems dirty, and it is more work to use it properly.) I'm looking for factual answers, such as answers involving design guidelines (I don't know any about `Try*` methods), usability (as I ask this for a class library), consistency with the BCL, and readability. * * * In the .NET Framework Base Class Library, all three methods are used:   * return a magic value that has no meaning otherwise:      * `Collection<T>.IndexOf` returns -1,     * `StreamReader.Read` returns -1,     * `Math.Sqrt` returns NaN,     * `Hashtable.Item` returns null;   * throw an exception:      * `Dictionary<,>.Item` throws KeyNotFoundException,     * `Double.Parse` throws FormatException; or   * return `false` and provide the actual return value in an `out` parameter:      * `Dictionary<,>.TryGetValue`,     * `Double.TryParse`. Note that as `Hashtable` was created in the time when there were no generics in C#, it uses `object` and can therefore return `null` as a magic value. But with generics, exceptions are used in `Dictionary<,>`, and initially it didn't have `TryGetValue`. Apparently insights change. Obviously, the `Item`-`TryGetValue` and `Parse`-`TryParse` duality is there for a reason, so I assume that throwing exceptions for non-exceptional failures is in C# 4 _not done_. However, the `Try*` methods didn't always exist, even when `Dictionary<,>.Item` existed."}
{"_id": "201142", "title": "What is good way to maintain library project without redundancy?", "text": "I am an Android developer, while I am developing a new project I often find I need to import a library project, so in every new project I need to to copy my library project and then I can add. Is there any better way to have single copy of my library project which I can then import into every one of my other projects without copying the same (library) project over and over again? I am using BitBucket.org to host my code."}
{"_id": "201140", "title": "What document should describe usage of a third party library in a project?", "text": "A customer of my employer has recently requested new features for some legacy code, and since the authors of the program are no longer here, I've been assigned to implement the new features. I've been provided with some high-level documents that are mostly from early stages of the project: the project definition, black-box testing procedures, research analysis of the initial phase of the project, and so on - nothing at a technical level. The code makes extensive use of a third party library (Lemur Indri) for indexing and retrieval of indexed materials, but there's no documentation of how we use this library, or why it was chosen. I've spent a lot of time just learning about the library itself and how we use it; I feel like this is wasted time. During a meeting with my supervisor I mentioned that it would have been nice if the developers of our system had written some documentation about the library and how we use it. I told him that it would have saved a lot of time for me, but I couldn't convince him that this type of thing is essential. I think writing such documentation helps future developers to get a grip on the system and perform modification faster. If there should be such document, what would it be called, or should it be included in one of the design documents?"}
{"_id": "201141", "title": "Type of license to use that forces to keep a reference to the authors", "text": "I have a small open source library that I've written.   I want people to use it while forcing them to keep the authors attribution (a 2 liner in each file) when redistributing it or using it in their project. Would the MIT license work? or what type of license should I use"}
{"_id": "43454", "title": "how do we clear new programming concept", "text": "In IT world, new latest technologies are generated daily. Every time, every programmer need to learn something & then clear it conceptually to implement. All new technologies are built on some basic concepts. But, these technologies have their own area of development & a developer is supposed to grasp it from very basic. This seems like starting from very beginning to reach till current. What is the best & fast way to learn and grasp a new developed technology ?"}
{"_id": "4754", "title": "Should I have a blog to be a better programmer?", "text": "I read a few questions about how you can benefit from reading blogs, but I wonder what is really the impact of writing one. I had mine, but I neglected it (not having the time, not having fun with it (and I really try to avoid things that are not fun)) and now it's dead. Should I try harder on it? Or I can keep developing (pun) my abilities without having to maintain a blog?"}
{"_id": "170464", "title": "C++11 support for higher-order list functions", "text": "Most functional programming languages (e.g. Common Lisp, Scheme / Racket, Clojure, Haskell, Scala, Ocaml, SML) support some common higher-order functions on lists, such as `map`, `filter`, `takeWhile`, `dropWhile`, `foldl`, `foldr` (see e.g. Common Lisp, Scheme / Racket, Clojure side-by-side reference sheet, the Haskell, Scala, OCaml, and the SML documentation.) Does C++11 have equivalent standard methods or functions on lists? For example, consider the following Haskell snippet:               let xs = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]     let ys = map (\\x -> x * x) xs      How can I express the second expression in modern standard C++?               std::list<int> xs = ... // Initialize the list in some way.     std::list<int> ys = ??? // How to translate the Haskell expression?      What about the other higher-order functions mentioned above? Can they be directly expressed in C++?"}
{"_id": "19770", "title": "Training old timey fortran programmers to better code design. hints?", "text": "I need to quickly train Fortran 90 developers into object oriented design, good coding, and general coding practices to make code maintenance easier and accessible to everybody. Their current style is the usual:   * long routines that do too much   * modules are aggregated in \"family mode\" (routines that have something to do with different kind of objects who share a common use are all in one module, instead of having different modules for different type)   * huge globals module with hundreds of variables   * general un-greppability of identifiers This is just out of my head. I did a course to one of them explaining OO and modularization in terms of a Pen (with methods such as uncap(), and members like inkLevel) and I was very successful in diverting his point of view. I also gave him the exercise to code in OO style a very simple textual adventure, where the player can move around rooms. I also introduced the concept of patterns and antipatterns. I would like to know any hints and suggestions on how to perform this task at best. Thanks"}
{"_id": "170466", "title": "Can graphics in the public domain be used in commercial software?", "text": "For example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Epithalamus.png Could I take an image file like that, splice it apart, and use it in an application that would be sold?"}
{"_id": "170460", "title": "Developing web sites that imitate desktop apps. How to fight that paradigm?", "text": "Supposse there's a company where web sites/apps are designed to resemble desktop apps. They struggle to add:   * Splash screens   * Drop-down menus   * Tab-pages   * Pages that don't grow downward with content, context is inside scrollable area so page is of a fixed size, as if resembling the one-screen limitation of desktop apps.   * Modal windows, pop-ups, etc.   * Tree views   * Absolutely no access to content unless you login-first, even with non-sensitive content. After splash screen desapears, you are presented with a login screen.   * No links - just simulated buttons.   * Fixed page-size.   * Cannot open a links in another tab   * Print button that prints directly ( not showing printable page so the user can't print via the browser's print command )   * Progress bars for loading content even when the browser indicates it with its own animation   * Fonts and color amulate a desktop app made with Visual Basic, PowerBuilder etc. Every app seems almost as if were made in Visual Basic. They reject this elements:   * Breadcrumbs   * Good old underlined links   * Generated/dynamic navigation, usage-based suggestions   * Ability to open links in multiple tabs   * Pagination   * Printable pages   * Ability to produce a URL you can save or share that links to an item, like when you send someone the link to an especific StackExchange question. The only URL is the main one.   * Back button To achieve this, tons of javascript code is needed. Lots and lots of Javascript and Ajax code for things not related with the business but with the necessity to hide/show that button, refresh this listbox, grey-out that label, etc. The coplexity generated by forcing one paradigm into another means most lines of code are dedicated to maintain the illusion of a desktop app. What is the best way to change this mindset, and make them embrace the web, and start producing modern, web apps instead of desktop imitations ? EDIT: These sites are intranet sites. Users hate these apps. They constantly whine about them, but they have to use them to do their daily work. These sites are in-house solutions, the end-users have no choice but to use them. They are a \"captive audience\". Also, substitution will not happen because of high costs. But at least if that mindset is changed, new developments would be more web- like."}
{"_id": "253766", "title": "How to avoid or minimise use of check/conditional statement in my scenario?", "text": "I have scenario, where I got stream and I need to check for some value. If I got any new value I have to store it in any of data structure. It seems very easy, I can place conditional statement if-else or can use contain method of set/map to check either received is new or not. But the problem is checking will effect my application performance, in stream I will receive hundreds for value in second, if I start checking each and every value I received then for sure it effect performance. Anybody can suggest me any mechanism or algorithm to solve my issue, either by bypassing checks or at least minimize them?"}
{"_id": "170463", "title": "Why to use web services instead of direct access to a relational database for an android app?", "text": "I searched on the web how to access in an efficient manner to a central database at a remote location and I met suggestions to use web services instead direct access (i.e. JDBC etc ) to a database.I wonder the reason of that and any other suggestions."}
{"_id": "17632", "title": "What is the common definition of a Hacker?", "text": "I'm wondering if the term Hacker means different things to different people. When most people hear the word hacker what are the first things that come to mind?"}
{"_id": "177117", "title": "Use decorator and factory together to extend objects?", "text": "I'm new to OOP and design pattern. I've a simple app that handles the generation of Tables, Columns (that belong to Table), Rows (that belong to Table and have Columns) and Values (that belong to Rows). Each of these object can have a collection of Property, which is in turn defined as an enum. They are all interfaces: I used factories to get concrete instances of these products, depending on circumnstances. Now I'm facing the problem of extending these classes. Let's say I need another product called \"SpecialTable\" which in turn has some special properties or new methods like 'getSomethingSpecial' or an extended set of Property. The only way is to extend/specialize all my elements (ie. build a SpecialTableFactory, a SpecialTable interface and a SpecialTableImpl concrete)? What to do if, let's say, I plan to use standard methods like addRow(Column column, String name) that doesn't need to be specialized? I don't like the idea to inherit factories and interfaces, but since SpecialTable has more methods than Table i guess it cannot share the same factory. Am I wrong? Another question: if I need to define product properties at run time (a Table that is upgraded to SpecialTable at runtime), i guess i should use a decorator. Is it possible (and how) to combine both factory and decorator design? Is it better to use a State or Strategy pattern, instead?"}
{"_id": "177111", "title": "Should I use the factory design pattern for every class?", "text": "I've been writing a website in PHP. As the code becomes more complex, I keep finding problems that can be solved using the factory design pattern. For example: I've a got a class `Page` which has subclasses `HTMLPage`, `XMLPage`, etc. Depending on some input I need to return an object of either one of these classes. I use the factory design pattern to do this. But as I encounter this problem in more classes, I keep having to change code which still initiates an object using its constructor. So now I'm wondering: is it a good idea to change all code so that it uses the factory design pattern? Or are there big drawbacks? I'm currently in a position to change this, so your answers would be really helpful."}
{"_id": "17639", "title": "What core principles would you want in a library?", "text": "Theres talk about what syntax and feature you like in a programming language; i'll now ask what core principles or feature would you like in a library in your favorite (or any) language? An example is having adding list += anotherList valid as oppose to only allowing list += listElement (although some may see this as a bad idea)"}
{"_id": "177119", "title": "Is there a clean separation of my layers with this attempt at Domain Driven Design in XAML and C#", "text": "I'm working on an application. I'm using a mixture of TDD and DDD. I'm working hard to separate the layers of my application and that is where my question comes in. My solution is laid out as follows               Solution         MyApp.Domain (WinRT class library)             Entity (Folder)                 Interfaces(Folder)                     IPost.cs (Interface)                 BlogPosts.cs(Implementation of IPost)             Service (Folder)                 Interfaces(Folder)                     IDataService.cs (Interface)                 BlogDataService.cs (Implementation of IDataService)         MyApp.Presentation(Windows 8 XAML + C# application)             ViewModels(Folder)                 BlogViewModel.cs             App.xaml             MainPage.xaml (Contains a property of BlogViewModel         MyApp.Tests (WinRT Unit testing project used for my TDD)      So I'm planning to use my ViewModel with the XAML UI I'm writing a test and define my interfaces in my system and I have the following code thus far.                   [TestMethod]         public void Get_Zero_Blog_Posts_From_Presentation_Layer_Returns_Empty_Collection()         {             IBlogViewModel viewModel = _container.Resolve<IBlogViewModel>();                  viewModel.LoadBlogPosts(0);                  Assert.AreEqual(0, viewModel.BlogPosts.Count, \"There should be 0 blog posts.\");              }      `viewModel.BlogPosts` is an `ObservableCollection<IPost>` Now.. my first thought is that I'd like the LoadBlogPosts method on the ViewModel to call a static method on the BlogPost entity. My problem is I feel like I need to inject the IDataService into the Entity object so that it promotes loose coupling. Here are the two options that I'm struggling with:   1. Not use a static method and use a member method on the BlogPost entity. Have the BlogPost take an `IDataService` in the constructor and use dependency injection to resolve the BlogPost instance and the `IDataService` implementation.   2. Don't use the entity to call the `IDataService`. Put the `IDataService` in the constructor of the ViewModel and use my container to resolve the `IDataService` when the viewmodel is instantiated. So with option one the layers will look like this > ViewModel(Presentation layer) -> Entity (Domain layer) -> IDataService > (Service Layer) or > ViewModel(Presentation layer) -> IDataService (Service Layer)"}
{"_id": "13526", "title": "Places of historic significance in the field of programming?", "text": "Professions like art, history and literature have countless museums in their honor, but even regular non-entertaining fields like transportation and medicine have some destinations that could be of interest to the enthusiast. What about programming ? Are there any places of interest or historic significance that could amuse people with an interest in programming ?"}
{"_id": "185705", "title": "Computing integration with the Trapezoidal Rule", "text": "I am trying to implement the trapezoidal rule programmatically but am having trouble finding a good way to input the function of x and then have a loop which will iterate through for each sub-interval finding the area of the trapezium and adding the results and returning it. Any help would be awesome."}
{"_id": "185704", "title": "What is the nicest (user-friendliest) way to tell a user about \"Access Denied\" error?", "text": "Our software implements a layer of role-based security to secure data access, in the form of access control lists. Whenever a user tries to do something that isn't allowed, the software layer will receive an \"access denied\" error code or exception. Having seen how our customers react to such \"access denied\" messages, and their negative impression to our software as a result, I've been thinking about how we should modify that message to make it less stressful. I understand that the best way to reduce such frustration is to simply hide the UI actions that a user is not authorized to do. However, our UI is very feature-rich and it is not always possible to predict whether a UI action will result in access-denied error. From a user's point of view, it would be nice if the user can be told \"what went wrong\", i.e. explained in the same way that a human IT administrator would explain. My question   * From a user-friendliness standpoint, what is the best way to present an \"access denied\" message without offending or frightening the user?   * From a software design standpoint, what design methodologies can be used to reduce the chance of a user seeing an access-denied situation? * * * Some thoughts   * If there is a security rule that says someone is forbidden from viewing a piece of data, then:     * If the user has low trust (e.g. general public), no explanation for the \"access denied\" should be given because any partial information could be used against the security.     * If the user has partial trust (e.g. an employee in the customer's organization whose rank is not high enough, or works in a different department), perhaps some explanation can be given to the user so that the user knows what security rule is being enforced?   * However, occasionally some security setup is based on \"denied by default\", meaning that in the absence of a rule _granting_ access, nobody can access anything.     * In this case, it is much harder for a software system to explain to the user why the \"access denied\" occurred. Maybe it is a configuration error (a human error)? Maybe a security rule is indeed being enforced in the way of the lack of a \"access granting rule\"? * * * Related: Methodologies for Managing Users and Access?"}
{"_id": "185702", "title": "What's a good way to explain the need for pointing to a pointer?", "text": "Understanding what a pointer (an address) is, is fairly easy and an eleven- year old can understand it. But how do we express why we have a need for a pointer to a pointer? what is a very pedagogical example? Does it extend to pointing to a pointer to a pointer (and/or onward)? ## Example problem > T[][] does not decay to a T** ## Example problem 2               brainfuck command   C equivalent     (Program Start) char array[30000];                     char *ptr=array;     >   ++ptr;     <   --ptr;     +   ++*ptr;     -   --*ptr;     .   putchar(*ptr);     ,   *ptr=getchar();     [   while (*ptr) {     ]   }"}
{"_id": "181635", "title": "Is \"frontend\" generic term or it is used only in web design?", "text": "When I read about frontends, it always mentiones webpages. Can it be used in different contexts, e.g. desktop applications?"}
{"_id": "140181", "title": "The application I wrote is listed as malware. How to fix it?", "text": "I have a program that I wrote in Delphi. The program is available for download, but some antivirus like Norton detects it as malware, while other antivirus, like AVG, has no issues with it. Moreover, Google Chrome also gives a malware warning when you want to download the program from my website. Is there some way to prevent this, apart from putting the EXE file in a ZIP file?"}
{"_id": "65179", "title": "Where does this concept of \"favor composition over inheritance\" come from?", "text": "In the last few months, the mantra \"favor composition over inheritance\" seems to have sprung up out of nowhere and become almost some sort of meme within the programming community. And every time I see it, I'm a little bit mystified. It's like someone said \"favor drills over hammers.\" In my experience, composition and inheritance are two different tools with different use cases, and treating them as if they were interchangeable and one was inherently superior to the other makes no sense. Also, I never see a real explanation for _why_ inheritance is bad and composition is good, which just makes me more suspicious. Is it supposed to just be accepted on faith? Liskov substitution and polymorphism have well- known, clear-cut benefits, and IMO comprise the entire point of using object- oriented programming, and no one ever explains why they should be discarded in favor of composition. Does anyone know where this concept comes from, and what the rationale behind it is?"}
{"_id": "12439", "title": "Code Smell: Inheritance Abuse", "text": "It's been generally accepted in the OO community that one should \"favor composition over inheritance\". On the other hand, inheritance does provide both polymorphism and a straightforward, terse way of delegating everything to a base class unless explicitly overridden and is therefore extremely convenient and useful. Delegation can often (though not always) be verbose and brittle. The most obvious and IMHO surest sign of inheritance abuse is violation of the Liskov Substitution Principle. What are some other signs that inheritance is The Wrong Tool for the Job even if it seems convenient?"}
{"_id": "187876", "title": "Code reuse via inheritance", "text": "I have a set of classes that are all dealing with some related tasks. These tasks do have different inputs and outputs. This causes it to become impossible to have the tasks done via shared code without having this code be a pile of if-else statements handling all the different cases. Now someone refactored this code to use inheritance - there now is an abstract base class that holds methods for each of which it is used by some of the deriving classes, for some of which they get overridden or nullified and some of which are always called though not always applicable for the deriving class. Furthermore the inheritance is not used for polymorphism at all, just code reuse. I cringed a bit when I noticed this refactoring was done and that it happily got through code review. The codebase I am working with has existed for quite a while and is full of these kind of things, and most people don't understand the issues. I'm thus looking for a good overview of why inheritance should not be abused like this, esp including all the problems it causes."}
{"_id": "234881", "title": "When is it suitable to use inheritance", "text": "I recently had a small \"argument\" about inheritance with a friend. I think people overuse it a lot. Intuition tells me that that the only good reason for class inheritance is polymorphism - when there is a case that you want to treat uniquely object of different but related classes. Our argument was about having a BaseEntity class for Entity Framework that only has Id property. My friend says it's good because he can have generic repositories then. W don't agree with him.   1. Usually there's no such thing as a generic repository, you'll end up with \"Refused bequest\" smell.   2. What's the point of treating let's say a user and an invoice uniquely? These are 2 totally different things. Unfortunately I couldn't make any good points in spite of \"it makes no sense\". :) After a while I also realized that I drifted away from inheritance itself and now I tend to use interfaces instead. Actually in my recent web project (quite a big one) I can't recall any inheritance. Now I'm not sure when it is an appropriate technique anymore. So guys, please help me here.   1. What do you think about what I wrote?   2. Can you find any arguments I can use against my friend?   3. When it really is a good practice to use inheritance? (Please be specific and throw some examples) Please don't try to explain to me what the inheritance is all about. I'm very familiar with that and I used it a lot. Like I mentioned above, over time I just drifted away from it, because I couldn't find the right usage for it. Simply interfaces seem to be a better approach to me in most cases."}
{"_id": "175584", "title": "Demonstrate bad code to client?", "text": "A client has asked me to do a redesign of their website, an ASP.NET Webforms application that was developed by another consultant. It seemed like a relatively straightforward job, but after looking at the code, it's clear that's not the case. This application was not written well. At all. It is extremely vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, business logic is spread throughout the entire application, there is a lot of duplication, and dead end code that does nothing. On top of that, it keeps throwing exceptions that are being smothered, so site appears to run smoothly. My job is to simply update the HTML and CSS, but much of the HTML is being generated in business logic and would be a nightmare to sort out. My estimate on the redesign is longer than the client was aiming for. They are asking why so long. How can I explain to my client just how bad this code is? In their mind, the application is running great and the redesign should be a quick one-off. It's my word against the previous consultant. How can I give simple, concrete examples that a non-technical client will understand? **Update** Thanks for all the responses. The SQL injection attack demonstration makes sense and I will demo this in a test environment. That is just one part of many problems in this application. I was looking for ways to explain why other parts (such as html being generated in the data layer) would need to be replaced with better practices in order for the html and css update to take place. There are many good suggestions here which I'll piece together when I talk with my client."}
{"_id": "101523", "title": "Custom vs. browser-native scrollbars", "text": "Including customizable, JavaScript-based scrollbars (and scrolling functionality in general, i.e. bind the control to the mouse scroll wheel) in your webapp can be a great temptation. However all solutions I could find were developed by individuals (which can equal lack of formal or future support). In addition I fail to remember any mainstream site using them. In my particular case, no-JavaScript or IE6/odd-browser environments are not intended to be supported. Should custom scrollbars be avoided nowadays? If not, what's the best option one can choose?"}
{"_id": "181638", "title": "Determinism of functions using PRNG in Clojure and functional languages", "text": "I'm a bit surprised by a sentence found in the book _\"Clojure Programming\"_ (1st [and only as I write this!?] edition), page 78: > It should be obvious that it's impossible to deterministically test a > function that depends upon a random number generator Well, to me it's not obvious at all. First in the context the book definitely talks about a PRNG (that sentence just follows a mention of _java.util.Random_ , which is a PRNG), not a real random source. Seen that functional languages that do support higher-order function can be, well, passed functions... Why not simply pass the random generator function itself to the function you want to be able to deterministically test? If I've got something like the following function (it's just an example) and the PRNG itself is deterministic, why would it be impossible to deterministically test the following function:               (defn shuffle-deck [deck  last-generated-number   prngf]           ...)      I realize that instead of keeping a (global?) reference to your random generator, you need to keep a reference to the last generated number (and update it accordingly) but that's basically it. You can then test/reproduce the behaviour of any function using a PRNG as long as you pass the PRNG and 'the random number you're currently at'. It's not unlike deterministic game engines (like Blizzard's Warcraft III) where the replays only contains the player inputs, the time at which they happened and the overall seed to the PRNG. Basically I'm a bit confused: I've always seen PRNG as something that is not \"real randomness\" and I've got the impression that functional languages accepting higher-order function make it particularly _easy_ to reproduce behavior of functions depending on PRNG. So, is that sentence of the book (which I found a great book btw) complete rubbish? I sure do not find it \"obvious\" at all..."}
{"_id": "122949", "title": "What are the personal benefits from writing a boost library", "text": "Among the reasons for a developer to publish a self-written library as open source library, there is definitely fame. Now when it comes to Boost Libraries, they are available and promoted in a very anonymous and impersonalized form. The name of the author will be readable in the documentation and source files, but be honest: How many of you could tell me the names of the authors of `boost::shared_ptr`, ... without looking? And its not just about the names. Even if you do not know the name of the author of something your using, you still somehow identify it with \"the author\" and other stuff he did or maybe his website, where you found it. All these authors' identities are eradicated by the acceptance to Boost. (At this point I really want to thank all boost authors for their selfless and extremely professional efforts.) I know, they had there reasons, but what about the following case: Suppose, I had a marvelous and elegant solution to a C++ problem, that had bugged whole generations of programers. The implementation: \\- standard compliant   * No use of Macros   * type-safe   * requires the user to write the minimum possible boilerplate code with no - I repeat: NO - code repetion   * zero memory footprint    * NO runtime overhead   * fits in a header file of about 100 lines of code. What should I do with it? Should I bother going the burdensome path of the Boost acceptance process? If yes, what's in there for me? While this sounds selfish, in the end everything you do should have some positive cost/benefit ratio."}
{"_id": "20721", "title": "What must be done to allow a development team to minimize difficulties as new team members are added?", "text": "I work at a small Web Dev firm, and have been handling all the PHP/MySQL/etc. for a while. I'm looking at improving our practices to allow for easier collaboration as we grow. Some things I have in mind are:   * Implementing a versioning system (source control)   * Coding standards for the team (unless mandated by a certain framework, etc.)   * Enforcing a common directory structure for our Desktops (for backup purposes, etc.)   * Web-based task/project/time/file/password/contact management and collaboration app(we've tried a bunch; I may just create one) What do more experienced developers view as necessary first steps in this area? Do you recommend any books? One thing to consider is that the bulk of our daily tasks involve maintenance and adding minor functionality rather than new projects, and the team size will be between 3 and 5. I just found a related question about teams that will be expanding from a solo developer."}
{"_id": "246936", "title": "what does it mean when a nested function isn't assigned to a var?", "text": "I'm referencing this link about closures: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/111102/how-do-javascript-closures-work This is specifically about javascript. In the second answer with 956 votes, The author returns the nested function \"sayAlert\" after assigning it to the var keyword as shown below. (Example 3)               function say667() {     // Local variable that ends up within closure     var num = 666;     var sayAlert = function() { alert(num); }     num++;     return sayAlert;     }     var sayNumber = say667();     sayNumber(); // alerts 667      However in the next example (Example 4), the author assigns the following functions, \"gAlertNumber\", \"gIncreaseNumber\", and \"gSetNumber\", without the var keyword. Then the author is able to call the nested functions as follows.               function setupSomeGlobals() {     // Local variable that ends up within closure     var num = 666;     // Store some references to functions as global variables     gAlertNumber = function() { alert(num); }     gIncreaseNumber = function() { num++; }     gSetNumber = function(x) { num = x; }     }          setupSomeGlobals();     gIncreaseNumber();     gAlertNumber(); // 667     gSetNumber(5);     gAlertNumber(); // 5          var oldAlert = gAlertNumber;          setupSomeGlobals();     gAlertNumber(); // 666          oldAlert() // 5      I tried adding the keyword var to the begging of each nested function, but in my console it returns an error. So I'm assuming there's a difference between the two. But I don't know what this tactic is called and why it works..."}
{"_id": "20729", "title": "What aspects make websites load faster?", "text": "I want to know what aspects in VPS hosting packages are related to performance for the website which will make it faster in loading for the end useres. And does RAM really matter?"}
{"_id": "167040", "title": "Servlet : Usage of Constants.java class vs context param", "text": "I'm just wondering whether to keep some of my variables in Constants class or keep it in web.xml Say, I want to keep a variable of Facebook graph API prefix or `api_key`, `client_id` From my understand, the difference between Constants.java and web.xml is web.xml is easier to rewrite on compile using ant. So, you can replace your variables in web.xml according to what environment you are building you app for. (`client_id` varies by development environment/production environment, for example) If I understand it right, then Facebook graph API prefix should be kept in Constants.java (because it always is \"https://graph.facebook.com/\") and `api_key`, `client_id` should be kept in web.xml? What's the proper way to use them?"}
{"_id": "237728", "title": "Global variables in javascript", "text": "I don't consider myself a highly skilled javascript developer, but I thought I got one thing right for sure: don't create global variables unless you really have to. I've been learning `angularjs` lately and discovered one strange thing, almost everywhere in code samples for angular you can find constructions like the following.               'use strict';          /* Controllers */          var phonecatControllers = angular.module('phonecatControllers', []);          phonecatControllers.controller('PhoneListCtrl', ['$scope', 'Phone',       function($scope, Phone) {         $scope.phones = Phone.query();         $scope.orderProp = 'age';       }]);      Source: official example app https://github.com/angular/angular- phonecat/blob/master/app/js/controllers.js So I assumed I might be missing/misunderstanding something. Any thoughts except \"since it's demo code, they don't care\"?"}
{"_id": "244688", "title": "Breaking up classes and methods into smaller units", "text": "During code reviews a couple devs have recommended I break up my methods into smaller methods. Their justification was (1) increased readability and (2) the back trace that comes back from production showing the method name is more specific to the line of code that failed. There may have also been some colorful words about functional programming. Additionally I think I may have failed an interview a while back because I didn't give an acceptable answer about when to break things up. My inclination is that when I see a bunch of methods in a class or across a bunch of files, it isn't clear to me how they flow together, and how many times each one gets called. I don't really have a good feel for the linearity of it as quickly just by eye-balling it. The other thing is a lot of people seem to place a premium of organization over content (e.g. 'Look at how organized my sock drawer is!' Me: 'Overall, I think I can get to my socks faster if you count the time it took to organize them'). Our business requirements are not very stable. I'm afraid that if the classes/methods are very granular it will take longer to refactor to requirement changes. I'm not sure how much of a factor this should be. Anyway, computer science is part art / part science, but I'm not sure how much this applies to this issue. EDIT: Check out: What is the ideal length of a method?"}
{"_id": "164600", "title": "What would be a good  way to request comments?", "text": "In the project/team I'm working the frequency of comments is a little low. One reason might be that it is not clear to the long-time devs what lines in the code _really_ needs a comment (each part of the project has quite fixed devs). To increase this we plan to let team members review the code and check in \"requests for comments\", which the main dev of that part should replace with useful comments.   * Do you think this could work?   * If \"yes\": what tags should we use to mark? (e.g. //TODO please comment)   * Can you think of alternatives for this process? Edit: I appreciate your answers about best practice in commenting and writing code, and I completey agree. But my question targets the cases where refactoring is not an option (not wanting to change working code, not wanting to \"accuse\" main dev of producing code that needs refactoring,...) - so only more or better comments are an option (at least for this question)."}
{"_id": "124731", "title": "What performance can we expect from std::string's c_str()? Always constant time?", "text": "I've been doing some needed optimizations lately. One thing I've been doing is changing some ostringstreams -> sprintfs. I'm sprintf'ing a bunch of std::strings to a c style array, ala               char foo[500];     sprintf(foo, \"%s+%s\", str1.c_str(), str2.c_str());      It turns out that Microsoft's std::string::c_str() implementation runs in constant time (it just returns an internal pointer). It appears that libstdc++ does the same. I realize the std makes no guarantees for c_str, but its hard to imagine another way of doing this. If, for example, they copied into memory they'd either have to allocate memory for a buffer (leaving it up to the caller to destroy it -- NOT part of the STL contract) OR they'd have to copy to an internal static buffer (probably not threadsafe, and you have no guarantees on its lifetime). So simply returning a pointer to an internally maintained null terminated string seems to be the only realistic solution."}
{"_id": "240306", "title": "How should I handle measurement logging in my Discrete Event Simulation engine?", "text": "I'm attempting to build a Discrete Event Simulation library by following this tutorial and fleshing it out. **_How should I handle logging metrics in my Discrete Event Simulation engine?_** If you don't want/need background, skip to _The Design_ or _The Question_ section below... **Simulation** The goal of a simulation of the type in question is to model a process to perform analysis of it that wouldn't be possible or at least feasible in reality. Take the canonical example of a simulation of this kind is a Bank:   * Customers enter the bank and get in line with a statistically distributed frequency   * Tellers are available to handle customers from the front of the line one at a time with a certain distribution   * As the line grows longer, the number of tellers available may have to be increased based on certain business rules You can break this down into generic objects:   * Entity: These would be the customers   * Generator: This object generates Entities according to a distribution   * Queue: This object represents the line at the bank. They find much real world use in acting as a buffer between customers and a limited service.   * Activity: This is a representation of the work done by a teller. It generally processes Entities from a Queue **Discrete Event Simulation** Instead of a continuous tick by tick simulation such as one might do with physical systems, a \"Discrete Event\" Simulation is a recognition that in many systems only critical events require process and the rest of the time nothing important to the state of the system is happening. In the case of the Bank, critical events might be a customer entering the line, a teller becoming available, the manager deciding whether or not to open a new teller window, etc. In a Discrete Event Simulation, the flow of time is kept by maintaining a Priority Queue of Events instead of an explicit clock. Time is incremented by popping the next event in chronological order (the minimum event time) off the queue and processing as necessary. **The Design** I've got a Priority Queue implemented as a Min Heap for now. In order for the objects of the simulation to be processed as events, they implement an ISimulationEvent interface that provides an EventTime property and an Execute method. Those together mean the Priority Queue can schedule the events, then Execute them one at a time in the correct order and increment the simulation clock appropriately. The simulation engine is a basic event loop that pops the next event and Executes it until there are none left. An event can reschedule itself to occur again or allow itself to go idle. For example, when a Generator is Executed it creates an Entity and then reschedules itself for the generation of the next Entity at some point in the future. **The Question** _How should I handle logging metrics in my Discrete Event Simulation engine?_ In the midst of this simulation, it is necessary to take metrics. How long are Entities waiting in the Queue? How many Acitivity resources are being utilized at any one point? How many Entities were generated since the last metrics were logged? It follows logically that the metric logging should be scheduled as an event to take place every few units of time in the simulation. The difficulty is that this ends up being a cross-cutting concern: metrics may need to be taken of Generators or Queues or Activities or even Entities. Consider also that it might be necessary to take derivative calculated metrics: e.g. measure a, b, c, and ((a-c)/100) + Log(b). I'm thinking there are a few main ways to go:   1. Have a single, global Stats object that is aware of all of the simulation objects. Have the Generator/Queue/Activity/Entity objects store their properties in an associative array so that they can be referred to at runtime (my chosen language doesn't support reflection). This way the statistics can be attached as needed `Stats.AddStats(Object, Properties)`. This wouldn't support calculated metrics easily unless they are built into each object class as properties somehow.   2. Have a single, global Stats object that is aware of all of the simulation objects. Create some sort of ISimStats interface for the Generator/Queue/Activity/Entity classes to implement that returns an associative array of the important stats for that particular object. This would also allow runtime attachment, `Stats.AddStats(ISimStats)`. The calculated metrics would have to be hardcoded in the straightforward implementation of this option.   3. Have multiple Stats objects, one per Generator/Queue/Activity/Entity as a child object. This might make it easier to implement simulation object-specific calculated metrics, but clogs up the Priority Queue a little bit with extra things to schedule. It might also cause tighter coupling, which is bad :(.   4. Some combination of the above or completely different solution I haven't thought of? Let me know if I can provide more (or less) detail to clarify my question! I may be in error using the Aspect-Oriented tag, but I suspect that people of that background would have good advice for this situation."}
{"_id": "244684", "title": "Fixing a spelling mistake in a method name", "text": "One of the methods that I commonly use in our codebase is misspelled (and it predated me). This really irritates me not simply because it is mispelled but more importantly it makes me ALWAYS get the name wrong the first time I type it (and then I have to remember \"Oh, right, it should be mispelled to this...\") I'm making a few changes around the original method. Should I take the opportunity to just rename the freaking method?"}
{"_id": "120893", "title": "Good books to learn distributed computing", "text": "Are there any good books to learn about distributed computing ? I work on large scale java applications. Recently my colleagues started talking about things like distributed cache, load balancing, BigMemory (Terracotta thing),parallel processing etc., Is there any good book that gives an introduction to these concepts."}
{"_id": "240303", "title": "Restricting object types that can be added to each other using the Composite Pattern", "text": "**_The Situation** :_ I am building a custom PHP application framework. I have implemented a composite pattern so I can build a object tree representing the page to be rendered. Example:               abstract class \\Block\\BlockAbstract {          protected _blocks = array();          public function __construct($properties);          public function getBlocks();          public function addBlock($block);               ...               public function render();          }      All of my \"block\" object inherit from this abstract class which is working out great and rendering has been a snap with the help of a little recursion. **_The Problem** :_ I need a way to validate what classes of blocks can be added to other blocks. For example I have 4 distinct block types I have to consider. Keep in mind that ALL blocks inherit from a single block abstract, these are classifications of behavior of the concrete classes, not to be confused with additional abstracts:   * Generic - Generics can have any other block type added to it    * Final - Can not have any child blocks added to it.   * Parent - A parent is a block that can only have a specific type child added to it, but can be added to any Generic    * Child - Can only be added to a specific parent. This block can also share the properties of a Generic, Parent or Final **To sum the goal up:** Given a concrete block class name, generate a list of all concrete block classes that can be added to it. **_Solutions Proposed So Far** :_ _Add a property called \"blockClassification\" to the block abstract that defines it as a Generic, Final, Parent or Child and hard code the logic into a validate function that gets called in the from the addBlock($block) method._ I don't like this solution for a number of reasons, but mainly it still doesn't give me a clear path for defining what the concrete parents and children are that can be allowed. For instance, I have a concrete class _\\Block\\Tabs_ that is a parent. It can only have _\\Block\\Tabs\\Panel_ blocks added to it, and _\\Block\\Tabs\\Panel_ can only be added to _\\Block\\Tabs_. Additional properties would have to be added to build those relationships, and those properties could be examined to derive the \"block classification\" making this approach impractical. _Add allowedChildTypes property to the block that defines a list of concrete classes that can be added. For ease of use 2 values have specific meaning, a * that represents all block types, and NULL value that means no blocks can be added. For all other cases a coma delimited string of class names is provided and only those classes or classes that inherit from them are allowed_ I'm leaning towards this direction because PHP gives me the InstaceOf operator. I can use this to do the checks, when I have new concrete classes that extend the base set, that check will return the same results as its parent class. My only hesitation is that while this method definitely solves the problem of \"Given a concrete block class name, generate a list of\", I feel like it limits me in the future in that I can only do the search down the tree and not back up. I.e. \"Given a child block class name, generate a list of parent blocks it can be added to\" I'm sure that I am not the only one to ever run into the problem, so my question to the masses is: What is the best way to approach/solve this problem? **Additional Information:** If you where wondering how I'm getting a list of all the classes in the first place, the framework implements PSR-0 so I am scanning the directory tree to derive all of the class names, then dynamically instantiating them.               $allClassNames = scanDirectories(); // Returns array of strings ex: array('\\Block\\Classname1','\\Block\\Classname2');      foreach($allClassNames as $className){       $object = new $className();     }"}
{"_id": "244680", "title": "Object Oriented Design of a Small Java Game", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VBqAi.png) This is the problem i am dealing with. I have to make a simple game of NIM. I am learning java using a book so far i have only coded programs that deal with 2 classes. This program would have about 4 classes i guess including the main class. My problem is i am having a difficult time designing classes how they will interact with each other. I really want to think and use a object oriented approach. So the first thing i did was design the Pile CLASS as it seemed the easiest and made the most sense to me in terms of what methods go in it. Here is what i have got down for the Pile Class so far.               package Nim;          import java.util.Random;          public class Pile {              private int initialSize;                   public Pile(){              }              Random rand = new Random();              public void setPile(){                  initialSize = (rand.nextInt(100-10)+10);         }                   public void reducePile(int x){                  initialSize = initialSize - x;         }                   public int getPile(){                  return initialSize;         }                   public boolean hasStick(){                  if(initialSize>0){                      return true;             }                  else             {                 return false;             }         }          }      Now i need help in designing the Player Class. By that i mean i am not asking for anyone to write code for me as that defeats the purpose of learning i was just wondering how would i design the player class and what would go on it. My guess is that the player class would contain method for choosing move for computer and also receiving the move human user makes. Lastly i am guessing in the Game class i am guessing the turns would be handeled. I am really lost right now so i was wondering if someone can help me think through this problem it would be great. Starting with the player class would be appreciated. I know there are some solutions for this problem online but i refuse to look at because i want to develop my own approach to such problems and i am confident if i can get through this problem i can solve other problems. I apologize if this question is a bit poor but in specific i need help in designing the Player class."}
{"_id": "254475", "title": "How do I move away from the \u201cfor-loop\u201d school of thought?", "text": "This is a rather conceptual question, but I was hoping I could get some good advice on this. A lot of the programming I do is with (NumPy) arrays; I often have to match items in two or more arrays that are of different sizes and the first thing I go to is a for-loop or even worse, a nested for-loop. I want to avoid for-loops as much as possible, because they are slow (at least in Python). I know that for a lot of things with NumPy there are pre-defined commands that I just need to research, but do you (as more experienced programmers) have a **general thought process that comes to mind when you have to iterate something?** So I often have something like this, which is awful and I want to avoid it:               small_array = np.array([\"one\", \"two\"])     big_array = np.array([\"one\", \"two\", \"three\", \"one\"])          for i in range(len(small_array)):         for p in range(len(big_array)):             if small_array[i] == big_array[p]:                 print \"This item is matched: \", small_array[i]      I know there are multiple different ways to achieve this in particular, but I am interested in a general method of thinking, if it exists."}
{"_id": "254473", "title": "In which stage of compilation is \"typedef\" resolved by the compiler?", "text": "There are different stages of compilation Such as   * Preprocessing stage   * Syntax analysis   * Semantic analysis   * Intermediate Code generation   * Machine Code generation   * Optimization   * Linking My question here is in which stage of compilation _\"typedef\"_ is resolved."}
{"_id": "140458", "title": "Input to program without command-line arguments", "text": "Let's assume that there are no command-line arguments. How do you pass input data to a program? I'm thinking you'd write the input to a file with a specific name, such that the program knows to open and read it as input. However, how would one discover the name of that file? Usually, running a command-line program without arguments or with some standard help argument (e.g. `\\?`) produces some instruction on how to use it. But given an environment with no command- line arguments, how does one discover how to operate a program?"}
{"_id": "6190", "title": "Windows Service or Windows Task Scheduler?", "text": "I am planning to create a utility, which will query the database and store some information (on another table in the database). Its a multi-threaded utility and require to run for every 5 or 10 minutes/later may be thrice in a day. I see two options to achieve this in C#/DotNet programming.   * creating windows service having timer approach inside it.   * a console program and schedule it using windows task scheduler. Which one do you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "139598", "title": "Is there evidence that developers working remotely are less productive then when they work onsite?", "text": "So I was speaking to one of the folks I work with here a few days ago, and they were complaining that their company no longer allows workers to work remotely at all any more due to the decrease in productivity. As someone that has heard this excuse used for justifying onsite only staffing in my search for remote opportunities, I'm wondering if there's any empirical evidence that confirms this at all or if I and others that I know in the industry are being told a tale."}
{"_id": "140450", "title": "What is the best approach for database design with lots of columns?", "text": "I am writing a query based financial application. It lets the user to write complicated equations (much like WHERE part of an SQL query) and find companies matching those criteria. For the above, I currently have more than 500 columns in the database table (each column representing a financial field). Example of Columns are: company_name, sales_annual_00, sales_annual_01, sales_annual_02, sales_annual_03, sales_annual_04, protit_annual_00, profit_annual1...(over 500 such columns). The number of rows is around 5000. Going forward, I would like to further increase the number of columns/financial-fields. For the above I would like to get help regarding: 1) What is the best database design approach? Is it ok to have these many number of columns? 2) How can it be normalized? (User can use any of these fields in search criteria). 3) Is it ok to stick with MySQL, or modern document based databases like MongoDB should be better for it? P.S. (Update): I have been using MySQL till now and a running example of the usage is at: http://screener.in/companies/89/Formula-- In above there around 500 fields/columns to create your query on, however, I seek to increase that number to much more in future."}
{"_id": "140451", "title": "Extra class for writing data to some backend?", "text": "What is the common practice to write classes which take some data class and store it to some backend? In my case I have table classes (columns, headers, etc.) which are written to Excel. So I have a class Table with the data and a class ExcelDocument with access operations and basic writing (cells, ...). Where would I put the code which knows how to deal with Table data and knows how to write that the ExcelDocument? Both might be subject to refactoring at some point. Do I use `Table.write_to_excel(excel)` or `ExcelDocument.write_table(table)` or even some need intermediate class? With the concept \"a class should serve just one purpose\" I'd most likely write an intermediate class?"}
{"_id": "246689", "title": "Reporting Logic vs Domain Logic", "text": "Should the reporting logic to extract domain data in a certain format reside in domain objects or separate reporting objects? The reporting logic needs to:   1. select entities/data which match selection criteria e.g. date range   2. apply data validation rules e.g. date range, boundary values, missing values   3. apply type of reporting specific validation rules a. The rules will vary depending on type of domain object i.e. a certain domain object will require additional rules or different rule validation logic   4. transform data in certain format              a. Depending on domain object, number of fields may vary in the output      Solution Design   1. Should there be parallel hierarchy between reporting classes and domain classes?   2. The reporting classes will interact with domain classes through domain class interface   3. A context object would be needed to create domain object specific validator objects so that report generator can have generic logic Does this look like a good approach or am I approaching it incorrectly? ![Class Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QrCSY.png)"}
{"_id": "242742", "title": "How to convince management of making our project open source?", "text": "Xamarin 3 was released last week with a great new addition: Xamarin.Forms . This triggered our attention because we've been using such a system for a couple of years now. We've developed it by ourselves and used it for a bunch of projects. We've been looking for a way to make this project open source but we didn't manage to convince the management. They believe we should not make it open source because we won't win anything with it and all that will happen is that the competition will be able to build apps quicker with our library. We believe open sourcing our library will make the world a better place and that it will make our library much more stable and complete. So my question to all you people out there: How can we convince the management to open source our library?"}
{"_id": "246684", "title": "Was .NET's IObserver<T> intended for subscribing to multiple IObservables?", "text": "There are IObservable and IObserver interfaces in .NET (also here and here). Interestingly, the concrete implementation of the IObserver does not hold a direct reference to the IObservable. It doesn't know who it's subscribed to. It can only invoke the unsubscriber. \"Please pull the pin to unsubscribe.\" **edit:** The unsubscriber implements the `IDisposable`. I think, this scheme was employed to prevent the lapsed listener problem. Two things are not entirely clear to me, though.   1. Does the inner Unsubscriber class provide the subscribe-and-forget behavior? Who (and when exactly) calls `IDisposable.Dispose()` on the Unsubscriber? Garbage collector (GC) is not deterministic.   [Disclaimer: overall, I've spent more time with C and C++ than with C# .]   2. What should happen if I want to subscribe an observer K to an observable L1 and the observer is already subscribed to some other observable L2?              K.Subscribe(L1);     K.Subscribe(L2);     K.Unsubscribe();     L1.PublishObservation(1003);     L2.PublishObservation(1004);      When I ran this test code against MSDN's example, the observer remained subscribed to L1. This would be peculiar in real development. Potentially, there are 3 avenues to improve this:     * If the observer already has an unsubscriber instance (i.e. it\u2019s already subscribed), then it quietly unsubscribes from the original provider before subscribing to a new one. This approach hides the fact that it\u2019s no longer subscribed to the original provider, which may become a surprise later.     * If the observer already has an unsubscriber instance, then is throws an exception. A well-behaved calling code has to unsubscribe the observer explicitly.     * Observer subscribes to multiple providers. This is the most intriguing option, but can this be implemented with IObservable and IObserver? Let\u2019s see. It is possible for the observer to keep a list of unsubscriber objects: one for each source. Unfortunately, `IObserver.OnComplete()` does not provide a reference back to the provider who have sent it. So, the IObserver implementation with multiple providers would not be able to determine which one to unsubscribe from.   3. Was .NET's IObserver intended for subscribing to multiple IObservables?   Does the textbook definition of the observer pattern require that one observer has to be able to subscribe to multiple providers? Or is it optional and implementation-dependent?"}
{"_id": "233677", "title": "Create Database To Fit Data vs Make Data Fit The Database", "text": "I'm newish to programming and would like to know what people have found to be the most supportable option or rather what people find more understandable. I'm the only one writing code at my firm, but gradually will hand this off to someone else in the future. **The Project** The project I'm working on is parsing a huge text file that comes in once a day. The data file uses previous day's data file as a reference so each data file builds upon the previous data file. Using documentation I'm able to parse the text file and populate a MySQL database. Once the text file has been read, the data in the database is manipulated and then dumped into many Excel workbooks. The text file has a huge amount of data and I only need a fraction of it for the Excel workbooks. **My Question** My question is what is the proper structure for this program? I see that I have two options.   1. Is it better to construct a database that fits the data. So create a database with more tables and fields then is actually needed and possibly a little cryptic in it's layout.   2. Is it better to manipulate the data while it's being parsed and put it into more readable, human database? **What I've Done So Far** When I wrote the first version of this program, I went for option 2. Since I didn't know much about relational databases at the time and wanted it very easy for me to understand, visualize, etc. However, now that I'm looking to expand the data that I parse from the text file and since each data file builds on the previous day's data file I'm leaning towards option 1 so later down the line I won't have to spend a day reconstructing the database. Does this make sense? Please comment if it doesn't. Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks, Justin **Update** Let me start by saying the answers so far have been very helpful. Thank you. After reading some comments though I find that I have been a bit vague in my question. Let me try to be a bit clearer. I'm dealing with financial data of clients. Each account has its own Excel workbook that is used by the financial advisors to make projections and investment decisions. Additional worksheets in the the workbook are used to display the account's holdings and projected future to the client. The data that I get in each data file is separated by a record. Each record has a type...there are something like 13 different record types. Each record type is marked by a particular letter or number. Then after that letter or number there are a specific number of characters that represent that particular record. The record layout differs per record type and there is redundant information between record types which makes it additionally aggravating. Another point of contention is that if the financial advisor buys a new security, one that s/he hasn't bought before then the next business day, only in that day's data file, will the security's information show up (such as the name, security type, etc) and not again unless there's a change in that security. So if I ever need to rebuild the database I would have to start from day one. So I'm taking this data file, parsing it and writing it to a MySQL database separated into about four tables. I use EF6 to work with the database, and so that was a reason I started with a simple, readable fields and tables. Hope this expanded explanation helps."}
{"_id": "155892", "title": "Practical size limits of a DataTable in c#", "text": "I have to query a large data-set (~500 MB) using a sqlDataReader but I have to save the data in three different formats. Instead of querying the database 3 times I'm thinking about saving the data to an in-memory table and then save the data from there. Is there a practical limit to a table size in memory? Any ideas for a better approach? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "48547", "title": "In general, which is better: Nested Grids, or Grids that include controls using Column/Row Spans?", "text": "This question has been in the back of my mind since I started with WPF and Silverlight. **In general, is it better to use nested grids, or just set the Column/Row Span properties in a single Grid?** Better could be measured in many ways (not limited to these): * Easier to read * Easier to maintain and/or extend * Better performance * Quicker to implement/type For example, consider that I want to divide my view into three regions. One region spans the width of the top half of the page. The other two regions each span half of the bottom of the page. I'll attempt to draw it in text:               ---------     |   1   |     ---------     | 2 | 3 |     ---------      The heart of the question is, \"which of these two solutions to the example is better and why?\" Solution 1:               <Grid>       <Grid.RowDefinitions>         <RowDefinition />         <RowDefinition />       </Grid.RowDefinitions>       <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>         <ColumnDefinition />         <ColumnDefinition />       </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>            <TextBlock Grid.Row=\"0\" Grid.Column=\"0\" Grid.ColumnSpan=\"2\">1</TextBlock>            <TextBlock Grid.Row=\"1\" Grid.Column=\"0\">2</TextBlock>            <TextBlock Grid.Row=\"1\" Grid.Column=\"1\">3</TextBlock>     </Grid>      Solution 2:               <Grid>       <Grid.RowDefinitions>         <RowDefinition />         <RowDefinition />       </Grid.RowDefinitions>            <TextBlock Grid.Row=\"0\">1</TextBlock>            <Grid Grid.Row=\"1\">         <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>           <ColumnDefinition />           <ColumnDefinition />         </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>            <TextBlock Grid.Column=\"0\">2</TextBlock>            <TextBlock Grid.Column=\"1\">3</TextBlock>            </Grid>     </Grid>      I realize that there probably is no \"correct\" answer. Both solutions work, and are not greatly different. My hope is to gauge which one is more often done in the community at large. If there is a convention that is often followed I hope to learn it."}
{"_id": "247082", "title": "Is it okay if we use an arbitrary string as UUID?", "text": "I found the **tutorial of client (android) and server (pc) bluetooth** tutorial from here. But my question is **about the UUID.** **Is that okay if we define it randomly without the proper format**? Because I heard UUID is generally for ID for each devices just like IP address used right? For example like this, instead of the following code:               UUID.fromString(\"00001101-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb\");      I define my own UUID               UUID.fromString(\"myDeviceName009\");      Is it okay? I mean is it if i tested on both android device using the above code, they could communicate each other?"}
{"_id": "114409", "title": "Did concept of ViewModel exist before MVVM?", "text": "Today I was having a discussion with a colleague that ViewModel is a general concept and existed before MVVM pattern. I believe ViewModel term is used anytime you create a class with Model like properties for showing on View that supports data binding like in ASP.NET and even in WinForms. Is the opposite true? Did Microsoft name it the first time with MVVM?"}
{"_id": "236234", "title": "equivalence in callback and non-callback javascript", "text": "I'm pretty sure that the following two snippets are equivalent but I wanted to double check: **CALLBACK STYLE**               function foo(input, callback) {         // do stuff with input              callback();     }          function bar(input, callback) {         // do stuff with input              callback();     }          foo(\"hi\", bar(\"bye\", function() {                            // do something cool                          }));      _Note that the callbacks take no arguments._ **PLAIN STYLE**               function foo(input) {         // do stuff with input     }          function bar(input) {         // do stuff with input     }          foo(\"hi\");     bar(\"bye\");     (function() {         // do something cool     })();      Of course if they are equivalent it would make sense to me to use **PLAIN STYLE** as it's simpler and cleaner. I realize the scope of the anonymous function (who does something cool) is different in the two cases.. I'm not concerned with that aspect of \"equivalence\". **UPDATE** I'm working on some legacy code and find quite a bit of it confusing. This is the original code that prompted this question. Specifically the noted 6 or so lines of code.               var CoolNamespace = (function () {         var container_element,             keysLength = 0;              //         // THE FOLLOWING 6 OR SO LINES IS WHAT I'M CURIOUS ABOUT         //         _createCoolObject(function (coolObject) {             _appendFrameToContainer(coolObject, function () {                      // Post form                 _sendForm(function (form) {                     container_element.appendChild(form);                     form.submit();                 });             });          });              function _sendForm (callback) {             // Sends client data via post.             if (keysLength != 0) {                 var form = _createForm();             } else {                 throw new Error(\"error message stub\");             }             callback(form);         }              function _appendFrameToContainer (frame, callback) {             if (typeof container_element != \"undefined\") {                 container_element.appendChild(frame);             } else {                 throw new Error(\"error message stub\");             }             callback();         }              function _createCoolObject (callback) {             var coolObject = { level: \"very cool\" };                  callback(coolObject);         }              function _handleMessage (event) {             // it's not really about this function         }              function _createForm() {             // it's not really about this function either             var form;             return form;         }     })();      When stepping through the code, it seemed to be the case that the body of `_createCoolObject` was invoked _before_ the argument (which is a function). I think my confusion was that a the argument to `_createCoolObject` is a function literal which evaluates to a function but that function _is not itself evaluated_ until the line `callback(coolObject)`. Thanks for the clarification!!"}
{"_id": "236235", "title": "Is ClickOnce Deployment deprecated?", "text": "One of my internal users is having a problem with an application built by one of our long-retired developers. The application works fine on Windows XP, but in Windows 7 there is a problem with it. The application was originally developed as a ClickOnce application in .NET 2.0, something neither I nor any of our current devs know anything about. The question is, should we try to continue keeping this app as ClickOnce, or has it been deprecated in some way? Apparently ClickOnce applications can still be developed in VS2013, so it is do-able. But SHOULD we do it? I'd rather make this a web application, actually, and put it out on our intranet."}
{"_id": "49550", "title": "Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed?", "text": "Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed? Example (good) uses include hash dictionaries. I know there are things like SHA-256 and such, but these algorithms are **designed** to be **secure** , which usually means they are slower than algorithms that are less _unique_. I want a hash algorithm designed to be fast, yet remain fairly unique to avoid collisions."}
{"_id": "202639", "title": "Finding duplicate files?", "text": "I am going to be developing a program that detects duplicate files and I was wondering what the best/fastest method would be to do this? I am more interested in what the best hash algorithm would be to do this? For example, I was thinking of having it get the hash of each files contents and then group the hashes that are the same. Also, should there be a limit set for what the maximum file size can be or is there a hash that is suitable for large files?"}
{"_id": "70357", "title": "Command line options style - POSIX or what?", "text": "Somewhere I saw a rant against java/javac allegedly using a mix of Windows and Unix style like               java -classpath ... -ea ... Something      IMHO, it is no mix, it's just like `find` works as well, isn't it? AFAIK, according to POSIX, the syntax should be like               java --classpath ... --ea ... Something      and `-abcdef` would mean specifying 6 short options at once. I wonder which version leads in general to less typing and less errors. I'm writing a small utility in Java and in no case I'm going to use Windows style `/a /b` since I'm interested primarily in Unix. What style should I choose?"}
{"_id": "70353", "title": "Things to do to get better as a Software Development Group", "text": "What are some of the things that a team should do to get better as a Software Development group? The group is involved in doing intranet development/general support for various internal groups within the company?"}
{"_id": "161453", "title": "How do I read API documentation?", "text": "I've been trying to read through the RoR API to try to learn things that the tutorial missed, and I haven't been able to follow it at all. The only time I've read documentation was when I needed to look up a Python module, and that was easy to understand, but I can't understand the docs for Rails. How do I read through API documentation?"}
{"_id": "59631", "title": "Intellectual Property for in house development", "text": "My company is a sub contractor on a major government contract. Over the past 5 years we've been developing in house applications to help support our company and streamline our work. Apparently in 2008 our president of the company at that time signed a continuation of services contract with the company we subcontract with on this project. In the contract amendment various things were discussed such as intellectual property and the creation of new and existing tools. The contract states that all the subcontractor's tools/scripts/etc... become the intellectual property of the main contractor holder. Basically all tools that were created in support of the project which we work on are no longer ours exclusively and they have rights to them. My company really doesn't do software development specifically but because of this contract these tools helped tremendously with our daily tasking. Does my company have any sort of recourse or actions to help keep our tools? My team of developers were completely unaware of any of these negotiations and until recently were kept in the dark about the agreements that were made. Do we as developers have any rights to the software? Since our company is not a software development shop, we have created all these tools without any sort of agreements or contracts within the company stating that we give our company full rights to our creations? I was reading an article by Joel Spolsky on this topic and was just wonder if there is any advice out there to help assist us? Thank you Joel Spolsky's Article"}
{"_id": "59632", "title": "Dynamic Permissions for roles in ASP.NET MVC", "text": "We have been developing a web application in ASP.NET MVC. We have scenarios where many actions on web page are dependent upon role of a specific user. For example a memo page has actions of edit, forward, approve, flag etc. These actions are granted to different roles and may be revoked at some later stage. What is the best approach to implement such scenarios?"}
{"_id": "59633", "title": "Does anyone know of a simple (free?) feature request tracking system we could use internally for sales people?", "text": "I sometimes hear about pain points of customers using our app from sales people, but there really isn't a good way for us to currently keep track of these. I was going to write one myself but figured I would ask first. I was thinking something so simple it would literally just be a small form for adding a new feature, and then it would appear in the list, like stackexchange questions. Then users can upvote them, or even record each time a user complains about something related to the request so we can order them in priority based on real data. Then I can easily go look every few days and see what's going on. That's really it, nothing more complicated than that. Know of anything?"}
{"_id": "237183", "title": "What makes Web crawling legal?", "text": "* When Google, Bing or Yahoo are crawling content from Web sites, what makes it legal? Is there a public registry of only allowed crawlers?    * When researchers are crawling Deep Web, what makes their efforts legal?   * When tester automate their tests with Selenium or JMeter and hit same site multiple times, what makes their effort illegal? In each of those cases, an automate is consuming Internet bandwidth of the Web site, and copying their content. But some are considered legal, and other are not."}
{"_id": "179616", "title": "\"A good programmer can be as 10X times more productive than a mediocre one\"", "text": "I had read an interview with a great programmer (it is not in English) and in it he said that \"a great programmer can be as 10 times as good as a mediocre one\" giving reason for why good programmers are very well paid and why programming companies give many facilities for their employees. The idea was that there is a very large demand for good programmers, because of the above reason and that's why companies pay very much to bring them. Do you agree with this statement? Do you know any objective facts that could support it? Edit: The question has nothing to do with experience; if you talk about one great programmer with 1 year experience then s/he should be 10 times more productive than a mediocre programmer with 1 year experience. I agree that from certain experience years onwards, things start to dissipate but that's not the purpose of the question."}
{"_id": "40894", "title": "What is the easiest way to migrate your current programming environment to a new laptop?", "text": "I have a WinXP based laptop with pretty basic hardware configuration by today's standards. I am planning to upgrade to a WinXP based laptop with a lot better hardware. The problem: My current laptop has truck loads of software like cygwin, perl, ruby etc. Installing each software manually is going to be pretty cumbersome. Not to mention customizing the packages. Is there any software (freeware or commercial, both okay) that can migrate my current programming environment with minimum fuss?"}
{"_id": "40895", "title": "Giving a presentation on \"code style and design patterns\"", "text": "My company (small, about 40 people across 3 offices) occasionally does \"developer workshops\" online where one of the devs hosts a presentation about some tech topic. It's not necessarily about our work, but just to help everyone improve their skills and understanding. I've been asked to host the next one, and the topic (chosen from a list I provided) is code style and design patterns. I know those things aren't that closely related but bear with me. I have seen many places in our code base that could be improved, some which may even qualify for DailyWTF, so I want this presentation to be as effective as possible. The problem is that I just don't know exactly what to cover in one hour. My first idea is to use our own code as an example, to drive home the point of \"please actually apply this to your work.\" But the topic is so broad. Some things wrong with our code (PHP) include:   * Minimal OO. It's been improving lately, but there are still tons of global functions. It takes me a while to find things.   * Global config (opinion I guess). You can find $GLOBALS['blah'] scattered in just about every file.   * Inconsistent brace style. Sounds minimal, but this actually caused a syntax error to be pushed to origin five days ago, which still wasn't corrected as of yesterday.   * Inefficient constructs. I was able to do some basic improvements that cut running time in some areas by 70%. I want this thing to be as useful as possible, without sounding condescending to my coworkers. So what aspects of \"style\" should I focus on, and which design patterns might be most useful to explain?"}
{"_id": "121769", "title": "Data Structures: What are some common examples of problems where \"buffers\" come into action?", "text": "I was just wondering if there were some \"standard\" examples that everyone uses as a basis for explaining the nature of a problem that requires the use of a buffer. What are some well-known problems in the real world that can see great benefits from using a buffer? **Also, a little background or explanation as to why the problem benefits from using a buffer, and how the buffer would be implemented, would be insightful for understanding the concept!**"}
{"_id": "247337", "title": "What's a good simple way to combat the n+1 problem?", "text": "I'm trying to better understand performance in PHP. One issue I'm thinking about is the n+1 problem. By n+1 I mean something like this:               $posts = Posts::getPosts();          foreach($posts as $post) {       $comments = Comments::getComments(array('post_id' => $post->id));       // do something with comments..     }      It's quite inefficient as we have to do many queries for every post to get the comments. Is something like this better? It's more PHP code but only two queries will be executed:               $posts = Posts::getPosts();          // get the ids into an array     $post_ids = array();     foreach($posts as $post) {       array_push($post_ids, $post->id);     }          // get comments for ALL posts in one query by passing array of post ids (post_id IN (...))     $comments = Comments::getComments(array('post_id' => $post_ids));          // map comments to posts     foreach($posts as $key => $post) {       foreach($comments as $comment) {         if($post->id == $comment->post_id) {           $post->pushComment($comment);         }       }     }          foreach($posts as $post) {       $comment = $post->comments;       // do something with comments..     }      This is much more PHP, and kinda messy too, but this time I'm only using two queries (one for posts, the other for fetching ALL comments of those posts in one query). Is this a good proposal to tackle the n+1 problem in PHP? Also, how do frameworks generally deal with this under the hood?"}
{"_id": "176999", "title": "At what point/range is a code file too big?", "text": "I'm finding lots of 2-3k line files, and it doesn't really feel like they should be that big. What is a good criteria to objectively call a source code file \"too big\"?, is there such thing as a maximum amount of lines a source code file should have?"}
{"_id": "247333", "title": "\"Cross-cutting\" domain in DDD", "text": "I've recently started studying Domain Driven Design and so far it looks like it will help tremendously with my team's current project. I'm running into a bit of a problem though actually determining _what_ the domains are in our project. After my inital pass, I ended up with something like this: ![Domains D & E overlapping A,B,C](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aJJYe.png) I have three domains: A, B, and C for different areas of the business. However, for each of those I need to track current data as well as create plans for the future. This led me to add a **Planning** domain, but I don't see a clear way to separate Planning from the other domains. Either A, B, and C need to have detailed knowledge of Planning or vice versa. Example: Let's say Domain A is \"inventory\". The implementation has messages for things like ItemsAdded and ItemsRemoved and it tracks quantities of various products. Then if I want to allow for planning of future quantities of items I need to add classes to the model which will allow me to associate future product info with various time windows. This kind of feels like a new domain except the same planning and time window logic also applies to Domain B and C. Essentialy, I have a cross-cutting domain. I feel like I must be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe I actually have 6 domains and a library used by 3 of them?"}
{"_id": "151489", "title": "Is C# becoming harder to read?", "text": "As C# has progressed, many language features have been added. It has come to the point where it's becoming unreadable for me. As an example, consider the following code snip from Caliburn.Micro code here:                           container = CompositionHost.Initialize(                        new AggregateCatalog(                           AssemblySource.Instance.                                  Select(x => new AssemblyCatalog(x))                                    .OfType<ComposablePartCatalog>()                     )                 );      Now, this is just a small example. I have a number of questions:   * Is this a common or known problem?    * Is the C# community finding the same?    * Is this an issue with the language, or is it the style used by the developer? Are there any simple solutions to better understand others code and avoid writing code in this way?"}
{"_id": "211933", "title": "Which ASP.Net programming model is closer to PHP?", "text": "I've been using ASP.Net WebForms for the last year or two at work for development, but I've used PHP for personal projects for 10 years. So, I'm far more adept at developing with PHP. When it comes to ASP.Net MVC, I have no experience with it because I've avoided it because I assumed it would just be a more complicated form of WebForms. Recently, I've been doing more research and it's sounding like MVC might be closer to what what I want. But, something I'm still not clear on is which ASP.Net programming model is closer to developing with PHP.   * My biggest complaint about ASP.Net WebForms is the \"magic boxes.\" Namely the View State, and ScriptManager.   * I don't like that WebForms messes with my client side HTML/JavaScript/CSS. WebForms does a lot of this including, but not limited to:      * Inserting JavaScript that I can't modify and have to rely on Microsoft to ensure cross-browser compatibility.      * Forcefully changing the `name` attributes of tags that make use of `runat=\"server\"`.      * Wrapping the contents of a `<form>` with a `<div>` tag.      * Forcing wrapping everything inside one big `<form>` tag.   * Everything in WebForms feels like it's catered to in-experienced web-developers who only know how to write Windows applications with .Net.      * Standard names for tags and attributes are changed when using `<asp:xxx>` tags. For example, instead of an anchor (`<a>`) tag, it's a \"hyperlink\" (i.e. `<asp:HyperLink>`). Instead of `href=` it's `NavigationUrl=`.      * The event driven model.    * I also don't like the complete separation of server side code from the client side code. I miss being able to do things like this...                <table>          <tr>              <td>Name</td>              <td>Age</td>          </tr>          <? foreach( $people as $person ) { ?>          <tr>              <td><?= $person->name ?></td>              <td><?= $person->age ?></td>          </tr>          <? } ?>      </table>      So, with these points in mind, which programming model is closer to development with PHP (i.e. do the annoyances of WebForms that I've listed here exist in MVC)? * * * _Note: I have found ways around many, if not all of these annoyances, but did not feel the solutions I use are revelent to the question at hand._"}
{"_id": "245026", "title": "Matching weighted unbalanced Bipartite graph", "text": "I am looking for a way to solve an assignment problem, but I am having some problems finding the correct algorithm to use. I have 2 list of nodes A and B, and in my problem may the length of A not be equal to B. In addition, the node a in A may not be a potential match with all nodes in B. The preference is given by a double where 0 is not interested to 1 that is very interested and then remove all matches with an edge of 0 after (As there might be matches that is impossible). If a have a preference of x to b, will b have the same preference to a. Example graph: ![Example graph](http://i.stack.imgur.com/at6uT.jpg) I am interested in creating the most optimal matching, meaning that to sum of the edges are the largest possible. In the example above would I be interested in the matching (1,1) and (3,2) leaving 2 in the left row unmatched, with a total edge weight of 1.9. I have been looking at the stable marriage and the Hungarian algorithm but both these algorithm requires there to be an equal amount of nodes on each side, and they do not find the greatest total edge weight. (Greatest or lowest is fines as I can just invert the edge weight) Can any of you point me towards an algorithm that will solve this problem for me?"}
{"_id": "255709", "title": "ftp plugin for sublime text with active editing support", "text": "i use notepad++ with npp ftp plugin for editing webpages.I would like to have a similar plugin for sublime text. what i want to achieve by ftp plugin for sublime text is same functionality of npp ftp plugin.   1. Npp ftp plugin provides sidebar view of files.   2. npp ftp plugin allows to download file and make changes , whenever file change is made , the file in ftp server is also updated by just saving the file. issue with sublimetext ftp plugin is it doesnt allow active editing of ftp files. file i download is not linked to server.so i have to manually upload every time to see change."}
{"_id": "211937", "title": "HTTP resource bundling/streaming practice", "text": "Our SPA (plain HTML and Javascript) makes use of huge volume of javascript and other resources that are downloaded via XHR. Given the sheer number of components and browser simultaneous request limits, we're thinking for ways to deliver our resources in a more efficient manner. A method we're considering is bundling several resources that logically form a coherent group into a single file; thus reducing down to only one XHR (per group). Furthermore to make it more responsive, we'd like to constantly inspect the partial responseText during the LOADING state, determining if a usable chunk (atomic resource) has already been downloaded, and make it available for deserialization/processing even before the XHR is DONE. (a stream-like experience) We're thinking surely somebody else would've considered roughly the same approach before, but haven't really come across any library/framework or container file format that is suitable for our scenario. Anybody else know of something similar?"}
{"_id": "148079", "title": "Agile - Spikes and the Overall Timeline", "text": "Team is starting on their first capital-A Agile project, and the project seems like it will fall in line nicely with the methodology (i.e. we can probably just grab an agile book and follow it like a recipe), with one bit of confusion: The project involves three things that nobody on the team has any experience with: Integrate with the Foo Payroll System, be able to handle the file type XYZ89 (where \"XYZ89\" = some file type you've never heard of), and convert some other files so they can be handled by the Frobnobdicator. As I understand it, standard Agile practice would be to schedule spikes for each of these, after which we can determine how long they're going to take (I'm not sure there's much of a chance that the client will decide not to do them, as they're pretty much solid requirements of the project) So my questions are:   1. Do we do all the spikes up front in the first iteration to get a better estimate of the time it's going to take to do them and/or get a \"walking skeleton\" up and running?   2. If not, wouldn't the total project schedule be at the mercy of one of these spikes coming back with data that this particular story will take way longer than we ballparked? **What is the best practice way to handle multiple spikes when they are basically non-negotiable requirements of a project?**"}
{"_id": "211938", "title": "Hyperlinked, externalized source code documentation", "text": "Why do we still embed natural language descriptions of source code (i.e., the reason _why_ a line of code was written) within the source code, rather than as a separate document? Given the expansive real-estate afforded to modern development environments (high-resolution monitors, dual-monitors, etc.), an IDE could provide semi- lock-step panels wherein source code is visually separated from -- but intrinsically linked to -- its corresponding comments. For example, developers could write source code comments in a hyper-linked markup language (linking to additional software requirements), which would simultaneously prevent documentation from cluttering the source code. What shortcomings would inhibit such a software development mechanism? A mock-up to help clarify the question: ![Dual Editor Mockup](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JlUiE.png) When the cursor is at a particular line in the source code (shown with a blue background, above), the documentation that corresponds to the line at the cursor is highlighted (i.e., distinguished from the other details). As noted in the question, the documentation would stay in lock-step with the source code as the cursor jumps through the source code. A hot-key could switch between \"documentation mode\" and \"development mode\". Potential advantages include:   * More source code and more documentation on the screen(s) at once   * Ability to edit documentation independently of source code (regardless of language?)   * Write documentation and source code in parallel without merge conflicts   * Real-time hyperlinked documentation with superior text formatting   * Quasi-real-time machine translation into different natural languages   * Every line of code can be clearly linked to a task, business requirement, etc.   * Documentation could automatically timestamp when each line of code was written (metrics)   * _Dynamic_ inclusion of architecture diagrams, images to explain relations, etc.   * Single-source documentation (e.g., tag code snippets for user manual inclusion). Note:   * The documentation window can be collapsed   * Workflow for viewing or comparing source files would not be affected   * _How_ the implementation happens is a detail; the documentation could be:      * kept at the end of the source file;     * split into two files by convention (`filename.c`, `filename.c.doc`); or     * fully database-driven   * By hyperlinked documentation, I mean linking to external sources (such as StackOverflow or Wikipedia) and internal documents (i.e., a wiki on a subdomain that could cross-reference business requirements documentation) and other source files (similar to JavaDocs). Related thread: What's with the aversion to documentation in the industry?"}
{"_id": "255703", "title": "How to get the average of an array?", "text": "Please correct the method \"ave\".               public class methods{         public static void main (String[] args){         int[] a = {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8};         System.out.println(\"Sum is: \" + sum(a));         System.out.println(\"Average is: \" + ave(a));         System.out.println(\"Minimum is: \" + min(a));         System.out.println(\"Maximum is: \" + max(a));         System.out.println(\"Minimum appears: \" + countmin(a) + \" times\");         System.out.println(\"Maximum appears: \" + countmax(a) + \" times\");     }     //sum of the arrays     public static int sum(int[] array){         int sum = 0;         for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++){             sum += array[i];         }         return sum;     }     //average     public static int ave(int[] array){             double ave;             for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++){                 ave = sum(array)/array.length;             }             return ave;     }     //displays the smallest number     public static int min(int[] array){         int min = array[0];         for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++){             if (array[i] < min)                 min = array[i];         }         return min;     }     //displays the biggest number     public static int max(int[] array){         int max = array[0];         for(int i = 0;i < array.length; i++){             if (array[i] > max)                 max = array[i];         }         return max;     }     //displays how many times the min appeared     public static int countmin(int[] array){         int countmin = array[0];         for(int i = 1;i < array.length; i++){             if (array[i] == min(array))                 countmin++;         }         return countmin;     }     //displays how many times the max appeared     public static int countmax(int[] array){         int countmax = 0;         for (int i = 1; i < array.length; i++){             if (array[i] == max(array))                 countmax++;         }         return countmax;     }     }"}
{"_id": "123723", "title": "Immutable structures and deep composition hierarchy", "text": "I'm developing a GUI application, heavily working with graphics - you can think about it as a vector editor, for the sake of the example. It is very tempting to make all data structures immutable - so I could get undo/redo, copy/paste, and many other things almost without effort. Fot the sake of simplicity, I will use the following example - application is used to edit polygonal shapes, so I have \"Polygon\" object, which is simply list of immutable points:               Scene -> Polygon -> Point      And so I have only one mutable variable in my program - the one which holds current Scene object. The problem which I have starts when I try to implement point dragging - in mutable version, I simply grab a `Point` object and start modifying its coordinates. In immutable version - I am stuck. I could have stored indices of `Polygon` in current `Scene`, index of dragged point in `Polygon`, and replace it every time. But this approach does not scale - when composition levels go to 5 and further, boilerplate would become unbearable. I'm sure this problem can be solved - after all, there is Haskell with completely immutable structures and IO monad. But I just cannot find how. Can you give me a hint?"}
{"_id": "119200", "title": "Would this be a good web application architecture?", "text": "**My problem** Our MVC based framework does not allow us to cache only part of our output. Ideally we want to cache all static and semi-static parts, and run dynamic parts. In addition, we need to consider data caching that reacts to database changes. **My idea** The concept I came up with was to represent a page as a **tree of XML fragment objects**. Some of the fragments are dynamic, and can pull their data directly from models or other sources, but most of the fragments are static scaffolding. If a subtree of fragments is completely static, then I imagine that they could **unfold** into XML that would then be cached as the text representation of their parent element. This process would ideally continue until we are left with a root element that contains all of the static XML, and has a couple of dynamic XML fragments that are resolved and attached to the relevant nodes of the XML tree just before the page is displayed. In addition to separating content into dynamic and static fragments, some fragments could be dynamic and cached. A simple expiry time which propagates up through the XML fragment tree would indicate that a specific fragment should periodically be refreshed. A newspaper section or front page does not need to be updated each second. Minutes or sometimes even longer is sufficient. Other fragments would be dynamic and uncached. Typically too many articles are viewed for them to be cached - the cache would overflow. Some individual articles may be cached if they are extremely popular. **Functional notes** The folding mechanism could be to be smart enough to judge when it would be more profitable to fold a dynamic cached fragment and propagate the expiry date to the parent fragment, or to keep it separate and simply attach to the XML tree when resolving the page. If some dynamic cached fragments are associated to database objects through mechanisms like a globally unique content id, then changes to the database could trigger changes to the output cache. If fragments store the identifiers of parent fragments, then they could trigger a refolding process that would then include the updated data. A set of pure XML with an ordered array of fragment objects (that each store the identifying information of the node to which they should be attached), can be resolved in a fairly simple way by walking the XML tree, and merging the data from the fragments. Because it is not necessary to parse and construct the entire tree in memory before attaching nodes, processing should be fairly fast. The identifiers of each fragment would be a combination of relevant identity data and the type of fragment object. Cached parent fragments would contain references to these identifiers, in order to then either pull them from the fragment cache, or to run their code. The controller's responsibility is reduced to making changes to the database, and telling the root XML fragment object to render itself. I would just like to make it clear that while I say XML, what I really mean is XHTML. The design generates and folds XHTML from the very start, without trying to add an additional step to transform the XML to XHTML. It's just functionally equivalent to XML. **UPDATE:** ![Modified MVC](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6rRmu.png) The design is still essentially MVC. Traditionally in Web applications, controllers make changes to models directly, _then_ load all the data from models, and send it to the view. The problem with this is that it's hard to do partial page caching. Most web applications spend most of their time in the DB. If the controller has to load the data from models _each time_ , then caching the view has no point, unless you cache the whole view and do no database queries. However, in Smalltalk, where the MVC pattern originally came from, views pulled data from models directly. \" _The view gets its own data from the model._ \" - MVC on Wikipedia If views pull their data from the models, and views are composed of other views, then it becomes trivial to cache the _output_ of views. If it does not need loading again, then it doesn't load, and it doesn't contact the DB. I am treating view output as XML/XHTML because we have a couple of tools that allow us to manipulate XML quite well, making the interweaving of static and dynamic fragments fairly simple. **The Question** My question has two parts:   1. Is this a good design? Are there any obvious flaws I'm missing?   2. Has somebody else thought of this before? References?   3. Is there an existing alternative that I should consider? A cool templating engine maybe?"}
{"_id": "119203", "title": "Which license for commercial software?", "text": "At the moment we are writing modules for an open source cms. We would like to sell these with a license. But which are the best options? Any suggestions and experiences."}
{"_id": "119205", "title": "What is the possible disadvantage of putting declarations in inner blocks, instead of at beginning of function?", "text": "At the place where I work, there are explicit guidelines for placement of declarations of variables. According to that, it is required to put them at the global level and / or at the beginning of functions, and not in inner blocks (such as a for loop). Since they've been specified by persons more experienced than I am, I'm sure that there must be a good reason for it, but I cannot figure out what that might be. It would be nice to know if there are any compile time / run time advantages at having them declared at a bigger scope."}
{"_id": "123726", "title": "future in iphone development?", "text": "i have done btech,nw i am searching job but one big question arise me in front of me several times that as a **iphone developer** i can survive or not ? i learned nowdays iphone development but my seniors said to me after learn iphone development you become miniority developer why dont you start from java or .net or php plateform. but i feel my future safe in i phone developer?m i right or not ?i am totally confused?please help me and give valuable suggestions"}
{"_id": "119206", "title": "Is it OK to use dynamic typing to reduce the amount of variables in scope?", "text": "Often, when I am initializing something I have to use a temporary variable, for example:               file_str = \"path/to/file\"     file_file = open(file)      or               regexp_parts = ['foo', 'bar']     regexp       = new RegExp( regexp_parts.join('|') )      However, I like to reduce the scope my variables to the smallest scope possible so there is less places where they can be (mis-)used. For example, I try to use `for(var i ...)` in C++ so the loop variable is confined to the loop body. In these initialization cases, if I am using a dynamic language, **I am then often tempted to reuse the same variable** in order to prevent the initial (and now useless) value from being used latter in the function.               file = \"path/to/file\"     file = open(file)          regexp = ['...', '...']     regexp = new RegExp( regexp.join('|') )      The idea is that _by reducing the number of variables in scope I reduce the chances to misuse them_. However this sometimes makes the variable names look a little weird, as in the first example, where \"file\" refers to a \"filename\". I think perhaps this would be a non issue if I could use non-nested scopes               begin scope1        filename = ...     begin scope2        file = open(filename)     end scope1        //use file here        //can't use filename on accident     end scope2      but I can't think of any programming language that supports this. **What rules of thumb should I use in this situation?**   * When is it best to reuse the variable?   * When is it best to create an extra variable?   * What other ways do we solve this scope problem?"}
{"_id": "80823", "title": "Unit Testing and .Net", "text": "Coming from a native development background, I'm used to my unit test runners outputting the file and line that caused the test failure. This allowed me to run the tests as a post-build step, and if any test failed the build would fail. Also, I could press the hotkey and jump directly to the offending line. What I'm discovering in the .Net world is that no one appears to work this way. I'm willing to admit that perhaps there is a different, better way of doing things in this alternate universe, but I would like to know what that is. I don't want to need an external tool (awful), and I don't want to have to remember to compile and then run my tests. What I really want is what I used to have: failing tests also fail the build, and a quick press of a hotkey would jump me to the test that failed. Edit: I should add that I'd like to see some sort of integration with Visual Studio's csproj file format. Having a custom MSBuild Task would be great, but I'd be perfectly happy with a console command that I put inside an Exec or AfterBuild."}
{"_id": "108562", "title": "how to start with ASP.NET MVC 3 razor", "text": "I going to start a new project in my company in which are involved the use of MVC 3, now this is the first time that we are using this framework, and i have a couple of questions,   1. It's recommended to start with MVC3 and not from the MVC2?   2. Any Tutorials in specific that you can recommend?   3. This framework have full integration with jQuery?"}
{"_id": "80827", "title": "When it comes to hosting your personal throw-away projects, does one service and project structure stand out?", "text": "I'm looking at Google Code, SourceForge, BitBucket, and GitHub, since they seem to be the big players. Now, I haven't broken down all of the features that they provide yet, but I'm really looking for a place to put various code that I write (my solutions for Project Euler, code that I might write for the Code Golf/Programming Puzzles Stack Exchange, and so on) in a centralized location. So, my first question is: For a situation like this, does one service stand out among the others? * * * Once I've chosen a service, I then need to choose how I'm going to distribute the code. There are a few options that I see for setting up the repositories and projects. A single repository can hold any number of projects - for example, I could have a \"Tom Owens's Project Euler Solutions\" repository for all of my various solutions to Project Euler, with projects for each language and environment in directories within this repository, another repository for my various Code Kata solutions and so on. Or I could break something like that down by language (have Project Euler solutions in Python in one repository, PE solutions in Java in another repository, and Code Kata C++ solutions in a third repository). My second question: Are there any limitations or conventions that exist for determining how you should share your code samples that you choose to make open, especially in terms of how you create your repositories? My thought is that this might be dictated by the service that you choose (based on the conventions of the community)."}
{"_id": "10580", "title": "What should you leave behind for your successors?", "text": "Assume that you're a sole developer leaving a job. What kind of information/material, outside of the code itself, should you create and leave behind for your replacement? An obvious answer is \"whatever you would want at a new job\" for sure, but it's been a while since I started a new job, and I forget what the most important things that I needed were back then. I'm thinking:   * accounts/passwords   * location of equipment, backups, software CDs What else?"}
{"_id": "66040", "title": "What makes documentation good?", "text": "I need to write documentation for several projects I worked on. I was wondering what, according to your experience, makes documentation useful and complete. What part should I include, how deep should I go in my explanation, etc? My target audience is developers. The purpose of the documentation is to make it easy to update or finish projects."}
{"_id": "127118", "title": "Rule of thumb for cost vs. savings for code re-use", "text": "Is it a good rule of thumb to always write code for the intent of re-using it somewhere down the road? Or, depending on the size of the component you are writing, is it better practice to design it for re-use when it makes sense with regards to time spent on it. What is a good rule of thumb for spending extra time on analysis and design on project components that have \"some probability\" of being needed later down the road for other things that may or may need this part. For example, if I have the need for project `X` to do things `A`, and `B`. `A` definitely needs to be written for re-use because it just makes sense to do so. `B` is very project specific at the moment, and I can hack it all together in a couple days to finish the project on time and give everyone kudos for being a great team, etc. Or if we say, lets spend a whole friggin' 2 weeks figuring out what project `Y/Z` might need this thing for and spend a load of extra time on on part `B` because someday we might need to use it on project `Y/Z` (where the savings will be realized). I'd imagine a perfect world situation would be a nicely crafted combination of project specific vs. re-use architected components given the project. However some code shops might feel it would be a great idea to write everything for the intention of using it at some point down the road."}
{"_id": "59810", "title": "Design for future changes or solve the problem at hand", "text": "While writing the code or during design do you try to generalize the problem at the first instance itself or try to solve that very specific problem. I am asking this because, trying to generalize the problem tends to complicate the things (which may not be necessary) and on the otherhand it will be very difficult to extend the specific solution if there is a change in the requirement. I guess the solution is to find the middle path which is easier said than done. How do you tackle this type of problem ? If you start generalizing it at what point of time you know that this much of generalization is sufficient ?"}
{"_id": "193807", "title": "Agile: When to re-factor and when to extend while accruing technical debt?", "text": "Consider the following scenario. You currently have a feature set `A` you wish to extend to include feature set `B`. In the near feature there's a high possibility that you wish to extend this even further to include feature set `C`.   * Option 1) Cost to extend `A` -> `B` is minimal, but high maintenance costs.   * Option 2) Cost to refactor `A` and `B` to make more logical sense is moderate, but low maintenance costs. Extending to include feature set `C`:   * Cost to extend refactored(`A` & `B`) -> `C` is minimal, again low maintenance costs.   * Cost to extend A,B -> C is high, (both to refactor and extend). Assuming the inclusion of feature set `C` is beyond the scope of the current sprint, how do you go about choosing an option? How does this change if the addition of feature set C is several (2 or more) sprints out?"}
{"_id": "225093", "title": "How to Know When to Stop Designing?", "text": "First some backgrounds, I'm interning at a company that makes parallel processing hardware. We're currently working out the design for a component of our driver that is supposed to evolve over a few generations of our products. The next gen is still in simulation phase and the specification we have now may change when we actually get the hardware. Our module is supposed to work on the current gen and all future gens. I've always been under the impression that a design should be as future- proofing as possible. In this case, we know exactly what to do for current gen hardware but are unclear on some fronts for the next gen. So my question is: **When do you know that you should stop designing for the future and just keep it simple and correct for what you know right now?**"}
{"_id": "149539", "title": "Agile estimation with tech-debt", "text": "When estimating (story points) a story that consists on extending a current functionality with a known tech-debt, should we consider the effort that will be spent to refactor the current code or should we estimate independently of this tech-debt?"}
{"_id": "138313", "title": "Built in Scala library slow?", "text": "I found this question and accepted answer on StackOverflow. It's related to the slow JSON parser in the standard Scala library. The consensus as it were, is that the build-in JSON library is slow, and, in the words of DMC: \"it's like that, and that's the way it is\" Maybe I'm just being naive here, but that sounds like a bad approach to grow the language. Shouldn't the _built-in_ libraries be perfect? They don't have to be everything for everyone, and I accept that Scala is extendable. But, if there is a built-in library, then surely it should be rock solid and as fast as the language have to offer. I'm lodging a complaint with Star Command ;-) Does anyone know where or how a normal guy like me can voice my opinion on this, i.e. where we can go to help shape the Scala language? Update: This question was not intended in any negative way. Scala, it's creators and the Scala community is choc-full off goodness. I was simply surprised to see that something like the built-in JSON parser was far from optimal (according to the question in the link provided)"}
{"_id": "164214", "title": "Writing scripts for Visual Studio project", "text": "What is the best way to write and run small scripts and tasks that are specific to a particular .Net project? Such things as configuring a database or confirming proper connections to servers. In Ruby, I would build rake tasks for this sort of thing. I am currently using unit tests for these tasks as they are easy to run within VS and they have access to all the necessary libraries and project code. However, this is not really their intended purpose and, with the dropping of Test Lists in VS 2012, it does not work nearly as well as it used to. Is there a better solution than writing a console project to handle these little code snippets I need to run periodically?"}
{"_id": "164213", "title": "Define which tests are run after build in Visual Studio 2012", "text": "Visual Studio 2012 has a new feature where it automatically runs your unit tests after every build. I would like to use this feature, but I have a number of tests that should not be run after every build (long running performance tests, etc). Is there a way to define which categories are run automatically? Or some other way to define which test should be run?"}
{"_id": "138319", "title": "Methods of ordering function definitions in code", "text": "When I work on some programming project (usually command line application in Python with many switches), I'm usually creating about 30 and more functions. Most of the functions are in one file (except some helpers that I utilize in more projects). Some of the functions are called on particular switch (like -p or --print) but many functions do some helper computations, print operations or database operations because I don't want to main functions be too large. When I have an idea for a new functionality I often put new functions randomly to the file. Should I think more about it and place it to some particular place? Are there some methods for this?"}
{"_id": "40230", "title": "Stored procedure Naming conventions?", "text": "One of our senior developers has stated that we should be using a naming convention for stored procedures with an \"objectVerb\" style of naming such as (\"MemberGetById\") instead of a \"verbObject\" type of naming (\"GetMemberByID\"). The reasoning for this standard is that all related stored procedures would be grouped together by object rather than by the action. While I see the logic for this way of naming things, this is the first time that I have seen stored procedures named this way. My opinion of the naming convention is that the name can not be read naturally and takes some time to determine what the words are saying and what the procedure might do. What are your takes on this? Which way is the more common way of naming a stored proc, and does a what types of stored proc naming conventions have you used or go by?"}
{"_id": "20201", "title": "Could you blend java and javascript?", "text": "As a developer who spends most of my time in either Java or Javascript these days, I have this fantasy about a language that blends the two of them together. I'm always missing something from one or the other. I know neither is perfect, but to me, they both can be considered the mainstream, modern decendants of C. I know the popular opinion is that they are completely different languages with only superficial similarities (obviously the name, but also lots of syntactical similarities, especially at the statement and expression level). However, I think that in theory anyway, it should be possible to create a new language, which is essentially a superset of both Java and Javascript (non- strict, of course). Sure there would be challenges in making a language that is loosely typed in some places and strongly typed in others, compiled in some places and interpreted in others, etc.... but my gut feeling is that none of these would be show stoppers (except for those with open minds and good imaginations). Aside from issues of \"where they run\" (browser vs. server side, etc)....what are the issues that would come up, especially on the syntax side? How could you handle the situations where the two languages would otherwise conflict? What would it look like? I can appreciate it if you just think \"it shouldn't be done\" or \"what a nightmare working in that language\", but I'm hoping for responses from people with open minds and that have more to say than that..."}
{"_id": "162904", "title": "What should I ask a prospective client during initial meeting?", "text": "I'm about to branch out into taking on some contracts on the side. What would be some good questions to ask of a potential client during a first meeting? I've thought of a few things that seem pretty obvious:   * What is the project?   * What are the deadlines?   * What's the budget?   * What/how do they want me to deliver the completed work?  Is that it, or are there any tricky things to watch out for?"}
{"_id": "17995", "title": "What are the advantages of obfuscating release code?", "text": "The specific example I have in mind involves the currently-alpha game Minecraft, but this is a general question that I think warrants some conversation. Minecraft is written in Java, and stack traces usually look like this (real example):               java.lang.NullPointerException         at d.a(SourceFile:247)         at gi.b(SourceFile:92)         at bd.a(SourceFile:33)         at bn.a(SourceFile:69)         at bn.e(SourceFile:115)         at bn.d(SourceFile:103)         at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.i(SourceFile:1007)         at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.run(SourceFile:596)         at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)      Obviously these are not the real package and method names that the developer uses when he writes. Since he is in an alpha stage, it seems that the developer should like to be able to make sense of his stack traces, especially if someone is able to provide one for a bug report. As this stands, it's mostly meaningless. What advantage could one possibly hope to gain by obfuscating his code like this that overcomes the drawbacks of more difficult bug identification?"}
{"_id": "240763", "title": "What should happen when code is reached that shouldn't be, according to business or logic rules?", "text": "I am currently writing an application that isn't huge but will be used through-out my company of 200+ people and external customers about projects we are working on (not software projects), but there are a fair amount of business rules, along with the implied ones that go with creating, verifying, and maintaining user accounts. Semi-often I find myself writing code like this               If (A)     {        foo();     }     else If (B)     {        foo2();     }     else     {        throw new exception(\"Should not happen because XYZ\");     }      or               foo()     {        //do stuff            if (D == F)        {            throw new exception(\"Method should not be called if D==F, you forgot how to use this method\");        }            //do other stuff     }      Is this code-smell because it implies that my code might break? Is this good a programming practice for debugging when things WILL go wrong? Is this being paranoid?"}
{"_id": "237387", "title": "How should I handle exception that *should* never be thrown?", "text": "What is the best way to handle errors that shouldn't ever happen? My current way to do this is to throw an exception if the 'thing that shouldn't happen' **does** happen, like so:               /*      * Restoring from a saved state. This shouldn't be       * null unless someone in the future doesn't set it properly, in which       * case they will realize they did something wrong because it may crash.      */     Object foo = bundle.getSerializable(\"foo\");     if (foo != null) {         doSomethingWith(foo);     } else {         // This should never happen.         if (BuildConfig.DEBUG) {             throw new RuntimeException(                 \"Foo is null!\");         }         foo = new Object();         doSomethingWith(foo);     }      This is somewhat pointless, because this _should never happen_. But just in case the code gets screwed up and is released into production with `foo` being null, should I leave these types of checks in the code?"}
{"_id": "28346", "title": "Software License Web Application", "text": "We are in the process of building a web application for a client and they have inquired about owning the code for the site. We would like to issue a license agreement to the client for use of the code if we for any reason we are no longer working on the project. We would like to have ownership of the code but allow them use wherever they see fit, the only limitation we would like to have is the sale of the code. The are a company with several employees and will only be using the application within their company. What would such a license agreement look like?"}
{"_id": "220065", "title": "Modularity and \"encapsulation\" in C", "text": "This applies to C (and probably to any other similar non-object oriented language). If I have a central data store and potentially concurrent access there are two ways I can see of protecting it. Let's say I have a data store with a few data elements...               struct MyStore     {         int data1, data2, data3, ...., dataN;     } store[M];      In this example the data types are the same but let's imagine this applies to something a bit more varied with different types etc... this is just to keep the question simple. To grant other users access to the data within I could do a few things.   1. Could provide critical region functions and rely on the caller to get the protection correct.   2. I could provide a setter and getter function for each data item type in the store and manage the critical regions within the module and protect the user from having to deal with any logic. My trouble with the first method is that the burden is placed on the caller. My trouble with the second, at least in C, is that firstly I end up writing a whole load of boiler plate accessors and secondly more complex stuff like test-and-set or needing to hold a lock on the data whilst doing several operations becomes messy. E.g. for method 2 I need               int GetData1(unsigned int index) {          int data;               ENTER_CR();          data = store[index].data1;          LEAVE_CR();               return data;     }          ...     ...          int GetDataN(unsigned int index) {          int data;               ENTER_CR();          data = store[index].dataN;          LEAVE_CR();               return data;     }      And the same for all the setters. And then what if I want to set multiple items atomically? Gets hard! How to get some of the benefits of modularity and encapsulation but still have a flexible interface?"}
{"_id": "94969", "title": "Techniques to increase logic at programming", "text": "I am into programming since last 3 years. But I seems to be lost in it. I am not able to get good at it even though I code everyday. suppose I solve one problem, I will wander from solution to solution and implement some other solution. I cant focus much. I get many defects for the code I write. I afraid of code I dont know why if I dont finish it on time my boss will fire me etc. I enjoy coding but not all the time. How to increase patience? I always wonder how do I become the best coder like many exceptional programmers. I know this sounds subjective but I think this will help programmer community to get good at it especially for average like me or beginner programmers."}
{"_id": "234907", "title": "How to implement a branch-and-bound in a functional programming language?", "text": "I am trying to write a branch and bound search on the set of all functions f: D -> R, where the domain size is small (|D| ~ 20) and the range is much bigger (|R| ~ 2^20). Initially, I came up with the following solution.               (builder (domain range condlist partial-map)                 (let ((passed? (check condlist partial-map)))                   (cond                    ((not passed?) nil)                    (domain (recur-on-first domain range condlist partial-map '()))                    (t partial-map))))     (recur-on-first (domain range condlist partial-map ignored)                        (cond                         ((null range) nil)                         (t (let ((first-to-first                                   (builder (cdr domain)                                            (append ignored (cdr range))                                            condlist                                            (cons (cons (car domain) (car range)) partial-map))))                              (or first-to-first                                  (recur-on-first domain                                                  (cdr range)                                                  condlist                                                  partial-map                                                  (cons (car range) ignored))))))))      Here the parameter `condlist` to the function `builder` is a list of conditions that should be satisfied by a solution. The function `check` returns nil iff any element in the list of conditions is violated by the `partial-map`. The function `recur-on-first` assigns the first element in the domain to the first element in the range and tries to build a solution from there. Failing this `recur-on-first` invokes itself to try and construct a solution that assigns the first element in the domain to some element other than the first one in the range. However, it has to maintain a list `ignored` that stores these discarded elements (like the first element in the range) as they could be images of some other elements in the domain. There are two problems that I can see with this solution. The first one is that the lists `ignored` and `range` in the function `recur-on-first` are quite large and `append`ing them is an expensive operation. The second problem is that the recursion depth of the solution depends on the size of the range. So I came up with the following solution that uses doubly linked lists to store the elements in the range. The functions `start`, `next` and `end` provide facilities to iterate over the doubly linked list.               (builder (domain range condlist &optional (partial-map nil))                 (block builder                        (let ((passed? (check condlist partial-map)))                          (cond                            ((not passed?) nil)                            (domain (let* ((cur (start range))                                           (prev (dbl-node-prev cur)))                                      (loop                                        (if (not (end cur))                                          (progn                                            (splice-out range cur)                                            (let ((sol (builder (cdr domain)                                                                range                                                                condlist                                                                (cons (cons (car domain) (data cur)) partial-map))))                                              (splice-in range prev cur)                                              (if sol (return-from builder sol)))                                            (setq prev cur)                                            (setq cur (next cur)))                                          (return-from builder nil)))))                            (t partial-map))))))      The runtime of the second solution is much better than the runtime of the first solution. The `append` operation in the first solution is replaced by splicing elements in and out of a doubly linked list (these operations are constant time) and the recursion depth only depends on the size of the domain. But my problem with this solution is that it uses `C` style code. So my question is this. Is there a solution that is as efficient as the second solution but does not use `setf`s and mutable data structures? In other words, is there an efficient functional programming solution to this problem?"}
{"_id": "114202", "title": "Should interviews for programming positions be CS knowledge focused or behavioral focused?", "text": "It appears that many interview related questions on this site are focused on testing traditional CS knowledge, such as:   * Algorithms   * Data structures   * Programming language/environments Obviously the site is called \"programmers\", so that is to be expected. However, I'd also argue that there are many other aspects that may be better predictors of a candidate's success (assuming that the candidate has a degree in CS from a good school and got good grades):   * Do they have a general love for programming and a continual interest in improving their skills?   * Are they willing to learn new skills?   * Are they willing to take the time to share their knowledge with and help others?   * Do they have a track record of success?   * Will the interviewee enjoy the type of work the company is doing and be dedicated to it?   * Did they work on similar projects or for similar companies before and enjoy them?   * Will they like the company's culture?   * Are they committed to seeing projects succeed? Is there more benefit in testing CS knowledge or behavioral aspects, or a combination?"}
{"_id": "122477", "title": "How can I deal with the cargo-cult programming attitude?", "text": "I have some computer science students in a compulsory introductory programming course who see a programming language as a set of magic spells, which must be cast in order to achieve some effect (instead of seeing it as a flexible medium for expressing their idea of solution). They tend to copy-paste code from previous, similar-looking assignments without considering the essence of the problem. Are there some exercises or analogies to make these students more confident that they can, and should, understand the structure and meaning of each piece of code they write?"}
{"_id": "87696", "title": "Is copy & paste programming bad?", "text": "With plain Google as well as Google Code search tools it is easy to find how to program using some resource or solve certain problems (such as create a Java class, or an FTP block in Perl, etc.). So developers are tempted to just purely copy & paste the code (in a way re-use). Is this an incompetency? I have done this myself, though I think I am a better programmer than many others I have seen. Who has the time to RTFM? In this age of information abundance, I do not think that copy & paste programming is bad. Isn't that what sites like Stack Overflow do anyway? People ask - OK, here is my problem - how to solve it? Now someone will post complete code and the person who asked the question would simply copy & paste the most voted answer. No matter how small the problem is. I am working with a bunch of young coders who heavily rely on the Internet to get their job done. I see convenience in copy/pasting and modifying code to get the job done. For example, you may be quite good with algorithms and such, but you may not know how to use a `BufferedReader` in Java - would you read complete the Javadoc for `BufferedReader` or look up some example of using it somewhere? What are the real dangers of copy & paste coding that can impact their competency?"}
{"_id": "50874", "title": "Is there an idiot's guide to software licensing somewhere?", "text": "Basically, my knowledge on the issue is zilch other than the fact that open- source and closed-source exists. I'm a web developer (not a designer in the slightest), so I look online for things like icons. I've always been a big fan of these icons, which have a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. As far as I can see, this license says 'do whatever you want with them as long as you have a link back to me _somewhere_ '. Is that assumption correct? Just today I found a new icon set, with a much more confusing license (found here), and to be quite honest I have no idea if I'm allowed to use them or not.   * At the moment I want to just use them for toy stuff that might never see the light of day, but then my source code is stored on Github, is it legal to store the icons there where they're publicly accessible?   * If I put them on my personal website that might have ads on it to make me five cents every now and then, is _that_ legal?   * If I use them on a site that offers a free service to users, is _that_ legal?   * If that site then starts making money (via things like paid subscriptions) or gets bought out by someone (highly unlikely but one day possible) is _that_ legal? Is there some noob guide out there that explains all this stuff, because I would hate to start using this sort of stuff now only to have to change it all later. Even if I buy the icons, there's still licensing issues that I don't understand! :( And this sort of stuff keeps popping up more and more often..."}
{"_id": "50877", "title": "Moving all UI logic to Client Side?", "text": "Our team originally consisted of mostly server side developers with minimum expertise in Javascript. In ASP.NET we used to write a lot of UI logic in code-behind or more recently through controllers in MVC. A little while ago 2 high level client side developers joined our team. They can do in HTMl/CSS/Javascript pretty much anything that we could previously do with server-side code and server-side web controls:   * Show/hide controls   * Do validation   * Control AJAX refreshing So I started to think that maybe it would be more efficient to just create a high level API around our business logic, kinda like Amazon Fulfillment API: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/fws/latest/APIReference/, so that client side developers would fully take over the UI, while server side developers would only concentrate on business logic. So for ordering system you would have a high level API like: OrderService.asmx               CreateOrderResponse CreateOrder(CreateOrderRequest)     AddOrderItem     AddPayment     -     SubmitPayment     -     GetOrderByID     FindOrdersByCriteria     ...      There would be JSON/REST access to API, so it would be easy to consume from client-side UI. We could use this API for both internal UI development and also for 3-rd parties to create their own applications. With advances in Javascript and availability of good client side developers, is it a good time to get rid of code-behind/controllers and just concentrate on developing high level APIs (ala Amazon) that client side developers can consume?"}
{"_id": "9099", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages to using your real name online?", "text": "As a programmer, do you see any professional or other advantage in using your real name in online discourse, versus an invented handle? I've always gone by a single username and had my real name displayed whenever possible, for a few reasons:   * My interests online are almost exclusively professional and aboveboard.   * It constructs a search-friendly public log of all of my work, everywhere.   * If someone wants to contact me, there are many ways to do it.   * My portfolio of work is all tied to me personally. Possible cons to full disclosure include:   * If you feel like becoming involved in something untoward, it could be harder.   * The psychopath who inherits your project can more easily find out where you live.   * You might be spammed by people who are not worth the precious time that could be better spent writing more of the brilliant software you're famous for.   * Your portfolio of work is all tied to you personally. It seems, anyway, that a vast majority of StackOverflow users go by invented handles rather than real names. Notable exceptions include the best-known users, who are typically well established in the industry. But how could we ever become legendary rockstar programmers if we didn't get our names out there? Discuss."}
{"_id": "160461", "title": "Programming language trends", "text": "Are there some statistics out there that show the approx. number of users that popular programming languages have and the rate this number increases over time?"}
{"_id": "160460", "title": "How to create interest in programming?", "text": "I am student of 3rd year software engineering, and I find myself nowhere in field of programming. I know basics of programming languages like C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, HTML, JAVAScript, CSS and PHP. But every time I sit in front of my computer and start coding in any of the languages, I feel frustrated and distracted and I just shut it down. I have lost interest in everything and I am worried about my future. I am worst at creating logics. So can anyone help me or guide me to make me create my interest in programming?"}
{"_id": "190944", "title": "OOP when using a GUI Designer", "text": "I usually do database and web development but at the moment I'm learning desktop development with Mono and Gtk# using using the MonoDevelop IDE. I'm also using the Stetic GUI Designer inside MonoDevelop to create the GUI. **What are the best practices when using a GUI designer to encapsulate extra logic that is related to a widget used in the GUI designer?** For example I may use a TreeView widget but I'll also need to have logic specific to how the cells render, deleting selections of rows, etc. My first thought would be to simply extend the Treeview like so:               public class MyTreeView : TreeView {}      But I don't think I can do that and still use the GUI Designer (correct me if I'm wrong). What I'm doing now is making a class that has the TreeView as a member of it:               public class MyTreeView      {         private widget;              private MyTreeView(TreeView treeView)         {             this.widget = treeView;         }     }      Am I on the right track or is there some special and fancy pattern or C# language feature that I don't know of that I should be using instead?"}
{"_id": "54018", "title": "How to share code as open source?", "text": "I have a little program that I wrote for a local group to handle a somewhat complicated scheduling issue for scheduling multiple meetings in multiple locations that change weekly according to certain criteria. It's a niche need, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other groups that could use software like this. In fact, we've had requests from others for directions on starting a group like this, and if their groups get as big, they might also want special software to help with scheduling. I plan to continue developing the program and eventually make it an online web app, but a very simple alpha version is completed as a console app. I'd like to make it available as open source, but I have no idea what kind of process I should go through first. Right now, all I have is Java code, not even unit-tested thoroughly. I haven't shown the code to anyone else. There is no documentation. I don't know where I would put the code so others could access it. I don't know anything about licensing it. I don't know what kind of support people will expect from me if I release it as open source. I have no idea what else I should worry about. Can someone outline for me (or post an article(s) that outlines) the process of taking open source software from \"coded\" to \"completed / available\"? I really don't want to embarrass myself by doing things weirdly."}
{"_id": "190946", "title": "Why Apple doesn't \"force\" the user to update by installing the needed API updates when the user downloads a new app?", "text": "I was here programming in iOS with a class that's available only for iOS 6, and I was wondering: why should I implement my app to handle multiple operating systems when my app will be distributed by Apple through the App Store, and so they could just include/install whatever iOS source needed for my app? In the old days updates to the operating systems came through CDs, and so it made sense that programmers could not expect everybody to have the latest OS, and that OS updates had to be clumped together into major releases and be few and far between. But in the age of the internet, and especially on iOS where both the user and the software developers are forced to buy and sell apps through the App Store, shouldn't we just expect the new APIs to be downloaded on the background when installing new apps? and changed to the OS to happen incrementally rather than in major releases?"}
{"_id": "118557", "title": "Why scalability issues cannot be solved by more servers ?", "text": "I know that big websites suffer from scalability issues and I guess that more servers (hardware) can help to handle scalabililty issues but I see that big websites are stuck about scalability even if they can handle the cost of new servers. So why can big companies not handle scalability issues by more servers?"}
{"_id": "66964", "title": "What problems are stack oriented languages well-suited and ill-suited for?", "text": "Stack-oriented programming is a pretty non-widely used paradigm (well, PostScript gets used under the hood a bit here and there). This in mind, what problems are stack-oriented languages good at? What would they do better than [paradigm] does? Also, for what problems are they a bad choice? Is stack-oriented programming just a niche paradigm?"}
{"_id": "118552", "title": "How to choose between Tell don't Ask and Command Query Separation?", "text": "The principle Tell Don't Ask says: > you should endeavor to tell objects what you want them to do; do not ask > them questions about their state, make a decision, and then tell them what > to do. > > The problem is that, as the caller, you should not be making decisions based > on the state of the called object that result in you then changing the state > of the object. The logic you are implementing is probably the called > object\u2019s responsibility, not yours. For you to make decisions outside the > object violates its encapsulation. A simple example of \"Tell, don't Ask\" is               Widget w = ...;     if (w.getParent() != null) {       Panel parent = w.getParent();       parent.remove(w);     }      and the tell version is ...               Widget w = ...;     w.removeFromParent();      But what if I need to know the result from the removeFromParent method? My first reaction was just to change the removeFromParent to return a boolean denoting if the parent was removed or not. But then I came across Command Query Separation Pattern which says NOT to do this. > It states that every method should either be a command that performs an > action, or a query that returns data to the caller, but not both. In other > words, asking a question should not change the answer. More formally, > **methods should return a value only if they are referentially transparent > and hence possess no side effects.** Are these two really at odds with each other and how do I choose between the two? Do I go with the Pragmatic Programmer or Bertrand Meyer on this?"}
{"_id": "207485", "title": "mobile app data copyright question", "text": "I want to develop a mobile app for itinerary of major sport event. My confusion is whether there will be a copyright problem in sharing the schedules, venue of matches, player statistics and ticket information etc. on my application, or whether I should make it either a free app or a paid one. If I use official sports news channel information then would there be any issue?"}
{"_id": "250979", "title": "Roles configuration strategy", "text": "We're close to start new project using `sf2`, and, probably, `FosUserBundle`. Keeping that in mind - what's the best strategy to define roles? App will be used by multiple divisions inside our company (every division has it's manager and regular employees), as well as external users, that can be divided into 3 groups (for now). I'm comming up with two possible solutions:   1. **each role represents specific action in app** , i.e.: adding new task action is described as `task_new` role. Selected users get this role to be able to add new task.   2. **each role represents user ability and every action checks if user has this ability** i.e.: when new task is being added, controller checks if current user has role `task_access` role. I ~~really~~ somehow like approach to this problem in our current app - there's one place where only admin has access granted, with list of all registered actions. Users are divided into about 10 groups and all you have to do is to check that this group has access to this action. In this case no code-juggling is required, but I'm afraid it will generate some limitations or roles overgrowing in new app. What I'm really afraid of is spending too much time changing the security code in specific controller/action, I mean, when new user has to get access to specific place, I will have to go to the code, handle new role, code will grow, and so on. I want to keep this time as low as possible, and as flexible as possible. I believe there are some great solutions to this problem. Am I right?"}
{"_id": "207487", "title": "What does 'between' and 'in range' mean in the world of numeric types?", "text": "Given is an integer with the value 5. Given is a range with start and end values of 2 and 5. So is the integer 5 now between the range? What should a 'InBetween()' method return and which one is the correct representation of 'between':               int val = 5                    if(val >= 2 && val <= 5) // would return true                    if(val > 2 && val < 5) // would return false"}
{"_id": "207486", "title": "Data structure theory based on graph rewriting", "text": "First of all, I'm looking for a book, publication, project or any kind of information that should probably exceed the limits normally imposed on answers in this kind of forum. I know the rules about not asking to advice a book, but hold your breath, don't vote to close yet. I've been searching every place and returned empty-handed. Eventually I came across the mention of \"Theory of data structures by relational and graph grammars\" book, but I cannot find it. This book is really old, the author didn't continue the work in the same direction, instead he published several books related to programming practices rather then theory. Well, I cannot believe that was the only book. Will you please help me find more? TL;DR The motivation, if you are interested. Through the course of last few years I was specifically trying to reach to any, even if very exotic languages to have a better idea of how they organize their system of data structures. The reason to do so was that the mainstream languages provide the programmers with very fragmented, not unified under any rigorous theory set of tools. Some try to build a hierarchy / heterarchy of things they put into that basket, but really, it's just random. SQL has very nice theory (relational algebra) to back it up, alas, that doesn't include the very common things, like strings or lists etc. For some time I had a gut feeling that the general case of any data structure must be a graph and other data structures would be some kinds of either degenerate graph (list is an acyclic direct graph with the requirement that there should not be a vertex that connect more then one other vertex, etc.) or a \"projection\", like a two-dimensional relation. I found several pages from the book I mentioned earlier, where the author expresses what I've taken to be the same / similar idea. But there must be more to it. Similar to how relational algebra defines a set of operations on relations, that book mentioned basic graph operations, but the details were lost."}
{"_id": "207483", "title": "How to handle the large website rss feed", "text": "Portal website usually have very large number of posts. For example I have 50,000 posts in website. I even created the google sitemap as chunks and included it in main site map file. But I have no idea how to deal with RSS feed. 50,000 posts in RSS feed file size will be very huge, how to handle the situation?"}
{"_id": "116806", "title": "Which DVCS (git or hg) is easier for programming students?", "text": "A bit of context: I'm in 3rd year of college. students are divided into teams of 4. Almost everyone will be working under windows (except a few like me who are on linux). As part of the school curriculum, we will soon start working on a project for a real client, but me and another team are wondering which way would be best for sharing our code with each other. I've been working part-time for 3 years and have had plenty of experience using both git and mercurial on different projects, so I don't have any problems using one system or the other. However, none of my teammates have ever used a version control system before. There's also another team who've tried using SVN but have had major problems and would prefer trying out something else, so they've asked for my opinion. My thoughts : I've heard that mercurial + TortoiseHg has a better integration under windows, but I'm wondering if the concept of anonymous heads might confuse them even If I explain them. On the other hand, I find that git branches are easier for a beginner to understand (clear seperation of work for each programmer) but doesn't work as well under windows."}
{"_id": "252646", "title": "Is it bad practice to resolve null arguments to default static variables?", "text": "First, let me show you an example (written in ActionScript 3.0):               class GameObject {         public static function MakeFromName( pName:String,                                              pAtlas:TextureAtlas = null,                                              pGameData:Object = null ):GameObject {                  // If these arguments are not passed, they default to the static INSTANCE's              // currentAtlas and currentData.             if (pAtlas == null) pAtlas = GameBaseClass.INSTANCE.currentAtlas; // <--             if (pGameData == null) pGameData = GameBaseClass.INSTANCE.currentData; // <--                  var theSymbolData:Object = pGameData.symbols[pName];             var theSymbolTextures:Vector.<Texture> = pAtlas.getTextures( pName );                  var newGO:GameObject = new GameObject();             newGO.MakeFromData( pName, theSymbolTextures, theSymbolData );                  return newGO;         }              // MakeFromData defined somewhere down in the code...     }      I'm having this debate with a coworker regarding the above 'null' (basically optional) parameters. To me, it makes sense to auto-resolve those two parameters ( _pAtlas_ and _pGameData_ ) to some sort of central resource (in this case, the primary Atlas and Data used in the game). This `GameBaseClass` goes hand-in-hand with `GameObject`, so I see no harm in referring to it's singleton-instance's properties. The developer still has the option to supply their own Atlas and Data. BUT, my coworker believes this ties the classes together too much - it isn't loose enough. I can understand his point if it was actually referring to the derived classes used in the game (i.e: `AwesomeGame.INSTANCE.currentAtlas`, where _AwesomeGame_ extends _GameBaseClass_ ). But it isn't! From his point of view, the developer should be forced to enter every single parameters, nothing optional (in this particular situation). Is there any way to have the best of both worlds? The only other way I can think of is just to write two separate methods (one with the 2nd and 3rd arguments, and one without), but that still doesn't address the issue with the GameBaseClass dependency. Any ideas? **EDIT: In the above example, I used ActionScript 3.0 which does not support assigning non-constant variables. In other words, it allows hardcoded Numbers, Strings (empty ones too), Booleans, and Constants (although I don't think it would work with non-primitive constants, could be wrong though). Since the`GameBaseClass.INSTANCE.currentAtlas` is a property that could change in the lifetime of the running application, this cannot be inlined as a 'compile- time' default value. Hope that makes more sense!**"}
{"_id": "2682", "title": "Does making source code available affect your ability to generate revenue?", "text": "We\u2019re working on a .Net framework which ultimately amounts to a single DLL. We intend to charge for commercial use of the framework, but make it free for open source/non-commercial use. The rough plan at the moment is to administer this through some form of fairly simple licence which will be issued whether you\u2019re using it for free or paying. We\u2019re debating whether to make the source code available. It\u2019s our perception (and our own preference) that it\u2019s far more appealing to use something where you have access to the source code. I\u2019m interested in whether people think making the source code available will damage our ability to make money from the framework, or whether it will encourage more usage and enough \u201cgood\u201d people will arrange to pay for the correct licence if using it commercially. My feeling is that, generally, commercial operations don\u2019t mess about on the licencing front and so making the source code available will only encourage usage and therefore ultimately generate more revenue, but I\u2019d be interested in others views/experience."}
{"_id": "130341", "title": "Open-source or closed-source for SaaS?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Does making source code available affect your ability to generate revenue? Initially I was going closed-source all the way, or at least until we have a good reputation, and open-sourcing will only improve that rep. Recently though, I've been thinking about open-sourcing the entire solution. Various popular SaaS solutions have open-sourced under AGPL and are generating revenue. For instance, Gitorious (http://gitorious.com/subdomain) is AGPL but they make profit. OpenERP makes profit using the same sort of mechanism as Gitorious, advertising that they maintain the servers and keep servers online. I am building an ecommerce solution, and am considering offering free use of part of the system, pay per/month to use the entire system. By making the solution open-source, couldn't a competitor just download my project and offer it at a cheaper fee per/month? If I open-source, will that increase or decrease my revenue?"}
{"_id": "252643", "title": "Should my internal MVC/MVVM application use Web Services for Persistence?", "text": "Just talking about internal applications or intranet web apps... At some companies I've seen their business-logic piece (Model in MVC/VM in MVVM) on one (or both) sides of a Web Service. And on the other side of the web service is the Persistence.               MVC/MVVM > Service Layer > Persistence      This is only for intranet/internal application customers, and both the web or app code, and the persistence (usually ORM) dlls both sit on the same server, or even in the same folder. I'm used to seeing internal apps and intranet websites that reference a business-layer... then that business-layer connects to persistence. So the app itself is persistence-ignorant. But with my own apps, if something needed to be exposed externally, that something is opened up via a web service. But otherwise, everything stays internal. Is there a reason for why I've seen a couple different companies do this? They didn't seem to know the answer themselves."}
{"_id": "126809", "title": "Javascript modularity, server based MVC & business reality", "text": "I understand this is a _very_ broad question, but I have worked with various aspects of this problem individually and am struggling to bring all the concepts and technologies together. I'd like to specify that answers should include these technologies:   * C#    * MVC 3 w/ Razor   * Javascript w/jQuery Anything above and beyond those (such as Backbone.js, Entity Framework, etc) are welcome as suggestions if they help answer the question which is: > **Using the above listed technologies, what is an _optimal_ strategy for > organizing code and logic while maintaining scalability and the ability to > create a rich, fast, clean UI?** Ideally the focus should be put on a solution being deployed in a business/corporate environment. On that note, the technologies list above **will not be changed** so please don't offer solutions with \"you should be using _xxx_ instead of _yyy_ that you are using now\". **Background** I work with jQuery everyday, have adopted ASP.NET's MVC and have been working with C# for a long time. So you can present solutions assuming intermediate- to-advanced knowledge of those technologies. I'll organize the question into **smaller parts** to make it simpler to respond to: **1\\. Project structure** Given I am working with ASP.NET MVC (in **Visual Studio 2010** ) I would like a directory structure solution that offers some acceptance of the main layout this type of application. Something like Brunch I suppose, but with a little more detail of what each folder would contain and how it works with other areas of the app. **2\\. Data access** I'd like to modualize my data access as much as I can, with an API-type structure. You can assume lots of POCO objects (`User`, `UserGroup`, `Customer`, `OrderHeader`, `OrderDetails`, etc), but there will also be some complex reports that require data intensive SQL and careful UI rendering. **EF + LINQ** are fantastic for the former but not so much for the latter. I can't find something that seems to fit both scenerios without being overly complicated or overly simple. **3\\. Client-Side Code Organization and UI Rendering** Like most developers first picking up jQuery, I fell into the trap of mashing together code wherever it needed to go but quickly found it piling up and turning ugly. Although I've come leaps and bounds since then, I still struggle with modularizing my code and working with various parts of the UI without repeating code. As an example, a typical piece of code I might write would look like this, I have commented the stuff that bothers me ( _note that I've since changed to using deferred AJAX calls and separated the actual data requests from the DOM manipulation_ ):               $('#doSomethingDangerous').click(function () {         // maybe confirm something first         if (confirm('Are you sure you want to do this?')) {                     // show a spinner?  something global would be preferred so I dont have to repeat this on every page              $('#loading').show();                    // maybe the page should notify the user of what's going on in addition to the dialog?             $('#results').show().html('<h2>Please wait, this may take a while...</h2>');                    $.ajax({                 url: 'blah/DoDangerousThing',                 success: function (data) {                                          // The results will be loaded to the DOM obviously, is there a better way to pull this type of specific code out of the data access calls?                     $('#results').empty();                     $('#results').append('<b>' + data.length + '</b> users were affected by this dangerous activity');                     $('#results').append('<ul>');                          // I've recently started to use jQuery templates for this sort of logic, is that the way to go?                     $(data).each(function (i, user) {                         $('#results').append('<li>' + user.Username + '</li>');                     });                                         $('#results').append('</ul>');                          // Need to hide the spinner, again would prefer to have this done elsewhere                     $('#loading').hide();                 }             });         }     });      **General Questions**   * Client MVC vs. server MVC? My project is already a server-side MVC structure, so is there still a need for client MVC like Backbone.js provides?   * Should Javascript files get created for each object (like an `OrderHeader.js`) and then minified/merged during the build? Or should there just be an `Order.js` which has logic for `OrderHeader, OrderDetails, Reports` etc?   * How should complex queries be handled? Right now my leading theory is `/Reports/Orders-By-Date/` or something along those lines and I use a custom SQL query that renders a custom dataset (or `ViewModel`) to the Razor View. But what about paging, sorting, etc? Is this better to be done client or server side? (assume larger dataset - 2 to 3 second SQL query)   * I've read through Microsoft's Project Silk. Is this a good way to go? How does it compare to Backbone.js or others?   * I'm very accustomed to an N-tiered architecture, do these concepts somewhat throw that out the window? It seems MVC is like a bunch of mini N-tiered sections within what would have been the front-end or top tier in the past. Again the more _specific_ your answers are the better they will be. **I've read alot of high level documentation and examples** , I'm trying to **better understand translating it into real world examples**."}
{"_id": "148180", "title": "Reinvent the wheel or using the existing wheel?", "text": "I would like to ask something about project management. I got a project that has some requirements, it can be done from scratch with the use of a big framework. Maybe some tools are necessary for some of the functions. But using a framework seems very cool, it seems that reduces the amount of work, but need to study a framework first. But study a frameworks seems very big for the team. So, what do you think? Just get the thing done from scratch or study a framework and get started like 'Standing on the shoulders of giants'?"}
{"_id": "126807", "title": "Should I learn a programming language before I attend college for Computer Engineering?", "text": "I've dipped my toes in C++ programming but I haven't actually delved into it. I want to know if I actually need to learn it or any other languages before I go to college for Computer Engineering or am I just going to learn it at school anyway?"}
{"_id": "48849", "title": "Is there any plugin for better viewing of exceptions?", "text": "I don\u2019t think that I\u2019m the only one that thinks that Visual Studio exception window is very poor. Trace information lacking formatting and is hardly readable.   * **Is there any plugin or external tool that shows exception information better?**"}
{"_id": "12450", "title": "Question about Creating a Scripting Language", "text": "Say, for example, I wanted to pay somebody to create a programming language or scripting language for me. What type of document would they need, in order to fully understand what it is exactly that I want. I mean, are there standard documents that describe the new programming/scripting language in question?"}
{"_id": "250752", "title": "Is there a design pattern for dynamically applying transformations or filters to a model?", "text": "For example, there is a model of an event with certain attributes that can be adjusted by existing processes: maybe one that looks at a geo-location stamp and determines a nearby city; another that looks at the number of registrations and applies rounding; another that calculates local popularity based on attendees vs. nearby events. The important piece is having a way to **dynamically order the operations** \\--the filters/transformations/processing tasks--so that you can pass the events to a processing object that arranges the tasks in the correct order for the configuration/situation, and then passes the models through to apply them. I can think of some ugly ways to make this happen, but want to know if there is a SOLID pattern that would allow for better, more-testable code."}
{"_id": "253412", "title": "Single result as REST/ODATA response on GET", "text": "In an API which should be both restful and support OData for different client types. I have an endpoint that always returns a single result. Should I:   * Return the entity as a single entity?   * Put it in a list which will always contains 1 element?    * Do something completely different? Normally a Get request returns a list of items and Get(int key) returns a single item based on the key, this however is _the_ exception. I don't want to be inconsistent, but it seems counter productive to put a single element in a list.               public SingleEntity Get() { }     public IEnumerable<SingleEntity> Get() { }"}
{"_id": "253411", "title": "How to allocate cross-cutting concerns in agile software development planning?", "text": "My employer has been moving from traditional waterfall projects to a modified version of agile. Work is broken into stories, which are estimated and sequenced into two-week long iterations. Each iteration includes points for building, testing, and accepting features. Stories are focused on testable business features. There is no way to plan and account for cross cutting concerns such as design, architecture, infrastructure, or (ironically) project management. Should agile teams explicitly include stories or tasks for these cross-cutting concerns? How does your team handle tasks that never go away? Are they \"off book\"?"}
{"_id": "48840", "title": "Can I claim the website I made when the back-end technology such as MySQL and PHP weren't invented by me?", "text": "That's just an example case. What I'm trying to point out is, how can you claim something (software/website/or any 'ontouch-able' products) as yours while at the same time you are using some existing technologies behind it? (such as database engine, programming languages, compilers, or even the computer it self!). If you can, how far can you claim it?. Can we put a notice (Copyright (c) by Me) on an website that built on top of LAMPP?. Or can I put my own copyright notice for the program I wrote on top of OpenGL? I have the basic ideas about software licenses such as GPL, MIT, LGPL, etc. What I still don't understand is, the fact that we are all being helped all the time by existing technologies such as DBMS, compilers, IDE, and even the computer we use, now if we create something from these technologies, how far we can claim it as ours?"}
{"_id": "143102", "title": "Intel mnemonic to machine code converter library", "text": "I'm trying to do the following: take a single IA32 instruction in the Intel syntax (such as `ADD EAX, EBX`) and produce the corresponding machine code for this instruction. Is there some small library, preferably open source, that can do this for me?"}
{"_id": "151988", "title": "non-volatile virtual memory for C++ containers", "text": "Is there a virtual memory management process that would allow a program to use the standard container structures and classes, but retain these structures and their data when the program is not running (or being used), for use by the program at a later time? This should be possible, but can it be done without changing the source code and its (container) declarations? Is there a standard way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "151989", "title": "Of which bad practice is require calling functions in order a sign?", "text": "Sometimes I find myself writing comments on class methods like this:               class A : public Base     {     public:         /**           * Sets variable;           * should be called before ImplementsInterfaceMtehod(),           * else has no effect.           */       void SetSomeVariable( var_type value );            virtual void ImplementsInterfaceMethod();     }      The callers of `Base::ImplementsInterfaceMethod` obviously do not know about the variable, and should not. But the users of `A` should set the variable if they want it to take effect. It is not required to set the variable (else it could be a parameter for the constructor), so I cannot throw exceptions in `ImplementsInterfaceMethod` if it is not set. Is this a sign of some typical bad practice? Is there a better way than writing a comment as shown to deal with this? **edit** here's a more concrete example resembling part of some realtime 3D image processing code; because of the realtime part and the fact images can get huge, everything has to be preallocated.               class DataProcessor     {     public:         /**           * Sets dimensions of the data for the next call to Process().           * Can be used by implementations to setup internals, eg preallocate.           * Upon returning out contains the dimensions that will be returned           * by the Process call, given dims as input dimensions.           * (A)           */       virtual bool SetInputDimensions( const Dimensions& dims, Dimensions& out ) = 0;            virtual bool Process( const Data& in, Data& out ) = 0;     };          class ImageStitcher : public DataProcessor     {         /**           * Set size of the output image returned by Process() as a factor,           * eg when size == 2, image will be twice as big.           * (B)           */        void SetOutputSize( const double size );              /**           * Set the position at which the next Data object passed to Process()           * will be stitched.           * (C)           */        void SetStitchPosition( double x, double y, double alpha );     }      So here (A) must be called at least once before Process() is called. Which I enforce by returning an error in Process() if that was not the case. Most of the time the dimensions are not known when constructing the object though so a constructor parameter is not an option. Two main components use the DataProcessor interface: all processors are in a network of processors, and that network is unaware of the type of processor, it just takes care of transferring data between them by calling Process() multiple time. Another component takes care of setting up the network by calling SetInputDimensions(), again unaware of what type the processor is. (B) should be called before SetInputDimensions() gets called, as it defines the size of the resulting image. (C) should be called before each call to process else the stitcher doesn't know where to put the image Now this whole processing network is actually used in commercial applications and works extremely well since I made sure everything is called nicely in order. Yet each time I write 'must/should be called before' bells start ringing all over the place.."}
{"_id": "151987", "title": "What was the first commercial open-source software?", "text": "According to the Wikipedia article on open-source, the philosophy of sharing code has been used in projects since the early computer days (mostly through Universities sharing code). However, I'm interested to know what (and when) was the first commercial open-source software (successfull or not)? If there's any confusion on commercial, I define it as thus: \"Having profit as a chief aim\"."}
{"_id": "151980", "title": "How did programming work when programmers used punchcards?", "text": "I saw this: Learning to program on punchcards and I've seen this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming_in_the_punched_card_era but they leave much to be desired. Can anyone explain to me how programmers programmed when they used punchcards? Specifically, the system of input computers used to derive instructions from the punched card itself. I do not know much about retrocomputers, so any one system of input you are familiar with would be fine. More general answers are also appreciated."}
{"_id": "167650", "title": "Should Equality be commutative within a Class Hierachy?", "text": "It is easy to define the `Equals` operation in ways that are not commutative. When providing equality against other types, there are obviously situations (in most languages) were equality not being commutative is unavoidable. However, within one's own inheritance hierarchy where the root base class defines an equality member, a programmer has more control. Thus you can create situations where               (A = B) \u2260 (B = A), where A and B both derive from base class T      Substituting the `=` with the appropriate variation for a given language. (`.Equals(_)`, `==`, etc.) That seems wrong to me, however, I recognize I may be biased by background in Mathematics. I have not been in programming long enough to know what is standard/accepted/preferred practice when programming. Do most programmers just accept `.Equals(_)`may not be commutative and code defensibly. Do they expect commutativity and get annoyed if it is not. In short, when working in a class hierarchy, should effort me made to ensure Equality is commutative?"}
{"_id": "152735", "title": "How do you put a database online?", "text": "I have a very beginner question regarding web development. I've had some experience with JSP, Hibernate, and MAMP to create a simple system for tracking inventory and sales. But this was all done locally on one computer. This time, I want to create a system that could be accessible online. It's to help my mother track her business wherever she goes. So there would be similar aspects like tracking inventory and sales. I understand that you have to have a server in which to host all the files in. But I don't understand how you can access your database online. Or what sorts of applications or products should be used. Currently the host of my database is localhost. How do put it online such that you can still do CRUD operations? Are there any guides to do this?"}
{"_id": "166104", "title": "In Scrum, should you split up the backlog in a functional backlog and a technical backlog or not?", "text": "In our Scrum teams we use a backlog, which mostly contains functional topics, but also sometimes contains technical topics. The advantage of having 1 backlog is that it becomes easy to choose the topics for the next sprint, but I have some questions:   * First, to me it seems more logical to have a separate technical backlog, where developers themselves can add pure technical items, like: we could improve performance in this method, this class lacks some technical documentation, ... By having one backlog, all developers always have to pass via the product owner to have their topics added to the backlog, which seems additional, unnecessary work for the product owner.   * Second, if you have a product owner that only focuses on the pure-functional items, the pure-technical items (like missing technical documentation, code that erodes and should be refactored, classes that always give problems during debugging because they don't have a stable foundation and should be refactored, ...) always end up at the end of the list because \"they don't serve the customer directly\". By having a separate technical backlog, and time reserved in every sprint for these pure technical items, we can improve the applications functionally, but also keep them healthy inside. What is the best approach? One backlog or two?"}
{"_id": "166105", "title": "Community Programming", "text": "**Background** I just began working for a religious non-profit organization. As with most non-profits, the organization is resource-poor and has no IT department to speak of. In my two months here I've received 20 requests for websites, apps, and internal automation. Many of these 20 requests have merit and would benefit the organization. I'm a .net web developer and as such the open source community is relatively foreign to me... **Question** _For the sake of this question, lets say I'm talking about building a single, large, website._ Does software (web based, hopefully) exist that would allow me to post requirements and assets (graphics and CSS) for a site, and then invite programmers to participate in the sites development? As a simple example, I could post the requirements and data for the about us page and an individual would indicate that they could/would fulfill the requirement. Upon completion, they could upload the new source code to the shared repository (github)."}
{"_id": "196811", "title": "How to save useful code snippets?", "text": "I do a lot of web development and there are many code snippets that come up again and again so I dive back into the most recent project where I used it which isn't that efficient. How do you store all your useful and oft used code pieces? Are there any products meant for this?"}
{"_id": "224769", "title": "Classes and library archive", "text": "We are a group of 5 developers(scientists end engineers) that write code in C++. What we would like to do is to make all the code available to all the developers easily. The first step in this process was to set up a SVN server, and it worked fine. Now we are facing another need: we would like to have a system were all the base classes, mathematical libraries, algorithms are public and accessible to every developer. Something like a Wiki, or like the root documentation http://root.cern.ch/root/html/TH1.html. A sort of site where you can upload code, you can describe it and you can point out how to use it. Do you have any suggestion?"}
{"_id": "236489", "title": "How to go about saving a Snippet / Block of Code", "text": "I am currently learning C#, I am pretty proficient in Java. A project I have been working on for a while is basically an application that lets you input code \"Snippets\" or blocks of frequently used code and lets you tag them with specific topics for easy sorting. How should I go about saving the inputted code so I can access it later and possibly format it or keep it in the formatting it's pasted in? I would want to put more information into the file it is stored in addition to the actual code, like the tags and dates/times so things like XML have came to mind but I really am not sure. Just for clarification, I am aware of the snippet function in visual basic. What I am asking about is for making my own C# standalone application and how to store the code on my own."}
{"_id": "198852", "title": "How to avoid code duplication across unrelated projects", "text": "I'm a contractor at a large Telco where I'm usually working on several different projects at once. The VCSs I use (mainly git and mercurial) tend to make me keep the code bases for unrelated projects in separate repositories, and I realise many benefits of this approach. However, there are many little bits of utility code and helper functions I've written which are useful across two or more projects, and I'm well aware of the benefits of keeping my code DRY - for example sometimes I find a better way to implement some piece of code and I don't want to have to update it in every place where I've duplicated the same idea. What is the best way to refactor out this common functionality (it is not always so simple as copy-and-paste, but sometimes it is..) without creating unnecessary dependencies between unrelated projects, and without adding needless complexity?"}
{"_id": "204871", "title": "Automatic code snippets in VS 12", "text": "I've decided to customize my VS12 to perfectly mirror my wishes. However, due to the lack of time, I'd like to start by just simply adding some code snippets first. Addins and such will have to wait until fall. :( So, basically, I'd like to type _hazaa_ and get some (preferably, but not necessarily, tab-jumpable) text saying _yo, dude_. Something like _prop_ spits out a stub for a property (with tab-jumpable parts of it being optional). I've found this tutorial and I wonder if that's the quickest way to start creating ones own code snippets. If so, I can as well do it right from the ground but it'd be nice to have something Q&D to start with. Also, I can't really evaluate how well that article adapts to the modern capabilities of VS12 (and the upcoming VS13). It'd be a blast if somebody with experience of that shed some light on the matter.   1. Is the article the quickest way to automatic code generation?   2. Is the article a reliable and updated way to customizing VS12/13?   3. Is there a better resource for my plans and, in such case, where?"}
{"_id": "193412", "title": "What design pattern should be used for implementing maintainable complex dialogs?", "text": "From time to time I implement functionality which requires asking user questions sequentially.   Questions are conditional, that is the answer defines the set of the following questtiongs.   Sure it is Wizzard UI design pattern, but for now I have no clear understanding how it is implemented from the point of view of software architecture. Screen/question can be a somewhat complex interface but most fo the time it's just a selection of several options.   Nonetheless after any step some calculations can be required, not only to get additional data but to define the set of questions.   I guess Strategy pattern has to do with this but I feel that the with this pattern the code which builds \"execution flow\" can become ugly. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "193410", "title": "The Service class in MVC", "text": "From time to time I find there is a need to build a service class. Something I can't really attach inside a model in order to respected GRASP and SOLID. So I created a class called AccountTransferService. * Are service classes good design practice ?  * Do they represent a Model ?  * If a Service is not a Model what are they in a MVC arhitecture ?"}
{"_id": "161331", "title": "Work flow when editing files in /var/www. Constantly needing to input \"sudo\" commands", "text": "I installed Apache2 and PHP5 last night on my fresh Linux Mint machine. I created a folder and created a simple `index.php` file with a call to `phpinfo()` to test out the installation and every works correctly. However when I open the file with Sublime Text 2 or any other editor, I cannot save my changes. I can use the `sudo nano` command to open it with super user privileges and I can save just fine. The same goes with Mercurial. I cannot `hg commit` because of permissions. I can only `sudo hg commit`. Is this how the basic workflow is supposed to be? If I run the `chmod` command and recursively give `777` permissions to the folders and files within Apache can run it just fine, but if it's a dynamically created file ( _created by my web app_ ) then it seems Apache cannot access or run it. I have to run the `chmod` command **again**! Any suggestions on what I should do? I feel like 30% of my time is spent on redundant processes that shouldn't be done at all."}
{"_id": "128057", "title": "Lisp As A Langauge For A Beginner?", "text": "Should I learn Lisp as my first programming language? I have no prior experience but have heard great things about it from programming friends."}
{"_id": "56110", "title": "is it possible to sell a web site", "text": "There might be a situation where one of my clients won't pay for the web site that I've made. So I am wondering if it is possible to sell a web site? It is an internet shop, so there is no content that comes with it, but the source code is fully available, and it has a decent design. I've seen people trying to sell web site templates, and I've seen people who try to sell already running web sites, and there are plenty of commercial web site engines out there. But what about raw empty web sites, is there a market for them?"}
{"_id": "56115", "title": "Is IPv6 support a \"nice to have\" feature anymore?", "text": "I work on an app that does a lot of network communication. I know that IPv4 addresses are being exhausted. At the same time, none of our customers are asking for IPv6 yet. We are examining which new features to add to the next release, so I ask: is IPv6 support a \"must have\" or a \"nice to have\" feature at this point?"}
{"_id": "143161", "title": "Where should a programmer explain the extended logic behind the code?", "text": "I have developed a few quantitative libraries in C# where it is important to understand not only the classic information that goes with the XMLDoc comments (which contains basic information with the method signature) but also the mathematical formulas being use within the methods. Hence I would like to be able to include extended documentation with the code, which could contain, for example Latex formulas, graphs, and so on. Do you think such information should be included in the API documentation? Or should it be included in a dev blog for examples? Are there common tools that are usually used for this kind of purposes?"}
{"_id": "41539", "title": "Methodology for documenting existing code base", "text": "I work as part of a team on an existing application that has no inline documentation, nor does it have technical documentation. As I've been working on various bug reports on the application, I've written a sort of breadcrumb trail for myself - bug numbers in various places so that the next developer can refer to that bug number to see what was going on. My question is thus: What is the most efficient method for documenting this code? Should I document as I touch the area (the virus method, if you will), or should I document from each section on its own, and not follow paths that branch out into other areas of the application? Should I insert inline comments where none previously existed (with the fear that I may end up incorrectly identifying what the code does)? What method would you use to accurately and quickly document a rather large application that has no existing inline documentation, nor inline references to external documentation?"}
{"_id": "99255", "title": "When do you start documenting the code?", "text": "Some friends and I recently started a medium-size project. We already covered the design part (at least the first attempt) and now we are moving into coding. We already have implemented some objects of the design, just to test if everything is going as expected (we are beginners, so we do not really trust our programming skills). The project is growing really fast but I do not really know when to start documenting the code. If I do it too soon the code will probably change, and so the documentation. Is there any \"golden rule\" for when to start documenting the code? Is there any time which is optimal to start? or it just does not matter? Thanks! **EDIT** : I changed \"commenting\" to \"documenting\" because I realized it is not the same. Sorry. * * * **ANSWER** Thank you all for your contributions. I'll try to post here the solution I got from reading all your answers. **When do you start commenting?**   * Comment the code as you write it because...     1. you wont come back later to comment     2. it will never be clearer in your mind   * Document the API. Create a design document separated from the original code and/or comment the header of your interfaces so:     1. It gets everyone in the same page     2. It helps everyone stay in the same page (no unwanted morphing)     3. It can evolve in the future into a more elaborated document I selected @Oct\u00e1vio answer as the right one because it hit an important fact: comment before it is too late. Thank you all again for your insightful answers!"}
{"_id": "53714", "title": "How do I document my code?", "text": "I'm a hobbyist programmer (with no formal education) looking to start doing small freelance jobs. One of the things that hobbyist programmers can get away with that those with a \"real\" job can't is lack of documentation. After all, you wrote it so you know how it works. I feel a little silly asking because it seems like such a basic thing, but how do I document my code?   * How should it be formatted?   * How should it be presented? (HTML pages? LaTeX?)   * What does/doesn't need to be documented? ...And maybe more specifics I haven't thought of. I mostly program in PHP but also C#."}
{"_id": "29488", "title": "What does your Technical Documentation look like?", "text": "I'm working on a large project and I would like to put together some technical documentation for other members of the team and for new programmers joining the project. What sort of documentation should I have? Just `///` code comments or some other file(s) explaining the architecture and class design? I've never really done documentation except the occasional word doc to go with smaller apps, and I think this project is too large to doc in a single word file."}
{"_id": "12186", "title": "What are the best documentation patterns?", "text": "I've seen a lot of different ways to [or not to] comment out the code, specially patterns on desciptions of function details and file purposes. I'd like to know what is most used pattern to do that [I'm specially interested on documentation generators and their patterns]"}
{"_id": "218988", "title": "When to write software project documentation on code", "text": "I usually write my software projects in java, and I am still a bit confused as to when to document my classes, interfaces and methods. There are two ways: **1)** Write documentation after declaring or coding a class/interface/method/constructor. This way I am sure documentation is handled immediately. **Disadvantage:** I might modify the arguments of a method/constructor or I might modify the functionality of the class or interface and forget to edit the documentation. **2)** Write documentation after finishing the project (or a major finish/version of the project), this way I am sure to document the full functionality/arguments of methods/constructors as well as documenting all exceptions thrown. **Disadvantage:** It usually becomes another great overwhelming task to go through hundreds of classes and methods at the end of the project, trying to write documentation code. As you can see both scenarios have their disadvantages but I think one is more advantageous than the other. I am puzzled as to which. Also I am not implying this to Java alone, it can be applied to any programming language that requires documentation."}
{"_id": "206102", "title": "How do you create documentation when there is none?", "text": "I have recently inherited a large, legacy system with a complex codebase that has a lack of documentation. I'm the sole internal developer embedded with the core users, taking some responsibility from an external contractor. While modules and functions are documented well enough, there is no documentation around the system itself. What it is, why it exists, how overall modules fit together. This is a web-application, and an example of this is how it produces a page. This requires executing PHP that makes a call to the database that retrieves some XSLT with custom extensions, that is transformed (this process may happen many times), it may retrieve PHP _from the database_ , however sometimes when retrieving PHP, it will retrieve a PHP stub, which indicates it actually needs to retrieve a PHP file from the file system. While individual chunks of this process are captured, there is no documentation that takes a systemic or macro view of the world. So I've come in, and have begun writing what I've been able to figure out from emails to the current consultant, what I've been able to figure out from the code, and just raw determination. Because of the importance of this system, the people I work with have its important that the system can be understood, so they are less reliant on a single person - be it me, the original developer or anyone. To be honest, I am happy with this, I'm secure in my own abilities, and if part of my task is to help mitigate the organisational risk if I was to disappear then thats fair. I also enjoy the task of unravelling a giant legacy system - its a giant puzzle. However, the challenge is this - I need to produce some solid documentation around how the system works, both for me and whoever follows. While I have started to get a clear understanding, what I would like to know is **what are the kinds of things a new developer would need to see to make sence of a legacy system that was new to them?** Similarly, knowing what needs to be written **how would you tackle diving in, dissecting and documenting a large legacy codebase?**"}
{"_id": "20950", "title": "What justifies the use of an IDE versus a standard editor?", "text": "I find myself using my text editor of choice (vim, nano, gedit, pick your poison) much more often than any IDE as of late. After noticing my ide shortcuts getting dusty I started to think about this and wonder: **what justifies use of an IDE for you opposed to a text editor**? For that matter what rationale would you have for **not** using an IDE and merely relying on an editor?"}
{"_id": "61738", "title": "Time to drop Emacs and vi?", "text": "Every time you are looking for a text editor, no matter what language you are using, vi and Emacs are hall-of-famers. However they are ancient, and we have better alternatives (at least I hope we do). Why are developers stuck on these two editors? Shouldn't we drop them and try to invent or look for something new? _(I have full respect for Emacs and vi fans)._"}
{"_id": "195226", "title": "Why do people use terminal text editors?", "text": "Are there any inherent advantages to a terminal text editor over a gui version of the same editor (vim and gvim for example) or are the people using terminal text editors just using them because that's what they're used to? I am not asking about vim in particular. I am asking whether, all else being equal, a terminal text editor has advantages over a gui text editor."}
{"_id": "69050", "title": "Must a programmer learn text editors like Emacs and Vim? How important are they?", "text": "I have been writing code so far in conventional text editors that come with the OS so far or use an IDE in some cases. I know there are some advanced text editors like `Emacs` and `Vim` available solely for the purpose of coders. How important are they really? Should a programmer dealing with `PHP`, `Python` etc. learn these editors? What are the advantages that they provide over conventional editors like `Notepad++`, `Scribes` etc.?"}
{"_id": "83688", "title": "Why would you use vi/vim", "text": "I often see people express a preference for vi or vim for text editing or even for programming. I've tried it and I can't see how it could possibly be any faster or easier. If you use one of them, why?"}
{"_id": "191309", "title": "How to start a development project when there are too many potential stakeholders", "text": "I've just taken on a new job at a college as (the sole) Web application developer. The college has a number of disparate but all pretty badly coded legacy systems. Mostly built in PHP they deal with things like attendance, exam results, marking etc. My first job is to build a system that incorporates a lot of this data, which is currently resting in various databases without any kind of friendly API to pull it out (the existing systems are coded in vanilla PHP with no separation of data and view) with a new platform for recording pastoral information about students and presents it to tutors and senior staff in a useful manner so they can react to issues with students quickly. In our first meeting, there were 18 people! There was no clear leader or voice that represented the majority. No identifiable _client_. The meeting swung from detailed implementation ideas on minor features from heads of faculty to arguments about whether we should use Excel spreadsheets or not for data input! As you can imagine my head was spinning at the end. I actually had a lot of good ideas but I couldn't get them heard. This is a very new role for me, before I was part of a development team in a marketing agency. We had very well defined roles: Project Manager, Client, Designer, Developer. I'd like to know if any seasoned developers or managers out their can give me some pointers on how I can whip my colleagues up into something that resembles a project team. Is agile the way to go? How would you approach handling all the disparate voices? It's clear that some process needs to be put in place very quickly, I'm just not sure what that is."}
{"_id": "128052", "title": "C++ for C# Developers", "text": "I know C# pretty well (self-taught, sadly) and need to do some C++ programming for a Windows application. I have been able to find a ton of information for C++ developers learning C# but haven't been able to find much on learning C++ when you already know C#. Has anyone come across a good rundown of the basics? MSDN has a comparison but it is not very in-depth. I can piece together several sources but figured something was out there - I just can't find it. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "158936", "title": "Good resources for learning about recursion", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Resources for improving your comprehension of recursion? I am a programmer with 2 years experience, and sometimes think I could solve a specific problem with recursion, but in most cases I fail miserably. I am asking your advice about resources for learning, refreshing and deepening one's knowledge about recursion, preferably:   * helping to identify when you could use recursion.   * practical examples (applied to contemporary programming languages).   * a reference handbook.   * source code."}
{"_id": "191303", "title": "Should a new class refactored out of an existing one have history pointing back to it's progenitor", "text": "If I split one class into two classes should both classes have history in source control tracing back to the original class that contained both; or should the new class be added as a new file without any history tracing back? When splitting a large class into two similar sized parts this seems like the natural approach since the older versions of the combined class will have large amounts of relevant history for both descendents. When I'm just pulling one or two methods out to create a helper class, having the complete history for the new class be >90% changes in the parent that affected code that wasn't split out seems like a recipe for confusion in the future."}
{"_id": "191305", "title": "Checking if my app is using any undocumented parts of the API", "text": "I just read through this question, but I am still confused. How can I know if my app is using undocumented API calls before submitting to it to the app store? Are there any tools I can use?"}
{"_id": "238590", "title": "Decreasing vars in Scala programs", "text": "I have been studying scala for the past week or so and the ideologies associated with it and functional programming in general. As expected, the leap from imperative to functional programming is not as easy as I had hoped. For example, I converted a programming exercise that I did in Java into Scala. What I found was that it was near impossible for me to switch from mutable variables into the Scala style of immutable vals. For the TL;DR people, my main question is, how does one decrease the var usage in a functional program? For the sake of a use case, I'll provide some sample code:               import scala.io._     object Bowling {       def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {         val input = Source.fromFile(\"bowling.in\").getLines         for(testCase <- input) {           val numberOfRows = augmentString(testCase).toInt           var index = 0           var a = 1           var sum = 0           while(index < numberOfRows) {             sum += a             a += 4             index += 1           }           println(sum)         }       }     }      EDIT: I'm accepting Karl's answer because of its conciseness though I do really appreciate Ptharien's code example and Doval's explanation of functional concepts as a whole."}
{"_id": "113773", "title": "I can't remember programming 5 mins after learning?", "text": "I'm learning Java, and I found a great teacher. He explains everything perfectly. I understand it _all_. My problem, is that after learning a short section, for example \"Nested If Statements\" or \"Many Methods and Instances\", I can type it all great, but in 5 mins, after going on to a new section (when I'm comfortable with the last section) I forget the code to type for the last section. Any tips or techniques you guys use to remember code????"}
{"_id": "51839", "title": "How do you keep cool when production system goes down?", "text": "This has happened to most of us... You come to work one day. Everything seems normal - the sun is shining, birds are chirping, but you notice a couple of weird things on your way to work that remind you of the d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu cat in the Matrix. You get into the office and there are a lot of phones ringing - but it could just be that they are doing a new sales promotion. You settle in, when you notice a dark cloud hovering over you. It takes you a couple of moments, but you recognize the cloud is your boss. Usually he checks on you every morning with his \"Soooo Peeeeter, how about those TCP/IP reports?\" routine, but today he forgot everything about common manners and rudely invaded your personal space. No \"Good Morning\", just some drooling, grunts and curses. He reminds you a bit of a neanderthal who is trying to get away from a cyber -toothed tiger, fear and panic all compressed in a tight ball. You try to decipher the new language that he created since yesterday and you start understanding that something bad happened overnight - the production system went down. Now, your system is usually used by clients during regular working hours from 9-5, but for whatever reason you didn't get any alerts on your beeper (for people under 30 - a beeper was like a mobile phone that could only ring and tell you who beeped you). You'll need to remember to charge it next time. So it is now 8:45am, and the system MUST be up at 9am. Every 10 seconds, your boss lets out yet another curse which communicates to you that another customer is having problems getting into the system. Also, several account managers are now hovering over your boss trying to make him understand how clients are REALLY REALLY suffering. Everyone is depending on you to get the system up ASAP and at the same time is hindering your progress by constantly distracting you. How do you keep cool in a situation like this?"}
{"_id": "150580", "title": "Coding guidelines for seamless merging", "text": "I am looking for coding guidelines developers should follow while writing C#/ASPX/SQL code, so that merging into other branches is smooth if not seamless."}
{"_id": "53282", "title": "Should every programmer keep a \"Lessons Learned\" journal?", "text": "Every time I've finished a project, there is always something that I've learned (otherwise I don't find it very motivating). But I can't remember everything, and much later I may stumble across the same problem that I encountered in a previous project but no longer how I solved it (or at least what attempts I made). So would it be a good idea to write this down in a journal of some sort? I know that writing stuff down feels like writing documentation (which not everyone enjoys doing), and hope our memory to serve us when needed. But having it documented, it could be shared with other programmers and learn what lessons they learned. So, what do you think?"}
{"_id": "51834", "title": "What to do when opensource project starts to tear apart? (or a manager tries to write code and then shouts at the team)", "text": "I'm working on an open source cross-platform client/server app. It is fairly complex and it's taken months for a group of developers to get it where it is now. At one point the team lead decided to implement a feature on his own. He had some development experience, but not a lot. He failed and the other developers finished the job for him. Since then his attitude got a lot more negative. He's trying to tell developers that their work is of poor quality and that all work should first be discussed with him. The current setup is that all team members are marked as \"project owners\" and thus have equal rights in the project. The team leader is now offering the developers the choice between always talking to him first or being demoted from project owners to contributors. So what are our options as developers? What arguments we can provide to the team leader to calm him down? Is it possible to save the project or is it better to fork out now? An important issue is that lately we had no active ticket system, and I personally think that this was the reason the mess appeared. So... any ideas?"}
{"_id": "119784", "title": "Is it good idea to require to commit only working code?", "text": "Sometimes I hear people saying something like \"All committed code must be working\". In some articles people even write descriptions how to create svn or git hooks that compile and test code before commit. In my company we usually create one branch for a feature, and one programmer usually works in this branch. I often (1 per 100, I think and as I think with good reason) do non-compilable commits. It seems to me that requirement of \"always compilable/stable\" commits conflicts with the idea of frequent commits. A programmer would rather make one commit in a week than test the whole project's stability/compilability ten times a day. For only compilable code I use tags and some selected branches (trunk etc). I see these reasons to commit not fully working or not compilable code:   1. If I develop a new feature, it is hard to make it work writing a few lines of code.   2. If I am editing a feature, it is again sometimes hard to keep code working every time.   3. If I am changing some function's prototype or interface, I would also make hundreds of changes, not mechanical changes, but intellectual. Sometimes one of them could cause me to carry out hundreds of commits (but if I want all commits to be stable I should commit 1 time instead of 100). In all these cases to make stable commits I would make commits containing many-many-many changes and it will be very-very-very hard to find out \"What happened in this commit?\". Another aspect of this problem is that compiling code gives no guarantee of proper working. So is it good idea to require every commit to be stable/compilable? Does it depends on branching model or CVS? In your company, is it forbidden to make non compilable commits? Is it (and why) a bad idea to use only selected branches (including trunk) and tags for stable versions?"}
{"_id": "158353", "title": "Why does the code auditing tools like FindBugs require a compile step to work properly?", "text": "Basically I ran Intellij Idea 's plug in called FindBugs-Idea to analyze my code . I corrected whatever errror was caught and then ran the tool again but it was still complaining about the same error even though it was fixed in the source file . It only stopped complaining after I recompiled my classses . Why does it require a compilation step ? Shouldn't it basically look in the source file and detect a possible bug ? How do these tools work in general ?"}
{"_id": "158354", "title": "What's the name of this pattern involving multiple inputs and what to do based on an input?", "text": "If I've got code similar to this (although perhaps not as constrained as warning levels):               switch(item.StatusCode)     {         case StatusCode.SUCCESS:             CallSuccess(item);             break;         case StatusCode.WARNING:             CallWarning(item);             break;         case StatusCode.ERROR:             CallError(item);             break;     }      I often find myself converting it to something more like:               var behaviors = new Dictionary<StatusCode, Action<Item>>     {         {StatusCode.SUCCESS, (item) => CallSuccess(item)},         {StatusCode.WARNING, (item) => CallWarning(item)},         {StatusCode.ERROR,   (item) => CallError(item)},     }          behaviors[item.StatusCode](item);      I find that in a lot of cases this makes for more maintainable code. Is this a pattern, does it actually help like I think it does, and what's its name?"}
{"_id": "119782", "title": "What does 'stage' mean in git?", "text": "I find git hard to understand as I could not find the meaning of the words used for the actions. I have checked the dictionary for the meaning of 'stage' and none of the meanings were related to source control concepts. What does 'stage' mean in the context of git?"}
{"_id": "166171", "title": "Differential and integral calculus for programmer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where is the application of Calculus(of continuous quantities) in Computer > Science or programming   >  How can calculus and linear algebra be useful to a system programmer? Differential and integral calculus is part of my degree but I don't understand why. Where does it come in play, where is it used?"}
{"_id": "139497", "title": "Where is the application of Calculus (of continuous quantities) in Computer Science or programming", "text": "I am a Software Engineer professional. I have studied calculus as a core course in my graduation studies. I want to ask question, that what/where is the implementation of calculus in computer science?"}
{"_id": "149274", "title": "mysql fulltext search table design", "text": "I have been working on a Mysql db design which keyword based search seems to be necessary. Main table has two columns:               id | Title      For each entry, users will be required to enter 4 or 5 keywords. I think using a seperate table for keywords would be better. I would like to learn if there is any difference between these two designs in terms of performance, scalability and management. There will be millions of rows in the main table.               id | keywords     1  | 1kword1, 1kword2, 1kword3     2  | 2kword1, 2kword2, 2kword3      Or               id | keyword     1  | 1kword1      2  | 1kword2      3  | 1kword3     4  | 2kword1      5  | 2kword2      6  | 2kword3"}
{"_id": "120400", "title": "Where can I get feedback and support from other programmers in real time?", "text": "I used to work in an office surrounded by a large team of programmers where we all used the same languages and had different expertises. Now that I am on my own forming a startup at home, my productivity is suffering because I miss having people I can talk to for specific help, inspiration and reality checks when working on a coding problem. I don't have access to business incubators or shared (co-working) office spaces for startups so I need to chat with people virtually. Where can I go for real-time chat with other programmers and developers (currently I'm looking for people developing for the web, javascript and python) for live debugging and problem-solving of the tasks I am working on? And what other resources can I use to get fellow programmer support?"}
{"_id": "120407", "title": "How can you achieve and maintain flow while pair programming?", "text": "Flow is a concept introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; in short, it means to get into the \"zone\". You feel immersed in your task, focused; the task can be difficult but challenging at the same time. When people achieve flow their productivity shoots up. Programming requires a great deal of mental focus because we often need to juggle several things in our minds at once. Many like to work in a quiet environment where they can direct their full attention to the task. If they are interrupted, it may take several minutes or even hours to get back into flow. I understand there's a practice in agile development and extreme programming called pair programming. It means you put the whole software development team in one room so that communication is seamless. You do write code with your pair because this way you get instant code reviews and fewer bugs get through. I've always had problems achieving flow while doing pair programming because of constant interruptions. I'm thinking deep about an issue then all of sudden someone asks me a question from another pair. My train of thought is lost. How can you achieve and maintain flow while pair programming?"}
{"_id": "250142", "title": "MVC/P in Desktop Application", "text": "I am developping a desktop application in C#, and have separated different layers in an MVC-ish architecture. As I have switched from GTK# to XWT, only views had to be adjusted, so the seperation of layers was done quite OK. As XWT does not have a layout designer, everything has to be set up in code, which in turn led to an architectural problem: I have one controller for displaying outlets, inlets and connections. This controller sends data to one view (outlined in red). This view in turn has subviews (green and blue), that only communicate with the view in red. ![Layout of view](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sQ2RT.png) On scrolling / collapsing / expanding the treeviews, the green view send events, which are received by the red view, which in turn trigger redrawing in the blue view. Controller does not see the green or blue views, every change in connections / outlets / inlets are only sent to the red view. My problem: As I understand MVC, views should not have much logic. But the green views is a class of 300 lines, the red view's class has 200 lines, which is too many. What architectural problem can arise from this? Am I overlooking a fault in my MVC logic?"}
{"_id": "120408", "title": "How to increase the bus factor and specialize at the same time?", "text": "In agile pair programming it is recommended to switch pairs every now and then so as to increase the bus factor of the team. That means, most people in the team should work on different parts of the system at different times so that everyone has an understanding of it. Now it is impssible that everyone has an expert level of understanding of each part of the system. That's because people are urged to specialize in one area of expertise. If you are an expert database admin, what's the point of working on the user interface of the system when you switch pairs? You will not be able to do such a high quality job as someone who has extensive experience in UI design. How can you increase the bus factor and make sure that you have specialization in your team?"}
{"_id": "152987", "title": "Does using GCC specific builtins qualify as incorporation within a project?", "text": "I understand that linking to a program licensed under the GPL requires that you release the source of your program under the GPL as well, while the LGPL does not require this. The terminology of the (L)GPL is very clear about this.               #include \"gpl_program.h\"      means you'd have to license GPL, because you're linking to GPL licensed code. And               #include \"lgpl_program.h\"      means you're free to license however you want, so that it doesn't explicitly prohibit linking to LGPL source. Now, my question about what isn't clear is: [begin question] **GCC is GPL licensed, compiling with GCC, does not constitute \"integration\" into your program, as the GPL puts it; does using builtin functions (which are specific to GCC) constitute \"incorporation\" even though you haven't explicitly linked to this GPL licensed code? My intuition tells me that this isn't the intention, but legality isn't always intuitive. I'm not actually worried, but I'm curious if this could be considered the case.** [end question] [begin aside] The reason for my equivocation is that GCC builtins like `__builtin_clzl()` or `__builtin_expect()` are an API _technically_ and _could_ be implemented in another way. For example, many builtins were replicated by LLVM and the argument could be made that it's not implementation specific to GCC. However, many builtins have no parallel and when compiled will link GPL licensed code in GCC and will not compile on other compilers. If you make the argument here that the API _could_ be replicated by another compiler, couldn't you make that identical claim about any program you link to, so long as you don't distribute that source? I understand that I'm being a legal snake about this, but it strikes me as odd that the GPL isn't more specific. I don't see this as a reasonable ploy for proprietary software creators to bypass the GPL, as they'd have to bundle the GPL software to make it work, removing their plausible deniability. However, isn't it possible that if builtins don't constitute linking, then open source proponents who oppose the GPL could simply write a BSD/MIT/Apache/Apple licensed product that links to a GPL'd program and claim that they intend to write a non-GPL interface that is identical to the GPL one, preserving their BSD license until it's actually compiled? [end aside] Sorry for the aside, I didn't think many people would follow why I care about this if I'm not facing any legal trouble or implications. Don't worry too much about the hypotheticals there, I'm just extrapolating what either answer to my actual question could imply."}
{"_id": "221950", "title": "Testing Framework Selection: xUnit family theory", "text": "**Background:**   I am familiar with xUnit family frameworks and have had experience with (shunit2, PhpUnit and simpletest). I am currently trying to find a testing framework for C++. I did a quick search for frameworks using Wikipedia's list of documented frameworks; however, the framework I would like to use is very difficult to setup and is poorly documented. There is another framework that I have tried that was (IMHO) extremely easy to setup and integrate into my production workflow. The difference between my framework of choice (the one that is difficult to setup) and the one that I'm currently using (the one that was easy to setup) is compliance with xUnit methodology. **Questions:**   1\\. I have read quite a few articles about xUnit testing frameworks. I believe that they use similar naming conventions and testing methods for their test. Is this true and what are the naming methods utilized?   2\\. Does staying with xUnit testing frameworks make it easier to run integration tests when using multiple languages?   3\\. From a training perspective is it more cost effective to teach new programmers a set of tools based on the same concept or different individual tools that do the same thing? _I kept the frameworks that I am looking at anonymous because I am more interested in industry best practices than a comparison of the two said frameworks_"}
{"_id": "152983", "title": "EPL-Licensed Library with Closed-Source Commercial Product", "text": "The Eclipse Public License is not entirely clear for me. As I understand it, anyone who redistributes a Library whose code is licensed under the EPL is considered to be a Contributor. It then states that you are not required to redistribute source-code but you must make mention of where to obtain it. Other websites have said you do not need to release the source code of your project unless you specifically modify parts of the EPL-licensed program, but from reading the license, it seems to indicate otherwise. If I would like to use Library X in my Java program where I link the library to my project via the Build Path and then redistribute Library X with my program, am I required to allow the obtaining of the source code or not, \"Ask A Lawyer\" advice aside."}
{"_id": "152982", "title": "Splitting code from form operations in C#", "text": "I have a large (at least for me - approximately 10k lines) project that is written in C#. I have a treeview object on the left of my form and i have many nodes on my treeview. When i click a node, i bring up a panel on the right side of form. Since i only do GUI item operations (filling textboxes, clicking buttons, showing images on pictureboxes etc.), i write all of my code into MainForm class. This seems not very good but on the other side, i think i have to write into MainForm class because all of my job is to evaluate form items on panels. What should i do to write a more portable or understandable code? Do i have to write into MainForm class or do i have some options or methods to implement?"}
{"_id": "65538", "title": "Where to position logging statements", "text": "I have the following classes :               class Task     {         public void DoSomething()         {              var s = new Service();             s.First();             s.Second();             s.Third();         }     }          class Service     {         public void First() {};         public void Second() {};         public void Third() {};     }      If I want to add logging, should I put logging statements like this :                   public void DoSomething()         {              Log(\"new\");             var s = new Service();                  Log(\"First\");             s.First();                  Log(\"Second\");             s.Second();                  Log(\"Third\");             s.Third();         }      Or should I put each statement inside the called methods of Service class ? I know it is quite subjective, and won't change a lot of things, but I'm curious about the pros and cons of each approach. Update : I'm not asking about verbosity or level, just about placement of the logging statements."}
{"_id": "65534", "title": "Hourly rate benefits for the customer", "text": "It is good for a developer to work on a per-hour basis, but it's hard to explain the advantages of hourly rate to the customer. What are your arguments on the hourly rate for the customer? How do you explain him his benefits and how do you argue on \"I want to know the exact cost of the project\"?"}
{"_id": "246777", "title": "Pros and cons of custom exceptions", "text": "This may be an pointless question based on opinion, style, and context but I've been racking my brain trying to decide whether or not to make use of custom exceptions and would love to hear some pros and cons from anyone with experience from both approaches. For example I'm trying to decide between a custom ObjectNotFoundException vs IllegalArgumentException/IllegalStateException. (Please note that I am not intending to throw an exception whenever a service cannot find an object with a given identifier. We simply return a null in that case. I'm speaking of when an action is to be performed on an object with a given identifier. In this case, the object in question is expected to exist, so if it does not, we want to throw an exception.) On one hand, a \"GiraffeNotFoundException\" is explicit and could be handled differently than a generic IllegalStateException, but then again I suppose that would only matter if such a differentiation is actually required. Another pro is that a custom message for such an exception can be set as the default message for this exception (reducing a bit of redundancy). On the other hand, it might not be a good idea to clutter the source code with custom exceptions. Also with standard exceptions, the Assert class from spring can be used quite efficiently. There are no intentions of publishing our code as a third party library so there are no pressures for using standard exceptions from that end. Any other thoughts?"}
{"_id": "114331", "title": "What are possible/useful implementations when extending exceptions?", "text": "I have seen a lot of exceptions - custom or integrated in the language (PHP) itself that have no differences but their class name. When extending default exceptions to use within your own code, are there any other things you could implement that are useful besides the more specific exception name that do not violate things like single responsibility?"}
{"_id": "49084", "title": "GoF Design Patterns - which ones do you actually use?", "text": "I'm trying to educate my colleagues in the area of design patterns. Some of the original Gang of Four patterns are a little esoteric, so I'm wondering if there is a sub-group of \"essential\" patterns that all programmers should know. As I look through the list, I think I've probably used -   * Abstract Factory    * Factory Method   * Singleton    * Bridge    * Facade    * Command Which ones do you actually use in practice, and what do you use them for? Link for those wanting a list of patterns"}
{"_id": "150630", "title": "Why isn't reflection on the SCJP / OCJP?", "text": "I read through Kathy Sierra's SCJP study guide and I will read it again more throughly to improve myself as a Java programmer and be able to take the certification either Java 6 or wait for the Java 7 exam (I'm already employed as Java developer so I'm in no hurry to take the exam.) Now I wonder why reflection is not on the exam? The book it seems covers everything that should be on the exam and AFAIK reflection is at least as important as threads if not more used inpractice since many frameworks use reflection. Do you know why reflection is not part of the SCJP? Do you agree that it's at least important to know reflection as threads? Thanks for any answer"}
{"_id": "241485", "title": "Do input template languages exist?", "text": "When I have to create some textual representation of data, I can use a template language, so that my code does not have to worry about the structure of the output file - I can sometimes even write code that's independent of whether the output is XML, LaTeX or any other plain text. A simple example: Template (in separate file):               <someXmlTag>     $variableName     </someXmlTag>      Code:               Template(temstring).substitute(variableName=\"value\")      Result (written to output file):               <someXmlTag>     value     </someXmlTag>      I want to do the same, but in the opposite direction. I have XML or plain text or whatever files to input. I want to describe the input structure in a separate file that looks like the input but has these variable declarations in it, and I want to handle it with code that's independent of the structure. **Has this been done before? What approach was used and how did it work out?** (We usually handle XML input by using an XML parser library to describe the input structure in program code, handle plaintext input by writing regexes in code, and don't handle LaTeX input because LaTeX can't really be parsed.)"}
{"_id": "64489", "title": "What are some precedents on how substantial a snippet must be to be copyrightable?", "text": "I occasionally worry that when I borrow snippets of code from websites, etc. there's at least the theoretical possibility that this will be copyright infringement. However, small pieces of code to accomplish common tasks may be too unoriginal for copyright and in practice this kind of sharing happens all the time. What are some **rules of thumb** , ideally supported by legal precedent, as to how substantial and original a piece of code must be to be copyrightable? P.S. I **know** there are no hard and fast rules on this and that a definitive answer to a specific case requires a lawyer. However, since I'm only looking for rules of thumb here, answers to this effect will be downvoted."}
{"_id": "43155", "title": "ETL Software Research Question", "text": "Where I work, we use an in-house ETL solution that's homegrown and has been around for 5-10 years. I'm still new to my data analysis job, but I was wondering about the ETL tools that are out there. This is a new area for me. My situation, and job, is basically   * digging in a set of databases (DB2, SQL2005, Citrix, Ancient Cobol Database with a SQL Wrapper on top, MySQL, etc).   * Gather the desired information.   * combine the different datasets into one set.    * output into a file of choice (CSV, Tab Separated, Pipe Separated, XLS, etc).   * FTP to customer. I guess what my real question is, given my job, what are some good ETL suites that I can look at and compare to my in-house tools? This is more to research some other options. Ultimately, I'd either suggest a new solution or get options/ideas to improve our current app."}
{"_id": "43151", "title": "Should you sacrifice code readability with how efficient code is?", "text": "Should you sacrifice code readability with how efficient code is? e.g. 3 lines of code into 1 line. I read in _Code Craft_ by Pete Goodliffe that readability is key. Your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "167275", "title": "Database Change Auditing - Part of or Abstracted from ORM / Application Layer?", "text": "My fellow developers and I are at a crossroads in how to go about continuing our auditing of database changes. Most of our applications log changes via `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, and `DELETE` triggers. A few of our newer applications audit at the ORM layer; specifically using Hibernate Envers. While ORM layer auditing provides a much cleaner interface and is much more maintainable, it will not capture any manual database changes that are made. ORM layer auditing also means that our libraries will currently require a dependency on our ORM implementation unless, specifically in our case for example, JPA plans on providing something in the near future. Is there a common paradigm that addresses this?"}
{"_id": "23891", "title": "What is REST (in simple English)", "text": "Lately I have become interested in familiarizing myself with REST. I tried reading wiki entry on REST, but it was of no help. I would really appreciate it if someone can explain in simple English (that is without **unnecessary** tech jargon)   1. What is REST   2. What position it occupies in web architecture ecosystem   3. How tightly (or loosely) it is coupled with protocol.   4. What are the alternatives to REST and how does REST compare with them. I understand it may not be possible to answer this in one or two paragraphs, in that case relevant links will be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "105313", "title": "How could the first C++ compiler be written in C++?", "text": "Stroustrup claims that Cfront, the first C++ compiler, was written in C++ (Stroustrup FAQ). However, how is it even possible that the first C++ compiler be written in C++? The code that makes up the compiler needs to be compiled too, and thus the first C++ compiler couldn't have been written in C++, could it?"}
{"_id": "201971", "title": "How can CoffeeScript be written in CoffeeScript?", "text": "How is it possible that written a programming language like CoffeeScript in itself like CoffeeScript? Firstly CoffeeScript doesn't exist that read CoffeeScript scripts and interpret them?"}
{"_id": "141554", "title": "C is written in C, how is this possible?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How could the first C++ compiler be written in C++? I know my question goes to the underground galaxy cave where languages are born and involves some lambda math and light-years of google-studying. But what kind of knowledge is necessary to create a language?"}
{"_id": "167276", "title": "What should my \"large codebase sample\" look like?", "text": "If an employer asks for a large code sample, one for an entire project, what characteristics should the project have to show architectural skills and the ability to manage a large codebase? For example, should I show off managing modules/dependencies? writing test/build scripts? design patterns? etc."}
{"_id": "205180", "title": "What licensing implications (if any) are there when porting code from one language to another?", "text": "I'm considering taking an old PHP4 web application and re-writing it using ASP.Net MVC4 in C#. The old application was licensed under GPL2. I'm unsure how this affects my new application, if at all. I obviously can't directly copy any of the code from the old PHP application to my .Net application as the two languages are totally different. Equally, the old application wasn't even OO in nature, nor did it follow any kind of design pattern (i.e. MVC). In essence, my new application will only be taking the \"ideas & features\" of the original application. Even the database schema will be significantly different. Would I still have to GPL my new application or is it considered a new work where I choose a license myself?"}
{"_id": "253552", "title": "Porting an LGPLv3 library to a different language under Apache v2 License", "text": "Is it legal / ethical to port a library that is written in C under LGPLv3 to (pure) Go under the Apache v2 license? Keep in mind the port will be 100% compatible with full attribution to the original author and it will be a complete rewrite being a different language and all."}
{"_id": "153586", "title": "Difference between Pattern and Principle", "text": "What is the difference between Object Oriented Design Patterns and Principles? Are they different things? As far as I understood both of them try to achieve some common goal (e,g. flexibility). So can I say a pattern is a principle and vice versa? Design Principle = SOLID (i.e. Dependency Inversion Principle) Design Pattern = Gof (i.e. Abstract Factory Pattern)"}
{"_id": "152679", "title": "Is a client side developer usually expected to do design work also, or know designing and CSS as well?", "text": "If I'm applying for a client side developer job, am I usually expected to know designing as well? Such as CSS? I have knowledge of JavaScript, JQuery, Ajax and HTML5 basics, and HTML DOM. Is this enough or should I also be able to style nicely in CSS? I have a basic knowledge of CSS, but I certainly can't style anything at all. And I really dislike CSS or styling tasks"}
{"_id": "101893", "title": "XML vs SQL for small projects?", "text": "I'm working on a small project which will only have one user at a time since it's a local application (developed in WPF and C#). To store data I was thinking of using an XML file but I'm wondering if this would be the best approach. What the data is for:   * Shedules   * Library of files in folders (with Artist name, Title, Location on HDD)   * Possibly statistics based on the shedule data   * ... Information regarding the library would be fine in XML I imagine but about all the rest I'm not so sure. Also LINQ to SQL seems to be alot more profitable in terms of development speed than LINQ to XML. Is this correct or am I wrong? I was unsure if I should post this on SO or here but it seemed more appropriate here! Thank you in advance"}
{"_id": "198688", "title": "How to create different paths for users to take through the pages in my site?", "text": "I have a website where users are directed to go through a sequence of pages to perform a sequence of work tasks (transcribe a paragraph, answer a survey, interact with another user, etc). For short, let's call these tasks A, B, C, etc. I'm using Django, and each task is currently implemented as a view function (or method), e.g. `def A(request)`. Currently, each view function has the next step hardcoded in an HTTP redirect, e.g. `HttpResponseRedirect(reverse(B))`. My challenge is that I will soon have a requirement to create various permutations of the sequence of tasks. Sometimes I will want users to do A, B, C; for others, B, C, D; for others, A, B, D, F. How can I architect this so that I can define these permutations elegantly and concisely in my code? Intuitively, I feel like I need to genericize the HTTP redirect calls with a variable, like: `HttpResponseRedirect(reverse(next_view_function))`, but I struggle to figure out where `next_view_function` should be defined, and how the definition of the sequence (e.g. A, B, D) should be persisted across requests. Can anyone lead me down the right path with a suggestion or idea? I'm happy to provide more details. **Edit** in response to Bart's questions:   * The order of tasks is predetermined. Once we have defined it, we send the users a URL that takes them to the first page. They should then be routed through the tasks. One group of users might get a URL that takes them through steps A,B,C, while another group of users gets a URL that takes them through steps A,B,D. We decide in advance which users should get which URL.   * Since the order is predetermined, the next step does not depend on the results of the current task. The only requirement is for them to complete the task (we of course validate the POST data they submit as a precondition to the HTTP redirect). **Edit 2** , my solution so far: A central concept in my code architecture is that of a \"Treatment\" (defined in my models.py). A Treatment is a specification of the experience a user has when they use my site, such as what UI is presented to them. I split my users into groups and assign each group to a different treatment by emailing them a URL that contains the PK of their treatment. (There are also different subclasses of Treatment, since some Treatments are totally different from others. SoccerTreatment and HockeyTreatment have little in common, so it makes sense to subclass them.) So, the class definition for a Treatment seems like the sensible place to store the sequence of views as a Python list, as follows:               # in soccer/models.py     class SoccerTreatment(BaseTreatment):              world_cup = models.BooleanField()         ....              def views(self, request):             seq = [soccer.views.ViewClassA]             if self.world_cup:                 seq.append(soccer.views.ViewClassWorldCup)                  return seq          # in shared/models.py     class BaseTreatment(models.Model):             def next_view(self, request):             seq = self.views() # views() method implemented by descendant classes             if request.session.get('current_view_index'):                 request.session['current_view_index'] += 1             else:                 request.session['current_view_index'] = 0             # [handle boundary cases, code snipped...]             # ...             return seq[request.session['current_view_index']]                   # ...          # in views.py, at the end of a view function     # ...     HttpResponseRedirect(reverse(user.treatment.next_view()))      However, the design above wouldn't work, since then models.py would have to import views.py, creating a circular import. So the list elements would have to be strings (either URLs, or a the name of the view class as a string), which could be brittle since renaming my classes or URLs won't automatically rename these strings. Maybe I am being too picky, but I wonder if there is a better design."}
{"_id": "197463", "title": "Chain class behaviour", "text": "I have a Bird class. A bird can learn and a bird can fly (methods). A bird can only fly after it learns. Considering both methods are public. How can you make this clear to another fellow developer. Usually they should take a look at the public method names and understand what they do. But how can he understand without reading comments or understand the encapsulated code that method2 can be called only after method1?"}
{"_id": "49338", "title": "25 years old and considering a career change...possible? practical?", "text": "I'm new to this site and new to programming as well. I've spent some time going through an intro cs book that uses python as the language of choice. I find the exercises interesting and engaging and I generally have had a favorable experience programming so far. I've gone through some of the basics with python like writing simple programs, basics of GUIs, manipulating strings, lists, defining functions, etc. And I've always loved technology. Although I've never done any real hardcore programming yet, I was inclined to building websites from a very young age but I never really developed my skills. Now, the thing is I'm 25, I have my bacholors in environmental studies and two masters degrees in urban planning and landscape architecture respectively. I know, it would be quite a departure to pursue a career in programming at this point. Currently, I'm working as a geographic information systems intern. I've taken some GIS classes and have a lot of experience with making maps, doing spatial analysis etc. So what I'm thinking is maybe I can learn some solid programming skills and apply these skills in the field of GIS. From what I've seen, .net languages are the norm in this arena. Could you perhaps provide some guidance to me in terms of what languages I should focus on or courses I should take at this point? What about for building web mapping applications? Also, I was thinking about getting a certificate in programming from a university extension program. Do you think it would be worth it? And furthermore, do you think potential employers would be interested in hiring someone like me (once I get a couple of languages down pretty well) as an intern or in an entry level position? I'll be living in the bay area so I feel that there should be decent opportunities even though I don't have a b.s. in cs."}
{"_id": "197469", "title": "Jargon to describe unnecessary running of code?", "text": "Some code works but it runs an unnecessarily large fraction of the code in many cases, though that extra code is still required sometimes. Better preprocessing, simple stoppers and conditional checkers would save enormous amount of running time. What is the technical jargon to describe unnecessary running where a programmer could simply place a condition or do better preprocessing?"}
{"_id": "157001", "title": "Is it better to find issues myself or let the computer figure it out?", "text": "I'm about to start the process of migrating a program from one component to another. Most of the core functionality will be the same but I'll need to change database calls, etc. I'm sure there will be a few quirks somewhere. Naturally, there will be many errrrrrors, some of which Ill miss completely. Would it be better to completely scrutinize the code, checking for errors line by line, or to just write the code and see what errors occur?"}
{"_id": "157000", "title": "How do I draft user stories as a developer?", "text": "I am writing a system where both the system owner and myself are developers, and we are currently the only source of 'requests' or requirements for the system, which I would like to capture in user stories tied to features{1}. My urgent priority now is to get a managaeble backlog captured. How should I go about capturing the level of technical spec I am used to to working with in users stories, which aren't supposed to be too technical. {1} I am evaluating agile project management service TargetProcess, and each user story must be tied to a parent feature. The system seems a good fit, so this small constraint is something I would rather work with than work around."}
{"_id": "17177", "title": "What makes a project big?", "text": "Just out of curiosity what's the difference between a small, medium and large size project? Is it measured by lines of code or complexity or what? Im building a bartering system and so far have about 1000 lines of code for login/registration. Even though there's lots of LOC i wouldnt consider it a big project because its not that complex though this is my first project so im not sure. How is it measured?"}
{"_id": "68101", "title": "Do you spend your working hours on learning?", "text": "Do you spend your working hours learning new stuff, reading tech blogs, books on programming etc.? What's your opinion on it? Can an employer have benefits allowing developers to spend about 1-1.5 hrs a day on learning. Will it be repaid in future (with better productivity etc.)?"}
{"_id": "17173", "title": "Most logically consistent way to create methods of the form a affects b?", "text": "I have a common scenario where I have an object (a) that logically affects another object (b), like a makes a note on b, or a marks b as disabled (usually a is a user object of the system and b is some kind of business object like a customer or an appointment). In the past, the method was on the affected object like:               customer.Disable(user); // user is marking the customer as disabled      ... but it doesn't read well (it appears backwards). The opposite:               user.Disable(customer);      ... reads better, but there's something about it that I can't put my finger on that just doesn't seem right. The only other option is to have a static intermediary:               ThirdPartyClass.DisableCustomer(customer, user);      ... but the domain objects end up becoming more like DTOs and I prefer the domain model approach because it makes more sense. So the question is: which makes the most sense? Is there an option I haven't considered? Who actually owns an operation like this? **Edit** With the second option, the actionable objects in the system (users usually) end up becoming huge because the users of the system are the ones that pretty much do and affect everything."}
{"_id": "52569", "title": "Language Niches and Niche Libraries", "text": "\"Everyone Knows\" ...   * ... that c is widely used for low level programs in large part because operating system/device apis are usually in c.   * ... that Java is widely used for enterprise applications in large part because of enterprise libraries and ide support.   * ... that ruby is widely used for webapps thanks in large part because of rails and its library ecosytem  But lets go into to details what are the specific niches and subniches. Especially with respect to libraries. Where might you embed lua for application scripting versus python. Where would you use Java vs C#. Which languages do different scientists use? Also which languages have libraries for these subniches? Things like bioperl/scipy/Incanter. Please no flamewars about how nice each language or environment is. This is where they used. Also no complaints about marketing/PHBs. **(Manually migrated) I asked this question again after it was closed on stackoverflow.com**"}
{"_id": "199484", "title": "How will writing the transaction part in Java benefit the security of the application, when all other parts are being written in PHP?", "text": "A friend of mine while working on a PHP application asked me to write one part of the application in Java. The part that involved transactions. He said it will be better to write this portion in Java. He talked about how secure it will be! Though I was too busy to help him then, I want to know the essence of this idea. Why he was trying to use Java when he wrote the most part in PHP? Will it really boost up the security? And writing transactions in Java is only concerned with security? The thing seems very interesting but I really have no idea, what it is! Please provide some insight into the topic. Note: When I say transaction, it involves everything. From accessing account to transferring money."}
{"_id": "199482", "title": "Is there a loophole in the GPL that allows proprietary software to be linked with GPL libraries?", "text": "Let\u2019s examine a hypothetical scenario: Company X writes a proprietary program (A) that dynamically links with a proprietary library (B). Company Y wants to use a replacement library (C) licensed under the GPL, and so writes a wrapper library (D) that dynamically links to both A and C and translates the API calls used by A to the API calls used by C. As D is intended to be used with C, and uses C\u2019s API calls, it is a derivative work of C and must therefore be distributed under the terms of the GPL*. As a result, the combined work of A and D must also be distributed under the terms of the GPL, which is impossible given that Company Y does not possess the source code for A. That said, so long as Company Y distributes D by itself, there is no problem. _However, regardless of Company Y\u2019s actions, Company X does not violate the GPL by distributing A, even without B. The mere existence of D does not mean that A is suddenly a derivative work of C (through D) that must be licensed under the GPL as well._ Now this is the loophole: _there is nothing that stops Company X from writing its own version of D, distributing it separately from A, and telling end-users to use D instead of B when running A._ It seems that a company is capable of designing a proprietary program to use a GPL library without violating the GPL, so long as a wrapper module is used to insulate the proprietary program from the GPL library and that module is distributed separately. Am I correct in my reasoning? Is this a real loophole in the GPL? *D is also a derivative work of A, but for the purposes of this scenario, Company X has explicitly authorized the creation of D and allowed it to be licensed under the GPL."}
{"_id": "94101", "title": "What type of code or program , i can post as open source on Git or Bit Bucket", "text": "I have seen many times that if you want to look good on resumes you should have some project coded as open source on bit bucket and Git. I want to do that , even though it may be small but at least i want to starts the steps which can make me a good programmer and it looks good on resume. I knows these languages like `php bash python django jquery joomla` Can anyone give me some example what type of projects i should upload there which i can mention in resume. i usually build websites , how can i put those type of codes. Does putting shell script for backing database can also be put in there"}
{"_id": "155339", "title": "Process monitoring in Linux environment?", "text": "I'm trying to write a multi threaded/processes application and it need to know how to monitor a process from another process all the time. So here is what I have, I have a 2 processes, each with multiple threads that handle the network part, then another 2 process also with multiple threads that interact with DB and with the network processes, what I need to do is that if for example one of the network processes goes down the DB process start sending to the live network process until the second one is up again. I'm using fifo between the DB and the network process. I was thinking of sending messages with message passing all the time but not sure whether this is a good idea or I need to use some other IPC for this issue, or probably neither is good and I need to use entirely something else?"}
{"_id": "116170", "title": "Do ORM POCOs replace domain entities?", "text": "This is somewhat similar to this question but more broad. In general, with ORMs like EF 4.1 supporting POCOs, does it now make sense to have your domain entities **be** the objects that are persisted to your database? With older ORMs like EF 4 or Linq-to-SQL, your \"database objects\" were auto- generated, and tightly coupled to your database, and so, for non-trivial applications, were mapped to more robust, intelligent domain entities before being put to work. Is the idea with newer ORMs to just build robust domain entities, and then have a data-layer that simply provides a mapping between said domain entities and your DBMS? In writing that I get the feeling that this has **always** been the goal, but not readily (easily) possible with the tools available, at least not in the .NET world."}
{"_id": "225734", "title": "constants/enums in API", "text": "What are a few ways constants and enums are dealt with when creating an API Client? I'm writing a client in python for our API and I've hit a sticking point with this. We use a lot of mappings to numbers (to save space) and I was wondering what the best technique is. I can hard code them into the client, but if a new enum/constant gets added, the consumer would have to update his version of the client. I also thought about grabbing the maps/enums when the client is first initialized and cached until there is an update. Are these typical approaches, or is there a more effective way to do this? Edit: This is a REST API but I'm making a python client (so platform specific I suppose) for it to make it easier to work with. For a little more detail, when I say enums, I just mean using a constant (like an integer) to represent a certain choice a consumer has for a certain attribute. So lets say someone using the API is saving what type of video game system they have. 1 = xbox, 2 = playstation, 3= wii, etc... Do I hardcode those into the python client for the consumer to use? Do I grab them from the server when the client is initialized and then cache them client side?"}
{"_id": "116177", "title": "Is there justification for leaving conflict markers in checked-in code?", "text": "Consider conflict markers. i.e.:               <<<<<<< branch     blah blah this     =======     blah blah that     >>>>>>> HEAD      In the particular case which has motivated me to post this question, the team member responsible had just completed a merge from upstream to our branch, and had in some cases left these in, as comments, as a sort of documentation over what had just been resolved. He left it in a compiled state, tests passing, so it's not as bad as you would think. Instinctively though, I really took objection to this, however being devils advocate to myself I can see why he might have done it:   * because it highlights to other team developers what has changed as a result of the merge.   * because those who are more expert with the particular pieces of code can then address the concerns illustrated by the comments so that he doesn't have to guess.   * because the upstream merge is a right pain and it can be difficult to justify the time to resolve everything well and completely, so some semi-complete FIXME notice is necessary, so why not use the original conflict as a comment to document this. My objection was instinctive, but I'd like to be able to justify it rationally, or see my position more wisely. Can anyone give me some examples or even experiences where people have had a bad time with someone else doing this and/or reasons why it's bad practice (or you can play devil's advocate and support it). My own immediate concern was that it would clearly have been annoying if I had been editing one of the files concerned, pulled the changes, got real conflicts, but also pulled in the commented ones. Then I would have had a very messy file indeed. Fortunately that didn't happen."}
{"_id": "199488", "title": "MVC pattern with JSF-Spring-MyBatis webapp", "text": "I've a Java webapp with these frameworks and I want to know if my implementation meets with MVC pattern: **Controller Layer (V)** I'm using JSF               @ManagedBean     public class Controller{         @ManagedProperty(\"#{business}\")         private Business business;              public void insert(){             business.insert();         }     }      **Business Layer (C)** I'm using Spring               public interface Business{         public void insert();     }          @Service(\"business\")     public class BusinessImpl implements Business{         @Autowired         private DaoMapper mapper;              @Override         @Transactional         public void insert(){             mapper.insert();         }     }      **Data Layer (M)** I'm using MyBatis (This java interface is associated to XML file of MyBatis)               public interface DaoMapper{         public void insert();     }      My layers implemented MVC pattern? I'm confused :S..."}
{"_id": "113521", "title": "Why in the world does a heap need to make sure it allocates in 8-byte alignments?", "text": "4-bytes = word; 8-bytes = 2x word Then why doesn't the heap just go with 4-byte alignment (because it will be grabbing a word at a time anyway, right?) If we went with 8-byte alignments, why not 12? 16?"}
{"_id": "162170", "title": "What is a suitable replacement for an Access 2003 database required to run an older PC?", "text": "Many years ago, I wrote a small Access 2003 database for a non-profit to track the donations they received. They recently wrote me asking for some new features (I was shocked it was still in use, honestly) and I'm wondering if I could rewrite the application with a newer technology/framework. Here are the machine specs:   * Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz   * 1 GB RAM   * Onboard Intel video card   * Windows XP SP3 What, if any, would be a suitable replacement for the database and UI? I'm mainly a C# developer so Winforms + SQL Compact 4 springs to mind (I don't know how WPF would perform on a machine that old). Perhaps there are other possibilities in Python/Ruby/etc? Update: I appreciate and agree that rewriting is rarely the right thing to do, but I was hoping to learn via this question, that given the PC's specs and OS, what possibilities would I have for writing an application that could   * perform CRUD for donations   * generate summary reports (totals by month/year/etc) Or, put another way, is Access still the appropriate tool for the job?"}
{"_id": "102562", "title": "How do I know if I'm cut out for the position I'm in?", "text": "Most times someone gets the chance for more responsibility and growth in their career they would not know for sure if they can handle it until they are actually doing the work. When things dont seem to be working out, how would one know whether it is because of himself not capable of doing the work due to incompetence, or due to lack of experience? Keeping in mind that there is no one more senior than you at the company for the specific area of expertise. If you've been given a job that you are not ready/capable of performing adequately, what would be the better career move:   1. Push hard to skill up in order to be able to perform the job. potential Burnout danger, and then how would you handle the time between being incompetent and becoming competent.   2. Tell management that you are not ready for the job and they need to hire someone more senior. They may replace you all together.   3. Look for another job where your experience is correctly matched to your responsibilities   4. None of the above"}
{"_id": "36810", "title": "What's the best explanation of what Story Points are?", "text": "We're starting to use Story Points here for our Agile development but I find it hard to explain and also can't find any definitive answer to what they are. The best thing I can do is point to other sites (like http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/tag/story-points) and give some vague generalization of what they are. I'm looking for a good explanation with some examples of use that would be helpful for others to use. Are there any good resources for explaining story points?"}
{"_id": "197791", "title": "Xerox SOLID example in PHP", "text": "There is a good example on Wikipedia regarding the violation of SOLID principles. > The ISP was first used and formulated by Robert C. Martin while consulting > for Xerox. Xerox had created a new printer system that could perform a > variety of tasks like stapling a set of printed papers and faxing. The > software for this system was created from the ground up and performed its > tasks successfully. As the software grew, making modification became more > and more difficult so that even the smallest change would take a > redeployment cycle of an hour. This was making it near impossible to > continue development. The design problem was that one main Job class was > used by almost all of the tasks. Anytime a print job or a stapling job had > to be done, a call was made to some method in the Job class. This resulted > in a huge or 'fat' class with multitudes of methods specific to a variety of > different clients. Because of this design, a staple job would know about all > the methods of the print job, even though there was no use for them. The > solution suggested by Martin is what is called the Interface Segregation > Principle today. Applied to the Xerox software, a layer of interfaces > between the Job class and all of its clients was added using the Dependency > Inversion Principle. Instead of having one large Job class, a Staple Job > interface or a Print Job interface was created that would be used by the > Staple or Print classes, respectively, calling methods of the Job class. > Therefore, one interface was created for each job, which were all > implemented by the Job class. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interface_segregation_principle I tried to find a good PHP solution for this, I got this far:                class Job implements StampleJob, PrintJob {      }           class Print {        protected $objPrintJob;        public function __construct(PrintJob $objPrintJob) {          $this->objPrintJob = $objPrintJob;        }      }           class Staple {        protected $objStapleJob;        public function __construct(StapleJob $objStapleJob) {          $this->objStapleJob = $objStapleJob;        }      }      I can understand how the interface will limit knowledge but this will not actually change the big Job class or remove the SRP violation. Can you clarify how this solution actually solves the problem: \"The design problem was that one main Job class was used by almost all of the tasks\"?"}
{"_id": "112690", "title": "Why put SQL statement in a variable before using mysql_query()?", "text": "I'm been working with PHP on and off for a bit now, and I've seen plenty of code both ways:               $sql = \"SELECT \u2026\";      mysql_query($sql);      vs               mysql_query(\"SELECT\u2026\");      Is there a reason for separating the two, beyond being able to also pass in something such as $con?"}
{"_id": "104816", "title": "What does it mean for software, libraries, and languages to be asynchronous?", "text": "With popular software out today like Node.js, Celery, Twisted, and others boasting about being asynchronous, what does it mean? I've gone through the basic Node.js tutorials and written a few Node.js scripts, but still don't feel comfortable with the topic. Please note that I haven't had I had any formal introduction to the topic.   1. How exactly does asynchronous software work?    2. What are the pros and cons?   3. What are callbacks?   4. Lastly, how does a synchronous web server perform vs. an asynchronous web server?"}
{"_id": "197794", "title": "Where does UI fit in a Multi Agent system", "text": "**tl;dr** How would I represent GUI as agents in a multi agent system. I am learning more about Multi Agent Systems. I like the concepts of such systems, it makes a lot of sense and it sounds very useful when I want to create a large system devised of smaller parts for the Web. So, I created a basic `Agent` class, taught my agents to negotiate and communicate, created an environment for them to be situated in and such. So, in a simple app attempt I have:   * Several \"InfoBroker\" Agents that handles communications with server services, wanting to obtain information about the world and willing to share it under certain terms (They hold an auction if that matters).   * A few agents that coordinate the communication between my services on the client side (Also \"InfoBroker\" agents I guess).   * A few working agents, that have a simple goal in their environment, performing calculations and performing (very basic) means-end reasoning in the environment. They're my 'manual labor' in the app.   * A few other things specific to my application. That's all great, but I have no idea where GUI fits in all that? I need to show information about my system to the user, the GUI isn't a small part (consider agents that speak to the DOM in a web app). How would represent GUI as an agent in a multi agent system? Note: I've implemented this in JavaScript, but this seems more language agnostic to me."}
{"_id": "197797", "title": "Keyword Collection, ManyToOne or OneToMany relationship?", "text": "I hope this is the right place for this type of problem. An Object of my class `Movie` can have several `keywords` ( like 'fight club', 'brad', 'fincher'), and be part of different `categories` (like 'Drama', 'Best Movies Ever') I implemented them as ManyToMany:               @OneToMany(targetEntity = Keyword.class,fetch=FetchType.EAGER)         private Set<Keyword> keywords;          @OneToMany(targetEntity = MovieCategory.class, fetch=FetchType.EAGER)         private Set<MovieCategory> movieCategories;      Somehow I don' think, this is not the correct relationshipmodel, how would you implement this? Right now hibernate wont allow me to fetch.eager. fetch.lazy is okay. I found this link http://www.mkyong.com/hibernate/hibernate-many-to- many-relationship-example-annotation/ but it didn't answered my question."}
{"_id": "112694", "title": "Is an \"associate engineer\" the same as a \"junior engineer\"?", "text": "I'm a recent college grad starting my first software engineering job. I received an offer I like but the title is associate engineer. I'm used to seeing junior engineer. Is this pretty much the same thing? Salary is $70k + stock options."}
{"_id": "104818", "title": "How important are PHP notices really?", "text": "I recently turned all possible error-messages on with `error_reporting(-1);`, on my PHP project. Of course, right away I got alot of messages. For example: > **Notice:** Undefined variable: foo in /.../file.php on line **205** So I started updating my code to get rid of all the notices. Mostly, by adding `isset($foo)` and making the `$foo = NULL;` So, I'm wondering. How important are these notices really? I mean, if the `$foo` variable is not set, then it should be false/null/not-set by default..so technically the code works?! If I would get rid of all notices, then does it make the process faster or slow it down (because I'm adding more code, `isset($foo)`, `$foo = NULL` etc)? How do you guys deal with these notices, or do you even pay attention to them?   I guess, the most important question is: Should the code be written so strict, that it would never generate any notices or warnings?"}
{"_id": "120201", "title": "About empty line of code", "text": "Why do my colleagues hate it when I add an empty line of code? Sometimes I add a few lines to see when a method ends and another one starts more easily."}
{"_id": "222006", "title": "What is the standard practice for extracting an auto-incrementing primary key?", "text": "I have some objects that will be created an entered into the database. There is no guarantee that any of their fields will be unique except for the auto- incrementing primary key. I would like to be able to access these objects later in the program using their primary key. What is the best way to get this key out of the database? I can think of two methods to obtain the primary key after adding the object's data to the database:   1. Find the maximum primary key as this was the one most recently added.   2. Delete the current object, compare the data in the database with the data in the program, and then create a new object based on the row that is not contained in the program. Both of these seem error-prone and hacky and I am wondering if there was a more standard way do to this."}
{"_id": "215621", "title": "Writing arguments in constructors", "text": "When creating constructors with multiple arguments, is ok to use the generic `String[] args` or is it better to list the arguments? Does it really make any significant difference as the coding becomes more complicated?               public static void Something (String[] args)      {     }      or               public static void Something (String lots, ... int some, ... etc)      {     }"}
{"_id": "254134", "title": "sell applications that run only on a GPL v2 Server", "text": "I have been testing Pentaho BI server community edition, and after reading their licensing terms I found out that the community edition is under GPLv2. As you may know the server is intended to host different types of files and applications (like reports, olap cubes,etc...) My question is : are we allowed to sell applications that run on the GPLv2 server ? (we will maybe modify the server source code a bit but we won't charge it to our clients. thus the modified GPL server will be just an execution environment or a container for the reports and applications that we intend to sell) ? this suggests that our clients must install the GPL v2 edition first and then buy from us the reports that work on it but not their source code. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "254136", "title": "Tomcat + Spring + CI workflow", "text": "We're starting our very first project with `Spring` and `java` web stack. This project will be mainly about rewriting quite large ERP/CRM from `Zend Framework` to `Java`. Important factor in my question is that I come from `php` territory, where things (in terms of quality) tend to look different than in `java` world. **Fatcs** :   * there will be 2-3 developers,    * at least one of developers uses Windows, rest uses Linux,   * there is one remote linux-based machine, which should handle test and production instances,   * after struggling with buggy legacy code, we want to introduce good programming and development practices (CI, tests, clean code and so on)   * client: internal, frequent business logic changes,   * scrum, daily deployments What I want to achieve is good workflow on as many development stages as possible (coding -> commiting -> testing -> deploying). The problem is that I've never done this before, so I don't know what are best practices to do this. **What I have so far is:**   1. developers code locally,   2. there is `vagrant` instance on every development machine, managed by `puppet`. It contains the same `linux`, `jenkins` and `tomcat` versions as production machine,   3. while coding, developer deploys to vagrant machine,   4. after local merge to `test` branch, `jenkins` on vagrant handles tests,   5. when everything is fine, developer pushes commits and merges   6. `jenkins` on remote machine pulls commit from `test` branch, runs tests and so on,   7. if everything looks green, `jenkins` deploys to `test` `tomcat` instance   8. Deployment to production is manual (altough it can be done using helping scripts) when business logic is tested by other divisions and everything looks fine to client. **Now, the real question: does above make any sense? Things that I'm not sure about:**   1. Remote machine: won't there be any problems with two (or even three, as jenkins might need one) instances of same app on `tomcat`?   2. Using `vagrant` to develop on `php` environment is just vise. Isn't this overkill while using Tomcat? I mean, is there higher probability that `tomcat` will act the same on every machine?   3. Is there sense of having local `jenkins` on vagrant?"}
{"_id": "254131", "title": "Cost Estimation For Aspect Oriented Programming AOP", "text": "There are many estimation techniques, such as counting lines of code, Function Points, Object Points, etc. However, my next project is using Aspect Oriented Programming. Are there any special estimation methods or techniques that can be applied to software developed using this paradigm? Is there something like function points or object points for AOP?"}
{"_id": "254130", "title": "What is the correct way to deal with similar but independent features?", "text": "Let's say we have a feature request come in and we begin work on it, which we'll call _feature-1_. It introduces some new logic to the application, which we'll call _logic-A_ and _logic-B_. A programmer branches from the release branch and begins work on the feature. Soon after, we get another feature request, which we'll call _feature-2_. It will implement _logic-A_ and _logic-C_ into the application. The _logic A_ being implemented by this feature is the same _logic-A_ as was implemented in _feature-1_. Let's also say that given _logic-B_ , _logic-A_ might be implemented slightly differently than it would have been given _logic-C_ , and also differently given both _logic-B_ and _logic-C_ (eg. with only one feature, the code would be less flexible than with both). How should this situation be handled? **Concrete Example** (to help with any confusion in my wording)   * _feature-1_ is a feed from programmers.stackexchange.com.   * _feature-2_ is a feed from gaming.stackexchange.com.   * _logic-A_ is the implementation of a feed at all (assuming the application currently has no feeds), which links to the content as well and gives related information.   * _logic-B_ is that the feed's source is from programmers.stackexchange.com.      * Adds to _logic-A_ that the related programming language is displayed.   * _logic-C_ is that the feed's source is from gaming.stackexchange.com.      * Adds to _logic-A_ that the related game's name and box art is displayed."}
{"_id": "148607", "title": "Alternative to Perl's POD Documentation in Other Languages?", "text": "Perl has this really cool documentation method that makes documenting really easy. It's called POD (Plain Old Documentation). Here is an example:               =head1 NAME          Example::Module - an example          =head1 SYNOPSIS              use Example::Module;         my $object = Example::Module->new();         print $object->as_string;          =head1 DESCRIPTION          Just an example.          =head2 Methods          =over 12          =item C<new>          Returns a new My::Module object.          =item C<as_string>          Returns a stringified representation of     the object. This is mainly for debugging     purposes.          =back          =head1 LICENSE          This is released under the Artistic      License. See L<perlartistic>.          =head1 AUTHOR          Dynamic           =head1 SEE ALSO          L<perlpod>          =cut      The output of this would be in HTML, like this example on CPAN (not what I wrote). Cool right! So is there a method similar to POD in which a developer can put there documentation inside of the code itself, without it being a comment?"}
{"_id": "148604", "title": "Create Tickets From TODO (or otherwise annotated) comments", "text": "Is there any software that will allow me to generate trouble tickets (for Trac, Team Foundation Server, etc.) from TODO or otherwise annotated comments in the source code?"}
{"_id": "148602", "title": "A defense for boilerplate?", "text": "To me, boilerplate code is obviously bad. However I've met a developer who displays resistance in any attempt to reduce boilerplate. I realized I didn't have a readily formed, well thought out argument past the abhorrence I have developed for it over time. So that I can form a convincing argument for favoring less boilerplate, what are some counterarguments? In other words what are the arguments (if any) in favor of boilerplate? (I mean what I think is generally meant by boilerplate, but a good example is getters and setters in Java.)"}
{"_id": "99428", "title": "How can I improve upon this \"pattern\"?", "text": "I have a series of method calls that all share similar qualities. The basic layout is               public void CallDataBase()     {        Utility sqlHelper = new Utility();                StringBuilder query = new StringBuilder(200);        query.Append(@\"update \" + Environment.NewLine);//or insert, select        query.Append(@\" table \" + Environment.NewLine);        //...        utility.ConnectAndExecuteNonQuery(query);//or query, scalar       }      I'm not a big fan of the `StringBuilder` in this case, but it does help readability to have line breaks in the inline SQL. Stored Procedures are not an option (way too much work to convert, have higher priorities). LINQ and EF are not options. Company is on SQL 2000 and there are no concrete plans to upgrade."}
{"_id": "132314", "title": "How can I prevent programmers from capturing data entered by users?", "text": "I'm developing a web application with a strong focus on security. What measures can be taken to prevent those who work on the application (programmers, DBAs, quality assurance staff) from capturing user entered values that should be well-protected, such as passwords, social security numbers, and so forth?"}
{"_id": "142723", "title": "How to decide whether to implement an operation as Entity operation vs Service operation in Domain Driven Design?", "text": "I am reading Evans's Domain Driven Design. The book says that there are entity and there are services. If I were to implement an operation, how to decide whether I should add it as a method on an entity or do it in a service class? e.g. `myEntity.DoStuff()` or `myService.DoStuffOn(myEntity)`? Does it depend on whether other entities are involved? If it involves other entities, implement as service operation? But entities can have associations and can traverse it from there too right? Does it depend on stateless or not? But service can also access entities' variable, right? Like in do stuff myService.DoStuffOn, it can have code like               if(myEntity.IsX) doSomething();      Which means that it will depend on the state? Or does it depend on complexity? How do you define complex operations?"}
{"_id": "142721", "title": "Command-Query-Separation and multithreading safe interfaces", "text": "I like the command query separation pattern (from OOSC / Eiffel - basically you either return a value or you change the state of the class - but not both). This makes reasoning about the class easier and it is easier to write exception safe classes. Now, with multi threading, I run into a major problem: the separation of the query and the command basically invalidates the result from the query as anything can happen between those 2. So my question is: how do you handle command query separation in an multi- threaded environment? * * * Clarification example: A stack with command query separation would have the following methods:   * push (command)   * pop (command - but does not return a value)   * top (query - returns the value)   * empty (query) The problem here is - I can get empty as status, but then I can not rely on top really retrieving an element since between the call of empty and the call of top, the stack might have been emptied. Same goes for pop & top. If I get an item using top, I can not be sure that the item that I pop is the same. This can be solved using external locks - but that's not exactly what I call threadsafe design."}
{"_id": "147537", "title": "What is the canonical reference on probabilistic data structures?", "text": "I've heard of probabilistic data structures like Skip Lists and Bloom Filters being immensely useful and I'd like to learn more about them in general. Is there a canonical reference on the subject on the level of Cormen et al.?"}
{"_id": "91059", "title": "BDD: Getting started", "text": "I'm starting with BDD and this is my story:               Feature: Months and days to days         In order to see months and days as days         As a date conversion fan         I need a webpage where users can enter         days and months and convert them to days.      I have some doubts ... Should I write my scenarios before coding anything or should I first write a scenario and then write code, write a scenario again and then write code, and so on ... ? If I should write my scenarios before, can my steps be approved and production code still does not get done? When should I do refactoring on my code? After the feature is done or after each scenario implementation?"}
{"_id": "188712", "title": "Ethics and best practices when forking code base", "text": "I have a question as to the proper best practices and ethics revolving forking code. I've taken code base licensed under Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 and brought significant changes to it to suit my needs. I feel as though my version could benefit others and wish to redistribute it. I'm unsure what liberties I have for redistribution or what is ethically and morally accepted. Can I rename the projects? Should I start a new v.1 or continue from the original version number? What is considered giving proper attribution to the original author? Should I consult the author and ask permission before releasing (although he is already aware)?"}
{"_id": "232321", "title": "Is it acceptable within the community of developers to copy open-source software and branch it?", "text": "Is it generally, to a reasonable developer, considered morally acceptable, to take a branch of an open-source repository, and start making changes to it and calling your own? You would be taking this to another open-source. Assume that you will link to the original. Note that this is a question of what is considered acceptable, _not_ what is legal. If this is okay, where is the line of how much you change that allows you to call it your own?"}
{"_id": "186623", "title": "Migrating from PHP to ASP .NET MVC", "text": "I plan on migrating a website from PHP to ASP .NET MVC. However, since the website is large and this migration can't be done in a short time I plan to use both MVC and PHP pages together. So the idea is to replace each PHP page or group of pages with an MVC equivalent. I have to refactor each page and rewrite it overall anyways so I thought I might as well move to the ASP .NET MVC framework for various reasons. The question is, does anyone know what are some of the problems I will face while doing this? Here are some I thought of: \\- Logins \\- I plan to overcome this with an ajax request to the ASP .NET website on the background and keeping the login information separately for asp .net. \\- Sessions \\- I'm not sure how I can share sessions or if I will even need to. Other than that, I'm not sure if anything else will arise. Anyone experienced that have a few things to say?"}
{"_id": "91050", "title": "What can I use to generate API documentation with my custom formatting?", "text": "I want to automatically generate documentation for a java project, but I'd like to have my own custom styling for it. As an example, take the stackoverflow api (method description page), can that be done by an automated tool? Can it \"take me close\" to that?   I wouldn't mind having to manually change a few things to achieve the result I want (ie: it doesn't have to be 100% automated)"}
{"_id": "91051", "title": "Are first person comments distracting and unprofessional?", "text": "I just found myself writing the following comment in some (archaic Visual Basic 6.0) code I was writing:               If WindowState <> 1 Then         'The form's not minimized, so we can resize it safely         '...     End if      I'm not sure why I subconsciously use \"we\" in my comments. I suspect it's because I imagine someone stepping through the code, as if they were actually \"doing\" all of the commands on each line, rather than just watching them happen. With this mindset, I could have used `I can resize it`, since I'm the one \"doing\" it currently, or `you can resize it`, as if I were speaking to whomever is \"doing\" it in the future, but since both of those of these cases will most likely happen, I use \"we\" as if I'm leading someone else through my code. I can simply rewrite it as `it can be resized` and avoid the issue, but it's sparked my curiosity: is it common to use first person like this in comments, or is it considered distracting and/or unprofessional?"}
{"_id": "91053", "title": "How to hire a contract/outsourced architect for", "text": "The company I work for has a legacy application that we are looking at rewriting and enhancing using more modern technology. We are a very small company (5 people) and do not have the resources to hire a full time permanent architect so we are looking to hire an architect as a consultant for a short term (about 6 months) engagement to help us design the software and then we will take care of (or use additional staff augmentation) of developing based on the design. We have compiled a list of general high level requirements as well as some other lists of more specific functional requirements. How feasible is what we are trying to do? What kinds of information should we have prepared so that we can provide enough information to potential candidates for them to determine if they will be able to come up with a design for us that we can take over and develop from? What should we ask for from them to base our hire decision on?"}
{"_id": "106714", "title": "Does forcing a user to add numbers or uppercase letters really make a password stronger?", "text": "Recently my university updated their password storage procedure, and they have several criteria such as that the password must contain a number, symbol, and uppercase character, and has a length requirement. Realistically, when a brute force / dictionary attack is being performed, doesn't this just make it easier for the person to crack one that works? I understand that this is to prevent people from doing things like \"password,\" but what about one such as \"youwillneverguessmypassword\" ?"}
{"_id": "67176", "title": "How to keep up with the Rails world?", "text": "How should I keep up to date with the ever-changing Rails community? I have been trying to learn Rails off and on for a year now and the brick wall I keep running into is the fact that I'm trying to balance learning most of the Rails' community best practices and they keep changing direction. For example, I obviously need to learn Rails and Ruby (I've done some work with both but I've forgotten a bit). When I was using it before it was still Rails 2.3.4, so now Rails 3 is out and changed some things; I'm not sure if Ruby 1.9 had any major changes. I like my version control, and the Rails world is solidly behind Git, so I have to use Git (again I've used it before but not recently). I want to make sure my app is solid so I want to write tests; the new trend in Rails seems to be to use RSpec or similar BDD frameworks instead of the built-in test framework, and mocks/factories instead of fixtures. I'm having a very hard time keeping up with all the things I need to pick up to be successful using Rails, and it seems that it's always changing and I end up frustrated because I will choose something, then when I research how to do something I find loads of blog posts saying don't use it anymore, use this new thing instead. So I have to ask how much this matters? If I'm going to be revisiting Rails I obviously want to be using Rails 3. I've used Git so I can stick with that. Should I even bother with RSpec/HAML/SASS/whatever else the \"cognoscenti\" is hyping or should I just focus on mastering the framework and stick with the built-in stuff (e.g. use the built-in ERB engine for HTML, Test::Unit for testing, Fixtures instead of mocks/factories, etc) as much as possible (stupid thing to ask, I know, but the way my brain works I am always torn between doing the easiest thing that will benefit me and doing things the \"right\" way as the really high-end guys suggest) so I can focus on actually developing my application? Should I extend that to Javascript as well, meaning should I just say screw it and use RJS or is that actually worth using jQuery (I've used jQuery for my .NET work a fair bit although I'm by no means an expert) due to the benefits? I would like to \"nail down\" a stack that I can use and not deviate but again I find myself constantly wondering \"If the top Rails guys are using XXX now am I hurting myself by not switching to it myself?\" For example I'd like to just decide 100% on:   * Framework: Rails (obviously) Source   * Control: Git Test Framework:   * Test::Unit w/Factories HTML Engine:   * ERB Javascript Framework: jQuery but whenever I try this there's a voice in the back of my heading saying I'm \"doing it wrong\" and should be using RSpec/Shoulda/HAML/library du jour instead."}
{"_id": "156358", "title": "How do you accept arguments in the main.cpp file and reference another file?", "text": "I have a basic understanding of programming and I currently learning C++. I'm in the beginning phases of building my own CLI program for ubuntu. However, I have hit a few snags and I was wondering if I could get some clarification. The program I am working on is called \"sat\" and will be available via command line only. I have the main.cpp. However, my real question is more of a \"best practices\" for programming/organization. When my program \"sat\" is invoked I want it to take additional arguments. Here is an example:               > sat task subtask      I'm not sure if the task should be in its own task.cpp file for better organization or if it should be a function in the main.cpp? If the task should be in its own file how do you accept arguments in the main.cpp file and reference the other file? Any thoughts on which method is preferred and reference material to backup the reasoning?"}
{"_id": "156359", "title": "Should you create a class within a method?", "text": "I have made a program using Java that is an implementation of this project: http://nifty.stanford.edu/2009/stone-random-art/sml/index.html. Essentially, you create a mathematical expression and, using the pixel coordinate as input, make a picture. After I initially implemented this in serial, I then implemented it in parallel due to the fact that if the picture size is too large or if the mathematical expression is too complex (especially considering the fact that I made the expression recursively), it takes a really long time. During this process, I realized that I needed two classes which implemented the `Runnable` interface as I had to put in parameters for the `run` method, which you aren't allowed to do directly. One of these classes ended up being a medium sized static inner class (not large enough to make an independent class file for it though). The other though, just needed a few parameters to determine some indexes and the size of the for loop that I was making run in parallel - here it is:               class DataConversionRunnable implements Runnable         {             int jj, kk, w;                  DataConversionRunnable(int column, int matrix, int wid)             {                 jj = column;                 kk = matrix;                 w = wid;             }                  public void run()             {                 for(int i = 0; i < w; i++)                     colorvals[kk][jj][i] = (int) ((raw[kk][jj][i] + 1.0) * 255 / 2.0);                 increaseCounter();             }         }      My question is should I make it a static inner class or can I just create it in a method? What is the general programming convention followed in this case?"}
{"_id": "156357", "title": "Design Pattern for Skipping Steps in a Wizard", "text": "I'm designing a flexible Wizard system that presents a number of screens to complete a task. Some screens may need to be skipped based on answers to prompts on one or more previous screens. The conditions to skip a given screen need to be editable by a non-technical user via a UI. Multiple conditions need only be combined with `and`. I have an initial design in mind, but it feels inelegant. I wonder if there's a better way to approach this class of problem. **Initial Design** **UI** ![UI Mockup](http://i.stack.imgur.com/biEbk.png) where The first column allows the user to select a question from a previous screen. The second column allows the user to select an operator applicable to the type of question asked. The third column allows the user to enter one or more values depending on the selected operator. **Object Model**               public enum Operations { ... }     public class Condition     {         int QuestionId { get; set; }         Operations Operation { get; set; }         List<object> Parameters { get; private set; }     }          List<Condition> pageSkipConditions;      **Controller Logic**               bool allConditionsTrue = pageSkipConditions.Count > 0;     foreach (Condition c in pageSkipConditions)     {         allConditionsTrue &= Evaluate(previousAnswers, c);     }           // ...          private bool Evaluate(List<Answers> previousAnswers, Condition c)     {         switch (c.Operation)         {             case Operations.StartsWith:                 // logic for this operation             // etc.         }     }"}
{"_id": "198352", "title": "Initializing derived classes in the same way", "text": "I have a class Base that has several children, say A, B, C. For testing purposes I'd like to mock those derived classes by deriving from them. So MockA derives from A, MockB derives from B and so on. The problem is, that MockA, MockB, ... all inherit protected members from Base that have to be set in the same way in each mock class. The code looks like this:               MockA::init()     {         x = 1;     // inherited from Base         y = \"abc\"; // inherited from Base         z = 0.5;   // inherited from Base     }          MockB::init()     {         x = 1;     // inherited from Base         y = \"abc\"; // inherited from Base         z = 0.5;   // inherited from Base     }      and so on. So my question is, how can I avoid this cut&paste initialization? Can I achieve it without touching Base, A, B, C, ...?"}
{"_id": "168233", "title": "Call a script over the network", "text": "I have a Python script on a box that I want to call from a Java server, over the network. I know that I can start a server on the Python side and then connect to it from the Java site, but I am trying to see if there is a way to avoid the overhead of running a server on the Python side. Is there any other way of doing it?"}
{"_id": "29280", "title": "is coding important?", "text": "Is coding important to be good at computer science? Should one implement the algorithm to know it well ? I remember one cs professor's idiom that \" **I never code\"**"}
{"_id": "198358", "title": "Client side authentication through signatures instead of passwords", "text": "I want to save some user-generated data with some signature of the user that generated it (let's say that the user has to fill some forms with some data and I want him to sign the written data). The server side is some random server language (that has big enough libraries to cover everything I'll need to do), the client side is Javascript (and the webapp is a SPA, Single Page Application). The client machine can be a cellular (a fairly new smartphone... but still a slow CPU compared to standard desktops/laptops) The DB backend is \"insecure\". It is possible to tamper the data (many persons have access to the machine, perhaps it's \"in the cloud\"), but there is and a strong sequential continuous backup where it is very difficult to tamper with the already written data (something similar to a secured sequential log) (perhaps a digest of the log is shipped continuously to a secure server, or the sequential log is kept in another cloud totally separate from the first one, or if it only has to save some hashes, even a random machine can do it). What I want to be able to do is make very difficult for third parties that have read/write access to the DB machine and read access to the server machine to add/modify records created by the user. For the deletion I'll do this: the program doesn't do any real update/delete operation. Every update/delete simply add a new version of the data and marks the old as \"old\". The hash of all the data is continuously saved on the tamper proof backup. This will even protect me from updates to old data. The only thing it won't protect me is against adding new data through spoofing an existing user. I will use https to secure transmission (with certificates bought from some SSL cert authority). I know I can't really secure the site (as in \"the javascripts that will go to the user\"), so that this is a weak point (someone could install a keylogger directly in the javascript code). I've watched around but it doesn't seem possible to sign some javascript code, send it to a client and let the client check the signature (probably because the javascript, being a dynamic language, would let a malicious javascript inject himself in the signed code/in a random piece of the javascript base library, so it would be very difficult to firewall everything the pre-existing environment). I could check the signature from the server side (the server program is signed and sends only javascripts that are signed). I don't want to use client-side SSL certificates because they are difficult to use for the user (if the user changes computer he has to reinstall the certificate, if the user forgets he has a certificate in a computer it's possible to steal it...) The solution I thought was to use ECDsa, generate a public/private keypair from the user password (plus some other data) and then the client signs the user's data client-side. The public/private key generation happens client side. When the user is created and the password is chosen, the client generates the public/private keypair and tells the server the generated public key. The user only needs to remember its password. Clearly the weak point of this is that someone could add a new public key of the user on the server and sign something with the new public key, but it would be quite easy to spot this, because there would be a new public key. Something more clever would be to change an old public key and then resign everything the user signed with that new key, so it would be impossible to show if the data was tampered, but for this there is the tamper-proof log. Another weak point would be from the user side: someone could install a keylogger and steal the password, but this is a problem of all the \"standard\" password schemes (for this I'll add a TOTP authentication, see at the end) Password recovery would be handled \"manually\" (a super-user would have to confirm the identity of the user and then sign the change of the password with the super-user's key) Now let's make it a little more complex: the private key is generated from the PBKDF2 of a salt unique for each user (sent by the server) plus the user's password. Sadly to make the software compatible with cell phones I will need to keep the iterations of PBKDF2 low (mmmh... On my old Optimus W, 1000 iterations require 8 seconds, while with the S3 it's nearly instantaneous... But 1000 iterations isn't very strong) (perhaps I could use Scrypt instead of PBKDF2... It should be more resistant to GPU attacks) So in the end it would be: User inserts username and password and press a button. The client asks the server for the salt, for the number of iterations of the hashing function and for the time of the day (this to stop attacks based on reusing the same signature), then calculates the hash of the password by using PBKDF2/Scrypt, regenerates the ECC private key, signs the message (that contains the operation requested and the time of the day received by the server) and sends the signature. The server must remember what challenges he has given and what have been replied (and so are \"exhausted\"). After this I could add a two step verification (using the algorithm used by Google Authenticator, for example). The key of this would be shared between user and server. The one-time password could be inserted in the various messages signed by the client. The server could save the calculated time of the TOTP so that it would be easy to verify at a later time. So the question is: is everything ok? Is there a pre-made solution that does everything? Is there an hole in my reasoning?"}
{"_id": "68818", "title": "A job in big company like IBM/Microsoft vs. own small 1-2 people software company?", "text": "I hope all programmers have gone through the stage at I am. I'm an iPhone and mobile apps developer and currently working in a company which is 1 of the best in my city. Now I am at a stage where I've two options. The first is with a big company like IBM or the second is with my own small company in which one of my friends and I will be starting. You might be wondering why am I asking this question instead of trying my own company but I know that once getting myself into a business going back to a job after closing a business would be a painful condition for me. What's your preference? What advice can you suggest?"}
{"_id": "157914", "title": "One or many RESTful APIs for large company?", "text": "I work for a large company which has several non-RESTful APIs. I am tasked with building a web application to interact with these APIs. Each API handles and provides very different business processes and data. I'd like to build RESTful (a) interface(s) fronting the APIs so as to make them reusable by other future web applications. Then, I'd like JavaScript to interact with the RESTful interface(s). Should I build one RESTful API (one subdomain) for my entire company               http://api.mycompany.com         /business_process_1/resource/         /business_process_2/resource         /business_process_3/resource      and make it front the very different business processes and data? Or, should I build multiple APIs (multiple subdomains)?               http://business-process-1.mycompany.com     http://business-process-2.mycompany.com     http://business-process-3.mycompany.com"}
{"_id": "109478", "title": "ASP.NET MVC: Getting User input in your Controller?", "text": "I wanted to get your opinion on best practices for getting user input while doing something in a controller. I am inside a Action method in my controller and I am processing some data. The data may force me to ask the user for further input, based on that input I will then do something with that data. What is the best practice to go about this? 1) How do I issue an alert or confirm box to get user input from the Controller? This Action is initiated by an update button on a Telerik MVC grid. 2) How do I persist my data from initially processing it, to asking the user for input, and then continue processing the data? It's a fair amount of data. If the initial request was started from a ajax call in a javascript function, I think I would know how to do this. I would probably have the Action method pass back a JSON object back to the javascript method that would in turn ask the user and then decide which controller action to call and then pass this json object to it. Am I on the right track here? If so, my problem would be with the Telerik MVC grid. I would need the update event of my grid to be bound client side. Any help or thoughts on this is appreciated. Steve"}
{"_id": "59577", "title": "Why is Software Engineering not the typical major for future software developers?", "text": "While most agree that a certain level of Computer Science is essential to being a good programmer, it seems to me that the principles of good software development is even more important, though not as fundamental. Just like mechanical engineers take physics classes, but far more engineering classes, I would expect, now that software is over a half century old, that software development would begin to dominate the undergraduate curriculum. But I don't see much evidence of this. Is there a reason that Software Engineering hasn't taken hold as an academic discipline?"}
{"_id": "59576", "title": "How would you like to be coached?", "text": "My boss is going through a certification process reggarding \"Coaching\", and he asked me if he could coach me. According to what I understood from him, I should have an objective on what should I be coached at and some initial questions from where the coaching process would stem from. As a software developer who likes to embrace new technologies and has lately been specially enjoying the \"requirements negotiation\" part of the work, I have no idea on what could I be coached or what kind of questions could I bring him. Maybe you guys here would have nice ideas?"}
{"_id": "59578", "title": "What do I tell my colleagues when they complain that our Rails-based website has an API but is not a Web Service?", "text": "People want SOAP or a WDSL. I've just got a defined API. What's wrong with that?"}
{"_id": "25888", "title": "Is it appropriate to ask for reasons after rejected after the interview?", "text": "I thought I did okay in the interviews but apparently the interviewers didn't think so. Is it appropriate to ask for a reason after I have received the rejection email? After all I don't want to annoy the HR person. I am a student, so not so much job hunting experience so far. Bear with me if this question sounds stupid."}
{"_id": "29132", "title": "economic viability analysis for an iPhone app", "text": "I have to do an economic viability analysis for an iPhone app and I do not know if you could help me in some questions like link text:   * How can I estimating an iPhone application development costs?   * Cost per hour of a programmer?   * Time that 1 programmer takes in doing an app similar to \u201cSpend Free - Personal Budgeting\u201d link text supposing that it has experience in Java but is rookie in the world of development of aplicaiones for iPhone (neither Objective-C nor Cocoa Touch knows \u2026)   * Time in integration testing?   * Return on investment (ROI)? Where can I find information?"}
{"_id": "29137", "title": "Do Ruby (and other dynamic language) programmers use IoC / Dependency Injection?", "text": "I'm primarily an ASP.NET developer and the single thing i've been introduced to in recent years that has had the most dramatic impact on the quality of the code I write has learning how to use IoC containers to manage dependencies between different layers of the application efficiently. I've recently made it my hobby to learn Ruby (and Rails) for personal projects, and I love the language so far. However, one of the things i've noticed from the various tutorials and references i've been using, has been that there has been no mention yet of using IoC. This is in stark contrast to .NET where it is (and where it isn't, should be) drummed into developers at an early stage. I appreciate that one reason why dependency injection may not be necessary in Ruby, is that everything in a class is public and virtual so open to modification so it's not really needed in order to write good unit tests. But there are of course many other benefits to using IoC containers such as the decoupling options this brings, managing object creation and lifetime etc. Is dependency injection used in Ruby? If not, why is this not an issue?"}
{"_id": "194475", "title": "Why is SIT called SIT when it serves for system testing?", "text": "I should define a testing strategy and environments and I have encountered rather terminology issue (but might well be my fault) so I hope someone will correct me here. We are using INT environment where the application is deployed at first and then SIT environment, where is the app passed if it is fine on INT. So, testers do all system tests on SIT. But according to all definitons, SIT is system integration testing which is done after the system tests and validates cooperation of more systems. So why SIT serves actually for system testing, yet it is said to be a phase which actually follows the system testing? EDIT: According to common knowledge-books:   1. Unit   2. Integration (modules to larger pieces)   3. System test   4. ().. System Integration Test --if there are more system to integrate Our apps consist of db, services, frontend. So to make a system test, they must be integrated, otherwise testers cannot do anything. So SIT precedes actual system testing (both funtional and non functional) which does not match with described processes. And environment for testers is also called SIT.."}
{"_id": "216297", "title": "Class diagrams - do aggregated/composed classes automatically see each other?", "text": "Let's say that in the game, a player has a pet: Player<>------Pet Obviously player can access Pet's fields and methods, but I assume Pet does not know about the player? I need that Pet can access the player as well, how should I model that?"}
{"_id": "194476", "title": "Deleting Lookup Item", "text": "I was wonder what people do in this situation. You have an admin area of a system where you let users define a list of values they want to see in a dropdowns across the system. What do you do in your application is a user wants to delete this option? What do you do with data records which already use this value?"}
{"_id": "194470", "title": "How to see bits of an integer in Visual Studio", "text": "As far as I know it is not possible to see the bits of an integer in Visual Studio, you can see variables in decimal or hexadecimal format in the Locals and Watch windows in the debugger. Why is this limitation in place and are there any tools/addins to see integers as bits?"}
{"_id": "195026", "title": "Data aggregation like polyvore.com", "text": "I'm creating a website that is going to aggregate women shoes from across the web into one website. Kinda like polyvore.com does with all their products but mine is only going to be shoes. Which makes my job a lot easier but I'm still lost as to how I go about getting all the data. I have access to 3 APIs so far. Which provide over 15000 line items so far but there are 1000's of sites out there and millions of products. What is the best method to aggregate all this data? Is it even possible? Or should I rely on a social aspect as well, like polyvore where users can upload any products that aren't on the website? Also, do I have to resort to screen scraping? And is this possible as a one man show? Polyvore has a team of 30 programmers, do I need a team to do this properly?"}
{"_id": "7055", "title": "What is the most frequently used design pattern?", "text": "Which design pattern do you think is the most popular?"}
{"_id": "34507", "title": "What are your experiences with off-shore or outsourced testing?", "text": "**Has anyone had experience** with out-sourced testing? Is it worth the fairly high premium you have to pay? Can you simply hire some _off-shore_ 'mechanical turks' (who offer the same services, but a lot cheaper) with a testing script as a cheaper alternative to professional software testing services?"}
{"_id": "34506", "title": "Is SugarCRM really adequate for custom development (or adequate at all)?", "text": "Have you used SugarCRM for custom development successfully?, if so, have you done it programmatically or through the Module Builder? Were you successful? If not, why? I used SugarCRM for a project about two years ago, I ran into errors from the very installation, having to hack the actual installation file to deploy the software in the server and other erros that I can't recall now. Two years after, I'm picking it up for a project once again. I'm feeling like I should have developed the whole thing from scratch myself. Some examples:   * I couldn't install it in the server (again).  I had to install it locally, then copy the files and database over to the server and manually edit the config file.   * Constantly getting deployment errors from the module builder.  One reason is SugarCRM keeps creating a record in the upgrade_history table for a file that does not exist, I keep deleting such record and it keeps coming back corrupt. I get other deployment errors, but have not figured them out. then I have to rollback all files and database to try again.   * I deleted a custom module with relationships, the relationships stayed in the other modules and cannot be deleted anymore, PHP warnings all over the place.   * Quick create for custom modules does not appear, hack needed.   * Its whole cache directory is a joke, permanent data/files are stored there.   * The module builder interface disappears required fields.   * Edit the wrong thing, module builder won't deploy again, then pray Quick Repair and/or Rebuild Relationships do the trick. My impression of SugarCRM now is that, regardless of its pretty exterior and apparent functionality, it is a very low quality piece of software. This even scared me more: http://amplicate.com/hate/sugarcrm; a quote: > I wis this info had been available when I tried to implement it 2 years > ago... I searched high and low and the only info I found was positive. Yes, > it's a piece of crap. The community edition was full of bugs... nothing > worked. Essentially I got fired for implementing it. I'm glad though, > because now I work for myself, am much happier and make more money... so, I > should really thank SugarCRM for sucking so much I guess! I figured that perhaps some of you have had similar experiences, and have either sticked with SugarCRM or moved on to another solution. I'm very interested in knowing what your resolutions were -or your current situations are- to make up my own mind, since the project I'm working on is long term and I'm feeling SugarCRM will be more an obstacle than an aid. After further failed attempts to continue using this software I continued to stumble upon dead-ends when using the module editor, I could only recover from this errors by using version control. We are now moving on to a custom implementation using Symfony; perhaps if we were using it with its out-of-the- box modules we would have sticked with it."}
{"_id": "34504", "title": "Is php|architect any good?", "text": "Kind of a hard topic to search for, as architect turns up a lot about software architects instead. After 8 months of PHP self-study, I finally stumbled across the php|architect site. The length of time it took me to find it makes me suspicious of its quality. 3 related questions:   * do professional PHP coders read/care about php|architect?   * is it a good source for PHP beginners?   * assuming yes to either of the above, how far back in the archives to articles remain relevant? (ex: does stuff written about PHP4 still matter?)"}
{"_id": "222981", "title": "\"C++ Templates: The Complete Guide\" (c) 2002 -- up to date with C++11?", "text": "The book _C++ Templates: The Complete Guide_ , (c) 2002, looks very appealing to me, but as it's 12 years old, I'm concerned it may be out of date. There are some highly favorable Amazon reviews dated as recently as a year ago, and I don't see any other very recent titles on C++ templates. Does anyone know whether a book about templates published in 2002 (as opposed to a book specifically about the STL) would have syntax or concepts that have been superseded or added to by, say, C++11? The following is from the Amazon book description: > Templates are among the most powerful features of C++, but they are too > often neglected, misunderstood, and misused. C++ Templates: The Complete > Guide provides software architects and engineers with a clear understanding > of why, when, and how to use templates to build and maintain cleaner, > faster, and smarter software more efficiently. > > C++ Templates begins with an insightful tutorial on basic concepts and > language features. The remainder of the book serves as a comprehensive > reference, focusing first on language details, then on a wide range of > coding techniques, and finally on advanced applications for templates. > Examples used throughout the book illustrate abstract concepts and > demonstrate best practices. > > Readers learn > >   * The exact behaviors of templates >   * How to avoid the pitfalls associated with templates >   * Idioms and techniques, from the basic to the previously undocumented >   * How to reuse source code without threatening performance or safety >   * How to increase the efficiency of C++ programs >   * How to produce more flexible and maintainable software >"}
{"_id": "79505", "title": "UDP segments that are lost", "text": "i know that UDP does not care about segment (packet) order and their arrival on the destination. then how on earth are we able to stream videos?   * if a segment is lost (doesn't reach the destination), destination has no idea about it. so, it can't ask the target to retransmit it.   * if a segment arrives out of the order, should't the video being streamed be distorted? since the whole segment order is wrong now, because of that one segment is not on its place."}
{"_id": "222989", "title": "If another team haven't done a requested task, are we supposed to mention it in every Daily Scrum as an Impediment until they do?", "text": "Is it really necessary to mention the same impediment (blocking issue) in every daily standup, if the whole Scrum team already know about it because it's been mentioned at previous daily standups?"}
{"_id": "131667", "title": "Interface naming: prefix 'Can-' vs suffix '-Able'", "text": "It's common to use '-able' as a suffix for interfaces e.g. Serializable Printable Enumerable Drinkable Shootable Rotatable I was thinking that 'Can-' might better because it may be more descriptive. Yes, it is more wordy and it adds noise to the interface name. In particular, passive verbs can be used. _E.g. 1_ does Shootable mean that the object is able to shoot (a gun might implement this), or does it means that it can be shot at (a target board might implement this). With the 'Can-' prefix, the former would be \"CanShoot\" and the latter would be \"CanBeShotAt\" or \"CanShootAt\". _E.g. 2_ A document 'CanBePrinted' and a printer 'CanPrint' Or, should we stick with '-Able' and _let the documentation provide the context?_ Any opinions."}
{"_id": "210959", "title": "How to elegantly work with a lot of print functions?", "text": "I'm working on a Python project that is executed on a terminal (or console) for which I am planning to implement a GUI. I did not major in CS so I really have no idea how to effectively design a terminal GUI such that:   1. the user interface looks good   2. in GUI, it is directed to a certain widget, let's say, a text label, or a bottom bar, or a hide-able frame. Do you have any suggestions? Currently, I am using the `print` function to provide essential information on `STDOUT` during execution, so a lot of `print` calls are distributed here and there in the code. I'm thinking of using macro-like variables such as 'FILE_NOT_EXISTS_MESSAGE' for printing, and all of them and their values would be defined in one file. Is that a standard way to do this? Should I introduce a logging system? In summary, I'm looking for a pattern for handling console output that is effective and adaptable."}
{"_id": "145973", "title": "When accessing/manipulating complex data, is it better to store it in many small pieces or one large chunk?", "text": "I am building a web app that manipulates fairly complex data: guitar tabs.                   As a reference, guitar tabs look like this:     Eb|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|     Bb|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|     Gb|--5-5-5-5----------------------------------------------------------------|     Db|--5-5-5-5--3-3-3-3--7-7-7-7--5-5-5-5--2-2-2-2--3-3-3-3--2-2-2-2--5-5-5-5-|     Ab|--3-3-3-3--3-3-3-3--7-7-7-7--5-5-5-5--2-2-2-2--3-3-3-3--2-2-2-2--5-5-5-5-|     Eb|-----------1-1-1-1--5-5-5-5--3-3-3-3--0-0-0-0--1-1-1-1--0-0-0-0--3-3-3-3-|      Would it be more efficient for performance to store this data as a large chunk, or to break it up and store it on a \"note by note\" basis?               As a use case:     User changes first chord from:       to:                              Eb|---   Eb|---                              Bb|---   Bb|---                              Gb|--5   Gb|--4                              Db|--5   Db|--4                              Ab|--3   Ab|--2                              Eb|---   Eb|---      If I store it as a block, the code to manipulate the tabs would have to be much more complex. If I store it note by note, the database will have to be accessed a lot more. **Which method is more efficient?** Potentially, a lot of users will be modifying the data. I want the **best performing web app.** I will be using MySQL if that affects the answer at all."}
{"_id": "92509", "title": "How do you answer \"explain current architecture of your project\" question in interviews?", "text": "The application which I am working on currently is a bit huge. It cannot be explained in 15 minutes or so. Last time I ended up drawing some class diagrams and how they are linked, but I could see that the interviewer was not happy with the answer. What are the main things that should be highlighted when answering this question? For example, how session is managed, how persistence is achieved are few things. What are other things, which should not be missed?"}
{"_id": "145971", "title": "How to optimize Cartesian product", "text": "Is there a better way to compute cartesian product. Since cartesian product is a special case that differs on each case. I think, I need to explain what I need to achieve and why I end up doing cartesian product. Please help me if cartesian product is the only solution for my problem. If so, how to improve the performance. ## Background: We are trying to help customers to buy products cheaper. Let say customer ordered 5 products (prod1, prod2, prod3, prod4, prod5). Each ordered product has been offered by different vendors. ## Representation Format1: Vendor1 - offers prod1, prod2, prod4 vendor2 - offers prod1, prod5 vendor3 - offers prod1, prod2, prod5 vendor4 - offers prod1 vendor5 - offers prod2 vendor6 - offers prod3, prod4 In other words ## Representation Format2: Prod1 - offered by vendor1, vendor2, vendor3, vendor4 Prod2 - offered by vendor5, vendor3, vendor1 prod3 - offered by vendor6 prod4 - offered by vendor1, vendor6 prod5 - offered by vendor3, vendor2 Now to choose the best vendor based on the price. We can sort the products by price and take the first one. In that case we choose prod1 from vendor1 prod2 from vendor5 prod3 from vendor6 prod4 from vendor1 prod5 from vendor3 ## Complexity: since we chose 4 unique vendors, we need to pay 4 shipping price. Also each vendor has a minimum purchase order. If we don't meet then we end up paying that charge as well. In order to choose the best combination of product. We have to do cartesian product of offered products to compute the total price.               total price computation algorithm:          foreach unique vendor      if(sum(product price offered by specific vendor * quantity)<minimum purchase order limit specified by specific vendor)     totalprice +=sum(product price * quantity) + minimum purchase charge + shipping price     else     totalprice +=sum(product price * quantity) + shipping price     end foreach      In our case {vendor1, vendor2, vendor3, vendor4} {vendor1, vendor3, vendor5} {vendor6} {vendor1, vendor6} {vendor2, vendor3} 4 * 3 * 1 * 2 * 2 = 48 combination needs to be computed to find the best combination. {vendor1,vendor1, vendor6, vendor1, vendor2}=totalprice1, {vendor1, vendor3, vendor6, vendor1, vendor2}=totalprice2, . . {vendor4, vendor5, vendor6, vendor6, vendor3}=totalprice48 Now sort the computed totalprice to find the best combination. ## Actual Problem: If customer order's more than 15 products.Lets assume, each product has been offered by 8 unique vendor then we end up computing 8^15=35184372088832 combination. Which takes more than couple of hours. If customer order's more than 20 products then it takes more than couple of days. Is there a solution to approach this problem in a different angle?"}
{"_id": "145974", "title": "Memoization, Caching, Buffering and Page Filing?", "text": "I'm writing something on how iterative Fibonacci is substantially better than recursive Fibonacci - a few lines. The main reason of this I find, as do many prominent researchers I believe, is that you don't recalculate values - space vs time. From this I thought **ah ha!** caching! But I'm not sure if it is caching, memoization, buffering or one of the others. I personally think buffering to be the preloading of material before something is done with it vs caching and memorization being more of a processing based thing. The buffering notion is that I get from such a _buffering_ a picture or a video. What is the difference between buffering, memoization, caching and page filing?"}
{"_id": "209888", "title": "Is there any \"Set\" database?", "text": "Is there any \"set\" database? For example Neo4j is a \"graph\" database. What I'm looking for is database which can be used to organize \"items\" into \"sets\" and then be able to query them with set operations. For example \"items that are in set A and B but not in set C\". Or which one of current databases can efficiently do this data modeling? Sets are not limited, they can be added/edited/removed as data, just like items or like links in a graph database. For example making a new set called D or Set2347 and add some item in it. An example would be pages liked by users, where each page is a \"set\" which is liked by users as \"items\" it contained. To clarify my question I would better quote Karl Bielefeldt comment: > The question isn't whether it's possible to use a relational database for > this use case. Obviously it is. It's possible to use a relational database > for a graph, but we have graph databases anyway which make working with > graphs a lot easier. Asking if something similar exists for sets is not an > unreasonable or unclear question, even if the answer happens to be no. Maybe > people have some good ways to make working with sets on relational databases > easier."}
{"_id": "23064", "title": "How to slow down your computer (for testing purposes)?", "text": "As most people agree, encouraging developers to make fast code by giving them slow machines is not a good idea. But there's a point in that question. My dev machine is fast, and so I occasionally write code that's disturbingly inefficient, but that only becomes apparent when running it on other people's machines. What are some good ways to temporarily slow down a turbocharged dev machine? The notion of \"speed\" includes several factors, for example:   * CPU clock frequency.   * Amount of CPU cores.   * Amount of memory and processor cache.   * Speed of various buses.   * Disk I/O.   * GPU.   * etc."}
{"_id": "136124", "title": "Problem and Requirements Definition", "text": "I was recently hired to redesign a management system from scratch. This is my first business-scale project. I have assisted with business applications in the past, but I am the only one dedicated to redesigning and programming the system with the assistance of a company employee. This employee built the previous version of the management system. We all agree that we want this done, and done right. I am willing to put in the time upfront to define the problem and requirements so I do not have to reap bad seeds during testing. At the moment, I am trying to capture the problem and gather the requirements for this management system. What questions should I ask this employee to be able to move forward with some documentation? I realize these requirements can change constantly, but I would like a starting point to work with. Here are a few questions I have come up with: > What is the purpose of the management system?   >  What is the problem we are trying to solve?   >  What will be the features of this system?   >  Who will be using the system? (Employees? Outside Entities?)   >  What are the means of security for this system? (Can an outside entity see > what an employee can see? etc.)"}
{"_id": "136123", "title": "Using Map in Java (or other strongly-typed languages) to work with unstructured data", "text": "After looking at the core data type for frameworks that deal with unstructured data in java:   * json java library: JsonObject   * Mongodb java api: BasicBSONObject   * SolrJ (Solr java client): SolrDocument the common theme seems to be that data are first de-serialized into Map, then transformed into an given class by reflection.   So this raises the question, why not just work with these Map (or sub-type of map) directly? You can extend Map and create your own sub-type, and you will still have all the benefit of OO programming. **Edit** I am not concerned with the cost of deserialization, but the flexibility that Map offers when dealing with unstructured data. By this, I mean not having to define a class that the data can be deserialized into.   **Edit 2** I am more interested in the \"why not (disadvantages)\", since the framework I mentioned already demonstrated that it could be done."}
{"_id": "21748", "title": "Starting to be a team leader", "text": "After half a year working for the company, I got two students to be leader for. So, I got some technical management responsibility. As I think, I should be not just a leader, but a teacher and the one who is example. What are common steps to educate junior developers? How to be not just a boss, who gives the task, but a 'senior fellow'? Is it appropriate to give some advices which are not properly related to coding(for example, human interaction and so on). I want to be a good leader for them, but don't have any experience in that and don't know what to begin from. Thanks."}
{"_id": "136129", "title": "Client wants to resell the app I programmed", "text": "Not sure if this is the right forum. If it's not, please let me know and I'll move it. So I have been asked by a client to develop a RoR Web App for them. He asked me if the development is their property. I said yes, you can request the source code and database migrations anytime. Then he says \"I'm asking you this, because we plan to resell the app to other branches. That's why I'm asking you if the development is ours and we have rights to resell it.\" So I'm thinking they do. I mean, they paid me to program for them. Is there a recommendation from any of you more experienced programmers? I'm thinking about of course, telling him he has the right to resell it, and I could help him deploying the app in more servers and cut him a web hosting deal so I can also benefit from my app being resold. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "246618", "title": "Why shouldn't you develop on production database?", "text": "I need help with organizing my arguments for why it's MADNESS to develop against production data. **Backstory:** I started working here six months ago and I noticed we're developing directly against production data. The codebase is local, but the database we're connected to is live data! So i have to be super careful constantly when doing update/store operations, so that I don't break anything. We have an annual software meeting soon and I want to raise my concerns, and come loaded with arguments but I have a really hard time coming up with good solid points to something that's should be obvious as this. It's as if they would ask me to come up with arguments to why I need to breathe. **My Question:** What arguments are there for NOT developing on production database directly?"}
{"_id": "207987", "title": "Safely fixing production database data", "text": "Bugs happen and sometimes data has to be fixed in production. What is the safest way to go about this from a big company standpoint? Are there tools that can help? Here are some considerations driving this requirement...   1. We need to log who ran the query and what they ran   2. Ideally we need to give the person access to only run queries against the tables of interest and only for a short time   3. Whatever is running the queries needs to have some smarts about it to not allow long running and locking SQL to run without explicit permission   4. This process needs to be DB agnostic or at least understand DB2, Oracle, and SQL Server. We are trying to reduce the risk of ad-hoc prod fix-up queries from doing the \"wrong thing\" and at the same time add some security/audtis to the process. Thoughts or Ideas?"}
{"_id": "251418", "title": "How do you deal with clients asking for manual data edits in the database?", "text": "I've recently started working on a legacy application that frankly doesn't do all that it should. It's lacking a lot of features, has barely any administration capacities and doesn't check half the data it should. As such, it's very easy for users to do something stupid and get stuck. _\"Oops, I added this item of the wrong type to this thingie and now it won't let me remove it\"_. Indeed, the application should have checked for this, but allowed adding the wrong item. And now, when it comes to deleting the wrong item, it becomes extremely protective and refuses that anything be removed. Problem is, the clients (who are actually users within the company) don't care much for that. They need the application to hold the real-world data as it should be, so they ask the developers to \"fix it\" by changing the data. In this example, deleting the wrong item. In other cases, it will be reassigning items to different parents, fixing various values, etc... Since the application has almost no admin GUI, everything ends up being done directly in the database (augh!), risking even more issues down-the-line unless you know _exactly_ how it works (which no one really does considering the massive application). Ultimately, it feels like the database has become a huge Excel file that devs edit day by day at the whims of the clients, because of failures of the application. It's obvious to me that fixing the application to avoid such situations should be top priority, but it seems the clients prefer asking for a lot of new features instead and it's accepted as such. What can a developer do in such a situation? Is it even possible to refuse DB edits in favor of fixing things? There are so many bugs that it feels like they're never going to wait _that_ long..."}
{"_id": "210052", "title": "How many ALU additions are needed to add three numbers?", "text": "Please give reasons for your answer. As I found, two additions are needed. This is because every number to be add needs to changed to binary. Then addition is done between two binary numbers where the XOR gate is used for addition. When a carry bit is required an AND gate is involved to add the carry bit to the next line. Therefore if more than 3 binary numbers are added together there can be more than one carry bit and the AND gate doesn't support that. Am I right or I am confusing everything and nothing make sense? Thank you for your time."}
{"_id": "144378", "title": "Reading/resources for improving architect and senior engineer skills", "text": "I am working on improving my architect / senior engineer skills. In particular, I want to focus on \"getting lost in the weeds\" - spending a lot of time on a problem while a better solution could have been achieved and \"not seeing the forest for the trees\" - missing the big picture and only providing part of the functionality - issues. What is some recommended reading/source material that can help me along?"}
{"_id": "189623", "title": "Java Swing ActionListener design", "text": "I have a form that includes an area for putting in address information and a table that shows the addresses that have been added. I've separated out the ActionListener for the \"add address\" button on the form into it's own top level class and I'm finding it tricky and cumbersome to refer back to the form that has the text boxes and the table. From a design perspective, is it a bad idea to put the class that implements the ActionListener for the add address button as an inner class in the form class? The ActionListener class will be specifically tied to the parent form alone, so I'm figuring that an inner class might be the better route to go. I'm going to perform any business logic outside of the form class, of course..."}
{"_id": "40642", "title": "Advice for transitioning into a Java developer position from doing other types of web development?", "text": "I've been doing web programming and currently work at a company working with mainly PHP and Javascript. For a little while now I've been becoming more and more frustrated with the shortcomings of this type of development and want to move to a company with a more defined development process that values doing things the \"right way\" such as using Unit tests, dependency injection / IoC, etc. I've been learning JEE / Java as much as I can on my own time but would really like to make a switch to doing this as my career and leave behind the PHP world altogether. I'm just wondering if anyone can give me advice on which things to put my main focus on right now to make myself marketable as an entry level Java developer? Basically, I feel that I'm not really learning anything new at my current job that will benefit me and its only making me more and more frustrated so I figure if there is any way to position myself for a transition I would rather do it sooner than later."}
{"_id": "187288", "title": "Creating a text input simplifaction tool", "text": "I have been working on a project for several months now to write a web-based tool that will help me at work. I work at a call center and the CRM software that is used is wretched, we basically have to input all of our information into notepad templates and then paste it in to a description box. My initial goal was to create a web-interface for the templates so that I didn't have to use notepad anymore. I was just going to write it with HTML5/CSS/JS, both as a learning experience and, if I was fortunate enough, an opportunity for advancement. As I worked on coding this tool I continuously found myself changing the foundation of the project, attempting to integrate more functionality in my tool. It has gotten to the point where I want the tool to be used alongside the CRM software for every call I receive. I want to be able to simply copy the customer's information off of CRM (simply with Ctrl + A/Ctrl + C), then be able to paste the block of jumbled text into a text box. The program will then pick out the customer's info by looking for keywords in specific positions to fill out a user selected template. The rest of the information is input manually and then the output is generated with the push of a button. The information will also be parsed into a backup text file. The text file will be created automatically based on the date. If the text file for the current date exists, it will simply concatenate the info. As I wrote my code I found myself getting distracted looking at different coding languages and possibilities. I kept looking back at what I had completed and I was disappointed, I've started over from scratch two times now. Now for the actual question: I am thinking of starting over, writing my program with AngularJS. I like the idea of a smooth, single page, app-like interface, but I'm scared of hitting more barriers and starting over using something else. Based on my description of how I want my program to run, can anyone suggest how to go about implementing this? Should I look into a different language, or is JS really the way to go these days? I just discovered Dart and am intrigued, but the idea of learning yet another language is discouraging instead of exciting. I feel like I'm missing a pretty big point. I hope this question is appropriate for this forum. I feel a bit lost with StackExchange, and the last thing I want to do is receive negative attention for a bad post. I'm just feeling a bit lost when it comes to this project, and perhaps even programming in general. Regardless, any feedback will be appreciated. Even direction to a forum for emotionally distraught fledgeling programmers would be a welcome answer. >.< Thank you."}
{"_id": "221180", "title": "Unit testing side effect-heavy code", "text": "I'm starting to write C++ code to run a robot, and I don't know how to incorporate unit testing, if indeed I can. I have been provided with a library which allows the creation of \"commands\" for the robot, which are automatically scheduled and executed. The mechanism to create these commands is to subclass a command base class they provide, and implement virtual `void Initialize()`, `void Execute()`, and `void End()` methods. These functions are run purely for their side effects, which do things to the robot (run motors, extend pistons, etc.). Because of this, I don't really see anywhere to attach unit tests to the code, short of mocking the entire library so that I can check the virtual before and after states of the robot. Is there a way to unit test this that isn't overly burdensome? ## Edit I think I may have been misleading about the functionality of the library. The library provides most of the interface to the robot as well as the command/scheduling system, so it's not as simple as mocking the command base class, I'd have to mock the entire interface to the hardware. I unfortunately just don't have the time to do that."}
{"_id": "199974", "title": "What's a typical team size using a Git repo?", "text": "We've been using Git as our version control but as the team grows, there are more and more pains when it comes to getting all our changes onto a single branch ready for a deployment. I'm wondering if maybe we're outgrowing Git as an effective collaboration tool. I know there are large OSS projects with many developers that use Git but there also tend to be some gatekeepers responsible for the merging of branches into the final build/deployment branch. In an office environment, where the developers are relatively independent and can be trusted to merge their own changes, how many people can effectively collaborate on Git? Additionally, are there any tips for effective use of Git? We've been using the rebase workflow, I'm not entirely convinced switching to a merge based workflow would improve the situation but then, I haven't seen a formal description of how a large group would work together in a merge workflow (It seems like the history would just turn into merge hell). Addendum: So that it's easy to find for anyone else wondering:   * We're using a feature branch strategy   * The code base is well organized and pretty clean. It's Python (with some HTML/JS), MVC via pyramid for the web app, separate package (different top level folder in same repo, itself split up into well defined layers) for a large chunk of the non-web specific application functionality.   * We experience pain as far as merging code because developers are frequently making changes in the same files, like, one dev owns auth, so they're touching the views, etc... related to auth, but another dev is handling internationalization, so they're touching all the views, etc."}
{"_id": "221185", "title": "What are good ways of balancing informative exceptions and clean code?", "text": "With our public SDK, we tend to want to give very informative messages about why an exception occurs. For example:               if (interfaceInstance == null)     {          string errMsg = string.Format(               \"Construction of Action Argument: {0}, via the empty constructor worked, but type: {1} could not be cast to type {2}.\",               ParameterInfo.Name,               ParameterInfo.ParameterType,               typeof(IParameter)         );              throw new InvalidOperationException(errMsg);     }      However, this tends to clutter up the flow of the code, as it tends to put a lot of focus on error messages rather than what the code is doing. A colleague started refactoring some of the exception throwing to something like this:               if (interfaceInstance == null)         throw EmptyConstructor();          ...          private Exception EmptyConstructor()     {         string errMsg = string.Format(               \"Construction of Action Argument: {0}, via the empty constructor worked, but type: {1} could not be cast to type {2}.\",               ParameterInfo.Name,               ParameterInfo.ParameterType,               typeof(IParameter)         );              return new InvalidOperationException(errMsg);     }      Which makes the code logic easier to understand, but adds a lot of extra methods to do error handling. What are other ways to avoid the \"long-exception-messages clutter logic\" problem? I'm primarily asking about idiomatic C#/.NET, but how other languages manage it are helpful as well. **[Edit]** It would be nice to have the pros and cons of each approach as well."}
{"_id": "199971", "title": "What could be the use of forking a repository in a github's organization?", "text": "I'm trying to figure it out some nice workflow for our company, and we have so far the main repository on the github's organization account and we all, the members of the team working on the branches of that repo. Could you please mention some advantages on forking the repo or some use, by the members of the organization? I was thinking, that for example, I could make a fork and perform a upgrade of the libraries, but someone pointed that, \"what is the differences on doing it simply in another branch,without forking? Thank you in advance, for your time."}
{"_id": "209776", "title": "Changing a variable through a series of statements ... What is this technique called?", "text": "I'm looking at a function that that has several statements like this:               n = returnDifferentVersionOf(n);      I.e., the value of _the same_ variable `n` changes progressively several times during the course of a subroutine -- rather than a newly named variable being assigned at each change. What is the generic name of this technique (if there is one)? * * * A more full example might be (in Ruby):               # reuse same var     def cromulentize(str=\"\")        str = \"wowza\" if str.empty?        str += \" adios!\"        str = str * 3        str.gsub!('a', 'X')        str = str[0..-3]        str.upcase     end      What is that technique called, as opposed to this one:               # uses diff vars     def cromulentize(str=\"\")        non_empty_str = str.empty? ? \"wowza\" : str        adios_str = non_empty_str += \" adios!\"        multiplied_str = adios_str * 3        gsubbed_str = multiplied_str.gsub!('a', 'X')        spliced_str = gsubbed_str[0..-3]        upcased_str = spliced_str.upcase     end      (Note that in Ruby the value of a method's last expression is the return value.)"}
{"_id": "151519", "title": "Do I need to add an index on a table with one row?", "text": "I'm creating a parameter table in our database. This table will have 1 row with values that are environment specific (production, development, etc). Is there any reason why I should define an index on this table? **Update**   This table is a parameter table which will be used to drive our job queue system. The table will be defined like this:               QueuePrm       LogLvl    integer       ShowMs    boolean       Restart   boolean      This table will only ever have 1 row. No other table in our system will reference it."}
{"_id": "151518", "title": "Is it advisable to ask employees to create 'work' GitHub accounts?", "text": "I've moved all our company Git repositories to GitHub and now I want to add employees to the projects. Since most employees already have personal GitHub accounts, I'm wondering whether I should ask them to create a _work_ GitHub account. The reason that I'm thinking of doing this is to decrease the chances of unauthorized access to our code base since their personal accounts may be well publicized through their personal activity on the site, increasing chances of targeted attacks. Furthermore, if their personal account is ever compromised it won't mean the whole company code is accessible to the hijacker. Since this will bring the burden of maintaining two accounts for the employees I'm wondering whether it is the correct approach and whether it even makes sense. I would love to hear your opinions on this. **Update** Thanks for all the useful insights. I won't set an answer as accepted because of the subjective nature of the question/answers and since I took the best points from several different answers. I have decided to go forward this way: I will remind employees that work- related GitHub e-mail notifications will have to be sent to their work e-mail accounts for practical reasons. Therefore it would make more sense to create work GitHub accounts. If they are willing to use their personal GitHub accounts and connect it to their work e-mail accounts then that's fine. _In any case_ , employees will have to agree in written form to a number of conditions tied to using GitHub. These are related to account security: choosing a secure password using a secure random password generator that is not used with any other account, not accessing GitHub through computers not owned or administered by them, etc. At the end of the day employees will have to decide themselves whether a work account makes more sense for them or not."}
{"_id": "28667", "title": "Is anything in programming truly evil?", "text": "So, there are a bunch of questions appearing asking is X evil, is Y evil. My view is that there are no language constructs, algorithms or whatever which are evil, just ones which are badly used. Hell, if you look hard enough there are even valid uses of goto. So does absolute evil, that is something which is utterly incompatible with best practice in all instances, exist in programming? And if so what is it? Or is it just bad programmers not knowing when something is appropriate? Edit: To be clear, I'm not talking about things programmers do (such as not checking return codes or not using version control - they're choices made by bad programmers), I mean tools, languages, statements, whatever which are just bad..."}
{"_id": "74904", "title": "What is the average lifespan of a cookie", "text": "I am wondering if there is any research on the lifespan of cookies on users computers? For a website I'm building we are looking at giving the users some personalization based on a previous selection when they come back at a later point. However, our users mostly will come back a few months or even a year later. Of course I can set the expiration time of the cookie to a year or longer. But overtime people get a new computer, a new install, or just a new browser (version). Or there might be other changes which make the cookie be deleted. I'm guess that the cookie won't survive the length of a year. Will it be worth saving this in a cookie? E.g., how much percentage of the cookies will still be there by that time?"}
{"_id": "151515", "title": "Rewrote GNU GPL v2 code in another language: can I change a license?", "text": "I rewrote some parts of Mercurial (which is licensed under GNU GPL v2) in C#. Naturally, I looked a lot into original Python code and some parts are direct translations from Python to C#. Is is possible have \"my code\" licensed under different terms or to even make a part of a closed-source commercial application? If not, can I re-license \"my- code\" under LGPL, open-source it and _then_ use this open-sourced C# library in my closed-source commercial application?"}
{"_id": "61248", "title": "What is the role of C++ today?", "text": "Currently I'm an IT student and I'm wondering what is still important in C++ today, what for is it used? I completed basic C++ course in my university but I can't imagine where can I use my knowledge and in which direction should I go learning C++. In other words what should I learn to become a successful C++ programmer? Currently I'm learning Java just because I don't see clearly in which area C++ could be useful today, but I clearly know which kind of work I'll be doing as a Java programmer. But I still hope that C++ isn't dead."}
{"_id": "240581", "title": "Should we push for more JavaScript on the JVM, alongside Java and Scala? Or, if not, why?", "text": "With JavaScript becoming one of the most widely used languages around, I began asking myself why people do not find ways to use it extensively on the JVM. As a programmer who spends half day writing Java, and the other half, writing JavaScript, I do see a lot of potential in this. Was it just the timing that shot Scala up straight? Or the nature of the language itself. Although JavaScript and Java are fundamentally different languages, it is certainly not a problem to compile JS to Java bytecode. That's what Rhino has been doing for many years, right? Or the maybe the problem lies in the performance? Whatever it is, I would be interested to know."}
{"_id": "35671", "title": "Should a c# dev switch to VB.net when the team language base is mixed?", "text": "I recently joined a new development team where the language preferences are mixed on the .net platform.               Dev 1: Knows VB.net, does not know c#     Dev 2: Knows VB.net, does not know c#     Dev 3: Knows c# and VB.net, prefers c#     Dev 4: Knows c# and VB6(VB.net should be pretty easy to pick up), prefers c#      It seems to me that the thought leaders in the .net space are c# devs almost universally. I also thought that some 3rd party tools didn't support VB.net but when I started looking into it I didn't find any good examples. I would prefer to get the whole team on c# but if there isn't any good reason to force the issue aside from preference then I don't think that is the right choice. Are there any reasons I should lead folks away from VB.net?"}
{"_id": "73024", "title": "What best practices should be employed in a PHP login script?", "text": "I am wanting to re-write my login scripts for clients websites to make them more secure. I want to know what best practices I can implement into this. Password protected control panels are in their abundance, but very few seem to impliment best practices in terms of code writing, speed and security. I will be using PHP and a MYSQL database. I used to use md5, but I see that sha256 or sha512 would be better (together with secure hash and salt). Some login scripts log the ip address throughout the session or even the user agent, but I want to avoid that as it isn't compatible with proxy servers. I am also a little behind the best practice in using sessions in PHP 5 (last time I read up was PHP 4) so some best practices with this would be helpful. Thanks."}
{"_id": "165313", "title": "Is shipping a Clojure desktop app realistic?", "text": "I'm currently shipping a desktop Java application. It is a plain old Java 5 Java / Swing app and so far everything worked nicely. Java 5 was targetted because some users were on OS X version / computers that shall never have Java 6 (we may lift this limitation soon and switch to a newer Java and simply abandoning my users stuck with Java 5). I'm quickly getting up to speed with Clojure but I haven't really done lots of Clojure-to-Java and Java-to-Clojure yet and I was wondering if it was realistic to ship a Clojure desktop application instead of a Java application? The application I'm shipping is currently about 12 MB with all the _.jar_ so adding Clojure doesn't seen to be too much of an issue. My plan would be to have Clojure call Java APIs: my application is already divided in several independent jars. If I understand correctly calling Clojure from Java is harder than calling Java code from Clojure which is why I'd basically rewrite all the UI (part of the UI, mixing Swing components and self-made BufferedImages needs to be rewritten anyway due to the rise of retina display), and do all the 'wiring' from Clojure. So that's the problem I'm facing: is it realistic to ship a Clojure desktop app? (it certainly doesn't seem to be very widespread but then shipping plain Java desktop apps ain't that common either and I'm doing it anyway) Technically, what would need to be done? (compared to shipping a Java app)"}
{"_id": "188398", "title": "C++ Typecasting VS performance", "text": "Let's say we're designing a video game. We have some sprites on the map and we want to call some method of the particular sprite at some particular position. We are using _one broadly-known C++ framework_. It has an `GraphicsItem` class, and ALL our sprites are derived from it. Now, framework has a method to get a pointer of the `GraphicsItem` at any position on the map. We've got two options now:   1. Cast from `GraphicsItem*` to our `Sprite*` and call `Sprite`'s method. (We know for sure that all the graphics items on the map are instances of `Sprite`)   2. _Make some crazy things like_ Store pointers to `Sprite` in some container, iterate through them, compare address vales and get straight `Sprite*` without casting. The question is: what is the best practice in this case? I was always told to avoid typecasting because it means you've got design issues. But how can I change design to avoid typecasting here? And extra iteration over a container with a comparison is just... crazy..."}
{"_id": "51482", "title": "As a student, how to answer a random question: \"Is 'something' about the topic unclear to you?\"", "text": "While attempting to make a list programming subjects/topics that were unclear to me, I was unable to come up with anything. I know I can't be clear on everything. What steps can I take to get an accurate self-assessment of my knowledge and \"know what I don't know\"?"}
{"_id": "51485", "title": "How to communicate with a co-worker that considers frameworks a performance hit", "text": "How can one sell an idea like \"we should use jQuery because its highly optimized and cross browser compatible\" or \"entity framework is cool because its neat and takes care of our model automagically\" when the common response is a blanketed statement such as \"jquery doesn't perform well\" or \"entities bring in 12 columns on a table when we only need 10\"? I am a pragmatic guy that tends to trust axioms I've developed through experience (its not a performance problem until there's a visible slowdown). I don't know if there's a specific \"category\" that the other extreme fits into, whereas everything is a performance problem until proven otherwise...or even where to begin the communication here."}
{"_id": "100901", "title": "Do you write unit testing or TDD as a line item requirement into your contracts or statements of work?", "text": "If you do, do you discuss coverage, continuous integration, quality control, or anything related to the difference between unit testing, functional testing and TDD in general? If clients ask, do you simply state that you will unit test, but leave out specifics?"}
{"_id": "100903", "title": "What would motivate you to do free programming work for work after work?", "text": "I'm not talking about working overtime for a project, but R&D, or test bed applications that benefit the company. These would become teaching tools, and eventually sales tools. I know it sounds crazy to even ask, but I'm seeing a trend in this industry with regard to rapidly changing technology, and a problem with getting programmers to bring the after hours knowledge gained in house. You would think it would spill over naturally, but I find most leads holding back because the work would then be \"managed\" by the company, and now the property of the company. Are there solid programs or initiatives that stimulate a back-and-forth, where you can actually bring something to the table and be rewarded for it? **EDIT** Can anyone provide additional feedback on this: _Are there solid programs or initiatives that stimulate a back-and-forth, where you can actually bring something to the table and be rewarded for it?_ There appears to be a miscommunication here, where some users are under the impression I'm trying to figure out how to get free work out of colleagues. Just the opposite is true. I want to know if there are programs that exist, or ideas that you have that would motivate you, which doesn't necessarily have to be money."}
{"_id": "98420", "title": "How can I help open source win in the future against closed systems like iPhone and iPad?", "text": "I would like to donate a lot of my time over the next few years to helping open source hold its own against closed systems like the iPhone and iPad in the mobile and appliance computing space. If that's my goal, what's the better strategy -- to do development work for Android or for Ubuntu? I know Ubuntu is behind on the mobile front, but they work great on netbooks and are gradually moving into the tablet space. And there are questions over whether Android is really faithful to the spirit of open source. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/is-android-open/ Any suggestions? I'm primarily a Ruby programmer who has done a lot of iOS programming."}
{"_id": "98427", "title": "gRaphael plugin best practices", "text": "I'm looking for best practices when creating a plugin for gRaphael. I'm looking for something like jquery where in its documentation you have the best practices of how to write a plugin. So far I haven't found nothing so I'm starting to imagine that it just comes down to best practices with javascript and not with a particular order of the code or configurability... any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "145020", "title": "Should cases be reopened for bugs, or should bugs be opened as a new case?", "text": "Currently at my work place we use FogBugz for managing all our features and bugs for our different web applications. When a new feature is to be added to one of our web applications, a new Case is created. For example \"Create CSV Upload Form\". I then work on the case recording the amount of time I've spent on it. Once this case is completed, I then resolve it, and it gets assigned back to the case opener (usually the project manager), who then closes the case. If there are any bugs with the feature, my Project Manager then re-opens the case, and assigns it back to me with a bullet point list of bugs. In my opinion I believe these bullet pointed bugs should be opened as individual bug cases, so that they can be tracked easier, and not get cluttered with the original feature case notes. My managers disagree with me stating that it is easier to work out the total time spent on the feature if its all in one case. Furthermore they believe it is less confusing for our clients as they only have 1 case number reference for the feature. However I would stress that the bugs should be dealt with as seperate cases as this is post-completion of the original case. Am I right in stating that bugs should be reopened as a new case? And what are the pros/cons of each way of managing this?"}
{"_id": "229700", "title": "Is it possible to use the framework behind Metro UI to make Expos\u00e9?", "text": "Is it possible to use the framework behind the Windows 8 Metro UI to make Expos\u00e9-like application for Windows? I tried Mac and I really like this feature, on another side i like that I can drag the screen from the top of the screen into the Metro UI, but that is completely useless. So imagine if it is possible to use this functionality in a Expos\u00e9-like application for windows. Is it even feasible? If not, maybe at a later stage? I am a programming rookie, but it could be a fun project. Thanks in advance for any answers, suggestions and information."}
{"_id": "183945", "title": "Can I use Visual Studio 2010 Architectural features to enforce design on code, without feature packs?", "text": "I am studying Visual Studio 2010's architectural tools for application lifecycle management. After we have sketched some modeling diagrams, we wonder now how should be the natural workflow to convert that to architecture-compliant code. We noticed that UML Explorer tab keeps track of entities created in class diagrams, sequence diagrams and component diagrams, but not so with layer diagrams and activity diagrams. The main problem is: when the modeling is ready, how would be the expected way to convert it to a compliant code? Possible paths could be:   * \"you have to manually keep track of everything\";   * \"you can use feature X and/or technique Y\";   * \"There's no way to do that without the Modeling Feature Pack\"; As far as I have researched until now, everything suggests that the Feature Pack is needed, but I wonder what would be the point to have those standard modeling projects if the greatest advantages of modeling (tracking and validating development code) cannot be performed... UPDATE: This blog post shows how to use Layers Diagram of a modeling project (via Validation flag on modeling project's properties tab) to RAISE BUILD ERRORS in case a layer dependency (which can be manually created) is violated. That seems promising, and I wonder which more of these hidden features the \"non-feature-packed\" Visual Studio 2010 might have. Thanks for any help"}
{"_id": "130208", "title": "Is there a general method to evaluate the optimality of an optimization algorithm?", "text": "is there a general method to evaluate the optimality of an optimization algorithm, for example an algorithm solving an otherwise NP-hard or NP- complete problem? The only method I came up so far is comparing the results of the algorithm against already known optimal solutions. If not, are there specific methods for some special problems? **EDIT** To clarify: By optimality I mean how close the result is to an optimal solutions result."}
{"_id": "4614", "title": "What differentiates the exceptional programmers from the really good ones?", "text": "You know who they are. They are the rock stars of programming:   * They code 10X faster.   * Their code just works.   * They not only know their primary language inside and out, but they also know how it works under the hood.   * They know the answer to most any question before you ask it.   * A few of them invented the programming principles we all use.   * And they tend to be uncharacteristically humble, as well. What is it about these folks? Is there something about their thought process that is fundamentally different from the above-average programmer? Or are they simply very talented people that work hard? To put it another way: How can I be like them? I know what I think I need to learn to be that good, but it seems like it will take me the next ten years to learn it, and then my knowledge will be obsolete."}
{"_id": "183942", "title": "How to maintain lots of different variations for deployment, using Git for development", "text": "Although there are many similar questions here regarding using GIT for maintaining different versions, none seem to answer my specific case. I'm OK with how to use GIT to do my development, using different branches to do hot fixes, versioning etc. However, I am making a commercial application that needs to track various modules and configurations for **DIFFERENT** clients. And I do NOT wish the client to have access to a module or code they haven't paid for. Yet I would like to use GIT to deploy on their server, or to be able to deploy directly on the client server using ssh/rsync, or even on my server in a unique directory, then zip up the source files using a standard process. Let me give you an example: Client A:   * Deploy basic application   * Deploy Module A (e.g. forum) only   * Deploy Client A specific theme with Client A specific logo Client B:   * Deploy basic application   * Deploy Module A (e.g. forum)   * Deploy Module B (e.g. faq system)   * Deploy Client B specific theme with Client B specific logo Development Server:   * Contains basic application   * Contains Module A (e.g. forum)   * Contains Module B (e.g. faq system)   * Contains Client A and Client B themes with all logos   * Contains Development Notes which must NOT be visible to client   * Contains build files used with Phing - these must NOT be available to clients It's very important to understand that GIT on the development server contains proprietary data for Client A and Client B. Therefore Client A must never see my development notes, my Phing build files, Module B (faq system) or code/data/images for Client B. I do not need to keep variations of a module or the basic application for individual clients. Everything is standard across the system, and it's only the deployment configuration/variation for each client which is unique. I am happy to use GIT Submodules to keep some parts separate, if that helps. Note that all my code is in PHP and I am happy to deploy solutions using PHP, Perl, Python or scripting, but I don't want to use Java on the destination server. Ideally I would like to avoid Ruby solutions, if possible. I have access to SSH on the client server and can use rsync over SSH as well, but I need to be able to execute a script on the client server to clean caches etc after an update. My development machine is **Windows** \\- yes, unfortunate, but true. If I cannot achieve what I need on Windows then I will run CentOS/Fedora in VMWare. This is not a multi-server deployment requiring simultaneous updating across a server farm, although it would be nice to be able push out updates of the application to all the various clients on a schedule or using a single command/procedure rather than having to do it manually for each one. I would also need to be able to push client specific updates to individual clients as and when required (for instance HTML or logo updates). So, can I use GIT for deployment, or at least track the various configurations using branches? Or is it simply going to be too messy? Can I hide Client B from Client A, including in commit history, in a particular branch, to make sure someone proficient with GIT at the client's organization cannot retrieve code they mustn't see (and this is a **contractual** requirement of the project)? If so, how do I do this in GIT? If not, how can I **best** manage a build process that allows me to deploy client specific configurations? Note that initially I will be managing around 20 different clients, and this might grow to 100 or more different configurations as each one will include their own HTML and logos, and a variation based on a potentially unique selection of 15-20 modules. I am happy to maintain a hundred different XML configuration files if that's what it takes. I am aware of Capistrano, but from reading about it, it doesn't seem that suitable for my specific case. If you feel otherwise, please do feel free to state so."}
{"_id": "128430", "title": "How much programming skill should I have as a computer security expert?", "text": "I have a fairly comprehensive understanding of a program environment (from machine to code), however I have limited experience actually programming anything. Is this something I really need to work on? or is conceptual understanding enough?"}
{"_id": "101052", "title": "What are some effective ways of helping someone learn a programming language/framework in a focused way?", "text": "Here's some background:   * I have someone who is motivated to help me out on a project that already has a good chunk of code written   * The person does not have a CS background, but knows the basics (functions, variables, objects, classes, etc)   * The goal isn't to make this person a rockstar developer overnight - they just need to be able to pull their weight on this specific project.   * The project is a Rails project, but if there are general responses, I'd like to favor them. The current approach that is being taken is to give this person a simple feature (that has a similar feature already written). Then nudging them when they get confused, while trying not to give them full chunks of code. Regardless, they're very confused and frustrated, and moving slowly. Not unexpected, but I'm wondering if there are any tips or tricks to help them learn more effectively, and get to the wonderful \"ah-ha!\" moments."}
{"_id": "128434", "title": "Computer security expert using pre-made tools or own?", "text": "As a digital security consultant when is it 'ok' to use tools someone else made (dumb to reinvent the wheel, right?) and when should I make my own?"}
{"_id": "253888", "title": "In a specification, should I describe what a product does (ideally) or what it should/must do?", "text": "I'm writting a German specification (I'm not German). Differences may appear for this process in different cultures, especially in the terminology, but usually here's the idea:   * The **client** writes his **needs and wishes** in a document, called a scope statement or **requirements document**.   * The **supplier** tries to understand the **actual need** of the client (which might be different to what was written _and_ to what the client meant to say _and_ to what the client _thinks_ he needs, etc.)   * The supplier writes a **specification** for the **product** , which should fill the client's need.   * The specification needs to be **precise enough for the product to be made** (ambiguity problems occur).   * The client and the supplier can check whether they have understood each other, and discuss details of the product.   * The client **agrees** with the specification (or at least its current iteration) and the supplier is ready to start the **work**. (it may of course be expected of you to disagree with this process, but this is irrelevant to my problem): I'm now somewhere around the last two steps and I've been criticized because I wrote what the product _must_ do, and not what it _will do_ ideally. Usually along the lines of > The product must be able to perform task A And I was expected to write > The product performs task A This is a simple word play, but I feel saying what the product _does_ , while the product isn't even on the way to be made yet, is wrong. I would tend to consider a specification as a contract of what the product is expected to do (what it must do and how it should do it), and not what it _does_. Said differently, I feel this is the specification and not the manual of the end product\u2026\u2026 Should I say what the product _must do_ or what it _does_?"}
{"_id": "220279", "title": "How are algorithms developed?", "text": "I'm impressed with the efficiency of some algorithms and I noticed the way the problem is solved can be and/or appear really unintuitive. It may sound dumb, but I would like to know:   * **How do the authors come up with amazing algorithms? Do they just keep thinking about the problem and end up with the answer? Are they geniuses?**   * Which leads me to my next question: **how long do they take to find the solution? Hours, days, months, years?** I know there isn't a definite answer to these questions. But I would like to know how it usually works regarding the most used/known algorithms."}
{"_id": "205082", "title": "Code review if nobody in team has knowledge in some technology?", "text": "Sample situation: A team of Java developers starts an iOS project. Only one developer has Objective-C/iOS knowledge, and in the beginning he will work on this project alone. How we can perform code reviews in this situation? What are processes, approaches, tools that this developer will use?"}
{"_id": "253353", "title": "Java HTTP Header issue", "text": "I'm looking to download videos from YouTube. My code works I can save the videos no problem but for some videos an HTTP response code of 403 is returned. For example all Vevo videos return 403 errors. I'm pretty sure it is to do with the headers. I've added headers to the request as per Chromes Live HTTP Headers. This is my code. Can somebody please suggest something I'm missing.               Base url used = \"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE\";          String url = \"http://r5---sn-8vq54voxpx-q0ce.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?mv=m&ratebypass=yes&sver=3&id=o-AG0Zbfjq6nIMbyri8B5-6_-C8Vc4WHeRLHXbmh6CLK2A&source=youtube&sparams=gcr,id,initcwndbps,ip,ipbits,itag,ratebypass,source,upn,expire&mm=31&expire=1408069579&key=yt5&mws=yes&fexp=901466,902408,927622,931983,934024,934030,946023,949402&ms=au&ipbits=0&initcwndbps=1059000&&mt=1408047855&gcr=ie&ip=109.79.21.79&upn=xEwXucfWzTk&type=video/mp4;+codecs=%22avc1.64001F,+mp4a.40.2%22&quality=hd720&itag=22&fallback_host=tc.v8.cache7.googlevideo.com&signature=8287AA736059404B5179505C650D2CE6145F988B2.3AD41A007E3A69ABED73FF1C1A957BE645BDCDBDDB5&\";               CloseableHttpClient httpclient = HttpClients.createDefault();     HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url);     httpget.addHeader(\"User-Agent\", \"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36\");     //httpget.addHeader(\"Accept\", \"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8\");     httpget.addHeader(\"Accept\", \"/\");     httpget.addHeader(\"Accept-Encoding\", \"gzip,deflate,sdch\");     httpget.addHeader(\"Accept-Language\", \"en-US,en;q=0.8\");     httpget.addHeader(\"DNT\", \"1\");     httpget.addHeader(\"Origin\", \"https://www.youtube.com\");     httpget.addHeader(\"Referer\", \"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\" + videoID);     httpget.addHeader(\"Connection\", \"keep-alive\");          CloseableHttpResponse response = httpclient2.execute(httpget2);     HttpEntity entity = response2.getEntity();          System.out.println(\"\\nResponse Code: \" + response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode());     System.out.println(entity.getContentType());"}
{"_id": "65941", "title": "Delegate pattern : Who has the responsability to create return Object?", "text": "I've a question about the Delegate Pattern : If I want to delegate the parsing of a xml file, for instance, that I want to be converted into a Key-value Dictionary. Let's take this classical example... What's the best practice about the creation of that Dictionary Object?   * Is it the \"main\" object that creates it and pass a reference to it to the delegate, asking him to fill it up,  or   * Is it the delegate that create this dictionary add pass it back to the \"main\" object, when he has done his job, trough the return value of the call-back method (or any other way) Is one of this two ways really better than the other ? And why ?"}
{"_id": "65942", "title": "Is this a pattern? Should it be?", "text": "The following is more of a statement than a question - it describes something that may be a pattern. The question is: is this a known pattern? Or, if it's not, should it be? I've had a situation where I had to iterate over two dissimilar multi-layer data structures and copy information from one to the other. Depending on particular use case, I had around eight different kinds of layers, combined in about eight different combinations:               A-B-C     B-C     A-C     D-E     A-D-E      and so on After a few unsuccessful attempts to factor out the repetition of per-layer iteration code, I realized that the key difficulty in this refactoring was the fact that the bottom level needed access to data gathered at higher levels. To explicitly accommodate this requirement, I introduced `IterationContext` class with a number of `get()` and `set()` methods for accumulating the necessary information. In the end, I had the following class structure:               class Iterator {       virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const = 0;     };          class RecursingIterator : public Iterator {       RecursingIterator(const Iterator &below);     };               class IterateOverA : public RecursingIterator {       virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const {         // Iterate over members in dataStructure1           // locate corresponding item in dataStructure2 (passed via context)           // and set it in the context           // invoke the sub-iterator     };          class IterateOverB : public RecursingIterator {       virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const {         // iterate over members dataStructure2 (form context)           // set dataStructure2's item in the context           // locate corresponding item in dataStructure2 (passed via context)           // invoke the sub-iterator     };               void main()      {       class FinalCopy : public Iterator {           virtual void iterateOver(const Structure &dataStructure1, IterationContext &ctx) const {               // copy data from structure 1 to structure 2 in the context,               // using some data from higher levels as needed           }        }            IterationContext ctx(dateStructure2);       IterateOverA(IterateOverB(FinalCopy())).iterate(dataStructure1, ctx);     }      It so happens that dataStructure1 is a uniform data structure, similar to XML DOM in that respect, while dataStructure2 is a legacy data structure made of various `struct`s and arrays. This allows me to pass dataStructure1 outside of the context for convenience. In general, either side of the iteration or both sides may be passed via context, as convenient. The key situation points are:   * complicated code that needs to be invoked in \"layers\", with multiple combinations of layer types possible   * at the bottom layer, the information from top layers needs to be visible. The key implementation points are:   * use of context class to access the data from all levels of iteration   * complicated iteration code encapsulated in implementation of pure virtual function   * two interfaces - one aware of underlying iterator, one not aware of it.   * use of `const &` to simplify the usage syntax."}
{"_id": "140611", "title": "Good resources for language design", "text": "There are lots of books about good web design, UI design, etc. With the advent of Xtext, it's very simple to write your own language. What are good books and resources about language design? I'm not looking for a book about compiler building (like the dragon book) but something that answers:   * How to create a grammar that is forgiving (like adding optional trailing commas)?   * Which grammar patterns cause problems for users of a language?   * How create a compact grammar without introducing ambiguities. Here, think \"clean language\", not \"parser builder warnings\". Maybe \"how do I avoid confusing the developer using my language?\""}
{"_id": "205088", "title": "Common and frequently used algorithms of Data structures?", "text": "I have been programming for a while, and the edge that I am missing over other programming is algorithms. I know what is linked-list and binary tree, but I dont know many more of them. I failed on 2 interviews, because of exercises that demanded me to know some data structures algorithms. I am also starting to build a javascript project which has some heavy processing, and I need to know a few good frequently used algorithms?"}
{"_id": "140616", "title": "Steps to Learn a Programming Language / Framework", "text": "I am new to programming. I am eager to learn new programming languages / frameworks. Can any one suggest the best way to master programming languages / frameworks?"}
{"_id": "253889", "title": "Is this JS code a good way for defining class with private methods?", "text": "I was recently browsing a `open source` `JavaScript` project. The project is a straight port from another project in `C language`. It mostly use static methods, packed together in classes. Most classes are implemented using this pattern :               Foo = (function () {         var privateField = \"bar\";         var publicField = \"bar\";          \u00a0 \u00a0 function publicMethod()          {             console.log('this is public');     \u00a0 \u00a0 }                 function privateMethod()          {             console.log('this is private');         }              return { \u00a0             publicMethod : publicMethod,                     publicField : publicField         };     })();      This was the first time I saw private methods implemented that way. I perfectly understand how it works, using a anonymous method. Here is my question : **is this pattern a good practice ?** What are the actual limitations or caveats ? Usually i declare my JavaScript classes like that :               Foo = new function () {         var privateField = \"test\";         this.publicField = \"test\";          \u00a0 \u00a0 this.publicMethod = function()     \u00a0 \u00a0 {             console.log('this method is public');             privateMethod();     \u00a0 \u00a0 }                 function privateMethod()         {             console.log('this method is private');         }            };      Other than syntax, is there any difference with the pattern show above ?"}
{"_id": "185622", "title": "Where and when to include assets in languages that don't care where they are declared?", "text": "I come from c++, where one declares all assets to be included at the top of a file. That is what I have been doing with php as well. Lately I have been tempted to stray from this rule: I have a script file where I put functions I use throughout my projects, sort of like a library script. There are some functions included that require assets that no other function uses, and since one can put require_once statements all throughout one's scripts, I have been tempted to include assets at the beginning of those functions, to conserve resources when the script is running. Is this kind of thing frowned upon in OOP, or is that OK? I guess while I am at it, should I not be doing this at all because there is a purerer OOP approach to the kind of library scripts I have been creating?"}
{"_id": "185623", "title": "Math library methods in Google's Go Programming Language", "text": "I have been programming in google Golang and have been enjoying it due to its brevity but I find it surprising that almost all its Math standard library methods are for the floating point type. Is there any particular reason why these methods do not exist for ints?"}
{"_id": "146615", "title": "Should I perform encryption in the front end or within the database?", "text": "I want to store an encrypted string (specifically, email addresses) in a database. I'm currently using Python and MySQL. I was initially going to use MySQL's AES_ENCRYPT/DECRYPT to handle it, but then got to wondering if one was was better than another. It seems that if I tie it to a database function, that could potentially lock me into the database and at this point that selection may change down the road. Otherwise I would look to handling it in the Python code, but part of me thinks that having it all handled on the back end would free you to use whatever front end logic and code you wanted to. Any thoughts or ideas?"}
{"_id": "139206", "title": "Ternary operator (condition ? foo : bar) and the XOR (^) operator", "text": "I have read in a recent code review that both `ternary operator (condition ? foo : bar)` and the `XOR operator ^` are rarely used in Java. Is it true? If yes, is this because they are less readable? or some other reason."}
{"_id": "139204", "title": "How image editing software change image contrast?", "text": "How Photoshop or other image editing software change an images contrast? What contrast mean when we process image pixel by pixel? Or what image contrast means? Here I created a very basic image to understand image contrast. This is a 10\u00d710 pixels image that get a 100% non-legacy contrast adjustment in Photoshop. The only change I saw was in gray colors that were lighter after applying the contrast. Before and after contrast: ![The images before and after contrasts are similar, except for the gray color which is slightly lighter](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CqZhf.png)"}
{"_id": "139202", "title": "How I can hide dependencies from my Services?", "text": "Here's a service abstraction that I am working on :               public abstract class Service     {     public ILogger Logger{get;set;}          public IQueryManager QueryManager{get;set;}          public ICommandManager  CommandManager{get;set;}     }      Then I have to call them in my class as usual :               Logger.Log(\"Something\");          QueryManager.Query(new QueryObject()).Result;          etc.      But I'd like to have some protected helper methods to make these sentences less verbose :               Log(\"Something\");\\\\calls Logger.Log(\"Something\")          Query(new QueryObject()); \\\\ returns QueryManager(new QueryObject()).Result      Is there a way so that I can implement my dependencies so that they will be hidden from children of Service ? Is there an IoC container that allows me to use private properties to inject my dependencies ?"}
{"_id": "85479", "title": "How to improve relationships between consultants and staff programmers", "text": "I have been a consultant for a small software consulting firm for quite some time now. Our normal business model is not staff augmentation, but such that we find clients who need assistance in building a solution of some kind and then send in a team who can build that solution, work with the existing IT staff, train all involved on supportting that solution, then move on to the next job. We, of course, are still around for any needed ongoing support. We have a great reputation in our area and have been very successful in implementing the solutions that we provide. However, I have noticed a common theme for most of our projects. When we get on-site, there is generally a \"stressed\" relationship between our team and many of the IT staff currently at the client. I understand completely that there may be some anxiety about our arrival and that defenses can come up when we are around. Many of the folks are understanding and easy to work with, but there are usually some who will not work well with us at all, and who can quickly become a project risk in many ways. We try to go in with open minds and good attitudes, and try NOT to be arrogent or condecending. We generally get deployed when there is a mess to clean up - but we understand that there were reasons decisions were made that got them in the bind they are...so we just try to determine the next step forward and move on. My question is this - I'd like to hear from the IT staff and programmers out there who have had consultants in - what are the things that consultants do that fire up negative feelings and attitudes? What can we do better to make the relationship better, not only in the beginning, but as the project moves forward?"}
{"_id": "74272", "title": "The importance of Design Patterns with Javascript, NodeJs et al", "text": "With Javascript appearing to be the ubiquitous programming language of the web over the next few years, new frameworks popping up every five minutes and event driven programming taking a lead both server and client side: Do you as a Javascript developer consider the traditional Design Patterns as important or less important than they have been with other languages / environments?. Please name the top three design patterns you, as a Javascript developer use regularly and give an example of how they have helped in your Javascript development."}
{"_id": "85472", "title": "How do I distribute free copies of a paid iOS app?", "text": "Can anybody tell me how I can give my paid app a free download option to one of my friend from iTunes Connect. What I mean is that I will give my friend a code by which he can download my app without paying. Can anyone tell me if there is any option in iTunes Connect to do this?"}
{"_id": "191109", "title": "Planning poker, individual or whole group in estimates?", "text": "In planning poker/scrum poker, when an estimate is made, should the estimate be made based on the assumption that only a single developer is assigned to that task, or a group of developers? If the latter, how large is that group? The reason this is relevant is that the time estimates would probably be different if a single person works on the problem compared to having several people. I've read several descriptions of how planning poker is supposed to work, but this basic information seems to be omitted, as if it should be inferred from the procedure in some way. In other words: If I give an estimate, should my estimate be how long I think a single developer in the group needs to spend to solve the problem, or how long the whole group would spend to solve the problem?"}
{"_id": "200560", "title": "Is it bad programming practice to check if a class referenced by its interface is an instance of another class?", "text": "I have a class (`Timer`) with an array list of `Timable` objects. `Timeable` is an interface. There is some specific functionality that I need for the `Trigger` class (implements `Timable`), which has a reference called `target`. A lot of methods need to search through the `Timer` array for `Trigger` objects with a certain `target`. What I did was a function like this:               public Timable[] findObjectsWithTarget(Cue target) {         ArrayList<Timable> result = new ArrayList<Timable>();         for (Timable timed : fireable) { //fireable is the array (actually a HashSet) of Timed objects             if (timed instanceof Trigger && ((Trigger) timed).getTarget() == target)                 result.add(timed);         }         return (Timable[]) result.toArray();     }      This feels like a bad practice. The Timer class is now dependent on the Trigger class (sort of) and are no longer generalized. So, my two questions: **1) Is it actually a bad practice? Why or why not?** **2) What's a better way if it is a bad practice?**"}
{"_id": "200565", "title": "Javascript library for Java source code reference", "text": "Could you suggest any JS lib, that will \"recognize\" all Java classes in specified text and create reference link to page with this class? (similar to Eclipse Ctrl+click) There are plenty of good JS libraries to highlight code, but none of them have this feature."}
{"_id": "70596", "title": "GCC vs clang/LLVM -- pros and cons of each", "text": "What are the pros and cons of GCC vs clang/LLVM?"}
{"_id": "203030", "title": "How can I keep current with Python coding style?", "text": "I've been using Python since version 2.2. I do pick up new language constructs like for example `with` statement or dictionary/set comprehensions. However, I've realized that even though I'm being consistent with PEP-8, for existing constructs I'm using old style, rather than new style (for example `except Exception, e` instead of `except Exception as e`). Is there a resource which would have either most current style guide, or even better a list of changes in Python's coding style?"}
{"_id": "70599", "title": "Kaizen in DevOps methodology?", "text": "I was wondering, Does anybody here works in a software development team under the DevOps methodology and applying Kaizen instead Lean for continuous improvement? I read that DevOps is based on Agile methodology and Lean, but I don't know whether it's possible to use Kaizen instead Lean. Thanks."}
{"_id": "203033", "title": "What is the process or term for viewing HTML/CSS using localhost?", "text": "I have recently used some software, which come as a regular setup file, where you install your software, and then when you run it, opens the browser, uses the localhost with some specific port number to connect to the software, and runs it from there. I find it quite useful and interesting. But I even don't know whether this kind of software and programming methodology have a name or not. Therefore, I would like to learn which programming languages, APIs, and frameworks are specifically designed for this purpose? One example to this is Metasploit. You can download its setup file, and install it casually like any other software, then when everything finishes, and you want to use the software. It will open the browser and connect to,               http://localhost:3790/      where Metasploit will load and start."}
{"_id": "203036", "title": "At what size of data does it become beneficial to move from SQL to NoSQL?", "text": "As a relational database programmer (most of the time), I read articles about how relational databases don't scale, and NoSQL solutions such as MongoDB do. As most of the databases I have developed so far have been small to mid scale, I have never had a problem that hasn't been solved by some indexing, query optimization or schema redesign. What sort of size would I expect to see MySQL struggling with. How many rows? (I know this is going to depend on the application, and type of data stored. the one that got me thing was basically a genetics database, so would have one main table, with 3 or 4 lookup tables. The main table will contain amongst other things, a chromosome reference, and a position coordinate. It will likely get queried for a number of entries between two potions on a chromosome, to see what is stored there)."}
{"_id": "218331", "title": "What are the requirements for attribution in the MIT License?", "text": "choosealicense.com claims that the MIT license is \u201cA permissive license that is short and to the point. It lets people do anything with your code **with proper attribution** and without warranty\u201d (emphasis mine). Reading the license, though, I don\u2019t see anything claiming that attribution to the original author has to be anywhere, so where are they taking that from?"}
{"_id": "223616", "title": "PHP - PSR 0 - Configuration Constants", "text": "This question is about PSR-0 autoloaded libraries and the way main configuration constants should be declared and used. From your point of view (lib/framework developer), where/how should be declared your library configuration PHP constants (such as `ESCAPE_SOMETHING`, `USE_DOM`, `API_URL`, ...) in such a way that   * your code can easily address them   * client code can easily modify them depending on needs Is there any convention, recommendation, or even something I missed in PSR-0 I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "223619", "title": "Testing: Should I wrap system notifications and send my own?", "text": "In the current Cocoa app I'm working on, I've got an object, `RecordScheduler`, which responds to two types of notifications, \"day did pass\" and \"quicksaving interval did pass\". In both cases, the `RecordScheduler` tells a `Recorder` to do its recording job, among other things. Now I want `RecordScheduler` to issue a recording when the Mac goes to sleep. You subscribe to sleep/wake notifications via `NSWorkspace`:               [[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] notificationCenter] addObserver:self              selector:@selector(computerWillSleep:)              name:NSWorkspaceWillSleepNotification object:nil];      This is easy enough. Add it to `RecordScheduler`'s `-init` and the notifications would be processed just nicely. Thing is, for the other two cases I wrote helper methods like `fireDayDidPass()` to use in unit tests. I fired my custom notifications and added assertions for `RecordScheduler`'s response. Works well. I don't feel comfortable firing a `NSWorkspaceWillSleepNotification` since (a) it's not my own, and (b) I don't know about any side effects. Instead, I resorted to calling `[scheduler computerWillSleep:nil]` which would receive notifications. Now I don't have an intergration-ish test to verify `RecordScheduler` subscribes to `NSWorkspaceWillSleepNotification`. After I found out there is no additional information to be sent, I abandoned the idea of creating a `HibernationObserver` which subscribes to `NSWorkspace`'s notifications and re-sends my own kind of \"Will Sleep\" and \"Did Wake\" notifications. There seemed to be no additional benefit. Now here's the point:   * Is it still a unit test when I fire a notification and assert for both the side effects of notification handling and the receiver's subscription upon initialization?   * How else could I verify an object signs up itself as a notification receiver?   * Should I make it a habit to wrap system notifications in my own?"}
{"_id": "231939", "title": "Is it bad practice to allow user defined fields?", "text": "Generally speaking, is it considered bad practice to allow for user created fields in a database for a webapp? For example, I am making a home inventory webapp for my wife, and she is going to want to define her own fields for different items. I was planning to allow her to create item categories, and add \"features\" to those categories. Features would just be key/value stored as strings. That way if she had a category called \"Audio CDs\" for example, she could add features for stuff like \"artist\", \"tracks\", etc. But in another category like \"furniture\", she could add features for stuff like \"material\" (wood, plastic, etc). Then any item could belong to one (or many) categories, adding those features to the item. I can see issues where searching by these features requires string comparisons, there's no validation of data, etc. Following agile methodology, maybe it would be better to just have her come up with new categories and attributes and I would just have to create new tables as we go. In my example, it's a small userbase (2 of us) and the amount of records created would be small, so not too bad. Generally speaking though, how do people handle something like this in \"real life\"?"}
{"_id": "147214", "title": "Refactoring Switch Statements and is there any real use for Switch Statements at all?", "text": "I was reading this article and was wondering, do we get rid of all switch statements by replacing them with a Dictionary or a Factory so that there are no switch statements at all in my projects. Something did not quite add up. The question is, do switch statements have any real use or do we go ahead and replace them with either a dictionary or a factory method (in using a factory method, of course, there will be a minimum use of switch statements for creating the objects using the factory...but that is about it)."}
{"_id": "187009", "title": "Is it possible to avoid enormously big switch in that case?", "text": "I'm writing a simple chess-related code with intention to write it clearly (performance doesn't matter at all). And this method I have doesn't look clean to me at all:                public static Piece GetClosestPiece(Square squareFrom, Direction direction)         {             //TODO: rework this mess             switch (direction)             {                 case Direction.Top:                     return                         _pieces.Where(p => p.Square.OnVerticalWith(squareFrom))                                .OrderBy(p => p.Square.Y)                                .First(p => p.Square.Y > squareFrom.Y);                 case Direction.Bottom:                     return                         _pieces.Where(p => p.Square.OnVerticalWith(squareFrom))                                .OrderByDescending(p => p.Square.Y)                                .First(p => p.Square.Y < squareFrom.Y);                 case Direction.Right:                 <...>                 case Direction.TopLeft:                     return                         _pieces.Where(p => p.Square.OnBackslashWith(squareFrom))                                .OrderByDescending(p => p.Square.X)                                .First(p => p.Square.X < squareFrom.X);                 default:                     throw new InvalidEnumArgumentException();             }         }      I store the pieces as list, so, here I'm using LINQ to find the piece closest to a given square on a given direction.   1. Do switch/if statements of this size (8 cases total here) always present a code smell?   2. Is there any way to refactor this part only, or should I consider reviewing the design of the whole solution?"}
{"_id": "227721", "title": "Is it worth the time to run static analysis tools (e.g. Findbugs) on test classes?", "text": "How likely is it for a bug _that can be discovered by a static analysis tool_ (namely Findbugs) in _test classes_ mask a real bug in the actual code? Is this a realistic scenario? Is it really worth the time to run static analysis tools on them to find bugs in the actual code?"}
{"_id": "231936", "title": "DDD with a 'School' domain", "text": "I've been asked to draw out the Bounded Contexts (BC) and the possible aggregate and the roots of a School domain. The domain consists of students who study modules on a course. The submit their assignment for a module which is then marked by an external tutor. The 'Marking' firstly sticks out as a BC, but im unsure about the rest... Also a 'module' would appear on multiple Bounded Contexts so how would i handle this?"}
{"_id": "36593", "title": "How to make audio and video streaming servers work?", "text": "I am PHP MySQL developer and I am interested in the way television and radio are broadcasted over Internet live. I want to know how it works and and what are its requirements (which package of which programming language offers the best). And please clarify me: Websites are stored in servers. From my desktop, if I want to broadcast some video, then I need to connect to webserver (to upstream the video). Is there an application to do that (or do I have to code that or embed in my web application and which programming language would be suitable (does Python support that))? And I also need a script to handle the upstreamed video or audio (can I do that with PHP)?"}
{"_id": "187911", "title": "PHP OOP: Should every object contain all the data?", "text": "I'm trying to learn PHP OOP \"properly\", and I was wondering, should the constructor grab all the information in the database and store it in the object? To use an example I'm trying to create using PHP OOP, an internet comic website (much like XKCD's), would have two classes:   * Catalogue (list and order of all the episodes)   * Episode (data relating to that particular episode) So, in this situation, should the `Catalogue` object get an array of all the episodeIDs (presumably this would be gotten in the constructor)? And if so, does that mean I have to update both the Object's array and the Database's array? And if so, what's the most common way of implementing this (presumably very common) action?"}
{"_id": "200871", "title": "Why do javascript implementations parse numbers this way?", "text": "According to the ECMAScript spec the integer part of a decimal number should be either zero or start with a non-zero digit. A hexadecimal value should start with 0x. Javascript, in the major browsers, extends EMCAScript to include octal numbers. These are determined by having a sequence of digits (from 0 to 7 inclusive) start with a zero. Given these facts, my naive implementation of a javascript interpreter would probably parse integers a bit like this:               if first_char in [1-9] then         parse_input_as_decimal()     else if first_char is 0 then         if second_char is 'x' then             parse_input_as_hexadecimal()         else if second_char in [1-7] then             parse_input_as_octal()         else             parse_input_as_zero()      However the web browsers seem to act slightly weird in that if a number beginning with zero contains the digits 8 or 9 then it reads it as a valid decimal. This can lead to oddities, especially when using a decimal point or exponent. Some examples:               011 // is octal     0011 // is octal     019 // is decimal     0091 // is decimal     011.0 // throws an error     019.0 // is decimal     011e5 // throws an error     019e5 // is decimal      My question is why do they behave like this? Is it just some quirk of history? Or is there a good reason? Is it written in some spec somewhere? Will this ever change? I know this is a bit arcane and few people use octals in javascript these days, but I'm curious."}
{"_id": "182391", "title": "Functional testing before code checkin", "text": "I am working on a project with legacy code where it does not have much code coverage. One of the idea to improve that is to enforce a rule that each code check-in must have test, not only test but functional test as well, so that we can verify that the existing code did not break. I would like to get some ideas, both pros and cons on this approach. Sometimes it sounds like it's a huge undertaking as it will need a really good infrastructure so that developers can have their code fully tested before it is committed. How would one go about running automated unit tests as well as functional tests when code is checked in? Is this even a feasible idea?"}
{"_id": "182396", "title": "Thoughts on a custom data structure for a node/chain implementation", "text": "I am designing a simple GUI that will allow a user to create a GPX route by clicking repeatedly on a map panel. I am faced with a design dilemma for how to represent the nodes and route. This construct can be abstracted as follows:   * the user clicks **n** times on the screen in sequence to create a chain of **n** nodes   * after a chain has been completed, a user can add more nodes to it, either by selecting nodes in the middle (inserting between existing nodes) or by simply automatically appending to the end with his next click At first I was determined to use a Java Collections class to represent the chain, but there are unexpected difficulties with that. On the surface, this would appear to be a perfect example of a `LinkedList`, but consider as follows. If the user wishes to insert a node in the middle of the chain, he first chooses some node on screen that he wishes to insert a new node before. If the node belongs to a linked list, it will need to maintain a reference to its encompassing list (a somewhat unusual practice, I'd think), and even then we will still have to locate the node in the list before we can insert. So we have to:   * find the node (linear time)   * insert the new node (constant time) Or if I try the same thing with an `ArrayList`, it also performs at best in linear time.   * find the node (linear time)   * insert the new node (linear time) But neither case really seems desirable. I briefly flirted with the idea of using a `LinkedHashSet`, but it does not allow insertion into the middle of the linked list, nor does it seem fundamentally correct to use a set implementation for something like this. So here is what I came up with:               class Node {         Node previous;         Node next;         Chain chain;     }      A Node maintains only a reference to its previous and next nodes, as well as the chain it belongs to (again, this latter part seems unconventional and possibly even wasteful to me, but I'm convinced it may be necessary here).               class Chain {         Node first;         Node last;     }      The chain knows only what its first and last nodes are. Now, if a user wants to insert a node in the middle of the chain? He selects the node, which simply updates the first/last references of itself and its neighbors. If he wants to add nodes to the end of a chain? He simply selects any node on screen (which is aware of what chain it belongs to, and therefore what the last node in that chain is), and the chain immediately begins updating link references for the last node and each node added after it, as well as keeping its own \"last\" reference up to date. I really wanted to use a Collections class, but this approach seems better to me. But I'd love to here thoughts/criticisms from more experienced programmers. Thanks."}
{"_id": "37425", "title": "What are the major challenges in creating a platform such as StackOverflow?", "text": "Let us assume you were to create a platform such as StackOverflow. It needs to be functional, fast and scalable, just like SO, in order to be successful. What are the major challenges you would face in such a task? I'm looking for technical challenges rather than problems such as how to advertise it and stuff like that. (I'm not looking for ways of creating a new site to challenge SO; I'm just interested in how difficult it would be to create it if it didn't already exist.)"}
{"_id": "41301", "title": "Where can I learn and understand the complete workings of HTTP headers, so I can implement my own?", "text": "I am looking to learn how to properly use, and implement, HTTP headers. What is the best resource or set of guidelines that I can use? ( especially ranges to detect download managers, etc) ?"}
{"_id": "134434", "title": "Is it legal/ethical to post production code?", "text": "This may sound silly or obvious but this is my case; I work at a company that recently implemented SAP and I was the responsible to generate/migrate the master data of the company which let me learn a lot from this system. SAP comes with its own language known as ABAP and since the system went live I've been learning and programming with it. Before ABAP I worked as a freelancer in other projects with VB6, VB.Net, C# and ASP.Net building a lot of stuff, here I've made some utilities that are been using daily, so I came with long experience in programming. At first ABAP was difficult but eventually after long analysis, googling and trial and error I became the guy who makes basically all the development in SAP from reports, to user-exits, enhancements, BADIs, tables, dynpros, etc. Daily I learn more and more because of all the requests I receive which makes me investigate and code a lot everyday. It has become challenging and funny at the same time. You could be very productive in ABAP once you get into. Ok, the question is - can I post how I resolved a certain thing in SAP? That implies that I'd publish production code. I feel doubtful about this."}
{"_id": "134432", "title": "Mediator vs Observer?", "text": "Can someone provide me with a canonical answer on the differences between an `Observer` and a `Mediator`, and a summary of when you should use one pattern over the other? I am unsure of what kind of situation would require an `Observer` and what kind would require a `Mediator`"}
{"_id": "134431", "title": "How should I handle multi-tasking in a WPF application?", "text": "In most of the multi-tasking CRM applications I've seen, MdiWindow is used to allow users to open multiple windows at the same time. But MdiWindow doesn't seem to be commonly used in WPF. Looking through Codeplex, I only found one abandoned MdiWindow project. In some of the WPF-based CRM applications I've seen, they create a dashboard and only let users work on one thing at a time. What's the best way to handle multi-tasking in a WPF application? Is there a better alternative to MdiWindow in WPF?"}
{"_id": "249949", "title": "If a dependency is not in the maven repository should I add it to source control?", "text": "One of the jar files that I use in my code is not in the maven repository(and yes I tried to avoid using it). I have installed it locally so when I build the project it gets picked up by maven. I also put instructions in my `README` so anyone who wants to build my code can see how to add the jar to their local repository. The question is, should I check this jar into my git source control? I know normally you don\u2019t check jars into source when using maven and git but in this case it seems like it might be a better idea than saying, find this jar on the internet. I am the only developer in my group so setting up a company hosted repository for just this single jar is overkill."}
{"_id": "249940", "title": "Binding in web frameworks - to frontend data or backend data?", "text": "AngularJS and other web frameworks provide data binding abilities (as in WPF). Is the UI bound to JavaScript variables on the frontend (web browser) or is it bound to the data in the server (via AJAX and such)? I assumed that with all the MVC frameworks for the web, the model is the data on the server, the view is the web page on the client, and the controller is either on the server or on the client (browser). Did I get that wrong? I'm sorry if its a stupid question. I am a C#/C++ developer but with little experience in web development."}
{"_id": "223258", "title": "Structuring asynchronous javascript code", "text": "I am working on an application that heavily depends on asynchronous data operations. I am dealing with those through promises. However, while my code works, I have the feel that it is getting chaotic and hard to maintain in the future. Assume this:               validate().then(          // success     function(promise){         $http.post('stuff.php',data).then(                function(p){                },           function(){                }         )      },          // failure     function(reason){         // Assume another promise-depending operation     },          // notification     function(update){          }     );      As you can see, promise calls are heavily nested. Furthermore, I have to deal with resolve/reject methods in each and every step. What am I missing; how can I improve my technique?"}
{"_id": "86412", "title": "Transition from maintenance programming to design", "text": "What to do people do develop a design for a s/w for a given set of requirements? I like many people joined a Semiconductor MNC and got stuck in maintenance for quite a couple of years. My work was usually changing a lines of code for windows drivers supplied by my company or a couple of small script (style like) C programs for validating h/w. As a result I developed the bad habit of 'programming by coincidence'. I have not developed the ability for designing tools/programs from scratch. I was the only s/w member of the local team and thus some grunt work from the well established other site of the company came to be done by me. Now I have moved to a different company and thus finding developing from scratch very difficult. How do I unlearn my bad habit and develop this ability of designing s/w and then coding it ?"}
{"_id": "123293", "title": "What hurts maintainability?", "text": "For someone who doesn't have much real world experience yet, the notion of maintainable code is a bit vague, even though it follows from typical good practice rules. Intuitively I can tell that code can be well written, but not maintainable if for example it hard-wires information that is subject to constant change, but I still have a hard time looking at code and deciding if it's maintainable or not. So the question is: what hurts maintainability? What should I look for?"}
{"_id": "123291", "title": "Mobile: Native vs. web - Input for discussion on top management level", "text": "I have been given the task of producing a compilation of pros, cons and key points on the issue of mobile native applications versus mobile web applications. It will be input for a discussion on top management level. What are some valid and maybe overlooked topics here?"}
{"_id": "86419", "title": "Design Anti-Patterns - C# - Do you call this a God object?", "text": "I am writing Portfolio module for my web site and it has 3 components. Gallery Category, Gallery, & Gallery Images.   I am doing all the request handling, (creating, reading, updating, other), for the above 3 components in 1 class, Portfolio.   DB handling jobs for Portfolio module is done in another file.   My question is, even just for request handling purpose, can you do all the operations in 1 class? -Reddy"}
{"_id": "123294", "title": "Is it misguided to label mobile web applications as cross platform?", "text": "Yes, you can access the mobile web site from a range different mobile devices, but the platform, I suppose, is still the web server and the client browser (the latter ideally being the \"same\" on any device). When talking mobile and cross platform I am thinking frameworks such as PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium, but still with a reluctance to call it cross platform as the deployed products are not the same. I guess I am hung up on the idea that it has to be directly equivalent to the Java virtual machine to call anything cross platform, but maybe I am the one who is misguided. What is the general opinion?"}
{"_id": "12495", "title": "Advice on Switching Careers to Java Programmer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best way for a senior programmer to switch languages/environments in next > job? I have about 15 years of IT experience in IT Security and Networking. I am looking for a career change and I really would like to take a stab at Java programming. I have a CS degree but it's been about 5 years since my last class. I have intermediate experience in Perl (that is still current) and I am also trying to learn Python (although it has taken a back seat to Java). I picked up Sam's Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours as a refresher to my Java classes I took in school. I am half way through it and luckily it's all coming back to me. I also have HTML and some SQL experience. The reason I chose Java and not Perl is because a.) I liked programming in Java in school and b.) Java seems to be in high demand these days. I wouldn't mind being a Perl programmer but it seems like all of the jobs have Perl listed as \"nice to have\" experience and not a requirement. I guess my question is what kind of jobs should I be applying for? I am thinking I only have enough knowledge for a beginner/intern type jobs but it's going to be almost impossible for me (personally) to take a job that only makes 1/3 of what I'm making now ($90k). Will I be laughed at if I attempt to apply for \"real\" programming jobs or is there such a demand for Java programmers now that someone will be willing to give me a chance? Thank you for any advice. I would really like to make this change within the next 6 months."}
{"_id": "132870", "title": "Why is it discouraged to create variables on the fly? PHP gives you a Notice Error", "text": "Are you guys familiar with those pesky PHP notice errors? You know, the ones that will appear when you do something like this:               if($some_variable == 45)      But if $some_variable wasn't created already, PHP will be like \"Hey! Idiot! This variable wasn't defined yet!\" and output a Notice Error onto the screen. However, you can simply turn PHP Notice Errors off by using error_reporting(0) and the application works perfectly. What's the point? Who cares if a variable wasn't created yet? Why can't you just create it on the fly inside the if statement? I feel like this is the easy, no-brainer way to do it, but apparently PHP discourages this practice. Why? What I find myself having to do a lot of times is something like this:               if(isset($some_variable) && $some_variable == 45)      If $some_variable is not set, the if statement automatically fails, so the second condition of the if statement is never checked, so the Notice Error never happens. This works great, but I feel like it shouldn't be necessary. Some of the applications I am working on are huge and I fear that the extra added conditions will slow down my poor old server if there are dozens of instances of it, combined with thousands of users. I know that this is just a single extra statement which would be O(1), which isn't a lot of resources, but it's still something I worry about. Should I not worry about O(1) even if I hypothetically were to have thousands of users? Am I caring too much about being efficient? I know PHP Notice errors can easily be turned off by using error_reporting(0). I'm not sure if certain types of errors can be turned on/off as desired because I haven't researched error_reporting() extensively. My question is what's the point? Why is it discouraged to create variables on the fly? I feel like creating variables on the fly may be a little bit lazier but is 10000000x easier to program and should be the no-brainer encouraged way to do it. This is meant to be both a philosophical and a technical question."}
{"_id": "219064", "title": "Is storing stack traces in database recommended?", "text": "The current system I am working on goes through a set of documents & performs some logic using the metadata of the document. If the metadata of a document is fishy..it throws an exception. The system logs the exception, fail the job & let the developer fix the issue by looking at logs before moving on. I want to improvise this system by making system fault tolerant as I have seen that generally the job fails because of few documents. System continues even if there's an exception raised. The exception information would be stored in the database table along with document information. This information would be sent to developer who can then work on fixing it without having customer waiting. The customer can later process those failed documents separately. My question is how to store the exception information in table. The exception would already be logged in the log file. One idea I was thinking was to store the time stamp of the exception so that developer can later find the time stamp in log file and understand the exception. But this comes with a possibility that the log files might be deleted. Does it make sense to store the entire stack trace in the database?"}
{"_id": "238250", "title": "Is it reasonable for programmers to be sprinting the whole year round?", "text": "It feels like it is not enough for working programmers just to \"walk\" 5 to 8 hours a day, and \"quick walk\" is not enough, but they have to \"sprint\", every day, year after year. For the company, it makes a lot of sense because to get the most out of workers, sprinting all day long, day after day is better than people who merely walk the whole day. Here I am comparing our \"sprints\" to normal day life of walking vs sprinting. While we can sprint 100 meter a few times or even two dozen time a day, for a total of 15 seconds x 25, can anybody sprint the whole day long for 5 hours, and day after day? What I mean is, doesn't it make more sense to sprint for 3 months, and then get back to normal, when people can just \"walk\" or \"quick walk\", being productive, for the rest of the 9 months in a year? Or sprint for 3 months, get back to normal for 3 months, and then sprint for another 3 months and back to normal for another 3 months? It sure make a lot of sense to the company, because if people can sprint the whole year, then the company can get a lot of things done, burn out people, and just later replace the burned out people by other fresher people (possibly replaceable contractors) -- and it is such a nice term to use too -- we have people sprinting the whole year round -- we are getting the \"maximum\" output -- so the directors now can have reasons to get promoted to be vice presidents. I really wonder, should sprints really be year round? I think in the old days, when companies such as Microsoft made people work 60 hours per week, some people described them as a velvet sweat shop. But if we begin to say, we are just having sprints (and not mentioning that it is sprints for 3 weeks, and then another one immediately following, and it just repeats again and again the whole year round), then it sounds like a very justified thing to do."}
{"_id": "230462", "title": "How to integrate a second programmer to a startup", "text": "I'm the technical founder of a startup and I'm currently looking to hire a second developer for our product. Since I've been the sole developer, there is no formal organization for the project and I wanted to know what would be the minimum organization required to incorporate this second developer. Right now the code only under source control (a kind of chaotic git repo) but it lacks unit tests and other things that are required for serious development. I was willing to go without those for a while for the sake of speed, but now that the company is growing, we feel that delaying those might be problematic. How to incorporate this second person to work with the code?"}
{"_id": "15828", "title": "Autocomplete seeding (with xml format?)", "text": "**Autocomplete driven development** is the issue. How do I feed autocomplete hints to IDEs, when I'm using scripting languages which provide magic methods? I'm not using an IDE usually. But it's obvious that many developers rely on them, and some percentage of them rely on autocomplete hints from the IDE. Now Eclipse and Netbeans both have support for PHP and Python. But they are of course unable to see class methods and attributes which are provided through `__get/__` or something. Whereas magic methods sometimes provide a nicer and more flexible API (and/or save coding). Anyway it's obviously an issue if you want to make the API visible to autocomplete programmers. So how can it be done? Is there an XML format for this? I know Eclipse is pretty xml-happy, but couldn't google up anything useful about that. How about Netbeans or other IDEs, is there any standardized scheme to signal autocomplete infos to code editors? (Would be nice if you could hobble in class methods and attributes, but also signal type hints for commonly used variable/object names.)"}
{"_id": "223251", "title": "Switching between mobile webapp version using Ionic Framework and Desktop web app version?", "text": "I own a web application that make use of Twitter Bootstrap 3.   This eases the design of the mobile version since it brings some responsive features.   However, I would like a really native-mobile aspect for the mobile version, but not a native for the Desktop one.   I searched..and I found **this really promising framework** : Ionic It seems that this framework is really **only focused on Mobile application** and doesn't fit with any other kind of framework like Bootstrap (not mentioned in the documentation). Therefore, my questions are:   What should be the strategy to keep a desktop version (not using Ionic but bootstrap 3) and a mobile version using Ionic? Making two distinct UI applications? One that would use Bootstrap and the other Ionic? What about duplications??"}
{"_id": "202073", "title": "Do preprocessor defines slow down build times?", "text": "I have a very large c++ project and I'm trying to decrease build times. I've been religious about forward declaring and only including files which are used. However I have many preprocessor defines which are setup in the project files (ie not in cpp or header files) so that I can keep them all in a central location for my different build configurations. Is it possible that this could increase build times? Would moving the preprocessor defines to a header file so they will only be included where needed speedup the build time? It seems like the build time would be faster if the preprocessor didn't need to scan and replace the defines for files that don't use any of them, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort."}
{"_id": "178810", "title": "Handle complexity in large software projects", "text": "I am a lead developer in a larger software projects. From time to time its getting hard to handle the complexity within this project. E. g.   * Have the whole big picture in mind all the time   * Keeping track of the teammates work results   * Doing Code Reviews   * Supply management with information etc. Are there best practices/ time management techniques to handle these tasks? Are there any tools to support you having an overview?"}
{"_id": "202071", "title": "Refactoring classes with ref to themselves", "text": "How can I refactor this code?               class Node     {        public Node Parent { get; set; }     }          class AVLNode     {        public AVLNode Parent { get; set; }     }      I tried to use inheritance, but then I have to use type casting:               class AVLNode : Node     {     }          class Program     {        void Main()        {           AVLNode a = new AVLNode();           AVLNode b = a.Parent **as AVLNode**;        }     }"}
{"_id": "178814", "title": "Increase the size of a memory mapped file", "text": "I am maintaning a memory mapped file to store my tree like datastructure. When I'm updating the datastructure ,I got this problem. The file is limited on it's size and can't be too long or too small. I have a methods like                void mapfile_insert_record(RECORD* /* record*/);           void mapfile_modify_record(RECORD* /* record*/);      Both operations could lead to exceed the space which is free on memory file. How do I overcome this? What strategy I should use.   1. calculate whether it requires to exceed the file as a pre-condition on both methods.   2. Dynamically exceed it , for a example manage a timer and constantly polling file for it's free avaliable size and then automatically extend it. Any ideas or patterns to overcome this problem?"}
{"_id": "178817", "title": "OO Design, how to model Tonal Harmony?", "text": "I have started to write a program in C++ 11 that would analyse chords, scales, and harmony. The biggest problem I am having in my design phase, is that the note 'C' is a note, a type of chord (Cmaj, Cmin, C7, etc), and a type of key (the key of Cmajor, Cminor). The same issue arises with intervals (minor 3rd, major 3rd). I am using a base class, Token, that is the base class for all 'symbols' in the program. so for example:               class Token {     public:         typedef shared_ptr<Token> pointer_type;         Token() {}         virtual ~Token() {}     };          class Command : public Token {     public:         Command() {}         pointer_type execute();     }          class Note : public Token;          class Triad : public Token; class MajorTriad : public Triad; // CMajorTriad, etc          class Key : public Token; class MinorKey : public Key; // Natural Minor, Harmonic minor,etc          class Scale : public Token;      As you can see, to create all the derived classes (CMajorTriad, C, CMajorScale, CMajorKey, etc) would quickly become ridiculously complex including all the other notes, as well as enharmonics. multiple inheritance would not work, ie:               class C : public Note, Triad, Key, Scale      class C, cannot be all of these things at the same time. It is contextual, also polymorphing with this will not work (how to determine which super methods to perform? calling every super class constructors should not happen here) Are there any design ideas or suggestions that people have to offer? I have not been able to find anything on google in regards to modelling tonal harmony from an OO perspective. There are just far too many relationships between all the concepts here."}
{"_id": "137316", "title": "How close have we gotten to automating code writing?", "text": "And I don't mean Autocomplete or automatic code snippets as inserted by modern day editors, or polymorphic code. But what is the state-of-the-art in programs that can go through given inputs and types and information of the desired outputs and output a valid piece of code in a language of choice. I am aware of Genetic Programming, Gene Expression Programming but I don't know of any other efforts. Also googling doesn't turn up much. Is anyone aware of any advancements on this front? Edit: When i say \"output a valid piece of code\", I mean an AI or something similar working out the logic and the flow of control and implement it in an imperative language. Imperative language only, since that's the tough part. Nevertheless, if you know of any new languages being developed to support this kind of idea, please do mention, as maybe our current set of languages are not suitable for the kind of early AI we may first chance upon."}
{"_id": "202079", "title": "I want to sell my application in Google Play Store, but I want the code to be open-source. Which license should I use?", "text": "I would like to sell the compiled binary of my android application in the Google Play Store when it reaches production. Which license can I use to prevent people from downloading my source code from the open-source page and selling an exact copy of my work on the play store? I want the code to be free and open for geeks/hackers to download and play with, but I don't want people who check out my source code to have the ability to use it for commercial use."}
{"_id": "41999", "title": "Inspiring People", "text": "So I work with a few people that I feel are intelligent but don't seem to be working out well. After working with them for a while I have seen the flashes of brilliance but mostly I see a reliance on others. What I mean by this is that most times it seems like at the first moment of trouble they go ask for help. Now personally I am all for helping and spend a significant portion of time helping others with whatever they need, but after helping others for so long I have noticed a disturbing trend. These people seem terrified that they might make a mistake and because of this they don't try. So my question is how can I motivate someone who is afraid of making a mistake? In my career I have always learned the most by making mistakes and learning from them. Personally I feel that if I hadn't learned so much I would never have made it as far as I have. So how can I get them to discover that they have the ability to figure it out themselves and that if they make a mistake and learn from it they will be better off. I feel that if I can discover some way to properly motivate them that we all will be better off."}
{"_id": "33946", "title": "Why is C# ASP.NET generally not regarded as a rapid web development framework?", "text": "The terms rapid web development gets associated with Python/Django and ROR. Why is this not the case with C# ASP.NET?"}
{"_id": "14441", "title": "Is it right to appraise Scrum members according to number of successful user stories completed?", "text": "When my Manager told to team that \" ** _now onwards successful user stories will be considered for appraisal!_** \" We sat there for while shocked and that was one of the several jaw dropping moments he gave us :-) We felt that was stupid idea, since this will ruin all concept and goal of agile development methodology. Let me know what you people think? and how can we convince him?"}
{"_id": "108465", "title": "Common Qt Producer/Consumer Example: What is the point of multithreading here?", "text": "While trying to figure out how to implement a Producer/Consumer Queue in Qt, I stumpled upon several SO answers, blogs and sites linking to this site: You're doing it wrong... I got the point of this site, but people are usually referring to the code example which is in the referenced blog: Threading without the headache The blog has a small code example attached, the core of it being posted by KornP in this SO answer: Qt moveToThread() vs calling new thread when do we use each So if you take a closer look we have the following behaviour:   1. Producer P produces an item, while Consumer C waits for events to appear in its event loop.   2. P forwards the produced data through a signal and returns to event loop idling.   3. C receives the signal in its event loop and consumes the data.   4. C emits a signal to the producer thread and returns to event loop idling.   5. Start over from 1. In other words: while P is producing, C does nothing and while C is producing, P does nothing. What is the point of having a producer and consumer **like this** in two different threads?   Wouldn't a single thread accomplish exactly the same?"}
{"_id": "246823", "title": "Early attempt to remove Python GIL resulted in bad performance: Why?", "text": "**This post** from Python creator, Guido Van Rossum, mentions an early attempt to remove the GIL from Python: > This has been tried before, with disappointing results, which is why I'm > reluctant to put much effort into it myself. In 1999 Greg Stein (with Mark > Hammond?) produced a fork of Python (1.5 I believe) that removed the GIL, > replacing it with fine-grained locks on all mutable data structures. He also > submitted patches that removed many of the reliances on global mutable data > structures, which I accepted. However, after benchmarking, it was shown that > even on the platform with the fastest locking primitive (Windows at the > time) it slowed down single-threaded execution nearly two-fold, meaning that > on two CPUs, you could get just a little more work done without the GIL than > on a single CPU with the GIL. This wasn't enough, and Greg's patch > disappeared into oblivion. (See Greg's writeup on the performance.) I can hardly argue with the actual results, but I really wonder why this happened. Presumably, the main reason that removing the GIL from CPython is so difficult is because of the reference counting memory management system. A typical Python program will call **`Py_INCREF`** and **`Py_DECREF`** thousands or millions of times, making it a key contention point if we were to wrap locks around it. But, I don't understand why adding atomic primitives would slow down a _single_ threaded program. Suppose we just modified CPython so that the refcount variable in each Python object was an atomic primitive. And then we just do an atomic increment (fetch-and-add instruction) when we need to increment the reference count. This would make Python reference counting thread-safe, and shouldn't have any performance penalty on a single-threaded application, because there would be no lock contention. But alas, many people who are smarter than me have tried and failed, so obviously I'm missing something here. What is wrong with the way I'm looking at this problem?"}
{"_id": "196069", "title": "Coarse grained remote interface vs encapsulating business logic", "text": "I'm writing a Web Service that will be consumed by a Mobile client. The Mobile client has to make several chained requirements checks to determine whether the user may initiate a request, and if so what type. If any of the checks fail then the user is redirected to a UI explaining why. I can't decide whether I should expose an operation for each check on my Web Service, or expose a single coarse-grained interface that simply returns all the check value results in a single DTO. Is the coarse-grained interface premature optimisation? I can always provide both the fine-grained and coarse-grained interfaces because the coarse-grained interface will use the local fine-grained methods to build its DTO."}
{"_id": "84954", "title": "What is your experience working for IT outsourcing company in the professional sevices and/or managed services?", "text": "I am from the UK. I have about 4 years experience working for a large European IT outsourcing company. This company was split into two; professional service and managed service. I only worked in the managed services and there was a lot of resources issues concerning reaching customer's expectation and there was a lot of conflict priority. I didn't enjoy may experience as a lot of arguments were involved with all internal parties and conflict of interest with external customers, legal matters etc. I do think now that perhaps, as a employee, I do not want to work in IT outsourcing company and just work for a company that handle its own IT services. I am wondering what has your experience been like? Are you or have you worked in the professional services or managed services? what was your experience like? Have you worked in both services and what is your preference? Look forward to your responses."}
{"_id": "207645", "title": "Running SQL Server Express on Micro/Extra Small VM", "text": "I'm exploring options for running a small cloud Windows Server (either AWS EC2 Micro or Azure Extra Small). The server won't be hit very hard, but I need to run a simple relational database, which I'm expecting to be moderately sized - probably a few tables with a few hundred thousand records, and running a few thousand queries a day to aggregate the data. I'm most familiar with SQL Server, so I'm looking into using SQL Express. However, the system specs are well below the recommended values for SQL 2012 Express. 2008 is a little better, but still not great. Anyone have experience (good or bad) with running SQL Server Express on one of these servers? I'll definitely do some testing before making a decision, but with the inconsistency that comes with these shared computing solutions, I can't be confident after just one or two testing sessions, so anecdotal evidence would be great. If SQL Server doesn't work well, I'll be looking into other solutions - it seems Postgres works well in a wimpy server, or maybe MySQL or one of its forks, or possibly cloud database hosting like Azure SQL Databases."}
{"_id": "232772", "title": "how to manage new private variables introduced into class?", "text": "Whenever I want to add a new functionality, I introduce a new private variable into the class. Declare it just above the first method definition. leave a small comment. Set it in a certain method. And then use this set value in another method. Now the possible problems which arise are, I dont cover all the possible cases when to modify the value of this variable and only notice a bug in it when during trying various possible user flows of the software. Is there any possible way to tie this value to some kinds of triggers so that I know all the possible situations when to modify its value? I am using Javascript. For e.g. I create a status message for editing an existing DB record. If the updating is failed over REST HTTP I set the status. Now I forgot to reset the status when I dont hit update button and instead select another record for updating. What is the best way to manage such new private variables? How to mange their state? what is the best software engineering way to prevent such mistakes?"}
{"_id": "175998", "title": "Implementing the transport layer for a SIP UAC", "text": "I have a somewhat simple, but specific, question about implementing the transport layer for a SIP UAC. Do I expect the response to a request on the same socket that I sent the request on, or do I let the UDP or TCP listener pick up the response and then route it to the correct transaction from there? The RFC does not seem to say anything on the matter. It seems that especially using UDP, which is connection-less, that I should just let the listeners pick up the response, but that seems sort of counter intuitive. Particularly, I have seen plenty of UAC implementations which do not depend on having a Listener in the transport layer. Also, most implementations I have looked at do not have the UAS receiving loop responding on the socket at all. This would tend to indicate that the client should not be expecting a reply on the socket that it sent the request on. For clarification: Suppose my transport layer consists of the following elements:               TCPClient (Sends Requests for a UAC via TCP)     UDPClient (Sends Requests for a UAC vid UDP)     TCPSever (Loop receiving Requests and dispatching to transaction layer via TCP)     UDPServer (Loop receiving Requests and dispatching to transaction layer via UDP)      Obviously, the *Client sends my Requests. The question is, what receives the Response? The *Client waiting on a recv or recvfrom call on the socket it used to send the request, or the *Server? Conversely, the *Server receives my requests, What sends the Response? The *Client? doesn't this break the roles of each member a bit? **Update** I did a packet capture on an SIP Invite transaction between Ekiga and a PolyCom server. Ekiga was the client, and the polycom was the server. In the invite request Ekiga used port 5060 in the via header. 5060 is the port that its UAS is listening on, so that would seem to indicate that the UDPServer is receiving the responses to all requests and not the UDPClient that sent the request. Is this valid reasoning?"}
{"_id": "34999", "title": "How to Get Myself Up to Speed in Building a Java Web App", "text": "I'm a new developer at a fairly large company and I'm working on a Java Web Application with a senior developer there. The Web App is built on top of an IBM stack (RAD, DB2, WebSphere) and basically uses JSPs and Servlets. The Web App is an internal tool to be used by employees to manage data coming from Excel files. So, there are lots of database interaction going around like SQL commands. My question is: I don't know much about JavaEE as a whole and only know a little about JSPs and Servlets and I would like to get myself up to speed so I can understand and contribute to the Web App as fast as I could. What resources (tutorials, links, etc) should I be looking at? Am I supposed to get a book about JavaEE or something that focuses just on JSPs and Servlets? EDIT: What I know well that I think is relevant:   * Java SE   * Object Oriented Concepts   * Some JSP & Servlets I just graduated from college so I don't have a really wide knowledge of frameworks and such yet but I spend a lot of time reading blogs and working on some small programs (not necessarily Java, more Python really.)"}
{"_id": "232774", "title": "How Add/Create* commands should be handled in CQRS + Event Sourcing architecture", "text": "I want to implement my first application using CQRS pattern along with Event Sourcing. I am wondering how creation of aggregate roots should be handled properly. Let's say someone sends CreateItem command. How it should be handled? Where the event ItemCreated should be stored? As first event of a new Item? Or should I have some kind of ItemList entity that aggregates all items and its event list consists only of ItemCreated events? Udi Dahan suggests not to create aggregate roots and always use instead some kind of fetch method. But how I can fetch something that is new and certainly does not have any ID assigned. I understand the idea behind and it is pretty reasonable to think that a new object is an object that has its state composed of zero events replied on it. But how should I use it? Should I have a distinct method in my Repository like `getNewItem()` or make my `get(id)` method accepting `Optional<ItemId>` instead? Edit: After some time of digging I found really interesting implementation of the aforementioned patterns using actors. The author instead of creating the aggregate, retrieves it from some kind of repository with newly created UUID. The drawback of this approach is he allows for a temporary inconsistency state. I am also wondering how I can implement `delete` method with such approach. Simply add Deleted event to the event list of the aggregate?"}
{"_id": "175990", "title": "How do I know if I'm violating MVVM with WPF?", "text": "I was recently grabbing an auto generated TreeViewItem from a nested TreeView node in WPF, and I was using ItemContainerGenerator to get it in code behind. Then I thought to myself I'm certainly violating MVVM right now. What are some other signs that someone is violating MVVM ?"}
{"_id": "175996", "title": ".NET - refactoring code", "text": "I have inherited and now further develop a large application consisting of an ASP.NET application, VB6 and VB.NET application. The software was poorly written. I am trying to refactor the code as I go along. The changes I am making are not live (they are contained in a folder on my development machine). This is proving to be time consuming and I am doing this along side other work which is the prioritiy. My question is: is this a practical approach or is there a better methodology for refactoring code? I don't have any experience with version control software or source control software and I am wandering if this is what I am missing. I am a sole developer."}
{"_id": "34993", "title": "Dependently typed language best suited to \u201creal world\u201d programming?", "text": "Which _dependently typed_ programming languages could be used for real world _application development_? I will mostly be writing toy applications at first, after that maybe web development or a simple DBMS. These are some points, that I think are important:   * documentation   * example programs   * a good/big standard library   * an easy to use foreign function interface   * a community of people using the language for real world tasks   * tool support I am aware that there is currently no language that meets all these requirements. I'd like to know which one comes closest."}
{"_id": "233421", "title": "Building presentation layer directly on data layer", "text": "My application is currently quite a mess and I'm trying to untangle it all. My current idea is that I should have 3 separate layers:   * data layer that knows how to keep stuff in database (and handle data schema changes, so it's not really that trivial)   * domain layer (is that correct name?) that does all the magic changing the objects and processing events triggered by user requests   * presentation layer that knows how to show to user only what that user is allowed to know (some data is hidden from user just because) My initial idea was that having a data object I can build domain object from it, then build a view object from that one and then serve it to user. However I'm now thinking about building view object directly from data object.   * If the user just queries some information, I fetch the data from database, get the nice presentation of it, then serve it to user. Not touching the domain layer at all.   * If user performs an action, I fetch the data, build models from it, do the magic object interaction, save it all back to data layer, then wrap it into presentation and serve. How bad is such design? Unfortunately I am not well-versed in software architecture/design terminology thus I might be failing to find the answer just because I don't know how to name things. Edit: I don't mean to discard the Model part completely. I just mean that I will have Model sitting on Data and View sitting on Data too."}
{"_id": "31548", "title": "If you got to rebuild Pandora from scratch, what technology stack would you choose?", "text": "Requirements:   * many different user experiences: website, mobile, etc.   * user management, registration, roles   * large amount of music metadata   * genome search that finds closest music   * public and private RESTful API for all functions   * massive server-side service scale"}
{"_id": "13870", "title": "How do you find time to work on Open Source Projects?", "text": "A bit of background: I've got a small open source project that I've started on, a basic framework which provides an object oriented means of generating HTML code (since I don't really like HTML, and I do like PHP). It has some released source, and a few downloads, but primarily, the project is for me, with the Open Source portion just being a side benefit. The original project which caused me to be able to develop on this project has mostly gone into hibernation for the time being, which means that all the development I get to sink into it at this point is personal time only. Unfortunately, I'm currently working toward my bachelor's degree, studying for certifications, and I have a three month old baby at home. In short, by the time I get around to \"me time\", I rarely feel like doing work, but rather usually feel like just chilling out. So, if there's anyone else out there who feels like they're in a similar position, what strategies have you used to keep yourself motivated toward working on the project? I would really like to at least be able to work on this until I have 100% spec coverage, but I haven't committed source in months. Anyone out there who can help?"}
{"_id": "233429", "title": "What's in a name? Revision vs Timestamp", "text": "Apparently naming things is one of the hardest things in programming..! I have a synchronisation implementation which uses timestamps (number of seconds since unix epoch) to sync. Currently, the timestamps have simply replaced an older revision field. My question is, does it make sense to name it \"Revision\" or is \"Timestamp\" better? Revision makes sense to me since that's what's used to version an entity - to know what's created, updated, deleted. But if I needed to increase the granularity of the revision field in the future (ie. to become a decimal, to include fractions of a second), I wouldn't be sure that a decimal revision would make sense. On the other hand, perhaps I want to move away from timestamps in the future (ie. to sequence numbers) in which case revision would make sense."}
{"_id": "171671", "title": "When to use DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) in programming?", "text": "I recently found a framework named ecto. In this framework, a basic component named \"plasm\", which is the ecto Directed Acyclic Graph.In ecto, plasm can be operated by ecto scheduler. I am wondering what's the advantage of this mechanism, and in what other situations can we exploit the concept of DAG?"}
{"_id": "228396", "title": "Should functions be prepared for overlapping buffers?", "text": "So I have a function in C like this:               void crunch(const char *in, char *out, size_t inLen, size_t outLen)     {         //...     }      If the two buffers overlap, the function may mess up the input buffer as well, while generating output.   * What's the general practice?    * Should I always consider overlapping buffers when implementing functions like this?    * Should I assume that the user won't pass overlapping buffers?    * Should I always document whether the function works well or not with overlapping buffers?"}
{"_id": "228395", "title": "Are there guidelines for SOA events and file transfers in a SOA context?", "text": "We are part of a SOA implementation. We publish events via the enterprise bus for certain changes in our system. The architects here have advised, however, that some bulk changes to data should go via a flat file (generated by our system) and handled (moved between servers) by middleware, because they want to avoid overloading the bus with data. (It would be possible for us to publish a single event containing all the changes as opposed to many single events, which would perform much better, but for some reason they do not want this). More recently, a contention has arisen over a price list that we produce. The original requirement for us was to produce a flat file on a daily basis (which would be a lot simpler than communicating real-time pricing changes). In this scenario, we fought off requirements from the consumer system to tailor the data a specific way. Our argument is that in a SOA context, our output should be consumer-agnostic, so as long as it contains the necessary data, it can be transformed by middleware into the required target format. Now, however, architecture has again intervened, saying that publishing a price list is an event that could/should go via the bus. We are not sure we agree with this, and why, in the case of bulk changes mentioned above, a file transfer is acceptable which effectively bypasses the bus. I guess my question is manifold:   * Are there guidelines around what data should be contained in an event in the SOA context?   * Is there place for file transfers in an event-driven architecture? If so, is my assumption correct that we could be exporting a file containing pricing information in our own format, and leave it to middleware to transform?"}
{"_id": "195000", "title": "Understanding algorithms for numeric constraint solving", "text": "As an educational exercise, I am looking to implement a constraint solver from scratch. However, since the field is entirely new to me, I am at a loss of where to begin with background research. The problems I aim to address are mostly sets of inequalities, such as `a < b && b < c`, where `a`, `b`, `c` are integers. (While it is possibly not relevant to the question at this stage, I do aim to address problems with other numeric types later on). The algorithms I have looked at so far are in the _branch-and-bound_ and _branch-and-cut_ categories mostly. However, if I am looking for a generic, efficient algorithm, is this what I want to be looking at? It would be very helpful to receive some guidelines here."}
{"_id": "230687", "title": "Scrum: Baseline story for point estimation", "text": "To estimate PBIs you need to choose an average story and assign it a number of points (for example 5). Then you compare all other stories to that story and assign points accordingly. My question is, are you really supposed to compare every single story to that original story from the beginning of the project? If not, then how do you make sure your scale remains more or less consistent throughout the project? Thanks."}
{"_id": "89037", "title": "As a C# developer, how much \"advanced\" Java do I need for Android development?", "text": "I'm a professional .NET -C#- developer who's interested in doing development for Android. I'd like to know if it's really necessary for me to first read a book or two on Java (like Java For Programmers 2nd), or if I should just be able to pick up an Android book (like Pro Android 3) and be able to -mostly- work my way around it without much fuzz. **Note 1** : Java is not 100% new to me. For testing purposes, I've previously done a few -very basic- console applications and web applications. **Note 2** : I'm not trying to shift from .NET to Java / Android anytime soon. I just wat to develop applications for myself and this wonderful community. :)"}
{"_id": "230682", "title": "Algorithm for detection of overlapping between vectors", "text": "I am currently developing a math-physics program and I need to calculate if two vectors overlap one another, the one is vertical and the other is horizontral. Is there any fast algorithm to do this because what I came up so far, has a lot of repeats. Eg lets say we have vector V1((0,1),(2,1)) and a V2((1,0),(1,2)) where the first parenthesis is the coordinates starting and the second coordinates that the vector reaches. I want as a result to take that they overlap at (1,1) So far the only idea I came up is to ''expand'' each vector to a list of points and then compare the lists e.g for V1 its list would be (0,1) (1,1) (2,1)"}
{"_id": "205865", "title": "Why is Moore's Law seen as an absolute truth?", "text": "Often times I read things like: \"Intel stated that either the next generation or generation after that will likely fail Moore's Law.\" Why don't they just say Moore's Law will fail instead? I don't know why it's held as some sort of standard that must be upheld? Why not aim for the highest progress instead of limiting yourself with arbitrary expections?"}
{"_id": "225616", "title": "Are problem-solving programming questions useful for improving one's general programming ability?", "text": "For example, like: * * * The inaugural International Olympiad in Frogleaping is being held in Australia in 2013 and you are determined to win. While you want nothing to do with such slimy, jumpy creatures, you plan to enter a frog-like robot that you know will be faster than all the other organic entrants. The IOF takes place in a large pond in which there is a sequence of lily pads arranged in a long line. The rules of the race are simple: your frog will be placed on the first lily pad, then it must jump to the second lily pad, then the third and so forth until it reaches the last lily pad in the course. Note that you can not `skip' lily pads--every lily pad must be jumped on exactly once. The first frog to reach the last lily pad will win the race. Since your robotic frog has super-frog speed, you are confident in your victory. However, your frog has one minor incorrectable flaw--it is only able to jump one fixed distance. Specifically, it can only jump exactly K metres forward from its current location, even if this lands the frog in the water (where it will promptly short-circuit). Since the initial lily pad positions may make it impossible for your frog to reach the last lily pad, you plan to create a distraction and move the lily pads so that they are spaced exactly K metres apart, enabling your frog to jump from the first to the last without falling in the water. Shifting a lily pad by one metre will take you one second, and the longer you spend stealthily moving lily pads, the more likely that the IOF judges will notice and disqualify you from the competition. Given the initial distances between the lily pads in the course, you must write a program to compute the minimum time you will have to spend shifting lily pads such that all pairs of consecutive lily pads are exactly K metres apart. You can assume that the pond is sufficiently long so that the first lily pad can be moved any distance back, and the last lily pad can be moved any distance forward. # Input Your program should read from the file frogin.txt. The first line of this file will consist of two space-separated integers N and K. The following N-1 lines will contain the initial distances between consecutive pairs of lily pads. Specifically, the ith line will contain one integer representing the distance between the ith and (i+1)th lily pad. # Output Your program should write to the file frogout.txt. Your output file should consist of one line containing one integer: the minimum total time spent shifting lily pads so as to ensure your victory. * * * This is a sample problem from the Australian Informatics Olympiad, which I happened to come across searching on the internet. But I do not believe that any programming-related problems which do not directly connect with real-life situations will have any helpful effects upon one's real-world programming ability. Will they?"}
{"_id": "225612", "title": "What are and how do (data-) types work?", "text": "1. What is a \"variable\"/data type?   2. How does a compiler / interpreter handle types? My specific concern has to do with the different types in lower and higher level languages. For instance in Python, as `list` is really flexible. You can just define it and put in at runtime whatever you want.   * `int`s   * `float`s   * `str`ings   * `set`s   * even other `list`s Basically objects of any type (if I'm not mistaken). So I imagine `list` to be a class written in C with really a lot of stuff in there, dynamic memory allocation and so on and so forth, to handle all this.   * Is that right?   * ..and does that mean all those e. g. Python types are C classes?   * Then what are types in C?   * Are they \"classes\"?   * ..or somehow related to assembler code? PS: I'm not looking for some precise illustrative hints and answers rather than for a wide exhaustive explanation. And: This questions are not related to \"There are no variables in Python, but identifiers\"."}
{"_id": "103026", "title": "Password insanity! Recommended approaches to password management on multiple client systems?", "text": "A software development company I work with has a web based product they are successfully selling to clients. All of these clients have a support agreement with us that generally requires us to access their servers, databases and application data. As the number of clients grows, (and the number of different people supporting those clients grows), we are seeing a need to better manage in particular **passwords** , but more generally all the information one would need to fully support client systems ie. URLs, application login details, IP addresses, any client-specific weird stuff etc etc. This data is changing on an increasingly rapid basis, as systems get moved around to different machines, IP addresses. The worst problem is superuser passwords for the applications. These are constantly changing and occasionally we find ourselves in a situation where nobody seems to know who made the most recent change. This is clearly an unsatisfactory situation. There are **procedures** in place which say that password changes etc need to be documented in a central secure place. But of course, people being humans, sometimes forget to document these things. The danger is that when people get so fed up of password chaos, that you can end up with a situation where everyone's password is \" _password123_ \" as they can't be bothered any more. Apart from enforcing the procedures, what other approaches could we take? One suggestion I heard was to have a \"hidden\" application superuser whose password is easily remembered/derived, which only support personnel would know about it. Personally I think that solution is a scary security hole, especially when you have multiple clients using your software. So how would you handle this situation if you were supporting multiple clients? More strict procedure enforcement, or a technical approach to make life easier for everyone?"}
{"_id": "207880", "title": "What should I learn to be backend web developer?", "text": "I want to be a web developer and because I don't want to get into designing (and stuff like that) so I thought I should become a backend developer (also more suited because of my course i.e. b.tech in computer science). So I have been searching the internet for a lot of things. But I am confused as what should I choose?   1. Python (attended a workshop on django looked easy but I think is a dying language as adoption of Python 3 is very slow)   2. Ruby   3. node.js   4. Java (Play framework)   5. .Net I am currently in my second year which means I have a whole 3 years to learn a language till I apply for a job. I want to learn something which helps me to build things on my own (to fulfill my creative mind's appetite) and something which gets a me good job also. So please guide. I am ready to do the hard work so it doesn't matter if the language is not very easy :)"}
{"_id": "225618", "title": "Is it correct/useful to define Computational Complexity in this way?", "text": "I analyzed my algorithm and I deduced that in the best case it requires n^3 iterations while in the worst case it requires n^4 iterations. Then I asserted that my algorithm is in \\Omega(n^3) and in \\BigO(n^4). Is this assertion correct and useful? (sorry for the format but I'm not able to add LaTeX text, so if you can please tell me how to format this I will edit soon, thanks)"}
{"_id": "38393", "title": "Does being a Senior Developer using one language qualify you to be a Senior Developer using another language?", "text": "If I work as a Developer in one language (e.g. Java) and work my way up to Senior Developer, would that qualify me to be a Senior Developer for a position using another language (e.g. Ruby)?"}
{"_id": "120308", "title": "How can I compare and contrast open source licenses?", "text": "My company has given permission for me to open source some internal tools I've built. The first step is to choose an open source license. How do I do this? I know about the GPL, the Apache license, and others. Are there any resources out there that compare and contrast the different licenses? I'd rather not have to read every single candidate until I've narrowed the field."}
{"_id": "215527", "title": "How should a non-IT manager secure the long-term maintenance and development of essential legacy software?", "text": "We are a small, very specialized, benefits administration firm with an extremely useful, robust collection of software, some written in COBOL but most in BASIC. Two full-time consultants have ably maintained and improved this system over more than 30 years. Needless to say they will soon retire. (One of them has been desperate to retire for several years but is loyal to a fault and so hangs on despite her husband's insistence that golf should take priority.) We started down the path of converting to a system developed by one of only three firms in the country that offer the type of software we use. We now feel that although this this firm is theoretically capable of completing the conversion process, they don't have the resources to do so timely, and we have come to believe that they will be unable to offer the kind of service we need to run our business. (There's nothing like being able to set one's own priorities and having the authority to allocate one's resources as one sees fit.) Hardware is not a problem--we are able to emulate very effectively on modern servers. If COBOL and BASIC were modern languages, we'd be willing to take the risk that we could find replacements for our current consultants going forward. It seems like there ought to be a business model for an IT support firm that concentrates on legacy platforms like this and provides the programming and software development talent to support a system like ours, removing from our backs the risks of finding the right programming talent and the job of convincing younger programmers that they can have a productive, rewarding career, in part in an old, non-sexy language like BASIC. **In short, as non-IT managers, how can we best manage this transition?**"}
{"_id": "240894", "title": "Why are strong names optional?", "text": "Why the c# allows project not to be strongly signed when they are build? They may be signed by some automatic name file if programmer do not choose his(hers) own sign file. Where is the advantage of not signed .dll file? What the strong names are? I am working on project which uses C# .dll files in Microsoft Dynamics AX. If the .dll file has the strong name it is easy to use. If not the fun begin. If the .dll do not have strong name   1. You can not easy install it to gacutil    2. You can not use it as a reference when you build a project with strong name.   3. It can leads to DLL Hell I see only disadvantages of project without strong names so I want to know if I miss see something or there is some tricky historical consequences why they are still allowed. I want to know if there is some advantage of using them. It should be possible to add strong name to .dll file without compiling but I was not able to use this because I end after I try to use ILASM.exe with \"The program can't start because fusion.dll is missing from your computer, Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.\" even if the fusion.dll is in the system (We decided to use different approach so I don't have time for more tries on this solution.)"}
{"_id": "53669", "title": "Are there any benefits to checking in commented out code into version control?", "text": "I've found, what I personally believe to be a bad habit that a lot of developers seem to have adopted. Code in various places in the applications I have seen are commented out (lots of it) and checked into the mainline. Now, I don't have a problem with people doing this with their own branches, but is it a good idea to comment out 60 or so lines of code and check it into trunk? A colleague of mines has unearthed a lot of this and had spend half a day removing the commented out code just to tidy things up. Is there any benefit in checking in commented out code and leaving it for another developer to have to tidy up after you? After all, version control does have a history, so you can easy pull back any code that's been removed."}
{"_id": "190096", "title": "Can commented-out code be valuable documentation?", "text": "I wrote the following code:               if (boutique == null) {         boutique = new Boutique();              boutique.setSite(site);         boutique.setUrlLogo(CmsProperties.URL_FLUX_BOUTIQUE+fluxBoutique.getLogo());         boutique.setUrlBoutique(CmsProperties.URL_FLUX_BOUTIQUE+fluxBoutique.getUrl());         boutique.setNom(fluxBoutique.getNom());         boutique.setSelected(false);         boutique.setIdWebSC(fluxBoutique.getId());         boutique.setDateModification(new Date());              boutiqueDao.persist(boutique);     } else {         boutique.setSite(site);         boutique.setUrlLogo(CmsProperties.URL_FLUX_BOUTIQUE+fluxBoutique.getLogo());         boutique.setUrlBoutique(CmsProperties.URL_FLUX_BOUTIQUE+fluxBoutique.getUrl());         boutique.setNom(fluxBoutique.getNom());         //boutique.setSelected(false);         boutique.setIdWebSC(fluxBoutique.getId());         boutique.setDateModification(new Date());              boutiqueDao.merge(boutique);     }      There is a commented-out line here. But I think it makes the code clearer, by making obvious what the difference is between `if` and `else`. The difference is even more noticeable with color highlighting . Can commenting out code like this ever be a good idea?"}
{"_id": "213684", "title": "good replacement for commenting out code?", "text": "It bothers me to see commented out code and it seems often-times a symptom of developers not being proficient in advanced source control features, but on the other hand source control does not really go all the way in solving the problem that commenting out is intended for. I've occasionally seen requirements flip-flop in such a way that code that would have been deleted suddenly is needed again. If the code is really deleted, there doesn't seem to be a clear procedure for locating exactly where to find that deleted code in source control. Is there a better way out there to save developer work that may be needed again besides the tried-and-true \"commenting out\"?"}
{"_id": "47070", "title": "Organizations that encourage kids to program", "text": "Since my son started going to school, I've been noticing a very serious lack of organizations to encourage kids to program or at least letting them know how to get involved in programming. Are there any groups that you know of to help kids out this area?? And I'm not referring to tools to help kids learn, I'm referring to groups that will help in getting kids interested in programming. Here are a few that I know of:   * Dreamspark   * Lego First Robotics   * Imagine Cup Are there anymore out there? And are there any that work at the elementary - high school levels?? Also are there any other parents that have noticed the same thing, or is this local to my area?? Edit: Also I'm looking for groups that encourage kids who don't have programmers for parents. I've got no problem teaching my own son, I'm more worried about the other kids."}
{"_id": "47073", "title": "Finding the balance between the important and the interesting", "text": "Sometimes I go for what I find interesting instead of what is considered important. Having this attitude has been educational and it has let me produce work that I'm exceptionally proud of but it has also made me miss deadlines and disappoint people. Sometimes I think that I do this because I don't want to _break_ my curiosity. I'm afraid that if I ignore it I may gradually lose it. Do you have any advice? * * * Meta: How can I make this a community wiki?"}
{"_id": "47076", "title": "Is Flash really superior to Java applets?", "text": "I'm still a student, without much real life experience in programming. I've never written anything bigger than ~5k lines of code. I've written code in both Flash and Java, and I just can't understand why people are writing web applications like video players (YouTube etc.) in Flash, and not as Java applets. So I want to ask you, programmers with hands on experience, for some wise words on the subject. I see no real benefit of Flash over applets, while on the other hand, at least to me, it seems buggy as hell. I understand it is faster to make something in Flash, and I can see why it would be a good thing for fast prototyping, but in general, is it worth it? Every time a YouTube goes berserk, i curse the developers for writing it in Flash. And if you are using Linux with Opera, this happens all the time. So, basically, why are people using flash, and not applets?"}
{"_id": "231480", "title": "Does commercial mean when you earn money by putting a ad to support you or is it something else like for a big company?", "text": "I been reading a few things about using libraries and stuff but they all talk about not using it for commercial purposes. Does commercial mean when you earn money by putting a ad to support you or is it something else like for a big company?"}
{"_id": "231481", "title": "Is hierarchical product backlog a good idea in TFS 2012-2013?", "text": "I'd like to validate I'm not in the wrong way. My team project is using Visual Studio Scrum 2.x. Since each area/product has a lot of kind of requirements (security, user interface, HTTP/REST services...), I tried to manage this creating \"parent backlogs\" which are \"open forever\" and they contain generic requirements. Those parent backlogs have other \"open forever\" backlogs, and/or sprint backlogs. For example:   * HTTP/REST Services (forever)      * Profiles API (forever) *POST profile (forever)        * We need a basic HTTP/REST profiles' API to register new user profiles (sprint backlog) **Is it the right way of organizing the product backlog?** _Note: I know there're different points of view and that would be right for some and wrong for others. I'm looking for validation about if this is a possible good practice on TFS with Visual Studio Scrum._"}
{"_id": "155669", "title": "Is there any logical relation between different types of UML diagrams?", "text": "I'm trying to find out ,that is there any relation between different types of UML diagrams, for example, once you developed a use case, should it be an event for each of them in a sequence diagram, or is there any exact relation between the use case and class diagrams. By the way my main focus is on the below diagrams:   * Use case    * class diagram   * activity   * sequence   * event if you think I need any extra diagram to be included so it can be used to connecting the above diagrams to each other, please mention it too. Thanks In Advance"}
{"_id": "155668", "title": "HG: fork web app project to separate API code from app code", "text": "I have a web app thats been in active development for about 8 months now and its becoming apparent that the project has a need to maintain a separation between app specific code and our OO Javascript API. What I would like to do is have another repository with the following general structure of the js API code.               repo_name        |        +---build        |        +---build_tools        |        +---doc        |        +---src             |             +---js      Of course this structure is different from the original web app directory structure. If I make changes to this new repository how could I pull in those changes to the web app repository without unintentionally removing files or modifying the directory structure of the web app repository?"}
{"_id": "15317", "title": "Factors to be Considered for Software Risk Management", "text": "What are the risk factors that we need to consider while planning for a software project."}
{"_id": "87426", "title": "Do some interpreted languages only load the scripts once?", "text": "The benefit of a compiled application was that all the libraries and classes are loaded one time and sit waiting for input right? I come from a background working with PHP and the resources/classes that used are loaded each page request which puts an bad load on the server memory. For example, given the PHP core uses 1MB of memory, and a wordpress loads another 7MB of objects - you end up with 8MB being loaded _every request_. I assumed this was the same process for other scripting languages like Python and Ruby also. However, I have started looking at node.js (because JavaScript is so beautiful) and it seems that it is loaded _once_ (and whatever memory needed is only taken once) and then sits around waiting for requests sharing the classes it has loaded among any new threads (is that the right term?) so they don't have to re-load them. So PHP would take `8MB process * 10 requests = 80MB` for ten concurrent requests to wordpress. This sounds like node.js would take `8MB process + 10 requests = ~14MB`. **Is this really true? Are there any other scripting languages that do this?**"}
{"_id": "173296", "title": "IIS for beginner", "text": "I have a problem understanding some functionalities in IIS. Per example I want to know when do I use \"Add application\", \"add virtual directory\" or \"add website\". Currently I have around 10 websites which are located in my wwwroot/websitename directory and they automatically appear under sites in IIS. What is the best approach?"}
{"_id": "173297", "title": "Why learn git when there are GUI apps for GitHub?", "text": "Given that GitHub provides GUI apps for both Mac and Windows, what are the benefits of learning to use git from the command line? Currently I'm using their mac app to update my repositories, and so far it seems to cover my needs. What might I be missing out on?"}
{"_id": "155665", "title": "What are the key terms rvalue and lvalue?", "text": "Many of the times my compiler shows errors like Lvalue or Rvalue Required. What are the **Lvalues** and **Rvalues** in **C or any programming languages**? Is a pointer constant a rvalue?"}
{"_id": "206518", "title": "Sending exactly one notification n seconds after the event", "text": "I have a system that checks the status of a number of systems, such as, is http up, does the system respond to ping, that sort of thing. I check all of these systems every 5 minutes. If something is broken, I send out an e-mail with a notice. If the problem is cleared I send out an \"all clear, problem resolved\" notice too. I want to send out a notice 30 minutes after a problem is detected and the problem is still ongoing and then at failure +1h, +2h, +4h, etc. I do not want to flood the user with messages every time the event \"problem still ongoing\" occurs which is every 5 minutes. I could store a \"last notification sent at\" somewhere and just work with that but I would rather just solve it in the code itself. Am I missing something very obvious or is this the only feasible way?"}
{"_id": "206511", "title": "Under what conditions should I rebase rather than merge?", "text": "Here is, roughly, our structure of work using git, for web development. We have a master branch, and individual or groups of work are done seperately in branches, then merged in.   1. A ticket (or several) comes in.   2. We create a branch on our local development repository, and push it to origin.   3. We fix the tickets in code, commit the work and push to origin.   4. Once we're happy with our work, we pull the branch down to a repository on our UAT / Staging server and check it out for the client to review.   5. The client approves the work.   6. We go back to our local development repository, we check out master, merge the branch, and push to origin.   7. We create a tag from master afterwards.   8. We then go on the live server, pull master and move/update the tag to the new one. There are 7 of us, working on about 15 projects or so throughout the year. Generally, one person is sufficient to work on a project at any one time, but sometimes two people might work in separate branches with a view to merging into the master branch around the same time. Generally we think merging is best because it, as I understand, preserves a development history with regard to what was merged and when. Whereas rebase seems to completely destroy this and linearize the master log. Why would, if this assumption is correct, someone want to use rebase? Is it only for extremely busy projects that are constantly being branched and merged and there needs to be a guarantee that merges are successful - so developers can test out adding master to their work and resolve conflicts before merging back in?"}
{"_id": "173125", "title": "Rewriting software using Agile methodologies", "text": "Suppose you have to rewrite an entire application using Agile methodologies, how would you do it? I guess you could write a big bunch of user stories based in the behavior of your current system. And then implement them in small iterations. But this wouldn't mean that we have the requirements **UP FRONT**?? Also, when would you start releasing? Agile says we should release early and often, but it doesn't make much sense to release before the complete rewrite has been completed."}
{"_id": "173123", "title": "what receives an ajax call?", "text": "I'm making a site which should (a) take information from the user in the form of files and forms, (b) take that data to the server to be run on a C application, and (c) take the result back and show it to the user. I was told to look for AJAX for the communication with the server. BTW, I'm using rails. I'm trying to understand how AJAX works. From what I understand so far, with rails is pretty easy to make the call. What I can't figure out is, what waits for that call? what process the call? If I understand correctly, with rails I could make a function in ruby and make it so it's called through AJAX, which means -or so I understand- that it gets executed on the server. If I were using PHP, would I need to make an http server to wait for the AJAX calls? I just don't find information about what waits for the call, and that information is processed. Any links, comments or books are welcome!"}
{"_id": "200919", "title": "Making subclass more type-specific with accessors", "text": "I have a super class: `TriggerManager` with a subclass `TimedTriggerManager`. NOTE: I'm working in java `TimedTriggerManager` only deals with `TimedTrigger` s, a subclass of `Trigger`. `TriggerManager` references all `Trigger` objects. To modify the subclass (`TimedTriggerManager`) to only accept `TimedTriggers` into its accessors and mutators (getters and setters) I have the following questions: 1) I have in `TriggerManager` the following `public void addTrigger(Trigger t)`. In `TimedTriggerManager` should I just override the method to throw an error if the argument (`t`) is not a `TimedTrigger`. If so, What error should I throw? If not, what should I do? 2) Should I add another method `getTimedTrigger` to work alongside the supper class's `getTrigger` so that I don't have to keep type casting? (Since the latter would return a `Trigger` object) 3) Is there anything else I'm forgetting, or some common practice that I'm not doing?"}
{"_id": "201518", "title": "Pattern to use for different Stages in a software", "text": "I am developing a software for a laboratory to test some devices. To test each device there are multi subtests which should be done to reach to the final result.To perform a complete test, the software must pass Stage1 then automatically goes to Stage2 then Stage3 and so on until the whole test is finished. meanwhile the user can select to just have the Stage3 or Stage2 or any other Stages independently to be performed (which she selects that at runtime). this is the thing I have done so far: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UTpiF.png)               public class IronTestWorkFlow:ITestWorkFlow         {             private readonly List<ITestStages> _testStageses;                  public IronTestWorkFlow(List<ITestStages> testStageses )             {                 if (testStageses == null)                 {                     throw new ArgumentNullException(\"testStageses\");                 }                 _testStageses = testStageses;             }         }      I am useing a DI container. But I don't know how to change the list of Stages in `ITestWorkFlow` at runtime. **Questions:** 1- Am I designing this right? 2- If yes which pattern shall I follow to obey the principles and change the stages at runtime? and how can I do that?"}
{"_id": "177630", "title": "Capitalization convention for C# protected fields", "text": "What is the capitalization conventions for protected field names in C#? Is it _myVar (like private field) or MyVar (like properties)?"}
{"_id": "177632", "title": "I am trying to figure out the best way to understand how to cache domain objects", "text": "I've always done this wrong, I'm sure a lot of others have too, hold a reference via a map and write through to DB etc.. I need to do this right, and I just don't know how to go about it. I know how I want my objects to be cached but not sure on how to achieve it. What complicates things is that I need to do this for a legacy system where the DB can change without notice to my application. So in the context of a web application, let's say I have a `WidgetService` which has several methods:               Widget getWidget();     Collection<Widget> getAllWidgets();     Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByCategory(String categoryCode);     Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByContainer(Integer parentContainer);     Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByStatus(String status);      Given this, I could decide to cache by method signature, i.e. `getWidgetsByCategory(\"AA\")` would have a single cache entry, or I could cache widgets individually, which would be difficult I believe; OR, a call to any method would then first cache ALL widgets with a call to `getAllWidgets()` but `getAllWidgets()` would produce caches that match all the keys for the other method invocations. For example, take the following untested theoretical code.               Collection<Widget> getAllWidgets() {         Entity entity = cache.get(\"ALL_WIDGETS\");         Collection<Widget> res;         if (entity == null) {             res = loadCache();         } else {             res = (Collection<Widget>) entity.getValue();         }         return res     }          Collection<Widget> loadCache() {         // Get widgets from underlying DB         Collection<Widget> res = db.getAllWidgets();         cache.put(\"ALL_WIDGETS\", res);         Map<String, List<Widget>> byCat = new HashMap<>();         for (Widget w : res) {             // cache by different types of method calls, i.e. by category             if (!byCat.containsKey(widget.getCategory()) {                 byCat.put(widget.getCategory(), new ArrayList<Widget>);             }             byCat.get(widget.getCatgory(), widget);         }         cacheCategories(byCat);         return res;     }          Collection<Widget> getWidgetsByCategory(String categoryCode) {         CategoryCacheKey key = new CategoryCacheKey(categoryCode);         Entity ent = cache.get(key);         if (entity == null) {             loadCache();         }         ent = cache.get(key);         return ent == null ? Collections.emptyList() : (Collection<Widget>)ent.getValue();     }      _NOTE_ : I have not worked with a cache manager, the above code illustrates `cache` as some object that may hold caches by key/value pairs, though it's not modelled on any specific implementation. Using this I have the benefit of being able to cache all objects in the different ways they will be called with only single objects on the heap, whereas if I were to cache the method call invocation via say Spring It would (I believe) cache multiple copies of the objects. I really wish to try and understand the best ways to cache domain objects before I go down the wrong path and make it harder for myself later. I have read the documentation on the Ehcache website and found various articles of interest, but nothing to give a good solid technique. Since I'm working with an ERP system, some DB calls are very complicated, not that the DB is slow, but the business representation of the domain objects makes it very clumsy, coupled with the fact that there are actually 11 different DB's where information can be contained that this application is consolidating in a single view, this makes caching quite important."}
{"_id": "97101", "title": "Is Clojure, Scala and other restrained by the JVM vs CLR", "text": "The Java implementors seem slow to adopt language improvements, for example compare C# with full closures, expression trees, LINQ etc.. to Java, and even the push back of some stuff to Java 8 will still leave it behind the current implementation of C#. However since I dont intend to use either Java or C# that particular language war isnt of interest too much, im more concerned with the JVM vs CLR. Is this lagging-behind also applicable to the JVM? Will Scala, Clojure etc.. will they be able to continue to innovate or score optimal performance in the face of slowly progressing underlying VM such as JVM? Is Clojure/Scala restrained at present by JVM limitations?"}
{"_id": "231150", "title": "What's the difference between SocketAddress and ServerSocket in Java?", "text": "Learning how to develop a small embedded HTTP server for a class assignment, and the examples given on how to use `com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer` use an `InetSocketAddress` which extends `SocketAddress` as the link between client and server. However, all of my previous network programming assignments used `Socket` and `ServerSocket` to create raw connections between a server and client to send custom protocols back and forth. Clearly these two classes are different as they don't share any common ancestor other than `java.lang.Object`. What is inherently special about each that makes them fundamentally different?"}
{"_id": "228027", "title": "Data Model for selling groups of products as one product", "text": "Say I have an e-commerce with a data model like the following, which allows a `Sale` to describe how a single `Product` is sold. This division allows a product to be sold multiple times in different ways (different pricing, or offered at a different point in time). This works great when a sale is selling a single product. **Sale**   * product_id (sale belongs to product)   * other offer details like price, sale expiry date, marketing content, etc **Product**   * product has many sales   * factual product details like name, photo, manufacturers description, etc * * * **The problem:** How can this data model be improved to allow a sale to have many products? For example, to create a bundle of 1 of product A, and 1 of product B. So if a customer wants quantity=3 of those bundles, they would receive a total of 3 A's and 3 B's. Or a sale could be for multiples of a single product. In this case the sale would be for 5 of product C. So if a customer wants quantity=3 of those bundles, they would receive 15 product C's. * * * The best idea I have so far is add a new table. This would allow a sale to reference many orderables, which describe what's in the bundle. **Orderables**   * belongs to product   * belongs to sale   * qty in the bundle But a refactoring of this magnitude is a monumental task. The number times `sale.product` appears in the codebase for a variety of reasons is enormous. And every single case need to be fixed in code, and probably presentation as well. So before we commit too heavily to this approach, I'm wondering if there is a glimmer of hope I've not yet seen, or if my future is fraught with the pain and peril of this epic refactoring."}
{"_id": "224563", "title": "Does CTRL+C works in the whole world", "text": "I would like to know if CTRL+C (copy) keyboard shortcut works on all Windows versions above '98, all Non-English Windows and on all keyboards (English, German, Chinese...)?"}
{"_id": "224569", "title": "Algorithm for defragmenting cross-pipe issues in a network for routing signals through?", "text": "I have a network I'm responsible for routing signals through. You can think of the network as a directed graph of nodes (hardware) but each edge is really a pipe capable of fitting a specific bandwidth, I can route signals to any index on that pipe and may have multiple signals of different 'size' going across the pipe. For what it's worth the signals are predetermined sizes and will not always be simple multiple of twos. I know how to defragment a single 'pipe' easily enough. However, it's theoretically possible that I could have to move signals around across multiple pipes to create enough room to fit a new signal. In a trivial example I could have two edges from A to B with enough space to fit a signal of size '4' available, and a signal of size '8'. To fit the signal across I would have to move some signals from pipe 2 to 1 so that 1 is completely freed, living a full '8' slots available for my new signal to routed in. **How to detect and properly defragment these sort of cross-pipe issues?** Of course in the real world I may have to route signals through completely different devices, perhaps having signals take less-direct routes, to free up enough space for my new signal on any given pipe. So in short across an entire system of these networks I want to   1. find a method to get a signal from input to destination in a crowded environment where I may have to move multiple signals to take a different path to their destination in order to free up sufficient space on a given pipe   2. figure out how to do the above with the minimum number of signals physically moved   3. have an approach that minimizes the need of running the above steps by minimizing fragmentation as much as possible. This is a complicated series of requirements on their own, and I'm not looking for an answer on how to do it all, though such an answer is welcome."}
{"_id": "39047", "title": "How do you find the most optimized way to write code?", "text": "In my programming career, I have written Java and PHP, Javascript and a little Ruby. I am not a CS major but got into web development from a more broad Internet Professional associates degree, which focused on Design, User Experience, and Development. I started out as Front-end Developer and quickly got great jobs working on complex applications which once I mastered the front-end world, I had the opportunity to become a Software Engineer on the projects because I understood the system and could figure out how to engineer it to do what I want. Obviously I work with most other who have CS degrees and while I may be faster at figuring out how to make the application we are working on do something, they usually understand basic concepts better than I. That being said, there are obviously language docs out there for Java and PHP but what resources are out there that tell you the best practices of writing good optimized code. Reading those docs aren't good enough to be able to write code and then show people like some of you and not get a bunch of \"why didn't you do this\" or \"I can't believe he didn't do that. \" There are a lot of blogs out there but you only find an article here and there by a person that focuses on explaining how to write better code. Or maybe I am wrong, I don't even think I am explaining this question all that clear. My main problem is, I can write code get it to work, think that it is written well but I'm not really sure. Besides just getting your code to work how do you know you have written it the preferred way that when others look at it, they say to themselve, this guy knows what he is doing :). If anyone has any specific language resources right now I would prefer PHP ones, since that is what I am working on."}
{"_id": "16755", "title": "Project Management Techniques (high level)", "text": "Our software dev team is currently using kanban for our development lifecycles, and, from the reasonably short experience of a few months, I think it's going quite well (certainly compared to a few months ago when we didn't really have a methodology). Our team, however, is directed to do work defined by project managers (not software project managers, just general business), and they're using the PMBOK methodology. Question is, how does a traditional methodology like PMBOK, Prince2 etc fit with a lean software development methodology like kanban or scrum? Is it just wasting everyone's time as all the requirements are effectively drawn up to start with (although inevitably changed along the way)?"}
{"_id": "245855", "title": "Save database changes in service layer or controller mvc .net", "text": "I have recently been using a service layer to abstract away alot of the business logic of my application. However I've come into an issue where I'm not sure what is best practice on doing the actual persist of any changes I may make to my models. 1) Is it best to implement a SaveChanges() on my Service layer and so inject the IUnitOfWork into each one I use.                   public class BaseService : IService         {            private readonly IUnitOfWork _unitOfWork;                 protected BaseService(IUnitOfWork unitOfWork)            {               _unitOfWork = unitOfWork;            }                 public void SaveChanges()             {                 _dbContext.SaveChanges();            }         }      Hence my controllers would only ever be injected with my various services and I would call SaveChanges on these. 2) Or, is it best to let my controller, or service user contain the IUnitOfWork reference and let it call the save directly.                   public class MyController         {            private readonly IUnitOfWork _unitOfWork;            private readonly IMyService _myService;                 protected MyController(               IUnitOfWork unitOfWork,               IMyService myService)            {               _unitOfWork = unitOfWork;               _myService = myService;            }                 public void MyAction()             {               // do stuff with service layer                    _unitOfWork.SaveChanges();            }          }      **Note** : I would use a DI framework like Autofac, Ninject, Unity etc to manage the UnitOfWork creation via a InstancePerHttpRequest lifetime. 3) Or could I leverage action filters and persist the changes on ActionExecuted.                   public class UnitOfWorkActionAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute         {             public IUnitOfWork UnitOfWork { get; set; }                  public override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)             {                 UnitOfWork.SaveChangesAsync().WaitAndUnwrapException();             }         }"}
{"_id": "245857", "title": "Measuring performance of a network simulator?", "text": "I have written a python program to test a new network routing algorithm, that uses a Content Centric Network Approach for handling requests (CCN), where the CCN router keeps 3 data structures:   * A PIT or Pending Interest Table, that holds requests for which a router has not yet received a response.    * A FIB or Forwarding Interest Base, which maps requests to the next router to which the request can be forwarded.    * A Content store to which the router can cache content from previous requests. The Simulator is simple: \\- It follows the Event-Based design where 'Dummy Packets' are sent from server object to other server objects containing data of what content is being requested and the destination of where the content object is. **Specifically** , how could I design my simulator or tests to get a birds eye view of how my new algorithm matches up against standard IP routing? My hunch is that I will need to test speed, which I believe can be done by timing the round trip time for a request. But I don't know how I would test other aspects of this algorithm. I have little to no networking experience so any advice or direction is appreciated."}
{"_id": "245850", "title": "API providing function to be run in a thread vs. thread that runs this function", "text": "I'm writing a Python library which exposes a certain event listener interface. The user can register callbacks to handle different types of events. There is also a function which handles the actual events. This function does something like this:               def get_event():         while(1):             event = wait_for_event() # blocking call             process_event(event)      This function is meant to be run in its own thread. So really, the way to use it is               def start_listening():         thread = threading.Thread(target=get_event)         thread.start()      For simplicity I'm ignoring locking mechanisms and such. In the module API, I can either expose `get_event` or `start_listening`. What are the pros and cons of doing one versus the other? Is there a \"pythonic\" way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "245853", "title": "Is it bad to use the same class or idiom names as in a third-party API that you're using?", "text": "FlashPunk is a third-party graphics API for simple game development in AS3, and they take what are effectively sprites or display objects of some sort and refer to them as \"Entities\". `Entity` is the actual class name, and it's the predominant class to use to animate something such as a character moving on the screen. There's a bit of a convention right now in which you refer to things like barriers, enemies, characters, etc. as \"entities\". So that being said, if you're using FlashPunk for your graphics, is it bad to create a base class to represent such things and name it `Entity` as well? (In particular, does this violate a widely-held coding convention?) Obviously it would be in a different package, and most people would probably separate the graphics from the game's actual state, so there's not a lot of overlap there. It's just using the same title. What about scenarios like this in general with programming? _Is there a particular convention?_"}
{"_id": "245973", "title": "Implement RPC via SIP", "text": "Look at the following use case. I have a client (Java) application, which wants to get/set the state of another, remote application (C). The communication between them is done via SIP, which is run in another thread. The SIP interface can do the following: sendMessage onRequest I have two ideas for the architecture: **RPC (JSON-RPC)** Define a class which does the marshalling/unmarshalling for JSONRPCRequests and JSONRPCResponse (http://software.dzhuvinov.com/json-rpc-2.0-base.html) Define a Invoker class, which has something like a **call(server, name, arguments)** method. In the Invoker class, the name and arguments are put into a JSONRPCRequest and sent via the SIP layer sendMessage Now comes my problem. How do i actually get the right back to the caller? The control flow is now: The onRequest method is called, but I do now know whether it is the answer to my previous call. What i do is putting all responses reaching my server into a Map, and just poll that list in the Invoker. A rough sketch might be; **Invoker (provides API to client)**               class Invoker {              private Channel channel;              public Invoker(Channel channel) { this.channel = channel; }              public Object call(String server, String name, Object .. args) {             JSONRPCRequest req = ...;             channel.sendMessage(server, req.toString());             while( ! channel.hasResponse(req.id()) {                 Thread.sleep(42);             }             return channel.getResponse(req.id()).result();                 }          }      **Channel (interface to messenger):**               class Channel {              private Map<Object, JSONRPCResponse> responses = new //;              private Sip sip = new Sip() {             public void onRequest(String msg) {                 JSONRPCResponse response = JSONRPCResponse.parse(msg);                 responses.put(msg.id(), response);             }         };              public void sendMessage(String server, String message) {             sip.sendMessage();         }              public boolean hasResponse onRequest(Object id) {             responses.hasKey(id);         }              public JSONRPCResponse getResponse(Object id) {             responses.get(id);             responses.delete(id);         }          }      **SIP (messenger itself):**               abstract class Sip {              public void sendMessage(String msg) {             // SIP magic         }              public abstract void onRequest(String msg);         }      Is there a better way to do that? My biggest problems/code smells are:   * the blocking in Invoker    * the protocol is in Invoker, maybe I want to switch marshalling to something else   * the map as mean to get the correct response for a request   * the SIP abstract method looks strange   * No error handling   * No timeout **Message Passing** Is there an easy way to get rid of RPC, and implement something like RPC with just message passing? Any hints for pattern are welcome. I do not need the code itself, I am totally fine with just architecture. I tried to google for message passing implementations, and how they actually change state with it, but I did not find anything useful. How to implement timeout/ error handling? Any good books/literature on that topic is also welcome, as I never programmed such distributed stuff. Any other ideas on which protocol to use inside SIP to change state is welcome, too, as RPC was my initial thought, and I did not find anything other useful. The code will not compile, I guess, it was just to visualize my idea."}
{"_id": "188154", "title": "JavaScript...what to unit test", "text": "I would like to hear other people's opinion on what to unit test in JavaScript. I've been thinking about it and experimenting and let me present what seems to me the right thing. First of all, in order to be able to unit test your production code you need to divide the productin code into three layers: (1) DOM/jQuery, (2) Logic, and (3) AJAX. Refer to the attached image. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XkqwX.png) The Logic layer sits between the DOM/jQuery layer and the AJAX layer, that is, the DOM/jQuery layer is not tied to the AJAX layer. So, in my opinion the only layer that should be unit tested is the Logic. Writing unit tests should be easy, otherwise programmers will not write them. What is the use of writing unit tests for the DOM/jQuery layer - ok, you've added an li element to an ul element, why do I need to assert that, there should be no if statements there. About the AJAX layer, what's there to assert...the URL that was used was \"blah\", I know it was \"blah\". Whatever the data that was obtained in the AJAX layer should be given to the Logic layer. Now, the Logic layer is a different story, for example, in a unit test it can be given data that suppossedly came from an AJAX call, and use a mock DOM/jQuery layer to verify that the data was displayed correctly. Let me know what you think."}
{"_id": "154138", "title": "Where should libraries be placed, in windows?", "text": "I have just moved from Linux to Windows, and I have to use the Zend Framework library. Where should the library be placed?   * Directly on C drive   * Create a lib folder like C:/lib/    * Create a lib folder in my user folder I am wondering if there is a classic folder where these kind of libraries are placed. **Update** :I am asking about the location on my own standpoint. The Zend Framework library is a PHP framework."}
{"_id": "120178", "title": "What's the difference between MariaDB and MySQL?", "text": "What's the difference between MariaDB and MySQL? I'm not very familiar with both. I'm primarily a front end developer for the most part. Are they syntactically similar? Where do these two query languages differ? Wikipedia only mentions the difference between licensing: > MariaDB is a community-developed branch of the MySQL database, the impetus > being the community maintenance of its free status under GPL, as opposed to > any uncertainty of MySQL license status under its current ownership by > Oracle."}
{"_id": "181933", "title": "Open sourcing an internal project that has confidential information in the old revisions.", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to open-source a project whose git repository has copyrighted media in > the history? Our company has spent a year working on an internal web application and has decided to open source the project and host on github. The application was originally versioned with Bazaar and we are going to preserve the commit history when converting it to git. There is some confidential information within the commit history, such as internal database information. **Question:**   Is there a way to preserve the commit history while removing or hiding all traces of confidential information? The big reason being that we have had employees that have worked on the project that have moved on to ~~higher-paying~~ other jobs and we want to maintain recognition of their hard work."}
{"_id": "81140", "title": "Best practice for organizing third-party integration code in ruby", "text": "I have a rails app. I'm writing code to integrate it with a third-party service, \"Foo Bar\". The integration affects many parts of the system -- models, controllers, and an API wrapper. Thus far I've been putting the integration stuff into the modules of each model and controller. So inside **app/models/user/foo_bar.rb** is `User::FooBar`, which I then include into my user model. I have the API wrapper inside **lib/foo_bar_api.rb**. It occurred to me today that perhaps I should have all my integration code in **lib**. So **lib/foo_bar/user.rb** would contain `FooBar::User`, which I then include in my user model. Is there a particularly standard way of doing this, or is it 6 of one, half- dozen of another? (p.s., this is my first programmers.stackexchange.com question -- it's appropriate for here, right?)"}
{"_id": "100044", "title": "Basic Database Relationship Advice?", "text": "I am finding it difficult to get together in a single place the different types of relationships used for different things and would like to find out which I have correct and incorrect and the proper \"technical\" terms for the different types of relationships. An example:               In database we have:     One to One     One to Many     Many to Many      I beleive (although I may be wrong hense the question) that these types of relationships are collectively termed \"Multiplicity\" relationships. Is this correct, and if so, are there other names for it.               In programming we have:     Ihneritance     Encapulslation     Polymorphism      I beleive (and may be very wrong here) that these are different types of \"Compound\" relationships. If they are all the same type of compound relationship then is there other names for it. If they are different, how are they named. I would also like to know if there are other relationship types in general database / programming world that would be used to some degree without going into obscurity like some sort of unused sci-fi \"molocular mumbo jumbo bumbo\" relationship. Just keeping to what would be generally useful in the real world. I think I have a good understanding of the different relationship types, its more the terms used to describe them, and comming up with a brief 2 or 3 line description that really sums it up (assuming someone has allready got a fair understaiding). Knowing the technical terms properly and clearly will help me should I need to advise others on what to look for elsewhere. Can anyone offer suggestions on this for me without getting overly technical. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "100047", "title": "Why (not) segmentation?", "text": "I am studying operating systems and the x86 architecture, and while I was reading about segmentation and paging I naturally was curious how modern OSes handle memory management. From what I found Linux and most other operating systems essentially shun segmentation in favor of paging. A few of the reasons for this that I found were simplicity and portability. What practical uses are there for segmentation (x86 or otherwise) and will we ever see robust operating systems using it or will they continue to favor a paging based system. Now I know this is a loaded question but I am curious how segmentation would be handled with newly developed operating systems. Does it make so much sense to favor paging that no one will consider a more 'segmented' approach? If so, why? * * * And when I say 'shun' segmentation I am implying that Linux only uses it as far as it has to. Only 4 segments for user and kernel code/data segments. While reading the Intel documentation I just got the feeling that segmentation was designed with more robust solutions in mind. Then again I was told on many occasions how over complicated the x86 can be. * * * I found this interesting anecdote after being linked to Linux Torvald's original 'announcement' for Linux. He said this a few posts later: > Simply, I'd say that porting is impossible. It's mostly in C, but most > people wouldn't call what I write C. It uses every conceivable feature of > the 386 I could find, as it was also a project to teach me about the 386\\. > As already mentioned, it uses a MMU, for both paging (not to disk yet) and > segmentation. It's the segmentation that makes it REALLY 386 dependent > (every task has a 64Mb segment for code & data - max 64 tasks in 4Gb. > Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies). I guess my own experimentation with x86 led me to ask this question. Linus didn't have StackOverflow, so he just implemented it to try it out."}
{"_id": "215373", "title": "where do you track team Decisions", "text": "I have been on many development teams and as the team matures decisions about direction are made. These decisions often come back up over and over. Like why don't we fill in this field why didn't we use memcache over a custom solutions. These decisions add up over time and become a significant part of style guides coding standards and unit tests. My question is I have never run into a good way of tracking these decisions or the discovery that went into making them. Does anyone have a best practice."}
{"_id": "111302", "title": "What technology is used to build \"Visual Studio 11\"?", "text": "A preview of the new \"Visual Studio 11\" was recently shown at Microsoft's BUILD conference. Out of interest, what technology is being used to create it? I assume it's not WinRT (which I've been led to believe is only for Metro style apps in the new Windows 8 touch-first environment) Is it still using WPF (like 2010)? Is it built on .NET 4.5? Are there any new technologies going into it? Do we know?"}
{"_id": "236688", "title": "Ensuring non conflicting components in a modular system", "text": "So lets say we are creating a simple \"modular system\" framework. The bare bones might be the user management. But we want things like the Page Manager, the Blog, the Image Gallery to all be \"optional\" components. So a developer could install the Page Manager to allow their client to add a static home page and about page with content they can easily edit with a wysiwyg editor. The developer could then also install the Blog component to allow the client to add blog entries. The developer could then also install the Gallery component to allow the client to show off a bunch of images. The thing is, all these components are designed to be independent, so how do we go about ensuring they don't clash? E.g. ensuring the client doesn't create a /gallery page with the Page Manager and then wonder why the gallery stopped working, or the same issue with the Blog component, assuming we allow the users to customize the URL structure of the blog (because remember, the Page Manager doesn't necessarily have to be there, so we might not wan't our blog posts to be Date/Title formatted), likewise our clients aren't always going to be happy to have their pages under pages/title formatting. My core question here is, when building a modular system how to we ensure that the modules don't conflict without restricting functionality? Do we just leave it up to the clients/developer using the modules to ensure they get setup in a way that does not conflict?"}
{"_id": "219802", "title": "How do you identify a problem as being suitable for dynamic programming?", "text": "I have been reading up on dynamic programming lately. Would like to hear from someone who started from scratch and now is pretty good at identifying and solving DP problems. I am struggling in identifying these problems as DP and framing a concise solution. I have gone through most of the beginner DP problems and MIT resources etc"}
{"_id": "221081", "title": "Unit test DAO code using SQL Lite when the application database is Oracle", "text": "We have an application with Oracle backend. The DAO layer is written in C# and uses nHibernet to perform the data operations. To unit test our DAO code, we use SQL Lite which creates the database based on our existing mapping in the project. Some of our nHibernate queries that go to oracle use (+) for outer joins. Now SQL Lite doesn't understand (+). There can be some more syntax from Oracle that SQL Lite doesn't understand. How do we fix problems like these? What are the other database systems that can be used for unit testing the application code."}
{"_id": "236686", "title": "Using a closure to avoid code duplication in Python", "text": "Sometimes I find myself wanting to run the same code from a few different spots in the same function. Say I have some function func1, and I want to do the same thing from a few different spots in func1. Normally the way to do this would be to write another function, call it \"func2\", and call func2 from several different places in func1. But what about when it's convenient to have func2 access variables that are local to func1? I find myself writing a closure. Here's a contrived example:               import random     import string          def func1 (param1, param2):         def func2(foo, bar):             print \"{0} {1} {2:0.2f} {3} {4} {0}\".format('*'*a, b, c, foo, bar)              a = random.randrange(10)         b = ''.join(random.choice(string.letters) for i in xrange(10))         c = random.gauss(0, 1)         if param1:             func2(a*c, param1)         else:             if param2 > 0:                 func2(param2, param2)      Is this the Pythonic way to handle this problem? A closure feels like pretty heavy machinery to be rolling out here, especially given that I have to construct a new function every time func1 is called, even though that function is going to be basically the same every time. But it does avoid the duplicated code and in practice the overhead of repeatedly creating func2 doesn't matter to me."}
{"_id": "219805", "title": "What do I benchmark before updating a web site?", "text": "I am volunteering my time to update a website for a local business. The current website they have is not up to date and it fails quite a few \"web tests\". For example, the pages are too large, the images are not compressed, and the site is not mobile friendly. All of these things are measurable - eg. the time taken to load (in seconds), bandwidth (in kb), and a list of the devices the site displays correctly on. It is my intention to note these benchmarks before starting the project, and upon completion. My question is: what benchmarks do web developers present to their clients?"}
{"_id": "255388", "title": "Help me with random access file without using a database in vb6.0", "text": "I'm an IT student and we have to make a project about random access file without using a database, using only text files. So I was wondering if anybody here that could help me with it. I want to have an example so I can study it. A simple random access file program will do. An example of it is a phonebook in which you can save a name and a phonenumber. And you can edit it and delete. And also search names or phonenumbers and also can browse all the files randomly. If you know how it's done or if you have any samples that I can study, please answer. Your help is really appreciated. And I'll give you credits if I make my program. I'll thank you in advance...."}
{"_id": "162375", "title": "Software developer interview questions: is speed everything?", "text": "Maybe I'm just less smart than other people but for once I'd like to say that all the puzzles, riddles, code questions and code-on-paper exercises seem just a bit hard to me. I've always thought of myself as a above-average smart guy, but in an interview when they ask me to solve something or write code on paper in order to ask something, I think I'm just not suited to that. Maybe I'm not as productive as someone who is totally reactive and a fast- thinker, but I repute myself a creative thinker, someone who is able to solve every problem if he's given enough time (which is not EONS, just some time more than a fast'n'furious minded applicant). In my opinion is not guaranteed that a fast thinker is smarter than a less-fast thinker (not slow, just LESS fast). Is speed everything in face-to-face-with-paper interviews?"}
{"_id": "111306", "title": "Obtaining the best of both worlds: MVC and WebForms", "text": "Rather than asking a general question about WebForms vs MVC (such as in ASP.NET v/s ASP.NET MVC), I have a specific quesiton. It appears the main differences between the two approaches are   1. WebForms is Event Driven and uses pre built components   2. MVC has a built in layer that WebForms does not: the Model   3. MVC has the Controllers in a separate folder than the Views while the WebForms Controller is the CodeBehind One could easily add a folder to a WebForm project called \"Model\" that stores all the business logic which used in the Code Behind (decoupling the two). The main argument against WebForms is that it's \"easy\" to write business logic in the CodeBehind. But you could easily add business logic in your MVC controller completely violating the separation of concerns. Now for the question: Isn't it the case that you could write a WebForms project in such a way that the business logic is separate from the Controller/Code Behind which would have all the benefits of MVC (separation of concerns) while keeping the benefits of WebForms: rich controls, Event driven (if you like events)?"}
{"_id": "233950", "title": "Can someone explain the behind-the-scenes process of connecting an app account to a Facebook account?", "text": "I am developing an app that will use the Twitter and Facebook login APIs exclusively. Suppose a new user downloads the apps and is presented with the option to log in through Facebook or Twitter. The user chooses Facebook. I think the procedure at this point is to a) create an auto-generated user ID in my Users table   b) store the Facebook credentials against the auto-generated user ID I am confused about part b. Does Facebook return a unique ID when their API is called that I can store against my user ID or is there some alternate process? In other words, what exactly does it mean to store the Facebook credentials?"}
{"_id": "184902", "title": "Are security exploits a fatality?", "text": "_I'm asking this here and not on the security related site because this one is a question about \"software architecture\" and \"development methodologies\", which are both covered by the FAQ._ **EDIT** : I'm talking about purely remote root / admin software exploits. Not about insider physically breaking into labs / companies / houses / networks / machines. Everytime there's a blog entry or article about a new security exploit there are lots and lots of people basically writing that: _\"No software shall ever be secure, every single software out there can be exploited. Give any pirate sufficient time and he'll eventually exploit any high-target software.\"_ This is a constant. These type of comments always get modded like crazy and most people seems to accept it as a fact. And it really gets me wondering: can any software architecture and development methodologies be used to ever come up with secure software or is there something technical that prevents us from writing secure systems/programs/OSes/servers? The more I think about it, the more I don't understand why we couldn't, technically, build 100% secure software. All the way down from the OS and then up: browsers, plugins... Note that I'm not interested in a discussion here: I want to know if technically there is something or not that can prevent, say, an OS, to be written in a 100% secure way and why it's that way. Now if there's nothing technically that prevents us from writing a 100% secure OS and from then writing a 100% secure server, why hasn't it been done? Does it means our architecture and development methodologies (and tools?) are deeply flawed?"}
{"_id": "236431", "title": "CUDA Loop Question - Worthy of Unwinding?", "text": "It's a known fact that branching is bad for CUDA. The question I have is a little more specific. I have a (static) loop. Static here means that it follows the exact same path every time, and executes the same number of times. Inside the loop are branches, but in a given iteration, the same branch is followed every time. So, if we unwind/unroll this loop, and flatten out obvious branches, it will be plain-old sequential code. Is it worth it to unwind this loop for execution on a CUDA device, or will branch prediction work well enough and execute only one branch per thread? Because otherwise, there are about 34 paths through the code that can be taken, and I'm trying to avoid each thread taking each path. Example loop:               for (int i = 0; i < 33; i++)     {         if (i % 3 == 0)             ...         if (i % 3 == 1)             ...         if (i % 3 == 2)             ...     }"}
{"_id": "162145", "title": "Story points for bug fixing tasks: Is it suitable for Scrum?", "text": "I'm just wondering if we should assign story points to bug fixing tasks or not. JIRA, our issues-tracking software, does not have story point field for _Bug_ type issues (it's only for _Story_ s and _Epic_ s). Should we add the _Bug_ issue type to the applicable issue types of the _Story Points_ field? What are the pros and cons? Would it be suitable for Scrum?"}
{"_id": "90456", "title": "Why don't relational databases support returning information in a nested format?", "text": "Suppose I'm building a blog that I want to have posts and comments. So I create two tables, a 'posts' table with an autoincrementing integer 'id' column, and a 'comments' table that has a foreign key 'post_id'. Then I want to run what will probably be my most common query, which is to retrieve a post and all of its comments. Being rather new to relational databases, the approach that appears most obvious to me is to write a query that would look something like:               SELECT id, content, (SELECT * FROM comments WHERE post_id = 7) AS comments     FROM posts     WHERE id = 7      Which would give me the id and content of the post that I want, along with all the relevant comment rows packaged neatly in an array (a nested representation like you'd use in JSON). Of course, SQL and relational databases don't work like this, and the closest they can get is to do a join between 'posts' and 'comments' that will return a lot of unnecessary duplication of data (with the same post information repeated in every row), which means processing time is spent both on the database to put it all together and on my ORM to parse and undo it all. Even if I instruct my ORM to eagerly load the post's comments, the best it'll do is to dispatch one query for the post, and then a second query to retrieve all of the comments, and then put them together client-side, which is also inefficient. I understand that relational databases are proven technology (hell, they're older than I am), and that there's been a ton of research put into them over the decades, and I'm sure there's a really good reason why they (and the SQL standard) are designed to function the way they do, but I'm not sure why the approach I outlined above isn't possible. It seems to me to be the most simple and obvious way to implement one of the most basic relationships between records. Why don't relational databases offer something like this? (Disclaimer: I mostly write webapps using Rails and NoSQL datastores, but recently I've been trying out Postgres, and I actually like it a lot. I don't mean to attack relational databases, I'm just perplexed.) **EDIT:** Since a few people seem to be confused, I'm not asking how to optimize a Rails app, or how to hack my way around this problem in a particular database. I'm asking why the SQL standard works this way when it seems counterintuitive and wasteful to me. There must be some historical reason why the original designers of SQL wanted their results to look like this. I also think that the people saying \"just run two queries\" are missing the point too - I may not know the post's id when I'm making a query. I may not have to eager load one relationship, but dozens. I used a concrete example not because it's a particular problem I'm trying to solve, but because it illustrates my point. For the people below who say that it's not the database's job to return data ready for display, it seems to me that joins and database views perform basically the same functionality - they make the denormalized data in your db easier to put together and use (not necessarily display, but use). I think that what I proposed above is basically equivalent to a join, just simpler for the developer to parse and make use of."}
{"_id": "160201", "title": "WPF, MVVM, EF, POCO guidance required on simple architecture", "text": "(sorry for my poor english) I am developing a application using WPF, EF Code First using MVVM (Caliburn.Micro). It should be used mostly to CRUD work. I created a `BaseViewModel<T>` class from wich all other ViewModels inherit and exposed a `T Selected` property to bind to the View. I know it is not recomended to expose a Model to the View but it just make things simple to get the app running. Problem is I do not want to pollute my Models (EF POCO classes) with `INotifyPropertyChanged`, `IDataErrorInfo`, `IEditableObject`, etc... So, there is something that I can do here or do I have to really duplicate all Model properties to the ViewModel and give up trying to bind the model directly? I would like to use the attribute validation too, since all models have them already. I used this approach on the past with Silverlight/RIA but in this case RIA Services generated the classes for me, with all the plumbing code. I can get the validation errros using Validator class but I also need to indicate the component that has the error no the UI and I think I need to implement `IDataErrorInfo` on my model for this to happen, right? For `INotifyPropertyChanged` I can use something like NotifyPropertyWeaver but my problem is `IEditableObject` and something to be able to use the attribute validation. It would be nice something like `MagicBusinessBaseClassThatImplementAllThoseInterfaces<Model>` to encapsulate the model so I can just bind it and move on. I know I can make this work implementing manually the interfaces on each VM - but just think on all the \"duplicated\" code make me cringe :( How WPF developers are doing those kind of things today? There some secret ninja technique that I am not aware of?"}
{"_id": "160200", "title": "Best way to approach a partner business to understand the need for B2B web-services", "text": "We currently work with a company that has a fairly simplistic web system for processing warranty information. The only way to get data out of it is through excel exporting. Compilation of this data and correlation with our systems has to be manual and makes us be reactive in our response. The ideal situation would be setting up a web service on their side and automatically mash it up with our data so that we can have good and timely information without human overhead or the weekly bottleneck. However, when we mentioned this same argument to them, their IT department creeped out from us wanting to access their systems \"directly\", since they have other information for other vendors which are our competition. **In other words, they seem to think it is something weird and insecure**. My question is: how would you make them understand the need to modernize their systems?, have you had any experience convincing the company you want the web- service from?, and, would you go convince them yourselves as a company with the need, or hire a consultant to assess this and speak with them instead? Edit: We supply custom made electronic devices for our clients which then sell it to end users. End users deal with our clients and, depending on the case, then the client deals with us if they require software/hardware fixes for the next revision."}
{"_id": "200002", "title": "Semantic versioning for desktop applications", "text": "I can easily follow the Semantic Versioning recommendations if I develop a library or API, but what if the developed product is a website or a desktop application? When would you increment a `major` component in that case? In case of a complete UI redesign? Or something else? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "226427", "title": "How important is an SSL certificate for a internal website?", "text": "I know many people have asked the same question but I think it really depends on the type of the website. So that's why I am asking the question about my website. I am developing a PHP web application for an insurance company. the application contains all information about the customers but this app is only used by the admins and salesman of the company. The admin creates a user then that user can add customers or renew their insurance. the address will be something like example.com/manage/ and the login is only for the users that admin person has created. Of course I will be using validation, salt, encryption, etc. But do I need SSL certificate?"}
{"_id": "190364", "title": "What can Go chan do that a list cannot?", "text": "I want to know in which situation Go chan makes code much simpler than using list or queue or array that is usually available in all languages. As it was stated by Rob Pike in one of his speeches about Go lexer, Go channels help to organize data flow between structures that are not homomorphic. I am interested in a simple Go code sample with chan that becomes MUCH more complicated in another language (for example C#) where chan is not available. I am not interested in samples that use chan just to increase performance by avoiding waiting of data between generating list and consuming the list (which can be solved by chunking) or as a way to organize thread safe queue or thread-safe communication (which can be easily solved by locking primitives). I am interested in a sample that makes code simpler structurally disregarding size of data. If such sample does not exist then sample where size of data matters. I guess desired sample would contain bi-directional communication between generator and consumer. Also if someone could add tag [channel] to the list of available tags, that would be great."}
{"_id": "135427", "title": "Which one of these implementations is more appropriate for my REST api?", "text": "### Background So I have a REST API that allows for client applications to access and manipulate users' data. I'm in the process of writing an Objective-C class for simple utilization of this REST API, but I'm stuck between two methods of implementation. ### Method 1               class MYClient         string username         string password         methods for using GET, PUT, POST, DELETE on questions         // questions are dictionaries with 'title' and 'body' strings      ### Method 2               class MYUser         string username         string password         array  tokens     class MYToken         string title         string body          // classes inherently sync themselves to the server in their initializers, setters, and getters      ### Questions   * Is there one that is more appropriate for use in (for example) iOS apps?   * Is there one that is more appropriate in general?   * What are the distinct benefits of Method 1 over Method 2 and vice versa?"}
{"_id": "249488", "title": "Ways to modularize blocks of code in ASP Classic", "text": "I have one huge file.asp with all my reports. I have modularized the page using querystring, so this creates a lot of \"virtual pages\" with Report #1, Report #2, and so on. I have some blocks of code I use more than once in the page. Actually I am repeating the code, but I already started to use Function to, for example format the date. But the block of codes are like panels with some selects in databases, tables, and so on... I mean, one panel can have more than 200 lines of code. I would like to create some kind of function to reuse the code, instead of replicate it everytime. With classic asp, how many options I have? One that I have discarted is create one asp file per panel and in a master file include the panel where is necessary. I am really out of this approach. Is the Function the best approach?"}
{"_id": "135423", "title": "Best practice/Patterns for two way data synchronisation", "text": "Quite often in my work the idea of 2-way data synchronisation between database systems crops up. The classic example is two slightly different CRM systems (say, Raiser's Edge and Salesforce) and the need to have a two-way sync of Contact data between them. API considerations aside, assuming you have a shared key to sync on, and purely thinking of the algorithm/pattern to be employed, this is a task that is often underestimated by non-techies. For example, you have to watch out for:   * Can you easily detect which records have changed in both systems (or will you have to compare all records between the systems to detect changes)   * If you're going for a once-every-N-hours sync, how to deal with conflicts where the same record changes at more-or-less the same time in both systems   * If you're going for a real-time sync (ie an update in one system immediately triggers an update to the other system) how to handle divergence over time due to bugs or system crashes Personally I can think of ways to tackle all this but I'm wondering if there are any well known patterns, literature or best practices that I could refer to."}
{"_id": "135421", "title": "Learning Zend Framework 1 or 2?", "text": "I have programmed for a few years in php and now I'm going to learn zend framwork. Zend is very popular and there are a lot of tutorials, books and documentation out there. But I saw in the last months that there is a second version of Zend, but it's not so used and popular, not yet. I think it is better to start with a new version, but I don't know what to do now, as when I see job offers many people require the first version. Which version do you suggest me?"}
{"_id": "158745", "title": "What was the first server-side language", "text": "I was thinking about different server-side languages and this question immediately cropped up in my mind. What was the first server-side programming language using which websites were being created? Was it java or some other language? Note: I think some languages became prime server-side because they provided or rather aimed to provide better tools and libraries for easy development. I agree Java was not primarly server-side but it provided better tools and hence was and is used a lot."}
{"_id": "158744", "title": "How do I assess tradeoff between robustness and \"lazy\" code in API design?", "text": "Postel's law: > Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. \"Lazy\" code (per The Pragmatic Programmer): > Be strict in what you will accept before you begin, and promise as little as > possible in return. I'm developing a finance (asset pricing, etc.) framework for Python. Question: when designing the API for the framework, what factors should I consider when I assess the tradeoff between being strict and being liberal re: inputs? Example: I have the following method that downloads stock prices from Yahoo.               def historical_prices(ticker, start=None, end=None, data='d', convert=True):     # Do stuff      For the date arguments (`start` & `end`), I could:   * Be strict, and only allow a string of ISO format YYYY-mm-dd, or   * Be liberal and accept datetime objects, strings (of specified formats), etc."}
{"_id": "244723", "title": "Can I save & store a user's submission in a way that proves that the data has not been altered, and that the timestamp is accurate?", "text": "There are many situations where the validity of the timestamp attached to a certain post (submission of information) might be invaluable for the post owner's legal usage. I'm not looking for a service to achieve this, as requested in this great question, but rather a method for the achievement of such a service. For the legal (in most any law system) authentication of text content and its submission time, the owner of the content would need to prove:   * that the timestamp itself has not been altered and was accurate to begin with.   * that the text content linked to the timestamp had not been altered I'd like to know how to achieve this via programming (not a language-specific solution, but rather the methodology behind the solution). * * *   1. **Can a timestamp be validated to being accurate to the time that the content was really submitted?**   2. **Can data be stored in a form that it can be read, but not written to, in a proven way?** In other words, can I save & store a user's submission in a way that proves that the data has not been altered, and that the timestamp is accurate? I can't think of any programming method that would make this possible, but I am not the most experienced programmer out there. Based on MidnightLightning's answer to the question I cited, this sort of thing is being done. * * * **Clarification:** I'm looking for a method (hashing, encryption, etc) that would allow an average guy like me to achieve the desired effect through programming. I'm interested in this subject for the purpose of Defensive Publication. I'd like to learn a method that allows an every-day programmer to pick up his computer, write a program, pass information through it, and say: > I created this text at this moment in time, and I can prove it. This means the information should be protected from the programmer who writes the code as well. Perhaps a 3rd party API would be required. I'm ok with that."}
{"_id": "13310", "title": "Getting unicode characters in gVim on Windows", "text": "What I'm trying to do? I'm using gVim on Windows, and am trying to get something that looks like this. ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IqEuN.png) See the indent lines and tab characters? _(check out the link for the big picture if this one is too small)_ I tried a lot of things already, some of them having to do with fonts, some of them having to do with encodings, some of them having to do (it seems) with the current air pressure, and wind speed. But none of them worked."}
{"_id": "152477", "title": "What is the meaning of the sentence \"we wanted it to be compiled so it\u2019s not burning CPU doing the wrong stuff.\"", "text": "I was reading this article. It has the following paragraph. > And did Scala turn out to be fast? Well, what\u2019s your definition of fast? > About as fast as Java. It doesn\u2019t have to be as fast as C or Assembly. > Python is not significantly faster than Ruby. We wanted to do more with > fewer machines, taking better advantage of concurrency; we wanted it to be > compiled so it\u2019s not burning CPU doing the wrong stuff. I am looking for the meaning of the last sentence. How will interpreted language make the CPU do \"wrong\" stuff ?"}
{"_id": "53769", "title": "What is an exit option in an IT career", "text": "In management consulting, iBanking...there is a popular term called Exit option. What exactly does this refer to in layman's terms?   Also in an IT career, is the term relevant? For a programmer/ project manager for example?"}
{"_id": "101315", "title": "Which Linux distro to pick for volunteering?", "text": "The number of Linux distributions is large. Someone wanting to volunteer with one of them might have a hard time picking between them, because it's hard to sense the culture, environment, and level of community and esprit de corp. Also, some might be very strict with long processes before you are trusted, or else much looser with a smaller community with more trust. It's hard to tell where to look for information. Maybe one is in great need, and others are well-established with less need. How would I find out who is in greatest need? Joining a Linux distribution's team of writers, developers, testers, coordinators, and administrators is a big decision. This is an extremely sensitive question, and I hope nobody is slighted by either the question or responses."}
{"_id": "152470", "title": "How to convert an html page to pdf using javascript?", "text": "I am developing a project, In that I have a receipt page (this is the html page that I want to convert it into pdf) and I've to print it. While printing that page alignments are not coming properly. If I convert it into pdf, then pdf only will take care of that alignments thus my work will become easy and effective. I was restricted to use either JavaScript or js libraries only to complete this task. Could any of you please help me?"}
{"_id": "53761", "title": "What is the smallest snippet of code that can be copyrighted?", "text": "Obviously something as simple as `int i = 0;` or `for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)` can't be copyrighted, but an entire function could be. Where is the line between copyrightable and uncopyrightable?"}
{"_id": "10757", "title": "Is an architecture description document a violation of the DRY Principle?", "text": "The DRY Principle (Don't Repeat Yourself) states that \"every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.\" Most of the time this refers to code, but it is often extended to documentation also. It is said that every software system has an architecture whether you chose it or not. In other words, the software you build has a structure and that \"as built\" structure is the architecture of the software. **Since a built software system comes with an architecture, is creating an architecture description of that system a violation of the DRY Principle?** After all, if you need to know the architecture then you could always just look at the code..."}
{"_id": "14839", "title": "New job and my boss is frequently absent", "text": "So I just started a new position at a great company that is pretty much a dream to work for. The only problem is that there's a steep learning curve for the type of data I will be working with, and my boss/training lead **is never there.** I think he is, after 10 years, experiencing burnout. He's here probably 3-10 hours out of the week, and even then its not a guarantee he's checked-in. I can still contribute in some fashion (I don't need training on programming, per say), but I'm two months in and I still don't feel comfortable in my position due to the lack of one on one time. I can contribute to some projects which I volunteer for, but they're a little outside the scope of my primary responsibilities. I'm worried that the higher ups might view me as slow to adjust. Any suggestions to change this situation? edit: So I took the suggestion in the multiple answers to schedule face time. I did, and it took us about 20 minutes to accomplish a task that should have taken about 5. The reason it took so long? **He was talking about his kid.** FML"}
{"_id": "48895", "title": "Improving exception handling?", "text": "I am a newbie programmer and I recently started learning about exception handling in Java. I know what try, catch and finally blocks do, but I really need to understand how to use them well and where to handle something in the call stack... I have a project right now that involves I/O and all I'm doing is handling the exception in the lowest possible method in the call stack. I'm sure my exception handling can be improved, so I'm asking you guys how you think of exception handling? How did you guys get good at this and how can I better wrap my head around this idea?"}
{"_id": "11802", "title": "GIT branch model for derivative work", "text": "I'm planning on using Vincent Driessen's branching model which I found great for my current development. I think Vincent approach is very general to any development project but I'm finding it difficult to handle the following scenario. I'm working on an application that will be branded to several customers, so each one of my bundles is a different branch that I `rebase` from `develop` branch each time a new build is going to be released. Each brand has its assets (images and text) and they do not conflict with changes in `develop` branch because in that branch I never touch the assets. My question is, now that I'm planning on using it, how can I handle different versions based on the same code base but with different assets?"}
{"_id": "112901", "title": "is c or c++ necessary for game programming?", "text": "Do you need to learn c or c++ for game programming? I am very good with java. Is it true that most game engines are in c or c++.should i learn c or c++ or start making games in java.Can you suggest some books to start with"}
{"_id": "112907", "title": "When the shell prints \"TBD: create a test thread to print info from the Test object\", what does the 'TBD' stand for?", "text": "I did this after 'make' for some C++ files, and then running one of them. Does anyone know what the significance of the acronym 'TBD' is?"}
{"_id": "112905", "title": "Is it bad practice to define/use \"Preset\" functions", "text": "Lets say I have an extremely robust and versatile function:   `void DoAnything(action, target, context)` In my program, 90% of the time I call this function, it's with the same parameters:   `DoAnything(eat, food, lunchtime);` Is it bad form for me to define a function such as:   `void EatLunch(){ DoAnything(eat, food, lunchtime); }` And call that instead?"}
{"_id": "58797", "title": "How did we get saddled with the (hierarchical) filesystem as the basic data structure?", "text": "I'm self-taught and I don't have a CS degree. The more I've been learning about data structure, the more I wonder, in this day and age, how are we still saddled with the filesystem, with directories and files, as the basic data storage structure on the OS? I understand the simplicity of it, but it seems nowadays that there could be more options available natively. As far as I'm aware, the only project to improve the basic functionality of the filesystem was ReiserFS, where you could tell what line of a file was changed by whom, and when. For instance, if I could have native tagging for files, where I could tag images, diagrams, word-processing documents, an entire code repository, all as belonging to a single project, that would really be helpful to me. Since I'm stuck in the filesystem paradigm, I know that I could put all those into a single folder/directory, but what if they already exist in disparate directories, and they need to stay there? I know there are programs out there that can do this, but why aren't they on the filesystem? Something that would be nice to have is some kind of relational feature in the filesystem, like you get with RDBMSes. I understand that that was supposed to be part of Vista/7, but that fell off the feature list too. Sure, any program can store a binary file and have any data structure it wants in it, by why couldn't the OS offer more complex ways of storing data, beyond the simple heirarchy of the filesystem?"}
{"_id": "124504", "title": "How to present my startup experience in my CV?", "text": "I started doing Android mobile development (with a partner) sometime ago. I do this in part time. I'm trying to find out how to display this information in my CV, since I believe it is relevant for the development jobs which I'm searching for (not only due to the Java/Android experience that I aquired but also in terms of showing some personality traits). I could place it in the \"Professional Experience\" section, but I fear that it could \"flaky\" (i.e. trying to pass a hobby around as real experience). Although it actually is real experience... Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. PS: I'm asking this because I did place it as a normal \"job\" entry in my CV (it contains a link for the startup's website which contains a description aboutthe product/app, and so on). Last week I had an interview and got questioned on it. Namely, the usage of the \"founder\" expression seamed to intrigue the HR lady. So I'm wondering if this may raise strange vibes or may look like I'm faking some experience."}
{"_id": "171066", "title": "Is it OK to push my code to GitHub while it is still in early development?", "text": "I have some projects that are in a very early development state. They are nowhere nearing completion but I do host them (as public repos) on GitHub because:   * I have multiple computers and I want access to my code everywhere   * I want a backup for my code   * I want it to be easy if someone wants to collaborate in some way   * I use GitHub Issues as a poor man's project management software Is it OK to publish a project on GitHub even when it is very early in the development? I am a bit concerned about someone to come by and say `OMG this is total BS, this code is so bad!` while looking at unpolished/still in development/not tested code. What are your practices when you start new public projects? Do you wait until you have something substantial to show or you create a bare repo directly on GitHub and start from there? I used `GitHub` throughout this post but this applies to every code hosting service out there."}
{"_id": "124500", "title": "Why isn't lazy evaluation used everywhere?", "text": "I've just learnt how lazy evaluation works and I was wondering: why isn't lazy evaluation applied in every software currently produced? Why still using eager evaluation?"}
{"_id": "106909", "title": "Saying \"no\" to people asking questions", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When do you not give help to less experienced programmers? Currently, I am finding a lot of my day is taken up by people asking domain knowledge/system questions. This impacts personal productivity. Should developers learn to say \"no\" more to ensure they get asked less questions and be more productive, or should the developers help each other out? Stuff does get documented, but it is often easier to ask a \"quick question\". How do you handle this sort of scenario?"}
{"_id": "175569", "title": "Software patterns for frameworks", "text": "I am currently doing some research about software patterns and about architectural patterns for frameworks specifically. Google is not really showing off for this topic, so I am curious which patterns would you consider specificially important for the architecture of frameworks? I am focusing on frameworks for web, mobile and desktop software, such as Rails, UIKit, etc."}
{"_id": "246763", "title": "Why does C# have much more features than Java?", "text": "Please note that this isn't meant to be a Java vs. C# argument. I'm a Java programmer with no C# experience, asking just out of curiosity. I did some reading on C#, and it seems it has much more features than Java. A number of examples:   * Type inference.   * `dynamic` keyword.   * Delegates.   * Optional parameters.   * Lambda and LINQ _(I actually have no idea what these are)._   * Properties. However Java doesn't really feature anything that C# doesn't have. My question is: why does C# have much more native features than Java? And why didn't Java add some of these throughout the years, for example Properties or type inference? Do the Java language designers take a more simplistic approach? What is the reason for this?"}
{"_id": "246762", "title": "Is there a real advantage to dynamic languages?", "text": "First I want to say Java is the only language I ever used, so please excuse my ignorance on this subject. Dynamically typed languages allow you to put any value in any variable. So for example you could write the following function (psuedocode):               void makeItBark(dog){         dog.bark();     }      And you can pass inside it whatever value. As long as the value has a `bark()` method, the code will run. Otherwise, a runtime exception or something similar is thrown. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about this). Seemingly, this gives you flexibility. However, I did some reading on dynamic languages, and what people say is that **when designing or writing code in a dynamic language, you think about types and take them into account, just as much as you would in a statically typed language.** So for example when writing the `makeItBark()` function, you intent for it to only accept 'things that can bark', and you still need to make sure you only pass these kinds of things into it. The only difference is that now the compiler won't tell you when you made a mistake. Sure, there is one advantage to this approach which is that in static languages, to achieve the 'this function accepts anything that can bark', you'd need to implement an explicit `Barker` interface. Still, this seems like a minor advantage. Am I missing something? What am I actually gaining by using a dynamically typed language?"}
{"_id": "85136", "title": "How secure is my private repository on bitbucket", "text": "Does anybody know how secure are my private repositories on bitbucket.org? Can I rely on that? I have some repositories and I only want them to be reachable only by me and two others."}
{"_id": "169782", "title": "Rapid prototyping and refactoring", "text": "Sometimes when I start a small project (like an android app), I don\u00b4t know which approach will work out at the end, and I just go for one approach and give it a try. But if I never used this approach before (for a sort of application I\u00b4ve never programmed before) it is like stepping into unknown terrain. I don\u00b4t know which libraries to use (maybe I have to try out several libraries) and there are so many unkonwns (like: how to get raw audio data in android) So then my development process goes like this:   * Write a piece of code to see if the approach has a chance. (The more uncertain the approach is, the uglier the code gets)   * If it works, refactor a lot until it is beautiful I think it could be a waste of time if I planned my software design in detail at this point, it would be like planning a trip without a map. Is this part of aglie development? How do you deal with unknown terrain in software development?"}
{"_id": "255578", "title": "Are there any existing real time trivia web apps I could contribute to?", "text": "I want to build a trivia app where people can take part in an in person trivia competition from their phone browser. Like, the question comes up on the screen and everyone can answer from their phone. I feel like this is probably already a thing, and would like to contribute to an existing project instead of building from the ground. But I cant find anything like this. Is there anything like this?"}
{"_id": "255572", "title": "\"The guard condition is false\"", "text": "On the English Language Learning StackExchange, there is this seemingly simple question on whether you would throw a \"be\" in with \"evaluates to\": evaluates to be false vs evaluates to false The \"be\" is a word that most programmers -- I'd think -- would feel is _\"in the way\"_. Someone answered that part already. And I probably would not have thought much of this and clicked on... _if_ it hadn't been for the answer declaring the more natural phrase is _\"the condition is false\"_. That led me to internally consider that what I thought the right words would be in a simplification. _\"The condition is **met** \"_ ... _\"The condition is **satisfied** \"_ came to mind. Then I thought about the interchangeability of how we use \"condition\" to mean \"conditional expression\" and it made me want to talk about the subtler points. The risk I mention is that if we are to say that conditions are either \"true\" or \"false\" is that we have a limited vocabulary. When you have code that says `if (foo - bar)` then you run into problems when you talk about **\"the condition\"**. I'd say that common usage is that \"the condition\" mostly refers to \"the conditional expression\"; this is to say that \"the condition\" would be `foo - bar`. But even if we think throwing away \"evaluation\" is okay, then as false values in the language may be different from the logical falseness governing conditional statements, we should prefer \"condition is not satisfied\" or \"condition is not met\" unless we really wish to emphasize that an evaluation produced false. In that sense, I do not see \"the condition is false\" as being a good substitute; if one were to get literal then that might even suggest the code says `if (false)`. English Language Learners does not have a wide programmer audience, so I thought I'd bring the question here for insights. Think of `if (foo - bar)` where foo and bar are integers in a language with a separate boolean type (C++ for instance). What wording is best? When--if ever--is it okay to say \"the guard condition is false\"?"}
{"_id": "255573", "title": "Spring MVC Workflow: multiple configurations for dev, staging and production", "text": "I'm looking for info about best practices of handling multiple configurations (not to be confused with - multiple configuration files) for seamless development of Spring MVC based app. I come from world of \"big\" PHP frameworks, where all you have to do is to write confirations specific for each phase (dev, staging, production) in separate files named as framework wants you to (Symfony), or writing one huge config file and dividing it into sections (Zend), and this will actually work. Sometimes you also/additionaly have to put some extra, `vcs` ignored files and it will do. How to handle this in Spring MVC, or Tomcat apps in general? If you're not sure about what I'm talking about, please refer to this article. To clear things up even more:   1. I'm talking (mainly) about `web.xml` and `pom.xml`.   2. I want to have (or maybe what I dream about):      * local configuration - for each developer in team, to run project locally, on `localhost:8080`, displaying full error messages and stack traces     * dev configuration - to run on test server, `dev.example-private.com`, show errors     * staging configuration - client preview, `staging.example-private.com`, nice error pages, send mails with critical errors and stack traces     * production configuration - `example.com`, nice error pages, send mails with errors   3. I don't want to switch configurations manually. I want `spring` to recognise the environment (maybe using `tomcat` config) and use appropriate configuration files. This is mainly because I want to make deployment as easy as merging branches."}
{"_id": "169789", "title": "How to select an appropriate Nvidia GPU for learning CUDA", "text": "What would be a good GPU to start learning CUDA on? Are any GPUs unsuitable?"}
{"_id": "255576", "title": "How best to involve junior developer in designing an application from scratch?", "text": "We are a team of 3 developers (2 experienced devs and a junior). We just started a brand new project. We've designed the application, concentrated efforts on choosing the right architecture and now we are laying the first lines of code. We are writing the core of it, what will be the foundation of the entire application. This ain't no easy application either. Hard performance requirements, massively distributed, complex entity model etc. We are all out of our comfort zone, especially the junior. He doesn't have the experience to create a good design upfront. That's not a problem though because me and the other dev are there to help and we both believe in mentoring and in building teams, but... we don't know exactly what would be the best way to do it, so that he gets an enjoyable experience and learns the maximum amount of skills. We both realized that we didn't have a junior on new projects, only on existing ones where it was easier on the junior because he had an entire code base from which to learn and inspire. But for this app we have almost no code. We just started. We were thinking at a few approaches:   * have him try on his own for a couple of days then intervene and refactor the code together with him, steer him in the right direction then repeat => Might not be a fun experience for him since we will be pointing out his mistakes on every refactor;   * have him pair programming with one of us => he might become just a \"bystander\" and agree with everything we do, without actually learning a lot or digesting much of the information;   * have us build the skeleton of each module, with a solid design and then giving the module to him to add the missing pieces => might not be fun to pick up after us and there is the risk that he only pays attention to filling the gaps and not to the entire design. How can we involve him in the design so that he doesn't feel left somehow outside of it and so that he learns a lot from the experience and gaining enough confidence to try it on his own?"}
{"_id": "229311", "title": "What's the appropriate procedure for subversion merges?", "text": "We have a project with a few release branches and a trunk. Lately we've been adding bugfixes and new features to the release branch, while doing simultaneous infrastructure development on the trunk. This has caused us some problems. Today I was told to merge changes from branch to trunk, using HEAD as starting/end revisions. It generated a dozen conflicts, which I resolved mostly by accepting the working copy of the trunk. After this was done, I found some scrambled code and some variables that didn't belong in functions. In addition to giving me a headache, this makes me re-think the way I approached merging. Is it a better practice to merge from a RECENT starting revision, as opposed to the origin of the branch? I actually did it this way first, and it didn't result in any scrambled code or misplaced variables."}
{"_id": "255574", "title": "Does distributing GPLd assets with a non-GPL application violate the license?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out if I can distribute the Faenza icons, which are GPL licensed, with some MIT-licensed software I'm working on. What does the GPL license really mean when applied to a non-software medium, like an icon set, that is primarily used in software applications?   * If I load the icons dynamically from external files instead of compiling them into an executable, would this violate the GPL license?   * If not, would it make a difference if the icons were compiled in?   * If I can compile them into a program, does the license just mean I can't compile the SVG \"source code\" of the icons into a program?   * If I can't compile the SVG source into a non-GPL program, can I load it dynamically?   * Even if I'm technically allowed to package the icons with my software under some of the above conditions, would I be violating the _spirit_ of the license? Relevant: Does distributing non-GPLd assets with a GPL application violate the license?"}
{"_id": "161557", "title": "Semi-intelligent \"diff\" utility", "text": "Part of the QA steps required for a project I am tangentially involved with require the person who is responsible to integrate new version of source file to first calculate how many lines have been added, removed and \"changed\". Changes may include physically move a whole function or procedure around the source file (without altering the content, just reorganization) and this is counted as \"no change\" while actually altering a line, say from               a=b;      to               a=b--;      Of course the matching should not include extra spaces or comments. The question is: can you point to something (I suppose a Perl script would be enough as a starter) that given two version of a file can: Remove comments Count added, removed and \"modified\" lines, giving the three results, and not counting whole functions/procedures which have been moved up or down in the file without altering the workings? Language is C/C++. At the moment this is done by diff-ing the two source files and manually counting the lines. The result needs not to be precise to the line - basically if you get over a certain quota of \"significant changes\" the source goes through a more complicated integration/testing phase, so as long as the results are close enough to actual changes it's ok, in case of \"too many changes\" it will be reviewed by a human anyway."}
{"_id": "161550", "title": "Abstract DAL - Use Interface with Internal Class?", "text": "We have a business logic layer (BLL) that is tightly coupled to our data access layer (DAL). We make calls like this:               using (FooData data = new FooData())     {       data.DoSomething();     }      It's important to note that all of our data classes are `internal`, and they're in the same assembly as the logic classes, so that only the BLL can access the DAL. In order to decouple these (to help facilitate unit testing), one idea is to create IDataClass interfaces, like IFooData. At first I thought it may be a problem because we'd have to make our data classes public to implement the interfaces. But we should be able to keep the data classes internal, even though we still need the methods to be public:               public interface IFooData     {       void DoSomething();     }          internal class FooData : IFooData  // Notice the class is internal     {       public void DoSomething();  // Method is public, but that's ok because class is internal     }      So even though the method is public, since the class itself is internal, we should still allow only our BLL access. Is there anything inherently wrong with this approach? Is there a better way to abstract the DAL, for unit testing, without opening the DAL to the world by making it public?"}
{"_id": "29738", "title": "What are the differences among the .NET certification exams?", "text": "I am a .NET developer using WPF and ASP.NET MVC and I was hoping to pass some kind of certification exam. There seems to be four exams but I am unable to understand what the differences are even with Microsoft's definitions:   * MCPD   * MCAD   * MCSD   * MTA How do they relate to each other? Is there a natural progression path through the certification exams? What version of .NET are they suited for?"}
{"_id": "175381", "title": "Clarification on the Strategy Pattern", "text": "I've just been reading through some basic design patterns, Could someone tell me if the term \"strategy pattern\" only applies if your implementing a completely abstract interface? What about when your children (concretes?) inherit from a parent class (the strategy?) with some implemented methods and some virtual and/or abstract functions? Otherwise the rest of the implementation, the idea that you can switch between different children at run time, is identical. This is something i'm quite familiar with, i was wondering if you would still call it the Strategy Pattern or if that term only applies to using an interface. Apologies if this question is not appropriate! Or if this is just nitpicking :) I'm still learning and i'm not really sure if design patterns are quite heavily defined within the industry or just a concept to be implemented as you like."}
{"_id": "164000", "title": "Is There a Real Advantage to Generic Repository?", "text": "Was reading through some articles on the advantages of creating Generic Repositories for a new app (example). The idea seems nice because it lets me use the same repository to do several things for several different entity types at once:               IRepository repo = new EfRepository(); // Would normally pass through IOC into constructor      var c1 = new Country() { Name = \"United States\", CountryCode = \"US\" };     var c2 = new Country() { Name = \"Canada\", CountryCode = \"CA\" };     var c3 = new Country() { Name = \"Mexico\", CountryCode = \"MX\" };     var p1 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = \"Alabama\", Abbreviation = \"AL\" };     var p2 = new Province() { Country = c1, Name = \"Alaska\", Abbreviation = \"AK\" };     var p3 = new Province() { Country = c2, Name = \"Alberta\", Abbreviation = \"AB\" };     repo.Add<Country>(c1);     repo.Add<Country>(c2);     repo.Add<Country>(c3);     repo.Add<Province>(p1);     repo.Add<Province>(p2);     repo.Add<Province>(p3);     repo.Save();      However, the rest of the implementation of the Repository has a heavy reliance on Linq:               IQueryable<T> Query();     IList<T> Find(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate);     T Get(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate);     T First(Expression<Func<T,bool>> predicate);     //... and so on      This repository pattern worked fantastic for Entity Framework, and pretty much offered a 1 to 1 mapping of the methods available on DbContext/DbSet. But given the slow uptake of Linq on other data access technologies outside of Entity Framework, what advantage does this provide over working directly with the DbContext? I attempted to write a PetaPoco version of the Repository, but PetaPoco doesn't support Linq Expressions, which makes creating a generic IRepository interface pretty much useless unless you only use it for the basic GetAll, GetById, Add, Update, Delete, and Save methods and utilize it as a base class. Then you have to create specific repositories with specialized methods to handle all the \"where\" clauses that I could previously pass in as a predicate. Is the Generic Repository pattern useful for anything outside of Entity Framework? If not, why would someone use it at all instead of working directly with Entity Framework? * * * Original link doesn't reflect the pattern I was using in my sample code. Here is an (updated link)."}
{"_id": "179809", "title": "Can a designer start an open source project?", "text": "I appreciate you can't start an open source project with just an idea but would just a design be enough? Has anyone ever seen that done where a designer posts a design and developers join to start the coding?"}
{"_id": "179808", "title": "C++ Pointers: Number of levels of Indirection", "text": "In a C++ program that doesn't contain legacy C code, is there a guideline regarding the maximum number of levels of indirection that should be used in the source code? I know that in C (as opposed to C++), some programmers have used pointers to pointers for a multiple dimension array, but for the case of arrays, there are data structures in C++ that can be used to avoid the pointers to pointers. Are users who still create pointers to pointers (or more than this) trying to use pointers to pointers only for performance ETC. reasons? I have tried NOT to use any more than a pointer to a pointer, only in the case that a pointer needed modification; does anyone have any other official or unofficial guidelines or rules regarding the number of levels of indirection?"}
{"_id": "191974", "title": "Application Design with a Shared Database", "text": "I have a generic design question that relates to enterprise applications but I think that software developers from other types of projects may have experience with this as well. The scenario is following - you have a database and you are about to write an application that provides access to its data. The database also contains data about user accounts, their roles and authorization. The problem is that other processes are accessing the database as well and any one of these processes may change any data at any moment (e.g., delete a user). In other projects I used to have exclusive access to the database and so I usually wrapped the database with a layer that exposed the related domain functionality in a SOA-style. This wrapper had a rich domain model and could utilize caching of the database data because it was aware of any potential change (by intercepting domain events, CQRS) that could modify it. With a shared database I don't know how to approach the design. Imagine this situation:   1. HTTP request arrives to you application and you are to authenticate this request.   2. You query the database for the claimed user account and its login data. If the supplied credential matches then a session is established (e.g., in ASP.NET a secure cookie is sent to the client).   3. But then a subsequent request from that user arrives. The problem is that instead of doing something useful at this moment, it seems like that one needs to check whether the associated user account still exists in the database. Any information can stop being valid at any point because some other process may alter the database. This is of course a more generic problem. The data may not only change between requests but even between two separate database calls. The easy answer here is to use locks/transactions. But the truth is that this would require huge changes to the database schema. For example, every user account would require an additional column 'InUse' - but that is just a very simple scenario. I can imagine that completely new tables would need to be created. Also, the transactions would typically span across many HTTP requests and thus render the database useless for long periods of time for other users. I have read the PoEAA book and I am well aware of various synchronization techniques. What I am looking for here is some generic technique or methodology how to achieve the so called \"good-enough-design\" that does not require changes to the database schema and can handle the mentioned situations where anything can change between two requests. Right now I think I will go with the following approach - I will authenticate the user. Then I will **not** perform any subsequent checks to ensure that he was not deleted in the meanwhile. But when I perform some operation that relies on the existence of the user I will receive an exception and deduce that the user must have been deleted. The response will then be some kind of error message or error page. I am sure this is a common problem that many of you must have encountered. I will appreciate any solution or even a reference to some book or paper. Thanks."}
{"_id": "129286", "title": "What is the difference between waterfall model with iterations and evolutionary software development model?", "text": "Does anyone know the difference between those two? They are both created by iterative approach - giving successive revision after each iteration. They both have the initial idea->analysis->(outline)design phases."}
{"_id": "123883", "title": "Is it fine to have broken intermediate commits, as long as the final commit in any push works?", "text": "**Related:** Should every git commit leave the project in a working state? Suppose I make the following commits locally:   * Modify the database schema, breaking the application.   * Update the application so it is compatible with the database schema again. As long as I push both commits, `master` remains in a working state. However, a _historical_ version is broken. I'm aware that I can use `git rebase -i` to squash the commits together. However, the resulting commit will be large and less descriptive. If I need to search the commit history to find out why I changed something, I'd rather find the original commit showing what I did and why. My questions are:   * Has anyone encountered difficulties due to broken _historical_ commits in master?   * If so, is there a _simple_ way to avoid such difficulties, without discarding individual commit messages and changes?"}
{"_id": "191971", "title": "How to work out a complex, untested scope?", "text": "The scope: it is part of a big ERP system which provides specific calculations. One can think of it as a salary calculation module in a CRM. Yet this is way beyond that in both complexity and integration points. Thus, there are a lot of technological debt, but not unmaintanable one. There some some unit/integration tests written. It _is_ testable, but it wasn't done much. It is an old part of that ERP system (3 years old), over the years it had mutated into what it is now, and there are willingness to try to complete it even if it costs some major efforts. The problem: the scope which provides a lot of various calculations based on a specific list of objects and the outcomes are not right sometimes. There are a lot of interesting (not so common) features about this scope:   * Dynamic C# formullas (loaded to context and then included in calculcations)   * A lot of reports doing the same calculations but on the database   * The scope is unstable and period-intense (new features and bugfixes are shipped every month) This scope has a lot of input parameters on all of the dependant objects. By multiplying all the possible parameter values we have 1,62*107 cases of possible outputs. Not all the parameters warry that much, but most of them do. So slicing half of that number is something around the practical possible otucomes. This scope is eating up a lot of time and money and is far from done in its current form. I would like to know what is ~~the silver bullet to~~ the most viable way to stabilize and finish the scope to the state where only minor bugs and nice to haves will occur? First of all I was thinking, that establishing a DoD (Definition of Done) would be a relevant thing to do. Then I came up to the fact that having that huge number of outputs working is half of that - everything must also be flexible on the UI scope as well. Will it be enoguh to establish a test plan, maybe do some bruteforcing tests? Should I consider any kind of design patterns? Validation options (like a solid third party validation service, etc.)? Will it be enough or maybe I have gaps in my modest knowledge that I should fill? _Note: the application is not what would one call monolithic. It is based on a lot of different services that can be easily extended, etc._"}
{"_id": "123881", "title": "What is the architectural pattern: data pollers collect push normalized data to a central server for monitoring", "text": "I am trying to find a name for this architectural pattern that I have seen in many places before: Poller - (There are a number of these)   * These are either plugins or services acting on there own   * communicate with equipment of various sorts collecting data and pushing that data to a central service in a normalized form.   * each poller knows how to communicate with a particular device,   * collects the devices status but does not act on it, just passes it on. Central Server   * Receives normalized data, files it in key / value store.   * Periodically (or by some trigger) evaluates conditions that refer to the data. The conditions cause some action to occur (like an event to be logged, or message to be sent to an operator)"}
{"_id": "179801", "title": "How are \"Json.org\"-like specs graphs called and how can I generate them?", "text": "In http://www.json.org Douglas Crockford shows the specs of the JSON format in two interesting ways: In the right side column he lists a text spec that looks like a YACC or LEX listing. In the main body of the homepage, he put several images that gives us a simple way to visually understand the valid sequences that composes a JSON string. Those images look like a description of the path that a finite state automaton would follow when parsing the JSON string. Wich are the names (if any) of that listing format and that kind of graphics? Is there any software that renders a source file containing the specification into that kind of images?"}
{"_id": "179807", "title": "Design patterns to avoiding breaking the SRP while performing heavy data logging", "text": "A class that performs both computations and data logging seems to have at least two responsibilities. Given a system for which the specifications require heavy data logging, what kind of design patterns or architectural patterns can be used to avoid bloating all the classes with logging calls every time they compute something? The decorator pattern be used (e.g. `Interpolator` decorated to `LoggingInterpolator`), but it seems that would result in a situation hardly more desirable in which almost every major class would need to be decorated with logging."}
{"_id": "193187", "title": "Handling timeout in network application", "text": "How can I handle timeouts in a network application. I'm implementing a provisioning system on a Linux server, the code is huge so I'm going to put the algorithm, it works as like this   1. Read provisioning commands from file   2. Send it to another server using TCP    3. Save the request in hash.   4. Receive the response then      1. if successful response received then remove request from hash      2. if failed response received then retry the message The problem I'm in now is when the program didn't receive the response for a timeout reason then the request will be waiting for a response forever and won't be retried. And please note that I'll be sending hundreds of commands and I have to monitor the timeout commands for all of them. I tried to use timer but that didn't help because I'll end up with so many waiting timers and I'm not sure if this is a good way of doing this. The question is how can I save the message in some data structure and check to remove or retry it later when there is no response from the other end? Please note that I'm willing to change the algorithm to anything you suggest that could deal with the timeouts."}
{"_id": "212498", "title": "Git temporary code-change", "text": "My program interacts with another application via a socket communication. The current public version of this application does not support a specific command while the newest trunk does. To be compatible with the current public release, I just need to re-write few lines of code. From the current point on, development must continue with this _changed code_ , but in the future the original code should be used again. Is it possible to make a partial change to a file temporary with Git? I could create a branch, for instance, and continue developing in this branch. However, when I merge the branch into the master, I want the _changed code_ mentioned above to be reverted to its _original code_. _Note_ : I am well aware that I could distinguish between versions of the software, however the changes have also effect on GUI resource files which I can not affect from code other than simply loading a different resource file."}
{"_id": "238820", "title": "Should I use initializer blocks in Java?", "text": "I recently came across a Java construct I have never seen before and was wondering whether I should use it. It seems to be called initializer blocks.               public class Test {       public Test() { /* first constructor */ }       public Test(String s) { /* second constructor */ }       {         doStuff();       }     }      The code block will be copied into each constructor, i.e. if you have multiple constructor you do not have to rewrite code. However, I see three main drawbacks using this syntax:   1. It is one of the very few cases in Java where the order of your code is important, as you can define multiple code blocks and they will be executed in the order they are written. This seems harmful to me as simply changing the order of code blocks will actually change the code.   2. I do not really see any benefits by using it. In most cases, the constructors will call each other with some pre-defined values. Even if this is not the case, the code could simply be put into a private method and called from each constructor.   3. It reduces readability, as you could put the block at the end of the class and the constructor is normally at the beginning of the class. It is quite counter-intuitive to look at a completely different part of a code file if you do not expect that to be necessary. If my above statements are true, why (and when) was this language construct introduced? Are there any legitimate use cases?"}
{"_id": "108671", "title": "What is the best way to design a web site to be highly scalable?", "text": "For websites that need to be highly scalable, such as social networks like facebook, what's the best way to design the website?   1. Should I have a web service which the site queries to get data that it needs? or   2. Should the site query databases directly? (can be done using built in language constructs to fill tables automatically etc). I would think the web service is the better design since it gives centralized data access and things like caching and the like become much easier to control, but what do others think?"}
{"_id": "12861", "title": "Why should we use low level languages if a high level one like python can do almost everything?", "text": "I know python is not suitable for things like microcontrolers, make drivers etc, but besides that, you can do everything using python, companys get stuck with speed optimizations for real hard time system but does forget other factors which one you can just upgrade your hardware for speed proposes in order to get your python program fit in it, if you think how much cust can the company have to maintain a system written in C, the comparison is like that: for example: 10 programmers to mantain a system written in c and just one programmer to mantain a system written in python, with python you can buy some better hardware to fit your python program, I think that low level languages tend to get more cost, since programmers aren't so cheaply than a hardware upgrade, then, this is my point, **why should a system be written in c instead of python**?"}
{"_id": "12864", "title": "What are your initial three steps when you are first presented with a software problem?", "text": "I am curious about the very early steps that a programmer's mind takes when it first encounters a problem that it is supposed to solve. How do you start reasoning about it ? What are the first questions you ask yourself ??. Ok, let me make it more concrete for those of you who think the question is too vague or entirely situation dependent. Pick **any** of the following requirements and think out loud about your very first hunches/impressions/tendencies about how to solve it. 1) build a simple word processor with about as much functionality as MS Word Pad   2) design a single person card game (e.g. Solitaire)   3) build a scientific calculator   4) Any problem of your choosing with similar scale/complexity as the above three"}
{"_id": "156880", "title": "Authentication Systems - Separate for Management?", "text": "**Edit** : I admit to being unclear when I first wrote the question. I suppose I wasn't sure of the issue myself, the comments and answers provided up to now helped me focus on the issue, thank you to all involved. This edit is a total rewrite of the question. **End editorial comment** On a dynamic website we have two systems - content management, and user interface (trivial). We are trying to decide if the two should have separate authentication systems (being two systems, this might increase security [or not - @GlenH7?]), each having its own hierarchy of permissions etc. Or is it better to have a single system (it's the same database, after all... plus easier maintenance) and only play around with permissions (regular, jumbo, power, super nova, admin, Q)?"}
{"_id": "151352", "title": "Is it a good programming practice to have a class with several .h files?", "text": "I suppose the class have several different interfaces. Some it shows to some class, some it shows to other classes. Are there any good reason for that? One thing I can think of is with one .h per class, interface would either be public or private. What about if I want some interface to be available to some friends' class and some interface to be truly public? Sample:               @interface listNewController:BadgerStandardViewViewController <UITableViewDelegate,UITableViewDataSource,UITextFieldDelegate,NSFetchedResultsControllerDelegate,UIScrollViewDelegate,UIGestureRecognizerDelegate> {     }          @property (nonatomic) IBOutlet NSFetchedResultsController *FetchController;     @property (nonatomic) IBOutlet UITextField *searchBar1;     @property (nonatomic) IBOutlet UITableView *tableViewA;     + (listNewController *) singleton; //For Easier Access     -(void)collapseAll;     -(void)TitleViewClicked:(TitleView *) theTitleView;     -(NSUInteger) countOfEachSection:(NSInteger)section;     @end      Many of those public properties and function are only ever called by just one other classes. I wonder why I need to make them available to many classes. It's in Objective-c by the way What do you mean? Interface is interface. In C++ you can declare some classes as \"friends\". In Objective-c you cannot I think. Basically I want to emulate that. My friends can access some members that's not available too publicly,."}
{"_id": "208949", "title": "Design Pattern for Server, where application is single-page RIA", "text": "So I'm using Node and ExtJS server-side/client-side respectfully. By using ExtJS, I'm moving a lot of the presentation logic client-side. Thus, something like MVC wouldn't make sense server-side since the view-logic is all client- side. At this point, my Node server's responsibilities are essentially:   * Act as proxy to persistent storage (MongoDB) for ExtJS stores   * User validation/sessioning with Windows Active Directory   * Hooking-in with existing Enterprise infrastructure (databases, Salesforce.com, etc). Well I know design patterns aren't the end-all-be-all, and conforming to a design pattern can in some cases impede progress, but I'm relatively new to web-programming in general. I'd like to use a pattern to start just so I don't make any major architectural decisions that will haunt me for the rest of the project. Is there a pattern will suited for my needs that I could lean-on?"}
{"_id": "50442", "title": "c style casts or c++ style casts", "text": "So, what do you use?               int anInt = (int)aFloat;      or               int anInt = static_cast<int>(aFloat);     // and its brethren      And, more importantly, why?"}
{"_id": "220219", "title": "Is navigate between more than one class a bad practice?", "text": "I have the following class with the following function (some implementation details have been skipped):               public class TitleScreen : GameScreen     {          public Texture2D titleScreen;              public override void Draw (GameTime gameTime)         {             ScreenManager.SpriteBatch.Draw (titleScreen, new Rectangle (0, 0, ScreenManager.Game.Window.ClientBounds.Width, ScreenManager.Game.Window.ClientBounds.Height), Color.White);         }     }      This class is associated with a class \"ScreenManager\", which is associated with a Game, which is associated with a Window. As you can see, I navigate through several classes in order to obtain the bounds of the Window so I can draw it. My question is: Is that a bad practice? Am I coupling the TitleScreen class with Game and Window? It would be better to implement a function in ScreenManager to return the Width and Height of the window?"}
{"_id": "1106", "title": "When can you call yourself good at language X?", "text": "This goes back to a conversation I've had with my girlfriend. I tried to tell her that I simply don't feel adequate enough in my programming language (C++) to call myself good. She then asked me, \"Well, when do you consider yourself good enough?\" That's an interesting question. I didn't know what to tell her. So I'm asking you. For any programming language, framework or the like, when do you reach a point were you sit back, look at what you've done and say, \"Hey, I'm actually pretty good at this.\"? How do you define \"good\" so that you can tell others, honestly, \"Yeah, I'm good at X\". Additionally, do you reach these conclusions by comparing what others can do? **Additional Info** I have read the canonical paper on how it takes ten-thousand hours before you are an expert on the field. (Props to anybody that knows what this paper is called again) I have also read various articles from Coding Horror about interviewing people. Some people, it was said, \"Cannot function outside of a framework.\" So they may be \"good\" for that framework, but not otherwise in the language. Is this true?"}
{"_id": "126109", "title": "Enum with FlagsAttribute or IEnumerable<Enum>/ISet<T>", "text": "Which is the currently-accepted best practice in terms of C# enum usage, a bitwise [Flags] Enum (compared using | and &) or an IEnumerable of enum values? I'm thinking both from a code-conciseness perspective and from a maintenance perspective. The only downside to using the Flags approach that I can think of is the inability to enumerate the values without doing the reverse enumeration:               var possibleValues = Enum.GetValues(typeof(MyEnum)).Cast<MyEnum>();     var applicableValues = possibleValues.Where(x => (containerClass.EnumProperty & x) == x);      Whereas obviously the IEnumerable is easier to query. EDIT: As svick rightly pointed out, the IEnumerable would be perhaps the wrong collection to use, an ISet might be a better example."}
{"_id": "197623", "title": "PHP function types", "text": "I am trying to find a way of classifying different types of PHP functions. For example that fopen, fwrite, fclose and so on are all part of IO, and the MySQL functions and MySQLi class is all for mysql related things but something more automatic was wondering if there is some sort of function class mapping in PHP"}
{"_id": "129825", "title": "What is this development methodology called?", "text": "I recall a methodology that emphasized making functions short and numerous. It said that if a section of code can be separated at all, it should be, even if the resultant functions are only used once. Some argue that it's DRY taken too far, and that this kind of obsessive refactoring is counterproductive. Does anyone know what it could be called? I don't think it actually had _refactoring_ in the name."}
{"_id": "252142", "title": "Should an Animal be abstract or allow for instantiation to represent a \"general\" instance?", "text": "After a short discussion in the comments here I have come to wonder whether or not a baseclass like `Animal` in the traditional OOP example should be marked as abstract or not. Personally I believe it should: there is no such thing as an \"animal\", it is merely a term that groups certain subtypes based on what they are. Any instance of an \"animal\" should be a subtype, a concrete example. The comment that followed on this was > There most certainly is such a thing as an Animal. Or would you insist that > Dog be broken down into Affenpinscher, IrishWolfhound, SiberianHusky, > EnglishSetter, and 600 other breeds? which is a fair remark but that is different from the original situation where the hierarchy was ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/keWQL.png) And there are no subclasses of `Dog` in the first place. Should there have been then yes, `Dog` should be abstract because the tree includes more specific leafs for that specific type. I can only assume that the reason you wouldn't make it a specific subtype is when you simply don't know it. I would instead add a \"default\" implementation of a dog to account for this so I can keep the `Dog` class itself abstract so there wouldn't be any ambiguity possible: you are forced to either create a specific dog or indicate that you don't know the type. Furthermore it also allows you to create `abstract` methods that every dog should implement for themselves because they are dogtype-specific. By using a non-abstract class you can't do this and you'll have to remember to override each method in the subclasses. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UXPFM.png) In the above tree I would make `Dog`, `Mammal` and `Animal` abstract and allow the others to be instantiated. The question boils down to this: **should you be able to instantiate a class that exists to indicate a subspecies or should you defer the creation of such a \"general\" object to a subtype?**"}
{"_id": "111595", "title": "Contract Clause on Ergonomics/Injury Prevention", "text": "I'm sure many developers have faced this scenario: you're currently negotiating a new position at a company and you're going through the whole list (salary, perks, benefits, etc), but there's _always_ something missing. In my 8 years of professional work, not once have I seen a clause on ergonomics or injury prevention. I'm talking about providing an ergonomic chair, keyboard or even a stand for your LCD. I have a bad upper back and neck which I need to go see the chiropractor every week. I always make sure there's a least a good chiropractic plan in the contract, but that's just fixing the problem's surface. My chiropractor is telling me that my neck is straightening (not good) and that I should try to prevent bad ergonomics in the workplace to stop it. I'm at a point in my career where I'm in high demand and can make some reasonable demands myself. I have asked several companies in the past to procure me a better chair (Herman Miller, Humanscale, etc) or keyboard (Microsoft Ergonomic) or even an LCD stand, to which I normally get chuckled at. There is no doubt that this profession is ruining my neck/back, but good luck trying to pin this on any specific (or even collective) company for their lack of ergonomics. My question is, how do you approach the subject? Has anyone been successful in the past? Do you do on the contract or wait until you're in the company, then ask? How do you make sure the company hold's their end of the deal? Any suggestions and opinions would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "111594", "title": "Would a NoSQL DB be more efficient than a relational DB for storing JSON objects?", "text": "I am using a library that returns a JSON object (as a string, but I think that's standard), and I would like to store the contents of this object into a local database. I'm fairly fresh-faced in terms of interfacing with DBs, but I can find my way around. I was using a MySQL database to store the data, but this involved using methods to extract the fields of the raw object, and slicing and dicing. I'm wondering if it would be more efficient to use a NoSQL solution to store the data, as it's already in the right form."}
{"_id": "111591", "title": "Are interfaces and method signatures copyright protected?", "text": "For example, is it copyright infringement if I write a class called Random with the exact same purpose and method signatures as Microsoft's .Net System.Random class? Does it make a difference what language it's written in? In this case I want to write a Random class for use in ActionScript, which lacks a built-in seeded PRNG class. If anyone has good links or reference suggestions for understanding what aspects of software are protected that's great too. And yes I know this isn't the place for \"real\" legal advice. If anyone goes to court pointing to a public message board as precendence--shame on them."}
{"_id": "197624", "title": "Necessity to learn haskell language extension for production", "text": "Haskell core language is really simple. Coming from an OO background, the main difficulty is to adapt to the pure functional paradigm. While learning \"basic\" Haskell, I have always considered language extensions as toys for CS people or as experiments for future versions of the language (like `from future import ???` in python). However when I began to look at web frameworks such as Yesod, I find that a lot of source files require between 3 & 4 extensions. Some look quite simple (StringOverload). Other are really intimidating (GADT, Type Famillies, Template Haskell). Their documentation links to research papers, which is scary for someone expecting to learn \"just\" a new library. Is it necessary to learn GHC language extensions to be productive in Haskell? If you were to hire a Haskell developer for a production application, would you ask for such knowledge?"}
{"_id": "26517", "title": "Is a developer-driven product a good thing?", "text": "I work in a company where the CEO manages the product team, who mockup features and drop in the lap of developers to then implement said features. There is some iteration of course, developer's opinions are respected. But I wonder how effective this process is. Jason Calacanis just wrote : > The Zuckerberg Doctrine: Developers design products with significantly > improved speed and functionality compared to product managers and designers, > outweighing potential mistakes and drawbacks. > > ... > > Then it really hit me: Developer-driven startups always produce product > faster. > > This stands to reason: our nontechnical people are having discussions and > debates while Zuckerberg is coding his next feature. This is why no one has > been able to keep up with Facebook! > > While MySpacers debated how to iterate on their product, Facebook simply > tried stuff. Does this actually work better in practice ?"}
{"_id": "216941", "title": "Running only some of the tests after a code change", "text": "Running the build can take a long time. Why run all the tests when a given change probably only has the potential to break some of them? You should be able to build a dependency graph of all the code that each test could possibly run, and then avoid running tests that couldn't possibly be affected. Is there anything that does this?"}
{"_id": "216944", "title": "MVC is a GUI Architecture or a Architecture to GUI and Domain?", "text": "Fowler refers to the MVC, as a GUI architecture: > There have been many different ways to organize the code for a rich **client > system**. Here I discuss a selection of those that I feel have been the most > influential and introduce how they relate to the patterns. If MVC is a GUI architecture, then say that the M in MVC are the business rules or domain is not wrong?"}
{"_id": "160787", "title": "Hiding away complexity with sub functions", "text": "I am having a discussion on code style, and it's starting to sound like a \"matter of taste\". I strongly believe otherwise, so I'm writing this to get your opinion and learn from your arguments for and against. The issue is that of hiding complexity by replacing a bunch of lines of code with a method. This discussion is unrelated to reusable functions, and I'm trying to make the argument for simple code organization, not for factoring out common functionality. So, take this example in loose java:               public void purchase(Customer customer, Set<Item> items, Warehouse warehouse){          int credit = customer.getCredit();              int orderPrice;               for(Item item: items){              orderPrice+=items.getPrice();          }               if(orderPrice + customer.getPendingPayments() > customer.getCredit()) {                   warehouse.reserveStock(items);                transportCenter.allocateTransport();                customer.bill(items, orderPrice);          }     }      As opposed to this:               public boolean isCreditOk(Customer customer, Set<Item> items){          int credit = customer.getCredit();              int orderPrice;               for(Item item: items){              orderPrice+=items.getPrice();          }          return  orderPrice + customer.getPendingPayments() > customer.getCredit();     }          public void purchase(Customer customer, Set<Item> items, Warehouse warehouse){          if(isCreditOk(customer, items)){                warehouse.reserveStock(items);                transportCenter.allocateTransport();                customer.bill(items, orderPrice);          }     }      The whole discussion now is: would you have created the `isCreditOk` method or would you have left if inline? When do you do one or the other? does it depend, in a general case, on:   * The length of the function to extract   * How many sub-functions and sub-subfunctions isCreditOk will end up having Again, this is not done because `isCreditOk` will be used often, but because it makes the code easier to read (in my opinion). Can I have your comments? Thanks! Note: I have found this question to be related: Is there such a thing as having too many private functions/methods?"}
{"_id": "160782", "title": "Are factors such as Intellisense support and strong typing enough to justify the use of an 'Anaemic Domain Model'?", "text": "It's easy to accept that objects should be used in all layers except a layer nominated as a data layer. However, it's just as easy to end-up with an 'anaemic domain model' that is just an object representation of data with no real functionality ( http://martinfowler.com/bliki/AnemicDomainModel.html ). However, using objects in this fashion brings the benefit of factors such as Intellisense support, strong typing, readability, discoverability, etc. Are these factors strong arguments for an otherwise, anaemic domain model?"}
{"_id": "160789", "title": "QoS implementation algorithm", "text": "I'm working on an application, that does IP routing and QoS. Today we have the QoS implemented, with 3 priorities (low, normal and high) and for each level we create a Queue and as soon as the packages are queued, we send it forward in a FIFO way (the scheduler spend 60% of time with the high queue, 30% the time with normal and 10% with the low queue). It works, but as FIFO it has some drawbacks like:   * An aggressive traffic will fill in the queue and all other flows with the same priority will be stucked   * under high usage, TCP will slow down and UDP will keep flooding our Queue. It means in the end UDP flows will have better priorization then TCP flows I was thinking a way to improve it and my idea is to implement a SFQ with the following algorithm:   * keep the high, normal, low, but they aren't just 3 queues, but one per (seen) protocol    * The scheduler still spending 60% of time we spend with the high queues, 30% the time with normal and 10% with the low queues. But now, it does a round-robin between the queues with the same priority. The choosen Queue, will still forward the packets in a FIFO way. drawbacks from this implementation:   * it is more expensive to the CPU Am I missing something? Any recommendation?"}
{"_id": "207361", "title": "How much time can I spend learning at work?", "text": "I've been working as a software developer for about 2 years by now. It seems obvious that in a field so rapidly evolving as software development, you need to spend time on learning new technologies, frameworks, etc. I always thought I could take it for granted that if I need to learn something to solve a problem at work, I am free to spend the hours needed learning that at work as well. However, I have had discussions about this topic with various colleagues, and we were holding very different opinions, apparently on the span of two extremes: > Your employer pays you for knowing stuff. You got hired for having knowledge > on the field of expertise required for doing this job, and if the field > emerges so that you need to aquire more knowledge, it is only natural that > you do so in your free time. And the other extreme being > Whatever makes me more productive at work in the long run, is worth spending > the time on at work, because the employer will eventually profit from that. > This does of course apply to learning new techniques, but also, e.g. > learning VIM to get faster, etc. But even when discussing how long to spend time on something with the guys tending to the second extreme, we were of vastly different opinions, ranging from \"an hour every now and then is okay\" to \"however long it takes\". Does your workplace encourage learning new skills and if so what processes do they have to encourage this? How much time do you spend learning new things (and not writing production code) during your day as a programmer?"}
{"_id": "213362", "title": "Java convention for if/else if order", "text": "I have an if/else if structure that on some cases does nothing. From the code I have seen in my career, the \"empty\" case is normally left out. But when I wrote my code, it just doesn't feel right to leave this case out, but to show it as a real case that simply does nothing. For example, in a case where something is done when a number is below 5 and above 10, but in between nothing is done:               int a = 4     if(a < 5) {       do something     } else if(a >=5 && a <= 10) {       // do nothing     } else if(a > 10) {       do something else     }      The reason I thought this is a better option is because:   1. The is how I though about the problem in my mind.   2. This shows the reader of the code that I thought of all the possibilities and didn't forget one by mistake. So I was wondering if this convention is either accepted by the programming community or it is shunned upon."}
{"_id": "95860", "title": "What is the accepted best practice for Java type conversions?", "text": "What is the current best practice for all the type conversions necessary in a Java web application? For example, `HttpServletRequest.getParameters(...)` returns `String[]`, but Hibernate does not allow `String[]` to be used in an IN clause for a numeric column. Therefore I need to convert `String[]` to `Long[]` via `Long.valueOf()`. What is the best way to handle this, short of rewriting in another language? Do people just create a class full of little static methods to do this?"}
{"_id": "95863", "title": "Is integer used too much as a data type?", "text": "Do most application developers use signed integers in places where they really mean to use unsigned integers? I do it all the time, so do my co-workers. I haven't seen a lot of other extensive codebases (other than the Delphi VCL) and examples on the internet usually use integer. Whereas the VCL developers use their own data types (which would be the most non-lazy way to go about declaring variables). Something seems a little dreadful about code like this               TStuffRec = record        recordID : Integer;        thingID : Integer;        otherThingID : Integer;     end;      when it could be written as               TStuffRec = record        recordID : Cardinal;        thingID : Cardinal;        otherThingID : Cardinal;     end;      Functionally, these records almost always work the same (and hopefully will continue to work the same even in 64-bit Delphi). But very large numbers will have conversion issues. But there are drawbacks to using unsigned ints too. Mainly stemming from how annoying it is to mix the two. The real question is, is this a thing that actually gets thought about or included in best practices? Is it usually just up to the developer?"}
{"_id": "175169", "title": "What is the best approach to solve a factory method problem which has to be an instance?", "text": "I have to add new funcionality in a web service legacy project and I'm thinking what is the best approach for a concrete situation. The web service is simple: It receives a XML file, unmarshalling, generates response's objects, marshalling and finally it sends the response as a XML file. For every XML files received, the web service always responds with the same XML structure. What I have to do is to generate a different XML file according to the XML received. So I have a controller class which has all marshalling/unmarshalling operations, but this controller class has to be an instance. Depending on XML received I need some marshalling methods or others. Trying to make few changes on legacy source, what is the best approach? My first approach was to do a factory method pattern with the controller class, but this class has to be an instance. I want to keep, as far as it goes, this structure:               classController.doMarshalling();      I think this one is a bit smelly:               if(XMLReceived.isTypeOne())         classController.doMarshallingOne();     else if(XMLReceived.isTypeTwo())         classController.doMarshallingTwo();     else if(XMLReceived.isTypeThree())         classController.doMarshallingThree();     else if ...      I hope my question is well understood"}
{"_id": "114415", "title": "Why do many older algorithms papers reference implementations on a PDP-10 or PDP-11?", "text": "Take the original Boyer-Moore paper, for instance. It seems every time I look for an algorithm the paper I see referenced is talking about implementation idiosyncrasies on a PDP-10 or PDP-11. I know these were popular machines at one time, but not so popular as to account for the large number of references I see. Is there a specific reason these machines were used as examples in algorithms papers?"}
{"_id": "179668", "title": "Do I need to make the source code available to a modified AGPL application if the application is only exclusively available over my private LAN?", "text": "I have a network game licensed under the AGPL that I modified to suit my needs. Theoretically, I want to charge people to play this game over a local area network that is set up in a private establishment of which I own all the local network infrastructure including the server and the game stations. would I still be required to make the source code available to these people?"}
{"_id": "220076", "title": "How can I implement a modular \"save\" function for a game?", "text": "I have to implement a method to save my game in such a way that I can change the storage medium with the change of only a single variable. Ideally I'd use an interface to designate the required method signatures and implement that interface with a different concrete class for each medium. For example, one for database, one for xml, possibly one for serialized objects. How exactly I initiate the save function? For example, if I have a Class of type Persistence called PersistToXML, which is instantiated to some variable somewhere upon launching the game, how best should I implement it so that I can save my relevant objects as needed? I'm hesitant to use a Singleton due to all the bad reviews I read about it, and I don't really want to have to pass this object around to every class just in case I need to save something."}
{"_id": "3199", "title": "What \"version naming convention\" do you use?", "text": "Are different version naming conventions suited to different projects? What do you use and why? Personally, I prefer a build number in hexadecimal (e.g 11BCF), this should be incremented very regularly. And then for customers a simple 3 digit version number, i.e. 1.1.3.               1.2.3 (11BCF) <- Build number, should correspond with a revision in source control     ^ ^ ^     | | |     | | +--- Minor bugs, spelling mistakes, etc.     | +----- Minor features, major bug fixes, etc.     +------- Major version, UX changes, file format changes, etc."}
{"_id": "23019", "title": "How do you version your files (Version Numbers)", "text": "I wonder how do you decide on the version number of your apps, do you really record down all changes made (for a change log)? Then how will you decide how to increment the version number. eg. +0.0.1 for each bug fix or something, +0.1 for each new feature release? or maybe you bundle many changes into +0.1 of your version number?"}
{"_id": "166215", "title": "When do you change your major/minor/patch version number?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What \"version naming convention\" do you use? Do you change your major/minor/patch version numbers right before you release or right after? Example: You just released 1.0.0 to the world (huzzah!). But wait, don't celebrate too much. 1.1.0 is coming out in six weeks! So you fix a bug and do a new build. **What's that build called?** 1.1.0.0 or 1.0.0.xxxy (where xxxy is the build number of 1.0.0 incremented)? Keep in mind you may have 100 features and bugs to go into 1.1.0. So it might be good to call it 1.0.0.xxxy, because you're nowhere close to 1.1.0. But on the other hand, another dev may be working on 2.0.0, in which case your build might be better named 1.1.0.0 and his 2.0.0.0 instead of 1.0.0.xxxy and 1.0.0.xxxz, respectively."}
{"_id": "77206", "title": "What is your application versioning strategy?", "text": "I would be interested to get the SO community's opinions on the best application versioning strategy. My questions:   1. How do you keep track of your application's version number? Do you have a formal definition of what each number/character in that version represents?   2. What do the different numbers/strings in the application's version mean for your app?   3. Do you use any automated updating system in your apps (e.g. something like Sparkle) and how good has it been behaving for you?   4. Do you have a separate update procedure for beta-testers or pre-release testers of your app?"}
{"_id": "77637", "title": "[YYYY].[MM].[DD].[hh][mm] vs. [major].[minor].[revision]", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What \"version naming convention\" do you use? I am currently debating between the traditional versioning convention `[major].[minor].[revision]` and my own, almost whimsical, `[YYYY].[MM].[DD].[hh][mm]` for a new project I am starting. I understand that `[major].[minor].[revision]` is probably the most popular versioning method on the planet and it is indeed pretty straightforward and reasonable, except that determining which changes merit the label \"major\", \"minor\" or even \"revision\" could be... **subjective**. A versioning system based on a _timestamp_ is purely non-subjective and guarantees uniqueness. Which one would you choose for your project and why?"}
{"_id": "118749", "title": "Recommendation for a book that explains web services in java", "text": "I am new to web services. I have been working with Java web applications for the past 3 years. Are there books that explain the basics of web services clearly. I have read Starting Java Web Services and feeling lost but I did not find a proper book recommendation there."}
{"_id": "104226", "title": "Is the JavaScript syntax the same for all browsers?", "text": "As for interacting with the DOM, different browsers will offer methods -and results- that are different between them to some or other extent. But how about JavaScript itself? Do all browsers (or platforms e.g. Adobe Reader) implement the same syntax and behavior? Aspects that particularly worry me are function/object handling and arithmetical operations."}
{"_id": "148067", "title": "Considering JCR as a NoSQL solution?", "text": "I'm evaluating some NoSQL solutions for a project of mine and JCR popped up during my searches as a document store. But it seems somehow of an obscure niche which didn't have the impact its designers hoped for. I'm interested in the technology, but so far there does not seem to be a lot of resources out there to show it's potential (there is some info on the Jackrabbit site, but otherwise, pretty much scarce info). Hopefully someone in the SE community could share from their experience with this technology. What are its advantages/disadvantages? In what situations does this technology perform best?"}
{"_id": "93168", "title": "Open Source Web-based CMS for writing and managing API documentation", "text": "This is a question that have somewhat been asked before (i.e.: How to manage an open source project's documentation). However, my question is a little different because:   * We're not developing open source software, but proprietary software   * The documentation has to be hand-written, because we do not want to publish the actual software API documentation, but only the public API documentation   * I do want developers and project managers to write the documentation collaboratively Obviously, wikis are a solution, but they're very generic. I'm looking for a more specialized tool for this job. I've looked around and found a few like Adobe Robohelp, SaaS solutions and such, but I'd like to know if any open source software exists for that purpose. **Do you know any Open Source Web-based CMS for writing and managing API and software documentation?**"}
{"_id": "165667", "title": "Building a Redundant / Distributed Application", "text": "This is more of a \"point me in the right direction\" question. My team of three and I have built a hosted web app that queues and routes customer chat requests to available customer service agents (It does other things as well, but this is enough background to illustrate the issue). The basic dev architecture today is:   * a single page ajax web UI (ASP.NET MVC) with floating chat windows (think Gmail)    * a backend Windows service to queue and route the chat requests      * this service also logs the chats, calculates service levels, etc   * a Comet server product that routes data between the web frontend and the backend Windows service       * this also helps us detect which Agents are still connected (online)  And our hardware architecture today is:   * 2 servers to host the web UI portion of the application   * a load balancer to route requests to the 2 different web app servers   * a third server to host the SQL Server DB and the backend Windows service responsible for queuing / delivering chats ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/AoSk5.png) So as it stands today, one of the web app servers could go down and we would be ok. However, if something would happen to the SQL Server / Windows Service server we would be boned. My question - how can I make this backend Windows service logic be able to be spread across multiple machines (distributed)? The Windows service is written to accept requests from the Comet server, check for available Agents, and route the chat to those agents. How can I make this more distributed? How can I make it so that I can distribute the work of the backend Windows service can be spread across multiple machines for redundancy and uptime purposes? Will I need to re-write it with distributed computing in mind? I should also note that I am hosting all of this on Rackspace Cloud instances - so maybe it is something I should be less concerned about? Thanks in advance for any help!"}
{"_id": "148062", "title": "When should you use a document vs relational vs graph database?", "text": "For the purposes of discussion let's consider a FourSquare scenario. ## Scenario Entities:   * Users   * Places Relationships:   * Checkins: users <-> places, many to many   * Friends: users <-> users, many to many ## Database Design These will most likely have errors, please point them out. ### RDBMS Tables:   * Users   * Places   * Checkins (junction)   * Friends (junction) Pros:   * CAP: consistency, availability Cons:   * CAP: partition tolerance, aka sharding   * schemes = inflexible structure   * poor replication? ### Graph Objects:   * Users   * Places Edges:   * Friends: User <-> User   * Checkins: User -> Places      * contains timestamp Pros:   * CAP: consistency, availability?   * schemaless, easily mutable objects and edges   * graph traversal queries, for example:      * clustering        * finding groups of friends       * finding restaurants liked by similar people     * any other common / useful queries? Cons:   * CAP: partition tolerance? ### Document / Object 3 separate databases?   * Users      * friends list   * Checkins      * timestamp     * user     * place   * Places Pros:   * CAP: availability, partition tolerance   * schemaless, easily mutable objects Cons:   * CAP: consistency ## Questions For the record, they ended up using MongoDB. In addition to all those question marks above:   1. I'm not sure how to implement a document database.   2. How do document databases gain partition tolerance?   3. To get a single user's checkins, I assume the operation would parse all checkins and filter the metadata for username (map + filter). The performance of parsing 1,000,000+ documents for each user would be terribly poor. I assume this is not the correct behavior?   4. What other pro / cons are there?"}
{"_id": "197982", "title": "Why would you want to use an array, or hash as hash key in ruby?", "text": "i'm using **Ruby 1.9.3** I figured out that you can use an `array`, or a `hash` as hash key in ruby:               h = Hash.new          h[Array.new] = \"Why?\"     h[Array.new] # Output: \"Why?\"          h[Hash.new] = \"It doesn't make sense\"     h[Hash.new] # Output: \"It doesn't make sense\"      But an object works differently...               h[Object.new] = \"LOL\"     h[Object.new] # Output: \"nil\"      But this one works as expected:               o = Object.new          h[o] = \"LMAO\"     h[o] # Output: \"LMAO\"      Tried this:               o = Object.new           # Output: #<Object:0x2c78c10>     h[\"#<Object:0x2c78c10>\"] # Output: nil      Tried it in **Python** and **PHP** and it throws an error. I'm just curious about how it works, and why would you want to use an `array`, or a `hash` as hash key in ruby? Thanks."}
{"_id": "165663", "title": "Thread safe GUI programming", "text": "I have been programming Java with swing for a couple of years now, and always accepted that GUI interactions had to happen on the Event Dispatch Thread. I recently started to use GTK+ for C applications and was unsurprised to find that GUI interactions had to be called on gtk_main. Similarly, I looked at SWT to see in what ways it was different to Swing and to see if it was worth using, and again found the UI thread idea, and I am sure that these 3 are not the only toolkits to use this model. I was wondering if there is a reason for this design i.e. what is the reason for keeping UI modifications isolated to a single thread. I can see why some modifications may cause issues (like modifying a list while it is being drawn), but I do not see why these concerns pass on to the user of the API. Is there a limit imposed by an operating system? Is there a good reason these concerns are not 'hidden' (i.e. some form of synchronization that is invisible to the user)? Is there any (even purely conceptual) way of creating a thread safe graphics library, or is such a thing actually impossible? I found this http://blogs.operationaldynamics.com/andrew/software/gnome- desktop/gtk-thread-awareness which seems to describe GTK differently to how I understood it (although my understanding was the same as many people's) How does this differ to other toolkits? Is it possible to implement this in Swing (as the EDT model does not actually prevent access from other threads, it just often leads to Exceptions)"}
{"_id": "55679", "title": "Why aren't we all doing model driven development yet?", "text": "I am a true believer in Model Driven Development, I think it has the possibility to increase productivity, quality and predictability. When looking at MetaEdit the results are amazing. Mendix in the Netherlands is growing very very fast and has great results. I also know there are a lot of problems   * versioning of generators, templates and framework   * projects that just aren't right for model driven development (not enough repetition)   * higher risks (when the first project fails, you have less results than you would have with more traditional development)   * etc But still these problems seem solvable and the benefits should outweigh the effort needed. **Question** : What do you see as the biggest problems that make you not even consider model driven development ? I want to use these answers not just for my own understanding but also as a possible source for a series of internal articles I plan to write."}
{"_id": "51319", "title": "Is there a canonical book on creating highly interactive websites (eg. \"Flash\" like) with HTML5/CSS3/JS/jQuery?", "text": "I know some of the basics of these technologies already, but it is mostly limited to more static sites. Using things like HTMl5 semantic elements, CSS3 gradients, shadows, `@font-face` etc. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on creating highly interactive websites with HTML5/CSS3/JS/jQuery? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "51312", "title": "responsibility for storage", "text": "A colleague and I were brainstorming about where to put the responsibility of an object to store itself on the disk in our own file format. There are basically two choices:   1. object.store(file)   2. fileformatWriter.store(object) The first one gives the responsibility of serialization on the disk to the object itself. This is similar to the approach used by python pickle. The second groups the representation responsibility on a file format writer object. The data object is just a plain data container (eventually with additional methods not relevant for storage). We agreed on the second methodology, because it centralizes the writing logic from generic data. We also have cases of objects implementing complex logic that need to store info while the logic is in progress. For these cases, the fileformatwriter object can be passed and used as a delegate, calling storage operations on it. With the first pattern, the complex logic object would instead accept the raw file, and implement the writing logic itself. The first method, however, has the advantage that the object knows how to write and read itself from any file containing it, which may also be convenient. I would like to hear your opinion before starting a rather complex refactoring."}
{"_id": "55672", "title": "Is it better to load up a class with methods or extend member functionality in a local subclass?", "text": "Which do you like better? Class #1:               public class SearchClass     {         public SearchClass (string ProgramName)         { /* Searches LocalFile objects, handles exceptions, and puts results into m_Results. */ }              DateTime TimeExecuted;         bool OperationSuccessful;              protected List<LocalFile> m_Results;         public ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile> Results         {             get { return new ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile>(m_Results); }         }              #region Results Filters         public DateTime OldestFileModified         {             get { /* Does what it says. */ }         }              public ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile> ResultsWithoutProcessFiles()         {             return new ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile> ((from x in m_Results                                                        where x.FileTypeID != FileTypeIDs.ProcessFile                                                        select x).ToList());         }         #endregion     }      Or class #2:               public class SearchClass     {         public SearchClass (string ProgramName)         { /* Searches LocalFile objects, handles exceptions, and puts results into m_Results. */ }              DateTime TimeExecuted;         bool OperationSuccessful;              protected List<LocalFile> m_Results;         public ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile> Results         {             get { return new ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile>(m_Results); }         }              public class SearchResults : ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile>             {             public SearchResults(IList<LocalFile> iList) : base(iList) { }                  #region Results Filters             public DateTime OldestFileModified             {                 get { /* Does what it says. */ }             }                  public ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile> ResultsWithoutProcessFiles()             {                 return new ReadOnlyCollection<LocalFile> ((from x in this                                                            where x.FileTypeID != FileTypeIDs.ProcessFile                                                            select x).ToList());             }             #endregion         }     }      ...with the implication that OperationSuccessful is accompanied by a number of more interesting properties on how the operation went, and OldestFileModified and ResultsWithoutProcessFiles() also have several more siblings in the Results Filters section."}
{"_id": "51310", "title": "what should a developer know/address to build commercial Android Apps?", "text": "Android and mobile development is an exciting area of development. As it is a new discipline, what would be expected of an android developer to build commercially robust applications in terms of skills ? The problem that I and, i think, many other \"noobs\" into the technology would like to know are the areas of technical skills and the progression to the required advanced topics that goes beyond the the very basics provided by Google. There is _a lot_ of information that's quite useful but its not organised into categories of discipline nor order. **Update** : Look at it this way. If you're a senior dev, and needed to get a fellow colleague upto speed on Android for a particular project, (at your discretion for this question), what would you do ?"}
{"_id": "51315", "title": "How can a CAPTCHA be integrated into a community?", "text": "I'm planning on making a **simple discussion feature** for a web framework I'm building. It should:   * allow anonymous posting   * block spam bots  The obvious answer is to use a generic \" **captcha** \" plugin, however I think there are some **creative opportunities** here that I would like to explore, e.g. questions like:   * (simple math) what is four + three? **___**   * (pop culture) who sings like a virgin? **___**   * (history) last name of first U.S. president: **___ __**   * (pictures) [picture of Obama], who is this?: **___ ___**   * (contextual) what year was our association founded? **___ __**   * (company) last name of our personnel director: **___ ___**   * (current events) the country that toppled Muburak: **___** The captcha could actually be used to **teach people about the community** , information that they had to look up, etc. Or these could be **collected from users** of the community, the ones which got approved and used would earn them reputation points. **What is the best way for a CAPTCHA to be designed so that it not only blocks spammers but helps reflect the knowledge of a community?**"}
{"_id": "79988", "title": "Made a windows gadget for the local tram company without request. What now?", "text": "I'm too lazy to look at a pdf/table when the next tram is, so I did a windows widget that always tells me when the next one is. You can add, edit and delete trams to be watched. I don't work for this company, but I have tried to make it as professional as possible and I even threw the company logo into the widget. I believe other people could also use this and I would like to send this to the company. What's the best way to send it? Should I send photos, a video explaining the widget, the widget itself? I don't think they would pay me for this, nor do I expect this, but I'd love to make an internship there, if the spot is available. I could see myself developing an iPhone/Android app for the company, seeing that the only thing their app does is sell tickets and I'm sure other people would love to be able to see on their phone when the next train is. Even if they don't have an internship available, I'd still find it pretty cool if they made it available at their website and I somehow got credits for it. I think it's a pretty nice thing to have in the CV. But I wouldn't be interested if they are just going to publish it without any credits. What do you guys think? By the way, only a couple of trains and stations are available, as I don't have their database and right now what I have to do is manually insert the schedule. But this is very easy to add/change once they provide it. PS: Seeing this is career advice, to make it general, I guess the question is, how do I send software that was not requested, but could be useful, to a company? PS2: I'm sorry that I couldn't think up of a short concise title!"}
{"_id": "222500", "title": "Create an Objective-C category to route methods depending on a specified type", "text": "For one project, I needed to find a solution to avoid code like this:               if ([self.desiredColor isEqualToString:@\"Red\"])         [self constructRedMenu];     else if ([self.desiredColor isEqualToString:@\"Blue\"])         [self constructBlueMenu];      So I decided to create an category of NSObject. You can find the open-source code here: https://github.com/JeanLebrument/NSObject-MethodCallDependingType But I have only been developing on iOS for a few months and I would like to have opinions from more experienced iOS developers. Is there any risk to the stability of the app using this Category? Any constructive comments or opinions are welcome! Edit : Change the exemple of using this category in this post and on GitHub."}
{"_id": "222503", "title": "Kerberos web authentication", "text": "I'v developed an internal singe-page web-app (unix, apache & postgresql) protected by a simple login page. Currently, the users have their own login role with a password. This is starting to get cumbersome for a couple reasons:   1. Users have multiple passwords (for my web-app and Active Directory, the company-network is windows).   2. Storing user information in two different places (would like to centralize). I've been looking into Kerberos to the point, I've set-up a KDC and am able connect to the database through GSSAPI authentication (command-line only). From what I understand I should be able to use my own KDC that will integrate with Active Directory. My problem I'm working through at the moment is web-app authentication via kerberos: If a user is on the web - how can I obtain/verify kerberos credentials? Can I store the credentials in a cookie? Do I have to resort using OAuth,Webauth, or something similar? To clarify, What I want to do is: If a user doesn't have valid credentials, give them the login page to obtain credentials (via kinit, but how through the browser?) and return valid credentials. (how can I store credentials in browser, can I create a cookie from the Kerberos credentials?). I've googled, and read a fair-few pdf's and web-resources, but unfortunately none of them were able to dumb it down enough for me to get a solid grasp of how to accomplish kerberos web authentication. If you didn't notice, I'm confused on how to piece everything together and would appreciate a conceptual over-view of how everything fits together."}
{"_id": "116818", "title": "Should fresh grads join startups keeping in mind the future?", "text": "I'll graduate next year and the campus drive has secured me a couple of jobs with what we call the \"big\" companies. But I had approached a startup recently as I really liked their projects and am also currently working with them, as an intern (though I work from home, keeping contact with my mentor there). I like the way they work, and they're offering me a position of software engineer with a nice pay-package. But the question is, if I join this startup as my first job, will I, should I choose to switch, be accepted in any of the \"big\" companies? I'm sure many of you must have encountered such a situation from either perspective - the job seeker or the employer."}
{"_id": "156722", "title": "How does learning assembly aid in programming?", "text": "I have been programming in higher level languages (Python, C#, VBA, VB.NET) for around 10 years and I have completely zero understanding on what's going on, \"under the hood.\" I am wondering what are the benefits of learning assembly, and how will it aid me as a programmer? Can you please provide me with a resource that will show me exactly the connection between what I write in higher level code to what happens in assembly?"}
{"_id": "195155", "title": "Is There Any Benefit to Learning Machine Code?", "text": "I mostly work in Python and Ruby, but I recently decided to learn some C so I have a better feel for how a computer _actually_ works. I've been wondering whether it is possible to take this even a step further. Does anyone learn machine code (whatever C is compiled into) anymore? Would I benefit from taking some time to learn it?"}
{"_id": "116816", "title": "Freelancer.com\u2014Any opinions?", "text": "Has anyone ever tried Freelancer.com (former GetAFreelancer.com)? Does anyone have any opinions/feedback on the site? I would like to start some projects as a freelancer but I would really like to get some opinions on the site to get started."}
{"_id": "79984", "title": "What is a good way to represent (programatically) graphs/networks?", "text": "SO I have made this program dealing with cities and the roads linking them, and I am wondering if anyone could point me towards a way to represent this \"network\" graphically (in 3 or 2Ds). Could be either a specific programming friendly file format (which I could easily generate an instance of programatically), or a specific language's api or library for such representation. My current work is in Java, but if there's a solution in an other language it's not a problem."}
{"_id": "151825", "title": "Good design for class with similar constructors", "text": "I was reading this question and thought that good points were made, but most of the solutions involved renaming one of the methods. I am refactoring some poorly written code and I've run into this situation:               public class Entity {            public Entity(String uniqueIdentifier, boolean isSerialNumber) {         if (isSerialNumber) {           this.serialNumber = uniqueIdentifier;           //Lookup other data         } else {           this.primaryKey = uniqueIdentifier;           // Lookup other data with different query         }       }          }      The obvious design flaw is that someone needed two different ways to create the object, but couldn't overload the constructor since both identifiers were of the same type (`String`). Thus they added a flag to differentiate. **So, my question is this:** when this situation arises, what are good designs for differentiating between these two ways of instantiating an object? **My First Thoughts**   1. You could create two different static methods to create your object. The method names could be different. This is weak because static methods don't get inherited.   2. You could create different objects to force the types to be different (i.e., make a `PrimaryKey` class and a `SerialNumber` class). I like this because it seems to be a better design, but it also is a pain to refactor if `serialNumber` is a `String` everywhere else."}
{"_id": "25376", "title": "Can anyone recommend a good resource for finding SQL Server training?", "text": "Either on site or off site training (no web training). I've been Googling but have only found a few companies. It would be nice to find something that offers reviews on various companies that provide training... Related to Can anyone recommend a good company that does SQL Server training?"}
{"_id": "163847", "title": "How to avoid general names for abstract classes?", "text": "In general it's good to avoid words like \"handle\" or \"process\" as part of routine names and class names, unless you are dealing with (e.g.) file handles or (e.g.) unix processes. However abstract classes often don't really know what they're going to do with something besides, say, process it. In my current situation I have an \"EmailProcessor\" that logs into a user's inbox and processes messages from it. It's not really clear to me how to give this a more precise name, although I've noticed the following style matter arises:   * better to treat derived classes as clients and named the base class by the part of the functionality it implements? Gives it more meaning but will violate is-a. E.g. EmailAcquirer would be a reasonable name since it's acquiring for the derived class, but the derived class won't be acquiring for anyone.   * Or just really vague name since who knows what the derived classes will do. However \"Processor\" is still too general since it's doing many relevant operations, like logging in and using IMAP. Any way out of this dilemma? Problem is more evident for abstract methods, in which you can't really answer the question \"what does this do?\" because the answer is simply \"whatever the client wants.\""}
{"_id": "104598", "title": "Where to look for challenging jobs with a relaxed atmosphere?", "text": "I'm a dev at one of the big-name tech companies. I like the job for many reasons:   * I do interesting work on a cool product   * I solve challenging problems and use a lot of high-level skills (quantitative, creative, writing, presenting)   * It pays well The problem is that I feel I need a more relaxed atmosphere (shorter hours, less performance pressure, and more flexibility), in order to free up time for other pursuits and reduce stress. The ideal would be a job that's around 30-35 hours a week, where there is flexibility to work more or less in a given week. **Can anyone suggest where to look for a job like this, where I wouldn't have to sacrifice too much on the above points?** (Obviously I would have to sacrifice pay.) My employer does not generally offer part-time employment. The closest thing I can think of is when I did summer internships at my university's CS department. The work was very intellectually challenging, but if I needed to go home a couple hours early or get flexibility on a due date, nobody batted an eyelash. However, I'd like to find out if there are alternatives to academia since from what I've seen the pay there is a gigantic drop from what I'm currently making. I've done freelance development before, but I do like that as an employee of a large company I have a lot of things taken care of for me (e.g. benefits and guaranteed stable employment)."}
{"_id": "195722", "title": "What is the best programming language to do crypto running time measurement?", "text": "I am trying to measure the running time of different crypto algorithm. e.g. how long it takes to encrypt/decrypt a block of plaintext. May I ask if `C` with `OpenSSL` is the best PL to do this?"}
{"_id": "197650", "title": "How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure?", "text": "I am a developer in a 5-member team and I believe our project is headed for disaster. I'll describe why in a moment, but my question is: how should I behave? The deadline is in 1.5 months, and I feel no matter what we do, this project will fail. I'm of the opinion that we should just terminate the project and stop wasting our time, but politically I think it's impossible for our manager to do that. What should I do in this case? Should I put in extra effort, or should I just take it easy? And what should I say to the manager? Reasons this project is headed for failure:   * With deadline approaching many of the must-have features are not finished    * Application is unstable and very difficult to use    * System is very convoluted, code very hard to understand, very difficult to change - Data model is too driven by a complex relational database (100+ tables)   * Unclear leadership; the manager responds to new information with major changes    * Almost no automated tests or unit test    * Heavily depends on other systems, but no integration tests yet  In fact, we actually just inherited this project (along with the mess) around 1-2 months ago from another dev team under the same manager, who has worked on it for a few months."}
{"_id": "195720", "title": "What's the formal name of this diagram?", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FmuRO.gif) I'd also want to know how can I draw them."}
{"_id": "104591", "title": "Choosing the type of Index Variables", "text": "We use Integer type represent index variables most of the time. But in some situations, we're forced to choose               std::vector<int> vec;     ....          for(int i = 0; i < vec.size(); ++i)     ....      This will cause the compiler to raise the warning that mixed use of signed/unsigned variables. if I make the index variable as `for( size_t i = 0; i < vec.size(); i++ )`, (or an `unsigned int` )it will sort out the issues. When it come more specific to use windows types, most of the Windows APIs are dealing with DWORD (which typedef-ed as unsigned long). So when I use similar iteration, will again cause the same warning. Now if I rewrite it as               DWORD dwCount;     ....          for(DWORD i = 0; i < dwCount; ++i)     ....      I find this a bit weird. It might be the problem withe perceptions. I agree that we are supposed to use the same type of index variable to avoid the range problems can happen with the index variables. For e.g if we're using               _int64 i64Count; //      ....          for(_int64 i = 0; i < i64Count; ++i)     ....      But in the case of DWORD, or unsigned integers, are there any problems in rewriting it as               for(int i = 0; (size_t)i < vec.size(); ++i)      How most of the people are working with similar issues?"}
{"_id": "104594", "title": "Multiple Joins or Simple Readable Database Calls", "text": "Curious how other developers feel about this. I come across some pretty nasty sql joins, as we all do I'm sure. I would prefer making more database calls for the sake of readability and simplicity rather than have a large SQL statement to maintain; about 3 - 4 joins. For the performance argument, I will give up a little performance for readability. For example: make the first call, filter the data, and then query the second table, and so on What is your preference?"}
{"_id": "127763", "title": "Does it hurt to learn bits of many programming languages?", "text": "I started my programming career with BASIC, during 9th grade. I learned a bit of BASIC by writing simple programs to add, subtract and to print. Then I went to the university and took Computer Information and Systems Engineering. In the first year I was taught C, and I have good command over it. Next I learned C++ in the second year. It just taught me some knowledge of OOP. Now I am doing PHP (along with HTML). I have not mastered C++, BASIC or PHP. I am now planning to move to mobile development. But I feel that I have not covered everything in the languages I learned. Does it really matter?"}
{"_id": "82356", "title": "What is the iOS equivalent of Michael Hartl's Rails 3 Tutorial?", "text": "I'm a newbie programmer and I've been reading Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial. I'm enjoying the book very much. It's easy to follow and doesn't assume I know much. I'd also like to learn to code iOS apps (both iPhone and iPad) and would appreciate any recommendations on books or courses that could help me to do so. Thanks in advance for the assistance! Eddie"}
{"_id": "214543", "title": "Using private vs company devices for development at work", "text": "I'm employed at a mobile app development company since 4 months as Android developer. It's my first job as developer. Currently I'm using my two private Android devices for development. Is it common practice that developers use their own hardware devices for development in mobile development companies, or should I ask for company devices?"}
{"_id": "82359", "title": "Bringing your previous intellectual property to your employer", "text": "Assume that in my free time I have developed library X before signing a contract or being employed by company A. I then sign a contract with company A and begin working. It becomes apparent that library X will be incredibly useful and save the company lots of time and money. What is the industry standard practice in this area in terms of bringing this code into the company? Would it be possible to license library X to company A?"}
{"_id": "82358", "title": "Can an email exist in multiple message boxes", "text": "I'm in the process of writing a mail server stack and it's a fairly critical design decision as to whether a unique message can appear in more than one message box. Simple cases are easy to make a decision on (e.g. a message obviously cannot exist in the \"Inbox\" and the \"Trash\" mailbox) but a more subtle situation like being in the \"Work\" mailbox and the \"Trash\" mailbox is a little trickier. So:   * Is it easier to assume clients won't notice if a unique message appears in more than one mailbox, and throw a hissy fit.   * Or use tagging and only have the message exist in the major mailboxes and use tagging to identify other attributes. In clients that don't support tags (quite a lot), fake the message's uniqueness (not difficult on server end) and display the tags as if they we're their own mailbox    * Or is it cardinal sin to have a message in multiple mailboxes in the first place.  I'm specifically looking for the broadest possible client friendly solution as I'm making a client independent server. Unique message = Unique Identifier on the server (alpha numeric usually), all other headers and body components could by freak coincidence, or by hitting send twice in quick succession be duplicated. If I was to fake the Identifier it would only be to face the client, it would be linked back to the original again on the server for any edits. **Edited for clarity**"}
{"_id": "214549", "title": "Structuring an input file", "text": "I am in the process of structuring a small program to perform some hydraulic analysis of pipe flow. As I am envisioning this, the program will read an input file, store the input parameters in a suitable way, operate on them and finally output results. I am struggling with how to structure the input file in a sane way; that is, in a way that a human can write it easily and a machine can parse it easily. A sample input file made available to me for a similar program is just a stream of comma-separated numbers that don't make much sense on their own, so that's the scenario I am trying to avoid. Though I am giving the details of my particular problem, I am more interested in general input-file structuring strategies. Is a stream of comma-separated values my best bet? Would I be better off using some sort of key:value structure? I don't know much about this, so any help will probably put me in a better track than I am now."}
{"_id": "120230", "title": "Should one comment differently in functional languages?", "text": "I'm just getting started with functional programming and I'm wondering about the correct way to comment my code. It seems a little redundant to comment a short function as the names and signature already should tell you everything you need to know. Commenting larger functions also seems a little redundant since they are generally comprised of smaller self-descriptive functions. What is the correct way to comment a functional program? Should I use the same approach as in iterative programming?"}
{"_id": "215637", "title": "Why delete method/field/function refactoring doesn't exist in Eclipse?", "text": "An operation in an interface is obsolete so I decided to delete it. It seems that there is no automatic support for such a \"refactoring\" in Eclipse. For me is a refactoring operation since the behavior of the code will be preserved since nobody (tests, client apis) will notice that the operation was removed. In Eclipse, in Java code, on an method in an interface I have the following options: rename, move, change method signature, inline, extract interface, extract superclass, use supertype when possible, pull up, push down, introduce parameter objet, introduce indirection, generate declared type. Is there any reason for which a delete method/field/function refactoring doesn't exist?"}
{"_id": "153468", "title": "How to configure simple game AI setting with jtable", "text": "I'm developing an application that has methods of this kind:               attackIfIsFar();     protectIfIsNear();     helpAfterDeadOf();     helpBeforeAttackOf();      etc. The initialization of my application for n players is something like               player1.attackIfIsFar(player2);     player2.protectIfIsNear(player4);     player3.helpAfterDeadOf(player1);     player4.helpBeforeAttackOf(player3);      etc. I don't know how to configure a jtable that that can allow me to set the equivalent of this code-block In others words I need simply a way to create a jtable with 3 column and n row, were I can set in the column 1 and 3, the player, and in the central column one of the available methods that each player on the column 1 must invoke on each player of column 3"}
{"_id": "120238", "title": "At what point should you switch to release build?", "text": "One of the practices set out in Jez Humble's Continuous Delivery is that you should build one package and then release it to each environment you deploy to, so that the deployment and the artifacts have themselves been tested multiple times before going to production. I fully support this idea. On the other hand, debug-mode builds that give you stack traces with line numbers are incredibly useful in test environments, as is the ability to remote-debug. But, you want to send a release build to production. So, for people following the first principle, at what point do you switch from debug to release builds? Is it before the first deployment to a test environment, figuring the cost of losing debug mode is worth paying to ensure you are testing the actual release candidate early? Or do you build again at some point in the promotion process, figuring that you'll trust the build process over the software? Or do you just screw it all and deploy debug versions to production? Note: I know this doesn't really apply to interpreted languages because you can usually flick the switch in configuration rather than doing it at build time."}
{"_id": "153464", "title": "Google Maps-based desktop application", "text": "I want to build a desktop application which has google maps embedded to it. This app should have a thread to read coordinate data online a usb microphone to use. This application will move the google map markers to their new locations based on the data retrieved from online connections on each refresh. As far as I know gmaps has a javascript API so the first idea in my mind was to embed this mapview into a java applet. So the application will run on a browser. I'm not sure if this will work. Do you guys have any idea about this or any other advices you might have?"}
{"_id": "251664", "title": "Modeling Associations", "text": "I am working on the design phase of a paper folding project. I have a few queries in this. Part of the problem statement says \" A web can contain one or more ribbons in it. It can also contain a group of ribbons folded together inside it.\" How do you model the association for this? I found two solutions i) Maintain two associations, one between the web and ribbon and the other between the ribbon   and the Group class. This way, the web contains only ribbons and when you process the ribbons, you'll have to check whether it is part of a group. Note that the behaviour of the ribbon will change if it is part of a group ii) Introduce a new class called Childelemnt and associate it to web. Both Ribbon and Group will share the interface of Childelement. Which one do you think is better? If you have any other solution, please let me know. Thanking you all in advance, Pradeep"}
{"_id": "117142", "title": "Using a SetProperty method to prevent accidental changes to a property", "text": "Is it good/bad practice to do the following:               public class MyClass {       public MyType MyProperty { get; private set; }            public void SetMyProperty(MyType myProperty) {         MyProperty = myProperty;       }     }      My intention is to prevent `MyProperty` from being accidentally changed outside the class. However, it can be changed if needed. Also, if `MyType` is a reference type, then will the `private set` prevent, for example:               instanceOfMyClass.MyProperty.SomeField = 2;      In other words, will it make `MyProperty` and all its members readonly, or just the reference to `MyProperty`? Sorry if this seems an unintelligent question; I'm afraid I'm a beginner."}
{"_id": "10675", "title": "Ideal programming language learning sequence?", "text": "What do you think? What is the ideal programming language learning sequence which will cover most of the heavily used languages and paradigms today as well as help to grasp common programming basics, ideas and practices? You can even suggest learning sequence for paradigms rather than languages. N.B. : This is port of the question I asked in stackoverflow and was closed for being subjective and argumentative."}
{"_id": "21987", "title": "How is IntelliJ better than Eclipse?", "text": "I know there have been questions like What is your favorite editor/IDE?, but none of them have answered this question: Why spend the money on **IntelliJ** when **Eclipse** is free? I'm personally a big IntelliJ fan, but I haven't really tried Eclipse. I've used IntelliJ for projects that were Java, JSP, HTML/CSS, Javascript, PHP, and Actionscript, and the latest version, 9, has been excellent for all of them. Many coworkers in the past have told me that they believe Eclipse to be \"pretty much the same\" as IntelliJ, but, to counter that point, I've occasionally sat behind a developer using Eclipse who's seemed comparably inefficient (to accomplish roughly the same task), and I haven't experienced this with IntelliJ. They may be on par **feature-by-feature** but features can be ruined by a poor user experience, and I wonder if it's possible that IntelliJ is easier to pick up and discover time-saving features. For users who are already familiar with Eclipse, on top of the real cost of IntelliJ, there is also the cost of time spent learning the new app. Eclipse gets a lot of users who simply don't want to spend $250 on an IDE. If IntelliJ really could help my team be more productive, how could I sell it to them? For those users who've tried both, I'd be very interested in specific pros or cons either way."}
{"_id": "117147", "title": "What happened to Concurrent C?", "text": "I recently checked out a fantastic book from my college library. It is a bit old at 1989, but the language it describes sounds rather nice. And even while I may not be using it soon, I wanted to research their paradigm some more. So I tried to wiki Concurrent c. nothing. I can't find any references to it on the internet really either. searching for \"Concurrent c\" mostly points you to that one book. (Stack overflow doesn't have even one reference.) Does anyone know where I might find some history on this programming language or other resources?"}
{"_id": "210044", "title": "What is the name of this particular kind of over-engineering?", "text": "When faced with (even a small) project, I tend to fall into the following bad practice. I think about the structure of the problem. Then I create some base classes, derive from them and then derive from those my actual useful classes. I almost never have a chance to write code inside those base classes, they are just too broad for the concrete problem I am solving. The problem is not limited to inheritance. If I need to do something very simple, I make a class to do it, then a class to hold an instance of the \"doer\", and then a Manager to ... call methods inside the wrapper of the \"doer\". IMHO this is different form directly breaking YAGNI as I do not build unnecesery features for the end user. What term best describes this anti-patern? Any tips how to change my design process in order to avoid it?"}
{"_id": "210047", "title": "Factory for arrays of objects in python", "text": "Ok, the title might be a little misleading. I have a `Window` class that draws widgets inside itself in the constructor. The widgets are all of the same type. So I pass a list of dictionaries, which contain the parameters for each widget. This works quite nicely, but I am worried that the interface to callers is obfuscated. That is, in order to use `Window`, one has to study the class, construct a correct list of dictionaries, and then call the constructor with only one parameter - widgets_params. Is this good or bad design? What alternatives does the python syntax provide?"}
{"_id": "210043", "title": "Is Clojure development required to be open-source?", "text": "This question could be generalized to any language where the language development is open-source, potentially, but I'm most curious about Clojure specifically. If Clojure (as a language) is open-source, licensed by the Eclipse Public License, which per this GitHub side-project requires derivative works to disclose source, must any application written _in_ Clojure be distributed with source? Or must only derivative language projects (e.g. Continjuation or something) disclose the source? Or do I have a faulty major premise somewhere in there?"}
{"_id": "98153", "title": "What the usual or accepted cost of a support contract for custom software?", "text": "For custom built web based software, what is the industry standard or generally accepted cost for support and maintenance of the software? Is it usual to be expressed as a % of the original development cost, and if so what is the usual % amount?"}
{"_id": "105178", "title": "Where to Start When Making a Web Application on Your Own", "text": "I've been assigned an in-house web application that is basically an Employee and Project Management System. I'm getting confused as to where I should really start with this assignment (I mean I'm my own development manager and I really don't have experience with making a project alone) and I'm hoping that you guys could share your experiences when you were given an assignment/project to build by yourself. Thanks"}
{"_id": "105179", "title": "Wiki-like tool for writing specifications and documentation", "text": "I am looking for a wiki or wiki-like system for writing and managing specification and documentation for a software project. I know there are lots of wiki-implementations available, but are there some that are especially well-suited for this kind of task? Actually it doesn't have to be a wiki, just a system that makes it easy to write and navigate specs and documentation, and which support change tracing."}
{"_id": "214018", "title": "Choosing the right resources", "text": "Once I heard that a good book on any programming language cannot be short, so the number of pages is the first criterium when choosing a tutorial. The statement was half a joke, but it has some truth in it. There are tens and hundreds of books available for most popular programming languages, frameworks and technologies, and it is hard to choose one. So that _dummy condition_ is the first one to check. Are there any criteria to help choose the \"right\" tutorials? What is the first (or probably the second) thing to pay attention on when choosing a technical tutorial?"}
{"_id": "98159", "title": "What is the necessity to go for lambda functions and expressions in C++?", "text": "1. What is the necessity to use lambda functions and expressions in C++?   2. Can you explain or show through examples how to use lambda functions and expressions?   3. I already gone through the related Wikipedia page, but I got only few ideas regarding this. Are there more resources I can read? May I know which compilers will fully support this lambda feature? Some answers I found are VS10 and GCC5 compilers. Is there any online compilers which are supporting this feature?"}
{"_id": "188750", "title": "when to, and benefits, of replacing existing message passing with JMS in project?", "text": "I have moved to a new project and as the only 'software guy' I'm welcome, and expected, to suggest design improvements to the existing code (code just got out of prototype phase and needs extended to final releasable version; plus adding functionality) The code has multiple stand alone components which are suppose to run in concert, but each one can be rebooted on it's own. They are passing messages between these daemons via a few hand written classes which implement their own server with message queue's. It works well enough, the project made it passed prototype phase and while stability is one of their biggest long term focuses it's not notoriously unstable; just not quite up to par for a final release. Still, ever time I see the code all I can think is \"I would have done this using JMS.\" If I went back in time to their implementation days I would have told them to do this in JMS from the start; and I am very tempted to insist on that now. Only problem is that, even if reinventing the wheel was suboptimal at the time, what they have mostly works now and I would hate to throw out large chunks of code. I have no doubt if we kept their message passing logic I would have to spend some time working on it; I'm not certain it is 100% reliable; there are some minor data-races that they get away with because they system should be able to recover even if it happens, some 'code smells' I want to investigate further etc etc. Still, replacing the whole system with JMS would be a pretty big overhaul. Require writing allot of new code, some debugging to fix issues they already ran into and corrected with their home brewed system, and ultimately add a dependency on JMS when we release this project which may be undesirable. To give a slightly better idea of the system as it is; it's mostly a direct pipeline with two way asynchronous calls. Each separate part of the system (called daemons) at most speak with two other daemon, the one in front of it in the pipeline, and the one behind it. Each daemon will pass requests further 'down' the pipeline to the low level architecture and want some response back (but doesn't block waiting for it), in addition asynchronous messages must be able to propagate back up the system. Multiple people can be making requests at once; but we don't expect an absurdly high number of total messages. Each customer will generate messages in a small burst, but the bursts aren't huge and I don't _think_ this has to scale up to an absurdly high number of customers. Lost of a message would likely result in inconsistent state; lost messages are quasi-detected currently, but nothing really done to 'clean up' when it happens; but the system is basic enough that inconsistent state isn't likely to break things as horrible as some systems could (plus we have our own tiny closed system, probably aren't going to lose messages). The current communication code is generic, any daemon can send any message to any other; and we just trust each daemon only sends messages to the correct daemons and that no daemon sends a message of a type another daemon doesn't know how to happen (all messages are enumerated, but some only are viable when sent to specific daemons) So the question is, can I justify a switch to JMS? I will feel more comfortable with stability if I know were using an enterprise system, and I think it would allow some of my other \"crazy, probably never get around to implementing, but would be so cool\" ideas a bit easier to implement later. However, we have a small team and can't possible do everything I would love to do anyways. Will JMS provide enough benefit to warrant the cost of rewriting mostly-working code (mostly working because we don't have an obvious \"this doesn't work!\" example, I know from code review that there are minor issues a few 'smells' that I need to look into further, and basically that it's a decent but no-where close to enterprise level, but the stuff I am certain I have to address wouldn't take as long as writing the JMS logic, much less testing and debugging). How 'bad' is it to create a dependency on an external system like JMS when we currently can run without it? Are there other useful advantages to JMS I'm not seeing (guaranteed message delivery seems a big one to me, but not sure just how much of a benefit that will be yet for this project) Incidentally, one of our eventual \"long term, cool to have, were see if we get around to it\" goals would be to replace the current use of SQL calls to fetch data by storing everything in memory. If we do store in-memory we will need very reliable message passing to keep state consistent between multiple daemons, and my inclination right now is that something like that should never be tried without the something like JMS. The state wouldn't change very often, but when it does change were have to stay consistent, worry about data race etc. We may not do that at all, would JMS make it substantially easier to keep consistent state and handle data-races, or will I still be doing the same logic in either case? Are there certain things particularly prone to failing with quickly written message passing systems I should be looking for explicitly?"}
{"_id": "199729", "title": "What's the right way to work with a graphic designer?", "text": "Recently, we worked with a graphic designer (arranged by the client) to provide the skin for a Django+Bootstrap application we had built. The designer provided a series of static images of the new layout, along with a document describing some technical attributes (font sizes, colours, a few dimensions etc). It turned out to be incredibly time consuming to implement this. Although the whole site was basically a front page, an index page, and half a dozen detail pages, I spent at least 5 days just implementing the CSS and HTML changes. So I'll go out on a limb and call this _The Wrong Way_. My basic approach was:   1. Compare the static image and current rendering, and notice a difference.   2. Guess what change would be need in the CSS/HTML   3. Make that change   4. Go to step 1. Some of the particular issues were me not understanding that the design included a change from 8 columns to 12, some images provided in the wrong format (.png's can render differently on different browser/platform combinations), hassles trying to undo Bootstrap's styling, the usual CSS wrestling to achieve pixel perfect rendering etc. And occasionally I had to reorganise the HTML templates to get a certain behaviour. What's the right way?"}
{"_id": "199723", "title": "How to handle deleting record with associated records?", "text": "this is not a technical question but rather about the right logic on handling delete with foreign key constraint. First of all, Im very new to programming and a dummy about software engineering. Im still a first year student. In my exercise app, I cascaded the record with OneToMany relationship with other records. In other words when I delete the record, Hibernate will automatically delete the associated records. My problem is, my teacher told me that Cascading is not right. He said that the user must delete first the associated records and he didn't tell me the details and he is kinda angry when he told us. (He is always like that, he wants to intimidate his students. Idk what's his problem but I don't really mind. I just want to learn). Please give me some advice because I cannot make up my mind. So far these are my thoughts: 1) After clicking delete, the system will tell the user that there are associated records and it will be deleted along if he continues. He will be then ask if he will continue. 2) After clicking delete, the system will tell the user that there are associated records and he can be redirected to a page or there is a pop-up that will show all the associated records and he can manually delete. 3) Don't allow the user to delete. Please advice...."}
{"_id": "199720", "title": "How do I test my non-Ruby website using Ruby?", "text": "I would like to build some Ruby tests to test my non-Ruby website. I love the Ruby testing tools (webrat, capybara, etc.) but they seem to be targeted to testing local sites. How can I use these great tools to test external websites? Is there a way to override their settings so that they don't hit `http://localhost` for everything? Or do they work deeper and what I'm asking is impossible? MichaelT, I guess a better way to ask my question is: How do I continuously test a non-Ruby website (say, a .Net one) with Ruby tools? I want to crawl my website every 5 minutes, doing things like logging in, making sure the home page loads, adding things to my shopping cart, and checking out. If any of these steps fails or takes too long then I want the system to notify me in some way so that I can fix it. UPDATE: JustinC has the right idea, apparently this is a duplicate question and I wasn't able to find the correct question to ask. I think either of the solutions in your response will work and I'll play with them both. Thanx! NOTE: I know there are several SaaS providers on the web that do transaction testing but in a quick survey I was unable to find one that A) worked with non-Windows systems, and B) was able to be scripted without some sort of \"recording\" system (which didn't work on my system)."}
{"_id": "199721", "title": "Balance Tree with depth n has how many nodes maximum?", "text": "I couldn't find the answer anywhere, but let's say we have a B-Tree with min = 1 and max = 2: What is the formula to calculate the maximum number of nodes in this B-Tree if the depth is say 100? This question was given on an in-class test to which most everyone had no idea what the answer was. I was completely stumped and am wondering if anyone knows what it is. Thanks a lot!"}
{"_id": "236292", "title": "\"flexible\" functions in SQL Server 2012?", "text": "I'm looking for a very exotic thing and have no idea if it exists at all in SQL Server 2012. (Please forgive me - my background is in T-SQL, but not yet the fine details of SQL 'programming'.) So, whether this 'this' is a UDF or SP or something else - I don't know. The challenge is to have something so flexible that it could return a table with one or more records and a list of fields that is determined at runtime. I guess something like a virtual table, but 'lighter' and faster. Is that doable (and how)? As an example, let's say I have two records (IDs being `1` and `2`) and their values for field '`name`' are '`R1`' and '`R2`'. Some other logic makes me want to combine these into a record with ID '`virtual1`' and two fields names , '`F1`' and '`F2`' with value '`R1`' and '`R2`' - very much boiled down, but this what I'd like to achieve...."}
{"_id": "2777", "title": "What are the key points of Code Complete?", "text": "I have heard a lot of people mention Code Complete as a book worthwhile reading. Unfortunately, I am so busy that I don't have time to read it, so can anyone tell me what the key points of the book are?"}
{"_id": "9498", "title": "What are the criteria for evaluating an ORM for.NET?", "text": "I'm looking at evaluating ORMs. I've used SubSonic, Linq-to-SQL and Entity Framework. I've got a team of developers ranging from juniors to seniors. What are the criterias for evaluating an ORM for.NET?"}
{"_id": "191118", "title": "Forking SQLite source", "text": "I am interested in modifying the SQLite source code and making it available as an experimental public fork (GitHub, Google Code, etc.) However, the SQLite source code is currently in the public domain. If I fork, am I allowed to relicense using GNU GPL 3+? I would like my changes to the original source to be licensed under GNU GPL 3+. Using this Q as an example, I plan to commit the last official source to a git repo and make a note in README about the original source code. I assume this will satisfy this clause: `The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.`"}
{"_id": "221858", "title": "Why can data sent from the server be in a variety of formats, but sent to the server it can only be a string", "text": "I recently ran into an error, I guess caused by my lack of understanding of how HTTP works, where I was sending a JSON object to the server to be stored in session data, and then sent back to the client at a later time. When I was sending the data to the server all of my booleans were enclosed in quotes and so when they were later sent back to the client and parsed, all of my false values were evaluated as true - obviously quite a nooby error but it took me ages to debug because I was being stupid and seeing the \"false\" values in chrome dev tools and thought everything was fine with the response from the server and was looking for the problem elsewhere. So I was wondering, is there a way to set a content-type header when sending data to the server, that would cause data types to be maintained, as you can when sending a response from the server to the client?"}
{"_id": "221859", "title": "Building proprietary software over haskell compiler", "text": "Is it perfectly legal to use GHC as base and build some commercial application over its top ? Are there such examples I can can interact with ?"}
{"_id": "191110", "title": "Copyright/General Law for Publishing Online Software", "text": "I'm planning on releasing a program I made, but I'm not sure exactly how to ensure people don't just steal it. The price point is $1, but I'm not selling it through an \"app store\" or anything so I have to handle the legal stuff myself as well as building a website. How do I make it illegal (is it by default?) for people to resell copies of it. What about adding Copyrights to the code itself? Often, when I'm buying software, or even when it's free, I have to accept terms and conditions (which I obviously read _sarcasm_ ). Do I need something like that? I don't know if any other information is relevant, but just in case:   * It's written in Java   * There aren't any similar programs (in design) that I know of like it.   * I'm planing on using Paypal for the payment, though I may look into amazon or see the cost of an ssl certificate with my host to see if it makes sense to do it myself."}
{"_id": "93836", "title": "What is a NPR Syntax?", "text": "what is a NPR syntax, from what i have gathered from internet, i have come to conclusion that NPR is a performance related database. Its based on NPR database Given that what i have gathered is correct, how do i extract data from this Database, what language\\Tools should i be using?"}
{"_id": "191115", "title": "Advanced Java Articles", "text": "Recently, I've _really_ been getting into programming. I've always loved it, but now it's all I think about. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And now that I'm working a lot and about to graduate and get a full time job, I'm looking to sharpen those skills. Lately, all of my programming has been in Java and Javascript. I've nearly mastered the quirks of Javascript, but I'm still \"new\" to Java. I've written a lot of code, but I don't know the ins and outs. (For instance, I just discovered the try with resources statement.) TL;DR - I'm looking for some articles to hone my Java skills and really know the ins and outs of the language. Anything from refactoring tips to advanced security guides to performance optimizations. Where can I go to become a better Java programmer. (Besides my IDE. I spend enough time there. :p )"}
{"_id": "236297", "title": "Typical instantiation of new object - is there a way to avoid repetitious syntax?", "text": "When learning C# (and OO concepts more generally at the same time) something I found very distracting is exemplified by the following line:               ExampleClass exampleObject = new ExampleClass();      It's the apparent redundant repetition that bothered me. Some light dawned when I grasped the difference between declaring a variable and assigning it a value or reference (and that these processes can be separate). However, the above usage is extremely common. Obviously, I've learnt to live with it (and am not expecting the C# syntax to change!) but I wondered if there is a better way. Would there be any merit in the following:               exampleObject = new ExampleClass();      Where the variable `exampleObject` is strongly typed as `ExampleClass` when it is not specified? **EDIT**   [after commenters pointed out ambiguity of above between a declaration of a new, and an assignment, of an existing, variable:] An alternative hypothetical shortened syntax, which avoids the declaration/assignment ambiguity, is:               ExampleClass exampleObject = new();      ...where this would create a new instance of `ExampleClass`, the type having been specified in the declaration of its referencing variable, `exampleObject`. .. but I'm sure this opens up other problems I haven't thought of!   **/EDIT** Obviously, if for some reason we wanted `exampleObject`to be of type `Object`, or - a more common requirement - to be of the type of a parent class of `ExampleClass`, we would specify these types in front of the variable name in the standard way, but is there any drawback to my suggested shorthand in this very common scenario?"}
{"_id": "52151", "title": "Models, controllers, and code reuse", "text": "I have a blog where users can post comments. When creating a comment, various things happen:   * creating the comment object, associations, persisting   * sending notification emails to post's author given his preferences   * sending notification to moderators given their preferences   * updating a fulltext database for search   * ... I could put all this in the controller, but what if I want to reuse this code ? e.g. I would like to provide an API for posting comments. I could also put this in the model, but I wonder if I won't lose flexibility by doing so. And would it be acceptable to do all of this from the model layer ? What would you do ?"}
{"_id": "119590", "title": "Where to go after Adobe Flex?", "text": "After this post http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about- flex.html and especially this paragraph: > ... Does Adobe recommend we use Flex or HTML5 for our enterprise application > development? > > In the long-term, we believe HTML5 will be the best technology for > enterprise application development. We also know that, currently, Flex has > clear benefits for large-scale client projects typically associated with > desktop application profiles. ... Make no mistake, the days of Flex are over. Thus a lot of people are asking themselves: **Which technology(ies) will solve their and their customers problems in a future without flex?** P.S.: Obviously the correct answer for adobe would have been \" ...Since we believe, that HTML5 will be the best technology enterprise application development, we will ensure that it will be targeted by future releases of the Flex framework ...\""}
{"_id": "190265", "title": "I want to publish an android app, but I'm afraid of software patents", "text": "I wrote an application that helps you to save energy. Actually it is very simple. I check the current location of the phone and I make some changes to the configuration like \"sound off, dark display, wifi off...\", depending on the location of the user. Sony just released a new phone including one of my apps features (actually they have an extra entry in the options menue for this). I have no idea whether there is a patent for this function. Can I even release this app without risking to be sued some day? I'm very confused about the whole \"patent\" situation.   I'm about 20 years old and I can't even write a simple app, without investing lots of money for a lawyer. Edit: **I don't ask for legal advice**. I wanted to receive an overview about how developers see or handle the whole situation."}
{"_id": "65316", "title": "What are some tips for avoiding 'Death by PowerPoint' during a technical presentation?", "text": "What are some tips for keeping users interested in a technical presentation?"}
{"_id": "119598", "title": "Detail of acceptance criteria in user story", "text": "I have the following example for a user story with acceptance criteria. I would like to know if I am allowed to describe how the GUI must be changed to support the new feature. How much detail can acceptance criteria have? This is my example: **User Story:** As forum administrator I will connect persons in groups, so that people can get organized. **Acceptance Criteria:**   1. The creation of a person group happens below a person group pool (person group pool is an object also visually available in the current software system)   2. The creation happens with a context menu of the persongroup pool. Below the pool one can create new groups.   3. A person group contains: person group-ID, description, remark May that be relevant an right acceptance criteria? Because I describe how you can create a new group by opening a context menu."}
{"_id": "94893", "title": "How to use Anorm correctly", "text": "So I'm new in scala-play world. And just got a look at Anorm and it seemed quite cool. But I was wondering what is the proper way to use it? I guess we shouldn't just put pseudo-SQL everywhere in our code.. I took a look at the website and there is a tutorial explaining some stuff, but it is not said how to actually effectively use it. Can anyone please share their 5cents?"}
{"_id": "190267", "title": "What is the difference of the add and offer methods of Java's PriorityQueue?", "text": "In java.util.PriorityQueue we have the methods `add(E e)` and `offer(E e)`. Both methods are documented as: > Inserts the specified element into this priority queue. What are the differences between these two methods?"}
{"_id": "9723", "title": "Are physically handicapped programmers at risk of being discriminated?", "text": "This thought hit me the other day: How would an employer look at a one-handed programmer being interviewed? I wouldn't be surprised if the person behind the desk were thinking: > Hm, he/she only has one hand. One hand is half of two hands, hence he/she > can type half as fast as a two-hander. Programmers type code, thus he/she > will produce half as much code. To wit, a one-hander is half as productive > as a two-handed coder. But good programmers do so much more than write code: they device algorithms and solutions to nitty problems; they do code-reviews and upkeep a high standard; they detect and fix bugs; and so much more. Most importantly, they think! If you want typing power, hire an orangutang! But maybe I'm barking at a non-existant problem. Maybe employers don't think a physical disability affects their programming skills. How would I know - I've never met a physically handicapped programmer, let alone a one-handed one, to confirm it. What's your experience? Have you, for example, witnessed a physically disabled programmer not be hired because it was thought he or she wouldn't be able to do the job because of the handicap?"}
{"_id": "251080", "title": "Can PhoneGap and RoboVm work in harmony?", "text": "The Goal is to make an iOS app using phonegap and java. When writing phonegap plugins that interact with native code (objective-c) would it be possible instead to make it interact with java when using robovm?"}
{"_id": "180371", "title": "Listing editors and IDE's in your resume?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Hiring developers - listing IDE as a requirement? I've seen this from time to time, that people tend to mention editors in their resume/CV and I've been guilty of doing the same thing(although with IDE's). Is this in any way interesting for the employer, or is it maybe even regarded as something naive and negative? EDIT: I found this question which mentions a few reasons why maybe listing IDE's would be reasonable. Maybe this question should be closed."}
{"_id": "102333", "title": "How seriously should a programmer take a 'star performer' award?", "text": "I work at a medium sized software corp. in India (abt 6,500 employees). This company has a star performer policy; basically they select a person from each \"grade\" every quarter and give her the award(some gift vouchers and a trophy). Well, not that I am jealous ... but a colleague just got the award and I sort of feel left out. I cant seem to get over the fact that I didn't get it. Do these awards actually provide any benefit to a Programmers career? Do other programmers think more highly of programmers who have won these awards?"}
{"_id": "220809", "title": "Text conversion - Javascript before saving to db, or php when retrieving?", "text": "Long story short, I have a social networking site I wrote a while back as a \"proof of concept\" to myself that I had the skills to do it. I decided to revisit it, and \"improve\" a lot of the bad coding practices I had when I first wrote the thing (3 years ago). # My current situation Users can create posts. When posting, some bbcode-style tags are allowed, as well as lots of smileys and such. Currently, I take the post, and store it in a mySQL database just the way it was written. When retrieving the post, I use php & regex expressions to convert these tags and smileys in to the appropriate html. For example, I might convert `:)` in to `<img src='/images/smiley.gif' />`. It works well... but then I got to thinking (probably a bad idea). # My proposed solution I got to thinking that doing this conversion every single time the post is retrieved from the database is probably not optimal, as there is an amount of server side CPU usage to perform the all the regex substitutions. The approach I think I would like to take is doing the conversion ahead of time, and storing the html version of the post in the database. This way, when I retrieve it the next 100 times or more, I don't need to keep doing the conversion. I plan on storing both the original text (to be used for editing the post) as well as the converted text (for displaying the post). Other than taking up more space in the database (I'm now storing a raw text version as well as an HTML version, is there any downside to the approach I'm thinking of using? Or does this sound like a reasonable optimization of the whole process? # Update So... after reading the comments from you guys, it sounds like there's probably not a lot of reason (okay, no reason) to try and do this client side rather than server side as I'm doing it now. Why did I come up with such a crazy idea in the first place? Well... right now, I store bbcode-ish text in the database, and when creating the page, run a function replacing all that code with html. What I **want** to do is show a preview box, similar to the StackExchange site, so that when the users are entering their posts, they can see what the formatted result would be. I assume that I need to do this via Javascript, so I've basically duplicated the preg_replace I use in php with replace functions in Javascript, so I can show the preview as the user enters their text. Soooo... I'm now duplicating the text replacement code, once in php, once in js. I figured maybe I should find a way to not have to write the code twice... but after some thought, maybe it's a small trade off to handle it this way. I just wanted to share what's rolling around in my head to put my on this path in the first place..."}
{"_id": "63519", "title": "How do I find someone to build an app for me?", "text": "I have an idea that I would like to develop as an app. I have no programming skills though. -Can someone point to some resources on how I can hire a reputable company to do the job for me.   * What are important factors I should consider when choosing?   * Any warning signs or red flags that I should be aware of when choosing?   * Can anyone provide cost estimates? I do not have a large amount of capital to invest. Are there companies that would build and come in for a percentage of the app if they feel it would be successful? Thank you all for your time."}
{"_id": "22983", "title": "Is it easy for a developer to become a system/business analysts?", "text": "I've been developing for a while now and I'm a little bit bored of the tiny details of software development. I would like to be less technical and more focused on the bigger picture, like take more of a system wide approach from a business perspective. Therefore, I'm thinking I might become a business analysts. But so far, I can't seem to determine what a business analyst does that a developer can't do. I know they're supposed to know more about the business rules and how a user uses the system but as a developer, I feel you have to know that anyway. I mean, I've trained new BAs up when they've first started on how the system is used. I'm also good with people, and can write pretty well. So I'm happy to do that, but surely there's much more to the job right? It's just weird because BAs in my area seem to get paid a lot more than developers - what are the skill sets I'm missing as a developer that I need as a BA?"}
{"_id": "112249", "title": "How do you cope with Java coming from javascript?", "text": "I learned some javascript as my introduction into programming, and now I'm trying to move on to Java and Python and from there to c++, c#, etc. I've been caught up with schoolwork, so I've had very little chance to learn anything yet, but I have been lurking around SO looking for easy Java questions that I might have asked myself and trying to learn from the answers. I saw one that was kind of interesting. It was a homework assignment about finding the most efficient order of jobs to do, assuming each job took two days and had to be in sequential order. I could have easily done this in javascript, but I'm having trouble figuring out how in Java. With javascript I would just return a two dimensional array. Each element being an array containing the profit and the days to work. Ignoring whether or not that's a stupid way to return data in javascript, what is the proper way to return data like this in Java? In other words, the javascript array I would return would look something like: [ ['1-3-5', 50], ['2-5-8', 90], ['2-4-7', 75] ] In Java, I would have to convert the integers to strings to start off, and then find a way to concatenate two two dimensional arrays... Needless to say, this is the wrong way to go about it."}
{"_id": "207101", "title": "Managing Multiple Projects that Share Code + Customization", "text": "I recently became lead developer of a project at my first non-internship programming position. I've been there for 8 months since I've graduated in December. The project is a web service we offer that is used to track inventory, provide reporting features, and other administration services. The project was originally created for a single client, but has started to become a general project that can be customized for each client. So as each new client signs on, we copy the code from the most recent project and start fresh again customizing the site for the new client. The Customization can be fairly dramatic in some areas of the site, or in some cases very little customization is needed. The problem I see is when we make improvements to the core functionality of the site, that all clients would benefit from, we would have to copy this new feature into every client's site. This seems very cumbersome to me, even with my limited amount of experience and feel there has to be a better way. And to be honest, it usually isn't copied over at all. Same for bug fixes. They'll go client by client, fixing the same bugs as they go in each site. Right now we use Microsoft's Team Foundation Server as our code repository, so a new project for each client is created and added. It may help to mention that it is a smaller company with about 40 employees. Of which 9 are programmer's. I feel like this could be a chance to prove my worth and figure out a better solution. If anyone here has had experience with a similar situation any input would be appreciated. **Update:**   Some questions that have been asked that I have added in here. Q. Describe what the application looks like. Is this a web application? Does the application on it's own look to have three (or more) tiers? Is the code a mess?      A. Yeah this is a web application that has a fairly extensive database, and is FDA regulated. It is used by Pharmaceutical companies to track pharmaceutical drug samples distributed by their representatives. The code isn't horrible, but it can definitely be improved. Which is something I have been trying to do. It was developed with ASP.Net and C#. Q. Tell me about the database. Is there a common database that all instances of the application interact with?      A. No shared database, each client has their own database instance. When a new client signs on we take a copy of the most recent client's database to be used. The database is written in a fairly generic way. Some business logic needs to be tweaked depending on the client, but it usually isn't too extensive and doesn't require modifying table structures or anything like that. And finally, most of the customization that has to be done involves business logic. We don't really change the UI per client or anything like that. Just acquire a copy of the Company's logo and smack it the default spot. Some of the more extensive changes had to do with the companies structure and involved the database/ BL. Most of the time though it is more minor changes."}
{"_id": "207102", "title": "Is it fair to call a database or a document a \"Model\", as in Model/View/Controller?", "text": "Part of my job is working on line-of-business applications built around client-side databases, such as Access or FoxPro. Other times these local LOBA's have direct document access, such as an exact one-to-one mapping between a logical object an an XML node or references to bookmarks in Word Documents or ranges Excel spreadsheets. While the code is about as messy as one would expect, it's usually fairly stable and the platforms these applications are built upon all have one thing in common: they translate program data to physical storage directly and transparently, from the programmer's point of view. Would it be fair to refer to the database or document in one of these LOBA's as a \"Model\", when referring to the Model/View/Controller separation of concerns? Or would it be improper to call separation of UI and business-logic MVC unless we make intermediate objects that in turn map to either the UI or the database?"}
{"_id": "211395", "title": "Is over-engineering a warning sign?", "text": "So we present a straightforward coding exercise to new candidates with some well defined requirements. Occasionally we receive solutions which don't really solve the problem at hand, but are over-engineered to solve a perceived problem - often outside the bounds of the exercise. Now my question is, is this a warning sign? EDIT: Quite a lot of the discussion is based on the test being flawed - which is a fair point. As I described in a comment, the basic premise of the test is to show how you can read the data from the file in a sensible way (and you'd be amazed at the variety of approaches we see), and how to match the items before calculating the latency between the updates. Now for this to work, certain assumptions have to be made about the data, and we look for these assumptions, and we also state explicitly that we want to see the approach you take (including OO approach etc.) All this in a two hour time frame. IMHO, when I was interviewing it was the most complete exercise I came across. The particular scenario which I'm pondering about is where a candidate, rather than reading from the file, accepted \"network\" input in a multi-threaded application, which clearly is not in scope."}
{"_id": "146898", "title": "How should I architect multi-language support for a group of applications?", "text": "I have about 8 web applications (all of them ASP.NET based), and I want to implement multiple language support for all of them and have an architecture that I can leverage on new web applications down the road. I would also like to try to centralize the admin piece (where all the text translations and other language specific resources reside), do you know of any tool or architectural pattern that might be useful in this case? The only robust solution I can think of is to have a web application that manages the language support resources and all the other web applications connect to this centralized app/service, but I'm afraid that this solution will have a performance impact on all applications if not implemented the right way. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions."}
{"_id": "146899", "title": "GPL License - Selling and Stealing", "text": "I understand that when any software under the GPL is given to another the recipient has the same rights over the software that I do. I also understand that this applies to \"a work based on the Program\". Questions: 1) I noticed several companies sell wordpress plugins and require that you buy a new plugin for each website. Plugins are obviously \"a work based on the Program\". How do they do this with GPL? (ie I want to do this and not have someone take my plugin, turn around and sell it for themselves. I'm working with Drupal, however, not Wordpress). 2) If I write a module for in-house purposes and an employee takes that module home and puts it online, is that legal? What I mean is that if someone steals my code do they still have the same rights over the code that I do? 3) If I use Drupal modules in a software-as-a-service business and let people use it (ie hosted on my servers), do I still have to give them the source? References: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html"}
{"_id": "137158", "title": "Is it better to use assert or IllegalArgumentException for required method parameters?", "text": "In Java, which is more highly recommended, and why? Both types will throw exceptions, so in that regard handling them is the same. `assert` is slightly shorter, but I'm not sure how much that matters.               public void doStuff(Object obj) {         assert obj != null;         ...     }      vs               public void doStuff(Object obj) {         if (obj == null) {             throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"object was null\");         }         ...     }"}
{"_id": "146890", "title": "How to conduct a 3 days training on current techniques like TDD and CI", "text": "I am tasked to conduct a training for an upcoming team of 20 Java developers for a new project. The project owner wants us to use state of the art development techniques like TDD and CI. The developers are skilled Java developers but have minor to no experience with unit testing, and most likely only superficial experience in refactoring. So the overall project manager scheduled a 3 day training for all developers, and some project managers, to learn the \"new\" techniques, get everybody in a shared mindset and get started. So I have 3 days (aka 20 hours) to teach them   * ~~Software Craftsmanship~~ deleted due to answer   * Unit Testing   * TDD/BDD   * Refactoring   * Static Code Analysis   * CI Obviously I can't teach them everything. So my questions is   * **how to distribute the available time on these (and other) topics** ,    * what to focus on and what do omit,    * and how to best **conduct a training session based on these topics**?"}
{"_id": "197614", "title": "How to make big chunk of hardcoded menuitems in a programmable way", "text": "So in the javascript app, we have a lot of repeated chunk of `menu items` with the specific `settings`: URL, Name, Title, etc etc (these settings sometimes can be optional). Here is the gist of the menuItem and we have tons of them. The client pushes new changes every month or twice per month on these items, either the menu item should be named differently or the url is outdated or whatever. Instead of going and changing each URL everytime, I thought about:   * Creating a web-service, with a complete CRUD on menuitems, whatever comes in there, goes dirrectly via JSON, to the app Well, I would like to hear if you have some thoughts on this idea of `configuring` the application rather than hardcoding the app each time when the CR comes. Here is the gist of the menuItem and we have tons of them. All help will be appreciated"}
{"_id": "197615", "title": "Good public API for use in demos and documentation?", "text": "I have created a utility library and open sourced it on Github, and I'd like to document the HTTP utilities. I created this around some apps I've developed, but none of the APIs I use are for public consumption. I want to use a well known public API in my documentation so that code samples will work and be really easy to understand for the user, but I don't work with any such API so I'm not familiar with any...looking for suggestions."}
{"_id": "167752", "title": "How to stop gold-plating and just be content to release working developments", "text": "The development team that I'm a member of has recently adapted to work according to Agile practices. This has personally highlighted the fact that I can't stop myself gold-plating code (and documentation) and I consequently exceed original estimates, when I could've delivered solutions that meet the requirements much earlier. I think my ethic is bordering on the obsessive in that I become too attached to my code and am rarely content to release before I've refactored and perfected it to the nth degree. I am happy that I have realised this but how can I change my attitude/mentality to be content with my progress and release on-time instead?"}
{"_id": "190643", "title": "Which of these OOP examples demonstrate proper OOP concepts?", "text": "I'm still trying to wrap my head around OOP. All of the following examples work, of course, but is there one (or possibly another) that best exemplifies OOP concepts?               /**      * For the following examples the Image class queries an image      * and associated info from a database, which is passed on      * instantiation via dependency injection.      */          $image = new Image(new Db());      **Example 1:**               if ($image->setImageId($id, $size)) {         header('content-type: ' . $image->content_type);         header('content-length: ' . $image->length);         echo $image->getBytes();     }      **Example 2:**               if ($image_info = $image->getImageInfoByIdAndSize($id, $size)) {         header('content-type: ' . $image_info->content_type);         header('content-length: ' . $image_info->length);         echo $image->getImageBytesByIdAndSize($id, $size);     }      **Example 3:**               $image->setImageIdAndSize($id, $size);          if ($image_info = $image->getImageInfo()) {         header('content-type: ' . $image_info->content_type);         header('content-length: ' . $image_info->length);         echo $image->getImageBytes();     }"}
{"_id": "142390", "title": "I'm going to quit my job because of our platform: how can I leave a productive explanation of this?", "text": "I'm planning on leaving my current job because we're locked into using Blub, with an enterprise Blub framework and a Blub-level web server, on mediocre shared hosting. My coworkers are friendly and my boss is an average small business owner - I want to leave entirely because of the technical reasons. I feel like being soaked in Blub is bad for my brain and making me a worse programmer. When I leave, how can I explain this to my boss and coworkers? How can I phrase my complaints about Blub productively? What kind of warning can I and should I leave for my successor in documentation? _(trying to make sure I meet thestandards)_"}
{"_id": "71952", "title": "Interested in a million things, have a million goals: how to choose what to focus on", "text": "I am currently working as a Web Application developer using .NET Technologies. I am interested in learning more about the technologies that I work with, but I am ALSO interested in a million other things... (including Systems programming, Networking, Game Development, Mobile Development, Computer Science topics, Math, participating in an Open Source project, starting my own business, etc). I can't seem to focus on one thing to become an 'expert' in when there are so many **other** things to 'master' that are pulling at my attention, and there are only so many hours in the day... My question is, what are some good strategies to stop procrastinating and manage time effectively, so that you can get the most out of your free time and learn what you are interested in, while not losing sight of other priorities and letting other interests fall through the cracks? Or do I have to sacrifice, and if so, how do I prioritize what to sacrifice? I'd love to hear what you guys have to say... Thanks"}
{"_id": "197619", "title": "How to model/structure data that contains parent/child relationships for the same entity?", "text": "I think it is just my thinking that is off here. Suppose I have two entities: question and choice. A question can be a parent or child, or both (in relation to other questions). It seems that this model is too simple and is an unresolved many-to-many, but I think my thinking is the problem here so this is more of a conceptual question. What is the best way to design/model this? Please explain why it is or isn't a many-to-many relationship, and whether or not it needs to be resolved and why. See below: ![idea](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7kUG9.png) A question can be a parent or a child, or both (potentially multiple times). Programming logic would prevent the child from being its own parent and vice versa. It seems I'm missing a linking solution of some sort here, or I'm just not wrapping my brain around this."}
{"_id": "189989", "title": "How to know if an Open Source project is mature enough to use in a product?", "text": "There are some open source projects that I'd like to incorporate into a product at work. We don't have the bandwidth nor the subject matter expertise to do it ourselves. I found these by searching in Google. I'm unaware of any \"major players\" that utilize the projects, but I'm pretty encouraged by what I see. Now, I'm a bit concerned about the amount of risk I'm exposed to by using joe- blow's open source project. If it takes me 95% of the way there, perhaps the remaining 5% is easy to add or fix. Perhaps it's non-trivial. **How do people go about determining whether an open source project is mature enough to use in a product?** This is not a hobby project, so stability, maintainability, etc. are paramount."}
{"_id": "253678", "title": "Should we enforce code style in our large codebase?", "text": "By \"code style\" I mean 2 things:   1. Style, eg.              // bad     if(foo){ ... }          // good     if (foo) { ... }        2. Conventions and idiomaticity, where two ways of writing the same thing are functionally equivalent, but one is more idiomatic. eg.              // bad     if (fooLib.equals(a, b)) { ... }          // good     if (a == b) { ... }      I think it makes sense to use an auto-formatter to enforce #1 automatically. So my question is specifically about #2. I like to break things down into pros and cons, here's what I've come up with so far: **Pros:**   * Used by many large codebases (eg. Google, jQuery)   * Helps make it a bit easier to work on new areas of the codebase   * Helps make code more portable (this is not necessarily true)   * Code style is automatic once you get used to it   * Makes it easier to fast-decline pull requests **Cons:**   * Takes engineers\u2019 and code reviewers\u2019 time away from more important things (like developing features)   * Code should ideally be rewritten every 2-3 years anyway, so it\u2019s more important to focus on getting the architecture right, and achieving high test coverage   * Adds strain to code reviews (eg. \u201cdon\u2019t do it this way, I like this other way better\u201d)   * Even if I\u2019ve been using a code style for a while, I still sometime have to pause and think about how to write a line better   * Having an enforced, uniform code style makes it hard to experiment with potentially better styles   * Maintaining a style guide takes a lot of incremental effort   * Engineers rarely read through the style guide. More often, it's cited in code reviews And as a secondary question: we also have many smaller repositories - should the same code style be enforced there?"}
{"_id": "211022", "title": "Languages implemented in Python?", "text": "AFAIK, Scala and Clojure are implemented in Java and Java is implemented in C. I suppose that many or most languages are implemented in C, for instance Perl, Python and SQL. I don't know much about language implementation but maybe you can tell me the rationale to favor one implementation language Java over another C? Are there any theories about one language implementing another, or are we resorted to Turing machine theory where a language is regarded are a Turing machine?"}
{"_id": "211023", "title": "Utility Classes in MVC - ASP.NET", "text": "So I was wondering today, where would you put utility classes in an ASP.NET MVC app? By utility classes I mean classes that can be static and are just used to perform a function. Like a class to send an email that takes email address , subject, and body as arguments.   I would assume maybe creating a separate folder and namespace would be good enough, but wanted to get everyone opinions"}
{"_id": "211028", "title": "What is the pattern called when getters take responsibility for the setting?", "text": "I've been heavily using a pattern for years now, but I don't know what it's called. It looks like this....               class xzy     {            public function getFoo()       {         if ( undefined(this.foo) )         {            this.foo = new Foo;         }         return this.foo       }            public function setFoo(foo)       {         this.foo = foo;         return this;       }            public function getResult()       {         if ( undefined(this.result) )         {            this.result = this.getFoo().action();         }         return this.result;       }          }      It find it great for testing yet still allows for a high level of encapsulation. It's also great for drying up code. I also very rarely use a constructor. I'm now in a position where I could really do with specifying the pattern in some documentation but I don't know what it's called and it's a hard thing to try and Google."}
{"_id": "78575", "title": "Who does the UX on a scrum project?", "text": "OK. Let's say you're working on a textbook scrum project. You've got a scrum master collaborating with a product owner. The next sprint is UI-heavy - by the time your coders start building screens, you really want to have _some_ idea what they're going to look like. Who does the wireframing, and when? The product owner? Somebody supporting the product owner? The scrum master? If you have a UX expert, do they work alongside the coders _after_ the sprint has started, or do they supply wireframes & mock-ups up-front that sit alongside your story cards and constraints to guide and inform the work the developers are doing? I'm pretty sure we need some UX help, you see, but I'm really not sure where to apply it... EDIT: Let me rephrase the question. How do you deliver consistent, high-quality user experience on an agile project?"}
{"_id": "125357", "title": "Keep my classes and methods as small as possible?", "text": "A few days ago, I was talking to a Software Engineering PhD candidate and at some point she said to me: > Keep your classes and methods as small as possible And I wonder if this is always a good practice. I mean for example, is it worthy to have a class with only 2 attibutes in it? For instance, In some methods I need pairs of integers to work with. Should i write a \"PairOfIntgers\" class? Could this way of thinking \"break\" the code in too many pieces?"}
{"_id": "78571", "title": "Best practices for web application Authentication/Security (Any Platform)", "text": "I got a question today from my manager asking me my thoughts on what is considered an acceptable design for authentication of a web form application, especially in regards to the nature of many popular browsers to \"Remember Password\" for your typical user name password login fields. I am having trouble coming up with an answer that I feel is acceptable. In light of Sony's embarassing security flaws, I really want to be careful, even though the data being stored on people is of a lower sensitivity. We are not storing social security numbers or even addresses however we are storing phone numbers, email addresses and a photo of a visitor. He is concerned that a user can simply Remember Password on a public terminal, then someone can simply jump on this terminal and begin viewing or modifiy data in an unauthorized way. I am fairly certain however that at least on Windows workstations that the browser will not \"Remember Password\" across Windows user accounts. Beyond this I am implementing a one way password encryption at the server side (store encryped password in the database, encrypt user supplied password on the server, compare to encrypted string from database). There are no immediate plans to incorporate SSL encryption however this is still an option. Are there are any major security flaws with this approach? Do you have any better suggestions?"}
{"_id": "222086", "title": "Understanding unit testing concept", "text": "I've just started writing unit tests and I'm not sure am I doing it the \"right way.\" Should I test every class \"by removing dependencies\"? In other words, does unit testing mean: \"test part of a code with assumption that provided dependencies to other modules are correct and test these dependencies as single modules later in other unit test classes\"? For example, I write WinRT application in Model-View-ViewModel manner and I have MainViewModel class. This class has dependency to `IDataRepository` which is injected in constructor. `MainViewModel` is responsible for handling commands and connecting model with view. `MainViewModel` has commands like `CopyItems`, `LoadData` etc which are relying on `IDataRepository` implementation. Should I pass fake (mock/fake it??) `IDataRepository` in `MainViewModel_Tests` and test just is data loaded, copied etc. on command execution? Should one test check just things what class really do - not what dependencies do?"}
{"_id": "91158", "title": "Is it ok if I don't know C but I am good with C++?", "text": "I have a question which I think can be best answered here. I am pretty good with `C++`, good as in I am comfortable with the language, I have read `Accelerated C++` and done almost all the exercises. However, I have a big problem. Do I need to learn `C`? I have never done `C` ever in my life. I just started with `C++` when I started with programming. Probably cause I was always interested in knowing why everyone calls the language so complex. Now though I know the answer to that question ;) I am particularly interested in knowing whether I can survive without knowing `C` in today's world. Like if I give an interview in a company, if I tell them that I don't know `C` \\- will they take it as OK? The two languages I am good with is Python and C++. I am asking this cause I have heard that companies ask data structures in interviews. So if they ask me to implement it, and if I do it in C++, is it acceptable? And people who say 'how can you not know C when you C++', please don't reply :) No offense, but I fail to understand why learning C is prerequisite."}
{"_id": "169998", "title": "Can I release complementary Windows 8 and WP8 apps on their respective stores?", "text": "I am creating a pair of apps, one to run preferably on tablets, but also laptops and PCs, and the other for WP8. These apps are complementary - having one is of no use without the other. I know there is a Windows Store, and a Windows Phone store, so one would be released on one, and one on the other. My question is: as these apps are useless by themselves (although in most cases it won't be the same people running both apps), will there be a problem with offering these useless-when-used-alone apps? IOW: Person A will use the Windows 8 app to interact with some people that have the WP8 app installed; those with the WP8 app will interact with a person or people who have the Windows 8 app installed. What I'm worried about is if these apps go through a certification process where they must be useful \"standalone\" - is that the case?"}
{"_id": "220811", "title": "Script files as resource or solution project?", "text": "I've written a program for another group within my company that uses scripts. These scripts are user selected by the use of two drop down lists: category and name. Currently the application uses an XML file that is on a network share to populate the drop down lists with the scripts and their associated categories and titles. The XML file also contains the network path location where the scripts are housed as well as title, description and usage details. I am trying to decide on the better way to manage access to the scripts without allowing the end users to be able to edit them with a text editor. I've been going between adding them as a project within the solution or adding them as references. Does anyone have any thought on either of those options or possibly a better solution? EDIT: I think I may have figured out a solution for what I'm looking to do. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319292. I'll load the macros as well as the XML file and that should allow me to accomplish what I'm trying to do."}
{"_id": "220810", "title": "What exactly is my program \"linking\" with overall?", "text": "I have heard that my C++ programs \"need to link with the C++ library/runtime\". However, the C++ runtime is just the compiler inserting stack operation code in to the image, or \"boilerplate\" code if you will. The C++ runtime is basically intrinsic to the program itself, so \"linking the runtime\" is a bit illogical. Linking a library makes more sense, especially since the C++ libraries are independent objects which would otherwise need resolvement with the source program itself, and relocation. So I wondered, besides the C++ library, what else, or how do you know what you are linking with exactly? For example, if I'm supposedly linking with the C++ library, I also need to link with the OS-specific library and API as well, or at least a wrapper of some sort that will deal directly with it. So the linker will, in effect, link the main program file with the C++ library with the OS-API/library? That doesn't sound particularly right. Basically, the linker will link multiple libraries together(statically, in this example, at compile/link-time)?"}
{"_id": "234530", "title": "Utilising Promises, Closures and Recursion in Node.js", "text": "I have employed a recursive call to a closure in order to mitigate against some race conditions I am getting (That's what I think it is). I'd like to know if (and why) this is a good solution or a bad solution.               function getResources(activity, resource) {         var q = when.defer(),         resourceQuery = constructSelectionQuery(resource),         timeoutCounter = 0,         timeoutLimit = 100;         function queryDatabase() {             query.getResult({                 query: resourceQuery             }, function(err, result) {                 if (result.length === 0) {                     if (timeoutCounter > timeoutLimit) {                         q.reject();                     }                     timeoutCounter++;                          //subsequent call(s)                     queryDatabase();                 } else {                     q.resolve(result);                 }             });         }              //initial call         queryDatabase();              return q.promise;              }      * * * What I am trying to ascertain is the validity of using recursion and closure in this combination - is this an acceptable way of approaching the problem of repeating the call to the database? Without the repeating of the call the result is sometimes empty. This is curious as this function is only called after the record has been saved. However this is in another system so I am assuming the speed of indexing is at fault in MySQL - I don't want to go into that aspect of the system as I'm happy with what I've got - My question is isolated to using this pattern - a recursive call to the closure as a way to repeat the call."}
{"_id": "91150", "title": "measuring database load", "text": "I was reading about memcache and one of the questions that I have for this moment is about 'measuring database load'. In this tutorial they are talking about a 'database load of 20'. How can I measure the database load of a web application?"}
{"_id": "144948", "title": "Patterns for Handling Changing Property Sets in C++", "text": "I have a bunch \"Property Sets\" (which are simple `structs` containing POD members). I'd like to modify these property sets (eg: add a new member) at run time so that the definition of the property sets can be externalized and the code itself can be re-used with multiple versions/types of property sets with minimal/no changes. For example, a property set could look like this:               struct PropSetA     {         bool activeFlag;         int processingCount;         /* snip few other such fields*/     };      But instead of setting its definition in stone at compile time, I'd like to create it _dynamically_ at run time. Something like:               class PropSet propSetA;     propSetA(\"activeFlag\",true);  //overloading the function call operator     propSetA(\"processingCount\",0);       And the code dependent on the property sets (possibly in some other library) will use the data like so:                bool actvFlag = propSet[\"activeFlag\"];      if(actvFlag  == true)      {        //Do Stuff      }      The current implementation behind all of this is as follows:               class PropValue     {      public:         // Variant like class for holding multiple data-types         // overloaded Conversion operator. Eg:         operator bool()         {           return (baseType == BOOLEAN) ? this->ToBoolean() : false;         }         // And a method to create PropValues various base datatypes         static FromBool(bool baseValue);     };          class PropSet     {           public:       // overloaded[] operator for adding properties       void operator()(std::string propName, bool propVal)       {         propMap.insert(std::make_pair(propName, PropVal::FromBool(propVal)));       }           protected:        // the property map        std::map<std::string, PropValue> propMap;     };      This problem at hand is similar to this question on SO and the current approach (described above) is based on this answer. But as noted over at SO this is more of a hack than a proper solution. The fundamental issues that I have with this approach are as follows:   * Extending this for supporting new types will require significant code change. At the bare minimum overloaded operators need to be extended to support the new type.   * Supporting complex properties (eg: `struct` containing `struct`) is tricky.   * Supporting a reference mechanism (needed for an optimization of not duplicating identical property sets) is tricky. This also applies to supporting pointers and multi-dimensional arrays in general. Are there any known patterns for dealing with this scenario? Essentially, I'm looking for the equivalent of the visitor pattern, but for extending `class` properties rather than methods. **Edit:** Modified problem statement for clarity and added some more code from current implementation."}
{"_id": "222611", "title": "Should I use the new method/action to retrieve records? (Rails)", "text": "I have an admin controller that is just used for its index action which renders a view with the most recent updates to certain resources:               class AdminController < ApplicationController              before_action :authenticate_user!         layout \"admin\"              def index             @events = Event.last(3)             @foos   = Foo.last(3)             @bars   = Bar.last(3)         end          end      Now, I want to create a new event. So I have an Events controller:               class EventsController < ApplicationController            before_action :authenticate_user!, only: [:new,:create]       layout \"admin\", only: [:new]                 def index         @events = Event.all       end            def show       end            def new       end            def create       end                    end      But I want to display a list of events that have previously been added in the same view as the form for creating a new event. Should I retrieve all the events in the new action? i.e.               def new       @events = Event.all     end      Or is there a better approach(perhaps more restful)?"}
{"_id": "115739", "title": "RFC: Extending the MVC Design Pattern", "text": "I've been using the MVC pattern in my applications for years (with full separation of the controller from its views). Having to implement several hundred views to represent a little over 100 model's for a potential contract, this time around I'd like to reduce the development time of my UI tasks and also add a few additional features (view decoration, etc). I'm curious to find out if anyone has used or even implemented a design such as the one I'll explain bellow and if so, what were your pros and cons were. Without getting into too much detail, I'm going to simply elaborate on an example of an API I have been juggling with in my head for a few days along with some explanations a bit later on, so here goes:               Model m = dao.getInstance(ID);  // ie: possibly fetch it from a database          VTextField text = new VTextField();  // simply 'extends' the Swing components          text.setModel(m);          Decorator deco = DecoratorFactory.getInstance();  // specific to a customer          text.setDecorator(deco);          Controller c = ControllerFactory.getInstance(m);          text.setController(c);          Validator v = ValidatorFactory.getInstance(m);  // get the current validator          c.setValidator(v, \"validateText\");      So in the example above, the idea is that I will have the same application for several clients. Although each have accepted the general usability, each want their branded L&F to it, some based on business rules (ie: a text field has errors, the background of text-field should be in yellow with red fonts... an other want the text in black and the background yellow with a red border). What I was thinking was that on any event (on focus, loss focus, key typed, etc), the component would basically invoke the controller. In turn, the controller (through reflection) would invoke the validator. If validation passes, the controller simply updates the model. If validation fails, the controller does not update the model. The controller would keep a state of all of this (viewing, editing, editing with error, etc) and would delegate to the decorator which would adjust the L&F of each component based on client demands. This would avoid a ton of 'if/else' blocks directly in a single controller. The controller, validator and decorator knows which concrete instance to load based on which client is running the application. This way, I can separate the logic for each client and reuse when it is shared behavior. The decorator doesn't overide the paintXXX() methods, but simply calls the 'setBackground(c)', 'setBorder(b)' and all of these setter methods already available in the Swing components. The reason I extend each component is simply to add the 'setModel(m)' and 'setController(c)' methods along with any framework logic I'll need. When the component is in 'view' mode, it usually doesn't paint the border and background and all that stuff (looks more like a traditional web page). When it is in 'edit' mode then it looks more like a Swing component. When I design application UI's I usually stick to only a few major components (JTextField, JTextArea, JPanel, etc). So it wouldn't be too much work on that side. I have not started to implement any of this stuff just yet, so if you know of existing libraries which does something similar, please point them out. My only real issues I have at this time is how to handle cases where component depend on each other. For example, two text fields having an int value. If one field is odd then the other must also be odd and if one is even, then the other must be even. When the validation occurs, the validator would need the value of the other text field to properly validate... so I still have not ironed out that part."}
{"_id": "237744", "title": "heading in right direction? C++ and class templates", "text": "I'm working on some inherited code in C++ and am trying to use 2 classes with templates as I need 2-types of each class to operate on floating point or integer data (double v uint64_t to be exact). In the two classes that I'm trying to \"templatize\"(?), one inherits from the other. Data definitions needed for both are defined in the 'more base' class, some with the parameterized typename 'T', and some with resolved types (e.g. 'int') in the 'protected:' section. The corresponding implementation (.cc) file for the more base class compiles 'ok', but the implementation file for the derived class (which is also 'templated') isn't seeing the the class data from the 1st template. I thinking that the derived class file wants to see a resolved version of the more base class's template definition, but am not sure. Example: more base class template file (.h) has:               template < typename T > class FieldMeter : public Meter {     ...     protected:         int numfields_;         F *fields_;         F total_, used_, lastused_;     ...     };      'less base' class (.h) file:               template <typename T> class FieldMeterGraph : public FieldMeter <T> {         ...     }      Problem comes in less-base class .cc file when accessing 'numfields_' or 'fields_':               fieldmetergraph.cc:51:24: error: \u2018numfields_\u2019 was not declared in this scope       if (!heightfield_  && numfields_>0 && graphNumCols_ >0)      When both were simple classes, I didn't get the above, so it's a case where data being declared in the more base, 'templatized' class isn't accessible in the implementation of a derived template. My terminology may be a bit off -- but it seems like this should be doable -- with \"end classes\" like \"`cpumeter`\" that would pass a solid data type (`uint64_t`) to the toplevel `FieldMeterGraph` template. I'm tempted to resort to storing the type at compile time, and doing the resolution manually, at run-time like I would in 'C', but as I understand it, this should be resolvable by the compiler (g++ using C++11), at compile time. I do have Stroustrup's 4th tomb as reference, but it seems his examples are tending toward being a bit too generic for me to correctly derive a resolvable, concrete example that g++ likes (though g++'s error messages do seem to be extraordinarily more helpful and precise compared to what I normally get in perl..).... If someone knows how to more quickly resolve my conundrum, than my randomly trying various things that don't work, it would be appreciated! ;-) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "115734", "title": "App shell using MEF", "text": "I am designing an WPF app shell using MEF. I would like to have the app start a \"view\" upon startup. I also would like the option of having another add-in have a \"startup\" attribute and then the app would load that one instead. I've made an interface:               [InheritedExport]     public interface IStartupParams     {         /// <summary>Gets or sets the WindowMode property.</summary>         WindowMode WindowMode { get; set; }              /// <summary>Gets or sets the NavigateUri property.</summary>         string NavigateUri { get; set; }              /// <summary>Gets or sets the Priority property.</summary>         int Priority { get; set; }     }      So the app would load multiple IStartupParams concrete classes and select the one with the highest priority. What do you guys thing about this design? Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "186187", "title": "Write tests for unit tests in TDD?", "text": "In an answer to another question, I suggested creating a randomized value for input to a specific method. In my experience this has been useful for making tests more readable and it lets you skip the \"trivial phase\" where you hardcode specific results in a method. Here's the unit test code pasted from the other answer, for quick reference:               [Test]     public void FullHouseReturnsTrue()     {         var roll = AnyFullHouse();              Assert.That(sut.IsFullHouse(roll));     }     [Test]     public void StraightReturnsFalse()     {         var roll = AnyStraight();              Assert.That(sut.IsFullHouse(roll), Is.False);     }      A couple of comments in response suggested that this strategy would not work well, because the helper method would need to be tested also. In my experience, I've never had a need to test methods like this, since creating the corresponding production code also tests my test code. Do `AnyStraight()` and `AnyFullHouse()` need to have their own unit tests? If so, how do you solve the chicken-and-egg problem that presents? **EDIT** Would I still want to create dedicated unit tests for the `AnyFullHouse` algorithm if I inlined the method?               [Test]     public void FullHouseReturnsTrue()     {         var roll = listOfHardCodedFullHouseRolls[_random.Next(0, listOfHardCodedFullHouseRolls.Length)];              Assert.That(sut.IsFullHouse(roll));     }"}
{"_id": "232330", "title": "Single configuration file for multiple WCF services", "text": "We have a scenario where we have multiple WCF services hosted on the same server connecting to same database. But currently they all have their separate web.config files. So each time there is some change or new deployment to another server, each and every web.config needs to be changed. Is there a way we can have a single configuration (be it on a file or in memory/db) which can be shared among all the services on any given server? If so what would that be? If not, why not? If we shouldn't go for this approach, why not? Currently we have such a hierarchy (Folder structure)   * Services      * Service1     * Service2 ... ...     * ServiceN"}
{"_id": "222617", "title": "Is there a software engineering principle that relates reuse and regression test cost on a production system?", "text": "I've worked on a large financial transaction system for a bank that looked after Pensions and Investments. After 15 years of feature changes, the manual regression test cost had climbed to $200K per release. (10M LOC, $10M transacted per day). This system also interfaces with 19 other systems around the company moving lots of data around. This system was implemented in Java. What we observe however, is that the more 'reuse' we do, the more regression test costs go up. (The reason being that you need to \"test the code you touch\" - and reused/shared code impacts a multiplicity of places when it is touched. So despite 'DRY - Do Not Repeat Yourself' - ie don't copy and paste code - we observe a financial incentive to copy and paste code. This is to drive regression test costs down, because we don't want to modify code that could be shared, because that will cause a big regression test impact. ) My question is **is there a software engineering principle that describes the relationship between reuse and regression test costs?** The reason I'd ask this question is that arguably there is a cost benefit in decomposing the system into smaller parts to be tested. **Assumptions:**   1. 'Regression test' means 'acceptance test' - ie another group spending time to write new and reuse old tests against the system on behalf of the business, including environment and data setups.    2. I know the knee-jerk reaction to a big regression test cost is 'more automated tests'. This is a good principle. In this environment there are a couple of challenges.  (a) Automated tests are less useful across system boundaries, unless that system has a high automated test coverage as well. (Sphere of influence challenge). (b) It is culturally difficult to get momentum on programmer time or capital investment on high automated test coverage when your system is already large and complex. (c) The cost of maintaining automated tests is hidden on a project, and so they are easily discarded at a project level. (d) This is just the cultural reality of working in a bank. (e) I'm working to solve this problem in a different way (decomposition)."}
{"_id": "132505", "title": "At what point should I have my Windows developers upgrade to the latest release of Windows?", "text": "At what point should I begin upgrading our developer's machines to a later Windows release? From experience, Microsoft typically has an epic fail about every other O.S. (I am really not trying to start a debate about this, it is my perception let it be) i.e. 2000 was a stable and useful O.S, yet m.e. didn't do well, xp was a great O.S. that many businesses still use, Vista didn't do well (I know that the reason this one didn't do well wasn't really Microsoft's fault and that Vista and 7 are the same major revision), while 7 seems to be an excellent O.S. that will be around for a while--sort of like xp is now. Anyways, this makes me reluctant to upgrade our development machines to Windows 8.   * a. I don't want to cost our business a ton of money for an O.S. that will only be used for a year or two.   * b. They also have to have linux dual boots, and I have read that Windows 8 and grub will not play well together. I do want our developers to develop in the latest environment and to have a leading edge in any technology they are developing with. I do want to stay ahead of--or at least with--the technology curve, yet I want it to make business sense. So in particular, should I upgrade their machines at this point? In general, what calculus should I use for deciding this sort of thing? **edit** They do write desktop UI applications as well as ASP.NET applications. Also, I do make sure that they always have the latest release of Visual Studio."}
{"_id": "132504", "title": "Is it a bad idea to ask an interviewer what the greatest strength and weakness of their development team is?", "text": "I was wondering if this was a good question to ask a possible employer when interviewing for a developer position: > What is the greatest strength and weakness of your development team? We all get this question when we are in an interview, so why not ask them in return? I think it is a very good question because we could find out about the team, and how this strength or weakness could affect us, but I don't want to annoy the interviewer. Is there any downside to asking this question when interviewing for a developer position?"}
{"_id": "136684", "title": "OpenUp/Basic In Practice", "text": "I have some confusion understanding the OpenUp/Basic process. It is described as an iterative process consisting of four phases:   * Inception,   * Elaboration,   * Construction, and   * Transition.  I am not clear if a single iteration consists of all these phases or if we make several iterations within a single phase and then move to next phase. In the later case, it seems to be impractical but in former case feasibility of project can not be identified. Is there anyone who has experience implmenting it in the organisation?"}
{"_id": "128656", "title": "What is the rationale behind semantic web?", "text": "Is the semantic web extended form of the relational database that the data should not be redundant? That is it should exist only as an entity and all its characteristics defined by the other entities should be linked via predicates."}
{"_id": "196567", "title": "Building one way chat?", "text": "I'm implementing a Windows 8 app using C#, part of it is One Way Chat. It will be for multiple users such as teacher and student. We want to use a chat room for every course. Teachers teach different courses that include many students and students study different courses, so when the teacher and student open the course page, they will find a chat page specific for this course. How can I build such a thing?"}
{"_id": "186450", "title": "Should I refactor my unit tests when I extract a class out of the System Under Test?", "text": "I wrote this class that does a few things (perhaps this is a violation of the Single Responsibility Principle). I realize now that some other part of the project needs a _piece_ of that logic and the way I'm going to expose it is to extract a class out of my original System Under Test. I anticipate being able to do this without having to change any test code, but when I finish, you could argue that the test isn't a **unit** test anymore. It'll be testing the original class _and_ the class I've extracted. In other words, I'll have one test case, but two systems under test. Am I supposed to refactor my test code after I'm done? IE: Create an ExtractedClassTest and move all the relevant tests from OriginalClassTest into it? This seems like it could be a little risky: I may lose some coverage in the process, it may not be as simple as moving a test and I'd end up rewriting some test code that I know used to work but may not anymore, etc. On the other hand, if I leave the OriginalClassTest as-is, I can see this being a test maintenance issue. It'll be a little confusing to find where the ExtractedClass's tests are. Your first impression will be that it doesn't exist. Over time with lots of production code refactorings, this could become a serious issue. I'm new to TDD so I'd like an expert's advice. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "225369", "title": "Nomenclature for wildcard vs regex expressions", "text": "When I see the term _pattern_ in a description of syntax I infer a regular expression is being specified. Is there a separate term that specifies a wildcard expression?               ^foo.*(bar|baz){3} <--  'regular expression' or 'pattern'     foo*bar.txt        <--- 'wildcard expression' or ...?      Or is a wildcard expression just another type of pattern requiring context information to discern the distinction?"}
{"_id": "186453", "title": "Best practice to sync long paths to filesystems where path length is limited?", "text": "I wrote a sync tool to synchronize folders/files from Alfresco to Windows.   PROBLEM:   * In Alfresco, /files/can/have/very/very/very/long/filepaths/like/this.txt   * The Windows API prevents me from creating a path with more than 260 characters. In addition to telling the user there is a problem, what is the best practice in such a case?   1. Shorten the file's name?   2. Skip the file?   3. Create a sort of \"folder's carriage return\", a special folder from which the path can continue?   4. Something else? Files need to be 100% usable by other applications. If necessary directory names can be modified, I can keep a mapping."}
{"_id": "106521", "title": "Namespace and class name guidelines", "text": "I'm having problems naming my classes and services correctly when utils and other help classes are involved. How would you structure the following:               EventService.cs     EventServiceUtils.cs     EventServiceValidators.cs     EventServiceCoordinator.cs      etc... I have multiple services with the same needs as the above service. One thought is to separate all of this into a suitable namespace, making it look something like this:               Services.EventService.EventService.cs //(the actual service)     Services.EventService.Validators.DateValidator.cs     Services.EventService.Validators.ParticipantValidator.cs     Services.EventService.Coordinators.ParticipantCoordinator.cs     Services.EventService.ExtensionMethods.Extensions.cs      and so on. Every namespace is of course a separate folder. But this doesn't feel 100%, since there are probably more `DateValidators` in the other services, which can easily lead to an unwanted reference. And also the `Services.EventService.EventService.cs` includes the class name in the namespace, which is no good either. You could use `Services.Event.EventService.cs`, but there is of course already an entity with that name. This is the domain model."}
{"_id": "238318", "title": "Use of MIT-Licensed OSS with GPL Dependencies", "text": "I have been assigned to audit third-party dependencies for one of my company's products to make sure we aren't in danger of running afoul of any licenses. This is probably a job for a lawyer, but such is life when you work at a small company. At my company, we are using CS2J, an open-source project, to translate C# to Java. CS2J is itself MIT-licensed, and we use it in two ways. First, we use it as an internal tool to translate our source code from one language to another. Second, it comes with a support library (a jar file) that the translated files reference. We package this support library with our main distribution. It turns out that the support library depends on JavaMail, a GPL-licensed product. (There's technically another license option, but it has the same copyleft clause.) I believe at one time it had something other than a GPL license, but that is no longer the case. We had been planning on to ship the support library (CS2JSupport.jar) and JavaMail (mail.jar) as its dependency. I have a few questions:   1. Is CS2J allowed to be licensed under the MIT license in the first place if it's distributed with a GPL dependency?   2. If we are shipping mail.jar as a dependency of our dependency, does that mean the copyleft applies to us? Or does it just apply to CS2J?   3. We have a close relationship with the CS2J author. If we asked the CS2J author to make available a CS2JSupport.jar that had mail.jar included _inside_ the jar, then is CS2JSupport simply a derivative work of mail.jar? And since the derivative work is covered under the MIT license instead of the GPL license, would that exempt my company from the copyleft even if we wouldn't be exempt in the situation described in #2?"}
{"_id": "186459", "title": "design pattern to expose MongoDB to REST api?", "text": "We are setting up something like a document library on Amazon AWS. The architecture is basically 1. AMI server running MongoDB 2. A bunch of PDF documents on elastic block storage 3. Some server-side scripting that pulls and parses metadata into MongoDB, and finally, 4. some front-end services that query the database. The end goal is a website that facilitates search and discovery of the PDF library (e.g. show me all PDFs written by X). First, I wonder if this is a reasonable way to go about things. (Is this a good design pattern?) Second, we are having a difficult time exposing MongoDB through REST API. We can access REST through the browser address bar, but getting stuck on sending GET requests in client-side javascript because of cross-server requests. Any help is appreciated."}
{"_id": "106526", "title": "Is performing a Waterfall every 2 weeks considered agile development?", "text": "I've been wondering if one can still classify a Waterfall type development approach, where the length of the waterfall cycle is 1-2 weeks, as Agile."}
{"_id": "106527", "title": "How can I select an appropriate licensing/obfuscation system for .NET?", "text": "I saw someone suggesting .NET Reactor once as a good obfuscator. I went to their website to check it out and saw they have a product called IntelliLock which is advertised as a pretty robust licensing system which has code protection/obfuscation built in. With that said, I tried to contact them and ask them a few questions regarding the product, but have not had any response. This is kind of a red flag for me. However, it seems like there is some user base for this product whom are satisfied. What .NET licensing system(s) with .NET code protection/obfuscation are you using? What are its pros & cons that you have encountered? Are there things I should be looking for or looking to avoid when evaluating these systems?"}
{"_id": "29075", "title": "Difference between '\\n' and '\\r\\n'", "text": "Yes yes, I am aware that `'\\n'` writes a newline in UNIX while for Windows there is the two character sequence: `'\\r\\n'`. All this is very nice in theory, but my question is **_why_**? Why the carriage return character is extra in Windows? If UNIX can do it in `\\n` why does it take Windows two characters to do this? I am reading David Beazley's Python book and he says: > For example, on Windows, writing the character '\\n' actually outputs the > two- character sequence '\\r\\n' (and when reading the file back, '\\r\\n' is > translated back into a single '\\n' character). Why the extra effort? I will be honest. I have known the difference for a long time but have never bothered to ask WHY. I hope that is answered today. Thanks for your time."}
{"_id": "216554", "title": "How is reactive logic programming different from functional programming?", "text": "As Reactive Programming model is perfectly suited to address the change propagation required for transaction processing, that is, when the server receives change (Insert, Update, or Delete) requests. The key approach borrows heavily from Domain Driven Design to provide declarative Domain Logic. But how does it differ from functional programming approach?"}
{"_id": "35447", "title": "Earning extra cash as a programmer", "text": "I work as fulltime programmer and have a pretty well paid job for the country where I live, but I could do with a bit of extra cash at the moment (wife nagging about new kitchen etc.). I'd be interested in taking on small projects in my spare time. I'm not interested in writing malware or get rich quick schemes. I've checked out a few sites programmer freelance sites, but the projects all see to be very poorly paid or people that want malware creating (or both). Are there any good freelancing sites that I may have missed? Are there any other ways to find small freelance projects?"}
{"_id": "29072", "title": "What is ant build file and maven build file?", "text": "Can somebody please tell me in simple words what exactly is ant build file and maven build file?"}
{"_id": "236651", "title": "Purposely raising exceptions to use catch", "text": "For a typical `if...else` wrapped with exception handling, is something like the following example a recommended practice to avoid code duplication?               try     {         if (GetDataFromServer())         {             return ProcessData();         }         else         {             throw new Exception();         }     catch(Exception ex)     {         return null;     }      instead of...               try     {         if (GetDataFromServer())         {             ProcessData();         }         else         {             return null;         }     }     catch(Exception ex)     {         return null;     }      I know there is a slight performance hit, but I'm wondering if this is considered to be an acceptable practice. I currently do it the second method - especially in cases where I need to handle specific exceptions differently - but I was wondering if the first method is appropriate for simple cases."}
{"_id": "156142", "title": "What is the correct way to implement Auth/ACL in MVC?", "text": "I am looking into making a correctly laid out MVC Auth/ACL system. I _think_ I want the authentication of a user (and the session handling) to be separate from the ACL system. (I don't know why but this seems a good idea from the things I've read.) What does MVC have to do with this question you ask? Because I wish for the application to be well integrated with my ACL. An example of a controller (CodeIgniter):               <?php     class forums extends MX_Controller     {         $allowed = array('users', 'admin');         $need_login = true;                  function __construct()             {             //example of checking if logged in.                 if($this->auth->logged_in() && $this->auth->is_admin())             {                 echo \"you're logged in!\";             }         }         public function add_topic()         {             if($this->auth->allowed('add_topic')             {                 //some add topic things.             }             else             {                 echo 'not allowed to add topic';             }         }     }     ?>      ### My thoughts `$this->auth` would be autoloaded in the system. I would like to check the `$allowed` array against the user currently (not) logged in and react accordingly. Is this a good way of doing things? I haven't seen much literature on MVC integration and Auth. I want to make things as easy as possible."}
{"_id": "23215", "title": "What's a \"Professional Fit\" interview?", "text": "So I went through an initial interview on school campus, and an on-site interview(one day, mostly technical interviews) with this company, and then a week later, I am told that there will be an additional phone interview with one of their hiring managers, called \"Professional Fit Interview\", which I have no idea what it is. Before I thought the on-site interview was gonna be the last round, at least that's the impression I got from them. So what this \"professional fit interview\" might be? How should I prepare for it? Thanks a lot! A follow-up: Thank everyone for the replies. As everybody has mentioned, it's a HR type interview. The interviewer did some introduction of the team, then asked if I have some questions, and asked me a couple of questions like \"where do you see yourself in 2 years\". Anyway, a rejection email came about one week later."}
{"_id": "66076", "title": "Do I need to buy individual ios developer subscriptions for the members of my team, if I have a company subscription?", "text": "My guess is I have to, and if I do, I'll buy them while the company license is under review."}
{"_id": "185197", "title": "Is there any Windows installer maker with decent scripting capabilities?", "text": "I need to do complex dependency processing during the installation of our solution, install a few related programs from their own installers and also probably run a few simple tests to determine performance of the machine to choose the right parameters for our application. I'm thinking something like Lua would be a great fit for this task, yet all scripting in installers I found so far is something like Pascal script of Inno Setup which leaves a lot to be desired and NSIS scripting language is nonexistent. I guess I'm missing something really obvious here as my task is not unique and has probably been solved before."}
{"_id": "220336", "title": "Sharing only part of code with git", "text": "**The situation** I have code which has features X and Y. Bob needs access to the code to help develop feature X further. Normally I would allow Bob to clone the code, but the problem is that feature Y is confidential, so this is not possible. Bob does not need to be able to view feature Y code to develop feature X further. If I create a new branch to share with Bob and delete feature Y from the code, it will still be viewable in the commit history. So I guess the only option is:   1. Create a new branch and delete feature Y.   2. Create a completely new repository to share with Bob   3. Copy the files (while the new Y-less branch is checked out) to the new repository.   4. Give Bob access to that new repository.   5. After Bob develops feature X further, cherry pick relevant lines and files, and put them into my master. (painful) **Question** Is there a better way to go about this?"}
{"_id": "185193", "title": "MVC - sharing multiple models", "text": "I am building a java desktop application where I am attempting to implement MVC. The GUI interface has multiple views (think pop-up windows) from the main view. Each view has its associated model that it receives updates from. I am running into scenarios where **two views** need to access a particular data field from one **model**. This requires that one model \"knows about\" the another. What are my options to solve this? The data field is a table that is populated in one of the views and is then subsequently accessed in the main splash view. I have tried passing the second model into the first's constructor from the controller, however I feel this is sloppy. Should a model listen to another model (Observer pattern)? Perhaps my question is too subjective...."}
{"_id": "487", "title": "How would you design a programming language?", "text": "If you were to design a programming language, how would you do it? What features would you put in? What would you leave out? Statically or dynamically typed? Strongly or weakly typed? Compiled or interpreted? Justify your answers."}
{"_id": "238310", "title": "\"Saving method name in a variable: Python\", How does this code works?", "text": "I am trying to make sense of the following code snipet:               factor = misc.kkt_chol2(G, dims, A)     ....     ....     factor(W, P)      How the parameter in factor binding with the parameters inside kkt_chol2? Thank you in advance for the response."}
{"_id": "181863", "title": "Categories of 'for' loops", "text": "I remember once reading some research where a body of C code had been analysed, and the findings were that the vast majority of `for` loops could be categorised into about five categories, corresponding to the functional equivalents of `map`, `filter`, `fold`, etc. I can't seem to find this paper/article anymore. Can anyone point me to it?"}
{"_id": "105952", "title": "Why contribute to non-free open source projects?", "text": "As a owner of an open source project you'd want people to contribute and make it better, right? But if you then decide to throw on a nice tasty licencing model for people to use the software [Corporate or otherwise], do you get rights to all the income? if so why would people bother contributing? They could be doing all the work while you, the owner, reap all the rewards? This just seems wrong to me, maybe i'm misunderstanding it."}
{"_id": "177435", "title": "Am I considered \"technical\"?", "text": "Am I considered \"technical\"? I am starting my third company, and in the process of doing so, I meet investors. They seem to be all caught up in whether a startup has a technical co-founder. Ok. So what makes a person technical? Here's some info about me. You be the judge.   * I have worked for software and internet companies for 18 years.   * I have built web sites.   * I am starting my third company.   * My business partners build the web architectures for the businesses I dream up.   * I've successfully launched technical products for mobile and web in the US and Internationally.   * I do the rest of the work.   * I have a Github account.   * I've built my own gaming PCs. But I may be taking the question too literally when asked \"Are you technical?\"   * I don't code, but I can read code well enough to copy/paste it.   * I've worked on command line editors like emacs and vi, but it's not my forte. Or should I just lighten up and answer \"Yes\" when asked?"}
{"_id": "220333", "title": "Is it ethical or even legal to track user data/metrics using IP", "text": "This one is a bit tough. It is publicly available information, is it not? But it's can also be used maliciously. So is it legal/ethical to store and/or gather information on users based on IP? It's mostly for curiosity, but it would also be important for marketing purposes, and maybe something to anonymously post on the homepage. One use for this is detecting attacks and, for some products, limiting your release to one part of the world. I can see no real downsides from a business point of view, but I can also see how it would make users feel uncomfortable, and may actually be illegal. Right now, I'm simply storing the user-agent and ip strings in a slightly randomized line-break format, so if a vulnerability is found by a web bot, there's less of a chance for ips to be properly scraped. But I'd like to eventually compile a map of users, and put a little dot where each user logged in. It would be a world-wide map, so the fine details would not be disclosed. But for some reason, I feel like I'm guilty of something or will get into trouble for collecting this data. On the legal side of things, I've noticed articles similar to this: http://www.adexchanger.com/the-debate/why-ip-tracking-is-a-bad-idea/, and I've read about companies like Google and Facebook getting into hot water with users for collecting data. I am in the United States, and the server will most likely operate somewhere in the US, but I have the impression that the per-country laws pertained to the client visiting."}
{"_id": "228622", "title": "How to organize software document for the same application supporing both iOS and Android", "text": "I have to write software project documentation for an application which will support both iOS and Android. Each platform has its specific features and the mobile app design and requirements are almost the same. At first, I thought to include all the requirements in one document by separating the platforms side-by-side. However, why should android devs see the iOS dev part and vice-versa? Should I write the document separately for each platform or include it in one document? Which one is good for QAs and for the overall professionalism of the software requirement specification ?"}
{"_id": "31035", "title": "Advice for good web server development setup", "text": "A month or so ago I created my first LAMP stack and implemented a simple web site that exercised each letter in that acronym. However my development setup was much less than ideal. I don't really have a local test server, but instead I was writing all of my CGI scripts in vim while ssh'ed into the remote machine as _root_. Now I intend to start more serious development. **Question:** What is a good setup so that development goes as easily as possible? I would like to understand what is available to me along the lines of an IDE, subversion (or alternatives), uploading and downloading content, and just best practices. I'm pretty new at all of this. Also, feel free to point me at good websites. There's plenty of websites, but only people who are already heavily developing web content are able to quickly determine if they are good websites."}
{"_id": "31036", "title": "Rolling your own Hackathon", "text": "**Background Info** Hey, I pitched the idea of a company Hackathon that would donate our time to a charity to work on a project (for free) to improve morale in my company and increase developer cohesion. As it turns out most like the idea but, guess who's gonna be the one to put it together. lol Yeah me. I should add that we are a fairly small shop with about 10-12 programmers (some pull double duty as programmers, inters etc..) So, that might make things a bit easier. **Base Question** While I am no means a project manager or of any level of authority (Entry level guy) I was wondering if anyone knew the best approach for someone in my position to put together such an even with possibly (some) company backing. Or for that matter have any helpful advice to pass along to a young padawan. **So far.....** As of right now it is just an idea so, to start with I presumably would have to put together some sort of proposal and do some that office stuff that I became a programmer to steer clear of to some extent."}
{"_id": "3921", "title": "When is it right to edit the code written by a co-worker?", "text": "For which issues is it right to edit the code written by a co-worker? For which issues is it wrong?"}
{"_id": "6723", "title": "Getting a coherent view of the state of the data", "text": "Here is a theoretical problem. It could apply to many systems. Let's assume RESTful Web services for example. You want to find out something but as it happens you can't get it in a single query. You can make multiple queries. For example, you have a joint bank account (or a company bank account) and you want to find out how much money is in there. Meanwhile someone else transfers money from checking to savings.               Checking:  $5,000   Savings:  $3,000      > Me: Query Checking. Response: $5,000 > Joe: Transfer $4,000 from Checking to Savings               Checking: $1,000   Savings:  $7,000      Me: Query Savings. Response: $7,000 Total $12,000. How do you avoid anomalies like this? The example shows two accounts at one bank, but it can also happen with two accounts at two different banks."}
{"_id": "72548", "title": "Topics for development team cross training sessions", "text": "Our team of developers are going to start holding monthly meetings for the purposes of cross training and knowledge improvement. We're looking for ideas for topics to discuss. We've already made a list of some obvious ones, such as discussions/training on specific applications, proper usage of TFS for source control, bug tracking and code reviews, coding standards, and corporate architecture. The problem we're having is that we are a cross-platform development team so we don't want to look at topics that only apply to certain members of the team (Sql, .NET, reporting, third party apps, etc). We'll use sub-team meetings for those. So what other topics that would apply across a broad development team would be good for these training sessions?"}
{"_id": "225942", "title": "Preventing some downsides of a static class", "text": "Here is my situation. I have implemented the accepted .NET 4.0 answer in this question, which is working. However, my codebase is quite large and as responsible for this code I've started getting inquiries regarding this solution. I've been asked if there are no easier ways of accomplishing the same thing, and if there is any way to shorten the usage. In almost all cases, this class is used to get or set a single property only. This favors other solutions, since the usage ends up like this: `new UserSessionData().CustomerNumber = 123;` The closest thing I have is a class (static or not) with static members and methods, like this:               public static class UserSessionData     {         public static Dictionary<string, string> AsDictionary()         {             return typeof(UserSessionData).GetProperties()                        .ToDictionary(p => p.Name, p => p.GetValue(null, null) as string);         }         private static string Get(Expression<Func<string>> e)         {             var me = e.Body as MemberExpression;             return ExternalInterfaceClass.Get(me.Member.Name);         }         private static void Set(Expression<Func<string>> e, string value)         {             var me = e.Body as MemberExpression;             ExternalInterfaceClass.Set(me.Member.Name, value);         }              public static string CustomerNumber {             get { return Get(() => CustomerNumber); }             set { Set(() => CustomerNumber, value); }         }              // ... and hundreds more properties similar to \"CustomerNumber\"     }      This feels like a quite good solution:   * It's strongly typed (i.e. I can easily refactor `CustomerNumber` throughout)   * Usage is great (`UserSessionData.CustomerNumber = 123;`)   * The boilerplate is not _that_ ugly - I think it's acceptable However, there is one issue that I can't wrap my head around. Sometimes we need to be able to use this a little differently, A) as a return type and B) bulk-editing the structure before saving. As for A, I understand that a static class cannot be used as a return type, however I don't know what my alternatives would be in this specific situation? As for B, I guess that I could delay the actual saving by providing a stated subclass and requiring explicit save, but the usage would be worsened for the normal use case (setting or getting a single property) since every one-liner would have to be followed by a call to the save method. I thought about creating an interface for the class but interfaces can't define static properties. I'm feeling a little muddled here, help is appreciated. Please provide a minimal code example when presenting your thoughts, if possible - it clarifies the point a lot."}
{"_id": "144235", "title": "How can I save my university's Computer Science & Engineering department?", "text": "I'm currently pursuing a B.S. in Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, and we're having a bit of a problem right now... The state recently passed a budget plan that cuts funding for higher education in Florida. The dean of UF's College of Engineering decided that the best way for us to absorb the blow is by executing the following plan:   * All of the Computer Engineering Degree programs, BS, MS and PhD, would be moved from the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Dept. to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. along with most of the advising staff.   * Roughly half of the faculty would be offered the opportunity to move to Electrical/Computer Eng., Biomedical Eng., or Industrial/Systems Eng.   * Staff positions in CISE which are currently supporting research and graduate programs would be eliminated.   * The activities currently covered by TAs would be reassigned to faculty and the TA budget for CISE would be eliminated.   * Any faculty member who wishes to stay in CISE may do so, but with a revised assignment focused on teaching and advising. In short: **our department (at least as we know it) is being decimated.** Computer & Information Sciences & Engineering (one of 9 departments in the College of Engineering) is taking more than 50% of the cuts. If you're interested in reading the full proposal, you can access it here. A vast, VAST majority of the students and faculty in the department are vehemently opposed to this plan, however the dean is already taking measures to implement it. This is the only proposal on the table right now, and she has not entertained our requests for alternatives. She sees it as an obvious (albeit drastic) solution to our budget problem, citing that many other universities have combined Computer and Electrical Engineering departments. I'll bet those universities didn't have to eliminate an established department to get there, though. The budget goes into effect July 1, 2012 (this is non-negotiable), and the dean's proposal is currently set to be finalized some time next week. We don't have much time! **My question to everyone here is this** : Are we overreacting to this plan, or are we justified? And could you explain why or why not? It's obvious that CISE students will resist any cuts to our department, but I'm curious to see what other people in the field have to say. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. **I will select the answer that saves our department.** Just kidding, I'll pick the one that best explains why this is a good or bad decision for the dean to make. Please note that anything you say _can_ and _will_ be used to further our cause (and we might track you down if you provide a compelling argument against us)."}
{"_id": "144232", "title": "Possible applications of algorithm devised for differentiating between structured vs random text", "text": "I have written a program that can rapidly (within 5 sec on a 2GB RAM desktop, 2.33 Ghz CPU) differentiate between structured text (e.g English text) and random alphanumeric strings. It can also provide a probability score for the prediction. Are there any practical applications/uses of such a program? Note that the program is based on entropy models and does not have any dictionary comparisons in its workflow."}
{"_id": "132517", "title": "How to explain the history of programming to non-programmers?", "text": "Sorry if this question is not appropriate for this stack exchange site, I've never used this one before. I am doing my senior project on computer programming. I'm going to be presenting the project to classmates, teachers and (most importantly) judges, who haven't the slightest clue what programming is. My question is somewhat broad, but how should I make my project to be about programming but still be simple enough for the judges to understand? Here are some things I considered:   1. The project will focus on the history of programming, what it has accomplished, how it is used today, etc. and I will show pictures of code and say \"This is what code looks like\". So the presentation would be simple, easy, and average.   2. Try to explain a little bit of code, perhaps show a loop in action or something like that, and try to make the audience think a bit rather than just watch someone present some stuff they consider to be boring. But then again, I don't want to make them feel stupid or anything."}
{"_id": "225949", "title": "using unsigned integers in c, c++", "text": "I have a very simple question that baffles me for a long time. I am dealing with networks and databases so a lot of data I am dealing with are 32-bit and 64-bit counters (unsigned), 32-bit and 64-bit identification ids (also do not have meaningful mapping for sign). I am practically never deal with any real word matter that could be expressed as a negative number. Me and my co-workers routinely use unsigned types like uint32_t and uint64_t for these matters and because it happens so often we also use them for array indexes and other common integer uses. At the same time various coding guides I am reading (e.g. Google) discourage use of unsigned integer types, and as far as I know neither Java nor Scala have unsigned integer types. So, I could not figure out what is the right thing to do: using signed values in our environment would be very inconvenient, at the same time coding guides to insist on doing exactly this."}
{"_id": "188483", "title": "Is it okay to convert dataset from stored procedure to IEnumerable", "text": "So, I am working on a project with a team and we are using Entity Framework. We basically want to use linq to entities, and not use stored procedures. I use quite a bit of lists and IEnumerables and so does everyone else. My question is, will converting the dataset produced by a stored procedure to an IEnumerable dramatically slow down the applications performance speed, say it parses through 1,000's of rows. Or would it be better to convert the store procedure to linq to entities(the procedure is a bit complex). We have not set up testing unit tests and integration yet."}
{"_id": "144238", "title": "INI files or Registry or personal files?", "text": "I want to save the configuration of my project which includes   1. Screen size   2. Screen position   3. Folder paths   4. Users settings and so on. The standard places where you can save these are configuration values are:   1. Registry   2. INI files   3. Personal files (like *.cfg) How do you choose between these places? Also, are there any **pros and cons** of using any of them?"}
{"_id": "100203", "title": "What's the difference between an Asset and a Resource?", "text": "I've used several IDEs and created several default projects. Upon creation, I'll find folder structures created for me. Sometimes I'll see a Resources folder, sometimes an Assets folder, and sometimes both. Is there actually a (standard) difference?"}
{"_id": "100201", "title": "2 year degree plus experience vs 4 year degree", "text": "Alright, I have searched around a bit on this site and found two somewhat similar questions: Computer Science Programming Certificate vs. Computer Science Degree? Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree? But these do not provide an answer specifically to what I am seeking. I have my 2 year A.A.S. Degree in computer programming, along with a networking certificate from a technical college. I also have been working at a small educational game development company for 3 years now in various positions, but steadily moving up and now as a lead programmer on a few projects. Some of the higher programmers I work with claim that no matter how much experience I develop it still will not mean as much as someone with a 4 year degree. Their argument is that most employers will look over my resume because of the common '4 yr' minimum requirement. I have also heard people state (not as many though) that experience is everything and that an employer would rather have someone that has worked in the field instead of a rookie fresh out of college. I have heard both sides of this argument, but am looking for a general consensus, or more arguments from both sides from the people who have been there, or are there."}
{"_id": "177381", "title": "How can I combine C/Fortran with JavaScript?", "text": "I'm working on a project where I need heavy numerical calculations to be real- time visualized with something flexible like D3.js. Are there frameworks out there that would let me painlessly achieve this? Or do I need to use some sort of \"glue\" code written in, say, Python?"}
{"_id": "177383", "title": "In TFS, how should different \"releases\" be structured? (version 1.0, version 2.0)", "text": "I am importing a website into TFS that is stored in SourceSafe as               $/MyApp 1.0     $/MyApp 2.0     $/MyApp 3.0     $/MyApp 3.5      Should I import this as several distinct projects (MyApp1.0 ... ) or as one project called \"MyApp\"?"}
{"_id": "36367", "title": "Hand over source code to customer", "text": "I have made a couple iphone applications for a customer and was asked today to hand over the source code so that they could do the maintenance if this should be required. Until now, no code issues were ever discussed. Is there any \"common\" practice regarding this?   Also, in which way should this affect the price?"}
{"_id": "92719", "title": "What to explain when asked \"How did you implement MVC\"?", "text": "I have a project on my resume in which we had used `MVC Architecture` and `Java, JSP and MySQL`. Hence during the interviews if the position requires experience about MVC Architecture, I have to face the question like \"`Explain this project.`\" What exactly is the interviewer is expecting? I know that they want to know how we implemented the MVC. But what \"exact\" details should I tell them in the short time span of 2-3 minutes? Which key features/parts I am supposed to explain? Can someone experienced give some idea about it? The project is about Leave Management System."}
{"_id": "187321", "title": "Interview - Create a portfolio to show my skills", "text": "I have around five years of experience in PHP development and around one year of experience with ExpressionEngine. I use PHP 5, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web technologies. I decided to create a portfolio site and include hundreds of (if time permits) little examples to prove my skills. Then at the interview if the interviewer asks me to show my work I am going to show my portfolio site. Is this a good approach? If yes, can you suggest to me some great, creative projects to include in my portfolio? I am thinking: 1. Model View Controller 2\\. Simple e-commerce site 3\\. Content Manage System (CMS)"}
{"_id": "224014", "title": "Questions about God's algorithm and Rubik's cube", "text": "I am creating Rubik's cube solver. It will be good if solver could solve cubes of any size and if it could generate short solutions. I have found many various information about God's algorithm, which as I understand is able to solve various puzzles, not only Rubic's cube. So I want to implement God's algorithm, but I cannot find any simple explanation of this algorithm. In simple words, how does God's algorithm actually work?"}
{"_id": "224017", "title": "Is depending on lazy loading a code smell?", "text": "During my short experience with DDD I often find myself in the situation where I wished for some type of lazy loading mechanism to solve some dangerous cases where large nested data sets might be loaded. However after a while I realized that each time, that was the symptom of a poorly designed aggregate root that was taking too much responsibility. Additionally it used to be the case where the aggregates should be fully loaded to perform consistency operations. Getting used to work with Entity ids made things slightly easier. So after a while, I am wondering... is lazy loading a code smell? Is it something just to build non mature models without causing a big problem?"}
{"_id": "50168", "title": "What roles do people take after scrum master/technical lead? ", "text": "What roles do people take after scrum master/technical lead? EDIT: My current role is a mix of a technical lead and scrum master role, but that's how we do it in my company :) )"}
{"_id": "130908", "title": "Dealing with large amounts of web service requests and storing that data", "text": "I have a desktop application that sends a POST request to my website every 5 minutes. This post request can contain a variable amount of data about the PC sending the request, but typically it contains about 20-30 variables of information. I'm storing all of this information in a MySQL table in a format like, RequestID|Field|Value. I want to be able to keep all of it so I can run trend reports over 24 hours, 48 hours, weeks, months, years, etc. This could amount so something like 10,000 rows of data every day. That's 3 million rows of data a year. I can imagine 20-30 people using my website and the database storing 100 million rows of data a year. What is the best way to approach this kind of 'notification' service and scale it?"}
{"_id": "117805", "title": "Most \"native\"/integrated functional language for Mac OS X development?", "text": "If one views the CLR/.NET runtime and associated libraries as the future of windows, then the F# programming language could be seen in that light as the most native functional language. Meaning that it has support from the OS creator, presumably integrates best with their libraries, etc. Is there a similar logical choice of language on the Mac OS X platform? While the most-native language itself is obviously Objective-C, is there a first- among-equals or most obvious functional paradigm language that stands out?"}
{"_id": "55531", "title": "How important is it to learn jQuery with ASP.NET", "text": "I'm reading a chapter on jQuery in a ASP.NET book. To be honest I'm finding it quite boring. How important is it to learn jQuery? And do many ASP.NET developers use it for their pages? Regards TDG"}
{"_id": "181245", "title": "How can I profile database queries from PHP?", "text": "CodeIgniter has a very nice feature called a Profiler, which displays information at the foot of a page, information such as GET, Memory, POST data. It also shows database queries and how long they took to run which I find very useful. I have recently taken over a legacy PHP application and it would help a lot to see what tables in the database are being queried by PHP pages. Is there a library for raw PHP applications that could produce something similar to CodeIgniter's Profiler? I am already using xdebug, I am only interested in profiling database queries."}
{"_id": "181248", "title": "Loop fusion example using aspect-oriented framework", "text": "I had recently read a paper 'Aspect-Oriented Programming' by Gregor Kiczales and others, and found there _the loop fusion_ example. Here is a definition of the loop fusion from the paper > \u2026the loop fusion composes by fusing the loops of those primitive filters > that have the same loop structure and that are direct neighbors in the data > flow graph. Each of these composition rules is easy to understand when > looking at its own appropriate picture. But the two composition relation- > ships cut each other so fundamentally that each is very difficult to see in > the other\u2019s picture. Later in the paper _loop fusion_ mentioned to be implemented using metaobject protocol at Lisp: > \u2026the loop fusion aspect \u2026 can be implemented, with some degree of > efficiency, using the method combination facility in the CLOS metaobject > protocol What does _loop fusion_ look like using any modern aspect-oriented frameworks in either static or dynamic typed languages? I'm looking for examples of aspect language and advices that could do _loop fusion_. ### Status for mid-January'13 As long as there is no any other answer, I have marked my own answer as an answer. Anyway I'm still looking forward for examples from other languages/frameworks. **ps** : _loop fusion_ discusion at \"AOP in .NET\" book's forum @manning forum"}
{"_id": "181249", "title": "How would type errors be detected while creating mocks in a dynamic language?", "text": "The problem occurs while doing TDD. After a couple of test pass, the return types of some class/module change. In a statically typed programming language, if a previous mocked object was used in the tests of some _other_ class and was not modified to reflect the type change, then compilation errors will occur. For dynamic languages however, the change in return types might not be detected and the tests of the _other_ class will still pass. Sure there might be integration tests that should fail later on, but unit tests would erroneously pass. Is there any way how to avoid this? Updating with a trivial sample (on some made up language)... Version 1:               Calc = {         doMultiply(x, y) {return x * y}     }     //.... more code ....          // On some faraway remote code on a different file     Rect = {         computeArea(l, w) {return Calc.doMultipy(x*y)}     }          // test for Rect     testComputeArea() {          Calc = new Mock()         Calc.expect(doMultiply, 2, 30) // where 2 is the arity         assertEqual(30, computeArea)     }      Now, on version 2:               // I change the return types. I also update the tests for Calc     Calc = {         doMultiply(x, y) {return {result: (x * y), success:true}}     }      ...Rect will then throw an exception on runtime, yet the test will still succeed."}
{"_id": "55539", "title": "Interpreting Others' Source Code", "text": "Note: I am aware of this question. This question is a bit more specific and in-depth, however, focusing on reading the actual code rather than debugging it or asking the author. As a student in an introductory-level computer science class, my friends occasionally ask me to help them with their assignments. Programming is something I'm very proud of, so I'm always happy to oblige. However, I usually have difficulty interpreting their source code. Sometimes this is due to a strange or inconsistent style, sometimes it's due to strange design requirements specified in the assignment, and sometimes it's just due to my stupidity. In any case, I end up looking like an idiot staring at the screen for several minutes saying \"Uh...\" I usually check for the common errors first - missing semicolons or parentheses, using commas instead of extractor operators, etc. The trouble comes when that fails. I often can't step through with a debugger because it's a syntax error, and I often can't ask the author because he/she him/herself doesn't understand the design decisions. How do you typically read the source code of others? Do you read through the code from top-down, or do you follow each function as it's called? How do you know when to say \"It's time to refactor?\""}
{"_id": "55229", "title": "What are the challenges in building a scalable real-time web app?", "text": "I'm looking into real-time web applications using websockets and node.js. I'm interested to see what are some technical challenges with scaling such a setup. One such problem I've heard is that each socket requires a Unix file descriptor, and epoll/select takes time linear to the number of open file descriptors. Anyone have other insights into scaling?"}
{"_id": "22165", "title": "To learn a new language/framework, which way is better?", "text": "For learning a new language or framework , is it better to learn by working with someone else on an existing project or creating a new one myself? I had experience on working on a open-source rails project for four months. The project was nicely written, and it has lot of good examples for me to learn, but I didn't get too much of rails in the end. At the end, I was still confused by many rails/MVC concepts. On the other hand, after that rails project, I myself started creating a ASP.net MVC from scratch. I ended up successfully building a fully functioning MVC web site and used a lot of ASP.net MVC features. I had a way better idea of MVC and ASP.net MVC's mechanisms after this project, but meanwhile, I might have employed many bad solutions without even realizing it. So which way do you think is better for learning? What are the pros and cons for each approach?"}
{"_id": "131362", "title": "Semantic or structure - which should get preference for variable naming?", "text": "We've a call stack in our project. The program is written for microcontroller, the language is C. The call stack is basically an array of integers. The variable that represents this call stack ends with the string `_stack`. I was reviewing the implementation. The feature is reset recovery, not the call stack, but the call stack is part of the feature. When I first saw the variable, I thought it is used as a stack. So I assumed the following:   * No entries other than the last entry can be accessed.   * There will be PUSH/POP/CLEAR/TOP operations. Next, I found that the first entry (index 0) is always checked in a special condition. I also found a function where all elements of the array are read sequentially from index 0 to top. Both of them are invalid stack operation. I am thinking that the variable name should not contain the string `stack` as it is not a stack, rather it is used as a list. But the coder is showing valid logic, that according to semantic meaning, it's a stack and there is in fact PUSH operations. Should the variable be named with `*stack*`?"}
{"_id": "231013", "title": "Do I have to internationalise the display of hexadecimal values?", "text": "For decimal numbers, obviously I want to localise everything. Whatever programming language I'm working in, there will tend to be tools for this, so it's also easy to do. In my application, I happen to be formatting numbers as hexadecimal quite often. This leads me to wonder:   * Are there locales which group hexadecimal numbers into different groupings to me?   * Are there locales which use a separator other than space for the groupings?   * Are A-F used as the extra six digits even in locales which don't use a Latin script? I guess in general - do I have to internationalise this, or does everyone in the world look at the same hexadecimal value and intrinsically understand it the same way?"}
{"_id": "189476", "title": "Implementing the Visitor Pattern for an Abstract Syntax Tree", "text": "I'm in the process of creating my own programming language, which I do for learning purposes. I already wrote the lexer and a recursive descent parser for a subset of my language (I currently support mathematical expressions, such as `+ - * /` and parenthesis). The parser hands me back an Abstract Syntax Tree, on which I call the `Evaluate` method to get the result of the expression. Everything works fine. Here is approximately my current situation (Code examples in C#, although this is pretty much language-agnostic):               public abstract class Node     {         public abstract Double Evaluate();     }          public class OperationNode : Node     {         public Node Left { get; set; }         private String Operator { get; set; }         private Node Right { get; set; }              public Double Evaluate()         {             if (Operator == \"+\")                 return Left.Evaluate() + Right.Evaluate();                  //Same logic for the other operators         }     }          public class NumberNode : Node     {         public Double Value { get; set; }              public Double Evaluate()         {             return Value;         }     }      However, I would like to decouple the algorithm from the tree nodes because I want to apply Open/Closed Principle so I don't have to reopen every node class when I want to implement code generation for example. I read that the Visitor Pattern is good for that. I have a good understanding of how the pattern works and that using double dispatch is the way to go. But due to the recursive nature of the tree, I'm not sure how I should approach it. Here is what my Visitor would look like:               public class AstEvaluationVisitor     {         public void VisitOperation(OperationNode node)         {             // Here is where I operate on the operation node.             // How do I implement this method?             // OperationNode has two child nodes, which may have other children             // How do I work the Visitor Pattern around a recursive structure?                  // Should I access children nodes here and call their Accept method so they get visited?              // Or should their Accept method be called from their parent's Accept?         }              // Other Visit implementation by Node type     }      So this is my problem. I want to tackle it immediately while my language does not support a lot of functionnality to avoid having a bigger problem later. I did not post this to StackOverflow because I don't want you to provide an implementation. I only want you to share ideas and concepts that I might have missed, and how I should approach this."}
{"_id": "231010", "title": "Determinining \"value\" in multi-agent microeconomical simulation", "text": "I am trying to determine an objective way for a self-interested agent to calculate the optimal buying/selling price for goods in a multi-agent simulation not dissimilar to Sugarscape (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarscape). The simulation is as follows: Each agent has a stock of food F, a stock of money G, a certain amount of \"energy\", E, and a position (x, y) on a square grid. Moving from one square to a neighboring square expends A units of energy, and energy is naturally expended at a rate of B units per simulation day. An agent has the following options available to it during each day: consume a unit of food to increase its energy by Q units; move to another location (provided it has sufficient energy), \"forage\" for food (expend P units of energy to obtain a [possibly unknown] quantity of food), or trade with a neighboring agent for a mutually- agreeable price. Each agent's goal is to maximize its \"utility function\" U(E, F, G) without regard for that of other agents. Right away, this seems to give a base \"use value\" of food: Vuse = U(E + Q, F - 1, G) - U(E, F, G), but if this was the whole story, this wouldn't be an interesting problem. It seems the most general (but exponential-time) solution would look something like this:               Function SearchActions(State S):         Add(consume food) to action set         Add(forage for food) to action set         For each other agent A             For each possible trading price P                 Add(trade with A at price P) to action set         For each action X in action set             S' = Apply X to S             SearchActions(S')         Return optimal X     End function      However, the major difficulty gets swept under the rug by \"for each possible price\", because the price that agent A will buy/sell for is itself dependent on an identical calculation...e.g. My calculation of the value depends on either what I can get from using it myself, or what someone else will pay for it...but what they will pay for it depends on what I will pay for it. How do you cut this knot? I know this problem has been solved before...but I cannot find any references to it, let alone any actual implementations. The closest I've come has been a paper about \"Strategic Planning\" in SugarScape, but it only seems to give the results of the planning, rather than explaining how the planning is done."}
{"_id": "189473", "title": "Do not declare interfaces for immutable objects", "text": "**Do not declare interfaces for immutable objects** [EDIT] _Where the objects in question represent Data Transfer Objects (DTOs) or Plain Old Data (PODs)_ Is that a reasonable guideline? Up to now, I've often created interfaces for sealed classes that are immutable (data cannot be changed). I've tried to be careful myself to not use the interface anywhere where I care about immutability. Unfortunately, the interface begins to pervade the code (and it's not just my code I'm worried about). You wind up being passed an interface, and then wanting to pass it to some code that really wants to assume that the thing being passed to it is immutable. Because of this problem, I'm considering never declaring interfaces for immutable objects. This might have ramifications with respect to Unit Testing, but other than that, does this seem a reasonable guideline? Or is there another pattern I should be using to avoid the \"spreading- interface\" problem I'm seeing? (I'm using these immutable objects for several reasons: Mainly for thread safety since I write a lot of multi-threaded code; but also because it means I can avoid making defensive copies of objects passed to methods. Code becomes a lot simpler in many cases when you know something is immutable - which you don't if you've been handed an interface. In fact, often you can't even make a defensive copy of an object referenced via an interface if it doesn't provide a clone operation or any way of serialising it...) [EDIT] To provide a lot more context for my reasons for wanting to make objects immutable, see this blog post from Eric Lippert: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/tags/immutability/ I should also point out that I'm working with some lower-level concepts here, such as items that are being manipulated/passed around in multi-threaded job queues. These are essentially DTOs. Also Joshua Bloch recommends the use of immutable objects in his book Effective Java. * * * **Follow Up** Thanks for the feedback, all. I've decided to go ahead and use this guideline for DTOs and their ilk. It's working well so far, but it's only been a week... Still, it's looking good. There are some other issues relating to this that I want to ask about; notably something I'm calling \"Deep or Shallow Immutability\" (nomenclature I stole from Deep and Shallow cloning) - but that's a question for another time."}
{"_id": "189471", "title": "How do IDE-s provide auto-completion, instant error checking and debugging?", "text": "Say you have a language compiler you would like to build an IDE for. How is auto completion, instant error reporting while writing code and debuggers commonly implemented?"}
{"_id": "77442", "title": "Best ways to generate an embed code", "text": "I am developing a small web application in CakePHP which allows user to create contents using tools I provide. Once user is done creating the contents, I want to give an option to embed that in her own website. There are 2 ways I can think of right now to do this   1. Using iFrame embed code    2. Giving unique link to that content Are there any better ways to generat an embed code? Later on I would also like user to give style (css etc) to the contents she has created."}
{"_id": "27148", "title": "Is Emailing waste of time in Dev Teams", "text": "I know its not strictly related to what people ask here but I have to ask this anyway. Isn't having long conversations/discussions over emails reduce one's productivity. I have joined this new company where people prefer emails **alot**. It's not a big company so every one is accessible to everyone and also senior techies tend to get together for a 30 mins session every day to discuss and plan things with managers and stake holders. I think emails are great and should be used as long as they are to the point and don't waste anyone's time. In my professional experience getting or agreeing things over emails quickly becomes an endless game of ping-pong. Reaching to a conclusion often takes days just because.. oh well..not everyone has enough time to go through lengthy emails. Email subjects often become less subjective and more _\"re:re:re:re:fw:\"_. After few _\"re:re's\"_ and _\"fw:fw's\"_ it becomes a nightmare to find what you're looking for since not every single thing in emails is a key-point so coming back to conversation after 8-9 months is like going through someone's source code writen in C. It's also not the best approach for discussing ideas or agreeing over things as most people tend to be more reserved in email conversations than they are in real life because it's very easy to misinterpret one's tone. Most of the times I find it much easier and quicker to send an email saying \"Lets discuss thing X at xx:xx\" followed by a quick call at agreed time rather than dragging the issue for days (or in some cases weeks). When needed I follow up with an email saying \"well here's what we agreed on the phone\". Also people are generally more respectful to each other and open to discussions when talking face to face or over the phone. Don't get me wrong, emails are important and should be used whenever they are absolutely necessary. But in small/medium sized teams why is this culture (of writing long stories i.e. emails) so so important ? why don't people use tools like Basecamp, redmine, wiki's instead. How would you improve your team or company's communications so people become more productive and create a friendly environment. Thank you for reading."}
{"_id": "77447", "title": "Portfolio and NDA", "text": "So, working with NDA's prevent you from mentioning the projects in your portfolio.   * What is the way to deal with it?    * How would one showcase his experience in this scenario?  For example, I've worked on several complex iphone applications, since 2 years, and I cannot even mention the app store url's in my resume/online profile to those apps due to NDA? Does my experience go waste?"}
{"_id": "77445", "title": "How to do data synchronisation between two applications?", "text": "Our client has a CRM application (let's call it `A`) and a custom built Windows application (VB.NET) (let's call it `B`) that directly writes to and reads from the CRM database. Application `A` is used (mainly) to manage clients and their orders. Application `B` is used to manage all the products our client sells. Our client wants us to build a webshop (`C`) using ASP.NET WebForms so they can sell the products they manage with `B`. All of their clients and orders should be present both in `A` and in `C`. Since `B` will take care of all the communication to `A`, will have to come up with a way to let `B` and `C` synchronise their data. This is something relatively new to us. We have done something like this in the past, but I really don't like the way it was solved there: > When someone orders something in the webshop, **C** puts the order in an > XML-file, zips the XML-file and sends it to an FTP-server in the network of > **A**. **A** monitors the directory on the FTP-server, unzips each new file, > processes the XML, creates a new XML-file, zips it and sends it to an FTP- > server in the network of **C**. **C** monitors the directory on the FTP- > server, unzips each new file and processes the XML. > > In addition to this, each night **A** generates an XML-file for each table > in its database, zips them and sends them to the FTP-server in the network > of **C**. **C** unzips the files and lets SSIS process the XML-files to > update the database of **C**. I _really_ don't like that. There must be other ways, right? We probably need single record sychronisation and batch synchronisation. How is this usually tackled? Webservices? Something custom like Rhino ETL? Something else? **Update:** It would be nice if you could also give a short explanation of how the technology you propose is typically used and how it impacts the different applications."}
{"_id": "61529", "title": "How does a Scrum team account for infrastructure tasks in the planning meeting?", "text": "How does a Scrum team account for dev/infrastructure tasks in the planning meeting? At first glance, they do not seem like user stories since they do not deliver end user value. However, attaching them as tasks to a particular user story sometimes does not make sense either. For example, say the task is: \"Setup Bamboo.\" That task is not required to complete any user story since the team could manually build and deploy. So attaching it to a user story does not make sense since this task is not required to complete the user story. So, then, this suggests that these tasks become user stories. But then, if the team story points them, then this changes the velocity which is odd since the Product Owner wants to know the velocity against his backlog, not against his backlog with a bunch of technical user stories attached to it."}
{"_id": "43801", "title": "What's a good book to help non-technical management understand software development?", "text": "If you have some non-technical people managing your software development team, is there a book you'd want them to read to understand the process better? For example, in most work, you can pretty well estimate how long a task will take. But in development, the whole point is that you have to figure out the problem, which takes unknown time. This is hard to communicate. Anything you know of that explains this well?"}
{"_id": "43807", "title": "The worst anti-patterns you have came across", "text": "What are the worst anti-patterns you have came across in your career as a programmer? I'm mostly involved in java, although it is probably language-independent. I think the worst of it is what I call the **main anti-pattern**. It means program consisting of single, extremely big class (sometimes accompanied with a pair of little classes) which contains all logic. Typically with a big loop in which all business logic is contained, sometimes having tens of thousands of lines of code."}
{"_id": "219397", "title": "How to use apache license in my project which will be LGPL", "text": "I want to use LGPL for my project, can I use some source code which is apache licensed ? If I only use the apache licensed component as library in my project, how should I make the clarification in my project ? Do I need to put some information about apache license at the beginning of source code which uses the library?"}
{"_id": "219395", "title": "WCF Versioning, Naming and Endpoint URL", "text": "I have a WCF Service and a Main Lib1. Say, I have a Save Profile Service. WCF gets data (with predefined data contract) from client and pass the same to the Main Class Lib1, generate response and send it back to client. **WCF Method : SaveProfile(ProfileDTO profile)** **Current Version 1.0** ProfileDTO have the following UserName Password FirstName DOB (In string yyyy-mm-dd) CreatedDate (In string yyyy-mm-dd) **Next Version (V2.0)** ProfileDTO have the following UserName Password FirstName DOB (In UnixTimeStamp) CreatedDate (In UnixTimeStamp) **Version 3.0** ProfileDTO have the following (With change in UserName and Password length validation) UserName Password FirstName DOB (In UnixTimeStamp) CreatedDate (In UnixTimeStamp) In simple we have DataContract and Workflow change between each version 1\\. How do I name the methods in WCF Service and Main Class Lib1? 2\\. Do I have to go with any specific pattern for ease development and maintenance? 3\\. Do I have to have different endpoints for different version? In the above example I have a method named \u201cSaveProfile\u201d. Do I have to name the methods like \u201cSaveProfile1.0\u201d, \u201cSaveProfile2.0\u201d, etc. If that is the case when there is no change between Version \u201c3.0\u201d and \u201c4.0\u201d then there will difficult in maintenance. I\u2019m looking for a approach that will help in ease maintenance"}
{"_id": "200247", "title": "A few clarifications about the DOM", "text": "I have been trying to understand the DOM, and although I have a fair idea of what it is, there are certain ideas I just cannot pin down. I will list down what I think the DOM is and my questions will be inline.   1. The DOM is a fully object-oriented representation of the web page. The W3C DOM standard forms the basis of the DOM implemented in most modern browsers. _So does the DOM talk about how an XML/HTML document is represented as an object model?_   2. The DOM does not specify that documents must be implemented as a tree or a grove, nor does it specify how the relationships among objects be implemented.  _In what other ways can the document be represented?_   3. When you do something like this -              document.write('welcome to my home page!');      the document object is provided by the DOM. The write methods are the interfaces that are exposed to JavaScript by the DOM. _So the objects and its methods are created as JavaScript objects by the DOM parser and then presented to the JavaScript engine? Or are the objects and methods within the DOM parsing engine in their own native language? And is exposed to the JavaScript engine? If this is so, then what is responsible for translating from JavaScript to the native language?_   4. What are language bindings ? The language binding is the set of objects native to the language in question that implements each of the interfaces in the DOM specification. Developers can create language bindings from the DOM to their language simply by following the IDL (Interface Definition Language) in the DOM specification. _So if the DOM parsing engine is implemented in say C++, does that mean that when you create language bindings by following the IDL, you are just creating objects in the specific language, i.e C++ that your DOM parsing engine is built with?_"}
{"_id": "200242", "title": "Can you learn enough programming in 2 years to get good entry level job?", "text": "I have studied 2 out of 4 years in college, mainly math and physics so I am fairly technical. For some reason I have never really learnt to code before last month. And I was so thrilled and I am going to concentrate my last 2 years in college solely for learning to program. My question is: If I study like a Mad Man my last 2 years before graduation can I learn enough programming to get a good and reputable entry level software engineer job/intership. And by reputable I mean something like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, Oracle etc. Is it possible to start from scratch and learn in 2 years enough skills to make it?"}
{"_id": "200243", "title": "SQL Table Design Modification based on data roles or implementation convenience?", "text": "I've got an existing SQL table structure that looks like this:               Orders     - order_id     - organisation_id     - [all the rest of the order data]          Organisations     - organisation_id     - [all the rest of the organisation data]          Users     - user ID     - [all the rest of the user data]      I'm trying to change the `Orders` table so that an Order can be linked to either an `Organisation` or a `User`. I've got two ideas: ### Option A   * Add field `orders.user_id`, and then set either `user_id` or `organisation_id` to null for each order, indicating whether the order was placed by a user or organisation. ### Option B   * Add a table `orderers` (or similar) and then add fields `organisations.orderer_id` and `users.orderer_id`. Then, users and organisations are both orderers, and orderers place orders. ### Evaluation Option B's role-based approach seems to make good sense and seems to be more extensible, but I just can't help but think about the hassle the extra `JOIN`s are going to cause, in terms of performance and SQL complexity. What is the best way to go about this?"}
{"_id": "184747", "title": "How to code in a more functional style in Java?", "text": "I code Java for at least 5 years now and I really appreciate how the language works. When looking at new JVM languages (e.g. Scala, Clojure) there is a trend to more functional ways to code and this way has some major advantages. Anyway, are there patterns to achieve a more functional style even when using Java or other pure OOP? And does this make sense in Java?"}
{"_id": "208035", "title": "Graph to show decreasing desirability when taking shortcuts", "text": "I'm responsible for creating a presentation to management that details how a system should be refactored or rewritten. We have an existing system that has had production failures and the code base is not in a desirable state. Here are the current possible options:   1. Rewrite the system using developers that provide the best code quality   2. Rewrite the system using developers that write less-than-ideal code quality   3. Leave the system as is and just maintain it   4. Rewrite the system using cheaper labor on the other side of the world The issue isn't which one to choose, because I believe #1 provides the best long-term value to the business. The issue is how to present this to management so they understand the costs to each shortcut they take from #1. For example, I would start with presenting #1... then what? My original idea is to somehow show each shortcut and what that means in terms of long-term cost/benefit. So, perhaps management wants to use cheaper labor. I need to show what that does to quality, time, etc. How do I show that? Perhaps management wants to use a hybrid of the above options. How do I show that? There could be 20 different permutations of the above options, and I'd like to show that if they take the short-term approach of low-cost everything, what that eventually means to the quality of the product. Are there graphs for this type of thing? A recommended approach? I could just start typing, but I don't want management's eyes to glaze over from too many words. Hope that all makes sense. An idea is to present something like this for each option: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qbsrs.png)"}
{"_id": "208036", "title": "Who coined the term \"performant?\"", "text": "We all know that it's not a real word. But it is commonly used among programmers, and could probably be thought of as a \"technical term.\" It might pass into common usage and make its way into the dictionary, if enough people use it. Wiktionary defines _performant_ thusly:   * **performant** (comparative more performant, superlative most performant)     1. (jargon, chiefly computing) Capable of or characterized by an adequate or excellent level of performance or efficiency. Ours is a performant network monitoring and systems monitoring tool. \"This software is ten percent more performant than its predecessor.\" God knows why I want to know*, but fifteen minutes of searching later I still don't know who is considered the person who coined the term \"performant\" in software engineering? Who was the first person to use it? *That's not necessarily true. I suspect it's because 10am on Monday in the US and I'm ready to head home."}
{"_id": "208033", "title": "Browser as a rich client platform", "text": "In Java there is a notion of \"rich client platform\" - it's a framework for building desktop applications, provides common features like help browser, window layout management, etc. Prominent frameworks are Eclipse and Netbeans. Now I am curious if something like that can be done on top of web browser? I heard about XULRunner, Chrome extensions, NPAPI and such but hesitant to dive further (my current idea is to fork Chromium). Basically, is there a way from a (serverless) browser application:   1. Work with filesystem (Open/Save/open OS file browser)   2. Start OS processes (e.g. some utilities) and parse their output.   3. Access dynamic libraries.   4. Alter browser UI (e.g. remove home/address bar, redo menus)   5. Package as something easily deployed throw the app stores. Can this be done without forking the browser? What should I read about? **Updated Requirements:** Essentially I am looking for \"PhoneGap for PCs\" - but I really like how I could reuse Chromium UI (tabs, preferences, etc) if I forked it. I'm prototyping on Mac, will setup a Linux build. I am not interested in Windows at this point..."}
{"_id": "215202", "title": "The better way to ask for input?", "text": "I am wondering which is the best way to go with java code. I need to create a class with simple prompts for input.. I have tried using both classes and cannot work out the particular benefits for each. Is this because I am still in the early stages of programming or are there situations that will occur as it becomes more complex??               import java.util.Scanner;          public class myClass     {         Scanner stdin = new Scanner(System.in);          public String getInput(String prompt)        {             System.out.print(prompt);             return stdin.nextLine();         }      ... or               import java.io.*;          public class myClass     {         public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException         {             BufferedReader stdin = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader (System.in));             System.out.print(\"Input something: \");             String name = stdin.readLine();      I know these examples are showing different methods within these classes, but thought this might serve well for the discussion. _I'm really not sure which site is the best to ask this on._"}
{"_id": "165505", "title": "Continue working full time on projects or get a job for appearances on resum\u00e9?", "text": "Current situation: About five months ago I got a degree in something that has nothing to do with programming. Since then I have been intensively studying/working on programming projects the last five months. **(A) Do I continue working full time on projects progressing at a fast rate likely having finished decent enough projects to land a starter position/payed internship in 3 months** or **(B) do I get a job, almost surely one that has nothing to do with programming, merely so employers can see on my resum\u00e9 that I did a job in between and significantly reduce my progress in programming?** I assume that HR interviewers from large companies would see my unemployment as a bad thing but on the other hand it's very unlikely I would even apply for a job for such company anyway because they almost always seem to require a related degree. But I am not sure how other employers would interpret the situation. Btw, I am talking about the western european job market, not the american job market. Also, I have learned WAY more in those 5 months on my own than in those three years altogether in university college. ## EDIT I am actually convinced that the best step is to continue working full time on those projects because I think that there is a significant number of employers of small companies who can look past unemployment on my resum\u00e9 as long as I can present them with projects I have worked on. But my father fears no employer will be able to look past the fact I have not done an actual job in that period, regardless if it programming related. **I want to show my father this SO thread to convince him otherwise**. So can any employers or employees of such employers please state if my father's suspicion is correct or not. This has a great influence in my current living situation so it is important for him to understand that."}
{"_id": "93444", "title": "Compiler time versus programmer time", "text": "I want to briefly discuss managed or interpreted languages. It's said that they're worth developing in, because the CPU time is worth less than the programmer time required to develop in a faster language. I'm curious if the same thing could be said for the compiler. If I had some mythical compiler that took four times as long to compile as, say, C#, but took half the time to program with, would that be an advantage or a disadvantage? Is programmer time worth more than compiler time?"}
{"_id": "230947", "title": "MIT License - possible to steal code?", "text": "Say your company has some closely-guarded internal software that happens to have an MIT License. Maybe it was based on MIT Licensed software but has been heavily modified over the years. Your company does not want to share it with the outside world. However, one day an employee decides to post the software up on GitHub against the wishes of the company. Is this legal? Does it violate the license?"}
{"_id": "98214", "title": "Name for this pattern?", "text": "I'm writing a class that will handle thread synchronisation. It would have a begin method which would increment a counter and an end method that would de-increment a counter. It'll have another method which will block while the counter is not zero, then perform an action while holding the lock. Its a bit like the opposite of a semaphore, because it's unlocked at zero, and can get locked multiple times, only becoming unlocked again once it's been unlocked an equal number of times. Is there a name for this pattern? * * * It's a class based on the accepted answer of my question here"}
{"_id": "98216", "title": "Why companies don't buy developers entertaining instruments?", "text": "Many times when I get tired of development and my mind doesn't really help me any more (at home), I simply do something entertaining and my mind gets free for more hours of work with higher problem-solving capacity. However, when I recommended this technique to my manager as a technique to increase developers productivity and efficiency, he refused to accept on the ground that work is not the place for entertainment. I think this formula works for me. Is it true for other developers too:               2 hours of productive work + 30 minutes of entertainment > 3 hours of dull work      Why companies don't believe in it? **Update:** I don't know why this has been closed as off-topic. Please if you feel that this is relevant, vote to reopen it."}
{"_id": "216540", "title": "what is need for a handler in general", "text": "I have been searching for a definition for handler. basics i've understood that \"A handler is a piece of code that is called when something happens, and usually takes some action, like generating a response.\" - (from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3246200/what-is-an-handler ). But that can be a trigger or a callback. Also in specific an event handler on a low-level , often works by polling a device and waiting for a hardware response. So, what is the specific role of a handler ( that makes it unique from a trigger or a callback or any other such function ). Do all handlers have similar role ( event handler, file handler , exception handler, error handler )..."}
{"_id": "200790", "title": "How easy is it to hack JavaScript (in a browser)?", "text": "My question has to do with JavaScript security. Imagine an authentication system where you're using a JavaScript framework like Backbone or AngularJS, and you need secure endpoints. That's not a problem, as the server always has the last word and will check if you're authorized to do what you want. But what if you need a little security without involving the server? Is that possible? For example, say you've got a client-side routing system and you want a concrete route to be protected for logged-in users. So you ping the server asking if you're allowed to visit protected routes and you go on. The problem is that when you ping the server, you store the response in a variable, so the next time you go to a private route, it will check that if you're already logged in (no ping to the server), and depending on the response it will go or not. **How easy is for a user to modify that variable and get access?** My security (and JavaScript) knowledge isn't great. But if a variable is not in global scope and is in the private part of a module pattern which only have getters but not setters, even in that case, can you hack the thing out?"}
{"_id": "200796", "title": "How is dependency injection not just moving the complexity into a separate class?", "text": "I've been looking into using the Typhoon framework for dependency injection this week. I get that separating the construction of objects is beneficial for replacing arbitrary components with mocks during unit testing, and so far I have seen benefits from this alone. But I cannot help but think that where before I had a humongous view controller class that had tens of header imports, I now have a humongous factory class that has tens of header imports. Am I supposed to avoid having a massive factory class?"}
{"_id": "249579", "title": "Implementing a priority queue with a circular array", "text": "[If this fits more to stackoverflow then transfer it there please.] Hi, I'm trying to implement a priority queue in C. The easiest way I found to do it is with a circular array (rather than using a linked list). I have an array of fixed size, the index for the `first` element in the queue and the index for the `next` free place in the queue. But I'm struggling with dequing the maximum value... I know how to get the maximum value, but not how to move next and first so that the queue stays contiguous in the array (the only way I know of it working). How should I do this? Or do you have a suggestion for a better implementation? Thanks"}
{"_id": "204493", "title": "How to certify an electronic vote?", "text": "I'm developing a simple 'voting' system for any type of group (political, working team). I was wondering what could be a good system to 'certificate' the votes? For example, a simple db structure is:               PollID, UserId, ChoseID (what user chose), DateTime      What can I do to certify that the vote has not been tampered with? Adding a KEY field resulting from an algorithm? Anything else ?"}
{"_id": "110380", "title": "Call GPL software from non-GPL software", "text": "Can I (legally) use a program that is released under GPL from another program that I'm writing and not have to respect the GPL (for the program I'm writing)? For example, I have a GUI that uses a program (which is under GPL), can I hide the code in the GUI and even sell it?"}
{"_id": "234057", "title": "Calling a GPL binary from command line", "text": "I developed some software which I sell / closed souce. There is a GPL executable I would like to call/execute from within my software (and use the data returned by it) _if_ users download the executable themselves and tell my program the path where to find it. (Hence, I do not want to distribute neither source, nor binaries of the GPL tool.) If I understood this correctly, I am therefore not linking in any way. The GPL tool will only constitute a very tiny part of the overall functionality and probably only be useful (and not likely mandatory) to less than a percent of my users. (Rough estimate.) Hence, by my understanding, I should be able to do above without further problem, i.e. I will not need to: \\- Mention anything in my readme/similar since user downloads the GPL executable himself form the official site - my software will point to it, so the user can find it there) \\- My own software can stay as it is (closed source, commercial) Am I correct in above?"}
{"_id": "246565", "title": "Passing two different types down a chain of calls because of an overload further down", "text": "I've got myself into a bit of a mess. I've got code coming from Main, through myMethod and down to OtherMethod. One of the parameters can be either an int or a string, which affects OtherMethod but none of the intervening methods.               public static void Main()     {         myMethod(number: 10);         myMethod(letters: \"ten\");     }          public static void myMethod(int number = 0, string letters = null)     {         //long entirely shared code with calls to:         OtherMethod(number,letters);     }          public static void OtherMethod(int number = 1, string letters = null)     {         //Lots of shared code, embedded multiple times within this code is essentially:         if (letters != null)         {             Console.WriteLine(\"letters!\");         }         else         {             Console.WriteLine(\"numbers!\");         }     }      OtherMethod cares about when I'm passing it `int` or `string`, but none of the intervening methods care. I would also find splitting OtherMethod without unnecessary code reuse very hard. The solution I have provided works, but is probably an anti-pattern. Because, for example, a call to `myMethod(10,\"ten\")` would silently throw `10` in the bin. Would changing it to `private mymethod(int number = 0, string = null)` called by `public (int number)` and `public (string letter)` for each level be a terrible idea? I though of instead passing a class with both int and string and instructions of which to use right from the top to bottom. I suspect this is the solution. But it feels as OTT as it does OO. My real use case is that I'm randomly generating data at the bottom of this chain and I can either provide a seed (int), or cheat and provide the data to generate (string). It occurs to me that what I'm doing may be a procedural dependency injection bodge,"}
{"_id": "249572", "title": "Programming for future use of interfaces", "text": "I have a colleague sitting next to me who designed an interface like this:               public interface IEventGetter {              public List<FooType> getFooList(String fooName, Date start, Date end)             throws Exception;         ....          }      The problem is, right now, we are not using this \"end\" parameter anywhere in our code, it's just there because we might have to use it some time in the future. We are trying to convince him it's a bad idea to put parameters into interfaces that are of no use right now, but he keeps on insisting that a lot of work will have to be done if we implement the use of \"end\" date some time later and have to adapt all the code then. Now, my question is, are there any sources that are handling a topic like this of \"respected\" coding gurus that we can link him to?"}
{"_id": "249574", "title": "handling online payment for items with one quantity - design issue", "text": "I would like to implement a robust way to handle ecommerce payment for items with limited quantity, like for example exclusive paintings. Payment would ideally be accepted via PayPal and credit cards. Ideally, it would work on a 'first-come-first-serve' basis, and wouldn't just lock items out if you add them to cart like some online fashion stores do. However, the main problem is that once you redirect the user to the payment solution, you do not have control over the user. Even if I was to implement some form of locking on items, i.e a user adds it to cart and it is temporarily locked for other users for say 30 minutes - I think this problem would still prevail given the below workflow:   * User A adds item A with limited quantity (1) to cart. Item is removed from website for 30 minutes   * User A goes to payment on PayPal.    * For some reason, UserA does not pay immediately on PayPal but keeps session alive for say 1 hour   * After 30 minutes, website will restore item A back in stock   * User B adds to cart   * User B proceeds to payment   * User B pays for item   * User A, with the continuously refreshed session, pays for item as well. This would result in double-purchase for the same item. Is it possible to solve this problem 100%? I highly doubt this would happen in real-life, but would like to handle all possible cases."}
{"_id": "235361", "title": "How to invoke a method in a class always when the class is accessed - like a reaction?", "text": "I am working on a C# net micro framework project, in particular an I2C bus class. I have several different I2C devices each defined in separate classes which contain all of the devices' unique methods. In my case, I can only have ONE I2CDevice object defined and to switch to another I2C device, I have to change the I2CDevice.Config = DeviceConfig. For example (pseudo-code):               Class Device1      -DeviceConfig1     -Method 1     -Method 2     -Method 3          Class Device2     -DeviceConfig2     -Method 1     -Method 2     -Method 3               Main Program     {     I2cBus = new I2CDevice(configuration)     Device1.Method1     Device2.Method3     }      When switching between devices, I need to change the I2CDevice.Config property. I'm looking for an elegant way such that whenever I call a Method for a device, that the I2CBus.Config is automatically changed. Is there a way that I don't need to re-type this config code in each method? Have a separate internal method that's called each time I access any of those methods? I hope my description is clear. Update, As an alternative, is there a way I can have my make my I2C Bus class and then ADD the devices to the this class? Then To access The Devices, I would Do something like               I2CBus.AddDevice(Device1ObjectClass)     I2CBus.AddDevice(Device2ObjectClass)     I2CBus.Device1.Method1     I2CBus.Device2.Method2      I still have the same problem that I need to \"automatically\" switch the I2C configuration between Different Device calls."}
{"_id": "70146", "title": "Best way to create a web interface to query a particular database", "text": "I was asked to make a web application to allow users to query a particular database more easily. Simplifying, this database has only two tables, reports and products. The relationship between the two is that one report may refer to one or more products. The web application should allow users to specify in a graphic way (even in a simple form) a list of search criteria to retrieve a subset of reports. For example a user might ask for all reports in a certain period, with \"(field1 = value1 and field2 = value2) or (field3 <> value3)\", that refer to product A and product B. This is the description of the basic requirements; ideally the web application should also allow users to save and combine their queries (for example with \"UNION, EXCEPT, INTERSECT\"-like operators) and to dinamically order the results. Moreover, the products ca be grouped into hierarchical levels and a user might ask for all reports that refer to all products in a certain level. At this moment the reports table has only 114.000 rows but it's growing fast: it has existed for 27 years but 18.000 rows were inserted last year! So, my question is how to approach the development of this application. First of all, it is necessary to develop a NEW application or there is something I can use out-the-box (with some initial configuration, obviously)? If not, I believe I could write it myself with CodeIgniter and JQuery, but I would know if there are other PHP or JAVA frameworks or components useful to speed up my work. Finally I'd love to hear your opionion about the critical points I should worry about."}
{"_id": "130018", "title": "Book on network cryptographic protocols", "text": "I am looking for a book that describes in fair detail the most common network cryptographic protocols such as SSL, TLS, SSH, HTTPS, etc. I already have some books that cover the underlying cryptographic protocols (such as DES, AES, etc.). It's the next layer up that I am interested in learning about."}
{"_id": "125613", "title": "Ease the pains of unit testing C# when you are the only person on the team unit testing", "text": "I have ran into this a few times where you get put on a project and you want to do unit testing of some type, but the project isn't setup right to allow for this and you might not have buy-in from everyone. The main issues tend to be code smells like issues with dependencies (especially the over use of statics) and seperation of concerns. New code that you write can be setup easily, but anything that operates with other legacy code or even those not drinking the cool aide can become an issue. Some things that I have found are that isolation frameworks like TypeMock can make this easier. **What are some other tools/tricks/best practices that you have found that ease this sort of pain?**"}
{"_id": "118035", "title": "Starting a coherent architecture in a legacy application", "text": "I have responsibility for a large Asp.Net based website. It is currently a website (not web application), some windows services and a number of class libraries. The data layer uses a mixture of LLBLGEN and Linq To LLBGen, as well as a number of instances of legacy inline SQL which have not been refactored. There are some manager type implementations, but in many cases the application exhibits the Smart UI anti-pattern (i.e. too much business logic in code behind classes) The site is reasonably high traffic, and performance is fine, but we are growing our development capability to a team of around 10, and increasingly it is clear we need an overarching layered design on top of the existing middleware. My question is where to start? We have 10 years of code (some of it still really just migrated ASP Classic stuff), many different approaches, and styles. Refactoring the entire code base is not realistic and, probably not desirable I know this is not a novel situation, are there any useful ideas or concepts as to how to approach this problem?"}
{"_id": "105036", "title": "What are common Silverlight specific mistakes/pitfalls developers should avoid?", "text": "What are some common mistakes/pitfalls, specific to Silverlight development, that developers should avoid? PS: Please, if you don't have hands on experience with Silverlight and want to simply state that people should just not use it, refrain from doing so. Thank you for you time and consideration. Here is a compilation of input from users on both StackOverflow and programmers.stackexchange.com to this question:   * Thinking it's the same as WPF   * Not using the MVVM design pattern   * Not knowing that it doesn't support ADO.Net Connections   * Not knowing that it only supports basicHttpBinding (no wsHttpBinding allowed)   * Not knowing that RelativeSource bindings don't support AncestorType   * Forgetting to setup IIS MIME types   * Thinking that Silverlight works the same way as WPF   * 5mb limit on XAP files and the need for third party solutions to work around that   * Not abstracting out the service layer calls.  > Abstracting out the service layer calls so that the silverlight pages load > in the designer (either Visual Studio or Expression Blend) without the > presence of the service helps out. Especially if the UI is being designed in > Expression Blend. Some dummy data can be returned without calling the > service and the UI designers still get a feel for the look and feel of the > application with data.   * Not using MVVM > You can program Silverlight like a winforms app but you are in for a world > of grief. The whole platform was designed to use MVVM and if you don't work > with that you are going to be swimming upstream the whole way.   * **Networking:** there are limits on sockets, e.g. no UDP, only the async model   * **Networking:** two (3.0) different HTTP stack, the browser one and the client one - each has its own quirks (a lot of applications ends up using both);   * **Security:** some API are marked as [SecurityCritical] and you won't be allowed to use them, even if it will compile just fine, at runtime (e.g. but that code has been working for years in my other application)   * **Security:** security policies on HTTP[S] and sockets (but works so well on your own computer)   * ditran.net/silverlight-common-errors   * Using MVVM but not truely understanding it  > blindly obeying its principles as if they were the 10 commandments, some > people really make things hard for themselves I bet most don't have any > separate UI design team nor are using Unit tests, so the benefits of MVVM > would be minimal >   * Not grasping the Asynchronous nature of Silverlight. >   * Over using UserControls when they should be using a Templated control > > > Thank you for constructive input to the following people: Rachel, > maple_shaft, Jesse C. Slicer, ChrisF, Jon Raynor, poupou, RKitty, DShah, > AnthonyWJones"}
{"_id": "232090", "title": "Why do we use hungarian notations on local variable but not on function or global variable?", "text": "That doesn't seem to make sense. In local variable, we sort of know the type anyway. It's local. We're working on it. Yet in function name or global variable, the definition is very far away on other files. It seems that hungarian notations make far more sense there. For example, in objective-c I used this               +(CGFloat) fHeightOfNavigationController      So when I want to know the height of navigation controller, I will need to press a button that specify the function. What's the button? What's the name of the function. Is it heightOfNavigationController? Is it NavigationControllerHeight? Is it navHeight? I don't know which letter I should type first to activate the autocomplete. But I know the function is float. So I just type f... Tada... I got fHeightOfNavigationController in autocomplete. Yet I don't think this is how most people use hungarian notation. Why?"}
{"_id": "87248", "title": "TDD - what are the short term gains/benefits?", "text": "Quite often benefits of using TDD are considered as 'long term' gains - the overall code will be better structured, more testable, overall less bugs reported by customers, etc. However, where are the short terms benefits of using TDD? Are there any which are actually tengible and easily measureable? Is it important to have an obvious (or even not obvious by quantifiable) short term benefit at all, if the long term gains are measurable?"}
{"_id": "87241", "title": "Any legal issue in developing app similar to others?", "text": "There is a game I want to develop for mobile devices e.g. cellphone/tablet. I have been looking for this game and couldn't find it so I decide to just do it on my own. But I'm worried that there will be legal issues. I'm sorry but I do not know what is the process in doing this. I noticed for example the game Bejeweled Blitz. If I develop something similar, do I have to contact the developer and ask for permission if I develop a game with similar rules but use shapes rather than jewels? The original game exists only on Windows for free. If I develop the game, exactly similar rules but different display, am I allowed to sell it? Thanks..."}
{"_id": "135873", "title": "How do you create interest in your projects?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Ideas to get you programming mojo back? Its almost 10 years for me working in Java based applications (mainly on Web). Sometimes I feel really bored of the regular work...same old problems, similar challanges etc. Since I work for a company that provides services to different customers, I change my domain from time to time, I get to know about some new things, but ultimately all are web applications and I really find nothing interesting after 6-8 months in a new project. I would like to know from experts, how do you make working in same technology interesting?"}
{"_id": "146408", "title": "Is it the job of programmers to design the database?", "text": "I've been a programmer for the past six years. Throughout my career, I have worked on many web applications. Most of the time, when a database was needed, it was given to us (the programmers) or we had some legacy database to work on. If not that, we had to create and design the database on our own which was not that tough. But are we, as programmers, supposed to create the entire database from scratch when we have to build new application where data is so important and have messy requirements with a complex data model? Isn't it in the best interest of the app and the company to get it done by an expert? I am not trying to run away from designing the database, but it's a thing that is so important to get right."}
{"_id": "135997", "title": "Does commentary style affect how readers understand code?", "text": "This question has been obsessing me for the past 2 months. A while ago a friend who is a great programmer gave me some example codes, and for the first time I've noticed a unique style of organizing comments. He took some effort to design comments in a way that would make me more comfortable with the code itself. For example:               /////////////////////////////////////////////                                                   //                                             //     //  This code prints a basic \"Hello world\" //     // message to the console screen. You can  //     // change the text in the brackets.        //     //                                         //     /////////////////////////////////////////////          #include <iostream>          int main() {       cout << \"Hello world\";          }      when he could have simply written               /* This code prints a basic \"Hello world\" message to the console, change text in brackets */           #include <iostream>          int main() {       cout << \"Hello world\";          }      This kind of example only on a bigger scale. I find this a little unproductive in professional situations but in a learning situation, it seems ideal. The question here is, if comment style affects how the reader understands code. In my personal opinion option #1 is prettier to the eye and easier to follow than #2. Does the way you comment on code affect ones ability to comprehend your code, or is it just wasted time and space?"}
{"_id": "50819", "title": "Is there a measure of code rot?", "text": "I'm dealing, again, with a messy C++ application, tons of classes with confusing names, objects have pointers into each other and all over, longwinded Boost and STL data types, etc. (Pause and consider your favorite terror of messy legacy code. We probably have it.) The phrase \"code rot\" oft comes to mind when I work on this project. Is there a quantitative way to measure code rot? I wouldn't expect anything highly meaningful or scientific, since no other measure of code productivity or quality is so fine. I'm not looking for a mere opposite of measures of code quality, but specifically a measure of how many bad things happened after a series of maintenance software \"engineers\" have had turns hacking at the code. A general measure applying to any language, or many languages, would be great. If there's no such thing, at least for C++, which is a better than average language for creating messes. Maybe something involving a measure of topology of how objects connect during runtime, a count of chunks of commented out code, how mane files a typical variable's usage is scattered over, I don't know... but surely now, a decade into the 21st Century, someone has attempted to define some sort of rot measure. It would be especially interesting to automate a series of svn checkouts, measure the \"rottenosity\" of each, and plot the decay over time."}
{"_id": "95310", "title": "What is the best/ethical way to estimate code clean-up?", "text": "I have been working on a product line since my senior year of college for my current employer. Now several years out of college I am in a position where I am giving estimates for change requests on this same produce line. Please note that our software lead still approves the estimates, but is hands off during the process. As my skill set continues to grow, I continue to see things which I can improve upon. The issue is how to get these changes funded. My current process is to clean up / refactor code if it touches an area that has an active change request. However the dirty sections of code that aren't part of an active CR are neglected and bug me more and more as the product line matures. To help clarify, I do not believe that the customer should pay for a full rewrite of the software, unless it is in fact cheaper to do so to meet new requirements. I do prefer the incremental changes to clean up bits of code. When submitting quotes / estimates, what is the best way to _ethically_ try and recapture the costs of code clean up? To elaborate further, what kind of padding is typical for general maintenance? Should it be based on lines of code, project complexity, or some other metric?"}
{"_id": "167080", "title": "How is technical debt best measured? What metric(s) are most useful?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How can I quantify the amount of technical debt that exists in a project? If I wanted to help a customer understand the degree of technical debt in his application, what would be the best metric to use? I've stumbled across Erik Doernenburg's code toxicity, and also Sonar's technical debt plugin, but was wondering what others exist. Ideally, I'd like to say \"system A has a score of 100 whereas system B has a score of 50, so system A will most likely be more difficult to maintain than system B\". Obviously, I understand that boiling down a complex concepts like \"technical debt\" or \"maintainability\" into a single number might be misleading or inaccurate (in some cases), however I need a simple way to convey the to a customer (who is not hands-on in the code) roughly how much technical debt is built into their system (relative to other systems), for the goal of building a case for refactoring/unit tests/etc. Again, I'm looking for one single number/graph/visualization, and not a comprehensive list of violations (e.g. CheckStyle, PMD, etc.)."}
{"_id": "84579", "title": "Improving Cohesion and Coupling of Classes", "text": "I am given this set of code and need to suggest ways to improve the code's cohesion and coupling of the classes. But I thought these classes are quite well de-coupled since it looks like they are making use of events. And in terms of cohesion, all the init() calls are placed together, everything seems quite alright to me.               public class A     {         private C t;         private B g;         public static void main(String args[]) {             // Creates t and g.             t = new C();             t.init();             g = new B();             g.init();             g.start(this);         }         pubic void update (Event e)         {             // Performs updating of t based on event         }     }          public class C     {         public C() { ... }         public void init() { ... }     }          public class B     {         public B() { ... }              public void init() { ... }              public void start(A s) {             e = getNextEvent();             while (e. type != Quit)                 if (e.type == updateB)                     update(e) ;                 else                     s.update(e) ;             e = getNextEvent();         }              public void update(Event e) { ... }         }     }      Are there still ways to improve the classes cohesion and coupling? It looks ok to me but I think I am missing something out. Thanks for any suggestions on this."}
{"_id": "41512", "title": "Software Design for Product Verticals and Service Verticals", "text": "In every industry there are two verticals `Product Vertical` and `Service Vertical`, so my question is:   * How does design approach changes while designing Software for Product Vertical as compared to developing Software for Service Vertical ? What are the pros and cons for each case ? Also, in case of Product Vertical,   * How you go about designing Product or Features and what are steps involved ?  Lastly, I was reading How Facebook Ships Code article and it appears that Product Managers have very little influence on how Product is developed and responsibility lies mainly with the Developer for the feature.   * So is this good practice and why one would go for this approach ?    * What would be your comment on this kind of approach ?"}
{"_id": "41514", "title": "You are or will be a laid off programmer - what do you do a year ago, right now, tomorrow, and next week?", "text": "Many programmers, software engineers, and other technology professionals are out of work, facing layoffs, or are unprepared for layoffs though they _feel_ secure right now.   * What should every programmer do right now (even if secure in their current job) to prepare them for layoffs down the road? If your boss came to your cubicle while you read this and laid you off:   * What would you do immediately after?   * What would you do tomorrow?   * What would you do next week? It obvious that one should always have an up to date resume, always get recommendations from people when they see you at your best (not when you're looking for a new job), etc. What are the things, step by step, that every programmer should do (or should consider doing) long before they are laid off, when they're laid off, and shortly after being laid off? This is a question with many possible facets. While I want to encourage discussion to center around programming career based answers, please reconsider before downvoting someone because they're thinking in terms of how they're going to prevent going into debt. **Bonus catch-22 type question:** You can study a new language or technology while out of work, but most places want you to have more than 1-2 months experience in a working environment, not just from a learning exercise. Is it worthwhile to place a priority on new (ideally in demand) skills, or should you instead hone existing skills?"}
{"_id": "85339", "title": "How to describe your skill levels in the CV?", "text": "What are possible/standard words to describe your skill levels in different programming languages in your CV? I currently use these three:   * expert   * advanced   * beginner I do not consider myself an expert in any programming language, so I classify all my skills as either beginner or advanced. However, I would like to differentiate more. I am especially looking for something between _advanced_ and _expert_. Any suggestions? Or should I not even bother to differentiate any more detailed?"}
{"_id": "84572", "title": "Why are IT and development job titles so cryptic?", "text": "I'm a new intern in a fairly large company's IT department. I've been learning a whole lot of stuff and I'm loving every minute of it. However, the more people I meet in the company, the less I understand their titles or the general title hierarchy. Here are some examples:   * Senior Designer   * System Architect   * Systems Analyst   * Systems Analyst II   * Technical Support Analyst II   * Infrastructure Operations To name a few. But from what I gather sometimes two people will have the same title and do 2 completely different things, whereas sometimes they will have different titles and do the same things. No more do I actually understand anything from the titles themselves."}
{"_id": "203269", "title": "Python \u2014 Time complexity of built-in functions versus manually-built functions in finite fields", "text": "Generally, I'm wondering about the advantages versus disadvantages of using the built-in arithmetic functions versus rolling your own in Python. Specifically, I'm taking in GF(2) finite field polynomials in string format, converting to base 2 values, performing arithmetic, then output back into polynomials as string format. So a small example of this is in multiplication: Rolling my own:               def multiply(a,b):         bitsa = reversed(\"{0:b}\".format(a))         g = [(b<<i)*int(bit) for i,bit in enumerate(bitsa)]         return reduce(lambda x,y: x+y,g)      Versus the built-in:               def multiply(a,b):  # a,b are GF(2) polynomials in binary form ....         return a*b  #returns product of 2 polynomials in gf2      Currently, operations like multiplicative inverse (with for example 20 bit exponents) take a long time to run in my program as it's using all of Python's built-in mathematical operations like // floor division and % modulus, etc. as opposed to making my own division, remainder, etc. I'm wondering how much of a gain in efficiency and performance I can get by building these manually (as shown above). I realize the gains are dependent on how well the manual versions are built, that's not the question. I'd like to find out 'basically' how much advantage there is over the built-in's. So for instance, if multiplication (as in the example above) is well-suited for base 10 (decimal) arithmetic but has to jump through more hoops to change bases to binary and then even more hoops in operating (so it's lower efficiency), that's what I'm wondering. Like, I'm wondering if it's possible to bring the time down significantly by building them myself in ways that maybe some professionals here have already come across."}
{"_id": "203267", "title": "Trying to understand 3 layer programming", "text": "I am confused to understand the structure of a 3 layer programm. Where is good place for exceptions, entity and etc.? If I use MVC, in my UI model, how to transfer entity class to model class and etc.? I have created a project that called Ramznegar. It is web project. In this a user can register and get a account. Then login and can create category, like gmail, yahoo, etc... In each category user can add any item and its password. This programm actually is password keeper. For developing this program I created four project with following structure:   1. RamznegarDAL: contains all DAO file    2. RamznegarBLL: contains logic of the program. like password decrypt and encrypt class   3. RamznegarUI : contains all `JSP` and `Servlet` class.    4. entity : contains 2 type of classes. `entity` (like Category, Item and User class) and `exceptions` (include all exception class that use in program like `DataSourceAccessException`)   `RamznegarDAL` use `entity` as library.   `RamznegarBLL` use `RamznegarDAL` and `entity` as library `RamznegarUI` use `RamznegarBLL` and `entity` as library. Now, please say me this structure is correct or if I have a problem with 3 layer concept."}
{"_id": "224315", "title": "How do you program a way to create mathematics formulas?", "text": "For one of my project ideas, I want to create a dice rolling app. It would allow people to setup somewhat complex combinations of dice roll cascades in a visual way. I have a pretty good idea on how I would program the logic for the dice, namely as if you're creating a math formula; Class:               Formula      Properties:               Left formula     Right formula     Function      Thus, adding `X = A + B` would consist of Formula `X`, with left `Formula A`, right `Formula B` and function `Add`. Formula A and B would consist of left `a` or `b`, right `null` and function `Constant`. This approach seems fine to me, but I like to try and find approaches others have come up with. However, because 'programming math' tends to lead to completely different questions (of the 'Do I need to learn math to program' or 'How do I program this formula' variety), I'm having difficulties finding other approaches."}
{"_id": "175916", "title": "OOP Design: relationship between entity classes", "text": "I have at first sight a simple issue but can't wrap my head around on how to solve. I have an abstract class `Compound`. A `Compound` is made up of `Structures`. Then there is also a `Container` which holds 1 `Compound`. A \"special\" implementation of `Compound` has `Versions`. For that type of `Compound` I want the `Container` to hold the `Version`of the `Compound` and not the `Compound` itself. You could say \"just create an interface `Containable`\" and a `Container` holds 1 `Containable`. However that won't work. The reason is I'm creating a framework and the main part of that framework is to simplify storing and especially searching for special data type held by `Structure` objects. Hence to search for `Containers` which contain a `Compound` made up of a specific `Structure` requires that the \"Path\" from `Container`to `Structure` is well defined (Number of relationships or joins). I hope this was understandable. My question is how to design the classes and relationships to be able to do what I outlined. EDIT: Kind of translation issue. with version i did not mean in terms of \"versioning\" but more in terms of \"different variety\" but fundamentally the same. There is no active / inactive. All are active. EDIT 2: Also note that these classes are entity classes and hence complex inheritance and hierarchies can be problematic. EDIT 3: Just don't see how either pattern (Composite, decorator) can work. I tried but the problem is the \"path traversal\", eg. implementing it in the context of Spring-data and QueryDSL. I've created Class diagramm with comments that might help to understand the issue. Batch = Version. ![Class Diagramm](http://i.stack.imgur.com/s3Mgf.png)"}
{"_id": "133590", "title": "Implementing oAuth 2 server", "text": "Do you have any pointers on how one should go about implementing the oAuth2 protocol itself? That is, the server side or the \"provider\" facet of OAuth2? If you have tried to implement (a part of) it, please share the issues and the solutions. Note that this is completely technology and programming language agnostic - except, of course, for the de-facto standard cryptological technologies that might be involved. The IETF draft (v23) for oAuth2 is located here"}
{"_id": "133592", "title": "Refactoring an existing MVC codebase to remove business logic & data access from the Controllers", "text": "Product I've inherited has the following composition:   * MVC web site where the controllers make calls to Repositories to get, insert and update objects retrieved that are  defined in the:   * Data access layer written using Linq2SQL This means that currently the controller for the action /Account/Add will perform the following pseudo-code:   * Get the current user   * new() an AccountItem object   * Set the UserId, AccountItemTypeId and Value fields on the AccountItem   * Get an instance of Repository   * Call the repositorys InsertOnSubmit(AccountItem item) method   * Call the repositorys SubmitChanges() method   * new() an EmailQueue item   * Set the appropriate properties on the EmailQueue item (to, subject, body, etc,..) based on the inserted account item   * Get an instance of Repository   * Call the repositorys InsertOnSubmit(EmailQueue item) method   * Call the repositorys SubmitChanges() method I've already made a first pass through the codebase and injected, using Castle Windsor, the repository's in (actually injecting an instance of a type that implements `IRepositoryResolver` which has a method called `GetRepository<T>` so that I can decouple the controllers from the Linq2SQL dependent repositories. I've also started to write unit tests, based on the current behaviour of the controllers (to ensure that when I make further changes I can identify when I get it horribly wrong) but that's tangenital to my actual question. I've identified lots of places where the controller actions are performing identical actions against various repositories, such as getting a given users total `Value` for all `AccountItem`'s and am now considering extracting all this common logic into a business/service layer. My question is, would the following structure be considered \"best practice\":   * `AccountService`: Provides an `AddAccountItem` method (plus others such as `GetAccountValue`)   * `EmailService`: Provides an `AddEmailToQueue` method Should I be refactoring the controller so it does:               accountServiceInstance.AddAccountItem(userToCredit, userCrediting, AccountItemType.Bonus, 300);     emailServiceInstance.AddEmailToQueue(userToEmail, EmailType.AccountCreditBonus);      Or, should my `AccountService` take an `EmailService` as a dependency (that's satisfied by Castle Windsor) and it's the responsibility of the `AccountService` to call `EmailService.AddEmailToQueue`?"}
{"_id": "202796", "title": "Naming: objectAction or actionObject?", "text": "The question, Stored procedure Naming conventions?, and Joel's excellent Making Wrong Code Look Wrong article come closest to addressing my question, but I'm looking for a more general set of criteria to use in deciding how to name modules containing code (classes, objects, methods, functions, widgets, or whatever). English (my only human language) is structured as action-object (i.e closeFile, openFile, saveFile) and since almost all computer languages are based on English, this is the most common convention. However, in trying to keep related code close together and still be able to find things, I've found object-action (i.e. fileClose, fileOpen, fileSave) to be very attractive. Quite a number of non-English human languages follow this structure as well. I doubt that one form is universally superior, but when should each be used in the pursuit of helping to make sure bad code looks bad?"}
{"_id": "145704", "title": "Safe iPhone app \u2194 server communication", "text": "What would be the best approach to achieving private communication between my iOS app and its server component? Is having a single unchanging \u201csecret key\u201d baked into the app source enough, or do I need to set up generations of such \u201chandshake\u201d keys dynamically somehow? The server by itself doesn\u2019t have access to any sensitive data, so even if the user hits some private endpoints, it won\u2019t get them anywhere, but I just want those to be hidden from the public. Basically, I want to ignore all requests hitting particular routes, unless they are coming from my iOS app. The server component runs on RoR, if that\u2019s important."}
{"_id": "210359", "title": "Design decision - why generate <p> without </p>?", "text": "**tl;dr** Some widely used programs, which generate html, will only generate opening paragraph tags, and not closing ones, assuming that the browser will properly close paragraphs. On the face of it, it seems to me that the assumption that browsers will properly close paragraphs is not correct. Is my interpretation correct? More generally, what tradeoffs are involved in this kind of decision? * * * Browsing through moinmoin source code, the following line of code caught my eye:               # We only open those tags and let the browser auto-close them:     _auto_closing_tags = set(['p'])      (source) After reading throug the rest of the implementation, I've convinced myself that yes, indeed, when moinmoin generates html code for one of its pages, it will correctly generate paragraph open tags, where appropriate, while at the same time purposefully avoiding any of the paragraph close tags (despite being able to trivially do so). For my specific, rather unusual, use case, this behaviour is not correct. I'm tempted to submit a bug report and/or change the behaviour. However, it looks like this design decision was thoughtfully made. I'm not well enough versed in the intricacies of the html standard, or the various browser implementations, to be able to tell if this is correct behaviour in general, and I have the feeling that my instinct to correct/change this behaviour might be misguided. Is this code making a valid assumption about browser implementations? Is the generated html valid? More generally, what tradeoffs might I be missing here?"}
{"_id": "85330", "title": "How should one properly comment and license a set of code files before uploading to the public?", "text": "I've written a decent chunk of code over the past few days and I'm ready to `git init` it and push it to github. But before I do so, I want to do this the \"correct\" way in case anyone else wants to use my code. So I guess I need to pick a license (probably MIT) and implement it, and write some sort of comment at the top of every file. What is a good style comment to put at the top of the file? What info should it include, what should it look like? And do I put the license in a LICENSE folder in the root directory, or at the top of every source file or something? And are there any other steps I'm missing before throwing this up to github?"}
{"_id": "71230", "title": "Why aren't all programs being turned into web apps?", "text": "To extend from the question things like googledocs can handle word, excel and powerpoint so why aren't all programs being moved to web applications with the use of smartphones(blackberries, iphones and androids) and tablet pcs(ipad) increasing why isn't there a move to get every program browser based? With the increased capability of CSS and javascript surely this makes sense no need for clunky java programs which are 10 years old which just write to a database, that a rails/django application could probably do quicker and cost less money to maintain."}
{"_id": "175818", "title": "Results stored in a session - good idea?", "text": "To give a bit of background, lets say it's a generic results page, which is paginated so there are X results per page. Generally to do this, I have two queries on the page:   1. to get the total number of results   2. to get the results, limiting by the correct page's resultset However, recently I've been trying to cut down on the queries the site is making, and I thought one way to do this would be to only do the query if any parameters to the page have changed (except of course the page number)?   This would then cache all the result id's in a session, which can be sliced when I need to return the correct resultset for that page. I was trying to look around the net to see if there are downsides of this method, but I've found very little information about it. Has anyone done this before? Is it a good idea?"}
{"_id": "175817", "title": "What's the difference between Microsoft's MCSD and MCPD certications?", "text": "I am looking on the website but the difference between the two isn't explained. To complicate matters a Google search tells me that developers should focus on the MCPD qualifications but an examination of the MCPD section of the site is telling me that the Web Application exams will expire in July 2013! It seems out of date. Meanwhile the MCSD exam seems to be a lot more up to date with references to HTML5/ASP.net 4.5 MVC applications! What's the difference? Are the MCPD certifications going to be updated after July?"}
{"_id": "175813", "title": "Lua and multi-paradigm programming: scope and capabilities", "text": "Despite having started learning programming with Pascal and C, after the jump to OO (C++, Java) I lost sense of the structured programming paradigm. I have started learning Lua and I have researched many tutorials, but all of them only cover basic operations and language features and capabilities. They feel more like a reference doc than a programmer's guide. Now, when trying to work with day to day tasks, how does one go through most common design patterns like observer, or multithreaded programming, creating UI elements and polling system calls for keyboard or sensors? Is it even feasible in this languages or you have to work with the C binding, libraries and low-level programming to get most stuff done? Do I get the Lua scope wrong?"}
{"_id": "123317", "title": "Should we bind view to a model property or ViewModel should have it's own..?", "text": "I am starting a project with following technical environment : .Net 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0, WPF with **MVVM Architecture** I saw lots of examples on the net, some books with this environment. In some of the examples authors had this Idea :   1. Viemodel will have an instance of Model class (Entity Framework Entity e.g. Person)   2. Bind the WPF view controls to the properties of Model While some authors did :   1. Viemodel will expose all the properties of the model.   2. Bind the WPF view controls to the properties of ViewModel rather than to the model directly. So is it a good idea to let the view bind property from model rather than viewmodel exposing it's own? Or which is more preferred?"}
{"_id": "233323", "title": "Mobile/Global User Authentication? (Non-domain and non-enterprise)", "text": "What is the current way to authenticate users in a mobile/global fashion? In other words, assume a mobile application. And if there is a database server in the backend, how would these users typically register/login? Is there a current standard for non-domain, non-enterprise authentication? I was thinking just having a **basic username/password combination** , and **hashing** (and salting) the password on registration and login, and passing that over the wire to the cloud database. That gets a little fuzzy with password resetting, emailing, etc. though. Is there an _easier way_ (API, methodology, etc.) or _more-accepted way_ to do this? It's simple, but that simplicity is a good thing, I think. I don't need the complexities of other membership frameworks. I'm more curious if this is an accepted and secure approach. I am aware of ASP.NET's membership model, but the complexity is just way too much for a one-dimensional security model (users and auth, no need for roles, authorization, etc.). Not to mention, outside of an ASP.NET application, what would be used?"}
{"_id": "233322", "title": "Database design: circular reference but dynamically created", "text": "I am trying to design database for this case:   1. Assignments have vectors, relation is 1:N   2. Assignments have submissions, relation is 1:N   3. Submissions have executions, relation is 1:N   4. Every execution have one vector. ![Database EER diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MEHHW.png) Business logic   1. teacher creates assignments and defines test vectors   2. student upload his solution, so record in submissions is created   3. After successful compilation of submission, submission is executed with defined test vectors. Each execution is one record in executions (One execution per vector). So circular reference is created after successful execution, but if compilation failed no record is created in executions. Link between vectors and executions is needed for score calculation process, where is reference output from vectors compared to output from executions. So in my case, circular reference is not persistent, but it depends on runtime, so it is wrong design?"}
{"_id": "233325", "title": "Understanding Front End vs Back End Javascript?", "text": "I've been noticing lately, as I've played around with javascript, HTML5, and node.js for the first times that javascript seems to be a language that is used very differently (and with different syntax) depending on where it is used at. My observation with javascript is this: -Front end javascript finds the JS embedded in HTML5 pages, where it is used to build dynamic webpages and react to events that occur on the page. -Back end JS is used as a solo language with node.js and its associated packages to handle web page requests, data transfers, and general server tasks. Have I accurately summarized front end versus back end JS?"}
{"_id": "89918", "title": "Publish programming problems from interviews", "text": "I have read in a few places that publishing programming problems/puzzles/exercises from interviews is not nice with the company, but I have recently had a few interviews where I faced some interesting problems I really wanted to discuss with those who could have solved them better. Do you think that is fine if I don't copy-paste these exercises but try to \"make my own version\", for example rewriting it a bit so the whole point will be the same but in another format? Also if I didn't mention the company itself, not even the fact the problem was asked on an interview, would it still be a bad thing to do? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "37674", "title": "Is a Master's worth it?", "text": "I know there are a few questions already about getting a Master's degree in Computer Science, but my question is a bit different. I've started programming when I was quite young. I did receive a BS in CIS at Cal Poly Pomona over 4 years ago. Since then I've made a good living as a programmer for both Boeing and Disney (where I currently work). I feel that I've made very good progress as I quickly became a Sr. level developer in both companies within a year. I had considered getting a master's for a couple of years and finally started it a few months ago at Claremont Graduate in their MSIS program (http://www.cgu.edu/pages/201.asp). I've only taken a couple of courses but already I'm feeling like I already know this stuff and work with on a daily basis. I'm even wondering if it is worth me getting another \"IS\" degree and if I should look at a Computer Science degree instead. I had a couple of reasons of not going to CS in my undergrad, 1) I'm not great at math 2) I wanted to have a business degree to open up my options. I feel I'm a very competent programmer though and can work in a variety of languages, understand the software development process, etc. I'm just trying to figure out if I'm wasting my time with the current program I'm in. Sorry for the lengthy post, but I wanted to give some back story for better understanding."}
{"_id": "89912", "title": "I'm forced to write bad code. How do I save my face?", "text": "I'm only a junior developer but my job forces me to work with really terrible PHP code (think about the worst PHP code you've seen; then think about code twice as bad). I usually try to fix bugs and fight with the codebase to add new features. Sometimes I'm ordered to get things working ASAP which more often than not involves dirty hacks. The product was previously open source and I am concerned that it might go open-source in the future. I would be ashamed if someone (especially potential employers) could find my name next some of the changesets. What can I do to protect my good name? I am not sure if this is relevant but I'll add that neither my boss nor my colleagues want to admit that the code is bad, but I'm not sure I can blame them for that -- for many of them this is their first job."}
{"_id": "214059", "title": "How can I make sure that I'm actually learning how to program rather than simply learning the details of a language?", "text": "I often hear that a real programmer can easily learn any language within a week. Languages are just tools for getting things done, I'm told. Programming is the ultimate skill that must be learned and mastered. How can I make sure that I'm actually learning **how to program** rather than simply learning the details of a language? And how can I develop programming skills that can be applied towards all languages instead of just one?"}
{"_id": "37673", "title": "Are your projects completed on time or past the deadline?", "text": "Are your projects completed on time? If not, what problems cause you to miss deadlines? How can they be overcome? Do your clients understand them?"}
{"_id": "229239", "title": "modelling a restaurant availability search", "text": "I am looking into finding an efficient way which can scale up to thousands of restaurants, for doing a reservation search. Ideally, it would be efficient to answer queries like find a restaurant which has availability for 6 people at 19:00. Time slots are based on 15-minute interval, e.g 19:00, 19:15, 19:30, ... I am using a document database (RavenDB), but the issue is more conceptual and I don't think it is dependent on the underlying datasource. Each restaurant can have a different amount of capacity, for example restaurant A might fit 40 people, while restaurant B might fit 60. My first instinct was to have a `Restaurant` collection, and a `Reservations` collection. However, I cannot think of a way how an efficient query can be made on the restaurant/reservations collections to actually get a result for a restaurant only if it has enough space at that particular time for a booking. Sample data objects below:               Restaurant     ----------     Id     Name     Capacity          Reservation     -----------     Id     DateTime     RestaurantId     NoOfPeople        The other option that came in mind was to actually keep a track of each day and all the timeslots in a day (each 15 min interval). Then, with each booking, each respective timeslot is updated. Hence, the query would be a simple search on the timeslots. This would work (haven't tried it yet), but it involves more _'maintenance'_. Is this the best way to go for such a problem, or is there maybe a side of it which I'm not seeing? ## Computing availability on bookings My idea for the second option, to compute availability for bookings is that I would add another data object, as below               RestaurantTimeSlot     ------------------           RestaurantId     DateTime (e.g 18/02/2014 17:00)     AvailableBookings      MaxBookings      A background task would create new time slots for restaurants for subsequent days, example creating up to 90 days in advance so that users can book a maximum of 90 days from today. Each day would have all the different timeslots, example 00:00, 00:15, 00:30, so on so forth. Initially, the `RestaurantTimeSlot` would be set as `AvailableBookings` = 0, `MaxBookings` = maximum bookings of that restaurant (e.g 60). The reason for `MaxBookings` is because a restaurant availability might be based on time, and in 2012 it might have availability for 60, while in 2013 it might expand to 80. Then, when a booking for say 4 people is made at 18/02/2014 17:00, that respective timeslot's `AvailableBookings` would be added by 4. Then, when a search needs to be done, one would search easily in `RestaurantTimeSlot`. Does this make sense? My issue that having to constantly create these new data objects so that they are available for search, and keeping them in sync when a new booking is made. This looks like it can lead to the system being more error-prone."}
{"_id": "30029", "title": "Vertical alignment: yea or nay?", "text": "For instance, non-vertically aligned:               Name:   Hamt     Version:  0.1.0     Cabal-Version:  >= 1.2     License:  BSD3     Author:  Jason Baker      Or vertically aligned:               Name:           Hamt     Version:        0.1.0     Cabal-Version:  >= 1.2     License:        BSD3     Author:         Jason Baker      Which do you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "229232", "title": "How to manage accidental complexity in software projects", "text": "When Murray Gell-Mann was asked how Richard Feynman managed to solve so many hard problems Gell-Mann responded that Feynman had an algorithm:   1. Write down the problem.   2. Think real hard.   3. Write down the solution. Gell-Mann was trying to explain that Feynman was a different kind of problem solver and there were no insights to be gained from studying his methods. I kinda feel the same way about managing complexity in medium/large software projects. The people that are good are just inherently good at it and somehow manage to layer and stack various abstractions to make the whole thing manageable without introducing any extraneous cruft. So is the Feynman algorithm the only way to manage accidental complexity or are there actual methods that software engineers can consistently apply to tame accidental complexity?"}
{"_id": "223521", "title": "What graph traversal algorithm should I use?", "text": "I would like to write an algorithm which can traverse a graph and hopefully later I can implement it to use for an indoor navigation system. The graph would come from floor plans of a building and the graph nodes represent the building objects such as doors, corridors, stairs, rooms, etc. The navigation system will accept different users with different capabilities, these capabilities are stored in user profile. For each individual user (or a group of users of the same type, e.g. staff member) the system returns a path specific to that user/s considering his personal functionality. For example if the user of the system is using a wheelchair the system should exclude all the stair nodes from the path (they will be marked non-traversable). Similarly if in order to enter into an indoor space, the user needs to have a key or be an staff member but he is NOT, the system should mark the node (e.g. the door which requires the key) non-traversable and should search for those paths which don't require these specifics requirements. This was the first part and here I use a function to check these conditions for a given user. The inputs to this function are a node and a user. If the conditions that are required by the node are NOT fulfilled (means user profile doesn't match the condition required by the node) the function returns false= non-traversable. If the condition holds true, the node stays isTraversable and will be stored somewhere and will be considered for the final path calculation. The second part is that I have a list that contains all the nodes that are traversable and now the shortest path will be calculate based on 3 different costs, Energy, time and money. The final cost can be a combination of these costs and it sets the weights for the edges. My problem is with the first part. I want to know how can I make an algorithm that produces the subgraph (the list with the traversable nodes in it). And later how can I use this algorithm to modify Dijkstra to fit this system. Can anybody help with writing a pseudocode for the algorithm so that I can understand how would it work in clear steps or any hints on how can I make these steps into pseudocode? Please note that at this stage the performance is not very important for me."}
{"_id": "40643", "title": "Is good code impossible in modern software development?", "text": "It seems that even that developer tools has become more solid and robust, writing good code has become a challenge. Even that tools are more powerful, quality of code haven\u2019t got better. I come up with two important factors, there is less time and the projects are more complex. Because tools we use today are more powerful it is easier to write more complex code, but having no time to plan and without looking back decreases code quality and increases bugs and maintenance. It is not that we didn\u2019t write complex code before. It is that we write more complex code. My question is the following: Considering we have more powerful language and tools.   * **Why is writing good code more difficult?**   * **Do factors, time and complexity contribute to this?**   * **Are methodologies not practiced correctly?** The type of project I consider is enterprise application with large complexity and business logic. The definition of \u201cgood code\u201d is individual please don\u2019t get stuck in the interpretation of \u201cgood code\u201d."}
{"_id": "86626", "title": "Best practice- handling images on website", "text": "I am porting an old eCommerce site to MVC 3 and would like to take advantage of design improvements. The site currently has product images stored in 3 sizes: thumbnail, medium (for display in a list) and expanded for a zoomed look. Right now we are having to upload 3 separate images that are sized exactly right, provide 3 different names that match what the site expects, etc., it is a pain. I'd like to upload just 1 file, the large one, then let the site reduce it to needed sizes, and I'd like the flexibility to change the thumbnail and list sizes depending on user preferences, form factor (e.g. mobile, iPad, desktop), etc. so might need many copies of the same image. My question is should the image be reduced then saved several times upon upload and if so what is a good storage/naming convention? The other idea is to store just the single image but resize it programmatically before serving it to the client. Has anybody done this and what are the tradeoffs besides a few more machine cycles? How do you pass a temporary image in memory to the client (there is no URL)?"}
{"_id": "178996", "title": "Explain to me what interaction oriented programming is", "text": "There is this new kid on the block called Interaction Oriented Programming (IOP). Can somebody explains how it works? How does it compare to object oriented programming. Will this replace object oriented programming or will it just be a niche thing? What exactly is it and what is it's intended purpose."}
{"_id": "178997", "title": "GMail API for a small app (Rails? Javascript? PHP?)", "text": "I want to create an app that accesses the GMail API, but I'm finding that it isn't as simple as I thought it might be. I'm hoping somebody in the community here might have some experience working with one of these API's and could not only recommend the right solution, but also show me to some tutorials or examples that could help me get up and running. Here are some of the requirements of this app:   * Preferably in Rails or Javascript or even PHP. I am open to other technologies as well, but hope they'd be easy to implement.   * Connects to gmail via Oauth   * Can read who emails have been sent to and received from. Basically would like to perform some analytics on who emails are sent to, when and how frequently. I've read that one reason why this isn't easy, and why there isn't an official javascript API provided by gmail, is that google is concerned it's going to make their service less performant for their users."}
{"_id": "44946", "title": "Does abandon-ware code ever properly die?", "text": "It is my impression that, over time, more and more open source code is generated, added to various free or partially free repositories, and then generally abandoned. Are there any generally accepted standards for disposing of abandoned code? Should this be enforced by repositories, or would this be something that's up to the original code authors to do?"}
{"_id": "202131", "title": "Does responsive web design go against the Separations Of Concerns principle?", "text": "I'm wondering how responsive design plays along with the Separations of Concern principle, in respect of how we're allowing a single implementation behave for multiple presentation devices (mobile, tablet, browser sizes etc.). Is it breaking the principle? If I make changes to a web page that I know is behaving responsively and should work on 5 devices for example, am I not making the development extremely difficult due to possible regression that can occur from a single place in the software? Sure it's making me write less code and work a lot faster on multiple devices, but now each one of my pages requires potentially much more thorough testing, which is the cost I could move to not using a responsive web framework and maintaining separate implementations of a page."}
{"_id": "44948", "title": "Should I worry about switching over from IPv4 to IPv6?", "text": "As you must be aware that IPv4 addresses ar almost over and the switch to IPv6 is imminent, should I, as a programmer need to worry about anything to make my applications work with the new system ? Please pardon my ignorance. Its always better to ask and learn than pretending to know-it-all."}
{"_id": "40649", "title": "What is the most effective way of communicating potential delays in software development?", "text": "In development, what is the best way to manage delays? For example, you're doing a task, new requirements come in/something which further steepens the learning curve of something that must be learnt right there and then, and you need to communicate this to the PM/manager. What is the most effective way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "202139", "title": "Is web session \"Bad Design\"? Why?", "text": "the other day I was discussing with a colleague and he came out saying that using user's session in a web application is just wrong. I replied that it could be wrong depending by the information you are storing, otherwise why should a web session service even being provided by Microsoft (we were talking about ASP.NET). He replied to me, again, that even in MS they could easily reply me that it was bad design. And that he could show me some white-papers demonstrating that. Unfortunately I have no opportunity to contact this guy anymore, but I would really like to understand more about his point of view. Does anyone have information/points of view about that here?"}
{"_id": "212626", "title": "JSP Include: one large bean or bean for each include", "text": "I want to refactor a webapp that consists of very distorted JSPs and servlets. Because we can't switch to a web framework easily we have to keep JSPs and Servlets, and now we are in doubt how to include pages into another and how to setup the use:bean-directives effectively. At the first step we want to decouple the code for the core-actions and the bean-creation into servlets. The servlets should forward to their corresponding pages, which should use the bean. The problem here is, that each jsp consists of different sub- and sub-sub-jsp that are included into another. Here is a shortend extract (because reality is more complex):   * head      * header     * top   * navigation      * actionspanel   * main      * header     * actionspanel   * foot      * footer Moreover each jsp (also the header and footer) use dynamic data. For example title and actionspanel can change on each page-reload or do have links and labels that depend on the processing by the preceding servlet. I know that jsp-include-directives should only be used for static content und should be avoided for dynamic content. But here we have very large pages, that consist of many parts. Now the core questions: Should I use one big bean for each page, so that each bean holds also data for header and footer beside its core data, so that each subsequent included jsp uses the same bean-directive? For example:   * DirectoryJSP <-> DirectoryBean   * CompareJSP <-> CompareBean Or should I use one bean for each jsp, so that each bean only holds the data for one jsp and its own purpose. For example:   * DirectoryJSP <-> DirectoryBean HeaderJSP <-> HeaderBean FooterJSP <-> FooterBean   * CompareJSP <-> CompareBean HeaderJSP <-> HeaderBean FooterJSP <-> FooterBean In the second case: should the subsequent beans be a member of the corresponding parent bean, so that only the parent bean is attached as attribute to the request? Or should each bean attached to the request?"}
{"_id": "226573", "title": "Why is the Unix linker called \"ld\"", "text": "Tried to search the web and couldn't find an answer. It might have something to do with \"load\", but that doesn't make much sense to me. Obviously, \"ln\" was already taken, but where does that \"d\" come from?"}
{"_id": "226578", "title": "Selecting a point inside a non-convex polygon", "text": "There are a lot of algorithms which will tell you whether or not a given point is found inside a polygon. I'm looking to write an algorithm which, given a non-convex polygon, will return a point which is inside the polygon. I don't need the point to be in any specific location inside the polygon, but I prefer to receive a point which isn't very close to an edge, but that is not a deal-breaker. It's there merely to mark that polygon's planar straight-line graph (PSLG) as an internal shape for use with Shewchuck's Triangle library for some complicated constrained Delaunay triangulations. My initial thinking is:   1. Compute the bounding box    2. Cast a ray from one corner in the direction of the opposite corner, or from the center of a bounding box edge to the opposite edge center.   3. Then, a point exactly between the first and second intersection will be inside the polygon. Is there a better approach?"}
{"_id": "208790", "title": "Architecture for REST consumer", "text": "Are there any good samples of web applications that consume restful web services? I am developing a webapp with spring, and have come to the point of reading lists of elements and element details from a RESTful JSON api. I started developing as though I was using a database, creating services, model elements plus DAOS, but now I'm stuck on how to do a proper design here. Should model objects hold a fromJson/toJson method and encapsulate themselves the serialization info? What should DAO objects do? Where should I keep WS specific info (urls, api keys, item names, etc.)? Any good opensource apps would be nice."}
{"_id": "208791", "title": "How to update an existing excel file using java program?", "text": "I've made a file browser in java that opens and read already been made excel files. (using Apache poi 3.9 library) program read those files perfectly but i want to update some of those files. how can i be able to update those files through my program. is there is any library or function/class that might be helpful, or also any other language that can support that feature (among c/c++, python)..???"}
{"_id": "47918", "title": "What is the average job duration in software engineering positions?", "text": "I was just curious to see if this was recently measured. How long do people expect to stay in a new job? How long do people actually stay within an organization or in a position?"}
{"_id": "207567", "title": "Find index of item closest to value, but is also less than value", "text": "Let's say I have a sorted array of ints like so:               int[] numbers = new[] { 10, 20, 27, 30, 55, 70 };      What is the most efficient way, given a value, to find the value in that array (or the index of it) that is closest to the value but is not greater than the value? For instance, given the value 26, it would return the 20. Please note that the values in the array are dynamically assigned once when the program starts, but will not change for the duration of the program. The simple solution that I'm using now is this:               int GetNumber(int value)     {         foreach (int number in numbers)         {             if ((value -= number) <= 0)                 return number;         }              return -1;     }      It works, but it's not extremely fast. I'm hoping there's some kind of algorithm that allows me to \"map\" values to ranges or something that will make lookups faster. If it helps to know, I've used simple ints in my example, but the actual project I'm working on is a kind of segmented memory space where each of the segments are adjoined, but are of various sizes. This algorithm would allow me to pass in a memory address and get back the corresponding memory segment. This is the actual method that is currently in use:               public MappedMemoryArea GetArea(int address)     {         foreach (MappedMemoryArea area in _areas)         {             if (address < area.Size)                 return area;             address -= area.Size;         }              return null;     }      I have full control over the MappedMemoryArea type, so if adding a property to it would be beneficial for this purpose, it's totally doable."}
{"_id": "219634", "title": "An algorithm for a synchronization", "text": "I want to make a synchronization. What's the algorithm for it in a nutshell? 1) A client reads a local data and sends them to a server **afterwards**. The server compares them with its actual data, decides what are newer and overwrites its data with received data in case received data is newer. or 2) A client reads data from the server **first** , compares them with its local data and in case data from the server is newer, overrwrites them with the server data. And does the order matter?"}
{"_id": "207560", "title": "How to handle complex views (consisting of several parts) in MVC web application", "text": "Lets say I am writing a blog web application using MVC pattern. Typical layout for the main page of the blog application is - some kind of a post index in the main part, and aside there are some addition parts, like timeline, tag navigation panel, subscribing panel, etc. Those controls also appear on a single post view, and may appear on other views I have. My question is - how should I handle those panels aside in my views and controllers. I see three approaches here:   1. Create a big viewmodel class that contains all the information required for rendering the view s (either index or single post). That case I could make these aside panels a partial views, and calling them from the view being rendered passing part of that big viewmodel. The drawback is - I will have the code filling viewmodel spread amongst various controller method, meaning code is duplicated. Which is quite bad.   2. Create another layer of view rendering. Say, the topmost layer of rendering recives a alreay rendered parts of html, or functions which when called outputs an html. The layer under this \"combining partials layer\" would give just partial views for each panel I want, include main content. The drawback here - memory usage. Most modern frameworks renders htmls directly to output stream, but in this approach partial views would be rendered into string objects first - which leads to memory overhead.   3. Use something like \"RenderAction\" from asp.net mvc, which calls a controller method from a view. I think this is a worst solution of 3 given, because it drops an MVC approach. The question is not tied to any specific framework, I want to understand the general way of doing things like that. **UPDATE** After an answer given, I've found out that post is not clear. So reasonable update here: Under _viewmodel_ term I understand an object that contains all the data required to render a particular view. All of three approaches involve building partial views with their own viewmodel. For example (using C# syntax):               class SinglePostViewModel {       string Text {get;set;}       string Title {get;set;}       string Slug {get;set;}       DateTime PublishedDate {get;set;}       ...     }          class TagNavigationPanelViewModel {       string TagText {get;set;}       int PostsCount {get;set;}     }          class CalendarNavigationPanelViewModel {       DateTime YearAndMonth {get;set;}       int PostsCount {get;set;}      }      My question is - how to nicely combine those partial views together."}
{"_id": "47911", "title": "RTOS experience", "text": "I have been working as an embedded software engineer on mostly 8 bit micro- controller firmware and desktop/mobile applications development for the past five years. My work on a WinCE project (in which I got introduced to .NET CF) was short lived. I did use core APIs for interrupt processing, peripheral communication, etc...but again, not exactly a pure RTOS environment. In order to get together more solid experience for growing more in the embedded field, I want to work more with RTOSes. Will buying an evaluation board with an RTOS and putting together a project at home be regarded as a good experience or will an online course be more useful? I am just not clear as to what will be regarded as good experience. Any suggestions or directions will greatly help me. I have a passion for the field but just a need a point in the right direction."}
{"_id": "233922", "title": "Dependency Injection vs Mixing Levels of Abstraction", "text": "I've been reading Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Robert C. Martin. One point he makes: > G34 Functions should descend only one level of abstraction However, I'm wondering about the functions that actually create the objects for an application. Say we have dependencies               App -> Book -> Database      Then using dependency injection, App would need to create both a Book and Database instance, and inject the database instance into Book.   * Is this an acceptable breaking of the mixing level of abstraction rule?   * If yes / no, why?"}
{"_id": "158120", "title": "Algorithm for appointment reminders", "text": "My program allows users to store appointments in a calendar. What has been requested of me is the ability for SMS reminders to be sent to people to remind them of their appointment. The SMS would need to be sent out about 2 days prior to their appointment. I thought the best way to achieve this is to choose a time of the day (eg. midday) for the software to check to see which appointments are in 2 days time and then send out the SMS reminders to the people who have those appointments. Would this be an advisable approach to this problem? Is it advisable to have this happen at one time of the day, or would it be better to somehow spread it out over a longer time? I am assuming at this point that a background thread would be a good idea for this type of activity."}
{"_id": "238770", "title": "Serve content from server to remote embed HTML", "text": "The title is very bad so let me explain what I need to know. I have a server with let's say different images. What I want to achieve is be able to embed a frame, into any HTML site, and be the server the one that determines what image to show on that remote frame. Imagine the situation where you want to add a piece of advertising to your site, but you just need to paste a piece of JS or HTML into your HTML and be the advertising seller be in charge of showing whatever he wants on the size of the frame. My question is what is this technique/technology named ? What should I know, is it websockets ?, is it embedding ? How could I achieve this ? Thanks !"}
{"_id": "230163", "title": "Viability of a Development Team with no *dedicated* Tester role", "text": "I've been thinking a lot lately about how to build a lean development team. Ultimately, I'd like to open up my own little software house with a small number of like-minded people. The goal won't be to become rich, but rather to have a healthy work environment. So far, I'm defining a lean team as the following:   * Small;   * Self-organizing;   * All members must have QA in mind;   * Members must be capable of performing multiple roles The last point is where I'm worried a bit because, as the mantra goes... > Developers make bad testers. While I understand that, often, developers are \"too close\" to their code or their colleague's code to make higher-level assessments of quality, I'm not convinced they are _de-facto_ bad testers. On the contrary, I'm of the opinion that the qualities of a good developer overlap greatly with the qualities of a good tester. Assuming this is correct, I've been thinking of different ways of getting around the dev/tester problem and I believe I have come up with a viable model. My model requires:   * A small software house with 2+ projects   * An Agile (iterative) approach to development and delivery   * 1 team per project   * All team members will be Software Developers      * Their job description will clearly state **Development** , **Quality Assurance** , **Testing** , and **Delivery** as responsibilities If all these preconditions have been met, then the projects can be organized in the following fashion (this example will refer to two projects, _A_ and _B_ ):   * Every team member will alternate between Developer role and Tester role   * If a team member is a Developer on project _A_ , they will be a Tester on project _B_     * Members will work on only 1 project at a time, and therefore are expected to be acting as _either_ a Dev _or_ a Tester.   * A **Role Cycle** consists of 3 iterations as a Dev and 2 iteration as a Tester (again, on two different projects)   * Project teams would have 3 Devs and 2 Testers at all times.   * Member Role Cycles should be out of phase by 1 iteration.      * This minimizes the abruptness of the team changes. For each iteration, 2 Devs and 1 Tester will remain the same as the previous iteration. Given the above, I see the following Pros and Cons: **Pros**   * Distributes project knowledge throughout the company.   * Ensures team members aren't testing the code they helped write.   * Out-of-phase role cycles means no project ever has a 100% member switch.   * Alternating roles breaks the monotony of boring projects. **Cons**   * The iterations of both projects are tightly coupled. If one project were to cancel an iteration halfway through and start again, then the two projects would be out of sync. This would make the role-cycle difficult to manage.   * Hinges on hiring Developers open working as Testers as well. I've received mixed reviews when discussing this approach with friends and colleagues. Some believe that few developers would ever want to alternate roles like this, while others tell me they personally would love to try it. **So my question is:** Could such a model work in practice? If not, could it be tweaked into a working model? _Note:_ For the sake of brevity I have only focused on the Dev and Tester roles. I'll expand on other roles if needed."}
{"_id": "230168", "title": "What is needed write an interface to Microsoft Dynamics GP web services?", "text": "We've went ahead and purchased Microsoft Dynamics (see edit history for why) in order to write 2 functions to interact with one tiny part of it to fulfill one big need. What I want to know is, from other programmers who have integrated their software with MS Dynamics GP. Is there any way to connect with it (fully) without having to write an interface in C#? We want to use GP SOAP services so we can communicate to it from Delphi and eventually Java, but it seems like the only way we're going to be able to maximize it's usefulness is to write some sort of middleware program in C#."}
{"_id": "230169", "title": "How to explain the difference between a variable and a key in a key-value pair?", "text": "Variables and the keys in key-value pairs are both identifiers for values, so, on a conceptual level, these seem very similar ideas. How would you explain the difference between these two concepts?   * Is it that key-value pairs are used in collections?   * Is it that variables point to a memory location?   * Or something else? (If I look at code, I'm instinctively aware of the difference, the question's more about how to explain it which doesn't seem too obvious given that they do similar things.)"}
{"_id": "38213", "title": "Is Moore's law (empirically) the same for both memory capacity and processing speed?", "text": "Or, in other words, has memory and processing power increased over time around basically in the same rate, or we could say that one or the other has increased more? Has cost decreased in the same rate? And how about the near future? I am aware this question is not _directly_ related to programming, but I thought it would be better to ask it here for some reasons:   1. I work as a programmer, not a computer science theorist (so I probably would not find very helpful the kind of question I would receive from the Theoretical Computer Science site, for instance).   2. I prefer answers based upon a programmers real experience.   3. And I am worried about real programming-related issues, specially the functional x imperative debate. About the 3rd item: currently we've being seeing a lot of arguments about how the increase of using functional programming techniques is related to the now common multi-core machines, and how the free lunch is over [pdf]. But it seems to me that the functional paradigm is much more memory consuming (but this is an opinion, not a fact), and I have not seem many arguments about this future increase in memory needs. PS: Sorry about the not very good English, but I guess I have made myself clear (sort of)."}
{"_id": "234672", "title": "Is there are problem holding large numbers of open socket connections for lengthy periods of time?", "text": "The application we have in mind is a relay server. The aim is to accept large numbers of incoming socket connections (at least thousands) that will stay open for lengthy periods (hours or maybe days). They will exchange modest quantities of data and they need reasonably low latency. The technical design is straightfoward and we have a test implementation. Our preference is to use Windows hosting and .NET, because that's the technology we know. However, this kind of usage is well outside what we are familiar with. The question is whether there are specific limits or constraints to be aware of that are inherent in or common to software that does this, and that we should allow for in our design and/or test for before a roll-out. I found this question (Handling large amounts of sockets) and this link (http://www.metabrew.com/article/a-million-user-comet-application-with- mochiweb-part-1), which tend to suggest that our solution should work. \\-- Commenters have suggested opening and closing ports, or using some kind of protocol, without suggesting how. The problem is that at any time a message might be relayed to an individual known destination with the expectation that it be received quickly (say 1 second at most, preferably sooner). The destination is (in general) behind a firewall with unknown properties, so cannot (in general) run a server or accept incoming connections. It can only make outgoing connections. We think it needs a persistent outgoing connection in order to receive packets at any time without notice. Alternative suggestions would be of interest, although strictly off topic for this question. Other commenters have suggested there are OS limits, but not specified any. Assuming that this is some version of Windows server and some (perhaps large) amount of memory, are the limits likely to be a problem? Roughly what will they be? Is Windows a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "234673", "title": "How to modify ELO algorithm when number of games is low to reduce outliers", "text": "I've developed the standard ELO implementation that can be found here, but the problem I'm running into is that my players will only have between 10 and 40 games in a \"season\". Since my first season has already completed (I'm just now starting my OWN rating system for my game), I know what the rank of my players ELO ratings should be, or at least very close to that. My problem is, after implementing that base algorithm, I have a some outliers that are way off. Since I only have 10 to 40 games, my first thought to remedy this situation was to implement a loop around this process, taking the end result ELO rating from one cycle, and use that as the starting point for the next cycle (for each individual player). Then, repeat these cycles until the average or max deviation of ELO ratings from previous to current cycles is not greater than X. This helped to resolve some of the big outliers. There are still some smaller outliers that I'm still not comfortable with... As an example, I have 7 divisions, for division 1, the guy that should be ranked #1 based on his ELO, ends up being ranked 5th, for division 2, the guy that should be ranked #1 is 3rd. The top 10 or so for each division are actually pretty close, except for these kinds of outliers. How can I modify my algorithm, or what approach can I take to try and reduce the outliers? Side note #1. For division 1, the guy that should be #1, that ends up #5, is actually ranked #1 for the entire season by the other rating system. I just don't know how that one is calculated (and it may not be calculated, it could be based on, I know x player is this good, so he's ranked #1). Side note #2. I have made a modification to the algorithm. I want to \"weight\" the wins/losses by how dominant they were. If player A beats player B 20-0, I want that weighted more heavily, especially if they ratings are very close, but if their ratings are further apart (where a is already greater than B), then the ELO change shouldn't be that much anyway since they were expected to win in the first place. So, what I did was instead of using the k factor/value of 400 like the original formula uses, I changed it to be `100 + ((score difference) * 2)`. So the max k factor would be 140 (20-0 is the biggest win, multiply by 2, add to 100). What other strategy could I implement to include weight results, as well as correct some of those outliers? * * * Without having the data in front of me (everything is at home), I'll try and sum up the scenario... ### Division I               #1 Elo Rating of 2250     #2 Elo Rating of 2200     #3 Elo rating of 2190     #4 Elo rating of 2175     #5 Elo rating of 2170      Where #5 guy just beat the #1 to win the tournament, and his \"body of work\" seems more complete than the #1 guy (aka he played against, and beat stronger opponents than the #1 guy did). Maybe it's because the \"weighted\" k factor is throwing this off because #5 had lots of wins that were by only 2 to 5 points, where #1 wins were by a higher margin, say 5 to 10 points. Maybe I just need to play around with my \"weighted\" k factor to see if I can get my calculated results closer to the actual results..."}
{"_id": "38217", "title": "Defer items during sprint or at the end of sprint", "text": "When tasks take longer than expected, why is it better to defer items during a sprint than to just defer everything you didn't finish on the last day of the sprint?"}
{"_id": "76271", "title": "How can I make the life of a new hire comfortable?", "text": "As a senior member of a software team that, unfortunately, has little documentation for legacy reasons, what are the things that one could do to make a new hire comfortable? I have been planning debug sessions with the person on specific defects/feature requests to get him/her acquainted with the code base. However the code base is real large, and its only a fixed amount of code I can expose the person to in this manner. I am looking for suggestions in either cases when the new hire is a recent graduate or an experienced professional."}
{"_id": "72951", "title": "Which \"ebook\" format for digitizing/coding project?", "text": "Does anyone have a suggestion for digitizing + OCR'ing a printed corpus with images? I have 1,200 pages of text sprinkled with essential photographs. Assuming I have perfect scans of the pages, what are my options for preserving the layout of the original text and allowing me to feed this to a program?"}
{"_id": "208862", "title": "Using a Public Property AND a Public Field", "text": "Where I work, using Properties are discouraged. We have code generation tools to \"speed things up\". All object data ends up being Public fields. If you request properties anyway, you get something like this:               Public sFoo as String          Public Property Foo as String       Get         Return sFoo       End Get       Set(ByVal value as String)         sFoo = value       End Set     End Property      I can't think of a reasonable argument to do this. Are there any good reasons to use both a Public Property with a Public Field?"}
{"_id": "208866", "title": "How can I conceptually model a craigslist search?", "text": "I'm trying to understand how something like this works, but I'm inexperienced and I'm trying to understand how the process would work. Say you have ten categories, a thousand zip codes, and ten thousand items listed in each category, each of which has a description. When a user does a search for (e.g.) \"guitar hero xbox\" in the \"video games\" category within \"50 miles\", what happens next? Would the database compare zip codes first, to find everything in range, then do a `SELECT items WHERE category=\"video games\" and zipcode=A OR B OR C OR D`, then execute some sort of search on the description of each listing in the result set? How would that work? I'm not looking for exact answers about CL, I'm looking for a general idea of how this works anywhere/everywhere."}
{"_id": "17675", "title": "Has the term \"Service Oriented Architecture\" become meaningless jargon?", "text": "I was asked today if I had experience with \"Service Oriented Architecture\" and although I think I do. The concept, to me, seems so muddled I don't know how you could honestly answer that question anymore. I resorted to Googling the term in an effort to get a concise definition of the concept and how it differs from other architectures. After reading a number of articles on it, the only common thread I seem to be able to find is a system with multiple components that talk to each other over some kind of interface, with perhaps a slight preference for XML/SOAP. It seems like almost any application could be defined as SOA, especially a web application. Has this term fallen into the \"Web 2.0\" trap and become a term meaning whatever you want it to mean? Am I way off base here? When you guys hear the term does it mean anything specific to you? If so I'd love a concise definition that clearly demonstrates what is and what specifically is NOT SOA."}
{"_id": "11275", "title": "Would you fork an open source project because it's \"poorly managed\"", "text": "If you know of an open source project whose organizer   * has gotten really busy that he doesn't maintain it that much    * and he's the type of guy that doesn't accept contributions until a few months later (busy I guess) if at all   * and the project is starting to flounder  would you fork this project, give it a new name, and continue working hard on it and build a new community around it that's more encouraging to code contributions? Basically a better managed project since the concern now is bad management."}
{"_id": "178364", "title": "Evaluating a product owner", "text": "How do you evaluate a product owner? More specifically, how would one conduct a performance review of a product owner? What qualities or characteristics would one look at when reviewing a product owner?"}
{"_id": "43347", "title": "Is It \"Wrong\"/Bad Design To Put A Thread/Background Worker In A Class?", "text": "I have a class that will read from Excel (C# and .Net 4) and in that class I have a background worker that will load the data from Excel while the UI can remain responsive. My question is as follows: Is it bad design to have a background worker in a class? Should I create my class without it and use a background worker to operate on that class? I can't see any issues really of creating my class this way but then again I am a newbie so I figured I would make sure before I continue on. I hope that this question is relevant here as I don't think it should be on stackoverflow as my code works, this just a design issue."}
{"_id": "174853", "title": "Intern Screening - Software 'Quiz'", "text": "I am in charge of selecting a new software development intern for a company that I work with. I wanted to throw a little 'quiz' at the applicants before moving forth with interviews so as to weed out the group a little bit to find some people that can demonstrate some skill. I put together the following quiz to send to applicants, it focuses only on PHP, but that is because that is what about 95% of the work will be done in. I'm hoping to get some feedback on   A. if it's a good idea to send this to applicants?   B. if it can be improved upon?               # 1. FizzBuzz     # Write a small application that does the following:     #   Counts from 1 to 100     #   For multiples of 3 output \"Fizz\"     #   For multiples of 5 output \"Buzz\"     #   For multiples of 3 and 5 output \"FizzBuzz\"     #   For numbers that are not multiples of 3 nor 5 output the number.          <?php                    ?>          # 2. Arrays     # Create a multi-dimensional array that contains     # keys for 'id', 'lot', 'car_model', 'color', 'price'.     # Insert three sets of data into the array.          <?php                    ?>          # 3. Comparisons     # Without executing the code, tell if the expressions     # below will return true or false.          <?php              if ((strpos(\"a\",\"abcdefg\")) == TRUE) echo \"True\";         else echo \"False\";         //True or False?              if ((012 / 4) == 3) echo \"True\";         else echo \"False\";         //True or False?              if (strcasecmp(\"abc\",\"ABC\") == 0) echo \"True\";         else echo \"False\";         //True or False?          ?>          # 4. Bug Checking     # The code below is flawed. Fix it so that the code     # runs properly without producing any Errors, Warnings     # or Notices, and returns the proper value.          <?php              //Determine how many parts are needed to create a 3D pyramid.         function find_3d_pyramid($rows) {             //Loop through each row.             for ($i = 0; $i < $rows; $i++) {                 $lastRow++;                 //Append the latest row to the running total.                 $total = $total + (pow($lastRow,3));             }             //Return the total.             return $total;         }              $i = 3;         echo \"A pyramid consisting of $i rows will have a total of \".find_3d_pyramid($i).\" pieces.\";          ?>          # 5. Quick Examples     # Create a small example to complete the task     # for each of the following problems.     #   Create an md5 hash of \"Hello World\";     #   Replace all occurances of \"_\" with \"-\" in the string \"Welcome_to_the_universe.\"     #   Get the current date and time, in the following format, YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS AM/PM     #   Find the sum, average, and median of the following set of numbers. 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10.     #   Randomly roll a six-sided die 5 times. Store the 5 rolls into an array.          <?php                    ?>"}
{"_id": "174854", "title": "What do you call a queue when the word queue is reserved?", "text": "I'm working on a rails app, and in rails `queue` is a reserved word. I need to make a Queue model for my app, and I'm stuck because I don't know what else to call it. Has anyone else run into this before, and if so what did you call your Queue that can't be called a Queue?"}
{"_id": "206445", "title": "Small self-contained windows desktop application technologies?", "text": "Firstly, I'm not new to this. I've written desktop applications for Windows going back to 1991 with Visual Basic 3.0. I've used C/C++ and Win32 API, VB3-6, C# 1.0-4.0 and currently knock out web applications in ASP.Net MVC. However I haven't touched desktop stuff since 2000 in depth bar playing around with some ClickOnce deployed WPF stuff in C#. However, I've recently stumbled on a requirement to throw out a small, self- contained .exe standard windows desktop application. I don't want to ship any major dependencies with it. In fact, I'd rather like it to be uTorrent style i.e. small, self-contained and without masses of crud around it and possibly UPX packed. This is part of the manifesto of the software: simplicity and the ability to install in a user LocalAppData folder. This is a diagnostic tool which will be used by our users and will scan the system and report various bits of specific information back to our web servers. This has to work on pretty much everything back to win2k. I really don't want to have to go right back to Win32 if possible. Now when I look around, everything has descended into a confusing mush of MFC, ATL, Managed C++, WTL, WPF, Metro and various other bits of string and sticky tape. Either that or heavy frameworks like Qt, Gtk and Wx. The question is simply: What, apart from Win32, is the best starting point for an application of this type? Or should I just write \"yet another win32\" wrapper?"}
{"_id": "89266", "title": "Comparing one's self to others during interviews", "text": "I'm often asked at some point during the interview process to compare myself to my peers. For example, one of my first after-graduation jobs asked me to compare myself to my classmates. A job I recently interviewed for asked me to compare myself to my coworkers. I always play this down quite a bit. I'm always worried that, \"I'm miles above everyone around me,\" sounds too arrogant. When push comes to shove though it is the truth. I graduated at the top of my class. I had a 3.99, the highest GPA of anyone else that year. My fellow students bitched and moaned about things like having to use the console to write \"javac xxx.java\" and build programs instead of just hitting the build button in VS. Most of them were utterly inept and I'd hate to see what happened to them in the real world. Others were miles above these people. There were like 3-5 of us that actually gave a damn, pursued our own education as if it mattered, and had whatever genes are necessary to think like a programmer or mathematician (the one guy I'd say was smarter than me was actually a math major--he graduated one year ahead of me or he would have taken my title). Even among these few \"big hitters\" I was one of, if not the best (some was due to more experience though). For about 90% of the other students though I see this not as me being so good, but them being really that f'n bad. I was often dumbfounded not just by their ignorance, but by their unwillingness to do what it took to loose it. My peers in college were lazy, bemoaning, irresponsible, sacks of stupidity that would rather run around puking from so much booze than put out the least amount of effort in learning anything. Then they blamed their ineptitude on the professors. As I entered the workforce I found that this trend continued. When I'm on the internet, talking to a worldwide populace of brilliant people I'm rather mediocre. I'm smart, excited, etc...I'm still very good but I'm much more able to see myself as a smaller fish in a larger ocean. Locally though, in personal real life experience....what I find easy others find hard even among what I'd call some of the best developers I've worked with. I know more about design, general development, and the specific language I use more than anyone else I know. Part of this is, I know full well, the kind of places I've learned in and where I've worked (who doesn't have the money to pay me what I'm worth). Still though, if I were to fairly compare myself to my coworkers, and in years past my co-students...don't I come off as more than a little arrogant? Others see me this way too though. It actually took me a while to recognize that there's actually something significantly special about the way I approach my programming (I really care), work ethic, and additionally my lucky roll in the gene game. I have seen it get to my head from time to time, and I try to avoid it, but in all honesty I'm just better than most. One thing that seems to differentiate me more than anything really is the fact that I continue to pursue greater knowledge at home, off hours. I'm one of the best because I want to be and it shows significantly. I've found that this is actually fairly rare in the real world, though many Internet people have me beat here as well. Knowing that there's certainly many more people like this out there, in fact I know of many people on SE that are much smarter than I am, how do you approach this question? Do you answer honestly? \"I'm a fucking God that has do dumb down everything thing they do for the little people! The only way I can drag the rest along is by saying everything 20 times in 5 different ways.\" Or do you downplay yourself to make sure you don't come off as someone so damn arrogant they can't work with others? Edit: Yes, I make grammatical mistakes and additionally many more. I also suck at welding even though I tried very hard to get it. I also have a very hard time keeping my house plants alive. Some people are simply better at it. I'm simply better at programming."}
{"_id": "245137", "title": "Is the string \"1.2.3f4\" a standard format for version numbers?", "text": "The game development package Unity uses the following version numbering scheme:               {major}.{minor}.{patch}{type}{number}      With the following known types:   * **a** = alpha   * **b** = beta   * **f** = final Some examples:   * 1.2.3a27   * 1.2.3b4   * 1.2.3f2 Is this a standard formatting for version numbers?"}
{"_id": "245136", "title": "Is the tool pywebsocket suited for production?", "text": "Is it a good idea to use **pywebsocket** in a production environment, since it is so widely used, but their google developer page states \" _pywebsocket is intended for testing or experimental purposes_ \". Since Mozilla as well as Google use it to test their websocket implementations, and it was suggested (for production) in many SO threads, I thought it to be a pretty stable basis until I looked at their page. Or am I misinterpeting something, and it is just meant to be _especially_ helpful for testing, as well as suitable in production? Moreover do you know what the specific drawbacks of using it would be?   * Are there performance drawbacks?   * Is it not stable or unsecure in a certain way?"}
{"_id": "88792", "title": "Automake - how to keep the source tree clean?", "text": "I have a project that uses GNU autotools to build itself. I am trying to modify so that autotools generates all the non-versioned control files in a separate directory so that I can keep the source tree clean of temporary files. Anyone has any ideas how to do this ?"}
{"_id": "214706", "title": "RSpec + Selenium tests for .NET on Windows", "text": "I'm a Rails developer doing TDD on a Mac with RSpec, Capybara and Selenium webdriver. Now I have been asked by my company to use this approach for a .NET on Windows environment. What is the best way of doing this? I could just install Ruby and use RSPEC, Capybara and Selenium webdriver for integration testing. But what about unit tests? I also looked at NSpec, but I'm not sure if I can combine that with Capybara or Selenium for integration tests. What would be a good approach here?"}
{"_id": "225000", "title": "How do you reduce geographic latency in web application (MVC ASP.net) backed by a single database", "text": "I'm working on a modest sized web application that receives circa 30k unique users per day, this is an MVC C# application hosted on 3 web servers and backed by a single SQL server, everything is hosted in one data center. The issue is we are seeing dom complete times upto 3 times slower in some parts of the world. We have done all the usual \"quick wins\" as suggested by yslow \\- and are now looking to make architectural changes. Our initial plan is to create a web api that wraps our server tier, and then host the web tier in a second data center in a different part of the world closer to the users with the poor latency. The hope is that this in combination with caching and will help reduce latency. I appropriate that there will be latency between the api service tier and web tier, but the hope is that these will be lightweight http calls. Does this make sense?"}
{"_id": "225002", "title": "The user interface in a clean architecture with client / server model", "text": "I have been reading (and watching presentations) about subjects like: DDD, TDD, BDD, SOLID (principles), design patterns, clean code, clean architecture, agile project methodologies. All in all I have quite a clear view on how to approach agile software development. Especially the DDD part really helps in communicating to all involved in the team (stakeholders, product owners, team members, etc). Developing good software is tough and I really value the opinions of experienced developers. They however say things like: \"The user interface (or database) is an implementation detail\". If you are looking from the core value of the product that is certainly true. In reality however, the end user solely deals with the user interface. To make our product really useful we need to have an excellent user experience. Let's say that we have a single page html/css/javascript client. Designing and creating all of the \"only user interface\" stuff is quite doable. I run into trouble with the following things:   * _Domain logic_ \\- It lives in my domain model on the server. It feels fragile to duplicate it in the client. Exposing those parts of the domain model on the server might be an option, but that would probably create a lot of requests (a performance issue). Yet requiring the user to enter a value between 0 and 42 is clearly a business rule.   * _User stories / Scenarios / Behavior / Use cases_ \\- Whatever you call it. The server is able to handle the use cases, if we've done it well they are nicely specified by behavioral specifications. The user interface should implement a 'view' or 'guide' for these scenarios. We should probably reuse these right? I could not find anything about the combination of these things. Do you have any resources or idea's about this? There must be some smart person that has said something very enlightening about this subject, otherwise: here's your chance"}
{"_id": "150315", "title": "Scala or Clojure Functional Programming best practices", "text": "I did a lot of self-study coding, got some experience with Parallel Programming Models: Actors, Software Transactional Memory, Data Flow. When I am trying to apply these architectures to real life - into high load web application - any model doesn't support durability and persistence for data. Real life tasks requires to save data at the end. This means that still I have to use DB and trapping DB syncs, possible scalability bottle necks etc. Does anybody knows good example of architecture (src or text or diagram or blueprints) that uses _Akka_ Actors **or** Software Transaction Memory and implement persistence at the end? Any good example/idea for Transactional Memory, Actors, Dataflow, Tuple spaces in real life applications is welcome."}
{"_id": "155145", "title": "Modular Database Structures", "text": "I have been examining the code base we use in work and I am worried about the size the packages have grown to. The actual code is modular, procedures have been broken down into small functional (and testable) parts. The issue I see is that we have 100 procedures in a single package \\- almost an entire domain model. I had thought of breaking these packages down - to create sub domains that are centered around the procedure relationships to other objects. Group a bunch of procedures that have 80% of their relationships to three tables etc. The end result would be a lot more packages, but the packages would be smaller and I feel the entire code base would be more readable - when procedures cross between two domain models it is less of a struggle to figure which package it belongs to. The problem I now have is what the actual benefit of all this would really be. I looked at the general advantages of modularity:               1. Re-usability     2. Asynchronous Development      3. Maintainability      Yet when I consider our latest development, the procedures within the packages are already reusable. At this advanced stage we rarely require asynchronous development - and when it is required we simply ladder the stories across iterations. So I guess my question is if people know of reasons why you would break down classes rather than just the methods inside of classes? Right now I do believe there is an issue with these mega packages forming but the only benefit I can really pin down to break them down is readability - something that experience gained from working with them would solve."}
{"_id": "103273", "title": "Can I use MIT licence plugins in my commercial web site?", "text": "If yes, what precautions should I take?"}
{"_id": "155143", "title": "DRY, string, and unit testing", "text": "I have a recurring question when writing unit tests for code that involves constant string values. Let's take an example of a method/function that does some processing and returns a string _containing_ a pre-defined constant. In python, that would be something like:               STRING_TEMPLATE = \"/some/constant/string/with/%s/that/needs/interpolation/\"          def process(some_param):         # We do some meaningful work that gives us a value         result = _some_meaningful_action()         return STRING_TEMPLATE % result      If I want to unit test `process`, one of my tests will check the return value. This is where I wonder what the best solution is. In my unit test, I can:   1. apply DRY and use the already defined constant   2. repeat myself and rewrite the entire string               def test_foo_should_return_correct_url():         string_result = process()              # Applying DRY and using the already defined constant         assert STRING_TEMPLATE % \"1234\" == string_result              # Repeating myself, repeating myself         assert \"/some/constant/string/with/1234/that/needs/interpolation/\" == url      The advantage I see in the former is that my test will break if I put the wrong string value in my constant. The inconvenient is that I may be rewriting the same string over and over again across different unit tests."}
{"_id": "103271", "title": "Where do I learn most - by going to industry or pursuing a doctorate degree?", "text": "I enjoy learning new things, and thus I want to pursue a career where I can continue to do so. I'm currently doing my Master's thesis and will finish my degree beginning of next year. After that I'm at a crossroad of what to do next. My examiner wants me to continue my academic studies and apply for a doctorate degree, and I can't say I'm entirely against it; where can you learn more than by doing research? At the same time, however, I imagine that you'd get more practical experiences by going to industry. Then again it is always the risk of ending up in the guinea pig wheel and doing mindless work and never progress. And at research you might only research just that and never look at anything else. And let's not forget the higher salary in industry (at least when you compare the pays in Sweden, but I am willing to work for less if I get to learn more). So what to do?"}
{"_id": "155141", "title": "A solution for a PHP website without a framework", "text": "One of our customers asked us to add some dynamic functionality to an existent website, made of several static HTML pages. We normally work with an MVC framework (mostly CodeIgniter), but in this case moving everything to a framework would require too much time. Since it is not a big project, not having the full functionality of a framework is not a problem. But the question is how to keep code clean. The solution I came up with is to divide code in libraries (the application's API) and models. So inside HTML there will only be API calls, and readability will not be sacrificed. I implemented this with a sort of static Registry (sorry if I'm wrong, I am not a design pattern expert):               <?php     class Custom_framework {              //Global database instance         private static $db;              //Registered models         private static $models = array();              //Registered libraries         private static $libraries = array();              //Returns a database class instance         static public function get_db(){                  if(isset(self::$db)){                 //If instance exists, returns it                 return self::$db;             } else {                 //If instance doesn't exists, creates it                 self::$db = new DB;                 return self::$db;             }         }              //Returns a model instance         static public function get_model($model_name){                  if(isset(self::$models[$model_name])){                 //If instance exists, returns it                 return self::$models[$model_name];             } else {                 //If instance doesn't exists, creates it                 if(is_file(ROOT_DIR . 'application/models/' . $model_name . '.php')){                     include_once ROOT_DIR . 'application/models/' . $model_name . '.php';                     self::$models[$model_name] = new $model_name;                     return self::$models[$model_name];                 } else {                     return FALSE;                 }             }         }              //Returns a library instance         static public function get_library($library_name){                  if(isset(self::$libraries[$library_name])){                 //If instance exists, returns it                 return self::$libraries[$library_name];             } else {                 //If instance doesn't exists, creates it                 if(is_file(ROOT_DIR . 'application/libraries/' . $library_name . '.php')){                     include_once ROOT_DIR . 'application/libraries/' . $library_name . '.php';                     self::$libraries[$library_name] = new $library_name;                     return self::$libraries[$library_name];                 } else {                     return FALSE;                 }                  }         }          }      Inside HTML, API methods are accessed like this:               <?php echo Custom_framework::get_library('My_library')->my_method(); ?>      It looks to me as a practical solution. But I wonder what its drawbacks are, and what the possible alternatives."}
{"_id": "60225", "title": "How do you off load work from the database?", "text": "In at least the web development field, web servers are everywhere but are backed by very few database servers. As web servers get hit with requests they execute large queries on the database, putting the server under heavy load. While web servers are very easy to scale, db servers are much harder (at least from what I know), making them a precious resource. One way I've heard from some answers here to take load off the database is to offload the work to the web server. Easy, until you realize that now you've got a ton of traffic internally as a web server tries to run SELECT TOP 3000 (presumably to crunch the results on its own), which still slows things down. What are other ways to take load off the database?"}
{"_id": "60224", "title": "How can we improve overall Programmer Education & Training?", "text": "Last week, I was just viewing this amazing interview by Kevin Rose of Phillip Rosedale, of Second Life. And they had an amazing discussion about how to find, hire and identify good programmer's, and how hard it is to find good ones. Which has lead me to really think about the way we programmer's learn, are taught. For a majority of us, myself included, we are self-taught. Which is great about being a programmer, anyone can learn and develop skills. But this also means, that there is no real standards of what a good programmer is/are, and what kind of environment's encourage the growth of programming skills. This isn't so much a question, but just a desire in me, to see how we can change the culture of programming, and the manager's of programming, so that education and self-improvement is encouraged. There are a lot of avenue's for continued education, youtube videos, books, conferences, but because of the experiental nature of what we do, it isn't always clear what's important to learn and to master. Let's look at the The Joel 12 Steps. The Joel Test Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you make daily builds? Do you have a bug database? Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Do you use the best tools money can buy? Do you have testers? Do new candidates write code during their interview? Do you do hallway usability testing? I think all of these have important value, but because of something I call the Experiential Gap, if a programmer or manager has never experienced any of the negative consequences for not having done items on the list, they will never see the need to do any of them. The Experiental Gap, is my basic theory, that each of us has different jobs and different experiences. So for some of us, that have always worked with dozens of programmer's, source control is a must have. But for people who have always been the only programmer, they can not imagine the need for source control. And it's because of this major flaw in how we learn, that we evaluate people by what best practices they do or not do, and the reason for either can start a flame war. We always evaluate people in our field by what they do, and think \"Oh if this guy/gal isn't doing xyz best practice, he/she can't be a good programmer, so let's not waste time or energy talking to them.\" This is exactly why we have so many programming flame wars, that it becomes, because of the Experiental Gap, we can't imagine people not having made the decisions that we have had to made. So this has lead me to think, that we totally need to rethink how we train, educate and manage programmer's. For example, what percentage of you have had encouragement by your manager's to go to conferences, and even have them pay for it? For me, and a lot of people, this is extremely rare, a lot of us would love to go to conferences, to learn more, but the money ain't there to do that. So the point of this question is really to spark a lot of how can we train, learn and manage better? How can we create a new culture of learning that doesn't insult people for not having the same job experiences. Yes we all have jobs and work to do, but our ability to do our jobs well, depends on our desire, interest and support in improving our mastery of our skills. Right now, I see our culture being rather disorganized, we support the elite, but those tons of us that want to get better, just don't have enough support to learn and improve ourselves. I mean, do we as an industry, want to be perceived as just replaceable cogs? Thank you..."}
{"_id": "60221", "title": "Is it better to concentrate on one or two research projects throughout undergrad?", "text": "Currently in the 4th semester of engineering in an Indian university. The thing is - is it better to do as many short-lived projects/research work on diverse topics of computer science or stick to one/two projects consistently throughout my undergraduate years? Case in point: currently working on an image-processing project that promises to carry on for a year or so (as per the prof). Does this seem like being over-specialized at too early a level? Although taking on too many things will spread me out thin and in all probability not end up getting any meaningful work done. Especially as I hope to apply for grad school in the US. Would really appreciate any views and suggestions on this."}
{"_id": "235074", "title": "Common interview: flexibility on code test?", "text": "I'm looking my first job and tomorrow I have my first interview in which they will test my programming skills by doing some code. I want to know if it's usual they let you search on internet if you don't remember an specific method name or something related to syntax's ?. If this is unusual then what should I do in case of forget something related to syntax?"}
{"_id": "235076", "title": "Should I label class diagram variables as private or public?", "text": "In my program, I have several class variables whose access specifier is known as private package. The default accessor specifier in Java is known as private package where it is accessible within the package which the class belongs to. For the UML class diagram , should I label these variables as public or private? I can't decide because of this concept of private package."}
{"_id": "213935", "title": "Why use classes when programming a tkinter gui in python", "text": "I program primarily in python and have programmed a couple of GUI's with Tkinter, every tutorial I have ever seen has recommended defining and using a class for the GUI, but my GUI runs flawlessly using only procedures, without a class. Why use a class? It seems from my perspective to simply be an extra layer of complexity and unnecessary code."}
{"_id": "233068", "title": "Is better Show() + Hide() or SetVisible(bool visible)?", "text": "What is better and why? (From interface-design point of view) : a) To have two `Show()` and `Hide()` functions b) To have one `SetVisible(bool visible)` function EDIT: For example some object have visibility state and this functions is used to change it. c) To have all three `Show()`, `Hide()`, `SetVisible(bool visible)` functions"}
{"_id": "82623", "title": "Can you use UML in a TDD project?", "text": "If so, at what stage? or it is also an iterative process? If iterative, how formal? Also, how useful is UML for a solo programmer doing open source? While I like to see a picture of the system, it feel so formal and a bunny trail for TDD. Thanks."}
{"_id": "82627", "title": "Same source code compiling in various languages", "text": "What do you call source code valid in several languages? There was a specific word for it and really crazy examples."}
{"_id": "155495", "title": "How should I handle using two databases with a legacy PHP application?", "text": "I have a legacy PHP application that was written in 2004 and uses MSSQL as a database backend. At this stage MSSQL is still supported by PHP but only just via a Microsoft driver. I have looked at converting to mysql via automated tools, which work quite well, but I have quite complex views which need a lot of individual work to convert. I don't have a great deal of time to do this. Many tools I wish to use and frameworks I would like to move the application to, don't support MSSQL, so I was considering adding new features using a new mysql database and wondered if anyone had opinions on the pros and cons of using two seperate database backends in a single application?"}
{"_id": "155496", "title": "How to make custom libraries accessible?", "text": "I am trying to compile and install every custom module under it's own designated folder. (ex: `/myApps/myLinux/compiled_app`) I had luck with Python so far, where my Python is compiled from source and lives in: `/myApps/myLinux/python2.5` and \"python2.5\" -> `/myApps/myLinux/python2.5.6-gcc463` So I can access this Python through a wrapper script that sets the right environment. The question is recently I had to compile and add something called gperf3.0.4. So now it lives: `/myApps/myLinux/gperf3.0 and \"gperf3.0\" -> /myApps/myLinux/gperf3.0.4-gcc463 ` The question is: How will I point to this lib if some other app needs to access it? Is it done through the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable?"}
{"_id": "240419", "title": "How do you detect lying Stubs/Mocks?", "text": "Consider this piece of code from the PHPUnit manual(I'm using PHP only as an example):               class StubTest extends PHPUnit_Framework_TestCase     {         public function testStub()         {             // Create a stub for the SomeClass class that could be later injected into another class, but removed here for simplicity.             $stub = $this->getMock('SomeClass');                  // Configure the stub.             $stub->expects($this->any())                  ->method('doSomething')                  ->will($this->returnValue('foo'));                  // Calling $stub->doSomething() will now return 'foo'.             $this->assertEquals('foo', $stub->doSomething());         }     }      Now I just stubbed the method `doSomething()` to return `foo`. What if some time later in the future I decide to implement `SomeClass` like this:               class SomeClass{              function doSomething(){             return 'bar';         }     }      Of course i have tests for `SomeClass` that test for `bar`, but I totally forgot to test for `foo`. Now I have a lying test. How does TDD handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "240418", "title": "Storing data in elasticsearch vs mongodb", "text": "We are trying to create an online-shopping like application in which we have to store a huge amount of data,since the data that will be stored are mostly document like data, the suggestion was to store the data in mongodb and using elasticsearch to add the search functionality, but i also know that elasticsearch itself can be used as a database to store the data, but I'm not sure if that's the right thing to do. Can you guys help me out?"}
{"_id": "240415", "title": "Should I implement a function or a method?", "text": "Once in a while I encounter a C function in my colleagues' code. Mostly it is in some helpful objective categories, and those functions are mostly an internal calculation of something or a comparison of values. Since those guys are not part of the company anymore, I can't ask them why they decided to go with a C function instead of a proper objective C method. So the question is: Why implement certain algorithms as a C function instead of objective C method? What are the considerations?"}
{"_id": "154364", "title": "Who is a CMS really for?", "text": "I have started lately discovering `Content Management Systems`, and I was wondering, who is really **CMS** for? What I mean by that: is it only for `companies`, `small businesses` or `individuals`, that pays a contractor to make a website that it's users can just upload content through a easy interface. Or is it used also by programmers, to build their own websites, projects? Would a _Facebook_ , _Tweeter_ , `StackExhange` ever started by using a **CMS** , a very powerful one for example. Would you as a programmer build your own \"fancy\" website on top of a **CMS** , for example like Typo3, or you would build it from scratch? P.S To be more clear is a summary: _`What I mean to begin with is, would I as a developer choose a CMS to develop a website that can be scaled with a big base of users, be stuck if I choose to start with a CMS system. What if I build a website using CMS, and the website explodes in popularity, and then I wanted to add much more functionality that I have planed, is it possible that the CMS will limit the growth, because it might have not been build for that kind of scale?`_"}
{"_id": "102507", "title": "Should a developer also act as a tester?", "text": "We're a scrum team of 3 developers, 1 designer, the scrum master, and the product owner. However, we don't have official tester in our team. A problem that is always with us, is that, testing the application and passing those tests and removing bugs has been defined as one of the criteria to consider a PBI (Product Backlog Item) as done. But the problem is that, no matter how much we (3 developers and 1 designer) try to test the application and implemented use cases, still some bugs are not seen and ruin our presentation (Murphy's law) to stakeholders. As a remedy, we recommended that the company hire a new tester. Someone who's job would be testing, and testing only. An official professional tester. However, the problem is that, scrum master and stakeholders believe that a developer (or a designer) should also be a tester. Are they right? Should we developers (also designers) be testers too?"}
{"_id": "154796", "title": "Are programmers bad testers?", "text": "I know this sounds a lot like other questions which have already being asked, but it is actually slightly different. It seems to be generally considered that programmers are not good at performing the role of testing an application. For example: Joel on Software - Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers (emphasis mine) > Don't even think of trying to tell college CS graduates that they can come > work for you, but \"everyone has to do a stint in QA for a while before > moving on to code\". I've seen a lot of this. **Programmers do not make good > testers** , and you'll lose a good programmer, who is a lot harder to > replace. And in this question, one of the most popular answers says (again, my emphasis): > Developers can be testers, but they shouldn't be testers. **Developers tend > to unintentionally/unconciously avoid to use the application in a way that > might break it.** That's because they wrote it and mostly test it in the way > it should be used. So the question is _are programmers bad at testing?_ What evidence or arguments are there to support this conclusion? Are programmers only bad at testing their own code? Is there any evidence to suggest that programmers are actually _good_ at testing? What do I mean by \"testing?\" I do _not_ mean unit testing or anything that is considered part of the methodology used by the software team to write software. I mean some kind of quality assurance method that is used after the code has been built and deployed to whatever that software team would call the \"test environment.\""}
{"_id": "150432", "title": "Training resources or ideas for very small team without a dedicated QA person or QA team", "text": "I have a very small 3-developer programming team that has zero QA people. We would like to hire a QA person but are unable to at this time. Until we can hire a QA person with proper QA training we're going to have to test each other's work. I'd like to hear from anybody who has done this, how one does such training. I am an expert developer, and I respect QA as a separate profession. I don't think I think like a QA person, but I need to start thinking more like one. In the absence of other people doing this job, some of it will fall to me. Is there any book, or tutorials on How to Do a Good Job at Testing and QA on a software product that addresses the idea of teaching a programmer to do QA? Similar question here suggest to them that they run their team with Scrum, which we are currently working towards, but we will have to do without a QA person at least until our team size can increase."}
{"_id": "173624", "title": "Should a developer create test cases and then run through test cases?", "text": "I work for a company where the development manager expects a developer to create test cases before writing any code. These test cases have to then be maintained by the developers. Every-so-often a developer will be expected to run through the test cases. From this you should be able to gather that the company in question is rather small and there are **no testers**. Coming from a Software Architect position and having to write / execute test cases wearing my ' _tester_ ' hat is somewhat of a shock to the system. I do it anyway but it does seem to be a rather expensive exercise :) **EDIT:** I seem to need to elaborate here: I am _not_ talking about unit-testing, TDD, etc. :) I am talking about that bit of testing a **tester** does. Once I have developed a system (with my unit tests / tdd / etc.) the software goes through a _testing phase_. Should a developer be _that_ tester and developer those _test cases_? I think the misunderstanding may stem from the fact that developers, typically, are not involved with this type of testing and, therefore, assumed I am referring to _that_ testing we do do: unit testing. But alas, no. I hope that clears it up."}
{"_id": "188208", "title": "Should developers be responsible for testing other developer and contractor/vendor code?", "text": "I have been working (~ 5 years & first IT job) as an application developer at a large financial institution with a strict corporate hierarchy, multiple LOBs, and heavily process-laden IT departments. Now, one aspect of this culture is to use a lot of external contractors and vendors to port legacy code to current technologies. However, the internal developers are made to test (black-box) their code. A majority of the time these external developers do not ensure that their apps work end-to-end properly before releasing their code and wait for us (internal developers) to investigate issues/collect logs/any screen shots of failure/database logs etc. I am wondering if anybody else has encountered such a situation in their role as developers in IT shops/orgs. Do you really improve technically or intellectually, especially, on large complex projects where testing can go on for more than 6 months ? For instance, I went a whole 7 months QC'ing and acting as a non-coding team-lead thinking that I should not let the team down. However, I see now that this is detrimental to my coding skills."}
{"_id": "100637", "title": "Functional testing must be done by external party to avoid bias?", "text": "Our developers demand that someone external to the development team completes the functional testing. Their argument is that they are biased and cannot test their own code as they are too close to it. Our last round of testing is with the client in the form of UAT. To be clear by 'functional testing' I mean testing the code against the specs, eg. when you click on 'submit' the index page should load. By UAT I mean the client comes in and runs through use cases on the release candidate. While I understand this argument of bias, is it reasonable for the developers to demand someone else complete their functional testing or is this just a way to avoid doing their job?"}
{"_id": "124206", "title": "Mobile applications in Delphi", "text": "Many of us know that Delphi executables are little bit gigantic, but again it is acceptable as nowadays 1.5 mb is not a big issue in PC. But what about mobile devices? Currently Firemonkey supports iOS and in the near future it is going to Android and so on. Isn't 4 mb of executable size for mobile devices is too much for a simple application? Will Delphi team try to reduce the size of executable in the future OR is it possible to do without loosing most of the features in Firemonkey?"}
{"_id": "80662", "title": "Will I learn more freelancing or working for a company?", "text": "I got out of school about a year ago, and have been freelancing since then. Sometimes it seems like it would be a good idea to work for a company for a few years, to learn from people with more experience than I have. But on the other hand, working for myself has let me pursue projects/technologies that I'm interested in learning about, and I'm hesitant to give that up. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "80668", "title": "How do I spot and document a GPL violation?", "text": "How to spot that someone copied open source code licensed with GPL to their closed source commercial application, when you don't have access to their closed source code? Edit: Great answers! Part 2. What if it is a webapp where you don't even have access to the executables? Scenario: They copy the source, make some minor changes to the gui so the front end is nearly identical; add a new feature to the otherwise totally identical back-end; and fail to release it back to open source."}
{"_id": "195448", "title": "Efficient way to find highest value from predicates", "text": "I have predicate, that enumerates through backtracking list of values. I want to find highest value from this list. For example:               ranked_move(X,Y,R) :- between(0,10,Y), between(0,10,X), rank_move(X,Y,R).     top_move(X,Y) :- % X, Y for highest R      Right now, I have it solved by using `findall` and custom predicate that goes through the list and remembers highest value it comes across. But I would like to know if there is way to do it without first turning the moves into a list. Eg. do the picking predicate directly on `ranked_move`. I know about http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1701693/max-out-of-values- defined-by-prolog-clauses . I haven't tried it, but I assume Prolog is not going to go through the predicates efficiently."}
{"_id": "88135", "title": "how to contribute the same source code to two separate open-source projects?", "text": "Let's say there are two similar open source projects A and B, both licensed under the Apache Software License 2.0. I would like to contribute an improvement to both projects (because I don't know which one is administered better, and I would like to see my improvement show up in both). Is there a way I can contribute this improvement to both projects in a simple way? (One obvious approach is to start an open source project C licensed under Apache 2.0, but that's a headache for various reasons; I don't want to maintain a project myself)"}
{"_id": "88136", "title": "What is the proper response to lousy error message?", "text": "I've just come across (for the 47 millionth time) some code that looks like this:               except IOError, e:       print \"Problems reading file: %s.\" % filename       sys.exit( 1 )      My first reaction is very visceral: the person who coded this is a complete idiot. How hard is it to print error messages to stderr and to include the system error message in the string? It certainly used to be the case that, for simple programs (command line filters), best practice was to print error messages to stderr and (when appropriate) to include the system error in the message. A very large percentage of developers no longer follow those rules. Many questions of the form \"what is best practice for error messages\" include answers about massive logging frameworks and exception handling mechanisms that do not apply to the simple filter. Has best practice changed? or is failure to include system error messages and printing error messages to the wrong stream the mark of a novice?"}
{"_id": "46398", "title": "It's 2011 - why do I still have to use tables for email?", "text": "This might seem like a rant, but I am curious. CSS replaced tables for layout a long time ago. But we still have to use tables for layout when creating rich emails. Why is this? Are there any other options? Are there really technical constraints that prevent CSS from working in an email. What are they? I can see how linked or embedded style sheets might be a problem, but not even inline styles work. Is this ever going to change?"}
{"_id": "46391", "title": "How would you TDD the functionality of getting the corresponding process of a running windows service?", "text": "## Purpose Over the last year or more I've been learning unit testing via books I've read recently like _The Art of Unit Testing_ , _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_ , and others. I've also been using unit tests, mocking frameworks, and the like, periodically at work and definitely see the value. However, I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around TDD (as opposed to TAD) when the situation calls for code that is gong to mostly use external API calls. ## Problem to solve Get the process associated with a windows service using the service name. example: `Function GetProcess(ByVal serviceName As String) As Process` ## Rules   * Show each major iteration in production & test code using TDD      * No need to see any other code or configuration that is required to get things to run. Just curious about the interfaces, concrete classes, and test methods.   * C# or VB.NET   * Must use the .Net framework regarding services/processes (i.e. `System.Diagnostics.Process`)   * Test Frameworks:      * Nunit or MSTest   * Isolation Frameworks:      * Moq, Rhino Mock, or Microsoft Moles   * Must write true unit tests (no integration tests) ## Additional notes As far as I can tell there are two approaches design wise.   1. Use an Inversion of Control approach along with using the Adapter and/or Facade patterns to wrap the underlying .net framework objects dealing with processes and services.   2. Keep the .net framework code in the class containing the Get Process method and use code detouring (interception) via Microsoft Moles to isolate the hard dependencies from the method under test."}
{"_id": "17305", "title": "How do you use blank lines in your code?", "text": "There has been a few remarks about white space already in discussion about curly braces placements. I myself tend to sprinkle my code with blank lines in an attempt to segregate things that go together in \"logical\" groups and hopefully make it easier for the next person to come by to read the code I just produced. In fact, I would say I structure my code like I write: I make paragraphs, no longer than a few lines (definitely shorter than 10), and try to make each paragraph self-contained. For example:   * in a class, I will group methods that go together, while separating them by a blank line from the next group.   * if I need to write a comment I'll usually put a blank line before the comment   * in a method, I make one paragraph per step of the process All in all, I rarely have more than 4/5 lines clustered together, meaning a very sparse code. I don't consider all this white space a waste because I actually use it to structure the code (as I use the indentation in fact), and therefore I feel it worth the screen estate it takes. For example:               for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i)     {         if (i % 3 == 0) continue;              array[i] += 2;     }      I consider than the two statements have clear distinct purposes and thus deserve to be separated to make it obvious. So, how do you actually use (or not) blank lines in code ?"}
{"_id": "95461", "title": "How up-to-date is the Joel test?", "text": "I want to convince my partners that we should have a spec and that bugs should get fixed before writing new code. Should I refer to the Joel test? Do you think that the Joel test is up to date? I think that not having a spec is bad project management. Do you agree with the Joel test? Could you add something? It doesn't mention for instance Open Source."}
{"_id": "231512", "title": "Is it bad practice to update an object in a static method?", "text": "Still learning .net and OOP and have a basic question I hope. This is an asp.net mvc app. Looking at the code below, I am most concerned with the line in CheckShippingVendor that says ValidateDelivery(shipmentItem). Is it okay to pass in an object as a parameter and have the private static method update that item. When I did a resharper Extract Method refactoring this is what it did for me. Class is instantiated and call the CheckShippingVendor method:               var packageStatus = _inventoryService.CheckShippingVendor(shipmentId, shipmentFile);      Here is the rest of the code:               public PackageStatus CheckShippingVendor(string shipmentId, mvFile shipmentFile)     {             var packageStatus = new PackageStatus();             using (var shipmentItem = shipmentFile.Read(shipmentId))             {                     ValidateDelivery(shipmentItem);                     shipmentFile.Write(shipmentId, shipmentItem);             }             return packageStatus;     }          private static void ValidateDelivery(mvItem shipmentItem)     {             int shipped;             var shippedResult = Int32.TryParse(shipmentItem[1].ToString(), out shipped);             if (!shippedResult)                 return;                  int delivered;             var deliveredResult = Int32.TryParse(shipmentItem[57].ToString(), out delivered);             if (!deliveredResult)                 return;                  shipmentItem.Message = \"NO INFORMATION AT THIS TIME\";     }"}
{"_id": "9122", "title": "What features in Eclipse is not available in Visual Studio?", "text": "I have done much development in Java using Eclipse, and now I have started to use Visual Studio for .NET development. So far I find the IDEs to be able to do the same things, but just different. What features in Eclipse isn't available in Visual Studio?"}
{"_id": "196043", "title": "Is the algorithm more important than the programming language?", "text": "During the current (2013) Google Code Jam contest, there was a problem that took C++ and Java people 200+ lines of code as compared to Python people that solved the same problem only using 40 lines of code. Python is not directly comparable with C++ and Java but the difference in verbosity I thought might perhaps have an influence on the efficiency of the algorithm. How important is knowing the right algorithm compared to the choice of language? Could an excellently implemented Python program be implemented in C++ or Java in a better way (using the same algorithm) and does this have any relation to the natural verbosity of certain programming languages?"}
{"_id": "229592", "title": "In functional programming how does one achieve modularity through mathematical laws?", "text": "I read in this question that functional programmers tend to use mathematical proofs to ensure that their program is working correctly. This sounds alot easier and faster than unit testing, but coming from an OOP / Unit Testing background I've never seen it done. Can you explain it to me and give me an example?"}
{"_id": "10655", "title": "Debugging applications", "text": "In my current developement, I have decided to keep the command prompt open so I can see debug messages. For example, if something wasn't happening when it should, I would put a cout statement at every function to determine where the broken link is. Sometimes, I might get hundreds of the same message (like WM_MOUSEMOVE) and I need to determine whether or not the messages are still coming, so I would using a static variable, and increment it, so I might have:               ...     3> WM_MOUSEMOVE processed.     4> WM_MOUSEMOVE processed.     54> WM_CLICK processed.     5> WM_MOUSEMOVE processed.     ...      in my cmd. (Don't ask me why there would be 54 WM_CLICK and 4 WM_MOUSEMOVE) What I would like to know is your opinion. Is this a good approach to debugging? What kind of syntax would you use for consistency? Does a syntax even matter? And would you make any suggestions to how this method could be improved."}
{"_id": "10651", "title": "How do I get into R&D?", "text": "I'm beginning to think that I might be best suited for a job in R&D. The reason being that I like jobs that allow me to be creative and I generally am more interested in solving puzzles than building things. I really dislike jobs that just boil down to translating requirements into code. Here's the kicker though: I don't have a bachelor's much less a masters or phd. Is it possible for me to land a job like this?"}
{"_id": "7912", "title": "How do you endorse/support a code project that you find helpful?", "text": "How do you endorse/support a code project that you find helpful, be it established, emergent or fledgling? I think there are some obvious answers, but hopefully there will be some novel suggestions too."}
{"_id": "63754", "title": "Is it legal to distribute a GPLv3 licensed binary through the apples' app store?", "text": "I wrote a small multiplatform app and I am considering publishing the osx version in apple store. I've licensed the app under a GPLv3 license. I sort of like the GPLv3 license but I also like the easiness of apple store. I'm worried about the GPL's \"freedom to distribute a copy\" requirement - which seems to be incompatible with apple store policies (I think there is a line that states that downloads are for personal use only). Is this a valid concern? Can I meet the requirements of the GPL by distributing the osx binary at the same place as the source, since I can't do it in the apple store? Or is this forbidden by the apple store policy (it seems to require that apple store software be downloadable only from apple store)? **edit** By apple store I mean mac app store (gpl is not compatible with iPhone's app store). **edit 2** I add a good clarification to the accepted answer from the comments by Abhi Beckert: > So, if you wrote all the code yourself then you do whatever you want > including releasing it on the Mac/iPhone App Stores. If you didn't write all > the code, then you need permission from anyone who ever wrote even one line. > All of the GPL apps which have been pulled, were pulled because one (or > more) of the developers demanded that it be taken down. Once that happens, > Apple must pull it, or they'd face criminal charges And in practice: remove all mercurial changesets that are not yours and make the program work after that (or ask for approval from the person who wrote the changeset)."}
{"_id": "7915", "title": "Should I accept a job if pair programming is required?", "text": "I have been offered an interesting job, but there's a big caveat for me: they use pair programming. I hate the idea of pair programming, and I'm probably not suited for it: I like to do frequent pauses, I hate to see someone programming (I would constantly poke the pair away to code myself), I have to be in full control of the machine I'm working on, I like to work listening music, and basically I don't like to being tied to someone else. I'm not even a social person. I have however never actually worked with true pair programming (besides few times for a short time to help someone else or to solve a complex task together)... so it is pair programming really that bad? And given my attitude, should I refuse the job or should I leave my current one and give a try? * * * For people that asked about it: I'm looking for a job where formal design and development are used, as I hate my current job where we are \"coding in the wild\". The company is very interested in my technical profile so they insisted even when I specified I never worked with pair programming and that I probably wouldn't like it (besides being an unsociable loner programmer, I don't like and believe the very concept of pair programming)."}
{"_id": "231517", "title": "Proper way to structure JSON for front-end consumption", "text": "Having worked on several different web application code bases, I've seen some divergence in how back-ends serving JSON to front-ends structure that data. In particular, when a backend wants to return a number of objects of the same structure. Do you just wrap up all of the objects in an array? What about the \"key\" of the first array? What should that be? For example, say my back end wants to return a number of \"image\" items. Each image item is structured like this:               {         \"id\" : 123,         \"filename\" : \"someFile.jpg\",         \"caption\" : \"some image or other\",         \"gallery\" : 123     }      How would I structure a grouping of these items properly for consumption by a javascript front-end?"}
{"_id": "229594", "title": "Clarification about Polymorphism / Inheritance", "text": "I am trying to better my understanding of polymorphism. Say I have a base class called `baseClass` with one method called `foo()` and I have three derived classes called `derived1` , `derived2` and `derived3` which all override the and implement their own versions of the `foo()` method. If I have an array of `baseClass` objects can it contain objects that are derived from that base class like so:               baseClassArray: [ derivedObj1, derivedObj2, derivedObj3];      Also if I pull an object out of this array and called the `foo()` method would it call the method defined in baseClass or the method defined in the respective derived class? Or does this depend on the programming language this is implemented in?"}
{"_id": "88888", "title": "What one should look for when choosing a cross-platform C++ GUI library?", "text": "As a learning C++ programmer, I am trying to select a GUI framework or library for my own projects. I have some experience with Qt: it's very straightforward, it has a very good documentation, and provides a lot of tools, but it seems to duplicate a lot of the standard library. Are all C++ GUI libraries like this? What should I be looking for in a GUI library? How do I determine which one would be best given a particular problem? Should I focus on one specific library, or is it worth it to know several of them as they might serve different purposes?"}
{"_id": "20832", "title": "Is big-O really that relevant when working in industry?", "text": "In every interview I have been in, I have been quizzed on mathematical analysis of complexity, including big-O notation. My question is, how relevant is this test to development in industry? How often do you reeeally use it, and how necessary is it to have a honed mindset for the problem?"}
{"_id": "161309", "title": "Design considerations on JSON schema for scalars with a consistent attachment property", "text": "I'm trying to create a JSON schema for the results of doing statistical analysis based on disparate pieces of data. The current schema I have looks something like this:               {         // Basic key information.         video : \"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uwfjpfK0jo\",         start : \"00:00:00\",         end : null,              // For results of analysis, to be populated:         // *** This is where it gets interesting ***         analysis : {             game : {                 value: \"Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition Ver. 2012\",                 confidence: 0.9725             }             teams : [                 {                     player : {                         value : \"Desk\",                         confidence: 0.95,                     }                     characters : [                         {                             value : \"Hakan\",                             confidence: 0.80                         }                     ]                 }             ]         }     }      The issue is the tuples that are used to store a value and the confidence related to that value (i.e. `{ value : \"some value\", confidence : 0.85 }`), populated after the results of the analysis. This leads to a creep of this tuple for every value. Take a fully-fleshed out value from the `characters` array:               {         name : {             value : \"Hakan\",             confidence: 0.80         }         ultra : {             value: 1,             confidence: 0.90         }     }      As the structures that represent the values become more and more detailed (and more analysis is done on them to try and determine the confidence behind that analysis), the nesting of the tuples adds great deal of noise to the overall structure, considering that the final result (when verified) will be:               {         name : \"Hakan\",         ultra : 1     }      (And recall that this is just a nested value) In .NET (in which I'll be using to work with this data), I'd have a little helper like this:               public class UnknownValue<T>     {              T Value { get; set; }         double? Confidence { get; set; }     }      Which I'd then use like so:               public class Character      {         public UnknownValue<Character> Name { get; set; }     }      While the same as the JSON representation _in code_ , it doesn't have the same creep because I don't have to redefine the tuple every time and property accessors hide the appearance of creep. Of course, this is an apples-to- oranges comparison, the above is _code_ while the JSON is _data_. Is there a more formalized/cleaner/best practice way of containing the creep of these tuples in JSON, or is the approach above an accepted approach for the type of data I'm trying to store (and I'm just perceiving it the wrong way)? Note, this is being represented in JSON because this will ultimately go in a document database (something like RavenDB or elasticsearch). I'm _not_ concerned about being able to serialize into the object above, because I can always use data transfer objects to facilitate getting data into/out of my underlying data store."}
{"_id": "250847", "title": "API Server Client Setup", "text": "Suppose you have a setup where there is an API Server and all interaction revolve around the API. There is the admin, public and third party components that interact with the API server. Suppose we have an e-commerce model, the components' have the following capabilities: Admin - ability to manage products, orders and customer information Public - ability to manage customer and order information belonging to the user Third Party - ability to retrieve list of products, view orders - create orders in behalf of the user (meaning must have authorization from user) - view customer info (need authorization from user) My concern is regarding authorization. I'm familiar how to handle the third party through the OAuth workflow. But I'm confused with the Admin and Public components. The said two components doesn't seem to fit the OAuth workflow were there are typically 3 actors: the server, consumer and user. For example for the public component, it's the front facing application where your users can manage their profiles, order and view products. Are we going to treat this component as special from the API authorization perspective. The same goes with the admin component which offers the ability to manage almost all aspect of your application, even set API keys. Just like Facebook, Twitter, etc.. They offer an API. But internally do they communicate using some sort of API as well? Should these core components (UI for admin and public) NOT be decoupled from the API Server in the first place?"}
{"_id": "164143", "title": "How Facebook's Ad Bid System Works", "text": "When you are creating an ad on Facebook, you are provided with a \" _suggested bid_ \" range (e.g., $0.90 - $2.15 USD). According to this page: > The suggested bid range is there to help you pick a maximum bid so your ad > will be successful. It\u2019s based on how many other advertisers are competing > to show their ad to the same audience as you are. I'm interested in understanding what's actually going on (technically) under the hood here. Say a user logs into Facebook. On the server-side, it the HTTP request that the user's browser sent (as part of the login) is handled, and the server needs to figure out which ad to display back to the user. I _assume_ this is where the \"bidding\" system comes into play? Say that, based on this user's demographics, and based on the audience targeting that several competing advertisers designed their campaign with, let's pretend that Facebook sees a pool of 20 different ads it could return. How does this bidding system help Facebook determine which of the 20 ads it returns to the client-side? I'm guessing that advertisers who \"bid more\" get prioritized over those who \"bid less\". But when does this bidding take place? How often does an advertiser need to re-bid? How long is a bid binding for? Once I understand these usage-related concepts behind ads, it will probably be obvious between which of the following \"selection strategies\" the backend is using:   * Round robin   * Prioritized round robin   * Randomized (doubtful)   * History-based   * MVP-based Thanks to anyone who can help point me in the right direction and explain what these suggested bid systems are and how they work."}
{"_id": "80084", "title": "Is premature optimization really the root of all evil?", "text": "A colleague of mine today committed a class called ThreadLocalFormat, which basically moved instances of Java Format classes into a thread local, since they are not thread safe and \"relatively expensive\" to create. I wrote a quick test and calculated that I could create 200,000 instances a second, asked him was he creating that many, to which he answered \"nowhere near that many\". He's a great programmer and everyone on the team is highly skilled so we have no problem understanding the resulting code, but it was clearly a case of optimizing where there is no real need. He backed the code out at my request. What do you think? Is this a case of \"premature optimization\" and how bad is it really?"}
{"_id": "63286", "title": "Which is the best Software to Create a Social Networking Community with CMS Software?", "text": "Please take a look at the several options listed in the following link: http://www.allwebdesignresources.com/webdesignblogs/graphics/best-software-to- create-a-social-networking-community-with-cms-software/ I am keen on the idea of \"open source platforms\" (such as Drupal and Elgg), but I am not sure which one is best and why. I am not so keen on the idea of a \"Licensed\" packaged software (a COTS) that, irrespective of the alleged claim of full flexibility offered by the Software House (such as Social Engine), would, in reality, limit my flexibility at an annual cost. Has anyone had any previous experience with any of the listed softwares? If yes, any feedback on their respective Pros and Cons will be much appreciated. Many tks!"}
{"_id": "254543", "title": "Basic PHP Object Oriented Design Review", "text": "I am attempting to learn object oriented programming by designing a simple web application related to the Catholic liturgical calendar. I have very little formalized training in programming, but I have been able to more-or-less successfully learn basic programming concepts and the purposes/syntax of a couple languages. I was hoping that I could receive feedback on the following design I have worked out and implemented in testing. The basic use case is to be able to find the calendar details of any date and time through both application logic and some database queries. I have developed the classes as such:               class Year         create several DateTime objects for important movables feasts for a year          class Season extends Year         create several properties for each liturgical season based on the DateTime         objects from Year and additional application logic          class Day extends Season         contains an array of Hours objects since a liturgical day is not necessarily         the same as a 24 hour temporal day          class Hour extends Day         determines the liturgical hour details including the feast being celebrated         and DateTime objects representing the start and stop times of the hour since         and \"hour\" <> a temporal hour of 60 minutes      With this design, I can create an Hour by passing a single parameter ($date). The Hour needs to know which liturgical season it is for some application logic, so it creates a Season object based on $date. The Season object, however, cannot be created until it knows when certain important feast days occur in any given year (e.g. Easter determines the start and stop dates for several liturgical seasons), so it creates a Year object. Is this a \"desirable\" pattern such that to create a single desired object (Hour) two other objects (Season and Year) are created? Is it \"proper\" to extend classes to reflect a hierarchical relationship such as I have (i.e. the largest temporal period is \"at top\", followed by the largest subdivision of that, etc...down to the smallest temporal period of hour)? The primary purpose of this web application will be to display religious facts and literature based on the current liturgical hour. Thus, the Hour is the most important piece to the end user - but this cannot be determined successfully without the \"larger\" periods of Season and Year. The Day object will be used for navigation/information purposes only (e.g. what are the important religious occurrences at all the liturgical hours today?) and will likely not include any actionable events within it. In testing, I have created a year's worth of Date objects which results in 2,920 Hour, Season and Year objects (365 * 8 for each object type = 8,760 total objects). The application logic is correct and produces desired data results. However, this seems like an incredibly high number of object instantiations for such a simple system, so I would like to know if I am misusing objects or totally misunderstanding their purpose. I think it may be more desirable to be able to create a single Year object which would produce 13 Season objects that could then be referenced by each Hour that I need to create...thus creating only 2,934 objects (2,920 Hour, 13 Season and 1 Year). Any thoughts would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "254544", "title": "Designing Nested List<Class> Property in a Class", "text": "I'm currently in the class modeling phase of my project. Real life Scenario: Let's say I have a Project that is composed of Main Components and each Main Component is composed of Sub Components and each of Sub Components use multiple Materials. I created a class based on the entities:               public class Project     {         public List<MainComponent> MainComponents {get; set;}         // other properties..     }          public class MainComponent     {         public List<SubComponent> SubComponents {get;set;}         //other properties..     }          public class SubComponents     {         public List<Material> Materials {get;set;}         //other properties..     }          public class Material     {         //properties..     }      However I will be having a hard time accessing a Material because I will have to go through a nested `foreach` loop Let's say projectAlpha is an existing Instance of a Project class               foreach(MainComponent mainComponent in projectAlpha.MainComponents)     {         foreach(SubComponent subComponent in mainComponent)         {             foreach(Material material in subComponent.Materials)             {                 //do something with material here..             }         }     }      What are efficient ways of designing a class that are based on entities that are designed like this? (Avoiding nested loops)."}
{"_id": "125553", "title": "What is deconcatenation?", "text": "I heard this mentioned and wanted to find out more. It does exist in google searches but I found no 'introduction'. I also found no information in the php manual or in my usual resources (like here). I'm looking for a succinct answer and/or a link."}
{"_id": "254546", "title": "Where does the name \"psycopg\" come from?", "text": "Apologies if here is not the place to ask, but so far google, the documentation and the faq page are not giving me an answer."}
{"_id": "125551", "title": "Keep track of knowledge about techniques/bugfixes/workarounds", "text": "I'm trying to bring more structure in my worklife by trying to maintain my 'knowledge' of new techniques/bugfixes/workarounds. I find them on google (sometimes after a while of searching) and fix my bug/learn new stuff... I don't really expand my 'library' with this knowledge. So after a while, when I encounter the same bug, i need to search it again and this can be time intensive. How do you guys keep track of this knowledge? I mean, most of us are on a busy workplace, with no time to memerize every bugfix/piece of knowledge about a product/language. I want to be able to reference this information in my own library. While trying to keep links, texts and code snippets organized and maintainable, rather then a textfile/Evernote for each subject, making it almost impossible to find and organize this information..."}
{"_id": "152209", "title": "Zooming options terminology", "text": "I've come up with 4 different ways to fit an image inside a viewing region, but I'm trouble coming up with names for them. Perhaps someone can suggest some?   1. Fit image in viewing region, do not enlarge if image is smaller   2. Size image so it fits snuggly inside the viewing region (enlarge if necessary) -- the image is as large as possible while still fitting within the viewing region   3. Size image so that it fills the entire viewing region -- the image will be the same size or _bigger_ than the viewing region   4. 1:1 ratio; 1 pixel in the image corresponds to 1 pixel on screen All zooming options maintain aspect ratio. Stretching is just ugly, so it's not an option :)"}
{"_id": "176283", "title": "Software design for non object oriented paradigm", "text": "I'm currently working on a project where I'm writing the firmware for an electronic system in C, and have been asked to produce documentation on the development/evolution of the software for the embedded devices. Having developed software in the object oriented paradigm I know to use UML to document the software such as class diagrams with objects, however this does not work for documenting the development of my embedded system. So what should I produce to document the development of my firmware?"}
{"_id": "149725", "title": "tcp retransmission queue", "text": "I'm trying to understand how tcp retransmission queue works so I can implement it in my application that uses TCAP over SCTP. What I understood from the TCP queue is that every message is saved in retransmission queue with with a time, when the timer reaches 0 the message will be sent again. My question is how to check the time on that message, is it like a thread that constantly checks the retransmission queue or is it something else?"}
{"_id": "149724", "title": "Web API design best practices - having many (similar) operations", "text": "I have a web service (axis2) and the server performs 4 primary operations: createX, removeX, getX and updateX Where X is represented by a combination of 4 values: id1, id2, id3 and id4 So, to simplify developer life, we created 3 extra helper functions: removeXForId, getXForId and updateXForId where we represent the set of 4 values as 1 Identifier so that the developers who are calling us do not need to pass all those 4 values again and again and just store the unique identifier on their end. But, we cannot also completely remove removeX, getX and updateX operations completely abd just rely on the unique identifier as some use cases need to pass all 4 set of values. **So, now we have around 7 operations where half (3) of them are duplicate operations with different input values.** Operations:               /createX     /getX {input: id1, id2, id3, id4}     /getXForId {input: id1234}     /removeX     /removeXForId     /updateX     /updateXForId      Is this a good practice? **UPDATE:** _getX is exactly the same as getXForId in terms of behavior except the input arguments._ getX takes in 4 inputs: val1, val2, val3 and val4. But getXForId takes in just 1 ID which represents (val1, val2, val3 and val4) val1, val2, val3 and val4 are some how related to each other, they in combination represent a unique link to a product in our system. So we tried to club them together."}
{"_id": "190080", "title": "What can a technically proficient senior software developer study to keep improving", "text": "Say you have been programming for over 10 years. You know many languages, with few of those at very detailed level. You have been designing architecture for solutions, worked on and delivered larger projects. You have been studying patterns, best practices, effective coding guidelines, unit testing, multi- threading, etc. And then you slowly develop a feeling that most of the books you read, give less and less valuable information per 100 pages of text. So they start giving diminishing returns. You still learn, but you no longer improve by leaps and bounds. Why does learning become less productive compared to how it was before? Back then, it used to change your way of thinking, taught you new things and broadened your horizons that later improved either your current profession, or allowed to invent/manage/build something new. Why is it no longer the case?"}
{"_id": "190083", "title": "Game Netplay Rollback System", "text": "Can one explain the specifics and details of a netplay framework for a game that optimizes connection through a \"prediction / rollback\" mechanic, as seen in games where speed is a priority (first-person shooters, modern fighting games since Street Fighter IV, etc)? I have previously studied this article as an example: Source Multiplayer Networking, which describes Valve's techniques used in their shooters on a high, abstract level. However, it is simply too high-level and theoretical to be of use to me. Other similar articles follow this same pattern; none offer code samples or working examples. I have previously crafted netplay systems that use unoptimized TCP/IP, which is obviously horrendously slow and non-useful for anything except LAN play. Although I have taken a college course on network programming, I am only confident and experienced enough to have made this system through approximate copying of other pre-existing code."}
{"_id": "121071", "title": "Progressing past CRUD applications in PHP?", "text": "I've been programming in PHP for about a year and am at the following stage:   * Have a good 'feel' for the language   * Can create CRUD applications competently   * Can utilize an MVC structure to allow for future expansion of code   * Using the points listed above, I've created a number of my own applications for practise - including but not limited to; a forum, social network etc. My question may be a little vague but should hopefully be answerable. I feel as though there isn't anything else I would need to know about PHP to allow me to create websites, though I'm sure I'm wrong. **What advanced/complex PHP topics could I look at that have a real-world use and will allow me to enhance both my skill as a programmer and applications in general?** Recently I've looked a lot more at javascript/jQuery allowing me to give my applications a richer user interface which has been a great learning experience and proving very useful."}
{"_id": "46979", "title": "I'm 15 years old. What would you recommend for resources?", "text": "I'm a 15 year old kid who seems to excel in all of his classes, likes talking in 3rd person, and wants to learn more about programming and a little about html/php stuff. I already know a little python and I'm hoping to eventually learn Java/Javascript and C. I've been looking around and I've found some online lectures like this and some other tutorials that are so mind numbingly boring and difficult to understand. I was wondering if any of you knew of any good books or other resources that would actually teach me everything I'd need to know incrementally?"}
{"_id": "211620", "title": "What is the point of double check locking?", "text": "I have been reading the Wikipedia article on double check locking and one thing that's not clear from it (at least to me) is what the pattern achieves. What is the reason for making the two checks below? Why not have triple checked locking? Wouldn't that be even better?               if (mySingleton == null) { // 1st check                 lock (myLock) {                     if (mySingleton == null) { // 2nd (double) check                         mySingleton = new MySingleton();                     }                 }             }"}
{"_id": "158460", "title": "Inserting validation in Data Driven Tests", "text": "I am working on a testing tool that provides image comparisons. For test data insertions, I am using excel and csv files that supply the tests with text that is used by the tool to mock actual user interactions - in filling up of forms/screens in the tests. After the insertion, there is a need for verification to ascertain whether the test has functioned properly or not. What mechanism should I apply to ensure proper validation for the tests ? As the screens will differ widely, I cannot use a hard coded error/success validation string/image. One approach that I am considering is generation of images based on inputs(OCR) for different tests, which will be used to validate the instance of test where the specified input was executed. Can anyone comment/share any other technique for doing this ?"}
{"_id": "162507", "title": "Emacs/Vim/Vi - do they have a place in modern software development ecosystem?", "text": "Watching all those screencasts (and listening all those podcasts) with more- or-less famous hackers/programmers I hear that many of those use emacs/vi(m) for their daily work. Now, I myself tried using both emacs and vim, and I honestly cannot understand why would anybody use these for any kind of serious development. The most advertised feature is something along the lines of \"you'll be able to work with text (meaning cutting, pasting, duplicating, moving, etc) up to ten times faster than with conventional IDEs\", but I don't buy that. When has the success of a software project been defined by how fast a programmer can juggle lines in a text editor or by saving a couple of keystrokes here and there? Plugins and extensions? I bet nothing comes close to R# or IDEA in terms of refactoring support (\"Rename\" refactoring implemented by means of \"Search and Replace\" is not a refactoring IMO); others are trivial. Ubiquitous and available everywhere? So what? How often do you find yourself editing files over a 300 baud connection on an esoteric *nix installation without a VCS? So here goes: do said editors have a justified place in a modern software development ecosystem?"}
{"_id": "162502", "title": "Methodologies for Managing Users and Access?", "text": "This is something I'm having a hard time getting my head around. I think I might be making it more complicated than it is. What I'm trying to do is develop a method to store users in a database with varying levels of access, throughout different applications. I know this has been done before, but I don't know where to find how they did it. Here is an example of what I need to accomplish:               UserA - Access to App1, App3, App4 & can add new users to App3, but not 4 or 1.      UserB - Access to App2 only with ReadOnly access.     UserC - Access to App1 & App4 and is able to access Admin settings of both apps.       In the past I've just used user groups. However, I'm reaching a phase where I need a bit more control over each individual user's access to certain parts of the different applications. I wish this were as cut and dry as being able to give a user a role and let each role inherit from the last. Now, this is what I need to accomplish. But, I don't know any methods of doing this. I could easily just design something that works, but I know this has been done and I know this has been studied and I know this problem has been solved by much better minds than my own. This is for a web application and using sql server 2008. I don't need to store passwords (LDAP) and the information I need to store is actually very limited. Basically just username and access."}
{"_id": "123741", "title": "What are the tools/frameworks used to build C# ASP.net applications?", "text": "I am basically a java programmer who wants to move to .net. I haven't worked in .NET companies so I don't have any idea about the tools they use. In a Java company people use Maven, Hibernate and frameworks such as JSF or Tapestry. My questions are: What are the tools/frameworks that .NET/C# companies use? Do they use ASP.NET MVC? Do they use any ORM tool? Do they use any framework? I will be happy if someone could tell me about this."}
{"_id": "48252", "title": "Is there a supported way to run .NET 4.0 applications natively on a Mac?", "text": "What, if any, are the Microsoft supported options for running C#/.NET 4.0 code natively on the Mac? Yes, I know about Mono, but among other things, it lags Microsoft. And Silverlight only works in a web browser. A VMWare-type solution won't cut it either. Is there any semi-authoritative answer to why Microsoft just doesn't support .NET on the Mac itself? It would seem like they could Silverlight and/or buy Mono and quickly be there. No need for native Visual Studio; cross-compiling and remote debugging is fine. The reason is that where I work there is a growing amount of Uncertainty about the future which is causing a lot more development to be done in C++ instead of C#; brand new projects are chosing to use C++. Nobody wants to tell management 18\u201324 months from now \"sorry\" should the Mac (or iPad) become a requirement. C++ is seen as the safer option, even if it (arguably) means a loss in productivity today."}
{"_id": "163671", "title": "Situations that require protecting files against tampering when stored on a users computer", "text": "I'm making a 'Pok\u00e9mon Storage System' with a Client/Server model and as part of that I was thinking of storing an inventory file on the users computer which I do not wish to be edited except by my program. An alternative to this would be to instead to store the inventory file on the server and control it's editing by sending commands to the server but I was wondering if there are any situations which require files to be stored on a users computer where editing would be undesirable and if so how do you protect the files? I was thinking AES with some sort of checksum?"}
{"_id": "180104", "title": "Question regarding code readability", "text": "I would like to know, is it considered a common practice to use constructions like `|=`, `&&`, `||`, `!=` altogether in the single line of code? E.g. `hasErrors |= vi2!=null && vi2.hasErrors() || vi.hasErrors();` What can be done to make the code more readable? The programming language is Java, if it matters."}
{"_id": "164909", "title": "Integrating with a payment provider; Proper and robust OOP approach", "text": "### History We are currently using a so called redirect model for our online payments (where you send the payer to a payment gateway, where he inputs his payment details - the gateway will then return him to a success/failure callback page). That's easy and straight-forward, but unfortunately quite inconvenient and at times confusing for our customers (leaving the site, changing their credit card details with an additional login on another site etc). ### Intention & Problem description We are now intending to switch to an integrated approach using an exchange of XML requests and responses. My problem is on how to cater with all (or rather most) of the things that may happen during processing - bearing in mind that normally simplicity is robust whereas complexity is fragile. ### Examples   * User abort: The user inputs Credit Card details and hits submit. An XML message to the provider's gateway is sent and waiting for response. The user hits \"stop\" in his browser or closes the window.      * ignore_user_abort() in PHP may be an option - but is that reliable?     * might it be better to redirect the user to a \"please wait\"-page, that in turn opens an AJAX or other request to the actual processor that does not rely on the connection?    * Database goes away      * sounds over-complicated, but with e.g. a webserver in the States and a DB in the UK, it has happened and will happen again: User clicks together his order, payment request has been sent to the provider but the response cannot be stored in the database. What approach could I use, using PHP to sort of start an SQL like \"Transaction\" that only at the very end gets committed or rolled back, depending on the individual steps? Should then neither commit or roll back have happened, I could sort of \"lock\" the user to prevent him from paying again or to improperly account for payments - but how?   * And what else do I need to consider technically? None of the integration examples of e.g. Worldpay, Realex or SagePay offer any insight, and either my search engine or my search terms weren't good enough to find somebody else's thoughts on this. Thank you very much for any insight on how you would approach this!"}
{"_id": "164905", "title": "How best to store images on a file system", "text": "Developing an application in which users have to upload images. I have not really got much experience with file uploads in an application so I am wondering what the best way is for storing images which are uploaded by users to the file system."}
{"_id": "180106", "title": "How to execute a Ruby file in Java, capable of calling functions from the Java program and receiving primitive-type results?", "text": "I do not fully understand what am I asking (lol!), well, in the sense of if it is even possible, that is. If it isn't, sorry. Suppose I have a Java program. It has a `Main` and a `JavaCalculator` class. `JavaCalculator` has some basic functions like               public int sum(int a,int b) {        return a + b     }      Now suppose I have a ruby file. Called `MyProgram.rb`. `MyProgram.rb` may contain anything you could expect from a ruby program. Let us assume it contains the following:               class RubyMain       def initialize         print \"The sum of 5 with 3 is #{sum(5,3)}\"       end       def sum(a,b)         # <---------- Something will happen here       end     end          rubyMain = RubyMain.new      Good. Now then, you might already suspect what I want to do:   * I want to run my Java program      * I want it to **execute** the Ruby file `MyProgram.rb`     * When the Ruby program executes, it will create an instance of `JavaCalculator`, execute the `sum` function it has, get the value, and then print it.     * The ruby file has been executed successfully.   * The Java program closes. **Note** : The _\"create an instance of`JavaCalculator`\"_ is not entirely necessary. I would be satisfied with just running a `sum` function from, say, the `Main` class. My question: is such possible? Can I run a Java program which internally executes a Ruby file which is capable of commanding the Java program to do certain things and get results? In the above example, the Ruby file asks the Java program to do a sum for it and give the result. * * * This may sound ridiculous. I am new in this kind of thing (if it is possible, that is). **WHY AM I ASKING THIS?** I have a Java program, which is some kind of game engine. However, my target audience is a bunch of Ruby coders. I don't want to have them learn Java at all. So I figured that perhaps the Java program could simply offer the **functionality** (capacity to create windows, display sprites, play sounds...) and then, my audience can simply code with Ruby the logic, which basically justs **asks** my Java engine to do things like displaying sprites or playing sounds. That's when I though about asking this."}
{"_id": "175489", "title": "How can I get my own encryption algorithm tested?", "text": "I've just developed a block cipher symmetric-key algorithm and I am using it in some of my products. I want to put it to real test. How would one go about entering their encryption algorithm into an international encrytption contest?"}
{"_id": "179109", "title": "Which language is more suitable heavy file tasks?", "text": "I need to write a script (based on basic functions) to process /image/audio/video files. The process is mainly filesystem tasks and converts. The database of files has been stored by mysql. The script is simple but cause heavy tasks on the system; for example renaming/converting/copying thousands of file in a run. The script does not read the content of files into memory, it just manage the commands for sub-processes. The main weight is on the communication with filesystem. The script will be used regularly for new files. My concern is about performance. I am thinking of   1. Shell script   2. a complied language like C Please advise which programming language is more suitable for this purpose and why? **UPDATE:** An example is to scan a folder for images, convert them with `ImageMagick`, move files to destination folder, get file info, then update the database. As you can see, the process has no room for optimization, and most of languages have similar APIs for popular programs like `ImageMagick`, `MySQL`, etc. Thus, it can be written in any language. I just wish to reduce resource usage by speeding up the long loop. _NOTE:_ I know that questions about comparing languages are not favorable, but I really had problem to choose, because the problems can appear in action."}
{"_id": "90175", "title": "How do you handle your Project Manager", "text": "I currently work for a company that has recently downsized. I do all in-house work, client installs, builds, QA, and, well, basically all the in-house work. My direct boss is VERY nontechnical and lately I have found it VERY hard to deal with his lack of knowledge. The biggest issues I have had are as follows:   * I am on many deadlines at a time. I get stopped to put together a half fast quote as I cannot be late on the deadline, in the meantime, three support calls comes in, I give quote, time too much in quote so they outsource it. I then I have to fix everything the vendor broke which puts me behind. The worst is if I eat \"His buffer\" on a project I wasn't even on I am expected to complete everything already scheduled while all these other things come up.   * I get asked, when an issue arrises, why is the issue occurring and explain in detail, yet that detail means absolutely nothing to him.   * All he cares about are deadlines, yet he is the one who schedules everything.   * \"I am a programmer not a graphic designer, means nothing to him\"   * I was hired as a .NET programmer, yet they let a vendor choose wordpress for many sites(yeah I had to learn all about it quick) I guess I can go on and on, but has anyone had to deal with this type of project manager? What is some advice, other than finding another job? I cannot leave my job at this time as I cannot lose my insurance right now as my wife is very ill with MS. I am looking for the best way to deal with my manager. Thanks in advance, and I made this a wiki, so please don't close. Here is another situation that happened today. We have a friend of mine who assists me on projects. He asked us \"BOTH\" to quote out a job and give a rough estimate. I came back to him and said\" 7 weeks 6 hours day a day using my friend as a resource.\" He gave it to the client and added 10% buffer(24 hours). He then tells me that is all I get my friend for on the project. I wasn't asked how much time he was available for during the 7 weeks. Worst part is they already gave the quote to the client and didn't even have me review. His view is well you either get it done in the time I told him or find another job."}
{"_id": "175481", "title": "Is O(1) random access into variable length encoding strings useful?", "text": "I remember reading that there are no existing data structures which allow for random-access into a variable length encoding, like UTF-8, without requiring additional lookup tables. The main question I have is, is this even a useful property? I mean, to look up and replace random single _codepoints_ in O(1) time."}
{"_id": "175483", "title": "Suggestions for html tag info required for jQuery Plugin", "text": "I have written a tiny bit of jQuery which simply selects all the `Select` form elements on the page and sets the selected property to the correct value. Previously I had to write code to generate the `Select` in php and specify the `Selected` attribute for the option that was selected or do loads of `if` statements in my php page or smarty template. Obviosly the information about what option is selected still needs to be specified somewhere in the page so the jQuery code can select it. I decided to create a new attribute on the Select item               <Select name=\"MySelect\" SelectedOption=\"2\">  <-- Custom Attr SelectedOption     <option value=\"1\">My Option 1 </option>     <option value=\"2\">My Option 2 </option> <-- this option will be selected when jquery code runs     <option value=\"3\">My Option 3 </option>     <option value=\"4\">My Option 4 </option>     </Select>      Does anyone see a problem with using a custom attribute to do this, is there a more accepted way, or a better jquery way?"}
{"_id": "175485", "title": "Debugging framework for domain specific language", "text": "I want to know if there are any tools/tool-kits which aid in building source level debuggers for domain specific languages ? (I work on a proprietary DSL, which doesn't have any tools and sometimes debugging will become difficult, so, if in case there are any such tool-kits, wanted to try)"}
{"_id": "13101", "title": "Vendor Support for OpenStack (that's not a rip-off)", "text": "I'm beginning to see that there is a game being played where cloud support is either \"host inside our cloud at low cost (so we lock you in)\" or \"we will support your private cloud provided that it's huge like 5000 nodes and you pay for our premium support ~$5000/month\"so where are the are the support options for OpenStack that aren't trying to play this game?"}
{"_id": "179106", "title": "Computer vision algorithms (how is this possible?)", "text": "I recently stumbled across a company that has created what appears to be a computer vision technology that is capable of detecting shoplifting automatically and alert its users. LINK Watching some of the videos and examples provided by the company has left me completely baffled and amazed as to how on earth they may have achieved this functionality. I understand that no-one here will be able to tell me exactly how this may have been achieved but is anyone aware - and could point me to - research in this field or alternatively perhaps provide details as to how something like this could be implemented or guidance of where one might start? My understanding was the computer vision algorithms were many years away from being this sophisticated. Is this sort of application really possible? Anyone willing to hazard a guess at how they achieved this?"}
{"_id": "187333", "title": "Is it possible to create a 2d game for both linux and windows with next to no changes?", "text": "I'm starting a project with friends which would preferably reach both audiences of windows and linux. The only problem is that none of us have any experience of linux porting or linux coding any way. Thus, I'm asking for information here if it'd be possible to use the same code for both platforms. If it's some choices we had to make while coding it to be for both platforms. Our preferred coding language is C++, but if enough support is gained towards another one, a switch is possible. We haven't chosen a graphics nor a game engine yet because of this fact. With the minimum effort we'd like this to be as close as possible to a \"uniplatform\" game. :)"}
{"_id": "176826", "title": "Creating a Predicate Builder extension method", "text": "I have a Kendo UI Grid that I am currently allowing filtering on multiple columns. I am wondering if there is a an alternative approach removing the outer switch statement? Basically I want to able to create an extension method so I can filter on a `IQueryable<T>` and I want to drop the outer case statement so I don't have to switch column names.                   private static IQueryable<Contact> FilterContactList(FilterDescriptor filter, IQueryable<Contact> contactList)         {             switch (filter.Member)             {                 case \"Name\":                     switch (filter.Operator)                     {                         case FilterOperator.StartsWith:                             contactList = contactList.Where(w => w.Firstname.StartsWith(filter.Value.ToString()) || w.Lastname.StartsWith(filter.Value.ToString()) || (w.Firstname + \" \" + w.Lastname).StartsWith(filter.Value.ToString()));                             break;                         case FilterOperator.Contains:                             contactList = contactList.Where(w => w.Firstname.Contains(filter.Value.ToString()) || w.Lastname.Contains(filter.Value.ToString()) || (w.Firstname + \" \" + w.Lastname).Contains( filter.Value.ToString()));                             break;                         case FilterOperator.IsEqualTo:                             contactList = contactList.Where(w => w.Firstname == filter.Value.ToString() || w.Lastname == filter.Value.ToString() || (w.Firstname + \" \" + w.Lastname) == filter.Value.ToString());                             break;                     }                     break;                 case \"Company\":                     switch (filter.Operator)                     {                         case FilterOperator.StartsWith:                             contactList = contactList.Where(w => w.Company.StartsWith(filter.Value.ToString()));                             break;                         case FilterOperator.Contains:                             contactList = contactList.Where(w => w.Company.Contains(filter.Value.ToString()));                             break;                         case FilterOperator.IsEqualTo:                             contactList = contactList.Where(w => w.Company == filter.Value.ToString());                             break;                     }                          break;             }             return contactList;         }      Some additional information, I am using NHibernate Linq. Also another problem is that the \"Name\" column on my grid is actually \"Firstname\" + \" \" + \"LastName\" on my contact entity. We can also assume that all filterable columns will be strings. **EDIT** Remember this needs to work with **NHibernate** Linq and AST."}
{"_id": "176825", "title": "Function names - \"standardized\" prefixes", "text": "Imagine you have such routines               /*just do X. Fail if any precondition is not met*/     doX()          /*take care of preconditions and then do X*/     takeCareOfPreconditionsCheckIfNeededAtAllAndThenDoX()       A little bit more concrete example:               /*create directory. Most probably fail with error if any precondition is not met (folder already exists, parent does not exists)*/     createDirectory(path_name)          /*take care of preconditions (creates full path till folder if needed, checks if not exists yet) and then creates the directory*/     CheckIfNotExistsYet_CreateDirectory_andFullPathIfNeeded(path_name)      How do you name such routines, so it would be clear what does what?       I have come to some my own \"convetion\" like:               naiveCreateDirectory, ForceDirectoryExists, ...      But I imagine this is very standard situation. Maybe there already exists some norms/convetions for this?"}
{"_id": "176821", "title": "Is it ok to become junior at 27?", "text": "I'm having a computer unrelated job right now, but I want to become a programmer, I have some objective-c and iOS knowledge, studying hard in my free time, etc. I'm looking into getting a junior iOS developer position. It will probably pay half what I earn in my current job, and I am not sure if I will like that. But I am really tired of my job and want to get experience in this field. Also, working as iOS developer is great position, since they are in great demand. My country is Russia. What do you think? Or Should I just do it in my free time, get some programs out in Appstore and look for better position? What would you do?"}
{"_id": "168596", "title": "Is Perforce as good at merging as DVCSs?", "text": "I've heard that Perforce is very good at merging, I'm guessing this has to do with that it tracks changes in the form of changelists where you can add differences across several files in a single blow. I think this implies Perforce gathers more metadata and therefore has more information to do smarter merging (at least smarter than Subversion, being Perforce centralized). Since this is similar to how Mercurial and Git handle changes (I know DVCSs track content rather than files), I was wondering if somebody knew what were the subtle differences that makes Perforce better or worse than a DVCS like Mercurial or Git."}
{"_id": "28458", "title": "Cloud computing / web hosting solution suggestion", "text": "I am in the initial stage of analyzing a platform for my startup and I am exploring both the cloud computing and web hosting before I initiate developement. I am quite proficient in both .NET and the java platform and hence I am hoping to get your feedback for helping me with some ideas/directions. Here are is the feature set that I am looking for   * Robust platform (must have)   * Persistence a.l.a {Big table/Cassandra style or RDBMS} ( must have)   * Message queueing frameworks like ActiveMQ (Must have)   * Full text search and advance features - Lucene and Solr (Must have)   * Memcached (Must have)   * Background/Offline services (Must have)   * Hosted SSL (Must have)   * Ability to support RESTful webservices (Must have)   * Support for fast prototyping and deployment (Must have)   * Storage on file system (Nice to have)   * Easy administration, support for scaling, monitoring and profiling (Must have)   * Transparent billing and accounting (Must have) I have looked at Google App engine and although it looks quite appealing, I don't think it supports full text search (what an irony) or messaging which would be dealbreakers for me. I have also looked at hosting solutions ( e.g. www.justhost.com) and they too don't offer messaging and support for indexing/full text search etc. So I am wondering what are my options. Do I need to buy own server farm and talk to my ISP? If so, are there any ISPs that you can recommend? Please advise on how I can go about selecting an appropriate platform Thanks -Venu"}
{"_id": "54069", "title": "Why might an ASP.Net website load slowly?", "text": "Anecdotally, I've visited many .aspx website that require a significant amount of load time for each page. Is my experience unique? If not, why might an ASP.Net website load slowly?"}
{"_id": "54060", "title": "So with HTML5 what exactly.....is \"supposed\" to become phased out", "text": "So I know HTML5 is the \"replacement\" for Flash...however it's obviously not mainstream just yet......but what else is it supposed to replace. I ask this because web-dev has always been a secret kinda side-passion of mine (even though I a firmware programmer mostly doing C/Java stuff). And anyway I want to pursue a side thing at doing web design (I know basic XHTML/CSS + some CSS3) But what exactly is I guess....\"pointless\" to study? JavaScript I assume will always be a huge part of web design? (HTML5 isn't replacing that is it?) What about Ajax and CSS itself?) And then there's Flash....not sure if thats really worth putting effort into? Also there's Adobe Flex/Air......I'm a bit confused if you can't tell."}
{"_id": "250723", "title": "VPN system to analyze users traffic (onavo-like)", "text": "I would like to develop a system that is able to analize the network traffic of people using it. I am interested in the URLs that the users request. Let's say the users targeted are on iOS or Android (a PC would be too easy you had guessed!). I first imagined I could use web history to find out the relevant information I am looking for. It seems that it is not possible to do this because of the apps being sandboxed. (Rooting/Jailbreaking phones is not an option there). This being impossible, I am looking for another way to achieve my goal. I see that Onavo Extend - an app that allow users to have their data shrinked - is able to have their user's traffic sent to their servers. From what I understand, they setup a VPN connection to their servers which act like proxies. I thought I could use a similar system to be able to analyse my users' traffic but I am totally lost in all the VPN sorts and protocols. I was not able to find what kind of exact technology Onavo is using. I guess I would have to implement a VPN server with which I can extract the information I am looking for. Sadly, I have not been able to find relevant information helping me do this. So here are my questions:   1. Is there a simpler way to achieve my goal than setting up all the VPN structure?   2. If not, could you advise my on the type/technology of VPN I could use and/or point me to links that would help me build the server-side application that does the VPN proxing or just to relevant information that could help me in any way? PS: I am just trying to build a mockup to do this, not a top of the line service able to handle thousands of users. PPS: I am more focused on the server-side as I was able to find information on how to deploy profiles and setup VPN settings to the end users. I will focus on the client side once the server is ready. * * * Edit: What I want is not about real time monitoring, but more like being able to parse the requested URLs and store them (say, to a database for instance, or files, this is just a mockup) to analyze them later. As I am not able to access the user's web history, the idea is to be able to parse the traffic to build the history myself."}
{"_id": "28454", "title": "After SICP? Interested in Web and Desktop programming", "text": "As a complete newbie, I am curious as to what I should undertake after finishing _Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs_ (along with the MIT course). I am primarily interested in building desktop applications, and secondarily interested in web development. How do I grasp the essence of desktop programming? And web? Are there any particular books or courses that survey the various areas of programming and the tools I need to build something solid?"}
{"_id": "28457", "title": "Choosing a Programming Language", "text": "i've taking part in some conversations around here and it seems like choosing a programming language is an event like, wether you like coca-cola or pepsi, you cant like both. Sometimes its even worse, some people dont consider there are any other programming languages there expect the ones they prefere. Well my question is: Is THAT important the programming language decitions? Or maybe its a marketing scheme where companies buy it and then programmes suffer it? And further more, it should not be the other way around, companies ask for general developing skills and then train their human resources to accomplish a goal ( if the problem is concurrent, then use your concurrrent skill to develop in this specific language)?"}
{"_id": "155961", "title": "Working environment", "text": "I realise that this might not be the right place to ask questions about employment and that the question my raise debate etc. The company I work for recently decided that rather than having one web developer working on sites from a branch it would be better to make that person come into head office and work in the middle of a busy call centre. Also they're expecting the developer to answer the phone if it rings and take messages. Does anyone find that strange? Is it really the right place for a programmer to work? Thanks for the advice"}
{"_id": "143600", "title": "On improving commit practices", "text": "I was thinking about ways to improving my commit practices. Is there any co-relation between no. of source code lines and no. of commits? In a recent project that I was involved in, I was going at 30 commits per 1000 lines. One typical file from the project has these stats               language: JavaScript     total commits that include this file: 32          total lines: 1408     source lines: 1140     comment lines: 98          no. of function declarations: 28     other declarations: 8      Another file has these...               Language: Python     total commits that include this file: 17          total lines: 933     source lines: 730     comment lines: 80          classes: 1     methods: 10      I also think that no. of commits is more related to no. of features or no. of changes to the code and less to the no. of lines. The general git community motto is make short commits and commit often. So, do you really think about you commit strategy before you start the project. For that matter, is there anything like commit strategy? If so, what's yours?"}
{"_id": "213910", "title": "Maximum nesting for loops and conditionals?", "text": "I've written some code that has some fairly deep nests (one time, I wrote something that was a conditional check inside a forloop inside a conditional check inside a forloop inside a forloop). Is there a general guideline on limits to the number of nested for loops/conditionals you have?"}
{"_id": "180108", "title": "What will happen if I don't follow robots.txt while crawling?", "text": "I am new to web crawling and I am testing my crawlers. I have been doings tests on various sites for testing. I forgot about robots.txt file during my tests. I just want to know what will happen if I don't follow the robots.txt file and what is the safe way of doing the crawling?"}
{"_id": "256031", "title": "How can I write the code to get all the properties of a class?", "text": "I have a program, where I want to create a new instance of the object depending on a value, I take the value and then search the list and using that list I create a new instance. Well, it goes perfectly well. But there is a problem, that I have to write them all manually and it takes a long time. I wanted to know whether there is a better way of doing this or not, here is the C# code I am having               public Account (int userId) {         // here is look for the account         // inside a List<Account> which returns the account         // then I update the values for that instance,          this.AccountLockedSince = account.AccountLockedSince;         this.AuthenticationToken = account.AuthenticationToken;         this.CreateDate = account.CreateDate;         this.IsLocked = account.IsLocked;         this.IsVerified = account.IsVerified;         this.PasswordResetDate = account.PasswordResetDate;         this.PasswordResetToken = account.PasswordResetToken;         this.RequireEmailVerification = account.RequireEmailVerification;         this.TokenExpires = account.TokenExpires;         this.UserId = account.UserId;     }      .. as you can see, these are all the properties of the Account class and I have updated them, but this is not the efficient way of doing this. Any built- in feature in the C# .NET framework to handle this?"}
{"_id": "256036", "title": "What CS courses should I take as a data miner", "text": "guys, I am a data miner, most time I use R, SAS to do modeling and data mining work. But some times the packages in R are not what I want. It will be perfect If I could develop my own packages. But my background is not Computer Science and I always want to learn some coding techniques or dig deeper in computer science, which might help me better understand how to code and do data mining. Could any one give a comprehensive book/course list for me to learn, which will be helpful for data mining? thanks"}
{"_id": "256037", "title": "Why doesn't Google use Courgette for Android updates?", "text": "Google has an advanced diff tool specifically designed for compiled binaries called Courgette. Is there any reason why they wouldn't use this in Android and the Google Play Store to download updates? In my basic understanding of Java, it seems like it shouldn't be any more difficult (perhaps even easier?) to create 'diffs' like this because of Java's \"bytecode\" nature. Am I wrong? Are there any security reasons? **Note:** I know that unless someone from Google responds, we won't know for sure. But I'm asking for any obvious reasons - I'm an Android developer and sometimes get notes from people complaining about frequent updates, so it is somewhat relevant to me. :)"}
{"_id": "256034", "title": "\u00a1Advice Needed! - Node.js, PHP or Python to make a high performance Real Estate website similar to Zillow or Trulia?", "text": "First of all sorry for my bad english and sorry for my novice/beginner question, I'm doing my best with the help of google translator. To develop a Real Estate Site similar to Zillow or Trulia what language of this three with its respective ecosystem of tools and frameworks is more suitable( best tool for the job) for this type of Websites and why, Node, PHP or Python. Main concerns:   1. Development productivity. What development stack allow faster development for a site like the mentioned above.   2. HTML render speed, page load speed and general performance in the visitors devices(smartphones, Desktop PC, etc) when many concurrent users visit the website.   3. For a specific level of performance, which of the two development stack require less server resources, number of servers, and CPU, memory per server. I appreciate any advice"}
{"_id": "94414", "title": "What technologies are typically used to implement enterprise services in .NET?", "text": "I'm trying to get an idea as to how what I currently do (implementing enterprise services in Java) would be done in a .NET environment. In .NET, would it typically be done using:   * IIS as the server?   * C# as the language and WCF as the framework?   * BizTalk as the enterprise service bus, with MSMQ as the gateways? Has anyone implemented services in both Java and .NET, and if so, are there any major paradigm differences or is it pretty similar?"}
{"_id": "216397", "title": "Why did Apple remove Python support in Mavericks, aka Mac OS X 10.9?", "text": "In a rather unceremonious way - Apple has _removed_ Python support (at least from the SDK) in 10.9. Python IS still installed on the system in...               /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework      but trying to _link to it_ under the 10.9 SDK fails. Even with the \"CLI Tools\" installed, there is no Python in...               /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.9.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks      I'm no _Pythonista_... but I do find it interesting that Apple has removed a part of the Developer Toolchain that has been around for so long, and was once so promising (on the Mac platform). Apple often tries to steer the focus towards certain \"methodologies\"; but historically, when the plug has been pulled - it's over - at least in Apple's eye. Is this _a statement_ by Apple, along the lines \" _People aren't using Python very much anymore.. we're gonna phase out support_ \"? Or simply, \" _Adoption of PyObjC is anemic, maybe we can reduce the size of the SDK by 3.1Mb_ \"? Whatever the motivation, it's likely a change that is here to stay. Are there suggestions on workarounds to maintain compile and runtime-compatibility, or insights into why the decision was made?"}
{"_id": "237342", "title": "What is a good integration test strategy?", "text": "I'm getting started on a project wherein I want to have pretty thorough test coverage, and I have the luxury of driving the test strategy. I've settled on a workable plan for unit testing, and I've also settled on using Gherkin to describe features and a port of Cucumber to run the scenarios as end-to-end acceptance tests. The problem is that I sense that there is a gap in between those two layers. I can test all my units in isolation, and I can test that my features work, but I can think of other things that I'm going to want to test. I'm also coming from a different project with (poorly-implemented) automated tests that are a very brittle and are a maintenance nightmare, the goal of these tests being to mostly replace manual regression testing. Writing more maintainable tests is a must, but at a higher level I'm not sure that our tests are the right ones. As an example, given a web application, say there's a form to add an event with start and end dates. As an end-to-end test, we can validate that you can, in fact, add an event. But if your start date is after your end date, then you get an error message, and I wouldn't think that how a trivial user input error is handled belongs in a feature file. On the other hand, there seems to be a pretty strong belief that unit testing the UI isn't worth it; instead, one should do automated integration testing. So what do I do for this code? Do I unit test the components related to error messages in general, as well as that this form is going to show them, and skip automating that they actually appear? Do I do the above and then automate that just one error message somewhere shows as intended, and assume the rest will work? Do I try to automate every different potential failure case for every form? This hits the middle ground of integration testing, of which I am leery. Based on my experience, maintaining a large number of integration tests does not seem worth the value. On the other hand, there is functionality above the unit level and below the feature level that I would ideally like tested, both in the UI and outside of it. And I'm concerned about what kind of confidence automated regression can bring if it isn't hitting everything. I am perfectly willing to write integration tests, but in the context of when to write tests, what tests to write, and how many to write, what is a good approach to addressing this problem?"}
{"_id": "148929", "title": "Firefighting allocation problem", "text": "I'm trying to develop a model to work on an assignment problem in the firegifhter area. Given n firefighters, m trucks and z ongoing fires, each with a danger level, try and allocate the resources in the best way. Is there some work on this i can read to try and understand how should i formulate my problem (costs, and so on)? **EDIT:** I have more details on the model. For each danger level there is a minimum number of firefighter that should be guaranteed, giving priority to the higher levels. Trucks have capacity and firefighters can only be allocated if there is a truck to take them to the fire. There's also a constraint saying that a fire can be abandoned if one with 2 or more levels above doesn't have the minimum number. Does this look like knapsack? **EDIT 2:** I am adding this because it might be of help to someone facing a similar problem. I opted to solve this using a tree. If you would like details feel free to contact and i can explain the algorithm in detail. Disclaimer: i am familiar with assignment algorithms, like the Hungarian, for instance, and what i am looking here is not help with the algorith per se but with the formulation."}
{"_id": "188107", "title": "Why do some websites include the \"page name\" in the URL?", "text": "I'm not a web programmer at all so I really have no idea: You'll notice that websites like Stack Exchange have links like this:               http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188078/policy-and-practice-on-code-maintenance      As you can see, the link includes the \"page name\" ( _Policy and practice on code maintenance_ ). We know this is unnecessary, since I could just use               http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/188078      instead. Curiously, upon using this link, the site will replace it for the one with the page name. My question is: why do some websites put the page name in their links? What advantages or disadvantages come from that? The only advantage that comes to my mind is the fact that the link becomes more user friendly since it is easier to identify what the URL is about. But I wonder if there are more technical aspects behind this behavior."}
{"_id": "66672", "title": "what does \u201ctoolkit independent web framework\u201d mean?", "text": "Well .. I am new to web development and I want to know what does toolkit independent framework mean?"}
{"_id": "66673", "title": "Measuring the reliance of an enterprise upon software", "text": "In bidding a complex project for a client, I wanted a way to determine their reliance upon software. They have many people doing manual entry and Excel spreadsheets power many pieces as well as legacy code and some off the shlef solutions that do not interact in any way. Its one thing to say \"You need software to run your business\" but how do you create a measure of this to be able to say something like \"You are currently 68% reliant upon software\" its time to take it seriously before the expanding complexity costs more to maintain than to re-write?"}
{"_id": "156435", "title": "Is an API in C++ a better alternative to computing directly in SQL?", "text": "I need to perform large amounts of computations on data storerd in a busy Microsoft SQL server. Would it be faster if I retrieve the data from the server, perform the computations locally in C++, and possibly later update the tables on the server, all through an API? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "161749", "title": "How to manage/organise when you have to multi-task on multiple 1 man projects?", "text": "We are a team of developers working on multiple small projects - a developer could have 3 or more 1 man projects to work on and keep moving. It can feel like your time is pretty fragmented & interrupted moving between project to project. Sometimes frustrating, stressful & overwhelming. In an ideal world it wouldn't be this way but it appears to be very common. When you are in a setup where it can't be avoided, how do you make the best of it? I'm looking for ideas/tips/methods that will help increase productivity & reduce stress specifically in multi-tasking environments. DOs and DON'Ts etc. What boundaries, limits should be in place? Which development methodologies will & won't work? What do you know that does WORK? Is there any good way to organise this kind of environment to be maximum productive?"}
{"_id": "142334", "title": "Where does Objective-C fall in the language performance continuum?", "text": "There seems to be a lot of discussion of the various speed merits to C or C++ as compared to say Java or Python, but I rarely see Objective-C mentioned. Roughly where does it fall in terms of language performance?"}
{"_id": "161744", "title": "What Are Some Tips For Writing A Large Number of Unit Tests?", "text": "I've recently been tasked with testing some COM objects of the desktop app I work on. What this means in practice is writing a large number (>100) unit tests to test different but related methods and objects. While the unit tests themselves are fairly straight forward (usually one or two Assert()-type checks per test), I'm struggling to figure out the best way to write these tests in a coherent, organized manner. What I have found is that copy and Paste coding should be avoided. It creates more problems than it's worth, and it's even worse than copy-and-paste code in production code because test code has to be more frequently updated and modified. I'm leaning toward trying an OO-approach using but again, the sheer number makes even this approach daunting from an organizational standpoint due to concern with maintenance. It also doesn't help that the tests are currently written in C++, which adds some complexity with memory management issues. Any thoughts or suggestions?"}
{"_id": "147121", "title": "Internship vs Open Source in terms of experience", "text": "I'm currently a second year undergraduate Computer Science student. I'm having a hard time deciding to either apply for an internship or spend the summer back home, working on some fields I feel I haven't yet got a good grasp of (OOP, algorithms) + working on one or two open source projects I found really attractive. I don't really care about getting paid from doing the internship, I'm only looking for experience. I'll still do an internship next year since it's mandatory (University rules) and most probably the year after. What weighs more for an employer and what would benefit me most in the long run?"}
{"_id": "161970", "title": "Is defining a variable to name a method argument a good practice?", "text": "For the sake of readability I often find myself defining temporary variables while calling functions, such as the following code               var preventUndo = true;     doSomething(preventUndo);      The shorter version of this to this would be,               doSomething(true);      But when I come back to the code I often wonder what `true` refers to. Is there a convention for this kind of conundrum?"}
{"_id": "29507", "title": "Is the ASF going to continue supporting all their java projects in the future?", "text": "As you all know ASF quit the JCP and the things between them and Oracle are not going so smooth. Not only that, Oracle is cooking some enterprise level JVMs. With all of these happening, I think it proves that Java is moving to a more closed-source environment. I'm curious if this will affect all those apache projects built around Java, e.g. Tomcat, Ant, Maven, Derby, Jackrabbit, just to name a few. Will these projects be in danger of disappearing due to the conflicts revolving around Java? Why?"}
{"_id": "129325", "title": "How to find Sub-trees in non-binary tree", "text": "I have a non-binary tree.   I want to find all \"sub-trees\" that are connected to root. Sub-tree is a a link group of tree nodes. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aH7pw.png) every group is colored in it's own color. What would be be the best approach? Run recursion down and up for every node? The data structure of every treenode is a list of children, list of parents. (the type of children and parents are treenodes) **Clarification:** Group defined if there is a kind of \"closure\" between nodes where root itself is not part of the closure.   As you can see from the graph you can't travel from pink to other nodes (you CAN NOT use root).   From brown node you can travel to it's child so this form another group. Finally you can travel from any cyan node to other cyan nodes so the form another group"}
{"_id": "129327", "title": "How to keep a big and complex software product maintainable over the years?", "text": "I have been working as a software developer for many years now. It has been my experience that projects get more complex and unmaintainable as more developers get involved in the development of the product. It seems that software at a certain stage of development has the tendency to get \"hackier\" and \"hackier\" especially when none of the team members that defined the architecture work at the company any more. I find it frustrating that a developer who has to change something has a hard time getting the big picture of the architecture. Therefore, there is a tendency to fix problems or make changes in a way that works against the original architecture. The result is code that gets more and more complex and even harder to understand. Is there any helpful advice on how to keep source code really maintainable over the years?"}
{"_id": "226618", "title": "What is expected from a programmer as an intern?", "text": "I was hired as an intern at a company that mainly deals with civil and environmental engineering. I am their only programmer and the project they assigned me seems impossible for someone of my experience. I'm a 3rd year computer engineering major working on my B.S. My program is a tool that organizes tens of thousands of items and performs numerous calculations based on user specified constraints..all while displaying charts and graphs of the outcome of various scenarios in a user- friendly interface. I'm given 2-3 months to do all of this on my own. I've managed to make good progress but at the same time I'm terrified I cannot deliver to our clients in time and that I may be using terrible coding techniques that will result in bugs and errors as the tool becomes more complex. I'm told soon this program has to connect to a database and will be reused for other clients. Is this a likely job for not even an entry level developer? I feel like I'm given the job of senior level work but I have nobody to turn to and ask if I'm doing it right except the internet and I'm going crazy from the constant pressure to do all this correctly and on time. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "126311", "title": "are there any tools to convert general purpose XML to HTML?", "text": "I don't know how to say... The XIB is using xml to store the UIElement information, similar to .Net GUI. Is there any open source stuff also convert the xml file to a html layout?"}
{"_id": "126315", "title": "Do you work in teams? how do you split programming tasks? Is specialization a must?", "text": "I am currently a programmer specialized in javascript(mostly jquery) and css. In other words. My main work is always done on the client side. However, I do know basic stuff about mysql and PHP. Recently, a friend of mine who has very little knowledge of PHP (he is not a programmer but he wants to become one) told me that he would love to start a project together. I told him that I liked the project so we started splitting the \"tasks\". I thought it would be best if he specialized in database design & management (SQL) and also in PHP, so I would be strong 'on the client side' and he would be strong 'on the server side'. However, I have many concerns with this approach. What would you do? It is not like I want all the work for myself, because even though i have much more experience this guy has quite a lot of brains, and he will learn anything quite soon. That is why I thought he should learn SQL. How would you split the tasks? I am also afraid of the amount of work we will have since this project uses AJAX very much. Any help or advise is very welcome."}
{"_id": "85573", "title": "What are some good questions (and good/bad answers) to ask at an interview to gauge the competency of the company/team?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What questions do you ask about a company before deciding to work there? I'm already familiar with the Joel Test, but it's been my experience that some of the questions there have the answers \"massaged\" to make the company seem better than it is. I've had several jobs in the past that, for instance, claimed they had a QA process and did unit testing, and what they really meant is \"The programmers test the app, and test with the debugger and via trial- and-error.\"; they said they used SVN but they just lumped everything into one giant repository and had no concept of branching/merging or anything more complicated than updating and committing; said they can build in one step and what they really mean is it's \"one step\" to copy dozens of files by hand from the programmer's PC to the live server. How do you go about properly gauging a company's environment to make sure that it's a well-evolved company and not stuck on doing things a certain way because they've done it for years and they're ignorant of change? You can almost never ask to see their source code, so you're stuck trying to figure out if the interviewer's answer is accurate or BS to make the company seem good. Besides the Joel Test what are some other good questions to get the proper feel for a company, and more importantly what are some good and bad answers that could indicate a good or bad company? I mean something like (take at face value, please, it's all I could think of at short notice): _Question:_ How does the software team apply the SOLID principles and Inversion of Control to their code? _Good Answer:_ We adhere to SOLID wherever possible; we use TDD so it kind of forces us to write abstract, testable code. We use Ninject for our IoC container because it's fairly easy to configure - it was that or StructureMap but I find Ninject a bit more intuitive, and who doesn't like ninjas? You're not a pirate, are you? _Bad Answer:_ Our code is pretty secure, yeah. And what's this Inversion of Control thing? I've never heard of it before. You see what I did there. The \"good\" answer uses facts to back it up and has a bit of \"in crowd\" humor; the bad answer shows complete ignorance of the question - not necessarily a bad thing if you are interviewing for a manger/director position, but a terrible answer and a huge red flag if you're interviewing as a developer and talking to a senior developer or manager! My biggest problem at the moment is being able to take a generic response and gauge whether it's the good or bad answer; more often than not it's the bad kind and I find myself frustrated almost from day one at the new job. I suppose I could name drop if I ask about specific things (e.g. \"Do you write unit tests?\" and if the answer is yes, ask if they use NUnit, MbUnit or something else; if they mention data access ask if they use a clean ORM like NHibernate or something more coupled like EF or Linq) but is there another way short of being resolute to actually call the interview on things (which will almost certainly result in not getting the job, but if they are skirting the question it's probably not a job I want)."}
{"_id": "23760", "title": "Languages on a resume: Is it better to put \"C/C++\" or \"C, C++\"?", "text": "I'm graduating in a couple of weeks, and my resume (as expected) lists the languages that I've had experience with. Previously I've put **\"C/C++\"** , however back then I didn't have _that_ much experience with these two languages as I do now. Now that I've formally learned these two languages, it has become evident to me (and anyone who really knows these languages) that they are similar, and completely disimilar at the same time. Sure, most C code is compilable C++ code, but syntax and incorporation of library functions is pretty much where these similarities end. In most non-trivial problems, chances are that the desirable C++ solution will be different from the desirable C solution.   ### My question:    Will recruiters take note or care about whether you put **\"C/C++\"** as opposed to **\"C, C++\"**? Will they assume a lack of knowledge of the workings of either because of the inclusion of the first form, or perhaps see the inclusion of the second form as a potential \"resume beefer\" (listing them as 2 languages, instead of \"one\")? Furthermore, for jobs that you've applied to that were particularly interested in these two langauges, did the interview process include questions about the differences between C programming and C++ programming (so, about actual programming techniques, not only the extra paradigms in the latter)?"}
{"_id": "150870", "title": "Is it a good pattern that no objects should know more than what it needs to know?", "text": "I am implementing a controller class to manage a view. I have a file uploader class, Grabber, which could communicate in one of 2 ways: 1) Offer some kind of notification event to the controller on upload start and finish 2) Provide a property on Grabber that indicates true or false if upload has completed I am concerned that with option 2) I am introducing a dependency between the controller and the Grabber. What is the better design here?"}
{"_id": "253129", "title": "If OWIN is used on PC and Mac (Mono), then what is the abstraction for claims and authentication?", "text": "If the PC implementation of OWIN is Katana, and OWIN doesn't define authentication abstractions, (or authorizations)* then:   * What is the abstraction for Authentication (cookies, forms, OAuth, SAML, etc)? *This is from the MSFT Jabbr Room on SignalR and OWIN"}
{"_id": "253128", "title": "Level order sorted binary tree from a binary tree", "text": "Lets suppose we have a binary tree . Tree node structure is as               struct node      {        int val ;        struct node *left , *right ;     }      Now we have to sort the tree in level order manner . For example lets suppose we have original tree like this               root = 6     root->left = 1      root->right = 9     root->left->left = 8     root->right->right = 2      Then after applying level order sorting , our tree will be               root = 1     root->left = 2     root->right = 6     root->left->left = 8     root->right->right = 9      One way of doing this problem is just take all the values in a array and apply any of the standard sorting algorithm and then put back the values in tree in level order traversal manner. This solution is not efficient in term of space and time both. What algorithm can I use to decrease operations and memory usage from my proposed plan? Is there a more efficient algorithm to do this without the use of a sorted array? **Level order sorting :**   Level order sorting means if you do level order traversal of the tree then you should get a sorted non-decreasing sequence . **Constraint :**   Shape of the tree should not alter that is if in original tree left child of the root does not have right child (as in my example) then after sorting too, it should not has right child ."}
{"_id": "27078", "title": "What is the best way to introduce software created by you?", "text": "What is the best way to introduce applications that programmers develop to the world? For mobile apps you have the different marketplaces, but what about non-mobile applications? These could be web apps or desktop apps. Introduce = distribution to the end users as well as popularize amongst the software development community. Obviously the software that is being released would have a specific audience in mind (i.e. a community based web site or user based application versus an tool that developers could use)."}
{"_id": "253123", "title": "Are promises suitable for Model Controller communication?", "text": "I have an Express app built with the Yeoman Angular fullstack generator to build an API to send JSON to Angular. I'm trying to work out the best way to pass back information from my model to my controller, further processing may occur in the controller. I'm currently using promises. I feel uncomfortable about my model returning a promise to the controller. Should I? Currently my Model looks like this:               function returnCountries(lim, offset) {         var promise = new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {             //SQL is just an example             connection.query('SELECT * FROM countries LIMIT 1', function(err, result) {                 return resolve(result);             });         })         return promise     }          function returnCountry(countryID) {       //not yet implemented     }     module.exports = {         \"returnCountries\": returnCountries,         \"returnCountry\": returnCountry     }      And controller looks like this:               var Country = require('./country.model');          // Get list of countries     exports.index = function(req, res) {           Country.returnCountries().then(function(countries){                   return res.json(200, countries);     })"}
{"_id": "253122", "title": "Has anyone nailed dependency management?", "text": "I've used various dependency management tools for installing software: homebrew, cabal, rubygems, etc. Invariably, despite someone's simple instructions for installing their package, there are times when dependencies don't get worked out by the package manager and the installation fails. This is more common than it ought be. And frustrating! You end up trying to troubleshoot the installation process which I feel is something users (even if they are developers) shouldn't have to do. This is one reason people knock Linux (which I love!) as compared to Windows: installations can be associated with complications. Windows users aren't tasked with compiling source. Is someone aware of a dependency management tool (or dependency management strategies) that has been especially successful at eliminating the bumps associated with installs? Clearly some package managers must be better than others. Or does this remain an unsolved problem?"}
{"_id": "253126", "title": "Is there anything groundbreaking about NoSQL?", "text": "I am a very solid Relational Database guy and understand all the way to 3rd normal form, appreciate the algebraic set theory roots of SQL, and can probably relationalize a broken heart (or not). I haven't figured out a relational database structure FOR date nights with my wife, but I HAVE thought about relational database projects ON date nights with my wife.. Now I'm hearing about NoSQL, and researching it. Cutting to the chase, is there anything about NoSQL that is ground breaking, mathematically novel, or a \"hey you don't even really need to organize your data relationally, this is so much easier\" type of approach? Is NoSQL like a super shell to the data structure? In my mind, data must ultimately have structure to be retrieved and the retrieval must be defined in a language of some sort."}
{"_id": "253124", "title": "Traits, Inheritance and Interfaces in Groovy, when to use them?", "text": "I'm learning groovy and I've just learned about the new feature added in 2.3, which is the addition of _Traits_. Now to me it seems like Traits allow you to do basically everything a super-class and an Interface can do. Does the addition of Traits to Groovy make Inheritance and Interfaces obsolete? And if not, then what is the best time to use each of these mechanisms?"}
{"_id": "92158", "title": "Are there any limitations of an idealistic HTML5 web application", "text": "Let's assume the following two assumptions are true.   * Your entire userbase has broadband access _everywhere_   * There is an imaginary browser X that implements the entire draft specification of the HTML5 and WHATWG groups, consistently and all users use browser X. What are the _intrinsic_ limitations of a commercial public HTML5 web application that we need commercial public desktop applications for? I'm interested in the limitations of plugin-less web applications that don't rely on Flash/Java/SilverLight/etc bridges for extra features nor rely on browser plugins for extra features. **Possible Limitations that don't apply:**   * Databases? We have WebSQL and indexedDB.   * File IO? We have the HTML5 File API which does both reading and writing.   * Speed? With the recent JavaScript engine race, the browser is no longer slow. Native C++ is only 3 times faster then chrome's V8 engine.   * Development Tools? The web has matured and there is a whole range of tools available which are too numerous to list.   * Closed Source? Yes, all the code is open source. This is a double-edged sword and there are numerous opinions on use of closed source or open source code. I personally believe the advantages of open source code outweigh the disadvantages.   * JavaScript/HTML5? Arguments along the likes of \"I personally think HTML5 and EcmaScript are horrible development platforms\" do not count. **Known Limitations:**   * Real time / security (top secret) critical code does not belong on the web nor can it. It needs to be written in a low level, highly controllable language like C or C++.   * Any tool that needs to interact with a foreign 3rd party piece of hardware attached to your computer will have a difficult time talking to your web application.  There is also a whole suite of programs that do not belong on the web. Operation systems, drivers, server software, low level APIs. I'm aware of that but I don't classify them as \"commercial public\" applications, these are the type of software that can be pre-installed on computers. As an aside, I know the two assumptions are horribly unrealistic, but we might achieve them in 5/10/20/30 years. I'm interested in the type of applications and the features of the applications that make them _completely incompatible_ with the web. **Motivation:**   * Google applications   * Microsoft Office365   * Web application list   * Adobe Aviary **The point:** Given the set of problems where a desktop application is a valid solution.   * Why is a web application not a valid solution?   * How do I identify whether or not I can use a web application as a solution. I've tried to remove the main difficulties with web applications (internet connection and browser support) by asserting they don't exist. As a further aside, HTML5 offline applications and Modernizr are on track to solving both those issues. What are the other difficulties with web application development?"}
{"_id": "59254", "title": "How is performance testing integrated into your product lifecycle?", "text": "Do you do any performance testing in any repeatable and automated way? Do you trigger it as a part of CI builds? What tools do you use? How do you spot changes in trends? I'm looking for how-tos and description of working set-ups for end-to-end automated performance testing approaches."}
{"_id": "145522", "title": "For what reasons should I keep \"using\" section clean in C#?", "text": "Once when I was refactoring my code, I went up the IDE to the **using** section of my C# class, and cleaned _unused namespaces_ and _duplicate namespaces_ , and sorted them all. My pair (pair programming) asked me the reason. I had no idea why I did that. I did it out of my habit to keep all of my code clean and tidy. I mean, I told him that having a cleaner code is a good idea in general, but of course that reason was not a good justification, as I won't even bother to spend my time in the **using** section of any C# code page. Since many times you move a class or an enum (or a type in general) from one namespace to another namespace, and this adds new using statements to your code (either manually by going up the code window and writing the using statement yourself, or through the editor using Alt+Ctrl+F10 combination), and since these new **using statements** would be added to the end of **using section** , which makes them not sorted alphabetically, and since compiler never complaints about any of these problems, why should we care to make this section clean and tidy? What reasons might we have?"}
{"_id": "145524", "title": "What is your approach to multi-paradigm programming?", "text": "I have been learning some Ruby recently and I had the following experience. I had written a small tool of about 200 lines of code and, as an inexperienced Ruby programmer, I had used several loops to build arrays from other arrays. E.g.               gs = ... # Some array of input data.     l  = gs.size     i  = 0     r  = Array.new     while (i < l) do       if (cond(gs[i]))         r.push(gs[i])       end       i = i + 1     end          # r contains the result now.      Then I discovered that I can do it in a functional style:               gs = ... # Some array     r  = gs.select { |g| cond(g) }          # r contains the result now.      So I immediately replaced most of my loops in the code with constructs like each, select, take_while, drop_while, and so on. I have decided to use a functional style in Ruby whenever possible and try to avoid an imperative style. As another example, in C++ I tend to use classes and methods everywhere and use functions only for small utility tasks that are private to the implementation of some class. So I tend to think object-oriented when working in C++ and avoid a procedural style almost completely. More in general, when working on a given project in a given language, I tend to pick one paradigm and stick to it throughout the project: I find this makes my code more uniform, easier to read and to debug, which, IMO, is very important, especially for production code. Yet, I often think that maybe I should explore more and try out different possibilities offered by a language, e.g. use different paradigms and try out different solutions. For me this involves some overhead both while coding (should I make it procedural or object-oriented? imperative or functional?) and when reviewing or debugging code (what did I want to do here?) because of the increased complexity. So my question is: do you also tend to select a preferred programming paradigm when coding and stick to it, or do you tend to explore more and mix different paradigms? If you mix different paradigms, do you have the feeling that there is some overhead in terms of how fast you can write and debug code (added complexity, switching between different mindsets) or is it just a matter of learning how to do it and then you can even be more productive? Or do you mix different paradigms in a more structured way, e.g. you apply each paradigm to a specific class of problems (e.g. functional for queries, object-oriented for architectural aspects, and so on)?"}
{"_id": "221265", "title": "Are all scripting languages dynamically typed?", "text": "Are all scripting languages dynamically typed? I am using TCL. It is a scripting language and it does not enforce or allow type delaration of variables. It is instead a dynamically-typed language with ducktyping. The type of a variable is assumed by the interpreter according to the value assigned to it. I would really like to know is there are scripting languages that are strictly/strongly typed."}
{"_id": "50764", "title": "Help me choose an Open-Source license", "text": "So I've done lots of open-source work. I have released many projects, most of which have fallen under GPL, LGPL, or BSD licensing. Now I have a new project (an implementation library), and I can't find a license that meets my needs (although I believe one may exist, hence this question). This is the list of things I'm looking for in the license.   1. Appropriate credit given for ALL usage or derivative works.   2. No warranty expressed or implied.   3. The library may be freely used in ANY other open-source/free-software product (regardless of license, GPL, BSD, EPL, etc).   4. The library may be used in closed-source/commercial products ONLY WITH WRITTEN PERMISSION. GPL - Useless to me, obviously, as it completely precludes any and all closed- source use, violating requirement (4). BSD/LGPL/MIT - Won't work, because they wouldn't require closed-source developers to get my permission, violating requirement (4). If it wasn't for that, BSD (FreeBSD in particular) would look like a good choice here. EPL/MPL - Won't work either, as the code couldn't be combined with GPL-code, therefore violating requirement (3). Also I'm pretty sure they allow commercial works without asking permission, so they don't meet (4) either. Dual-licensing is an option, but in that case, what combination would hold to all four requirements? Basically, I want BSD minus the commercial use, plus an option to use in commercial/closed-source as long as the developer has my written permission. EDIT: At the moment, thinking something like multiple-licensing under GPL/LGPL plus something else for commercial?"}
{"_id": "221260", "title": "How to alter the code at runtime in an interpreter?", "text": "While reading the difference between Compiler and interpreter , I found the following differences fromt he internet. Advantages of using compiler:   * Since compiler converts the program to native code of the target machine (object code), faster performance can be expected.   * There is a scope for code optimisation.  Advantages of using interpreter:   * Process of execution can be done in a single stage. There is no need of a compilation stage.   * Alteration of codes possible during runtime.   * Really useful for debugging the codes (because source code execution can be analyzed in an IDE)   * Facilitates interactive code development. In case of interpreter, stated as interpreter \"there is a possibility of alter the code\" and In case of compiler \"code optimization will be there\" Can anyone explain these 2 points ?"}
{"_id": "35020", "title": "Eclipse vs. Aptana", "text": "I know that Eclipse is a universal IDE and variety of plugins are available to scale it. What is the difference between: The original Eclipse IDE, Aptana and NetBeans. I looked into Wikipedia and came to know that the latter two originate from the main Eclipse. For Aptana specially, what was the need to reproduce a new variant that resembles too much with its base IDE? If your preferred choice is Eclipse itself, what makes it unique as compared to the other two."}
{"_id": "214146", "title": "How do I include Implementation and Usage Documentation in one file", "text": "There are two types of documentation. One type, the **Implementation Documentation** , contains information about specific implementation of a construct (eg. Class, Method, etc.). It is targeted to the future me, maintainer, debugger and so on. And there is **Usage Documentation** , containing information how to use a provided api. It does not contain information about specific implementation and is targeted to users of the api. How do I include both of them in one file? (Or do I include both of them in one file? And if not, what type belongs into the source file?) Are there special techniques, using java-doc and/or best practices?"}
{"_id": "115972", "title": "What career opportunities exist for developers with a degree in computer science?", "text": "I have an upcoming speaking engagement at a local University and will be address students in a 102 computer science course. Being more of an introductory course, there will be comp sci majors, along with some business/comp sci hybrid majors, as well as Math and Physics majors. It is one of those 'see someone from the real world with your degree' type things. The professor's requested topic is what career opportunities does a student have when they have some programming courses under their belt. Now, my degree was a B.S. in Comp Sci and my entire experience (5 years out of school) has been in what you would generically label the 'business world' (first job was for a consulting firm, my current job is for a company in distribution). I was hoping to get outside opinions so that I'm not just pulling from my own experience for these college students. What opportunities exist for students that have some degree and ability to program/develop software outside of the business world? (ie. research and grant type work, military/government, etc.) How can the skills learned in programming courses help you beyond developing software? (Being able to better communicate with an I.T. staff is something I thought of) Any other benefits you can think of would be appreciated! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "196158", "title": "Type parameterized methods to avoid casting", "text": "In a library I am developing I have a factory method that looks a bit like:               public <T> T instantiate(Type targetType) {         return ...;     }      I am using a type parameterized method to avoid that users of my library have to cast every time they invoke it (that would be the case if I would have chosen to return `Object`). Is there any reason this is **not** a good design choice ?. I do not like that the programmer can invoke my method like:               String s = instantiate(Integer.class);      Which is clearly wrong. Unfortunately, the method requires a type and not a class, otherwise I could have written something like:               public <T> T instantiate(Class<T> targetClass) {         return ...;     }"}
{"_id": "196159", "title": "Saving multiple copies of a single image at different sizes", "text": "I'm building a file storage programme that will also display images in photo galleries to users who upload them. I was wondering if anybody could help me out. My plan was if an image was wider than 500px then I would resize it to 500px (gallery and mobile use) width and 250px (thumbnail use) width I have no serious experience with this so I was wondering if anybody could help me. How many different versions of a single image should I store and at what sizes. Thanks"}
{"_id": "189274", "title": "Is imposing the same code format for all developers a good idea?", "text": "We are considering to impose a single standard code format in our project (auto format with save actions in Eclipse). The reason is that currently there is a big difference in the code formats used by several (>10) developers which makes it harder for one developer to work on the code of another developer. The same Java file sometimes uses 3 different formats. So I believe the advantage is clear (readability => productivity) but would it be a good idea to impose this? And if not, why? **UPDATE**   We all use Eclipse and everyone is aware of the plan. There already is a code format used by most but it is not enforced since some prefer to stick to their own code format. Because of the above reasons some would prefer to enforce it."}
{"_id": "115979", "title": "When you should and should not use the 'new' keyword?", "text": "I watched a Google Tech Talk presentation on Unit Testing, given by Misko Hevery, and he said to avoid using the `new` keyword in business logic code. I wrote a program, and I did end up using the `new` keyword here and there, but they were mostly for instantiating objects that hold data (ie, they didn't have any functions or methods). I'm wondering, did I do something wrong when I used the new keyword for my program. And where can we break that 'rule'?"}
{"_id": "21735", "title": "External framework to fix code growth problems", "text": "I'm currently working on a project, and there are some \"code growth\" problems, that need a solution for. The deadline is not very far, and it would be advisable to stay within allocated time-frame. Still, the code needs some restructuring, and here lies the question. Should we try to use a new framework to fix the current problem, or not. My colleague is very open towards external frameworks and offers to restructure the code by finding an existing library something along the lines of WTL/boost/TinyXML/ATL. I, on the other hand, am very cautions concerning new frameworks for existing code bases. The language is C++, and I have a fair amount of experience where libraries like MFC backfire with a huge flamethrower. I am not saying my way is the right one, as I guess the truth is somewhere between, but I need to decide how to proceed. The deadline is pretty close and the changes would touch a large part of the code-base, app logic layer. Restructuring the existing code base would require some peaceful thinking and some extra coding. But the code is not TDWTF kind, rather it has grown past the original requirements and needs new clothes. The app is heavily asynchronous, and uses multiple threads, so it's not the trivial kind. Can anyone tell me what is the general rule when you have to decide whether to use the premade wheel vs. reinventing a new one? What would be the acceptance criteria for new code?"}
{"_id": "196151", "title": "What guidelines should I follow while designing a library?", "text": "I am working on a Arduino project using the Uno. The project contains a significant amount of code. I would like to create a library and I may even share it later on. What guidelines should I follow while designing the library?"}
{"_id": "189272", "title": ".Net developer trying to learn ruby on rails", "text": "I am a .NET developer and I just had the chance to play with Ruby on Rails this weekend. In .NET we separate layers of the application by creating separate class library projects. From the design pattern standpoint, do we have to do that in Rails too or is it just one whole project with everything in it?"}
{"_id": "107946", "title": "Job market-wise, are more and more companies moving to NoSQL?", "text": "I know NoSQL isn't nearly as mature, but it's been about a year or so since I've kept up with anything recent. Is it still \"the future\", are companies moving towards this, or are they still stuck in relational land? Obviously each has it's pro's and con's, and a lot of companies software is built around the traditional RDMS, but is the general direction moving towards a NoSQL solution? Also what about Jobs? I have experience with C++/Java and have always been interested in databases, I only graduated about 9 months ago with my B.S. in Comp Science, and it's something I'd like to pursue (however I'm only knowledgeable on traditional RDMS). What would be the wisest thing for me to concentrate on at this point?"}
{"_id": "119626", "title": "Suggestions for getting an open source electron beam tracking code going", "text": "I work in the field of accelerator physics and synchrotron radiation. High energy electrons circulating in large rings of magnets produce x-rays that are used for a variety of different kinds of science. Running and improving these facilities requires controlling and modelling the electron beam as it circulates in the ring. A code to model this basically requires trackers to follow the electrons through the elements (something called a symplectic integrator), and then the computation of different parameters associated with this motion. The problem with these codes is that every facility has there own (maybe 4-5 different codes, some with multiple versions). In principle the code is not so complex. And as a modelling project, one might think it has some general interest. Who doesn't want to be able to create a track in space out of magnets and watch the electrons circulate? There is a Matlab based code to do this called Accelerator Toolbox, but the creator of the code is no longer in the field. I put the code in Sourceforge under the name atcollab. The basic resource is a set of symplectic integrators written in C. These are then compiled into mex code and interfaced via Matlab. It has been useful to put the code on Sourceforge in order to exchange code, but the community of users is quite small and most are too busy to put that much time into collaboration. So in terms of really improving the code, I don't think it has been so successful. Any piece of this picture could be recreated without that much difficulty, but overall it is a bit complex, and because each lab has their own installation with lots of added-on code and locally developed tools, people find it hard to really work together and share code. Somehow I think we need to involve a wider community in our development, or just use some standard tools. But for that, I suppose it needs to be of some general interest. I think symplectic integrators may have some general interest. And the part about a plug-in architecture to build up the ring ought to fit other patterns. Or the other option is to just accept that this is not a problem of general interest, and work harder within our small community. Suggestions or anecdotes of analogous experience would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "119625", "title": "Real performance of node.js", "text": "I've got a question concerning node.js performance. There is quite lot of \"benchmarks\" and a lot of fuss about great performance of node.js. But how does it stand in real world? Not just process empty request at high speed. If someone could try to compare this scenario: Java (or equivalent) server running an application with complex business logic between receiving request and sending response. How would node.js deal with it? If there was need for a lot of JavaScript processing on server side, is node.js really so fast that it can execute JavaScript, and stand a chance against more heavyveight competitors?"}
{"_id": "145299", "title": "Why the static data members have to be defined outside the class separately in C++ (unlike Java)?", "text": "class A {       static int foo () {} // ok       static int x; // <--- needed to be defined separately in .cpp file     };      I don't see a need of having `A::x` defined separately in a .cpp file (or same file for templates). Why can't be `A::x` declared and defined at the same time? Has it been forbidden for historical reasons? My main question is, will it affect any functionality if `static` data members were declared/defined at the same time (same as **Java** ) ?"}
{"_id": "116076", "title": "Why use phpunit when traditional manual testing can be used", "text": "When I make a web app I test my work on the browser to see if I receive any errors and fix them. I have made complex applications and testing this way has been easy and fast. I have watched many videos on youtube regarding phpunit and cannot find a purpose for it. Why is this library useful? Is phpunit more for php framworks like cakephp or zend? I dont use any framework just core php. Would or can phpunit be useful for me? If yes, how? There is also xdebug but I'm not sure if it relates."}
{"_id": "145294", "title": "Trac/SVN to DVCS Migration", "text": "The project I'm currently working on is using Trac, with SVN integration. It's worked great until now. Now, however, we've taken on some additional developers and we're running into issues with branching and merging. Because of this, I think a move to a distributed version control system is in order. The problem is that Trac is very closely integrated with the SVN repository. We have tight integration between the tickets and the revision numbers of code changes corresponding to those tickets. In addition we have a support wiki that has a lot of data that helps the tech. support team. Is there a way we can migrate to git or mercurial without losing the benefits of Trac? I've looked at the git plugin for Trac, and I'm unsure of how well it works. Has anyone here used it with a project that's been migrated from SVN? **EDIT:** I should note that the most important priority for us is maintaining the links between Trac tickets and the corresponding changesets in SVN. That's a tool that we use every day, and it provides an easy way to jump to code changes when reviewing tickets. Wiki migration would be nice to have, but if it's not possible, we can continue to run the old system whilst we write some kind of a one-off script to migrate the content."}
{"_id": "127044", "title": "I need some counter-points to counter the argument of why NOT to use M-V-P", "text": "I whipped up a demo on Friday before the holiday weekend of using the Model- View-Presenter pattern (the \"Passive View\" version, I believe) that I want to show to my co-workers this week as an example of how to architect our WebForms application moving forward and get maintainable, clean code. We currently keep almost all logic outside of some data access routines in the code-behind files. I know immediately one of the points raised will be that it's _faster/easier to just use code-behind_ rather than create a separate class library for the views and presenters, and having to create a separate view per page (that at least can get hairy as we have well over a hundred pages, although at this point I'm talking about future development and not retrofitting the rest of the code). The argument will be that it's much faster to get a task done by doing something like this:               protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         DataSet ds = Customer.Get(Request.QueryString[\"custid\"]);         if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0)         {            txtFirstName.Text = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][\"fname\"].ToString();            // other properties here..          }     }      than this:               // CustomerDetails.aspx     private CustomerDetailsPresenter _presenter;          protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         long customerId = Convert.ToInt64(Request.QueryString[\"custid\"]);         _presenter = new CustomerDetailsPresenter(this);         _presenter.Init(customerId);     }          // CustomerDetailsPresenter.cs     class CustomerDetailsPresenter      {         private ICustomerDetailsView _view;              // ctor here...              public void Init(long customerId);         {             // get customer somehow, via ORM or DataSet or whatever...             _view.FirstName = firstName; // some string, whether from dataset or ORM         }     }      What counter-arguments can I use to show the benefit of using the MVP pattern? Specifically ways it would **improve** the speed and efficiency of getting things done. Just saying \"it's cleaner\" or \"you can properly abstract the code\" isn't enough because code quality has never been a big issue, just speed (and now that mentality is biting us in the rear). **NOTE:** This is for new features to an existing brownfield/legacy application, not for a new site (I would chose MVC for a brand new site). New pages that have to interact with the application as a whole, radical changes to old pages, and the like is what we normally do and what I'm talking about using MVP for."}
{"_id": "55888", "title": "old KDE project", "text": "So I have this old C++, KDE project for QT 3.3.x. The IDE's version is 3.0.0-10, the one that comes with Linux RedHat 7.3. I'd want to get rid of the dependency to this environment, in other words I'd like to manage the project throught Makefiles. Alternatively, it would also be acceptable if I could port this KDE project to Eclipse. Has someone been successful in doing this?"}
{"_id": "253789", "title": "Data Access Objects old fashioned?", "text": "A couple of weeks ago I delivered some work for a university project. After a code review with some teachers I got some snarky remarks about the fact that I was (still) using Data Access Objects. The teacher in question who said this mentions the use of DAO's in his classes and always says something along the lines of \"Back then we always used DAO's\". He's a big fan of Object Relational Mapping, which I also think is a great tool. When I was talking about this with some of my fellow students, they also mentioned that they prefer the use of ORM, which I can understand. It did make me wonder though, is using DAO's really so old fashioned? I know that at my work DAO's are still being used, but this is due to the fact that some of the code is rather old and therefor can't be coupled with ORM. We also do use ORM at my work. Trying to find some more information on Google or Stack Exchange sites didn't really enlighten me. Should I step away from the use of DAO's and only start implementing ORM? I just feel that ORM's can be a bit overkill for some simple projects. I'd love to hear your opinions (or facts) about this."}
{"_id": "253788", "title": "When should a method of a class return the same instance after modifying itself?", "text": "I have a class that has three methods `A()`, `B()` and `C()`. Those methods modify the own instance. While the methods have to return an instance when the instance is a separate copy (just as `Clone()`), I got a free choice to return `void` or the same instance (`return this;`) when modifying the same instance in the method and not returning any other value. When deciding for returning the same modified instance, I can do neat method chains like `obj.A().B().C();`. Would this be the only reason for doing so? Is it even okay to modify the own instance and return it, too? Or should it only return a copy and leave the original object as before? Because when returning the same modified instance the user would maybe admit the returned value is a copy, otherwise it would not be returned? If it's okay, what's the best way to clarify such things on the method?"}
{"_id": "55883", "title": "Front end first or Back end first. Of the two which is a Good system design pratice?", "text": "I have a client right now requiring me to develop a school enrollment system. Now this is the first time im having this kind of challenge. Most of the past software that i created are not that complex. I know most all of you have created complex softwares, i just want your advise on this. Should i design first the front end or back end? thanks! Here's a conclusion of an article I found in the internet a while ago. Just whant to share http://www.skitoy.com/p/front-end-vs-back-end-developers-my-take/157 **Front-end vs. back-end developers (my take)** My personal take Again it\u2019s a matter of training, some broad stroke generalizations: **Front end developers**   * **Typically don\u2019t have a CS degree, or have a CS degree from a 3rd tier school.**   * Work in languages that similar to basic (see PHP is Basic)   * Have a visual skill in converting photoshop documents to CSS/HTML/etc.   * Have a high tolerance for iterative programming, due to type free languages **Back end developers**   * **Have a CS degree or lots of experience**   * Tend to me more systematic in their problem solving approach   * Don\u2019t mind spending days finding the one object that is leaking   * Try and build tools to solve problems"}
{"_id": "253782", "title": "Nicest way to map rgb colors from html to led", "text": "I have attached an rgb led to a color picker on a webpage and have hit the obvious problem that though the led is 8-bit like html the color rendition is very different so with the more subtle shades the led values for the color are wildly different to the html values. The brute-force method would be for me to have a lookup-table on the webserver to map the two sets of values but would ideally like to do it more elegantly Before I start listing all my 101 ideas for doing this I wondered if anyone else had come across the issue, the end-game would be to be able to abstract the color-rendition of different leds and make it available as a webservice (html value and device id in, led value out)"}
{"_id": "55884", "title": "Should Whitebox testers be involved in the software design process?", "text": "Should Whitebox testers be involved in the software design process and why?"}
{"_id": "227952", "title": "inheritance and static final variables", "text": "I'm a programing student. I've been having problem to organize Java classes that use inheritance and static final variables. Let say I have an abstract class named Form that has two children named Rectangle and Triangle. Those two children have a final static variable named NumberOfSides. Both children classes need identical getters for that variable.... Would it be possible to write that getter in the \"mother\" class? Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "22416", "title": "Is embedded programming closer to electrical engineering or software development?", "text": "I am being approached with a job for writing embedded C on micro controllers. At first I would have thought that embedding programming is too low on the software stack for me, but maybe I am thinking about it wrong. Normally I would have shrugged off an opportunity to write embedded code, as I don't consider myself an electrical engineer. Is this a bad assumption? Am I able to write interesting and useful software for embedded systems, or will I kick myself for dropping too low on the software stack? I went to school for computer science and really enjoyed writing a compiler, thinking about concurrent algorithms, designing data structures, and developing frameworks. However, I am currently employed as a web developer, which doesn't scream the interesting things I just described. (I currently deal with issues like: \"this check box needs to be 4 pixels to the left\" and \"this date is formatted wrong\".) I appreciate everyone's input. I know I have to make the decision for myself, I just would like some clarification on what it means to be a embedded programmer, and if it fits what I find to be interesting."}
{"_id": "22412", "title": "Working with fubar/refuctored code", "text": "I'm working with some code which was written by a contractor who left a year ago leaving a number of projects with buggy, disgustingly bad code. This is what I call cowboy PHP, say no more. Ideally I'd like to leave the project as is and never touch it again. Things break, requirements change and it needs to be maintained. Part A needs to be changed. There is a bug I cannot reproduce. Part A is connect to parts B D and E. This kind of work gives me a headache and makes me die a little inside. It kills my motivation and productivity. To be honest I'd say it's affecting my mental health. Perhaps being at the start of my career I'm being naive to think production code should be reasonably clean. I would like to hear from anyone else who has been in this situation before. What did you do to get out of it? I'm thinking long term I might have to find another job. **Edit** I've moved on from this company now, to a place where idiots are not employed. The code isn't perfect but it's at least manageable and peer reviewed. There are a lot of people in the comments below telling me that software is messy like this. Sure I don't agree with the way some programmers do things but this code was seriously mangled. The guy who wrote it tried to reinvent every wheel he could, and badly. He stopped getting work from us because of his bad code that nobody on the team could stand. If it were easy to refactor I would have. Eventually after many ' _just do this small 10minute change_ ' situations had ballooned into hours of lost time (regardless of who on the team was doing the work) my boss finally caved in it was rewritten."}
{"_id": "22411", "title": "Which one of the SOLID principles had the largest effect on your code?", "text": "Which if the SOLID principles introduced by \"Uncle Bob\" Martin had the largest effect on your day to day coding? Please give details!"}
{"_id": "250479", "title": "If the UI layer depends on the Application layer. Who starts the application/process?", "text": "This is related to DDD for a desktop application in c#...with 4 layers ui/application/domain/infrastructure. Actually 3 desktop applications sharing part of the domain and part of the infrastructure. In an effort to avoid developers crossing the wrong layers and using the wrong classes, I separated the layer in assemblies and set the reference/dependencies in accordance. If the infrastructure is a dll/assembly and the domain another dll/assembly and the application is an exe/assembly and the ui is a dll/assembly... then the project cannot the build. Who's gonna load the the ui.dll? Am I missing something here? The only solution i have come with is creating a fifth layer called Program. That layer will have the entry point of the program and will wire everything together (I'm using DI with Unity ) Any idea?"}
{"_id": "250473", "title": "Checking that a function is only run from __main__ in Python", "text": "I often end up with code files that can either be imported or run as `__main__`. It's easy to handle this by checking if `__name__ == '__main__'`. But sometimes if my main function gets too big I split out pieces of it into other functions, expecting that they'll only be called when `__name__ == '__main__'`. Sometimes I enforce this condition by calling the following `assert_main` function:               def assert_main():         \"Use this in a module you only expect to get run as __main__, not imported\"         mod = sys._getframe(1).f_globals[\"__name__\"]         if \"__main__\" != mod:             raise Exception(\"Module {} is not main\".format(mod))      Other options would include making `assert_main` into a decorator or putting the definitions of the functions in question inside of `if __name__ == '__main__'` block. And there may well be other options I haven't thought of. What is the idiomatically correct thing to do?"}
{"_id": "26301", "title": "Would you use C, today, for a software project?", "text": "If yes, where and why would you use it? If no, please provide an explanation to why C is not acceptable to you."}
{"_id": "190875", "title": "What's the practical difference between the styles of dependency injection?", "text": "I'm new to dependency injection and I have a few questions about which style I shouldI use in my applications. I've just read _Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern_ by Martin Fowler, but I can't get the practical difference between constructor, setter and interface injection. It seems to me that the reasons for using one over the other are just a matter of code cleaning and/or clarity. What is the difference? Are there any strong advantages or disadvantages for using one over the other, or is it just what I've stated before? In my opinion, _constructor injection_ is the most intuitive of all, as well as _interface injection_ is the least. In the other hand, _setter injection_ is a middle term, but, are you supposed to be able to change the instance of the dependency object you initially injected? Does this style of injection guarantees that the object which needs the dependency will always have it injected? I believe not, but please correct me if I'm wrong."}
{"_id": "190876", "title": "I don't understand value iteration", "text": "In class I am learning about value iteration and markov decision problems, we are doing through the UC Berkley pac-man project, so I am trying to write the value iterator for it and as I understand it, value iteration is that for each iteration you are visiting every state, and then tracking to a terminal state to get its value. I have a feeling I am not right, because when I try that in python I get a recursive depth exceed. So I return to the pseudo-code, and there is a `Vk[s]` and `Vk-1[s']`, which I had thought to mean value of state, and value of `newState`, but I must be missing something. So what is the significance of the `k` and `k-1`? My Code:                def val(i, state):             if mdp.isTerminal(state) or i == 0:                 return 0.0             actionCost = {}             for action in mdp.getPossibleActions(state):                 actionCost[action] = 0                 for (nextState, probability) in mdp.getTransitionStatesAndProbs(state, action):                     reward = mdp.getReward(state, action, nextState)                     actionCost[action] += probability * reward + discount * val(i - 1, nextState)                     return actionCost[max(actionCost, key=actionCost.get)]              for i in range(iterations):             for state in mdp.getStates():                   self.values[state] = val(i, state)      Pseudo Code:               k \u21900      repeat           k \u2190k+1            for each state s do                Vk[s] = maxa \u2211s' P(s'|s,a) (R(s,a,s')+ \u03b3Vk-1[s'])      until \u2200s |Vk[s]-Vk-1[s]| < \u03b8"}
{"_id": "160591", "title": "Multiple javaScript libraries | Emerging standards - compare to C++", "text": "It seems like there are many different styles to write JavaScript, in fact I've heard that JavaScript is an expressive language. But the point of code is functionality (function) not expression (form). Is there a library that will be adopted into the ECMA standard the way the STL and Boost Library were adopted in to the C++ standard?"}
{"_id": "160590", "title": "Converting data-structure in Perl", "text": "A function produces this hash of arrays:               'KEYNAME1' => ARRAY(0x1edeeb0)        0  'val11'        1  'val12'        2  'val13'     'KEYNAME2' => ARRAY(0x1efacb8)        0  'val21'        1  'val22'        2  'val23'      Another function requires an array of hashes containing arrays:               0  HASH(0x1f6df98)        'KEYNAME1' => ARRAY(0x1f776b0)           0  'val11'           1  'val12'           2  'val13'     1  HASH(0x1f6dfe0)        'KEYNAME2' => ARRAY(0x1f6df80)           0  'val21'           1  'val22'           2  'val23'      This code converts the first to the second, but is there an easier way?"}
{"_id": "160593", "title": "Why put a simple query into a stored procedure in a web service?", "text": "I'm working as a junior programmer, and the senior programmer above me has instructed me to follow a certain unofficial policy for constructing new queries on our web development projects. Generally, we are developing an intranet site for some client, and they always have databases. He wants me to have a **class** containing a method for each query that the website will perform. This class calls web methods in a web service, hosted on the same machine. Those web methods use ADO to run stored procedures that perform simple queries. Sometimes the queries need parameters and sometimes they don't. When I say simple queries, I mean simple...`select * from table where column=@parameter` I feel like there are several extra steps here, and I'm hoping someone can explain why he might want this as our standard procedure for using databases in web apps. He says each step adds a layer of security. I'm genuinely interested in how all this provides security. Is all this necessary? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "249862", "title": "Deleting dynamic elements from a database", "text": "I have a select dropdown, with '+' and '-' buttons that add and remove items before submission. I would like to be able to remove the elements with the '-' button after they have been added to the database. I'm not sure how to go about doing this, other than removing prior entries and rewriting the options again. Ideally, it would be reusable and simple to figure for the other developer on the team, or anyone who may replace me down the line. Can someone point me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "137420", "title": "How to swap out a DB from MySQL to SQL Server in a multiple large projects?", "text": "Is there a sane way / best practices way to swap out a DB from MySQL to SQL Server in a multiple large projects? Some of the projects are ASP projects, some of them are windows services, some are standalone windows apps. I don't think any ORM is used. I think its just SQL statements all over the place."}
{"_id": "253878", "title": "Dependency injection in constructor, method or just use a static class instead?", "text": "What is the best between:               $dispatcher = new Dispatcher($request);     $dispatcher->dispatch();      and               $dispatcher = new Dispatcher();     $dispatcher->dispatch($request);      or even               Dispatcher::dispatch($request);      Knowing that only one method of this class uses the $request instance. I naturally tend to the last solution because the class have no other states, but by I feel that it may not be the best OOP solution."}
{"_id": "166297", "title": "What is 'work' in the Pomodoro Technique?", "text": "I have just started to use Pomodoro today and I am trying to work out what I should and should not do during my 25 minute work time. For my 25 minute work stint I started to write some code and realised that I had done something similar in a related project so I opened that solution to copy and paste that existing code. Question is, is this allowed? Also, if during my 25 minutes I realise that there is an important work- related email that I need to send can I do that or should I wait for the next 25 minutes or the break ? I am writing this question during my, now extended, 5 minute break. Is this work or is it a break? I really will appreciate some guidance as I want to use Pomodoro to focus better on my work. Another thing that happened to me was that a Adobe AIR update alert came up on my desktop during the 25 minutes. Should I ignore such things until the break? Sachin"}
{"_id": "166298", "title": "How do I tell my boss he made the wrong choice?", "text": "Recently, our biggest product failed majorly because we'd only used outsourced labor to do it, and they never tested anything, etc. Finally, our CEO decided that the US team should learn the code and fix it up. (Not a total rewrite, but lots of formatting/style changes, refactoring, etc). However, he knows next to nothing about programming (thankfully, he admits it). He had been grooming me to take on the project manager position, but I had to go back to college. Now he gave it to another programmer who is naive and inexperienced. I don't feel the naive programmer will do nearly as well. The CEO's reasoning is that the naive programmer can work full time and I can only do part time, so the less senior programmer could put more work into it. How can I convince him that 15 hours of my time is worth more than the other guy's 40?"}
{"_id": "21821", "title": "Should I continue learning a language if in the meanwhile I became interested in another language/platform?", "text": "I started learning Java a couple of months ago. I also wanted to become more exposed to linux so I installed ubuntu and started working with Java since then. In the meanwhile however I became more interested in C# and in learning the Windows platform. At this point I'm asking myself if I should stop learning Java and move to the .NET world. I don't hate or dislike Java by the way, I am just more curious about windows/.NET at this point in time. My question is, should I remain with Java or go with C#/.NET? What is your advice?"}
{"_id": "250783", "title": "Why a hashtable? Why not just a non-hashed associative array?", "text": "I've been learning about using a hashtable to efficiently check for items in a list without looping through the whole thing, but there's one thing that I don't get: Why hashed keys? It seems like:               var wordList = {        'aa'    : ['aa'],        'aah'   : ['aah'],        'ahhed' : ['aahed']     };      Would work just as well as:               var wordList = {        '/* hashed value of aa*/'    : ['aa'],        '/* hashed value of aah*/'   : ['aah'],        '/* hashed value of aahed*/' : ['aahed']     };      **What's the performance difference between looking up a hashed key and a simple name key?**"}
{"_id": "116995", "title": "What is the actual problem with a prototype based design?", "text": "I feel like anything that can be developed using OO/functional languages can be generally made 'better' using a prototype based language, because they appaer to have the best of them all: high order functions, flexibility to simulate any OO structure, productivity (low verbosity) and scalability because of concurrency. But it seems like they are avoided for the creation of executable applications and of bigger projects in general. Why that?"}
{"_id": "56282", "title": "Removing hard-coded values and defensive design vs YAGNI", "text": "First a bit of background. I'm coding a lookup from Age -> Rate. There are 7 age brackets so the lookup table is 3 columns (From|To|Rate) with 7 rows. The values rarely change - they are legislated rates (first and third columns) that have stayed the same for 3 years. I figured that the easiest way to store this table without hard-coding it is in the database in a global configuration table, as a single text value containing a CSV (so \"65,69,0.05,70,74,0.06\" is how the 65-69 and 70-74 tiers would be stored). Relatively easy to parse then use. Then I realised that to implement this I would have to create a new table, a repository to wrap around it, data layer tests for the repo, unit tests around the code that unflattens the CSV into the table, and tests around the lookup itself. The only benefit of all this work is avoiding hard-coding the lookup table. When talking to the users (who currently use the lookup table directly - by looking at a hard copy) the opinion is pretty much that \"the rates never change.\" Obviously that isn't actually correct - the rates were only created three years ago and in the past things that \"never change\" have had a habit of changing - so for me to defensively program this I definitely shouldn't store the lookup table in the application. Except when I think YAGNI. The feature I am implementing doesn't specify that the rates will change. If the rates do change, they will still change so rarely that maintenance isn't even a consideration, and the feature isn't actually critical enough that anything would be affected if there was a delay between the rate change and the updated application. I've pretty much decided that nothing of value will be lost if I hard-code the lookup, and I'm not too concerned about my approach to this particular feature. My question is, as a professional have I properly justified that decision? Hard-coding values is bad design, but going to the trouble of removing the values from the application seems to violate the YAGNI principle. EDIT To clarify the question, I'm not concerned about the actual implementation. I'm concerned that I can either do a quick, bad thing, and justify it by saying YAGNI, or I can take a more defensive, high-effort approach, that even in the best case ultimately has low benefits. As a professional programmer does my decision to implement a design that I know is flawed simply come down to a cost/benefit analysis? EDIT While all the answers were very interesting as I think this comes down to an individual's design choices, I think the best answers were @Corbin's and @E.Z. Hart's as they bring up things that I hadn't considered in the question:   * the false dichotomy of 'correctly removing hard-coded values' by moving it to the database vs 'efficiently applying YAGNI' by using hard-coding. There was a third option of putting the lookup table into the app configuration, which doesn't incur the overhead of the correct way, and without the efficiency of YAGNI. We generally aren't limited to either/or decisions, and it then comes down to a cost/benefit decision.   * code generation can reduce the overhead of moving the hard-coded values to the database, and in a way that also removes my over-engineered decision to process a CSV into the table. Potentially this also adds a long-term maintenance issue with the generated code if the basic requirements change for the lookup method. This all just affects the cost/benefit analysis, and it is likely that if I had had that automation available I wouldn't have even considered hard-coding something like this. I'm marking @Corbin's answer as correct because it changes my assumptions of development cost, and I'll probably add some code generation tools to my arsenal in the near future."}
{"_id": "114620", "title": "Definition of a 3-tier system", "text": "People often claim that they are following a '3-tier (or n-tier) architecture', and sometimes they then claim to be switching to a Domain Model. But I really never have understood what this mythical '3-tier architecture' is. It seems to have no formal definition. Whereas there are numerous references and examples around that explain and demonstrate the Domain Model pattern, any reference to 3-tier simply suggests you should separate your code into UI, Business Logic and Data Access Layers. And that's all they seem to say. What I find particularly strange is that to me, Domain Model is the perfect embodiment of this 3-tier paradigm. the ORM and mapping files are the Data Access Layer, the Domain is the Business Logic, and the UI is the, well, UI. So why do people talk as though it is something new and different, and something they should switch to? Before I saw people implementing Domain Model, most applications were UIs accessing stored procedures with the logic split across the UI and the SPs. Sometimes there were a few assemblies called 'UI', 'BLL' and 'DLL' but usually these were just mediators between the UIs and SPs, leaving more places for the logic to be randomly spread across. So what is this mythical '3-tier' architecture? Does it really even exist? and if so, where are some examples of it implemented well?"}
{"_id": "99907", "title": "Managing manual test protocols", "text": "We have to organize a very long list of manually running tests. Currently we use Word documents, print them out check them off etc. Ugh-ly but works, with problems. **Problems with the current solution**   * Requesting and executing subsets, depending on the actual changes. (i.e. tests 153, 155-157 and 24325 need to run only if Module X changed)   * Branching. Different releases (which are still maintained, up to a point) have different test protocols, but share a lot of contents. Manual copy & paste.   * Tracking \"Test Template\" vs. \"Test executed\" documents. It's a bit old-style office with lots of forms & binders.    * Tracking in source control together with the source changes. Ideally, the same way features are copied / moved between branches, i.e. as diffable document that is included in a commit. **Content requirements** Documents need images (usually, hardware setup specs and screenshots of \"good\" curves), \"Pass / Fail\" checkboxes and minor formatting (suc has emphasis, steps, distinction of \"things to do\" and \"what to expect\") **Current idea** One of my devs suggested we use HTML documents instead (Sharepoint Designer is deemed appropriate for editing), \"normalize them somehow so they are diffable\", and put them under version control together with the sources. I am personally not wholly sold on this idea for various reasons, but I agree with the other guys that if it works it's better than Word documents. **The Question:** How do you / would manage the documentation for manual tests? Do you know any tools? Ideas? We are open to other solutions, but only with minimal custom development efforts. Example: installing dedicated software, configuring some templates would be great, but we have no resources for \"hack something together with XML and stylesheets and a database, that should be easy\". **Some facts &figures** Source control is git, 6 software developers, ~1.5KLoc, one run through _all_ manual tests takes about 4 man-weeks (order of magnitude) and roughly the same in wall time with all modifications and repetitions. (A full run only happens for major releases.) * * * Note: _Please don't tell me to test automatically,_ thank you but we already do. The manual tests involve integration, visualization and external measurement equipment. In addition, the information produced is so multifold that the discoveries of a engineer who knows the whole system discovers a whole lot more with a single look at a chart. * * * Example: A typcial test setup would look like this, every question mark needs to be \"checked\", it's usually 5..15 tests per setup > Connect 10Ohm resistor to S1. Connect amplifier input to OUT 1. Run test > Template 42. > >   * Measure voltage over resistor. ~1Vrms ? >   * In Table 3 Uac = 1.0 V, Iac= 0.1 A, ISNR+D > 45 dB ? >   * U(f) Spectrum flat for f > 10 Hz? >   * ... >"}
{"_id": "54568", "title": "Looking for searchable code archives", "text": "As part of research for a user group presentation I'm looking for usage examples of certain code constructs. I'm looking for online source code repository collections that allow me to search inside the source code across the whole collection. GitHub does it but it's a bit light on the sort of code I'm looking for. Sourceforge searches only the project description text rather than the source code. Any others I should try?"}
{"_id": "167743", "title": "General solution to solve different sports results in different languages", "text": "I currently have some code that checks if squash and tennis scores are valid, both in javascript and PHP. This results in 4 blocks of code existing, 2 languages * 2 sports, which does not scale well should any extra sports come around, or extra languages... How can one describe the valid scores of games via a settings/text file, so that each language can parse them and apply these rules. I'm stumped with the strange tie break situations in tennis should it reach 6-6 in a set, and also infinite play off in the final set should it reach 2 sets all. ie:               tennis = {         \"format\": [             {                 \"name\": \"sets\",                 \"min\": 3,                 \"max\": 5,                 \"winby\": 1             },             {                 \"name\": \"games\",                 \"min\": 6,                 \"max\": 7,                 \"winby\": 2             }         ]     }          squash = {         \"format\": [             {                 \"name\": \"games\",                 \"min\": 3,                 \"max\": 5,                 \"winby\": 1             },             {                 \"name\": \"points\",                 \"min\": 15,                 \"max\": 0,                 \"winby\": 2             }         ]     }"}
{"_id": "96103", "title": "Is any JavaScript  code used only for websites, open source?", "text": "**Rewritten question:** I'm not asking a JavaScript-related question, but all \"client\" languages used on the web (HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and so on). If I put JavaScript code (that is GPLed) on my website, and this website is accessible from anyone over the web, am I violating the GPL in some way? What happens if I would like to sell the client-code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to someone? Do I need a different license in this case? Isn't JavaScript (when used for websites) always open source? When you open a webpage you can always read the source. Do I also need to release my server-side code if I'm selling a website which contains JavaScript GPLed code? What happens if this website is partially accessible (a part is free and the other requires you to pay) but the GPLed code (the same part) is used on both sides of the website? What if the GPLed code is only in a part of the website that requires you to pay to access it? If I'm selling a website to a customer in this way:   1. I'm selling you (one time fee) all client-related code (JavaScript, HTML and CSS)   2. I'm **not** selling you the server-side code, you're renting it (I don't want to let you reuse my server-side code) If I'm using some JavaScript GPLed code, am I violating something? (The website is accessible from anyone over the web.) **Edit 2:** Added a new specific question: What if the website can work without server-side code, I mean, JavaScript is just calling some PHP pages that contains data in JSON format. Other people can build a website with the client side, but they will need to provide data. In this case JavaScript is calling the \"PHP\" code (but not the opposite) I think. In this case, am I violating GPL?"}
{"_id": "220605", "title": "Why Big Data Needs To Be Functional?", "text": "I started working on a new project lately related to Big Data for my internship. My managers recommended to start learning functional programming (They highly recommended Scala). I had a humbled experience using F#, but I couldn't see the the important of using this paradigm of programming as it's expensive in some cases. Dean gave an interesting talk about this topic, and shared his thoughts on why \"Big Data\" here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFAdLCqDbLQ But it wasn't very convenient as Big Data doesn't mean only Hadoop. As BigData is very vague concept. I forget it for a while. I tried to come-up with one simple example to compare between the different aspects when we deal with data, to see if functional way is expensive or no. If functional programming is expensive and memory-consuming for small data, why do we need it for Big Data ? Far from fancy tools, I tried to build a solution for one specific and popular problem using three approaches: Imperative way and functional way (recursion, using collections). I compared time and complexity,to compare between the three approaches. I used Scala to write these functions as it's the best tool to write an algorithm using three paradigms               def main(args: Array[String]) {         val start = System.currentTimeMillis()         // Fibonacci_P         val s = Fibonacci_P(400000000)         val end = System.currentTimeMillis()         println(\"Functional way: \\n the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not exceed four million : %d \\n Time : %d \".format(s, end - start))         val start2 = System.currentTimeMillis()              // Fibonacci_I         val s2 = Fibonacci_I(40000000 0)         val end2 = System.currentTimeMillis();         println(\"Imperative way: \\n the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not exceed four million : %d \\n Time : %d \".format(s2, end2 - start2))     }      Functional way :               def Fibonacci_P(max: BigInt): BigInt = {         //http://www.scala-lang.org/api/current/index.html#scala.collection.immutable.Stream         //lazy val Fibonaccis: Stream[Long] = 0 #:: 1 #:: Fibonaccis.zip(Fibonaccis.tail).map { case (a, b) => a + b }         lazy val fibs: Stream[BigInt] = BigInt(0)#::BigInt(1)#::fibs.zip(fibs.tail).map {             n = > n._1 + n._2         }         // println(fibs.takeWhile(p => p < max).toList)         fibs.takeWhile(p = > p < max).foldLeft(BigInt(0))(_ + _)     }      Recursive way:               def Fibonacci_R(n: Int): BigInt = n match {         case 1 | 2 = > 1         case _ = > Fibonacci_R(n - 1) + Fibonacci_R(n - 2)     }      Imperative way:               def Fibonacci_I(max: BigInt): BigInt = {         var first_element: BigInt = 0         var second_element: BigInt = 1         var sum: BigInt = 0              while (second_element < max) {             sum += second_element                  second_element = first_element + second_element             first_element = second_element - first_element         }              //Return          sum     }      I noticed that Functional programming is heavy! it takes longer time and consume more space in memory. I am confused, whenever I read an article or watch a talk, they say that we should use functional programming in data science. True, it 's easier and more productive, specially in data world. but it takes more time and more memory space . So, why do we need to use Functional programming in Big Data ? What are the best practices to use functional programming (Scala) for Big Data ?"}
{"_id": "147149", "title": "Does C# Cache Calculation Results?", "text": "I am recently building a basic ray tracer in C# from scratch, as a learning/teaching project. A previous release of the project (let's call it A) does reflections and diffuse shading. The program renders the scene at around 900ms. Now I've just made a release B which adds specular highlights. Naturally, I assumed rendering time would increase. Imagine my surprise when the same scene rendered in a speedy 120ms! The results are absolutely the same (since the objects in the scene don't actually have specular highlights). Curious, I tried to narrow down what part of the code is actually making it faster. I think I've narrowed it down to a calculation that is made in both the reflection component, and the specular component (calculating the reflection vector). For each iteration of the ray tracing, both calculate the same vector (same inputs, same output), but there is no data sharing between the two. So I was wondering if C# is somehow caching the results which would account for the performance increase? Here's the code for the reflection rendering               private Color TraceReflection(Ray ray, Vector3D normal, Vector3D hitPoint, IPrimitive hitObject, int Level)         {             //Calculate reflection direction             var reflectionDir = (ray.Direction - (2 * (ray.Direction * normal) * normal)).Normalize();                  //Create reflection ray from just outside the intersection point, and trace it             var reflectionRay = new Ray(hitPoint + reflectionDir * Globals.Epsilon, reflectionDir);                  //Get the color from the reflection             var reflectionColor = RayTrace(reflectionRay, Level + 1);                  //Calculate final color             var resultColor = reflectionColor * hitObject.PrimitiveMaterial.ReflectionCoeff;                  return resultColor;         }      And here's the specular highlight function:               public  Color GetColor(IPrimitive HitObject, ILight Light, Vector3D ViewDirection, Vector3D LightDirection, Vector3D Normal)         {             //Caulcate reflection vector             var reflectionDirection = (LightDirection - (2 * LightDirection * Normal) * Normal).Normalize();                  var dot = reflectionDirection * ViewDirection; //if the dot product is zero or less that means the angle between the two vectors is 90 or more and no highlighting occurs.                  if (dot > 0)             {                 var specularPower = HitObject.PrimitiveMaterial.SpecularCoeff * Math.Pow(dot, HitObject.PrimitiveMaterial.SpecularExponent);                 var highlightColor = HitObject.PrimitiveMaterial.DiffuseColor * specularPower;                      return highlightColor;             }                  return new Color();         }      ## UPDATE The previous numbers were when both programs were running in debug mode. I just switched them both to release, and the numbers are what I was expecting them to be in the first place (270ms without specular. 380ms **with** specular). So it seems the debug mode, somehow, is the culprit."}
{"_id": "196842", "title": "Task Planning on an Agile Team", "text": "At the beginning of each sprint our team will pull in a handful of user stories and then, one by one, write slightly more detailed tasks for them as well as assign specific hours to each task. Having individual tasks helps us establish our sprint burn-down by having a specific total number of hours up front, as well as make it more feasible to keep track of who's working on what and what all has been completed. However, I recently read that some mature Agile teams have eliminated the use of writing tasks altogether and head right into their sprints armed only with their user stories as the modularized sources of work for the sprint. I'm having a hard time seeing how eliminating task planning could still provide an Agile team with small enough units of work so as to keep the sprint organized and transparent. Has anyone here tried or use this approach and if so how do you keep track of exactly who is working on what?"}
{"_id": "144423", "title": "How to properly structure a project in winform?", "text": "A while ago I started to create a winform application and at that time it was small and I did not give any thought of how to structure the project. Since then I added additional features as I needed and the project folder is getting bigger and bigger and now I think it is time to structure the project in some way, but I am not sure what is the proper way, so I have few questions. **How to properly restructure the project folder?** At the moment I am thinking of something like this:   * Create Folder for Forms   * Create Folder for Utility classes   * Create Folder for Classes that contain only data  **What is the naming convention when adding classes?** Should I also rename classes so that their functionality can be identified by just looking at their name? For example renaming all forms classes, so that their name ends with **Form**. Or is this not necessary if special folders for them are created? **What to do, so that not all the code for main form ends up in Form1.cs** Another problem I encountered is that as the main form is getting more massive with each feature I add, the code file (Form1.cs) is getting really big. I have for example a TabControl and each tab has bunch of controls and all the code ended up in Form1.cs. How to avoid this? **Also, Do you know any articles or books that deal with these problems?**"}
{"_id": "196840", "title": "Matching two lists of data with different conventions", "text": "I have two lists of data, A and B. These lists are themselves aggregated from multiple sources, and contain typos, abbreviations not found in the other, and also lack a 1-1 mapping, but will never have a value in A that maps to two values in B and vice-versa. Right now, we're doing a naive (string comparison) match to create a map between the two lists. That has about 80% accuracy. I'd like to get that accuracy to at least 90% (95% would be incredible). Are there any software tools that can be used for something like this? I'd like some sort of tool that could traverse both lists and suggest matches. **Update from comments:** Right now, we only produce a hit if `A[x] == B[y]`. That gives us matches for 80% of the data in the data sets (which contain roughly fifty thousand rows each). What I'd like to do is find a tool or develop one based on an algorithm that will allow me to suggest a match for two values that are likely to have the same meaning, e.g. `KING ROAD` and `KG RD`. These potential matches would then be provided to a human to review and approve or ignore. Generally, I'd use something like Levenshtein, but this is somewhat parametrized data (think addresses) and I don't know how to apply something like Levenshtein to structured data."}
{"_id": "141998", "title": "Security in a private web service", "text": "I am developing a web site and a web service for a small on-line game. Technically, I'll be using Express (node.js) and MongoDB+Redis for the databases. This the structure I came up with:   * One Express server that will server as the Web Service. This will connect to the databases.    * One Express server that will provide the web site. It will connect to the Web Service to retrieve and push the information.   * iOS and Android application will be able to interact with the WebService. Taking into account:   * It is a small game. The information transferred is not critical.   * There will NOT be third party applications. At least for the moment. My concern is about which level of security I should use in each of the scenarios:   * Security of the user playing through web browser   * Security of the applications and the Web Server connecting to the WS. I have take a look at the different options and:   * OAuth and/or Https is too much for this scenario, isn't it?   * Will be a good option to hash the user and password with MD5(or similar) and some salt? I would like to get some directions and investigate by my own rather than getting a response like \"you should you use this node.js module...\" Thanks in advance,"}
{"_id": "196845", "title": "Handling compiler bugs in Continuous Integration", "text": "I believe that warnings should be treated as errors. If you start ignoring warnings you'll start missing \"important\" warnings among the \"unimportant\" ones. So my Continuous Integration system fails a build if there are warnings. One of my compilers has a bug that causes it to raise a warning when it shouldn't. My code is valid and compiles correctly, and I can't disable this particular warning. How should my CI system handle this? Should I temporarily disable \"warnings as errors\", until the compiler is patched?"}
{"_id": "106309", "title": "HTTP requests/responses analyser for Android", "text": "When using Firefox on my PC, for example, HTTP analysis is quite easy using for example the Net tab of Firebug. GETs, POSTs, etc., all there. What would be the best technique to see the HTTP requests an Android app sends? Another app? Some kind of hack via Wi-Fi and a router or USB modem?"}
{"_id": "60144", "title": "Visual PHP? or Visual Ruby?", "text": "I am intrigued. Why does the open source industry not have 'Visual' products like 'Visual' Basic, 'Visual' C++ or 'Visual' ASP.NET? Why don't we have Visual PHP? or Visual RUBY?"}
{"_id": "186237", "title": "How to write tasks in Jira when using Scrum?", "text": "I am going to start a new project using Scrum and Jira and I have some questions regarding how to write proper tasks in Jira. From what I understand user stories are small non-technical descriptions written by the stakeholders (ideally) that can have the form: As a user I want to order monkies so I can earn money. However these tasks must be elaborated with requirements, technical requirements etc. My question is: How do you write such tasks in Jira properly, and do I have the right understanding of user stories. Should I create user stories as super tasks and then create subtasks with the actual tasks/requirements? Should I estimate super tasks/user stories, or only the sub tasks?"}
{"_id": "186230", "title": "Should we validate a state transition before attempting it in the State Pattern?", "text": "When applying the State Pattern illegal transitions should result in an exception being thrown (or at least that's what I understood from the pattern) I know exceptions are for \"unexpected behavior\" where an action isn't supposed to happen. Errors would be more appropriate if the required action is common (ex: user enters a wrong password) Now picture this, I have an admin panel where a list of orders are shown and each order has 3 buttons (Refund, Cancel, Reorder) where each one of them changes the state of the order if the operation is allowed. The 3 buttons are enabled by default (I'm simplifying my case here as my real system is much more complex than that). Now a user can for example push the cancel button for an order with state (Cancelled) which is an invalid state transition.   1. Since I expected that this illegal transition action to occur would a validation before attempting to **Cancel** the line be more appropriate?   2. If I validate before transition do I still need exceptions in the model?   3. Is there a better approach to the whole problem (ignoring disabling the buttons and client side validation)"}
{"_id": "106301", "title": "How do you refrain from doing too much when maintaining code?", "text": "At my previous job, I was in a relatively easy ASP.NET developer role that had me turning over a large number of small database systems for internal use within the company. I churned out the required code, and all the while I had almost complete creative control. After releasing a system, I'd even come back to it when I was in a low period of work and refactor the code and generally improve the system for the users and/or other developers. I've now moved on, and tried to shift my career more towards what I am interested in. In doing so, I managed to find myself a great job (lots of learning, complex algorithms, etc). The problem is, I seem to have picked up some bad habits in my former job that seem to have leaked into my new job. My first task at my new job is updating a Bash script that performs a build and deploy of some code, and basically the guy I was doing the work for essentially refused to review my code because the file diff was _massive_. The problem was that while going through the code, I'd basically refactored half of the code into functions, standardized all the output, added a \"debug mode\" and basically given the script a hell of a spit-shine. But in doing this, I'd gone way off reservation and done _too much_. My colleague agreed that the code was good, but there was no way that I could commit the code without confusing other developers, and causing merge conflicts. Now I'm worried that my freedom at my last job, coupled with my inexperience as a programmer has gotten me into the habit of changing code on autopilot. **Are there any sure fire techniques for keeping yourself on a tight leash when maintaining code? Any tips for judging when you've done too much refactoring? Where do you draw the line between \"if it ain't broke don't fix it\", and allowing the code to rot?** Thanks! * * * **Some Clarifications**   * I've been working on this particular script for three days, and while I have been doing so, I've had the code change every day when pulling from source control! It's not big changes by any means, but changes nonetheless that require merging.   * The combined length of the Bash scripts (if they were to be concatenated) is approximately 4000-5000 lines. The part I'm working on (one file) is 2000.   * You have to consider that I am definitely at the bottom of the food chain here. Doing \"code walkthroughs\", while I have done them in the past, is not an option here because I can't tell other developers how to do their job with only 2 weeks experience under my belt. I'm looking more to establish a rapport with my colleagues at the minute, not rub them the wrong way by criticising their code."}
{"_id": "116666", "title": "Open Source P2P Java Chat library", "text": "I am making a P2P Android application. The initial functionality I am aiming for is chatting. Can anyone please suggest a good open source P2P library, using which I can build my application upon? Most of the ones I found are complete applications, but I want a library I can use to build my application."}
{"_id": "60148", "title": "Possible for one developer to work on a site thats on another developer's server?", "text": "Sorry for the confusing title. Let me explain: I am currently trying to get a site developed. My current developer has taken the site about as far as I think they are capable of and I am planning on hiring another developer to put the finishing touches on it, debug it and upgrade some of the more technical details. The site is hosted on my current developer's server. They are scheduled to work on it until mid-April, at which point they will transfer the site to my server. I would like the new developer to get started on the upgrades to the site as soon as possible. So my question is this: Is it possible for the new developer to start working on upgrades to the site while it is still on the old developer's server (and without the old developer knowing about it)? Would the new developer have to create a mirror site and work on it that way? I'm having trouble imagining if this is possible so any advice you can offer would be much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "53900", "title": "Javadoc for outsiders versus javadoc for insiders", "text": "When building an API for a customer, the public javadoc has to contain just what you want to show the customer. Which is a shame, as it the javadoc is also, in some ways, the obvious target for some kinds of internal design documentation. One might imagine a custom doclet or some other trickery to allow the two types of information to coexist in the source. Anybody been there?"}
{"_id": "113019", "title": "Why does Garbage Collection only sweep the heap?", "text": "Basically, I've learned so far that garbage collection erases forever any data structure that is not currently being pointed to. But this only checks the heap for such conditions. Why doesn't it also check the data section (globals, constants, etc etc) or the stack as well? What is it about the heap that it's the only thing that we want to be garbage collected?"}
{"_id": "49953", "title": "What is a good time/task tracking software to use when consulting?", "text": "I am looking for time tracking software to use as an individual consulting on multiple projects at once. The projects I work on are billable to different clients. Some clients are billed on an hourly basis while others are billed on a project basis. I also track personal projects that may never produce income. I need to be able to track the time down to the individual task level. I am looking for software that is easy to use, cost effective, easy to invoice out of and has data mining reports."}
{"_id": "24812", "title": "Is this book a reliable source for beginning Java EE?", "text": "Core Servlets and Javaserver Pages: Core Technologies, Vol. 1 (2nd Edition) Can I rely on this book to learn Servlets and JSP,or is there a better book out there I should be reading instead?"}
{"_id": "226066", "title": "What semantics should be used when referring to waterfall and agile methodologies", "text": "I've just been involved in a debate regarding semantics of how to define approaches to the software development lifecycle. As far as I have been concerned, waterfall and agile are not methodologies, they are vaguely defined approaches/models. The definition of a methodology being a set of tools and techniques used to exactly define the steps taken to develop a successful software project. In my understanding, the following statements are true: -   * SSADM (Structured System Analysis and Design) is a waterfall methodology   * Scrum is an agile methodology   * XP is an agile methodology Thus, it would not make sense to write: -   * Waterfall is a waterfall methodology   * Agile is an agile methodology Since you would get into a recursive mess. The issue is, whenever I get into this debate with anyone, they seem to be certain that waterfall is a methodology and so is agile. An example of what I see as being incorrect is the following article: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development_methodology > Methodologies Waterfall Prototype model Incremental Iterative V-Model Spiral > Scrum Cleanroom RAD DSDM RUP XP Agile Lean Dual Vee Model TDD FDD DDD These are listed as methodologies on the wikipedia page and I find that this is just plain wrong. Can someone please correct me and/or let me know what terminology I should be using?"}
{"_id": "251783", "title": "Why Microsoft\u2019s Web API is named as ASP.Net Web API", "text": "ASP.Net is Active Server Pages using .Net Framework Wikipedia says > It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET > Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) > technology. While answering this question following thought came to me \u2013 why Microsoft named it\u2019s Web API as \u201cASP.Net Web API\u201d. There are no `Pages` involved in Web API. Then why do some people call it as \u201cActive Server Pages .Net Web Api\u201d ? I believe there are some `fundamental features` of ASP.Net shared with Web API. So what are they? Another observation - why is the tag in `programmers` naming it as \"asp.net- mvc-web-api\"? **Reference** :   1. ScottGu's Blog- ASP.NET Web API"}
{"_id": "251786", "title": "How does Elastic Search approach the problem of distributed membership and consensus?", "text": "I already understand that Elastic Search is supposed to be deployed in a distributed topology, in that you can have multiple nodes for a cluster of ES instances. I like the API, and it looks promising. But I wonder how Elastic Search solves some standard problems in distributed computing. My \"architectural\" questions are motivated out of trying to understand whether I ought to commit to using the product. Consider membership problem: If I add a node to the cluster, how does Elastic Search cluster know to add that node wants to join? Or what if a node goes down (or the network to the data center it is in) gets too flaky. Is it using some sort of gossip protocol like Amazon Dynamo does? Consider the consensus problem: if I POST a document to one node to the cluster, how does the change get propagated to the other nodes? Of course, I understand that the document has to be indexed, so I cannot expect a search query to find it immediately. Does ES use a Paxos algorithm? Raft algorithm? N.B. if someone could tag this question as \"elasticsearch\" I'd appreciate it!"}
{"_id": "134802", "title": "Which licenses are free for commercial use?", "text": "I'm lost in a mass of licences - GPL, LGPL, Creative Commons, BSD, Apache, etc, and looking for a beginners guide. When using a component under a popular licence like these, what are the restrictions for using them without paying in a commercial product? E.g.   * do I have to redistribute the source?   * do I have to credit them?   * what if I modify the component? etc. From what I can tell from http://www.codeproject.com/info/Licenses.aspx, only GPL and Creative Commons force you to redistribute source?"}
{"_id": "134809", "title": "Is an 8 second (incremental) build time common?", "text": "My current project takes 8 seconds to build one C++ file. Is this common? Other files take 12-15 seconds but most at the moment are about 8 seconds. I use Visual Studio to tell me the time. I have gone into the headers and removed things I didn't need and used forward declaration. It did save me about 2 seconds per file and one header takes about 4 seconds to go through alone. In that header I need all its declarations and using a lite version which removes private methods public functions I don't need. Should I be happy it's 8 or so seconds or is that too long to compile one file?"}
{"_id": "82820", "title": "Planning software development", "text": "I'm fairly new to programming (still a student), and I haven't had much experience with planning out my software development. Usually if it's a large project, the profs break it up into steps for me. If it's smaller, I usually just dive right in. This has worked so far, but I'd like a better process. I'm planning to do a rather ambitious project, and I'm worried that my code will turn out a mess and/or take a lot longer than if I had planned it properly. I'd like a method/technique/advice for planning out my software development."}
{"_id": "251431", "title": "Why was the first compiler written before the first interpreter?", "text": "The first compiler was written by Grace Hopper in 1952 while the Lisp interpreter was written in 1958 by John McCarthy's student Steve Russell. Writing a compiler seems like a much harder problem than an interpreter. If that is so, why was the first compiler written six-years before the first interpreter?"}
{"_id": "146173", "title": "Merge sort versus quick sort performance", "text": "I have implemented merge sort and quick sort using C (GCC 4.4.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 running on a 4 GB RAM laptop with an Intel DUO CPU at 2GHz) and I wanted to compare the performance of the two algorithms. The prototypes of the sorting functions are:               void merge_sort(const char **lines, int start, int end);          void quick_sort(const char **lines, int start, int end);      i.e. both take an array of pointers to strings and sort the elements with index i : start <= i <= end. I have produced some files containing random strings with length on average 4.5 characters. The test files range from 100 lines to 10000000 lines. I was a bit surprised by the results because, even though I know that merge sort has complexity O(n log(n)) while quick sort is O(n^2), I have often read that on average quick sort should be as fast as merge sort. However, my results are the following.   * Up to 10000 strings, both algorithms perform equally well. For 10000 strings, both require about 0.007 seconds.   * For 100000 strings, merge sort is slightly faster with 0.095 s against 0.121 s.   * For 1000000 strings merge sort takes 1.287 s against 5.233 s of quick sort.   * For 5000000 strings merge sort takes 7.582 s against 118.240 s of quick sort.   * For 10000000 strings merge sort takes 16.305 s against 1202.918 s of quick sort. So my question is: are my results **as expected** , meaning that quick sort is comparable in speed to merge sort for small inputs but, as the size of the input data grows, the fact that its complexity is quadratic will become evident? Here is a sketch of what I did. In the merge sort implementation, the partitioning consists in calling merge sort recursively, i.e.               merge_sort(lines, start, (start + end) / 2);     merge_sort(lines, 1 + (start + end) / 2, end);      Merging of the two sorted sub-array is performed by reading the data from the array `lines` and writing it to a global temporary array of pointers (this global array is allocate only once). After each merge the pointers are copied back to the original array. So the strings are stored once but I need twice as much memory for the pointers. For quick sort, the partition function chooses the last element of the array to sort as the pivot and scans the previous elements in one loop. After it has produced a partition of the type               start ... {elements <= pivot} ... pivotIndex ... {elements > pivot} ... end      it calls itself recursively:               quick_sort(lines, start,          pivotIndex - 1);     quick_sort(lines, pivotIndex + 1, end);      Note that this quick sort implementation sorts the array in-place and does not require additional memory, therefore it is more memory efficient than the merge sort implementation. So my question is: is there a better way to implement quick sort that is worthwhile trying out? If I improve the quick sort implementation and perform more tests on different data sets (computing the average of the running times on different data sets) can I expect a better performance of quick sort wrt merge sort? **EDIT** Thank you for your answers. My implementation is in-place and is based on the pseudo-code I have found on wikipedia in Section **In-place version** :               function partition(array, 'left', 'right', 'pivotIndex')      where I choose the last element in the range to be sorted as a pivot, i.e. pivotIndex := right. I have checked the code over and over again and it seems correct to me. In order to rule out the case that I am using the wrong implementation I have uploaded the source code on github (in case you would like to take a look at it). Your answers seem to suggest that I am using the wrong test data. I will look into it and try out different test data sets. I will report as soon as I have some results."}
{"_id": "251439", "title": "Programming a promotions engine", "text": "I am trying to implement a promotions engine for an e-commerce application and I want to figure out how such engines work especially in situations like the following. > Buy X Items from Category A Get Y Items from Category B at Z% discount If the order contains many different items from category A how the engine selects the items that trigger the promotion since there can be many combinations of items that qualify and some combinations make the rule not applicable. A brute force approach would be to find all possible combinations of items that qualify and stop when the rule applies successfully. Are there any algorithms for this or other promotion patterns that I can use?"}
{"_id": "82822", "title": "Doing 'more' with C on Windows than very simple programs?", "text": "I'm currently learning C via 'C Primer Plus' as recommended by a lot of people here and I'm finding it very interesting - the in-depth explanations of how and why we do certain things in C are great rather than just being told what things do and going no further... I feel as though all I can do with C at the moment is maths, which isn't terribly inspiring when trying to picture putting various applications together in my head (besides calculators (-_-)). I'm only about half way through the book so it hasn't covered things like the if statement yet, but I'm just taking it easy - I already know a fair amount of programming concepts since I'm fairly capable in PHP. My question is - are there any tutorials are interesting bits of source code people can link me to that will inspire and educate me beyond the loops/variables/operators/etc universal programming features that will give me an insight into programming say.. with Windows API? Or things along those lines? I found PHP fine to learn since I already knew html/css which obviously handle the front-end of my web applications, as well as the reverse - getting input data from forms, interacting with a database etc, but with C I don't know anything other than 'backend' and standard I/O stuff. Many thanks to those that can link some interesting resources - a lot of sites seem to be fairly old, which is fair enough (what, with C having been around for coming up 40 years?), but I'm not programming for 40 year old computers so..."}
{"_id": "210239", "title": "When using your own API (Dog Fooding). How do you avoid giving away the secret key?", "text": "I read this article on soundcloud's api:   http://backstage.soundcloud.com/2011/08/soundcloud-mobile-proxies/   It talks about consuming your own API. What I don't understand is how they avoid giving away the secret key. If you normally give the secret key to a developer who is going to use it in his API how do you give the secret key to yourself and avoid divulging it without transferring it over the wire? I am assuming there is a new secret key for each user. Otherwise each user would have the same secret key and a new public key and I am not sure if that would work. * * * I am not talking about developers. I am talking about users like us are to Stack Exchange (actual users of the app itself). My app will be consuming it's own API. Each user that signs up for the app (I assume) would get a private and public key. Each call to the API would need to (potentially) authenticate with a public and private key. If in this situation the user is a regular user of the app, how does one get the private key to the user. Or is this not the best way to do this?"}
{"_id": "219148", "title": "Study on designing user prompts (choice of wording, response format, etc.)", "text": "Sometimes there are different ways to ask a user the same question. For example, if the user tries to exit a program without saving their file, you can ask either of these questions:   * Are you sure you want to exit without saving? `[Y] [N]`   * Do you want to save before exiting? `[Y] [N]` These are essentially the same question, but because of the different wording, they have **opposite** answers. This raises some questions on which is better to use like which is which is clearer? which reduces mistakes? and so on. I\u2019m wondering if there are any studies, statistics, or experimental research, clinical trials, etc. on these sorts of things that can help design UI/UX to minimize user frustration and errors. I know there are papers and books on designing user interfaces, but I have not seen anything specifically about specific wording, deciding between positive and negative responses, and such like with the above prompt example."}
{"_id": "157661", "title": "What percentage of software developers work solo?", "text": "I'm trying to put together some ideas for a talk, and one of the things that occurred to me, is if there's any documentation or research into how many programmers work as the lone developer within their team. I think this is an important distinction because individual developers (and perhaps small team developers) end up having to wear many more hats than developers part of a large developer group. It could give us some better insight to career development and transition tactics, as well. I've tried some generally googling, and wasn't able to turn up anything, so I'm hoping maybe someone has seen (or studied) something related to this. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "251245", "title": "Showing the structure of the program (menu) as a tree - does it a have name?", "text": "In my thesis, I want to show the structure of the program, like this: > >     > Menu  ---  Settings ---- Audio ---- ... >     >                     ---- Video >     > >     >       ---  Perform  ---- Calculation >     >                     ---- Video demo >   You know, like a map for a website, I would like to present a tree for the menu. But does this have a fancy name in SW engineering?"}
{"_id": "247197", "title": "Split work item into prototype and main work item?", "text": "During grooming, we usually have work items which get approved based upon the team understanding that what needs to be done? The product owner does not discuss the details of how it will be done and stops the discussion if team tries so. This applies to all work items (new UI, new API or changes to existing UI/API). Product Owner's reasoning is that getting into the details (both technical & functional) of how it will be done is something that needs to happen during sprint and discussing it during grooming is not correct. The effort estimation also happens based upon this discussion. But during sprint planning, approved items are taken for the sprint and expectation is that if work item is approved, team should know all the details of the solution and should be able to complete the item in sprint. What happens is team spends first 2-3 days in doing the research and getting the PO's approval for the solution (UI design, key business logic clarification). Unless the analysis results in great difference in effort estimate, team is asked to complete the feature. This happens in each sprint. I dont have a problem with putting extra effort in completing the work item. My question is regarding the process.   1. Should the team say no in approving the item unless team understands how the solution will look like?   2. Should the work item be splitted into research/analysis in which solution prototype will be proposed to the PO? Once the PO will approve the prototype, the main work item will be marked approved.   3. Any other suggestion as to how it can be handled in better way?"}
{"_id": "150669", "title": "Is it a bad practice to store large files (10 MB) in a database?", "text": "I am currently creating a web application that allows users to store and share files, 1 MB - 10 MB in size. It seems to me that storing the files in a database will significantly slow down database access. Is this a valid concern? Is it better to store the files in the file system and save the file name and path in the database? Are there any best practices related to storing files when working with a database? I am working in PHP and MySQL for this project, but is the issue the same for most environments (Ruby on Rails, PHP, .NET) and databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL)."}
{"_id": "68761", "title": "How do I move into consulting/building apps for small-to-mid businesses?", "text": "I have a few friends who are small business owners (~100 employees) and I've had good luck turning their Excel spreadsheets and the like into actual applications. It works great for them and is rewarding for me. You guys might laugh, but you'd be surprised the money and personnel time it saves them. The work isn't complex, per se, but I really love it. Why do I love the work?   1. I work directly with the person who pays me and who gets to see the results.   2. I'm working in whatever framework/platform I fancy, so I can stay abreast on new technologies.   3. I get to pick and chose what projects I want to work on. This is great, but I'm getting to the point where I need to get extra income and I'm finding it _really_ hard to branch out and get more clients. Mostly, small businesses seem to really leery of something they don't understand. Any idea how to penetrate this market? Is this something, someone is doing right now? Are there certain industries where this is more amendable than others? This is really my dream, so any advice is appreciated."}
{"_id": "194572", "title": "Using one repository for the foundation of another", "text": "I have an existing website theme that I have built. I've been using github to maintain this theme, let's call it `dragon`. We are changing the theme entirely but we're using the existing theme as a foundation. Should I create a new github repository for the new theme? Or should I just continue pushing to the `dragon` repo? If I do create a new repo should I use clone `dragon` and use that as the base for the new repo?"}
{"_id": "1969", "title": "Should EICAR be updated to test the revision of Antivirus system?", "text": "I'm posting this here since programmers write viruses, and AV software. They also have the best knowledge of heuristics and how AV systems work (cloaking etc). The EICAR test file was used to functionally test an antivirus system. As it stands today almost every AV system will flag EICAR as being a \"test\" virus. For more information on this historic test virus please click here. Currently the EICAR test file is only good for testing the **presence** of an AV solution, but it doesn't check for engine file or DAT file **up-to- dateness**. In other words, why do a functional test of a system that could have definition files that are more than 10 years old. With the increase of zero day threats it doesn't make much sense to functionally test your system using EICAR. That being said, I think EICAR needs to be updated/modified to be effective test that works in conjunction with an AV management solution. This question is about **real world testing** , without using live viruses... which is the intent of the original EICAR. That being said I'm proposing a new EICAR file format with the appendage of an XML blob that will conditionally cause the Antivirus engine to respond.               X5O!P%@AP[4\\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-EXTENDED-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*     <?xml version=\"1.0\"?>     <engine-valid-from>2010-1-1Z</engine-valid-from>     <signature-valid-from>2010-1-1Z</signature-valid-from>     <authkey>MyTestKeyHere</authkey>       In this sample, the antivirus engine would only alert on the EICAR file if both the signature or engine file is equal to or newer than the valid-from date. Also there is a passcode that will protect the usage of EICAR to the system administrator. If you have a backgound in \"Test Driven Design\" TDD for software you may get that all I'm doing is applying the principals of TDD to my infrastructure. Based on your experience and contacts how can I make this idea happen?"}
{"_id": "187544", "title": "A better workflow between designer and developer on iOS XIB files development", "text": "We're working on an iOS project and right now, and whenever the designer has some feedback about fonts, colors, positions of elements, what images should go where etc., I have to go back and go through each little detail and make sure it's fixed. I'm thinking there's got to be a better way to do this, where the designer could somehow be directly involved in the application's design. The first idea I got is to create a global plist (or a per-XIB plist) which contains the details of the different elements (size, font, title color, background image etc.) and just let the designer fill that in, and have a special class that looks over the plist and sets the properties accordingly. If I have the time I might implement this. Is there some other method of working that saves the developer all that nit- picking designing time? edit: Or maybe is there some way to do iOS development similar to how CSS works with HTML?"}
{"_id": "187547", "title": "what is the name of the model for the describing strategy between R&D and Professional Services", "text": "Is there a model that describes the different strategies that a company may use where the organisation is split into an engineering division and a professional services division? This is the sort of model that is followed by companies like Microsoft, whereby Engineering (or R&D) produce the core software, and professional services can then help clients implement that software."}
{"_id": "233122", "title": "Using past participle for non-altering functions", "text": "I often have naming problems when I write classes and functions. Generally speaking, I try to follow the following set of rules if I have to deal with a function whose name is a verb:   * If the function alters the parameters, use an infinitive.   * Otherwise, use a present participle.   * If the function is a boolean, use `is`, `has` or `can` before the infinitive. I thought that this rule made sense, but looking at standard libraries of several programming languages, I feel rather alone. For example:   * Python's string methods do not alter the strings but are name with infinitive verbs ( _e.g._ `capitalize`, `split`, `strip`...).    * D's `std.functional` functions return new functions but are named with infinitive verbs too ( _e.g._ `memoize`, `curry`...). While it would have made sense to me to use `strip` (had Python strings been mutable) to alter a string and `stripped` to get the a new string (similar to the one passed but stripped from its leading and ending spaces), it seems that such a convention is almost never used (however, Python also provides the built-in functions `reversed` and `sorted` which do use past participle to tell that they respectively return a reversed or sorted collection without modifying the one passed to them). Are there contraindications concerning the use of past participle for the names non-altering functions and methods? **EDIT:** I fail to see what is unclear, so I'll sum up the question in a few words: _Is it bad pratice to use past participle instead of imperative or infinitive verbs to name functions that take a single parameter, do not alter it, but return an altered copy of the said parameter?_"}
{"_id": "198441", "title": "What is the proper and easy way to move a LocalDB to Azure using code first ?", "text": "The only way I could figure how to do it was create the schema on the localDB with code first and then manually change the database string to Azure and then run the code on Azure.. But that only gives me the schema and not the data.. Is there a better way like ? bacpac? Create a script instead? Or some other concept I am missing ?"}
{"_id": "187543", "title": "Workflow for building a RESTful API", "text": "I am building a RESTful API, and so far, to make sure that my resources work as I need them to, I am using a REST client called Postman. This makes it easy for me to store routes and quickly make requests to them for testing. My current collection of routes in Postman looks like this: ![](http://cl.ly/image/29410W1W0i3h/content) The trouble with testing the API is this way is I have to manually change resource IDs. For example, if I want to test the `PUT` method on my posts resource, I have to first create a resource, find the ID, and then paste it into the `PUT` URI. This is long! What is considered professional practice for building a RESTful API? Should I be writing unit tests for each route, dynamically creating the post before testing methods like update?"}
{"_id": "187548", "title": "What happens when using address before it's allocated?", "text": "The very simple piece of C++ code below is incorrect, it's easy to see why and tools like Valgrind will tell you. In running several C++ codes containing this kind of error, I noticed that each time, it ended up with a `Segmentation fault` at the line which tries to use the address. So my question is: is it safe to claim that trying to use an address before it's allocated will **inevitably** lead to a `Segmentation violation` at the corresponding line?               class ClassType     {       public:int data_;     };          ....     // Using address before it's allocated     ClassType * ClassType_ptr;     int x = ClassType_ptr->data_;"}
{"_id": "58934", "title": "Is there a better alternative to the folder-based file system, and will it be replaced any time soon?", "text": "All file systems I've encountered have been based on folders - you have a root folder, which contains files and subfolders, which in turn contains files and subfolders, and so on. Is there a better alternative to organizing files, and will it replaced the current system any time soon? Feel free to include some history about file systems, if you judge that's in order in your answer. Interpret the term \"better\" any way you please."}
{"_id": "37078", "title": "Are there any online/parttime degree programs focused on IT Security?", "text": "I'm a software engineer and would like to focus more on security related stuff (cryptography, mobile security, identity management, ...). As I would like to do a M.S. in Computer Science anyway I'm looking for a program where I can combine both."}
{"_id": "33758", "title": "Managing Eclipse projects in source control", "text": "I've been using eclipse for a long time to do development. One of the problems I've come across when working on other people's projects is if they come from source control, some of the eclipse project files \"default.properties\" and other xml config files are missing. Its usually a big pain in the butt to get the project running in eclipse. I understand the reasoning to not have certain files tracked because they may be full of specific stuff to a certain eclipse install. How do all of you manage that?"}
{"_id": "30223", "title": "Do licenses matter if there's nobody around to enforce them?", "text": "Suppose that the original creators can't (or won't) enforce a license on their software/code, but that work is still popular. I guess if you want to visualize it, I'll throw out a convoluted hypothetical:   Imagine a very small group of developers that released a code project under an open-source license. The repository was hosted on their servers. However, everybody on the immediate development team passed away in a tragic accident or something. Their servers shut down after this happened. The project had a fairly large user base, and so others began to host the last revision on their own servers for others to download. (Yes, I have an active imagination) Does abiding by the license simply become a matter of morality by its users, or can there still exist a legal penalty when there is no one user or group to enforce it? Could anything be done if an unscrupulous user decided to branch off the project and use it under a different license? I am not looking for legal advice -- I am simply curious about how software licenses work. I tend to think of strange situations and wonder what would happen in those scenarios."}
{"_id": "113901", "title": "Do technical interviews tend to be subjective?", "text": "Based on my experience in technical interviews, I have found that most tend to be subjective because the interviewer already has his own answer. Even though the answer from the candidate is correct, because the interviewer was not prepared for that answer, the candidate does not get the job. In an interview recently I said something about using an AVL tree algorithm to solve a specific problem that was asked. The interviewer responded: \"What's an AVL tree?\". Another example is anything around syntax; I've encountered this mostly in interviews that require Ruby code because there are many ways to implement a solution to a given problem. A very common ones is problems around Object Oriented designs. In this situation, there's no way for the interviewee to succeed. Has anybody else felt this way too or is it just me? If it's not just me, how can we make technical interviews better?"}
{"_id": "107160", "title": "How can we design mobile chatting XMPP server", "text": "I have a xmpp server design problem, I have been thinking and searching about this for a while, but cannot reach a decision, I hope experts here can give me a hint, really appreciate. <Requirement>      Build a mobile chatting server, this server should allow:   1\\. Register new user   2\\. upload user photos   3\\. edit their personal information.   4\\. User can chat with each other.   5\\. Release API and allow android or IOS to use.   6\\. Should be extensible, should allow us to add new features later without too much structure change. <My question>   I know there is _OpenFire_ open source xmpp server that we can use, but these two are standalone servers, they don't allow user to upload pictures, edit their own personal information, or some other activities. So how can achieve this? Can we create all the add-on features on Tomcat server, and make Openfire working with it together? Or can we create Plugin in openfire to achieve this? What is the best solution?"}
{"_id": "233699", "title": "scaffolding a multi-angular-app portal with usersystem", "text": "I'm trying to find the best way of developing a portal that a user can log in to and then be presented with a range of different apps (angular). They should share the same api-backend. I think that each angular-app could (and should) be developed separately. The only thing I think I need to do is place the dist-folder (or create a symlink to it) in the \"portal\"-part. When I say the portal, I mean the part where user is presented with a login- screen, and after successful authentication is routed to a app-menu. Pretty static stuff really. The api-backend can be a separate express-app to make it less complex (atleast I think so). My goal is to make the development-process effective and easy to maintain. Each angular-app is scaffolded with yeoman, and I develop them while doing a 'grunt serve'. 'grunt build' will then produce a nicely packed app in the dist folder. I'm quite happy with this solution. The Backend is an expressjs app, and I use nodemon to do it effectively. My issue right now is how do I scaffold all of this ? I once tried setting up a large Gruntfile.js to build the backend, portal, and each angular-app and stitch everything together. I gave up. As I see it, the parts I need to stitch together is: Login/portal/menu (express/passport)   n * Angular apps   API-Backend (express/mysql) I have a portal-part that works with passport, I have a API-backend that works, and I have some conceptual angular-apps that works. my git-repo contains everything, and I have this structure:                git       |-- backend       |      |       |      +-- api        |          |-- app.js       |          |           |          |-- lib       |          |-- public       |          +-- config       |            |            +-- frontend               |-- App1               |     |--Gruntfile.js               |     |--node_modules               |     |--app               |     |   |--bower_components               |     |   |--images               |     |   |--views               |     |   +--scripts               |     +--dist               |                      |-- App2               |     |               |     |--Gruntfile.js               |     |--node_modules               |     |--app               |     |   |--bower_components               |     |   |--images               |     |   |--views               |     |   +--scripts               |     +--dist               |               +-- Portal                     |                     express/passport app      Should the portal-part and the api-backend be the same ? Any good ideas on how to scaffold this is much appreciated :) (I even appreciate it if someone care to read my long question)"}
{"_id": "142212", "title": "CodeIgniter routing helping", "text": "Can you explain these two lines of code in `applications/config/routes.php` file in the CodeIgniter framework?               $route['default_controller'] = 'pages/view';     $route['(:any)'] = 'pages/view/$1';"}
{"_id": "142216", "title": "If I were to start doing a GUI how do I decide on what platform to use?", "text": "I hear about WPF, Silverlight but then there is also windows RT, metro stuff, windows 8 and so on at the moment - I'm having a hard time nailing what to bet on. How do I, at a given point in time, find the best platform for doing somewhat future-proof GUI?"}
{"_id": "184162", "title": "Help understanding MapReduce Sort example", "text": "From Section 5.3 of Google's paper describing MapReduce. > \"A Map function extracts a 10-byte sorting key from a text line and emits > the key and the original text line as the intermediate key/value pair. We > used a built-in Identity function as the Reduce operator. This function > passes the intermediate key/value pair unchanged as the output key/value > pair. The final sorted output is written...\" I don't understand how the actual sorting happens. As far as I understand, they Map function extracts a key value pair, and then the Reduce function somehow spits out the data sorted. What is a \"sorting key\"?"}
{"_id": "199102", "title": "npm packages.json: devDependencies vs global installation", "text": "I'm new Node.js development and I have a question about best practices when writing `package.json` files. From my understanding, you have to list all devependences that you need to execute your app under `\"dependencies\"` in the `package.json` file. All your extra dependences that are required to run your test (or your build process) have to be listed in `\"devDependencies\"`. But what about tools that you additionally use, but which are not necessarily required by every developer. Take the `node-inspector` package as an example, which I installed globally on my machine but did not add to the `package.json` file. Is that a good practice, or would you recommend to also file those packages as `\"devDependencies\"`?"}
{"_id": "184169", "title": "Why aren't there modern C IDEs?", "text": "Why weren't the features present in modern IDEs for Java & C# (Intellij IDEA, Visual Studio, eclipse) developed in (earlier) IDEs for C language? I mean I don't know any IDE which has modern features (auto-complete, code navigation, refactoring, VCS integration etc.) that was developed especially for C. I know that eclipse has plug-in for C and Visual Studio can run an old version of C but they weren't designed for C but rather for Java/C# (or the other .NET languages). I also find it hard to believe that things like \"pressing a key to go to a function or struct definition\" or \"commit to SVN from 2 key shortcuts rather than going in shell and writing a command\" or \"pressing a key for extracting a method or a variable\" are useless and emacs or vim is enough. Not to mention code analysis, code coverage and probably most important specific library/framework support. These are all functions which greatly increases the productivity of a programmer. The only reason I thought of is that there aren't many large projects in C (hundreds of thousands LoC), but still, there are plenty of them; and also, most of the functionality is very useful for smaller projects also."}
{"_id": "115505", "title": "Is this the correct way to use extends?", "text": "I am making a UML diagram. Im wondering if im using the extends feature correctly. I have a marketer that can search contacts but only if they have created them in the first place.... Have i got the right idea. Or should there be an association between the marketer and the update/delete contact too? Should the update/delete even extend the create contact? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qeMtm.jpg)"}
{"_id": "137720", "title": "The overlap between open source and closed source", "text": "I would like to understand why do some people like open source and some others like closed source? Let me be more specific and make my question about web development. If I build my site using an open source server side language what are the benefits for me? and if I build it using a closed source server side language, what are benefits? I just want to understand how can I choose between the two differnt paradigms when building different types of web sites and applications!"}
{"_id": "137726", "title": "Testing chainable method calls return type and value", "text": "Is it worth testing the return type and value of a method call that is designed for chaining? It is conceivable that a fellow programmer could accidentally change the return type to void and remove the return while furiously refactoring some methods? This would potentially break a lot of code for an unsuspecting user. However, I feel like I would be testing code structure rather than code functionality. Is this a reasonable thing to test? Or is it just a big waste of time?"}
{"_id": "197005", "title": "Complex Mutual Exclusion Validation Logic", "text": "I need to validate some form inputs in complex way. E.g.               <select id=\"options\" multiple=\"multiple\">       <option>A</option>       <option>B</option>       <option>C</option>       <option>D</option>       <option>E</option>       </select>        For example, if user selects A and B, user should be given an error if user also selects D. Note, I'm trying to keep this business rule in a separate layer from this UI code, which could be an entirely different form, e.g. checkboxes, drag-and- drop, add/delete options with possibly accompanying fields. I'm looking for a framework, design pattern, or other elegant way to code this logic, preferably ultimately through validation attributes in a model."}
{"_id": "157429", "title": "Why doesn't Microsoft release UX frameworks to build UI's like their current UIs?", "text": "When I started learning programming with the .NET framework, I started by using WinForms as a UI technology. It uses \u201cclassic\u201d menus just like this office 2000: ![office 2000 user interface](http://i.stack.imgur.com/cevjt.png) A few years later Office 2007 was released, the ribbon was born: ![office 2007 user interface](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WvWbm.png) And even some years later Office 2010 was released, which also added new features like the stage:![office 2010 user interface](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fYfEQ.png) A few days ago Office 15 preview was released and they added more fancy new stuff: ![office 15 user interface](http://i.stack.imgur.com/hf2Wl.png) That's huge progress IMO, but why don\u2019t they enable the developers to build UI\u2019s like them? When I have a look at .NET, there\u2019s still no way to build a ribbon. Even with WPF, which is highly extensible, there are no premade controls. So the community has started several projects to create all those \"features\". I know, today Microsoft has released a ribbon for WinForms and WPF, but that's still not part of any core framework (not even the 4.5 one). But this is not limited to .NET as far as I know? Today there are still no APIs for unmanaged applications to create those ribbon UI\u2019s?! In Germany they are offering free UX training to make sure everything fits their style! http://j.mp/NZGgH9 **Why doesn\u2019t Microsoft give the cool stuff to us developers? Do they want their applications to be unique?**"}
{"_id": "234474", "title": "When to use custom collections?", "text": "I see a lot of APIs that use custom collections instead of just using strongly-typed packaged generics. For instance, the API will have a `Object1Collection` instead of just a `List<Object1>` (or whatever the appropriate generic would be). When do you know to use one or the other? I understand you'd create a custom collection if you want to _extend_ the capabilities of a pre-shipped generic collection, but what if that's not the case? Is it prudent to create the custom collection from the beginning, with thoughts that in the future that object might scale up and require further capabilities, and it may be easier to just do that initially? Is that justification enough? And if you just want to _extend_ functionality, instead of _define_ collection functionality, you would just derive your custom collection from a base generic collection class, otherwise inherit the interface accordingly? Is that typical?"}
{"_id": "68520", "title": "how to choose co programmer", "text": "I am working on a idea, I need a co-programmer to get that to a good shape. What are the factors should be considered while choosing people for such positions. (Note : if any java programmer is open-minded, please contact me. This however is not a job offer :-) )"}
{"_id": "234473", "title": "how are virtual methods slower in C#", "text": "I was reading the that virtual calls make the code slower than calling non- virtual call in C#. However the IL instruction for both are the same `callvirt` except in cases where `base.somemethod()` is called. So how does virtual method hurt performance ?"}
{"_id": "109909", "title": "How can I handle chat messages asynchronously?", "text": "I'm working on a program where part of it will be working as a chat between different people. I'm trying to figure out the best way to send and receive messages. A PrintWriter or something similar won't work because the process will stop at the `read()` method while waiting for a message to be sent to it. I'd like to check to see if there is a new message, and if not, continue the execution. I've seen some stuff about JMS, but I haven't done enough research to determine if it's up for this job. _Is_ JMS the best option for this, or is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "86009", "title": "What are SCM tasks that could be performed on a mobile device?", "text": "Given an iPad, iPhone, Playbook, or other mobile device, what SCM tasks make sense on these devices. Code review? Change propagation between branches? Automated build results after check in? What else? Code generation? Debugging? Code editing in the cloud? Or do you think all SCM tasks will always be performed on a desktop computer?"}
{"_id": "204996", "title": "how to use the same behaviour in different classes", "text": "I have a behaviour that I'd like to use in different classes. Those classes are unrelated to each other (no inheritance). I'm using AS3, where multiple inheritance is not possible. I could use an interface but then I'd have to rewrite the same implementation every time, which is basically what I'm doing now (but without the interface). As en example I have many situations where I have an icon and a text label. In buttons, signs, etc. I'd like to centralise the alignment behaviour between the icon and the label. What is the best OOP pattern for that?"}
{"_id": "163402", "title": "How is this number calculated?", "text": "I have numbers;               A == 0x20000000     B == 18     C == (B/10)     D == 0x20000004 == (A + C)      A and D are in hex, but I'm not sure what the assumed numeric bases of the others are (although I'd assume base 10 since they don't explicitly state a base. It may or may not be relevant but I'm dealing with memory addresses, A and D are pointers. The part I'm failing to understand is how 18/10 gives me 0x4. **Edit: Code for clarity:**               *address1 (pointer is to address: 0x20000000)          printf(\"Test1: %p\\n\", address1);     printf(\"Test2: %p\\n\", address1+(18/10));     printf(\"Test3: %p\\n\", address1+(21/10));      Output:               Test1: 0x20000000     Test2: 0x20000004     Test3: 0x20000008"}
{"_id": "4200", "title": "Why would you hire in-house software developers instead of outsourcing them to develop a product for your company?", "text": "Why would you hire in-house over outsourcing in developing a product for your company? I can only think of a few but I'm not entirely sure if they're good enough reason. This is actually for a debate that I'm going to have in class. I'm more inclined on the outsourcing part but unfortunately, I was asked to switch to the in-house side of the debate. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "159277", "title": "When to use the 3 layers model?", "text": "I was recently exposed to the three layer model (DAL,BL,UI). Someone told me I should ALWAYS work with this model. I have a medium project that I'm starting and I have doubts whether I should build it with layers and make myself work with more complex code just to 'code by the book'? Even though I read about this model, I'm still not entirely convinced it's worth it. I understood that it would help if I change the UI, but I really don't see any chances that the UI of this app will ever change. So is it worth the hassle? I would appreciate your opinion - would you advice me to always build projects by this model (even if currently I can't see much of a benefit)? **EDIT:** guys, please don't catch me on the word 'ALWAYS' - the meaning was just that generally this is the proper way I should design my projects by."}
{"_id": "170755", "title": "Best approach for saving highlighted areas on geographical map", "text": "I am designing an application that allow users to highlight areas of a geographical map using a tool that is like brush or a pen. The tool basically draw a circle with a single click and continue drawing those circles with mouse move. Here is an example of drawing made by moving the tool. It is pretty much same as Microsoft Paint. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aXG9T.png) Regardless of programming language what is best approach (most inexpensive approach) for saving this kind of data?"}
{"_id": "170758", "title": "Silverlight, one database per user", "text": "I have a Silverlight application with WCF and entity framework. Is it possible to have one database per user. So when the the user log in, the user will use his own database?"}
{"_id": "222295", "title": "How discrete should a RESTful API be?", "text": "I've never built a RESTful API before and I am wondering how discrete should it be? For example lets say I have a customer which has a name, address, phone number, email address, language, etc. Does it make sense that there is a way to update each individual field (update address, update email address, etc), or should there just be a single update for the entire customer and each field is optional?"}
{"_id": "222294", "title": "Which is better to use? (Enum or Constant)", "text": "I have my enum like this.               enum Size{PAGE_SIZE=20,               HEADER_SIZE=30     };      I only use them as constants(No enum variable created) in my program.   i.e= `int x = PAGE_SIZE + 20;` So what is the better way to declare the constants in this scenario? (enum or const)"}
{"_id": "79219", "title": "What are Ruby's strengths?", "text": "Before I'd read this article, I never understood why anybody liked LISP. After reading it, I was able to give LISP a fair enough shot and have since grown to like it. It wasn't until I read this that I began to understand why some people cared about TCL. I need an equivalent for Ruby. I can read the code. I've written a trivial amount of it. I've seen Rails. Yes, everything is an object... yes, the syntax is novel... I still don't understand why folks are so enamored with it."}
{"_id": "106489", "title": "What pattern helps to compose nested views at runtime?", "text": "Are there any design patterns to compose views within a parent view during runtime? Say we are composing the views in a workflow tab and views in the tabcontrol depend on the country, store type and/or other conditions. This is a MVP, WPF, PRISM application."}
{"_id": "79215", "title": "Why do Windows Forms / Swing frameworks favour inheritance instead of Composition?", "text": "Today a professor of mine commented that he found it odd that while SWT's philosophy is one of making your own controls by composition, Swing seems to favour inheritance. I have almost no contact with both frameworks, but from what I remember in C#'s Windows Forms one usually extends controls, just like Swing. Being that generally people tend to prefer composition over inheritance, why didn't Swing/Windows Forms folks favour composition instead of inheritance?"}
{"_id": "229748", "title": "Implementing bussiness logic with a large number of business rules and processes", "text": "We are currently working on a project that heavily relies on a database. Among many tables the main focus is on table \"data\" which is linked to another table \"data_type\" as many-to-one, which is then linked to table \"data_operation\" as one-to-many. The last table defines specific set of operations that has to be processed for each row in table \"data\" based on specific data type. The operation is processed against specific fields in table \"data\" and partially data from other tables, not mentioned in this example. The actual operation is mostly a complex calculation or specific formula. The result of a specific operation will be stored in yet another table. So in general we have: ![Trivial scheme](http://i.stack.imgur.com/V8jrq.png)   * Projection for table \"data\" is approximately one million rows per year, while other tables should not change drastically on a yearly basis, but it will initially hold a few thousand rows, that is, each data type will define roughly 10-15 operations.   * Each operation should be reversible (revert changes).   * Processing speed is a very important factor.   * The application will most likely process 2500 new table \"data\" rows per day. My question is concerning the best approach to implement operations. Do you think it is wiser to move business logic and rules to a database (procedures, triggers for each operation) or implement and process each operation in the application/business layer? What would be the ideal generic structure? Also I am open for other approaches as well."}
{"_id": "91347", "title": "Are audit and log exactly doing the same things in a software system?", "text": "I've seen that some of software systems have functionality of audit and log. Both of those functionality seem that they are just doing the same things - **records all the users's actions behind the scene.** There are respective tables of audit and log even exist in the database. If they are really doing the same things why the developer developed duplicated function in a system?"}
{"_id": "206312", "title": "Should an algorithm handle invalid inputs and can it have hard-coded paths for certain input data?", "text": "I have certain preconditions on input data and I need to design an algorithm for that data. Should I also handle invalid preconditions? Also is it normal that my algorithm will work only for a certain number of inputs, for example 4, and for any smaller number of inputs I'll have \"if input.size\" clause? To clarify my question. Well, actually it's a task from a book but anyway. So it says i'm given an array sorted, then swapped so that it looks like \"4567123\" first part \"123\" is swapped. So, should I bother to design algoritm for non-swaped case? Also my algoritm doesn't work well for input size 1, 2, 3, so I inserted cases for 1 , 2 ,3. Is it ok. So here is the code:               //file SwapedArraySearch.java\\     public class SwapedArraySearch {         public static int search(int[] arr) {             switch (arr.length){                 case 1:                     return arr[0];                 case 2:                     return arr[0] > arr[1]?arr[1]:arr[0];                 case 3:                     return arr[0] > arr [1] ? (arr[1] > arr[2]?arr[2]: arr[1]):                                                 (arr[0] > arr[2]?arr[2]: arr[0]);             }             int x = arr[0];             int n = arr.length/2;             int prevn = arr[n] > x ? arr.length -1 : 1;              int t;             while(prevn != n) {                 if (x < arr[n]) {                    if (arr[n] > arr [n + 1] )                        return arr[n+1];                     t = n;                     n = n + (prevn - n)/2;                     prevn = t;                 } else {                     if (arr[n - 1] > arr[n])                         return arr[n];                     t = n;                     n = prevn + (n - prevn)/2;                     prevn = t;                 }             }             return arr[0] > arr[1] ? arr[arr.length - 1] : arr[0];         }              public static void main(String... args) {             int[] arr = new int[args.length];             for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++)                 arr[i] = Integer.valueOf(args[i]);             System.out.println(search(arr));                     }     }      Also I'm bother that it looks too complex. Doesn't it or is it fine? Also, let's say, binary search, it obviously shouldn't check before run that array was sorted before, right?"}
{"_id": "238089", "title": "comparison of floating point numbers vs. comparsion of Integers in C", "text": "Does comparison of floating point numbers takes (considerably) longer time than comparison of Integers in C? I just wrote a C program of heap sort to sort floating point numbers. I am on ubuntu 14.04 and I used `time` command to check the time taken by this program for sorting 50, 5000 and 50000 random numbers and then I just changed all `double` to `int` and again checked time for 50, 5000 and 5000 numbers and statistics are as follows:               $ time ./heap 50 < input.txt           real    0m0.003s     user    0m0.001s     sys 0m0.002s     $ time ./temp 50 < input.txt           real    0m0.003s     user    0m0.001s     sys 0m0.002s     $ time ./heap 5000 < input.txt           real    0m0.008s     user    0m0.007s     sys 0m0.002s     $ time ./temp 5000 < input.txt           real    0m0.005s     user    0m0.004s     sys 0m0.001s     $ time ./heap 50000 < input.txt           real    0m0.030s     user    0m0.028s     sys 0m0.002s     $ time ./temp 50000 < input.txt           real    0m0.027s     user    0m0.026s     sys 0m0.002s     $ time ./heap 500000 < input.txt           real    0m0.263s     user    0m0.259s     sys 0m0.003s     $ time ./temp 500000 < input.txt           real    0m0.219s     user    0m0.216s     sys 0m0.003s      Here heap is the executable of floating point heapsort and temp is the executable of Integer number heapsort. As we can see there is noticeable difference in running times? What is the reason? I can upload the codes if needed."}
{"_id": "79213", "title": "Are basic level programming skills taught at elementary necessary/helpful for success in maths?", "text": "How would you feel if basic level programming skills were taught in elementary school? Would kids not be up to par with what programming demands, brain capacity wise? Would it help the kids with maths and other similar classes, or even be worth it for kids who have no interest in the field."}
{"_id": "35346", "title": "Good design for a simple site that contains a blog", "text": "What is a good design for a simple web site with mostly static pages and a blog? I am helping a friend build this for their small business. We are looking for a simple approach that can be implemented fairly quickly. (I am a programmer and can help with coding, hosting, etc.) One option is to use a site like virb, which lets you choose from one of their themes and build a site pretty easily. You can also include a blog. They host the site for a pretty low monthly rate. I recommended this option, but my friend wants a design that is unique and custom. So, I took one of the themes and started modifying the HTML and CSS. This might still be a good option, but... ...If we are going to greatly modify it, why not just create the static pages from scratch and use something like Wordpress for the blog. Is this a good option? It looks fairly easy to integrate Wordpress with a site so that the design and behavior are really cohesive. Is this a good idea? Do you recommend any other approaches?"}
{"_id": "145887", "title": "Is Cygwin or Windows Command Prompt preferable for getting a consistent terminal experience for development?", "text": "### The question: Which is better, installing cygwin or one of its cousins on all my windows machines to have a consistent terminal experience across all my development machines, or becoming well trained in the skill of mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt? ### Systems I use:   * OSX Lion on a Macbook Air   * Windows 8 on a desktop   * Windows 7 on the same desktop   * Fedora 16 on the same desktop ### What I'm trying to accomplish Configure an entirely consistent (or consistent _enough_ ) terminal experience across all my machines. \"enough\" in this context is clearly subjective. Please be clear in your answer **why** the configuration you suggest is consistent enough. ### One more thing to keep in mind: While I do write a lot of code intended to run on Windows (actually code that runs on Windows Phone which necessitates a windows machine), I also write a lot of Java code, and prefer to do so in vim. I test a local repo in Java on my windows machine, and push to another test machine running ubuntu later in the development stage. When I push to the ubuntu machine, I'm exclusively in terminal, since I'm accessing it via SSH. ### Summary, with more accurate question: Is there a good way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, or is it better to get accustomed to remembering different commands based on the system I'm on? Which (if either) is considered \"best practice\" by the development community? Alternatively, for a consistent development experience, would it be better to write **all** my code SSHed into another machine, and move things to windows for compile / build only when I needed to? That seems like too much work... but could be a solution. ### Update: While there are insightful responses below, I have yet to hear an answer that talks about _why_ any given solution is superior. Cygwin/GnuWin32 is certainly a way to accomplish a similar experience on all platforms, but since I'm just learning all things command line, I don't want to set myself up to do a lot of relearning/unlearning in the future. Cygwin/GnuWin32 has its peculiarities I would imagine, and being aware of how that set up works on Windows is a learning curve. Additionally, using Cygwin/GnuWin32 robs me of learning the benefits of PowerShell. As a newcomer to working in a command line, which path should I choose to minimize having to relearn/unlearn things in the future? or as my first paragraph poses: > [is it better to use Cygwin] ...or [become] well trained in the skill of > mentally switching from linux terminal to windows command prompt?"}
{"_id": "224192", "title": "Optimizing mindmaps by finding the least amount of redundancy", "text": "When using mindmaps, you order them based on how you think it fits best. So for instance (tab means subtree)               requirements       dinner         food         forks         spoons       breakfast         food         forks      this could be written using               food       at         dinner         breakfast     forks       at         dinner         breakfast     spoons       at         dinner      What would an algorithm look like that finds the best sorting in the manner described. Best means, the least amount of redundancy? (The 2nd example might not actually reduce redundancy but it shows what is meant by sorting/reordering)"}
{"_id": "224195", "title": "what is the difference between a software engineer and project manager?", "text": "I understand that a software engineers job is to work with all aspects of developing and supporting a software system. How does a project manager fit/work with a software engineer in a small team (5 or less) environment?"}
{"_id": "224197", "title": "Is it reasonable to use git only on my local machine?", "text": "Is it ok to just use git only locally? I don't want to have to pay for a service that provides private repositories (such as Github) but I think git is a great way to organize my closed-source project."}
{"_id": "73510", "title": "Communication between teams in the same company", "text": "In our company we have 3 teams working on different software. The level they are working on is very diverse from 8/16 bit microcontroller in C , via 32bit arm on C++ under winCE to PC software developed with C# and windev. The tools and procedures we all use are roughly the same, although some teams use VSS and others SVN for version control. At the moment there is not much formal communications between the teams. Improvements in the process are only accidental because you hear something from a member of the other team that you could use in your own development. We would very much love to improve this situation but don't know how. What did you do that did or didn't work in such situations?"}
{"_id": "73514", "title": "What are some good books to use to learn ADA?", "text": "I was recently encouraged by a potential employer to go out and buy a book and begin learning ADA. I generally find that starting out with a good book, then supplementing that learning with continued research on-line with reference as needed to the book is the best way that I learn. What books would you recommend to start out with learning ADA? The job itself would involve embedded programming which I don't have experience with either. Any books that cover both topics well?"}
{"_id": "188669", "title": "In an event-driven environment, how should a \"cancel\" function abort all further events?", "text": "In my iOS app, things are mostly driven by events.   1. The user presses a button   2. The app listens for an external device to be connected to the iOS device   3. Once the device is detected (is connected), an asynchronous call is made to a web service (to check for user authenticity)   4. The web service returns the user's authenticity (such as a boolean)   5. Another asynchronous web service is called for a stage 2 authenticity   6. Result is returned My question is: If I give the user a dialog box saying \"Please wait, processing\" and I give them a \"Cancel\" button, how should I (or how might I) abort everything that's happening? One way to do this is to simply have a boolean called \"userDidCancelEverything\" and every event-driven method checks to see if this is true. This seems ugly though."}
{"_id": "132779", "title": "Queries in Agile process", "text": "How to determine the story point value in Agile methodology and determine the team velocity? In web search able to get the definition but not the actually process explanation."}
{"_id": "132773", "title": "Where can I get some sample text?", "text": "I am trying to get statistics on 2-character sequence combination frequencies for the English language for a project I'm working on. It's very important that the results are as precise as possible. I'm not quite sure whether this type of research has been conducted before, but not to worry; I can easily whip up a script to report the statistics I need. But what I don't have is a large body of sample text to analyse. Does anyone know of a good resource where I can get a large amount (several GB would be nice) of English text covering a wide variety of topics in plain-text?"}
{"_id": "206946", "title": "Sorting versus hashing", "text": "My problem is as follows. I have an array of `n` strings with `m < n` of them distinct. I want to create a one-to-one function which assigns each of the `m` distinct strings to the numbers `0 ... m-1`. For example, if my strings are: `Bob, Amy, Bob, Charlie, Amy` then the function: `Bob -> 0, Amy -> 1, Charlie -> 2` would meet my needs. I have thought of three possible approaches:   1. Sort the list of strings, remove duplicates, and construct the function using a search algorithm.   2. Create a hash table and check each string to see if it is already in the table before inserting it.   3. Sort the list of strings, remove duplicates, and put the resulting list into a hash table. My code will be written in Java, and I will likely use standard Java algorithms: merge sort for sorting, binary search for searching, and whatever the standard Java hash table algorithm is. **Question:** Assume that after creating the function I will have to evaluate it on each of the n original strings. Which of the three approaches is fastest? Is there a better way? Part of the problem is that I don't really know what's going on \"under the hood\" in standard hashing algorithms. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "183671", "title": "Using a product licensed under GNU GPLv3 for internal company use", "text": "I am in the process of a creating a small web portal for the department I'm working in. For this is need to present some data, and have found the following: http://www.pchart.net/, which could seem to be of great help to me. The above is licensed under GNU GPLv3, and my question is whether it would be allowed for me to use the above, for free. To clarify, the portal that I'm creating will in no way be sold or generate money, but will purely be for internal informational purposes. I have read through the terms and conditions of the GPLv3, and as far as i can make out, my situation is legal, but i want to be absolutely sure that I'm not using the software illegally."}
{"_id": "183670", "title": "How can I avoid mistakes using the same variable name again?", "text": "This isn't a rare case and occurs with me often and I spent countless time trying to debug the code. Latest example, this PHP code where I used `$email` for the parameter and for object as well.               private function _mail( $email )     {         if( filter_var( $email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL ) ):             $email = new Zend_Mail();             $email->setSubject( $this->request->post('subject') )                 ->setBodyHtml( $this->request->post('message') )                 ->setFrom( $this->request->post('from') )                 ->addTo( $email )                 ->send();             unset($email);         endif;     }      It was throwing an error, `strtr()` expects parameter 1 to be an string object given and it was really frustrating to browse through zend libraries to see what obscure string statement was throwing this error. How to avoid such mistakes?"}
{"_id": "206942", "title": "Is Moving Entity Framework objects over a webservice really the best way?", "text": "I've inherited a .NET project that has close to 2 thousand clients out in the field that need to push data periodically up to a central repository. The clients wake up and attempt to push the data up via a series of WCF webservices where they are passing each entity framework entity as parameter. Once the service receives this object, it preforms some business logic on the data, and then turns around and sticks it in it's own database that mirrors the database on the client machines. The trick is, is that this data is being transmitted over a metered connection, which is very expensive. So optimizing the data is a serious priority. Now, we are using a custom encoder that compresses the data (and decompresses it on the other end) while it is being transmitted, and this is reducing the data footprint. However, the amount of data that the clients are using, seem ridiculously large, given the amount of information that is actually being transmitted. It seems me that entity framework itself may be to blame. I'm suspecting that the objects are very large when serialized to be sent over wire, with a lot context information and who knows what else, when what we really need is just the 'new' inserts. Is using the entity framework and WCF services as we have done so far the correct way, architecturally, of approaching this n-tiered, asynchronous, push only problem? Or is there a different approach, that could optimize the data use?"}
{"_id": "87851", "title": "Is there any research out there on geographic differences in work environments (e.g., respect) for programmers?", "text": "One thing I've learned from this website is that software developers are not treated the same as what I've seen in the companies I've worked at, and some of the differences seem to be related to the culture or other factors of the geographical location where the programmer works. In some areas, it seems like programmers can expect many perks and a great deal of professional respect, but in others it sounds like programmers are seen as laborers who are told what to do and then should go do it without question. Even in just the USA, there seem to be major differences in \"the norm\" between the various regions of this country. I'm wondering how much of this is just my perception, and how much is real differences about how programmers are perceived in their different locations. Is there any research out there discussing major differences in programmer work environments or attitudes about how to treat or respect programmers by geography? I'd be interested in multiple articles tackling different ways of looking at this. Edit: Research, specifically, doesn't seem to be available, so I'm making the question broader. Any good, thoughtful writing on the topic of any kind available?"}
{"_id": "241122", "title": "Automatically analyze excel files", "text": "I have to replicate a manual generation of a large number of excel files. I started to manually track the relations between cells ( files, formulas, etc). I also had a talk with the person which generates those files. For now I have a general understanding about how the excel files are generated, but \"devil is in the details\". I assume that I can write a script which will generate the hierarchy between cells and files, but this might require the same effort as manually noticing the relations. Also, I'm afraid that I'm not too experienced and my app is more prone to error approach than a manual analyze. How to handle this problem? Do you know about an open source project which analyze the excel files in a recursive mode following the formulas ?"}
{"_id": "180320", "title": "Have I understood OOP correctly?", "text": "I had originally posed this on StackOverflow. The question was closed and I was asked to post this here instead. Here is the original question I had posted there: * * * I have been programming using procedural method for a while now. I have done some good amount of reading pertaining to OOP and I know how to use it. It's just that I am not sure if whether I still know how to use it correctly? So to put this to a test I am presenting a skeleton of a plugin which I have developed using OOP. The plugin is supposed to fetch values like subscribers, follows etc from various social networks.               // This is an abstract class used by all Social Network classes     abstract class Social_Network {         protected $service_url,$service_identifier,$icon_url,$refresh_data;              function __construct($arguments) {             // Code to populate the protected variables declared above         }              protected function get_value_internal() {             // Internal here means get data from cache.                  // Call get_value_external If cache data has expired or does not exist         }              protected function parse_json_data($data) {             // This function parses data and gets the requested value from it         }              public function display_value() {             // This is a public function which outputs the value                  // Call get_value_internal                  // Display the value with icon, etc.         }              //This will be different for all networks because every network would have a different method for retrieving data         abstract function get_value_external();     }          class Facebook_Social_Network extends Social_Network {         function get_value_external() {             // Unique code for retrieving data from Facebook                  // Process the data fetched above and parse it using the parse_json_data function defined in our abstract class             return $this - > parse_json_data($data);         }     }          class Twitter_Social_Network extends Social_Network {         function get_value_external() {             // Unique code for retrieving data from Twitter                  // Process the data fetched above and parse it using the parse_json_data function defined in our abstract class             return $this - > parse_json_data($data);         }     }          class YouTube_Social_Network extends Social_Network {         function get_value_external() {             // Unique code for retrieving data from YouTube                  // Data returned by YouTube is processed differently so this doesn't use the shared method parse_json_data                  // Process the data and put it inside a variable named $value which will be returned below                  return $value;         }     }      I will appreciate if someone good at OOP can take a quick look and tell me if I am on target with my understanding, close to the target or way off? One thing that's bothering me is whether I should have just used one class which would handle all Networks? * * *"}
{"_id": "180326", "title": "Scientific software design", "text": "I asked this question over at stackoverflow and it was suggested a tighter form be posted here. Many early career numerical researchers face the prospect of having to create performance critical software from the ground up. Most are ill equipped to do so, and my lab is no different. I currently work extending a sophisticated C application that is typical of a lot of academic code -- it is a nightmare to work with and adding new features takes much longer than it should. I want to learn how to do it better, and I learn by doing. With that in mind, I would like to jump in the deep end and create an application that is parallel (OpenMPI + maybe OpenCL), combines script driven Python UI with C++ for the heavy lifting, and most importantly, makes use of appropriate design patterns to make the code as modular as possible. The primary reason for doing so is to learn the major gotcha's and some general performance techniques that can be documented and shared around the lab. I have read some of the books around OO and pattern's, but I find it challenging to take their abstract nature and apply it to the problem domain in a useful way. I guess the question I am asking is: **if you were given the task to design this kind of software, what would be the focus of your first hour in front of a whiteboard?**"}
{"_id": "244576", "title": "Should custom data elements be stored as XML or database entries?", "text": "There are a ton of questions like this, but they are mostly very generalized, so I'd like to get some views on my specific usage. **General:** I'm building a new project on my own in Django. It's focus will be on small businesses. I'd like to make it somewhat customizble for my clients so they can add to their customer/invoice/employee/whatever items. My models would reflect boilerplate items that all ModelX might have. For example:   * first name   * last name   * email   * address   * ... Then my user's would be able to add fields for whatever data they might like. I'm still in design phase and am building this myself, so I've got some options. **Working on...** Right now the 'extra items' models have a FK to the generic model (`Customer` and `CustomerDataPoints` for example). All values in the extra data points are stored as char and will be coerced/parced into their actual format at view building. In this build the user could theoretically add whatever values they want, group them in sets and generally access them at will from the views relavent to that model. _Pros:_ Low storage overhead, very extensible, searchable   _Cons:_ More sql joins My other option is to use some type of markup, or key-value pairing stored directly onto the boilerplate models. This coul essentially just be any low- overhead method weather XML or literal strings. The view and form generated from the stored data would be taking control of validation and reoganizing on updates. Then it would just dump the data back in as a char/blob/whatever. Something like:               <datapoint type='char' value='something' required='true' />     <datapoint type='date' value='01/01/2001' required='false' />     ...      _Pros:_ No joins needed, Updates for validation and views are decoupled from data   _Cons:_ Much higher storage overhead, limited capacity to search on extra content * * * **So my question is:** If you didn't live in the contraints impose by your company what method would you use? Why? What benefits or pitfalls do you see down the road for me as a small business trying to help other small businesses? _Just to clarify, I am not asking about custom UI elements, those I can handle with forms and template snippets. I'm asking primarily about data storage and retreival of non standardized data relative to a boilerplate model._"}
{"_id": "220289", "title": "Mobile compatible JEE application", "text": "Does using frameworks like AngularJS/Backbone JS/Bootstrap/Foundation etc. automatically make the web application mobile device compatible? Is there a framework/design approach to make applications (new or existing) mobile compatible? To put it simply; is there a framework/guideline/library which I can use in my JEE web application UI layer making it automatically compatible both on computer browsers and mobile devices (iOS phone, iPad, Android phones and the whole array of it)."}
{"_id": "240651", "title": "Why don't we completely de-couple frontend JS frameworks and backend APIs?", "text": "Whenever we implement a frontend framework in the likes of Backbone, AngularJS etc. there's an integration process involved with the backend technologies like NodeJS, Rails, Yii etc. (like setting up routes, generating views or adding libs etc.) which varies depending upon what you select at the front-end and what you take at the backend, my question is: Why don't we completely de-couple the process so that front-end (HTML, CSS, JS etc.) is completely independent while backend APIs returns us desired data only, just like we do in mobile development."}
{"_id": "240653", "title": "Modifying an open-source license with optional requests", "text": "A general question about open-source licenses: I know you can't modify them yourself (i.e. \"GPL except you can't do this\") and writing your own is generally a bad idea. However, is it feasible to add \"Please do this\" riders? For example, say that I want to license something under the GPL. Can I add a clause which says `\"If you release a fork of this software, you are hereby requested to contact so-and-so and notify them\"`? Would this count as a different license? For that matter, is the license even the right place for such a request, or should it go in a README (and if so, how would you get it to propagate)? **Edit:** To clarify, I'm primarily asking whether this is something that **can** be done, and only secondarily whether it's a good idea (I suspected not, and the first responses confirm it). I have no intent of actually doing so, it's just inspired by an unrelated discussion I had."}
{"_id": "244573", "title": "Purpose of building file using Make", "text": "I am trying to understand what is the purpose of making files using commands such as `cmake ..` and `make`, I have tried looking online but there is no concise explanation on its purpose that i could find. Also, is it necessary to use `make` on a project folder that is not built in order to use the source (C++) in other projects. I know this may be a simplistic question, but as i am fairly new to building files, any information or references would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "23404", "title": "How to get money from reluctant client?", "text": "I completed this website 4 months ago. (I would like to keep the website anonymous - if this post comes up on google search for his customers, it will have a negative impact on his business). We did several iterations, he was very demanding (and nosy), I complied with every single thing he wanted, including the font-size of the footer which destroyed the aesthetic looks by quite a bit. (and he messed with the colors too, making it look dangerously childish and unprofessional) Anyway, he was very friendly during he whole process. After getting all the requirements I accepted to build the website for \u00a3950 and I charged him \u00a3150 in advance so he wouldn't want to bail out after I started the work. The requirements kept changing quite a lot, I made adjustments as and completed the website just 5 days late, w.r.t. the agreed date, in-spite all the changes in requirements. That was four months ago. He has never returned my calls nor replied to my emails since then. How do I get the money back from him? I really need some advice on this, this is the second time someone has not payed me. ### Points to be noted: 1) We did not sign any contract - he was a friend of a friend.   2) I still hold the passwords for ftp, cpanel and everything. I don't want to bring the site down. somehow it doesn't seem ethical to me.   3) I posted this on stackoverflow and it was closed, I was redirected here. **EDIT**   Thank you everyone, for your enormous support. I thought I should include some more details: He is hosting the site. as in, I made him register and use his own debit card to buy the domain name, webspace and everything, I just have the passwords for his cpanel, and ftp (well, I have access to cpanel that pretty much gives me access to many things) Now, if I give him a warning, he might change the password to cpanel, but I am fairly sure he doesn't know about ftp's. **UPDATE**   I followed `Anna Lear`'s advice and sent him the final invoice, on Saturday, with a warning that I will take the site down if he doesn't respond to my email before this Tuesday. He hasn't replied to my emails yet, but I will let you know how this goes. Thanks much for your support. I plan to put up a holding page as `Darknight` suggested after Tuesday. **Points**   I dont have a server space of my own, however I have few web spaces of my clients but I dont want to use them for these kind of purpose. **RESULTS**   After my follow up of final invoice and warning, the client refused to anything. workman's advice seemed to be the most sensible to me. I mirrored the site to my own webspace, logged into his CPanel and forwarded the website to my site. Once that was done, I put up a holding page on my site so anyone going to the website would see a holdup page (nothing fishy, just an Under Construction page). Of course, this was all very weak in the sense that if my client knew about CPanel he could just remove the redirection. But, I had this second chance to get back to him and I was relying on him not knowing anything. Two hours later, I got a call from the said client, (and he was acting as if he did not get any of my voice mails or emails) and asked me to get the site back up. I, of-course, said I had to be paid and two days after that he made a bank transfer. His site's back up and running now. Just wanted to say thank you all very much, I was very desperate when I had started this question. You guys are the best, not only you told me to learn the lesson (which I did) you also gave me a very very good solution that seemed to be very ethical (almost) to me. A BIG thank you to workman! * * * If I could choose more than once answer, I would have chosen `Anna Lear` too, but since I followed workman's advice I had to pick that up. People who made a point about not taking the site down without consulting a lawyer, thanks a lot."}
{"_id": "209281", "title": "How is Delphi going on the market? Is it worth yet to make a project in Delphi?", "text": "I use Delphi since 1999 because it is visual, fast, helpful and committed to good programming roles. That's what I tell my friends in the university and interviewer when I apply for a job in any software house. But I am very criticized for using Delphi and for Windows development. It is prejudice IMHO. They say I should use open source technologies and develop in Java, Ruby, Python and other \"new\" technologies, and I should only develop for the Web and cross-platform. I tell them I do code in Java and PHP when necessary but I dislike script and byte-code languages, but I would not matter if suddenly Embarcadero did a Delphi version with Java, what matters is the IDE and the concepts (RAD Studio still has .NET and C++). I \"teach\" them that those languages are almost old as Pascal. I tell them that Delphi is so powerful that I can do almost anything with it (with special respect for VCL) and that is becoming a very good cross- platform software compiler, with options to OS-X and iOS. I think at creating a LT about Delphi to present it to people, because after discussion they leave not convinced. And after that I always stop later and think what if I am really wrong about it. But then I open StackOverflow I see all these splendid professional who works with Delphi and knows so much and I think back how can I be wrong!? I my region clients do not care much how the software is made as long as it works and is cheap.   1. So, I am wrong or not?**   2. **So, how about Delphi acceptance in your country's market?**   3. Is there still a place for Delphi specialized professionals, or everybody just want C# and dotNET when it comes to Windows?   4. Is it worth doing a project in Delphi and some year from now have to make a version for the web (which will take longer to be finished considering my skills)? _Please, if you do not feel comfort on this question because there might be opinion based answers, just focus on item 2, which can be based on generally statistic data._ I am my own Boss and I am starting a big project. I have to make a decision if I will go Delphi or Web. Considering that I can finish the project much faster with Delphi (experience and facilities), it's very important to know if I am choosing right. I have to consider that I have years of written code that I made and reuse."}
{"_id": "230577", "title": "Why is an A element often used instead of a BUTTON for web design?", "text": "Is there any particular reason why people use the A tag to mimic a BUTTON in HTML and JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "185783", "title": "What's a good math textbook to have on my desk while studying Haskell?", "text": "I just started learning Haskell and it seems like you can't get too far in the language without being comfortable ( or at least exposed ) to certain branches of mathematics. Unfortunately I have major holes in such areas and am wondering what is a good introductory textbook that covers all the concepts Haskell uses? For what it's worth, I have an undergraduate engineering degree ( not comp-sci or EE ), though the math I was exposed to was of the hand-wave and memorize variety. I also took an intro to comp-sci course where we did a few weeks of oCaml."}
{"_id": "140108", "title": "Best Practice of making a Composite Control with a repeater activity", "text": "Best Practice of making a Composite Control with a repeater activity It's Templated-Based, have paging support via a DropDown and 2 Buttons It should have Event-Handling also Needed to work as a package for ( so didn't want to give template-editability or much programming options ) **Key Parts to answer :**   1. A Custom Repeater, A Composite Control , A Custom Control with functionality similar to repeater or `CompositeDataControl`?   2. How prepare and get the data to avoid repetition of the processes I did all controls creation and initiation in `CreateChildControls`   but seems that it is running in every request, Is it good to let all the controls created on every Postback or We have to Control this process, How do you suggest   3. Cause we want to Bind via the repeater should we do anything regarding of Data Binding inside the Composite Control ? In my example I binded the repeater (just the repeater) in a method that will run in each run in every serious event like `OnLoad` (Conceptually we binded the repeater, not the CC)   4. How to make a property such as Page Number persistent via postbacks use `viewStates` or if any click we pass the new Page info from session to the control it should do the job ? What is your Paging Strategy, In simple Lines   5. Should I store anything of the Repeater in **ViewState/Control State** and assign a property for them ? want to know your decision, best-practice other professionals know and suggest"}
{"_id": "234043", "title": "Alternatives to inheritance on complex structures?", "text": "I'm working on an ASP.NET Webforms project, using the MVP Pattern (which the presenters as you may know use a Page Controller pattern). I'm given a rather complex inheritance chain for my controllers. Below I depict a small example of the structure I'm facing (it is way bigger structure in my app): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zT5Is.jpg) A lot of code among these controllers is duplicated (i.e. creating cookies in RegisterPageController and LoginPageController, access Customer data in ProfilePage and BuyProductPage...), so I decided to systematically apply Template pattern and create an inheritance structure that would allow me to reuse as much of the code as possible (i.e. Creating an AuthenticatedPageController that checks that the user is authenticated and then BuyProductPage and ProfilePageController inherits from this class, reusing the authentication part of the code). However, as I progress refactoring my code and apply more Template pattern, the inheritance chain starts to become more and more complex, and sometimes trying to create a new hierarchy among all my other classes becomes too tedious. I was wondering if there was a better approach to tackle my issues. I've been reading about composition (I read this post Alternative to \"inheritance versus composition?\") but I'm not sure about how to implement it nor if this would be the best approach for my case. Can anyone enlighten me? Thank you."}
{"_id": "109017", "title": "Explanation of the Google Gravity trick", "text": "I am not much of a JS developer, but I stumbled upon this site called Google Gravity (those who haven't used it, try doing a search there - you'll be amazed), which is a remastered Google homepage. From then on, I've been thinking and wondering about learning more on how the guy implemented it. I tried googling, but could not find a good explanation of the implementation. All the JS/CSS Gurus, can you point me to a location where I can learn more? I already know the basics of working with jQuery and AJAX. Thanks, Yati Sagade"}
{"_id": "140102", "title": "What are the pros and cons of implementing this requirement in different layers?", "text": "I have a CRUD app for `<DomainObject>`s. They are persisted in a database. There is a new requirement: keep track of the `<DomainObject>`s that have been created since the app was opened, so that the user can see what he/she has done. I see three ways to implement this:   1. every time the app is opened, create a new sessionid (for lack of a better name) and store it in the database. Store the sessionid as a foreign key for each `<DomainObject>`. Use a custom query to access the data (i.e. `select * from DomainObject where sessionid = \"currentSessionId\"`)   2. same as 1., except perform the filtering in the business layer   3. don't keep track of this data in the database. Instead, have the model keep track of the new `<DomainObject>`s **The problem:** I don't have enough experience to understand the consequences of each approach. For example, it seems like 1. puts business logic in the database. But 3. doesn't persist some of the data. **What are the pros and cons of each approach?**"}
{"_id": "140105", "title": "Can NoSQL databases be used in e-commerce companies for order management?", "text": "Is it possible to use a non relational database be in an Order management system for an e-commerce company with a large number of orders everyday, like Amazon? Can the benefits of Non Relational databases (scalability, reliability etc) be exploited in this scenario, or, is it impossible to give up ACID properties and hence mandate that only a relational DB be used for this purpose?"}
{"_id": "97538", "title": "Why after each restart, my local .NET sites take time to load for the first time?", "text": "I'm developing sites based on .NET platform. I usually deploy these sites on my local IIS, so that I can test them and see their functionality before going live. However, each time I restart windows, it seems that sites take a long time to run for the first time. I know about JIT and I'm also aware of this question, but it doesn't answer my question. Does JIT happens every time you restart windows? Is it related to creation of w3wp.exe process? Why sites are so slow for the first request after each restart?"}
{"_id": "139517", "title": "Software bundle containing LGPL libraries as Java Fat-Jar Archive", "text": "At work, we're deploying a software bundle of a Java application (written by us) which has lots of external dependencies, most of them being LGPL and BSD- licensed third-party-libraries distributes as JAR archives. Currently, we're deploying a test-client of the software which is distributed as a single java fat jar archive, created by the Maven assembly plugin, which does roughly the following:   * extract all dependencies   * rebundle them as a single jar-archive All class files are extracted, and then bundled back into a single JAR file with our own application. I realized that also some files get overwritten, mostly LICENSE.txt-files, due to having the same name. I'm wondering whether this is correct and complies with the LGPL license. What would be a better way to distribute the software? How would this particular package be best organized? We did not incorporate any source code directly into our source files, nor did we touch the binary files. The source code of the libraries accompanies the whole product. (It is software that is internally used, not deployed to customers or anything, but I guess that does not matter.) PS: I asked the same question on Stack Overflow, and I was suggested to ask it here."}
{"_id": "6118", "title": "When programming for a new platform, do you change the keyboard mapping to what you're familiar with?", "text": "I've been a Windows programmer for a decade or more now, and I'm currently doing my first ever Macintosh project. One of the things that is driving me bonkers is how the keyboard maps differently. There's the little things, like how the equivalent of ALT+TAB in Windows is COMMAND+TAB, which for a standard USB keyboard winds up being WINDOWS+TAB. Then there's the really annoying things, like maneuvering through text in a document is different. In Windows if I want to select a line's text I can position my cursor at the end with the END key, hold SHIFT and hit HOME. On the Macintosh the END key takes you to the end of the document (which, to be fair, is somewhat logical) and holding down SHIFT and the HOME key just selects the entire document up until the cursor. The ALT+arrow keys are more what I'm looking to do. My attitude towards this has been basically to suck it up and learn the new way of doing things and adapt to the idea of going back and forth. My reasoning is that this likely won't be the last new platform I ever program for in my career and it probably benefits me both as a programmer and a computer user to be flexible. In addition, there's always going to be machines I go to where mapping the keyboard isn't in place already, or may not be an option (i.e., helping troubleshoot a QA machine). Plus not everything I'm used to in Windows is going to have a Macintosh equivalent. However, right now I'd be considerably more productive if I were to make things more like Windows. For people who have been working with multiple platforms, do you change the mappings to make everything like what you're familiar with? Or do you do what I'm currently doing which is to suck it up and learn the different way of doing things?"}
{"_id": "124047", "title": "The importance of the length of a program?", "text": "* Why is the length of a program important?   * What difference does it make? [Aside from the fact that a short program looks \"good\".]"}
{"_id": "124046", "title": "Use-cases for node.js and c#", "text": "I do quite a bit of ASP.NET work (C#, MVC), but most of it is typical web development. I do Restful architecture using CRUD repositories. Most of my clients don't have a lot of advanced requirements within their applications. I'm now looking at node.js and it's performance implications (I'm addicted to speed), but I haven't delved into it all that much. I'm wondering if   * node.js can realistically replace my typical web development in C# and ASP.NET MVC (not rewriting existing apps, but when working on new ones)   * node.js can complement an ASP.NET MVC app by adding some async goodness to the existing architecture. Are there use-cases for/against C# and node.js? ### Edit I love ASP.NET MVC and am super excited with where it's going. Just trying to see if there are special use cases that would favor node.js"}
{"_id": "7823", "title": "Is it OK to have multiple asserts in a single unit test?", "text": "In the comment to this great post Roy Osherove pointed to the OAPT project that is designed to run each assert in a single test. This is written on projects home page: > **Proper unit tests should fail for exactly one reason,** that\u2019s why you > should be using one assert per unit test. And also Roy wrote in comments: > My guideline is usually that you test one logical CONCEPT per test. you can > have multiple asserts on the same _object_. they will usually be the same > concept being tested. I think that there are some cases when multiple assertions are needed (e.g. Guard Assertion), but in general I try to avoid this. What is your opinion? Please provide a real word examples when multiple asserts are really _needed._"}
{"_id": "177194", "title": "How should I expand Jenkins to help me release?", "text": "Pushing new Sparkle releases of our internal apps is a pain. I have to make the build, make the release notes file, sign the .zip with the private key, and add a new entry to the appcast file tying everything together. I'd love it if Jenkins could help: use the commit messages for the release notes, and automatically do the rest of it. Should I be looking at writing a new Jenkins plugin, or using shell scripting, or is there something already that will do what I want? (A quick Google didn't find anything.)"}
{"_id": "177196", "title": "What reasons are there to reduce the max-age of a logo to just 8 days?", "text": "Most websites set `max-age=31536000` (1 year) on the `Cache-control` headers of static assets such as logo images. Examples:   * YouTube   * Yahoo   * Twitter   * BBC But there is a notable exception: Google's logo has `max-age=691200` (8 days). I've checked the headers on the Google logo in the past, and it definitely used to be 1 year. (Also, it used to be part of a sprite, and now it is a standalone logo image, but that's probably another question...) What could be valid technical reasons why they would want to reduce its cache lifetime to just 8 days? Google's homepage is one of the most carefully optimised pages in the world, so I imagine there's a good reason. * * * **Edit:** Please make sure you understand these points before answering:   * Nobody uses short `max-age` lifetimes to allow modifying a static asset in future. When you modify it, you just serve it at a different URL. So no, it's nothing to do with Google doodles. Think about it: even if Google didn't understand this basic trick of HTTP, 8 days still wouldn't be appropriate, as only those users who _don't_ have the original logo cached would see the doodle on doodle-day \u2013 and then that group of users would go on seeing the doodle for the following 8 days after Google changed it back :)   * Web servers do not worry about \"'filling up' the caches of clients (or proxies). The client manages this by itself \u2013 when it hits its own storage limit, it just starts dropping the lowest priority items to make space for new items. The priority score is based on the question \"How likely am I to benefit from having cached this URL?\", which is nothing to do with what `max-age` value the server sent when the URL was originally requested; it's a heuristic based on the 'frecency' of requests for that URL. The `max-age` simply lets the server set a cut-off point \u2013 the time at which the client is supposed to discard the item regardless of how often it's being re-used. It would be very nice and trusting of a downstream client/proxy to rely on origin servers 'holding back' from filling up their caches, but I don't think we live in that world ;)"}
{"_id": "177191", "title": "iOS: Using Jenkins for nightly internal builds (TestFlight), plus frequent client builds", "text": "I'm an iOS dev, working for a small agency. I'm currently on a few smaller projects where I'm the only developer. We recently acquired a Jenkins server, but each project is left to fend for themselves as for how to use it. I'd like to use it for making and distributing builds. My ideal would be:   1. Every commit is built as a single IPA that is placed in a HTTP-accessible location. (It only needs to keep the latest one, otherwise the disk would fill up \u2014 some of our apps are 500MB or more.)   2. Once a day it makes a build, signs it with our internal provisioning profile, tacks a build number onto the end of the version number, and sends it to our internal TestFlight team.   3. When manually prompted, it builds the latest commit, gives it a manually specified version number, signs it with the client's provisioning profile and sends it to TestFlight. I'm pretty new to Jenkins. The developer who set up the server is running it on one of our projects, so I know it has the right stuff installed to do Xcode builds. I believe he's only using it to run unit tests though, not to do any of the code signing, IPA creation or TestFlight stuff. So my questions:   * I've listed three distinct kinds of build. How does Jenkins cope with that? I see there's a \"build triggers\" section in the config for a Jenkins project, but it doesn't seem to mention different types of build. Should I just set up multiple Jenkins projects, called \"App X (continuous)\", \"App X (nightly)\" and \"App X (client)\"?   * How do I specify the provisioning profile through Jenkins? If there isn't a way, I guess I could make different configurations in the Xcode project\u2026   * Has anyone else used Jenkins to actually do the release (i.e. build and push to TestFlight) of beta builds of their apps? Is it a good idea? Or should I continue just doing it manually?"}
{"_id": "177190", "title": "Supporting and testing multiple versions of a software library in a Maven project", "text": "My company has several versions of its core software in use by our customers at any one time. My job is to write bespoke Java software for the customers based on the version of core software they happen to be running. I've created a common Java library that performs many of the tasks I regularly require in a normal project. This is a Maven project that I deploy to our local Artifactory and pull down into other Maven projects when required. Currently this library includes v1.3 of our core software, for example:               <dependency>       <groupId>com.foo</groupId>       <artifactId>core-software</artifactId>       <version>1.3</version>     </dependency>      As a result, that's the only version I'm completely confident is compatible due to the success of the unit tests. **How can I best automate testing with other versions of the core software to ensure compatibility?** * * * One possibility is to create a series of Maven projects that incorporate my library and override the core-software version:               <!-- Override core version -->     <dependency>       <groupId>com.foo</groupId>       <artifactId>core-software</artifactId>       <version>1.2</version>     </dependency>     <!-- Incorporate shared library: -->     <dependency>       <groupId>com.foo</groupId>       <artifactId>common-lib</artifactId>       <version>1.0</version>     </dependency>      I could then execute the unit tests from my main project to ensure they all pass (I need to figure that bit out). The benefit of this approach is that I can incorporate these additional Maven projects in my continuous integration server and be alerted whenever a check-in breaks compatibility with another core software version. Can anyone suggest a better alternative?"}
{"_id": "124049", "title": "Java Web Frameworks (JSF vs Wicket) Third-party component suites in Wicket?", "text": "A presentation linked in an answer here demonstrated a comparison of several web development frameworks. It was a good comparison but caused me a little worry based on the technology stack that I have been pushing for awhile now at my current company. While it seemed like the author was biased towards RoR, he pointed out some major pain points about JSF, which I am using right now and personally have no significant problems with. It seems hip to hate JSF, and I would like to look into something different like Wicket. The problem is that rich third-party component libraries like Primefaces have me hooked by the extreme convenience of throwing prebuilt web components onto a page with simple XHTML compliant markup. Frameworks like Wicket are great because they merge the page with the View, and with Spring this is a powerful combination, but I can't help but wonder how long would it take me to implement the fully featured Primefaces Data Table component in a framework like Wicket? Clearly JSF is a component based framework like Tapestry, but does Wicket have an answer to rapid component-based web development like JSF+Primefaces? Further, I am aware of the major drawbacks of JSF, one of which being the level of effort and frustration it takes to develop a component, but with component suites in JSF becoming more stable and fully featured, is this a major issue for relatively simple web applications with loose open ended UI specifications? If it doesn't have to look exactly like the spec visually, why would custom components need to be developed? I know there is a lot of JSF hate out there... just mentioning it a developer conference causes people to break out into seizures from so much fail. The web is littered with JSF Sucks blogs, but I have done some pretty cool things with it. Any thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "177192", "title": "What is a good support knowledge base tool?", "text": "I have been searching for a tool to help my team organize its knowledge for resolving recurring support cases. Context: our team is developing and supporting an huge applications (lots of different screens and workflow processes. We already have a good tool for managing our documentation, but we are struggling with support cases.   Support action involve often quite a lot of manual steps to fix stuff and the knowledge for these actions is more 'oral transmission' than modern tools. We need an efficient way to store them in a knowledge base to be able to retrieve similar cases based on patterns (a stacktrace, an error message, a component name, a workflow step, ...) and ranked by similarity. Our wiki search is not very powerful when it come to this kind of search and the team members don't want to 'waste' time writing a report that will never be found... Do you know efficient knowledge base tool for this kind of use case ?"}
{"_id": "125795", "title": "Starting off with web dev with php", "text": "I'm currently working with Java / C++. I'm interested in web development and am planning to shift my stream. I heard that PHP is a good platform to start off and also it does not require that much of knowledge in technologies like JSP / Servlets or frameworks like springs / struts / hibernate. I have basic ideas about HTML and Javascript as well. I have gone through previous posts in SO and found out the relevant resources as well:   * http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/the-best-way-to-learn-php/   * http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-1028265.html   * http://www.killerphp.com/   * http://phpforms.net/tutorial/tutorial.html   * http://www.php5-tutorial.com/ etc. Now, my question is: I heard of PHP frameworks like CodeIgniter, Zend Frameworkd and Yii.   1. Doesn't learning PHP & MySql implicitly makes us aware of these frameworks?   2. Am I making a good choice in stating with PHP?   3. Is it a good idea to shift streams?"}
{"_id": "125796", "title": "Comparison of IDEs for C++ and C development on Linux: KDevelop, Eclipse, NetBeans, CodeBlocks and Anjuta", "text": "I'd like to note your experience of full scale IDEs on Linux. I personally work mostly with `vim`, however other programmers would like to see a real IDE. So I'd like to hear your personal opinion about different IDEs and comparison between them, in following context:   * C++ and maybe some C development (not Java, Python and other stuff)   * Server side programming (no need for GUI development)   * Working on Linux not \"cross-platform\" development. Opinion needed regard:   1. How stable is it? If IDE crashes I don't need it.   2. Comfortable to use.   3. Powerful for debugging.   4. Integration with various build systems   5. Scalability over huge projects (projects of hundreds thousands of lines of code) I used to work with KDevelop and it was very nice IDE and seems that KDevelop 4 is a huge progress. It seems also that many rather use Netbeans and Eclipse."}
{"_id": "125797", "title": "Protecting the uninitiated (developer) from generics", "text": "Is it acceptable to have a dummy generic parameter in the parameters list in order to save method consumers from the need to specify type arguments? For example -               public T Generate<T>(int paramForInstance) where T : MyClass {         return MyClass.SomeFactoryMethod<T>(paramForInstance);     }          //calling code needs to specify type     MyDerivedClass instance = Generate<MyDerivedClass>(5);          public T Generate<T>(int paramForInstance, T dummy) where T : MyClass {         return MyClass.SomeFactoryMethod<T>(paramForInstance);     }          //calling code needs to provide a \"sample\" to enable type inference     MyDerivedClass instance = null;     instance = Generate(5,instance);      The assumption here is that if ~~junior~~ other devs on the team don't need to think about generics, they're less likely to kick. ## A Little Background (feel free to skip this) A couple weeks ago, a management-developer type in my team freaked out when he saw code (my code) that looked like this:               //conversion methods, using generics     private static TResult? IfNotDangerous<TResult>       (SomeType firstThing, string name, Func<object, TResult?> conversion)        where TResult : struct     {         return IfNotDangerous(firstThing, name,                (any, dummy) => conversion(any), (TResult?)null);     }          private static TResult IfNotDangerous<TResult>       (SomeType firstThing, string name, Func<object, TResult, TResult> conversion,       TResult defaultValue)     {         if (firstThing == null) return defaultValue;         if (!firstThing.Contains(name)) return defaultValue;         if (firstThing[name] == DangerousValue) return defaultValue;         return conversion(firstThing[name], defaultValue);     }      The complaint he had was, \"Why are you using a struct?! That's so resources- heavy! And what does 'where' mean? **Nobody** on the senior development end knows what that does - I've asked them all!\" After overcoming my self-pity, I found a way around that didn't use generics for this particular method. Appeasement was achieved. But I'd like to avoid trouble in the future, if possible. **EDIT** I appreciate all the encouragement, but the question was not \"should I look elsewhere for work?\" - it was \"is this a usable workaround?\""}
{"_id": "7286", "title": "Are programmers inclined towards order or chaos?", "text": "We've all met both kinds of people, which generally can be categorized by the status of their desks: the ones who have a clean, non-cluttered desk; and the ones whose desk look short of having been struck by a bomb shell. But what kind are programmers? Is programming driven by:   1. either order _or_ chaos, but not both,   2. a combination of both,   3. or does it have no impact whatsoever?"}
{"_id": "125792", "title": "In c/c++, are block-scope variables stacked only if the block is executed?", "text": "Suppose this:               void func()     {      ...      if( blah )      {       int x;      }      ...     }        Is the space for `x` reserved on the stack immediately when `func` is entered, or only if the block is actually executed?   Or is it the compiler's choice?   Do C and C++ behave the same about this?"}
{"_id": "73434", "title": "What is a good method to do lightweight architecture evaluation?", "text": "I'm familiar with architecture evaluation methods such as the technical Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) and more business-oriented Cost Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM). However, these methods are fairly large scale: they prescribe several brainstorming sessions, presentations, development of a host of scenarios describing tradeoffs, etc. While useful for projects of a certain size, they are too big for internal projects or desktop applications that are typically developed by a handful of developers (or less), that even though they are small, have some fairly steep quality constraints (performance, scalability, adaptability). A typical practice I have used in the past is to have one developer (or the architect if a team has one) to come up with a general architecture for the application and then discuss it on a whiteboard with the rest of the team, typically using some pseudo-UML notation that is easy to draw and understand. This typically leads to feedback and some iterations on the architecture. But it tends to be a little too informal causing all kinds of assumptions to be made that can later turn out to be wrong decisions. Methods like ATAM typically force all stakeholders to think deeply about the architecture, which leads to discussions until everyone at least agrees on what the architecture exactly _is_. Does anyone have experience with doing lightweight up-front architecture evaluation? If so, what are good practices?"}
{"_id": "121278", "title": "Is it possible to develop a functional language based on PHP opcode?", "text": "Is it possible to develop a functional language based on PHP opcode? Similar to Scala/bytecode or F#/CIL Has somebody done this already?"}
{"_id": "247009", "title": "\"Columnar\" programming language", "text": "There are column-oriented databases, like HBase or Teradata. My question is whether there are programming language implementations that store the objests/structures in a similar format when they are stored in a collection. (To improve cache locality, possibly reduce memory footprint in some cases.) (Searching did not reveal these kind of languages for me, but probably I tried the wrong keywords.) What I mean is the following (in Scala syntax):               case class Data(a: Int, b: Array[Byte])     var someData: Array[Data] = new Array(Data(2, new Array[Byte](2)), Data(3, new Array[Byte](3))     var someData(1).b(1) = 1.toByte      Could be represented as the following: Array for the `a` parts:               ---     |2|     ---     |3|     ---      Array for the `b` parts:               ---------------               -----     |byteArrayRef0|   ------>     |0|0|     ---------------               -----   -------     |byteArrayRef1|   ----------------->  |0|1|0|     ---------------                       -------      Object passing would require more stack space with this structure, for example to pass the only second element from `someData` it would require to pass the the array references (for the `a` and the `b` parts) and the index `1`. Probably this is its main drawback, but I guess there might be clever solutions, or this would not be a huge problem. (The arrays should be internal implementation details, not visible, unless the container for `someData` is immutable. Probably arrays are not ideal for this kind of data primitives, but an ArrayList implementation would be better.) **Edit:** This question is not about whether this is a good/bad idea or which implementation is better. This is only about existence -or probably also announced plans, articles if they exists. (I am quite busy currently, so cannot check the suggestions yet, but will check them during the weekend.) If my question is not clear, I'll try to reformulate it."}
{"_id": "247008", "title": "How to organize the dependencies of a project", "text": "I have a project built with Gradle, which contains libraries which can be used freely outside the main project, like this: ![Project structure](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KwjNy.png) The folders with a square at the bottom right are project modules. I want to opensource this project (I mainly use Git and GitHub for tasks like this), but I have no idea how to organize it. Should I create separate repositories for each library (and if so, how can I link them to the main repository?), or should I put it all in one repo (I guess that's bad practice)? The main criteria is that when `git clone repo_url` is run, it should recreate project structure one-to-one, so it can still be built with `./gradlew build`."}
{"_id": "173478", "title": "Why are source control systems still mostly backed with files?", "text": "It seems that more source control systems still use files as the means of storing the version data. Vault and TFS use Sql Server as their data store, which I would think would be better for data consistency as well as speed. So why is it that SVN, I believe GIT, CVS, etc still use the file system as essentially a database, (I ask this question as we had our SVN server just corrupt itself during a normal commit) instead of using actual database software (MSSQL, Oracle, Postgre, etc)? EDIT: I think another way of asking my question is \"why do VCS developers roll their own structured data storage system instead of using an exisiting one?\""}
{"_id": "89092", "title": "show or publish software applications", "text": "I am thinking of uploading on source forge some personal projects that may be useful to other people.   The main reason I decided to do that is I am planning to start pursuing job in another company (leave current one).   I thought this might help me, by showning to employers stuff I did.   Is this a good idea (for the reason I am aiming) or there are any pitfalls?   Also is source forge the best place for something like this? Thanks"}
{"_id": "231226", "title": "Simple dependency handling for objects (perl)", "text": "I am a bit stuck with a design of a project, where many objects has to have access to the same piece of information. It could be some data, to construct a global-like object for themselves or the object itself (essentially a config object). Essentialy these object are in a tree: On a top is a 'Router' object, which has 'Interface's, which has 'Host's. Router creates interfaces and interface creates hosts. Also, the router object gets that config object as parameter in constructor. I would like to keep the code clean and easy to test, keeping the neccessary mocking at minimum and allowing easy test setups. Which methods is recommended for providing access to this config object accross the project?   1. use a singleton instance of the config object   2. use a superglobal config object   3. Each object (router, interface, host) should get the config object via the constructor -> in every new object calls there should be this config object. It would be like: Host->new({config => $self->config})   4. Each object should have a reference to the parent router. Interface and Host will have access to the Router (which will be passed to them in the constructor -> weak_ref to the main Router object), and they will access the router's config object   5. Interface will have a delegate method to retrieve the config object from the router and Host will have access to this config object through this method -> this implies, that everyone should be aware of it's parents (host should have a reference to the parent interface, interface should have a reference to the router etc.)   6. Or maybe have a singleton global object-storage, from which everyone could retreive what they want (config object, database handle etc)?   7. Or use some existing dependency injection system, which seems like an overkill (a lot)"}
{"_id": "240386", "title": "Does this count as 'machine learning'?", "text": "I've been working for a while on an app (hobby project) that makes up melodies. Each melody is composed of several phrases (musical sentences, or 'sub-melodies'). Lately I had the idea to allow the user to press a button to 'like' a melody. What this will do is save the phrases composing the melody to a storage. These phrases will be integrated into future melodies. Does this count as machine learning?"}
{"_id": "204489", "title": "Would a simple attribution satisfy the BSD license's requirements for reuse or do I need to copy the whole copyright notice?", "text": "Would something like `This program uses code written by Nathan2055` satisfy the requirements for the BSD license, or do I need to copy out the whole notice? I know it asks that the notice is kept intact, but if I'm only using one file of code it's a waste to have to copy the entire license into the main copyright file."}
{"_id": "237469", "title": "MongoDB: Replicate data in documents vs. \u201cjoin\u201d", "text": "Disclaimer: This is a question derived from this one. What do you think about the following example of use case?   1. I have a table containing orders.   2. These orders has a lot of related information needed by my current queries (think about the products; the buyer information; the region, country and state of the sale point; and so on)   3. In order to think with a de-normalized approach, I don't have to put identifiers of these related items in my main orders collection. Instead, I have to repeat all the information for each order (ie: I will repeat the buyer's name, surname, etc. for each of its orders). Assuming the previous premise, **I'm committing to maintain all the data related to an order without a lot of updates** (because if I modify the buyer's name, I'll have to iterate through all orders updating the ones made by the same buyer, and as MongoDB blocks at a document level on updates, I would be blocking the entire order at the update moment). This raises the following questions:   1. Do I have to replicate all the products' related data? (ie: category, maker and optional attributes like color, size\u2026)   2. What if a new feature is requested and I've to make a lot of queries with the products \"as the entry point of the query\"? (ie: reports showing the products' sales performance grouping by region, country, or whatever)      1. Is it fair enough to apply the $unwind operation to my orders original collection? (What about the performance?)     2. I should have to do another collection with these queries in mind and replicate again all the products' information (and their orders)?     3. Wouldn't be better to store a product_id in the original orders collection in order to be more tolerable to requirements change? (What about emulating JOINs?)   3. The optimal approach would be a mixed solution with a RDBMS system like MySQL in order to retrieve the complete data?      * I mean: store products, users, and location identifiers in the orders collection and have queries in MySQL like `getAllUsersDataByIds` in which I would perform a `SELECT * FROM users WHERE user_id IN ( :identifiers_retrieved_from_the_mongodb_query )`"}
{"_id": "38473", "title": "Is \"Experience working on large projects\" something that I should strive for?", "text": "This is in the context of job search. There are fancy words such as \"Enterprise software\" (as opposed to a school project). Then there is the experience of developing/architecting large software products - something that some employers desire. While large companies may pride themselves in being able to create the \"nuclear power plant equivalent\", I personally see little glory in that. Surely, individual things like the Google search engine, or MS Office, or .Net framework are impressive. But then there are things less glamorous. I have worked for a couple of giants, and do not see what the big deal is. Surely, 50 programmers (+ 10 analysts and 5 managers etc.) can build something big over 4 years, but 2 programmers in 1 year can build a lot more than 1% of the comparable thing. In fact, before I had my BS degree and worked for a lab in college, I put together some code that impressed me at the time ;), but I have not seen too many examples of great code since. Long-term I think I want to gravitate to a small company. So, I wonder if I have an excuse to be opinionated about large companies, or do I truly have something to learn from working on a large project (other than: business folks do not understand software, politics sucks, we are moving too slowly, we are stuck with bad karma, we are supporting too many branches and customizations which should be dead by now, it ought to take less than 2 days to get a dev machine set up, it ought to take less than 4 hours to complete a build, unit tests would be nice)? Have you worked on a large project and learned something invaluable, something that you would not learn in a smaller place? Please share good and bad stories."}
{"_id": "141762", "title": "Is there a difference in usage between halting and terminating?", "text": "The title says it all: Are halting and terminating synonyms in the context of computability theory?"}
{"_id": "141761", "title": "Any valid reason to Nest Master Pages in ASP.Net rather than Inherit?", "text": "Currently in a debate at work and I cannot fathom why someone would intentionally avoid Inheritance with Master Pages. For reference here is the project setup: >   * BaseProject   > >     * MainMasterPage >       * SomeEvent >   * SiteProject   > >     * SiteMasterPage   > >       * nested MainMasterPage >   * OtherSiteProject   > >     * MainMasterPage (from BaseProject) > The debate came up because some code in BaseProject needs to know about \"SomeEvent\". With the setup above, the code in BaseProject needs to call `this.Master.Master`. That same code in BaseProject also applies to OtherSiteProject which is just accessed as `this.Master`. SiteMasterPage has no code differences, only HTML differences.   If SiteMasterPage Inherits MainMasterPage rather than Nests it, then all code is valid as `this.Master`. Can anyone think of a reason why to use a Nested Master Page here instead of an Inherited one?"}
{"_id": "184950", "title": "What happens when an unexpected packet arrives at a computer?", "text": "I have been wondering this for a few days. I basically understand how networks and packets work. But what happends when an unexpected packet arrives? Like, when I didn't send a request for a website's index, but it sends the index to my machine anyways ? Does my browser pop up? Does it ignore it? Anyway to actually catch it?"}
{"_id": "141766", "title": "Why do \"Joke\" programming languages exist?", "text": "First of all please be aware this post contains some abusive language but I hope it will not bother anyone. I apologize for the bad language but that's what the name is. As I've been doing documentation on existing programming languages attempting to make a complete list of them I stumbled across terrible programming languages, which were clearly not made for actual use and implementation due to their insane difficulty. Languages such as Brainfu*k and LOLCODE or Whitespace are fool languages because they have no real use. For example, a \"Hello world\" program written in BrainFu*k. Taken from Wikipedia:               The following program prints \"Hello World!\" and a newline to the screen:          +++++ +++++             initialize counter (cell #0) to 10     [                       use loop to set the next four cells to 70/100/30/10         > +++++ ++              add  7 to cell #1         > +++++ +++++           add 10 to cell #2          > +++                   add  3 to cell #3         > +                     add  1 to cell #4         <<<< -                  decrement counter (cell #0)     ]                        > ++ .                  print 'H'     > + .                   print 'e'     +++++ ++ .              print 'l'     .                       print 'l'     +++ .                   print 'o'     > ++ .                  print ' '     << +++++ +++++ +++++ .  print 'W'     > .                     print 'o'     +++ .                   print 'r'     ----- - .               print 'l'     ----- --- .             print 'd'     > + .                   print '!'     > .                     print '\\n'      or another example taken from LOLCODE language:                HAI      CAN HAS STDIO?      PLZ OPEN FILE \"LOLCATS.TXT\"?          AWSUM THX              VISIBLE FILE          O NOES              INVISIBLE \"ERROR!\"      KTHXBYE      These languages are very difficult to learn/read/work with. My question is - Why do they exist? What is the purpose of them? Also, is there an official \"name\" for these type of languages?"}
{"_id": "141764", "title": "Handling \"related\" work within a single agile work item", "text": "I'm on a project team of 4 devs, myself included. We've been having a long discussion on how to handle extra work that comes up in the course of a single work item. This extra work is usually things that are slightly related to the task, but not always necessary to accomplish the goal of the item (that may be an opinion). Examples include but are not limited to:   * refactoring of the code changed by the work item   * refactoring code neighboring the code changed by the item   * re-architecting the larger code area around the ticket. For example if an item has you changing a single function, you realize the entire class now could be redone to better accommodate this change.   * improving the UI on a form you just modified When this extra work is small we don't mind. The problem is when this extra work causes a substantial extension of the item beyond the original feature point estimation. Sometimes a 5 point item will actually take 13 points of time. In one case we had a 13 point item that in retrospect could have been 80 points or more. There are two options going around in our discussion for how to handle this.   1. We can accept the extra work in the same work item, and write it off as a mis-estimation. Arguments for this have included:     * We plan for \"padding\" at the end of the sprint to account for this sort of thing.     * Always leave the code in better shape than you found it. Don't check in half-assed work.     * If we leave refactoring for later, it's hard to schedule and may never get done.     * You are in the best mental \"context\" to handle this work now, since you're waist deep in the code already. Better to get it out of the way now and be more efficient than to lose that context when you come back later.   2. We draw a line for the current work item, and say that the extra work goes into a separate ticket. Arguments include:     * Having a separate ticket allows for a new estimation, so we aren't lying to ourselves about how many points things really are, or having to admit that all of our estimations are terrible.     * The sprint \"padding\" is meant for unexpected technical challenges that are direct barriers to completing the ticket requirements. It is not intended for side items that are just \"nice-to-haves\".     * If you want to schedule refactoring, just put it at the top of the backlog.     * There is no way for us to properly account for this stuff in an estimation, since it seems somewhat arbitrary when it comes up. A code reviewer might say \"those UI controls (which you actually didn't modify in this work item) are a bit confusing, can you fix that too?\" which is like an hour, but they might say \"Well if this control now inherits from the same base class as the others, why don't you move all of this (hundreds of lines of) code into the base and rewire all this stuff, the cascading changes, etc.?\" And that takes a week.     * It \"contaminates the crime scene\" by adding unrelated work into the ticket, making our original feature point estimates meaningless.     * In some cases, the extra work postpones a check-in, causing blocking between devs. Some of us are now saying that we should decide some cut off, like if the additional stuff is less than 2 FP, it goes in the same ticket, if it's more, make it a new ticket. Since we're only a few months into using Agile, what's the opinion of all the more seasoned Agile veterans around here on how to handle this?"}
{"_id": "184958", "title": "Why (or why not) are existential types considered bad practice in functional programming?", "text": "What are some techniques I might use to consistently refactor code removing the reliance on existential types? Typically these are used to disqualify undesired constructions of your type as well as to allow consumption with a minimal of knowledge about the given type (or so is my understanding). Has anyone come up with a simple consistent way to remove reliance on these in code which still maintains some of the benefits? Or at least any ways of slipping in an abstraction that allows their removal without requiring significant code churn to cope with the alteration? You can read more about existential types here (\"if you dare..\")."}
{"_id": "4585", "title": "Looking for parallel programming problem", "text": "I am trying to come up with a problem that is easily solvable in a parallel manner and that requires communication between threads for a test. I also am trying to avoid problems that require require random waits, which rules out dining philosophers and producer-consumer (bounded buffer), two of the classics. My goal is for the student to be able to write the program in less than 20-30 minutes in front of a computer not knowing of the problem beforehand. (This is to prevent preparation more than to come up with something novel.) I am trying to stress the communication aspect of the program, though the multi-threaded nature is also important. Does anyone have some ideas? **Edit** : I'm using Google Go for the language and testing comprehension of the goroutines/channels combo vs an actors library that I authored."}
{"_id": "251005", "title": "Where to keep global variables in Windows Forms App", "text": "I have here a Vb.Net employee management application. It has employees, managers, teams, trainings and so on. The way the application is set up now, data is read from the database in the startup form (frmMain) load event and kept in that forms public properties. After that all other forms (and there is many of them) reference those lists (list (of employee), list of (team)) usging those properties. For example               dim emp = frmMain.Employees.Find(Function(x) x.ID = 128) , or     dim team1 as new Team     frmMain.Teams.Add(team1)      I feel that this is a very bad way to solve this problem, but I'm stuck on deciding how this should be done. Some singleton class that would keep all those lists (there is lots of them) instantiated on application startup, or is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "204516", "title": "Moving from PHP to ASP.NET", "text": "I have been working for a long time with PHP, and tried to be as good as possible on it (good coding practices, knowing how every request is handled from the start to the end, etc.), but now, for job reasons I have to start learning ASP.NET and C#. I've read and tried to understand it's foundations, as ASP.NET is always working with a given Framework called .NET, but there are so many versions, and different approaches like MVC or WebForms, etc. I've made some tests, and I see that parts of the code get compiled, others not \u2014don't know why\u2014, and that a lot of shit is generated in the final HTML output. I have the feeling of **losing control** over my WebApp, so my question is: **Where can I start to understand how that works?** Any tutorial, book, etc is welcome (as up-to-date as possible). **Is it possible to keep having control of the code with that Microsoft software, so the final output is clean, lightweight and high performance JS and HTML code?** For the C# part, I think this it is the easiest one, I'm just looking for a good book to read... I guess version 5.0. **Am I right?**"}
{"_id": "209289", "title": "What is the difference between state and field?", "text": "Is state another name for field or is it something different? For example:               private int telNumber;      can I say about telNumber that it is a state or it is a field?"}
{"_id": "175137", "title": "Does the term \"Learning Curve\" include the knowing of the gotchas?", "text": "When you learn new technology you spend time understanding its concepts and tools. But when technology meets real life strange and not pleasant things happen. Reuqirements are often far from ideal and differ from 'classic' scenario. And soon I find myself bending the technology to my real needs. At this point I begin to know bugs of the system or that is is not so flexible as it seemed at the very begining. And this 'fighting' with technology consumes a great part of the time while developing. What is more depressing is that the bunch of such gotchas and workarounds are not concentrated at one place (book, site, etc.) And before you really confront it you cannot really ask the correct question because you do not even suspect the reason for the problem to occur (unknown-unknown). So my question consiststs of three: 1) Do you really manage (and how) to predict possible future problems? 2) How much time do you spend for finding the workaround/fix/solution before you leave it and switch to other problems. 3) What are the criteria for you to think about yourself as experienced in the tecnology. Do you take these gotchas into account?"}
{"_id": "78028", "title": "How to mentor junior programmer who may not be a good fit for programming?", "text": "I'm in a bit of a precarious position. I'm working remotely for a client that has recently brought in a junior developer straight out of college into the project. He works physically at their office. I believe he studied computer science (although I can't recall 100% at the moment). He has been with the company a couple months now and was started, by the project manager, on testing and getting familiar with the app and for about the past month, has been assigned small bugs and features. The thing is, in that time, he has only committed code once and it was code that I basically walked him through and wrote out for him. (I thought it would be beneficial for him to see the working solution after he had spent days trying to get it to work). I have had a few calls with him and some pair programming sessions but he is spending days getting frustrated at simple JavaScript code that should really not be that difficult even for a junior developer. I am beginning to think that maybe programming is not a good path for him but want to make as much effort as I can to helping him find solutions on his own and help him improve. This is the first time I have been in a position of having to provide training and mentoring. Being remote probably makes this much more difficult as well. What can I do to help him improve and to get him going?"}
{"_id": "198592", "title": "What is expected of an intern iOS SDK programmer from self-taught arena?", "text": "**edit** : I'm asking for samples an intern would want to show, please don't answer soft-skills that get this marked as a dupe, it is NOT. To be more specific, what sample apps and background, is minimum expectations for an intern? Yes, I pass the FAQ tests with this and it is related, let me narrow it down a bit though. So, when I went professional from hobbyist, I had to know C++ like english (a language), have the iOS manuals read, and at least be smart enough to learn libraries even if I haven't used them before. Besides algebra, the bar wasn't much higher than that. As an intern, I was not expected to architect, only to fix apps. Right now, I am tutoring someone. I am his only rubric, so I need help from others on this so he knows when he's \"hirable\", in the programming field. I realize a definite this/that is impossible, but a rough estimate on what your company expects of interns or learning people is all I need. For example, I would expect sample apps that 1) Consume a web service. 2) Transition between view controllers. 3) Show a simple game, cards or board, that show off basic state transitions and iOS workflows. We do not need to debate the philosophy of learning attitudes and other soft skills, just what sample apps we look for. Soft skills questions get closed, this is programming-specific. We can infer the rest based on the samples one would look for. Specifically iOS apps. If you have a design pattern addition to an app, feel free. Thank you for answering. This question is hard to word, I saw so many relevant ones get closed, but as far as I can tell I match the topics"}
{"_id": "138393", "title": "Base classes as factories?", "text": "I was writing some code over the weekend and I found myself wanting to write a factory as a static method in a base class. My question is simply to know if this is a c# idomatic approach? My sense that it might not be comes from the fact that the base class has knowledge of the derived class. That said, I'm not sure of a simpler way to get the same result. A whole other factory class seems (to me at least) like unneeded complexity (?) Something like:               class Animal     {       public static Animal CreateAnimal(string name)       {          switch(name)          {             case \"Shark\":               return new SeaAnimal();               break;             case \"Dog\":               return new LandAnimal();               break;             default:               throw new Exception(\"unknown animal\");          }       }     }     class LandAnimal : Animal     {     }          class SeaAnimal : Animal     {     }"}
{"_id": "138391", "title": "Should I use the Date type in JAX-RS @PathParam?", "text": "This is what I'm thinking about doing on a JEE Glassfish server using Jersey.               @GET     @Path(\"/{name}/{date}\")     public String getMessages(@PathParam(\"name\") String name, @PathParam(\"date\") Date date)      I like the idea of being able to tell people consuming this RESTful webservice that \"The date here is anything that works with the Date class in Java\". That's pretty simple from the standpoint that they can just look at the Date spec, and they'll already have a working model that they can test with. The problem that I'm worried about is that when I do this, JAX-RS is not very nice when Date() doesn't like what it gets in the constructor. Since Date() throws an error if it can't parse what it's given (like if you pass it the string \"today\" instead of a real date), the JEE server returns a 404 error. Is this a good practice? Is there a better way to do this that I'm not thinking of?"}
{"_id": "36067", "title": "Highlight global variable in vim (or any other free editor)", "text": "In Source Insight, global variable show up in a different colour. Is there a way to accomplish this in vi (or any other free editor)?"}
{"_id": "36065", "title": "Web api authentication techniques", "text": "We have a asp.net MVC web service framework for serving out xml/json for peoples Get requests but are struggling to figure out the best way (fast, easy, trivial for users coding with javascript or OO languages) to authenticate users. It's not that our data is sensitive or anything, we just want users to register so we can have their email address to notify them of changes and track usage. In our previous attempt we had the username in the URI and would just make sure that username existed and increment db tables with usage. This was super basic but we'd notice people using demo as a username etc so we need it to be a little more sophisticated. What authentication techniques are available? What do the major players use/do."}
{"_id": "36060", "title": "How to improve my email communication", "text": "Paraphrase of an email I sent to a colleague > I noticed a problem with System A. I have determined that it is not caused > by X. I suspect that it is being caused by Y. (since you are in charge of Y) > Can you please take a look at it? (The part in parentheses was not included in my email because this colleague knows full well he is in charge of Y... it should be understood that's why I was sending him the email) I run into the colleague half a day later, and say, \"did you look at the problem with System A yet?\" and he answers, \"Oh, yeah, I got your email about System A being broken but I assumed it was probably caused by X, so I was waiting for you to check on that.\" Obviously my message did not get communicated. This is an all-too-common result of emails I send and is very discouraging... yet, I don't know how I could make my emails any clearer. They are always as brief, clear, and to the point as I can make them. Any suggestions? Maybe there is something inherent about the medium of email that is just not effective for these types of communications?"}
{"_id": "14350", "title": "Laptop like keyboard, trackpad, and monitor combo that I can hook up to my desktop so I can program while reclining on my couch?", "text": "My desktop is fine, except that I like programming while reclining on a couch. My legs hurt after sitting too long in an office chair. Is there anything like a keyboard, trackpad, and monitor combo that I could hook up to my desktop (8 feet away from the couch), so I can work on the couch? I was thinking of buying a laptop for this purpose, but I'm looking to save money."}
{"_id": "14356", "title": "Is paper indispensable in a programmer's everyday work?", "text": "As a programmer who work in a company whose vision is to make **paperless office** possible, is there any way I can work effectively while using less paper? I can list at least several kinds of papers I use quite often:   * Paper notebook, on which I do most of the pre-coding design work and ideas   * Books   * Temporary printouts of source code, though not so often ( _in color, with a 6 point font at 600 DPI_ )   * Sticky note, to remind myself of things that should be taken care of within a few days On the other hand, I also use a wiki and an office text editor. Once a while I would use a diagramming software to make a few flowcharts. **Deeper questions:**   * Is there a relationship between paper use and productivity?    * How can programmers help save the trees?    * Is paperless software development fundamentally different from paperless office? Related questions:   * Do you ever write code with pen and paper, and should we do it more often?   * What physical tools do you find useful to work as a programmer?   * What things are essential on a programmer's desk?   * Stuff every programmer needs while working Additional info, if it helps:   * Everyone has dual monitors.   * We have decent project management and issue tracking software (both web-based). **Please be constructive.** In particular, please give your answer to your peer programmers who wish to be flexible and are willing to change working style in order to become more productive as well as meeting certain their own personal values. * * * _**Edited:_** I removed the company's view because it appears to be too flamebait. If you need to see my original words, go to the edit history. _**Deleted: Doxygen and whiteboard._**   Reason: disregarding my personal experience with these great tools, we never had to print out anything as a consequence of using/not using them. To see my original words, go to the edit history."}
{"_id": "11188", "title": "Is the agile approach too much of a convenient excuse for cowboys", "text": "I believe that an agile approach is best for projects where the requirements are fuzzy and a lot of interaction is required to help shape the end user's ideas. _However..._ In my professional work, I keep ending up at companies where an \"agile\" approach is used **as an excuse as to why no effort was put into an up front design;** when the requirements are well understood. I can't help but thinking that if the agile approach wasn't around, I'd be sitting here with a nice high-level specification and not having to revisit the same screen and functionality every second day when something else crops up or so and so hadn't thought of that. > Are the benefits of agile methodologies really enough to outweigh the excuse > for being lame it gives to cowboy technical leads? Update: Ironically I'm now a certified Scrum Master. One of the papers presented on the Scrum course observed that the best development process was one where there was a single expert or guru making the design decisions, however that has obvious weaknesses. Scrum shifts the responsibility for producing quality software to the \"Team\" which means a sub-standard team can get away with churning out spaghetti which I guess is no different to other Agile and non-Agile development processes."}
{"_id": "71002", "title": "When should you move the post-statement of a 'for' loop inside the actual loop?", "text": "With a `for` loop you can move the post-statement empty and move it to the bottom of the code in the loop:               for (int i = 0; i < 10; /* empty */ ) {         //...         ++i;     }      But in this case it doesn't gain you anything; more importantly it makes the code harder to read as you would expect the `++i` to reside at the top of the statement as the post-statement. So when is it valid to move the post-statement from its usual location to somewhere inside the loop? **EDIT:** The code which made me think about this question I got from _C++ Primer_ :               for (T* p = first_free; p != elements; /* empty */)        alloc.destroy(--p);      Here `first_free` is a pointer to the first free element in an array of objects to be destroyed in reverse order, and `elements` is a pointer to the first object in the array. Here it seems, to me, valid to move `--p` from a post-statement into the loop, because otherwise you would need to rewrite the code as such:               for (T* p = first_free - 1; p != elements; --p)        alloc.destroy(p);      Here the code would run into problems if the array doesn't actually contain any objects as you would skip over `elements` and thus cause a crash (or at least undefined behaviour). This means you would need an additional check before the loop whether the array actually contains any elements or not."}
{"_id": "71007", "title": "How to automatically generate build numbers for a Python GitHub project?", "text": "What's the best way to automatically generate or increment version numbers for a (python) project that's on GitHub? In the past I've always manually incremented the versions number manually via the `argparse` or `optparse` libraries."}
{"_id": "47032", "title": "Can I use GPL software in a commercial application", "text": "I have 3 questions about the GPL here:   1. If I use GPL software in my application, but don't modify or distribute it, do I have to release my application under the GPL?   2. What if I modify some software that my application uses. Then do I have to release my application under the GPL, or can I just supply the modified software under the GPLs terms.   3. And what if I use GPL software, but don't modify it, can I distribute it with my application? My case in point is, I have a PHP framework which I use the GeSHi library to highlight some output.   1. Because GeSHi is GPL, does my framework have to be GPL?    2. Can I modify GeSHi for particular use cases of my application if I supply the modifications back to the GeSHi maintainers?   3. Can I redistribute my framework with GeSHi?"}
{"_id": "246063", "title": "Having trouble with exposing class properties across projects", "text": "I have several projects in my solution:   * **Logan.Web.DBContext** defines the DbContext for the database and builds the data model   * **Logan.Web.Objects** defines the classes that will represent the tables in the database   * **Logan.Web.Data** defines the data layer that the application will use   * **LoganMVC** is the actual MVC website Obviously I don't want the MVC website to know too much about the database so I have no links between it and the Objects/DBContext projects. Instead, the Data project acts as a \"middle-man\" between them and contains all the CRUD functionality. The problem I'm having with this structure is that, to show anything on the Views, the Models need to know the properties for the data as defined in the Objects classes. I'm not sure how to expose them without referencing the Objects project in the MVC project, but it is my understanding that this would not be good practice. Instead, I'd prefer, if at all possible, to expose them through the data layer, but I also can't figure out how to do that in any way that makes sense. I've posted all the code for most of these projects as such currently exists on pastebin: http://pastebin.com/eFahpGzE   * DBContext namespace starts on line 1   * DBObjects namespace starts on line 141   * Data namespace starts on line 185 What's the best way to expose the properties of the classes in Logan.Web.Objects so that they can be used in LoganMVC given the structure defined here?"}
{"_id": "233500", "title": "When and Where should we use hoisting in Javascript", "text": "I'm new to Javascript. I'm learning the concept of hoisting in Javascript.   Based on the Javacsript tutorials in Mozilla website, I came across this word `hoisting`. According to those tutorials, **variables in JavaScript is that you can refer to a variable declared later, without getting an exception**. But, my question is on what circumstances is it suitable to use hoisting in a client-side Javascript or why should we use hoisting in Javascript. What are its advantages."}
{"_id": "17912", "title": "How do you regularly take advantage of VS2010's multi monitor support?", "text": "Although I like VS2010's multi monitor support, I seem to have too many accidental window drags, where I unsnap a window without intending to. This behavior has made me still live in the mental model of vs200X's non-snappable windows. 1) Do you have a particular layout that works for general purpose work? 2) How have you optimised for specific scenarios (SQL, Debugging, Workflow, WPF) 3) Are you aware of any hotkey or utility that will jump to a particular window layout? 4) Are you aware of any way I can reduce the times I accidentialy undock a window?"}
{"_id": "252253", "title": "Why does Microsoft still ship VBA within Office products, instead of integrating .NET directly?", "text": "I know that it's possible to call .NET code from your VBA code, but why does VBA continue to exist? The only reason I can think about is legacy. I just had to sort a `Scripting.Dictionary` and the amount of code needed was frightening. The IDE looks like Visual Studio 2003. And there are many little details, that drive you insane (Like changing the line, and getting a warning because of some compilation error). Or, if you open more than one spreadsheet, it mixes into you \"VBAProject\" and this is really confusing. The whole module/classmodule/form division is actually not that bad, but I end up everytime with directly writing logic in forms, or having one huge module that handles everything. Why can't I press Alt+F11, and hack in C#?"}
{"_id": "252251", "title": "Is there any evidence that syntax highlighting in IDEs & editors aid new learners?", "text": "We take for granted syntax highlighting in IDEs and text-editors, and it is the one thing I ask for in any editor. Is there any evidence that syntax highlighting actually is useful--i..e, do people program better (with fewer typos) when using it than without? In particular, I am trying to find some research that shows new programming students make fewer mistakes when using an editor with highlighting versus new students who use a plaintext editor without highlighting."}
{"_id": "252255", "title": "Should you avoid adding unecessary stack frames?", "text": "I have been working with laravel (PHP) recently, and there is an option when using their fluent ORM to define where clauses using closures. This gives us two, functionally equivalent, ways to specify a where clause that should only be added in certain cases: Example 1                   $query = App::make('Vendor_Orders')->             where(function($query) use ($admin) {                 if (!$admin) {                     $query->where('vendor_id', '=', $this->id);                 }             })->             get();      Example 2                   $query = App::make('Vendor_Orders');         if (!$admin) {             $query->where('vendor_id', '=', $this->id);         }         $query = $query->get();      As you can see, one of these is using a closure (and maintaining the \"fluent- ness\"), while the other avoids it. My instinct is to prefer the second, because using an anonymous function like that is adding an extra stack frame, which I would expect to make the program less efficient (possibly a holdover from my time working with C). On the other hand, my colleague (whose first language was PHP) prefers the first example, because it avoids the use of a second assignment operator, and he doesn't see anything wrong with piling up extra function calls. This started me wondering - how much effect does that extra stack frame really have, in a modern system? Does it make any practical difference if one uses a function call instead of an if statement? I'm not looking for subjective which-do-you-prefer answers, I'm asking for some sort of facts regarding the impact of unnecessary jumps - particularly to anonymous functions - in modern, interpreted languages (e.g. PHP, Java, etc.). Possibly also some notes on how this differs from old-school compiled languages."}
{"_id": "45931", "title": "How best to design Access Control Layer in n-tier architecture application", "text": "This is a typical architecture scenario for a 3-tier design: **UI-tier**   Has Graphical User Interface components **Middle-tier**   Has business logic including the following layers:   1. Data Access Layer (DAL)   2. Access Control **Data-tier**   Typically your database or physical data storage What is the best way to implement **Access Control** when performance is top of priority list?   * Should the DAL return ALL data and have the UI layer worry about Access Control?   * Should the DAL perform Access Control, i.e. decide with data to return, so that the UI does not worry about Access Control?  What are your thoughts on this, and what guides you when making such design decisions?"}
{"_id": "87036", "title": "Why does the iterative version take longer?", "text": "I was looking over at http://programming.lispdream.com/blog/2011/06/recursion- vs-iteration/ and I saw that on his implementation of the recursive and iterative implementations of the factorial function, the iterative actually takes longer given n = 1,000. I can't figure out why (he doesn't explain, but says that it is an exercise for the reader). Sorry for my newness to all of this."}
{"_id": "44042", "title": "Use of c89 in GNU software", "text": "In GNU coding standard it is said that free software developer should use C89 because C99 is not widespread yet. > 1999 Standard C is not widespread yet, so please do not require its features > in programs. Reference here. Are they talking about developers knowledge of C99, or about compilers supporting it? Also, is this statement plausible as of today or is it somewhat \"obsolete\" or at least obsolescent."}
{"_id": "219782", "title": "Better style for member variables?", "text": "class awesomeClass {         std::list<A> myList;         //...         void fillList();     };          awesomeClass::awesomeClass() {         fillList();     }          void awesomeClass::fillList(){         //...         foreach(A a, otherList)             myList.push_back(a); //add to list     }      Compared to :               awesomeClass::awesomeClass() {         myList = fillList();     }          std::list<A>& awesomeClass::fillList() {         //...         std::list<A> ret;         foreach(A a, otherList)             ret.push_back(a); //add to list         return ret;     }      This is just a class with an `std::list` as a member variable and a function which fills this list. The first fills it inside the function and the second one returns a list and assigns it to the member list. Which of these is better style? The one which fills the list inside the function or the one which returns a list? Or is there an even better solution?"}
{"_id": "146238", "title": "Developing android on android", "text": "Is there currently a way of developing android apps on an android phone? In other words, write, compile, install and run regular android java on the phone without using a pc? If not, what would make it possible, if at all? (would rooting be necessary? Or an android emulator compiled for android?)"}
{"_id": "212189", "title": "What do goroutines, Ruby Fibers, etc. look like to the OS/Kernel?", "text": "In process concurrency and thread concurrency it's quite obvious how the kernel sees these as they map directly to real things that the kernel manages. When it comes to Golang goroutines and Ruby Fibers (these are similar things right?) I'm clueless as to how these are managed. Are they managed by the respective languages implementation/Virtual Machine(I know Go doesn't have a VM) or are they mapped to something that the kernel is better at handling?"}
{"_id": "51238", "title": "Is it possible for a technically open source application (specifically javascript) to be released under a proprietary license?", "text": "A javascript application release won't technically be closed source - at best it can be obfuscated. Given that, my question has two parts: >   * Is it at all possible to release a technically open source application > under a proprietary license? >   * Are there any examples of applications which are technically open > source, have been kept under a proprietary license, and are being profitably > sold? >"}
{"_id": "212180", "title": "How can I find all connections in a mesh network/graph?", "text": "Suppose I have a mesh of relationships, such as   * Friends who trust some friends and not others    * A IPv6 router that needs to locate peers across the Internet   * A PGP Web Of Trust that needs two people to locate each other's trust level I'm interested in determining not only the shortest path, but the cost of each (an arbitrary weight by be added), the nodes of each path, and other information typically used in this general purpose need. What approaches are there to accommodate this need? Ideally this will be something that I can run locally on a phone or computer and search a large graph in O(N) speed or better."}
{"_id": "254947", "title": "Difference between a heap and a priority queue", "text": "I always thought that heaps and priority queues were synonyms - an abstract data structure that supports the `insert`, `findMin` and `deleteMin` operations. Some literature seems to agree with me - Chris Okasaki's Purely Functional Data Structures (chapter 3), for instance. On the other hand, Wikipedia's heap page defines it as a tree-based data structure, and states that heaps are a concrete implementation of priority queues. I'm having a hard reconciling this with the fact that I can think of more than one heap implementation - leftist heaps, binomial heaps, splay heaps... Does the simple fact that a heap can be implemented with different data structures not mean, by definition, that it is an abstract data structure? And if that's the case, is there an actual difference with priority queues?"}
{"_id": "254942", "title": "Efficiency of getters/setters with database performance", "text": "I'm currently in the process of refactoring a very old personal project of mine, which used procedural PHP-in-HTML code. I'm modernising it as a learning project, using OOP where beneficial. I understand the basics of OOP but I'm wondering if I understand correctly as it would seem my old way of doing this was faster in this case. On a user's profile page, all of their stats are listed. It's a game so there are lots of individual fields containing stats like wins, losses etc. Now I've made a User class and given every stat its own getter/setter. A typical pair looks like this:               function getEmoticon() {         if ($this->emoticon) {             return $this->emoticon;         }              $stmt = $this->conn->prepare('SELECT emoticon FROM profile WHERE id=:userid');         $stmt->execute(array('userid' => $this->userid));         $row = $stmt->fetch();              return $this->emoticon = $row['emoticon'];     }          function setEmoticon($emoticon) {         $stmt = $this->conn->prepare('UPDATE profile SET emoticon=:emoticon WHERE id= :id');         $stmt->execute(array('id' => $this->userid, 'emoticon' => $emoticon));         return $this->emoticon = $emoticon;     }      There used to be one single \"GET * FROM profile\" SQL query to get all the user's stats in a single query. Now though, I'm resorting to using the getter for every stat, resulting in a database query for every stat. On the profile page it means it has gone from 1 database query to dozens. Is this the right way to do things? It seems more inefficient but I'm not sure how else to do it, unless I have a User class method like getAllStats() or something."}
{"_id": "241340", "title": "Who should have full visibility of all (non-data) requirements information?", "text": "I work at a smallish mid-size company where requirements are sometimes nothing more than an email or brief meeting with a subject matter manager requiring some new feature. Should a programmer working on a feature reasonably expect to have access to such \"request emails\" and other requirements information? Is it more appropriate for a \"program manager\" (PGM) to rewrite all requirements before sharing with programmers? The company is not technology-centric and has between 50 and 250 employees. (fewer than 10 programmers in sum) Our project management \"software\" consists of a \"TODO.txt\" checked into source control in \"/doc/\". Note: This is nothing to do with \"sensitive data access\". Unless a particular subject matter manager's style of email correspondence is top secret. Given the suggested duplicate, perhaps this could be a turf war, as the PGM would like to specify HOW. Whereas WHY is absent and WHAT is muddled by the time it gets through to the programmer(s)... Basically. Should specification be transparent to programmers? Perhaps a history of requirements might exist. Shouldn't a programmer be able to see that history of reqs if/when they can tell something is **hinky** in the spec? This isn't a question about organizing requirements. It is a question about WHO should have full VISIBILITY of requirements. I'd propose it should be ALL STAKEHOLDERS. Please point out where I'm wrong here."}
{"_id": "213853", "title": "Why is there an alternative download page of python for China?", "text": "On http://python.org there are two download pages, http://python.org/download/ for international users and http://python.org/getit/ for Chinese users. When accessed from a country other than china, the second link redirects to the normal download page. Why is that so?"}
{"_id": "213858", "title": "Python decorators and Lisp macros", "text": "When looking Python decorators someone made the statement, that they are as powerful as Lisp macros (particularly Clojure). Looking at the examples given in PEP 318 it looks to me as if they are just a fancy way of using plain old higher-order functions in Lisp:               def attrs(**kwds):         def decorate(f):             for k in kwds:                 setattr(f, k, kwds[k])             return f         return decorate          @attrs(versionadded=\"2.2\",            author=\"Guido van Rossum\")     def mymethod(f):         ...      I haven\u2019t seen any code transforming in any of the examples, like described in Anatomy of a Clojure Macro. Plus, Python\u2019s missing homoiconicity _could_ make code transformations impossible. So, how do these two compare and can you say they are about equal in what you can do? Evidence seems to point against it. **Edit:** Based on a comment, I\u2019m looking for two things: comparison on \u201cas powerful as\u201d and on \u201cas easy to do awesome things with\u201d."}
{"_id": "129650", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of storing the number of comments in an integer column vs. calculating it on the fly?", "text": "Let's take CodeReview page as an example. If you go here, you will see the list of the questions with their vote numbers and comment numbers Now, I am wondering if these numbers are calculated on the fly (e.g. count the total comments in db for this question), or is there an actual field in the `questions` table called `voteCount` and it's incremented by one whenever someone votes for this question? Just another question. Both VoteCount and CommentCount are just integers, what about the user information that is displayed for each question? Hope this is the correct place to ask this question."}
{"_id": "129652", "title": "Precaching HTML image resources", "text": "I wrote a web cam viewer where the javascript source basically sources the image according to an \"active\" class in a list. I was wondering what are good modern techniques to make images load faster in the background, so a user can get a better experience flicking through images. Obviously it doesn't make sense to download all images, I imagine it needs to be like when one scrolls through a Google map in principle, images are loaded on demand."}
{"_id": "129659", "title": "Should consistency be favoured over programming convention?", "text": "When designing a class should consistency in behaviour be favoured over common programming practice? To give a specific example: A common convention is this: If a class owns an object (e.g. it created it) it is responsible of cleaning it up once it's done. A specific example would be in .NET that if your class owns an `IDisposable` object it should dispose it at the end of its life. And if you don't own it then don't touch it. Now if we look at the `StreamWriter` class in .NET then we can find in the documentation that it closes the underlying stream when it is being closed/disposed. This is necessary in cases where the `StreamWriter` is instantiated by passing in a file name as writer creates the underlying file stream and therefore needs to close it. However one can also pass in an external stream which the writer also closes. This has annoyed me heaps of times (yes I know you can make a non-closing wrapper but that's not the point) but apparently Microsoft has made the decision that it's more consistent to always close the stream no matter where it came from. When I come accross such a pattern in one of my classes I usually create a `ownsFooBar` flag which gets set to false in cases where `FooBar` is injected via the constructor and to true otherwise. This way the responsibility of cleaning it up is passed to the caller when he passes the instance explicitly. Now I'm wondering if maybe consistency should be in favour over best practice (or maybe my best practice is not that good)? Any arguments for/against it? **Edit for clarification** With \"consistency\" I mean: The consistent behaviour of the class always taking ownership (and closing the stream) vs \"best practice\" to only take ownership of a object if you created it or explicitly transfered the ownership. As for an example where it is enoying: Assume you have two given classes (from some 3rd party library) which accept a stream to do something with it, like creating and processing some data:                public class DataProcessor      {          public Result ProcessData(Stream input)          {               using (var reader = new StreamReader(input))               {                   ...               }          }      }           public class DataSource      {          public void GetData(Stream output)          {               using (var writer = new StreamWriter(output))               {                    ....               }          }      }      Now I want to use it like this:                Result ProcessSomething(DataSource source)      {           var processor = new DataProcessor();           ...           var ms = new MemoryStream();           source.GetData(ms);           return processor.ProcessData(ms);      }      This will fail with an exception `Cannot access a closed stream` in the data processor. It's a bit constructed but should illustrate the point. There are various ways to fix it but nevertheless I feel that I work around something I should not have to."}
{"_id": "129658", "title": "Origin of the programming language term \"boxing\"?", "text": "What was the first programming environment (probably language) to use the words \"boxing\" and \"unboxing\" to indicate encapsulating a primitive type in some kind of wrapper to allow it to be used in more object-y contexts? (Or something like it.) (I recently noticed that \"boxing\" is a very critical concept in the J programming language, and so I suspect it may be from APL. A coworker of mine thinks it might be from LISP.)"}
{"_id": "178564", "title": "Is it justified to use project-wide unique function and variable names to help future refactoring?", "text": "Refactoring tools (like ReSharper) often can't be sure whether to rename a given identifier when, for example refactoring a JavaScript function. I guess this is a consequence of JavaScript's dynamic nature. ReSharper solves this problem by offering to rename reasonable lexical matches too. The developer can opt out of renaming certain functions, if he finds that the lexical match is purely accidental. This means that the developer has to approve every instance that will be affected by the renaming. For example let's consider we have two Backbone classes which are used completely independently from each other in our application:               var Header = Backbone.View.extend({         close: function() {...}     })          var Dialog = Backbone.View.extend({         close: function() {...}     })      If you try to rename `Dialog`'s `close` method to for example `closeAndNotify`, then ReSharper will offer to rename all occurences of `Header`'s `close` method just because they are the same lexically prior to the renaming. To avoid this problem, please consider this:               var Header = Backbone.View.extend({         closeHeader: function() {...}     })          var Dialog = Backbone.View.extend({         closeDialog: function() {...}     })      Now you can rename closeDialog unambiguously - given that you have no other classes having a method with the same name. Is it worth it to name my functions this way to help future refactoring?"}
{"_id": "178567", "title": "I failed FizzBuzz, would you hire me?", "text": "I'm a developer with a CS degree and have work experience doing development in a number of languages for almost 3 years. Today I had an interview, overall it went quite well, I prepared for most of the questions and felt ready for anything. At the end of the interview, they gave me ONE programming question...a problem like FizzBuzz (without the print the number part). I believe I made too many mistakes and thus have \"failed\" it. Is all hope lost for me? Here is my code:                 void FizzBuzz()       {         for(int i = 0; i <= 100; i++)         {           bool isThree = i % 3;           bool isFive = i % 5;               if (isThree)          {              print \"Fizz\\n\";          }          else if(isFive)          {              print \"Buzz\\n\";          }          else          {              print \"FizzBuzz\\n\";          }       }      }      As you can see I messed up the bools which should have the syntax i % 3 == 0; If I'm remembering the question right I also put an else instead of an elseif with isThree && isFive. I was quite stressed, but that's no excuse for missing a simple problem. So the question is, how important is being able to produce working code on the spot relative to other factors, such as experience and personality? For instance, would the above code be a deal breaker?"}
{"_id": "253479", "title": "Replaceable parameter syntax meaning", "text": "Replaceable parameter syntax for the console object in C#. I am taking the O'Reilly C# Course 1 and it is asking for a replaceable parameter syntax and it is not very clear on what that means. Currently I used this:               double trouble = 99999.0009;     double bubble = 11111.0001;     Console.WriteLine(trouble * bubble);      Am I missing the meaning of replaceable parameter syntax? Can someone provide an example for what I am looking for? Original question for the quiz: \"Create two variables, both doubles, assign them numbers greater than 10,000, and include a decimal component. Output the result of multiplying the numbers together, but use replaceable parameter syntax of the Console object, and multiply the numbers within the call to the Console.WriteLine() method.\""}
{"_id": "171127", "title": "How do operating systems\u2026 run\u2026 without having an OS to run in?", "text": "I'm really curious right now. I'm a Python programmer, and this question just boggled me: You write an OS. How do you run it? It has to be run somehow, and that way is within another OS? How can an application run without being in an OS? How do you tell the computer to run, say, C, and execute these commands to the screen, if it doesn't have an OS to run in? Does it have to do with a UNIX kernel? If so, what is a Unix kernel, or a kernel in general? I'm sure OSes are more complicated than that, but how does it work?"}
{"_id": "195954", "title": "Looking for session/event analytics analysis tool", "text": "I have data that is basically made up of a set of sessions filled with events. For example:               Session1 - [Event1] [Event2] [Event3]...[Event64]     Session2 - [Event1] [Event3] [Event4]...[Event64]      The data itself currently lies in a MySQL database in the following 2 tables:               sessions: id, time     events: sessionId, sequence, event      What I need to create are funnels in percentages that show the movement from one event to the next. I need a tool to analyze the sessions and output a combined \"tree\" of sorts, to show where most users went. Example:               START -> Event1 -- 50% --> Event 2                |                |                ----- 50 % --> Event 3 -- 20% --> Event 23                                  |                                  ------- 30% --> Event 24                                  |                                  ------- 50% --> Event 25      I can also assume for simplicity that no cycles are needed in the analysis. If for instance we come across these sessions:               [Event 1] [Event 2] [Event 3] [Event 2]     [Event 1] [Event 2] [Event 2]      Then the processed tree would be ordered like this:               [Event 1] -- 100% --> Event 2 -- 50% --> [Event 3] -- 100% --> [Event 2]                              |                              ------- 50% --> [Event 2]      I can also safely assume that all sessions start with [Event 1]. Now, I can always write some code to arrange data in a certain way but the analysis and visualization seems a bit complex. Also, the amount of sessions is rather large (a few millions). Is there any existing tool or framework that can help me analyze this?"}
{"_id": "195958", "title": "Service to prove authorship with trusted timestamp", "text": "This question is related with copyrights. The copyright is granted by default to the author of some code, however this requires to prove that some person is the \"first\" author of some piece of code. Consider the following example:   * Andy writes some code in 2010 and stores it in a not secure enough place.   * Brian copies that code in 2011 and registers this code in some service to associate it with some timestamp, to prove he had it written in 2011.   * Andy decides he should be able to prove he is the author of the yet not published code and gets proceeds as Brian in 2012.   * Carol has to judge who is the original author of that code in 2013 and all the evidence is in favor of Brian. I think such a service is important and if I'm not mistaken there are some services like that which provide this for a price. At the same time nowadays there are quite a few git based services like Github, Bitbucket, Assembla, etc. that provide a version control system and store all the different versions made available for some code through time. They are free and offer really nice features. In some of them it is possible to define a repository as private and then switch it as public when the code is ready to be released. The problem with the git based services is that they trust and believe the client on the dates for the commits. This means that if Brian commits in 2011 some code and publishes (pushes) it then David could manipulate the date in his computer to pretend he committed that code in 2009, beating Brian and Andy (the real author of the code). So basically I would like to know if there is some kind of service like these that:   * handles timestamps in a trustworthy way   * allows publishing the code   * allows publishing the different versions and diffs   * allows private repositories that can be made public if shit happens   * is free So far, the most reasonable approach I found is sending something through mail. Even though the MIME headers can be manipulated the SMTP servers in the route should not be reasonably trustworthy and they set the timestamp for the time the mail goes through them. This is a whole mess when compared with bitbucket, for instance, you cannot read my e-mails (I truly hope). Bitbucket allows private repos, repos can be made public with all the previous versions and diffs, etc. The only problem: the timestamps an be manipulated and thus they are not trustworthy. So the question is: do you know about any service like this? PD: Emails should be as valid as regular mail or escrows, even though they may raise more eyebrows among lawyers. But even if a tarball in an email is something simple to produce and do, it's much more natural to simply use some CVS, which should be used anyway. They do even have the timestamps already and I guess that should work in centralized systems like subversion, where the timestamp is set by the server. So maybe services that allow subversion repositories (SourceForge, Assembla, Google Code, etc.) could be enough? Would they be enough? Do you know about other (possibly better) alternatives? Assembla seems to be the only one fulfilling all the requisites. Thank you."}
{"_id": "47764", "title": "How to ensure quality of code?", "text": "I have been learning programming in C# for about a year and a half now. How should I ensure that the code that I am writing and the habits are forming are good ones?   ie. I don't want to end up having written code which only I can understand. I know that we must use the naming conventions as per language. But are there any more concrete guidelines which I must keep in mind? Any rules which various companies enforce on their programmers while writing code? Any Documentation standards ? Any books/websites would also be helpful."}
{"_id": "82128", "title": "Repeat digit problem", "text": "There are numbers 1 to N present in a list, and an additional number that has been included by mistake. So, in total there are N+1 numbers. Assume that the largest integer that the language can handle is N. What is the fastest algorithm to find the repeat digit? Note: This is not a homework problem."}
{"_id": "237810", "title": "How should I connect to my php framework to use methods written in the framework, in a framework agnostic environment?", "text": "My company runs 2 websites, a public facing website for clients, and an employee intranet. The intranet is used as a backend for employees to edit and maintain various parts of the public website. Both are written in PHP. The intranet is years older, and was designed using an inhouse framework. We have recently created a new public website, and because of the opportunity to \"start from scratch\" with it, we designed it using a PHP framework (Kohana). We knew from the beginning that there would be implementation issues with getting the intranet to interact with the public site, and vice-versa. We are now at that point. There are a few different ways we have been able to make things work: For direct data manipulation, both use mysql, so the query builder in Kohana can manipulate the same data as the straight mysqli queries of the intranet. But beyond that, when the public site needs to use certain auditing methods written on the intranet framework, or when the intranet needs to send an automatic email written in Kohana, or use any number of other methods and functions, we have 1- Included one framework within the other, to have access to both. Problems with this are: a. Both rely on object buffering to prepare output, and are constantly starting and ending buffers at odd times. b. Conflicting class names being autoloaded c. autoloaders overwriting each other d. errors designed to be handled in one way are being handled improperly by the other framework's error handler. e. any number of other incompatibility issues We have gotten around these on a case by case basis, but it has been a nightmare 2- Using a remote API. We have written webservice methods on each server, and the other framework makes a cURL request of the other server. Problems with this are: a. The added work of protecting the API and authenticating requests b. the need to write service methods c. The overhead of having to make http requests instead of loading files locally 3- Using a local api. Similar to the above, except the framework is included on the same server, and the api methods are written in shell scripts which output data to be read by the calling script via `shell_exec`. This alleviates the need for authentication, but it seems like an ugly, hacky way of doing things We don't want to rewrite the intranet using a proper framework. It would take an incredible amount of time that we do not have. Is there a better way to do this, or at least a more \"standard\" or \"conventional\" way of dealing with this problem? Or are we stuck hacking away at it like we currently have been?"}
{"_id": "15405", "title": "Fix bugs, or wait for the customer to find them?", "text": "Do other people fix bugs when they see them, or do they wait until there's crashes/data loss/people die before fixing it? ## Example 1                Customer customer = null;      ...      customer.Save();      The code is clearly wrong, and there's no way around it - it's calling a method on a null reference. It happens to not crash because `Save` happens to not access any instance data; so it's just like calling a static function. But any small change anywhere can suddenly cause broken code that doesn't crash: to start crashing. **But** , it's also not _inconceivable_ that correcting the code:               Customer customer = null;     ...     customer = new Customer();     try        ...        customer.Save();        ...     finally        customer.Free();     end;      might _introduce_ a crash; one not discovered through unit tests with complete coverage, and manual user testing. ## Example 2               float speed = 0.5 * ((G * mass1 * mass2) / R) * Pow(time, 2);      People knowing physics will recognize that it's supposed to be R2 in the denominator. The code is wrong, it's absolutely wrong. And overestimating the speed will cause the retro-rockets to fire too soon, killing all the occupants of the spacecraft. But it's also possible perhaps having it over-estimate the speed is masking another issue: the air-bags can't deploy while the shuttle is moving too fast. If we suddenly fix the code:               float speed = 0.5 * ((G * mass1 * mass2) / Pow(R, 2)) * Pow(time, 2);      Now the speed is accurate, and suddenly airbags are deploying when they shouldn't. ## Example 3 Here's an example that i had recently, checking if a string contains invalid characters:               if (StrPos(Address, \"PO BOX\") >= 0     {        //Do something     }      What if it turns out there's a bug in the `Do something` branch? Fixing the obviously incorrect code:               if (StrPos(\"PO BOX\", Address) >= 0     {        //Do something     }      Fixes the code, but introduces a bug. * * * The way I see it there are two possibilities:   * fix the code, and get blamed for breaking it   * wait for the code to crash, and get blamed for having a bug What do _you_ politically do? * * * ## Example 4 - Today's real world bug I am constructing an object, but calling the wrong constructor:               Customer customer = new Customer();      Turns out that the \"parameterless\" constructor is actually an parameterized constructor from further back in the inheritance chain:               public Customer(SomeObjectThatNobodyShouldBeUsingDirectly thingy = null)     public Customer(InjectedDependancy depends)      Calling it is a mistake, since it bypasses all the subsequent constructors. I could change the object's lineage to not expose such a dangerous constructor, but now I have to change the code to:               Customer customer = new Customer(depends);      But I can't guarantee that this change won't break anything. Like my **Example 1** above, perhaps someone, somewhere, somehow, under some esoteric conditions, depends on the constructed `Customer` to be invalid and full of junk. Perhaps the `Customer` object, now that it is **properly** constructed will allow some code to run that previously never did, and now I can get a crash. i can't bet your wife's life on it. And I can test it from here to Tuesday, I can't swear on your daughter's life that I didn't introduce a regression. Do i:   * fix the code and get blamed for breaking it? or   * leave the bug, and get blamed when the customer finds it?"}
{"_id": "114432", "title": "Decoupling UI code?", "text": "In my application I have several event handlers that perform some action in response to user interface events such as a button click or menu selection. The code in these event handlers looks like this for example:               void MyDialog::OnCommandLoadFile()     {         char strFilter[] = { \"Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt|All Files (*.*)|*.*||\" };              CFileDialog fileDlg(TRUE, \".txt\", NULL, 0, strFilter);              if( fileDlg.DoModal() == IDOK )         {             const std::string path = fileDlg.GetPathName();                  std::vector<std::string> urls;             int maxNumberOfUrls = settings_->Get<int>(Settings::MaxNumberOfUrls);             UrlProvider *urlProvider = new FileUrlProvider(path);             urlProvider->GetUrls(urls, maxNumberOfUrls);                  webMonitoringService_->MonitorUrls(urls);                  DisplayMessage(\"URLs loaded.\");         }          }      This is typical of my event handlers. I don't code monolithic event handlers but they do \"glue\" various pieces together. I usually have some business- logic/service classes which the UI has a reference to and in the event handlers I make calls to one or more of these to perform the desired task. What I'm wondering is is this still too coupled? If I wanted to turn this into a command line app I'd have to extract bits and pieces from the UI code. In the above example, there is a compound action going on so should I'm thinking it should look more like:               void MyDialog::OnCommandLoadFile()     {         char strFilter[] = { \"Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt|All Files (*.*)|*.*||\" };              CFileDialog fileDlg(TRUE, \".txt\", NULL, 0, strFilter);              if( fileDlg.DoModal() == IDOK )         {             const std::string path = fileDlg.GetPathName();                  application->MonitorUrlsFromFile(path);                  DisplayMessage(\"URLs loaded.\");         }          }      Is that right? In the above code what would \"application\" be? A controller? Is that the right abstraction for this? Whenever I need to perform some task in a UI handler, should it always be a one-liner (aside from getting data in or out of text boxes etc.) Anyone have a pointer to a tutorial that really covers this (in any programming language)? Furthermore, if in fact you should abstract compound actions, how to you propagate error messages from within the compound abstraction back out to the UI? An exception hierarchy? Single exception with error code? **UPDATE** I'm looking at the Command Pattern which looks promising. **UPDATE 2** In the end I decided on refactoring my code as described in the Humble Dialog Box paper in the accepted answer. My understanding is that this is a Model View Presenter (MVP) type pattern and more specifically a Passive View. The refactoring is going smoothly. There are some rough edges in my understanding of the full application of the pattern when it comes to things like displaying message boxes and file open dialogs or dealing with event timers but overall I'm happier with my code; the tight coupling was bothering me. I also found this \"bundle\": patterns & practices Web Client Developer Guidance: Model View Presenter (MVP) Bundle which has sample MVP code. It's a web project whereas my current implementation is desktop but I guess that's the beauty of MVP is that it partly doesn't matter. One thing I got from that was to dependency inject my service layer objects into the presenter rather than new'ing them inside my presenter class."}
{"_id": "7705", "title": "Are long functions acceptable if they have internal structure?", "text": "When dealing with complicated algorithms in languages with support for nested functions (such as Python and D) I often write huge functions (because the algorithm is complicated) but mitigate this by using nested functions to structure the complicated code. Are huge (100+ line) functions still considered evil even if they're well-structured internally via the use of nested functions? Edit: For those of you not familiar with Python or D, nested functions in these languages also allow access to the outer function scope. In D this access allows mutation of variables in the outer scope. In Python it only allows reading. In D you can explicitly disable access to the outer scope in a nested function by declaring it `static`."}
{"_id": "206201", "title": "Licensing code \"not for reuse\"", "text": "I have a client-side Javascript framework that is publicly available and BSD licensed. Each file says it is copyright me, the date, all rights reserved, and the BSD license text. I am making a project which uses - and adapts and makes code changes to - my BSD licensed framework. Although obviously browsers will download and execute this code, I don't want to BSD license my derived project. I don't object to people seeing my code, but I don't want them to cut-n-paste and make derivatives of my project. What boilerplate text do I put at the top of each file? I would like to include a link to my BSD-licensed framework too. How should I phrase that?"}
{"_id": "153317", "title": "Is it bad form to stage a function's steps in intermediate variables (let bindings)?", "text": "I find I tend to need intermediate variables. In Clojure that's in the form of let bindings, like `cmp-result-1` and `cmp-result-2` in the following function.               (defn str-cmp         \"Takes two strings and compares them. Returns the string if a match; and nil if not.\"         [str-1 str-2 start-pos substr-len]              (let [cmp-result-1 (subs str-1 start-pos substr-len)               cmp-result-2 (subs str-2 start-pos substr-len)]             (compare cmp-result-1 cmp-result-2)))       I could re-write this function without them, but to me, the function's purpose looks clearer. I tend to do this quite in a bit in my main, and that is primarily for debugging purposes, so I can pass a variable to print out intermediate output. Is this bad form, and, if so, why? Thanks."}
{"_id": "123100", "title": "How big a problem is Qt's cross-platform GUI?", "text": "I read something on this site saying that Qt's GUI being a big problem that stop programmers from using Qt. They say the problem is that the GUI don't look native, and they are inconsistent. I personally use Windows, and from what I can see (some tree view and table view), they look pretty good and very native-looking too. So I want to know what they are like on Mac, and what are the differences? and what differences there should be between ordinary Mac apps and ordinary Windows apps in terms of user experience?"}
{"_id": "126554", "title": "Platform to Learn/Experiment with Web Programming", "text": "I am looking to teach myself some web programming, but I am not sure how I can experiment with an actual website. Are there sites that host platforms for these purposes?"}
{"_id": "126550", "title": "Who decided on the terminology downcasting and upcasting?", "text": "As far as I know, the terminology comes from how the **inheritance hierarchy** is traditionally displayed, with the extending types at the bottom, and the parent types at the top. This is a bit pointless, unless you feel like calling the following _leftcasting_ and _rightcasting_. ![horizontal inheritance hierarchy](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6YUSl.png) I am _not looking for opinions_ why the terminology is as is, but they are more than welcome as comments. I am looking for references on **who first introduced up and downcasting, and why they decided on that name**."}
{"_id": "237579", "title": "Where can I find \"SVN for Git Users\" resources?", "text": "So I took a job where the firm uses SVN (but will be moving to Git sometime in the future). The problem is that I don't know SVN. I've tried numerous Google queries and all I can ever find are SVN->Git tutorials, \"Why is Git better than SVN\" blogs, and a particular \"cheat sheet\" that gives (some) comparable commands... Short of reading the O'Reilly book on SVN, what are the brief (but not _too_ brief) instructions to SVN for Git users?"}
{"_id": "244965", "title": "Where to start when designing an application that allows plugins", "text": "I'm building an application, and I'm thinking long-term I would like to be able to allow plugin support. The application I'm creating is a Java based application. How could I allow plugins using a scripting language, or is it better to require plugins to use Java? Would I need to create some sort of plugin interface to allow the use of plugins? Any ideas of references of where to start?"}
{"_id": "244961", "title": "Client and I don't know each other - any tips on ensuring client won't run off w/o paying?", "text": "I'm in college. I've taken to finding badly coded websites, e-mailing the owners and telling them I can fix it in exchange for Paypal money. I just completed one of these little fixes for a site, and having been previously burned, I'm a little hesitant to e-mail him his corrected code. Specifically I'm using @media queries in CSS to hide ads on certain, mobile sized screens and hiding mobile ads on desktop sized screens. How can I prove to my client that I have his completed work without just handing out my code? We both don't know anything about each other, we've probably sent a total of 6 emails to each other. I really need this 60$, lol"}
{"_id": "126881", "title": "What type of applications Silverlight is designed for?", "text": "I have 3 years experience in ASP.NET with C# and now I am learning Silverlight with Beginning Silverlight 4 in C# book. As I have completed my first 4 chapters, I am getting the feeling that Silverlight is just about creating RIA which can also be done with Flash. What is a scope of Silverlight for a C# programmer?"}
{"_id": "219404", "title": "Are frameworks used for \"big\" websites?", "text": "I'm kind of new to PHP. I can create basic sites with login/registration, etc., but I always struggle to build complex sites with lots of features, because eventually the code becomes messy and I just run into more and more little bugs, and then fixing those produces another, and so on. I realise that that's partially to do with me simply not writing clean code (I'm working on that!) but I would also probably benefit from using a framework. But is using ready-made frameworks \"unprofessional\"? Would a big site such a YouTube or Facebook use a framework like CakePHP or CodeIgniter?"}
{"_id": "28927", "title": "Are SMART goals useful for programmers?", "text": "Several organisations I know use SMART goals for their programmers. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. They are fairly common in large corporations. My own prior experience with SMART goals has not been all that positive. Have other programmers found them an effective way to measure performance? What are some examples of good SMART goals for programmers (if they exist)."}
{"_id": "28920", "title": "What is your best whiteboarding technique when collaborating with your team?", "text": "I wanted to know what solutions you guys tend to do when sketch modeling on whiteboards. Since my reading on Creg Larman's very good book Applying UML and Patterns, I do my everyday business and software modeling with whiteboards. The problem is, I have a hard time being 'agile' and 'iterative' after the whiteboard has been erased and snapshotted. Sketching is the way to go for me but as soon as all my work is snapshotted in a digital picture, I don't find the required added value of having to either redraw it on the whiteboard, or use an UML tool. I wanted to know, for those of you who favor whiteboarding over UML tools, what are your techniques? (web/desktop based softwares, hardware, materials, etc.) you employ to achieve those criterion:   * Refine and iterate over past whiteboards that have been erased   * Collaborate remotely (not only room-to-room)   * Synchronize and simultaneously work on your sketches I have come to search for online web-based whiteboardings and I found the following which are pretty neat:   * Vyew   * Dabbleboard   * Twiddla However, my solution seems to go over with Smart Technologies, especially with their Notebook software which is very good for whiteboarding multiple designs. I was wondering also if some had some feedback for this application and their conferencing software as well (usage of their digital whiteboards and etc.)"}
{"_id": "126886", "title": "How to use a switch statement with enum efficiently?", "text": "I would like to know how I can use a `switch` statement with `enum` values for the following scenarios: I am making a small program for a flight reservation system. The program is meant to enter certain details about the passenger. The program also restricts the user to choose destinations other than the following 3 destinations. Once destination is chosen, the flight number is supposed to be automatically assigned. The user will choose one of three destinations and program will assign an appropriate Flight No for the passenger. The Flight No will be assigned as below:                    Destination                    Flight No.           London                            201           Frankfurt                         233           Berlin                            241      So let's say I make an `enum` of destinations, then how can I use switch statement here? This isn't a homework. I am doing it just for the sake of exploring."}
{"_id": "212458", "title": "Clarity over Python and Jython", "text": "I'm a Java programmer, but I want to program in Jython. I've never coded in Python before, but have been looking through some tutorials and I'm fairly confident I can grasp it. My question is clarity over Jython. I understand with Jython you have the joys of writing Python code with the added bonus of accessing Java libraries. Does this mean, all aspects and coding practices of Python can be applied, such as creating animation, input out structures, or is there a whole new structure which needs to be learned to code Jython?"}
{"_id": "214111", "title": "What is the Meaning of Return False in a Php Function", "text": "i wanted to know what is the meaning of return False in an function. go Through this function:               function reset_password($password,$user_id)     {         $sql=\"UPDATE user SET password='$password' WHERE user_id='$user_id'\";              if(!mysql_query($sql,$this->mycon))         {             array_push($this->err_msg,\"Error in Inserting - \".mysql_error($this->mycon));             return false;         }         else         {             //Reset Password code.         }        }      in this function i wanted to know what is the meaning of return false."}
{"_id": "241246", "title": "Restructuring a large Chrome Extension/WebApp", "text": "I have a very complex Chrome Extension that has gotten too large to maintain in its current format. I'd like to restructure it, but I'm 15 and this is the first webapp or extension of it's type I've built so I have no idea how to do it. **TL;DR:** I have a large/complex webapp I'd like to restructure and I don't know how to do it. **Should I follow my current restructure plan (below)? Does that sound like a good starting point, or is there a different approach that I'm missing? Should I _not_ do any of the things I listed?** While it isn't relevant to the question, the actual code is on Github and the extension is on the webstore. The basic structure is as follows: **index.html**               <html>         <head>             <link href=\"css/style.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" /> <!-- This holds the main app styles -->             <link href=\"css/widgets.css\" rel=\"stylesheet\" /> <!-- And this one holds widget styles -->         </head>              <body class=\"unloaded\">             <!-- Low-level base elements are \"hardcoded\" here, the unloaded class is used for transitions and is removed on load. i.e: -->                  <div class=\"tab-container\" tabindex=\"-1\">                            <!-- Tab nav -->             </div>                  <!--                 Templates for all parts of the application and widgets are stored as elements here.                 I plan on changing these to <script> elements during the restructure since <template>'s need valid HTML.             -->             <template id=\"template.toolbar\">                 <!-- Template content -->             </template>                  <!-- Templates end -->                  <!-- Plugins -->             <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"js/plugins.js\"></script>                  <!-- This contains the code for all widgets, I plan on moving this online and downloading as necessary soon. -->             <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"js/widgets.js\"></script>                  <!-- This contains the main application JS. -->             <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"js/script.js\"></script>         </body>     </html>      **widgets.js**               (initLog || (window.initLog = [])).push([new Date().getTime(), \"A log is kept during page load so performance can be analyzed and errors pinpointed\"]);          // Widgets are stored in an object and extended (with jQuery, but I'll probably switch to underscore if using Backbone) as necessary     var Widgets = {         1: { // Widget ID, this is set here so widgets can be retreived by ID             id: 1, // Widget ID again, this is used after the widget object is duplicated and detached             size: 3, // Default size, medium in this case             order: 1, // Order shown in \"store\"             name: \"Weather\", // Widget name             interval: 300000, // Refresh interval             nicename: \"weather\", // HTML and JS safe widget name             sizes: [\"tiny\", \"small\", \"medium\"], // Available widget sizes             desc: \"Short widget description\",             settings: [                 { // Widget setting specifications stored as an array of objects.  These are used to dynamically generate widget setting popups.                     type: \"list\",                     nicename: \"location\",                     label: \"Location(s)\",                     placeholder: \"Enter a location and press Enter\"                 }             ],             config: { // Widget settings as stored in the tabs object (see script.js for storage information)                 size: \"medium\",                 location: [\"San Francisco, CA\"]             },             data: {}, // Cached widget data stored locally, this lets it work offline             customFunc: function(cb) {}, // Widgets can optionally define custom functions in any part of their object             refresh: function() {}, // This fetches data from the web and caches it locally in data, then calls render. It gets called after the page is loaded for faster loads             render: function() {} // This renders the widget only using information from data, it's called on page load.         }     };      **script.js**               (initLog || (window.initLog = [])).push([new Date().getTime(), \"These are also at the end of every file\"]);          // Plugins, extends and globals go here. i.e. Number.prototype.pad = ....          var iChrome = function(refresh) { // The main iChrome init, called with refresh when refreshing to not re-run libs         iChrome.Status.log(\"Starting page generation\"); // From now on iChrome.Status.log is defined, it's used in place of the initLog              iChrome.CSS(); // Dynamically generate CSS based on settings              iChrome.Tabs(); // This takes the tabs stored in the storage (see fetching below) and renders all columns and widgets as necessary              iChrome.Status.log(\"Tabs rendered\"); // These will be omitted further along in this excerpt, but they're used everywhere              // Checks for justInstalled => show getting started are run here              /* The main init runs the bare minimum required to display the page, this sets all non-visible or instantly need things (such as widget dragging) on a timeout */         iChrome.deferredTimeout = setTimeout(function() {             iChrome.deferred(refresh); // Pass refresh along, see above         }, 200);     };          iChrome.deferred = function(refresh) {}; // This calls modules one after the next in the appropriate order to finish rendering the page          iChrome.Search = function() {}; // Modules have a base init function and are camel-cased and capitalized          iChrome.Search.submit = function(val) {}; // Methods within modules are camel-cased and not capitalized               /*       Extension storage is async and fetched at the beginning of plugins.js, it's then stored in a variable that iChrome.Storage processes.            The fetcher checks to see if processStorage is defined, if it is it gets called, otherwise settings are left in iChromeConfig     */     var processStorage = function() {         iChrome.Storage(function() {             iChrome.Templates(); // Templates are read from their elements and held in a cache                  iChrome(); // Init is called         });     };          if (typeof iChromeConfig == \"object\") {         processStorage();     }      ### Objectives of the restructure   1. **Memory usage:** Chrome apparently has a memory leak in extensions, they're trying to fix it but memory still keeps on getting increased every time the page is loaded. The app also uses a lot on its own.   2. **Code readability:** At this point I can't follow what's being called in the code. While rewriting the code I plan on properly commenting everything.   3. **Module interdependence:** Right now modules call each other a lot, AFAIK that's not good at all since any change you make to one module could affect countless others.   4. **Fault tolerance:** There's very little fault tolerance or error handling right now. If a widget is causing the rest of the page to stop rendering the user should at least be able to remove it. Speed is currently not an issue and I'd like to keep it that way. ### How I think I should do it   * The restructure should be done using Backbone.js and events that call modules (i.e. on storage.loaded => init).   * Modules should each go in their own file, I'm thinking there should be a set of core files that all modules can rely on and call directly and everything else should be event based.   * Widget structure should be kept largely the same, but maybe they should also be split into their own files.   * AFAIK you can't load all templates in a folder, therefore they need to stay inline.   * Grunt should be used to merge all modules, plugins and widgets into one file. Templates should also all be precompiled. ### Question: **Should I follow my current restructure plan? Does that sound like a good starting point, or is there a different approach that I'm missing? Should I _not_ do any of the things I listed?** Do applications written with Backbone tend to be more intensive (memory and speed) than ones written in Vanilla JS? Also, can I expect to improve this with a proper restructure or is my current code about as good as can be expected?"}
{"_id": "241240", "title": "Architecture for dashboard showing aggregated stats", "text": "I'd like to know what are common architectural pattern for the following problem. Web application A has information on sales, users, responsiveness score, etc. Some of this information are computationally intensive and or have a complex business logic (e.g. responsiveness score). I'm building a separate application (B) for internal admin tasks that modifies data in web application A and report on data from web application A. For writing I'm planning to use a restful api. E.g. create a new entity, update entity, etc. In application B I'd like to show some graphs and other aggregate data for the previous 12 months. I'm planning to store the aggregate data for each month in redis. Some data should update more often, e.g every 10 minutes. I can think of 3 ways of doing this.   1. A scheduled task in app B that connects to an api of app A that provides some aggregated data. Then app B stores it in Redis and use that to visualise pages. Cons: it makes complex calculation within a web request, requires lot's of work e.g. api server and client, storing, etc., pros: business logic still lives in app A.   2. A scheduled task in app A that aggregates data in an non-web process and stores it directly in Redis to be accessed by app B.   3. A scheduled task in app A that aggregates data in a non-web process and uses an api in app B to save it. I'd like to know if there is a well known architectural solution to this type of problems and if not what are other pros/cons for the solution I've suggested?"}
{"_id": "214115", "title": "Should cucumber step definitions in Java be static methods or instance methods?", "text": "We are new to using cucumber with selenium to write automated test suites. Our initial approach was to have one java class per feature file. Now we added instance methods in each class for corresponding step definitions. Now if we need to re-use a step definition in some other feature file we are facing problems as we can't re-use same annotation with same regex pattern with any other method of other class and neither can we use the existing step definition which is in some other class. These methods are sharing instance variables like the reference to the driver. Now to re-use an instance method as a step definition is also a problem because these methods are not re-usable outside the class and I can't put all step definitions inside one class. I looked at some samples of ruby, I found that they write some sort of blocks that don't have access to shared state. They just execute steps. So in Java should I always make static methods that will just execute steps one by one and share no state ?"}
{"_id": "155758", "title": "Is committing/checking in code everyday a good practice?", "text": "I've been reading Martin Fowler's note on Continuous Integration and he lists as a must \"Everyone Commits To the Mainline Every Day\". I do not like to commit code unless the section I'm working on is complete and that in practice I commit my code every three days: one day to investigate/reproduce the task and make some preliminary changes, a second day to complete the changes, and a third day to write the tests and clean it up^ for submission. I would not feel comfortable submitting the code sooner. Now, I pull changes from the repository and integrate them locally usually twice a day, but I do not commit that often unless I can carve out a smaller piece of work. **Question:** is committing everyday such a good practice that I should change my workflow to accomodate it, or it is not that advisable? _**Edit:_** I guess I should have clarified that I meant \"commit\" in the CVS meaning of it (aka \"push\") since that is likely what Fowler would have meant in 2006 when he wrote this. ^ The order is more arbitrary and depends on the task, my point was to illustrate the time span and activities, not the exact sequence."}
{"_id": "82785", "title": "Are there deals (free or low cost) to license Visual Studio for open-source developers?", "text": "I have several open-source projects, but I no longer have a license for Visual Studio. I heard that Resharper has some kind of deal for open-source project contributors. Is there something similar for Visual Studio? Thanks. * * * **EDIT**   ps: The main project I'm concerned about is DotNetZip. I use an open-source text editor now to modify the code and project files; and the project is hosted at CodePlex, which I can get to via the \"free\" Visual Studio TFS command-line tools. My main problem is that I can no longer design or run the tests I've put into the code. I know there is Nunit and other alternative testing frameworks, but the code is already instrumented for MSTest (I guess that's what it is) and I'd like to keep the testing stable if possible. **EDIT2** I know about DreamSpark but I am not a student. Just a developer of an open- source project. **EDIT3** I guess a better question might be, _what's the lowest-cost option for me, an individual open-source developer, to license Visual Studio so that I can run tests on my project?_"}
{"_id": "214119", "title": "Old programmer disappeared. About to hire another programmer. How do I approach this?", "text": "After spending over one year working on a social network project for me using WordPress and BuddyPress, my programmer has disappeared, even though he got paid every single week, for the whole period. Yes, he's not dead as I used an email tracker to confirm and see he opens my emails, but he doesn't respond. It seems he got another job. I wonder why he just couldn't say so. And I even paid him an advance salary for work he hasn't done. The problem is that I never asked for full documentation for most of the functions he coded in. And there were MANY functions for this 1+ year period, and some of them have bugs that he still didn't fix. Now it seems all confusing. What's the first thing I should do now? How do I proceed? I guess the first thing to do will be to get another programmer, but I want to start on the right foot by having all the current code documented so that any programmer can work on all the functions without issues. Is that the first thing I should do? If yes, how do I go about it? What's the standard type of documentation required for something like this? Can I get a programmer that will just do the documentation for all the codes and fix the bugs or is documentation not really important? Also, do you think getting another \"individual\" programmer is better or get a company that has programmers working for them, so that if the programmer assigned to my project disappears, another can replace him, without my involvement? I feel this is the approach I should have taken in the beginning."}
{"_id": "241248", "title": "How to analyze a scenario where a bug didn't get caught and adjust development workflow to prevent similar errors", "text": "I had a bug that was really difficult to track down, because all the unit tests were green, but the production application didn't work properly. Here's what happened: I had a filter class that set my application to ignore data that was not in some specified time windows.   * The unit test, which seemed thorough to me, turned green.   * Additionally, my integration tests also produced results as expected.   * Production, however, did not work.      * As a result of the first two bullets, this problem was very difficult to find. It turned out the problem was that my test dates were using my time zone (America/Chicago) but the production data was providing dates in UTC, which I did not realize, and the logic for the filter wasn't correct for UTC dates. (I was using joda time `DateTime` objects).   1. **Where did my workflow break down?**     * Did I fail to produce a spec that specified that the logic needed to handle dates in any time zone?     * Did I fail to thoroughly consider all cases at the unit test level?     * Did I fail to insure the integration test was sufficiently similar to production?     * Other?   2. **What changes can I make to my workflow to better prevent this sort of mistake in the future?**   3. **How can I more effectively debug a problem when there is an issue in production but not in testing?**"}
{"_id": "65601", "title": "Is it smart to store application keys, ids, etc directly inside an application?", "text": "I have heard some say it isn't but they never suggest an alternative. Is this true? **UPDATE** Is it possible to store this external from application and have it called?"}
{"_id": "191596", "title": "Is it OK to partially change a collection with PUT or DELETE?", "text": "I have a collection of products in a product group e.g.:               product-groups/123/products        1. If I need to **add** to the collection, is it OK that I pass only **some** products with PUT?   2. If I need to delete **some** products from the collection, is it OK that I pass **filter data** (an array of ID's) with DELETE? What's the best way to implement the functionality in the spirit of ReST? Edit: the items are links to separate entities, basically ID's of products."}
{"_id": "218287", "title": "How do I cleanly design a central render/animation loop?", "text": "I'm learning some graphics programming, and am in the midst of my first such project of any substance. But, I am really struggling at the moment with how to architect it cleanly. Let me explain. To display complicated graphics in my current language of choice (JavaScript -- have you heard of it?), you have to draw graphical content onto a `<canvas>` element. And to do animation, you must clear the `<canvas>` after every frame (unless you want previous graphics to remain). Thus, most canvas-related JavaScript demos I've seen have a function like this:               function render() {        clearCanvas();        // draw stuff here        requestAnimationFrame(render);     }      `render`, as you may surmise, encapsulates the drawing of a single frame. What a single frame contains at a specific point in time, well... that is determined by the program state. So, in order for my program to do its thing, I just need to look at the state, and decide what to render. Right? Right. But that is more complicated than it seems. My program is called \"Critter Clicker\". In my program, you see several cute critters bouncing around the screen. Clicking on one of them agitates it, making it bounce around even more. There is also a start screen, which says \"Click to start!\" prior to the critters being displayed. Here are a few of the objects I'm working with in my program:               StartScreenView  // represents the start screen     CritterTubView   // represents the area in which the critters live     CritterList      // a collection of all the critters     Critter          // a single critter model     CritterView      // view of a single critter      Nothing too egregious with this, I think. Yet, when I set out to flesh out my `render` function, I get stuck, because everything I write seems utterly ugly and reminiscent of a certain popular Italian dish. Here are a couple of approaches I've attempted, with my internal thought process included, and unrelated bits excluded for clarity. ### Approach 1: \"It's conditions all the way down\"               // \"I'll just write the program as I think it, one frame at a time.\"          if (assetsLoaded) {       if (userClickedToStart) {         if (critterTubDisplayed) {           if (crittersDisplayed) {             forEach(crittersList, function(c) {               if (c.wasClickedRecently) {                  c.getAgitated();               }             });           } else {             displayCritters();           }         } else {           displayCritterTub();         }       } else {         displayStartScreen();       }     }      That's a very much simplified example. Yet even with only a fraction of all the rendering conditions visible, `render` is already starting to get out of hand. So, I dispense with that and try another idea: ### Approach 2: Under the Rug               // \"Each view object shall be responsible for its own rendering.     // \"I'll pass each object the program state, and each can render itself.\"          startScreen.render(state);     critterTub.render(state);     critterList.render(state);      In this setup, I've essentially just pushed those crazy nested conditions to a deeper level in the code, hiding them from view. In other words, `startScreen.render` would check `state` to see if it needed actually to be drawn or not, and take the correct action. But this seems more like it only solves a code-aesthetic problem. The third and final approach I'm considering that I'll share is the idea that I could invent my own \"wheel\" to take care of this. I'm envisioning a function that takes a data structure that defines what should happen at any given point in the `render` call -- revealing the conditions and dependencies as a kind of tree. ### Approach 3: Mad Scientist               renderTree({       phases: ['startScreen', 'critterTub', 'endCredits'],       dependencies: {         startScreen: ['assetsLoaded'],         critterTub: ['startScreenClicked'],         critterList ['critterTubDisplayed']         // etc.       },       exclusions: {         startScreen: ['startScreenClicked'],         // etc.       }     });      That seems kind of cool. I'm not exactly sure how it would actually work, but I can see it being a rather nifty way to express things, especially if I flex some of JavaScript's events. In any case, I'm a little bit stumped because I don't see an obvious way to do this. If you couldn't tell, I'm coming to this from the web development world, and finding that doing animation is a bit more exotic than arranging an MVC application for handling simple requests -> responses. * * * What is the clean, established solution to this common-I-would-think problem?"}
{"_id": "225300", "title": "What changes can I make to my IDE to minimize the effect of my dyslexia?", "text": "I program and I am dyslexic. My vision is excellent. I do poorly processing symbols and am a visual thinker. When I code, I'm slower than normal people because I am unpredictably unaware of the errors I make. I am learning python and the text only development environments cause me a lot of visual stress; I am using Wingware which is somewhat helpful, but cant complete assignments in the time given. Can you suggest an accommodation that would help me? What adaptations would be helpful to me? Is there any way I can automatically find, highlight and fix these kinds of errors? Proofreading, I see what I expect to see or something familiar. I don't notice typos, skip lines etc and the bugs turn up in testing. Even copy & pasting I can miss lines and cause errors. Blocks of text from margin to margin give me headaches as do some color combinations I do not process text as symbols, rather as objects that can be rotated, transposed so that the digits in a number move to different places, I may perceive \"123\" AS \"132\", THE LETTERS \"pddq\", look the same to me. I think of these as tricky - the same shape rotated and reflected."}
{"_id": "119700", "title": "Is the term \"web portal\" obsolete?", "text": "My boss uses the term \"portal\" for the project I work on all the time. To me, the word makes me think of Yahoo in the late 90s. Does the word \"portal\" have old-school connotations, or is it just me? Do you think it's ok to use it or will it drag our client's perception of the product down into the middle-ages?"}
{"_id": "119703", "title": "Interpolation search vs Binary Search", "text": "When should I used interpolation search instead of binary search? For example, I have a sorted dataset, in what situations would I use binary search to find an item in this dataset or in which situation should I used interpolation search? What properties of the dataset would be the determining factor?"}
{"_id": "119470", "title": "Differences between programming in school vs programming in industry?", "text": "A lot of students when they graduate and get their first job, feel like they don't really know how to program even though they may have been good programmers in college. What are some of the differences between programming in an academic setting and programming in the 'real world'?"}
{"_id": "120487", "title": "HTTP events? Is there a standard / precedent for this?", "text": "Our architecture is HTTP servers (custom written) which whereby custom clients send a HTTP request for some information and information is returned just as HTTP works. But we need a special custom 'extension' which is a request which is a subscription for receiving asynchronous 'events' on a resource. For example the client sends an http request subscribing for events on some entity. As the 'entity' generates events they are passed to the http server and the http server must then lookup subscriptions for that entity and send the event message to all subscribed clients. Hope that makes sense. So my questions are:   * Has this been done before / or is there a standard I should be looking at?   * If no standard, any suggestions on how to implement?   * How does a http server send an unsolicited 'message' to a client?"}
{"_id": "81476", "title": "To implement registration page with Vaadin or not?", "text": "This is a tactical implementation question about usage of Vaadin or in some part of my application. Vaadin is a great framework to login users and implement sophisticated web applications with many pages. However, I think it is not very well suited to desgin pages to register new users for my application. Am I right? Am I am wrong? It seems to me that a simple HTML/CSS/Javascript login + email registration + confirmation email with confirmation link cannot be implemented easily with Vaadin. It seems like Vaadin would be overkill. Do you agree? Or am I missing something? I am looking for feedback from experienced Vaadin users."}
{"_id": "252710", "title": "How to parse different number types with LALR(1)", "text": "Consider a LALR(1) parser for a file format that allows integer numbers and floating point numbers. As usual, something like `42` shall be a valid integer and a valid float (with some automagic conversion in the background). There might be parsing rules where a floating point number or an integer number is expected, and other rules where _only_ an integer number is expected, e.g.:               foo1         : bar FLOAT buzz         | bar INT buzz         ;          foo2         :  some INT other stuff         ;      Now consider something like               foo3         : bar FLOAT xyz FLOAT abc FLOAT buzz         ;      but at each position in this rule, instead of `FLOAT`, also `INT` shall be allowed.   * Turning this rule into 8 rules (one rule for each combination of `FLOAT` and `INT`) isn\u2019t an option. (Consider a rule having 4 or 5 numbers...)   * Using a rule like              float_or_int : FLOAT | INT;      won\u2019t help, because in general, this rule will reduce all `INT` to `float_or_int`, and rules like `foo2` no longer can be parsed. (Because with a grammar large enough, the one token lookahead cannot avoid the shift-reduce- conflicts resulting from this rule.)   * When the lexer sees a number without a decimal point, it cannot decide whether the parser currently expects an int or a float-or-int. How can this be handled in an elegant way?"}
{"_id": "60383", "title": "How can we integrate use of a foreign language into an internship?", "text": "We have a few interns here that have orders from college to integrate speaking, reading, and writing French into their internship.   All of them are working on developing their own web application, and I'm wondering how we can integrate French into their projects.   Here are some things I've come up with:   * Translate the whole project front-end to French   * Write French documentation for the project   * Promote the application in a French community   * Speak French (exclusively?) to our project managers Any other ideas or suggestions? Does anyone else have experience with this?"}
{"_id": "94275", "title": "How do I make a license an open source license?", "text": "I have been granted permission to reduce the rules from our custom license used in Advanced Electron Forum project. I am not sure what exactly is needed to make the license above an open source license for the product but I think that third term is the one that should be removed/changed. Best regards."}
{"_id": "66408", "title": "What graphics engine is used in Photoshop", "text": "I am wondering what is the default graphics engine used in Photoshop? It's great tool. And I don't know how they make it? I mean, if I want to create a simple tool like it, I will use MFC/GDI+. So, what is core to make Photoshop being great tools?"}
{"_id": "201263", "title": "When should I use or not BooleanUtils.isTrue(...) and BooleanUtils.isFalse(...)?", "text": "About this function: `org.apache.commons.lang3.BooleanUtils.isFalse(Boolean bool)` and the similar `isTrue`, my co-work (less experienced) use it for **every** boolean in the code. I am trying to convince him that it is not a good practice because make the code confusing. In my POV, it should be used ONLY if the boolean to be tested is a type of non-primitive `Boolean` and it can be `null`. Actually, even this I think it is unnecessary, because the implementation of this function is simply `Boolean.TRUE.equals(bool)` or `Boolean.FALSE.equals(bool)`. Anyway, I think it is totally crazy do something like:               boolean isReady = true;          if (BooleanUtils.isTrue(isReady)) {        // ...     }      when you cold simply do               if (isReady) {        // ...     }      or `(!isReady)` for the opposite. His only argument to use this is \"it is easy to read\". I just can't accept this argument. Am I wrong? What arguments can I use to convince him that no useless code is better than useless code in this case? Thank you guys."}
{"_id": "113165", "title": "NoSQL Modify operations performance", "text": "I am working on the application which in near future (hopefully) will have to process tens or hundreds of thousands of items (item is currently one row in relational database table) per second. If I understood it right NoSQL databases are superheroes of data retrieval thanks to map-reduce magic. But will NoSQL databases provide extra performance in comperatison to relational ones in my case?"}
{"_id": "201261", "title": "What to do if the task is too difficult ? Internship/SummerTraining", "text": "I conducting my summer training or internship for 2 months in an IT company as a a Sysadmin and Web developer. This is my first week. My mentor assigned me to work on an existing Flash/AS3 project(alone) to improve it and add new features. ( I think this wasn't part of my training plan) The problem is that I have never worked on AS3, so I took my time this week to learn as much as I can, about it. Today, I saw the source code of the project and it was outsourceed with 3500 lines of code plus no comments or any documentation included. I am panicking . The company has no one with AS3/Flash experience nor my mentor. I'm not sure if I can accomplish the task with their requirements. As it definitely needs an experienced developer in this field , plus I have only 2 months - so it's short. Hence , I'm asking here and looking for advice and suggestions on what to do next. Should I ask him and explain ? or should I risk and (try) working on it? what if I fail? Thanks advance! EDIT: I'm not sure if I have to accomplish the task in 2 months. I'm sure less so that I work on other projects. I haven't really asked. Since I'm not living in the US , I'm not sure if an Intern is the proper word to use. Every university student is required to conduct his/her summer training for 2 months in a company. At the end , either he/she passes the course or fail."}
{"_id": "11400", "title": "Are captchas worth the decreased usability?", "text": "When is it useful to use a captcha? When is it an unnecessary hindrance? Is a captcha just a quick fix for the lazy/unexperienced programmer, or are they really the best way to prevent spam and bots?"}
{"_id": "96698", "title": "Is there a clean alternative to WTF that communicates to coders?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Another term for common code smell Programmers know immediately what I mean if I talk of finding a 'WTF' in the code base. In particular, it is a noun that refers to an extremely wrongheaded approach/implementation, and not typically an exclamation (though it can be used also as an exclamation). I don't want to use expressions that thinly veil obscenity, but I can't think of any substitute that communicates this idea quickly and succinctly. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "19238", "title": "How to calculate the cost of a course I will give?", "text": "I am going to give a javascript course to some developers in a local company, I know all the subjects I will teach and estimate duration, also note that the course will be for experience developers so it will contain a lot of advanced subjects. I don't know how to calculate my cost, anyone there have experience and can advice me?"}
{"_id": "240925", "title": "Separate Action from Assertion in Unit Tests", "text": "## Setup Many years ago I took to a style of unit testing that I have come to like a lot. In short, it uses a base class to separate out the Arrangement, Action and Assertion of the test into separate method calls. You do this by defining method calls in [Setup]/[TestInitialize] that will be called before each test run.               [Setup]     public void Setup()     {        before_each(); //arrangement        because(); //action     }      This base class usually includes the [TearDown] call as well for when you are using this setup for Integration tests.               [TearDown]     public void Cleanup()     {        after_each();     }      This often breaks out into a structure where the test classes inherit from a series of Given classes that put together the setup (i.e. GivenFoo : GivenBar : WhenDoingBazz) with the Assertions being one line tests with a descriptive name of what they are covering               [Test]     public void ThenBuzzSouldBeTrue()     {        Assert.IsTrue(result.Buzz);     }      ## The Problem There are very few tests that wrap around a single action so you end up with lots of classes so recently I have taken to defining the action in a series of methods within the test class itself:               [Test]     public void ThenBuzzSouldBeTrue()     {        because_an_action_was_taken();        Assert.IsTrue(result.Buzz);     }          private void because_an_action_was_taken()     {        //perform action here     }      This results in several \"action\" methods within the test class but allows grouping of similar tests (i.e. class == WhenTestingDifferentWaysToSetBuzz) ## The Question Does someone else have a better way of separating out the three 'A's of testing? Readability of tests is important to me so I would prefer that, when a test fails, that the very naming structure of the tests communicate what has failed. If someone can read the Inheritance structure of the tests and have a good idea why the test might be failing then I feel it adds a lot of value to the tests (i.e. GivenClient : GivenUser : WhenModifyingUserPermissions : ThenReadAccessShouldBeTrue). I am aware of Acceptance Testing but this is more on a Unit (or series of units) level with boundary layers mocked. _EDIT_ : My question is asking if there is an event or other method for executing a block of code before individual tests (something that could be applied to specific sets of tests without it being applied to all tests within a class like [Setup] currently does. Barring the existence of this event, which I am fairly certain doesn't exist, is there another method for accomplishing the same thing? Using [Setup] for every case presents a problem either way you go. Something like [Action(\"Category\")] (a setup method that applied to specific tests within the class) would be nice but I can't find any way of doing this."}
{"_id": "215242", "title": "Implementing set of processes in a stored procedure or through the code?", "text": "I want to know what's the suitable method to implement the following case (best practice). If i make a set of processes like this:   1. select data from set of DB tables.   2. loop on the selected result.   3. Make some checks on each iteration.   4. Insert the result in another table. * * * Implementing the previous steps in a stored procedure or in a transaction through my code (asp.net)? Concerning the performance, security and reliability issues."}
{"_id": "90695", "title": "What is the best way to handle similar functionlaity in separate user stories / Product back Log Items?", "text": "I am using the TFS 2010 SCRUM template. So, let's say I have these user stories: As a user I want the ability to add contacts directly from the Partner page. As a user I want the ability to add contacts directly from the Project page. Design wise the contact forms should be the same and so should the functionality. So, if a user clicks the add contact button from either page, a pop up window will appear allowing the user to add a new contact. Should both those stories share similar tasks since the development and design are similar? Should I break up the features into separate stories? Update: So, is it more acceptable to write this: As a user I want to add contacts from any area in the site so that I don't have to keep going back to a speicifc contact entry page. Then I could supply the features we need for that story?"}
{"_id": "164050", "title": "How would you manage development between many Staging branches?", "text": "We have a Staging Branch. Then we came out with a Beta branch for users to move whenever they wanted to from old Production branch to the new features. Our plan seemed simple, we test on Staging, when items get QA'd, they get cherry-picked and deploy to Beta. Here's the problem! A bug will discreetly make its way on to Beta, and since Beta is a production environment, it needs fixes _fast_ and _accurate_. But not all the QA's got done. Enter Git hell.. So I find a problem on Beta. No sweat, it's already been fixed on Staging, but when I go to cherry-pick the item over, Beta barely has any of the other pre- requisites of code to implement this small change. Now Beta has a little here and a little there, and I can't imagine it as a code base being as stable as Staging. What's more, is I'm dealing with some insane Git conflicts, and having to monkey patch a bunch of things to make up for what Beta hasn't caught up with Staging. Can someone polite or non-polite terms, tell me what we're doing wrong here as far as assembling this project? Any awesome recommendations or workarounds or alternatives to the system we came up with?"}
{"_id": "152902", "title": "What guidelines should be met for something to be called a webapp", "text": "In my mind a webapp is any website that has some complicated features and that's served from the web, but I know there are people who are a lot smarter than me here and they'll point out other features that I'm not noticing. For example:   * If it doesn't have a login system, can I still call it a webapp? (because most webapps end up being user-based).    * Should I think of a CMS as a webapp? and how about the sites that are built with it? probably they're not webapps, right?    * Is Gmail a webapp? I think so.   * Is twitter a webapp? Yes, though the functionality is rather simple. So what conditions need to be met to call a website a webapp? P.S. StackExchange's tag system defines web-applications as > applications that are accessed over the \"web\", which can mean the Internet, > or an internal network (an intranet)."}
{"_id": "251237", "title": "Should each method have a seperate JUnit test class?", "text": "I am writing JUnit unit tests for my classes. Is it better to have a separate class for each method, or have just one test class for every actual class?"}
{"_id": "251236", "title": "Need help understanding a recursion example in Python", "text": "Python is my first programming language, and I'm learning it from \"How to Think Like a Computer Scientist\". In Chapter 5 the author gives the following example on recursion:               def factorial(n):        if n == 0:          return 1        else:          recurse = factorial(n-1)          result = n * recurse          return result       I understand that if n = 3, then the function will execute the second branch. But what I don't understand is what happens when the function enters the second branch. Can someone explain it to me?"}
{"_id": "118077", "title": "Data Scraping - One application or multiple?", "text": "I have 30+ sources of data I scrape daily in various formats (xml, html, csv). Over the last three years Ive built 20 or so c# console applications that go out, download the data and re-format it into a database. But Im curious what other people are doing for this type of task. Are people building one tool that has a lot of variables and inputs or are people designing 20+ programs to scrape and parse this data. Everything is hard-coded into each console and run through Windows Task Manager. Added a couple additional thoughts/details:   * Of the 30 sources, they all have unique properties, all are uploaded into individual MySQL tables and all have varying frequencies. For example, one data source is hit once a minute, another on 5 minute intervals. Majority are once an hour and once a day.  At current I download the formats (xml, csv, html), parse them into a formatted csv and put them into staging folders. Within that folder, I run an application that reads a config file specific to the folder. When a new csv is added to the folder, the application then uploads the data into the specific MySQL tables designated in the config file. Im wondering if it is worth re-building all this into a larger complex program that is more capable of dynamically adding content+scrapes and adjusting to format changes. Looking for outside thoughts."}
{"_id": "148350", "title": "What algorithm(s) can be used to achieve reasonably good next word prediction?", "text": "What is a good way of implementing \"next-word prediction\"? For example, the user types \"I am\" and the system suggests \"a\" and \"not\" (or possibly others) as the next word. I am aware of a method that uses Markov Chains and some training text(obviously) to more or less achieve this. But I read somewhere that this method is very restrictive and applies to very simple cases. I understand basics of neural networks and genetic algorithms(though have never used them in a serious project) and maybe they could be of some help. I wonder if there are any algorithms that, given appropriate training text(e.g., newspaper articles, and the user's own typing) can come up with reasonably appropriate suggestions for the next word. If not (links to)algorithms, general high-level methods to attack this problem are welcome."}
{"_id": "74258", "title": "How do other people keep code current accross multiple machines? (something other than DropBox)", "text": "I am a hardware/infrastructure guy going back to school to get my degree (FINALLY...) and am taking some low level intro programming classes. On top of the JAVA I am working on at school, I am also tinkering around in some other languages. I work in a shop with some very talented developers and am attempting to learn as much as I can from them. Basically, learning a bunch on my own to write code that will make my infrastructure job easier, so I have more time to learn. With that said, I spend 90% of my time using eclipse, and 8% in BlueJay (blah, I know) and 2% in VS Express. Because I have 5 different machines between work and home, I am having a big issues keeping my code for various projects up to date when working on different machines. I tried using Dropbox, and setting the local folder on all my machines to my workspace in Eclipse, and that worked great for a week. Then I found out that the company was getting on users for Internet Usage, because their Dropbox was keeping a live connection to the web 100% of the time that it was running. I have tried the old school thumb drive approach, and I keep forgetting to save most recent to the thumb drive. So, basically, what I am looking for is advice on how users keep their code up to date? Are there any similar utilities like DropBox, and only attempt to sync when stuff is changed? Are their any other suggestions for an online repository that I can do this with, without logging 50+ hours a week of time on our Firewall report?"}
{"_id": "49003", "title": "Which online/hosted bug tracking tool do you use for your own work and projects?", "text": "I've accumulated a lot of side projects over the years, which I slowly improve on over time. Whenever I return to one, I take some time reading over text files that include design, recent bugs, next features, etc... that I should be working on - it's not pretty. I'm looking to switch to something more formal. Ideally, this would be a full featured, online, bug tracking system, which allows for free or nearly free bug tracking for my own projects. Also, ideally this would be doable in a private manner - I don't really want everyone to see my side projects and what a mess I've made of some of them."}
{"_id": "80789", "title": "Distribution Licensing for Windows XP Junction tool", "text": "My application needs to create a directory symbolic link in Windows XP to get around the file path length limitation of ~256 characters. Windows XP does not have this functionality built-in. I had chosen Junction from Sysinternals as a candidate to solve this issue. However, now legal is telling me that I cannot distribute Junction to my users; they would have to download it themselves. My problem is that my users are not connected to the internet and probably have too many bureaucratic hurdles to go through to get approval to download and transfer this software.   1. Has anyone found an exception and legally distributed Sysinternals software like Junction?   2. What free/open/libre alternative do I have for creating directory symbolic links in Windows XP?"}
{"_id": "80780", "title": "How should ability be distributed through teams?", "text": "After reading this, I saw that there seems to be a lot of disagreement over how agile teams should be structured within a group of developers with varying ability (aka almost all teams). Should all the best developers be put on their own teams and be given the highest priority work? This will pretty much ensure that the most important tasks will get done. At the same time, you are then left with the \"less than perfect\" teams elsewhere racking up technical debt, even if it is only on low priority tasks. On the other hand, evenly distributed teams could have the benefit of making your lagging developers a bit better, but has the potential to demotivate your heaviest hitters. Also, if you mix in a bunch of good design patterns with a bunch of terrible anti- patterns, you can really end up with something that might as well be a bunch of anti-patterns. All teams have their strong coders and their not so strong coders, so how should this be dealt with?"}
{"_id": "153365", "title": "How to deal with colleagues refuse to follow practices?", "text": "I was discussing with another colleague about what we should be used when an DB entity is referring to another. I don't think there is any good reason to break the practice of putting the Primary Key in the referring entity. However, one of my colleague says: \"You should use a surrogate key in the entity, but it is better to put the human-readable natural key in the referring entity. As long it is unique, it is fine and it is easier when you are doing support or maintenance job\" I know it will works, but obviously it is not a good practice you are putting a non-PK unique column as \"foreign key\", just for gaining a bit of ease in writing SQL during support as we can have less table join. Though I mentioned the his approach is conceptual incorrect, and causing problem too practically etc, he seems rather trade off correctness in data model in exchange of ease of ad-hoc support jobs. And he said: \"I know it is not good practice, but good practice is not golden rule\" Honestly I feel frustrated when dealing with something like this. I know there are always case that we should break some rule or practice, but doubtless it is not such case now. What will you when you are facing situation like this? Please assume yourself being a senior developer which is expected to contribute in misc development direction and convention."}
{"_id": "153366", "title": "What is So Unique About Node.js?", "text": "Recently there has been a lot of praise for Node.js. I am not a developer that has had much exposure to network application. From my bare understanding of Nodes.js, its strength is: we have only one thread handling multiple connections, providing an event-based architecture. However, for example in Java, I can create only one thread using NIO/AIO (which is non-blocking APIs from my bare understanding), and handle multiple connections using that thread, and I provide an event-based architecture to implement the data handling logic (shouldn't be that difficult by providing some callback etc.)? Given JVM being a even more mature VM than V8 (I expect it to run faster too), and event-based handling architecture seems to be something not difficult to create, I am not sure why Node.js is attracting so much attention. Did I miss some important points?"}
{"_id": "45586", "title": "Integration of advertisement into WP7 apps: Any experiences?", "text": "Has anyone of you guys integrated or is thinking about integrating either admob, MS pubCenter, adwhirl or any other advertising provider into your apps? Please share your experience...   1. Who pays best?   2. Any regulations?    3. Any problems with getting the app approved by Microsoft Market?   4. If you chose Admob: Which plugin do you suggest? This or that or another one?   5. Any experiences in Europe or Germany? (MS pubCenter is US only so far) **Edit:** I think we discussed enough about acceptance of mobile advertisement. **Let's focus now on the questions I asked.** **Edit 2:** Hmm, maybe Stackoverlfow is a better place to discuss question 2-5. Could somebody migrate this one?"}
{"_id": "153369", "title": "Is there any benefit of using one language over the other for competitive programming websites like SPOJ or TopCoder?", "text": "I know a bit of C++, Java and Ruby. I want to be proficient in one of these now and I don't know how to pick. I was wondering if picking one over the other would be advantageous in any way for competitive programming?"}
{"_id": "148686", "title": "iOS object instance accessible from three separate classes, or load 3 nib files with one class?", "text": "I've got three nib files in my project, each of which is driven by its own class (.h and .m files). Each nib has a stylized design with a full screen background image and a few overlay images acting as buttons. Each button has its own button-click sound, and most of the buttons on each nib file will play a different video per button. To play the videos, each of my three .m files have a couple of methods similar to this:               -(IBAction) videoButtonClicked: (id)sender{         if([sender tag] == 1) {             AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (buttonClick1);             [self loadMoviePlayer:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@\"Video 1\" ofType:@\"mov\"]];         } else if ([sender tag]  == 2) {             AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (buttonClick2);             [self loadMoviePlayer:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@\"Video 2\" ofType:@\"mov\"]];         } else if ([sender tag]  == 3) {             AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (buttonClick3);             [self loadMoviePlayer:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@\"Video 3\" ofType:@\"mov\"]];         } else if ([sender tag]  == 4) {             AudioServicesPlaySystemSound (buttonClick4);             [self loadMoviePlayer:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@\"Video 4\" ofType:@\"mov\"]];             }     }          - (void)loadMoviePlayer:(NSString*) movieURL     {           // Play movie from the bundle         NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:movieURL];              player = [[MPMoviePlayerViewController alloc]                   initWithContentURL:url];              [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]          addObserver:self          selector:@selector(movieFinishedCallback:)          name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification          object:player];              [self presentMoviePlayerViewControllerAnimated:player];         [player release];     }      My code works now because the videos are embedded in my resources folder. However, together, the videos are too big to be bundled with the app and downloaded from the App Store. I'll therefore have the app download them from a server, so I want to create one video-management class to keep track of which videos have been downloaded. I think I should have one instance of the object, but then how can my three controllers talk to the one instance? I am pretty sure if I have one class that loads the correct .nib file, I can have that one instance talk to my one video-management instance. But would I be unnecessarily wasting memory by loading all three nibs at once?"}
{"_id": "99251", "title": "How prototypal inheritance is practically different from classical inheritance?", "text": "Inheritance, Polymorphism, and Encapsulation are the three most distinct, important features of OOP, and from them, inheritance has a high usage statistics these days. I'm learning JavaScript, and here, they all say that it has prototypal inheritance, and people everywhere say that it's something **far different** from classical inheritance. However, I can't understand what's their difference from the point of practical usage? In other words, when you define a base class (prototype) and then derive some subclasses from it, you both have access to functionalites of your base class, and you can augment functions on the derived classes. If we consider what I said to be the intended result of inheritance, then why should we care if we're using prototypal or classic version? To clear myself more, I see no difference in the usefulness and usage patterns of prototypal and classic inheritance. This results in me having no interest to learn why they are different, as they both result in the same thing, OOAD. How practically (not theoretically) prototypal inheritance is different from classical inheritance?"}
{"_id": "198602", "title": "What is a good pattern for multi language in MongoDb?", "text": "Say I want to build a website that support multiple language and use MongoDB datastore. I wonder what is a good approach to have multiple versions of the body and title of an article, one for each language. Should I keep all versions in the same article document? Like a collection of key-value pairs of language code and text in the body field of the article. This way I'd get no more than 1 request for viewing articles, but I'd also get more data than I might need so the response is larger. Is there a better solution? How and why?"}
{"_id": "161390", "title": "Does Clojure have the continuation?", "text": "I started programming with Python. When using python, concepts like coroutine, closure made me really confusing. Now I think I know them some superficial level, but I want to get the \"enlightement\" so, I choose to learn Clojure, the dialect of Lisp. I bought the book of Stuart Halloway and it's good. But when I looked the index of that book, there's no words like coroutine, continuation. I googled it, but there's anything, too. So, my question is, Does Clojure have continuation or coroutine (which greenlet or stackless serve) to do the jobs like the Ping-pongs without stack overflow? Python style (though Python standard does not serve full-feature of this symmetric coroutine):               def ping():       while 1:        print \"ping\"        function to switching to pong          def pong():       while 1:        function to switching to ping        print \"pong\"      If not, as for learning the functional concepts, is it better to learn Scheme instead?"}
{"_id": "80434", "title": "PHP and SQL, together or individually?", "text": "I am done with HTML and CSS. Now I want to know whether I should study PHP and SQL together or individually. Basically, I have this book, `O'Reily Head First PHP and MySQL`. Should I take this book or start with a book for PHP only? And is there any difference?"}
{"_id": "125966", "title": "Algorithm to determine fastest route?", "text": "Let's say we're going from 1 to 5. The shortest route will be 1-4-3-5 (total: 60 km). ![Graph](http://i.stack.imgur.com/w0SnS.png) We can use Dijkstra's algorithm to do that. Now the problem is, the shortest route is not always the fastest one, because of traffic jams or other factors. For example:   * 1-2 is known to have frequent traffic jams, so it should be avoided.    * Suddenly a car accident happens along 4-3, so it should be avoided too.   * Etc... So probably we can speed on the route 1-4-5, because of no traffic jams/accidents, so will arrive at 5 faster. Well that's the general idea, and I haven't think about more details yet. Is there any algorithm to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "198605", "title": "Researching the growth of functional languages", "text": "In recent years it seems that functional programming languages have had a real popularity increase. Languages like Erlang, Haskell, Scala, F# and Clojure seem to be pretty well known and many popular programming sites (such as Stack Overflow) seem to be full of questions and discussions on them. The question is how would you go about researching the growth of these languages in real terms. Of course I know about the TIOBE index but is that really the best source to measure the popularity of a given programming language? Hopefully this question will be allowed since it is something that many programmers look towards to decide whether a given technology is likely to last for a long time or not (although this is not my personal goal)."}
{"_id": "80439", "title": "Why is C++ still preferred to build heavy GUI apps over the latest dynamic languages?", "text": "I see that most of the apps that include heavy GUI content are usually developed in C++. Most of the games/browsers are coded in C++. Can't we just develop better GUI apps with the latest dynamic languages? I know java wouldn't be a great choice. But what about languages like python which are natively built on C? Aren't the latest languages supposed to be better than their ancestors? Why do we still have to prefer the age old C++ over the latest languages? And I would also like to know, what is it that is responsible in C++, for the better speed of processing GUI? On the other hand what is it that the other latest languages lack?"}
{"_id": "12174", "title": "How do you pronounce technical English words around non-natives?", "text": "I'm working as a developer back in my home country, where English is not a first/second language. However, I consider myself a native speaker since most of my schooling has been in an American environment. Everyday I have to talk to my colleagues about technical stuff and English words obviously come up all the time. My colleagues pronounce English words very differently than how it's supposed to be (well most of the times) and I feel weird trying to correct them or speaking the 'right way' because it makes it seem like I'm a dick and often takes the focus away from the real subject. How do you guys deal with this kind of 'problem?'"}
{"_id": "232049", "title": "Merging branches where the same code was worked on", "text": "If there are two unrelated tasks, except that the changes are in the same project, and end up touching at least one of the same classes/methods, how do I manage that? Two different developers could each pick up one task. Each dev will create a new branch off of Integration, work in it, then need to Merge. When Merging two branches, most of the time \"Take Source Branch\" is proper for Up-Merging, and \"Take Target Branch\" is proper for Back-Merging. But when Back-Merging, or dual-merging up, there could be conflicts which overwrite the code of the previously merged project if they both changed the same class/method. One answer is: \"So only let one dev work on both tasks sequentially.\" Except that we're in SCRUM and any dev can pick up any task. We don't want to start assigning. Another answer is: \"Have the devs get together and hash out how to manually merge some stuff.\" But that's work! Lol. Is there a method I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "12170", "title": "GPLed Library (EXT JS) Licensing Issue", "text": "Good Day Everyone, I am realy out of option for interpreting the GPL for EXTJS for my work/idea/personal project. I can see that this is an active forum I realy hope, I have a closure on this. First let me explain my project, Iam creating this website which is like a webportal which is intented for End-User, now this webapps uses an EXTJS library which is GPL'ed as with my understanding on this GPL Any application uses GPL license libray should be released to as Open Source a a GPL compatible Linsence, this is when I or my application is a derivework or I have modified the Library and released it. or destribute it. But EXTJS has this dual license which is typically giving me the rights to do what I want. without giving out my code. If my application is intented for end user only, not a derive form of work, not a library, not a development tool, I will not distribute it because it is on the web. with this also the Libraries i will use will remain untouch as it is. and I will have list of library I use and thier respective license to credit them Given this can I not close-source my application and not violate the GPL? is it ok for me to use GPL library so long as the above is meet? The question in short is can i used GPL'ed Library, do not released my code as OPensource compatible License and still NOT violate the GPL'ed terms? Thanks in Advance Nick Ace"}
{"_id": "12171", "title": "How does fair use apply to code snippets?", "text": "Is there a size where you can copy under fair use for code you don't have a license for the purpose? For example, what if I copy a snippet that is (normally) 3 lines of code? Is that fair use? If it is fair use, what length is required before I need a license?"}
{"_id": "46584", "title": "What should a Python developer know while learning Ruby?", "text": "I have been a Python programmer for about 18 months, consisting of one internship and a few side projects, and I consider myself pretty comfortable in the language. However, there seems to be a lot of attention on Ruby in the programming field, but not a lot on Python anymore. So in learning Ruby, are there going to be Pythonic things that are just bad practices in Ruby? What should I watch out for, and what should I avoid?"}
{"_id": "46582", "title": "Career advice: PhD in theory of programming languages", "text": "I'm very interested in the theories of programming languages and going to apply a PhD in this topic, but I want to know more about the career after the graduate education. besides being a professor, but also what occupation can I get?"}
{"_id": "46583", "title": "Advancing Code Review and Unit Testing Practice", "text": "As a team lead managing a group of developers with no experience ( and see no need) in code review and unit testing, how can you advance code review and unit testing practice? How are you going to create a way so that code review and unit testing to naturally fit into the developer's flow? One of the resistance of these two areas is that \"we are always tight on dateline, so no time for code review and unit testing\". Another resistance for code review is that we currently don't know how to do it. Should we review the code upon every check-in, or review the code at a specified date?"}
{"_id": "162715", "title": "Arguments for development environment being the same as production", "text": "Intuitively it seems appropriate that the development environment (and all test environments) be as close to the production build as possible. Are there any documented arguments in support of this intuition?"}
{"_id": "196738", "title": "How the cross programming language compiler or translator works", "text": "These days there are more cross programming language compilers (specially from some 'X' language to JavaScript). I wonder how these are developed? What are the general steps to be taken care to write algorithms if I were to develop one? Do I need to be completely thorough in Lexical Analysis? As far as my knowledge is concerned they should follow the same steps of translating some 'X' language to Assembly language (basic compilation). Is that how they actually been developed? OR there is some different way? Thanks"}
{"_id": "167946", "title": "What are the differences between AppMobi and PhoneGap?", "text": "I am new to the cross platform application development. I came across the very similar cross platform frameworks AppMobi and PhoneGap. I want to know   * Is there any differences between apk/ipa created using Appmobi and apk/ipa created using PhoneGap?   * Is there any difference in native features that can be used ?   * What are the advantages of appmobi over phonegap or PhoneGap over Appmobi? Also other differences between these two."}
{"_id": "194765", "title": "What to do when your colleagues don't value code maintainability", "text": "I've been working in the same software development department for a few years now. In that time, the average stay of a developer has been 6-9 months. A handful have been around for over 2 years, but the majority of our 20 or-so developers come and go at a relatively high rate. As a result, the majority of our projects have become maintenance nightmares. Contractors will come in, code a few patch releases, and leave. Our department has development guidelines (we do TDD) but they aren't enforced. Recently, I've been pushing for our department to produce more maintainable code. I've been asking for mandatory code reviews and mandatory TDD. Management fully agrees with me... in theory. In practice TDD always goes out the window. The justification is always that, in our domain, we need to deliver NOW. I keep going on and on to colleagues that we're just digging a hole for ourselves, and that our current approach to software development is costing our department a lot of money... but it seems to fall on deaf ears. What can I do to get my colleagues to see the value of code maintainability? How can I explain that short-term wins without a long-term vision is not sustainable?"}
{"_id": "238749", "title": "How to effectively cooperate in a team having mixed background/mindset regarding OOP?", "text": "I've been recently assigned for a new high-performance C++ project (finance) together with 3 other guys who, like, me, refer to themselves as \"primarily C/C++ programmers\", meaning, all of us have also done Java & other stuff, we all have comparable experience (8 to 10 years) and have successfully collaborated for the making of other projects (not C/C++). I soon found out we have such different mindsets when it comes to our \"mother programming tongue\" that it risks not only the good delivery of the project but also the general well-being of the team/office. Specifically: They come from an electrical engineering/automation/polytechnic type of background, so their reasoning is intimately related to how hardware works, how bytes move around, processor workings, instruction caching, generally everything at the lower layers. They did embedded programming, ARM programming (I barely know what those are). I soon found out their practical experience is with mostly C, not C++. They think procedurally, not OOP. I, on the other hand, have trained myself to think in a more abstract way, to apply principles such as encapsulation, low coupling/high cohesion for creating reusable, modular software. My speciality is the C++ programming language, with an accent on language constructs that help you get both fast and reusable, generic code. I think design patterns, idioms, concepts. Throughout 9 years of developing software I consistently witnessed how poor maintainability of software systems is by far the #1 burden of teams. I generously document my code, write careful interfaces. I embrace template meta-programming as a way to obtain fast and reusable products. I embrace the new C++11 standard features. Where I see reusability and loose coupling, they see \"complication\". They want to \"see it all there\". They want to see `char*`, not some buffer class in interface methods. At one point one even said \"I don't care how simple your interfaces are if your implementation looks complicated\". The trouble is, we really are trying to transition from a monolithic style of systems to a reusable one - we are writing a library. Yet they don't wish to see their C-style structs being polluted with templated methods, typedefs and c-tors, even if neither makes their structs non-POD. They also don't wish to see static_assert(std::is_pod<...>). They love memcpy and pointers and generally stay away from references. They tend to think typedefs are somehow evil. I really tried to make them see an abstraction for what it is. It is code together with data it operates on. By necessity, a library needs to define some interfaces for the user to be able to plug it into a larger product. They tend to see these interfaces as ways in which my code _requires their code behave/look as I wish and doesn't allow them to do things their way_ , but without actually telling me a specific functionality they can't obtain. Make no mistake, I'm no ignorant when it comes to performance. I know about cache lines, branch prediction, the overhead of method virtualization, heap allocation, hash lookups. I'm good with complexity of algorithms (though that doesn't matter so much here), data structures, inlining and some other compiler optimizations such as RVO. I believe with a modern compiler a reusable, layered OOP C++ product can get within 10% of the performance of a C-only monolithic product, when carefully written and optimized. I honestly believed we would complement each other in our thinking. What are your thoughts? Please don't be too harsh, we need to make this work."}
{"_id": "193927", "title": "Which programming guidelines for a chess network application?", "text": "I'd like to implement a simple chess peer to peer network application : one instance of the program may register friends player, and when one friend is \"connected\" (I mean both available by another program instance and registered as friend), I can ask him to play a game. As I know J2SE language, as well as Swing framework, I tried to start coding, using Sockets. The problem is that I need a way to   * register my friends (or other accounts)   * get the friend ip, for creating a socket (it will be the same problem on the other side) : with the problem of dynamic ip adresses.I mean that a serialized adress may not be valid anymore   * be informed that the other side has \"connected\" I think that first and third point can be resolved if I use a PHP server which will have all informations for all registered users. This is how the application should work :   1. First, before trying to connect each other, the users must register an account on a PHP server that I'll have to implement (with MySQL database)   2. When launching the application, the user logins by giving its username and password. So that the application will be able to retrieve friends (and stats for example) thanks to the server   3. When two friends are ready to play together, the server give all needed informations (such as ip adress) to both player application instance. My main difficulties will be for the (de)serialization of dynamic IP Adresses, and for retrieving informations about a user on the PHP server. What do you suggest ?"}
{"_id": "59866", "title": "When is a glue or management class doing too much?", "text": "I'm prone to building centralized classes that manage the other classes in my designs. It doesn't store everything itself, but most data requests would go to the \"manager\" first. While looking at an answer to this question I noticed the term \"God Object\". Wikipedia lists it as an antipattern, understandably. Where is the line between a legitimate glue class, or module, that passes data and messages from place to place, and a class that is doing too much?"}
{"_id": "193923", "title": "Approaches to reduce cyclomatic complexity", "text": "I was running our code through JSHint, and decided to switch checks against cyclomatic complexity, and then went on long refactoring sprint. One place though baffled me, here is a code snippet:               var raf = null //raf stands for requestAnimationFrame          if (window.requestAnimationFrame) {       raf = window.requestAnimationFrame;     } else if (window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame) {       raf = window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame;     } else if (window.mozRequestAnimationFrame) {       raf = window.mozRequestAnimationFrame;     } else if (window.msRequestAnimationFrame) {       raf = window.msRequestAnimationFrame;     } else {       raf = polyfillRequestAnimationFrame;     }      Not surprisingly, in this implementation CM is 5, first attempt was to use solution from MDN:               var requestAnimationFrame = window.requestAnimationFrame || window.mozRequestAnimationFrame ||                               window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame || window.msRequestAnimationFrame;     window.requestAnimationFrame = requestAnimationFrame;      Which simply looks like a hack to me (yes I know, majority of full time javascript programmers won't agree with me, however this is a prevalent opinion within our team). Doodling around my code, I found another hacks I could employ to full code-linter, among ones I was proud for about 5 second was usage of array comprehensions:               var rafs = [                  window.requestAnimationFrame,                  window.webkitRequestAnimationFrame,                  window.mozRequestAnimationFrame,                  window.msRequestAnimationFrame,                  polyfillRequestAnimationFrame                ].filter(function (rafClosure) {                  return rafClosure !== null && rafClosure !== undefined;                });     return rafs[0];      However I'm curios whether there is more or less standard practice of refactoring long branching code (that's not trivial to reduce)?"}
{"_id": "58515", "title": "Advice: The first-time interviewer's dilemna", "text": "I've been working in my first job for about 2 years now, and I've been \"asked\" to interview a potential teammate (whom I might have to mentor as well) on pretty short notice (2 days from now). Initially, I had been given a free rein(or so I thought, and hence agreed), but today, I've been told \"not to pose _bookish_ questions\" - implying I can only ask basic programming puzzles and stuff similar to the 'fizbuzz' question. I strongly believe that not knowing basic algorithmic notations(the haziest ideas of space/time complexities) or the tiniest idea of regular expressions would make working with the guy very difficult for anyone. I know i'm asking for a lot here, but according to you, what would be a comprehensive way to test out the _absolutely basic_ requirements of a CS guy(he has 2 yrs of exp) without sounding too pedantic/bookish etc ? It seems it would be legit to ask C questions/simple puzzles only....but I really do want to have something a bit different from \"finding loops in linked lists\" that has kind of become the opening statement of most techie interviews !! This is a face-to-face interview with about an hour or more of time - I looked at Steve's basic phone-screen questions, and I was wondering if there exists a guide on \"basic face-to-face interview questions\" that I can use(or compile from the community's answers here). EDIT: The position is mostly for a kernel level C programming job, with some smattering of C++ required for writing the test framework."}
{"_id": "209615", "title": "I've never interviewed anybody before... HELP?", "text": "There were 3 developers at this GIS tracking company, but now there's 2. Last week my boss was fired. Today, new developers will be coming in for interviews. They'll be coming in from a placement agency. I don't really know how to be on this side of a hiring interview. Any advice or sample questions I can ask? Company Background: The 2 of us wear many hats. We are the MySQL DB admins, we write C# web services including APIs, there's C# back end processes that generate reports and issue alerts, and we also have a few VB6 projects that I personally am hoping to replace. Our web app is just under 10K lines of javascript, almost 2K lines of HTML and just under 4K lines of CSS. We don't use a lot of frameworks or libraries aside from jQuery and Bing Maps. I've been here a year as just a developer and at no place have I ever worked with any sort of management responsibilities. What kinds of questions can I ask that can really show me that somebody knows how to develop in these languages? I'm really drawing a blank here."}
{"_id": "53654", "title": "What are the problems with a relatively large common library?", "text": "As long as the code in the base library is as loosely coupled as splitting it up into separate libraries, what's the problem? In general, having a lot of assemblies composing a .NET solution is painful. Plus, when code in one solution needs to be shared, it can just be added to the common library, rather than deciding which common library it should be added to or creating yet another library. edit: the question comes to me after using Smalltalk for a bit, where all the code is available to use, all the time."}
{"_id": "21771", "title": "Is there a good reason to use Java's Collection interface?", "text": "I've heard the argument that you should use the most generic interface available so that you're not tied to a particular implementation of that interface. Does this logic apply to interfaces like _java.util.Collection_? I would much rather see something like the following:               List<Foo> getFoos()      or               Set<Foo> getFoos()      instead of               Collection<Foo> getFoos()      In the last case, I don't know what kind of data set I'm dealing with, whereas in the first two instances I can make some assumptions about ordering and uniqueness. Does _java.util.Collection_ have a usefulness outside of being a logical parent for both sets and lists? If you came across code that employed _Collection_ when doing a code review, how would you determine whether its usage is justified, and what suggestions would you make for its replacement with a more specific interface?"}
{"_id": "63121", "title": "How to evaluate Java skills", "text": "I was asked to make a table in which developers in team could use to evaluate their Java level (Maybe from 1 to 5). And then they will know what they are lacking so they could focus to learn on that technique. I think about Skill Matrix but don't know how to start. Could you please help me some hint? Thank you in advance. * * * As Paul commented, i would like to update some information. our software is just related to Web-Application using Core Java, JSP, JSF, Struts, Spring, Hibernate. Desktop application is using Core Java, Swing to develop"}
{"_id": "78325", "title": "Book on Information Technology Concepts for Developer", "text": "Is there a good book and/or series of articles that explains IT concepts such as networking, windows domain, security (SSL certs), cryptography, IT infrastructure, etc? I'm a mid level developer who would like to build a good foundation on these topics as it would help me see how my system fits in.   Now, I realize that these topics are vast and have great deal of resources available on individual topics. My goal, at this point in my career, is not to necessarily gain the depth of the information, instead I'm looking for a good overall working knowledge and when required I'll resort to those special topic books. I'm certain you folks had to overcome this bump in your career as enterprise software developer. What did you do? What resources did you resort to? How does one go about bridging the gaps in knowledge and gaining the necessary understanding that is essential to your success. I'm very interested in reading about your experiences. Thanks for the comments so far. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "195180", "title": "What does it mean to perform an operation \"In Place\" for Interpreted Languages?", "text": "Programming question: > Reverse words in a string (words are separated by one or more spaces). **Now > do it in-place**. What does \"in-place\" mean in the above context for an interpreted language like PHP or JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "78320", "title": "Are code screening services worthwhile?", "text": "I've seen websites that screen programmers by their ability to write code. It's a service that you enter a programming question into and then send out a link. Job candidates program their solution to the question as they are timed and recorded. The person who posted the question can then playback a video of their candidate programming the script. This video allows them to see how quickly and neatly their job candidate can code. Are these types of services worth it? What caveats and hangups are there to using such things to screen potential hires?"}
{"_id": "236775", "title": "How to fulfill requirements of AGPL on my web service?", "text": "We want a simple tool to parse PDF forms, retrieving just the associated field names and user values. PDFSharp would be a good option for us, as it is under the MIT license, but it is a few versions of Acrobat behind - so not going to work. The most popular library (from what my searches have revealed) seems to be iTextSharp. Thus I am introduced to the intricacies of the AGPL. Now, for the structure of our app. We want something simple and re-usable among any apps we may want to use later that require the same functionality. My plan was to design a simple web service, that takes in the PDF file, and simply returns the Fields and Values in a list of key-value pairs. It looks like, as long as this is an intranet service, there is no concern from the AGPL, as described in this question: Can I safely use an open source library in an internal closed-source project? That is our most likely scenario, but I wanted to be aware ahead of time in case we need to expose our service externally (such as for some of our Silverlight clients, for example). If the service were exposed externally, then, under AGPL, would we simply need to provide the source for the service itself? Or, would the source of any consumer of the service also need to be provided? So, I am looking for 1) confirmation that in the intranet scenario there are no further considerations, and 2) what is necessary if the web service is publicly visible?"}
{"_id": "176322", "title": "Sharing authentication methods across API and web app", "text": "I'm wanting to share an authentication implementation across a web application, and web API. The web application will be ASP.NET (mostly MVC 4), the API will be mostly ASP.NET WEB API, though I anticipate it will also have a few custom modules or handlers. I want to:   1. Share as much authentication implementation between the app and API as possible.   2. Have the web application behave like forms authentication (attractive log-in page, logout option, redirect to / from login page when a request requires authentication / authorisation).   3. Have API callers use something closer to standard HTTP (401 - Unauthorized, not 302 - Redirect).   4. Provide client and server side logout mechanisms that don't require a change of password (so HTTP basic is out, since clients typically cache their credentials). The way I'm thinking of implementing this is using plain old ASP.NET forms authentication for the web application, and pushing another module into the stack (much like MADAM - Mixed Authentication Disposition ASP.NET Module). This module will look for some HTTP header (implementation specific) which indicates \"caller is API\". If the header \"caller is API\" is set, then the service will respond differently than standard ASP.NET forms authentication, it will:   1. 401 instead of 302 on a request lacking authentication.   2. Look for username + pass in a custom \"Login\" HTTP header, and return a FormsAuthentication ticket in a custom \"FormsAuth\" header.   3. Look for FormsAuthentication ticket in a custom \"FormsAuth\" header. My question(s) are:   1. Is there a framework for ASP.NET that already covers this scenario?   2. Are there any glaring holes in this proposed implementation? My primary fear is a security risk that I can't see, but I'm similarly concerned that there may be something about such an implementation that will make it overly restrictive or clumsy to work with."}
{"_id": "112617", "title": "When should the presentation model design pattern include one or more controllers?", "text": "I have been researching the usage of the Presentation Model design pattern for an application I am preparing to build. The specific technology I will be using is Flex though I doubt that it matters for this question. In general most of the Presentation Model examples I have run across are pretty consistent in the basic implementation. More or less they follow Martin Fowler's Presentation Model description to a T when it comes to the three basic concepts: View, Model, Presentation Model. I think that I understand this. However, I have seen some other examples that extend this further by including controller, event, and service objects in addition to the three basic constructs I listed above. The examples I have seen are (note these are both using Swiz for DI and event handling):   * CafeTownsend   * Swiz Presentation Model Example I understand the reasoning for a service layer. You may want / need to retrieve your data from a SOAP interface one day, a REST interface the next, and a SharedObject on the third day. The service layer interface makes it easy to swap out retrieval and persistence logic. However, I am not sure that I understand why the addition of the controller is an advantage? In the examples linked above some logic within the presentation model is dispatched and handled within the presentation model itself while other logic is dispatched and addressed within a controller. My guess is that logic that is view specific is captured within the presentation model. This supports the notion that the presentation model is simply an abstract representation of the view. Further, I suspect that the controllers are used to capture common business logic and events that are not view specific and are not performed by the service layer (e.g., persistence). This should support reuse across the application and help to make the application more testable.   * Is this conclusion right?    * Are there other advantages I am missing?    * What are the disadvantages (besides more code)?   * How do you know when logic should be in the presentation model and when it should reside in a controller?"}
{"_id": "176324", "title": "Android Card Game Database for Deck Building", "text": "I am making a card game for Android where a player can choose from a selection of cards to build a deck that would contain around 60 cards. Currently, I have the entire database of cards created that the user can browse. The next step is allowing the user to select cards and create a deck with whatever cards they would like. I have a form where the user can search for specific cards based off a few different attributes. The search results are displayed in a List Activity. My thought about deck creation is to add the primary key of each card the user selects to a SQLite Database table with the amount they would like in the deck. This way as the user performs searches for cards they can see the state of the deck. Once the user decides to save the deck. I'll export the card list to XML and wipe the contents of the table. If the user wanted to make changes to the deck, they would load it, it would be parsed back into the table so they could make the changes. A similar situation would occur when the eventually load the deck to play a game. I'm just curious what the rest of you may think of this method. Currently, this is a personal project and I am the only one working on it. If I can figure out the best implementation before I even begin coding I'm hoping to save myself some time and trouble."}
{"_id": "167915", "title": "How do I develop database-utilizing application in an agile/test-driven-development way?", "text": "I want to add databases (traditional client/server RDBMS's like Mysql/Postgresql as opposed to NoSQL, or embedded databases) to my toolbox as a developer. I've been using SQLite for simpler projects with only 1 client, but now I want to do more complicated things (ie, db-backed web development). I usually like following agile and/or test-driven-development principles. I generally code in Perl or Python. Questions:   1. How do I test my code such that each run of the test suite starts with a 'pristine' state? Do I run a separate instance of the database server every test? Do I use a temporary database?   2. How do I design my tables/schema so that it is flexible with respect to changing requirements?    3. Do I start with an ORM for my language? Or do I stick to manually coding SQL? One thing I don't find appealing is having to change more than one thing (say, the CREATE TABLE statement and associated crud statements) for one change, b/c that's error prone. On the other hand, I expect ORM's to be a low slower and harder to debug than raw SQL.   4. What is the general strategy for migrating data between one version of the program and a newer one? Do I carefully write ALTER TABLE statements between each version, or do I dump the data and import fresh in the new version?"}
{"_id": "61753", "title": "Should documentation be a company policy or every programmer's responsibility?", "text": "I have been struggling lately with the whole subject of documentation at my current position. I am at a point in my programming career in which I feel I have just been birthed into the whole world of proper and effective documentation. Currently there is very little to be found in any database or source code at the company. User spec documents are generally developed in email threads, on a good day. I wonder, am I to blame for having not been strict with myself on this issue? Is it the responsibility of the programmer to maintain this and update where needed or found lacking? I have come to the realization that the best way to approach documenting is to pretend that you have one foot out the door, and another soul will have to take over your work. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "179311", "title": "Is there a way to check if redistributed code has been altered?", "text": "I would like to redistribute my app (PHP) in a way that the user gets the front end (presentation) layer which is using the API on my server through a web service. I want the user to be able to alter his part of the app but at the same time exclude such altered app from the normal support and offer support on pay by the hour basis. Is there a way to check if the source code was altered? Only solution I can think of would be to get check sums of all the files then send it through my API and compare them with the original app. Is there any more secure way to do it so it would be harder for the user to break such protection?"}
{"_id": "225081", "title": "Reporting Solution in PHP / CodeIgniter - Server side logic vs client side", "text": "I'm building a report for an end user. They would like to see a list of all widgets... but then also like to see widgets with missing attributes, like missing names, or missing size. So i was thinking of creating one method that returns json data containing all widgets... and then using javascript to let them filter the data for missing data, instead of requerying the database. Ultimately, they need to be able to save all \"reports\" (filtered versions of data) inside a csv file. These are the two options I'm mulling over: **Design 1** Create 3 separate methods in my controller/model like:               get_all_data()     get_records_with_missing_names()     get_records_with_missing_size()      And then when these methods are called, I would display the data on screen and give them a button to save to csv file. **Design 2** Create one method called get_all_data() and then somehow, give them tools in the view to filter the json data using tables etc... and then letting them save subsets of the data.   The reality is, in order to display all data, I still need to massage the data, and therefore, I know which records are missing attributes. So i'd rather not create separate methods by each filter. I'm not sure how I would do that just yet but at this point, i would like to know some pros/cons of each method. Thanks."}
{"_id": "115343", "title": "Does the (A)GPLv3 allow people to contibute code anonymously?", "text": "Does AGPLv3 or GPLv3 allow people to contribute code without specifying author of contributed code ? Does it allow people to fork an (A)GPL-project without specifying authors of forked code ?"}
{"_id": "115344", "title": "How long should I practice a code kata?", "text": "I recently found out about the idea of code katas at Dave Thomas's blog and was really interested in it. I'd like to hear the opinions of people who have experience with code katas; is it assumed that I should practice one kata until I find a solution to the problem, or there is another explanation?"}
{"_id": "152016", "title": "Running cherryPy on apache or not?", "text": "seems the cherryPy have a standalone web server, is this suggested to deploy the application on Apache Server? or just use the standalone one? If so, any pros and cons between these decision? Thanks."}
{"_id": "213172", "title": "developing an android app that include a C++ toolkit", "text": "I'm a java developer and I want to develop an android app that capture a photo and extract its bags of visual words. To extract those bags of words I use the TOP-SURF toolkit which is written in C++ I'm new to C++ development and I want to know how to develop an android app that use this toolkit I read about the NDK. It's the solution?"}
{"_id": "251907", "title": "Commercial Apps with an Open Source on github", "text": "I am going to be launching a small web service soon and was wondering if it's a good idea to upload the code to a public github repo. The code will not be licensed for commercial use but the public could download the code and hack around with it. Is this a good idea? Would it help produce more secure/bug-free code? Or would it run my startup into the ground? Thanks, Ben"}
{"_id": "225082", "title": "How do I read the Entity Framework Model and validate it against a given connection?", "text": "I have a Entity Framework Database First Model. I want to write a MSTest/nUnit test to verify that all the stored procs, tables and views that are defined in my edmx model are still valid on the database."}
{"_id": "152018", "title": "Dual Inspection / Four Eyes Principle", "text": "I have the requirement to implement some kind of dual inspection or four-eyes principle _as a feature of my software_ , meaning that every change of an object done by user A has to be checked by user B. A trivial example would be a publishing system where an author writes an article and another has to proofread it before it is published. I am a little bit surprised that you find nearly nothing about it on the net. No patterns, no libraries (besides cibet), no workflow solutions etc. **Is this requirement really so uncommon? Or am I searching for the wrong terms?** I am not looking for a specific solution. More for a pattern or best practice approach. **Update:** the above example is really trivial. Let's add some more complexity to it. The article has been published, but it now needs an update. Putting the article offline for the update is not an option, but the update has to be proof read, too."}
{"_id": "190294", "title": "About ANSI C++ 2003 standard", "text": "I would like to ask for your help. I searched a lot on Internet, but I found mismatched informations. **My questions:**   1. I tried to buy the \"ISO/IEC 14882:2003(E) Programming Languages - C++\" standard on the ansi.org, but i have not found it. However, I found this standard on nssn.org: www.nssn.org/search/DetailResults.aspx?docid=338353&selnode= But unfortunately this standard has been deleted or replaced with an another one. webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=INCITS/ISO/IEC%2014882-2003 On the iso.org, it's also the same situation: www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=38110 Yes, I know that the actual standard is C++11, but I'm need the C++03 standard. From another sources, I heard that, the C++03 standard has become an open standard, so I can download it from the Internet for free, THE FULL, OFFICIAL standard, for example: code.google.com/p/openassist/downloads/detail?name=C%2B%2B%20Standard%20-%20ANSI%20ISO%20IEC%2014882%202003.pdf cs.nyu.edu/courses/spring13/CSCI-GA.2110-001/downloads/ Is this true? And it's the full, official C++03 standard, not just a draft?   1. Is that true, the C99 (C programming language, 1999) has also become an open standard? If yes, this is the full C99 standard?: cs.nyu.edu/courses/spring13/CSCI-GA.2110-001/downloads/C99.pdf"}
{"_id": "255269", "title": "Communication/Updates between units of works/entity framework contexts, colliding with user changes", "text": "I'm developing a WPF application using Entity Framework for my database communication. The application has a hierarchy of tabs where each tab has a db context. Each tab allows the user to view some particular object, make changes, save, update, close or open tabs for related objects. My crux is that some tabs contain information that depends on other objects as well, an object O of type A may be related to other A objects (o_1,...,o_n) in a parent-children relationship, where I have a graphic indicator showing wether property P in O has the same value as P in all the children of O, for example. Red indicator means they are unequal, green means they are equal. The \"overlap\" in information between contexts will only be presentation-wise, the different tabs will not be stepping on each others toes by changing each others data. Now if I have Tabs for O and o_3 opened, change P in o_3 and save, the indicator in the tab for O might need to change as well, but since that tab has its own (now outdated) db context, the indicator still shows the old value, which might be confusing to the user. This seems like a very general and common problem considering how many application has this architecture. How would you solve the problem? I see a few different but flawed/problematic solutions. A. Make the user aware of the fact that tabs can become \"obsolete\" when saving others. _This feels like a forfeit to technological troubles._ B. Force updates of related tabs when saving. _This would either overwrite user changes or I would have to build some system (repository pattern?) that maintains information of user changes and mediates what to update and what to keep, what to tell the user and so on._ C. Indicate outdated:ness of related tabs. _This seems like the pragmatic solution, but the user is left to wonder what would be affected if updating the tab manually, and any changes made would have to be dismissed_ D. Communicate the change to the other tab without involving the db context. _This would sort of work, but could lead to complicated problems by introducing state that is not related to the db context, overall it would increase complexity_"}
{"_id": "157629", "title": "GUI advice for a responsive touchscreen", "text": "I am tasked with building a piece of software that interfaces with a MySQL database, in order to allow the user to pick songs to play and que using a touch screen, and then they are shown simultaneously on a second monitor as videos. **Questions:** To allow both displays to work, would it be best to write two pieces of software (one for each display or just the one) I have never written code for a touch screen (other than mobile development, are there certain libraries to use, how would one go about it) I plan to use VLC to play the videos, is there a language that would be best for that In order to create a truly stunning GUI should I use a specific language If I know all the dimensions, should I worry about fluid layouts? * * * Sorry for the many questions, its this is my first solo commercial piece of software so I am looking to get a solid game plan. Also I was sure if this was best suited to SO or here, so please correct me if I was wrong. The languages I was considering were: C#, JAVA, python."}
{"_id": "157625", "title": "When is using DI and optionally a IoC framework a step too far?", "text": "Consider a logging system - used absolutely everywhere in your codebase. _(note - logging is just an example, don't take it too literally and point me at your favourite logging system)._               public interface ILogger     {         void LogMessage(string message);     }          // Just used for testing, do nothing     public class NullLogger : ILogger     {         public void LogMessage(string message) { }     }          public class FileLogger : ILogger     {         public FileLogger(string fileName){...}         public void LogMessage(string message) {              // Log to a file here          }     }      No I could make every single class have ILogger in ctor or param and use some IoC framework. Or I could just use something like               public static class Globals     {        public static ILogger Log = new NullLogger();     }      Use at any point by `Globals.Log.LogMessage(\"Hello Logging World\");` And at 'Compositon Root' (main entry point of program) set `Globals.Log = new FileLogger(\"somefile.log\");` Or this could be done as a Singleton of course. When is using DI and optionally IoC a step too far? What would you do in this case?"}
{"_id": "255263", "title": "Improve logic finding possible misconceptions", "text": "I made a logic to accomplish a specific problem, but it's too long. I've sure that it can be reduce too fit it. I have the following model               public class ColumnChart     {                 public virtual string type { get; set; }         public virtual string name { get; set; }         public virtual List<double> data { get; set; }     }      The idea of `List<double>` is to keep 12 values (1 per month if exists). All these 12 values, has to belong someone, so the `name` will kept the legend The type is `column` (not always, but in this case will to make it simple) **Big Logic**               // Create a List of ColumnChart's     var list = new List<ColumnChart>();          // Instantiate one object of type ColumnChart     var serie = new ColumnChart();          // Instantiate the List<double> (like my model says)     serie.data = new List<double>();          // Control the loop     int i = 0;          foreach (var element in MyDataSource)     {        // If the serie.name don't have the current Group Name that came from my DataSource        if (serie.name != element.GroupName)        {            // Isn't the first loop ?            if (i != 0)            {                // Return a new empty instance of ChartColumn                serie = NewInstance();                     // Set the legend that belong all data                serie.name = element.GroupName;                     // Set the type of the chart                serie.type = \"column\";                     // Instantiate a new List<double> (like my model says)                serie.data = new List<double>();                     if (serie.data.Count == element.Month - 1)                {                    serie.data.Insert(element.Month - 1, element.ValueRevenue);                }                     // If the number of elements in my List<double> is lower then the Month.                else                {                    while (serie.data.Count < element.Month - 1)                    {                        serie.data.Add(0);                    }                        serie.data.Insert(element.Month - 1, element.ValueRevenue);                 }            }                 // Is the first loop interaction            else            {                 serie.name = element.GroupName;                 serie.type = \"column\";                 serie.data.Insert(element.Month - 1, elemento.ValueRevenue);                 i++;             }        }             // The serie.name have the same current Group Name that came from my DataSource        else        {            serie.data.Insert(element.Month - 1, element.ValueRevenue);            i++;        }             // My i variable that control the loop is the last interaction ?        if (i == MyDataSource.Count() - 1)        {            list.Add(serie);        }     }          i = 0;      **Data Source**               MyDataSource           [0]                  Month: 1                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [1]                  Month: 2                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [2]                  Month: 3                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [3]                  Month: 4                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [4]                  Month: 5                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [5]                  Month: 6                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [6]                  Month: 7                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [7]                  Month: 8                GroupName: 'Music'                ValueRevenue: 700.0           [8]                  Month: 9                GroupName: 'Car'                ValueRevenue: 700.0"}
{"_id": "157621", "title": "How to handle encryption key with a large development team?", "text": "If we have a large development team, say 100, and we would like to keep our encryption key hidden from developers who are not directly involved in the encryption module/algorithm, what are some best practices to keep this key as secret as possible while still allowing for development and debugging?"}
{"_id": "243351", "title": "Time passage arithmetic explanation", "text": "I ported this from http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article.psp.html/joe/Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_HTML5 some time ago. However i'm now wanting to modify it for the purpose of changing it from floating point to fixed point maths for enhanced efficiency (for those who are going to talk about premature optimization and what not, i want to have my entire engine in fixed point both as a learning process for me and so i can port code more easily to systems in the future that dont have native floating points such as arm cpus) My initial conversion to fixed points just resulted in the cycling stuck on either the first or last frame of cycling. Plus it would be nice to understand better how it works so i can add more options and so forth in the future, my maths however sucks and the comments are limited so i don't really know how the maths work for determining the frame it shoud use (cycleAmount) I was also a beginner when i ported it as i had no idea between floating points and integers and what not. So in summary my question is, can anyone give an explination of the arithmatic used for determining the cycleAmount (which determings the \"frame\" of the cycle) This is the working floating point maths version of the code:               public final void cycle(Colour[] sourceColours, double timeNow, double speedAdjust) {       // Cycle all animated colour ranges in palette based on timestamp.       sourceColours = sourceColours.clone();            int cycleSize;       double cycleRate;       double cycleAmount;            Cycle cycle;       for (int i = 0, len = cycles.length; i < len; ++i) {         cycle = cycles[i];              cycleSize = (cycle.HIGH - cycle.LOW) + 1;         cycleRate = cycle.RATE / (int) (CYCLE_SPEED / speedAdjust);         cycleAmount = 0;              if (cycle.REVERSE < 3) {           // Standard Cycle           cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize);           if (cycle.REVERSE < 1) {             cycleAmount = cycleSize - cycleAmount; // If below 1 make sure its not reversed.           }         } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 3) {           // Ping-Pong           cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize << 1);           if (cycleAmount >= cycleSize) {             cycleAmount = (cycleSize * 2) - cycleAmount;           }         } else if (cycle.REVERSE < 6) {           // Sine Wave           cycleAmount = DFLOAT_MOD((timeNow / (1000 / cycleRate)), cycleSize);           cycleAmount = Math.sin((cycleAmount * 3.1415926 * 2) / cycleSize) + 1;           if (cycle.REVERSE == 4) {             cycleAmount *= (cycleSize / 4);           } else if (cycle.REVERSE == 5) {             cycleAmount *= (cycleSize >> 1);           }         }              if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) {           reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle);         }              if (USE_BLEND_SHIFT) {           blendShiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount);         } else {           shiftColours(sourceColours, cycle, cycleAmount);         }              if (cycle.REVERSE == 2) {           reverseColours(sourceColours, cycle);         }       }     colours = sourceColours;     }          // This utility function allows for variable precision floating point modulus.     private double DFLOAT_MOD(final double d, final double b) {       return (Math.floor(d * PRECISION) % Math.floor(b * PRECISION)) / PRECISION;     }"}
{"_id": "67717", "title": "Procedural Code vs OOP code", "text": "I've finished a project in PHP of 13000+ lines in Procedural Style [because I'm very familiar with that, though I know OOP], and the project is running perfectly. But should I convert it to OOP? [ _because the world is busy with OOP_ ] My code doesn't need any of the feature of OOP [encapsulation, inheritance basically...]! So what should I do? And what kind of help I will get if I convert it to OOP ?"}
{"_id": "245389", "title": "What is the best way to get a method name in runtime?", "text": "Here is a little background of my problem: I implemented a singleton logger class which is being called from several projects. I want to log the name of the class as well as the name of the method asked for logging. So far, I thought about two ways to get the name of the method and the class - either by reflection or by manually writing them. The advantage of using reflection is that whenever the name of the class or the method will be renamed, which is not that often, it will be updated automatically. The disadvantage of reflection is that it is performance consuming and it is suggested not to use it whenever you can avoid it, as can be seen in the documentation of reflection (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/reflect/index.html) or in various threads online. What would be the best way and why?"}
{"_id": "151661", "title": "Is it bad practice to use <?= tag in PHP", "text": "I've come across this PHP tag `<?= ?>` recently and I am reluctant to use it, but it itches so hard that I wanted to have your take on it. I know it is bad practice to use short tags `<? ?>` and that we should use full tags `<?php ?>` instead, but what about this one : `<?= ?>`? It would save some typing and it would be better for code readability, IMO. So instead of this:               <input name=\"someVar\" value=\"<?php echo $someVar; ?>\">      I could write it like this, which is cleaner :               <input name=\"someVar\" value=\"<?= $someVar ?>\">      Is using this operator frowned upon?"}
{"_id": "50350", "title": "Arguments for a coding standard?", "text": "A few friends and i are planning to work on a project together and we want a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT coding standard. We do NOT want to use the coding standard the libraries/language uses. Its our project and we want to mess around. So i came here to ask what you guys think are good standards and arguments for it (or what not to do and arguments against it). The styles i remember most are   * Upper casing the entire word   * Camel and Pascal casing   * Using '_' to separate each word   * pre or postfixing letters or words (i hate m for member but i think IsCond() is a good func name. SomethingException as a postfix example)   * Using '_' at the start or end of words   * Brace placement. On a new or same line?  I know of libs that use Pascal casing on all public and protected members. But would you ever get confused if something is a func, var or even property if the lang supports it? What about if you decide a public member to be private (or vice versa) wouldnt that great a lot of fix up work or inconsistencies? Is prefixing C to every class a good idea? I ask what do you think and why?"}
{"_id": "187175", "title": "Is it a acceptable approach to put try catch wherever null pointer exception occurs?", "text": "There are instances where the references to objects, fields, variables etc can be null and there might be a possible occurrence of Null Pointer exception occurring at that point. Is is a permanent solution to put these code blocks which expect Null ponter exception to be put in a try catch block?"}
{"_id": "187177", "title": "requirements for software quality for internally developed / shared software?", "text": "In environments where software is built internally by one team and then that software is used by other internal teams, how does one decide what the required quality should be for the produced artefacts? For example:   1. documentation completeness and accuracy   2. extensibility/re-usability of artefact (without hacking at source code)   3. defects   4. etc I guess one aspect to consider is the length of time into a project before quality is considered. It should be more cost effective to ensure quality is built into a product from the start rather than leaving it until later in the project life-cycle."}
{"_id": "187170", "title": "Searching for text within a webpage", "text": "I'm currently designing a search algorithm for a document, and just got curious about this while designing the algorithm: how do web browsers search a webpage? For example, in Google Chrome, you can press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F to activate the \"Find\" bar, which will let you search a particular webpage for text. How does it do that, given that it only has the raw HTML as reference?"}
{"_id": "157992", "title": "Java advice needed, What is Java Messaging Service", "text": "Is it used for Software Development or Website development? Is it needed (or good) for a JSP Programmer to learn JMS? I know server side scripting languages like JSP and PHP, but I have not found any relation between JSP and JMS."}
{"_id": "157991", "title": "Reasons NOT to use JSF", "text": "I am new to StackExchange, but I figured you would be able to help me. We're crating a new Java Enterprise application, replacing an legacy JSP solution. Due to many many changes, the UI and parts of the business logic will completely be rethought and reimplemented. Our first thought was JSF, as it is the standard in Java EE. At first I had a good impression. But now I am trying to implement a functional prototype, and have some really serious concerns about using it. First of all, it creates the worst, most cluttered invalid pseudo-HTML/CSS/JS mix I've ever seen. It violates every single rule I learned in web- development. Furthermore it throws together, what never should be so tightly coupled: Layout, Design, Logic and Communication with the server. I don't see how I would be able to extend this output comfortably, whether styling with CSS, adding UI candy (like configurable hot-keys, drag-and-drop widgets) or whatever. Secondly, it is way too complicated. Its complexity is outstanding. If you ask me, it's a poor abstraction of basic web technologies, crippled and useless in the end. What benefits do I have? None, if you think about. Hundreds of components? I see ten-thousands of HTML/CSS snippets, ten-thousands of JavaScript snippets and thousands of jQuery plug-ins in addition. It solves really many problems - we wouldn't have if we wouldn't use JSF. Or the front- controller pattern at all. And Lastly, I think we will have to start over in, say 2 years. I don't see how I can implement all of our first GUI mock-up (Besides; we have no JSF Expert in our team). Maybe we could hack it together somehow. And then there will be more. I'm sure we could hack our hack. But at some point, we'll be stuck. Due to everything above the service tier is in control of JSF. And we will have to start over. My suggestion would be to implement a REST api, using JAX-RS. Then create a HTML5/Javascript client with client side MVC. (or some flavor of MVC..) By the way; we will need the REST api anyway, as we are developing a partial Android front-end, too. I doubt, that JSF is the best solution nowadays. As the Internet is evolving, I really don't see why we should use this 'rake'. Now, what are pros/cons? How can I emphasize my point to not use JSF? What are strong points to use JSF over my suggestion?"}
{"_id": "240965", "title": "What Kind of Source Control Do High Security Projects Use?", "text": "I was just reading this slightly older post on choosing a good source control system when I started thinking about how different projects use source control. Where I work we've essentially moved completely to Git and things have been mostly good. I have wondered about high security projects such as military software projects. Using something like Git there would fundamentally be unsafe; even allowing repo clones under restricted circumstances could be problematic. Using SVN or TFS may not even provide enough security in itself. Are there any VCS systems that have any stronger security considerations? Or are there additional considerations that go into using VCS for high security projects?"}
{"_id": "58405", "title": "What issues are there for doing freelance work?", "text": "I'm considering doing some contract work on the side of my normal job. I know that it will kill my free time, but I figure I can control when I'm doing projects and then get a little extra money or even eventually make it my full time job. But as I've never done this before, I'm wondering what issues people face to do this kind of work. For instance: how do you find customers? What difficulties do you normally face on a project? How do you deal with projects that are too large for one programmer to effectively complete? What about projects that need other skill sets (for instance web design for a web app?)"}
{"_id": "175670", "title": "Should I incorporate exit cost into choosing a solution", "text": "I'm currently choosing between two viable software designs/solutions. Solution 1 is easy to implement, but will lock some data in a proprietary format, and will be hard to change later. Solution 2 is hard to implement, but will be a lot easier to change later on. Should I go YAGNI on this or should I incorporate the exit cost in the decision making? Or asked differently, is the exit cost part of the TCO? I'm thinking of going back to the customer with this to ask whether or not he thinks the exit costs are relevant, but I'd like to know what the community thinks first. P.S. Is exit cost the correct term?"}
{"_id": "72001", "title": "So they're trying to pull me into management", "text": "I work in a small IT department in a non tech company. My manager recently quit and they are looking for a replacement. I guess since I'm one of those \"rare\" developers with people skills, the director is encouraging me to apply Part of me wants to apply but another part of me says no. The pay and ability to make a difference sound intriguing, and I'm a little burnt out on programming after 12 years, but there are downsides too it seems. I'd be managing someone else who is very interested in the position and it could be awkward since he's a friend and currently higher on the ladder than me (along with a few others). Has anyone else been in a similar position? Is anyone in management and happier or has anyone taken a management job and wished you didn't? Any feedback would be appreciated! * * * @Pratik: When managers worked for ex-employees in the companies that you worked for, did they give them any trouble? * * * EDIT: Thanks everyone for your answers. While this seems like it might be a good opportunity, there are a few things that make me uncomfortable about this. 1) I would be responsible for EVERYTHING instead of what I am asked to do. The department is still reeling after several rounds of lay offs...overstressed and on the verge of burnout. I do have a pretty good relationship with everyone on the team....but I wonder if it wouldn't change if I took this job. 2) A couple of other co-workers despise the director for whatever reason. He might try to get me to do his dirty work and punish them if they butt heads. 3) Managing people who are older than me which doesn't seem to be an issue based on Codemwnci's post. 4) It's a small department and I really don't think a full time manager is needed. IMO we don't need someone to spend 50% of their time ordering people around (because everyone knows what they have to do) and 50% of the time doing nothing. The dept need more of a player-coach IMO. I think it would actually help the team because they would have another person to do support work full time (instead of having a support person write code like I'm doing now) if that makes any sense.   It is difficult but what I'm doing now is also difficult (development + support work) I'd just hate to see them bring in someone from the outside that doesn't know what they're doing or ruins the team we have now which is pretty solid. * * * EDIT (4/30) > Your relationship with the rest of the team **will** change. You are now the > boss rather than a mate. You will need to tell people what to do and they > should do it. Some will be OK with the change, but others might resent that > you've been promoted rather than them. That could be a problem since I'm friends with most of them now. > In this case allocate some of the \"easy\" project tasks to yourself. These > should be non-critical items that you can pick up and drop at a moment's > notice. This allows you to help on the project, keep up with the code base > but not get distracted from the managerial activities. Another thing you can > do is field all the bug reports that come in. Check them out to make sure > that they are real bugs and, if it's an easy edit, fix it straight away. > Larger problems can then get scheduled in to the rest of the team's > activities. This stops the team getting distracted and also shows the > client/upper management that things do get fixed. Sounds like a good strategy... > To me it comes down to which day-to-day activities you enjoy. Do you like > coaching, meeting with people, project management, building rapport, and > solving people problems? Or do you need lots of alone time, find meetings > draining, dislike drama, and like intellectual/technical problems? I can do both. The main thing for me is work-life balance. My old boss had work-life balance but only because he had dedicated employees below him that knew what they were doing, worked the extra hours, and made his job easy. Of course if someone else took over and the department was mismanaged, work-life balance for everyone could be out the window. * * * EDIT (5/1) @Jeff It's a corporate environment and I have no control in how many people we have or job description of each position. I would hope that my fellow teammates would want me to succeed but I'm not sure. I made friends with some of them and surely this would change our relationship. But I'm not sure the other candidates would be able to run the dept and keep things running smoothly...although I could be wrong."}
{"_id": "72004", "title": "Source code stolen\\hacked by rival company", "text": "On some companies I've worked for, managers have spent quite a lot of money on it-security consultants. Primarily because they're afraid we're gonna get the source code stolen by a rival company. However, as a programmer, I see it as a minor concern that a rival company would find the actual source code useful. After all, just having access to our application is enough, and that can be done without breaking the law. In my opinion, the data handled by the business people would much more useful than source code. My question is; _are there any known examples where source code has gotten stolen AND a rival company have used it extensively?_ I know some game engine (quake 1 and half life 2 if I remember correctly) source code has gotten stolen, but I can't really see that really hurt their business. (I know, this question might be more appropriate for other forum at stackexchange)"}
{"_id": "164712", "title": "Field symbol and Data reference in SAP-ABAP", "text": "If we compare field symbol and data refernece with that of the pointer in C i concluded that :- In C language, Say we declare a variable \"var\" type \"Integer\" with default value \"5\". The variable \"var\" will be stored some where in the memory and say the memory address which holds this variable is \"1000\". Now we define a pointer \"ptr\" and this pointer is assigned to our variable. So, \"&ptr\" will be \"1000\" and \" *ptr \" will be 5. Lets comapre the above situation in SAP ABAP. Here we declare a Field symbol \"FS\" and assign that to the variable \"var\". Now my question is what \"FS\" holds ? I have searched this rigorously in the internet but found out many ABAP consultants have the opinion that FS holds the address of the variable i.e. 1000. But that is wrong. While debugging i found out that fs holds only 5. So fs (in ABAP) is equivalent to *ptr (in C). Please correct me if my understanding is wrong. Now lets declare a data reference \"dref\" and another filed symbol \"fsym\" and after creating the data reference we assign the same to field symbol . Now we can do operations on this field symbol. So the difference between data refernec and field symbol is :- in case of field symbol first we will declare a variable and assign it to a field symbol. in case of data reference first we craete a data reference and then assign that to field symbol. Then what is the use of data reference? The same functionality we can achive through field symbol also."}
{"_id": "79051", "title": "Competency matrix for 3D graphic skills", "text": "As a part of self-evalution, I bumped into this programmer competency matrix which collects many major aspects of being good/expert programmer. It really helped me a lot to understand what I know about programming, what I don't know and what I have never even thought about. Now, I would need same kind of matrix about 3D graphics programming skills - not so much about using software to build models but about general 3D stuff, mathematics, using shaders, performance/optimizations etc. Does anyone have an idea where I could find one? It does not have to be perfect (and not even matrix necessarily) but it would be nice to have at least some basic aspects covered."}
{"_id": "178046", "title": "Is \"Interface inheritance\" always safe?", "text": "I'm reading \"Effective Java\" by Josh Bloch and in there is Item 16 where he tells how to use inheritance in a correct way and by inheritance he means only class inheritance, not implementing interfaces or extend interfaces by other interfaces. I didn't find any mention of interface inheritance in the entire book. Does this mean that interface inheritance is always safe? Or there are guidlines for interface inheritance?"}
{"_id": "73751", "title": "is there an \u201capp store\u201d for regular pc apps?", "text": "I have written an app for the computer in java, but i don't want to give it out for free. I only want to charge somewhere between $0.99 - $2.99, is there a website that i can upload it to, to do this for me. I am looking for something like the apple app store, or the android market, but for the computer. Does this exist? also, is there a way to control the amount of computers it can be installed on? ie. if a person is using a specific key, they can only use the program one one computer at a time, like i-tunes movies. the program is a standalone app, meaning there is no installation process, you just open the executable file and it works. will this be a problem for integrating a licensing function."}
{"_id": "178048", "title": "Event driven language for Robotics", "text": "There are several options that are available like C, C++, Matlab and some more. But is there a language that naturally feels like Event programming? For example: If I see a red ball (Event) ---> Do this (Action)"}
{"_id": "178049", "title": "css - use universal '*' selector vs. html or body selector?", "text": "Applying styles to the body tag will be applied to the whole page, so               body { font-family: Verdana }      will be applied to the whole page. This could also be done with               * {font-family: Verdana}       which would apply to all elements and so would seem to have the same effect. I understand the principle that in the first instance the style is being applied to one tag, body for the whole page whereas in the second example the font is being applied against each individual html elements. What I am asking is what is the practical difference in doing that, what are the implications and what is a reason, situation or best practice that leads to using one over another. One side-effect is certainly speed (+1 Rob). I am most interested in the actual reason to choose one over the other in terms of functionality."}
{"_id": "151591", "title": "How do you keep code with continuations/callbacks readable?", "text": "Summary: **Are there some well-established best-practice patterns that I can follow to keep my code readable in spite of using asynchronous code and callbacks?** * * * I'm using a JavaScript library that does a lot of stuff asynchronously and heavily relies on callbacks. It seems that writing a simple \"load A, load B, ...\" method becomes quite complicated and hard to follow using this pattern. Let me give a (contrived) example. Let's say I want to load a bunch of images (asynchronously) from a remote web server. In C#/async, I'd write something like this:               disableStartButton();          foreach (myData in myRepository) {         var result = await LoadImageAsync(\"http://my/server/GetImage?\" + myData.Id);         if (result.Success) {             myData.Image = result.Data;         } else {             write(\"error loading Image \" + myData.Id);             return;         }     }          write(\"success\");     enableStartButton();      The code layout follows the \"flow of events\": First, the start button is disabled, then the images are loaded (`await` ensures that the UI stays responsive) and then the start button is enabled again. In JavaScript, using callbacks, I came up with this:               disableStartButton();          var count = myRepository.length;          function loadImage(i) {         if (i >= count) {             write(\"success\");             enableStartButton();             return;         }              myData = myRepository[i];         LoadImageAsync(\"http://my/server/GetImage?\" + myData.Id,             function(success, data) {                  if (success) {                     myData.Image = data;                 } else {                     write(\"error loading image \" + myData.Id);                     return;                 }                 loadImage(i+1);              }         );     }          loadImage(0);      I think the drawbacks are obvious: I had to rework the loop into a recursive call, the code that's supposed to be executed in the end is somewhere in the middle of the function, the code starting the download (`loadImage(0)`) is at the very bottom, and it's generally much harder to read and follow. It's ugly and I don't like it. I'm sure that I'm not the first one to encounter this problem, so my question is: **Are there some well-established best-practice patterns that I can follow to keep my code readable in spite of using asynchronous code and callbacks?**"}
{"_id": "151593", "title": "Challenges in multi-player Android Game Server with RESTful Nature", "text": "I'm working on an Android Game based on Contract Bridge, as a part of my college Summer Internship project. The game will be multi-player such that 4 Android devices can play it, so there's no BOT or CPU player to be developed. At the time of getting project, I realized that most of the students had already worked on the project but none of their works is reusable now (for variety of reasons like, undocumented code and design architecture, different platform implementation). I have experience working on several open source projects and hence I emphasis to work out on this project such that components I make become reusable as much as possible. Now, as the game is multi-player and entire game progress will be handled on server, I'm currently working on Server's design, since I wanted to make game server reusable such that any client platform can use it, I was previously confused in selecting Socket or REST for Game Server's design, but later finalized to work on REST APIs for the server. Now, since I have to keep all players in-sync while they make movements in game, on server I've planned to use Database which will keep all players' progress, specific for each table (in Bridge, 4 players play on single table, and server will handle many such game tables). I don't know if its an appropriate decision to use database as shared medium to track progress of each game table (let me know if there's an appropriate or better option). Obviously, when game is completed for the table, data for that table on server's database is discarded. Now the problem is that, access to REST service is an HTTP call, so as long as client doesn't make any request, server will remain idle, and consider a situation where   * A player has played a card on his device and the device requests to apply this change on the server.   * Now, I need to let rest of the three devices know that the player has played a card, and also update view on their device.   * AFAIK, REST cannot provide a sort-of Push-notification system, since the connection to the server is not persistent.      * One solution that I thought was to make each device constantly poll the server for any change (like every 56 ms) and when changes are found, reflect it on the device. But I feel this is not an elegant way, as every HTTP request is expensive. (and I choose REST to make game play experience robust since, a mobile device tends to get disconnected from Internet, and if there's Socket-like persistent connection then entire game progress is subject to lost. Also, portability on client-end is important)   * Also, imagining a situation where 10 game tables are in progress and 40 players are playing, a server must be capable to handle flooded HTTP requests from all the devices which make it every 56 ms. So I wonder if the situation is assumed as DoS attack. So, explaining the situation, am I going on the right track for the server design? I wanted to be sure before I proceed much further with the code."}
{"_id": "151594", "title": "introducing automated testing without steep learning curve", "text": "We're a group of 4 developers on a ajax/mysql/php web application. 2 of us end up focusing most of our efforts on testing the application, as it is time- consuming, instead of actually coding. When I say testing, I mean opening screens and testing links, making sure nothing is broken and the data is correct. I understand there are test frameworks out there which can automate this kind of testing for you, but I am not familiar with any of them (neither is anyone on the team), or the fancy jargon (is it test-driven? behavior-driven? acceptance testing?) So, we're looking to slowly incorporate automated testing. We're all programmers, so it doesn't have to be super-simple. But we don't want something that will take a week to learn... And it has to match our php/ajax platform... The Question: Which testing framework will allow us to jump in right away without spending a lot of time learning the syntax and/or a new programming language."}
{"_id": "79586", "title": "Future proofing code", "text": "Where I work developers are always telling me that \"I added this just in case for the future\" or \"I think it's a good idea to do this because they'll probably want it some day\". I think it's great that they're proactive in trying to anticipate future changes but I can't help thinking that it's unnecessary and risks writing code that may never be needed and therefore unproductive (I also think that some developers just want to try out something new for the sake of it). Are the arguments for future proofing invalid if you just write good, clean organised code?"}
{"_id": "144041", "title": "Merging similar graphs based solely on the graph structure?", "text": "I am looking for (or attempting to design) a technique for matching nodes from very similar graphs based on the structure of the graph*. In the examples below, the top graph has 5 nodes, and the bottom graph has 6 nodes. I would like to match the nodes from the top graph to the nodes in the bottom graph, such that the \"0\" nodes match, and the \"1\" nodes match, etc. This seems logically possible, because I can do it in my head for these simple examples. Now I just need to express my intuition in code. Are there any established algorithms or patterns I might consider? (* When I say based on the structure of the graph, I mean the solution shouldn't depend on the node labels; the numeric labels on the nodes are only for demonstration.) UPDATE: It has been correctly pointed out that using the structure alone, most of these graphs can't be solved with 100% accuracy. I've added some thoughts to each graph. I'm also interested in the performance of any potential solutions. How well will they scale? Could I merge graphs with millions of nodes? In more complex cases, I recognize that the best solution may be subject to interpretation. Still, I'm hoping for a \"good\" way to merge complex graphs. (These are directed graphs; the thicker portion of an edge represents the head.) ![Example 1](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vxEmS.png) This graph is a cycle with 1 node \"attached to the outside.\" After attaching a second node to the outside it's not possible to determine whether the new node (node 5) is attached to node 1 or 3. The 4 nodes composing the cycle can't be perfectly matched either. ![Example 2](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3Bkbd.png) Nodes 1 and 5 can be swapped in the bottom graph without changing the structure. Thus, you can only guess with 50/50 accuracy which is the new node. ![Example 3](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jmU7l.png) This graph has symmetry in 2 dimensions and can be mirrored without changing the structure. Meaning you can swap several nodes without changing the structure. ![Example 4](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CeUEb.png) This last graph is the only one for which you can identify the new node with 100% accuracy. Thanks Kirk Broadhurst, for pointing this out."}
{"_id": "144042", "title": "how a pure functional programming language manage without assignment statements?", "text": "When reading the famous SICP, I found the authors seem rather reluctant to introduce the assignment statement to Scheme in Chapter 3. I read the text and kind of understand why they feel so. As Scheme is the first functional programming language I ever know something about, I am kind of surprised that there are some functional programming languages (not Scheme of course) can do without assignments. Let use the example the book offers,the `bank account` example. If there is no assignment statement, how can this be done?How to change the `balance` variable? I ask so because I know there are some so-called pure functional languages out there and according to the Turing complete theory, this must can be done too. I learned C, Java, Python and use assignments a lot in every program I wrote. So it's really an eye-opening experience. I really hope someone can briefly explain how assignments are avoided in those functional programming languages and what profound impact (if any) it has on these languages. The example mentioned above is here:               (define (make-withdraw balance)         (lambda (amount)             (if (>= balance amount)                 (begin (set! balance (- balance amount))                     balance)                 \"Insufficient funds\")))      This changed the `balance` by `set!`. To me it looks a lot like a class method to change the class member `balance`. As I said, I am not familiar with functional programming languages, so if I said something wrong about them, feel free to point out. **EDIT** :I guess to fully understand the question, I have to dig into a pure functional programming language.Thanks for all the answers. I sure learned a lot."}
{"_id": "222905", "title": "How to maintain view logic separation with a server", "text": "I am writing a client server application. I wanted to fully separate the server logic, from the view. The first thing I wanted to to, is to make a sort of a message log. The server itself should not know if the messages will be shown at a GUI, or on the console. What I was thinking, would be to have a handler method, that would be called every time a new message was posted. So a GUI app would have it's own method to maybe add to a listView, while the console would have a simple printf. Is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "222907", "title": "Can some LGPL library published upgrades use a commercial library?", "text": "I am using a LGPL v3 library and have made upgrades to it. Before using these upgrades, I understand I have to publish them. That's al-right.   1. Is it legal if I perform upgrades that use a commercial library of my own (upgrades will be published, but not my commercial library)? Note: usually, questions are the other side: commercial applications that want to use GPL libraries.   2. If yes to (1), is there some restrictions on the build of the upgraded LGPL library ? Shall the commercial library be dynamically or statically linked, or whatever ?"}
{"_id": "34584", "title": "How to explain OOP concepts to a non technical person?", "text": "I often try to avoid telling people I'm a programmer because most of the time I end up explaining to them what that really means. When I tell them I'm programming in Java they often ask general questions about the language and how it differs from x and y. I'm also not good at explaining things because 1) I don't have that much experience in the field and 2) I really hate explaining things to non-technical people. They say that you truly understand things once you explain them to someone else, in this case how would you explain OOP terminology and concepts to a non technical person?"}
{"_id": "253557", "title": "how to install lib_mysqludf_sys.dll?", "text": "I have put the \"lib_mysqludf_sys.dll\" in C:/Xampp/mysql/lib/plugin. in \"my.ini\" config file the plugin directory has been set correctly. after putting that .dll file in the appropriate place, I restarted the mysql server. all things seems are correct. then I write CREATE FUNCTION sys_exec RETURNS INT SONAME 'lib_mysqludf_sys.dll' in phpmyadmin but I confront with Can't open shared library 'lib_mysqludf_sys.dll' (errno: 193 ) ... can anybody help me and say to me where I have done incorrectly or might have not done? your cooperation is appreciated before. meisam..."}
{"_id": "130532", "title": "Prerequisites for developing an application with Unicode support", "text": "What could be the necessary prerequisites to be taken when developing an application with Unicode support in the context of   1. Web applications   2. Desktop applications   3. Embedded applications Prerequisites to be taken care of relating to   * Type casting and conversion   * Data Storage   * Fallback in case of no Unicode support   * Transition from a database without Unicode support to a database with Unicode support Answers pertaining to real-world projects are preferred"}
{"_id": "130534", "title": "How should I extend an existing Service?", "text": "Our system's main functionality is encapsulated in a service, let's call it X. There are requests coming in to X-Manager service which deal with all validations and security issues, and activates X's functionality after everything passed. We now want to extend X's functionality with a new module, let's call it Y, but without changing X's code too much, preferably without changing it at all. Also, Y may be able to work on it's own some day (and not only extending X) The main idea now in the team is to make X-Manager **call Y with X instead of just calling X, so that Y will do it's thing and then Y Will call X's functionality instead of X-Manager.** I don't know why but this smells icky to me, I hope I managed to explain this well... **Is there any better way of doing this?**"}
{"_id": "130539", "title": "Easiest way to create static HTML file with sortable and filterable table?", "text": "I want to create a static HTML file I can email to someone with a lot of data, and have that data sortable and filterable. What is the easiest to use library or package I can use to get this off the ground?"}
{"_id": "233808", "title": "How can I handle this string concatenation in C in a reusable way", "text": "I've been writing a small C application that operates on files, and I've found that I have been copy+pasting this code around my functions:               char fullpath[PATH_MAX];     fullpath[0] = '\\0';     strcat(fullpath, BASE_PATH);     strcat(fullpath, subdir);     strcat(fullpath, \"/\");     strcat(fullpath, filename);          // do something with fullpath...      Is there a better way? The first thought that comes to mind is to create a macro but I'm sure this is a common problem in C, and I'm wondering how others have solve it."}
{"_id": "93670", "title": "Line break before/after operator", "text": "While Sun's Java code convention suggests to put line break before the operator many other guidelines disagree with it. I do not see any obvious pros and cons, so are there advantages of using one of these styles over another?               String longVarName = a + b + c + d +               e + f;      vs               String longVarName = a + b + c + d               + e + f;"}
{"_id": "93676", "title": "Is it a must to focus on one specific IT subject to be succesful?", "text": "Lately I'm deeply disturbed by the thought that I'm still not devoted to one specific IT subject after so many years of doing it as a hobby. I've been in so many different IT related hobbies since I was 12. I have spent 8 years and now I'm 20 and just finished freshman year at Computer Eng. Just to summarize the variety:   * 3D Game Dev. and Modelling (Acknex, Irrlicht , OpenGL, GLES, 3DSMAX)   * Mobile App.Dev (Symbian, Maemo, Android)   * Electronis (Arduino)   * Web.Dev. (PHP, MYSQL, Javascript, Jquery, RaphaelJS, Canvas, Flash etc.)   * Computer Vision (OpenCV) I need to start making money. But I'm having problem to pick the correct IT business to do so. **Is it a problem to have interest in so many different IT subjects?(in business world)** I'm having a lot of fun by doing all those stuff from time to time. Other than making money I also noticed that having so many different interests is lowering my productivity. But I'm still having difficulty to pick one. I'm feeling close to all those subjects (time to time)."}
{"_id": "128455", "title": "LGPL open source license", "text": "I have recently become curious about open source licenses. I have a question about the LGPL. I created a Java web project and built it as a WAR package. Can I add LGPL jars to this WAR file?"}
{"_id": "188316", "title": "Is there a reason that tests aren't written inline with the code that they test?", "text": "I've been reading a bit about Literate Programming recently, and it got me thinking... Well-written tests, especially BDD-style specs can do a better job at explaining what code does than prose does, and have the big advantage of verifying their own accuracy. I've never seen tests written inline with the code that they test. Is this just because languages don't tend to make it simple to separate application and test code when written in the same source file (and nobody's made it easy), or is there a more principled reason that people separate test code from application code?"}
{"_id": "188310", "title": "Naming guard clauses that throw exceptions", "text": "I have a function `evaluate()` that parses a `String` for some variables and replaces them with their corresponding value:               public String evaluate() {         String result = templateText;         for (Entry<String, String> entry : variables.entrySet()) {             String regex = \"\\\\$\\\\{\" + entry.getKey() + \"\\\\}\";             result = result.replaceAll(regex, entry.getValue());         }         if (result.matches(\".*\\\\$\\\\{.+\\\\}.*\")) {    //<--check if a variable wasn't replaced             throw new MissingValueException();         }         return result;     }      Since the `evaluate()` function now does 2 things, it first replaces the variables with the values **AND** check for any variables that weren't replaced, I thought about refactoring it to:               public String evaluate() {         String result = templateText;         for (Entry<String, String> entry : variables.entrySet()) {             String regex = \"\\\\$\\\\{\" + entry.getKey() + \"\\\\}\";             result = result.replaceAll(regex, entry.getValue());         }         checkForMissingValues(result);     }          private void checkForMissingValues(String result) {         if (result.matches(\".*\\\\$\\\\{.+\\\\}.*\")) {             throw new MissingValueException();         }     }      Now is this a good name for the function `checkForMissingValues`? I mean it does check for missing values, but it also throws an exception. I thought about renaming it to `throwExceptionIfMissingValueWasFound()`, but this name tells **HOW** the function does it more than **WHAT** the function is doing. Is there a standard for naming such functions that check for a condition then throw an exception?"}
{"_id": "165393", "title": "Bug Tracking Etiquette - Necromancy or Duplicate?", "text": "I came across a really old (2+ years) feature request issue in a bug tracker for an open source project that was marked as \"resolved (won't fix)\" due to the lack of tools required to make the requested enhancement. In the time elapsed since that determination was made, new tools have been developed that would allow it to be resolved, and I'd like to bring that to the attention of the community for that application. However, I'm not sure as to what the generally accepted etiquette is for bug tracking in cases like this. Obviously, if the system explicitly states to not duplicate and will actively mark new items as duplicates (much in the way the SE sites do), then the answer would be to follow what the system says. But what about when the system doesn't explicitly say that, or a new user can't easily find a place that says with the system's preference is? Is it generally considered better to err on the side of duplication or necromancy? Does this differ depending on whether it's a bug or a feature request?"}
{"_id": "55388", "title": "What are pros and cons of using \"in-house\" tools?", "text": "What are pros and cons of using \"in-house\" tools, from real-world experience?"}
{"_id": "181439", "title": "Why can't java generics be in arrays?", "text": "Why is it that when I try to make an array of ArrayLists: `ArrayList<Integer>[] arr=new ArrayList<Integer>[40];` there is an error and java does not allow this? Is there a reason related to java's implementation of generics, generics in any language, or something arbitrary?"}
{"_id": "51403", "title": "What should web programmers know about cryptography?", "text": "Should programmers who build websites/web applications understand cryptography? I have no idea how most crypographic algorithms work, and I really don't understand the differences between md5/des/aes/etc. Have any of you found any need for an in-depth understanding of cryptography? I haven't needed it, but I wonder if perhaps I'm missing something. I've used salt + md5 hash to encrypt passwords, and I tell webservers to use SSL. Beyond that, I can't say I've used much else, nor can I say with any certainty _how_ secure these methods are. I only use them because other people claim they are safe. Have you ever found a need to use cryptography in web programming aside from these two simple examples?"}
{"_id": "181431", "title": "What are the differences between algorithms using data structures and algorithms using databases?", "text": "# The General Question What are the differences between algorithms using data structures and algorithms using databases? # Some Context This is a question that has been bugging me for some time, and I have not been able to come up with a convincing answer for it. Currently, I am working on strengthening my understanding of algorithms that, of course, heavily involve data structures. These are basic structures such as Bag, Queue, Stack, Priority Queue, and Heap. I also use databases on a daily basis to store the data that has been processed and submitted by the end-user or processed by the program. I retrieve and submit the data through a DAL, which has data structures of its own that are generated based on the tables in the database. My questions come when I have the option to sort the data using the database to send it back to me ordered in either an ascending/descending fashion or retrieve and load the data into my logic, process this data in a priority queue, and heap sort all of it. Or another one would be to search for records using the database rather than loading a subset of the records and using something like binary search to find the record or records I am interested in. In my mind, I would try to have as many operations take place on the database- end before sending it over because communication is expensive. This also makes me wonder when do you use algorithms and data structures strictly defined within your own logic rather to process data than that of the database's? So here are the questions... # Questions   1. What are the differences between data structures and databases?   2. When do we use algorithms that use data structures defined solely within your own logic and not that of the database's?   3. **@Harvey post:** When do the methods in the database become less efficient to use than methods in your own logic?      * **@mirculixx post:** What makes a method efficient?   4. **@Harvey post:** How is processing data with data structures faster than doing it in the database? # Clarifications   1. **@Grant post:** The databases I normally work with are relational, and these questions are coming out of working with them. However, I do think these questions are applicable to any persistence framework (when I say framework, I mean it in the most general sense). I know answers without a specific context are difficult. Food-for-thought, advice, or discussion points are mainly what I'm looking for and would be most appreciated!"}
{"_id": "78353", "title": "How far should one take e-mail address validation?", "text": "I'm wondering how far people should take the validation of e-mail address. My field is primarily web-development, but this applies anywhere. I've seen a few approaches:   * simply checking if there is an \"@\" present, which is dead simply but of course not that reliable.   * a more complex regex test for standard e-mail formats   * a full regex against RFC 2822 \\- the problem with this is that often an e-mail address might be valid but it is probably not what the user meant    * DNS validation   * SMTP validation As many people might know (but many don't), e-mail addresses can have a lot of strange variation that most people don't usually consider (see RFC 2822 3.4.1), but you have to think about the goals of your validation: are you simply trying to ensure that an e-mail address can be sent to an address, or that it is what the user probably meant to put in (which is unlikely in a lot of the more obscure cases of otherwise 'valid' addresses). An option I've considered is simply giving a warning with a more esoteric address but still allowing the request to go through, but this does add more complexity to a form and most users are likely to be confused. While DNS validation / SMTP validation seem like no-brainers, I foresee problems where the DNS server/SMTP server is temporarily down and a user is unable to register somewhere, or the user's SMTP server doesn't support the required features. How might some experienced developers out here handle this? Are there any other approaches than the ones I've listed? Edit: I completely forgot the most obvious of all, sending a confirmation e-mail! Thanks to answerers for pointing that one out. Yes, this one is pretty foolproof, but it does require extra hassle on the part of everyone involved. The user has to fetch some e-mail, and the developer needs to remember user data before they're even confirmed as valid."}
{"_id": "129514", "title": "How can I efficiently approach cookie-based session handling?", "text": "Currently our web application uses server-sided sessions. Because of the large amount of memory usage, we want to switch to cookie-based sessions. I have been thinking about several ways: ### Idea 1 My first idea was to give the client two cookies: `SessionID` (a hash) and `SessionData` (the encrypted data). The `SessionID` will be used to look up a decryption key for `SessionData` in an in-memory hashtable. Because only decryption keys are stored on the server, this should wind up being less memory usage. However it still uses some memory, and the CPU load is increased due to encryption/decryption on every request. It'd also make the session cluster-dependant, with no graceful failover possible. ### Idea 2 My second idea was similar to the fist, but instead of looking up a decryption key in a cache, I'd use a salted version of `SessionID` to decrypt `SessionData`. The upside is that there wouldn't be any in-memory cache or hash table anymore, and that session would be cluster-independent if the salt is the same for all clusters. However, the tradeoff is that it's much less secure due to a potential danger of decrypting or modifying the `SessionData` cookie, and that the CPU load is increased due to encryption/decryption on every request. Is there a better way to go about this problem? Or a way to modify one of these ideas to be a little more palatable?"}
{"_id": "25644", "title": "Are there any actual examples of profitable programmer's \"worker's cooperatives\"?", "text": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative I'm curious whether there are, anywhere in the world, worker's cooperatives that center on a technology business that involves either programming, IT, or some sort of IT or programming related consulting or services. The wikipedia link above is an overview of the concept. The short form explanation is that a co-op is a worker-owned business. Also there is the notion that every worker owns shares in the business. I am interested in knowing whether an example of a \"programmer's/IT co-op\" even exists. Note: I am not talking about nor asking about a government-funded incubator nor any other socialized, state supported group. I also don't mean \"co- working\", which is renting an office with other self employed people doing their own thing. I mean a going, profitable IT business operating in a competitive environment that is worker-owned and run."}
{"_id": "65989", "title": "How to do this in Standard UML?", "text": "In the below Sequence  diagram, when the user have entered the Username and Password, I have to do the authentication. Now you can see two details **valid details** and **invalid detail** in the diagram , which i will return when the **user password match** and **miss-match** respectively. Now My big question is which one i have to draw first, either **valid details** or **invalid detail** , how I know which one will come first."}
{"_id": "74769", "title": "What's the limitation of APSL compared to BSD or MIT?", "text": "I heard some people complain that APSL 2.0 ( http://www.opensource.apple.com/license/apsl/ ) has too many limitations. What's the limitation of it compared to BSD or MIT?"}
{"_id": "74760", "title": "Is javascript worth learning if you do not plan on being a web developer?", "text": "I heard Javascript is a full language just like c++. Is this true? What else is it good for programming besides web stuff?"}
{"_id": "196293", "title": "Why DependencyProperties and not native language support?", "text": "With advent of WPF and MVVM Microsoft introduced `DependencyProperties` and `INotifyPropertyChange` interface to provide a way to implement the \"reactive\" approach used with those technologies. Sadly both of these constructs are very verbose, require much boilerplate, are clumsy to use, also are not really that safe since they require much use of \"magic strings\". So here come the question: why didn't they put these functionalities directly into the language - why didn't they create new kind of properties created with a simple keyword, providing useful stuff of `DependencyProperties` (like events on change and so on...). What were stopping them?"}
{"_id": "196998", "title": "Is there a name for the school of thought behind writing tests?", "text": "Essentially it is a branch of software engineering but SE itself is too large an umbrella. I was curious if there was a title for the knowledge base that encompasses TDD, BDD, mocks/stubs/spys, unit tests vs. integration tests, code coverage, etc."}
{"_id": "214870", "title": "What am I risking if I don't update my SDK/JDK and bundled runtime/JRE every time there's a security update?", "text": "It seems like there's a new major security hole patched in Java every other week, and I would assume the same goes for other development platforms. After years of frustration trying to get customers to install and configure a compatible JRE on their systems, we started bundling one with our software. (By bundling, I mean we extract a copy of the JRE in our installation directory--we don't install the JRE and configure it as the system default.) The problem is, it's a hassle having to keep that JRE up-to-date because first we have to retest everything to make sure the update didn't break anything (it has broken some of our third-party dependencies in the past). How seriously, if at all, are we putting our customers at risk if we don't update our SDK/JDK and the runtime/JRE that we bundle with our product every time there's a security update? Is it reasonable to just update on a periodic schedule--say, once every 6 months or so?"}
{"_id": "115833", "title": "Drawing thread interaction", "text": "I'd like to draw (pen and pencils) threads interaction in a UML(-like) notation. I don't insist on UML, anything that is obvious to the reader should do. I started with sequence diagrams, but I don't feel this is the best way to do that. All the time, there would be \"action initiators\" coming from off-screen which kinda break the SSD idea. I inherited a medium size code base with around 9 - 10 threads each owning a state machine and I'm trying to figure out how it works. How should I visualize thread interaction?"}
{"_id": "136079", "title": "Are there any statistics that show the popularity of Git versus SVN?", "text": "I'm writing an essay, and would like to have some empiric evidence, perhaps longitudinal data where the popularity of these technologies is compared over a period of some years. Are there any statistics that show the popularity of Git versus SVN?"}
{"_id": "234721", "title": "Why do concurrent languages tend to have more complicated syntax?", "text": "This is a question that's been on my mind for a while. Recently I've been checking out concurrent languages like Haskell or Go or Erlang. From my point of view, they have huge benefit in performance as opposed to languages like C++ or Python because of the way they handle functions in parallel. My question is: Why is the syntax for languages like C++ or Python so much different (and IMO simpler) from those of concurrent languages, even though most concurrent languages are executed on runtime (and therefore they have more possibility in simplifying the syntax)? Here is an example, consider Go's `sqrt`:               // Package newmath is a trivial example package.     package newmath          // Sqrt returns an approximation to the square root of x.     func Sqrt(x float64) float64 {         z := 1.0         for i := 0; i < 1000; i++ {             z -= (z*z - x) / (2 * z)         }         return z     }      Now for the Python counterpart (ported this myself based on the `Sqrt` example from Go):               def Sqrt(x):      z = 1.0      for i in Range(0, 1000):       z -= (z*z-x/2*z)       return z      Now as you can see go has a syntax like \":=\" for assignment, If you take a more complicated examples, the syntax will look more like what I am trying to point out. And Go is just the least \"weird-looking\" language. If you consider Erlang it's looking even weirder:               %% qsort:qsort(List)     %% Sort a list of items     -module(qsort).     % This is the file 'qsort.erl'     -export([qsort/1]). % A function 'qsort' with 1 parameter is exported (no type, no name)          qsort([]) -> []; % If the list [] is empty, return an empty list (nothing to sort)     qsort([Pivot|Rest]) ->         % Compose recursively a list with 'Front' for all elements that should be before 'Pivot'         % then 'Pivot' then 'Back' for all elements that should be after 'Pivot'         qsort([Front || Front <- Rest, Front < Pivot])         ++ [Pivot] ++         qsort([Back || Back <- Rest, Back >= Pivot]).      Parts that caught my eye were \"++ [] ++\", '<-' and '->' I am convinced these languages look like this for a reason, but I can't help but think: Can't it be simpler? Why are concurrent languages like this? Why if they use a runtime like Python and JavaScript, are they still type-safe? I know type-safe languages have an advantage of their own to not mix up variable types, but still, there's gotta be somebody who made a concurrent language that didn't have type-safety, if possible right? It seems like almost all concurrent languages have one thing in common: a bigger list of possible / valid syntax. I hope I've explained my question well enough."}
{"_id": "214879", "title": "How to manage a lot of Action Listeners for multiple buttons", "text": "I have this Tic Tac Toe game and I thought of this really cool way to draw out the grid of 9 little boxes. I was thinking of putting buttons in each of those boxes. How should I give each button (9 buttons in total) an `ActionListener` that draws either an **X** or **O**? Should they each have their own, or should I do some sort of code that detects turns in `this`? Could I even do a `JButton Array` and do some `for` loops to put 9 buttons. So many possibilities, but which one is the most **proper**? Code so far:               import javax.swing.*;          import java.awt.event.*;     import java.awt.*;     public class Board extends JPanel implements ActionListener{     public Board(){         Timer timer = new Timer(25,this);         timer.start();     }     @Override     protected void paintComponent(Graphics g){         for(int y = 0; y < 3; y++){             for(int x = 0; x < 3; x++){                     g.drawRect(x*64, y*64, 64, 64);             }         }     }     public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e){         repaint();     }     }"}
{"_id": "239025", "title": "Advantage of Tagging a Release in SVN versus Only Leaving a Comment for the Commit", "text": "In my company, we have had a policy of tagging every release. Someone new joined, and he suggested that instead of formally using a Tag, we could just leave a comment for the release build when it is checked in. I like using a Tag, but, obviously, we can also get to the source code for a build also by looking for the comment. The only advantage I see is that because our product spans multiple technologies, we can group the source code for both in the same directory with a folder for each. **Is there some other advantage of tagging releases that I'm missing?** BTW, we are using SVN."}
{"_id": "165971", "title": "How is architectural design done in an agile environment?", "text": "I have read Principles for the Agile Architect, where they defined next principles : > Principle #1 The teams that code the system design the system.   >  Principle #2 Build the simplest architecture that can possibly work.   >  Principle #3 When in doubt, code it out.   >  Principle #4 They build it, they test it.   >  Principle #5 The bigger the system, the longer the runway.   >  Principle #6 System architecture is a role collaboration.   >  Principle #7 There is no monopoly on innovation. The paper says that most of the architecture design is done during the coding phase, and only system design before that. That is fine. So, how is the system design done? Using UML? Or a document that defines interfaces and major blocks? Maybe something else?"}
{"_id": "93093", "title": "How to sell your libraries?", "text": "If someone has created something like a DevExpress library, or Infragistics, Telerik, RavenDb etc., what's the easiest way to start selling it? What are the required steps? Is there some rules for licenses and stuff?"}
{"_id": "231618", "title": "Should Libraries Use Events or a Set Action", "text": "I'm building a small reusable library for two systems our company manages. Something that I've been caught up on is whether I should expose a set of properties of type `Action<T>` for events such as Completed, Aborted, ExceptionOccured, or if I should use the `Event<T>` T : EventArgs methodology. In practice another internal library will be consuming this information and handling the display of information to the user. The library's classes will be instantiated within a single thread and wouldn't be consumed by anything outside of its owner. To me it seems more along the lines of if I only need to notifications are only ever going to be consumed by one object then it doesn't matter, however for completeness, and due to the fact that I as the library auther have little control over how another developer implements this, I should use the Event method due to it's broader ability to handle events. EDIT (sample code): @Robert Harvey, I read that post when searching for reasoning on picking one over the other. I understand the answer in context to that question, but I'm not sure how it relates to using the event keyword or the simple assigning of a property. @Fabio Marcolini, I understand that I'm using the word event to describe what is happening. What I'm trying to answer is that if using the event structure is preferred to simply executing a delegate property. Here are the properties that I use to define the event actions:               public Action<WorkflowInstallerCompletedEventArgs> InstallCompleted;          public Action<System.Activities.Activity, WorkflowInstallerActivityCompletedEventArgs> ActivityCompleted;          public Action<System.Activities.Activity, WorkflowApplicationAbortedEventArgs> InstallAborted;          public Func<System.Activities.Activity, WorkflowApplicationUnhandledExceptionEventArgs, UnhandledExceptionAction> UnhandledExceptionDuringInstall;      The idea would be to invoke one of them in this manner:                 if (this.InstallCompleted != null)         this.InstallCompleted(new WorkflowInstallerCompletedEventArgs(logs));      Now until @svick's comment I would've said that you could only have one Action (or Func) assigned to each property. Example implementation:                 WorkflowInstaller installer = new WorkflowInstaller(activity, new TestVariablesCollection()) { ActivitiesRunSequentially = true };       installer.AddInstallActivity(activity2);            installer.InstallCompleted = (e) =>       {         Log[] logs = e.Logs.ToArray();         string test = SerializationHelper<Log>.Serialize(logs.FirstOrDefault());         try         {           logOutputFromRun = SerializationHelper<Log[]>.Serialize(logs);         }         catch (Exception ex)         {              }         syncEvent.Set();       };       installer.InstallAborted = (a, e) =>       {         Assert.Fail(\"Unexpected abort during the install.\");         syncEvent.Set();       };       installer.UnhandledExceptionDuringInstall = (a, e) =>       {         Assert.Fail(\"Unexpected exception during the install.\");         syncEvent.Set();         return System.Activities.UnhandledExceptionAction.Terminate;       };            installer.StartInstallation();            syncEvent.WaitOne();      The answer to my question may not be a definitive this way or that way, but more of best practice or generally accepted approach. I'm really trying to expand my horizons when it comes to creating code that is acceptable to a wider audience."}
{"_id": "165978", "title": "Case insensitive keywords in a language", "text": "We're trying to write a custom scripting language. There has been a suggestion to make the language forgiving by providing **case insensitive** keywords. I personally do not like the idea, but there are few people in my team leaning towards it, saying it will make the end user happy! Examples of languages like FORTRAN, BASIC, SQL are given saying that these are case insensitive. Is this a good idea?"}
{"_id": "109420", "title": "How to Properly Google for C", "text": "The problem with trying to use Google to find tutorials or answers for the C programming language is that C is not an expressive enough name to narrow down the searches. Even coupled with keywords like \"Programming\" and/or \"Language\" yields results mostly for C++, C#, and Objective-C. Is there a way to more effectively search for specific C resources using Google?"}
{"_id": "206256", "title": "Methods as verbs: is the object the subject?", "text": "Is there some recommended practice regarding methods as verbs in OOP? Should the object work syntactically as subject or as object/complement? Should `object.doSomething()` be normally understood as \"the object iself does something\" (subject) or \"the caller does something with the object\"? I suspect that the first alternative is more right, and it sounds more natural with such a general verb... But consider for example \"OutputStream.write(byte[])\", which... > writes b.length bytes from the specified byte array to this output stream. Here it's not the object who is the subject of the action, it's the caller. The Writer (rather confusingly) does not really \"write\", its the caller is who \"writes\" bytes _to the Writer_. Should this be considered incorrect?"}
{"_id": "117475", "title": "What skills to add for an older CS grad living in rural area?", "text": "The answers to this question might be different than the generic, \"I graduated. Duh, now what should I do?\" Living in an area with a low population presents limited opportunities compared to those in more urban or suburban communities. On the other hand...maybe the answers will be largely the same. I'm asking you folks who might be looking at this from a perspective of more years on the inside for your wisdom. I have just finished a CS degree. I am about 40 (does it matter much?). I left a successful, professional career in the laboratory robotics industry because it required me to either move to a big city or continue to travel extensively. In a few years we could potentially move somewhere else or I could start travelling again but I need to start working now. I need to make myself as employable as possible. There are few jobs available in my area for computer professionals. Of those few, the majority seem to be IT related more than software development related -- SharePoint, ERP, network security, web services, etc.. Might I be well served by trying to pick up some IT knowledge? Or should I continue to work on my software development chops? I have my own project now that I am proud of and excited about and could happily continue to extend it. It is a good vehicle for learning new stuff until (and hopefully after) I find employment. I'm hoping to get some others involved in it as well. Or I could start a new project that would be a vehicle for learning something marketable -- from .net to being able to support all that legacy COBOL there seems like a lot of stuff out there. Thanks for whatever insight anyone shares."}
{"_id": "55966", "title": "Going back to ASP.Net Webforms from ASP.Net MVC. Recommend patterns/architectures?", "text": "To many of you this will sound like a ridiculous question, but I am asking because **I have little to no experience with ASP.Net Webforms** \\- I went straight to ASP.Net MVC. I am now working on a project where we are limited to .Net 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. I liked the clean separation of concerns when working with ASP.Net MVC, and am looking for something to make webforms less unbearable. Are there any recommended patterns or practices for people who prefer asp.net MVC, but are stuck on .net 2.0 and visual studio 2005?"}
{"_id": "22597", "title": "Does late have any meaning in Agile methodologies?", "text": "This came out of some of the answers and comments on another question (this one). I've worked primarily with waterfall projects and while I've worked on ad-hoc projects that have taken on agile behaviours and have read a fair bit about agile, I'd say I've never worked on a \"proper\" agile project. My question is does the concept of \"late\" have any meaning in agile, if so then what? My reasoning is that with agile you have no upfront plan and you have no detailed requirements at the outset. You may have a high level goal in mind and a notional date attached to it but both may change (potentially massively) and neither are certain. So if you don't know exactly what you're going to deliver basically until you deliver it and the user accepts it, and if you don't have a schedule beyond the next sprint, how could you ever be late in any way that actually has meaning? (Obviously I understand that a sprint might overrun but I'm talking about beyond that.) **Edit** : Just to be clear I'm (personally) happy with the assumption that on time waterfall projects (even relatively large ones) are possible based on the fact I've seen them and been involved in them - they're not easy or common even but they are possible. This isn't about knocking agile, it's about me understanding it. I've always seen the benefit of agile as nothing to do with deadlines or budgets (or rather only indirectly), it's to do with scope - agile delivers closer to what is really important rather than what the project team think is important before they've seen anything."}
{"_id": "22598", "title": "Algorithms: Find the best table to play (standing gambler problem)", "text": "_**Preface_** This is not code golf. I'm looking at an interesting problem and hoping to solicit comments and suggestions from my peers. This question is not about card counting (exclusively), rather, it is about determining the best table to engage based on observation. Assume if you will some kind of brain implant that makes worst case time / space complexity (on any given architecture) portable to the human mind. Yes, this is quite subjective. Assume a French deck without the use of wild cards. _**Background_** I recently visited a casino and saw more bystanders than players per table, and wondered what selection process turned bystanders into betting players, given that most bystanders had funds to play (chips in hand). _**Scenario_** You enter a casino. You see n tables playing a variant of Blackjack, with y of them playing Pontoon. Each table plays with an indeterminate amount of card decks, in an effort to obfuscate the house advantage. Each table has a varying minimum bet. You have Z currency on your person. You want to find the table where:   * The least amount of card decks are in use   * The minimum bet is higher than a table using more decks, but you want to maximize the amount of games you can play with Z.   * Net losses, per player are lowest (I realize that this is, in most answers, considered to be incidental noise, but it could illustrate a broken shuffler) _**Problem_** You can magically observe every table. You have X rounds to sample, in order to base your decision. For this purpose, every player takes no more than 30 seconds to play. What algorithm(s) would you use to solve this problem, and what is their worst case complexity? Do you:   * Play Pontoon or Blackjack ?   * What table do you select ?   * How many rounds do you need to observe (what is the value of X), given that the casino can use no more than 8 decks of cards for either game? Each table has between 2 and 6 players.   * How long did you stand around while finding a table? I'm calling this the \" **standing gambler problem** \" for lack of a better term. Please feel free to refine it. _**Additional_** Where would this be useful if not in a casino? _**Final_** I'm not looking for a magic gambling bullet. I just noticed a problem which became a bone that my brain simply won't stop chewing. I'm especially interested in applications way beyond visiting a casino."}
{"_id": "142836", "title": "Achieving forward compatibility with C++11", "text": "I work on a large software application that must run on several platforms. Some of these platforms support some features of C++11 (e.g. MSVS 2010) and some don't support any (e.g. GCC 4.3.x). I expect this situation to continue for for several years (my best guess: 3-5 years). Given that, I would like set up a compatibility interface such that (to whatever degree possible) people can write C++11 code that will still compile with older compilers with a minimum of maintenance. Overall, the goal is to minimize #ifdef's as much as reasonably possible while still enabling basic C++11 syntax/features on the platforms that support them, and provide emulation on the platforms that don't. Let's start with std::move(). The most obvious way to achieve compatibility would be to put something like this in a common header file:               #if !defined(HAS_STD_MOVE)     namespace std { // C++11 emulation       template <typename T> inline T& move(T& v) { return v; }       template <typename T> inline const T& move(const T& v) { return v; }     }     #endif // !defined(HAS_STD_MOVE)      This allows people to write things like               std::vector<Thing> x = std::move(y);      ... with impunity. It does what they want in C++11 and it does the best it can in C++03. When we finally drop the last of the C++03 compilers, this code can remain as is. However, according to the standard, it is illegal to inject new symbols into the `std` namespace. That's the theory. My question is: _practically speaking_ is there any harm in doing this as a way of achieving forward compatibility?"}
{"_id": "193744", "title": "Is there a better way to model a many-to-many relationship on the same table with Entity Framework?", "text": "# The context We're building a web application using Entity Framework 5.0. One of the requirements is that it should be possible for the administrators to link related products so that when someone browses to a product we can render a list \" _You might also like these products:_ \". Since a product can be linked to many products we need a many-to-many relationship for this. The table in the database could look something like this:                _________________________     | LinkedProducts          |     |-------------------------|     | ProductId1 | ProductId2 |     |------------|------------|     |     1      |     2      |     |------------|------------|     |     1      |     3      |     |------------|------------|     |     2      |     4      |     |------------|------------|      An additional requirement is that the linking should be bidirectional. This means that with the sample data from the table above, when you browse to product 2, you should get product 1 and 4 in the list. So for a given `ProductId`, you should be able to get its linked products from column `ProductId1` and `ProductId2`. # What I've come up with The product entity:               public class Product     {         public int ProductId { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }              public virtual ICollection<Product> References { get; set; }         public virtual ICollection<Product> ReferencedBy { get; set; }              public Product()         {             References = new List<Product>();             ReferencedBy = new List<Product>();         }     }      The product mapping:               public class ProductMapping : EntityTypeConfiguration<Product>     {         public ProductMapping()         {             HasKey(t => t.ProductId);                  Property(t => t.Name).IsRequired().HasMaxLength(150);                  ToTable(\"Products\");             Property(t => t.ProductId).HasColumnName(\"ProductId\");             Property(t => t.Name).HasColumnName(\"Name\");                  HasMany(x => x.References).WithMany(x => x.ReferencedBy).Map(map =>                 {                     map.ToTable(\"LinkedProducts\");                     map.MapLeftKey(\"ProductId1\");                     map.MapRightKey(\"ProductId2\");                 });         }     }      This all works. To display the list of linked products for a certain product, I can just get the union of `References` and `ReferencedBy`:               var product = db.Find(2);     var linkedProducts = product.References.Union(product.ReferencedBy);      # The problem As I said, this works, but I don't really like it and I was wondering if there is a better way to deal with a situation like this when working with Entity Framework. # The solution I liked Ryathal's suggestion to add two records to the database when linking products. So, when linking product 1 to product 2, I now insert two records: `{ 1, 2 }` and `{ 2, 1 }`. This also allows me to remove the `ReferencedBy` collection in the `Product` class so that only one collections remains: `References`. To link to products:               product1.References.Add(product2);     product2.References.Add(product1);      To remove the link between products:               product1.References.Remove(product2);     product2.References.Remove(product1);      Here is my new `Product` class with the mapping:               public class Product     {         public int ProductId { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }              public virtual ICollection<Product> References { get; set; }              public Product()         {             References = new List<Product>();         }     }      The product mapping:               public class ProductMapping : EntityTypeConfiguration<Product>     {         public ProductMapping()         {             HasKey(t => t.ProductId);                  Property(t => t.Name).IsRequired().HasMaxLength(150);                  ToTable(\"Products\");             Property(t => t.ProductId).HasColumnName(\"ProductId\");             Property(t => t.Name).HasColumnName(\"Name\");                  HasMany(x => x.References).WithMany().Map(map =>                 {                     map.ToTable(\"LinkedProducts\");                     map.MapLeftKey(\"ProductId1\");                     map.MapRightKey(\"ProductId2\");                 });         }     }"}
{"_id": "221762", "title": "Why doesn't Java 8 include immutable collections?", "text": "The Java team has done a ton of great work removing barriers to functional programming in Java 8. In particular, the changes to the java.util Collections do a great job of chaining transformations into very fast streamed operations. Considering how good a job they have done adding first class functions and functional methods on collections, why have they completely failed to provide immutable collections or even immutable collection interfaces? Without changing any existing code, the Java team could at any time add immutable interfaces that are the same as the mutable ones, minus the \"set\" methods and make the existing interfaces extend from them, like this:                                    Iterable (already immutable)                              |                     ImmutableCollection             _______/    /          \\   \\___________            /           /            \\              \\      Collection  ImmutableList  ImmutableSet  ImmutableMap  ...         \\  \\  \\_________|______________|__________   |          \\  \\___________|____________  |          \\  |           \\___________  |            \\ |           \\ |                       List            Set           Map ...      Sure, operations like List.add() and Map.put() currently return a boolean or previous value for the given key to indicate whether the operation succeeded or failed. Immutable collections would have to treat such methods as factories and return a new collection containing the added element - which is incompatible with the current signature. But that could be worked-around by using a different method name like ImmutableList.append() or .addAt() and ImmutableMap.putEntry(). The resulting verbosity would be more than outweighed by the benefits of working with immutable collections, and the type system would prevent errors of calling the wrong method. Over time, the old methods could be deprecated. Wins of immutable collections:   * Simplicity - reasoning about code is simpler when the underlying data does not change   * Documentation - if a method takes an immutable collection interface, you know it isn't going to modify that collection   * Concurrency - immutable collections can be shared safely across threads As someone who has tasted languages which assume immutability, it is very hard to go back to the Wild West of rampant mutation. Clojure's collections (sequence abstraction) already have everything that Java 8 collections provide, plus immutability (though maybe using extra memory and time due to synchronized linked-lists instead of streams). Scala has both mutable and immutable collections with a full set of operations, and though those operations are eager, calling .iterator gives a lazy view (and there are other ways of lazily evaluating them). I don't see how Java can continue to compete without immutable collections. Can someone point me to the history or discussion about this? Surely it's public somewhere."}
{"_id": "193745", "title": "UDP order of packets with direct connection", "text": "If i have two systems (A and B) running on LAN(INTRANET) which are directly connected. There are no routers in the middle. In this case, if system A sends a few UDP packets every few milliseconds to system B: Is it possible that system B receives the packets in a different order? Please note that I'm not asking whether to use TCP or UDP. I'm interested in whether the above scenario will have packets out of order - I'm aware that UDP packets are not guaranteed to arrive in order."}
{"_id": "240867", "title": "Why are there no function pointers in Java?", "text": "Lately I started studying about different interesting concepts that exist in languages other than Java. Since the only language I've ever programmed with is Java, a lot of these concepts are very new to me. So this question may be very naive :) . I learned recently about first class functions and function pointers. Why are there no function pointers in Java? Or at least some variation of them, like delegates in C#? Maybe it's just the excitement of learning about this concept, but it seems to me like it could be a powerful feature in the language."}
{"_id": "220414", "title": "How to store Status for Reservation table", "text": "I have a reservation table (a user fills out a form to request a reservation). It has two parts that need to be confirmed. isReservationAccepted (decline,accept,waiting) and hasReservationBeenSent (sent, declined, waiting) Not sure how to structure my table, thinking about making a lookup table for each column, or maybe just creating them as int, and having 1 = accepted/sent, 2 = declined, 3 = waiting. not sure if there is a better way (probably)"}
{"_id": "57529", "title": "Sharing code in LGPL and proprietary software", "text": "I'm working on a piece of software that'll be released as a dll under LGPL. The software interfaces with hardware from a small company that has provided me with the needed libraries and some code to use them correctly (not only headers but its all in a separate file). As far as i know, the same code is used in their proprietary software that they don't intend to open source but they'd be fine releasing the piece of code they've given me. Now here's the question: What license could be used on the code I got from the company? I guess using GPL or LGPL would make them violate GPL when using the same code in their other software. Is MIT a good idea? Is it ok to just include a file with MIT license on it in my otherwise LGPL:ed project? Since I'm not the copyright holder, I'd have to ask the company to apply the license obviously but that shouldn't be a problem. Thanks /Martin"}
{"_id": "104609", "title": "Infinite Bitmap", "text": "I'd like to build a bitmap during runtime. The bitmap should be scalable on all sides and pixel access should be quiet efficient. ![Some illustration](http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/4995/maptm.jpg) Between and after the commands shown in the picture, Map.setPixel() and Map.getPixel() should set/return data saved in the bitmap. I don't expect an implementation just a concept how to allocate memory in such a way that the setPixel()/getPixel is as fast as possible."}
{"_id": "199468", "title": "How to record/store edits?", "text": "In many programs and web apps (stack exchange included) the program is able to backtrack what edits where made to the piece. My issue is similar: I want to be able to store a \"timeline\" of edits, where the user can go back and see what they typed at a specific time/when the typed certain words. What's the standard way to do this? Also, in things like google docs and other programs, they automatically \"group\" actions together (Like if I delete something by hitting back space 5 times, it knows I was deleting one word), any ideas on how to do that to?"}
{"_id": "57522", "title": "Modified Strategy Design Pattern", "text": "I've started looking into Design Patterns recently, and one thing I'm coding would suit the Strategy pattern perfectly, except for one small difference. Essentially, some (but not all) of my algorithms, need an extra parameter or two passed to them. So I'll either need to   * pass them an extra parameter when I invoke their calculate method  or   * store them as variables inside the ConcreteAlgorithm class, and be able to update them before I call the algorithm. Is there a design pattern for this need / How could I implement this while sticking to the Strategy Pattern? I've considered passing the client object to all the algorithms, and storing the variables in there, then using that only when the particular algorithm needs it. However, I think this is both unwieldy, and defeats the point of the strategy pattern. Just to be clear I'm implementing in Java, and so don't have the luxury of optional parameters (which would solve this nicely)."}
{"_id": "57526", "title": "Computer Science vs. Game Programming", "text": "I'm interested in going to University in the hope of taking programming to a professional level, in particular I would like to go into Game Programming. Would I benefit more from going to a University and getting a degree in a \"Game Programming\" type course, or would a more general degree in Computer Sciene be better?"}
{"_id": "194286", "title": "How do you store \"fuzzy dates\" into a database?", "text": "This is a problem I've run into a few times. Imagine you have a record that you want to store into a database table. This table has a DateTime column called \"date_created\". This one particular record was created a long time ago, and you're not really sure about the exact date, but you know the year and month. Other records you know just the year. Other records you know the day, month and year. You can't use a DateTime field, because \"May 1978\" isn't a valid date. If you split it up into multiple columns, you lose the ability to query. Has anyone else run into this, if so how did you handle it? **Edit:** To clarify the system I'm building, it is a system that tracks archives. Some content was produced a long time ago, and all that we know is \"May 1978\". I could store it as May 1 1978, but only with some way to denote that this date is only accurate to the month. That way some years later when I'm retrieving that archive, I'm not confused when the dates don't match up. For my purposes, it is important to differentiate \"unknown day in May 1978\" with \"May 1st, 1978\". Also, I would not want to store the unknowns as 0, like \"May 0, 1978\" because most database systems will reject that as an invalid date value."}
{"_id": "223693", "title": "Using MVC strictly with DAAB?", "text": "I am the only one at my company that is familiar with MVC and they are getting more pressure to modernize and switch to MVC for future projects, so I was tasked to create a template to use as a base for any training or as a base for new projects. This is perfectly fine and I'm glad to do it. However, one absolute requirement is that I use EL Data Access Block. Doesn't this kinda defeat the purpose of MVC and using an ORM for simpler data code? I have tried looking everywhere online for any standard practices when using MVC with DAAB but I cannot find a single good article or tutorial or code anywhere, which leads me to believe I should not do it this way, but i have to.. So, on that note, is it possible for me to use EL Data Access for the Model and set it up so that it can be strongly typed and get it to basically act kinda like EF? I was thinking that I could just create a t4 template or something to help generate the models based off of the DB tables and add as much of the CRUD operations as I could. No clue if this will be a good idea though."}
{"_id": "24997", "title": "Can all the recursive functions be coded with iterations?", "text": "What are the advantages of recursion? Some programming languages can optimize tail recursion, but, still in general terms, recursion consume more resources than regular loops. Is it possible to have an iterative version of some recursive function?"}
{"_id": "223691", "title": "Why would you opt to fully qualify a package instead of importing it?", "text": "In java, to print the date we could do either of the following: **Fully qualified**               public class MyMain {              /**          * @param args          */         public static void main(String[] args) {             // TODO Auto-generated method stub                  System.out.println(new java.util.Date());              }          }      **Using an import**               import java.util.*;          public class MyMain {              /**          * @param args          */         public static void main(String[] args) {             // TODO Auto-generated method stub                  System.out.println(new Date());              }          }      What are the advantages and disadvantages to for each way? For me, using an import seems tidier, as you can see at the top of your class, just what packages are being used."}
{"_id": "141563", "title": "Should main method be only consists of object creations and method calls?", "text": "A friend of mine told me that, the best practice is class containing `main` method should be named `Main` and only contains `main` method. Also `main` method should only parse inputs, create other objects and call other methods. The `Main` class and `main` method shouldn't do anything else. Basically what he is saying that class containing `main` method should be like:               public class Main     {         public static void main(String[] args)         {             //parse inputs             //create other objects             //call methods         }     }      Is it the best practice?"}
{"_id": "75499", "title": "Single line comments for multiple indented lines of code", "text": "After many years of coding, trying various programming styles, weeding out unreadable or impractical stuff, I still can't figure out one thing: what is the best way to single-line-comment multiple lines of indented code. 1.                   setup_checkpoint();     //    if (object->looks_suspicious())     //        guard->full_body_scan(object);      2.                   setup_checkpoint();         // if (object->looks_suspicious())         //     guard->full_body_scan(object);      3.                   setup_checkpoint();         // if (object->looks_suspicious())             // guard->full_body_scan(object);      Please, don't suggest multiline commenting, because sometimes you want to leave that possibility for bigger blocks, which may include smaller pieces of comments."}
{"_id": "141564", "title": "why are transaction monitors on decline? or are they?", "text": "http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/cics.do http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/tuxedo.do Look at the demand for programmers (% of job ads that the keyword appears), first graph under the table. It seems like demand for CICS, Tuxedo has fallen from 2.5%/1% respectively to almost zero. To me, it seems bizarre: now we have more networked and internet enabled machines than ever before. And most of them are talking to some kind of database. So it would seem that use of products whose developers spent last 20-30 years working on distributing and coordinating and optimizing transactions should be on the rise. And it appears they're not. I can see a few causes but can't tell whether they are true:   1. we forgot that concurrency and distribution are really hard, and redoing it all by ourselves, in Java, badly.   2. Erlang killed them all.   3. Projects nowadays have changed character, like most business software has already been built and we're all doing internet services, using stuff like Node.js, Erlang, Haskell. (I've used RabbitMQ which is written in Erlang, \"but it was small specialized side project\" kind of thing).   4. BigData is the emphasis now and BigData doesn't need transactions very much (?). None of those explanations seem particularly convincing to me, which is why I'm looking for better one. Anyone?"}
{"_id": "75493", "title": "\"Accept the human condition\" is one of lean software development values. Can you elaborate?", "text": "The Lean Software and System Consortium 2011 conference, which took place last week, stated the vision and values of lean software development. Here are the six values of lean software development as photographed by one of the attendees. Number 1 is \" **accept the human condition**.\" While I can sense the humanistic and maybe even anti- _Taylorist_ mood in this statement, I'd like to ask the experts to explain this principle and how to apply it in our daily work."}
{"_id": "75490", "title": "Does it make me a bad programmer if I dislike the Agile methodology?", "text": "I like the small iterations. I like the unit tests. I like code review. What I don't like is the starting off with little or no documentation. Am I alone in this? Do I simply have a misunderstanding of the process? Any thoughts would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "26179", "title": "Why do people disable JavaScript?", "text": "I asked a question yesterday Should I Bother to Develop For JavaScript Disabled?. I think the consencus is: Yes, I should develop for JavaScript Disabled. Now I just want to understand why users disable JS. It seems many developers (I guess people who answered the questions are developers) disable JS. Why is that. Why do users disable JS? For security? Speed? or what?"}
{"_id": "209583", "title": "License for academic use only?", "text": "I'm developing a software package and would like to make it (and the source) available for personal, academic, or educational use, but _not for commercial use_. Is there such a license? Ideally, it should be reciprocal, so that if someone publishes a modified version, they'll have to grant the same rights. Alternatively, would it be possible to modify the GPLv3 in such a way that it forbids commercial use and grants rights only to non-commercial users?"}
{"_id": "209581", "title": "Offline data transaction processing capabilities in a context of poor internet connectivity", "text": "We have a core banking product developed with ASP.NET with C# using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database. Product is hosted on a centralized server and works well at all locations (bank branches) where connectivity is good and stable. We need to implement this solution at a region where connectivity is always an issue. Since it is a core-banking solution, there should not be any service lapse to the customer because of technical issues (viz., connectivity). How to design the architecture for this and ensure that there is no transactional issues at any given point of time, and at the same time the centralized database contains the latest data from all branches?"}
{"_id": "204757", "title": "Am I approaching learning Java correctly?", "text": "(Originally Posted on Stackoverflow) I'm sorry if this question is not appropriate for stackoverflow, I know this is not a technical question, but I feel like it is relevant. I have always been interested in programming, I have messed around with many programming languages and different game engines, making simple apps and things like that. I have been doing Java for a little over a year. Because of school, I did Java mostly on-and-off. I would do it for a month or so then pick up 6 - 8 weeks later... anyway, my point is I know the basics of Java quite well. This is because every time I jumped back into java, I would always recap from the beginning. I understand I know hardly anything. That being said I really want to learn more about the language and get better at it. I am tired of doing System.out.Print() statements, I feel like I have done almost everything I can do with them. I have also done basic work with GridLayouts and Swing. Since school is out I have been doing a lot of Java, at least a few hours a day. I have been following along with these tutorials. http://zetcode.com/tutorials/javagamestutorial/ The first 3 or so tutorials I completely understand, but after that it gets a bit difficult. I am not here to ask a specific question about code. But I would like to know the opinion of an experienced Java programmer. Am I approaching this the correct way? What is the best way to learn the most Java? I feel like it's gotten to the point in the tutorials where I am not befitting from them like I was in the beginning. Should I stick with what I am doing? Attempt to memorize the code? Could someone point me to somewhere else that I could learn? I have never taken a class on programming, I will be a senior in high school."}
{"_id": "187996", "title": "Why do large websites use different languages for the backend and frontend?", "text": "My understanding from small MVC applications is that you have the front end, which deals with HTML, JS, jQuery, etc, and you have the back end, which consists of your controllers and models. However, when I talk to developers from large companies, they often mention having a frontend tier and a backend tier. So sometimes, I might hear that they have a frontend with C# and a backend with Java. Why would any company want a backend and frontend in different languages? Does this help the large website scale better? When people say that their frontend is built in C#, does this mean that they are using a framework for the frontend (like .NET) and an additional framework on the backend (such as Spring)? Or does it mean something entirely different?"}
{"_id": "187994", "title": "Is sending password to user email secure?", "text": "How secure is sending passwords through email to a user, since email isn't secured by HTTPS. What is the best way to secure it? Should I use encryption?"}
{"_id": "187990", "title": "Should web service response use a base class or generic class?", "text": "In my RESTful WCF web service I have something like the following response object.               public class WebResponse<T>     {              public bool Success { get; set; }             public T Data { get; set; }                 public string ErrorMessage { get; set; }     }          This way I can capture any errors that occur during the request to the web service. It also separates the data object from the response object. Another way this could be done is with a response base class like this.               public abstract class WebResponseBase     {             public bool Success { get; set; }             public string ErrorMessage { get; set; }     }          public class CarResponse : WebResponseBase     {             public string Manufacturer { get; set; }             public string Make { get; set; }     }      I personally prefer the first method as it gives me a clear separation of the data and the response/error status and allows me to easily return lists/arrays etc. without having to create multiple classes. Are there any benefits to using the base class? Are there any limitations to using the generic class?"}
{"_id": "182319", "title": "Effective implementation of \"array\" of type Int X String -> String in .NET or in general", "text": "The question in general is: is there a more effective way of implementation of table with structure like `Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, string>>`? The reason I am asking this is because I have made few performance tests and it does not perform well for data with > 5M rows. Now, I dont really need this amount of data but I was wandering if there is a more effective way. It could also help performance for smaller tables with thousands of rows. Last but not least I am interested in what _COULD_ be done to improve it. What I have thought of is to use string[][] and have some method transform string rows/column to numbers. That would however require a quite significant rewrite of my work so far. Is there something simpler? I need rows to be able to handle gaps. Background on my project: I have a home brewed structure of objects that represent a table along with some additional functionality that I need. I have table called T, and it stores data (rows) in `Dictionary<int, TRow>`. Each TRow has another `dictionary<string, TCell>` that represents the row data, in which TCells are indexed by column names. TCells is basically a wrapper around simple string. Table and each row has a Schema definition (column -> {INT, DOUBLE, STRING, BOOL, ...} that is parsed when getting data from the table by methods like .getBool( int row, string column ) etc. Each object (T,TRow,TCell) has quite a lot of helper methods that I use, so they are not a simple wrapper with get methods. EDIT TO ANSWER FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS: The table is meant for general purpose. No special focus on reading/writing only. The table is often initially loaded from result-set produced by stored procedure in database and then only read from - but not exclusively. The composite key is an interesting idea, but that would break my T, TRow, TCell structure I am afraid. The Dictionary INT X STRING -> STRING is only a simplification, as written in my last paragraph the table T has Dictionary< int, TRow> and TRow has Dictionary< string, string >. The reason I need to keep Table, Row and Cell broken up is that sometimes I work directly with rows, e.g. some method can return a single row etc. Any ideas please? Or there is nothing better :/."}
{"_id": "147928", "title": "Does the structured programming definition only consider imperative programming?", "text": "Does the structured programming definition only consider imperative programming? By this I mean does the definition of structured programming automatically exclude functional programming (in the most common usage, by which I mean not necessarily pure-functional programming, but something like Clojure). Structured programming, at least from the definitions that I've found seem to really be saying: \"good programming shouldn't use goto, and should be modular\". Which doesn't necessarily exclude functional programming, while most definitions seem to begin with \"... is a subset of imperative programming\". I'm looking for a bit of clarification I think. BTW, I have read \"What's The Difference Between Imperative, Procedural and Structured Programming?\" which is a pretty good historical description."}
{"_id": "75144", "title": "Best Practises in Android Resources Naming", "text": "There are a lot of android resources types: layouts, strings, drawables and so on. I understand that readability of it's names is important but can not create a table of rules how to name them in the best way. Are there any best practices on that?"}
{"_id": "199467", "title": "Simple way to deploy Winform application to website", "text": "First of all, I know there is no perfect answer to my question. It is a bit personnal, but I'm sure many programmers face the same dilemma when they get from regular desktop applications to client/server web applications: what is the \"best\" language/framework to use? There are a lot of great solutions out there, all having more or less the same advantages and features. So, I would like an advice based on my needs and background. I'm fairly experienced with VB and PHP, and I have some Javascript and C# knowledge. I currently have a perfectly functionnal C# Winform app that I would like to deploy to my website. The application uses the user's webcam to recognize a game card through a perceptual hashing algorithm and displays details of the best matched card from a MySQL database. Here's how I'd like the web version to perform:   * the server sends a recordset of the whole datebase's cards ID/hash matches to the client   * the client \"scans\" his card with his webcam and creates a hash   * the client searches for a match between this hash and the ones in the recordset   * the client returns the best match to the server   * the server displays information of the card from the database My objectives :   * limit (if possible) the need for the user to install 3rd party software (flash, java, activex or other plugins)   * create a solution that integrates well in a Windows/Apache/PHP environnement   * create a solution that is, ideally, cross-platform   * using a language/framework combination on which it's simple to write, debug and maintain code So far, I'm eyeing Python on Eclipse or Javascript on Visual Studio. I read interesting stuff about Ruby on rails, but the learning curve might be a bit steep for me. I don't mind learning a new language and coding the app again from scratch, but I'd like as much as possible to use the skills and code I already have. Any thoughts? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "75147", "title": "Is c# actually a multiplatform language?", "text": "C# (and the .net platform in general) is looking like it's becoming a good option form multi-targeting apps :   * official MS .net framework : full blow windows development, asp.net dev, Windows phone Dev, etc.   * mono and all its derivated : monotouch, monodroid : the rest of the world. This tools are today RTM.   * Does it means that C# is becoming a good language for targeting the most popular platforms : desktop, web and mobile ?   * Is it still better to use the \"native\" language of target platforms (objective C, Java, etc.)   * Is it only a screen of smoke and only marketing language ? Please note that I'm actually conscious I won't able to copy/paste the code between platforms. But I'm sure the lower layers of applications (models, business, etc.) can be reused, but I know I'll have to adapt the higher layers (Gui, etc.) to the platform. My goal is more focused on required skills than technical code sharing. [edit] I **am** a c# developer in a company that massively use c#. That's why I talked about c# in a plan to expand the range of target platforms in my company."}
{"_id": "182313", "title": "find second smallest element in Fibonacci Heap", "text": "I need to describe an algorithm that finds the second smallest element in a Fibonacci-Heap using the Operations: Insert, ExtractMin, DecreaseKey and GetMin. The last one is an algorithm previously implemented to find and return the smallest element of the heap. I thought I'd start by extracting the minimum, which results in its children becoming roots. I could then use GetMin to find the second smallest element. But it seems to me that I'm overlooking other cases because I don't know when to use Insert and DecreaseKey, and the way the question is phrased seems to suggest I should need them."}
{"_id": "199466", "title": "Should I allow my client to self host?", "text": "I'm just starting out as a web designer. I'm trying to build up a portfolio for my own website. I'm concerned about designing a site and handing it over to the client. Once I do this I could lose access to the site. They can change the login information and they may not need to me manage it. If the client changes anything on the site that compromises my design work, it will reflect my business. My business' name will be on the homepage of the website. Is this a valid concern?"}
{"_id": "182315", "title": "What will be the better way to access information from another object", "text": "I have a `page` Object, which has `Paragraph` and `Image` object Collections And each `paragraph` has only `image_id(s)` that are assigned to a paragraph. All other information about image is stored in `Page->Image` Now from the `paragraph` object I want to access the `image` information where paragraph has only `image_id` and all other information about the image is in `Page->Image` object. What will be the better way to access this info? Should I pass the `page` object in every `paragraph` constructor or something else? I also can't change the class structure, as it is written by someone else."}
{"_id": "138158", "title": "How do you do technical interview when you can't commnicate with the interviewer?", "text": "I just had a developer technical interview last night. As similar to so many technical interviews, it ask me to solve and implement an algorithms within a period of time (1 hour). But when interview begin, he start with introducing his life and to long 13 years career life for like 15 min or more (1/6 of my problem solving time gone). Then I notice I really having troubles understanding his English, thus every question or explanations he said, I have to repeatedly ask him to repeat and explain many times. Turns out he gave up explain one question and ask another one. At the end it turns out I couldn't have enough time to do the algorithms implementation even I got the concept to implement. I did tried to briefly explain how my concept and implementations should be, but at the same time I really concern is he really understand my explanation(English). I feel I am pretty much fail this interview, but I don't want to repeat this situation again. So what will be the best way to get him communicate properly with me, so it won't waste so much time to repeat the same explanation? And not letting him think I have no idea how to implement the algorithms? A side question, how can I cut his long introduction?"}
{"_id": "138159", "title": "C++, how many years experience?", "text": "As a little background, I've been programming for a long time now using various languages, systems, etc. I've come across the old problem of a recruiter wanting to know \"how many years experience\" I have of C++. I'm a little stumped as I've bounced around it many times over a number of years. I don't think I can just add up the months/years. I'd put myself somewhere around the 3 - 5 year mark. I know it's a bit of a wide range, but I'm not really sure, with newer standards and libraries, the older stuff probably becomes deprecated. So, I wanted to ask your opinion. What would you expect a C++ programmer with (i) 3 years, and (ii) 5 years experience (mainly on Unix/Linux systems) to be able to do? Perhaps, more importantly, what would be the difference you would expect to see between a programmer of 3 years compared to 5 years (and above)? I know this is all a bit vague and the correct answer is, \"it depends\". But if anyone has a good opinion, I'd love to know."}
{"_id": "209052", "title": "Shared hosting for a PHP application", "text": "I was reading Essential PHP Security and chapter 8 talks about problems with hosting your PHP app in a shared hosting environment. Some of the problems he mentions are: **\\- Exposed source code and File system browsing.** > a web server must be able to read the source code in order to execute it. > Since the web server is shared a PHP script written by another developer on > the server can read arbitrary files. An attacker can also create a script > that browses the file system. **\\- Exposed session data and Session injection.** > By default, PHP stores session data in /tmp which is writable by all users, > so Apache has permission to write session data there. A simple script can > allow other users to read, add, modify, or delete sessions. It's like everything is exposed and vulnerable if I used shared hosting this way. My questions:   1. Considering the book was published 8 years ago, are they problems still occurring or were they mitigated somehow in the last few years?   2. Why would one opt for shared hosting if it going to cause these huge security concerns?   3. I understand that shared hosting is cheap, but there must be a safer alternative to it and cheaper than dedicated hosting?   4. In case a customer ask me to develop an application that will be hosted on a shared hosting, is there a full proof way to develop a secure application or is it just a recipe for disaster?"}
{"_id": "247105", "title": "Calculate reachability of one point from another", "text": "I have an array which stores a set of positive x coordinates in sorted way, say `arr={1, 4, 5, 9, 12, 45}` etc. And I have a maximum distance `k` which I can go from one point to another point let `k=3`. Now, given two points `x` and `y(arr[x]<arr[y])` I need to determine if I can reach from `x` to `y`. I will be able to reach `y` from `x` if distance between every two hop is less that or equal to `k`. Here suppose `x=1 y=4` then I can go from 1->2 then 2->3 but since distance between 3 and 4 is greater than 3 I can't go so in this case I can't reach. But if `x=1` and `y=2` then I can reach. It can be simply solved with O(n). I have created a for loop from `arr[x]` to `arr[y]` and for each pair of points I check if distance between them is less than or equal to `k`. But I want better algorithm. I am thinking of doing something like binary search. Can anybody please suggest a good algorithm?"}
{"_id": "4879", "title": "How to improve the code writing effort?", "text": "Code needs to be written to file, on way or another. While all programmers should strive to write no more code than necessary, this \"small\" portion needs to be written nevertheless. What tips do you have for improving the code writing effort? Usage of IDEs? Different keyboards or character layouts? Minimal usage of mouse? Code generation tools? What else can you think of?"}
{"_id": "79871", "title": "Is Java Plug-in still relevant?", "text": "When I challenged Chrome development team about their decision to block every version of the Java Plug-in by default (http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84001). They answered that Java Plug-in is not widely used anymore. Google is also officially stating this: https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=1247383&hl=en-US. I'm aware that Applets as a tool for design purposes (banners, menus, etc) is outdated, and I must admit that it has been a while since I developed something serious that used the Java Plug-in (I had some fun with JavaFX and Web Start draggable applications for learning purposes, but that's pretty much it). Still, Java Plug-in accounts for a important part of my surfing experience (I'm the sad type of grownup still playing games such as Runescape. My bank use a Java Applet for the security keyboard and several sites I often visit uses Applets for things such as file uploading and authentication). My question here is: Do you guys think that client-side Java web applications are still relevant? Please disregard Desktop and Server Side applications... We all know how popular Java is (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html). This question is specifically about Java Plug-in."}
{"_id": "221413", "title": "Why is it so hard to recruit for compiler[-related] jobs?", "text": "Last week, a few colleauges and I were participating in career fairs at three major universities (two here in the US and one in England), where we were trying (without much success) to recruit for several compiler positions, ranging from internship, to entry-level, to more senior, for our team. To our surprise, 80% of the students that we talked to responded somewhere a long the line of \"I want to build Ansroid apps\", when asked what they were interested in doing. (And the other 20%? \"iPhone apps\"! ) Some even expressed openly that they did not \"want to build a compiler, ..., it's boring\"; they said and I quoted. So what is it about mobile apps that is so appealing to (young ?) \"developers\" these days? And by the same token, why is compiler such a\"boring\" topic to them? ( I don't necessarily think these two are mutually exclusive. One can certainly build a compiler for a mobile phone, but that's beside the point) What can we do, if anything, to attract more talents, or even just interested candidates?"}
{"_id": "199218", "title": "Is it good to have an interface plenty of methods which belong to different concepts, just to preserve the Liskov's Principle?", "text": "I'm currently studying a course based on Software Design and I had a discussion in class with my professor and some classmates about a problem represented by the next scenario: **Scenario** > _Imagine we have a graphic application which lets us plan the interior > design of our future house using a perspective from top. We are able to add > or remove some elements like furniture and change their position, but > obviously, we can't move the walls of the house because it was already > built._ **Solution 1** To solve this problem, some of my classmates proposed a solution that could be expressed using the following UML diagram: ![UML diagram for Solution 1](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nV7Ne.jpg) As you can see, they agreed on the use of a common interface called \"Drawable\" which represents the graphical objects displayed on the UI. The general class \"App\" manages a list of Drawables, and each of them has a set of methods. This interface is implemented by different classes such as Furniture, Wall or Window. The thing is that a Furniture object could be moved, but not the Walls nor the Windows. So, a Furniture would implement the 'move' method defined in Drawable. In contrast, Wall and Window simply will write it empty. At this point, other classmates and I complained about this decission because the design does not require to fulfill with the constraints (like moving or not Drawable objects, depending on their nature). This way, the design will allow some new objects could be moved, although they probably shouldn't be. However, the professor said this design is good because it's flexible and transparent for the App class, because this class doesn't know what kind of instance is managing. _Extended case_ In addition, we could think on an extreme case where we add several methods to the Drawable interface, such as 'sell', 'open' and 'lend'. Using the same approach described above, we will have an interface which could be able to do anything, like Superman. Therefore, I believe this is a bad design solution due to we are mixing behaviors which belong to different concepts (Movable, Sellable, Openable, and so on). Also, we are allowing a Wall object could implement the 'sell' method, which completely does not make sense... but my professor still insisted on his point of view and he didn't see the problem. **Solution 2 (based on the extended case)** Other people suggested we could add those interfaces (Movable, Sellable, Openable) and each of them would inherit from the Drawable interface. That way:   * A Wall would implement Drawable directly   * A Furniture would implement Movable and Sellable   * A Window would implement just Openable The next diagram summarizes this approach: ![UML Diagram for Solution 2](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xvqVi.jpg) [Edit: The Drawable's move method should be removed, this is a mistake because it is now placed into the Movable interface] **Questions and Doubts** Finally, once you can figure out the problem, could you help me and answer these questions, please?   1. Aren't we breaking the _Single Responsibility Principle_ with this super-mega-god-interface?    2. Are both approaches valid against the _Liskov's Substitution Principle_? I think it's broken in the first case because the post-conditions are broken due to some methods don't do anything. Anyway, in the second approach I'm not sure as well because of the interfaces inheritance tree   3. Maybe, another alternative could be the definition of basic Drawable objects (with 'click' and 'draw' methods). Thus, we may take advantage of some kind of mechanism like the Decorator pattern in order to add behaviors dynamically. But how?   4. If we use a language without interfaces such as JavaScript or Python, how can we deal with this problem?"}
{"_id": "70510", "title": "How can I prepare for an interview over TeamViewer and Skype?", "text": "I am in big dilemma what to do or not... Tomorrow have an interview on TeamViewer and Skype for a web developer position in PHP. They want to take my technical interview there, so I think they will give give me a PHP program to write. The thing is that PHP has vast variety of functions so its not possible to keep all the functions in mind or on finger tips: Google is really needed. I am aware about how to solve problems, but it may be the case that I don't know the exact syntax for questions they ask. So what should I do in this case? How can I convince them that I know how this can be accomplished but the exact syntax is not coming immediately to mind? Also, what type of question might they ask? _Some thing about me so that may be you can give your advice accordingly_ Am a junior web developer who has 14 month experience in PHP. My skills : PHP, Mysql, Magento, Wordpress, CSS, HTML, Javascript..."}
{"_id": "199211", "title": "Matrix Pattern Recognition Algorithm for a 2D space", "text": "I have a picture that I elaborate with my program to obtain a list of coordinates. There is a matrix represented in the image. In an ideal test I would get only the sixteen central points of each square of the matrix. But in actual tests I have some noise points. I want to use an algorithm to extrapolate from the list of the coordinates the group formed by 16 coordinates that best represent a matrix.   * Example of found points:   ![](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HhriV.png)   * Example of desired result:   ![](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WfCHq.png) How to do this? Note: The matrix in the image can be rotated a little too, so a rotation- independent algorithm would be great."}
{"_id": "199217", "title": "What did Rich Hickey mean when he said, \"All that specificity [of interfaces/classes/types] kills your reuse!\"", "text": "In Rich Hickey's thought-provoking goto conference keynote \"The Value of Values\" at 29 minutes he's talking about the overhead of a language like Java and makes a statement like, \"All those interfaces kill your reuse.\" What does he mean? Is that true? In my search for answers, I have run across:   * The Principle of Least Knowledge AKA The Law of Demeter which encourages airtight API interfaces. Wikipedia also lists some disadvantages.   * Kevlin Henney's Imperial Clothing Crisis which argues that use, not reuse is the appropriate goal.   * Jack Diederich's \"Stop Writing Classes\" talk which argues against over-engineering in general. Clearly, anything written badly enough will be useless. But how would the interface of a well-written API prevent that code from being used? There are examples throughout history of something made for one purpose being used more for something else. But in the software world, if you use something for a purpose it wasn't intended for, it usually breaks. I'm looking for one good example of a good interface preventing a legitimate but unintended use of some code. Does that exist? I can't picture it."}
{"_id": "58874", "title": "I'm having trouble understanding these exercises wording", "text": "Exercise 1-20. Write a program detab that replaces tabs in the input with the proper number of blanks to space to the next tab stop. Assume a fixed set of tab stops, say every n columns. Should n be a variable or a symbolic parameter? Exercise 1-21. Write a program entab that replaces strings of blanks by the minimum number of tabs and blanks to achieve the same spacing. Use the same tab stops as for detab. When either a tab or a single blank would suffice to reach a tab stop, which should be given preference? could you paraphrase these for me. thanks"}
{"_id": "18478", "title": "Tuple: toople or tuh-ple?", "text": "I hear it's another Europe vs. America dispute, just like with \"router\". Some other time I hear tuh-ple is specific to Python (and possibly some other languages too) while in mathematics and CS it's \"toople\" on all continents. What do you know about this?"}
{"_id": "33498", "title": "Have unit test generators helped you when working with legacy code?", "text": "I am looking at a small (~70kLOC including generated) C# (.NET 4.0, some Silverlight) code-base that has very low test coverage. The code itself works in that it has passed user acceptance testing, but it is brittle and in some areas not very well factored. I would like to add solid unit test coverage around the legacy code using the usual suspects (NMock, NUnit, StatLight for the Silverlight bits). My normal approach is to start working through the project, unit testing & refactoring, until I am satisfied with the state of the code. I've done this many times in the past, and it's worked well. However, this time I'm thinking of using a test generator (in particular Pex) to create the test framework, then manually fleshing it out. My question is: have you used unit test generators in the past when commencing work on a legacy codebase, and if so, would you recommend them? My fear is that the generated tests will miss the semantic nuances of the code-base, leading to the dreaded situation of having tests for the sake of the coverage metric, rather than tests which clearly express the intended behaviour in code."}
{"_id": "59713", "title": "Best Development Methodology for One Person?", "text": "I spend a lot of time working on projects in which I am the sole developer, project manager, designer, QT person (Yes, I know... Bad!), and sometimes I'm even the client. I've tried just about everything for planning projects and managing myself, from just sitting and working freestyle until the project is done however long it takes, to a single-person version of scrum in which I held a progress meeting with myself over a one-man burn down chart every morning (not kidding). For those of you who spend much time working alone, what is the best way to organize yourself, manage large (for one person) projects, and keep productivity as high as possible?"}
{"_id": "63048", "title": "Design and Development Methodologies for the single developer", "text": "At my work, typically the developers here all work separately, we may share projects but often only do so when another isn't working on it (for reference, we're a consulting company. So someone may work on project A one month, then three months late, I may too). What methodologies can we use to improve the quality of the code we produce when there is typically only one developer (at most three) on the project?"}
{"_id": "232627", "title": "How to manage the whole project while you are the only resource", "text": "It's frustrating to handle the whole Project/manage the project while you being the only developer/coder/Programmer in the Project. How can we handle the project? Are there any steps to follow to complete the project with the limited given time?"}
{"_id": "87152", "title": "Development methodology for single web developer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Design and Development Methodologies for the single developer I'm a web developer who mostly works with the LAMP stack when it comes to my own projects. Most of the time I just start coding on a project and fixing bugs and adding features as I go along. Often I'll try to use an existing solution such as Wordpress or Drupal. Now that I'm thinking of creating my own web application with businesses as the target group, I feel there's a **need for proper analysis and design**. Something lightweight for a **one person project** and still solid enough to handle requirements, user interfaces, security, etc. If you could **recommend methodologies and literature** I would be grateful."}
{"_id": "232441", "title": "Encrypt and decrypt password for a specific application", "text": "I have a basic web application where users can login and edit their profile. In the profile they can submit an username and a password for a different application. I'd like to take that password and encrypt it. Later, when I want to connect to that different application I need to decrypt the password. Is there a common pattern for this scenario? Or some other advice you might have? Just in case it matters, I want to connect to JIRA without having the user have to submit his password on every request / login to the page. Thanks, Sven **Update** To make it more clear, I have a web appliction where users can signup/login/etc, this uses a authentication/authorization library (friend) and its all well. However, from my webapp I want users to connect to a jira instance that they can choose and where they have to provide a username/pw combo which I cannot hash, because I need to send them unhashed to the JIRA instance. What I am thinking of right now is to display a login dialog to the user as soon as he wants to request his JIRA instance. There he provides his username/password combo for JIRA and I send a REST request to JIRA from the client side, so no user/password is sent to my server. I get a sessionid back then, which I can use for further requests. What do you think about that approach?"}
{"_id": "232442", "title": "Unit testing, factories, and the Law of Demeter", "text": "Here's how my code works. I have an object that represents the current state of something akin to a shopping cart order, stored in a 3rd party shopping API. In my controller code, I want to be able to call:               myOrder.updateQuantity(2);      In order to actually send the message to the third party, the third party also needs to know several things that are specific to THIS order, like the `orderID`, and the `loginID`, which will not change in the lifetime of the application. So when I create `myOrder` originally, I inject a `MessageFactory`, which knows `loginID`. Then, when `updateQuantity` is called, the `Order` passes along `orderID`. The controlling code is easy to write. Another thread handles the callback and updates `Order` if its change was successful, or informs `Order` that its change failed if it was not. The problem is testing. Because the `Order` object depends on a `MessageFactory`, and it needs `MessageFactory` to return actual `Message`s (that it calls `.setOrderID()` on, for example), now I have to set up very complicated `MessageFactory` mocks. Additionally, I don't want to kill any fairies, as \"Every time a Mock returns a Mock a fairy dies.\" How can I solve this problem while keeping the controller code just as simple? I read this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791940/law-of- demeter-on-factory-pattern-and-dependency-injection but it didn't help because it didn't talk about the testing problem. A few solutions I've thought of:   1. Somehow refactor the code to not require that the factory method return real objects. Perhaps it's less of a factory and more of a `MessageSender`?   2. Create a testing-only implementation of `MessageFactory`, and inject that. * * * The code is pretty involved, here's my attempt at an sscce:               public class Order implements UpdateHandler {         private final MessageFactory factory;         private final MessageLayer layer;              private OrderData data;              // Package private constructor, this should only be called by the OrderBuilder object.         Order(OrderBuilder builder, OrderData initial) {             this.factory = builder.getFactory();             this.layer = builder.getLayer();             this.data = original;         }              // Lots of methods like this         public String getItemID() {             return data.getItemID();         }              // Returns true if the message was placed in the outgoing network queue successfully. Doesn't block for receipt, though.         public boolean updateQuantity(int newQuantity) {             Message newMessage = factory.createOrderModification(messageInfo);                  // *** THIS IS THE KEY LINE ***             // throws an NPE if factory is a mock.             newMessage.setQuantity(newQuantity);                   return layer.send(newMessage);          }              // from interface UpdateHandler         // gets called asynchronously         @Override          public handleUpdate(OrderUpdate update) {             messageInfo.handleUpdate(update);         }     }"}
{"_id": "106112", "title": "Work experience instead of education?", "text": "I wanted to name this topic as \"Education vs. Experience\", but this topic already exists. I've read that discussion and though what I'd like to ask is related with that topic, the question is quite different. I've started learning programming about 12 years ago. For the last 4 years I'm working as developer in software outsourcing (located in Russia). I'm thinking about leaving Russia and moving somewhere else like Australia (doesn't matter basically). I have a number of examples illustrating the general ability and success stories, but still there's a difference between all these people and my case. I have quite a good technical experience - primary areas are C++ and .NET. I have already participated in 7 projects based on different technologies/platforms (Windows, Linux, Android, Qt, .NET, etc). So, I believe, _I'm capable_ of working as a software developer. Let's just take it - \"from technical standpoint, this guy is absolutely OK\". The only problem is, I don't have any education. So, here's the question: **In most cases, may I read words like \"BS in CS, equivalent, or better\" as \"N years of experience\"?** **Update** : Is there a sense in getting certificates like MCSD (for .NET)? I know there's a separate topic for this question, but still asking for the case when there's no education but there are certificates and experience."}
{"_id": "247109", "title": "Multilayered enterprise application use of JAXB objects", "text": "I am asked to refactor and maintain an enterprise application. Normally I'm used to using the MVC design pattern. This time however, I'd like to separate everything into layers (multilayered architecture). Something along the lines of (Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition - October 2009): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Pqqq0.png) My data sources are in general XML files. These files are read and written with the use of JAXB, and this resides in the data-layer. Whenever I load a specific XML a \"provider\" will use JAXB to construct a tree of objects representing the XML structure. These objects/information needs to be used inside the business, service and presentation layer. Per layer the information needs to be treat differently, i.e. business layer will enforce business rules on the objects/information whereas the presentation layer needs additional UI information to have everything shown to the user. I'm looking for your tips / experiences when it comes down to using data sources throughout an multilayered application. Should I:   1. Create some sort of mapping, such that a new object tree is constructed in every layer?   2. Work via the lines of aggregation, such that my data sources can be decorated with extra functionality / information inside an object that lives in another layer?   3. Make the JAXB-objects \"fat\", with an interface which supports all my needs that come from all other layers? I'd love to hear your thoughts!"}
{"_id": "251577", "title": "What's the name of this category of variables (NEW, OLD, etc) in triggers?", "text": "I need to do some very specific web search, but in order to do that I need to know what's the technical name of the category/type of variables like NEW, OLD, USER ( the could be more ) that you can access from within a trigger in a RDBMS without having to declare them. The question I want to post is \"does `<RDBMS>` support `<xxxx>` variables in triggers ?\" but I don't know what to put in the `<xxxx>` placeholder. For example, variables like this `:var` in a query are called _bind variables_."}
{"_id": "146038", "title": "API design and versioning using EJB", "text": "I have an API that is EJB based (i.e. there are remote interfaces defined) that most of the clients use. As the client base grows there are issues with updates to the API and forcing clients to have to update to the latest version and interface definition. I would like to possibly look at having a couple versions of the API deployed at a time (i.e. have multiple EAR files deployed with different versions of the API) to support not forcing the clients to update as frequently. I am not concerned about the actual deployment of this, but instead am looking for thoughts and experiences that others have on using EJB's as an API client.   * How do you support updating versions, are clients required to update?   * Does anyone run multiple versions in a production environment? Are there pro's cons?   * Any other experiences or thoughts on this approach, and having an EJB centric API?"}
{"_id": "30254", "title": "Why Garbage Collection if smart pointers are there", "text": "These days, so many languages are garbage collected. It is even available for C++ by third parties. But C++ has RAII and smart pointers. So what's the point of using garbage collection? Is it doing something extra? And in other languages like C#, if all the references are treated as smart pointers(keeping RAII aside), by specification and by implementation, will there still be any need of garbage collectors? If no, then why is this not so?"}
{"_id": "108546", "title": "Is there a need for garbage collection in a stack-based language?", "text": "What is the need for garbage collection (GC) in a stack-based language? In a language like Forth or RPL (on HP calculators), is there a need for garbage collection? I would think, since output is popped off the stack, that there wouldn't be any need. Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "220822", "title": "Why not free memory as soon as its reference counter hits zero", "text": "A lot of languages like Java and C# have garbage collectors that free memory when that memory no longer has any reference. Yet they don't immediately free it after the reference counter hits zero but instead every once in a while they check on all the memory to see if that memory has any reference and delete it if it doesn't. What is the benefit of doing that way? The downside to doing it that way is that you lose the destructor as you can't guarantee when it will be called. I would imagine that it is done that way because of performance, but has there been any study that shows that a garbage collector that works like that has a better performance then `std::shared_ptr` found in C++?"}
{"_id": "185845", "title": "Design guidelines for this scenario in C#?", "text": "I have to create a validation system(I don't want to use Data Annotation or any other system) for my C# application using .Net Compact Framework, where I have an `object` which contains many other objects. Many of the properties are dependent on each other means they have some sort of dependencies. I can write a simple `validator` class which goes through all the properties and checks them one by one with lots of `if and else` but I want to design something dynamic e.g. I should be able to specify list of dependencies on a property and specify a method which should be invoked during validation. I mean some design guidelines would be appreciated ? Example ( just for demo purpose ):                   public enum Category             {                 Toyota,                 Mercedes,                 Tata,                 Maruti             }                  class MyBigClass             {                 public Category Category { get; set; }                 public double LowerPrice { get; set; }                 public double UpperPrice { get; set; }                      public SomeOtherObject OtherObject { get; set; }          public List<string> Validate()             {                 List<string> listErrors = new List<string>();                 ParameterInfo pInfo = null;                 switch (Category)                 {                     case Category.Toyota:                         pInfo = ParameterStorage.GetParameterInfo(PTYPE.Category_Toyota);                         break;                     case Category.Mercedes:                         pInfo = ParameterStorage.GetParameterInfo(PTYPE.Category_Mercedes);                         break;                     case Category.Tata:                         pInfo = ParameterStorage.GetParameterInfo(PTYPE.Category_Tata);                         break;                     case Category.Maruti:                         pInfo = ParameterStorage.GetParameterInfo(PTYPE.Category_Maruti);                         break;                     default:                         break;                 }                      if (LowerPrice < pInfo.Min || LowerPrice >= pInfo.Max)                 {                     listErrors.Add(\"LowerPrice\");                 }                      if (UpperPrice > pInfo.Max || UpperPrice <= pInfo.Min)                 {                     listErrors.Add(\"UpperPrice\");                 }                      return listErrors;             }             }                   public enum PTYPE                 {                     RATING,                     Category_Tata,                     Category_Toyota,                     Category_Mercedes,                     Category_Maruti                 }                      public class ParameterInfo                 {                     public PTYPE Type { get; set; }                     public int Min { get; set; }                     public int Max { get; set; }                     public int Default { get; set; }                 }                 public class ParameterStorage             {                 private static Dictionary<PTYPE, ParameterInfo> _storage = new Dictionary<PTYPE, ParameterInfo>();                 static ParameterStorage()                 {                     _storage.Add(PTYPE.Category_Maruti, new ParameterInfo { Type = PTYPE.Category_Maruti, Min = 50000, Max = 200000 });                     _storage.Add(PTYPE.Category_Mercedes, new ParameterInfo { Type = PTYPE.Category_Mercedes, Min = 50000, Max = 800000 });                     _storage.Add(PTYPE.Category_Toyota, new ParameterInfo { Type = PTYPE.Category_Toyota, Min = 50000, Max = 700000 });                     _storage.Add(PTYPE.Category_Tata, new ParameterInfo { Type = PTYPE.Category_Tata, Min = 50000, Max = 500000 });                 }                      public static ParameterInfo GetParameterInfo(PTYPE type)                 {                     ParameterInfo pInfo = null;                     _storage.TryGetValue(type, out pInfo);                     return pInfo;                 }             }      In the above example I have a `MyBigObject` which contains some properties and some other objects and I have a `storage` class which keeps all the limits of properties which will be required to validate a property. As described in the above example I have to get `ParameterInfo` for each property and then compare, I am looking for some kind of automatic way/dynamic way of doing the same."}
{"_id": "36513", "title": "Why is the warranty disclaimer section of a licence usually (always?) shouted?", "text": "For example, the templates provided on the Open Source Initiative website for the 3-clause BSD License, and the MIT License both include an all-caps warranty disclaimer, though the rest of the license is written with normal capitalisation. Is there some genuine reason for this? Or is it just a tradition to make the warranty disclaimer harder to read?"}
{"_id": "230358", "title": "Choosing a database for a framework with both asynchronous and synchronous calls", "text": "I'm building a framework to work as an all-purpose astronomy pipeline and before I get too far into development I was hoping to run my needs by you all to see if there are any optimizations or pitfalls I'm missing. This is a long one, so thank you to anyone who takes the time to look this over. My main needs are as follows (in order):   1. Cross platform and easy to install without a lot of dependencies. Most of the astronomers I work with are very good at understanding physics and astronomy but are weaker in programming ability and due to time constraints they are unlikely to adopt a new solution to reduce their data unless it's lightweight and easy to install on their choice of OS. If something looks complicated to install or setup then they will likely look for something else or continue using the decades old software they are currently using. I also like using python since a growing number of people in the astro community are using it.   2. Centrally located on a server. Currently most open source solutions for reducing data sit on the users machine. This means each user in a group must download the same data from the server, wasting disk space and time (often file sizes can be O(100Mb) or more). It also means they have to install and setup a variety of programs written by different people and it can take weeks to get one machine fully configured... until the next software update when something breaks and the procedure must be started again. So I want to use a web based solution where the images will all be located on a server that does the majority of the processing and my application is basically just a UI in a web browser to interact with all the nastiness that is open source astronomy command line software.   3. Ability to run both short and long runtime functions. For example, I have a viewer that converts a fits image into a bunch of png tiles and sends them to the client to be viewed on a canvas. This must be done as quickly as possible. Other tasks will run routines like photometry or data reduction that may take an hour or more, depending on the task and dataset. So it is important to be able to have some routines run asynchronously (like building and loading images) while other tasks are queued (like finding all the bright and isolated stars in a given image).   4. Modular structure. I plan on building a basic UI framework in python that can easily be extended by users. This will allow the community to share more of their code and only install the pieces needed for an individual or groups research. Functions essentially become webpages with an image viewer, instructions, and an interface for parameters to minimize the time it takes for new students to learn to use the software.   5. Small group of users. If there are 10 people using a server concurrently that is usually a lot. But if possible it would be nice to have something that scales up rather easily so that larger projects could adapt this for their needs.   6. Processing on multiple cores. While not necessary, our groups server has more cpu's than members of the group. So it would be nice if each user could log in and have their own core to run their jobs without interfering with other users. So what I have begun to develop is a python tornado server with mongodb solution on the server. Clients connect to the server via a web socket and send jobs to be processed. The job server then runs the routine specified by the client and sends the result to the client, or sends a link if an image or large data file is ready to be downloaded. The database is optional but handy (this is the part I'm implementing now). Typically the image files we deal with contain a header with 100 or so keywords. So when a new set of images is downloaded the user can load the headers into the database (this could be 100's of files). For a number of reasons, the user may want to search the files for any one of the hundred keywords, not just a few key indices. When I dump the header data into a cpickle object it's over 100mb and takes a minute or so to load. I'm hoping that mongodb (or some other db with a python interface) is faster and will allow for multiple users to access the data concurrently, but I've learned that databases can be very different and performance can vary greatly depending on the need. An additional function of the database will be to keep track of user accounts and which directories of images they are allowed to see (for example a collaborator from another university may have access to a set of data taken together while other datasets are for internal use only). One thing I've thought of doing is writing a general db api. Since most of the searches will be fairly simple functions could just call a getFiles routine that allows them to input lists of selection criteria and then the user simply needs to add the correct syntax for his/her particular db in the get function. Perhaps this is overkill, but one of the main things I'm trying to combat is the tendency in astronomy to use outdated code and technologies because no one wants to take the time to update them. My hope is that by making this as flexible as possible it can easily change as new tools are available (such as a better suited web server, database, or even more commonly used programing languages, keeping in mind that many of my collaborators still use fortran 77 code written before I was born). I've also considered running multiple job servers, one for tasks that need to be quickly accessed, and anther for jobs with long run times. But it would be nice to have a single server solution. I've put about a month into building the framework so far and unless there is a very good reason to switch web application servers I'd like to stick with Tornado. It's lightweight, easy to use, and seems to meet all of my needs. I just started looking at databases so I'm much more flexible and open to other options here. Thank you to anyone who has read through or skimmed most of this, any advice you have is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "255133", "title": "Better and cleanest way to bind a ICommand to a RelayCommand", "text": "By reading various source code, I see that there is different ways of binding an ICommand to a RelayCommand :   * From the constructor              MyAwesomeViewModel()  {         this._fooCommand = new RelayCommand((x) => Bar(x))      }        * Directly from the command property              private ICommand _fooCommand ;     public ICommand SearchCommand     {         get         {             return _fooCommand ?? (_fooCommand = new RelayCommand());         }     }      Which way is the better from your point of view ?"}
{"_id": "236353", "title": "How to manage memory in C interface for C++ implementation considering c++11?", "text": "I have a library implemented in C++ which has a C interface. This C interface is, for all intents and purposes, the only way to use this library. C++11 seems to discourage the use of raw pointers but neither shared_ptr or unique_ptr are suitable in this case. From what I understand, intrusive_ptr is an option, but I am both unsure of how this differs from maintaining my own ref count (I am new to C++) and wary of wading into boost yet (I am new to C++). How should I handle memory management in C++11 and higher? I only state the spec to make it clear that I am willing to use the features of the latest spec and have no need to maintain compatibility with older specs."}
{"_id": "230355", "title": "Unit Testing with an Optimization Problem", "text": "Suppose I'm making an algorithm that identifies the subject of a picture. It could be anything that a computer doesn't do that well, but I'm not expecting to get the right answer every time - 80% is fine. Suppose further, that the accuracy of the intermediate steps was also somewhat fuzzy. Is there a way to incorporate unit tests? The option that immediately comes to mind is to add 1 to a tally and every time a 'test' passes, increment the tally. When that finishes, divide by the total and test 'passes/tests > 0.8', but that seems kludgey. EDIT: Thank you all for your kind words and well-reasoned responses. My particular problem, while fuzzy, has nothing to do with pictures, and I'm currently getting about 80% pass. The short term value for me in a testing scheme would be knowing whether small adjustments were more globally beneficial or catastrophic. Long term testing value should be obvious."}
{"_id": "226097", "title": "Models Views and Controllers jobs", "text": "First, I know there are lot of answers about MVC but I need some more-specific ansewer based on my probably wrong understanding of MVC. I've already read this very good answer (Explain Model View Controller) but I still need some clarification. I need to understand if I've understood how MVC works because I'm using it in a kind of MVC framework I'm developing.   * I have the views that are at the moment just \"stupid\" templates    * The models that are \"things\" that fetch data from database (or other sources) and transform them in arrays passed to the views.   * The controllers that are mostly ajax javascript scripts and observers for buttons and other user events and PHP scripts that are called by the Ajax scripts when I need to perform server-side operations like SQL updates, inserts etc. So my \"MVC understanding\" makes my app works in this way: I open my index that loads the **viewsloader** (model), this one loads the contents calling the **contentsloader** (model) that calls some other script depending by the view the user is requesting.   Then when all the data is loaded in a single array, the **viewsloader** (model) uses it to render the requested view and passes it to the user. Now the user can click some button (for example a \"view contacts\" button) and under the hood my **contactslistener** (controller) calls the **contactsloader** (model) to load the contacts list, the array provided by the **contactsloader** (model) passed trhough the **contactslistener** (controller) which injects it in the view. * * * I think I have serious problems with the MVC model, looks like the **controllers** are doing too different things. Probably I should put the observers/listeners in the **views** part and use **controllers** just to load contents provided by the **models**.   * Are the **models** dedicated just to data fetching and organization (for example, fetch from database and put it in array organizing it with the right structure)?   * Are the **controllers** thought for handle user events or should I use **views** for this purpose? Should I use them to query the **models** and inject the answers into the **views**?   * Are the **views** just stupid templates or should I put there some business logic like event listeners? Following what I've read I should put the entire interface-side scripts here and put only (client/server)-side scripts in controllers. But in this case I've not idea about what a controller should do..."}
{"_id": "234843", "title": "Multi-level paging tables", "text": "Referring to the image here: ![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:X86_Paging_4K.svg](http://i.stack.imgur.com/B5cyA.png) From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:X86_Paging_4K.svg Could somebody please explain something for me? I don't get exactly how this works. As I understand it the page \"directory\" contains an entity which essentially points to the beginning of the \"page table\". However, surely all of the entities in the page \"directory\" would contain the exact same value? Or, does this mean we have 1x page \"directory\" but N page \"tables\" (at the same level in the page multi-level hierarchy\")? If there are N page \"tables\" and one page \"directory\" I get why the PD would point to one of the N PTs. If there aren't then I am really confused."}
{"_id": "234845", "title": "Confused in NoSql data model", "text": "I've a web application uses `MongoDB` as primary database. This is the first project I do with a NoSql db, I'm trying to create the application model but I'm confused. I know NoSql are non-normalized and it is normal to replicate data avoiding joins (that are not supported) but I'm now thinking at this scenario: I have the `User` class containing email address and the user can change it in the profile page. This email address is displayed in few pages in different environments and I think the right choice is to embed this property in few class documents (ex.: product subscription, invoice, shopping cart, ... ). What if the user change his email address? Have I to trigger multiple updates to change every collection, every document embeds this property?"}
{"_id": "236354", "title": "WPF Control Lifeycle and Navigating through Containers to set Focus", "text": "I wanted to understand a control's lifecycle in WPF. Let me explain my scenario: I have a complex screen containing various container controls hosting forms. Let's say my screen has 3 Accordion Items. In the first Accordion item, I have a TabControl and this TabControl has 4 TabItems. Each TabItem has various Forms containing label-value pairs such as checkboxes, comboboxes, textboxes, RadWatermarkTextBoxes etc.., Now, the user introduces an error in one of the TextBox present in AccordionItem#1 --> TabControl#1 --> TabItem#1 --> TextBox#1 (for example) and then he/she switches over to TabItem#2 within the TabControl#1. Now, when the user switches over to TabItem#2, does the TextBox#1 die? Is it recreated again, when I expand TabItem#1? What exactly happens when a container is collapsed and how can I set focus to an element which is not existing in the view anymore? Let me explain it further in detail ... Now, let's say, the user has introduced various errors in different forms of the TabItems. and has now come out of the AccordionItem#1 and entered into AccordionItem#2. There are lots of errors (the user knows that and would like to correct them later by navigating to them). After finishing all the form filling in all the accordions. He starts looking at the errors before saving. The user needs to navigate and to do this, we have an icon and clicking on this icon, will take us to the next erroneous field, which means I need to automatically open the AccordionItem#1 --> TabControl#1 --> TabItem#1 --> TextBox#1 and set focus to this control, so that the user can start editing it. When the user finishes correcting the error in this field, he/she presses the icon again, and I need to automatically open AccordionItem#2 --> TabControl#2 --> TabItem#3 --> TextBox#4 for example. All these were previously collapsed as we were in AccordionItem#1 previously?! So, I wanted to understand, if something like this is possible or not? I was wondering what kind of a pattern will help us achieve this kind of functionality. When I find an error. Can I store a reference to this element(using its GUID - i.e. x:Name value) and when user clicks on the next error, then raise an event on it, which will propogate up the visual tree letting the parent tab handle it, passing it further and on till I reach the highest level and then pass another event down the line so that each of these parents can then expand themselves come into view and finally setting focus to the errorneous control? Is something like this possible? It is an interesting scenario and probably many developers might have encountered an issue like this when designing and developing huge applications."}
{"_id": "83251", "title": "Tips and recomendations for a phone interview", "text": "A while ago I asked this question, I got very nice results but now I have a similar situation, but I'm looking for advices and I want to know if you think is possible to tell if you want a developer only with a phone interview. Let's say that you need to perform an interview to a candidate which is not on your country, so in case you'd hire him/her you'd have to provide a relocation package, wait for him/her to get the whole work permit in order and all those stuff, so you'd need to make sure that this person is quite worth it. Let's say that the candidate is applying for a junior developer position as a C#/ASP.NET developer with a small / medium software development company.   * Can you tell in a phone interview if you'd like the candidate?   * Any recomendations for the candidate to impress the interviewer?"}
{"_id": "83254", "title": "Career with PeopleSoft", "text": "I have 3 years of experience writting applications with Java. I am doing my Master's now. Last year, I started working with PeopleSoft systems for my university. I am considering it as my career path from now on. I am trying to determin what thee pros and cons for it would be."}
{"_id": "83259", "title": "Any recommendation to manage an investigation projects?", "text": "I'm working on an investigation on the NLP field. Since software engineering and software documentation are not the primary concerns of my whole investigation I decided to do it using XP. My question is, can you recomend:   * Any tool you've used to manage XP projects   * Any recomendation/link on how to manage investigation projects I'm very biased with XP because I've used it before, but if anyone has a better methodology you can post it as well"}
{"_id": "202341", "title": "Does the expansion of new technologies cause a perceived shortage of skill?", "text": "Systems programming and desktop application development is a well established field. In recent years, web and mobile development have shown rapid expansion. As a software engineer I understand that _programming is programming_ , and C++, Javascript, and Android APIs are tools that any engineer worth his salt can handle. Unfortunately, there exist recruiters, managers, and companies that don't understand that skill isn't necessarily tied to tools. Also, some companies just aren't interested in providing the ramp-up time required when hiring an engineer with little direct experience with a software tool that is used by their existing development team. Does this combination of increasing demand for applications built with recently established tools/platforms and recruiter/HR figures' juxtaposition of _programming_ experience with _tools_ experience cause a (albeit arguably incorrect) perceived shortage of skill applicable to new technologies? To phrase it differently, given two similarly talented engineers, is the one doing C++ application development less valued in the market than the one with some web applications under his belt?"}
{"_id": "133169", "title": "Creating controls dynamically in the code-behind or ViewModel?", "text": "Right now I'm working migrating an app I made entirely using code behind to MVVM and had a question on where I'm supposed to be creating controls dynamically. Basically I have a web service that returns {#} of items. For each item a button will be created and the item will be assigned to its data context. Now so far I know that I should set the Command to the ViewModel as well as the Command property. Also I know I should call those items in my web service inside of the view model (or model, right now its irrelevant to the question). The part that is questionable is where to create the buttons. I didn't really like the idea of creating buttons in my ViewModel since it was, well, related to the View. Is this correct or should I be creating them inside the ViewModel and then some how pass them back to the View via Messaging?"}
{"_id": "202349", "title": "Strategies for removing register_globals from a file", "text": "I have a file (or rather, a list of about 100 files) in my website's repository that is still requiring the use of register_globals and other nastiness (like custom error reporting, etc) because the code is so bad, throws notices, and is 100% procedural with few subroutines. We want to move to PHP 5.4 (and eventually 5.5) this year, but can't until we can port these files over, clean them up, etc. The average file length is about 1000 lines. I've already cleaned up a few of the low-hanging fruit, however the job took almost an entire day for 2 300-500 line files. I am in a quagmire here (giggity). Anyway, has anyone else dealt with this in the past? Are there any strategies besides tracing backwards through the code? Most static analysis tools don't look at code outside of functions - are there any that will look at the procedural code and help find at least some of the problems?"}
{"_id": "40031", "title": "Property-coalescing operator for C#", "text": "The null-coalescing operator in c# allows you to shorten the code                 if (_mywidget == null)          return new Widget();       else          return _mywidget;      Down to:                 return _mywidget ?? new Widget();      I keep finding that a useful operator I'd like to have in C# would be one that allowed you to return a property of an object, or some other value if the object is null. So I'd like to replace                 if (_mywidget == null)          return 5;       else          return _mywidget.Length;      With:                 return _mywidget.Length ??! 5;      I can't help thinking that there must be some reason for this operator not to exist. Is it a code smell? Is there some better way to write this? (I'm aware of the null object pattern but it seems overkill to use it to replace these four lines of code.)"}
{"_id": "133162", "title": "Multiple source files vs. libraries for a single project", "text": "I write a lot of scientific software, and I originally got into programming with F77. I moved to C++ for my primary programming about 10 years ago now, but I do catch myself using F77 habits. One thing I cannot seem to get used to is library usage. To be clear, I understand why one would want to use one, but for most of the code I write, no one but the end user and the maintainers will ever use the routines I write, so I question the usefulness to me. Okay, so libraries give you a good place to stash reusable code that's easy to follow and maintain. But didn't separate source files already solve that problem for my situation? What advantage would I gain by putting my source files into a library? I can understand executable file size savings with shared libraries, but is that all that important? I have a lot of math routines that are general and could be extracted to a shared library, but should I? Most of them are only called once by a single point in my code, and usually only by a single project, so do I gain anything? Isn't any memory savings gone the moment the symbol is resolved, and the code loaded? Thanks."}
{"_id": "133163", "title": "Organizing projects in SVN", "text": "I'm fairly new to SVN and I would be interested in hearing about how other people would organize projects in SVN. We have projects that have different types of source files: C#, SQL, and Matlab. In addition to these types of files, we have Excel and Word file reports that we do not intend to put into SVN. So let's say we have a projects directory:               Projects\\     Projects\\Project1     Projects\\Project2     ...      Now for the SVN repository, would it make sense to categorize things by source file type (C#, SQL, Matlab) then project:               SVN\\C#\\Project1     SVN\\C#\\Project2     SVN\\SQL\\Project1     SVN\\SQL\\Project2     SVN\\Matlab\\Project1     SVN\\Matlab\\Project2      Or would it make more sense to categorize things by project first then source file type:               SVN\\Project1\\C#     SVN\\Project1\\SQL     SVN\\Project1\\Matlab     SVN\\Project2\\C#     SVN\\Project2\\SQL     SVN\\Project2\\Matlab      Or maybe there's a better way to do this? Also, what is the best way to indicate in the Projects folders (not SVN) that a project contains files saved in SVN? Like, if I went into a the project folder for Project1 (Projects\\Project1) and only saw Excel and Word reports, what would be the best way to indicate that there are other files checked into an SVN repository? Also, how does everyone feel about putting checked out SVN files on shared drives? So for instance, let's say Projects\\Project1 contains the following files:               Report1.doc     Script.sql (This is a checked out SVN files in the Projects folder, which is a shared network drive)      In this situation, it would be very easy to see when there are SVN files used with a project, BUT having the checked out SVN file on a shared drive would make collaboration much more difficult. Is this others do to?"}
{"_id": "131632", "title": "Is querying KeyValue Pairs efficient compared to two-property objects?", "text": "I'm working on a webservice and I'm returning JSON. However, I'm returning a `List<KeyValuePair<string, int>>`, since that's all I'm really ever going to be dealing with (property => value) Now sometimes I myself will be calling these functions to aggregate the results, so I end up with something like               List<KeyValuePair<string, int>> myList = resultList.where(o => o.Key ==\"StringKEY\");      and sometimes               List<KeyValuePair<string, int>> myList = resultList.sum(o => o.Key ==\"StringKEY\");      My question is, would it be more efficient to do the following (custom class vs dictionary):               List<MyObject> myObj = resultObjList.where(o => o.Property1 == \"stringProperty\")      and so on. Is there any benefit to using custom objects? I will not ever need to be adding properties, and in this case I can say there will never be a need for additional properties."}
{"_id": "149866", "title": "Are R&D mini-projects a good activity for interns?", "text": "I'm going to be in charge of hiring some interns for our software department soon (automotive infotainment systems) and I'm designing an internship program. The main productive activity \"menu\" I'm planning for them consists of:   * Verification testing   * Writing Unit Tests (automated, with an xUnit-compliant framework [several languages in our projects])    * Documenting      * Code      * Updating wiki      * Updating diagrams & design docs    * Helping with low priority tickets (supervised/mentored)   * Hunting down & cleaning compiler/run-time warnings    * Refactoring/cleaning code against our coding standards But I also have this idea that having them do small R&D projects would be good to test their talent and get them to have fun. These mini-projects would be:   * Experimental implementations & optimizations   * Proof of concept implementations for new technologies   * Small papers (~2-5 pages) doing formal research on the previous two points   * Apps (from a mini-project pool) These kinds of projects would be pre-defined and very concrete, although new ideas from the interns themselves would be very welcome. Even if a project is too big or is abandoned, the idea would also be to lay the ground work so they can be retaken by another intern or intern team. While I think this is good in concept, I don't know if it could be good in practice, as obviously this would diminish their productivity on \"real work\" (work with immediate value to the company), but I think it could help bring aboard very bright people and get them to want to stay in the future (which, I think, is the end goal for any internship program). My question here is if these activities are too open ended or difficult for the average intern to accomplish and if R&D is an efficient use of an interns time or if it makes more sense for to assign project work to interns instead."}
{"_id": "85946", "title": "Independent projects as a student to show off abilities", "text": "I'm an inexperienced student (having learned up to data structures and algorithms through various online resources) of computer science, and I'm hoping to get a job as a developer some time after I've gotten a few independent projects done. My question is, how should I choose which projects to work on? I've been looking around stackoverflow-- people usually say to pick whatever you're interested in, but I don't have enough experience to even know what specifically I'm interested in, and possibly more importantly, I don't know what some common beginner project types are. Essentially, I'm at the gap between course work (and the projects entailed in those classes) and real programming, and I don't quite know how to start. If any of you have any ideas, I'd really appreciate it."}
{"_id": "85942", "title": "Software cost estimation", "text": "I've seen on my work place (a University) most students making the software estimation cost of their final diploma work using COCOMO. My guessing is that this way of estimating costs is somewhat old (COCOMO dates of 1981), hence my question:               How do you estimate costs in your software?      I've seen things like : Cost = ( HoursOfWork + EstimatedIddle ) * HourlyRate That's not what I want, I'm looking for a properly (scientifically) defined cost model **EDIT** I've found some related questions on SO:   * What are some of the software cost estimation methods and models?   * How do you estimate the cost of developing software requirements?"}
{"_id": "225698", "title": "Why should an \"Order\" object have a \"Status\" property?", "text": "I always see standard Order classes implemented with a \"Status\" property, but I don't feel comfortable with that. Isn't the status a property of the fulfillment process instead of the order itself? What about orders that can be subject to different fulfillment processes?"}
{"_id": "138843", "title": "Communicating from lower level components to GUI?", "text": "What is the recommended way for a lower level software component/module to communicate with the GUI? I'm using C++. I have a service layer class that if some conditions occur needs to notify the user, but still continue processing. In the case of an unrecoverable error I understand that I can use exceptions to bubble up to the GUI, but what about in the case of a simple message that needs to be communicated to the user where the lower level component continues executing? **UPDATE** Just to clarify the service layer (aka business logic, compute layer, etc) does not \"know\" about the GUI nor do I want it to."}
{"_id": "138841", "title": "Library/Framework usage guidelines", "text": "At my core, I'm a structural, Computer Science sort of programmer (in college I was required to do a lot of programming using C, C++ and even COBOL(!)) and I'm finding more and more conflict with the core fundamentals I developed in my CS degree as opposed to the modern web development world that I'm currently immersed in. One of those conflicts I'm having is the place of libraries/frameworks in web development. I've been discovering and experimenting with several libraries/frameworks for some web application development I've been doing. Some that I've used and/or experimented with include jQuery, jQueryUi, TinyMCE, CodeIgniter, Struts, Spring and GWT. I have a slight fear of using these libraries/frameworks too extensively because of the rapidly changing nature of web technology. It seems about every other minute there's some new library/framework available to use in web development, whether it's a new framework or enhancement to an existing technology. This really rubs against the academic world I was in as we generally spent an entire semester learning the language/concept with the expectation we would later use that knowledge effectively in the workplace. My fear is that a lack of good understanding of a library/framework will lead to me to a dead end path where I will have more problems than the one that I set out to solve initially. Sorry for rambling, but I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced such a fear? I'm also wondering what could be some general guidelines for implementing libraries/frameworks into a web application. i.e. Should there be a limit of how many libraries/frameworks are used when developing a web application? Should a developer spend a week (or 2 or 3...) really getting to know the library/framework before attempting to implement it into their web application? Ultimately looking for answers in the context of libraries/frameworks which (loosely) includes anything that is implemented in a web application outside of the core technology (Java, JSP, PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript are core technologies that I personally use)."}
{"_id": "138844", "title": "Should we check in Setup Project of Visual Studio", "text": "From what I understand, the ideal way to prepare builds using Visual Studio is to use a single build machine. That means, while the developers go through development process using their respective machine, the build isn't prepared from any of those machines and a build PC is used instead. Under this condition, is it necessary to check-in(using TFS as example here) the setup project. There isn't any version controlling on that particular project as any required change would be done in the build machine itself, and this isn't of any concern to others."}
{"_id": "144019", "title": "Pointers in C vs No pointers in PHP", "text": "Both languages have the same syntax. Why does C have the weird `*` character that denotes pointers (which is some kind of memory address of the variable contents?), when PHP doesn't have it and you can do pretty much the same things in PHP that you can do in C, without pointers? I guess the PHP compiler handles this internally, why doesn't C do the same? Doesn't this add unneeded complexity in C? For example I don't understand them :)"}
{"_id": "171368", "title": "Large enterprise application - clients wish to use duplicate e-mails addresses?", "text": "I'd like to know people's opinions, reactions to clients and technical work arounds (if applicable), to the issue of an enterprise application where a client wishes to use duplicate e-mail addresses? To clarify, when I say duplicate e-mail addresses I mean within the same client system, having multiple users that have the same e-mail address. So not just using generic e-mail addresses but using the e-mail address of another user. e.g. Bob Jenkins: bjenkins@myorg.com James Jeffery: bjenkins@myorg.com **Context** To give this some further context, in the e-learning sector it is common that although all staff in an organisation must complete e-learning - they may not have their own e-mail address so they choose to use their managers e-mail address. Albeit against good practice in public sites... it's a requirement we've over and over again where an organisation is split between office based staff and perhaps e.g. staff in a warehouse. **Where problem lies** Mr Steak, good point, the problem lies in password resets and perhaps in situations where semi-personal information could be sent (not confidential enough to worry about the insecurities of email). Perhaps reminders for specific system actions, which would be confusing for the unintended party to see (if perhaps misreading the e-mail's intended recipient) **Possible solutions**   * System knowing the difference between a \"for the attention of\" and direct to the person e-mails, including this in the body text.   * Using alternative communication such as SMS   * Simply not having e-mails sent to people who are not the intended recipient.   * Providing an e-mail service ourselfs (not really viable for a corporate IT dept) Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "238128", "title": "versioning data schema in android internal storage", "text": "I am using Android's internal storage to hold data for my application and I am trying to find a good way to handle reading data of an older schema. For example, let's say I have serialized and written several instances of class Data to a file               public class Data{         private String text;         public Data(text){             this.text = text;         }     }      and later I read that stringified data back out and cast to (Data). But then say I change Data to look like this               public class Data{         private String name;         public Data(name){             this.name = name;         }     }      now that the property is named differently, when I read out data that was saved in the original schema, it will not easily cast to the new type. What are some solutions to version the data so that I can read out old data and cast it to a new type?"}
{"_id": "78043", "title": "Writing a CSS parser in C#. What do you think is the best strategy?", "text": "I'm in the middle of writing a CSS parser in C#. I'm well under way, but I also have those times where I wonder if I'm taking the best approach. The things I've considered are:   1. Feed the CSS grammar from the W3C into a parser generator and working off that.   2. Hand-code a CSS parser off the grammar.   3. Use a generated tokenizer, but hand-code the parsing of the productions.   4. The reverse of (3) - generate the productions, but hand-code the tokenizer. Without revealing my current approach, I was wondering how others feel about this, and appreciate any comments and guidance from your experience. Part of this is also to see what questions people ask and compare the questions to what I asked myself."}
{"_id": "233717", "title": "How to Recover from Inconsistent Job State without Database Polling", "text": "I'm working on scaling an application which is currently polling a mySQL database to send async jobs to a background processing system. A state machine is being used to keep track of the entities progress throughout a workflow. For example, we might have three states:   * Scheduled   * Processing   * Complete My plan is to add a messaging queue system to broker the jobs sent to the background processing system. So `Application A` would insert a new entity, then push a message to the queue. `Application B` would consume these messages and route them to the correct background processing job.               def do_work(entity)       # Precondition check       raise \"Wrong State\" unless entity.scheduled?            # Update state to processing       entity.processing            # ... do work            # Update state to complete       entity.complete     end      Given a job like above, I am having a hard time determining how it would be possible to recover from a situation where there was an error between the `processing` and `complete` event transitions. For example a process crash. The job processor would re-try the job, but now the entity is in an inconsistent state, and would fail. How could I handle this case without resulting back to polling the entity table looking for stale jobs? **Edit** There are two different concepts at play here. We have the data, and we have the state of the data as it relates to the job execution (scheduled/processing) + the state of the workflow (complete). Both of these pieces of information are in the same table. So after data grows the process of polling becomes inefficient (reads/updates/inserts constantly happening). So maybe a solution is to have `Application B` move active jobs into a separate datastore. So when the \"clean up\" task that @\u04cd\u03c3\u1d8e refers to is running, the dataset should be much smaller. Ultimately, there it seems like there is no way to avoid polling the database to ensure data is a correct state."}
{"_id": "171363", "title": "Are There Other Use Cases For F# Type Providers?", "text": "So I think I know the main use case for F# 3.0's Type Providers, i. e. better Intellisense when working with data stores that use them. Are there other use cases for Type Providers or is that pretty much it?"}
{"_id": "173213", "title": "Can interface be not abstract?", "text": "Friend of mine said that not every interface is abstract. I haven't chance to discuss that with him but it get me thinking of not abstract interface in any type of language. Is there a non abstract interfaces?"}
{"_id": "109731", "title": "Career Day: how do I make \"computer programmer\" sound cool to 8 years old?", "text": "Have to do a talk at Career Day at my kid's school & looking for ideas on how to make \"computer programmer\" sound cool to 8 years old."}
{"_id": "100725", "title": "Should I be concerned if I have nothing to do during an internship?", "text": "I have been an intern at this company for about four months now. At first, it was great because I didn't have a ton of hours, the work was interesting, and it didn't interfere with school. However, once summer started, some problems turned up. They changed my direct supervisor from the person who managed the programmers to just one of the software engineers. He is pretty busy and doesn't have a lot of time to help me, so I can end up stuck for days before I can finally get help from someone. This is pretty frustrating, as I really have nothing to do during this time period and my new supervisor is extremely hard to get a hold of. As an intern, I really feel like I need more direction and help. I quickly run out of things to do or get completely overwhelmed when assigned broad things. I'm never really \"checked on\", so I can sit for a long time without getting anything done and no one really cares. I've tried asking for help multiple times, but he either doesn't respond to my emails or cancels our meetings. Is this normal for an intern? Is there anything I should be doing so that I can be more productive? Should I go ask management for help or would that be considered out of line for an intern? Should I not really worry about it, since this is just an internship?"}
{"_id": "170093", "title": "Use of keyword \"Using\" in C# interface", "text": "When I'm using C# to write some code and I define an interface using Visual Studio 2010, it always includes a number of \"using\" statements (as shown in the example)               using System;     using System.Collections.Generic;     using System.Linq;     using System.Text;          namespace TestEngine.TestNameSpace     {         interface ITest1         {             bool testMethod(int xyz);         }     }       I wonder what these are for and if they are really necessary. Can I leave these out? Are they only necessary when I'm using those parts in my interface description?"}
{"_id": "15391", "title": "What's the most appropriate duration of the video tutorial?", "text": "It is now more and more popular to have video tutorials of the software or technology instead of writing long articles. As for me, it makes perfect sense, especially for such areas like \"Getting Started\" or \"What's New\". What do you think is the most appropriate duration for such a videos? If you record the video tutorial yourself, would you just touch main points to keep it brief, or rather split it into a number of parts to keep the same level of details? And why? I know this question isn't implied to have one and only answer. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind various opinions. I have personally come across a video tutorial 45 minutes long today, and I got tired at around minute 10... So, my own impression is it's better to keep it from 5 to 10 minutes to gain visitor's attention fully. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "15397", "title": "Python and only Python for almost any programming tasks!", "text": "Am I wrong if I think that Python is all I need to master, in order to solve most of the common programming tasks? **EDIT** I'm not OK with learning new programming languages if they don't teach me new concepts of programming and problem solving; hence the idea behind mastering a modern, fast evolving, with a rich set of class libraries, widely used and documented, and of course has a \"friendly\" learning curve programming language. I think that in the fast evolving tech industry, specialization is key to success."}
{"_id": "166640", "title": "Besides macros, are there any other metaprogramming techniques?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Programming languages with a Lisp-like syntax extension mechanism I'm making a programming language, and, having spent some time in Lisp/Scheme, I feel that my language should be malleable. Should I use macros, or is there something else I might/should use? Is malleable syntax even a good idea? Is it perhaps too powerful a concept? In doing some research, I found `fexprs`. I don't really understand what these are. Help with that in an answer too please. Is it possible to have a language with macros/something-of-a-similar-nature without having s-expressions?"}
{"_id": "215013", "title": "Languages like Tcl that have configurable syntax?", "text": "I'm looking for a language that will let me do what I could do with Clipper years ago, and which I can do with Tcl, namely add functionality in a way other than just adding functions. For example in Clipper/(x)Harbour there are commands #command, #translate, #xcommand and #xtranslate that allow things like this:               #xcommand REPEAT;         => DO WHILE .T.      #xcommand UNTIL <cond>;        =>     IF (<cond>);                   ;EXIT;               ;ENDIF;           ;ENDDO           LOCAL n := 1     REPEAT         n := n + 1     UNTIL n > 100      Similarly, in Tcl I'm doing               proc process_range {_for_ project _from_ dat1 _to_ dat2 _by_ slice} {         set fromDate [clock scan $dat1]         set toDate   [clock scan $dat2]              if {$slice eq \"day\"} then {set incrementor [expr 24 * 60]}         if {$slice eq \"hour\"} then {set incrementor 60}              set method DateRange              puts \"Scanning from [clock format $fromDate -format \"%c\"] to [clock format $toDate -format \"%c\"] by $slice\"         for {set dateCursor $fromDate} {$dateCursor <= $toDate} {set dateCursor [clock add $dateCursor $incrementor minutes]} {             # ...         }     }     process_range for \"client\" from \"2013-10-18 00:00\" to \"2013-10-20 23:59\" by day      Are there any other languages that permit this kind of, almost COBOL-esque, syntax modification? If you're wondering why I'm asking, it's for setting up stuff so that others with a not-as-geeky-as-I-am skillset can declare processing tasks."}
{"_id": "184089", "title": "Why don't languages include implication as a logical operator?", "text": "It might be a strange question, but why there is no implication as a logical operator in many languages (Java, C, C++, Python Haskell - although as last one have user defined operators its trivial to add it)? I find logical implication much clearer to write (particularly in asserts or assert-like expressions) then negation with or:               encrypt(buf, key, mode, iv = null) {         assert (mode != ECB --> iv != null);         assert (mode == ECB || iv != null);         assert (implies(mode != ECB, iv != null)); // User-defined function     }"}
{"_id": "210902", "title": "Can I use the code for responsive video on this github link under a license?", "text": "This is the link: https://gist.github.com/jgarber/2302238 I am new to github and web development.So please bear with my questions. I would like to use the responsive video code on the link mentioned above, for a commercial website I am building. I see that the code is posted under the 'public' section but there is a copyright attached as well. And, the file name is MIT-LICENSE.txt. Does this have any connection with the MIT-License? Two questions: a) Can I use this code by giving an attribution? b) And, if I can, under which license can I use the code and what sort of attribution is required?"}
{"_id": "234159", "title": "Database Schema Data Independence", "text": "I'm currently reading about database schemas about how the three-level ANSI- SPARC architecture works and i'm a bit confused about a concept it's talking about. My question is what would happen if an application was modified so it could store data for a column not defined in the logical schema? The book i'm reading talks about: > ... the addition or removal of new entities, attributes or relationships > should be possible without having to change existing external schemas or > having to rewrite application programs.\" - Database Systems: A practical > Approach to Design, Implementation and Management. Page: 40 (Part: 2.1.5)   * How does the logical schema handle input (columns) from applications for which it is not defined in the logical schema? ANSI-SPARC architecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI-SPARC_Architecture"}
{"_id": "234158", "title": "Make a java program use more processors", "text": "I am running a program that is supposed to solve a problem with the brute force approach. My computer has a quad-core CPU. When I run the program clearly java uses only one core, because in my program I use only one thread. Is there a way to split up the program in more threads so that more core's are used and so to improve calculation speed? I mean: if one has a program which has a natural solution that uses only one thread, is it possible to force it use more threads without completely changing the code?"}
{"_id": "241081", "title": "How to fix poorly designed software?", "text": "I am working on large project solo as a hobby, and I made a mistake in the very beginning: I jumped right into programming without giving a second though to design. Now I am nearly 6 months in and things are starting to fall apart: I cant get anything done, the code is very inconsistant, and the whole thing is a mess. Ive definitely learned the importance of design in software development, but I dont know how one designs software to begin with. Are there any programs that can help with this? Or do I need to sit down with pen and paper for the next few weeks trying to work things out?"}
{"_id": "183733", "title": "What features should be tested via automated UI testing?", "text": "We recently had a consultant tell us that if a feature can only be tested via automated UI tests (e.g. Selenium, Coded UI), then there is an underlying architectural issue. While this statement might be a bit extreme, it is along the same lines of the testing pyramid in that UI tests should make up a small portion of your overall automated test suite. So, what kinds of features _should_ have automated UI testing? Will a system with a cogent architecture still have features that can only be verified through UI tests, or should these tests just serve as \"back-up\" for a suite of unit and service tests?"}
{"_id": "183730", "title": "Machine Learning With Categorical and Continuous Data", "text": "This question could go here or on S.O. perhaps... Suppose that your training dataset contains both categorical and continuous data such as this setup:                Animal, breed,  sex, age, weight, blood_pressure, annual_cost      cat,    calico, M,   10,  15    ,   100         , 100       cat,    tabby,  F,   5,   10    ,   80          , 200      dog,    beagle, M,   3,   30    ,   90          , 200      dog,    lab,    F,   8,   75    ,   80          , 100      And the dependent variable to be predicted is the annual vet cost. I'm a bit confused as to the specific techniques available to deal with such a dataset. What are the methods commonly used to deal with datasets that are a mixture of both continuous and categorical data?"}
{"_id": "183731", "title": "Convert grammar into an LL(1) grammar which recognises the same language", "text": "I have the following sample question for a compilers exam and wanted to check my solution.               Convert the following grammar into an LL(1) grammar which recognises the same      language:          E -> E + T       E -> T       T -> id      T -> id()      T -> id(L)      L -> E;L      L -> E      For my answer I have               E  -> T E'       E' -> + T | \u03b5       T  -> id      T  -> id()      T  -> id(L)      L  -> E L'      L' -> ;E | \u03b5      Can anybody verify the answer? **Edit** Ok so would it be similar to...               E  -> T E'       E' -> + E | \u03b5       T  -> id      T  -> id()      T  -> id(L)      L  -> E L'      L' -> ;E | \u03b5"}
{"_id": "241089", "title": "Keep user and user profile in different tables?", "text": "I have seen in a couple of projects that developers prefer to keep essential user info in one table (email/login, password hash, screen name) and rest of the non essential user profile in another (creation date, country, etc). By non-essential I mean that this data is needed only occasionally. Obvious benefit is that if you are using ORM querying less fields is obviously good. But then you can have two entities mapped to same table and this will save you from querying stuff you don't need (while being more convenient). Does anybody know any other advantage of keeping these things in two tables?"}
{"_id": "229958", "title": "In C++ what is the commonly accepted method for making a program platform-agnostic?", "text": "The way I usually do it is I make some namespace Platform in Platform.h and every OS call is encapsulated by a static function in this namespace. So the only place in the entire code base that knows what OS is being used is Platform.cpp. Is this a good way of making things easier? For instance when I call Platform::MessageBox(...), what actually happens is:               void Platform::MessageBox(...)     {     #ifdef(_WINDOWS)     ....     #elif(_LINUX)     ....     #elif(_MAC)     ....     #endif     }"}
{"_id": "144528", "title": "Interesting Topics in Comp. Sci. for New Students?", "text": "I hope this is the right forum to ask this question. Last friday I was in a discussion with my professors about the students' lack of motivation and interest in the field of Computer Science. All of the students are enrolled, but through questionnaires and other questions that my professor posed it was revealed that over 90% of all enrolled students are just in it for the reward of getting a job sometime in the future (since it's a growing field with high job potential) I asked my professor for the permission to take over the first couple of lectures and try and motivate, interest and inspire students for the field of Computer Science and programming in particular (this is the Intro to Programming course). This request was granted and I now have a week to come up with a lecture topic for my professor's five groups. My main goal isn't to teach, I just want to get students to be as interested in the field as I am. I want to show them what's possible, what awesome magical things have been done in the field, the future we are heading towards using programming and Comp. Sci. Therefore, I would like to pose this question: I have a few topics, materials and sample projects that I would like to talk about:   * Grace Hopper (It is my hope to interest the female programmers in the class. There are never more than two or three per group and they, more than males, are prone to jumping ship and abandoning Comp. Sci.)   * The Singularity Institute   * Alan Turing   * Robotics   * Programming not as a chore or a must, but the idea that we are, at our core, the nexus to which anything anybody does in the digital world is connected to. We are the problem solvers; we assemble all the parts together and we are the ones that, essentially, make the vision a reality.   * Give them an idea for a programming project which, through the help of the professor, could be significant to every student (I want students to not only feel interested in the topic, but they should feel important, that what they do here makes a difference) Do you have interesting topics worthy of discussion, something I can tell the students which they can get interested about? How would you approach the lecture? If you had 90 minutes worth of time to try and get students interested in the project, what would you do?"}
{"_id": "184337", "title": "Emphasize negation", "text": "I was just writing an if statement with fairly long property names and came occross this problem. Let say we have an if statement like this:               if(_someViewModelNameThatIsLong.AnotherPropertyINeedToCheck == someValue &&        !_someViewModelNameThatIsLong.ThisIsABooleanPropertyThatIsImportant)     {         //Do something     }      The second property is of a boolean type and it makes no sense to have the stetement like               if(boleanValue == true)      Is there a better way to emphasize the negation then to put the `!` in front. To me it seems like this can easily be overseen when reading the code and may potentialy cause problems with debuging"}
{"_id": "184336", "title": "Parsing a Log File - Java", "text": "Im reading a log file in Java on a Linux box on a continual schedule of 2 minutes looking for certain messages. I store the last offset (RandomAccessFile getFilePointer) and read from it onwards when I detect LastModified has changed; is this best practice or even right?"}
{"_id": "227817", "title": "Data sharing across processes", "text": "I have a C# .NET app that downloads a users Tweets using LinqToTwitter. This is for TV broadcast - the client wants to show Tweets on air. We have two other apps that need to access these tweets. One is a C++ app and one will use MS Script Host. These two apps don't run at the same time - it's one or the other. My question is, of the many ways to share this data, which would you choose? **DataBase** \\- Like MySql. This was my first choice. But then it seemed like overkill for the 10-20 tweets they would get per day. **Streaming** \\- Like TCP or named pipes. This would involve some type of protocol. Like \"Give me the last 10 tweets...\" **Xml** \\- Store the data in a file all programs can access. Simplest, but just doesn't feel right for some reason. **Memory Mapped IO** \\- I think this would require a COM library for the scripts to be able to use it There are others. Just curious what you would use. I am the only programmer in a small company and don't have others to bounce ideas off of. Thanks."}
{"_id": "180421", "title": "Using database Indexes", "text": "This might sound like a naive question but when are database table indexes in mysql required? How do such indexes affect performance and why?"}
{"_id": "180429", "title": "Is there a way to display the stack during recursion method?", "text": "I'm trying to learn recursion. I copied this bit of code from my book and added the displays to help me trace what the method is doing and when.               public static void main(String[] args) {                   System.out.println(sum(4));          }//main          public static int sum(int n) {         int sum;         System.out.println(\"n = \" + n + \"\\n\");         if (n == 1)             sum = 1;         else             sum = sum(n - 1) + n;            System.out.println(\"n after function = \" + n + \"\\n\");         System.out.println(\"sum after function = \" + sum + \"\\n\");         return sum;     }          Here's the results: > n = 4 > > n = 3 > > n = 2 > > n = 1 > > n after function = 1 > > sum after function = 1 > > n after function = 2 > > sum after function = 3 > > n after function = 3 > > sum after function = 6 > > n after function = 4 > > sum after function = 10 > > 10 I'm getting hung up on what's being stored in the stack, or perhaps how it's being stored. Is there a way to display what's in the stack while n is counting down to 1? This is an odd concept - it's like an invisible loop storing values in a way I don't understand."}
{"_id": "159453", "title": "Are there any good, open-source change request systems?", "text": "I have a need to make a somewhat custom change request system (very high auditing requirements). Instead of completely reinventing the wheel I was wondering if there's an open-source change request system, considered decent that I could write a custom module for? I've done some searching but the ones I have found don't seem to encapsulate what a change request system should be (no way of recording test plans or work streams). In my experience a change request system has (does) store test plans / technical specs and a log of work."}
{"_id": "159454", "title": "How important are the people I work with?", "text": "I'm a very lucky individual who's managed to push a job I enjoy as a junior developer (I say push as I was hired as a Business Analyst but moved into development by proving I could do the work). I'm happy with my salary and working conditions. BUT (Seriously, why wouldn't there be a but?) the people I work with are... in a word... up themselves. I have two senior developers - brilliant minds, great work but complete knowledge horders. I feel like there's a lot I _could_ learn from them but very little they're going to _let_ me learn. As I'm early in my career and really want to become as great at this as I can - how important is learning from others (outside of the Internet) at this point in my career? Am I doing myself a disservice that I'm going to live to regret later in my career by staying here and not seeking out a workplace that has people willing to teach me and help me to further my skills?"}
{"_id": "136440", "title": "Asynchronous Java", "text": "I'm wondering if I wanted to implement a web service based on java that does web analytics, what sort of architecture should I use. The actualy processing of the Big Data would be done by Hadoop. However I am not sure what I would need to do to make it asynchronous, or is Hadoop already asynchronous by nature? Could I do something with JMS? If so, how would that fit into the whole thing? Would it be something along the lines that upon receiving the web service request, I use JMS to send a message to Hadoop to handle a particular data, and then wait for it to come back to me? I am not too familiar with asynchronous java so I'm not sure where to start."}
{"_id": "218823", "title": "What does \"testing surface\" mean in the context of programming?", "text": "I encountered the following text in an article on the ModelViewPresenter pattern and my brain blue-screened: > Passive View usually provides a **larger testing surface** than Supervising > Controller because all the view update logic is placed in the presenter. I haven't come across this particular jargon before and I'm rather puzzled about what exactly constitutes the \"testing surface\" of a design pattern. Would someone please enlighten me regarding what the term means and also what it means for one design pattern to have a larger (or smaller) \"testing surface\" than another?"}
{"_id": "218822", "title": "Dota 2 running on Linux, Mac and Windows - How do they do it?", "text": "How do Valve create games that run on Linux, Mac and Windows? I imagine they dont really write one version for each platform bec that would just be a nightmare.. or do they? I imagine it is written in a portable C++ code (or C#?) but I wanted to know more details about this. I've developed an app on Adobe AIR and considering on porting it to a diff language as Adobe abandoned linux support."}
{"_id": "116678", "title": "How good does a well-rounded programmer need to be with bit-wise operations?", "text": "I have been browsing some OpenJDK code recently and have found some **intriguing** pieces of code there that has to do with **bit-wise operations**. I even asked a question about it on StackOverflow. Another example that illustrates the point:                1141       public static int bitCount(int i) {      1142           // HD, Figure 5-2      1143           i = i - ((i >>> 1) & 0x55555555);      1144           i = (i & 0x33333333) + ((i >>> 2) & 0x33333333);      1145           i = (i + (i >>> 4)) & 0x0f0f0f0f;      1146           i = i + (i >>> 8);      1147           i = i + (i >>> 16);      1148           return i & 0x3f;      1149       }      This code can be found in the Integer class. **I cannot help but feel stupid when I look at this.** Did I miss a class or two in college or is this not something I am supposed to just _get_? I can do simple bit-wise operations (like ANDing, ORing, XORing, shifting), but come on, how does someone come up with a code like that above? **How good does a well-rounded programmer need to be with bit-wise operations?** **On a side note...** _What worries me is that the person who answered my question on StackOverflow answered it in a matter of minutes. If he could do that, why did I just stare like deer in the headlights?_"}
{"_id": "77171", "title": "PHP framework plunge", "text": "I am about to take plunge into PHP frameworks and my weapon of choice is kohona. I have a reasonable amount of OO experince with java. And my javaScript, jQuery, PhP and html/CSS skills are passable. Now to the question. Is this a reasonable choice? As ZEND looks like a steeper learning curve and CakePHP commandline configuration does not immediately strikes me as good way to produce code."}
{"_id": "77174", "title": "Is function memoization really only for primitives?", "text": "I was thinking about this for quite some time. Is function memoization really only for primitives? I currently have this piece of code:               Public Shared Function Mize(Of TArg1 As Structure, TResult)(ByVal input_f As System.Func(Of TArg1, TResult)) As System.Func(Of TArg1, TResult)         Dim map = New System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary(Of TArg1, TResult)         Return Function(arg1 As TArg1)                    If map.ContainsKey(arg1) Then Return map.Item(arg1)                    Dim result = input_f(arg1)                    map.Add(arg1, result)                    Return result                End Function     End Function      And I'm wondering should i upgrade TArg1 such that it could accept any arbitrary class?"}
{"_id": "201062", "title": "How to handle flag in multiple if-else's", "text": "I seem to see this often enough in my code and others. There's nothing about it that seems horribly wrong, but it annoys me as it looks like it can be done better. I suppose a case statement, might make a little more sense, but often variable is a type that does not work well or at all with case statements (depending on language)               If variable == A         if (Flag == true)             doFooA()         else             doFooA2          else if variable == B         if (Flag == true)             doFooB()         else             doFooB2     else if variable == C         if (Flag == true)             doFooC()         else             doFooC2      It seems there's multiple ways to \"factor\" this, such as 2 sets of if-elses, where one set handles when Flag == true. Is there a \"good way\" to factor this, or perhaps when this if-else algorithm happens it usually means you are doing something wrong?"}
{"_id": "201065", "title": "Scalable spring core with AMQP?", "text": "I use 3 standard Spring MVC war, which share a common core (Services, DAO, and Models). The main problem is when I plan to deploy all the 3 wars on a same server. I have the Core Application Context instantiated 3 times. I know it's possible to share a common context using an EAR, but for scalability purposes I have to keep all 3 wars, as 3 distinct units, which could deploy in a different count each. My question is about an architectural choice: Is it a good idea to split the Service layer used by my Controllers in a facade + commands (pattern) which can be distributed to the core (backend) via an AMQP? So that I could share requests across multiple cores."}
{"_id": "201066", "title": "I believe I have mixed C and C++ code when I shouldn't have; Is this a problem and how to rectify?", "text": "**Background/Scenario** I started writing a CLI application purely in C (my first proper C or C++ program that wasn't \"Hello World\" or a variation thereof). Around midway through I was working with \"strings\" of user input (char arrays) and I discovered the C++ string streamer object. I saw that I could save code using these, so I used them through the application. This means that I have changed the file extension to .cpp and now compile the app with `g++` instead of `gcc`. So based on this, I would say the application is now technically a C++ application (although 90%+ of the code is written in what I would call C, as there is lots of cross-over between the two language given my limited experience of the two). It is a single .cpp file around 900 lines long. **Important Factors** I want the program to be free (as in money) and freely distributable and usable for all to have. My concern is that someone will look at the code and think something to the effect of: > Oh look at the coding, it's awful, this program can't help me When potentially it could! Another matter is the code being efficient (it is a program for testing Ethernet connectivity). There should be no parts of the code that are so inefficient that they can severely hinder the performance of the application or its output. However, I think that is a question for Stack Overflow when asking for help with specific functions, methods, object calls, etc. **My question** Having (in my opinion) mixed C and C++ where perhaps I shouldn't. Should I look to rewrite it all in C++ (by this, I mean implement more C++ objects and methods where perhaps I have coded something in a C style that can be condensed using newer C++ techniques), or remove the use of string streamer objects and bring it all \"back\" to C code? Is there a correct approach here? I am lost and need some guidance on how to keep this application \"Good\" in the eyes of the masses, so they will use it and benefit from it. **The Code - Update** Here is a link to the code. It is circa 40% comments, I comment nearly every line until I feel more fluent. In the copy I have linked to though, I have removed pretty much all the comments. I hope this doesn't make it too hard to read. I am hoping though that no one should need to fully understand it. If I have made fatal design flaws though, I am hoping they should be identifiable easily. I should also mention, I am writing a couple of Ubuntu desktops and laptops. I'm not intending to port the code to other operating systems."}
{"_id": "224356", "title": "Debugging checklists: How much it's necessary to have?", "text": "Should making _debug-checklists_ be an essential part of development process? How it can be integrated with _unit-tests_? **Update** Debugging checklist: Think about it as your troubleshooting checklist -- like what you do for your network connection, this time for your developers and your source code. For example if you're trying to access web via your web browser and you can't, then you'd probably go and check if you can load other websites or not, if not, then you'd check your internet/network connection, and so on. Here if you have a team of multiple developers and you ran into a bug, you wouldn't just jump into the source code and try to debug it there, because someone else might changed the code and that might cause the problem. To spot the actual bug without a checklist, everybody needs to spend a lot of time looking at different things, probably in an unorganized way also. For example we have a Map module in our software. If you're trying to use that module somewhere in the application and that doesn't work, then there is a small checklist to help you debug it faster:   1. Check if the license exists in Dashboard/Settings/Map or in the database. Is that a valid license?   2. What is the MapCenter? Is that a valid LatLng?   3. What is the MapProjection?   4. Can you reach the MapServer? So, specially if you're new to the team/code, you can catch up with others much faster without spending hours trying to spot the cause of errors. There are ways to do a better error handling -- like throw an _exception_ for example if the MapServer is unreachable, however there are also situations that you still need to check different elements to make sure what exactly causing the error. The question is: If I'm writing a _sort_ function, and I know that you need to specify the correct _encoding_ in order to get the correct result, should I write a checklist simply like this:   1. Make sure you have set the proper _encoding_ in configuration file. If the above example could save myself or another developer 10-15 minutes of looking around to find the problem, should we make it mandatory for every developer to write this kind of checklists when they spot something that's potential to be source of a problem on a specific part of application later?"}
{"_id": "170541", "title": "Does putting types/functions inside namespace make compiler's parsing work easy?", "text": "Retaining the names inside `namespace` will make compiler work less stressful!? For example:               // test.cpp     #include</*iostream,vector,string,map*/>     class vec { /* ... */ };      Take 2 scenarios of `main()`:               // scenario-1     using namespace std;  // comment this line for scenario-2     int main ()     {       vec obj;     }      For scenario-1 where `using namespace std;`, several type names from `namespace std` will come into global scope. Thus compiler will have to check against `vec` if any of the type is colliding with it. If it does then generate error. In scenario-2 where there is no `using namespace`, compiler just have to check `vec` with `std`, because that's the only symbol in global scope. I am interested to know that, shouldn't it make the compiler little faster ?"}
{"_id": "170547", "title": "Refactoring and Open / Closed principle", "text": "I have recently being reading a web site about clean code development (I do not put a link here because it is not in English). One of the principles advertised by this site is the **Open Closed Principle** : each software component should be open for extension and closed for modification. E.g., when we have implemented and tested a class, we should only modify it to fix bugs or to add new functionality (e.g. new methods that **do not** influence the existing ones). The existing functionality and implementation should not be changed. I normally apply this principle by defining an interface `I` and a corresponding implementation class `A`. When class `A` has become stable (implemented and tested), I normally do not modify it too much (possibly, not at all), i.e.   1. If new requirements arrive (e.g. performance, or a totally new implementation of the interface) that require big changes to the code, I write a new implementation `B`, and keep using `A` as long as `B` is not mature. When `B` is mature, all that is needed is to change how `I` is instantiated.   2. If the new requirements suggest a change to the interface as well, I define a new interface `I'` and a new implementation `A'`. So `I`, `A` are frozen and remain **the implementation** for the production system as long as `I'` and `A'` are not stable enough to replace them. So, in view of these observation, I was a bit surprised that the web page then suggested the use of **complex refactorings** , \"... because it is not possible to write code directly in its final form.\" Isn't there a contradiction / conflict between enforcing the Open / Closed Principle and suggesting the use of complex refactorings as a best practice? Or the idea here is that one can use complex refactorings during the development of a class `A`, but when that class has been tested successfully it should be frozen?"}
{"_id": "19437", "title": "What does Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) clause 3 section (A) actually limit?", "text": "I've been looking at the Ms-PL license that ASP.NET MVC and DotNetOpenAuth are published under and 3A says this:               3 Conditions and Limitations          (A) No Trademark License- This license does not grant you rights to use any contributors' name, logo, or trademarks.      Does this mean that I cannot name my project ASP.NET MVC DotNetOpenAuth Sample Project and publish it if I use these two technologies or does it just mean that I cannot use the author's name to promote this project?"}
{"_id": "145947", "title": "Client/Server App \u2013 Best online data storage/administration/communication library?", "text": "I work on some iphone/android apps and the \u201cdata stored on a centralized server\u201d pattern seem fairly common. So far, I have done one app like this, doing everything myself at a low level without using many libraries:   1. MySQL database   2. PHP/HTML web forms allowing the app manager to enter/update content with some validation   3. PHP scripts turning the SQL data into downloadable XML files   4. App code (java/objective-c) to download the XML files, parse them and turn them in some proper objects then displayed in the app UI As you can imagine, that is very tedious and boring and there is lots of duplicated stuff. Also, it was interesting to do it once that way to understand how it works but I\u2019m sure some libraries do it much better that my own php/java/obj-c code. Now, I will have to work on something similar and I\u2019m looking for some sort of API/service that will do most of this work for me but still allow me to alter/customize what I need to (e.g.: web form validation so that the app manager doesn\u2019t break the integrity of the database, e.g.: plugging with my own classes). So I\u2019m looking for the best generic solution that cover all the steps above plus the case when the app can insert/update data as well (download and upload). (Note the library shouldn\u2019t have a licence that prevents me from selling the app) Let\u2019s say I have to build an app about cars, I want to store the car data in an online SQL database with some HTML forms allowing the app manager to add more cars (but only allowing him to enter validated data). I want the app user to be able to download the cars and insert new one in the online SQL database from his phone. What library/API would you recommend? What service would save me the most time while still allowing flexibility?"}
{"_id": "185063", "title": "Version control: Dealing with incomplete/broken code", "text": "It seems to be a generally accepted good practice not to push invalid, broken, or incomplete code. But one of the huge advantages of version control systems is that it gives you a remote place for your code, so you can work on the same codebase from more than one place. Suppose you are working on a feature with a couple other developers, and a bad winter storm is announced; everybody agrees to go home and keep working rather than get caught in the storm, but nobody is at an ideal _stopping place_. What do you do?   1. Create different branches for each developer and commit your changes to that, push those branches to remote and hope you can clean it up later on remote without making life difficult?   2. Create a different `remote` just for incomplete code?   3. Copy your code to your personal flash drive and hope you don't lose it later, or get caught violating company policy?   4. Something else? (We use `git`, but I would hope the answer could be general to any version control system.)"}
{"_id": "185064", "title": "Using a stream manipulator (endl) or a newline escape character (\\n)?", "text": "I don't have a specific context in which I'm asking the question, but while I was reading a beginner book on C++ I noticed the use of both an endl stream manipulator and a newline escape character when dealing with a stream object. The exmaple is as follows:               cout << \"Hello World\" << endl;     cout << \"Hello World\\n\";      My questions are:   1. Is it more appropriate to use the stream manipulator (endl) in a certain situation and an escape character in a different one?   2. Are there drawbacks efficiency wise to using one of the two?   3. Are they completely interchangeable?   4. I read that an escape sequence is stored in memory as a single character. Does that mean it is more appropriate to use endl if you're going for low memory consumption?    5. Does the stream manipulator endl use up memory in any way, if so is it more than the escape sequence? Thanks, StackExchange Apologies if I posted this in the wrong section, I thought it counted as data structures."}
{"_id": "230438", "title": "In git, is it a bad idea to create a tag with the same name as a deleted branch?", "text": "I have a project with a git branching model that roughly follows that of nvie's git-flow. Our release branches are named in a SemVer format, e.g. `v1.5.2` Once a release branch is given the green light for production, we close the branch, by merging it into master, applying a tag, and then deleting the branch. As we immediately delete the release branch, we've been using the same identifier for tagging the branch, e.g. `v1.5.2` Here's the commands we'd use to close a release branch:               $ git checkout master     $ git merge v1.5.2     $ git tag -a v1.5.2 -m \"Version 1.5.2 - foo bar, baz, etc\"     $ git branch -d v1.5.2     $ git branch -dr origin/v1.5.2     $ git push origin :v1.5.2     $ git push     $ git push --tags      This seems to work in the majority of cases, however it's causing an issue in the scenario where another instance of the git repo (e.g. another dev machine, or staging environment) has a local checkout of the v1.5.2 branch. The `git push origin :v1.5.2` command will delete the branch in the remote, but does not delete the local version of the branch (if it exists) in all repos. This leads to an ambiguous reference, when trying checkout `v1.5.2` in those repos:               $ git checkout v1.5.2     warning: refname 'v1.5.2' is ambiguous.      Can this be avoided without using a different syntax for the branches, e.g. `release-v1.5.2`, or `v1.5.2-rc`? Or is it unavoidable, and therefore a fundamentally bad idea to create a tag with the same name as a deleted branch?"}
{"_id": "212639", "title": "Should I store test files in source control?", "text": "I have a number of (large) test files that need to be maintained. This means access to their history is a requirement. **Benefits**   * Any new developers get the entire test suite with just a `git pull`.   * The history of the files is backed up.   * The files themselves are backed up. **Drawbacks**   * Huge increase in size of repository.   * Huge increase in download size of new developers copying the repository. What are the best practices for maintaining test files? Do I store these files in source control? Are there any alternatives?"}
{"_id": "230436", "title": "Sprint Planning Meetings - determine if a work item is \"planned\"?", "text": "We've been working with Scrum for a while now, generally successfully. However of late, as the pressure has started to mount up we've encountered several situations where items came through planning meetings but when it actually came time to code, it became apparent they were woefully under-specified. This is an annoying and awkward waste of time. So I'm wondering, is there anything we can do to make sure that a work item is properly understood and planned before it's included in a sprint? We don't use TDD, but my experiences with it suggest that it's a good way of ensuring a programmer understands a task before beginning work. So I did consider trying to work out some automated testing as a possible approach to this. But not all work items are amenable to automated tests, and it's likely to be difficult/boring for non-programmers in the meeting. As an aside, out of curiosity, is when one has decided on acceptance criteria, should they go on a work item, or a user story, or both?"}
{"_id": "235403", "title": "Wrapper around C++ STL", "text": "Where I work we have our own system library, which pretty much is only wrappers around the STL, such as:               template <typename T>     class HVector {     protected:         std::vector<T> data;     public:         int size () const; //Only returns data.size()         int custom(); //Some generic custom function that uses the data vector     }      Most of the class members are just re-declarations of the STL container members, but we also have a few customized functions that do some generic tasks with the container. Is this a good design? If not, what would be the best way to implement the customized functions around the containers?"}
{"_id": "181772", "title": "Mobile number validation", "text": "I am trying to find best way to validate a mobile number with in a country. Currently my understanding is: User can enter whatever format they want in mobile numbers and its a waste of time and energy to validate it against a set of regular expressions. My application is not a critical one like banking application and if the user is entering an invalid mobile number, it is at his own risk to get updates (like activate account/ do something with the application) So I think the best way is to check for mobile number length and whether all are digits. I want to know the best way forward and is there any good resource (non- scattered) to get all mobile number length validations based on a country code?"}
{"_id": "181776", "title": "Pictures from iPhone to clients FTP server - Directly (iPhone->FTP) or Cloud (iPhone->Amazon->FTP)", "text": "My clients wants to take pictures with their iPhone's and place them collectible on their server, suggested by FTP. I can see there is two solutions:   1. Directly upload from the iPhone to the FTP server. My colleague can make so the get the ActiveDirectery username and password, so they do not use the same password all of them.   2. Upload them directly to Amazon S3, where I then have a worker which takes the image and puts it on the ftp server. I can do this easily with Python. I will use Kinvey to manage users. Is nr. 2 overkill on short terms? Or is the downsides with creating a FTP connection on a iPhone? My boss thinks it makes it unnecessary more complicated with that extra link. I can easily see what my boss mean, and think he is right. The problem is that I have not tried FTP'ing in Obj-C and do not know how hard or difficult it can might be. I know phonegap, which could easily upload to Amazon."}
{"_id": "253979", "title": "Should I reference a CopyOnWriteArraySet from the Set interface?", "text": "There are two ways to use a CopyOnWriteArraySet:               // A     Set<Object> set = new CopyOnWriteArraySet<>();      and               // B     CopyOnWriteArraySet<Object> set = new CopyOnWriteArraySet<>();      With 'normal' sets like HashSet and TreeSet, case A is preferred, because it allows easy switching of the Set implementation. However, in this case a conscious choice is made for a specific thread-safe Set implementation. Should I use case B to signify this intent?"}
{"_id": "181778", "title": "Is a coder that 'quality checks' bug fixes and bugs raised by testers a recognised role?", "text": "I've recently found myself frequently in the position where I'm checking both bug fixes by other programmers, and bugs raised by the QA team. Any bug fixes frequently end up having 'collateral damage', and I've found it invaluable to go through any recent fixes, and analyze what other parts of the system could potentially have been impacted by the changes. It's been instrumental in maintaining the reliability of the system. Without this process, the testers generally find new bugs raised, and rarely recognize the cause as the recent bug fix. I'm also quite often going through new bugs raised by the testers, analyzing possible causes to determine if there's a root cause that may impact on other parts of the system, quite frequently merging two or more bugs into one case. It's essentially doing the 'investigation' part of the bug fixing process, so that another programmer can focus on just the coding. The question is, is this a recognised role? It doesn't seem to fit into the 'Programmer' or 'QA' job title neatly, it's kind of in-between. Or is the need for this role more a consequence of bad process or bad design?"}
{"_id": "86995", "title": "Modern approaches to retrieve useful content from a web page?", "text": "What are the modern ways to (effectively) determine which part of page contains useful text, data tables, etc. and which are not (e.g. ads, navigation, etc.)? What were the last valuable researches/result/papers in this field in latest years? Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "86997", "title": "Keep permuting a vector until it is ordered", "text": "I have this problem: Imagine you have a vector V, integers from 0 to 70000 -- sorted in ascending order Now you have a permutation P of that vector. Then you do V[P] \"shuffling\" the vector. If you keep doing V[P] (P never changes), V will eventually be sorted again in ascending order? Is there a way you may know, a priori, how may shuffles you need?"}
{"_id": "86993", "title": "Do backend developers care what their code looks like in the frontend?", "text": "As a backend and a frontend developer I see the process from start to finish, first by creating the logic, displaying the correct data on a web page and then using frontend skills to make this look awesome. My question is, do pure backend developers care what their code ends up looking like in the frontend? As far as the user is concerned, they will ONLY see design/frontend. They don't actually care that your code is clean, DRY and maintainable. As long as it doesn't disrupt their payment process or flight booking they do not care. Does this affect the average backend developer?"}
{"_id": "38884", "title": "Asynchronous Programming in Functional Languages", "text": "I'm mostly a C/C++ programmer, which means that the majority of my experience is with procedural and object-oriented paradigms. However, as many C++ programmers are aware, C++ has shifted in emphasis over the years to a functional-esque style, culminating finally in the addition of lambdas and closures in C++0x. Regardless, while I have considerable experience coding in a functional _style_ using C++, I have very little experience with actual functional languages such as Lisp, Haskell, etc. I've recently began studying these languages, because the idea of \"no side- effects\" in purely functional languages has always intrigued me, especially with regards to its applications to concurrency and distributed computing. However, coming from a C++ background I'm confused as to how this \"no side- effects\" philsophy works with asynchronous programming. By asynchronous programming I mean any framework/API/coding style which dispatches user- provided event handlers to handle events which occur asynchronously (outside the flow of the program.) This includes asynchronous libraries such as Boost.ASIO, or even just plain old C signal handlers or Java GUI event handlers. The one thing all of these have in common is that the nature of asynchronous programming seems to _require_ the creation of side-effects (state), in order for the main flow of the program to become aware that an asynchronous event handler has been invoked. Typically, in a framework like Boost.ASIO, an event handler _changes_ the state of an object, so that the effect of the event is propagated beyond the life-time of the event handler function. Really, what else can an event handler do? It can't \"return\" a value to the call point, because there is no call point. The event handler is not part of the main flow of the program, so the only way it can have any effect on the actual program is to change some state (or else `longjmp` to another execution point). So it seems that asynchronous programming is all about asynchronously producing side-effects. This seems completely at odds with the goals of functional programming. How are these two paradigms reconciled (in practice) in functional languages?"}
{"_id": "157943", "title": "Are there any design patterns that are unnecessary in dynamic languages like Python?", "text": "I've started reading the design pattern book by the GoF. Some patterns seem very similar with only minor conceptual differences. Do you think out of the many patterns some are unnecessary in a dynamic language like Python (e.g. because they are substituted by a dynamic feature)?"}
{"_id": "143736", "title": "Why do we need private variables?", "text": "Why do we need private variables in classes? Every book on programming I've read says this is a private variable, this is how you define it but stops there. The wording of these explanations always seemed to me like we really have a crisis of trust in our profession. The explanations always sounded like other programmers are out to mess up our code. Yet, there are many programming languages that do not have private variables.   1. What do private variables help prevent?    2. How do you decide if a particular property should be private or not? If by default every field SHOULD be private then why are there public data members in a class?    3. Under what circumstances should a variable be made public?"}
{"_id": "176876", "title": "Why shouldn't I be using public variables in my Java class?", "text": "In school, I've been told many times to stop using `public` for my variables. I haven't asked why yet. This question: Are Java's public fields just a tragic historical design flaw at this point? seems kinda related to this. However, they don't seem to discuss _why_ is it \"wrong\", but instead focus on _how_ can they use them instead. Look at this (unfinished) class:               public class Reporte {              public String rutaOriginal;         public String rutaNueva;         public int bytesOriginales;         public int bytesFinales;         public float ganancia;              /**          * Constructor para objetos de la clase Reporte          */         public Reporte() {              }     }      No need to understand Spanish. All this class does is hold some statistics (those public fields) and then do some operations with them (later). I will also need to be modifying those variables often. But well, since I've been told not to use `public`, this is what I ended up doing:               public class Reporte {              private String rutaOriginal;         private String rutaNueva;         private int bytesOriginales;         private int bytesFinales;         private float ganancia;              /**          * Constructor para objetos de la clase Reporte          */         public Reporte() {              }              public String getRutaOriginal() {             return rutaOriginal;         }              public String getRutaNueva() {             return rutaNueva;         }              public int getBytesOriginales() {             return bytesOriginales;         }              public int getBytesFinales() {             return bytesFinales;         }              public float getGanancia() {             return ganancia;         }              public void setRutaOriginal(String rutaOriginal) {             this.rutaOriginal = rutaOriginal;         }              public void setRutaNueva(String rutaNueva) {             this.rutaNueva = rutaNueva;         }              public void setBytesOriginales(int bytesOriginales) {             this.bytesOriginales = bytesOriginales;         }              public void setBytesFinales(int bytesFinales) {             this.bytesFinales = bytesFinales;         }              public void setGanancia(float ganancia) {             this.ganancia = ganancia;         }     }      Looks kinda pretty. But seems like a waste of time. Google searches about \"When to use public in Java\" and \"Why shouldn't I use public in Java\" seem to discuss about a concept of **mutability** , although I'm not really sure how to interpret such discussions. I do want my class to be mutable - all the time."}
{"_id": "249701", "title": "Why shouldn't I make variables public, but should use public getters/setters?", "text": "I'm watching a C++ tutorial video. It is talking about variables inside classes and assert that variables should be marked private. It explains that if I want to use them publicly, I should do it indirectly through functions. Why? What's the difference? It looks like the result is the same, except that instead of having one line of code, I now have like 9 or 10 more LOC to do the same thing. Can someone explain why converting a private variable in a class to public within the class rather than just making it public right out the simple way is any different and more efficient?"}
{"_id": "57491", "title": "Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why do we need private variables? I know that it's best practice to stay safe, and that we should always prevent _others_ from directly accessing a class' properties. I hear this all the time from university professors, and I also see this all the time in a lot of source code released on the App Hub. In fact, professors say that they will actually take marks off for every variable that gets declared public. Now, this leaves me _always_ declaring variables as private. No matter what. Even if each of these variables were to have both a getter and a setter. But here's the problem: it's tedious work. I tend to quickly lose interest in a project every time I need to have a variable in a class that could have simply been declared public instead of private with a getter and a setter. So my question is, do I really need to declare _all_ my variables private? Or could I declare _some_ variables public whenever they require both a getter and a setter?"}
{"_id": "80232", "title": "How do you handle the need to have multiple development environments?", "text": "How do you deal with different project environments? Every project might require a different database (oracle, IBM db2, mysql & etc), a different server (tomcat, IBM WAS, weblogic & etc) or some other new technologies. Every time a new database or new server comes in, I install them on to my workstation for my convenience. Right now I have more than one database and server on my workstation and it has caused my workstation take some time at startup. I have to wait a period of time for my workstation to be ready for me to start working. Sometimes when I install database A, it causes my previous database B to have issues. I found that this will take a lot of my cpu usage although I'm not using them at the moment. In this case, I can think of only one method, I can install the databases on to one virtual machine and the servers on to another virtual machine. Or one project environment one virtual machine. Then I can start just the one that I need it. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "173518", "title": "What are the differences between abstract classes, interfaces, and when to use them", "text": "Recently I have started to wrap my head around OOP, and I am now to the point where the more I read about the differences between abstract classes and interfaces the more confused I become. So far, neither can be instantiated. interfaces are more or less structural blueprints that determine the skeleton and abstracts are different by being able to partially develop code. I would like to learn more about these through my specific situation. Here is a link to my first question if you would like a little more background information: What is a good design model for my new class? Here are two classes I created:               class Ad {         $title;         $description         $price;              function get_data($website){  }              function validate_price(){  }      }               class calendar_event {         $title;         $description              $start_date;              function get_data($website){ //guts }              function validate_dates(){ //guts }      }      So, as you can see these classes are almost identical. Not shown here, but there are other functions, `like get_zip()`, `save_to_database()` that are common across my classes. I have also added other classes Cars and Pets which have all the common methods and of course properties specific to those objects (mileage, weight, for example). Now I have violated the **DRY** principle and I am managing and changing the same code across multiple files. I intend on having more classes like boats, horses, or whatever. So is this where I would use an interface or abstract class? From what I understand about abstract classes I would use a super class as a template with all of the common elements built into the abstract class, and then add only the items specifically needed in future classes. For example:               abstract class content {         $title;         $description                   function get_data($website){  }              function common_function2() { }         function common_function3() { }      }               class calendar_event extends content {              $start_date;              function validate_dates(){  }      }      Or would I use an interface and, because these are so similar, create a structure that each of the subclasses are forced to use for integrity reasons, and leave it up to the end developer who fleshes out that class to be responsible for each of the details of even the common functions. my thinking there is that some 'common' functions may need to be tweaked in the future for the needs of their specific class. Despite all that above, if you believe I am misunderstanding the what and why of abstracts and interfaces altogether, by all means let a valid answer to be stop thinking in this direction and suggest the proper way to move forward! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "228711", "title": "Interfaces vs Base class", "text": "I'm strugging to know when to use a base class with Polymorphism or an interface. Providing my object exposes DoThis() then I can't see why it matters if it's an interface of a base class. Please consider the following               public void MyMethod()     {         var myObject = new MyObject();         myObject.DoThis();     }      In regards to MyObject, I could have created it in 2 ways Approach 1               public class MyObject : IMyInterface     {         public void DoThis()         {             //logic         }      }      Approach 2               public class MyObject : MyBaseObject     {         public override void DoThis()         {             //logic         }      }      From what I can see, both of these implementations achieve the same thing. The issue could be my example is too simple/contrived but, is there a way to know when to use one approach over the other? In my example above, I would _guess_ the answer is preference? I've not done any big projects before and so I'm guessing that one isn't as extendible but I don't know why I think that!"}
{"_id": "101399", "title": "How long should I provide free updates for my shareware - per version, per year, or forever?", "text": "I will release my first shareware soon and I'm wondering for how long should a paying user be entitled to free updates. I can think of three options:   * You buy a version then all the updates are free for one year (eg. SmartFTP)   * You buy a version then all the minor updates (mostly includes bug fixes) are free (eg. UltraEdit)   * You buy a version and all the minor and major updates are free forever (eg. Total Commander) It seems that different applications use different ways. What would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "218171", "title": "UPOS RFIDScanner data format", "text": "A lot of work that I do currently is based in the OPOS/UPOS world. My company has a device that can read 13.56Mhz tags (RFID), Smart Cards, and Mag Stripe cards. Up until somewhat recently I have only been working with RFID for a very specific scenario. That was to read UltraLight C and Desfire cards. These cards were all setup very specifically so that I could take the data read from those cards and force it into a MSR track2 format. The past couple of weeks, however, I have been working on reading RFID credit cards (since I have a Visa card I've been using mine), and Smart Card credit cards. (The visa card I have has both) In learning how to communicate with SmartCard and reading ISO7816 and EMVCO documents I became a little more familiar with how info is stored. But now I have a question regarding UPOS. The RFID data on my Visa is stored (and read) very similar to how the data is stored and read from the Smart Card on my Visa. Cool. Well in the UPOS spec for SmartCardRW the ReadData method returns a byte array. That's cool, I can just return all that data and then parse it as my heart desires. The RFID though has a LinkedList of Tags. Well this makes sense in terms of my Visa card (reminds me of a question I have in regards to SmartCard, but that is for another question) but what about ULC and Desfire, or for that matter any Mifare card. Pages, Files, Purses don't exactly fit the Tag profile. For instance lets just say I read pages 4-12 on my ULC card. Each page I read is 4 bytes long. Does this mean I have 9 tags in my LinkedList? Is my Tag id the page number? Or then how does that translate to Desfire? I open application 123456 and read file 1 and file 2, Do I have 2 tags? and if so what is my tag id? At least with my Visa I _think_ that I have to use the Tag id (ex 5F24 for my expiration date) and value of {0x15, 0x10, 0x31} Part of me says yes..that makes sense. Another part of me says, \"well if that is the case then why doesn't SmartCardRW have Tags?\" So that is my question. How do I format my data from those different types of media? or is that the job of my Control Object (the application)? Is so how does it know? The only protocols I have are:               // Summary:     //     Enumerates the available predefined RFID tag protocols the device supports.     [Flags]     public enum RFIDProtocols     {         EpcClass0 = 1,         RFIDSdt0Plus = 2,         EpcClass1 = 4,         EpcClass1Gen2 = 8,         EpcClass2 = 16,         Iso14443A = 4096,         Iso14443B = 8192,         Iso15693 = 12288,         Iso180006B = 16384,         Other = 16777216,         All = 1073741824,     }      If I use that well all of my cards that I have are all Iso14443A. I use the ATQA and the SAK to know what type of card I really have. There is no RFID property that lets me specify that. So I'm lost."}
{"_id": "140319", "title": "Flowchart for solving programming problems", "text": "I noticed that every developer implements a somewhat different flowchart for solving programming problems. By flowchart I mean a defined system of techniques that the developer goes through in a certain sequence, trying to solve the problem at hand. Some examples for techniques:   * Google \"how to...\" or \"... tutorial\".   * Search the java/msdn/apple/etc API doc for the specific class or method.   * Search in stack overflow the exact problem with some tags like [iphone]/[java] etc.   * Take a nap and let the subconscious work.   * Debug.   * Draw the algorithm or system.   * Google the logged error message.   * Ask a colleague or manager.   * Ask a new question in stack overflow. From your experience, what is the best flowchart for solving a programming problem?"}
{"_id": "219887", "title": "Does Java development typically involve more subclassing than C#/.NET?", "text": "I've recently started looking at Android development. This has brought me back into the world of Java software development. The last time I worked with Java, I'll admit, I didn't understand OOP nearly as much as (I think) I do now. Having mainly used C# in my career, I'm noticing a startling difference in how inheritance is used Java and C#. In C# it seemed like inheritance could be avoided in most situations. The task at hand could usually be accomplished by using concrete classes of the .NET framework. In Java, from what I'm gathering from code samples, it seems like the Java framework supplies many interfaces or abstract classes that are then meant to be implemented/extended by the developer. This seems to be too big a difference to just boil down to style. What is the reasoning behind this? I feel like I won't be writing clean Java code until I understand this. Also, is this limited to just the Android SDK or is this a Java-wide approach to OOP? Or put in another way, What is it about the design of these two languages that (seems to encourage) more or less inheritance use than the other? If the languages treat inheritance identically, and assuming my observation is valid, then it means this is related to the design of the frameworks/libraries and not the languages. What would the motivation be for this kind of design?"}
{"_id": "140311", "title": "How to popularize Nemerle (or another programming language)?", "text": "Any .NET developer who is interested in different programming languages knows that F# is the most popular functional language for the .NET platform nowadays. The only fact describing the popularity of F# is the great support of Microsoft. But we are not limited with F# at all. There are some other functional languages on the .NET platform. I'm very disappointed with the fact that Nemerle isn't well-known. It's an awesome language which supports three paradigms: object-oriented, functional and meta- programming. I won't try to explain why I like it so much. The problem is that I can't use it at work. I think that only really brave companies can rely on Nemerle. It's almost unknown, that's why it's hard to find new developers for the project. Noone wants to make a first step with Nemerle if it can influence the budget what is reasonable. So, here is a question: **what can I do to make Nemerle more popular?** Here are my first ideas:   * implement open-source projects using Nemerle;   * make presentations on different conferences;   * write articles."}
{"_id": "139496", "title": "How soon existing projects should be upgraded to newer version of the technologies powering it?", "text": "In large scale applications (e.g. Banking Domain), what is the criteria of upgrading an existing project to a newer version of the technology on which it is built? For instance, a .NET application built on .NET Framework 3.5 and using Oracle 9i back-end. There are not any specific urgent requirements, but should I think of upgrading to .NET 4.5 and Oracle 11g in the near future? Is it advantageous to keep pace with the technology version?"}
{"_id": "140317", "title": "What is the difference from the push and pull development models?", "text": "I was reading Extreme Programming Explained, Second Edition and in the chapter 11 \"The Theory of Constraints\" the authors talk about the old and obsolete **\"push\" development model** and the XP way, the **\"pull\" development model**. It looks like a quite important concept, but it takes only a very small paragraph and two images that are mere illustrations of the \"waterfall\" and iterative process, nothing specific about these models except by the image caption. I searched and it doesn't go any further about it in the rest of the book. I couldn't find any further explanations or discussions about it in the Internet either. If the only difference about those is that one is **\"waterfall\"** and the other is **iterative** , them why push and why pull? Does anyone understand what is really the difference between those two and give some good examples?"}
{"_id": "42044", "title": "How can I prototype a very abstract theoretical framework?", "text": "I've had an idea for a semantic model of computing that's theoretically sound but is also quite unusual. I'd like to quickly prototype a system to prove that it can work in practice. Most of my work is in programming languages, so I'm comfortable putting together a small language for the purposes of testing, but I wonder if this is the best approach, as it necessitates a certain amount of advance work on the linguistic side that's not directly related to the computational model. So what is the best prototyping strategy for a very high-level theoretical framework such as this? Should I go with a new language, or an embedded DSL, or some other approach? I can provide a bit more background if necessary, but this doesn't need to turn into a discussion of the specifics of the model."}
{"_id": "45218", "title": "Releasing software/Using Continuous Integration - What do most companies seem to use?", "text": "I've set up our continuous integration system, and it has been working for about a year now. We have finally reached a point where we want to do releases using the same. Before our CI system, the process(es) that was used was:               (Develop) -> Ready for release -> Create a branch -> (Build -> Fix bugs as QA finds them) Loop -> Final build -> Tag          (Develop) -> Ready for release -> (build -> fix bugs) Loop -> Tag                    Our CI setup:     1 server for development (DEV)     1 server for qa/release (QA)      The second one has integrated into CI perfectly. I create a branch when the software is ready for release, and the branch never changes thereafter, which means the build is reproduceable without having to change the CI job. Any future development takes place on HEAD, and even maintainence releases get a completely new branch and a completely new job, which remains on the CI system forever, and then some. The first method is harder to adapt. If the branch changes, the build is not reproduceable unless I use the tag to build [jobs on the CI server uses the branch for QA/RELEASE, and HEAD for development builds]. However, if I use the tag to build, I have to create a new CI job to build from the tag (lose changelog on server), or change the existing job (lose original job configuration). I know this sounds complicated, and if required, I will rewrite/edit to explain the situation better. However, my question: [If at all] what process does your company use to release software using continuous integration systems. Is it even done using the CI system, or manually?"}
{"_id": "255680", "title": "Buffer-overflow vulnerabilities that a static code analyser won't pick up", "text": "I'll use FlawFinder in this example. FlawFinder is a static code \"analyser\" tool that examines C/C++ source files and outputs warnings/hits if a vulnerability was identified. The way it does this is by using text pattern matching for function names and their parameters. It then matches these against a pre-defined database of commonly known issues/vulnerabilities associated with different standard library functions. E.g.               #include <stdio.h>          int main()     {        char str[50];             printf(\"Enter a string : \");        gets(str);             printf(\"You entered: %s\", str);             return(0);     }      This will cause FlawFinder to generate a hit at the line calling the `gets(str)` function. It will warn against a potential buffer overflow and advises the developer to use fgets() instead. I'm suspecting that this may cause some false positive results in some cases, as it doesn't actually \"analyse\" the code and the context but just matches function names against a set of predefined warnings. But I was wondering if there's a situation where you could have an obvious buffer overflow vulnerability that wouldn't be identified by a tool like FlawFinder or in general most static code analysis tools? Specifically in a C/C++ environment."}
{"_id": "124581", "title": "What do you think of this Exception handling practice", "text": "I'm working on a project that includes a lot of creating/manipulating and reading JSONObjects and arrays but not in a systematic way. So there is JSON code everywhere.   It is ok for me except that every time I work on a JSONObject I got to handle JSONException.   So I created a class that extends JSONObject and Override the put/get methods in it and handled JSONExceptions inside this class.   It made my code way much clearer and I believe it is more than enough for my case. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "241542", "title": "The purpose of using a constants pool for immutable constants", "text": "_Originally posted atstackoverflow.com/q/23961260_ * * * I come across the following code with a lot of frequency:               if (myArray.length == Constants.ZERO_INT)       or               if (myString != null && !myString.equals(Constants.EMPTY_STRING))       Neither of these makes much sense to me. Isn't the point of having a constant pool for ease of code appearance and to allow for modularity? In both of the above cases, it just looks like needless noise that accomplishes neither objective. My question: what is the purpose of using a constants pool for variables like this which will never change? Or is this just cargo cult programming? If so, then why does it seem to be prevalent in the industry? (I've noticed it with at least two different employers I've worked with)."}
{"_id": "201934", "title": "When inheriting from a base class, should you retest constructor arguments?", "text": "Say I have something like this:               public class BaseClass     {         public BaseClass(string someString)         {             if(someString == null)                 throw new ArgumentException();         }     }          public class ChildClass : BaseClass     {         public ChildClass(string someString)             : base(someString)         {             // Should I do this??             if(someString == null)                 throw new ArgumentException();         }     }      Also, what if I'm inheriting a class that I do not have the source for. Should I recheck constructor arguments?"}
{"_id": "201930", "title": "Where to store web application custom configuration settings", "text": "I'm currently working on an internal web application for my company in node.js We want to have certain configuration settings be changeable by management. For example, we pre-print some labels automatically during receiving if the quantity is less than 5 so the user doesn't have to stop to confirm a print dialog. What if we wanted to shift this to any quantities less than 10 because it is found to be more efficient? My question is this: What's the best approach to save custom configuration settings if I was to create an area for changing these params on their dashboard? Would saving this information in a json formatted text file on the server and then just parsing it using fs every time be the best way? or is there something I'm not thinking of? Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "139722", "title": "Could JQuery and similar tools be built into the browser install?", "text": "After reading another question about JQuery and CDN's, is it feasible for tools like JQuery to \"come with\" the browser, thus reducing/eliminating the need for the first download from a CDN, or from your own host server. JQuery files specifically are pretty small, so you could easily have a number (all?) of the different versions as part of a browser install. Now fair enough, this would increase install footprint, download time for the browser itself. Then sites could check \"local\" first, before CDN (which then caches), before finally defaulting to downloading from the website server itself. If this is feasible, has it been done, and if not, why hasn't it be done?"}
{"_id": "163026", "title": "Teaching version control (git, mercurial) to undergraduates?", "text": "I'm teaching a scientific programming course to undergraduates, targeted at freshmen/sophomores who are seeing the command line for the first time but are likely to need version control in future classes and careers. Are there resource for teaching version control (to those who have never seen it) available? What aspects should be taught first / emphasized most?"}
{"_id": "200089", "title": "How do you decide what code to put into a function?", "text": "I started out with a script that was a few hundred lines. Later, I realized I wanted another script that would require much of the same code. I decided to wrap certain areas of the original script that would be shared, into definitions. When I was deciding exactly what should be in a function, I came across various things to consider:   1. What should I set as its input parameters? If anything was needed in the function, I should probably require it as a parameter, right? Or should I declare it within the function itself?    2. If function x always requires the output of function y, but function y sometimes is needed alone, should function X include the code of function y or simply call function y?    3. Imagine a case where I have 5 functions that all call a function 'sub' (sub is essential for these 5 functions to complete their work). If 'sub' always is supposed to return the same result, then wouldn't multiple calls from these parent functions duplicate the same work? If I move the call to 'sub' outside of the 5 functions, how can I be sure that 'sub' is called before the first call to any of the 5 functions?   4. If I have a segment of code that always produces the same result, and isn't required more than once in the same application, I normally wouldn't put it in a function. However, if it is not a function, but is later required in another application, then should it become a function?  Sorry if these questions are too vague, but I feel there should be some general guidelines. I haven't programmed for very long, and bounced around between OOP and functional, but I've never remembered reading anything that explained this. Could it simply be a matter of personal preference?"}
{"_id": "231387", "title": "Python methods vs builtin functions", "text": "Python widely uses built-ins (or module function) and not class methods. So   * `len([])` instead of `[].length()`   * `filter(f, [])` instead of `[].filter(f)`   * `str(2)` instead of `2.to_str`   * same for `map`, `foreach` etc These prevent you from doing nice chaining which is possible in other languages like Ruby or Scala: (sorry very artificial example)               my_list.map(f).filter(g).length()      In Python you would need to either split into several lines:               list_of_something_else = map(f, my_list)     list_of_something_else_without_blah = filter(g, list_of_something_else)     length = len(list_of_something_else_without_blah)      In a single expression it doesn't look readable:               len(filter(g, map(f, my_list))      Is it considered to be not-Pythonic to chain methods? Or do people usually extend classes with a dozen of helper functions to make it easier?"}
{"_id": "200083", "title": "What is the rule on passing around collections? List vs. Ienumerable vs. IQueryable", "text": "I do Entity Framework stuff using repository patterns that are passed to the controller to than be called by the client using jquery AJAX.. Is there any basic rules on in what format I should be passing around these lists? Within the server code I suppose I could just pass around an Iqueryable? yes? And to the client I could pass around a list version ? That is my first guess.. any ideas ?"}
{"_id": "231381", "title": "When/Where to create/assign event handlers to its elements", "text": "Lets say I have the following code               // JS          $(function(){             $('[data-mc=logout]').click(function(){                     if (!confirm(myconfig.msg['asklogout'])) {                         return false;                     }             });                  $('[data-mc=ajax]').click(function(){                     var target=$(this).data('target'); //retrieve data-target of the clicked tag                     return false;             });     });      which target some HTML elements               //  HTML          <a class='menulink' data-mc='logout' data-target='main-content-div' href='page/'>Logout</a>     <a class='menulink' data-mc='ajax' data-target='main-content-div' href='page/'>Start page</a>        1. Am I right when I say that this code needs to be called on every full page load?   2. a: If so, what if one of the elements doesn't exists on the chosen page?   b: To avoid errors an \"if exist\" check is necessary, right?   c: jQuery will do that prior adding the handler?   3. What if some content gets requested using Ajax and inserted into the DOM. Then this code needs to be called again, right?   4. Is this best practice or should the code be split and called per page load, where only existing element's event handlers gets attached?"}
{"_id": "70252", "title": "Are gimmicks ever a good idea?", "text": "Are adding gimmicks to a website ever a good idea? What I mean by gimmick is adding \"cool\" features that solve no real problem. We are currently considering adding a \"Magazine style\" product viewing application to the site. You know like a flash based app that shows magazine pages that you can click and flip the pages with your mouse. I personally think this is terrible idea. We already have a category page where you click on a category and it lists products. So this catalog view is not solving any problems that are not already solved. They want to use it because of its \"cool\" factor. I personally don't think its cool, I think its cumbersome, but thats besides the point. I am all for adding complex features, but only when those complex features are solving real problems. I think this worst part of all is there are now 2 paths for the user to take, a category route and a magazine route. I think the shopping route should be linear and I believe too many options like this is distracting and confusing. InDesign has a plugin that can make something like this very easily. So not much time will be wasted on it, but I still think it is a very bad idea. Am I right, or being too opinionated? Can anyone give me any good arguments for either side?"}
{"_id": "70251", "title": "What should I expect as a C++ software engineer in a company that develops python web applications?", "text": "A company is hiring C++ software engineers. When I go to the company's website, they provide a web applications written in python. (At least that's what I see from the outside.) What kind of responsibilities can I expect? Does this sound like server and back end coding? What else? At which point would a python web application most likely switch to C++?"}
{"_id": "70255", "title": "Recommendations on running Visual Studio inside a VMWare VDI environment?", "text": "Does anyone have experience running Visual Studio inside a VDI environment?   * Would you recommend it?   * Would you advise against it? * * * **Our Background** Our department is one of the few in the company that doesn't use thin clients. The head of the department is getting pressure that we too should be using thin clients, in a hope that the help desk and server admins will be more responsive to other departments complaints and issues. I agree with the idea behind it, but I'm very leery of running a program like Visual Studio inside a virtual machine."}
{"_id": "70254", "title": "Returning from a long function on the first false condition", "text": "I have a long(ish) function of the following pattern:               bool func(some_type_t *p1, another_t *p2)     {       bool a = false, b = false, c = false, etc = false;            a = (some_long && expression && \\            (that_deserves | its_own_line));            b = (another || long_expression && \\            (that_deserves | its_own_line));            c = and_so && on;            return a && b && c && etc;     }      As you can see, the return value is `true` if and only if all flags are true. Hence I can return as soon as one of them turns out to be `false`. It may or may not be more optimal than the current version, but I want to do it to satisfy my OCPD. I thought of putting everything in a `do{}while(0);` and breaking out on `false`, but that looks odd (and I remember seeing something like that in tdwtf). I do not want multiple return statements or deeply nested if blocks, and I certainly don't want to compromise on readability with a huge if that relies on short circuiting. I can live with `goto` in this case, but I want to know if there are any other patterns/constructs used in similar scenarios."}
{"_id": "203570", "title": "Understanding how memory contents map into a struct", "text": "I am not able to understand how bytes in memory are being mapped into a struct. My machine is a little-endian x86_64. The code was compiled with gcc 4.7.0 from the Win64 mingw32-64 distribution for Win64. These are contents of the relevant memory fragment: ...450002cf9fe5000040115a9fc0a8fe... And this is the struct definition:               typedef struct ip4 {         unsigned int ihl :4;         unsigned int version :4;         uint8_t tos;         uint16_t tot_len;         uint16_t id;         uint16_t frag_off; // flags=3 bits, offset=13 bits         uint8_t ttl;         uint8_t protocol;         uint16_t check;         uint32_t saddr;         uint32_t daddr;         /*The options start here. */     } ip4_t;      When a pointer to such an structure (let it be `*ip4`) is initialized to the starting address of the above pasted memory region, this is what the debugger shows for the struct's fields:               ip4:          address=0x8da36ce     ip4->ihl:     address=0x8da36ce, value=0x5     ip4->version: address=0x8da36ce, value=0x4     ip4->tos:     address=0x8da36d2, value=0x9f     ip4->tot_len: address=0x8da36d4, value=0x0     ...      I see how `ihl` and version are mapped: 4 bytes for a long integer, little- endian. But I don't understand how `tos` and `tot_len` are mapped; which bytes in memory correspond to each one of them. Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "125180", "title": "Why is it so hard to make a great app?", "text": "Maybe a better way to ask the question would be: why is the Facebook app so bad? This is not so much a question specific to the Facebook iOS app, it just uses that as an example. What I want to know is how is it possible that a company like Facebook that has all the resources it needs can make such a bad app. Facebook is famous and \"cool\" so a lot of devs, designers and architects want to work for them, and it has the money to pay for the best of those. And it's not like it doesn't care about the app. It's not some small internal unimportant project, it's one of the most downloaded apps on the app store. But also one of the most complained about. This brings me to my question, how is it possible that an entity with such resources and desire can end up making such a bad product? To put it another way, what are the main complexities involved in such a big project that can ultimately lead a collection of perfectly skilled individuals to collectively create something that is not so perfect? Put in a more positive way, what is required (other than skilled people) to make a great product?"}
{"_id": "121408", "title": "Why can we delete some built-in properties of global object?", "text": "I'm reading es5 these days and find that [[configurable]] attribute in some built-in properties of global object is set to true which means we can delete these properties. For example: the join method of Array.prototype object have attributes               {[[Writable]]:true, [[Enumerable]]: false, [[Configurable]]: true}      So we can easily delete the join method for Array like:               delete Array.prototype.join;     alert([1,2,3].join);      The alert will display `undefined` in my chromium 17,firefox 9 ,ie 10,even ie6; In Chrome 15 & safari 5.1.1 the [[configurable]] attribute is set to true and delete result is also true but the final result is still `function(){[native code]}`. Seems like this is a bug and chromium fix it. I haven't notice that before. In my opinion, delete built-in functions in user's code is dangerous, and will bring out so many bugs when working with others.So why ECMAScript make this decision?"}
{"_id": "240492", "title": "Exercise 3.6: Skiena Algorithm Design Manual", "text": "I am preparing for interview and try to solve the exercise problems of the book. > 3-6. [5] Describe how to modify any balanced tree data structure such that > search, insert, delete, minimum, and maximum still take O(log n) time each, > but successor and predecessor now take O(1) time each. Which operations have > to be modified to support this? Solution: Maintain extra pointers to the successor and predecessor. Update the pointers on insert and delete. Nothing else right? Or is there some other trick involved. Thanks"}
{"_id": "219226", "title": "Javascript heavy page/application - best practice for handling errors", "text": "Consider an application that contains a number of pages with a relatively large amount of javascript present, or a predominantly JS powered application. The script handles a number things, such as:   * Client side validation   * Showing/hiding entry sections when appropriate   * Autocomplete when filling text fields   * Date pickers etc. If we consider the case that javascript is a requirement to use the site (e.g. not public internet site), I am wondering what the best practice would be for handling an unexpected error that occurs at runtime that causes some of the functionality to no longer be present (e.g. sections remain hidden, calendar controls become empty textboxes etc). The options that I can think of would be:   1. Try to fail gracefully and have a page that will respond with no script present (gets trickier the more complex a page/app becomes). or   1. Try..Catch round all the critical code, and on error, display a message, or redirect to an error page. I am curious if anyone has 'best practice' suggestions for this? * * * My motivation for looking into this comes after an obscure bug with an earlier version of jQuery for a user in IE10 running in compatibility mode. This question is not about that, but the knock on affect was that a lot of the code in a document ready handler in jQuery was not loaded, resulting in significant degredation in usability."}
{"_id": "219227", "title": "Strategies to find memory leak in AIR app with native extension", "text": "**Background:** I'm working on an Adobe AIR app that has many facets. I'm looking for strategies to find memory leaks. Broadly speaking, the EXE contains an embedded JVM, and an AIR Native Extension for Windows (using C). So there are many moving parts. As one example, I'm using MonsterDebugger which traces either the AIR runtime (or the Flash Player... I'm not sure which). We've used it to find one leak (regarding listeners in ActionScript). I'm also monitoring the EXE via PowerShell and trying to match memory jumps with log files. **Questions:**   * How can I monitor an embedded JVM, that is launched via C in an AIR ANE?   * Any other strategies? I'm treating this as a \"whiteboard\" question; this is why it's not on Stack Overflow."}
{"_id": "247278", "title": "Way for java program to read file from when it was stopped", "text": "I am working on an application that reads a log file, looks for a specific string, sends alert emails and saves data from the file into a database. The reading functionality is working well, but I am coming across an issue when I stop and restart my program. Basically, it always starts from the beginning of the log file, so I am rereading information I have already read. Please reference the example below. Consider I have the log file with the following lines               1 0708 1200 Error in log     2 0708 1230 Received invoice 00001     3 0708 1231 Received invoice 00002     4 0708 0130 Error in log      5 0708 0135 Received invoice 00003     6 0708 0200 Received invoice 00004     7 0708 0230 Received invoice 00005     8 0708 0235 Error in log      In this example, say I ran the application. The application would start reading at line 1 and continue until I stop the application (picking up any lines that are added to the file as well). Let's say I stop the application when I get to line 5. If this were the case, I would have received an alert e-mail from line 1 and line 4. I would have also saved lines 2 and 3 in the database. My problem/question comes from when I want to restart the application again. Currently, the application will start reading at line 1 again. This is not an issue when it comes to saving data because I have placed a clause to not save if the line has already been added. However, when it comes to sending e-mails I will receive an e-mail for lines 1 and 4 again. After all of the that rambling, I will present my actual question / inquery. Is there a way to stop a program (it completely stops the process) and begin reading from the spot in which I stopped reading from? I cannot think of a way to save the place holder for the file and use it once I start the program again. I have considered saving the file pointer value to a text file and reading from there at every start up, but I was wondering if there was another way or any suggestions to improve this process. I know this question is abstract, but I am reaching out for extra brains on this issue. Little information:   * This is a java program   * This is a web app running on a tomcat server   * The server that tomcat is running on is a unix server   * This is a constantly running application that should only be shut off during an issue or change   * The logs being scanned are very large with 500,000+ lines   * The logs turn around (get replaced with empty log) once they reach a certain size. This means that when I save the file pointer, I have to make sure I am in the same file before I start reading again, otherwise I want to start from the beginning Any help / suggestions would be very helpful. Sorry for the wordy question, please let me know if anything is unclear. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "176652", "title": "Examples of Liskov Substitution", "text": "I'm facilitating a session next week on the Liskov Substitution Principle and I was wondering if anyone had any examples of violations 'from the trenches'? I'm looking for something other than uncle Bob's rectangle - square problem and the persistent set problem he talks about in A-PPP (although that is a great example). So far I'm using the example of a (very simple) List and an IndexedList as the 'correct' use of inheritance. And the addition of a Set to this hierarchy as a violation (as a Set is distinct; strengthening the pre condition of the Add method). I've also taken this great example and it's solution from this question Both those examples are great but I'm looking for something more subtle and harder to spot. So far I've come up with nothing so if you've got a great, subtle example post it up. Also, any metaphors you've come across that helped you understand LSP would be really useful too."}
{"_id": "176657", "title": "Quality Assurance=inspections, reviews..?", "text": "Studying this subject extensively, the most books state the following:   * **Quality Assurance: prevention activity. Act of inspection, reviewing..**   * **Quality Control: testing** While there are some exceptions that mention that QA deals with just processes (planning, strategy, standard application etc.) which is IMHO much closer to real QA, yet I cannot find any good reference in Google Books. I believe that inspections, reviews, testing is all **quality control** as it is about checking products, no matter if it is the final one or work products. The problem is that so many authors do not agree. I would be grateful for detailed explanation, ideally with a reference."}
{"_id": "247272", "title": "How bad is using underscore in names?", "text": "I am mainly a C programmer. In my world, writing `likeThis` or `like_this` is just a matter of style. In Haskell however, it seems that camelCase is the definite choice. Personally, I find the later much more readable. Think `pthread_mutexattr_init` vs `PthreadMutexAttrInit`. What's more, I have configured vim to swap the numbers and their alternate symbols (in C), since numbers happen to be written much less frequently than symbols such as parentheses, star, ampersand etc, which makes life easier on my wrist. As a bonus, this lets me write `this_sort_of_thing` without using the shift key. My question is, from the Haskell programmers, whether using underscore in names is acceptable to the Haskell community or not. Is camelCase an unwritten rule or common convention? Would it be ok to make the public functions `likeThis` but internally write `like_this`?"}
{"_id": "247270", "title": "Does ES6 help grow the Ecmascript standard library?", "text": "With all the noise about EC6, one thing that I realized I haven't heard about is expanding Javascript's standard library. Javascript has a fairly sparse standard library. You need a 3rd party library to do many basic things like date manipulation. I'd rather have more built into the browser via a standard library then have to download Javascript to do basic things. Is this a focus of the standards body? Is it contingent on ES6 modules? Is it even correct to discuss an \"Ecmascript standard library\" (does the standard specify a std lib like say C++'s spec does) or is it something specific to the Javascript implementation of the Ecmascript standard?"}
{"_id": "247274", "title": "MVC and the business rule", "text": "I need to know where in the MVC should I apply the business rule. Imagine the situation: I have a school and I need to generate a calendar of classes for teachers. Each teacher has a school subject and is only available certain times. I need to generate this calendar in such a way that teachers can performing without timing conflicts. **Here are my questions:**   1. What part of MVC the teacher should be part of? Taking into mind that your timings data are stored externally (such as a SQL database or an XML), it should be a Model, correct?   2. Now, where in the MVC the business rule that will compile the calendar should be developed? Like Controller or a Library?   3. These data could be worked directly into the Model, or perhaps a specific Model to work with other Models? **Now a bit of my vision:** (please, correct me if I'm wrong)   1. The data from the teachers should be handled by a Model. So that I could, for example, get the timing available to him and his school subject. So, Teacher is Model.   2. The compilation of the calendar could be done in a controller or library. Question: but, controllers should be related to routes, and libraries to an API?"}
{"_id": "141046", "title": "What are the benefits of closing every if-statement with an else in Python?", "text": "I am reading Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw. In this lesson he writes: \"Every `if-statement` must have an `else`.\" What are the benefits of ending every `if-statement` with an `else`? Are there any legitimate reasons not to end an `if-statement` with an `else`?"}
{"_id": "184855", "title": "In memory collection vs database vs individual classes for infrequently changed objects", "text": "I have a ASP.NET application which puts the users through a series of forms in a wizard like fashion and has them fill out fields on the form. In code, these forms and fields are represented as \"Step\" objects, with a collection of \"Field\" objects as properties. Currently I have only one Step class, and each individual step is an instantiation of this class with various identifying properties set on it, including the collection of fields. The step objects are persisted in a database and loaded using an ORM. Note these \"Step\" objects aren't actually responsible for tracking progress of a specific user, they're really just templates that describe step properties like name, display name, step order, etc. Progress is tracked through a series of \"ItemStep\" objects which basically link one of these \"Step\" templates to a specific \"Project\". \"ItemSteps\" store information about which steps are completed, locked, skipped, etc. However, these step objects and the associated field objects are not designed to be configured by end users. Most changes to the objects would likely break the application without corresponding changes to the code. Given all of this, I see 3 possible things I can do.   1. Moving the steps and fields out of the database and into some sort of in memory collection. My basic thought process is to have a static collection that holds all the steps, which will be hidden behind my existing data access logic.   2. Create a new class for each step, and appropriately define equality methods so that two step objects of the same class are considered equal. Then instead of querying either my in memory repository, or my ORM, all I need to do is new up an instance of the appropriate step class. The only downside is I have to find some way to persist the relationship between an \"ItemStep\" in the database and the \"Step\" class it should be instantiated with.   3. Do nothing and keep everything as it is. I figure 1 or 2 will result in a performance improvement since they'll be fewer trips to the database, and will streamline the process of application changes, since I won't have to worry about updating the database. And either 1 or 2 could also make it easier to build out a rich inheritance model around the steps, and move some logic onto the step class itself, instead of where it currently sits, inside my Presenters. Of these three possible solutions, what would you reccommend?"}
{"_id": "133298", "title": "Help understanding server-side scripting", "text": "As far as I understand, there are basically 3 options for doing server-side scripting these days:   1. Using scripting languages that can be directly interpreted/executed by the web server (e.g., PHP and ASP), where the scripts are interpreted/executed on the fly (i.e., as HTTP requests come), the output is embed into HTML pages is then sent back to the client.   2. Using any language (e.g., C, C++, PERL, Python) the operating system of the server is capable of executing (either using an interpreter or using the executable file already compiled) and then using CGI to communicate between the web server and the OS. Output of the scripts comes via CGI to the server in the form of complete HTML pages, and is then sent back to the client.    3. Using Java on a server that can handle servlets/JSPs, which is pretty much the same idea as option 1 above, except using Java instead of PHP/ASP. **Questions** :   1. Is my understanding so far on track, or did I get something wrong?   2. Are ASP and PHP the only languages that can be interpreted and executed directly by a web server?   3. Where does Ruby fall in the classification above? Can it be interpreted/executed by servers like PHP? Or does it communicate via CGI?   4. Is server-side scripting via CGI becoming obsolete or not at all?"}
{"_id": "255060", "title": "Where to put sample data in project structure", "text": "I am working on a Scala project and I want to include some sample data somewhere in the project. Specifically, my Scala project includes code that performs various natural language processing tasks on text data. I want to include a sample set of text files that the user can use to test out the program somewhere in the project structure. Right now I am putting this sample data in the resources folder (mostly because it is the only location within the project that I know how to read from). But I was wondering if this is the best location? In general what is the best practice regarding where to put sample data within the project? Alternatively, would it be a better idea to simply provide this data separately (i.e external to the project)?"}
{"_id": "255065", "title": "Architecture Decoupling", "text": "I have set up my ASP.NET MVC project as follows: Presentation Layer : ViewModels, Views, Certain logic to handle service responses Business Logic / Service Layer : Services that work with data from either database or presentation layer. (Domain models is EF entities) Database Access Layer : Entity Framework. according to http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/getting-started-with-ef-using- mvc/advanced-entity-framework-scenarios-for-an-mvc-web-application#repo a repository/unit of work pattern is no longer needed with EF6. And working with ASP.NET Identity creating a interface for DbContext is hard, making all services have a tight coupling to the ApplicationDbContext. Is this okay? in the scenario you have to change database to NoSQL, you would have to change all the Services code instead of just the \"middleware\". Any comments to architecture is welcome aswell. I am trying to find a good stand point for creating an application."}
{"_id": "184859", "title": "When should user stories be combined and separated?", "text": "As a school project, we are rolling out our initial set of user stories. Should a user story record the original idea from a user, without combining them or separate them? For example, John added that \"I want to post multiple choice questions.\", and Mike added that \"Except multiple questions, I want to post true/false questions.\" David added that \"I want a confirmation box before I add questions\" Do you leave those 3 user stories as it is, or you want to combine John's and Mike's as \"I want to post multiple choice and true/false questions.\" and within this new user story a detail like \"show a conformation box before clicking the add buttion\"? What do you choose?"}
{"_id": "252591", "title": "How to convert this recursive problem to iterative? Line Simplification algorithm fails to run due to Maximum Recursion Depth being hit", "text": "I am implementing the Douglas, Peucker's Line Simplification algorithm in Python. I started with this implementation. However, it fails to run in Python due to Maximum Recursion Depth being hit. How can I convert this algorithm to a iterative one? I am not able to imagine this problem in an iterative view. My expectation is to get approach/hint which can be used rather than actual code. Is it possible to use some internal stack to resolve the stack overflow (or avoid the maximum recursion depth)? **Update:** Found the iterative implementation of the algorithm here."}
{"_id": "209542", "title": "How to get up to speed on latest technologies?", "text": "I am working as Software Developer for Financial Company and we are using standard Java/Java EE stack with Oracle db as backend and using Spring/Hibernate framework with JBOSS Application Server. So this is pretty much standard stack and it's an legacy application. Now, I read blogs on Infoq.com and corporate engineering blogs and see people are trying out new technologies like NoSQL(Mongodb, Cassandra), Cloud Computing(AWS), Big Data(Hadoop and it's related eco system) and distributed computing frameworks(Zookeeper, cluster based cassandra...mongodb...hadoop configuration !!!) but I cannot use those technologies in my current project as it's an legacy application and there is no scope and messing around with core components. So my question is,   1. How can I learn and come to speed on all this new technologies?   2. What approach should I take? (I do lot of reading from Infoq and HighScalability about different architectures but never get an experience where i am migration my complete application to ec2 instance and analyze what are benefits of doing that or what all scenarios should we consider with that kind of project) Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "252593", "title": "Data generation system modular design", "text": "I am trying to think of the most sensible way to design the architecture of a data generation system with several steps. Data in the system goes through several transformations which can be divided into separate steps (from the business logic point of view). I would like the system to keep this modular design, in such a way that each module represents a step in the data transformation. A module's input should be the previous module's output.   1. What are some good ways to orchestrate this flow?   2. How should modules communicate with each other?   3. In each step, where should the input come from, and where should the output go?   4. Is it a good idea to use a database as the source and target of data consumption / generation for each module?   5. Should modules be built as separate scripts / executables which only directly communicate with the database? **Edit:** The system will be implemented by several people. Each developer will be assigned a module. I would like the architecture to simplify the workflow by allowing each developer to work independently; and make assumptions only about the data their specific module consumes. **Edit 2** : The modules relationship is depicted below. Modules are represented as blue boxes. Some modules depend on data generated by other modules (black arrows). Some modules need to persist data on the DB (dotted gray arrows). ![Modules flow](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WWzee.jpg)"}
{"_id": "123802", "title": "How can I migrate from Excel VBA with ADO to C++ with OCCI?", "text": "I am employed as a developer, but the only application development tools I have available to me are Access and Excel (i.e., VBA). Fortunately, I have good access to our Oracle DB, but that took some persuasion! It's been a while, but I can write good, albeit vanilla C (amongst other, less relevant things) and am familiar with the OOP model. The problem I've come up against is that VBA with ADO isn't robust enough to suit my needs. So, my question is: how realistic do you think it would be to migrate from this environment to C++ (say, using Visual C++) with Oracle's C++ call interface, given my experience? Would the learning curve (C++, which I've dabbled in briefly, OCCI and, ultimately, Windows GUI coding) be too steep to justify? That is, could I learn this stuff on the job to a production level in a short amount of time?"}
{"_id": "123803", "title": "How to estimate the length of a project based on another project?", "text": "I was wondering whether there were any estimating models for projects which use the results of previous projects. For example, imagine I want to develop an application for a phone based on a web app I completed last month. Say the web app took 1000 hours but that I don't know anything about mobile development. If you wanted to add another number into the equation you could say that 50% of the features implement in the web app will need to be implemented for the mobile app. Where would I even start to form an estimate for the new project? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "168252", "title": "Is a \"model\" branch a common practice?", "text": "I just thought it could be a good thing to have a dedicated version control branch for all database schema changes and I wanted to know if anyone else is doing the same and what have the results been. Say that you are working with:   1. Schema model/documentation (some file where you model the database visually to generate the schema source, say MySQL Workbench, with a .mwb file, which is binary)   2. Schema source (a .sql file)   3. Schema-based code generation The normal way we were working was with feature branches, so we would do changes to the model files (the database specific ones), and then have to regenerate points 2 and 3, dealing with the possible conflicts (or even code rewriting). Now say that your workflow goes the same way as the previous item numbering. With a model branch you wouldn't have to reconcile the schema model with binaries in other feature branches, or have to regenerate schema source and regenerate code (which might have human code on top of it). It makes so much sense to me it feels weird not having seen this earlier as a common practice. **Edit** : I'm counting on branch merges to be the assertions for the model matching the code. I use a DVCS, so I don't fear long-lived branches or scary- looking merges. I'm also doing feature branching."}
{"_id": "125234", "title": "Is it a bad idea to stray from CSS selector syntax in a JavaScript selector engine?", "text": "I'm designing a JavaScript selector engine, and I'm currently focused on parsing the selector string. Specifically, combinators. The CSS3 combinators I know of are:   * `>` (children)   * `space` (descendants)   * `+` (next sibling)   * `~` (all next siblings) Which is fine for how CSS works (how style rules are applied). However, I'm now realizing (now that I'm examining this paradigm more closely) that this seems a bit limiting in a JavaScript setting. Below I've created an alternative list of combinators. What I would like to know is:   1. Do any of the current selector engines stray from standard CSS selection methods? (I'm familiar with Sizzle and Sly, but none of the others)   2. Do you see any reason why any of the combinators I've listed wouldn't work well?   3. Do you think having more selector string options (more combinators, more filters, etc) is beneficial or are just a waste/confusing/dumb/etc? Thanks all in advance for your thoughts!   * `>` (children)   * `>>` (descendants) (also, space would still work)   * `+` (next sibling)   * `++` (all next siblings) (also, tilde would still work)   * `-` (previous sibling)   * `--` (all previous siblings)   * `*` (previous and next siblings)   * `**` (all siblings)   * `^` (parent) Example 1: `div ^ span` \\- get all spans with a div child Example 2: `div ** span` \\- get all span siblings of div Example 3: `.lastListItem -- li` \\- all li previous to the li with class `.lastListItem` Example 4: `#thing ^ div ** .error` \\- all items with class `.error` that are siblings of #thing's parent (assuming #thing's parent is a div) p.s. Oh, and I also thought of having a placeholder character that could stand in for any simple selector. So, Example 4 might look like this (with an underscore as a placeholder): Example 4 alt: `#thing ^ _ ** .error` \\- all items with class \".error\" that are siblings of #thing's parent (no matter what kind of element #thing's parent is)"}
{"_id": "198330", "title": "Solving the last mile problem in software engineering", "text": "The more I write code the more I realize that writing the code is not the hard part. The hard part is making sure all the dependencies are in order, there are no hard coded paths, that I don't have weird implicit library dependencies, that there is documentation on how to get it up and running, etc. Tools like vagrant, rake, chef-solo, and fpm definitely help me with some of those problems but there is almost always something that I overlook and when it comes time to deploy the code something almost always goes wrong. I'm also a little disheartened by how little most programmers care about making sure their code is easy to deploy. So how do people usually solve the last mile problem? How do you make sure your code is deployable with as little fuss as possible?"}
{"_id": "138455", "title": "What is a recommended pattern for REST endpoints planning for foresighted changes", "text": "Trying to design an API for external applications with foresight for change isn't easy, but a little thought up front can make life easier later on. I'm trying to establish a scheme that will support future changes while remaining backward compatible by leaving prior version handlers in place. The primary concern on this article is to what pattern should be followed for all defined endpoints for a given product/company. ## Base Scheme Given a base URL template of `https://rest.product.com/` I have devised that all services reside under `/api` along with `/auth` and other non-rest based endpoints such as `/doc`. Therefore I can establish the base endpoints as follows:               https://rest.product.com/api/...     https://rest.product.com/auth/login     https://rest.product.com/auth/logout     https://rest.product.com/doc/...      ## Service Endpoints Now for the endpoints themselves. Concern about `POST`,`GET`,`DELETE` is not the primary objective of this article and is the concern on those actions themselves. Endpoints can be broken down into namespaces and actions. Each action must also present itself in a way to support fundamental changes in return type or required parameters. Taking a hypothetical chat service where registered users can send messages we may have the following endpoints:               https://rest.product.com/api/messages/list/{user}     https://rest.product.com/api/messages/send      Now to add version support for future API changes which may be breaking. We could either add the version signature after `/api/` or after `/messages/`. Given the `send` endpoint we could then have the following for v1.               https://rest.product.com/api/v1/messages/send     https://rest.product.com/api/messages/v1/send      So my first question is, what is a recommended place for the version identifier? ## Managing Controller Code So now we have established we need to support prior versions we need to thus somehow handle code for each of the new versions which may deprecate over time. Assuming we are writing endpoints in Java we could manage this through packages.               package com.product.messages.v1;     public interface MessageController {         void send();         Message[] list();     }      This has the advantage that all code has been separated through namespaces where any breaking change would mean that a new copy of the service endpoints. The detriment of this is that all code needs to be copied and bug fixes wished to be applied to new and prior versions needs to be applied/tested for each copy. Another approach is to create handlers for each endpoint.               package com.product.messages;     public class MessageServiceImpl {         public void send(String version) {             getMessageSender(version).send();         }         // Assume we have a List of senders in order of newest to oldest.         private MessageSender getMessageSender(String version) {             for (MessageSender s : senders) {                 if (s.supportsVersion(version)) {                     return s;                 }             }         }     }      This now isolates versioning to each endpoint itself and makes bug fixes back port compatible by in most cases only needing to be applied once, but it does mean that we need to do a fair bit more work to each individual endpoint to support this. So there's my second question \"What's the best way to design REST service code to support prior versions.\""}
{"_id": "134776", "title": "What licence for a FOSS that would sell packages on Mac and Windows but give them away on Linux?", "text": "The code should remains as open as possible, but I'm planning to sell it on Windows and Mac, and make free rmp/deb. Does the licence even matter? It feels like I'm just selling the service of compiling and distributing the software here."}
{"_id": "199657", "title": "Difference between functional and technical specification", "text": "I'm writing a specification for a project, and am struggling with separating functional specification from technical specification (see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000035.html). For example, I'm trying to specify the behaviour when a user requests a list of Foo objects they have visibility on. In the functional specification, should I describe what precisely is returned (i.e. the structure of a Foo object) or just that the system returns a list of them and then put the details of the Foo object in the technical specification? The design is for an API in case that makes any difference. I can't find many examples of how such an API specification is written."}
{"_id": "134770", "title": "Non-viral open source license but with clause for source disclosure?", "text": "I'm looking for a license (for a C library) which basically says: \"Redistributions in binary form must be accompanied by the source code of Larger Work (My code + Your code)\" i.e., L = M + Y, with '+' here meaning, for example, static linking / dynamic linking. And there must be no more restrictions other than this. If I choose my license 'X' as:   * GPL - source code of Larger Work, both M and Y, must also be licensed as whole under GPL.   * LGPL - My code continues to be LGPL, Your code can be kept closed-source if needed.   * BSD - source code of neither M nor Y need be disclosed. To be more clear, the binary must be under the license 'X' but source code of Larger Work must be made _available_ \\-- under whatever license the Author of Larger Work wants, it need not be restricted to 'X'. LGPL comes close, but it does not mandate the source availability of Your code. Example use case: Author of Larger Work _must_ give the his recipient all of his source code (both M and Y) but can ask the recipient to sign an NDA restricting modification of Y, but the recipient is allowed to study Y. In short, 'X' shouldn't have hereditary characteristics (like *GPL) yet source code availability should be mandated. Is there such a \"non-viral\" FOSS license ? Thanks in advance ! PS: I asked this question first on StackOverflow, someone there suggested that I post it in this site. That question was closed as off-topic there, and I've deleted it from SO."}
{"_id": "164557", "title": "Service Layer - how broad should it be, and should it also be used from the local application?", "text": "**The background:** I need to build a desktop application with some operations (CRUD and more) (=winforms), I need to make another application which will re-use some of the functions of the main application (=webforms). I'm using service layer for reusing my functions. The service is calling the functions on the BL layer (correct me if I'm doing this wrong). so my desktop has 4 projects - DAL, BL, UI, WEBSERVICES. **The dilemma (simple but I still need some more experienced opinions):**   1. In my main winform UI - should I call the functions from the BL - bl.getcustomers(), or do it similar to how I call it in the webform, and call the functions from the service - webservices.getcustomers?    2. Should I create a service for every single function on the BL even if I need some of the functions only in one UI? for example - should I create services for all the CRUD operations, even though I need to re-use only update operation in the webform? _YOUR HELP IS MUCH APPRECIATED_"}
{"_id": "84265", "title": "Giving employer power of attorney to obtain your inventions", "text": "Is it normal/just for a software company to ask for power of attorney to ensure they obtain patents on anything you invent while you are employed as a programmer? **Update:** In my case, I went back the the employer. They told me they have no interest in using my inventions which are not related the domain that were not invented during company hours, using company resources. The company encourages open source contribution, and will not interfere in that regard. I further examined the contract, and at the point where the term 'inventions' is defined in legal speak, it stated that inventions in the context of this agreement were only those developed using company resources within company time. Power of Attorney allows the company to ensure they can get my signature (or equivalent in my absence) for any inventions which they may wish to patent."}
{"_id": "164552", "title": "How to communicate within a company what is being Continually Deployed", "text": "I work for a small development company, 20 people total in the entire company, 3 in actual development, and we've adopted CD for our commits to trunk, and it works great, from a code management and up-time side. However - we're getting flak from our support staff and marketing department that they don't feel that they're getting enough lead time on new features and notifications on bug fixes that could change behavior. Part of why we love the CD system is for us in development, it's fast, we fix the bug, add the quick feature, close the Bugz and move on with our day to the next item. All members of our company are now on HipChat at all times, and when a deployment occurs, a message is sent to a room that all company members are in, letting them know what was just deployed (it just shows the commit messages from tip back to the last recorded deployment). We in development are also attempting to make sure that when we're making a change that modifies the UI or a public facing behavior, we post a screenshot to the All Company room and explain what the behavior change is, seeking pushback or concerns. Often, the response is silence. Sometimes, it's a few minor questions, but nothing that need stop the deployment from happening. What I'm wondering is how do other users of the CD method deal with notifications of new features and changes to areas of the company that are not development - and eventually on to customers in the world? Thanks,   Francis"}
{"_id": "40373", "title": "So Singletons are bad, then what?", "text": "There has been a lot of discussion lately about the problems with using (and overusing) Singletons. I've been one of those people earlier in my career too. I can see what the problem is now, and yet, there are still many cases where I can't see a nice alternative - and not many of the anti-Singleton discussions really provide one. Here is a real example from a major recent project I was involved in: The application was a thick client with many separate screens and components which uses huge amounts of data from a server state which isn't updated too often. This data was basically cached in a Singleton \"manager\" object - the dreaded \"global state\". The idea was to have this one place in the app which keeps the data stored and synced, and then any new screens that are opened can just query most of what they need from there, without making repetitive requests for various supporting data from the server. Constantly requesting to the server would take too much bandwidth - and I'm talking thousands of dollars extra Internet bills per week, so that was unacceptable. Is there any other approach that could be appropriate here than basically having this kind of global data manager cache object? This object doesn't officially have to be a \"Singleton\" of course, but it does conceptually make sense to be one. What is a nice clean alternative here?"}
{"_id": "178685", "title": "How to evaluate code quality when you're not familiar with the language?", "text": "As a hypothetical, if I were to interview someone for a new PHP developer position when my experience is in .NET, how can I determine if the code sample they've provided me is efficient and of good quality? In other words, what is the best way to evaluate a programmer's code if you're not familiar with the language?"}
{"_id": "162865", "title": "Is there a name for this use of the State design pattern?", "text": "I'm looking to see if there is a particular name for this style of programming a certain kind of behavior into a program. Said program runs in real time, in an update loop, and the program uses the State design pattern to do some work, but it's the specific way it does the work that I want to know about. Here's how it's used.               - Object Foo constructed, with concrete StateA object in it     - First loop runs     --- Foo.Run function calls StateA.Bar     --- in StateA.Bar replace Foo's state to StateB     - Second loop runs     --- Foo.Run calls StateB.Bar     - Third loop runs     --- Foo.Run calls StateB.Bar     - Fourth loop     --- etc.       So in short, `Foo` doesn't have an explicit `Initialize` function. It will just have `Run`, but `Run` will do something unique in the first frame to initialize something for `Foo` and then replace it with a different action that will repeat in all the frames following it- thus not needing to check if `Foo`'s already initialized. It's just a \"press start and go\" action. What would you call implementing this type of behavior?"}
{"_id": "178682", "title": "Best method to organize/manage dependencies in the VCS within a large solution", "text": "A simple scenario:   * 2 projects are in version control      * The application      * The test(s)   * A significant number of checkins are made to the application daily.    * CI builds and runs all of the automation nightly. In order to write and/or run tests you need to have built the application (to reference/load instrumented assemblies). Now, consider the application to be **massive** , such that building it is prohibitive in time (an entire day to compile). The obvious side effect here, is that once you've performed a build locally, it is immediately inconsistent with latest. For instance: If I were to sync with latest, and open up one of the test projects, it would not locally build until I built the application. This is the same when syncing to another branch/build/tag. So, in order to even start working, I need to wait a day to build the application locally, so that the assemblies could be loaded - and then those assemblies wouldn't be latest. How do you organize the repository or (ideally) your development environment such that you can continually develop tests against whatever the current build is, or a given specific build, while minimizing building the application as much as possible?"}
{"_id": "162860", "title": "FTP file compare", "text": "Are there any FTP programs out there that do a file comparison as well, so I can select the local and remote files and see what actually changed? I didnt find any when I googled. But it doesnt seem like a very advanced use case to me. Surely many others would have felt the need for it.. right?"}
{"_id": "230157", "title": "What is the point of link rel=\"self\" in a REST API?", "text": "I often see the following in HTML documents               <link rel=\"self\" href=\"http://example.com/something\">      or like this in JSON                link: {          rel=\"self\",          href=\"http://example.com/something\"      }      or in XML                <atom:link rel=\"self\" href=\"http://example.com/something\" />      So I had some questions:   1. Why include this link? What advantage does it bring? (Please tell me there is a reason to it and its not just a \"good practice\" talisman)   2. How should I exploit this link in my clients? What are the use case for this link?   3. When _shouldn't_ I use this link? When is it pointless to include it?"}
{"_id": "14254", "title": "Is mentioning my blog on my resume helpful or hurtful to a job search?", "text": "I have a blog that I use mostly to record solutions to problems I have had, that I had some trouble finding an answer to. Mostly problems where the online doc I googled provided too much info, and I found the answer to my question on the fifth page of my third google hit. (Or if I asked the question here, I either didn't get an answer or I got slammed for asking a question that \"the answer could be easily googled.\") I frequently look up stuff on this blog to remind myself of how I solved a problem, and it gets a decent amount of hits from others as well. Anyway, I was wondering if mentioning this blog on my resume would help or hurt me in a job search? The topics are all over the map. What I would hope it shows is that   * I am a person who finds solutions to problems   * I have used many different technologies in my work   * I am not afraid to tackle a challenge  What I am concerned it shows is that   * This person had trouble with something that simple?   * Why is this person bothering to blog this stuff?"}
{"_id": "122175", "title": "Choosing a web development framework?", "text": "So, I've sort of reached a point where I want to start developing a website. Originally, I planned to build said website using PHP and CodeIgniter, I'm familiar with both, but, truth be told, I'm not too fond of either. I find they just get rather messy, CodeIgniter helps somewhat, but no matter what, it seems that most PHP comes out more obfuscated than it has to be. Anyways, I've come to the point where I want to either use Python or Ruby. I'm familiar in both, though more so towards Python, but I've never done any web development in them. I'll take the necessary time to learn the frameworks (and further my knowledge in the language of my choosing), but I need to choose one. I don't like either language more than the other, they both have their benefits... However, since I've never done any web development with either language, I was hoping that you guys could give me some pointers. What are the available frameworks for each language? What do you recommend and why? Note: I've primarily looked into Rails and Django - but I'm still open to others. I'm looking for one that will work for just one (or maybe two) developers. It has to be fairly easy to learn (but I will take the time to learn it). Also, I'd like it to easily support clean code and agile development."}
{"_id": "58246", "title": "Who can call themselves a UI developer?", "text": "**Who can call themselves a UI developer, without being a poser?**   I've noticed people calling themselves UI developers, which I would categorize as web designers instead. I'm not knocking it, I'd just like to know _who's the real deal_."}
{"_id": "164085", "title": "Does *every* project benefit from written specifications?", "text": "I know this is holy war territory, so please read the question to the end before answering. There are many cases where written specifications make a lot of sense. For example, if you're a contractor and you want to get paid, you need written specs. If you're working in a team with 20 persons, you need written specs. If you're writing a programming language compiler or interpreter (and it's not perl), you'll usually write a formal specification. I don't doubt that there are many more cases where written specifications are a really good idea. I just think that there are cases where there's so little benefit in written specs, that it doesn't outweigh the costs of writing and maintaining them. **EDIT:** The close votes say that \"it is difficult to say what is asked here\", so let me clarify: The usefulness of written, detailed specifications is often claimed like a dogma. (If you want examples, look at the comments.) But I don't see the use of them for the kind of development I'm doing. **So what is asked here is: How would written specifications help me?** Background information: I work for a small company that's developing vertical market software. If our product is easier to use and has better performance than the competition, it sells. If it's harder to use, even if it behaves 100% as the specification says, it doesn't sell. So there are no \"external forces\" for having written specs. The advantage would have to be somewhere in the development process. Now, I can see how _frozen_ specifications would make a developer's life easier. But we'll never have frozen specs. If we see in the middle of development that feature X is not intuitive to use the way it's specified, then we can only choose between changing the specification or developing a product that won't sell. You'll probably ask by now: How do you know when you're done? Well, we're continually improving our product. The competition does the same. So (hopefully) we're never done. We keep improving the software, and when we reach a point when the benefits of the improvements we've added since the last release outweigh the costs of an update, we create a new release that is then tested, localized, documented and deployed. This also means that there's rarely any schedule pressure. Nobody has to do overtime to make a deadline. If the feature isn't done by the time we want to release the next version, it'll simply go into the next version. The next question might be: How do your developers know what they're supposed to implement? The answer is: They have a lot of domain knowledge. They know the customers business well enough, so a high-level description of the feature (or even just the problem that the customer needs solved) is enough to implement it. If it's not clear, the developer creates a few fake screens to get feedback from marketing/management or customers, but this is nowhere near the level of detail of actual specifications. This might be inefficient for larger teams, but for a small team with low turnover it works quite well. It has the additional benefit that the developer in question often comes up with a better solution than the person writing the specs might have. This question is already getting very long, but let me address one last point: Testing. Like I said in the beginning, if our software behaves 100% like the spec says, it still can be crap. In fact, if it's so unintuitive that you need a spec to know how to test it, it probably _is_ crap. It makes sense to have fixed, written tests for some core functionality and for regression bugs, but again, this is nowhere near a full written spec of how the software should behave when. The main test is: hand the software to a user who doesn't know it yet and tell him to use the new feature X. If she can figure out how to use it and it works, it works."}
{"_id": "122173", "title": "Can the Abstract Factory pattern be considered as a case of polymorphism?", "text": "I was looking for a pattern/solution that allows me call a method as a runtime exception in a group of different methods without using Reflection. I've recently become aware of the Abstract Factory Pattern. To me, it looks so much like polymorphism, and I thought it could be a case of polymorphism but without the super class `GUIFactory`, as you can see in the example of the link above. Am I correct in this assumption?"}
{"_id": "94843", "title": "Duplication of view access control logic in database queries and application component", "text": "Our web application has a complex access control system which incorporates role-based and object-level privileges. In the business logic layer, this is implemented by a component that obtains (and caches) all the necessary data with a batch query and computes the user's type and level of access to any object in the system. (A future optimization would be conditional batching based on the data we need for a particular request.) However, the **view** privilege logic in this component is duplicated elsewhere in database queries. (We need to hide data in listing screens that the user does not have privilege to view.) **How can we reduce or eliminate this duplication of logic between the application access control component and our database queries?** Two approaches come to mind. I'm sure there are others.   * Check view privilege in the application for each row that comes back from the server via queries from listing screens.   * Move more of the access control logic into a stored function that can be called from the queries as well as the application code. _Answers should defend the merits of the proposed method over other methods. For example, if my second suggested approach is desirable, why? If you have suggested a third approach, why does it win over both my approaches?_"}
{"_id": "5427", "title": "Why such popularity with Python?", "text": "Other than being annoyed at whitespace as syntax, I'm not a hater, I just don't get the fascination with Python. I appreciate the poetry of Perl, and have programmed beautiful web services in bash & korn, and shebang `gnuplot`. I write documents in `troff` and don't mind REXX. Didn't find tcl any more useful years ago, but **what's the big stink about Python**? I see job listings and many candidates with this as a prize & trophy on their resumes. * * * I guess in reality, I'm trying to personally become sold on this, I just can't find a reason."}
{"_id": "122179", "title": "Random pairing algorithm", "text": "If you have a list of items and you want to randomly pair the items in the list together, what kind of algorithm would you use to do that, such that the items can only be matched to one other item."}
{"_id": "114078", "title": "Why should company choose VB.NET over C#", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  VB.Net vs C# debate Are there any actual reasons why company should choose VB.NET over C#? I work for a company which develops medical software and switched from VB6 to VB.NET several years ago. There were two reasons to switch to VB.NET but not to C# at that moment:   1. VB.NET is more similar to VB6 and it should make it easier for developers to switch to .NET world   2. VB.NET had a better support for COM than C# The first reason is not serious as VB6 and VB.NET are two different worlds and there is no significant difference between switching from VB6 to VB.NET or C#. The second reason is not actual after C# 4 release. Our company eventually switched to C# (and yes, we now have modules in VB6, VB.NET and C#; and even some modules in C++) because: 1\\. It is easier to find developers in C# 2\\. .NET world is C#-oriented: Visual Studio works better with C#, Resharper has better support for C#, etc. I am just curious whether there are still some reasons for company to choose VB.NET over C#."}
{"_id": "228043", "title": "We use subversion - Should we place comments in my code anyways?", "text": "I brought up in a meeting an annoyance that code changes were not commented within the code itself. We use SVN (Subversion) for source control, and it was relayed to me that you can just go into SVN and check the history and see the changes. My question is is this a best practices? It seems easier to me to place the comment in the code itself with the defect/user story reference (we use Rally/Agile) **AND** in the svn header when you check in the changes. My bosses seem to think putting it the code is unecessary, and I told them I completely disagreed with that practice. I've always been taught that comments in the code are never bad. This is not my first gig. I was even more floored when he told me his boss has been known to rip out comments in some code. After I stopped having the shakes, I wanted to... vomit. What do you think about comments in code vs/with comments in source control and what do you do as a best practice?"}
{"_id": "175302", "title": "What to do when TDD tests reveal new functionality that is needed that also needs tests?", "text": "What do you do when you are writing a test and you get to the point where you need to make the test pass and you realize that you need an additional piece of functionality that should be separated into its own function? That new function needs to be tested as well, but the TDD cycle says to Make a test fail, make it pass then refactor. If I am on the step where I am trying to make my test pass I'm not supposed to go off and start another failing test to test the new functionality that I need to implement. For example, I am writing a point class that has a function **WillCollideWith( _LineSegment_ )**:               public class Point {         // Point data and constructor ...              public bool CollidesWithLine(LineSegment lineSegment) {             Vector PointEndOfMovement = new Vector(Position.X + Velocity.X,                                                    Position.Y + Velocity.Y);             LineSegment pointPath = new LineSegment(Position, PointEndOfMovement);             if (lineSegment.Intersects(pointPath)) return true;             return false;         }     }      I was writing a test for **CollidesWithLine** when I realized that I would need a **LineSegment.Intersects( _LineSegment_ )** function. But, should I just stop what I am doing on my test cycle to go create this new functionality? That seems to break the \"Red, Green, Refactor\" principle. Should I just write the code that detects that lineSegments Intersect inside of the **CollidesWithLine** function and refactor it after it is working? That would work in this case since I can access the data from **LineSegment** , but what about in cases where that kind of data is private?"}
{"_id": "175301", "title": "Has the emerging generation of programmers got the wrong idea about design patterns?", "text": "Over the years I've noticed a shift in attitude towards design patterns, particularly amongst the emerging generation of developers. There seems to be a notion these days that design patterns are silver bullets that instantly cure any problem, a proliferating idea that advancing as a software engineer simply means learning and applying more and more patterns. When confronted with a problem, developers no longer strive to truly understand the issue and design a solution - instead they simply pick a design pattern which seems to be a close fit, and try to brute-force it. You can see evidence of this by the many, many questions on Stack Overflow that begin with the phrase _\"what pattern should I use to...\"_. I fall into a slightly more mature category of developers (5-10 years experience) and I have a very different viewpoint on patterns - simply as a communication tool to enhance clarity. I find this perspective of design patterns being lego bricks (collected like pokemon cards) a little disconcerting. Will developers lose this attitude as they gain more experience in software engineering? Or could these notions perhaps steer the direction of our craft in years to come? Did the older generation of developers have any similar concerns about us? (perhaps about OO design or similar...). if so, how did we turn out?"}
{"_id": "114322", "title": "What is this kind of architecture", "text": "I have looked at the Force.com videos, I am fascinated by the way it allows one to add custom fields to forms, create new forms, with the validations built in by just marking as the required kind, all on the fly. I am trying to implement the same kind of approach to my Java application.   1. Which of the Java frameworks support this kind of quick development.    2. Do we have a name for this kind of architectural approach? In case I need to provision this feature on the fly, what are the things I need to take care for implementation.  Basically I am not clear what is this kind of approach known as to google and find. Please point me any references. Thanks. _Edit: Here is it @barjak:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkRbzd3vxHU#t=0m18s_"}
{"_id": "238240", "title": "Help in ensuring unit tests are meaningful", "text": "I've just written a unit test for this function, which loops through a collection of dates and sets properties equal to true or false depending on whether they're before or after a given comparison date:               public void CheckHistory(int months)     {         var endDate = DateTime.Today.AddMonths(months);         Dictionary<Order, bool> orders = new Dictionary<Order, bool>();              foreach (var kvp in this.Orders)         {             if (kvp.Key.Date >= endDate)             {                 orders.Add(kvp.Key, true);             }             else             {                 orders.Add(kvp.Key, false);             }         }         this.OrderHistories = orders;     }      So here's the test I wrote:               public void Assert_CheckHistory_SelectsCorrectDates()     {         MyViewModel vm = GetVmWithMockRepository();         vm.OrderHistories = new Dictionary<OrderHistory, bool>();              OrderHistory ohOld = new OrderHistory();         ohOld.MailingDate = DateTime.Today.AddMonths(-12);         vm.OrderHistories.Add(ohOld, false);              OrderHistory ohNew = new OrderHistory();         ohNew.MailingDate = DateTime.Today.AddMonths(-3);         vm.OrderHistories.Add(ohNew, false);              vm.CheckOrderHist(-6);              int selectedOrders = vm.OrderHistories.Where(o => o.Value == true).Count();         Assert.AreEqual(1, selectedOrders, \"Unexpected number of selected Order Histories\");     }      Nothing wrong there. Test passes and all is good with the world. However, I'm haunted by a nagging feeling that I'm not actually testing anything useful, and am just writing tests for the sake out it. I get this a _lot_. A creeping paranoia that the tests I'm writing are incomplete in the sense that while they cover the lines of code in the target function, they don't really trap any likely problems and are therefore just a maintenance overhead. Is that sample test worthwhile? Is even a badly-designed test worth worthwhile over no test at all? And most of all are there any principles to help programmers identify whether a test is useful or not, or to guide them in constructing useful tests in the future? To be clear, I'm adding tests to an existing application. Going test-first in true TDD style isn't possible."}
{"_id": "238249", "title": "Project Organization", "text": "I have been having a discussion with a colleague about the best way to organize a (C#)project after he reorganized a project I had been working on from something that looked like this: ![Combined](http://i.stack.imgur.com/h50vX.png) To something that looks like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6Gh2J.png) I tend to sway towards having a few big projects as opposed to many smaller projects, but I am open to new ideas and I would love for some input on this. Does anyone have experience with either of these approaches either really working out, or completely falling apart a few years down the line?"}
{"_id": "160705", "title": "Does Fred Brooks' \"Surgical Team\" effectively handle the bus factor?", "text": "My team of 4 experienced developers works on a large, modular Windows application (approx. 200 KLoC). I have focused on the core codebase since the beginning of the project (3 years ago) and have gradually shifted to a semi- lead developer position, though I am not the team manager. Our current iteration is a high-priority UI refresh requested by upper management, involving about 15 changes to the core codebase. When asked by the manager, I estimated that each of the 15 changes would take less than four hours **for me to complete** , a total of less than 7 work days. I then volunteered to perform the work. Instead, the manager decided to evenly divvy up all 15 tasks to all four developers. In the three days since we started work, I have observed two things:   1. The other inexperienced team members completed about 1 or less task each.   2. **Brook's Law** in action: I spent about half of my time providing assistance (attempting to coach them on using the components). As a result, I only finished 2 tasks myself, instead of the expected 5 or 6. I approached my manager with my concern that we were running late and again suggested that I complete the remaining tasks. My request was kindly refused, and the stated reasons to split the load evenly was twofold:   1. Limit the **truck/bus factor** \\- ramping up other developers on these skills now, so that in the future any work can be given to anyone, not just me.   2. To eliminate a \"bottleneck\" (me) and get work done faster. To be clear, I have no problems with: a) investing the time teaching, b) people touching my code, or c) job security. In fact, I regularly suggest to the team leader that I train other devs on certain aspects of the core codebase to reduce risk. In this iteration we also have a large collection of high-priority bug fixes targeted, so it would seem that more progress could be made if the workload were redistributed. In Mythical-Man-Month, Brooks' suggests a **\"Surgical Team\"** where every team is comprised of a lead + sub-lead (the manager and me), and some minor roles. I feel as though we are naturally falling into this organization, but my manager is working against it. I feel that the bus factor is already taken care of (the manager is well-versed in the core code), and that the bottleneck doesn't actually exist (involving more devs won't make the work go faster). I think that in this regard, a Surgical Team is a Good Thing. These are my feelings, but I'm not an experienced manager, nor have we had to deal with the bus factor (knock on wood). **Was Brooks right? Have you worked in a \"Surgical Team\" where the bus factor came into play? Are there better techniques to manage distributing expertise?** Similar questions:   * How to increase the bus factor and specialize at the same time?   * Always keeping 2 people expert on any one chunk of code"}
{"_id": "160700", "title": "Which aspect of normal forms do entity-attribute-value tables violate, if any?", "text": "I'm not asking if EAV tables are good or bad. I'm wondering if they are considered \"normalized\", and if not, why? If they aren't normalized, which normal form are they violating and why?"}
{"_id": "234645", "title": "As a programmer, are you professionally obliged to offer ongoing support after you've left a company?", "text": "I've had a few programming jobs in the past where I was the only developer working on a project. After I've left, I typically get several emails a week from these companies, usually from the developer(s) who's replaced me there. These emails are usually asking for details about how things work and how I'd best go about implement feature x based on the existing system. I'm usually polite and helpful, but these kind of communications really start to eat into my time making every job I work on another weight around my ankle. Not to mention they're projects that I chose to leave behind me for a good reason. My question is, would it be professionally 'ok' to tell them I'm just not going to offer support any more and refuse and answer inquiries? NB. None of these companies are paying me any type of retainer and the inquiries are often informal questions from developers and not management."}
{"_id": "256188", "title": "Data model for persisting queries to database", "text": "I have been asked to build what is essentially a query builder for a reporting application. The variety of objects to query, potential modifiers, number of conditions, and so forth to be reported on have made me conclude that a query builder would be the best way to go about this task. I am trying to decide the data model to back the storage of query parameters. I have seen the models in this SO question as well as in this tutorial. But since it feels especially important to pick a good model up front, I would really appreciate any input. Here is my current approach... please critique as I know it is not too good. **Query**   * QueryID   * QueryName, QueryDescription, etc **Entity** \\- _ie Dog, Planet, Employee_   * EntityID   * EntityName, EntityDescription, etc **AttributeType** \\- _ie INTEGER, DECIMAL, FLOAT_   * AttributeTypeID   * AttributeTypeName, AttributeTypeDescription, etc **BinaryOperator** \\- _ie =, <, IS_   * BinaryOperatorID   * BinaryOperatorName, BinaryOperatorDescription, etc **AttributeTypeToBinaryOperator** \\- _ie (INTEGER, >), (BOOLEAN, IS)_   * AttributeTypeID   * BinaryOperatorID **EntityAttribute**   * EntityAttributeID   * EntityID   * AttributeTypeID   * EntityAttributeName, EntityAttributeDescription, etc **EntityAttributeCondition** \\- _ie Dog.Breed = 'dachshund'_   * ConditionID   * EntityAttributeID   * BinaryOperatorID   * ConditionRawValue - _ie 14, false, Tom_ **EntityAttributeConditionGroup** \\- _ie (a AND b)_   * ConditionGroupID   * LeftConditionID   * RightConditionID   * LogicalOperatorEnum - _ie AND, OR, XOR_ **EntityAttributeConditionGroupToGroup** \\- _ie (a AND b) OR (c OR d)_   * LeftConditionGroupID   * RightConditionGroupID   * LogicalOperatorEnum"}
{"_id": "252043", "title": "What is the Controller in Django MVC?", "text": "Learning Django MVC and the way I thought of it is: **Models** are the database tables represented in Django as Python classes.   **Views** are the HTML returned from function in views.py.   **Controllers** are the actual functions themselves in views.py invoked from a HTTP request. However I read on Wikipedia (at the time of writing): > ... a regular-expression-based URL dispatcher (\"Controller\"). I would have thought the mapping of URLs to functions as routing - not the controller. But perhaps I am wrong - I guess I got my ideas because is ASP MVC the functions that handle the requests are contained in classes called Contollers..."}
{"_id": "156803", "title": "Cannot understand a certain point in Agile Manifesto Principles", "text": "I was reading Agile Manifesto Principles. Everything seems clear and reasonable except for one point: > Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential. I dont understand this. Does this mean that the work that wasn't done should be somehow exaggerated? If so, it doesn't really make sence."}
{"_id": "234646", "title": "Java code quality in methods calling methods", "text": "I am currently working with an \"interesting\" code-base and see the following type of thing alot in the code.               public Object doSomething()     {         Object obj = new Object();              // Do some stuff to the object              obj = doSomthingElse(obj);                  return obj;     }      I always feel when looking at this kind of code that it is somewhat incorrect to have an object be passed into a method as a parameter but also set the object returned by the method to the same variable that was referencing the passed object. I would usually do something like the following, where I create a new variable to avoid any confusion.               public Object doSomething()     {         Object obj = new Object();              // Do some stuff to the object              Object anotherObj = doSomthingElse(obj);                   return anotherObj;     }      Am I wrong in thinking the second code snippet is more readable/correct?"}
{"_id": "49", "title": "Why isn't functional programming more popular in the industry? Does it catch on now?", "text": "During my four years at university we have been using much functional programming in several functional programming languages. But I have also used much object oriented programming to, and in fact I use object oriented languages more when doing my own small project to prepare for my first job. But I often wish that I was coding in a functional programming language when doing these projects. However, when looking for a job, it is very rare to see a job where knowledge of a functional programming language is required. Why isn't functional programming languages used more in the industry? There is quite much news about functional programming languages these days, so I wonder if functional programming is catching on in the industry now?"}
{"_id": "111661", "title": "JavaScript and the paradigm shift in web programming", "text": "If my memory serves me right, there was a time when using JavaScript for web development was hugely frowned upon, because among other things, it was a privacy and security concern for users and some people just had it off. Nowadays, you can hardly see a major website that doesn't use JavaScript, and many websites will cease to function altogether without JS, graceful degradation be damned. Either that, or usability will be severely impacted, like on SE sites. What has changed between then and now that made JavaScript practically ubiquitous in web development? Or is my assertion that JS was frowned upon a figment of my imagination and it has always been this way?"}
{"_id": "135300", "title": "How to unit test Visual Basic 6 legacy code?", "text": "I am doing legacy software programming in Visual Basic 6.0. How do I unit test it?"}
{"_id": "92641", "title": "Are RAD tools worth the trouble?", "text": "I have used RAD tools for windows and web development for many years (primarily Infragistics). I invariably find myself in some situation where I have a very difficult time figuring out what is going on because these controls have layer upon layer of indirection and abstraction. This goes for all sorts of RAD tools, including AJAX update panels, AJAX grids, etc. More than once I have found myself asking \"Is this worth the trouble?\" For all the trouble and time I take debugging what often are bugs or quirks in these controls, would it be better to just code my own AJAX? Code my own extra functionality instead of using these RAD tools? The other problem with them is it keeps us unfamiliar with the technology they are using, for instance I have never done my own AJAX because I have always had update panels etc. But I imagine this would be useful to know. What is your take on this? Note: Please don't just say \"Well you should try XYZ RAD tools instead of Infragistics...they are better\". This isn't a debate on the RAD tool itself. This question is about RAD tools in general, not the merits of the one I mentioned in my question."}
{"_id": "110135", "title": "Ubiquitous Language - conflict between correctness and usability", "text": "A core part of Domain Driven Design is the consistent use of a ubiquitous language across the system - in conversations, code, database schema, UI, tests, etc. I'm involved in a project in which there is a well-established domain language already, defined by an international standards organisation. However, the work we're doing is for a public web site, and the 'correct' terms for the domain aren't necessarily how the public typically use and understand them. The compromise we're using at the moment is to use the 'official' terms everywhere, except for in our acceptance criteria which refer to UI components, where we use the informal names. Does this seem like a reasonable approach?"}
{"_id": "246276", "title": "How can I use unit tests and TDD to test an app that relies mostly on database CRUD operations?", "text": "At work, one of my projects is mostly about taking data passed in from an external client and persisting it in a database. It's a Java enterprise app using JPA and most of our logic revolves around CRUD operations. The majority of our bugs involve JPA in one way or another.   * Example 1: If you click the save button twice, JPA might try to insert the same entity into the database a second time, causing a primary key violation.   * Example 2: You retrieve an entity from the database, edit it and try to update its data. JPA may try to create a new instance instead of updating the old one.  Often the solution is needing to add/remove/change a JPA annotation. Other times it has to do with modifying the DAO logic. **I can't figure out how to get confidence in our code using unit tests and TDD. I'm not sure if it's because unit tests and TDD are a bad fit, or if I'm approaching the problem wrong.** Unit tests seem like a bad fit because I can only discover these problems at runtime and I need to deploy to an app server to reproduce the issues. Usually the database needs to be involved which I consider to be outside the definition of a unit test: These are integration tests. TDD seems like a bad fit because the deploy + test feedback loop is so slow it makes me very unproductive. The deploy + test feedback loop takes over 3 minutes, and that's just if I run the tests specifically about the code I'm writing. To run all the integration tests takes 30+ minutes. There is code outside this mold and I always unit test that whenever I can. But the majority of our bugs and the biggest time sinks always involve JPA or the database. * * * There is another question that is similar, but if I followed the advice I'd be wrapping the most unstable part of my code (the JPA) and testing everything but it. In the context of my question, I'd be in the same bad situation. What's the next step after wrapping the JPA? IMO that question is (perhaps) a step to answer my question, but not an answer to it."}
{"_id": "89572", "title": "Pattern for SQL data mining app", "text": "We have an app that is used for data mining on our client database. Typical uses include getting a list of clients and their email addresses, running reports about user transactions between certain dates and returning clients that live in a specific area. High level functional requirements are:   1. Each data mining query needs to be able to exported to excel.    2. Parameters need to be supported (so that we can filter results etc).    3. Other apps would need to be able to access these queries as well as their results. It has been implemented as follows:   * A database function is created for each SQL query.    * There is also a table that contains details of each function as well as required parameters as their types.    * There is a web front end where the SQL queries are maintained, and can be run and exported.    * A web service exists that other apps can use to run queries. The method to run a query returns a dataset and gets passes parameters and their values in XML.  Our current solution works but there are some problems with maintaining the hundreds of DB functions (would it be necessary to use functions - couldn't we just store SQL in tables?). I also have some security concerns around SQL injection as our front end basically allows the users to input any SQL. Has anyone had to develop something similar and what approach did you use? What was your reasoning for using that approach?"}
{"_id": "48967", "title": "HTML/CSS plagiarism", "text": "I'm facing an issue here. A customer asked me to copy an exact site, and even though I'm trying to convince him of going for a new design he does not accept it. He loves this design so much (on a side note it's horrible and outdated, but I wouldn't say that to him!) It's been a couple of weeks since we are discussing this and I don't know what to do. Do you have similar experiences? I don't want to lose the customer, he pays well and his jobs are really easy. At the same time, I don't want to put my signature on someone else's work. Any suggestions? Similar experiences? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "117672", "title": "Age of Design Patterns", "text": "When did these design patterns originate? Balking, Builder, Delegation, Facade, Memento. I have looked for days across the net, so if someone points me to a simple google search I may shoot myself. The real question I have is only which is the oldest and which is the youngest, so the specific dates for each are not important. I have already found that the Balking pattern originated in 2002."}
{"_id": "117671", "title": "Can freelancers ask their client to sponsor an iPad for project needs?", "text": "I do freelance web projects for a client. The client has been asking me to buy an iPad for testing purposes. Should I ask him to get me an iPad ? I otherwise don't have any need for the iPad. Is it ethical to ask for sponsorship when you are getting paid for the projects ? Should I try it out ?"}
{"_id": "252482", "title": "What do you call a problem caused by a design flaw", "text": "Is there any terminology for a problem that is caused by a previous wrong decision? For example you build your own framework, with a flawed MVC design. This in turn leads to weird situations when routing requests. A person then asks how to solve the latter problem, while the actual problem is the wrong design of the framework. I've tried searching several descriptions but as I'm looking for the word, it's hard to find anything relevant. It's not one of these Anti-patterns"}
{"_id": "155380", "title": "How to test the render speed of my solution in a web browser?", "text": "Ok, I need to test the speed of my solution in a web browser, but I have some problems, there are 2 versions of the web solution, the original one that is on server A and the \"fixed\" version that is on server B. I have VS2010 Ultimate, so I can make a web and load test on solution B, but I can't load the A solution on my IDE. I was trying to use fiddle2 and jmeter, but they only gave me the times of the request and response of the browsers with the server, I also want the time it takes to the browser to render the whole page. Maybe I'm misusing some of this tools... I don't know if this could be usefull but:   * Solution A is on VB 6.0    * Solution B is on VB.Net Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "193357", "title": "Domain-specific language for text search/processing?", "text": "I work for an organization that does a lot of work with government data. We have a couple of different projects where we've abstracted out common text search/manipulation operations into reusable libraries, for things like standardizing the way politicians' names are displayed (e.g., transforming \"MCDONALD, BOB (R-VA)\" into \"Bob McDonald (R-VA)\"), or finding legal citations in text (e.g., finding a reference to (e.g., finding occurrences of things like \"1 U.S.C. 7\" in text, determining that it's a US Code citation, and returning a structure that says it's referring to section 1 of title 7). These are relatively simple operations, and lots of collaborators in our space would like to use them, but we end up having to pick a language in which to implement each (the former is in Python; the latter, Javascript), and we freeze out potential consumers/contributors who work in different languages and don't want to resort to hacks like shelling out to a node process to handle their text. This all seems like a shame because what we're expressing is so simple, and ought, one would think, to be pretty easy to share. What would be ideal would be a tiny DSL that could express a few basic text processing operations: regular expression search/replace, a few list- processing operations like map and filter, and the ability to store stuff in JSON-ish data structures (maps and lists), and a mechanism to either translate this DSL into or allow it to be consumed from the actual higher-level languages we and our collaborators want to work with (Python, JS, Ruby, and PHP are probably the main ones). Does anything like this exist? I've considered building one myself... maybe a declarative thing on top of something like YAML, or maybe a tiny subset of Scheme or Lua, or maybe something entirely invented for this purpose. But I wanted to see if anything was already out there first."}
{"_id": "193351", "title": "How to unit test code which is intended to have different results on different platforms", "text": "I noticed some duplicate code in a codebase I am working on that appended a filename to a directory path, so I decided to refactor it into its own method. The application I am working on is not well tested, however; I just set up the first unit tests on it two days ago, so I am very concerned to get as much code under test as possible whenever I touch it. So I began to write a unit test like this (pseudocode):               Directory directory(\"a\")     Expect(directory.prependPathToFilename(\"b\")).toBeEqualTo(\"a/b\")      However, I then remembered that the application is cross-platform. So I thought about this:               Directory directory(\"a\")     String separator = \"/\" if (platform is *nix) else \"\\\"     Expect(directory.prependPathToFilename(\"b\")).toBeEqualTo(\"a\" + separator + \"b\")      But I remembered that Roy Osherove says in section 7.1.2 (\"Avoiding logic in tests\") of _The Art of Unit Testing_ (178): > If you have any of the following inside a test meethod, your test contains > logic that should not be there: > >   * `switch`, `if`, or `else` statements > >   * `foreach`, `for` or `while` loops > > > > A test that contains logic is usually testing more than one thing at a time, > which isn't recommended, becauset he test is less readable and more fragile. > But test logic also adds complexity that may contain a hidden bug. Now, it does not seem that in this case I am testing more than one thing at a time. Would this be a case of an acceptible logic block in a test? Is there a pattern for cleanly testing behaviors/results that are _expected_ to be different on different platforms?"}
{"_id": "7516", "title": "What programming language and framework has best support for agile web development?", "text": "If I would like to quickly set up a modern website, what programming language + framework has best support for this? E.g. short and easy to understand code for a beginner and a framework with support for modern features. Disregard my current knowledge, I'm more interested in the capacity of web programming languages and frameworks. Some requirements:   * Readable URIs: http://example.com/category/id/page-title similar to the urls here on Programmers.   * ORM. A framework that has good database support and provide ORM or maybe a NoSQL-database.   * Good support for RESTful WebServices.   * Good support for testing and unit testing, to make sure the site is working as planned.   * Preferably a site that is ready to scale with an increasing number of users."}
{"_id": "92877", "title": "getting back to c# programming after dabbling in non tech world", "text": "Whats the best way to get back and stay abreast to latest stuff going on with C#3/4? I do have Jon Skeet's book"}
{"_id": "348", "title": "Should companies consider remote employees or stick to local employees?", "text": "Elite developers can be 10x more productive than an average developer. Clearly it's easier to find an elite developer around the whole world than in a company's backyard. If a company is not located in a programming hot spot, should they consider hiring people who work from home?"}
{"_id": "206016", "title": "Maintaining SVN history for a file when merge is done from the dev branch to trunk?", "text": "In my org, we use SVN for version control So for each build (done periodically), we merge the code to trunk from the development branch (all the developers checks in to this branch). So when we want a new branch say for a new release, we create from the trunk doing a svn copy. Now in the new branch we have the _history only from the trunk_ and not from _the previous development branches_. Is there any way to maintain the history when merge is done from the dev branch to trunk? **Update :** By history I meant revision History of each and every file . Who created it and who edit it. Unfortunately we are using svn 1.6 right now"}
{"_id": "149335", "title": "On MVC can several views have the same controller or one view must have one unique controller?", "text": "I'm having some questions while designing a architecture for a project around MVC. (It's a C++/Marmalade SDK project, I'm not using any particular MVC framework, I'm making one.) On several articles (like on the original Steve Burbek article) I keep reading the concept \"MVC triad\" which bogs me since I took this concept rather literally. When I read it the first time looked like an application is built around \"MVC triad\" units - one for each UI piece I supposed -, but I find this rather un-flexible and I think that's not how MVC was intended to be used. Then, researching further on the issue, I found several examples of tight coupling of the controller and the view, namely, 1-to-1 relationship - TextEditView has TextEditController. But when I get back to my project I find that could be useful to have one controller (by 'logical unit', like AddElementController) and several views for that particular controller. I'm clearly thinking about something like an AddElementController that should have some sort of tab UI. Should I have a AddElementController that has a AddElementTabView and several AddImageView, AddSoundView, etc for the tabs? Or should I have a different 'sub-controller' for each tab view? In sum, and regarding the MVC pattern (not the X framework particular understanding/implementation of this pattern), is it correct to have several views for a controller or should each view have it's particular controller? Also, is it correct to keep some state information on the controller or should it be stateless (meaning that the state should be placed on some non-domain state model)? Thanks to all in advance."}
{"_id": "149330", "title": "Good architecture for user information on separate databases?", "text": "I need to write an API to connect to an existing SQL database. The API will be written in ASP.Net MVC3. The slight problem is that with existing users of the system, they may have a username on multiple databases. Each company using the product gets a brand new instance of the database, but over the years (the system has been running for 10 years) there are quite a few users (hundreds) who have multiple usernames across multiple \"companies\" (things got fragmented obviously and sometimes a single Company has 5 \"projects\" that each have their own database).   Long story short, I need to be able to have a single unified user login that will allow existing users to access their information across all their projects. The only thing I can think is storing a bunch of connection strings, but that feels like a really bad idea. I'll have a new Database that will hold the \"unified user\" information...can anyone suggest a solid system architecture that can handle a setup like this?"}
{"_id": "193682", "title": "When to (enforce) linting in a software project", "text": "I'm heading a new team of developers working on a software project that makes use of continuous integration (circleci) w/ a pretty fleshed out suite of busterjs unit/integration/acceptance tests. Our project is primarily written w/ coffeescript, and I try to make use of coffeescript-linter to ensure everyone working our code base keeps code consistent and as organized as possible. My question is, does anyone have any thoughts on when/if/how to enforce linting? Should I integrate linting into my tests that are executed by circleci before deployment? Another thought I had was writing a simple shell script that combines git-push and the linting utility into one step and then including it in the project & having everyone use it. I'm pretty new to managing teams of programmers so anyone else's feedback is much appreciated. EDIT: In the last 3 seconds it just occurred to me that git-hooks is probably perfect for this. Specifically a git-hook on commit."}
{"_id": "149339", "title": "Who should register input listeners: the controller or the view? (MVC)", "text": "I'm using an (C++) SDK (Marmalade) and building a project around the MVC pattern. On my app, user input listeners may be registered on certain UI elements/widgets/etc providing a proper callback function (according to MVC should be a method of a controller, right?). In this scenario, who should register these listeners:   * The controller? (must have access to the view UI elements, less decoupling of control from presentation)   * Or the view? (direct access to UI elements but must have a reference to the controller, isn't this incorrect in MVC?) Between the two, I think the latter makes more sense and does better separation of concerns, but I'm afraid that I overlooked some problem with that design. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "255808", "title": "Precedence of operators", "text": "int x=2,y;     y= x++  + x-- - ++x;     printf(\"%d\",y);      When I compiled using Turbo C++, I got 3 as the output. For the GCC compiler, I got 1 as the output. Why does the output vary?"}
{"_id": "158097", "title": "What to do when client have unrealistic expectations?", "text": "I've been working on a project for the past six months at a client site since they require data confidentiality and didn't want us to work at our own office. When I showed up alone to this client site, I was told that I needed to finish the project in two months. Since the client is not a software company, and because of various policies, it took around 20-25 days just to give me rights on my machine to install stuff like eclipse, tomcat, etc. Even after the delay in getting the environment setup, they were still expecting me to complete the project in the same two month period. They did not give me any requirement documents, but since I'm working at the client site, we used to have meeting regularly to discuss the requirements. After six months the application is still not finished, and everyone is blaming me, but they fail to realize that we have added many more features than those discussed in the first few meetings. I've had to redo many things during this period, e.g. separate a form into two sections; a few weeks later, they ask me to merge the two forms again as its confusing, and so on. The scope of the application is increasing every day but they still think it's a two month project that got delayed. When I told them that scope has increased they ask why I didn't ask for requirements at the beginning. I already work 11-12 hours everyday and Travel 3-4 hours, and now they expect me to come on Saturdays also. I have to do everything here: take requirements, design, code and test. Please advise me what to do in such a case? Additional details: We did have a list of deliverables, but then they added a few more things to it saying these are also important. They also changed a few deliverables. They dont even have their UAT server, they test on my development machine itself via IP address."}
{"_id": "255803", "title": "How to design JavaFX client with JEE server. what is possible design?", "text": "I am using JavaFX as thin client as a view technology. Design is like...   * On Client Side:=> (View) JavaFX with client side validations   * On Server Side:=> (Controller and Model) Server side validations Servlets, WebServices, EJBs, JPA. There may be a possible need of HTML5 in future. I chose this design so that the application can scale and meet future needs. I have a form with some data which need to be submitted and its values are validated on client side as done in HTML with JavaScript. But after validation how can I submit my form values actually name/value pairs to server side where actual business is done. For getting data from server to client web services are good choice. How to send data from client to server on submit a form. So the question is:- Is there any `<form action='server/AuthenticateServlet'></html>` counterpart of html in JavaFX or it should be done using HttpClient like api? I have read about CaptainCasa framework but It is very thin client. For every change in view it connects to the server that is unnecessarily making the network busy and can not provide a good performance in a slow connections. Many things could be done in client site. I wan't some javascript like processing on client side. Except that I didn't find any framework or design pattern which fits to this problem. Any other ways to achieve this???"}
{"_id": "158095", "title": "How Can I Improve my Workflow?", "text": "So I design and develop websites myself, mostly in WordPress. Once I'm happy with the site on my local server, I upload it and its database to the web server and let the client make whatever changes to the site. When he/she needs me to make changes to the code or the backend of WP, I usually work on the remote version of the site from then on, which is a pretty slow process compared to working locally. I guess what I'm asking is, is there a way to work on a local version of the site which syncs any changes made to the remote version of the site? Is this version control by any chance? Here's my typical workflow:   * Set up local database   * Code local WordPress site   * Export local database   * Import local database to remote server   * Upload all files to remote server   * Continue to make any changes post-launch remotely Is there any way to improve my current workflow?"}
{"_id": "255801", "title": "Career in SQL Server Development", "text": "I am a fresher and i have started my career as \"associate data analyst\" in one of the reputed MNC. Right now i am working on microsoft sql server for queriong the database using T-SQL and also working on SSRS(SQL Server reporting Services). I want to know future scope for these technologies. Waiting for your answers"}
{"_id": "158092", "title": "Does this happen in Common Lisp?", "text": "From Steve Yegge's \"Lisp is Not an Acceptable Lisp\":                Lisp has a little syntax, and it shows up occasionally as, for instance, '(foo)      being expanded as (quote foo), usually when you least expect it.      What is he talking about with `'(foo)` being expanded into `(quote foo)` in some situations? (As opposed, I would imagine, to `(quote (foo))`)."}
{"_id": "158090", "title": "When are multimethods useful in practice?", "text": "The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) supports multiple dispatch (multimethods). When is this a useful feature in practice? I'm not just looking for an example of hypothetical functionality that would be easier to implement with multiple dispatch[1]. I'm looking for examples of where it's useful in real software, for any value of real that means it would get written for something other than just an example. [1] In programming tutorials, are examples contrived more often than not?"}
{"_id": "120728", "title": "How should we deal with multiple transaction-report requests?", "text": "We are developing a system for the retail market and of its features will enable clients (actually consumer clubs) to go through all transactions made by end-clients. One of the ways to get this information will be via an API. The idea is that there will be requests for reports with a start date and an end date, and a response will have all the transactions between those dates. We worry that some reports will be very large, and that some clients will repeatedly request for reports, in this case the DB and CPU will be very overloaded. The same server that is going to service those requests will also take care of the actual retail transactions (received by proprietary devices) and of the Web application. We are not sure about how to limit the report requests from the API so that it won't affect the system too much. **So, how should we deal with this scenario? any thoughts?** EDIT: just to make it clear: When I mentioned proprietary devices I meant \"On- Location\" devices which are used during sales with end-clients, this means that these requests shouldn't get delayed, and this is the main concern. **One more question : Some people here suggested the use of prioritized threads, i.e. - giving lower priority to the threads retrieving the reports, is this a good idea?**"}
{"_id": "153976", "title": "What is Rainbow (not the CMS)", "text": "I was reading this excellent blog article regarding speeding up the badge page and in the last comment the author waffles (a.k.a Sam Saffron) mentions these tools: > dapper and a bunch of custom helpers like rainbow, sql builder etc Dapper and sql builder was easy to look up but rainbow keeps pointing me to a CMS, can someone please point me to the real source? Thanks. _Obviously the architecture of these [SE] sites is uber cool and ultra fast so no comments on that thanks._"}
{"_id": "153970", "title": "Observer pattern for unpredictable observation time", "text": "I have a situation where objects are created at unpredictable times. Some of these objects are created before an important event, some after. If the event already happened, I make the object execute stuff right away. If the event is forthcoming, I make the object observe the event. When the event triggers, the object is notified and executes the same code.               if (subject.eventAlreadyHappened()) {         observer.executeStuff();     } else {         subject.subscribe(observer);     }      Is there another design pattern to wrap or even replace this observer pattern? I think it looks a little dirty to me."}
{"_id": "120721", "title": "What are the differences between aspect-oriented, subject-oriented, and role-oriented programming?", "text": "I know there are many papers describing these three paradigms but I'm looking for a schematic explanation. There are a few very good descriptions of aspect-oriented programming on here so I'm asking this question in the hope to get the kind of high-quality answer people at Stack Overflow are used to delivering."}
{"_id": "16493", "title": "What if a team member start listing aggressive deadlines and management is happy and programmers know they will work overtime?", "text": "A team member start listing fairly aggressive deadlines (for the project everybody is working on) -- something that is to be done well can take 4 to 5 days, and he lists it as 2 to 3 days. The program manager and the CEO are both happy, because that means people will work overtime and salary is lower as a result, and faster goal reached, etc. People do get burned out and it is not so long term sustainable. Are there good ways to handle it? I can talk to the management but sure it is a conflict of interest, because they want people working overtime and people don't want to always work overtime. (unless you tell them sprint for 2 months and we will give you 2 weeks extra holiday). If enough coworkers say this is not good, we can tell the management, but some coworkers don't care about quality as much (if shorter time just sacrifice quality), and some coworkers also like to please the management, and the remaining may not want to make noise to suggest that they don't want to work hard. What are some good ways to handle this?"}
{"_id": "150773", "title": "Can observer pattern be represented by cars and traffic lights?", "text": "I wanted to verify with all of you, if I have a correct Observer Pattern analogy. The scenario is as follows: Consider, at a junction, there is a traffic signal, having red, yellow and green lights respectively. There are vehicles facing the traffic signal post. When it shows red, the vehicles stop, when it shows green, the vehicles move on. In case, it is yellow, the driver must decide whether to go or to stop, depending on whether he/she has crossed the stop line or not. At the same time, there are vehicles that do not care about the signal. They would do as they like. The similarities are that, the Traffic Signal happens to be the subject, notifying its states by glowing the appropriate lights. Those looking at it and following the signal are the ones subscribed to it, and behave according to the state of the subject. Those who do not care about it, are sort-of un- subscribed from the traffic signal. Please tell me, if you think this is a correct analogy or not?"}
{"_id": "250357", "title": "Isn't striving for elegance counter-productive?", "text": "Many questions have been asked about the nature of elegant code and design, but the underlying assumption seems to be that _elegance is a good thing_. Therefore it is acceptable or even desirable to make some extra effort to create elegant solutions. **But is it really worth it?** I am not asking what is elegant; neither am I asking about good code. I assume that \"you know it when you see it\", and it can also be vaguely characterized by verifying that there is nothing left to take away, in a sense that the mental model you have in your mind is expressed directly and unobscrured in the language of your choice (programming language, object oriented design, relational schema etc.), without distractions. However, a corollary to it is that elegance is always relative (and in a way subjective); it depends on what you think the problem is and what the solution should look like. The problem of course is that both the problem domain and your understanding of it constantly change (additionally, your knowledge about the programming language / patterns / tools develops, but that's not what I am mainly concerned about). This implies that in order to keep your design elegant, you have to constantly rethink it as the problem / your undestanding of it evolves. Practically, doing so would result in almost endless refactoring. Furthermore, I even maintain that by striving to develop elegant solutions maintainability necessarily suffers. The most elegant solutions are the most tightly coupled to the problem domain, for if they weren't, then there would be something to take away from it, hence they would not be most elegant anymore. If there is something abundant in your solution, then you can simplify it and make it more elegant by removing that abundant part, right? But then, sometimes, when you have a really elegant design and are required to implement a change, you first have to \"untighten\" your solution, just in order to be able to make an unforeseen (as are most of them) change at all. However, the open/closed-principle states that this should not be necessary. So, another more concrete formulation of the question is: **To some degree, aren't elegance and open/closed-principle at odds with each other?** What do you think?"}
{"_id": "119515", "title": "Finding header files", "text": "A C or C++ compiler looks for header files using a strict set of rules: relative to the directory of the including file (if \"\" was used), then along the specified and default include paths, fail if still not found. An ancillary tool such as a code analyzer (which I'm currently working on) has different requirements: it may for a number of reasons not have the benefit of the setup performed by a complex build process, and have to make the best of what it is given. In other words, it may find a header file not present in the include paths it knows, and have to take its best shot at finding the file itself. I'm currently thinking of using the following algorithm:   1. Start in the directory of the including file.   2. Is the header file found in the current directory or any subdirectory thereof? If so, done.   3. If we are at the root directory, the file doesn't seem to be present on this machine, so skip it. Otherwise move to the parent of the current directory and go to step 2. Is this the best algorithm to use? In particular, does anyone know of any case where a different algorithm would work better?"}
{"_id": "250358", "title": "Confusion in my If Else ,Else If Condition. in C#", "text": "I have three column as follows:   * Month   * Tech   * Circle According to this column I need to fetch the data. In Month Column, Data is : Jan,feb, March... and so on.   In Tech Column, Data is : Gsmnqi, Gsmboi... and so on.   In Circle Column, Data is : Ap ,Kol, Mumbai.. and so on.   I want to prove four condition as follows:   1. if I select the month it will fetch the data related to month, tech and circle will not be selected.   2. if I select the month and tech it will fetch the data related to month and Tech, circle will not be selected.   3. if I select the month and circle it will fetch the data related to month and circle, Tech will not be selected.   4. if I select month, tech and circle it will fetch the data related to month, tech and circle. But my if condition is not working, seriously I get confused in if, else and else if for this four condition.                 if (nqiSqiEntity.Month != string.Empty)       {           query.AppendLine(\"select * from K2_NQISQI with (nolock) where MONTH = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Month + \"'  order by id asc\");       }       else if (nqiSqiEntity.Month != string.Empty && nqiSqiEntity.Tech != string.Empty)       {           query.AppendLine(\"select * from K2_NQISQI with (nolock) where MONTH = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Month + \"' and TECH = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Tech + \"' order by id asc\");       }       else if (nqiSqiEntity.Month != string.Empty && nqiSqiEntity.Circle != string.Empty)       {           query.AppendLine(\"select * from K2_NQISQI with (nolock) where MONTH = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Month + \"' and CIRCLE = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Circle + \"' order by id asc\");       }       else       {           query.AppendLine(\"select * from K2_NQISQI with (nolock) where MONTH = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Month + \"' and CIRCLE = '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Circle + \"' and TECH '\" + nqiSqiEntity.Tech + \"' order by id asc\");       }      In condition, instead of `string.Empty` I need to put the value or I need to check if the value is present then only condition should get executed. Please kindly help me in my understanding this code."}
{"_id": "119516", "title": "What to use for simple cross-platform games instead of Flash?", "text": "In short, for simple games:   1. Is Flash still a good option for browser-based PC clients? It still has 90%+ penetration.   2. What is a good alternative for mobile devices? Is HTML5 + JavaScript **the** choice for mobile? Or does one have to learn a new native language for each target platform? (Android, Apple, Windows Phone)... If you desire further background: There are more blogs about the official demise of mobile Flash than I can count, along with endless useless and vitriolic comments. I'm actually trying to do something practical: build simple games that can be served accross multiple platforms. Several months ago I plopped down $1100 for CS5.5 Web and am wading into Flash. Bummer. My question to people who actually develop simple games and apps: What platform should I use instead? Is Flash still a sensible platform for web-served PC users? For example, let's say I build a simple arcade game that I would like to serve as an app to mobile users and as a browser-based game to PC users. Should I still invest the time and effort to learn and develop in Flash for the PC users, while building a parallel code set in some other language for mobile users? My games are simple enough that it would be annoying but not inconceivable to maintain parallel code sets."}
{"_id": "119510", "title": "What's the point of adding Unicode identifier support to various language implementations?", "text": "I personally find reading code full of Unicode identifiers confusing. In my opinion, it also prevents the code from being easily maintained. Not to mention all the effort required for authors of various translators to implement such support. I also constantly notice the lack (or the presence) of Unicode identifiers support in the lists of (dis)advantages of various language implementations (like it really matters). I don't get it: why so much attention?"}
{"_id": "144385", "title": "Programming Without A Computer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Learning to program without a computer I have a bit of experience programming (6 Months) and am soon to go on a 2 month trip where I will be without a computer, but with lots of spare time. Is there a way I can keep programming (or learning to program) even without a computer? Should I read language-agnostic books like Code Complete or PragProg?"}
{"_id": "191267", "title": "Is \"responsive web design\" becoming a \"badge to wear\" for front end devs?", "text": "This may seem like an odd question. However, more and more I am seeing web applications that are built on the \"mobile first\" / \"responsive design\" principle that are about as responsive as a wasp in winter. Mobile isn't a \"trend\" but it's being treated like that. It's \"trendy\" and \"eye-catching\" for digital agencies to be \"mobile first\", but for most that only means one or more of the below:   * @media queries   * Jquery mobile   * Twitter bootstrap I've recently seen a site which was billed as \"mobile first\" which only used @media to differentiate between devices. It was a .NET webforms application that heavily relied upon view state and the download size for just the homepage (pre postbacks) was over 1mb! Responsive? Not on my crappy Samsung in the middle of a field. I know that this just sounds like a rant, but I'd really just like to know what peoples opinions are on how to tackle device differentiation? Personally, I show / hide markup (ie sections of a page / includes) based on device to ensure, not only the layout and functionality are optimized, but the download total too. Am I a dinosaur?? Am I wasting my time??"}
{"_id": "191264", "title": "What exactly is a Search Engine Indexer. Where to start building one?", "text": "For one of the projects at uni we were given the task to create a custom, niche search engine. My colleges and I split the tasks amongst each other so that we can tackle the overall project more easily. My part is to create the indexer. I already read the wikipedia page on search engine indexers and some other related articles but I'm still struggling to understand exactly how it works and how it looks. To me it is obvious that it is not just a regular table with an index and a descrption column. So my question would be, what is a search engine indexer comprised of, how does it architecture look, and where to start from in building one?"}
{"_id": "201542", "title": "When presenting a software design to upper management", "text": "I'm presenting a software design for approval today and as I'm going through the hundreds of pages of design documentation, cherry picking what's important, I'm unsure if I should start with the activity diagrams or use cases. I was thinking of having it stacked like so:   * Activities Diagrams   * Use Cases Diagrams   * Sequence Diagrams   * Class Models I've spent the last 7 months of my life creating this and I want it to be presented in the most logical order and done with."}
{"_id": "43054", "title": "What modelling technique do you use for your continuous design?", "text": "Together with my teammates, I'm trying to self-learn XP and apply its principles. We're successfully working in TDD and happily refactoring our code and design. However we're having problems with the overall view of the design of the project. Lately we were wondering what would be the \"good\" practices for an effective continuous design of the code. We're not strictly seeking the right model, like CRC cards, communication diagrams, etc., instead we're looking for a technique to constantly collaborate on the high level view of the system ( _not too high though_ ). I'll try to explain myself better: I'm actually interested in the way CRC cards are used to brainstorm a model and I would mix them with some very rough UML diagrams (that we already use). However, what we're looking for are some principles for deciding **when** , **how** and **how much** to model during our iterations. Have you any suggestion on this matter? For example, when your teammates and you _know_ you need a design session and how your meetings work?"}
{"_id": "124911", "title": "As a young developer, should I be worried about having to use \"out-of-style\" tech at work?", "text": "I'm a recent college graduate (last May!). While I was still in school, I wanted to make sure that I had a job before I graduated, and very early (probably too early) in my job search I settled on one in a region I'd been hoping to move to after undergrad. However, I've been second guessing this decision for months now, for several reasons. One is that I'm not very challenged at work, and I feel like I haven't improved much at programming since starting here. I can always make time to work on open source (and have in the past) outside of my job, though, so I do have a venue to get around this disappointment. More importantly, I'm worried by the fact that my job is basically to work on a creaky old Perl web application (using Mason and a weird in-house ORM). Am I shooting myself in the foot here by working with a technology that's no longer popular, and won't really help me out getting a job in the future? I rarely see Perl jobs, and when I do, it's usually doing something I'm not interested in (front-end web development stuff). Systems programming, visualisation, network programming, or at least backend web development stuff are the sort of topics that I'd actually enjoy working in -- it doesn't seem like my current work experience is helping me towards positions doing any of these things."}
{"_id": "124913", "title": "Does JavaFX have a future?", "text": "I have not intended to hash and rehash the same matter, but just to decide, what to learn first (JavaFX, Flex, HTML5, etc.) I would pull through a kind of survey, especially as the recent similar questions here came out since at least one year. So, what is JavaFX prospect as a RIA technology for the next couple of years?"}
{"_id": "69771", "title": "Why was Scala not implemented with C or C++", "text": "Does anybody know why was Scala implemented in Java and .NET instead of C or C++? Most languages are implemented with Cor C++ [i.e Erlang, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl]. What are the advantages for Scala implemented in Java and .NET other than giving access to Java and .NET libraries? **UPDATE** Wouldn't Scala gain more benefit if it were implemented in C because it can be tuned better rather than relying on JVM?"}
{"_id": "199054", "title": "New C++11 analogous to python 2 ->3?", "text": "1. I'm a Python2 developer and I just ordered The C++ programming language, 4th edition, from Bjarne Stroustrup's, to learn C++11. But right after I ordered it, I started to wonder if I made a mistake. Are the changes made to C++ in C++11 analogous to how Python moved from 2 to 3 insofar as code significantly breaking and not being backwards compatible? Or is learning C++11 safe to do?   2. If I coded C++11 in XCode, the latest version being whatever it is, would it work on say a Windows machine? Or does that depend more on what will compile the code, fairly certain that XCode uses LLVM."}
{"_id": "199055", "title": "\"Open-source\" licenses that explicitly prohibit military applications", "text": "I am a researcher, and in my research I do a lot of programming. I am a big fan of the open-source concept - especially in research, where transparency and reproducibility is already a big part of the culture. I gladly contribute as much as I can to the community, and releasing my code for anyone to use is part of that. However, in research there is always a certain measure of uncertainty about what the stuff you produce will be used for. I fully understand that I can't copyright any results or conclusions - but I can protect how others use my code, and I would like to make sure that there is no (legal) way to incorporate software I produce in military applications. I've read through a few of the shorter ones of the common OSS licenses, and summaries of some more, but they all seem to focus solely on the questions \"do you earn money on my code?\" and \"do you make my code available with your program?\" - nothing about what the program actually does with the code. Are there any good open-source licenses that explicitly prohibit all kinds of military applications? ### Update: After reading up some more on how OSS works, I've realized that a license that meets my needs by definition will not be open-source, since open-source licenses cannot discriminate against fields. Thus, I'm rather looking for a license that is _like_ an open-source license, except that it prohibits military use. I want this license to be already existing, authored or at least reviewed by someone who actually knows licensing, since I don't. Also, in response to a couple of remarks that this will be difficult to enforce: yes, I realize that. But this is more for myself than for the legal implications; if I use a license like this, and a military organization uses my code anyway, they are breaking the law and they are doing it despite my explicit instructions not to. Thus, the potentially gruesome things that they do with applications that include software I've written are no longer \"on my conciousness\", since they stole the software from me. (And somewhere I have a na\u00efve hope that if they need something I've done, and my license prohibits them from using it legally, they'll get someone elses program that does the same thing and allows them to use it. Not that governments always do, but they always _should_ abide by the law...) It's a moral safeguard, so to speak, rather than something I actually expect to bring up in court (if my mediocre code is ever used by CIA...)"}
{"_id": "69775", "title": "What does the word Relational in \"Relational Database\" imply?", "text": "I tried searching but didn't get any useful information. What does the word \"Relational\" mean here? Is it tables being related to each other just like the real life entities, or does it mean something else?"}
{"_id": "254278", "title": "Using object flow and control flow in UML", "text": "I have a UML activity diagram below, where there are two ways are shown in which actions can be done. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bhttT.jpg) Since the setting of values of **a** and **b** can be done any order before the action 2 is executed so, I'm wondering if both of the ways shown here are correct or if there is a difference between them?"}
{"_id": "125883", "title": "Are there any languages that have both high- and low-level facilities?", "text": "Are there any languages that have both high- and low-level facilities? If not, is it feasible to create one? Why or why not? In theory, it would be very helpful to have a programming language that has both shell and regular programming language facilities, like Forth for example can easily be made to, and also to have high-level facilities; Forth does not seem (and it would probably take a good bit of work to make it) like a natural fit for high-level things. Of course, languages like C or C++ can be made to simulate features of high- level languages, but at the cost of ugly or difficult syntax, and the addition of considerably more complexity, or at the cost of a lot of work, which would be unnecessary since it would often be easier just to use a more standard high-level programming language. **Clarification** : Low-level meaning things like manual memory management, limited data structures, only one return value, and the like. Examples: Assembly language, C, C++ to some extent, and Forth. High-level language examples would be: Python, Perl, JavaScript, Java and C# to a big extent, Lisp."}
{"_id": "195604", "title": "How can I compute maximal area including only given integer pairs of (x,y) coordinates?", "text": "The values \u200b\u200bof a function of two variables z = f (x, y), where x, y, z take integer values are stored in sql db. Calculate (appoint) the largest surface area of \u200b\u200bthe flat. By 'flat area' we mean an area about which for each pair of x and y lying inside the area about the value of the function is constant (z = const). I have already tried to use this flood fill algorithm, but I am not sure if this is the right way. e.g. if I have pairs(x,y) as follows: (0,0),(0,2),(2,0),(2,2) for which z equals to 5(z=const) and have point (1,1) where z=1 - how should I compute \"flat area\"?"}
{"_id": "52487", "title": "MySQL proficient?", "text": "I've been looking to apply to various web development intern jobs, and I feel comfortable with the PHP/CSS/HTML that they are asking for, but what does MySQL proficient mean? I've designed my own databases in phpAdmin and used them in the CMS I created, does that mean I'm proficient in MySQL? Do you just need to be able to create a database and then update/delete/insert fields in there? Would knowing this much allow me to put MySQL on my resume?"}
{"_id": "56900", "title": "How do you QA and release software quickly with a large team?", "text": "My work used to be a smaller team. We had less than 13 devs for a while. We are now growing rapidly, and are over 20 with plans to be over 30 in a few months. Our process for QA'ing and releasing each build is no longer working. We currently have everyone develop the new code, and stick it onto a staging environment. A few days before our weekly release, we would freeze the staging environment and QA everything. By our normal release time, everything was usually deemed acceptable and pushed out the door to the main site. We reached a point where our code got too big so we could no longer regress the entire site each week in QA. We were ok with that, we just made a list of everything important and only covered that and the new stuff. Now we are reaching a point where all the new stuff each week is becoming too big and too unstable. Our staging environment is really buggy week after week, and we are usually 1-2 hours behind the normal release time. As the team is growing further, we are going to drown with this same process. We are re-evaluating everything, and I personally am looking for suggestions / success stories. Many companies have been where before and progressed beyond, we need to do the same"}
{"_id": "166930", "title": "Is ASP.NET MVC completely (and exclusively) based on conventions?", "text": "**\\--TL;DR**   * Is there a \"Hello World!\" ASP.NET MVC tutorial out there that doesn't rely on conventions and \"stock\" projects?   * Is it even possible to take advantage of the technology without reusing the default file structure, and start from a single \"hello_world.asp\" file or something (like in PHP)?   * Am I completely mistaken and I should be looking somewhere else, maybe **this**?   * I'm interested in the MVC framework, not Web Forms **\\--Background** I've played a bit with PHP in the past, just for fun, and now I'm back to it since web development became relevant for me once again. I'm no professional, but I try to gain as much knowledge and control over the technology I'm working with as possible. I'm using Visual Studio 2012 for C# - my \"desktop\" language of choice - and since I got the Professional Edition from Dreamspark, the Web Development Tools are available, including ASP.NET MVC 4. I won't touch Web Forms, but the MVC Framework got my attention because the MVC pattern is something I can really relate to, since it provides the control I want **but**... _not quite_. Learning PHP was easy - and right form the start I could just create a \"hello_world.php\" file and just do something like this for immediate results:               <!-- file: hello_world.php -->     <?php>         echo \"Hello World!\";     <?>      But I couldn't find a single ASP.NET (MVC) tutorial out there (I'll be sure to buy one of the upcoming MVC 4 books, only a month away or so) that would start like that. They all start with a sample project, building up knowledge from the basics and heavily using conventions as they go along. Which is fine, I suppose, but it's now the best way for me to learn things. Even the \"Empty\" project template for a new ASP.NET MVC 4 Application in VS2012 is not empty at all: several files and folders are created for you - much like a new C# desktop application project, but with C# I can _in fact_ start from scratch, creating the project structure myself. It is not the case with PHP:   * I can choose from a plethora of different MVC frameworks   * I can just create my own framework   * I can just skip frameworks altogether, and toss random PHP along with my HTML on a single file and make it work I understand the framework needs to establish some rules, but what if I just want to create a single page website with some C# logic behind it? Do I really need to create a whole bloat of files and folders for the sake of convention? Also, please understand that I haven't gotten far on any of those tutorials mainly because of this reason, but, if that's the only way to do it, I'll go for it using one of the books I've mentioned before. This is my first contact with ASP.NET but from the few comparisons I've read, I believe I should stay the hell away from Web Forms. Thank you. (Please forgive the broken English - it is not my primary language.)"}
{"_id": "211318", "title": "How do I easily print number triangles? Using for loops", "text": "I know how for loops work and what a nested loop is but I get very frustrated while printing those number or asterisk triangles in java. It makes me wanna quit learning programming :( Please someone tell me an easy way to master loops.               for(int i=1;i<7;i++){             for(int j=1;j<i;j++){                 System.out.print(j);             }             System.out.println();         }      i want to add a mirror image of this triangle before itself."}
{"_id": "113430", "title": "What is the accepted style for using the `this` keyword in Java?", "text": "I come from languages like Python or Javascript (and others that are less object-oriented) and I am trying to improve my working knowledge of Java, which I know only in a superficial way. Is it considered a bad practice to always prepend `this` to the current instance attributes? It feels more natural to me to write               ...     private String foo;          public void printFoo() {         System.out.println(this.foo);     }     ...      than               ...     private String foo;          public void printFoo() {         System.out.println(foo);     }     ...      as it helps me to distinguish instance attributes from local variables. Of course in a language like Javascript it makes more sense to always use `this`, since one can have more function nesting, hence local variables coming from larger scopes. In Java, as far as I understand, no nesting like this is possible (except for inner classes), so probably it is not a big issue. In any case, I would prefer to use `this`. Would it feel weird and not idiomatic?"}
{"_id": "162036", "title": "Algorithmic problem - quickly finding all #'s where value %x is some given value", "text": "Problem I'm trying to solve, apologies in advance for the length: Given a large number of stored records, each with a unique (String) field S. I'd like to be able to find through an indexed query all records where Hash(S) % N == K for any arbitrary N, K (e.g. given a million strings, find all strings where HashCode(s) % 17 = 5. Is there some way of memoizing this so that we can quickly answer any question of this form without doing the % on every value? The motivation for this is a system of N distributed nodes, where each record has to be assigned to at least one node. The nodes are numbered 0 - (K-1) , and each node has to load up all of the records that match it's number: If we have 3 nodes   * Node 0 loads all records where Hash % 3 ==0   * Node 1 loads all records where Hash % 3 ==1   * Node 2 loads all records where Hash % 3 ==2 adding a 4th node, obviously all the assignments have to be recomputed -   * Node 0 loads all records where Hash % 4 ==0   * ...    * etc I'd like to easily find these records through an indexed query without having to compute the mod individually. The best I've been able to come up with so far: If we take the prime factors of N (p1 * p2 * ... ) if N % M == I then p % M == I % p for all of N's prime factors e.g. 10 nodes : N % 10 == 6 then   * N % 2 = 0 == 6 %2    * N % 5 = 1 == 6 %5 so storing an array of the \"%\" of N for the first \"reasonable\" number of primes for my data set should be helpful. For example in the above example we store the hash and the primes _HASH_ _PRIMES (array of %2, %3, %5, %7, ... ])_ 16 [0 1 1 2 .. ] so looking for N%10 == 6 is equivalent to looking for all values where array[1]==1 and array[2] == 1. However, this breaks at the first prime larger than the highest number I'm storing in the factor table. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "102444", "title": "Is it possible to get a job in a high-demand company without having hobby projects?", "text": "I was curious if the recruitment team at high-demand companies such as Google takes a lack of hobby projects into consideration when evaluating candidates. I'm a straight 40 hour/week programmer, who is lucky to spend an hour or two a month outside of work on anything programming related. I love hanging out on SO/SE during my breaks at work, and love answering questions, but after work I leave the programming world and go back to my life. I already understand that you don't need hobby projects to be a good programmer, but does this lack of hobby projects affect my chances getting a job at a company that always has a long list of candidates trying to get in?"}
{"_id": "162030", "title": "Differences between imperative-language and functional-language debuggers", "text": "Up to now I have always worked with imperative languages like Pascal, C, C++, Java in a production environment, so I have experience with debuggers for these languages (Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, GDB / DDD, Visual Studio, Eclipse). A debugger for an imperative language normally allows to   * Set break points on statements, and execute the program until the next break point is encountered.   * Execute the program one statement at a time, with the option of entering a function / method call or skipping over to the following statement. When program execution is paused, one can examine the current state of the program, i.e.:   * Inspect the contents of the stack to see the current nesting of function calls.   * Inspect local variables, actual function parameters, global variables, and so on. Since I have never worked with a functional programming language in a production environment, I was trying to figure out how a debugger for such a language would look like. For example:   * How does the debugger walk through the program if there are no statements like in an imperative language? Where does one set break points?   * In a language with lazy evaluation like Haskell, the sequence of function calls can be different from that of an eager language: will this make a big difference when trying to understand the call stack?   * What about variables? Since there is no state, I imagine that a debugger will only show the variable bindings for the current scope (?), i.e. there will be no local or global variables changing value as I step through the program. Summarizing, are there any general, common features of functional-language debuggers that clearly distinguish them from imperative-language debuggers?"}
{"_id": "167044", "title": "Is it possible for a good programmer to have never used version control?", "text": "I am looking for an expert programmer to help solve a difficult situation. The interviews so far have been surprisingly disappointing. The best candidate so far is a very experienced programmer who has never used version control software. The problem in itself might not be too serious because it is something which can be learned in a short time. But there is a deeper aspect, which worries me: How is it possible to actively develop software for 10-15 years without ever needing version control? Is the fact itself of not looking for a solution to the problem of tracking changes a sign of a wrong attitude to programming?"}
{"_id": "235611", "title": "Multiple Quartz scheduler for different Applications in a same schema?", "text": "Currently I've defined a specific quartz scheduler for all of my applications in a same schema with same tables. Also, there is a specific trigger for all of them. Everything is fine after running two applications. But when I run third and forth application I've got this warning, and quartz job isn't called for third and forth application.               Application A -> Scheduler A -> Trigger 1      Application B -> Scheduler A -> Trigger 1     Application C -> Scheduler A -> Trigger 1     Application D -> Scheduler A -> Trigger 1 and Trigger 2      `2014-02-11 13:56:13,465 [QuartzScheduler_QuartzJobCluster-1APP381392087198304_ClusterManager] WARN jdbcjobstore.JobStoreTX - This scheduler instance (1APP381392087198304) is still active but was recovered by another instance in the cluster. This may cause inconsistent behavior.` Now I want to use different scheduler's instance for each application with specific trigger in a same schema. So,I like to know is that correct to use a **same schema and tables** for all of the applications or I should use different schema for them? Does any one know what's the best practice for this situation? Also, the forth application has two triggers. The second one is different with others.               Application A -> Scheduler A -> Trigger 1      Application B -> Scheduler B -> Trigger 1     Application C -> Scheduler C -> Trigger 1     Application D -> Scheduler D -> Trigger 1 and Trigger 2"}
{"_id": "116235", "title": "What programming languages are well suited for developing a live coding framework?", "text": "I would like to build a \"live coding framework\". I should explain what is meant by \"live coding framework\". I'll do so by comparing live coding to traditional coding. Generally put, in traditional programming you write code, sometimes compile it, then launch an executable or open a script in some sort of interpreter. If you want to modify your application you must repeat this process. A live coding framework enables code to be updated while the application is running and reloaded on demand. Perhaps this reloading happens each time a file containing code is changed or by some other action. Changes in the code are then reflected in the application as it is running. There is no need to close the program, to recompile and relaunch it. In this case, the application is a windowed app that has an update/draw loop, is most likely using OpenGL for graphics, an audio library for sound processing ( SuperCollider? ) and ideally a networking lib. Of course I have preferred languages, though I'm not certain that any of them would be well suited for this kind of architecture. Ideally I would use Python, Lua, Ruby or another higher level language. However, a friend recently suggested Clojure as a possibility, so I am considering it as well. **I would like to know not only what languages would be suitable for this kind of framework but, generally, what language features would make a framework such as this possible.**"}
{"_id": "86636", "title": "TDD vs. Productivity", "text": "In my current project (a game, in C++), I decided that I would use Test Driven Development 100% during development. In terms of code quality, this has been great. My code has never been so well designed or so bug-free. I don't cringe when viewing code I wrote a year ago at the start of the project, and I have gained a much better sense for how to structure things, not only to be more easily testable, but to be simpler to implement and use. However... it has been a year since I started the project. Granted, I can only work on it in my spare time, but TDD is still slowing me down considerably compared to what I'm used to. I read that the slower development speed gets better over time, and I definitely do think up tests a lot more easily than I used to, but I've been at it for a year now and I'm still working at a snail's pace. Each time I think about the next step that needs work, I have to stop every time and think about how I would write a test for it, to allow me to write the actual code. I'll sometimes get stuck for hours, knowing exactly what code I want to write, but not knowing how to break it down finely enough to fully cover it with tests. Other times, I'll quickly think up a dozen tests, and spend an hour writing tests to cover a tiny piece of real code that would have otherwise taken a few minutes to write. Or, after finishing the 50th test to cover a particular entity in the game and all aspects of it's creation and usage, I look at my to-do list and see the next entity to be coded, and cringe in horror at the thought of writing another 50 similar tests to get it implemented. It's gotten to the point that, looking over the progress of the last year, I'm considering abandoning TDD for the sake of \"getting the damn project finished\". However, giving up the code quality that came with it is not something I'm looking forward to. I'm afraid that if I stop writing tests, then I'll slip out of the habit of making the code so modular and testable. Am I perhaps doing something wrong to still be so slow at this? Are there alternatives that speed up productivity without completely losing the benefits? TAD? Less test coverage? How do other people survive TDD without killing all productivity and motivation?"}
{"_id": "191867", "title": "Beta-testing app good practice", "text": "I have just released an iOS app for beta-testing with TestFlight. I'm wondering what is good practice during beta-testing?   * Should I halt development of the app during beta-testing?   * Should I continue developing but make a snapshot image of what the code looked like when it was released for beta-testing?   * Issues that could rise that I can think of is that if I make any changes to the code and then a bug is detected in the code that I have changed this would not be ideal. There are probably other issues to deal with but these are the ones that I could think of at the moment. I'm the only developer of the app at the moment."}
{"_id": "235360", "title": "Am I covered with GPL If I want to create a derived work from a GPLv2 project and change the project name?", "text": "Recently I create a fork from an \"open source project GPLv2\" with different name. I make a major changes in source code and I gave a new name to the modified open source. I kept in the header of each source file the origin author copyright. And then I publish my new open source in github. is this behavior is legal according to GPLv2 License statements ? do I have the right to change the name of the modified open source ? Could you please provide justification from licenses with the answer."}
{"_id": "191196", "title": "CoffeeScript and Named Functions", "text": "Elsewhere: an argument has arisen over the terminology of a named function in CoffeeScript. In particular somebody refereed to something like this                foo = ->         console.log(\"bar\")      as a named function. But its been objected that everything in CoffeeScript is anonymous functions and there are no named functions. This is certainly true, CoffeeScript only has function expressions which can then be stored in a variable. But I don't think that means it is wrong to call this a named function. As I see it, it is a named function because its a function that has been given a name. True, its not a named function in the same way that some other languages have named functions, but I think its close enough that its not inappropriate to call it a named function. To insist otherwise just seems to be nitpicking. Am I out to lunch in thinking that insisting that this isn't a named function is just nitpicking?"}
{"_id": "203563", "title": "Fair 2-combinations", "text": "I need to fairly assign 2 experts from `x` experts (`x` is rather small - less than 50) for every `n` applications, so that:   * each expert has the same number of applications (+-1);   * each pair of experts (2-combination of `x`) has the same number of applications (+-1); It is simple to generate all 2-combinations:               for (i=0; i<n; i++) {       for (j=i+1; j<n; j++) {         combinations.append(tuple(i,j));       }     }      But to assign experts fairly I need to assign a combination to an application i correct order, for example:               experts: 0 1 2 3 4          fair combinations:          counts          01234          01   11000     23   11110     04   21111     12   22211     34   22222     02   32322     13   33332     14   34333     03   44343     24   44444      I'm unable to come up with a good algorithm for this (the best I came up with is rather complicated and with `O(x4)` complexity). Could you help me?"}
{"_id": "191198", "title": "Way for store User recent playlist in database", "text": "Every time when user hears one music on system, the system stores this music to recent list, but I am afraid to pass over than decimal(19,0) limit in future. If I do Reseed I will get some problems insert invalid duplicate pirmary keys, but if I reallocate all id's it is possible. Is there a better way for that? With possibility to clean the jump of id (55-60) without future headache with Primary key overflow? Note: I can limit this list for `255(smallint)` maybe, but I want evade use same id`s."}
{"_id": "195606", "title": "Best OOP design pattern for a sequence of operations", "text": "I am working on an application, a module of which does the following financial operations sequentially: When a user requests for a certain amount to be transferred into her bank account:   1. check whether any transaction can happen now? (transaction can be carried out only during a certain time period)   2. check whether the user has requested for a minimum amount to be withdrawn   3. check whether the user has any default account The result of all the above actions should be logged. If all the above condition satisfies, the transaction is carried out. In future, there might be some additional checks. Which object oriented design pattern should be best suitable for the above case?"}
{"_id": "197697", "title": "setSoftInputMode versus InputMethodManager", "text": "I have seen and used both of the methods to hide the on screen keyboard while coding Android:               getWindow().setSoftInputMode(WindowManager.LayoutParams.SOFT_INPUT_STATE_ALWAYS_HIDDEN);      and:               InputMethodManager imm = (InputMethodManager) getSystemService(Context.INPUT_METHOD_SERVICE);     imm.hideSoftInputFromWindow(myEditText.getWindowToken(), 0);      I have read through the documentation for both and I am still unclear as to how each is different, the same, which is a better method or practice to use, and which one should be used in which situations. Here is an excerpt from the `.setSoftInputMode` documentation: > Specify an explicit soft input mode to use for the window, as per > WindowManager.LayoutParams.softInputMode. Providing anything besides > \"unspecified\" here will override the input mode the window would normally > retrieve from its theme. And here is an excerpt from the `InputMethodManager` documentation that seems to say nearly the same thing: > You can also control the preferred soft input state (open, closed, etc) for > your window using the same windowSoftInputMode attribute. > > More finer-grained control is available through the APIs here to directly > interact with the IMF and its IME -- either showing or hiding the input > area, letting the user pick an input method, etc. So what is the difference in these two options to hide the Android soft keyboard, and does one have a benefit over the other? Is one more efficient? What are specific uses for each?"}
{"_id": "17729", "title": "how do early stage startups hire ninja programmers", "text": "I am programmer who just started working on a startup idea. At the moment I want to bring onboard at least one programmer. This programmer should be a ninja - a 10x engineer. Since early days are probably the most risky for a startup, I want to make sure I approach this problem the best I can. How do I find these people? and How do I convince them to come onboard? I would love to hear from people who started their own companies and what their thoughts are about hiring **Update** : I would like to get the ninja as a co-founder so besides being a ninja (ie. great programmer with computer science background) he/she has to have a healthy appetite for risk (for great programmers this is not a big deal because they can be hired anytime into mainstream jobs if the startup doesn't work)"}
{"_id": "27998", "title": "How do you organize your usability testings?", "text": "* What is your process?   * How do you get feedback?   * What software do you use? (like Morae from TechSmith)   * Who does them?   * Have you measured how it positively affected the quality of your software? I'm looking for your experience on the subject. This is something I want to improve."}
{"_id": "229885", "title": "sqlite trigger or application event?", "text": "I've have two event queues(table mapped queues) based on two different states of same data stored in two different tables. The events are generated on create/update/delete on both the tables. Constrain is that both the tables have to be in sync. The create/update/delete in one table has to be reflected into other table. So the question is that should i use trigger to queue events in table or application/object to queue events in table? and Why? Note:   1. Update on either is capable of generating 3 different types of events. So on application layer extra diff logic would be required to generate correct event.   2. The Negative thing in trigger is that it will introduce duplicate events from both sides. i.e. if some event is processed on one table it will create an event for processing on other table."}
{"_id": "52732", "title": "Do you think natively compiled languages have reached their EOL?", "text": "If we look at the major programming languages in use today it is pretty noticeable that the vast majority of them are, in fact, interpreted. Looking at the largest piece of the pie we have Java and C# which are both enterprise-ready, heavy-duty, serious programming languages which are basically compiled to byte-code only to be interpreted by their respective VMs (the JVM and the CLR). If we look at scripting languages, we have Perl, Python, Ruby and Lua which are all interpreted (either from code or from bytecode - and yes, it should be noted that they are absolutely not the same). Looking at compiled languages we have C which is nowadays used in embedded and low-level, real-time environments, and C++ which is still alive and kicking, when you want to get down to serious programming as close to the hardware as you can, but still have some nice abstractions to help you with day to day tasks. Basically, there is no **real** runner-up compiled language in the distance. Do you feel that languages which are _natively_ compiled to executable, binary code are a thing of the past, taken over by interpreted languages which are much more portable and compatible? Does C++ mark an end of an era? Why don't we see any new compiled languages anymore? * * * **I think I should clarify:** I do not want this to turn into a \"which language is better\" discussion, because that is not the issue at hand. The languages I gave as example are only examples. Please focus on the question I raised, and if you disagree with my statement that compiled languages are less frequent these days, that is totally fine, I am more than happy to be proved mistaken."}
{"_id": "60648", "title": "Is software better designed and developed by people who will use it?", "text": "I see many apps written by programmers who obviously don't use the program like the end customers in a production environment. This results in features that don't really make sense in practice, inferior ways of doing things, half- baked functionality, bad workflow, many tools doing similar things, etc. But on the other hand, in rare cases you see the same end customers making similar apps in an effort to overcome these shortcomings, and they might not be as sophisticated code-wise as the ones written by programmers but they work much better and feel like it's written by someone who uses the program professionally just like the end customers. So is software better designed and developed by people who will use it, people who have intrinsic knowledge of the domain the program will serve in?"}
{"_id": "60643", "title": "What advantages does TFS have over Tortoise SVN in this scenario?", "text": "This is neither a Holy War invocation nor is it http://stackoverflow.com/questions/661389/tfs-vs-svn \\- This question is much more specific and would potentially make a team of developers very happy: I used an earlier version of TFS for two years but I have not used it for years. What advantages does it have over Tortoise SVN? For example, does the merging work seemlessly or does it involve a lot of manual work; and does the shelving actually work (we could not get it working)? The Platform is Windows (does TFS run on anything else) and the intended use is version control through Visual Studio 2008 / 2010 with the scope for Continuous Integration on x86 or 64bit build servers (depending on the product). There would any ever be one develop stream per product. Projects would typically last less than two weeks (large pieces of work would be broken down into these discrete chunks of this size). The maximum team size to work simultaneously on a product would be less than six developers. Checkins on a branch would occur at any time (only explicit rule is that it builds). Merges back into the trunk (head) occur after project completion. Running a TFS trial is likely to be costly to a business. Therefore, I have asked the question on here. I want to hear answers from those who already know (as well as those who anticipate pitfalls). There is no point reinventing the wheel. It makes no sense to incur unnecessarly research costs. To reiterate: my major concern is merging. I know SVN Tortoise works (it has a few quirks around ASP.Net .csproj files but I can live with that) but TFS is supposed to have a great deal of features. I want the best deal for the devs."}
{"_id": "63595", "title": "0x9e3779b9 golden number", "text": "i'm trying to understand a constant 0x9e3779b9 what kind of data is this? it's not binary, not decimal, what is this? it's a constant used on the TEA algorithm it says it's derived from the golden number but the golden number is 1.618?"}
{"_id": "80576", "title": "Best practice to save data in different databases using C# ADO.NET", "text": "I would like to know if you guys have any best practice when dealing with transaction between different databases vendors. For example, if you have a C# application that save customer data in two databases (one Oracle and the other Microsoft), what would you do? Would you use OleDbTransaction? Is it possible?"}
{"_id": "254074", "title": "How exactly is an Abstract Syntax Tree created?", "text": "I think I understand the goal of an AST, and I've built a couple of tree structures before, but never an AST. I'm mostly confused because the nodes are text and not number, so I can't think of a nice way to input a token/string as I'm parsing some code. For example, when I looked at diagrams of AST's, the variable and its value were leaf nodes to an equal sign. This makes perfect sense to me, but how would I go about implementing this? I guess I can do it case by case, so that when I stumble upon an \"=\" I use that as a node, and add the value parsed before the \"=\" as the leaf. It just seems wrong, because I'd probably have to make cases for tons and tons of things, depending on the syntax. And then I came upon another problem, how is the tree traversed? Do I go all the way down the height, and go back up a node when I hit the bottom, and do the same for it's neighbor? I've seen tons of diagrams on ASTs, but I couldn't find a fairly simple example of one in code, which would probably help."}
{"_id": "152731", "title": "What is the main difference between HAS_MANY and BELONGS TO relationship in mysql?", "text": "After making little progress in web development and php I figured out if I can make my grip strong on database designing, I will be able to reduce much code and time in developing the application. But I happen to be a dumb in database designing so can anyone please help to differentiate between has many and belongs to relationship. They seems quite same to me"}
{"_id": "80573", "title": "I've been programming in one language for many years. Is this career suicide?", "text": "I have been programming in the same Object Oriented Programming language for many years (Windows-based). The problem is this particular language is not very popular, and not one of the hottest ones in demand in job postings and such. Should I be worried? Would a Java employer understand that I'm a programmer and can pick up any language in a matter of a week or two, or would they be under the impression that since I haven't programmed in their specific language professionally, then I'm just not qualified? PS. As far as learning, I do play around with different technologies at home. But at work, I'm pretty much stuck with the same language."}
{"_id": "152733", "title": "What is the term for a really BIG source code commit?", "text": "Sometimes when we check the commit history of a software, we may see that there are a few commits that are really BIG - they may change 10 or 20 files with hundreds of changed source code lines (delta). I remember that there is a commonly used term for such BIG commit but I can't recall exactly what that term is. Can anyone help me? What is the term that programmers usually use to refer to such BIG and giant commit? BTW, is committing a lot of changes all together a good practice? UPDATE: thank you guys for the inspiring discussion! But I think \"code bomb\" is the term that I'm looking for."}
{"_id": "148522", "title": "Why is putting something on the stack called \"push\"?", "text": "According to http://dictionary.reference.com > push > > verb (used with object) > >   1. to press upon or against (a thing) with force in order to move it away. > >   2. to move (something) in a specified way by exerting force; shove; drive: > _to push something aside; to push the door open_. > >   3. to effect or accomplish by thrusting obstacles aside: _to push one's > way through the crowd._ > >   4. to cause to extend or project; thrust. > >   5. to press or urge to some action or course: _His mother pushed him to > get a job._ > > This IMO fits to FIFO queues. Is there an explanation for this?"}
{"_id": "148523", "title": "chat/game server best way to implement, is WCF the way to go?", "text": "I'm creating a game on wp7 and it will be an online game played between a max of 4 players. The game will be a turn based game. My question really is what is the best way to do this server wise? is WCF the way to go? The following is information transferred to and from the server from each player.   * Player Chat message   * Chat message from other players.   * Players points from game.   * Picture sent to each player for start of game"}
{"_id": "148521", "title": "websites that show real world scenarios for OOP beginners so that they can implement them", "text": "Since programmers learn more by implementing the real world scenarios rather then by gaining theoretical knowledge and concepts about programming, I wanted to know that is there any website that tells about real world scenarios for OOP learners so that they can practice their designing skills and implement these scenarios using c#? Like which can help them making designing decisions for a problem for e.g in which scenario one should use abstract classes, interfaces, virtual overriding etc."}
{"_id": "63598", "title": "improving IM communication skills", "text": "I am an email person, but found that at my new job, co-workers use IM a lot. I have to admit that I have been largely ignoring the IM/SMS as a way of communication by thinking it is only for teenagers... The IM-style of communication is quite different from emailing. The sentences are shorter and there is less time for a response. So when I chat with someone, more often than not, I feel that I lag with the answer and then I just pick up the phone - and the conversation usually last minutes ... which plainly defeats the idea of the \"instant\" communication. Are there some recommendations that I can follow to improve my IM communication skills?"}
{"_id": "251000", "title": "How much data should exceptions hold?", "text": "Almost all the exceptions I have ever written have been very lightweight, containing a String message and optionally a throwable. In some situations I have included some application specific enum or some other field.               public class MySpecialException()     {         private MyErrorCode errorCode;              public MySpecialException(String message, Throwable cause, MyErrorCode errorCode)         {             super(message, cause);             this.errorCode = errorCode;         }              ....     }      Now I face a situation where I need to put in 5 or 6 fields in the exception because the error handler that catches them needs them to generate the output. Would you consider that to be bad code? Can an exception be too big?               public class MySpecialException()     {         private String name;         private int age;         private int id;         private int height;         private String duck;         private String whatever;              ....     }"}
{"_id": "53284", "title": "What do you as developers think of a marketplace for PC apps?", "text": "I just wanted to get some honest opinions from developers about the prospect of a marketplace/app store for the PC? Would you build apps for it? Examples are silverlightmarket.com, allmyapps.com etc etc... Cheers, Ash."}
{"_id": "184695", "title": "When was source control invented?", "text": "I'm aware of many version control systems: CVS, SVN, TFS etc... I've googled for the very first \"revision control/version control system\" and seen various conflicting answers. When was source control invented? Who invented it? What was it called?"}
{"_id": "62643", "title": "Why does EL have such low visibility?", "text": "Use of EL in JSP's is the proper way to code logic according to the Sun tutorials and samples, which also recommend against the use of Java scriptlets. Yet searching job listings for EL | \"expression language\" in the SF bay area on craigslist yields 0 hits (vs 144 for jsp, 8 for jstl and 678 for java. this is searching ad text not the titles) so it doesn't seem to be a skill of interest. Also 0 hits on programmers on the topic and I had to create a new tag ;-) What's good or bad about EL and why the low interest? As a java technology you would expect a lot more."}
{"_id": "220896", "title": "COBOL & Mainframe & Business", "text": "I have made a search on a Hong Kong job seeking website. There numerous of jobs titled \"Computer Analyst\". These are the requirements of the job:               Over 3 year experience relevant working experience in IBM Mainframe environment.     University degree in Computer Subject.     Proficient in system analysis, design and coding for the banking systems.     Application knowledge of Core banking and Card applications is definitely an advantage.     Sound in using IBM CICS/COBOL, and VSAM for both online and batch application systems.     Good communication skills with internal users.      Quite a number of jobs are similar: They requires candidates to have the following qualities:   * Computer Subjects especially Computer Science   * 3 years above experience   * IBM Mainframe COBOL   * Proficiency Then it comes to my question:   1. It makes it hard for new programmers to enter the industry. How should someone enter the industry, i.e. making him/herself suitable for this kind of position?    2. Do they still want new programmers in this field?   3. How should one learn to operate IBM Mainframe(Or any kind of Mainframe)?   4. Is knowledge in finance required or crucial?"}
{"_id": "54770", "title": "Should we leave our contact details in source code?", "text": "I usually leave my email address as a courtesy in case someone wants to ask me a question about it later. Do other people leave more or less information than that? Does anyone leave a phone number??"}
{"_id": "186102", "title": "Functional reactive programming \u2014 is Fay expressive enough?", "text": "> So I'm doing a fairly involved javascript/html client with lots of ajax > calls and other involvements of callback-ism. I'm entertaining the thought > of using Fay for this purpose. I'm aware of Elm. Tried it and liked the FRP > elements. Now I'm looking to know if similar structure is possible in Fay. > > Are there any concrete examples of FRP in Fay out there at this point? This question was migrated from SO due to not adhering to its intended format. Since it got some upvotes there I thought I could move it. I wont be doing FRP with my current code for now but I'm interested for future reference. Some relevant technologies:   * Arrowlets, arrowised FRP in javascript   * FlapJax, another javascript alternative   * Bacon.js, FRP in javascript One possible solution, using Bacon. With demo."}
{"_id": "186107", "title": "Can you claim that your product is fit for purpose when it uses OSS software which does not guarantee it?", "text": "I am working on a product for a client that must be valid and fit for purpose. It's built on a LAMP stack (PHP/Cake), so there's GPL, MIT, PHP, APACHE licenses: > \"AS IS\" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express > or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of > TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or **FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR > PURPOSE**. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of > using or redistributing the Work and assume any risks associated with Your > exercise of permissions under this License. My rationale that my product is valid and fit for purposes:   * The signed UAT doc proves validity and fitness for purpose.    * The stack is so widely used by developers, industry and end users (netcraft, gartner etc. stats), that there is a consensus that it IS fit for purpose. (ie we can disregard the fitness for purpose statement in the warranty disclaimer to an extent) Is this a valid point? Can I make claims that my software is fit for purpose?"}
{"_id": "20416", "title": "Why is there a decline in CS majors?", "text": "Although I've read on various websites until 2007-2008 that CS majors in decline, I don't understand why--I haven't entered the job market yet. Bruce Webster has an excellent chart regarding the topic: http://brucefwebster.com/2008/03/05/the-decline-in-computer-science-students/ What are some factors that lead to this decline? Is there still deficient amount of graduates? Are more people just skipping higher education altogether to get inside the industry? Does a \"Software Design\" major exit now? So many questions."}
{"_id": "222001", "title": "Can a pure-functional solution to this problem be as clean as the imperative?", "text": "I have an exercise in Python as follows:   * a polynomial is given as a tuple of coefficients such that the powers are determined by the indexes, e.g.: (9,7,5) means 9 + 7*x + 5*x^2   * write a function to compute its value for given x Since I am into functional programming lately, I wrote               def evaluate1(poly, x):       coeff = 0       power = 1       return reduce(lambda accu,pair : accu + pair[coeff] * x**pair[power],                     map(lambda x,y:(x,y), poly, range(len(poly))),                     0)      which I deem unreadable, so I wrote               def evaluate2(poly, x):       power = 0       result = 1       return reduce(lambda accu,coeff : (accu[power]+1, accu[result] + coeff * x**accu[power]),                     poly,                     (0,0)                    )[result]      which is at least as unreadable, so I wrote               def evaluate3(poly, x):       return poly[0]+x*evaluate(poly[1:],x) if len(poly)>0 else 0      which might be less efficient (edit: I was wrong!) since it uses many multiplications instead of exponentiation, in principle, I do not care about measurements here (edit: How silly of me! Measuring would have pointed out my misconception!) and still not as readable (arguably) as the iterative solution:               def evaluate4(poly, x):       result = 0       for i in range(0,len(poly)):           result += poly[i] * x**i       return result      Is there a pure-functional solution as readable as the imperative and close to it in efficiency? Admittedly, a representation change would help, but this was given by the exercise. Can be Haskell or Lisp aswell, not just Python."}
{"_id": "222002", "title": "eCommerce use case: removing a product", "text": "I am starting to design the database schema for the eCommerce element of a web service I am creating. The thing I'm trying to get my head around is how to deal with the use case of a seller (user of my web service) deleting a product. The issue I have is that this product could be referenced in a customers basket, to be paid orders, pending orders, deliveries, past orders etc... This problem is surely one that everyone developing such a system has come across. I'm just wondering if there is a best practice way to address it? Can it be addressed at the database schema level? Or maybe it just requires certain validation checks on database data before allowing a product to be deleted, or to stop an error if a customer is trying to pay for an order that had a reference to a product, but that reference has been deleted (i.e. product was deleted)."}
{"_id": "175401", "title": "Naming methods that do the same thing but return different types", "text": "Let's assume that I'm extending a graphical file chooser class (`JFileChooser`). This class has methods which display the file chooser dialog and return a status signature in the form of an `int`: `APPROVE_OPTION` if the user selects a file and hits _Open_ / _Save_ , `CANCEL_OPTION` if the user hits _Cancel_ , and `ERROR_OPTION` if something goes wrong. These methods are called `showDialog()`. I find this cumbersome, so I decide to make another method that returns a `File` object: in the case of `APPROVE_OPTION`, it returns the file selected by the user; otherwise, it returns `null`. This is where I run into a problem: would it be okay for me to keep the `showDialog()` name, even though methods with that name \u2014 **and a different return type** \u2014 already exist? To top it off, my method takes an additional parameter: a `File` which denotes in which directory the file chooser should start. My question to you: Is it okay to call a method the same name as a superclass method if they return different types? Or would that be confusing to API users? (If so, what other name could I use?) Alternatively, should I keep the name and change the return type so it matches that of the other methods?               public int showDialog(Component parent, String approveButtonText) // Superclass method     public File showDialog(Component parent, File location) // My method"}
{"_id": "95777", "title": "generic programming, how often is it used in industry", "text": "I do programming in an academic setting at the moment, so I can use whatever I want. I'm using the boost graph library for a few things, and I'm wondering whether investing effort in understanding GP more deeply is worth it. I'm curious - is generic programming (GP) used much in industry? My guess is that most programmers are much more comfortable with OOP or are using languages that don't emphasize or support GP, so that outside of calling STL data structures/functions in C++, my impression is that GP isn't used all that frequently in practice. But, being outside industry at the moment, it'd be nice to hear from practitioners on this. (as I'm writing this, I see that generic-programming isn't even a valid tag!)"}
{"_id": "95771", "title": "best practices for testing backbone.js apps with jasmine?", "text": "I've recently started using jasmine to do javascript unit testing. loving it so far. one of the projects i'm working on is a plugin for backbone.js. since backbone is an mvc style framework for javascript, a lot of what it does is view manipulation - typically through jquery. my plugin is no exception to this. i have several things being manipulated in html elements, through backbone views. right now, i am doing what might be some awful stuff to make this worth with jasmine. here's an example of how i'm laying out my tests:               describe(\"conventionBindings\", function(){       beforeEach(function(){         this.model = new AModel({name: \"Some Name\"});         this.view = new AView({model: this.model});         this.view.render();       });            afterEach(function(){         this.view.close();       });            describe(\"... that thing it does ... \", function(){         it(\"... stuff .... \", function(){         });       });     });      The important bits here, are the beforeEach and afterEach. notice that i'm calling my view's render method, and then my view's close method. here's what those methods do:               AView = Backbone.View.extend({       render: function(){         this.html = $(\"\");         $(\"body\").append(this.html);       },            close: function(){         this.html.remove();       }     });      i'm specifically adding this \"close\" method to my view for the tests, because if i don't, then the jasmine page that i'm viewing when i run the jasmine test server would show the inputs that i've appended to the body of the page. so... here's my questions: is this a horrible thing to be doing? should i be testing my views and html element manipulations in some way other than appending elements to the body of the page? right now i don't have a need to run these tests in any kind of CI server, but if i do, what kind of problems will i run into? how can i write better jasmine tests, so that i can test my backbone plugin in a CI server, knowing that the plugin has to manipulate html elements during the test?"}
{"_id": "81977", "title": "OpenID and data espionage", "text": "This answer[link] to another question here talks about OpenID and data espionage. I quote: > [Data espionage] Why let them gather the detailed statistics from many > consumer site and help them build personal profiles of people? Who knows > what they'll do with it? Sell it, use it to adjust their marketing tactics, > submit it to CIA? This has been also a concern of mine. If you use Yahoo, Yahoo now has a track of all the sites you went to (and signed with your OpenID). I'm wondering if this issue has been addressed more thoroughly. I think we here are the best people to have this discussion, because we're unbiased developers who don't get paid by OpenID or any provider (Yahoo, Google, etc.). What do you think about this?"}
{"_id": "163347", "title": "Issues with time slicing", "text": "I was trying to see the effect of time slicing, and how it can consume significant amount of time. Actually, I was trying to divide a certain task into a number of threads and see the effect. I have a two core processor. So two threads can run in parallel. I was trying to see if I have a task `w` that is done by 2 threads, and if I have the same task executed by `t` threads with each thread doing `w/t` of the task. How much does time slicing play a role in it. As time slicing is time consuming process, I was expecting that when I do the same task using a two thread process or by a `t` thread process, the amount of time taken by the `t` thread process will be more. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "120967", "title": "Does waterfall require code complete before QA steps in?", "text": "The process used at a certain company consists of: >   1. Create a layout according to some designs made in a web page design > tool. (CSS, html) >   2. Requirements come in with \"functional requirements\". These consist of > 100's of lines of business directions. E.G. Create a Table on page X. > Column1 has numeric data. Column1 is the client code. Column2 is a > string...etc. > >   3. Write code to meet all functional requirements. > >   4. When all code is checked in, send to QA (which is the BA that wrote the > requirements) for inspection, bug finds and change requests. >   5. Punt back to developer with a list of X bugs and Y change requests. >   6. While bug finds or change requests > 0 go to step 4. > The agile development environments I have worked in allow, if not demand, early QA inspection and early user acceptance. So, pieces of the program can be refined and redefined before the entire application is in place. Not only that, but the process leaves little room for error or people changing their minds. Instead, those \"change requests\" come in at the last stage when they do the most damage. And being that a bug-fix's cost increases over time, this is a costly way to write code. I am no waterfall expert. As described, is this waterfall being mishandled in some way? How does waterfall address my concerns?"}
{"_id": "210957", "title": "Modern web application development! Is flash and silverlight still relevant?", "text": "When building an application one considers the appropriate technology of choice for best long term impact and scalability. If building a media streaming application for mobile and desktop should one still use flash or silverlight, or html5 and javascript? How does one select the right technology?"}
{"_id": "195020", "title": "Is it a bad design to specify default bindings when using Inversion of Control (IOC) containers and dependency injection (DI)?", "text": "I'm using Ninject, but this is not a Ninject-specific question. I'm wondering if the advanced and flexible capabilities of the IoC container are giving me enough rope to hang myself with a bad application design. I've got a service interface:               public interface IBuilderService {         IBuilder Create(string category, string clientID);     }      and I lean on Ninject Factory Extension's `ToFactory()` to create what I'd guess you'd call a proxy implementation at runtime. I have `IBuilder` bindings like this:               kernel.Bind<IBuilder>().To<NullObjectBuilder>(); // for unbound categories     kernel.Bind<IBuilder>().To<CatOneBuilder>();     kernel.Bind<IBuilder>().To<CatTwoBuilder>();     kernel.Bind<IBuilder>().To<CatThreeBuilder>();     kernel.Bind<IBuilder>().To<CatOneBuilder_ClientA>();     kernel.Bind<IBuilder>().To<CatOneBuilder_DefaultClient>(); // for unbound clients     // etc...      I've been experimenting with custom instance providers and binding generators with Ninject (I'm guessing other IoC containers may have similar constructs for overriding basic binding behavior), but I have **two distinct binding scenario goals** :   1. if a **category** of binding cannot be resolved from the `IBuilderService.Create` `category` argument, then a `NullObjectBuilder` should be resolved - this is the _default_ binding in this case.   2. if a **clientID** of a binding cannot be resolved, then a default client implementation like `CatOneBuilder_DefaultClient` for a `category` of `CatOne` should be resolved - this is the _default_ binding in this case. This is a situation where unknown category requests **are expected** , so it seems a shame to use expensive exception handling for something I know will happen very often. I want there to be fallback behavior to \" _handle the unhandled_ \" in a very plain way - in this case, it would be the `NullObjectBulder` for unknown categories, and `*_DefaultClient` for _unknown clients_ of _known categories_ \\- two distinct fallback behaviors for two different _types_ of unknown behavior. I'm having trouble keeping the two fallback behaviors mapped to their respective scenarios, but it's given me pause to think about the friction I'm feeling in fleshing out this design\u2026 Is it a flawed design to have _default_ bindings and the logic used to determine when one is needed contained in IoC custom implementations, rather than an exception being thrown? Is this a mis-use of IoC containers?"}
{"_id": "163343", "title": "How should I incorporate a hotfix back into a feature branch using gitflow?", "text": "I've started using gitflow for a project, and I have an outstanding feature branch as well as a newly created hotfix. Per the gitflow workflow, the hotfix gets applied to both the _master_ and _develop_ branches, but nothing is said or done about extant feature branches. Nevertheless, I'd like to incorporate the hotfix changes back into my feature branch, which as near as I can tell leaves three options:   1. Don't incorporate the changes. If the changes were needed for the feature branch, it should've been part of the feature branch.   2. Merge _develop_ back into the feature branch. This seems to follow the gitflow workflow the best, but would cause out-of-order commits.    3. Rebase the feature branch onto _develop_. This would preserve commit order but rebasing seems to be completely absent from the general gitflow workflow. What's the best practice here?"}
{"_id": "198019", "title": "Single codebase for client and server with Node.js", "text": "There are a few claimed benefits to Node.js that I typically hear. Some (many?) I agree with. There is one that I completely do not understand, which is the one language argument: \"You can now use one language on both the client side and the server side.\" This does not make sense to me on many levels:   1. most people already know more than one language, and learning a second is anyway not that big of a deal.   2. JavaScript is not that great of a language; if people had any choice they'd probably choose something else on the client side, but they're locked in.   3. the beauty of the server side is you can choose ANY language (so it makes sense to choose the best, most capable language, with the least baggage). The only reasonable argument I've heard is \"if I'm using backbone I can re-use my models\". Since I haven't used backbone myself I'm not sure how much that actually amounts too however. Can someone shed some light?"}
{"_id": "163348", "title": "Functional programming readability", "text": "I'm curious about this because I recall before learning any functional languages, I thought them all horribly, awfully, terribly unreadable. Now that I know Haskell and f#, I find it takes a little longer to read less code, but that little code does far more than an equivalent amount would in an imperative language, so it feels like a net gain and I'm not extremely practiced in functional. Here's my question, I constantly hear from OOP folks that functional style is terribly unreadable. I'm curious if this is the case and I'm deluding myself, or if they took the time to learn a functional language, the whole style would no longer be more unreadable than OOP? Has anybody seen any evidence or got any anecdotes where they saw this go one way or another with frequency enough to possibly say? If writing functionally really is of lower readability then I don't want to keep using it, but I really don't know if that's the case or not.."}
{"_id": "237610", "title": "How do I manage a JavaScript library with TFS?", "text": "I know that I can share files between Visual Studio projects using linked files and assemblies using project references. Is there a good approach for JavaScripts? I'd rather not use linked files since it doesn't allow projects to have their own version of the script."}
{"_id": "157816", "title": "How does it matter if a character is 8 bit or 16 bit or 32 bit", "text": "Well, I am reading Programing Windows with MFC, and I came across Unicode and ASCII code characters. I understood the point of using Unicode over ASCII, but what I do not get is how and why is it important to use 8bit/16bit/32bit character? What good does it do to the system? How does the processing of the operating system differ for different bits of character. My question here is, what does it mean to a character when it is a x-bit character?"}
{"_id": "224941", "title": "Anemic domain models - what sort of methods a domain object might need?", "text": "This question might seem strange, but it's something I've faced sometimes. I've been trying to adopt DDD, however I'm always facing the problem of anemic domain models. The problem is that when I start to think about what should be the behaviors of the domain objects, nothing comes to mind. I've started then to seek on the internet what should be put inside the behavior of the domain objects and many people say that are rules and validations. The problem is that I've faced the situation many times where to customer who wants the system doesn't want any validation. Once I've asked a customer: \"what are the required properties for this object?\" and he said \"no, I don't want anything like that, sometimes I want to just place one property and leave the others because I'm without time\". Then I've asked: \"and what sould be the format of data for this property?\" and he said \"I don't want anything checked, I want to be free to put as I like\". So the customer _didn't want_ validation at all, so I coudln't implement it. In that case, there's no validations, there are no rules in place. Then I've looked at the controllers (it was built with MVC) to see if there was any logic specific to the domain entities, and there wasn't any. Just logic to read and write data. So in cases like that, is it a problem to have anemic domain models? Also, I'm working with .NET. In .NET we can put validation with Data Annotations, and we can write getters like properties. So methods to do validation when setting data aren't requireds, because the Data Annotations do the job, also methods to calculate data aren't required, because properties with just a special get can do the job. So what the behaviors become after all?"}
{"_id": "224946", "title": "What is the difference between Avalanche and WaterScrumFall?", "text": "Recently I learnt about a new methodology based on waterfall and scrum: Water- Scrum-Fall.   Some say that is the new \"reality\" and is what scrum pragmatist use nowadays.... But, from the definition of \"Avalanche\": > The Avalanche model is a Software Engineering project management anti- > pattern, it is a combination of a sequential process such as the Waterfall > model and Agile software development methodologies [...] What do you think about these two models? Aren't those the same? * * * More info:   http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/12/water-scrum-fall-is-the-norm http://www.slideshare.net/harsoft/water-scrumfall-isrealityofagileformost"}
{"_id": "20652", "title": "Need clarification concerning Windows Azure", "text": "I basically need some confirmation and clarification concerning Windows Azure with respect to a Silverlight application using RIA Services. In a normal Silverlight app that uses RIA services you have 2 projects:   * App   * App.Web ... where App is the default client-side Silverlight and app.web is the server-side code where your RIA services go. If you create a Windows Azure app and add a WCF Web Services Role, you get:   * App (Azure project)   * App.Services (WCF Services project) In App.Services, you add your RIA DomainService(s). You would then add another project to this solution that would be the client-side Silverlight that accesses the RIA Services in the App.Services project. You then can add the entity model to the App.Services or another project that is referenced by App.Services (if that division is required for unit testing etc.) and connect that entity model to either a SQLServer db or a SQLAzure instance. Is this correct? If not, what is the general 'layout' for building an application with the following tiers:   * UI (Silverlight 4)   * Services (RIA Services)   * Entity/Domain (EF 4)   * Data (SQL Server)"}
{"_id": "19987", "title": "Is knowing .NET only enough for a successful career in IT industry?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it better to specialize in a single field I like, or expand into other > fields to broaden my horizons? Recently, I don\u2019t know from where I got a thought in my mind that, \u201cis knowing .NET development environment enough for a successful career in IT industry\u201d. Should I be learning more languages too or will .NET suffice me for next 10-15 years. By successful career I mean earning decent living and having good growth opportunities."}
{"_id": "37317", "title": "Is it okay to be generalist?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it better to specialize in a single field I like, or expand into other > fields to broaden my horizons? I work at a ~50 employee company (UK), where all the technical people do a bit of everything. Specialising in anything for very long (6 months) is discouraged. For example, last week, I built a new Debian webserver, refactored some Perl, sat on a sales phone call, did a tape backup, reviewed code, built and deployed an RPM, gave opinions about x, y, z... With such a work scheme, I have gained a general knowledge how many things work, and pretty specific knowledge. I maybe program for 5 hours a week, despite officially being a developer. Does anyone else work like this, (or is this company unique)? Is it a problem to have skills developed in this way? (i.e. know a bit about everything in a certain domain, rather than know everything about say, one programming language?) Is it okay to be a generalist?"}
{"_id": "126359", "title": "An aspiring programmers proverbial fork. (asp.net or ...)", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it better to specialize in a single field I like, or expand into other > fields to broaden my horizons?   >  Do Diversified Skills Foster or Hinder Specialization? Afternoon, I am seeking some career guidance, as the road seems to be splitting, winding and veering off in many different directions. It is my desire to be a professional software engineer, focusing (more so) on web applications. My background in web design lead me to php, mysql and minimal javascript (as so many have). From here I'm starting to learn visual studio, C# MS SQL and many tools / scripting languages that I feel would make me a better programmer and asset to a web team (REGEX, HTML5, MSSQL,). The more I dwell into Visual Studio, ASP.NET aspx syntax ( <% %> ) and now reading the up coming razor syntax. I am starting to get this feeling of cornering, isolation from those who develop in areas that I also find interesting. I get it, it's just the nature of life when you become specified in any area of expertise, you have to focus somewhere or you'll be a jack of all trades. But at the same time I would love to \"reach over\" and be able to dab into objective-C or Java, so I can design web applications that are intended for cross-platform use. It is not my intention to come of whining, I'm just looking to be told \"it'll be ok, push hard an any of these directions and you'll be able to do anything you want.\" Where, my next 4 years of effort in becoming an asset in C# and asp.net will no damn me to a life of servitude to Microsoft technology related jobs. Upon my visit to Google's HQ back in April it really inspired me and opened my eyes a bit. But from what I hear their technological push does not utilize any C# or .NET for that matter. So I guess a summed up question would be: Do professional software engineers have the freedom (and time for that matter) to learn, professes and become an asset of other technological sectors? Does one who masters Visual Studio also have a mastery of VIM or EMACS?"}
{"_id": "81160", "title": "Does being a jack-of-all-trades hurt your career?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it better to specialize in a single field I like, or expand into other > fields to broaden my horizons? Looking at job postings, the vast majority ask for extremely specific qualifications and requirements and a great deal of experience in very narrow areas. Having written a job description or two myself, I know that the \"requirements\" are more of a wish-list than anything, and actual job duties can vary wildly. That said, if I look at these job postings as a potential applicant, I don't think I'd even be considered for most of them - mainly because I don't really have a specialty or area of strong focus. I can do just about anything marginally well (programming, database, networking, you name it), and have had experience with a wide range of different technologies (at varying levels of expertise), but I've never had a job that required or otherwise had a need to drill deep down into something, spend a lot of time on it, and \"master\" it. Does being a jack-of-all trades really hurt your career (long term)? Does that mean that you will never be able to move up or advance beyond something like Tier 1/2 tech support or general IT-lackey? In the same vein, is it possible to make a career out of being versatile with technology, having a wide range of (albeit shallow) experience, but without specializing in a particular technology?"}
{"_id": "176515", "title": "How to name an subclass that add a minor, detailed thing?", "text": "What is the most concise (yet descriptive) way of naming a subclass that only add a specific minor thing to the parent? I encountered this case a lot in WPF, where sometime I have to add a small functionality to an out-of-the-box control for specific cases. Example: TreeView doesn't change the SelectedItem on right-click, but I have to make one that does in my application. Some possible names are   * `TreeViewThatChangesSelectedItemOnRightClick` (way too wordy and maybe difficult to read because there is so many words concantenated together)   * `TreeView_SelectedItemChangesOnRightClick` (slightly more readable, but still too wordy and the underscore also breaks the normal convention for class names)   * `TreeViewThatChangesSIOnRC` (non-obvious acronym),    * `ExtendedTreeView` (more concise, but doesn't describe what it is doing. Besides, I already found a class called this in the library, that I don't want to use/modify in my application).   * `LouisTreeView`, `MyTreeView`, etc. (doesn't describe what it is doing). It seems that I can't find a name which sounds right. What do you do in situation like this?"}
{"_id": "234657", "title": "Why is \"Select * from table\" considered bad practice", "text": "Yesterday I was discussing with a \"hobby\" programmer (I myself am a professional programmer). We came across some of his work, and he said he always queries all columns in his database (even on/in production server/code). I tried to convince him not to do so, but wasn't so successful yet. In my opinion a programmer should only query what is actually needed for the sake of \"prettiness\", efficiency and traffic. Am I mistaken with my view?"}
{"_id": "37954", "title": "How do you determine which skills are marketable?", "text": "While this question might be relevant to other fields, I'm interested specifically in searching for jobs as a developer. Namely, when you are searching for an applying for a new job you might look for listings that are for C# or Java developers; however, most jobs aren't just writing one language so how do you determine which skills are worth highlighting on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or more likely on a targeted cover letter? Likewise, are there some skills that aren't worth mentioning because it is implied that most developers should know it (i.e. XML) or is it better to list everything?"}
{"_id": "176518", "title": "Extracting color profile information from JPEG files", "text": "I'm trying to look up info about reading JPEG's color profile info and to my surprise there's very little open specific how-to information on that regard, but rather lots of general explanation on what it is. **Does anyone know how to find and read the color profile information from JPEG?**"}
{"_id": "143197", "title": "Do any database \"styles\" use discrete files for their tables?", "text": "I've been talking to some people at work who believe some versions of a database store their data in discrete tables. That is to say you might open up a folder and see one file for each table in the database then several other supporting files. They do not have a lot of experience with databases but I have only been working with them for a little over a half year so I am not a canonical source of info either. I've been touting the benefits of SQL Server over Access (and before this, Access over Excel. Great strides have been made :) ). But, other people were of the impression that the/one of the the benefit(s) of using SQL Server over Access was that all the data was not consolidated down into one file. Yet, SQL Server packs everything into a single .mdf file (plus the log file). My question is, is there an RDBMS which holds it's data in multiple discrete files instead of one master file? And if the answer is yes, why do it one way over the other? **edit** Thank you everyone for you're answers. This has really helped clarify the whole situation."}
{"_id": "143194", "title": "What advantages are conferred by using server-side page rendering?", "text": "I am developing a web app and I have currently written the entire website in html/js/css and on the backend I have servlets that host some RESTFUL services. All the presentation logic is done through getting json objects and modifying the view through javascript. The application is essentially a search engine, but it will have user accounts with different roles. I've been researching some frameworks such as Play and Spring. I'm fairly new to web development, so I was wondering what advantages using server side page rendering would provide? Is it: Speed? Easier development and workflow? Access to existing libraries? More? All of the above?"}
{"_id": "146073", "title": "How does Google crawl frequently updated webpages?", "text": "I'm trying to build a very small, niche search engine, using Nutch to crawl specific sites. Some of the sites are news/blog sites. If I crawl, say, techcrunch.com, and store and index their frontpage, then within hours my index for that page will be out of date. Does a large search engine such as Google have an algorithm to re-crawl frequently updated pages very frequently, hourly even? Or does it just score frequently updated pages very low so they don't get returned? Also, how can I handle this in my own index?"}
{"_id": "72632", "title": "Are There Any Flaws With This Git Branching Model?", "text": "I am asking about this git branching model or workflow. I really like this. It strikes me as very intuitive and productive, but what I am asking for is whether there are any flaws or negatives to this approach that are not yet clear to me (coming from another world where ClearCase ruled the day). (You don't need to answer every question, whatever you can is helpful)   1. Do you use this or a similar git branching workflow?   2. Do you consider this a productive approach?   3. Do you see any flaws with this approach? Any potential downside?   4. If you have a better approach, would you mind sharing, or providing a link to an article or discussion about it?"}
{"_id": "109281", "title": "How important is multithreading in the current software industry?", "text": "I have close to 3 years experience writing web applications in Java using MVC frameworks (like struts). I have never written multithreaded code till now though I have written code for major retail chains. I get a few questions on multithreading during interviews and I answer them usually (mostly simple questions). This left me wondering how important is Multithreading in the current industry scenario ?"}
{"_id": "67693", "title": "Should I represent the Database in my use cases?", "text": "I am creating use cases for my web application and I was wondering if a representation of the DB should be listed as an actor. For example a user can check his profile and edit it (assuming that he is logged in). The two use cases would be:   \\- User can view his profile   \\- User can edit his profile   Would the use cases then be for example:   Actor: User, DB   Use case: View profile   Or can I leave out the DB as an actor? Unfortunately I haven't found any consistent way of drawing the use cases."}
{"_id": "115958", "title": "Is it bad practice for services to share a database in SOA?", "text": "I have recently been reading Hohpe and Woolf's Enterprise Integration Patterns, some of Thomas Erl's books on SOA and watching various videos and podcasts by Udi Dahan et al. on CQRS and Event Driven systems. Systems in my place of work suffer from high coupling. Although each system theoretically has its own database, there is a lot of joining between them. In practice this means there is one huge database that all systems use. For example, there is one table of customer data. Much of what I've read seems to suggest denormalising data so that each system uses only its database, and any updates to one system are propagated to all the others using messaging. I thought this was one of the ways of enforcing the boundaries in SOA - each service should have its own database, but then I read this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4019902/soa-joining-data-across-multiple- services and it suggests this is the wrong thing to do. Segregating the databases does seem like a good way of decoupling systems, but now I'm a bit confused. Is this a good route to take? Is it ever recommended that you should segregate a database on, say an SOA service, an DDD Bounded context, an application, etc?"}
{"_id": "191293", "title": "Using a database for each module in a system", "text": "I was reading this question: > I was trying to standardize and modularize some functions (Email Management > Module, CMS Module & etc) by implementing a 3-tier architecture concept > where each module would have its own independent module database. So that in > the future all we'd need to do is just code a presentation layer, reuse the > BLL layer, DAL Layer and database. My follow-up question is whether it is a good idea to place all the database tables from each module into the same database, or whether they should be separated into entirely separate databases? I am using PostgreSQL. My worries are:   1. Problems with running data analysis if data is in many different databases   2. Problems pinning down database performance issues if we use the same database for all modules   3. In ability to join tables across modules if we some time in the future discover that our modularization is flawed for creating a certain feature"}
{"_id": "215260", "title": "Tips for Tail Call Recursion in Python", "text": "Ok, Python doesn't have tail call optimization. But for those who think better recursively than \"looply\", whats the best practices to write code?? 1000 stack calls are enough for many cases, but what are the tips to conceal recursion with efficiency in Python?"}
{"_id": "92461", "title": "Is this a valid smartphone CPU vs. desktop CPU speed comparison (Android G1 vs. old Pentium 4 desktop)?", "text": "I am trying to estimate speed differences when creating code on my desktop PC that will be ported to Android phones. I don't need to be exact, but a good estimation will help stop me from creating code that is dismally slow on an Android phone. I want to support down to the Android G1 so I am using it as my \"baseline\". Here is how I am currently performing my calculations using Dhrystone MIPS using an old Pentium 4 for comparison that will be the test unit for quick speed tests. According to this document, a G1 using a Qualcomm MSM72xx ARM CPU is about 1 MIPS per Mhz: http://www.techautos.com/2010/03/14/smartphone-processor-guide/ Web searches turned up user comments indicating that the G1's CPU comes stock running at around 350 Mhz and not at the 523 Mhz shown in the chip's specs so I am assigning a MIPS rating of 350 MIPS for the G1, rightly or wrongly. This Wikipedia page shows the Pentium 4 Extreme edition rated at about 9700 MIPS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second This makes the Pentium 4 approximately 27 times faster than the G1. Given that multiplier, if during one of the time consuming operations my code takes 1 second on the Pentium 4, I would estimate that it would take 27 seconds on a G1. Is my logic correct? I am hoping it is not because that means I'll have to do some really painful optimizations to the code to make things livable on the G1. If my logic is not correct and there is a better algorithm for this calculation, please let me know. \\-- roschler"}
{"_id": "67694", "title": "What encryption method should I use?", "text": "I am looking for some information on encryption. Here's what I'm trying to do:   * Get unique information from our customer (an ID or something)   * Generate and encrypt some data on our side (using the clients ID)   * Send this data to customer, and allow an application to decrypt (and decrypt only) this data using the ID sent before What methods should I be looking at? Kind regards To clarify:   * We encrypt some data using our private key and our clients public key   * The client decrypts this data using their public key   * The client must not be able to encrypt valid data using their public key"}
{"_id": "146076", "title": "Steps for moving towards continuous delivery?", "text": "Say you have a traditional dev > test > production process say on a monthly release cycle. What are some of the steps you need to take and put into place to move towards a model of continuous delivery with frequent releases per day. Please make one suggestion per response. I would be interested in using voting to indicate which steps the community feel are most important."}
{"_id": "114862", "title": "At what point does a company need a system engineer?", "text": "I'm 8 months into my first job as a developer at a mid-small company. The four development teams have about 7 developers each, the design team consists of about the same number, and the administration / sales / marketing / hr team is 4 people. We mostly develop web apps, a one-time deal, to run on the client's (usually existing) environment. I'm finding myself setting up development environments to match, usually things I've never used before (from C#.NET 1.1 and MS-SQL to a regionally developed WAS called JEUS), which takes a significant amount of time. Sometimes I get help from other developers but mostly I follow online tutorials until it seems to work, and then I spend more time fixing my code when it breaks because the settings aren't exactly the same as the actual environment. I'm starting to think that one guy who specializes in this stuff would make it much easier for the developers to actually do what they're paid to do. When does it make sense for a company to get a dedicated systems engineer? Or am I wrong and should just suck it up and learn to do it? I do realize that being familiar with different environments would improve my employability..."}
{"_id": "114865", "title": "Redundant code ok?", "text": "Using C#/.Net, I have a page where the user can enter data and save these data by clicking a button. To save data, the user needs to enter a valid date, this means a date which has a certain format. The page contains amongst others two modules. The ValidateDate-Event has the responsibility two check the format of the date-field. So it checks the format and displays a message if the date is not well formed. The Save-Event has to save user entries. To successfully complete the task, a well formed date is needed. So I designed the module to check the date format. This has the advantage that the module can never crash and is not dependent of the Validation-module. But I realized that in fact I do the same thing twice, in two modules. I am just curious, how do you handle this matter? What do you think is the best way to do it? **1) ValidateDate Reponsibility: Check format of date field (, inform user)   Sub-Task: Check format of date field 2) Save Reponsibility: Save data   Sub-Task: Check format of date field**"}
{"_id": "146075", "title": "If I drop cookies with JavaScript will it still be compliant with the EU ICO Cookie Law?", "text": "The challenge proposed to me as to create a widget to apply in other sites that makes a website compliant with the cookie law[1]. Can I do this without changing server code? I mean, if there's code on server-side that writes an affiliate cookie to the response and my JavaScript widget deletes it after on window.load event: will the site still be cookie law compliant? Then comes the Google Analytics and share buttons cookies. How would I stop those scripts and iframes from being executed in JavaScript? [1] The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) : New ICO Cookie Law"}
{"_id": "136602", "title": "Should I take on this very large project idea?", "text": "The last month I have had idea of a very large project to take as a software hobby/potential business project - simply because I saw some \"vision\" of a great tool if this would be done. The idea behind the project is really a common idea, and there is this one very big competitor (as the size of a corporation with dozens if not hundreds of programmers working on a product that might contain my \"visionary\" features in the future) - their product gets polished every year with their new edition. A few days ago I saw their latest edition, and it literally \"shut my wind\" down : Their latest edition contained about 50% of the features I dreamed about. And they implemented those in a good way. Also, those \"features\" that they have implemented, are part of a very large product of theirs, so they benefit from integrating those features to their big product. If I were to code my own product, those \"features\" will simply be a stand-alone product without any other _nice and efficient tools_. So my doubts are these : If I were to begin coding this myself, this would take perhaps a few years. Should I really take this project idea and invest my time in it, while some big corporate company might suddenly have those same features implemented in, let's say, one year from now? Should I really _think_ before entering a whole new project about my chances of success, or, simply, should I _dive and kamikaze_ on it?? What do you think? P.S. If you can, please recommend me information resources about starting up projects and eventually getting commercial. Thank you very much."}
{"_id": "142571", "title": "Must developers understand the business domain or should the specification be sufficient?", "text": "I work for a company for which the domain is really difficult to understand because it is high technology in electronics, but this is applicable to any software development in a complex domain. The application that I work on displays a lot of information, charts, and metrics which are difficult to understand without experience in the domain. The developer uses a specification to describe what the software must do, such as specifying that a particular chart must display this kind of metrics and this metric is the following arithmetic formula. This way, the developer doesn't really understand the business and what/why he is doing this task. This can be OK if specification is really detailed but when it isn't or when the author has forgotten a use case, this is quite hard for the developer to find a solution. At the other hand, training every developer to all the business aspects can be very long and difficult. Should we give more importance to detailed specification (but as we know, perfect specification does not exist) or should we train all the developers to understand the business domain? **EDIT: keep in mind in your answer that the company could used external developers and that a formation to all the domain can be about 2 weeks**"}
{"_id": "136605", "title": "Designing access to file-based \"database\"", "text": "It happened frequently that I have to provide access to a bunch of files organized in a directory tree according to some (sometimes loosely specified) rules. My standard pattern is to provide a Database class which is initialized with the root directory. This class provides getX()-like (example: getStructure()) methods to extract data from the database. These methods normally return semantically meaningful objects (Structure) with proper methods returning data (eg. structure.getPoints()). I am not completely happy with this design, for two main reasons. The first problem is that the mapping between in-application objects and files may not be 1:1, that is, to create the Structure object I may have to open different files in the \"database\", and the mapping may not be perfect. In this case, I call the Structure a \"Thick object\". An alternative (\"thin objects\") is to stick to objects that _are_ fully represented in a file, even if poor in high-level domain meaning (that is, if I have two files to define a structure, one file containing points, and the other containing connections between these points, I just provide a Points object and a Connections object, and let someone else \"connect the dots\" outside Database). The other problem I have is the following: who should perform the actual file parsing? I envision two strategies: either the objects are able to deserialize themselves from file (\"pickle-like\" in python parlance), or they are just dumb data containers filled by stateless parser objects (one per file), or even by the database object itself. When you do ORM, there are clear, well defined rules on how the object is represented in the database, and the process is extremely well defined in terms of interface and behavior. This is not necessarily verified with an arbitrary bunch of files some people call \"database\". I would really enjoy your points on this regard. How should I perform proper deserialization in this case of \"raw mapping\"? Thin or thick objects ? Smart or dumb ? Note that I don't really have any control at all when it comes to the files I have to access. I get the files from external sources, and I have to convert them into some kind of domain objects, generally only for reading, but sometimes also for writing. Readonly is by far the most frequent case though."}
{"_id": "236057", "title": "How do remote programmers working on proprietary software go about securing their work/source code?", "text": "I was just wondering what kind of protocols a software engineer would go through if they were working at home for a company developing proprietary closed source software. Would you use a third party anti-virus or would you fear they could steal your code? Can you trust web hosting services like git- hub and bit-bucket? Would you keep your source code on an encrypted partition? Would you make any configurations to ensure windows could not steal your source code through some kind of built in feature? What other kinds of security concerns would you have and how would you deal with them?"}
{"_id": "188432", "title": "Algorithm for matching similar content text items", "text": "I am working on a website (C#, ASP.Net MVC 3) which reads some RSS feeds from multiple sources and put feed title and summary in a database table(Sql Server). What I want to do is: Put an algorithm in place which can relate multiple feeds. For example if each feed is a news item, I would like to relate all news which says in different grammar of English \"Some has won some election\". Is there any standard algorithm for such kind of content matching logic? If not, what kind of custom algorithm should be used? If this logic can be written on Database side(e.g. Stored Procedure) it will be better."}
{"_id": "188433", "title": "Novel polymorphism - any reasons for this code?", "text": "As part of my work on a legacy C# application I've come across a novel (to me) use of an interface & concrete implementations. I can't think of any reason why you'd do the following, but I'm pretty thick, so maybe someone else can?               public interface IContract     {         ContractImplementation1 Contract { get; }         bool IsCollection { get; }         bool Touched { get; set; }     }          public class ContractImplementation1 : IContract     {         public ContractImplementation1(string propertyOne, string propertyTwo, string propertyThree, string propertyFour)         {             PropertyOne = propertyOne;             PropertyTwo = propertyTwo;             PropertyThree = propertyThree;             PropertyFour = propertyFour;         }              public ContractImplementation1 Contract { get { return this; } }         public bool IsCollection { get { return false; } }         public bool Touched { get; set; }              public string PropertyOne { get; private set; }         public string PropertyTwo { get; private set; }         public string PropertyThree { get; private set; }         public string PropertyFour { get; private set; }              public override string ToString()         {             if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(PropertyFour))                 return string.Format(\"{0} => {1}: {2}\", PropertyOne, PropertyTwo, PropertyThree);             else                 return string.Format(\"{0} => {1}: {2} {3}\", PropertyOne, PropertyTwo, PropertyThree, PropertyFour);         }          }          public class ContractImplementation2 : IContract     {         public ContractImplementation1 Contract { get { return null; } }         public bool IsCollection { get { return true; } }         public bool Touched { get; set; }              public List<ContractImplementation1> Contracts = new List<ContractImplementation1>();     }      I can't get my head around the super-type having a property that is a sub-type of itself.   Following Cosmin's answer: I can't get my head around why you'd have the sub- type as a property given that the property returns itself on the implementation (rather than a 'parent' of the same type i.e. a different instantiation of the super-type)."}
{"_id": "111301", "title": "Challenges to the Agile approach on government projects", "text": "A previous Agile discussion here had good answers specifying what is **critical** to the success of implementing Agile methodology in software development. Most of the points were the typical organizational and management challenges, but one point worries me and it is that the client must be involved throughout the process. The client is the one thing that you cannot control realistically, perhaps your business model gears you to government contracted work for instance where an intensely strict contract obligates the company to:   * Provide X features exactly as requested   * Feature requests will be thrown over a wall, don't bother us we don't want to hear it.   * There is no concept of feature priority in the customer's mind, _they are all important or we wouldn't have asked for them._   * The project will cost no more and no less than Y regardless of overruns or deadlines.   * Absolute, strict, final and non-negotiable deadline for complete delivery of all work. We have never worked with such a client before but the money on the project is just too good to pass up. We need this work. I came here and worked **HARD** to change processes within to move towards Agile development and here I don't know how to reconcile where this project fits into our new process. I have never before had the luxury of open-minded hands-off management that trusted me to lead the development team and processes down this path and now that we are here I can't honestly tell myself that this project will truly be done in an Agile way. I feel like management trusted me to lead this path and that I let them down because this situation we are in now so clearly calls for Waterfall. I am afraid that I might lose their trust if I backtrack now. Other answers like the one here say Agile is impossible with this kind of client, do you agree? Have any of you been in a similar situation and made it work? What strategies did you implement to make Agile happen successfully?"}
{"_id": "143222", "title": "Is it more advantageous to write a program to test your code (ie a client) or just use the main portion of your program?", "text": "For instance if I had a program with a bunch of methods.                       public class Dog{                           public boolean ishappy{..}                      public int weight{...}                       public static void main{             Dog Max = new Dog             Max.ishappy}}      Is it best to use the main portion of the code to test, or write a completely separate program, which would be a client of the dog class, to test my code?"}
{"_id": "143226", "title": "How are you using CFThread in ColdFusion Applications?", "text": "I'm presenting on Concurrency in ColdFusion at CFObjective this year, and I'd like to hear how you're using CFThread in your ColdFusion applications. In addition, what problems have you had while using it, and how (if at all) have you solved them? What do you dislike about CFThread? Have you run into significant weaknesses with CFThread or other problems where it simply could not do what you wanted to do? Finally, if there's anything you'd like to add related to concurrency in CF, not specifically related to CFThread, please do tell."}
{"_id": "131055", "title": "Is it a good idea to use an unit test framework for another purpose than test code?", "text": "I'm about to write a simple script to test a dataset for certain conditions. I was designing it as a set of functions each one describing the condition to be tested and pass them to the test engine:               # The tester engine:     all(f(dataset) for f in conditions)      I realized that my approach was similar to unit testing. So, to avoid repeating myself, I am thinking of using my favorite unit testing framework instead.   1. What do you think about that idea?   2. Have any of you used an unit test framework for any other purpose than test code?"}
{"_id": "189747", "title": "Ruby manager for Windows: Is Ruby's PIK alive or dying?", "text": "At first, please forgive probably offtopic and/or notconstructive question, but I truly have no idea where to ask it. At first I targetted StackOverflow there's at least some PIK-related traffic visible, but Programmers seem more relevant (although there seems to be not a three words here about PIK..). Some time ago I was looking for a quick way to predictably and repeatibly setup Ruby environments and I've found PIK to be relatively easy and usable. Note that I'm not a full time Ruby developer, I use it more as a \"quick hacking console\" and \"lightweight Bash replacement\" on Windows. For the last one or maybe even three years I was happily using PIK for isolating Ruby's ENVS from the normal windows shell environment. I've also came up with some extensions, both to windows's shell and PIK itself, and from time to time I feel the urge to publish them. They include simple things from running a script by doubleclick alike to .vbs or .bat, to more interesting ones like drag&dropping files onto a .rb script, to some fairly esotheric like emulated support for shebangs like `#!/bin/ruby-187` `#!/bin/ruby-193` so you can easily switch Ruby runtimes in the scripts lying on your desktop. Some background covered, let me then ask the awful question: ~~is it worth publishing?~~. No, obviously almost everything usable is worth that. My point is more about the feeling that I maybe I could spent that time better, there's no point in polishing dead tools, and as I search the web, I see **very** little movement in the subject :)   * Are such extensions actually needed, or maybe they do exist and I simply reinvented a wheel? Do you, Ruby users, feel \"lack\" of them in your \"everyday use\" of Windows?   * Is the PIK alive, getting popular or dying? is it known/used throughout the windows/ruby community, or should I adapt my addons to other managers?"}
{"_id": "189741", "title": "Which design pattern is illustrated by inheriting IStructuralComparable interface?", "text": "We know that some design patterns are found so useful that they become features of the language itself. For instance, the interface `IEnumerator` which is implemented by `Array` object. This helps in separating the iterator from the collection object. The internal representation of the object is encapsulated. The pattern: Iterator Pattern I have just come across another interface `IStructuralComparable`(msdn). This is used to compare the structure of two collection types using `StructuralComparisons`(msdn) class. The intent of this interface seems to be thus: > My understanding is that it's used for collection like types, and > encapsulates the structural part of the comparison, but leaves the > comparison of the elements to a comparer passed in by the user. (link) (Got > from the comments section of the question) **Is this an implementation of any familiar design pattern? If yes, which pattern is it?**"}
{"_id": "34791", "title": "Are there any good editors for asp.net on smartphones?", "text": "I came across coderun the other day does anyone know any better editors/ide's espeially that can be used relatively easily on some of todays smartphones for asp.net ?"}
{"_id": "209630", "title": "Self reference using a new table vs concatenated list of ids", "text": "At my current workplace there is a common pattern in database design: they don't use foreign keys but they list all corresponding ids in a column like this:               some_table     id  name image_ids     1   a    1,2,3     2   b    4,6,7          images     id url     1  ...     2  ...     ...      They store self references in a same manner:               some_table     id  name  some_table_id     1   a     2,3     2   b     1,3     ...      They encourage me to use this pattern but it does not feel right for me. I would never design a database like that. I have some counter arguments against it:   * What if some day I would add some arbitrary data to a self reference? Using this model I would not be able to.   * It does not ensure referential integrity. I can easily add non-existent ids which will lead to problems   * Searching through strings is not fast either I need to justify my complaints so my question is: What persuasive counter- arguments can you come up with against this hacky design approach?"}
{"_id": "209632", "title": "Why should IQueryProvider implementations throw NotSupportedExceptions?", "text": "Searching the web, we can find plentiful examples of various ORMs (nHibernate, EF, LinqToSql, etc.) that implement but don't actually support the full `IQueryable<T>` interface, throwing `NotSupportedExceptions` when they encounter something they don't like, such as LinqToSql and `SkipWhile`. My question is this: why do ORM providers opt to throw a `NotSupportedException` instead of letting certain query operators (that do not translate well or at all to the target data source) trip a query execution and then let Linq to objects handle the rest? I understand that some heavy physical resource usage could occur as a result, but if `IQueryable<T>` instances were _truly_ swappable, would we not be better off?"}
{"_id": "107258", "title": "Standard practices for an architect", "text": "I am the architect for my group. Unfortunately I was given this position organically and there are no standards in place for how I should do my job. At different companies, how does the architect role work? I am very interested, for example, in what type of diagrams and documents an architect might provide so that they can assist a developer in doing their job."}
{"_id": "209638", "title": "What's the best approach to building a db schema for profile, but to track changes?", "text": "I'm working on a site where companies can create a profile then add locations for each profile. Those first two tables are simple enough. But any changes to their profiles or locations have to go through an approval process. This is where I'm torn. The end result would be an employee going through a worklist and seeing the requested changes and clicking \"approve\" or \"deny\". Approve applying the new data to the existing record, deny setting a flag on the request record(s) and sending a response. What I'm wondering is the best way to go about the change requests. I would definitely like to keep the change requests in a separate table than the profile or location table. I can't decide if it's best to just create duplicates with a few extra columns of the profile and the location tables and use those for change tracking. Or if I should just create a simple table with just the columns to capture the change target id, field, and value, plus a few extras like changeset, datetime, flag, etc. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "209639", "title": "Multi-Thread Return Single SQL Result", "text": "I am having some difficulty with MySQL and returning a unique row to a thread. I want it so the thread will search for a row from the table where the bit (see below) is false and only one row is returned. But I don't want the other threads to return the same result should there might be some race condition where the same result is returned to the thread; because the thread will then do lots of processing off the back of this result and I don't want duplication. Background: I have a MySQL database that contains 3 columns (id, text, bit). The id is auto-incremented. I have a multi-threaded Ruby application that reads, updates and inserts rows into the table. Pseudo code for the thread is as follows:               select a row from the table where the bit is false     do some processing with the text returned from that row     insert more rows with bit set to false      I have tried a simple test with a multi-threaded script that uses the following:               SELECT id, text FROM table WHERE bit =FALSE LIMIT 1 FOR UPDATE      But each thread returns the same row. I have disabled autocommit as per the recommendation. Since I am omitting any commit I would expect the other threads to have a different result since the row is locked. Am I missing something or should I be looking at using another method?"}
{"_id": "77373", "title": "Is Scala ready for prime time?", "text": "Now that I've done a few trivial things with Scala (which I love for \"hello world\" and contrived applications!) I am left wondering.. part about maturity of the tools to support development, and part about general applicability. Are the toolsets ready? Is Scala appropriate for use on enterprise / business applications? Would \"you\" use it on a non-trivial project? Some of my (possibly unfounded) concerns would be:   * are the IDE and toolsets as rich as what we have to develop .net and java applications (eclipse for Scala seems limited compared to eclipse for java)?   * are the build / CI / testing toolsets able to effectively deal with Scala?   * how maintainable is the concise code that _can_ be (encouraged?) written in the language?   * is it possible to find developers with Scala experience?   * is there enough critical mass to get help through on-line reference and books that are more than \"intro\" to the language? So bottom line - is the ecosystem mature enough to use now, or better off waiting to see how it evolves? EDIT: let's say \"non-trivial\" is a multi-year, multi-release, 10-20 developers project."}
{"_id": "151414", "title": "Is there a language where collections can be used as objects without altering the behavior?", "text": "Is there a language where **collections** can be used as **objects** without altering the behavior? As an example, first, imagine those functions work:               function capitalize(str)          //suppose this *modifies* a string object capitalizing it     function greet(person):         print(\"Hello, \" + person)          capitalize(\"pedro\")     >> \"Pedro\"          greet(\"Pedro\")     >> \"Hello, Pedro\"      Now, suppose we define a standard collection with some strings:               people = [\"ed\",\"steve\",\"john\"]      Then, this will call toUpper() on each object on that list               people.toUpper()      >> [\"Ed\",\"Steve\",\"John\"]      And this will call greet once for EACH people on the list, instead of sending the list as argument               greet(people)     >> \"Hello, Ed\"     >> \"Hello, Steve\"     >> \"Hello, John\""}
{"_id": "151415", "title": "What are best practices to read high level undocumented and uncommented code?", "text": "There are some opensource projects, that have classes and classes without any significant explanation about what the class does and or why is that class needed. For example, classes in the CppEditor plugin for QtCreator. What are the best practices to read undocumented code? Don't read it, is not an option :)"}
{"_id": "24412", "title": "Do you have your own 'misc utils' library? What part are you most proud of?", "text": "I know that many of us maintain our own little personal library with tools and utilities that we use often. I've had mine since I was 16 years old so it has grown to quite a considerable size. Some of the stuff I've written has since been added to the framework. I wrote my own little implementation of expression trees for use with genetic algorithms long before LINQ, which I quite like and was proud of at the time - of course its pretty useless now. But recently I have been going through it and upgrading to .NET 4.0 and re-kindled an interest. So I'm curious as to what you use your library for. Maybe we could get some cool ideas going for useful little snippets and share them amongst ourselves. So my questions are:   * Do you have a miscellaneous utility library?   * Which part are you most proud of and why? Give an example of code if you like `:-)`"}
{"_id": "151417", "title": "Class design, One class in two sources", "text": "Is it possible define methods from **the same class** in different \"CPP\" files? * * * I have header file \"myClass.h\" with:               class myClass     {     public:         // methods for counting         ...         // methods for other         ...     };      I would like to define \"methods for counting\" in one CPP and \"methods for other\" in other CPP. For clarity. Both groups of methods sometime use the same attributes. Is it possible? Thanks :)."}
{"_id": "24414", "title": "Thoughts of Cloud Development/Google App Engine", "text": "I use mainly PHP for web development, but recently, I started thinking about using Google App Engine. It doesn't use PHP which I am already familiar with, so there will be a steeper learning curve. Probably using Python/Django. But I think it maybe worthwhile. Some advantages I see:   * Focus on App/Development. No need to setup/maintain server ... no more server configs   * Scales automatically   * Pay for what you use. Free for low usage   * Reliable, it's Google after all Some concerns though:   * Does database with no joins pose a problem for those who used App Engine before?   * Do I have to upload to Google just to test? Will it be slow compared to testing locally? What are your thoughts and opinions? Why would you use or not use App Engine?"}
{"_id": "199834", "title": "How do web apps create subdomains?", "text": "I want to understand the architecture of web apps that use subdomains. I don't think that I'm phrasing this well, so let me explain. Many web apps, like tumblr or shopify create a user's site on a subdomain. Say for example my tumblr account was `johndoe` then you could find my tumblr blog at `johndoe.tumblr.com`. Can someone explain how this is implemented?"}
{"_id": "180194", "title": "How do you migrate from one language to another?", "text": "I know that language is just a tool and it's all about creating product. But if you are all about enterprise and than you change to mobile development - how do you manage it?   If I am used to PHP and it's framework and switch to Ruby - how do I deal with it? With learning and getting experience with Rails, with Ruby language and so on.   What if I was C++ programmer working on standalone programs? And than I switch to Python/Django for web? In general, here are my questions for all the examples above:   1. Is it possible to switch your specialisation as software developer? From web-development to enteprise, from standalone to mobile, etc. If yes, how? Or should I stick with one path to become expert in it?    2. How do you learn new languages? I mean, there are new frameworks you need to learn, and if it's different development sphere - say, mobile after web-development - you need to learn basic stuff for this sphere, right? How do you handle it?    3. Is switching language/career path hard in terms of getting new job since you dont have any experience in this language? Do you downgrade in salarys?  _**Please explain it all to me! How do people handle it? I am 100% sure I love development, atm I love PHP/RoR and web-development, so I use PHP as my main language at fulltime job, but I don't want to stick with it forever and I want to be able to change languages or/and maybe development direction (mobile, standalone, enterprise). How do you do it without hurting your career, or is it impossible?_**"}
{"_id": "404", "title": "Is there any hard data to back up \"Human task switches considered harmful\"?", "text": "Joel Spolsky wrote a famous blog post \"Human Task Switches considered harmful\". While I agree with the premise and it seems like common sense, I'm wondering if there are any studies or white papers on this to calculate the overhead on task switches, or is the evidence merely anecdotal?"}
{"_id": "23295", "title": "Moving Old Projects To Newer IDE's and Libraries", "text": "At work we have a few older projects that are stuck on .NET 1.1 and VS 2003. While these are probably to much work now to move forward I'm wondering if the effort to keep our newer projects up to date will be worth it. Specifically we would be looking at moving about 30 projects from .NET 3.5 to .NET 4.0 and VS2008 to VS2010. My Questions for the community are: **Do you move your projects along as new tools and libraries become available or just start the newest stuff in the newest versions? If you do move forward have you found the benefits out weigh the cost of the upgrade?**"}
{"_id": "408", "title": "What techniques are used in solving code golf problems?", "text": "### \"Regular\" golf vs. code golf: Both are competitions. Both have a well-defined set of rules, which I'll leave out for simplicity. Both have well-defined goals; in short, \"use fewer hits/characters than your competitors.\" To win matches, athletic golfers rely on   * equipment      * Some situations call for a sand wedge; others, a 9-iron.   * techniques      * The drive works better when your feet are about shoulder width apart and your arms are relaxed.   * and strategies      * Sure, you could take that direct shortcut to the hole... but do you really want to risk the water hazard or sand bunker when those trees are in the way and the wind is so strong? It might be better to go around the long way. **What do code golfers have that's analagous to athletic golfers' equipment, techniques and strategies?** Sample answer to get this started: use the right club! Choose GolfScript instead of C#."}
{"_id": "128706", "title": "Most frequently used design patterns in refactoring (my example)", "text": "I've been doing quite a lot of refactoring of C++ and C# code recently, and found that 90% of the patterns I use are:   * Template method   * Factory   * Singleton Are these generally the most commonly used patterns in refactoring or is it just me? Can you share your refactoring experiences?"}
{"_id": "74799", "title": "Why is MVC more popular than PAC?", "text": "I just stumbled upon a question at SO about PAC and got interested in the pattern. I'm wondering why it's not as widely used as MVC? What is the MVC benefits compared to PAC?"}
{"_id": "151055", "title": "What happens if we serialize and deserialize two objects which references to each other?", "text": "To make it more clear, this is a quick example:               class A implements Serializable { public B b; }     class B implements Serializable { public A a; }     A a = new A();     B b = new B();     a.b = b;     b.a = a;      So what happens if we serialize a and b objects into a file and deserialize from that file? I thought we get 4 objects, 2 of each. Identical objects but different instances. But I'm not sure if there's anything else or is it right or wrong. If any technology needed to answer, please think based on Java. Thank you."}
{"_id": "188294", "title": "Encountering the same issue in an application", "text": "I've often come across the situation when the same mistake is made in many places in an application. For example, in a web application when the user creates an item and clicks the `Add` button to save it. If they click the button several times, multiple items are added instead of one because UI wasn't blocked and backend check wasn't performed properly. How to create bug tickets in such cases? Here are the solutions I could think of:   * create one single bug ticket and list where the situation occurs   * for every case found create a separate ticket   * when finding the bug tell the development to pay attention, wait till they are finished and test again"}
{"_id": "188299", "title": "Is this an appropriate use of Mockito's reset method?", "text": "I have a private method in my test class that constructs a commonly used `Bar` object. The `Bar` constructor calls `someMethod()` method in my mocked object:               private @Mock Foo mockedObject; // My mocked object     ...          private Bar getBar() {       Bar result = new Bar(mockedObject); // this calls mockedObject.someMethod()     }      In some of my test methods I want to check `someMethod` was also invoked by that particular test. Something like the following:               @Test     public void someTest() {       Bar bar = getBar();            // do some things            verify(mockedObject).someMethod(); // <--- will fail     }      This fails, because the mocked object had `someMethod` invoked twice. I don't want my test methods to care about the side effects of my `getBar()` method, so would it be reasonable to reset my mock object at the end of `getBar()`?               private Bar getBar() {       Bar result = new Bar(mockedObject); // this calls mockedObject.someMethod()       reset(mockedObject); // <-- is this OK?     }      I ask, because the documentation suggests resetting mock objects is generally indicative of bad tests. However, this feels OK to me. **Alternative** The alternative choice seems to be calling:               verify(mockedObject, times(2)).someMethod();      which in my opinion forces each test to know about the expectations of `getBar()`, for no gain."}
{"_id": "55029", "title": "Other than for legacy software, are there reasons for using COBOL?", "text": "COBOL is still (heavily?) used for financial computing. It is an old language, and AFAIK most programmers hate, or at least dislike, COBOL. This brings a question: is the only reason COBOL is still used that legacy software uses it, or does it have any real advantages over other programming languages? Just curious."}
{"_id": "91841", "title": "Python template engines: What are the real benifits and drawbacks to XML vs custom syntax", "text": "I'm interested in knowing what are the real difference (benefits and drawbacks) between the two types of python templating engines; XML (like Genshi or Kid) and a custom syntax (like Cheetah or Jinja2). I'm not looking for which is better, or a recommendation. I understand that no one solution will be perfect, and that the best solution will depend on the problem. I do want to better understand the differences between the two types before I choose one for my problem. This list may not apply to all templating solutions. XML Benefits:   * Uses XML, it's mostly familial to developers. There are a few new (ifelse, flow logic) items to learn.   * It works with existing XML toolchains.   * It's more powerful as it is knowledgeable about the data being worked on. (Genshi is context aware) XML Drawbacks:   * The XML based engines tend to be slower than the custom syntax engines.   * Some will argue that XML is more difficult to learn than custom syntax. Custom Syntax Benefits:   * It's fast than XML based engines. (see earlier link)   * It's a simple powerful syntax that should be easier to learn. Custom Syntax Drawbacks:   * It's another syntax to learn.   * It might not work smoothly with existing XML toolchains."}
{"_id": "181577", "title": "Is it possible to read memory from another program by allocating all the empty space on a system?", "text": "Theoretically, if I were to build a program that allocated all the unused memory on a system, and continued to request more and more memory as other applications released memory that they no longer need, would it be possible to read recently released memory from another applications? Or is this somehow protected by modern operating system? I have no practical application for this, I'm just curious. I realize there are some issues with allocating \"all available memory\" in real-life. Edit: To clarify, I'm asking specifically about \"Released\" memory, not accessing memory that is currently allocated by another application."}
{"_id": "55020", "title": "How do I pick which agency to go through?", "text": "I work in a town where the majority of work comes from the government. As a contractor, I generally have to apply for work through agencies which are on the government's preferred vendor's list. Most jobs are publicly listed and to apply for them, you generally need an agency to represent you by submitting your application with a rate which is usually your rate plus their commission. I've been trying to figure out what the agencies do, and it seems a large part of what they do is 1) get on that preferred vendor's list and 2) forward resumes. So right now, my policy is that since their commission affects how expensive I am, one - I don't work with companies that do not disclose their margin. And two, I go for the agency that takes the least amount of commission for the job I want to apply for. IS that the best approach? I would think applying for a job with the most competitive rate is the best approach but I also wonder whether which agency you're applying through actually matter? I know some agencies actually build personal relationships with senior managers but how do I know which one? How do I know that actually affect my job prospects? What criteria should I use to decide which agent I go through for the job?"}
{"_id": "107874", "title": "question, the best data structure and algorithm", "text": "I have a question about implementing a data structure (with algorithm) that has these features:   1. There are too many places (like stores), and each place can store too many items, I want to store items in the places. The point is we need to have optimized insertion (or deletion) and optimized search feature.   2. Search can be done based on places (return items in the place) or base on items (return places that have the item) I thought to use a hashmap for this, and use places ID as the key and store items as a collection (again a hashmap with item id for both key and value). So based on this, the insertion of each item or place would be O(1) but get or remove of place will be O(n) and for item it will be O(n*k)! (assume we have \"n\" places and \"k\" items - I hope this is the correct calculation). Is there any better data structure or algorithm for this problem?"}
{"_id": "35448", "title": "Always keep files updated in Eclipse", "text": "I keep lots of files/editors open in Eclipse. I also love using `git stash` and other git commands that essentially change the contents of my open files. Is there an Eclipse feature or plugin that will always keep the contents of my open files up to date and live? Currently if I put focus in an out of sync editor, I get an awkwardly worded dialog that I have to parse carefully every time. I wish it would just keep me synced like Textmate does."}
{"_id": "35443", "title": "Do you prefer building your interfaces in IB or programmatically? and why?", "text": "I've been using Xcode and building iPhone apps for two months, but I'm finding it really hard to grasp good application design. I always face problems\u2014like you can't put your tabbarcontroller in another custom viewcontroller, for example\u2014that 'sometimes', of course, would work if you did the creation of the views/viewcontrollers programmatically. So I don't know if I should start writing the creation of my objects or use Interface Builder. What are your experiences?"}
{"_id": "140555", "title": "How do you track existing requirements over time?", "text": "I'm a software engineer working on a complex, ongoing website. It has a lot of moving parts and a small team of UI designers and business folks adding new features and tweaking old ones. Over the last year or so, we've added hundreds of interesting little edge cases. Planning, implementing, and testing them is not a problem. The problem comes later, when we want to refactor or add another new feature. Nobody remembers half of the old features and edge cases from a year ago. When we want to add a new change, we notice that code does all sorts of things in there, and we're not entirely sure which things are intentional requirements and which are meaningless side effects. Did someone last year request that the login token was supposed to only be valid for 30 minutes, or did some programmers just pick a sensible default? Can we change it? Back when the product was first envisioned, we created some documentation describing how the site worked. Since then we created a few additional documents describing new features, but nobody ever goes back and updates those documents when new features are requested, so the only authoritative documentation is the code itself. But the code provides no justification, no reason for its actions: only the how, never the why. What do other long-running teams do to keep track of what the requirements were and why?"}
{"_id": "165589", "title": "Avoiding \"double\" subscriptions", "text": "I am working on a website that requires a bit of marketing; let me explain. This website is offering a _single_ , say, iTunes 50$ voucher to a lucky winner. To be entered in the draw, you need to invite (and has to join) at least one friend to the website. Pretty straightforward. Now, of course it would be easy for anyone to just create a fake account and invite that account so, I was thinking of some other way to somehow find out of possible cheating. I was thinking of an IP check on the newly subscribed (invited) user, and if there is the same IP logged in the last 24 hours, and if that's the case, investigate more about it. But I was thinking that maybe there is a more clever way around this issue. Has anyone ever though about this? What other solutions did you try? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "140550", "title": "Storing images in file system and returning URLs  or virtually resizing and returning byte arrays?", "text": "I need to create a REST web service to manage user submitted images and displaying them all in a website. There are multiple websites that are going to use this service to manage and display images. The requirements are to have 5 pre-defined image sizes available. The 2 options I see are the following:   1. The web service will create the 5 images, store them in the file system and and store the URL's in the database when the user submits the image. When the image is requested, the web service will return an array of URLs.  I see this option to be a little hard on the hard drive. The estimates are 10,000 users per site, and lets say, 100 sites. The heavy processing will be done when the user submits the image and each image is going to be pulled from the File System.   2. The web service will store just the image that the user submits in the file system and it's URL in the database. When the user request images, the web service will get the info from the DB, load the image on memory, create its 5 instances and return an object with 5 image arrays (I will probably cache the arrays).  This option is harder on the processor and memory. The heavy processing will be done when the images get requested. A plus I see for option 2 is that it will give me the option to rewrite the URL of the image and make them site dependent (prettier) than having a image repository for all websites. But this is not a big deal. What do you think of these options? Do you have any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "101156", "title": "Tips for achieving \"continual\" delivery", "text": "A team is experiencing difficulty releasing software on a frequent basis (once every week). What follows is a typical release timeline: During the iteration:   * Developers work on stories on the backlog on short-lived (this is enthusiastically enforced) feature branches based on the master branch.   * Developers frequently pull their feature branches into the integration branch, which is continually built and tested (as far as the test coverage goes) automatically.   * The testers have the ability to auto-deploy integration to a staging environment and this occurs multiple times per week, enabling continual running of their test suites. Every Monday:   * there is a release planning meeting to determine which stories are \"known good\" (based on the testers' work), and hence will be in the release. If there is a known issue with a story, the source branch is pulled out of integration.   * no new code (only bug fixes requested by the testers) may be pulled into integration on this Monday to ensure the testers have a stable codebase to cut a release from. Every Tuesday:   * The testers have tested the integration branch as much as they possibly can have given the time available and there are no known bugs so a release is cut and pushed out to the production nodes slowly. This sounds OK in practise, but we have found that it is incredibly difficult to achieve. The team sees the following symptoms   * \"subtle\" bugs are found on production that were not identified on the staging environment.   * last minute hot-fixes continue into the Tuesday.   * problems on the production environment require roll-backs which blocks continued development until a successful live deployment is achieved and the master branch can be updated (and hence branched from). I think test coverage, code quality, ability to regression test quickly, last minute changes and environmental differences are at play here. Can anyone offer any advice regarding how best to achieve \"continual\" delivery?"}
{"_id": "220338", "title": "API for expanation of complicated calculation or business rules?", "text": "In online shops there are areas with complicated rules. For example   * is a product visible in the product catalog   * is a product sold out   * what is the price for the product (Discounts, Promotions, ...) Is it a good idea to have an additional explanation API for each complicated rule? Example: `boolean isProductVisible()` has an additional `String explainIsProductVisible()`? How to make understanding these rules easier? Background: Yesterday I as a software developer had the problem that my standard- testproduct on my local test system was \"sold out\" and I needed this product to test the order-confirmation page. So I had to debug the `IsProductAvailable` routine to correct the test data before I was able to do the original task \"test the order-confirmation page\". In order to find out, why my test product was sold out an explanation message would have been helpful. In a similar situation in the price calculation engine I already added log messages like this               double calculateItemPriceForProduct(Product product, int quantity, Cart cart, ...)     {         double cumulatedPrice = 0;         ...         if (quantity > 1) {             Price price = getScalePrice(product, quantity);             if (price != null) {                 cumulatedPrice = price.getValue();                 if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {                     log.debug(\"calculateItemPriceForProduct(\"+                         product.getCode()+                         \") using scalePrice \" +                          price.getCode() + \" for quantity \" +                          quantity + \":\" + price.getValue());                 }             }         }         ...     }      As a developer I can look into the server log and hopefully find out what happened. If I were a product manager it would be more comfortable to have role-specific tooltips on the webpage that shows the explanation part. Of course these tooltips would not be available for ordinary customers, just for developers and product managers. My questions:   * Are there other ways to make understanding complicated rules easier?   * Is it a good idea to have an additional explanation API for each complicated rule?   * Does such a feature pay off the cost of developing this feature?"}
{"_id": "65863", "title": "How can I find out what a job title means at a company?", "text": "I am in a dilemma about a job offer from a top 10 semiconductor companies in SF bay area. I have about 10 years of experience at various small to large (> $1 billion) companies in bay area. After my Graduate degree about 10 years ago I started at a big company in Bay area as as Sr Engineer. However, due to job change after a 5 years from that position, more job changes afterward, and not caring too much about titles, I am currently (still) a Sr Engineer at another company. Having had so many years of experience in Hi-tech I now realize that titles are important too. The dilemma is that this offer from another company also is for a Senior Software Engineer, and not a Staff or MTS title, which I after some investigation realize to be higher titles than just Sr engineer. Should I be asking the company (and its recruiter) to give me a higher title than a Sr Sw Engineer; is that expectation reasonable? I had the same Sr Engineer title 7 years ago and after many job experiences and a graduate degree I think I should be acknowledged by the new company making the job offer as a higher staff engineer. **Is there any way to find information about the company hierarchy as I can not trust the information company's recruiter is giving me due to his vested interest?** There are reviews about the company on sites like glassdoor but they do not provide a chance to put questions to employees. Are there any interactive websites/forums for Hi-tech employees (hardware design as well as software) where one could ask such question and hopefully get an answer from someone working at the company? PS: If needed, the company regularly appears in googled list of top 20 semiconductor corporation by sale for every year."}
{"_id": "61521", "title": "Any hard evidence on how much smart phone app developers have actually earned?", "text": "I am considering making a smart phone app. Before I start, I want to see whether it is worthwhile at all. Unfortunatelly, I find it very hard to find any hard evidence on how much the developers of such apps actually earn either via application purchases, or in-app advertisement. The best research I have found so far states that the average IPhone app earns 682$ per year. Then again, there are loads of apps some of which might not even work and their earnings also count towards this statistic. Therefore, I am after some specific examples of an app and its earnings."}
{"_id": "253097", "title": "What is the point of writing WCF Interceptors, compared to using a helper method?", "text": "For those of you who don't know, WCF allows you to attach interceptors to methods in the service contract. The interceptor is capable of performing custom logic before and after a method call, and is (as far as I know) used mainly for validating parameters and doing custom authorization schemes. But what's the point of using them if you can just write a helper method to do the same thing?"}
{"_id": "51610", "title": "How can I implement an escrow payment system in my website?", "text": "I'd like to build a web service similar to kickstarter that allows users to pledge money to an idea, tho I'm unsure how I can implement this kind of payment system. If the the idea receives a specified amount of money, then the donors are charged. If it doesn't, the donors are not charged. I've done some preliminary research and have found Amazon Payments to be a possible solution provider for this, but I'm still unsure where to start with this and was hoping someone could point me in some right directions for how I can go about implementing this kind of payment structure in my web site. I should also note that this is primarily a prototype I'm building, so it's ok if the solution is limited to U.S. customers only. Also, I plan to build the site using Ruby on Rails. Thanks so much for your wisdom!"}
{"_id": "117886", "title": "How to design a database wherein multiple tags(string) are to be associated with an id?", "text": "I have to design a database wherein I have to associate an audio_id with multiple tags(words). I am considering following approaches to select one from these: 1) To have multiple fields for multiple tags (columns: tag1, tag2, tag3.... tag10) corresponding to a single audio_id. The number of tags in my application will not be more than 10-15. 2) To save the tags(words) as comma separated single string corresponding to a single audio_id. 3) To save the associations (tag:audio_id) in a separate table. But the issue here is that the associations can be n to n. Multiple tags can be associated with an audio_id and same tag can be in multiple audio_id. Also please let me know if there can be any alternate design for this scenario or its better to consider any other type of database other than MySQL. Total number of tags will be around a million and audio_id are around a few thousands. I am concerned for the performance of the system."}
{"_id": "65868", "title": "\"Functional\" php indentation", "text": "I'm a big fan of 1tbs when it comes to c-like languages. Now that php got decent lambdas and closures, though, I'm not sure the style I'm using for them (fundamentally made up, has something to do with the jquery source code) is the most readable/standard option. What do you think? Somebody has some nice examples of 1tbs + lambdas and functions as parameters? Here's a sample of my code.               function bold_search_terms($needle, $haystack) {       return str_replace(          $occurrencies = array_filter (              explode(\" \",$haystack),              function ($var) use ($needle) {                 return(levenshtein($var, $needle) < 3);              }          ),          array_map(               function ($var) {                   return \"<strong>$var</strong>\";               },               $occurrencies          ),          $haystack       );     }"}
{"_id": "253090", "title": "Why are inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism not the pillars of OOP?", "text": "One day I went to a Stack Overflow chat and saw a phrase, that was stating that inheritance, incapsulation and polymorphism are the pillars of OOP (in the sense that they are fundamental, a construction sole). Also, there's a similar question, that I have been asked very often on college exams and job interviews, and the right answer always was the statement pronounced in the title of the question (\"Yes, inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism are the pillars of OOP). But in the Stack Overflow chat I was severely ridiculed, participants strongly disagreed with such a statement. So, what's wrong with this statement? Does programmers seem to be trained in different things in post-Soviet and United States colleges? Are inheritance, encapsulation and polymorphism not considered to be the pillars of OOP by US/UK programmers?"}
{"_id": "186926", "title": "How much times command executed? Looking for mistake", "text": "I have following piece of code:               int sum = 0;     for (int i = 1; i <= N; i++)         for (int j = 1; j <= N; j++)             for (int k = 1; k <= N; k = k*2)                 for (int h = 1; h <= k; h++)                     sum++;      So I'v calculated how much does each cycle executes and then whole script, and I think I might be wrong for the last one.               1. N     2. N     3.  1 + log2N( means log N to the base 2)     4. N      So the total execution amount of inner cycle would be N^3 * (1 + log2N). Am I right? How I can transform this statement? **UPDATE 1** I have another solution which seems monstrous:               1. N     2. N     3. LOG2(N) + 1     4. 2^(LOG2(2N)) - 1      So total cycles amount would be `n^2 * (LOG2(N) + 1) * 2^(LOG2(2N)) - 1`. Which transforms to n^2 order of growth. **UPDATE 2** I wrote simple test app to check my assumption. it seems that third cycle is already calculated for some reason is fourth one. At least this is the result of test app. I threw away `(LOG2(N) + 1)`. As the result of several transformations I have following equation for total amount of sum++ calls:               N*N*(2*N - 1) = 2 * N^3 - N^2 ~ N^3"}
{"_id": "186921", "title": "How to solve circular package dependencies", "text": "I am refactoring a large codebase where most of the classes are located in one package. For better modularity, I am creating subpackages for each functionality. I remember learning somewhere that a package dependency graph should not have loops, but I don't know how to solve the following problem: `Figure` is in package `figure`, `Layout` is in package `layout`, `Layout` requires the figure to perform layout, so package `layout` depends on package `figure`. But on the other hand, a `Figure` can contain other `Figure`s inside it, having its own `Layout`, which makes package `figure` dependent on package `layout`. I have though of some solutions, like creating a `Container`interface which `Figure` implements and putting it in the `Layout` package. Is this a good solution? Any other possibilities? Thanks"}
{"_id": "186922", "title": "Formatting Dynamic Web Pages", "text": "A page built so that is has server side scripts implemented on the page. Should indentation of the code be according to the server side logic (making it easier to read while coding) or according to the HTML/ASP.NET markup (making it easier to read while debugging etc.)?"}
{"_id": "186929", "title": "How to do unit tests on a method that takes the elapsed time into account?", "text": "I'm currently in the middle of refactoring an important method in a legacy- system. There were almost zero test until I've started working on it, and I've added quite a lot to ensure the correct work after my refactorings. Now I've came across the most crucial part: the algorithm that calculates an indicator. It's something like               indicator = (OneNumberFromA + AnotherNumberFromB) / elapsedTime;      How can I test the correct behavior for this Function with Unit tests? There are also some slightly different algorithms in the functions, that the program reaches in some cases - but in all of them, the `elapsedTime` is vital to the outcome."}
{"_id": "130095", "title": "Porting library, what to do with JavaDoc comments/credits", "text": "I ported a library to Java, but am wondering what to do with the JavaDoc comments. The original library used javadoc comments too, so do I leave the @author tags from the original code? And how do I give myself credit as the person who ported it over?"}
{"_id": "25432", "title": "How can a new programmer impress the software engineer (boss)?", "text": "I'm working at my first programming job. My boss is a very smart software engineer, and I feel like I have very little to offer compared to him. Problem is, he is always busy, and needs someone to help him out. I feel like I'm not good enough, but I still want to succeed. I want to be a great programmer. What can I do to impress him? Thank you."}
{"_id": "36230", "title": "What strategy to use when starting in a new project with no documentation?", "text": "**Which is the best why to go when there are no documentation?** For example how do you learn business rules? I have done the following steps:   1. Since we are using a ORM tool I have printed a copy of database schema where I can see relations between objects.   2. I have made a list of short names/table names that I will get explained. The project is client/server enterprise application using MVVM pattern."}
{"_id": "139123", "title": "How can I advocate a semi-strict release schedule in a risk-averse environment?", "text": "Recently I've been increasingly plagued by what I would have to describe as one of my most frustrating and morale-killing experiences in this profession: Having to _sit on a release_ that has been tested, re-tested, staged, and for all intents and purposes is _ready to ship/deploy_. As an all-around solutions guy and not just a hardcore coder, I do understand and have even advocated the need for proper change control. But lately, the tenuous balance between covering our bases and shipping on time has gone all lopsided, and I've had little to no success in restoring it to something sane. I'm looking for _compelling_ arguments to help convince risk-averse management that:   1. The dev team should (or must) be able to set its own release schedule - within reason of course (1-3 months should be conservative enough for all but the biggest Fortune 500 companies);   2. Software releases are important milestones and should not be treated cavalierly; in other words, _unnecessary_ delays/stoppages are highly disruptive and should be considered only as a last resort to some critical business issue; and   3. External (non-dev/non-IT) entities who want (or demand) to be involved as stakeholders have a responsibility to cooperate with the dev team in order to meet the release schedule, especially in the last week or so before the planned ship date (i.e. user testing/staging). The above are _assertions_ that ring true for me based on experience, but it looks like I'm now in the position of having to _prove_ it - so I'm asking for something a little meatier here, if such a thing exists. Can anyone who has had to \"sell\" the idea of a fixed (or maybe semi-flexible) release cycle to management give some pointers on what arguments/strategies are effective or persuasive and what is not? Aside from the obvious schedule contention and sunk costs, is there any hard data/evidence that would be useful in making the case that shipping is actually important, even in a \"corporate\" setting? Alternatively, I'm open to hearing constructive arguments about why schedule flexibility (even over a period of weeks/months) is more important than shipping on schedule; it's hard for me to believe right now but maybe they know something I don't. Note we have staged releases, and this went through every stage except production. Issues are tracked using a commercial bug tracker and every issue - 100% of them - that was assigned to this release was closed out. I realize it's difficult to believe and that's really precisely the point - it makes no sense that a 100%, feature-complete, fully-tested, approved-by-stakeholders release would be delayed by management for unexplained reasons, but that's what happened, that's what's been happening, that's the problem to be solved."}
{"_id": "139125", "title": "Extracting text from various file formats", "text": "I want to extract text from various files. I used Apache POI for parsing Microsoft documents. It's working and now I want to parse PDFs and extract text from them. Is there a Java API that I could use? I used Apache Tika but it does not provide an API."}
{"_id": "128263", "title": "Years experience over unfinished degree?", "text": "I'm currently in my placement year and working for a great software development company. It was always my intention of getting to this stage through university, getting enough academic experience as well as the year\u2019s placement and then try to get a full time programming job without the need to finish my degree. I decided this from an early stage as I have never really liked the whole university environment. I was so unhappy at university and I\u2019m so happy now I\u2019m on my placement year, I really don\u2019t know if I can go back. My question is, do you think companies will take me on if I apply for other jobs after my placement year and not penalize me for not finishing my degree? I guess at the end of the day I don't want to look back on my life and think \"god, why didn't I just spend one more year being unhappy to have a job I love\" but I know that even if I get a degree I could still end up without a programming job and this worries me more than anything."}
{"_id": "253325", "title": "Dealing with data, when your database is under version control", "text": "Currently my database is not under some kind of vcs, we can get deltas but that's about it. I would like to try and make product deployments more automated, and less time consuming. I understand that placing a db's schema files under source control allow you to manage versions, and that these files are basically for dropping the old tables/indexes/etc and then adding the new versions. My question is, what about the data that's already there? By dropping everything we'd lose all of the data. So, we would have to do a data dump before updating the database, and then re-load the data back after the update has been done. Problem is, some of our largest databases have 80+ GB of data, and we probably have a total of 20 sets of databases (6 DBs per set). I'm sure that this would work, but given the size of everything, is there a simpler solution that would cut out the need to dump and reload everything each time a schema update took place? And, if not, wouldn't we have to dump the data such that reloading it took in to account the new schema?"}
{"_id": "128267", "title": "What are the advantages/disadvantages of using record and playback for regression testing?", "text": "We have a web application that we want to start running regression tests on, and one of the things I'm supposed to look for when choosing an alternative is a tool that has a recorder. However, I get the general feeling that it is frowned upon, and that writing tests in code is preferred. What are the eventual disadvantages or advantages of using a record and playback tool for regression testing?"}
{"_id": "128264", "title": "Which recorder do I use for Selenium 2", "text": "We have a web application that we want to start running regression tests on, and have pretty much decided that we will be using Selenium 2. Not all of the testers are programmer savvy. Is Selenium IDE usable for this? Which other recorder alternatives are best for Selenium 2?"}
{"_id": "16807", "title": "Is it ever ok to have an empty catch statement?", "text": "I thought about it and could not come up with an example. Why would somebody want to catch an exception and do nothing about it? Can you give an example? Maybe it is just something that should never be done."}
{"_id": "220365", "title": "I have a unexceptional exception. That is thrown by a API used in my project. Is it standard to log errors like these or handle them without logging", "text": "The API has a Throttle on the number of requests you can make. So we queue our requests in a local database and make as many requests as possible until the \"Throttle exception\" is thrown. Upon catching we exit the program and a scheduled task starts the process over again in 15 minutes. Is it standard to log this type of exception or just exit the program since this exception is expected"}
{"_id": "166581", "title": ".NET developer needs FoxPro advice", "text": "We have a prospect with FoxPro 2.6 (whatever it means) system. Our product integrates with other systems by the means of triggers (usually). We would place couple of triggers on X system and then just pull collected data for our use. This way there is no need to customize customers product and it works great(almost real time - we poll for changes every 30 seconds). Question:   1. Can I put triggers on FoxPro 2.6?   2. Can access FoxPro from .NET? Any catches/caveats?"}
{"_id": "253541", "title": "Where should the \"not empty field\" validation code be written on a 3-layer application?", "text": "When working with the 3-layer model, where should the validation code be placed? for: not empty fields, unchecked options, null values, wrong-written dates, etc. To keep total isolation between a form (UI layer) and the business rules, this validation should belong to BLL? It's the only work for the UI: grab user data input, without **any** care of verifying, and just send it to next layer.   For example, It's an empty username field, really breaking a business rule, or the BLL doesn't even need to care about getting empty values, sure, UI takes care. Could be this shallow validation, considered as an actual BL rule, or is enough handle it on UI layer?"}
{"_id": "205637", "title": "Form, Fit and Function changes in relation to software", "text": "I am looking at configuration management and the idea of form, fit and function change can determine whether a change is minor or major. I wondered how this definition could be applied when doing software development. Is there a good guideline on whether a change to software is classed as a major or a minor change?"}
{"_id": "141684", "title": "xmpp flow -server, client and library", "text": "My complete requirement is development of a chat engine - including server, clients etc. Currently I am working on things at my desktop only but once done, I have to host it; basically incorporate it with in a site for chatting purpose. So, now my problem is: I am not clear about how the actual data flow is? I have googled and read about xmpp (a book by Peter Andre) also but I am not clear about the flow and what are the actual requirements to do the above mentioned task. What I currently know is:   1. I need a server - so selected ejabberd    2. I need client - still not sure which one to use and one other doubt is how this client thing will work when deployed on some website for chatting purpose.    3. Some library - don't know which one and what is the purpose? Can anyone guide me?"}
{"_id": "166059", "title": "How to have a maintainable and manageable Javascript code base", "text": "I am starting a new job soon as a frontend developer. The App I would be working on is 100% Javascript on the client side. all the server returns is an index page that loads all the Javascript files needed by the app. Now here is the problem: The whole of the application is built around having functions wrapped to different namespaces. And from what I see, a simple function like rendering the HTML of a page can be accomplished by having a call to 2 or more functions across different namespace... My initial thought was \"this does not feel like the perfect solution\" and I can just envisage a lot of issues with maintaining the code and extending it down the line. Now I would soon start working on taking the project forward and would like to have suggestions on good case practices when it comes to writing and managing a relatively large amount of javascript code."}
{"_id": "227640", "title": "What algorithm pairs blocks so that the weighted average of the two blocks falls within an upper and lower bound?", "text": "What algorithm would pair parcels with a high proportion of property x to a parcel with a low proportion of property x so that the weighted average of the two parcels falls within an upper and lower bound? The algorithm needs to pair a set of parcels to maximise the quantity that fall into the given range. The parcels are of differing size. For example, suppose I have a table of data that has tonnes of each block and percentage iron in each block. I can process two blocks at the same time to create an average iron percentage. I want to change the sequence of each block to maximise the tonnes that fall inside a percentage iron range."}
{"_id": "141688", "title": "Single-developer GIT workflow (moving from straightforward FTP)", "text": "I'm trying to decide whether moving to VCS is sensible for me. I am a single web developer in a small organisation (5 people). I'm thinking of VCS (Git) for these reasons: version control, offsite backup, centralised code repository (can access from home). At the moment I work on a live server generally. I FTP in, make my edits and save them, then reupload and refresh. The edits are usually to theme/plugin files for CMSes (e.g. concrete5 or Wordpress). This works well but provides no backup and no version control. I'm wondering how best to integrate VCS into this procedure. I would envisage setting up a Git server on the company's web server, but I'm not clear how to push changes out to client accounts (usually VPSes on the same server) - at the moment I simply log into SFTP with their details and make the changes directly. I'm also not sure what would sensibly represent a repository - would each client's website get their own one? Any insights or experience would be really helpful. I don't think I need the full power of Git by any means, but basic version control and de facto cloud access would be really useful. **EDIT:** I've narrowed it down to the two options that seem most sensible. The first is based on ZweiBlumen's answer, whereby edits are made on the live server and committed from there to the (external) Git server. This has the advantage that my workflow won't change much (there's the extra step of making the commits, but otherwise it's identical). The second option is to work locally using XAMPP, then to commit changes from the local machine. Only when the site goes live do I upload the finished article to the web server from the local machine (immediately after the final commit to Git). This seems okay in theory, but if the site thereafter requires amends and I make them on the live server (as I usually do) then I'll need to manually copy over the changed files in my local repo, then commit those changes to the Git server. This seems unduly complex and is perhaps too much of a departure from my current workflow. I think on balance I'll give option #1 a go, and see how I get on."}
{"_id": "57314", "title": "How to run a F# app in Windows Azure?", "text": "I have a project that requires me to write a library management system in F# and using Windows Azure for the development. I am quite new to Cloud concept and i don't know what to do as a next step. Is there any way to implement it using webForms? If you can help me with the steps i have to take, i can study them and learn. Thanks"}
{"_id": "36491", "title": "What can programmers learn from the construction industry?", "text": "When talking with colleagues about software design and development principles, I've noticed one of the most common sources for analogies is the construction industry. We **build** software and we consider the design and structure to be the **architecture**. One of the best ways to learn (or teach) are through analyzing analogies - **what other analogies can be drawn from construction?** (whether already in common use in software or not). Please provide a description, or your personal experience, regarding how the programming concept is similar to the construction concept. [Credit to Programming concepts taken from the arts and humanities for the idea]"}
{"_id": "57311", "title": "Twitter's new approach of third party application? How would you see this move as developer.... especially you plan to build a twitter client", "text": "Just today morning I have read news that twitter has issued a warning to developers not to make any new third party client, the official announcement can be read here. As a programmer, how do you see this move of twitter? Does it seems that they want to standardize the behavior of third party client or they don't want any new client in favor of the default clients they have made? What if anybody wants to create a new client? Is there any guidelines that-if followed- ensure that we can create a new mobile client? Or we should stop thinking about it? What are the option for the developers who want to build some clients for twitter? I can realize that I have asked too many questions, but I still think that there can be one common answer."}
{"_id": "36496", "title": "Source code used when supplying this to customer", "text": "Do you write your code differently when you need to hand it over to a customer?   How does one balance the delivery of good code while at the same time not handing over too much \"intellectual property\"?"}
{"_id": "101844", "title": "How can I improve my user interface and usability design skills?", "text": "I invested most my time and resources in programming, and now I think it's time I should invest some time in learning about user interface design, user experience, and usability. What are some good resources about usability and designing user interfaces? I'm mainly looking for more theoretical topics, such as color theory and color physiology and how they affect users, along with information about best practices."}
{"_id": "75260", "title": "I've got my Master's in Software Engineering... Now what?", "text": "Recently I completed a Master of Science in Software Engineering from Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA, US), because I wanted to have _some_ formal education in software (my undergrad is in Math Ed) and also because I wanted to be able to advance my career beyond just programming. Don't get me wrong; I love to code. I spend a lot of my spare time coding. However, for me writing code is just a means to an end: what I **REALLY** love is designing software. Not visual design, mind you, but the architecture of the system. So, ideally I'd like to try to get a job doing software architecture. The problem is that I have no _real_ experience in it besides my graduate course work. So, what should I do to make my \"bones\" in software architecture? **UPDATE**   Just so it's clear, I have over 5 years of work experience in software development and an MCTS cert in addition to my education, so I'm not looking for the usual \"I'm fresh out of school, what should I do?\" advice."}
{"_id": "37548", "title": "What rules of etiquette should be followed at software conferences?", "text": "Whether as an attendee, a speaker, or a vendor I wanted to know what the unspoken rules of etiquette are at software conferences. Other than the blindingly obvious ones (like don't assault the winner of the iPad raffle because you didn't win). What are some of the rules that should be followed, even if you feel they don't need to be said? Please, one rule per answer, with the summary in bold leading the answer. Post multiple answers if you have multiple rules."}
{"_id": "18843", "title": "Dev approaches to complex JavaScript UI's", "text": "I am trying to understand the landscape of different approaches, and best practices, around the development of complex client-side JavaScript. I'm not sure what to label this class of application, perhaps **heavy AJAX** or **RIA** (but not plugins like Flash/Silverlight). I'm referring to web apps with these characteristics:   * Emulate rich/native desktop UX in JavaScript   * Contain most/all behavior in client-side JS, using the server as a data-API (JSON/Html-Templates). This is in contrast to using the web-server for the UI rendering, producing all HTML in a page-refresh model. Some examples are:   * Google Docs / Gmail   * Mindmeister   * Pivotal Tracker As we move forward into HTML5, I can see this style of RIA development, with heavy JavaScript, becoming ever more common and necessary to compete. **QUESTION: So what are the common approaches emerging around managing these kinds of heavy JS developments?** Client-side code, as an app grows in features, is fiendishly complicated. There are problems scaling a development effort across multiple teams with raw JS (or so I hear, and can well believe it). Google has approached the problem by building GWT that compiles from a higher level language (Java) to JS, leaning on the existing development infrastructure that the higher level language has (Eclipse, strong-typing, refactoring tools), along with abstracting browser compatibility and other issues away from the developer. There are other tools, like Script# for C# that do something similar. All this puts JS more in the role of an IL (Intermediate Language). ie. \"You never really write in that 'low level language' anymore.\" But this 'compile to JS' is not the only approach. It's not apparent that GWT is the dominant approach...or indeed will become it. **What are people doing with rich-client JavaScript?** Some orienting questions:   * Are most shops crafting JS manually (atop libs like jQuery et al)?   * Or are there many many different approaches, with no clear best-practice emerging?   * Are most shops avoiding RIA scale development in favor of the simpler to developer server-side/page-redraw model? If so, will this last?   * Is compiling to JS perhaps an emerging future trend? Or is this just wrong headed?   * How do they manage the complexity and refactoring of client JS?   * Modularization and distribution of work across teams?   * The application, enforcement, and testing of client-side patterns like MVC/MVP etc. **So, what are the emerging trends in this heavy-JavaScript and HTML5 future of ours?** Thanks!"}
{"_id": "75269", "title": "How do I design an arbitrary system in an interview?", "text": "A common question in Tech Interview is to design a particular system, usually an existing product of the company. For example, \"Design Google Docs\". What is the expected answer for such a question? I mean, such systems surely have a complex design which is beyond the scope of any interview. What are the interviewers expecting in such a short time?"}
{"_id": "18845", "title": "Are groups like comp.unix.programmer still alive?", "text": "If you see the posts at http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.programmer/topics?pli=1, most of them are spam. Are these com groups still good places to visit for programmers, if yes, how do you filter the spam? Why aren't they moderated anyways?"}
{"_id": "203777", "title": "When to really focus on performance?", "text": "We've just finishing up the first release of a database driven web application, which is now in regression testing. The application has an advanced search with many different filtering criteria. When the search is first used with only the 3(of 28) minimum required search criteria it takes like 15-20 secs to calculate and retrieve the data for the page to load. This happens only the first time the search(uses a stored proc) is run. The search thereafter take 2-6 secs. The stored procedure has medium complexity around 1500 - 2000 lines. I would like to get it down to run the first time to 6 secs and thereafter like 1-2 secs but I can't seem to find the time to make it faster. My question is, is this acceptable for users if it is only slow the first time the search is run? Has anyone else had a similar experience with creating advanced searches? What was your solution?"}
{"_id": "132331", "title": "What is O(...) and how do I calculate it?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Plain English explanation of Big O I've seen some questions here and on SO talking about the most efficient way to find or sort this or that. The questions usually talk about the efficiency of a certain algorithms in terms of O(...). As a wannabe-programmer, I would like to start learning how to program algorithmically. So, what is O(...)? How do I calculate it, where can I learn about this?"}
{"_id": "250014", "title": "Programming with emacs instead of a debugger-integrated IDE", "text": "There's a question that might be deemed a duplicate of this one (I use an IDE (Eclipse) to develop software. Why should I switch to vim or emacs?) but I don't think answers my question. I usually program in C++ (not exactly to create GUIs so rather low-level) and I find myself comfortable with editing code into visual studio, compiling it and debugging it. I know that all of this can be done in a linux/unix environment (even on Windows) as well, but I'm wondering how come that many low-level programmers are proficient with tools like emacs which I suppose hasn't any debugger integrated (no breakpoints setting, doing that with gdb seems pretty slow and really unhelpful). How can they develop a complex software with a write-compile-debug cycle in such environments? Am I missing something? I doubt that they develop code in Eclipse, Qt Creator or Visual Studio and then get back to their textual tools."}
{"_id": "138297", "title": "Joining a Team on a Broken and Non-Controlled Project, Possibly Developed by Beginners?", "text": "Context: A firm which markets oneself with all kinds of partnerships and like a programming firm, but **feels** to me to be a firm employing cheap students at low wages to work on their major product (which looks the part). They market themselves with a lot of praise, but I have never heard about the firm in the open-source community, which makes me skeptical about their level of expertise. Now this firm is looking for some long-time engagement and offering a job to work on this product. But my first impression has been very negative:   * no version control,   * non-running codebase,   * amateurish and inexperienced feel of the codebase. On top of that, they appear to to be dishonest as they push for low wages by minimizing the importance of the problem, but still require a long engagement. I don't think I can ever solve any meaningful problem in such an environment where I face this kind of diversions. It is good to speak about problems honestly and openly. Here, I am afraid about just wasting time. Any experience like that, and recommendations about how to assess the situation or get them to change?"}
{"_id": "250013", "title": "Sanity check for design pattern used with an intricate calculation model", "text": "I am working on a project that generates technical brochures in batch. The 3rd party API that is being used expects POCOs with property names that match field names used in each of the brochure templates. The task I am seeking advice on is with the data source that will be used to populate these POCOs. The data is based on cascading calculations against a Domain Model. I originally entertained the idea of having the Domain be self-calculating, but there are so many calcs required that it seemed obvious to me this needed to be abstracted away. I created some hypothetical code that closely mimics the design pattern in question, and I am open to any suggestions or reaffirmations as to whether I am approaching this correctly. My primary concerns:   1. The constructor for the \"AirplaneResultsContext\" class, which injects itself to calculation classes which are also publicly exposed properties. Does this create recursive paths?   2. The possible occurrance of circular references with cascading calculation calls to various properties/methods in various other classes. Note that I am re-using most of the calculation logic (as was requested) but I can propose the need for it to be refactored if need be. I noticed I used the word \"Intricate\", which is usually a telltale warning for code that needs to be abstracted out, but I am struggling to see how I can make this better. * * * **The entity being calculated against**. Picture this as an aggregate root for a larger domain model.               class Airplane : Entity<int>     {         public double WingLength { get; set; }         public double FuselageCircumference { get; set; }         public double FuselageLength { get; set; }         public double SeatWidth { get; set; }         public double SeatDepth { get; set; }         public double SeatHeight { get; set; }         public double IsleWidth { get; set; }         public double LegRoomArea { get; set; }     }      **The calculation context**. The intent is for this object to be passed along as part of a batch process -- an abstract factory which consumes an interface represented by this context class and generates the POCO objects. Note that I also omitted the interfaces and abstract classes that would be used for different calculation strategies for brevity.               class AirplaneResultsContext     {         public AirplaneResultsContext(Airplane airplane)         {             Airplane = airplane;             Fuselage = new FuselageCalculator(this);             Seating = new SeatingCalculator(this);         }              public Airplane Airplane { get; private set; }         public FuselageCalculator Fuselage { get; private set; }         public SeatingCalculator Seating { get; private set; }              public double ComputeWidth()         {             return Airplane.WingLength*2 + Fuselage.ComputeDiameter();         }     }      **Calculators**. In my non-hypothetical project, these methods are private/protected, cached on the first call, and read back by read-only properties, but I only wanted to show a basic representation of some of the calculation complexity.               class SeatingCalculator     {         private readonly AirplaneResultsContext _context;              public SeatingCalculator(AirplaneResultsContext context)         {             _context = context;         }              public int ComputeNumberOfSeats()         {             double isleArea = _context.Airplane.IsleWidth* _context.Airplane.FuselageLength;             double availableArea = (_context.Fuselage.ComputeDiameter()*_context.ComputeWidth()) - isleArea;             double seatArea = _context.Airplane.SeatDepth * _context.Airplane.SeatWidth + _context.Airplane.LegRoomArea;                  return (int) Math.Floor(availableArea/seatArea);         }     }      * * *               class FuselageCalculator     {         private readonly AirplaneResultsContext _context;              public FuselageCalculator(AirplaneResultsContext context)         {             _context = context;         }              public double ComputeDiameter()         {             return Math.PI / _context.Airplane.FuselageCircumference;         }     }"}
{"_id": "84062", "title": "Starting Web Development and interactive experiences", "text": "I'm new to web development and I'm a bit confused about the different languages and technologies in the web. I understand the basic is Html, Javascript, and Css. Then there's jQuery, ASP.net, Html5. I'm confused where I should use each technology and which should I use. For example, here is a video of a WPF application that I built: WPF app demo The app is essentially for students, teaching some lessons. The student can choose a lesson, and listen and see images. The student can also test himself. As you can see, the app has some animation and stlying If I were to attempt at building this application for the web- where should I start from and what should I use? HTML5 (Canvas?), jQuery (jQueryUI?), ASP.net? I would really appreciate it if you can help me. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "84064", "title": "is object constraint language worth the effort?", "text": "so OCL is supposed to extend UML when we as a designer/analyst cannot express something with a diagram, is has a full blown specification still, there is not (at least not that i know) any production-ready compiler supported by any major company (Oracle, MS, IBM, Apple, Google for example) that can translate OCL to any intermadiate/machine language, so why would anyone invest in learning such a thing?, why not invest that time in learning an actual programming language instead ? there are a few easy-to-learn fast-to-pick up languages out there (ruby, php, visual basic) and if its only function is to extend UML diagrams why not just write some pseudocode and get done with it?, do we really need to learn a full blown specificacion just for writing a special case of pseudocode ?"}
{"_id": "159943", "title": "Testing my VB.NET code?", "text": "I'm having trouble developing unit testing approaches to testing both if the \"code does what I want it to do\", and testing \"does my code work\". For example, I'm writing code to validate input that will be inserted into a database table, so I need to test if my code does what I want it to do - Good input is accepted, bad input is rejected. Here's some of the code, in VB.NET:                   'Let's check if we are going to update all the fields that must be updated...         If record.table.RequiredMustBeSuplied IsNot Nothing Then             For Each req In record.table.RequiredMustBeSuplied                 If query.UpdateFields(req.Key).value Is Nothing Then                     Throw New ArgumentNullException                 End If             Next         End If      So, for my unit test I would pass in a query without the proper update fields and expect that it would result in a `ArgumentNullException`, and a corresponding test that passes. The problem that happens to me is later on I'll notice a bug, and realize my code doesn't work correctly. For example, the correct code in this case was:                   'Let's check if we are going to update all the fields that must be updated...         If record.table.RequiredMustBeSuplied IsNot Nothing Then             For Each req In record.table.RequiredMustBeSuplied                 If query.UpdateFields(req.Key).value Is Nothing Then                     Throw New ArgumentNullException                 End If             Next         End If      So, I was able to test for problems I know about (missing fields) but not a problem I don't know about (the difference between `dbnull` and nothing). Is unit testing just not very good at finding these kinds of errors, or is there an approach someone could suggest?"}
{"_id": "83598", "title": "Task management - how important it is for a entry level developer targeting PM role in the future?", "text": "I hold masters in CS and now I'm mobile apps developer (entry level), I always start to plan things when starting or doing any project both at work and projects I do at home (for passion) - as I can deliver the project on time but sometimes I am running out of time like 10 tasks a day vs my time forecast will take 2 on that day? As I'm beginner level, I want your suggestions on how important is task management for a person like me and for achieving my goals? My target for the next 3 years will be a Project Manager or similar role - I believe which these time managing skills will be a needed quality."}
{"_id": "113433", "title": "DDD - Does an aggregate root's repository handle saving aggregates?", "text": "I am using a DDD-like approach for a greenfield module of an existing application; it's not 100% DDD due to architecture but I'm trying to use some DDD concepts. I have a bounded context (I think that's the proper term - I'm still learning about DDD) consisting of two Entities: `Conversation` and `Message`. Conversation is the root, as a Message doesn't exist without the conversation, and all messages in the system are part of a conversation. I have a `ConversationRepository` class (although it's really more like a Gateway, I use the term \"Repository\") which finds Conversations in the database; when it finds a Conversation it also creates (via Factories) a list of messages for that Conversation (exposed as a property). This seems to be the correct way of handling things as there doesn't seem to be a need for a full-blown `MessageRepository` class as it only exists when a Conversation is retrieved. However, when it comes to saving a Message, is this the responsibility of the ConversationRepository, since it's the aggregate root of Message? What I mean is, should I have a method on ConversationRepository called, say, `AddMessage` that takes a Message as it's parameter and saves it to the database? Or should I have a separate repository for finding/saving Messages? The logical thing seems to be one repository per Entity, but I've also heard \"One repository per Context\"."}
{"_id": "83596", "title": "graph or relational database?", "text": "I'm starting to think that a lot of my tables could be replaced by only a graph db: For example: I have 4 tables: accounts, votes, posts, relationships but I can represent all these in a graph table with different edges,               NODE1 -> type of relation -> NODE2     account -> vote_+1 -> post     account -> wrote -> post     account -> friend -> account2      is there a difference of performance or other between them?"}
{"_id": "226062", "title": "Unit tests tactics", "text": "The only unit tests tactic I'm familiar with is comparing against golden data _ a predefined set of input data for which output is known (preferably including corner cases). I cannot think of any other reasonable way of unit testing. Trying to unit test using arbitrary input data is (at least) as difficult as writing the application itself. Are there any effective tactics for unit testing other than golden data testing? Note: By saying arbitrary data I mean any `syntactically` valid input which a method can accept (including logically invalid inputs)."}
{"_id": "207855", "title": "Should I be afraid of a major corporation stealing my idea?", "text": "If I have an idea for a website that's really good, but I myself am not experienced enough to execute it well single-handedly, but I get it going with a team of people (guess that's called a start-up), should I be afraid of Google or Microsoft noticing my site, thinking to themselves _That's genius-- we have a thousand times their resources, let's do it better than them_ and hanging me out to dry?"}
{"_id": "14093", "title": "Will a degree in progress get past the HR filter?", "text": "I dropped out of college half way through my final year due to personal reasons. I have 6 modules to repeat but unfortunately I cant afford to go back and finish them for at least another year. Im wondering if i put this down on my resume will it pass the HR filter?               Bachelor of Science in Computing in Software Development     2007 - present"}
{"_id": "14092", "title": "How do you quantify competency in terms of time (years)?", "text": "While looking for a job via agencies some time ago, I kept having questions from the recuitment agents or in the application forms like: How many years of experience do you have in:   * Oracle   * ASP.NET   * J2EE etc etc etc.... At first I answered faithfully... 5yrs, 7yrs, 2 yrs, none, few months etc etc.. Then I thought; I can be doing something shallow for 7 years and not being competent at it simply because I am just doing a minor support for a legacy system running SQL2000 which requires 10 days of my time for the past 7 years. Eventualy I declined to answers such questions. I wonder why do they ask these questions anymore. Anyone who just graduated with a computer science can claim 3 to 4 years experience in anything they 'touched' in the cirriculum, which to me can be equivalent to zero or 10 years depending how you look at it. It might hold true decades ago where programmers and IT skills are of very different nature. I might be wrong but I really doubt 'time' or 'years' are a good gauge of competency or experience anymore. Any opinion/rebuttal are welcome!"}
{"_id": "219141", "title": "Audit trails and entity relationships", "text": "I'm working on an order system and implementing an audit log. Two main concerns are: 1) While auditing a line item , you should only see audits for the line item 2) While auditing an order, you should see audits pertaining to the header information AND line item. For example, a line item would have an audit trail for what was changed to the line item fields, in addition any adding/removing/modification to comments, photos attached , etc would be also be logged. An audit for a order would contain all the things above, plus changes to the actual order (shipping location changes, purchaser name changes, etc). Instead of mirroring the relationships for the audit trails tables, I am planning on having only 2 tables, which are as followed               Audit_Log:         -audit log id         -entity type         -entity id         -audit timestamp         -audit user         -audit message (serialization of object changes most likely)          Audit_Relationship         -audit log id 1         -audit log id 2         -is child of entity      This will greatly simply queries and sorting of audit trails. Big plus is all the audit trails is in one table. You can just sort by timestamp and get an idea of what exactly is going on in the system (although, i think audits are meant mainly to focus on a smaller area , ie a specific order, to see changes). Has anyone tried a similar design? I'm concerned if this confuses entity relationships at all. (Ie, a comment audit long for a line item will also be attached to an order, even though that relationship doesn't exist in the business logic.) The \"is child of entity\" was used to make this a bit more clear... *I am using php with Doctrine 2, but I think this is an abstract enough idea to work with any ORM. **(ADDED) I am also using MySQL, and considering on using database triggers rather then doing this at the ORM library level. **(ADDED) Using the method described above might be a terrible idea. When attaching a audit trail, we need to get all the entities that will be associated with the audit trail. In order to do so we would need to implement a method to get a list of effected id's. Maybe some special annotations Doctrine uses to figure which properties should be followed when the audit log is \"bubbling up\" and attaching? Anyways, shifting to longer read times using joins sound much more reasonable then longer write time for this feature."}
{"_id": "14098", "title": "How do you prepare yourself before you start coding?", "text": "Before you start coding something, how do you prepare yourself? Do you make diagrams, pseudocode, mockups or any of that kind of stuff or you just start coding and see what comes along the way. Personally, I prefer to jump into the code as fast as possible when I am comfortable doing what I have to do. If something is more complicated or a problem occurs, I normally take a sheet of paper and start writing pseudocode down since I have less trouble concentrating that way (I guess that's kinda weird and hard to explain, but whatever...It works!) I guess everybody has there own strategy, so what's yours?"}
{"_id": "3233", "title": "Why do programmers write closed source applications and then make them free?", "text": "As an entrepreneur/programmer who makes a good living from writing and selling software, I'm dumbfounded as to why developers write applications and then put them up on the Internet for free. You've found yourself in one of the most lucrative fields in the world. A business with 99% profit margin, where you have no physical product but can name your price; a business where you can ship a buggy product and the customer will still buy it. Occasionally some of our software will get a free competitor, and I think, this guy is crazy. He could be making a good living off of this but instead chose to make it free.   * Do you not like giant piles of money?   * Are you not confident that people would pay for it?    * Are you afraid of having to support it? It's bad for the business of programming because now customers expect to be able to find a free solution to every problem. (I see tweets like \"is there any good FREE software for XYZ? or do I need to pay $20 for that\".) It's also bad for customers because the free solutions eventually break (because of a new OS or what have you) and since it's free, the developer has no reason to fix it. Customers end up with free but stale software that no longer works and never gets updated. Customer cries. Developer still working day job cries in their cubicle. What gives? PS: I'm not looking to start an open-source/software should be free kind of debate. I'm talking about when developers make a closed source application and make it free."}
{"_id": "255305", "title": "State Change Tests", "text": "In Chapter 3 of his book The Art of Unit Testing: with Examples in C#, Roy Osherove describes the concept of testing state change of a system. The example code under test he uses looks like this:               public class LogAnalyzer     {         public bool WasLastFileNameValid { get; set; }              public bool IsValidLogFileName(string filename)         {             WasLastFileNameValid = false;                  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(filename))             {                 throw new ArgumentException(\"filename has to be provided\");             }                  if (filename.EndsWith(\".SLF\", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))             {                 WasLastFileNameValid = true;                 return true;             }             return false;         }     }      and we want to test state of the `WasLastFileNameValid` property. To this end, the author uses the following test:               [Test]     public void IsValidFileName_WhenCalled_ChangesWasLastFileNameValid()     {       LogAnalyzer la = MakeAnalyzer();            la.IsValidLogFileName(\"badname.foo\");            Assert.False(la.WasLastFileNameValid);     }      However, I see the following issues with this test:   1. The 'outcome' part of the test name is `ChangesWasLastFileNameValid`, but the test doesn't really check whether the property value changes; it may have been `false` even before the call to `IsValidLogFileName`.   2. The test is only testing the one case where the last call was an invalid filename. I would use the following test instead (using `xunit.net`)                   [Theory]         [InlineData(true, \"fileWithValidExtension.SLF\", true)]         [InlineData(true, \"fileWithBadExtension.FOO\", false)]         [InlineData(false, \"fileWithValidExtension.SLF\", true)]         [InlineData(false, \"fileWithBadExtension.FOO\", false)]         public void IsValidLogFileName_WhenCalled_ChangesWasLastFileNameValid(             bool preState, string filename, bool postState)         {             LogAnalyzer analyzer = new LogAnalyzer();             analyzer.WasLastFileNameValid = preState;                  analyzer.IsValidLogFileName(filename);                  Assert.Equal<bool>(postState, analyzer.WasLastFileNameValid);         }      Here I test whether the value changes, and I also test all scenarios. Is this a better test?"}
{"_id": "182126", "title": "Why is the minimum value of ints, doubles, etc 1 farther from zero than the positive value?", "text": "I know it has something to do with 2's complement and adding 1, but I don't really get how you can encode one more number with the same amount of bits when it comes to negative numbers."}
{"_id": "204270", "title": "What's the difference between these property definitions in C#", "text": "class myClass     {      int age;           public int Age     {      get{return age;}      set{age = value;}     }      Versus               class myClass     {      public int Age{get; set;}     }      What's the difference between these two? Are they both the same?"}
{"_id": "204278", "title": "Should I use semicolons to delimit Scala statements?", "text": "I'm used to delimit statements by a semicolon from Java, so naturally I do it in Scala code too. I also feel that the code is easier to read, because it's evident where one statement ends and another begins. But many times when I post a piece of Scala code on SO, the code gets edited just to get semicolons removed.   1. Should I use semicolons or not? Are there any \"official\" guidelines or coding style?   2. Are there cases where semicolons are required, otherwise the code is ambiguous?"}
{"_id": "41595", "title": "Reaching Intermediate Programming Status", "text": "I am a software engineer that's had positions programming in VBA (though I dare not consider that 'real' experience, as it was trial and error!), Perl w/ CGI, C#, and ASP.NET. The latter two are post-undergraduate, with my entrance into the 'real world'. I'm 2 years out of college, and have had 5 years of experience (total) across the languages I've mentioned. However, when it comes to my resume, I can only put 2 years down for C#, and less than a year down for ASP.NET. I feel like I _know_ C#, but I still have to spend time going 'What does this method do?', whereas some of the more senior level engineers can immediately say, \"Oh, Method X does this, without ever having looked at that method before.\" So I know empirically that there's a gulf there, but I'm not exactly sure how to bridge it. I've started programming in Project Euler, and I picked up a book on design patterns, but I still feel like I spend each day treading water, instead of moving forward. That isn't to say that I don't feel like I've made progress, it just means that as far as I come each day, I still see the mountain top way off in the distance. My question is this: How did you overcome this plateau? How long did it take you? What methods can you suggest to assist me in this? I've read through _Code Complete_, _The Mythical Man Month_, and _CLR via C#, 2nd edition_ \\-- my question is: What do I do now? * * * **Edit** : I just found this question on projects for an intermediate level programmer. I think it adds to the discussion (though it does not supplant my question). As such, I'm adding it to the question as a \"For More Information\"."}
{"_id": "178919", "title": "Questions to ask a 3rd party API provider", "text": "I'm due to meet with a developer/sales person from a new 3rd party resource we're about to start using. The main topic I'll be interested in, is their API as I will be the developer making use of it and explaining it to the rest of the team. What questions would you recommend asking? Things I'm already thinking about are:   * What happens and how will I be notified when they depreciate a method?    * Is there ever any downtime?   * Who will I deal with first when I have API issues?"}
{"_id": "137213", "title": "Is PHP a more simple introductory language to back-end web development over Ruby on Rails?", "text": "I have a program coordinator for a course I plan to teach who wants to change the \"Introduction to Web Development\" course from using PHP to Ruby (I assume he means Ruby on Rails). His justification is that Ruby \"is the future of web development\". Because we can't argue about the future, only trends, I'm hoping to build an argument against this instead based on \"teach-ability\". My personal experience in learning both PHP and Ruby on Rails is that PHP was more natural to ease into, simply because you can start inserting code wherever you need to and gradually improve your code structure and organization from that point forward. Ruby on Rails however requires a significantly sharper learning curve on code structure and organization (in my opinion). However, I learned Ruby on Rails much later in my programming career, so it was much easier to pick up than a first time student. So my question is, what language would be more appropriate to teach a beginner course on web development given those two options?"}
{"_id": "105191", "title": "what are the best tips for storing images in a database?", "text": "Is it appropriate to store the image files in the database? Or it would be better to store only the path of the file in the database, while keeping the file itself on the server? Are there any other methods for doing this right?"}
{"_id": "178910", "title": "How to create a Request Specific Thread Safe Static int Counter?", "text": "In one of my server application I have a class that look like,               class A     {        static int _value = 0;        void DoSomething()        {              // a request start here               _value = 0;              _value++;              // a request end here        }        // This method can be called many time during request        void SomeAsyncMethods()        {              _value++;        }     }      The problem is SomeAsyncMethods is async. Can be called many times. What I need when a request start set _value = 0 and then asynchrosnously increment this. After end of request I need the total. But the problem is that another request at the same time can access the class."}
{"_id": "137215", "title": "How is the \"Infinite Monkey Theorem\" different to use than Genetic Programming to solve problems?", "text": "This might be a little open ended, but I heard an explanation of this talk on how GP could be used to fix bugs, and I wonder: How does this differ from the infinite monkey theorem?"}
{"_id": "66757", "title": "How does optimization make code \"greener\"?", "text": "It seems clear that whatever the language used, an optimized application consumes fewer resources than a poorly written application, and require fewer servers to manage a similar number of requests for a site with heavy traffic. Similarly, I like to assume that an application written in a compiled language like C++ or. NET require fewer servers than if it were written in PHP, for example, for the same performance reasons. That may be why Facebook has designed a compiler for the application written in PHP. Now, Facebook has recently opened the architecture of its data centers to the public to provoke thought for a reduction in their ecological footprint, but I'm not sure that the equipment is solely responsible if an optimized code needs less servers to address a number of requests. That's why I wonder if quantitative studies have been conducted, with supporting figures to show how the optimization of the code could save resources and machinery thereby reducing the ecological footprint of data centers dedicated to single application like Facebook. If there are examples like \"to do or not do\" for languages, as well as tips to make the code more \"green\", I'd be very interrested. Do you have any resources on this or thoughts to share?"}
{"_id": "198566", "title": "Use functions inside a loop declaration", "text": "**What's the best practice?** This :               for ($i = 0; $i < count($array); $i++) {     //stuff     }      Or, what I usually do :               $count = count($array);     for($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++) {     //stuff     }      Is it the same with the magic of compiler optimization?"}
{"_id": "152753", "title": "Is it safe to trust emulators when developing multi platform/resolution mobile apps?", "text": "I'm currently developing some mobile applications using PhoneGap for Android, testing only in 3 different kinds of smartphones, and using emulators to test on the others target phone resolutions. Later on I will probably use a iOS emulator. I would like to know if I will have any problems with that."}
{"_id": "76760", "title": "Distributed/Network application development that is user focused but NOT web application development", "text": "I was curious, what other architectures exist for business or user focused development that aren't written using web applications. Are these architectures used today? If you are or were in the business world and you need to connect to an application from a remote location, what technology would you use (that isn't web application based)?"}
{"_id": "38749", "title": "Why does everybody hate SharePoint?", "text": "Reading this topic about the most over hyped technologies I noticed that SharePoint is almost universally reviled. My experience with SharePoint (especially the most recent versions) is that it accomplishes it's core competencies smartly. Namely:   * **Centralized document repository** \\- get all those office documents out of email (with versioning)   * **User-editible content creation for internal information disemination** \\- look, an HR site with current phone numbers and the vacation policy   * **Project collaboration** \\- a couple clicks creates a site with a project's documents, task list, simple schedule, threaded discussion, and possibly a list of all project related emails.   * **Very basic business automation** \\- when you fill out the vacation form, an email is sent to HR. My experience is that SharePoint only gets really ugly when an organization tries to push it in a direction it isn't designed for. SharePoint is not a CRM, ERP, bug database or external website. SharePoint is flexible enough to serve in a pinch, but it is no replacement for a dedicated tool. (Microsoft is just as guilty of pushing SharePoint into domains it doesn't belong.) _If you use SharePoint for what it's designed for, it really does work._ Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "76764", "title": "What to cover in a \"introduction to python\" talk?", "text": "I'm in a student team that is focusing on web development. My teammates are interested in Python and I'm the only one that has learned it, so I was asked to give an \"introduction to Python\" talk next week. I'd like to listen to your advice about what to talk about to make the talk interesting instead of just a bunch of grammar things. PS: my teammates are familiar with PHP and .NET"}
{"_id": "38746", "title": "Software Design: Build it fast or build it well?", "text": "When building a non-trivial application, is it best to focus on getting things working quickly, and taking shortcuts in the code like mixing model logic with your views, breaking encapsulation - typical code smells? Or, are you better off taking the time upfront to build more architecture, build it right, but running the risk that all this extra code might not be used since your design is quite fluid and you might have to throw it away if feedback causes you to go in a different direction? For context, I'm building a desktop application. I'm the only developer, and I'm doing this part-time since I have a day job. Now, for work, I try to do things the right way, schedule permitting. But for this project, which I expect will morph as I get feedback from people, I'm not sure that's the right approach. I spent several hours this week putting in a textbook Model View Controller design in place to communicate changes in the model to the view. This is great in general, but I'm not sure if I need multiple views to display the data and I know that I could have had things displayed more quickly without the additional architecture. With maybe 10-15 hours a week to spend on the project, I feel it will take ages to get something built that I can demo if I follow good software practices. I know that my users won't care that I used MVC internally, they just want something that solve their problem. But I've also been in the situation where you've incurred so much technical debt from short cuts that the code is just incredibly difficult to maintain and add new features to. I'd love to hear how other people approach this kind of problem."}
{"_id": "38742", "title": "How do I handle two algorithms that seem the same but different?", "text": "I have two algorithms that share a lot of commonalities. One performs an iterative procedure, the other does just the first iteration. The results are, of course, different (one class provides results that the other can't), as well as the setup (the iterative process requires tolerances and max number of iterations, which are irrelevant in the non-iterative one). Should I have a unique class with internal ifs (like `if (iterative) do this else do that`) or should I implement two different classes (and potentially put common code in an accessible place so that it can be shared ?) What do you think ?"}
{"_id": "34890", "title": "how to learn Java", "text": "This question I am asking because I couldn't find any source which gives complete overview of java development. I just want to know where java technology currently in market & what is preferable for development ! Java always remain top programming language for development point of view. However, java is combo of, j2ee, j2me, jsp, jsf, spring, other frameworks, ui components, jndi, networking tools and various other \"J\" are there ! However, learning java is definitely dependent on the development requirement, but still, to be a well-experienced java developer, what is the organised way of learning java? What is preferable in current technology ? and what is deprecated, currently ?"}
{"_id": "171539", "title": "Using nested public classes to organize constants", "text": "I'm working on an application with many constants. At the last code review it came up that the constants are too scattered and should all be organized into a single \"master\" constants file. The disagreement is about how to organize them. The majority feel that using the constant name should be good enough, but this will lead to code that looks like this:               public static final String CREDITCARD_ACTION_SUBMITDATA = \"6767\";     public static final String CREDITCARD_UIFIELDID_CARDHOLDER_NAME = \"3959854\";     public static final String CREDITCARD_UIFIELDID_EXPIRY_MONTH = \"3524\";     public static final String CREDITCARD_UIFIELDID_ACCOUNT_ID = \"3524\";     ...     public static final String BANKPAYMENT_UIFIELDID_ACCOUNT_ID = \"9987\";      I find this type of naming convention to be cumbersome. I thought it might be easier to use public nested class, and have something like this:               public class IntegrationSystemConstants     {         public class CreditCard         {             public static final String UI_EXPIRY_MONTH = \"3524\";             public static final String UI_ACCOUNT_ID = \"3524\";             ...         }         public class BankAccount         {             public static final String UI_ACCOUNT_ID = \"9987\";             ...         }     }      This idea wasn't well received because it was \"too complicated\" (I didn't get much detail as to _why_ this might be too complicated). I think this creates a better division between groups of related constants and the auto-complete makes it easier to find these as well. I've never seen this done though, so I'm wondering if this is an accepted practice or if there's better reasons that it shouldn't be done."}
{"_id": "233515", "title": "What's a DRY alternative to c++ header files?", "text": "In c++, is there any other way, besides header files, to use a function defined in file A.cpp, inside file B.cpp that would be considered good programming practice?"}
{"_id": "233501", "title": "mysql, store a single piece of data per row", "text": "I am preparing to write a database system using PHP and MYSQL which will store every piece of info sent to it as an individual row. Each row will store several piece of meta data (time stamp, who created it, version number, attribute number) and one piece of 'true' data (file name, phone number, username, etc.) Rows my also be used to store serialized data. The goal is to create a system that is easy to incrementally back up, search on single rows, and review based on its state at a particular date. Is this an effective design or should I alter my approach? The database will be used to drive a custom CMS system which is intended to store a interconnected system of data. It will involve customer data, location data and job data. We want to be able to track individual database changes based on time so that we can maintain an on-site backup (the system will be cloud based) which we can use in the event that we lose internet connectivity. The system will be strongly permission based, only allowing people to see/change information that they are authorized to see. Most of the data will be viewed in a timeline format, based on the time that the info is entered into the system."}
{"_id": "171536", "title": "What's so difficult about SVN merges?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I\u2019m a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or > Git or any other DVCS? Every once in a while, you hear someone saying that distributed version control (Git, HG) is inherently better than centralized version control (like SVN) because merging is difficult and painful in SVN. The thing is, I've never had any trouble with merging in SVN, and since you only ever hear that claim being made by DVCS advocates, and not by actual SVN users, it tends to remind me of those obnoxious commercials on TV where they try to sell you something you don't need by having bumbling actors pretend that the thing you already have and works just fine is incredibly difficult to use. And the use case that's invariably brought up is re-merging a branch, which again reminds me of those strawman product advertisements; if you know what you're doing, you shouldn't (and shouldn't ever have to) re-merge a branch in the first place. (Of course it's difficult to do when you're doing something fundamentally wrong and silly!) So, discounting the ridiculous strawman use case, what is there in SVN merging that is inherently more difficult than merging in a DVCS system?"}
{"_id": "242952", "title": "Can Swift be used for anything besides iOS and OSX apps?", "text": "I'm liking Swift, a lot. But making an iOS or OSX native app isn't totally what I would want to do with it. Is it possible for Swift to be used in other contexts? Like say a web application that runs on a linux server? Or perhaps Arduino micro-controllers? Or is it locked up in the Apple ecosystem?"}
{"_id": "242954", "title": "Where does Rails get it's datetime for creating records?", "text": "I have a rails app with a data model called 'jobs' and i'm faced with a critical design choice crossroads. I don't know enough about Rails and it's inner workings to be able to say for sure what I should do despite a complete read of the rails and ruby docs. I want to be able to accurately display the age of a job record in days. So when a customer logs in, they can see that the job they submitted is 'x' days old. Where does a rails app on Heroku get it's time stamps? From Heroku? or the customers system clock? If a customer has a out of date system clock and submits a job, it could really mess up the sorting of their job list, not to mention me the overseer of job records. Any advice out there? EDIT: Just to be clear, i'm not asking how to list jobs by their date, but to which clock does a rails app on Heroku base it's records."}
{"_id": "38299", "title": "Do computer glasses work?", "text": "There are a few different types of \"computer glasses\" available:   * Steelseries Scope   * Gunnar Computer Glasses They seem to be designed for long gaming sessions. Seem a little silly, but thought I'd ask has anyone used them? Do you think they would aide in long coding marathons or reduce eye strain?"}
{"_id": "103143", "title": "What is Visual Studio Lightswitch and how does it differ from normal Visual Studio versions?", "text": "How is Visual Studio Lightswitch different from regular Visual Studio? In what sort of situations would you use this IDE over regular Visual Studio? I'm trying to decide if this is something that would be worthwhile for me to take the time learning since I am currently doing WPF/Silverlight development."}
{"_id": "138886", "title": "Low Level vs High Level Development", "text": "I really want to start working in OS development, particularly kernel development, with the Open Source Darwin Project - building my own Mac-like operating system, however I am simply not experienced enough to work in the black art of kernel development - I'm constantly deterred by comments : \"your code has to be close to spectacular\" , \"You need to be a programming veteran to write in kernel space\" So I Have tried to find other projects. I am working at CryENGINE 3 at the moment, but I just can't get into the API's as I'm constantly wanting to start kernel development. I have no experience in user-land programs, however I have researched and created small assembly based programs. Note: I'm 17 years old. Are there any projects you can recommend me starting, so I can get some experience for user-land applications? I find it almost impossible to build something revolutionary. I have Experience with C, C++ , C# , Java , Haskell , Ruby , Lua and ASM. Plus: What's the chance of creating a business out of software development?"}
{"_id": "83049", "title": "lightweight, sustainable processes for good code/design quality?", "text": "Ok, gang, next question: what do y'all think are the best processes to improve the quality of the code the (corporate) team produces? (The cult of quality question was good, but I'm looking for specific suggestions of things we can do.) Background: the team is diverse, in the usual way: > There's the brilliant coder whose code is impenetrable and undocumented and > whose ability to communicate isn't as good, which manifests itself as > impatience or excuses of busy-ness. > > There's the middle-of-the-road developer who just wants to get his/her work > done and go home. New methodologies would be ok, but he/she won't initiate. > > There's the person who really doesn't want to change (i.e., is hostile to > change, for whatever reason), satisfied with their current level (the old > way). > > There's the person who really doesn't know what the possibilities are, > they're just copying everybody else's code (and that works, too). > > There's me, of course, the handsome, charming, brilliant developer who takes > the time to write good, clear documentation and unit tests and just wants > the best for the group and isn't satisfied with the status quo > (technologically) and couldn't possibly be the problem. There are all these beautiful principles out there: OOP (highly coherent, loosely coupled), functional programming (what I mostly see here is /no side effects or in-out parameters/), strong static typing (no runtime type errors, method not found, etc.), separation of concerns (business logic separate from UI and database). And there's the old school of huge blobs of code that do multiple things all sort of intertwingled together, and global variables and their cousins the singletons and the huge classes with lots of data members. So, how do we get from point A to point B? Grass roots suggestions get ignored. [edit: well, to be more accurate, a single developer running around telling people what they're doing wrong is not the best way, from both managers' and peers' points of view. I don't do that because I don't want to be Cassandra.] Can we do abbreviated code reviews? Like... just call out what your new classes and methods are (ignoring implementations). Or call out (in English) where you added new functionality (i.e., which method did you update to do what)? What if the person(s) who need to review that stuff are constantly in meetings (you know how that goes: new features, partnering, crazy deep bugs that have important customers screaming[2])? Would a wiki or some sort of social thing work, to get more eyes on the new designs? How do we get those who don't want to be involved involved? So... lightweight, sustainable, effective processes? Any ideas? What works for y'all? (I know people are going to say pair programming. Ok, granted, but that ain't gonna fly here.) Thanks. [2] Ok, overblown language. s/screaming/focused on particular bugs/"}
{"_id": "134523", "title": "better way to learn programming with the intention of getting a job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to get a job with no experience? So I've worked on a desktop software coding Swing GUI for past 2 years. I feel that even having a live website selling my java desktop software (customers buy it occassionally) is not enough experience, contrary to opinions from this site, very little of my experience building, running the software business is discussed during interviews. Often jobs have extensive list of qualifications which I think I can cover 70%, but I don't have example projects for each language and framework, rather I've played around with different open source libraries and build things based on what is needed. When I land interviews, sometimes I pass all the technical questions but sometimes I don't when they ask me about experience I don't have. When I do land interviews, I cannot complete the programming tasks in time. I over think the problem, and while I have done more complex problems working on my software project, I cant think quickly enough to do the testing questions fast enough. What other ways can I improve my skills to better showcase my skills? How many portfolio of projects do I need to be convincing? Should I take a course from a local college in Java?"}
{"_id": "47331", "title": "Mock Objects for Testing - Test Automation Engineer Perspective", "text": "How often QA engineers are responsible for developing Mock Objects for Unit Testing. So dealing with Mock Objects is just developer job ?. The reason i ask is i'm interested in QA as my career and am learning tools like JUnit , TestNG and couple of frameworks. I just want to know until what level of unit testing is done by developer and from what point QA engineer takes over testing for better test coverage ? Thanks **Edit** : Based on the answers below am providing more details about what QA i was referring to . I'm interested in more of Test Automation rather than simple QA involved in record and play of script. So Test Automation engineers are responsible for developing frameworks ? or do they have a team of developers dedicated in Framework development ? Yes i was asking about usage of Mock Objects for testing from Test Automation engineer perspective."}
{"_id": "132067", "title": "Difference between a service class and a Helper class", "text": "I would like to know what differentiates a Service class from a utility class or a helper class? A class only with underlying methods calls the dao's is a service? Doesn't the usage of Helper classes violates SRP?"}
{"_id": "213178", "title": "Refactoring two classes from third-party library that could have extended a base class", "text": "I have two Classes, with very similar behaviors, both from a third party library. Both needs to be populated with some value object and sent to specific queues in order for logging. Please note both of them does not have a common parent. I am scratching my head to find out ways to refactor this. Here is the sceanrio. Class 1 : Apple Class 2 : Orange Unfortunately, Apple and Orange are not child classes of Fruit And I can not change them to extend a base class. Constructors of Apple and Orange have different signatures. Current code:               if(isApple){         Apple apple = new Apple(....);         apple.setColor(Color.RED);         apple.setPrice(10);         apple.setCount(1000);              AppleMQObject applMQObject = new AppleMQObject(apple);         Producer appleProducer = Factory.create(\"apple-producer\");         appleProducer.send(applMQObject);     }else{         Orange orange = new Orange(...);         orange.setColor(Color.ORANGE);         orange.setPrice(30);         orange.setCount(100);         OrangeMQObject oMQObject = new oMQObject(orange);         Producer orangeProducer = Factory.create(\"orange-producer\");         orangeProducer.send(orangeMQObject);     }      I can move the MQ code out to a common method. But how to handle the apple/orange situation."}
{"_id": "206651", "title": "Need help understanding UML diagram", "text": "I'm focusing on trying to understand UML diagrams and learning to interpret them in order to implement the designs they describe. In the following diagram, I am not clear on what the implementation for `Port Operation` should be. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IMimV.png) It looks like it should be a class/entity the same as the others in the diagram. I understand the relationship between Leg and `Port Operation` is bidirectional. But it seems that it does not make sense to have a class just for port operations, and having Load() and Unload() methods in Leg doesn't make much sense since a Leg class does not represent a port or its' operations. When reading UML diagrams, is it expected that there are multiple ways for someone to implement it? i.e some ways are better than others, and it's a judgement call as to how someone implements it? What would be the recommened implementation for the above diagram with regards to Port Operation?"}
{"_id": "225084", "title": "How do I explain that we're wasting developer time adding unnecessary features?", "text": "So I've lead the charge with my fellow engineers to, at the very least, start \"thinking\" Lean. We hit on a few major areas of waste, and 2/3 lead to the exact same point...\"Extra Features\". We dogfood our own software on two fronts, sales and project management. It works great for sales, because that's what a CRM is great for. It's not so great for managing projects, and we're often tasked with adding extra features to make it work for this use case. Does it make more sense to continue adding features that don't add any customer value, or should we accept that having our sales team using our own product is \"good enough\" and perhaps look for an off-the-shelf solution?"}
{"_id": "105878", "title": "How to work on a project with a beginner?", "text": "I am currently starting work on a personal project that me and a friend are very passionate about. We want to work on it together, but we are on very different programming levels: I'm in my last semester of my education have been through 2 internships and I'm currently working as a student, programming, while he just finished his first year of uni and just got the basics down. The question is How can we work on this together? He is just making the switch from Java to C# at school, and the project will be an ASP.NET project in C#. I could wait a semester so he can get more into the language and learn more programming concepts, but I feel that it would be a waste of time, and I might loose momentum. So the question is **what is the best way to work with a person on a different programming level than you?** Pair programming, making a part of the system as an example that he can follow in making another part? How would you do it?"}
{"_id": "15050", "title": "Natural language detection for web application", "text": "I have my own thoughts how \"ideal\" multilingual web application or web site should behave. Can you think of better solution? What are the pros and cons of them? What are cons of the solution I am presenting bellow? Any comments? My \"ideal\" solution:   * application should read browser language (from Accept Language header)   * user should be able to override his/her default language in options (logged-on users will see the web site in this language no matter of current browser settings; useful when one is travelling for example)   * on top of this, when lang attribute is specified in URL (see example bellow), user will see the page in language specified by this attribute (both accept language and user settings would be overridden; this could be useful for book-marking, sharing, RSS feeds selection, web crawlers). Example URL: http://www.example.com/index.html?lang=ex"}
{"_id": "206659", "title": "Use a search box that calls on a JSON file?", "text": "I use a JSON file to populate several drop down lists. The format is:                   {             \"value\" :\"lightyear\",             \"name\" :\"Light Year(yl)\"         },         {             \"value\" :\"astronomicalUnit\",             \"name\" :\"Astronomical Unit(AU, UA)\"         },      and so on. I'd like to implement a search box so a user can type \"Light year\", \"lightyear\", \"lightyears\" etc etc. I want to make it possible for them to search for a particular unit. The immediate problem I can see is that I've used camel casing for pretty much all values except those displayed in the drop down boxes. There are two options, I think... Either run the search on the value key of the JSON and search for parts of it so \"AU\" would still yield Astronomical Unit or to use the value. The other option is to use the value which I think will overcomplicate things. It's not something I've done before and not sure which direction to go in?"}
{"_id": "49067", "title": "What to do if you find a vulnerability in a competitor's site?", "text": "While working on a project for my company, I needed to build functionality that allows users to import/export data to/from our competitor's site. While doing this, I discovered a very serious security exploit that could, in short, perform any script on the competitor's website. My natural feeling is to report the issue to them in the spirit of good-will. Exploiting the issue to gain advantage crossed my mind, but I don't want to go down that path. So my question is, would you report a serious vulnerability to your direct competition, in order to help them? Or would you keep your mouth shut? Is there a better way of going about this, perhaps to gain at least some advantage from the fact that I'm helping them by reporting the issue? **Update (Clarification)** : Thanks for all your feedback so far, I appreciate it. Would your answers change if I were to add that the competition in question is a behemoth in the market (hundreds of employees in several continents), and my company only started a few weeks ago (three employees)? It goes without saying, they most definitely will not remember us, and if anything, only realize that their site needs work (which is why we entered this market in the first place). This might be one of those moral vs. business toss-ups, but I appreciate all the advice."}
{"_id": "170668", "title": "Pair programming business logic with a non-IT person", "text": "Have you had any experience in which a non-IT person works with a programmer during the coding process? It's like pair programming, but one person is a non-IT person that knows a lot about the business, maybe a process engineer with math background who knows how things are calculated and can understand non-idiomatic, procedural code. I've found that some procedural, domain-specific languages like PL/SQL are quite understandable by non-IT engineers. These persons end up being co- authors of the code and guarantee the correctness of formulas, factors, etc. I've found this kind of pair programming quite productive, this kind of engineering-type users feel they are also \"owners\" and \"authors\" of the code and help minimize misunderstandings in the communication process. They even help design test cases.   * Is this practice common?   * Does it have a name?    * Have you had any similar experiences?"}
{"_id": "80167", "title": "How do I safely write code in my own 'words' and not plagiarize?", "text": "I understand plagiarism and paraphrasing fairly well when it comes to writing a research paper, but those equivalent areas in programming seem foreign to me. I've looked up the topics online, and surprisingly there is not as much material on the subject as one would have expected. When writing code and having to implement something I've never implemented before, I'll go online to look for an example. I try to read through the documentation beforehand, but sometimes I find it challenging to follow. So if that fails, I will search for the topic online and be presented with dozens of examples (whether they be on someone's personal blog or a Q&A site like SO). Now I'm usually presented with 5-10 lines of code. I have and will NEVER copy- and-paste that into my own code, but I still worry about copying it down verbatim. I find it hard to reword a certain piece of code, especially when there are only so many ways to do so. I make sure to rename variables, change formatting, etc. - but is this enough? I've always wanted to understand this topic, but now that I'm working with a new language and in a corporate environment I think that it is especially pertinent. If anyone could explain or link to a good explanation elsewhere, I would greatly appreciate that! **tl;dr** I don't understand how much you have to change and reword 5-10 snippets of code found online to avoid plagiarism. What if there is very little that you can change?"}
{"_id": "229853", "title": "Backend development philosophy", "text": "I feel kind of lost in this backend development process I am attempting right now. Most of the usual development practices I use while developing client- side applications don't apply here... Let me provide some context. ### The debugging process While developing a client side application (iOS, Java desktop app, or whatever), it is easy to quickly setup the project on your favorite IDE, get it running on your machine or a testing device, and debug the hell out of it as much as you like. On the other hand, it's not as trivial to hook a debugger to your backend code, and especially if it is python code running on Google App Engine (GAE). That's what I am using, and ... yeah. Linters and all help A LOT, but still, semantic issues cannot be resolved that way, obviously. I am currently going over my recently written backend code and just burying it with logging.debug('msg') statements, asserts and whatnot. This is the only thing I can think of. Is this normal for backend developers? Does logging and digging through logs usually how backend devs iterate on their applications? ### Parallelism and request driven This might be a bit more specific to GAE and other non-blocking backends, honestly. Single threaded servers don't suffer from this problem... Anyways, so when you are dealing with parallelism and everything is driven by socket events, how do backend developers usually test if their backend works? I did the most naive thing of all time, which is to open python console and using the requests library just send requests and test bit by bit. Then, I went ahead and wrote a **kivy** app to help me send the requests from a GUI interface and see what is going on, but it's taking more time to maintain the kivy app than develop the backend!! I tried to check for test frameworks for GAE, but they didn't seem easy to get, so I was wondering if they are worth it? Would I be able to simulate 100s of clients using my backend using test frameworks? What do people use these days (For GAE specifically)? ### Visualizing the \"flow\" Because of my inexperience with backend development, it is **surprisingly hard** hard for me to keep a clear image of the request/response cycle in my head. I know the basics, I have written a few backend apps, but as soon as it get just a little complex, I have to keep reminding myself where the request goes through by looking at the entry point, and all the steps till the response is made. I am sure if I were able to somehow visualize it, I don't have to keep going back over and over. Instead, I would easily know where a bug would originate, for example, or where is the best place to add a certain feature. In any case, I was wondering if there is some sort of standard \"thing\" to design the request flow. I don't know, maybe a UML diagram or something? I tried to sketch it out, but I ended up with a mess. Like, I would sketch the backend design based on the features and requirements, but then the actual logic and model would be left out. Then, I try to include those in the diagram, and it becomes overly complex and cluttered with many weird arrows and boxes. **I need something to backend development, like ER diagrams is for relational database design**. Yeah, Sorry. I talk a lot, and I am lost in this world. Help?"}
{"_id": "173004", "title": "Supporting early versions of Android", "text": "What policy do developers have when it comes to supporting earlier versions of Android? I still support , but this means that I am unable to use features such as the action bar. Over 40% of my users are still running versions below 3.0, so I feel somewhat constrained about this. The problem is that 3.x was not very successful, so 2.3.x will be with us for some time. But all new devices will now be shipping with 4.x. I am wondering whether 4.x users are more likely to pay for an app, while most 2.3.x users are just looking. **Update:** With a little effort, I have found that I am able to implement action bars and Holo themes, and still support Android 2.1. All this without recourse to an external library. The only feature that I am still stuck with is tab bars. These do work with action bars, but not in the approved style. For that I would need fragments, which requires Android 3.0. I only have two tab bars though, so it is not a big deal."}
{"_id": "57571", "title": "What do these symbols mean? I'm trying to understand them to make an app", "text": "What do the symbols `\u229e` and `\u2295` mean? I'm trying to understand them to make an app. It's on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:XXTEA.png ![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:XXTEA.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EyUUf.png)"}
{"_id": "239020", "title": "Lexer/Parser for multidimensional Languages", "text": "How does _Lexer/Parser_ work in a 2D programming language like Funciton in order to transform such an unusual source-code to the correct AST?"}
{"_id": "239024", "title": "NVI for virtual function implemented in every layer of a deep hierarchy", "text": "Suppose we have the following class hierarchy:               class Object {     public:         virtual void update() {             // Update position         }     };          class Rocket : public Object {     public:         virtual void update() {             Object::update();             // Orientate towards target         }     };          class SparklingRocket : public Rocket {     public:         virtual void update() {             Rocket::update();             // Create sparkling particles         }     };      For obvious reason this is no good idea. For instance an inheritor of any of the classes might forget to call Base::update() and the behaviour of the program would be incomplete. As I see it, functions that implement important behaviour shouldn't be made virtual, that's something better reserved for replaceable behaviour. So, we would probably change the architecture like that:               class Object {     public:         void update() {             // Update position             afterObjectUpdate();         }          protected:         virtual void afterObjectUpdate() {}     };          class Rocket : public Object {     protected:         virtual final void afterObjectUpdate() override {             // Orientate towards target             afterRocketUpdate()         }              virtual void afterRocketUpdate() {}     };          class SparklingRocket : public Rocket {     protected:         virtual final void afterRocketUpdate() {             // Create sparkling particles             afterSparklingRocketUpdate();         }         virtual void afterSparklingRocketUpdate() {}     };      This is pretty much what I want:   * The public interface of all classes is only the non-virtual update() - method   * When that method is called it is ensured that every update()-\"submethod\" is called   * Even if the one inheritor forgets to call a afterUpdate() - method, the hierarchy is stable from the base class down. This way a API could ensure its own integrity whilst in the first codeexample it would have to rely on the user to call the Base::update() method I dislike one thing though: The name of each class is part of the after...Update() methodname. That seems like codesmell to me. I think the general goal of keeping virtual call hierarchies stable can't be that uncommon. What is the commonly applied solution that I didn't come across yet?"}
{"_id": "229859", "title": "How to avoid unauthorized use of an API?", "text": "I have to design a \"widget\", a script that partners will embed in their websites to display some UI and make calls to our API. Basically it will display our data on these sites based on some IDs they provide in our API calls. **What we would like to avoid is someone abusing the API and using it to scrape the entirety of our catalog.** Each partner that embeds our script will be given a public key that must be provided when calling the API. An idea would be to ask them to append this key when loading the script, e.g.:               <script src=\"//initrode.com/widget/loader.js?key=xxxx\"></script>      That way the request for the script can be used to register the key/source IP pair, and answer subsequent API calls only if the key/IP pair matches a registered one (with a limited lifetime, and a limit on requests per day). I'm not sure it's a good idea since it's obviously security through obfuscation (someone reloading the script will completely bypass it) ; but I don't see any other way to restrict access. I cannot provide a unique key to every user, only to partners. I can't use a private-key system since all the code will be available to anyone. It's basically restricting access to a public API, i.e. contradictory in its definition. What do you think of this solution, and what would you do with these constraints?"}
{"_id": "184277", "title": "The most human language like programming language", "text": "I was wondering, there are so many articles about what the best coding languages are. C, C++ Go Haskel lisp java ML F# etc etc. But rarely i see an article about the most human like programming language. It doesn't need to be fast but be closest to the English (or other natural) language. Once it was a goal to create such languages it was seen as a form of AI. But these days AI went a different direction Now there is Siri etc, but those are application not coding languages themselves. Out of curiosity is there still somewhere a language that understand basic English to code with ?"}
{"_id": "100499", "title": "Can I safely use an open source library in an internal closed-source project?", "text": "I m thinking of using iTextSharp, which is licensed under Affero GPL, in an internal closed-source WinForms project. No one outside my company will be using it. GPL (and Affero GPL as well) typically demands that the source be provided with the binary. Given that this is an internal project, do I need to provide my employees with the source code of the project?"}
{"_id": "224684", "title": "What is dispatch? Does it imply dynamic resolution?", "text": "AFAIK, the term _dispatch_ means just a method resolution and calling. It doesn't matter whether it is static or dynamic. I saw many people are using a term like _static dispatch_ and _dynamic dispatch_. What makes me confusing is there're also some mysterious descriptions. I was trying to understand what is _multiple dispatch_ , and it seems just _selecting a subprogram by parameter types_. If I understood it correctly, there can be both of _static multiple dispatch_ and _dynamic multiple dispatch_ , and we can say C++ is providing _multiple dispatch_ via free functions. But, Wikipedia article about _multiple dispatch_ says C++ has no multiple dispatch because it doesn't have dynamic resolution of function by multiple parameters. And I really don't get conceptual difference between Common Lisp example and C++ overloaded function. Because I can't find any conceptual difference unless the term _multiple dispatch_ implies _dynamic dispatch_. And I realized that I am confusing what the _dispatching_ really is I also checked QA entry Multiple Dispatch vs. Function Overloading, and it seems the answer is premising the term _dispatch_ is basically _dynamic_. That also makes me confusing. What is correct meaning of the term _dispatch_? Does it imply _dynamic resolution_? Is this term well defined or just conventional? What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "228564", "title": "\"Match Making\" script, a way without involving the database and php?", "text": "I am writing a matchmaking script for a game through a web portal. For the past few days I have been looking into the different options and I believe the following approach would be the most optimal but I would like the opinion of others.   1. Get players match requirements through a web form (Method GET) and place the player in queue (mySQL database entry with time stamp and match requirements) for 1 hour.   2. On the submit page run an ajax script every minute that contacts a php script that checks the following:      * Is a player still in the system, if their hour is over or their ajax script has not ran in 5 minutes remove them from the database. Return time out.     * Is the player in queue flagged for a match?        * If yes then place both players in the in match table and remove both players from queue and send match variables.       * If no then continue.     * Do the remaining players match the current players requirements?     * If yes:        * Is the player the same one looking for a match.       * If no: Return match variables. Flag other player.       * If yes: Return match not found.     * If no: Return match not found.   3. When match variables are received the page will be updated with jquery, including a new ajax request that will call a new php script every 30 seconds to find out if both players accept the match. Possible ajax results are: 0 waiting, 1 accepted, 2 declined. There will also be a button that will send the players response immediately to the php script through ajax that will disable itself through jquery when pushed. When both players accept the page will then use jquery again to display the instructions for beginning the match. Is there a cleaner or less intensive way to do this with or without involving the database and php? Notes:   No code is written yet.   The system will not have more than 100 players in queue at any time. (Most likely a peak of 25)"}
{"_id": "224268", "title": "Microsoft Reciprocal License: include source even for unmodified binary?", "text": "The Microsoft Reciprocal License (here taken from the WIX toolset I use) has the following sentence: > For any file you distribute that contains code from the software (in source > code or binary format), you must provide recipients the source code to that > file along with a copy of this license Does that mean I have to provide the source code even if I only use the unmodified (original) DLL in binary format? Note that this unmodified DLL contains code from the software, although it was not compiled by me. What does _provide_ mean? Shall I provide 11 MB of source code as part of my application (install the source on hard disk) or can I provide it as an extra download as well?"}
{"_id": "99564", "title": "How can I show aptitude to prospective employers when my all my work is on internal projects?", "text": "I've been in my current position for a long time (10 years) and in that time, I feel like I've performed well as a designer, system architect, and programmer. However, all that work has been on internal projects that aren't accessible from the outside world. I see a lot of advice like this that suggests 'If you can literally point to something and say \"I wrote this\" it's very impressive'. What about if you can 'literally point to' nothing at all, because while you're a passionate programmer who (as the classic Joel-ism puts it) \"is smart and gets things done\", all those things are invisible? Do I need to start frantically committing to open-source projects? Start a \"real world\" (not corporate-internal) blog? Frankly, I spent most of my 10 years happy here, and only recently have considered leaving for greener pastures. Am I going to be sunk before I start looking because of my focus on work my current employer, at the expense of my \"public presence\"?"}
{"_id": "16654", "title": "What corners have have you cut at work?", "text": "Have you ever let your coding standards slip to meet deadlines or save time? I'll start with a trivial example: We came up with a coding standard at work around which brackets/formatting to use and so on. I ignore it and use the auto-format tool in netbeans."}
{"_id": "74857", "title": "Are IT and software industry getting more and more litigious?", "text": "The last couple of years I've been observing an exponential growth in the news related IT companies and individuals taking their cases to court, on one side, and the questions concerning legal matters everywhere on the web, on the other side. I very much doubt people and companies have suddenly started stealing each other's ideas, but something is different. Is it that: 1) IT people on average are getting more legally-educated? 2) Some changes in legal systems of various countries I have missed are causing that phenomenon? 3) IT is now being perceived as the source of potentially unlimited revenue and the trolls and lawyers have turned its attention to it? 4) Any other development in place? * * * The **first part** of my question is **how should an average developer react to this perturbing trend** : a) Continue on as before and ignore everything legal b) Educate themselves in local and international laws related to IT c) Always get a professional legal advice before venturing to do anything programming related d) For any kind of project register an LLC to protect himself even for the most basic and harmless projects * * * A **second part** is a bigger one: **how does this all affect IT companies and start-ups** : e) Is any new company at potential risk? If so, is this risk local like in US with all of its software patents or global? f) Can any new company survive without getting lawyers from the start and applying for all possible patents? g) Is it a risk factor for the registration of a new company to choose a location which supports software patents in its legal code? * * * I admit my question is complex but the matter at hand is even more complex. If you see any restructuring potential, it'd be welcome. I'm also seeking any input either global or related to local markets. We'll figure out the common ground from particular cases."}
{"_id": "221004", "title": "Is there any sorting algorithm which is not inherently sequential and is task distributable?", "text": "After googling for a couple hours, I came to a conclusion that all sorting algorithms are inherently sequential which can be data distributed but not task distributable. Is there any algorithm which is not inherently sequential and is task distributable?"}
{"_id": "154677", "title": "Migration of PowerBuilder application to multiplatform", "text": "I developed a client/server application with PowerBuilder in the past for medical clinics and done maintenance for it until now. Now, some clients are asking me to develop a release for Mac/Linux and need some advice about what programming language/technology is best suited for it and the learning curve. It\u2019s not a very very big program but I\u2019m the only developer and have done it in my spare time. PowerBuilder is very productive for this kind of projects (database centric), but it\u2019s not multiplatform and it\u2019s hard to sell PowerBuilder application now days (web, .NET, java sells a lot better with his marketing). My programming skills:   * I studied C and C++ in the past (university) but never used it on real projects   * Have some Java experience but not in desktop applications   * Some experience with Ruby on Rails for web projects   * Good skills with PowerBuilder and C# (.NET) (there are my main developing languages) My first dilemma is if I change the desktop application to a web interface, but I think the user will lose some user-experience, and some doctors don\u2019t have a clinic (they are alone at home with my software). I think installing a web application (with webserver) for one user will be overwhelming. If I continue developing desktop application, what is at the moment a good framework/toolset to learn having my skills? Somebody has had similar experiences?"}
{"_id": "154676", "title": "Etiquette when asking questions in an IRC channel", "text": "Many larger OSS projects maintain IRC channels to discuss their usage or development. When I get stuck on using a project, having tried and failed to find information on the web, one of the ways I try to figure out what to do is to go into the IRC channel and ask. But my questions are invariably completely ignored by the people in the channel. If there was silence when I entered, there will still be silence. If there is an ongoing conversation, it carries on unperturbed. I leave the channel open for a few hours, hoping that maybe someone will eventually engage me, but nothing happens. So I worry that I'm being rude in some way I don't understand, or breaking some unspoken rule and being ignored for it. I try to make my questions polite, to the point, and grammatical, and try to indicate that I've tried the obvious solutions and why they didn't work. I understand that I'm obviously a complete stranger to the people on the channel, but I'm not sure how to fix this. Should I just lurk in the channel, saying nothing, for a week? That seems absurd too. A typical message I send might be \"Hello all - I've been trying to get Foo to work, but I keep on getting a BarException. I tried resetting the Quux, but this doesn't seem to do anything. Does anyone have a suggestion on what I could try?\""}
{"_id": "69576", "title": "SQL Auto Formatting and Auto Capatilize in Vim", "text": "I'd like to use vim for writing SQL queries, but I haven't figured out yet how to get two key features that I use all the time in programs like SQL Yog. I usually just start up an instance of Yog in the background, cut-and-paste my SQL into it, hit F12 which auto-formats the whole thing. All the SQL keywords are automatically capitalized as soon as the text is pasted. I then copy it back into whatever other tool I'm using (often SQL Query Browser at work) and go from there. The benefits of these two features are worth the extra effort. Anyone know how I can set up vim to do this? I still may need to cut and paste back into Query Browser, which is acceptable to me, but I'd like to stick with vim for all my editing. Thanks."}
{"_id": "69570", "title": "How does enterprise level Flash development work?", "text": "I started working at a PHP shop and occasionally we have to go and tweak some legacy Flash and actionscript code. It's a small shop; we have about six developers. It seems almost every time we pull a flash file down from SVN, we run into some weird dependency, either with fonts, code suddenly deciding not to compile, or version incompatibility with Actionscript and Flash MX/CS3/4/5. None of the folks who created the flash components are still working for the company (nor are any of the dependencies documented), so we have to slog through the code and it takes FOREVER. This got me thinking: how does enterprise level Flash development work? What tools are used? Is it possible to allow for many people to be working on the same Flash file, and be able to unload that file to a new machine with a minimal setup hassle?"}
{"_id": "84805", "title": "What is a combined fragment in a UML Sequence Diagram?", "text": "Everything is in the question. I just discover this new feature and I don't really understand what it stands for. I know that it can represent loop, alternative in the sequence diagram. Can someone explain me what it is?"}
{"_id": "211448", "title": "Is it okay to check in changes to import statement on opensource projects on a commit?", "text": "There are some guidelines out there (eg scala guidelines) and I'm wondering if it's okay to do some tidying up when committing other changes or if the commits should be more focused and to the point? Eg - remove unused, reorder per style guide. It might make it harder to read the pull request - but it will improve the project quality at least a little. What's your general rule of thumb? I'm not sure if I'm breaking unspoken taboos."}
{"_id": "201388", "title": "How to solve the problem of nested comments", "text": "It appears in not just one language that comments can't be nested. Do you have a good solution for this problem? One workaround in C/C++ and Java is to only use the single-line comment but it becomes impossible then to comment out a larger block. I'm facing something like this:               </li><!--                     <li><!-- Save -->      So I must manually go through and edit the comments. Can you advice how we should handle this, in many languages? I'm not sure but maybe python has a solution for this with the `'''` way that might be able to include a `#` comment in python? `"}
{"_id": "107601", "title": "Strictness in programming methods among Stack Overflow users", "text": "I've been a member of Stack Overflow for a couple of weeks now and have answered questions and read others answers, mostly in C/C++. True, I have learned about some things. For example, `undefined behavior` which in the past, knowing what's going on from inside the CPU to compiler code generation, all those \"seemed\" defined and worked as I expected them to. I understand now how conforming to rules such as not evoking undefined behavior are good for you, even though you know in your PC, in your compiler it works without a flaw. However, at times I got negative points for answers involving using macros or certain codes that makes me wonder why among people here, there are such very strict rules. For example, almost any time you talk about macros, people say \"use functions instead\". I understand that functions are better in many ways, but there are many places macros are more fit. Are macros so frowned upon here? Another example is, if for any reason you write a simple `for` loop to find a character, you get a lot of comments telling you to \"use prewritten functions instead\" or you get negative points for suggesting the loops. I understand the functions in standard library have all kinds of error checking in them and probably are most efficient in general, but is it such a crime to write a simple loop for your own specific case? What I'm asking is more general than these mere examples. It seems to me that among the users of Stack Overflow, there is \"defined\" (if not written) standard of coding in C/C++ and that's the only way they accept it. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm not saying that at all. I learned a lot myself about things that made my code not portable. However, almost all of those things turned out to be too much restriction. Things such as \"if you do like this, your code won't work in computers that don't encode characters in ASCII\". Do you think people will always want their code to run on all possible computers? Isn't that a bit too much? A simpler, faster method that you know works on computers you know your program would run on, seems to me a better solution than a completely portable one. There are great codes out there that seems to me if they were judged here, they would get the worst results. Codes such as the Linux Kernel, implementation of STL that comes with g++, Mesa3D's implementation of OpenGL and so on. Look at these codes and your eyes are flooded with macros and bitwise operations. Do you condemn the programmers of the Linux Kernel too? Would you rather have your OpenGL library drop framerates by 10% but possibly run on a 16bit microprocessor too? So, is what occurred to me true? Are people in Stack Overflow so strict on judging others' codes? Or have I just been unlucky enough to stumble upon a minor few? Edit: I'm a master's student in robotics, my bachelors was in software engineering. My master's project was library/kernel module for a project funded by european union and through that I got offered PhD (in a subject that has to do with writing some software). I also code for fun. It's been 15 years that I'm familiar with C/C++ and 8 years that I actively code. (What I mean is, I didn't start programming just yesterday) Update: After doing some research I found out there are a lot of C programmers, if not most, who hate C++ and a lot of C++ programmers, if not most, who hate C. As someone who finds beauty in both languages and maintains a coding style of a mixture of the two, I find those hatreds absurd. However, as it seems the majority of the programmers in either language have this hatred at least to some extent, I no longer see a reason for continuing this argument. I came to the conclusion that I would write the answers they way I see fit, and _just ignore everyone when they start throwing a fit because I didn't use a`vector` or something_ (Seth Carnegie, the 7th comment). However, I would put a note on the bottom saying: _This code is not meant for copy-paste. There may be lacking error checking. This is just to demonstrate how blabla works, and not necessarily the easiest way to do it._ and other legal stuff. You know, like what you see in a EULA."}
{"_id": "21128", "title": "When does it become overkill?", "text": "First off, I apologize cause I don't know how to make a community thread; so someone help me out please. As a developer, across many platforms, technologies and even on an infrastructure level; I always find myself asking, when am I doing TOO much?!? It's been a never ending learning process, since I started. One (1) thing I learned is that requirements are barely valid for an extended period of time, and as such a little foresight may go a long way. But where is the balance, and how do you know when you're losing time, not gaining it?!"}
{"_id": "46461", "title": "Best practice with branching source code and application lifecycle", "text": "We are a small ISV shop and we usually ship a new version of our products every month. We use Subversion as our code repository and Visual Studio 2010 as our IDE. I am aware a lot of people are advocating Mercurial and other distributed source control systems but at this point I do not see how we could benefit from these, but I might be wrong. Our main problem is how to keep branches and main trunk in sync. Here is how we do things today:   1. Release new version (automatically create a tag in Subversion)   2. Continue working on the main trunk that will be released next month And the cycle repeats every month and works perfectly. The problem arises when an urgent service release needs to be released. We cannot release it from the main trunk (2) as it is under heavy development and it is not stable enough to be released urgently. In such case we do the following:   1. Create a branch from the tag we created in step (1)   2. Bug fix   3. Test and release   4. Push the change back to main trunk (if applicable) Our biggest problem is merging these two (branch with main). In most cases we cannot rely on automatic merging because e.g.:   * a lot of changes has been made to main trunk   * merging complex files (like Visual Studio XML files etc.) does not work very well   * another developer / team made changes you do not understand and you cannot just merge it So what you think is the best practice to keep these two different versions (branch and main) in sync. What do you do?"}
{"_id": "219921", "title": "Database design/relationship for threading messages", "text": "What's the database design or business logic for creating an app for messaging between users? I am having difficulties with choosing how to approach the relationship between each Conversation of User Thread. I show this figure, but it was really hard to grasp the concept ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tfvlB.png) How all this threading message works (like Gmail or Facebook)?"}
{"_id": "219927", "title": "Representation of time expanded graph", "text": "I want to build a time expanded graph with time discretization Dt that starts at t = 0 and ends at t = T where between the node (n1, t) and the node (n2, t') is an arc if and only if (n1, n2) were connected in the original graph. How can this be implemented in pseudo-code? The problem I'm stuck on is how to pass from the original graph to the time expanded one. (I use C++ and Boost libraries to write the code)"}
{"_id": "240497", "title": "image processing algorithm to find solid square vs square outline in video frames", "text": "I am working on a system to detect an \"embedded\" 12 bit number within a series of frames that are recorded inside an mp4 file. The point of it is to automatically identify the \"take\", and also trim the start of the file to a common offset for synchronization with other files. this is typically done manually, but the nature of the project demands it needs to happen as much as possible automatically. It's not possible to set the timecode in the camera. The number is generated by a smartphone app, which I have coded a prototype for, but as I am new to image processing, I need some help figuring out how to do the other side of the equation. this algorithm, for what it's worth doesn't need to be real time, and will probably happen in a pc based command line utility, not that it's that relevant to the algorithm itself. My original idea was to use a QR Code, but I found the resolution and artifacts from the mp4 stream were too much to cope with it in all lighting situations and frame rates. So I came up with the idea of sending the number serially, by encoding it in a distinctive series of squares, using RGB colours, which seems to be efficiently handled without too many \"artifacts\" at speed by the mp4 encoder. (This I am determining by manually looking at the video frame by frame, not programmatically) Which whilst it is a slow way to send the number, it can be accurately synced to a known time datum, and the precise frame extrapolated from there (I take precisely 1 seconds to send the 12 bits), which most frame rates can keep up with.) To check the images are \"human readable\" I have extracted frames, and I am confident that it is now a fairly trivial task to analyse each frame to decode each bit of the number. so breaking it into manageable chunks, here is what I need to be able to do:   * Detect a \"solid\" red square   * Detect 4 squares within each other that are red,green,blue, and white    * Detect 4 squares within each other that are red,green,blue, and black  The last 2 would effectively be the same algorithm, as i would just change parameters. there's an variation on that theme, but it's not that relevant to the algorithm, i just means swapping the blue and green around, to detect the frame rate. **Solid red square** ![red square solid](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1wZKM.jpg) **Red square, a green square, and a blue square, white square:** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vhbKm.jpg) **Red square, a green square, and a blue square, black square:** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wyei2.jpg) The algorithm would need to be able to work independent of the previous frame, but would need to return the bounding rect of the red square in each case, for validation purposes. I could in theory attempt this myself, but what i am not sure how to handle is the fact the squares might not be exactly \"level\". aside from rotating the image multiple times by a few degrees, I can't think how to detect it accurately."}
{"_id": "124285", "title": "Hobbyist transitioning to earn money on paid work?", "text": "I got into hobbyist Python programming some years ago on a whim, having never programmed before other than BASIC way back when, and little by little have cobbled together a, in my opinion, nice little desktop application that I might try to get out there in some fashion someday. It's roughly 15,000 logical lines of code, and includes use of Python, wxPython, SQLite, and a number of other libraries, works on Win and Linux (maybe Mac, untested) and I've gotten some good feedback about the application's virtues from non- programmer friends. I've also done a small application for data collection for animal behavior experiments, and an _ad hoc_ tool to help generate a web page...and I've authored some tutorials. I consider my Python skills to be appreciably limited, my SQL skills to be very limited, but I'm not totally out to sea, either (e.g. I did FizzBuzz in a few minutes, did a \"Monty Hall Dilemma\" simulator in some minutes, etc.). I also put a strong premium on quality user experience; that is, the look and feel matters much to me and the software looks quite good, I feel. I know no other programming languages yet. I also know the basics of HTML/CSS (not considering them programming languages) and have created an artist's web page (that was described by a friend as \"incredibly slick\"...it's really not, though), and have a scientific background. I'm curious: Aside from directly selling my software, **what's _roughly_ possible--if anything--in terms of earning either side money on gigs, or actually getting hired at some level in the software industry, for someone with this general skill set?**"}
{"_id": "162237", "title": "Object Oriented Programming: getters/setters or logical names", "text": "I'm currently thinking about an interface to a class I'm writing. This class contains styles for a character, for example whether the character is bold, italic, underlined, etc. I've been debating with myself for two days whether I should use getters/setters or logical names for the methods which change the values to these styles. While I tend to prefer logical names, it does mean writing code that is not as efficient and not as logical. Let me give you an example. I've got a class `CharacterStyles` which has member variables `bold`, `italic`, `underline` (and some others, but I'll leave them out to keep it simple). The easiest way to allow other parts of the program to access these variables, would be to write getter/setter methods, so that you can do `styles.setBold(true)` and `styles.setItalic(false)`. But I do not like this. Not only because a lot of people say that getters/setters break encapsulation (is it really that bad?), but mostly because it doesn't seem logical to me. I expect to style a character through one method, `styles.format(\"bold\", true)` or something like that, but not through all these methods. There is one problem though. Since you can't access an object member variable by the contents of a string in C++, I would either have to write a big if- statement/switch container for all styles, or I would have to store the styles in an associative array (map). I can't figure out what the best way is. One moment I think I should write the getters/setters, and the next moment I lean towards the other way. My question is: what would you do? And why would you do that?"}
{"_id": "81355", "title": "How does a large company make rookie mistakes which leave security holes?", "text": "Sony was recently hacked with a SQL injection and the passwords of their user's was stored in plain text. These are rookie mistakes. In such a large company, how does this pass QA? How do they not have better teams than to know better than this? The sheer size of the company that was hacked makes this different. It affects all of us because we all may one day find ourselves on a team that is responsible for something like this, and then we get the ax. So what are the factors that lead to this, and how do we prevent them?"}
{"_id": "240498", "title": "Javascript based application controller in Javascript-less environments", "text": "I just got done watching an informative Box tech talk by Nicholas Zakas on a javascript architecture for web development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKouqShWI4o&feature=youtu.be This image, which I acquired from http://alanlindsay.me/kerneljs/index.html#nav-what , will give you an overview of the architecture: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/oKTpl.png) However, to give you a brief summary and help you avoid mundane stuff, the Kernel is basically an Application Controller which makes up the C in the MVC. Now I obviously have to take care of the possibility of an environment where Javascript is disabled. I was wondering if that effectively meant developing an application controller in a language such as PHP and maintaining it in parallel to the one written in Javascript along with the ensuing commands/modules? There's something smelly about that, is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "135309", "title": "What precisely does \"Applicative\" mean in computer science?", "text": "I know what an \"applicative Functor\" is, but I've been reading papers recently that refer to other \"applicative\" things, particularly \"purely applicative data structures\". The trouble is, I'm not sure precisely what \"applicative\" means in this context, and Google has so far failed me. I can get a general English (ie useless) definition of \"applicative\", but as soon as I add \"computer science\" to the search all I get is definitions of computer science. I have a vague sense that this relates to keeping them pesky effects in their place, but I could use a precise definition. I found this - http://foldoc.org/applicative \\- but I'm not sure \"applicative language == functional language\" really helps."}
{"_id": "180585", "title": "Are there any OO-principles that are practically applicable for Javascript?", "text": "Javascript is a prototype-based object oriented language but can become class- based in a variety of ways, either by:   * Writing the functions to be used as classes by yourself   * Use a nifty class system in a framework (such as mootools Class.Class)   * Generate it from Coffeescript In the beginning I tended do write class based code in Javascript and heavily relied on it. Recently however I've been using Javascript frameworks, and NodeJS, that go away from this notion of classes and rely more on the dynamic nature of the code such as:   * Async programming, using and writing writing code that uses callbacks/events   * Loading modules with RequireJS (so that they don't leak to the global namespace)   * Functional programming concepts such as list comprehensions (map, filter, etc.)   * Among other things What I gathered so far is that most OO principles and patterns I've read (such as SOLID and GoF patterns) were written for class-based OO languages in mind like Smalltalk and C++. But are there any of them applicable for a prototype- based language such as Javascript? Are there any principles or patterns that are just specific to Javascript? Principles to avoid _callback hell_ , _evil eval_ , or any other anti-patterns etc."}
{"_id": "24485", "title": "Design Patterns for Javascript", "text": "A lot of web frameworks have a MVC-style layout to code and approaching problems. What are some good similar paradigms for JavaScript? I'm already using a framework (jQuery) and unobtrusive js, but that still doesn't address the problem I run into when I have more complex web apps that require a lot of javascript, I tend to just end up with a bunch of functions in a single, or possibly a few files. What's a better way to approach this?"}
{"_id": "158373", "title": "JavaScript application design patterns", "text": "I need to write a PhoneGap application with JavaScript and I'm thinking of the code design patterns. I've read some books of JavaScript design patterns but can't really see the advantages/disadvantages on them and I think I don't understand the implementation and usage right. I would like to have some opinions of which might suit my needs best. I'd like the code to be readable and maintainable. The application itself is quite small and simple. It has a player management (add/remove), a game management (add/remove players from a team, start/stop/reset a stopwatch). In last app I created I had over 30 named functions in a global scope which I think is a big no no. So, now I want to make things right, and was thinking of either using an object literal or a module pattern... something like this perhaps:               var MYAPP = {         init: function() {             $(document).ready(function() {                 MYAPP.bind();              });         },              bind: function() {             // Bind jQuery click and page events         },              player: {             add:            function(name) { ... },             remove:         function(name) { ... }         },              team: {             addPlayer:      function(name) { ... },             removePlayer:   function(name) { ... }         },              game: {             create:         function() { ... },             startTime:      function() { ... },             stopTime:       function() { ... },             resetTime:      function() { ... }         }     };          document.addEventListener('deviceready', MYAPP.init, false);      ... or perhaps this?               var MYAPP = {         init: function() {             $(document).ready(function() {                 MYAPP.bind();              });         },              bind: function() {             // Bind jQuery click and page events         }     }          var PLAYER = (function () {              // Some private variables         var privateVar, privateMethod;              return {             add: function (name) { ... },             remove: function (name) { ... }         };          }());          document.addEventListener('deviceready', MYAPP.init, false);"}
{"_id": "215586", "title": "From Java to Javascript?", "text": "I am primarily a Java programmer. Because of its OO principles and the general paradigm of Java programming, like wrapping things in static variables, and having things return specific types, heavily aids me in \"visualizing\" a program. Instead of thinking of a big program, I can, instead, focus on smaller organized parts of my eventual program, and add functionality and build up from there. Thus, I have trouble programming in other languages. Or at least, I have not been able to program in the same ability as I do in Java compared to other languages. I know Javascript has OO principles, so I'd like to learn this language in a OO-based like I would program with Java. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "198228", "title": "Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript. Is there life without it?", "text": "At our company we have pretty large body of PrototypeJS based JavaScript code, which we are porting to jQuery for several reasons (not really important here). I'm trying to set up coding guidelines to make/keep things tidy during the porting. One observation from wading through the prototype based implementation is that a lot of code is written in OOP style (using Prototype's `Class.create`), but the code is not \"object oriented\" in spirit. The general pattern I've seen: one \"constructor\" which you are expected to call (but not call twice, because the constructor uses hardcoded DOM id's), a bunch of other \"functions\" and event handlers, which you are not expected to call (but the because there is no \"private\" in JavaScript, you don't know that) and data sharing between all these functions through `this`. Seen from the caller's point of view there is just one \"callable\" and nothing else. I'm starting to believe that _OOP in JavaScript can and maybe should be avoided_ in a lot of cases. At least for our use case, which is not the next generation Goole Wave UI, but simply put: a bit of AJAX based enhancements, registering some event handlers here and there, minor DOM manipulations and such.   * the functionality we need seems to be implementable just fine in the typical jQuery non-OOP way, using closure magic to obtain encapsulation and privateness. As side effect, the minification efficiency of the ported code is much better.   * OOP in JavaScript is non-traditional and confusing if you are coming from a \"traditional\" background. There are a lot of attempts and frameworks to approximate traditional OOP, but IMHO this makes things even more confusing and fragile.    * One thing that Crockford's \"JavaScript the good parts\" taught me, is that the true power of Javascript lies in function scopes and closures, much less in OOP patterns. I'm wondering if there is wider support for this feeling that OOP in JavaScript doesn't really cut it as the sacred mantra, like it is in other languages/platforms. And, in extension, what kind of non-OOP/closure based patterns are much more preferable."}
{"_id": "202443", "title": "Go with an object-oriented perspective", "text": "My OOP JavaScript question is at the very bottom if you want to skip my introduction. In an answer to  the question Accessing variables from other functions without using global variables, there's a comment about OOP that says: > If there's a chance that you will reuse this code, then I would probably > make the effort to go with an object-oriented perspective. Using the global > namespace can be dangerous -- you run the risk of hard to find bugs due to > variable names that get reused. Typically I start by using an object- > oriented approach for anything more than a simple callback so that I don't > have to do the re-write thing. Any time that you have a group of related > functions in javascript, I think, it's a candidate for an object-oriented > approach. That rings true to me from what I've seen some of my old OOP colleague. There are lots of different approaches and different voices leading in different directions. Since I am a front end developer and UI designer, I am a little confused. **Building up to the question** I've heard from a variety of places that global variables are inherently nasty and evil, when doing some non-object oriented Javascript, and that there are three choices available to make a variable from one function, visible and usable by another function, e.g., function A to be visible to function B; or, a variable of Function A to be passed and usable within function B.   1. make it a global   2. make it an object property, or   3. pass it as a parameter when calling B from A. I've read about namespaces, currying, and other approaches... **Question:** With that all said, I was wondering what's the best OOP structure or best code practice in JavaScript that keeps things encapsulated and adds greatest security from having your variables exposed to manipulation?"}
{"_id": "190006", "title": "What is the best practice for method parameter validation in a library?", "text": "I develop a game library in javascript, containing many classes. I hesitate on the behavior that I should follow concerning method parameter validation: **Should I check the validity of parameters passed to each method ?** By example, when a method take only a number between 0 and 100 in parameter, should I check that the value is correct? I have dozens of classes, each with dozens of methods. For a simple getter, I can have more than half lines code only used for checking parameters. Add checks makes my code less maintainable, more heavy. Seeing that it's a library, destined to be used by many other programmers, checking parameters can avoid many mistakes and bugs, and would be a appreciated. So, how do other javascript libraries, handle this and what is the best solution?"}
{"_id": "200162", "title": "I'm trying to figure out which functions from one C library are being used by C project. Does anyone have a simple solution?", "text": "To be specific, I want to know which function/types in libpri and being used in the Asterisk project. I'm not traditionally a C programmer, but I know some basic stuff because I took a class in college."}
{"_id": "41960", "title": "What is a good one-stop-shop for understanding software licensing information?", "text": "I've learned a fair amount about the various different software licensing models and what those models mean for my own software project. However, I'd like to make sure I understand as many of them as possible for making decisions on how to license my own software and in what scenarios I can safely use software under a licensing model. Do you have a good recommendation for a book/site etc.. that has this information in one location?"}
{"_id": "41968", "title": "Maintaining a main project line with satellite projects", "text": "Some projects I work on have a main line of features, but are customizable per customer. Up until now those customizations have been implemented as preferences, but now there are 2 problems with the system...   1. The settings page is getting out of control with features. There are probably some improvements that could be made to the settings UI, but regardless, it is quite cumbersome setting up new instances for new customers.   2. Customers have started asking for customizations which would be more easily maintained as separate threads instead of having tons of customizations code. Optimally I am envisioning some kind of source control in which features are either in the main project line and customizations per customer are maintained in a repo per customer set up. The customizations per project would need to remain separate but if a bug is found and fixed in a particular project, I would need to percolate the fix back to the main line and into all of the other customer repos. The problem is I have never seen this done before, and before spending time trying to find source control that can accommodate this scenario and implement it, I figure it best to ask if anyone has something less complicated or knows of a source control product which can handle this with very little hair pulling."}
{"_id": "17525", "title": "What should I study to 'learn' Comp Sci?", "text": "[This question was originally asked on Stack Overflow, but recommended to move the question here.] I can't find anything quite like the question I'm about to ask, so please forgive me if there's something just like it already, please feel free to point me in the right direction. It'll take a bit of background explaining too, please forgive me for that. [backstory] Basically, I graduated from University about 18 months ago with a degree in Business Information Systems and Japanese. The Japanese took up half of the degree so the BIS was only joint. I only learned PHP in terms of languages and basically no computing theory - everything was vocational (Networking, programming basics, CMS development, Office and VBA and then loads of Business theory courses). Since this, I decided to teach myself C# and ASP.Net and try to get a position as a programmer. I created an online shop style website and a small CRM application in Windows Forms to both teach myself and build a portfolio, and luckily I managed to snag a developer position. Bad side? I'm the only developer at my company. Now don't get me wrong, in the last year I've learned loads and loads, I did some devpt. before Uni so knew the basics anyway, but it was very much a \"learning from books\" job - every night. Now then... I am now at a point where I'm building software on a regular basis, making good judgements for time scales, and have even been told my code and methodology are good by other professionals that have been in the game longer than me, and they have offered me jobs. [/backstory] What this whole thing boils down to, is that I now want to study up on the topics I'll have missed by not doing CS. More importantly, could you recommend books / free online courses? I want to learn about Computer Science theory, not just better coding. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "244444", "title": "Organization of DLL linked functions", "text": "This is a code organization question. I got my basic code working but when I expand it, it will be terrible. I have a DLL which I don't have a `.lib` for. Therefore I have to use the whole `LoadLibrary()/GetProcAddress()` combo. It works great. But this DLL that I'm referencing has 100+ functions. My current process is: 1) Typedef a type for the function. E.g.: `typedef short(_stdcall *type1)(void);` 2) Assign a function name that I want to use such as `type1 function_1;` 3) Load the DLL, then do something like: `function_1 = (type1)GetProcAddress(hinstLib, \"_mangled_funcName@5\");` Normally I would like to do all of my function definitions in a header file but because I have to use the load library function, its not that easy. The code will be a mess. Right now I'm doing (1) and (2) in a header file and was considering making a function in another .cpp file to do the load library and dump all of the (3)'s in there. I considered using a namespace for the functions so I can use them in the main function and not have to pass over to the other function. Any other tips on how to organize this code? My goals are to be able to use `function_1` as a regular function in the main code. If I have to a `ref::function_1` that would be okay but I would prefer to avoid it. This code for all practical purposes is just plain C at the moment."}
{"_id": "234823", "title": "Release an open-source project under multiple licenses", "text": "Consider this license I wrote for my software:               Copyright 2014, [my name]          The author(s) of this software intends to provide the users with the     maximum amount of freedom. As such, this software may be used under     any one of the following licenses:          1. MIT: [link to the license]     2. Apache 2.0: [link to the license]     3. BSD 2-clause: [link to the license]     4. BSD 3-clause: [link to the license]          Or, it can be considered released into the public domain in jurisdictions     where this is possible.          In any case, the software comes with absolutely no warranty.      Do you guys see any potential problems with this licence, especially from a legal point of view? Does it succeed in providing the users with the maximum amount of freedom?"}
{"_id": "244446", "title": "Why DbContext object shouldn't be referred in Service Layer?", "text": "I've been looking for some implementations of `Service Layer` and `Controller` interaction in blogs and in some open source projects. All of them seem to refer `DbContext` object in repository classes but avoided to use in service classes. Service classes essentially using a `IQueryable<T>` references of `DbSet<T>`. I want to know why this practice is good and why `DbContext` shouldn't have a reference in Service Layer."}
{"_id": "244449", "title": "What is the origin of the negative term \"legacy code\"", "text": "Everyone talks about legacy code in software development and I have heard the term over the last ten years used to paint any codebase as being bad. Where did this term, which has such powerful connotations to programmers alike originate? I am sure there must be some book on software development that pioneered this term. I would love to locate the origin of the term \"legacy code\"."}
{"_id": "162587", "title": "Version control and project management for freelancing jobs", "text": "Are there version control and project management tools which \"work well\" with freelancing jobs, if I want to keep my customer involved in the project at all times? What concerns me is that repository hosting providers have their fees based on the \"number of users\", which I feel is the number which will constantly increase as I finish one project after another. For each project, for example, I would have to add permissions to my contractor to allow him to pull the source code and collaborate. So how does that work in practice? Do I \"remove\" the contractor from the project once it's done? This means I basically state that I offer no support and bugfixes anymore. Or do freelances end up paying more and more money for these services? Do you use such online services, or you host them by yourself? Or do you simply send your code to your customer by e-mail in weekly iterations?"}
{"_id": "255916", "title": "Does the head of any linked list must contain any data", "text": "Is there any rule that says the head of any linked list should contain data. Is it because by doing it so we save a space for one node. Why for some implementation of head contains data and for other it doesn't."}
{"_id": "204488", "title": "Why does OCaml's (and F#'s) type inference algorithm need tagging functions as recursive?", "text": "From _Real World OCaml_ (beta): > OCaml distinguishes between non-recursive definitions (using `let`) and > recursive definitions (using `let rec`) largely for technical reasons: the > type-inference algorithm needs to know when a set of function definitions > are mutually recursive, and for reasons that don't apply to a pure language > like Haskell, these have to be marked explicitly by the programmer. Why is this the case (what is the technical reason, exactly), and why does a pure language like Haskell \u201cget away\u201d with not having to tag functions as recursive?"}
{"_id": "7993", "title": "How do you get your product owner more engaged on agile projects?", "text": "During iteration retrospectives on agile projects, one of the topics that comes up most often for us is that the product owner is (or product owners are) not available or engaged in the project at a day to day level. It seems to be a common theme that customers are unwilling to \"give up\" the necessary amount of their product owner's time to the project, but instead have them answer questions via email, or during product demos only. This has the effect of increasing the length of the feedback cycle and making the project less effective. Have you had to overcome this hurdle? How did you do it?"}
{"_id": "152533", "title": "Should a server \"be lenient\" in what it accepts and \"discard faulty input silently\"?", "text": "I was under the impression that by now everyone agrees this maxim was a mistake. But I recently saw this answer which has a \"be lenient\" comment upvoted 137 times (as of today). In my opinion, the leniency in what browsers accept was the direct cause of the utter mess that HTML and some other web standards were a few years ago, and have only recently begun to properly crystallize out of that mess. The way I see it, being lenient in what you accept _will_ lead to this. The second part of the maxim is _\"discard faulty input silently, without returning an error message unless this is required by the specification\"_ , and this feels borderline offensive. Any programmer who has banged their head on the wall when something fails silently will know what I mean. So, am I completely wrong about this? Should my program be lenient in what it accepts and swallow errors silently? Or am I mis-interpreting what this is supposed to mean? * * * The original question said \"program\", and I take everyone's point about that. It can make sense for programs to be lenient. What I really meant, however, is APIs: interfaces exposed to _other programs_ , rather than people. HTTP is an example. The protocol is an interface that only other programs use. People never directly provide the dates that go into headers like \"If-Modified- Since\". So, the question is: should the server implementing a standard be lenient and allow dates in several other formats, in addition to the one that's actually required by the standard? I believe the \"be lenient\" is supposed to apply to this situation, rather than human interfaces. If the server is lenient, it might seem like an overall improvement, but I think in practice it only leads to client implementations that end up _relying_ on the leniency and thus failing to work with another server that's lenient in slightly different ways. So, should a server exposing some API be lenient or is that a very bad idea? * * * Now onto lenient handling of user input. Consider YouTrack (a bug tracking software). It uses a language for text entry that is reminiscent of Markdown. Except that it's \"lenient\". For example, writing               - foo     - bar     - baz      is _not_ a documented way of creating a bulleted list, and yet it worked. Consequently, it ended up being used a lot throughout our internal bugtracker. Next version comes out, and this lenient feature starts working slightly differently, breaking a bunch of lists that (mis)used this (non)feature. The documented way to create bulleted lists still works, of course. So, should my software be lenient in what _user inputs_ it accepts?"}
{"_id": "235618", "title": "Environment-aware Code", "text": "There are situations where the deployed environment ( **development** , **test** , or **production** , for example) might dictate the outcome of certain actions. For example, perhaps a successful \"user registration\" process will send a notification email to the new user. Environment-specific actions:   * **Development:** Do not actually send the email. Email logs will provide enough for developers.   * **Test:** Send all emails to some testEnvironment@domain.com inbox and not to the user's address.   * **Production:** Send the email to the user. I have listed three possible solutions below. ## **CurrentEnvironment configuration value** One way of solving this, which I have seen a lot, is to have some configuration value (whether it be in some xml config file or in the database) such as `CurrentEnvironment` which specifies the current environment in which the system is deployed to. This would require case/if checks in code to determine the desired action:               if(CurrentEnvironment == Environment.Test)     {         // Send all emails to some testEnvironment@domain.com inbox.     }     else if(CurrentEnvironment == Environment.Production)     {         // Send the email to the user.     }      This is not a maintainable solution in my opinion. ## **Wipe all email addresses** Another method is to run a change script, once restoring a database, to do the following:   * Remove all user email addresses (in development),   * Replace all user email addresses with testEnvironment@domain.com (in test) This is an extra step in the release process which, if missed, could have some dangerous results. Additionally, this solution only fixes the email problem. There are perhaps many other situations where the environment matters. ## **Config transformation** Another idea is to use web.config transformations. This way the config can be different for different environments. For example, we will have the following configs:                web.config        web.Development.config        web.Test.config        web.Production.config      The transformation can then use different \"providers\" or set certain attributes according to the environment. For example, an `overrideDeliveryAddress` can be set in the `web.Test.config`:               <EmailService>       <providers>         <add            name=\"EmailServiceProvider\"           type=\"CustomProviders.EmailServiceProvider, CustomProviders\"           smtp=\"smtp.domain.com\" password=\"xyz\"           overrideDeliveryAddress=\"testEnvironment@domain.com\"           enabled=\"true\"         />      </providers>     </EmailService>      This solution requires much more work, but is more maintainable and less invasive. Code is now environment-oblivious. What other ways can the above be achieved? Should code EVER be environment aware?"}
{"_id": "125882", "title": "Is there a subset of programs that avoid the halting problem", "text": "I was just reading another explanation of the halting problem, and it got me thinking all the problems I've seen that are given as examples involve infinite sequences. But I never use infinite sequences in my programs - they take too long. All the real world applications have lower and upper bounds. Even reals aren't truly reals - they are approximations stored as 32/64 bits etc. So the question is, is there a subset of programs that can be determined if they halt? Is it good enough for most programs. Can I build a set of language constructs that I can determine the 'haltability' of a program. I'm sure this has been studied somewhere before so any pointers would be appreciated. The language wouldn't be turing complete, but is there such a thing as nearly turing complete which is good enough? Naturally enough such a construct would have to exclude recursion and unbounded while loops, but I can write a program without those easily enough. Reading from standard input as an example would have to be bounded, but that's easy enough - I'll limit my input to 10,000,000 characters etc, depending on the problem domain. tia [Update] After reading the comments and answers perhaps I should restate my question. For a given program in which all inputs are bounded can you determine if the program halts. If so what are the constraints of the language and what are the limits of the input set. The maximal set of these constructs would determine a language which can be deduced to halt or not. Is there some study that's been done on this? [Update 2] here's the answer, it's yes, way back in 1967 from http://www.isp.uni- luebeck.de/kps07/files/papers/kirner.pdf That the halting problem can be at least theoretically solved for \ufb01nite-state systems has been already argued by Minsky in 1967 [4]: \u201c...any \ufb01nite-state machine, if left completely to itself, will fall eventually into a perfectly periodic repetitive pattern. The duration of this repeating pattern cannot exceed the number of internal states of the machine...\u201d (and so if you stick to finite turing machines then you can build an oracle)"}
{"_id": "152535", "title": "Pattern for Accessing MySQL connection", "text": "We have an application which is C++ trying to access MySQL database. There are several (about 5 or so) threads in the application (with Boost library for threading) and in each thread has a few objects, each of which is trying to access Database for its' own purpose. It has a simple ORM kind of model but that really is not an important factor here. There are three potential access patterns i can think of:   1. There could be single `connection object` per application or thread and is shared between all (or group). The object needs to be thread safe and there will be contentions but MySQL will not be fired with too many connections.    2. Every object could initiate connection on its own. The database needs to take care of concurrency (which i think MySQL can) and the design could be much simpler. There could be two possibilities here. a. either object keeps a persistent connection for its life OR b. object initiate connection as and when needed.    3. To simplify the contention as in case of 1 and not to create too many sockets as in case of 2, we can have group/set based connections. So there could be there could be more than one connection (say N), each of this connection could be shared connection across M objects.  Naturally, each of the pattern has different resource cost and would work under different constraints and objectives. What criteria should i use to choose the pattern of this for my own application? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of each of these pattern over the other? Are there any other pattern which is better? * * * PS: I have been through these questions:   mysql, one connection vs multiple and   MySQL with mutiple threads and processes   But they don't quite answer exactly what i am trying to ask."}
{"_id": "235615", "title": "Refactoring sought for replacing shared data types in .NET component", "text": "I am in charge with updating a software product that is made up of two components the Controller process and the UI process. The Controller and the UI communicate via XML messages. Furthermore, the Controller is built on top of a shared library that implements a number of business flows. For builing the messages for Controller-UI communication, somebody decided to use .NET built-in serialization and deserialization and therefore created class types annotated with attributes that control serialization (XmlElement, XmlAttribute, etc) for each message, serializing it and deserializing it by using the default XML serializer. For the first couple of controllers, this was fine. But now, while some of the messages can be reused, the other cannot. They will accomplish the similar functions but are structurally incompatible with the information we need them to contain. Because this decision was made we are stuck with data-types that cannot model the data we need, and cannot be changed because they would break the other controllers. At the same time we need the functionality and messaging sequences implemented in the shared library. I need a way out of this conundrum, one that has the smallest technical cost in relation to changing the other controllers, I need a sort of \"structural polymorphism\" for these types, where the type is the same but its internal structure different. Perhaps these messages can be changed to 'object' data types, but in that case... I need a way to control from the outside of the shared library the casting that gets made inside the shared library. How do I approach this, I am not experienced enough to find a clean refactoring for this? I feel stuck. We are using .NET 4.5"}
{"_id": "254277", "title": "How to fix legacy code that uses <string.h> unsafely?", "text": "We've got a bunch of legacy code, written in straight C (some of which is K&R!), which for many, many years has been compiled using Visual C 6.0 (circa 1998) on an XP machine. We realize this is unsustainable, and we're trying to move it to a modern compiler. Political issues have said that the most recent compiler allowed is VC++ 2005. When compiling the project, there are many warnings about the unsafe string manipulation functions used (`sprintf()`, `strcpy()`, etc). Reviewing some of these places shows that the code is indeed unsafe; it does not check for buffer overflows. The compiler warning recommends that we move to using `sprintf_s()`, `strcpy_s()`, etc. However, these are Microsoft-created (and proprietary) functions and aren't available on (say) gcc (although we're primarily a Windows shop we do have some clients on various flavors of *NIX) How ought we to proceed? I don't want to roll our own string libraries. I only want to go over the code once. I'd rather not switch to C++ if we can help it."}
{"_id": "235616", "title": "Loosely compare user input with database record", "text": "I have a database table with 3 columns; id, question and answer. On the front- end, I have a PHP application that shows questions to the user. The application would then compare the user input with the answer on the database. Using only PHP, how do I loosely compare user's input with the record on the database and pass it as correct even though it is not a strict match? For example:- **Question:** What is the structure of a water molecule? **Answer on database:** Hydrogen and oxygen **Acceptable answers:** Oxygen and hydrogen, hydrogen n oxygen, hydrogen & oxygen"}
{"_id": "101459", "title": "Size of database a factor for Hibernate vs JDBC?", "text": "Do you know if the size of the database (number of tables used) is a factor when choosing between Hibernate and JDBC? Why or why not? In my particular case, I am evaluating Hibernate and JDBC for interacting with Oracle database for a small web app."}
{"_id": "254271", "title": "git workflow for separating commits", "text": "Best practices with git (or any VCS for that matter) is supposed to be to have each commit do the smallest change possible. But, that doesn't match how I work at all. For example I recently I needed to add some code that checked if the version of a plugin to my system matched the versions the system supports. If not print a warning that the plugin probably requires a newer version of the system. While writing that code I decided I wanted the warnings to be colorized. I already had code that colorized error message so I edited that code. That code was in the startup module of one entry to the system. The plugin checking code was in another path that didn't use that entry point so I moved the colorization code into a separate module so both entry points could use it. On top of that, in order to test my plugin checking code works I need to go edit UI/UX code to make sure it tells the user \"You need to upgrade\". When all is said and done I've edited 10 files, changed dependencies, the 2 entry points are now both dependant on the colorization code, etc etc. Being lazy I'd probably just `git add . && git commit -a` the whole thing. Spending 10-15 minutes trying to manipulate all those changes into 3 to 6 smaller commits seems frustrating which brings up the question **Are there workflows that work for you or that make this process easier?** I don't think I can some how magically always modify stuff in the perfect order since I don't know that order until after I start modifying and seeing what comes up. I know I can `git add --interactive` etc but it seems, at least for me, kind of hard to know what I'm grabbing exactly the correct changes so that each commit is actually going to work. Also, since the changes are sitting in the current directory it doesn't seem like it would be easy to run tests on each commit to make sure it's going to work short of stashing all the changes. And then, if it were to stash and then run the tests, if I missed a few lines or accidentally added a few too many lines I have no idea how I'd easily recover from that. (as in either grab the missing lines from the stash and then put the rest back or take the few extra lines I shouldn't have grabbed and shove them into the stash for the next commit. Thoughts? Suggestions? PS: I hope this is an appropriate question. The help says _development methodologies and processes_"}
{"_id": "135234", "title": "Can Agile be accomplished without client involvement?", "text": "I couldn't write a book on Agile. I have worked in several shops that call their process Agile. One of the main points of Agile development is regular client involvement. After a sprint, the work can be demo'd to the client to obtain their feedback. Rinse and repeat. The problem I come across is that many clients do not want to be that involved. They would much prefer a waterfall approach. Gather the requirements up front, then come back when you are done. In my experience, waterfall does not work. Clients do not know what they want until they see it. The waterfall dilemma is further propagated by a large community of developers that want to have all the requirements up front. This way they know what they are building, they can architect accordingly, and the client is to blame because they \"signed off\" on said requirements. Am I incorrect? Can Agile work without client involvement? If so, how and how do you overcome the issues I discussed?"}
{"_id": "72867", "title": "What would make you adopt a language with very few resources and tools, barely any libraries and more or less no other users for a project?", "text": "Often, many decent languages just won't get popular because of the chicken- and-egg problem where a language lacks resources (books, tutorials... other than for some basic language documentation), tools (IDE support, debuggers), libraries (other than for some kind of small standard library) and very few people have adopted it. The language might not have been standardized either. Such languages do still get used occasionally, as otherwise, we wouldn't have any popular languages today. Some got popular because they were created for a specific major product and used for that (e.g. C for UNIX), but some languages weren't, but still got quite popular (e.g. Java and Python). What would such a poorly supported language need to offer in order for you to adopt it for a software project you are going to create? Surely, there would have to be something quite revolutionizing or unique about the language."}
{"_id": "120964", "title": "How to instrument existing ASP.NET application?", "text": "We have several highly complex ASP.NET web applications that are used internally by hundreds of users. We are trying to figure out which areas of the applications to invest in to improve functionality, but we aren't sure which screens/features are more heavily used. So, ideally, I'd like to find a way to add a layer of instrumentation to the applications that gathers metrics on which buttons are being clicked, which text boxes are being used, etc. Are there any products / open source apps out there that will do this sort of instrumentation for ASP.NET? Obviously I could do it myself manually by going into the code and injecting logging statements everywhere but this would be a significant amount of work that will be hard to accomplish."}
{"_id": "120965", "title": "Idea of an algorithm to detect a website's navigation structure?", "text": "Currently I am in the process of developing an importer of any existing, arbitrary (static) HTML website into the upcoming release of our CMS. While the downloading the files is solved successfully, I'm pulling my hair off when it comes to detect a site structure (pages and subpages) purely from the HTML files, without the user specifying additional hints. Basically I want to get a tree like:               + Root page 1          + Child page 1          + Child page 2              + Child child page1          + Child page 3     + Root page 2          + Child page 4     + Root page 3     + ...      I.e. I want to be able to detect the menu structure from the links inside the pages. This has not to be 100% accurate, but at least I want to achieve more than just a flat list. I thought of looking at multiple pages to see similar areas and identify these as menu areas and parse the links there, but after all I'm not _that_ satisfied with this idea. **My question:** Can you imagine any algorithm when it comes to detecting such a structure? **Update 1:** What I'm looking for is _not_ a web spider, but an algorithm do create a logical tree of the relationship of the pages to be able to create pages and subpages inside my CMS when importing them. **Update 2:** As of Robert's suggestion I'll solve this by starting at the root page, and then simply parse links as you go and treat every link inside a page simply as a child page. Probably I'll recurse not in a deep-first manner but rather in a breadth-first manner to get a more balanced navigation structure."}
{"_id": "124426", "title": "Is there an efficient way to convert a Java project with a TUI into one with a GUI?", "text": "So I need to make the interface of a Java-database application a GUI. We coded the project in Eclipse, and I am going to import it into Netbeans. In Netbeans there's a great GUI builder, but I'm unsure about how to go about this."}
{"_id": "124423", "title": "How come the design process is so different for Web Design and GUI Design?", "text": "I had the opportunity to develop applications in several niches:   server back-end, desktop clients, and recently a small scale website. Once indulged in the website design I am asking myself and you   how come the UI design process is so different? Can you point out the differences, and why they originated? Once, HTML was for marking up text and desktop GUI was the front-end for doing the real job, but today, why the GUI development process is still so different? Here are some for a start: Desktop: **Use of explicit layout**. (ex: StackPanel in WPF, BorderLayout in Swing)   Web: **Layout is a set of CSS properties** (ex: height/width, margin/padding, float, display..) that are given to each container like element. Desktop: **Isolation of GUI components** to OO classes, easy reuse.   Web: **Components are not reused in html level** , they may be reused in dynamic server-side html generation. Only CSS styles may be reused. Can you name a few more? and why? Why can't they be similar? Side note: I have some experience with GWT, it creates a client application that runs in the browser, but why can't I make a webpage (like a blog page) with desktop UI design methods and tools?"}
{"_id": "81971", "title": "Why does Knuth forbid the reading of pre-chapter quotations in The Art of Computer Programming?", "text": "After the preface to The Art of Computer Programming is the Procedure for Reading This Set of Books. Step 4 is to begin reading Chapter N, with the specific instruction to \" _not_ read the quotations that appear at the beginning of the chapter.\" (emphasis his). This section is present in the 1997 3rd edition of Volume 1, but not in 3rd edition of Vol 2 or 2nd edition of Vol 3 both dated 1998. I have guesses as to why this curious instruction exists, but I've been unable to find any reference to it. Does anyone first hand knowledge about this, or a link to info?"}
{"_id": "124429", "title": "What to choose: freeware, shareware or payware?", "text": "A few years ago I've developed a program that has a steady group of users. It became quite popular and now we have close to two million downloads on Download.com. At first I provided the application as freeware to reach as many users as I could, but there is server costs and of course it would be nice to receive a bit of money in return for your effort. I'm looking for a way to gain reasonable revenue from my freeware application, but still make a bit of money. Here's my experience so far (current in bold): Xacti.com : Low revenue and it took me a lot of emails to eventually get my money.   OpenCandy.com : Friendly, revenue is ok, good online overview of your downloads.   **InstallMonitizer.com** : We're testing with them right now, revenue seems higher and a referral program. Another option would be to switch to shareware (let's say 30-day trial based), but I think that would cost me a lot of users. The offer screens are harmless in my opinion. What do you use for your software (opensource, freeware, shareware)?   What are your experiences so far?   What would you accept as a user? **Update 28/12/2011:**   Number of installs is still increasing with InstallMonetizer: http://www.installmonetizer.com. The bundle automatically checks for the best match in geographic location and revenue. For some applications we see $1.00 per US download! Many other countries are supported as well. It will take a bit more time to update all of our mirrors. I'll keep you guys posted."}
{"_id": "124428", "title": "How to explain to a layperson the variance in programmer rates?", "text": "I recently talked to a guy that is looking for developers to build a product idea. He mentioned he has received interest from people but the rates have varied from $20-120/hr. This project he estimates should take 3-6 months and since he is non-technical, he is confused why there can be so much variance. I understand how I would choose someone but I am a developer and can gauge other people's work. How can I explain to him (in a non-biased way, if possible, as I will apply as well) about the variance in rates? Is there any good analogy that would help?"}
{"_id": "118954", "title": "How do I develop in more languages with less IDEs", "text": "I would like to set up my computer so that I can develop in .net, C#, Java, ActionScript, JS/CSS, and functional languages such as Scala or Haskell. However, I want to do this with the least amount of full-featured IDEs to learn / programs taking up harddrive space on my computer / running multiple IDEs simultaneously. Which programs can I use to minimize the amount of full-featured IDEs I have to learn/use. (For example, if Eclipse could handle all of these frameworks, that would be a valid answer)"}
{"_id": "85072", "title": "Which is more important: solving or implementing?", "text": "I guess I'm capable of solving problems with my pencil and paper easily, but I find it takes more time to implement the solution in code. Between \"solving\" or \"implementation\", which is more important in the IT field?"}
{"_id": "85070", "title": "As a novice, how can I best overcome the complexity of larger projects?", "text": "Currently, I'm a student and I can tackle all my assignments which only require, at most, 3-5 classes to implement. Now, I'm wanting to develop programs on a bigger scale but I am having a really difficult time figuring out how to design the program from a higher level. The real world example I am working on is a group project to build an RSS reader. So far so good and I have a very basic prototype working that uses an RSS framework plus a few classes I created myself. Using the prototype as an example and the requirements document (well over 50 requirements, as of now) I need to build the actual program. I feel like I know a lot of the principles but I am not sure how to apply them to varying contexts such as this. I'm hung up on how to break this simple RSS reader into multiple components, classes, etc and what those should even be. I would really like to know how I can/should go about wrapping my head around this project. I want to be able to step back and visualize the different pieces of the program so I have some structure before writing any code. Extra kudos if you have a link to an article or blog that actually shows, by example, how you can take a concept and break it down at a high level. Sort of a \"from concept to production\" type article instead of just abstract information as available at sites like SourceMaking."}
{"_id": "152288", "title": "How to commit a file conversion?", "text": "Say you've committed a file of type _foo_ in your favorite `vcs`:               $ vcs add data.foo     $ vcs commit -m \"My data\"      After publishing you realize there's a better data format _bar_. To convert you can use one of these solutions:               $ vcs mv data.foo data.bar     $ vcs commit -m \"Preparing to use format bar\"     $ foo2bar --output data.bar data.bar     $ vcs commit -m \"Actual foo to bar conversion\"      or               $ foo2bar --output data.foo data.foo     $ vcs commit -m \"Converted data to format bar\"     $ vcs mv data.foo data.bar     $ vcs commit -m \"Renamed to fit data type\"      or               $ foo2bar --output data.bar data.foo     $ vcs rm data.foo     $ vcs add data.bar     $ vcs commit -m \"Converted data to format bar\"      In the first two cases the conversion is not an atomic operation and _the file extension is \"lying\"_ in the first commit. In the last case the conversion will not be detected as a move operation, so as far as I can tell it'll be _difficult to trace the file history_ across the commit. Although I'd instinctively prefer the last solution, I can't help thinking that tracing history should be given very high priority in version control. What is the best thing to do here?"}
{"_id": "163185", "title": "Torvalds' quote about good programmer", "text": "Accidentally I've stumbled upon the following quote by Linus Torvalds: > \"Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data > structures and their relationships.\" I've thought about it for the last few days and I'm still confused (which is probably not a good sign), hence I wanted to discuss the following:   * What interpretation of this possible/makes sense?   * What can be applied/learned from it?"}
{"_id": "163184", "title": "Compiler design in Lisp", "text": "With some googling, I could easily find some documents in compiler design in C, Java, and C# and even in Haskell, but not in Lisp except implementing Scheme/Lisp in Lisp. Is Lisp not so popular in implementing other (not functional) programming languages? Do you know of some good documentation about implementing a compiler in LISP?"}
{"_id": "231446", "title": "MVC: How to Implement Linked Views?", "text": "I'm developing a java application to visualize time series. I need (at least) three linked views, meaning that interaction with one of them updates the others. The views are:   1. A list represents the available and currently selected time series. The selected time series are used as input for subsequent computations. Changing the selection should update the other views.   2. A line chart displays the available and selected time series. Time series should be selectable from here by clicking on them.   3. A bar chart shows aggregated data on time series. When zooming in to a period of time, the line chart should zoom in to the same period (and vice versa). How to implement this nicely, from a software engineering point of view? I.e. I'd like to write reusable and clear, maintainable code. So I thought of the MVC pattern. At first I liked the idea of having the three view components observing my model class and to refresh views upon being notified. But then, it didn't feel right to store view related data in the model. Storing e.g. the time series selection or plot zoom level in the model makes implications about the view which I wouldn't want in a reusable model. On the other hand, having the controllers observe each other results in a lot of dependencies. When adding another view, I'd have to register all other views as observer of the new view and vice versa, passing around many references and introducing dependencies. Maybe another \"model\" storing only view-related data would be the solution?"}
{"_id": "20385", "title": "Should I ask/tell my boss before freelancing?", "text": "I am currently working as an intern at a consulting firm. I am soon to move to a full time employee once I graduate next semester, and I love working there. However, as a student, I lack money and I have met a business owner outside of work who has offered to hire me for some freelance web development. Because I met this individual outside of work, I feel it would not be a conflict of interest to freelance for him. However, the work his is wanting me to do is very similar to what I already do for my current boss. Should I speak with my boss before considering the offer? **Edit** : I understand that I cannot take IP from work, and I am not in a contract, I'm employed at will."}
{"_id": "255631", "title": "Liskov Substitution and SRP Principle violation - how best to structure this scenario?", "text": "While learning SRP and LSP, I'm trying to improve the design of my code to comply best with both of these principles. I have an employee class that has a calculatePay method on it. Firstly, I believe following OOP SOLID Principles, calculatePay() method should not be an employee objects responsibility. Common responsibilities of employees would be to performDuties(), takeLunchBreak(), clockIn() and clockOut() etc.. Am I right in thinking this way? That's why I feel calculatePay() should belong in some other class. Okay so that's my SRP insecurity. Coming to LSP: I have subclasses like accountants, salesman, and directors. These are all employees that get paid. How would I change this design to better support volunteers? Volunteers don't get paid.               public class Employee {              private String name;         private int salary;         private boolean topPerformer;         private int bonusAmount;                   public Employee(String name, int salary, boolean topPerformer, int bonusAmount) {            // set fields etc..         }              // This method doesn't seem to belong here.         public int calculatePay(){             if(topPerformer)                 return salary+bonusAmount;              else{                 return salary;              }         }     }"}
{"_id": "255630", "title": "how to install opencv's cross-compiled libraies on raspberry", "text": "my problem is may be complicated, I'll try to detail I cross compiled opencv for ARM (raspberry pi) from my host, and everything works fine. I also tried to cross compile an example and it also worked, i got an executable. but once the executable transferred to the raspberry, I cannot execute it and I get the following error: error while loading shared libraries: libopencv_core.so.3.0: can not open shared object file: No such file or directory. on my host, in my opencv's build folder, I have a \"install\" folder in which there are four subfolders: \"bin\", \"share\", \"include\", \"lib\". what am i suposed to do with these folder ?? i think i must use their content but don't know how. where and how do I install the cross compiled libraries in raspberry ?? how could i fix that error ?? thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "255634", "title": "Moving my ASP.NET MVC application to Amazon AWS", "text": "I built an ASP.NET MVC application, and now I want to move it to Amazon AWS from my development server. My question is: How does one migrate an ASP.NET application to Amazon AWS? Here is what I have researched/found so far:   * Sessions don't work across instances, so I need to use DynamoDB or memcached to store state. I looked into various clients like Enyim as a possible solution to the session state problem using Amazon ElastiCloud.   * Amazon has a web service for SMTP emails. So I will need to rework the code that sends SMTP emails to send through Amazon SES, and reroute incoming emails to a separate mail server by changing the DNS records.   * There's an SDK for managing user identity (Amazon IAM). I will need to change the authentication code to use this web service. Perhaps there are more points that I am unaware of. So, how does one migrate an MVC app to AWS?"}
{"_id": "255636", "title": "How to determine what should get it's own respective controller?", "text": "I'm using the MVC pattern in my web application built with PHP. I'm always struggling to determine whether I need a new dedicated controller for a set of actions or if I should place them inside an already existing controller. Are there any good rules of thumb to follow when creating controllers? For example I can have: `AuthenticationController` with actions:   * `index()` to display login form.   * `submit()` to handle form submission.   * `logout()`, self-explanatory. **OR** `LoginController` with actions:   * `index()` to display login form.   * `submit()` to handle form submission. `LogoutController` with action:   * `index()` to handle logging out. **OR** `AccountController` with actions:   * `loginGet()` to display login form.   * `loginPost()` to handle login form submission.   * `logoutGet()` to handle logging out.   * `registerGet()` to display registration form.   * `registerPost()` to handle form submission. And any other actions that are are involved with an account..."}
{"_id": "213997", "title": "How do the blogging sites or sites that host prose like contents store the data?", "text": "How do the blogging sites, Q&A sites (or any other sites host prose like content) store their data? That is, how do you store blogs and Q&A content in the database? I hope it is not good to store this huge text data inside RDBMS table columns."}
{"_id": "141535", "title": "Optimal Database design regarding functionality of letting user share posts by other users", "text": "I want to implement functionality which let user share posts by other users similar to what Facebook and Google+ share button and twitter retweet. There are 2 choices: 1) I create duplicate copy of the post and have a column which keeps track of the original post id and makes clear this is a shared post. 2) I have a separate table shared post where I save the post id which is a foreign key to post id in post table. Talking in terms of programming basically I keep pointer to the original post in a separate table and when need to get post posted by user and also shared ones I do a left join on post and shared post table                   Post(post_id(PK), post_content, posted_by)              SharedPost(post_id(FK to Post.post_id), sharing_user, sharedfrom(in case someone shares from non owners profile))      I am in favour of second choice but wanted to know the advice of experts out there? One thing more posts on my webapp will be more on the lines of facebook size not tweet size."}
{"_id": "210765", "title": "Is this how Simplex Noise works?", "text": "I have done a huge ton of reading up on Simplex Noise now, and after a lot of confusion and headaches I think I am able to form an idea of how Simplex Noise works now. Am I right, that simplex noise (2D) is just a grid build of Simplexes, in this case triangles, where at every corner of a triangle there is a value between 0 and 1. When you ask the algorithm for a point it'll convert the 2D coordinates to the simplex grid coordinates, interpolate the noise and then return the actual value?"}
{"_id": "216312", "title": "How to slowly release a web application to more and more users so that too many concurrent users don't crash your site?", "text": "I have a web application that I expect to go viral pretty quickly. How can I control traffic to it so that it doesn't crash under too much load? This application doesn't require user login. It will be properly load tested, but I am not really sure what kind of traffic to expect until I make it live."}
{"_id": "243146", "title": "WPF4 Unleashed - how does converting child elements work?", "text": "In chapter 2 of the book **WPF4 Unleashed** the author shows an example of how XAML processes type conversion. He states that               <SolidColorBrush>White</SolidColorBrush>      is equivalent to               <SolidColorBrush Color=\"White\"/>      , because a string can be converted into a `SolidColorBrush` object. But how is that enough? It doesn't make sense to me. How does XAML know to which property should the value `White` be assigned?"}
{"_id": "216316", "title": "IL and case-sensitivity", "text": "Quoted from A Brief Introduction To IL code, CLR, CTS, CLS and JIT In .NET > CLS stands for Common Language Specifications. It is a subset of CTS. CLS is > a set of rules or guidelines which if followed ensures that code written in > one .NET language can be used by another .NET language. For example one rule > is that we cannot have member functions with same name with case difference > only i.e we should not have add() and Add(). This may work in C# because it > is case-sensitive but if try to use that C# code in VB.NET, it is not > possible because VB.NET is not case-sensitive. Based on above text I want to confirm two points here:   1. Does the case-sensitivity of IL is a condition for member functions only, and not for member properties?    2. Is it true that C# wouldn't be inter-operable with VB.NET if it didn't take care of the case sensitivity?"}
{"_id": "243143", "title": "Object-Oriented equivalent of LISP's progn function?", "text": "I'm currently writing a LISP parser that iterates through some AutoLISP code and does its best to make it a little easier to read (changing prefix notation to infix notation, changing setq assignments to \"=\" assignments, etc.) for those that aren't used to LISP code/only learned object oriented programming. While writing commands that LISP uses to add to a \"library\" of LISP commands, I came across the LISP command \"progn\". The only problem is that it looks like progn is simply executing code in a specific order and sometimes (not usually) assigning the last value to a variable. Am I incorrect in assuming that for translating progn to object-oriented understanding that I can simply forgo the progn function and print the statements that it contains? If not, what would be a good equivalent for progn in an object-oriented language?"}
{"_id": "168667", "title": "Count function on tree structure (non-binary)", "text": "I am implementing a tree Data structure in c# based (largely on Dan Vanderboom's Generic implementation). I am now considering approach on handling a Count property which Dan does not implement. The obvious and easy way would be to use a recursive call which Traverses the tree happily adding up nodes (or iteratively traversing the tree with a Queue and counting nodes if you prefer). It just seems expensive. (I also may want to lazy load some of my nodes down the road). I could maintain a count at the root node. All children would traverse up to and/or hold a reference to the root, and update a internally settable count property on changes. This would push the iteration problem to when ever I want to break off a branch or clear all children below a given node. Generally less expensive, and puts the heavy lifting what I think will be less frequently called functions. Seems a little brute force, and that usually means exception cases I haven't thought of yet, or bugs if you prefer. Does anyone have an example of an implementation which keeps a count for an _Unbalanced and/or non-binary tree_ structure rather than counting on the fly? Don't worry about the lazy load, or language. I am sure I can adjust the example to fit my specific needs. **EDIT: I am curious about an example, rather than instructions or discussion. I know this is not technically difficult...**"}
{"_id": "168666", "title": "Responding to end users about bugs they found", "text": "I have an issue tracking system, but sometimes users report bugs directly to me in an email. If I'm responding to a bug report in an email, what's a good etiquette to use? Do I thank them for reporting the bug? Do I apologize for it ? Is there a good template anywhere?"}
{"_id": "173588", "title": "Multiple files in powershell", "text": "How to using multiple files in Powershell to ensure modularity? function.ps1 could have all the utility functions? command1.ps1 could have calls related to a command?"}
{"_id": "253165", "title": "Question about mocking externals", "text": "at company we're developing quite a big project and we're arguing at the testing strategy. The question is: should all of the tests be executed in isolation of external services like database or APIs (facebook etc) or just part of them? Of course what I have in mind is using mockups. We discussed following strategies:   1. Write all of the tests in isolation of external services - mock externals everywhere   2. Write part of the tests in isolation and create single bigger functional test for every feature that tests it using externals (without mocking anything) - using fixtures   3. Run all tests communicating with externals (of course that's never appliable to unit tests so they're out of scope in that case) I know it can start quite a discussion but I think that's what it is all about, I'd like to find pros and cons that I didn't think of already."}
{"_id": "164324", "title": "Good practices for large scale development/delivery of software", "text": "What practices do you apply when working with large teams on multiple versions of a software or multiple competing projects? What are best practices that can be used to still get the right things done first? Is there information available how big IT companies do development and management of some of their large projects, e.g. things like Oracle Database, WebSphere Application Server, Microsoft Windows, ....?"}
{"_id": "164325", "title": "Revamp application", "text": "I am a software developer having an experience of 3 yrs. I want to play with latest technologies always. But this is not practical. Because say, I developed a web application in .Net 3.5, now its 30% done. After the release of .Net 4.0, my mind is always goes with .Net 4.0. I think like this, lot of features are in new version, so why shouln't I implement those versions in my application. When I worked with IT companies, most of them code with very old versions, some body use VB.NET, C, even Classic ASP. So what might be the points should I consider if I revamp an application?"}
{"_id": "184044", "title": "What is Context Diagram in a SRS?", "text": "I am learning how to write a System Requirements Specifications, and most of templates I have seen talk of a Context Diagram. What exactly is a Context Diagram?"}
{"_id": "178270", "title": "Is \"watermarking\" code with random trailing whitespace a good way to detect plagiarism?", "text": "Consider this:               int f(int x)       {             return 2 * x * x;           }       and this               int squareAndDouble(int y)       {             return 2*y*y;           }       If you found these in independent bodies of code, you might give the two programmers the benefit of the doubt and assume they came up with more-or-less the same function independently. But look at the whitespace at the end of each line of code. Same pattern in both. Surely evidence of copying. On a larger piece of code, correlation of random whitespace at line ends would be irrefutable evidence of a shared origin. Now aside from the obvious weaknesses: e.g. visible or obvious in some editors, easily removed, I was wondering if it was worth deploying something like this in my open source project. My industry has a history of companies ripping off open source projects."}
{"_id": "121617", "title": "Architecture Question", "text": "I am writing a rules/eligibility Module. I have 2 sets of data, one is the customer data and the other is the customer products data. Customer data to Customer products data is one to many. Now I have to go through a set of Eligibility rules for each of this Customer product data. For each customer products data, I can say the customer is eligible for that product or decline the eligibility and should move on to the next product record. So in all the rules, I need to have access to customer and customer product data(the particular record that the rules are being executed against). Since all the rules can either approve a product or decline a product, I created an interface with those 2 methods and is implementing the this interface for all the rules. I am passing the Customer data and one product data for all the rules (because rules should be executed on each row of customer product data). An Ideal situation would be having the customer and customer product data available for the rule instead of passing them to each rule. What is the best way of doing this in-terms of architecture? Edit: Here is what I am doing               public class CustomerContract     {         public DateTime StartDate { get; set; }         public DateTime endDate { get; set; }         //Other Contract related details          }     public class Customer     {         public int ID { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public string state { get; set; }     }          public class CustomerInfo     {         public CustomerInfo(int CustomerID)         {             Customer = new Customer();// Get Customer from DB             AppliedProducts = new List<CustomerProduct>();// Get the customer products by customerID             CurrentContract = new CustomerContract();//Get the contract by CustomerID, State             declineReasons = new List<int>();// just intailizing. the decline codes are added by rules.         }              public CustomerContract CurrentContract { get; set; }         public IList<CustomerProduct> AppliedProducts { get; set; }         public IList<int> declineReasons { get; set; }         public Customer Customer { get; set; }     }          public class CustomerProduct     {         public decimal AmountCharged { get; set; }         public int DeclineReasonID { get; set; }         public int Product { get; set; }         public decimal DiscountApplicable { get; set; }         public decimal AmountQuoted { get; set; }         public decimal Tax { get; set; }     }          public interface IRule     {         // Since we need to have access to contracts when deciding the eligibility         CustomerProduct ExecuteRule(CustomerProduct currentproduct, CustomerInfo customerInfo);              //when denied,          CustomerProduct DenyProduct(CustomerProduct currentProduct);     }          public class EligibityEngine     {         List<IRule>  rules = new List<IRule>();         private CustomerInfo c;              public EligibityEngine(int CustomerID)         {             c = new CustomerInfo(CustomerID);             LoadRules();             foreach (var customerProduct in c.AppliedProducts)             {                 ExecuteRules(customerProduct);             }         }              private void ExecuteRules(CustomerProduct currentProductItem)         {             foreach (var rule in rules)             {                 currentProductItem = rule.ExecuteRule(currentProductItem, c);             }         }              private void LoadRules()         {             // add all the IRule types here             //rules.Add();         }     }      When I execute the rule, I have pass the customer Product data and customer data. I have to pass the result of one rule execution to the other. In the above pattern, if the rule changes data in customerInfo class, it is not save unless it is passes as ref. My question is I want the all rules to have access to this data with out passing them in. So I need not worry about capturing the out put of the rule. I want the executeRule method to void."}
{"_id": "121610", "title": "See number of SVN Checkins per folder", "text": "I have a very large SVN repository (working copy of several gb) that has just reached its 20,000th checkin. As a bit of an interesting statistic for our team (and to partly celebrate our 20,000th checkin) I'd like to make a graph showing which folders in the repository have had the most checkins. Is there any way to do this? We mostly use integrated SVN clients in our IDE and Tortoise SVN, but I'm willing to get other tools for this one-off thing."}
{"_id": "178277", "title": "Necessary Infrastructure for large project with many components communicating through IPCs", "text": "I have a fairly in depth question which probably doesn't have an exact answer. As a software engineer, I am usually tasked with working on a program or project with minimal understanding of how other components or programs in the project interact with each other. When one program fails in a sea of multiple components and processes, what infrastructure elements are necessary to ensure that the problem can be accurately tracked to the violating application? More specifically, what infrastructure elements should be necessary for this large project and which are optional but very helpful. One such example I can think of is some form of a common logging infrastructure that allows for a developer or tester to easily browse through a log that contains numerous components for messages that might allude to the culprit program along with a \"trail\" of what happened before the issue occurred. I'm thinking of something similar to Androids alogcat tool. These necessary infrastructure elements should be language-agnostic. While these elements should be understood by all engineers on the team in question, which elements should be understood at great detail by the technical system engineers and what should the individual software engineers be responsible for adding to their tools to allow for such infrastructures to take hold? Please feel free to ask for clarification if something does not make sense as I understand this question is very broad and needs some refinement. I will refine as necessary from the answers and comments I receive. Thanks for any help! Update: I am entering in a team that has maybe 5% of the code with Unit Tests and is just beginning to Instrument and Monitor. Each software programmer (I say programmer and not engineer because not everyone on the team is an engineer) does not understand the basics of fail immediately and sanity checking. Much of our software baseline is legacy code and is in the process of being ported over. Unfortunately we don't have the man power to refactor a lot of the older components. This is what led me to try and understand if there there are necessary infrastructure tools that can be used to detect and find bugs at the source in a much quicker fashion. While I am not expecting a tool to magically do this, I was thinking there might be tools or configurations that allow for more easily finding bugs in a sea of components."}
{"_id": "174752", "title": "Lead/Manager vs Individual contributor: which is better?", "text": "Currently I am working in a company as a manager (software dev). But I only have 6.8 yrs experience. I joined this company as a software engineer and got promoted to SSE, Lead, and Manager. Some of my team members have better experience than I, and I feel like I need to have more exposure/experience to take these roles. I feel like it is better to be an individual contributor and learn many things for another couple of years and become a Principal Software Engineer, rather than getting involved in management. Options I have:   1. Ask my current employer to make me an individual contributor?   2. Find a new company and join as an SSE to start over?   3. Find a new company for a lead position?  Please advise."}
{"_id": "130840", "title": "Efficient graph clustering algorithm", "text": "I'm looking for an efficient algorithm to find clusters on a large graph (It has approximately 5000 vertices and 10000 edges). So far I am using the Girvan\u2013Newman algorithm implemented in the JUNG java library but it is quite slow when I try to remove a lot of edges. Can you suggest me a better alternative for large graphs?"}
{"_id": "174751", "title": "Pure Java web browser, is it practical?", "text": "I know that a Java web browser is possible, but is it practical? I've seen the Lobo project and must admit I am impressed, but from what I've gathered it seems that development stopped in 2009. Would a browser coded in pure Java (no WebKit java bindings of any type) be able to compete with those among the ranks of Chrome or Firefox, or would it be inherently slower, hindering the user?"}
{"_id": "39371", "title": "What are the factors that have made Java a success as a programming language in enterprise computing?", "text": "What are the factors that have made Java a success as a programming language in enterprise computing?"}
{"_id": "15930", "title": "How can we make software development best practices more interesting to people without a software background?", "text": "Where I work there are a few experienced software developers with a software background, but the majority of developers are physicists or chemists with excellent domain knowledge but limited experience when it comes to developing high quality, maintainable software. To address this we have started running regular talks and workshops. **What topics do you think we should discuss to help make these people more effective software developers?** In particular we are struggling to gain enthusiasm for these talks as many developers do not see software as an interesting subject. **How could we make these more interesting to people without a software background?** Thanks"}
{"_id": "252362", "title": "Is it a good idea to merge multiple HTTP requests to save bandwidth?", "text": "I am preparing a single page application that would be sometimes used over slow mobile connection. Some of its part are quite heavy in terms of API requests (fetching ten different resources for a new screen display). Now, is it a good idea to merge these services to one that provides all required data, but is not as \"pure\" in terms of REST principles? Are there significant performance gains to be expected?"}
{"_id": "252360", "title": "Implementing a simple controller in embedded C", "text": "Is there a known method or pattern to implement a simple controller for an MVC design in pure C or the switch case approach is the standard? **Background :** I have an embedded application and I'm pleased with how the business logic turned out. I also finished the UI which boils down to basically 2 functions:               uint8_t getInput(void);     void display(logger toDestination, char* message, ...)      Inputs can come from multiple sources and outputs can be sent to several destinations. All of that is taken care of so the application has no idea if its run by a PC on on the device. It also has no idea if the events come from humans or are faked by unit tests. Where I struggle is with the application logic. My views are in charge of where and how to display the outputs. My drivers, regrouped into behavioral models providing clear features, know _how_ to do their jobs very well but not _when_. Here's my functional rough draft, which in my opinion violates principles like DRY, cohesion, flexibility and may present scalability problems: **Rough draft :** (I faked the names and reduced the size but you get the idea) _menu.h_               void goToMainMenu(void); // This is the entry point of the application after everything was setup correctly              void goToFirstSubMenu(void);             void firstFunctionality(void); //The last levels are the ones doing the calls to the business logic             void secondFunctionality(void);             //Other functionality or nested sub-sub-menus              void goToSecondSubMenu(void);             void thirdFunctionality(void);              int doSomethingWithTheBusinessLogic(int arg1, char arg2, void* arg3);              //Other sub-menus and options              /* And so on, the function prototype are indented to reflect the logical level of the menus.*/      Then most of the functions will roughly look like this: _menu.c_               void goToMainMenu(void)     {       uint8_t choice = 0;       resetDefaultState();             do       {         display(toTerminal, \"Press 1 to go to sub-menu 1\" ENDL);         display(toTerminal, \"Press 2 to go to sub-menu 2\" ENDL);         display(toTerminal, \"Press 3 to do something with the drivers\" ENDL);         display(toTerminal, \"Press z to go back.\" ENDL);              choice = getChar(); /* Blocking thread waiting for events to pop from the other threads */              if     (choice == '1'){ goToFirstSubMenu(); }         else if(choice == '2'){ goToSecondSubMenu(); }         else if(choice == '3'){ doSomethingWithTheBusinessLogic(); }            }while(choice != 'z');            resetDefaultState();        /* When a submenu returns we're taken to the parent menu's do-while loop */     }        * Is it a good way to do things for small-medium systems?   * How could this be improved considering the limits of C and embedded environnements? **What has been tried :** I tried a n-ary tree approach where nodes are menus and leaves are functionality but without polymorphism it's hard to define elegently how both should behave to inputs. The strongly typed system also makes it hard to do a simple callbacks system because I end up needing tons of wrappers around the drivers to unifiy a single callback signature (`void myCallback(void*)`). It also seem to be overkill for this simple state-flow; I feel like I'm working against KISS and productivity only because I've been hammered with \"chains of if-elses is the devil\". **What I would like :** With higher level languages usually you can bind events and callbacks. Something along the lines of `bind(myMenu, thisInput, theCallback)` so whenever `myMenu` is focused and an event `thisInput` it raised `theCallback` is called. I'm unsure how to do this in C without going way overboard."}
{"_id": "8633", "title": "How to pick a framework", "text": "This quote by Joel Spolsky resonated with me: > Which is better, XUL, Eclipse's SWT, or wxWindows? I don't know. They are > all such huge worlds that I couldn't really evaluate them and tell. It's not > enough to read the tutorials. You have to sweat and bleed with the thing for > a year or two before you really know it's good enough... Unfortunately, for > most projects, you have to decide on which world to use before you can write > the first line of code, which is precisely the moment when you have the > least information. I'm enough of a perfectionist that I _hate_ the thought of picking a framework for a new project without complete knowledge of what the best choice is, but the fact is that, as Joel says, there's no (practical) way to have complete knowledge of what the best choice is. Right now I'm trying to pick a web framework. Right now, based on our target platforms and my judgment of various languages, I'd pick Python over Ruby, C# / ASP.NET, or Java / J2EE. Of the available Python frameworks, based on this SO question, I'd pick Pylons over Django. (Our intended projects are somewhat specialized, not content-related, so Pylons' flexibility sounds better than Django's CMS support and built-in admin. Our team has relatively little experience in any of the alternatives, so that's not a significant factor.) But Django is substantially more popular than Pylons, and Ruby on Rails or ASP.NET are substantially more popular than Django. So what am I to conclude?   1. The very popular choices are more popular because they're much better, so I should pick one of the more popular choices instead of what I'm currently planning.   2. The very popular choices are not necessarily much better, but more popularity means better documentation, better community support, better add-ons, and an easier time finding developers with prior experience, so I should pick one of the more popular choices instead of what I'm currently planning.   3. Any of the options would be good, so I should pick what sounds best for my target project without stressing about popularity."}
{"_id": "8631", "title": "What do you name functions/variables/etc when you can't think of a good name?", "text": "When you are defining a function/variable/etc and are not sure what to name it, what do you name it? How do you come up with a name? If you use a **_temporary_** name as a place-card until you give it it's real name, what temporary name do you use? * * * ### update I have been using things like `WILL_NAME_LATER`, `NEEDS_NAME`, or `TO_BE_NAMED`. I was hoping there was an adopted convention, I was actually hoping that if I used this adopted convention my IDE would highlight the name until I changed it."}
{"_id": "95362", "title": "Can I use publicly mentioned algorithms for writing programs?", "text": "I want to write a program that solves sudoku. So, I found some sudoku algorithms on Wikipedia. Can I use them or do I need to develop my own algorithm? Also, do I need to ask the specific license holder's permission?.. If so, how would I go about obtaining that permission?"}
{"_id": "92385", "title": "trust factor in code review", "text": "How much should a reviewer trust the coder who submits the code for review? I always have that dilemma of whether I should go test of the changes proposed or should I trust the submitter that he would be _knowing_ what he is doing? Mainly because at the end of the day its reviewers responsibility also. Code-reviews are not fun always."}
{"_id": "126065", "title": "What is the equivalent of Josh Bloch's \"Effective Java\" for Objective-C/Cocoa?", "text": "I'm a newcomer to Objective-C and Cocoa but a reasonably experienced Java programmer. When I was starting out, reading Josh Bloch's Effective Java made me a 20% better Java programmer overnight. As its foreword says, most language books teach you syntax and vocabulary, but not much about idiomatic usage. I **hate** knowing I'm writing \"The vase of my uncle is on the credenza of my aunt\" kind of stuff in a new language. What's the equivalent of _Effective Java_ for Objective-C and Cocoa?"}
{"_id": "221161", "title": "Guidance on Excel VBA resource scheduling algorithm?", "text": "This was posted originally at StackOverflow though suggested to post here instead. I am looking to create an Excel VBA solution that will create a rota/schedule allocating staff to service users using an algorithm. I believe there are already existing names for this kind of problem/algorithms but not entirely sure what to refer to it is. Here is my scenario: A colleague approached me with a problem of scheduling staff against visits required. Currently this is a manual process done every week and is labour intensive. The datasets are small, on average there would be 20 service users each requiring 2 visits a day with 5 members of staff available each day. I have a worksheet that contains the list of staff who are available for the following week. Each row of data contains their name, gender, skill level, home postcode, day working, start time and end time. A member of staff may be listed more than once on the same day as they may be available for hours in the morning and also in the evening. Another worksheet contains the list of service users and visits required for the following week. Each row of data contains their name, postcode, day of visit, time of visit, visit duration, gender required (i.e. must be seen by a male/female), skill level required (i.e. any, certified) and the number of staff required for that visit (i.e. 1 or 2). Again a service user may appear more than once on the same day as they may require multiple visits at different times of the day (i.e. morning and evening) I have already created some VBA functions to deal with handling of postcodes and getting latitude/longitude co-ordinates along with a function to calculate the distance between two points as the crow flies. At present the distinct values of postcodes with there co-ordinates are being stored on a helper sheet for the VBA to reference. What I am really looking for is guidance on how to even being creating a procedure/algorithm which will produce a suggested rota/schedule, this could be a simple table with pairings between staff and visits. The process must always make suitable pairings based on:   * Skill Level Required   * Gender Required   * Staff Availability Least important are that matches take into consideration the distance required to travel between visits. I believe this is referred to as a Genetic Algorithm? There may be instances where there are too many service users for the available staff and vice versa. Making use of all staff isn't necessary provided all visits are dealt with, if all visits cannot be paired due to a lack of staff availability then this needs to be listed as being unmet. I can utilize SQL Server if need be but ultimately the solution needs to be presented in Excel to the end user, as this is what they are most familiar with. I'm thinking the procedure/process would need to go something like this:   1. For each day, sort the visits by start time   2. For each visit, determine which staff members meet the gender and skill level requirement and is available on that day   3. For each of the staff member determined above, are they available at the time requested?   4. For each staff member that is available calculate the distance from their current location to the where they need to be   5. Rank them in order of preference by distance required to travel   6. Once this has been done for each day, come up with a suggested allocation of staff to visits using some kind of scoring method I'm no VBA expert and deal with SQL Server as my day job but I am willing to try and come up with a suitable solution, just need some guidance on how best to start."}
{"_id": "126061", "title": "Advice/Approach for distilling homogenous code and building common code for a team", "text": "I work for the State of California. Our programming team in my opinion is not really a 'team' in that we usually work solo on projects throughout the application/systems complete life-cycle. The end result is a lot of developers are 'reinventing the wheel'... writing their own data layers, even though the vast majority of us work on the same Oracle DB... writing their own security stuff... the list goes on. I can't change the mentality of my employees, and don't have any realistic ambitions in regards to changing our team process... but my goal is to get our team to work together a little more, at least to build common building block pieces that we can all use for boilerplate functionality. The obvious benefits are, testing and support are much more maintainable when all our users are familiar with a common piece, time to production is less when you aren't writing the same repository someone else already did, and we can focus on providing better solutions to the unique problems our apps must solve... etc. I'm preaching to the choir, I'm sure. The trick is, the State does not like change, neither do its employees. Managers often disregard new ideas simply because they like to avoid friction and would rather continue on as is. There are similar questions out there, but what I am looking for is advice on how any of you may have faced a similar situation, and any direction toward getting a 'grass roots' kind of effort going to have an easier time approaching management. EDIT: Just to clarify a few things:   * the scope I'm looking for is within the IT shop of my State Agency. I'm not trying to coordinate across several departments. Got get people off the training wheels before asking them to ride motorcycles.   * Security is not much of a concern, most of our applications are internal and written in Windows Forms distributed on Citrix (ugh.) and nearly all use the same enterprise tables in Oracle... very few if any apps are \"classified\" so to speak. it shouldn't hinder collaboration.   * I have gone so far as to setup a NuGet feed, with a couple of boilerplate pieces of code packaged, and written a few repos for Oracle, sent out some emails, but received little feedback. I've got about 1/3 of our team using ReSharper, and send emails from time to time with tips... again, not a whole lot of feedback."}
{"_id": "240704", "title": "Confused about layered application development", "text": "So, for the first big project that I'm getting paid for, I decided I'd do things right. To that end, I've created several projects in my Solution. Some of these projects are generic and handle common elements that can be used in any project (stuff like logging and such), but that's not where the focus of my question is. The projects I'm concerning myself with in this case are mostly to do with the database and the actual web application that will use it. So I have an `Ortund.Objects` Class Library Project and an `Ortund.DBContext` Class Library Project. **Ortund.Objects**   This project defines the classes, setting properties and default values that makes up the database.   For example, the Users class defines properties such as Username, EmailAddress, Password **Ortund.DBContext**   This project uses Entity Framework and the Objects project to build the database. DbSets of the classes in the Objects project and various other components explicitly define the structure of the database. Obviously, given this structure, I would have the DBContext project referencing the Objects project. This means that, while somewhere in my head, it makes sense to put all my methods and functions that the web app will use into the Objects project, I wouldn't actually be able to do anything because I won't have the DbContext. To reference the DBContext project would create a circular reference. So, in order for my application to interact with the database now, the only option I can see is to create a 4th project to act as the data layer, effectively becoming a \"middle-man\" between the web application and the other 2 projects. When I suggested this on IRC, someone answered with the following: > No, the application layer uses the database layer to provide persistence to > the domain layer. I don't understand what this means. Can someone help me to understand how best to structure this application?"}
{"_id": "69215", "title": "What to plan before starting development on a project?", "text": "Say I've received the specs for a project from a client, and now its time to start developing it. Normally, I just start with the first module (usually user registration) and then go from one module to the next. I only plan in my head just before I'm about to start on a module how its going to work, but there's no planning before that. However, I think it would be better if I went over the specs and planned out how the system was going to work before I coded it, e.g what are the main components, how they're going to interact, etc. I'm just not sure exactly what I should plan. To give a better idea of what I'm asking for, how should I a) Divide the project into components, b) Plan their interactions, e.g should I do class diagrams, write unit tests, etc..? Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "199085", "title": "Should the design take longer than code development?", "text": "I once heard that if you spend 90% of your time developing the design of your program the coding part will only take a trivial 10% of the time. I have found a lot more success in spending about 30% of my time designing the architecture than when I used to spend 0% in design. As a result my programs seem to avoid unnecessary coupling and are now more flexible to change before any re- factoring takes place. I usually finish the design phase once I have a clear idea of what all the objects should be named (I am really picky about naming objects) and what single responsibility each will have. Once I feel confident in my design and feel ready to start constructing the software, would there be any benefit to taking more time to keep re-thinking the design? To me it might seems like it might be overkill. What's an effective design to code development time ratio and should the design time be greater than the code development time?"}
{"_id": "23604", "title": "How much time do you spend on design before coding?", "text": "In my experience, it is useful to spend a little while sketching plans for a project before getting into code. Such planning usually includes choosing frameworks/tools, writing requirements and expectations, and doing mockups. I usually only do this for serious projects though, not so much for one-off or short-lived attempts. I'd be interested to hear how much time you spend on planning/designing projects before starting to do the coding. Do you do it for every project, or just the \"serious\" ones?"}
{"_id": "128911", "title": "Process of developing software?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What to plan before starting development on a project? I was wondering when you start developing a software what process should you generally go through to do it? By this I mean after you get an idea, do you just sit down and start pushing out code directly, or is there some planning process that you should generally go through first? (i.e. flowcharts, diagrams etc.) Just wondering because I just had an idea and am about to embark on my first \"real\" application but have no idea where to begin. What would you suggest is the steps that should be taken to have a successful developmental cycle?"}
{"_id": "115282", "title": "How much design to do first?", "text": "I have never worked with a professional software development team. As such, analyzing and thinking about each and every aspect of my software does not come naturally to me. Whenever I strike an idea that excites me I just start a new project in my IDE (after finishing the previous one) and I start designing the interface\u2014which means to me as placing menubars, buttons and other components at their appropriate places\u2014and start coding for them. Recently I started a chess game in Java and I followed that pattern: first programmed the black-white grid, then registered a mouse listener etc. without thinking about warriors/objects of chess game. One thing that annoys me is that I have never been able to completely use object-oriented features of object-oriented programming, though I understand it. I have the habit of taking on things when it comes. This could be the reason of the poor design I end up with. I complete all the projects that I start, but since they are personal projects I have never felt the need to refactor the code. But I know that if I am asked to modify any function of my program I could be in a mess because they are not properly designed (though they work as asked). What is the correct/better way to start to design software that is somewhat complicated like a chess game?"}
{"_id": "39499", "title": "What should be first - functionality or design?", "text": "I've started reading a book from Head First series about OOP and Design. In a first chapter it is stated I have to worry about design of my application just after basic functionality is ready. Basic functionality is ready means you have something to show to your customer or boss. Do you think this is a correct approach? Shouldn't I think about design from the beginning? Can't it happen I won't have time for making a good design after functionality is ready because I will have new high priority requirements to implement? By 'design' I mean Object Oriented design, not GUI or something."}
{"_id": "106284", "title": "Starting a hobby project", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What to plan before starting development on a project? I have been going through the SE for quite a while but could not find a relevant answer for my question.The question is I am planning to stat a hobby project in my spare time using .NET and MVC3.I have everything set up on my box. But the biggest problem is I don't know where to begin with Shall I create a documentation first?   Start creating a web template? I am really eager to start this but need some guidance . Let me know if there are any ideas."}
{"_id": "111496", "title": "Five or fewer tips to writing good JavaScript?", "text": "JavaScript has obviously become pretty indispensable; however, I'm still new to it, and I've found it's hard to fight the feeling that it seems such a mess and I don't want to deal with it right now. I'm much further in my understanding of other languages than I am with JavaScript, because I can't seem to get a handle on this fear. I get a feeling that, when I'm writing JavaScript, I'm trying to paint a portrait of Weimaraner puppies. It usually helps me to keep a handful of the most important directives in mind that I can ask myself for each move I make. (To my mind, a handful is five or less.) Can you list five (or fewer) questions specific to JavaScript I should ask myself for each move I make, when I'm coding JavaScript? What would they be? Update: to clarify, I'm not asking for five things to keep in mind when learning JavaScript; I'm asking for five questions to always ask myself going forward, that everyone should alsways ask. High-level questions like: \"Am I likely to repeat this somewhere else?\" or \"is this variable/function name specific enough (or too specific)\" <== except these example questions are not peculiar to JavaScript. I'm looking for directives that are peculiar to JavaScript."}
{"_id": "111497", "title": "Workflow design for multi-step edits on a webapp", "text": "I have a web app (ASP MVC2) where some forms can be accessed via multiple routes, initially once a form was complete a user was kicked back to a default page for that form rather than the page they entered it from. Now I'm redesigning a sizable area I want to address this, I want a solution that is easy to add in. I have a couple of ideas but I'm not sure which to go with, I do know that I want it to be \"invisible\" (ie not touching my URLs). So I'm thinking either: I could have hidden fields for the referrer page on the forms. Alternatively I could use TempData and have an attribute that handles checking and adding the referrer URL (this would likely include a string for each of the different pathways so that a user could have 2 different forms open and not have the referrers interfere). The problem with the form value is that it would require putting non-model related fields in each of the views and would break if there's ever any GET requests in the workflow. it would also require manually handling this property in each view and action. The TempData+attribute approach would be a much neater way to apply this but it's possible for powerusers who are doing many things at once to have conflicting referrers for the same forms. I'm leaning towards the latter approach as it's more elegant and easier to keep track of as I don't see there being many of the edge cases where it gets overridden but I'm worried about the user experience for if it does happen. Is the trade off worth it?"}
{"_id": "152231", "title": "Why don't browsers support haml and sass?", "text": "The time needed to download a website would be significantly reduced, and parsing would be also easier I think. Why are not these languages imposed as a standard? Obviously they are better than raw html and CSS... Browsers are the only thing that keeps us away from eliminating the intermediate HTML/CSS code."}
{"_id": "212344", "title": "Is it bad practice to make an iterator that is aware of its own end", "text": "For some background of why I am asking this question here is an example. In python the method `chain` chains an arbitrary number of ranges together and makes them into one without making copies. Here is a link in case you don't understand it. I decided I would implement chain in c++ using variadic templates. As far as I can tell the only way to make an iterator for chain that will successfully go to the next container is for each iterator to to know about the end of the container (I thought of a sort of hack in where when `!=` is called against the end it will know to go to the next container, but the first way seemed easier and safer and more versatile). My question is if there is anything inherently wrong with an iterator knowing about its own end, my code is in c++ but this can be language agnostic since many languages have iterators.               #ifndef CHAIN_HPP     #define CHAIN_HPP          #include \"iterator_range.hpp\"          namespace iter {        template <typename ... Containers>            struct chain_iter;        template <typename Container>            struct chain_iter<Container> {                  private:                using Iterator = decltype(((Container*)nullptr)->begin());                Iterator begin;                const Iterator end;//never really used but kept it for consistency                  public:                chain_iter(Container & container, bool is_end=false) :                    begin(container.begin()),end(container.end()) {                        if(is_end) begin = container.end();                }                chain_iter & operator++()                {                    ++begin;                    return *this;                }                auto operator*()->decltype(*begin)                {                    return *begin;                }                bool operator!=(const chain_iter & rhs) const{                    return this->begin != rhs.begin;                }            };        template <typename Container, typename ... Containers>            struct chain_iter<Container,Containers...>            {                  private:                using Iterator = decltype(((Container*)nullptr)->begin());                Iterator begin;                const Iterator end;                bool end_reached = false;                chain_iter<Containers...> next_iter;                  public:                chain_iter(Container & container, Containers& ... rest, bool is_end=false) :                    begin(container.begin()),                    end(container.end()),                    next_iter(rest...,is_end) {                        if(is_end)                            begin = container.end();                    }                chain_iter & operator++()                {                    if (begin == end) {                        ++next_iter;                    }                    else {                        ++begin;                    }                    return *this;                               }                auto operator*()->decltype(*begin)                {                    if (begin == end) {                        return *next_iter;                    }                    else {                        return *begin;                    }                }                   bool operator !=(const chain_iter & rhs) const {                    if (begin == end) {                        return this->next_iter != rhs.next_iter;                    }                    else                        return this->begin != rhs.begin;                }             };        template <typename ... Containers>            iterator_range<chain_iter<Containers...>> chain(Containers& ... containers)            {                auto begin =                     chain_iter<Containers...>(containers...);                auto end =                    chain_iter<Containers...>(containers...,true);                return                     iterator_range<chain_iter<Containers...>>(begin,end);            }     }          #endif //CHAIN_HPP"}
{"_id": "126394", "title": "Does syntax matters for a (Lispy) Domain Specific Language (MELT, inside GCC)?", "text": "I am the main author and designer of MELT, a domain specific language to extend GCC (the Gnu Compiler Collection). The implementation is available free software (GPLv3 licensed). If you want a detailed description, from the point of view of a Domain Specific Language, read my DSL2011 paper on MELT. I have chosen a Lisp-like syntax for _MELT_ , so as in Lisp or in Scheme, every operation is written with _\"Lots of Insipid Stupid Parenthesis\"_ so the application of function `f` to arguments `a` and `b` is written `(f a b)` (like it is in Scheme or in Lisp). Of course, `(f)` -a function application without argument- is not the same as `f` -a simple thing denoted by a variable-. _MELT_ shares with many other Lisp-s and with Scheme the usual \"control\" operators like `let if defun define cond lambda letrec list definstance` etc... _MELT_ does not use the common names for primitive operations (no `car` or `+` in _MELT_ , which has `pair_head` `list_first` `+i` `+iv` with different meanings). And _MELT_ deals with both first-class values (like in Scheme) and \"stuff\" (for raw GCC data like _Gimple_ , details are in the DSL2011 paper) The reasons I have chosen a Lisp-like syntax includes:   * first, I am lame, and wanted to have a quick implementation. Parsing Lisp is trivial;   * I was (and am) able to use e.g. Emacs `lisp-mode` for _MELT_ without trouble.    * A small _MELT_ implementation was originally prototyped in Common Lisp   * Current _MELT_ translator is bootstrapped so is written in _MELT_   * The implementation uses classical Lisp tricks: S-expressions are expanded by a macro mechanism (into a sort of internal abstract syntax tree), then normalized, and finally translated to C code.   * GCC has several Lisp like formalisms inside (notably for the back-end, for \"machine description\" files).   * the GNU projects have Emacs Lisp and Guile as Lisp-like dialects (I was not able to use them for technical reasons detailed in my DSL2011 paper). My question is: _should I offer an alternative, infix-like syntax_ (a bit Pythonic or Lua-esque)? One one hand, I am afraid that some people (particularly young ones, who never met any Lisp-like programming languages; I had a course on Lisp in the 1980-s) are completely allergic to Lisp and won't even try _MELT_ because of its look. On the other hand, the only thing I could do is some simple parser producing the same AST as _MELT_ has today, and the syntax will be ad-hoc (but infixed) and probably not pretty. Also, working on an alternative syntax which I won't use will distract me (or take time) from other efforts (writing documentation & tutorial, making good examples of _MELT_ , debugging and improving the implementation). Some young persons (in particular Jeremie Salvucci and Pierre Vittet) have been able to learn and code _MELT_ without prior exposure to _MELT_ , to Lisp dialects (or Scheme) or even to compilation. Would an alternative syntax attract people allergic to Lisp? A nice guy told me that syntax does not matter really for DSL-s. They can be adopted if they bring some value, even with a not very sexy syntax."}
{"_id": "151165", "title": "When module calling gets ugly", "text": "Has this ever happened to you? You've got a suite of well designed, single- responsibility modules, covered by unit tests. In any higher-level function you code, you are (95% of the code) simply taking output from one module and passing it as input to the next. Then, you notice this higher-level function has turned into a 100+ line script with multiple responsibilities. Here is the problem. It is difficult (impossible) to test that script. At least, it seems so. Do you agree? In my current project, all of the bugs came from this script. Further detail: each script represents a unique solution, or algorithm, formed by using different modules in different ways. Question: how can you remedy this situation? Knee-jerk answer: break the script up into single-responsibility modules.   Comment on knee-jerk answer: it already is! Best answer I can come up with so far: create higher-level connector objects which \"wire\" modules together in particular ways (take output from one module, feed it as input to another module). Thus if our script was:               Foo.Input fooIn = new Foo.Input(1, 2);     Foo.Output fooOutput =  fooModule.operate(fooIn);     Double runtimevalue = getsomething(fooOutput.whatever);     Bar.Input barIn = new Bar.Input( runtimevalue, fooOutput.someOtherValue);     Bar.Output barOut = barModule.operate(barIn);      It would become with a connector:               FooBarConnectionAlgo fooBarConnector = new fooBarConnector(fooModule, barModule);      Foo.Input fooIn = new Foo.Input(1, 2);     Bar.Output barOut = fooBarConnector.operate(fooIn);      So the advantage is, besides hiding some code and making things clearer, we can test FooBarConnectionAlgo. I'm sure this situation comes up a lot. What do you do?"}
{"_id": "28238", "title": "Is using ELSE bad programming?", "text": "I've often come across bugs that have been caused by using the `ELSE` construct. A prime example is something along the lines of:               If (passwordCheck() == false){         displayMessage();     }else{         letThemIn();     }      To me this screams security problem. I know that passwordCheck is likely to be a boolean, but I wouldn't place my applications security on it. What would happen if its a string, int etc? I usually try to avoid using `ELSE`, and instead opt for two completely separate IF statements to test for what I expect. Anything else then either gets ignored OR is specifically handled. Surely this is a better way to prevent bugs / security issues entering your app. How do you guys do it?"}
{"_id": "212349", "title": "What are common categories for Kanban and Scrum JIRA boards?", "text": "One minimal Kanban-like system has three places for cards: \"To do\", \"In progress\", \"Done\". As I've seen Scrum and Kanban on the web, it is maybe five or six categories. What are some of the common options for categories for Kanban and Scrum JIRA boards?"}
{"_id": "151163", "title": "Web standards or risk avoidance?", "text": "My company is building an App Engine application. The app encounters a bug (possibly due to an issue with App Engine itself, as per our research) on IE9, but it cannot be reliably reproduced and is experienced by a small percentage of users. The workaround is to force IE9 to use IE8 mode. As a lazy front end developer (who doesn't like CSS hacks, shims and polyfills) I think it's OK to at least try going back to IE9 mode and see what happens, while we're still in private beta. The senior engineer (being more pragmatic) would rather that we continue forcing IE9 users to use the older IE8 mode. Who is right?"}
{"_id": "95986", "title": "HTML 4, XHTML and CSS 2 - How long until these are obsolete?", "text": "I got into the game of programming, exactly a year ago. Now i am posing as an HTML, CSS and Javascript Guru. html5 and css3 are the new things out there but in my opinion they are still experimental, (some new websites remind me of the blink tag). I know HTML 4.x and xhtml were out there for a very long time and eventually became standards. But i wasn't around to see that transition from experimental to strict standards. So my question is how long will it take for us to get there with these new versions of html, css and javascript. Most of the code I see around is accommodating older browsers, and i can fairly say that it is easier to write javascript code that work in ie5-8 than to write one that works with i9 and ie5 (let's take localStorage for this example). So when are we going to get to this level where if you want to make sure code works almost universally you have to make sure it's at least HTML5 and CSS3 compliant."}
{"_id": "157341", "title": "Refactoring options - multiple methods in same class or into separate classes", "text": "we have some API which will be called either by client A, B, C or D **Current code**               doSomething(String client){          if (client.equals(\"A\")){     ...     }     else if (client.equals(\"B\")){     ...     }      **Proposed refactoring 1** separate into multiple methods and have each client call the dedicated method such as               doSomethingForClientA()          doSomethingForClientB()      we need this because internally each method will call other private methods defined in the same class **Proposed refactoring 2** Use strategy (or template) pattern and separate into multiple classes for the clients to call the method call from client remains               doSomething()      Which approach is better in the long run? Is there any design pattern to help with option 1 ? or a 3rd option?"}
{"_id": "95988", "title": "Centralized and decentralized logging mechanisms", "text": "I've worked different kind of applications both having centralized and decentralized logging mechanisms. I feel centralized logging mechanism is good to see the proper flow of code and timing of executions while debugging problems. Most of the implementations will have small fixed file size for easily narrowing down the problem. But if the number of components is too high within the system I feel the log directory will get exhausted with huge number of files. Is it a good idea to employ decentralized (module-wise) logging mechanisms in such situations? What are the pros and cons of the same?"}
{"_id": "50985", "title": "Best practices for connecting from ASP.NET to SQL Server?", "text": "There are several different ways to connect to SQL Server from an ASP.NET application. I'm working on rebuilding an ASP.NET / SQL Server environment right now and I'm trying to figure out which method I should be going for. Here are the options as I see them:   * Connect via SQL Server ID that is stored in web.config. Pro: simple. Cons: password in web.config; have to specifically configure SQL Server ID.   * Connect via user NT ID via ASP.NET impersonation. Pro: no passwords in web.config; fine-grained control of security per user. Cons: administrative overhead of configuring user accounts in SQL Server; SQL Server monitoring of application is scattered across many accounts.   * Run ASP.NET as a custom NT ID, and have that NT ID configured in SQL Server. Pros: connecting to SQL Server as one ID - simple; no passwords in web.config. Cons: complicated from a security perspective. Have to configure custom SPNs in Active Directory for Kerberos authentication. Are there other options that I'm missing? Which of these options are used in which situations? Which are more standard? Are there pros and cons that I'm not thinking about? Note that my assumption is that users are authenticating with ASP.NET via integrated windows authentication; this is for an intranet application."}
{"_id": "51055", "title": "What would you say to a bunch of software engineering students on their first day at college?", "text": "Next Friday I'm giving a short (30 min.) talk to a bunch of software engineering students who will be attending the same university I did. Some context:   * The place is Montevideo, Uruguay   * The university is Universidad de la Rep\u00fablica (public, free university)   * The Software Engineering programme takes 5 years (if you're very good and don't start working early). Around 800 new students per year, around 80 graduates per year. Conditions are harsh, particularly the first two years. Most of them probably have no idea what software engineering or programming is. My goal would be to somehow give them an idea of the field and hopefully motivate them to endure the hardships ahead to eventually become successful developers. So the question is: what would you tell these people?"}
{"_id": "197869", "title": "Paid vs ads-based Windows Phone app", "text": "I am looking to understand, before I publish my application on the Windows Phone Marketplace, what is the best way to monetize it. I am looking at 3 options:   * Free, ads-based (no paid version)   * Time trial, no ads + paid full version   * Free trial (not time limited), ads based + paid full version, no ads DISCLAIMER: *All the ideas below assume that the app is actually good and people use it :) The goal is to make as much money as possible. I am not a big fan of the ads- based applications but it sounds to me that having a constant cash flow from ads can bring more money, long term, than getting a lump sum once. I mean, in order to get more money from a pay-only-once application, you need more customers while the ads based only requires people to use the app; the ads based, long term, can generate more money with a smaller user base that is loyal. What do you experts think? Did others research/have experience with the actual amount of money that can be generated in each scenario?"}
{"_id": "197868", "title": "Could we build a functional computer?", "text": "As mush as FP has done, in the end, all our programs are structured. That is, it doesn't matter how pure or functional we make a them - they are always translated to assembly, so what actually runs behind the hoods are instructions, states and loops. We are kind of emulating FP. As a hardware noob, my question is: why aren't we using computer architectures that actually computed things in a functional style? For example, a computer could consist of primitive \"functional chips\" such as \"concat\", \"map\" and \"reduce\", and a program would merely tell the computer how to flow the data between those chips in order to compute the desired result, such as in concatenative languages. ![nonsense sketch](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7RA0Q.png) This doesn't really make sense but might illustrate what I'm thinking."}
{"_id": "93208", "title": "In Scrum, how to handle contention/workload at end of sprint", "text": "My team started using Scrum a few sprints ago. Our project involves building software interfacing with physical devices (think robots and sensors) and our typical Product backlog usually represent adding controls device to the whole system. We split down the task close to the example here. Each device integration feature is split into code, tests, integration tests, peer review, etc. Obviously, there is a sequence inherent to each Product Backlog Items. Typically, our sprints last 2 weeks and the team has between 4 to 6 members. We run into 2 problems at the end of sprints:   * The first is to keep everyone busy at end of sprint.   * The second (related) one is contention on system. We pretty much end up integrating during the last few days of the sprint. We only have one integration system, so people are often blocked from continuing to work on their task because they can't access the system. Since it is the end of the sprint, there is not much work left to do in the sprint backlog. What should these people work on? Pick up items from the top of the product backlog is not well received from the product owner, since the current items are not done. Working on technical debt will help the project as a whole but won't help completing the sprint. Are there any best practices to either structure sprints to avoid these issues? Tips to negotiate with product owners?"}
{"_id": "93206", "title": "Is it possible to create and distribute an app for the BlackBerry Playbook that doesn't go into App World?", "text": "My company is looking to create an app that we'll use internally on several (about 20) BlackBerry Playbooks. We don't want it to be put up on App World because it's just an internal application. I'm wondering if there are any:   * Costs involved with this outside of paying a programmer to develop it - i.e. Are there any license fees, deployment fees, etc.   * License issues involved with deploying the app to multiple Playbooks without deploying it to App World   * Limitations on functionality of the app   * Other things we should be taking into consideration If it matters, the app will be collecting information and downloading it to a computer via USB."}
{"_id": "165740", "title": "Are regular expressions a programming language?", "text": "In the academic sense, do regular expressions qualify as a programming language? The motivation for my curiosity is an SO question I just looked at which asked \"can regex do X?\" and it made me wonder what can be said in the generic sense about the possible solutions using them. I am basically asking, \"are regular expressions Turing complete\"?"}
{"_id": "160510", "title": "If condition not true: default value or else clause?", "text": "I have searched Programmers and Stackoverflow and was not able to come up with a satisfying answer, even though I'm quite sure it must have been asked many times before. The only question I found has answers only dealing with readability. The code excerpts below are from actual C# code I was writing. * * * When dealing with a local variable that has some calculated value when a condition is true but a default value otherwise, do I: First set the value, then change the value when the condition is true?               short version = 1;      // <-- set the value here.     if (separator != -1)     {         version = Int16.Parse(filename.Substring(separator + 1));         filename = filename.Substring(0, separator);     }      Or _not_ set the value, and add an else when the condition is false?               short version;     if (separator != -1)     {         version = Int16.Parse(filename.Substring(separator + 1));         filename = filename.Substring(0, separator);     }     else         version = 1;        // <-- set the value here.      Could a programmer have wrong expectations when confronted with either solution (e.g. when the if-clause is quite big and the else-clause is way down, out of view)? Do you have any experiences where the difference mattered? Is one particular style enforced at your company, and why? Are there any technical reasons why one would be preferred over the other? The first one sets a variable twice, but I'm not sure whether this would matter in modern- day optimizing compilers."}
{"_id": "93201", "title": "What is the term for IntelliSense in a non-Microsoft world?", "text": "When talking about IDE software or about what a programming language allows you to do or not at the source level, I often use the word IntelliSense, which has a precise meaning in the Microsoft world, but is inappropriate when talking to people who don't have to be familiar with Visual Studio. In this case, what is the appropriate term to use? I usually use the term \"auto-completion\", but it doesn't always work. In fact, IntelliSense includes auto-completion, but it also provides documentation and hints."}
{"_id": "61322", "title": "How do I make money from my FOSS while staying anonymous?", "text": "Let's say that:   1. You have created a FOSS project that other people find useful, perhaps useful enough to donate to or pay for modifications to be done.   2. It is a perfectly legitimate and innocuous software project. It has nothing to do with cryptography as munitions, p2p music, or anything likely to lead to a search warrant or being sued.   3. You want your involvement to stay anonymous or pseudonymous.   4. You would like to receive some money for your efforts, if people are willing. Is that possible, and if so, how could it be done? When I talk about anonymity, I realize that it is necessary to define the extent. I am not talking about Wikileaks style 20 layers of proxies worth of anonymity. I would expect a 3 letter agency to be able to identify the person easily. What is wanted is shielding from commercial competitors or random people, who would not be expected to be able to get the financial intermediary to divulge your details just by asking for them. Why would you want to stay anonymous? I can think of several valid reasons, maybe you operate a stealth mode startup and don't want to give your competitors clues as to the technology you are using. Maybe it is a project that has nothing to do with your daily job, is not developed there, but the company you work for has an unfair (and possibly unenforceable) policy stating that any coding you do is owned by them. Maybe you just value your privacy. For what it's worth, you intend to pay the relevant taxes in your country on any donations."}
{"_id": "182344", "title": "What are the Advantages of a \"Combined\" Getter/Setter VS Individual Methods?", "text": "This is what I call a \"combined\" getter/setter method (from jQuery):               var foo = $(\"<div>This is my HTML</div>\"),         myText;          myText = foo.text(); // myHTML now equals \"This is my HTML\" (Getter)     foo.text(\"This is a new value\"); // The text now equals \"This is a new value\")      This is the same logic with separate (theoretical) methods:               var foo = $(\"<div>This is my HTML</div>\"),         myText;          myText = foo.getText(); // myHTML now equals \"This is my HTML\" (Getter)     foo.setText(\"This is a new value\"); // The text now equals \"This is a new value\")      **My Question:** When designing a library like jQuery, why would you decide to go the first route and not the second? Isn't the second approach clearer and easier to understand at a glance?"}
{"_id": "118174", "title": "How to store a simple DB \"in the cloud\"?", "text": "Even though the name is similar my question is not a dupe of the very fine question here: Database in the cloud? I've got a webserver (Java/Tomcat) running a webapp (which I wrote) on a dedicated server (which I fully configured myself) and I'd like to have it now use a small persistent DB. I know how to install and configure a SQL DB like, say, PostgreSQL: I've already done it several times. But this time I'd like to do something different. The DB schema is very simple. So simple that a spreadsheet is enough to store the data (a few columns and lots of rows). It would only grow by about 2000 rows a day (and that requirement, seen the datasource, cannot change in the future). (*) I don't want to install PostgreSQL nor any other DB on my dedicated server: I don't want to bother with backup/configuration/re-installation if I migrate/update the server etc. so I'd like to keep my dedicated server as simple as possible and store the DB somewhere \"in the cloud\". By that I mean I'd like to have either Google or Amazon or someone else take care of the data (there's nothing confidential) and have an easy way to access it. Ideally it should be free. Here's what I'm thinking of at the moment:   * every time new data comes in (from a fat client) I _a)_ update a Google Doc spreadsheet using the Java API they provide and _b)_ I warn my Java webapp that new data did arrive (about once every 10 minutes)   * every time the Java webapp is launched and every time it gets notified that new data was in, it pulls data from the Google Doc spreadsheet using the Java API. The advantage is that:   * it's free   * the Google Doc spreadsheet limits of 400 000 cells per document would allow me to have one spreadhseet per week (for example)   * the DB is stored in Google's cloud, making it highly unlikely that I'd lose it   * I can easily visualize my data from wherever I'd be: I can simply log on to Google Docs an open the spreadsheet And of course I can still do my own daily or weekly backup of the data (offline onsite and online onsite for example). I don't see any particularly hard technical issues here but I'm wondering what would the other options be? How would you go about storing a very simple DB \"in the cloud\"? _(*) Should the requirement change later on, I could always move on to a \"real\" DB that I'd install on my server but as of now I'm really after having my data in the cloud_"}
{"_id": "118175", "title": "On the path to Enlightenment: Scheme, Common Lisp, Clojure?", "text": "A lot of people smarter than me keep writing about when you learn Lisp it makes you a better programmer because you \"get it\". Maybe all I hear about Lisp(s) changing your life is just a big practical joke on the newbies, but I figure there's no harm in knowing more about the world, even if I find out I've been sent after a snipe or something. I'd like to follow the SICP book, and or ANSI Common Lisp, but at the same time be studying a dialect and implementation that I could go on to use on personal projects. SICP is focused on Scheme, so that's one big vote. Paul Graham said that if he were to teach newbies he'd do it in Scheme, but it sounded like Scheme was still inferior to Common Lisp. But then there's Clojure-- which I'm told is limited in ways, but more practical in others (JVM libraries). It sounds like I could get through Scheme materials easier, achieve \"real\" enlightenment from CL, or come close enough with Clojure and be able to get more done with it in the long run. How much of all of that is true? When should I stop thinking about what to learn about and just go and learn about it?"}
{"_id": "126936", "title": "What's an Elegant and OOP way to create a tree from arrays and render it as a nested UL", "text": "I have a series of arrays which represent file system paths, so each next value is actually a directory deeper, for example:               var a1 = [\"Desktop\", \"Pictures\", \"Summer 2011\"];      is the equivalent of               Desktop     |-Pictures       |-Summer 2011      I'm trying to find an elegant way to:   1. Flatten/merge all the different arrays I have to come up with one object/dictionary/multi-dimensional-array.   2. Parse the result and render a nested **`UL`** (html list) to the page which represents the hierarchy correctly.   3. Write what I already have in a more 'OOP way'.. I already have a working version:               <!DOCTYPE html>     <html>         <head></head>         <body onload=\"init()\">             <ul id=\"tree\"></ul>             <script>                 var a = [ \"Desktop\", \"Folder1\",  \"InnerFolder1\" ];                 var b = [ \"Desktop\", \"Folder1\",  \"Inner 2\" ];                 var c = [ \"Documents\", \"Folder 2\", \"InnerFolder1\", \"even deepper\" ];                 var d = [ \"Something Else\", \"Folder1\",  \"Inner 2\" ];                      var all = [a, b, c, d];                 var Tree = {};                 var ul = document.getElementById(\"tree\");                      function init(){                     for ( var i = 0; i < all.length; i++ ){                         addToTree(Tree, all[i] );                     }                     createList(Tree, ul);                 }                      //function from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3663096/how-to-convert-array-to-tree                 function addToTree(tree, array) {                     for (var i = 0, length = array.length; i < length; i++) {                         tree = tree[ array[i] ] = tree[ array[i] ] || {};                     }                 }                      function createList( obj, _pushTo  ){                     for ( attr in obj ){                         var _doIHaveChildren = function ( ){                             for(var prop in obj[attr]) {                                 if (obj[attr].hasOwnProperty(prop)) {                                     return true;                                 }                             }                             return false;                         }                         var li = document.createElement(\"li\");                         li.id = attr.toString();                         li.innerHTML = attr.toString();                         if ( Tree.hasOwnProperty(attr) ){                             ul.appendChild(li);                         } else {                             _pushTo.appendChild(li);                         }                         if ( _doIHaveChildren() === true ){                             var ul2 = document.createElement(\"ul\");                             li.appendChild(ul2);                         }                         createList( obj[attr], ul2 );                     }                 }             </script>         </body>     </html>      Thanks! EDIT: I'm starting from strings which represent the paths i.e. `\"Desktop/Pictures/Summer 2011\"` which are broken to arrays."}
{"_id": "110362", "title": "Is JSP a good alternative to PHP", "text": "I'm wondering is JSP a safe alternative to PHP? Some things I'm concerned about are cpu usage, memory usage, and security."}
{"_id": "110365", "title": "Getting started with repositories: are they what I need, or are there any alternatives?", "text": "I'm a solo iOS developer - mostly self taught, but have made several successful apps so far and potentially starting some slightly bigger projects. ## What I want to do: As I'm working on some bigger and more complex apps now, there's some things that I want to do - which from what I gather, repositories are what I should be looking at. Basically, I want to:   * Online backup of all my code (for now, dropBox works fine)   * Work on new features of apps, while somehow being able to update/bugfix the older version and have the changes applied to both versions So, are repositories what I should be looking into? From the brief look I've had, it does look like a bit of a learning curve, with the downside that I could only do work when an internet connection is available (sometimes not the case). ## Is there: any alternative to repositories that would achieve the 'branching'/new features - e.g. is there any way to already achieve this using Xcode and not relying on some server? This would be the easier option in my case. Alternatively, if there isn't: What repository system would be best for me, and easiest to use (and probably free!)?"}
{"_id": "163965", "title": "Overloading interface buttons, what are the best practices?", "text": "Imagine you'll have always a button labeled \"Continue\" in the same position in your app's GUI. Would you rather make a single button instance that takes different actions depending on the current state?               private State currentState = State.Step1;          private ContinueButton_Click()     {         switch(currentState)         {             case State.Step1:                 DoThis();                 currentState = State.Step2;                 break;             case State.Step2:                 DoThat();                 break;         }     }      Or would you rather have something like this?               public Form()     {         this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = false;     }          private ContinueStep1Button_Click()     {         DoThis();         this.ContinueStep1Button.Visible = false;         this.ContinueStep2Button.Visible = true;     }          private ContinueStep2Button_Click()     {         DoThat();     }"}
{"_id": "253705", "title": "JS closures - Passing a function to a child, how should the shared object be accessed", "text": "I have a design and am wondering what the appropriate way to access variables is. I'll demonstrate with this example since I can't seem to describe it better than the title.   * `Term` is an object representing a bunch of time data (a repeating duration of time defined by a bunch of attributes)   * `Term` has some print functionality but does not implement the print functions itself, rather they are passed in as anonymous functions by the parent. This would be similar to how shaders can be passed to a renderer rather than defined by the renderer.   * A container (let's call it `Box`) has a `Schedule` object that can understand and use `Term` objects.   * `Box` creates `Term` objects and passes them to `Schedule` as required. `Box` also defines the `print` functions stored in `Term`.   * A `print` function usually takes an argument and uses it to return a string based on that argument and `Term`'s internal data. Sometime the `print` function could also use data stored in `Schedule`, though. I'm calling this data `shared`. So, the question is, what is the best way to access this `shared` data. I have a lot of options since JS has closures and I'm not familiar enough to know if I should be using them or avoiding them in this case. Options:   1. Create a local \"reference\" (term used lightly) to the `shared` data (data is not a primitive) when defining the `print` function by accessing the `shared` data through `Schedule` from `Box`. Example:              var schedule = function(){         var sched = Schedule();         var t1 = Term( function(x){   // Term.print()                            return  (x + sched.data).format();                      });     };        2. Bind it to `Term` explicitly. (Pass it in `Term`'s constructor or something). Or bind it in `Sched` after `Box` passes it. And then access it as an attribute of `Term`.   3. Pass it in at the same time `x` is passed to the print function, (from sched). This is the most familiar way for my but it doesn't feel right given JS's closure ability.   4. Do something weird like `bind` some context and arguments to `print`. I'm hoping the correct answer isn't purely subjective. If it is, then I guess the answer is just \"do whatever works\". But I feel like there are some significant differences between the approaches that could have a large impact when stretched beyond my small example. **Edit** I'll post the solution I'm using but I'd still welcome criticism: All `print` functions take, as arguments, anything `term` doesn't own. This way, `term` is not coupled to `schedule` in any way (obviously `schedule` is still dependent on `term`, though). This allows `term` to be initialized/constructed anywhere without needing knowledge of schedule. So, if `term` had an `init()` function it might take an object that looks something like this:               {         inc: moment.duration(1,\"d\"),         periods: 3,         class: \"long\",         text:\"Weekly\",         pRange: moment.duration(7,'d'),         //*...other attr*//         printInc: function(increments,period){             return moment(this.start).add(this.inc.product(increments)                   .add(this.startGap))                   .add(this.pRange.product(period))                   .format(DATEDISPLAYFORMAT);         },         printLabel: function(datetime){             return (datetime).format(DATEDISPLAYFORMAT);         }     }      Where increment, period, datetime would all be passed from whatever is using term's print methods (schedule in this case)."}
{"_id": "253704", "title": "When is type testing OK?", "text": "Assuming a language with some inherent type safety (e.g., not JavaScript): Given a method that accepts a `SuperType`, we know that in most cases wherein we might be tempted to perform type testing to pick an action:               public void DoSomethingTo(SuperType o) {       if (o isa SubTypeA) {         o.doSomethingA()       } else {         o.doSomethingB();       }     }      We should usually, if not always, create a single, overridable method on the `SuperType` and do this:               public void DoSomethingTo(SuperType o) {       o.doSomething();     }      ... wherein each subtype is given its own `doSomething()` implementation. The rest of our application can then be appropriately ignorant of whether any given `SuperType` is really a `SubTypeA` or a `SubTypeB`. Wonderful. But, we're still given `is a`-like operations in most, if not all, type-safe languages. And that suggests a potential need for explicit type testing. **So, in what situations, if any, _should_ we or _must_ we perform explicit type testing?** Forgive my absent mindedness or lack of creativity. I know I've done it before; but, it was honestly so long ago I can't remember if what I did was good! And in recent memory, I don't think I've encountered a _need_ to test types outside my cowboy JavaScript."}
{"_id": "163960", "title": "MVC, when to separate controllers?", "text": "I'm starting with MVC and have a newbie question. What would be the logic criteria to define what a controller should encompass? For example, say a website has a 'help' section. In there, there are several options like: 'about us', 'return instructions', 'contact us', 'employment opportunities'. Each would then be accessed like 'mysite.com/help/aboutus', 'mysite.com/help/returns', 'mysite.com/help/contactus', etc. My question is, should I have a 'help' controller that has 'about us', 'returns', 'contact us', 'employment' as actions with their respective view, or should each of those be a different controller-action-view set? What should be the line of reasoning to determine when to separate controllers?"}
{"_id": "195643", "title": "How to implement better security in Linux?", "text": "I'm just investigating the security and control of the Linux platform in comparison to Android. In Android there seems to be a huge development around security - Applications are required to ask for system permissions, and if the user grants that permission, then the system allows that application to execute with those granted privileges. It isn't like that on vanilla Linux. Applications can access anything they want, albeit not granting them to modify files, but nevertheless. Users simply don't know how applications work, and what information - sensitive information - they take and what they do with that information (upload it to a database and sell it to 3rd parties). So what is this dealt with? I'd imagine the Linux kernel has to be modified so it accepts access tokens per application basis or something similar. Windows at least has some type of security system with it's built in firewall and local authority service. (I know little about Windows.)"}
{"_id": "195642", "title": "Why are semicolons and commas interchanged in for loops?", "text": "In many languages (a wide list, from C to JavaScript):   * commas `,` separate arguments (e.g. `func(a, b, c)`), while   * semicolons `;` separate sequential instructions (e.g. `instruction1; instruction2; instruction3`). So why is this mapping reversed in the same languages for **for loops** :               for ( init1, init2; condition; inc1, inc2 )     {         instruction1;         instruction2;     }      instead of (what seems more natural to me)               for ( init1; init2, condition, inc1; inc2 )     {         instruction1;         instruction2;     }      ? Sure, `for` is (usually) not a function, but arguments (i.e. `init`, `condition`, `increment`) behave more like arguments of a function than a sequence of instructions. Is it due to historical reasons / a convention, or is there a good rationale for the interchange of `,` and `;` in loops?"}
{"_id": "220684", "title": "Cohen\u2013Sutherland algorithm", "text": "I was reading Cohen\u2013Sutherland algorithm on Wikipedia  and I am confused in these two parts,               int ComputeOutCode(double x, double y) {         ...         if (x < xmin)       code |= LEFT;         else if (x > xmax)  code |= RIGHT;         if (y < ymin)       code |= BOTTOM;         else if (y > ymax)  code |= TOP;         ...     }      and               if (outcodeOut & TOP) {           // point is above the clip rectangle         x = x0 + (x1 - x0) * (ymax - y0) / (y1 - y0);         y = ymax;     } else if (outcodeOut & BOTTOM) { // point is below the clip rectangle         x = x0 + (x1 - x0) * (ymin - y0) / (y1 - y0);         y = ymin;     } else if (outcodeOut & RIGHT) {  // point is to the right of clip rectangle         y = y0 + (y1 - y0) * (xmax - x0) / (x1 - x0);         x = xmax;     } else if (outcodeOut & LEFT) {   // point is to the left of clip rectangle         y = y0 + (y1 - y0) * (xmin - x0) / (x1 - x0);         x = xmin;     }      What I am confused is, How does it handle points who are top-left, top right, etc. It just handles top, left, right and bottom. Why use `|` in `code |= LEFT;` and `outcodeOut & TOP` in `if-else` below it? I know that these two somehow handle all 8 possible cases but I don't know how."}
{"_id": "220687", "title": "How to best protect from 0 passed to std::string parameters?", "text": "I have just realized something disturbing. Every time I have written a method that accepts a `std::string` as a paramater, I have opened up myself to undefined behaviour. For example, this...               void myMethod(const std::string& s) {          /* Do something with s. */     }      ...can be called like this...               char* s = 0;     myMethod(s);      ...and there's nothing I can do to prevent it (that I am aware of). So my question is: How does someone defend themself from this? The only approach that comes to mind is to always write two versions of any method that accepts an `std::string` as a parameter, like this:               void myMethod(const std::string& s) {         /* Do something. */     }          void myMethod(char* s) {         if (s == 0) {             throw std::exception(\"Null passed.\");         } else {             myMethod(string(s));         }     }      Is this a common and/or acceptable solution? **EDIT:** Some have pointed out that I should accept `const std::string& s` instead of `std::string s` as a parameter. I agree. I modified the post. I don't think that changes the answer though."}
{"_id": "96186", "title": "How would you approach teaching web development to teenagers?", "text": "I have been tasked to build an 8 hour program of work to teach teenagers (12-15) the basics of web development. I am at a loss at where to start on such a huge subject. I'm not even sure what the target should be. Any tips would be great."}
{"_id": "243154", "title": "C++ strongly typed typedef", "text": "I've been trying to think of a way of declaring strongly typed typedefs, to catch a certain class of bugs in the compilation stage. It's often the case that I'll typedef an int into several types of ids, or a vector to position or velocity:               typedef int EntityID;     typedef int ModelID;     typedef Vector3 Position;     typedef Vector3 Velocity;      This can make the intent of code more clear, but after a long night of coding one might make silly mistakes like comparing different kinds of ids, or adding a position to a velocity perhaps.               EntityID eID;     ModelID mID;          if ( eID == mID ) // <- Compiler sees nothing wrong     { /*bug*/ }               Position p;     Velocity v;          Position newP = p + v; // bug, meant p + v*s but compiler sees nothing wrong      Unfortunately, suggestions I've found for strongly typed typedefs include using boost, which at least for me isn't a possibility (I do have c++11 at least). So after a bit of thinking, I came upon this idea, and wanted to run it by someone. First, you declare the base type as a template. The template parameter isn't used for anything in the definition, however:               template < typename T >     class IDType     {         unsigned int m_id;              public:             IDType( unsigned int const& i_id ): m_id {i_id} {};             friend bool operator==<T>( IDType<T> const& i_lhs, IDType<T> const& i_rhs );     };      Friend functions actually need to be forward declared before the class definition, which requires a forward declaration of the template class. We then define all the members for the base type, just remembering that it's a template class. Finally, when we want to use it, we typedef it as:               class EntityT;     typedef IDType<EntityT> EntityID;     class ModelT;     typedef IDType<ModelT> ModelID;      The types are now entirely separate. Functions that take an EntityID will throw a compiler error if you try to feed them a ModelID instead, for example. Aside from having to declare the base types as templates, with the issues that entails, it's also fairly compact. I was hoping anyone had comments or critiques about this idea? One issue that came to mind while writing this, in the case of positions and velocities for example, would be that I can't convert between types as freely as before. Where before multiplying a vector by a scalar would give another vector, so I could do:               typedef float Time;     typedef Vector3 Position;     typedef Vector3 Velocity;          Time t = 1.0f;     Position p = { 0.0f };     Velocity v = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f };          Position newP = p + v*t;      With my strongly typed typedef I'd have to tell the compiler that multypling a Velocity by a Time results in a Position.               class TimeT;     typedef Float<TimeT> Time;     class PositionT;     typedef Vector3<PositionT> Position;     class VelocityT;     typedef Vector3<VelocityT> Velocity;          Time t = 1.0f;     Position p = { 0.0f };     Velocity v = { 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f };          Position newP = p + v*t; // Compiler error      To solve this, I think I'd have to specialize every conversion explicitly, which can be kind of a bother. On the other hand, this limitation can help prevent other kinds of errors (say, multiplying a Velocity by a Distance, perhaps, which wouldn't make sense in this domain). So I'm torn, and wondering if people have any opinions on my original issue, or my approach to solving it."}
{"_id": "245276", "title": "How do I differentiate between old and new data in backbone collections?", "text": "A common pattern I come across is a backbone collection which is initially seeded from a database. However, the user can also add to the collection. When the user does add to the collection, these should be reflected in the db. Usually I would bind some kind of server call to the collection `add` event. However if I do that, the call will be made even during the initial seed. I only want it to be called on _new_ data. Whats the right way to tackle this problem?"}
{"_id": "214427", "title": "business logic: client-side vs. server side", "text": "Let's say 3-5 years ago (more or less) n-tier application on the server side - and some javascript/html/CSS for the UI was a basic approach for web development. Nowadays we can see that traditional web development paradigm changes a lot. Each day I saw more and more application who do not have server side in traditional way. They just consume some services (data-service, auth-service, etc.) but the business logic placed on client side. Also already a lot of javascript frameworks creates for simplify development according such model (Angular, Backbone, etc.) What are the main benefits and disadvantages of new model versus traditional approach?"}
{"_id": "82099", "title": "What do I do when my team leader is breaking my database schema with a release coming up?", "text": "My team leader has this terrible habit of mucking with the database schema, and making changes that would cause severe breakage on the code base (without really consulting me on how the changes would affect the code base). Normally, I would just live with it, but we have a deadline in 2 weeks and this has been happening ever since I started 1 and a half months ago. I was brought on, to speed up the development of the project. Due to the deadline I am already putting in 60+ hours a week, and dont really have energy left to deal with this (I have tried in some ways already). We are only a 2 man team, and besides changing the database on a daily basis, he has not contributed much in the sense of actual development (coding). Currently, I am feeling like I am doing all the work, plus having to 'fix' what he breaks with his changes. How does one deal with this? I have already spoken to our manager about his lack of effort in the development department. He has been there 6 months longer than I have, but I have written 95% of the code when you exclude the 5th normal form database monstrosity he 'contributed'. Any suggestions? **Post-mortem:** On Friday we had a discussion with manager, and I made my worries known. This led to a bit of confrontation, but overall I felt the manager was siding with me. So at least we have our data freeze in place now, let's see how it goes from here."}
{"_id": "214425", "title": "Why does Clojure neglect the uniform access principle?", "text": "My background is Ruby, C#, JavaScript and Java. And now I'm learning Clojure. What makes me feel uncomfortable about the later is that idiomatic Clojure seems to neglect the Uniform access principle (wiki, c2) and thus to a certain degree encapsulation as well by suggesting to use maps instead of some sort of \"structures\" or \"classes\". It feels like step back. So a couple of questions, if anyone informed:   * Which other design decisions/concerns it conflicted with and why it was considered less important?   * Did you have the same concern as well and how it end up when you switched from a language supporting UAP by default (Ruby, Eiffel, Python, C#) to Clojure?"}
{"_id": "214429", "title": "How can I integrate local web development environments with a central SSO solution?", "text": "We have a single-page web application, and we have a new SSO site (also our own) using OAuth2, and are looking to hook them up. On our production/staging/CI deployments, it's easy to hook everything up. For instance:   * on production we'll have `https://app.company.com` access our prod backend point to `https://sso.company.com` for auth and vice versa   * on CI we'll have `https://app.ci.company.com` access our dev backend and point to `https://sso.ci.company.com` for auth. When we're doing development on the app, we access it locally at something like `http://localhost:8000/`, and it points to the shared dev backend. In the past, we've had it just do its own auth against the dev backend (getting the end user's credentials and submitting it), but we'd like to get it wired to use SSO to auth. The question comes up of how we can do this without every developer who wants to develop locally needing to set up and custom configure their own SSO service. Specifically, can we use the shared dev/CI SSO and have it point to our local deployments? **What we've considered:**   * Use a proxy file/hosts file and have `http(s)://sso.ci.company.com` point to `http(s)://localhost:8000`. This burdens us with setting up HTTPS locally or have the SSO direct to a non-HTTPS URL. Also, the setup is a bit of a pain.   * Have our local app redirect to the SSO with an argument identifying itself, and have the SSO use that to know where to redirect. For instance, redirect to `https://sso.ci.company.com/?appUrl=localhost:8000`. This forces us to punch an open-ended redirect in the SSO that we'd have to turn off for production and it is a bit \"weird\" but it works and can be black-boxed into the app.   * Just run the SSO locally on every dev box. This is basically the non-solution since it would require a lot of setup to get to a \"one box that can run everything\" script, and it negates one of our valuable advantages at the moment in that basically all you need to do is check out the code on any system and have it running. I've seen this done before commonly though (often on top of dev VMs); I would just like to explore options that we are potentially closer to. Is there a solution to this sort of problem or aspects of our ideas we haven't considered yet?"}
{"_id": "215775", "title": "I want a trivial example of where MongoDB can scale but a relational database will have trouble", "text": "I'm just learning to use MongoDB, and when discussing with other programmers would like a quick example of why NoSQL can be a good choice compared to a traditional RDBMS - however the scenarios I come up with and can find online seem pretty contrived. E.g. a blog with lots of traffic could be represented relationally, but will require some performance tuning and joins across tables (assuming full denormalization is being used). Whereas MongoDB would allow direct retrieval from one collection to the same effect. But the response I'm getting from other programmers is \"why not just keep it relational and then add some trivial caching later?\" Does anybody have a less contrived example where MongoDB will really shine and a relational db will fall over much quicker? The smaller the project/system the better, because it leaves less room for disagreement. Something along the lines of the complexity of the blog example would be really useful. Thanks."}
{"_id": "251703", "title": "Structuring Resource Files", "text": "In .NET we've got Resource files which are great for allowing providing translations across your application. In the past I've seen these resource files grow into monolithic unmaintainable lists of words and phrases. What is the best way to avoid this?   * A single resource file for your entire application? It's easy to translate, has very few duplicates but grows to an incredible size   * A resource file per project, this has the benefit of keeping resources and code together, breaks down the file but creates a much higher chance of duplicates between the files.   * Many small files. For example a resource file per project in the BLL/Dal and one per Area/View in the UI (let's assume MVC). Having struggled to maintain massive resource files in the past I'm tempted by the third option. To create a single per controller/logical separation in the UI level. Although this may cost more in translation (and lead to more duplicates) it will be much easier to maintain. Is there another or recommended approach to handling resource files in larger applications?"}
{"_id": "53274", "title": "\"// ...\" comments at end of code block after } - good or bad?", "text": "I've often seen such comments be used:               function foo() {        ...     } // foo          while (...) {        ...     } // while          if (...) {        ...     } // if      and sometimes even as far as               if (condition) {        ...     } // if (condition)      I've never understood this practice and thus never applied it. If your code is so long that you need to know what this ending `}` is then perhaps you should consider splitting it up into separate functions. Also, most developers tools are able to jump to the matching bracket. And finally the last is, for me, a clear violation to the DRY principle; if you change the condition you would have to remember to change the comment as well (or else it could get messy for the maintainer, or even for you). So why do people use this? Should we use it, or is it bad practice?"}
{"_id": "116276", "title": "Deploying Web Applications", "text": "**Background** So I have developed an order system and order tracking for a organisation. Currently it is web based with plans to develop a mobile application and a desktop application. The business model is an exclusive membership where you sign up to be able to distribute their products at a cheaper price than other competitors. EDIT: To clarify its currently being developed using Yii Framework for PHP, but I have a basic stripped down version in PHP using no framework. It's still in a development environment, no code is live yet. **Question** What (in your opinion or the industries opinion) the most effective way to distribute this application to the members? Possibly in each of the stages of development (such as how to distribute a web app, desktop app or mobile app)."}
{"_id": "166218", "title": "How do you write a linearithmic algorithmn?", "text": "> Write psuedocode to determine the number of pairs of values in an input file > that are equal. If your first try is quadratic, think again and develop a > linearithmic solution. I found this question in a textbook and I'm not sure how to write this algorithm. My guess at first was to write it along the formula nC2 = (n(n+1))/2. Any help is appreciated."}
{"_id": "166219", "title": "JavaFX 2.0 vs Qt for cross platform stand-alone application", "text": "I need a bit of advice from you developers who deal with cross-platform applications (specifically programs with a GUI). I will be creating an application soon that needs to be cross-platform and so I have done some preliminary research on two different frameworks: JavaFX 2.0 and Qt. Honestly, both would more than suit my needs. So then I asked myself why I would choose one over the other (SPOILER ALERT: I don't know the answer :P ). I do know that JavaFX 2.0 is rather new (as of 2012) and is not fully supported across platforms, but it will be eventually. The question I pose is this: which one of these would you use for a cross- platform application, and what criteria did you look at when making that decision? Thank you for taking the time to read this! :)"}
{"_id": "56206", "title": "Getting into Medical Development", "text": "I'd like to start coding for medical techs such as 3D Echocardiograms and other imaging and sensor based technologies. I'm fine with the coding and design aspect but are there any resources on finding hospitals or organizations looking for this tech or do you just have to send out letter after letter to the business office of various hospitals?"}
{"_id": "56207", "title": "Hosting own Git service?", "text": "I was wondering if it would be possible to install a git service for use by a small team. Would it be possible to install on a private network/locally or would it be more practical to install over a web network (e.g. a website domain). Thanks and please point my in the right direction, ~Daniel"}
{"_id": "166212", "title": "Generic Adjacency List Graph implementation", "text": "I am trying to come up with a decent Adjacency List graph implementation so I can start tooling around with all kinds of graph problems and algorithms like traveling salesman and other problems... But I can't seem to come up with a decent implementation. This is probably because I am trying to dust the cobwebs off my data structures class. But what I have so far... and this is implemented in Java... is basically an edgeNode class that has a generic type and a weight-in the event the graph is indeed weighted.               public class edgeNode<E> {         private E y;         private int weight;              //... getters and setters as well as constructors...     }      I have a graph class that has a list of edges a value for the number of Vertices and and an int value for edges as well as a boolean value for whether or not it is directed. The brings up my first question, if the graph is indeed directed, shouldn't I have a value in my edgeNode class? Or would I just need to add another vertices to my LinkedList? That would imply that a directed graph is 2X as big as an undirected graph wouldn't it?               public class graph {         private List<edgeNode<?>> edges;             private int nVertices;         private int nEdges;         private boolean directed;              //... getters and setters as well as constructors...     }      Finally does anybody have a standard way of initializing there graph? I was thinking of reading in a pipe-delimited file but that is so 1997.               public graph GenereateGraph(boolean directed, String file){             List<edgeNode<?>> edges;             graph g;             try{                 int count = 0;                 String line;                 FileReader input = new FileReader(\"C:\\\\Users\\\\derekww\\\\Documents\\\\JavaEE Projects\\\\graphFile\");                 BufferedReader bufRead = new BufferedReader(input);                 line = bufRead.readLine();                 count++;                 edges = new ArrayList<edgeNode<?>>();                 while(line != null){                     line = bufRead.readLine();                     Object edgeInfo = line.split(\"|\")[0];                     int weight = Integer.parseInt(line.split(\"|\")[1]);                     edgeNode<String> e = new edgeNode<String>((String)                     edges.add(e);                 }                            return g;             }             catch(Exception e){                 return null;             }         }      I guess when I am adding edges if boolean is true I would be adding a second edge. So far, this all depends on the file I write. So if I wrote a file with the following Vertices and weights...               Buffalo | 18  br Pittsburgh | 20 br New York | 15 br D.C | 45 br      I would obviously load them into my list of edges, but how can I represent one vertices connected to the other... so on... I would need the opposite vertices? Say I was representing Highways connected to each city weighted and un-directed (each edge is bi-directional with weights in some fictional distance unit)... Would my implementation be the best way to do that? I found this tutorial online Graph Tutorial that has a connector object. This appears to me be a collection of vertices pointing to each other. So you would have A and B each with there weights and so on, and you would add this to a list and this list of connectors to your graph... That strikes me as somewhat cumbersome and a little dismissive of the adjacency list concept? Am I wrong and that is a novel solution? This is all inspired by steve skiena's Algorithm Design Manual. Which I have to say is pretty good so far. Thanks for any help you can provide."}
{"_id": "166213", "title": "How do I know if a particular build has a particular version control change in it?", "text": "Let's say I have a build. I need to know if a particular changelist/commit is present in that build. How would I solve this problem? I can think of a couple of possible approaches: 1) Add the changelist number into the binary so that I can look somewhere in the GUI and know what the changelist number is. I can then use this information to determine if the change I'm interested in is within that build. 2) Tag version control using some string that uniquely identifies that build. What unique string would I use? Is either of these two better? Are there any other better approaches? The solution would have to work for both Mac and Windows builds."}
{"_id": "193526", "title": "Is it a bad habit to (over)use reflection?", "text": "Is it a good practice to use reflection if greatly reduces the quantity of boilerplate code? Basically there is a trade-off between performance and maybe readability on one side and abstraction/automation/reduction of boilerplate code on the other side. Edit: Here is an example of a recommended use of reflection. To give an example, suppose there is a an abstract class `Base` which has 10 fields and has 3 subclasses `SubclassA`, `SubclassB` and `SubclassC` each with 10 different fields; they are all simple beans. The problem is that you get two `Base` type references and you want to see if their corresponding objects are of same (sub)type and are equal. As solutions there is the raw solution in which you first check if the types are equal and then check all fields or you can use reflection and dynamically see if they are of the same type and iterate over all methods that start with \"get\" (convention over configuration), call them on both objects and call equals on the results.               boolean compare(Base base1, Base, base2) {         if (base1 instanceof SubclassA && base2 instanceof SubclassA) {               SubclassA subclassA1 = (SubclassA) base1;              SubclassA subclassA2 = (SubclassA) base2;              compare(subclassA1, subclassA2);         } else if (base1 instanceof SubclassB && base2 instanceof SubclassB) {              //the same         }         //boilerplate     }          boolean compare(SubclassA subA1, SubclassA subA2) {         if (!subA1.getField1().equals(subA2.getField1)) {              return false;         }         if (!subA1.getField2().equals(subA2.getField2)) {              return false;         }         //boilerplate     }          boolean compare(SubclassB subB1, SubclassB subB2) {         //boilerplate     }          //boilerplate          //alternative with reflection      boolean compare(Base base1, Base base2) {             if (!base1.getClass().isAssignableFrom(base2.getClass())) {                 System.out.println(\"not same\");                 System.exit(1);             }             Method[] methods = base1.getClass().getMethods();             boolean isOk = true;             for (Method method : methods) {                 final String methodName = method.getName();                 if (methodName.startsWith(\"get\")) {                     Object object1 = method.invoke(base1);                     Object object2 = method.invoke(base2);                     if(object1 == null || object2 == null)  {                         continue;                     }                     if (!object1.equals(object2)) {                         System.out.println(\"not equals because \" + object1 + \" not equal with \" + object2);                         isOk = false;                     }                 }             }                  if (isOk) {                 System.out.println(\"is OK\");             }     }"}
{"_id": "82545", "title": "Entity Framework book for beginners", "text": "I picked up Julia Lerman 1st edition book: Entity Framework book 1st Edition I started reading that and it was pretty good, but I'm wondering if there is even a more higher level book for EF? From what I was reading in the 1st edition it was pretty technical. I'm looking for a real high level book. Almost like a precursor to Julia's book (2nd edition). Are there any out there that this group would recommend?"}
{"_id": "194061", "title": "Cyclomatic Complexity Ranges", "text": "What are the categories of cyclomatic complexity? For example: 1-5: easy to maintain   6-10: difficult   11-15: very difficult   20+: approaching impossible For years now, I've gone with the assumption that 10 was the limit. And anything beyond that is bad. I'm analyzing a solution, and I'm trying to make a determination of the quality of the code. Certainly cyclomatic complexity isn't the only measurement, but it can help. There are methods with a cyclomatic complexity of 200+. I know that's terrible, but I'm curious to know about the lower ranges, like in my example above. I found this: > The aforementioned reference values from Carnegie Mellon define four rough > ranges for cyclomatic complexity values: > >   * methods between 1 and 10 are considered simple and easy to understand >   * values between 10 and 20 indicate more complex code, which may still be > comprehensible; however testing becomes more difficult due to the greater > number of possible branches the code can take >   * values of 20 and above are typical of code with a very large number of > potential execution paths and can only be fully grasped and tested with > great difficulty and effort >   * methods going even higher, e.g. > 50, are certainly unmaintainable > When running code metrics for a solution, the results show green for anything below 25. I disagree with this, but I was hoping to get other input. Is there a generally accepted range list for cyclomatic complexity?"}
{"_id": "191010", "title": "Unit Testing in a \"no setter\" world", "text": "I do not consider myself a DDD expert but, as a solution architect, do try to apply best practices whenever possible. I know there is a lot of discussion around the pro's and con's of the no (public) setter \"style\" in DDD and I can see both sides of the argument. My problem is that I work on a team with a wide diversity in skills, knowledge and experience meaning that I cannot trust that every developer will do things the \"right\" way. For instance, if our domain objects are designed so that changes to the object's internal state is performed by a method but provide public property setters, someone will inevitable set the property instead of calling the method. Use this example:               public class MyClass     {         public Boolean IsPublished         {             get { return PublishDate != null; }         }              public DateTime? PublishDate { get; set; }              public void Publish()         {             if (IsPublished)                 throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Already published.\");                  PublishDate = DateTime.Today;                  Raise(new PublishedEvent());         }     }      My solution has been to make property setters private which is possible because the ORM we are using to hydrate the objects uses reflection so it is able to access private setters. However, this presents a problem when trying to write unit tests. For example, when I want to write a unit test that verifies the requirement that we can't re-publish, I need to indicate that the object has already been published. I can certainly do this by calling Publish twice, but then my test is assuming that Publish is implemented correctly for the first call. That seems a little smelly. Let's make the scenario a little more real-world with the following code:               public class Document     {         public Document(String title)         {             if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(title))                 throw new ArgumentException(\"title\");                  Title = title;         }              public String ApprovedBy { get; private set; }         public DateTime? ApprovedOn { get; private set; }         public Boolean IsApproved { get; private set; }         public Boolean IsPublished { get; private set; }         public String PublishedBy { get; private set; }         public DateTime? PublishedOn { get; private set; }         public String Title { get; private set; }              public void Approve(String by)         {             if (IsApproved)                 throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Already approved.\");                  ApprovedBy = by;             ApprovedOn = DateTime.Today;             IsApproved = true;                  Raise(new ApprovedEvent(Title));         }              public void Publish(String by)         {             if (IsPublished)                 throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Already published.\");                  if (!IsApproved)                 throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Cannot publish until approved.\");                  PublishedBy = by;             PublishedOn = DateTime.Today;             IsPublished = true;                  Raise(new PublishedEvent(Title));         }     }      I want to write unit tests that verify:   * I cannot publish unless the Document has been approved   * I cannot re-publish a Document   * When published, the PublishedBy and PublishedOn values are properly set   * When publised, the PublishedEvent is raised Without access to the setters, I cannot put the object into the state needed to perform the tests. Opening access to the setters defeats the purpose of preventing access. How do(have) you solve(d) this problem?"}
{"_id": "191013", "title": "How to label software requirements?", "text": "What is a good strategy to label software requirements in an SRS? Typically outline numbering is employed on headers - but these will renumber if a new heading is inserted in the document. To me it seems like a good idea to aim for a more stable designation for each software requirement. This should make it easier to reference a particular requirement even in the face of an updated SRS. What are your experiences on this?"}
{"_id": "191018", "title": "Does Silverlight5 provide anything new for WCF", "text": "From WCF standpoint, just wondering whether I can leverage anything after upgrade from `Silverlight 4` to `Silverlight 5`? I did some research regarding new features of `SL5` and cannot find anything about changes to `System.ServiceModel` and `System.ServiceModel.Web` namespaces, is it rigth that nothing were added or am I missing something? **My Questions:**   * Have there been any changes to WCF in Silverlight 5?   * If yes, has there been any changes to duplex polling on HTTP?"}
{"_id": "137537", "title": "I have a bad memory. Is dynamic typing language+vim appropriate for me?", "text": "I am switching from C#+Visual Studio to Ruby+Vim for a few months. The **only** thing that I am missing from C#/Visual Studio is **intellisense** , especially when I have a new ruby gem to familiarize. As a programmer with a below-average memory like Joel, I miss the a happy time in Visual Studio that I can `Ctrl`+`Space` everywhere to get a hint list so that I don't have to memorize a single method , whether it's name or it's parameter list. I can even get it's usage/sample code at MSDN with only a press of `F1`. So, ruby(dynamic typing language)+vim/TextMate programmers, when you are coding Do you run google/gem API reference manual/irb/ri side by side with your vim/TextMate like me most of the time ? or A Good memory is a must-have for ruby(or other dynamic language) programmers?"}
{"_id": "16354", "title": "What software do you use to help plan your team work, and why?", "text": "Planning is very difficult. We are not naturally good at estimating our own future, and many cognitive biases exacerbate the problem. Group planning is even harder. Incomplete information, inconsistent views of a situation, and communication problems compound the difficulty. Agile methods provide one framework for organizing group planning--making planning visible to everyone (user stories), breaking it into smaller chunks (sprints), and providing retrospective analysis so you get better at planning. But finding good tools to support these practices is proving tricky. What software tools do you use to achieve these goals? Why are you using that tool? What successes have **you** had with a particular tool?"}
{"_id": "187898", "title": "Why five dining philosophers?", "text": "I was wondering why the Dining philosophers problem is based on a five philosophers case. Why not four? I guess that we can observe all unpleasant issues that can occur when discussing five philosophers example also when we are given four thinkers. Is it only for a historical reason then?"}
{"_id": "61814", "title": "Is programming in the UNIX philosophy the same as Functional programming?", "text": "The UNIX Programming Environment (the classic text) states that the UNIX approach to programming is to build small, well-defined tools that can be combined to solve more complex problems. In learning C and the Bash shell, I've found this to be a powerful concept that can be used to deal with a wide range of programming problems. Just using a Linux platform, the concept is pretty clear and used all the time. Any expression formed on the command line that redirects I/O, linking system tools like ls, grep, more, and so on shows how powerful this concept is. The thing that confuses me is that many of these programs are written in C, using an imperative/procedural programming style, yet the way they are used and joined together on the command line seems much more like functional programming to me, where each program is an isolated function that doesn't depend on the state of any other program it might be joined to. Is this accurate, understanding the UNIX programming philosophy is basically functional programming using tools that may have been built using an imperative programming style?"}
{"_id": "117350", "title": "Who owns the code I wrote, what rights do I have with respect to my employer", "text": "This is a legal question with mixing code I've written in my own time with code I've been paid to write for an employer. I'm employed at a company with an employment contract, and am paid hourly. This is in Ontario, Canada in case that that affects matters. I've been working on a project for my employer, and in this project I've incorporated some code that I had previously written in my own time at my house for another project (as in I own the code outright). My code is now tightly coupled with the project at work (as in it won't work without it). I have at times needed to make changes to my original code to get it working with my work project, and since I am paid hourly for my time, I've technically been paid to work on my own code. But since I was paid for it, does my employer now technically own this code? Suppose I leave this company tomorrow, do I need to leave my source code behind? I'm not saying I would, but do I still retain exclusive and unrestricted rights to my original code?"}
{"_id": "117357", "title": "Is Entity Framework Suitable For High-Traffic Websites?", "text": "Is Entity Framework 4 a good solution for a public website with potentially 1000 hits/second? In my understanding EF is a viable solution for mostly smaller or intranet websites, but wouldn't scale easily for something like a popular community website (I know SO is using LINQ to SQL, but.. I'd like more examples/proof...) Now I am standing at the crossroads of either choosing a pure ADO.NET approach or EF4. Do you think the improved developer productivity with EF is worth the lost performance and granular access of ADO.NET (with stored procedures)? Any serious issues that a high traffic website might face, was it using EF? Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "119490", "title": "How to justify having one (or more) mobile developers per platform", "text": "I've come across a situation at work where I have to justify why I need one (or more) mobile developers per platform. Although I'm quite aware of the why (each platform is substantially different, has its own philosophy, etc.) I can't seem to come up with more than that. Are there any articles I can read or even books that will give me hard data about the advantages?"}
{"_id": "202316", "title": "Is it okay for an application to check for automatic updates in less than 20 hour interval?", "text": "I have a desktop application that has the ability to automatically update itself on the next restart (without the user's consent - but this is another issue altogether). Assuming that the user would never notice anything related to application updating (such as a progress bar, or pop-up requiring restart), and that our server would support the request spam load, is there any reason why it should not check for updates in less than 20 hour interval? The reason I'm asking this is because all applications that I know that have auto-update capability check for update every 20 to 24 hours and at startup. I was just wondering if there was an ethical rule about it, or simply because of the risk of overloading the server."}
{"_id": "119493", "title": "What techniques would you use for a next generation java web application?", "text": "I'm working at a site similar to Foursquare and Yelp, with approximately 100000 unique requests each week that generates content, growing steadily. We are currently using:   * Seam as Java web framework.   * MySQL as DB   * Hibernate as ORM   * Hibernate Search as Index   * EhCache for Caching. Since our site is slowly growing out of the current setup and has a lot of legacy code, it is time for us to start thinking about a major refactoring/changing setup.   1. Web framework We are not ready to change the language but we are leaning towards Spring Web Framework, since:     * Seam is no more.      * Almost all of us have worked with Spring and liked it.   2. DB and ORM We have done a little research and we are thinking about MongoDB.   3. Index Do we need to have a separate Index if we use MongoDB?   4. Cache ? So my question is basically: If you take Spring Web Framework and MongoDB into consideration, how would a good setup be for a web application that is growing and handles a lot of logged in users generating input and performing searches? **EDIT** I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to answer me, but the answer I'm looking for should be more specific: \"We choose Spring as our web framework and **Freemarker** as our template language since freemarker is fast.... If you use **MongoDB** you will not need a separate index for doing geo searches since **MongoDB** supports location- based queries out-of-the-box... I very good cache solution to this setup is.... In my previous project we chose to use **Apache Solr** as our search platform because this solved the issue with fast updates...\" Thank you // Jakob"}
{"_id": "141917", "title": "Bug reopen vs. new", "text": "A bug was opened, fixed, verified and closed. A month later, it showed up again in a subsequent version after several iterations without any regression. Provided the bug characteristics are the same, would you **reopen** the existing bug ID or open a **new** one with a link to the closed bug?"}
{"_id": "141913", "title": "Facing quality issues", "text": "A workforce management software has complex GUI (for example values in a page depends on the status (closed or open) of other pages). Only latest and near past development has test coverage. During our last release, we received lots of bugs from customer in-spite of 2 weeks of testing Sprint. We don't have dedicated test team. The developers does the unit test and User acceptance test. Every day triggers automated regression test. I am afraid the developers are not testing the entire workflow because its time consuming also not able to automate it because of its complexity. Any suggestions? The legacy code (15 years of development) has less code coverage. How can I improve quality? Note: Now not possible to hire testers to have independent test team."}
{"_id": "107472", "title": "Which development methodology for a solo programmer on a 1 month project?", "text": "I've been tasked with a solo project to investigate & resolve memory leaks in 8000 lines of Javascript code. I anticipate the project to take up to a month. Please recommend a development methodology I can use to structure my efforts. Prefer something light & easy to pickup and run with. Thanks"}
{"_id": "9605", "title": "What did Alan Perlis mean regarding the ways to write error-free programs?", "text": "There's a quotation by Alan J. Perlis that says: > There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works. I recently heard this quote from my friend, and was unable to understand the deeper meaning behind it. What is Perlis talking about here?"}
{"_id": "113636", "title": "How to convince a teammate, who sees oneself as senior, to learn SVN conceptual basics?", "text": "To start with some background, I took up a new developer position this summer and ended up being the newest member on the team, yet with most experience under the belt. So far I have managed to push sanity initiatives through easily enough because of low adoption costs (in terms of time and effort). However things have leveled up a bit. One of my teammates, although experienced, does not really understand SVN. Naturally, blank areas on his mental map depicting oceans of SVN cause him to adopt rather strange usage patterns. For example, he had declared a policy of \"1 SVN commit per day per developer\" because otherwise \"the server would soon run out of disk space\". When I explained him that SVN commits are deltas, not full copies, he responded with doubt and even today I'm not entirely sure if he understands what it means. We also had a heated argument about whether to include Eclipse `.project` configuration in SVN. My teammate insisted we should, although it has caused numerous pointless conflicts. I was against keeping individual developer configuration files in SVN. Finally, it turned out that my teammate had a practice of re-checkouting the entire source tree after every commit to just make sure \"code committed into repository works\". That was the reason he was so adamant in keeping the project configuration in SVN - so it would be easy to re-import the project. When I explained that commit synchronizes working copy to remote byte-by-byte which makes re-checkout unnecessary, my teammate responded with doubt again and eventually waved the whole issue off as insignificant. In my opinion, our team wastes time by resolving SVN conflicts in project configuration files which contain only developer-specific settings that need not be shared to SCM at all. All this mess because someone tailored the process around incorrect assumptions. How can I convince a teammate, who sees oneself as senior, to get a better understanding of SVN basics?"}
{"_id": "107478", "title": "How Do I calculate the the \"Human Resources/Effort\" for a programming project?", "text": "as a project manager or CTO how would I calculate the \"time\" it takes to develop a software system? For Example I would be responsible for developing a large web application in Java, MySQL, HTML, JSF. How do I correctly calculate how much time this takes? Prerequisites: I do not know the team that will do this job (so I can not ask them how long they might need). I did not do any calculations like this before. I am completely new in this role. But I have some very basic/slight programming background... Also any good resources (=links) or answers are very much appreciated."}
{"_id": "113634", "title": "Should I use Java applets or JavaScript/PHP to make my site more interactive?", "text": "I have a website that is about electronics. I want to make some functional calculators such as calculation for analog filters which will have to show lots of plots and stuff like that. This is a sample of what I am looking for and obviously it is only PHP and its graphic functions. I want to have similar thing but much more interactive with realtime sliders and stuff like that. What should I go for? Java Applets? or stick to JavaScript/PHP? I am asking this because I can do it with Java much faster (know it better than JavaScript and PHP). But I am afraid of browser incompatibility, security options for Applets and similar things. What is your suggestion?"}
{"_id": "113635", "title": "What's the difference between the greedy and Hamiltonian methods?", "text": "Given _T={CTAGC, GAGCG, AGCGG, CGGAG}_ , using a greedy algorithm, the superstring _S_ will be _CTAGCGGAGCG_. From `S`, the combination of triplets will be given as _s = {CTA, TAG, **AGC** , **GCG** , CGG, GGA, GAG, **AGC** , **GCG** }_. Both _GCG_ and _AGC_ are repeated. If using _s_ to retrieve the superstring by using Hamiltonian method, would the repeated words will be used or omitted? If the repeated word is omitted, then _CTA_ , _TAG_ , _AGC_ , _GCG_ , _CGG_ , _GGA_ , and _GAG_ constructed back will become _GTAGCGGAGC_. So, in the end, both the greedy method and Hamiltonian method will provide different results in the superstring. Why are they different? In my research, all the examples I found showed that there are no repeated words in the combination, so if I reconstruct the superstring using the Hamiltonian method, the result of the greedy and Hamiltonian methods will be the same. But what about the repeated words?"}
{"_id": "113632", "title": "Is this an anti-pattern?", "text": "I've seen this a lot in our legacy system at work - functions that go something like this:               bool todo = false;     if(cond1)     {       ... // lots of code here       if(cond2)         todo = true;       ... // some other code here     }          if(todo)     {       ...     }      In other words, the function has two parts. The first part does some sort of processing (potentially containing loops, side effects, etc.), and along the way it might set the \"todo\" flag. The second part is only executed if the \"todo\" flag has been set. It seems like a pretty ugly way to do things, and I think most of the cases that I've actually taken the time to understand, could be refactored to avoid using the flag. But is this an actual anti-pattern, a bad idea, or perfectly acceptable? Edit: The first obvious refactorization would be to cut it into two methods. However, my question is more about whether there's ever a need (in a modern OO language) to create a local flag variable, potentially setting it in multiple places, and then using it later to decide whether to execute the next block of code."}
{"_id": "21243", "title": "How can I introduce new technology to my team?", "text": "I work on several teams that are living in the past, and I'm trying to introduce them to new technologies like ASP.NET MVC2. What are good ways to introduce new technology in a positive light?"}
{"_id": "151169", "title": "Why do some programmers think there is a contrast between theory and practice?", "text": "Comparing software engineering with civil engineering, I was surprised to observe a different way of thinking: any civil engineer knows that if you want to build a small hut in the garden you can just get the materials and go build it whereas if you want to build a 10-storey house (or, e.g., something like this) you need to do quite some maths to be sure that it won't fall apart. In contrast, speaking with some programmers or reading blogs or forums I often find a wide-spread opinion that can be formulated more or less as follows: _theory and formal methods are for mathematicians / scientists while programming is more about getting things done_. What is normally implied here is that programming is something very practical and that even though formal methods, mathematics, algorithm theory, clean / coherent programming languages, etc, may be interesting topics, they are often not needed if all one wants is to **get things done**. According to my experience, I would say that while you do not need much theory to put together a 100-line script (the hut), in order to develop a complex application (the 10-storey building) you need a structured design, well- defined methods, a good programming language, good text books where you can look up algorithms, etc. So IMO (the right amount of) **theory** is one of the tools for **getting things done**. My question is why do some programmers think that there is a contrast between theory (formal methods) and practice (getting things done)? Is software engineering (building software) perceived by many as **easy** compared to, say, civil engineering (building houses)? Or are these two disciplines really different (apart from mission-critical software, software failure is much more acceptable than building failure)? **EDIT** Thanks for all the answers and the interest in this topic. I would kindly ask you not to post any new answers if you do not have to add some observation that has not been covered by the existing answers yet. So please read all answers carefully before posting new ones. I try to summarize, what I have understood from the answers so far.   1. In contrast to software engineering, in civil engineering it is much clearer what amount of theory (modelling, design) is needed for a certain task.   2. This is partly due to the fact that civil engineering is as old as mankind while software engineering has been around for a few decades only.   3. Another reason is the fact that software is a more volatile kind of artefact, with more flexible requirements (it may be allowed to crash), different marketing strategies (good design can be sacrificed in order to get it on the market quickly), etc. As a consequence, it is much more difficult to determine what the right amount of design / theory is appropriate in software engineering (too little -> messy code, too much -> I can never get finished) because there is no general rule and only (a lot of) experience can help. So if I interpret your answers correctly, this uncertainty about **how much** theory is really needed contributes to the mixed love / hate feelings some programmers have towards theory."}
{"_id": "112322", "title": "Can anyone recommend a good robot kit for learning C++ robotics programming?", "text": "Preferably something that is a combination of affordable and close to real world robotics programming and will allow me to program it with C++."}
{"_id": "81013", "title": "Methods names prefixes and postfixes", "text": "Some time ago I've read some article (or it was a chapter in some book, cannot remember) about naming method prefixes, that reflect method behaviour like `addFoo()`, `setFoo()`, `removeFoo()` etc Could anyone point me to that article? Cannot google it and it makes me sad panda :-("}
{"_id": "113988", "title": "How can I change sloppy company culture?", "text": "Sometimes when I have a problem that needs to be solved, I find that the easiest way to solve it is by writing a small program as a personal tool. I don't make it super usable or super robust, as I am the only one going to use it, and I don't have the time to refine it and test it thoroughly. Then a coworker sees the program and asks for it, because he has run into the same problem and the tool could help. I give him the \"It's not pretty but it'll get the job done\" disclaimer and let him have it. Next thing I know, my superior is calling me, telling me that he's trying to get the software to work on a client's computer but it's showing X error message. WTF?? That software is not ready for release, nor was I told that it needed to be ready for release. But for some reason, my superior thought it was good enough and released it without telling the original developer. Now, this particular problem is easy to fix with a `MessageBox.Show(\"DO NOT GIVE TO CLIENTS!\");`. However the problem is indicative of a much deeper problem: our company culture is sloppy. Sloppy software is OK and sloppy processes are OK. Don't worry about the future - put just enough effort into getting it barely working now, put the binaries in a .zip file, and ship it. Good enough for government work. This is a small company with 10 full-time employees, is growing, and has been around for a while. Don't get me wrong; I love working here and I love the company. Don't tell me to run; I want to be a part of making the company better. How do you start to bring good change to this kind of culture?"}
{"_id": "198195", "title": "Objective C - nested messages ... confusion about", "text": "Wonder if anyone could shed some light on this messaging construct: The documentation says that messages appear btwn brackets [] and that the msg target/object is on the left, whilst the msg itself (and any parameters) is on the right: [msgTarget msg], e.g., `[myArray insertObject:anObject atIndex:0]` OK, simple enough... but then they introduce the idea that it's convenient to nest msgs in lieu of the use of temporary variables--I'll take their word for it--so the above example becomes: `[[myAppObject theArray] insertObject:[myAppObject objectToInsert] atIndex:0]` In other words,` [myAppObject theArray] ` is a nested msg, one, and, two, 'theArray' is the 'message'. Well, to say I find this confusing is a bit of an understatement ... Maybe it's just me but 'theArray' doesn't evoke a message semantically or grammatically. What this looks like to a guy who knows Java is a type/class. In Java we do things like `Class objectInstance = new Class() ... ` the bit to the left of the assignment operator is what this so-called nested message reminds me of ... with object and class/type positions switched of course. Anyway, any insight much appreciated."}
{"_id": "210850", "title": "What is the purpose of the stand-up and its duration in agile methodologies?", "text": "I used to work in a waterfall methodology and now I am in a team that is following an agile methodology. It seems they are doing it wrong. For example, we have stand-ups that last 25+ minutes daily, which is really annoying. Additionally, I feel more like I am justifying my salary to management than anything else. Am I wrong to feel this way? Is this how stand-ups are usually conducted?"}
{"_id": "210851", "title": "How to make a \"git push\" update files on your web host?", "text": "I have a few sites which are all hosted on the same web hosting service under shared hosting. My web host supports Git and I have SSH access to it, and I also have Git setup on my laptop as well. I want to make it so that when I do a \"git push origin master\", it will automatically update the files on my web server, and also save a backup of the previous commit's files so I can easily rollback if I want to. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "212348", "title": "Using Java Reflection to decouple code modules", "text": "I'm involved in a project with several modules. I found that programmers have designed one module to be easily decoupled from its dependent modules using Java Reflection. If other modules need to call a method in this module, the programmers are expecting them to use reflection to call it. This has resulted in a lot of places with **hard-coded** reflection calls. By _hard-coded,_ I mean the class and method names are permanently fixed as Strings, which kind of defeats the purpose of reflection which is supposed to be for dynamic programming. How can this be justified? I feel they are being novice about it and misusing the reflection API. I think polymorphism is the right way to decouple a module from another without breaking functionality. (Unfortunately, changing the entire code base to polymorphism is way too much maintenance.)"}
{"_id": "137052", "title": "migration and interoperability", "text": "A large system has already been done in visual fox pro. They want to add more requirements to a module and make some changes to the system.At the same time they are thinking about migration to .net. Some parts like report generation has been done in .net using visual fox pro database and loaded in vfp. Is it a good idea to start migrating database as well? I mean is it good to create database (and tables) for the module for new requirements and changes? I think this will cause problem and difficulty to maintain the software. How is the process of data migration initiated? Should it be done gradually (partly in visual fox pro and partly in sql) or should it be done all at a time?"}
{"_id": "137057", "title": "Do gantt charts have a role in agile software development?", "text": "I've heard it said that gantt charts are a relic of waterfall project management techniques. I typically use an agile-like approach to project planning and tracking progress which provides good visibility into feature-time trade-offs as the project progresses. We're at the outset of a project in in which, while the exact front-end user interaction design is somewhat unclear at this early stage, the back-end requirements are fairly clear (components that communicate with various third- party APIs, the server infrastructure, etc). We'll be going through a process to develop good user interaction design for the front-end (starting with user stories and working forward from there), but we also wanted to get an idea of how long the back-end would take. I decided the best approach was to break it down into sub-components, where each component consisted of tightly coupled code that should probably be worked on in a contiguous period of time. I assigned rough time estimates to each component and sub-component, typically ranging from 1 to 10 days. I then used OmniPlan to indicate dependencies between these various components, and assigned developers to each task, with the goal of distributing effort as equally as possible. I then used OmniPlan's leveling tool. All, I think, a fairly standard way to use OmniPlan, and I thought reasonable way to come up with a rough time estimate. I should clarify that the intention was not to come up with a rigid blueprint about who would work on what and when, but more come up with at least one plausible way that we could build what we needed to build in a two month period. The gantt chart suggested that this was feasible. To my surprise, I received quite strong pushback from another team-member familiar with the agile development process, who accused me of adopting a waterfall methodology. Their more specific criticism was that the gantt chart was specified in terms of architectural components, rather than on user-visible features. They were frustrated that it didn't lend itself to saying \"we should have functionality X by Y date\". Where, if anywhere, did I go wrong?"}
{"_id": "12087", "title": "What are great online code reviews tool for Open Source projects?", "text": "I would like to start new Open Source project, and I believe all check-ins should be reviewed before merged into trunk. What are some great **online** code review tools for Open Source projects that have this functionality, and what makes them great?"}
{"_id": "190766", "title": "Should I use TDD and BDD if my project is changing fast?", "text": "I have my own little project I am creating using RoR, I plan it to have small- medium load.   With no doubt I started with BDD and TDD (Cucumber and RSpec to be exact, but I am also experienced with TestUnit), I like it but since it's my own project and it's a somewhat startup - I am changing many things in it, many requirements, many ideas how things should work and look. So it becomes too much time-consuming to always code it using BDD and TDD, even if I cover only common cases.   What should I do? Should I sacrifice BDD and TDD for productivity till I get to some point when I have a solid basis and it's time for production, and than I write tests?   Should I write them right now but as minimal as possible? Should I only write RSpec and forget about Cucumber for now? Or maybe just TestUnit to test model for now since it's the most important and everything else can change?   Thanks in advance! **Update:**   I know all the pros of TDD and BDD, by no means it makes it easier to scale and bugfix application in future and save time, but maybe it's more reasonable in my situation to wait few weeks till I have at least some skeleton architecture of my app and than once I am sure with it I can cover it with tests to have a solid base? And than continue with TDD and do all the tests with TDD."}
{"_id": "190763", "title": "Is there a name for this kind of database constraint? \"Functional foreign key\"? And is it a good idea?", "text": "Say we want to enforce that a table represents a tree. I have found this method for doing so:               create table tree (       id integer[] primary key,       parent integer[] references tree (id),       item text not null,       constraint tree_parent check (            (id = array[]::integer[] and parent is null)         or parent = id[1:array_length(id,1)-1])     );      A node in the tree is identified by its _path_ from the root node. As such, the foreign key `parent` is just that path with one element dropped off the end. The combination of `foreign key` and `check` guarantees the tree structure. **First question:** is this a good idea? Are there better approaches? In Oracle at least, I'm able to define `parent` as a virtual column, which is elegant. **Second question:** is there a name for this approach? I like to think of this as a \"functional foreign key\": `tree.id` references `tree.id`, but _via a function_ that drops the last element in the path. I think this concept has more general use than the tree example above."}
{"_id": "223565", "title": "Should I pay for the use of subversion?", "text": "I am confused about paying subversion. Our company has a solution and wants to manage the version of the source. Our company product is obviously commercial product and not open source. & it's not for distribute purpose.   1. Can I use the subversion without payment for the company?   2. Should I open the source of our solution because we use the subversion free?    3. Is there any obligation followed by this?   4. Exactly, in which case do I have to pay for using the subversion? Thank you."}
{"_id": "223566", "title": "Are my novice user stories correctly composed?", "text": "Is this user story substantively correct: > As a system owner, I want everybody that uses the system to have to log in > using a secure password and login system, to prevent unauthorised and random > access to system data. And then: > As a user, I want to be able to log in with my secure password, so that only > I can access areas of the system I need to do my work. I have several other stories for the system owner, like password format, lockouts etc. Is this a good place for these requirements? As stories for the system owner?"}
{"_id": "223567", "title": "Deploying artifacts and dependencies on another system with Maven", "text": "I am coding a Java program on my development machine. Maven packages this a `myjar.jar`, and I can run it from the command line using `java -cp myjar.jar my.FantasticClass`. It uses library `somelib.jar`. I use Maven, and the project is hosted on github. When I want to run my project on the target machine, what is the best way to go? I could package my code as a jar, grab the `somelib.jar` and move it to the target machine manually, but I suppose I could also check out the Maven project from github on the target machine, run it, and have Maven both generate the jar and get the `somelib.jar` file. Or am I simply overlooking something?"}
{"_id": "49420", "title": "What features/changes would you most like to see in Visual Studio 2012?", "text": "Or at least the \"next version\". There are some very interesting, grand ideas out there, threatening to revolutionise the way we code. Equally, there is likely a whole flurry of little improvements that might make the whole experience better. I do love Visual Studio 2010, it is a luxury environment for developers (in my opinion). What can be done next?"}
{"_id": "223561", "title": "Why should we be aware of licenses?", "text": "I know this is common question, but why should a programmer be aware of software licenses as well as extensions and plugins licenses? I'm working in a company which focuses on the business process (Ruby on Rails) and I'm curious as to why they are strict on such licenses in the project development. What licenses should I be aware of and why?"}
{"_id": "49422", "title": "Was Java originally designed for a toaster?", "text": "I've heard this tossed around few times, but never really a source. The wiki page says it was designed for home appliances, but never really references a toaster. Anyone have a source?"}
{"_id": "116004", "title": "Is it bad to join open-source projects as an amateur?", "text": "I've thought for about six months now that I should join an open-source iPhone or iPad project to hone my skills in Objective-C, but every time I go to do it I see thousands of lines of code on huge projects that I end up convincing myself I would never understand. I always think that my commits would just end up being a hassle for project admins and more senior contributors, so I always back out at the last second. My question essentially is, **is it a hassle when an intermediately- experienced programmer joins an open-source project?**"}
{"_id": "116005", "title": "What exactly is a programming language? What enables us to write in such a language?", "text": "Alright I'm new to programming and I admit this is a fairly abstract question. The natural language we speak every day exist because people can understand each other. How can computers understand my code written in a certain language? Let's say Mr. A creates a new language. How is that accepted by machines? Must the creator communicate with the machine using machine language to create a new language? What guarantees that we can written in a language while getting understood by the machine properly?"}
{"_id": "211105", "title": "Best practice for code coverage of empty interface methods", "text": "Given a class that implements an interface, but does not need all of the methods implemented, what is the best practice for unit testing this class with respect to code coverage? - or is it considered a sign for a code smell? To make the problem more concrete, consider a Java class (the question is not limited to Java though) that implements `ComponentListener` but derives from some `X` (so as to rule out the choice to use `ComponentAdapter`). The class is however only interested in the `componentResized()` method and leaves the other callback method bodies empty. When checking the code coverage, we get a report that indicates correctly that the remaining methods are untested. For obvious reasons, I hesitate to add a test that simply calls a no-op method for the sake of coverage. While I am not bound to reach a certain coverage, I still think that in and of itself, this phenomenon may indicate a code smell with respect to the single- responsibility principle. On the other hand, it's not far-fetched either that a component representation is responsible for updating its state on a resize. Is there some sort of consensus or best practice on how to handle such methods, or is the question illegitimate as in it is a result of a supposedly bad design?"}
{"_id": "211104", "title": "what are the practical steps of software development life cycle", "text": "I am building a software and trying to learn the typical steps for software life cycle, I am not sure if what I did is correct or enough so I would like to ask for the typical steps you follow during your life cycle in terms of actual steps taken for example requirement gathering is a not the step i mean, but gathering requirements using User Stories from the customer or from the requirements documents is the step I mean. This is what I do now,   1. Write User Stories from the requirement document I had.    2. Write Use Cases for these stories.    3. Collected nouns from the requirement documents and used them as classes to build class diagram.    4. Draw state diagrams for main entities in the class diagram.    5. Draw database diagram to map the class diagram to database tables    6. Started coding to 3-tier architecture.  Please tell me if I am doing it right or missing something."}
{"_id": "68036", "title": "When should a junior not be helping a senior?", "text": "What do you do when the person you\u2019re helping is your senior, do you continue to help them? I've seen this happen at a previous job. A senior developer lost touch and was having trouble with the basics. He'd got lazy over years and was accustomed to loading work on the juniors. Restructuring meant that senior now had to work hard for the money. What do you do? Help or expect more from them. **EDIT:** Myself and the other seniors did help and the juniors. But the senior developer was accustom to delegating and many felt the senior developer in question just was trying to get others do their work. I was asking the question in reference to reading: When do you not give help to less experienced programmers? Basically when should you draw a line in the sand."}
{"_id": "68035", "title": "What is the best way to store files when using winforms and web?", "text": "I have to develop an application (in C#) that has to work with files. The application consists of two versions: a web version and a windows version. Therefore, the files must be stored on a place where both versions can access the files. In both versions, the files can be edited and new files can be created. I've been thinking about the following options to store files:   * IIS using WebDav   * Sharepoint   * Using a share and make this share a virtual directory in IIS. I don't have experience with one of these options and these were the options that came to my mind. What is in your eyes the best way to store the files?"}
{"_id": "157130", "title": "Nice iterator naming", "text": "How do you name your iterators when you return a begin and an end iterator from a class? Without it sounding clunky, that is. Example:               typedef std::vector<Idea> Ideas_Type;          Ideas_Type::const_iterator GetIdeasBegin() const;     Ideas_Type::const_iterator GetIdeasEnd() const;      Should it be GetIdeasBeginIter? IdeasBegin?"}
{"_id": "90725", "title": "Is Displaying Degree In Office Appropriate?", "text": "This is a little bit of a non-technical question for those working in the software development field. My employer has spent a fair amount to renovate 2 executive offices into 1 software development area. There are 3 programmers here, and I am the only one who holds a degree, and the only general software developer - my co-workers program in a scripting language that controls our hardware product. I feel that my employer is attempting to demonstrate to customers and others who visit the office that they are taking an active step in quality and functionality control by bringing the development in house (some of it has previously been contracted out). I feel that we're being looked after; new furniture, new hardware to work on, etc. I am considering whether it is appropriate to display my degree in the office. I generally feel that it would be fine, I'm proud of it and worked hard for it. My only hesitation is that there are engineers here who are much more well established in their careers who don't display any of their certifications (mind you, their work area is constructed of partition walls instead of drywall, but I don't think this is the deciding factor, but may be). I would, of course, consult my employer before hanging anything on the walls, but I thought it would be good to get a feel before approaching them. What has been your experience with this sort of decision, and are there other considerations that I am overlooking? Thanks"}
{"_id": "99096", "title": "Sign Language Recognition", "text": "I am a final year undergraduate student of Information Technology. My team and I have taken up \"Sign Language Recognition\" as our Final Year Project. We have just started with it and we are in the phase of information gathering (gathering data). We plan to use Instrumented Gloves as the input device. But we do not have much knowledge in the area. Also, we came across the following methods for training the system for actual recognition of gestures and hence sign language.   1. Neural Networks   2. Symbolic Learning Algorithms   3. Hidden Markov Models   4. Instance Based Learning   5. Grammar based techniques Please tell me which of them I should use for sign recognition. Also, tell me about Instrumented Gloves and is there any specific variety which we should choose for our project?"}
{"_id": "90721", "title": "What is the history behind the .NET platform's origins?", "text": "I watched Douglas Crockford's JavaScript talks recently, and at one point, he said that Microsoft did not consider JavaScript important because they saw the web as a passing phase of internet usage that would be supplanted by something loosely known at the time as \"Internet X\", and they wanted .NET to become \"Internet X\" Of course, the web is still with us and we know .NET as an application development platform. Can anyone tell me about the early history of .NET and how to went from being an intended replacement for the web to the platform we know it as today?"}
{"_id": "199576", "title": "How to rotate an array of bits", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YmIEw.png) I currently have a PIL Image object which I store as an array of bits (1's and 0's). However I now would like to be able to rotate that image 45 degrees. One way to do it is take the original PIL image, apply a transform matrix on it, then convert that to an array of bits. Problem with this approach is that it's computationally expensive, especially if I want to start doing more than just one rotation. It would be faster to just modify the array of bits directly. I tried using numpy.roll:               numpy.roll(bits, 45) # rotate 45 degrees      Unfortunately, this just does a circular shift, not an actual angular rotation. What algorithm can I use on the array of bits to give me the desired output without having to go through the original image? Even though my application is in Python, your answer can be in whatever language you feel comfortable with, I'm more interested in the algorithm itself not the syntax :)"}
{"_id": "90723", "title": "What is the typical workday in the life of a junior programmer?", "text": "I am a college student majoring in CS and I have yet to take an internship. I am wondering what the normal workday for a junior programmer is like. What is the normal daily work load like? Are there any specifics or office ettiquite to being a programmer that's different for other junior-level employees?"}
{"_id": "205755", "title": "Encapsulate downcasting when returning from a method", "text": "In chapter 24 of Code Complete the author says, in reference to encapsulate downcasting when returning from a method, \"If a routine returns an object, it normally should return the most specific type of object it knows about. This is particurlarly applicable to routines that return iterators, collections, elements of collections, and so on.\" Now, being a C# programmer, I typically always return ICollection instead of, say, IList or even List. By using an interface from higher up in the hierarchy I am free to switch collection type in the method without breaking the method interface. This seems like a good thing. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "168300", "title": "When not to use Spring to instantiate a bean?", "text": "I am trying to understand what would be the correct usage of Spring. Not syntactically, but in term of its purpose. If one is using Spring, then should Spring code replace all bean instantiation code? When to use or when not to use Spring, to instantiate a bean? May be the following code sample will help in you understanding my dilemma:               List<ClassA> caList = new ArrayList<ClassA>();     for (String name : nameList) {         ClassA ca = new ClassA();         ca.setName(name);         caList.add(ca);     }      If I configure Spring it becomes something like:               List<ClassA> caList = new ArrayList<ClassA>();     for (String name : nameList) {         ClassA ca = (ClassA)SomeContext.getBean(BeanLookupConstants.CLASS_A);         ca.setName(name);         caList.add(ca);     }      I personally think using Spring here is an unnecessary overhead, because   1. The code the simpler to read/understand.   2. It isn't really a good place for Dependency Injection as I am not expecting that there will be multiple/varied implementation of `ClassA`, that I would like freedom to replace using Spring configuration at a later point in time. Am I thinking correct? If not, where am I going wrong?"}
{"_id": "198224", "title": "Why is MongoDb popular with Node.js?", "text": "I've been looking att different web stacks, mainly rails and node.js. One thing that strikes me is that while rails is often used with a relational database Node.js seem to go hand in hand with Mongodb, judging by the blogosphere. Is there a specific reason for this? I like the modularity of node but I'm also sceptical to NOSQL. I get the feeling that if having a rdbms is important I should use rails since they seem to be a second class citizen in the node ecosystem."}
{"_id": "198225", "title": "Is there value in learning Entity framework 4.0", "text": "I purchased a used book by Julia Lerman (2010) on EF4.0, and now I am wondering if the EF has changed dramatically since, I'm looking to learn this technology and i do not know if starting with a previous version matters or not ( deprecated functions, new practices, different approaches...). If I start with learning EF 4.0 will I be learning a dead or dying technology or will most of what I learn translate directly to EF 5. Are there things I should be aware of that are extremely different in the application of the 2 versions?"}
{"_id": "168308", "title": "Why not commit unresolved changes?", "text": "In a traditional VCS, I can understand why you would not commit unresolved files because you could break the build. However, I don't understand why you shouldn't commit unresolved files in a DVCS (some of them will actually _prevent_ you from committing the files). Instead, I think that your repository should be locked from _pushing_ and _pulling_ , but not committing. Being able to commit during the merging process has several advantages (as I see it):   * The actual merge changes are in history.   * If the merge was very large, you could make periodic commits.   * If you made a mistake, it would be much easier to roll back (without having to redo the entire merge).   * The files could remain flagged as unresolved until they were marked as resolved. This would prevent pushing/pulling. You could also potentially have a _set_ of changesets act as the merge instead of just a single one. This would allow you to still use tools such as `git rerere`. So why is committing with unresolved files frowned upon/prevented? Is there any reason other than tradition?"}
{"_id": "220694", "title": "Need Advice About A Specialized eCommerce System", "text": "I'm doing requirements/systems analysis on a particular project and could use some advice. **PROBLEM:** The project is for an organization that has a number of suppliers, with each supplier having up to several thousand items in their inventory. The supplier's inventory list will mostly be available via some sort of API. It's contain the product name, description, photos, unique identifier (e.g. barcode), and other details like dimensions, weight, colors, etc. depending on the inventory item. The organization has a number of retail stores. These retail stores may opt to sell the inventory items available from the organization's suppliers at whatever price the retail stores set. Retail stores also need the ability to:   * flag whether the inventory item is available in-store and/or online   * add items to their inventory that aren't part of the organization's suppliers' inventory list   * provide variable pricing models to the retail stores' customers (e.g. a set price for regular customer, a discounted price for preferred customers, etc.)   * allow customers to purchase items based on a line of credit For online purchases, the payment gateway/merchant account used should be either:   * the organization's payment gateway/merchant account, or   * the retail store's own payment gateway/merchant account Retail stores also need basic CMS functionality for their site, such as:   * ability to add pages   * ability to define custom data (e.g. like the \"channels\" concept in ExpressionEngine)   * member management The organization also need to manage the individual retail stores' website -- as well as allow the individual retail stores to do their own management/administration. So a \"multi-site manager\" feature + site level control panels are needed. The organization will also provide the retail stores a few templates to choose from. So, a robust templating system along with ability to choose templates would be needed. **PARTIAL CONCEPTUAL SOLUTION:** I was thinking that I should have a centralized repository for all the supplier's inventory items so that the suppliers can have a uniform way to accessing them. This would result in a duplication of data, but it might be necessary as the data will be needed for displaying product details, categorization, search, etc. Benefit of having a centralized repository are:   * any API keys that need to be managed in order to obtain the suppliers' inventory list would be in one place only   * any special code to obtain suppliers' inventory would only need to reside in one place, too **QUESTIONS**   1. Is my idea of having a centralized repository a good idea?   2. Is this a system that needs to be built from the ground up?"}
{"_id": "220911", "title": "Using public API of a BSD-Licensed library in an MIT-Licensed project", "text": "I'm writing code that I would like to release under the MIT License. It uses the public API of a library licensed under the BSD 3-clause license. I am not redistributing the library with the source code, and I am not providing binaries, users must install the library themselves and compile from source. Do I need to include the license of the library in my project, effectively overriding the MIT License, even though I am not redistributing source code?"}
{"_id": "112589", "title": "Examples of MVVM adoption outside the Microsoft community?", "text": "IS MVVM getting any kind of traction outside the Microsoft community? Within Silverlight this is a non-issue, but for other technologies, like JavaScript it surely is: For instance Knockout.js is a great framework, but the 'rest of the world' seems to be on a Backbone path. My concern is that MVVM frameworks (like Knockout) are going to suffer a lack of network effect by being constrained to the Microsoft ecosystem, and thus fall behind compared to the rest."}
{"_id": "197087", "title": "Is there any environments like Visual Studio for embedded systems?", "text": "I thought it would be very useful if there is an embedded application development tool like Visual Studio for web development. I mean when we develop web applications we have a toolbox and we drag and drop components and generally use events. In embedded systems events are interrupts. So why don't we have a toolbox which has electronic circuit components and we drag and drop them, also by clicking on them writing the behind code. Is there any extension like that for visual studio? or Is there any other environment like that?"}
{"_id": "104925", "title": "Do I still own accreditation of work despite not owning copyright?", "text": "I completed some work at University for a website design. I understand that unless I request IP from the University they own full rights to the design. The clause is stated as below: > 18.1 All intellectual property rights in and to any work created by a > student during the course of his/her study will belong to and be the > absolute property of the University and the student will do all such acts > and sign all necessary deeds and documents to vest legal title in and to the > intellectual property in the University. The questions I have are:   1. Do I maintain any rights to the design?    2. Have I relinquished all rights to the work through this point?   3. Is accreditation and IP separate? I.e. do I still have the right to accreditation on the website despite not owning it? Any advice or help is much appreciated."}
{"_id": "224487", "title": "Are there any known effects on cognitive load of many files with one file per object?", "text": "There has been a trend in the Ruby/Rails community to create lots of objects that have very small functionality (SRP anyone?) and live in their own file. These are often extracted from large, bloated model files. This could be good, but I think it is often changing one problem (bloated models with hundreds of lines of code) for another, worse problem (hundreds of small object files in subdirectories several layers deep). Are there any known effects on the cognitive load difference between lots of small files and fewer large ones?"}
{"_id": "104921", "title": "Why so many layers with domainobject like objects in an application?", "text": "Take a typical Line-of-Business Silverlight applicatioin for example.First,We have a Product table in database,which has fields of ID,Name,Price,etc; Then, on the server side,we should have a Product Entity class in the Data Access Layer,which has properties of ID,Name,Price,etc; Then, we should have a Product DTO Class with properties of ID,Name,Price,etc; Then, on the client(Silverlight) side, we have the Product DTO class with properties of ID,Name,Price,etc as Data Contract to communicate with the server; Then, We should have a Product ViewModel Class,which alse has the properties of ID,Name,Price,etc to binding with the View. **Don't these many layers of similar objects violate the Don't Repeat Yourself principle?** What if the Business Domain Model itself faces frequent change? For example, the customer wants to remove/add new properties to the product, which will cause all layers to change its code. We introduce an addtional DAL layer in the assumption that the underlying database will be changed,but in the real world, the business model itself changes far more frequently than data access or presentation logic."}
{"_id": "102189", "title": "Evaluating third-party libraries", "text": "At our company, we frequently use third-party libraries and frameworks in our products. Often, we are faced with the task of evaluating one or more libraries that full fill similar requirements (in a specific case we had to choose between some encryption libraries). We often do a simple prototype to try to figure out, if the library somehow works for us. However, often the prototypes get really complex and when we are at a point where we figure out, that the library is not suited for our purposes, lots of time was spend, that we could have used to write the desired functionality ourselves. My question would be, do you have or practice any guidelines when it comes to evaluating third-party libraries? More specifically, do you have something like a maximum time that will be spend on prototypes and do you have general requirements for libraries you use (license issues, support, documentation, ...)?"}
{"_id": "115675", "title": "Pesky bugs - nonexistant?", "text": "Very short introduction (this is quite a context-heavy question): I'm a 17 year old script kiddo/programmer, doing some projects, usually netting around 20 files of 200 lines each. I usually don't program very low- level, more high-level with battery included API's like Python + pygame and Lua + WoW API. Nevertheless I've written quite some code in the lower levels of the computer too (mostly C/C++). Now, I read **a lot** of programmer discussion and a common returning argument is _preventing pesky bugs_ , for example in \"reusing variable names\". I always nodded and thought that it was a valid argument, but just now I wondered, how valid is it? To be honest, after thinking for a while, I figured I have no idea what they mean with _pesky bugs_. We all heard stories about phenomenal impossible-to- debug bugs, we all have spent useless evenings on that one annoying bug, but apart from a few cases I have never been busy with a programming-related bug for longer than a few hours. Though on the other hand, the projects I work(ed) on aren't huge 10 million line projects like the linux kernel, and are quite simple... scripts. I have a good understanding of them (or at least my part in collaborations) and are not very error-prone. So I'm wondering, do these pesky bugs occur exponentially more as the amount of code increases, or ...?"}
{"_id": "102181", "title": "Should CMS be coupled with presentation?", "text": "There seems to be a growing trend for CMS systems to manage not only data capture and workflow, but to be an end-to-end product that manages presentation and end user content (like comments/forums). I thought it was a pretty ridiculous, but it seems like this approach is gaining more and more traction. It seems to me that the two concepts should be completely orthogonal. The CMS needs to either publish content to database or XML repo or expose an API (RESTful or otherwise) and remain agnostic to presentation. I'm sure there are some efficiencies in coupling, but at the expense of lock-in and inflexibility. I guess my question is, should I go with the flow or is this something I should keep fighting against?"}
{"_id": "147401", "title": "from software developer to a software teacher career", "text": "I am a software engineer on a large company and I love what I do. However, I feel that on the long run I would like to become a teacher on these subjects, not exactly a classic uni teacher, but more like giving workshop/seminars for professional software developers. Any advice about stuff that I could start doing now to achieve that (in let's say 5 years), would be extremely useful. I live in London, UK, if that helps ..."}
{"_id": "79293", "title": "Deploying Microsoft-Access databases with our application", "text": "Up to now we use DAO 3.51 (MS-Access 97) databases with our application. We are considering using a newer version.   * Which versions are available?   * How about deployment?   * How about royalties/licence fees?   * Any recommendations about alternatives? This question should be easily researchable, but I failed."}
{"_id": "132263", "title": "Testing an IRC Bot", "text": "I'm using Autumn gem to create a Ruby IRC bot for a game. However, it makes me feel rather embarrassed because I don't know how to test this kind of program... I think I should mock the IO process to have a control over it but I can't see how in this case when using the gem. Has anyone an idea ?"}
{"_id": "106409", "title": "What should you include in a development approach document?", "text": "I'm in the middle of co-producing a \"development approach\" document for off- shore resources as they ramp up onto our project. The most recent (similar) document our company has used is over 80 pages, and that does not include coding standards/conventions documents. My concern is that this document will not be consumable and will therefore fail. What _should_ be in a development approach document? Are there any decent guidelines on this topic? EDIT: The development approach document should detail the practices and techniques that will be used by software developers while software is designed, built, and tested."}
{"_id": "111803", "title": "Questions about releasing an application that has been built on an IDE on an educational license", "text": "If an application is made during education using an IDE that had an Educational License (provided by the institute), and later the developers decide to release it in the market as a product:   1. Is it legal, and valid to do so?   2. Is it valid to build that application through the free or commercial version of the same IDE, or the project has to be re-coded or developed from the start, entirely on the commercial version of the IDE.   3. What permissions and licenses should be acquired if there is such plan?   4. What are the other things too look for in this regard?   5. If there is such plan, how to prepare for it at the start of the project, like who to talk to and how to talk about it, what paperwork etc. should be done so that in the end, there is nothing illegal."}
{"_id": "35594", "title": "How can I improve my problem-solving ability?", "text": "Everyone says the same thing: \"a real programmer knows how to handle real problems.\" But they forget how they learned this ability or where: it's not taught in schools. What can I do to improve my ability to tackle complex programming problems? What strategies have worked for you? Are there specific areas I should be focusing on, like algorithms or design patterns?"}
{"_id": "210913", "title": "How can I organize my data flow to process a good program solution?", "text": "My main problem when trying to form a program is that while I have the tools at my disposal, I am too disorganized to properly use them to solve my problems. Often my process is simply trial and error until the program works. I am looking to see what others use to organize the process of writing programs."}
{"_id": "94643", "title": "How do you improve your problem solving skills?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How does one improve one's problem-solving ability? I'm focusing on becoming a better developer and one area I'd like to focus on is improving my problem solving skills. The really good developers I know understand the problem very well and know how to approach HOW to find out what they don't know. I've often heard that a developer must know his problem domain well or his code can't be built upon a poor understanding of the business. I've almost never been in an environment where I was given time to sufficiently learn the business enough. Can others share their thoughts on best practices of how to approach solving a problem, or more importantly... how to best approach finding out the information you need to know in order to get to a reasonable answer or hypothesis? Are there any good books or resources for this?"}
{"_id": "196684", "title": "What do small business people do with regards to 'legal' when selling software", "text": "For those who have sold software successfully over the Internet, after going to the effort of writing the software, creating a website, get a domain name, hosting the website, setting up a merchant facility, creating a trial version, etc - what do you do about the legal aspect of allowing the version downloaded from the Internet to be used only within the intended scope. That is from the perspective of say:-   * each workstation, or server, or CPU, etc counts as a CAL   * Development Vs Evaluation Vs Production   * support and upgrades   * not allowing the user to on-sell   * disallow modifying/extending Is there a standard procedure / contract for this - i.e. are there documents in the public domain for this or can I take one from another software vendor, tailor it, etc. Or, do I need to hand crank it - i.e. get an accountant/legal- person to write it up"}
{"_id": "115587", "title": "Definition of a Software bug. Blizzard Entertainment insists that my \"bug\" is not a bug at all. Are they right?", "text": "According to Wikipepdia, > _A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, > failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect > or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways._ Recently I've found a \"bug\" in StarCraft 2 which produces an unexpected result: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2868627470 The problem is that if I keep StarCraft 2 minimized for a long time, the game does not disconnect or generate any form of timeout. It does disconnects however _after_ first battle and sometimes also loses game data (match statistics). Unfortunatly, according to Blizzard: > _The game is not designed to be kept minimized for such a long period of > time. (Blizzard) cannot consider such behaviour as erroneous as StarCraft II > is not meant to be minimized for hours._ So, is my \"bug\" really a bug?"}
{"_id": "186714", "title": "Ria service security", "text": "I have a silverlight app that connects to a entity framework over WCF ria service. These calls have to be secure. What can I do so only valid users can call the ria service, and to make the call secure? The user has to log in to get to the silverlight app, so maybe that login in some way can be saved for authentication of the ria calls?"}
{"_id": "196688", "title": "Considerations for beginning work on a unified search", "text": "I have become interested in creating a unified search for a corporate asset management database. My goal is to allow users to submit queries like:   * `stuff in building 3210`   * `stuff in building 3210 owned by Jim`   * `stuff in building 3210 owned by org 2`   * `people in org 2 who own stuff`   * `stuff owned by people in org 2`   * `people in building 3210`   * `people in building 3210 who own stuff` While the application is written in C# I have no real issue with building a search layer in a different language if it is more appropriate to the task. Working with .NET I could see utilizing F#, Lucene or ANTLR to accomplish my goals, but was hoping for some sage advice before starting down any one path. What are some considerations when working with language recognition? What questions am I not asking that I should be?"}
{"_id": "196689", "title": "Computer organization and software engineering", "text": "We have a course called Computer Organization. I am wondering if it is useful in terms of software engineering. These are some topics from the course: Instruction set architecture (ISA), ISA design considerations, RISC vs. CISC, assembly and machine language, programming a RISC machine. Computer arithmetic, arithmetic logic unit, floating-point numbers and their arithmetic implementations. Processor design, data path and control implementation, micro programmed control, exception detection. Pipelining, hazards, pipelined processor design, hazard detection and forwarding, branch prediction and exception handling. Memory hierarchy, principles, structure, and performance of caches, virtual memory, segmentation and paging. I/O devices, I/O performance, interfacing I/O. Should I learn all of those topics or are there any topics that i could skip learning? This is the online course page http://courses.bilkent.edu.tr/videolib/course_videos.php?courseid=16"}
{"_id": "225241", "title": "Best practice with respect to anonymous classes in UI applications", "text": "When working with user interface based Java programs, one way of attaching behaviour to a certain actions _(e.g. to a button click)_ is through the use of anonymous classes. In the example below, the GUI framework is SWT, however I have the same issues with Swing or Android UI components. Namely the structuring of my programs.               MenuItem sampleMenuItem = new MenuItem(popupMenu, SWT.NONE);     sampleMenuItem.addSelectionListener(new SelectionAdapter() {         public void widgetSelected(SelectionEvent event) {              doSomething();                   // handle all table entries              for (int i=0; i<10; i++) {                  doSomething2();              }                   doSomething3();              doSomething4();         }     });      Of course, some might argue that the amount of code in the sample above already warrants for the creation of a dedicated class that contains the logic. This is also suggested by Sonar's **\"Anonymous classes should not have too many lines\"** rule. Interestingly, this rule also specifies that: > squid : S1188 - While waiting for support of closure in Java, anonymous > classes is the most convenient way to inject a behavior without having to > create a dedicated class. But those anonymous inner classes should be used > only if the behavior can be accomplished in a few lines. With more complex > code, a named class is called for. However, since closures have not yet arrived in Java, **my question is whether there are any more elegant solutions than** :   * writing a bunch of code within anonymous classes which has all sorts of drawbacks _(limited reuse, slower navigating through the code, ...)_   * creating a huge number of dedicated classes which themselves all might have very limited functionality _(i.e.: over-engineering, ...)_ _To extend my question:_ I would also like to know what are the best practices with respect to this aspect of Java based UI applications? Are there any well established patterns?"}
{"_id": "225246", "title": "Factory method - when objects need information to get initalized", "text": "Lets look on a simple example: assume that I have three classes implemeting `IPersonRepository`: `SQLPersonRepository`, `WebPersonRepository`, `InMemoryPersonRepository`. I also have `PersonRepositoryFactory` class which is simple Factory method pattern implementation - contains `GetPersonRepository` methods which have enum/string as parameter. How could I create Factory pattern (or in other words centralize my object creation) when `SQLPersonRepository` needs dependency for: `SQLConnection` or string to database path, `WebPersonRepository` needs some http settings object and `InMemoryPersonRepository` has no dependencies? I could pass it in Factory constructor or as method parameter but it'd be ugly, unclean and unmaintable especially if I had more `IPersonRepository` implementations."}
{"_id": "216450", "title": "How to practice object oriented programming?", "text": "I've always programmed in procedural languages and currently I'm moving towards object orientation. The main problem I've faced is that I can't see a way to practice object orientation in an effective way. I'll explain my point. When I've learned PHP and C it was pretty easy to practice: it was just matter of choosing something and thinking about an algorithm for that thing. In PHP for example, it was matter os sitting down and thinking: \"well, just to practice, let me build one application with an administration area where people can add products\". This was pretty easy, it was matter of thinking of an algorithm to register some user, to login the user, and to add the products. Combining these with PHP features, it was a good way to practice. Now, in object orientation we have lots of additional things. It's not just a matter of thinking about an algorithm, but analysing requirements deeper, writing use cases, figuring out class diagrams, properties and methods, setting up dependency injection and lots of things. The main point is that in the way I've been learning object orientation it seems that a good design is crucial, while in procedural languages one vague idea was enough. I'm **not** saying that in procedural languages we can write _good_ software without design, just that for sake of practicing it is feasible, while in object orientation it seems not feasible to go without a good design, even for practicing. This seems to be a problem, because if each time I'm going to practice I need to figure out tons of requirements, use cases and so on, it seems to become not a good way to become better at object orientation, because this requires me to have one whole idea for an app everytime I'm going to practice. Because of that, what's a good way to practice object orientation?"}
{"_id": "237683", "title": "How to deal with a misnamed function in production code?", "text": "I've recently come across a Python library on GitHub. The library is great, but contains one glaring typo in a function name. Let's call it `dummy_fuction()` while it should be `dummy_function()`. This function is definitely \"in the wild\" and most likely used in embedded systems. The first thing that springs to mind is to add a second version of the function with the correct name and add a deprecation warning to the first version for the next release. Three questions:   1. Could the approach above have any unintended consequences?   2. Is there a standard approach to this kind of problem?   3. How long should any deprecation warning be left in place?"}
{"_id": "179139", "title": "How to identify a software development framework?", "text": "Based on what information, can we identify something as a software development framework? For example the Wikipedia article of 'software framework' claims it should include support programs, compilers, code libraries, etc. But there are some companies I know of which call a code library 'framework'! What should a certain development environment contain to be considered as a 'framework'?"}
{"_id": "66139", "title": "When can you offer innovation without being off-task?", "text": "**When can you offer innovation, without being off-task?**   I can't understand how creative innovation fits in Agile and other methodologies. **People just want what they asked for, right?**   Say you're following an efficient methodology like Agile/SCRUM. When can you offer innovation, without being off-task? Say you're making an app and doing some creative stuff with the UX. The client gave you implicit instructions, and you're staying on track. Imagine you discover an innovation that's not a beta. If you introduce innovations the wrong way, you could appear off-task."}
{"_id": "66138", "title": "Why does PHP have interfaces?", "text": "I noticed that as of PHP5, interfaces have been added to the language. However, since PHP is so loosely typed, it seems that most of the benefits of using interfaces is lost. Why is this included in the language?"}
{"_id": "136016", "title": "Putting audit functionality into the database", "text": "Our database does not have any audit functionality.   * It does not records who inserts the record or who who changes it   * It does not keep a history of the changes made   * Nothing can be restored if something goes wrong   * There are many other short comings for example the database does not have any data integrity, anything an be thrown in, no check on different fields, duplicates etc My question is, who's job it is to put this functionality in? An ASP Developer who knows basics of SQL and who interacts with the database regularly. Or an SQL Administrator who's sole job is to work with the databases, optimize it and maintain it? At this point we do not have an SQL Administrator, but can hire one. How big of an undertaking this should be for a developer to fix the above issues?"}
{"_id": "66131", "title": "Can you copyright code under 2 separate entities?", "text": "I am wondering if it is possible to copyright a piece of software under 2 separate entities, allowing both entities full right do whatever they want with the software while not allowing one of the entities to be able to revoke privileges to the other? Basically I am working on a team, and not getting paid so it is not a paid for hire situation, and I am probably going to be building a web platform system from scratch in C#. I want to be able to make sure that in the event the team breaks up or I kicked off the team that I will still be able to continue work on the web platform system without any legal issues. It is not that I don't trust the team as I do, but life has taught me to always cover my own ass. Would a better way to handle this be to copyright the code under my name and then just give the team a license to use the code however they see fit? I also know that any advice I receive here is most likely not from a lawyer and even if it is, any advice given may not be 100% accurate according to the law."}
{"_id": "185250", "title": "QR Codes as Booking Confirmations for Conference?", "text": "A client of mine is holding a conference and we have the task of creating a booking system for them. However they have requested that we use QR codes so that on the door, a person can simply present their QR code, be scanned, and boom! they are signed in. This isn't so much of a problem because I thought well I could use a long URL to connect to our DB and sign the person in, mark them as booked in/confirmed, and be done with it. That's all very easy, the problem is then that what if the person scan's the QR code themselves? How do ensure that, only the people who are on the door of the conference have the power to scan the barcodes and sign people in? I am limited really to php / jquery, if I knew XCODE I would write an App but I don't. Thoughts I had:   1. Get the IP of the local WIFI, and only accept requests from that (however that does not stop the public from signing in)   2. Use some variable in $_SERVER[] that I could map as coming from a certain person's phone only."}
{"_id": "181948", "title": "How to organize MVVM files in solution", "text": "I'm fairly new to the MVVM concept but like a lot of the flexibility it gives me so far. However, I'm struggling to find a good way to manage my code. I have several classes that are just sitting in a folder in my solution such as `xxxView.cs`, `xxxViewModel.cs`, `yyyView.cs`, `yyyViewModel.cs`, `zzzView.cs`, `zzzViewModel.cs` you get the idea. It has started to crowd my solution, making it harder to find the files I'm looking for. Is there some standard way to organize these files? Do I create a **View** and **ViewModel** folder to separate and clean up the solution or have people found a better way?"}
{"_id": "181944", "title": "What are the challenges related to typing in writing a compiler for a dynamically typed language?", "text": "In this talk, Guido van Rossum is talking (27:30) about attempts to write a compiler for Python code, commenting on it saying: > turns out it's not so easy to write a compiler that maintains all the nice > dynamic typing properties and also maintains semantic correctness of your > program, so that it actually does the same thing no matter what kind of > weirdness you do somewhere under the covers and actually runs any faster **What are the (possible) challenges related to typing in writing a compiler for a dynamically typed language like Python?**"}
{"_id": "204335", "title": "Software Design Stability , YAGNI and Agile", "text": "I've met the criterion of good system desing as its stability relative to requirements change.   Small req. changes should raise small changes in design.   Yet I have gut feeling that almost for any somewhat complex software system it's possible to state the set of small changes in requirements which causes unacceptable amount of changes in software.   This feeling is based on personal experience though not very great and the fact that schedules are often broken.   Community can argue against this statement in case of strong disagreement. But the question only has meaning if you agree. YAGNI principle works well against overengineering and Agile methodology brings it to the whole process of software development: system evolves incrementally and this perfectly conforms to stability concept which I started this post from.   But... If we however agree that there are some instability points shouldn't we localize this cases to understand the implications from the very beginning? And how is it possible if we designs system in agile incremetnal manner?! P.S. Itneresting part of the dialog with my colleague:   * Nothing is wrong with incremental software development.   * Do you imagine the costs of changing the architecture of Curiosity's firmware after it landed Mars?   * Hey, but the can and changed the firmware!   * Yes, but before that, they had carefully designed this feature. And if not...that would be the point of no return."}
{"_id": "25978", "title": "Begin and Finish or Pre and Post in async call pair?", "text": "In an async call pair you would rather have a BeginDoSomething & FinishDoSomething or PreDoingSomething & PostDoingSomething pair? Cheers"}
{"_id": "139377", "title": "Current iOS version/device statistics?", "text": "The answer to this SO question has become stale: iOS version/device statistics - where can i find? because time currency wasn't part of that question, and iOS version updates have been release since this question was asked. Is there a web site or other publicly available source which keeps a current or frequently updated list of the percentages of iOS devices and OS versions in use, perhaps by continual monitoring of app analytics or web site logs or other means? And what device or OS information are iOS app analytics currently allowed to report, if any? (...assuming an appropriate privacy policy and adhering to such, of course.)"}
{"_id": "103318", "title": "iOS version/device statistics - where can I find?", "text": "Since I am developing iOS apps I'm trying to find stats on how many iOS devices there are out there. Preferably broken down into versions: Iphone 3G, Iphone 3Gs, Iphone 4 etc. Also I'd like to know the stats on different iOS versions. After an hour of googling I found out that it is not the easiest thing to find. Anyone got some nice bookmarked links to share?"}
{"_id": "196355", "title": "What are the drawbacks of immutable types?", "text": "I see myself using more and more immutable types _when the instances of the class are not expected to be changed_. It requires more work (see example below), but makes it easier to use the types in a multithreaded environment. At the same time, I rarely see immutable types in other applications, even when mutability wouldn't benefit anyone. **Question:** Why immutable types are so rarely used in other applications?   * Is this because it's longer to write code for an immutable type,   * Or am I missing something and there are some important drawbacks when using immutable types? ## Example from real life Let's say you get `Weather` from a RESTful API like that:               public Weather FindWeather(string city)     {         // TODO: Load the JSON response from the RESTful API and translate it into an instance         // of the Weather class.     }      What we would generally see is (new lines and comments removed to shorten the code):               public sealed class Weather     {         public City CorrespondingCity { get; set; }         public SkyState Sky { get; set; } // Example: SkyState.Clouds, SkyState.HeavySnow, etc.         public int PrecipitationRisk { get; set; }         public int Temperature { get; set; }     }      On the other hand, I would write it this way, given that getting a `Weather` from the API, then modifying it would be weird: changing `Temperature` or `Sky` wouldn't change the weather in real world, and changing `CorrespondingCity` doesn't make sense neither.               public sealed class Weather     {         private readonly City correspondingCity;         private readonly SkyState sky;         private readonly int precipitationRisk;         private readonly int temperature;              public Weather(City correspondingCity, SkyState sky, int precipitationRisk,             int temperature)         {             this.correspondingCity = correspondingCity;             this.sky = sky;             this.precipitationRisk = precipitationRisk;             this.temperature = temperature;         }              public City CorrespondingCity { get { return this.correspondingCity; } }         public SkyState Sky { get { return this.sky; } }         public int PrecipitationRisk { get { return this.precipitationRisk; } }         public int Temperature { get { return this.temperature; } }     }"}
{"_id": "199677", "title": "Source code of jar.exe - is it available", "text": "This may seem an odd question, but I want to create an executable which runs under Windows written in C++. The program needs to be able to update a jar file even if Java is not installed on the target machine. I have seen the src.zip in the Java JDK folder and the jar folder but this is Java code. I assume jar.exe is written in C or C++? Is it possible to see the jar.exe source code? If so where would I find that?"}
{"_id": "23481", "title": "How to go about working as a Contract/Consultant remotely", "text": "I currently have a full-time job, but my company is thinking of turning me into a Contract/Consultant due to the fact that I'm now in a different city and have to work remotely. I know usually Contract positions are hired through agencies, in this case since I'll be dealing directly with my company, I told them that I'm only going to charge the same amount as if I were to get a Contract job from an agency, this way I'm still getting a competitive rate, and my company gets to pay a lower rate (no agency to collect a cut). Some background facts:   1. I have a typical team - some are keener's, others not so much, the tech lead/manager try to do their best to achieve deadlines, which means work load is not always spread out evenly, but this is probably true for any team out there.   2. I enjoy my work so far as a software developer, I have a lot of responsibilities and I'm handed meaningful work most of the time.    3. My team members are mostly young, just like me, ideally I'd like to have experienced senior developers/architects on the team to bounce ideas with, but so far that hasn't happened.   4. Our team produces desktop applications written in c#, this means no web applications are involved, I sometimes wonder if this means I'm \"pigeon-holed\".  Back to the Contract possibility, I have the following concerns:   1. Would this actually be a good career move? (this is my biggest concern) As our HR pointed out to me, such a Contract position can be terminated once they decide that I'm not needed anymore, or if the company needs to cut budget, after which I'll have to look for new work, will \"Contract/Consultant\" on the resume hurt my job-searching? (I'll be doing more architectural / design work once I'm in this new Contract role)   2. I'll be working remotely most of the time, I wonder if this would hurt or help my growth to be an architect.    3. Should I be a sole proprietor, or should I get incorporated? What would be the advantage of either?    4. There will not be any medical/dental/other benefits (basics are covered by OHIP Canada), should I look into buying private insurance? If so how expensive would it be?   5. My company is looking at putting on restrictions such as: I will not be allowed to work overtime (cannot charge more than the normal # of hours per day), I will need to pay for all expenses (other than equipment) such as travelling and courses <\\- I'm fine with the 2nd one, is the 1st one normal for Contract positions to be ask to complete your tasks but without any overtime? Does the above sound familiar to anyone? Any suggestions/advices you can give me on what I should think about / watch out for?"}
{"_id": "144173", "title": "What are some useful things you can do with Mvc Modelbinders?", "text": "It occurs to me that the ModelBinder mechanism in ASP MVC               public interface IModelBinder {       object BindModel(System.Web.Mvc.ControllerContext controllerContext, System.Web.Mvc.ModelBindingContext bindingContext);     }      Is insanely powerful. What are some cool uses of this mechanism that you've done/seen? I guess since the concept is similar in other frameworks there's no reason to limit it to Asp Mvc"}
{"_id": "34614", "title": "Have you ever worked at branding your software?", "text": "Clearly, if I want my software to attract enough eyeballs I ought to brand it. Unless of course there isn't any competition. I'd like to understand your thoughts on how to go about branding your software."}
{"_id": "109094", "title": "Why doesn't Google use GWT in most of its applications?", "text": "Google created Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and doesn't use it when building their own web applications. Does this mean GWT is not suitable for building dynamic applications? Or have caching problems? Or have RPC problems? Or are there other concerns that prevent Google from using this technology? `EDIT`: I don't say here that Google don't ever used GWT in any app, but What I am want to say, why they are not using it in a wide range?"}
{"_id": "72467", "title": "How important is working with a team?", "text": "I am about to graduate from college with a Masters in computer science. I have a couple of offers that I am considering and to me, the biggest difference between the two jobs comes down to one thing - how important is it for a recent grad to be part of a team of software engineers? Will it help me grow more in terms of a career in software engineering? Will it help me become better software engineer since I can get guidance from the experienced engineers? The first offer is with a small telecom company. I've been interning here for a while and love the people I work with. Also, this is where I live currently and so there is no relocation required. The problem is that I'm pretty much the only software engineer here. Everyone else is either network engineers or system integrators. My goal is to have a career in software development and I am concerned about my opportunity for growth. Mainly, I've been creating internal tools and writing scripts for managing networks. My director says he plans on expanding our software team eventually. Also, not having a software engg team means that stack overflow is pretty much my mentor, not that that's a bad thing. The second offer is actually with a top tech company. Pluses with this offer is that I will be part of a team of software engineers and hope that I will have the opportunity to learn a lot from them. I'm not really sure if that's what will happen since I've never worked in a software engg team outside of college. Cons of this job are:   * have to relocate more than 1600 miles away   * northwest, so not exactly pleasant weather year round. I'm from Texas   * I liked the manager and the other interviewers but no guarantee that I will like the team   * pay including benefits are somewhat lower than at small company What do you think? Please help me out. Thanks."}
{"_id": "96770", "title": "What features contributed to the evolution of Pascal?", "text": "I am compiling a detailed history of the Pascal language, and there are a few details I am missing. There are so many features today that we take for granted. What features significantly contributed to the evolution of Pascal, and why were they significant? I'm looking for language features, not platform or framework features. So like operator overloading or default parameters, but not Linux support or new Rich Text widget. I know there are a few different flavors of Pascal (Delphi, Free Pascal, Oxygene, Quick Pascal, Apple Pascal, etc.) and they introduced the same features at different times and in parallel. That is OK. I'm looking at the Pascal language as whole, and **_when_** the significant milestones occurred (dates, versions, etc.)"}
{"_id": "177268", "title": "Looking for a real-world example illustrating that composition can be superior to inheritance", "text": "I watched a bunch of lectures on Clojure and functional programming by Rich Hickey as well as some of the SICP lectures, and I am sold on many concepts of functional programming. I incorporated some of them into my C# code at a previous job, and luckily it was easy to write C# code in a more functional style. At my new job we use Python and **multiple** inheritance is all the rage. My co-workers are very smart but they have to produce code fast given the nature of the company. I am learning both the tools and the codebase, but the architecture itself slows me down as well. I have not written the existing class hierarchy (neither would I be able to remember everything about it), and so, when I started adding a fairly small feature, I realized that I had to read a lot of code in the process. At the surface the code is neatly organized and split into small functions/methods and not copy-paste-repetitive, but the flip side of being not repetitive is that there is some magic functionality hidden somewhere in the hierarchy chain that magically glues things together and does work on my behalf, but it is very hard to find and follow. I had to fire up a profiler and run it through several examples and plot the execution graph as well as step through a debugger a few times, search the code for some substring and just read pages at the time. I am pretty sure that once I am done, my resulting code will be short and neatly organized, and yet not very readable. What I write feels declarative, as if I was writing an XML file that drives some other magic engine, except that there is no clear documentation on what the XML should look like and what the engine does except for the existing examples that I can read as well as the source code for the 'engine'. There has got to be a better way. IMO using composition over inheritance can help quite a bit. That way the computation will be linear rather than jumping all over the hierarchy tree. Whenever the functionality does not quite fit into an inheritance model, it will need to be mangled to fit in, or the entire inheritance hierarchy will need to be refactored/rebalanced, sort of like an unbalanced binary tree needs reshuffling from time to time in order to improve the average seek time. As I mentioned before, my co-workers are very smart; they just have been doing things a certain way and probably have an ability to hold a lot of unrelated crap in their head at once. I want to convince them to give composition and functional as opposed to OOP approach a try. To do that, I need to find some very good material. I do not think that a SCIP lecture or one by Rich Hickey will do - I am afraid it will be flagged down as too academic. Then, simple examples of Dog and Frog and AddressBook classes do not really connivence one way or the other - they show how inheritance can be converted to composition but not why it is truly and objectively better. What I am looking for is some real-world example of code that has been written with a lot of inheritance, then hit a wall and re-written in a different style that uses composition. Perhaps there is a blog or a chapter. I am looking for something that can summarize and illustrate the sort of pain that I am going through. I already have been throwing the phrase \"composition over inheritance\" around, but it was not received as enthusiastically as I had hoped. I do not want to be perceived as a new guy who likes to complain and bash existing code while looking for a perfect approach while not contributing fast enough. At the same time, my gut is convinced that inheritance is often the instrument of evil and I want to show a better way in a near future. Have you stumbled upon any great resources that can help me?"}
{"_id": "194857", "title": "Assuring Quality and Bug Fix speed in Open Source Python Project", "text": "I'm maintaining an open source framework (in Python on *nix platforms if that matters) for the first time in my life. It is pretty much pre-alpha, not much more then a scientific proof of concept, yet. But it is also already used in production by another department because it is the only framework globally that approaches their needs. Now there are two anti polar goals: quality and development speed. Of course I want quality in form of documentation, unit tests, code reviews and some kind of \"beta\" usage, before I am confident to let a change be used in production. But the development team has dead lines and when they find a bug, which happens rather often in this prototype, then they need the bug fix to be in production very fast. I have currently no working solutions and our ideas diverge. I think this project can't be the only one with that problem. How do other projects solve this? I'm going to post my idea and the dev teams idea as answers for further discussions, both ways are not a solution though, because my idea basically only focusses on quality and their solution only focusses on speed."}
{"_id": "100127", "title": "How do I view Scala code without all the syntactic sugar?", "text": "I have been studying Scala, but what I keep running into is the optimization of syntax. I'm sure that will be great when I am an expert, but until then.. Not so much. Is there a command or a program that that would add back in all/most of the code that was optimized away? Then I would be able to read the examples, for example."}
{"_id": "194855", "title": "What is \"Semantics visibility\"?", "text": "I'm reading 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, now I'm positioned in \"Apply Functional Programming Principles\", and there is a paragraph that says: > ...A leading cause of defects in imperative code is attributable to mutable > variables. Everyone reading this will have investigated why some value is > not as expected in a particular situation. Visibility semantics can help to > mitigate these insidious defects, or at least to drastically narrow down > their location, but their true culprit may in fact be the providence of > designs that employ inordinate mutability... What is the objective of Semantics Visibility in this context? How to apply this approach to solve mutable variables' insidious defects?"}
{"_id": "92610", "title": "Is it worth developing custom shopping cart?", "text": "We have handsome library of cakephp modules at my workplace, and we develop custom websites at good pace until the shopping cart comes our way to slow down the process. I have used various ( _Magento, Opencart, Zencart_ ) shopping carts in different project, where we have to merge them with our core cakephp application. Usually very custom requirements make the shopping cart **non-upgradable** and takes **lot of time**. I am thinking to make our own shopping cart ( _quite basic at present, and will we extended as we move on_ ) from scratch so it can adapt the custom requirements easily. Is it worth doing? # UPDATE 24-Aug-11 I continued developing our own shopping cart. Here are my experiences that i want to share with you guys. Benefits   1. New cart is easy to change and extend.   2. It saves time when we have vague or custom requirements, and allow us to directly import modules from our existing code library.   3. No need for dual template implementation for cart & custom website.   4. Single admin panel for our shopping cart & custom website.  Limitations   1. Still not mature enough w.r.t other carts in market.   2. Security concerns. We mostly rely on cakephp security.   3. Lacks functionality Problems faced   1. Developing Shipping/Payment gateways was the real pain. As @davidhaskins pointed out **It saved us significant time which we might have spent hacking standard shopping carts to meet our needs**"}
{"_id": "177262", "title": "Project Dashboards", "text": "I'm attempting to create a dashboard so that people not intimately involved with the project can get an indication of project's health. I'm struggling with determining what to put on said dashboard. I think it needs to be brief to be useful, yet complete. The project I'm working on depends on both 3rd party contractors, external hardware and of course my team's effort. Are there any suggestions or guidelines on how to encapsulate it all in a relatively easy manner? Mods, I believe this question falls squarely between _development methodologies_ and _business concerns_ as outlined in the faq. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "194859", "title": "Security in Authentication in single page apps", "text": "What's the most secure method of performing authentication in a single paged apps? I'm not talking about any specific client-side or server-side frameworks, but just general guidelines or best practices. All the communications are transfered primarily through sockJS. Also, OAuth is out of the question."}
{"_id": "177260", "title": "Hash Algorithm Randomness Visualization", "text": "I'm curious if anyone here has any idea how the images were generated as shown in this response: Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed? Ian posted a very well-received response but I can't seem to understand how he went about making the images. I hate to make a new question dedicated to this, but I can't find any means to ask him more directly. On the other hand, perhaps someone has an alternative perspective. The best I can personally come up with would be to have it almost like a bar graph, which would illustrate how evenly the buckets of the hash table are being generated. I have a working Cocoa program that does this, but it can't generate anything like what he showed there. So the question is two fold I suppose: **A)** How does one truly interpret the data he shows? Is it more than \"less whitespace = better\"? **B)** How does one generate such an image based on some set of inputs, a hash, and an index? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding entirely, but I really would like to know more about this particular visualization technique. Or maybe I'm mis-applying this to hash tables rather than just hashes in general, but in that case I don't know how it would be \"bounded\" for the image."}
{"_id": "191089", "title": "OwnCloud App Licensing", "text": "I'm a bit confused about the OwnCloud licensing model. OwnCloud is an AGPL licensed product (at least the open source version is). Does that mean that the only license I can use for an OwnCloud app I write using the API would be AGPL as well? The way I understand it, the AGPL license is so restrictive that no app can be written without it having to be released under the AGPL, which would include custom apps for customers who don't want to spend a small fortune on the OwnCloud Enterprise edition. Somehow that feels wrong, so I might have gotten it all wrong and would be happy if somebody with a clear understanding of this topic could shed some light on this."}
{"_id": "92619", "title": "Revenue sharing with customer who is unable to pay development fee", "text": "I have a potential customer who has an idea for an ipad application but is unable to find sufficient fundings for this. One idea that came up is that I do the work either for free or for a minor fee and then receive a percentage of the income from appstore. How do I decide what percentage is realistic?   How is this affected by the price in appstore and how do I protect myself from the scenario where the customer suddenly decides to offer the app for free?"}
{"_id": "187040", "title": "Have there been disputes when software identifies genders with a boolean?", "text": "I remember that in our first programming class with Java, while explaining data types, the following occurred (kinda): > **Professor** : So, what data type would you choose if your program needs to > store the user's gender? > > **Someone** : How about a boolean? You know, true for male and false for > female. > > **Professor** : Sure, that may work, but some people may hesitate about > that. There have been disputes about calling men \"true\" and women \"false\" in > the past... > > * _laughter_ * He ended up recommending us to consider chars (like `'m'` and `'f'`) although booleans should be fine. I tried searching a bit if there has been any kind of historical entry regarding a major dispute based on this programming practice with no luck. I'm not asking what data type to use for gender nor if it is fine or not to use booleans. I'm asking if, **historically** , there has been a dispute regarding the usage of booleans to determine the gender in programming because of the apparently \"wrong\" (I'm not saying it _is_ wrong - I don't care about that) behavior of calling a woman \"false\" as the professor seemed to suggest. Searching around related questions, the results happen to be only about software efficiency."}
{"_id": "187042", "title": "codeigniter pagination - how to have multiple sets of pagination links on one view", "text": "**Problem** I don't know how to create two sets of pagination links one view. **Background Information** I have a situation where I have parent / child tables that I have to display on the same view - perhaps in two different sections. Each section needs its own set of pagination links. The contents (and therefore, pagination links) in section 2 will change depending on what is selected in the parent section / section 1. The parent is what I call \"subcategories\" and the child table is \"products\". SO when the user comes to the first page, all categories are shown. But once they select a specific category, I want to take them to this view that I'm discussing which will show any subcategories... and any products. **Possible Solution** I'm thinking that I need the following methods in my controller:               public function getsubcategories($categoryID)     {         1.  find data yu need to display         2.  set up pagination object         3.  use add_js method to add ajax call to a method \"get_products_in_category\"              Ajax method to be invoked on document.ready and will return product data.         4.  load view.      }          public function get_products_in_cateogry($categoryID)     {         1. look up products in category         2.  build html to display products.          3.  return string with all html to display product information         ??? can i create another pagination object here???     }      If you have any suggestions on what's wrong with my idea / how I can accomplish this, I'd really appreciate it Thank you. **Edit 1** While waiting for a response, i went ahead and tried a little test... and it doesn't seem to be working. I still have the issue where the pagination links displayed in section 2 actually manipulates the data in section 1. I'm going to move post this question in stackoverflow. Thank you."}
{"_id": "228478", "title": "Testing all combinations", "text": "I need to do some performance measurements inside my application. I want to measure, change some parameters, measure again. There are different algorithms I want to test, and there are various parameters which interact with each other in that the total performance depends on all of the parameters (but the parameters themselves don't influence each other. e.g. if I set x to 5, it will always stay 5 and changing some other parameter won't change x). I think the total number of combinations is quite high, at least enough so that I don't want to manually change everything and test out each possibility by hand. I'm looking for a piece of lightweight piece of software architecture (I dare say a design pattern) that basically enables me to define a set parameter types relevant to an algorithm, the possible values of those types, and that piece of code should then run through all combinations of those types and their values, for each one doing the required stuff (calling some functions to change values, etc.) and then executing the algorithm. Example: An algorithm depends on values x, y and z. x can be either 0 or 1, y can be \"hello\" or \"goodbye\", and z can be in the range [0,100]. The solution I'm looking for starts with [0,\"hello\",0], calls some functions to set the values of those variables, lets the profiling run for some time, then changes to [0,\"hello\",1], repeat, [0,\"hello\",2]... etc. This is probably something that people have needed to solve before. How do I solve this elegantly?"}
{"_id": "50049", "title": "Two internships at the same time -- good or bad?", "text": "I had no internship a few months ago, so I basically went on a 'resume mailing' spree and emailed a _lot_ of companies that I was interested in working for and that had my line of work. This didn't prove futile until a company accepted me into their internship program but said that I would be working remotely. I had no problem with that, the project was good and I was interested. Now I have another internship at a company that is close to my home and I don't want to miss it at all! I can manage both internships side-by-side. In the day, I will do the internship that is closer to my home and at night (and other times), I can manage the remote internship. My question is -- should I both? I am particularly interested in how two internships at the same time are viewed. Would it look good or bad? PS: Neither is paying me anything, so money is not a factor."}
{"_id": "228472", "title": "Include GPLv2 licensed data in MIT licensed project", "text": "I'd like to include some data from a GPLv2 licensed project in my MIT licensed project. More specifically, I want to use the data from the other project as the training data for my machine learning algorithm and I'd also like to include the trained model in my project. I don't want to include the whole project source code, just those data files. I will not modify them. I also want to have the trained model in my project which I think is derived work? Can I create a folder for those data files, add a copy of the GPLv2 license, make it clear that my project is MIT licensed apart from that folder which contains GPLv2 licensed files? Does the trained model also have to be released under GPLv2? If so, can I also keep it in that folder?"}
{"_id": "228470", "title": "Socket Connection Data Insert", "text": "I have been working through a high-performance application where I have identified a bottleneck. The bottleneck is actually when the application must insert messages from a socket, it will record them in a database. The trouble is the speed at which the messages come through are so fast that the application cannot catch up due to poor architectural planning. Clearly, insertion needs to be improved. So here's the question: What is the most optimal format for performing inserts of individual records? I have looked over at this link on high performance inserts revision 4 and found that doing something of this nature would require an extensive restructure in the application compared to its current attempt at concatenating a string together such as this:               INSERT INTO table (col1,col2,col3) VALUES (val1,val2,val3),(val4,val5,val6),(val7,val8,val9)      Does anybody have any have an insight over which is better, **datatable insertion** vs **string concatenation**?"}
{"_id": "86461", "title": "Writing Web \"server less\" applications", "text": "### TL;DR What are the prospects of writing applications which are completely based on a **REST** database server (CouchDB) and web applications which directly access the DB instead of having a web server in between? * * * I recently started looking up some NoSQL databases. MongoDB seems to be a popular choices. I also liked the project. But I personally liked the REST interface of **CouchDB**. So what I wanted to know is if there was the possibility of applications (maybe cached apps in web browser, a chrome extension etc.) which could just just query the database directly with no requirement of a webserver in between. All the computational logic would reside in the client application and the database will do what it does, **CRUD**. Since mostly (I don't know which doesn't) client frameworks support REST quaries, it could be a good way writing applications well optimized for respective framework. These applications though won't be doing complicated computation, but still provide enough functionality which could replace lots of conventional applications. _Are existing resources and projects which would help me move towards writing such applications and also the scope and moving towards developing in this way?_ _Are their any technical/security issues with this?_ * * * This post will help me decide to look into project like CouchDB (and maybe Dive into Erlang later) or stay with the conventional frameworks (like django) and SQL databases. ### Update A specific point of such apps I had in mind is creation of _offline applications_ just by replicating couchdb data on client."}
{"_id": "145803", "title": "A software design pattern to model runtime-dependent behavior", "text": "In a interview I was asked, _Suppose we are going to create a software that runs on both desktop machines and smartphones. Name a software design pattern that could be used to enable the application to create different classes for display at runtime depending on the platform._ I know there are simple solutions to implement this feature in the actual code. For example, in Java I can check the display size and create the suitable class (`MobileDisplay` or `DesktopDisplay` class) for that display. But I don't how this is related to the software design. IMO creating suitable class based on runtime platform is an implementation concern than a software design issue."}
{"_id": "228475", "title": "REST and RPC in multi-tier API", "text": "My team is developing a multi-tier API with scalability and modularity in mind. The public access point of the API is fully REST. However, we are splitting the data access layer as another tier in our architecture and this layer will be on another physical server. We decided that RPC would be a good communication protocol between the public facing API and the private data access layer. We decided to use RPC over REST for the private communication between our tiers because:   * Avoid REST routes duplication between each tier   * Transparency in executing code/functions on different servers    * The communication is private. With good documentation there shouldn't be any problems for the team to understand the communication protocol. My question are:   * Did we miss advantages or disadvantages in the choice of communication protocol for the private communication between tiers?    * What is normally use to communication between tiers in a multi-tier architecture, especially for web APIs?"}
{"_id": "50043", "title": "Is OrientDB document-database? or graph-database?", "text": "Some document says OrientDB is document-database, some others talks it's graph-database. What's right?"}
{"_id": "32618", "title": "Solid principles vs YAGNI", "text": "When do the SOLID principles become YAGNI? As programmers we make trade-offs all the time, between complexity, maintainability, time to build and so forth. Amongst others, two of the smartest guidelines for making choices are in my mind the SOLID principles and YAGNI. If you don't need it; don't build it, and keep it clean. Now for example, when I watch the dimecast series on SOLID, I see it starts out as a fairly simple program, and ends up as a pretty complex one (end yes complexity is also in the eye of the beholder), but it still makes me wonder: when do SOLID principles turn into something you don't need? All solid principles are ways of working that enable use to make changes at a later stage. But what if the problem to solve is a pretty simple one and it's a throwaway application, then what? Or are the SOLID principles something that always apply? As asked in the comments:   * Solid Principles   * YAGNI"}
{"_id": "176497", "title": "How to keep the trunk stable when tests take a long time?", "text": "We have three sets of test suites:   * A \"small\" suite, taking only a couple of hours to run   * A \"medium\" suite that takes multiple hours, usually ran every night (nightly)   * A \"large\" suite that takes a week+ to run We also have a bunch of shorter test suites, but I'm not focusing on them here. The current methodology is to run the small suite before each commit to the trunk. Then, the medium suite runs every night, and if in the morning it turned out it failed, we try to isolate which of yesterday's commits was to blame, rollback that commit and retry the tests. A similar process, only at a weekly instead of nightly frequency, is done for the large suite. Unfortunately, the medium suite does fail pretty frequently. That means that the trunk is often unstable, which is extremely annoying when you want to make modifications and test them. It's annoying because when I check out from the trunk, I cannot know for certain it's stable, and if a test fails I cannot know for certain if it's my fault or not. **My question is, is there some known methodology for handling these kinds of situations in a way which will leave the trunk always in top shape?** e.g. \"commit into a special precommit branch which will then periodically update the trunk every time the nightly passes\". And does it matter if it's a centralized source control system like SVN or a distributed one like git? By the way I am a junior developer with a limited ability to change things, I'm just trying to understand if there's a way to handle this pain I am experiencing."}
{"_id": "233980", "title": "JavaScript: Bundle a required, but common, polyfill in my library?", "text": "First, here are **a couple of related, but not-quite-the-same** questions:   * Should I include dependencies for which I have the source as projects in my solution?   * Depending on another open source library: copy/paste code or include Now on to **my particular question:** I'm building a small JavaScript library. If run within certain older browsers, part of its functionality will depend on a certain polyfill. For the purposes of an example, let's say this polyfill is the `requestAnimationFrame` polyfill. This polyfill is:   * Well-known: Most JavaScript developers are at least vaguely aware of it.   * Available: Copy-pasteable code snippets of variants of it are all over the place.   * Tiny: It's only a few lines of code, really.   * Endemic: Libraries in the same problem space as mine may have it bundled already. Obviously, if my library were the only library being used in someone's project, and if part of that code could fail without the polyfill in circumstances likely for the developer's audience, it would make sense to bundle the polyfill with the library. But in the JavaScript world, particularly in this library's domain, it's possible that the developer already has the polyfill, and that by bundling it, I could be re-polyfilling `requestAnimationFrame` for the second, third, fourth time over. (This itself isn't really an issue, since most polyfills by their very nature include a pre-check of the namespace. But, I admit, the thought of the _same polyfill_ appearing multiple times in someone's code bothers me like a painting hung slightly crooked.) So what is the sensible thing to do? Include it? Or just leave a note in the documentation that says, \"By the way, make sure you have the Polyfill X if you need to support Browser Y\"?"}
{"_id": "233987", "title": "Is it legal to distribute a closed source X Window Manager?", "text": "I\u2019m doing a thought experiment about making a product on top of Linux. I\u2019m wondering: If you make a custom window manager (akin to KDE, for example) on top of X and you release it, do you have to release it under the GPL (Linux) or MIT (X.org)? Or can you keep it closed source?"}
{"_id": "96809", "title": "Why isn't there a Boolean for x values of a variable?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Would you see any use of a Trilean (True, False, ??) Well first and foremost, I'm not a programmer, I am a civil engineer that does some programming and quite enjoy it. Second and Second most, I'd like to claim rights to this amazing invention and call it TROLLEAN or DASSOUKIEAN. Joking aside, on numerous times I run into variables that can only hold three values (let's cal them True, False, and Other. For example, take a traffic intersection. It could be signalized, unsignalized, or non-controlled (aka no stop signs and no traffic lights). it would be dnice to define `TROLLEAN traffic_light = Other` Other in this case represents non-controlled intersections. Instead I find myself writing a code sequence to define that."}
{"_id": "233984", "title": "Trying to \"combine\" similar objects without doing a bazillion comparisons", "text": "In this database I have \"accesses\" - each access can have any number (usually less than 4, sometimes as many as 15) attributes. I also have \"tickets\" where N users are requesting M accesses, so I've got a sub-ticket table with the NxM \"user access requests\". Then for the sub-ticket, there is another table with the A attributes for that access (where \"A\" varies depending on the request). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/s7QQL.png) So, for example, if I have two users requesting three accesses, and those accesses have 2, 3 and 4 attributes respectively, I have 1 ticket record, 6 sub-tickets records, and 18 sub ticket attribute records. The problem is that I want to quickly group the sub-tickets together, so that when I display them I can find all the ones for one type of access, then all the ones of another type of access, and then the third type of access. I know, each type of access should have been given a unique id somehow, but they weren't, and now it's my burden. I only am allowed to \"suggest\" database changes, not insist on them. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "131240", "title": "Difference between brittle and fragile", "text": "When you're discussing a system or a code base, when you use the adjectives 'brittle' or 'fragile' to describe it, what's the difference between those two terms?"}
{"_id": "189531", "title": "What's the protocol for a autoexecuting JQuery plugin?", "text": "I have a jQuery Plugin that I use myself which modifies the selected value of select items on a page. In my own code the plugin automatically executes as soon as it is included in the page this code in the plugin file.               jQuery('Document').ready(function(){     jQuery('select').SelectOptions();     });      this automatically executes my plugin on all `select` items on the page. Obviously for people other than myself who might come across this on github I'd like to change this slightly. I still think the idea of auto execute is good but my question is.   1. Don't setup autoexecute at all, let the developer call the code.   2. Call autoexecute on All Select items and let the developer modify the code if he doesnt want that.   3. Autoexecute, but modify my selector called in the plugin js file to modify only select tags with a particular class - such as below .               jQuery('Document').ready(function(){     jQuery('select .selectoptions').SelectOptions();     });      Is there any established protocol for this?"}
{"_id": "189534", "title": "How many are too many nested function calls?", "text": "Quoted from MSDN about StackOverflowException: > The exception that is thrown when the execution stack overflows because it > contains too many nested method calls. `Too many` is pretty vague here. How do I know when too many is really too many? Thousands of function calls? Millions? I assume that it must be related in some way to the amount of memory in the computer but is it possible to come up with a roughly accurate order of magnitude? I'm concerned about this because I am developping a project which involves a heavy use of recursive structures and recursive function calls. I don't want the application to fail when I start using it for more than just small tests."}
{"_id": "151206", "title": "Why has the accessor methods from the JavaBean specification become the standard for Java development?", "text": "The JavaBeans Specification describes a JavaBean as > A Java Bean is a reusable software component that can be manipulated > visually in a builder tool Since the majority of the lines of code that are written seem to have nothing to do with being manipulated visually in a builder tool, why has the JavaBean specification been the \"way\" to write object oriented code? I would like to forgo the traditional getter/setter in favor of Fluent Interfaces all throughout the code, not just in builders but fear doing so since this is traditionally not the way way object oriented code is written in Java."}
{"_id": "24629", "title": "How did you get started with .NET?", "text": "I'm interested how programmers got started with learning .NET development. What books and blogs did you read, podcasts or videos did you watch/listened and what other resources did you use to self learn .NET development. I have to mention that while I am new to .NET I'm not new to programming in general. I've used PHP, Python for a while and Java for about 1-2 months."}
{"_id": "155054", "title": "What are the commonly confused encodings that may result in identical test data?", "text": "I'm fixing code that is using ASCIIEncoding in some places and UTF-8 encoding in other functions. Since we aren't using the UTF-8 features, all of our unit tests passed, but I want to create a heightened awareness of encodings that produce similar results and may not be fully tested. I don't want to limit this to just UTF-8 vs ASCII, since I think issue with code that handles ASN.1 fields and other code working with Base64. So, what are the commonly confused encodings that may result in identical test data?"}
{"_id": "135542", "title": "php + web service", "text": "Can someone confirm good performance using PHP + Java webservice (for heavy duty tasks) running on NGINX (or Apache) because PHP is slow in completing some heavy tasks and I want to make a web service in java to communicate with PHP via SOAP or REAT or JSON. The fact I'm asking this question is that I already know PHP at a very good level (and Java and I don't want to start learning ASP or Ruby) and HTML5, CSS3 and I want to develop a big portal that will have increased number of requests (1000 / 2000 request/sec) **and I don't want to code the whole application in Java** (cause PHP has more sense), I only need the heavy work to be done by a webservice. **For my project PHP is slow in doing some Math computation and I/O file access every second. It consume a lot of memory and a lot of CPU. At the rate of 1000 req/s it almost crushes.** Is this a good practice? Is there another solution?"}
{"_id": "135544", "title": "Why are several popular programming languages influenced by C?", "text": "The Top 10 programming languages, according to the TIOBE index seem to be heavily influenced by C: **1\\. Java** > The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler > object model and fewer low-level facilities. - _wikipedia.org_ **2\\. C** > C is one of the most widely used programming languages of all time and there > are very few computer architectures for which a C compiler does not exist. - > _wikipedia.org_ **3\\. C#** > During the development of the .NET Framework, the class libraries were > originally written using a managed code compiler system called Simple > Managed C (SMC). In January 1999, Anders Hejlsberg formed a team to build a > new language at the time called Cool, which stood for \"C-like Object > Oriented Language\". - _wikipedia.org_ **4\\. C++** > It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell Labs as an > enhancement to the C language. - _wikipedia.org_ **5\\. Objective-C** > Objective-C is a reflective, object-oriented programming language that adds > Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. - _wikipedia.org_ **6\\. PHP** > He rewrote these scripts as C programming language Common Gateway Interface > (CGI) binaries, extending them to add the ability to work with Web forms and > to communicate with databases and called this implementation \"Personal Home > Page/Forms Interpreter\" or PHP/FI. - _wikipedia.org_ **8\\. Python** > Python was conceived in the late 1980s and its implementation was started in > December 1989 by Guido van Rossum at CWI in the Netherlands as a successor > to the ABC programming language (itself inspired by SETL) capable of > exception handling and interfacing with the Amoeba operating system. - > _wikipedia.org_ > > ABC (programming language) Its designers claim that ABC programs are > typically around a quarter the size of the equivalent Pascal or C programs, > and more readable. - _wikipedia.org_ **9\\. Perl** > Perl borrows features from other programming languages including C, shell > scripting (sh), AWK, and sed. - _wikipedia.org_ **10\\. JavaScript** > JavaScript uses syntax influenced by that of C. - _wikipedia.org_ It appears that most of them borrow their syntax from C and / or are heavily influenced in several other ways, at least in their beginnings. Why?"}
{"_id": "240565", "title": "When calling for a random integer from 1-6, how can I make it gradually get less likely to pick a number the bigger it is?", "text": "Like having 1 be the most common number and 6 be the least common number. And everything else just leveling out."}
{"_id": "135546", "title": "GUI architecture and class naming advice", "text": "Problem: I'm working on coding a few light-weight touch-tablet games and often get stuck with difficulties naming my user interaction/interface classes and their relationships with each other (architecture?). I'm rarely satisfied with any of my solutions, thus doubt and change them several times on down the line. For example, I have a board game with these components (among others):   * \"HUD\" - the HUD frames the view of the game world thus enabling user interaction   * \"boardOverlay\" - this is invisible and lies on top of the viewed game world. It receives and interprets touches, consequently calling methods in \"thinger\".   * \"board\" - maintains all elements on the board.   * \"thinger\" - the class that gets things done, changes game state. I call it thinger since I dont know what it should be called. Better to have a non-descript name than one that will be misinterpreted. Searching for enlightenment: Now I would like to have general/abstract names/architecture for these components which will likely be used in many other games/apps. But I have difficulty coming up with satisfying ones. I have searched the net many a time for guidelines/advice but I find that all of the sources are language/technology/API specific and seldom like their approach. I don't know the name of this discipline/practice to search for for enlightenment. I have tried \"event driven framework\", \"event driven naming conventions\", \"GUI architecture\", \"+oop +GUI +taxonomy\"... on and on .... .... with no luck. Question1: Can anyone provide a resource to enlighten me? A technology independent resource that philosophizes about this type of naming and architecture. Extra credit question: It would also be great with a reliable/concise resource discussing practices/disciplines of this context? There are too many different and overlapping usages/interpretations out there. Example: GUI framework, GUI architecture, GUI structure, GUI design - what should the proper usage of these terms be?"}
{"_id": "197866", "title": "Overriding - Access to Members with Reference Reassignment", "text": "I have recently been moving through a couple of books in order to teach myself Java and have, fortunately, mostly due to luck, encountered very few difficulties. That has just changed. I read a section on the following under inheritance and the whole superclass subclass setup   * When a new superclass object is created, it is, like all objects, assigned a reference (superReference in this example)   * If a new subclass object (with the defining subclass extending the superclass) is created, and then the superReference reference is set to refer to that instead of the original object, it is my understanding that, since the reference is made for a superclass, only members defined by the superclass may be accessed from the subclass. First - is this correct? Second: If I am overriding a method and therefore have one in the super and one in the sub, and I create a superclass object and then assign its reference, as I did above, to a subclass object, by the principle called something like _Dynamic Method Dispatch_ , a called overridden method should default to accessing the subclass method right? Well, my question is: If a reference to a superclass-object is retooled for a subclass-object and will deny direct `object.member` access to subclass-defined members, only supporting superclass-defined members, how can, if a superclass reference is retooled for a subclass object, an overridden method apply to the subclass- object if access is limited by the superclass-originated-reference"}
{"_id": "141271", "title": "If I use locks, can my algorithm still be lock-free?", "text": "A common definition of lock-free is that at least one process makes progress. 1 If I have a simple data structure such as a queue, protected by a lock, then one process can always make progress, as one process can acquire the lock, do what it wants, and release it. So does it meet the definition of lock-free? * * * 1 See eg M. Herlihy, V. Luchangco, and M. Moir. Obstruction-free synchronization: Double-ended queues as an example. In Distributed Computing, 2003. \"It is lock-free if it ensures only that some thread always makes progress\"."}
{"_id": "73334", "title": "What is a hack?", "text": "I often hear co-workers saying to each other, \"That's a horrible, horrible hack.\" What I can take away from that is that it's not good. When I asked them if it works they say \"yes, but it's not good\". Does that mean it's not a good solution? How is a solution bad if it works? Is it due to good practice? Or not maintainable? Is it using a side effect of code as a part of your solution? It's interesting to me when something is classified as a hack. How can you identify it?"}
{"_id": "184664", "title": "mvc pattern on procedural php", "text": "First off, I do not have anything against OO programming (I'd be mad if i believed so). But I was thinking on some sort of procedural MVC pattern with PHP; let me explain better. As we all know, variable scopes, unless they are taken from $_SESSION (, database, redis, etc.) are never global and only refer to a singular execution of a script. For example:               class Car {       this->name = \"foo\";       function setName($name) { ... }       function getName() { return $this->name; }     }      Where obviously in a more common situation, this data will be taken from the DB, otherwise any object car, per execution, would have the same name. Now, is it not possible to apply MVC pattern on procedural code for simplicity purpose? Imagine a really simple social network like application; I could have a structure like this               *views       -profileview.php       -messageview.php       -loginview.php       -notloggedin.php     *models       -user.php       -message.php     - profile.php     - messages.php     - login.php      where profile, messages and login.php work as controllers and route to the right view; and user and message.php work as the classes, that contain all the functions that are eventually needed by the controllers, such as getUserById($id), postMessage($id, $meesage), etc. I have simplified it a lot but I think you can sort of understand my point. What would you think of such implementation on the long run, and why?"}
{"_id": "184666", "title": "Ensuring conceptual integrity in Python project with multiple programmers", "text": "One objection that I have _often_ heard raised against Python that it is difficult to synchronize a team of many programmers on large Python project. Note: that synchronization is _possible_ in such a project does not necessarily entail that it is practical, cheap or easy. There's still n*(n-1) communication channels between programmers, so communication cost grows more or less with square of number of programmers, on average. One thing I liked in Java are interfaces. Sadly, both PEP 245 and even modified Guido's version on interfaces ( http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=106&thread=87182 ) have not been implemented. I was thinking that duck-typing style limited interfaces (no types, just method names) might be very useful, emphatically not for sake of pychecker, faster code, or forcing (dumb) programmers to follow (smart) architect's design, but as means of easy synchronization between 2+ programmers. So, apart from typical but not working very well suggestion of \"more documentation\" (nobody wants to write it really), what are your means of synchronization high-level design and conceptual integrity on such large, multi-person projects? (in part I ask because large projects I have participated in never used Python) I heard objections mentioned above in person: At least 3 times when talking to startups (2 Scala startups, so they have slant towards static typing) and at least once within corp when considering various programming languages for projects. On the web: can't remember this now, I have vague memory of reading it on some OO blogs and forums. Static typing guys (Java, Scala) seem to have had big on this point, even though typically static typing and interfaces are usually meant for other things (speed, IDE autocompletion). Note I know TDD defense on this but the problem here is that it is defensive since typically it's one person that writes unit tests. Of course, one could envision 1+ programmers sitting down together and writing unit tests before coding as sort of indirect spec + test but have you seen it done? I haven't. I also feel that unit tests, even written by groups, are not quite (limited) design or spec. They are low level after all. There's a reason (good maybe?) that Java has interfaces in addition to and not instead of JUnit."}
{"_id": "22753", "title": "C# open source projects", "text": "What C# project(s) would you consider contributing to if you were a beginner trying to sharpen your skills in C# and .NET framework ? The project should be (besides all) active and not something less active and/or stagnant."}
{"_id": "38966", "title": "At which architecture level are you running BDD tests (e.g. Cucumber)", "text": "I have in the last year gotten quite fond of using SpecFlow (which is a .NET port of Cucumber) I have used it both to test a ASP.NET MVC application at the web layer, i.e. using browser automation, but also at the controller layer. The first gives me a higher confidence in the correctness of the application, because JavaScript is tested, and improper controller configuration is also caught. But those tests are slower to execute, and more complex to implement, than those just testing on the controller layer. My tests are full functional tests, i.e. they exercise all layers of the application, all the way down to the database. So the first thing before any scenario is that the database is cleared of data, allowing the test to assume that only data specified in the \"Given\" block exists. Then I see example on how to use it, where they test just exercise the model layer. So what are your experiences with these tools? Which layer of the application do you test?"}
{"_id": "208177", "title": "How to architect a P2P application", "text": "[Moved here at the suggestion of SO users (10k SO+)] I'd like to develop a peer-to-peer application. While I have a lot of experience in LOB apps, I'm new to the P2P arena. I've got a rough idea of how things should work but need some more details to fill out my understanding. What I know (believe) I need to do:   * A significant proportion of clients need to enable inbound connections (ala uPnP/NAT rules)   * Nodes should share other known nodes to provide resiliency if any particular node goes down   * Some form of synchronisation/route finding is required for sending data between arbitrary clients   * Possibly some resource sniffing to differentiate between \"dumb\" clients and and more powerful \"super nodes\" to handle sync/sharing of node lists and maybe relay messages   * Clients without inbound support should hold open an outbound connection through which they can receive info of nodes to connect to In short, I'm hoping to offer (at first) a chat/messenger service which doesn't rely on a connection to any particular central server. While I imagine I'll need to supply a number of centralised \"supernodes\" to get things started (or after significant upgrades), these should be optional once a functional P2P network has been established. I can see a slew of problems and don't know how to address them. Mainly how to...   * Authenticate users to other nodes without a central authority to verify   * Co-ordinate which nodes know about which other nodes (min-max number/by latency/???)   * Allow a given user to determine if another user (or node) is online   * Deal with a situation where 2 groups of nodes are physically disconnected (airgapped) and how to resync on reconnection of the groups   * Etc etc I know this is a pretty open-ended question, so while high-level design patterns would be appreciated, what I'm really looking for is a decent guide to how others have handled these problems (and the ones I haven't considered yet)."}
{"_id": "200885", "title": "Testing From A Developer's Perspective", "text": "I have a book which mentions: > \"There are many types of testing, including unit testing, integration > testing, functional testing, system testing, performance testing, and > acceptance testing\". It is often noted that many developers carry out unit-testing only, or no testing at all. From the types of testing above, which ones are to be conducted by the developer? What are the responsibilities of a developer when it comes to testing?"}
{"_id": "204841", "title": "Migration from a complex C++ application to C# a -- good idea?", "text": "We currently have a complex VC++ software application, which uses a library like ObjectARX to build the dll. I feel there are many features in C# like Collections, Generics, and other libraries which can be used to build the current application in a better and efficient way. I have been thinking about it, but I am not sure on how to present it to my Supervisor and colleagues. I would appreciate any help, to help me think in the right direction and highlight the points to bring it to the team. Few points that I thought was;   1. With some current examples, implementing it in C# with the features.   2. Highlight the development time is comparatively lesser in C# than C++.   3. Use a Design Architecture."}
{"_id": "204843", "title": "Could it be possible to add the integer type to the ECMAScript standard?", "text": "In JavaScript, every number you will ever use will always be represented with what C programmer would call a `double`. The official type is I believe `number`. If I recall correctly, that fact was mentioned by Google as a \"fundamental\" problem with JavaScript and one of the reason why they wanted to have clean break with Dart. Now, I can't help but wonder :   * Can the ECMAScript standard just add that type? Would it be possible to do without breaking existing code?   * Anyway, can't a JIT engine watch the integer usage and generate code that is almost as efficient as using a native integer type, by using integer registers and opcodes? In effect : Could it be done? _Why should it be done?_"}
{"_id": "77656", "title": "Code Reviews do they really work in true Agile?", "text": "So I started working for a large corp., one of those with 3 letters in the name, and they are trying to become Agile, but have tons of processes, which I don't feel are Agile. The one that has me the most wound up are code reviews. My last job was with a startup that I would say is the most Agile development team I have seen, been on, and/or ever heard of. Anyway, my argument is that Code Reviews are a waste of time in iterative or Agile development where the UX/UI is extreme/intense (think Apple/Steve Jobs perfection). Maybe someone here can help understand before they fire me? Here is my development process and the one at my last startup... very Agile. We do the early feature work to sort development task/todos. We would mock a couple versions up and present to users, team, and marketing to get feedback. We then do another mockup iteration to get one round in from the same stakeholders above. Then we divvy up the work and get started. We have milestones and dates to meet, but we keep plugging away. We have no code reviews during any of this. Several times during the weeks of our development we hold sesssions with the stakeholders again to see if they still agree features/functions/UX/UI are still a fit and on target. As we approach the end of the 8 week iteration cycle QA starts testing, then it goes to alpha users, and finally to beta users. But during the alpha and beta developers are going over the new features and older features making iterative daily or hour changes to the UI to improve the UX. So a feature that was being developed this release, might end up being changed 3 more times the last four weeks to improve and perfect it or add a few tiny features (e.g. make the component a little slicker or smarter). Sometimes the changes might be superficial meaning no CRUD operations are changed or modified, but all UI only changes. So with this type of development process, extreme Agile, wouldn't code reviews be a waste of time? Meaning if I had another developer or two review my code, but then that code changes 3 more times before it goes out the door, because of all the UI/UX improvements, are we not wasting our time for first 3 times they reviewed it the code as that code/component/UI was scrapped? We never had many quality issues with this process and yes if a developer left all the knowledge walked out the door, but we always found smart developers to pick it up and takeover. _**And yes, we have a lot of testers because they may have to retest things 3 or 4 times. Also please don't get hung up on asking why all the UI/UX changes...thats just how things are done... been then thats why the app wins tons of awards for UI/UX and the users will kill for the app. The thought process is if I can make a even a 2% improvement in something because I have an extra hour then do it. Users will be happier, which means more $ or users. And yes, our users are ok with the app changing continuously because thats how its been done since day one so they don't see it as bad or a negative._** Hope this post doesn't come off as pompous, but I just can't see how Code Reviews aren't wasteful. Maybe 2% of all our code in the code reviewed has bugs. Each release we might find 3 bugs via code review. So it ends up being 40 hours of code review per developer per release (4 x 40 = 160 hours) to find 3 to 5 bugs? Chances are 50% those 3 to 5 bugs would have been picked up by QA anyway. Wouldn't it be better to spend that 40 hour per developer adding a new feature or improving the existing ones?"}
{"_id": "93567", "title": "The state of localization in web applications", "text": "Given that browsers (Chromium/Chrome thus far AFAIK) seem to be introducing embedded site translations and utilities such as Wibiya and given the amount of work that localizing a site can be (depending on framework, view re-writes, database-driven message localization, etc), does it make sense to put in work to localize sites that are intended for an international market anymore? I'm developing such an application solo and I'm wondering if it's _really_ a worthwhile investment at this point and hoping to hear from others who develop internationally targeted large scale applications. I'm not looking so much for opinions (although those are valuable as well) as factual numbers, i.e. the market share that Chromium and Chrome may have compared to other browsers, which browsers offer native localization, etc. Basically, an estimated percentage of users that I may be factoring out of usability without integrating site-driven localization."}
{"_id": "165263", "title": "Let a model instance choose appropriate view class using category. Is it good design?", "text": "Assume I have abstract base model class called MoneySource. And two realizations BankCard and CellularAccount. In MoneysSourceListViewController I want to display a list of them, but with ListItemView different for each MoneySource subclass. What if I define a category on MoneySource               @interface MoneySource (ListItemView)     - (Class)listItemViewClass;      @end      And then override it for each concrete sublcass of MoneySource, returning suitable view class.               @implementation CellularAccount (ListItemView)     - (Class)listItemViewClass     {         return [BankCardListView class];     }     @end          @implementation BankCard (ListItemView)     - (Class)listItemViewClass     {         return [CellularAccountListView class];     }     @end          @implementation MoneySourceListController     - (ListItemView *)listItemViewForMoneySourceAtIndex:(int)index     {         MoneySource *moneySource = [items objectAtIndex:index];         Class viewClass = [moneySource listItemViewClass];         ListItemView *view = [[viewClass alloc] init];         [view setupWithMoneySource:moneySource];         return [view autoreleased];     }     @end      so I can ask model object about its view, not violating MVC principles, and avoiding class introspection or if constructions. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "165264", "title": "design pattern advice: graph -> computation", "text": "I have a domain model, persisted in a database, which represents a graph. A graph consists of nodes (e.g. NodeTypeA, NodeTypeB) which are connected via branches. The two generic elements (nodes and branches will have properties). A graph will be sent to a computation engine. To perform computations the engine has to be initialised like so (simplified pseudo code):               Engine Engine = new Engine() ;     Object ID1 = Engine.AddNodeTypeA(TypeA.Property1, TypeA.Property2, \u2026, TypeA.Propertyn);     Object ID2 = Engine.AddNodeTypeB(TypeB.Property1, TypeB.Property2, \u2026, TypeB.Propertyn);     Engine.AddBranch(ID1,ID2);      Finally the computation is performed like this:               Engine.DoSomeComputation();      I am just wondering, if there are any relevant design patterns out there, which help to achieve the above using good design principles. I hope this makes sense. Any feedback would be very much appreciated."}
{"_id": "165268", "title": "Java heap space", "text": "In Java/JVM, why do we call the memory place where Java creates objects as \"Heap\"? Does it use the Heap Data Structure to create/remove/maintain the objects? As I read in the documentation of Heap data structure, the algorithm compares the objects with existing nodes and places them in such a way that Parent object is \"greater\" than the children. ( Or \"lesser\" in case of min heap). So in JVM, how are the objects compared against each other before placing them in the heap?"}
{"_id": "230861", "title": "Difference between TSimpleRWSync's BeginWrite and BeginRead methods?", "text": "I have recently switched to TSimpleRWSync from TRTLCriticalSection. The methods BeginRead and BeginWrite confuse me as wherever I read help, they seemingly do the same thing i.e. acquire the critical section whenever it gets relinquished. As the TSimpleRWSync doesn't allow multiple read threads, there is seemingly no point in having two separate methods either. Is there a special difference between them aside from the contextual one?"}
{"_id": "170888", "title": "Name for Osherove's modified singleton pattern?", "text": "I'm pretty well sold on the \"singletons are evil\" line of thought. Nevertheless, there are limited occurrences when you want to limit the creation of an object. Roy Osherove advises, > If you're planning to use a singleton in your design, separate the logic of > the singleton class and the logic that makes it a singleton (the part that > initializes a static variables, for example) into two separate classes. That > way, you can keep the single responsibility principle (SRP) and also have a > way to override singleton logic. ( _The Art of Unit Testing_ 261-262) This pattern still perpetuates the global state. However, it does result in a testable design, so it seems to me to be a good pattern for mitigating the damage of a singleton. However, Osherove does not give a name to this pattern; but naming a pattern, according to the Gang of Four, is important: > Naming a pattern immediately increases our design vocabulary. It lets us > design at a higher level of abstraction. (3) Is there a standard name for this pattern? It seems different enough from a standard singleton to deserve a separate name. _Decoupled Singleton_ , perhaps?"}
{"_id": "93568", "title": "How do I apply a computer science degree to web development?", "text": "I'm a web programmer, but I haven't found many opportunities to take advantage of a formal education in computer science. Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but it seems to me like most of the web jobs I come across are CRUD, web forms, and data grids. For these jobs a formal CS background doesn't seem necessary, and you could do fine with O'Reilly cookbooks in jQuery, CSS 3, PHP, SQL, or ASP.NET MVC. What kinds of web developer jobs exist that really let you apply your computer science background? Do I need to branch out into other areas of programming to take full advantage of my degree?"}
{"_id": "208281", "title": "Options for implementing aggregate message processing", "text": "I am developing a web service in java that requires to do an asynchronous call to a 3rd party app by aggregating about 100 requests or for a minute (whichever happens earlier). Is there any open source framework or known design patterns available to help me in this. I have looked at JMS and Spring-Batch. JMS processes each message (and not aggregate) and Spring Batch provides batch execution but also doesn't provide this aggregation support. I can implement my own queue and handler service to make sure I aggregate the results and process it, but I was looking for solutions like JMS which also takes care of persisting the message/data incase of failure and re-using it once system is back up."}
{"_id": "208285", "title": "Alternative inheritance paradigms in object-oriented design", "text": "My apologies if a variation of this question has been asked before, but due to its nature it is hard to search for. I am having a discussion with a colleague about object-oriented design, and it basically comes down to a choice between two different paradigms. What I had been searching Google for was a discussion between these - as I've seen both discussed. **Paradigm A** Have a small number of classes which answer a lot of public methods, many of which are not applicable unless in certain circumstances. In these cases, they throw a runtime exception. _Example: a mathematical vector class can have any number of elements. This class answers 'Cross', but returns an error if it has anything other than 3 elements._ **Paradigm B** A deeper inheritance tree, with methods only appearing where they are applicable. _Example: the mathematical vector class is specialised as a 3D-vector, with only the 3D-vector answering 'Cross'. 3D vectors are a special case as there are many functions relevant to a positional vector alone (Dot, Cross, Distance, AngleTo, etc)._ ~~I'm not actually asking for opinions on the above (although clearly the second is better!) but where can I find a good discussion on this - and similar - design issues. I can find many beginners' discussions/tutorials on the subject, but I haven't had any luck finding the more in-depth articles.~~ * * * Edit: After a prompt from @JohnDibling, I'll rephrase the question (and add another Paradigm on request): **Paradigm C** Lightweight objects with a suite of functions to interpret them, and throw errors if the provided arguments weren't valid. _Example: all vectors only respond to the most basic requests, and a series of functions like Size(vector), Cross(vector) do all of the work. Cross would throw a (runtime) error if an argument of the wrong size is given._ Could anyone give me specific reasons why A or C might be preferable to B, or point me to an article which discusses this issue in depth?"}
{"_id": "205462", "title": "Fowlers Data Access Layer patterns", "text": "Fowler talks about a number of design patterns available for the data access layer e.g. Table Data Gateway, Row Data Gateway, Active Record and Data Mapper. In the book it suggests using Data Mapper with Transaction Script and Active Record with Domain Model. This doesn't seem to be logical to me as Transaction Script classes contain business logic and data logic and domain model separates business logic and data logic. Active Record combines business logic and data logic (like Transaction Script rather than domain model) and Data Mapper separates business logic and data logic (like domain model rather than Transaction Script). What am I not understanding here?"}
{"_id": "4507", "title": "Do you think that GAE alone is enough to justify learning Python over Ruby?", "text": "Considering the fact that you don't have to get involved in setting up/buying a server or even buying a domain, do you think that fact alone is enough to choose one over the other? I don't necessarily want to work on Google App Engine, I just find it convenient when it comes to hosting/environment/etc. and wondering if that's a good enough reason to learn python. In any case, I'm not looking for a debate between python and ruby but more on Google App Engine and whether its value is enough to dictate the language you should learn."}
{"_id": "155956", "title": "Getting through a lengthy book?", "text": "This may seen like a weird question, but since we're challenged--as engineers --to constantly adapt to changing technologies, we always find ourselves buried in documentation. That said, we also need to consider that time is of the essence because people want their stuff fixed and improved with little hesitation if any. How do you get through lengthy manuals, books/manuals within a short period of time? Take for example: \"The Linux Programming Interface,\" by Michael Kerrisk, which is roughly 1500 pages in length. How would you get through a monster of a book like this if you're pressed for time while still learning most of the material?"}
{"_id": "224803", "title": "Is virtual machine image a good protection for source code?", "text": "We have developed an application that is sold as an online service. After some time we realized that some of customers would need/prefer/require to have it installed locally on their intranet. However the application was developed using scripting language and we wouldn't want to allow clients to access the source code. The question is: What are the technical downsides of distributing application as a virtual machine image?"}
{"_id": "138645", "title": "What maths should I learn to become a better computer scientist?", "text": "I'm a self taught programmer, and although I know many people feel math isn't necessary, I find that in many examples of algorithms I come across talk about (what sounds to be) some pretty complex mathematics. I would love to eventually have a solid understanding of the math that a good, university educated computer scientist should know. I don't really remember any math past algebra 2. With that being where I left off, what should my starting point be? What math topics should I research, and in what order? I'm looking to build a curriculum for myself that will be pretty easy to take on from where I left off and continually learn until I have a similar understanding to that of what a university would provide."}
{"_id": "138641", "title": "What are the roles of a Software Delivery Manager", "text": "I have been told about a position that may be open to me - the role of a Software Delivery Manager. From what I understand this role does not already exist within my organisation. To be perfectly honest I'm not quite sure what a Software Delivery Manager's roles are. I have a few ideas and would appreciate some input around whether they are correct or not, or if there is anything missing:   * ensure the quality of the software being delivered   * document the relationships between the components being delivered   * ensure that the delivery of these components does not break other components   * ensure that the components being developed make the best use of the environments they are being deployed in   * being on-hand during software deliveries (though not actually performing the delivery of software, rather giving the Go) I have also been told that the role would include some software development work (which is important to me being a developer at heart!) - is there software development specifically associated with the role of Software Delivery Manager or is this more likely to just be a case of helping the team out when time is short?"}
{"_id": "103233", "title": "Why is DRY important?", "text": "Quite simple, why would I want to write code that works for all cases and scalable data when all I need to do is repeat the same process a few times with a few minor tweaks? I'm unlikely to need to edit this again any time soon. It looks like a lot of less work to just go...               function doStuff1(){/*.a.*/}     function doStuff2(){/*.b.*/}     function doStuff3(){/*.c.*/}      And if I ever need to add something...               function doStuff4(){/*.d.*/}      And if I need to remove it, I remove it. It's harder to figure out how to make all of those into one straight-forward pattern that I can just feed data into and deal with all the cases, and make a bunch of changes I don't feel like I'm ever going to have to do. Why be DRY when it looks like a quick cut+paste is going to be so much less work?"}
{"_id": "74832", "title": "Moving to Python (SciPy and NumPy) for Scientific Computing", "text": "Just read a presentation about using Python for Scientific Computing. I am currently using MATLAB (student license FTW, which will expire when I graduate soon). So I was wondering **how matured SciPy and NumPy are with respect to relying on them for all the Scientific Computing** I need to do. The advantage is that it's free. I am mainly focused on Signal Processing, Audio, Acoustics kind of computing. I can imagine that the NumPy and SciPy projects are evolving with respect to the support for more complex techniques. So, **how fast are they evolving** , are there large communities behind them? Finally, **are there other solutions**?"}
{"_id": "190414", "title": "Python potential for science applications?", "text": "I'm a beginner in programming. I am learning Python as a hobby. However, after reading some things in what concerns, for example, its speed, I asked again myself if I should really learn Python or learn other more difficult language. I am in sciences at school, and have interest in physics and microcontrollers, so a performance-wise language would be needed for, for example, computational calculations, and that. So probably a language like C or C++ would be more handy in terms of future university degree. So, my questions are:   * I saw that Python is an interpreted language, therefore slower (up to 100 times from C++, from what I read at Stack Overflow, which is a lot). Can't it be compiled so that no interpreter is needed and it has high speed? (like C is) I mean, it's what the interpreter does, isn't it?   * Does Python have any chance of being useful for science? How could it surpass it's speed lack?   * Isn't there the possibility of writing a program in Python, and translate it to C++ in order to compile? Therefore having the simple writing of Python and the speed of C++? Are there any Python-to-C++ translators?"}
{"_id": "70028", "title": "Do you write Documentation in a language other than English?", "text": "A couple of months ago I moved to Germany. Taking some projects on my own, I've recently had the opportunity to develop with a company-based framework, that was very well documented, but in German. My German is pretty good, however my programming terminology is somewhat lacking. Long story short, I was wondering, how common is it to document code in a language other than English? Sorry to seem English-centeric but it seems like a bad habit."}
{"_id": "130114", "title": "What is a good IDE for client side JavaScript development?", "text": "I recently started learning JavaScript and am looking for a good JavaScript Editor/IDE. I found dozens of them in a Google search but I would appreciate if users who have experience with using such an IDE could recommend one. I want an IDE with **syntax highlighting** , possibly **IntelliSense** and **debugging support** for JavaScipt code. I'm a **Windows 7** user and do just **client-side** JavaScript development. Any suggestions??"}
{"_id": "130115", "title": "What is an untriaged bug?", "text": "I am an undergrad studying Computer Science. When I tried reporting bugs to several projects, I came across the classification _untriaged_ a lot. A web search didn't really explain what this means. Could you tell me what an untriaged bug is?"}
{"_id": "130116", "title": "Are there any advantages of using separate RDBMS for reports?", "text": "My production database is SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. It has limited features and I am testing it in a production environment. To better handle reporting queries in a highly concurrent environment, I want to use any open-source RDBMS with tables that will be acting as temporary tables to frequently fill recent records and delete them after use. The only problem is that I need to keep two connections for each RDBMS, but I feel, Firebird or PostgreSQL can give me better performance of reports in a highly concurrent environment. What are your suggestions? Is this approach used in any commercial scenario?"}
{"_id": "130119", "title": "Is Agile applicable in product development companies as well?", "text": "The following principles of Agile development makes it look like Agile is mostly suited for services companies:   * Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software   * Welcome changing requirements, even late in development   * Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)   * Working closely with the client. Often this involves a client representative to be a part of the development team.    * Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location) My question is: Is Agile exclusively suited for service oriented companies or do even product development companies (including web based companies) benefit from Agile techniques?"}
{"_id": "370", "title": "How old is \"too old\"?", "text": "I've been told that to be taken seriously as a job applicant, I should drop years of relevant experience off my r\u00e9sum\u00e9, remove the year I got my degree, or both. Or not even bother applying, because no one wants to hire programmers older than them.1 Or that I should found a company, not because I want to, or because I have a product I care about, but because that way I can get a job if/when my company is acquired. Or that I should focus more on management jobs (which I've successfully done in the past) because\u2026 well, they couldn't really explain this one, except the implication was that over a certain age you're a loser if you're still writing code. But I _like_ writing code. Have you seen this? Is this only a local (Northern California) issue? If you've ever hired programmers:2   * Of the r\u00e9sum\u00e9s you've received, how old was the eldest applicant?   * What was the age of the oldest person you've interviewed?   * How old (when hired) was the oldest person you hired?      How old is \"too old\" to employed as a programmer?      1 I'm assuming all applicants have equivalent applicable experience. This isn't about someone with three decades of COBOL applying for a Java guru job.   2 Yes, I know that (at least in the US) you aren't supposed to ask how old an applicant is. In my experience, though, you can get a general idea from a r\u00e9sum\u00e9."}
{"_id": "100656", "title": "I'm questioning my education choice because they say there's no place for old programmers", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How old is \"too old\"? I'm about to start CS next year. I love both the coding and the mathematical aspects of programming. However, recently I encountered multiple rants about how it's impossible to actually be a programmer over 45, unless you're in a managing position or filling a very specific niche. Any advice? I'm seriously questioning my career choice here, and would be grateful for some input."}
{"_id": "61678", "title": "Can a developer move into a fast-paced career later in life?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How old is \"too old\"? Most developers I know pushed really hard to get ahead in their careers early on, then maybe slowed down about 10 to 15 years in to marry and raise a family. I didn't. I had a family early in my career, knowing that children were more important to me than my career. I will be in my early 40's when my children are going to college, and it seems that I might be able to take advantage of the lull in my responsibilities and get ahead at a level of experience where so many developers are slowing down to spend more time with their families. However, I'm also wondering if the effort would pay off that late in life. Specifically, I'm concerned about age-ism, especially as a woman in development. Women are affected by age-ism more strongly in most careers, and development seems to be far more biased towards youth than most fields. I also know the women who are in software development are fairly likely to leave the field at ages 35 to 40, although I wonder if that is related to delayed childbearing in this field more than anything. Can an older developer reap the same benefits of intense work that younger developers receive? Or will I automatically be perceived as \"stable\" and \"jaded\" at that age, regardless of my interest in moving ahead and investing lots of time into my career once the kids are grown? Would I be better off planning on starting my own business at that time if I want to make a large investment in my career and have it pay off (financially)? ETA: A little clarification: I expect to work between now and then, and grow on the job. So I would be a very senior SDET by that age. I don't expect to have trouble getting a job at that point; my question is more about climbing the ladder to get promotions and pay increases. I see the work the VP of tech does, and it looks fun - but he got to that point by rising quickly early in his career. Can I make the same rise later in my career? Or will I be limited to the rate of growth in position that I achieve in my earlier career?"}
{"_id": "566", "title": "Is it ever worthwhile using goto?", "text": "Goto is almost universally discouraged. Is this statement every worthwhile using?"}
{"_id": "125710", "title": "What are the arguments against parsing the Cthulhu way?", "text": "I have been assigned the task of implementing a Domain Specific Language for a tool that may become quite important for the company. The language is simple but not trivial, it already allows nested loops, string concatenation, etc. and it is practically sure that other constructs will be added as the project advances. I know by experience that writing a lexer/parser by hand -unless the grammar is trivial- is a time consuming and error prone process. So I was left with two options: a parser generator \u00e0 la yacc or a combinator library like Parsec. The former was good as well but I picked the latter for various reasons, and implemented the solution in a functional language. The result is pretty spectacular to my eyes, the code is very concise, elegant and readable/fluent. I concede it may look a bit weird if you never programmed in anything other than java/c#, but then this would be true of anything not written in java/c#. At some point however, I've been literally attacked by a co-worker. After a quick glance at my screen he declared that the code is uncomprehensible and that I should not reinvent parsing but just use a stack and String.Split like everybody does. He made a lot of noise, and I could not convince him, partially because I've been taken by surprise and had no clear explanation, partially because his opinion was immutable (no pun intended). I even offered to explain him the language, but to no avail. I'm positive the discussion is going to re-surface in front of management, so I'm preparing some solid arguments. **These are the first few reasons that come to my mind to avoid a String.Split-based solution:**   * you need lot of ifs to handle special cases and things quickly spiral out of control   * lots of hardcoded array indexes makes maintenance painful   * extremely difficult to handle things like a function call as a method argument (ex. add( (add a, b), c)   * very difficult to provide meaningful error messages in case of syntax errors (very likely to happen)   * I'm all for simplicity, clarity and avoiding unnecessary smart-cryptic stuff, but I also believe it's a mistake to dumb down every part of the codebase so that even a burger flipper can understand it. It's the same argument I hear for not using interfaces, not adopting separation of concerns, copying-pasting code around, etc. A minimum of technical competence and willingness to learn is required to work on a software project after all. (I won't use this argument as it will probably sound offensive, and starting a war is not going to help anybody) **What are your favorite arguments againstparsing the Cthulhu way?*** *of course if you can convince me he's right I'll be perfectly happy as well"}
{"_id": "85270", "title": "When Interfacing with a 3rd Party API, What Can Make Things Challenging?", "text": "Reuse of components in development of software program are always exposed through the API's. Most of the products in today's world (such a facebook, google, .Net, JDK, ...) provide API's to reuse their components without being actually coding from the stratch. Also API's provide a huge high-level abstraction to the under lying components. My question is about the usability of these API's. Certainly, in all API's there are Obstacles. Obstacles can be   * skill sets,   * resources,    * Documentation of the API's   * the API itself. What do the programmers think the real obstacle are? List few of your opinions. To Question this here: Being a developer I investigated the obstacles when using 3rd party API's, one such is Highcharts. Though I have strong points why Highchart libraries are great compared to other Javascript visulization libraries (not comparing it with Google visulization API's) I found myself lost with the usability of the charts when going through their API docs at the very beginning. Indeed, their support forum is good to get your questions answered. Developers uisng API's - most of the time - do not (sometimes, need not) understand the design intents of the API, architecural design and the decisions made during the development of the API. Also, what will be your suggestions to make better API that will reach to large set of developers? I'm not entirely sure about the friction of learing new API's. PS: This may not be a constructive answer. But I am sure I am communicating with real developers on this site."}
{"_id": "128540", "title": "What do I need to know about Agile to blag my way past a recruitment agent?", "text": "I'm currently hunting for a new job. I'm a c# / SQL server developer, but have never worked in an agile environment. I'm in the UK, where very few (IT) employers advertise directly, but instead use recruitment agencies. The problem I'm having is that many agents have little or no understanding of the skills they're trying to recruit for. Agile, being the latest buzzword, appears as an \"absolute requirement\" on many job postings. I've already spoken to couple of agents today who believe that it's some kind of programming language, rather than a development methodology. It looks like I'm going to have to tell a few white lies to get my CV into the hands of potential employers. Can someone suggest a resource for the basics of Agile so I can at least sound convincing to an agent."}
{"_id": "141495", "title": "What is a microframework?", "text": "Why are some frameworks (e.g. Flask for Python, Sinatra for Ruby) called microframeworks? What differentiates them from full-fledged frameworks, like Django or Rails?"}
{"_id": "246351", "title": "Using abstract methods to force subclasses to define values for member fields", "text": "Often in my designs I define an abstract superclass whose subclasses will vary mostly in their values for the fields defined in the superclass. For example, in a game I'm developing there's an abstract class `Missile` with a number of subclasses. Each one defines a different value for member variables such as `MAX_SPEED`, `MASS`, `FLYING_FORCE`, which are then used in calculations performed in the superclass. I use abstract methods in `Missile` to force it's subclasses to define these variables. For example I simply have an abstract method `defineMass()` that forces subclasses to define their own value of mass. A different example would be my `Entity` class (the superclass of all game- play classes) defining an abstract `loadImage()` method that forces subclasses to define an image for themselves. Is this good practice? Is it common?"}
{"_id": "246356", "title": "Functional programming strategies in imperative languages", "text": "I've been convinced for awhile now that some strategies in functional programming are better suited to a number of computations (i.e immutability of data structures). However, due to the popularity of imperative languages, its unlikely that I will always be working on projects that are functionally implemented. Many languages (Matlab, Python, Julia) support using a functional paradigm, but it feels tacked on in many cases (looking at you, anonymous functions in Matlab). That being said, what are functional methods and strategies that I can use even in OOP/Imperative code? How can I write solid functional code that does not allow side effects even in languages that have mutable state and global variables?"}
{"_id": "122729", "title": "Alternatives to Octopus for deploying .NET applications?", "text": "Our shop has a TeamCity server that produces deployment packages. The packages are either ASP.NET web apps, Windows services, or miscellaneous binaries (that just get copied to the network somewhere). The packages are all simple zip files. This is all working fine but right now the act of deploying involves a developer manually unzipping the package and copying it to the right place, starting/stopping Windows services if necessary, dealing with synchronization processes to push files to all servers in a web farm, etc. I'm working on figuring out the best way to automate all this. There is a new tool called Octopus which looks to be exactly what we need. However, for various reasons (cost, immaturity of product), we can't use it. At the other end of the spectrum, obviously I could script all this out with MSBuild. But what are my other options? Are there tools similar to Octopus out there? Are there open source equivalents? How are other shops solving this?"}
{"_id": "14744", "title": "I don't know C. And why should I learn it?", "text": "My first programming language was PHP ( ** _gasp_** ). After that I started working with JavaScript. I've recently done work in C#. I've never once looked at low or mid level languages like C. The general consensus in the programming-community-at-large is that \"a programmer who hasn't learned something like C, frankly, just can't handle programming concepts like pointers, data types, passing values by reference, etc.\" I do not agree. I argue that:   1. Because high level languages are easily accessible, more \"non-programmers\" dive in and make a mess   2. In order to really get anything done in a high level language, one needs to understand the same similar concepts that most proponents of \"learn-low-level-first\" evangelize about. Some people need to know C; those people have jobs that require them to write low to mid-level code. I'm sure C is awesome, and I'm sure there are a few bad programmers who know C. Why the bias? As a good, honest, hungry programmer, if I had to learn C (for some unforeseen reason), I would learn C. Considering the multitude of languages out there, shouldn't good programmers focus on learning what advances us? Shouldn't we learn what interests us? Should we not utilize our finite time moving _forward_? Why do some programmers disagree with this? I believe that striving for excellence in what you do is the fundamental deterministic trait between good programmers and bad ones. Does anyone have any real world examples of how something written in a high level language--say Java, Pascal, PHP, or Javascript--truely benefitted from a prior knowledge of C? Examples would be most appreciated."}
{"_id": "170704", "title": "Why learn more programming languages?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  (Why) Should I learn a new programming language? I came across a line in this article which is, > Learn one programming language every year Why do good programmers suggest to learn more programming languages . We can be a jack of all and master of none too in this case."}
{"_id": "136133", "title": "(Why) Should I learn a new programming language?", "text": "I'm quite proficient with Java, C/C++, JavaScript/jQuery and decently good at Objective-C. I'm quite productive with the languages and their corresponding frameworks too and do produce enterprise level systems (and also small scale ones) with sufficient ease all the while keeping code 'clean' and maintainable (yes, I can read my own code after six months :) Unless mandated by the platform (iPhone, iPad, etc.) or by the client/implementation organization, just \"why\" should I learn a new programming language? Just for \"fun\"? And do what with that fun if I'm not going to do anything worthwhile with it? A lot of my peers are ready to dive in to learn the \"next new thing/language\" and it's usually Python, Ruby or PHP (just naming a few popular ones). Now, just knowing the language by itself is futile IMHO. You also need to know the frameworks, learn their usage/APIs as well as 'good implementation practices', etc. So from an 'economic' sense, is there any benefit in learning a new programming language? If the language is learned in a quick and dirty fashion, it'll probably also be used for quick and dirty prototyping/implementation - but I don't see THAT as a justifiable investment of time/effort. So just WHY should I (or anyone for that matter) learn a new programming language other than \"it's fun so let's try it out\" - if the investment of time may not be worth it in the long run?"}
{"_id": "115783", "title": "Is C a MUST-learn language for programmer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I don't know C. And why should I learn it? I start my programming from Java, and learned PHP. Also, because of the work, I learned Objective-C. But most of the programmer learn from C. So, is this necessary for a programmer to learn C? If yes, how important it is? Please drop your comments, thanks."}
{"_id": "123088", "title": "Why we still need C in terms of development for high level programming modules?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I don't know C. And why should I learn it? I was kind of awkward in coding with C, though I am somewhat familiar with it. I like Java and C#. The reason I like to code with them is for better GUI application development. With C, it's hard to code for a better appearance of any application. I understand the fact that C is the basis of all. But now we have tons of libraries which can help us to do anything in no time. But why do many people still code in the C programming language?"}
{"_id": "30974", "title": "Should I Learn C/C++ Even If I Just Want To Do Web Programming?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I don't know C. And why should I learn it? My goal is to be able to create online apps and dynamic, database driven websites. For instance, if in the future I get the idea for the next Digg or Facebook, I want to be able to code it myself. To arrive there I think I have basically two paths: ### Path 1 Start at a basic level, learning C, then C++ for OOP, then algorithms and data structures, with the goal of getting a solid grasp of computer programming. Only then move to PHP/MySQL/HTTP and start working on practical programming projects. ### Path 2 Start directly with PHP/MySQL/HTTP and getting my hands dirty with practical projects right away. What would you guys recommend?"}
{"_id": "122726", "title": "Java void methods implicitly returning this", "text": "there are a couple of discussion on SO about setter methods returning \"this\" type. And looks like java 7 had the proposal of void methods returning this. But this proposal could not make it to java 7 features. I could not find if this proposal is moved on to java 8 or future or have been completely discarded. Is it? Ref link - Design: Java and returning self-reference in setter methods"}
{"_id": "122721", "title": "Documentation with images - what is the most git-friendly approach?", "text": "When documenting software I traditionally write a plain text file (like a README.txt) which works well, but unfortunately cannot contain images like HTML can. Unfortunately images must be stored as separate files with a normal HTML document (using <a href=\".../foo.png\">) which give unnecessary clutter. The \"Save a single web-page\" in Internet Explorer use MIME HTML (MHTML) to save all resources within a single file. The requirement of having to use a browser to read it, is not a impediment these days. Apparently Opera and Word support editing these documents directly. We use git for our source code, hence the differences as seen by git between two edits of the same documents should not be large to avoid unnecessary disk usage and unusable diff's when looking at the document outside the MTHML editor. What is the best mainstream HTML editor for producing git-friendly MHTML files?"}
{"_id": "94423", "title": "Can we regard file-system structure as one part of architecture?", "text": "Put this image inside `images` folder. All JavaScript files should go inside a folder called `js`. Put templates inside a folder called site-templates and for each template, have three folders called `layouts`, `looks`, and `pages`. We're all familiar with these file-system structures in which we try to logically and efficiently categorize files and folders in an acceptable hierarchy inside our projects. On the other hand, because many times we do I/O operations on these files, changing the file-system structure forces us to update parts of our code, no matter how high-tech, and decoupled our code is. My question is, based on the effect that a file-system structure has on an overall project, can we consider it as a part of the software architecture? Because, in many cases, choosing a correct file-system structure prevents us from duplicating a file, say jQuery, in many places."}
{"_id": "246460", "title": "Reduce a list of IPv4 to lowest common CIDR", "text": "I have a long list of IP addresses that show some pattern of closeness Example:               XX.249.91.16       XX.249.91.21       XX.249.91.32       XX.249.91.160       XX.249.91.165       XX.249.92.15       XX.249.92.25       XX.249.92.51       XX.249.92.234        and sometimes a whois reveals a range like this               XX.163.224.0 - XX.163.239.255      I would like to create a list of CIDR that gives me the lowest common number It seems Python already has such a thing - iprange_to_cidrs - but I need it in JavaScript               XX.249.90.0/16      if that is what would handle               XX.249.91.0 - XX.249.92.255        ditto XX.163.200.0/nn to handle               XX.163.224.0 - XX.163.239.255      A calculator that can do it one range at a time when I fiddle with the mask is here http://www.subnet-calculator.com/cidr.php My preferred language is JavaScript and I have the following start but need the algorithm that does the match and transform               var list = [         [1234,\"10.249.91.16\"],         [5678,\"10.249.91.21\"],         [123,\"10.249.91.32\"],         [456,\"10.249.91.160\"],         [789,\"10.249.91.165\"],         [3456,\"10.249.92.15\"],         [7890,\"10.249.92.25\"],         [1234,\"10.249.92.51\"],         [5432,\"10.249.92.234\"]     ]     function dec2bin(ip) {          return ip.split(\".\").map(function(num) {            return (\"00000000\"+parseInt(num,10).toString(2)).slice(-8);          }).join(\".\");     }     $(function() {         $res = $(\"#res\");         $.each(list,function(_,arr) {             $res.append('<br/>'+dec2bin(arr[1])+\" - \"+arr);          });     });      UPDATE after reviewing an answer FIDDLE               function getDec(ip) {       var octet = ip.split(\".\");       return (octet[0] << 24) | (octet[1] << 16) | (octet[2] << 8) | octet[3];     }     var res = document.getElementById(\"res\");          var adr1 = \"111.163.224.0\";     var adr2 = \"111.163.239.255\"     var XOR = getDec(adr1)^getDec(adr2);          // now what?      Update 2: could the result of the range 111.163.224.0 - 111.163.239.255 be `111.163.224.0/20` ? since we have               01101111.10100011.11100000.00000000 - 0,111.163.224.0     01101111.10100011.11101111.11111111 - 0,111.163.239.255"}
{"_id": "74300", "title": "Has anyone successfully used Windows Workflow for a Business Rules/Validation engine?", "text": "I was wondering if anyone has successfully used Windows Workflow Foundation for a BusinessRules/Validation engine, or if you know of some sample code or articles about this. If you have used it before, what do you think of it? How is it compared to other BusinessRule/Validation systems? I am thinking of rules like               if (A, B, and C)          AllowAccess();      Or               if (Value between X and Y)         return true;"}
{"_id": "146727", "title": "Event driven design and separation of core/UI logic", "text": "I am new to event driven development, and I feel lost when I try to implement events that should pass the core/UI boundary. In my program I have the following (example in c#):               UI.RuleForm   Core.RuleList     UI.ResultForm     Cell 1        Rule 1     Cell 2        Rule 2     Cell 3        Rule 3      What I want is: when a RuleForm cell changes, it will update the corresponding rule in RuleList. And when the RuleList changes, the resultFrom will be recalculated from the rules. My current thought is that, in order to keep core logic separated from UI logic (i.e. core should know nothing about UI), core should then only generate events, but not processing events generated by others. So I have to create some kind of UI.RuleListWrapper which can process RuleForm change events, updating Core.RuleList. RuleList in term should fire OnChange events that UI.ResultForm can use. So in summary, my questions are: I want to know if my reasoning and purposed implementation is okay or not, which probably means: **should a core module be able to process events generated by outside UI** Is my separation some kind of \"mysophobia\", or has it been done before. Are there other better approaches?"}
{"_id": "185532", "title": "What is the best way to plot 3D/2D plots with real time data?", "text": "First of all, I like to use Python, because it is easy to work with. I am not a programmer, so I prefer anything that is easy to use and understand. I understand that it might be faster to program 3D in C/C++ or whatever, but that is beyond my scope. Now, I wish to create a 3D plot of lots of data points (from a scientific sonar). I get roughly 5-10 updates per second and each update contains thousands of points. So the drawing of the 3D plot needs to be fast. Below the 3D plot I want to have a 2D plot \"seen from above\", and to the right another 2D plot \"seen from the side\". Both of these 2D plots will be updated at the same time as the 3D plot, with the same number of points. At any time I will want to pause the real time playback of data and select points from the 2D plots and extract data from those points. I also wish to represent the points with different size and color depending on target strength. And in the paused selection-mode, show the selection by changing color of selected points and/or make individual points blinking or similar (apply two different selections at once). I've done a bit of research, and it seems like Enthought has some nice tools. First of all Mayavi for the 3D plot, and then Chaco for the 2D plots. These seem to have nice built-in functionality of selecting points etc. But I am a bit concerned about the plotting speed. Are they able to plot thousands of points 5-10 times per second in real time? Also, maybe I missed something during my research and there are better alternatives out there? E.g. how much work is it to code directly for OpenGL and is it worth the extra hassle in this case? Or some gaming engine? Or matplotlib? I would appreciate any advice I can get on this. And if it is platform independent, all the better. I am using both Ubuntu and Windows7."}
{"_id": "146720", "title": "Database architecture decisions", "text": "I do not know too many things about databases, so a lot of questions concerning architecture came up lately. Two of these things are:   1. If I have a table with a lot of entries(millions probably), how can I make the `select` queries faster? I thought about sorting the table alphabetically and then splitting it in two, but that doesn't seem to make things easier for me. Do you have any suggestions?   2. I have a table _user_ and one _message_. In _message_ I should have `sender_id` and `receiver_id`. From what I know, I can't make them both _foreign keys_ for _user_ , so I have to pick one of them. Doesn't this, however, lead to data inconsistency(which, as far as I know, is bad)? What is the right approach here? I do not think that it matters, but I use MySQL 5.5."}
{"_id": "135890", "title": "Does an iterator have a non-destructive implied contract?", "text": "Let's say I'm designing a custom data structure like a stack or a queue (for example - could be some other arbitrary ordered collection that has the logical equivalent of `push` and `pop` methods - ie destructive accessor methods). If you were implementing an iterator (in .NET, specifically `IEnumerable<T>`) over this collection that popped on each iteration, would that be breaking `IEnumerable<T>`'s implied contract? Does `IEnumerable<T>` have this implied contract? eg:               public IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator()     {         if (this.list.Count > 0)             yield return this.Pop();         else             yield break;     }"}
{"_id": "42941", "title": "How do you navigate and refactor code written in a dynamic language?", "text": "I love that writing Python, Ruby or Javascript requires so little boilerplate. I love simple functional constructs. I love the clean and simple syntax. However, there are three things I'm really bad at when developing a large software in a dynamic language:   * Navigating the code   * Identifying the interfaces of the objects I'm using   * Refactoring efficiently I have been trying simple editors (i.e. Vim) as well as IDE (Eclipse + PyDev) but in both cases I feel like I have to commit a lot more to memory and/or to constantly \"grep\" and read through the code to identify the interfaces. This is especially true when working with a large codebase with multiple dependencies. As for refactoring, for example changing method names, it becomes hugely dependent on the quality of my unit tests. And if I try to isolate my unit tests by \"cutting them off\" the rest of the application, then there is no guarantee that my stub's interface stays up to date with the object I'm stubbing. I'm sure there are workarounds for these problems. How do you work efficiently in Python, Ruby or Javascript?"}
{"_id": "135896", "title": "Have not been working as a programmer since the three years since I graduated and would like to, any advice?", "text": "I graduated with my BS in CS, June 2009 and then took a job near school which they told me would be web site maintenance. It was actually web-based customer service with a small amount of working on the company site. After about six months I got super bored with it and decided to move back home. I was desperate for a job so I could pay rent and start paying off my student loans. After six months of looking I found my current job where I've been for about a year an a half. My current boss also promised me the job would be company website development and maintenance but I ended up getting railroaded into doing customer service again. I just found out that my boss is having a website developed by a friend which I guess I will be asked to keep updated. I'm really unhappy in my job and I feel like my education is totally going to waste. I can't seem to find any job listings for CS degree students who don't have software development employment experience. And now that it's been three years since I graduated and I'm still not in the field it seems like that makes me look really bad to employers. I was offered an internship at a software company about a year ago but my fiance' asked me to turn it down because it would have been unpaid and we were running out of money. My current job takes up so much of my time and energy and leaves me so drained that I have a hard time working on projects at home or even finding the time to apply for new jobs. So, my question is two fold:   1. how do I get past the stigma of not having been working in the industry since I graduated and    2. how do I find a CS job in the small amount of time I have. Posting resumes and applying to job postings online, writing cover letter after cover letter seems useless."}
{"_id": "116911", "title": "Is the \"Software Project Survival Guide\" methodology compatible with Agile ones?", "text": "I'm considering re-reading Steve McConnell's excellent \"Software Project Survival Guide\" and perhaps applying it verbatim to my next project. However, one thought struck me: the book was written in 1998, before Scrum and other agile methodologies became popular. Are the teachings of this book still relevant in light of the newer methodologies? Or are they compatible? If the latter, do you have any experience of agile projects run according to McConnell's book(s)?"}
{"_id": "204865", "title": "Can You Use 2 Python Modules Issued Under LGPL and BSD License in a Program?", "text": "I'm making a drawing program as my first open-source program merely to get a taste of the open-source community. To make said program, I am using Python 2.7. I'm using the following modules:   1. EasyGUI 0.96 - Under the 3-clause BSD license   2. Pygame 1.9.1 - Under the LGPL 2.1 license All I intend to do is create a program using these modules which depend on it, and upload it to a public GitHub repository for others to freely modify and distribute. _If_ using my code is allowed in closed source software, or profits to be made by others, I do not want it. I do not wish to modify Pygame or EasyGUI themselves, either. They just need to be simply provided to run the software. Is this possible with the two licenses mentioned above? If I were to do this, what license would I have to issue my program under and why? Are some better choices than others? Is it also possible release my drawing program code under a reciprocal license so the people contributing send their bug fixes in my script back?"}
{"_id": "128093", "title": "Are detailed style requirements inappropriate from Marketing?", "text": "I'm working on the UI-side of a project which is under intense scrutiny by our Marketing group. Most of the time, we're reviewing functionality requirements. Once in a while, however, they will get very in-depth regarding colors, styles, etc. For example, I've been tasked by Marketing to make one particular button a very specific color and a very specific size, In other projects I've worked on, however, these types of requirements have been quietly ignored or rejected when they came from Marketing. Managers and tech leads have insisted Marketing shouldn't be specifying details like colors, styles, control layouts, etc., but I've never really been told _why_. Is it inappropriate for Marketing to list detailed style requirements for a UI, including colors, shades, layout, sizes, etc.? If so, why? Is this just a case of conflicting philosophies regarding Marketing responsibilities? (I should probably mention that we're not working with a unified style guide for company-wide applications. In the past, other projects I've worked on have \"winged it\" when assembling their UIs.) * * * **Edit:** I removed an editorial comment I made which probably implied this post was a complaint couched in a question. I'm not really concerned with what I should _do_ , but rather I would like better understanding as to what Marketing's responsibility is regarding these types of requirements. I've had very little exposure to Marketing (I've been more distanced from them in previous projects) and I don't understand their role as it pertains to UI styling."}
{"_id": "203104", "title": "Why can't `main` return a double or String rather than int or void?", "text": "In many languages such as C, C++, and Java, the `main` method/function has a return type of `void` or `int`, but not `double` or `String`. What might be the reasons behind that? I know a little bit that we can't do that because `main` is called by runtime library and it expects some syntax like `int main()` or `int main(int,char**)` so we have to stick to that. So my question is: why does `main` have the type signature that it has, and not a different one?"}
{"_id": "140156", "title": "Is unit testing or test-driven development worthwhile?", "text": "My team at work is moving to Scrum and other teams are starting to do test- driven development using unit tests and user acceptance tests. I like the UATs, but I'm not sold on unit testing for test-driven development or test- driven development in general. It seems like writing tests is extra work, gives people a crutch when they write the real code, and might not be effective very often. I understand how unit tests work and how to write them, but can anyone make the case that it's really a good idea and worth the effort and time? Also, is there anything that makes TDD especially good for Scrum?"}
{"_id": "41419", "title": "Convincing my coworkers to use Hudson CI", "text": "Im really aware of some benefits of using Hudson as CI server. But, im facing the problem to convince my coworkers to install and use it. To put some context, we are developing two different products (one is an enterprise search engine based on Apache Solr) and several enterprise search projects. We are facing a lot of versioning issues and i think Hudson will solve this problems. They argued about its productivity and learning curve What Hudson's benefits would you spotlight?"}
{"_id": "204330", "title": "How commonly used is jQuery DataTables, and what are the alternatives?", "text": "I'm doing some work on a project that uses jQuery DataTables. I've never used this particular jQuery extension before. In the past, I've used the ASP.net DataGrid control, which of course is not available in ASP.net MVC. I've also used the Telerik Kendo UI grid, which is expensive. I've been wondering how commonly used jQuery DataTables is across the internet (especially with ASP.net MVC) and what other technologies are being used to replace the formerly ubiquitous ASP.net DataGrid."}
{"_id": "41411", "title": "Is there a trend for cross-platform GUI toolkits?", "text": "What is the trend like for the usage of **cross-platform** GUI frameworks right now? Are more people starting to use cross-platform frameworks (such as GTK+, Qt and wxWidgets) or are there more who use more platform-tied frameworks (e.g. Cocoa or WPF)? Is it more or less stagnant? Is it like a rollercoaster? What do you think the trend will be like, say, 5 years from now? The OS landscape is shifting with less people using Windows (personal observation). This should increase the demand for cross-platform toolkits, shouldn't it? Edit: Also, which (cross-platform) toolkits are growing the most, if so?"}
{"_id": "70688", "title": "Are web applications limited by the amount of memory or by the speed of the database server on the server side?", "text": "Many web sites mostly only do CRUD (create, read, update, delete) operations to the database for different URLs. Suppose that we have a 3-tier solution with the database server on a dedicated server and the web server on another server. This question is not about the database server, but the web server. The web server use dynamic content so it execute some code for every request and is communicating with the database server. What should be the limitations of the web server if the web applications aren't computation-heavy under heavy load? Shouldn't the web application be limited of the speed of the database server? or is it limited by the amount of memory? With the speed of CPUs today I don't think that the web servers CPU speed is the limitation. For static content web servers like Nginx and Lighttpd the web server almost always use very little memory and are limited by the disk-IO speed. But how is it for dynamic content?"}
{"_id": "218422", "title": "Many JS files included, one breaks all, smart approach to fix?", "text": "I'm doing a project that uses svg-edit(JS drawing tool) and the page grows big. By now there are about 20 JS file in a page - plug-ins and so on. One of the editor's files breaks in some kind of 'Uncaught TypeError' but it's compressed and can not understand anything. I used several jquery plug-ins that are important for the usability of the page and it's not possible to remove any of them. There are severe conflicts obviously but I can't rewrite any of the plug-ins. Any smart approach to fix this ? Where I can start ?"}
{"_id": "83946", "title": "Would it be dishonest to use side tools during a phone interview?", "text": "A lot of time for decent tech jobs you have to go through a phone screening process. If you suck over the phone you generally don't get a chance to show how bad ass you are in person. These interviews, even for experienced and advanced positions, very often involve trivia style questions over basics. Unfortunately for me they're always in something I don't generally think about and didn't imagine to prepare for. With more experience with them (I haven't applied for a lot of such positions) I imagine I might get better but in the meantime... So for example, converting some decimal value XX to hexidecimal or binary. Last time I interviewed for something I had a total brain-fart on how to actually do this. I very rarely have to care. I use hexidecimal any time I want to be associating values with bit construction and decimal when I want to think of the value as a number. I rarely convert between the two. When I do need to I just pop open the calculator and let it do it for me. It's not like it's hard or anything but for some reason I simply couldn't even remember how to do it. I told the interviewer the truth and told him I'd have a better chance to convert the other way (since it's way, way easy and still shows understanding I guess). He then mentioned that most people struggled with that and wondered if it was some sort of age difference thing. Maybe, maybe not. I explained where I was coming from and let it at that. But, being a phone interview he couldn't exactly tell how I'd come up with the answer. Perhaps it's perfectly legitimate to just use the tools I always do? What do you think? If you where interviewing someone, asked a question like that, and then found out that they'd used a tool or reference to answer your question rather than do it by hand or in their head....would you be pissed off? Would you consider that dishonest or a good use of tools available to solve the problem?"}
{"_id": "83948", "title": "How to distribute our software on Linux without shipping source code", "text": "For our company needs, we need to sell one of our software on *nix-like system. How can we distribute and protect our software ? I know that almost every program on linux is open-source, so how can we protect source code ? Do we need distribute part of source code in object files ? Software written in C."}
{"_id": "70682", "title": "What is ActiveRecord in Rails?", "text": "Today I interviewed with a big-ego VP for a Rails and Rails position at a profitable company in my city. He asked me to explain what ActiveRecord is in Rails. I told him the following: > ActiveRecord provides an object-oriented interface to an application's > database to make development easier and friendlier for the developer. It > provides validation functionality as well which helps keep data in the > database clean. ActiveRecord also pertains to the model part of the MVC He then told me that was \"kind of mickey moused.\" So, IS my explanation \"mickey moused,\" or should I just have hung up on him right then and there?"}
{"_id": "133495", "title": "What's the simplest example out there to explain the difference between Parse Trees and Abstract Syntax Trees?", "text": "To my understanding, a parser creates a parse tree, and then discards it thereafter. However, it can also pop out an abstract syntax tree, which the compiler supposedly makes use of. I'm under the impression that both the parse tree and the abstract syntax tree are created under the parsing stage. Then could someone explain why these are different?"}
{"_id": "39700", "title": "How should compilers report errors and warnings?", "text": "I don't plan on writing a compiler in the near future; still, I'm quite interested with compiler technologies, and how this stuff could be made better. Starting with compiled languages, most compilers have two error levels: warnings and errors, the first being most of the time non-fatal stuff you should fix, and errors indicating most of the time that it's impossible to produce machine- (or byte-) code from the input. Though, this is a pretty weak definition. In some languages like Java, certain warnings are simply impossible to get rid of without using the `@SuppressWarning` directive. Also, Java treats certain non-fatal problems as errors (for instance, unreachable code in Java triggers an error for a reason I'd like to know). C# doesn't have the same problems, but it does have a few. It seems that compilation occurs in several passes, and a pass failing will keep the further passes from executing. Because of that, the error count you get when your build fails is often grossly underestimated. On one run it might say you have two errors, but once you fix them maybe you'll get 26 new ones. Digging to C and C++ simply shows a bad combination on Java and C#'s compilation diagnostic weaknesses (though it might be more accurate to say that Java and C# just went their way with half the problems each). Some warnings really ought to be errors (for instance when not all code paths return a value) and still they're warnings because, I suppose, at the time they wrote the standard, compiler technology wasn't good enough to make these kind of checks mandatory. In the same vein, compilers often check for more than the standard says, but still use the \"standard\" warning error level for the additional findings. And often, compilers won't report all the errors they could find right away; it might take a few compiles to get rid of all of them. Not to mention the cryptic errors C++ compilers like to spit, where a single mistake can cause tens of error messages. Now adding that many build systems are configurable to report failures when the compilers emit warnings, we just get a strange mix: not all errors are fatal but some warnings should; not all warnings are deserved but some are explicitly suppressed without further mention of their existence; and sometimes all warnings become errors. Non-compiled languages still have their share of crappy error reporting. Typos in Python won't be reported until the code is actually run, and you can never really kick of more than one error at a time because the script will stop executing after it meets one. PHP, on its side, has a bunch of more or less significant error levels, _and_ exceptions. Parse errors are reported one at a time, warnings are often so bad they should abort your script (but don't by default), notices really often show grave logic problems, some errors really aren't bad enough to stop your script but still do, and as usual with PHP, there are some really weird things down there (why the hell do we need an error level for fatal errors that aren't really fatal? `E_RECOVERABLE_E_ERROR`, I'm talking to you). It seems to me that every single implementation of compiler error reporting I can think of is broken. Which is a real shame, since how all good programmers insist on how important it is to correctly deal with errors and yet can't get their own tools to do so. What do you think should be the right way to report compiler errors?"}
{"_id": "133490", "title": "VisualVM Sampling & Accuracy", "text": "It's been said in other questions that jvisualvm sampling works as a \"lightweight\" profiling tool by calculating metrics directly from Java stack frames. Its almost unanimously agreed that such a technique is _faster_ but not as _accurate_ in terms of its \"timings\". My question: why is this method not as accurate? And, what is it not as accurate as (as opposed to what? Are there more precise profiling techniques?)?"}
{"_id": "133492", "title": "Is \"Code Smell\" still a useful metaphor, or has misuse of the term subverted its meaning?", "text": "I've come across some comments and answers on Programmers.SE that decry the use of the phrase \"Code Smell\" and I've been wondering what the reasoning is for those who dislike it. I first encountered this term when I read Fowler's Refactoring back in 2000, yet it's only in the last year or two that I've heard any complaint about the use of the phrase. **Q:** Would it be correct to say that the phrase _Code Smell_ has recently started to fall into disfavor, and if so why does/should this metaphor no longer apply? * * * I am looking for well defined answers supported by sound reasoning as I realize that this question is borderline subjective."}
{"_id": "231804", "title": "Where to Populate Objects", "text": "As mentioned in this question, I am moving our team towards objects (as opposed to just throwing DataTables and variables around everywhere). I have picked a suitable spot for the project that contains the object definitions, but not sure how I should go about populating some of the objects. In particular, what do I do with classes as properties?               Public Class Class1         Public Property SomeProperty As String         Public Property SomeOtherProperty As String         Public Property SomeKey As Integer         Public Property Foo As Class2     End Class      In this basic example, I can easily populate the first three properties from a query, but `Foo` has its own set of properties. Right now, to create a `List(Of Class1)` I generate the data for all of the Class1 objects, and then use `SomeKey` to go back and, one object at a time, populate all of the `Foo`. Certainly this works, but in my case it is rather slow, and it seems that perhaps I am simply doing it wrong. Am I handling that incorrectly? If so, what should I be doing? The only other thing I can come up with is to create a query (or stored procedure) that returns all of the appropriate data for all of the objects. In my test case that amounts to a list that contains 154 `Class1`'s, with each of them having four properties like `Foo`, and some of those having classes as properties."}
{"_id": "59880", "title": "Avoid Postfix Increment Operator", "text": "I've read that I should avoid the postfix increment operator because of performance reasons (in certain cases). But doesn't this affect code readability? In my opinion:               for(int i = 0; i < 42; i++);         /* i will never equal 42! */      Looks better than:               for(int i = 0; i < 42; ++i);         /* i will never equal 42! */      But this is probably just out of habit. Admittedly, I haven't seen many use `++i`. Is the performance that bad to sacrifice readability, in this case? Or am I just blind, and `++i` is more readable than `i++`?"}
{"_id": "71379", "title": "What are the advantages of the Unified Software Development Process?", "text": "Why should an organization adopt the unified process over others? What are the relative advantages? I know that it is closely coupled with UML, but clearly this cannot be the only advantage. Why choose this approach over others?"}
{"_id": "27686", "title": "What are useful metrics for source code?", "text": "What are useful metrics to capture for source code? How can metrics, like for example _(Executable?) Lines of Code_ or _Cyclomatic Complexity_ help with quality assurance or how are they beneficial in general for the software development process?"}
{"_id": "231809", "title": "Why don't interpreters interpret bytecode (like VMs) - instead of source code?", "text": "**Edited the question to be more clear:** It is known that interpreting bytecode is much faster than interpreting source code or some IL version of the source code. **The interpreter has a much easier time understanding bytecode than source code or source-code-like IL.** Virtual machines interpret bytecode. This bytecode interpreted by VMs is the result of compiling source code to bytecode. However, 'independent interpreters' (not inside a VM) are known to interpret source code or source-code-like IL, instead of bytecode. **Why is that? Why don't interpreters interpret bytecode, like VMs?** All that is needed is to first compile the source code to bytecode (like done for VMs), and then the interpreter can interpret this bytecode. **Is the reason for this is that an interpreter that interprets bytecode is a VM by definition?** (Just guessing here). Or is it something else?"}
{"_id": "71374", "title": "Functional language with C-like syntax", "text": "I've been looking for functional language with C-like syntax and static typing. So far my choice would be Nemerle. Is there anything else/better? EDIT: second choice would be Lua or Go. Any pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "232576", "title": "Building a serverless p2p CMS/System", "text": "I'm thinking about building an Open Source, serverless, offline-replicated p2p CMS, but I'm concerned about it really working in a real environment. How would you go about doing that, reducing the exposition to risks/bugs? _I've thought about this schema for now._ On the local device we have a folder called \"cmsfiles\" containing the software's files and a subfolder \"database-shards\", inside this subfolder we have: shard0.sqlite, shard1.sqlite, shard2.sqlite and so on.. each shard has a cap of 50GB. Inside these shards we'll assign the tables in a random way, being: comments, posts, answers, users etc. If a device visits a portal, it has read-only access and to interact it has to have a locally installed instance, with the same content as explained above. When he installs the software, he's asked for a nick and a password, that will then be saved on a private key for later verification. When a device does an insert (an answer to a post in this case), it has to send other information as well. _**Locally, the request is processed in the following way:_** The remote peer is asked for his ip address/proxy/tor-node and hardware UUID. A check is then done to determine if the remote peer is in the blacklist list, if TRUE, the whole operations/negotiations are discarded, but if it evaluate FALSE, a checking is done to see if it's present in the \"breaking attempt log\" list and if the number is less than 5 && not equal to 0, the number is ++incremented, at the same time all the operations are discarded with the remote peer. Else, if the number equal 0, we proceed to further verification. The remote peer's message (answer), private key and files in the \"cmsfiles\" folder are fetched. The files are now being compressed locally to cmsfiles.lz, hashing and comparing. This hash is then compared to the local one and if they're not equal, the number in the \"breaking attempt log\" list is ++incremented and all the operations being done discarded. But if they match, we proceed signing the remote private key with the public key, if it signs successfully, we check if the post (the answer) already exists. If it exists (if TRUE), the number in the \"breaking attempt log\" is ++incremented and any operation discarded, else (if FALSE) we check if post votes equal 0 (a new post cannot have more than 0 votes!), if it doesn't, the number in \"breaking attempt log\" list is ++incremented and any operations discarded. Otherwise, if it indeed equals 0 we can finally add the message (answer) to the local database. I'm including a tree schema representation just in case: ![example tree](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7m7Xe.jpg)"}
{"_id": "147027", "title": "determine language limitations before development", "text": "It so happens that you are given a project specs and your knowledge about the language is very basic. There are features in the project that you have never worked with. But you have some ideas and logic on how this can be implemented.   Later on as the development continues you discover that the required features cannot be developed because of some language limitations or any other issues. Now you have to convince your client about this, which is not easy. **Edit** : the reason for working with not so comfortable technology is that,Company at times cannot afford to hire someone for this task. Hence relies on existing employees to learn something new and contribute. So how do I avoid such situations? How do I research about the features before accepting the project ?"}
{"_id": "66810", "title": "How did the \"Rails can't Scale\" meme start?", "text": "One meme about Rails is that Rails can't Scale. Is it known how this meme started? Was there a particular blog post that argued this is the case?"}
{"_id": "232579", "title": "Testing non-central features", "text": "Only 1% of our clients use particular features or scenarios. Do you think we should spend as much time testing these features and scenarios as we spend on our central features and scenarios, or we should test mostly the \"happy path\" for these features? **UPDATE** Maybe I should have asked the question in a different way. Do you think a company needs to spend more time testing the central features of its products? For example I assume the Windows 8 team tested the the boot sequence more in depth than they tested the driver for a very uncommon graphics card. The cost of a bug in a boot sequence is huge since no one would be able to use the OS. But a bug in a driver of an obscure GPU will hurt only a small client base."}
{"_id": "70978", "title": "I feel that my manager slows my work, how to deal with it?", "text": "It seems strange, but my manager sits right next to me and, well, when he isn't near, I feel free, and I'm planning, doing, etc, doing my work with flashes in the eyes, feel accomplishments. But everything is opposite when he's on his workplace, I simply have to force myself to do anything, I'm feeling very much worried and nervous and my brain doesn't work normally. How to deal with it?"}
{"_id": "7038", "title": "Can I do anything to improve performance in VS 2010?", "text": "I'm using VS 2010 since we're developing an app in .Net 4 and the performance is driving me crazy. It's mostly bad when I don't view the IDE for a while (such as when I get pulled away for a help desk call or come in in the morning). I realize it's probably built in WPF which unloads its resources when unused, but the few minute delay while it loads everything back up is really annoying. I've also noticed some significant delays when opening files or compiling."}
{"_id": "70973", "title": "focusing on a language itself VS focusing on language + CS", "text": "So, I've been working on Ruby with the goal of self-employment (I'm an impoverished philosopher (not even in university!) and can't get a normal low- paying job). But there is a quandary in my road of learning and discovery: I keep getting sidetracked by CS (mostly theoretical). I'm starting to think that I should consciously stop myself from straying into the theoretical until I am, I dunno, not starving? :) So I would like opinions on whether or not my view is rational (I guess a better term would be pragmatic), and of course discussion in general relating to the interrelationship between language mastery and general CS mastery is welcome."}
{"_id": "132436", "title": "Which skills should I improve in order to become a professional software engineer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  most desirable skills for a graduate software engineer I'm currently doing my PhD in physics and will be finished in about two years from now. I plan to become a software engineer afterwards. I'm now looking for advice on which skills I should improve during this time in order to reach my goal. My background: For my research I need to write my own programs. I've been programming every now and then since I was a child but only in the last 2.5 years I've actually spent a lot of time coding. I've got around 2 years of experience in C++ now and consider myself being good at it. Recently, I started learning Python. I didn't attend any university courses on algorithms, data structures or databases, so maybe I'm lacking some basic knowledge here. I thought about reading books on the following topics:   * General books like Code Complete or The Pragmatic Programmer.   * Test-driven programming and agile development methods (though I'm not sure how widely they are used in companies)   * Databases   * Algorithms and data structures I also thought about learning Java... What would you consider useful in my situation? Which skills are important for a company?"}
{"_id": "71080", "title": "What does \"downstream/upstream design\" mean?", "text": "What does \"downstream/upstream design\" in software development mean?"}
{"_id": "180833", "title": "Why can't Windows services have a GUI?", "text": "I was using this feature in earlier Windows release like XP and NT. I was able to run a GUI from a Windows service. But it is not possible in the later versions. What is the reason behind the removal of this feature? Why can't Windows services have a GUI?"}
{"_id": "226189", "title": "Designing a fitness / weight lifiting routine database", "text": "I'd like to create an app similar to Barbell Pro for Android, for practice / interest / educational purposes really. Or even as another example for database purposes, Fitocracy The problem is, I have no idea how the database could be designed... For example:   * We have a 1000 Persons using the app    * Each Person could have 1-7 individualised WorkoutRoutines, depending on the day. (Perhaps even more -> AM workouts / PM workouts)    * Each WorkoutRoutine has an individual set of Exercises, with some crossover e.g. someone could do Bench Press on Monday and on Friday afterall.   * Each Exercise has a number of Sets   * Each Set has a number of Reps Now to me, this seems like it could potentially be a large amount of information to store for Each Person, and maybe pretty complicated to do so. I only have some experience with relational databases and I don't know how I'd go about designing that in an efficient matter for a relational database. I'm not asking for a design, just how I'd begin to go about it. The potential complexity is daunting for me due to lack of database experience. Maybe it's not even that complicated, but like I say, ignorance from myself."}
{"_id": "226188", "title": "Significance of many-to-many relationships?", "text": "How important are to-many relationships in iOS programming? Do you often hold a list of pointers to objects in an array in your codes? I don't think I fully understand the concept of to-many relationships, let alone how to implement them into code. From my current understanding, to-many relationships holds a list of pointers to one or more class objects and their corresponding properties and instance variables?"}
{"_id": "182087", "title": "Are there differences between Functionality and Functional Requirements", "text": "I'm writing some documentation in a project in a tool. In this tool of mine, and write in specific area, I have here use Case, Business Rule, N-Diagram Types, and Functionality and Functional Requirements. So I got me wondering, Are there differences between Functionality and Functional Requirements? In my vision, a Functionality a implementation of a Functional Requirement, is it correct? What other differences one can find between them?"}
{"_id": "37733", "title": "What benefits do I get from learning Scheme?", "text": "I'm a java programmer and I've decided to learn a bit about theoretical computer science. I don't have a degree in that and a little background would help me a lot since I don't know anything other than coding when it comes to software development. I've searched this website for answers and I've found a lot of people recommending the book \"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs\" but since I don't have the required mathematical know-how to handle this book, I decided to go with \"How to Design Programs\" instead. My question here is what would I gain from this experience? Would it teach me about Computer Science like I want? Or am I better off reading about algorithms and data structures instead?"}
{"_id": "147894", "title": "How should I go about re-releasing a GPL-licensed project?", "text": "A few months ago we found a library licensed under GPL that fit the bill for what we were looking to do at that time. We included it in our codebase and all was fine. Now, a few frantic months of coding later, we've refactored the hell out of the library: it's more feature complete, more stable, fully unit tested, PSR-0 compatible, etc. Now we would like to use the library in another one of our projects and that got me thinking, why not re-release the library? The problem is that I don't have any idea on how to attribute the work the original developers have put in (which is actually that much refactored that it's kinda unrecognizable) when releasing the library as GPL again. Over time all the file documentation headers with the original credits have been replaced and all that remains is the LICENSE file which is an exact copy of the GPL v3 license. I have absolutely no problem giving credit where it's due, but I would like to do it according to what is right in the FOSS world. Anyone can tell me how to proceed?"}
{"_id": "182083", "title": "Possible to implement OOP without using extensive heap operations?", "text": "Is the concept of OOP intimately tied to allocating objects on the heap? Is it possible to write normal OOP without creating excessive objects on the heap?"}
{"_id": "182082", "title": "PHP Framework for RESTful Web Service", "text": "I have been going round in circles with this question for days - which is the best PHP framework to use to create a RESTful Web service? I've trawled the web for info and have come across three main factors that are important:   * must have REST architecture built into the framework   * must be a stable application   * must be full featured It may be that what I want does not exists, but I wanted to check with the community to see of I had missed something. Currently the three contenders are: **CodeIgniter** Is a very stable framework with a large community and plenty of features and 'extensions'. Issue is that it's not RESTful. I have found a RESTful controller but there are a few things that I don't like about it. Mainly that it does not seem to correctly use the HTTP methods as per the RESTful architecture definition. I think this stems from restrictions in the CodeIgniter core though. **Yii** Again, seems like a large community and is stable with plenty of features, but not RESTful. **Laravel** A framework that is RESTful straight out of the box, and it has a good amount of features. The issue is that this is a relatively new framework so lacks stability. Other frameworks I've considered: Zend \\- from what I've read, avoid unless writing Enterprise software. Recess \\- RESTful, but seems very inactive and under used. **UPDATE:** In the end I went for Laravel. Can't recommend it enough! I had a RESTful API up and running in a week and also a simple web client. Amazing framework."}
{"_id": "83364", "title": "How does Facebook calculate mutual friends?", "text": "How does Facebook calculate mutual friends? Does it cache all mutual friends for each user? Does it use MySQL to calculate mutual friends with a query?"}
{"_id": "83361", "title": "More Powerful language for client-side web apps: JavaScript or C#?", "text": "Concerns over Microsoft's future with Silverlight, HTML 5 and Windows 8 have led me to reconsider plans to develop a business app over the next few years in Silverlight. It can be difficult to define what powerful means. Here I mean to ask this as power in the sense that Paul Graham describes, as what you can express with the language. I'm not sure but it seems that even the latest features of C# 4.0 such as dynamic types, anonymous functions, closures, and even LINQ exist in JavaScript. Do you think there are plans to add additional power to the JavaScript language in its next release? Also, to deal more with the HTML5/JavaScript stack vs. the Silverlight/C# stack: which is or will be more powerful in the sense of what capabilities it gives to developers and their applications? e.g. WCF communication, tools, UI controls..."}
{"_id": "83363", "title": "Is there a large bank using Mysql or PostgreSQL?", "text": "I always thought the largest scale of banks use Oracle. However, there is no proof they really use Oracle instead of Mysql or PostgreSQL, nobody knows the secret. Any idea what they really use? Can i build an ATM/Bank system where millions of transaction will happen using Mysql? Can I use PostgreSQL? Or must I use Oracle only?"}
{"_id": "123180", "title": "What are the programming languages that never outdated and programs created be able to run for next 20 years?", "text": "I want to know what are the programming languages that have longevity? I mean, code that written today be able to run for next 20 years or so?"}
{"_id": "123189", "title": "Algorithm for an exact solution to the Travelling Purchaser Problem", "text": "do you know of any algorithms which give an exact solution for the Traveling Purchaser Problem. I can only find heuristic and probabilistic approaches. I do have implemented a genetic algorithm so far, which by its nature does not terminate by itself an does not always yield the optimal result. Thus I'm looking for an exact solution to the problem such that I'm able to compare my solution to an exact / optimal value for a given test data set. For those of you who haven't heard of the Traveling Purchaser Problem (TPP), _this is_ **_not_** _the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)_ , but a generalization of it. It thus is also NP-hard."}
{"_id": "237892", "title": "Using someone else's code in your commercial products", "text": "Is it acceptable to use code made by other people that was deliberately made to be shared amongst Web developers? Things such as long libraries of code that contain hundreds of lines of code that you may want to copy rather than write yourself because it is too long and complicated. Is this unacceptable and frowned upon in the programming community simply because everyone is required to write all their code themselves and no copying to speed things up is allowed? Also, do you think large organizations would copy pre-made code that has been made to be used to speed the process of programming web development up? Must they write every single line of code themselves?"}
{"_id": "202274", "title": "How can I test linkable/executable files that require re-hosting or retargeting?", "text": "_Due to data protection, I cannot discuss fine details of the work itself so apologies_ **PROBLEM CASE** Sometimes my software projects require merging/integration with third party (customer or other suppliers) software. these software are often in linkable executables or object code (requires that my source code is retargeted and linked with it). When I get the executables or object code, I cannot validate its operation fully without integrating it with my system. My initial idea is that executables are not meant to be unit tested, they are meant to be linkable with other system, but what is the guarantee that post- linkage and integration behaviour will be okay? There is also no sufficient documentation available (from the customer) to indicate how to go about integrating the executables or object files. I know this is philosophical question, but apparently not enough research could be found at this moment to conclude to a solution. I was hoping that people could help me go to the right direction by suggesting approaches. To start, I have found out that Avionics OEM software is often rehosted and retargeted by third parties e.g. simulator makers. I wonder how they test them. Surely, the source code will not be supplied due to IPR rgulations. **UPDATE** I have received reasonable and very useful suggestions regarding this area. My current struggle has shifted into testing 3rd party OBJECT code that needs to be linked with my own source code (retargeted) on my host machine. How can I even test object code? Surely, I need to link them first to even think about doing anything. Is it the post-link behaviour that needs to be determined and scripted (using perl,Tcl, etc.) so that inputs and outputs could be verified? No clue!! :( thanks,"}
{"_id": "86705", "title": "Using MVP, how to create a view from another view, linked with the same model object", "text": "_**Background_** We use the Model-View-Presenter design pattern along with the abstract factory pattern and the \"signal/slot\" pattern in our application, to fullfill 2 main requirements Enhance testability (very lightweight GUI, every action can be simulated in unit tests) Make the \"view\" totally independant from the rest, so we can change the actual view implementation, without changing anything else In order to do so our code is divided in 4 layers : Core : which holds the model Presenter : which manages interactions between the view interfaces (see bellow) and the core View Interfaces : they define the signals and slots for a View, but not the implementation Views : the actual implementation of the views When the presenter creates or deals with views, it uses an abstract factory and only knows about the view interfaces. It does the signal/slot binding between views interfaces. It doesn't care about the actual implementation. In the \"views\" layer, we have a concrete factory which deals with implementations. The signal/slot mechanism is implemented using a custom framework built upon boost::function. Really, what we have is something like that : http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/PassiveScreen.html Everything works fine. _**The problem_** However, there's a problem I don't know how to solve. Let's take for example a very simple drag and drop example. I have two ContainersViews (ContainerView1, ContainerView2). ContainerView1 has an ItemView1. I drag the ItemView1 from ContainerView1 to ContainerView2. ContainerView2 must create an ItemView2, of a different type, but which \"points\" to the same model object as ItemView1. So the ContainerView2 gets a callback called for the drop action with ItemView1 as a parameter. It calls ContainerPresenterB passing it ItemViewB In this case we are only dealing with views. In MVP-PV, views aren't supposed to know anything about the presenter nor the model, right ? How can I create the ItemView2 from the ItemView1, not knowing which model object is ItemView1 representing ? I thought about adding an \"itemId\" to every view, this id being the id of the core object the view represents. So in pseudo code, ContainerPresenter2 would do something like itemView2=abstractWidgetFactory.createItemView2(); this.add(itemView2,itemView1.getCoreObjectId()) I don't get too much into details. That just work. The problem I have here is that those itemIds are just like pointers. And pointers can be dangling. Imagine that by mistake, I delete itemView1, and this deletes coreObject1. The itemView2 will have a coreObjectId which represents an invalid coreObject. Isn't there a more elegant and \"bulletproof\" solution ? Even though I never did ObjectiveC or macOSX programming, I couldn't help but notice that our framework is very similar to Cocoa framework. How do they deal with this kind of problem ? Couldn't find more in-depth information about that on google. If someone could shed some light on this. I hope this question isn't too confusing ..."}
{"_id": "111932", "title": "What are the deciding factors in choosing to expose a web service as a SOAP or REST service?", "text": "As far as I can see consuming SOAP requires a SOAP stack, so it is harder for your clients to consume i.e. they need to ensure that they have a SOAP stack in place that formats the POST data and the headers correctly and then gives you back some data structure, whereas with REST you just make an HTTP GET request with the arguments in the query string and get back some text that I guess is probably XML. So what does the extra overhead / complexity of SOAP give you, when do you need it and when could you and should you do without it?"}
{"_id": "99389", "title": "How do I convince my boss to use REST over SOAP?", "text": "We need to create an API to our system. How do I convince my boss that REST is a better option than SOAP (or XML-RPC)? I say REST is...   * easier to implement and maintain   * not much new to learn -- plain old HTTP   * lot of people have chosen it Yahoo ~ Facebook ~ Twitter   * will be lot quicker to code My boss says SOAP is...   * richer and more expressive   * it's all standard XML (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI) -- and so will be easier to consume   * well standardized than REST   * Google uses a lot of SOAP   * it is important to adhere to SOAP standards than to create a custom XML schema in REST"}
{"_id": "159754", "title": "Why the question \"give five things you hate about C#\" is so difficult to answer during an interview?", "text": "In podcast 73, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood discuss, among other subjects, \"five things everyone should hate about their favorite programming language\": > If you\u2019re happy with your current tool chain, then there\u2019s no reason you > need to switch. However, if you can\u2019t list five things you hate about your > favorite programming language, then I argue you don\u2019t know it well enough > yet to judge. It\u2019s good to be aware of the alternatives, and have a healthy > critical eye for whatever it is you\u2019re using. Being curious, I asked this question to any candidate I interviewed. None of them were able to quote at least one thing they hate about C#\u00b9. Why? What's so difficult in this question? It is because of the stressful context of the interview that this question is impossible to answer by the interviewees? Is there something about this question which makes it bad for an interview? * * * Obviously, it doesn't mean that C# is perfect. I have myself a list of five things I hate about C#:   * The lack of variable number of types in generics (similar to `params` for arguments).   `Action<T>`,   `Action<T1, T2>`,   `Action<T1, T2, T3>`,         \u205e   `Action<T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, T10, T11, T12, T13, T14, T15, T16>`   Seriously?!   * The lack of support for units of measure, like in F#.   * The lack of read only properties. Writing a backing `private readonly` field every time I want a read only property is boring.   * The lack of properties with default values. And yes, I know that I can initialize them in the parameterless constructor and call it from all other constructors. But I don't want to.   * Multiple inheritance. Yes, it causes confusion and you don't need it in most cases. It's still useful in some (very rare) cases, and the confusion applies as well (and was solved in C#) to the class which inherits several interfaces which contain methods with the same name. I'm pretty sure that this list is far from being complete, and there are much more points to highlight, and especially much better ones than mine. * * * \u00b9 A few people criticized some assemblies in .NET Framework or the lack of some libraries in the framework or criticized the CLR. This doesn't count, since the question was about the _language_ itself, and while I could potentially accept an answer about something negative in the core of .NET Framework (for example something like the fact that there is no common interface for `TryParse`, so if you want to parse a string to several types, you have to repeat yourself for every type), an answer about JSON or WCF is completely off-topic."}
{"_id": "205925", "title": "use of LGPL libraries in closed source android software", "text": "I'm investigating the legal issues of using LGPL native libraries in a closed source Android software. As for now, my research on the subject shows that using LGPL libraries in closed source software is doable, and that the requirements are not specially high. On a regular application (for example a C closed source application), I would dynamically link the library, and distribute the binaries of the application along with the library with proper reference to it and instruction on how to replace this library with the version the user would like to. (I may be forgetting some stuff here but this is not the point of my question). My question refers to Android software and JNI. Assuming I am building an Android software using JNI I do have : My java source A JNI folder including :   * Android.mk file for the compilation of the application   * the library source code   * _.cpp/_.h files linking the source code with JNI  To compile my application, two steps are required :   * Compilation of the library using NDK to generate a *.so file    * Compilation of the Android application using Ant. The java code includes a System.loadlibrary(\"nameOfTheLibrary\") The problem I am facing is that the source code of the library is first compiled to a *.so file. This can be considered as derivative work, am I right ? How could I include the native LGPL libraries and distribute it in a proper way to avoid any legal problems ?"}
{"_id": "226239", "title": "Maintaining independence between modules", "text": "I am reading Algorithms 4th Edition by Robert Sedgewick and in chapter 1.2 it discusses API design. It says: \"The key to success in modular programming is to maintain independence between modules. We do so by insisting on the API being the only point of dependence among modules.\" Now the book is based on Java. I am considering this in terms of C++ development (but I imagine concepts are similar). Is this suggesting that if I have a library eg to do networking, that if a client #includes my net.hpp header (fictional name) and maybe sets to link with net.lib then no other includes or libraries should be required? Is that the jist of this? Or is there something else?"}
{"_id": "235547", "title": "Under what license may this PyQt-based \"Hello World\" app be distributed?", "text": "**Update:** I was wrong about the PyQt license. It isn't merely a GPL license. The PyQt authors include a special set of exceptions that allow users to release their own code under a different license, as long as it is one of the Open-Source licenses specifically listed in the PyQt `GPL_EXCEPTION.TXT` file. * * * For the purpose of this discussion, consider the following fully-functional app, which depends on PyQt:               # hello_world.py     from PyQt4.QtGui import QApplication, QPushButton     app = QApplication([])     button = QPushButton(\"Hello, World!\", clicked=app.quit)     button.show()     app.exec_()      (In case it's relevant to the discussion, please note that Python programs like this one do not require \"linking\" per se.) My preference is to distribute my code under a **permissive** license, e.g. the BSD license. However, PyQt is released under the ~~GNU GPL~~ **GNU GPL with special exceptions**. With that in mind, what are my options here? Am I obligated to release under the GPL, even if I don't distribute PyQt itself? To be more specific, in which (if any) of the following scenarios am I permitted to release my code under the BSD license vs. being obligated to release under the GPL?   * **Scenario 1:** I give you a fully-packaged binary that includes `hello_world.py` and PyQt.   * **Scenario 2:** I give you the source code of `hello_world.py` and PyQt in a single download (say, a `.tar.gz`), but it's up to you to get them running together.   * **Scenario 3:** I give you `hello_world.py` alone, leaving you to obtain PyQt on your own. I know that most of us aren't lawyers, so it is very much appreciated if you can cite the sources your answer is based on."}
{"_id": "47813", "title": "Do you think code is self documenting?", "text": "This is a question that was put to me many years ago as a gradute in a job interview and it's nagged at my brain now and again and I've never really found a good answer that satisfied me. The interviewer in question was looking for a black and white answer, there was no middle ground. I never got the chance to ask about the rationale behind the question, but I'm curious why that question would be put to a developer and what you would learn from a yes or no answer? From my own point of view, I can read Java, Python, Delphi etc, but if my manager comes up to me and asks me how far along in a project I am and I say \"The code is 80% complete\" (and before you start shooting me down, I've heard this uttered in a couple of offices by developers), how exactly is that self documenting? Apologies if this question seems strange, but I'd rather ask and get some opinions on it to gain a better understanding of why it would be put to someone in an interview."}
{"_id": "40457", "title": "Pros and cons of working at a company that uses a lot of its own frameworks", "text": "I have an opportunity to work in a company that looks good from the outside but has something that bothers me. It doesn't use commercial technologies. The main language that will be used is Java but the company doesn't use all known technologies like Spring, Struts, Hibernate etc. Instead it has its own technologies that do pretty much the same. Can you tell me what are the pros and cons about working in such a company?"}
{"_id": "40454", "title": "What is a closure?", "text": "Every now and then I see \"closures\" being mentioned, and I tried looking it up but Wiki doesn't give an explanation that I understand. Could someone help me out here?"}
{"_id": "230045", "title": "Refreshing website design and architecture", "text": "I have a website that is build with asp.net web forms. I would like to refresh design (using css, html5, responsive design) and also change it from web forms to asp.net MVC. To me this is more of a frontend project. Since there is already existing backend, it is \"only\" necessary to reuse it in MVC. Should I first start with design update or MVC? This project if far more easier, than starting a new website from the start, or am I mistaken?"}
{"_id": "219485", "title": "Creating classes according to a struct", "text": "I get a array via SOAP service, in the array in each value which is a struct is a description of any visual components (size, position, default value etc.) like CheckBox, RadioButton etc. And I wonder about how to write a code which will return instances of those any visual components according to the input parameter with usage a design pattern. Which design pattern is the best for this purpose?"}
{"_id": "219482", "title": "Avoid too complex method - Cyclomatic Complexity", "text": "Not sure how to go about this method to reduce Cyclomatic Complexity. Sonar reports 13 whereas 10 is expected. I am sure nothing harm in leaving this method as it is, however, just challenging me how to go about obeying Sonar's rule. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.                public static long parseTimeValue(String sValue) {              if (sValue == null) {             return 0;         }              try {             long millis;             if (sValue.endsWith(\"S\")) {                 millis = new ExtractSecond(sValue).invoke();             } else if (sValue.endsWith(\"ms\")) {                 millis = new ExtractMillisecond(sValue).invoke();             } else if (sValue.endsWith(\"s\")) {                 millis = new ExtractInSecond(sValue).invoke();             } else if (sValue.endsWith(\"m\")) {                 millis = new ExtractInMinute(sValue).invoke();             } else if (sValue.endsWith(\"H\") || sValue.endsWith(\"h\")) {                 millis = new ExtractHour(sValue).invoke();             } else if (sValue.endsWith(\"d\")) {                 millis = new ExtractDay(sValue).invoke();             } else if (sValue.endsWith(\"w\")) {                 millis = new ExtractWeek(sValue).invoke();             } else {                 millis = Long.parseLong(sValue);             }                  return millis;              } catch (NumberFormatException e) {             LOGGER.warn(\"Number format exception\", e);         }              return 0;     }      All ExtractXXX methods are defined as `static` inner classes. For example, like one below -                   private static class ExtractHour {           private String sValue;                public ExtractHour(String sValue) {              this.sValue = sValue;           }                public long invoke() {              long millis;              millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue.substring(0, sValue.length() - 1)) * 60 * 60 * 1000);              return millis;          }      }      * * * ## UPDATE 1 I am going to settle down with a mix of suggestions here to satisfy Sonar guy. Definitely room for improvements and simplification. Guava `Function` is just a unwanted ceremony here. Wanted to update the question about current status. Nothing is final here. Pour your thoughts please..               public class DurationParse {          private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(DurationParse.class);     private static final Map<String, Function<String, Long>> MULTIPLIERS;     private static final Pattern STRING_REGEX = Pattern.compile(\"^(\\\\d+)\\\\s*(\\\\w+)\");          static {              MULTIPLIERS = new HashMap<>(7);              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"S\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractSecond(input).invoke();             }         });              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"s\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractInSecond(input).invoke();             }         });              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"ms\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractMillisecond(input).invoke();             }         });              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"m\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractInMinute(input).invoke();             }         });              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"H\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractHour(input).invoke();             }         });              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"d\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractDay(input).invoke();             }         });              MULTIPLIERS.put(\"w\", new Function<String, Long>() {             @Nullable             @Override             public Long apply(@Nullable String input) {                 return new ExtractWeek(input).invoke();             }         });          }          public static long parseTimeValue(String sValue) {              if (isNullOrEmpty(sValue)) {             return 0;         }              Matcher matcher = STRING_REGEX.matcher(sValue.trim());              if (!matcher.matches()) {             LOGGER.warn(String.format(\"%s is invalid duration, assuming 0ms\", sValue));             return 0;         }              if (MULTIPLIERS.get(matcher.group(2)) == null) {             LOGGER.warn(String.format(\"%s is invalid configuration, assuming 0ms\", sValue));             return 0;         }              return MULTIPLIERS.get(matcher.group(2)).apply(matcher.group(1));     }          private static class ExtractSecond {         private String sValue;              public ExtractSecond(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = Long.parseLong(sValue);             return millis;         }     }          private static class ExtractMillisecond {         private String sValue;              public ExtractMillisecond(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue));             return millis;         }     }          private static class ExtractInSecond {         private String sValue;              public ExtractInSecond(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue) * 1000);             return millis;         }     }          private static class ExtractInMinute {         private String sValue;              public ExtractInMinute(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue) * 60 * 1000);             return millis;         }     }          private static class ExtractHour {         private String sValue;              public ExtractHour(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue) * 60 * 60 * 1000);             return millis;         }     }          private static class ExtractDay {         private String sValue;              public ExtractDay(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue) * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);             return millis;         }     }          private static class ExtractWeek {         private String sValue;              public ExtractWeek(String sValue) {             this.sValue = sValue;         }              public long invoke() {             long millis;             millis = (long) (Double.parseDouble(sValue) * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);             return millis;         }     }      } * * * ## UPDATE 2 Though I added my update, it is only that much worth the time. I am going to move on since Sonar now does not complains. Don't worry much and I am accepting the mattnz answer as it is the way to go and don't want to set a bad example for those who bumps on to this question. Bottom line -- Don't over engineer for the sake of Sonar (or Half Baked Project Manager) complains about CC. Just do what's worth a penny for the project. Thanks to all."}
{"_id": "208909", "title": "Is a well written documentation a good enough reason for learning a programming language?", "text": "I am learning Python currently which wasn't part of my college curriculum. I was asked in an interview why I chose Python and I replied that it is easy to learn and the documentation is very well written. The interviewer didn't reply whether it was a good enough reason. He looked convinced but I cannot be sure. Is a well written documentation along with ease of learning a good enough reason for choosing a scripting language? Or should I have elaborated more about the availability of Python libraries and bigger user base of Python? Just a note. Python wasn't required for the job. The company worked on Ruby- on-rails. Python was in my resume and I think the interviewer just wanted to know what considerations I made as a fresher while choosing a programming language."}
{"_id": "76534", "title": "SaaS / PaaS / IaaS / HaaS", "text": "I've read:   * IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Terms Clearly Explained and Defined and   * Cloud Computing \u2013 Demystifying SaaS, PaaS and IaaS And I've got 2 questions:   1. Is Google App Engine considered PaaS or IaaS?   2. Is HaaS a subset of IaaS or is HaaS really just another name for IaaS?"}
{"_id": "157121", "title": "How To Document an Object Oriented Design in Text", "text": "For my next project, I'm looking to document my Object Oriented design in simple text before jumping the gun to code it up. I want to do this for two reasons.   1. I want to give proper thought to my design and possibly revise it several times.   2. I haven't exactly decided which language I want to implement my project in. I'm looking for a convention to outline my design in simple text, instead of a UML diagram. I like the convenience of text. I can version control it and easily put in a blog or wiki to share it. I am thinking something concise e.g. how you might code in Python. However, I want the representation to be language independent. I've looked around the internet but couldn't find anything. The closest would probably be how properties and methods are defined in the box representing a class in a UML Model. **Update:** I just wanted to clarify \"in Text\". My goal is to be able to outline the object model in a github wiki. I imagine it being kind of an open source design in addition to code. Thus, I can create a Wiki page per entity and identify the relationships using links and formatting etc. However, what I wanted suggestions on was how to outline the specification of an entity on its page."}
{"_id": "208901", "title": "How to assure users that website and passwords are secure", "text": "On reliable websites I always see claims such as \"All data is encrypted\" or \"All passwords are encrypted using 128bit encryption\" and etc. However I have never come across a claim such as \"All passwords are hashed.\" On my website, I will be storing all user passwords in a database after using SHA-512 (most likely) hashing with a random salt. I want to add a snipet assuring users that their passwords are secure so they will not be deterred from using my website because it requires a password. I want users to feel secure but I do not think everyone knows what hashing is. MY QUESTION: Is it okay to provide a message saying that \"All passwords are encrypted and secure\" since I do not think that the average user will know what the difference between hashing and encryption is, and will more likely feel secure just because they see the comfort word \"encryption\"? Or is there an alternative message I should provide? On a side note, I am new to encryption and password hashing and I was wondering if this would be safe enough for now as I launch my site. I do not want to tell users it is secure if it is not. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "76539", "title": "I'm using JSON and degrading gracefully, so how do I prevent duplicate code?", "text": "There are a bunch of questions on Stack Overflow about whether AJAX should return JSON or HTML, and most seem to agree that it is ideal to return JSON for the sake of speed. However, that means that if I degrade gracefully, I will have some duplicate code because I am generating the same markup in both PHP and Javascript. A hypothetical example: A website has a list of links to short stories. If the user has Javascript, then clicking on one of these links loads the story without a page refresh. This is done with an AJAX request that returned a JSON with the story information. Javascript generates the markup for the story. If the user does not have Javascript, then clicking on the same link reloads the page with the story now loaded. PHP generates the markup for the story. Is there a solution to use JSON and degrade gracefully without duplicating the code?"}
{"_id": "72858", "title": "GPL Confusion (I made a mistake)", "text": "I have a project that I created under GPL (I am copyright holder). The mistake I made is I deciding to go closed source, in doing that I removed the open source download access and removed the project from sourceforge. A third party came in and recreated the project on sourceforge (under the same name) with the last GPL release and plans to modify the software. (For download access) Is it required by GPL that any branches of the project by under a new name? http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl- faq.html#WhyDoesTheGPLPermitUsersToPublishTheirModifiedVersions \"Sometimes control over modified versions is proposed as a means of preventing confusion between various versions made by users. In our experience, this confusion is not a major problem. Many versions of Emacs have been made outside the GNU Project, but users can tell them apart. The GPL requires the maker of a version to place his or her name on it, to distinguish it from other versions and to protect the reputations of other maintainers. UPDATE The third party and I decided to leave the project page in place and redirect users to a new page for the open source version. This way the old page serves a purpose of notifying former users of the status of the project."}
{"_id": "171705", "title": "Where should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should they be separate?", "text": "I have a small MVC framework I've been working on. It's code base definitely isn't big, but it's not longer just a couple of classes. I finally decided to take the plunge and start writing tests for it(yes, I know I should've been doing that all along, but it's API was super unstable up until now) Anyway, my plan is to make it extremely easy to test, including integration tests. An example integration test would go something along these lines: Fake HTTP request object -> MVC framework -> HTTP response object -> check the response is correct Because this is all doable without any state or special tools(browser automation etc), I could actually do this with ease with regular unit test frameworks(I use NUnit). Now the big question. Where exactly should I draw the line between unit tests and integration tests? Should I only test one class at a time(as much as possible) with unit tests? Also, should integration tests be placed in the same testing project as my unit testing project?"}
{"_id": "174951", "title": "DDD: service contains two repository", "text": "Does it correct way to have two repository inside one service and will it be an application or domain service? Suppose I have a Passenger object that should contains Passport (government id) object. I am getting Passenger from PassengerRepository. PassengerRepository create request to server and obtain data (json) than parse received data and store inside repository. I have confused because I want to store Passport as Entity and put it to PassportRepository but all information about password contains inside json than i received above. I guess that I should create a PassengerService that will be include PassengerRepository and PassportRepository with several methods like `removePassport, addPassport, getAllPassenger` and etc. **UPDATE:** So I guess that the better way is represent Passport as VO and store all passports inside Passenger aggregate. However there is another question: Where I should put the methods (methods calls server api) for management passenger's passport. I think the better place is so within Passenger aggregate."}
{"_id": "194354", "title": "Constants and Big O", "text": "Are constants always irrelevant even if they are large? For example is O(10^9 * N) == O(N) ?"}
{"_id": "174958", "title": "Why creating a new MDX language instead of extending SQL?", "text": "I have a long experience with SQL, but recently began working with datawarehouse and OLAP technologies: building fact and dimension tables, that then are queried using MDX (MultiDimensional eXpressions). The problem is that MDX works with a completely different logic compared to SQL, and it's a whole new learning curve even for someone with a strong SQL background. Yes, MDX allows you to do things that would be hard or almost impossible with plain SQL. But sometimes it's frustrating to be hours around an MDX to do something you know you could achieve in minutes using SQL (ok, you can tell me to RTFM ...). But why go on to the trouble of creating a new completely different language when you could build on SQL, extend it to add the features needed by OLAP applications?"}
{"_id": "174959", "title": "How can I make a case for \"dependency management\"?", "text": "I'm currently trying to make a case for adopting dependency management for builds (ala Maven, Ivy, NuGet) and creating an internal repository for shared modules, of which we have over a dozen enterprise wide. What are the primary selling points of this build technique? The ones I have so far:   * Eases the process of distributing and importing shared modules, especially version upgrades.   * Requires the dependencies of shared modules to be precisely documented.   * Removes shared modules from source control, speeding and simplifying checkouts/check ins (when you have applications with 20+ libraries this is a real factor).   * Allows more control or awareness of what third party libs are used in your organization. Are there any selling points that I'm missing? Are there any studies or articles giving improvement metrics?"}
{"_id": "11334", "title": "Does your company have a written policy about contributing to open-source projects?", "text": "Does your company have a written policy about contributing to open-source projects? We've been contributing \"don't ask don't tell\" style, but it's time to write something down. I'd appreciate both full written policy text and bits and pieces. **Update** : we've made some progress since I asked this question and now have such a policy - read this."}
{"_id": "201777", "title": "Break on default case in switch", "text": "I am a bit puzzled on whenever or not to include `break` after the last case, often `default`.               switch (type) {         case 'product':                  // Do behavior                  break;         default:                  // Do default behavior                  break; // Is it considered to be needed?     }      `break`s sole purpose is in my understanding to stop the code from running through the rest of the `switch`-case. Is it then considered more logical to have a `break` last due to consistency or skip having it due to the `break` applying no functional use whatsoever? Both are logical in different ways in my opinion. This could to a certain degree be compared with ending a `.php` file with `?>`. I never end with `?>` mostly due to the risk of outputting blank spaces, but one could argue that it would be the logical thing to end the file with."}
{"_id": "201776", "title": "Does Jar file shrinker affect performance", "text": "I've heard ProGuard's Jar shrinker affects the performance of you application. Is this true? And if so just how much slower does the Jar go shrinked compared to unshrinked?"}
{"_id": "170791", "title": "Dropbox as a Version Control tool", "text": "I have some friends telling me that Dropbox can be used as a version control tool. I have always used SVN or Git. I was looking around Dropbox and couldn't find anything that tells me about is characteristics as Merging, Fork and other characteristics for a complete VCS. Can someone point me what I'm missing."}
{"_id": "19100", "title": "Becoming an \u201cApplication DBA\u201d?", "text": "I have to admit, until recently I did not know there was such a thing as a \"System DBA\" and \"Application DBA.\" Currently, I am an Application/System Admin for a large CMS. I would like to pursue a track/training that would eventually lead to this role of \"Application DBA\", the ultimate goal being understanding how to best use Apps and DBs together. Our Apps run on Oracle 10g. I do OK with basic SQL (selects, inserts, updates and can figure out a join or two, etc), but right now most of our DB support (e.g., generating and interpreting AWR reports, etc) is from the System DBA. I came across several posts that talked about becoming a DBA, but I would appreciate any advice and pointers towards an \"Application DBA\" role."}
{"_id": "19104", "title": "How to interview someone you know well?", "text": "How would you interview someone you know well or someone you may even be friends with? What if you already know their strengths and weaknesses. I would prefer to avoid this situation by delegating this task to somebody else, but what if this is not an option. I feel like there is just too much personal feelings involved and it is almost impossible to be unbiased. If you have been in an similar situations, how did you handle them?"}
{"_id": "170254", "title": "Building a website, want to use java", "text": "I'd like to make a simple-ish website that is essentially a small game. Key strokes are to be processed and sent to a server (already acquired and should support SQL and JSP, I believe) which then translate to a location and written to the DB. SQL queries are to be used to retrieve these locations and written to other clients connected to the website. Their page is to be updated with these locations. I have working knowledge of Java, jQuery/Ajax, SQL and JavaScript but I'm unfamiliar with JSP and how everything hooks up. I'm aware of the MVC paradigm as well. For my little game idea, would these technologies work? Am I over thinking this and can make it much easier to implement? What might be a good tutorial or example to study? EDIT: I was just informed I will not be able to use WAR files on the server. I'm not big on php and really don't like developing with it, can I still use Java?"}
{"_id": "170258", "title": "What is the best way to create HTML in C# code?", "text": "I have a belief that markup should remain in mark-up and not in the code behind. I've come to a situation where I think it is acceptable to build the HTML in the code behind. I'd like to have some consensus as to what the best practices are or should be. When is it acceptable to build html in the code behind? What is the best method to create this html? (example: Strings, StringBuilder, HTMLWriter, etc)"}
{"_id": "88852", "title": "How do you track Production tasks", "text": "I manage a team of coders (5people) that maintain a few modules in a large project. On top of doing coding, we also do production operational tasks (like doing server housekeeping, batch backlog tracking) These tasks are done daily, done by 1 person, and is rotated weekly The problem is this: These tasks are routine, but there I cant think of a practical way of ensuring the person does what he is supposed to do. I thought of using spreadsheets to track, or to the extent of doing a paper checklist, which the person on duty will have to physically sign off. I just want the guy on duty to remember and execute every daily item. What works on your project?"}
{"_id": "214629", "title": "How is\"cloud computing\"different from \"client-server\"?", "text": "Watching a CEO for a new \"cloud computing\" company describe his company on a finance TV program today, he said something like \"Cloud computing is superior to old-fashioned client-server computing\". Now I'm confused. Can someone please explain what \"cloud computing\" means in contrast to client-server? As far as I understand it, cloud computing is more of a network services model, such that I do not own or maintain the physical hardware. The \"cloud\" is all the back-end stuff. But I still might have an application that communicates with that \"cloud\" environment. And if I run a web site presents a form that a user fills out, pushes a button on the page, and returns some report that was generated by the web server, isn't that the same as \"cloud\" computing? And would you not consider my web browser as the \"client\"? Please note my question is specific to the concept of \"cloud computing\" with respect to \"client-server\". Sorry if this is an inappropriate question for this site; it's the one closest in the Stack universe and this is my first time here. I'm an old timer, programming since mainframe days in the late 70's."}
{"_id": "155064", "title": "How do I convince my team that a requirements specification is unnecessary if we adopt user-stories?", "text": "We are planning to adopt user-stories to capture stakeholder 'intent' in a lightweight fashion rather than a heavy SRS (software requirements specifications). However, it seems that though they understand the value of stories, there is still a desire to 'convert' the stories into an SRS-like language with all the attributes, priorities, input, outputs, source, destination etc. User-stories 'eliminate' the need for a formal SRS like artifact to begin with so what's the point in having an SRS? How should I convince my team (who are all very qualified CS folks by the way - both by education and practice) that the SRS would be 'eliminated' if we adopted user-stories for capturing the functional requirements of the system? (NFRs etc can be captured too, but that's not the intent of the question). So here's my 'work-flow' argument: Capture initial requirements as user- stories and later elaborate them to use-cases (which are required to be documented at a low level i.e. describing interactions with the UI prototypes/mockups and are a deliverable post deployment). Thus going from user-stories to use-cases rather than user-stories to SRS to use-cases. How are you all currently capturing user-stories at your workplace (if at all) and how do you suggest I 'make a case' for absence of SRS in presence of user- stories?"}
{"_id": "103331", "title": "Balance between workload and helping new-hires", "text": "I've been at my first job for about 2 months and I've started to notice that there is a delicate balance between workload and helping new-hires. Since there is a lot of pressure from managmanet to fix bugs and resolve as many customer issues as possible everyone on the team seems to be very focused on their backlog of work instead of helping the new-hires get up to speed. The new-hires can ask questions and occaisonally we'll get a developer to sit down and help us but often we'll get an obscure answer that only a veteran of the product would understand because they are too busy with their task. I understand the the new-hire must also maintain a balance. Sometimes it will take a new-hire 3 days to investigate and fix something where a veteran could have done it in 20 minutes. New-hires need to show effort toward learning the product and the codebase. With out simply reducing the workload of the veterans, how can you balance between helping new-hires and continuing to work on your backlog at a reasonable rate?"}
{"_id": "155061", "title": "Design Pattern for building a Budget", "text": "So I've looked at the Builder Pattern, Abstract Interfaces, other design patterns, etc. - and I think I'm over thinking the simplicity behind what I'm trying to do, so I'm asking you guys for some help with either recommending a design pattern I should use, or an architecture style I'm not familiar with that fits my task. So I have one model that represents a `Budget` in my code. At a high level, it looks like this:               public class Budget     {         public int Id { get; set; }              public List<MonthlySummary> Months { get; set; }              public float SavingsPriority { get; set; }              public float DebtPriority { get; set; }              public List<Savings> SavingsCollection { get; set; }              public UserProjectionParameters UserProjectionParameters { get; set; }              public List<Debt> DebtCollection { get; set; }              public string Name { get; set; }              public List<Expense> Expenses { get; set; }              public List<Income> IncomeCollection { get; set; }              public bool AutoSave { get; set; }              public decimal AutoSaveAmount { get; set; }              public FundType AutoSaveType { get; set; }              public decimal TotalExcess { get; set; }              public decimal AccountMinimum { get; set; }     }      To go into more detail about some of the properties here shouldn't be necessary, but if you have any questions about those I will fill more out for you guys. Now, I'm trying to create code that builds one of these things based on a set of `BudgetBuildParameters` that the user will create and supply. There are going to be multiple types of these parameters. For example, on the sites homepage, there will be an example section where you can quickly see what your numbers look like, so they would be a much simpler set of `SampleBudgetBuildParameters` then say after a user registers and wants to create a fully filled out `Budget` using much more information in the `DebtBudgetBuildParameters`. Now a lot of these builds are going to be using similar code for certain tasks, but might want to _also_ check the status of a users `DebtCollection` when formulating a monthly spending report, where as a `Budget` that only focuses on savings might not want to. I'd like to reduce code duplication (obviously) as much as possible, but in my head, every way I can think to do this would require using a base `BudgetBuilderFactory` to return the correct builder to the caller, and then creating say a `SimpleBudgetBuilder` that inherits from a `BudgetBuilder`, and put all duplicate code in the `BudgetBuilder`, and let the `SimpleBudgetBuilder` handle it's own cases. Problem is, a lot of the unique cases are unique to 2/4 builders, so there will be duplicate code _somewhere_ in there obviously if I did that. Can anyone think of a better way to either explain a solution to this that may or may not be similar to mine, or a completely different pattern or way of thinking here? I really appreciate it."}
{"_id": "228733", "title": "What are the benefits of Android way of \"saving memory\" - explicitly passing Context objects everywhere?", "text": "Turned out, this question is not easy to formulate for me, but let's try.   In Android, pretty much any UI object depends on a `Context`, and has defined lifetime. Android can also destroy and recreate UI objects and even whole application process at any time, and so on. This makes coding asynchronous operations correctly not straightforward. (and sometimes _very_ cumbersome) But I never have seen a real explanation, why it's done that way? There are other OSes, including mobile OSes (iOS, for example), that don't do such things. So, what are the wins of Android way (volatile UI objects and Contexts)? Does that allow Android applications to use much less RAM, or maybe there are other benefits?"}
{"_id": "120378", "title": "Is error suppression acceptable in role of logic mechanism?", "text": "This came up in code review at work in context of PHP and `@` operator. However I want to try keep this in more generic form, since few question about it I found on SO got bogged down in technical specifics. Accessing array field, which is not set, results in error message and is commonly handled by following logic (pseudo code):               if field value is set        output field value      Code in question was doing it like:               start ignoring errors     output field value     stop ignoring errors      The reasoning for latter was that it's more compact and readable code in this specific case. I feel that those benefits do not justify misuse (IMO) of language mechanics.   * Is such code is being \"clever\" in a bad way?   * Is discarding possible error (for any reason) acceptable practice over explicitly handling it (even if that leads to more extensive and/or intensive code)?   * Is it acceptable for programming operators to cross boundaries of intended use (like in this case using error handling for controlling output)? **Edit** I wanted to keep it more generic, but specific code being discussed was like this:               if ( isset($array['field']) ) {         echo '<li>' . $array['field'] . '</li>';     }      vs the following example:               echo '<li>' . @$array['field'] . '</li>';"}
{"_id": "215577", "title": "Naming a predicate: \"precondition\" or \"precondition_is_met\"?", "text": "In my web app framework, each page can have a precondition that needs to be satisfied before it can be displayed to the user. For example, if user 1 and user 2 are playing a back-and-forth role-playing game, user 2 needs to wait for user 1 to finish his turn before he can take his turn. Otherwise, the user is displayed a waiting page. This is implemented with a predicate:               def precondition(self):         return user_1.completed_turn      The simplest name for this API is `precondition`, but this leads to code like `if precondition(): ...`, which is not really obvious. Seems to me like it is more accurate to call it `precondition_is_met()`, but not sure about that either. Is there a best practice for naming methods like this?"}
{"_id": "11486", "title": "Does working with good code make you a better developer or does it make you soft?", "text": "Does working with good code make you a better developer or does it make you soft and reluctant to work with anything _less_ than quality code?"}
{"_id": "11485", "title": "How to test the tests?", "text": "We test our code to make it more correct (actually, _less likely to be incorrect_ ). However, the tests are also code -- they can also contain errors. And if your tests are buggy, they hardly make your code better. I can think of three possible types of errors in tests:   1. Logical errors, when the programmer misunderstood the task at hand, and the tests do what he thought they should do, which is wrong;   2. Errors in the underlying testing framework (eg. a leaky mocking abstraction);   3. Bugs in the tests: the test is doing slightly different than what the programmer thinks it is. Type (1) errors seem to be impossible to prevent (unless the programmer just... gets smarter). However, (2) and (3) may be tractable. How do you deal with these types of errors? Do you have any special strategies to avoid them? For example, do you write some special \"empty\" tests, that only check the test author's presuppositions? Also, how do you approach debugging a broken test case?"}
{"_id": "213713", "title": "Good or bad code? Or \"a secret reason\"?", "text": "I think this code:               if(file_exists(\"amodule.inc.php\"))          require_once(\"amodule.inc.php\");        is _misleading_ because of the use of the require_once. I think that - to keep the logic and \"wording\" in line - \"include_once\" would be appropriate (where there are a number of arguments to not use the \"if\" at all but I would like to concentrate on \"require vs include\"). As far as my understanding goes, the ONLY difference between \"require\" and \"include\" is that \"require has a consequence (halt) if the file does not exist vs. include proceeds with just a warning. But, in the example, if the file does not exists, the require_once code will not executed anyways. Therefore the \"require\" _misleads_ from my point of view. From a superficial view, one could argue that the above code using require_once and               if(file_exists(\"amodule.inc.php\"))          include_once(\"amodule.inc.php\");      are \"identical\" what, from my view, is not. Because: A \"rough\" analysis (like an automated check of a project) would throw a message, that \"amodule.inc.php\" is a vital project file, which the code shows, is not. Also, in a (not very likely) cas that between the execution of the \"if\" statement and the require_once statement, the file could be deleted. Then, even worse, the code would NOT execute like expected (to run without load) but give up. So, how would you guys out there argue?"}
{"_id": "218992", "title": "REST API at backend and MVC Javascript framework at client side", "text": "I am building an online social network. I have finished writing RESTful API service using Django. This will return only JSON response (No HTML will be generated from server side) so that this JSON response can be used to build native smartphone apps. API service being common to all clients. My question is, since there is no HTML response from server side, can the MV* Javascript Frameworks like Angular / Backbone / Ember take care of complete Front-end, right from generating HTML page with CSS?"}
{"_id": "82709", "title": "Statistics on time estimates for web application", "text": "I have been asked to help estimate the time it would take to develop a web application. I will not be involved in the actual programming, but I am participating as an \"experienced\" programmer. The actual work will probably be handed over to a consulting company, but the client (a university department) wants to have an estimate to have an idea of how much time and money will be needed. We will try to break down the features to implement and then try to create some kind of grand total estimate (even though Joel Spolsky says this will not work), but I thought that these kinds of web applications have been done hundreds of times and that there must be lots of experience to draw from on one or another of the stackexchange sites. ## Is it possible to answer this question: How many hours/weeks does it generally take for an experienced programmer, using their language and framework of choice (be it Java, Ruby on Rails, or some other fairly big technology), to create a web application, given that:   * It is fairly standard, meaning that there is a database, an administration interface and a presentation layer for the general public.   * It is written from scratch, but there are old systems to draw experiences from.   * The administrators (think they) know fairly well what they want. I know this is **very** vague, but I am looking for your experiences: (made up examples follow) \" _We have bought these kinds of systems several times, and they generally take twenty staff-months to complete._ \" \" _Using Python and Django, I'd say most web apps are up and running in 6 staff-months, top._ \" ## Edit: Some clarification:   * I my question most information about this project is missing. The client has written a detailed specification draft on the system and there is also a requirement analysis based on user feedback on the old system.    * I want to state, again, that I am looking for _your experiences_ (see my example answers), not a quote for this system. **Thanks for all the insightful answers, though!**"}
{"_id": "214194", "title": "clone/copy constructor and child class", "text": "I just want feedback on what one considers 'most elegant design' for a situation like this. I have an object that is immutable with some (sort of) copy constructors to allow creating a similar but modified version of my immutable object. So something like this:               class ImmutableObject{        Fee fee;        Fi  fi;        Fo fo;             public ImmutableObject(Fee fee, Fi fi, Fo fo){             this.Fee=fee;             this.fi=fi;             this.fo=fo;        }             public ImmutableObject(ImmutableObject cloneObj, Fee fee){           this.fi=cloneObj.fi;           this.fo=cloneObj.fo;           this.fee=fee;        }             public ImmutableObject(ImmutableObject cloneObj, Fi fi){           this.fee=cloneObj.fee;           this.fo=cloneObj.fo;           this.fi=fi        }                  public ImmutableObject(ImmutableObject cloneObj, Fo fo){           this.fi=cloneObj.fi;           this.fee=cloneObj.fee;           this.fo=fo;        }     }      I'm now expanding this by creating a sub-class with extra behavior:                Class ImmutableChild extends ImmutableObject{             Fum fum;             ImmutableChild(Fee fee, Fi fi, Fo fo, Fum fum){           super(fee, fi, fo);           this.fum=fum;        }      The problem is that I have a collection of 'ImmutableObjects' that contain both original and child classes. When I try to clone them to get a new object with one modifid element My copy constructors will always create a class of parent type 'ImmutableObject' type and completely loose the state of 'fum' if I'm actually cloning the child class. I can easily refactor this to meet any solution I want, copy constructor, clone methods etc. However, while I can get the behavior I want, I'm not sure what would be considered both elequant and non-ridged solution. What is the cleanest method to allow a method that will create a 'clone' of my object with one value modified which works well with children classes that expand functionality?"}
{"_id": "240518", "title": "Accessing a 32-bit DLL from a 64-bit process", "text": "I'm aware that it's not possible to load a 32-bit DLL into a 64-bit process. The DLL in question is a ODBC driver which is no longer supported (although it works fine) and no 64-bit version of it exists. I don't have access to the source code either. There doesn't seem to be an off-the-shelf way of \"thunking\" between the two architectures - the only option I can think of is to write a 32-bit COM object and get it to wrap the 32-bit DLL, and then also write a 64-bit DLL which exposes the same API the 32-bit DLL exposes and then bridge the gap by serializing the parameters to the API call and utilising DCOM's data marshalling functionality to get across the 32-bit / 64-bit boundary. This is a pretty tedious approach though and it could be quite slow if the interface is \"chatty\". So what I'm wondering is if there are any other ways of solving this problem?"}
{"_id": "201196", "title": "Is the future of the web application going the same as the desktop application?", "text": "I've noticed an increase in mobile applications being released that offer high value features, but without any corresponding web based version. Was just reading about a new medical app for iPhone that allows doctors to share medical images, and had this idea been done 5 years ago it surely would have been a web application. Now it's released purely on iPhone without any web alternative. It's been years since I've had a client request a desktop application, and everything has been web based, but today all future projects involve some kind mobile solution. How much longer should I recommend clients to continue investing in web based applications?"}
{"_id": "201191", "title": "creating a struct in java and searching for a specific member", "text": "Im a beginner in Java, I have the following code:               public class operations {         public ArrayList<Integer> stream;         public ArrayList<Integer> funct;         public ArrayList<String> name;         public ArrayList<Integer> funcgroup;         public ArrayList<Integer> source;     }      I read and understood that classes in Java are comparable to structs in C. In my program, I have to get an input from the user for name and search through the class and provide the other fields (stream, func, funcgroup, source) as output. My question is similar to Efficient way to shuffle objects From the first and best answer, I understand that rather than parallel lists, I should create a single list and then call a list with this class. But how do I add all my elements to the various fields in List in that case? I already have a separate `ArrayList` of these fields collected in another class."}
{"_id": "43489", "title": "How to handle coworker with \"obsessive refactoring disorder\"", "text": "My coworker (who is very clever, but with severly limited inter-personal skills), keeps refactoring my code even when it is work in progress and assigned to me as a task. Whereas I fully subscribed to the idea of collective ownership of code, I find this extremely irritating, but attempts to have him stop seem to have no effect. My analysis of his personality is that he considers himself the best, and if it had not been for him, the codebase would have been in a mess. I should add that I am not a novice, I know my skills and I produce quality work. Some of the refactorings are indeed to the better, most are basically just introduction of a style that he likes better than mine. In addition, he has a almost child-like need to have the last word in any discussion and has never any word of praise for work done by co-workers. There is always something that he, the master, would have done differently. I feel this is strongly affecting the quality of my work-life. What should I do ?"}
{"_id": "201192", "title": "Where should the processing to structured XML be done?", "text": "I have been given the task of redeveloping an \"in house\" solution to make it expandable and easier to maintain and administer. The original solution had been hashed together over time using PHP as more requirements were added, and the need to expand is expected into the foreseeable future. The solution, gathers many different files such as word documents and varying structures of XML document, from different \"locations\" and converts each into a specifically structured XML documents which get sent on via a web service. To add to the mix, some of the original XML files are retrieved from the same \"location\" but have varying levels of processing that are required depending on where they are from before that (identified by a \"customer\" field in the XML) My intention is to make the new solution as modular as possible so that processing can be suspended at the individual \"customer\" or \"location\" level without affecting anything else. While I have many puzzles to overcome and questions to answer, the question that is keeping me up at night at the moment is \"Where should the processing to the structured XML be done?\" At present it is done per \"customer\" but as you can imagine, it leads to a lot of duplicated code. Maybe it is unavoidable, due to the \"customer\" specific processing required sometimes but sanity tells me there must be a better way."}
{"_id": "240512", "title": "How to efficiently troubleshoot or test new code when hardware setup to reproduce bugs is difficult or impossible to obtain?", "text": "I work at a mid-sized company (150ish employees, ~10 size engineering team), and most of my projects involve interfacing with lab equipment (oscilloscopes, optical spectrum analyzers, etc) for the purpose of semi-automated test applications. I have run into a few different scenarios where I am unable to efficiently troubleshoot or test new code because I no longer or never had the hardware setup available to me. **Example 1:** A setup where 10-20 \"burn-in\" processes are run independently using a bench top type sensor - I was able to obtain one such sensor for testing and could occasionally steal a second for simulating all of the facets of interfacing to multiple devices (searching, connecting, streaming, etc). Eventually a bug showed up (and ultimately ended up being in the device firmware & drivers) that was very difficult to reproduce accurately with only one unit, but hit near \"show stopper\" levels when 10-20 of these devices were in use simultaneously. This is still unsolved and is ongoing. **Example 2:** A test requiring an expensive optical spectrum analyzer as its core component. The device is pretty old, legacy according to the manufacturer who was acquired by a larger company and basically dissolved, and its only documentation was a long winded (and uninformative) document that seems poorly translated. During initial development I was able to keep the device at my desk, but now its tied up, both physically and in schedule during its 24/7 multi-week tests. When bugs show up related or unrelated to the device, I often need to go through the trouble of testing code external to the application and fitting it in, or writing code blindly and attempting to squeeze in some testing time in between runs, as much of the program logic requires the OSA and the rest of the test hardware to be in place. _I guess my question is how should I approach this?_ I could potentially spend time developing device simulators, but figuring that into the development estimate will balloon it more than most would probably appreciate. It may not accurately reproduce all issues either, and it's pretty rare to see the same equipment used twice around here. I could get better at unit testing...etc...I could also be loud about the issue and make others understand that temporary delays will be required, not much more than a headache for Research and Development but usually a perceived as a joke when pitched to manufacturing."}
{"_id": "201198", "title": "Separation of Concerns, Data Access Layer", "text": "I was thinking about this earlier today and figured I would get some input on the matter. When I develop applications I would usually have the Data Access Layer on another project, incase it could be re-used elsewhere in a similar manner in the future but also to allow updating the DAL without updating the UI layer. When doing so I handle all of the data querying etc in the DAL. The application does not need to know if its ADO.NET, EF or a List. However, it occurred to me that in almost all cases the return types are specified in the DAL. So the UI Layer does need to know about types defined there. Is that normal or is there a way for more seperation? (other than using Anon types)"}
{"_id": "80702", "title": "How do you use the sample codes while reading programming books?", "text": "Programming books often contain a lot of code scattered within it. Usually there will be an accompanying website to download the code used in the book. How do you use the code? Do you just run them and check the results or do you code it from scratch again? If you are coding it from scratch, have you found any advantages( like remembering the content better etc)?"}
{"_id": "80703", "title": "CSS in a CMS - Pros/Cons", "text": "I am a regular user of Wordpress and whenever I feel the need to change the look of a DOM element, I prefer to use it inline. This is just because I don't want go back to the stylesheet and create new classes and styles for a single different looking element on a particular post. Can anyone please list the **PROS and CONS of this technique**. And should I change it? _**PS - All suggestions should be given keeping the CMS factor in mind._**"}
{"_id": "16595", "title": "Is taking frequent breaks really that beneficial when programming?", "text": "I keep reading that it is recommended for a programmer to take frequent breaks while programming, and the usual recommendation I see is 5 minutes every half hour or 10 minutes every hour. I gave it a try, but quite often I find something interesting during those 5 minutes, and it takes me away from what I was working on for longer than I planned. Either that, or my mind gets focused on something else and I find it hard to get back into my work and don't focus very well. Is it really that beneficial to take frequent breaks while programming? Am I doing something wrong for it to be decreasing my productivity instead of increasing it?"}
{"_id": "12683", "title": "Should one use pseudocode before actual coding?", "text": "Pseudocode helps us understand tasks in a language-agnostic manner. Is it best practice or suggested approach to have pseudocode creation as part of the development lifecycle? For instance:   * Identify and split the coding tasks   * Write pseudocode   * Get it approved [by PL or TL]   * Start Coding based on Pseudocode Is this a suggested approach? Is it practiced in the industry?"}
{"_id": "200828", "title": "Reason for placing function type and method name on different lines in C", "text": "I just started at a company and one of the style comments at my first code review was that the return type and method name should be on different lines. For example, this               void foo() {     }      should be this               void     foo() {     }      I've always used the first style, and I was wondering if there is any reason other than personal preference why people use the second style? I don't think the first one hurts readability at all. Is one more common than the other with C programmers and large open source projects?"}
{"_id": "161958", "title": "The limit of Int32 for Identity Column", "text": "This is just a consideration for a site am creating and for other big sites out there. I am using Identity Column to store the ID of some of my tables and I have classes whose Id are decorated with `Int32` to hold the value of the ID retrieved from database. My worry is that as the site grows bigger, some tables that grows exponentially e.g `QuestionComments` might exceed the `Int32` limit in future. So I change my class to use `long`.               public class Question     {        public long QuestionID { get; set; }        ...     }      //Converting database value to .Net type                Question q = new Question();      q.QuestionID = Convert.ToInt32(myDataRow[\"QuestionID\"]);      How true is my assumption? Would using a UniqueIdentifier be better? Are there other way to address this? **UPDATE:** But for the sake of learning, how would site like FaceBook, Google, StackOverflow etc. handle Visit table assuming they have VisitID as Identity Column"}
{"_id": "200822", "title": "How to copyright personal code", "text": "I am writing a program using VBA because its readily available, the code will be available to Cracks even though I password protect it. I knew this when I chose VBA because portability is more important than protection. My question relates to copyright, I put copyright and my name in the code and on the spread sheet to indicate it is my program but is this enough when people start copying the code? Do you have a strong legal version which I could place in my code?"}
{"_id": "88278", "title": "How similiar should the environments of PreProd and Prod be?", "text": "I've just recently been on a project and during the release, we realized that it didn't work in Production. It works in all other environments but because we have a separate release team, and we cannot set up the servers and environments ourselves, we have no visibility of the configuration on them. We suspect that Prod has some user permissions in its account or IIS settings that are different, so we are working though it now. So I think this whole thing has been a learning experience for me and I don't want the same thing repeated again. I would like to ask, how different should these environments be? I always thought that PreProd should be an identical copy to the Prod environment using a copy of the same database, using a copy of the same user account, should be installed on the same servers etc. But how far should I take it? If the web site is externally facing, should PreProd be externally facing? What if the website has components that don't require a user account or password to navigate to? Is it still okay to expose it to the outside world?"}
{"_id": "200821", "title": "How to write a HTTP server?", "text": "As the title says, I would like to write a HTTP server. My question is this, how do I do this? I know this sounds VERY general and too \"high level\", but there is a method to my madness. An answer to this question should be, I believe, language agnostic; meaning, no matter what language I use (e.g., C, C++, Java, etc.) the answer should be the same. I have a general idea of how this is supposed to work:   1. Open a socket on port 80.   2. Wait for a client to make a request.   3. Read the request (i.e., this person wants page \"contact-us.html\").   4. Find and read \"contact-us.html\".   5. Send an html header, then send the content of \"contact-us.html\"   6. Done Like I said, I believe this is the process, but I am not 100% sure. This leads me to the heart of my question. How or where does a person find out this information? What if I didn't want to write just an HTTP server, what if I wanted to write an FTP server, a chat server, an image viewer, etc.? How does a person find out the exact steps/process needed to create a working HTTP server? A co-worker told me about the html header, so I would have NEVER know this without him. He also said something about handing off each request to a new thread. Is there some big book of how things work? Is there some manual of what it takes to be an HTTP server? I tried googling \"how does a HTTP server work\", but the only answers I could find were geared towards your average Joe, and not towards a person wanting to program a HTTP server."}
{"_id": "177703", "title": "Abstract Factory Method and Polymorphism", "text": "Being a PHP programmer for the last couple of years, I'm just starting to get into advanced programming styles and using polymorphic patterns. I was watching a video on polymorphism the other day, and the guy giving the lecture said that if at all possible, you should get rid of `if` statements in your code, and that a switch is almost always a sign that polymorphism is needed. At this point I was quite inspired and immediately went off to try out these new concepts, so I decided to make a small caching module using a factory method. _**Of course**_ the very first thing I have to do is create a switch to decide what file encoding to choose. DANG!               class Main {         public static function methodA($parameter='')         {             switch ($parameter)             {                 case 'a':                     $object = new \\name\\space\\object1();                     break;                      case 'b':                     $object = new \\name\\space\\object2();                     break;                      case 'c':                     $object = new \\name\\space\\object3();                     break;                      default:                     $object = new \\name\\space\\object1();             }                  return (sekretInterface $object);         }     }      At this point I'm not really sure what to do. As far as I can tell, I either have to use a different pattern and have separate methods for each object instance, or accept that a switch is necessary to \"switch\" between them. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "177704", "title": "Software Manager who makes developers do Project Management", "text": "I'm a software developer working in an embedded systems company. We have a Project Manager, who takes care of the overall project schedule (including electrical, quality, software and manufacturing) hence his software schedule is very brief. We also have a Software Manager, who's my boss. He makes me write and maintain the software schedule, design documents (high and low level design), SRS, change management, verification plans and reports, release management, reviews, and ofcourse the software. We only have one Test Engineer for the whole software team (10 members), and at any given time, there are a couple of projects going on. I'm spending 80% of my time making these documents. My boss comes from a Process background, and believes what we need is better documentation to improve software: (1) He considers the design to be paramount, coding is \"just writing the design down\", it shouldn't take too long, and \"all the code should be written before the hardware is ready\". (2) Doesn't understand the difference between a Central & Distributed Version control, even after we told him its easier to collaborate with a distributed model. (3) Doesn't understand code, and wants to understand every bug and its proposed solution. (4) Believes verification should be done by developer, and validation by the Tester. Thing is though, our verification only checks if implementation is correct (we don't write unit tests, its never considered in the schedule), and validation is black box testing, so the units tests are missing. I'm really confused. (1) Am I responsible for maintaining all these documents? It makes me feel like I'm doing the Software Project Management, in essence. I'm ok with technical documentation, but I believe scheduling/planning should not be done by the developer. (2) I don't really like creating documents, I want to solve problems and write code. In my experience, creating design documents only helps to an extent, its never the solution to better or faster code. (3) I feel the boss doesn't really care about making better products, but only about being a good manager in the eyes of the management. What can I do? This whole year I've done 3 months of actual coding, the rest just spent in making documents and waiting for bug reports from clients."}
{"_id": "177709", "title": "How do web-developers do web-design when freelancing?", "text": "So I got my first job recently as junior web-developer.   My company creates small/medium sites for wide variety of customers: autobusiness companies, weddign agencies, some sauna websites, etcetc, hope you get my point. They don't do big serious stuff like bank systems or really big systems, it's mostly small/medium-sized websites for startups/medium sized business. My main skills are PHP/MySQL, I also know HTML and a bit of CSS/JS/AJAX. I know that good web-developer must know some backend language (like PHP/Ruby/Python) AND HTML+CSS+JS+AJAX+JQuery combo.   However, I was always wondering. In my company we have web-designer. In other serious organisations I often see the same stuff: web-developers who create business-logic and web-designers, who create design. As far as I know, after designers paint design of website they give it to developers either in PSD or sliced way, and developers put it together with logic, but design is NOT created by developers. Such separation seems very good for full-time job, but I am concerned with question **_how do freelance web-developers do websites_**? **_Do most of them just pay freelance designers to create design for them? Or do some people do both?_**   Reason why I ask - I plan to start some freelancing in my free time after I get good at web-development. But I don't want to create websites with great business-logic but poor design. Neither I want to let someone else create a design for me. I like web-development very much and I am doing quite good, I like design aswell, even though I am a bit lost how to study it and get better at it. But I am scared that going in both directions won't let me become expert, it seems like two totally different jobs and getting really good in both seems very hard. But I really want to do both. What should I do? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "52211", "title": "Open source IDEs released under GPL", "text": "Some IDEs (or code editors like Notepad++) are released under GPL. If I decide to make a program using the IDE, do I have to release my program under the GPL? Or is it only if I take code from the open source?"}
{"_id": "255903", "title": "How to validate the ajax post request is coming from", "text": "I am developing an web application in **MVC4**. I my application all the function is did by the **ajax post call**. I do not even **post single form(Even not have the form tag also)** all the things are did by the ajax call. but I am scared for the miss use of the my java script. Any one who got this code he can post the **dummy data** to my application. So I need to **validate** the weather the post request is coming form my website or not. I thought that the ajax call is good instead of posting all the form to server. Also I have did the validation at client side only. Is that also the threat for me?"}
{"_id": "235796", "title": "Using the Decorator pattern to add public methods to an object", "text": "The Decorator pattern is usually used to extend the functionality of an object by extending one of it's current methods. To illustrate, please consider an object `object` and a decorator `decorator`. `object` has one method called `methodA()`. `decorator`, because we're in the Decorator pattern, also has this method by inheritance (both `object` and `decorator` eventually inherit from the same super-class which has `methodA()`. Let's call it `AbstractObject`). `methodA()` in `object` looks like this:               public void methodA(){         // do stuff     }      `methodA()` in `decorator` looks like this:               public void methodA(){         // do some extra stuff.         wrappedObject.methodA(); // and then delegate to the wrapped object.     }      It would be used like this:               AbstractObject object = new ConcreteObject();     object.methodA(); // does stuff     object = new ConcreteDecorator(object);     object.methodA(); // does stuff and some more stuff. the extended methodA().      The point of `decorator` is to extend the functionality of `object`, **and it does this by extending one of`object`'s current methods**. So far, classic Decorator. **Now, my question:** As I said Decorator usually extends an object's functionality by adding content to one of the object's current methods. But what if I wanted to use Decorator to **add public methods to an object**? Please consider the following scenario where `decorator` has another method `methodB()`:               AbstractObject object = new ConcreteObject();     object.methodA(); // does stuff     object = new ConcreteDecorator(object);     ((ConcreteDecorator)object).methodB();     // methodB() belongs to ConcreteDecorator() but not to AbstractObject().      As you see if I wanted to do this, I would have to cast `object` to `ConcreteDecorator`. This exposes the concrete type of `object` and the fact that it's decorated, and as such somewhat defeats the intent of the Decorator pattern. Also, the code invoking `methodB()` would have to know `object` is decorated. Again, not very much in the spirit of Decorator. **In light of this I have two questions:**   * Is the Decorator pattern ever used this way? Is it ever used to add public methods to an object, as opposed to only 'extending' it's current methods?   * Are there situations where this would be a good idea or a wise use of Decorator?"}
{"_id": "53166", "title": "Any experience porting a Powerbuilder application to Java (or another language)?", "text": "Does anyone out there have any experience porting a large Powerbuilder client/server application to a Java application (or another language)? By large I mean something on the order of 2 million lines of code and literally hundreds of database tables. How did you do it? How long did it take and how much did it cost? What were the biggest challenges?"}
{"_id": "53162", "title": "Programmer logbook application?", "text": "I've just released my application to the public, and I'm working on an updated version, but I really think I should keep track of ALL the code changes. In case some functionality suddenly starts failing, with a history of all the changes I made it would be a lot easier to figure out where I messed it up, in case the problem wasn't already there. The _ideal_ would be to have a super fast computer with a huge hard drive and an application that automatically saves a backup of the whole project every time I change a line in the code, with some file comparison tool that would show me every difference between any two backed up projects, but that's not really possible for now. So, do you know any application that makes it easy for a programmer to keep track of the changes made to the source code?"}
{"_id": "191562", "title": "Multi-threaded server", "text": "I have written a server/client program in which I am using 2 threads :   * One to recieve data continously and   * Other to send data as the user writes it on screen Problem: I have created the threads but durung execution ,the control gets stuck in the recieving thread having the infinite loop to recieve data and never goes to the sending thread. Please tell me if there is any solution to the problem."}
{"_id": "21082", "title": "What is the most obscure sorting algorithm you know?", "text": "I just read about cyclesort via a sortvis.org blog post. This is probably the most obscure one I have heard of so far, since it uses maths that I am not familiar with (detecting cycles in permutations of integer sets). What is the most obscure one you know?"}
{"_id": "21084", "title": "Object Oriented Programming Concepts and Interviews", "text": "I'm an Object Oriented Programming fanatic. I have always believed in modelling solutions in terms of objects. It is something that comes to me naturally. I work with a services start up that essentially works on application development using OOP languages. So I tend to test understanding of OOP in the candidate being interviewed. To my shock, I found very very few developers who really understood OOP. Most candidates brainlessly spit out definitions they mugged up from some academic book on object oriented programming but they don't know squat about what they are saying. Needless to say I reject these candidates. However, over the course of time, I ended up rejecting almost 98% of the candidates. Now this gets me thinking if I'm being over critical about their OOP skills. I still believe OOP is fundamental and every programmer MUST GET it. Language knowledge and experience is secondary. Do you think I'm being over critical or do I just get to interview bad programmers unfortunately? **EDIT:** I usually interview programmers with 2 to 5 years of experience. The position that I usually interview for is Ruby/Ruby on Rails application developer."}
{"_id": "63650", "title": "Why does every installer on Windows have to be run with elevated privileges?", "text": "The current tendency to ship even the smallest applications (like simple games, tools, etc.) as a Windows Installer (.msi) or even with .exe that can do virtually anything is very annoying. After the application is installed it is run as standard user, but it is useless if during installation it can do what it wants. For example, configuring a firewall, maybe I do not want my new shiny 15 KB calculator application to have full access to the Internet (for incoming connections :) ) Custom actions inside Windows Installer installer files are even worse, since it is possible to run a custom function inside the provided DLL file! How do you manage to handle this, just ignore problem, or maybe have some unknown for me methods of running Windows Installer packages? And from the other side, why on Earth is everybody making installers? In many many cases, a simple ZIP file will be enough, at least as a opportunity to a standard installer."}
{"_id": "195271", "title": "Do tools, like Windows Workflow, inhibit development growth?", "text": "I\u2019ve had this gut feeling about Windows Workflow (WW) for a while now. And, until now, I couldn\u2019t think of the right words to say in order to explain it. Since I think I have a good way to verbalize it now, I thought I\u2019d share. I believe there is a problem in our industry where a great percentage of developers take a long time to understand simple, solid OOP principles and design patterns. Indeed, many developers never reach this level of understanding. My unsubstantiated concern is that tools like WW further shield developers from good design. The reason for this is that, absent WW, a developer could be shown how to write code using a state pattern, or chain of responsibility pattern, or a rules engine, or even simple OOP. Many developers simply don\u2019t know how to implement polymorphism. My fear is that tools like WW provide an abstraction that hides, or inhibits, good design by simply providing a way for developers to click boxes on a canvas and write code in those boxes. What\u2019s going on under the hood, or what should be going on under the hood, is lost to the developer. Do tools, like Windows Workflow, inhibit development growth? Disclaimer: I have not used WW. There may be great use cases for using it. My thoughts, above, are simply a gut feeling, and I'd be curious to know how others feel about the topic."}
{"_id": "63655", "title": "What ESB systems work the best for .Net stack", "text": "What Enterprise Service Bus would you use and why?"}
{"_id": "195273", "title": "Is MVC the optimal pattern to build a RESTful web service?", "text": "Not being a Java practitioner, I recently came to learn about the JAX-RS specification and Apache CXF framework. While still wrapping my head around all these things, I also read the this question on SO. Since MVC is a design pattern while JAX-RS is a specification, I was confused about the comparison. Granted my nascent understanding of JAX-RS, what makes it more suitable for implementing a RESTful API than say a framework that uses the MVC pattern? N.B. I have a C and Python background."}
{"_id": "245921", "title": "How to structure REST api service that accepts POST parameters in the body", "text": "Everything I've read says to pass parameters to a REST service in the URI, whether by template, or query string:               https://www.myapp/my/login/api/authenticate/ganders/mypassword      or               https://www.myapp/my/login/api/authenticate?user=ganders&password=mypassword      But obviously those are exposing my username and password in clear view. Our security guy is saying that we need to pass the parameters in the body of the request. How do I do that? Examples, or just a link to an example is sufficient because apparently my googling skills are not very high. One thing that I've found so far is that if you decorate your service methods with the attribute [FromBody], like this:               public AuthenticationResult Authenticate(**[FromBody]**LoginData loginData)     {         return AuthenticationResult.Authenticated;     }      that will grab them from the body. My other task is trying to test this? Is this a task for Fiddler? Or Chrome Dev tools? Another thing I've found so far is that you can only have 1 parameter in the post, is that accurate? Sorry, lot's of questions here. Spent all day yesterday trying to research this and obviously didn't get very far... Edit: So here's what I have so far, this is the \"GET\" version that we need to convert to a POST (this is Angular calling C# REST API)               $http.defaults.headers.common.Authorization = 'Basic ' + encoded;          var url = $rootScope.serviceBaseUrl + \"login/get\" + \"?username=\" + user + \"&password=\" + password + \"&accesstoken=\";          $http({method: 'Get', url: url}).success(.....).error(......);      And the REST service:               [HttpGet]         public AuthenticationResult Get([FromUri]LoginModel login)         {             try             {                 AuthenticationService authService = new AuthenticationService();                 AuthenticationResult result = authService.IsAuthenticated(login);                      if (result.IsAuthenticated)                     return result;                 else                 {                     return new AuthenticationResult()                     {                         IsAuthenticated = false,                         User = new User()                         {                             UserId = login.Username                         }                     };                 }             }             catch(Exception ex)             {                 return new AuthenticationResult()                 {                     IsAuthenticated = false,                     User = new User()                     {                         UserId = login.Username,                         Token = ex.Message                     }                 };             }         }      Edit2: I'm getting closer. I've got the response to go through (via Fiddler), but my json array of data that I'm passing is not getting mapped to my complex type. Here's what I've got: In Fiddler:               User-Agent: Fiddler     Host: localhost:42761     Content-Length: 73     Content-Type: application/json     Accept: application/json      \"Request Body\":               {     \"Username\": \"ganders\",     \"Password\": \"hashedPassword\"     }      My \"LoginData\" object is instantiated on the service-side, but my two properties are null..."}
{"_id": "245922", "title": "Combining asynchronous and synchronous programming", "text": "I've got trouble wrapping my head around a certain problem: In my data-flow app (a visual editor), I have both autonomous objects which communicate though ports via unordered simultaneous messages and thus represent an asynchronous system. ![in this picture, f would receive x from the first object, transform and immediately send the transformed value to the next](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MNRFL.png) Still, I also want to use functions which are synchronous, e.g they need input to compute it's value Now the problem is - how do I combine both with a non-trivial system? ![2](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wHG9E.png) In this picture, f needs x and y to compute its value, but during any point in time, only one input may be present (suppose x is present, y is not). Generalize this to higher dimensions I can see a possible way out:   * make x an array X = (x,y) and combine the first two objects resulting in a Type-1 like system ..   * or make f an active object, which caches x,y and then computes   * or make f always compute its value (e.g when only x is present, compute x*y = x*0 ...) * * * So the possibility of futures was mentioned. I'M using Java, so i'll frame my possible solution via Objects ![X is sent, y is missing -> create future \\(maybe a copy of f\\) waiting for y](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4N34O.png) X is sent, y is missing -> create future (maybe a copy of f) waiting for y ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JJme0.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WWuPM.png)"}
{"_id": "236449", "title": "DDD / Optimizing a specific service belonging to a specific bounded context regarding hardware", "text": "Well known is the split of a whole application into several bounded contexts to emerge an Ubiquitous language. while practicing Domain-Driven Design. In general, 1 bounded context = 1 archive file ready to be deployed (JAR / EAR / DLL etc..) My question concerns the bounded contexts deployment regarding hardware optimization: Suppose I want to optimize one specific service within a specific bounded context (optimization could be a more powerful CPU, more RAM, etc..), is it a good practice to create a specific archive file just for it? Meaning to split further the initial bounded context. Thus, in order to deliver it on a specific hardware tunes for its usage. Or should I consider 1 bounded context as being an **indivisible** unit and therefore optimizing the bounded context as a whole even if some specific services doesn't need this increase of hardware power?"}
{"_id": "236448", "title": "DATABASE design for storing specifications?", "text": "I am creating , a site like gsmarena , can any one help me with database design to store mobile specifications like here \"http://www.gsmarena.com/asus_padfone_infinity_lite-6120.php\" as user can add more custom specification ,"}
{"_id": "245929", "title": "Using class like an object in Python", "text": "I am learning from _Learn Python the hard way_ where I have come across a study drill where they want to know that whether a class can be used like an object. As I have experimented:               class A(object):         def __init__(self):             print \"in here\"         def cat(self,name):             print \"my cat \",name      Here if I write `A.cat(A(),\"Tom\")`, it works and found out that its call unbound method. Now, does that mean I can assume that classes can be used like an object?"}
{"_id": "236441", "title": "Specific class to pass a bundle of data from my Model to Controller or a simple Collection?", "text": "I am doing an Invoice application implementing MVC pattern design in Java. One of the features my application has to have is showing all info about a Customer: Personal data, Calls, Invoices, TelephoneNumber, etc. My model, which has access to all this data, has to pass and assemble this to pass it to the Controller. Then, my Controller will show it via my View.   I have thought how to make the connection between the Model and the Controller in a pretty way. One of my alternatives is to add every DTO (TelephoneNumber, CustomerData), and Collection of DTO (Collection, Collection, and more) to a Collection. IMHO, this is not a good approach to solve this problem well, because I am creating a lot of dependency in the Controller when receiving this information and casting according to the order of assembling. As I wanted to find another solution, I had the idea of creating a class (Bundle) which wraps me customer's data and then, in Controller's code, I use the methods of this class to get the data I need to display. My question is about if my solution is good or it would be another which will be better. I am not quite sure if the Bundle class will be a solution or just crap.   Thanks."}
{"_id": "153052", "title": "Is there a Javascript library for creating vintage photos?", "text": "I'm working on a Canvas object in HTML5, and I am attempting to make some photos look \"better\". I tried VintageJS, an existing photo-retouching Javascript library, and Picozu, a web application cloning some Adobe Photoshop functionalities, but I'm still not happy. Can you help me with an algorithm or point to an existing Javascript library that would allow me to make my photos look like the following example? http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f137/thanhtu_zx/Untitled-1.jpg ![example of a \"vintage\" look](http://i.stack.imgur.com/59Uee.jpg)"}
{"_id": "69306", "title": "Pair Swapping: What are the Pros and Cons?", "text": "The general idea that is espoused by most _Agile_ / _XP_ theorists seems to be that pairs should swap regularly. For example each programmer should swap pairs once per day; half the people swap at the start of the day, half the people swap after lunch: due to external factors such as meetings, holidays and the like most people will tend to flip their swap times once or twice per week so that the pair configurations distribute fairly evenly across the team. One rationale behind frequent swapping is that knowledge is spread amongst the team quickly and evenly, rather than having specific skills and knowledge being concentrated in particular individuals - implying that work can continue smoothly if people are either away or leave the company. Another rationale, which is a sort of corollary to the dogma surrounding pair programming itself, is that each time someone swaps on you are getting a new code review by a fresh pair of eyes, so it can only improve code quality. Both assertions sound reasonable; from a management point of view it sounds like you get an increase in both stability and quality, and as such frequent swapping is pretty much standard theory in most _Agile_ / _XP_ books that I've looked at. So, when actually put into practice, what do people actually think about pair swapping from   * A programmer's point of view?   * A manager's point of view? And   * What should determine when someone swaps off of / onto a pair?"}
{"_id": "86287", "title": "C# String.format extension method", "text": "With the addtion of Extension methods to C# we've seen a lot of them crop up in our group. One debate revolves around extension methods like this one:               public static class StringExt     {         /// <summary>         /// Shortcut for string.Format.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"str\"></param>         /// <param name=\"args\"></param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static string Format(this string str, params object[] args)         {             if (str == null) return null;             return string.Format(str, args);         }     }      Does this extension method break any programming best practices that you can name? Would you use it anyway, if not why? If I renamed the function to \"F\" but left the xml comments would that be epic fail or just a wonderful savings of keystrokes?"}
{"_id": "86286", "title": "Is there something better than a StringBuilder for big blocks of SQL in the code", "text": "I'm just tired of making a big SQL statement, test it, and then paste the SQL into the code and adding all the `sqlstmt.append(\"` at the beginning and the `\")` at the end. It's 2011, isn't there a better way the handle a big chunk of strings inside code? Please: don't suggest stored procedures or ORMs. **edit** Found the answer using XML literals and CData. Thanks to all the people that actually tried to answer the question without questioning me for not using ORM, SPs and using VB **edit 2** the question leave me thinking that languages could try to make a better effort for using inline SQL with color syntax, etc. It will be cheaper that developing Linq2SQL. Just something like:               dim sql = <sql>               SELECT * ...               </sql>"}
{"_id": "154001", "title": "De-facto standards for customer information record", "text": "I'm currently evaluating a potential new project that involves creating a DB for typical customer information (userid, pwd, first & last name, email, adress, telfnr ...). At this point, requirements are only roughly defined. The customer DB is expected in the O(millions) of records. In order to calculate some back-of-the-envelope numbers for DB sizing and evaluate potential DB options & architectures, I'm looking for some de-facto standards for these kind of records. **In particular, the std size of every field (first name, last name, address,...) or typical avg for a simple customer record would be great info**. With so many e-commerce websites out there, there should be some kind of typical config that can be reused and avoid re-inventing the wheel. Any ideas? \\---- edit ---- The answers seems to be steering towards adopting an standard customer record vs designing your own. I would like to stress that the focus of this question is to locate a **reference** for field sizing for a customer object, and avoid figuring that out on my own.(I've emphasized that part on the original text - **now in bold** -)"}
{"_id": "86283", "title": "Static teams or dynamic teams?", "text": "Is it better to assemble permanent teams of developers within the company that always work together, from project to project, or is it better to have dynamic teams that assemble for a project, and then dissasemble afterwards? My inclination is to treat the entire company as a \"platoon\" and to assemble \"fireteams\" for individual projects, choosing from the \"platoon\" those developers best suited for the project."}
{"_id": "154003", "title": "Designing a hierarchical structure with lots of reads and writes?", "text": "I am in the process of working on a video on demand system part of it involves the management of a hierarchical tree structure (think windows explorer) which allows users to upload videos, move folders around, create new folders etc. User action will be allowed depending on which permissions they have. In addition to managing the structure (creating folders and uploading videos), subscribers will be viewing content (read access). The number of reads will be significantly more than the writes. My question (and it is big one) is should I store the data in a database (for the writes) and also have some sort of cache which will be used for the reads? or do I use two databases? or is there a better solution? Also I will have to resolve concurrency issues which I think optimistic locking on the database will resolve. I have a fair bit about CQRS over the last few months but not sure if this is the way to go. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "153059", "title": "faster algorithm for finding all subsets", "text": "This is the algorithm (pseudocode) I have right now for finding all subsets for a given set with length k:               void allSubsets(set[]) {         for (i = 0; i<k; i++) {             for (j = i + 1; j<k; j++) {                 print(set[i...j]);             }         }     }         But it's run-time is O(n^2). Can anybody improve this?"}
{"_id": "154009", "title": "Is case after case in a switch efficient?", "text": "Just a random question regarding switch case efficiency in case after case; is the following code (assume pseudo code):               function bool isValid(String myString){        switch(myString){        case \"stringA\":        case \"stringB\":        case \"stringC\":           return true;        default:           return false;     }      more efficient than this:               function bool isValid(String myString){        switch(myString){        case \"stringA\":           return true;        case \"stringB\":           return true;        case \"stringC\":           return true;        default:           return false;     }      Or is the performance equal? I'm not thinking in a specific language but if needed let's assume it's Java or C (for this case would be needed to use chars instead of strings)."}
{"_id": "69308", "title": "git for personal (one-man) projects. Overkill?", "text": "I know, and use, two version control systems: Subversion and git. Subversion, as of now, gets used for personal projects where I am the only developer and git gets used for open source projects and projects where I believe others will also work on the project. This is mostly because of git's amazing forking and merging capabilities, where everyone may work on their own branch; very handy. Now, I use Subversion for personal projects, as I think git makes little sense there. It seems to be a little bit of overkill. It is OK for me if it is centralized (on my home server, usually) when I am the only developer; I take regular backups anyway. I don't need the ability to make my own branch, the main branch _is_ my branch. Yes, SVN has simple support for branching, but much more powerful support for it makes no sense, I think. Merging can be a pain with it, or at least from my little experience. Is there any good reason for me to use git on personal projects, or is it just simply overkill?"}
{"_id": "9378", "title": "What usability issues have you had with VS2010? ", "text": "A few of my friends have noticed some quirks with vs2010... notably the Undo/Redo feature doesn't seem to work reliably... often messing up the code beyond comprehension. What other quirks have you seen? **Update for vs2010 users (nonSP1)** Please post your bugs at Microsoft connect, and a corresponding link here so we can up vote them as needed. https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio?wa=wsignin1.0 **Update for VS2010 SP1 Users** You can download the SP1 for all versions of Visual Studio here. Just be aware that there are compatibility issues mentioned in the readme. Also some people have reported issues with this release. Please report bugs here: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio?wa=wsignin1.0"}
{"_id": "121137", "title": "JSP Model 2 Architecture and Dependency Injection", "text": "If I'm writing a web application that uses the model 2 architecture, is it possible to use the Google Guice framework (or really any IoC container)? The reason I ask this question is because everything I've researched about DI, IoC, et cetera always uses Spring, Hibernate or some other framework/container in their examples. I'm just using Java classes, controllers, and JSP's to build this application and I can't find any good documentation about the subject."}
{"_id": "195359", "title": "What is the current status of software support for JPEG-2000?", "text": "The general recommendation to record original scanned images used to be \"use TIFF\". But programmers need evolution of format for \"evolution of software\", and I need to evolve my system to change from TIFF to JP2. I have a big image storage (terabytes) for legal and scientific scanned materials, they need original recording. I use some caching rules, but the system need to show (via web download) or to manipulate (ImageMagick and others) original data. I've read an article about migrating image storages from TIFF-lossless to JPEG-2000-lossless and the conclusion is to stay with TIFF. However the article is from 2009 and at the time they found support for the JPEG-2000 format by available software was very poor. The conversions to JPEG-2000 were lossy in the software they tested, and the available software for consuming images did not support the format well. **Is now the time to change from TIFF to JP2, or not?** Is the software support still as flawed as it was in 2009?"}
{"_id": "121132", "title": "Which tasks should a beginner, intermediate and advanced rails developer be able to complete?", "text": "I have been programming ROR for about a year now, and I think I am ready to start working on a project for someone else. The problem is that job postings for contractors don't really tell you which specific tasks you should be able to do at different experience levels (in rails and other technologies), so I don't know where to pitch myself. I think I am somewhere between junior and mid-level, but who knows? So my question is: Which actual tasks should an junior programmer be able to do at, say, $35 an hour, which actual tasks should an intermediate programmer be able to do at, lets say, $75 an hour, and which actual tasks should an advanced programmer be able to do at, oh say, $140 an hour? One or two examples should suffice."}
{"_id": "9371", "title": "What is the proper way to create requirements documents?", "text": "Right now my supervisor is creating requirements documentation / specs for me using bugtracking software. This seems like a terrible idea to me, all the requirements are on these little tickets and I have to click around on this dumb webform to get at the requirements. What is a sane software solution for requirements / software specs? To be clear, I am building this large software component with quite a few features and these features are being set forth in this bugtracking software."}
{"_id": "121138", "title": "The value of an updated specification", "text": "I'm at the tail end of a large project (around 5 months of my time, > 60,000 lines of code) on which I was the only developer. The specification documents for the project were designed well early on, but as always happens during development, some things have changed. For example:   * Bugs were discovered and fixed in ways that don't correspond well with the spec   * Additional needs were discovered and dealt with   * We found areas where the spec hadn't thought far enough ahead and had to change some implementation   * Etc. Through all this, the spec was not kept updated, because we were lean on resources (I know that's a questionable excuse). I'm hoping to get the spec updated soon when we have time, but it's a matter of convincing management to spend the effort. I believe it's a good idea, but I need some good reasoning; I can't speak from very much experience because I'm only a year and a half out of school. So here are my questions:   1. What value is there in keeping an updated spec?   2. How often should the spec be updated? With every change made that might affect it, just at the end of development, or something in between? EDIT to clarify: this project was internal, so no external client was involved. It's our product."}
{"_id": "212924", "title": "Increase speed of a VB.net Application to SQL server 2008 and Hamachi VPN", "text": "Our current Information System (complete with path for pictures for records stored in db) has the following specifications:   * A desktop application was developed in vb.net   * We use SQL server 2008 r2 as the database   * Server specs: Intel xeon processor clocking in at 2.40 ghz, 2 GB RAM and Operating system   of 2008 R2   * Hamachi VPN for our offshore offices (within country).   * Office has 6mb dedicated internet connection. Offshore offices have varied ranging from 2mbps to 1mbps The application made in vb.net is connected to the server via IPaddress(locally) and hamachi public IP (for offshore)(we made sure that the tunnel is direct, not relayed) We found some weird things while users used the application. There are times where there are 5 users (local and offshore) simultaneously using it, and it went great. Then there would be times where even just three active users (still local or offshore) would suddenly experience extreme slowdown (even for something as simple as a select query to database for verification of log-In). For offshore clients we tried to ping them in hamachi and found out that each has speed averaging at 500 bytes per reply. Also, loading records that have pictures in them takes a REALLY long time. Wasn't it supposed to be that if you put image path instead of using BLOB, imaging would be faster? (The applications images is stored in a shared folder on the server, then we map that folder to the client unit). The questions are: based on the given above, how can we exactly speed up the system? Should we improve the server specs? is the internet provider the problem? must we redesign how we manage pictures in the system? What are the bottlenecks and how do we remedy it? Are there any other things that I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "149003", "title": "How can this deterministic linear time selection algorithm be linear?", "text": "Im trying to understand the basic concepts of algorithms through the classes offered at Coursera (in bits and pieces), I came across the deterministic linear time selection algorithm that works as follows:               Select(A,n,i)     (0)  If n = 1 return A[1].     (1)  p = ChoosePivot(A, n)     (2)  B = Partition(A, n, p)     (3)  Suppose p is the jth element of B (i.e., the jth order statistic of A). Let the \u201c\ufb01rst part of B\u201d denote     its \ufb01rst j \u2212 1 elements and the \u201csecond part\u201d its last n \u2212 j elements.     (3a)  If i = j, return p.     (3b)  If i < j, return Select(1st part of B, j \u2212 1, i).     (3c)  Else return Select(2nd part of B, n \u2212 j, i \u2212 j).      And sorts the array internally in the `ChoosePivot` subroutine to calculate the median of median using a comparison based sorting algorithm. But isnt the lower bound on comparison based sorting `O(nlogn)`? So how would it be possible for us to acheive `O(n)` for the entire algorithm then? Am I missing something here?"}
{"_id": "149001", "title": "Are there any situations where having a \"data model\" in which all your entities are instances of a Map<String, Object>", "text": "Are there any situations where having a \"data model\" in which all of the entities are instances of a `Map<String, Object>` would make any sense? How do you explain to someone why having such a \"data model\" is not such a good idea? It seems like it's an absurd approach to me, could I be missing something?"}
{"_id": "149006", "title": "Testing for object equality by comparing the toString() representations of objects", "text": "Following on from this question \\- how do you explain to someone that this is just crazy!:               boolean someMethod(Map<String, Object> context) {         Object object = context.get(\"someProperty\")          Object another = context.get(\"anotherProperty\")               return object.toString().equals(another.toString());     }      Apparently the reason for why `Object.equals(...)` is not used is that \"what's contained in the Map is not concretely known, but is definitely known to be one of the primitive wrappers i.e. `String`, `Double`, `Boolean`, etc... and that `Boolean.TRUE` is required to be `equal(...)` to the `String` \"TRUE\"\"."}
{"_id": "212921", "title": "building a chat bot for an e-commerce site", "text": "I was recently talking to a couple of friends who run a modest e-commerce website (Daily visitors: approx. 100,000,). They plan to have an in-site chat module to engage customers. Since the whole operation is run by 3 people at the moment, they probably won't be able to respond to all the queries in a timely manner. The question they asked me was, was it possible to build an automated chat bot which could maybe engage the customers for simple queries and for more complex ones, forward the chat to one of them. Now, I haven't built anything of the sort and it looks like a great challenge that I'd love to take up. There's no set deadline for the moment (which is really great) and this gives time (hypothetically) to learn a few things that may come in handy. My questions are as follows:   * What sort of architecture would this chat bot consist of?      * I was going through this site for a rough idea but I noticed they didn't use a database.     * Is noSQL the standard where chat bots are concerned? If yes, which one's recommended?   * I have am comfortable with Python - is that a good enough language to build this?   * If I wanted to make this project available to more than one person/project, what are the considerations which have to be taken into account so that this bot is adaptable to any site. For example, the people for whom I intend to build this for sell only t-shirts on their site. So they bot would answer questions related to fabrics, designs, colors etc. But tomorrow, if I want to show this bot to someone who, say sells pottery on his site, which parts of the bot should I leave open to learning? Or should I have a separate module which learns the products of the target site? At the moment I am using this question as a starting point. I apologize if there's anything left out. Please let me know if there are more details required."}
{"_id": "49624", "title": "What does the lack of Unicode support in PHP mean?", "text": "How can the lack of Unicode support in PHP affect a PHP web app?"}
{"_id": "49623", "title": "Should programming languages be strict or loose?", "text": "In Python and JavaScript, semi-colons are optional. In PHP, quotes around array-keys are optional (`$_GET[key]` vs `$_GET['key']`), although if you omit them it will first look for a constant by that name. It also allows 2 different styles for blocks (colon, or brace delimited). I'm creating a programming language now, and I'm trying to decide how strict I should make it. There are a lot of cases where extra characters aren't really necessary and can be unambiguously interpreted due to priorities, but I'm wondering if I should still enforce them or not to encourage consistency. What do you think? * * * Okay, my language isn't so much a programming language as a fancy templating language. Kind of a cross between Haml and Django templates. Meant to be used with my C# web framework, and supposed to be very extensible."}
{"_id": "41883", "title": "Why are most browsers developed in C++", "text": "It seems like most of common web browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari) are developed using C++. My question is straightforward. Why they use mainly C++ rather than any other language? **Edit: What factors must have been considered when its come to C++ Write ability, Cost, Reliability etc. ?**"}
{"_id": "41880", "title": "How can I apply regression modeling to analyze the characteristics of Extreme Programming and the Rational Unified Process?", "text": "I have been given task that has a case study developed by Extreme Programming (XP) and the Rational Unified Process (RUP). I was asked to apply regression models and take some dependent variables and some independent variables in order to compare both XP and RUP. Even though I have been searching, I have not been able to identify dependent and independent variables could be used in software quality testing?"}
{"_id": "49995", "title": "Convert from Procedural to Object Oriented Code", "text": "I have been reading Working Effectively with Legacy Code and Clean Code with the goal of learning strategies on how to begin cleaning up the existing code- base of a large ASP.NET webforms application. This system has been around since 2005 and since then has undergone a number of enhancements. Originally the code was structured as follows (and is still largely structured this way):   * ASP.NET (aspx/ascx)    * Code-behind (c#)   * Business Logic Layer (c#)    * Data Access Layer (c#)    * Database (Oracle) The main issue is that the code is procedural masquerading as object-oriented. It virtually violates all of the guidelines described in both books. This is an example of a typical class in the Business Logic Layer:                   public class AddressBO     {         public TransferObject GetAddress(string addressID)         {             if (StringUtils.IsNull(addressID))             {                 throw new ValidationException(\"Address ID must be entered\");             }                  AddressDAO addressDAO = new AddressDAO();             return addressDAO.GetAddress(addressID);         }              public TransferObject Insert(TransferObject addressDetails)         {             if (StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString(\"EVENT_ID\")) ||                 StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString(\"LOCALITY\")) ||                 StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString(\"ADDRESS_TARGET\")) ||                 StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString(\"ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE\")) ||                 StringUtils.IsNull(addressDetails.GetString(\"CREATED_BY\")))             {                 throw new ValidationException(                     \"You must enter an Event ID, Locality, Address Target, Address Type Code and Created By.\");             }                  string addressID = Sequence.GetNextValue(\"ADDRESS_ID_SEQ\");             addressDetails.SetValue(\"ADDRESS_ID\", addressID);                  string syncID = Sequence.GetNextValue(\"SYNC_ID_SEQ\");             addressDetails.SetValue(\"SYNC_ADDRESS_ID\", syncID);                  TransferObject syncDetails = new TransferObject();                  Transaction transaction = new Transaction();                  try             {                 AddressDAO addressDAO = new AddressDAO();                 addressDAO.Insert(addressDetails, transaction);                      // insert the record for the target                 TransferObject addressTargetDetails = new TransferObject();                 switch (addressDetails.GetString(\"ADDRESS_TARGET\"))                 {                     case \"PARTY_ADDRESSES\":                         {                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"ADDRESS_ID\", addressID);                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE\",                                                           addressDetails.GetString(\"ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"PARTY_ID\", addressDetails.GetString(\"PARTY_ID\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"EVENT_ID\", addressDetails.GetString(\"EVENT_ID\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"CREATED_BY\", addressDetails.GetString(\"CREATED_BY\"));                                  addressDAO.InsertPartyAddress(addressTargetDetails, transaction);                                  break;                         }                     case \"PARTY_CONTACT_ADDRESSES\":                         {                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"ADDRESS_ID\", addressID);                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE\",                                                           addressDetails.GetString(\"ADDRESS_TYPE_CODE\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"PUBLIC_RELEASE_FLAG\",                                                           addressDetails.GetString(\"PUBLIC_RELEASE_FLAG\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"CONTACT_ID\", addressDetails.GetString(\"CONTACT_ID\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"EVENT_ID\", addressDetails.GetString(\"EVENT_ID\"));                             addressTargetDetails.SetValue(\"CREATED_BY\", addressDetails.GetString(\"CREATED_BY\"));                                  addressDAO.InsertContactAddress(addressTargetDetails, transaction);                                  break;                         }                          << many more cases here >>                     default:                         {                             break;                         }                 }                      // synchronise                 SynchronisationBO synchronisationBO = new SynchronisationBO();                 syncDetails = synchronisationBO.Synchronise(\"I\", transaction,                                                             \"ADDRESSES\", addressDetails.GetString(\"ADDRESS_TARGET\"),                                                             addressDetails, addressTargetDetails);                           // commit                 transaction.Commit();             }             catch (Exception)             {                 transaction.Rollback();                 throw;             }                  return new TransferObject(\"ADDRESS_ID\", addressID, \"SYNC_DETAILS\", syncDetails);         }                   << many more methods are here >>          }      It has a lot of duplication, the class has a number of responsibilities, etc, etc - it is just generally 'un-clean' code. All of the code throughout the system is dependent on concrete implementations. This is an example of a typical class in the Data Access Layer:                   public class AddressDAO : GenericDAO     {         public static readonly string BASE_SQL_ADDRESSES =             \"SELECT \" +             \"  a.address_id, \" +             \"  a.event_id, \" +             \"  a.flat_unit_type_code, \" +             \"  fut.description as flat_unit_description, \" +             \"  a.flat_unit_num, \" +             \"  a.floor_level_code, \" +             \"  fl.description as floor_level_description, \" +             \"  a.floor_level_num, \" +             \"  a.building_name, \" +             \"  a.lot_number, \" +             \"  a.street_number, \" +             \"  a.street_name, \" +             \"  a.street_type_code, \" +             \"  st.description as street_type_description, \" +             \"  a.street_suffix_code, \" +             \"  ss.description as street_suffix_description, \" +             \"  a.postal_delivery_type_code, \" +             \"  pdt.description as postal_delivery_description, \" +             \"  a.postal_delivery_num, \" +             \"  a.locality, \" +             \"  a.state_code, \" +             \"  s.description as state_description, \" +             \"  a.postcode, \" +             \"  a.country, \" +             \"  a.lock_num, \" +             \"  a.created_by, \" +             \"  TO_CHAR(a.created_datetime, '\" + SQL_DATETIME_FORMAT + \"') as created_datetime, \" +             \"  a.last_updated_by, \" +             \"  TO_CHAR(a.last_updated_datetime, '\" + SQL_DATETIME_FORMAT + \"') as last_updated_datetime, \" +             \"  a.sync_address_id, \" +             \"  a.lat,\" +             \"  a.lon, \" +             \"  a.validation_confidence, \" +             \"  a.validation_quality, \" +             \"  a.validation_status \" +             \"FROM ADDRESSES a, FLAT_UNIT_TYPES fut, FLOOR_LEVELS fl, STREET_TYPES st, \" +             \"     STREET_SUFFIXES ss, POSTAL_DELIVERY_TYPES pdt, STATES s \" +             \"WHERE a.flat_unit_type_code = fut.flat_unit_type_code(+) \" +             \"AND   a.floor_level_code = fl.floor_level_code(+) \" +             \"AND   a.street_type_code = st.street_type_code(+) \" +             \"AND   a.street_suffix_code = ss.street_suffix_code(+) \" +             \"AND   a.postal_delivery_type_code = pdt.postal_delivery_type_code(+) \" +             \"AND   a.state_code = s.state_code(+) \";                   public TransferObject GetAddress(string addressID)         {             //Build the SELECT Statement             StringBuilder selectStatement = new StringBuilder(BASE_SQL_ADDRESSES);                  //Add WHERE condition             selectStatement.Append(\" AND a.address_id = :addressID\");                  ArrayList parameters = new ArrayList{DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"addressID\", OracleDbType.Decimal, addressID)};                  // Execute the SELECT statement             Query query = new Query();             DataSet results = query.Execute(selectStatement.ToString(), parameters);                  // Check if 0 or more than one rows returned             if (results.Tables[0].Rows.Count == 0)             {                 throw new NoDataFoundException();             }             if (results.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 1)             {                 throw new TooManyRowsException();             }                  // Return a TransferObject containing the values             return new TransferObject(results);         }                   public void Insert(TransferObject insertValues, Transaction transaction)         {             // Store Values             string addressID = insertValues.GetString(\"ADDRESS_ID\");             string syncAddressID = insertValues.GetString(\"SYNC_ADDRESS_ID\");             string eventID = insertValues.GetString(\"EVENT_ID\");             string createdBy = insertValues.GetString(\"CREATED_BY\");                  // postal delivery             string postalDeliveryTypeCode = insertValues.GetString(\"POSTAL_DELIVERY_TYPE_CODE\");             string postalDeliveryNum = insertValues.GetString(\"POSTAL_DELIVERY_NUM\");                  // unit/building             string flatUnitTypeCode = insertValues.GetString(\"FLAT_UNIT_TYPE_CODE\");             string flatUnitNum = insertValues.GetString(\"FLAT_UNIT_NUM\");             string floorLevelCode = insertValues.GetString(\"FLOOR_LEVEL_CODE\");             string floorLevelNum = insertValues.GetString(\"FLOOR_LEVEL_NUM\");             string buildingName = insertValues.GetString(\"BUILDING_NAME\");                  // street             string lotNumber = insertValues.GetString(\"LOT_NUMBER\");             string streetNumber = insertValues.GetString(\"STREET_NUMBER\");             string streetName = insertValues.GetString(\"STREET_NAME\");             string streetTypeCode = insertValues.GetString(\"STREET_TYPE_CODE\");             string streetSuffixCode = insertValues.GetString(\"STREET_SUFFIX_CODE\");                  // locality/state/postcode/country             string locality = insertValues.GetString(\"LOCALITY\");             string stateCode = insertValues.GetString(\"STATE_CODE\");             string postcode = insertValues.GetString(\"POSTCODE\");             string country = insertValues.GetString(\"COUNTRY\");                  // esms address             string esmsAddress = insertValues.GetString(\"ESMS_ADDRESS\");                  //address/GPS             string lat = insertValues.GetString(\"LAT\");             string lon = insertValues.GetString(\"LON\");             string zoom = insertValues.GetString(\"ZOOM\");                  //string validateDate = insertValues.GetString(\"VALIDATED_DATE\");             string validatedBy = insertValues.GetString(\"VALIDATED_BY\");             string confidence = insertValues.GetString(\"VALIDATION_CONFIDENCE\");             string status = insertValues.GetString(\"VALIDATION_STATUS\");             string quality = insertValues.GetString(\"VALIDATION_QUALITY\");                       // the insert statement             StringBuilder insertStatement = new StringBuilder(\"INSERT INTO ADDRESSES (\");             StringBuilder valuesStatement = new StringBuilder(\"VALUES (\");                  ArrayList parameters = new ArrayList();                  // build the insert statement             insertStatement.Append(\"ADDRESS_ID, EVENT_ID, CREATED_BY, CREATED_DATETIME, LOCK_NUM \");             valuesStatement.Append(\":addressID, :eventID, :createdBy, SYSDATE, 1 \");             parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"addressID\", OracleDbType.Decimal, addressID));             parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"eventID\", OracleDbType.Decimal, eventID));             parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"createdBy\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, createdBy));                  // build the insert statement             if (!StringUtils.IsNull(syncAddressID))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", SYNC_ADDRESS_ID\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :syncAddressID\");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"syncAddressID\", OracleDbType.Decimal, syncAddressID));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(postalDeliveryTypeCode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", POSTAL_DELIVERY_TYPE_CODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :postalDeliveryTypeCode \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"postalDeliveryTypeCode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, postalDeliveryTypeCode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(postalDeliveryNum))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", POSTAL_DELIVERY_NUM\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :postalDeliveryNum \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"postalDeliveryNum\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, postalDeliveryNum));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(flatUnitTypeCode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", FLAT_UNIT_TYPE_CODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :flatUnitTypeCode \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"flatUnitTypeCode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, flatUnitTypeCode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(lat))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", LAT\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :lat \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"lat\", OracleDbType.Decimal, lat));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(lon))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", LON\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :lon \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"lon\", OracleDbType.Decimal, lon));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(zoom))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", ZOOM\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :zoom \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"zoom\", OracleDbType.Decimal, zoom));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(flatUnitNum))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", FLAT_UNIT_NUM\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :flatUnitNum \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"flatUnitNum\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, flatUnitNum));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(floorLevelCode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", FLOOR_LEVEL_CODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :floorLevelCode \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"floorLevelCode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, floorLevelCode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(floorLevelNum))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", FLOOR_LEVEL_NUM\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :floorLevelNum \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"floorLevelNum\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, floorLevelNum));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(buildingName))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", BUILDING_NAME\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :buildingName \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"buildingName\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, buildingName));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(lotNumber))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", LOT_NUMBER\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :lotNumber \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"lotNumber\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, lotNumber));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetNumber))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", STREET_NUMBER\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :streetNumber \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"streetNumber\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetNumber));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetName))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", STREET_NAME\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :streetName \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"streetName\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetName));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetTypeCode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", STREET_TYPE_CODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :streetTypeCode \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"streetTypeCode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetTypeCode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(streetSuffixCode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", STREET_SUFFIX_CODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :streetSuffixCode \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"streetSuffixCode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, streetSuffixCode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(locality))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", LOCALITY\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :locality\");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"locality\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, locality));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(stateCode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", STATE_CODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :stateCode\");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"stateCode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, stateCode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(postcode))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", POSTCODE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :postcode \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"postcode\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, postcode));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(country))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", COUNTRY\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :country \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"country\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, country));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(esmsAddress))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", ESMS_ADDRESS\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :esmsAddress \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"esmsAddress\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, esmsAddress));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(validatedBy))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", VALIDATED_DATE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", SYSDATE \");                 insertStatement.Append(\", VALIDATED_BY\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :validatedBy \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"validatedBy\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, validatedBy));             }                       if (!StringUtils.IsNull(confidence))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", VALIDATION_CONFIDENCE\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :confidence \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"confidence\", OracleDbType.Decimal, confidence));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(status))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", VALIDATION_STATUS\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :status \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"status\", OracleDbType.Varchar2, status));             }                  if (!StringUtils.IsNull(quality))             {                 insertStatement.Append(\", VALIDATION_QUALITY\");                 valuesStatement.Append(\", :quality \");                 parameters.Add(DBUtils.CreateOracleParameter(\"quality\", OracleDbType.Decimal, quality));             }                  // finish off the statement             insertStatement.Append(\") \");             valuesStatement.Append(\")\");                  // build the insert statement             string sql = insertStatement + valuesStatement.ToString();                  // Execute the INSERT Statement             Dml dmlDAO = new Dml();             int rowsAffected = dmlDAO.Execute(sql, transaction, parameters);                  if (rowsAffected == 0)             {                 throw new NoRowsAffectedException();             }         }              << many more methods go here >>     }      This system was developed by me and a small team back in 2005 after a 1 week .NET course. Before than my experience was in client-server applications. Over the past 5 years I've come to recognise the benefits of automated unit testing, automated integration testing and automated acceptance testing (using Selenium or equivalent) but the current code-base seems impossible to introduce these concepts. We are now starting to work on a major enhancement project with tight time- frames. The team consists of 5 .NET developers - 2 developers with a few years of .NET experience and 3 others with little or no .NET experience. None of the team (including myself) has experience in using .NET unit testing or mocking frameworks. What strategy would you use to make this code cleaner, more object-oriented, testable and maintainable?"}
{"_id": "152099", "title": "Object Oriented programming on 8-bit MCU Case Study", "text": "I see that there's a lot of questions related to OO Programming here. I'm actually trying to find a specific resource related to embedded OO approaches for an 8 bit MCU. Several years back (maybe 6) I was looking for material related to Object Oriented programming for resource constrained 8051 microprocessors. I found an article/website with a case history of a design group that used a very small RAM part, and implemented many Object based constructs during their C design and development. I believe it was an 8051. The project was a success, and managed to stay inside the very small ROM/RAM they had available. I'm attempting to find it again, but Google can't locate it. The article was well written, and recommended a \"mixed\" approach using C methods for inheritance and encapsulation - if I recall correctly. Can anyone help me locate this article?"}
{"_id": "168146", "title": "What is the term for a 'decoy' feature or intentional bug?", "text": "I have forgotten a slang programming term. This thing is an intentional bug or a decoy feature used as a distraction. An example usage, \"Hey Bob, QA is doing a review today. Put a `$THING` into the module so they actually have a problem to find\". This can be used negatively, to have a very obvious intentional flaw to discover as a distraction from a real problem. This can also be used positively. Its like how you always let rescue dogs 'find' a victim when searching a disaster area. It can also be used to verify that a QA process is actually catching flaws. What is the term I am looking for?"}
{"_id": "228287", "title": "Returning null or a empty value/throw exception?", "text": "Various programming books suggest that methods should not return `null` values (Clean Code for example). Instead of returning `null` default values (0 or empty string or empty object) should be returned or an exception should be thrown. This is recommended in order to avoid many `!= null` checks or to avoid `NullPointerException`. I really don't understand how this helps. If you return a default value you have to make `!= DEFAULT` checks; more over, the default value might mean something (like 0 for a credit amount). Throwing a specific exception is not worth with, because if you don't handle your code well, an exception is thrown anyway - `NullPointerException`. I've thought about this when I found a bug caused by a method which returned an empty object (e.g. `new MyBean()`) instead of returning `null`. The code didn't worked functionally and the logs didn't warn anything, so detection and fixing was not that easy; with `null` a `NullPointerException` would have been thrown so spotting and fixing the bug would have been trivial. The only case where it makes sense to me to return a default value instead of returning `null` is when returning arrays/collections; here they are usually consumed `for each element in collection` so if its empty nothing happens but if it's `null` NPE is thrown."}
{"_id": "152097", "title": "What are the legal risks if any of using a GPL or AGPL Web Application Framework/CMS?", "text": "Tried to ask this on SO but was referred here... Am I correct in saying that using a GPL'ed web application framework such as Composite C1 would NOT obligate a company to share the source code we write against said framework? That is the purpose of the AGPL, am I correct? Does this also apply to Javascript frameworks like KendoUI? The GPL would require any changes that we make to the framework be made available to others if we were to offer it for download. In other words, merely loading a web sites content into my browser is not \"conveying\" or \"distributing\" that software. I have been arguing that we should avoid GPL web frameworks and now after researching I am pretty sure I am wrong but wanted to get other opinions? Seth"}
{"_id": "49999", "title": "Including a GPL-license library in a commercial Java program", "text": "I am in the process of helping develop a commercial Java program. We want to use a certain third-party LookAndFeel in the GUI. The problem is that the LookAndFeel library is GPL licensed. Since we are planning to sell our product, would it be legal to use that GPL LookAndFeel in our product? The LookAndFeel in question is the InfoNode Look And Feel"}
{"_id": "254757", "title": "Where is the 'this' variable stored?", "text": "Let's take this simple c++ program as an example:               #include <vector>     class A     {       void fun() { a = this + 1; }       A* a;     };          main()     {       std::vector<A> vec;       vec.resize(100);     }      Forgetting for the moment that `this` is a pointer to some instantiation of `A`, this question is about the variable `this` itself, and where its contents (the value of the memory address) is stored. It can't be a literal because the compiler can't know the location of class `A`, so its contents must be allocated _somewhere_ on the stack or heap as a variable. In this case the instances of `A` are allocated on the heap; does this mean the `this` pointer is also on the heap? Looking at the `resize` call of `vec`, a compiler might do something like this under the hood:               std::vector<A>::resize(this, 100); // where 'this' is a pointer to vec      So my question is, where does the `this` pointer come from? Ie. where is the contents of `this` (the 32/64-bit memory address value) stored in memory for it to be passed to this method? I would presume it can't be a normal member; so my first thought was that it's a mangled global variable of some sort, but then by storing an unknown number of them in a vector I don't see how the compiler could achieve this either. Where is the contentx of the `this` variable stored in relation to the contents of the `A` class member to which it refers? If the standard has something to say about this, I would prefer an answer with reference to the standard. Note that the reason I want to know is because I am concerned about false sharing of the memory allocated for the `this` object if I modify member variables. Knowledge of where the `this` object is stored might affect padding decisions."}
{"_id": "158634", "title": "Dynamic choice of compilers?", "text": "An application has the following logic:   * client => created *.cpp => sent to the server => cl.exe + *.cpp =   *.exe   * client => created *.cs => sent to the server => csc.exe + *.cs =   *.exe   * client => created *.pas => sent to the server => PascalCompiler +   *.pas = *.exe   * etc. The language - C#. I hear that MSBUILD can help me, but I don't understand how to change compiler on server at runtime. Does anyone know of options other than Process class? I'm trying to write an online system to test programs in programming contests. The programmer selects the compiler and sends the source code to the server for verification. And I do not need to build the project, I just need to compile a single file."}
{"_id": "158633", "title": "Distributed application using RabbitMQ", "text": "I am on my way to create an application with 4 bounded context using CQRS & event sourcing. In order to make these bounded context talk to each other I was planning on using Rabbit MQ. My requisites are the following :   * The bounded context must not know about each other   * The bounded context must not be hindered if the other bounded context are down or if rabbitMQ is down   * If a bounded context is not available the messages, that it should receive, must wait patiently for its return ie : every event published must be forwarded at least once to all the bc interested. Therefore, I was thinking about having each of them referencing a queue : BandMasterQueue and creates it if it is not. When producing an event, the event store stores it and its dispatch consists of two steps :   1. project on itself this event to every little projection. Each projection has a little tiny store of events already projected to warrant idempotency over some period of time.   2. publish this event to the queue BandMasterQueue if it would fail on step 2 because of no rabbitmq available, then I expect my event store to try again to dispatch the message to the RabbitMQ after sometime (not really though precisely about this part, I must say...) The bandMaster \"bounded context\" knows about every different BCs he looks after. He is the one reading the bandMasterQueue and decides which events are public and which are not. He is also responsible to handle the \"sagas\" and can send corrective actions to each bc. In order to do that, he will comunicate with each bounded context using the dedicated queue of the bounded context and creates it if it does not exits. Each BC is bound to this specific queue, and add the event coming from outside in its own event store, and afterwards project it to its own projection. Should this \"architecture\" work or do you see any major flaw in it?"}
{"_id": "253135", "title": "Property-level value transformation for indirect object casting", "text": "Does any programming language exist to support the explicit, property-level object copy? For example, assume this code:               public class Student     {         public string Name { get; set; }              public string Code { get; set; }              public List<string> Interests { get; set; }     }          public class Item     {         public string Name { get; set; }               public string Code { get; set; }     }      I wonder if there is a compiler (or a language) out there that can indirectly cast two objects to each other, based on property-level matching and a lossy transformation algorithm?   1. Create an instance of the target class   2. Using reflection, find all properties of the target class   3. For each property, try to find a match in the source class, using name and type   4. If found, transfer the value   5. Otherwise, initialize to the default value Of course, this should be done **explicitly** with the full intention of the developer. For example, a C# pseudo-syntax might look like:               Student student = new Student();     student.Name = \"Saeed\";     student.Code = \"513223\";     Item item = copy student; // assume \"copy\" to be a keyword     // Here, item's name is \"Saeed\" and its code is \"513223\""}
{"_id": "58156", "title": "SEO for AJAX based website", "text": "My question is that we have a completely ajax based website: http://news.swalif.com/. Now we want to get all the 'pages' crawled by Google and other search engines, but we do not want to move to a PHP based solution or make an archive. I would like to get any ideas on how it could be possible."}
{"_id": "190214", "title": "Time limit on user input", "text": "I am trying to put a time limit on the user input, so if they take longer than 2 seconds to put type in an input then the program will terminate. I was wondering if there is a simple way to do this in C language?"}
{"_id": "160337", "title": "Unit Tests code duplication?", "text": "How can I avoid code duplication in unit tests? Using Java and JUnit suppose I have something like this:               public interface Arithmetic<T> {         public T add(T a, T b);         public T sub(T a, T b);     }          public void IntegerArithmetic<Integer> {         //     }          public void DoubleArithmetic<Double> {         //     }      And the test class:               public class TestArith {          private Arithmetic<Integer> arith;          @Before     public void init() {         Arithmetic<Integer> arith = new IntegerArithmetic();         Integer term1 = 4;         Integer term2 = 3;     }          @Test     public void testAdd() {          assertEquals(7, arith.add(term1, term2));     }          @Test     public void testAdd() {          assertEquals(1, arith.sub(term1, term2));     }     }      The problem is that the test class for the DoubleArithmetic class should look exactly the same; the only difference is in @Before init() where the initialization of the concrete type is done. How can this code duplication be avoided?"}
{"_id": "190216", "title": "Which is simpler for REST client call to return JSON - JQuery/JavaScript or Spring RestTemplate?", "text": "I've been trying to hack up an annotated Spring MVC web app but it's proving pretty hard to call a URL of my web app which fires a request to a remote API (UK Police data) and recieves a reply which I can then return as JSON. I've been trying to use Spring's RestTemplate. The odd JavaScript example that I've glanced at does seem to be suited to that task a lot better and more simplistic than a full blown servlet. **Is that an opinion that you also share and can back up with a good, clear simple example?** JavaScript does seem to provide a good platform for this kind of task **Or, in other words, is it simpler to create a \"web-app\" with JavaScript that does some REST calls and renders the response than trying to do it with Spring?**"}
{"_id": "158639", "title": "What do you need to do when mentoring a new graduate?", "text": "Well I have been THE junior developer in a small team for several years. Now, there is a new fresh graduate so I have become the not-so-junior-developer and have been asked to mentor him. But I have no idea what to do since I have always been kind of a \"figure- things-out-on-my-own\" person and didn't receive much mentoring. So, what do you need to do when mentoring a new graduate?"}
{"_id": "158638", "title": "How stable is Common LISP as a language?", "text": "I have been reading a bit about Common Lisp and I am considering trying to learn it (I only know very basic concepts) or even using it for some project. Question: how stable is Common Lisp as a language? What I mean is, regardless of new libraries, are new language features (involving new syntax and semantics) being added to the language? In other words, if I learn Common Lisp now, would I be able to use the same language in 10 years from now, or read code that was written 10, 20 years ago (apart, of course, from having to get familiar with different libraries and API's)?"}
{"_id": "251642", "title": "Inheriting from Abstract class vs Enum Types for custom exceptions", "text": "I am creating an interface and would like the implementer(s) of this interface to throw exceptions in the case that something goes wrong. Let's call the implementer a plugin. I have a director which can call any one of the plugins. Rather than each plugin throwing it's own random exception, I would like plugins to throw specific exceptions which my director can then handle. For example: If the plugins fail to authenticate with the credentials that are provided by the director or if the requested action times out on the plugin, the plugin should throw an exception. Rather than each plugin throw it's own random exception, I would like plugins to throw specific exceptions that the director knows about and can handle. I do this because if an exception is fatal (like authentication failed) I don't want to retry, whereas if it was a timeout, the director may decide to retry. Now, I am confused as to which of the following ways is better: **Idea 1:** Create a custom exception (lets say `PluginException`) and have an enum type which different types of exception (such as `authenticationfailed`, `timeoutout`, `permissiondenied`, etc.) The director will catch all `PluginException`s and handle each exception case by case. **Idea 2:** Create an abstract exception (lets say `PluginException` again) and have specific exception types derive from my abstract exception (like `AuthenticationFailedException`, `TimeoutException`, etc.) The director can listen for any specific exception it is interested in and also listen for the broader `PluginException` if none of the above exception types match the exception thrown by the plugins."}
{"_id": "169819", "title": "Detect duplicate in a subset from a set of elements", "text": "I have a set of numbers say : 1 1 2 8 5 6 6 7 8 8 4 2... I want to detect the duplicate element in subsets(of given size say k) of the above numbers... For example : Consider the increasing subsets(for example consider k=3) Subset 1 :{1,1,2} Subset 2 :{1,2,8} Subset 3 :{2,8,5} Subset 4 :{8,5,6} Subset 5 :{5,6,6} Subset 6 :{6,6,7} .... .... So my algorithm should detect that subset 1,5,6 contains duplicates.. My approach : 1)Copy the 1st k elements to a temporary array(vector) 2) using #include file in C++ STL...using unique() I would determine if there's any change in size of vector.. Any other clue how to approach this problem.."}
{"_id": "179064", "title": "Date calculation algorithm", "text": "I'm working on a project to schedule a machine shop, basically I've got everything covered BUT date calculations, I've got a method called schedule (working on PHP here):               public function schedule($start_date, $duration_in_minutes)      Now my problem is, currently I'm calculating end time manually because time calculations have the following rules:   1. During weekdays, work with business hours (7:00 AM to 5:00 PM)   2. Work on Saturdays from 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM   3. Ignore holidays (in Colombia we have A LOT of holidays) I already have a lookup table for holidays, I also have a Java version of this algorithm that I wrote for a previous version of the project, but that one's also manual. Is there any way to calculate an end time from a start time given duration?, my problem is that I have to consider the above rules, I'm looking for a (maybe?) math based solution, however I currently don't have the mind to devise such a solution myself. I'll be happy to provide code samples if necessary."}
{"_id": "164828", "title": "Why are people laughing at visual basic?", "text": "When I was at high school I used visual basic 6 and I think it was pretty good. Then I came to the university and began to use c/c++ java python etc.. I didn't find a reason why people laugh at visual basic, is it because of its syntax? or something else? **UPDATE:** all of you have gave fantastic answers, but tdammers's answer is what I'm wondering at first. Thanks a lot for all your help:)"}
{"_id": "164756", "title": "TDD, BDD or both?", "text": "I'm a little bit confused about BDD. I'm doing TDD currently. My question is whether BDD is complementary to TDD or it's a whole new thing and my team should do both TDD and BDD? Or is it enough to do just one or the other?"}
{"_id": "135218", "title": "What is the difference between BDD and TDD?", "text": "I have been learning writing test cases for BDD using specflow. If I write comprehensive tests with BDD is it necessary to write TDD test separately? Is it necessary to write test cases for both TDD and BDD separately? It seems to me that both are same, the only difference being that BDD can be understood by non developers and testers."}
{"_id": "53585", "title": "Is the difference between BDD and TDD nothing more than a vocabulary shift?", "text": "I recently made a start on learning BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) after watching a Google tech talk presented by David Astels. He made a very interesting case for using BDD and some of the literature I've read seem to highlight that it's easier to sell BDD to management. Admittedly, I'm a little skeptical about BDD after watching the above video. So, I'm interested to understand if BDD is indeed nothing more than a change in vocabulary or if it offers other benefits."}
{"_id": "111837", "title": "Relation between BDD and TDD", "text": "What is the relation of BDD and TDD? From what I understood BDD adds two main things over TDD: tests naming (ensure/should) and acceptance tests. Should I follow TDD during development by BDD? If yes, should my TDD unit tests be named in the same ensure/should style?"}
{"_id": "169816", "title": "Returning a mock object from a mock object", "text": "I'm trying to return an object when mocking a parser class. This is the test code using PHPUnit 3.7                   //set up the result object that I want to be returned from the call to parse method         $parserResult= new ParserResult();         $parserResult->setSegment('some string');                      //set up the stub Parser object         $stubParser=$this->getMock('Parser');         $stubParser->expects($this->any())                    ->method('parse')                    ->will($this->returnValue($parserResult));              //injecting the stub to my client class         $fileWriter= new FileWriter($stubParser);         $output=$fileWriter->writeStringToFile();      Inside my `writeStringToFile()` method I'm using `$parserResult` like this:               writeStringToFile(){        //Some code...         $parserResult=$parser->parse();         $segment=$parserResult->getSegment();//that's why I set the segment in the test.     }      Should I mock `ParserResult` in the first place, so that the mock returns a mock? Is it good design for mocks to return mocks? Is there a better approach to do this all?!"}
{"_id": "169815", "title": "Help to understand the abstract factory pattern", "text": "I'm learning the 23 design patterns of the GoF. I think I've found a way to understand and simplify how the Abstract Factory works but I would like to know if this is a correct assumption or if I am wrong. What I want to know is if we can see the result of the Abstract Factory method as a matrix of possible products where there's a Product for every \"Concrete Factory\" x \"AbstractProduct\" where the Concrete Factory is a single implementation among the implementations of an AbstractFactory and an AbstractProduct is an interface among the interfaces to create Products. Is this correct or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "169814", "title": "What are the differences between Special Edition and the Third Edition of Stroustrup's The C++ Programming Language?", "text": "I'm buying a few C++ books after moving from Java. I obviously want to read the reference manual from the man himself, though I cannot tell the difference between these two editions. The special edition is ten pages shorter than the third edition. However, the special edition is recommended over the third edition and it seems this version covers the ISO standard when the other edition does not. Can anyone shed a bit of light on this?"}
{"_id": "162798", "title": "Can we create desktop application with Ruby?", "text": "I know the Ruby on Rails framework is only for web development and not suitable for desktop application development. But if a ruby programmer wants to develop a desktop application, is it suitable and preferable to do it with Ruby only (not jRuby, as most of the tutorials are for jRuby)? If yes, please provide some good tutorials. I want to use linux as OS for development. Please suggest something, as I am a ruby developer and wants to develop desktop application."}
{"_id": "162796", "title": "How quickly does the Java language get outdated?", "text": "I started learning Java recently. I started learning it using books that I picked up from the library, some that I bought, and here and there from Java documentation.   The book that I use for Java was published in the year 2011. In 2012, Java8 will be released followed by Java9 in the year 2013.   The questions are:   * How do I keep myself updated about developments in Java without having to buy a tome for Java8 and/or Java9   * Is a book published in 2008 an outdated book for studying JSP and Servelets? I'm talking about Head First Servlets and JSP"}
{"_id": "203844", "title": "What does it mean to \"expose\" something?", "text": "So I am working on creating a Google App Engine Application, and I've come across the term \"expose\" a number of times, e.g. \"your first app can expose objects using an HTTP based API\" and \"expose this datamodel class through a REST API\". What does \"expose\" mean? Is there a particular action associated it, or is it an abstract part of design?"}
{"_id": "203847", "title": "Need thoughts on a course curriculum for an entry-level programmer", "text": "Would love to know your thoughts on a curriculum that will be developed for people that want to get started in the programming field. The goal of the course is to help it's students to ensure that students have an understanding of the theory and skills required to be a programmer, and have enough skills to get entry-level jobs upon graduation. Curriculum is:   * 400 hours of instruction plus self-study.   * 40 hours of practicum **1\\. Foundation** a. Clarity b. Detail orientation c. Communication d. Compartmentalization/abstraction e. Typing f. Memory **2\\. Theory** a. Lexical analysis b. Parsing c. Optimization d. Hierarchical thinking e. Scope f. Type systems **3\\. Computer Science** a. Data structure (ex. sorting, searching, data structure transversal) b. Recursion c. Language structures (ex. arrays, linked lists, dictionaries, etc) **4\\. Systems Architecture** **5\\. Operating System Theory** a. POSIX b. IO c. Memory allocation **6\\. Object Oriented Programming** a. Java b. PL/SQL * * * Would love to know:   1. Is the above curriculum laid out clearly? If not, how would it be best to change it?   2. Are there any crucial components being missed from the above outline?   3. Should any components be removed from the above outline (considering the timeline)? Perhaps it's too detailed at certain points and is not in balance with the rest of the content?"}
{"_id": "54302", "title": "Is using SVN for development and CM a bad practice?", "text": "I have a bit of experience with SVN as a pure programmer/developer. Within my company, however, we use SVN as our Configuration Management (CM) tool. I thought using SVN for development at the same time was OK since we could use branches and the trunk for dev, and tags for releases. To me, the tags were the CM part, and the branches/trunk were the dev part. Recently a person, who develops high level code (but outside of the \"pure SW\" group) mentioned that the existing philosophy (mixing SVN for dev and CM) was wrong... in his opinion. His reasoning is that he thinks the company's CM tool should always link to run-able SW (so branches would break this rule). He also mentioned that a CM tool shouldn't be a backup utility for daily or incremental commits. Finally, he doesn't like the idea of having to jump from revision 143 to 89 in order to get a working copy... and further that CM tools shouldn't allow reversion to a broken state. In general he wants to separate the CM and back-up/dev utilties that SVN offers. Honestly, I am new and the person with this perspective is one of seniority, experience, and success, so I want to field this dilemma with the stackoverflow userbase to see if his approach has merit. My question: Should SVN be purely used for development, and another tool for CM (or vice versa)? Why? If so, what tools would you suggest for this combo? Or do you think that integrating both CM and dev into SVN is the best approach? Why? Thanks. * * * **Edit-** during my research I found the following site which may give some more reasons against using SVN for CM. Are the author's points valid? I feel like this is aligned with what my colleague was inferring... Link: SVN isn't CM"}
{"_id": "54301", "title": "Different ways of solving problems in code", "text": "I now program in C# for a living but before that I programmed in python for 5 years. I have found that I write C# very differently than most examples I see on the web. Rather then writing things like:               foreach (string bar in foo)     {         //bar has something doen to it here     }      I write code that looks like this.               foo.ForEach( c => c.someActionhere() )      Or               var result = foo.Select( c =>                     {                         //Some code here to transform the item.                     }).ToList();      I think my using code like above came from my love of map and reduce in python - while not exactly the same thing, the concepts are close. Now it's time for my question. What concepts do you take and move with you from language to language; that allow you to solve a problem in a way that is not the normal accepted solution in that language?"}
{"_id": "54300", "title": "Transitioning from Oracle based CMS to MySQL based CMS", "text": "We're looking at a replacement for our CMS which runs on Oracle. The new CMSes that we've looked at can in theory run on Oracle, but   * most of the vendor's installs run off of MySQL   * vendor supports install of their CMS on MySQL, and a \"theoretical\" install on Oracle   * the vendor's dev shops use MySQL   * none of them develop/test against Oracle Our DBA team works exclusively with Oracle, and doesn't have the bandwidth to provide additional support for a highly available and performing MySQL setup. They could in theory go to training and get ramped up, but our time line is also short (surprise!). So ... I guess my question(s) are: If you've seen a situation like this, how have you dealt with it? What tipped the balance either way? What type of effort did it take? If you're to do it over, what would you do differently ... ? Thanks! KM"}
{"_id": "168494", "title": "How important is positive feedback in code reviews?", "text": "Is it important to point out the **good** parts of the code during a code review and the reasons why it is good? Positive feedback might be just as useful for the developer being reviewed and for the others that participate in the review. We are doing reviews using an online tool, so developers can open reviews for their committed code and others can review their code within a given time period (e.g. 1 week). Others can comment on the code or other reviewer's comments. Should there be a balance between positive and negative feedback?"}
{"_id": "245588", "title": "Where to put format validation in a CQRS \u201cstylish\u201d domain model?", "text": "It feels right to put format validation inside the domain objects (VOs or entities) because it is the natural place for high cohesion and the domain knows best what every domain description/attribute/property means. Many DDD practitioners and books authors (Vaugh Vernon, Dan Bergh - and even Eric Evans suggest , but on a different aspect: authorization, to model the domain to reflect these matters) sugest to design the domain model in a way to reflect and enforce a proper state of the business. I agree that format validation (ie.: address property in EmailAddress VO should be max ~250 chars and should match a regex) should be implemented inside the domain objects. But these validation checks work best with a domain model that will be used for both state changes and state queries. What about CQRS where the command side (where the domain model is) has little or no knowledge about the read side. Should one reimplement the same input format checks in the query side of the application? In CQRS there are some common responsibilities for both command and query side (like input format validation), so the usual format validation implementations that most of DDD practitioners sugest will be duplicated. How should one deal with this, w/o making the domain model (from the command side) to be anemic and w/o making unaware of the state of the attributes it will hold . An example : there might be a feature that would let a conference owner to schedule a conference and change the number of available seats. But because the conference room is not big enough, the maximum allowed number of seats would be 100. So a business rule would be that : a conference owner cannot add more than 100 seats for a scheduled conference (also minimum 1 seat needed for the conference to be in a valid state). So a method would be on a ConferenceAR :               changeNumberOfAvailableSeats(numberOfAvailableSeats) {         if(!isNumber(numberOfAvailableSeats) || numberOfAvailableSeats > 100 ||                    numberOfAvailableSeats < 1) {             throw new DomainException ...         }                // Change the number of available seats ...     }      On the query side there might be an UI page where you can find all the scheduled conferences that have a certain number of available seats. So again , on the server's query side of the application, there must be a format validation that will check if the query for scheduled conferences with a number of seats available is a number and is in the range 1-100. This query might be needed by someone who wants to reserve a certain number of seats for a conference . Also conferences might be on the same topic so one could see a confenrece with the same topic many times and choose the one cheaper or with more seats available. So again, should one reimplement the format validation on both query and command sides or there is another solution? P.S. : there are many format validation duplicates (on both command and query side) like the email format validation , or a currency format validation (if the currency is : USD || CAD || AUD etc ...) **P.P.S. : Another question that poped up : Does the query side of the application reuquire any input format validation ? If the input is not a valid format it will return nothing , query found no data related to the request. I see that format validation on the query side is purely a security measure (ie. for buffer overflows). So is the input format validation really required on the query side ?**"}
{"_id": "163445", "title": "How to make a PHP function triggered automatically at a user defined time", "text": "I am developing an internal system for a company with PHP using Zend framework. I need one of its functions to execute on a time specified by user. My research on this matter found me several ways of doing this using CPanel Cron jobs and setting up scheduled tasks on the server. But in this scenario, I don't have a CPanel and I already use scheduled tasks. But my challenge is to provide an interface for the user to specify the time to trigger the function."}
{"_id": "94754", "title": "How do I convince my teammates that we should not ignore compiler warnings?", "text": "I work on a huge project (more like a tangled up combination of dozens of mini projects that can't be easily separated due to poor dependency management, but that's a different discussion) in Java using eclipse. We've already turned off a number of warnings from compiler settings and the project still has over 10,000 warnings. I'm a big proponent for trying to address all warnings, fix all of them if possible, and for those that are looked into and deemed safe, suppress them. (Same goes for my religious obsession with marking all implemented/overriden method as @Override). My biggest argument is that generally warnings help you find potential bugs during compile time. Maybe out 99 of 100 times, the warnings are insignificant, but I think the head scratching that it saves for the one time that it prevents a major bug, it's all worth it. (My other reason is my apparent OCD with code cleanness). However, a lot of my teammates don't seem to care. I occasionally fix warnings when I stumble across them (but you know it's tricky when you touch code written by a co-worker). Now with literally more warnings than classes, the advantages of warnings are very much minimized, because when warnings are so common-place, nobody will bother looking into all of them. How can I convince my teammates (or the powers that be) that warnings need to be addressed (or suppressed when fully investigated)? Or should I convince myself that I'm crazy? Thanks (P.S. I forgot to mention what finally prompted me to post this question is that I sadly noticed that I'm fixing warnings slower than they are produced)"}
{"_id": "122444", "title": "Controllers in CodeIgniter ", "text": "I little bit new to the CodeIgniter framework and this is my first project with this framework. During a chat on StackOverflow somebody said that we need to make controllers tiny as possible. Currently I have a default controller named `home` with 1332 lines of codes (and increasing) and a model named `Profunction` with 1356 lines of codes (and increasing). The controller class have about 46 functions on it and also with model class. I thought that Codeigniter can handle large Controllers or Models well, is there any problem/performance issue/security issues regarding this?"}
{"_id": "122440", "title": "How do regular expressions actually work?", "text": "Say you have a document with an essay written. You want to parse this essay to only select certain words. Cool. Is using a regular expression faster than parsing the file line by line and word by word looking for a match? If so, how does it work? How can you go faster than looking at each word?"}
{"_id": "62216", "title": "How does a programmer tell a business analyst that she isn't right?", "text": "I implemented some functionality, then a business analyst created a defect, saying that some message text is wrong. Then I reviewed the spec again and found that I'm right. I posted a spec excerpt and closed the defect. Then she reopened the defect again, saying that there was a mistake in the spec and that I shouldn't implement it mindlessly and should escalate this particular thing to her. How should I respond?"}
{"_id": "62217", "title": "Interview question: which is the time period estimated by you to learn Java", "text": "At my last interview(it was a phone interview) I was asked: \"Which is the time period in which you can learn Java?\". I've answered that I believe that in 2-3 month I'm able to write good code for non-fancy/regular applications. After that I observed that the employer took a long break and switched to other questions. Now, I'm asking you, what you've answered if you were in my place. PS: I didn't worked a lot with Java(2 weeks), so I don't think that a person who is saying something like \"I can learn Java in 2 days\" is fair with him/herself."}
{"_id": "42181", "title": "Tester-Developer communication", "text": "While a lot is written about developer-developer, developer-client, developer- team manager communications, I couldn't find any text which gives guidelines about tester-developer communication and relation. Whether testers and developers are separate teams or in the same one (in my case, I am a lone tester in an agile development project), I have the belief that how testers are perceived is extremely important in order for testing to be well-accepted, and to serve its goal in enhancing the quality of the project (for example, they should not be viewed as a police force). Any advices, or studies about how a tester should communicate with developers? **Update** : Thank you all for your answers. They all confirmed what I had in mind. As for now, my team was very receptive of my role and we ended up making real progress. I could have chosen more than one as the answer but I had to make my decision."}
{"_id": "210503", "title": "Is seniority/paygrade an important factor for effective QA members?", "text": "As a member of our company's QA team, I frequently get entirely unenthusiastic feedback from developers in their responses to test results in our agile, web- based software-as-a-service shop. Most of our testing is manual, since automated testing doesn't really make sense for us right now, and developers are usually reluctant to listen to any change suggestions beyond those that prevent javascript/500 errors. I understand that fixes/changes require work, and our developers are rarely short on work to do, but I don't think developers respect QAs input. Unfortunately, our product owners are vacant: acceptance testing doesn't exist, and user stories usually are only one sentence long, and don't provide the developer with much to go off of. There is no other feedback mechanism to development other than from customers x-weeks later, who aren't designers/developers either, of course, and whose suggestions are all over the board. I am technically competent, at worse, and am capable of simple development on our LAMP stack and feel confident that developers respect my knowledge. However, I have for the most part given up on feedback beyond that which prevents critical errors--which affect data integrity, or bottom-line functionality. This has raised the question of whether seniority, or pay grade is a significant factor in how seriously developers value QAs input. In our case, where we don't do automated testing and QA members likely don't have as much technical expertise, it kind of makes sense that we make less than developers (between 60-70%, depending on time in grade). I don't believe in the argument that the opinion of the team member with the biggest pay check is the most important, however I can imagine how it's difficult to take feedback from team members who have a year or two less experience, are not as technically knowledgeable, and make noticeably less. In the end the best idea should win, but unfortunately that might be decided after the enhancement has been on production for several months, and users love it or hate it."}
{"_id": "179390", "title": "What are the advantages of Scala's companion objects vs static methods?", "text": "Scala has no _static_ -keyword, but instead has similar functionality through companion objects. Behind the scenes the companion objects are compiled to classes that have static methods, so all this is syntactic sugar. What are the advantages of this design choice? Disadvantages? Do other languanges have similar constructs?"}
{"_id": "179393", "title": "Review tests first", "text": "I am going to adopt TDD in our team and one of the ideas I have is to review tests first. So one would write interfaces, mocks, and tests first, submit them for a code review and once interfaces and tests (think specification) are approved an actual implementation can be written (theoretically, can be done by another developer). I wonder how viable this idea is?"}
{"_id": "145989", "title": "CoffeeScript translates to JavaScript. Is there something like it for C?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a language that transcompiles to C with a better syntax? There are many language implementations which compile to C. However, most of them have some language specific runtime requirement. For example, Gambit-C and Vala both compile to C. Gambit-C depends upon a garbage collector. Vala depends upon the GObject system. Are there languages which compile to C which have no dependencies beyond standard C libraries such as libc?"}
{"_id": "143729", "title": "Readability of || statements", "text": "On HTML5 Boilerplate they use this code for jQuery:               <script src=\"//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js\"></script>     <script>window.jQuery || document.write('<script src=\"js/libs/jquery-...      What's more readable:               if (!window.jQuery) document.write(...);      or               window.jQuery || document.write(...);"}
{"_id": "14673", "title": "Write once, run anywhere. Is it still relevant?", "text": "Since Oracle bought Sun and Apple have decided not to continue developing their JVM, is the \"write once and run everywhere\" model still relevant or has web services/SOA reduced it to an edge case?"}
{"_id": "255531", "title": "How valid is the statement \"write once, debug everywhere\" by some Java users?", "text": "How valid is the statement \"write once, debug everywhere\" by some Java users? If it is true, what is the effect to us?"}
{"_id": "155841", "title": "Best practices for web page styling with CSS?", "text": "I have a website to design. I have information on how the page should look and interact. The problem is I'm not good in front-end design, and have put many many hours to get the hang of the stuff. Currently I use the CSS from sample sites in github to style my site, which seems to be an un-ethical way. **Question:** how do you style webpages?   * Are there some really good tools?    * I would be deeply appreciated if a detailed answer will be provided or link to wiki will work as well."}
{"_id": "251980", "title": "Implementation of strategy design pattern", "text": "Here is my code:               public class StrategyDemo {                  public static void main(String[] args) {                      Phone ipPhone = new IPPhone(\"1234\", \"ProviderA\");                 Phone tdmPhone = new TDMPhone(\"4567\", \"ProviderB\");                      ipPhone.getRecordingResource();                 tdmPhone.getRecordingResource();                      ipPhone.setRecordingResource(Resource.IPRecorderIP2);                        ipPhone.getRecordingResource();                  }              }      ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SX1HE.gif) As I understood, a strategy pattern made that I would be able to change dynamically objects. I always have hard time to actuality think of something to implement to practice on them. This implementation is actually a strategy implementation ? How should I improve it? * * * Regarding comments asking to clarify my needs, I will try to explain the problem that I created that it will be more clear to determine if I used strategy correctly. A phone should have an ability to be recorded. A phone can be one of 2 types - `IPPhone` or `TDMPhone`.   A recording resource can be one of 2 types - TDMRecorder or IPRecorder. IPRecorder should but not must to record an IPPhone.   TDMRecorder should but not must to record an TDMPhone. An actual recorder is a host in that case that is represented with an `IP`. I was trying to implement it that way, that I would be able to change dynamically during _runtime_ the resource the a phone is been recorded on (an `IP` address). As I understood the part that is missing for me is to have under Record class an abstract method `startRecording` and the ability to change the recording resource from `IPRecorder` to an `TDMRecorder` and vice versa? Is the problem that I defined suitable for a strategy design pattern?"}
{"_id": "255406", "title": "What is the \u201cApp Id\u201d when i create new GTKmm app?", "text": "While writing new application using GTKmm. the first line is :                Glib::RefPtr<Gtk::Application> app = Gtk::Application::create(argc,argv,\"org.gtkmm.examples.base\");      and i knew that \"org.gtkmm.examples.base\" is the application ID , my questions are : 1 - what is the application id?. 2 - how do i write it?."}
{"_id": "255404", "title": "How to use github, branches and automatic releases for version management?", "text": "I understand most of the basic Git/Github concepts by now, however I still have trouble understanding the bigger picture. These are some things that I have managed to get working so far:   * Push commits   * Work with branches   * Integrate Github with Travis CI, a continuous integration system   * Via Travis CI, automatically build on every commit to master and put the release as a ZIP on Github under releases. However I have only worked on alpha/beta versions of projects so far, so I've never seen versioned releases in practice yet. Thus I want to learn more about versioning, maintaining separate versions, hotfixing the versions, etc. How would I ensure that the following things happen:   * Have different versions of my project, for example version 1.1.0 and 2.0.0   * Have the ability to push hotfixes on the versions, sort of bumping the version to 1.1.1 or 2.0.1, etc.   * Make a continuous integration system build that version automatically on commit and if succeeds, then publish a release for that specific version. I am doubting between the following options:   * Do I need to use tags for every version? If so, how can a continuous integration system build releases automatically?   * Should I create branches for every version? If so, would that not create a whole ton of branches (like an 1.1 and a 2.0 branch, hotfixes go onto that branch of course)   * How would I specify the version number? Is it okay to have a configuration file that specifies the version number, or are there smarter ways around it? In this case it would be a Java project, if that matters."}
{"_id": "53533", "title": "What alternatives are there to using HTML/CSS layouts for websites?", "text": "Is there any existing in-use, or even just conceptual attempts at creating a markup or programmatic expressions for designing the layouts of websites other than HTML/CSS? If there are others out there and they do not appear to be in heavy use. Why is this?"}
{"_id": "255400", "title": "Appcelerator needed? Have we gone wrong with mobile development", "text": "We just got into mobile development at our company and see some potential even for a company like ours which is mainly engineering. I'm not talking about cad on the mobile platform I'm mainly suggesting we can make use of mobile for internal applications like a content management system / CRM / internal apps in general. Suddenly I am getting email from a company called Appcelerator: http://www.appcelerator.com/. Our mobile architecture is mainly for our android environment as we are dealing with android phones. However, our API's return data in json format which I believe apple / window / any gadget can clearly understand. The folks at appcelerator continue to email me saying mobile development is a beast and writing a \"mobile tier\" is a huge burden. I'm not sure what this guy is talking about, our API's are already written (doesn't matter what language, but they are written) and our systems / devices make use of that API as if they were black boxes. For instance, our mobile devices and our actual asp.net application make use of the same data without writing any code (they merely call web methods). The web methods simply return the results in json format. They continue to harp about how great their product is and how we need it. But their own video seems to show that they merely take a data source (Doesnt matter if its sql-server, oracle, or sap, etc.) and convert the data to json format. Which we already do...see their video here: http://www.appcelerator.com/platform/video/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonuK%2FNd%2B%2FhmjTEU5z16uglWK6%2Fi5h41El3fuXBP2XqjvpVQctqNrHYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3DL9YN1N13RhnlCQ%3D%3D Specifically the second one called \"Great mobile apps, quickly at scale\". I watched that video (its rather short) but notice how they mention pulling data in different formats is difficult because devices don't understand the format. Then they slam the appcelerator logo on the video and pump out little json widgets as animation - but we are already doing that. Does anyone use appcelerator or can give me any reason why we would need this. Aside from analytic s as we are not at that point already. **Folks I am not asking about how to get out of this e-mail / spam. I am asking if our mobile strategy (At least from the sounds of it) is okay...I mean there system seems to take a dataset and spit it out in a common format (namely JSON)...we are doing this..so were did I go wrong? Again please don't think I am asking for a recommendation on how to get a salesguy to leave me alone.**"}
{"_id": "148847", "title": "TDD adding simple properties", "text": "I am currently doing my first real project with TDD. I have written tests, and implemented most of the logic for the application. However, there are properties I know I need to have on the UI, however, there is really no way to write a useful test which will cause their creation. For example, a description field. It's the ID that is really cared about in the logic of the application, but the actual description is just carried along from when it's populated and sent to the UI. How would you go about writing a test that is worthwhile, since a new property is literally nothing more than.               public string foo { get;set; }"}
{"_id": "218680", "title": "Good design for a recreation of pokemon", "text": "I'm currently working on a group project to recreate the original Pokemon Yellow version in Java. We've only just started planning it out but they way we've drawn out the design right now is to have an abstract Pokemon class and have 151 (Count of the original Pokemon) classes that extend it, each one being a different Pokemon. Each class will be able to store data such as an ID, its name, the type of Pokemon it is (ie: rock/water/fire/etc), and the moves it can use and learn. It seems a little much to be creating 151 classes for the Pokemon but it also seems like a good way to limit coupling. As far as design goes is this a good way to go about doing it, if not what are some better methods to go about doing it?"}
{"_id": "148840", "title": "How can I apply OOP concepts to building a simple, but real-world, web app?", "text": "I've been trying now for a long time to wrap my head around OOP. I see its advantages. I've read many, many tutorials and watched an equal amount of videos on the subject. I get the animal/cat/dog examples, I get the car/drive examples. What I'm struggling with is how to apply these concepts in a real- world application. So, I've set out to build one using OOP. I am not asking for help with syntax or writing specific code \u2014 I can find that myself in documentation and by searching forums etc.. What I really need is some guidance, and a push in the right direction every now and then. Are there any seasoned programmers willing to mentor me? As my learning project I would like to build a simple classifieds \"web app\". Something similar to Craigslist but way watered down in terms of scope. I would like to use PHP5 and MySQL, because I am familiar with them. Let's say there are only these 2 use cases:   1. Posting something for sale   2. Browsing/searching for something to buy What \"things\" should be objects? I can imagine that each item could be an object, but at what point? And why? So for example, the user fills out the \"post item for sale\" form, should that form get turned into an object which gets passed to another object which inserts the values into a database? What about when another user is browsing and requests to see all items of category C? Does it make sense that whenever the app has to connect to its database it creates a database object and then gets a bunch of item objects and displays them on the page? \u2026writing this out certainly makes me realize how clueless I still am about OOP. Please help me fix that. If in your opinion this is not a good project to start wading into OOP with, please feel free to suggest another idea!"}
{"_id": "194066", "title": "Storing User Form Data", "text": "I am trying to come up with a data schema/methodology for storing the data collected from various different user application forms. All forms contain the basic info like name, address, etc but then they diverge in what they collect. Each application will have its own unique subset of questions they want to ask. Because of this one \"answers\" table is out of the question. Would i be better off normalizing the database into a questions table and answers table? Another option considered would be to have a table of answers for the standard/universal questions and then serializing and storing the other answers in a field. Given that, would i be better moving to a straight up nosql database option? Maybe nosql is overkill and i really just need EAV? Once information is collected, it won't be edited. Just needs to be read."}
{"_id": "143099", "title": "What's the DCPU-16 thing all about?", "text": "Ever since Notch (of Minecraft fame) announced his next project will include programmable 16-bit CPUs ingame everybody seems to want to write VM's for the specification Notch has written up. I've seen them written in C, C++, Go, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, etc. What's so special about the specification Notch wrote up or is it just that it's the first game that actually contains a CPU ingame that you can do whatever you want with? It sparked my curiosity, but I fail to grasp the thing that makes it so special suddenly everybody needs to write up code for it?"}
{"_id": "156576", "title": "Are there tools that do automated validation of database standards?", "text": "I'm looking for something akin to FxCop, but for databases. Basically, I want to have a tool where I configure my database standards (naming conventions, field types, or more complex custom rules). Then, I want to incorporate that tool into my continuous integration process so that any violations are flagged immediately. We support both Oracle and SQL Server so tools that address either of those is good, but one tool that supports both would be better. Do tools such as this exist or perhaps there is some better method or type of tool that I can utilize to help me achieve this goal?"}
{"_id": "252758", "title": "Testing for Authentication loop holes / bugs", "text": "We've got a web application which is 99% complete prior to public beta, were currenlty securing the site from security perspective, locking down the server, db etc, one thing I'm concerned about but not really sure of the best way to test is for authentication loop holes. For instance there a 3 user types - System admin, Staff, Client. There are urls on the site that I would only want the System admin to be able to access, and there are other pages, that I would want everyone to access, but not view all of the data. System admin would be able to see everything, but Staff and Client would be able to see some content, similarly some pages would be read only for some users. Is there a workflow for testing this, at the moment I've come up with a script that has the credentials of a each user type and goes to every url on the site trying to access pages and reports if it's able to see a page it's not meant to, similarly it checks for read / write data on the page.   * Is there anything else I should be checking for to make my authentication tests more robust ?"}
{"_id": "143096", "title": "Question for Enterprise control language(HPCC)", "text": "does anyone got some idea about ECL which is Enterprise control language used in HPCC(high performance cluster computing) used for distributed computing? i got some problem and not getting any answer after lot many tries any help will appreciated. thanks"}
{"_id": "167847", "title": "MIPS has been used a multiprocessor architecture in the past. Is anyone using it in a multicore SoC?", "text": "I have been reading about the MIPS architecture and learned that it has been used a multiprocessor architecture in the past. Is anyone presently using it in a multicore SoC?"}
{"_id": "171640", "title": "Steps to create a solution for a problem", "text": "I am a trainee. According to my teacher to solve a problem we should go through following steps:   1. Create Algorithm (optional)   2. Create a Datatable: By analyzing the problem, create main concepts in those problem as columns and the related issues in the main concept as rows.   3. Create a Flowchart based on the Datatable. (when creating flow chart, think that you are in that situation and design it in your brain)   4. By seeing the Flowchart, one can solve the problem easily and in efficient way. These steps should always be considered by a programmer if he/she wants to become a Software designer (not just a programmer) because this approach gives an efficient way of finding solution to a problem even if the problem is small. According to him, this way of approach also works in real time scenario's. My question is: Is this really an efficient way? please share also your thoughts. Through this question I also wanted to share some thoughts of my teacher with you who is a good mentor."}
{"_id": "29424", "title": "What is meant by XML/XSLT/XPath and asynchoronous programming?", "text": "I understand that (1) XML/XSLT/XPath and (2) asynchoronous programming may not be related to one another. My questions are:   1. When a C# developer job is advertised saying: \"the following skill is required as mentioned in 1 and 2\", what does it actually mean?   2. Lets say I need to master these two topics (1 and 2). What do I need to do to accomplish that skill? If there are some books for intermediates that actually teach that stuff with practical scenarios and case studies then please suggest some. Answers are much appreciated. I have worked XML packet crafting for message exchange over the network, developed some amateur XML parsers for some projects and done message exchange for a client server based messaging system using asynchronous calls. But I really need to know and learn what the companies are looking for when they write these things (1 and 2) as requirement in their job advertisment. Aggregate skills required for the specific job were:   * ASP.NET 2.0 (OK)   * Web Services and .Net Remoting (OK)   * XML/XSLT/XPath **(?)**   * Asynchoronous Programming **(?)**   * Windows Services (OK)   * Javascript/XML/AJAX (OK)   * Microsoft Silverlight/WPF (OK) So firstly, it's clear that AJAX is not related to Asynchronous programming (in this very specific context) as it is written as a **separate** required skill (and I hope that it's not a mere redundancy). In normal cases, my deductions would have been the same like asynchronous programming means working with AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript with XML). Secondly, making a web service in C# does not require any **extensive** experience with **XSLT**. In fact, exposing functions from a DLL (encapsulating business logic) is the most simplest of any task with web services in C#. I wonder if there is some extra skill or experience that is needed?"}
{"_id": "29422", "title": "Should I include `assembly` as programming language in the CV?", "text": "In the answer for one question someone wrote that `assembly is not a language, it's a process`. I tend to agree, since the assembly \"language\" is dependent on the architecture it will run on, which may differ quite a bit from one CPU to another. So if you've written assembly for one architecture, does that mean you can include it in the CV under merely `assembly` along with the other programming languages? Or do you explicitly say that you've written assembly for that particular architecture? **EDIT:** Changed 'dabbled' to 'written'. English isn't my native language and I misunderstood the term, thinking it meant that you've used it a lot instead of just a bit."}
{"_id": "29421", "title": "PHP objects with configurable data interfaces", "text": "I have a `User` class which needs to load data from a variety of sources, e.g. the main user database, WordPress user metadata, authorizations from another app, etc. For the sake of organization, I want to separate out those different data loaders into their own classes. Calls to `$user->get_name()` would appropriately delegate down to whatever backend object provides this information. How might this look in PHP? Is there a name for this pattern? (And hopefully it's not an anti-pattern.) I can anticipate people suggesting some embedded objects, like `$user->wordpress` as an interface to the WordPress loader. I have an additional complicating factor, that not all users are present in all of our data stores. My loaders are able to identify if they understand and have data for a given username/id, and they're loaded into the `User` object with a priority level. A given identifier may only trigger a subset of data loaders, so `$user->get_name()` essentially is a consistent interface to user data, wherever it's stored. I'm evaluating my setup in an effort to make things more testable, and I believe this is an appropriate first step."}
{"_id": "1217", "title": "Why do new programmers seem to ignore compiler error messages/runtime exception messages?", "text": "I think we\u2019ve all seen this. Beginners ask questions on StackOverflow that follow the basic outline... > I\u2019m trying to do _(very vague description of the goal)_ but it doesn\u2019t > work/I get an error/exception. Please help! Isn\u2019t it bizarre that so many of them seem to consider it unnecessary to paste the error message? I wonder what the psychology of this is. What is it about error messages that makes people initially assume that they are useless and not worth paying any attention to? The answer I\u2019m looking for is _not_ \u201cthey don\u2019t understand the error message\u201d. That doesn\u2019t explain why they wouldn\u2019t consider telling anyone else who might understand it."}
{"_id": "178773", "title": "Help parsing long (3.5mil lines) text file, line by line and storing data, need a strategy", "text": "This is a question about solving a particular problem I am struggling with, I am parsing a long list of text data, line by line for a business app in PHP (cron script on the CLI). The file follows the format:                   HD: Some text here {text here too}              DC: A description here         DC: the description continues here         DC: and it ends here.              DT: 2012-08-01              HD: Next header here {supplemental text}              ... this repeats over and over for a few hundred megs      I have to read each line, parse out the HD: line and grab the text on this line. I then compare this text against data stored in a database. When a match is found, I want to then record the following DC: lines that succeed the matched HD:. Pseudo code:                   while ( the_file_pointer_isnt_end_of_file) {             line = getCurrentLineFromFile             title = parseTitleFrom(line)             matched = searchForMatchInDB(line)             if ( matched ) {                 recordTheDCLines  // <- Best way to do this?             }         }      My problem is that because I am reading line by line, what is the best way to trigger the script to start saving DC lines, and then when they are finished save them to the database? I have a vague idea, but have yet to properly implement it. I would love to hear the communities ideas\\suggestions! Thank you."}
{"_id": "168395", "title": "Check parameters annotated with @Nonnull for null?", "text": "We've begun using FindBugs and annotating our parameters with `@Nonnull` appropriately, and it works great to point out bugs early in the cycle. So far we have continued checking these arguments for `null` using Guava's `checkNotNull`, but I would prefer to check for `null` only at the edges-- places where the value can come in without having been checked for `null`, e.g., a SOAP request.               // service layer accessible from outside     public Person createPerson(@CheckForNull String name) {         return new Person(Preconditions.checkNotNull(name));     }          ...          // internal constructor accessed only by the service layer     public Person(@Nonnull String name) {         this.name = Preconditions.checkNotNull(name);  // remove this check?     }      _I understand that`@Nonnull` does not block `null` values itself._ However, given that FindBugs will point out anywhere a value is transferred from an unmarked field to one marked `@Nonnull`, can't we depend on it to catch these cases (which it does) without having to check these values for `null` everywhere they get passed around in the system? Am I naive to want to trust the tool and avoid these verbose checks? **Bottom line:** While it seems safe to remove the second `null` check below, is it bad practice? This question is perhaps too similar to Should one check for null if he does not expect null, but I'm asking specifically in relation to the `@Nonnull` annotation."}
{"_id": "89844", "title": "Getting started with version control and its integrated project management?", "text": "I am given the charge of finding a **version control + project management setup** , and also training and maintenance, in addition to my regular jobs; I will be known as \"the git guy\" (or whatever) from now on. We develop PHP (in netbeans), C# (in VisStudio) and Python in windows XP and Fedora. The system is to be hosted on Windows. We are five-strong and may aggressively jump to 8-10 soon I myself shortlisted **Mercurial + Redmine** by rationalizing. My rationales are:   * Its easy to admin and maintain   * easy to get started in Mercurial and has a gentle learning curve   * It supports solo and few-people workflows equally well   * Mercurial has usable GUI tools   * Redmine has a **stable and integrated** interface to Mercurial (TRAC is skirting around stable Mercurial support, making me nervous)   * Netbeans has **stable and usable** integration with Mercurial (I know Netbeans ships with Mercurial support but...) **My questions** (in order of importance) are:   1. Are my rationales valid or will my assumptions lead to costly mistakes later?   2. Does this combination have issues that severely affect usability?   3. Are there less painful combination for our small team (SVN+Trac for example)? Some in SO have the opinion \"Just get started!\", but I want to play it safe."}
{"_id": "179931", "title": "Multiple database accesses or one massive access?", "text": "What is a better approach when it comes to performance and optimal resource utilization: accessing a database multiple times through AJAX to only get the exact information needed when it is needed, or performing one access to retrieve an object that holds all information that **might** be needed, with a high probability that not all is **actually** needed? I know how to benchmark the actual queries, but I don't know how to test what is best when it comes to database performance when thousands of users are accessing the database simultaneously and how connection pooling comes into play."}
{"_id": "150939", "title": "How common are generic-case exponential time algorithms in production software?", "text": "I know that exponential time algorithms should generally be avoided but are sometimes necessary. A case being the Traveling Salesman. How common are such algorithms in production software? Are these cases typically necessary or a result of rush jobs? I understand that many can be solved with a good heuristic. What is typically done with those that cannot?"}
{"_id": "161173", "title": "printf - source of bugs?", "text": "I'm using a lot of `printf` for tracing/logging purposes in my code, I've found that it's a source of programming error. I always found the insertion operator (`<<`) to be somewhat of a odd thing but I'm beginning to think that by using it instead I could avoid some of these bugs. Anyone ever had a similar revelation or I'm just grasping at straws here? # Some take away points   * My current line of thinking is that type-safety outweighs any benefit of using printf. The real problem is the format string and the use of non type-safe variadic functions.   * Maybe I won't be using `<<` and the stl output stream variants but I will certainly look into using a type-safe mechanism which is very similar.   * A lot of the tracing/logging is conditional but I'd like to always run the code to not miss bugs in tests just because it's a rarely taken branch."}
{"_id": "150936", "title": "Create many similar classes, or just one", "text": "The goal is to create an application that has objects that can represent some operations (add, subtract, etc). All of those objects will have common functions and members, and thus will either implement an interface or inherit from an abstract class (Which would be better practice, this will be in C# if that matters?). As far as I can see, there are two different ways of organizing all of these classes.   1. I could create an addition class, a subtraction class, etc. This has the upside of being highly modular but the difference between classes is so minimal.   2. I could create one class, and have a member that will say what type of operation is being represented. This means lots of switch statements, and losing some modularity, in addition to being harder to maintain. Which is is better practice? Is there a better way of doing that is not listed above? If it matters, the list of functions that should be supported is long."}
{"_id": "150930", "title": "When calculating how many days between 2 dates, should you include both dates in the count, or neither, or 1?", "text": "I am trying to make an algorithm that counts the days between two dates, e.g. between 3/1/2012 and 3/2/2012. What is the correct answer, or the most popular choice? Should be the one I use? In this case, if I don't include both dates I am comparing, the days are 0; if I include one of them, the days are 1; if I include both, the days are 2."}
{"_id": "59359", "title": "How many story points should you allocate in an initial sprint?", "text": "When first implementing Scrum within a team, how should you go about determining the amount of story points that are in an initial sprint when you have no idea of the team's velocity? Should you base this on an estimate of hours and only use the points at a later stage?"}
{"_id": "95087", "title": "How to improve my trade", "text": "I'm currently working as a software developer and studying for a software engineering degree (the former whilst not doing the latter). I'm confident in my ability to do my job competently, but I feel I could do it better. I know my greatest pitfall is in my business skills; for example, I often don't understand at first why I'm asked to implement something in such a way, because I haven't understood the business requirement behind it. Does anybody have any good advice on improving my business skills? Or is it something that comes with experience?"}
{"_id": "95084", "title": "Recommendations for books for learning computer science on your own?", "text": "Can you guys recommends which books are best, to learn what's taught at most undergraduate and graduate computer science programs. Specially by the specific areas (like AI, Software Engineering, etc). I'm very interested in learning everything i can. And i hope this help other people that are interested like me. Thanks for any help you can give - i really appreciate it."}
{"_id": "238954", "title": "Is there any reason not to use Optional as a method argument in the case where you know the argument is something that may or may not be needed?", "text": "With Java 8, I've seen more and more articles about the use of Option/Optional. I understand what they trying to represent, and I see many examples of them being used as returns. However what I don't see is them being used as method/function arguments in languages that don't have the syntax for default/optional parameters. Is there any reason not to use `Optional` as a method argument in the case where you know the argument is something that may or may not be needed? Here's an example I could think of:               Optional<Customer> lookupCustomer(String firstName, Optional<String> middleName, String lastName)"}
{"_id": "238953", "title": "Is it correct to call the assignment symbol an \"operator\" when it is actually a statement?", "text": "In some languages (C++, Java, Ruby, etc.) an assignment returns a value and can be used in an expression:               x = (y = z);    // ok, 'x' gets the value of 'z'      In other languages (Ada, VHDL), an assignment is a proper statement and cannot be used in as expression:               x := (y := z);   -- error!      However, in both cases, it is possible to find teaching material where the assignment symbol is called the \"assignment operator\". My question is, is it technically correct to call the assignment symbol an \"operator\" in the second case, where it is actually a statement, does not return a value, and cannot be used in the middle of an expression?"}
{"_id": "238959", "title": "Why can't a server continue to act on a request after sending the response?", "text": "Say for example I've got a RESTful webservice, and I need to support creating a widget via a POSTed http request. I need to   1. Deserialize the POSTed widget.   2. Validate the deserialized widget.   3. Persist the widget to a backing service.   4. Send a success response back to the client. Now, the problem is that my SLA does not allow 3 to block 4--persistence in this case takes too long and the client needs to know right away that the request has succeeded (this is the standard use case for the `202` http status code). Almost everywhere I look, the assumption is that the way to solve this is to \"background\" the expensive persistence part. This is typically an awkward process with many moving parts and often its own latency (e.g. making a blocking call to a separate queuing service). Simply parallelizing 3 and 4 using native constructs is generally out of the question, as is switching the order so that 4 blocks 3. As near as I can tell, this is mainly because the web and app servers are built with the fundamental assumption that a process (and any children it's forked off) is free to be killed/reused as soon as it's sent its response. Or, equivalently, that the response can't be sent until the app has finished doing everything it's going to do. This is intensely frustrating to me! In any other context, I can do what I like with the program's control flow. But when I'm running a Phusion Passenger -> Ruby on Rails setup, and I want to do a thing after I send the response, I'm left with a wide variety of baroque options that all seem to consider it perfectly natural and acceptable to, say, serialize the application state, post it to Amazon SQS, have basically separate web service that polls SQS, deserializes the old application state, then do the thing. I had application state all set up the way I wanted it after sending the response! Why isn't anything written so I can just do               def create       widget = Widget.new(params[:widget])       if widget.valid?         respond_with(widget)         widget.save       else         respond_with(widget.errors)       end     end      Why is there a pervasive assumption that web service stacks will never support this kind of flow? Is there a hidden drawback, or tradeoff, to making it possible to do this?"}
{"_id": "54612", "title": "How to capitalize maximally on location-independence \u2026 my personal #1-incentive for working as a developer", "text": "To me the ultimate beauty in working as a developer is the fact that given a nice CV, your are going to find a new job, everywhere at any time. So I would like to ask if somebody here as experience in working while travelling for example. Or job-hopping from metropolis to metropolis every, say, six months. For example I have been investigating for how to get to Brazil. But it seems like that working as an employee in Brazil would be no option, b/c it takes a lot of time/money/effort to get the proper visas and permissions. So the only practical solution would be to freelance and the just travel, while getting your job done wherever you are. I bet my ass that there are loads of IT-guys out there and on here who know exactly what I am talking about. I'm looking forward to interesting ideas and stories. **EDIT** for the BOUNTY: I am not so much intersted in general wisdoms but rather in concrete accounts of personal experiences addressing the subject from people who can relate to my question and do have actual personal experiences to share. I am not asking for opinions and accounts of second-degree nature. **EDIT** for **_EVERYBODY_** (concrete questions):   1. Where do you work while travelling? (office pooling? libraries? caf\u00e9s?)   2. Where do you sleep? I guess hotels are somewhat to expensive. (hostels? couchsurfing?) **EDIT** I accepted Andy's reply as \"the\" answer mainly b/c of its romantic and positive undertone. Though of course there is not THE answer to that question. I was hoping for an intriguing discussion and given 11 vote ups and 5 bookmarks I seem to be not the only one who is interested in some input. So I hope some more people chime in and share their experiences."}
{"_id": "117964", "title": "PowerShell guide or reference for .Net Framework?", "text": "I'm a java dev that is new to powershell. I know that it's built on the .Net Framework, but I don't have much knowledge with that framework. Is there a reference guide of some sort that shows what libraries are available in Powershell? I found a list of Powershell 2.0 commands, but I'm pretty lost as to what library to use or what is available from the underlying framework."}
{"_id": "196219", "title": "How to design an application that read files using MVC pattern?", "text": "I am going to write an application that reads data from a csv file, and display that data to the user. I intend to apply an MVC design pattern to create this application. A user will interact with this application through a console. Hence the view is a console. There will be a Main.java that is responsible for :   * Presenting a menu that a user can choose in the console.   * Able to handle event in the console, e.g.: a user choose an option to read two csvfiles and ask the application to display differences between the two csv files.   * Execute appropriate business logic for selected events. To do this the Main.java will have a Main method that displays menu to a user in a console. I am considering to make the Main.java as a Controller, because this class is responsible for taking the user input, and figure out what to do with the input. To do this, The Main.java will call a class called FileService.java, which is a service class. FileService.java is responsible for:   * Read a csv file.   * Display the content of the text file sorted according to some rule.   * Display differences content of 2 csv files. The FileService will parse the csv file using a csv parser, and stores the content of the files on a disk using MapDB. The intention of using MapDB is to allow user read huge file (e.g.: 5 GB), and perform operations to the content of the file. Once the file has been read, Main.java could display the content of the file, or display the differences between the 2 text files, when a user select the option in the console. The FileService is intended to be the Model part in this application. And, the FileService is completely decoupled from the view and the controller, which is the Main.java. Does this simple design achieve separation of concern addressed by MVC ? **Response to @tgkprog:** _where is the view? if main is the controller and FileService the model/ business part then you need a view class too._ **Response** : When I built a web application, a view would be, but not limited to, a JSP, or an HTML page. In the context of the CSV file reader application, what would be the equivalent of a HTML or a JSP page ? This is some thing that I am not sure. The menu displayed in the console can be simply achieved inside the main method of the Main.java. _if the files are 5mb then i think a console app will be quite inadequate to display differences unless there are very few?_ **Response** : I could dump the difference in a text file, and let user view the text file. This would be more helpful for them I think. Thank you for pointing this out."}
{"_id": "40845", "title": "How necessary is it to learn JavaScript before jQuery?", "text": "In my opinion, when I looked at JavaScript, it looked like not my cup of tea. When I came across jQuery, I loved it. I sat and watched Nettuts+ 15 days of jQuery screencasts, 1 year later and now I'm fairly confident I wouldn't develop a website without including jQuery's library. I have never felt this has held me back but my question is, will this come back and bite me in the ass one day, the fact that I didn't have a solid JavaScript foundation before jumping feet first into one of its best (if not the best) frameworks? Did anyone else take this approach?"}
{"_id": "111756", "title": "What is the difference between 'layer of abstraction' and 'level of indirection'?", "text": "I am not sure if both terms can be used interchangeably. Maybe there is some academic distinction in computer science which is not relevant for day-to-day programming? Or can I use both term interchangeably without being wrong? Maybe it depends on the context in which I use both terms? Edit: On reason why I find both terms possibly interchangeable is a Wikipedia entry about Abstraction layer. There you can find David Wheelers quote 'All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.'"}
{"_id": "8402", "title": "Are algorithm questions good interview questions?", "text": "I've had an argument recently with a fellow programmer. He was interviewing for a new position and was asked this question: > Give a sequence of numbers starting at X and ending in Y but with one > element missing so N is Y-X-1, find the missing element in O(N) or better. Now, the answer is irrelevant here (but interesting). This started a discussion on whether this was even a good question to ask during an interview. One side: Algorithms are an inherit part of programming and a candidates ability to answer this question supports that this candidate will be a good programmer and be able to solve larger problems and can handle most programming tasks which are ultimately easy to understand and answer. Other side: Writing algorithms from scratch is rarely used in modern programming and therefore is irrelevant in the bigger question of whether the person will be a good programmer. A person could successfully answer this question yet still not be able to do more common programmings tasks. Your thoughts? Good interview question or not?"}
{"_id": "111751", "title": "Software Manual - Where to start", "text": "Are there any software packages out there for generating a nice looking users manual for small projects? I'm not talking about source documentation. I want to create an end users manual that doesn't look like I spent 20 mins in Microsoft Word."}
{"_id": "234103", "title": "Is it fine to skip MVC?", "text": "I am building a pair of components that communicates in a one-way fashion:               [ JButton ] --> data...process...process...out --> [ JTextField ]      The JButton allows the user to select a file and the JButton's ActionListener picks up the click and pulls out the file name and directory. I then need that information to be displayed by the JTextField. Such functionality is so basic, it need not ever change. Someone suggested a way to relay the message here, but I am asking another question: **should I skip the MVC?**               [ JButton ]  --> [ JTextField ]      Simple is best, right? That's the simplest and clearest way I can think of of relaying the message. I mean, just modify the the JTextField by JButton's ActionListener. So should I go with this simpler approach or try to apply MVC anyway?"}
{"_id": "176260", "title": "What is the convention for the star location in reference variables?", "text": "I have been learning Objective-C, noting that different books and examples use differing conventions for the location of the star (`*`) when naming reference variables:               MyType* x;     MyType *y;     MyType*z; // this also works      I see the first two used interchangeably, and sometimes in the same code I've seen differing uses of both. Is one format easier to read, easier to maintain, or less error prone than the other formats, or is it simply a matter of personal preference?"}
{"_id": "93972", "title": "When did developers start making normalized relational databases?", "text": "I work on a pretty old application which was converted from DOS and flat files for storing information to Paradox tables using the BDE then to MySQL relational database. The older devs say that the reason they have no idea how to properly create a table in 3nf is because their code predates relational databases and they never learned about them in school. So, within actual programs, when did a majority of programmers adopt a decent method for creating tables in their databases? If you look at the databases in open source CMS's, those tables look well normalized - are successful ones initiated that way or do they get normalized over time (or denormalized for pragmatic reasons)?"}
{"_id": "236017", "title": "When do you use subquery in SQL?", "text": "When do you use subquery in SQL, and what type of request is subquery useful for? I am practicing SQL and need to know how to spot a subquery problem immediately"}
{"_id": "9814", "title": "What should we do to make Morning Standup meetting better and effective", "text": "Well , Here in my Office, we made it a practice to come before 9 AM (in any condition as decided by Management) and start with a Standup Meeting. Here we start with Discusiing with issues of previous day, Any updates from Manager (by leads) and the work plan for today. This meeting may sound good and process oriented , but some times if there is a show down then it ruins the morning mood or if there is a difference in opinion then again it is not a good thing to start with. So, HR and Management decides that initially we will discuss personal matters for 10 to 15mins and then we will jump to technical and official discussion.For 15 minutes everyday, are you serious , I don't get a topic to discuss for 15mins every day with my lead who is much older than me and never discussed anything in personal till now and you want to start with it just like that!!! So it is back to square one. Every one (Amazingly in all the teams) is discussing aagain technical aspects only in the moring /stand up meeting. So here it comes, today I have a Lunch with Management and the Topic for Discussion is :               \"How to make Nice Day(Morning/Standup) meetings effective?\"      Any Suggestions please."}
{"_id": "119106", "title": "How Do I interview Front-End Web Developers?", "text": "For the first time I'm in the position where I'm helping interview potential front-end developers. The other interviewer is more business & PM-focused, although he is a former developer. I probe for knowledge and background in CSS, Javascript, and other related technologies, but those questions are really just testing for lingo. I feel that it would be unfair to ask very specific questions about CSS when we're not in front of a computer. I've also been given websites that these web developers have written. Is that enough to go on for interviewing front-ends? We're also looking for general aptitude, rather than a databank of knowledge."}
{"_id": "92362", "title": "Ruby on Rails - guide to learning milestones?", "text": "Is there a guide of some sort to important milestones while learning Ruby on Rails? I'm self-taught so I don't have a mentor to tell me these things. I've been learning Rails for 11 months, and think I'm making good progress, but I would like some informed feedback on whether I'm progressing nicely or if I need to ramp up my efforts, so I'm searching to see if such a guide exists online. Maybe someone wrote an appendix to a book they wrote on Rails, or a blog post? Something along those lines..."}
{"_id": "98999", "title": "How do you keep track of latest software trends along with a demanding job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where do you find the time? I am sure there are lots of us in this very common situation. You have a job that's demanding. In other words you need to put in 50+ hours/week and yet you are expected to keep up with what's happening on the bleeding edge technology and open source end. Any suggestions folks how you do it? Reading blogs or papers on C++ or ruby is hardly an option during office unless of course you want to give up on lunch. Also, what would you want to read? There are way too many C++ tools and ruby gems that are relevant to my work -- can't read them all, right?"}
{"_id": "149824", "title": "Automatically delete files after they expire", "text": "I've got this idea for some time and I was wondering if anyone has seen such a feature/app in any operating system and if you haven't, what do you think about it. Where do you think I should begin? The idea is simple. I think we all have those files that are made and probably used for a few days and then are left on our disk and we never delete them or even check to see if we need them again. It'd be cool if you could right click on a file and click on \"Expire in.. 3 days\" for example. And the file gets deleted after 3 days. I have a great need for this and maybe **some** people will find it useful. I was thinking of writing a script and use the Nautilus Action project in GNOME for a start."}
{"_id": "149827", "title": "Who was the first programmer?", "text": "Is there some consensus among historians on who was the first programmer ever? If so, who was it and what were they programming on? I find it more interesting to know more about the pioneers of programming, regardless if they programmed on a programmable machine or if they've designed the machine themselves to do some computing task."}
{"_id": "223348", "title": "Can I rename a portion of code released under Apache 2.0?", "text": "Is it possible to rename a portion of code extracted from a Apache 2.0 licensed software, releasing it as a new repository under a new name?"}
{"_id": "189047", "title": "What is the functional-programming alternative to an interface?", "text": "If I want to program in a \"functional\" style, with what would I replace an interface?               interface IFace     {        string Name { get; set; }        int Id { get; }     }     class Foo : IFace { ... }      Maybe a `Tuple<>`?               Tuple<Func<string> /*get_Name*/, Action<String> /*set_Name*/, Func<int> /*get_Id*/> Foo;      The only reason I'm using an interface in the first place is because I want always want certain properties/methods available. * * * **Edit:** Some more detail about what I'm thinking/attempting. Say, I've got a method which takes three functions:               static class Blarf     {        public static void DoSomething(Func<string> getName, Action<string> setName, Func<int> getId);     }      With an instance of `Bar` I can use this method:               class Bar     {        public string GetName();        public void SetName(string value);             public int GetId();     }     ...     var bar = new Bar();     Blarf.DoSomething(bar.GetName, bar.SetName, bar.GetId);      But that's a bit of a pain as I have to mention `bar` three times in a single call. Plus, I don't really intend for callers to supply functions from different instances               Blarf.DoSomething(bar1.GetName, bar2.SetName, bar3.GetId); // NO!      In C#, an `interface` is one way to deal with this; but that seems like a very object-oriented approach. I'm wondering if there's a more functional solution: 1) pass the group of functions together, and 2) ensure the functions are properly related to each other."}
{"_id": "189044", "title": "Is it worth to try write foolproof data structures?", "text": "## The problem We need to store data in a table-like way, but we have very strict space constraints (~1Mb per table of 10k+ rows). We store data like this:               ID | reviews | factor | score | interval | etc.     ---+---------+--------+-------+----------+-----      1 |     244 |    2.4 |    10 |     4268 | ...      in a simple binary format (a one-dimensional array of bytes, where the index of each row can be calculated simply by knowing the length of each row, which is fixed). There is only one function that ever reads this data (gets a row by its index), and only one function that appends a new row (to the end). Removing items from the table will never be required (the table is append-only). Both functions are covered with a decent amount of unit tests. The problem is the following: we need to be able to quickly go through rows _ordered by different columns_. In other words, we need the data to be sorted by at least two columns. ## A simple solution To solve this problem, we would implement indexes that, again, would be chunks of binary data. Now I would intuitively do it by creating ordered data structures that only list the index of the row in the original table:               factor_index        score_index     ------------        -----------               6                  2               2                  1               3                  6               1                  4               .                  .      The function that appends a new row to the table would have to be updated to cause the indexes to be updated as well. **EXAMPLE:** To get the first item ordered by score, we just look up the first value in the index table for score (2) and get the corresponding row from the original table (the third row if we agree that the table is zero-indexed). However, I was suggested to take a different approach. ## A more complex but presumably safer version Instead of of only storing the indexes, we duplicate the ID fields in each index table:               factor_index | ID        score_index | ID     -------------+---        ------------+---               6  | 46                  2 |  8               2  |  8                  1 | 14               3  | 91                  6 | 46               1  | 14                  4 | 60               .  |  .                  . |  .      Then keep the original table sorted by ID, and use the indexes only as a starting position for a binary search in the original table. The function that appends a new record will now have to do a binary search by ID to find where to insert the new row, _and_ cause the indexes to be updated. **EXAMPLE:** To get the first item ordered by score, we look up the first row in the index table for score (2, 8), and use the index (2) as a starting position for a binary search in the table. If the data is valid, we don't even need to do a binary search, because at position 2 we will find the row with ID 8. If, however, we find that the record at position 2 has a different index, we continue with a binary search to find the right one, and log the error. The argument for this approach is that it will work even if the index points to the wrong row in the table. I find it hard to believe though that this approach is really better, for the following reasons:   * It requires a binary search, which can be a new source of bugs.   * It requires the table to be kept in order, which implies more complex insert (as opposed to a simple append).   * It does not guard against the main table being out of order: if that happens, the index could even fail to find the record via binary search.   * It requires writing (and testing) code that is never even meant to be run.   * It uses more data than what is necessary. ## The question It is very high priority for our application that the above piece of data is always valid. But does that justify writing more complex data structures and lookup mechanisms to guard against edge cases may or may not happen? Shouldn't the time and effort instead be put in writing more robust test cases for a simpler version?"}
{"_id": "223345", "title": "How should I mark types in C and C++ programs?", "text": "In this answer of mine, I used `_t` at end of types, which ended at best, controversial. This is the practice I use in my current projects.               typedef struct {         int x;         int y;     } point_t;      This was intended to be consistent with C types from `stddef.h` like `size_t` or `ptrdiff_t`. However, according to certain comments in my questions, `_t` postfix appears to be reserved for POSIX. What should I use instead of `_t`? Or should I continue using `_t` anyway? This question is for both C and C++. If these languages have different conventions, feel free to answer so."}
{"_id": "52975", "title": "Advice/Wisdom for Programming Competitions. (Specifically the IOI)", "text": "I'm on the Irish team heading to the International Olympiad of Informatics in Bulgaria at the start of August, and from the great pools of wisdom of SA, I wish to ask a few questions of those of you who have competed in programming competitions (or indeed, the IOI) before. Mainly, what tidbits of advice can you give for those competing? What's the best way (in your eyes) to go about solving a problem? I've got my own methods, but I am interested to hear your point of view. How do you manage time? Is it worth loading troublesome code up in gdb to try to work out tricky bugs, or is it best to try to hack solutions? Is there even time to debug things properly? I have been memorizing some algorithms, such as graph search algorithms, brute force algorithms, recursive algorithms, etc. What other common algorithms do you think are useful? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "22516", "title": "How To Know When To Stop Testing?", "text": "I know this is a very very basic question. For some software applications there are a large almost infinitely high number of test cases for an application. It is not practical to test all those test cases. How do we decide when to stop testing? (other than \"when money runs out\")."}
{"_id": "227853", "title": "Meaningful names in weakly typed language like JS", "text": "I've been learning java for about a year, but recently entered the world of javascript. I'm having trouble coming up with meaningful names in function parameters, so that I'll be able to tell and remember what is being passed in and act on it correctly. For example: In java, I could define `void method(Type name)` and always know that name is of object Type.               void printToConsole(String errorMessage) {         System.out.println(errorMessage); <--I know errorMessage is a string     }      In Javascript, I can only do `function method(name)`, and if I come back later, I forget what name is and have to go see where `method` was called and what was passed in. I have started naming the parameter like `nameType` but this seems too verbose. somewhere in code:               getBoxText($(\"input[type='text']\")[0]);          function getBoxText(searchBox) {         //TODO: do something with searchBox;     }      In the second example, its not immediately clear that `searchBox` is an `element`, as opposed to a `nodeList`, XML DOM, or something else, so when I come back to write this method, I have to go find the call and remember what it is. I would be tempted to change the function declaration to:               function getBoxText(seachBoxElement) {      Even worse, later I might be tempted to call `getBoxText(somethingNotAnElement)`. Is there an accepted convention for this? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "166400", "title": "How to read Scala code with lots of implicits?", "text": "Consider the following code fragment (adapted from http://stackoverflow.com/a/12265946/1333025):               // Using scalaz 6     import scalaz._, Scalaz._          object Example extends App {       case class Container(i: Int)            def compute(s: String): State[Container, Int] = state {         case Container(i) => (Container(i + 1), s.toInt + i)       }            val d = List(\"1\", \"2\", \"3\")            type ContainerState[X] = State[Container, X]            println( d.traverse[ContainerState, Int](compute) ! Container(0) )     }      I understand what it does on high level. But I wanted to trace what exactly happens during the call to `d.traverse` at the end. Clearly, `List` doesn't have `traverse`, so it must be `implicit`ly converted to another type that does. Even though I spent a considerable amount of time trying to find out, I wasn't very successful. First I found that there is a method in `scalaz.Traversable`               traverse[F[_], A, B] (f: (A) => F[B], t: T[A])(implicit arg0: Applicative[F]): F[T[B]]      but clearly this is not it (although it's most likely that \"my\" `traverse` is implemented using this one). After a lot of searching, I grepped scalaz source codes and I found `scalaz.MA`'s method               traverse[F[_], B] (f: (A) => F[B])(implicit a: Applicative[F], t: Traverse[M]): F[M[B]]      which seems to be very close. Still I'm missing to what `List` is converted in my example and if it uses `MA.traverse` or something else. * * * **The question is: What procedure should I follow to find out what exactly is called at`d.traverse`?** Having even such a simple code that is so hard analyze seems to me like a big problem. Am I missing something very simple? How should I proceed when I want to understand such code that uses a lot of imported `implicit`s? Is there some way to ask the compiler what `implicit`s it used? Or is there something like Hoogle for Scala so that I can search for a method just by its name?"}
{"_id": "166403", "title": "why compiler design/coding design considered the highest level activity in programming?", "text": "In some recent articles I have read I have found that in the programming ladder compiler design is always considered as highest level activity. Why is this so? Why not database design or network protocol architecture. Here is one such article."}
{"_id": "160492", "title": "Omit terminating semicolon in a tag - a good idea?", "text": "It's possible to omit the **terminating semicolon** in a tag. Example:               <table>       <th><td>Name</td><td>Email</td>       <? foreach ($receivers as $receiver): ?>       <tr>         <td><?= $receiver->name ?></td>         <td><?= $recevier->email ?></td>       </tr>       <? endforeach ?>     </table>      Note the `<? endforeach ?>` without a semicolon after `endforeach`. The PHP Documentation says: > The closing tag of a block of PHP code automatically implies a semicolon; > you do not need to have a semicolon terminating the last line of a PHP > block. **Why am I bringing up this subject?** Currently I and a friend of mine work in a proprietary PHP project with MVC (model-view-controller). For the view I evaluated some PHP template engines like Smarty, Moustache and even designed my own home-grown template engine. But when I read that PHP is a template engine in itself something went \u00ab _click_ \u00bb in my head. Why not just agree in the team to use a limited subset of PHP as a template engine? And having many code reviews to keep up the rules? And this subset could look like this:   * Use only short tags `<?`, `<?=` and `?>`   * Use only simple expressions without side effects, especially **don't assign variables**   * Use only `if`, `foreach`, and `include` for statements   * Use only the alternative syntax for control structures   * Have only **one** statement in a tag each This is the context where we are omitting the terminating semicolon, namely for `<? endforeach ?>`, `<? endif ?>` and `<? include(\"list-contents.php\") ?>`. **However I read often that omitting terminating semicolons is a bad practice. Why? Is it a bad practice at all?** I am happy that PHP allows omitting the terminating semicolon because this minimizes the visual clutter in the template files. They should look mostly like HTML files with only tiny PHP fragments here and there. The example above is what I am striving for. What do you think about this? If you are against it: why? If you support it: Why would it be a good idea? What should I tell my partner if he is referring me some text against omitting the semicolon? Please back up your opinion with facts, references or your own experience."}
{"_id": "166402", "title": "C#, architecture and jobs", "text": "Do I need to have a knowledge of architecture along with C# to get a job using C#, or if I worked through some books (no architecture content) would that be sufficient for a graduate position? I finished university and have a Software Engineering degree, but can't recall any of the architectures and frameworks module content such as setting up an n-tier architecture."}
{"_id": "165469", "title": "How to handle \"porting\" software that's still in development", "text": "My company is building an iOS version of an Android app that our client is developing (but has not yet released). We have access to the latest builds and source, however since the software is frequently re-structured and refactored, we're doing a lot of unnecessary re-work. In addition, the due date on the contract will likely be passed before the client's application is even ready for release. In other words, we're supposed to build the iOS version before the original Android version is even complete. Luckily the client tossed out the original deadline, but now we may have to renegotiate pricing... never a fun situation. _Are we handling this incorrectly?_ How are \"ports\" (especially between mobile platforms) normally done? Is there a correct way to pipeline development for multiple platforms without so much re-work? Thanks in advance! :)"}
{"_id": "165467", "title": "Why PHP doesn't support function overloading?", "text": "I am wondering if one of the key features of a programming language is to have the ability to overload functions via arguments. I think it is essential in- context of the Object oriented programming. Is it intentionally left behind and not allowed? Or is overloading not a good practice?"}
{"_id": "165460", "title": "Learning about security and finding exploits", "text": "First things first: I have absolutely no interest in learning how to crack systems for personal enrichment, hurting other people or doing anything remotely malicious. I understand the basis of many exploits (XSS, SQL injection, use after free etc.), though I've never performed any myself. I even have some idea about how to guard web applications from common exploits (like the aforementioned XSS and SQL injection) Reading this question about the Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability from the Security SE piqued my curiosity and made me wonder: how did someone even find out about this exploit? What tools did they use? How did they know what to look for? I'm wary about visiting hacker dens online for fear of getting my own system infected (the Defcon stories make me paranoid). So what's a good, safe place to start learning?"}
{"_id": "98392", "title": "What happens when a project switches to a different license?", "text": "I've been reading a bit about software licenses, and I'm having trouble getting my head around the idea of what happens when one wants to change the license. I've read a couple of questions here on the topic and it clarifies things some, but there are still a couple of areas that are unclear to me. One example: Suppose I have a project hosted on github with no license specified. If someone contributes a patch to my code base and I merge it in, does that patch still belong to them? If so, would I need their permission to change the license on my project? Another example: Suppose I have my software under some permissive open source license. I understand that I am allowed to change the license on my software at will (barring conflicts with contributors), but does that effect existing copies of the software out there? If I decide to close source my project, do existing copies of the source with packaged OS license remain open source and distributable according to the previous license? I like the idea of working together with others on projects in a flexible manner, and unless a project actually starts to pick up it seems like unnecessary overhead to go about deciding on an appropriate license. It would be nice to be more aware of the potential conflicts that could crop up, though."}
{"_id": "75411", "title": "any issues with using git in a CI environment?", "text": "I work in a shop that lives by its CI process. We have traditionally used SVN and are considering moving to git (want to leverage its ease of branching, stashing, etc). Thinking in terms that a distributed source control system, by its very nature, seems to put the need for a central repository as a secondary concern, does git create any challenges for a CI process? As long as the developer performs a \"commit\" then \"push\", does the concept of a central repo as I would have known it with SVN still exist, making CI builds just a different config (pull from git rather than svn)? Any cultural issues (developers pushing to main repo less often and instead only committing locally perhaps)? Would love to hear success/failure stories from a group that uses CI with git."}
{"_id": "75417", "title": "What is best pratice for user stories containing two roles", "text": "I have a number of user stories where the same feature needs to be shared by multiple roles. I have started writing these stories like this: > As a Role-A or a Role-B   >  When I perform Action-X   >  Event-Y should occure. Is this the correct way to represent that concept in user stories, or should I break it up into one story for each role?"}
{"_id": "150061", "title": "Convert list of 24-hour-precipitation values into total-by-hour", "text": "Let's say I have a list of precipitation values by hour, each showing how much rain happened in the prior 24 hours, ordered by date. For example:               {         '2012-05-24 12:00': 0.5, // .5\" of rain from 5/23 12:00 - 5/24 11:59         '2012-05-24 11:00': 0.6, // .6\" of rain from 5/23 11:00 - 5/24 10:59         '2012-05-24 10:00': 0.6, // .6\" of rain from 5/23 10:00 - 5/24 09:59         ...         '2012-05-23 10:00': 0     }      Is there a strategy/algorithm to determine how much rain fell in each of the hours? I can't seem to wrap my head around this. I know that it's not as straightforward as just summing the diffs. **Visualization of Dataset**               P(N)    [.....======================]     P(N-1)  [....======================.]     P(N-2)  [...======================..]     P(N-3)  [..======================...]     I want  [..........................=]      Many thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "150065", "title": "Design: Sharing a class between multiple forms", "text": "This question relates to a question I asked earlier, which can be used for reference here: Is this the best way to approach this design? Is this an example of MVC? While coding, I came across a realization that I am not creating 'loose coupling'. The way I am trying to solve the problem right now is creating an instance of the **Log Collector Class** in **MAIN** and passing it around to each form classes constructor. Now, in theory, the **Log Collector Class** needs to be instantiated only once for the whole program run-time. I was thinking about using a Singleton Pattern for this class, ~~but than thought that if two forms need to update this class at the same time, there would be an issue.~~ What would be the best way to have the Log Collector Class be shared via multiple forms without instantiating a new version of the Log Collector Class each time? I've done some research before posting this question and have read some people say using a static class for this type of design. However, this doesn't seem like loose coupling to me. **Another Question** Would an Interface for the Log Collector Class be best used here for all forms wanting to communicate with it? For example:               public interface LogCollectorInterface     {         void SendLogMessage(string logMessage);     }      Now when all forms want to communicate with the **Log Collector Class** , this is the only function they really need to use, SendLogMessage. Would instantiating the interface rather than the **Log Collector Class** be the best way to go about it? FWIW, I am not sure if 'loose coupling' is the best direction is the way to go. It's one of those things I have caught on to while reading questions answered related to OOP. Being a new OOP programmer, it makes the most sense to me for both as an organizational standpoint and testing standpont. **Edit:** This will not be a multi-threading application so no two forms can update the log collector class at the same time."}
{"_id": "196169", "title": "Documenting Function That Takes Random Parameters?", "text": "What's the best approach to creating documentation (displaying the function prototype if you will) for functions that take a variety of different forms in terms of parameters. Let's say there are 10 different choices:               param(name);     param(name, type);     param(name, options);     param(name, type, options);     param(name, fn);     param(name, type, fn);     param(name, options, fn);     param(name, type, options, fn);     param(options);     param(options, fn);      How would one write a function prototype (documentation) for these types of methods (even ones that don't come to this extreme)? Some projects use function \"overloading\" in the documentation:               .on(event, fn, [capture])     .on(event, selector, fn, [capture])      But would the length be outweighed by the clarity or flexibility?"}
{"_id": "209500", "title": "Advise how to write a simple test for this javascript snippet?", "text": "I'm trying to start unit testing (not using any testing frameworks) for my javascripts. Here's one example of it.               var obj = {};          obj.disableBtn = function ($btn, style) {       $btn.attr('disabled','disabled').addClass('disabled').removeClass(style);     };      The use case is as such:               obj.disableBtn($('.submit'), 'btn-blue');      What it does is simply add the `disabled` attribute, add the `disabled` class, and remove the `btn-blue` style. Please advise how would a typical test case look like in this case. I have a little knowledge on testing using `assert()`, but have no idea how to go about it when it involves verifying the result on HTML elements."}
{"_id": "209501", "title": "The right place to embed a parser : Server or the Client?", "text": "I'm writing a database management software. It has a client-server architecture where the server has the piece of code to store and retrieve. The client has to get the input from the user, connects to the server and queries it. Now I have a parser that can parse SQL like queries. My question is which is the best place to embed this parser? ### Option 1-Embedding it in the Server: Get the queries from the client, pass it untouched to the Server and then parse it and do the needful. (OR) ### Option 2-Embedding it in the Client: Get the queries from the Client, parse it then and there and then pass a command object that has specific fields set reflecting the queries to the server and the server acts upon the data in the command object. Which is the right way to do?"}
{"_id": "196168", "title": "Can I borrow parts of an apache-licensed project for something not open-source?", "text": "If I want to make a card game app or android, could I legally borrow parts of the Apache-2.0-licensed Solitaire-for-Android? Would I be able to charge such a project? (I was unable to understand the legal jargon in the license here.)"}
{"_id": "237947", "title": "Planning troubleshooting in a sprint", "text": "From time to time we face difficult problems which are hard to reproduce. Creating a planning for solving such an issue is (nearly) undoable. What we do at the moment is break these up in analyses/reproduction and solving the problem. As long as know nothing we plan a number of hours to investigate and book off these hours by effort and not by result. This does not feel like a true agile sprint. Do you guys have any suggestion how to improve this situation?"}
{"_id": "92948", "title": "What is needed to deploy an application that uses Microsofts new LocalDB?", "text": "I'd like to know what microsoft components need to be installed for this new LocalDB to run on a users machine. > **Now in CTP3: SQL Server Express LocalDB** LocalDB is a new lightweight > deployment option for SQL Server Express Edition with fewer prerequisites > that installs very quickly. This makes it ideal for developers who need an > embedded SQL Server database for desktop applications or tools. LocalDB has > all of the same programmability features as SQL Express, but runs in-process > with applications and not as a service. It is available as part of the SQL > Server Code Name \u201cDenali\u201d CTP3 download. The above is from Microsofts website New in CPT3 This sounds like the perfect SQL database for small one-user desktop applications. I'm trying to find out what I need to include in an install. I want to use this as an embedded database but I don't know if I need to install any Microsoft components or make sure that any other Microsoft compenents have previously been installed. Does anyone know what Microsoft components need to be installed in order for this new LocalDB to run? Is there an installer out there that will automatically detect the presence of the necessary componets an install them? ### Moderator Help Needed: How do I migrate this question to http://dba.stackexchange.com?"}
{"_id": "144679", "title": "asp .net development skills transferred to sharepoint?", "text": "Would a competent asp .net C# developer be disregarding a lot of their skills in order to have more concern with configuration and server-side coding when moving their career into the sharepoint 2010 arena? Or is asp .net C# in fact just a good base to begin the study of sharepoint on?"}
{"_id": "114702", "title": "Is there any comercial application written in Visual Basic .NET?", "text": "In my work the language used to write applications is Visual Basic .NET. I read on internet and almost all the examples and questions are about C#. Is there any comercial application written in Visual Basic .NET? Is there any field for a VB Net developer?"}
{"_id": "114701", "title": "What are the legal considerations when forking a BSD-licensed project?", "text": "I'm interested in forking a project released under a two-clause BSD license: > Copyright (c) 2010 {copyright holder} All rights reserved. > > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > > (1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the disclaimer at the end. Redistributions in > binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of > conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other > materials provided with the distribution. > > (2) Neither the name of {copyright holder} nor the names of its contributors > may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software > without specific prior written permission. > > DISCLAIMER > > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" > AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE > IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE > ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE > LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR > CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF > SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS > INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN > CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) > ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE > POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. I've never forked a project before, but this project is very similar to something that I need/want. However, I'm not sure how far I'll get, so my plan is to pull the latest from their repository and start working. Maybe, eventually, I'll get it to where I want it, and be able to release it. Is this the right approach? How, exactly, does this impact forking of the project? How do I track who owns what components or sections (what's copyright me, what's copyright the original creators, once I start stomping over their code base)? Can I fork this project? What must I do prior to releasing, and when/if I decide to release the software derived from this BSD-licensed work?"}
{"_id": "231777", "title": "When an interpreter executes code: Is there a \"chain of interpretations\" down to the lowest level?", "text": "After doing some research and with the help of people on this site, I finally came to an understanding of what interpretation actually is. Essentially, what interpretation means is (correct me if I'm wrong):   1. Scan a piece of code.   2. Come up with a piece of code in another language, with the same meaning.   3. **Execute** that new piece of code. So for example, and interpreter written in Java that interprets code in C, and sees this line of code:`printf(\"hello world\");` Will come up with this line of code: `System.out.println(\"hello world\");` And will **execute** it (as opposed to a compiler, which will **store** it). **If all of this is true, then here is my question:** I think, that **every execution an interpreter carries out, actually creates a chain of interpretations down to the lowest level.** I'd like to know if this is true. Here is what I mean: When an interpreter **executes** a line of code (which is the new line it came up with, after scanning a line), **it actually tells the underlying platform to interpret it.** For example, as we know, an interpreter written in Java that interprets C code, sees `printf(\"hello\")` and **executes** in reaction the new line of code `System.out.println(\"hello\")`. But what does \" **executes** `System.out.println(\"hello\")`\" actually mean? **It means to tell the underlying platform (in this case the JVM) to interpret this line.** And so, another interpretation begins: The (in this example) interpreter in the JVM receives the line `System.out.println()`, comes up with a new line of code with the same meaning in another language, and **executes** it. And when it **executes** the new line of code, again: It actually tells it's underlying platform to interpret it (in this example, the OS). And then another interpretation begins in the OS, which comes up with a new line of code with the same meaning in a different language, and tells an even lower level to interpret it. This continues down to the lowest level of the CPU. My question is: Is this true? **Is every execution an interpreter carries out, actually a call to the underlying platform to interpret?** (Thus creating a chain of interpretations down to the lowest level?) When people say that an interpreter **executes** code, do they actually mean that it tells it's underlying platform to interpret that code? (And so on?) _(Note: I might be not accurate about the function of the JVM specifically, I missed some steps there. But my question is more general, Java is just an example)._"}
{"_id": "93019", "title": "Is it possible to get entry-level jobs and internships without devoting all your time to programming?", "text": "I'm majoring in computer science in college, and I'm currently in summer program for a business minor. With the schedule and all the outside group projects and studying its impossible for me to really program, and I'll only have a short time free before the start of Fall semester. To make matters worse, I've been told my education path\u2014with my business focus\u2014will start to downplay the importance of programming for the rest of my time at school, further atrophying my programming skills. I'd like to apply for software development internships over the summer, but it doesn't seem likely I'll be able to land any when other candidates have spent much more of their time programming. Am I overemphasizing the importance of knowing programming front-to-back for intern/entry level positions, or is it really necessary to focus most of my time to programming, at the expense of other things I want to do (like have a social life)?"}
{"_id": "104355", "title": "License on papers published at universities?", "text": "I've done some searching around on how to interpret morse code inputted by a human. I haven't found any existing libraries or applications that do this, but I found some academic papers on how it can be done. Before embarking on the journey of trying to interpret the academic language and advanced topics I have to know if it is okay for me to use these papers? What kind of license do they have? One I'm thinking of specifically is \"A Morse-code recognition system with LMS and matching algorithms for persons with disabilities.\" but also others floating around. The paper mentioned appears to cost money to read, but then what? Can it have been patented? What rules apply here?"}
{"_id": "196968", "title": "Is a grid or p2p architecture a subset of a broker architecture?", "text": "Is a grid or p2p architecture a subset of a broker architecture? what are the key features that make these similar or distinct?"}
{"_id": "196963", "title": "Is it possible to write a code without class methods, globals, and class variables?", "text": "I'm designing my own programming language for fun, and I'm thinking of making it fully Object-oriented (no statics, no globals, no class variables, no class methods), so I need to find a way to completely eliminate the needs of class methods, but, first, I need to make sure that I know all the problems that could only be solved by using class methods. So, usually, class methods is used for creating helpers, and named constructors, yes? (Anything else?). Currently, this is what I have to replace those with Object-oriented designs: For example: the File helpers, I'm thinking of designing it like this:               class File       def initialize(path)         @path = path       end            def copy(destination)         # Copy file from @path to destination         # Then open destination path by creating new file instance       end     end      _I'm actually using C, but I wrote the example in Ruby so it will be easier to understand._ No class methods, and you could chain it like this:               File.new(\"directory/file\").copy(\"new_path\").copy(\"other_path\")      If its too long, I could just drop the \"new\" method like what Python do:               File(\"directory/file\").copy(\"new_path\").copy(\"other_path\")      Math helpers can be replaced with mixins:               module Math       def pow(value)         @value = @value ** value       end     end          class Integer       include Math            def initialize(value)         @value = value       end     end      Call it like this:               Integer.new(100).pow(10).pow(10).pow(10)      In case you still need some helpers:               module Helpers       # Some block of codes     end          class Object       include Helpers     end      And now it's accessible everywhere. To add more helpers, just modify the Helpers module:               module Helpers       # Add more helpers     end      We can create factory class instead of named constructor:               class Lexer       def initialize(source)         @source = source       end     end          class LexerFactory       def create_from_file(file)         return Lexer.new(File.read(file))       end            def create_from_string(string)         return Lexer.new(string)       end     end          class Base       def initialize(lexer_factory)         @lexer_factory = lexer_factory       end            def lexer         @lexer_factory       end     end          lexer = Base.new(LexerFactory.new).lexer.create_from_file(\"directory/file\")      So my questions is: What am I missing? What you can't do without class methods, and class variables? What problems that could only be solved by using those?"}
{"_id": "3482", "title": "You've shipped, you get a rare seg fault. Pointer checking or let it go?", "text": "You've shipped, asserts are turned off, you receive a _rare_ crash report indicating that a null pointer violation occurred in your code. In a development environment, the problem would have been caught by an assert. All you have is a crash report, so reproducing the issue is near impossible. Following the backtrace doesn't give any clues as to why the crash happened in the first place. Options: \\- Add pointer checking to prevent the crash. This will prevent the crash, but you probably won't even find out why it happened in the first place. \\- let it fly, hope that it happens again with a repro scenario Let's say the application isn't intended for a guided missle or automatic braking system... Which would you choose?"}
{"_id": "196964", "title": "Getting a job in the software industry coming from the games industry?", "text": "Is it even realistic to try and do enter the software industry coming from the game industry? I feel like I have pretty strong skills with regards to programming in general- I'm somewhat into Agile programming techniques and pay close attention to code quality, have some limited experience using SCRUM, and have a pretty strong knowledge of C# and to a lesser extent C++ however I don't have experience with any business technologies- only game technologies. Whenever I see any ads they are always heavy on technology experience so I'm not sure how I would have any chance."}
{"_id": "106269", "title": "How much effort goes into maintaining a build system?", "text": "In StackExchange Podcast #09 it is remarked: > Another study recently looked at how much effort goes into maintaining the > build system: 5 to 30% of all development effort is spent on maintaining the > build system. With the variations being huge even when working on similar > projects. What is the name of the study referenced, and where can it be found? The audio of the podcast contains no further details. Additionally, does anyone have any links to other studies covering the same topic."}
{"_id": "199293", "title": "Is repeating links to the same class in a single javadoc comment a bad practice?", "text": "I'm currently writing an API and its documentation. For example I have something like this:               public interface Event {     }          public interface Process {     }          public interface EventProcessor {         /**          * Starts to process the sepcified event asynchronously. The returned          * {@link Process} can be used to track progress on the processing. If the          * specified event causes more {@link Event events} to be processed in this          * system, then they are also tracked via the returned {@link Process}.          *           * @param event          *            to be started to process          * @return          */         Process startProcessing(Event event);     }      In the example above, the javadoc link to the interface `Process` is repeated. In the API I'm writing there are cases where I have several more references to the same class in a single javadoc comment. Should I always mark references to the class/method/etc. as javadoc links? Generally, I think having many links in a javadoc comment is a sign for high cohesion. But when it's often the same target, which is linked, I'm not sure if this is good."}
{"_id": "199291", "title": "How to protect yourself as DevLead from political management games", "text": "As a developer/DevLead you've got your focus on developing software and you may be quite good in it. Developers are, however, in my observation often not so good at playing political games. This concerns in particular about:   * Protecting yourself and to provide information correctly   * Keeping track about: Who has said what   * Who is to blame if anything goes wrong   * Etc. Management guys are much better in the game of looking good and blaming others. :) Are there common rules and techniques for software developers and DevLeads to protect themselves from political games and making life easier?"}
{"_id": "199297", "title": "Software Architecture Modelling", "text": "I am a little confused at how best to visually model a space-based architecture (SBA) for presenting the system/software architecture design to a client. The goal of this modelling is to show:   * The major components of the system (e.g.: databases, server exposed API, client, server workers, client exposed API)   * Interactions between these major components   * Primary end-to-end workflows Currently I am thinking to use BPMN2 notation with swimlanes; and sequence & use-case diagrams in UML2 notation. Not sure if this approach is best, would be great to get some feedback :)"}
{"_id": "104681", "title": "What could be a good team building activity to improve estimation skills?", "text": "I'm putting together a presentation to deliver to some of my teammates (all developers), and I'd like to include a short team building activity that focuses on improving estimation skills. Does anyone have any suggestions or know of any team building activities I could use?"}
{"_id": "24910", "title": "Is SourceSafe really safe?", "text": "Having spent all morning trying to check something in - I now realise I've lost a couple of days worth of work. Its happened before - and is apparently common occurrence with SourceSafe. Can SourceSafe be used successfully, without problems, and if so, how?"}
{"_id": "253933", "title": "What is considered to be a \"modification\" of sources under the BSD license?", "text": "I have a question about the 3-clause BSD license based on it's Wiki description. It states: > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > ... What is understood by \"modification\"? Specifically I am interested whether any/all of the following is considered as such modification:   1. Reading the original sources and then re-implementing a custom way.   2. Reading the original sources, waiting for a year and then re-implementing something based on whatever you could remember.   3. Direct and very significant \"complete\" refactoring of the original sources."}
{"_id": "106191", "title": "What is a good start for small web-design projects?", "text": "What are the most common templates, languages, web-design tools that you recommend for me to be able to start web-design? I do software but I have not not had web-design experience, I have been a Win32 developer with VB 6.0, Delphi, C#,etc.., not web-based. The type of web-design I have in mind is some simple web-sites, even static web sites, that the owner of some small business like a restaurant wants to have a web-site to show its services ..I know there are some stuff people start with like WordPress, Joomla, PHP CMSes, CSS frameworks,... I am looking for stuff like this that helps speeds up building a nice website...what are the things people mostly use these days? Thanks"}
{"_id": "134920", "title": "Patterns for Maintaining Model State in Real Time", "text": "While some platform in some languages already address this issue, I would like to keep this semi-language agnostic and to focus on patterns associated with this issue. I have a data model that contains FirstName, MiddleName, and LastName (to keep things simple). First and Last names are required and may have other rules to ensure their validity. Middle name is optional. By default, the model is empty and thus, invalid. When a value changes, an event can be triggered to validate the field that changed. My question is what patterns can be used to best manage the state of the object since, based on the scenario, I'm doing field level validation. Should I move to model level validation on field change which would address the state issue or is there an alternate way?"}
{"_id": "134923", "title": "How can I prototype my app better?", "text": "A few weeks ago I saw a story about a master app designer showing how he worked with good old pen and paper to do effective prototyping before writing code. I'm unable to dig up that story (and I think it was a video) but if you could recommend any other useful resources I'd appreciate them. I know roughly what I want to build, but want a useful framework for thinking about how the screens should flow together. The app I want to build is for the iOS platform, but I think the video might have been about creating a web app. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "108800", "title": "Is there any formal research in FizzBuzz Question Effectiveness?", "text": "After seeing this question today on variation of the FizzBuzz interview question, as well as seeing other questions related to it around, I have to ask: is there any _formal_ research on how effective this is as an interview technique? There are plenty of folks who say that it filters out some crazy- sounding percentage of candidates (95%+ in some cases) but how good is it for finding good programmers/developers? There has been some research that shows that soft skills might be better indicators than hard skills for choosing a good candidate for a job role. As well, there might be some intermediate reasons for so many candidates failing this test (nervousness, thinking \"it's a trick\", etc). **EDIT:** Based on the comments so far, it looks like the idea behind FizzBuzz questions is to determine whether or not the person has good (enough) coding skills to be further considered. I'm not totally convinced FizzBuzz actually does this. Also, remember that FizzBuzz filters _a very large percentage_ of candidates _very early_ in the hiring process, which could mean that significant numbers of good candidates are being removed early on because they can't solve silly problems fast enough. Also, I'll point out that looking at FizzBuzz effectiveness is something that can completely be done in a quantitative manner. This is unlike looking at \"fit\" or \"passion\" which are highly variable and highly unscientific (but still quite important for new hiring decisions)."}
{"_id": "102689", "title": "What is the benefit of not using Hungarian notation?", "text": "One of the things I struggle with is not using Hungarian notation. I _don't_ want to have to go to the variable definition just to see what type it is. When a project gets extensive, it's nice to be able to look at a variable prefixed by 'bool' and know that it's looking for **true/false** instead of a **0/1** value. I also do a lot of work in SQL Server. I prefix my stored procedures with 'sp' and my tables with 'tbl', not to mention all of my variables in the database respectively. I see everywhere that nobody really wants to use Hungarian notation, to the point where they avoid it. My question is, what is the benefit of _not_ using Hungarian notation, and why does the majority of developers avoid it like the plague?"}
{"_id": "113289", "title": "Why do we need a Heap if everything can be done much more efficiently on the Stack?", "text": "This is actually somewhat related to the question I asked yesterday about why both a Stack _and_ a Heap are necessary in the applications we use today (and why we can't just go with a Heap instead of both, in order to have a simple & singular standard to go by). However, many of the responses indicated that a Stack is _irreplaceable_ due to the fact that is many hundreds (or thousands) of times faster than trying to allocate/reference the Heap. I know there is a problem with dynamic storage allocation if we do away with the Heap, but isn't there a way around this, or perhaps, a way to improve on the Stack so that it can handle dynamic memory allocation?"}
{"_id": "194180", "title": "User stories are too high level and conceptual, management expects developers to fill in the blanks", "text": "I am employed in a very brilliant company with a true intention of doing XP. Communication is good and management is open to constructive discussion but due to pressing time constraints, some certain things are considered too RUP to be discussed. At the moment I'm a little troubled with the volume of change that becomes necessary while implementing the stories. I believe many of these discoveries (which take time and effort of course) are the responsibilities of the story writers (customers, end users and product owners) and not the developers. To put is short, user-stories are too conceptual and just convey the underlying intention but lack enough details (specially pre-conditions and post- conditions, relevance to other stories, dependencies and alike). The developer is expected to fill in the blanks at his own discretion by the virtue of XP developers being designers and analysts at the same time. The problem is many of these blanks are discovered after some wrong assumptions have made made their way into evaluation time and code since noticing added complexities emerge than initially anticipated. Even then finding the right thing to fill in takes time which is - to various degrees - considered as deviation from the initial estimations. I'm looking for a constructive way of conveying these implications to the management in a way that would not pose me as someone who is trying to unnecessarily complicate things. I'm new and as yet I have not established much credibility. You insights are most welcome. Closely related and somehow gives an answer : How much detail about a user story can a developer expect?"}
{"_id": "188834", "title": "Is git-flow in the spirit of git?", "text": "The question is pretty self-explanatory. I've had some experience with git- flow, and not much more _true_ experience with plain git before that. (I was using it more as a backup-provider.) I'm confused as to what consensus is, given that I can safely assume that there are a large number of git users who miss 'the good old days' of formal, centralized version control, and just want a piece of it back (cf. rant article below) Related articles:   * The seminal   * an anti-git-flow rant * * * _\"spirit of git\"_ in the question title is, whatever it means to you. For me, I remember that it's a DVCS, not a CVS. git flow seems like it's imposing an organized branching model where one might not need to be there at all, where it would be essential in a centralized system such as SVN."}
{"_id": "194186", "title": "Why does JavaScript count array lengths by the last index?", "text": "JavaScript seems to calculate the array length property by the number of the last index in the array rather than counting the number of items in the array. Example:               var testArray = ['a', 'b', 'c'];     console.log(testArray.length); //3     testArray[8] = 'i';     console.log(testArray.length); //9      Normally I would use push() and wouldn't add a value to an array using bracket notation, but this was a bit of a surprise. Is there any reason for this implementation of assigning a value to Array.length? The only thing I can seem to come up with is that it just uses the last index as a performance optimization to avoid counting the array items."}
{"_id": "139869", "title": "How large should a Python module be?", "text": "I was browsing a github project and found **this module** which has more than 8 thousands lines. Is it good practice to have that much code in a single module? Shouldn't this be split over multiple modules? maybe one for each db engine? And what benefit does the developer get from making one huge module like this?"}
{"_id": "53365", "title": "Is this a bad time to be majoring in computer science?", "text": "There has been a lot of media attention paid in recent months and years to the increase in CS majors and the possibility of a second tech bubble. Some news reports have suggested that as more people enter CS, the market could be flooded with CS professionals and jobs could be increasingly difficult to find. Is this a bad time to be majoring in computer science? Edit: I'm a non-trad student who allready has a Bachelor's degree in economics and will be pursuing a CS degree starting this upcoming summer semester at the Univ of Kansas. I've been programming for about two/three years and just need a more formal education to fill the holes in my head. I have an interest in CS, it's just that I am worries about the prospects for the future."}
{"_id": "139860", "title": "What is best practice for log level in PHP?", "text": "When programming in C, I often get the advice to turn on many or all warnings and not ignore warnings. Does the same hold in PHP, should I enable all warnings in the PHP log?"}
{"_id": "80587", "title": "How much time/money should be spent on software QA/QC?", "text": "Any non-trivial commercial application/program/system/what-have-you requires testing (QA/QC). Not counting things like automated tests, how much time/money relative to the development investment in the project should be spent testing (e.g. with live people)? I know there's no magic percentage of time or budget, and individual projects will differ in size and scope of testing, but is there something that's considered good practice? An application may be perfect in every way, but still the only means of ensuring that is to test it. Basically my employer wants to cut down on testing of over-seas-developed software, but I have strong reservations against that (being in charge of QA and having worked with the vendor before, I don't think that our directive of telling them to \"make fewer bugs\" is exactly going to get us results, no matter what is stipulated in the contract). Is there any kind of best-practice or guideline that I can look to?"}
{"_id": "199436", "title": "Good way to manage database test data?", "text": "Standard LAMP stack: CentOS, Apache, PHP, MySQL plus Java (via Google Web Tools), eclipse, mercurial Currently we have a manual integration step where a feature branch is pushed to a staging server where QA tests the feature by poking at it with the GUI. We use a shared dev database. We're running into the problem where feature branches require different database schema creating a bottleneck between feature branch development and acceptance testing. We'd like to start having separate dev databases but do not know how to handle populating the database with test data (the web app requires some base amount of data to be present to start up i.e. users) and keep that test data in sync with the merging of feature branches, etc. I read lots of suggestions and tools regarding database schema changes, but not managing database test data. We're only a two person shop so keeping things simple is important. We've thought of just maintaining scripts (SQL files or otherwise) to populate the test database. Does anyone have resources, success stories, or advice to share?"}
{"_id": "20927", "title": "What is your favorite whiteboard interview problem?", "text": "Just as the title says, what is your favorite whiteboard interview problem, and why has it proven effective for you? Junior, senior, Java, C, Javascript, PHP, SQL, pseudo-code, etc."}
{"_id": "199438", "title": "Tracking progress via a burndown chart when sprints overlap", "text": "Our team has adopted some agile practices to help us develop and deliver our software to our client. We adopted practices as needed (as problems/challenges were identified) rather than jumping wholesale into the agile camp. The big ones for us are maintaining a product and sprint backlog and developing and delivering new versions in one month sprints. We do estimate the items in our sprint backlog to guesstimate what we can deliver within a sprint however we are not tracking progress very well so its difficult to know whether or not we are on target. The next step in our evolution appears improve our progress tracking ability. We are looking at using burn down charts to aid us. However, our sprints overlap significantly due to established and procedures for our software promotion schedule. We have the following established events:   1. **Development begins** on _Sprint 1_ and continues until _code freeze_. That said we do test our software throughout this phase with the development and test groups.   2. **Code freeze** stops development on _Sprint 1_ functionality. We have small window to finish or fix any issues before the next event _acceptance promotion 1_. In addition development begins on _Sprint 2_.    3. **Acceptance promotion 1** promotes the application to the client's acceptance environment where it is tested by our test group. Issues identified in testing may be fixed during a small window before _acceptance promotion 2_. Meanwhile _Sprint 2_ development continues.   4. **Acceptance promotion 2** promotes the application one last time to the client's acceptance environment to validate any issues identified during _acceptance promotion 1_. _Sprint 2_ development continues.   5. **Production promotion** promotes the application to production and it is tested by our test group and _Sprint 1_ is officially completed. This is when it is truly done. A visual depiction of this can be seen below. The average calendar time between **development begins** and **code freeze** is four weeks. The average time between **code freeze** and **production promotion** is two weeks. ![Overlapping sprints](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fKqke.png) larger resolution version This schedule of events is not within our control. Client policy dictates when application software is promoted from Test to Acceptance to Production. No application code may be modified beyond our second fix window. We do not perform the promotions. This is accomplished via '3rd' parties at the client's site, again, due to policy. In addition some tasks, like such data updates can and do happen outside of this schedule. Some data updates follow the code (for instance, when there is a schema dependency) but others such as data bugs or updates can and do occur outside of this schedule. This is due to fewer restrictions as to what may be modified on the clients environment. Only application code is restricted to these specific milestones. Data and configuration are exempt and technically may be modified as needed. We are considering tightening this up so that data updates follow the same schedule as the code. Given this scenario, overlapping sprints I have a several questions?   1. What is the proper way to create/handle a burn down chart when we burn development, testing, and data hours from the previous sprint while working also working towards the next one? I think we have 2 concurrent burn down charts on for each sprint.   2. Assuming we at most have two burn down charts how do we best display the cumulative burn down when the sprints overlap so as to understand our actual workload progress on each so as to best set us up for success?   3. If items are found in Sprint 1 after code freeze that need to be addressed in Sprint 2 how does that our Sprint 2 backlog and burn down? I assume that for critical items we need to bump out less critical Sprint 2 items to make room for the incomplete Sprint 1 items. Non critical items will be bumped to Sprint 3 or later.   4. What would be the proper start and end dates for the burn down chart?  It seems the best option would be to reflect reality. Sprint 1 is not truly done (including testing and data updates) until **production promotion** and its final testing. So the start date would be **development begins** and the end date be **production promotion** despite any overlap.   5. What else am I missing? What else could or will bite us?"}
{"_id": "199439", "title": "Making a class pseudo-immutable by setting a flag", "text": "I have a java project that involves building some pretty complex objects. There are quite a lot (dozens) of different ones and some of them have a HUGE number of parameters. They also need to be immutable. So I was thinking the builder pattern would work, but it ends up require a lot of boilerplate. Another potential solution I thought of was to make a mutable class, but give it a \"frozen\" flag, a-la ruby. Here is a simple example:               public class EqualRule extends Rule {         private boolean frozen;         private int target;              public EqualRule() {             frozen = false;         }              public void setTarget(int i) {             if (frozen)                  throw new IllegalStateException(                     \"Can't change frozen rule.\");                  target = i;         }              public int getTarget() {             return target;         }              public void freeze() {             frozen = true;         }              @Override         public boolean checkRule(int i) {             return (target == i);         }     }      and \"Rule\" is just an abstract class that has an abstract \"checkRule\" method. This cuts way down on the number of objects I need to write, while also giving me an object that becomes immutable for all intents and purposes. This _kind of_ act like the object was its own Builder... But not quite. I'm not too excited, however, about having an immutable being disguised as a bean however. So I had two questions: 1\\. Before I go too far down this path, are there any huge problems that anyone sees right off the bat? For what it's worth, it is planned that this behavior will be well documented... 2\\. If so, is there a better solution? Thanks"}
{"_id": "194232", "title": "Closest Point of Approach (CPA) mathematical formula in ship radar", "text": "I was recently searching for the mathematical formula to find closest point of approach (CPA) between one ship and another ship. I need to apply the formula in my radar ship program and I can't find the correct way to calculates it. Does anybody know what the correct formula (or pseudo-code) is instead of plotting it manually?"}
{"_id": "99113", "title": "Is there really a choice of the best language for a specific project?", "text": "Programmers.SE has plenty of questions of beginner programmers asking if they must use a specific language or another one in their daily work, or if they must learn a language or another. Those questions are quickly closed, and when they receive answers, those answers are of type: > Use what is best for a specific project. There are languages that cannot be reasonably used for some sorts of projects. For example, it would be strange to use Assembly to create a dynamic website, or to use PHP to create a rich desktop Windows application or to use Ruby to create a video game with hardware acceleration. But in general, does the \"Use what is best for a specific project\" rule work?   * If I create a simple business desktop application, how can I say that for this business app, C# is not appropriate at all, while Java is the best choice?   * If I create an ordinary small or medium-scale website, how can I say that I must use C#/ASP.NET MVC over Ruby on Rails? **Comparing mainstream languages, they are all pretty similar**. I choose C# over Java because I don't know Java very well; I choose ASP.NET MVC over PHP because _in my opinion_ , PHP sucks; I choose PHP over ASP.NET MVC when my customers have a web server running Linux. In all cases, every time I have to to a choice, I consider:   * my skills in the languages to choose from,   * languages I personally want and enjoy to use,   * software and hardware requirements (i.e. difficulty to deploy Java or Ruby on Rails website on a server which has already a support for PHP),   * legacy and interoperability concerns. Does it mean that I lack broad knowledge in _several_   languages? What happens in other companies? **Is there a real choice, for every project, of the language which is the best one in a precise case?** How could such choice be made in a situation where the mainstream languages are so similar?"}
{"_id": "191608", "title": "Data warehouse architecture for mutating schema", "text": "I am setting up an ETL process and small data warehouse for querying the data in a few different dimensions. One issue is that the schema for the objects can mutate over time - mainly that some fields will be added and some removed. What are some methodologies or approaches for handling this? (Note the source data is managed as EAV, which is hard to query and it's slow - hence the DW approach in the first place). What seems like a naive approach (which can often be the best) is to simply add columns over time to the destination shapes in the warehouse, and backfill existing objects with some query-valid placeholder data. This is a little outside my domain expertise though, so looking for input."}
{"_id": "210461", "title": "How can designing for inheritance cause extra cost?", "text": "So I wanted to inherit from a `sealed class` in _csharp_ and got burned. There is just no way to unseal it unless you have access to the source. Then it got me thinking \"why `sealed` even exists?\". 4 months ago. I couldn't figure it out, despite reading many things about it, such as:   * Jon Skeet's wishes \"classes were sealed by default in .NET.\"   * Prefer composition over inheritance?   * \"You should not seal all classes (...)\"   * How do you mock a Sealed class? I've tried to digest all that since then, but it's just too much for me. Eventually, yesterday I tried it again. I've scanned over all of them again, plus few more:   * Why should a class be anything other than \"abstract\" or \"final/sealed\"?   * In over 15 years programming, first time I've heard of SOLID, out of an answer from a question already linked and I obviously didn't read it all 4 months ago Finally, after lots of pondering, I decided to _heavily_ edit the original question based on the new title. The **old question** were too broad and subjective. It was basically asking:   1. In the old title: One good reason to use sealed   2. In the body: How to properly modify a sealed class? Forget about inheritance? Use composition? But now, _understanding_ (which I didn't yesterday) that **all`sealed` does is preventing inheritance**, and we can and should indeed use composition over inheritance, I realized what I needed was _practical_ examples. I guess my question here is (and in fact have always been) exactly what Mr.Mindor suggested me in a chat: _How can designing for inheritance cause extra cost?_"}
{"_id": "198520", "title": "Entity to DTO Usage", "text": "Been trying to come up with a flow for a basic tiered web application, and have been reading conflicting information online. What I'm trying to figure out is if there is an advantage to still using DTO objects from your DAO to Service layer through the use of some sort of mapper. The basic flow I foresee is as follows:   1. UI Model / Form --> Controller   2. Controller converts Model into Domain Object (Entity)   3. Domain Object --> Service Layer   4. Domain Object --> DAO   5. DAO --> Domain Object(s)   6. Service --> UI   7. UI converts Domain into UI models If DTO was followed DAO would pass back a DTO not the Entity. After doing some reading it seems like DTO has become slightly defunct since (at least in Java) entities have become annotated POJOs meaning their memory footprint has become very small. Is this the case, or should DTOs be used to completely encapsulate the domain objects within the DAO layer, and, if this is the case, what would the service layer pass to the DAO? Thanks a bunch!"}
{"_id": "124845", "title": "Should an interviewer be prepared to answer any question he asks?", "text": "As I gain more professional experience, I've become a bit more skeptical about a lot of the politics of the interview process. In particular, I'm curious to know if y'all think it's ok to ask the interviewer the same questions you're asked. For instance, in an interview a few years back, I was asked: > Where do you see yourself in 5 years? I gave a decent answer, and then asked the interviewer: > Where do you see yourself in 5 years? He actually gave a fairly thoughtful answer. What about questions like:   * Why do you like working here?   * Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a coworker and how you resolved it.   * Answer this question. EDIT: I meant:   * Answer this [insert technical gotcha question here] question."}
{"_id": "210468", "title": "Using a flag in in-memory-repository to indicate update to entity", "text": "I'm about to write a lot of test for my application. While some of the tests check whether everything works if the user enters the right data, most of them deal with wrong/missing data. In these cases nothing should be updated and an exception should be thrown. At the moment, this leads to a lot of duplicated code, because every test has to make sure that not only the exception is thrown but that no data in my ( ~~mocked~~ in-memory) database is changed. My first idea was to move these tests into a function and to call this function in every test. Pro: I still can use very explicit tests. Contra: I have to remember changing the function and adding more tests whenever I add more functionality to the checked function. But I could as well add a property to my ~~mocked~~ in-memory-repository that indicates whether an entity was updated. Pro: I'll never have to worry about a forgotten check. Contra: The check is quite vague - When it fails I'll only knew that _something_ was changed. In order to find the error I'll have to debug step by step through the function. What is the better approach? Maybe there's an even better third solution?"}
{"_id": "224537", "title": "Help putting together an Open Source Friendly contract but does not allow day job work to be Open Sourced", "text": "So I just was hired at a place that had only one Developer and that was the co owner. Their employee handbook had something to the effect of the following. > All IP, inventions or software you develop while at X company is the > property of the company. Additionally you will have to provide a list of all > prior inventions, software or IP developed prior to working for company x. This is an issue for me because I have both side projects and occasionally contribute to open source stuff and would like to continue to have the ability to to both. I talked about it with the owner and he agreed to making changes and asked me for an outline that is fair for both parties. He would take that to a lawyer and they would go over it and apply it. So with that I'm looking for some wording I could submit to that effect to helping me put this together in such a way that I and any other software developers are protected as well as company x and its software. That or a resource or guideline for this sort of thing. To clarify, the company's software isn't allowed to be made open but the employees will be allowed to work on side project both of an open-source and private nature as long as they don't come to compete with the company's best interest. If it helps we are in the USA."}
{"_id": "54711", "title": "How to explain bad software to non-technical people?", "text": "In discussing software development with non-technical people (customers, business owners, project sponsors, etc.), I often resort to analogies and metaphors. It's relatively easy and effective to use a \"house\" or other metaphor for describing the size and complexity of new development. However, we often inherit someone else's code or data, and this approach doesn't seem to hold up as well when trying to explain why we're gutting something that already seems to work. Of course we can point to cycle time and cost to be saved in the future but this generally means nothing to business folks. I know doctors can say \"just take this pill,\" but I'm not sure that software devs have the same authority. Ideas? EDIT: Let me add a bit to the discussion. The specific project I'm talking about has customers that don't realize (or care) about specific aspects of the system we're retiring (i.e., they think it was just fine):   1. The system would save a NEW RECORD every time someone updated a field   2. The system contained tables for reference data. These tables had new records added every day, even though they were duplicates of previous records. And there was no way to tie the reference data used for a particular case at the time it was closed. This is like 99% of the data in the old system.   3. The field NAMES also have spaces, apostrophes and other inappropriate characters in them, making everything harder to work with.   4. In addition to the incredible amount of duplicate data, they have around 1000 XLS files with data they want added to the system. Previously, they would do a spreadsheet for each case in the database, IN ADDITION TO what they typed into the database. Getting rid of this old, unneeded information and piping in the XLS data comprises about 80% of the total project effort, and was not something we could accurately predict. I'm trying to find a concrete way to describe how bad this thing was, mostly so that the customer will understand why the migration process has been so time-consuming. The actual coding was done pretty quickly and the new system works fine, but without the old data they won't be happy. Sorry to get into the weeds, but most of the answers I've seen so far are pretty basic scope/schedule/cost things. I've been doing this for 15 years, so this really is more of a reflective, philosophical question - but without some of the details it can be difficult to really appreciate the awful beauty of this problem."}
{"_id": "102023", "title": "Should the usage of DI/IoC remove all occurrences of the \"new\" keyword?", "text": "Should the usage of Dependency Injection and an Inversion of Control container remove **all** occurrences of the \"`new`\" keyword from your code? In other words, should every object/dependency, no matter how simple or short- lived, be \"registered\" within your IoC container and injected into the method/class that needs to use them? If no, where do you draw the line between which dependencies/objects get registered in the IoC container, versus what gets created \"in-line\" as a concrete reference, via the `new` keyword ?"}
{"_id": "30140", "title": "Entire webpage obfuscation", "text": "I want to obfuscate all the webpages of my website. I Googled through some free tools like HTML and Javascript obfuscation but don't know how effective they are. First of all, does it makes sense to obfuscate a webpage that could comprise of variety of codes like Javascript, PHP etc. Secondly, how effective is this method and please recommend some free nice tools."}
{"_id": "113863", "title": "On the effectiveness of unit testing", "text": "**EDIT:** I think that no one really understood the question. I think that this is partly my fault as well, so I hop it gets better now. The thing is, I am perfectly aware of the existence of mocking frameworks, and so on. This is not the problem. The problem is what happens when you change your method's implementation and it simply doesn't call the mock anymore, and you start seeing a bunch of red lights in your test stack, because your mocks aren't called the way the way they should? Unit or Integration test, something should be done here, right? Another one, if I start writing different mock methods for every test condition I like, what happens if I decide to change the signature of the class I'Ve mocked? All my tests go to the trash bin, right? Is this normal, can it be avoided? Is it a design problem? I hope I am not confusing you more, guys. How effective are unit tests in reality? I am under the impression that at some point unit tests turn into tests that test the dependency between the object under test and another object. Sure, one can always abstract dependencies using interfaces, but what happens when even the interfaces should be changed? What if the unit under test no longer relies on those dependencies? If our tests fail because of dependency issues, does it mean they are too coupled to our code? Also, do we have to change them every time when we change the dependencies? If it happens quite often, is this a sign that our design is wrong? I tended to believe that unit tests are an effective way to test ensure robustness, but if they are too coupled to the dependencies that our objects have with other objects (be they expressed as interfaces), it simply leads to more time wasted in fixing those tests to pass the new design. Am I wrong? NOTE: Someone mentioned that when we test the dependencies between two objects, it is no longer considered unit testing, but rather, integration testing. I don't know what to believe in, any longer"}
{"_id": "226430", "title": "Creating a large quantity of types VS using mostly the ones provided by the language", "text": "There are several times where you're coding a method which has two parameters with the same type, lets say, integers, `NumberOfUnitA` and `NumberOfUnitB`. Given that we're coding in a language that doesn't support named parameters, why is that we don't see people creating types closer to the domain logic, in this case, `UnitA` and `UnitB`, but just raw integers? It seems much more expressive to me. And even in other situations, many times, we have to pass a bunch of flags, and they are just integers (even in cases where perfomance is not an issue), why we do this? Does it create unnecessary complications? What are the problems of this approach of creating many types?"}
{"_id": "37242", "title": "What process do you normally use when attempting to debug a problem/issue/bug with your software?", "text": "Most people seem to treat debugging as an art, rather than a science. For those here which treat it as a science, rather than an art - what process(es) do you normally use when faced with a new issue/bug/problem?"}
{"_id": "24005", "title": "tracking time for personal projects", "text": "Does everyone track time spent on personal projects? I feel that it is valuable to know how much time (and potential money) has been put into a hobby. I am currently using harvest to track time."}
{"_id": "252", "title": "When is Singleton appropriate?", "text": "Some hold that the Singleton Pattern is always an anti-pattern. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "190801", "title": "Singleton: Is Singleton an Anti-Pattern", "text": "Was reading an interesting blog post on Singleton design pattern which is so widely used. If it's stupid or as in some quora posts, its an anti-pattern why is it so widely used even in frameworks. For e.g., Spring framework (java) makes all the classes available through dependency injection as Singleton classes and adding prototype is optional."}
{"_id": "235527", "title": "When to use a Singleton and when to use a static class", "text": "I've searched about this here and on StackOverflow and found some differences between the two. But I'm still not sure _in what cases one would prefer a Singleton, and in what cases one would choose to use a static class_. (In languages which don't support 'static classes', like Java, I'm obviously referring to classes containing only static methods and fields). Please give me concrete examples of cases where you would pick each one, and explain why."}
{"_id": "159003", "title": "Singletons in C++, are they really necessary, used?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When is Singleton appropriate? Ok, most people probably know what a singleton is, use them, and know all the drawbacks including race conditions and so on. But what I never really figured out, is why people still use them, and why they are so popular, when the implementation is actually usually error prone or complex. Double locked constructors and so on. Because it seems that even in large projects, it's not really that often when you have an object that should be created only once, and if there is, there seem to be easier ways to achieve it. Has anyone actually been a situation where singleton cruft made their lives easier for the rest of the project?"}
{"_id": "107698", "title": "Is there is a case when there is no any reasonable replacement for singleton design pattern?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When is Singleton appropriate? I've seen many explanations why is Singleton is evil. But is there really no such a case when Singleton is the only beautiful solution?"}
{"_id": "242618", "title": "Is it OK to reoccupy my old GitHub username to protect repository redirections?", "text": "I'm considering changing my GitHub username from the old alias I was using as a kid to my real name. I'm concerned about my repository URLs. GitHub will redirect the old URLs, but if someone creates a new account using my old username and creates a repository with the same name as one of my repositories, the URL redirection will break and the URL will lead to their repository, not mine. Now, this is understandable, and GitHub recommends to not count on the redirect in the long term, and update all the remotes, but I'm concerned about some Vim plugins I'm hosting on GitHub. It's a common practice to manage Vim plugins with Git(either as separate repositories or as submodules), and if one of the plugins' remotes break you'll get error messages when you try to batch- update all your plugins(it happened to me once...). It's not **that** hard to solve, and the chances that'll happen are slim, but I would still like to avoid causing trouble to the users of my plugins... To prevent this, I think to create a new account with my old username. That way I can avoid the risk of someone else taking my old username and breaking the redirects of my old repositories. While researching this approach I've found GitHub's Name Squatting Policy. According to that policy, GitHub can delete or rename inactive accounts. To my understanding, they do this to prevent Cybersquatting, but surely this isn't the case with my fake account - I'm not holding someone else's name in an attempt to sell it to them, I'm merely occupying a name **I** was using to protect **my** old URLs... So, is it acceptable to go with this plan an create a fake account with my old username?"}
{"_id": "63416", "title": "Should I help anonymity related projects?", "text": "Projects that increase online anonymity, such as Tor and bitcoin, allow personal freedom from government oppression but also allow crimes to go unpunished. As a developer, should I contribute to such projects? Is there a way to enforce that those technologies will not be used for money laundering and child pornography?"}
{"_id": "115429", "title": "Is AOP widely used in the enterprise sector", "text": "I'm curious to here the opinions of people working in large enterprise organisation whether AOP is widely (or even modestly) used when they are developing? Is AOP something which is inherent in the design. Because from everything I managed to find on the Internet (including by reading the AspectJ in Action, 2nd ed. book) I was left with the impression that AOP is something which is more of a \"niche\" type of technology. My main point is whether there is a point in investing effort and time in learning to an acceptable level - e.g. the join-point mechanism, advices etc. Furthermore, do you design with AOP in mind or you use it to amend shortcomings in an existing design?"}
{"_id": "146967", "title": "Company wants us to use escrow or provide SLA", "text": "We have a SaaS business (we host everything) where people, using our software, pay for various services offered by a few \"vendors.\" We collect this money and every week we deposit the balance into the vendor's account. Our cut is a small piece from each of these service payments; so if nobody buys anything the vendor doesn't pay anything. This model has worked fine, but we're now in talks with a larger vendor (government) that was asking for escrow for our service. They asked the trigger (for the release of the code) to be bankruptcy, not providing the service at a reasonable level (can't remember the actual term used), or acquisition by a third party. We told them that we don't have a problem with the bankruptcy trigger, but the acquisition part we can not agree with because who would want to buy us if our customers have the option of just running our software for free. Are we rightfully concerned about this scenario? After we mentioned that a trigger cannot be acquisition by a separate company or if they think our software doesn't live up to some standard, they countered that in this case they would want some kind of SLA with \"really high requirements\" instead of the acquisition or service trigger -- but still have the escrow for bankruptcy. Doesn't SLA imply some kind of monthly or yearly service fee? We structured our model so that if a company does use our software they don't pay anything. We thought this would be preferred over a monthly/yearly fixed cost. Are we being unreasonable? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "146961", "title": "Is it fair to reduce OOP to mere hierarchical composition of data structures?", "text": "Meaning that OOP allows me to have data-trees, of arbitrary depth and breadth, with some leafs being functions (and those leafs would be called methods) ? Because everything else that people often put near \"OOP\" mark, just don't seem to have anything to do with it. (Inheritance, subtype polymorphism and encapsulation seem to be orthogonal to OOP). Am I right? Or I'm missing something ?"}
{"_id": "115421", "title": "Are there best practices for checking for errors in business logic for DB refreshes?", "text": "I'm working for a company with very large databases which all refresh overnight, ready for users to interrogate in the morning. These over night loads essentially truncate all the tables, and reload again using pretty complicated business logic. This is all fine and good, but occasionally, rather than going through the proper routes, a quick fix is needed in the business logic, and changes will be made on the \"Live\" server to the business logic without too much testing. This has, as I'm sure you can imagine, resulted in subtle but significant mistakes being made. I basically want to now independently write logic (in T-SQL probably) which will try to spot any abnormal changes, so at least I'm ahead of the game, and can report them sooner. My question is, fairly obviously, does anyone have any advice on this? Is there any theory or general good practice which I could incorporate to hopefully limit the impact of future \"quick and dirty\" changes to business logic? Just so you know, we do use source control, and use Live, UAT, and Dev server environments, its just that sometimes, changes need to made immediately, rather than going through the stricter channels."}
{"_id": "184008", "title": "Is there an advantage to using WCF or WebAPI for mobile?", "text": "I'm looking at doing my first mobile development using Mono Touch and Mono for Android. I'd like them to communicate with an ASP.NET MVC 4 site I'm designing. I've worked with WCF and WebAPI in the past but I'm wondering if there are any **quantifiable** advantages to using one over the other in this context?"}
{"_id": "115359", "title": "List of reserved words a username can't be?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a list of common usernames to reserve in a new system? I'm working on a site where users will have a custom URL e.g.: http://domain.com/username I want to avoid the situation where a user registers and creates a username that I later need, e.g. if I want a page at domain.com/about and someone's already named themselves 'about'. Does anyone have a list of generic words that could be added to a blacklist for this?"}
{"_id": "180939", "title": "Algorithm to find if a set can be recreated", "text": "I'm finding it hard to solve the problem and was hoping that someone could help me with the solution or at least give me a search term to use for problems like this one. The generalized problem: I have a set of numbers (e.g. `[1,2,3]`) and a an array of sets (e.g. `[1,4,5],[4,2,3],[6,7,8],[2],[1,3]`). What I need to do is to find if I can create the first set from the others by taking 1 or 0 elements from them (e.g. taking 1 from the first, 2 from the second and 3 from the last). Order of the elements doesn't matter in any of the sets."}
{"_id": "255028", "title": "Which one is better?Change sprint dates or one team member is not attend sprint plans for 4 months", "text": "We have an agile team and nearly running 80. sprint.Our sprint starts wednesday and finish Tuesday 10 days after.One of our team member,developer, will attend to a university course every Wednesday during 4 months.Which one is better should we take sprint days Tuesday to Monday,total sprint day will not change still 10,or one member will not attend to sprint plans and team will give commitment for her."}
{"_id": "189870", "title": "How to compute amoritized cost for a dynamic array?", "text": "I am trying to understand how to do the amortized cost for a dynamic table. Suppose we are using the accounting method. Let A of size m be an array of n elements. When n = m, then we create a new array of size 4m, and then copy the elements of A to the new array. When n = m/4, then you create a new array of size m/4, and copy the elements to that array. What I am confused about is how to calculate the costs. From what I know so far: Before the first expansion, you pay two dollars to insert. `1$` for the insert, and `1$` you just store with the element, so that you can use that later for a copy operation. Then when you expand it, you use that stored `$` to move the element to the new array. Now in the new array the elements won't have any `$` with them. But now as you insert a new element, you use `3$`. `1$` for the insert, then one more for itself (for a future copy), and one more for the previous element that was just copied. The problem here is, what if you have an array like this: `1$ 2$` Then insert an element `1$ 2 3$ _ _ _ _ _` Now how do you handle a delete operation?"}
{"_id": "197766", "title": "Pros and cons of the following Parsing methods?", "text": "I'm thinking of making a Python-JavaScript converter/compile. I've been wondering about the pros and cons of the following methods to parse the Pythonic code, into JavaScript equivalent.   1. Working with the output of `ast.dump(ast.parse(code))`   2. Working with tokens. I've been trying weigh the pros and cons of these methods, but well I'm unable to think of any major one, as I've never used them..   So, Basically could someone help me by telling me what the pros and cons of the two methods I've mentioned above are?   Also, if there is something better that I can use for this purpose, notify me about it.. PS: I'll be using Python to write the converter.."}
{"_id": "136710", "title": "How to connect iPad app to an app I have running in Windows", "text": "I recently picked up a macbook and want to start doing some apps for my ipad. I have a chat client written in c# that interfaces a game I play. What I would like to do is write an app for the ipad that would communicate somehow with my c# app. What would be the best approach to this? I have never used JSON but is this where I should be looking? I don't want to spend a ton of time looking in the wrong place, hoping someone here could point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "189878", "title": "What recent studies point to the possible improvement a programmer can make as a result of personal character traits?", "text": "In Chapter 33, Personal Character of Code Complete (Second ed.) McConnell cites some studies such as those listed below in support of the assertion that 10-1 improvement is possible from efforts in improving our programming as a result of personal determination to improve.   * Sackman, Erikson, and Grant 1968;    * Curtis 1981; Mills 1983;    * DeMarco and Lister 1985;    * Curtis et al. 1986;    * Card 1987;    * Valett and McGarry 1989 As you can see from the list above, these studies are quite dated. Have more recent studies been conducted that studied potential for improvement in programming efficacy? How do the findings compare to McConnell's research? What have these studies revealed about the progress modern methods and tools had in our ability to program?"}
{"_id": "68208", "title": "Universal Standards for Data Interchange - Do they exist and do you follow them?", "text": "**Mostly fact and maybe a little bit of opinion:**   One of my pet peeves in programming is data interchange. I work exclusively with small business software (as opposed to working with corporate ERP systems) and I see that many small businesses store contacts two or three times in different types of software where there is little or no interchange. Time clock systems usually don't integrate with calendaring and project management systems. Task management may be in a system separate from project management, or more commonly, tasks are managed on paper or mentally. These are just a few examples of the data interchange problems I see every day in almost every small business. It seems every software company has a different idea about how to store it's data and whether or not to expose that data for interchange and integration. If they do expose some of their data there is really no common standard to facilitate interchange or synchronization. You're always forced to read through the SDK/API documentation if you do want to program some type of integration and then it's almost never a painless experience to get it working and keep it working. It would be really nice to receive an \"electronic document\" from our vendors that would allow us to quickly enter bills into our accounting system. It would be really nice if we hire a new employee that we could make one single entry somewhere, enter his roles and then he would be entered into all the correct systems even if his information would need to be flagged for review in systems such as accounting. It would be so nice if all our contacts were seamlessly shared between systems so that updating an address or phone number in one of them would make the changes in all of them. **Questions:**   1. Do data interchange standards for common entities such as people, purchase orders, sales orders/invoices, shipping documents, projects, tasks, appointments, etc. already exist?    2. Assuming some do exist, are they commonly accepted, ratified standards?    3. Would you program a business system to use or follow these standards if the initial requirements of the project did not call for it? In other words, how common or accepted are these standards, enough to be followed every time?"}
{"_id": "76330", "title": "In open source jargon, who is a \"committer\"?", "text": "In open source jargon, is a \"committer\" someone who creates a commit that gets accepted into a project, or is a \"committer\" a gatekeeper who decides what commits/patches are or aren't accepted into the \"blessed\" repository?"}
{"_id": "157309", "title": "Can I watch a SHA-256 do its magic visually?", "text": "Is there any possible way I can download a program, type in a message, and watch the program display visually what iterations are going on and what formula the character is being fed through all the way down to the output message of a SHA-256 operation or is that just too geeky to ask for?"}
{"_id": "211735", "title": "Multiple sites with the same codebase in Python", "text": "I am trying to run a large amount of sites which share about 90% of their code. They are simply designed to query an API and return the results. They will have a common userbase / database but will be configured slightly different and will have different CSS (perhaps even different templating). My initial idea was to run them as separate applications with a common library but I have read about the sites framework which would allow them to run from a single instance of Django which may help to reduce memory usage. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/sites/ **Is the site framework the right approach to a problem like this, and does it have real benefits over running separate applications?** * * * Initially I thought it was, but now I think otherwise. I have heard the following: > Your SITE_ID is set in settings.py, so in order to have multiple sites, you > need multiple settings.py configurations, which means multiple distinct > processes/instances. You can of course share the code base between them, but > each site will need a dedicated worker / WSGIDaemon to serve the site. This effectively removes any benefit of running multiple sites under one hood, if each site needs a UWSGI instance running. Alternative ideas of systems:   * https://github.com/iivvoo/django_layers   * https://github.com/shestera/django-multisite I don't know what route to be taking with this."}
{"_id": "68201", "title": "Licensing for code that I find in forums or on SO?", "text": "Let us say, I am browsing the internet and stumble upon a SO answer/forum/blog with code that perfectly solves a problem I have. The only trouble is they didn't specify any sort of licensing for their code. Is this code usable in my project or would I break copyright laws? What would be required for me to include it in a closed source project? An open source project? What licenses would be compliant or non-compliant with it? (e.g. Could I take their code and release it with GPL code?)"}
{"_id": "76339", "title": "Confused about career options in Web Development", "text": "I am currently in the final year of my graduation in computer science course. I love programming in PHP but not under pressure. As my graduation life is going to be over I have to shape up my career. My personal desire is to become a web developer and start my own web-based company after completion of courses. I do not have any desire to work for a company as a developer. Currently I have programming knowledge of PHP, Mysql and Javascript. Though I have not completed any type of project in PHP. So to become a complete web developer what else do I need to know to be able to get developement project? Any project I apply for are simply declined due to lack of portfolio. So how should I proceed?"}
{"_id": "157307", "title": "Guided Questioning iOS App", "text": "I'm making an iPad app that will display a few choices and based on your choice will display a series of questions with each question triggering a different set of questions. I was wondering if there was a name for this or any open-source library that someone has made for this kind of app. If not, would it be best to hard code all the questions and responses into the app, or to read them from a file?"}
{"_id": "255027", "title": "What is exaclty Timer Deamon in windows? how can i get that using C#?", "text": "I have been trying to find the difference between the RTC clock and the system clock. At last I found that Timer Deamon in windows try to compare time between RTC and OS clock. If it is more than 1 min then the time will be updated in OS clock. But the thing is that I want to know what is time deamon exaclty? how can i access that using c#?"}
{"_id": "137575", "title": "Do we need \"obvious\" Method Documentation information?", "text": "I know we have questions about comments in general but I'm specifically wondering about Java Doc style method documentation here. * * * I've been pruning unnecessary comments as I refactor and I've noticed our code has painfully obvious descriptions of methods.               /**     * @name save     * @desc Validates and saves submitted daily plant production information.     */      Most of the \"documented\" functions are just method names used by convention in our MVC framework (CakePHP). It's inherently obvious that the save method in the Production Controller performs the necessary actions to save Production Information. We don't actually _use_ Java Doc and I question the value of these descriptions even if they were included in Java Doc style documentation. The only reason I haven't touched these because they're method documentation that's _supposed_ to be valuable. The method documentation also hasn't been used _consistently_ , about half of our Controller/model methods are documented. Is there any reason to keep these obvious \"Java Doc\" comments or should I prune them in favor of \"self documenting code\" and only make Java Doc comments for less obvious methods?"}
{"_id": "67452", "title": "Nurturing creativity", "text": "What is the best development methodology for nurturing personal creativity? Why do you think it's better than others? The methodologies can be agile, traditional or whatever."}
{"_id": "81124", "title": "How should I develop an unusual user interface?", "text": "Say I have an idea for a desktop application with unusual interface requirements. I need:   * Pixel-level control over the look and feel.   * Finely specified custom controls.   * Platform-independence. My typical solution in this scenario would be to use SDL (or SDL+OpenGL) as a graphics framework upon which to build the interface from scratch.   * Is it a good idea to work this way, or should I use an existing toolkit?   * If the latter, which toolkit with bindings for either C or C++ offers the cleanest and most versatile facilities for extension (creating new controls) and customisation (styling existing controls)?"}
{"_id": "37863", "title": "Is it ok to use VS Express edition to create small utilities at work?", "text": "I am developer working mainly in C# who has now been assigned to a Data Migration project. (Sad story, I know. But that's for another day). We are currently creating column-to-column mapping between tables in an Excel worksheet in a particular format. Now as many developers, I too hate this kind of mechanical work. I was thinking of creating some sort of small app which will help me in automating this process to a large extent. For this I was thinking of using Visual Studio Express edition as my manager says that the project can't afford a full- fledged VS license. Is it okay to do this considering the license terms of Express edition?"}
{"_id": "37862", "title": "Recommendations on integrating DI/IoC container into an existing application", "text": "I am now faced with integrating an inversion of control (IoC) container into an existing application, and I'm looking for some recommendations on how that can most easily be accomplished with the ultimate goal of reducing coupling, thereby increasing testability. Although I generally wouldn't classify most of the classes as god objects, each has too many responsibilities and hidden dependencies through statics, singletons, and lack of interfaces. Here is a bit of background some of the challenges that need to be faced:   * Dependency injection is infrequently used   * Static methods abound - both as factory and helper methods   * Singletons are fairly prevalent    * Interfaces, when used, are not too granular   * Objects often pull in unneeded dependencies through base classes Our intent is that the next time we need to make changes in a particular area, that we try to tease out dependencies which, in actuality, exist but are hidden behind globals such as singletons and statics. I suppose that makes the IoC container secondary to the introduction of dependency injection, but I would expect that there is a set of practices and recommendations that could be followed or considered that will help us break out these dependencies."}
{"_id": "108248", "title": "How should I communicate the specifics of cloud computing (as compared to other)", "text": "A meeting today went well where I explained that cloud computing which one of the persons recognized was something else than a traditional RDBMS and I said that cloud computing is that everthing is software. It didn't seem like \"Aha!\" when I said it so I wonder what I should say. I thought the main specifics of cloud computing are integrated services, no traditional RDBMS and resources are allocated as software and payment model is pay per usage instead of pay per hardware. And/or should I stress the concept of PaaS i.e. that it is a platform? Wikipedia says the distinction is between products and services but that we said about web services 15 years ago. Thanks in advance for you answers"}
{"_id": "234224", "title": "Can MVC implementations differ in design-details and still be considered MVC implementations?", "text": "Is the Model-View-Controller pattern very strictly defined, to it's design details? Or is it a term, like many others, with lots of different interpretations and versions (that all fit the definition)? I have come across many 'versions' and interpretations of the MVC term. For example: Some versions state that using the Observer pattern, the View registers as an observer to the Model. Through this the View gets updates from the Model when it changes, and can update itself. Other versions claim that the View must never interact with the Model in any way. The first version is from the Head First Design Patterns book. The second version I read here on Programmers. Two contradicting interpretation of the specific design-details of the MVC. And there are more examples. My question is: **Is the definition for the MVC pattern one of these terms that are interpreted in a variety of ways, which are all acceptable?** I am not talking about the higher-view definition of the pattern. This has a pretty clear definition. **I am talking about more specific details of design.** Examples: _Should Observer be used to update the View about changes of the Model? Should orders to the View to update be passed to it only through the Controller, or may be told to it by the Model directly?_ Things like these. Do MVC versions vary in these details, but all still fit the MVC definition? Or is it simply that there are lots of 'wrong' MVC implementations?"}
{"_id": "234223", "title": "Is it wise to invest time to learn another technology that you don't need to use at work?", "text": "I am primarily from a .net background. During the course of my regular job I find it tiring to keep up with all the relevant technologies (angular js, windows workflow, wcf, Jquery, SSIS, SSRS, asp.net ...). Since most of the top technology companies out there are java based, I am considering making a switch to java. But I am concerned that me devoting time to java might result in me lagging behind in .net (which is very vast ocean in itself). I don't want to spend a few years getting good at java only to realize that I ended up being a jack of all trades and who is not really good at anything. I know I am asking a very general question that may be hard to answer. But I am still hoping, some of the seasoned veterans with many years of experience, can give me some advice on this."}
{"_id": "234229", "title": "Place measurement data in database (access)", "text": "In a software I use records of measurement data. Each record contains basic information like a name, some parameters and the actual measurement data in the form of three arrays of double values that may vary in length from record to record. I currently use a binary format to save these records.   However I am not entirely happy with this approach, since it makes it hard to maintain (there may be changes or additional information in new versions and so on). So I was thinking of moving the data into a database like access. This would have advantages for everyone. I can add information as I want, the user can use the database for other purposes if they please, etc. However I am a complete novice in regards to databases and I wonder how I would structure a database to represent this content, especially the variable arrays.   I thought about encoding the double values into a string (like ; separated base64 strings) but this seems like a dirty hack that's not very user friendly. So my questions are:   * Is a database like Access suitable for my type of application.   * There are no \"array\"-fields in an Access database, right?   * How is storing a variable amount of data in a database entry usually handled?   * Can I link one Access-Table to an entry in another table? So I would create a Data-table with entries for each datapoint and link this to a specific record in my main table? I hope I could make myself clear somehow, but it's hard to wrap my head around the concepts. If you need more information, please ask. Thank you."}
{"_id": "234228", "title": "When allowing a user to change passwords, should I generate a new salt?", "text": "In my database, I have a column for the hashed password and the salt. My application allows users to change their password. Should I use the same salt for the password, or should I generate a new one? Does it matter to the security of the application?"}
{"_id": "186696", "title": "Is it reasonable to build applications (not games) using a component-entity-system architecture?", "text": "I know that when building applications (native or web) such as those in the Apple AppStore or Google Play app store that it's very common to use a Model- View-Controller architecture. However, is it reasonable to also create applications using the Component- Entity-System architecture common in game engines?"}
{"_id": "229663", "title": "How to design routes for generalized/specialized resources", "text": "I hope I can explain what is troubling me. Example: I have an object basket with a list of fruit objects. So normally I would build my routes like this baskets/{basketId}/fruits/{fruitId). But fruit is an interface and there are different implementations like apples and oranges that all require their own resource representation. So how do I build my routes now? Like one of those?:   * baskets/{basketId}/fruits/{fruitId}/apple,   baskets/{basketId}/fruits/{fruitId)/orange and so on   * baskets/{basketId}/fruits/{fruitId}/apples/{fruitId} , baskets/{basketId}/fruits/{fruitId}/oranges/{fruitId}   * baskets/{basketId}/apples/{fruitId},   baskets/{basketId}/oranges/{fruitId} What would be the restful way?"}
{"_id": "222393", "title": "Transport information screens", "text": "I need to create an information service on trains to deliver live information. I am looking for some ways to go about this. There are already existing LCD monitors in many of the train wagons. They are powered from the battery. When the train is moving, I would like the screens to display the following information: i) about the route, next stops etc. ii) news items iii) video adverts to be shown when the train is within a GPS 'corridor'. For this to work, we need to place GPS on board. We also need to be connected to the internet to be able to get live data (for the news items) and to be able to push new video content when it becomes available. I don't want to have to visit each train wagon just to load up new data. I had originally thought I would need to have an app built in Android that did all this, but I think it would be easier all round if I could get this to work via HTML5 on a browser. So far I have come up with the following 2 hardware possibilities: 1) Buy cheap, 2nd-hand tablets with broken screens (as I should still be able to control it using a mouse). They should have GPS capability either in-built or via a dongle and be internet-enabled (likely a SIM card). Output the display to the LCD screen. 2) Install a laptop with the same capabilities. With 1) it is possible to buy older tablets or with cracked screens etc. so the cost can be kept lower, although it would be impossible to get a standard type (which would be far easier to maintain). They can be bolted onto the back of the monitor. The disadvantage is that the output from the tablet may not be high enough resolution when blown up onto an LCD With 2), a laptop, the resolution issue can be more easily overcome. It also may be easier to source working laptops with broken/missing screens. I imagine that I will need to send information about the GPS location to a server every 10 seconds or so, maybe in a simple GET in a URL, so that I can present the information on a web-page. This might work for information like the next stop, and news feeds, but the videos will likely be longer than 10 seconds. So how do I deliver the content? Among the things I am wondering is if a browser connected to the internet can do all this. The location needs to be continually updated. Instead of simply playing everything on a loop, things happen when the train is in certain areas e.g. approaching/leaving a station. One way to do it is send the GPS data back every 15 seconds and then refresh the browser web-page to display content based on that GPS location and direction. Additionally, would video content cache correctly? When a browser needs to show that content, it would be nice if there wasn't a lot of lag as it tries to download a new video (or display an existing one). And, although using machines with broken screens, which are more cost- effective and less of a target for theft, they become less user-friendly. What happens in the event of a power-outage? It is possible to reboot everything correctly to have the browser displaying everything and connected to the GPS and internet? Lots for me to solve :)"}
{"_id": "222395", "title": ".NET Programming and POCO classes", "text": "I was having a think tonight while pondering over some application I need to change and it got me thinking. Entity Framework Entities are POCO (Plain old CLR Objects) and models used in ASP.NET MVC are usually also POCO. This basically means just properties, no methods. Now OO programming normally allows an object to encapsulate its functionality, which includes its properties as well as its methods, this allows for polymorphism to happen. With the rise of POCO classes being used, design patterns like generic repositories have become more popular. When in the past my objects would have had their own CRUD operations, I now have them on a repository. Is this just an evolution in OO where CRUD operations are removed from the objects to allow them to be decoupled or maybe CRUD operations shouldn't have been at object level in the past and I was in the wrong? heck, maybe both are perfectly legit and always have been. Its just an observation that got me thinking, so figured I would seek other opinions."}
{"_id": "238270", "title": "How to show to management that unit testing is cheaper in the long run than manual testing?", "text": "In the company I work for there is a requirement that all the code should be covered by a test of any kind because they want to have as few user reported defects as possible. With this is mind I decided to put a policy that the code should be unit tested to C0 (100% coverage of each line, not each condition). Now others say that this is more expensive that doing manual test. Intuitively I would say that this is wrong as each time you do a change you have to retest everything manually and this is probably more effort than just executing the tests and updating the ones that need to be updated but I don't find a way to justify myself with numbers, papers or other information. Can you give me some good points to proof my approach to the people I report to? **EDIT** : Thanks to all that helped on the question. I see that there were some key points missing on it:   * This is a new product that we started developing one year ago with testing in mind so we use DI everywhere and everything is prepared for testing.   * We already have a commercial product that allows us to reach a 100% coverage as we can mock almost everything, including .Net classes so we can truly isolate classes (JustMock).   * We have tools to calculate testing coverage.   * We are not removing testers and manual testing. We are removing manual testing done by developers. We have a separate SQ team but management wants that the number of bugs that reach the SQ team is as small as possible so developers must reach 100% coverage by any mean before delivering code to the SQ team. So what I did was to replace developer manual testing with automated testing (unit and integration tests) and that's what management wants to revert. **The question is not the same as the \"duplicated\" one as I already have a 100% coverage requirement.**"}
{"_id": "222398", "title": "OOCSS / BEM / SMACSS architecture", "text": "I've been working through this article to organize my front-end code. It references articles on BEM / SMACSS, which in turn reference other articles. I'm really trying to understand what the best practices are ... I have a few days to lay down this \"standard\", and then have to burn through a high- priority / high-visibility / limited timeline project. As such, I'd like to ensure I'm starting with a foundation that will scale as my app does. Given a component named `segment` ... I'm creating pages that will have ~10 `segments` per page. Each `segment` will share the same base class. However, certain `segments` will have modifiers on them (different background colors). Further, elements within each block (in the BEM approach) will have modifiers as well. To demonstrate, here is a simple implementation (with only a single element `arrow`, while my full site will have 4-5 elements in each `segment`):               .segment__arrow {         position: absolute;         bottom: -24px;         left: 50%;         margin-left: -11px;         background-position: center no-repeat;         height: 21px;         width: 21px;         z-index: 2;     }     .segment__arrow--orange {         @extend .segment__arrow;         background-image: url('/images/arrow_orange.png');     }     .segment__arrow--white {         @extend .segment__arrow;         background-image: url('/images/arrow_white.png');     }      So this is the single-class approach:               <div class=\"segment__arrow--white\"> ... </div>      Alternatively, I could go with the multi-class approach:               .segment__arrow {         position: absolute;         bottom: -24px;         left: 50%;         margin-left: -11px;         background-position: center no-repeat;         height: 21px;         width: 21px;         z-index: 2;     }     .segment__arrow--orange {         background-image: url('/images/arrow_orange.png');     }     .segment__arrow--white {         background-image: url('/images/arrow_white.png');     }      Where my markup would be:               <div class=\"segment__arrow segment__arrow--white\"> ... </div>      Third, I could do:               .segment__arrow {         position: absolute;         bottom: -24px;         left: 50%;         margin-left: -11px;         background-position: center no-repeat;         height: 21px;         width: 21px;         z-index: 2;     }     .segment__arrow.orange {         background-image: url('/images/arrow_orange.png');     }     .segment__arrow.white {         background-image: url('/images/arrow_white.png');     }      And then my class def would be               <div class=\"segment__arrow orange\"> ... </div>      Perhaps even namespacing orange with something like `sa_orange` to avoid loose selectors. The end result I'm looking for is less code / easier to maintain (which probably rules out the single class approach (option 1), as described in this great article on scalable architecture. The multi-class approach (option 2) results in a lot of verbosity (especially in my HTML), but is extremely explicit. The third uses a multi-class approach, but doesn't use namespaced modifiers (like .segment__arrow), so is slightly less verbose (but also less explicit & higher potential for collisions). Does anybody with real world experience with this stuff have any feedback on the best way to approach this?"}
{"_id": "79310", "title": "Good unit test examples for embedded C developers", "text": "I'm going to be giving a talk to my department next week about unit testing and test-driven development. As part of this, I'm going to show some real- world examples from some code I've written recently, but I'd also like to show some very simple examples that I'll write in the talk. I've been searching on the web for good examples, but I've been struggling to find any that are particularly applicable to our area of development. Almost all of the software we write is deeply-embedded control systems running on small microcontrollers. There's a lot of C code that is easily applicable to unit testing (I'll be talking about unit testing on the PC rather than on the target itself) as long as you stay clear of the 'bottom' layer: the stuff that talks directly to the microcontroller peripherals. However, most examples I've found tend to be based on string-processing (e.g. the excellent Dive Into Python Roman numerals example) and since we hardly ever use strings this isn't really suitable (about the only library functions our code typically uses are `memcpy`, `memcmp` and `memset`, so something based on `strcat` or regular expressions isn't quite right). So, on to the question: please can anyone offer some good examples of functions that I can use to demonstrate unit testing in a live session? A good answer in my (subject to change) opinion would probably be:   * A function that is simple enough that anyone (even those who only write code occasionally) can understand;   * A function that doesn't appear pointless (i.e. working out the parity or CRC is probably better than a function that multiplies two numbers together and adds a random constant);   * A function that is short enough to write in front of a room of people (I may take advantage of Vim's many clipboards to reduce errors...);   * A function that takes numbers, arrays, pointers or structures as parameters and returns something similar, rather than handling strings;   * **A function that has a simple error (e.g.`>` rather than `>=`) that's easy to put in that would still work in most cases but would break with some particular edge case: easy to identify and fix with a unit test.** Any thoughts? Although it's probably not relevant, the tests themselves will probably be written in C++ using the Google Test Framework: all our headers already have the `#ifdef __cplusplus extern \"C\" {` wrapper around them; this has worked well with the tests I've done so far."}
{"_id": "232971", "title": "Implementation difference between Lombok & AutoValue", "text": "I thought both Project Lombok & AutoValue used compiler annotation processors, but from this slide presentation and this stackoverflow answer it seems that `Lombok` doesn't? Or at least no only annotation processors? How do `Lombok` & `AutoValue` differ with regards to this?"}
{"_id": "232975", "title": "Performance and data retrieving", "text": "I'm currently developing a mobile application in **Objective C** for **iOS** devices. While doing the application I reach the point where I have to retrieve data from a database and show it on a table (the name of a specific workout routine and his description). The way I see it I can do this in two ways:   1. I can select every workout from the database and the associated description, build a collection of objects, send it to the appropriate controller and show in a table all the names, when one is selected I can send the appropriate object to another controller (the one from the next view) and show the appropriate description (this way I just do one operation over the database and manage a lot of objects).   2. The other way of doing this is just retrieving all the workouts names, when one is selected retrieve the associated description from the database and show it (this way I do two operations over the database but manage a lot of less data and objects in the application). What I'm concerned about is performance. Is it better to do more operations over the database and manage less information and objects in the application or is it better to do less operations over the database and manage more information and objects? I know that every application is different and one answer can't be applied to everyone of them, but how should I think about it when developing one? Thanks for your time and help."}
{"_id": "232976", "title": "Why should one subclass instead of composite when using the Factory Method design pattern?", "text": "I'm currently learning about design patterns. I learned about the Factory Method pattern. This pattern means that in order to implement a factory to create objects, one should subclass the class that needs these objects, and have the subclass create them. This way the superclass only works with more abstract references instead of the concrete implementations the subclass generates, which creates a loosely coupled design. This usually means the superclass becomes `abstract`, since it's `createObject()` method must be `abstract` so that the subclass containing the factory method will have to implement this method. Like any factory pattern, this pattern encapsulates the creation of the concrete object, and allows the client to work with a higher level of abstraction. But this specific pattern is built on inheritance. **What I don't understand is** \\- Why would anybody go through all the trouble of subclassing the class that needs a factory and making it `abstract`? **Composition is so much better for this purpose in any way.** It makes much more sense to **create an abstract class or an interface called`Factory`.** It would declare one method: `createObject()`. We **create concrete implementations of it for different purposes** (`WeaponFactory`, `TitleFactory`..) Then, we **give the client a`Factory` member instance `factory`.** This reference is **set to whatever concrete`Factory` is needed at runtime**, and the client can simply use `factory`'s `createObject()` when needed (without having to know what concrete implementation `factory` is holding). I don't understand why one would go through the trouble of subclassing a class and making it abstract just for the benefit of allowing it to use a factory in a loosely-coupled manner. The simple composition-based design I described is better in any way - I think. **Do you agree? Could you explain why anybody would use the Factory Method Pattern I described?**"}
{"_id": "228536", "title": "High-Level SQL Interoperability", "text": "In a server -> client scenario, wouldn't it be simpler and faster to grant a public user access to a Stored Procedure rather than using web services (XML, REST, SOAP, etc) and other interoperable solutions? That way you could connect directly to a database and get relevant content and do what you will with it in the same way across all languages and systems?"}
{"_id": "228535", "title": "How to describe an n-dimensional cube?", "text": "I want to describe an n-dimensional cube (a 2-dimensional cube is a square, a 3-dimensional cube is a cube, etc). I'm pretty sure I need an array, but how do I organise it in the best possible way? So far, I think the best way is to create an array with n dimensions (eg. a square is `$cube [][]`), but I can't understand how to create it. A similar approach may be storing an n-cube as an array of n cubes of n-1 dimensions, which is far more practical (eg. a cube is an array of squares, and each square is an array of points)."}
{"_id": "228531", "title": "Are HSQLDB unit tests an anti pattern?", "text": "HSQLDB is great. It (also) has an embedded mode (no dedicated server needed), which allows for quick prototyping of stuff like Proof of Concepts, and it can also be great in production-ready applications, as a quick and simple storage of various data. However, at least 90% of the projects I've worked on in the past years, if they deal in any way with an SQL database, they will unavoidably have unit tests that use an embedded HSQLDB. Sure-enough, these projects (which use the standard Maven structure most of the times), have a ton of \"unit tests\" (or, at least, some kind of tests, but which are located in the \"unit-test\" area of the project (like \"src/test/java\")) which use one or more embedded instances of HSQLDB in order to do some CRUD operations and check the results. My question is: is this an anti-pattern? Does the fact that HSQLDB is easy to integrate and the embedded server is very lightweight make it so that it can be overlooked as \"mock-up\" of an actual database, when it shouldn't be the case? Shouldn't such tests be treated more like integration-tests (since each of them is composed of \"something\" _AND_ that \"something\"'s integration with a database server)? Or am I missing something in the \"unit test\" definition, and we can infact say that using HSQLDB like this simply adheres to the \"mock the dependencies, and test only the unit\" part of the \"unit test\" definition?"}
{"_id": "188581", "title": "Validating Emails in PHP", "text": "I wrote the following function to validate emails for a web app I'm working on:               function validate_email($email) {         $valid = true;              if(!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {             $valid = false;         }              $email_parts = explode(\"@\", $email);              if(count($email_parts) < 2) {             $valid = false;         }         else {             if(!checkdnsrr($email_parts[1], \"MX\")) {                 $valid = false;             }         }              return $valid;     }      It's not intended to replace the validation email sent to the user with a link to complete the registration. I know it wont catch all invalid ones, it will just reduce them. Hence reduce the amount of bounced emails received. My questions are:   1. Will it flag a valid emails as a false positive?   2. Is it okay to depend on a DNS check to validate the domain?  Any help is appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "76376", "title": "What programming should I know before college?", "text": "I am a student in high school who has wanted to become a computer programmer since elementary school. There are not very many places that teach programming to people my age around where I live, so I am entirely self-taught using resources on the internet such as the MSDN. I have learned and become decent in QBASIC (which I know is very old, even when I learned it), C, C++, C# and have dipped my toes into Java. I get the basic idea behind OOP. I'm planning on going to college and getting a degree in computer sciences, and maybe computer engineering and electrical engineering while I'm at it, because the curriculums are supposedly extremely similar, according to a man I briefly met and talked to from a college. What should I know about computing/programming before going to college? Should I already know a whole lot, know a language or two proficiently, and have fairly high programming/computing skills, or do classes basically start from scratch?"}
{"_id": "147610", "title": "What code format has been verified by case studies as most readable?", "text": "Are there any eye tracking case studies, or similar research done to verify what code format is easiest to read, maintain and work with. I always format my code this way.               function thing()     {         if(something)         {           // do something         }         else         {           // do something else         }     }      But, I never see this followed elsewhere. In most APIs or open source projects it's done like this.               function thing() {         if(something) {           // do something         } else {           // do something else         }     }      Can you provide an answer that is not based upon your personal preference, but is supported by research or some kind of fact? **Has there been any visual eye scanning studies done to confirm which format is best?**"}
{"_id": "188588", "title": "Is there a name for this design pattern?", "text": "I don't like singletons, but I have to compromise now (but only as temporary measure). However I don't want to go completely singleton. I'd rather want to use this pattern:               interface NameThisInterface {            //Returns the currently centralized object.       static function current();            //Centralizes the instance.       function centralize();          }               class A implements NameThisInterface {        ...     }               $obj = new A;               $obj->centralize();          ...               A::current(); //gets $obj.      Basically A would be my \"Application\" class. All controllers, models and views etc will access need only one instance of it. But for the sake of easier unit- testing among other reasons I want to have the application object stored as a reference to all MVC classes. So with the pattern above, the conversion at this later point in time will be easier and some of the unit testing might be easier. Is there a generally accepted name for this pattern?"}
{"_id": "136198", "title": "Use Theme/Skin or CSS in Asp.Net", "text": "I am working on a website which is using Skin templates everywhere in the page. Because of this all the controls, even labels, are server controls. I was wondering if it is worth changing at least labels to HTML controls and create CSS for them. Is there any advantage of using Skin over CSS?"}
{"_id": "154144", "title": "How to define implementation details?", "text": "In our project, an assembly combines logic for the IoC-Container, the project internals and the communication layer. The current version evolved to have only internal classes in addin assemblies. My main problem with this approach is, that the entry point is only available over the IoC-Container. It is not possible to use anything else than reflection to initialize the assembly. Everything behind the IoC-Interface is defined as implementation detail and therefore not intended for usages outside. It is well known that you should not test implementation detail (such as private and internal methods), because they should be tested through the public interface. It is also well known, that your tests should not use the IoC-Container to setup the SUTs, because that would result in too much dependencies. So we are using the InternalsVisibleTo-Attribute to make internals visible to our test assemblies and test the so called implementation details. I recognized that one problem could be the mixup between different concerns in that assembly, changing this would make this discussion useless, because classes have to be defined public. Ignoring my concerns with this, isn't the need to test a class enough reason to make it public, the usages of InternalsVisibleTo seems unintended, and a little bit \"hacky\". The approach to test only against the publicly available IoC-Container is too costly and would result in integration style tests. The pros of using internals are, that the usages are well known and do not have to be implemented like a public method would have to be (documentation, completeness, versioning,...). Is there a solution, to not test against internals, but keep their advantages over public classes, or do we have to redefine what an implementation detail is."}
{"_id": "186520", "title": "Interview puzzle on traveling on a line segment", "text": "Here's an interesting question I came upon: Let's just say on a number line of length `M`, where `0 < M <= 1,000,000,000`, you given `N` (`1 < N <= 100,000`) integer pairs of points. In each pair, the first point represents where an object is currently located, and the second point represents where an object should be moved. (Keep in mind the `second` point may be _smaller_ than the `first`). Now, assume you start at the point `0` and have a cart that can hold `1` object. You want to move all objects from their initial positions to their respective final positions while traveling the least distance along the number line ( _not_ displacement). You have to end up on point `M`. Now, I've been trying to reduce this problem to a simpler problem. To be honest I can't even think of a brute force ( _possibly_ greedy) solution. However, my first thought was to degenerate a backwards movement to two forward movements, but that doesn't seem to work in all cases. I drew out these `3` sample test cases in here: ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/zRv4Q.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dj9l8.png) The answer to the first testcase is `12`. First, you pick up the `red` item at point `0`. Then you move to point `6` (distance = `6`), drop the `red` item temporarily, then pick up the `green` item. Then you move to point `5` (distance = `1`) and drop the `green` item. Then you move back to point `6` (distance = `1`) and pick up the `red` item you dropped, move to point 9 (distance = `3`), then move to point `10` (distance = `1`) to finish off the sequence. The total distance traveled was `6 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 1 = 12`, which is the minimum possible distance. The other two cases have answers of `12`, I believe. However, I can't find a general rule to solve it. Anyone got any ideas?"}
{"_id": "25836", "title": "What is the best C++ interview question?", "text": "If you could ask a C++ programmer one question to measure their C++ skills, what would it be? The question I think is best is: **Can you call \"delete this;\" inside a member function?** (I put this as a link so you can think it through first, then go to The Best C++ Interview Question \u2013 Ever! to see the correct answer.) I don't ask this because I expect most people to know the answer. If they did it would not be that useful a question. I ask to see if they can work their way to the correct answer and how they do so."}
{"_id": "134220", "title": "Sending a collection of data to an API. Multiple small calls vs one big call", "text": "I am currently creating an API and implemented a few basic REST actions such as get, update, search etc. Another program that collects data needs to synchronize these to this API. My current thought is: What would be good practice to synchronize this data? A few informations: The amount of data that needs to be synchronized is different between applications. Some may transfer 100 records a minute, others 10k records a minute. There will be a transfer limit per hour to keep the server load balanced. Additionally, requests are signed with a token to check authenticity. Here's a little pro/con list I've made just now. I'm neither sure if these are real pros/cons there nor am I sure if I should weight some of them. **Option One**   Loop through this data and create an API call for every record. Pros:   * integrates better with the current REST API   * failed synchronisation entries can be queued for a resend Cons:   * a bigger overhead because of multiple calls **Option Two**   Build a package of all those data and send over that package in one call. Pros:   * less overhead   * just one query Cons:   * transfer error may drop all data   * separate implementation to allow"}
{"_id": "186526", "title": "When would you need \"hundreds of thousands\" of threads?", "text": "Erlang, Go, and Rust all claim in one way or another that they support concurrent programming with cheap \"threads\"/coroutines. The Go FAQ states: > It is practical to create hundreds of thousands of goroutines in the same > address space. The Rust Tutorial says: > Because tasks are significantly cheaper to create than traditional threads, > Rust can create hundreds of thousands of concurrent tasks on a typical > 32-bit system. Erlang's documentation says: > The default initial heap size of 233 words is quite conservative in order to > support Erlang systems with hundreds of thousands or even millions of > processes. My question: what sort of application requires so many concurrent threads of execution? Only the busiest of web servers receive even thousands of simultaneous visitors. Boss-worker/job-dispatching type applications I've written hit diminishing returns when the number of threads/processes is much greater than the number of physical cores. I suppose it might make sense for numerical applications, but in reality most people delegates parallelism to third party libraries written in Fortran/C/C++, not these newer generation languages."}
{"_id": "184815", "title": "Class inheritance and extra parameters", "text": "Im trying to create an SMS gateway .. I have a request coming in from a client (web form or API or database record) that I need to process and forward on to a 3rd Party API - or SMS provider. So that things would be simpler going forward I decided to create an interface that each provider implementation would implement :               interface SMSProvider       public method sendSMS(sendTo,message)       public method sendWakeup(sendTo)      I thought this would be my best way forward because then I wouldn't have to change my code when sending to a different provider - i knew that when i create my provider i just call the method to perform the function with the normal parameters and everything is good ... Well until I have a new provider that requires new parameters               new provider requires       - sendTo       - message       - sendFrom       - validityPeriod      So now what do i do ? how can i now use my interface ? when the new provider needs extra parameters ?"}
{"_id": "202010", "title": "In OnionArchitecture can UI talks directly to datastore or not?", "text": "I'm fan of onion architecture but looking for some relaxing solutions in some areas. First of all I was thinking about communicating directly from UI (from controller in mvc) to data on the read side. As everyone can see UI should not be referenced to any assembly except Core. When I want to display list of countries on page to select one, that I really need to do this through my Core? I see two solutions:   * UI has reference to NHibernate and talks directly   * add a very thin abstraction layer where I define IFinder<> (only to read data) which will be implemented in infrastructure Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "240758", "title": "method of validating sanity of order dependent values received asynchronously", "text": "I have a series of hardware devices that I'm connecting to create paths through. I have some sanity checking to make sure if potential paths are valid and will do what is intended, but to do it properly I need to know what device is the source of the path, and other information from that soruce. Once everything is set up I can infer the source by following the path backwards. However, when I first boot up and infer state, and when I send a request in-parallel to multiple devices, I may get connections out of order; so that I can't trace my connections back to the source because I know that connection A and C exit, but am not yet aware of B so I can't trace C back to A yet. This means it's hard to do the error checking right when I add the connection. My question is how do I do my sanity checking? I have three options, none of which I entirely like 1) trust I do my job right and no bad requests are made 2) try to store the source with each connection when it's created, so I can skip straight to the source for logic checking without tracing the path backwards. This can be done in theory, but I'm afraid that I'm now having to trust that when my pathing logic says something is the source it's right and that source will never change, as well as having logic for inferring source when connections come from the hardware and generally it seems potentially inelegant to maintain. 3) try doing sanity checking as soon as I have a full path (when I add B I now check that B and C are both good), the problem here is that throwing an exception in device B to report an issue with connection made on device C seems...confusing. 4) make connections without validating their sanity, but have someone else in charge of doing a sanity check after all the paths are hooked up (or immediately before)?"}
{"_id": "145615", "title": "Can we create a reference to DOM objects like document.location", "text": "As we have a wonderful concept called hooking where we can create a reference to a function and connect another function In the same way can we create a reference to DOM objects. For example can we create a function and **hook** it to **document.location** so that whenever document.location is used the other function must be triggered."}
{"_id": "180203", "title": "Is adhering to one assert per test foolish consistency in this case?", "text": "I have a class that I'm testing. The class has a function: `apply(List<IRule> rules, List<ITarget> targets);` In one test I want to ensure that each target has been passed to one rule, a la:               rule1.AssertWasCalled(fnord => fnord.Test(target1));     rule1.AssertWasCalled(fnord => fnord.Test(target2));     rule1.AssertWasCalled(fnord => fnord.Test(target3));      It seems to me that limiting myself to a single assertion statement would be quite the hobgoblin. Am I correct in this assumption, or is there some other way that I could assert that each target had, in fact, been tested?"}
{"_id": "240757", "title": "How to model an optional input to an activity?", "text": "I am constructing a UML 2.0 activity diagram. The activity is to evaluate data from a usability study of a prototype. It can optionally end with just getting the user satisfaction results. But if the company wants to choose which features to implement in the final version, which ones to change and which ones to leave out based on the satisfaction, they also need to do this evaluation. If they choose the additional evaluation, they also need some decision criteria. ![diagram wrong](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8uamv.png) As I understand the UML 2.0 formalism, the object node :classification criteria\" in the diagram version above must exist. It has to be there, to be available for token generation, etc. But in my activity, if the company doesn't want to do the \"classify features\" branch and chooses to end the activity at the flow final node, it doesn't have to prepare any classification criteria before it starts the activity. On the other hand, the criteria are external to the activity, so I can't really put them after an if split, they have to be there at the border. How do I model this situation correctly?"}
{"_id": "140065", "title": "Is it proper to have Investigation task in sprint", "text": "I have been practicing agile for more than a year now. As part of our sprint, some times we will have **Investigation Tasks**. We skip poker planning for theses tasks, and adds blanket numbers. Theses are tasks like investigating some tricky defects or technical feasibility of some features etc.. Is this proper or is there any alternative ways to tackle it?"}
{"_id": "188059", "title": "I want to adopt an agile methodology - in a company that has NO process at all?", "text": "I'm in a team of two developers and currently we have no formal processes for software development and testing - I'd like to adopt one solo initially. Where I need some opinions is really on the matter of where to begin? Having read various books it isn't terribly clear what the best starting point would be. Recently I put in place a simple sharepoint/access database for recording issues and resolutions, and a changelog. Beyond that, testing is a manual process. In my control is the process by which I design and develop any of my own tools or content and would very much like to adopt a lightweight agile methology that works well for a single developer but is intended to be a \"follow my example\" for the company to pull all the software development into it. I do like picking out items from various projects I have on the go and refactoring them or adding functionality; one of the notions I was considering was the notion of user stories whereby I could cherry pick out various stories when I was in the general project to which it applies. Anyone else in a similar single developer position who has adopted agile/other 'ology?"}
{"_id": "101649", "title": "A modern review of Java", "text": "I've been programming for a few years and I began in Java, and in my time I've found many different sources claiming Java to be an inferior language in some way or another. I'm well aware that each language has it's strengths and weaknesses, but a lot of things I've read about Java seem to be dated. The most often cited reason for Java being inferior is that it is much slower than other natively compiled languages, like C++ for example. Many people criticize the game designer Notch (who developed Minecraft) for using Java because of its apparent lack in the performance department. I know Java was much slower back in the day, but there have been many improvements since, especially JIT compilation. I would like to get some objective opinions of Java as a language today. So my question has 4 parts.   1. Performance. a. How does Java's speed today compare to C++? b. Would it be possible to create a modern AAA title using Java? c. In what areas specifically is Java slower than C++, if at all? (i.e. Number-crunching, graphics, or just all around)   2. Is Java now considered a compiled language or interpreted language?   3. What are some major shortcomings of Java that have been addressed since the early days?   4. What are some major shortcomings of Java that have yet to be addressed? Edit: Just for clarification purposes I'm not making this Java vs C++, obviously on average c++ will be a little faster than Java. I simply need something to compare Java to in terms of maturity as a language at this point in time. Since c++ has been around forever I thought I would be a good point of comparison."}
{"_id": "23364", "title": "Solutions to problems that .NET can solve better than Java (or vice-versa)", "text": "To me it seems these are two different platforms that address similar enterprise(but not only) problems. I'm interested however in problems that Java can solve better than C#/.NET or C#/.NET can solve better than Java. Leaving aside the 'cost' factor, since that is somehow not an issue for big enterprise companies (the developers probably cost more than the licenses from Microsoft - it's just a thought) and even for small projects there are free/open-source tools for .NET so the cost can be zero for the .NET world as well. With Mono, you can port .NET to Linux and MacOS as well so the benefit that Java had(cross platform) isn't THE decision factor to use Java nowadays.. What real world problems can you think of where .NET would be a much better solution than Java, and vice-versa? I'm only interested in solutions to problems."}
{"_id": "136228", "title": "Open Source Licenses", "text": "I'm independently developing a physics-based game using HTML5 canvas and JavaScript; I've used no external code at all (including physics or game engines), and my code is about 5000 lines in length. The development is almost complete, and now I want to release it. I am planning to release the game as a paid app on the Chrome, Android, and Apple app stores, but I also want to release the code under an open source license - one which allows free reading and gleaning of ideas from my code, but does not allow more than a couple lines to be copied. Basically I want people who know where to look and how to use to find free code, and the general public to buy it, while preventing piracy or the development of a near copy. Is this possible with an open source license? What license should I use?"}
{"_id": "101645", "title": "Creating a New Scripting Language For the Learning Experience?", "text": "Is creating a scripting language for my own personal learning experience worth it? The reason I ask is that there are so many programming languages available already, I know mine will never have any actual use other than providing a good learning experience. I do, however, see drawbacks with just trying to make a scripting language as a learning experience: it will take a lot of time and effort in which I could be doing something more \"productive.\" Would creating a programming language (including writing drafts of its intended purpose, syntax, philosophy, interpreter, etc) be worth the time, effort and learning experience? Or are there other projects I could benefit more from?"}
{"_id": "188056", "title": "Why do web sites require certain characters in their credentials?", "text": "It seems like when web site lists requirements as to what characters MUST be in the password they're only providing a password map for someone who wants to hack their system. For instance, fsd.gov requires:               The password must be 10-14 characters in length.          The password must contain two each of the following:          Upper/lower case letters, numbers, and special characters.          An example of an acceptable password is:  AAbb1234!@      Congrats! If I wanted to hack your password, now I know that trying to guess \"aaaaaaaaa\" will be wrong, you've given me clues as to what I can guess and helped narrow it down. It seems to me like it's more open and more possible combinations if they didn't require special characters. Then if you included one your account is now more secure. _Note - As you've probably guessed, I'm not a pro at security, which is why I posted here._"}
{"_id": "188054", "title": "A multi tenant data architecture", "text": "We are at a planning & redesign stage of our loyalty card application. As it is understood it will be a multi-tenant application. And I need to take your thoughts. Here are the some key points we should take in to account to redesign logical and physical data structure:   1. Campaigns: We may organize cross tenant campaigns like if you buy this from tenant A you may buy that from tenant B with 10% discount.    2. Tenant Hierarchy: From the security point of view branches of tenants can only see their transactions not the other branch or tenant.    3. Customization for tenants will be rare to be ignored: We consider customization will be on card holder data only (at least we will not have a chance to make customizations per tenant base in next one or two years).   4. Card holder (not a tenant user, Also we may login for administrating and reporting all tenants) may login to system to see the transaction she made.  In general i agree with the idea of separating tenant dbs or sharding at some level. Since we have #1 criteria, it requires us to query all dbs to decide whether her transaction is shooted a campaign or not. It may be a huge performance problem. Or what do you think about sharding, does it really make performance issues? Also what would you prefer if you have to create OLAP system you have to query on multiple-sharded db for reporting and decision making purposes? On the other hand with separating db, more active tenants will take more performance gain from system especially while taking reports. Because their transactional data will reside in their own db and one query will be executed. We may allocate more resources on system and quote meaningful price for their usage of application. Sharding will also be helpful if we consider to place this app on cloud because sqlServer azure has limit of 10gb per db. One idea is separating dbs but maintaining a master db for cross decisions like campaigns etc (like the one mentioned here at edit part of the question). But all reports will be taken from the dbs they owned. A second idea is separation of much more active tenants and handling the others by tenantID approach in master db. Lastly we may consider nosql graph db to process transactions on campaign server. We will also be using NHibernate for ORM tool. But sharding project left undone and we should take into account to implement one for us to implement seperate db approach using sharding or master db approach. What do you think about using nhibernate at transaction handling service? Will it be a performance penalty using NHibernate in a real time service that should perfom high speed response? If so what would you suggest? ## EDIT @rae1n To be more understandable on my certain needs : 1 - According to key point i mentioned above what data architecture would you suggest ?   * One db and TenantID per table, replicate the db when needed.   * Using shards with master table.   * Using mix of sharding and tenantID.    * Your own suggestion. 2 - Is NHibernate suitable for you suggestion for #1 and how? Could you please suggest a sample app or link to a article ? 3 - Is NHibernate suitable for campaign assessment service. Please take into account that there may be very complex campaigns amoung 1 to n tenants and we should support these behaviours. 4- Would you suggest nosql graph db for campaign assessment and do you know a sample for that usage?"}
{"_id": "125275", "title": "How is type checked in a dynamic language interpreter/compiler, such as JavaScript?", "text": "In dynamic languages, such as JavaScript or Python, the type of a variable is determined at runtime. This is one reason why they are slower than typed languages such as Java. How is type checking performed? What is the essential reason this process is slow?"}
{"_id": "109117", "title": "Managing contractors on Github", "text": "I want to manage outsourced contractors to help develop our code. The code sits on Github. I wish to use a simplified version of this branching model: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ For now, the code is not modular, so I cannot hide parts of it from some developers, a la http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3852601/github-branches I do want to hook up our production and staging servers to a repository, so I need to manage write access to the code repository. Q1 - does this mean I need an ORGANIZATION account on Github? I'm assuming I do. Q2 - Would this branching methodology work: A `Main` repository with the `Master` and `Integration` branches. Contractors (not having write access) will pull from this repository (or fork it?). When they are done with a task, they will send a pull-request via the site. Q2A - does this mean I will not have the ability to track task branches in my repository?   Q2B - how will the integration process work? Do I need to assign a new team, called integrators? Will they pull the completed tasks to the integration branch of the main repository, test it and if good merge to the master branch? Q3 - Is there a better model? **EDIT** \\- I trust these developers with my code (with regards to secracy). I do not trust them to decide when a feature is ready for production, or which fixes go into the next release. Thanks! Tal."}
{"_id": "76804", "title": "Explaining floating point precision to customers", "text": "What is the best way to explain floating point rounding issue to **_customers_**? I know http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html as well as the entries in the C++ FAQ and various other pages aimed at developers and scientists, but is there a web page, article or explanation, aimed at \"regular\" customers with limited mathematical or scientific background? (for which the above references fall flat). If it were maintained or coming from a well-known and well-recognized institution or corporation, all the better, given that, as some of you might have experienced, it can be a little complicated to explain that yourself."}
{"_id": "51712", "title": "Why Functional Programming", "text": "What is the deal with functional programming? I see talk about it a lot but to be honest I've never found them at all useful. Why do so many universities apparently teach them?"}
{"_id": "177546", "title": "How do you handle increasingly long compile times when working with templates?", "text": "I use Visual Studio 2012 and he have cases where we added templates parameters to a class \"just\" in order to introduce a \"seam point\" so that in unit-test we can replace those parts with mock objects. How do you usually introduce seam points in C++: using interfaces and/or mixing based on some criteria with implicit interfaces by using templates parameters also ? One reason to ask this is also because when compiling sometimes a single C++ file (that includes templates files, that could also include other templates) results in an object file being generated that takes in the order of around 5-10 seconds on a developer machine. VS compiler is also not particularly fast on compiling templates as far as I understand, and because of the templates inclusion model (you practically include the _definition_ of the template in every file that uses it indirectly and possibly re-instantiate that template every time you modify something that has nothing to do with that template) you could have problems with compile times (when doing incremental compiling). What are your ways of handling incremental(and not only) compile time when working with templates (besides a better/faster compiler :-))."}
{"_id": "163203", "title": "How to adopt scrum agile methodology for a small .Net team", "text": "I am working on a small product based company developing .Net applications. There is a small team with 5-6 developers. I am a person responsible for planning everything. But my primary role is Software developer. Now our current project is very unstable because of poor organization. Today my boss called me and told to submit a report about required resources, appropriate methodology, required man power and their salary scales to make the current project success. I know I don\u2019t have enough organization skills and I need to go deep in my programming skills. So I need to focus only in the development. So I can\u2019t manage the project anymore. Now I am searching some other ways to make ongoing development success. My questions are   * What is the suitable agile methodology to my team?   * Is Scrum is suitable for above mentioned scenario?   * If we adopt Scrum, what we have to do next? (I think hiring new one to manage the project is more suitable. So we have to get Scrum master and some other developers.)   * Are there any resources (books, Blogs and etc) to get some tips and advices to solve this problem?   * If Scrum is not a suitable methodology for our scenario, what else can be more suitable methodology to adopt? Can anyone give a good solution for my problem?"}
{"_id": "140392", "title": "Should devs, testers and business users have one unified test script?", "text": "In development, I would normally have my own test scripts that would document the data, scenarios and execution steps that I plan to test; this is my dev test plan. When the functionality has been deployed to Test, testers test it using their own test script that they wrote. In UAT, the business user then tests using their own test plan. In retrospect, it looks like this provides a better coverage, with dev tests having a mix of black and white box testing, while testers and business users focus on black box testing. But on the other hand, this brings up distinct test cases that only are executed per stage (ie. some cases which testers thought of are only executed on Test stage) and it would like the dev missed it, which makes it a finding/bug. Is it worth consolidating the test scripts from the start? Thus using one unified test script, or is it abit difficult to do this upfront?"}
{"_id": "133015", "title": "Private variable vs property?", "text": "When setting a value to a variable inside of a class most of the time we are presented with two options:               private string myValue;     public string MyValue     {        get { return myValue; }        set { myValue = value; }     }      Is there a convention that determines how we should assign values to variables inside of our classes? For example if I have a method inside the same class should I assign it using the property or using the private variable. I've seen it done both ways, so I was wondering if this is a choice or performance is a factor (minor, probably)."}
{"_id": "139419", "title": "Changing from VB.NET to C#?", "text": "I am working on co-op at a company as a test engineering specialist. This is not technically a software job, however at the end of the day, I spend most of my time programming. I am not a programming wiz by any means, but I am very comfortable using VB.NET since that is what projects started at my company previous to my time were written in, and so it is what I have learned and used in the position. I have gotten the feeling from my time searching for help online when I need it that there is generally more and better support for C# than there is for VB.NET. This has led me to thinking that it may be beneficial for the company going forward to start programming less in VB.NET and more in C#. However, almost all projects in my department (since several other people work on small programming projects) are currently written in VB.NET. Additionally, most of the software design done in our department is relatively simple I would imagine relative to a software focused area of any company. Probably half of it is generating html pages with graphs to visually illustrate certain data. Taking these two facts into account, there are obvious disadvantages to trying to switch the main programming language used. Also, the vb.net language is very similar to VBA (for excel) and VBScript, which are also used quite a bit in my area of the company. I am basically not sure if it would be worth the work to change the main language used since there is not a lot of complicated programming done, and similar languages are necessary anyways it seems. I was curious what additional insight experienced programmers may be able to offer me regarding changing the main language used in my area from VB.NET to C#? What benefits or disadvantages are there that I may not have thought of? How big a role do each advantage and disadvantage play? What is your overall opinion on the idea of changing from VB.NET to C#?"}
{"_id": "131165", "title": "When we talk about 'a closure' do we refer to a single variable, or do we refer to all 'closed' variables?", "text": "Let's take the following (JavaScript) code that returns a function that closes over variables `x` and `y` to illustrate:               function test() {       var x = Math.random();       var y = Math.random();       var f = function() {          console.log(x, y);        };            return f;     }     test()();      _The code is nonsensical, I just want to close over`x` and `y`._ Variables `x` and `y` don't exist outside of the function `test` but they remain available in the function `f`. Barring any compiler optimizations (like inlining), do we say there is a single closure ( _created by_ `f`), or do we say there are two closures ( _for/over_ `x` and `y`)?"}
{"_id": "131161", "title": "What is the reason behind the if syntax of CoffeeScript?", "text": "In most other languages the condition comes before the statement to be executed when the condition is met. However, in CoffeeScript (and maybe some other languages) the syntax is:               number = -42 if opposite      Is there any online documentation of what the logic behind this design decision for this syntax was?"}
{"_id": "6656", "title": "How to Subtly Tell a Professor About our Poor Programming Assignments?", "text": "This is related to my C++ teacher of semester one and, unfortunately, the coming second semester as well. I have already completed the first assignment; needless to say, it's horrible. How can I gently tell my professor that the homework he is forcing us to do is giving us a bad example of good OOP as well as bad OOP practice in C++. For example, he is forcing us to class all of our functions, use get/set methods for all members and painstakingly horrible functions to call our data. This is an example of the homework project we have to do:               AuctionApplication aA;     Auction *auction = aA.CreateAuction(\"Hello\");     Bidder *bidder   = aA.CreateBidder(\", World\");     Bid *bid         = aA.bid(bidder, auction, 0);          std::cout << \"Auction:  \"  << aA.GetLatestBid(auction)->GetAuction()->GetName()               << \"\\nBidder:  \" << aA.GetLatestBid(auction)->GetBidder()->GetName()               << \"\\nPrice:  \"  << aA.GetLatestBid(auction)->GetPrice() << \"\\n\\n\";          std::cout << \"Auction:  \"  << bid->GetAuction()->GetName()               << \"\\nBidder:  \" << bid->GetBidder()->GetName()               << \"\\nPrice:  \"  << bid->GetPrice();      Every single function must have a non-void return type, I cannot simply retrieve any data whatsoever without jumping through hoops. Above that, it's not even encapsulated properly, as I can easily get a bid member and then, if I was an unknowing programmer, continue programming with said value. There is no const-correctness, there is no efficiency (everything is pass by value, even vectors and lists), there is no exception safety, nothing whatsoever. The homework assignments are bug-ridden and goes against the nature of C++, which is, in my opinion, OOP in moderation, as it demands. I'm not sure if it's me, and how my other classmates feel about it. I know my friend feels the same way, but most of the class is struggling as it is with a fail-rate of 60% on exams. Is there any way I can tell my teacher to try and give better assignments in a more C++ style environment without possibly raising his ire? Posting this in Programmers as opposed to SO since the question deals with how to talk to programming professors, not write actual code :)"}
{"_id": "92004", "title": "Does being a software tester make you a more well-rounded developer?", "text": "I'm interested in the prospect of spending a few years as a tester: it seems like two or three years as a tester in anyone's CV is a big gain. Are there any skills you can get as a software tester which you can't (or certainly won't) get as a developer? Is there a way back from software testing to development or do most companies prefer \"pure\" developers?"}
{"_id": "255079", "title": "How do newly-created programming languages use Windows API features?", "text": "WinAPI is focused primarily on the C family, but how do new programming languages use those features without creating their own runtime/interpreter type thing? Do they hook directly into the DLL files? kernel32.dll contains most of those functions right? Thanks."}
{"_id": "177092", "title": "Are python's cryptographic modules good enough?", "text": "I mean, say you were writing professional grade software that would involve sensitive client information. (Take this in the context of me being an amateur programmer.) Would you use hlib and hmac? Are they good enough to secure data? Or would you write something fancier by hand? Edit: In context of those libraries containing more or less the best hashing algorithms in the world, I guess it's silly to ask if you'd \"write something fancier.\" What I'm really asking here is whether it's enough on its own."}
{"_id": "231305", "title": "Best way to make synchronous calls between JEE apps", "text": "I have two jee web apps that are going to be published on the same physical server, but on different network addresses. **APP A** : Listens to a port on a public IP address and makes synchronous invocations to app B if necessary. **APP B** : Listens to a port on a private IP address and makes synchronous invocations to app A if necessary. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zfoDg.png) For connecting APP A with APP B, I am considering the following alternatives.   * RMI    * Message Queue    * Lightweight ESB Please tell me if you see any clear advantage supported by facts on any of them, or if there's another technology I should consider."}
{"_id": "184585", "title": "Strategies to avoid data entry duplication between PDF vs. website (e.g. restaurant menus)", "text": "I'm building a website for a restaurant. They have a downloadable PDF version of their menu (which is what the \"real-world\" menu is printed from), but we also want to have a text-based version of the menu on the website (because it's the 21st century and you shouldn't have to read a PDF when browsing a site like this). I'm hoping to avoid -- or minimize as much as possible -- the potential problems with maintaining data in two places (one in the PDF and one on the website). In an ideal world, we'd build a custom dashboard interface for managing menu data, with a fully-normalized schema, and from that data we'd automatically generate the PDF _and_ the website versions of the menu (and come up with a very expensive and flexible visual design for the PDF menu that takes into account all future permutations of data that may be contained within it -- because the visual layout of the PDF menu is very important, since that's what the \"real-world\" menu is printed from). But, since the budget is not unlimited, I'm trying to think of other ways to accomplish this goal. Are there any compromise solutions or \"this gets you halfway there\" kind of things I could do? Obviously I'm not expecting a perfect and cheap solution, but anything that minimizes the double-data entry to the extent that it's not so much of a chore would be really helpful."}
{"_id": "184586", "title": "Devising test of Haskell's value/reference semantics", "text": "In imperative languages, it is trivial to devise a programming test of language's use of \"value semantics\" or \"reference semantics\". One could do the following and check the value of `a` (where `Vertex {one, two, three :: Integer}`):               a := Vertex 3 4 5     b := a     one b   :=  6     two b   :=  8     three b := 10      However, since variables are immutable in functional languages, this test won't work in such languages. I know very little about Haskell (and functional programming in general), but my understanding is that it uses value semantics. Is it possible to devise a programming experiment that would distinguish between a \"ref record\" and a \"val record\" in Haskell?"}
{"_id": "182511", "title": "Advices on structure and names for namespaces and classes", "text": "I'm resistant to calling the \"main\" class the same as the namespace, but I sometimes find myself needing it. Considering I'm using the `Vendor.Namespace.[Subnamespace].Class` formula, imagine this scenario:               [MyFramework]         [Database]             Database             Sql             Schema             DriverAbstract             DriverInterface             [Drivers]                 Mysql                 Postgresql                 Sqlite      obs: `[]` are for namespaces, the others are classes. Now, I could call the `Database` class `Connection` instead, but when I import the namespace `MyFramework.Database` I would only see `Connection` in the code (but connection to what?). Other solution would be calling it `DatabaseConnection`, but is that really necessary? I would like to hear your thoughts and ideas on that problem. Thank you (: Sidequest: also, what are your thougths on `DriverAbstract` and `DriverInterface`? Should they fit better in the `[Drivers]` namespace? Should I call `DriverAbstract` just `Driver`?"}
{"_id": "182510", "title": "When is Efferent / Afferent coupling good or bad", "text": "I have a software patterns exam this week and one of the topics we are to study is Efferent and Afferent coupling. I understand a package has a high Ce (efferent coupling) if it depends on a number of other types. For example:               class Car{         Engine engine;         Wheel wheel;         Body body;     }      This class would have a high efferent coupling because it depends on the Engine, Wheel and Body types. Whereas the type \"Wheel\" would have a high Ca (afferent coupling) if several other packages depended on it (Car, Plane, Bicycle). One of the possible questions on our exam is, when is Efferent / Afferent coupling good or bad? This seems odd to me because logically a program would need packages / classes with both high Efferent / Afferent coupling. Does anybody have an example of when / where high efferent or afferent coupling is good / bad?? Thanks !"}
{"_id": "182513", "title": "How does a priority_queue maintain a heap on a deque efficiently?", "text": "In the C++ STL, `priority_queue` (heap) can be used with any underlying container, such as a `deque`. How does the implementation stay `O(log n)` if `deque`s don't swap an item in index `a` with index `b` in constant time?"}
{"_id": "43974", "title": "Simplifying the process of compiling and running objective-c apps in GNUstep", "text": "I just installed GNUstep (following this post: http://www.jaysonjc.com/programming/objective-c-programming-in-windows- gnustep-projectcenter.html) It says to run this code:               gcc -o helloworld helloworld.m -I /GNUstep/System/Library/Headers -L /GNUstep/System/Library/Libraries -lobjc -lgnustep-base -fconstant-string-class=NSConstantString      every time I want to compile. It works just fine for me. However as I'm learning and will be compiling/running apps way often (making little changes and trying again), I'd like a simpler way to do this. Is there an easier way to compile and then run the app? Or am I just being lazy?"}
{"_id": "86914", "title": "What's the best structure for a repository?", "text": "I've looked into many open source software repositories, and I've found some common elements and somethings people do in different fashion from one another. For example, every repository has a `README` file, a `INSTALL` file, a `COPYING` file and stuff like that. Other things differ:   * Some projects, like git, have their source code in the root level, while others have the source code in a `src/` folder and others, like the Linux kernel, have the source code spread in different folders in root level, that divide code by areas;   * Some have their tests in a `t/` folder, while others in a `tests/` folder, or named otherwise;   * Some have files about submitting patches and who the maintainers are, and those might be inside some `Documentation/` or in the root level. Are there recommendations? A best practice? For example: personally, I don't like the code in the root level, git-fashion. It looks messy and confuses one trying to start as a contributor (especially because they have some code inside folders, and scripts in the root level as well, it's really messy). If I were to start a project of my own and wanted to start right from the start, are there recommendations? Best practices? How can I make a clean and clear structure? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "140936", "title": "test for graduate software developer role?", "text": "I'm looking for tests that are suitable for a graduate software developer role, mainly tests that are about reviewing code and finding faults and etc, multiple choice or otherwise.preferably code written in c#. I have a test coming up soon and want to prepare before hand."}
{"_id": "213738", "title": "why javascript is widely used scripting language in web applications?", "text": "I cant find plugins written in other languages other than javascript. There is browser support only for Javascript. Why didn't they use other scripting languages other than Javascript when people started using scripts on their web pages? Why javascript was given priority?"}
{"_id": "90057", "title": "Why do we still use JavaScript?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why aren't there other client-side scripting languages for websites? It seems to me that, despite being one of the world's most used languages, even some of the leading experts of JavaScript like Doug Crockford think JavaScript suffers from some pretty big design flaws ( _JavaScript: The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language_ ) that make development confusing and ambigious. Programming languages and development tools are always getting better and make it much easier for developers to make things. There's a new version of .NET every few years, new version of HTML5 with new tags, new versions of CSS, etc. Why hasn't there been a better version of JavaScript or another dynamic loosely typed language, but without all the design flaws, come out to supercede JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "44842", "title": "Why aren't there other client-side scripting languages for websites?", "text": "Why is there just support for JavaScript and some VBScript in browsers today? I know JavaScript is good and all, but wouldn't having the option of using another programming language help promote different development styles?"}
{"_id": "125107", "title": "What are the essential Clojure libraries to learn beyond the basics of \"core\"", "text": "I am teaching myself Clojure. I've started using Leiningen, I'm working on Clojure Koans, plan to do LabREPL next, and will have a look at Noir. My question is: what are the essential \"must know\" Clojure libraries and functions to know beyond those covered in the above learning plan? Looking at Clojure Contrib, there are large number of libraries. As a professional (or OSS) Clojure developer, which do you find yourself using on a daily basis? Which ones are not so useful or otherwise not commonly used (i.e. are esoteric / do not come up often in day-to-day coding)."}
{"_id": "140939", "title": "How to introduce a computer illiterate 50-year old to programming", "text": "The other day my dad asked me a question that I would have never expected from him. \"How can I learn C++?\" My dad is turning 56 this year and computers are a distant concept for him. He doesn't know how to use a phone very well besides calling numbers (no speed dial or contacts); though he has started to learn computers a little better - to the point that he knows how to open the internet (in Windows) and browse around (and has successfully completed several job applications entirely on his own online, of which he was offered positions too). But still, these are too narrow-windowed experiences to mean much, really. While he may not have the background, my dad knows how to read. And I mean reading as a skill, not just an ability. He has little to no college education (financial problems, family, etc.) and was fortunate enough to finish high school, but still taught himself to become a master electrician and has been one for almost 30 years now. He did the same with guitar, learning to play at a very professional level and has been praised for his skill. In high school, he picked up a weight lifting book - and was the only person in his high school at the time to qualify officially as an \"athlete\" by national standards. In all cases, he just needed something to read. Something to teach him. He absorbs information like a sponge. I have no doubt in my dad's motivation or capability of doing this, so my general goal is simply: **Get my dad into the world of computers, and get him on the road to programming.** I strongly believe that once I get him through the fundamentals, his drive and reading skill will keep him going on this own. So I'm asking you all: where should I start with all this? And what are the best resources out there? Should I get him to start Linux instead of Windows? Is C++ a bad idea? Remember, he needs to (IMO) learn computers first, and then get that first grasp (the \"Hello world\" experience) of programming. For money's sake and at top preference, I'd like free online resources that he can read, but by all means any good suggestions in print or paid-for-online are welcome (that I could possibly look into later to purchase). And also, I intend to start him off with C++ (no Python, Java, etc.), because I know it the best and will be able to help him along the way with code. (I have minimal knowledge right now in other languages). Edit: I'm getting a lot of persistent suggestions to use Python. The only reason I wanted to do C++ is that I KNOW it and can be THERE when my dad needs help. My VERY FIRST exposure to programming ever was Java. I learned Java, and I got good at it. I open to other suggestions, but please provide an effective application of your suggestions. EDIT #2: I understand my approach/thinking/knowledge could be lacking here. I'm a sophomore level undergraduate CS major. If you don't agree with anything in my post, tell me why - give me ideas, information - that's why I'm asking in the first place. To narrow down my general goal to specific reachable goals."}
{"_id": "121481", "title": "Python for large projects", "text": "Are there any resources out there on how to architect large, industrial strength Python projects? I'd like to start on an ambitious personal project, but I'm not really sure how to architect it and what practices to put into place to make the project successful. Are there any resources out there discussing how to make large Python projects work?"}
{"_id": "94616", "title": "Understanding the DIP, DI, IoC theory", "text": "For about 2 months I've been reading everything I can find for these 3 topics and I'm not yet sure I got it.   1. **Dependency Inversion Principle**. Means you should always only rely on interfaces and not on their implementations. If your class depends on any other class, that's bad, because it depends on that second class' details. If your class depends on interface, that's absolutely OK since this kind of dependence only means that your class needs something abstract that can do something specific and you don't really care the way it does it. Since P in \"DIP\" stands for \"Principle\", I should probably define it this way: **Dependency Inversion Principle is a principle that requires all your code's entities to depend only on details they _really_ need**. By \"details they really need\" I mean interfaces for the simplest case. I also used the word \"entities\" to emphasize that DIP is also applicable to procedures and whatever else, not only to classes.   2. **Dependency Injection**. It's only applicable to DI-enabled entities. DI-enabled entity is an entity which is \"open\" for configuring its behavior without changing its internals. There are 2 basic kinds of injection (when talking about classes):     * Constructor Injection - is when you pass all the required \"abstract details\" to the object just by the moment it's about to be constructed.     * Setter Injection - is when you \"clarify\" the required aspects after the object has already been created. So, the definition is probably like following: **Dependency Injection is a process of passing the \"abstract details\" to the entity that _really_ needs these details**. By \"really needs these details\" I mean interfaces for the simplest case. The word \"entities\" is, as always, used to emphasize that DI is also applicable to procedures and whatever else.   3. **Inversion of Control.** It's often defined as \"difference between libraries and frameworks\", as \"writing programs the either way you did in procedural programming\" and so forth. That the most confusing thing for me. I believe that main idea here is just about initiating any actions. Either you do something \"whenever you want\" (Procedural way), or you \"wait\" until someone asks you (IoC way). My Definition is: **IoC is a property of your program's execution flow, when you don't do anything until _they_ ask you to do it**. It sounds exactly as \"Hollywood Principle\", but I believe that \"Hollywood Principle\" and IoC are both absolutely the same idea. Do I understand it?"}
{"_id": "208329", "title": "How to figure out design pattern for this particular solution?", "text": "While working on a project I've come up with some design solution. I am having a hard time relating it to any general design pattern or analyzing this situation in details. This is also prohibiting me to find any better design for this. This is a simple analogy of my solution - Both `Kangaroo` and `Tiger` can `walk` but only `Kangaroo` can `jump` and only `Tiger` can `run`.               Animal<TLeg> where TLegs: ILegs     {         TLegs Legs;         void Walk(){ Legs.Walk(); }     }          Kangaroo: Animal<IJumpingLegs>     {         void Jump() { Legs.Jump(); }     }          Tiger: Animal<IRunningLegs>     {         void Run() { Legs.Run(); }     }          ILegs     {        void Walk();     }          IRunningLegs : ILegs     {        void Run();     }          IJumpingLegs : Ilegs     {        void Jump();     }      [Edit]   Problem Description:   Here, Kangaroo and Tiger share common functions and a property Legs. Therefore, I have a base class for common functions. Base class needs to have access to this property `Legs`.   Functions in subclasses too rely on Legs and based on type of Legs, subclass will need to call different functions of this property. Basically, two concrete animals need some common methods and their uncommon methods(Jump and Run) require different TYPE of a common property. For this problem, I have come up with the solution described above. Hoping that I am able to describe my problem, I would like to know if there could be any alternate solution. Does this problem/solution sound familiar? Is there anything that can be improved?"}
{"_id": "249778", "title": "How big can the binary code be?", "text": "Where does binary go in a computer? When you turn the computer on it points to the bios and runs through it. I get that. Then it loads data off something ( disk, flash, etc. ). But where does it go? Does the binary go in ram? Does that mean if my program is 2mb and ram is 32mb I can only address 30mb? I mainly want to know so I can tell how big my bin can be. I'm just a little confused on this issue. I know it's platform specific. But in general where would it go, and in general what document would I look at to check this information?"}
{"_id": "208321", "title": "How to deal with runtime changes to tenant-location in a clustered, multitenant web application with app-managed datasources?", "text": "I have a Java web application that supports multi-tenancy to keep customer data separate. Connection pools to each customer database are created at runtime. The details of each customer shard (jdbc url, credentials, etc) are stored in a shard \"control\" database. When the application needs to access a customer shard, it tries to obtain a JDBC connection from that shard's connection pool. If that connection pool has not be established yet, the application looks up the necessary details from the control schema and creates the pool. This is a fine setup but it has one major issue that I'm not sure how best to solve. This application is eventually going to be clustered with each app instance managing its own customer shard connection pools. The problem is what to do when the location of a customer shard changes. This doesn't happen very often but it does happen. The application has an admin interface for managing the shard details and I could put a function in there that says \"rebuild this shard's connection pool\" but you would only be interacting with whichever application instance the load balancer sent you to on that request and all of the other instances would not be aware that you wanted the pool rebuilt. So here are the ways I can think of to deal with this along with the pros and cons as I see them. ### 1) Since this scenario is not a frequent occurrence, just forcibly restart all of the application cluster instances when this situation arises and call it a day. PROS: Requires no further work. CONS: This is more workaround than solution. That said, restarting all app instances in a cluster might not be an easy as pushing a button and then going for a coffee break. Additionally, an application user with permission to manage customer shards might not be someone who is allowed to initiate a cluster restart. ### 2) Before releasing a connection from the connection pool, check the control database to see if the pool's definition has been changed and if so, reconfigure the pool before releasing the connection to whomever requested it. PROS: Most straight-forward approach. Application instances are guaranteed to get a connection to the right shard using the freshest information. CONS: Major performance overhead. You need to hit the control schema and read all of the shard definitions and then compare them to what you've currently got loaded for every single connection request in the application. ### 3) Have a background thread on a timer that looks for shard definition changes and rebuilds the pools when necessary. PROS: You avoid the performance hit involved with doing the check upon every request for a connection. CONS: Once a shard definition is changed, there is going to be a period of time in which each application instance has the wrong information. This can have lots of consequences including application exceptions until the shard definition change is picked up. The longer the check interval, the worse this problem is going to be so you'd like it to be as short as possible, but the shorter it is, the bigger the performance hit because you need to load the shard definitions from the control database. ### 4) Wait for an exception to be thrown while trying to obtain a connection from a shard's connection pool and then take that opportunity to hit the control schema and see if the shard definition has changed. PROS: None of the performance problems of options 2 and 3 CONS: Assumes that you're changing the shard definition because the old location is no longer functioning which may not be true. That alone I think is reason enough to kill this option but I'm listing it here because it came to mind. ### 5) Create a \"shard definition change\" topic in messaging infrastructure that all application instances would be subscribed to and reload connection pools in response to those. PROS: None of the performance issues of options 2 and 3. None of the stale data issues of option 3. CONS: I don't have any messaging infrastructure available to me today. It's coming but nothing I can put a date on yet. I'd appreciate any thoughts/experience/advice you can share with this problem."}
{"_id": "208326", "title": "Codebase Analysis of Trends over Time", "text": "I've looked around for a solution (preferably not hosted, something I can run locally) to do static analysis of a codebase over time for things like SLOC, Complexity, authors, commits, etc. It has to work with subversion, and I have to have some way of getting that \"raw data\" out in csv. Ultimately I want to write a small R app against the results to view some interesting graphs and do things with the resulting data (like overlaying commits or SLOC against deadlines or tags/releases). Does anyone know if any open source solutions exist that do this? I think really all we want is a way of extracting subversion information for the commits, and statically analyzing the code for that given commit, and being able to aggregate all that and export as .csv (for import into R). I **think** sonar does some of this, but I don't think it will do this sort of analysis or data capture across a codebase's history (ie- looking at subversion from day 1 and capturing commits per day, SLOC, complexity over time, etc). The static analysis I'll need to be done is over Java and JavaScript."}
{"_id": "215451", "title": "PHP: A config file in .ini or .php format?", "text": "I'm working on a huge CMS system, and I asked myself what configuration format I should use. There are two common formats for configuration files. The first one is an INI file, containg all the configuration properties. Then you can simply parse this INI file using build in PHP functions. A second option is to use a PHP file containing a regular PHP array with these configuration properties. Now, it's easier to edit an INI file, but a PHP file give's you more options, for example it allows you to add a function which retrieves one of the configuration options while reading the configuration file. Note: The PHP configuration file would only contain an array of configuration, no initialization functions or anything. (This is possible of course, but it's not implemented by default) Now, what is recommend for me to use as configuration file? What is the most common format for a configuration file? Should I go for simplicity with the INI files, or with a more dynamic one using PHP. One thing to note, this is not for personal usage. I'm planning to release the CMS system soon, and a lot of websites are scheduled already to change to my CMS system."}
{"_id": "200664", "title": "Java generalization", "text": "I have a question regarding generalization. I know when it is needed to be done, but is it worth having an extra class for 1 field? e.g.: `StatisticsCustomer` has fields: `Customer customer` and `int projectCount` `StatisticsCountry` has fields: `Country country` and `int projectCount` What is best in this situation? Creating an extra class just for projectCount or keeping it twice in the two classes?"}
{"_id": "200663", "title": "Why do people fork repositories on GitHub?", "text": "I noticed that a lot of GitHub accounts only have repositories which are forked from other accounts. In addition the people who do this usually don't make any contributions to the forked repositories. I've heard of people collecting stamps and seashells, but why would anybody want to collect repositories? Personally I would only fork a repository if I wanted to make some changes to it."}
{"_id": "170837", "title": "What should be done with class names that conflict (common) framework names", "text": "What should be done exactly when the most obvious class name for a component is taken by a framework? In my case, I need to make a class that describes an HTTP request. Of course, the most common name is \"taken\" as System.Web.HttpRequest. What should I do? This project will be used in a web context, so I'd really rather not force people to not import the System.Web namespace, or type out all of my class names manually. What is the usual way of dealing with this? I can come up with this:   * Prefix class name with a project shortname   * Try to come up with a different name that means the same thing(I've tried and can't come up with anything)   * Force users to choose between namespaces"}
{"_id": "122684", "title": "Should we stick to a framework?", "text": "I currently work with Zend Framework, but I also know about CodeIgniter and Kohana. I've just wonder that should I stick to a framework or depend on my purposes? Because I think I cannot master everything."}
{"_id": "246498", "title": "Multitier architecture using API", "text": "I have been reading a number of posts and I am leaning towards building an SOA. My main dependencies are:   * Need to support multiple clients   * Need individual client environments to not effect other client environments For example, if I want to add a text field to Client A's application, but I don't want Client B to be effected in any way. The solution I have is to send an API address along with the client auth token. For example, the client will send something like this:               api: http://myWebsite/api/clients/ClientA/someServiceCall      Similarly, from a token, the (MVC) controller will know which view to render for a given user. My question is, is this a good solution to my problem? I understand that I am having to call an HTTP REST service for my data access; but, I feel this solves a lot of problems. For instance, I could see which services sending 404 errors and fix them (presumably) before they even get reported. I have read a number of articles that seem to enforce my idea. Have I misunderstood this concept? Is there a better architectural approach? Here's what I've been reading:   * Dogfooding: how to build a great API   * Should a website use its own public API?   * Stevey's Google Platforms Rant Again, the goal is to keep individual client environments as separate as possible; such that if we push a change to the service layer, there is no downtime and no one gets logged out because of an app pool refresh. My over all plan is to incorporate these API calls wherever they are needed; i.e. in an MVC controller or a javascript AJAX call. For example:               public class HomeController : Controller     {         public ActionResult Index()         {             WebClient client = new WebClient();             string api = /* api from auth token */             User result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<User>(client.DownloadString(api));             return View(result);         }     }"}
{"_id": "237220", "title": "How can the following algorithm be optimized?", "text": "I am currently working on a tic tac toe auto-mover game. I have come upon a decent algorithm that allows the computer to easily build towards, and claim victory spots. The problem however is that when the opponent is dangerously close to victory, the computer continues to build towards it's own victory instead of blocking the opponents, is there any way the following algorithm can be optimized to counter that? The algorithm works as follows:   1. Initialize a 3x3 integer array   2. Loop over all possible combinations on the board (0|0, 1|1, 0|2... e.tc).     1. If combination is a immediate victory, stop and return this position.     2. Else initiate a loop (That loops either 1000, 10000 or 100000 times, depending on difficulty)       1. Continually move from both sides randomly till victory is achieved. If victory is by the computer, increment the score counter.   3. Select the board position with the highest score This algorithm works fine and can build towards victory (example:               \u00b7|x|o    \u00b7|x|o    \u00b7|x|o     \u00b7|\u00b7|\u00b7    x|\u00b7|o    x|x|o     \u00b7|\u00b7|\u00b7    \u00b7|\u00b7|\u00b7    \u00b7|\u00b7|o      However when confronted with a board like this               \u00b7|x|o     o|x|\u00b7     \u00b7|\u00b7|\u00b7      The optimal move should be to break x's chain, but the computer builds towards raising it's own chain i.e moving at 1|2 (The board is 3x3, indexes start from zero. So that'd be the second row's third coloumn). Is there any way to optimize this algorithm such that this weakness goes away?"}
{"_id": "255486", "title": "Is it a bad practice to use empty node with value attribute in XML?", "text": "I created XML parsing logic that forces XML to be formatted like this:               <fooList>         <fooObject value=\"SomeValue1\" />         <fooObject value=\"SomeValue2\" />     </fooList>      And then I started to think that a more elegant way would be               <fooList>         <fooObject>SomeValue1</fooObject>         <fooObject>SomeValue2</fooObject>     </fooList>      Are there any recommendations or good practices regarding this? I already know about Element vs. Attribute question, please note that mine is different."}
{"_id": "36380", "title": "What are Web CMS and how they work?", "text": "I have heard about many CMS such as Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, etc. Many sites are build using these CMS's, but what is a CMS and How they work(i.e basics)? Is CMS a normal Blog like site which is given many extended functionality, or we can do more from it?"}
{"_id": "71126", "title": "Making a virtual supercomputer with distributed P2P computing", "text": "I was just having this idea once and wondering if there's any possibility to harness the power of p2p distributed computing to make a virtual supercomputer with the following features:   * Works like a normal machine but uses networked RAM   * Normal applications should be able to work on distributed environment dividing load among peers This maybe unrealistic, just curious and want to know your views.. EDIT: Some interesting links I found while researching...   * http://mashable.com/2005/11/29/my-latest-harebrained-scheme-distributed-computing-as-a-web-service/   * http://mashable.com/2005/11/04/amazon-mechanical-turk-human-processing-for-web-20/"}
{"_id": "134486", "title": "Why do variables need a type?", "text": "So we write:               Customer c = new Customer();      Why is the design not such that we write:               c = new Customer();     c.CreditLimit = 1000;      The compiler can work out c points to a Customer and allow Customer's members to be invoked on c? I know we may want to write:               IPerson c = new Customer();     IPerson e = new Employee();      so as to be able to write:               public string GetName(IPerson object)     {         return object.Name     }          string name = GetName(c); // or GetName(e);      But if we wrote:               c = new Customer();     e = new Employee();      we could still write:               public string GetName(object)     {         return object.Name     }              string name = GetName(c); // or GetName(e);      The compiler could complain about the code immediately above if the type of object c references does not support a Name property (as it can check which members are used on the argument/parameter within the method), or the runtime could complain. Even with C#'s dynamic keyword, we are still using a variable 'type' (determined at runtime). But why does a variable need a type at all? I am sure there must be a good reason, but I can't think of it!"}
{"_id": "246148", "title": "usage of double pointers and n pointers?", "text": "I am familiar with basic C pointers. Just wanted to ask what is the actual use of double pointers or for that matter n pointer?               #include<stdio.h>     int main()     {     int n = 10 , *ptr , **ptr_ptr ;     ptr     = &n;     ptr_ptr = &ptr;     printf(\"%d\",**ptr_ptr);     return(0);     }      **ptr_ptr is printing 10 but how?"}
{"_id": "252511", "title": "Parent class loses coupling after I refactored identical code blocks from child classes to parent", "text": "I have a class called `Parent`, and classes called `Child1`, `Child2`, etc, I have noticed that child classes have a series of function calls that had same (duplicated) lines of code that could be refactored into a function call. So I created a method `getData()`, which I put into the parent class and put those duplicated code lines in the method, and removed original lines from child classes. Two things happened:   * Dynamic nature of PHP allows child classes to call the method from the parent class, so things still work despite children not having (but calling) that specific function. **That's good**   * my IDE can no longer jump from function instantiation inside the parent class to function body in the child class(es). Because it doesn't know which one to pick, nor one exists in the parent class.   **That's kind of bad** \\- at least I think that it is. I am losing the ability of IDE/PHP to tell me if there are errors. i.e. it looks like I can invent any function I want in parent class, and PHP will just think \"oh maybe it's in the child class\", when it in fact may not be - a fact that will only be discovered during run time, or using special static source code tools on PHP. Is there a more proper way to refactor my code? Namely, to have IDE/PHP be able to validate things a bit better than what I have now."}
{"_id": "252512", "title": "Knowing the range of variable types needed", "text": "So, if I (as the programmer) know that my value will never exceed a small number (say 100) because it is really just a counter-controlled loop or whatever, may I use `short` or `char` instead of `int` for the minute memory savings?"}
{"_id": "167758", "title": "\"TDD is about design, not verification\"; concretely, what does that mean?", "text": "I've been wondering about this. What do we exactly mean by design and verification. Should I just apply TDD to make sure my code is SOLID and not check if it's external behaviour is correct? Should I use BDD for verifying the behaviour is correct? Where I get confused also is regarding TDD code Katas, to me they looked like more about verification than design; shouldn't they be called BDD Katas instead of TDD Katas? I reckon that for example the Uncle Bob bowling Kata leads in the end to a simple and nice internal design but I felt that most of the process was centred more around verification than design. Design seemed to be a side effect of testing the external behaviour incrementally. I didn't feel so much that we were focusing most of our efforts on design but more on verification. While normally we are told the contrary, that in TDD, verification is a side effect, design is the main purpose. So my question is what should I focus on exactly, when I do TDD: SOLID, external API usability, or something else? And how can I do that without being focused on verification? What do you guys focus your energy on when you are practising TDD?"}
{"_id": "80985", "title": "What personal process can I employ at a non-software based company?", "text": "What is the best way for a developer to track his/her hours at work, if no framework exists at that firm which would avoid any complications with internal classified information being stored on a server I own at home? In particular, I would like to hear of any methodologies or software that could be used in this situation with limited issue. I just graduated from college, and am moving into my first full-time job with an embedded systems firm, which doesn't seem to have any particular process set up for its employees to use. Since last summer, I've been working on improving my development process, trying to record my time usage, bugs found, and other simple metrics for my process. Until now, I have been using Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) to do this from one of my personal servers, and have enjoyed working with it. The firm I am going to, however, doesn't seem to have anything similar, so I am stuck with needing to find a way to continue tracking these metrics. I feel I should not use my TFS server (or a similar tactic, such as Traq), since there would be the chance of exposing company secrets to the outside world through my server."}
{"_id": "44160", "title": "At what point does \"constructive\" criticism of your code become unhelpful?", "text": "I recently started as a junior developer. As well as being one of the least experienced people on the team, I'm also a woman, which comes with all sorts of its own challenges working in a male-dominated environment. I've been having problems lately because I feel like I am getting too much unwarranted pedantic criticism on my work. Let me give you an example of what happened recently. Team lead was too busy to push in some branches I made, so he didn't get to them until the weekend. I checked my mail, not really meaning to do any work, and found that my two branches had been rejected on the basis of variable names, making error messages more descriptive, and moving some values to the config file. I don't feel that rejecting my branch on this basis is useful. Lots of people were working over the weekend, and I had never said that I would be working. Effectively, some people were probably blocked because I didn't have time to make the changes and resubmit. We are working on a project that is very time- sensitive, and it seems to me that it's not helpful to outright reject code based on things that are transparent to the client. I may be wrong, but it seems like these kinds of things should be handled in patch type commits when I have time. Now, I can see that in some environments, this would be the norm. However, the criticism doesn't seem equally distributed, which is what leads to my next problem. The basis of most of these problems was due to the fact that I was in a codebase that someone else had written and was trying to be minimally invasive. I was mimicking the variable names used elsewhere in the file. When I stated this, I was bluntly told, \"Don't mimic others, just do what's right.\" This is perhaps the least useful thing I could have been told. If the code that is already checked in is unacceptable, how am I supposed to tell what is right and what is wrong? If the basis of the confusion was coming from the underlying code, I don't think it's my responsibility to spend hours refactoring a whole file that someone else wrote (and works perfectly well), potentially introducing new bugs etc. I'm feeling really singled out and frustrated in this situation. I've gotten a lot better about following the standards that are expected, and I feel frustrated that, for example, when I refactor a piece of code to ADD error checking that was previously missing, I'm only told that I didn't make the errors verbose enough (and the branch was rejected on this basis). What if I had never added it to begin with? How did it get into the code to begin with if it was so wrong? This is why I feel so singled out: I constantly run into this existing problematic code, that I either mimic or refactor. When I mimic it, it's \"wrong\", and if I refactor it, I'm chided for not doing enough (and if I go all the way, introducing bugs, etc). Again, if this is such a problem, I don't understand how any code gets into the codebase, and why it becomes my responsibility when it was written by someone else, who apparently didn't have their code reviewed. Anyway, how do I deal with this? Please remember that I said at the top that I'm a woman, and I'm sure these guys don't usually have to worry about decorum when they're reviewing other guys' code, but honestly that doesn't work for me, and it's causing me to be less productive. I'm worried that if I talk to my manager about it, he'll think I can't handled the environment, etc."}
{"_id": "80988", "title": "Which certification is the best for PHP?", "text": "What are the best PHP certifications according to the market requirements? Actually, I want to get the PHP certification which has the greatest demand. Also, I want to know more about the future of PHP:   * When will PHP 6 be released?   * Could you tell me something about the PHP 6 exam availability please?"}
{"_id": "132880", "title": "Hire for the job/project or hire for the future?", "text": "I'm at a pivotal point in my small software company where I have reached the critical mass of too much work and need to hire someone. Simple question: Do I hire someone who is simply qualified and can do the work and possibly grow with the company, or do I hire someone overqualified for the immediate work I have to offer but who can significantly deepen the knowledge and experience pool of my company?"}
{"_id": "84407", "title": "Why is Prolog good for AI programming?", "text": "I am researching programming languages used for AI programming. I know that LISP is taught as an AI programming language in my university, but Prolog rarely is. I am kind of fond of Prolog, but I'm not an AI programmer so I don't think I'm qualified to judge for myself why Prolog is better than LISP/Scheme. I was wondering if Programmers had any input on this topic. How could you argue that Prolog would be more useful for AI programming? I have been researching it a bit, and the basic argument I've seen over and over is that since thoughts are presented in logic, and Prolog is a logical programming language, Prolog can build decision machines easily, or something to that effect. Is there anything else that can be said for Prolog in AI?"}
{"_id": "84401", "title": "Which server side framework/language should I use", "text": "I am an iOS developer. I love objective-c and the cocoa/cocoa-touch framework. I was wondering what's a programming language/ framework for server side programming that best mimics or closely resembles objective-c and the cocoa framework? I have never programmed server side apps before so that's why I am asking. Here's a list of languages/frameworks that I have heard about that might be close to cocoa.               Ruby - Ruby on Rails     PHP - not sure which fw     Python - Djano      Thanks"}
{"_id": "254823", "title": "simple let binding vs constant function", "text": "I understand the reasons why I would prefer `let a = f(x)` over `let a() = f(x)`, especially when f takes is a long running function. I also think it is correct to say, that, considering lambda calculus origins of functional programming `let a()` is truly functional, while `let a` is not. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this. However I have no clue which expression will actually be better:               let a = 4      or               let a() = 4      Is there any reason I would prefer one over the other?"}
{"_id": "209234", "title": "What are the differences between functional, operational and technical requirements?", "text": "I have done tasks based on Java, but my seniors assigned me to collect requirements for creating a globalized bug tracking tool. I have read many types of requirements from Wikipedia and the mindtools website, but it was very confusing. What are the exact differences between functional requirements, operational requirements and technical requirements?"}
{"_id": "254820", "title": "REST API design for associations/aggregation", "text": "I am building RESTful API that manages persons and lists. There can be many `List` and many `Person` each with its own set of properties. `Person` can be in zero or more lists, `List` can contain zero or more Persons. I have implemented these operations for Persons and Lists:   * `GET api/Persons/` to get all persons   * `POST api/Persons/ {..}` to create new person   * `PUT api/Persons/123 {..}` to update person by id   * `DELETE api/Persons/123` to delete person by id To retrieve Lists person is in I would use `GET /api/Persons/123/Lists`, to retrieve all persons in List I would use `GET /api/Lists/234/Persons`. How do I design API to add Person to Lists, remove them from Lists? I thought about flattening `Person` to include `Lists` but then there will be other associations from `Person` and it seems unnecessary to transfer that mush information. I am using asp.net Web API 2 but I am asking in general what are the design principles in this case."}
{"_id": "254827", "title": "Separate methods or single method with if statement?", "text": "I'm working on a .NET application and I'm wondering if I should use separate methods to handle the click events of two different buttons. They essentially do the same thing, just on different objects on the form, in this case two separate maps. Same method:               Private Sub SingleButtonHandler(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnToggleSatNew.Click, btnToggleSatOld.Click         If sender Is btnToggleSatNew Then             Me.NewMap.ToggleSateliteView()         Else             Me.OldMap.ToggleSateliteView()         End If     End Sub      Separate Methods:               Private Sub btnToggleSatOld_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnToggleSatOld.Click         Me.OldMap.ToggleSateliteView()     End Sub          Private Sub btnToggleSatNew_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnToggleSatNew.Click         Me.NewMap.ToggleSateliteView()     End Sub      What's the overhead of checking if the two objects are the same? Is one version easier to read than the other? Or should I be doing something completely different?"}
{"_id": "167753", "title": "Getting some experience with asp.net", "text": "Hi I recently learned asp.net webforms and looking to get some experience under my belt using it.I found a website that provided some exercises here: asp.net exercises There weren't that many and I managed to finish them all.Are there any other website or books with similar exercises or tasks that could help me get some experience in using asp.net?"}
{"_id": "203315", "title": "Python GUI and MVC - get variable from other module", "text": "I am trying to split my code into different layers: GUI, reading the GUI, creating input, calculating the model, interpreting data, creating view, sending the view to the GUI. Somebody told me about MVC and I would like to try to build my program that way. But I'm a little confused about how to exchange information between those modules. I'm running into problems with undefined global names and so forth. My model is written in matlab and consists of a simulation. The GUI is supposed to present the data in plots. My actual problem is: how to connect the different modules/classes/files to each other if they are supposed to be as independent as possible? For example: I'm creating a GUI in one file, like this:               # userinterface.py          class Userinterface(object):         def __init__(self, controller):             self.controller = controller             self.buildGUI()             return              def buildGUI():             # build lots of widgets and stuff             widget = tk.Thewidget(options=values, command=self.controller.onclick)      And call it my interface. In order to keep this file nice and clean, I would like to define all functions to handle button clicks and read fields in another file and I guess this is what you would call the controller part:               # main.py         import userinterface as gui              class Controls(object):             def onclick(self):                 # read values from widgets and do stuff                 var1 = GUI.widget_entry.get()                 # Call some other function with var1 etc.          if __name__ == '__main__':         GUI_controls = Controls()         GUI = gui.UserInterface(GUI_controls)      But how do I do to connect these two? In my example above, I'm handing over an instance of my Controls object. But then I read about Events too or Inheritance or subclasses. I'm rather new to programming and started all this 2 months ago, so I'm struggling sorting all these theories. If somebody could point out to me what the way of communication between my modules/files should be and what such a meeting-point looks like. Or just give me a link that I can study (like Javier did, although I'll have to read this thing more than once)"}
{"_id": "203314", "title": "What is the middleware pattern?", "text": "Here's a Ruby poject that implements the middleware pattern. From the description, I have no idea what the pattern is, what it's useful for, and why other solutions wouldn't work as well. What is the middleware pattern, and what are its advantages and drawbacks?"}
{"_id": "203313", "title": "Hide or Show singleton?", "text": "Singleton is a common pattern implemented in both native libraries of .NET and Java. You will see it as such: C#: `MyClass.Instance` Java: `MyClass.getInstance()` The question is: **when writing APIs, is it better to expose the singleton through a property or getter, or should I hide it as much as possible?** Here are the alternatives for illustrative purposes: Exposed(C#):               private static MyClass instance;     public static MyClass Instance     {         get {             if (instance == null)                 instance = new MyClass();             return instance;         }     }          public void PerformOperation() { ... }      Hidden (C#):               private static MyClass instance;          public static void PerformOperation()     {         if (instance == null)         {             instance = new MyClass();         }         ...     }      **EDIT:** There seems to be a number of detractors of the Singleton design. Great! Please tell me why and what is the better alternative. Here is my scenario: My whole application utilises one logger (log4net/log4j). Whenever, the program has something to log, it utilises the `Logger` class (e.g. `Logger.Instance.Warn(...)` or `Logger.Instance.Error(...)` etc. Should I use `Logger.Warn(...)` or `Logger.Warn(...)` instead? If you have an alternative to singletons that addresses my concern, then please write an answer for it. Thank you :)"}
{"_id": "83752", "title": "How often should one update an app with a new version?", "text": "I've created my own iPhone app which is presently in the App Store. What is the maximum period that should pass without a new version update? What is the average time span between version releases? I'm asking this because I want to make sure that I'm giving the impression that my app is not being neglected. I'm currently working on an update, but as it is a one man show this could take a bit."}
{"_id": "228956", "title": "Algorithm for searching images within images", "text": "I can't google this question, because I can't come up with a good query, so let me describe what I want and maybe someone will be able to suggest a way forward for me. I need to solve the following problem: there is an list of jpg images. There is also one \"source\" jpg image. I need to find if this image is a cropped image from the list. I do not know what software was used to crop and have no control over what jpeg quality setting is used in the source image. I do realize that if the setting is to low the result can't be unrecognisable, but I still would like somehow be able to check the source image against each of the images in the list and get a \"yes\" if a match found. Ideally I'd like a .net library for this, but I also could implement it myself if only I knew a proper algorithm (and it's description is not 100 pages long). Since jpeg is lossy format I can't do bit by bit comparison, and even if I could it's not immediately obvious how to find the correct part of image to compare so this does not take too long, since the crop can be of arbitrary size in arbitrary spot of the image. In my case the crop is never resized or rotated, so it kind of makes it simpler, but I'm still not sure where to start."}
{"_id": "202663", "title": "Is it a good practice to wrap all primitives and Strings?", "text": "According to Jeff Bay's Essay on Object Callisthenics, One of the practices is set to be _\"Wrap all primitives and Strings\"_ Can anyone elaborate on this ? In languages where we already have wrappers for primitives like C# and Java. and In languages where Collections can have generics where you are sure of what type goes into the collection, do we need to wrap string's inside their own classes ? Does it have any other advantage ?"}
{"_id": "133285", "title": "Is there any reason why most programming languages don't have '!>' (not greater than) and '!<' (not less than) operators?", "text": "I wonder if there is any reason - or if it is just an accident of history - that there are no `!>` and `!<` operators in _most_ programming languages? `a >= b` _(a greater OR equals b)_ could be written as `!(a < b)` _(a NOT lesser b)_ , that equals `a !< b`. This question struck me when I was in the middle of coding my own expression tree builder. Most programming languages have `a != b` operator for `!(a=b)`, so why no `!>` and `!<` ? _UPDATE:_   * `!<` (not lesser) is **easier to pronounce** than `>=` (greater or equals)   * `!<` (not lesser) is **shorter to type** than `>=` (greater or equals)   * `!<` (not lesser) is **easier to understand*** than `>=` (greater or equals) *because `OR` is binary operator you brain need to operate two operands (grater, equals), while `NOT` is unary operator and you brain need to operate only with one operand (lesser)."}
{"_id": "178603", "title": "should singleton be life-time available or should it be destroyable?", "text": "Should the singleton be designed so that it can be created and destroyed at any time in program or should it be created so that it is available in life- time of program. Which one is best practice? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both?   EDIT :- As per the link shared by Mat, the singleton should be static. But then what are the disadvantages of making it destroyable? One advantage is it memory can be saved when it is not useful."}
{"_id": "47609", "title": "How do I set up MVP for a Winforms solution?", "text": "Question moved from Stackoverflow - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4971048/how-do-i-set-up-mvp-for-a-winforms- solution I have used MVP and MVC in the past, and I prefer MVP as it controls the flow of execution so much better in my opinion. I have created my infrastructure (datastore/repository classes) and use them without issue when hard coding sample data, so now I am moving onto the GUI and preparing my MVP. **Section A**   1. I have seen MVP using the view as the entry point, that is in the views constructor method it creates the presenter, which in turn creates the model, wiring up events as needed.   2. I have also seen the presenter as the entry point, where a view, model and presenter are created, this presenter is then given a view and model object in its constructor to wire up the events.   3. As in 2, but the model is not passed to the presenter. Instead the model is a static class where methods are called and responses returned directly. **Section B** In terms of keeping the view and model in sync I have seen.   1. Whenever a value in the view in changed, i.e. `TextChanged` event in .Net/C#. This fires a `DataChangedEvent` which is passed through into the model, to keep it in sync at all times. And where the model changes, i.e. a background event it listens to, then the view is updated via the same idea of raising a `DataChangedEvent`. When a user wants to commit changes a `SaveEvent` it fires, passing through into the model to make the save. In this case the model mimics the view's data and processes actions.   2. Similar to #b1, however the view does not sync with the model all the time. Instead when the user wants to commit changes, `SaveEvent` is fired and the presenter grabs the latest details and passes them into the model. in this case the model does not know about the views data until it is required to act upon it, in which case it is passed all the needed details. **Section C** Displaying of business objects in the view, i.e. a object (MyClass) not primitive data (int, double)   1. The view has property fields for all its data that it will display as domain/business objects. Such as `view.Animals` exposes a `IEnumerable<IAnimal>` property, even though the view processes these into Nodes in a TreeView. Then for the selected animal it would expose `SelectedAnimal` as `IAnimal` property.   2. The view has no knowledge of domain objects, it exposes property for primitive/framework (.Net/Java) included objects types only. In this instance the presenter will pass an adapter object the domain object, the adapter will then translate a given business object into the controls visible on the view. In this instance the adapter must have access to the actual controls on the view, not just any view so becomes more tightly coupled. **Section D** Multiple views used to create a single control. i.e. You have a complex view with a simple model like saving objects of different types. You could have a menu system at the side with each click on an item the appropriate controls are shown.   1. You create one huge view, that contains all of the individual controls which are exposed via the views interface.   2. You have several views. You have one view for the menu and a blank panel. This view creates the other views required but does not display them (visible = false), this view also implements the interface for each view it contains (i.e. child views) so it can expose to one presenter. The blank panel is filled with other views (`Controls.Add(myview)`) and (`(myview.visible = true`). The events raised in these \"child\"-views are handled by the parent view which in turn pass the event to the presenter, and visa versa for supplying events back down to child elements.    3. Each view, be it the main parent or smaller child views are each wired into there own presenter and model. You can literately just drop a view control into an existing form and it will have the functionality ready, just needs wiring into a presenter behind the scenes.  **Section E** Should everything have an interface, now based on how the MVP is done in the above examples will affect this answer as they might not be cross-compatible.   1. Everything has an interface, the View, Presenter and Model. Each of these then obviously has a concrete implementation. Even if you only have one concrete view, model and presenter.   2. The View and Model have an interface. This allows the views and models to differ. The presenter creates/is given view and model objects and it just serves to pass messages between them.   3. Only the View has an interface. The Model has static methods and is not created, thus no need for an interface. If you want a different model, the presenter calls a different set of static class methods. Being static the Model has no link to the presenter. ### Personal thoughts From all the different variations I have presented (most I have probably used in some form) of which I am sure there are more. I prefer A3 as keeping business logic reusable outside just MVP, B2 for less data duplication and less events being fired. C1 for not adding in another class, sure it puts a small amount of non unit testable logic into a view (how a domain object is visualised) but this could be code reviewed, or simply viewed in the application. If the logic was complex I would agree to an adapter class but not in all cases. For section D, i feel D1 creates a view that is too big atleast for a menu example. I have used D2 and D3 before. Problem with D2 is you end up having to write lots of code to route events to and from the presenter to the correct child view, and its not drag/drop compatible, each new control needs more wiring in to support the single presenter. D3 is my prefered choice but adds in yet more classes as presenters and models to deal with the view, even if the view happens to be very simple or has no need to be reused. i think a mixture of D2 and D3 is best based on circumstances. As to section E, I think everything having an interface could be overkill I already do it for domain/business objects and often see no advantage in the \"design\" by doing so, but it does help in mocking objects in tests. Personally I would see E2 as a classic solution, although have seen E3 used in 2 projects I have worked on previously. ### Question Am I implementing MVP correctly? Is there a right way of going about it? I've read Martin Fowler's work that has variations, and I remember when I first started doing MVC, I understood the concept, but could not originally work out where is the entry point, everything has its own function but what controls and creates the original set of MVC objects."}
{"_id": "195858", "title": "Getting into Guava", "text": "So I recently started using Netty for my applications client/server communication and I discovered I loved the idea of listenable `Future`s. I wondered why I didn't know about Java being able to do this, and, sure enough, it cannot. After some searching I realized that this is a feature provided by Guava's concurrency tools, which got me skimming through it's user guide. It seems awesome, but I have some concerns:   1. I already have a decent amount of code that uses JDK concurrency. How hard will it be to migrate over?   2. What is the risk of starting to become a \"Guava programmer\" so to speak? How difficult will it be to bounce back and forth between doing things the Guava way and the core Java way?      * What potential harm could there be if, in an existing project, I write new classes with Guava classes without migrating the rest of the code over?    3. Is there a good guide for slowly beginning to use Guava features without having to stop doing my actual job to train myself for a few days/weeks?   4. Is there anything else I should know in advance that I haven't already thought of?"}
{"_id": "195859", "title": "What is a development stack?", "text": "I am just now in the process of looking for jobs as I am about to graduate from college. An interviewer asked me what my current 'development stack' is? I know this is probably a really basic question. but could someone explain to me what a 'development stack' is? It isn't a term that gets used in school."}
{"_id": "195851", "title": "Should I re-download my server data after each change?", "text": "I have a simple DB editor that sits on the client. When I make changes via the editor, should I re-get all my data, as some of it is changed, or can I just do a check to make sure the procedure ran without error and assume my data is the same as the server?"}
{"_id": "47604", "title": "Does a PHP programmer need ZCE certification?", "text": "I want to know if PHP programmers are validated with their Zend Certified Engineer certification. Around me some of them are saying it is very useful, some of them say no. Please clear my mind. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "206365", "title": "Determining the aggregates in this domain", "text": "I'm working on an ordering system where we receive tab delimited files that look like this (I removed most of the columns for clarity):                     OrderId   OrderLineId    BuyerName   BuyerAdress   RecipientName     RecipientAdress                   1            1         John        123, Street      Doe              25, street              1            2         John        123, Street      Doe              25, street              1            3         John        123, Street     Michael           11, France              2            1         Sam         66,Somewhere     Lily             25, Poland              2            2         Sam         66,Somewhere     Dave             25, Russia              ...      Applying **DDD** I primarily extracted few entities as shown in the image below: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YdOci.png) Some facts about the data received in the files:   1. An **Order** must have a **Buyer** and a **Buyer** must have an **Order** .   2. An **Order** contains at least 1 **OrderLine** and each **OrderLine** must belong to an **Order**.   3. Each **OrderLine** must have a **Recipient** and each **Recipient** must have an associated **OrderLine**.   4. The status history for the **OrderLine** must be tracked by the system (hence the **Line History** entity) **Questions:**   1. Which entity is the **aggregate root**? Most of the articles I read about DDD would put the **Customer** entity as its own aggregate root and the Order with its OrderLines as the other root. However, since the Buyer and Recipient can **NOT** exist by themselves how can they be treated as their own aggregate root?   2. Should OrderLines be a value object or an entity? I have seen some answers on numerous blogs suggesting the OrderLines should be a VO, but I don't see why it shouldn't be treated as an entity since its identity will be needed in its relation with the History entity.   3. Similarly the Line History should be modeled as entity or value object"}
{"_id": "237915", "title": "Why HTTP Servers send information about themselves in HTTP Headers?", "text": "Most of the HTTP Servers I know send their application name and version in response http headers as default behaviour. (Nginx, IIS, Apache etc.) Of course we can change the default behaviour but I wonder why they send these information? Does it matter which HTTP Servers we use to the requesters? The only reason I can think of is to allow analytics services to keep track of which HTTP Servers are widely used by websites but otherwise these information are unnecessary for most of the requests and when an attacker figures out a specific version of a HTTP Server has a bug, he can easily find websites which uses that version and use that information against these websites."}
{"_id": "206361", "title": "What is the name of the part of the application, which manages people in general?", "text": "In each application there are concepts like users, customers, etc. and some part of the application tries to manage them. For example:               1. keeping the information of people, organizations, firms, etc.     2. managing users (people who work with the system)     3. managing customers (people who purchase goods/services)     4. distinguishing customers, from users, from ordinary people, etc.     5. ...      Do we have a universal term for that area of each application (that subsystem, that module, that whatever)? Or if I want to ask more precisely, can we package customers, users, people, organizations, etc. all in one module, and name it like X? Is this a correct taxonomy of subsystems? Update: Is **Entities** a good name?"}
{"_id": "235474", "title": "Return multiple columns with SQL where GroupBy is on one column", "text": "I have noticed that all the columns in a SQL Select Query should be in a aggregate function, because otherwise the output value for group would be arbitrary. This makes sense. But when the other columns are same in value, it doesn't matter which is returned. Is there a way to specify this or just use MAX() or MIN() on varchar columns?"}
{"_id": "15566", "title": "What is a good lightweight IDE that performs well in an Xterm window?", "text": "Our group is currently has a solaris server with eclipse installed on it. However, we need to run this from out desks using an xterm window. There is a delay with every action due to the weight of eclipse. Are there any other decent unix IDE's out there that are more forgiving on Xterm? The IDE is mostly used with our php projects (Though we do perl,ksh,python as well)."}
{"_id": "15567", "title": "Company PC refresh, laptop or desktop?", "text": "My company is getting PC refreshes with a choice of to have a desktop or laptop. Each one seems to have its pros and cons. Would you want the flexibility and freedom of the laptop but take the risk of working extra hours at home? Or a desktop limited to one place, but not having to worry about taking work home and disrupting home time? I'm not asking what would be better for coding, but more for convenience and productivity. I currently have a desktop and work about 8 to 9 hours a day, with only coming in on the weekends for when we get behind on major deadlines. I love developing but I also have quite a busy life after work. I feel that having a work laptop will only haze the line of work and home."}
{"_id": "206369", "title": "Decoupling Components - Design", "text": "I have created a a number of non-trivial scripts in Python that do some long running reporting. At first these reports started off as scripts with a config file. Then I added in the a database component to persist data. Now I'm building a GUI to sit on top of all of them. My question relates to design. Each time I add an additional requirement, I find myself wishing I had decoupled the components of these scripts more than I did. When I consider how to recfactor my code to be more modular, I find that I need to pass quite a few references around the code, to the point that class initializers and function signatures have a ton of parameters. Also I find myself having parameters that are simply \"pass-through\", in that one object needs them only to pass to another object, doing nothing with them. What is the best way to approach modularity in Python while minimizing the need to pass references all over the place? I understand this is very conceptual and will vary by design, but I'm looking for guiding principles."}
{"_id": "123222", "title": "How can I build this payment receipt/booking application?", "text": "I'm planning to build a payment receipt/booking application for a media company with several branches in different locations. The application should be able to move data across the network/internet to a central database where the administrator/accountant in a different location will be able to see the result of the entire job for the day from each branch. Application will run on windows environment. Will be able to send result of the booking to a Point Of Sales printer for print output. Now, I'm confused about choosing the right programming language to accomplish this task. I'm between beginner/intermediate level in PHP, I know HTML/CSS and JavaScript. I have tried to do this in PHP but, I'm face with several challenges and I fear for the POS part since PHP application run on the web browser. I don't know if python will be best suited for this and how long will it take someone with my experience level to pick up python. Any suggestion will be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "226376", "title": "Comment system sorting madness", "text": "I have a website in which I'm loading all of the users' comments by the number of likes they have. This has caused me some troubles. Let's say comment #1 has 5 likes, comment #2 has 2 likes, and the rest have 0 likes. We have the following comment id's:               1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10      Now let's assume someone else \"likes\" comment #4. Now the id's ordered are:               1   2   4   3   5   6   7   8   9   10      Let's assume I'm loading 3 comments at the same time. At scenario #1, I loaded comments:               {1, 2, 3}      Now when I click \"load more,\" I load:               {3, 5, 6}      Loaded #3 twice! And comment #4 is never viewed. Problems also happen when a comment is deleted, but that's for later. How can I work around that? I saw websites that order by \"likes\" or something similar and I almost never encounter duplicates and/or missing comments. Any tips? Thanks."}
{"_id": "171008", "title": "Why didn't \"cloud computing\" offer appear earlier?", "text": "Cloud computing is a model of renting resources - servers and data storage. Both servers and data storage have been around for much more than a decade so far. Yet cloud computing offers only appeared several years ago. What's the deal here? What was the critical change that triggered massive adoption and massive marketing of cloud computing offers?"}
{"_id": "233219", "title": "What are the harms of a cowboy coding style on a small personal project", "text": "Consider it is as a small personal project and is not intended to be maintain in future, what can be possible harm of cowboy coding style in such case?"}
{"_id": "233218", "title": "monitor .net web applications", "text": "I am a junior dev, I am on a team with an internal ticketing system (more/less) I want to improve our monitoring so that I can tell when functionality on my app is broken. current alarms only alert if the web site is hard down. I want to alert if clicking on a link causes a 500. I am having a hard time finding other teams that are implementing what I am asking, and the only documentation I can find is the ASP.Net health monitoring overview from http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/bb398933.ASPX#Features and i was wondering if there are any examples you're aware of? The existing teams suggest making a timer that waits 2 minutes and does something to check health and reports up to another server if it's alive or not - how can I make a method that... more accurately checks health of my web app? is there a way to simulate a function and see if it breaks or not?"}
{"_id": "233217", "title": "Inverse of Extract Interface refactoring", "text": "I'm working with a Java project that has several interfaces, many of which have only one implementation. (See related question) For a given revision of the software, one could think this acceptable because the interfaces were some plan for future extensions. However, when I look at the 200+ revisions over several years, those interfaces _never_ had more than one implementation, (nor were they used in unit-testing). It seems that in these cases of probable bloat (YAGNI) owing to the Interface Anti-pattern, it would be useful to apply the _inverse_ of Extract Interface. However, Inline Class (the supposed inverse according to refactoring.com) is not what I'm referring to. What's the name of the refactoring that removes an unused interface, substituting the sole class that implements it?"}
{"_id": "226378", "title": "How can I convince my client that the task was complex and the time I took is fair?", "text": "I am the single programmer working on a website handling both frontend and backend. Recently in my task list I have to provide a social news feed (activities among friends) which should summarize activities from different modules (at least 7 modules). It has taken at least 20-25 days for me to develop that. Remember in news feed every action can be performed right on the news feed + there must be some kind of aggregation which should aggregate similar activities e.g. User A, B and C liked your item. How can I convince my client that the task was complex and the time I took is fair?"}
{"_id": "233210", "title": "Should I expose a \"computed\" value as a property or a method?", "text": "I have a C# class that represents a content type in a web content management system. We have a field that allows a web content editor to enter an HTML template for how the object is displayed. It basically uses the handlebars syntax for substituting object property values into the HTML string:               <h1>{{Title}}</h1><p>{{Message}}</p>      From a class design perspective, should I expose the formatted HTML string (with substitution) as a _property_ or _method_? **Example as property:**               public class Example     {       private string _template;       public string Title { get; set; }       public string Message { get; set; }       public string Html        {         get         {           return this.ToHtml();         }         protected set { }       }            public Example(Content content)       {         this.Title = content.GetValue(\"title\") as string;         this.Message = content.GetValue(\"message\") as string;         _template = content.GetValue(\"template\") as string;       }            private string ToHtml()       {         // Perform substitution and return formatted string.       }       }      **Example as method:**               public class Example     {       private string _template;       public string Title { get; set; }       public string Message { get; set; }            public Example(Content content)       {         this.Title = content.GetValue(\"title\") as string;         this.Message = content.GetValue(\"message\") as string;         _template = content.GetValue(\"template\") as string;       }            public string ToHtml()       {         // Perform substitution and return formatted string.       }       }      I'm not sure from a design standpoint does it make a difference or are there reasons why one approach is better than the other?"}
{"_id": "229346", "title": "How does assembly relate to machine/binary code", "text": "How does assembly relate to machine/binary code. For example here is how to print to the screen in mikeOS(a small pure assembly OS), mikeOS it uses NASM to assemble.               BITS 16         ORG 32768         %INCLUDE 'mikedev.inc'          start:         mov si, mystring         call os_print_string              call os_wait_for_key              ret              mystring db 'My first MikeOS program!', 0      Where os_print_string and os_wait_for_key are defined as               os_print_string     equ 0003h   ; SI = zero-terminated string       and               os_wait_for_key     equ 0012h   ; Returns AL = key pressed      in mikedev.inc respectively and defined as               os_call_vectors:         jmp os_print_string     ; 0003h      in kernal.asm Now nasm must do a lot more work under the scene when assembling, I have no idea what. In other words assembly language is a wrapper to some degree to machine code just as say C is a wrapper to assembly. If I said cout >> \"Hello World\" for example in C++, this is then compiled into it's assembly equivalent and them assembled into machine code. So I am trying to understand out how 0003h and 0012h seem to dictate everything that is going on when printing to the screen. How do these two values, a) Tell the CPU/PC system which bus to send the corresponding bytes that represent the required string to the monitor bus and not say to the sound card. b) In this case the string is sent to the monitor, obviously, now my understanding is that you have a frame buffer that can store a maximum number of bytes. So say the resolution of your screen is set at 1024 x 768 which is 786432 pixels and a refresh rate of 60hz on the screen, therefore the FB will contain this number of byte values and hence will be sending this many bytes to the monitor every 1/60 sec. The first byte in the FB corresponding to the first pixel on the screen and the last to the last on the screen etc. So how does the CPU/GPU know which byte to put in which position in the FB. It's like saying to the GPU 'ok I need this pixel at coord (245,232) green so I will leave it to you to put this pixels value in the correct position in the FB' etc. How does this work."}
{"_id": "146262", "title": "How to correctly design NoSql database schema?", "text": "I would like to learn something more about NoSQL databases, so I've chosen to create a new project from scratch to handle football results. In my traditional relational database, I have tournaments, teams, results and class tables. All are obviously related. What might be a good approach for designing a project like this, using a NoSQL approach instead?"}
{"_id": "104928", "title": "Manager keeps changing requirement specification after every demo.", "text": "## Background of my working environment My manager has no background or understanding of computers or software whatsoever. It is highly likely he hasn't seen code in any form (not even from a physical distance of 10 feet or less) in his life. There is _no one_ who understands the complexity of what I am asked to implement. To the point that if I semi-hardcode no one would know. On Joel's test we score an unbelievable score 0. ## The problems   * The manager and at times other \"senior\" keep changing the requirement specification. Changes which, if good engineering be done and not patchy \"fixes\", require change in the underlying design.   * There is _absolutely no one_ who looks at code (probably because no one knows how to, or even if it should be done) which means no one will ever be able to:      * Appreciate the complexity of the problem or the elegance of the solution.     * Suggest improvement to the approach.      * Appreciate the quality of the code.     * Point out where the code can be improved.   * A lot of jargon is used which makes sense grammatically but fails to make any sense any other way.   * Doesn't feel, behave or work like a software company. ## The question What should be done? _Especially regarding there being no one who would point out improvements in my code._ ## Update To answer HLGEM's (and possibly others) question about what I've done to try and fix it. I offered to set up Redmine and introduce source control to everyone. I said I would recommend distributed (git or mercurial) but will also talk about centralized ones and let the team decide. Response was that things are being done and will be done within weeks. Haven't seen that nor am I aware if other parts of the company use it."}
{"_id": "229340", "title": "Fetching instructions from memory", "text": "So, I am a noob in assembly language and machine instructions. When the discussion came up as to how funtion calls are implemented at the processor level, someone said that the `CALL` instruction pushes the address of the next instruction to be executed on the stack before updating the `EIP` and then someone asked how do we know the address of the next instruction. And then someone asked while `EIP` points to the current instruction in memory how does the processor know how many bytes from `EIP` need to be read so that the whole instruction is read. I assumed that all instructions are fixed length so the processor would read those many bytes as would constitute the instruction and then the decoding process would determine how many more bytes need to be read to fetch the operands. However when searching about the instructions I came to know that the instruction sizes vary. So we are back to the same question: How does the processor know the number of bytes to read to get the instruction from memory to the instruction cache?"}
{"_id": "229349", "title": "does anyone know how to use the PyQt 'uic' module method 'compileUiDir'?", "text": "I don't find the docstring to be very clear:               def compileUiDir(dir, recurse=False, map=None, **compileUi_args):         \"\"\"compileUiDir(dir, recurse=False, map=None, **compileUi_args)              Creates Python modules from Qt Designer .ui files in a directory or         directory tree.              dir is the name of the directory to scan for files whose name ends with         '.ui'.  By default the generated Python module is created in the same         directory ending with '.py'.         recurse is set if any sub-directories should be scanned.  The default is         False.         map is an optional callable that is passed the name of the directory         containing the '.ui' file and the name of the Python module that will be         created.  The callable should return a tuple of the name of the directory         in which the Python module will be created and the (possibly modified)         name of the module.  The default is None.         compileUi_args are any additional keyword arguments that are passed to         the compileUi() function that is called to create each Python module.         \"\"\"      with regards to the map keyword argument and there is no simple example to go with it. Is it expecting a map argument? as in:               uic.compileUiDir(\"ui/\", map=(\"ui/\", \"../widget/test.py\"))      and how is it formed? I basically have a few `.ui` files in the `ui` directory and wish to compile them and place the resulting `.py` files in another directory called `widget`. They have names like `test1Widget.ui`, `test2Widget.ui`, etc. and I would like for them to be renamed to `test1.py`, `test2.py`, etc. Can anyone give me some pointers please?"}
{"_id": "44834", "title": "What is the pass mark for MS exam (particularly 70-515)", "text": "I am looking at taking the 70-515 (web apps with .net4) exam soon, and I am wondering what the pass mark is? The training material's test exams set the pass mark at 80%, but from past experience (taking 1.0 exams 6 years ago) I thought it was only 70%. Also, can anyone confirm if the number of questions on the exam is 45? Thanks."}
{"_id": "212713", "title": "Can compilers check whether certain axioms hold for a user defined type?", "text": "Suppose the following type is defined (C++ syntax, can be conceptually applied to any statically typed language.)               class T {        int val;        friend bool operator<(const T& lhs, const T& rhs) {           return lhs.val < rhs.val;        }        // Ideally, if we should make them \"friends\"        // Also, this doesn't make them belong to the type itself as they're not member functions        friend bool operator>=(const T& lhs, const T& rhs) {           return !(lhs < rhs);        }        // Also the following implementation is interesting        friend bool operator>=(const T& lhs, const T& rhs) {           return lsh.val >= rhs.val;        }     };      So, the compiler can definitely check whether T supports operator< or operator>=, it can just look up the declaration.   This gets more complicated should these be defined as \"friends\" instead of member functions, but it can be done as far as I'm concerned. However, can the compiler check whether the \"common axiom of sorts\" hold? (Can as in is it possible to check this in all scenarios? Doesn't matter whether or not this would be standard-compliant.) Say:   not (a < b) == a >= b Should we define one in terms of the other, it is definitely possible in this particular scenario, but this is naturally not the only axiom that needs to be checked, what about:   (a > b) => (b < a)   and it's also not necessary (unfortunately) to define our behaviour in terms of something that has already been defined. And sometimes it wouldn't be even possible. So, if the compiler can check whether certain axioms hold, how? Generating random values from certain ranges? Is it possible to devise and proof correctness of such ranges? This is mainly related to C++ concepts that unlike C++ concepts lite, should also be able to \"support axioms\", whatever that means, I just can't see a clear way as to how they can be enforced. Or will the creator of the type have to state what axioms his class obeys? C++ dropped the \"concept maps\" as far as I know."}
{"_id": "212714", "title": "How to set up variable installation directory?", "text": "I have a couple projects that depend on additional files, like images or config files. When compiling and installing a programs like `Okular` with `cmake`, I can specify an installation directory and let `make install` install to that. Somehow, that program will figure out that all its dependencies are within that folder, not withing the main Linux file system. So far, I had absolute paths, like `/etc/config.ini`. The problem is that I cannot test the program without it installing it to my system any more. How can I do that easily in C++ and Python?"}
{"_id": "126765", "title": "C# Design, many properties, complex constructor and equality", "text": "I'm still a relative novice with OOP, so I am still trying to understand some of the best practices for how to design \"good\" objects. I know this question is probably a rather subjective, which is why I am here rather than on stackoverflow. I am designing an object that will have 20 separate string properties, none of which are required. These constraints are fixed and cannot be changed as it is an implementation of an outside data source that I have no control over. The design problem I am running into is how to effectively construct an instance of the object and be able to compare equality by comparing each field without violating normal best practices.   * A 20 argument constructor seems very wrong, especially since every field is a string, and there are cases where many of them will be null. I could use the optional arguments in C#4 to reduce the number of arguments that are actually called, but since everything is a string, I would have to use named parameters when calling the constructor, and that seems that it would be even uglier.   * I have thought about trying to group the properties into smaller classes, but the most logical grouping still has an object with 10 properties, and at least half of the remaining properties have no logical grouping.   * I could give each property a public setter, but that would make the object mutable, and thus complicate matters for overriding `GetHashCode()`. And I really don't need the object to be mutable. Once it is built, there should never be a reason to change it, but I don't want to rely on that because who knows what someone will try to do with it.   * Implementing `IEquatable<T>` is a possibility for the equality test, but my understanding is it is recommended to also override `Equals(object obj)` and `GetHashCode()` when implementing `IEquatable` so all `Equals` methods have the same behavior. Is this an edge case where overriding `Equals` without overriding `GetHashCode` should be done? I don't intend on using this object as a key in a dictionary or as a member of a `HashSet`, but I can't predict what someone else would try to do in the future. Or should I just abandon the idea of doing an equality comparison on all of the properties with Equals and implement my own `Compare()` method? Or is there a better method for building the object that would allow it to still be immutable without having to pass all of the arguments through a constructor or a method? EDIT: In response to Sign's comment, the purpose of the object is ultimately to be able to compare the data from the outside data source to our internal data to ensure it is accurate. Both data sets contain address information, but they are broken up differently. The internal data, is generally stored as a typical address (Street, City, State, Postal Code, County, Country), but there are variations when you have a suite/apartment # or a floor in a building. The external data is broken down even further into smaller pieces. So this object is supposed to be a common link between the 2 data sources and allow the user to compare like fields for equality. EDIT #2: Ultimately, I chose Doc Brown's answer because a modified version of his dictionary idea (with Enums as Keys instead of strings) was the simplest way to go without having a messy constructor and still provide the immutability I was hoping to have. In the long term, I am going to experiment with some of Oliver's suggestions as some of his edits did have a lot to offer."}
{"_id": "126766", "title": "How to do a login page for third party service without letting them sign on?", "text": "We have a unique situation (at least for me, first time seeing this). We have a web form where accountants can fill in requests and that part is taken care of. But after their login we redirect them to a third-party website where we need more information from them. The process is crazy right now since we have to give our account login info to all people filing with us. So is there a way in PHP or any other solution where we can after that form on our website auto login with our information to that third party website in a way that our credentials are not visible to the users using the service?"}
{"_id": "126763", "title": "My Asp.net MVC is running like a dodo ! Any recommendations", "text": "Following is the Url for my website, http://www.price-tag.org . If you visit any category link, you will see it performing very slow. For example, if you visit http://www.price-tag.org/Store/Section/Computers , you will see a lag before the sub categories are loaded. This is just the very first phase and i have just added few categories to the database and nothing much. If it's working like this in the very beginning, what will happen when I start adding products. I am using Entity Framework Code-first approach. Following is the code for one of the action that retrieves the list of categories.               PriceCompareEntity pe = new PriceCompareEntity();         //         // GET: /Store/     public ActionResult Section(string id)     {         if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(id))         {             var catsAndSub = pe.Categories.Where(cat => cat.Name == id).FirstOrDefault();             if (catsAndSub == null || catsAndSub.ParentCategoryId != null)             {                 return View(\"NoSuchRootCat\");             }             else             {                 ViewBag.Title = catsAndSub.MetaTitle;                 ViewBag.Description = catsAndSub.MetaDescription;                 ViewBag.Keywords = catsAndSub.MetaKeywords;                 return View(catsAndSub);             }         }         else         {             return View(\"NoSuchRootCat\");         }     }      I am really worried and bit disappointed. After so much of hard work for last month or two, the results aren't any good. If things are going to be this slow, my whole project will sink. Can't imagine how slow will it be if i add a few hundreds of products to the site. Nobody's gonna bother visiting a dodo website. Have I done something wrong in the development ? And What can i do to get things right and straight. While surfing net, i came across web cache and other stuff, but they are very advanced and need quite bit learning. Besides, my website isn't any facebook or SO with millions of user so going that advanced into the subject seems a far cry and will take a lot of time to get things done. **Update** I have taken down the website, so links might not show the original content."}
{"_id": "213040", "title": "When using MVVM, should you create new viewmodels, or swap out the models?", "text": "Say I have a viewmodel like this:               public class EmployeeViewModel     {         private EmployeeModel _model;              public Color BackgroundColor { get; set; }         public Name         {             get { return _model.Name; }             set             {                 _model.Name = value;                 NotifyPropertyChanged(Name);             }         }     }      So this viewmodel binds to a view that displays an employee. The thing to think about is, does this viewmodel represent an employee, or a \"displayable\" employee. The viewmodel contains some things that are view specific, for instance the background color. There can be many employees, but only one employee view. With this in mind, when changing the displayed employee, does it make sense to create a new EmployeeViewModel and rebind to the view, or simply swap out the EmployeeModel. Is the distinction even important, or is it a matter of style? I've always leaned toward creating new viewmodels, but I am working on a project where the viewmodels are created once and the models are swapped out. I'm not sure how I feel about this, though it seems to work fine."}
{"_id": "255880", "title": "Some problem about QT when using Qtablewidget", "text": "QApplication a(argc, argv);         Qt_test w;         QTableWidget * table = new QTableWidget(&w);         table->setRowCount(1);         table->setColumnCount(3);         table->setGeometry(QRect(30,30,340,140));         QPushButton * btn = new QPushButton(\"btn1\");         table->setCellWidget(0,1,btn);     //      //  table->removeRow(0);     //      table->setRowCount(3);         table->setCellWidget(0,1,btn);         w.show();         return a.exec();      This is my code ! and what makes me confused is that : the table is blank without the expected button !"}
{"_id": "234719", "title": "Is it fine for a class that creates objects to delegate them?", "text": "I have a large list of intercommunicating components; so I decided to have one class create all of them and then subsequently delegate them to other classes to facilitate finer tweaking and wiring together. By \"finer tweaking\", I mean that the components are modified to their final state; and by \"wiring together\" I mean that components are given a way to communicate in a specific manner. After they are all wired together, I send all the components over to an organizer to be properly organized into a GUI. I read somewhere that a class should only create objects or use them, but never both; so, I am trying to follow that and also limit each class's responsibilities. This initializer/delegator class does both initializing and delegating, so **should I further split it into an initializer and delegator?**"}
{"_id": "255885", "title": "Taking too long to return results MySQL", "text": "I am confused why do the server is taking too much time in execution of a following query:               SELECT tbl1.Column1 FROM Table1 AS tbl1      INNER JOIN Table2 AS tbl2 ON tbl2.Column4 = tbl1.Column1      It took about 20 minutes to return the results. MySQL config (my.ini) file looks like the following:                   [mysql]              # CLIENT #         port                           = 3306         socket                         = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\mysql.sock              [mysqld]              # GENERAL #         user                           = mysql         default-storage-engine         = InnoDB         socket                         = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\mysql.sock         pid-file                       = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\mysql.pid              # MyISAM #         key-buffer-size                = 32M         myisam-recover                 = FORCE,BACKUP              # SAFETY #         max-allowed-packet             = 16M         max-connect-errors             = 1000000              # DATA STORAGE #         datadir                        = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\              # BINARY LOGGING #         log-bin                        = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\mysql-bin         expire-logs-days               = 14         sync-binlog                    = 1              # CACHES AND LIMITS #         tmp-table-size                 = 32M         max-heap-table-size            = 32M         query-cache-type               = 0         query-cache-size               = 0         max-connections                = 500         thread-cache-size              = 50         open-files-limit               = 65535         table-definition-cache         = 4096         table-open-cache               = 4096              # INNODB #         innodb-log-files-in-group      = 2         innodb-log-file-size           = 128M         innodb-flush-log-at-trx-commit = 1         innodb-file-per-table          = 1         innodb-buffer-pool-size        = 2G              # LOGGING #         log-error                      = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\mysql-error.log         log-queries-not-using-indexes  = 1         slow-query-log                 = 1         slow-query-log-file            = X:\\wamp\\bin\\mysql\\mysql5.5.8\\data\\mysql-slow.log      Both Tables have primary keys. Regards, F. Ahmed"}
{"_id": "213048", "title": "Managing threads in Java with a good pattern", "text": "This morning I began writing a minimal chat using Java socket and threads but it took some minutes for me to experience a lot of problems in the MVC management. Currently I have 3 classes:   * Main, this is just the main class used for starting the Control.   * ChatController, I use this for managing Model and View classes (this is a Controller class).   * Host, a class containing a Socket attribute and two Scanner and PrintStream attributes for reading and writing to and from the socket. The problem here is which class extending from Thread to let the program both read and write features concurrently. My professor told me to extend the ChatControl (hence, the Controller) class, but I think it is too much hard- coding (and also, I don't like the method/attributes inherited from Thread to be visible from the ChatController class). So, is it correct extending the Control class from Thread for managing the thread or should I consider to implement another class for tasking this problem (or even trying some other patterns)? If you need some source, find it on pastebin."}
{"_id": "213049", "title": "Extracting lambda expressions from linq queries and readability", "text": "Every now and then when I have a complex lambda, I do something like this:               Func<SomeObject, bool> equals = o =>         o.ID == someID && o.Name == someName && IsAdd || ...     var myList = MyThings.Where(equals).ToList();      Let's assume that the logic in equals can not be simplified. Does extracting the lambda from the linq query improve, or reduce readability? The alternative being:               var myList = MyThings.Where(o => o.ID == someID && o.Name == someName && IsAdd || ...).ToList();"}
{"_id": "255889", "title": "Application program interface", "text": "We usually test the web API s manually using J meter. Is it possible to create a software that will automatically create test scripts for the tests, and perform the testing ? I want to use J meter in the back end as the testing software."}
{"_id": "65167", "title": "In software, what does the term \"Embedded\" entail?", "text": "So I've been looking at furthering my knowledge into embedded and lower level hardware programming, however, every time I look for jobs that mentions _\"embedded\"_ it's always high level stuff. To me, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So what exactly does \"embedded\" entail? When I think of _embedded_ I think of lower-level microcontroller programming and such. If _embedded_ is not the proper title for this, then what should I be searching for?"}
{"_id": "127410", "title": "How to Write Unit Tests When One Fix Will Make Many Failing Tests Pass?", "text": "I have two test cases to test a fix to code that is using the wrong criteria for selecting objects from a collection:   1. Given one object in the collection matching the bad criteria, ensure that no object is returned.   2. Given two objects in the collection, with the later one matching the bad criteria, ensure that the earlier object is retrned. Right now, both of these tests will fail. The problem is, as soon as I make the fix, both tests will pass. Is this ok? I thought we needed a _single_ failing unit test before writing the code. I haven't heard it's ok to have multiple failing unit tests before writing code."}
{"_id": "127413", "title": "Can you share an explanation or experience that gave you clarity about how to use SQL SELECTS?", "text": "I have been programming for a long time, like 13 years (only professionally for about 4). I've become familiar with things like QBasic, Visual Basic, C#, .NET, Java, C, C++, Javascript, JQuery, etc. I can tackle almost any code and figure out what is going on or fix it, as well as create new solutions. However, no matter how hard I try, or how many times various DB people try and explain to me a solution for SQL, or how to create a SQL query that selects the things I want, I can't seem to 'get it'. What I mean is, I can understand why the new or modified query they write for me works, but I can't seem to get it into my head enough so that I can figure this out on my own or write my own complex queries. Was there any experience you had, or explanation you heard, that gave you enlightenment about SQL? This is not a yes or no question though, PLEASE share it!"}
{"_id": "241515", "title": "Why are interfaces called interfaces?", "text": "From what I understand so far, an interface is a list of methods that need to be implemented by whoever wishes to use that interface. If so, would it make any difference to call it a specification instead of interface, or is it more sophisticated than a specification?"}
{"_id": "254559", "title": "How does \"dogfooding\" work?", "text": "I heard that twitter practices \"dogfooding,\" meaning that they use their own API for the website. However, I don't really understand how that's true. When I use Firebug, I see that all the AJAX calls are made to some URL like:               https://twitter.com/{username}/{whatever else}      Rather than:               https://api.twitter.com/1.1/statuses/...      If they are using different URL's, how are they using their own API? I think I have the wrong notion of what an API is... Also, how would it work with OAuth? Do they validate themselves? How does one use his/her own API (\"dogfood\")?"}
{"_id": "215943", "title": "Creating deterministic key pairs in javascript for use in encrypting/decrypting/signing messages", "text": "So I have been searching everywhere and havn't been able to find anything with the sufficient information I need.. so Im a bit stumped on this one at the moment What I am trying to do is create a public/private key pair (like PGP) upon a users account creation, based on their passphrase and a random seed. The public key would be saved on the server, and ideally the private key would never be seen by the server whatsoever. The user could then sign in, and send a message to another user. Before the message is sent, the senders key pair would be re-generated on the fly based on their credentials (and maybe a password prompt) and used to encrypt the message. The receiver would then use their own re-generated private key to decrypt said message. The server itself should never see any plaintext passwords, private keys or readable messages. Bit unsure how on how I could go about implementing this. Iv been looking into PGP, specifically openPGP.js. The main trouble I am having is being able to regenerate the key-pair based off a specific seed. PGP seems to have a random output even if the inputs are the same. Storing the private key in a cookie or in HTML5 storage or something also isnt really an option, too unreliable. Can anyone point me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "215946", "title": "Either I'm not confident I just don't know anything", "text": "My name is Sael and I'm 14 years old. Since I was 12 and I got my first computer I instantly go interested in making games. So of course like any other I googled it, got discouraged and forgot about it for a few months. When I was 13 I decided to continue programming, and decided that java would best suit me. Now after a year, I have a basic understanding of java and how it works (it just clicked instantly one day). Anyways, my problem is that I know how I'm going to make a simple game in my head, but as soon as I click that \"New Project\" button on eclipse, I'm instantly lost and can't figure out where to start. I can't do much without a tutorial beside me since my mind is so dependent on it. So here's the question : what can I do to get past this problem of mine, and have any of you felt like this before?   * sorry if my English is a bit incorrect, Spanish is my main language* _I've made Minecraft mods before_"}
{"_id": "215945", "title": "Web Services and code lists", "text": "Our team heavily discuss the issues how to handle code list in a web service definition. The design goal is to describe a provider API to query a system using various values. Some of them are catalogs resp. code lists. A catalog or code list is a set of key value pairs. There are different systems (at least 3) maintaining possibly different code lists. Each system should implement the provider API, whereas each system might have different code list for the same business entity eg. think of colors. One system know [(1,'red'),(2,'green')] and another one knows [(1,'lightgreen'),(2,'darkgreen'),(3,'red')] etc. The access to the different provider API implementations will be encapsulated by a query service, but there is already one candidate which might use at least one provider API directly. The current options to design the API discussed are:   1. use an abstract code list in the interface definition: the web service interface defines a well known set of code list which are expected to be used for querying and returning data. Each API provider implementation has to mapped the request and response values from those abstract codelist to the system specific one.   2. let the query component handle the code list: the encapsulating query service knows the code list set of each provider API implementation and takes care of mapping the input and output to the system specific code lists of the queried system.   3. do not use code lists in the query definition at all: Just query code lists by a plain string and let the provider API implementation figure out the right value. This might lead to a loose of information and possibly many false positives, due to the fact that the input string could not be canonical mapped to a code list value (eg. green -> lightgreen or green -> darkgreen or both) What are your experiences resp. solutions to such a problem? Could you give any recommendation?"}
{"_id": "170357", "title": "Minimize useless tweaking of a numeric app", "text": "I'm developing a numeric application (nonlinear optimizer), with a zillion knobs to tweak and rising. It's not my first foray into this domain, but this time there are even more variables in the code and I'm on a tight schedule. Don't want to waste time fiddling. Days or even months can potentially be wasted adjusting variables, recompiling, and reprocessing benchmark datasets. The resulting data is viewed and trouble spots are checked. The overall quality of the solution is reported by the program but the meaning of the report could change over time. (Numeric units for the report are one thing I'm trying to nail down.) One main problem is organizing result files to identify each with specific code changes. Note taking can be a pain, is there software to help with this? Are there agreed best practices to making this kind of development cycle reliably move forward? The solver package converges to its optimal solution with mechanical determination, but I'm all too familiar with the way an excess of design decisions can mire development."}
{"_id": "207941", "title": "Reusing open-source code that doesn\u2019t specify a license", "text": "I am creating a module for a CMS. I found a PHP code in github that does some work for me. The author has not clearly stated the license for the code. Since it is in github and is publicly available, can I use the code in my module or should I get the author's written permission? I am planning to sell my module for a small price."}
{"_id": "207943", "title": "Why are some minor update versions of Java skipped?", "text": "Up until around January 2013, the minor updates of major Java versions were always consecutive: 6u30, 6u31, 6u32, 6u33 and so on. The same is true for Java 7 updates. But, starting around January or February 2013, some minor version numberings were skipped. Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history#Java_7_updates As you can see, the minor updates are 7u10, 7u11, 7u13, 7u15, 7u17, 7u21, 7u25. Where did 7u12, 7u14, 7u16 etc. dissapear ? Was there a specific reason why they were skipped ? If they were actually faulty and couldn't be released, then:   * how come there is no significant uptake in the time-gap between them ?   * how come up until January/February this year this never happened, but is constantly happening ever since ? I tried searching for an answer to this, but couldn't find anything. So I thought someone here might have a clue about this."}
{"_id": "100007", "title": "Keys as attributes for ajax calls", "text": "I have been told its kind of a bad idea to use a key as an attribute of an xml tag. I find the very handy for ajax as i can just stick the key i need in what ever element is being clicked,changed, or whatever. I can see how this is a security risk but have only used the tactic in internal apps. On external application/sites what would be a better way to handle this. I would assume just embedding another unique field that isn't numeric. Basic example... I have a button than when pressed would update the price of an item in the database. Then using JS on button press i would take the id and pass it back to the controller to update the item."}
{"_id": "96265", "title": "best way to quickly stash your cognitive state when you just can't avoid interruptions", "text": "I don't even know if this question makes sense ... but let me let you grok it... > _**imagine ..._** _You're totally absorbed into some programming > thought/idea/concept, your brain is in it's most active state thinking up a > solution to a problem, or asJoel Spolsky puts it -- you're deep into your > \"zone\" -- AND, suddenly someone or some event breaks your engrossment -- > something that you just can't avoid, something you have to attend to._ > **_... imagination complete .. back to reality_** Something that can break your concentration can be...   * you're summoned for an urgent meeting   * your code broke the daily build and your colleague is calling you   * you just recalled something you had to do but forgot doing it   * your teammate has some exciting news to break and insists you to listen   * your girlfriend (or boyfriend) has just come over Now assume you've got only 5-10 minutes before you **_have to_** leave what you were deeply into, and entertain the interruption. My question is -- how do you, quickly \"save\" the state of mind you were in, when the diversion came. Do you write it in \"some form\" on a paper or computer, or do you just \"remember\" it somehow. How do you salvage those exact thoughts within 5-10 minutes so that later on when you come back you can catch up right from the \"point\" you left. It often so happens to me that i just can't recollect those exact thoughts i was thinking before the blow -- and i feel like i've lost a good idea or solutions to a problem. i try to think retroactively trying hard to get to that SAME cognitive state that had me excited about an idea -- but i get frustrated not being able to \"get there\". does something like this happen to you. how do you \"recover\" from this? _**\\-- UPDATE --_** My main concern is not code -- it's those \"abstract ideas\" that haven't been yet converted into code that i need to \"save\" somehow"}
{"_id": "96262", "title": "Client Request Explanation of \"Benefits\" as part of consulting fee", "text": "I gave my rate to my client with a simple breakdown as requested. I listed out the components of my rate 1) Salary 2) Benefits 3) Overhead (tax, suppliers, etc etc) The client is ok with 1) and 3) But he wants a further breakdown of 2) Benefits (incl. vacation, sick days, insurance, etc) I am just using a very conservative and typical rate for benefits. Is this request typical? How should I say no? Thanks"}
{"_id": "160965", "title": "Fractional and Cartesian Coordinates", "text": "I have a set of fractional coordinates. I also have a rotation matrix that operates on cartesian coordinates. Does anyone know how I could convert my rotation matrix so I can operate on the fractional coordinates? The fractional coordinates are functions of the basis vectors a,b,c and the corresponding alpha, beta, gamma. The following link explains how to do coordinate transformations. I'm just not sure about how to use the listed matrices to operate on the rotation matrix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_coordinates Any ideas? Thanks"}
{"_id": "160967", "title": "Starting a new project and need ideas for handling Phishing/Brute Force attacks AND Logging access", "text": "I'm starting a brand new project. The main access from the client side app will be via an API written in ASP.Net MVC3.   I'm looking for discussions on how best to handle logging information for security access as well has how to handle Phishing and Brute Force.   On the Information side of things, I'd also like some ideas on what to keep track of to help me both better improve the application in the future and to be able to market it better.   Anyone got any suggestions or links?"}
{"_id": "116542", "title": "Maximum project duration for Feature Driven Development Project", "text": "Is there a duration limit for FDD Project when those projects are likely to fail due external and internal factors? For example XP projects should kept short due the openess of the concept and dependents on the individuals in the team and lack of documentation which is vulnerable to disturbances like losing team members and so forth."}
{"_id": "116541", "title": "Does Groovy follow Tennent's Correspondence Principle?", "text": "Here's an interesting discussion of Tennent's Correspondence Principle, and a brief description from Neal Gafter: > The principle dictates that an expression or statement, when wrapped in a > closure and then immediately invoked, ought to have the same meaning as it > did before being wrapped in a closure. Any change in semantics when wrapping > code in a closure is likely a flaw in the language. Does the Groovy language follow this principle?"}
{"_id": "124994", "title": "Why do PHP variables need to be preceded with a dollar sign?", "text": "I understand that all PHP variables need to be preceded by a dollar sign (e.g. `$someValue = 1`), but why is this the case? Why was this design choice made? The reason I ask is my girlfriend asked why when I mentioned that PHP variables need to begin with a dollar sign, and I realized I had no idea why this syntactic choice was made. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "124996", "title": "Is code commonly generated from UML?", "text": "So when I was at university I was educated on the benefits of UML and its future in code development. But from my industry experience, I've found that while we do use diagrams\u2014ranging from ER diagrams, class diagrams, state diagrams, to work flow diagrams\u2014all of it is for communication purposes. That is, I've never generated code automatically from diagrams, and from a communication standpoint, I generally try to keep my diagrams as simple and easy to understand as possible. But when I look at Visio and Enterprise Architect, it seems they have many different types of graphs, shapes, properties objects, most of which I don't use. Do people use UML to do more sophisicated things such as code or database generation?"}
{"_id": "124999", "title": "To which layer does this code belong?", "text": "When I say \"Revisional Data Model\", I mean a data model where information is never lost: Deletes never destroy any rows, and updates always cause an insert somewhere else to preserve a row's previous state before the update. There are a few I've read about, and heard from colleagues:   1. Triggers in the database. The main reason why I don't like this approach is because if you depend on triggers to enforce revision integrity, the application becomes tied to the database server. If using an ORM with different providers (Oracle, MySQL, T-SQL, etc), you may need to alter some SQL to switch between them.   2. Human-readable trace logs. Last year I played Business Analyst for a project with a new developer because one of our sister departments was slammed with important deadlines. She insisted that, despite the requirements I gathered and the schemas I modeled, she would insert a stored procedure to be executed with each create/update/delete statement. This sproc would just write out the old data as a formatted string, and save it to a ERRORS_LOG table in the database. Her goal was to help her with debugging the application in case anything went wrong: she wanted a trace.   3. Creating sister tables. This approach is like having 2 databases living in the same context. For the table Person there would be a PersonHistory table, for Product there would be ProductHistory, and so on. The schemas would be identical, and each time a change happened in the entity table, the previous state would be inserted into ProductHistory. If you have an application where you want to allow users to \"undelete\" or \"restore previous version\" of an entity, only #3 seems like a workable solution. However, since each pair (entity and its history) have the same model/schema, they can in fact be combined. By adding bool/bit properties like IsCurrentVersion and IsDeleted, you can slice a single entity set into different states within the WHERE clause. Consider this example #4. One disadvantage of #4 is that the database tables become hard to read when you select all rows. Mining data from a db server ide would require pretty extensive use of views, which causes the same problem as in option #1. Looking at all of the different states together in the same table makes it much more difficult to read. With approach #3, you need to look in a different table to find previous versions & deletes. We've been using approach #4 with success. We have a RevisableEntity supertype with properties that indicate when data was changed, who changed it, whether it was deleted, archived, or modified. Updates occur on rows just as they would under normal circumstances. However as part of the same action, a corresponding insert is made into the same table / entity set. The insert contains the same values as the update before it was updated. The updated row, in addition to whatever changes were made by the user, also updates the when and who properties. Now for my question: Where does this code belong? In the domain, or in the repository implementation? There are certain aspects of this that are storage dependent, which hint at putting the code where your ORM coupling is. However there are other aspects that the domain / application layers should be able to trust. Maybe the domain entities should manage their own revisional integrity, or maybe there should be a factory to coordinate?"}
{"_id": "192009", "title": "Should a Presenter or a View sort data in an MVP application?", "text": "A typical MVP application might have a View method such as:               void setDisplayItems(List<DisplayItem> items);      Should the Presenter sort the list of items or is that a task for the view? I feel this might be a task for the View, for two reasons:   1. If it were a task for the Presenter, then methods such as:              void addDisplayItem(DisplayItem item);      won't work, as the Presenter can't insert the item at the correct place.   2. The View can offer different sorting options, based on user selections. However, I also can't shake the feeling that this is too much \"thinking\" for the View to be doing. Can anyone comment on the correct choice for MVP? I should note that I typically produce Swing-based Java applications (in case that allows for more specific answers)."}
{"_id": "89313", "title": "Python file layout for web development package hacking", "text": "I come from a PHP background so I'm used to everything being in one place. I want to install a python program (Zine)so that I can hack on it. The instructions I've found install it to the system in multiple folders. I do not want to edit files that are installed in Linux system directories. What is the python way to layout the directory on the filesystem for a web program that under active development? would it be:               /web/htdocs/python/modules/app.py      or               /web/python/modules/app.py     /web/htdocs/      or               /web/python/modules/app.py     /web/python/htdocs/"}
{"_id": "51979", "title": "Small projects using the cathedral model: does open-source lower security?", "text": "We know of Linus' law: > With enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow In general, people seem to say that open-source software is more secure because of that very thing, **but**... There are many small OSS projects with just 1 or 2 developers (the cathedral model, as described by ESR). For these projects, does releasing the source- code actually lower the security? For projects like the Linux kernel there are thousands of developers and security vulnerabilities are quite likely going to be found, but when just some few people look through the source code, while allowing crackers (black hat hackers) to see the source as well, is the security lowered instead of increased? I know that the security advantage closed-source software has over OSS is security through obscurity, which isn't good (at all), but it could help to some degree, at least by giving those few devs some more time (security through obscurity doesn't help with the if but with the when). **EDIT:** The question isn't whether OSS is more secure than non-OSS software but if the advantages for crackers are greater than the advantages for the developers who want to prevent security vulnerabilities from being exploited."}
{"_id": "5964", "title": "\"How to code better\" training", "text": "We frequently recruit fresh talent into our company straight from the Universities. While a lot of training goes on for these developers, I think there should be a training program that simply teaches them good coding skills (note, I am not talking about knowledge of .net framework). What I am looking for is a software which allows me to automate some of this training. The part that should be automated is   * Create coding assignments   * Automatic submission of assignment   * Automatic evaulation of the submitted assignment on code quality Have you guys ever seen something like this in the wild?"}
{"_id": "16141", "title": "What are the pros and cons of a language using whitespace vs. {}'s to indicate scope?", "text": "There seems to be a conflict over whether its better to use whitespace or tokens like brackets to indicate scope. I've seen many praise python's solution to the inconsistent indentation problem, but many disagree: > Any language that has whitespace as tokens needs to die. posted later on the same answer: > I was sortof anti-whitespace-as-tokens, until I actually tried it. It > probably helped that my personal white-space layout pretty much matches what > everyone in python-land uses. Perhaps it's that I am a bit minimalist, but > if you're going to indent anyways, why bother with the {}s? I can see some clear arguments for each side: using whitespace:   * helps reduce inconsistent indentation in code   * clears the screen by replace visible tokens with whitespace to serve the same purpose using tokens:   * much easier to cut and paste code to different levels (you don't have to fix the indentation)   * more consistent. Some text editors display whitespace differently.   * more popular currently. Are there any points I missed? Which do you prefer? Any words of wisdom after having worked with one or the other for a long time? * * * PS. I hate it when languages don't use the same token for each control structure. VB is really annoying with its `End If` and `End While` statements, most other languages just use {}'s for everything. But maybe that's a topic for a different question..."}
{"_id": "52409", "title": "Coding with laptop and external screen - neck, back, comfort ", "text": "Guess I'm not the only one here coding on laptop + external keyboard + external screen. I can't really decide. **Figure 1** : Putting screen directly in front of (upright) my eyes and move laptop to the side. That feels like more comfortable but I can't really see so good to 15\" laptop which is now quite away. Feels unused. **Figure 2:** Putting laptop in front of me and move external monitor on side. Feels like more efficient space usage, but I am afraid that my neck/back might start hurting since I need to turn my head often. What do you prefer? Some good advice? Sacrificing health is definitely no option here so that's why I'm worried and asking this silly question. Thanks"}
{"_id": "52402", "title": "Generating CSRF tokens without using sessions & cookies", "text": "I'm writing a library to generate and check CSRF tokens. I would like to do it without having to use sessions and/or cookies. What I've come up with is this:   1. A token generated from the current time and a unique token id (unix-timestamp.unique-token-id).    2. The token would then be hashed using the HMAC method. The returned value would be: hmac-hash.unix-timestamp.unique-token-id. This could then be hidden in a form.   3. The library would then test the returned token by extracting the HAMC hash, time and unique token id from it and then compare the returned HAMC hash to one generated using the returned time and unique token id. As long as the HMAC secret on the server stays secret it should be secure or did I missed something?"}
{"_id": "153799", "title": "My software is hosted on a \"bad\" website. Can I do anything about it?", "text": "**Edit:** Thanks for all of the answers, guys! I think I'm just going to include some kind of text on my webpage telling users to only download from the links provided. The thing is that there have been some legitimate and illegitimate websites that have picked up on my software, so it would be safer just to tell users to avoid any website that I don't link to. Thanks a lot for all the help! **Original:** The software I've created is hosted on what you could call a \"bad\" website. It's hard to explain, so I'll just provide an example. I've made a free password generator. This, along with most of my other FREE software, is available on this website. This is their description of my software:               Platform: 7/7 x64/Windows 2K/XP/2003/Vista     Size: 61.6 Mb     License: Trial     File Type: .7z     Last Updated: June 4th, 2011, 15:38 UTC     Avarage Download Speed: 6226 Kb/s     Last Week Downloads: 476     Toatal Downloads: 24908      Not only is the size completely skewed, it is not trial software, it's free software. The thing is that it's not the description I'm worried about--it's the download links. The website is a scam website. They apparently link to \"cracks\" and \"keygens\", but not only is that in itself illegal, they actually link to fake download websites that give you viruses and charge your credit card. Just to list things that are wrong with this website: they claim all software is paid software then offer downloads for keygens and cracks; they fake all details about the program and any program reviews and ratings; they and the downloads site they link to are probably run by the same person, so they make money off of these lies. I'm only a teenager with no means to pursue legal action. This means that, unfortunately, I can't do anything that will actually get results. I'd like my software to only be downloaded off my personal website. I have links to four legitimate locations to download my software and that's it. Essentially, is there anything I can do about this? As I said above, I can't pursue legal action, but is there some way I can discourage traffic to that website by blacklisting it or something? Can I make a claim on MY website to only download my software from the links I provide? Or should I just pay no mind? Because, honestly, it's a bit of a ways back in Google results. Thank you ahead of time."}
{"_id": "90954", "title": "Is there any benefit to obsession with making code \"look pretty\"?", "text": "Sometimes I spend ridiculous amounts of time (hours) agonizing over making code \"look pretty\". I mean making things look symmetrical. I will actually rapidly scroll through an entire class to see if anything jumps out as not looking \"pretty\" or \"clean\". Am I wasting my time? Is there any value in this kind of behavior? Sometimes the functionality or design of the code won't even change, I'll just re- structure it so it looks nicer. Am I just being totally OCD or is there some benefit hidden in this?"}
{"_id": "252554", "title": "Testing strategy for production environment", "text": "In an ideal world, dev/ops are working together as one team to release something onto production. However, there are organizations with limitations so that release engineers/teams are kept completely away from development/project teams. This not only added the communication pain for releases but also making the production environment almost \"invisible\" to project team. To some extent, there is \"trust crisis\" between project and deployment team. Even we have good and reliable Acceptance/Functional tests in UAT environment but we just not sure if the deployment process has been done properly and if everything works on production exactly as UAT. So the only way we can verify this is through some tests on production environment. Some simple smoke tests could be helpful to identify connectivity problems. So my question is : What's your opinion on applying all tests we had on UAT to production (with configuration to disable the bits that we don't want to happen on production such as removing data etc.) If you have done something similar, how do you play data on production environment without having audit trails tainted (one obvious thing would be account based, but let's assume there isn't segregation by account). EDIT: I didn't mean to test prod environment all the time, but only right after deployment. Also we will not stop trying solving the problem from the root - dev/op relationship. But at the same time would like to explore other possibilities."}
{"_id": "153791", "title": "General programming techniques to speed up coding time", "text": "I am preparing for a programming contest where we have to code in C++ and it is all about producing working code in a short time. An example would be to use a macro to get the minimum of two ints or using memsets to initialize arrays (but I was told that you shouldn't use either here). This leads to the question, what kind of coding techniques exist to use at a real job?"}
{"_id": "153790", "title": "Non-blocking ORM issues", "text": "I asked a question on SO, and found that there are no non-blocking ORMs for my favorite web framework. By non-blocking I mean an ORM with callback support for asynchronous retrieval. The ORM would be supplied with a callback or some such to execute when data has been received. I want to create one, but I have some questions that blocking me from starting development:   * What issues might be encountered when developing ORM?   * Does supporting non-blocking retrieval dramatically increase the complexity of an ORM?    * Why are there so few non-blocking ORMs around? **Update:** It looks like I have to improve my question. We have solutions that already allow us to receive data in non-blocking way, and I believe that most companies that use such solutions use raw SQL. We want to create a more generic solution that we can reuse in future projects. What difficulties might we encounter? **Update 2:** Preferred language is python, but I'm interested in principles. This question is actually for me, as I will look at platforms which already have non-blocking ORM."}
{"_id": "148250", "title": "How should I build the data structure for a dynamic, unlimited-size \"maze\"?", "text": "I'm not actually sure that \"maze\" is the correct term. Basically users start in a single `Room` that has 4 doors (N, S, E, and W). They can go in any direction, and each subsequent room is contains another room with anywhere from 1 to 4 doorways that go to other rooms. The \"maze\" is supposed to be unlimited in size, and to grow as you move rooms. There is a limited number of `Rooms` available, however the available number is dynamic and can change. My problem is, I'm not sure of the best data structure for this type of pattern I first thought about just using a [X][X] array of `Room` objects, but I'd really rather avoid that since the thing is supposed to grow in any direction, and only rooms that are \"visited\" should be built. The other thought was to have each `Room` class contain 4 linked `Room` properties for N, S, E, and W, and just link to the previous `Room`, but the problem with that I don't know how to identify if a user goes into a room that has an adjacent room already \"built\" For example,               ---    ---            ----------     |        |            |        |        Start        5          4     |        |            |        |     ---    ---            ---    ---     ---    --- ---------- ---    ---     |        | |        | |        |     |    1          2          3     |        | |        | |        |     ---    --- ---    --- ----------           If the user moves from Start > 1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5, then `Room` #5 needs to know that W contains the starting room, S is room #2 and in this case should not be available, and N can be either a new `Room` or a wall (nothing). Perhaps I need a mix of the array and the linked rooms, or maybe I'm just looking at this the wrong way. Is there a better way of building the data structure for this type of \"maze\"? Or am I on the right track with my current thought process, and am just missing a few pieces of information? (In case you're interested, the project is a game very similar to Munchkin Quest)"}
{"_id": "102183", "title": "source code check in / validation best practices", "text": "I am looking for best practices that big organizations follow for code check- in and validations. Currently we follow these steps, \\- Developer writes code \\- Developer do some initial tests \\- Code is awaiting validation now \\- Technical lead reviews the code (possible bugs, see if coding convention is followed etc) \\- Once approved by technical lead, the code goes in QA state \\- Once QA approves the code is checked in into the trunk. We are now moving to a new project and I was looking for some best practices that would ease the process. We have custom made software that maintains the code status. Thanks, Ali"}
{"_id": "155560", "title": "Microsoft UI stack", "text": "I am a C#, WPF developer and would like to know and understand the Microsoft UI Stack. I could not find much on the internet. I guess that this would be a huge topic, and might not be feasible to explain here, but any suggest online reading would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "46158", "title": "SPRING.net Framework and its popularity", "text": "I was reading through the documentation on http://www.springframework.net/. I was extremely impressed with this framework despite the amount of xml configuration it requires. I was wondering why this framework is not in the \"buzz\" . Any shortcomings? They are even up to speed with CLR 4."}
{"_id": "155563", "title": "Role Difference between StakeHolder and ProductOwner", "text": "What is actually the role difference between ProductOwner and StakeHolder ?"}
{"_id": "46154", "title": "ClickOnce analog", "text": "I am looking for a ClickOnce analog on Windows platform. I have to deploy (publish) a .NET WinForms application (thick client) for N-tier system via web."}
{"_id": "228262", "title": "Concerning JavaScript prototype and the initial constructor function", "text": "I am going through a tutorial on OOP in JavaScript (javascriptissexy.com using OOP in JS: What you Need to know). The instructor is explaining the Constructor/Prototype pattern of object creation. I understand what is going on, but I have a burning question that he doesn't answer! We begin like this:               function User(name, email) {         this.name = name,         this.email = email,         this.scores = [],         this.etc = etc     }      I get it, and now every var xxx = new User(\"name\", \"email\") will have an xxx.name, xxx.email, xxx.scores, etc. But now, we overwrite the prototype:               User.prototype = {         constructor: User;         saveScore: function(...){...},         changeEmail: function(...){...},         showNameAndScore: function(...){...}     }      Now every var xxx = new User(...) will inherit saveScore, changeEmail, and showNameAndScore methods. I am brand new, but from what I understand, I could have included these functions in the begining:               function User(...) {         this.name = name,         this.saveScore = function(...) {...},         ...     }      Instead of editing the prototype right away. I am waiting for the author to tell me that we include these functions in the prototype because they will be exact carbon copies which the user can't edit, and therefore only need to define them once (in the prototype) rather than on every instance of a User. Or is he just trying to demonstrate the different flavors of inheritance? Thank you ahead of time!"}
{"_id": "82938", "title": "How do you keep yourself motivated?", "text": "Sometimes self -learning a particular language from books can make u feel bored and even you feel discouraged to learn more. What as a source of encouragement or motivation did you use while trying to learn programming?"}
{"_id": "124335", "title": "Laws about Software Development", "text": "I'm wondering if there are any laws related to software development... Like, what if you're writing code for a digital pacemaker, or you're designing some other system that might have a profound effect on someone's life, or well- being... Are there specific laws for that kind of thing?"}
{"_id": "124334", "title": "Software Agent construction guidelines", "text": "I'm currently studying a Master in Computer Science and I am interested in working with Software Agents and C#. I have found so much information regarding theoretical aspects but just a few articles focused on practical programming aspects such as architecture, design or implementation. Could anybody suggest any good source that I could explore? I wouldn't like to \"reinvent the wheel\" but to contribute with something better to the current state of the art."}
{"_id": "124337", "title": "Web-based Screening Interviews", "text": "I came across seemikecode.com and it got me thinking how this could be used for live coding sessions when screening applicants for a job. For example:   * Email telling the interviewee what to expect   * Problems attributes of coding problems that are suited for this setup   * How to responded to the code presented   * Recording the session What are your thoughts on this? Are tools like this helpful or do they get in the way of evaluating a candidate?"}
{"_id": "154211", "title": "Updating and organizing class diagrams in a growing C++ project", "text": "I am working on a C++ project that is getting bigger and bigger. I do a lot of UML so it was not really hard to explain my work to co-workers until now. Lately I implemented a lot of new features and I gave up updating by hand my Dia UML diagrams. My code is documented with Doxygen but the generated doc is not really visual. I would just like my co-workers to quickly understand updates in my class design. Doxygen seems to handle UML diagrams using Graphviz but I would like to know if other possibilities are available and what you guys do to be as clear as possible when showing your code to co-workers (not clients)."}
{"_id": "69113", "title": "What are some good JAIN SLEE related books?", "text": "Could you recommend some good reading materials related to JAIN SLEE? Or Java in Telecommunications in general."}
{"_id": "69111", "title": "What is the best advice to give someone in this industry who resists change?", "text": "I'm having a discussion with someone quite older than me, so I have no place in telling him what is wise. He is in the computer field but resists change, and we're discussing how his co-workers are enjoying learning a new technology and he's just avoiding it like the plague. I'm looking for maybe some good reading or testimony to support following trends and learning new technologies, rather than falling behind and sticking with what you know even as it's outdated. The kind of stuff which you might have someone who's in love with BASIC or PASCAL or mainframes read, because they won't listen to you directly. Internet articles or convincing, well-written blog posts preferred, but any good books are welcome too."}
{"_id": "153248", "title": "Programming Language, Turing Completeness and Turing Machine", "text": "A programming language is said to be Turing Completeness if it can successfully simulate a universal TM. Let's take functional programming language for example. In functional programming, function has highest priority over anything. You can pass functions around like any primitives or objects. This is called first class function. In functional programming, your function does not produce side effect i.e. output strings onto screen, change the state of variables outside of its scope. Each function has a copy of its own objects if the objects are passed from the outside, and the copied objects are returned once the function finishes its job. Each function written purely in functional style is completely independent to anything outside of it. Thus, the complexity of the overall system is reduced. This is referred as referential transparency. In functional programming, each function can have its local variables kept its values even after the function exits. This is done by the garbage collector. The value can be reused the next time the function is called again. This is called memoization. A function usually should solve only one thing. It should model only one algorithm to answer a problem. **Do you think that a function in a functional language with the above properties simulates a Turing Machine?**   * Functions (= algorithms = Turing Machines) are able to be passed around as input and returned as output. TM also accepts and simulate other TMs   * Memoization models the set of states of a Turing Machine. The memorized variables can be used to determine states of a TM (i.e. which lines to execute, what behavior should it take in a give state ...). Also, you can use memoization to simulate your internal tape storage. In language like C/C++, when a function exits, you lose all of its internal data (unless you store it elsewhere outside of its scope).   * The set of symbols are the set of all strings in a programming language, which is the higher level and human-readable version of machine code (opcode)    * Start state is the beginning of the function. However, with memoization, start state can be determined by memoization or if you want, switch/if-else statement in imperative programming language. But then, you can't    * Final accepting state when the function returns a value, or rejects if an exception happens. Thus, the function (= algorithm = TM) is decidable. Otherwise, it's undecidable. I'm not sure about this. What do you think?  Is my thinking true on all of this? The reason I bring function in functional programming because I think it's closer to the idea of TM. What experience with other programming languages do you have which make you feel the idea of TM and the ideas of Computer Science in general? Can you specify how you think?"}
{"_id": "99351", "title": "What is the name of this code-get-together...hackathon, codecamp, codejazz or?", "text": "Recently there's risen this small subculture in Denmark with geeks meeting up and hacking along on their sparetime projects together. The base is that there is no session, there is no keynote or anything, it's pretty much just meeting up and getting some prime time put into your project. You can choose to fiddle with anything you like, and you are free to sit and help people all day...pretty much just an open day. I have a bit hard time identifying if it matches any of the names in the topic, as I see it codecamp does have a topic, hackathon seems like devs doing a big solution together...and well codejazz is not really defined anywhere but another danish usergroup used that term."}
{"_id": "118249", "title": "What is the reporting function?", "text": "When dealing with an enterprise application, I often heard the requirement of \"reporting function\" \"run reports\", \"generate reports\", etc. What is it referring to?"}
{"_id": "99354", "title": "How do I verify that a user really works for the company they signed up as?", "text": "I am building a website that will allow companies to sign up and post information and have an internal network, but what is the best way to verify that the person that is filling in the sign up form really belongs to the company they say they do, as I don't want Joe Bloggs signing up saying he works for company XYZ when really he doesn't. Is there a logical way of doing this or is it an impossible task?"}
{"_id": "198721", "title": "Best way to structure a Git repository for Maven", "text": "I need some advice on how to structure our projects in Git. We use Java and Maven is our build tool. Maven kinda assumes all of your projects have a common ancestor eventually. Maven can also be a real drama queen when things aren't setup _exactly_ the way the Apache foundation sets up their projects (anyone using the release plugin probably knows what I'm talking about). We want a top level parent pom that controls plugin versions and build configuration (repo config, what artifacts to build, naming conventions, plugin versions, etc). Maven would want all of our IT projects to be in subfolders of that main project. This implies one massive Git repo for the organization. This will make for a very noisy environment. If there are two teams working on unrelated projects, they will constantly have to pull in merges from the other team. Ideally I'd like to have one repo per project. But that sort of clashes with the extremely hierarchal model of Maven, which _demands_ sub-projects be sub-folders. I need some advice on how people have reconciled these two models... thank you!"}
{"_id": "130456", "title": "Would it make more sense to use a framework to build an commerce site, or build it from the ground up?", "text": "Keep in mind, I know PHP as I learned it for this specific project. Also, I thought about just using magento, but as I went through it, I realized I would have to learn their framework. I am very opposed to putting more time into learning a framework rather than continue expanding my PHP knowledge. I took a computer science course in which rather than make us use already made objects and functions, we had to create those as to learn how they actually worked. That was an amazing learning experience. I know that their is a lot of work involved in doing this, due mainly to the fact that others have done similar things, but my main two reasons for this are:   1. I would only build what I need, no extra features I do not.   2. I would have specific needs, stuff that I would need to code anyways. The only thing I would need would be simple e-commerce features like user authentication, products pages(user, admin), and shopping cart, and obviously a database. Everything else I need would be tailored to the specific needs of the site and the way I will be implementing it. If this helps in giving a picture of where I am at, what would the best recommendation be from professionals. Thank you."}
{"_id": "210664", "title": "How do you validate need for documentation?", "text": "I once was on a project where a non-tech manager had the team spending half of every hour documenting what they just did so that someone with zero understanding of the tech would be able to understand the tech. Personally, I thought this was a huge waste, but there was no way to validate this was or was not waste. Is there a light-weight means of validating need for documentation before committing to produce the documentation? **Example 1:** Say the team is using an off-the-self software without customization. The test might be posting a job description on a monthly basis to access the likelihood that an expert in the software might be found at an acceptable cost level. **Example 2:** Automatically pull variables, functions, etc from the code, and two weeks after the code is written, generating questions that automatically assess the developers own knowledge of their own code without access to the code. If the developer is unable to answer the questions, then they must explain the code to another developer, and that developer decides if documentation must be produced. **Example 3:** Another way would be to take the likelihood that the code is used based on runtime analysis and cross reference it both with the volatility of input/output and historical likelihood of bugs/error being reported from that section of code and/or customer based requests to update the code. Honestly, don't believe those are great examples, but are more of an attempt to give the general gist of what I'm after, and that the goal is the most generally useful bare-bones method for doing this."}
{"_id": "210667", "title": "Performance related doubt in Java with Hibernate", "text": "Suppose in some ORM based project (say Hibernate) I am trying to fetch only few columns rather then the whole Object with may be more than 20 attributes. I am writing HQL like `\"select attr1, attr2 from Entity \"`. I know I am not taking advantage of using Hibernate because I will get the result in Object form only and then I have to do explicit casting for it. But whether it will be a right approach to achieve optimization from database prospective or because I am performing some explicit casting the cost will still be same?"}
{"_id": "198726", "title": "Important Questions to ask Client at Briefing (Web Development)", "text": "I am just moving into freelancing (my primary sector will be web design / web development). I've got a few projects for friends as well as one or two 'professional' projects in the pipeline. I would like to know what are some of the most important things you need to hear from your client before you start the process of developing their website: Some examples I can think of are:   1. Wishlist of website functionality (contact forms / specific pages etc)   2. Whether they have an existing Google Analytics account   3. Any other tracking stuff   4. Legacy code that needs to be integrated   5. Desired aesthetics of the website   6. SEO discussion So yes, I'd really like to know what you think are the most important things to discuss and ascertain from a client before you begin development."}
{"_id": "210668", "title": "Is rotating developers on a project a good or bad idea?", "text": "I'm working on a small team that will begin working on a large new project with another small team. The other team is currently working on a legacy system that they have been working on for years. The manager has decided that the developers from my team will be rotating every few months to replace developers working on the legacy system. That way the other team will have a chance to work on the new project and have a better understanding of the new system. **I want to know the benefits and drawbacks (if any) of rotating the developers from the project every 2-3 months.** I know that this is a similar question to \"Is rotating the lead developer a good or bad idea?\", but that question focuses on a lead developer. This question is about rotating the entire team on and off the project (tech. lead for the new project may or may not be rotated -- I don't know yet)."}
{"_id": "42729", "title": "How to fix the copy/paste-pattern?", "text": "Where i work, people (consultants) feel pressed to release features as fast as possible. So instead of spending too much time on thinking about how to do things the right way or because they don't want to break anything, code gets copied from different modules and modified. It's not easy to prevent this, since the code base is open to the whole company. Lots of people work on this. Now that the mess is there already, what is the best way to remove those redundancies without breaking too much?"}
{"_id": "97601", "title": "Best way to contact Microsoft about accessibility in their developer tools?", "text": "I'm a totally blind programmer who would like to learn .net. It appears that the Visual Studio express additions are not accessible since the scripts that come with Jaws for Widnows, the screen reading software I use requires the VS object model to make Visual Studio accessible. This is not available in the express additions, so the scripts may partially work or not work at all. None of the options mentioned in this question apply to me and I don't want to spend $500 or more to buy Visual Studio professional when I may never use it for a job. If I take the time to try out the express versions and run into issues is there any way to contact Microsoft without my questions/feedback being lost in a black hole?"}
{"_id": "162613", "title": "Multiple style sheets best practice", "text": "I currently am working on a project which has one large style sheet for about 20 pages. The style sheet contains some styles which are specific for certain pages. I'd like to break the style sheet up so there is one style sheet for each page with one master style sheet that handles everything generic. The reason I want to do this is so people can work on multiple pages without having to worry about who has that large style sheet checked out (I'm using TFS). Is this good practice?"}
{"_id": "162614", "title": "Compilable modern alternatives to C/C++", "text": "I am considering writing a new software product. Performance will be critical, so I am wary of using an interpreted or language or one that uses a emulation layer (read java). Which leads me to thinking of using C (or C++) however these are both rather long in the tooth. I haven't used either for a long time. I figure in the last 20 years someone should have created something which is reasonably popular and is nice to code in and is complied. What more modern alternatives are there to C for writing high performance code compiled code? _edit in response to comments_ If C++ is a different beast than it was 15 years ago, I would consider it, I guess I had an assumption that it had some inherent problems. Parallelisation would be important, but probably not across multiple machines. _edit after giving tick_ given the tick to zxcdw but thanks for all the c++11 is worth a look answers."}
{"_id": "162615", "title": "Why don't languages use explicit fall-through on switch statements?", "text": "I was reading Why do we have to use `break` in `switch`?, and it led me to wonder why implicit fall-through is allowed in some languages (such as PHP and JavaScript), while there is no support (AFAIK) for explicit fall-through. It's not like a new keyword would need to be created, as `continue` would be perfectly appropriate, and would solve any issues of ambiguity for whether the author meant for a case to fall through. The currently supported form is:               switch (s) {         case 1:             ...             break;         case 2:             ... //ambiguous, was break forgotten?         case 3:             ...             break;         default:             ...             break;     }      Whereas it would make sense for it to be written as:               switch (s) {         case 1:             ...             break;         case 2:             ...             continue; //unambiguous, the author was explicit         case 3:             ...             break;         default:             ...             break;     }      For purposes of this question lets ignore the issue of whether or not fall- throughs are a good coding style. ### Are there any languages that exist that allow fall-through and have made it explicit? ### Are there any historical reasons that `switch` allows for implicit fall- through instead of explicit?"}
{"_id": "193845", "title": "Why do books say, \"the compiler allocates space for variables in memory\"?", "text": "Why do books say, \"the compiler allocates space for variables in memory\". Isn't it the executable which does that? I mean, for example, if I write the following program,               #include <iostream>     using namespace std;          int main()     {        int foo;        return 0;     }      and compile it, and get an executable (let it be program.exe), now, if I run program.exe, this executable file will itself command to allocate some space for the variable foo. Won't it ? Please explain why books keep on saying, \"the compiler will do this...do that\"."}
{"_id": "45710", "title": "How 20q. works?", "text": "How does the web app http://20q.net work? Can I write a similar program, in a smaller scale, and if yes how?"}
{"_id": "45711", "title": "What do you do when a user asks for a feature you will not implement?", "text": "What do you do when a user asks for a complex feature that you could implement, but you aren't going to do it because 1) it adds unnecessary complexity to other users 2) you are not going to do it as an option either because you don't want your settings panel to be complicated. I wrote an iOS app and there are a few users that asked me for some complex features that I can't do because of the reasons above. Most of the time I just answered them that \"We will take that into consideration.\" Explaining them that they are in the minority that wants this feature is not going to help either. So, what do you do in the case like this?"}
{"_id": "90379", "title": "How do you test software that is time sensitive?", "text": "By time sensitive I mean for example a script that only runs once a month or a script that runs continuously but gives a certain output only once a month. Obviously you can unit test for a lot of cases but there are exceptions ( in my understanding). A recent example I ran into was setting up a cron job to run on the second to last day of every month. This required using a shell script with cron tab to get the correct day of the month for cron, something like: `1 0 [shell command] * * [my script]` I was unfamiliar with the script and unfamiliar with shell scripts in general and so had no good way to test it other than waiting for the end of the month to come and seeing if the script executed correctly (actually my solution was to find a co-worker who knew a lot more about cron and shell scripting that I did). So I am curious if there are any useful work arounds for testing time sensitive scripts."}
{"_id": "216622", "title": "AngularJS dealing with large data sets (Strategy)", "text": "I am working on developing a personal temperature logging viewer based on my rasppi curl'ing data into my web server's api. Temperatures are taken every 2 seconds and I can have several temperature sensors posting data. Needless to say I will have a lot of data to handle even within the scope of an hour. I have implemented a very simple paging api from the server so the server doesn't timeout and is currently only returning data in 1000 units per call, then paging through the data. I had the idea to intially show say the last 20 minutes of data from a sensor (or all sensors depending on user choices), then allowing the user to select other timeframes from which to show data. The issue comes in when you want to view all sensors or an extended time period (say 24 hours). Is there a best practice of handling this large amount of data? Would it be useful to load those first 20 minutes into the live view and then cache into local storage something like the last 24 hours? I haven't been able to find a decent idea of this in use yet even though there are a lot of ways to take this problem. I am just looking for some suggestions as to what might provide a good balance between good performance and not caching the entire data set on the client side (as beyond a week of data this might not be feasible)."}
{"_id": "9236", "title": "How much time do you invest in exploring new technology?", "text": "Sometimes, I see potential in a new technology eg. AIR (not new but I haven't tried it much), and I play around with it. After sometime, I feel inspired to try a new personal project out of it. It was during this project that I sometimes find another \"tech\" eg. Silverlight more suitable. Maybe its easier to get something done in that platform. But there are many alternatives to such things, and after a while, i feel that i have wasted my time just trying the \"new toy\", spending time learning it to get started etc. only to decide that I made the wrong decision. How long do you take to explore new technology? Or do you stick to what you already know?"}
{"_id": "181354", "title": "Finding Bugs in Tasks", "text": "A colleague and I have run a Kanban board at 2 places of work now, introducing a kind of scrum-ban agile/lean process into the team. Helping us move towards more flow orientated work and continuous releases. I just wanted to ask your advice, that when a task is peer tested or tested by the test team further down the board, what should happen to the tickets where a fault is found? We've tried 2 methods:   * Create a new ticket for the problem and chase this through the board until it catches up with the original faulted ticket. Then progress them both together through the board.   * Move the original ticket back to 'development to-do' or 'development work in progress'. Does anyone have any suggestions on best practices in this situation?"}
{"_id": "78205", "title": "Path of Replication", "text": "I'm currently developing a replication system to keep data in-synch between an arbitrary number of servers. Some of these servers exist in one cluster on one LAN. Others exist somewhere else in the world. I'm wondering what are the pros/cons of different paths that we choose to flow replicated data on between servers? In other words, what are the different strategies to load balance the replication process ?"}
{"_id": "78207", "title": "Using CC Music in my project", "text": "Well, I am not sure about is this is the right StackExchange site to ask this, but since can accept question about Software law, i think it's almost on topic here. If I use creative commons music for non commercial usage in my project, it's fine if my final product is freeware. But, what if it becomes ad-supported? It's considered commercial usage? And, if I do a paid ad-free version, this is commercial usage, i think. Example: using this music as bgm in a game"}
{"_id": "62970", "title": "Cross-platform frameworks and high profile applications", "text": "I was curious about what cross-platform framework does the developers of high profiles applications such as Photoshop, Guitar Pro, etc; use. They all integrate seamlessly with the OS to the point where you can sometimes assume that the application was developed exclusively for that OS. I have been programming with Qt for about a year and as far as I know given my knowledge and ability with Qt it's not possible to fully integrate your application with MAC OS. (e.g. see my unsolved issue with Qt and the MAC OS Dock icon ) Do they all use proprietary in-house frameworks? I'm I just lacking the necessary 'know-how'to achieve this with Qt? Are there better cross-platform alternatives?"}
{"_id": "236638", "title": "Application use on website", "text": "Is there a good way to run a C# application on clientside in lieu of JavaScript? I have done some front end work with JavaScript and backend C# for web developing at an old job, but I am interested in hosting a website myself soon. I have a C# application I would like to be open source, but before people care to download I'd like them to be able to use it. At its basic level it's a simple text editor, but there's much more to it in the nitty gritty. I could write it in JavaScript, but it would require me to keep documentation and up to date changes on JavaScript and C# in that case. I was thinking of creating an AJAX panel and somehow loading my winform application into a frame, but I don't know how or what words to google because I've never done it before except AJAX."}
{"_id": "62972", "title": "Key phrases showing benefits performing certified software testing for \"your\" company?", "text": "I am wondering what phrases that would have the most impact when approaching a business, to inform them why they should test their software. Obviously you have easy ones; reduce costs/risk, improves stability/reliability/usability. But these are just words, how would you wrap them into something concrete that even people living in their own world, could see the potential benefit of software testing. I'm looking for shared experience. And how would you as a developer like to be approached by a software tester? PS: Help! I'm not sure how to ask this question properly!"}
{"_id": "62978", "title": "How to ensure data integrity (when an external system is involved)", "text": "Say you have this task in an application that consists of two parts: 1) Delivery of a file to an external system (not in your control)   2) A database transaction in our system, with information about said delivery (what was sent, when and by whom) If any of these two parts fail, our system's state will be inconsistent. If a file has been sent and the db has no information about it, it's an error. Likewise, if the file transfer failed, but the information in the database suggests otherwise, that is also an error. How would you approach this task to ensure that the database is left in a consistent state after each time the task is attempted? I'm inexperienced in dealing with problems like this in a _proper_ manner - I could always use the na\u00efve approach and pretend writing to the database will never fail. :-) I wish to do better than that, though. The two basic variations I see here both leave something to be desired (pseudocode): A:               try:         commitTransaction()         deliverFile()     catch TransactionError:         // No problem, delivery was never attempted.     catch DeliveryError:         // The system will now say that it was delivered,          // even though it wasn't.      B:               try:         deliverFile()         commitTransaction()     catch TransactionError:         // The system will now say nothing was delivered,         // even though it was.     catch DeliveryError:         // Easy enough to handle:         rollbackTransaction()      I'm sure there is an acceptable solution to this, and that I just can't spot it?"}
{"_id": "12343", "title": "Is programming a SubCulture?", "text": "I was going through this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subculture Which got mee thinking is programming a subculture? After the a while I started thinking it really hard, and if you go really in depth this is a very complex and interesting question to ask. YOu can even ask yourself if (heavy) internet (social) users are an subculture and programmers a culture within. I think it might be an interesting discussion, hope you like it! NOTE: I linked the wiki article because it might be a good baseline, maybe you can base you answer on Ken Gelder\u00b4s proposal to distinguish subcultures. But it should be based on a little bit more that intuition. Thanks in advance! Trufa"}
{"_id": "12347", "title": "How long should you wait before interviewing at the same company a second time?", "text": "Suppose you've had a recruiter contact you about a position at a medium-large to large company, and went for an interview and such, and seriously considered the position but ultimately you decided against joining, or they decided against hiring you for that particular position because they had someone more qualified show up. But time elapses, your circumstances change, and you realize that working there might be a better idea now (or they have other positions available)... How long should you wait before interviewing at the same company again?"}
{"_id": "236635", "title": "Is it good practice to declare and set properties in abstract classes?", "text": "I am using PHP and designing some abstract classes. I can declare properties with constant values within my abstract class and access/overwrite them from any class which extends this without re declaring them within any of the extending classes. A benefit to this is less repetitive typing but the downside that overtime the original structure/layout of these abstract properties is forgotten and could be left at there default static values or even forgotten(not used) completely. How is this handled in professional environments? I assume this has been thought out before and is either favored or isn't? I am trying to adhere to good OOP principles/rules such as SOLID, DRY and KISS but I haven't seen this specific issue talked about in these. (perhaps I missed it when researching?)"}
{"_id": "10277", "title": "Example of Terms of Services for Agile contracting?", "text": "In my experience as a freelance developper, I've had some difficulties with clients, whom insist on getting an estimate over flimsy requirements. They then expect me to deal with requirements changes, sometimes late in the project, and stick to that estimate. Since I've never come up myself with some T.O.S. tailored for this situation, I ended up bound by a contract of a more general nature, which inevitably became unsasatisfactory... Legal lingo not being my forte, I've been lookin for some publicly released T.O.S. to try to remedy this situation. Ideally these would be from an agile shop, under a licensing scheme allowing derivatives. This would help me lay out the contractual groundwork for a sane customer relationship, especially when dealing with changes."}
{"_id": "118865", "title": "As the team leader/manager,  what kind of role should I seek when we switch to Scrum?", "text": "My company wants to start using Scrum, and in real scrum there is no place for a real team leader (manager). What is the next step for the dev team leader? Should I be a (chief) system architect/tech leader or search for another job in management? I like the management part and the technical part and the target is VP R&D/CTO."}
{"_id": "10270", "title": "Are enforced Professional Development Plans useful?", "text": "Many companies, especially larger ones have mandatory professional development plans for their employees. Employees and managers set out a personalized professional development plan and follow up on the progress every so often. As a developer, do you find such PDPs useful, do you follow through with your commitments? As a manager, do you think such PDPs bring value to the company and improve the overall quality of the employees? It seems that good developers will continue to educate themselves and strive to be better regardless of companies' procedures while bad ones won't. Are there benefits of having PDPs or is it just something managers feel they need to do?"}
{"_id": "106400", "title": "Copyleft Licenses - Need to attribute?", "text": "I'm currently evaluating which license to use for my next OS project, and things are getting more and more interesting after I decided that I really want to _understand_ what the licenses mean. Up until now, I just licensed everything under MIT because I like the MIT and their license is nice and short. And probably because it didn't really matter as only a hand full of people actually used my products. But now, I'm at the brink of releasing something that will surely be used by many people and also be subject to major modifications, so I want to choose the right license to go with. From what I understand, there are two groups of licenses; Copyright and Copyleft. Now, I read (and think to understand) MIT and BSD-2/3-Clause, but I'm really having trouble to get the gist of (L)GPL and alike. My main problem is; I want to always be named in derivative works of my project. I don't really care if it's used proprietary or free, I just want to make sure that anyone who reads the code sees \"ah, that's the original author\" (referring to me). Is there a clause in the copyleft licenses that assures this attribution? Or can this only be done using permissive copyright ones?"}
{"_id": "118869", "title": "Notation used in 'Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design'", "text": "I just purchased the book 'Pearls of Functional Algorithm Design' by Richard Bird. Unfortunately, the book doesn't have any section that describes the notation that is used. You can view the contents of the book by going to Amazon's page, and clicking on the book cover to get a sneak peak inside. http://www.amazon.com/Pearls-Functional-Algorithm-Design-Richard/dp/0521513383 If someone could give me a name, and/or reference to understand the notation used. That way I could actually read and understand the algorithms."}
{"_id": "63370", "title": "Real-world scenarios for protected methods", "text": "Today I noticed that I basically never use `protected` methods in C++ code, because I rarely feel the need to call non-public methods of a parent. I do use protected in Java in the template method pattern, but since you can override private methods in C++, I don't need `protected` there, either. So what are some real-world scenarios where I would want to use `protected` methods in C++ code? (Note that I'm not too fond of implementation inheritance in general, that might explain a lot...)"}
{"_id": "142647", "title": "What are approaches for analyzing the cost-benefits of a development methodology?", "text": "There are many development **practices** (TDD, continuous integration, cowboy- coding), **principles** (SOLID, layers of abstraction, KISS), and **processes** (RUP, Scrum, XP, Waterfall). I have learned you can't follow any of these blindly, but have to consider context and ROI (return on investment). My question is: How do you know whether you are getting a good ROI by following a particular methodology? Metrics, guesstimation, experience? Do analytical methods exist? Or is this just the million-dollar question in software engineering that has no answer? For clarification when I say ROI I mean overall business value. This does not necessary exclude developer happiness--if all the developers quit (or worse: become apathetic) after a 6-month death march you lose all the technical experience in the organization. If customers are unhappy you will need more customer support staff or lose business."}
{"_id": "190397", "title": "Log design approach", "text": "Logging was always a nightmare for me! Now I have to implement it again for a proxy system. In this proxy application, some systems ask proxy system to call some other services. What I have to log is   * Request Time   * Requester IP   * Request Parameters as XML   * Requested Service Name   * Requested Service Method   * Response Time   * Response data as XML   * Response Message (If any exception occurs it will logged as Message) I considered to append two lines to my methods:               // Log Request     Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Logger.Log(RequestParameters.ToXML(),Assembly.GetCallingAssembly().FullName, MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name, DateTime.Now));          // Invoke requested service and get response          // Log Response     Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Logger.Log(Response.ToXML(), DateTime.Now));      I also want to log nested transactions. Assume a transaction contains a request and a response. A transaction may contains many other internal transactions. When I receive a request, I should register a transaction, and insert a request for it, later, when response received, I should update the transaction response. Please note that I'm trying to store request and response relationship for better tracking. How can I safely add this logging procedure to methods? I want to restrict developers to implement this logging systems in all methods, some thing like interface or inheritance for method body is required. Can I do this by attributes? Then how?"}
{"_id": "190399", "title": "Conducting a requirements analysis interview", "text": "Why do requirements interviews never pan out as they are planned - and how do I prepare for that? I'm looking for the following kind of help regarding how to prepare for these interviews and what I can pay attention to in order to make the most of them. My information project, centered around management reporting within a firm, is currently in it's definition stage. All my stakeholders are managers of greater or lesser scope. I had my previous two interviews planned out quite extensively, but on both occasions my interviewees both went off in completely different tangents, delivering quite interesting results. I completely ignored the question flow I had prepared, and tried to go along with the interviewees. But instead of going towards a common concept that can be developed on, I feel that I get in- depth pictures of each individual's local information requirements. How can I conduct an interview that helps me get the participants on board and thinking towards a common solution, but doesn't inhibit their own thoughts which deliver me interesting material on data sources, formatting and communication paths?"}
{"_id": "176594", "title": "Looking for a non-cryptographic hash function that returns a single character", "text": "Suppose I have a dictionary of ASCII words stored in uppercase. I also want to save those words into separate files so that the total word count of each file is approximately the same. By simply looking at the word I need to know which file it should be in (if it's there at all). Duplicate words should go into the same file and overwrite the last one. My first attempt at solving this problem is to use .NET's `object.GetHashCode()` function and `.Trim()` to get one of the \"random\" characters that pop up. I asked a similar question here If I only use one character of `object.GetHashCode()` I would get a hash code character of A..Z or 0..9. However saving the result of GetHashCode to disk is a no-no so I need a substitute. **Question:** What algorithm (or subset of an algorithm) is appropriate for pigeonholing `strings` into a single character or range of characters (Like hex 0..F offers 16 chars)? **Real world usage:** I'll use this answer to modify the Partition key used in Azure Table storage as described here"}
{"_id": "176595", "title": "Deferring questions about salary expectations until the second interview", "text": "I usually find that interviewers ask about expected salary on a first interview, but I usually feel uncomfortable discussing such details at an early stage. I feel that low-balling a figure might result in under-selling myself, whereas going too high might lose me the chance of a second interview. I also like time to reflect on my interview experience before vocalising my expectations. I recently realised that in one interview I prefixed my salary figure with a justification, which made me come across as a little desperate and unsure of myself. Is there a good way to defer such questions until a second interview (assuming I get one, of course) without hurting my chances or weakening my position?"}
{"_id": "176592", "title": "Advice on reconciling discordant data", "text": "Let me support my question with a quick scenario. We're writing an app for family meal planning. We'll produce daily plans with a target calorie goal and meals to achieve it for our nuclear family. Our calorie goal will be calculated for each person from their attributes (gender, age, weight, activity level). The weight attribute is the simplest example here. When Dad (the fascist nerd who is inflicting this on his family) first uses the application he throws approximate values into it for Daughter. He thinks she is 5'2\" (157 cm) and 125 lbs (56kg). The next day Mom sits down to generate the menu and looks back over what the bumbling Dad did, quietly fumes that he can never recall anything about the family, and says the value is really 118 lbs! This is the first introduction of the discord. It seems, in this scenario, Mom is _probably_ more correct that Dad. Though both are only an approximation of the actual value. The next day the dear Daughter decides to use the program and sees her weight listed. With the vanity only a teenager could muster she changes the weight to 110 lbs. Later that day the Mom returns home from a doctor's visit the Daughter needed and decides that it would be a good idea to update her Daughter's weight in the program. Hooray, another value, this time 117 lbs. Now how do you reconcile these data points? Measurement error, confidence in parties, bias, and more all confound the data. In some idealized world we'd have a weight authority of some nature providing the one and only truth. How about in our world though? And the icing on the cake is that this single data point changes over time. How have you guys solved or managed this conflict?"}
{"_id": "211537", "title": "There are two types of color mixing: Additive and Subtractive. How about XOR-ive color?", "text": "There are two types of color mixing: Additive and Subtractive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_mixing Is is possible that color mixing model be done in XOR?"}
{"_id": "255302", "title": "Did I branch or not? How to merge 2 branches", "text": "I'm HMS confused I today created a branch to work on implementation of a new feature. I thought this branching was successful as these appeared. ![branches](http://i.stack.imgur.com/0K0rz.png) However I'd like to merge the new feature branch (NGUI interface test) back into the default main branch **but I don't have the option to if I right click on the most recent commit.** Plus, I've seen on other posts that the graph should be showing a branch of different colours from where the branching occurred, like in this eg. ![eg](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qgGPy.png) All advice appreciated, just discovered DVCS and think it is so elegant. T"}
{"_id": "122892", "title": "What are approaches to learning multiple technologies at the same time?", "text": "I want to learn multiple technologies. Currently I have knowledge of core Java, C, and PHP. I want to know the approach which should be followed to learn multiple things. I know if you know the core concepts of the behavior of programming language, any programming language can be learned. I want to make command on such language in a way that I can talk with them. I am doing lots of coding and surfing but I think there is an approach by which we can communicate or talk with programming language."}
{"_id": "211533", "title": "How do you handle deployment configuration of your thick browser (html/javascript/css) clients?", "text": "# Question For those of you working with html/javascript/css \"thick clients\", specifically those that work against some client-independent server API, how do you manage your deployment environment configuration? Do you manage the configuration at build time with per-environment release builds (e.g. QA, STAGE, etc) or do you build a general release and rely on some server-side configuration? What's worked best in your experience? # Background My company has several different thick browser clients. All clients share some common attributes.   * They operate against a common api server which is unaware of client-specific concerns   * They are completely static at deployment and delivered via apache with no server-side processing. This means that each environment requires it's own release build (QA, STAGE, UAT, PROD). We are looking at refactoring our clients to have general release builds and relying on server side processing to support the necessary client-specific configuration. This seems like the obvious choice, but I'd like to see how other people in same situation have handled it."}
{"_id": "255307", "title": "Fire domain events after transaction completes", "text": "I am trying to implement a domain event system that only fires its events when the associated unit-of-work commits successfully. The main reason why I want to do this is because I have other sub-systems that read the database that expect those changes to be in place when handling the event. I also don't want event handlers to do their work (send out emails, etc.) if the commit fails. The system is multiple ASP.NET applications (WebForms, MVC, and WebAPI).               public class Order     {         private Payment _payment;              public int ID { get; private set; }              public decimal Amount { get; private set; }              public void PayUsing(IPaymentProcessor processor)         {             if (_payment != null)             {                 throw new InvalidOperationException(                     \"You can't pay for an order twice\");             }                  // the Process method may also raise domain events             _payment = processor.Process(Amount);                  // Raise saves the event into a static Queue<T>             DomainEvents.Raise(new OrderPaidEvent(this));         }     }          public class OrderFulfillmentService     {         private readonly IUnitOfWorkFactory _unitOfWorkFactory;         private readonly IPaymentProcessor _paymentProcessor;              public OrderFulfillmentService(             IUnitOfWorkFactory unitOfWorkFactory,              IPaymentProcessor paymentProcessor)         {             _unitOfWorkFactory = unitOfWorkFactory;             _paymentProcessor = paymentProcessor;         }              public void Fulfill(int orderId)         {             using (var unitOfWork = _unitOfWorkFactory.Create())             {                 var order = unitOfWork.OrdersRepository.GetById(orderId);                      order.PayUsing(_paymentProcessor);                      unitOfWork.Commit();                      // I only want the events to be raised if the Commit succeeds                            }         }     }      With the current implementation, it's problematic because right now the domain raising must put it into a queue as it must not fire immediately. The queue is static which causes problems for multi-user systems. I do not want to accidentally fire events for another users, which is a definite problem as all users access the same queue. This is the list of solutions I have investigated, and why they won't work in my scenario   1. Have a non-static `DomainRaiser` class that gets passed into the `PayUsing` method.     * Passing a `DomainRaiser` is very difficult to do from the domain objects, sometimes events can be raised by changing properties and passing this object around is cumbersome.   2. Have all entities contain an `Events` enumeration that is read by the `UnitOfWork.Commit` call as discussed on http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2014/05/13/a-better-domain-events-pattern/     * Tracking every single entity that has possibly changed is very difficult, I am off-loading this change tracking to the ORM. This also clutters up the domain objects.   3. Using `HttpContext.Current.Items` to store user-specific events     * This is currently the best suggestion, however, it's not possible to unit-test, and it locks my domain to using asp.net, which I have plans in the future to release a desktop app. My question is, how do I queue and dispatch these events up in a multi-user environment reliably while taking into consideration that I only want to fire events if the overall unit-of-work succeeds?"}
{"_id": "67618", "title": "Alternative patterns for web development? (non-MVC)", "text": "Recently I've been reading some blog posts regarding MVC and how it doesn't fit the web. I've learned about alternative patterns like the RMR Architecture. I'm curious what other patterns people are using on the web besides MVC? Also, if there is a framework that implements the pattern, please post a link to it."}
{"_id": "243256", "title": "Javascript: Machine Constants Applicable?", "text": "I write numerical routines for students of science and engineering (although they are freely available for use by anybody else as well) and am wondering how to properly use machine constants in a JavaScript program, or if they are even applicable. For example, say I am writing a program in C++ that numerically computes the roots of the following equation: exp(-0.7x) + sin(3x) - 1.2x + 0.3546 = 0 A root-finding routine should be able to compute roots to within the machine epsilon. In C++, this value is specified by the language: DBL_EPSILON. C++ also specifies the smallest and largest values that can be held by a float or double variable. However, how does this convert to JavaScript? Since a Javascript program runs in a web browser, and I don't know what kind of computer will run the program, and JavaScript does not have corresponding predefined values for these quantities, how can I implement my own version of these constants so that my programs compute results to as much accuracy as allowed on the computer running the web browser? My first draft is to simply copy over the literal constants from C++: FLT_MIN: 1.17549435082229e-038   FLT_MAX: 3.40282346638529e+038   DBL_EPSILON: 2.2204460492503131e-16 I am also willing to write small code blocks that could compute these values for each machine on which the program is run. That way, a supercomputer might compute results to a higher accuracy than an old, low-level, PC. BUT, I don't know if such a routine would actually reach the computer, in which case, I would be wasting my time. Anybody here know how to compute and use (in Javascript) values that correspond to machine constants in a compiled language? Is it worth my time to write small programs in Javascript that compute DBL_EPSILON, FLT_MIN, FLT_MIN, etc. for use in numerical routines? Or am I better off simply assigning literal constants that come straight from C++ on a standard Windows PC?"}
{"_id": "243258", "title": "Do hiring managers have a hard time accepting developers who have a \"business look alike\" personal app but are NOT entrepreneurs?", "text": "Directly post graduation from University, I decided to build my own web app (Ease My Day) while waiting to get a job as a software Engineer. The reasons to build this app:   * Gain solid hands on software experience before hitting the job scene   * Providing a solution to a common problem   * **Not sitting doing nothing** while searching for jobs The app is **Not** an entrepreneurial tryout nor a business to be sold. Still throughout interviews I noticed that at the rate of 4 of each 5 interviews I pass through the app is being confused with a **business** and I am asked the same questions: > Why did you build the business? Why do you want to **stop** the app? Do you > want to sell the app? Knowing that I didn't build a business nor make any income from this application. Do candidates who take initiatives and like to craft their own apps on the side cause a **red flag** on the hiring manager's radar? # UPDATE requested by @Kate Gregory This is how I describe it on my resume: > Personal Project: Developer of \"Ease My Day\" SaaS application, Montreal, Qc.   >  Link: http://www.easemyday.com   >  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EaseMyDay > > \"Ease My Day\" BETA's main purpose is helping with daily nutrition/health > monitoring. > > _A list of more than 6000 foods with their nutrition facts is available. > Users can add their personal foods and grow the food database.   >  It allows users to specify their goal: lose weight, gain weight, no goal > just staying healthy.   >  It allows users to calculate their daily needs (calories, protein, > carbohydrates, fat etc..) using the app's built in calculator. Users can > manually input those values if they already know their needs.   >  Users can monitor their food intakes by: meals, days and/or weeks.   >  It is deployed on Amazon AWS ( EC2 instance with RDS )_   > > > \"Ease My Day\" solved a daunting task; it is a speed efficient platform that > turns daily health monitoring - a notably time consuming task in the past - > to an enjoyable activity that can be finalized in just few seconds. It is > currently used in several countries around the world. > > Languages/technology: **_.... HERE I explain the > languages/technologies/Software Engineering approaches used ...._**"}
{"_id": "216086", "title": "what is the meaning of following definition?", "text": "I am new to javascript and start learning from w3schools website. I'm not able to understand what the following line means. Can anyone please explain this with example? > You can only use document.write in the HTML output. If you use it after the > document has loaded (e.g. in a function), the whole document will be > overwritten."}
{"_id": "216085", "title": "Automatic Appointment Conflict Resolution", "text": "I'm trying to figure out an algorithm for resolving appointment times. I currently have a naive algorithm that pushes down conflicting appointments repeatedly, until there are no more appointments.               # The appointment list is always sorted on start time     appointment_list = [        <Appointment: 10:00 -> 12:00>,        <Appointment: 11:00 -> 12:30>,        <Appointment: 13:00 -> 14:00>,        <Appointment: 13:30 -> 14:30>,     ]      Constraints are that appointments:   * cannot be after 15:00   * cannot be before 9:00 This is the naive algorithm               for i, app in enumerate(appointment_list):         for possible_conflict in appointment_list[i+1:]:             if possible_conflict.start < app.end:                difference = app.end - possible_conflict.start                possible_conflict.end   += difference                possible_conflict.start += difference             else:                break      This results in the following resolution, which obviously breaks those constraints, and the last appointment will have to be pushed to the following day.               appointment_list = [        <Appointment: 10:00 -> 12:00>,        <Appointment: 12:00 -> 13:30>,        <Appointment: 13:30 -> 14:30>,        <Appointment: 14:30 -> 15:30>,     ]      Obviously this is sub-optimal, It performs 3 appointment moves when the confict could have been resolved with one: if we were able to push the first appointment backwards, we could avoid moving all the subsequent appointments down. I'm thinking that there should be a sort of edit-distance approach that would calculate the **least number of appointments that should be moved in order to resolve the scheduling conflict** , but I can't get the a handle on the methodology. Should it be breadth-first or depth first solution search. When do I know if the solution is \"good enough\"?"}
{"_id": "168757", "title": "What is the difference between E-Science Infrastructures and Distributed Computing Infrastructures", "text": "What is the difference between eScience infrastructures and grid computing or distributed computing infrastructures? And what are some of their examples. I can not distinguish them clearly. Is it how a grid is used make it an e-science platform?"}
{"_id": "187630", "title": "Changing behaviour of abstract class without modifying subclasses", "text": "I am facing a problem with changing behaviour of a library (thus cannot or don't want to change its internals because of future updates, etc.). In this library there is an abstract class which shares few methods with all its subclasses. Now I need to change few methods in this abstract super class without changing the subclasses. I was wondering what pattern I should apply to this without rewriting the whole thing. I use PHP, so I could use a trait to override these methods in my own sub- subclasses which I will then use in my client code. This would result in creating the sub-subclasses and adding a trait (which is a one-liner). But I need to run PHP 5.3 which doesn't support traits. Is there a pattern that solves this problem? EDIT 2: the point is I don't want to change the library code, I can extend the subclasses and use them in client code but I don't want to change the code in the library itself (so I can update the library easily). EDIT: see simplified code below               abstract class SuperClass {         protected function doMagic() {              ... I need to change this ...         }              abstract public function execute();     }          class SubClass1 extends SuperClass {         protected public execute() {             $this->doMagic();             ... some other code ...         }     }          class SubClass2 extends SuperClass {         protected public execute() {             $this->doMagic();             ... some different code ...         }     }"}
{"_id": "168751", "title": "Is the use of \"utf8=\u2713\" preferable to \"utf8=true\"?", "text": "I have recently seen a few URIs containing the query parameter \"utf8=\u2713\". My first impression (after thinking \"mmm, looks cool\") was that this could be used to detect a broken character encoding. So, is this a better way to resolve potential problems with character encoding, or is it just a developer having fun with a hack?"}
{"_id": "68991", "title": "Javascript, functional programming and parallel processing", "text": "When I use jquery library I notice that the code will continue execution regardless the previous line complete the execution. More precisely while using jquery ajax, it will continue execution without waiting for the ajax result. Is this because javascript takes advantage of parallel processing? Or to which category this can be referred to. Also can we call javascript as a functional programming language.? It will be greatly appreciated if someone could explain this briefly. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "158845", "title": "What are the practical ways to implement the SRP?", "text": "Simply what are the practical techniques people use to check if a class violates the single responsibility principle? I know that a class should have only one reason to change, but that sentence is somewhat lacking a practical way to really implement that. The only way I found is to use the sentence **_\"The ......... should ......... itself.\"_** where the first space is the class name and the later is the method (responsibility) name. However, sometimes it's hard to figure out if a responsibility really violates the SRP. Are there more ways to check for the SRP? **Note:** The question is not about what the SRP means, but rather a practical methodology or a series of steps to check and implement the SRP. **UPDATE** ![Report class](http://i.stack.imgur.com/D8u6h.png) I have added a sample class that clearly violates the SRP. It would be great if people could use it as an example to explain how they approach the single responsibility principle. The example is from here."}
{"_id": "158847", "title": "Recommended methodology for working with shared libraries and Mercurial", "text": "I work in a small team of developers who all collaborate on several Zend PHP projects. We are using Mercurial with a collection of upstream repositories, as well as Jenkins for centralized testing and health reports. We want to implement a shared library of common classes, but are struggling with finding a workflow that works well with our current environment. Currently, each project contains a structure like this:               - application        (project specific code)     - build              (temporary files generated by each build)     - library            (code used by multiple projects)         - OurLibrary     (our company\u2019s shared codebase)         - Zend           (external libraries)     - tests              (test code specific to this project)      The library folder is excluded from testing, and so we have created a project specifically for running unit tests against the shared library. This decision was made primarily to avoid deploying the test classes by accident, something which can largely be mitigated by a modification to the automated build process, but also because we felt that it was preferable to keep the library lightweight. We are including the library in each project as a Mercurial sub-repo. This means that changes pushed into the library from a developer working on ProjectA wil not automatically propagate to ProjectB (good) but will also not propagate to the library testing project (bad), and Jenkins will therefore not automatically warn us of potentially breaking code in the library (very bad). An ideal situation would be that developers can commit changes to the library from any project, and that our automated tools would then run the latest library tests against the latest library code. Furthermore, this should not result in a version conflict when a developer pulls a new version of the library tests. Is there an established methodology for this kind of workflow, or should we look into structuring our working practises a little differently before we fully commit ourselves to sub-repos?"}
{"_id": "157894", "title": "Capturing correct level of detail in a user story", "text": "I have written various user stories that describe functionality at a pretty high-level. For example:               As an analyst, I want to view the current share price, so that I have quick access to an up-to-date valuation of stock across the Euronext, London and New York stock exchanges.      This requirement is based on existing functionality that is being re-developed in a new version of some software. I can see from the existing implementation that the actual information displayed includes a lot of extra data such as different classes or shares, different timescales of graphs etc. I think it is impractical to capture all the functionality in the current implementation. So I have two questions:   1. How do I decide an appropriate level of detail for the requirement that is basically 'do what the current piece of functionality does'.   2. Is there some structured approach of accompanying the user story with more information? At the moment, I feel this would be the job of wireframes."}
{"_id": "160103", "title": "PHP PSR-0 + several namespaces in one file and autoload", "text": "I've been thinking for a while about defining several namespaces in one php file and so, having several classes inside this file. Suppose, I want to implement something like `Doctrine\\ORM\\Query\\Expr`:               Expr.php     Expr     |-- Andx.php     |-- Base.php     |-- Comparison.php     |-- Composite.php     |-- From.php     |-- Func.php     |-- GroupBy.php     |-- Join.php     |-- Literal.php     |-- Math.php     |-- OrderBy.php     |-- Orx.php     `-- Select.php      It would be nice if I had all of this in one file - `Expr.php`:               namespace Doctrine\\ORM\\Query;     class Expr {         // code     }          namespace Doctrine\\ORM\\Query\\Expr;          class Func {         // code     }          // etc...      What I'm thinking of is directories naming convention and, unlike `PSR-0` having several classes and namespaces in one file. It's best explained by the code:               ls Doctrine/orm/query     Expr.php      that's it - only `Expr.php` Since `Expr.php` is somewhat I call a \"meta-namespace\" for `Expr\\Func`, it make sense to place all the classes inside Expr.php (as shown above). So, the vendor name is still starts with an uppercased letter (`Doctrine`) and the other parts of namespace start with lowercased letter. We can write an autoload so it would respect this notion:               function load_class($class) {         if (class_exists($class)) {             return true;         }         $tokenized_path = explode(array(\"_\", \"\\\\\"), DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $class);         // array('Doctrine', 'orm', 'query', 'Expr', 'Func');         //                                    ^^^^         // first, we are looking for first uppercased namespace part         // and if it's not last (not the class name), we use it as a filename          // and wiping away the rest to compose a path to a file we need to include         if (FALSE !== ($meta_class_index = find_meta_class($tokenized_path))) {             $new_tokenized_path = array_slice($tokenized_path, 0, $meta_class_index);             $path_to_class = implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $new_tokenized_path);         }         else { // no meta class found             $path_to_class = implode(DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $tokenized_path);         }         if (file_exists($path_to_class.'.php')) {             require_once $path_to_class.'.php';         }         return false;     }      Another reason to do so is to reduce a number of php files scattered among directories. Usually you check file existence before you require a file to fail gracefully:               file_exists($path_to_class.'.php');      If you take a look at actual `Doctrine\\ORM\\Query\\Expr` code, you'll see they use all of the \"inner-classes\", so you actually do:               file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/AndX.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Base.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Comparison.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Composite.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/From.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Func.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/GroupBy.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Join.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Literal.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Math.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/OrderBy.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Orx.php\");     file_exists(\"/path/to/Doctrine/ORM/Query/Expr/Select.php\");      in your autoload which causes quite a few I/O reads. Isn't it too much to check on each user's hit? I'm just putting this on a discussion. I want to hear from another PHP programmers what do they think of it. And, of course, if you have a silver bullet addressing this problems I've designated here, please share. I also have been thinking if my vogue question fits here and according to `the FAQ` it seems like this question addresses \"software architecture\" problem _slash_ proposal. I'm sorry if my scribble may seem a bit clunky :) Thanks."}
{"_id": "160107", "title": "Analogy for Thread Pools", "text": "I am working on an application which spawns a new thread per request. Sometimes the number of threads active on the machine at one time is in the high hundreds. It's suspected that this is causing all sorts of problems. I would like to experiment with using thread pool instead to see if this improves work throughput. But first, I have to convince the powers that be to allow me the time. As part of my argument, I think a good analogy that compares the brute-force \"launch x threads\" method to the technique of thread pools would help. Is there a text-book analogy for this?"}
{"_id": "160104", "title": "Changing frontend cache", "text": "Our architecture consists of a front-end cache that most read only users obtain their data from directly. The front-end cache sits in front of a farm of webservers that serve pages written in PHP. We need to be able to detect certain conditions at the front-end cache level and pass those values through to the back-end via HTTP headers. For example we would like to manually tag the carrier network based on the IP address. So, for incoming traffic if the user is say coming from an IP address in the range of \"41.202.192.0\"/19 we would tag them as being a Orange Cameroon user by setting the appropriate HTTP request header, e.g., X-Carrier = \"Orange Cameroon\". Based on the setting of this header we would like to vary the cache and serve a different banner to the end user. How would you go about doing this? Keep in mind that we don't want to pollute the cache and we also don't want to create too many small cache segments. Assumptions: You can assume that the X-Carrier has already been detected in our cache. So, for the purposes of your test you can just set this value manually in your example script."}
{"_id": "58726", "title": "What is the difference between user stories and features?", "text": "Playing with icescrum, I realised that I do not understand the difference between user stories and user features. Can someone explain the difference?"}
{"_id": "222215", "title": "Effective way to estimate dead code removal?", "text": "I've been working in an application with about 100k LOCs and basically We have been reworking features to comply with a new architecture based on a new technology stack. This work is almost finished but we had to keep the old code because we had to guarantee a stable environment in case of critical bugs in the new . This has lead to a situation where we have a lot of dead code that mixes with a lot of working code thus making difficult to estimate how much time it would take to remove this dead code. This codebase in particular is very troublesome as it does not have unit/integration testing other than the one generated in the process of reworking the features we migrated to the new architecture and also I think that a great deal of the new code is interwoven with the dead code (by static calls, using the previously thrown exceptions). What would be a good start point to estimate how long would it take to safely remove the code?"}
{"_id": "187098", "title": "How is the Trial Period for Softwares generally implemented?", "text": "I was always under the assumption that trial softwares write a registry value of the installation date and then the software makes a comparison of the current date of the system with the remaining days + installation date to verify whether the trial period is still valid or not. If this assumption is to be true, winding your system clock further up ahead than the remaining days should end the trial period of the software (or keep winding the clock backwards to use the trial software as long as you wanted to). From experience, This was the case for some softwares, not so for others. For the latter case, I noticed that the trial period expires only after the days have passed in real time. I confirmed that the software wasn't connecting to the outer network for validation mechanism, so it is definitely something being done locally on the computer. **How does the trial period validation work in this case?**"}
{"_id": "164619", "title": "Complexity of a web application", "text": "I am currently writing my Master's Thesis on maintainability of a web application. I found some methods like the \"Maintainability Index\" by Coleman et.al. or the \"Software Maintainability Index\" by Muthanna et.al. For both of them one needs to calculate the cyclomatic complexity. So my question is: Is it possible to measure the cyclomatic complexity of a web application? In my opinion there are three parts to a web application:   1. Server code (PHP, C#, Python, Perl, etc.)   2. Client code (JavaScript)   3. HTML (links and forms as operators, GET-parameters and form fields as operands!?) What do you think? Is there another point of view on the complexity of web application? Did I miss something?"}
{"_id": "179210", "title": "what will EcmaScript 6 bring to the table for us", "text": "Our company ported moderate chunks of business logic to JavaScript. We compile the code with a minifier, which further improves performance. Since the language is dynamically typed, it lends itself well to obfuscation, which occurs as a byproduct of minification. We went to great efforts to ensure it positively screams, performance-wise. We can now do what we did before, faster, better, with less code, on more platforms. **In summary, we are very satisfied with the current state of the language.** I personally love the language especially for its cross-platform nature. So naturally, I read up a lot about the state of JavaScript compilers, performance and compatibility across as many browsers and platforms as I have time to research. The one theme which has been growing louder and louder these days, is the news about ECMAScript 6. So far, what I have been able to gather is that ES6 promises a better development experience; firstly by enabling new ways to do things, secondly by reporting errors early. This sounds great for those who are still waiting for the language to meet their needs before jumping on board. But we have already jumped on board in a big way. Sure, I expect that we will have to do ongoing maintenance and feature revisions on our code through the years, and that we would obviously make use of best practices at the time. But I don't see us refactoring major portions of it to take advantage of language features that are mostly intended to boost developer productivity. I keep wondering, what impact will the language advances ultimately have on our **existing,** well-written, well-performing code base? Is there something I am missing? Is there something we ought to look out for? Does anyone have tips or guidance on how we should approach the ecmascript.next finalization? Should we care?"}
{"_id": "164616", "title": "How should an API use http basic authentication", "text": "When an API requires that a client authenticates to it, i've seen two different scenarios used and I am wondering which case I should use for my situation. Example 1. An API is offered by a company to allow third parties to authenticate with a token and secret using HTTP Basic. Example 2. An API accepts a username and password via HTTP Basic to authenticate an end user. Generally they get a token back for future requests. My Setup: I will have an JSON API that I use as my backend for a mobile and web app. It seems like good practice for both the mobile and web app to send along a token and secret so only these two apps can access the API blocking any other third party. But the mobile and web app allow users to login and submit posts, view their data, etc. So I would want them to login via HTTP Basic as well on each request. Do I somehow use a combination of both these methods or only send the end user credentials (username and token) on each request? If I only send the end user credentials, do I store them in a cookie on the client?"}
{"_id": "179219", "title": "How do you take into account usability and user requirements for your application?", "text": "Our team supports BackOffice application: a mix of WinForm and WPF windows. (about 80 including dialogs). Really a kind of a Swiss Army Knife. It is used by developers, tech writers, security developers, testers. The requirements for new features come quite often and sometimes we play Wizard of Oz to decide which GUI our users like the most. And it usually happens (I admit it can be just my subjective interpretation of the reality) that one tiny detail giving the flavor of good usability to our app requires a lot of time. This time is being spent on 'fighting' with GUI framework making it act like we need. And it very difficult to make estimations for this type of tasks (at least for me and most members of our team). Scrum poker is not a help either. Management often considers this usability perfectionism to be a waste of time. On the other hand an accumulated affect of features where each has some little usability flaw frustrates users. But the same users want frequent releases and instant bug fixes. Hence, no way to get the positive feedback: there is always somebody who is snuffy. I constantly feel myself as competing with ourselves: more features -> more bugs/tasks/architecture. We are trying to outrun the cart we are pushing. New technologies arrive and some of them can potentially help to improve the design or decrease task implementation time but these technologies require learning, prototyping and so on. Well, that was a story. And now is the question:   * How do you balance between time pressure, product quality, users and management satisfaction?   * When and how do you decide to leave the problem with not a perfect but to some extent acceptable solution, how often do you make these decisions?   * How do you do with your own satisfaction? What are your priorities? P.S. Please keep in mind, we are a BackOffice team, we have neither dedicated technical writer nor GUI designer. The tester have joined us recently. We've much work to do and much freedom concerning 'how'. I like it because it fosters creativity but I don't want to become too nerdy perfectionist."}
{"_id": "178166", "title": "Should I implement BackBone.js into my ASP.NET WebForms applications?", "text": "# Background I'm trying to improve my group's current web app development pattern. Our current pattern is something we came up with while trying to rich web apps on top of ASP.NET WebForms (none of us knew ASP.NET MVC). This is the current pattern: ![diagram of our pattern](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GjKmw.png)!   * Our application is using the WinForms Framework.     * Our ASPX pages are essentially just HTML, we use almost no WebControls.    * We use JavaScript/jQuery to perform all of our UI events and AJAX calls.      * For a single ASPX page, we have a single .js file.     * All of our AJAX calls are POSTs (not RESTful at all)   * Our AJAX calls contact WebMethods which we have defined in a series of ASMX files.      * One ASMX file per business object. # Why Change? I want to revise our pattern a bit for a couple of reasons:   1. We're starting to find that our JavaScript files are getting a bit unwieldy.   2. We're using a hodgepodge of methods for keeping our local data and DOM updates in sync. We seem to spend too much time writing code to keep things in sync, and it can get tricky to debug. I've been reading Developing Backbone.js Applications and I like a lot of what Backbone has to offer in terms of code organization and separation of concerns. However, I've gotten to the chapter on RESTful app, I started to feel some hesitation about using Backbone. # The Problem The problem is our WebMethods do not really fit into the RESTful pattern, which seems to be the way Backbone wants to consume them. For now, I'd only like to address our issue of disorganized client side code. I'd like to avoid major rewrites to our WebMethods. # My Questions Is it possible to use Backbone (or a similar library) to clean up our client code, while not majorly impacting our data access WebMethods? Or would trying to use Backbone in this manner be a bastardization of it's intended use? Anyone have any suggestions for improving our pattern in the area of code organization and spending less time writing DOM and data sync code?"}
{"_id": "178168", "title": "Obtain reference to Parent object during instantiation", "text": "I have a situation where a custom class is a property of another class. What i need to be able to do, if it is possible at all, is obtain a reverse to the \"parent\" class (ie the the class that holds the current class as a property). ### For Instance:               Public Class Class1       ...       public readonly property Prop11 as Class2       public property Prop12 as String       ...     End Class          Public Class Class2       ...       private _par as Class1       private _var21 as string       ...       Public Sub New(...)         me._par = ????         ...       End Sub       public readonly property Prop21 as string         Get           return me._par.Prop12 & me._var21         End Get       End Property       ...     End Class      Ultimately, i am trying to access other properties within `Class1` from `Class2` as they do have substance for information from within `Class2`. There are several other classes within `Class1` that provide descriptive information to other classes contained within it as properties but the information is not extensible to all of the classes through Inheritance, as `Class1` is being used as a resource bin for the property classes and the application itself. ### Diagram, lazy design ;):               Application <- Class1.Prop12     Application <- Class1.Prop11.Prop21      ### Question:   1. Is it possible to get a recursion through this design setup?"}
{"_id": "151498", "title": "SQL language drawbacks, The Third Manifesto", "text": "Sometime ago I read about SQL language drawbacks (the basic language specification, not vendor specific), and one of the drawbacks was that the language does not allow to create a set of tuples that don't come from a table.   For instance,               SELECT firstName, lastName from people;      this creates a set of tuples coming from the table `people`. Now, if I don't have this table `people`, and I want to return a constant, I'd need something like this to return a set of two tuples (this would not require to have a table):               SELECT VALUES('james', 'dean'), ('tom', 'cruisse');      Why I would need that?   Because of the same reasons that we can define constants (not only basic types, but objects and arrays also) in any advanced programming language. Workarounds,   Yes, I could create a temporal table, fill the data, and SELECT from that table. This is a hack, to overcome the drawbacks of the poor SQL language. I think that I read about this somewhere in \"The Third Manifesto\",   but I don't find the paragraph/example talking about this concrete drawback anymore. Do you know a reference about it?"}
{"_id": "256146", "title": "In the BDD paradigm why should the \"ubiquitous language\" be merely semi-formal and not completely formal?", "text": "Here's the relevant quote: > A common risk with software development includes communication breakdowns > between Developers and Business Stakeholders. BDD uses the specification of > desired behavior as a ubiquitous language for the project team members. This > is the reason that BDD insists on a semi-formal language for behavioral > specification: some formality is a requirement for being a ubiquitous > language. In addition, having such a ubiquitous language creates a domain > model of specifications, so that specifications may be reasoned about > formally. I'm thinking an actual formal rigorous \"language\" that has a grammar and compiler could be useful for, say, auto-generating test stubs from specs or for guaranteeing that specs have certain properties (consistently named nouns and verbs, etc.). In the BDD paradigm, then, why should the \"ubiquitous language\" be merely semi-formal and not completely formal/rigorous?"}
{"_id": "62022", "title": "Project estimation with increasing requirements", "text": "Making a project estimation with given a requirements set is one thing. But, what happens when the user suddenly starts changing them on the fly and starts adding new requirements to the already defined set? And even goes to an extent to be mad about why the project is not finished in the originally planned time frame. How should I deal with these situations? Proposing some methodologies and readings could be helpful."}
{"_id": "256144", "title": "Test-Driven Design is not Unit Testing", "text": "Ran across this statement by Martin Fowler circa 2002: > Unit testing in XP is often unlike classical unit testing, because in XP > you're usually not testing each unit in isolation. You're testing each class > and its immediate connections to its neighbors. Is this still correct, and if so, why?"}
{"_id": "256140", "title": "how to do vector ops on a \"vector <string> item\" C++", "text": "I am trying to work on an array of strings (char **) where I am trying to use the C++ paradigm of \"vector device_names\". After parsing an input string for matching pos/neg entries, I want to sort the final lists, but attempts to sort the final list seem to be thinking I want to sort the characters in some item of the list. Code to illustrate this is:               struct ds_matches {         vector <string> positive_matches;         vector <string> negative_matches;         bool include_unspecified;     };     typedef struct ds_matches DS_Matches;          void ds_make_matches(DS_Matches &matches, const char * match_config) {         vector <string> tmp_intfs;         tmp_intfs.reserve(32);         int nmatches = split( tmp_intfs, match_config, \" \", 32, 32);         matches.positive_matches.reserve(nmatches);         matches.negative_matches.reserve(nmatches);         for (auto st:tmp_intfs) {             if(st[0] == '-') {                 matches.negative_matches.push_back((string){st,1,st.size()-1});                 matches.include_unspecified = 1;             } else {                 matches.positive_matches.push_back(st);                 matches.include_unspecified = 0;             }         }         // sort intf lists for faster runtime lookup         // if runtime search is costly, might convert to a hash here         if (matches.negative_matches.size()>1)              sort(matches.negative_matches.begin(),                  matches.negative_matches.end(), matches.negative_matches);         if (matches.positive_matches.size()>1)              sort(matches.positive_matches.begin(),                  matches.positive_matches.end(), matches.positive_matches);     }      I've tried a few syntax permutations on the sort statement, but each permutation has come up with a different reason for why it is wrong -- many thinking I'm trying to sort characters. Line 280 in my code (mentioned in all the error messages below) is the continuation line of the 1st \"sort\".                   g++: COMPILE util.cc, linux/netmeter.cc     In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.8/algorithm:62:0,                                      from util.cc:16:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h: In instantiation of \u2018void std::__insertion_sort(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2250:70:   required from \u2018void std::__final_insertion_sort(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5514:55:   required from \u2018void std::sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     util.cc:280:61:   required from here     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2183:29: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019             if (__comp(*__i, *__first))                                                              ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h: In instantiation of \u2018void std::__heap_select(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5363:59:   required from \u2018void std::partial_sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2355:68:   required from \u2018void std::__introsort_loop(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Size, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Size = long int; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5513:44:   required from \u2018void std::sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     util.cc:280:61:   required from here     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:1972:27: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019         if (__comp(*__i, *__first))                                                          ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h: In instantiation of \u2018void std::__move_median_first(_Iterator, _Iterator, _Iterator, _Compare) [with _Iterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2318:68:   required from \u2018_RandomAccessIterator std::__unguarded_partition_pivot(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2360:62:   required from \u2018void std::__introsort_loop(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Size, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Size = long int; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5513:44:   required from \u2018void std::sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     util.cc:280:61:   required from here     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:110:28: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019                  if (__comp(*__a, *__b))                                                             ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:112:25: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019             if (__comp(*__b, *__c))                                                      ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:114:30: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019             else if (__comp(*__a, *__c))                                                                 ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:117:33: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019                  else if (__comp(*__a, *__c))                                                                      ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:119:33: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019                  else if (__comp(*__b, *__c))                                                                      ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h: In instantiation of \u2018_RandomAccessIterator std::__unguarded_partition(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, const _Tp&, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Tp = std::basic_string<char>; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2319:78:   required from \u2018_RandomAccessIterator std::__unguarded_partition_pivot(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2360:62:   required from \u2018void std::__introsort_loop(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Size, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Size = long int; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5513:44:   required from \u2018void std::sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     util.cc:280:61:   required from here     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2287:35: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, const std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019             while (__comp(*__first, __pivot))                                                                          ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2290:34: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (const std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019             while (__comp(__pivot, *__last))                                                                         ^     In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:61:0,                                      from /usr/include/c++/4.8/algorithm:62,                                      from util.cc:16:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h: In instantiation of \u2018void std::__adjust_heap(_RandomAccessIterator, _Distance, _Distance, _Tp, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Distance = long int; _Tp = std::basic_string<char>; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h:448:15:   required from \u2018void std::make_heap(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:1970:47:   required from \u2018void std::__heap_select(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5363:59:   required from \u2018void std::partial_sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2355:68:   required from \u2018void std::__introsort_loop(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Size, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Size = long int; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5513:44:   required from \u2018void std::sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     util.cc:280:61:   required from here     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h:313:40: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019                     *(__first + (__secondChild - 1))))                                                                                     ^     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h: In instantiation of \u2018_Distance std::__is_heap_until(_RandomAccessIterator, _Distance, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >; _Distance = long int; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019:     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h:113:55:   required from \u2018bool std::__is_heap(_RandomAccessIterator, _Compare, _Distance) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >; _Distance = long int]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h:124:76:   required from \u2018bool std::__is_heap(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h:501:7:   required from \u2018void std::sort_heap(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5364:47:   required from \u2018void std::partial_sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:2355:68:   required from \u2018void std::__introsort_loop(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, _Size, _Compare) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Size = long int; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_algo.h:5513:44:   required from \u2018void std::sort(_RAIter, _RAIter, _Compare) [with _RAIter = __gnu_debug::_Safe_iterator<__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<std::basic_string<char>*, std::__cxx1998::vector<std::basic_string<char>, std::allocator<std::basic_string<char> > > >, std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> > >; _Compare = std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >]\u2019     util.cc:280:61:   required from here     /usr/include/c++/4.8/bits/stl_heap.h:94:50: error: no match for call to \u2018(std::__debug::vector<std::basic_string<char> >) (std::basic_string<char>&, std::basic_string<char>&)\u2019             if (__comp(__first[__parent], __first[__child]))                                                                                                         ^      FWIW.. I'm beginning to think the comment should add \"inability to figure out sort syntax\" as another possible reason for going to a map-based algorithm... Amazing how 1 line can generate so many competing error messages... _arg!_ How do I differentiate between operations called on the vector, vs. a string in the vector. I had (naively) assumed that to invoke an operation on a string in the array, I would need to use some \"specifier\" like the 'auto' in the 'for' loop before, or brackets for a particular element. But, apparently not so... Clue sticks appreciated!"}
{"_id": "137947", "title": "How does key-based caching work?", "text": "I recently read an article on the 37Signals blog and I'm left wondering how it is that they get the cache key. It's all well and good having a cache key that includes the object's timestamp (this means that when you update the object the cache will be invalidated); but how do you then use the cache key in a template without causing a DB hit for the very object that you are trying to fetch from the cache. Specifically, how does this affect One to Many relations where you are rendering a Post's Comments for example. Example in Django:               {% for comment in post.comments.all %}        {% cache comment.pk comment.modified %}          <p>{{ post.body }}</p>        {% endcache %}     {% endfor %}      Is caching in Rails different to just requests to memcached for example (I know that they convert your cache key to something different). Do they also cache the cache key?"}
{"_id": "252656", "title": "How to update last accessed with Forms Authentication cookie", "text": "I've got an MVC 4 site where I'm using Forms Authentication. I'm setting a cookie when a user logs in. The majority of my site does NOT require a user to be logged in though. What I'd like to do, whenever a user FIRST accesses my site, I'd like to update my \"LastLogon\" that I have stored in my database table to the corresponding value (if Request.IsAuthenticated). But I don't want it to fire on EVERY page that the user accesses. So, where do I track when the user first accesses my site? Is that in the Global.asax? Is Application_Start method for all first requests to a site, or is that when the website first loads after an iisreset?"}
{"_id": "64663", "title": "Lisp popularity on the rise. Anyone know why? Seen this first hand?", "text": "I recently found this article/table: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html It shows a big rise in Lisp's popularity. Does anyone know more about this? What applications is it gaining popularity in? Are there more Lisp jobs out there lately? Why isn't there a similar increase in Scheme? I am an enthusiast of Lisp and Scheme so I'm excited to see this. I've never used them professionally but I'd love to oppurtunity to. If anyone knows more about this I'd love to hear it."}
{"_id": "252655", "title": "How are some IEEE 754 floats printed succinctly?", "text": "Using this calculator, I can see how the decimal \".8\" and the expression \".7 + .1\" have different representations:               .8      = 1.1001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011010 *2-1     .7 + .1 = 1.1001100110011001100110011001100110011001100110011001 *2-1                                                                   ^^        But what mechanism causes \"0.8\" to be printed for the top value? E.g. `alert(.8)` in JavaScript. Why does it not print something like \"0.800000011920929\"? Is this a feature of IEEE 754 or the programming language implementing it?"}
{"_id": "144729", "title": "When to distinguish OS versions in canonical names for target platforms", "text": "I would like to organize my company's software releases by platform. I've looked at how Mozilla, Perforce, and Apache organize their releases, and it seems that I should partition by OS and processor architecture. I was thinking of something like this:   * Linux (x86-32)   * Linux (x86-64)   * Neutrino (x86-32)   * Windows (x86-32)   * Windows (x86-64) Is it common to distinguish between versions of Windows, Linux, or OS X? For example, should I be specifying the Linux kernel version?"}
{"_id": "215317", "title": "Data Transformation Pipeline", "text": "I have create some kind of data pipeline to transform coordinate data into more useful information. Here is the shell of pipeline:               public class PositionPipeline     {         protected List<IPipelineComponent> components;              public PositionPipeline()         {             components = new List<IPipelineComponent>();         }              public PositionPipelineEntity Process(Position position)         {             foreach (var component in components)             {                 position = component.Execute(position);             }                  return position;         }              public PositionPipeline RegisterComponent(IPipelineComponent component)         {             components.Add(component);             return this;         }     }      Every `IPipelineComponent` accepts and returns the same type - a `PositionPipelineEntity`. Code:               public interface IPipelineComponent     {         PositionPipelineEntity Execute(PositionPipelineEntity position);     }      The `PositionPipelineEntity` needs to have many properties, many which are **unused in certain components** and **required in others**. Some properties will also have become redundant at the end of the pipeline. For example, these components could be executed:   1. `TransformCoordinatesComponent`: Parse the raw coordinate data into a Coordinate type.    2. `DetermineCountryComponent`: Determine and stores country code.   3. `DetermineOnRoadComponent`: Determine and store whether coordinate is on a road. Code:               pipeline         .RegisterComponent(new TransformCoordinatesComponent())         .RegisterComponent(new DetermineCountryComponent())         .RegisterComponent(new DetermineOnRoadComponent());          pipeline.Process(positionPipelineEntity);      The `PositionPipelineEntity` type:               public class PositionPipelineEntity     {         // Only relevant to the TransformCoordinatesComponent          public decimal RawCoordinateLatitude { get; set; }              // Only relevant to the TransformCoordinatesComponent          public decimal RawCoordinateLongitude { get; set; }              // Required by all components after TransformCoordinatesComponent          public Coordinate CoordinateLatitude { get; set; }              // Required by all components after TransformCoordinatesComponent          public Coordinate CoordinateLongitude { get; set; }              // Set in DetermineCountryComponent, not required anywhere.           // Requires CoordinateLatitude and CoordinateLongitude (TransformCoordinatesComponent)         public string CountryCode { get; set; }              // Set in DetermineOnRoadComponent, not required anywhere.           // Requires CoordinateLatitude and CoordinateLongitude (TransformCoordinatesComponent)         public bool OnRoad { get; set; }     }      **Problems:**   * I'm very concerned about the dependency that a component has on properties. The way to solve this would be to create specific types for each component. The problem then is that I cannot chain them together like this.    * The other problem is the order of components in the pipeline matters. There is some dependency. The current structure does not provide any static or runtime checking for such a thing. Any feedback would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "144725", "title": "Desktop GUI loading slow", "text": "I am developing desktop based GUI (single form) using wxPython and loads it using remote citrix access from client private network. Suppose, the GUI has certain group of select and text boxes which are loaded together when application starts. The value of select boxes come from database and on the basis of selection of select box value, corresponding text boxes (which are initially blank) are populated from database. Now the problem is, due to slow remote access, we have to wait for long time (approximately 5-7 minutes ) before all controls are loaded. Is there any suggestion, if we can reduce this time ? One way coming in first thought is to divide the GUI in multiple tabs and divide the controls among tabs. This way I need to load less controls when application starts for showing first tab. Other controls load, only after user click corresponding tab. Any other way or this one is the best approach?"}
{"_id": "34463", "title": "Term for unit testing that separates test logic from test result data", "text": "So I'm not doing any unit testing. But I've had an idea to make it more appropriate for my field of use. Yet it's not clear if something like this exists, and if, how it would possibly be called. * * * Ordinary unit tests combine the test logic and the expected outcome. In essence the testing framework only checks for booleans (did this match, did the expected result result). To generalize, the test code itself references the audited functions, and also explicites the result values like so:               unit::assert(  test_me() == 17  )      What I'm looking for is a separation of concerns. The test itself should only contain the tested logic. The outcome and result data should be handled by the unit testing or assertion framework. As example:               unit::probe(   test_me()   )      Here the `probe` actually doubles as collector in the first run, and afterwards as verification method. The expected `17` is not mentioned in the test code, but stored or managed elsewhere. How is this scheme called? Or how would you call it? I hope I can find some actual implementations with the proper terminology. * * * Obviously such a pattern is unfit for TDD. It's strictly for regression testing. Also obviously, it cannot be used for all cases. Only the simpler test subjects can be analyzed that way, for anything else the ordinary unit test setup and assertion steps are required. And yes, this could be manually accomplished by crafting a ResultWhateverObject, but that would still require hardwiring that to the test logic.   Also keep in mind that I'm inquiring for use with scripting languages, and not about Java. I'm aware that the xUnit pattern originates there, and why it's hence as elaborate as it is. Btw, I've discovered one test execution framework which allows for shortening simple test notations to:               test_me();   // 17      While thus the result data is no longer coded in (it's a comment), that's still not a complete separation and of course would work only for scalar results."}
{"_id": "144720", "title": "Difference between software inspection and verification", "text": "I was reading about software inspection in Software Engineering by Ian Summerville and I came across the term Software inspection and I started reading about it on Wikipedia. I am unable to understand what is the difference between verification and software inspection?"}
{"_id": "143110", "title": "Inexpensive generation of hierarchical unique IDs", "text": "My application is building a hierarchical structure like this:               root = {        'id': 'root',       'children': [ {         'name': 'root_foo',         'children': []       }, {         'id': 'root_foo2',         'children': [ {           'id': 'root_foo2_bar',           'children': []           } ]       } ]     }      in other words, it's a tree of nodes, where each node might have child elements and unique identifier I call \"id\". When a new child is added, I need to generate a unique identifier for it, however I have two problems:   * _identifiers are getting too long_   * _adding many children takes slower, as I need to find first available id_ My requirement is:   * _naming of a child X must be determined only from the state in their ancestors_   * _When I re-generate tree with same contents, the IDs must be same_ or in other words, when we have nodes A and B, creating child in A, must not affect the name given to children of B. I know that one way to optimize would be to introduce counter in each node and append it to the names which will solve my performance issue, but will not address the issue with the \"long identifiers\". **Could you suggest me the algorithm for quickly coming up with new IDs?**"}
{"_id": "175020", "title": "What is the best approach for inline code comments?", "text": "We are doing some refactoring to a 20 years old legacy codebase, and I'm having a discussion with my colleague about the comments format in the code (plsql, java). There is no a default format for comments, but in most cases people do something like this in the comment:               // date (year, year-month, yyyy-mm-dd, dd/mm/yyyy), (author id, author name, author nickname) and comment      the proposed format for future and past comments that I want is:               // {yyyy-mm-dd}, unique_author_company_id, comment      My colleague says that we only need the comment, and must reformat all past and future comments to this format:               // comment      My arguments:   * I say for maintenance reasons, it's important to know when and who did a change (even this information is in the SCM).   * The code is living, and for that reason has a history.   * Because without the change dates it's impossible to know when a change was introduced without open the SCM tool and search in the long object history.   * because the author is very important, a change of authors is more credible than a change of authory   * Agility reasons, no need to open and navigate through the SCM tool   * people would be more afraid to change something that someone did 15 years ago, than something that was recently created or changed.   * etc. My colleague's arguments:   * The history is in the SCM   * Developers must not be aware of the history of the code directly in the code   * Packages gets 15k lines long and unstructured comments make these packages harder to understand What do you think is the best approach? Or do you have a better approach to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "35739", "title": "Rationale behind freeware projects", "text": "I've seen some freeware projects in the past where the author(s) invested a significant amount of their personal time and resources and never even considered charging for the software. A lot of these projects were donation based, and from what I've heard, donationware can never be a viable business model (even to simply support development costs) because most people choose not to donate if given an option. A lot of these projects eventually shut down because their authors could not sustain them further. Granted, some people simply like making the community happy (or something), but if you're struggling to keep your project alive, why not charge some small amount such as $10 simply to stay operational? If people find your software useful (and a lot of people found those projects VERY useful) they won't have a problem paying such a small amount. The question is: if you have a popular app that people like and download in great numbers, why not put a price tag on it? Why do it for free?"}
{"_id": "145459", "title": "Do path-finding algorithms have practical use outside of game development?", "text": "I'm interested to know if heuristic-based path-finding algorithms such as A* have any real world practical use outside the realm of game development. Are there any other fields of software engineering that employ path-finding algorithms, perhaps in a completely different or unconventional way, or is it by the nature of those algorithms and their design that they ultimately see very limited use in other areas?"}
{"_id": "35731", "title": "Is it a bad idea to get a Master's and Bachelor's Degree from the same university?", "text": "I'm getting close to graduation and am strongly considering continuing to a Master's Program. My long-term goal for the future is to stay in industry rather than pursuing a Ph.D/Academic career. While communicating these thoughts with some of my peers, I've been told that staying in the same University for both a Bachelor's and Master's degree is ill-advisable. The reasons seem to be based along the lines of lack of exposure to other opportunities, programs, and faculty. My question is, if I intend to pursue a career outside of the Ph.D/Academic spectrum, will staying at the same university for my master's really decrease my value in software related positions? If so (or if not), why?"}
{"_id": "145456", "title": "iphone app- is it possible to invoke a local app after user visits a website or a web app", "text": "I have a scenario where a local app is used to take snaps using the iphone camera and the local app can send the photo to a web server... Now when the user visits a website or another web app using his iphone, then the website/webapp invokes the local app to do its work. Do security/other restrictions on iphone prevent such a scenario from being implemented? Can I create a local app with the above scenario in mind? Is there something I should be aware of, before I start creating such an app? And should the user visit a web app or a website, so that the local app is correctly invoked to do its job?"}
{"_id": "165059", "title": "Do you use ReSharper full time, or only enable it when needed?", "text": "Based on a multitude of questions related to temporarily disabling ReSharper, and also on certain research data, I can see that a considerable share of ReSharper users have it disabled most of the time. They tend to enable it for a limited period of time (say, several hours), do whatever they need to do using its functionality, and disable it back until the next time they feel they need to use it. If you're using ReSharper (or other similar VS extensions, to that matter) in such occasional manner, can you clarify why you're doing this? Is your behavior based on performance, or other considerations? What kinds of tasks do you enable ReSharper for in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "216459", "title": "Accuracy in calculating distance from Android Device using double integral?", "text": "Using `TYPE_LINEAR_ACCELERATION` suppose I found out that the device is moving at 4 m/s\u00b2.               a(t)=s\"(t)=+4     v(t)=\u222b4tdt     s(t)=2/3t\u00b3     s(3)=18m      How much accurate it would be?"}
{"_id": "197372", "title": "How to use source control in Data analysis?", "text": "I am currently in a Data analaysis job and I am using mainly SPSS (Statistics) and a rather unknown scripting language to make nice tables. My problem is, that there are multiple script files for both programs with thousands of lines of code. Currently, they are copied each month to a new folder, modified as needed and executed. Predictabely, there are a lot of copy and paste errors and searching for the start of an error is a huge pain. I was thinking about source control, but I am not really familiar which one meetes the following criteria: 1\\. checkin from the windows explorer or Notepad++ 2\\. Committing to the same project from different folders. 3\\. Has anybody good ideas or best practice suggestions? I am using a little bit SVN for several small C# programs - but is there a better tool for Source code management under theese circumstances?"}
{"_id": "93733", "title": "Client\u2013server models and Client-centric models", "text": "For distributed applications, emphasis mine: > Where classic software systems of the past century were mostly based on > **Client\u2013server models** and **Client-centric application** development, > **both ultimately run on one single computer, be it the client computer or > the server.**   1. I understand what client-server models are, but I was wondering what client-centric model is?   2. How shall one understand that \"both ultimately run on one single computer, be it the client computer or the server\"? Does this apply to both client-server models and client-centric models?"}
{"_id": "188217", "title": "Writing a TCP protocol or use HTTP for file transfer?", "text": "I want to write a server side application which allows several users to exchange files (not above 3MB) in the following way: user A connects to (server) S. User B connects to S. User C connects S. User A sends a file. Users B and C \"see\" that a file was/is being uploaded and start downloading it. My main concern is responsiveness. I want the file to arrive at B and C not long after A started uploading. I thought of doing it using HTTP: user A sends raw bytes to the server and the server saves the file locally. At this point users B and C see that a file was uploaded and start downloading it. My question: is HTTP the best way to go here? Or should I write an app that uses TCP sockets, and write my own protocol? If I go with sockets. How can I estimate the RAM requirements of the VPS so that I can allow N file-transfer connections simultaneously?"}
{"_id": "111380", "title": "How can dev teams prevent slow performance in consumer apps?", "text": "When I previously asked what's responsible for slow software, a few answers I've received suggested it was a social and management problem: > This isn't a technical problem, it's a marketing and management problem.... > Utimately, the product mangers are responsible to write the specs for what > the user is supposed to get. Lots of things can go wrong: The product > manager fails to put button response in the spec ... The QA folks do a > mediocre job of testing against the spec ... if the product management and > QA staff are all asleep at the wheel, we programmers can't make up for that. > \u2014Bob Murphy > > People work on good-size apps. As they work, performance problems creep in, > just like bugs. The difference is - bugs are \"bad\" - they cry out \"find me, > and fix me\". Performance problems just sit there and get worse. Programmers > often think \"Well, my code wouldn't have a performance problem. Rather, > management needs to buy me a newer/bigger/faster machine.\" The fact is, if > developers periodically just hunt for performance problems (which is > actually very easy) they could simply clean them out. \u2014Mike Dunlavey So, if this is a social problem, what social mechanisms can an organization put into place to avoid shipping slow software to its customers?"}
{"_id": "129717", "title": "Automatic sorting of class/module members and its possible impact on productivity and code quality", "text": "Recently I saw some possibilities of some IDEs (via plugins) to sort members of their classes/modules based on some criteria, sou you could have everything sorted automaticaly no matter where you would put the elements in time of writing it to editor. Do you think that this kind of sorting in class/module may have positive impacts on productivity, readability, comprehensibility etc?"}
{"_id": "111384", "title": "Writing use cases for a rather complex scenario", "text": "I'm trying to improve my use-case writing skills but I'm stuck on a certain scenario. The idea is that there are a bunch of entries in a task list (some kind of todo list). Now the user wishes to process the list (divide it amongst other lists). He can do this by answering a series of questions / completing extra data. Based on the choices of the user the system perform different actions on the task. I'm really confused on how to write this down in a use case. What I was thinking is something like (I'm only writing down the main success scenario):               Use Case: Process Inbox     Primary Actor: User              1. User indicates he/she wants to sort his/her inbox     2. System presents the next question and provides possible actions     3. User makes choice          _steps 2-3 get repeated until inbox is empty_      The problem with this is that it's not specific enough so something else I was thinking of is to make sub use-cases for all the different steps in the question process like:               Use Case: Handle Project     Level: Sub Use-case     Primary Actor: System              1. System requests additional information (description, due date) from user.     2. User completes data     3. System classifies the task as a Project      What I'm puzzled about here is:   * How to include this sub use-case in my main scenario in a proper way   * How to indicate that after this action, the user starts again from step 2 in the main use case. I was thinking of using extensions in which I include the different sub use- cases but it's getting pretty confusing. So to bundle this request into one question: Can someone clear up how you would usually tackle this kind of scenarios and/or provide me a basic possible solution for this example? Thanks in advance ;) If anyone is interested, the flowchart of questions I'm intending to use is from David Allen's book Getting Things Done: link to diagram"}
{"_id": "126405", "title": "Why is C++ known as 'premature optimizaton'?", "text": "\"Programming in C++ is premature optimization\" Why ~~does everyone~~ do some people say this?"}
{"_id": "22809", "title": "Why develop free, open source programs?", "text": "Why would someone use his own time to develop an open-source project for free and without compensation?"}
{"_id": "121798", "title": "What is the economic rationale for focusing on free, open source projects?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why programming open source? I'm having trouble understanding why people dedicate their time to an open source project that's free as in beer instead of focusing on a closed source, paid project. Closed source projects seem to be more commercially viable, so why do programmers open source their code and make it free when there are commercial opportunities for it?"}
{"_id": "11257", "title": "What made you contribute to that open source project?", "text": "I'm interested in real experience and personal answers not just those standard worn out \"benefits of contributing to open source\" that we all memorized by heart by now. I've met many people who contribute to open source project and almost never did this topic come up: why did they contribute to this open source project. So, if you've contributed to an open source project before in any way, can you please pause for a second and try to remember what really made you decide to contribute to that particular project. Was it a random decision, was it because you were bored, was it because the company you worked for was already using it and you contributed as part of your job, was it because the project was too big you wanted to get contracts, or the project was too small you wanted to build it, or because your prof or co-worker asked you to help with his open source project, or..... To substantiate your reasons, please mention the project name and rate your involvement (heavy, occasional, light, once)."}
{"_id": "74648", "title": "Do I need to contact a lawyer to report a GPL violation in software distributed on Apple's App Store?", "text": "Some company is selling software through Apple's App Store which uses portions of code that I released publicly under the GPL. The company is violating the licensing terms in two ways, by (1) not preserving my copyright statement, and not releasing their code under the GPL license and (2) by distributing my GPL- licensed code through Apple's App Store. (The Free Software Foundation has made clear that the terms of the GPL and those of the App Store are incompatible.) I want to report this to Apple, and ask that they take appropriate action. I have tried mailing them to ask for more information about the reporting process, and have received the automated reply quoted below. The last point in the list of things one needs to provide, the \u201ca statement by you, made under penalty of perjury,\u201d sounds as if they mean some kind of specific legal document. I'm not sure. Does this mean I need to contact a lawyer just to file the report? I'd like to avoid going through that hassle if at all possible. (Besides an answer to this specific question, I'd welcome comments and experience reports from anyone who has already had to deal with a GPL violation on Apple's App Store.) > Thank you for contacting Apple's Copyright Agent. If you believe that your > work has been copied in a way that constitutes infringement on Apple\u2019s Web > site, please provide the following information: > >   * an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on > behalf of the owner of the copyright interest; >   * a description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed; >   * a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is > located on the site; your address, telephone number, and email address; >   * a statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed > use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; >   * a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above > information in your Notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner > or authorized to act on the copyright owner\u2019s behalf. > > > For further information, please review Apple's Legal Information & > Notices/Claims of Copyright Infringement at: > http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/claimsofcopyright.html > > To expedite the processing of your claim regarding any alleged intellectual > property issues related to iTunes (music/music videos, podcasts, TV, > Movies), please send a copy of your notice to iTunesStoreNotices@apple.com > For claims concerning a software application, please send a copy of your > notice to AppStoreNotices@apple.com. > > Due to the high volume of e-mails we receive, this may be the only reply you > receive from copyrightagent@apple.com. Please be assured, however, that > Apple's Copyright Agent and/or the iTunes Legal Team will promptly > investigate and take appropriate action concerning your report."}
{"_id": "253014", "title": "Distributed game development and security of source code", "text": "I think this question has already been asked many times, but I can't find any of them. I have a game project (I'm using Marmalade),and a few trusted developers, but I want to invite more. For adding some functionality, for writing scripts and so on. The question is - how can I don't give them the whole source code (only compiled part of it maybe), and/or give them limited rights to the project for doing them their work, but dont have the opportunity to steal the code?"}
{"_id": "73149", "title": "Certified Scrum Developer - Anyone out there who's taken this course?", "text": "I've met a bunch of \"Certified ScrumMasters\" as well as \"Certified Scrum Product Owners\" out there... but I have yet to meet a \"Certified Scrum Developer.\" See: http://scrumalliance.org/pages/certified_scrum_developer Who has taken this course. Was it valuable? Please let me know how your experience went. -=-= Edits -=-= I just realized what the CSD requirements are (below)... what a heavy course load! > CSD Qualifications > > At least five days of formal training are required to earn a Certified Scrum > Developer (CSD) credential. CSD applicants must also demonstrate an > understanding of agile engineering practices by taking and passing a formal > CSD assessment. > >   * At least three days must be technical training through a three-day CSD- > track technical skills course. >   * At least one of the five days must be dedicated to the study of Scrum > through a CSD-track Introduction to Scrum course or CSM/CSPO course. >   * The fifth day is an elective. You can choose from among the CSD-track > courses to develop the skills you feel would benefit you the most in your > role. The two-day CSM or CSPO course fulfils both Intro to Scrum and the > elective requirements. >"}
{"_id": "212754", "title": "When is it NOT good to use actors in akka/erlang?", "text": "I've been working with akka for 7-8 months now daily. When I started, I would be working on applications and notice that actors would be used basically anywhere once inside the actor system for communicating between most objects. So I did the same - spin up another actor for x/y/z. It seems to me that this may be too indiscriminate, adding complexity where it isn't needed - but I can't find any discussions on where actors vs plain synchronous or even async logic via futures should be used. I started pondering my stance after my coworker mentioned something similar. I realized several cases more recently where I have pondered a task and then avoided creating another actor because I could achieve the same result safely in an immutable implementation - eg something like getting configuration values from a db or file somewhere where you access very infrequently and will wait for the result is the actual use case. In particular, it seems to me that any case where you're playing with immutable state, actors create complexity and limit throughput - a pure function in an object, for example, can be called concurrently with no risk with any level of concurrency, yet an actor can only process one message at a time. The alternate consideration is you'll park the thread if you need to wait for the result unless you start using futures but cases where you don't need to worry about async messaging or scale it seems it may be overkill to employ an actor. So my question is - is there a bad time to use actors? I'm curious how erlang looks and would really like other people's insight. Or if there are some principles around actor use."}
{"_id": "197959", "title": "Prevent anomalies caused by signal propagation time", "text": "In electrical engineering class we learned that signal lines are not ideal, so it takes time for the signal to reach the other end of the cable, and if we doesn't take this into account, it can lead to crazy phenomenons like: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XAsXe.png) Imagine we have a tank game, where tank1 (played from Europe) shots tank2 (controlled from the USA). In tank1's monitor he sees that tank2 is destroyed, but it takes some (very small but not negligible) time for the signal to reach tank2's monitor. So while the signal travels, he can fire his virtual cannon too, destroying tank1. The signal of this act starts his journey to tank1, before the data that tells to tank2 that he is dead, arrives. This causes the weird phenomenon, that **tank1 destroyed tank2, but tank2 still can destroy player1** (despite that tank2 doesn't even exists). They told us, that we cant solve this problem in the hardware way, we have to prevent this in the software side, but they didn't tell us how should we do this, but I am courious, so how do we/they solve this problem? The problem is not about the time that elapse while the bullet flies in the air, it is about that the first tank should be destroyed, so it shouldn't be able to shot (or be able to do anything), but in our problem it is able, because the information that he destroyed doesn't arrived yet. **In this case we should interpret the word shot as: the bullet impacted and it destroyed the tank**. So **the actual signal** that is going to be sent to the other client **is that he is destroyed**. Not the event that the enemy tank fired its cannon."}
{"_id": "197953", "title": "VPS vs Web Hosting: Which one is good for java web services", "text": "I have some questions about VPS and web hosting. As far as I understand, VPS is a virtual machine on which we can do anything as we can do with our local machine. Install software, change settings etc. Web hosting is where we have only a folder in which we place our web site in. However, most of the provider currently advertise their service as \"VPS web hosting\". This confuses me, does that mean they are selling VPS service which can only host web sites? I need a virtual machine which host one RESTful Java service using Tomcat and Jersey and MYSQL at the backend. My plan was to hire a VPS machine, install Tomcat 7 and MySQL on that machine. Is this the right way to go? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "197950", "title": "Programming Style in Large Scale C++ Applications", "text": "Recently I've been browsing source code of large applications written in C++ to learn a bit but I couldn't help but notice that most if not all use a lot of IFDEFs and class-less functions (where they could have been class members/methods). An example is Qt Creator IDE source code: http://qt.gitorious.org/qt-creator/qt-creator/blobs/master/src/app/main.cpp If you notice, it has a bunch of functions around the main() function; one of them, for example, is:               static inline void toHtml(QString &t)      the above method is defined outside while I think it could have been part of some utility class maybe. Also, I think IFDEFs make the programs messy (again my opinion). **My question is** : _is it just an accepted practice in C++ world to mix procedural and OO code like that?_"}
{"_id": "234513", "title": "Dynamically loading MPL library in closed source application", "text": "I am dynamically loading an MPL 2.0 licensed library to use some of its exported functions in a feature. My code does not distribute the library, it simply detects it's presence on the system and uses it if it's available. I also browsed the library's source code to extract the function and certain type definitions. What ramifications does this have on my software? Do I have to distribute the MPL, open-source part of my code that uses the mentioned type definitions, do I have to mention something in my EULA, etc.?"}
{"_id": "56511", "title": "Building a common syntax and scoping framework", "text": "Hello fellow programmers, I was discussing a project the other day with a colleague of mine and I was curious to see what others had to say or if such a thing already existed. ### Background There are many programming languages. There are many IDE's and source editors that highlight and edit source code. Following perfectly and exactly the rules of a language to present auto-complete options and understand scopes in the code is rather complex. This task is complex enough that most IDE's implement different source-editors as plugins that often re-implement the same features over and over but in a different way (netbeans). From what I can tell most IDE's and source editors re-implement parsers that use regular expressions, or some meta-syntax Naur Form to describe the languages grammer generically. These parsers are implemented over and over and over again. ### Question Has anyone attempted to unify or describe a set of features through an API and have a consistent interface to parsing various programming languages and dialects. I'm not describing an IDE - but a consistent API for any program to use to parse and obtain meta-information from the source code. I realize various programming languages offer many different features which are difficult to 'abstract' into a set of features, but I feel this would be a worthwhile venture. It seems to me that this could possibly allow the authors of interpreters to help maintain a central grammer intepreter for their language. the Python foundation could maintain the Python grammer api, ANSI the C grammer api, Oracle the Java grammer API, etc ### Example usage If this was API existed code documentation generators could theoretically work across all dialects and languages to some level. It wouldn't matter if your project used 5 different languages a single application could document all of them and the comments and doc-tags within. Has anyone attempted this comprehensively?"}
{"_id": "7686", "title": "Does having Master's degree in Computer Science help your career?", "text": "I am curious about experiences of programmers who have gone beyond college or university and now work in the industry. I am not talking about academia (you need PhD there anyway). Do you have a Master's degree? Has it helped your career? Are there any other benefits besides the knowledge one gains while pursuing the degree?"}
{"_id": "196022", "title": "How to reject a code review that you believe is unnecessary?", "text": "I am in a position where I have been asked to review some code that fixes a problem that I don't believe exists. The fixer, who is more senior than me, insists his fix is necessary but it appears to be no more than C++ sophistry to me. Part of our deployment process is a code review, and as the 2nd highest engineer in a small company I am expected to review changes. I believe that reviewers are just as responsible for code changes as the original coder, and I am unwilling to accept responsibility for this change. How would you go about rejecting this review?"}
{"_id": "166503", "title": "2 Servers 1 Database - Can I use Redis?", "text": "Ok I have a couple of questions here. First let me give you some background information. I'm starting a project where I have a node.js server running my application and my website running on another normal server. My application will allow multiple users simultaneous connections and updates to the database so Redis seemed like a good fit there because of its speed and atomic functions. For someone to access my application they have to login with an account. To get an account, they have to signup for one through my website. So my website needs a database, but its not important to have a database like Redis here because it doesn't need it. Which leads me to my first question: **1\\. Can Redis even be used without node.js?** It seems like it would be convenient if both of my servers were using the same database to keep track of information. In some cases, they will keep track of the same information (as in user information) and in other cases, they will be keeping track of separate information. So even if the website wouldn't be taking full advantage of all that Redis has to offer it seems like it would be more convenient. So assuming Redis could be used in this situation that leads to my next question: **2\\. Since Redis is linked with JavaScript, how would I handle the security from my website users?** What would be stopping my website users from opening firebug or chrome's inspector and making changes to the database? Maybe if I designed my site with the layout like this: apply.php->update.php->home.php. Where after they submitted their form it would redirect them to the update page where the JavaScript would run and then redirect them after the database updated to the home page. I don't really know I'm just taking shots in the dark at this point. :) Maybe a better alternative would be to have my node.js application access its own Redis database and also have access to another MySQL database that my website also has access to. Or maybe there is another database that would be better suited for this situation other than Redis. Anyways any direction on this matter would be greatly appreciated. :)"}
{"_id": "221641", "title": "Specific and generic behaviour for derived objects that client doesn't need to be aware of", "text": "We have a database with tables that use an inheritance hierarchy. An entity in the derived table will have an ID that matches an entity in the base table and so on through the hierarchy. We have repository classes for the derived types/tables so that you can get specific instances by ID. The problem we have at the moment is that we want the ability to apply specific behaviour to some of the entities, but we also want some generic behaviour applied to all the base entities. It would be good if a client could treat a collection of entities as the base entity and just call the method to perform this action on it, without having to know about the specific behaviour. So the client will receive from the server a collection of entities, including their ID. The client will then call a method on the server with some of those IDs and somehow the server needs to be able to tell which derived types the IDs belong to. I considered leaving the table inheritance in place so that data isn't duplicated, but having a \"type\" tag in the base-table. Is this defeating the purpose of the inheritance hierarchy?"}
{"_id": "145182", "title": "Populate fields or return object", "text": "**What is better to do in this type of scenario: populate fields or return an object?** The situation is like this: I'm doing calculations to find the prices (inc tax, ex tax, discounted etc) of a product. Is there any advice or are there any guidelines on how to handle a return value? Populate fields:               public class ProductPrice     {         public int BasePrice;         public int IncTax;         public int ExTax;         // ...              public void GetPricesForProduct(int ProductID)         { /* Populate fields based on results */ }     }      Return object:               public class PriceCalculator     {         public ProductPrice GetPricesForProduct(int ProductID)         { /* Populate object fields and return object */ }     }     public class ProductPrice     {         public int BasePrice;         public int IncTax;         public int ExTax;     }      I'm not sure I really like the first method, because the `void` return type doesn't make it clear what happens when the method executes. However, returning an object results in a class which has no functionality."}
{"_id": "221644", "title": "Initializing properties that aren't parameters in a constructor: alternatives", "text": "A class loads properties from a file and uses those as it performs its duties. For testing purposes I want to be able to modify said properties directly without having to use a test properties file. I did the implementation, but it seems filled with smells -- I'm wrestling with keeping this thing small (avoiding frameworks like Spring that will wrap and inject the properties). In particular, I cannot recall seeing a constructor that initializes itself via a statically loaded set of properties -- particularly that it sets variable values from somewhere other than passed-in parameters. I'm looking for arguments for/against this approach, and hoping to hit upon some alternatives if this is really as uncool as I think it is.               private static final String CONFIG_FILE_NAME = String.format(\"config-%s.properties\",             null != System.getProperty(\"JAVA_ENV\") ? System.getProperty(\"JAVA_ENV\") : \"development\");     static {         PROPERTIES = new Properties();         try {             PROPERTIES.load(MyClass.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(CONFIG_FILE_NAME));             if (PROPERTIES.keySet().size() < 1) {                 LOGGER.error(String.format(\"failed to load %s: no properties\", CONFIG_FILE_NAME));             }         }         catch (final IOException ie) {             LOGGER.error(String.format(\"failed to load %s\", CONFIG_FILE_NAME), ie);         }     }          private String property1;     private String property2;          public MyClass() {         property1 = PROPERTIES.getProperty(\"prop.1\");         property2 = PROPERTIES.getProperty(\"prop.2\");     }          /* public accessors for property1 and property2 go here */"}
{"_id": "253239", "title": "Point estimates scale skewed", "text": "When using planning poker for estimates, we've ended up with effectively a non-linear points scale. By that I mean that point value is inconsistent for one-pointers and, say, eight-pointers. Couple examples each:   * 1 point: add tooltip text to a couple of icons; format date&time strings   * 3 points: create new user role and specify their permissions; automatically create a new case in CRM whenever certain actions are performed   * 5 points: watchlist functionality; filtering functionality on several facets   * 8 points: integrate with a third party provider *and* introduce a persistence layer to cache their responses My concern is two-fold: we lose estimating fidelity by restricting ourselves to the low-end of the scale and any reporting (or calculating average velocity) will be erroneous. How can I entice the scrum master, product owner and the team to use a more consistent, linear scale? **Edit:** just to clarify, we are using one of the traditional decks that goes all the way up to 100... except we've somehow anchored ourselves to not go over 5, ending up with effectively a logarithmic scale."}
{"_id": "220512", "title": "How many bugs to expect", "text": "At a previous job (circa 2010), my manager mentioned that he's doing some research into quality metrics. The bottom line is to answer the question **how many bugs should I expect?** The goal is to try and predict how many bugs are incoming, and more importantly, how many bugs we _probably haven't yet found_. There are some problems around this metric. Historically, we tend to look at \"lines of code,\" which is a horrible way of measuring functionality. Functional points seem better, but I don't have an easy way to describe and measure how many function points a piece of software has. The other issue is that quality will obviously vary (widely) depending on if you have really horrible QA/developers, or really awesome, or somewhere in the middle. Another issue is, obviously, what you define as a bug. Some teams look at any feature change as a bug; others try to divide (eg. new functionality vs. broken but \"works as expected\" functionality). Is there any research, or body of work, on helping software teams identify and predict how many bugs they should be finding?"}
{"_id": "104529", "title": "Determine Better Coding Practice", "text": "As a new programmer, it has always been hard to create applications, because I am still at the learning stage. I understand that to achieve a particular affect or function in an application, there will be numerous ways to achieve the same result. However, should I just purely create a function to it's working state, which means that as long as it works, just as the way I want it to, then it should be fine. Can any fellow programmers of a higher level kindly let me know the right way of doing things?"}
{"_id": "75593", "title": "Is it necessary to write a javadoc comment for EVERY parameter in a method's signature?", "text": "One of the devs on my team believes that it is necessary to write a javadoc comment for EVERY parameter in a method's signature. I do not think this is necessary, and in fact I think it can even be harmful. First off, I think parameter names should be descriptive and self-documenting. If it's not immediately obvious what your parameters are for, you're probably Doing it Wrong. However, I do understand that sometimes it's unclear what a parameter is for, so in those cases, yes, you should write a javadoc comment explaining the parameter. But I think it's unnecessary to do that for EVERY parameter. If it's already obvious what the parameter is for, the javadoc comment is redundant; you're just creating extra work for yourself. Furthermore, you're creating extra work for anyone who has to maintain your code. Methods change over time, and maintaining comments is nearly as important as maintaining your code. How many times have you seen a comment like \"X does Y for Z reason\" only to see that the comment is out-of-date, and in fact the method doesn't even take X parameter anymore? It happens all the time, because people forget to update comments. I would argue that a misleading comment is more harmful than no comment at all. And thus is the danger of over-commenting : by creating unnecessary documentation, you're making more work for yourself and everybody else, you're not helping anybody understand your code, and you're increasing the likelihood that the code will have out-of-date comments at some point in the future. However, I respect the other developer on my team, and accept that perhaps he is right and I am wrong. Which is why I bring my question to you, fellow developers : Is it indeed necessary to write a javadoc comment for EVERY parameter? Assume here that the code is internal to my company, and won't be consumed by any outside party."}
{"_id": "203523", "title": "Backend devs put down by user stories", "text": "I planned to slice in backend development into to the user stories vertically. But a backend guy on our team started to complain that this makes their work invisible. My answer was that   * at the sprint planning and review meetings we discuss backend tasks in front of stakeholders so it makes it visible, and   * maintaining a high quality during the project will result a slower startin pace than other teams, but we will have a stable velocity during the project. And velocity is highly visible to stakeholders. He still insist having stories like: \"As a developer I need to have a domain layer so I can encapsulate business logic.\" How can I solve the issue before it pollutes the team? The root of the issue is that our management systematically consider backend work as invisible and call backed devs miners, or other pejorative terms."}
{"_id": "141608", "title": "functional requirements - use wording based on verbs?", "text": "### Question Should the functional requirements in a requirements doc use wording based on verbs? ### Context School assignment, working in a team, working through the SDLC. The requirements doc has been done and we are now into design. ### Problem The requirements doc has an enumerated list of what I'd call features of the app - the functional requirements. In that list are things that I'd think of as \"how's\" rather than \"what's\" and now, trying to work on design, I feel like a part of design has been prematurely dictated. I've not done this before! To me, I should be dealing strictly with things that describe \"what.\" ### Example of current Pretend that the job is to make an omelet. Listing: crack the egg, break into bowl, scramble, etc.; crosses over the line into the territory of how. Along that track, so does wording like: create, generate, list, calculate, determine, validate, etc. - verbs, basically. Right now, I have a list of requirements that are partially rooted in verbs. My idea of a requirements doc for an omelet would be more like: has two eggs, x ounces of ham, x ounces of bacon, x ounces of montery-jack cheese, x ounces of cilantro, etc.--nothing but what (nouns). I might have, and could have, spoken up before finalizing the requirements doc if I'd had any experience."}
{"_id": "141607", "title": "Are there design patterns or generalised approaches for particle simulations?", "text": "I'm working on a project (for college) in C++. The goal is to write a program that can more or less simulate a beam of particles flying trough the LHC synchrotron. Not wanting to rush into things, me and my team are thinking about how to implement this and I was wondering if there are general design patterns that are used to solve this kind of problem. The general approach we came up with so far is the following:   * there is a `World` that holds all objects   * you can add objects to this world such as `Particle`, `Dipole` and `Quadrupole`   * time is cut up into discrete steps, and at each point in time, for each `Particle` the magnetic and electric forces that each object in the `World` generates are calculated and summed up (luckily electro-magnetism is linear).   * each `Particle` moves accordingly (using a simple estimation approach to solve the differential movement equations)   * save the `Particle` positions   * repeat This seems a good approach but, for instance, it is hard to take into account symmetries that might be present (such as the magnetic field of each `Quadrupole`) and is this thus suboptimal. To take into account such symmetries as that of the `Quadrupole` field, it would be much easier to (also) make space discrete and somehow store form of the `Quadrupole` field somewhere. (Since 2532 or so `Quadrupole`s are stored this should lead to a massive gain of performance, not having to recalculate each `Quadrupole` field) So, are there any design patterns? Is the `World`-approach feasible or is it old-fashioned, bad programming? What about symmetry, how is that generally taken into acount?"}
{"_id": "26230", "title": "Should a Student be a Jack of All Trades?", "text": "I'm currently a student going to an 8 month internship this January after my first year of studies and I'm planning on expanding my programming skills maybe during weekends or weeknights. For around 2-3 years, I've been learning as much as I could just because I enjoyed programming so much when I started 2 years ago. Some things I know include:   * source control   * Java   * Python   * C   * C++   * Bash   * Linux The problem is that I only know the basics of the above, nothing in depth (except Java) and I'm wondering what would benefit me more in the future when I finish my studies. Should I learn something new? (I've been wanting to take a crack at SICP) Or should I expand on something that I know right now (I enjoy programming low level) and build something useful and big? FWIW, I'm going to use Java(JSP, servlets) and SQL for my internship."}
{"_id": "21950", "title": "Why do people confuse C-type strings and STL strings", "text": "The last week I saw at least three questions where people were confused about the differences between `char *` and `std::string` or made some related mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with this, I just don't get the exact reason for this. Maybe it was just a coincidence."}
{"_id": "3724", "title": "How to deal with Programming != Job Description problem?", "text": "I'm currently in a situation where many people on here likely find themselves: I love to program, I do a lot of fun side projects, but it is not my profession. I work as an Electrical Engineering project manager, but at one point I wrote a software application that solved a tricky signal processing problem early in my career. Now the company is creating a product which will include the same functionality I created a while ago. They have asked for my assistance in designing it into the system, and to potentially help program it. My question for the community is: how have you dealt with this type of situation in the past with regards to pay and responsibility? While I would love to program as a full-time job, I am not ready to make a switch into that role. I would be happy to work on this in addition to my job, but I feel this type of specialized work would merit some form of bonus or side contract. I imagine it could also lead to an ongoing support responsibility, but I figure this could be handed off to the normal development team once the design and initial implementation is complete. Would this be an unreasonable request in a typical Fortune500?"}
{"_id": "203529", "title": "Why is TDD not working here?", "text": "I want to write a class `A` that has a method `calculate(<params>)`. That method should calculate a value using database data. So I wrote a class `Test_A` for unit testing (TDD). The database access is done using another class which I have mocked with a class, let's call it `Accessor_Mockup`. Now, the TDD cycle requires me to add a test that fails and make the simplest changes to `A` so that the test passes. So I add data to `Accessor_Mockup` and call `A.calculate` with appropriate parameters. **But why should`A` use the accessor class at all?** It would be simpler (!) if the class just \"knows\" the values it could retrieve from the database. For every test I write I could introduce such a new value (or an if-branch or whatever). But wait ... TDD is more. There is the refactoring part. I could refactor class A using the DB accessor. But I could refactor it in any other way as well (e.g. introducing new classes that encapsulate the data). So, again: **How do I write tests that force A to use the database (and nothing else)?**"}
{"_id": "209313", "title": "What is the identification procedure that registers a mobile device on a subscriber account and installs purchased content?", "text": "We know there are several moving parts to a system like the apple store or google play. At the very least;   * The device has a unique hardware id or sim card   * The user has a login/pass   * The \"store\" site has some crypto In what order and format (cypher/plaintext) is this data exchanged between the device and store software before content is installed?"}
{"_id": "204143", "title": "API for Hotels and Flights", "text": "I want to implement Hotels and Airlines in my web application.People will come and will search for hotels and airline's tickets and will compare result. What are the ways to get these informations? Is there an API which give me all this for whole world? OR what are the other possible ways to get this data? Need to have some Crawler?"}
{"_id": "204144", "title": "Creating a new file format: Write code or documentation first?", "text": "When creating a new file format for an application, you can write the code or the documentation first. When writing the documentation first, you have a better idea of what you should implement. However, you might need to change a lot of the documentation you have written afterwards when writing the code, because you may discover certain things aren't very efficient to implement that way. So: **When creating a new file format, what should you write first: The code or the documentation?**"}
{"_id": "138213", "title": "What makes a language more suited to Artificial Intelligence?", "text": "I've always read that LISP is well suited for Artificial Intelligence, but I never found out why."}
{"_id": "151375", "title": "Are Intel compilers really better than the Microsoft ones?", "text": "Years ago, I was surprised when I discovered that Intel sells Visual Studio compatible compilers. I tried it in particular for C/C++ as well as fantastic diagnostic tools. But the code was simply not that computationally intensive to notice the difference. The only impression was: did Intel really do it for me just now, wow, amazing tools with nanoseconds resolution, unbelievable. But the trial ended and the team never seriously considered a purchase. **From your experience, if license cost does not matter, which vendor is the winner?** _It is not a broad or vague question or attemt to spark a holy war. This sort of question is about two very visible tools. Nobody likes when tools have any mysteries or surprises. And choices between best and best are always the pain. I also understandthe grass is always greener argument. I want to hear all \"what ifs\" stories._ _What if Intel just locally optimizes it for the chip stepping of the month, and not every hardware target will actually work as well as Microsoft compiled? What if AMD hardware is the target and everything will slow down for no reason? Or on the other hand, what if Intel's hardware has so many unnoticable opportunities, that Microsoft compiler writers are too slow to adopt and never implement it in the compiler? What if both are the same exactly, actually a single codebase just wrapped into two different boxes and licensed to both vendors by some third-party shop?_ _And so on. But someone knows some answers._"}
{"_id": "250094", "title": "how to trace a drupal form script", "text": "I am completely new to Drupal. A site I have taken over www.statehr.com has a form on the front page that a) obviously submits and processes data, and b) checks for duplicate username for example via an onkeypress event. Can anyone give me an idea of where to find the script that receives the post? The action is to / so .htaccess probably intercepts it, and I see two key hidden fields               form_id     form_build_id      which probably match up on the receiving end. The form is putting data in the users table but I want to do quite a few more things with it."}
{"_id": "250092", "title": "optimize human-readable database with index", "text": "i need to store a large amount of data - about 10 million entries of the format               unique hash (64 chars), value 1 (5 chars), value 2 (9 chars)      i will be reading and deleting (but not updating) this data in quick succession. for example, i might write 10 lines, then read 3 and delete 3 lines, before moving on to more writes and reads... its a single threaded desktop program so reads are only initiated after writes and deletes have been completed. i would like to avoid using a database so that the data can be human-readable from the file system and so that people who download and use my program can see it and inspect it for themselves. i expect my users to be running a linux os and my program is written in python. i have come up with three possible options for how to store this data: **option 1** put the data in a single file. since the hashes are unique i can arrange them in ascending order like an index so as to give `log2 N` read times. deleting and inserting will happen often and would slow the process down as `N` gets large. **option 2** use the unique hash as a file name and put the values inside this file. this would be my preferred option so long as there are no obvious performance drawbacks? i know some file systems slow down when a large number of files exist in a single directory. and i really can't make any assumptions about which file system the users of my program will be using. i need to choose a solution which is quick on all file systems. **option 3** use the unique hash to create a directory to store the values in. so for example, if a record has hash `abcd` then i would create dir and file `base_dir/a/b/c/d.txt`. does this get around the file system performance issue issue? or is this just as bad as option 2 depending on the type of file system the user is running? **question** so really i'm just looking for help to decide which option to pick. also if you have any other options that are superior to the ones i have listed here i would like to hear them. maybe some database software like mysqli that sores data in human-readable text? that would be ideal really, but i imagine that most databases would use binary for efficiency..."}
{"_id": "250093", "title": "What design pattern should I use for import, update, export", "text": "I need to create a simple payments validator. On the following class diagram, I tried to present the model of payments. As you can see, each payment type inherits from Payments class. ![Payments diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wd1Yw.png) Now I want to work with these payments but hide the details so the user can only access what he needs. And those things are are: `Load` payments from path and return list of payments `Save` payments to path `Update` input payments list and return updated list I am not sure if the way I am doing it is correct. My idea would be to use Facade design pattern, so `PaymentsModel` class which would contain following methods should be created:               public class PaymentsModel     {              IList<ToBePaidPaymentsDto>  GetToBePaidPayments(string path){              return new IList<ToBePaidPaymentsDto>();         }              IList<DonePaymentsDto>  GetDonePayments(string path){              return new IList<DonePaymentsDto>();         }              IList<MissedPaymentsDto>  GetMissedPayments(string path){              return new IList<MissedPaymentsDto>();         }              ...          }      Then create abstract class:               public abstract class Payments<T>      {         protected string Delimiter {get; private set;}         protected int NumberOfHeaders {get; private set;}              public abstract IList<T> LoadRecords(string path);              public abstract IList<T> UpdateRecords(IList<T> records);              public void SaveRecords(string path, DataGridViewRowCollection records)         {         }      } where T is Data Transfer Object depending on the type of payments, so: `ToBePaidPayments` class would use `ToBePaidPaymentsDto` `DonePayments` class would use `DonePaymentsDto` as presented below               public class PaymentsToBePaid : Payments<IcsToBePaidPaymentDto> {              public override IList<IcsToBePaidPaymentDto> LoadRecords(string path){                  return null;         }                   public override  IList<IcsToBePaidPaymentDto> UpdateRecords(IList<IcsToBePaidPaymentDto> records){                  return null;         }          }      and               public class PaymentsDone : Payments<IcsDonePaymentDto>     {         public override IList<IcsDonePaymentDto> LoadRecords(string path){                  return null;         }              public override IList<IcsDonePaymentDto> UpdateRecords(IList<IcsDonePaymentDto> records){                  return null;         }          }      Now, my final question is - am I doing this correctly? Am I applying correct design pattern and am I applying it correctly? Thank you for advice."}
{"_id": "138215", "title": "JavaScript Multi Threading", "text": "Well these days JavaScript is main player in all web development technologies , on client side for making user interface better, client side logic, on some web servers as server side logic also Add to that the fact of people (at least some of them ) started moving in web game development from flash to javascript and HTML5 Isn't it time for it to support multi threading ! are there browsers that allow JavaScript to be multi threaded or is it there in any standards , HTML5 or future versions ?!"}
{"_id": "79936", "title": "Is it impolite to file bug reports against abandoned open-source projects?", "text": "Is it considered impolite to file a bug report against an abandoned open- source project, or an abandoned branch of a still-continuing project? Is it perceived as making a request of the former author(s) of the project, which they're no longer willing to fulfil, or are bug reports merely seen as a description of the current version of the software, which may be fixed by a different person in the future?"}
{"_id": "196352", "title": "GPL/LGPL/MPL non-code content license", "text": "I want to use a dictionary (basically a text file, and no code) that is included with an open office spell checking plug-in. The plug-in is under the tri-license GPL/LGPL/MPL which I don't understand. is that legal? If it is illegal, what if I wrote a script that uses the said open office plug-in to generate the dictionary (assuming it's technically possible, the script will generate all possible letter permutations, passes it to the plug- in and saves the correct ones) ? I will be using the dictionary in a closed source commercial application. The dictionary is in a language that has very little resources online, and short of making my own dictionary, there aren't any alternatives. Clarification: The script idea I mentioned above, isn't a _weird_ technique, I would generate a document with all possible words and use open office with the plug-in installed to show spelling mistakes and remove them, isn't this the intended use of the plug-in (spell checking)?"}
{"_id": "99836", "title": "How do I find work experience as a minor?", "text": "I'm currently 16, and I consider myself a good developer. I've worked as a freelance and with an Israeli company (that serves other international companies) for the past year, and I've completely satisfied my clients with a consistent 10/10 rating to date. However, I've recently been trying to find work experience in real life at an influential software firm, but with limited (and by limited I mean no) success (I've only applied at the smaller firms, all of which were advertising available job positions). It is a requirement to take a week's work experience in my state, but I've already done that at a hospital (to try out my parent's career choice for me 0 a doctor), and want to have a shot at a software development firm. I've sent about 4 emails to different companies about it, but haven't received any replies yet (its been weeks). How do I go about finding work experience as a 16 year old?"}
{"_id": "99834", "title": "I am learning Java and thinking about how and when to learn Android?", "text": "I am learning Java and I was wondering about when it would be best for me to try to develop something for Android? I have two specific concerns. 1.How is the Android API different from the main Java API? Are they similar or radically different? 2.I have heard that you need to make multiple versions of a given application for different devices. Is this correct? I have no idea where to start when answering these questions."}
{"_id": "99835", "title": "How to get manager to get me favorable projects", "text": "For some odd ball reason, my manager is giving me grunt work which no one wants to do. Currently he is working on a Flex/AS project, which I have previous experience with and he does not, but is unwilling to put me on that project. He cites other project needs and keeps me on them.. is it time to get out or talk to him or his boss???"}
{"_id": "191472", "title": "Why have hardware-accelerated vector graphics not taken off?", "text": "I'm working on an app that involves real-time manipulation of vector paths at 60fps, and I'm very surprised by how little information there is on the subject. At first, I tried to implement my idea using CoreGraphics, but it didn't perform adequately for my purposes. I then discovered that there was a Khronos standard for hardware-accelerated vector graphics called OpenVG, and thankfully a kind soul had written an OpenGL ES semi-implementation called MonkVG. But despite the fact that OpenVG is a very practically useful API, it seems more or less abandoned by Khronos. According to Wikipedia, since 2011, the working group \"decided to... not make any regular meeting [sic] for further standardization\". The documentation, best I can find, consists of just a single reference card. And what's more, there are barely any examples of OpenVG anywhere on the internet. I can find hundreds of OpenGL tutorials in the blink of an eye, but OpenVG seems conspicuously missing. You'd think that hardware-accelerated vectors would be more important in today's world of rapidly-increasing resolutions, and it does seem that many companies are implementing their own ways of doing this. For example, Qt and Flash have schemes for hardware-accelerated vectors, and many of Adobe's tools have hardware acceleration as an option. But it seems like the wheel is getting reinvented when a standard already exists! Is there something I'm missing about OpenVG that makes it unsuitable for real- world use? Or is it just that the standard didn't catch on in time and now it's destined for obscurity? Do you think there's room for a standardized API for hardware-accelerated vector graphics in the future, or will it just be easier to use traditional raster-based techniques? Or are vectors simply on their way out, before they were ever in?"}
{"_id": "106015", "title": "Creating a P2P application using Java", "text": "I am preparing to start a 3rd year project using Java. The object is to create a P2P application where users can write text, draw and edit at the same time. The connection between them must be P2P. At this point I still don't know details about design etc. and I'm just doing some reading. I have made a simple network application before but that was clients/server. What should I look into in order to understand how to create a P2P network? Do I need to use JXTA or, for a small scale application, it's better to make my own protocol? PS. I posted the same question on Stack Overflow, but it was closed. Hope this is a better place for it. **Update** JXTA proved a bit too complicated for my needs. As a result I ended up using JGroups, which proved very simple to work as well as efficient enough for my needs."}
{"_id": "106013", "title": "Nightly builds for one-man projects", "text": "I'm working on a C++ wrapper for libpcap and I'd like to get more into version control as I'm not experienced with this (the only reason I used it was to put code on GitHub :)). Does it make sense to schedule nightly builds for a one-man project? What advantages are there in doing this?"}
{"_id": "106019", "title": "Product Owner and automated tests", "text": "One of the claims of BDD-style development is that it bridges the gap between Product Owner and developers: the Product Owner writes a story, which can be converted in an equivalent automated test \"frame\" that should eventually pass. What I would like to hear is how to keep bridging the gap after that: once there are automated tests in place, how do you help the Product Owner review them? Or is it enough for the Product Owner to know that the test passes, without looking at the test code itself? In short, how intimate should the Product Owner be with the actual tests implemented, and how do you keep him/her productively involved with the tests beyond the initial story writing? The reason behind this question is double. First, between the paper story and the implementation details, some assumptions may sneak in, and having the author of the story review the test can be invaluable. On the other hand, the implementation introduces quite a bit of noise, too, and requires the PO to become fairly technical (read code, run tests). Is the test implementation a \"developer's detail\", or is it fair to request the PO to become a bit of a developer in this area? Then, in most case, the PO can actually validate the test without the automated test, by simply using the application. However, some stories are \"headless\" and can only be verified via code, so unless the PO knows how to read and run tests, he/she will never be able to state that he verified the story complete."}
{"_id": "186303", "title": "Single-Tenant Databases - creating and updating new tenants via PHP", "text": "We've built a single-tenant webapp in PHP and as it stands each hosted 'site' has its own database. However we need to be able to run a script to create their database, assign a mysql user, and insert the default sql. Now, we've got the database and user stuff working fine, its just the importing of the SQL. From what I can tell, PHP quite simply sucks when it comes to handling sql files, so storing a 'template' sql file seems to be out of the question. My next thought was maybe storing a live database which is then cloned, giving the site its pre-populated database, however I cant see how this would work. At the same time, I'd rather not 'hard code' the table creations into PHP as if we perform any updates we want to be able to update the SQL direct from our backend control panel. Surely there has to be a logical way of handling creations and updates on a multi-tenant SaaS?"}
{"_id": "167366", "title": "How to update dependency during runtime in my .NET application?", "text": "I have a server-client application. Sometimes the server is updated which requires some DLLs in the client to be updated as well (The DLLs are the dependencies of the main executable). For now, we have to close the client, manually deploy the DLLs, and then start the client again. This is kind of an inconvenience because the client is an automated application, so normally it doesn't need any user intervention. Is it possible for this to be done automatically without restart or user intervention? Like, the client would download the latest DLL, and replace the current one?"}
{"_id": "167365", "title": "Is a code review which uses only code comments a good idea?", "text": "## Preconditions   * Team uses DVCS   * IDE supports comments parsing (like TODO and etc.)   * Tools like CodeCollaborator are expensive for budget   * Tools like gerrit are too complex for install or not usable ## Workflow   * Author publishes somewhere on central repo feature branch   * Reviewer fetch it and start review   * In case of some question/issue reviewer create comment with special label, like \"REV\". Such label MUST not be in production code -- only on review stage:              $somevar = 123;     // REV Why do echo this here?     echo $somevar;        * When reviewer finish post comments -- it just commits with stupid message \"comments\" and pushes back   * Author pulls feature branch back and answer comments in similar way or improve code and push it back   * When \"REV\" comments have gone we can think, that review has successfully finished.   * Author interactively rebases feature branch, squashes it to remove those \"comment\" commits and now is ready to merge feature to develop or make any action that usualy could be after successful internal review ## IDE support I know, that custom comment tags are possible in eclipse & netbeans. Sure it also should be in blablaStorm family. ![Example of custom filtered task-from-comments in eclipse](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Iq6wo.png) ## Questions   1. Do you think this methodology is viable?   2. Do you know something similar?   3. What can be improved in it?"}
{"_id": "143939", "title": "SDLC approach for small size projects", "text": "For small size projects, is it worth following the SDLC? is SCRUM/agile development a better approach? **Edit** : The project I have in mind is a small change but it will affect multiple layers/parts of the application, so there will be 2 or 3 developers involved each from a different team, then the code will be integrated at a later step. Thanks."}
{"_id": "222600", "title": "Does condition coverage subsume edge coverage?", "text": "I'm a little bit confused about code coverage criteria; especially condition and edge coverage. As stated in this book, edge coverage does not subsume condition coverage; BUT my lecture material defines condition coverage in the following way: _Edge Coverage Criterion:_ Select a test set `T` such that, by executing a program `P` for each `d` in `T`, each edge of `P`\u2018s control flow graph is traversed at least once _Condition Coverage Criterion:_ Select a test set `T` such that, by executing `P` for each element in `T`, each edge of `P`\u2018s control flow graph is traversed, and all possible values of the constituents of compound boolean conditions are exercised at least once. So, the first part of the definition of condition coverage is obviously the same as the whole definition of edge coverage. Hence, I thought condition coverage implies edge coverage ... Is the definition broken? What's correct?"}
{"_id": "222604", "title": "If every instance of a type is to be random, how should the Random generator object be stored?", "text": "It seems to me that this is often encountered in practice and I was wondering if there is a design pattern for the following: Suppose I have a class that represents a card:               public class Hand {         private static Random rng;         private Rank rank;         private Suit suit;         public Hand() {             if (prng == null)                 prng = new Random();             }             //more stuff         }     }      Every time I instantiate a Card, I want a random card. Doing it the above way wastes one comparison to null per instantiation. If I create a static field and allocate it in the deceleration:               private static Random rng = new Random();      a new Random object gets instantiated every time - also not very efficient. If I pass the Random object into the constructor, I violate \"tell, don't ask.\" Perhaps there is another suggestion, but so far, I think the best way is the null check."}
{"_id": "232323", "title": "Asterisks in Multi-line comments", "text": "Using Visual Studio 2012 with C#, when I write multi-line comments, VS automatically begins each line with an asterisk, like this:               /*      *      *      */      I was just curious if this was the case in programming languages other than C#, or if there was a specific reason for this template."}
{"_id": "146379", "title": "Is use of finally clause for doing work after return bad style/dangerous?", "text": "As part of writing an Iterator, I found myself writing the following piece of code (stripping error handling)               public T next() {       try {         return next;       } finally {         next = fetcher.fetchNext(next);       }     }      finding it slightly easier to read than               public T next() {       T tmp = next;       next = fetcher.fetchNext(next);       return tmp;     }      I know it's a simple example, where the difference in readability may not be that overwhelming, but I'm interested in the general opinion as to whether it is bad to use try-finally in cases like this where there are no exceptions involved, or if it is actually preferred when it simplifies the code. If it's bad: why? Style, performance, pitfalls, ...? **Conclusion** Thanks you all your answers! I guess the conclusion (at least for me) is that the first example might have been more readable if it was a common pattern, but that it isn't. Therefore the confusion introduced by using a construct outside of it's purpose, along with possibly obfuscated exception flow, will outweigh any simplifications."}
{"_id": "185964", "title": "Portability: Python's C/C++ libraries/extensions vs JRuby's Java libraries", "text": "I've had some discussion with colleagues who chose to go with JRuby along the following line of argumentation: JRuby can make use of anything that is available in Java, ergo such programs are more portable bc Java is more portable. Arguably, the breadth, capability and speed of C/C++ libraries that have been wrapped for Python is still better than what is available in Java. But since this is C/C++, all the problems with portability reappear this way - or so their argument went. Have you ever had such a problem? that is, problem with portability of Python's extensions? Personally, I have never found this to be a problem, but YMMV, while theoretically and potentially this is a problem. I'm curious of your experiences."}
{"_id": "185966", "title": "What problem domain is LINQ made for?", "text": "Each time I see a question posted on Stack Overflow on C#, I see at least one or two answers posted that solve a problem with LINQ. Usually people with very high reputation seem to use LINQ like pros. So my question is, **what problem domain is LINQ supposed to be used for?** Also on side notes: Are there any purposes in which it should be avoided? Does the size of dataset affect the performance of LINQ queries?"}
{"_id": "36415", "title": "Are developers a stakeholder in a system", "text": "Are developers of a product considered stakeholders?"}
{"_id": "233132", "title": "Optimal movie schedule", "text": "Let's say Mr. A goes to cinema and he gets a movie schedule. There are N movies on the program today (1 < N < 50) and for every movie the time of the start and the time of the end are given in minutes. Mr. A wants to see as much minutes of movies as possible. But, there is one rule in the cinema: If a movie starts, you can't watch it. In other word if Mr. A watches Movie 1 and in meantime Movie 2 starts, Mr. A can't watch it. Find the maximum number of minutes that Mr. A can spend watching movies. * * * At first I sorted the movies according to their starting time. Then I made a NxN matrix and fill it with false values. Now if Movie X and Movie Y intersect, i.e play in the same time even just for a minute, then Matrix[X][Y] and Matrix [Y][X] get true value. Then I check the case when every movie is in the optimal solution. I put them into vector. Now using recursion I check every possible combination. If Movie X doens't have an intersection with every movie of the vector, I put into the vector, since there will be no intersection and then I move on to the next movie. And so on. This algorithm works, but I think that it's too much time-consuming and as I want to say it's \"modified brute-force\". Is there any better way to reach the optimal solution. NOTE: We are interested only about the maximum numbers of minutes, not in the maximum number of movies. At the end the program should print the maximum number of minutes, not a list of the movies Mr. A should watch."}
{"_id": "220845", "title": "Iterating calculations - children of children of children", "text": "I would like to move some business logic out of my application and into a stored procedure or function. I am willing to change rdbms as the system is being updated/re-written. Right now it's Access 97 (see why it's being updated?) but a while ago when I last looked, SQLserver couldn't handle it either. At least I couldn't see how. The basic problem is this- An assembly gets used, and the use is logged. I need to apply the use to the sub-assemblies, and their sub-assemblies, and so on until I end up at the elemental parts of the assembly. Maybe four or five levels deep. Knowing how many parts were made per hour I calculate how many \"uses\" each part received. The tricky bit is that the sub-assemblies can be changed out during the usage. For example, a machine runs for 40 hours, and the tooling sub-assembly is changed four times. Sometimes the clamp bolt on the tooling is changed but the tooling sub-assembly is not. I have the on and off timestamps when things - sub-assemblies and/or parts - were installed and removed, and what they were installed on in a history table. Currently I have code that calculates how many parts were made by the machine, and then looks for any sub-assemblies installed on the machine and calculates how many parts each installed assembly made, then looks at things installed on that until I run out of children. Surely some rdbms has come along since Access 97 that can do such a thing? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "112294", "title": "Can anyone recommend a toolchain-agnostic way of declaring and documenting inter-package build dependencies?", "text": "I currently have a project at my hand that I'll leave soon (PhD work) and should be left in an understandable form since it is likely to be taken up, though it is not known yet by whom and when. Therefore, I'd like to leave at least some documentation how it is built. The project consists of 7 packages, each of which is an independent source code package whose compilation only depends on libraries and headers from other packages. The whole build process revolves around open source standards, i.e. each project is built by autoconf and automake, is Debian-ized and the interpackage dependencies are declared in the Debian packages and checked in configure scripts. However, this feels like a quite specific way of specifying a quite general problem. It is likely that the next maintainer would want to build the software with a Windows GUI thingy that doesn't know anything about autoconf or Debian. I'd like to leave more rigid documentation in this case than a bunch of comments in the assorted INSTALL files and the Build-Depends/Depends declarations in the Debian files. Is there any toolchain-agnostic established language or standard to document packaging and build order? Bonus points if the actual build system specifications (like Debian Build-Depends) could be generated from that."}
{"_id": "33625", "title": "Anti-depressant and programming: does it reduce your thinking and focusing abilities?", "text": "I wanted to ask your opinion on anti-depressants, since I took them daily for 3 years now, but I can't be sure if I'm less perfomant with them or without, since I never withdrawed. I'm still at school at the age of 25, still having some motivation problems (for example I can't get used to do something at school if I don't think it will teach me something), but I'm quite motivated to work in the video-game field, since I have some personnal projects in mind. I know C++ programming etc, I'm still learning techniques, but do you think I should try more to do my project instead of just following the work I'm assigned to ? Have you had experience with depression or anti-depressants ? How did it affect your work ? Do you think that being depressed or half-depressed can improve creativity ? Do you feel it has affected the way you end up writing your algorithms ? EDITED"}
{"_id": "245228", "title": "return nhibernate entity from web api?", "text": "Is it a good idea to return nHibernate Entity from WebApi? For simple entity I tried to use this but what about complex entities. How will lazy loading be handled in that case?"}
{"_id": "3519", "title": "How do you learn a new programming language?", "text": "I am C++ developer with some good experience on it. When I try to learn a new language ( have tried Java, C#, python, perl till now) I usually pickup a book and try to read it. But the problem with this is that these books typically start with some very basic programming concepts such as loops, operators etc and it starts to get very boring soon. Also, I feel I would get only theoeritcal knowledge without any practical knowledge on writing the code. So my question is how do you tacke these situations? do you just skip the chapters if its explaining something basic? also, do you have some standard set of programs that you will try to write in every new programming language you try to learn?"}
{"_id": "119155", "title": "What is an effective way to familiarize yourself with a new application in a new language?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I pick up a new language quickly, given I know several others? I started a new job working on an application I'm vaguely familar with, and it's in PERL! I come from a PHP and Java background, so while I understand the basics, there are lot of nuances in PERL that make it troublesome. _updated_ < Im supposed to be a UI developer, but the smallness of the office requires me to learn and do a lot more than just javascript. So that was slightly unexpected in some aspects and I'm just thinking about what approach to take with this > / _updated_ So far I've been sifting through the code to understand what each part does, printed out copies of code and try to lookup APIs I'm not familiar with, and so I dunno how effective this process is -- I feel like it's gonna take some time -- and I dont want my new employers to feel like I'm not being productive. Anyone have some ideas or approaches for this kind of situation? I read some of the questions about learning new languages, but I'm curious to see if anyone's had experience with this with PERL."}
{"_id": "78175", "title": "How do I pick up a new language quickly, given I know several others?", "text": "One type of question that keeps coming up on Programmers.SE is how to learn a specific language, given you know several others (usually through a lot of experience or education). In some cases, however, one might need to get up to speed quickly for a job, or for personal development, or even to check out a hot new platform. In your experience, what general strategies have you used to pick up a new language quickly? Are there specific aspects of a language you try to focus on when starting cold? What _types_ of resources do you find helpful in this process?"}
{"_id": "176153", "title": "How would you react if someone told you your code is a mess?", "text": "I am a good programmer, or so I thought before. I always love to program. And I want to learn many things about programming to make me a better programmer. I studied programming for 1 year and now I am working as a programmer for almost 2 years. So in short, I have almost 3 years programming experience. Our team is composed of 5 programmers, and 4 of us are new, 1 has more than 3 year experience. We've been working for a program for almost a year now and nobody ever review my code and I was given a page to work with. We never had a code review and we are all new so we don't know what is a clean code looks like. I think programmers learn by themselves? We deployed our program to the program without thorough testing. Now it is tight and we need an approval and code review first before we make changes with the code. For the first time, someone reviews my code and he says it is a mess. I feel so sad and hurt. I really love programming and making them say something like that really hurts me. I really want to improve myself. But it seems like I'm not a genius programmer like in the movies. Can you give me advise on how to be better? Have you ever experience something criticizing your code and you feel really hurt? What do you do on those events."}
{"_id": "133048", "title": "C programming in Windows 7", "text": "Which is the best book and what are the best tools for C programming in Windows 7? Would using C in any way hinder me when it comes to using the Windows API as opposed to using C++ or C#? I would like to use C, because it seems to me that object-oriented programming is bad for performance and the abstraction seems only counter-productive if the right people are doing the programming. I will mostly do GUIs and background services that do a lot of networking, possibly at OSI Layer 2, and public key + cascaded symmetric key cryptograpy. Also, the core of the programs (excluding any that deal directly with OSI Layer 2) should be portable to Android."}
{"_id": "251329", "title": "How a VB6 programmer can update his skills and get qualified for the current job opportunities in the USA?", "text": "I'm going to the U.S.A. and was wondering how I can get a job there. I've been a developer for 3 years. Well, I've been working on big projects like the core banking system of one of the biggest banks of the country and I'm quiet good at programming and problem solving skills in general. But unfortunately these projects were developed using VB6 and I haven't been able to update my skills. I have a background in C# but I'm not proficient in it. So VB6 is the only language that I'm good enough to get a job. And I'm pretty sure that's not gonna help me to find a job in the US. So how Should I update my skills to be qualified for a windows application developer? Should I go to college or something like that? I'm in a bad situation and I have no idea what to do. Any help from you would mean a lot to me and is hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance. Edit: Basile, Graham, spaceknarf and tgkprog thanks for sharing your knowledge with me."}
{"_id": "210341", "title": "Releasing open-source software including Apache2 and LGPL libraries?", "text": "I am writing software (in Java) using three libraries:   * Library A, licensed under **MIT license**   * Library B, licensed under **Apache License, Version 2.0**   * Library C, licensed under **LGPLv3** I would like to make my software publicly available under the MIT license. I'm going to include all libraries in **source** and binary form (jar), including the their **original licenses** and **copyright notices**. I put a **LICENSE** file at the root of my project with the MIT license. I believe this should cover all requirements of MIT and LGPLv3, but I'm wondering about the NOTICE file mentioned in the Apache license. > If the Work includes a \"NOTICE\" text file as part of its distribution, then > any Derivative Works that You distribute must include a readable copy of the > attribution notices contained within such NOTICE file, excluding those > notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works, in at least > one of the following places: within a NOTICE text file distributed as part > of the Derivative Works; within the Source form or documentation, if > provided along with the Derivative Works; or, within a display generated by > the Derivative Works, if and wherever such third-party notices normally > appear. The contents of the NOTICE file are for informational purposes only > and do not modify the License. You may add Your own attribution notices > within Derivative Works that You distribute, alongside or as an addendum to > the NOTICE text from the Work, provided that such additional attribution > notices cannot be construed as modifying the License. http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html Does this simply mean that I have to include the NOTICE files that come with the library, or do I have to write my own NOTICE file mentioning the libraries and their copyrights? Second, are there any other requirements that I may have missed? Finally, let's suppose I'm also using Library D, licensed under **GPLv3**. How does that change the situation? I understand that in this case I would have to release my project under GPLv3. Any other implications? Please understand that I'm a student and I cannot afford a lawyer. :)"}
{"_id": "251326", "title": "Programmatically manipulate expressions accounting for operator precedance", "text": "There are times when an expression becomes confusing because of implicit operator precedence. Take this Python expression:               a, b, c, d = range(4)     e = a + b // c << d >> a ** b or a + c * d // c % c      With other languages it can become even more convoluted. Suffice to say, an experienced developer may do a double-take at code like this and add some parenthesis to clarify whats going on. While this is something you can do manually, It risks some human error, I'm curious if there are existing solutions which make the operator precedence explicit by adding parenthesis (Am not so fussed about the exact language, anything with in-fix operators is fine). Though not my aim, one could (for example), take some obfuscated code from http://www.ioccc.org and get a little closer to having something understandable. * * * _Note, for the purpose of this question, I'm not worried about non- communicative behavior of floating point operations in some languages._"}
{"_id": "133040", "title": "Create Primary Interop Assemblies or generate them?", "text": "I've never seen this question answered definitively: If you are maintaining a COM DLL that can be used by a .NET program, is it best to:   1. Import the COM DLL into each project, which generates an Interop assembly for each project? or   2. Generate the Primary Interop Assembly with TLBIMP every time the COM DLL is compiled? or   3. Write the Primary Interop Assembly in C# and compile that every time the COM DLL is compiled? I would like to do either number 2 or number 3. Number 2 sounds compelling, but I cannot see how you set the _AssemblyTitleAttribute_ (and other such attributes); I would assume you use custom attributes in the IDL which TLBIMP would pick up."}
{"_id": "133047", "title": "Unit-testing of inherently random/non-deterministic algorithms", "text": "My current project, succinctly, involves the creation of \"constrainably-random events\". I'm basically generating a schedule of inspections. Some of them are based on strict schedule constraints; you perform an inspection once a week on Friday at 10:00AM. Other inspections are \"random\"; there are basic configurable requirements such as \"an inspection must occur 3 times per week\", \"the inspection must happen between the hours of 9AM-9PM\", and \"there should not be two inspections within the same 8-hour period\", but within whatever constraints were configured for a particular set of inspections, the resulting dates and times should not be predictable. Unit tests and TDD, IMO, have great value in this system as they can be used to incrementally build it while its full set of requirements is still incomplete, and make sure I'm not \"over-engineering\" it to do things I don't currently know I need. The strict schedules were a piece-o'-cake to TDD. However, I'm finding it difficult to really define what I'm testing when I write tests for the random portion of the system. I can assert that all times produced by the scheduler must fall within the constraints, but I could implement an algorithm that passes all such tests without the actual times being very \"random\". In fact that's exactly what's happened; I found an issue where the times, though not predictable exactly, fell into a small subset of the allowable date/time ranges. The algorithm still passed all assertions I felt I could reasonably make, and I could not design an automated test that would fail in that situation, but pass when given \"more random\" results. I had to demonstrate the problem was solved by restructuring some existing tests to repeat themselves a number of times, and visually check that the times generated fell within the full allowable range. Does anyone have any tips for designing tests that should expect non- deterministic behavior? **EDIT:** Thanks to all for the suggestions. The main opinion seems to be that **I need a deterministic test in order to get deterministic, repeatable, assertable results**. Makes sense. I created a set of \"sandbox\" tests that contain candidate algorithms for the constraining process (the process by which a byte array that could be any long becomes a long between a min and max). I then run that code through a FOR loop that gives the algorithm several known byte arrays (values from 1 to 10,000,000 just to start) and has the algorithm constrain each to a value between 1009 and 7919 (I'm using prime numbers to ensure an algorithm wouldn't pass by some serendipitous GCF between the input and output ranges). The resulting constrained values are counted and a histogram produced. To \"pass\", all inputs must be reflected within the histogram (sanity to ensure we didn't \"lose\" any), and the difference between any two buckets in the histogram cannot be greater than 2 (it should really be <= 1, but stay tuned). The winning algorithm, if any, can be cut and pasted directly into production code and a permanent test put in place for regression. Here's the code:                   private void TestConstraintAlgorithm(int min, int max, Func<byte[], long, long, long> constraintAlgorithm)         {             var histogram = new int[max-min+1];             for (int i = 1; i <= 10000000; i++)             {                 //This is the stand-in for the PRNG; produces a known byte array                 var buffer = BitConverter.GetBytes((long)i);                      long result = constraintAlgorithm(buffer, min, max);                      histogram[result - min]++;             }                  var minCount = -1;             var maxCount = -1;             var total = 0;             for (int i = 0; i < histogram.Length; i++)             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"{0}: {1}\".FormatWith(i + min, histogram[i]));                 if (minCount == -1 || minCount > histogram[i])                     minCount = histogram[i];                 if (maxCount == -1 || maxCount < histogram[i])                     maxCount = histogram[i];                 total += histogram[i];             }                  Assert.AreEqual(10000000, total);             Assert.LessOrEqual(maxCount - minCount, 2);         }              [Test, Explicit(\"sandbox, does not test production code\")]         public void TestRandomizerDistributionMSBRejection()         {             TestConstraintAlgorithm(1009, 7919, ConstrainByMSBRejection);         }              private long ConstrainByMSBRejection(byte[] buffer, long min, long max)         {             //Strip the sign bit (if any) off the most significant byte, before converting to long             buffer[buffer.Length-1] &= 0x7f;             var orig = BitConverter.ToInt64(buffer, 0);             var result = orig;             //Apply a bitmask to the value, removing the MSB on each loop until it falls in the range.             var mask = long.MaxValue;             while (result > max - min)             {                 mask >>= 1;                 result &= mask;             }             result += min;                  return result;         }              [Test, Explicit(\"sandbox, does not test production code\")]         public void TestRandomizerDistributionLSBRejection()         {             TestConstraintAlgorithm(1009, 7919, ConstrainByLSBRejection);         }              private long ConstrainByLSBRejection(byte[] buffer, long min, long max)         {             //Strip the sign bit (if any) off the most significant byte, before converting to long             buffer[buffer.Length - 1] &= 0x7f;             var orig = BitConverter.ToInt64(buffer, 0);             var result = orig;                  //Bit-shift the number 1 place to the right until it falls within the range             while (result > max - min)                 result >>= 1;                  result += min;             return result;         }              [Test, Explicit(\"sandbox, does not test production code\")]         public void TestRandomizerDistributionModulus()         {             TestConstraintAlgorithm(1009, 7919, ConstrainByModulo);         }              private long ConstrainByModulo(byte[] buffer, long min, long max)         {             buffer[buffer.Length - 1] &= 0x7f;             var result = BitConverter.ToInt64(buffer, 0);                  //Modulo divide the value by the range to produce a value that falls within it.             result %= max - min + 1;                  result += min;             return result;         }      ... and here's the results: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RBnT5.png) LSB rejection (bit-shifting the number until it falls within the range) was TERRIBLE, for a very easy-to-explain reason; when you divide any number by 2 until it's less than a maximum, you quit as soon as it is, and for any non- trivial range, that will bias the results towards the upper third (as was seen in the detailed results of the histogram). This was exactly the behavior I saw from the finished dates; all of the times were in the afternoon, on very specific days. MSB rejection (removing the most significant bit off the number one at a time until it's within the range) is better, but again, because you're chopping off very large numbers with each bit, it's not evenly distributed; you're unlikely to get numbers in the upper and lower ends, so you get a bias toward the middle third. That might benefit someone looking to \"normalize\" random data into a bell-ish curve, but a sum of two or more smaller random numbers (similar to throwing dice) would give you a more natural curve. For my purposes, it fails. The only one that passed this test was to constrain by modulo division, which also turned out to be the fastest of the three. Modulo will, by its definition, produce as even a distribution as possible given the available inputs."}
{"_id": "133046", "title": "Interesting questions about Behaviour-Driven Development", "text": "For my master thesis at Software Engineering, I want to investigate in the new development technique BDD (Behaviour-Driven Development). In my opinion this technique could really improve on customer satisfaction, code coverage and bugs because of the force of executable specifications and the customer- understandable language. For my thesis however, I struggle with the way I am going to validate that BDD could work better in certain circumstances. At the company I work during my study, work is still mostly done in a traditional, iterative way, where it sometimes is hard to change requirements after the requirements elicitation stage. My question is, are there any people who already did projects with BDD, what are their experiences and have you ever felt something about BDD that you would want to investigate in, commencing on the above paragraphs? This could help me a lot with constructing my research question. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "202423", "title": "how to get accepted at a big company like google", "text": "I'm 18 Years old; I started teaching myself programming when I was twelve. I've developed many projects in PHP, Javascript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails. I know a very little about C, C++, Objective C and extending PHP with extensions created in C Programming Language. Now I'm working as a freelance Web Developer with a very low salary :(, My Dream is to get a good career with very high salary so I thought of Big Companies like Google Or Microsoft. My Question is How to get Accepted on those big Companies ? What Pre-requests they want And do you need to finish collage education ?"}
{"_id": "85823", "title": "Spreadsheet or writing an application?", "text": "When would you keep simple to medium-complex personal calculations in a spread sheet (Excel etc) and when would you write a small program or script for it? For example when you want to calculate what size of mortgage you can afford to buy a house. I could create a spreadsheet and have a nice tabular representation. On the other hand, if i would write a small script in a nice language (in my case Haskell), i'd have the security of a nice type system, preventing typos etc. What are the pro/cons in your opinion?"}
{"_id": "207902", "title": "Different ways to generate the latest int type primary foreign key in code", "text": "I am new to sql. I have added 2 new tables in database. The primary key of first is a foreign key in the other. The type of the keys is integer. Now I want to generate the keys in the code and assign it to new data so that the association between different rows of the tables is right. How do I ensure uniqueness of keys and also get the latest key from the db so that there are no errors while saving. If I had used guids then I would have assigned a new guid to the primary key and then assigned the same to the foreign key in the other table. Also there are multiple clients and one server which is saving the data. The data to be inserted in both the tables is decided in the c# code and is not derived from the row inserted in the primary table. Even if get the id in db then also the relation between the rows should be stored in some form from the code because after that it is lost."}
{"_id": "112747", "title": "Are these signs of a bad developer?", "text": "I used to blame changing specifications from clients for code rot, not realising that business models do change and it's my job to develop in an adaptable way. I now see that as a sign of a bad developer (I've changed!). But now I see other 'whinges' in myself. A few times recently I've found myself saying 'it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole', and also I find myself blaming client indecision for a project not progressing. Are there signs I should look out for where I should change my attitude? Is the client always right, or am I sometimes justified in getting frustrated?"}
{"_id": "225558", "title": "\"A well designed system is a testable system\"", "text": "I'm thinking about something I've read in a book: \"A well designed system is a testable system\" and I'm wondering why it is so. Certainly, a system that is much tested is probably well designed. Build from the ground up on test-first principles and assuming basic competence, it is hard to imagine a very bad design. But the statement reverses the idea: that a well designed system is testable. Why? Is it because good tests are small and simple by default, so making good tests on a bad design (where bad design usually means large and complex classes) is more difficult? Or that it is hard to, say, test a single aspect of a class in isolation when the class in question is a god class?"}
{"_id": "138960", "title": "How to map TFS to two local directories", "text": "I am working with a web application, using TFS. Every time I build the site it takes an unproductivly long time to start up again. I would like to have a second mapping of the site on my c drive, where I would only get latest and build once a day, so this version would always be fast. This would be like a \"readonly\" directory as I wouldn't personally make any edits to it. Please let me know if this possible, or if you have any alternative."}
{"_id": "225554", "title": "Verify 0 or 2+ sub sections in a section", "text": "There is a rule in writing: When you break a section into subsections, typically it should have more than one subsection. This goes back to the old high school composition rules: if you have an A. section you also need a B. section. To check a chapter of a book I'm writing in LaTeX I do this:               $ egrep -h '^\\\\(chapter|(sub)*section)\\**{' CHAPTERFILE.tex | sed -e 's/\\*{/{/g'                    \\chapter{My Chapter}     \\section{Topic}     \\subsection{Subtopic}     \\subsection{Another Subtopic}     \\subsection{Subtopic the Third}     \\section{More}     \\subsection{More more}     \\subsection{Less is more}     \\section{Odyssey}     \\subsection{Marge and Homer}     \\subsubsection{Bart}     \\subsubsection{Lisa}     \\subsubsection{Maggie}     \\subsection{Example}     \\section{Lore}     \\section{Data}      What is an efficient algorithm to verify the rule has been obeyed? This rule goes for sub sections in a section, subsub sections in a subsection, and so on. (Though in my case there are no subsubsub sections) Thanks to Bart's advice, here is the code I created. It is hacky in places but it is simple and found bugs in my LaTeX files:               #!/usr/bin/env python          import sys     import fileinput          TOKENS = [         ['\\chapter', 0],         ['\\section', 1],         ['\\subsection', 2],         ['\\subsubsection', 3],         ['\\subsubsubsection', 4],         ]          def getlevel(line):       \"\"\"Report the line's level (number of subsections).\"\"\"       for token, level in TOKENS:         if line.startswith(token):           return level       raise Exception()          def store(lst, level, value):       \"\"\"Store value in the level'th position.\"\"\"       while len(lst) < level:         lst.append('EMPTY')       return lst[:level] + [value]          def segments():       \"\"\"Read the input text, yield lists of segments.\"\"\"       path = []       last_level = 0       for line in fileinput.input():         value = line[line.index('{') + 1 : line.index('}')]         path = store(path, getlevel(line), value)         yield path          def get_tree(segs):       \"\"\"Build a tree out of segment lists returned by generator segs\"\"\"       tree = {}       for s in segs():         t = tree         for i in s:           t = t.setdefault(i, {})       return tree          def audit(t):       \"\"\"Audit: Leafs are ok, nodes are ok if they have >1 children.\"\"\"       error = False       for k, v in t.items():         if audit(v):           error = True         if len(v) == 1:           print 'ERROR: part with only one subpart: %s' % (k, )           error = True       return error          def main():       tree = get_tree(segments)       if audit(tree):         return 1          if __name__ == '__main__':       sys.exit(main())"}
{"_id": "137290", "title": "What are the drawbacks of elastic tabstops?", "text": "Look here: a typical holy war on tabs vs spaces. Now look here: elastic tabstops. All problems solved, and a bunch of very useful new behaviours added. ![elastic tabstops](http://i.stack.imgur.com/60RvQ.gif) Are elastic tabstops even mentioned in that tabs vs spaces discussion? Why not? Are there drawbacks to the elastic tabstop idea so serious that nobody has ever implemented them in a popular editor? **EDIT** : I apologise for putting too much emphasis on \"why aren't they mentioned\". That wasn't really what I intended; _that_ question is possibly even off topic. What I really mean is, what are the biggest drawbacks of this that prevent wider adoption of an obviously beneficial idea? (in an ideal world where everything supports it already) (Turns out there's already a request on the Microsoft Connect for a Visual Studio implementation of elastic tabstops, and a request in Eclipse too. Plus there's a question asking about other editors that implement elastic tabstops)"}
{"_id": "107769", "title": "Proper OO design for State and Command", "text": "I'm working (a bit) on a (turn-based strategy) game. There are two classes relevant for the question:   * `State`: This is an immutable class, which exposes all its fields (either via getters or another way, as I felt appropriate). The state is a bit complicated, so I decomposed it into several classes in the package `...state`   * `Command`: This is an abstract immutable class with a couple of subclasses like `MoveCommand(Field from, Field to)`, `PassCommand()`, `BidCommand(int amount)`, etc. in the package `...command`. All of fields have public getters. I need one of the two methods   * `State Command.applyTo(State)` or   * `State State.apply(Command)` returning the new state (obtained by applying the command to the state). Using the first method looks better at the first sight, since it dispatches to different implementations of `applyTo` in the subclasses of `Command`. Unfortunately, it forces me to fiddle with the many details of `State` in the class `Command`. In order to make it work, I need something like `MutableState`, or `State.Builder`, or a many-args constructor of `State`, or whatever. Using the second method looks ugly, as it'd force me to use `instanceof` (or some other ugly way to simulate the virtual method dispatch). OTOH, it would concentrate the working with `State` in the class itself. So I think the first method is the way to go. With `Command` and `State` each in its own package it means that `MutableState` (or whatever gets used for building the resulting `State`) need to be a public class since there are no `friend`s in Java. No real problem, but not nice, is it? So what is the proper design?"}
{"_id": "71450", "title": "Why atoms/symbols?", "text": "Why do programming languages like Ruby use symbols? I understand that String manipulation is much slower than using a lookup table as well as the idea that Strings are reallocated in memory no matter if it is the same or different as one used previously, but can't interpreters compensate for this? It would seem like an interpreter still has to parse the word that you typed in order to match it to a symbol, so why not just do the same with a string object? For instance, why doesn't the compiler take:               myHash[\"myKey\"] = ...      and treat it as               myHash[:myKey] = ...      behind the scenes, anyways? Even if the key is dynamic - it's an interpreter, so should it not know what the key is going to be before it finds the value and still treat the string key as a symbol? eg.:               concatMe = \"Key\"     myHash[\"my\" + concatMe] = ...      How come an interpreter can't still treat this as               myHash[:myKey]      If it knows what               \"my\" + concatMe      is _before_ it finds the value by key?"}
{"_id": "71451", "title": "How similar is Android/smartphone development to Android/other-platform development?", "text": "The more I program on the Android for smartphones platform the more I like. The way they made task management and inter-task messaging clean and easy is a treat (e.g. - AsyncTask, broadcasters, receivers, etc.). How similar is Android development on other platforms, for example tablets or later Android based TVs, to Android for smartphones? How compatible is code developed to run on the Android (phone) emulator to Android code running on other hardware platforms. If I write a lot of cool code for an Android smart phone, how much of it will I have to tweak/reinvent to get it to run on other Android platforms? That leads to a huge question concerining Android (phone) UI widget portability. Does code that uses those objects run unmodified on other Android platforms? If not, how much effort is it to make Android code cross-hardware platform portable? If the code is fairly portable, I think programming for the Android O/S on a table or regular Android PC if they gain popularity would be an excellent experience. If any of you have done Android programming on smart phones and on other hardware platforms, I'd love to hear what your experiences have been."}
{"_id": "233057", "title": "What are the use cases for these relationship types?", "text": "# Use Case What are the use cases for creating a **one-to-one** relationship where the parent points to the child compared to a child pointing to the parent? If there is no difference, is one preferred over the other? ## Example               +---------+     +-------+       +--------+     +----------+     + Parent  +     + Child +       + Parent +     + Child    +     +---------+     +-------+  vs.  +--------+     +----------+     + idChild + --> + id    +       + id     + <-- + idParent +     +---------+     +-------+       +--------+     +----------+      I suspect that you'd choose between these relationships depending on which entity is used first in the application. i.e. If the parent object always appears before the child object, then the relationship should be mapped from the parent to child."}
{"_id": "233056", "title": "Logging page/session ID in an inner module", "text": "We have a C# ORM module that generates queries. It logs generated queries and other information into the error/trace file. It is used by our web application. Most of our queries are generated dynamically (based on dynamic business rules and user interactions) which we have little control over. Obviously the ORM module is completely decoupled from the web application, and therefore completely unaware of web sessions, page hits etc. The downside is that the log entries it generates cannot be traced back to the original page hit. When we notice a non-performant query in the log, we cannot easily determine which page hit generates that query. How can I keep the ORM module decoupled from the web application, but still allow it to log enough relevant information for me to correlate each log entry to a session/page hit? (I know we can pass the logger object around, and the logger object can preserve that session information. However, some of these function calls are nested 10 levels deep, so passing the logger around is cumbersome)."}
{"_id": "233053", "title": "Why were default and static methods added to interfaces in Java 8 when we already had abstract classes?", "text": "In Java 8, interfaces can contain implemented methods, static methods, and the so-called \"default\" methods (which the implementing classes do not need to override). In my (probably naive) view, there was no need to violate interfaces like this. Interfaces have always been a contract you must fulfill, and this is a very simple and pure concept. Now it is a mix of several things. In my opinion:   1. static methods do not belong to interfaces. They belong to utility classes.   2. \"default\" methods shouldn't have been allowed in interfaces at all. You could always use an abstract class for this purpose.  In short: Before Java 8:   * You could use abstract and regular classes to provide static and default methods. The role of interfaces is clear.   * All the methods in an interface should be overriden by implementing classes.   * You can't add a new method in an interface without modifying all the implementations, but this is actually a good thing. After Java 8:   * There's virtually no difference between an interface and an abstract class (other than multiple inheritance). In fact you can emulate a regular class with an interface.   * When programming the implementations, programmers may forget to override the default methods.   * There is a compilation error if a class tries to implement two or more interfaces having a default method with the same signature.   * By adding a default method to an interface, every implementing class automatically inherits this behavior. Some of these classes might have not been designed with that new functionality in mind, and this can cause problems. For instance, if someone adds a new default method `default void foo()` to an interface `Ix`, then the class `Cx` implementing `Ix` and having a private `foo` method with the same signature does not compile. What are the main reasons for such major changes, and what new benefits (if any) do they add?"}
{"_id": "234589", "title": "Two closely related projects -- Two repositories or one?", "text": "### Background I am coding two closely related Java projects. The first project is Single Facility Simulator, which simulates a very simple supply chain with a single facility. The second project is Supply Chain Simulator, which simulates more complex supply chain networks, i.e. multiple facilities arranged as a graph with directed edges between some pairs of facilities. The first project is a \"toy\" project in the sense that I am using it to test and refine the high-level design of the project. The second project is the \"real\" project that I am interested in for work purposes. The high-level design of the two projects is the same, although there are some differences, for example a `Demand` object in the \"toy\" project only needs to generate a demand value per time period, whereas a `Demand` object in the \"real\" project needs to generate a demand value per facility per time period. ### Question Currently, the \"toy\" project lives in its own Git repository. As I begin implementing the \"real\" project, should I fork the \"toy\" project, or should I implement the \"real\" project as different packages in the same space as the \"toy\" project?"}
{"_id": "229580", "title": "Mail Server Caching", "text": "I'm currently working on a web mail client. When a user logs in, I'm fetching all the mails from the INBOX from the beginning of time. As expected this is pretty darn slow. I'm planning to implement some sort of a filtering/caching technique and was looking for some ideas. If I fetch all the message numbers, trim them and sort them in a descending order, will I have messages from the the last message received to the first? Also, would it be preferable to store mails in a intermediate database and fetch them from there?"}
{"_id": "76105", "title": "Best way to reference static database data in code?", "text": "Many applications include 'static data': data that doesn't really change during the lifetime of the application. For example, you might have a list of Sales Areas that is likely to be a fixed list for the foreseeable future. It isn't uncommon to find this static data in a database table (often because you want to refer to it in the foreign keys of other tables). A simple example table will have an Id to use as a primary key and a Description. For example, your SalesArea table will have (at least) a SalesAreaId column and a SalesAreaDescription column. Now, in code you might not want to treat each row of the table the same. For example, you might want to set a default Sales Area on some screens, provide different figures for some areas, or restrict what users can do in other areas. What is the best way to refer to this static data in code? Why?   1. Hard-code the descriptions in your code. Use this to look up the SalesAreaId from the database when you need it.   2. Hard-code the IDs in your code. Use this to look up the SalesAreaDescription when you need it.   3. Add a column to the table for each purpose, e.g. an \"IsDefaultOnProductLaunchScreen\" column and so on (there could be lots of these).   4. Something else. Are there any other special considerations I should make when dealing with static database data? For example, giving these tables a special name?"}
{"_id": "76106", "title": "Increase motivation in Our Project's Wiki with achievements?", "text": "We are currently running a mediawiki for our developers, and most developers are not adding entries if they find something to document. Instead they mail it to a list containing all developers, and most often I add the entries. I just thought adding something like score, achievements, badges or similar could add motivation, but I cannot find a extension for media wiki. Is there such an extension? Is one of these recommended? Funny fact: Currently I think the StackExchange system would fit much better but we need it internally ;)"}
{"_id": "234587", "title": "How to set stretch goals for a development team", "text": "We are looking at bringing on five college interns for the summer to help out with some development projects. Each one will be given a fairly stand-alone project that we are hoping he will be able to complete. However, we would like to provide some incentive for exceptional work, be it exceptional quality or exceptional productivity. Also, it should be something quantitative, not subjective. That way we can give them a goal beyond \"make your boss happy and get a prize\". Also, we prefer it to be something that will encourage them to work together, something they can achieve as a group. Finally, it should be something kind of fun, to lead up to a reward at the end of the summer. We are looking for something inspirational to encourage them to achieve more, not a metric to hold over their heads come review time. How do you inspire a dev team?"}
{"_id": "159976", "title": "Is it wise to be going back and forth between two programming languages?", "text": "I have been writing quite a lot of PHP for nearly two years. Now I am doing .NET (mainly c#) development. However, sometimes I go back and do some php. My main question is, is it wise for me to continue doing this or should I continue development in C#? Would this harm me in the long run (mind you my main goal is not to be a jack o all trades) or is it a good practice to be doing?"}
{"_id": "233584", "title": "Is there a good idiom for handling an in-line startActivityForResult", "text": "I have a bunch of Java code that looks something like this.               //Global     boolean something_result;     Monitor something_monitor;          // Some class on worker thread     Intent intent = new Intent(\"android.something.ENABLE\");     Global.something_enabled = false;     Global.something_monitor = new Monitor();     currentActivity.startActivityForResult(intent, 1234);     something_monitor.Wait();     this.enabled = (Global.something_result = OK);          // Some Activity on UI thread     protected void onActivityResult(int code, int result, Intent data) {         if(code == 1234) {             Global.something_result = result;             Global.something_monitor.Signal();         }     }      The idea is that the worker thread can do something in an Activity and wait for the result. It works just fine, but there are bits of code in three different places, it's a lot of code to do not much, some cases are rather more complicated and it gets replicated for each different thing you want to do. It's also error prone because it's potentially subject to threading issues. This is basically what `await` is designed to do for you. Is there a well- known idiom or technique to do this safely and with better encapsulation? Although the context is very much Java on Android, it's much more about a usable idiom for tackling this kind of threading issue that I'm interested in."}
{"_id": "233588", "title": "When is my code auto GPL'ed?", "text": "I'm currently working with Wordpress (GPL). I understood basically when you write a plugin/module/etc. it becomes GPL since it's considered dependent of Wordpress.   But on the contrary images and css from themes, are not due to be GPL (they are considered independent data files that could have meaning even without Wordpress)   And that just blurs things a little bit for me. What if I create a mathematical library non GPL. Then I create a Wordpress plugin that use that library?   Will it makes my library GPL? Would it means I cannot bundle them together? Not even put them on a single zip file? What if my library is a Web service? And what if the web service is self hosted? May I bundle it with the plugin code altogether? If I can't make any kind of bundle without GPL being propagated, how comes one can bundle a theme (feat. css + images) for Wordpress?"}
{"_id": "152407", "title": "Testing applications with statistical features", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How should I test randomness? Are their some techniques described for testing applications that have as a requirement some statistical or probabilistic features? They may for example use some random number generators and the customer may wish certain distribution etc. How would software companies test that the statistical requirements are satisfied?"}
{"_id": "161389", "title": "How to test a random-generating feature in application?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How should I test randomness? One of the features to be developed in our application was allowing user to click a button which will choose an element at random out of (normally 5-10) values registered in the database. The randomness doesn't need to be secure or scientifically uniform, but we do need it to be somehow unpredictable and not noticeably biased to one of the value. Any suggestion how to write a good unit test and functional test for this feature?"}
{"_id": "142327", "title": "What did they call Object-Oriented Programming before Alan Kay invented the term?", "text": "Alan Kay claims that \"I made up the term \"object-oriented\", and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.\" What he had in mind, of course, was Smalltalk. But he did not make up object-oriented programming itself; he got the basic ideas from Simula. So if the term hadn't been invented yet, what did they originally call object-oriented programming in Simula?"}
{"_id": "198477", "title": "Web application using JSF-Front end and node.js-Back end", "text": "I'm planning to build a eCommerce web application(similar to http://zovi.com/) using JSF 1.2 and node.js. All front end components will be jsf components binding to backing bean. I want to achieve real time functionality ( such as displaying **Today's hot sellers** , **Customers who viewed this item also viewed** such patterns) using node.js. And all data retrievals from database(MySQL)should be accomplished using node and display in JSF components. I'm confused in how to bind data that i get from node to corresponding managed bean property(since i bound it to corresponding JSF component). **For example** on load I've to retrieve data using node.js and populate datatable component and also i should update backing bean. Is it possible with out using any web services like REST Hope you understand this context. Please suggest some solutions. And I heard performance of Node.js is efficient only for small web applications not for Enterprise level. Is my approach correct??"}
{"_id": "142320", "title": "Request / Reply , how should one initiate the actual sending of the transmission?", "text": "I'm working on Language level interfaces to web API's. These libraries are of course built around existing HTTP Request/Reply interfaces. I see myself as having a few options submit method on the request object e.g               my $req = Request->new( ... );          my $response = $req->submit; # returns response          my $res2     = $req->submit; # sends the same request again      lazy request accessor               my $req = Request->new( ... );          my $response = $req->response; # returns a reference to the response          my $res2     = $req->response; # doesn't send again, just returns the reference          $req->clear_response;          # clears the response value          my $res3     = $req->response; # sends again because no response exists      These are the 2 options I'm thinking of. I have seen more examples of the former but I'm not sure if there's a reason why. Do you have any preferences on which style interface? or are there other ways I'm not thinking of? Overall I'm trying to discern what the best API is to retrieve the response."}
{"_id": "189931", "title": "Twitter in app browser + user agent string", "text": "Recently (I believe some weeks ago) with the latest update of the Twitter app for iOS, all links found inside tweets are opened in Twitter's build-in browser. My question is how to find Twitter's browser agent so I can display custom messages. For example: If browser is Twitter's in-app browser then display a custom message via HTML+PHP. It seems that there is no known agent available. Any help would be appreciate."}
{"_id": "226607", "title": "What design route should I take?", "text": "So I've taken on a project at work that I'm having a hard time attacking, and I'd love some feedback and suggestions. I work for an online retail store where we have an old, +7k-line script that we use to create various product feeds (mostly for CSEs like Google Products, Pricegrabber, etc). It's become a complete mess, mostly because each feed is slightly different and because there is almost no separation of concerns. I've been tasked with refactoring it, a task I volunteered for with gusto, and pretty soon I need to come up with a design. My main goal is to have a system that's easy to maintain, and easy to add new feeds as needed. If performance suffers a bit that's not a huge concern, though increasing performance would be great if it doesn't interfere with the first two goals. Until now, most of what I've worked on has been fairly linear and imperative; data comes in at the top and goes out at the bottom. But because of the various feeds with various needs, I wonder if an object-oriented approach would be beneficial. OO programming is still a bit of a mystery to me, so this problem has been a bit difficult to attack. My basic idea is as follows; objects exist for each main concern (images, product descriptions, file handling, etc). Then, each feed has an object (perhaps implementing an abstract class) that talks to the other objects, asking for the information it needs. For instance, the Pricegrabber object feeds the Image object a list of products along with some parameters (maximum image size, etc) and the Image object returns a list of products with corresponding image urls. This way, the Pricegrabber object doesn't know or care how the Image object finds its urls, or what mysql tables the Image object used or created; it just enters a list of products and gets a list of image urls. Pricegrabber does this with every main object until the feed file is created. Main questions:   * Does this design pattern make sense? Is there a better pattern I could use?   * Does OO seem like overkill for what I'm trying to accomplish?   * While we normally use Perl for our reports, would it be worth it to use PHP instead? If so, why? (I'd love to use Python or Ruby but IT has put the kabosh on that)."}
{"_id": "226604", "title": "A class with only methods", "text": "What's the name for a class that has only methods? There are no fields/properties. Just two methods with the ability to parse some file in two ways. I have named the class Parser, but it just doesn't seem right to have a class do only that. Or? Should it be in a class ? EDIT: Dummy Example               class Parser     {          public int parseMethod1(string file)          {              //parse & return          }               public string[] parseMethod2(string file)          {              //parse & return          }     }      How could I write an interface `IParser` which allowed me to have a subclass only implement one of the methods?"}
{"_id": "226605", "title": "Understanding special Scala syntax", "text": "I can understand this:               List(\"one word\", \"another word\") unzip (_ span (_ != ' '))      But don't get what's happening here **below** in the `span`. `span` takes a predicate and I think the braces can be omitted as `span` is used inline and has only one parameter but why isn't there any `_` and what is `' '.!=`               List(\"one word\", \"another word\") unzip (_ span ' '.!=)"}
{"_id": "189938", "title": "Do I need to learn python first to understand the part 2 of the book Test Driven development?", "text": "It seems like Python is used as a coding language for part 2 of Kent Beck's book Test Driven Development. I have read the first part of that book and started appreciating the value of TDD . First part was easy to understand as the examples were in Java and that is the only language that I have worked on. How should I prepare myself to go about reading the second part of the book? What value will it provide? I do not plan to write a testing framework myself. Can I skip this entirely and go to the third section?"}
{"_id": "189939", "title": "Is there a modern replacement for a mutation testing tool like Jester for Java?", "text": "> \u201cWhy just think your tests are good when you can know for sure? Sometimes > Jester tells me my tests are airtight, but sometimes the changes it finds > come as a bolt out of the blue. Highly recommended.\u201d - Kent Beck But I see that there is not even a tag called \" _Jester_ \" in stackoverflow. So what is the modern replacement for _Jester_ ,if any ? How can one be sure that unit tests written are rock solid other than finding statistics from code coverage from tools like _Cobertura_ and _Clover_?"}
{"_id": "144440", "title": "Can an issue tracking system be distributed?", "text": "I was thinking about issue tracking software like Redmine, Trac or even the one that is in Fossil and something hit me: Is there a reason why Redmine and Trac are not possible to be distributed? Or maybe it's possible and I just don't know how it's possible? If it's not possible, why? By distributed I mean like Facebook or Google or other applications that effectively runs on multiple hardware a the same time but share data."}
{"_id": "144443", "title": "Provide an OnChange event for an internal property which is controlled externally?", "text": "For fun and by request I am updating this ImageGrid component, a kind of listbox for images that has a `FileNames` property of type `TStrings`. For ease of writing, I have been misusing its `FileNames.Objects` property for bitmap storage. But since the `TStrings` type suggests that users of the component could or would want to use the `Objects` property for custom data, e.g. like `TListBox.Items`, I am rewriting the component to store the bitmaps elsewhere and leave `FileNames.Objects` untouched for unknown future usage. Now I am wondering whether to provide an `OnChange` event. And if so, whether to fire it when one or more `FileNames.Objects` changes. Trying to answer it myself, I dove in Delphi's own VCL and stumbled on:   * `TMemo`: has an `OnChange` event, but ignores `Lines.Objects`   * `TListBox`: has no `OnChange` event, but is capable of storing `Items.Objects`   * `TStringGrid`: has no `OnChange` event, but is capable of storing `Objects`, `Rows.Objects`, `Cols.Objects` So now I am somewhat puzzeled, because I cannot imagine Borland's developers didn't add events for several `Objects` properties out of ease. Sure, when a user changes a `FileNames.Object` in my component, he knows he does and could implement appropriate interaction himself. But wouldn't it be convenient when the component does automatically? What would you expect from this component in this regard?"}
{"_id": "88428", "title": "How were the first compilers made?", "text": "I always wonder this, and perhaps I need a good history lesson on programming languages. But since most compilers nowadays are made in C, how were the very first compilers made (AKA before C) or were all the languages just interpreted? With that being said, I still don't understand how even the first assembly language was done, I understand what assembly language is but I don't see how they got the VERY first assembly language working (like, how did they make the first commands (like `mov R21`) or w/e set to the binary equivalent?"}
{"_id": "173086", "title": "Are flag variables an absolute evil?", "text": "Are flag variables evil? Are the following kind of variables profoundly immoral and is it wicked to use them? > \"boolean or integer variables that you assign a value in certain places then > down below you check then in orther to do something or not, like, for > example using `newItem = true` then some lines below `if (newItem ) then`\"    I remember doing a couple of projects where I totally neglected using flags and ended up with better architecture/code; however, it is a common practice in other projects I work at, and when code grows and flags are added, IMHO code-spaghetti also grows. Would you say there are any cases where using flags is a good practice or even necessary?, or would you agree that using flags in code are... red flags and should be avoided/refactored; me, I just get by with doing functions/methods that check for states in real time instead."}
{"_id": "223042", "title": "Best way to notify the client in real time that their queue (e.g. SQS) job has finished?", "text": "**Current Scenario** Our application allows users to upload (Amazon S3) and manage their files through our interface. Currently those users can download the files directly from S3/Cloudfront through our application. **Adding a Zip feature** We would like to add a feature to the system that allows users to select multiple files at once and download them as a zip file. We would like the process to work in real time, so that when the user clicks the button to download a zip file, the system processes the request, compiles the zip, and returns the zip to the end user. While the process is running, the front-end will tell the user their request is processing, and when it is complete, it will prompt them to download the file. **Proposed Strategy** Our application is AWS cloud based, so my first instinct is to use Amazon SQS (but am open to other suggestions) to build a queue system to handle these requests. The flow would work like this:   1. User selects files and requests a zip file to be created.   2. Front-end sends a request to SQS with the files to be zipped, and the destination (on S3) where the final zip file will be stored.   3. The queue worker uses long polling to check for new SQS jobs. When a job is found, the worker downloads the files from S3, zips them up, and returns the finished zip file to the specified location on S3.   4. Now that the queue has finished processing, alert the client that their job is done and their file is ready for download. **Best Way to Handle Step 4?** This process appears to be a solid approach, and everything makes sense up until step 4. We are struggling with the best way to notify the end user in real-time that their job has finished and their file is ready for download. From my research I have seen three ways that people suggest:   1. Use pub/sub to create a socket for the job, and return the response when complete.     * From everything I have read, it is not best practice (and sometimes not possible) to create a large number of open pub/sub sockets/channels. In addition, how does SQS notify the open socket that the job is complete? This article regarding Amazon SNS looked promising at first, but they seem to infer that it is best practice to use a single SNS topic for the entire queue, not an SNS topic per job. This seems like a great approach if we were simply wanting to send an email to the user, letting them know their job has finished. However, I want to be able to update the user interface inside the web browser.   2. Continuous polling by the front-end server for the finished zip file on S3.     * If there are thousands of simultaneous jobs, this would create thousands of requests. This approach doesn't seem very scaleable, and could potentially cost money by extra S3 api calls.   3. Leave an open long-running request     * Due to the fact that if there are many jobs in the queue, the time taken to deliver the response could cause the request to time out. In addition this creates a lot of strain/wasted resources on the front-end web server. Again, not very scaleable. **My Question** Taking into account the points that I mentioned above, what is the best way to notify the front-end client that their job queue has finished and their file is ready to download? A great example of what I am trying to do is YouTube. When you upload a video to YouTube, their queue processes your video, and when it is complete, it notifies you that the video processing has finished. I am trying to replicate the same concept, except that in my scenario, I just want to the client to know when the zip file has been prepared and uploaded to S3. I'm aware of theoretical solutions, so please be specific. I am open to any suggestions, regardless if they use SQS or any of the technologies/methodologies I have listed. Pointing to any real-world code examples of this sort of thing would be a big bonus. Thank you in advance for your great help!"}
{"_id": "100410", "title": "Example for explaining object-oriented concepts", "text": "What are some _good_ examples for illustrating the concepts of object-oriented programming? I'm talking about sample classes, classes that would have inheritance, overriding, etc. The only one I can ever think of is of animals. A base `Animal` class, with `Cow` that have a different `makeCry` method or something like that. It sucks. What do you guys use?"}
{"_id": "100417", "title": "What is the relationship between the Dynamic Language Runtime and  C# 4.0?", "text": "Let's say I wanted to create a dynamic language compiler/interpreter, a Scheme interpreter perhaps, on the .NET platform as it exists today. Would I be better off using the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), or using C# 4.0 to implement my language's dynamic features? Or do I need both? I know that there has been other work done in this area, in particular with IronScheme and IronPython. Both of those languages use the DLR; I believe IronPython uses the most current version of the DLR (which is about a year old), while IronScheme uses an early, heavily modified fork of an early version of the DLR. But C# 4.0 was not available when these compilers were created. I've seen Rob Conery's work with Massive, using C# 4.0's dynamic features; it is quite impressive. But would C# hold up to the full-scale effort of a dynamic language compiler/intepreter? Are there features in the DLR that are missing from C#, or was the DLR essentially rolled into C# 4.0? Would I be missing any important features of the DLR if I just used C# 4.0 exclusively?"}
{"_id": "177973", "title": "How to design a scalable notification system?", "text": "I need to write a notification system manager. Here is my requirements: I need to be able to send a Notification on different platforms, which may be totally different (for exemple, I need to be able to send either an SMS or an E-mail). Sometimes the notification may be the same for all recipients for a given platform, but sometimes it may be a notification per recipients (or several) per platform. Each notification can contain platform specific payload (for exemple an MMS can contains a sound or an image). The system need to be **scalable** , I need to be able to send a very large amount of notification without crashing either the application or the server. It is a two step process, first a customer may type a message and choose a platform to send to, and the notification(s) should be created to be processed either real-time either later. Then the system needs to send the notification to the platform provider. * * * For now, I end up with some though but I don't know how scalable it will be or if it is a good design. I've though of the following objects (in a pseudo language): a generic `Notification` object:               class Notification {         String                 $message;         Payload                $payload;         Collection<Recipient>  $recipients;     }      The problem with the following objects is what if I've 1.000.000 recipients ? Even if the `Recipient` object is very small, it'll take too much memory. I could also create one Notification per recipient, but some platform providers requires me to send it in batch, meaning I need to define one Notification with several Recipients. Each created notification could be stored in a persistent storage like a DB or Redis. Would it be a good it to aggregate this later to make sure it is scalable? On the second step, I need to process this notification. But how could I distinguish the notification to the right platform provider? Should I use an object like `MMSNotification` extending an `abstract Notification`? or something like `Notification.setType('MMS')`? To allow to process a lot of notification at the same time, I think a messaging queue system like RabbitMQ may be the right tool. Is it? It would allow me to queue a lot of notification and have several worker to pop notification and process them. But what if I need to batch the recipients as seen above? Then I imagine a `NotificationProcessor` object for which I could I add `NotificationHandler` each `NotificationHandler` would be in charge to connect the platform provider and perform notification. I can also use an `EventManager` to allow pluggable behavior. Any feedbacks or ideas? Thanks for giving your time. Note: _I'm used to work in PHP and it is likely the language of my choice._ * * * **Edit** _(according to morphunreal's answer)_   * How many messages per second are you sending (Define current/initial levels, define a maximum level that the system should handle before being re-designed)   * What hardware constraints does the system have (memory, cpu etc available to the system)   * How will hardware scale (ie, adding more servers, cloud computing etc) * * *   * What languages / systems will be generating notifications? It is on my own, I'm in charge to create the notification programmatically but constructed from an UI.   * Does the generator know the recipients of the message (?) or are they provided by some other means (ie, business rules for certain alert types go to certain recipients) It should be possible to create a notification for a specific recipients, a group of recipients (for example using a tag system), or for a whole platform.   * Are there business rules for adding CC/ BCC / Read receipts Yes. Note that this is really platform specific and the read or cc are not available on all platforms.   * Does the generator know the type of message it's sending (ie, SMS/ email) or is it based off the recipient It is based on the recipient, however, as the recipient is platform related, and platforms have different way to handle data, the UI is likely to be platform specific to allow to set up images, a sound or something.   * Does the generator require confirmation of messages being sent/received/read (async vs synchronous sending) Well the system should be error prone but we would like to handle the error to define a set of rule, for example, if the server is unreachable, the notification should be requeued for further process, but if the notification is incorrect (or has been defined as is by the platform provider) it should not be requeued but notified.   * Are there requirements to store a history of message sources / recipients (how long for?) Yes, we likely want to make some statistics and report. * Define Notification End Points * * *   * What services are being used to send messages? Depends, some are classical REST webservice, other are some exotic protocol, it is really up to the provider.   * What feedback / confirmation is provided (sync / async) Depends, some are synchronous and reply with an error while some other need to be pulled afterward to check for errors.   * Is it likely to add new end-points [even if so, does it even need to be abstracted] Yes, actually, our app is growing and we likely want to be able to add new provider, but it is a ratio of something like 1 or 2 per year."}
{"_id": "64544", "title": "Employers and Intellectual Property", "text": "I have heard of companies that require their developers to sign agreements that say _any_ code developed by that developer while they are employed there belongs to the company. I am extremely uncomfortable with that kind of agreement. How common is this practice?"}
{"_id": "108161", "title": "What made jQuery so popular? What is offers that other JavaScript libraries don't?", "text": "According to W3Tech, this link, this link, this link, and many other sources, jQuery is really becoming what IE experienced in the world of web browsers (gaining more than 80% of the market for a period). I don't have the knowledge of any other JavaScript library like MooTools, YUI, etc. because when I started web development, jQuery was already ahead and I chose it. Are other libraries really that awful, or do they lack something jQuery exclusively has? What is the reason(s) behind this huge market share?"}
{"_id": "224600", "title": "Dealing with 'dirty' Ruby on Rails client", "text": "I had to leave a startup about a month ago because of lack of funding. Basically, this client wanted an application to allow contractors to create, update, read, and delete yardsigns. Straight forward stuff, right? Not really. So today, I received a phone call from this same client claiming to have spoken with \"someone who develops with the Ruby on Rails core team\" and claimed that \"developer\" said that my code was \"junk\" and that there are no controllers and models, and that there's just ROR auto generated code (I assumed he meant 'scaffold'). It's not just \"ROR\" auto generated code. So the client now wants his money back and doesn't want to pay me the money he owes me. One of the controllers is just a simple create, show, delete, update, and I've included a \"map\" action for viewing the yardsigns (it's an app for contractors/homeowners -- the code was a day after developing but this is just one controller out of the rest of the app and is apart of the only commit I could retrieve. The rest of the code has since been deleted when my hard drive crashed a week ago so I don't have a full copy of the app myself atm). I also must tell you that he claims \"the other developers ripped him off and left\" which I now don't believe was the case. I believe they left because they were being taking advantage of. Am I in the wrong? I honestly don't know what to do here. Is this a case of a non technical client expecting \"more lines of code\" for his fairly simple/small application? What could I have added to please this client? I love to learn from my mistakes but I honestly don't think I've made any."}
{"_id": "133950", "title": "OCCI for non-web application", "text": "I am writing a non-web application (written in java) which will allocate cloud resources. I want to make it compatible with as many providers as possible. Is it wise to use OCCI interface? Will it be too complicated?"}
{"_id": "133952", "title": "What should I do when I find sensitive information in version control?", "text": "Today I found what looked to be my supervisor's password in some code in version control. The password is to a database. He is very experienced and has explained before how to avoid having passwords in the source code. How should I handle this situation? Is there a best practice about preserving evidence of a security flaw, or should I remove such data as soon as I see it? Even if I remove the data in the current revision, there's still the revision history. Should I just alert my supervisor instead?"}
{"_id": "69254", "title": "Using C++/Java to develop software and sell it", "text": "I know this question has been asked here before, and I also know that this website is for programming questions only, but please do make an exception, as none of the posts I've come across on this site, or others, have answered this question properly (there are too many ifs). I'm planning to develop a program which I intend to sell later. I'm trying to decide upon a language to code it with, and have narrowed down to C++ or Java. I've been through the GPL v2 and v3 licenses used for GNU's GCC and OpenJDK (yes, I can understand some amount of legal stuff, but clearly, not all of it). But there is one point upon which **everyone** is obscure (this should have been one of the first things answered, IMO): if I develop a program using C++/Java and compile it using GCC compiler or OpenJDK's compiler, can I sell it without having to place my program under GPL as well? As far as I can make out, I have full rights to assign any license to my program, but, there is a catch: it says in the license that I shouldn't link to any library that is under GPL. If so, I'll have to release my program under GPL. Now, I don't know what in C++/Java is considered a library, so if I use the normal stuff in C++ (iostream, list, map, etc. ) or the normal Java classes/interfaces available as part of the standard JDK 6 distribution (String, List, Map, etc.), does this constitute 'linking to the libraries'?"}
{"_id": "108168", "title": "Coding dojos on regular basis", "text": "Do you find reasonable to practice coding dojos on a regular basis? I understand dojo may be a good starting point to introduce somebody to some approach but what is the point of making similar dojos regularly? So currently we have two teams which are working on real project written in TDD. One team wants to work on TDD-oriented dojos regularly and other prefers to practice it only on real tasks. Who is right?"}
{"_id": "170195", "title": "Task ownership with Wordpress - CSS - Designer or Developer?", "text": "We have a dispute regarding who owns which tasks when it comes to the CSS on our live site. Our designer argues that he is not responsible to log-in to word press and modify the css or use ftp for any changes because that's not his job description while developer argues that since it is css, it belongs to designer and that he is to update the changes to the server and then compare and correct the output. I'd like experienced people working in professional development environment to put a light on this scenario. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, or is there a separate forum for business development or project management specific questions?"}
{"_id": "191429", "title": "How should I structure a C# application that reads & writes binary data?", "text": "I have to read and write binary \"chunks\" of approximately 1Mb each. The data can come in the form of a stream or a in-memory `byte[]`. Normally I would use a `Struct` with a fixed layout, but there are a few properties of this binary data that are making this harder:   1. Byte 4 describes the \"version\" of the chunk   2. Byte 5 starts either as variable array of sub-chunks or as a human readable blob   3. Each sub-chunk has a version, and has a variable array of data within it.   4. The endian-ness of the data is inconsistent How should I structure a program that needs to handle binary data thats in this format?"}
{"_id": "131556", "title": "What should developers test before submitting their work to testers?", "text": "Is there a checklist the developer must go over before passing their work to testers ? Also, what are the conditions/cases the developer must pay attention to ?"}
{"_id": "84887", "title": "MEF & Circular dependencies in MonoDevelop / VS", "text": "(I think the problem described below is also affecting VS although I only tested it in MD) I have some trouble regarding circular dependencies. I know they are bad practice and should be avoided. In recent MonoDevelop Releases, you can't even create circular dependencies. However, I can't find an easy way out in the following Scenario: Application A uses the managed extensibility framework (MEF) to dynamically add functionality via Plugins, which can be developed by 3rd parties, and are loaded by just placing the .Dll into the bin/ folder (DirectoryCatalog in MEF terms). As I am the Developer of Application A, I ship some default Plugin(s) along with my application. Plugins may deliver LOTS of functionality to extend Application A, so I have every Plugin in a new .csproj Project. To develop a plugin, one (myself or any other 3rd party) must implement a class that implements an interface. The interface, lets call it Interface A, is defined in Application A and is less than 50 lines of code. Thus, Plugin A requires Application A as a dependency, because Interface A is defined in the Assembly of Application A. Since I want to use the Plugin A in my Application A, I add it as a reference, too. And voila, there is a cross reference between the two. I've come up with solutions, but I am not happy with them: 1) Create a seperate project and put ONLY the interface file in it. I dislike that because I don't see a 50line .cs to be a seperate project and consider this as \"over-modularization\" 2) Do not reference the Plugin at all within Application A (this is possible, as Application A only uses Interface A - the actual class instance is loaded by MEF). This, however, leaves me with some trouble: I cannot work on Application A and easily go to the code of Plugin A to fix sth. or add a feature which I often do - because I load core functionality into Plugins (one of the main goals of MEF is to allow modularization). I could however, start a 2nd instance of VS / MD. But this gets bad the more plugins I add, I will end up having 10 instances of IDEs open - I doubt any machine could handle this. So has anybody a recommendation on how to organize this correctly?"}
{"_id": "84886", "title": "Best practice for shared files within multiple unit test fixtures", "text": "I was wondering what the general best practice is for when you have multiple unit test fixtures testing different things that use the same file paths. My test files are in a directory tree with certain rules so currently I am reusing directory macros in each file, i.e.               #define TYPE1FILE \"Type1Files/\"     #define TYPE2FILE \"Type2Files/\"          #define GENERIC_FILE \"generic/\"     #define SPECIAL_FILE \"special/\"          #define BAR1 TYPE1FILE GENERIC_FILE \"/foo.txt\"     #define BAR2 TYPE1FILE SPECIAL_FILE \"/foo2.txt\"     #define BAR3 TYPE2FILE GENERIC_FILE \"/foo.txt\"     #define BAR4 TYPE2FILE SPECIAL_FILE \"/foo2.txt\"      However, this is starting to cause duplication in multiple files because multiple test fixtures will use the same:               #define BAR1 TYPE1FILE GENERIC_FILE \"/foo.txt\"      if they both use the same file. Also, it seems like it may be better to give them some scope by using variables inside the fixture or at least within the file. I like being able to see a list of what files are being used for each test, but I am also considering moving the BAR defines all into a shared header file. I am not crazy about that idea because it will end up being a giant list of files without any indication of what is used where. Also it couples the test cases together more. Does anyone have any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "204962", "title": "In my permissions API, how do I handle objects that don't exist?", "text": "Elgg is designing a permissions API loosely around the Activity Streams model. The user API could look (roughly) like:               function elgg_can($capability, $subject = null, $object = null, $target = null) { ... }        * `$capability` is a string   * `$subject` is a user object   * `$object` is the object acted upon   * `$target` is the context in which the action would take place E.g. Can the current user edit the title of an object?               if (elgg_can('edit title', $currentUser, $someObject)) {         ...     }      I'd like to know a good way to handle **asking for permission to create objects**. If the object doesn't yet exist, then the permissions system can't know anything about it, so there's a chicken-egg problem with a few obvious solutions:   1. Allow passing in a string in place of $object (e.g. the TypeName).   2. Put metadata about the object in the $capability. E.g. `elgg_can(\"create PageObject\", $currentUser, null, $group)`.   3. Have the API user create the object then pass it into the API to decide if it should be allowed to continue existing. Am I missing another obvious solution? Are there permissions models similar to this (that one could reasonably call successful) that handle this?"}
{"_id": "159243", "title": "What is volume in terms of databases?", "text": "I was reading a text. It said,               \"Information presentation must be compatible with the response time needs of      systems. The response time should be short enough that the information  does not      lose its freshness and value but it should be long enough to reduce volume (and      costs) and reveal important trends that signal the need for action\"      What does volume mean in it? Please help out. Thanks"}
{"_id": "92614", "title": "Cover Flow license issues?", "text": "I want to implement the Cover Flow effect in my commercial application on Windows. Are there any license issues about it? Because I think it has been patented by Apple."}
{"_id": "4112", "title": "Should I bother with trying to come up with names for these?", "text": "If you were to run across code like this in your travels would the short names bother you?               let setPropertyAssignment =          parser {             let! a = setIdentifierName             let! b = propertyName             let! c = openParenthesis              let! d = propertySetParameterList             let! e = closeParenthesis              let! f = openCurlyBracket              let! g = functionBody             let! h = closeCurlyBracket             return Node(NodeType.PropertyAssignment, [a;b;c;d;e;f;g;h])         }      Here is the largest parser in the project:               let iterationStatement =          parser {             let! a = doKeyWord             let! b = statement             let! c = whileKeyWord             let! d = openParenthesis             let! e = expression             let! f = closeParenthesis             let! g = statementTerminator             let symbols = [a; b; c; d; e; f; g]             return Node(NodeType.IterationStatement, symbols)         } +++ parser {             let! a = whileKeyWord             let! b = openParenthesis             let! c = expression             let! d = closeParenthesis             let! e = statement             let symbols = [a; b; c; d; e]             return Node(NodeType.IterationStatement, symbols)         } +++ parser {             let! a = forKeyWord             let! b = openParenthesis             let! c = maybeOne expressionNoIn             let! d = semiColon             let! e = maybeOne expression             let! f = semiColon             let! g = maybeOne expression             let! h = closeParenthesis             let! i = statement             let symbols = [a;b] @ c @ [d] @ e @ [f] @ g @ [h;i]                           return Node(NodeType.IterationStatement, symbols)         } +++ parser {             let! a = forKeyWord             let! b = openParenthesis             let! c = varKeyWord             let! d = variableDeclarationListNoIn             let! e = semiColon             let! f = maybeOne expression             let! g = semiColon             let! h = maybeOne expression             let! i = closeParenthesis             let! j = statement             let symbols = [a;b;c;d;e] @ f @ [g] @ h @ [i;j]             return Node(NodeType.IterationStatement, symbols)         } +++ parser {             let! a = forKeyWord             let! b = openParenthesis             let! c = leftHandSideExpression             let! d = inKeyWord             let! e = expression             let! f = closeParenthesis             let! g = statement             let symbols = [a;b;c;d;e;f;g]                            return Node(NodeType.IterationStatement, symbols)         }  +++ parser {             let! a = forKeyWord             let! b = openParenthesis             let! a = varKeyWord             let! c = variableDeclarationNoIn             let! a = inKeyWord             let! c = expression             let! d = closeParenthesis             let! e = statement             let symbols = [a; b; c; d; e]             return Node(NodeType.IterationStatement, symbols)         }"}
{"_id": "86037", "title": "Frontend development, where to start?", "text": "I've been stuck on the backend for years now, working on webservices, DBs, SDKs, APIs and all that jazz, and so that's an area that I have a decent grasp of, but I've absolutely no clue about how the frontend works. What's a good place to start for a backend monkey like me who wants to learn the best practices, latest technologies and the philosophy behind modern web page design and its interaction with the server? I want to be cool like all of the other javascript kids. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "204964", "title": "Need a simple compact program to execute few commands", "text": "(On Windows 7 64 bit)... I am looking for a program, something similar to the default Windows Terminal, what I need it to do is: Load text from a given URL, split the code in two variables and then trigger a simple Windows command based on these two variables. Currently I am doing this with PHP ...               <?php      $my_vars = file_get_contents('http://site.com/data.txt');     list($var1, $var2) = explode($my_vars);     exec(\"my command $var1 $var2\");     ?>       This does the job fine but I don't like having PHP installed on Windows for something as simple as this. I am looking for a more compact file that maybe can be triggered from command prompt and doesn't have many additional files or dependencies, I need it to run on 2-3 computers too."}
{"_id": "159248", "title": "Working on multiple things at work?", "text": "I was curious to know, if juggling between 2-3 projects at a time is a good or a common practice or not. When I say, 2-3 projects I mean:   1\\. 1 primary project,   2\\. 1 project with minor improvements/changes and   3\\. 1 project which comes at times for bug fixes So essentially, I find my self generally working on 2 projects in parallel and sometimes the 3rd one comes in with a trivial fix. Is this a problem? Or I should be learning to work on multiple projects at any given time. My personal opinion is, this style of work might affect how detailed and in-depth you think about a project."}
{"_id": "234051", "title": "How to apply IoC (or something similar) to a constant?", "text": "I have the following class with the following members:               public class RegistrationPresenter : EPiPresenter<IRegistrationView, LoginPage>, IDisposable     {         private readonly static string[] DefaultUserRoles = { AppRoles.RegisteredRole, AppRoles.EveryoneRole, AppRoles.ManagerUserRole };              private readonly INavigator navigator;         private readonly ISpanishProvincesHelper spanishProvincesHelper;         private readonly IContentHelper contentHelper;         private readonly IUserDataHelper userDataHelper;              public RegistrationPresenter(IRegistrationView view, LoginPage page, INavigator navigator,              ISpanishProvincesHelper spanishProvincesHelper, IContentHelper contentHelper, IUserDataHelper userDataHelper)             : base(view, page)         {     ....      }      I'm successfully able to Bind all the readonly members with an IoC container (Ninject in my case), except for the static string[], which I don't know how to do it. Which approach should I choose or how could I apply IoC to the DefaultUserRoles values, so I'm able to mock it when Unit testing?"}
{"_id": "131790", "title": "How to solve a fundamental cloud data storage dispute?", "text": "I'm working for a company that has recently hired me to create a new version of their existing software, which is now over 12 years old. The new software is a complete re-write of the old and they want it to be much more \"online\" than the previous version. I'm one of two programmers, the other having been with the company for 20+ years and is now close to retirement. The problem I'm facing is that with almost every idea I suggest that doesn't fall in line with what he thinks, it just gets shot-down, ignored and forgotten. So far I've let a lot slide; nothing too critical, and things that could be changed later on if needed. However, we're now on the subject of how to store the data that needs to be accessible to all the customers; he wants to use SQL Azure and store as much data as possible in xaml-string blobs, then use DevForce IdeaBlade to generate all the back end code. I'm not convinced, I think that if we're using a SQL storage solution we should be using relational database tables, which are normalized, etc. OR we shouldn't be using SQL at all, and perhaps use another method that allows storage of C# objects directly? What do you guys think? EDIT: Ok, so to give people a bit more information, the program could be considered a sort of Photoshop-like application, but aimed at a specific market. Users have access to a library of template \"backgrounds\" which they can then add text, images, etc. on too. When they browse the library of templates, they will be able to filter them by type, color, etc."}
{"_id": "73427", "title": "ColdFusion 9 - Using LOCAL Scope", "text": "I am starting to use the LOCAL scope in ColdFusion 9. I am trying to figure when to use it and when NOT to use it. Can you tell me the advantages/disadvantages of using the LOCAL scope either way? Should LOCAL be used on every page, or just in functions? WHICH SHOULD BE USED?               <cfset ImageHeight = 36>       <cfset ImageWidth = 42>       <cfoutput>     <img src=\"\" height=\"#ImageHeight#\" width=\"#ImageWidth#\">     </cfoutput>      OR               <cfset LOCAL.ImageHeight = 36>       <cfset LOCAL.ImageWidth = 42>       <cfoutput>     <img src=\"\" height=\"#LOCAL.ImageHeight#\" width=\"#LOCAL.ImageWidth#\">     </cfoutput>"}
{"_id": "73421", "title": "What should I consider when converting from ASCII to Unicode?", "text": "For instance if I had only ASCII characters and then switched to Unicode now I have to consider special characters, and bigger strings or chars. What else along these lines should I be considering? I'm assuming a Unicode string contains special characters as well, but other than that, what am I missing?"}
{"_id": "177357", "title": "Best practice to represent SQL in program source code", "text": "Where SQL statements are executed from a program, what is the best practice to store the statement text? Most often it is in a read only string, in the source file it is executed in. I think a better approach would be to have a separate text file containing all SQL statements, that are then read in to a dictionary object where the key is the purpose of that statement. Statements can then be executed by using their key, decoupling database implementation from the program and allowing reuse of statements between program objects. Is this efficient? Is there a better way? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "177355", "title": "C# coding standards\u201d Use the const directive only on natural constants", "text": "I've seen these 2 guidelines in coding c# standard and I\u2019m not sure the what the 2nd one means.   1. With the exception of zero and one, never hard-code a numeric value; always declare a constant instead.   2. Use the const directive only on natural constants such as the number of days of the week. What is the definition of a natural constants and if the number is not a natural constants given the 1st rule how does one declare a constant in c# without the const directive? So how is the 2nd rule not contradicting the 1st rule for non natural constants? See http://www.scribd.com/doc/10731655/IDesign-C-Coding-Standard-232 for reference."}
{"_id": "244378", "title": "Advice for beginner programmer", "text": "I am beginner in software development. I noticed when I try to learn one technology let's say .NET I lose my grip over other for example Java. I thought it would be better to concentrate on one technology either Java or .NET to make significant advancement and be an expert, because they can be many details which one can ignore when keeps on changing between technologies. Is my decision right? Do experts choose this approach? **Update:** Should I pursue my career knowing one technology or not?"}
{"_id": "244373", "title": "Dealing with state problems in functional programming", "text": "I've learned how to program primarily from an OOP standpoint (like most of us, I'm sure), but I've spent a lot of time trying to learn how to solve problems the functional way. I have a good grasp on how to solve calculational problems with FP, but when it comes to more complicated problems I always find myself reverting to needing mutable objects. For example, if I'm writing a particle simulator, I will want particle \"objects\" with a mutable position to update. How are inherently \"stateful\" problems typically solved using functional programming techniques?"}
{"_id": "244371", "title": "Your thoughts on Best Practices for Scientific Computing?", "text": "A recent paper by Wilson et al (2014) pointed out 24 Best Practices for scientific programming. It's worth to have a look. I would like to hear opinions about these points from experienced programmers in scientific data analysis. The authors' advices sound good, but do you think these advices are helpful and practical? As they admit, introducing all of them may take significant time and effort. For example, putting assertions and deploying unit tests surely need extra coding. Nevertheless, do you think scientists (such as biologists) who had no training in coding should generally follow these? If some of them are too much, to what point should we go and stop depending on what? > Wilson G, Aruliah DA, Brown CT, Chue Hong NP, Davis M, Guy RT, Haddock SHD, > Huff KD, Mitchell IM, Plumbley MD, Waugh B, White EP, Wilson P (2014) **Best > Practices for Scientific Computing**. _PLoS Biol_ 12:e1001745. > > > http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001745 > > **Box 1. Summary of Best Practices** > >   1. Write programs for people, not computers. > > (a) A program should not require its readers to hold more than a handful of > facts in memory at once. > > (b) Make names consistent, distinctive, and meaningful. > > (c) Make code style and formatting consistent. > >   2. Let the computer do the work. > > (a) Make the computer repeat tasks. > > (b) Save recent commands in a file for re-use. > > (c) Use a build tool to automate workflows. > >   3. Make incremental changes. > > (a) Work in small steps with frequent feedback and course correction. > > (b) Use a version control system. > > (c) Put everything that has been created manually in version control. > >   4. Don\u2019t repeat yourself (or others). > > (a) Every piece of data must have a single authoritative representation in > the system. > > (b) Modularize code rather than copying and pasting. > > (c) Re-use code instead of rewriting it. > >   5. Plan for mistakes. > > (a) Add assertions to programs to check their operation. > > (b) Use an off-the-shelf unit testing library. > > (c) Turn bugs into test cases. > > (d) Use a symbolic debugger. > >   6. Optimize software only after it works correctly. > > (a) Use a profiler to identify bottlenecks. > > (b) Write code in the highest-level language possible. > >   7. Document design and purpose, not mechanics. > > (a) Document interfaces and reasons, not implementations. > > (b) Refactor code in preference to explaining how it works. > > (c) Embed the documentation for a piece of software in that software. > >   8. Collaborate. > > (a) Use pre-merge code reviews. > > (b) Use pair programming when bringing someone new up to speed and when > tackling particularly tricky problems. > > (c) Use an issue tracking tool. > > I'm relatively new to serious programming for scientific data analysis. When I tried to write code for pilot analyses of some of my data last year, I encountered tremendous amount of bugs both in my code and data. Bugs and errors had been around me all the time, but this time it was somewhat overwhelming. I managed to crunch the numbers at last, but I thought I couldn't put up with this mess any longer. Some actions must be taken. Without a sophisticated guide like the article above, I started to adopt \"defensive style\" of programming since then. A book titled \"The Art of Readable Code\" helped me a lot. I deployed meticulous input validations and/or assertions for every function, renamed a lot of variables and functions for better readability, and extracted many bits as reusable functions. Recently, I introduced `Git` and `SourceTree` for version control. At the moment, because my co-workers are much more reluctant about these issues, the collaboration practices ( **8a,b,c)** have not been introduced. Actually, as the authors admitted, because all of these practices take some amount of time and effort to introduce, it may be generally hard to persuade your reluctant collaborators to comply them. I think I'm asking your opinions because I still suffer from many bugs despite all my effort on many of these practices. Bug fix may be, or should be, faster than before, but I couldn't really measure the improvement. Moreover, much of my time has been invested on defence, meaning that I haven't actually done much data analysis (offence) these days. Where is the point I should stop at in terms of productivity? I've already deployed: **1a,b,c, 2a, 3a,b,c, 4b,c, 5a,d, 6a,b, 7a,7b** I'm about to have a go at: **5b,c** Not yet: **2b,c, 4a, 7c, 8a,b,c** (I could not really see the advantage of using `GNU make` ( **2c** ) for my purpose. Could anyone tell me how it helps my work with MATLAB?)"}
{"_id": "230779", "title": "Why should I use node.js as http server?", "text": "I know what node.js is & what it does. What I really want to know is how does it work as an http server? A server like apache gets a request, fork a process, allocate memory to process, handle the request & release the process after it is completed. If we get thousands of http requests at a time, then apache waits for the the process queue to release process. How does node.js with a single threaded environment handles so many http requests. All the incoming requests are given their own event loop. All these event loops share same memory. How does using node.js to handle millions of http requests more scalable than using apache?"}
{"_id": "104700", "title": "What constitutes authorship for software documentation?", "text": "In science, intellectual contribution to a project is sufficient for someone to be the author of a document. When writing software documentation, this would imply that almost everyone involved in the software development would be included as co-authors. Unlike in science, it seems odd to include the names of people who do not actually work on the document. One reason is that documentation is constantly evolving and I am concerned about making sure that co-authors regularly review the current state of the document. **question:** When writing documentation, are there guidelines for whom, other than those who directly contribute to the document, should be considered an author? _clarification:_ I am writing documentation about how to use an open source software and database built by and for scientists. As this project represents most of our the team's cumulative experience with software development, we have no existing policies for authorship of documentation (unlike we do with journal articles)."}
{"_id": "132600", "title": "Best way to maintain data between local and remote sql databases", "text": "So I have, what would seem like a common question that I can't seem to find an answer to. I'm trying to find **what is the \"best practice\" for how to architect a database that maintains data locally, then syncs that data to a remote database that is shared between many clients**. To make things more clear, this remote database would have many clients that use it. For example, if I had a desktop application that stored to-do lists (in SQL) that had individual items. Then I want to be able to send that data to a web- service that had a \"master\" copy of all the different clients information. **I'm not worried about syncing problems as much as I am just trying to think through actual architecture of the client's tables and the web-services tables** Here's an example of how I was thinking about it: **Client Database**               list     --list_client_id (primary key, auto-increment)     --list_name          list_item     --list_item_client_id (primary key, auto-increment)     --list_id     --list_item_text      **Web Based Master Database** _(Shared between many clients)_               list     --list_master_id     --list_client_id (primary key, auto-increment)     --list_name     --user_id               list_item     --list_item_master_id (primary key, auto-increment)     --list_item_remote_id     --list_id     --list_item_text     --user_id      The idea would be that the client can create todo lists with items, and sync this with the web service at any given time (i.e. if they lose data connectivity, and aren't able to send the information until later, nothing will get out of order). The web service would record the records with the clients id's as just extra fields. That way, the client can say \"update list number 4 with a new name\" and the server takes this to mean \"update user 12's list number 4 with a new name\"."}
{"_id": "230776", "title": "RabbitMQ and Microsoft Service Bus integration", "text": "We're running Microsoft Service Bus (AMQP 1.0) locally and are quite happy with it. We've recently started doing business with a provider that uses RabbitMQ (AMQP 0.9.1) as it's message broker. How should we integrate to be able to receive their events? We could expose HTTP endpoints on our bus or even write an API that could perform \"translations\" but it seems counter intuitive and cumbersome. I'd like to not install Rabbit on my environment at all."}
{"_id": "185141", "title": "Clustering algorithm that doesn't require predefining the number of clusters required", "text": "I have a set of user queries from a search engine that I want to cluster. The only clustering algorithm I have come across so far is the K-means clustering algorithm, which requires defining the number of clusters up front. But in this case, I do not know how many clusters exist in the data. Is there any clustering algorithm that performs clustering without predefining the number of clusters?"}
{"_id": "230772", "title": "Looking for a Treemap tiling algorithm", "text": "I'm looking for an algorithm to convert a tree of data into a 2 dimensional treemap view. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemapping I can do all the coloring in and drawing myself, but if there was some kind of algorithm like :               xy-withweight = treemapMyData(treedata)      where xy is a list of data elements : \"x\" = x point of bottom right corner \"y\" = y point of the bottom right corner \"weight\" = could be used to signify colour"}
{"_id": "235978", "title": "DDD - Business rule that depends on a service", "text": "I got confused about if a domain is required to access an external service in some state of it's life cycle. The business rule is this : > If an Employee is accepting a JobSeeker's JobApplication, then the Employee > must create an Appointment and have it e-mailed to the JobSeeker. My current solutions are: 1 - Leave the mailing responsibility to the JobApplication domain               class JobApplication {         public function makeAppointment(IMailService $mailService, IMailGenerator $mailGen, \\DateTime $time, Address $address = null) {                 $employer = $this->getVacancy()->getEmployer();                  $this->accept();                  $appointment = new Appointment($employer,                 $this->applicant,                 'Interview Invitation - '.$employer,                 $time,                 $address ?: $employer->getAddress()             );                  $mailService->send(                 $appointment->getJobSeeker()->getMail(),                  $appointment->getTitle(),                 $mailGen->generateAppointmentMail($appointment)             );                  return $appointment;         }         }      I kinda feel awkward about this option, since it leaves the JobApplication entity to depends on the Mailing services. 2 - Create a new AppointmentService               class AppointmentService {         private $mailService;         private $mailGen;              public function __construct(IMailService $mailService, IMailGenerator $mailGen) {             $this->mailService = $mailService;             $this->mailGen = $mailGen;         }              public function makeAppointmentFromJobApplication(JobApplication $application, \\DateTime $time, Address $address = null) {             $jobApplication->accept();                  $appointment = new Appointment($application->getCompany(),                 $application->getApplicant(),                 'Interview Invitation - '.$application->getCompany(),                 $time,                 $address ?: $application->getCompany()->getAddress()             );                  $mailService->send(                 $appointment->getJobSeeker()->getMail(),                  $appointment->getTitle(),                 $mailGen->generateAppointmentMail($appointment)             );                  return $appointment;         }     }      This option is nice since I only need to inject AppointmentService to the controller, but it leaves the Appointment class anemic. I once read to never leave your domain to be dependent to domain services, the other way is fine. But some business rules do require services that existed out of the domain scope. Is there another options? **Update - 1** A third option would be like this:               class Employer {         public function acceptApplication(JobApplication $application) {             if($application->isRejected()) throw new \\Exception('Cannot make appointment for rejected application');                  $application->setAccepted();         }              public function makeAppointment(IAppointmentService $appointmentService, JobApplication $application, \\DateTime $time, Address $address = null) {             if(!$application->isAccepted()) $this->acceptApplication($application);                  return $appointmentService->makeAppointment($this, $application->getApplicant(), $time, $address ?: $this->getAddress());         }     }          class AppointmentService {         private $mailService;         private $mailGenerator;              public function makeAppointment(Employer $company, JobSeeker $jobSeeker, \\DateTime $time, Address $address = null) {             $appointment = new Appointment($company,                  $jobSeeker,                 'Interview Invitation - '.$application->getCompany(),                 $time,                 $address             );                  $this->mailAppointment($appointment);                  return $appointment;         }              private function mailAppointment(Appointment $appointment) {             return $mailService->send($appointment->getJobSeeker, $appointment->getTitle, $mailGenerator->generateApplicationAppointment());         }     }"}
{"_id": "10735", "title": "How to most effectively debug code?", "text": "Bugs creeping into code can be minimized, but not entirely eliminated as it is written - programmers are, although many would disagree, only humans. When we do detect an error in our code, what can we do to weed it out? How should we approach it to make most effective use of our valuable time and enable us to spend less time trying to find it and more time coding? Also, what should we avoid when debugging? Note here that we're not talking about _preventing_ bugs; we're talking about what to do when bugs _do_ appear. This is a wide field, I know, and may be highly dependent on language, platform and tools. If so, keep to encompassing answers such as mindsets and general methods."}
{"_id": "130601", "title": "Can modern OO languages compete with C++'s array store performance?", "text": "I just noticed that every modern OO programming language that I am at least somewhat familiar with (which is basically just Java, C# and D) allows covariant arrays. That is, a string array is an object array:               Object[] arr = new String[2];   // Java, C# and D allow this      Covariant arrays are a hole in the static type system. They make type errors possible that cannot be detected at compile-time, so every write to an array must be checked at runtime:               arr[0] = \"hello\";        // ok     arr[1] = new Object();   // ArrayStoreException      This seems like a terrible performance hit if I do lots of array stores. C++ does not have covariant arrays, so there is no need to do such a runtime check, which means there is no performance penalty. Is there any analysis done to reduce the number of runtime checks necessary? For example, if I say:               arr[1] = arr[0];      one could argue that the store cannot possibly fail. I'm sure there are lots of other possible optimizations I haven't thought of. Do modern compilers actually do these kinds of optimizations, or do I have to live with the fact that, for example, a Quicksort always does O(n log n) unnecessary runtime checks? Can modern OO languages avoid the overhead created by supporting co-variant arrays?"}
{"_id": "218030", "title": "Complex knowledge management system with CRM..written internally", "text": "We've all heard of salesforce and sugarcrm and the likes of systems like this. Unfortunately at my workplace we have been asked to write a similiar system (rather then license or purchase). Basically the database is fairly large. Think of modules such as: Corporate groups, customers, programs, projects, sub projects, and issue management. In simple terms a corporate group has one to many customers. A program has one or more projects. A project has one or more sub projects. And an issue can be created on many sub projects. Of course the system is a bit more complex but instead of listing every single module I think its best to keep it simple. In any event, the system in its current state has only two resources to be working on it (basically we have to do it all: CSS, database, jquery, asp.net and C#). We've started off well by defining the UI master and footer pages that way we can reuse those across all of our pages. Now comes the hard part. The system will have about 4k end users with say 5-10% being concurrent users. We are wondering if it makes sense to cache our database data (For say 5-10 minutes) rather then continously hit our database. The reason being is some of these pages may have 5-10 search filters associated with the page. Imagine every time a selection is made from a search box how many database hits. Also some of these search fields cascade so selecting for instance an initial drop down may cascade several drop down boxes under them. Is it wrong to cache because I am not finding too many articles on whether it is a good idea or not. Remember the system is similiar to say a CRM system where we manage our various customers, projects, sub projects, issues, etc."}
{"_id": "218032", "title": "How to identify potential for becoming a programmer", "text": "There's heaps of information out there on hiring someone who's already a programmer. (Or claims to be one.) But what about identifying someone who has the _potential_ to become a programmer, with little or no knowledge? Aside from the obvious things to look for (smart, gets things done), are there any interview questions and/or tests to determine whether one has the potential to become a programmer? Note: I'm not asking how to tell whether **I** can learn programming, but how to tell someone else is right for it. **UPDATE:** To narrow down the question, I'm asking: a. Is it even possible to determine in advance whether one can learn programming?   b. If so, how exactly can this be determined?   c. What are good tests/interview questions to ask in order to assess someone's potential ability? I'm talking about _specific_ question examples, not general guidance."}
{"_id": "7551", "title": "Why are there so many programming languages? Why are new languages still being made?", "text": "Why are there so many programming languages? And what prompts someone to create a programming languages in spite of the fact that other languages already exist?"}
{"_id": "128839", "title": "Is it ok to call external services or database inside the entity", "text": "I have \"logic engine\" which executes set of user configured steps. These steps are saved in the database as \"Step\" entities. The engine gets the first step and then executes steps until there are no more steps to execute:               public void Execute(details, data, Step firstStep)     {         var step = firstStep;         while (null != step)         {             step = step.Execute(details, data);         }     }      The different types of steps are expressed as derived classes. Each of them must implement the Execute method. The data and details parameters are used by the step to execute some logic. As fas as the logic engine knows it is just executing step after step without any knowledge what those steps do. **The problem:** Some of the steps need to access external services to get data or maybe even the same or different database where the actual step entities are stored. The information is **usually** used by other steps. One could say that some of the steps are just for loading data from external sources/database and other steps are using that data to make decisions. This separation is done so that we can use different data sources (as long as they produce the same kind of output to us) without the need to write any additional code. Is there a better way to handle this type of domain? If I separate the actual Step and the logic (i.e. loading data from external service or from database) then my whole domain model (steps) doesn't have any logic. I would most likely have something like:               var handler = dictionary[step];     handler.Execute(step, details, data);      **Now the logic and any external dependencies are in the handler object but the actual domain object (step) is just a dummy place holder for the information.** That doesn't sound right either."}
{"_id": "128837", "title": "How can I design a model layer without ORM, and when should I use it?", "text": "I'm a PHP developer who started with CodeIgniter. In it, designing models was easy: it seemed like each method defined in models was the equivalent of static methods in a normal, objected-oriented environment. I tried FuelPHP, which has an built-in active record style ORM, and PHP ActiveRecord to use with CodeIgniter. I found creating models was easy with ORM, and taught me best practices when designing models. However, I didn't like that I was tied to a specific ORM implementation, and as I got better with SQL, I thought ORMs were a bit heavy when compared to how quickly I could retrieve stuff with SQL. But when I try to design models from scratch without ORM, I'm lost: The ORM system of one class per table and queries with eager loading makes sense, and seems like worth the performance hit for using ORM. In what situations should I avoid using ORM? How can I design models without using ORM, so that I can use SQL directly?"}
{"_id": "228476", "title": "Things to consider for inviting and restricting users to a beta website", "text": "What are the best practices for designing a workflow for inviting users to a beta website? This is not for any specific programming language. 2 main requirements are   1. An interested user can request for an invite using her email   2. A signed up user can invite others via email (or social media maybe?). My thoughts:   1. In case#1, on submit, generate a reversible hash of the email and the timestamp of submission.    2. Then, send an email with the hash as a query param. When someone clicks on the URL, the controller/router should decrypt the hash and validate the timestamp. If valid, check if the user already exists, else, forward to the sign up page with the email id field pre-populated (or frozen), and allow the user to enter & confirm password and other details.   3. If the timestamp had expired, send another email to the same user with a new hash.   4. Case#2, should be exactly similar, but instead of the interested user, an existing user fills up the invitation form, and the email sent to the interested user will have the email or name of the existing user. Are there any security concerns in this approach? Are there any approaches that would provide a better UX?"}
{"_id": "134388", "title": "How can I communicate the risks of altering vendor software?", "text": "We have a major problem where I work, and it's name is \"customization\". We have an old (10+ years) vendor software system that our IT and accounting departments previously _loved_ to customize. Somewhere along the line this software started getting very buggy. Then, I was hired after the bulk of the customization. Nearly every problem I've found with the system is a direct result of customization; everything we change risks breaking business critical financial software. Yet the accounting department keeps suggesting changes (because we always said yes!) and there seems to be little respect for _how impactful_ changes might be. Some changes cause no problems; forms can be (and are meant to be) customized in the vendor software, we can move around form fields, remove them, ect. But for every harmless customization like that they also suggest changes like stored procedures and triggers to manipulate data in the database for the vendor application. I recently (barely) got them to stop trying to import customers from one vendor program into another as the information was completely incompatible. My problem with how that was resolved is because I found the system didn't work on the user side; the task was more complicated than they thought so they gave up. Regardless of how easy the user-side task is, the operation they wanted shouldn't have been performed. **How can I communicate that changing how this system works has risks, particularly when data validity is at stake?** I'm a new (6 months) hire and it's become the status quo, but it's risking the validity of our financial data and our support contracts--once the vendor's support hears \"X has been customized\" that gives them that much reason not to support us or tell us it's our fault."}
{"_id": "240277", "title": "What is the most efficient method in converting AutoLISP legacy code to C#?", "text": "I am engaged in a project that works mainly in AutoCAD to design and manufacture prefabricated building components such as roofing trusses. One of our goals is to redesign a program that was written in LISP that functions in designing roofing trusses. We are to rewrite the LISP code in C# and incrementally implement it into the current libraries that they have set up. My problem is that I have been tasked with building a rudimentary LISP to C# converter. After some research (as Google results quickly show that such a thing does not readily exist on hand), I have come to the question of which way of converting this legacy code would be more efficient. Would it be better to take chunks of the LISP code to analyze and rewrite in C#, or should I continue on with developing a rudimentary converter for the AutoLISP code?"}
{"_id": "201879", "title": "Use ILmerge for NuGet libraries?", "text": "I'm making an open source C# library (http://github.com/eteeselink/fakethat if you must). Like is fashionable these days, I plan to spread it via NuGet. My library depends on another library (Castle.Core). Before the NuGet days, I'd use a tool such as ILMerge to merge my library and Castle.Core into a single assembly, so that the distribution is simpler. This significantly increases the size of my assembly (from 50kb to 450kb), but it's only a single DLL, which is handy for users. Now that there's NuGet, however, I can simply add Castle.Core as a dependency and NuGet will resolve it for my users. This has a few advantages:   * It is simpler and less error prone for me   * If my users use another library that depends on Castle.Core, we save disk space   * It somehow feels more \"honest\" - all the hard work is done by Castle.Core, all I added is a pretty API.  There's a few disadvantages, too, however:   * If Castle.Core somehow gets removed from NuGet, my library will stop working   * If someone still wants to use my library without NuGet, it's a bigger hassle because multiple DLLs need to be copied around   * If a developer looks through the list of project references, she will see some weird \"Castle.Core\" reference that she never remembers having added. This might be confusing. What would you do?"}
{"_id": "201870", "title": "Using Sql Server Change Data Capture with a frequently changing schema", "text": "We are looking into enabling Sql Server Change Data Capture for a new subsystem we are building. It's not really because we need it, but we are being pushed for having a complete history traceability, and CDC would nicely solve this requirement with minimum effort on our parts. We are following an agile development process, which in this case means that we frequently make changes to the database schema, e.g. adding new columns, moving data to other columns, etc. We did a small test where we created a table, enabled CDC for that table, and then added a new column to the table. Changes to the new column is not registered in the CDC table. Is there a mechanism to update the CDC table to the new schema, and are there any best practices to how you deal with captured data when migrating the database schema?"}
{"_id": "201871", "title": "Unit-Testing functions which have parameters of classes where source code is not accessible", "text": "Relating to this question, I have another question regarding unit testing functions in the utility classes: Assume you have function signatures like this:               public function void doSomething(InternalClass obj, InternalElement element)      where InternalClass and InternalElement are both Classes which source code are not available, because they are hidden in the API. Additionally, doSomething only operates on obj and element. I thought about mocking those classes away but this option is not possible due to the fact that they do not implement an interface at all which I could use for my Mocking classes. However, I need to fill obj with defined data to test doSomething. How can this problem be solved?"}
{"_id": "201876", "title": "Lazy loading if collection would have any entries", "text": "I often see model classes with properties like this:               public IList<Note> Notes { get; set; }     public bool HasNotes { get; set; }      Where the list is initialized lazy, but the boolean property is loaded directly. This has the benefit, that only the count is loaded, when the collection is not needed, but the caveat is that the value for the boolean property is always calculated. This made me think and I came up with a solution like this:               public IList<Note> Notes { get; set; }     public bool HasNotes     {       get       {         if (Notes != null) return Notes.Any();         else // calculate (e.g. sql exists)       }     }      This way the calculation would only happen if the collection is not loaded. Would this be a good approach? Does there already exist different best practices unknown to me?"}
{"_id": "139603", "title": "Google Analytics with multiple environments", "text": "We are planning to use Google Analytics in our organization and I am in charge for setting it up. I was wondering how to deal with multiple environments. We sure do not want to collect data during development and QA (or maybe collect data to a different analytics account), but we want to when the site goes to production (obviously).   * How do you deal with multiple environments and Google Analytics ?   * Do you setup multiple accounts for Google Analytics and use either one depending on the environement ? We're using ASP.NET 2.0, if that matters."}
{"_id": "139601", "title": "Giving variables default values vs. treating accessing an undefined variable as an error", "text": "Having messed around with several scripting languages and being a bit of a linguist, there seems to be a way to divide dynamically typed languages into two groups: languages that give variables a default value, and languages that treat accessing an up-to-now unused variable an error. For instance, consider this code:               print(hi)        * In Lua, it prints `nil`   * In PHP (with a semicolon and `$`), it prints nothing   * In Perl (with a semicolon and `$`), it prints nothing (but using `say` yields an error) However,   * In Python it throws a `NameError`   * In Ruby, it throws a `NameError` (looks like Ruby ripped off Python's name for it)   * In Javascript, it throws a `ReferenceError`   * In Lisp, some type of error occurs that takes me to a debugger (I'm just learning Lisp now so I don't know what to call it) Additionally, these languages behave differently when indexing an hash map, a similar operation, and they again fall into two camps (and when I say 'nothing' I mean that language's representation of nothing):   * Lua returns nothing   * PHP returns nothing   * Ruby returns nothing   * Perl returns nothing   * Lisp returns nothing   * Javascript returns nothing But   * Python throws a `KeyError` So I am wondering what the comparative advantages and disadvantages are for a language to make accessing an undefined variable an error or just return a default value, and also what decisions would lead a language designer to choose one path or the other."}
{"_id": "139606", "title": "What did Ruby do right (or was it Rails)?", "text": "Most programming languages have some design decisions that influence their usage and applicability. For example:   * Python focused on maintainability/readability of code and had indentation be a part of the language itself.    * Java's intention was to be cross platform OOP 'easier' and 'friendlier' than C++   * Objective-C was built as an OO wrapper around C not knowing the future of C++ at the time   * Erlang is designed for highly fault tolerant and concurrent systems   * PHP designed for handling dynamic creation of web pages   * CoffeeScript designed to expose the _good parts_ of Javascript and adding OOP syntactical sugar and hiding the nuances (globals etc.) of JS 'behind the scenes' etc. Each programming language tried to exploit and capitalize on a particular niche IMHO. The above are my perspectives on what were the founding principles of the programming languages and that governed their evolution and widespread adoptability. Of course, there are many more, but the list is only intended as an example However, I've struggled to understand the founding principles on which Ruby is based and its growing popularity. What were the founding principles of Ruby that makes it popular today? Or is it the genius of one man who designed the Rails framework? If the latter was it that Ruby made the designing of Rails better/easier/faster? In what sense? The most commonly cited reason as per its creator is '...wanted a fun weakly typed programming language' - I don't see that as a reason for creating a new programming language altogether! Programming is sheer fun IMHO irrespective of the language (each language has some bad parts, but one either gets around it or lives with it). So what niche did (or does) Ruby exploit that isn't exploited by the current languages? What is the 'strong point' (USP) of Ruby that has led to its widespread adoptability? What did Ruby do that wasn't done before (or was extremely difficult)? I'm not a Ruby programmer, but just a Ruby noob and hence the confusion. **Disclaimer** : This is NOT a flame war and I'm not looking for Ruby vs Programming language type of answers. I am looking for the design decisions on which Ruby is based that has led to widespread adoption. What niche does Ruby satisfy to have become popular or is that purely attributed to Rails?"}
{"_id": "42254", "title": "What's the most effective way to invite a facebook \"friend\" to use an app?", "text": "I'm trying to decide between:   * using the clumsy facebook invite dialogs which are very cumbersome to use (not very configurable) but trigger notifications.   * Using the API to let users invite 2 or 3 friends according to some criteria (say same location). By invite, I mean write on the user friend's wall. My understanding is that this won't trigger a facebook notification, and the target friend may not even see it at all, it all hangs on facebook (unknowable) rules about what shows or not on a user's feed.  Ideally I would like to send emails but facebook api understandably doesn't provide email addresses. Incidentally, quora offers invites for facebook friends which result in emails being sent. Looks like quora does have perhaps privileged access to facebook apis (my guess)"}
{"_id": "233877", "title": "How can I define shared text entities in XHTML files?", "text": "I have an XHTML document that defines several text entities in its internal DTD. I want these entities to be available in other XHTML documents without having to cut and paste the internal DTD everywhere. The answer that seems to keep coming up for other XML files (not specifically XHTML) -- for example, here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13567930/how- to-use-multiple-dtd-files-in-a-single-xul \\-- suggests that the XHTML file I want to write would look something like this:               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>     <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN\"               \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd\" [     <!ENTITY % mydtd SYSTEM \"x.ent\">     %mydtd;     ]>     <html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\" xml:lang=\"en\">     <head>       <title>Example</title>     </head>     <body>     <p>&ldquo;&x; &y;&rdquo;</p>     </body>     </html>      ... where the file x.ent has these contents:               <!ENTITY x \"Hello\">     <!ENTITY y \"world!\">      But no. At any rate, it doesn't show what I expect in either of the browsers I need to work with. I expect to see \"Hello world!\" enclosed in left-hand and right-hand double quotes. But Firefox says &ldquo; is an undefined entity, and Opera shows the text between <p> and </p> verbatim (displaying ampersands instead of quotation marks). I also tried inserting the public DTD within my internal DTD, so:               <!DOCTYPE html [     <!ENTITY % publicdtd PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN\"               \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd\">     %publicdtd;     <!ENTITY % mydtd SYSTEM \"x.dtd\">     %mydtd;     ]>      Then Firefox complained that &x; was an undefined entity. Opera displayed the quotation marks I expected, but still displayed &x; and &y; verbatim; no hello, no world. I thought x.ent didn't need an XML tag, but someone put one in their example of a file of entity definitions, so I tried it. That didn't work either. Is there some reason that this can't work in XHTML? Or is this a defect in both of these browsers? Or is there another way to share the entities among multiple files? Unfortunately, I need something that works in these two browsers, or I might as well not do it at all. But if it's a flaw in the XHTML 1.1 DTD, I can use a different version."}
{"_id": "233876", "title": "Comparing absolute values when determining zero crossing in 2D image", "text": "I am trying to implement an algorithm for finding the zero crossing (check that the signs of all the entries around the entry of interest are not the same) in a two dimensional matrix, as part of implementing the Laplacian of Gaussian edge detection filter for a class, I understand everything up to step 3 of page 25 of this PDF. Why do I have to compare the absolute values of my neighbouring entries? It doesn't seem logical to me. If I have a matrix that looks like this:               [1 1 -2],     [2 -4 -1],     [1 -2 -2]      Why isn't the value of -4 a valid zero crossing?"}
{"_id": "42259", "title": "How should I pronounce the :: and -> in PHP?", "text": "When I read these lines aloud to someone:               $controller->process();          UserManager::getInstance();      How should the `->` and `::` be pronounced? Reading the characters themselves in cumbersome and I don't know of any nicknames for them. Being a developer who is used to C-style syntax, I'd like to say \"dot\", but I'd like something that is easy to say _and_ people can easily understand. It would also be good to know if there are any pronunciations that have become de-facto standards among teams of developers."}
{"_id": "233872", "title": "Should reflection be part of design?", "text": "I'm currently designing a somewhat large program that will involve the simulation of math/physics models and collection of data (I have not implemented any code yet). One of the main problems I'm facing is how to pass data around easily without having to have multiple copies of data (that may potentially be outdated and redundant). Initially I was thinking of having the model objects each implement a function that returns a data structure containing copies of their data, then collecting all those data structures together and passing that around. This would involve a lot of copying however, and the data wouldn't be mapped to the actual object anymore. (The data structure idea I had would involve using a trie so that the data is nice and hierarchical and lookups can be done easily by string) So now I was thinking that instead of designing the program to use a data structure to pass data around, the program would simply pass the model, and then data can be extracted with reflection. This would pretty much avoid any redundancy and the data passed will always be up to date. The problem is that I also need this program to be fast (it has soft realtime constraints), and I'm not sure about the performance impact of reflection. And reflection does seem kinda ugly. But at the same time, people say it's never a good idea to optimize early, so I'm on the fence here. So should I design the program to use reflection, and if so, how liberally? Or should I try to avoid reflection as much as I can during design?"}
{"_id": "163105", "title": "How best to keep bumbling, non-technical managers at bay and still deliver good work?", "text": "This question may be considered subjective (I got a warning) and be closed, but I will risk it, as I need some good advice/experience on this. I read the following at the 'About' page of Fog Creek Software, the company that Joel Spolsky founded and is CEO of: > Back in the year 2000, the founders of Fog Creek, Joel Spolsky and Michael > Pryor, were having trouble finding a place to work where programmers had > decent working conditions and got an opportunity to do great work, without > bumbling, non-technical managers getting in the way. Every high tech company > claimed they wanted great programmers, but they wouldn\u2019t put their money > where their mouth was. > > It started with the physical environment (with dozens of cubicles jammed > into a noisy, dark room, where the salespeople shouting on the phone make it > impossible for developers to concentrate). But it went much deeper than > that. Managers, terrified of change, treated any new idea as a bizarre virus > to be quarantined. Napoleon-complex junior managers insisted that things be > done exactly their way or you\u2019re fired. Corporate Furniture Police writhed > in agony when anyone taped up a movie poster in their cubicle. > Disorganization was so rampant that even if the ideas were good, it would > have been impossible to make a product out of them. Inexperienced managers > practiced hit-and-run management, issuing stern orders on exactly how to do > things without sticking around to see the farcical results of their fiats. > > And worst of all, the MBA-types in charge thought that coding was a support > function, basically a fancy form of typing. A **_blunt truth_** about most of today's big software companies! **Unfortunately** not every developer is as `gutsy` (or `lucky`, may I say?) as Joel Spolsky! So my question is: **How best to work with such managers, keep them at bay and still deliver great work?**"}
{"_id": "76123", "title": "I'm in over my head at my job. What should I do?", "text": "About 8 months ago I was hired as the sole developer at a small company to take on a certain project. Although there are other small projects that come up from time to time, I've been spending about 95% of my time over the last 7 months working on this project. At the rate I'm going, I think it will be at least a year and a half before I'm done with what we all hoped would be accomplished within two or three months. My boss seems to be aware of this; it would be impossible not for him to be based on what he's seen so far. One reason the project is taking so long is because I keep having issues pop up. This project deals with millions of records stored in dozens of different tables. Although I'm as competent as anyone when it comes to databases, I'm by no means a database expert or DBA, so I can't look and a slow query and immediately say, \"Oh, yes, it needs an index on X, Y and Z and we need to shard this table and we need to tweak the max_foo setting in the config.\" It takes me time to figure out what's going on. So far I've solved almost every significant performance issue I've come across, but there are a lot of unique challenges and I can't just become an expert overnight. And the performance issues that haven't been \"worth\" solving---because it would take me three days to make something run just a touch faster---are peppering my day with all these annoying little waits, where I get held up for 30 seconds but it's not like I can go do 30 seconds worth of meaningful coding somewhere else during that time. It's possible that this is the kind of project that really deserves a team of 3 developers and a DBA. It could also be that a better or more experienced programmer could handle this project on his own in a reasonable amount of time but my current skills just aren't equal to the task. In any case I feel like I'm in way over my head. I know I can _eventually_ get the project done but it might take a ridiculous amount of time. It's also quite lonely and discouraging to work on a giant project by yourself with no one else to discuss it with. I'm sure at least some other developers know what I mean. There's no reason for anyone else at the company to care one tiny bit about the ins and outs of the system, and there's no reason for any developer outside of the company to care about the project. The isolation combined with the slow pace is a real motivation killer. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "70196", "title": "What is so difficult about pointers/recursion?", "text": "In the perils of java schools Joel discusses his experience at Penn and the difficulty of \"segmentation faults\". He says > [segfaults are difficult until you] \"take a deep breath and really try to > force your mind to work at two different levels of abstraction > simultaneously.\" Given a list of common causes for segfaults, I don't understand how we have to work at 2 levels of abstraction. For some reason, Joel considers these concepts core to a programmers ability to abstract. I don't want to assume too much. So, what is so difficult about pointers/recursion? Examples would be nice."}
{"_id": "236342", "title": "JSON or XML for parsing for Google Map API", "text": "Can someone help me to find a easy way to parse XML? I have an iOS 7 Application using Google Map API. I tried to learn this on my own. I try to create an application that uses Web Services like Google Map. These web services use HTTP requests to specific URLs, passing URL parameters as arguments to the services. Generally, these services return data in the HTTP request as either JSON or XML for parsing and/or processing by my application. I would appreciate it."}
{"_id": "236343", "title": "RESTful API resource path for resource with complex relationship?", "text": "In my RESTful API, I have Users, Applications, and Tokens. An application has an owner, which is a user. A token is linked to both an application, and a user. A user has both public and private representations:   * `GET /user` \\- Retrieve current authenticated user   * `GET /users/:user` \\- Retrieve given user An application has a public representation:   * `GET /applications/:id` \\- Retrieve given application A token is associate with both a user, and an application. A token is **never** public:   * `GET /user/tokens/:id` \\- Retrieve given user token Similary, applications of a user can be seen like so:   * `GET /user/applications` \\- Retrieve collection of the current authenticated users' applications. * * * What should the resource path be in a situation such as this, for if I wanted to get all of the current users' tokens for a given application? Some things I have considered:   * `GET /user/tokens/application/:appId` \\- I felt this may be poorly represented. How would it be read? Current users' tokens application? It's really: current users' tokens _for_ application.   * `GET /user/applications/:id/tokens` \\- I felt this could imply that if you owned an application you would be able to see the tokens of all users using the application, which is of course not the intended functionality, or representation.   * `GET /applications/:id/tokens` \\- I felt this to be problematic in a manner similar to the above."}
{"_id": "236341", "title": "Encyption for passwords in config file?", "text": "I was wondering, if it makes sense to encrypt passwords for external services stored in my config file with an symmetric encryption algorithm? On the one hand I think, if someone gets access to the config file, he will probably also get access to the code and it will relatively easy to decrypt the passwords... on the other hand I am not comfortable to store the passwords in plain text either. Whats your opinion on this topic? Are there any \"best practices\"?"}
{"_id": "176758", "title": "doing a full permutation search and replace on a string", "text": "I'm writing an app that does something like a custom number (license) plate generator tool where if I ask for the plate \"robin\" it will suggest I try:   * r0bin   * rob1n   * r0b1n Are there any published algorithms which can do this? It has to be able to handle replacing single letters with multiples, e.g. m with rn and vise-versa and not fall over if it replaces an i with an l then comes to check the l and replaces it back to an i. The list of what gets swapped with what is going to be user input but I'm not expecting a huge list, possibly 10 pairs at most. I'll be implementing this in Ruby or Python but I should be able to convert code from any other language."}
{"_id": "173508", "title": "is Oracle ADF Mobile free? and what is it's usage scope?", "text": "I would like to know whether Oracle ADF Mobile is free to use for someone who doesn't have the (expensive) ADF license, and what if I want to talk to a backend (web service), do I need Weblogic? What about usage scope? Is ADF Mobile suitable for games?"}
{"_id": "173506", "title": "Publish a software with copyright and license", "text": "I just read some artical about publishing software and I am personally developing some random metero application at the moment. The artical were suggesting the software should have a publisher website. But what I have to put down in the publisher website to keep my copyright? Is it simply really just \"Designed/Developed @ 2012 By King Chan\" at the bottom of the site and software and is enough? Or do I have to even write a long paragraph of license/agreement said the user who download/use the software cannot copy the icon/functionality etc? (The Apple and Samsung things get me worry about CopyRight now....)"}
{"_id": "176756", "title": "Clustering and custom applications", "text": "So lets say we have a clustered environment setup. We have a cluster SQL Server (I don't know exactly how its done but lets just say its been done for the sake of argument). Now if a website or application is trying to access that database for read/write (say an ASP.NET app or a C# Winforms app) and during that time SQL goes down - it takes a couple of minutes for the clustering failover to take affect to switch to another node. What happens during this time? I think it will time out/unable to connect. BUT is there a way for it to place the request in some pipeline so when the cluster node is back up/switched over it will continue as normal?"}
{"_id": "219438", "title": "Documenting the effect of std::move", "text": "As my team move towards embracing the new features in C++11 I'm struggling with how to make the side-effects of `std::move` self-documenting in the code. The issue is that an object that has been moved to another location should no longer be used after that point. All I can come up with is a comment:               std::string x = Func();     Other(x);   // x is zombied.      Obviously this is error-prone and will not handle the cases where deeper code might unwittingly do a `std::move`. Has anyone else dealt with this issue? I have a feeling that diagnosing the use of zombied objects could be as much a pain as tracking down leaks or heap corruption."}
{"_id": "176751", "title": "If I implement a web-service, how do I respond to POST requests with JSON?", "text": "I have to make a rather complex system for my diploma work. Logically it will consist of the following components:   1. Database   2. Web-service   3. Management with web interface   4. Client iOS application that will consume web-service I decided to implement all the first three components under .NET. Firstly I will create a database depending on the information load - this is clear. But then I need a web-service that will return data in JSON format for iOS clients to consume - that's obvious and not that hard to implement. For this I will use WCF technology. Now I have a question, if I implement the web-service, how will I be able to respond to POST requests with JSON? It probably involves WCF JSON or something related? But I also need some web pages as admin part, so will this web- application be able to consume my centralized web-services as well or I should develop it separately? I just want my web service to act like a set of controllers. There is a related question here but this doesn't quite reflect my question."}
{"_id": "247137", "title": "What are the limits of using OS X when it comes to compiling and running CLI-based tools and scripts that were written with Linux in mind?", "text": "I run little scientific scripts and C tools on OS X from time to time. For the C tools, I just download the source and compile using the provided Makefile. I usually don't have any problems when using the tools. However, knowing that those tools were written on Linux most of the time, I wonder if the differences in architecture (Linux is System V based, OS X is BSD based) will present issues."}
{"_id": "173501", "title": "Is it legal to take the icon/graphic file found online to use in software project?", "text": "For example, like this icon website: http://www.iconspedia.com/ There is a lot icon there, (I just can't draw myself, I am not good at it.....), I wonder if is OK to use them in my software project? Will the type of project make difference? i.e Open Source Application, Commercial Application, Free Download Application?"}
{"_id": "141165", "title": "How to test code and functionality effectively while working as a freelancer?", "text": "I work as an independent developer. I find it difficult to test functionality of a feature and test code. As project goes complex, I loose focus resulting in each feature partially developed. I want to know how to write test cases, manage smooth workflow and handle features effectively and while remain focused?"}
{"_id": "141164", "title": "What is meant by elaboration of a declaration statement?", "text": "Intuitively I understand \"elaboration\" and have a very mild idea. But I want to know exactly what is elaboration of a declaration? I came across this word in this context: > Stack dynamic storage bindings are created for variables when their > declaration statements are elaborated. The quote is from \"Concepts of Programming languages\" Robert Sebesta ."}
{"_id": "141167", "title": "How are Implicit-Heap dynamic Storage Binding and Dynamic type binding similar?", "text": "\"Concepts of Programming languages\" by Robert Sebesta says - > **Implicit Heap-Dynamic Storage Binding:** > > Implicit Heap-Dynamic variables are bound to heap storage only when they are > assigned values.   >  It is similar to dynamic type binding. Can anyone explain the similarity with suitable examples. I understand the meaning of both the phrases, but I am an amateur when it comes to in-depth details."}
{"_id": "184796", "title": "Auto-completion or Suggest", "text": "How does Google or amazon implement the auto-suggestion at their search box. I am looking for the most used algorithm with technology stack. PS: I have searched over the net and found this and this and many many more. But I am more interested in not what they do but how they do it. NoSQL database to store the phases? or is it sorted or hashed according to keyword's? So to rephrase the question: Given the list of different searches ignoring personalization, geographic-location etc, How do they store, manage and suggest it so well."}
{"_id": "45150", "title": "Is programming as a profession in a race to the bottom?", "text": "It seems to me that the programming industry is in a race to the bottom. If we take the practices of:   1. Not taking time to implement best practices   2. Using other's people code as much as possible (custom code as a liability)   3. Using increasingly higher level languages to improve productivity   4. GUI based development \"tools\" that greatly simplify \"programming\" and do not require people to understand the plumbing behind the code These things imply to me that we are in a race to becoming like any other office worker. It is in the employer's interest for things to not require skill (easier to replace), for things to be prebuilt (less project time). My point here is that a) is there a misalignment between skill and the economic interests of the employer? and b) if there is, how do you mitigate it to enforce professional standards?"}
{"_id": "246845", "title": "Is any one of these the right way to write a license for your opensource project forked and modified from an existing one with different authors?", "text": "I've used parts of source from an existing Java library project with what appears to be a 3-clause BSD license. I've made significant changes to the library which makes it possible to use it in a new platform, and also added several new features, and new example projects using the modified library. I want to know if any one of these is the correct way to write a license for the project (no change in type of license) Please read both versions and provide a comparative answer: EITHER:               **<New library name for another platform>**          **Copyright (c) 2014     new author name**          **All rights reserved.**          **This project incorporates code from the project titled     <original library name for different platform>      which has its source code repository at     <git repository link> with the following copyright holders:**          **Copyright (c) 200x-200y     original library author name 1     original library author name 2     original library author name 3**          **All rights reserved.**          Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without     modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are     met:              Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,         this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.              Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright         notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the         documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.              Neither the name of **<author name>, <old library author name 1>,         <old library author name 2>, <old library author name 3>**, nor the names of its         contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from         this software without specific prior written permission.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS     IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED     TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A     PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER     OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,     EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,     PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR     PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF     LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING     NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS     SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.      OR:               **<New library name for another platform>     Copyright (c) 2014     new library author name     All rights reserved.**               Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without     modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are     met:              Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,         this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.              Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright         notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the         documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.              Neither the name of **<new library author name>**, nor the names of its         contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from         this software without specific prior written permission.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS     IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED     TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A     PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER     OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,     EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,     PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR     PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF     LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING     NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS     SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.               **This project incorporates code from the project titled     <original library name for different platform>      which has its source code repository at <git repository link>     and which is covered by the following terms:**          **<Original library name for different platform>     Copyright (c) 200x-200y     original library author name 1     original library author name 2     original library author name 3     All rights reserved.**          Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without     modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are     met:              Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,         this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.              Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright         notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the         documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.              Neither the name of **<original library author name 1>,         <original library author name 2>, <original library author name 3>**,         nor the names of its         contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from         this software without specific prior written permission.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS     IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED     TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A     PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER     OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,     EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,     PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR     PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF     LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING     NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS     SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE."}
{"_id": "252010", "title": "Is Chef an appropriate tool to use for application deployment?", "text": "We use Chef for both config management (making sure a \"DB Node\" has the right version of the right DB on it; that an \"App Server\" has the right version of Java and env vars on it, etc.). as well as deployment (`chef-client --once`) of our apps to the appropriate app server nodes. To me, personally, I feel like deployment belongs in the realm of the CI server. Everything besides the app (the container, the OS, system tools, system config, etc.) belongs to config management, and is therefore best managed by tools like Chef, Puppet, etc. Currently, our CI builds produce an artifact (an executable JAR with an embedded Tomcat container), and then executes the Chef-Client on all the nodes where the JAR needs to be deployed. The Chef-Client is configured to pull the JAR from the CI server. This feels hacky to me, and I'm trying to research a better, more cogent solution. So I ask:   * Does deployment belong to the CI server, or to the CM tool? **Why?**   * If it belongs to the CI server, what mechanisms (SSH, SCP, etc.) should the CI server be using to actually perform the deploy? We use Bamboo but could just as easily be talking about Jenkins, Hudson, etc.   * There is a difference between _deploying_ (placing the app on the node) and _running_. Does running belong to the CI server as well, the CM tool, or some other process? In other words, what should actually _stop_ the \"old\" version of the app, replace it with the \"new\" version, and then _start_ the new version? Is this a candidate for something like Run Deck?"}
{"_id": "123929", "title": "Where should I start on a large concurrent programming assignment?", "text": "My task is to implement a distributed semaphore system (links to description) and an application for it. I will be using Java sockets, and it will use watermark arrays and priority queues (not sure where), and so I am curious about how to tackle this project. Specifically, I'd like to know what is a good first-step goal, or a simple subsystem I can implement. At the moment, I just don't know where to focus my attention. The application is a floating license system - like in a computer lab with only one copy of a software (maybe a CAD program), which allows only one PC at a time to use the software. When one machine is using the software, the access to the software is locked. When that machine is done using it, it gives it up and whomever was first in requesting should be next. Here's the pseudo-code algorithm referenced - http://i.imgur.com/q9kRm.png"}
{"_id": "123920", "title": "Measuring the state of progress in an agile project", "text": "Is there a way to measure the success of an agile project as it relates to a well defined outcome? For example, I've pair coded Conway's game of life with 12 people using TDD, and each time it was different, but the goal of implementing a fully working version of the program was the same everytime. Clearly that's an extreme example, and most projects will not be that small, or well defined in scope, but it's just an attempt to express the concept I'm presenting, and which I'm looking to better understand."}
{"_id": "70445", "title": "How do I cope with programming insomnia?", "text": "I have been working until past 1:00 in the morning almost every night. Then I ride the bus home and I'm just envisioning my computer screen in my head. I get home and sleep at most four hours and then start seeing my screen on the bus the next day when it begins again. After four or five days of this I crash and sleep for 16 hours or more. I get a lot done but it feels unhealthy and I can't help but wonder if I'd actually get more done on a normal schedule. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Am I just a workaholic? I do like programming and this past year I have been learning how to write LOB apps, and I love it."}
{"_id": "135925", "title": "How do I explain a \"Hello World\" program for beginners?", "text": "I am going to give some beginners a presentation about writing first program in Java. This program will be about printing \"hello world\". I'm not sure how can I explain the concepts such as main method (and public and static keywords and the args argument) and class definition. Any ideas how can I explain that so they understand exactly what they mean? I don't have problem to spend 1-2 presentations just in Hello world program but I want them to understand."}
{"_id": "135920", "title": "Adding conditional toggles into methods for running tests", "text": "We've recently started to write tests for our fairly large PHP code base - using PHPUnit we are writing unit and integration test for our models and controllers. What's the concensus in setting a boolean toggle that states whether a class is in TEST_MODE that alters the behaviour of a method? ie: An email helper function - we don't need to send out an email during a test and we're not testing the mail server, just that that method has been called.               if (self::TEST_MODE) {         return true;     }      I'm already going off this idea - I don't think adding extra checks throughout the codebase for testing is an elegant solution. But in this example for instance - what would be a good way to check the email has been sent?"}
{"_id": "12807", "title": "Make a big deal out of == true?", "text": "There is a colleague of mine who constantly writes:               if (someBool == true)      It drives me up the wall! Should I make a big deal of it or just drop it?"}
{"_id": "119968", "title": "Is the use of explicit ' == true' comparison always bad?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Make a big deal out of == true? I've been looking at a lot of code samples recently, and I keep noticing the use of...               if( expression == true )         // do something...      and...               x = ( expression == true ) ? x : y;      I've tended to always use...               x = ( expression ) ? x : y;      and...               if( expression )         // do something...      Where `== true` is implicit (and obvious?) Is this just a habit of mine, and I'm being picky about the explicit use of `== true`, or is it simply bad practice?"}
{"_id": "125376", "title": "Scrum Sprint Optimization", "text": "Looking for a systematic method for estimating and comparing the success factors of sprint configurations based on:   * Team Size   * Sprint Duration   * Number of Stories"}
{"_id": "125375", "title": "Separating a \"wad of stuff\" utility project into individual components with \"optional\" dependencies", "text": "Over the years of using C#/.NET for a bunch of in-house projects, we've had one library grow organically into one huge wad of stuff. It's called \"Util\", and I'm sure many of you have seen one of these beasts in your careers. Many parts of this library are very much standalone, and could be split up into separate projects (which we'd like to open-source). But there is one major problem that needs to be solved before these can be released as separate libraries. Basically, there are lots and lots of cases of what I might call **\"optional dependencies\"** between these libraries. To explain this better, consider some of the modules that are good candidates to become stand-alone libraries. `CommandLineParser` is for parsing command lines. `XmlClassify` is for serializing classes to XML. `PostBuildCheck` performs checks on the compiled assembly and reports a compilation error if they fail. `ConsoleColoredString` is a library for colored string literals. `Lingo` is for translating user interfaces. Each of those libraries can be used completely stand-alone, but **if** they are used together then there are useful extra features to be had. For example, both `CommandLineParser` and `XmlClassify` expose post-build checking functionality, which requires `PostBuildCheck`. Similarly, the `CommandLineParser` allows option documentation to be provided using the colored string literals, requiring `ConsoleColoredString`, and it supports translatable documentation via `Lingo`. So the key distinction is that these are **optional features**. One can use a command line parser with plain, uncolored strings, without translating the documentation or performing any post-build checks. Or one could make the documentation translatable but still uncolored. Or both colored and translatable. Etc. Looking through this \"Util\" library, I see that almost all potentially separable libraries have such optional features that tie them to other libraries. If I were to actually require those libraries as dependencies then this wad of stuff isn't really untangled at all: you'd still basically require all the libraries if you want to use just one. Are there any established approaches to managing such optional dependencies in .NET?"}
{"_id": "170977", "title": "Should I create repositories with special functions like getStaffActive()?", "text": "I have seen lots of articles but none really help me. That is because I want to use dapper as a DAL. Should I create repositories with special functions? Like getStaffActive()? **If I use repositories**   * I can implement with dapper-extension a generic crud   * I have no idea how to handle database connection. Where to open the connection? If I do this at every function then how am I supposed to use transaction scope? Somehow the repositories I work with should share a connection in order transaction to work. But how to do this? Openning connection in BLL? If I use queries and execute them directly then still the same thing."}
{"_id": "208513", "title": "Are Frequent Complicated Merge Conflicts A Sign of Problems?", "text": "On our team, we use Git as our source control. We have several areas of code that are almost independent but have some overlap. Lately we have been discussing workflows and approaches to using source control. One complaint that comes up when I promote using a feature branch workflow is that people often run into complicated merge conflicts that they incorrectly resolve. By complicated, I mean \"not obvious as to how to resolve\". In light of this, other workflows are being more actively used, such a \"pull rebase\"-based workflow. As an advocate of the feature branch approach, I'm not really getting the complaint. Yes, you have to keep your local feature branches up-to-date from master or wherever, but that's about the only real problem I see. I'm thinking that if your merges are always complicated and may have secondary effects, then that's more of a teamwork problem than a Git problem. Am I correct in thinking this? Are complicated merge conflicts a sign of anything good or bad?"}
{"_id": "250762", "title": "Mapping multiple differing taxonomies to each other", "text": "At work we have a varied number of websites selling second-hand products. The bosses have noticed that there's often some overlap between the products sold on some of the websites and would like to syndicate content from one site to one or more of the others. The main problem I'm having is that taxonomy on each site is different, so it's not a straight-forward task to put adverts from Site A into a known taxonomy location in Site B. e.g. three sites sell second-hand bicycles but each site's each taxonomy is different... Site A's taxonomy: For Sale > Sports Equipment > Bicycles Site B's taxonomy: Bicycles > Mountain Bikes Site C's taxonomy: Second-hand > Bicycles > Adults' Bikes > 26\" Wheel The notion is, for example, that all adverts placed on Site A would be pushed to a routing engine which would decide whether or not the advert should be pushed out to other sites, and it struck me this could be a place to do the taxonomy mapping... but I'm stumped as to an elegant way to go about it. I'm also conscious that although these taxonomies are fairly stable, they're not set in stone! Anyone any ideas on how they'd go about approaching this problem?! Cheers, Adam"}
{"_id": "203435", "title": "Implementation details of database synchronisation API", "text": "I want to achieve a database synchronisation between my server database and a client application. The server would run MySQL and the applications may run different database technologies, their implementation isn't important. I have a MySQL database online and web accessible via an API I wrote in PHP (just a detail). My client application ships with a copy of the online data. As time passes my goal is to check for any changes in the online database and make these updates available to the client app via an API call, by sending a date to an API endpoint corresponding to the last date the app was updated, the response would be a JSON filled with all new objects and updated objects, and delete IDs, this makes possible to update the local store appropriately. Essentially I want to do this: http://dbconvert.com/synchronization.php My question is about the implementation details.   1. Would I need to add a column to my database tables with a \"last modified\" date?    2. Since the client app could be very out of date if it's been offline for a long time, does that also mean I shouldn't delete data from the online database but instead have another column called \"delete\" set to `1` and a modified date updated appropriately?   3. Would my SQL query simply check for all data with a modified date superior then the date passed into the API request by the client?  I feel like there's a lot more to it then having a ton of dates everywhere. And also, worry that I will need to persist a lot of old data in order to ensure that old versions of the client app always have the opportunity to delete parts of their data when they are able to sync."}
{"_id": "84308", "title": "Bugs keep reappearing in our GUI software during development. How should this be addressed?", "text": "We have a software product has a lot of usability features, and we're constantly changing it. We have issues with things like persisting scroll position which seem to get fixed, but then are broken again when we release. We have good testers, but we seem to miss things like this because there are just so many features in the application it's hard to perform thorough regression testing. How is this problem best solved? I'd love to have automated UI tests, but those are fragile. I'd love to have our testers test every feature every time we implement a new feature, but that would take forever, and seems impractical. I wanted to gauge how other software shops do this and how they avoid recurring bugs."}
{"_id": "97824", "title": "Improving analysis skills", "text": "I am a software engineer with a couple of years of experience. However I feel my problem solving skills need to be improved. To put in crude terms given facts A and fact B I have difficulty in reaching conclusion X ? Some people seem to have the ability to reach conclusion X given facts A and B and and also remembering to take facts C,D in account. What techniques do you use to improve your problem solving and analysis skills ?"}
{"_id": "203432", "title": "How does Google App Engine remote_api work", "text": "As I understand it, and I may be wrong, but GAE's remote_api allows one application to access another application's datastore. I'll be blunt I don't understand how this works. I have read the article that everyone likes to point to, but I still don't understand how you can link two applications. Can someone explain it to me, perhaps with a small example or just point me to a tutorial that does this?"}
{"_id": "204421", "title": "Forcing logger/appender to output line logged at lower than its current level?", "text": "Consider the following scenario: I am writing a Dispatcher Servlet that delegates processing to various handlers depending on the request URL; the handler objects having previously registered themselves for URL patterns, pretty much as Servlets register themselves in web.xml. When a Handler registers or unregisters itself for a pattern, I want to log a line that includes the action and pattern; and also the current mappings, so that when a subsequent request processing logs a warning that a request was not processed I can go back in the logs and find out the mappings. The question is how to ensure that lines logged by `registerUrlPattern`/`unregisterUrlPattern` actually appear in the log file:   * It seems to me that these methods should log the mapping changes at INFO level, since it is additional INFO being logged. But the logger's level is WARN so that will not work. The logger get many other messages at INFO level so it is not possible to change its level to INFO in production, except for troubleshooting.   * I could log it at WARN level, but qa/usability/customer does not like such warnings to appear.  I can think of the following alternatives:   * Change the Logger's level to INFO when logging these lines, possibly by adding a `forceInfo` method in my Logger (which wraps a standard log4j type logger)   * Use a different Logger for these methods and set its level to INFO   * Log at warning level but change the language to indicate that it is not something to be worried about"}
{"_id": "153812", "title": "Database Driven Web Application, C# Front-End and F# Back-End meaning", "text": "Hi I am an intern working with ASP.NET. My current task is to make a website which will incorporate some jquery viewing features. This project seems to me will be primarily dealing with reading data from a database and making graphs out of them. This will require me to make custom queries from whatever the client is looking at. I think it is going to be what this guy calls an Ad Hoc Query tool My plan for this is to make it a database-driven website. So I can utilize the jquery dynamic viewing capabilities. I stumbled upon the functional programming paradigm and found F#. I read that because of it's functional programming paradigm, it makes it a good language to do asynchronous functions. I read about how you can use this with LINQ to SQL and how easy it is to make queries without actually putting the query language in. I understand the concept of the MVC design pattern. But _**I don't understand what they mean about C# being the front-end and F# being the back-end**_. Can someone clarify this to me? Also what are your thoughts about doing this project in this way? Any comments and thoughts are greatly appreciated. I feel as if learning F# will be a great learning experience for me. My guess is that the F# back-end is like the part where it controls the calls to the database. F# is possibly the model part of the design pattern. And C# is the controller. So HTML, Javascript and Jquery stuff will be my View design pattern. Clarify please?"}
{"_id": "84301", "title": "Logging, do you do it?", "text": "Back on my theme of late: interview questions. Was recently asked to describe a time I'd used logging. My first instinct was to respond with compiler warnings set to full and error- out. What he was interested in was the use of logging as a debugging tool. Unfortunately I couldn't think of one at the time except the one I was assigned because clients where having issues connecting to license servers and support wanted a log. Thinking more clearly now though...I realized that I _used_ to use logging a lot, and still do in little experimental projects. I still use it when developing on Unix systems, but not so much on Windows. Why? Because as much as I despise Visual Studio and think their compiler is maybe one of the worse around (I run into numerous bugs and issues with it every day), they got the debugger right! If I could put Visual Studio's debugger on gcc built executables I absolutely would. Add to this the use of unit testing to bring things into focus, I simply haven't needed logging very much. On the other hand, maybe I'm really missing out. I have occasionally used it, and in fact some things that aren't exactly \"logging\" seem to me very similar. For instance, in debug mode the custom widget I created for this drawing application draws a bunch of extra visual clues representing bounding boxes and hot-spots. I also make very heavy use of assertions and exceptions. I do have a bunch of mock classes that \"log\" but they're never used in the real program. For example, I have a custom drawing context wrapper that allows me to use the same drawing code for various UI API's. I have a version of it that simply spits out all the commands it receives to a string that I then compare to expected results. I use this to unit test drawing code. If I where to use logging as a debugging tool I would want to do so in a consistent, standardized manner. On the other hand I'm at a bit of a loss to think of one. I suppose if I where writing something that surrounded network communication and such I would find it very necessary to have debugging logs and various verbosity outputs. On the other hand I write fairly simple UI programs by comparison. So, do you use logging? What do you use it for? How does logging fit in your coding standards?"}
{"_id": "203438", "title": "Advanced Search Stored procedure", "text": "So I am working on an MVC ASP.NET web application which centers around lots of data and data manipulation. PROBLEM OVERVIEW: We have an advanced search with 25 different filter criteria. I am using a stored procedure for this search. The stored procedure takes in parameters, filter for specific objects, and calculates return data from those objects. It queries large tables 14 millions records on some table, filtering and temp tables helped alleviate some of the bottle necks for those queries. ISSUE: The stored procedure used to take 1 min to run, which creates a timeout returning 0 results to the browser. I rewrote the procedure and got it down to 21 secs so the timeout does not occur. This ONLY occurs this slow the FIRST time the search is run, after that it takes like 5 secs. I am wondering should I take a different approach to this problem, should I worry about this type of performance issue if it does not timeout?"}
{"_id": "124341", "title": "If your algorithm is correct, does it matter how long it took you to write it?", "text": "I recently found out that Facebook had a programming challenge that if completed correctly you automatically get a phone interview. There is a sample challenge that asks you to write an algorithm that can solve a Tower of Hanoi type problem. Given a number of pegs and discs, an initial and final configuration; Your algorithm must determine the fewest steps possible to get to the final configuration and output the steps. This sample challenge gives you a 45 minute time limit but allows you to still test your code to see if it passes once your time limit expires. I did not know of any cute math solution that could solve it, and I didn't want to look for one since I think that would be cheating. So I tried to solve the challenge the best I could on my own. I was able to make an algorithm that worked and passed. However, it took me over 4 hours to make, much longer than the 45 minute requirement. Since it took me so much longer than the allotted time, I have not attempted the actual challenge. This got me wondering though, in reality does it really matter that it took me that long? I mean is this a sign that I will not be able to get a job at a place like this (not just Facebook, but Google, Fog Creek, etc.) and need to lower my aspirations, or does the fact that I actually passed on my first attempt even though it took too long be taken as good?"}
{"_id": "133560", "title": "How to avoid throwing vexing exceptions?", "text": "Reading Eric Lippert's article on exceptions was definitely an eye opener on how I should approach exceptions, both as the producer and as the consumer. However, I'm still struggling to define a guideline regarding how to avoid throwing vexing exceptions. Specifically:   * Suppose you have a Save method that can fail because a) _Somebody else modified the record before you_ , or b) _The value you're trying to create already exists_. These conditions are to be expected and not exceptional, so instead of throwing an exception you decide to create a Try version of your method, TrySave, which returns a boolean indicating if the save succeeded. But if it fails, how will the consumer know what was the problem? Or would it be best to return an enum indicating the result, kind of Ok/RecordAlreadyModified/ValueAlreadyExists? With integer.TryParse this problem doesn't exist, since there's only one reason the method can fail.   * Is the previous example really a vexing situation? Or would throwing an exception in this case be the preferred way? I know that's how it's done in most libraries and frameworks, including the Entity framework.   * How do you decide when to create a Try version of your method vs. providing some way to test beforehand if the method will work or not? I'm currently following these guidelines:      * If there is the chance of a race condition, then create a Try version. This prevents the need for the consumer to catch an exogenous exception. For example, in the Save method described before.      * If the method to test the condition pretty much would do all that the original method does, then create a Try version. For example, integer.TryParse().     * In any other case, create a method to test the condition."}
{"_id": "115574", "title": "If someone says Android message API what it related to? What classes it consists in?", "text": "Recently started Android programming. Developed 3 apps using threads, UI API, telephony API. My quesion is if someone says Android message API what it related to? What classes it consists in? \"Actually I have seen this in an Android job post\" Thanks"}
{"_id": "221000", "title": "Tips for developing a mobile app with a team", "text": "I am currently a high school student, I've been assigned to manage a group in my school to develop a mobile app and the problem is that all of us have no experience in making a project in a team and the greater problem is that we have only till the end of the month to submit the app. Can I have some tips to overcome these problem? Also we decided to do the app in Python with Kivy, we know Python."}
{"_id": "115573", "title": "Why are Coldfusion CFM and CFC files not in clear text?", "text": "I am learning Coldfusion, however when I try to open CFM and CFC files they appear to be unreadable. Some of the data look like java code, but other data looks like this: \"\u00b8 a\u00ba*3\u00b6 H**\u00b4 !\u00bd zY\u00bcS\u00b6\". I thought that this might be compiled with Java, but http://java.decompiler.free.fr does not seem to be able to decompile it."}
{"_id": "236967", "title": "What does \"mockable\" mean?", "text": "I came across this term when looking into PHP's \"traits\" (which are apparently bad, since, among things, they're not mockable), but I can't really find a definition for this \"mockability\". It might be related to polymorphism? There isn't even a Wikipedia entry I could find!"}
{"_id": "236964", "title": "Is there a standard class name suffix for talking to remote services?", "text": "My system is consuming a number of different remote (i.e. web) services to get data (mainly). These services are in different systems within the company (i.e. I have no control over them). I want to write classes that encapsulate the communication to these services (on a one to one basis). For example one class that talks to the CustomerService, one that talks to the AccountService etc. Each of these classes would use a single client class (e.g. HttpClient) to do the actual underlying transport communication. My question is what would you call these types of class that talk to the service? ...clients? consumers? adapters? (Example: CustomerService, the class that would call it is CustomerServiceClient(?)). Additional: If each of my classes talks to the remote service (via a HttpClient class) and creates internal DTOs from remote DTO type data, would you say then it is an Adapter?"}
{"_id": "236960", "title": "Combining two MVC frameworks in a project", "text": "Is it any good to combine two MVC frameworks together in a project? Is it a fairly common approach? I am thinking about using a serverside framework like **CodeIgniter/Laravel** and client side framework **AngularJS** in a predominantly CRUD based web project. I am a bit apprehensive about this idea. I think this approach does not get the best out of both frameworks and can kind of get in way of each other making the application needlessly complicated. Are there some good approaches/practices if one wants to combine these frameworks together?"}
{"_id": "203628", "title": "Is it normal to have a \"mini\" IT department within a department in a company?", "text": "The company where I work has a very decent IT department, which provided _almost_ everything we need from an IT department. Anyway because of the nature of the work in my department (not IT related by all means) sometimes we need some apps to make our work easier, these small apps (if to be made by the IT department) will only be used by our department in small scope and with a lot of changes from time to time so the IT department due to these reasons and also due to the fact that they do not know a lot about the nature of our work they are not interested in developing such an apps to our department. Luckily, there are two guys in this department who know how to program (let's say medium skilled), they start making small apps in their free time (while at work) and keep them updated to help the employees of our department in terms of productivity, things are fine and everyone is happy, also that we get some problems from the IT department from time to time (which I think is normal). The only reason why the IT department is not blocking this is the managers who are supporting these apps because they make their lives easier. You can say the IT department is standing neutral towards these apps as long as they are secure enough. Now is this normal in companies? a \"mini IT\" department (or team) inside a department in a company that does not deal with the main IT department regarding these apps, also these are apps are installed in the company network and generally are assessed by the IT department for security issues. Is this normal? or does it sound weird? Please note: these apps are not something if lost will cause a problem to the company or something like that. They are purely to help in productivity."}
{"_id": "246262", "title": "Who creates the agile definition of done(DoD)?", "text": "I believe that the \"Definition of Done\" is **created** by the **Team** and the \"Acceptance Criteria\" is created by the **Customer**. Am I correct? Can a customer define the Definition of Done to the agile team?"}
{"_id": "1060", "title": "What alternatives are there for cross cutting concerns other than aspect oriented programming?", "text": "Aspect oriented programming promises to deal with cross cutting concerns, but I'm not completely sold on it yet. Have there been any other attempts to deal with this problem?"}
{"_id": "1063", "title": "Programming as a conversation", "text": "I have often wondered if it would be possible to write a programming language that would work as a conversation. I would tell the computer that I want to store coordinates and it would ask what representation I would use. I would then ask to find the shortest path between points and it would ask if I want to use Djkstra's, brute force or use Floyd's? What research has been done towards producing a system like this?"}
{"_id": "1065", "title": "What product is better: ADFSv2, Ping Identity, CS Siteminder?", "text": "I'm comparing different STS's for claims based authentication and am trying when it's appropriate to use each one. It appears that ADFSv2 should be used in all Windows Environments. Ping and Siteminder are more for the Unix side... although a sales rep said Ping was better for Windows, I didn't really understand \"why\" Any comparative information is much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "232045", "title": "How to support different API Versions", "text": "I am writing a Rest API and am wondering how best to handle supporting the different versions. By this I don't mean how to define a URI as V2 or V3, but rather how to structure the code given that it'd need to:   * Support multiple versions at the same time, eg. V1 & V2 & V3 URIs must be live at the same time. I would retire V1 when say V4 comes in in order to constrain the amount supported at any one time.   * Avoid as much code duplication as possible   * Make it easy to add non-breaking changes to a version, without it impacting on other versions  It would seem that there are few approaches that could be taken:   * Use Git to control the versions, with a branch for the different versions (and old versions essentially having no new development work done on it). This would mean no code duplication as only the latest version is in the code, but previous versions would need to work with the new version of the DB until they are retired.    * Duplicate code so that each version is handled in the same application and has a totally separate code path, but this would mean a lot of duplication   * Re-use a lot of code across the versions, but this would make it harder to maintain as changing one version is more likely to impact a previous version Is there any best practice to deal with this problem as all options seem to have their own problems?"}
{"_id": "230933", "title": "C#/C++ GUI development without drag and drop?", "text": "I'm currently programming Java, I have played around with C++ before, but I have never touched GUI as I feel \"cheat-like\" when using its drag and drop system. I feel good and enjoy programming my own GUI like I do in Java, it feels much more rewarding. Is there any way I can program the GUI for C#/C++ like in Java, without the drag and drop system, and if so could someone possibly recommend me a tutorial (A lot of the tutorials are using the drag and drop system)? So far I have tried researching this and really can't find much explaining how I would do it."}
{"_id": "179769", "title": "Simple dependency tree diagram generator", "text": "I have a need to produce a simple dependency tree diagram. The input data would be in the following simple format:               ITEM_NAME   DEPENDENCY     ----------------------------     ITEM_101    ITEM_75     ITEM_102    ITEM_77     ITEM_102    ITEM_61     ITEM_102    ITEM_11      This means that ITEM_101 depends on ITEM_75 and ITEM_102 depends on items ITEM_77, ITEM_61 and ITEM_11. So the diagram would have items ITEM_77, ITEM_61 and ITEM_11 in one vertical level and ITEM_102 would be below it with a line connecting each of the three dependencies to ITEM_102. The same would be for ITEM_101, ITEM_75 would be somewhere above it and there would be a line connecting it. In the real world this tree represents a hierarchy of scheduling jobs. We have a very extensive workload automation hierarchy in `Autosys` and I have heard that its front end utility has something like this tree visual representation, however, for some reason, that utility has been disabled by admins. My business users want to see this hierarchy in an easy-to-consume format. I was hoping that I won't have to program something like this from scratch because it seems like quite a common reporting requirement and the input data is simply formatted. My question is: is there a FOSS tool that takes standardized data input and produces such a hierarchical tree? Thanks"}
{"_id": "232043", "title": "How do I mutate a value in a genetic algorithm using Gaussian distribution?", "text": "I've been reading 'Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms'. This method is stated, but not described, and I can't find anything more specific online. p44/45 of 2nd Ed for reference. \"adding to the current gene value an amount drawn randomly from a Gaussian distribution with mean zero and user-specified standard deviation\" Would be great to get the step by step, from initial to mutated value, including how Gaussian distribution works (or a link to something that could fill that gap). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "175224", "title": "Microkernel architectural pattern and applicability for business applications", "text": "We are in the business of building customizable web applications. We have the core team that provides what we call as the **core _platform_** (provides services like security, billing etc.) on top of which **core _products_** are built. These core products are industry specific solutions like telecom, utility etc. These core products are later used by other teams to build **_customer specific_ solutions** in a particular industry. Until now we have a loose separation between platform and core product. The customer specific solutions are build by customizing 20-40% of the core offering and re-packaging. The core-platform and core products are released together as monolithic apps (ear). I am looking to improvise the current situation so that there is a cleaner separation on these 3. This allows us to have evolve each of these 3 separately etc. I've read through the Mircokernel architecture and kind of felt that I can take apply the principles in my context. But most of my reading about this pattern is always in the context of operating systems or application servers etc. I am wondering if there are any examples on how that pattern was used for architecting business applications. Or you could provide some insight on how to apply that pattern to my problem."}
{"_id": "175221", "title": "Does the windows 8 store only support windows RT?", "text": "I'm in a project for creating a game engine and eventually a game, and we need ideas on how to get our game out into the internet. I had an idea with putting it onto the windows 8 store at a low cost(or free) in order to get the word out, but **does the windows 8 store only support apps programmed in windows RT?** Our game will be built in C++ / OpenGL / GLEW / Actionscript / GLM / etc.. , so we won't be using any windows RT functionality at all."}
{"_id": "252499", "title": "Entity-Attribute-Value table vs single table for storage of posts, events and pages", "text": "I am trying to decide whether to just use individual tables with more fields for storing posts, pages and events or using tables with basic fields plus having EAV tables as well for fields that are optional. Also EAV would allow to add more 'attributes' to each entity without actually changing the database at all (just changing the application code slightly). However, what I am worried about is performance. Would EAV decrease performance in such scenario (storing data like events)? Also, is it worth adding an EAV table like event_meta to the database just in case I will need to add extra fields/attributes to the model later on (when specs change and the system has to be expanded)? Currently I can think of two options:   1. Not using EAV tables and just having single tables for each entity type (posts, pages and events) and having all data (about 15 fields) in the entity table.   2. Use EAV tables to store optional data that is not usually entered by users (this would prevent the entity tables from having many empty fields) but store all required and crucial data in the entity tables. Also, for option two I might actually be able to just have one generic table 'posts' to instead of 3 tables posts, pages and events and just use more attribute-value rows in the EAV table (and have a type field in the posts table). However that would probably reduce the performance even more. Option 1 is much easier to implement. However option 2 might make it easier to extend the entities in the future as database would not have to ever be adjusted. Another important thing to consider is performance. What happens when we have millions of rows in the events_meta. Every time someone would view an event the application would have to perform queries on both tables which would be quite big and I am afraid that would reduce performance. So which option should I use for my situation?"}
{"_id": "190978", "title": "Application Settings, Status and more as Singleton?", "text": "I am relatively new to programming (1yr field experience now) and I think that I am overusing the singleton pattern and I need some input on how to do it in a better way. Right now I am using singletons as an excuse for static global data. I use singleton for Application Status, Application Settings and also a lot for \"Managers\". Basically they are all objects which are needed by different parts of my application. I think this pattern makes it easier then creating one object and inject it into all parts that need this. Any downsides to this approach? Any suggestion regarding this matter?"}
{"_id": "71710", "title": "Using single characters for variable names in loops/exceptions", "text": "I've had a couple of discussions with a co-worker about the use of single letter variable names in certain circumstances inside our codebase, at which we both disagree. He favours more verbose naming convention for these, and I do not. There are three scenarios in my opinion where I use single letter variable names:   * **Loops** \\- `i` `for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { ... }`   * **Lambda expressions in C#** \\- `x/y/z`: `.Where(x => x == 5)`   * **Exceptions** \\- `e`: `try { ... } catch(ExceptionType e) { /* usage of 'e' */ }` These are the **only** scenarios where I would use it, and I obviously use more verbose naming conventions elsewhere. My colleague put forward the following arguments for exceptions and loops:   * `i` \\- it doesn't mean anything.   * `e` \\- it's the most common letter in the English language. If you wanted to search the solution for exceptions, you'd find lots of undesired instances of `e`. I accept these arguments, but have retorts that, if one does not know what `i` means in a for loop, then they probably shouldn't be a programmer. It's a very common term for loops and exceptions, as is `e`. I have also mentioned that, if one wanted, they could search for `catch` in the case of the exception. I realise that this is subjective, but then, one could argue that coding standards are just that - opinions, albeit opinions by academics. I would be happy either way, and will forward the results to him, but would rather that we (our company) continue to use a single coding standard, rather than have two developers with different opinions on what to use."}
{"_id": "178410", "title": "When do I need to use Session Replication?", "text": "I am working on a number of web projects for a firm. Most of the projects are about one or two pages of input and then doing a save to a MySQL database. My system administrators are pushing to try to get session replication working in JBoss, but I don't really see any need for it and all of its overhead. We need load balancing and clustering so if the server does go down we can move the new requests to the backup server, but I am not to big in session replication. This is very low volume projects. In my eyes, what are the odds of a user being in the project as the server goes down on the one or two pages? I am trying to convince the system administrators that session replication is an unnecessary complication in this instance. In my situation, should I be using session replication? If not, what are the best reasons to not use it so I can convince the system administrators?"}
{"_id": "168097", "title": "Is it a bug or a task when something doesn't work, yet, in development process", "text": "We usually have this dilemma in our team. Sometimes, in order to implement a task or a story we find out that the system must be in a specific state. For example, a specific system configuration has to be made beforehand. The task / story can be completed and it is working as specified on it with the proper configuration in place. Note that the configuration is not directly related with the task. Next, we have to create a new ... ??? ... something for the process of generating that configuration file. This is where the problems appear. Some say that it is a _bug_ others say it is a _task_ or an extra _feature_. So, where is the limit between bugs and tasks in the development phase? Should we even consider something a bug if all the tasks are working as stated in their definitions? Can a thing be considered a bug because one compares it to the current (unstable) state of the system? _Short example_ :   * A feature requires configuring a communication service for a specific operation.   * In the process of the implementation the team discovers that the service requires the hostnames of the pears to be resolvable to an IP address.   * The team adds the hostnames to the DNS server (or hosts files) and continues implementing the required feature.   * After the initial feature is working, a question is risen. Should the sysadmin configure the DNS or hosts file or should our application do it automatically?      * An automatic solution is possible. So a decision is made to implement it.   * ... here start the discussions ... is this a bug or an extra feature / task? PS: I know that I mixed feature / task / story in the question. It is intentional. I am interested in separating bugs from the rest. Doesn't matter what _the rest_ means in a particular case."}
{"_id": "200840", "title": "How to store data for Windows Store apps?", "text": "I have a application which requires me to save data to a database not located on the users computer. Which approach is the best to save and access data for this scenario? Normally I would use Entity Framework and MS Sql Server but this seems not to a options for me with windows store apps."}
{"_id": "87147", "title": "Cost-Effective, Cross-Platform Mobile Hardware/Cell Service", "text": "What is the recommended acquisition strategy for having multi-platform, service-connected devices for mobile developers? Is it necessary to have separate phone numbers and service plans for each platform? My guess is that having a Droid, iPhone and Windows 7 phones all on the same plan and same phone number is out."}
{"_id": "17868", "title": "How do I get a feeling for visual design as a programmer?", "text": "Over the last years of web programming, I've noticed how bad I am at designing things. I have substantial knowledge of HTML and CSS, I can make a website look like I want it to, I have some pretty intense knowledge about usability. My only problem is: I can't design a web-site or even an element of it to look good and solid. Either the colors are wrong or the spacing, I can't pinpoint it most of the time, but something is off every time. How could I get a better feeling for design matters like compositing or coloring? Could you recommend any books, articles or maybe trainings?"}
{"_id": "87140", "title": "Planning development when academic research is involved", "text": "Dear fellow programmers, how do you do \"software planning\" when academic research is involved? And, on a side note, how do you convince your boss that writing software is **not** like building a house and it's more like writing a novel? The gory details are below. I am in charge of a small dev team working in a research lab. We started developing a software with the purpose of going public one day (i.e. sell and make money off that). Such software depends on, amongst other things, at least two independent research lines: that is, there are at least two Ph.D. candidates that will, hopefully, one day come out with a working implementation of what we need. The main software depends also on other, more concrete resources that we as developers can take care of: graphics rendering, soft bodies deformation, etc. My boss asked me to write the specifications, requirements AND a bloody GANTT chart of the entire project. Faced with the fact that I don't have a clue about the research part, and that such research is fundamental for the software, he said \"make assumptions.\" For the clarity of the argument, he is a professor whose Ph.D. students should come up with the research we need. And he comes from a strictly engineering background: plan everything first, write down specifications and only then write down code that \"it's the last part\". What I am doing now:   1. I broke down the product in features; each 'feature' is, _de facto_ , a separate product;   2. Each feature is built on top of the previous one;   3. Once a feature (A) has a working prototype the team can start working on the next feature (B), while QA for is being done for A (if money allows, more people can be brought in, etc.);   4. Features that depend on research will come last: by then, hopefully, the research part will be completed ( _when_ is still a big question) ; Also, I set the team to use SCRUM for the development of 'version 1.0', due in a few months. This deadline could be set based on reasonable assumptions: we listed all required features, we counted our availability, and we gave a reasonable estimate. So my questions, again, are:   * How do I make my boss happy while at the same time get something out the door?    * How do I write _specifications_ for something we -the developers- have no clue whether it's possible to do or not? (We still haven't decided which libraries to use for some tasks; we'll do so when we'll need to)   * How do I get the _requirements_ for that, given that there are yet no clients nor investors, just lots of interests and promises?    * How do I get peace in the world? I am sure at least one of my questions will be answered :) ps: I am writing this anonymously since a potential investor might backfire if this is discovered. Hope you'll understand. However I must say I do not like this mentality of 'hiding the truth': this program will likely benefit many, and not being able to talk openly about this (with my name and my reputation attached) feels like censorship. But alas, I care more about your suggestions now."}
{"_id": "254608", "title": "Best solution for a large database transaction", "text": "I have a COBOL CICS process running on a mainframe legacy system. The process does over 2K DMLs in a highly concurrent DB environment. After each CRUD operation, the result is used to make further computations followed by CRUD operations again. This entire process runs under a transaction block such that any failure before its successful completion results in the entire set of DB changes to be rolled back, only on success of each and every step in the process till the end, there is a commit. The COBOL program is written in a manner that it doesn't consume more than 20 odd seconds for its completion or failure lest the other process starve for DB resource(locks, stalls etc.) due to the enormity of this transaction. Now we are commissioned to expose this legacy application as a Java SOAP web service. The three approaches I have are:   1. The Service layer of my Java code sends a message to the queue with input parameters, the already existing COBOL program picks the message from the queue and does the transaction. Java layer pings the queue asynchronously and when it has got a result from the COBOL process, it sends it back to the Controller.   2. Write a Stored Procedure which mimics the job done by the COBOL process including the DB transaction and call that SP from Java Service layer.   3. Write the Business logic inside Java Service/DAO layer and the transactions inside a Spring transaction block. Business doesn't want the #1 approach as it means dependency on the legacy COBOL program. I have two doubts here :   1. I have an understanding that SPs are better from performance point of view. But will the SP be able to handle 2K or more odd DMLs within a transaction block and do the job in time at least equivalent to the time which COBOL process takes ? If yes, then will it be efficient enough in locking-releasing DB resources as the DB is highly concurrent and I don't want other processes to starve due to it.   2. I have never done a DB transaction of this magnitude from the Java code and I doubt whether Spring transaction block can hold 2K DMLs in a single block effectively. Even if it does I'm sure that it wouldn't match the speed of COBOL or SPs, hence it may acquire locks on records etc. and starve other processes which needs to access the same for long time.  The transactions are not on a particular DB table, it is distributed over 20 odd different tables containing critical financial data. I was thinking of breaking the large number of CRUD operations in chunks of Spring transaction blocks, but then it would have been a humongous task to code the entire roll back logic in Java, but it's alright, my main concern is locking other processes from DB access in the meanwhile. I am a Java developer with meager knowledge of RDBMS and practically no knowledge of COBOL. I would be grateful if someone can help me point to the right direction so that I can come out with a solution myself."}
{"_id": "122347", "title": "Should I update blog posts or rewrite them as technology (and me) changes?", "text": "I started a programming blog earlier this year, and since I started it some things have changed. Some changes are due to technology changing, some changes are due to my code libraries improving, and some (ok, probably most) are due to me changing as I learn more. I want to go back and completely re-write certain blog posts. Is it better to rewrite posts to remove old information and update them with new stuff, or to create entirely new posts and possibly take down old ones? I'm not talking about small changes to the code, or an extra few sentences, but complete rewrites with new code, new information, etc. Some things to consider are comments on the post, subscribers who receive updates when new posts are created, and user bookmarks."}
{"_id": "129493", "title": "Making an HTML5 application for both Android and iOS", "text": "I was checking out a video tutorial on HTML5 using Dreamweaver to do Android and iOS apps (using Phonegap) and it clearly mentioned that you need a Mac to debug and simulate for iPhone, iPod, etc. Is there any way around this? I really want to develop apps for iOS and android (more iOS) using HTML5 but what I need to know is if you develop an app with HTML5 and debug it in an android environment, is it still portable to iOS? My apologies if this question seems a bit ignorant but none of my google searches return results that answered my question. Maybe I'm not even asking the right question."}
{"_id": "83654", "title": "What advantages do simple text editors like TextMate have over Eclipse for Java development?", "text": "I'm torn which IDE to use. The power of eclipse or the simplicity of TextMate. I'm wondering which one has specific advantages over the other, productivity wise."}
{"_id": "129496", "title": "Is there a canonical book on simulation programming?", "text": "I've taken an interest in writing life-based simulations in C. I've been trying to find resources online and books, but haven't found anything. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on simulation programming? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "126171", "title": "How to handle errors back in an API environment", "text": "We're discussing the best way to handle errors in calls to a method. We have a credit model where we allow users to deduct credits for certain actions. We'd like to make a call to:               User.DeductCredits(10);      Then the Deduct method will check things like   1. Does the user exist?   2. Is the user active?   3. Does the user have at least 10 credits? If not, this result should fail. We're currently writing this just as a class library, but trying to keep it open to convert to a web service in the future. The options we've discussed so far are:   1. Throw an exception when an error occurs.   2. Create a new Result object that would have T has the type of data expected back, and wrapping that with a status code and message. We didn't like option #1, because then code to call deduct credits would look something like:               try     {        user.DeductCredits(10);     }     catch(InvalidUserException e)     {     }     catch(InactiveUserException e)     {     }     catch(CreditBalanceException e)     {     }      Additionally, if we turn this in to a service, we can't force exceptions on the user. The main reason we didn't like option #2 was that it seemed to be returning more data than what we need. For example:                 var address = user.GetMailAddress();      Now address has the status code and message, as well as a data property, or value property. So to get the city, you'd have code like:               if(!address.HasError)        state = address.Data.State;      as opposed to:               state = address.State;      So is there a best practice for this type of situation? Is one option really any better than the other?"}
{"_id": "118460", "title": "Where can I find localized information about our industry?", "text": "Questions like 'What sort of jobs are available in Houston', or 'What do developers get paid in London' are notoriously off-topic here. My question is: where do those questions belong? Is there a suitable place online that I can pose these sort of questions, or do some research into how the market looks on the other side of the world? With a medium-term plan to move internationally, it would be helpful to know what the potential job market might look like in my destination. Different technologies and vendor products are more popular in different regions, the relative pay rates vary dramatically, and skills required for different industries (technology, communications, manufacturing, marketing) are very diverse. This sort of information is very valuable. Where can I find it?"}
{"_id": "89439", "title": "Standard text samples", "text": "I need to use a long text as sample. Afterwards with an algorithm I will take a substring of it whose length is fixed (passed as parameter), but the startIndex is random, therefore each time it should take a different portion of that text. However I would take, if possible, a standard text as sample for my application. Looking in internet it is almost always used the Lorem Ipsum text. Can this be considered \"standard\" or is there a rela standard one? Thanks"}
{"_id": "151308", "title": "Given number which equals the sum of some of the 10 numbers. How to determine that given number contains one of 10 numbers?", "text": "I have:   * ten numbers: +1, +2, +4, +8, +16, +32, +64, +128, +256, +512.   * flag == sum of some of this ten numbers. How to determine that sum contains 2 or 32?"}
{"_id": "202571", "title": "SOLID Principles and code structure", "text": "At a recent job interview, I couldn't answer a question about SOLID \\-- beyond providing the basic meaning of the various principles. It really bugs me. I have done a couple of days worth of digging around and have yet to come up with a satisfactory summary. The interview question was: > If you were to look at a .Net project that I told you strictly followed > SOLID principles, what would you expect to see in terms of the project and > code structure? I floundered around a bit, didn't really answer the question, and then bombed out. How could I have better handled this question?"}
{"_id": "245763", "title": "Is there a benefit in compiling your code as you go along?", "text": "I recently had a job interview in which they gave me an hour to write some real code. It wasn't a huge amount, probably less than 100 lines. After about 45 minutes, I compiled, ran it, and got it to work. I may have spent 5-10 minutes working out compile errors and a couple minor bugs, but overall it was very smooth. (Incidentally, I did get an offer from them.) However, what puzzled me was that after I handed over the completed code, the interviewer told me that the only thing I did wrong was \"not compiling as I go along\". I asked him what the difference is, and he said \"what would you have done if you finished the code and it didn't compile in time\". In my understanding that's an invalid argument, because \"getting code to compile\" for a given length of code generally involves fixing a constant number of compile errors and takes a fairly constant amount of time, which should be the same whether you do it after you finish writing the code, or if you interleave it with your coding time. If anything, interrupting your coding to search for missing semicolons would probably be detrimental to your efficiency. Except in extreme circumstances when I'm experimenting with obscurities around edge-cases on things like virtual functions in derived classes, etc. it seems reasonable to expect that code written by a an experienced developer will compile, minus the occasional typing error, and even if it doesn't, it's not as if I would have to rewrite a portion of the code in order to fix the compile error. In another similar incident, I was given an incomplete codebase in an interview, and asked to finish it and make necessary modifications to get it running. I started by reading through the existing code, and then after a few minutes (even before I had finished looking at the code), the interviewer told me that's enough. When I asked him what he would have done (i.e. \"what did I do wrong\"), he told me that he would have started by immediately getting the code to compile. Why is that even relevant? In my opinion and in my experience, whether or not a piece of code compiles is essentially random, involving things like whether or not semicolons are missing, and has little to do with the correctness of the underlying program. (To me, focusing on compiling is like running an article through a spell-check without proofreading to check the grammar.) If you give me a piece of incomplete code, the first thing I do will be to read it. I won't even try to compile it until I know what the code is doing and I know the algorithm is correct. Anyway, these have been just a couple recent incidents, but in general I've heard many developers talk about compiling their code as they go along, and yet nobody has been able to tell me the benefit of doing so. I understand the benefits of _testing_ your code as you go along, but why compiling? So my question is this: Is there something I missed? Is there actually a benefit to compiling as you go along? Or is this some sort of myth propagated by the software community that you must compile your code frequently?"}
{"_id": "245767", "title": "Is it an antipattern, modifying an incoming parameter?", "text": "I am programming in Java, and I always make converters sort of like this:               public OtherObject MyObject2OtherObject(MyObject mo){         ... Do the conversion         return otherObject;     }      At the new workplace the pattern is:               public void MyObject2OtherObject(MyObject mo, OtherObject oo){         ... Do the conversion     }      For me it is a little bit smelly, as I got used to not to change the incoming parameters. Is this incoming parameter alteration an antipattern or is it OK? Does it have some serious drawbacks?"}
{"_id": "214937", "title": "design in agile process", "text": "Recently I had an interview with dev team in a company. The team uses agile + TDD. The code exercise implements a video rental store which generates statement to calc total rental fee for each type of video (new release, children, etc) for a customer. The existing code use object like:   * Statement to generate statement and calc fee where big switch statement sits to use enum to determine how to calc rental fee    * customer holds a list of rentals    * movie base class and derived class for each type of movie (NEW, CHILDREN, ACTION, etc)  The code originally doesn't compile as the owner was assumed to be hit by a bus. So here is what I did:   * outlined the improvement over object model to have better responsibility for each class.    * use strategy pattern to replace switch statement and weave them in config  But the team says it's waste of time because there is no requirement for it and UAT test suite works and is the only guideline goes into architecture decision. The underlying story is just to get pricing feature out and not saying anything about how to do it. So the discussion is focused on why should time be spent on refactor the switch statement. In my understanding, agile methodology doesn't mean zero design upfront and such code smell should be avoided at the beginning. Also any unit/UAT test suite won't detect such code smell, otherwise sonar, findbugs won't exist. Here I want to ask:   1. is there such a thing called agile design in the agile methodology? Just like agile documentation.    2. how to define agile design upfront? how to know enough is enough? In my understanding, ballpark architecture and data contract among components should be defined before/when starting project, not the details. Am I right?    3. anyone can explain what the team is really looking for in this kind of setup? is it design aspect or agile aspect?    4. how to implement minimum viable product concept in the agile process in the real world project? Is it must that you feel embarrassed to be MVP?"}
{"_id": "214938", "title": "How important is to avoid name collisions between libraries belonging to different domains?", "text": "I have written a small open source Java library for facilitating conversions between different types of objects (in the style of Google's gson, but quite more general). It seems to me that a nice natural name for my library is _JConverter_ , after browsing in the web to see if another library with the same name already exists, I found a library with the same name for Joomla. My concrete question is: How important is to avoid naming collisions when creating an open source library if an existing library with the chosen name already exists in a complete different domain ? (in my concrete case, these are libraries even implemented for different languages)."}
{"_id": "245769", "title": "Best way of storing a small number of user credentials", "text": "I'm working on a messaging application, based on a server/client architecture. Now I am thinking about the way how to store the user credentials. It's not a huge number, just about 20 entries with their User-IDs, Usernames and hashed passwords. Storing it with a SQL Server in my opinion is overkill. Is it better to store it in sort of a text file or in a SQLite database file? These methods would keep the server portable and the installation simple. And is password hashing enough to keep the passwords secret? What is the best way to handle this?"}
{"_id": "147860", "title": "OOP :What are some of the situations in which class based design is better than interface based one?", "text": "I was reading JDOM's website. > Why is the JDOM API defined in terms of concrete classes rather than > interfaces? > > Jason Hunter summarizes the arguments against an interface-based API for > JDOM: > > With interfaces everything becomes a factory, elements have to be 'imported' > into new documents instead of just added, features like long-term > serialization cannot be guaranteed, and the list goes on. > > We started with interfaces actually. During our pre-release review to some > peers we received the feedback we should try concrete classes. We did, and > the design was much better for it. I am a beginner designer. All the advice I have heard about till now is **_advising against_** using designing with concrete classes. May be using concrete classes are appropriate in certain places. Are there any common class problems for which using concrete classes in design is okay?"}
{"_id": "199053", "title": "How to outsource the UI of a dynamic Web application?", "text": "I have a web application developed using Spring and Hibernate, which uses a REST API and Javascript to display and update content. The project is nearly completed, but I want to enhance the look and feel. This will include better graphics and some extra behaviour. I want to outsource this task to a freelancer over the Internet. I don't have experience with outsourcing and don't know how to incorporate an outsider to the project. I mean I'd like to avoid other people to access the back-end source if I can. The only code that i want to be changed runs on the client side. Is this doable? I thought I can just give the URL to the designer and require them to use \"Augmented Browsing\" tools, like Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey to work on the UI. Is this something Web designers are accustomed to or willing to do? Or are there any better options to accomplish this? **EDIT** : A basic requirement: There are items on a list which are generated on-the-fly according to JSON data, using handlebars templates. I want these items to be removable, like when the mouse is over these items a button should appear. I also want those items to look better. This will require some Javascript, HTML and CSS integrated into existing code."}
{"_id": "226139", "title": "In objective C, where does the inheritance chain end?", "text": "In objective C, classes are objects, but what object owns the class objects? I am trying to get as detailed an understanding of iOS programming as I can, and this question popped into my head, so I decided I should know the answer."}
{"_id": "212522", "title": "How to indicate that a class might implement an interface?", "text": "Say I have a class User and an interface Administrator. Some users are administrator and can thus implement the interface. Most aren't, however, so it's false to say that \"User implements Administrator\". How can I represent that in a class diagram? Should I use the classic implementation arrow, or is there an existing stereotype for a class that **can** implement an interface?"}
{"_id": "82010", "title": "Schema/Code for respecting different schedules", "text": "We accept leads from lead providers. We only allow certain providers to post leads to us during certain days/times. Currently, we have 3 schedules, but we might add 1 or n more in the future:   1. Sunday @ 8AM - Friday @ 3PM -- all hours in between.   2. Monday - Friday from 8AM - 5 PM.   3. 24 hours a day, every day. In addition, we want to be able to one-off certain hours -- so, we would have told some of the lead providers, \"I know you normally post 8 AM - 5 PM M-F, but Monday is a holiday, so don't post then.\" The problem is that some lead providers are not setup to handle a schedule (or just ignore it if they want to sell us more leads). So, I now have to add this check into our system at the point in which we take in leads, and first check to see if that lead provider (they identify themselves in the XML they send) is allowed to post leads at this particular time. I honestly don't know where to begin. Has anyone done this before? How did you handle it, and what is good/bad about your method?"}
{"_id": "193258", "title": "Architectural questions regarding, MV** frameworks, NoSQL data models, and gradual refactoring", "text": "I have a web app I would like to gradually refactor by adding structure to it. I have narrowed down the options to Backbone (with some plugins), Ember.js and AngularJS My goal is to refactor that app, which has the usual jQuery spaghetti and _gradually_ add some structure to it. **Requirements**   * not a \"all or nothing\" framework, e.g. allow gradually moving code from \"before\" to \"after\" without rewriting the app from scratch (winner - Backbone?)   * something that has a future, people seem excited about and has a big company behind it (Angular takes this bullet)   * Let me sometimes do things \"my way\" and not force a paradigm (Backbone a clear winner here)   * Something that will really boost my productivity and remove the need for boilerplate code (Angular + Ember)   * Something that is good not just with the obvious things, but also the complex things, e.g. animation transitions, nested models, handling modal dialog views, drag and drop support, widget system etc One option is to become an advanced developer in all 3 and then, the other is to ask people who did something similar I know that with Backbone I can do everything I want, but I want to know if I'm not to \"careful\" and wonder if I'm not missing out by not taking the risk of using AngularJS / Ember.js **Questions** So my specific, answerable, constructive (as much as I could) questions are:   1. Is Angular / Ember able to support drag and drop without bending over backward?   2. Can either of these frameworks support animation transitions well?   3. Which of these 2 frameworks is easier to \"add in\" gradually and not to fully rewrite things \"their way\"   4. Which of these has better support for NoSQL /document based models as in MongoDB like documents (e.g. a JSON doc rather than a relational model)   5. Which of these has better built in support for complex models (similar to #4) Both Ember Data, and Backbone-relational seem to come from a relational database paradigm, and I wonder if there is anything that can build a model from an arbitrary multilevel / nested tree like structure without having to define a NoSQL model in a relational like data structure (e.g. hasMany, belongsTo instead of just a JSON like document). Also I don't want to stop using JqueryUI because it's not 100% done the \"Ember way\" or the \"Angular way\", is Backbone really my best option? Are the nice bells and whistles that come with Angular / Ember are in a trade-off with flexibility? Is it a good architectural choice to use either Angular or Ember when refactoring an existing jQuery callback pasta in a gradual, iterative approach?"}
{"_id": "206113", "title": "Make PHP code run on .net?", "text": "I can write PHP application in linux platform.   However, I getting a request to explore the idea to run PHP application into .NET. I have zero .NET knowledge.   So wondering, is it possible? Is it advisable? Implication ? Or maybe I should just install a .NET to playaround first? In short, zero code changes, except setup the PHP environment in .net. Also, wondering, will this benefits from .net security? The reason why I explore this idea is because Singapore government website must run on .NET (and I intend to save few bucks by not hiring dot net developers). I think the idea of application must run on .NET is absurd (a joke to me), just showing one of the \"world-class\" standard in Singapore :)"}
{"_id": "110675", "title": "Overcoming general lack of UI design skill in developers", "text": "I have been told, and have found for myself, that lots of developers are not good at UI design (I don't know how true is this) but _it is true about me at least_. In web development good code development skills are not enough without great skills in UI design to go with them. So for me, and many developers like me, that only have half of the thing (good development skills) how should we complete our other half other than paying for a designer? Is using Open Source web templates with little modifications the best solution for this, or are there other options?"}
{"_id": "231704", "title": "What is the best way to keep both html document structure and php control structure strongly visible in complex view file", "text": "I create a lot of views in my work as part of the common MVC pattern applied in web frameworks like Code Igniter and Cake. I also adhere to the following maxim as best I can: fat models and library objects doing the logic; skinny controllers responding to user actions server side; and views presenting request results and providing UI. This leads me to a situation where a lot of views are just html, variable echos and for loops, with the accompanying mark up for css and javascript application. Nice and clear. However, in some cases views need to be more complex. We might need to do different things based on the state of each looped item for example and sometimes this gets quite complex. The problem with this is that the identing applied to both html and php soon gets out of sync. A very simple example:               <ul>        <li> ... </li>        <li> ... </li>        <?foreach>            <li> ... </li>        <?endforeach>     </ul>      We now have li elements that are at the same depth in the output document but not at the same level in the code. If we start using other control structures this can get worse:               <ul>        <li> ... </li>        <li> ... </li>        <?foreach>            <li> ... </li>            <?if>                <li> ... </li>            <?endif>        <?endforeach>     </ul>      And so on ... Is there a well used pattern I can follow that minimises this problem even with complex views ?"}
{"_id": "82979", "title": "How are mock objects commonly misused?", "text": "I read an article recently which said that mock objects are often misunderstood and misused. Are there any clear mocking anti-patterns which I can look out for?"}
{"_id": "110678", "title": "What are the options when Sql generated by ORM needs tuning?", "text": "I am starting working on a web project using django. While researching whether to use Sqlalchemy or raw sql when django orm is not sufficient which is also a question I asked here Raw Sql vs SqlAlchemy when Django ORM is not enough One question bugged me. As the load on the website increases and we find out that sql queries ran by ORM needs tuning. But we have no control on how does an ORM executes queries. In that case we have to use raw sql queries because they give us the best control. But if we start using raw sql queries, all the benefits of using an ORM in first place are gone. We are stuck with both sql and orm code which will surely mess up the reading and maintainability of the code. It feels to me that we are opting for easy code in lieu of many problems later. No doubt our initial code will be fast and easy maintainable but this can cause later problems. I would like to know thoughts of others on it. I am not starting a question comparing orms and sql but I would like to know what are the options when we have created web app using ORM and comes the situation when its clear that ORM is not supporting our cause?"}
{"_id": "232258", "title": "Set distances algorithm question", "text": "I have multiple sets containing integers. An integer maybe present in one set or multiple sets. I would like to find/match the sets with the most common integers. Example s1 {1, 2, 3, 4} s2 {1, 3, 4, 5} s3 {6, 7, 8, 9} s4 {1, 6, 8, 10} In this case, I would like to \"efficiently\" group s1+s2 as they have the most overlapping elements (3) followed by s3+s4(2) s1+s4(1). You can do this the brute force way (match all possibilities - then sort) Looking for an efficient way to do this."}
{"_id": "117024", "title": "Why was the C syntax for arrays, pointers, and functions designed this way?", "text": "After having seen (and asked!) so many questions similar to > What does `int (*f)(int (*a)[5])` mean in C? and even seeing that they'd made a program to help people understand the C syntax, I can't help but wonder: Why was the syntax of C designed this way? For example, if I were designing pointers, I would translate \"a pointer to a 10-element array of pointers\" into               int*[10]* p;      and _not_               int* (*p)[10];      which I feel most people would agree is much less straightforward. So I'm wondering, why the, uh, unintuitive syntax? Was there a specific problem the syntax solves (perhaps an ambiguity?) that I'm unaware of?"}
{"_id": "234485", "title": "Best practice for storing information from a php script for future use", "text": "My employer uses forms to help people search for products. The product lists can change from time to time and the forms need to be updated again. The product information can be accessed through a third party API which I started tinkering with, I've recently built a script that retrieves the information with PHP and creates and populates a form dynamically with Javascript. **So far so good, but...** There are limitations to the API, mainly it can only be accessed a certain number of times per hour, it is probably more than my form/script would use but I want to create a script that is minimally intrusive. **My main question is...** **What is the best practice for accessing the information once and storing it long enough to let the API reset?** I was wondering about creating a cookie but there is the possibility of users that have them disabled. _(Also, I am doing this as a personal project but I like the people I work for and I think this would help them out.)_ Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "117029", "title": "Should the name of my program be a verb (\"frobnicate\") or a noun (\"frobnicator\")?", "text": "If I have a program that takes some input data, frobnicates the data, and outputs the result, should the name of the program be the verb, \"frobincate\", or the noun, \"frobnicator\"? Here's a hypothetical invocation with the verb form:               cat data.txt | frobnicate > frobnicated.txt      and here is the same invocation with the noun form:               cat data.txt | frobnicator > frobnicated.txt      (Obviously, \"frobnicate\" is an imaginary verb used as an example here.)"}
{"_id": "88746", "title": "Does a prose to code compiler exist?", "text": "I have seen some horrible code in my time including people virtually duplicating the code in comments               // add 4 to x     x+=4;          // for each i in 0 to 9      for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {         // multiply x by i         x *= i;     }      Taking this concept further, I'm curious whether prose to code compilers exist.   * Is there a valid use case for English prose to code?   * Do compilers exist that do this? The distinction between this and auto generated code, is that auto generated code is generally always a subset of a project. Can we have complete projects auto generated from english prose? I realise that this might overlap with the concept of declarative languages."}
{"_id": "88745", "title": "Does over-reliance on tools imply that you are lazy?", "text": "I started programming in C++ at uni and loved it. In the next term we changed to VB6 and I hated it. I could not tell what was going on, you drag a button to a form and the ide writes the code for you. While I hated the way VB functioned I cannot argue that it was faster and easier than doing the same thing in C++ so i can see why it is a popular language. Now I am not calling VB developers lazy in just saying it easier than C++ and I have noticed that a lot of newer languages are following this trend such a C#. This leads me to think that as more business want quick results more people will program like this and sooner or later there will be no such thing as what we call programming now. Future programmers will tell the computer what they want and the compiler will write the program for them like in star trek. Is this just an under informed opinion of a junior programmer or are programmers getting lazier and less competent in general? EDIT: A lot of answers say why re invent the wheel and I agree with this but when there are wheels available people are not bothering to learn how to make the wheel. I can google how to do pretty much anything in any language and half the languages do so much for you when it come to debugging they have no idea what there code does of how to fix the error. That's how I cam up with the theory that programmers are becoming lazier and less competent as no one cares how stuff works just that it does until it does not."}
{"_id": "88743", "title": "Is there a canonical book on parallel programming with focus on C++ ?", "text": "I am looking for a good book about parallel programming with focus on C++. Something suitable for a person reasonably good in C++ programming, but with no experience in concurrent software development. On the other hand, I'd prefer a practical book, without loads of silly examples about philosophers eating lunch. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on parallel programming with focus on C++ ? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "245180", "title": "About grammar, Chomsky hierarchy and obj file format", "text": "Considering the Wavefront obj file format where this syntax fits in the Chomsky hierarchy and why ? I'm also not sure if PEG grammars are being considered in the kind of classification made by Chomsky and if an obj is a real example of a PEG grammar . to formalize this: what kind of grammar and parser I need in order to read an obj file ?"}
{"_id": "161245", "title": "Caching's Effect on Program Performance", "text": "How does caching effect the performance of a running program? From my understanding, the assumption that each instruction always takes the same amount of time is not always correct, because of the effects of caching. How does caching affect algorithmic performance? Thanks in advance. **EDIT 1:** To further elaborate, lets say I'm running this Java program that's reading one million integers. From what I understand about this program, it's order of growth is cubic and will take a while to finish running. How would caching improve the performance of this program while it is running?"}
{"_id": "108085", "title": "How do I get myself out of a dead-end programming job?", "text": "I have almost 9 years of IT experience of which 7 years was worked in an IT company. For past 2 years I have been stuck in a non-IT based company using outdated technology and methodologies. We don't follow any good practices nor do we upgrade to the latest technologies due to budgetary constraints. For a time, there was some amount of work to keep me active, but lately, there's just maintenance work for a product running on an old technology stack. So I'm looking to get out of this job and into one that's more my speed: using the latest technology, writing new things, and actually in the IT field. But I keep coming up short on interviews due to the last few years of being in a job that's behind the technology times. What can I do to prepare myself and prove to more cutting-edge companies that I'm up to the job?"}
{"_id": "161384", "title": "How do you break out of the role of a code maintainer?", "text": "In my last three jobs, I was a code maintainer. In all three cases, I was hired _after_ the majority of the code for the project was already written. I'm a self taught programmer. Before I ever started my first professional job, I had maybe a dozen projects under my belt that I started and shipped successfully. Writing new code and maintaining existing code are two completely different jobs. Its like comparing an aeronautical engineer with an aircraft mechanic. It especially sucks when you're an aircraft mechanic working on an airplane that was designed by an engineer who made no attempt to engineer the plane to be in any way logical or easy to maintain. I'm starting to feel like to be around when the project is first starting out, you have to be one of those _special_ people who has somehow transcended the rest of the people in the computer science field. What does it take to be in that position? I kind of feel like this question doesn't really have any easy answer, but could anyone give me some insights? Have you ever been on the ground floor of a new project? What did it take to get there?"}
{"_id": "113306", "title": "Becoming a \"maintenance developer\"", "text": "So I've kind of been getting angry about the current position I'm in, and I'd love to get other developers' input on this. I've been at my current place of employment for about 11 months now. When I began, I was working on all new features. I basically worked on an entire new web project for the first 5-6 months I was here. After this, I was moved to more of a service oriented role (which was still great, all new stuff for me), and I was in this role for about the past 5-6 months. Here's where the problem comes in. Basically, a couple of days ago I was made the support/maintenance guy. Now, we have an IT support team, so I'm not talking that kind of support, I'm talking more of a second level support guy (when the guys on the surface can't really get to the root of the issue), coupled with working on maintenance issues that have been lingering in the backlog for a while. To me, a developer with about 3 years of experience, this is kind of disheartening. With the type of work place this is, I wouldn't be surprised if these support issues take up most of my days, and I barely make it to working on maintenance issues. Also, most of these support issues aren't even related to code, they are more or less just knowing the system architecture, working with making sure services are running/getting started properly, handling/fixing bad data, etc. I'm a developer, so this part sucks. Also, even when I do have time to work maintenance, these are basically just bug fixes/improving bad code, so this sucks as well, however at least it's related to coding. Am I wrong for getting angry here? I don't want to really complain about it, but to be honest, I wasn't spoken to about this or anything, I was kind of just sent an e-mail letting me know I'm the guy for this type of thing, and that was that. The entire team took a few minutes to give me their \"that sucks\" talk, because they know how annoying it is to be on support for the type of work we do, so I know I'm not the only guy that knows it's not that great of an opportunity. I'm just kind of on the fence about how to move forward. Obviously I'm just going to continue working for the time being, no point making a bad impression on anybody, but I'd like to know how you guys would approach this situation, or how you think I should be feeling about it/how you guys would feel."}
{"_id": "128691", "title": "How do I deal with a dead-end job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I get myself out of a dead-end programming job? I'm a passionate programmer in a well-paid dead-end software job. The downside is that I am patching crap code (this week I made several hundred changes much like a human script), and for various reasons I can't quit. The upside is that they are paying me fairly well, and I only need to work about 6 (real) hours per day, maybe even 4. My dream is to work in a more interesting job: startup, game company, Google, whatever. I am willing to work hard for it. How do I keep my head above water and eventually transition into something I would enjoy doing? I'm a .NET programmer; people who do interesting stuff avoid .NET like plague. And I have to stay in Canada for legal reasons (US is not an option). I am 35 years old, but in the last 5 years, or so, I did mostly business software."}
{"_id": "101785", "title": "How can I transition out of a maintenance-only job?", "text": "After I started working at a company, I found out that the job is to maintain a software product. Most of the work that I'm doing is finding and fixing bugs. It's not easy work. However, there is no new feature development. I am worrying about this, as it might mean I won't ever get the chance to focus on development. What can I do to transition from a job that's maintenance-only to one where I'm creating and designing software?"}
{"_id": "245189", "title": "What prevents a race condition on a lock?", "text": "I understand the basics of what data races are, and how locks/mutexes/semaphores help prevent them. But what happens if you have a \"race condition\" on the lock itself? For example, two different threads, perhaps in the same application, but running on different processors, try to acquire a lock _at the exact same time_. What happens then? What is done to prevent that? Is it impossible, or just plain unlikely? Or is it a _real_ race condition waiting to happen?"}
{"_id": "116583", "title": "Delegation and MetaClass in C++", "text": "We have an OOP course at our university, while discussing the concepts I came across MetaClass and Delegation. As far as I know, these don't exist in C++. Could someone give an example by which I can better understand how to simulate them instead."}
{"_id": "158198", "title": "HTTP Response Header for a unique Request ID for REST service", "text": "For our REST service I want to send back a unique request ID with every response; useful for debugging internal projects but also for offering support to any third parties who might use the service in the future. I have decided that I need to use a response header, since not all REST requests need to result in a response body (often lower-level REST APIs take advantage purely of status code and description), but would still need to send back this request ID. I want to ensure, if possible, that I use an HTTP Response Header that is _unlikely_ to be stripped out by any proxies along the way. This could be very important since a large number of clients will likely be mobile devices with what is bound to be 'interesting' network topologies between them and our servers. However, the same services are likely to be marketed to other businesses with their own corporate firewalls/proxies too. Because of this I've basically chucked out the idea of using a custom response header in favour of a well-known header. My current winning well-known header would be the `ETag` header, but while it's _almost_ right, it's not quite - because an `ETag` is for a resource, not a request (i.e. two separate requests for the same resource will legitimately return the same `ETag`). Moreover, if I do use that, it'll mean I can't do any entity-tagging for anything else. Anyone have any better ideas? _Update_ The Pragma header, it appears, could be used, but I'm having issues writing to it within the Asp.Net WebAPI. Here's a related question on SO."}
{"_id": "184660", "title": "Should I calculate hotness of a post on request or pre-calculate it?", "text": "Here is the Reddit's hot algorithm:               cpdef double _hot(long ups, long downs, double date):         \"\"\"The hot formula. Should match the equivalent function in postgres.\"\"\"         s = score(ups, downs)         order = log10(max(abs(s), 1))         if s > 0:             sign = 1         elif s < 0:             sign = -1         else:             sign = 0         seconds = date - 1134028003         return round(order + sign * seconds / 45000, 7)      My brain says hotness of a post should be calculated on every request because old posts should have a low hotness score. I implemented this function in MySql but as you might guess, it's slow. Very slow even indexes are there. And then I think to update the hotness field of the post on every upvote or downvote of the post. Let's assume we have a post just posted now and has 100 upvote and 1 downvote and it's hotness is 78 (example). But it doesn't get any votes for 3 days. After 3 days a new post appears and gets 100 upvotes and 1 downvote and has 78 score. If I'm updating hotness score on votes, the 3 days old post and the new post will be show together. But in theory, the 3 days old post shouldn't even show up in front page. What is the most viable method to implement for this situation?"}
{"_id": "255921", "title": "How do you make sure a .net client application is not being hacked to bypass authorization claims?", "text": "We wrote a simple .NET (C#) desktop application in Wpf. We also used WIF (Windows Identity Framework) to get a list of claims for the authenticated user. Some examples are:   * CanOverrideSalesAmount   * CanAddContact   * etc. This works fine and all, the client seems very protected. But, when I was debugging the application it occurred to me that all of the authorization is happening on the client side. A devious person could use a tool such as Snoop to hook into the application and make changes to the domain model that s/he isn't supposed to do. We thought about moving the authorization checks on the property setters, but even that isn't good enough because when we serialize the object graph to send over the wire, the serialized data can be altered (far fetched, but still possible). It seems to me that the only true way to protect my object graph is to have it only reside on the server and to have the client make calls to update it, but that seems like such an overkill. Is there a better way to handle this situation? I want our application to be as secure as possible."}
{"_id": "10849", "title": "Unit testing newbie team needs to unit test", "text": "I'm working with a new team that has historically not done ANY unit testing. My goal is for the team to _eventually_ employ TDD (Test Driven Development) as their natural process. But since TDD is such a radical mind shift for a non-unit testing team I thought I would just start off with writing unit tests after coding. Has anyone been in a similar situation? What's an effective way to get a team to be comfortable with TDD when they've not done any unit testing? Does it make sense to do this in a couple of steps? Or should we dive right in and face all the growing pains at once?? **EDIT** Just for clarification, there is no one on the team (other than myself) who has ANY unit testing exposure/experience. And we are planning on using the unit testing functionality built into Visual Studio."}
{"_id": "255925", "title": "Time Management System on Local PCs", "text": "I am looking to build a time management \"app\" that can be downloaded and used on an individual basis throughout my company. In theory, this app would be used to track time spent on several different projects, thus a need to store/track time based on username or employee ID seems like it would be the best route. I was looking to do this via C# WPF. My confusion arises from the architecture: Do I deploy a separate database per download? Or do I host one main database located on a client/server the entire company can use? From my perception - I don't necessarily see any privacy concerns or a need for a login management system. Simply username (as the PK), project name, hours and date would essentially be all fields in the table. While I say I am going to build it for internal use within my company, it is actually not going to be used BY the company - merely for personal tracking per project. This data will likely not be used (unless the company mandates it) by anyone else other than the person who is on the project."}
{"_id": "158197", "title": "Should I charge a client for mistakes that I made?", "text": "After developing a website for a client, I've realized that the load time is too extreme, and some changes need to be made. The extreme load times are attributed to the bloated css/js frameworks that I've been using. Much of the code that was included with these frameworks is not even being used and is slowing the site load time. My plan is to get rid of the css framework and just use a bare bones responsive css framework which is only like 1kb in size, and just add only the code needed. So my question is, should I charge the client for back-stepping and fixing this mistake?"}
{"_id": "158195", "title": "Next step after creating mock-up screens", "text": "I have created some mockup screens for my app in HTML/CSS. I have 4 screens in total.   They contain no client-side coding i.e. Javascript or jQuery. The screens themselves are quite bland at the moment, and I realise they require some further work. Some of my plans for the app going forward are:-   * Introducing client-side templating : eg Mustache/Dust.js   * Add some effects and transitions using jQuery   * Improve the visual look of the screens (through css and images) I'm indecisive on the best way forward. My main aim is that I want changes to be easy to manage, and that's why I did mockup screens first as per the recommendation in the _Getting Real_ book by 37Signals. I'm currently in the process of gathering feedback for the mockup screens. From a programming point of view, which of the 3 steps above, would be a good logical step forward considering my requirement of making changes easy to manage? I should point out that i am very new to programming and development, and this is the first time i am learning programming. Some terms may not make sense to me and you may have to elaborate."}
{"_id": "120648", "title": "Software for requirements and use cases", "text": "I am looking into some UML modeling software, which there is plentiful of on the market, but only a few I found support recording of requirements and written use cases (not the diagrams yet). Are there any tools or methods I should check out for making requirements and use cases? Or should I just fire up Word and create a separate document for each use case?"}
{"_id": "196000", "title": "What is the diffrence between the BSD and MIT licenses?", "text": "I assume based on this answer that the only difference between the MIT and BSD is the fact that MIT doesn't require credits when redistributing. Is that right? Is there any reason to use one over the other?"}
{"_id": "63942", "title": "Effective Information Management on a Personal Level", "text": "Have you had problems managing information and found ways to effectively manage information? When I say \"manage\" I'm talking about storing, grouping, tagging, prioritizing, searching, sharing, etc. When I say information I'm talking about website links, feeds, videos, emails, documents, your thoughts, tasks, appointments, etc. It's difficult to really give this question better context without writing a lengthy (and possibly boring) monologue but let me clarify a little. I'm not asking about information overload necessarily (that's been recently asked), or how to write software or databases for managing information (software already exists). And when I say \"personal\" I'm not talking about your love life; I'm talking about the ways that you personally manage information as it relates to your work. This question might be better suited to independent consultants or employees who have to juggle and manage a lot of tasks and information at their job. I'd like to hear about any tools or \"methods\" that you feel are effective or revolutionary when it comes managing information."}
{"_id": "187811", "title": "Should I write a test to prove that deleting code fixes a bug?", "text": "Occasionally I'll run into the situation where fixing a bug requires that I _delete_ a section of code. The TDD purist would (I assume) advocate writing a failing test, deleting the code, then watching the test pass. Now, it seems really strange to have a test asserting that some code was removed. Sure, I suppose it would ensure no one dug into source control and put that code back in, but is it worth it? If it is worth it, it certainly seems less valuable than writing a test for code that has been _added_ , right?"}
{"_id": "187814", "title": "How could I deal with conflicting personalities in a Scrum/Agile based team?", "text": "We apply Scrum/Agile and we have two teams. The other team has a conflict of interest (or rather personalities) between two developers. I would like to help resolve this and would like to know how to deal with it should it ever happen in my team. I am not a team lead as we use a flat structure. The conflict mostly comes to light during the daily stand-ups and during the end-sprint retrospectives. So far there has been no open bursts of shouting or even \"violence\" but at the current rate i would guess either of those may be inevitable. The conflicts are on areas of code or standards or ways of dealing with Scrum in the project. Neither team member is actually more wrong or sight than the other, so choosing a side is impossible. The effect of this underlining conflict is a negative impact of team morale and the newbies not feeling safe enough to give opinions or start taking charge of their tasks through fear of being involved in this or similar situations with the seniors. Thus from a Scrum/Agile perspective how would / could one go about getting the developers to set their differences aside and work as a whole team again?"}
{"_id": "150439", "title": "Is it best practice to always capitalize class file names in PHP, and other languages?", "text": "I ask because I've seen a couple of OO PHP tutorials which do not adhere to this, but to me it just makes sense. It makes it easy to instantly see if a file is a class or not, if non-class files all use lowercase names."}
{"_id": "61891", "title": "How (and where) to organize a team to make a website?", "text": "Please take this question seriously. I have some moneys and ideas and I would like to hire developers/graphics to write down my ideas into a website. I could do it all myself, I have the right knowledge but I don't have time. Now the problem is: If i hire some good developers and tell him my ideas who assures me he will not steal my idea and build the website on his own? (take the social network film) The best thing to do would be to create a team with firends and make it, But sincerly in my city and in my country my friends maximum are able to do is start pc -> open facebook.com What would be your moves? Other than the \"steal part\" I would like to know tips for the team-management too"}
{"_id": "61897", "title": "taking notes while reading source code of large projects", "text": "Whenever we start reading a big project source code it's often necessary to note down the calling chains and notes that reason why a specific code pattern was chosen, for example. I found primitive tools like A4 sheets lack the cut and paste or find capabilities. Consider working with a very simple editor like command line ones (such as `vim`/`emacs` or `nano`), or other lite IDEs like `Geany`. What are your methods to take notes to help you track the code folds and- ummm- mazes?"}
{"_id": "150436", "title": "What strategies are you using to migrate your web site from Silverlight to HTML5 + JavaScript?", "text": "Microsoft released Silverlight 5 but there has been no news of any future versions (except service releases) being released. Combined with the increasing visibility of HTML5 and modern JavaScript libraries it now makes a lot of sense to start adopting the new and emerging technology instead of relying on Silverlight whose future is in doubt. Given this what are the migration strategies that you are using to move away from Silverlight? Any lessons learnt so far?"}
{"_id": "154537", "title": "Do Java applets have any place on the web today?", "text": "Many browsers now disable Java applets by default, requiring them to be enabled on a per-page basis. It seems like applets have not changed much in the past few years. In fact, it seems that client-side Java (applets, desktop applications, ...) is dying completely, and Java is primarily becoming a server-side language. Except for the sake of compatibility, is there any place where applets are still useful on today's web? As a web developer who is familiar with Java and with JavaScript, why would I ever choose to use an applet instead of some JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "250259", "title": "Does CC0 allow sublicensing of derived works?", "text": "I want to release all my future FOSS projects under a \"public domain\" license such as CC0. This is in order to avoid the requirement for attribution present in most FOSS licenses, mainly when the code is compiled into a binary, but also when somebody decides to copy a small portion of my code into their own open source project. So suppose somebody copies a method from my code into their own, which they are planning to release under an MIT license. In order to release the code under MIT, they must claim copyright of the code; but can they claim copyright of the whole if a portion of the code was not their creation? Is that what it means to claim copyright of a derived work? It may seem strange that somebody could take a piece of public domain code, modify it, and apply a new license to the modified version that imposes further restrictions on its usage, such as the attribution requirement of MIT. But since their additional restrictions would apply only to the modified version and not the original version, this seems legitimate. My main concern is maximizing the ways in which people can utilize my code, without worrying about licensing requirements, and also to avoid a viral effect where any derivative works have to be themselves licensed under CC0."}
{"_id": "124813", "title": "Can anyone explain Developer Twin Syndrome?", "text": "I realise this is a fairly odd question to ask but in recent rounds of hiring we have noticed a rather odd trend in new developers that spectacularly fall short of our expectations. So much so that they to all intents and purposes appear to be an entirely different person to the one interviewed and tested. We pre-screen applicants during their initial interview with a fairly nasty PHP/MySQL written test which tests both their knowledge of the PHP/MySQL as well as some fundamental aspects of application design. You cannot score highly on this test by simply memorizing the PHP and MySQL manuals (We've made that mistake in the past). I'm sure It is by no means fool-proof, but is intended to be sufficient to weed out those who have clearly lied on their resum\u00e9s. Applicants that pass this stage are offered a second interview which is followed by a 2 hour practical test where they are required to develop a small application to a given specification. They are not necessarily expected to complete the task but are judged on their approach to the given task. Three times now he have hired the \"best\" applicant based on interview and test results, and each time the person that has showed up for work on the first Monday morning has been completely devoid of the skills and experience they have previously demonstrated. Each of these applicants scored over 90% on the written test and exceeded our expectations when given a practical task to complete. Hence my coining of the phrase \"Developer Twin Syndrome\" Has anyone else experienced a similar trend in hiring developers?"}
{"_id": "250256", "title": "Do modern languages still use parser generators?", "text": "I was researching about the gcc compiler suite on wikipedia here, when this came up: > GCC started out using LALR parsers generated with Bison, but gradually > switched to hand-written recursive-descent parsers; for C++ in 2004, and for > C and Objective-C in 2006. Currently all front ends use hand-written > recursive-descent parsers So by that last sentence, (and for as much as I trust wikipedia) I can definitely say that \"C (gcc), C++ (g++), Objective-C, Objective-C++, Fortran (gfortran), Java (gcj), Ada (GNAT), Go (gccgo), Pascal (gpc),... Mercury, Modula-2, Modula-3, PL/I, D (gdc), and VHDL (ghdl)\" are all front-ends that no longer use a parser generator. That is, they all use hand-written parsers. My question then is, is this practice ubiquitous? Specifically, I'm looking for exact answers to \"does the standard/official implementation of x have a hand-written parser\" for x in [Python, Swift, Ruby, Java, Scala, ML, Haskell]? (Actually, information on any other languages is also welcome here.) I'm sure I can find this on my own after a lot of digging. But I'm also sure this is easily answerable by the community. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "124819", "title": "Using Django without a database", "text": "Is Django a good solution for creating applications that won't use any database and communicate only through an internal API?"}
{"_id": "201466", "title": "Is Haskell function composition an instance of pipe & filter architectural pattern", "text": "The pipe & filter architectural pattern is defined as a chain of processing elements, arranged so that the output of each element is the input of the next. Every example seems to consider inter-process or inter-thread connection performed through some kind of shared buffer. To me, it seems that Haskell function composition is performing the same task. Can we say that it is an instance of this pattern even if it is just about function ordering and no explicit buffer is use as pipe? If yes, can we say the same thing for non-lazy language?"}
{"_id": "201461", "title": "Handling Dynamic amount of Strings for persistent and runtime storage in an IOS App", "text": "**Background** I am dynamically building an FQL query statement and because of the nature of the app, I exclude FB family members, this is the base portion of the query and remains fairly static. The query returns the FB profile pic and I display it on the UI. However, after the FB friends are displayed on the UI, I want to give the user the option to select a returned FB friend to never be returned in future queries and to return a new user in that users place Currently I am storing the other returned member uid's as a temporary exclusion in a Mutable Array, to prevent duplicate members being on the screen at once, I am also storing the excluded member in a different mutable array. I then build the query statement dynamically inserting the exclusion of all of the uids in the temp array and in the excluded array and then I dump the temp array after I return a new user in the place of who they picked to exclude. **Questions** What are some recommendations on the following:   1. storing these excluded uids(strings) during the apps lifetime? resort to a persistent storage method(core data/sqlite) or store in an array that is a part of a user object (NSUSer Defaults seems like a bad choice as this list can potentially be very long)   2. What are recommendations on some persistent storage so that exclusions can be taken into a query statement after the app is shutdown and started up (core data/sqlite/nsuserdefaults seem to be the only options here, userdefaults seems to be the least favorable because the reason mentioned above)   3. What are recommendations on injecting these unknown amount of uids(strings) into an FQL query statement which will be a string itself?"}
{"_id": "201462", "title": "Choosing the right language for the job", "text": "I'm currently working for a company on the engineering team of about 5-6 people and have been given the job of heading up the redesign of an embedded system tester. We've decided the general requirements and attributes that would be desirable in the system, and now I have to decide on a language to use for the system, or at the very least come up with a list of languages with pros and cons to present to the team. The general idea of the project is that we currently have a tester written in c++, which was never designed to be a tester, but instead has evolved to be such over the course of 3-4 years due to need. Writing tests for a new product requires modifying the 'framework' and writing code that is completely non- human readable or intuitive due to the way the system was originally designed. Now, we've decided that the time to modify this tester for each new product that we want to test has become too high and want to partially re-write the system so that we can program the actual tests in a scripting language that would then use the modified c++ framework on the back end to test the actual systems. The c++ framework would be responsible for doing all the actual work and the scripting language would just integrate with that to tell the framework what to do. Never having programmed in a scripting language (we program embedded systems), I've run into a wall where I have no experience with any of the languages that we could possibly use, but must somehow give pros and cons of each language so that we can choose the best one for the job. Currently my short list of possibilities includes:   * Python   * TCL   * Lua   * Perl My question is this: **How can a person evaluate a language that he/she has never used before? What criteria are good indicators for a languages potential usability on a project?** While helpful suggestions for my particular case are appreciated, I feel that this is a good skill to possess and would like to be able to apply this to many different projects if at all possible"}
{"_id": "201468", "title": "Is there a core set of language agnostic problems?", "text": "I would like to design a programming language by solving a specific set of problems. I am looking for a core set of programming problems that are language agnostic. It seems that there are a number of problems that are repeatedly solved by programmers. The implementation details vary from language to language, but, by and large, the problem they are solving remains the same. For example:   * Numerical libraries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_numerical_libraries)   * Cryptography   * Certain networking libraries   * Plotting / graphs   * Unit testing Have there been any enumerations of these in literature?"}
{"_id": "199330", "title": "What is the preferred access modifier for instance variables of a data transfer object?", "text": "I'm creating a data transfer object and can't decide whether it would be better to just give public access to the instance variables or if there would be a purpose to using getters and setters to access the data? According to the Data transfer object Wikipedia Article: > A DTO does not have any behavior except for storage and retrieval of its own > data (accessors and mutators). DTOs are simple objects that should not > contain any business logic that would require testing. It seems that public access would be justified for a DTO's instance variables. Here is the example I'm working on: **Ivars with public access modifier:**               class ServerContext     {         public String host;         public String user;         public String password;         public int port;              ServerContext(String host, String user, String password, int port) {             this.host = host;             this.user = user;             this.password = password;             this.port = port;         }     }      vs. **private access modifiers:**               class ServerContext     {         private String host;         private String user;         private String password;         private int port;              ServerContext(String host, String user, String password, int port) {             setHost(host);             setUser(user);             setPassword(password);             setPort(port);         }              public String getHost() {             return host;         }              public void setHost(String host) {             this.host = host;         }              public String getPassword() {             return password;         }              public void setPassword(String password) {             this.password = password;         }              public String getUser() {             return user;         }              public void setUser(String user) {             this.user = user;         }              public int getPort() {             return port;         }              public void setPort(int port) {             this.port = port;         }     }      **EDIT:** Could these be valid arguments for keeping the ivars private:   1. The potential of refactoring a DTO later to have more functionality?   2. Wanting to keep implementation consistent between DTO and regular objects?"}
{"_id": "161861", "title": "How does the GPL work in regards to languages like Dart which compile to other languages?", "text": "Google's Dart language is not supported by any Web Browsers other than a special build of Chromium known as Dartium. To use Dart for production code you need to run it through a Dart->JavaScript compiler/translator and then use the outputted JavaScript in your web application. Because JavaScript is an interpreted language everyone who receives the \"binary\"(Aka, the .js file) has also received the source code. Now, the GNU General Public License v3.0 states that: \"The \u201csource code\u201d for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.\" Which would imply that the original Dart code in addition to the JavaScript code must also be provided to the end user. Does this mean that any web applications written in Dart must also provide the original Dart code to all visitors of their website even though a copy of the source code has already been provided in a human readable/writable/modifiable form?"}
{"_id": "1885", "title": "Does anybody ever uses the OpenId url Log in?", "text": "As programmers I think we are the most inclined to use new technologies and things that are not so mainstream. I absolutely love OpenId's ability to log in with credentials you already have, but I always use a provider that I already use and that is the fastest to log in, like google. God knows I'd never used it if i had to type in the whole \"https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id\" I like to click on the google button and then just say yes (the first time, then its just clicking the button). Does any of you ever uses the Generic \"Enter your own provider\" OpenId? Do you think its worth to even offer it to more casual end users?"}
{"_id": "199643", "title": "Appropriate License for Available-Source, No-Unauthorized-Distribution", "text": "I have a program (technically an addon to a program) whose code I want to be freely available for educational purposes or to create derivatives for personal use. However, I do NOT want to allow unregulated redistribution of either modified or unmodified code, whether for free or for profit. However, I do want to allow the possibility of \"pre-approved\" derivative works - that is, the ability for a developer to request permission to distribute a derivative work (essentially an addon to an addon). Finally, the licensing for the parent program (which I do not own) forbids selling my addon directly but does not forbid monetization via other means (such as adfly). I do not want to allow others to monetize my original code, but do want to allow them to monetize pre-approved derivative works. Because of the rather nuanced nature of these requirements, and the fact it is NOT a free-distribution license like would be required for a \"true\" Open- Source license (as per the official definition), I do not know what license to use. Would creating my own be the best choice? Note that I do not have a lawyer nor do I have the resources to obtain one. It appears on its face to be closest to a \"visible source\" license, but those do not seem to accommodate the \"approved derivative work\" aspect I want. Here is the license as I have it so far. Is this a valid format and are these terms permitted to be used in this manner?                   /*******************************************************************************         * @author Reika         *          * This code is the property of and owned and copyrighted by Reika.         *          * Any and all users are permitted to use the source for educational purposes, or to create derivative works         * for private use only.         *          * Unless given explicit written permission - electronic writing is acceptable - no user may redistribute this         * source code nor any derivative works. These pre-approved works must prominently contain this copyright notice.         *          * Additionally, no attempt may be made to achieve monetary gain from this code by anyone except the original author.         * In the case of pre-approved derivative works, any monetary gains made will be shared between the original author         * and the other developer(s), proportional to the ratio of derived to original code.         *          * Finally, any and all displays, duplicates or derivatives of this code must be prominently marked as such, and must contain         * attribution to the original author, including a link to the original source. Any attempts to claim credit for         * this code will be treated as intentional theft.         *          * Due to the Mojang and Minecraft Mod Terms of Service and Licensing Restrictions, compiled versions of this code         * must be provided for free. However, with the exception of pre-approved derivative works, only the original author         * may distribute compiled binary versions of this code.         *          * Failure to comply with these restrictions is a violation of copyright law and will be dealt with accordingly.         ******************************************************************************/"}
{"_id": "199642", "title": "Anemic Domain Model vs. DDD by definition example(s)?", "text": "What is an example of \"Business Logic\" that should reside in the DomainModel i.e. inside an Entity instead of inside a (Domain) Service, as well as some example logic that should be in a service. Here are what I would consider to be pretty clear cases(?): Basic Validation would be done by the ViewModel definition attributes and jQuery validation. Therefore data correctness should be fine by the time data gets to the Service/DomainModel(Entity). Some business logic that depends on other Entities would belong somewhere outside the Entity in a service (naturally/presumably). Something that I could picture existing in a DomainModel (Entity) would be simple adding items to a list property (ensure no duplicates exist etc.). Perhaps some basic copy functionality. What else do you put in the Entity/DomainModel, instead of the Service? It's hard to make a clear distinction, or at least it feels like most of the logic would end up in the Service(s)."}
{"_id": "199644", "title": "Efficient way to shuffle objects", "text": "I'm writing a program for some quiz software. I have a question class containing the ArrayLists for the question, answer, options, marks and negative marks. Something like this:               class question     {         private ArrayList<Integer> index_list;         private ArrayList<String> question_list;                 private ArrayList<String> answer_list;               private ArrayList<String> opt1_list;                 private ArrayList<String> opt2_list;         }      I want to shuffle all questions, but for questions to be shuffled, all the objects need to be shuffled. I would have approached this problem in this way: First of all, I would not have used this design and used String not `ArrayList<String>` type as instance variables, and would then have used the `Collections.shuffle` method to shuffle objects. But my team insists on this design. Now, the question class is containing increasing ArrayLists as the entry to the questions are made. How to shuffle the questions now?"}
{"_id": "81096", "title": "What's the Best way to create a trial version of software for OS X?", "text": "I am having someone develop a program for me and I want to sell it for like $10. I was wondering what's the best way to create a trial version that I can tell my programmer to do. Like 30 day trial. And what's one way I can make it so once they pay, I can send them a unlock code. What's done in the program to allow that? If you could give me an answer that I could tell my programmer, that would be much appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "232273", "title": "modelling data / UI models in relation with the Data Layer", "text": "I have a user interface in Asp.Net MVC, which would for example need to load a list of products to show. Let us assume this calls `ProductRepository.GetProducts()` . In the data layer, I have a class `ProductData` which is the actual data stored in the product. I would like to seperate the frontend (UI) from accessing the data layer directly. Would it be best to have an interface say an `IFrontendProduct`, which would be implemented by `ProductData`. Then, the `ProductController` would interface directly with the `ProductRepository`, or should the controllers not even 'know' about `ProductData`, but only about the frontend- exposed interface, `IFrontendProduct`? Would it make more sense to have a model, say `FrontendProductModel`, rather than an actual interface? Then, the backend would bridge between `ProductData` => `FrontendProductModel`. I always like to think of it as having two seperate entities developing the frontend and the backend. In that case, the entity developing the frontend would not 'know' about `ProductData`, but only the interface/model exposed by the API developed by the entitiy developing the backend. Does this make sense, or is this taking seperation to an extra, un-needed level? Personally, I think the best-scenario would be to have a `FrontendProductModel` which the frontend can only access, and the frontend wouldn't even know about `ProductData`. Then, any calls which the frontend makes to the backend services, they would return them as `FrontendProductModel`. The backend would then translate the results from the data-layer to the model. I find this creates the best seperation between the layers, but it can be quite cumbersome to implement at times as it involves a lot of redundant code and copy properties to/from data-layer and frontend- models."}
{"_id": "235082", "title": "Get License Information for all Used nuget Packages", "text": "To keep our house in order, I want to automatically assemble licenses for project dependencies in our documentation, rather than having to add them manually. Does anybody know a simple way to traverse a set of CSPROJ files and extract the license information for the referenced packages?"}
{"_id": "191098", "title": "Who manages a CMS after a freelance project is complete?", "text": "I've been a full stack .net developer for several years now using C#/MVC4/SQL Server and have never taken on a freelance project. This is because up until now I have worked only as a full-time consultant by hour or on start-ups for equity. Also, I have only worked on very large complex projects that needed to be built for scale and thus had many layers. I'm now faced with a potential client who wants a website that is fairly easy:   1. Existing client-side   2. Build new database of products   3. Create a few pages to existing client-side    4. Add search/filtering functionality to search products in the database My usual development routine for building complex, scalable applications is very much overkill for the task so I'd like to use a CMS for the first time. Being that I'm a .NET developer, Orchard CMS looks great and I'd like to jump right in. I'm trying to come up with an estimate on the work but I'm not familiar with how freelance projects work in regards to source code. After I set everything up do I expose the WebMatrix project to the client so they can begin using the CMS as the administrator, adding content through the dashboard, etc themselves or do I only publish the end product and they have to come back to me for me to add functionality through the CMS dashboard? Obviously the agreement can be either way, but do programmers generally charge more for actually exposing the project and dashboard to the client or is this generally by default for CMS projects? As a side question, should I feel obligated to even disclose the use of a CMS behind the scenes (Assuming that I actually charge for the true time taken to set up the CMS)?"}
{"_id": "191094", "title": "Can PHP and Javascript do backend together?", "text": "I am creating an application with a friend, which we are planning on writing the back end partially in PHP and partially in Javascript with Node.js. Javascripts front-end involvement with PHP makes this a tough question to Google. We are also using ejs templates, MySql database and it will be run on a Fedora server if those factors matter. **Question:** I would like a basic understanding of how they combine and maybe more importantly if it is better to prepare for this merge now or if it is something we can figure out later?"}
{"_id": "96768", "title": "How do I pitch ASP.NET over PHP to a potential client?", "text": "I work at a Microsoft shop doing mainly web development. We had a client who asked us to review (improve) the data model for his web app, but said that he wants to develop his app in PHP (he knows \"a guy\" who can do it). When I asked him why he wants to go with PHP, he gave me the standard set of arguments from the 90's:   1. Microsoft is evil, and PHP is free   2. Writing an ASP.NET app is more expensive (software-wise)   3. Why would Facebook use PHP if it was a bad idea? **[classic]** He had a few more comments about the costs associated with going .NET. The truth is that \"Microsoft is expensive\" does not hold water any longer, with their \"Express\" suite, you can develop an ASP.NET app without paying anything for software. When it comes to hosting, you can save a few bucks with PHP over .NET, but that's a small fraction of the projected development costs (we quoted 10-15k). Going back to my question, **what arguments would I give to a client in favor of ASP.NET over PHP? [please provide sources for quantitative claims]**"}
{"_id": "197553", "title": "Running entire frontend of a system on a flatfile cache", "text": "I'm in the middle of moving away from PyroCMS to a custom solution built on Laravel. Wont go into the details as to why here, but it is a necessity. I'm toying with the idea of caching things like pages and posts into flatfile once they are created, and then loading them (if they exist) and falling back to the mysql database if the cache isnt found. It got me thinking. Is there a problem with essentially running the entire 'frontend' of your system or site on flatfile, pre-rendered cached files? Surely the cache only needs dropping/replacing when a post or page is modified, so a cache could essentially be kept for the lifetime of the site. Unless I'm missing something, surely this is something that should be done a lot more, should it not? Even if it was just storing serialised or json data from the database tables, it's got to be faster than opening up a mysql connection hasn't it?"}
{"_id": "197555", "title": "Single write, multiple read of stateful objects", "text": "Scenario:   * One data input feed (call this `Source`)   * Multiple objects (call these `Layer1`) **read** this `Source`, and analyze the feed. This analysis is stateful.   * `Layer1` objects have configuration parameters. For example, `new FooLayer1(10, 20)` will do different analysis than `new FooLayer1(20, 20)` will do different analysis than `new FooLayer1(20, 30)`     * The `Layer1` analysis is done asynchronously.   * Still other objects (call these `Layer2`) **readonly** the output of the `Layer1` objects and process those results. This analysis is also stateful.   * Guice object creation hierarchy   * Needed `Layer1` objects are accessed often enough that it doesn't matter if they are created lazily, as long as they remain in memory after they're created the first time.   * The needs of `Layer2` objects are hardcoded; no good way to know in advance which `Layer1` objects will be needed. I want to be able to reuse the work of the `Layer1` objects. For example, lets say I have:   * `AlphaLayer2` object that reads the output of `FooLayer1` and `BarLayer1`   * `BetaLayer2` reads the output of `BarLayer1` and `BazLayer1`   * `QuuxLayer1` is implemented, but I don't want my server to compute the value of `QuuxLayer1` unless there is a `Layer2` object that needs it. Currently, I have a factory that all `Layer2` objects have access to, that only creates the appropriate `Layer1` object as needed, and stores all created `Layer1` objects in a Map. But, since `Layer1` objects also have configuration parameters, I need to make sure that I'm storing the `Layer1` objects in a good data structure. But the `Layer1` functionality needs to be flexible, and I figure as I create more kinds of `Layer1` objects, this kind of a `Map` could get really complicated. I am asking this question because, while it's fine now, as the complexity grows, maintaining the data structure in this way seems to become really difficult. Trying to do some sort of nested `Map` data structure should get me `O(1)` access times on finding these `Layer1` objects, but will make the caching super complicated. Alternatively, I could keep them in a much flatter structure, and iterate over the list of all the `Layer1` objects and see if they have the right parameters. If none found, create the new one. As long as `Layer2` objects keep the reference, this should only happen once. Yet another option would be to create a `Map<Class, Set<Layer1>>` so that it only needs to iterate through the created `Layer1` objects of the correct class. Has anyone seen this kind of scenario before? Which of the options I've mentioned is preferred? Or, is there something I haven't mentioned yet? Also, is there any way to use Guice to create `Layer1` objects in a way where I can get reuse them (which I need to do, because they're stateful)"}
{"_id": "197554", "title": "Suitable algorithm for joining records from multiple databases", "text": "I am in the process of writing a library that is used to be able to access data from a database. The library requires the initial definition of all the tables that the application will be using in the form of classes that extend an abstract class within the library. These classes contain the database connection the table is stored in, the table name, the columns, the indices, and the relationships between tables. The abstract class contains static functions that allow a user to `select` or `insert` rows into that particular database. The `select` function returns an object that allows a query to be assembled, that provides options for the `fields`, `joins`, `where`, `group`, `having`, `order`, and `limit`, which culminates in a `fetch` function that returns an object that contains the resultant records along with `save` and `delete` functions. Now, this works fine when it is working between tables within the same database, when being combined with tables in other database, but I am trying to get it so that I can do something like this:               class tabA extends tableBase {         public static $database  = 'mySqlDB';         public static $tablename = 'tableA';         public static $columns   = array(             'tableAID'       => 'int(11)',             'tableAKey'      => 'varchar(128)',             'tableBRefID'    => 'int(11)',         );     }          class tabB extends tableBase {         public static $database  = 'oracleDB';         public static $tablename = 'tableB';         public static $columns   = array(             'tableBID'       => 'int(11)',             'tableBSpecial'  => 'boolean',             'tableBValue'    => 'text',         );     }          tabA::select()->join('tabB', 'LEFT')->where(andCondition(eqCondition(tabA::tableAKey, 'foo'), eqCondition(tabB::tableBSpecial, true)))->fetch()      Where the return of `fetch` would comprise of rows containing the found columns from the two databases. The drivers for the databases use a common interface, of which the select function looks like:               function select ($columns, $from, $joins, $where, $group, $having, $order, $limit, $offset)      I am aware that the tableBase class will have to break up the query it will be performing into two separate queries, one to query from tabA, and one from tabB, then join the results in the defined type (in this case, LEFT join). But I am having problems coming up with a suitable algorithm for dividing the query into two separate query blocks, then how to combine the results (satisfying the `where` condition) in an efficient manor. My thoughts so far would entail stripping out the columns (excluding fields that are derived from operations between data over the two databases) and conditions that are relevant to each database, using those searches on each database, passing through the results of the main database table results and joining data (discarding rows that don't match the join), (at this point, if there are any derived fields as stated above, they are computed), then finally passing through all the resultant rows to ensure that any remaining where or having conditions are matched, and applying any final orderings. But to my mind, this doesn't seem the most efficient manor, and creates issues when using limits, unless fetches all the rows, then applies the limit operation on the final result. So, are there any resources, or information on how such a thing could be accomplished in a better/more efficient/neater way? **ADDITIONAL** Although these are SQL databases, a NoSQL database could work as long as the driver built operates within the confines of the database driver interface. At the moment, there is only one driver that uses PDO, but I am working on building drivers for XML and MongoDB datastores."}
{"_id": "64064", "title": "Writing a Jenkins plugin - non-Java-Expert", "text": "Can anyone point me (.NET by career, primarily Ruby by hobby) in the right direction(s) for learning how to write a Jenkins plugin? I'm looking specifically at build summary information and trend graphs from PartCover stats. I'm not worried about being able to find my way around Java, though I don't want to have to learn everything about it before I attack the problem."}
{"_id": "153164", "title": "How many juniors should a senior mentor?", "text": "Our shop's size increases dynamically, so we are planning to hire a few new junior developers but we would not like to overwhelm the seniors with too much mentoring and training. How many (usually fresh out of college) junior developers could (and should) a senior developer mentor while the senior is still being able to do his or her tasks effectively?"}
{"_id": "153163", "title": "HTML, JS, CSS Engines", "text": "I am just messing around, trying to figure out how stuff works and right now I have a couple questions about HTML, JS and CSS engines. I know there are two major JavaScript engines out there - V8 and JavaScriptCore (WebKit's JS engine as far as I know). Is that correct? And what are the main HTML + CSS renderers out there? Let's say I want to build a web browser using V8 (I saw it has some documentation and stuff + I like the way it works), what are the best options for me? Partially another question. Is there any bare browser that uses V8 and runs on Ubuntu at least? P.S. I am a Ubuntu user and prefer C++."}
{"_id": "116089", "title": "Is is possible to unit test a web forms site", "text": "Is is possible (and sensible) to unit test a web forms site? It seems to me that as so much of it depends on state and user input it wouldn't be fesable. If it's not feasible is there a valid automated alternative?"}
{"_id": "94697", "title": "Delegate vs Method", "text": "Is there any advantige using delegates instead of methods? For example:               public void LoginAuthenticate(object sender, AuthenticateEventArgs e)     {      if (Membership.ValidateUser(lgUserLogin.UserName, lgUserLogin.Password))          {            Func<string, string> getDestinationPage = (userLogin) => { //definition };               e.Authenticated = true;          lgUserLogin.DestinationPageUrl = getDestinationPage(lgUserLogin.UserName);       }          else        {         Action<string> invalidLogin = (msg) =>          {            lgUserLogin.FailureText = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(msg) ? \"Invalid login\" : msg;            e.Authenticated = false;          };               MembershipUser user = Membership.GetUser(lgUserLogin.UserName);           if (user != null)            {             if (user.IsLockedOut)              {                invalidLogin(\"User has been blocked\");                   }              else if (!user.IsApproved)               {                invalidLogin(\"User is not activated\");               }               else                {                    invalidLogin(null);                  }                 }                 else              {                invalidLogin(null);              }        }     }      If I `getDestinationPage` define as `private string getDestinationPage(string login){...}` and `invalidLogin` as `private void invalidLogin(string msg){...}` does it gives any benefits?"}
{"_id": "17005", "title": "How effectively \"sell\" a good design in large meetings", "text": "Many times I have witnessed a sad tragedy. Here's what happens:   1. A team design review for a new project.   2. I see a simple design that has quite a few holes.   3. I casually mention the holes and ways to avoid them.   4. The warnings are ignored with comments like \"that 'never' happen in real life\"   5. Eventually the things that \"will 'never' happen\" happen   6. An emergency team design review for a broken project. So what do I do? Copping the \"I told you so\" attitude is not going to win friends and influence people. Sometimes years go by and the comments from step 3 are forgotten anyway. I definitely don't want to be the annoying pest reminding the world of the gotchas. I often sit back and watch the Titanic sail off to Europe. It's frustrating to see bad designs move forward. It's also frustrating that I can't seem to convince others of the pending peril of the current path. I do worst on team meetings where everyone has different ways of understanding different terms. Also, egos tend to win of reason and thought. I'm looking for good tactics to convince groups people to use some new and complicated ideas."}
{"_id": "94690", "title": "How to convince co-workers the merits of local development enviroments", "text": "I'm trying to convince my co-workers about the merits of developing on local environments, but so far have had little luck in my quest. Outside of myself, the other developers with my company develop on seperate folders on the same server as our development server, using the same DB/DB Server/Web Server for all folders, with your standard text editor on the local machines. I've mentioned the benefits of any mistakes (like say the stray while loop misconfiguration) localized to one machine, network or server issues having no relevance or effect on work, and able to use xdebug (although you can use it on a shared server, the issues with sessions I've been told are problematic...and not having a fulltime sys admin to keep things happy doesn't hurt either). So far, no dice. So I ask you the SO community what could be done to convince others to do so, or if I'm the one that is on the wrong path. The current environment that we have is your typical WAMP environments, but I wanted to keep the question language and environment agnostic as possible. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "102279", "title": "Hit the Upper Limit for Cross Platform API Capabilities", "text": "I am a junior programmer who works as an intern(8 mths into the internship) in a team of 1(myself only) creating mobile phone apps & websites. I have created an App that works exactly how it should & has some pretty cool features but the App fails to run on Android(the main target platform for us, it works on the desktop emulator but not on Android) due to the memory problems with large apps in the Mosync API(see the links for more info on the memory problem). The most demoralising aspect of the problem is that(as explained in the links below) the app crashes randomly & not consistantly so you make a change run it on the platform a cple of times & where something worked before it will now freeze then cause the app to crash(Android OS kills my app). http://www.mosync.com/content/android-how-much-memory-too-much-memory http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/why-you-should-stay-away-from- appcelerators-titanium/ I have invested 4 weeks in developing the app(an interactive calendar) & 5 mths in learning the Mosync API for apps that wont work on the platform. **My Problem:** I have to decide between dumping the app & starting the app again in Native Android Java(I know Java) or severely reducing the the number of resources(.pngs) & features of the app(polaroid effect it produces) to make it work in the android platform. The end result will be functional but low quality(in terms of graphics) & simple. **What would more experienced developers decide to do & how would you explain this decision/recommendation to your non-technical boss?**"}
{"_id": "101292", "title": "Will it ever be possible to build quality websites with editors alone, without needing to know HTML?", "text": "Lots of big companies, from Apple to Microsoft to Google, are putting more and more money into creating tools that will allow anybody to create a website with a WYSIWYG editor. For example, this email I just got from Adobe: > **Build websites as quickly and easily as an Adobe\u00ae InDesign\u00ae layout.** > > Currently in beta form, the application code-named \"Muse\" is a new > technology that enables graphic designers to use familiar, free-form tools > to design and publish HTML and CSS websites\u2014all without writing code or > being restricted to templates. Be part of this incredible free preview and > experience how Muse will revolutionize the way you create for the web. As a web developer, I can't foresee any way that Adobe or any other company will be to create some solution which allows a user with no HTML/CSS/JS knowledge to build a useful website design for these reasons:   * The code generated will almost certainly be a mess, which makes it difficult for a programmer who wants to write the backend for the site to work with it. They may even be required to change the code themselves to structure it as they need it.   * HTML is not pixel-based, so it is very difficult to develop a tool that can easily design templates which can flow with changes in text size, etc. In addition, elements should follow each other in reasonable order, not in some random order (e.g. as dictated by when an element is added).   * Code generated in one tool would likely not be portable to other tools easily, which would lock you in to the original tool. (I am assuming that the tool would allow complete control of a website; as Adobe said, \"as quickly and easily as an Adobe InDesign layout\". Programs which let you use professionally-designed templates are a different story.) Do you think it will ever be possible for a person unskilled in HTML to create quality (both behind-the-scenes and appearance) web designs/sites?"}
{"_id": "60763", "title": "Relationships Of Complex Documents In Document Databases", "text": "I have been looking at a number of document databases (RavenDB, CouchDB, MongoDB) and there are two things about them that I really like and makes me what to incorporate them as much as possible and that is the schema-less natural (not that they are schema-less per-say but that it is a very flexible schema that is much easier to change than ones with RDBMS) and the fact there is a lot less impedance mismatch when mapping the database data to code. There have a been a number of things that I have found that have prevented me from using a document database because I find I need these things all the time. Some of them I have found solutions for like unique fields. While document databases don't directly support this feature, a work around that is acceptable is creating another document with the email is the document id and then inserting the user if the insert on the email document was successful however there are there is one big thing that I don't think document database can provide me from my searching. That feature is relationships with complex documents. One of my projects I wanted to use a document database for is a project management system. The issue with this is that there are a lot of places where I need relationships with large objects (and multiple relationships within one document). When it come to something like a task or a user, those are complex documents and having the document embedded would not be a good thing as data mismatch with these items can't happen. Now if I just reference the document then am I really getting any benefit from using a document database because now I am probably going to have a lot more queries that I need to run compared to a relational database. While I was hopping to have most of my data be stored into a document database, the more I look at it, it seems like most of the data needs to be in a RDBMS. Am I correct in assuming this type of relationship needs a RDBMS or am I un-aware of how this can be accomplished in a document database."}
{"_id": "102270", "title": "restful web development in scala", "text": "I ve been a php developer for the past 4 years and worked in OO PHP and almost all sorts of PHP mvc frameworks. Ive joined a new company now and here we use scala for web development. We have a product which has a frontend developed in a js mvc and a backend in scala. Actually this kind of restful architecture itself is brand new for me. In PHP we just use PHP for both frontend and backend. So i started working in scala and did some basic console app stuff. But there are no articles on how i must use scala to do restful web development. There is a framework called lift developed in scala. But we havent used that. Ours is a pure scala app without lift stuff. I found out two blogs but it has too little information on implementation. So can any one point me in the right direction on when to use the restful architecure as against mvc architecture and absolute newbie guides to creating a web app using restful architecture in scala."}
{"_id": "102272", "title": "Negotiating with Google as a lone software developer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do programmers need a union? I have come across this website that is a trade union for Android Developers http://www.andevuni.org/ I was inspired to search for a trade union after this post Should developers accept overtime/weekend work/denied bonus payments? which was featured on Hacker News How effective could a trade union be to improve working conditions for Software Developers, more precisly, Android developers? I am an Android developer myself, and I am planning to release my app in a month or so. Could this petition by the trade union be effective at renegotiating the 32% Google tax on Android apps? If yes, should I wait with releasing my app?"}
{"_id": "235558", "title": "What is State, Mutable State and Immutable State?", "text": "This is a newbie question, but I couldn't find a newbie-proof enough answer on Google. What do people mean when they say 'state' - in programming in general, and in OO programming specifically? Also, what is mutable and immutable state - again, generally in programming and also specifically in OOP?"}
{"_id": "210587", "title": "What are the most crucial categories of content to organize into an internal developer portal in a large company?", "text": "I have been tasked with organizing all of the company's internal content currently spread around sharepoint, a markdown reference manual and confluence into a single cohesive and usable portal in confluence. I want the home page to be the \"dev center\" and for it to be where we point new devs and where everyone goes for reference and to see what is going on at the company. Here are some general categories I imagine might be important:   1. news... what's going on in the company, promotions, new hires, project updates   2. best practices... coding standards, solutions to common problems, etc...   3. on-boarding... docs describing how to set up a dev environment on your workstation   4. company culture... org chart, roles and responsibilities, the functions of different groups, processes   5. training... courses coming up, recommended and required training   6. events... events coming up, slides and materials from previous events Anything else you think is important to include? My goal is to have this portal be something devs actually want to look at multiple times per day for help doing their jobs. Expected user base is around 500 devs, testers, ops, etc... across over a dozen teams. Both .Net and Java are in use in this Enterprise. The page will be in Confluence, so I believe we can let everyone contribute in some way, or should we lock it down and appoint content managers? Good point about analytics. I will include that in my proposal. Thanks for the input!!"}
{"_id": "63494", "title": "How can I develop/install iPhone apps without owning an iPhone?", "text": "What are my options? I've heard that iPhone emulator is not reliable. Also is it possible for me to buy iphone apps without even owning an iphone? BTW, I am running linux and a windows VM. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "230869", "title": "Algorithm for HIghest Local Alignment Score with a specific character match between two subsequences", "text": "I'm writing a code that identifies the highest-scoring local alignment between a substring X' of X and a substring Y' of Y that has at least one column in which a C from X' is aligned to a W from Y'. Example: if X=:HCEA and Y=:HWEA, then some of the local alignments with a column that aligns a C to a W are : >   1. CE > > WE > >   2. HCE > > HWE > >   3. H-CE > > -HW- > > I need to compute all these possibilities and find the one which has a maximum alignment score. My Solution: I've taken the above 2 sequences as inputs and tried to solve the problem. Here is my code. I myself know that I haven't fulfilled the question because I've identified the matching substring alone. Can anyone tell me how should I improve my code to get the desired result.               public class Q1 {              public static void main(String[] args) {             //  Input Protein Sequences              String seq1 = \"HCEA\";               String seq2 = \"HWEA\";                  //  Array to store the score             int[][] T = new int[seq1.length() + 1][seq2.length() + 1];                  //  initialize seq1             for (int i = 0; i <= seq1.length(); i++) {                 T[i][0] = i;             }                  //  Initialize seq2             for (int i = 0; i <= seq2.length(); i++) {                 T[0][i] = i;             }                  //  Compute the matrix score             for (int i = 1; i <= seq1.length(); i++) {                 for (int j = 1; j <= seq2.length(); j++) {                     if ((seq1.charAt(i - 1) == seq2.charAt(j - 1))                             || (seq1.charAt(i - 1) == 'C') && (seq2.charAt(j - 1) == 'W')) {                         T[i][j] = T[i - 1][j - 1];                     } else {                         T[i][j] = Math.min(T[i - 1][j], T[i][j - 1]) + 1;                     }                 }             }                  //  Strings to store the aligned sequences             StringBuilder alignedSeq1 = new StringBuilder();             StringBuilder alignedSeq2 = new StringBuilder();                  //  Build for sequences 1 & 2 from the matrix score             for (int i = seq1.length(), j = seq2.length(); i > 0 || j > 0;) {                 if (i > 0 && T[i][j] == T[i - 1][j] + 1) {                     alignedSeq1.append(seq1.charAt(--i));                     alignedSeq2.append(\"-\");                 } else if (j > 0 && T[i][j] == T[i][j - 1] + 1) {                     alignedSeq2.append(seq2.charAt(--j));                     alignedSeq1.append(\"-\");                 } else if (i > 0 && j > 0 && T[i][j] == T[i - 1][j - 1]) {                     alignedSeq1.append(seq1.charAt(--i));                     alignedSeq2.append(seq2.charAt(--j));                 }             }                  //  Display the aligned sequence             System.out.println(alignedSeq1.reverse().toString());             System.out.println(alignedSeq2.reverse().toString());         }     }      A post states that, dynamic programming could solve this question in a better way. Also is there any other way to solve the question optimally? If its available can anyone post a pseudo code or an algorithm, so that I'll be able to code for it."}
{"_id": "237237", "title": "How to handle exception in REST API", "text": "Given a REST API, which throws an exception when handling a request from a client. Whenever the REST API throws an exception, it's logged and the application (in this case a console application) closes to prevent further damage. Should I send a response to the client whose request resulted in an exception, indicating that an error occured or should I let the client hang and deal with it (timeout)?"}
{"_id": "235555", "title": "What is the recommended approach for helper functions in JavaScript?", "text": "What is the recommended approach for helper functions? I would like to choose one technique, and run with it to create my new \"class\". Here are the design options I have pondered: **Option 1: Helper function in outer scope, invoke with context of instance**               function createPane (pane) {         // logic to create pane         var proto = Object.create(this.paneList);         $.extend(paneProto, pane);         return paneProto;     }          Panes.prototype.initialize = function (panes) {         var _this = this;         _.each(panes, function () {             _this.panes.push(createPane.call(_this, this));         });     }        * **Pros:** Simple syntax. `createPane` is not published on the instance.   * **Cons:** `createPane` is accessible in other scopes. **Option 2: Helper function in closure, invoke with context of instance**               Panes.prototype.initialize = (function () {              function createPane (pane) {             // same logic as last createPane         }              return function (panes) {             // same logic as before - calls createPane         }          })();        * **Pros:** `createPane` is not published on the instance.   * **Cons:** Lower readability and testability; Testing of this helper must occur in the scope of initialize. **Option 3: Prepend _ to name to indicate a private method**               Panes.prototype._createPane = function (pane) {         // same logic as last createPane     }          Panes.prototype.initialize = function (panes) {         // same logic as last, except calls this._createPane     }        * **Pros:** Implicit context of `_createPane` is the instance. Testability from the outside.   * **Cons:** Exposing helper function on the instance. **Option 4: Helper functions as arguments**               Panes.prototype.initialize = (function (createPane) {              return function (panes) {             // same logic as before - calls createPane         }          })(function createPane () {        // same logic as last createPane     });        * **Pros:** `createPane` is not published on the instance. Helper functions lack access to each other.   * **Cons:** Lower readability and testability; Testing of this helper must occur in the scope of initialize."}
{"_id": "220999", "title": "Fantasy: One Language/Standard supported by all devices?", "text": "No introduction or description needed. We all know how troublesome it is make different codes and test codes in different platforms and browsers such as IE, Firefox, Chrome, Android 2.3 onwards, iOS, Windows, etc... All across the web, here and there, we have talks of having HTML5 apps run seamlessly on all devices. Will that ever be true? Is that future coming up?"}
{"_id": "62727", "title": "When is it reasonable to create my own programming language?", "text": "Are there types of killer applications, classes of algorithmic problems, etc., where it is better, in the long run, to create my own language? PS: Just to be sure, I mean a new programming language and a compiler, not a new compiler for an existing language. **EDIT** : Thank you for the answers. Can you provide some examples, where it is absolutly unnecessary to create a DSL or cases in which a DSL might be a good idea?"}
{"_id": "220995", "title": "How to identify unstable floating point computations?", "text": "In numerics, it is very important to be able to identify unstable schemes and to improve their stability. How to identify unstable floating point computations? I am working on a very complex simulation where many numerical schemes work together and I am looking for a methodic to identify its weak parts. I am working on a physical model involving differential equations. A bird's eye view of the overall process is:   1. (Preliminary step) Gather physical observations _P_.   2. Determine initial parameters of the simulation. This uses an optimisation algorithm, where we walk in a parameter space and look for parameters _C_ such that some error function _E(F(C), P)_ is minimised, where _F_ is some derived quantity of the parameters.   3. Plug _C_ in the simulation engine. This is an Euler scheme of the EDP, so that at each time step, we compute the terms driving the dynamic (each of them is a complex function, potentially subject to instability) and feed the Euler scheme with these dynamic terms to compute the next state. This goes on for thousands time points.   4. At the end of the simulation, we compute some function _Proof(S)_ of the final state _S_ and compare to some quantities _Require(P)_ deduced from the observed quantities. This is not a formal proof of the result, more a plausibility check. Also, I see a tower of complex operations (computation of dynamic terms, within the Euler scheme, within the _Proof_ ). And would like to recognise \u201cbad parts\u201d and fix them. I speculate that using a software implementation of floating point numbers with reduced precision would magnify the unstability of numerical schemes, thus easing the comparison between different implementations. Is this a common technique to investigate this question? Is it possible to use a virtual machine, as Bochs, to achieve this without altering the program? To deal appropriately with the stability question, it is sometimes acceptable to target the typical input of the numerical procedure, so that it can be tuned to do well on that input and maybe less well on other valid, yet unlikely, input. Given a sample of typical inputs, it is possible to _snoop_ some intermediate results and prepare a statistical profile for them. Again, is this a common technique to study stability issues? Is a virtual machine useful for this?"}
{"_id": "220997", "title": "Under what scenarios will an App's localStorage get cleared?", "text": "I am developing an Hybrid android app using HTML5 which will work completely offline. Today morning when I opened the app, I saw that all the data stored in localStorage was cleared. Under what scenarios can the localStorage get cleared? Given these scenarios, is it a good idea to use localStorage?"}
{"_id": "230865", "title": "Java has lots of libraries. How much more than other modern languages?", "text": "The only programming language I ever used 'seriously' to create relatively big applications, is Java. Thus, I'm very familiar with the fact that Java offers a lot of built-in libraries that help with lots of tasks, that otherwise you'd have to implement yourself. But I wanted to ask: Does Java offer significantly more built-in libraries than other modern OO languages, for example C#? Is Java especially generous in the libraries it gives you, compared to other modern languages? Also, as a different question: Is it considered 'less proferssional' to often use the built-in libraries instead of implementing thing by yourself?"}
{"_id": "143836", "title": "I want to turn VB.Net Option Strict On", "text": "I recently found out about strong typing in VB.Net (naturally it was on here, thanks!) and am deciding I should take another step toward being a better programmer. I went from vba macros -> VB.Net, because I needed a program that I could automate and I never read anything about strong typing, so I kind of fell into the VB.Net default trap. Now I am looking to turn it on and sort out this whole type thing. I was hoping someone could direct me towards some resources to make this transistion as painless as possible. I have read around some and ctype seems to come up a lot, but past that I am at a bit of a loss. What are the benefits of switching? Is there more to it than just using ctype to cast things? I feel like there is a good article that I have failed to come across and any direction would be great. Would a good approach to be to rewrite a program that is written with option strict off and note differences?"}
{"_id": "148772", "title": "Should a class without instance variables be considered a class?", "text": "Say you need to implement a few closely related functions that provide a piece of functionality, but there is no need to track any state between those functions, they just sometimes pass some parameters between themselves. What would be the best decision from the design standpoint? Make it a class, or just a separate source file that contains these functions? UPD: Objective-C, no namespaces"}
{"_id": "148777", "title": "Efficient ways to model cars moving along a road", "text": "This has never come up, so I've never thought how a data or programming model should work that simulates (a) bird's eye view of cars moving and some rudimentary physics, (b) how the cars would follow a road layout and (c) how an efficient data structure for roads would look like. Obviously, this question also means to ask how the road data structures would interact with cars. Any recommendations, or reviews of such data models?"}
{"_id": "42114", "title": "What JavaScript inconsistencies should I look out for?", "text": "I remember reading some \"funny\" examples once of weird results JavaScript can give when you, for example, add strings to numbers etc. Does anyone have any good examples or a link to the blog that I might have read them on? Which ones are likely to catch a programmer out in the real world?"}
{"_id": "80329", "title": "How can I thoroughly evaluate a prospective employer?", "text": "We hear much about code smells, test smells, and even project smells, but I have heard no discussion about employer \"smells\" outside of the Joel Test. After much frustration working for employers with a bouquet of unpleasant corporate-culture odors, I believe it's time for me to actively seek a more mature development environment. I've started assembling a list of questions to help vet employers by identifying issues during a job interview, and am looking for additional ideas. I suppose this list could easily be modified by an employer to vet an employee as well, but please answer from the interviewee's perspective. I think it would be important to ask many of these questions of multiple people to find out if consistent answers are given. For the most part, I tried to put the questions in each section in the order they could be asked. An undesired answer to an early question will often make follow-ups moot. **Values**   * What constitutes \"well-written\" software?    * What attributes does a good developer have? Same question for manager. Who are your most valued employees/managers, and why? **Process**   * Do you have a development process?    * How rigorously do you follow it?    * How do you decide how much process to apply to each project?   * Describe a typical project lifecycle. Ask the following if they don't come up otherwise:     * Waterfall/iterative: How much time is spent in upfront requirements gathering? upfront design? **Testing**   * Who develops tests (developers or separate test engineers?)   * When are they developed?    * When are the tests executed?    * How long do they take to execute?    * What makes a good test?    * How do you know you've tested enough?   * What percentage of code is tested?  **Review**   * What is the review process like?   * What percentage of code is reviewed? Design?   * How frequently can I expect to participate as code/design reviewer/reviewee?   * What are the criteria applied to review and where do the criteria come from? **Improvement**   * What new tools and techniques have you evaluated or deployed in the past year?   * What training courses have your employees been given in the past year? What will I be doing for the first six months in your company (hinting at what kind of organized mentorship/training has been thought through, if any)   * What changes to your development process have been made in the past year?   * How do you improve and learn from your mistakes as an organization? What was your organizations biggest mistake in the past year, and how was it addressed?   * What feedback have you given to management lately? Was it implemented? If not, why?   * How does your company use \"best practices?\" How do you seek them out from the outside or within, and how do you share them with each other? **Ethics**   * Tell me about an ethical problem you or your employees experienced recently and how was it resolved?   * Do you use open-source software? What open-source contributions have you made? **Follow-Ups** I liked what @jim-leonardo said on this Stack Overflow question: _Really a thing to ask yourself: \"Does this person seem like they are trying to recruit me and make me interested?\" I think this is one of the most important bits. If they seem to be taking the attitude that the only one being interviewed is you, then they probably will treat you poorly. Good interviewers understand they have to sell the position as much as the candidate needs to sell themselves._ @SethP added: _Glassdoor.com is a good web site for researching potential employers. It contains information about how specific companies conduct interviews..._"}
{"_id": "42112", "title": "Why no fortran standard library?", "text": "To be a language focused on mathematics and scientific computing, I am always baffled by the total lack of useful mathematical routines in the Fortran standard library. One would expect it to be shipped at least with a routine to compute standard deviation and mean, but this is not the case. In particular with the introduction of Fortran 90 and the addition of modules (thus reducing namespace pollution), I don't see any reason why of this critical lack of services. I would like to hear your knowledge about why this is the case."}
{"_id": "80325", "title": "Building iOS Applications using  MonoTouch", "text": "I am planning to learn objective-c to be able to build iOS Applications I have seen some guys using Monotouch sdk, I am really confused where to start from. I have a solid experience in Developing sites and Application using .NET Framework Technology, should I go with `Monotouch`? Will the application made in the native platform run faster? Many Thanks."}
{"_id": "80320", "title": "Can I use corporate-licensed tool at home/for personal projects?", "text": "Normally, the company where a programmer works has corporate licensed tools which are useful for programmer (ex: proprietary IDEs, reflectors, diagramming tools, office tools and PDF makers, etc.) Can I :   * Install it at home and use it for company projects?   * Install it at home and use it for personal projects (possibly commercial)?   * Use it at office for personal project (e.g. after office hours)? I am not strictly asking for legal advise here (though some legal point of view would be nice, too). But is it a right thing to do in general?"}
{"_id": "198111", "title": "Why retrieves a native app data faster than one with PhoneGap?", "text": "I know that an app developed with PhoneGap is slower than a native one because at PhoneGap the whole code must be interpreted at runtime into a native one. But could someone explain or has a good in-depth website which explains why a native app retrieves data (a picture or text) from a web ressource faster than an app with PhoneGap? Do both apps handle internet connections in another way, or is there more data retrieved by an PhoneGap app?"}
{"_id": "48770", "title": "What are the duties of a software control management (SCM) engineer in a large company?", "text": "What are the canonical responsibilities of such a specialized role? Normally, I expected this to be part of the tasks of a normal developer, but in large companies I know this role is to be fulfilled by an engineer in his own. In my current company, there is a possibility for a new opening in a SCM position, so I could apply, but first I would like to hear about what, in your experience, characterizes this role best."}
{"_id": "156262", "title": "What are the pre-requisites for writing .NET web services?", "text": "I am very new to web development. I have been a C,C++ programmer for 5 years and I'm starting to get into the web development, writing web services, etc. I understand that basic concepts of web services. I know .Net web services can be written in VB or C#. Working with C,C++ will help getting used to writing code in C#. I do not have experience in .Net framework. I'd like to quickly get into writing .Net web services and learning on the go, without extensively spending a lot of time learning .Net framework (if possible) Any suggestions? Update - I know my way around databases and sql express in Visual Studio"}
{"_id": "156263", "title": "What is the best strategy for transforming unicode strings into filenames?", "text": "I have a bunch (thousands) of resources in an RDF/XML file. I am writing a certain subset of the resources to files -- one file for each, and I'm using the resource's title property as the file name. However, the titles are every day article, website, and blog post titles, so they contain characters unsafe for a URI (the necessary step for constructing a valid file path). I know of the Jersey UriBuilder but I can't quite get it to work for my needs as I detailed in a different question on SO. Some possibilities I have considered are:   * Since each resource should also have an associated URL, I could try to use the name of the file on the server. The down side of this is sometimes people don't name their content logically and I think the title of an article better reflects the content that will be in each text file.   * Construct a white list of valid characters and parse the string myself defining substitutions for unsafe characters. The downside of this is the result could be just as unreadable as the former solution because presumably the content creators went through a similar process when placing the files on their server.   * Choose a more generic naming scheme, place the title in the text file along with the other attributes, and tell my boss to live with it.  So my question here is, what methods work well for dealing with a scenario where you need to construct file names out of strings with potentially unsafe characters? Is there a solution that better fills out my constraints?"}
{"_id": "156266", "title": "Is it worth making a commit solely to resolve non-critical typos?", "text": "If I come across a non-critical typo in code (say, an errant apostrophe in a print(error) statement), is it worth making a commit to resolve that error, or should it simply be left alone? Specifically, I'm curious about weighing the gumming-up of the commit log against the value of resolving these non-critical typos. I'm leaning toward resolving them. Am I being pedantic?"}
{"_id": "99679", "title": "WCF + N-tier = why?", "text": "I've seen projects that use N-tier with WCF. When creating a WCF project in the solution it is often named with the word \"service?\" The main questions:   Why and what benefit do you have when using WCF in relation to N-tier? Which situation should be used with WCF and N-tier?"}
{"_id": "167835", "title": "Is extensive documentation a code smell?", "text": "Every library, open-source project, and SDK/API I've ever come across has come packaged with a (usually large) documentation file, and this seems contradictory to the wide-spread belief that good code needs little to no comments. What separates documentation from this programming methodology? a one to two page overview of a package seems reasonable, but elegant code combined with standard intelisense should have theoretically deprecated the practice of documentation by now IMO. I feel like companies only create detailed documentation and tutorials because its what they've always done. Why should developers have to constantly be searching through online documentation in order to learn how to do things when such information should be intrinsic to the classes, methods and namespaces?"}
{"_id": "186790", "title": "How to identify (business) processes for automation?", "text": "I recently started at a company and am working on statistical data analysis and data handling (market research). A lot of my tasks were previously done entirely by hand, so I created a few tools to automate much of my work. My boss asked if I could go ahead and look for other automation-possibilities. I certainly have the time and skill, but I don't know how to find processes which would be good candidates to be automated. I could ask co-workers, but most of them don't understand what is easy to automate and what isn't. I believe that there are processes for this sort of thing - but I don't know enough to start Googling. **What comes before requirements discovery and analysis?** **How do I identify business processes that will be more efficient as automated tasks?**"}
{"_id": "196604", "title": "What should I do when waiting for a review?", "text": "Before asking my question, I must explain the situation. I'm working for a company as a junior software engineer. One of the seniors always stops me when I have finished my development and want to commit. He always wants me to wait for him to review it. This is ok, because usually he finds some bugs, and does some optimisations. However I must commit my code before the deadline. When I finished, I call him and say it is finished. He usually comes late. So my code is late too. My question is, what should I do? Should I wait him for a review? **EDIT:** Addition to the question. I'm curious about one more issue. I want to be free when coding. How could I gain the trust for freedom of development? **Some explanations:** I've talked with him about this. But it didn't help. We use an issue tracker already, but there isn't any task for reviews. There are just development and test tasks."}
{"_id": "151680", "title": "How can I convince a project manager that there is no way to solve all the compatibility issues?", "text": "I have been working on this project for more than a year now, and we are close to release, the project manager wants the product to be perfect and working in every single aspect. I like that and I love working under the perfection idea, but it seems he is delaying the launch too much because of compatibility issues, he wants the product to work in every single installation, every single configuration possible, and in most cases, the product just works without issues when it's on the hands of the client. * * * UPDATE : yes the product doesn't work properly when there are conflicts, for example, other products that don't use guidelines nor standards to load libraries (causes double library load which leads to failure), cache is another example and so on..... but we warn the clients about the conflict before purchasing and help them fixing it after purchasing * * * I've tried to explain it by giving some examples on major products, he understands the situation, but can not believe that it is near impossible (if it is not impossible) to do what he wants. Hope it is clarified enough for the community to answer."}
{"_id": "29339", "title": "Experiences with WebSphere?", "text": "I'm going to be an intern soon at a bank (this is my first software related job) and I was told that I'm going to be working mostly with:   * Java (I already know SE)   * WebSphere   * DB2 I saw this thread at reddit recently and let's just say I cringed a bit while reading the comments. I'm currently going through Head First JSP & Servlet and using tomcat as container to get myself ahead a bit. I would like to know your experience regarding working with the above technologies. Is WebSphere really that bad of a server? or is it just the typical reddit hate for Java?"}
{"_id": "95126", "title": "How does a static type system affect the design of a prototype-based language?", "text": "The Wikipedia article on prototype-based languages contains the following paragraph: > Almost all prototype-based systems are based on interpreted and dynamically > typed languages. Systems based on statically typed languages are technically > feasible, however. In what ways does a static type system impose restrictions or introduce complexity in prototype-based language, and why are there more dynamically- typed prototype languages?"}
{"_id": "95120", "title": "What's an expat XML parser?", "text": "I found the term here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Mozilla_Web_Developer_FAQ I know what a XML parser is. I can't understand; what exactly is an **expat** XML parser?"}
{"_id": "63238", "title": "If you have a piece of logic that needs to be shared between two controllers where do you keep it?", "text": "I have a set of single purpose functions that I need in two separate controllers. Right now I just have duplicate code and I want to get rid of it. This code is part of the controller and doesn't belong in my service layer. Where would you put it?"}
{"_id": "8805", "title": "How to evaluate an open source project with joining in mind?", "text": "Assuming I've found an open source project I'm interested in, how do I evaluate the project(the members, the activity level, etc) to determine if joining the project will be a good use of my time and energy?"}
{"_id": "176257", "title": "Does FFMpeg support gpu acceleration of media encoding/decoding?", "text": "I was wondering if ffmpeg supported gpu acceleration. I was reading on their websites and came across contradicting information. http://www.ffmpeg.org/general.html#Video-Codecs -H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (VDPAU acceleration) http://ffmpeg.org/trac/ffmpeg/wiki/x264EncodingGuide -Will a graphics card make x264 encode faster? No. libx264 doesn't use them (at least not yet). There are some proprietary encoders that utilize the GPU, but that does not mean they are well optimized, though encoding time may be faster; and they might be worse than x264 anyway, and possibly slower. Regardless, FFmpeg today doesn't support any means of gpu encoding, outside of libx264. If not, is there any way to add gpu acceleration to h.264 encoding/decoding?"}
{"_id": "106493", "title": "\"Employee morale is the employee's responsibility\"", "text": "How true should (or does) this statement ring for developers? Many people I've talked to say \"it's like this everywhere\", while a similar number treat it as practically an invitation to resign. It's a bewildering statement, and I'm curious if anyone has experienced this and has ideas on how to approach a manager that holds this viewpoint."}
{"_id": "147336", "title": "\"how bad\" is unrelated code in try-catch-finally block?", "text": "This is a related Q: Is use of finally clause for doing work after return bad style/dangerous? In the referenced Q, the finally code is related to the structure used and the necessity of pre-fetching. My question is a little different, and I believe it's germane to the broader audience. My particular example is a C# winform app, but this would apply to C++ / Java finally usage as well. I'm noticing quite a few try-catch-finally blocks where there is a lot of code unrelated to exceptions and exception handling / cleanup buried within the block. And I will admit my bias towards having very tight try-catch-finally blocks with the code closely related to the exception and handling. Here are some examples of what I'm seeing. Try blocks will have lots of preliminary calls and variables being set leading up to the code that could throw. Logging information will get setup and run in the try block as well. Finally blocks will have form / module / control formatting calls (despite the app being about to terminate, as expressed in the catch block), as well as creating new objects such as panels. Roughly:                   methodName( ... )         {             try             {                 // Lots of code for the method ...                 // code that could throw ...                 // Lots more code for the method and a return ...             }             catch( something )             { // handle exception }             finally             {                 // some cleanup due to exception, closing things                 // more code for the stuff that was created (ignoring that any exceptions could have thrown) ...                 // maybe create some more objects             }         }      The code works, so there is some value to it. It is not well encapsulated and the logic is a bit convoluted. I'm (painfully) familiar with the risks in shifting code around as well as refactoring, so my question boils down to wanting to know others' experience with similarly structured code. Does the bad style justify making the changes? Has anyone been badly burned from a similar situation? Would you care to share the details of that bad experience? Leave it be because I'm over-reacting and it's not that bad of style? Gain the maintenance benefits of tidying things up?"}
{"_id": "223878", "title": "How can you add acknowledgement functionality to a Command pattern, given the response from receiver is gotten asynchronously on Server?", "text": "I have a scenario where I will implement Command pattern like described in this article. Actually from an Asp.Net MVC view, some user will invoke different commands/actions like Start Live Video, Start Live Image, Start Recording etc. A Web Socket Server will then receive these commands and dispatch them to a Receiver (a Windows based application). The receiver before executing the requested command, will first acknowledge the received command and will confirm back to sender that the sent command has been received for processing. Note: The acknowledgement and/or the actual response will be returned to the Web Socket Server always in an asynchronous manner and then accordingly dispatched to the sender. Means whole system is event driven based. So my question is: Given the Command pattern described in the article, now which best way I could add Command Acknowledgement to it and will the returned acknowledgment and/or actual response be also in the form of some command/message or something else? If we are to go something different for dispatching the Acknowledgement or response, then which pattern to use for it?"}
{"_id": "54630", "title": "Python productivity VS Java Productivity", "text": "Over on SO I came across a question regarding which platform, Java or Python is best for developing on Google AppEngine. Many people were boasting of the increased productivity gained from using Python over Java. One thing I would say about the Python vs Java productivity argument, is Java has excellent IDE's to speed up development where as Python is really lacking in this area because of its dynamic nature. So even though I prefer to use Python as a language, I don't believe it gives quite the productivity boost compared to Java especially when using a new framework. Obviously if it were Java vs Python and the only editor you could use was VIM then Python would give you a huge productivity boost but when IDE's are brought into the equation its not as clear cut. I think Java's merits are often solely evaluated on a language level and often on out dated assumptions but Java has many benefits external to the language itself, e.g the JVM (often criticized but offers huge potential), excellent IDE's and tools, huge numbers of third party libraries, platforms etc.. Question, Does Python/related dynamic languages really give the huge productivity boosts often talked about? (with consideration given to using new frameworks and working with medium to large applications)."}
{"_id": "78432", "title": "Can non-technical staff gather requirements on behalf of the development team?", "text": "Working in a large organisation, it is often the case that the members of the development team are not able to get direct access to the client to gather requirements. Is it possible/advisable to give a list of questions to an account manager so that they can gather requirements on your behalf?"}
{"_id": "72271", "title": "Should a manager (or CEO)  in an IT company have an IT background to perform in the organization?", "text": "I see that many managers or (even CEOs) running an IT company do not perform as well as those who have IT background. If I may take an example (without judging or pointing fingers), Microsoft's current CEO is one among many. I also see this in some smaller organizations. Should a manager (or CEO) in an IT company have an IT background to perform in the organization? Will a manager that has an IT background perform better than those who do not?"}
{"_id": "168383", "title": "VCS for single user using file sync service", "text": "I'm trying to setup a version control for my one man project. My project files are in sync thanks to live mesh (but I could be using dropbox for that matter), between my laptop, my home pc and my office pc. I'm now using Netbeans with local file history. Sometimes it helps to revert to a previous state of one file. But imagine a situation when multiple files have problems. Correct me if I'm wrong but I would have to go to every file and revert to previous \"safe\" state. I don't like this approach, so I'm considering using a version control between SVN and GIT. I have some previous experience with SVN (TortoiseSVN) and I know that I can create a file:// repo. So, what a want to do is setup a VCS inside my synced folder **just** to have the **ability to \"revert\"** to a previous version if something goes wrong. Since everything's been synced to all computers, I wouldn't ever need to run an update. The file tree organization would be the following: C:...\\SyncedFolder\\MyProject\\ Inside MyProject folder are all the project files plus a directory that has SVN or GIT info of my project (the repo/master). What VCS is best for this situation: SVN or GIT? Does SVN need to store all files from HEAD revision, thus \"duplicating\" all my project inside my synced folder? Does GIT eliminates this problem? Is this the best approach?"}
{"_id": "176259", "title": "how to verify ConcurrentHashMap is threadsafe?", "text": "As the jdk doc said, ConcurrentHashMap is thread safe and it doesn't block multiple thread read. It is not necessary to doubt that since it was under many and restricted test. But I just curious how to tell and write code to verify that. **Edited** : to be more precisely   1. how to keep read consitent without read block   2. does it return the latest view of data"}
{"_id": "168386", "title": "What are options for 3rd Party Centralized Software Settings Management?", "text": "I am an architect in an enterprise looking to build a SaaS solution. Our products are distributed over many different deployable containers, Web Services, Web UI's, etc. I am looking for some open-source or 3rd party software solution to manage the settings of our application. These would be similar to the settings you might find in Word or Eclipse or Visual Studio. The settings would control various behaviors and features of the product. (Probably not settings like which database to connect to but more like, should I show line numbers on the page or not by default..). Ideally, we would be able to store values for different dimensions (by tenant, by user, by application environment... ) Because we have so many different deployables, I am looking for a centralized solution that can provide a web service that each of the deployables can get their individual settings from. Does anyone know of a centralized service providing this sort of features or give me some help in searching for an alternative to rolling our own?"}
{"_id": "222283", "title": "Algorithm that determines relevant attributes in ordered list", "text": "Suppose I have a list of objects sorted by a person based on that person's subjective taste. Let's assume that this person is being somewhat consistent in their sorting and that there are quantifiable attributes of these objects that I can identify. For example, a person might sort cheese based on how much they enjoy the taste, and people who disliked salt would rank salty cheese lower than cheeses that were low salt. One person might not care what the color of the cheese was or whether it came from cows, goats, or sheep, while another might rank sheep's milk cheeses higher than goat's milk cheeses. I assume there is a procedure to identify what attributes of data elements in a list are and aren't relevant to the determining the order. What is the name for this problem, and what algorithms exist for solving it? (ideally in Python)"}
{"_id": "144682", "title": "Is there a sample C project designed for comparing compiler output size?", "text": "I am about to start a new project and must choose a compiler. Because we are working in the embedded domain, one of the criteria that we are evaluating is the size of the output of the compiler. There are benchmarks, such as Dhrystone and Whetstone for evaluating compilers in terms of how compilers handle string, integer, and floating point functions. Is there something along these lines for providing a general comparison of the ability of compilers to produce small output files?"}
{"_id": "144685", "title": "Preferred form for error detection and loop termination conditions?", "text": "In this Stackoverflow anwer I dimly recall being taught that it's better to use as \"wide\" a condition as possible to terminate a loop, rather than testing for an exact termination condition. i.e. use:               while (x < 10)       rather than               while (x != 10)      however I cannot recall (or find) any formal basis or rationale for this. Is this actually written down anywhere as best current practise?"}
{"_id": "109361", "title": "Is it possible to evaluate the efficiency of a testable algorithm against alternative solutions that aren't already built?", "text": "An e-commerce application I used to work on used a decision tree and a rules engine for each node in order to determine if a customer qualified for certain discounts. The problem was that every promotion tree had to be evaluated, so the more promotions the client had the slower the evaluation became. This was a big problem that was often solved by throwing more hardware at it. There were alternatives to consider, but the promotions engine was a considerable undertaking. I always wondered if there was a way to consider an alternative without developing it (or developing it entirely)?"}
{"_id": "109360", "title": "Android or iPhone application collecting payments", "text": "I'm starting to study a project that mainly will allows users to make payments from their iPhones or Androids. Since I don't have e-commerce experience and also I have never owned a smart phone, I ask you to give me some orientation on what is important when heading this kind of project. **What is making me doubt**   * Is it possible to do this witout apple or google refusing my app or charging my transactions with amounts similar to 30%?   * Is google checkout an alternative to paypal or am I getting this wrong?   * For debit card payment, what are the most common payment services in the US nowadays?   * How high is the technical complexity of that application? Is it very different to do it for iPhone and do it for Android? **What I already know:**   * The payments has nothing to do with the application itself; this is not an in-app scenario.    * We would like to go live with Android and iOS, but it would be acceptable to start with only one of them.   * No credit card information will be stored by the application; a payment gateway like PayPal should by in charge of the actual money movement. **Why Am I asking this?** Someone is asking me to develop an iOS or Android application for allowing his cutomers to add money into their customer cards. **Details of the application requeriment:**   * This service would be available only in the US.   * The application will cost a fix amount to download.    * It is initially required for iOS or Android but off course, bb's and why not wp7 could need to be supported soon. Searching stackoverflow and then the web I came to the feeling of Apple and Google being restrictive to this kind of applications, I also would like to know if it is true. **Example** I've found Starbucks' mobile app to be a very good example of what I need as the link says: _To reload the card, customers can link it to a debit, credit card or PayPal account_ I wonder if doing that is possible for any application or if there is a commercial agreement between starbucks and Apple behind. **Thanks for your help!**"}
{"_id": "109367", "title": "WinRT and the server (ASP.NET, Azure, etc)", "text": "Has Microsoft made any indication of WinRT's current or future relationship with server development (such as ASP.NET)? While it's been made clear that WinRT is the intended future of Windows UI programming, it also includes a substantial library of common features like networking and data processing (like JSON). If these libraries are to the the future of Windows development, it seems to me like it's only natural that they will eventually move into the world of server development (WinRT is already supported by \"Server 8\"). (I realise that ASP.NET isn't going anywhere and that MVC, for example, could potentially be completely gutted without affecting the programming model. I'm just curious)"}
{"_id": "109366", "title": "Where could SPMD parallel programming be used in a Compiler?", "text": "I have little knowledge about the subjects of compiler construction and parallel programming, so please bear with me. This is a course about compiler construction, and we are asked to learn CUDA while taking the course because the professor would like us to write a compiler for a simplified language. That compiler is supposed to be doing the work in parallel at some specific stages. My understanding was that the scanner, parser, semantic analyzer, code generator and the optimizer are inherently sequential. I have written some parsers for very simple tasks before, so my understanding is based on little bit of theory and little bit of experience. I would understand how to incorporate shared state at some point in the construction of the compiler to do multiprocessing, but not SPMD. **What components of a compiler can be parallelized(e.g. using CUDA as in my case, SPMD model in general)?** _SPMD_ : Single Program Multiple Data"}
{"_id": "194764", "title": "What is LPCTSTR?", "text": "what is `LPCTSTR` and `LPCTSTR`-like (for instance `HDC`) and what it does stand for?"}
{"_id": "187771", "title": "How do SaaS companies provide data liberation services?", "text": "# Overview I considered posting this to DBA but I think the question goes beyond the database. Of all the software-related Stack Exchange sites, the Programmers FAQ seemed most in tune with what I'm asking here. My company provides a SaaS offering. Our customers collect a lot of data using our service, and we wish to make that data more easily available to our users than our web application currently provides. Our largest customer databases can run into the tens of GB including indexes. Stripping away indexes, a single database can still be several GB and will grow with each additional year of service. The primary use cases our prospects and customers cite are:   * As a prospect/customer, I want guaranteed access to my data in the event your company should fail.   * As a prospect/customer, I want access to query my data so that I can build my own reports, dashboards, applications using that data. I like the phrase \"data liberation\" to classify these kinds of use cases. Google seems to be at the vanguard of the data liberation movement. They've done admirable work to enable their customers to get access to their data and to raise awareness of the state of SaaS data accessibility. As a SaaS provider, I'd like to give our customers better access to their data. # The Evolution In the past, we developed many custom report-like web pages to give customers a degree of access. This led to a lot of complex, custom pages that we must maintain. We later added a separate reporting solution and began charging for custom reports. Although this gives us more flexibility and we can deliver faster, this is also costly to maintain and not scalable. Customers also don't like being charged for every custom report, as they see it as us charging them for access to data they own. While we are meeting the needs of some customers, others want more. Some want to combine their SaaS data with in-house data, and they can't do that without the ability to query their SaaS data. There are many approaches to solving these problems. I'll talk about the two use cases and approaches I've considered, then ask for your input. I'm going to willfully avoid the question, \"How useful is the data without the application?\" Side Note: Our database is Microsoft SQL Server, but that's largely irrelevant. # Use Case 1 _As a prospect/customer, I want guaranteed access to my data in the event your company should fail._ ## Host Our Own Download Service A relatively easy solution would be to set up our own download service on a separate server hosted in the same data center. We'd put nightly database backups here for every customer to download at their leisure. Pros:   * We use free internal bandwidth to move files around.   * Customer only incurs bandwidth costs when they want to download. Cons:   * Some customers may download nightly \"just because we can\".   * Provisions must be made to keep the download service operational in the event the company fails, otherwise we've solved nothing. The customer still has to trust us to keep this service running, which is the core issue in the first place. An extreme variation of this model is to create a separate company to own the download service and pre-fund the hosting for a period of time sufficient to allow customers to download their last backup. ## Push Database Backups to the Customer Here we copy full nightly backups to a storage account or service (FTP over SSL, SFTP/SSH, Dropbox, Box.net, SkyDrive, Amazon S3/Glacier, etc.) of the customers' choosing. Pros:   * Customer always has access to their data. Cons:   * This method is bandwidth intensive and wasteful. We're pushing mostly the same data, night after night. The customer only needs the data in the event of a catastrophe.   * This method runs the risk of losing up to 24 hours of the customers' data if we only copy nightly backups. Copying periodic diff backups would help to reduce the recovery point objective at the expense of more bandwidth.   * Managing all the possible destination types, auth credentials and integrating new targets is complex. A less complex variation is to require our customers to provide credentials to a storage service of a single type, like Amazon Glacier. Everyone uses Glacier, or you don't benefit from the service. ## Third-Party Backup Tie-In There are services out there like Backupify that hook into Google Apps and back up data on a regular basis. I'm seeking out more services like this which could provide an independent, turn-key solution that our customers could sign up and pay for, and which we could fully automate. Unless the third party service ties into SQL Server in an intelligent way to only pull data differences from night to night, this is still going to be bandwidth intensive. ## Native Database Replication There are several built-in SQL Server features of interest, such as log shipping, mirroring, replication and \"always-on availability groups\". These all require a SQL Server on the remote side, as well as requiring the remote server be joined to a single domain and/or be part of a Windows Server Failover Cluster controlled by us. These methods therefore don't seem viable for this use case. # Use Case 2 _As a prospect/customer, I want access to download and/or query my data so that I can build my own reports, dashboards, applications using that data._ ## Web API Providing a comprehensive REST or SOAP/XML (or both) API would help some, but not most of our customers. Many customers really want some kind of SQL access, through ODBC/JDBC/ADO.NET or the like. ## Open Data Protocol (OData) We could expose denormalized data sets and present them using OData (see also SO questions on OData). However, being newish (1) I'm not sure OData will become mainstream enough to warrant a long-term investment and (2) it may be challenging for our customers to both understand and access. I'm not married to this opinion. I do know that the PowerPivot plugin for Excel 2010 can connect to OData sources, and Tableau (a tool at least one customer users) can as well. That's promising. ## Data Replication We've experimented with using Microsoft SQL Server transactional (pub/sub) replication of de-normalized subsets of data with a couple of customers. This requires VPNs and DBAs, making it complicated to set up and maintain. The dependence on SQL Server isn't ideal. ## Third Party Connectors I've researched and found a couple of companies who provide offerings around opening SaaS data to end customers.   * Connection Cloud   * Progress DataDirect Both companies have products that would seem to enable exactly what I'm looking to do. These are the only two providers I've found so far. I'm talking to representatives from both companies to evaluate their offerings. # The Question How have you solved your own customers' \"data liberation\" problems?"}
{"_id": "149420", "title": "Why did the Haskell committee choose monads to represent I/O?", "text": "The Clean language uses uniqueness types to handle I/O in a purely functional setting. Why did the Haskell committee go with monads instead? Were there other proposals for handling state that the committee investigated but decided against? **Note** : I'm not looking for a holy war between monads and other forms of computing. Let's keep the topic to just the committee's choices regarding I/O."}
{"_id": "147488", "title": "Creating webservices using spring-mvc. One project or multiple projects", "text": "Using spring mvc to create a restful api, Maven is build tool and tomcat with spring jars is deployment . **Plan A** : each webservice will be its own separate war file/project ? if required I would supply dependices as jar(s) (such as any dao's/dto's/service layer classes used in different webservices? I would share the spring jars between projects from with tomcat lib directory. **Plan B** : Have one large project with different controllers (and subsequent request mappings for restful api) added when needed. Supply the spring dependices with project in maven. Which is better ? I'm aware spring is not jax-rs compliant - what does this mean in practice, whats the difference if not compliant ?"}
{"_id": "147489", "title": "How important is self-teaching in the programming field?", "text": "I'm 16. I started programming about a year ago when I was about to start high- school. I'm going for a career in programming, and I'm doing my best to learn as much as I can. When I first started, I learned the basics of C++ from a book and I started to learn things by myself from there on. Nowadays I'm much more experienced than I was a year ago. I knew I had to study by myself because high-school won't (likely) teach me anything valuable about programming, and I want to be prepared. The question here is: how important is it to study programming by oneself?"}
{"_id": "147487", "title": "Estimate cost of project depends on [SLOC|COCOMO]?", "text": "Is it logical to estimate cost of project depends on source lines of code? Like those calculated reports from tools such as   * sloccount   * ohloh estimating   * * How to convince [somebody|employer|client] to pay depends on those reports ? The weird things come to scene when I see something like $83,862 based on my project. Sometimes the developer [him|her]self would write more lines of code because of this estimating. So if the count of the source lines isn't worthy, Why should be [sometimes|somehow] interesting part of development, Specially for employer, It does amaze them but why doesn't have any effect on pricing ? Hey _Employer_ I've developed this project that worth $1 million dollars, This source code counter program will prove it. Maybe I don't know the real worth of my work, Should I public it for people and collect some comments about it or show it to some [experts|consultants] to find-out or just estimate myself upon my knowledge, And all of these solutions aren't right or at least logical. And what happens to those codes I didn't wrote by myself, I mean sometimes we just copy a piece of code and [pasted|modified] into project. And if estimating in this way is wrong, What is the purpose of these tools to generate such a report about source lines of code, Average hourly work and other facts. Ohloh : > **Estimated Cost** > > We calculate the estimated cost of the project using the Basic COCOMO model. > For those familiar with the details, we are using coeffcients a=2.4 and > b=105. > > Estimate still seems way off? > > Software cost estimation is tricky business even when all the variables are > known (which we certainly don't have). One thing to remember is that COCOMO > was created to model large institutional projects, which often don't compare > well with distributed open-source projects. Beyond just development time, > COCOMO is meant to include the design, specification drafting, reviewing and > management overhead that goes along with producing quality software. > > This model seems to be most accurate with mature, large projects. Young > projects with little activity are typically overvalued. _I know quote from ohloh isn't just about SLOC_"}
{"_id": "131711", "title": "Should an application be designed without prototyping first?", "text": "I've just begun using a popular, well-documented graphics engine, and was given a month to create some small programs and get familiar with it. The library is huge, and there are sections I haven't explored. Due to a time-crunch, my tech-lead has asked me to start designing my software ( _sequence and class diagrams_ ) even for the parts I haven't explored, just by looking at the documentation and figuring out the capabilities of those classes. It's my understanding that designing software requires good knowledge of how something works. Does it make sense to create a design with only a vague understanding of how a class works, just by looking at the class's documentation? Shouldn't I be prototyping it with a small program, tweaking it here and there and understand how it behaves and THEN do the design for it?"}
{"_id": "156482", "title": "Where should instantiated classes be stored?", "text": "I'm having a bit of a design dilemma here. I'm writing a library that consists of a bunch of template classes that are designed to be used as a base for creating content. For example:               public class Template     {         public string Name {get; set;}         public string Description {get; set;}         public string Attribute1 {get; set;}         public string Attribute2 {get; set;}              public Template()         {             //constructor         }              public void DoSomething()         {             //does something         }         ...     }      The problem is, not only is the library providing the templates, it will also supply quite a few predefined templates which are instances of these template classes. The question is, where do I put these instances of the templates? The three solutions I've come up with so far are: ## 1) Provide serialized instances of the templates as files. On the one hand, this solution would keep the instances separated from the library itself, which is nice, but it would also potentially add complexity for the user. Even if we provided methods for loading/deserializing the files, they'd still have to deal with a bunch of files, and some kind of config file so the app knows where to look for those files. Plus, creating the template files would probably require a separate app, so if the user wanted to stick with the files method of storing templates, we'd have to provide some kind of app for creating the template files. Also, this requires external dependencies for testing the templates in the user's code. ## 2) Add readonly instances to the template class Example:               public class Template     {         public string Name {get; set;}         public string Description {get; set;}         public string Attribute1 {get; set;}         public string Attribute2 {get; set;}              public Template PredefinedTemplate         {             get             {                 Template templateInstance = new Template();                 templateInstance.Name = \"Some Name\";                 templateInstance.Description = \"A description\";                 ...                 return templateInstance;             }         }              public Template()         {             //constructor         }              public void DoSomething()         {             //does something         }         ...     }      This method would be convenient for users, as they would be able to access the predefined templates in code directly, and would be able to unit test code that used them. The drawback here is that the predefined templates pollute the Template type namespace with a bunch of extra stuff. I suppose I could put the predefined templates in a different namespace to get around this drawback. The only other problem with this approach is that I'd have to basically duplicate all the namespaces in the library in the predefined namespace (e.g. Templates.SubTemplates and Predefined.Templates.SubTemplates) which would be a pain, and would also make refactoring more difficult. ## 3) Make the templates abstract classes and make the predefined templates inherit from those classes. For example:               public abstract class Template     {         public string Name {get; set;}         public string Description {get; set;}         public string Attribute1 {get; set;}         public string Attribute2 {get; set;}              public Template()         {             //constructor         }              public void DoSomething()         {             //does something         }         ...     }      and               public class PredefinedTemplate : Template     {         public PredefinedTemplate()         {             this.Name = \"Some Name\";             this.Description = \"A description\";             this.Attribute1 = \"Some Value\";             ...         }     }      This solution is pretty similar to #2, but it ends up creating a lot of classes that don't really do anything (none of our predefined templates are currently overriding behavior), and don't have any methods, so I'm not sure how good a practice this is. Has anyone else had any experience with something like this? Is there a best practice of some kind, or a different/better approach that I haven't thought of? I'm kind of banging my head against a wall trying to figure out the best way to go. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "156481", "title": "How should I encapsulate database access?", "text": "What are some examples of good class structures used to manage database access? I am a fan of class encapsulation and would prefer the containers (e.g. car) not to perform database tasks. I would also like the ability to easily drop in things like a database cache in future. I often take the pattern of container classes, complete with getters and setters for validation and database access performed by a single singleton class. That being said, this often gets mixed between the two and becomes quite confusing. Sorry if my question is hard to understand; I'm not absolutely sure on terms regarding databases. Please feel free to ask for clarification if needed."}
{"_id": "111265", "title": "Is software development an engineering discipline?", "text": "Can software development be considered engineering? If no, what are the things that it lacks in order to be qualified as an engineering discipline? Related to this is this question on Stack Overflow about the difference between a programmer and a software engineer. There is the Software Engineering Institute at Carnigie Mellon University that prescribes and maintains the CMMI standards. Is this something that will turn development into engineering?"}
{"_id": "222832", "title": "What is the difference between UML Data profile and ER model?", "text": "I have been asked this question and even after a lot of research, I cannot find the answer. When I design a database using Entity relationship (ER) and then re-draw it as UML class model (extended with Data modeling profile for UML), what are the differences and how both models can be (in their way) useful for db developer? With regard to multiplicity, foreign keys.."}
{"_id": "222835", "title": "Why don't compilers support non-English keywords?", "text": "When you read C, C#, Java, Python, PHP and many other programming languages all the syntax is written in English. Simple code like this               if (X+1 > 4) {     }     while (A == true) {     }      Is written in English even if the programmer's native language is something else. Would it not be more effective to allow the programmer to use their own native language in the source code, like this (my bad Spanish so forgive me if it's wrong)               si (X+1 > 4) {     }     mientras (A == verdadero) {     }      There is no technical reason why a compiler or parser should be _stuck_ with it's syntax hard coded. Any developer who has done internalization knows there are many easy ways to support other spoken languages. You can run most IDE platforms in different languages. Yet, the programming language the developer is using is stuck in English. Why have none of the major languages added support for language packs?"}
{"_id": "143302", "title": "What are the names for various forms of camel-case style naming?", "text": "For the purposes of communicating coding styles to my co-workers, what would I formally call the following variants of camel case? > camelCase and > CamelCase Notice that the former version starts with a lower-case alphabetic character, and the latter version starts with an upper-case alphabetic character. I assume these have some sort of \"official name\". Also if there are any other forms I have not listed here, bonus points to those that mention them as well as well as their names."}
{"_id": "156489", "title": "Scripting language for filling out web form", "text": "I have a job as an intern at a technology company, I was given the unfortunate job of performing some data entry into our web management system. The information entered into the web form is stored in a MySQL DB. Upon receiving the data I realized I would have to submit this online form about 1000 different times all consisting of about 10 different text fields / check boxes per form. (So in other words, would be completely mind numbing and be a ridiculous waste of time and resources, or so I thought...) Having used databases a good bit prior to this, my immediate reaction was to just write a short MySQL script to bulk import all of the data, especially since it was already presented to me in an excel spreadsheet ready to go. Thought it may have been some sort of a test since it seemed too obvious. I wrote the script which consisted of about 10 lines of code but was then informed I couldn't be trusted with MySQL Admin privileges to run said script. So my next thought would be to write a script to just enter the information through the web form (Which will take ten times longer but it's what I have to) Being unfamiliar with scripting of this nature (seems like I would need something similar to a bot, but the good kind) I was unsure of how to proceed to do this. Is there a preferred language to use to enter the data i have into the web form I do have access to? I'm not particularly looking for this to be done for me by any means just a nice point in the right direction as far as what scripting language to use and how to pair that with the data I have that needs to be entered. Thanks for the help/ valuable input! **EDIT:** Is there a way to perform this using perl without having access to place any files on the server? Would I be able to run some Javascript loops to pull the data out of .csv or just a .txt format with line delimiters and insert it into the web form?"}
{"_id": "67803", "title": "Is it ok to use localized character encodings for code?", "text": "Is it ok to use a localized encoding (i.e. ISO-8859-15) instead of ANSI/UTF-8/some standard for code? What when you have names that do not translate very well into english code? Or when your company and your customers are (and always will be) local and not international, like governments? And what about using special characters like people in almost all countries have? What do you think, what encodings do you use?"}
{"_id": "67804", "title": "Licensing systems for software", "text": "I'm writing an application that will be made available for sale. I'd like to have a system to ensure that customers have paid to use the software. The variables to consider are: 1) Number of users in an organisation 2) Facilities available in the application to the users 3) Licensing period - ie one month or one year Are there any free or commercial offerings that can be used to help with this? What are the best practices for this kind of thing? What else should I be considering? My initial idea is to have a block of encoded text which is either emailed, or downloaded. The contents of the block of text would include a unique number for the PC, end date, facilities etc. I guess I would need a server somewhere to control the number of licenses for an organisation."}
{"_id": "107353", "title": "Developing BlackBerry app with 3rd party content", "text": "I'm working on a BlackBerry app, however I'm loading data from various 3rd party websites around the web. (E.g, posts from stackoverflow or currency rates off Yahoo.com) I'd like to know if this could cause any trouble, would it be allowed? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "136097", "title": "Can someone who studied web easily switch to software", "text": "I'm applying to university _very_ soon, and I have my mind set on programming. I narrowed down my program options to **Web Services and Applications** , **Computer Applications** , and **Computer Games**. I'm leaning towards Web, since I've been developing for Web since college. **Question** So, my question is, would it be very difficult to switch career path from Web to Software for example should I find years from now that I would have preferred a different career path? **Note** The three programs are all part of a Bachelor of Computer Science and seem to share the same basic courses."}
{"_id": "23157", "title": "Should programming schools be more competitive?", "text": "There have been several postings on P.SE about lower quality programming education, and this post from Joel on JavaSchools shows his frustration with the way computer science is often taught. At many art and music schools, only the best students are allowed to continue their education. They only accept a limited (call it x) number of students, and if you are not in the top x students, you don't continue. Contrast this with computer schools, where if you get a C, or a B in my school, you go on. Should computer science schools have a similiar program? What are your feeling regarding such a program? EDIT: In reply to the posts who say that graduating from a top school does not guarantee a good career: I don't think it should. My question has to do with how you be sure that the people who do graduate from any school - Ivy League or not - have reached the level of proficiency that a degree is supposed to show."}
{"_id": "77528", "title": "I need to develop a parser. Can I use Lex and Yacc for the purpose?", "text": "I need to extract very particular data from log files(of different types and formats). Since I am a recent college passout; my mind ran to using Lex and Yacc for the purpose. Now I have the **following Questions** **1.** Will it be legal to do so ? (This product I am working for belongs to one of the biggest tech companies in the world.) **2.** Also ; I would like to know if I am being too afraid to write my own parser? **3.** How can I use Lex and Yacc if my product is Windows based? Please tell me if you need any clarification or extra information."}
{"_id": "77529", "title": "Why isn't Radix Sort used more often?", "text": "It's stable and has a time complexity of O(n). It should be faster than algorithms like Quicksort and Mergesort, yet I hardly ever see it used."}
{"_id": "228969", "title": "Fixing bugs may lead to delayed feedback", "text": "I worked in a group in Microsoft that developed the upgrade to the Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus. For a year we worked on the next version of the product. We had 6 milestones (milestone each two months). Most of the features were developed in the first few milestones, and for the second part of the year these features were refined and bugs were fixed. Each milestone a larger portion of users (subscribed to the various alpha/beta programs) would get the product and provide feedback. I was told by the program managers in the project that the advantage of this approach is that there is more time for potential users to give feedback on the features, so it is preferable to ship all the features as soon as possible. However Scrum doesn't advocate this approach. In Scrum are you advised to deliver completely tested and functional piece of software and not half baked and brittle features. This approach has various benefits, but it also has some drawbacks. One of them is that feedback is delayed. So which approach do you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "228961", "title": "Should I save a simple list cookie in Javascript or PHP?", "text": "I am currently making a simple list tool. You can click a checkbox to mark it as done and if you navigate away from the page/close the browser and reload, it will still be saved. So it's pretty much just a visual difference. For this, I'm wondering, should I use PHP or Javascript to set a cookie to save the data on whether or not the item was checked? If not, should I use `$_SESSION`? I haven't been able to find a simple solution relevant to my concern, from my searches almost all of them are related to saving usernames/passwords, which of course have an added security aspect too. Thanks."}
{"_id": "3884", "title": "Are Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams actually used?", "text": "I learned about them in a Structured Programming course, but never saw them used thereafter either at the analysis phase or for documentation purposes. Not even for highly structured languages like Pascal (Delphi).   Does any of you actually use Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams? If yes, what tools do you use to create/maintain them?   **edit:**   Or have you never heard of them?"}
{"_id": "28174", "title": "Is using YouTube a good, inexpensive solution to building a website that requires users to post videos?", "text": "I'm diving into web development after ten years of desktop development and I have an idea for a Rails website that will rely on users posting short videos (5 -15 mins) they've recorded. The website will be ad-supported and probably won't generate enough revenue to support hosting video based on how expensive I understand it to be, so the idea I had was to allow users to specify a link to the video they recorded and have posted on Youtube. This way, YouTube funds all the resources (storage, bandwidth, etc.) needed for the videos and I simply embed them in my website. My questions are...   1. Is it worth the poor design choice to separate the user's content service provider (in this case, YouTube) from my website in order to save the money it would cost me to host the videos myself?   2. Is there an inexpensive way for me to host the videos myself if the answer to my first question is \"No!\"?   3. If it's not a bad idea, do you see any other potential problems with this approach? I apologize if this question is absurd in any way, I'm still getting familiar with the workings of web businesses. Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom, I'm going to continue researching my questions right now."}
{"_id": "151285", "title": "Does a team of developers need a manager?", "text": "**Background:** I'm currently part of a team of four: 1 manager, 1 senior developer and 2 developers. We do a range of bespoke in-house systems / projects (e.g. 6-8 weeks) for an organisation of around 3500 staff, as well as all the maintenance and support required from the systems that have been created before. There is not enough of us to do all the work that is potentially coming our way - we're understaffed. Management acknowledge this, but budget restraints limit our ability to recruit additional members to the team (even if we make the salary back in savings). **The Change** This leaves us where we are now. Our manager is due to leave his role for pastures new, leaving a vacancy in the team. Management are using this opportunity to restructure our team which would see the team manager role replaced by another developer and another senior developer. Their logic being that we need more developers, so here's a way of funding it (one of the roles is partially funded from another vacant post). The team would have no direct line manager and the roles and responsibilities would be divided up between the seniors and the (relatively new to post) service manager (a non-technical role with little-to-no development knowledge/experience whose focus is shared amongst a number of other teams and individuals) - who would be our next actual manager up the food chain. I guess the final question is: **Is it possible to run a development team without an manager?** Have you had experience of this? And what things could go wrong / could be of benefit to us? I'd ideally like to \"see the light\" and the benefits of doing things this way, or come up with some points for argument against it."}
{"_id": "197235", "title": "OOP (php) for beginners - some unclarities", "text": "I started reading some tutorials about OOP, because I want to learn the basics. I have a question about it. I understand how you can have a object \"Car\" and give it a color like this $oCar->setColor(\"white\"); But there are some things unclear to me. Let's say I have a database with all kinds of cars. What is the best way to create the object \"car\"? A SQL-query instead the class? And the other question is: how can I output a list of all cars? Do I need to create a object called \"Garage\" with has only one method within that selects all the cars from the database? Or does this kind of method belong in the \"Car\" object?"}
{"_id": "197232", "title": "How to write readable Clojure Code?", "text": "I am new to Clojure. I can understand the code I write but it becomes too difficult to understand it later.   It becomes difficult to match parentheses. What's the generic conventions to follow regarding naming conventions and indentation in various situations? For example I wrote a sample de-structuring example to understand but it looks completely unreadable the second time.               (defn f [{x :x y :y z :z [a b c] :coll}] (print x \" \" y  \" \" z \" \" a \" \" b \" \" c))       In case of de-structuring, is it better to do it directly at the parameter level or start a let form and then continue there?"}
{"_id": "91921", "title": "Where can I find unbiased evaluations of professional certification programs?", "text": "Until recently, I've been getting along just fine with my Computer Science graduate degree from a respectable university, but now my employer has instituted a policy that employees in my position must carry a certification from a short list of possibilities. I've never had to care about this stuff before, and just Googling around leads mostly to scammy-looking sites trying to sell you \"study software\", sample exams, or just the outright test answers (supposedly). So, I have to choose a certification to go for, and have no way of knowing if any of them are worth more (to a real programmer) than the paper they're printed on. I could post a big list here and have people pick it apart, but I figure \"teach a man to fish\" is perhaps more useful. If you have a positive / negative experience with a particular cert, by all means let me know, but I'd really prefer to be better equipped to evaluate them myself."}
{"_id": "225825", "title": "Large number of projects for a single application", "text": "I'm working on 300K line C/C++ Windows application that is spread across 23 different Eclipse projects (approximately one third for Qt interface, one third for DLLs and one third for static libraries). I have complained to the project manager that it's cumbersome to work with so many different projects for one single piece of software. For example, if I change one thing at a static library, I will probably have to recompile at least 5 other projects. Am I right to complain or is this how most similar projects are managed? Is there any reference on how it should be done?"}
{"_id": "79474", "title": "Why do more languages not support ===", "text": "I mean it as it is used in JavaScript. Just curious why this is not supported in more languages? Like Java for example does not have it? Seems to be a very useful operator to have."}
{"_id": "79476", "title": "What skills are needed for machine learning jobs?", "text": "I posted this question on Quora, but didn't get enough responses. reposting it here. I am a learner sitting at home and learning linear algebra, very interested on working in Machine Learning someday, but not sure > a) what technical skills are needed fot the interview/job   >  b) any relevant work experience are mandatory I have taken an initiative to atleast start rather just think about doing it so any suggestion/guidance would be very helpful and appreciated"}
{"_id": "79478", "title": "Good at Backend, but bad at front end", "text": "I want to start web development, I have been learning php.   I have experience in Java, Python, and C++   This experience has made me good at the back end side of web development.   But I am terrible at design and graphics.   I want to start website.   What do you guys suggest I do?   If your suggestion is to get better at graphics, what would be a good way?   I also want to know what you guys use for design and graphics, and what would be a good learning spot for it?"}
{"_id": "55144", "title": "How difficult would it be to interact with a Facebook poker game?", "text": "There is an online facebook flash poker game. This game is constantly sending and receiving information to the player's browser about all the things going on in the game. How hard would it be for a good programmer to make a program that could interface with the game server so that the user wouldn't have to use their web browser to play the game?"}
{"_id": "225829", "title": "Can removing unnecessary file from a repo be considered part of refactoring?", "text": "We're using Git as our DVCS and we're about to start to do a clean up (never done before in this team) of files that are not necessary (not part of the sources) from our products. This is done in two ways:   * removing the `product` files from the repo and adding them to the ignore list.    * deleting dead code According to Wikipedia: > Code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code > without changing its external behavior. Refactoring improves nonfunctional > attributes of the software. Advantages include improved code readability and > reduced complexity to improve source code maintainability, and create a more > expressive internal architecture or object model to improve extensibility. and from Martin Fowler's entry: > Refactoring is a very specific technique, founded on using small behavior- > preserving transformations (themselves called refactorings). I haven't read anywhere that removing dead code or removing files from your repo are considered refactoring techniques but I see them both as techniques that _\"improve source code maintainability\"_ by removing irrelevant code that may distract us later on. Do you think it's reasonable to call those two activities \"Refactoring\"?"}
{"_id": "56498", "title": "How can I reduce the amount of time it takes to fully regression test an application ready for release?", "text": "An app I work on is being developed with a modified version of scrum. If you are not familiar with scrum, it's just an alternative approach to a more traditional watefall model, where a series of features are worked on for a set amount of time known as a sprint. The app is written in C# and makes use of WPF. We use Visual C# 2010 Express edition as an IDE. If we work on a sprint and add in a few new features, but do not plan to release until a further sprint is complete, then regression testing is not an issue as such. We just test the new features and give the app a good once over. However, if a release is planned that our customers can download - a full regression test is factored in. In the past this wasn't a big deal, it took 3 or 4 days and the devs simply fix up any bugs found in the regression phase, but now, as the app is getting larger and larger and incorporating more and more features, the regression is spanning out for weeks. I am interested in any methods that people know of or use that can decrease this time. At the moment the only ideas I have are to either start writing Unit Tests, which I have never fully tried out in a commercial environment, or to research the possibilty of any UI Automation API's or tools that would allow me to write a program to perform a series of batch tests. I know literally nothing about the possibilities of UI automation so any information would be valuable. I don't know that much about Unit testing either, how complicated can the tests be? Is it possible to get Unit tests to use the UI? Are there any other methods I should consider? Thanks for reading, and for any advice in advance. Edit: Thanks for the information. Does anybody know of any alternatives to what has been mentioned so far (NUnit, RhinoMocks and CodedUI)?"}
{"_id": "221564", "title": "Why not annotate function parameters?", "text": "To make this question answerable, let's assume that the cost of ambiguity in the mind of a programmer is much more expensive then a few extra keystrokes. Given that, why would I allow my teammates to get away with _not_ annotating their function parameters? Take the following code as an example of what could be a far more complex piece of code:               let foo x y = x + y      Now, a quick examination of the tooltip will show you that F# has determined you meant for x and y to be ints. If that's what you intended, then all is well. But _I_ don't know if that's what you intended. What if you had created this code to concatenate two strings together? Or what if I think you probably meant to add doubles? Or what if I just don't want to have to hover the mouse over every single function parameter to determine its type? Now take this as an example:               let foo x y = \"result: \" + x + y      F# now assumes you've probably intended to concatenate strings, so x and y are defined as strings. However, as the poor schmuck who's maintaining your code, I might look at this and wonder if perhaps you had intended to add x and y (ints) together and then append the result to a string for UI purposes. Certainly for such simple examples one could let it go, but why not enforce a policy of explicit type annotation?               let foo (x:string) (y:string) = \"result: \" + x + y      What harm is there in being unambiguous? Sure, a programmer could choose the wrong types for what they are trying to do, but at least I know they intended it, that it wasn't just an oversight. This is a serious question... I am still very new to F# and am blazing the trail for my company. The standards I adopt will likely be the basis for all future F# coding, embedded in the endless copy-pasting that I am sure will permeate the culture for years to come. So... is there something special about F#'s type inference that makes it a valuable feature to hold onto, annotating only when necessary? Or do expert F#-ers make a habit of annotating their parameters for non-trivial applications?"}
{"_id": "221560", "title": "observer class as instance", "text": "Sometimes I read in oberver-pattern descriptions, to make the constructor of a observer base class protected so the class will be abstract. but by making the constructor public (if even one is neccessary), I could use the observer as an instance and not only as base-class. Is there any disadvantage of doing so i'm not mentioned yet?"}
{"_id": "56490", "title": "What does 'Nightly Builds' mean?", "text": "I have been using open source projects for a while and been developing upon the open source applications and every so often I come across the words 'Nightly Build' and I have always been curious as to what it actually means. Does it literally mean the projects are done purely as side projects (usually at night after everyone has finished their day jobs) and there's no true contributor/dedicated development team or is it more complex than that?"}
{"_id": "145228", "title": "Webkit as GUI in .Net/Mono", "text": "I want to make a cross platform application, which will also have a website where the desktop applications (Windows, iOS, Linux) will talk to the server and keep the users data in sync. So far the options I see are:   * Write a native GUI for each of the 3 OS, so I would have 3 GUI codebases (and a single backend system)   * Use something like GTK so I can use one system with support in all the mention platforms. But the third which I have not been able to find much info on (maybe I'm not searching for the right terms as I'm still new to C# and .Net), is to have a window with an embedded WebKit instance built in, which would allow me to use the same GUI system that I would use for the website. Which would make the client app and the website look as close as possible to each other so the users are familiar with the interface. Is this last option with WebKit plausible? I already know JavaScript/HTML well and if I can use that knowledge to make the interface, that would be great. Also would be a great way to allow users to customize the interface with plugins and they could keep in sync any UI preferences from local to web."}
{"_id": "145222", "title": "Is it a good idea to put all assembly: WebResource in the same cs file?", "text": "I have a .NET library, with some WebControls. These webControls have Embed Resources.   And we declare them like it, in all webcontrols for each cs file: Something like this:                [assembly: WebResource(\"IO.Css.MyCSS.css\", \"text/css\")]         namespace MyNamespace.MyClass         {              [ParseChildren(true)]              [PersistChildren(false)]              [Designer(typeof(MyNamespace.MyClassDesigner))]              public class QuickTip : Control, INamingContainer              {             //My code...               }         }      Would it be a good idea to create a cs file and include all WebResource declarations there? Example a cs file with just:                    [assembly: WebResource(\"IO.Css.MyCSS.css\", \"text/css\")]          [assembly: WebResource(\"IO.Image.MyImage.png\", \"image/png\")]     //And many other WebResources of all WebControls of the Assembly"}
{"_id": "130445", "title": "Omitting inheritance in programming languages", "text": "I am developing my own programming language. It's a general purpose language (think staticlly typed Python for the desktop, i.e. `int x = 1;` ) not intended for the cloud. Do you think it's okay not to allow inheritance or Mixins? (given that the user would at least have interfaces) For example: Google Go, A systems language that shocked the programming community by not allowing inheritance."}
{"_id": "181323", "title": "How to create view models - Constructor, Factory Method, ...?", "text": "I'm trying to lead a charge for re factoring our rather bloated controllers. We currently have a BaseModel from which all our other models inherit. The BaseModel contains things common to all pages, such as the page title, css files needed, current user. Each constructor has a private method to construct a particular ViewModel (essentially a factory method) BaseModel.cs               Class BaseModel {         public string title {get; set;}         public List<String> cssFiles {get;set;}         // More Properties     }      HomeModel.cs               Class HomeModel : BaseModel {         public List<News> LatestNews {get;set;}     }      ExtendedHomeModel.cs               Class ExtendedHomeModel : HomeModel {         public List<RSSItem> Twitter {get;set;}     }      HomeController.cs               public ActionResult Index(int userid) {         return View(MakeExtendedHomeModel(userid));     }          private ExtendedHomeModel MakeExtendedHomeModel(int userid) {         var model = new ExtendedHomeModel();              InitialiseBaseModel(model, userid);         InitialiseExtendedBaseModel(model);              model.Twitter = DomainModel.Twitter.GetLatestItems();     }          private HomeModel MakeHomeModel() {         var model = new HomeModel();         InitialiseBaseModel(model);         InitialiseHomeModel(model);     }          private void InitialiseHomeModel(HomeModel model) {         model.LatestItems = DomainModel.GetLatestItems;     }          private void InitialiseBaseModel(BaseModel model, int userid) {         model.PageTitle = \"Home\"         model.UserId = userid     }      So, my question is: what is the best way of initialising these kind of base models? As far as I can tell what the constructor essentially does is the factory method, and at the very least it should be moved out of the constructor. However, I'm convinced there is a more elegant way of doing this. The main problem that I see is that the code is thoroughly depended on you calling the initialise methods in the correct order. One idea I've had is to use constructors, passing necessary parameters down the chain as necessary. Are there any pitfalls to this approach I havent seen? (Bearing in mind I've only started asp mvc six months ago). Are there any better ways? Thanks for reading"}
{"_id": "253199", "title": "How to organize repository branches?", "text": "I am trying to find a way to organize the branches in my repository in a sensible way. I would like the main branch to contain only \"clean\" commits: features that are (mostly) complete, no superfluous code that has no role in the current version of the application, etc. I thought that for each feature I should have a separate development branch, and once that feature is complete, it should be merged into the main branch. It this a valid way to organize your repository? Can you recommend a good naming scheme for the development branches? What other ways to organize your repo can you recommend?"}
{"_id": "245621", "title": "When to used static visibility?", "text": "I can't attain the primary used of Static Visibility. My question is why they used static method & properties in this code?               class PassHash {              // blowfish         private static $algo = '$2a';         // cost parameter         private static $cost = '$10';              // mainly for internal use         public static function unique_salt() {             return substr(sha1(mt_rand()), 0, 22);         }              // this will be used to generate a hash         public static function hash($password) {                  return crypt($password, self::$algo .                     self::$cost .                     '$' . self::unique_salt());         }              // this will be used to compare a password against a hash         public static function check_password($hash, $password) {             $full_salt = substr($hash, 0, 29);             $new_hash = crypt($password, $full_salt);             return ($hash == $new_hash);         }          }"}
{"_id": "179003", "title": "OO PHP static keyword, should I use it?", "text": "I'm writing script for fb and I have 3 objects that I'll be using through all classes. I'm wondering if there is any advantage in using the `static` keyword except I don't have to create an instance every time I need to use a method/object? Which way should I go, with static or without it? I know this is basic, but I'm new to OOP and I want to learn to use it in a proper manner."}
{"_id": "61409", "title": "What is the biggest trouble developers encounter when debugging?", "text": "I just wonder what is the biggest trouble developers encounter when debugging? I can think of three answers but I am not sure whether they are correct:   1. **Trouble in locating the bug?** But most of the times the crash stack traces can provide enough info in locating the bug.   2. **Trouble in figuring out the reason and fixing the bug?** But if you can locate the bug, then probably you got the rough idea of how to fix it.   3. **Trouble in applying the fix?** Probably, some tricky bugs force developers to make changes in a lot of places, thus breaking the structure/design of the original program. But I'm not sure whether this is a trouble.  This question may be too general, but I'll be happy if I can get some feedbacks from you guys. Also, if you have other troubles in debugging please point out. Thank you a lot!"}
{"_id": "253194", "title": "Managing non-domain application behaviour in CQRS", "text": "Here's a scenario. I am building _QueueUnderflow_ , a community-edited Q&A site for people who haven't yet grasped the basics of data structures. My users don't like it when people edit their posts so, because I want to encourage as much conflict as possible, I want to send email notifications whenever a user's post is edited so he can log in and insult the editor. I am experimenting with CQRS. I'm not using event sourcing and have a single data store but I _am_ using event handlers to deal with the persistence of any state changes. In a normal N-Tier/CRUD app this might be triggered by an application facade or service layer. In my CQRS architecture, I can see a few options:   1. **The event handler:** I like this idea because it seems that sending a notification email is a concern that could well lie with an independent part of the system that wants to listen for an appropriate time to send an email and then send it, transparent to the rest of the system. I dislike this idea because Greg Young (reasonably) points out in his videos that if I _were_ to introduce event sourcing, this would result in the same notification emails being sent out potentially many times.   2. **The command handler:** This is a more explicit approach that still makes sense to me; however, it seems that the general consensus is that command handlers should just be for coordinating domain objects and not directly performing behaviour.   3. **The domain:** This seems plain wrong. The sending of notification emails is a concern of the application, not so much the domain which is concerned primarily with business logic.   4. **The presentation layer** (or potentially some intermediate application facade that simply hands a command off to its handler and performs other application-specific actions such as sending notifications). The question is - what part of my architecture is responsible for sending emails?"}
{"_id": "186802", "title": "Problems Calculating Big-O Complexity", "text": "I'm a complete beginner to Java, only in my second quarter of classes. I'm having trouble understanding our current chapter about calculating big-O for methods. So I thought I was right in saying that the big-O for these two methods is simply O(N), since there is only one loop that loops through the entire list, but apparently they're either O(NlogN) or O(logN). I really can't see why. Can anyone help me understand? 1)               public static int[] mystery1(int[] list) {         int[] result = new int[2 * list.length];         for (int i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {             result[2 * i] = list[i] / 2 + list[i] % 2;             result[2 * i + 1] = list[i] / 2;         }         return result;     }      2)               public static void mystery2(int[] list) {         for (int i = 0; i < list.length / 2; i++) {             int j = list.length \u2013 1 \u2013 i;             int temp = list[i];             list[i] = list[j];             list[j] = temp;         }     }      These aren't homework problems, they were on a test I just took and miserably failed since there were only 4 questions and these two were wrong. I just want to understand why these two aren't O(N) complexity (professor won't give out the answers since someone hasn't done the test yet). These questions were taken straight from the book for the test... which is why I was confident I was right since I had done them already. It was a multiple choice test, and the only options were `a)O(1) b)O(N) c)O(logN) d)O(NlogN)`."}
{"_id": "186807", "title": "handling rules applied to a set of checkboxes, radio buttons or form fields", "text": "I've been wondering about applications that have a set of checkboxes or radio buttons, even collections of form fields in their UI. At this moment I'm handling all the choices separately but of course this becomes a complete mess very quickly. There has to be an established way to deal with this that I don't know of. _If check box a is unchecked then check boxes d through e are enabled_ etc. etc. How should I be approaching this? Not in the UI of course, that's for sure. I would love to hear some insights and best practices as well as potential pitfalls. (BTW: I've tagged this \"rules-engine\" because I haven't got a clue what to tag this. Please feel free to edit the question, retag and remove this line.)"}
{"_id": "186805", "title": "Feasibility of continuous delivery with a mixture of development platforms", "text": "What are the major obstacles (and potential solutions, if known) for implementing \"continuous delivery\" software development when an application relies on varied programming languages or modules... especially when the same version-control and/or automated testing packages do not exist for those disparate platforms? For example, a **Java web application** that is deployed and running on a **Linux** host, talking to a **DB2** database back-end via **JDBC** , with occasional calls to stored-procedures that wrap **RPG** or **COBOL** or **C** programs on that same back-end? What if the code for all of that cannot be contained in **the same version-control/source-control system**? **Is it possible to get to the illusive \"push-botton release\" in this situation? Or do you have to have EVERYTHING in the SAME VCS?** Additionally, how would one manage the creation/modification of database schema, and so- called soft-code control values in the database? **Is there a more-or-less \"canonical\" published work on this type of thing?**"}
{"_id": "186808", "title": "System Requirements - Use of Conjunctions", "text": "I have come across many blogs and books where it is stated that it is bad for a system requirement to contain conjunctions like \"and\". However in reality I am often coming across scenario where a requirement is satisfied when a certain set of conditions are met. For instance, Shopkeeper should sell alcohol only if the buyer is older than 18 years, he has the necessary proof and he does not have any alcohol related problems. The requirement would not be complete if I break it down into multiple system requirements and I cannot complete the requirement without use of \"and\"."}
{"_id": "224883", "title": "What happens during \"loading\" screens?", "text": "I'm from the AS3, JavaScript, and similar \"web languages\" where _loading_ means the code is being downloaded from the server, and can't run reliably until enough has been fetched to the user's computer. However, what happens during a _loading_ screen in software and games in which all the information already exists on the user's computer? (especially now that the information can be stored on a \"quick to read and write\" harddrive, rather than slow floppies or CDs) Does this differ from the _loading_ pauses that sometimes may occur in the middle of a game?"}
{"_id": "104192", "title": "Will you consider a Software Team Lead position with previous employer", "text": "Say you left your previous employer about 3.5 years ago to pursue a growth opportunity, my primary motivation for moving. If a position currently opens up in that same company today for a Software Team Lead, would you:   1. Apply for this position, if you still have a lot of good relationships    2. If you would apply and can speak to the Engineering Director, who did all he could to keep you, would you call him to discuss about their needs and your interest? If not, how would you go about this? As the Engineering Director, would you consider this candidate for Software Team Lead who left you 3 years ago despite all you tried to do to keep him, knowing that this guy has a tendency to seek opportunities for growth every 3-5 years? Yes, this person meets all of the requirements and has the potential to be a good leader."}
{"_id": "253226", "title": "How to approach program design with respect to data strucutres and algorimths - is there an equivelant of the OO design process for d.s.'s + algs?", "text": "My applogies for probably the worst written body of text I have produced in my life and many thanks to those willing to plough through it all. I was (and still am) not able to clearly express what I was asking for, since by the nature of my question I cannot be clear about what exactly it is I am after. Fundementally I strongly suspect something in my knowledge of software development is missing, but because \"I don't know, what I don't know\", I cannot specify what exactly I am looking for (and indeed can't be sure whether such a thing exists) - hence I suppose I am asking for some direction in this matter. I kind of thought if proffessional developers did not know of/ did not use such a thing in the process of desingin code - then there is nothing to know in this respect (and I can stop worrying). Essentially I fear something akin to having learned to program, but having remained unaware of the subject of proper OO software design. I have studied standard data strucutres and algorithms (to the extent of coverage found in typical undergraduate text books), but can't help feeling that there should be something more. I hence can't help feeling like I've learned the very basics, but not become aware of the data structures and algs. equivelant of OO design. In essence I sort of imagine there is some \"process\" to solution design (in the context of the d.s.s and algs. side of programming - like there is to the OO design side of coding software - I see them both as being part of the same whole in programming) that informs one about how to go about the task of writing \"good\" code (in the d.s. and algs aspect of the program code written). I fear in absence of knowledge of such a process/ subject, I would be incompetent as a graduate developer (rather like I would consider a new employee, if his code turned out to be uninformed by the OO design process/ principles). I would consider the code produduced by someone lacking in knowledge of OO design principles/ processes to be \"bad code\" - and hence him to be incompetent. At the moment I fear my knwolege with respect to the d.s. + algs. side of coding puts me in a similar position. Thus, can anyone tell me what I might yet need to be aware of in this respect? (Another way of putting my question might be if I were to say: \"Object Oriented design principles and patterns, is to programming, what \"...\", is to data strucutres and algorithms\". Could anyone tell me what one might complete this sentence with, or whether there is nothing to consider here)"}
{"_id": "198933", "title": "Where is interface between button click and event raising defined", "text": "When I click on button, might be in windows apps, web apps, etc it has some animation to actually see it clicked and event is raised in background. I've knowledge of events and its attaching to button click events but I wanted to know how this mechanism works. I always assumed it is inbuilt in operating systems."}
{"_id": "205173", "title": "How do I license my software under a free license?", "text": "I wrote a number of NodeJS modules (some of which are actually good, in my modest opinion). I basically forgot to set a license for them. I would like to pick the AGPL (Affero GPL). How do I do that? Can I just get away with a LICENSE file in the project? Or do I need a license disclaimer in every single file in the project? What about CSS?"}
{"_id": "134241", "title": "How can I get started writing code?", "text": "I am currently learning Java in college. I have noticed a problem I have when I am starting to code to solve problem. The problem is that I don't know exactly how to start. For instance, if I try to think about the question and a way of coding the solution then I always say to my self \"what about this case.. and this case...\" and don't know where to start. So my question for people with experience in programming, is how do you start?   * Do you think about a solution for all the cases first, then start to write the code?   * Or maybe first you try to write the steps in your own language and then go and write the code?    * Or maybe you go ahead from the start, start typing some code and at the same time think about all the options and fixing and changing what you wrote?"}
{"_id": "253223", "title": "Why were magic methods implemented in C#?", "text": "In C#, I started seeing all these magic methods popping up, without being backed up by an interface. Why did Anders Hejlsbjerg (or whoever is in charge for C# development right now) choose this? Let me explain. Previously in C#, if an object implemented the `IEnumerable` interface, it would automatically be iterable by a `foreach` loop. That makes sense to me, since it's backed up by an interface, and if I were to have my own `Iterator` function inside the class being iterated through, I could do that without worrying that it would magically mean something else. Now, apparently, (not sure when), these interfaces are no longer required. It just needs to have the right naming conversions. Another example is making any object awaitable by having a method named _exactly_ `GetAwaiter` which has a few specific properties. Why not make an interface like they did with `IEnumerable` or `INotifyPropertyChanged` to back this \"magic\" up statically? More details on what I mean here: http://blog.nem.ec/2014/01/01/magic-methods-c-sharp/ What are the pros and cons of magic methods, and is there anywhere online where I can find anything on why these decisions were made?"}
{"_id": "128542", "title": "Client will not pay after software project is complete", "text": "I've recently left university and this was one of my first freelance projects - the first one to become a nightmare. The project was to build a highly custom e-commerce system for a restaurant. However, being inexperienced, naive and stupid, we had a verbal contract, not a written one. The client is currently withholding pay on the grounds that I have not completed the project. The problem is, what we agreed to on the day the project began is now only a **shadow** of what the project has actually become. I've graciously added many modules and features to the system free of charge, and he will not stop adding features saying that the project is not complete (even though all the features from the beginning of the project are present and then some). I think his main rationale is that his original idea did not suit his business, so he wants to keep changing it and that it is my responsibility to make it work. To make matters worse, the client refused to give me a budget at the start of the project even after I asked several times to his face. So, stupidly I decided to give him a **massive** discount hoping that he would agree to it at the completion of the project as he would not talk about price at the beginning. However, when he received my invoice he said it was \"too expensive\", which shocked me and I couldn't sleep for several days. Btw this was just a few hundred bucks for a complex custom e-commerce system. Yes I know I was stupid, but do I have _any_ legal basis at all? Is there anything I can do in the court of law? Or is it in my best interest to cut the client loose, not do anything more for him and count my blessings?"}
{"_id": "140761", "title": "Promoting ecology and/or sustainability as a programmer", "text": "A seemingly odd question, but here it goes. Say that a potential client asks that a certain level of ecology and sustainability is to be respected before they will consider your company for a web site project. How would you go about meeting this requirement?"}
{"_id": "75963", "title": "Career in robotics", "text": "I need advice on how to get a job in Robotics. I got a rejection when I applied in IRobot or some company related to Robotics. I am a international student. I have a masters in Artificial Intelligence and Bachelors in Electrical and Electronics engineering. Master's thesis is based on using machine vision in solving marine science problem. I made few robots. Two of them are, Hexapod walker and fire rescue robot. I am comfortable with C, Prolog and MATLAB. Can someone suggest me where I am going wrong? I want to develop career in robotics."}
{"_id": "27358", "title": "Implementation of XML templates in asp.net mvc and asp.net applications?", "text": "Open Google blogger uses XML templates for blogs. I want to implement same kind functionality in my asp.net mvc and asp.net applications. We can use master pages and themes in asp.net applications but I need to use XML templates same like Google Blogger uses. This question is in continuation to my previous discussion : link text"}
{"_id": "25564", "title": "When should you call yourself a senior developer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Whats the difference between Entry Level/Jr/Sr developers? I'm curious what senior developer means because apparently the definition doesn't mean what I thought it would. I keep seeing these teens at 22-23 years old who call themselves senior X developer or senior Y developer. To me, a senior must have 10 years or so experience in programming to call himself 'senior'. I've seen a lot of these teens here (hence the question). Am I wrong? Why?"}
{"_id": "91196", "title": "What can a senior programmer do that a junior can't?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When should you call yourself a senior developer? I often see offers for senior programmers and the rule of thumb seems to be that you need to have worked three years to become one. Duration doesn't mean much so what exactly is expected of a senior programmer? What should he be capable of doing? As an added question, when does a developer cease to be considered as a junior?"}
{"_id": "14914", "title": "What's the difference between Entry Level/Jr/Sr developers?", "text": "Other than title and pay, what is the difference? What different responsibilities do they have, how knowledgeable/experienced are they? Basically what would you use to determine which one you (or someone else) should be?"}
{"_id": "136163", "title": "What's the difference between junior, middle, and senior developers?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Whats the difference between Entry Level/Jr/Sr developers? There seems to be three common java programmer qualification levels:   * Junior   * Middle   * Senior What makes a programmer \"junior\", \"middle\", or \"senior\"? Does it mean the the programmer has a specific amount of certifications or job expertise? How do IT companies decide what title to give to a programmer?"}
{"_id": "75964", "title": "How long will an MS certification exam stay on my transcript?", "text": "I seem to remember reading/hearing that an exam will drop off your transcript after a year if you haven't taken further exams to complete a particular certificate. If it matters, the test in question is **70-536** : Microsoft .NET Framework - Application Development Foundation **Edit** : In case it isn't clear, The exam I've had drop off in the past was an older exam - for .Net 1.0 or 1.1. I now have the 70-536 exam on my transcript - just wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to find the motivation to finish up a cert."}
{"_id": "75968", "title": "Architecture suggestions", "text": "I'm writing a small application that will reset the entire \u201cenvironment\u201d consisting of various machines and applications. Machine names are added via config file - this is read, the appropriate services are stopped and log files deleted. My problem isn\u2019t how to do this (its already working) a bit more elegantly, but due to my lack of experience, I'm curious of the proper architecture. Right now I feel it\u2019s a mess, large blocks of code, in 5 different classes (delete, processes management, etc) and I would like to make this available for others to enhance. For example, Ive been thinking about breaking up the DeleteLog class into separate classes by machine, adding and interface and programming each of them to the interface (Strategy Pattern?). I've also contemplated using delegates (to which I'm very clueless, but it's always a good time to learn)."}
{"_id": "27356", "title": "Best way to model a singleton in a relational database", "text": "When designing relational database schema for web applications, I often find a case where I end up creating a table just to contain one row, and only one row. It feels like that is the wrong way to design it, but I can't come up with anything significantly better, or that is obviously \"the right way to do it.\" A recent example is a site that let the users manually control content on the home page. Well, there's only one home page. I created a table that had all the necessary fields to build the homepage, such as a text field for an area that contained descriptive text. A field to store the name of a big image file. Some foreign keys that point to articles that will be featured on the homepage, etc. It works, but it feels wrong to have a table with just one row. In the past I've tried many other designs, such as allowing multiple rows in the homepage table and selecting one at random. I've tried adding a boolean field named \"active\" and selecting one of the active homepages at random. I've tried forcing only one row to be active at any given time in the application logic. I've tried not even making a homepage table and having all the other items, such as articles, to have boolean fields with names like featured_on_homepage. In most cases I could build the homepage with a bunch of constants in a settings file. The main problem with the settings file is that it is under developer control. Because something like the contents of the homepage is something to be edited by the user, it has to go in the database. On many sites, I don't have this problem because I can build things like the homepage with a query such as selecting the five newest articles. But when I have pages that are manually curated with strict requirements, it becomes tricky to model it in the database. But imagine you've got a photo table and an article table. The requirement is that the homepage will display exactly five photos, exactly three articles, and two blocks of arbitrary text manually controlled by the user. How do you model that in the database the right way? Also, I have this modeling problem in many other cases besides just homepages. It's just the easiest and most generally applicable example I could come up with."}
{"_id": "25267", "title": "Reason to use mingw win32 headers and libs with LLVM/Clang", "text": "Is there any good reason (except \"GCC is better\") to use the MinGW win32api/headers/libs with LLVM/Clang. Suppose that in two to three years, Clang has matured enough (in C++0x and performance) that it's a competitor/replacement and has its advantages over MSVC like GCC does on some accounts. Why on earth would one want to avoid using the MS library and header implementations of the win32 API, which is freely available in the form of the Windows SDK?"}
{"_id": "234989", "title": "Separating php and html code", "text": "What is the industrial practice on how to separate html and php code in a web project? Using echos to generate html is considered bad but what is the standard way to achieve the sought separation? Using template engines like twig?"}
{"_id": "74389", "title": "Version Control on Windows Home Server", "text": "I'm a lone developer and am thinking about version control now. I don't particular want to pay for an online service if I don't have to, so I was thinking about using Windows Home Server as the location to manage versions. Has anyone done this before? Are there WHS plug-ins for this (I can find any based of searching the big G and big B)? If not, any recommendations for a super simple server side product that runs on x64 WinServer 2008? All I need is to commit changes about once per day right now, and maybe fall back to an earlier version about once a month. Eventually, I may bring on another developer who is remote, but would have access to WHS with credentials. Tools are VS 2010 and WHS Vail."}
{"_id": "58432", "title": "ASP.NET MVC 3 (C#) Software Architecture", "text": "I am starting on a relatively large and ambitious ASP.NET MVC 3 project and just thinking about the best way to organize my code. The project is basically going to be a general management system that will be capable of supporting any type management system whether it be a blogging system, cms, reservation system, wikis, forums, project management system, etc\u2026, each of them being just a separate 'module'. You can read more about it on my blog posted here : http://www.ryanzec.com/index.php/blog/details/8 (forgive me, the style of the site kinda sucks). For those who don't want to read the long blog post the basic idea is that the core system itself is nothing more than a users system with an admin interface to manage the users system. Then you just add on module as you need them and the module I will be creating is a simple blog post to test it out before I move on to the big module which is a project management system. Now I am just trying to think of the best way to structure this so that it is easy for users to add in there own modules but easy for me to update to core system without worrying about the user modifying the core code. I think the ideal way would be to have a number of core projects that user is specifically told not to modify otherwise the system may become unstable and future updates would not work. When the user wants to add in there own modules, they would just add in a new project (or multiple projects). The thing is I am not sure that it is even possible to use multiple projects all with their own controllers, razor view template, css, javascript, etc... in one web application. Ideally each module would have some of it own razor view templates, css, javascript, image files and also need access to some of the core razor view templates, css, javascript, image files which would is in a separate project. It is possible to have 1 web application run off of controllers, razor view templates, css, javascript, image files that are store in multiple projects? Is there a better was to structure this to allow the user to easily add in module with having to modify the core code?"}
{"_id": "223050", "title": "Can only integers be stored as register variables?", "text": "I am confused about this: what type of data can we store in register variables? I guess logically we can store any kind of data as register variables because they are variables, but really I am confused. I have tried to search on internet and in my book. I couldn't find the answer. By book I am referring to ANSI C's programming book."}
{"_id": "142947", "title": "How can I manage changes between a local config file and a remote config file in a mobile application?", "text": "I have an application with a configuration file that is stored in the application bundle. This config file stores the names of images on a remote server. Whenever the application is started, I download the configuration file from the server and see if there are any changes or updates. If there are changes, I iterate over the array of configuration settings and download the changed images to the user's iPhone I think that I will first list all of the name changes in an array, and after that start loading that changed images. However, I'm wondering if there is a better approach to solving this problem."}
{"_id": "142945", "title": "Basic design of a data access layer using the DataMapper pattern", "text": "I'm trying to understand the DataMapper pattern by implementing it myself for one of my domain objects. So far, I have:               class MyDomainObject       <attributes>       <business logic methods>          class MyDomainObjectMapper       save       update       delete       get      Now, I need get many `MyDomainObject`s. These could possibly be held cached in memory (saving many calls to the database). There could also be filter conditions. Where does this functionality go, according to the pattern? I'm not sure if I should add methods to `MyDomainObjectMapper` or create a new class."}
{"_id": "223058", "title": "How to handle status integers from database in object oriented code?", "text": "Consider a database table of Items that have a status flag represented by an integer. A few of the status might be:               0 - Past Storage;     1 - Current Inventory;     5 - Scrap;     6 - Rework;     15 - Processing;      Now, I would like to avoid passing and querying for 'magic numbers' in my code, and in the past I have used a Dictionary to accomplish this, but this approach seems less elegant than what I hope to accomplish. How are these types of status flags retrieved from a database handled in object oriented code? Is it with enums, and if so, how? Or is it better to create a separate table with the status flag as the primary key?"}
{"_id": "139372", "title": "Referencing external javascript vs. hosting my own copy", "text": "Say I have a web app that uses jQuery. Is it better practice to host the necessary javascript files on my own servers along with my website files, or to reference them on jQuery's CDN (example: http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.1.min.js)? I can see pros for both sides:   * If it's on my servers, that's one less external dependency; if jQuery went down or changed their hosting structure or something like that, then my app breaks. But I feel like that won't happen often; there must be lots of small-time sites doing this, and the jQuery team will want to avoid breaking them.   * If it's on my servers, that's one less external reference that someone could call a security issue   * If it's referenced externally, then I don't have to worry about the bandwidth to serve the files (though I know it's not that much).   * If it's referenced externally and I'm deploying this web site to lots of servers that need to have their own copies of all the files, then it's one less file I have to remember to copy/update."}
{"_id": "166718", "title": "Is Web application a Web service?", "text": "According to W3C: > Web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine- > to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a > machine-processable format Web application conforms to this definition. Its interface is HTTP. So can web application be called web service?"}
{"_id": "166716", "title": "Visual Studio 2012 - Express vs Professional", "text": "I'm having trouble finding a feature comparison between Visual Studio 2012 Express Edition and the professional edition. I'm using the trial Professional version at the moment, but it'll run out soon, so I need to make a decision whether to purchase the full version. Obviously, I can just try both initially and see if the Express edition is suitable, but the problem is that there are that many features in Visual Studio, there might be a really useful feature that was missing in the standard edition that I didn't even know existed! Or I didn't spot it was missing until later down the line. I could really do with a feature comparison list like the one for all non-Express editions here. It's a shame that page doesn't include the Express edition."}
{"_id": "141498", "title": "Which way is practical for improving your skills with pet project?", "text": "About your own project, in which way does it give you more improvement?   1. Read high quality code in the same domain, implement your own.   2. Write one project from scratch with your imagination. My point is that it is not practical to write something like networking lib or graphic engine without knowing what other people did in the same domain."}
{"_id": "101964", "title": "job interview question(s) for the interviewer(s) php and Oracle 9i", "text": "I have a job interview coming up at a small, 'family atmosphere' type of place running on php and Oracle 9i. I've prepared as best I could, but I'm struggling to come up with questions for 'them'. So far I got > How do you integrate a new developer into your work flow? Other than that I've got some canned questions courtesy of Google. Thanks in advance and my apologies if this is a duplicate question."}
{"_id": "84144", "title": "Mix three different licenses for an open-source software", "text": "I am currently working on a money tracking/invoice creation app that I intend to release for free. The app can be broken down to three parts:   * The Framework, a generic, all-purpose collection of classes (php/mySQL)   * The app itself (php/javascript)   * The design (images) I am trying to find licenses that fit three different purposes:   * I want to release the framework under a license that specifies that      * The framework is open-source, free, and cannot be sold     * However, the framework **can** be used in commercial products, as long as no author names are removed from the code and the framework's source is available (a link to my sourceforge in the about page will do...Even little, hidden in a subpage, or in the FAQ, as long as people really looking for it can find it).     * Code that uses my framework _doesn't_ have to be open-sourced. I don't want to stop people from releasing non open-source, commercial products. Too many times I have been blocked by this when working for a client, I don't want to inflict the same problems on the community. Furthermore, I will surely use my framework myself for closed-source projects for clients.   * I want to release the app part under an open-source, free license that disallows any attempt to sell it (but allows forks, as long as they stay open-source and free)   * I want to release the design (icons, backgrounds) under a free license for non-commercial projects only. Additionally, If it is possible (if such a license exists), I would like to remove all constraints, even for commercial products, as long as the project is led by a one-man (or a one-woman) team. In other words, I'd like freelancers to be able to fully enjoy complete freedom, but have some restrictions for companies. It might be worth mentioning that although the framework is totally custom code, the app will contain some third-party, namely jquery, and maybe some other javascript components. I am aware this is a very specific question that doesn't necessarily helps the coding community, just me, but I don't know where to turn to."}
{"_id": "84145", "title": "Open Source Client-Based Project Management?", "text": "For quite some time I've been searching for a web-based, open-source project management program that I can run on my rented space at Dreamhost to track client projects. dotProject seems nice, but I've never figured out how to create projects that only certain people can access. I'm usually working on two or three projects at a time for different clients, and would like to be able to allow access for each client to their project but not others. So, first of all, can anyone point me to how to do this in dotProject, and baring that, can anyone recommend an open-source solution to this problem?"}
{"_id": "105242", "title": "Agile methods and Databases at the start of the project", "text": "New to agile and I'm not sure how to start. The idea is to create small parts of the project in sprints. However the project I'm working of requires a database and the database must be almost functional to do anything with the project. So how do Agile projects handle this, do you start by creating the database? How would you do so, for example if using Scrum how would you do the user stories and test the db. Would you rather do parts of the db in a story that also requires code. Say you have a story that is \"As a user you must be able to register...\" you would create the user table in the database as a part of this story? How can agile help you design the database?"}
{"_id": "105243", "title": "Data services methods naming", "text": "When you work with ORM which implement UnitOfWork pattern (NHibernate's Session, Entity Framework's ObjectContext, etc.), there are two types of data services methods: those which save/commit changes and those which just modify model properties. In some time it becomes difficult to support this mess: when you call a method you are not sure, whether it will save changes or not (if it doesn't you need to do it in some of outer methods). How can I solve this problem? The only idea I have is a special naming. For example, AddCustomer for saving method and FillForAddCustomer for non-saving method. Any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "231885", "title": "How do I respond to incoming network messages in a way that achieves loose coupling?", "text": "I'm working on a client-server sort of protocol right now in Ruby. I've hit a snag where I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. Currently, I have a class, `Remote` that signifies a remote connection (for use through EventMachine). When `Remote` receives a message (i.e, network packet), it sends it off to the `MessageDecoder`, which returns the decoded message in a hash, like so (pseudo-code ahead)               { source = <the_remote_connection>,       message_code = 1, // An operation code that indicates how to respond to this message       payload = {         packet_specific_key = packet_specific_value // provided by the decoder       }     }      So, when I get this back from `MessageDecoder`, the `Remote` ships it off to its `ConnectionListener`, which needs to decide how to distribute that message across the application. Here's the issue: Each message might require a different scope of variables. For example, one might require the instance of a `World` object that the `ConnectionListener` doesn't know about (and rightfully shouldn't - the network code should not be coupled to the rest of the program) So my question is: how can I implement a loosely-coupled system for distributing the reception of network-ignorant messages from a remote connection in my application that somehow magically retains scopes? EDIT: For comments, example. Let's assume I have a `World` object. The `World` knows about the entities within it - rocks, trees, you get the general idea. So, a command comes in from the `Remote` saying `:DestroyRock` \\- which should invoke `World#destroy_rock`. The `World` should not know **where** the command to `:DestroyRock` comes from. It should just know that `World#destroy_rock` was invoked on it. The issue is, I need some way of finding a middle-man between `ConnectionListener` and `World#destroy_rock`. `ConnectionListener` **definitely** should not be aware of the `World` object, because if it is, that means I've now coupled my **network** code to my **gameplay** logic.. woops. That's pretty bad."}
{"_id": "231886", "title": "How do I handle merging code that hasn't been merged in ~3 years in an agile manner?", "text": "Our team has recently adopted agile practices and most of the team is new to agile. In our product, we use some code developed by another team and only they maintain that code. For the last 4-5 years, the previous developers have merged the code they intended to use and not all of that. Over time, the code in our branch was customized as well. Now for 3 years, these code bases have not been merged. We are expecting a lot of changes and manual conflict resolve process to perform a merge, as all of us are new to this code and also the code has been out of sync for long time. How should we approach this kind of task/story in Agile way? Is there any guidelines to approach such unclear task where uncertainty is very high and we do not know how many conflicts/bugs will come out? EDIT:1 please bear with me if question is not clear, let me know in comments and i will try to clarify as much as possible. So lets me try one more time. As a AGILE team what I (and team) has learn so far is, before 2 week sprint starts, we discuss requirements with PM, understand the work needs to be done, finalize the approach for any DB design if and then two week sprint starts. in the middle one day we also do another PBR session where any new concern's can be raised for current sprint or we just continue understanding new stories for next sprint. On the last Day of Sprint we do Sprint Demo, and next Day Sprint Retrospective. Recently I came to know word Spike. many AGILE teams use the Spike as a 2-3 days of period between sprints either at the end of sprint to finish up minor remaining task and do not need to carry the whole stories to next sprint. Or Sometimes in the beginning of sprint to finalize the design/approach or to flush out Proof of concept kind of thing. When I (team) saw this code merge task, we are like there is no way we will be able to break down this story to confined task as 90% of things are unknown. we do not have automate test around the code, we haven't merge this code before and again this is a Baseless merge on SQL side. what ever we estimate there are highly chances that we good amount of task may remain incomplete. now in retrospective this will become bad on team. and such task can disturb team velocity as well. **So My question is How other people include such task in there AGILE team. Does this really be executed as SPRINT? or this should be one time effort by team and not logged on AGILE board? In a way i am looking for guidance on how AGILE allows to execute such task. If not Sprint is there anything else ?**"}
{"_id": "134633", "title": "Is is preferable to design top down or bottom up?", "text": "As I understand, top-down design is by refining the abstract high level concept into smaller concrete and comprehensible parts, until the smallest building block is defined. On the other hand, bottom up defines low level parts, then gradually build up higher level blocks until the whole system is formed. In practice, it is said best to combine the two methods: starts with high level specification to fully specify the domain knowledge, its relationship and constraints. Once the problem is well understood, smallest building blocks are created to build up the system. The process of:   * Creating requirement spec   * Create a design spec (with diagrams)   * Implement   * Deliver   * Repeat (in iterative development, rather than doing a whole chunk in each phase, we do a little bit each repeatedly, and got daily meeting to adapt to customer's dynamic requirement) looks perfectly normal to me (with specs as plans). It has its flaws but that's why we got iterative development: instead of spending time on one phase, says, requirement analysis to study every possible thing in domain knowledge which is subjected to changes (possibly daily), we do a little bit of analysis, a little bit of design and then implement it. Another way is that each iteration is a mini-waterfall fashion, where analysis is done in a few days (or a week). The same applies for design. The rest of time is spent for implementation. Is there something inherently wrong with top-down approach in combination with iterative development? In his essay Programming Bottom Up, Paul Graham seems to encourage build from bottom up completely, or program it from bottom up, but not the requirement analysis/design phase: > Experienced Lisp programmers divide up their programs differently. As well > as top-down design, they follow a principle which could be called bottom-up > design-- changing the language to suit the problem. As far as I get, what he meant is that Lisper still performs top-down design, but program bottom up, is that true? Another point he wrote: > It's worth emphasizing that bottom-up design doesn't mean just writing the > same program in a different order. When you work bottom-up, you usually end > up with a different program. Instead of a single, monolithic program, you > will get a larger language with more abstract operators, and a smaller > program written in it. Instead of a lintel, you'll get an arch. Does this means that during the period of writing a program in Lisp, you end up with a generic tool?"}
{"_id": "209295", "title": "Mastering a programming language by not programming?", "text": "The computer scientist Peter Norvig argued in his essay Teach Yourself To Program in 10 Years that you need about 10,000 hours of practice. But Jeff Atwood argued in his post How To Become a Better Programmer by Not Programming that he believes _the only way to become a better programmer is by not programming._ These articles are in opposition. Is there a scientific evidence to prove the Jeff Atwood approach?"}
{"_id": "209292", "title": "How to write a syntax checker", "text": "How is a syntax checker for a programming language written? I am guessing a grammar has to be written first. How to then proceed? **Motivation** I'm using a programming language (Apex for Salesforce) that is compiled in the cloud and a list of errors is sent back to the basic Eclipse editor. I'd like to skip the process for simple typing mistakes and just check for them locally."}
{"_id": "134637", "title": "Can anybody recomend a good SEO book?", "text": "Im currently developing a ASP MVC site. Is there any book out there for ASP MVC SEO or just SEO in general?"}
{"_id": "203635", "title": "TDD Mock call verification - is it an anti-pattern?", "text": "I've been doing TDD for year now, I feel pretty good about it, I love my test suites and all. However I've noticed that lately I've been doing a lot of mock call verification. For example I'd have a Service that will have a Repository injected - in my unit test I'd pass a mock of the Repository and verify that it was called within the method that I'm testing. I'd then check if the results returned are correct (in another test). This definitely \"feels\" wrong, since my unit tests are now very coupled to the implementation details. I've heard that you should test \"behavior\", however in a lot of the situations that's ... emm - not possible ? If you have a `void` method for example, you usually test side-effects. I mean it's easy to go ahead and show some simple code-kata's where this can be demonstrated, but IMHO it doesn't reflect very well to the real world programs that we write. Is what I'm doing wrong? Is this type of testing sort of an anti-pattern? I'd appreciate your opinion on this, I'm still a bit of a newbie when it comes to TDD."}
{"_id": "203638", "title": "What is better: multiple sql entries or one sql entry with a list field?", "text": "Suppose that I have the following logical information: (tag_name, id). For example: (food, 1),(food, 2),(food, 3),(drink, 1),(drink, 2) I'm trying to decide what is the best way to store it in a database. I can simply use a (STRING, INTEGER) table like in the example, or a more compact (STRING, INTEGER_LIST), like so: (food, [1,2,3]),(drink, [1,2]). This method is definitely more compact, but the other method seems more trivially flexible (for example, I can do a join by tag_name or id with another table, and I don't need to parse the results of my SQL queries). Which method is better, and why? Is the redundancy of the first method overwhelmingly wasteful, or are SQL databases smart enough to figure out efficient storage for that? Is the post-query processing that the second method needs (like checking if an id is already associated with a tag before adding it) more expensive than putting this burden on the database in the first method?"}
{"_id": "159870", "title": "What makes a component or product \"enterprise\" software vs non-enterprise ready?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:** > > What is enterprise software, exactly? > > What does \u201centerprise\u201d means in relation to software architecture? What makes a component or product \"enterprise\" software vs non-enterprise ready? Is it difficult to use? Is it support contacts? Is it reputation? Is it a level of testing? Is it integration support? Is it marketing? Is it the focus on the customer of the product? What makes a piece of software \"enterprise\" software, rather than something that is for general consumption? For example, Derby DB is for developers, and small apps, but it's not an \"enterprise database\"."}
{"_id": "141410", "title": "RESTFul: state changing actions", "text": "I'am planning to build RESTfull API but there are some architectural questions that are creating some problems in my head. Adding backend bussiness logic to clients is option that I would like to avoid since updating multiple client platforms is hard to maintain in real time when bussiness logic can rapidly change. Lets say we have article as a resource ( api/article ), how should we implement actions like publish, unpublish,activate or deactivate and so on but to try to keep it as simple as possible? 1) Should we use api/article/{id}/{action} since a lot of backend logic can happen there like pushing to remote locations or change of multiple properties. Probably the hardest thing here is that we need to send all article data back to API for updating and multiuser work could not be implemented. For instance editor could send 5 seconds older data and overwrite fix that some other journalist just did 2 seconds ago and there is no way that I could explain to clients this since those publishing an article is really not in any way connected to updating the content. 2) Creating new resource can also be an option, api/article-{action}/id , but then returned resource would not be article-{action} but article which I'am not sure if this is proper. Also in server side code article class is handling actuall work on both resource and I'm not sure if this goes against RESTfull thinking Any suggestions are welcomed.."}
{"_id": "159860", "title": "What is the logic for setting the version numbers in an app?", "text": "I would like to know what's the logic for setting the versions in an application that you're developing? I mean from 1.0 to 1.1 or 1.7 to 2.0"}
{"_id": "159863", "title": "Associativity in C", "text": "int i = 2*5/2;      int j = 2*(5/2);      printf(\"%d\\n,%d\\n\",i,j);      **Variable Associativity** : when I run this program, the first statement gives me `i = 4;` Shouldn't it give me 2, because according to BODMAS rule `/` is evaluated before `*`, so the variable should have been evaluated as `(5/2)=2` and then `2*2=4`? I know this is a noob question, but this never fails to surprise me."}
{"_id": "202580", "title": "Solutions for iOS collaborative sync (iCloud CoreData, CouchDB)?", "text": "I'm developing an iOS app where one of the features will be allowing users to share and collaborate on data (e.g. lists). From everything I've read and based on the way that iCloud CoreData sync works I assume that it would not be a good fit for the following reasons, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything, as I'd prefer not to use a 3rd party syncing solution if at all possible:   * iCloud sync of any kind (CoreData, Document or Key / Value pairs) can only ever be between devices that use the same iCloud account, so it's designed for a single user syncing data over multiple devices. Any kind of collaborative sync (several people editing the same document / list) simultaneously would be limited to everyone have the same iCloud account. Cases of people sharing the same iCloud account is usually limited to, for example, husband and wife or similar close relationships for a small number of people.   * iCloud Core Data sync is for ensuring that each sync'd device has the same data. It doesn't seem to allow syncing just a subset of the data, so scenarios in which each user has their own documents and is only sharing / collaborating on a subset of them are not supported. And I'm not even mentioning the well document problems with iCloud CoreData syncing which may or may not have been resolved with iOS 7. Given the above, it would seem that CouchDB (with TouchDB) would be a better option, as it seems to support everything I need. What other options are there that people can recommend? **UPDATE:** Since posting this I've done more research and discovered that CouchDB as it stands would not be a good solution. Its filtered replication feature seems like it was made for syncing only a subset of data (e.g. data for one user) to a mobile device from a central server database that has all users' data on it. However, it's not a workable solution for both performance and security reasons. The guys at Couchbase are working on solutions for this, but they are all in early alpha stages. For a solution that doesn't involve creating your own backend, the options seem to boil down to Simperium, Parse or something like Windows Azure mobile services. Of these, the only one that supports real time push sync (no need to refresh or poll for new data) seems to be Simperium. The one downside to Simperium is that it doesn't support binary data (eg images)."}
{"_id": "159864", "title": "How should I arrange my javascript files?", "text": "I think this is best described using an image.   ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/d48nw.png) So it dawned on me that perhaps this isn't the best or most logical way to organise files.   The way it is currently, as you can see is just a dumping ground. The only reason `complexify` has it's own folder is that it's a submodule in Git. So should I be using a `/lib` folder with `jquery` & `jqueryui` and perhaps a `/plugins` with all the plugins in? Where would my files live? Are there any accepted practises for file structure in this situation where you have a core library, a number of plugins and then some of your own code? _PS, I realised just now I have two copies of jQueryUI._"}
{"_id": "133368", "title": "Is it bad practice to store user input in the same table where the admin stores data?", "text": "If in a web app, let's say an app that has a table with stored street address ( **Strings** ), the admin of the app will be adding data often to grow his archive. The table (MySQL) has a primary key with `AUTO_INC`. The web app allows the users to add addresses themselves. Once a user enters an address say **X** , ALL of the users of the application will be able to see the address **X** when searching for available addresses. What if, since address is a string, a user stores inappropriate content(like bad words, for example)? This might offend some users and push them to stop using the app. So I was thinking of what would be better:   * Storing user input in a separate table (\"pending input\"), until the admin approves them and then they're moved the official table?   * Or store the inputs in same table of the admin's inputs table, but put a temporary flag on each entered record (by the users) so that they are only visible to that user until the admin approves them? On a side note, is it logical to limit each user to have a specific amount of input addresses per day that they can add (some spammers might fill the table with thousands of useless records)?"}
{"_id": "113375", "title": "Why are there so many competing filesystem designs?", "text": "Just a quick question, but why are there so many file systems still competing and in use today? (ntfs, fat32, ext3(ffs), etc) It seems that file system designers could agree upon the best aspects of each type of system and implement a \"best\" filesystem, no? Just a thought, since these filesystems have been around for a while now, and it should be at least somewhat apparent which ones have good qualities over others, and we could just combine the good in each and create an ultimate system that is much better"}
{"_id": "147817", "title": "UML, Dependency, and Martin Fowler's Data Mapper Diagram", "text": "I'm trying to get a better understanding of Dependency. In Martin Fowler's explanation of the Data Mapper pattern, http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/dataMapper.html, the UML diagram shows the Mapper being dependent on both the Domain Object and the Database. It seems to me, however, that _the Domain Object is dependent on the Mapper_. For example, if the interface of the Mapper changes, the Domain Object may need to change. I would have expected a dependency to be shown from the Domain to the Mapper. At another level, I can see that the Mapper is dependent on the Domain Objects. Domain Objects, of all classes, are likely to change, and sure, this is likely to cause changes in the Mapper. I guess I'd feel happier if the Domain/Mapper dependency was bi-directional. Am I missing something? Or do I just need to loosen up a bit? Perhaps Martin only shows the dependency in one direction because it is the overwhelmingly more important direction?"}
{"_id": "147816", "title": "What to do when you find a security hole in your company's site", "text": "I have found a major security hole in one of my company's public facing site. This is our first public facing site that was converted from an intranet site. I brought this issue up to my boss and they essentially shrugged it off, saying that it would take a good deal of work to re-architecture the site to make it secure. This has really bothered me and I have thought about exploiting the hole to show the effects that this could happen if an actual hacker got to it. This is probably not the best idea as the effects could cost me my job if not something worse. What are some things I can do to show the magnitude of the situation to management?"}
{"_id": "226105", "title": "I know the language but still can't code like other peers", "text": "I have moved to a new job and code base (been doing C#, .NET, Windows Forms, etc. for last four years) and I have been on this for three months until today. During these three months I caught up with parts of the language and syntax that I didn't know before (MVVM, Silverlight, some advanced stuff in .NET like Action, Func, Callbacks, etc.), so now I know those but still when I go in the code to fix a bug and see their code, I get disappointed, because I see some coding techniques that although I know the syntax and understand it but I think to myself \"could I write this myself\"? The answer is no. For example they create classes that have a member as \"Action\" and at run-time they assign actions to separate instances, or register - unregister events at some parts of the code, etc. Is it normal? and gets better by time? or I am just a stupid mediocre developer? and how can I make it better?"}
{"_id": "182002", "title": "Developing a GPL replacement from public documentation. Any legal problems?", "text": "In a program I am developing, I need to use an improved ListView. The ObjectListView seems to satisfy my needs, except it is GPL and thus unusable in my commercial application. I believe, however, that we can develop our own replacement in-house, using the documentation from the site, without looking at the code. Is there any legal risk in doing so? Does our control need to be GPL or any other license restrictions?"}
{"_id": "139959", "title": "How is software installed from an image?", "text": "I read an article a while back (forgot from where) that essentially stated that someone wrote a virus and inserted it into an image. The end result allowed the cracker to have his way with the system. How is this possible?"}
{"_id": "147810", "title": "Is it common to use arrays everywhere with PHP?", "text": "I'm a fresh grad, and I just started workingin real world projects. I'm basically using PHP most of the time. I just figured out that most of the solutions I came out with for most of the problems, is involving using an array in somehow. What Am I doing wrong here? How could I unlearn this and always think of something else? Or is it the fault of the language?"}
{"_id": "153205", "title": "CamelCase issue (PList or Plist)", "text": "Ok, I understand what CamelCase is. This question is relating to how to CamelCase the shortened version of Property List (PList). I am asking this because I am working on a PList parser in C# and knowing how everything in .NET is CamelCase, I am wondering, should it be `PList` or `Plist` (also why)?"}
{"_id": "256181", "title": "Why wait and notify is declared in Object class instead of Thread", "text": "I need practical answer of this question Why wait and notify is declared in Object class instead of Thread ? answer with example will appreciated."}
{"_id": "75039", "title": "Why declare a variable in one line, and assign to it in the next?", "text": "(I figured this question was already asked, and searched for it, but was unable to find a duplicate; if I missed something, please delete this one and accept my apologies!) I often see in C and C++ code the following convention:               some_type val;     val = something;          some_type *ptr = NULL     ptr = &something_else;      instead of               some_type val = something;     some_type *ptr = &something_else;      I initially assumed that this was a habit left over from the days when you had to declare all local variables at the top of the scope. But I've learned not to dismiss so quickly the habits of veteran developers. So, is there a good reason for declaring in one line, and assigning afterwards? **EDIT** : Some people are confused about my tagging of this question as both `c` and `c++`. So, to clarify, I was interested in the difference between how these will behave in both C and C++. There are a lot of instances where the same code will behave differently in C++ than in C. **EDIT 2** : Apologies for the poor wording: I probably shouldn't have used the words _declare_ and _define_ without making clear exactly what I meant by them, since they have very specific meanings in different contexts. I've changed the title to say \u201cassign\u201d instead."}
{"_id": "167447", "title": "Install Ubuntu on MacBook Pro without a CD", "text": "Trying to install Ubuntu server on my MacBook however the CD drive is not working. All the guides I have seen so far use the bootcamp process (same as for windows) to achieve this. I currently have a windows partition on my machine (it was installed with a CD when the drive was ok) which I'm going to remove before I do this. Is it possible to boot using the USB drive from the Mac bootloader using this method? I don't want to remove my Windows partition to find that I NEED a CD to do this. I would also prefer to have a separate partition as opposed to any sort of VM setup to do this."}
{"_id": "70606", "title": "Trends of Java and Javascript?", "text": "I see the graph from Google Trends: Javascript: ![Javascript](http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=javascript&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N) Why Javascript goes down? Isn't it the most popular script language in web? What maybe replace javascript in the future? And also Java (vs .net, c#): ![Java](http://www.google.com/trends/viz?q=java,.net,c%23&date=all&geo=all&graph=weekly_img&sort=0&sa=N) Well, both Java and .Net are going down, why? Are there some new wonderful languages better then Java coming out?"}
{"_id": "167445", "title": "What kind of permission is this? (Groups+Roles)", "text": "I'm starting to need an access control for roles in my app. I don't know much of this, but I understand how vBulletin works:               I create groups, then give permissions to groups.      I think that what I need is the Role Bases Access Control (RBAC) , but i'm not sure, because I need groups to give permissions instead of single users (Maybe it's not that complicated to achieve). Example of what I'm thinking: Given a post:               Editor's Group has permission to view it before it's published.     Editor's Group has permission to edit its content.     Public Group (Default) has not permission to view it before it's published.     Admin Group has permission to delete the post.      So basically I wan't orientation about if RBAC is what I need. And also, how would it be good to store group membership in a user, for example, would be good to have: `ID NAME PASSWORD GROUPS (1, MyName, MyPassword, 1/2/3/4/5)` and explode it via PHP or one registry for every Group membership in a table named `permissions`, example: `USERID, USERGROUP values (1, 1), (1, 2)` Maybe should be the second way because of the formal norms but I didn't study yet Databases 1 at college."}
{"_id": "209125", "title": "Client Server System in .Net", "text": "I am not asking for code but rather design ideas. I am trying to develop a new system to learn more about client/server development. I would have 3 systems: `Client 1 : Client` `Server 1 : Server` `DB Server 1: DB Server` I would develop a server application as well as a client application What happens is that my idea would be to use DB authentication where the clients actually have different access rights which are stored in a DB table on the DB server. However, different access rights would get access to different features in the application. For example, a superuser would log in with his account by sending data from the client to the Server application running on Server 1, which would then check the superuser table in the DB to check if the account exists. My initial idea would be to send the account object back to the client in which the client application would check what type of account it belongs to and actually displays the corresponding form/User Interface to the user. However, this approach does not seem very feasible as it seems too flimsy and incorporates a lot of bad design. Perhaps someone could give me a better idea on how do i approach this problem. Summary : It would be just like a client server application but there would be different kinds of users being allowed different rights and different features."}
{"_id": "70602", "title": "Most Efficient Cache Replacement Algorithm", "text": "Wikipedia lists 11 cache replacement algorithms. Assuming I know almost nothing about the application I'm going to develop, **what should I use as a \"default\" cache replacement algorithm?** If I recall correctly from my OS course, LRU is the best general cache replacement algorithm. But maybe I'm mistaken. Also, this is a bit of an academic question, since, generally, main memory is cheap and abundant and I don't really need to worry about cache size too much."}
{"_id": "118295", "title": "Did the developers of Java consciously abandon RAII?", "text": "As a long-time C# programmer, I have recently come to learn more about the advantages of _Resource Acquisition Is Initialization_ (RAII). In particular, I have discovered that the C# idiom:               using (var dbConn = new DbConnection(connStr)) {         // do stuff with dbConn     }      has the C++ equivalent:               {         DbConnection dbConn(connStr);         // do stuff with dbConn     }      meaning that remembering to enclose the use of resources like `DbConnection` in a `using` block is unnecessary in C++ ! This seems to a major advantage of C++. This is even more convincing when you consider a class that has an instance member of type `DbConnection`, for example               class Foo {         DbConnection dbConn;              // ...     }      In C# I would need to have Foo implement `IDisposable` as such:               class Foo : IDisposable {         DbConnection dbConn;              public void Dispose()         {                    dbConn.Dispose();         }     }      and what's worse, every user of `Foo` would need to remember to enclose `Foo` in a `using` block, like:                  using (var foo = new Foo()) {            // do stuff with \"foo\"        }      Now looking at C# and its Java roots I am wondering... did the developers of Java fully appreciate what they were giving up when they abandoned the stack in favor of the heap, thus abandoning RAII? (Similarly, did Stroustrup fully appreciate the significance of RAII?)"}
{"_id": "240767", "title": "Why is there no deterministic object destruction in Java?", "text": "I understand and enjoy the benefits of the Garbage Collection in Java. However I don't understand why there is no way in Java to explicitly (and quickly) destroy an object. Surely this could be useful in some cases, I assume performance-critical software. It's true that in Java the GC will delete an object with no existing reference to it, so if I want an object deleted I can set the reference to it to `null`. But if I understand correctly, it isn't ensured that the GC will indeed delete the object, at least not immediately. And that's out of the programmer's control. Why is there no way in Java to explicitly destroy objects? While I understand that Java was designed to be used as a high-level language, that abstracts away some of the technical details from the programmer to make things easier: Java has become one of the most widely used languages, and is used in huge projects. I assume that in huge projects, performance is often an issue. Since Java had grown to become what it is, why wasn't explicit object destruction added to the language?"}
{"_id": "203186", "title": "Minimizing Dependencies For GUIs", "text": "I've been working on a project, and have been charged with designing the projects GUI front-end. I'm coding in Java and using the Swing toolkit. Usability-wise, the GUI front-end follows all of Nielsen's heuristics. Users can easily get to where they want to go through the click of a button / JComboBox. Essentially, in Swing terms, what happens is their actions drive the creation/deletion of custom panels. The GUI is coming along fine for the most part. However, I have to admit to being utterly dismayed at the tight web of dependencies my code is being smothered in. The main problem that I've encountered, that I haven't been able to fix as of yet, is how to keep a reference to the panels/buttons being changed. I'll give an example: Say there's a button A Say there's a panel B displaying picture C Say there's another picture D (not currently being displayed by panel B) When user clicks A, panel B should remove picture C and display picture D My question is, what's the best way of keeping track of panel B? Since I need a global point of access to panel B, my solution has so far been to just shoehorn it into a static variable, and access it through a series of static getters and setters. And this static variable is usually stored in the reference's original class. I.e. UserPanel has a static variable that stores a reference to itself. Is there an easy, tried-and-true way of dealing with these kinds of situations? Like my GUI works fine, but it is not modular and/or robust at all. To add to this, the dreaded 'cyclical dependencies' issue that's shunned by so many programmers is out here in full effect. I'm fairly new to development and just want to make sure that my code will be fairly extensible and won't cause much of a headache to the next person that decides to get a try at it. I know there's loads of books out there that probably have a nice elegant solution to this, but unfortunately I just don't have the time to leisure read right now. I need something that's quick and dirty. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "138023", "title": "Minimal linux distro for compiling arm binaries", "text": "I have this setup: A windows/x86 development box and a PandaBoard ES for testing with a linux on it. I would like to ask you for recommending a linux distribution that I would run in Hyper-V on my devbox that would be used only for compiling arm/linux binaries. After compiling these binaries I will copy them to an SD Memory Card and test them on PandaBoard. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "203181", "title": "programming practices starting", "text": "I have taken my major as computer science and Engineering and I am really confused at this moment. My first course was about learning C and C++ and I learned the basics of those. Now I am really confused what to do next. Some says I should practice algorithms and do contests in ACM-ICPC for now. Others tell me to start software development. But As I started digging its really a vast topic and there are many aspects of these, like web design, web- development, iOS-development, android... etc many things. And I am really confused about what should I do just now. Any advice for me to start with?"}
{"_id": "28314", "title": "Ternary operator considered harmful?", "text": "For example, would you prefer this one-liner               int median(int a, int b, int c) {         return (a<b) ? (b<c) ? b : (a<c) ? c : a : (a<c) ? a : (b<c) ? c : b;     }      or an if/else solution involving multiple return statements? When is `?:` appropriate, and when is it not? Should it be taught to or hidden from beginners?"}
{"_id": "254036", "title": "Can this word search algorithm be made faster?", "text": "Problem: Find a match of word **S** in text **T** Given: **S** and **T** are **part of spoken and written English**. Example: Match 'Math' in 'I love Mathematics' NOTE: Ignore CASES. My algorithm:               STEP 1) Convert S, T to char[]          STEP 2) for i=0, i < T.length , i++          STEP 3) for j=S.length-1, j>0 , j--      STEP 3 is the magic, instead of going about matching `M,A,T,H`, this matches `M, H, T` and finally `A`. This helps in eliminating a lot of possible partial matches. For example, if I go sequentially like `M A` as in Boyer Moore's method ... it can match `Matter, Mass, Matchstick` etc. using `M _ _ H` will bring down size of partial matches.               STEP 4) if S[j]!=T[i] -> break;             else if j==i -> PRINT MATCH"}
{"_id": "208457", "title": "Can you help me understand this design pattern made by Java expert?", "text": "I inherited the project from a very experienced Java developer. The project is Android app and the guy who coded is is very experienced in coding regular Java apps. He introduced some file structures that I haven't come across before (I haven't coded Java apps outside Android area). I can follow the code with no problem and I actually have finished a few add-ons so far, but now I would like to know more of why he used such approach since it may help me myself write a better code. On the other hand, if his approach is not suitable for Android apps, I would like to know that as well so I don't use such structures. I will divide all questions into points.   1. When dealing with a database, he made 3 layers: entities, data_access and controllers. This is a kind of MVC structure. Is it advised to use it in Android apps?   2. In controller part, he made the following file structure: > >     controller/ >           async/ >                 AsyncAddObject.java >                 AsyncExecutorAdd.java >                 AsyncExecutorGetAll.java >               Entity1Controller.java >               Entity2Controller.java >               Entity3Controller.java >               IController.java >   All async files are the generics. Is this structure familiar to you? I remember executors used in Java, but have never used such approach in Android development. If this is a proper way, what is Executor used for? What about `IController.java` \\- something usual in regular Java coding? +++++++++   Then when we want to add some entry into database, he uses the following code               Entity1 ent = new Entity1();     ent.setSomething(someParameter);          AsyncAddObject<Entity1> obj = new AsyncAddObject<Entity1>();     obj.setController(mEntity1Controller);     obj.setObj(ent);     new AsyncExecutorAdd<Entity1>().execute(obj);      Does this look confusing to you? I usually call some database method and pass object to it. For example, I would do it like this               Entity1 ent = new Entity1();     ent.setSomething(someParameter);          MyDatabaseClass.addEntity1(ent); //just an example, adding to database will be done on non-Main thread.       This is it. I apologize for a long post."}
{"_id": "33789", "title": "Web technologies on GUI apps", "text": "I developed many GUI applications for the Windows platform during my early professional career, and saw several GUI frameworks come, have whole magazines devoted to them, and then fade away. MFC is iconic. Tasked with writing yet another GUI application, I starter researching cross- platform frameworks like Qt and WxWindows. I found the same steep learning curves I knew from before, and tooling doesn't help much in building a functional and elegant user interface because its clumsy and complicated. But people are building beautiful and functional UIs on the Web all the time (look at this site!). The standards, the libraries, and the tools are certainly there. My thought and my question: Why not write a GUI in which most of the UI is handled by an embedded browser? I already know that the Qt widgets support a large part of CSS and JavaScript, and programmers with good knowledge about web development are relatively easy to find, ..., so... Have you done something like that before? What's your experience/advise? A browser widget will likely support a subset of the functionality of mainstream browsers, but enough to produce a rich user interface using web technologies. There's the added advantage of the enormous simplifications possible when the web-stuff doesn't have to talk to a server to service UI requests. My idea is not to embed a full-blown browser (yikes!). It is to enable the use of web technologies in GUI programming. **[Edit]** I haven't accepted an answer because the ones so far are suggestions about doing something else, and not about previous experience doing what I suggest. They're not even opinions or speculations about the pitfalls or benefits of doing it the suggested way, which is what I would expect in the unlikeliness that I'd be breaking new ground by using a browser widget to provide part of a GUIs interface. Think HTML, CSS, and limited JavaScript, with no Internet, no .Net or Java (or Air or Flex/Flash), no relational database; just executables, libraries, and templates that can be installed by copying them, and persistence to the user's home directory using the file system. ## Some Addtional Related Questions These are drawn from the answers so far:   1. User experience: Isn't the WebApp that runs StackExchange rich and intuitive enough?   2. User expectations: Hasn't the Web, and aren't portable gadgets (smartphones and tablets) moving the user experience away from the traditional GUI?   3. Could it be that there apps that must be GUI but benefit from being _webified_ while other's don't?"}
{"_id": "208451", "title": "Revoking Open Source license, for specific individuals", "text": "I develop an open source Android application, which is licensed under GPL and freely available on Github.   It is currently under heavy development, therefore it isn't published in the Play Store yet.      What can I do, if someone decides to publish it in the Play Store,   * without modifying the code (just build it from my repo and upload it, same package name).   * with modifying the source code and publishing it on Github under same license.   * and modify the code but don't publish the code under the same license."}
{"_id": "208450", "title": "Flight framework, static or non-static?", "text": "I recently came across the **Flight micro-framework** , I want to use for a project because it seems lightweight, easily extensible and maintained. Most of the other micro-frameworks I looked into and liked were updated about 2 - 4 years ago (like Epiphany, Recess or Dingo) However, basically Flight is **based on static classes** , but you have the **opportunity to run it with an object instance** (as mentioned here: http://flightphp.com/learn#methods)   1. How would you run the framework? (static or non-static)   2. What do you think about this framework in general? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "240641", "title": "MVC pattern synchronisation", "text": "I am facing a problem in synchronizing my model and view threads I have a view which is table. In it, user can select a few rows. I update the view as soon as the user clicks on any row since I don't want the UI to be slow. This updating is done by a logic which runs in the controller thread below. At the same time, the controller will update the model data too, which takes place in a different thread. i.e., controller puts the query in a queue, which is then executed by the model thread - which is a single-threaded interface. As soon as the query executes, controller will get a signal. Now, In order to keep the view and model synchronized, I will update the view again based on the return value of the query (the data returned by model) - even though I updated the view already for that user action. But, I am facing issues because, its taking a lot of time for the model to return the result, by that time user would have performed multiple clicks. So, as a result of updating the view again based on the information from model, the view sometimes goes back to the state in which the previous clicks were made (Suppose user clicks thrice on different rows. I update the view as soon as the click happens. Also, I update the view when I get data back from the model - which is supposed to be same as the already updated state of the view. Now, when the user clicks third time, I get data for the first click from model. As a result, view goes back to a state which is generated by the first click) Is there any way to handle such a synchronization issue?"}
{"_id": "18585", "title": "What is the most egregious waste of money you have seen, and what did you do about it?", "text": "Often we as programmers see large organisations wasting huge sums of money on bloated and inefficient solutions to problems. This pains me greatly because I like organisations to benefit from best of breed solutions. However, my abilities as a programmer are limited when it comes to influencing the key decision makers and often my perspective on the matter is constrained to my own little technical world. So, my question is this. After encountering an egregious waste of money on some software and/or hardware that really got your goat, **what did you do about it to get it fixed** or were you doomed to bite the bullet and mutter forever under your breath? I'm interested in hearing your overall experiences **and especially what lessons you learned about how to tackle this sort of thing in the future**. Let's not name names, the experience of how to tackle the problem is more important than the actual offending product."}
{"_id": "208458", "title": "When should I write integration tests?", "text": "According to rules of TDD unit tests are written before production code, but what about Integration tests that exercises interaction between concrete (non mocks) wired objects?   Should they be written before unit tests or after production code just to test the \"wiring\" ?   Note that I'm not talking about Acceptance or functional tests but Lower level integration tests."}
{"_id": "172927", "title": "Assigned to a new WPF project, know nothing about it", "text": "I started as the analyst, talking to the client and jotting down requirements and all that jazz. Ended as the sole developer of the project. The schedule is OK, but not OK for someone that don't know nothing about how to develop a WPF application, IMHO. What can I do about it, tell program manager that she made a huge mistake by choosing someone with no skills(she had no choice, I was the only one not allocated), or slit my wrists? Do I have other choices? P.S.: Really trying to learn it, can't get how to structure the project MVVM, IoC, Logging. The concept count is too damn high."}
{"_id": "172925", "title": "What problems do configuration management tools solve?", "text": "My company is creating a service in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud. Without getting too much into the details, there will be about 5 different types of servers, and each type will need to be replicated based on demand. A bit of reading gives me the impression that we're going to want to use a config management tool like Puppet or Chef. My bosses are receptive to the idea, but need convincing that it's actually worth the upfront cost of learning one of these tools. I have no experience with these tools, and can't really offer anything other than a few bullet points on what they do, and that wiser people on the internet seem to think it's a good idea. The benefits of a CM just seem like vague best practices at this point, since I haven't yet experienced the problems that they are meant to solve. What headaches can I expect if we don't use a config management tool?"}
{"_id": "76601", "title": "Looking for good functional / oop / meta programming language with :", "text": "I want it will be   * native code generation // Able to compile with something like GHC   * cross-platform (win / linux)   * Functional and a bit object-oriented   * lambdas, pattern matching, tuples and other functional stuff   * Great metaprogramming support   * Indent and minimum borders   * static typing   * also I want Mixin support :)   * possibility to build web sites based on some frameworks is also good plus.   * so and yes, performance and stability matters. I started **Haskell** , but still being not sure about it, because there is OCaml. And I've got F# experience. But as far as I know **OCalm** is a bit OOP and sometimes even faster (not sure about it) I never tried it. There is also erlang, I know nothing about **erlang**. And maybe I'm missing something more..? **Python** , I have no idea about python here, it's functional and it's oop and it supports mixin and popular and fast, but I don'r really think that python is able for all the functional magic, I think it can not. I know that this thread/topic is a like a talking about nothing or like a language war, but I seriously and really want to hear your vision of it."}
{"_id": "106601", "title": "In simple words what are are the purposes of abstract classes and/or interfaces?", "text": "I have to explain to some students the use of abstract classes and interfaces, as I have a very tecnical background, I would like to know if you would help me to define an easy explanation for junior. Simple definition: **What are the purposes of abstract classes, interfaces, and what is the difference between the two ?** **When is it appropriate to use one instead of the other?** Thanks."}
{"_id": "234598", "title": "How to manage data flow between UI components?", "text": "I have been trying to use classes that implement ActionListener to respond to user input. I'm consistently noticing that for an action listener to communicate the event to other objects, it has to contain the object. Like, The object I want to get updated when action_src is clicked:               public class Display_Field {         JTextField display;              public Display_Field ( JButton action_src ) {             action_src.addActionListener( new Open_Dialog_Click( this ) );         }              public void setText( String text ) {             display.setText( text );         }     }      The ActionListener I plan to add to action_src:               public class Open_Dialog_Click implements ActionListener {         private Display_Field display;              public void actionPerformed( ActionEvent action ) {             JFileChooser chooser = new JFileChooser();             chooser.showOpenDialog( null );             display.setText( chooser.getSelectedFile().getName() );         }              public Open_Dialog_Click( Display_Field display ) {             this.display = display;         }     }      There is so many convolutions! Like, the display needs to be constructed with a button that adds an ActionListener that needs to be constructed with the display... **Is there a less convoluted way to allow data to flow between components?** I have considered making a central class that houses all the listeners, acting as wiring for any and all intercomponent communication, but that seems like the class is doing too much for its own good. ...or is that how it is done after all?"}
{"_id": "38663", "title": "Programming language usage at Google", "text": "I have heard Google uses Python, Java and C++. But what I don't know is how is each of those programming language is used. I mean what is Python, Java and C++ is used for at Google. Why would they used upto 3 programming languages when 1 language is enough. Does anybody know?"}
{"_id": "38661", "title": "Is it fair to use shortened url to mention and give links of live projects in my resume?", "text": "I have done or was part of some mobile projects that are uploaded in their respective markets and currently live, and I am already mentioning status as LIVE for respective projects. One of my friend -who is actually a web developer- has recently suggested me to put the urls of the application if the project is live. And I am taking this suggestion seriously. But i have found that some urls are really long and they desperately need to be shortened. So my question is : Is it fair to shorten all the urls of the live application? Or just shorten those which are so long. In case I shorten all the urls, can any employer take this point negatively? Thanks **EDIT** : After reading your response I think I need to clarify one thing.... The applications I have developed are mobile applications and they are uploaded in their respective markets, like Blackberry App store and android markets. It means a lot for an application accepted to be sold in market. And I want to put the url of these market sites. The links are there for a long time, so there is no threat that the link goes offline in a year or two....."}
{"_id": "102736", "title": "Why am I seeing more boolean naming conventions where \"is\" is used as the first word in the variable (eg, IsUserAdmin vs UserIsAdmin)?", "text": "I think everyone will agree that the following boolean variable/property names are standard:   * UserIsAdmin   * OrdersAreClosed The important thing to note about boolean expressions is that they are stated and then evaluated as true or false. User is admin. False. You get the point. However, lately I have seen an increase in booleans being formed this way:   * IsUserAdmin   * AreOrdersClosed Am I the only one who doesn't think this sounds absolutely ridiculous? You're not asking \"Is user admin?\" and then waiting for a yes or no. You're making a statement of \"User is admin\" and waiting for a true or false evaluation. Microsoft has been doing this a lot lately, as well as the programming behind our Telerik web controls. The thing is that I don't understand where this is coming from. It never used to be popular, leaving me to wonder if it's just me who is noticing this or if this is a trend that is actually on the rise and, if so, what's the point?"}
{"_id": "83490", "title": "about database design", "text": "My question consists of three parts: When to be sure that your database design is perfect? * * * Is returning to the data base design to change some issues (like adding new column, delete a column or change data type or add new table or ....) considered as a bad practice or is it normal? * * * I want any web sites or books just for training on ERD and `normalization`. I want a lot of samples, practices, and case studies with recommended answers, to strengthen my skill in database design and avoid the poor database designs I've made. Note: I don't need books to explain the concepts, what I need is practices, examples, and case studies with recommended answers."}
{"_id": "83499", "title": "Do payment terms effect project design methodology?", "text": "When working on a software project for a client, there are two ways in which this can be billed - fixed fee project, or per hour billing. Does the choice of payment terms effect the design methodology you would choose to use? For example, one of the benefits of Agile programming is that changes can be made very quickly, and there is less emphasis on documentation, particularly with regards to design up front. This is great for per-hour billing, but when working on a fixed-fee project, you want to avoid changes as much as possible, or bill extra for the additional work created. In such a case, documentation and initial design become more important, as they form a great way of agreeing the exact scope of the project, and can be used to show deviations from design and therefore extra charges. Do you tend to use different design methodologies for fixed-fee and hourly rate projects? If so, what particular methodology do you feel works best for fixed-fee projects?"}
{"_id": "108552", "title": "Can GPL-licensed software be resold?", "text": "My research group is developing some software for research purposes. The project leader wants the software to be open source and likes the GPL, but wants to ensure that they software cannot be sold. Are we reading the GPL correctly? The software can be freely modified, (re)distributed, and sold? If so, I see why it would be difficult to effectively sell the software; however, the GPL isn't quite strict enough for our needs. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "18055", "title": "Installer or Portable", "text": "I feared programs that require installation a lot. They leave traces behind the registry even after un-installation, plus, some uninstallers are poorly- programmed (that means, some programs cannot be uninstalled). That applies to Windows. The good side of installers, they create shortcuts and file associations. However, the Komodo on Linux uses a shell script to setup and can be safely uninstalled by deleting the folder. Do you think installers should be all abolished? Do you think the effect of installations should be replaced by shell scripts? Do you think all computer games should be portable? Should the \"scan the /Applications/${AppName}/Information folder and list app icons\" design should be used for future desktop environments?"}
{"_id": "233623", "title": "How can I use different versions of an evolving library in different projects?", "text": "# The problem I write a lot of exploratory code in my research. As I go along, I put functionality that I'd like to reuse in a central location. A project might look like this:               ./mylib     ./exploration         /experiment_1         /experiment_2         /experiment_3      Where each experiment uses some functionality from `mylib`. Now I come along and start my fourth experiment. In the process, I may need to change my library in some backwards-incompatible way. Now I can't re-run my first three experiments without updating their codes to be compatible with the newest library. _Note_ : As of now, I keep `mylib` in version control, and `exploration` in version control, using git. This means that all of the experiments are in the same repository. This is done so that a single `push` or `fetch` and `merge` in `experiments` syncs all of my experiments between computers. I feel that there may be a better way, but that might be for another question... # Possible solutions   * I could bite the bullet and update the old experiments manually whenever I need to run them (bad, tedious, but straightforward).   * I could \"vendorize\" my library by copying it whenever I make a new experiment. (Bad, bugfixes have to be inserted into each copy).   * Since I keep my library in version control, I could tag points in the library's history by whatever is required by an experiment. When I want to run experiment _n_ , I'd checkout tag _n_. (Better, but what if I want to run two experiments simultaneously? It also seems like there should be a way to automatically use a specific version of the library.)   * Whenever I start an experiment, I'll make a new branch in the library. In each experiment folder, I'll clone the library repo and checkout the correct branch. (This seems reasonable, though it is perhaps wasteful of space, since I'm duplicated all branches when I clone. Also, I might have a lot of experiments, meaning that there will be lots and lots of branches in my repository, cluttering things unnecessarily.)  Should I reconsider any of these above solutions? I have also _heard_ about git's subtrees and submodules, and while they _sound_ like they might be the answer to my problem, I want to get the input of more knowledgeable coders before sinking time into a rabbit-hole."}
{"_id": "237768", "title": "State-of-the art Mercurial workflows", "text": "Having solid git knowledge under my belt, I occasionally use mercurial, especially when patching a HG based project. I feel slightly uncomfortable, because my knowledge of mercurial is limited and does a lot of things differently than git. Since a lot of these things are probably just rooted in my lack of mercurial knowledge I would like to brush it up. One obstacle when learning mercurial is the abundance of plugins. It seems that not all plugins described in Tutorials are still recommended as many of them have been superseded etc. What are good, modern plugins to start with? While in Git, I work with branches heavily, I like to rebase occassionally to avoid having too many merge commits between master and feature branches back- and-forth. Can this usage be reasonably simple mapped to mercurial or would you say that I should change this approach while using mercurial for a \"more native\" workflow?"}
{"_id": "108558", "title": "Are suffix trees and suffix arrays identical? What are the differences?", "text": "I have read some information through internet...i found that somehow suffix tree is quite similar to suffix array but somehow they are no the same thing.. Given a string, a suffix tree construction algorithm looks something like this (I copied the algorithm from a website)               FOR i \u2190 1 to n-1             FOR j \u2190 1 to i+1                     find the end path for S[j\u2026i]        extend the path, if needed, to S[i+1]       suffix tree able to list down all the subtring obtained from a given string However, does the suffix array also give the same functionality to obtain the list of substrings? Or are suffix arrays just an implementation of suffix trees? Or suffix array just provide some storing function?"}
{"_id": "233626", "title": "Should we include external systems in Class diagram?", "text": "I want to draw a class diagram that shows the following for an application:   * An external content management system that publishes some news items.   * The class that represents the news item in my application. The question is shall I include the external content management system as a class in my diagram (and maybe give it a different color or add a comment that it is an external component) ? if the answer is no, what shall I include in the class diagram ? the news item class only ? and how to show the relation between the news item class and the external content management system ?"}
{"_id": "238635", "title": "Standard ways of revoking user access to a site", "text": "I'm in the process of building a .NET MVC website where a requirement is that admin users should be able to lock accounts to not only prevent future log-ins but to also immediately revoke access to the site for a given authenticated user. Locking the account is easy, but is there an established method of preventing access immediately in this type of scenario. Is it a case of checking on each request whether the requester's account is locked in the db and then clearing the authentication cookie if required? I'd appreciate any pointers anyone has."}
{"_id": "182105", "title": "How To Explain Need to Refactor Code to Non-Developer Boss", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you explain refactoring to a non-technical person?   >  How to justify code refactoring time? My supervisor is the CTO of the company that I work at, he is the jack of all trades master of none. I have inherited a codebase of about 400,000 lines of PHP from 2 previous developers. The state of the code could be compared to that of a dumpster behind an italian restaurant, a mess and full of spaghetti. I have been in my current position for about 7 months and have been trying to get approval to refactor parts of the codebase as I am given bugs/features to work on. My attempts to get permission to dedicate time to this task has been met with little more than a passing 'no' in response. What are some steps that I can take to explain to my superior why we need to clean up this spaghetti mess of a codebase and see if we can't get it refactored into a manageable, scalable, and secure state. I am looking more for how to explain the need to someone who will say they understand, but truely have no idea so they shoot it down to avoid trouble later."}
{"_id": "201396", "title": "How do I explain the value of refactoring to stakeholders?", "text": "How do I convince project managers, product owners, business analysts, clients and various other stakeholders that refactoring is a worthwhile and productive part of the development process? As developers we all know that requirements change or are never fully explained from the start, and therefore how we wrote a piece of code in the past doesn't make sense now and needs to change. We know that if we redesign a some code now it will save us headaches in the long run. We know that if we keep our codebase clean and tidy, it will improve maintainability and ultimately lead to better code. But however I put this to stakeholders, I just can't seem to get the value across. To them, refactoring is an unconstructive waste of time (by its very definition - the user should see no change in the application). To them it delivers no business value (or at least no immediate business value) because it delivers no new features, and they will strongly resist any refactoring. I can't be involved in a codebase where refactoring doesn't happen because I've been there before and I've seen how it ends up. So instead i sneak it in when working on a feature. I would far rather be doing it openly so the stakeholders can get a clearer idea of the development process. Any ideas on how to get this across?"}
{"_id": "157928", "title": "How to justify code refactoring time?", "text": "Have a very large project more than 70k LOC. The project definitely needs some code refactoring in Core Framework and in other parts as well. There was NO time set in the beginning of the project for refactoring. However with time and more than 40 developers joint and left the project. From my perspective is indispensable. What would be your key points in arguing and defending a proper software development principle?"}
{"_id": "234937", "title": "UML Class Diagram: Abstract or Interface?", "text": "I am modeling a class diagram and have spotted an opportunity to simplify it slightly. What I want to know is, would this it be better to implement an abstract class or an interface? The scenario is this, I have the classes:   * Artist   * Genre   * Album   * Song All of which share the methods getName, setName, and getCount (playcount that is). Would it be best to create an abstract 'Music' class with the aforementioned abstract methods, or should I create an interface, since the classes that implement the interface have to include all of the interface's methods (I think, correct me if I'm wrong). I hope I've given enough detail, please ask questions if I haven't. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "208985", "title": "session persisting problem after system restart", "text": "Is there a way to prevent session id restore on startup/restart of user's system? We are using a asp.net app and I am able to login and access the site. For the first time session id is created and stored in cookies. Problem:   But if I restart my system without signing out, the session is still alive.   How can I prevent this? from server side. I can try to delete cookies but it is not practical, as each user will have different preferences."}
{"_id": "208987", "title": "How do I implement code obfuscation for native code?", "text": "I'm interested in doing code obfuscation **(native code, to make it clear what I mean by \"native code\": the actual machine code in x86/x64/arm executable files - PE, ELF, Macho and etc, not the sources)** as a part of a build process. I can think of several ways of doing it:   1. Writing a compiler plugin, that would get internal representation after all optimization phases, transform it and then send it to compiler's back-end. In this case, could you advise me some compilers that support plugins like that? Programming language doesn't really matter, but I would like to try out something other than C/C++ (I know that both GCC and Clang support plugins, but I could never get it working properly on Windows).   2. Dump internal representation after all optimization phases to file, parse and process it with my obfuscation tool and pass it back to the compiler. I couldn't find how to do it with GCC (I successfully dumped different internal representations, but I couldn't find how to make compiler generate code from it). And I know that Clang is able to generate LLVM bitcode, that can be processed and compiled with LLVM compiler, but again I couldn't make it work properly on Windows. Do you know any compiler that allows doing such things?   3. Currently I'm doing obfuscation by preprocessing sources, it works, but it takes too long to do it for a large code base. So I'm looking for alternative ways of doing it, and I want to read your opinions on what is the best way to do native code obfuscation. PS Please bear in mind that I'm asking a concrete question. **I'm not asking whether I need obfuscation on not**. Obfuscation is done for a reason and I have a reason to do it. **I'm not asking how to perform actual native code obfuscation or about algorithms of code obfuscation**. I know how to do it and how to break it. _**I'm asking about native code compilers that either have good support for plugins or can dump and recompile some low level internal representation like AST (abstract syntax tree), RTL (register transfer language), three-address code or something else_**."}
{"_id": "234939", "title": "ASP.net performance code behind vs app_code", "text": "I am wondering about performance of a web site/application when there is code in the code behind files rather than when the code is moved to separate files in the App_Code folder. My understanding is that the code behind gets compiled and executed every time they are requested by the user. If this is not the case, please let me know. Also, it is my understanding that the code in the App_Code file gets compiled once. With these understandings, it would seem that moving code the App_Code folder would speed up requests. I understand that there wont be any significant gains until you have lots of files and lots of requests very frequently. However, will this cause any performance value? Also, by performance I am talking about speed. Specifically speed of client side load. And I know there are other factors that can increase speed on the users end, but I am specifically asking about the above situation."}
{"_id": "199451", "title": "What's an incorporated software developer?", "text": "I saw a job posting asking for \"incorporated software developers\" and asking them to state their \"incorporated rate\" when applying. What's the difference between an incorporated developer and a contractor/freelancer? Google isn't helping. My best guess is that an incorporated developer is just a freelancer/contractor who sets up a corporation and works as the sole employee of that corporation, rather than freelancing under their own name. But since (I assume) you would have to pay both corporate and income taxes if you did that, rather than just income taxes, what would be the point of doing that? There would be some protection from legal liability, but that generally isn't a big risk for software developers."}
{"_id": "225457", "title": "Scaling of productivity as a function of the team size", "text": "Are there any kind of, even if rough, estimates how productivity scales with the number of programmers? (And, ideally, backed by numbers.) Here, by productivity I mean the _inverse of time_ that is needed to finish a project (given fixed projects, how it's time burden changes), though other measures may be as well of my interest (but other ones can be harder to be made objective). The standard wisdom is that _\"Nine women can't make a baby in one month.\"_ , which in my language means that performance is sublinear. (The Brook's law goes even further - that the total performance declines, but AFAIK is related pumping people when there project is already ongoing). Sure, there is an overhead for: communication, coordination, common technology; and very likely latter programmers may be not as skilled and motivated as the first one. But how much? In general scenario it is called Ringelmann effect and, at least - for simple tasks like pulling rope, it is attributed to the loss of motivation. * * * Why the question? Mostly, academically and out of curiosity. Scaling laws in performance are an interesting thing. For example, for performance of scientists grow superlinearly (here: ~n^2) with team size, until the group reaches number of maximal effective collaborators. For most of cognitive tasks, group typically does better than a single person, but not n-times as good (scaling more like square root, ~n^0.5). And for institution management overhead can be directly measured, as ratio of administrative workers increase with the institution size. See references from my talk Does 2x bigger mean 2x better? - 1st Offtopicarium. A bit related to my question Performance of a group solving a cognitive task: How does it scale? - CogSci.SE. * * * Sure, it will depend on the task, and collaboration technique (e.g. two people pair-programming vs sitting at their own desks)."}
{"_id": "40727", "title": "How would you decline to have your name put on a software patent?", "text": "Your company wants to patent something you implemented. You do not agree with the concept of patenting software. How do you proceed?   * Would it be acceptable to file the patent, but keep your name off it?   * Would you attempt to convince your company to NOT file the patent? Are there any downsides to having your name on a patent?   * Could you potentially be compelled to appear in court for a patent lawsuit?"}
{"_id": "734", "title": "Should a programmer use the default environment?", "text": "I see a lot of programmers (and, generally, tech people) using the old \"Classic theme\" in Windows instead of Aero (or Luna in Windows XP) for reasons like \"it is faster\" or \"I don't want eye-candy\". However, most non-programmer users will have the default theme enabled, so these programmers will work (and, possibly, design and debug its application) in a non-standard environment (unless they are targeting Windows Server). For example, a programmer that never uses Aero, may not even know that hovering a button gives it a \"halo\" effect. So, should programmers try to have their workstation configuration as closest as possible to the real world, or should they rely on something/someone else (test team, UI design team, etc.) for this \"real world integration\"? And what if the programmer is working as a one-man-team (being designer, coder and tester)?"}
{"_id": "739", "title": "Windows programming - should you leave UAC on?", "text": "What is the recommended User Account Control (UAC) setting when developing on Windows? Even on Win7 I find it annoying enough to turn it off (because it makes me more productive with it off) but sometimes I feel bad because I know I'll find more problems in my code if I leave it on."}
{"_id": "89188", "title": "Programmer, not a blogger", "text": "I need advice from people who might understand where I'm coming from. I'm the lead engineer on a software product. The company I'm working for recently expressed serious interest in having me blog about it (much to my dread). They even had someone set me up a blog. I have Asperger's disorder. I'm really good at taking complex software problems and finding wonderfully elegant solutions. I don't know the first thing about writing interesting and engaging text. Writing for me is a difficult problem, one that doesn't have a defined solution. I'm really struggling with this and it eats into a lot of time I could spend getting things done. I love the company I'm working for, but I'm worried what it'll mean if I tell them I can't do it. I don't know how to tell my employer that what they are asking for is something that's totally beyond me. Help or advice anyone? **Update** Thank you everyone! Wow, such great responses, lots of great advice!! It was very hard and took a long time, but I was able to do it. I'm going to stick with it a bit longer in hopes that it gets easier (the first post is probably the hardest, because it sets the tone and such). Thanks for the kind words, all the advice, and even for the kicks in the pants!! =)"}
{"_id": "132106", "title": "Is there a unit testing framework for HTML markup?", "text": "I work at a web design shop. Our workflow is divided into two parts: frontend programmers make static html and css templates of the site design, then backend programmers tie the templates into a CMS. We have a set of common functionality for our sites, and I'm wondering if there's a unit testing framework we can use to test for this functionality. For example, one of our common functionality guidelines states that _all links to a pdf must open in a new window_. I would like to write a unit test that goes something like this               if(a.class = 'pdf_link')       assert(target='_blank)      Wikipedia's list of unit testing frameworks doesn't seem to have anything that encompasses this relatively simple functionality (checking strings against a template), and I'm leaning towards writing a bunch of bash scripts and tying them into our CI server. But is there an better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "247096", "title": "Locking database records", "text": "What I have right now:   1. A table with lot of records.   2. About 200 users can select a record according to some rules based on the data in each record.   3. There is a high chance that 2 or more users will select the same record.   4. A user updates the record then saves it back to the db. That record won't be selected again (soft deleted).   5. Optimistic locking was tried and the performance wasn't accepted by the PO.   6. Our solution was once a user selects a records it updates a \"lock\" field in the record. The problems:   1. Collision is still occurring as users are still selecting the same record. I need to prevent 2 users from selecting the same record.   2. We need to release the lock manually if the user takes no action for a long time. I searched and it seems Amazon SQS was a good solution, but it had a problem that I can't search the Queue. Is there a good technology to solve my problem? I need to implement a searchable queue where messages are locked when selected and the lock expires after a certain amount of time."}
{"_id": "213639", "title": "Pro/con of using Angular directives for complex form validation/ GUI manipulation", "text": "I am building a new SPA front end to replace an existing enterprise's legacy hodgepodge of systems that are outdated and in need of updating. I am new to angular, and wanted to see if the community could give me some perspective. I'll state my problem, and then ask my question. I have to generate several series of check boxes based on data from a .js include, with data like this:               $scope.fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap = [       {'id':\"CAPITAL PRESERVATION\", 'name':\"Capital Preservation\"},       {'id':\"STABLE\", 'name':\"Moderate\"},       {'id':\"BALANCED\", 'name':\"Moderate Growth\"},        // etc       {'id':\"NONE\", 'name':\"None\"}     ];      The checkboxes are created using an ng-repeat, like this:               <div ng-repeat=\"investmentObjective in fieldMappings.investmentObjectiveMap\">      ...     </div>      However, I needed the values represented by the checkboxes to map to a different model (not just 2-way-bound to the fieldmappings object). To accomplish this, I created a directive, which accepts a destination array destarray which is eventually mapped to the model. I also know I need to handle some very specific gui controls, such as unchecking \"None\" if anything else gets checked, or checking \"None\" if everything else gets unchecked. Also, \"None\" won't be an option in every group of checkboxes, so the directive needs to be generic enough to accept a validation function that can fiddle with the checked state of the checkbox group's inputs based on what's already clicked, but smart enough not to break if there is no option called \"NONE\". I started to do that by adding an ng-click which invoked a function in the controller, but in looking around Stack Overflow, I read people saying that its bad to put DOM manipulation code inside your controller - it should go in directives. So do I need another directive? So far: (html):               <input my-checkbox-group               type=\"checkbox\"               fieldobj=\"investmentObjective\"               ng-click=\"validationfunc()\"               validationfunc=\"clearOnNone()\"               destarray=\"investor.investmentObjective\" />      Directive code:               .directive(\"myCheckboxGroup\", function () {       return {         restrict: \"A\",         scope: {           destarray:      \"=\",  // the source of all the checkbox values           fieldobj:       \"=\",  // the array the values came from           validationfunc: \"&\"   // the function to be called for validation (optional)         },         link: function (scope, elem, attrs) {           if (scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id) !== -1) {             elem[0].checked = true;           }           elem.bind('click', function () {             var index = scope.destarray.indexOf(scope.fieldobj.id);             if (elem[0].checked) {               if (index === -1) {                 scope.destarray.push(scope.fieldobj.id);               }             }             else {               if (index !== -1) {                 scope.destarray.splice(index, 1);               }             }           });         }       };     })      .js controller snippet:               .controller( 'SuitabilityCtrl', ['$scope', function ( $scope ) {       $scope.clearOnNone = function() {         // naughty jQuery DOM manipulation code that         // looks at checkboxes and checks/unchecks as needed       };      The above code is done and works fine, except the naughty jquery code in clearOnNone(), which is why I wrote this question. And here is my question: after ALL this, I think to myself - I could be done already if I just manually handled all this GUI logic and validation junk with jQuery written in my controller. At what point does it become foolish to write these complicated directives that future developers will have to puzzle over more than if I had just written jQuery code that 99% of us would understand with a glance? How do other developers draw the line? I see this all over Stack Overflow. For example, this question seems like it could be answered with a dozen lines of straightforward jQuery, yet he has opted to do it the angular way, with a directive and a partial... it seems like a lot of work for a simple problem. Specifically, I suppose I would like to know: how SHOULD I be writing the code that checks whether \"None\" has been selected (if it exists as an option in this group of checkboxes), and then check/uncheck the other boxes accordingly? A more complex directive? I can't believe I'm the only developer that is having to implement code that is more complex than needed just to satisfy an opinionated framework."}
{"_id": "213631", "title": "Is there any alternative to function pointers in c++?", "text": "I am a novice c++ programmer who kept an idea that function pointers are a thing of C and OOP in C++ does not recommend its usage. I know what I write here is vague/broad. But it will be great if somebody could comment whether my idea is completely wrong or something sensible. Thanks."}
{"_id": "67632", "title": "How to decide between using an existing eCommerce solution and building your own?", "text": "There are a number of both open and close source off the shelf solutions. For example Magento has an impressive list of sites that use them for eCommerce. There are also stories such as this (only link to last section) where an eCommerce site is developed from scratch with great success. I'm wondering if there's an objective way to approach the build vs customize decision?"}
{"_id": "213636", "title": "ORM: Design of the service layer", "text": "I'm currently writing a medium sized web-application and find myself asking this question many times. For example, let's say there are users, which have files (one-to-many). How should the UI access the data? One \"extreme\" would be to let the service layer \"only\" take care of the lazy loading, i.e.               public interface UserService {         public User createUser(String loginName, String password);         public Set<MediaFile> getFilesOfUser(User user);     }      or, on the other hand, never return entities, only their ids               public interface UserService {         public long createUser(String loginName, String password);         public Set<Long> getFilesOfUser(long userId);     }      This implies the service would need methods for querying (and setting) all \"basic\" attributes, too               public interface UserService {         public long createUser(String loginName, String password);         public Set<Long> getFilesOfUser(long userId);         public String getNameOfUser(long userId);         public void setNameOfUser(long userId, String name);     }      This adds quite a bit of code (and possibly additional load to the DB), but also protects from StaleData- or LazyInitializationException. Subquestion: How - if using the first case - should updating, fetching etc. be implemented? Two methods come to mind First, I could try to manually update the original reference (because things like collection proxies, version etc. only get updated on the returned object, not the original reference). This simplifies using those entities directly in the UI               public Set<MediaFile> getFilesOfUser(User user) {         Set<MediaFile> files = user.getFiles();         if(!Hibernate.isInitialized(files)) {             user.setFiles(userDao.findOne(user.getId()).getFiles()); // findOne to re-attach to the session         return ImmutableSet.<MediaFile> copyOf(files);     }      but also               public Set<MediaFile> getFilesOfUser(User user) {         return ImmutableSet.<MediaFile> copyOf(getUser(user.getId()).getFiles());     }      The major difference in those comes to show when using versioning. In the former case, I have to update version etc. manually (`user.setVersion(attachedUser.getVersion())`) after every update, in the latter, a update call has to re-fetch the entity every time just to set the value:               public void update(User user) {         User attachedUser = getUser(user.getId());         attachedUser.setName(user.getName());         attachedUser.setPasswordHash(user.getPasswordHash());         // etc etc         userDao.save(attachedUser);     }      This does not seem very efficient / unintuitive. Which is the correct way to go? **EDIT** Just had an other idea related to the \"only return id's\" method: Services could expose a public \"get___ById(long id)\" method, which then can be used to at least read the basic values of the entity. Additionally, one could implement \"get___ByIdEagerly(long id)\" and return a initialized entity, but I think that's a bad idea."}
{"_id": "205917", "title": "How to format this line according to PEP 8?", "text": "I'm trying to adhere to PEP 8, with a 78 character limit on the length of my lines. I have the following statement:               startTime = time.strptime(request.GET.get('st', (dt.datetime.now() - dt.timedelta(days=1)).strftime(\"%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S\")), \"%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S\")      How should I format it so that it adheres to PEP8 (where should I break it into new lines?)"}
{"_id": "93269", "title": "Using GPL libraries without modification on a commercial website, do I need to make my source code available?", "text": "If I write a public-facing commercial website, and use a GPL javascript library and/or binaries without modifying them (such as plupload), would I be required to make the source for my website available? Is that considered distribution? That component is just an example. I know a commercial license is available, but would I need a commercial license if I wasn't modifying the source code of the component?"}
{"_id": "132485", "title": "Does a website running modified GPL software have an obligation to release their changes?", "text": "If a non-profit organization runs software on its website that is modified GPL'ed software and it acknowledged to be such, do they have a legal obligation to release any changes? They are not offering binaries, they're just running it and providing public service. Does it make a difference if the original software was JavaScript (therefore users do acquire source at some point) or PHP? I have already read GNU's opinion, but it is somewhat ambiguous."}
{"_id": "213076", "title": "Definition of distribute in relation to the GPLv3", "text": "We lease an appliance to our clients (4 physical servers running 12 VMs). One of the servers exposes a website which in turn uses the other VMs. Clients have no access to the VMs or the software which runs on them. One of the reasons is that we process classified documents (and while security through obscurity is no defence, why make anything easy for an attacker?) So the appliances are owned and maintained by us but can be accessed across a network by clients. I'd like to use some functionality which is in a library licensed under the GPLv3. If needs be, I can implement the library myself without needing to refer the the library in question, but I'd obviously prefer to use the existing code (to avoid reinventing wheels). With the caveat that none of us are lawyers, can someone clarify if, in their experience, this counts as distribution under the definition of the GPLv3?"}
{"_id": "210212", "title": "If I used GPL code in server side app, what if any of my code do I need to release?", "text": "Consider a service such as Netflix... if on the server side netflix used code with a GPL license attached, do they have to make their server side code available under the terms of the GPL? Obviously netflix being only an example, the company I worked for mostly provides 'services', we don't sell software that anyone can download to their computers, more like, computers over a network talk to our computers and stuff gets done. Can I consider using GPL code in this environment without making all my code 'open source'?"}
{"_id": "131264", "title": "What constitutes \"distributing\" for LGPL v3", "text": "I am considering basing some new software on a LGPL web application. I want to utilize this new software for creating one website for my employer, and we do not intend to sell or distribute the software itself to anybody. Does publishing web pages from LGPL software constitute \"distributing\" in the license, so I would have to publish our changes to the LGPL code as well? I understand that none of you are lawyers so IANAL is implied. I also understand that I could contact the developers of the LGPL software and ask for a different license."}
{"_id": "77954", "title": "When embarking on a cloud computing project should a Chaos Monkey be the first application?", "text": "After reading Jeff Atwood's article \"Working with the Chaos Monkey\" and considering the implications of \"Fallacies of Distributed Computing\" it made me wonder if the first task of developers creating a cloud-based application should be to create a Chaos Monkey. Actually, given that even an entire data center can be lost within a cloud, the Chaos Gorilla may also be necessary to simulate a major outage. Netflix certainly seem to believe so but I was wondering if their conclusions were shared by others here. So, as the title says, when embarking on a cloud computing project should a Chaos Monkey be the first application?"}
{"_id": "77956", "title": "In Agilefant tool for Scrum, what are \"Leaf Stories\"?", "text": "I'm just starting as a Scrum Master, and I am looking for a good web based tool for a story board. I am trying Agilefant, and they have something called \"leaf stories\". I wonder what do they mean by that. I've read about User Stories, Technical Stories, Unplanned Items, but I can't seem to find a reference to \"Leaf Stories\". \u00bfCan anyone clarify?"}
{"_id": "48100", "title": "Which skills would you expect and appreciate in a Junior Software Engineer?", "text": "I recently finished my Master of Science in Software Engineering, and I am about to start my professional career in a few weeks. My role will be as a Junior Developer for a company which develops software using Java & related technologies (among them Spring and Hibernate). To be honest, I am really excited about what is coming, especially because I want to develop my career as a Java developer. I am also very interested in gaining experience in the field. Additionally, this is going to be my first work experience as a professional developer so I really want to do my best from the very beginning. I would like to know which skills and abilities, both soft and technical, would be most appreciated in a new professional (Junior Developer) that could be part of your team and in which skills I should focus on to achieve a successful career as a Software Engineer."}
{"_id": "27483", "title": "eBook editions of programming books", "text": "(I'll get my justification for why this is on topic in early: programming books tend to have fairly specific formatting needs - code samples, tables, images and graphs - which are not common to all book types and are not necessarily well handled by eBook readers. Similarly they're used in different ways - you often dip in and out rather than read cover to cover.) I've just noticed that Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug is available as an eBook edition for the Kindle (and presumably also for other readers) which set me thinking. There are certain advantages to eBook readers for tech books - primarily that you can carry a massive library of what would be heavy physical books around very easily. The downside is that certain eBook readers allegedly aren't particularly well equipped to cope with tables, code samples and so on and a book like Don't Make Me Think presumably makes extensive use of these sorts of things. So, the question, **what are your experiences of reading and using programming books on an eBook reader and would you recommend it?** I'm specifically interested in the latest generation Kindle but happy to hear about all devices - might be useful to state which one you use in the answer."}
{"_id": "229796", "title": "How is same-origin policy implemented?", "text": "I was looking at cross-domain requests for a design and stumbled upon something that puzzles me. From a local site I'm firing an Ajax request to another domain (with jQuery and vanilla XMLHttpRequest). Sure, the request fails and I can only get a fail event, which seems perfectly normal du to same-origin policy. But I noticed in Fiddler that the request is actually made and succeeds! It's seems that it's just that I can't process the response. Am I missing something, or is that a security hole? Sure, you can't access data, but what's the point of allowing sending data and just preventing response access?"}
{"_id": "229791", "title": "Multiple documentation issues in a single bug", "text": "It is clearly a bad practice to incorporate several issues in a single bug. It is not convenient, hard to maintain, difficult to keep track of what is done and what is not, etc. But does all this concern bugs associated with documentation as well? By documentation, I mean only external documents (user guides, architecture overviews, etc.). I personally find it more convenient to create a single bug for multiple issues in the same document. It's easier to keep track of the updates in the document and review the document when the changes are done. What are the cons of incorporating multiple issues of a document in a single bug?"}
{"_id": "231711", "title": "Application settings via constructor injection or ambient context", "text": "I am developing an application containing a class which loads application settings from a configuration file. Settings class:               public sealed class MyAppSettings : IMyAppSettings     {         private IMyAppSettings DefaultSettingsInstance;              public MyAppSettings()         {             DefaultLanguage = \"en\";                  var config = ConfigurationManager.GetSection(\"MyAppSettings\") as NameValueCollection;                  if (config != null)             {                 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(config[\"DefaultLanguage\"]))                     DefaultLanguage = config[\"DefaultLanguage\"];             }         }              public static IMyAppSettings Default         {             get             {                 return DefaultSettingsInstance ?? (DefaultSettingsInstance = new MyAppSettings());             }             set             {                 if (value == null)                     throw new ArgumentNullException(\"value\");                      DefaultSettingsInstance = value;             }         }              public string DefaultLanguage { get; private set; }          }      Class which is using setting (version 1):               public sealed class SomeClass     {         public SomeFunction()         {             // Using language setting here             if(MyAppSettings.Default.DefaultLanguage == \"en\")             {                 ...             }         }     }      or version 2:               public sealed class SomeClass     {         private readonly string _defaultLanguage;              public SomeClass(string defaultLanguage)         {             if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(defaultLanguage))                 throw new ArgumentNullException(\"defaultLanguage\");                  _defaultLanguage = defaultLanguage;         }              public SomeFunction()         {             // Using language setting here             if(_defaultLanguage == \"en\")             {                 ...             }         }     }      Both classes and interface are located in the same assembly. What approach is better for a global application settings, pass it via construction injection or use an ambient context or something else?"}
{"_id": "15261", "title": "Queries on online project outsourcing sites", "text": "I have been looking at RentACoder, Freelancer and eLance from last few years but I always hesitated to register at these site. Hesitation includes little worry too. These questions fill me: (1) Is there a legal contract between the bidder and the coder? Just in case my delivery date extends, what happens? (2) After delivery, payment reach without trouble or not. (3) In case the customer didn't find the project useful, then? Probably he might say that it is not useful to me and you return money. He might copy the source code and return another copy to me. (4) What are further recommendations? How should I start?"}
{"_id": "204332", "title": "How can I return generated HTML and a response too?", "text": "My web application will use AJAX calls often and so I have set up some JavaScript to handle \"messages\" or \"responses\". These responses are returned (from my ASP.NET application) as JSON objects that act as feedback once a function is complete. Suppose my responses have three basic elements.   * Type (error, warning, info, success)   * Title   * Message For example `Save unsuccessful` `Your data was not saved because of XYZ.` Sometimes, however, I want my function to generate and return some HTML. That's easy enough, but what if I still want to return a message to the user (or some other JSON)?   * Should I return the HTML as part of the JSON?   * Should I only return one or the other?   * Should I return HTML, then make another AJAX call for the response?   * Should I return HTML and store the response in data- tags? Can someone point me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "80045", "title": "Becoming a professional programmer, without going to college?", "text": "I was recently rejected from a college that had previously accepted me, on the grounds that I spent a year of high school in a foreign country and the college wasn't interested in recognizing education received in another nation. Because of this a very generous scholarship has dried up, and and financing an education is doubtful. I'm also hesitant to become a part of a system that has demonstrated what I consider to be blatant xenophobia. What I want to do is say \"Screw college\", strike out on my own, and do something amazing, wow everyone, and become a self made millionaire. The reality of the situation is that I'm two weeks out of high school, I have about the equivalent of an Intro to Programming course worth of self-taught experience (although I am driven to learn and improve), I still need to pay bills, and I have a sneaking suspicion that any employer is going to have a hard time taking me seriously. As I understand it, it's a fairly popular belief that you can make it without a degree, but how does someone like me do that? Would anyone take me seriously if I walked into their office and said \"I have no formal education and a minimum of skills, but I want to work and I want to learn. Please give me a job.\"?"}
{"_id": "213411", "title": "Making programming a career\u2014 without a degree. Is this smart?", "text": "I asked this before and go downvoted hard so someone said I should try posting here... Any help would be MASSIVELY helpful. I'm doing Udacity, Udemy, Codecademy, Lynda, and edX. I'm learning Java (my favorite), MySQL, Python (the hardest), Javascript, HTML, CSS, and just began to learn C. I work hard on them and I love doing it. OK, so I was visiting my bro and his family last week, and I told them I was doing online courses for programming. And they basically laughed their asses off at \"free education\" and told me I was living in a \"fantasy\". I'm 18, and while I'm not downplaying the idea of going to college. I just think it's a waste when I can have more fun learning online and save my money. However, I know a degree gets your foot in the door. However, they kinda drained what motivation I had to continue doing the courses. Anyone have any thoughts, success stories, or advice to keep me going? Is anyone else in the same boat? Also I was going to do some open source work and build my own projects to get some experience."}
{"_id": "173321", "title": "Conceptual difference between Git and GitHub", "text": "The last line of this answer prompted me to ask this question . I know to know at a conceptual level the difference between Git and GitHub ."}
{"_id": "177838", "title": "What is the right HTTP method for upvoting?", "text": "From a RESTful point of view, what is the most appropriate HTTP method for the action of upvoting a forum post (like on StackExchange)? I would say POST for voting and DELETE for canceling vote, but since users are only allowed to cast one vote per message, voting can be considered an idempotent operation so PUT can also be possible."}
{"_id": "39200", "title": "What arguments are there against easter eggs? Are there any arguments to even support easter eggs?", "text": "I'm a bit of a jester so the idea of an easter egg still appeals to me. I have added them in my code before but my group of friends has a running joke of using CTRL-FU to trigger the egg. Now I'm also a bit paranoid about performance so I like removing excess whenever possible. This heavily contradicts with easter eggs as they are 100% superfluous code. What arguments are there against easter eggs? Also, are there any arguments to even support easter eggs?"}
{"_id": "206465", "title": "Why should a column in a Relational Database have a single purpose?", "text": "Consider a table in which a column represents a monetary value in some cases and a link to the value of another record in other cases so that we have the following:               TABLE 1     Id Product Composite     1  Apple   False     2  Orange  False     3  Pear    True          TABLE 2     Product  Date        Price      1        2010-01-01  0.45     2        2010-01-01  0.50     3        2010-01-01  1.00     1        2010-01-02  0.46     2        2010-01-02  0.49     3        2010-01-02  2.00      The tables above represent the fact that the price for an Apple and Orange are given on each date by the corresponding Price column in Table 2 so that the price of an Apple on 2010-01-01 is 0.45 and the price of an Orange is 0.50 on that same date, however, the price for a Pear on 2010-01-01 is 0.45 and the price for a pear is 0.49 the following day by allowing the Pear's price to be determined by the price of an Apple on the first day and the price of an Orange on the second day. Please indicate the pros and cons of this approach?"}
{"_id": "206467", "title": "How to justify efforts to make capitalization of class and property names uniform?", "text": "In this thread, an Oracle Product Manager (username \"Alex Keh\") refused to make Oracle's EF provider to conform with .NET's `PascalCase` coding standard for class names and property names, saying that it is only \"cosmetics\" without any \"functional needs\". > I discussed it with my team. One of the key things we want to know is why > developers are spending so much time changing the case between Oracle and > EF. Is there a compelling functional need to change from upper case to > Pascal case, not just a cosmetic one? > > On the feature request tool and this thread, people have asked for the > feature, but not offered a reason why Pascal casing is so important that > they would be willing to conduct the manual mapping changes. For me, the main reason is that I don't want to see Oracle's `UPPER_CASE` name convention mixing in my .NET code, but it seems that this is not enough. How would you justify effort to support PascalCase convention?"}
{"_id": "206461", "title": "Do JAX WS implementation classes come as part of the Java 5/6 package or only as part of an application server libraries?", "text": "Do JAX WS implementation classes come as part of the Java5 package, as part of the Java6 package or only as part of an application server libraries like WAS? I read that it comes as part of Java EE? What does that mean? Java 5?"}
{"_id": "171789", "title": "How to use OO for data analysis?", "text": "In which ways could object-orientation (OO) make my data analysis more efficient and let me reuse more of my code? The data analysis can be broken up into   1. get data (from db or csv or similar)   2. transform data (filter, group/pivot, ...)   3. display/plot (graph timeseries, create tables, etc.) I mostly use Python and its Pandas and Matplotlib packages for this besides some DB connectivity (SQL). Almost all of my code is a functional/procedural mix. While I have started to create a data object for a certain collection of time series, I wonder if there are OO design patterns/approaches for other parts of the process that might increase efficiency?"}
{"_id": "228222", "title": "Graph data structures and journal format for mini-IDE", "text": "Background: I am writing a small/partial IDE. Code is internally converted/parsed into a graph data structure (for fast navigation, syntax-check etc). Functionality to undo/redo (also between sessions) and restoring from crash is implemented by writing to and reading from journal. The journal records modifications to the graph (not to the source). Question: I am hoping for advice on a decision on data-structures and journal format. For the graph I see two possible versions:   _g-a_ Graph edges are implemented in the way that one node stores references to other nodes via memory address   _g-b_ Every node has an ID. There is an ID-to-memory-address map. Graph uses IDs (instead of addresses) to connect nodes. Moving along an edge from one node to another each time requires lookup in ID-to-address map. And also for the journal:   _j-a_ There is a current node (like current working directory in a shell + file-system setting). The journal contains entries like \"create new node and connect to current\", \"connect first child of current node\" (relative IDs)   _j-b_ Journal uses absolute IDs, e.g. \"delete edge 7 -> 5\", \"delete node 5\" I could e.g. combine _g-a_ with _j-a_ or combine _g-b_ with _j-b_. In principle also g-b and j-a should be possible. [My first/original attempt was _g-a_ and a version of _j-b_ that uses addresses, but that turned out to cause severe restrictions: nodes cannot change their addresses (or journal would have to keep track of it), and using journal between two sessions is a mess (or even impossible)] I wonder if variant _a_ or variant _b_ or a combination would be a good idea, what advantages and disadvantages they would have and especially if some variant might be causing troubles later."}
{"_id": "228221", "title": "Who should do code reviews?", "text": "In my company mostly the architect does code reviews. He is a very experienced and smart software guy, so he is very good at it. When developers do the code reviews they don't do it half as well. We tried giving developers to do more code reviews, but the quality of the code reviews wasn't good. We use Scrum for as development methodology. However with the current system there are two problems:   1. The architect becomes a bottleneck    2. Developers don't take the responsibility for the quality of the code and the architecture (which leads to all sorts of problems). How can we address these issues? Should we change who does the code reviews?"}
{"_id": "216981", "title": "How do we keep dependent data structures up to date?", "text": "Suppose you have a parse tree, an abstract syntax tree, and a control flow graph, each one logically derived from the one before. In principle it is easy to construct each graph given the parse tree, but how can we manage the complexity of updating the graphs when the parse tree is modified? We know exactly how the tree has been modified, but how can the change be propagated to the other trees in a way that doesn't become difficult to manage? Naturally the dependent graph can be updated by simply reconstructing it from scratch every time the first graph changes, but then there would be no way of knowing the details of the changes in the dependent graph. I currently have four ways to attempt to solve this problem, but each one has difficulties.   1. Nodes of the dependent tree each observe the relevant nodes of the original tree, updating themselves and the observer lists of original tree nodes as necessary. The conceptual complexity of this can become daunting.   2. Each node of the original tree has a list of the dependent tree nodes that specifically depend upon it, and when the node changes it sets a flag on the dependent nodes to mark them as dirty, including the parents of the dependent nodes all the way down to the root. After each change we run an algorithm that is much like the algorithm for constructing the dependent graph from scratch, but it skips over any clean node and reconstructs each dirty node, keeping track of whether the reconstructed node is actually different from the dirty node. This can also get tricky.   3. We can represent the logical connection between the original graph and the dependent graph as a data structure, like a list of constraints, perhaps designed using a declarative language. When the original graph changes we need only scan the list to discover which constraints are violated and how the dependent tree needs to change to correct the violation, all encoded as data.   4. We can reconstruct the dependent graph from scratch as though there were no existing dependent graph, and then compare the existing graph and the new graph to discover how it has changed. I'm sure this is the easiest way because I know there are algorithms available for detecting differences, but they are all quite computationally expensive and in principle it seems unnecessary so I'm deliberately avoiding this option. What is the right way to deal with these sorts of problems? Surely there must be a design pattern that makes this whole thing almost easy. It would be nice to have a good solution for every problem of this general description. Does this class of problem have a name? * * * Let me elaborate on the troubles that this problem causes. This issue pops up in various places, whenever two parts of a project operate on graphs, with each graph being a different representation of the same thing that changes while the software is running. It's like making an adapter for an interface, but instead of wrapping a single object or a fixed number of objects, we need to wrap an entire graph of arbitrary size. Every time I try this I end up with a confusing unmaintainable mess. The control flow of observers can be difficult to follow when it gets complicated, and the algorithm for converting one graph to another is usually tricky enough to follow when its laid out plainly and not spread across multiple classes. The problem is that there seems to be no way to use just a plain, straight- forward graph conversion algorithm when the original graph is changing. Naturally we can't just use an ordinary graph conversion algorithm directly because that can't respond to changes in any way other than starting from scratch, so what are the alternatives? Perhaps the algorithm could be written in a continuation-passing style where each step of the algorithm is represented as an object with a method for each type of node in the original graph, like a visitor. Then the algorithm can be assembled by composing various simple visitors together. * * * Another example: Suppose you have a GUI that is laid out like you might in Java Swing, using JPanels and layout managers. You can simplify that process by using nested JPanels in place of complex layout managers, so you end up with a tree of various containers that includes nodes that exist only for layout purposes and are otherwise meaningless. Now suppose that the same tree that is used to generate your GUI is also used in another part of your application, but instead of laying the tree out graphically it is working with a library that will generate an abstract representation tree as a system of folders. In order to use this library, we need to have a version of the tree that doesn't have the layout nodes; the layout nodes need to be flattened into their parent nodes, but the library still needs to be notified each time the tree changes as though the two versions of the tree were a single data structure. * * * _Another way to look at it:_ The very concept of working with mutable trees violates the Law of Demeter. It wouldn't really be a violation of the law if the tree were a value as parse trees and syntax trees normally are, but in that case there would be no problem since nothing would need to be kept up-to- date. So then this problem exists as a direct result of violating the Law of Demeter, but how do you avoid that in general when your domain seems to be about manipulating trees or graphs? The Composite pattern is a wonderful tool for turning a graph into a single object and obeying the Law of Demeter. Is it possible to use the Composite pattern to effectively turn one kind of tree into another? Can you make a Composite parse tree so that it acts like an abstract syntax tree and even a control flow graph? Is there a way to do it without violating the single responsibility principle? The Composite pattern tends to cause classes to absorb every responsibility that they touch, but perhaps it could be combined with the Strategy pattern somehow."}
{"_id": "103950", "title": "How can you demonstrate scalabity and load balancing property of a cloud application on Windows Azure?", "text": "For my project I want to develop an web application with Windows Azure as the platform using C# language. The idea is to host the website of a University on the cloud. Whenever it announces the resutls online there is a spike and the cloud will handle the peak usage with its scalabilty and load balancing properties and deploy necessary resources. However since all of this is handled by Azure internally there is no way of demonstrating it in our project. Is there a way where we can specifically implement something to demonstrate it to the evaluator? A virtual way perhaps..."}
{"_id": "103951", "title": "Best resources to really understand run-time complexity", "text": "I'm familiar with the basics of run-time analysis such as what makes certain types of code O(n) and O(n^2). But I'm having real trouble learning, understanding, and really remembering how to analyze pieces of code that run in other complexities such as O(n log n) or O(2^n). I'm looking for resources that explain in simple terms how these other complexities work and some practice problems to really force my understanding."}
{"_id": "19720", "title": "Where can I find statistics on worldwide developers and software companies?", "text": "I try to find an answer of a very difficult question. The question is: > How many developers and how many software companies are there in the world? For example if I check the Statistic Austria page I can see that in Austria there are 8383 companies with 35522 employees defined as \"Computer programming, consultancy and related activities\" and another 4102 companies with 15171 employees defined as \"Information service activities\". This statistic is good, but it is only for Austria. Is there a similar for Europe, USA, Worldwide?"}
{"_id": "127868", "title": "JavaScript (jQuery) And CSS Styling", "text": "Lets say I am building a jQuery plugin that has a number of non-configurable css attributes it needs to apply to DOM elements the plugin itself creates. Is it consider better practice to apply the css directly in the javascript code or is it better to create a css file and just include both the css and javascript files? I have always been under the impression that is would be better to have the css file just because it seems a bit cleaner and you don't really gain much from having everthing in the javascript code. I mean the size of the css + javascript files would probably be about the same as if you had applied the css through javascript so the only thing you gain is that you only need to request 1 resource file instead of 2 if you apply the css in javascript. I am just curious as I an building a number of jQuery plugins and I have noticed some other plugins that are embedding a lot of css in the javascript instead of a css file."}
{"_id": "129227", "title": "What is \"Scalable Integrated Systems\"?", "text": "I've come across a job posting that asks for experience with \"Scalable Integrated Systems\", but honestly that sounds like \"generic buzzword,\" and I'm trying to figure out what the actual work behind \"Scalable Integrated Systems\" is. What does a \"Scalable Integrated System\" look like? Is it making distributed computing software? Is it writing APIs between services in a way they \"scale\", and if so, scale in what way? I don't understand what a Scalable Integrated System is. The company seems competent and I have competent programmer friends working there who say they are a great place to work in. If it was SpammyCoOnCraigslist@yahoo.com, I wouldn't bother asking."}
{"_id": "155370", "title": "concurrency semantics reading a file being written (ext)", "text": "In Ext 3/4 filesystem, if I have a log file open and being appended to, if another process tries to read it (e.g. with `cat`), what happens?   1. Can the reading process read part of / an incomplete write?   2. Is reading-during-writing safe and won't disrupt the writing process? Or is there a chance the logs can be corrupted by doing this? Where should one read more?"}
{"_id": "96322", "title": "How to productively spend \"free time\" at the office", "text": "After shipping a release, once in two to three months, I get 10 to 15 days of free time. By free time, I mean no work, no one cares what you are doing etc., but you have to come to the office and go. Do you get free time like that? How do you utilize this time? I tend to read, but I feel cramming more and more information is not the best way to spend it."}
{"_id": "130070", "title": "Too much free time in work place", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to productively spend \"free time\" at the office I am a Coldfusion Web Developer. I recently changed a company so that I can relocate to a different state. The current project I have is just a backup position for 3 months. I am not having much work, and the work I have also has nothing to do with programming. How do you other programmers generally make use of so much of free time? (I am going to stay here for another two months though)"}
{"_id": "177788", "title": "Should I encrypt data in database?", "text": "I have a client, for which I'm going to do an Web application about patient care, managing patients, consults, history, calendars, everything about that basically. The problem is that this is sensitive data, patient history and such. The client insists on encrypting the data at the database level, but I think this is going to deteriorate the performance of the web app. ( But maybe I shouldn't be worried about this ) I've read the laws about data protection on health issues ( Portugal ), but isn't very specific about this ( I just questioned them about this, I'm waiting for their response ). I've read the following link, but my question is different, should I encrypt the data in the database, or not. One problem that I foresee in encrypting data, is that I'm going to need a key, this could be the user password, but we all know how user passwords are ( 12345 etc etc ), and generating a key I would have to store it somewhere, this means that the programmer, dba, whatever could have access to it, any thoughts on this? Even adding an random salt to the user password isn't going to solve the problem since I can always access it, and therefore decrypt the data."}
{"_id": "100601", "title": "Java class version specific naming conventions", "text": "I have to create an Adapter between two software (mech. simulation, non-cs). Assuming we have a class named `ThatThing`. I have to handle various vendor specific implementations. These versions don't have meaningful names (unlike eclipse helios, indigo etc.). **1\\. How should I name a class that should express version number?** I find class like `ThatThing_3_6_Impl`, `ThatThing_3_7_Impl` quite awkward."}
{"_id": "100600", "title": "Google Native Client - The end of client/server side programming?", "text": "As some of you may know already, Google Native Client is going to be released with Chrome 14. Google native client is a technology that allow us to run native code(C, C++) on the web. (Cross-browser). I heard it's pretty secure as well. Is it the end of client/server side programming? The end of javascript, php, asp.net, ruby, jsp etc.??? It seems google native client has the potential to change the game. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "84920", "title": "How do I predict the time it will take to complete a task?", "text": "There are three scenarios where I am asked to predict how long it will take: >   1. I know I can solve the problem without further consultation of anything > (that is, there is no _unknown_ in the problem. I already have all the > knowledge to solve the problem) >   2. I know the problem can be solved but I need to do a lot of > experimentation to see how things work (for example, you may know a car tire > is easy to change, but if you have never changed it, you may run into issues > that you will avoid/correct the next time around, thus making your > _prediction_ of how long it will take, better... yes, this I know is one of > the answers to my question here... experience) >   3. I am told the problem can be solved, but I have no idea where to begin > so I start breaking it down into small pieces and go to Step 2 (where I know > it can be solved, but needs experimentation) > I am generally bad at predicting how long something will take even if I have done something _similar_ before. I always run into a snag I did not foresee. My question is mostly directed towards Point 1 and somewhat toward Point 2 (in Point 3, I know my predictions will always be wrong). I know that it requires experience, which will allow me to do good predictions but there _has_ to be some basic _rules_ I can follow to at least start making somewhat accurate predictions. Right now I feel like I will never be able to make good predictions, no matter how much experience I gain. One rule that I have heard is something along the lines of `predict how long it will take, then multiply it by 2, then add two more weeks` (more of a joke... or maybe not?) Now I know that predicting how long a task will take is a general problem in the industry, but people still predict to some extent and can't always be wrong (specifically on smaller tasks). In my case, if somebody tells me `How long do you think a linked list with these features will take?` I will give a wrong prediction even though I know how to make one without consulting any body/book. > **So my request is to SO (especially veterans in the industry) is to give me > (us) pointers on how to get better at predicting how long a task will > take.** **Background** I am currently a Masters student working at a company. I am very young in terms of industry experience and experience in general. I am reading lots of books on better programming, design etc. (most of them recommended here at SO) and my knowledge of programming is ever increasing thanks to work/school and SO; but of course, there is literally _tons_ more that I need to absorb."}
{"_id": "184424", "title": "What performance topics should I be aware of?", "text": "When coding performance-critical portions of code (not necessarily large, but code that gets executed a lot), what topics should I be aware of/take into account. I'm already fairly familiar with caching, aliasing, branching, cost of arithmetic operations, loop unrolling (and I guess some others that don't come to mind). What else should I know? (not necessarily looking for details, just concepts I can look up on my own)"}
{"_id": "184422", "title": "Does it make sense to create a Ruby wrapper to reference a Java object that does exactly the same thing?", "text": "I am using `JRuby`. In my `Java` code, I have a class called `Texture`, capable of doing some graphic manipulation stuff. In my `Ruby` code, I will usually need to draw things, so though I should simply call `Java`'s `Texture` class to do the drawing for me. However, I ended up making a `Ruby` class called `Texture`, **which wraps an instance of`Java`'s `Texture`**. Somehow like this (just an example, but rather accurate):               class Texture         def initialize             @reference = getMeAnInstanceOfAJavaTexture         end         def draw             @reference.draw         end         def rotate             @reference.rotate         end         def clear             @reference.clear         end     end      As you can see, all this `Texture` class does is... well, tell a `Java` `Texture` to do the job for it. Just that. Subconsciously, I think I wanted to do it this way **because it looks pretty** (lol). Now, getting a bit more technical, a possible advantage I see is that **this way I don't have to interact much with the`Java`-side of the project**. Most of the work I will do will be in `Ruby`, and maintaining a constant interaction between `Ruby` and `Java` can be confusing. If I make a `Ruby` class that handles this stuff for me, I might feel more comfortable in the future when I have to make like a hundred textures, but instead of interacting a hundred times with `Java`, I do it with `Ruby`, my main environment. Does my reasoning make sense or is it a lame excuse to do something that looks pretty? Or perhaps there is indeed a good reason to do what I just did?"}
{"_id": "177786", "title": "How do you keep track of a requirements document on an agile team?", "text": "I understand that User Stories dominate the agile world, but how are these artifacts stored, so that new developers who join the team can come up to speed with the requirements? What if the User Story changes later, how is it updated and kept as an artifact? I've seen many teams just open a new ticket/feature request/bug report instead of keeping track of the original story."}
{"_id": "184420", "title": "Are we using the repository pattern right?", "text": "We are using a bunch of separate classes suffixed with `-repository` to retrieve the data from the database; for each table its own repository. We have for instance a `customerrepository` class which has all kind of methods to retrieve customers, and a `vacancyrepository` which has all kind of methods to retrieve vacancies. I have two questions about this way of doing things:   1. How about getting data which spans multiple tables? For instance I have a screen which shows all customers who have not yet created a vacancy. Can a `customerrepository` use methods from the `vacancyrespository`, or do both repositories return results and is there a class higher in the hierarchy (let's name it a `dataservice`) which gets the results from both repositories and combine them into 1 result?   2. how much logic can such a repository handle?   I think it's OK to implement the 'where active == true' in a repository to retrieve only active records, or should even that simple logic be handled by a class higher in the hierarchy (let's name it a `dataservice`)? The example I was running into now is this one: We have a questions list, which contains one or more questions.   The question can have a result, which is hold in a separate table.   So when you want to retrieve the total result of the questions list, you have to combine data from the `questionlist` table, the question table and the `questionstatus` table. Right now we have 3 different repositories for these tables. If I would ask the `questionlistrepository` what it's the total result for list number 12, it would have to get data from two other repositories and hence have some logic in it, is that allowed? Or is there a `questionlistdataservice` which knows which repositories to use? One more thing: our repositories can result an `IQueryable` so a calling service can easily combine the results, but how about when this isn't the case, I don't think it's a good idea to retrieve all the content of all three tables from the database."}
{"_id": "218917", "title": "Deriving an algorithm from its neural network representation", "text": "I am not sure if this question is silly or not, or even nonsensical, but can a neural network be converted to a traditional algorithmic representation ? For eg. the NN for a pattern recognition program. Is there any mathematical basis for this ? Thanks Cheers"}
{"_id": "193162", "title": "Reusing values for segment variables when generating outbound URLs", "text": "When routes are matched to the _outbound URLs_ , the routing system will try to find values for each of the _segment variables_ in _route's URL pattern_ by also looking at the values from the _current request_. If necessary, routing system will reuse _segment variable values_ from the _incoming URL_ Excerpt is from _Pro Asp.Net MVC 4_ book: > The routing system will reuse values only for segment variables that occur > earlier in the URL pattern than any parameters that are supplied to the > Html.ActionLink method. Suppose we tried to create a link like this: > > @Html.ActionLink(\"Click me\", \"List\", \"Catalog\", new {color=\"Aqua\"}, null) > > We have supplied a value for color, but not for page. But color appears > before page in the URL pattern and so the routing system won\u2019t reuse the > values from the incoming URL, and the route will not match. > > ... We strongly recommend that you do not rely on this behavior and that you > supply values for all of the segment variables in a URL pattern. By relying > on this behavior you end up making assumptions about the order in which your > users make requests Note: the route to which the excerpt is referring to is defined as :                routes.MapRoute(\"MyRoute\", \"{controller}/{action}/{color}/{page}\");      a) > The routing system will reuse values only for segment variables that occur > earlier in the URL pattern than any parameters that are supplied to the > Html.ActionLink method What could go wrong if routing system also reused values for _segment variables_ that occur later in the _URL pattern_ than parameters supplied to `Html.ActionLink`? b) > We strongly recommend that you do not rely on this behavior and that you > supply values for all of the segment variables in a URL pattern. By relying > on this behavior you end up making assumptions about the order in which your > users make requests I don't understand how not supplying values for all _segment variables_ translates into making assumptions about the order in which users make _requests_?! Much appreciated"}
{"_id": "193384", "title": "Randomness in Acceptance-Tests", "text": "I've got a simple authentication solution, where a user can log in with either email or username. Since I want to show the little feature in the acceptance tests but don't want to pollute them, I thought I'll introduce some randomness. Do you think this is bad or good?               step \"Fill in my credentials\" do         fill_in :user_login, with: [@user.email, @user.name].sample         fill_in :user_password, with: @user.password     end"}
{"_id": "224411", "title": "Draw graph of a function whose characteristics are unknown", "text": "Suppose I have a function. I have code that, given an x value, produces a y value. I can assume that the function is somewhat mathematically sane, not something crazy like an everywhere-discontinuous function or the like, but beyond that, I don't know anything about it. I want to draw a graph that is likely to make sense to someone looking at it. My boundaries for x and y values are fixed. Obviously, I can put in a bunch of x values, get the corresponding y values, and play connect the dots. But that will produce misleading answers in some cases. For example, the graph of y=1/x has a discontinuity at x=0. If I play connect the dots, and zero does not happen to be one of my input x values, I'll draw a line across the discontinuity, instead of having y go up to infinity as x approaches zero from above, then reappear from minus infinity for slightly negative x. It seems that I might want to be suspicious whenever the direction of change of the y values reverses itself. In other words, mistrust apparent peaks and valleys; look at some more points to see what is really going on. But that could fail, too; consider the function y=100x+1/x. Now, unless my sample points get very close to zero, I will still miss the asymptote. Someone must have studied this problem. Is there any relevant literature? If so, where?"}
{"_id": "224410", "title": "How do you split work on web apps?", "text": "About a year ago at my workplace we decided to get into developing a web app for internal use (as part of a more intricate system which is irrelevant to this question). No one really had experience in web development, so probably some of our decisions were wrong, but all in all we've had success with the tool we were developing. Since we did have experience developing in Python, we chose Django as our platform. My question is about \"who does what\". The way we split our work was: there is one team which handles all the Python code - which means all the Django urls, views and models, as well as the actual backend to handle asynchronous task execution (something a bit like Celery). A different team (more precisely, a single person in a different development group - but this is just implementation) is responsible for the templates (data binding), javascript, design, HTML, CSS, etc. We have been working like this, as I said, for about a year now. I'm starting to think that maybe the line of responsibilities between the two teams is wrong. The reason is that there's a pretty big overhead whenever we need to interact - which is a lot. For example, when we add a new table and we want to display it, we need to let the \"frontend guy\" know what the url would be and what it would contain. Then we need to integrate out work to see if everything's alright. Sometimes we didn't pass enough context to the template to make it work and there's a slow ping-pong of information between us. So my question is this - what is the accustomed way to split work on web apps? Who takes care of the different modules - models, views, urls, templates, design, user experience, HTML, CSS, javascript?"}
{"_id": "193385", "title": "Bayes filtering and data storage with expansive data sets", "text": "I am looking to write a Bayes filter that will act as an indicator of topic for a number of topics with a variable number of sources. Given a really big number of RSS feeds and here really big might only be a few hundred only few percent (let's say 2%) are interesting to a given group. What I want to write (in PHP) is a filter I can train to say this is Topic X and this is not. Then I want selected users to be able to further train the filter. But I want to use only the base training for picking topics to mark as interesting for Topic X and then refine that collection based on the training the user has provided to give the most interesting results for that user by reassessing the probabilities including the user supplied training on the short list per user. Or maybe scoring the short list and picking the \"best\" items to show first. So over time I am going to gain a fairly large collection of data (all of the headlines and blurbs from hundreds of feeds) and I am going to have flagged the feed items \"yes\" and \"no\" on an unspecified number of topics and have had users have likewise done so. The headline and blurb will be stored for easy display later but I don't want to hold on to too many items that are \"no\" (up to 98% I imagine). Given I go with, say, this implementation from GitHub that I found earlier today https://github.com/benwaine/BayesPHP (or can be talked into rolling my own) what is the most efficient way to go about storing the data needed to carry out an assessment? Am I asking for trouble if simply try and store any news headlines etc flagged \"yes\" but store some sort of summary for the base \"no\" assessments and then just work it out on the fly each time storing the resultant \"yes\". The server I have to work with is already doing a fair amount and is not going to spare me much horse power for this. So balancing processing efficiency and storage needs what can you recommend?"}
{"_id": "240844", "title": "Conception and design before coding: how much is this true?", "text": "I learned at school as well as I read everywhere else that a good development methodology needs conception and design before coding properly. That is not a new information even for a beginner programmer. However, I wonder if this a good advice because since I started developing in several programming languages I never succeeded to design and conceive everything since the start. I mean, I always melted design, conception and programming. Am I the worst developer in the world, or is the idea we learn at school just an old meaningless _religious_ dogma? How can we even conceive and design something we never experienced and programmed before? Is not that ridiculous? Does not programming lead the conception and design instead?"}
{"_id": "218420", "title": "Is this an example of 'over engineered' or a good practice?", "text": "The code I've inherited has a design that I'm not familiar with (I'm still new to the world of programming). It is a .net project and there are 3 classes in question here.               public Class1     {         public void DoSomething()         {             Class2 class2 = new Class2();             string myValue = class2.GetSomeValuePlease();                 //why would I not do class2.MyClass3.GetActualValue();         }     }          public Class2     {         public Class3 MyClass3 = new Class3();         public string GetSomeValuePlease()         {             return this.MyClass3.TheActualValue();         }     }          public Class3     {         public string TheActualValue()         {             return \"This is the value\";         }     }      As you can see, all 3 classes are public. I don't understand why, using the example above, I would use Class2 at all? I could understand if within the `GetSomeValuePlease()` method there was some logic which affected Class2, but there isn't. Normally, I'd just go ahead and remove the Class2 method (GetSomeValuePlease) and call Class3 method (GetActualValue) direct from Class1, but, the developer I took over (who is not contactable) is wiser and more experienced than I. I have a _feeling_ this is just over engineering and this is just extra code / extra maintenance. Does any one have experience in designing this way that could explain the thought process or implications of having this \"middle class\" vs going direct?"}
{"_id": "241468", "title": "Image caching when rendering the same images on different pages", "text": "I'm told to think about caching of images that will be displayed on the page. The images will be repeated throughout the website on different pages and I'm told to figure out the best way to cache these images. There could be few to dozen of images on single page. Here's few questions:   * Will browser caching work to display the same images across different web pages?   * Should I rather store images in stringified form in a memory instead, using JavaScript arrays?   * Store them on hard drive using 'localStorage'?   * What would be easiest yet best option for this?   * Are there any other alternatives?   * How to force cache? Any other information would be greatly appreciated..."}
{"_id": "249672", "title": "Handling stylesheet from a real programming language", "text": "Lately I've been playing with CSS (and other web technologies). I'm a non-web programmer, and probably this is influencing way too much my approach. I found CSS syntax very limited, thus gave a shot to SASS and LESS (mostly the latter). These two languages are a lot more handy, but I'm still getting into several issues: it looks like these languages don't allow me to do most of the things I'd like to do. I have the feeling that these languages aim to be as unobtrusive as possible, remaining very close to CSS and having a very little understanding on what's happening; the result is a kind of weird mix between a macro processor and a declarative language. For instance, some of the things that are giving me headaches in LESS are:   * The lazyness of the language makes it quite difficult to understand the execution flow (and to foresee whether something is defined and what its value is)   * CSS properties cannot be accessed, you are forced to rely on LESS variables   * Scoping is somehow unclear (probably because of the laziness and of the way mixins are extended)   * If you don't pay a lot of attention, the result tends to be suboptimal, with a lot of dublication etc   * The syntax is not very nice: I dislike using @ for variables, @{} for variable class names,  I believe that a better solution might be to generate CSS from a real programming language (with a well known syntax and a load of functions available) that keeps track of all the properties of every selector and where my logic is executed sequentially. Here I'll try to sketch an example of what I've got in mind; I'm using JavaScript and an approach inspired by jQuery:               var x = new CSS('HTML5');     // `x` is my Style it started off from the default HTML5 CSS stylesheet.     // `x(selector)` will allow us to access the style of the `selector` CSS selector.          x.import('file.css'); // let's import some more rules          console.log( x('a').fontSize ); // Prints the default font-size property for 'a' elements          x('.myClass > p').display = 'block'; // CSS: .myClass > p { display: block; };          var c1 = x('body > div .class1'); // Just for commodity...     c1.width = x('.class2 > div').width; // Cannot be done in CSS/LESS/SASS :(     // It should fall back properly, of course, or give error if that property is not found          x('.class3').set( c1.deepCopy() ); // Bringing in nested selectors     x('.class4').set( c1.copy() ); // Only copying properties          // Introspection! F**k yeah!     c1.forEachProperty( function(property){ ... } );     c1.forEachChild( function(selector){ ... } );     c1.forEachDescendant( function(selector){ ... } );     x.forEachElement( function(selector){ ... } );          var c1Rule = c1.generate(); // Generating the CSS rule for a specific selector          x.delete('.class1'); // We no longer need/want `.class1` in our stylesheet     x.deepDelete('.class1'); // Removing also its nested selectors          // Let's now generate our final stylesheet.     // The `generate` function might take care of optimizing the stylesheet.     var stylesheet = x.generate();      * * * Tl;dr: I'd like to handle a stylesheet as if it was a database queryable from a real programming language. Now, I'm wondering:   * Is there any to generate CSS similar to this idea?   * Do you think such an approach would work?   * What disadvantages would this approach have with respect to CSS/SASS/LESS?"}
{"_id": "241460", "title": "Algorithm to match timestamped events from two sources", "text": "I have two different physical devices (one is camera, one is other device) that observe the same scene and mark when a specified event occures. (record timestamp) So they each produce a serie of timestamps \"when the event was observed\". Theoretically the recorded timestamps should be very well aligned: Visualized ideal situation on two time lines \"s\" and \"r\" as recorded from the two devices: ![Visualized timestamps of events in ideal conditions](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VJALZ.png) but more likely they will not be so nicely aligned and there might be missing events from timeline s or r: ![Visualized timestamps of events in real world conditions](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PFmVQ.png) I am looking for algorithm to match events from \"s\" and \"r\" like this: ![Matched events](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PKlrR.png) So that the result will be something like: (s1,null); (s2,r1); (s3,null); (s4,r2); (s5,r3); (null,r4); (s6,r5); Or something similar. Maybe with some \"confidence\" rating. I have some ideas, but I feel that this might be probably a well known problem, that has some good known solutions, but I don't know the right terminology. I am a little bit out of my element here, this is not my primary area of programming.. Any helps, suggestions etc will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "249678", "title": "Does Jquery basically use CSS3 for animation and effects?", "text": "I originally started out this question with \"what is JQuery, and how does it work\", in terms of all that fancy animation, effects, slideshow plugins, etc. I was uncertain as to how JQuery does all that fancy stuff. But after reading around on the internet, I am happy to acknowledge that JQuery is basically a \"javascript library\", and by that, I think it means that JQuery is pure text, of javascript code, consisting of public methods, functions, constants etc, with the idea that calling these simple methods or functions can replace loads of javascript code, and that its has a nice consistent feel to it. So am I right in saying that all that fancy animation, effects etc are not \"actually\" achieved by javascript/Jquery? They are achieved by using CSS3? And CSS3 is a style sheet language which the browser can understand, and has the capabililites of carrying out those stylesheet instructions? Very fuzzy and ambiguous question, I know, but just trying to get my head round how you get those amazing jquery animations etc"}
{"_id": "240596", "title": "Doing Integration Testing, what would be a good way to provide test values from external sources?", "text": "I am building an Integration Testing Solution using Selenium in VS2012, which will be run on a CI server in the near future. I need to provide some way to vary the values being used for testing. The easiest would be to provide the QA testers with a few template spreadsheets, which they can fill in to run tests with those values (for example Log-In, Create new user, Create new Booking, Update Reservation etc). At this moment I have a Test project using NUnit, and another project that contains the test execution code using Selenium, with sample values hardcoded in workflows for each test. I have done some searching, but came up with no relevant results. I am either using incorrect terminology, or this has never been done (improbable, I know). Have you done this, or heard/read about someone who has? I'd like to not reinvent this particular wheel."}
{"_id": "154089", "title": "C Flexible Arrays: When did they become part of the standard?", "text": "I learned to program in C many years ago, and used C steadily for about 10 years. These days, I occasionally have to look at C code, because our Informix 4GL RDS customized runners also contain C code, but it is fairly simplistic code. When I was using C a lot, I never remember hearing about of flexible arrays. I am asking this question, because I came across this SO question. Thanks."}
{"_id": "43402", "title": "How do I check that my tests were not removed by other developers?", "text": "I've just came across an interesting collaborative coding issue at work. I've written some unit/functional/integration tests and implemented new functionality into application that's got ~20 developers working on it. All tests passed and I checked in the code. Next day I updated my project and noticed (by chance) that some of my test methods were deleted by other developers (merging problems on their end). New application code was not touched. How can I detect such problem automatically? I mean, I write tests to automatically check that my code still works (or was not deleted), how do I do the same for tests? We're using Java, JUnit, Selenium, SVN and Hudson CI if it matters."}
{"_id": "154085", "title": "Teaching logical/analytical thinking", "text": "I have been trial running a club in which I teach programming for the past year and while they have progressed what they really lack is the most fundamental concept to programming, analytical thinking. As I now approach the second year of teaching to the children (aged 12 - 14) I am now realising that before I begin teaching them the syntax and how to actually program an app (or what they would rather, a game) I need to introduce them to analytical thinking first. I have already found Scratch and similar things such as Light-Bot and will most certainly be using the, to teach them how to _implement_ their logical thinking but what I really need are some tips or articles on **how to teach analytical thinking** itself to children aged 12 - 14. What I'm looking for are some ideas on how to teach the kind of thinking that these kids will need in order to get them into programming, whether that be analytical, logical or critical. **How and what should I teach them** relating to the way their minds need to be wired when programming solutions to problems?"}
{"_id": "154086", "title": "MIT License in a referenced library: legal implications?", "text": "I'm trying to determine what my legal obligations are if I use an MIT-licensed library (JAR file) in my program. Do I need to include the library's source code when I distribute my program? Do I need to include a README explaining the licensing of the packaged JAR? If I'm simply including the unedited JAR file, do I even need to include anything additional?"}
{"_id": "154080", "title": "How to identify a PDF classification problem?", "text": "We are crawling and downloading lots of companies' PDFs and trying to pick out the ones that are Annual Reports. Such reports can be downloaded from most companies' investor-relations pages. The PDFs are scanned and the database is populated with, among other things, the:   * Title   * Contents (full text)   * Page count   * Word count   * Orientation   * First line Using this data we are checking for the obvious phrases such as:   * Annual report   * Financial statement   * Quarterly report   * Interim report Then recording the frequency of these phrases and others. So far we have around 350,000 PDFs to scan and a training set of 4,000 documents that have been manually classified as either a report or not. We are experimenting with a number of different approaches including Bayesian classifiers and weighting the different factors available. We are building the classifier in Ruby. My question is: if you were thinking about this problem, where would you start?"}
{"_id": "43409", "title": "Dealing with engineers that frequently leave their jobs", "text": "My friend is a project manager for a software company. The most frustrating thing for him is that his **engineers frequently leave their jobs**. The company works hard to recruit new engineers, transfer projects, and keep a stable quality product. When people leave, it drives my friend crazy. These engineers are quite young and ambitious, and they want higher salaries and better positions. The big boss only thinks about it in financial terms, and his theory is that \u201c _three newbies are always better than one veteran_ \u201d (which, as an experienced engineer, I know is wrong). My friend hates that theory. Any advice for him?"}
{"_id": "201108", "title": "Login to a Web App using PKI Certs", "text": "I understand PKI reasonably well from a conceptual point of view - i.e. private keys/public keys - the math behind them, use of hash & encryption to sign a certificate, Digital Signing of Transactions or Documents etc. I have also worked on projects where openssl C libraries were used with certs for securing communication and authentication. I am also extremely familiar with openssl command line tools. However, I have very little experience with web based PKI enabled projects & hence I am trying to design and code a personal project for understanding this better. ## The requirements This is the website for a bank. All Internet Banking users are allowed use any certificate issued by a few known CAs (verisign, Thawte, entrust etc). The Bank is not responsible for procuring certificates for the user. These certificates will be used for authentication to the banks website either instead of or as an add-on to username/password login. The platforms/OS etc are still not fixed. Assume that enrollment has been done - i.e. bank knows the certificate going to be used by each user. ## Design I was wondering what's the best way to do authentication?   1. I saw that Apache has a way to enable 2 way ssl - in this case, i think navigating to the website would automatically ask for a cert from the user. But I am not sure if this is enough because it seems that all it verifies is whether a certificate is signed by a trusted CA & also may be whether it falls in a white list of subject lines of the certificates etc. But this is not enough for a bank case because you need to be able to associate a bankuserid with a certificate.   2. IIS seems to have a way by which I can have a certificate stored for each user in Active Directory. This is what I understood from reading few MSDN articles. You turn on 2 way SSL in IIS & then when the user tries to navigate to the website, IIS will send a request to the browser with a list of approved CAs and browser will let the user pick an appropriate certificate from his certstore and sends it to backend. I am assuming that IIS will do 2 things     * Ensure that the user has the private key corresponding to the cert (by under the cover negotiations)     * Based on the AD User-Cert Mapping, IIS will report the username to the application.   3. Do the authentication explicity by calling crypto functions rather depending on depending on the webserver to do it.     * Show a user screen where he uploads a certificate and the application ensures the user has the private key corresponding to the cert (by asking the front-end to sign some string using the cert).     * The application has a database some of data is stored which allows each user to be mapped to his userid. This may be      * the whole cert corresponding to each userid     * the CA and cert serial number corresponding to each user id. I was wondering which is the commonly used method? What are the best practices? If I should go with #3, what are the best ways to do this?"}
{"_id": "201118", "title": "Adding explicit interfaces to Legacy managed C++ code", "text": "I have a bit of a challenge and I am not sure how to approach this. We have a very very large project (that is about 5 years old). The code base is HUGE so a full refactor is out of the question. What we will be doing is refactoring bits of code as we use those parts (this is backend code, which we will be using on a frontend system) The existing code has got zero abstraction, and we want to build unit tests for it. We use the RhinoMock framework and the call from my superiors are that we need to add explicit interfaces to the code, thereby abstracting it so that we can mock the objects in RhinoMock. I have one broader and one narrower question: 1) Is an explicit interface the best option? Or should I suggest some other technique... 2) Can anyone suggest a high-level approach to this type of code refactoring? I've never been in a position where I have had to add explicit interfaces to existing code. (The legacy code is Managed C++ by the way) Thanks in advance for your answers. Also, if this question is in the wrong place or too broad, I do apologize."}
{"_id": "201110", "title": "Is it more efficient to learn as you go along with a project or to develop a broad base of programming skill?", "text": "For example, let's say I want to build a game, and I have a limited knowledge of programming(some but definitely not enough). Should my first move be to design the game and then learn how to implement each separate part? Or should you learn a language really well before you design a game?"}
{"_id": "135224", "title": "Static Analysis tools to detect architectural patterns", "text": "Currently for school we are working on a research project. The central question of this project is: Which architectural patterns can be detected using static code analysis? With architectural pattern is meant the architectural patterns from the book: Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture written by Martin Fowler. During our literature research we didn't find any studies/articals/journals that adress this problem. So for our approach for this rpoject we where thinking to create a prototype of this kind of tool. But first we have to know if there are any (open-source)tools with the same functionality?(detect architectural patterns with a static code analysis) So my question is do you know a tool that kind detect architectural patterns? We know of the existence of tools that can detect design patterns of the Gang of Four. And do you have any suggestions for our approach? Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "41807", "title": "Where can I go to have a sample select2perform test taken?", "text": "I did a quick search before asking and it brought up this: Where are sample Select2Perform test questions? I'm looking to take a sample Java exam, but the above topic doesn't mention a resource I could go to - just that somebody had taken the C++ version. If anybody could help, that'd be great."}
{"_id": "17645", "title": "Regexp or custom parsing algo?", "text": "I was trying to parse a java properties file to avoid some Properties loading pitfalls (non ordering, loss of comments). (Property are of the form 'key = value' where the value can span on multiple lines using the \\ special char) I have tried to get the right regexp to parse the properties but after I gave up after fighting for more than one hour. (a version for groovy found here:   `~ /^([^#=].*?)=(.+)$/)` I manage to write the same thing using a single loop and very trivial code in 5 minutes... I'm an average programmer when dealing with regexp: I have to re-read the doc each time I want to use them and advanced feature are still obscure for me. Often when dealing with regexp I have the feeling that some very skilled developers can produce/decipher very elaborated regexp in seconds, but others have trouble to handle them. Question: should I take time to deeply learn regexp and produce cryptic and powerful parser, or should I keep using some ugly easy to debug/understand parsing algo ?"}
{"_id": "162467", "title": "Is it Ok if Domain Object cross Service Boundary", "text": "Is it Ok if Domain Object cross Service-Boundary? Everyone recommend that only DTO should be returned by Services. I am creating simple CRUD application. Is it ok if my service methods return Domain object instead of flat DTO objects. It will save me from lots of mapping related setup. Is there any alternative approach?"}
{"_id": "13556", "title": "exclamation points in error messages", "text": "What do you think about using exclamation points in error messages? i.e. \"The address is not valid!\". Personally, I think it adds nothing, insults the user, and makes the product look like it was written in TRS-80 BASIC by a 12-year-old."}
{"_id": "235719", "title": "Executing user configuration settings", "text": "For an API I'm building what it does is load an XML file that is passed to it as a string, drill to the correct element, modify values, and return the modified XML. I'm doing something like this in my code               if (valid)     {         XDocument docRoot = XDocument.Parse(XMLstring);              var node1 = docRoot.Descendants(namespace + @\"node1\");              foreach (var result in node1)          {             var child1 = result.Descendants(ns + \"child1\");                  var test = child1.First();             test.SetValue(Transform(test.Value));         }                   //return the transformed XML          }     else { }      Now I want to create a configuration file in XML format that allows user to specify which nodes in the XML to modify and what modification to perform, (later I want to make use of this in a GUI) so something like               <root Value=\"\">         <Modify Xpath=\"\\parent\\child1\\superchild\\\" Attribute=\"\" Mode=\"delete\" />         <Modify Xpath=\"\\parent\\child2\\\" Attribute=\"Value\" Mode=\"multiply\" />     </root>      And I have these two pieces but don't know how to connect them together. I think I have to make a class from my XML configuration file and somehow map those to the values in the other XML."}
{"_id": "19896", "title": "Is it still worth learning desktop gui development?", "text": "For the last couple of years, all of the serious projects I have worked on have been either web based, or had a non graphical user interface (services, command line scripts etc...). I can throw together a WinForms app or do some simple WPF when needed, but I've never really delved into some of the lower level API's like MFC or QT. I understand that this depends on the situation but in general is it still worth taking the time to learn desktop development well or are applications moving to the web and mobile devices at a pace which makes this knowledge less relevant? Also, do you expect developers you work with to have desktop gui expertise?"}
{"_id": "185819", "title": "Why does automated testing keep failing in my company?", "text": "We have tried to introduce developer automated testing several times at my company. Our QA team uses Selenium to automate UI tests, but I always wanted to introduce unit tests and integration tests. In the past, each time we tried it, everyone got excited for the first month or two. Then, several months in, people simply stop doing it. A few observations and questions:   1. **Does automated testing actually work?** Most of of my colleagues who used to work at other companies have tried and failed to implement an automated testing strategy. I still haven't seen a real-life software company that actually uses it and doesn't just talk about it. So many developers see automated testing as something that is great in theory but doesn't work in reality. Our business team would love developers to do it even at a cost of 30% extra time (at least they say so). But developers are skeptics.   2. **No one really knows how to properly do automated testing.** Yes we have all read the unit testing examples on the internet, but using them for a big project is something else altogether. The main culprit is mocking/stubbing the database or anything else that is non-trivial. You end up spending more time mocking than writing actual tests. Then when it starts taking longer to write tests than code, that's when you give up.   3. Are there any good **examples** of unit tests/system integration tests used in a complex data centric web applications? Any open source projects? Our application is data centric but also has plenty of domain logic. I tried the repository approach at some point and found it pretty good for unit testing, but it came at the price of being able to optimize data access easily and it added another layer of complexity. We have a big project undertaken by 20 experienced developers. This would seem to be an ideal environment to introduce unit testing/integration testing. Why doesn't it work for us? How did you make it work at your company?"}
{"_id": "19893", "title": "ASP.Net or WPF(C#)?", "text": "Our team is divided on this and I wanted to get some third-party opinions. We are building an application and cannot decide if we want to use .Net WPF Desktop Application with a WCF server, or ASP.Net web app using jQuery. I thought I'd ask the question here, with some specs, and see what the pros/cons of using either side would be. I have my own favorite and feel I am biased. Ideally we want to build the initial release of the software as fast as we can, then slow down and take time to build in the additional features/components we want later on. Above all we want the software to be fast. Users go through records all day long and delays in loading records or refreshing screens kills their productivity. Application Details:   * I'm estimating around 100 different screens for initial version, with plans for a lot of additional screens being added on later after the initial release.   * We are looking to use two-way communication for reminder and event systems   * Currently has to support around 100 users, although we've been told to allow for growth up to 500 users   * We have multiple locations Items to consider (maybe not initially in some cases but in future releases):   * Room for additional components to be added after initial release (there are a lot of of these... perhaps work here than the initial application)   * Keyboard navigation   * Performance is a must   * Production Speed to initial version   * Low maintenance overhead   * Future support   * Softphone/Scanner integration Our Developers:   * We have 1 programmer who has been learning WPF the past few months and was the one who suggested we use WPF for this.   * We have a 2nd programmer who is familiar with ASP.Net and who may help with the project in the future, although he will not be working on it much up until the initial release since his time is spent maintaining our current software.   * There is me, who has worked with both and am comfortable in either   * We have an outside company doing the project management, and they are an ASP.Net company.   * We plan on hiring 1-2 others, however we need to know what direction we are going in first Environment:   * General users are on Windows 2003 server with Terminal Services. They connect using WYSE thin-clients over an RDP connection. Admin staff has their own PCs with XP or higher. Users are allowed to specify their own resolution although they are limited to using IE as the web browser.   * Other locations connects to our network over a MPLS connection Based on that, what would you choose and why? I am asking here instead of SO because I am looking for opinions and not answers"}
{"_id": "235712", "title": "Which do you code first, MVC?", "text": "I have been coding for a good bit, and I found a project I want to work on -- a python web app using django + mongodb. I know what I want my web app to do. When you are in this circumstance (just starting a brand new project) where do you start? What do you code first? Do you code the views first? Hope this hasn't been asked before (I did a quick look), but I could use some general direction."}
{"_id": "240336", "title": "Only functions without a class in cpp file! good design or not?", "text": "When I was going through the project on which I am working, I came across a cpp file, which has only functions and static variables.I was wondering why they have not put everything into a class! Whenever the inside functions have to be called, the cpp file is included. Is this a good design? what are the pros and cons of these type of design? for ex.               //independent.cpp     #include \"someclass.h\"     static int var1;     static someclass object(\"hello\");     static bool var2;          void foo(const char* dir, const char* filename){     ...     }          somefile.cpp     #include \"independent.cpp\"     class sample{     public:       void caller(){       foo(\"c:\\\", \"file.txt\");       }     }"}
{"_id": "128689", "title": "What is a good overview of options for access controls/permissions?", "text": "I'm in the process of designing the access control portion of a moderately complex application, but I feel like I'm re-discovering a lot of wheels. Does there exist a good overview of the \"access control\" domain, including terminology, discussion of the tradeoffs of different schemes (RBAC, ACL, ???), how it interacts with business policy (\"Alice can only access the coffee machine before 11:30\"), and possibly implementation suggestions? Sorry if this question is a bit vague. I'm still in the \"I sort of know what I want to accomplish, but I don't know very much about the domain or terminology\"."}
{"_id": "240334", "title": "First ATMs programming language", "text": "First ATMs performed tasks like a cash dispenser, they were offline machines which worked with punch cards impregnated with Carbon and a 6-digit PIN code. Maximum withdrawal with a card was 10 pounds and each one was a one-time use card - ATM swallowed cards! The first ATM was installed in London in the year 1967, as I looked at time line of programming languages, there were many programming languages made before that decade. I don't know about the hardware neither, but in which programming language it was written? (also which hardwares were used?) _*I didn't find a detailed biography of John Shepherd-Barron (ATM inventor at 70s)_ **_Update_** I found this picture, which is taken from a newspaper back to the year 1972 in Iran. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/eIQj8.jpg) **_Translated PS_** : > Shows Mr. Rad-lon _(if spelled correctly)_ , The manager of Barros _(if > spelled correctly)_ International Educational Institute in United Kingdom at > the right, and Mr. Jim Sutherland - Expert of Computer Kiosks. In the rest of the text I found on this paper, these kind of ATMs which called \"Automated Computer Kiosk\" were advertised with this: > Mr. Rad-lon _(if spelled correctly)_ puts his card to one specific location > of Automated Computer Kiosk and after 10 seconds he withdraws his cash. Two more questions are: **1-** How those ATMs were so fast? (withdrawal in 10 seconds in that year) **2-** I didn't find any text on Internet which state about \"Automated Computer Kiosk\", Is it valid or were they being called _Computer_ in that time?"}
{"_id": "240335", "title": "Calling static method from instance of class", "text": "As a developer I am fan of static methods. Recently I come across difference between OOP languages about this static methods. All OOP language use static method to access any method without creating instance of than class. So we can call this kind of method with just class name. But some language allow to access static method from instance variable also like Java and some don't like Objective - C. So what is the reason of this kind of difference between two OOP language? Which is correct OOP behaviour? I am just curious to know this."}
{"_id": "240332", "title": "Algorithmic Forecasting and Pattern Recognition", "text": "Say a user could enter project data into my software. Each project has 2 variables \"size\" and \"work\" and they're related but the relationship is not known. Is there a way to programmatically determine the relationship between the variables based on previous data and forecast the amount of work provided if only given the size of the project in the future? For Example, say the user had manually entered the following projects.   * Project 1 - Size:1, Work: 4    * Project 2 - Size:2, Work: 7   * Project 3 - Size:3, Work: 10   * Project 4 - Size:4, Work: x What should I look into to be able to programmatically determine, that Work = Size*3+1 and therefor be able to say that x=13?"}
{"_id": "254426", "title": "Ajax call or js to update a cart price", "text": "I am building a cart in Java and would like to give users the ability to update the quantity and see the new price instantly. I am using _BigDecimal_ on the back-end for complete accuracy, but the ajax call introduces a slight delay. It isn't much but I could make the update instant by sending the update to the server and just updating the price in Javascript before it even returns. The speed would be wonderful but it comes at the expense of rounding errors being presented to the user. Now the back-end computed price would be the one shown on the payment page so that would be accurate at least but is the speed worth the risk of a bad value showing in the cart in an eCommerce system?"}
{"_id": "254425", "title": "JavaScript Print Formatting", "text": "I'm learning NodeJS and rewriting some code to see how it compares. For one script, I am trying to take dates in the form of strings and turn them into JavaScript Date objects to perform calculations on. I managed to do this, by converting the string into an array and processing each character. It looks so ugly though, I'm wondering if there is a cleaner way, like the equivalent to sprintf or something. I'm sure I can find a module but am wondering if there is a native way in JS. This is what I have:               var a = '081320141900'.split('');     creationDate = a[0] + a[1] + \"/\" + a[2] + a[3] + \"/\" + a[4] + a[5] + a[6] + a[7] + \" \" + a[8] + a[9] + \":\" + a[10] + a[11];     console.log('Creation Date: ' + creationDate);      Output:               Creation Date: 08/13/2014 19:00      Again, the above works fine, just wondering if this can be done cleaner."}
{"_id": "83797", "title": "Is there a point to including a \"change log\" in every code file when you are using version control?", "text": "I was under the impression that a version control system eliminated the need to have \"change logs\" plastered everywhere in the code. I've often seen the continued use of change logs, including big long blocks at the start of stored procedures with a big section blocked out for changes to the file and littering the code with things like:               // 2011-06-14 (John Smith) Change XYZ to ABC to fix Bug #999      and:               // 2009-95-12 (Bob Jones) Extracted this code to Class Foo      // <commented-out code here>      The reason for this, as it was explained to me, is that it takes too long to sift through our VCS logs trying to find who changed what and why, while having it in the code file itself, either at the top or near the relevant change, makes it easy to see who changed what and when. While I see the point of that, it seems redundant and just kind of smacks of \"Eh we don't really understand how to use our VCS properly, so we won't bother with that stuff at all.\" What do you think? Do you use both comments and the log? Just the log? Do you find that it's easier to code when you can see above a block of code that John Smith changed the method to check for XYZ a week ago, instead of having to search through logs and compare code files in a Diff tool? EDIT: Using SVN, but basically only as a repository. No branches, no merges, nothing except log + storage."}
{"_id": "254421", "title": "How to use ViewModels in a layered architecture?", "text": "I've got a Java application that is using a layered architecture, we have: presentation layer, business layer and data access layer. Our business layer uses the models to process the \"requests\". We are using the concept of \"ViewModel\", so every View-Action relation has its View. What is happening is that we have a lot of ViewModels. The number of files are kind of confusing but the real problem is that we are facing a name conflict problem. This raised some questions:   1. In this case we are using ViewModels in a layered architecture. Is this approach OK?   2. Is it normal to face a high number of files?   3. Is there any naming convention you use to make it clear to which View the model \"belong\" to?   4. If a model is exactly the same for two views, should they be shared or should I have two different models that have exactly the same content?"}
{"_id": "195068", "title": "Tag an image in various places, and save to database", "text": "Id like to create something similar to what you see here... http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/9424693/list/8-Beautiful-Ways-to-Work-Glass- Into-Your-Kitchen-Cabinets If you click on the second photo down, youll notice it has a bunch of tags, linking to actual products, or just descriptions of products. Is this done using HTML5 canvas overlayed onto the photo?   Or what would be the most efficient way to implement this?? I have a list of 1,000,000 products that the user will be able to tag. I wanna link the two, so that as he tags, it saves to a database, and then anyone else viewing his room, can come in and click a link, to go to that product. Thanks"}
{"_id": "254428", "title": "How to measure algorithm accuracy?", "text": "I have a few optimization algorithms (for finding function minimum) and I'd like to check how good they are. Suppose I build test cases and compare the actual results to theoretical ones. What measures should I use to estimate if the function minimum was actually found? I thought about:   * mean number of function evaluations (\u00b1 standard deviation)   * success rate (how often it actually finds minimum) Are there any others that I have missed (let's say algorithm finishes 1e-4 from known solution. so is it success already or not?) Edit: My main concern is **not** time complexity. It is algorithm accuracy in cases when exact solution might never be found (eg. multidimensional solution spaces). How do I calculate the rate of convergence?"}
{"_id": "140405", "title": "Odd company release cycle: Go Distributed Source Control?", "text": "Sorry about this long post, but I think it is worth it. I have just started with a small .NET shop that operates quite a bit differently to other places that I have worked. Unlike any of my previous positions, the software written here is targeted at multiple customers and not every customer gets the latest release of the software at the same time. As such, there is no \"current production version.\" When a customer does get an update, they also get all of the features added to the software since their last update, which could be a long time ago. The software is highly configurable and features can be turned on and off: so called \"feature toggles.\" Release cycles are very tight here, in fact they are not on a schedule: when a feature is complete the software is deployed to the relevant customer. The team only last year moved from Visual Source Safe to Team Foundation Server. The problem is they still use TFS as if it were VSS and enforce Checkout locks on a single code branch. Whenever a bug fix gets put out into the field (even for a single customer) they simply build whatever is in TFS, test the bug was fixed and deploy to the customer! (Myself coming from a pharma and medical devices software background this is unbelievable!). The result is that half baked dev code gets put into production without being even tested. Bugs are always slipping into release builds, but often a customer who just got a build will not see these bugs if they don't use the feature the bug is in. The director knows this is a problem as the company is starting to grow all of a sudden with some big clients coming on board and more smaller ones. I have been asked to look at source control options in order to eliminate deploying of buggy or unfinished code but to not sacrifice the somewhat asynchronous nature of the teams releases. I have used VSS, TFS, SVN and Bazaar in my career, but TFS is where most of my experience has been. Previously most teams I have worked with use a two or three branch solution of Dev-Test-Prod, where for a month developers work directly in Dev and then changes are merged to Test then Prod, or promoted \"when its done\" rather than on a fixed cycle. Automated builds were used, using either Cruise Control or Team Build. In my previous job Bazaar was used sitting on top of SVN: devs worked in their own small feature branches then pushed their changes to SVN (which was tied into TeamCity). This was nice in that it was easy to isolate changes and share them with other peoples branches. With both of these models there was a central dev and prod (and sometimes test) branch through which code was pushed (and labels were used to mark builds in prod from which releases were made...and these were made into branches for bug fixes to releases and merged back to dev). This doesn't really suit the way of working here, however: there is no order to when various features will be released, they get pushed when they are complete. With this requirement the \"continuous integration\" approach as I see it breaks down. To get a new feature out with continuous integration it has to be pushed via dev-test-prod and that will capture any unfinished work in dev. I am thinking that to overcome this we should go down a heavily feature branched model with NO dev-test-prod branches, rather the source should exist as a series of feature branches which when development work is complete are locked, tested, fixed, locked, tested and then released. Other feature branches can grab changes from other branches when they need/want, so eventually all changes get absorbed into everyone elses. This fits very much down a pure Bazaar model from what I experienced at my last job. As flexible as this sounds it just seems odd to not have a dev trunk or prod branch somewhere, and I am worried about branches forking never to re- integrate, or small late changes made that never get pulled across to other branches and developers complaining about merge disasters... What are peoples thoughts on this? A second final question: I am somewhat confused about the exact definition of distributed source control: some people seem to suggest it is about just not having a central repository like TFS or SVN, some say it is about being disconnected (SVN is 90% disconnected and TFS has a perfectly functional offline mode) and others say it is about Feature Branching and ease of merging between branches with no parent-child relationship (TFS also has baseless merging!). Perhaps this is a second question!"}
{"_id": "140406", "title": "Advantages of using business logic in model", "text": "In an MVC framework i have often heard that use business logic in a model. But i think using the business logic in controller would run faster as view is directly connected to controller. I want to know what are the advantages of using a business logic in model?"}
{"_id": "140403", "title": "Which one is a better practice a static factory method of the same class or a separate factory class with methods?", "text": "I have seen this at many places. a Parent class has a static method to create objects of the right subclass and at times we have a dedicated factory class with instance methods to create object of various subclasses. Which one is used in which scenario ? Like static factory methods of InetAddress in java.net to create subclasses of InetAddress Vs BorderFactory class to create various Borders."}
{"_id": "128667", "title": "Software licenses in practice", "text": "Almost all questions and information on both SO and \"Google\" describes how different licenses works and what license to choose for your work? **But how do they work in reality.** Almost everyone I have spoken to have vastly different thoughts of how they work, including hard core open source developers that gladly share their libs and consultants who is only interested in money and would never reveal their libs. First I will give my impression of how they work in practice with three questions / statements and you can agree or disagree with me on those.   1. Lets say I make a large application and have a small portion of that from GPL code, then the copyright holder can't do much about it as it's deemed non essential code for my application and thereby the \"law\" rules over the GPL?   2. If the code is generic the copyright doesn't hold. For example if I make a tutorial on how to set up a chess engine no one have to care about my license. That's because my code is mechanical in nature.   3. If I use a lot of GPL code that is essential for my application and don't disclose it and someone finds out, my \"punishment\" will be to release all my source code, large companies are terrified by this.   But for a small hobby developer this isn't much of an issue as the software wouldn't be written at all or would be open sourced from the start anyway? I don't like this approach personally because I find it unethical and disrespectful to the original author. **EDIT:** Clarified as a comment made was that I din't ask a question. My question is are the 3 statements correct."}
{"_id": "128666", "title": "Is there a better way to design these classes?", "text": "I have two business classes: TimesheetDay and TimeSlot. One TimesheetDay can have one or more TimeSlots. The TimesheetDay and TimeSlot classes will be dependent on an object that implements a corresponding TimesheetDayData and TimeSlotData interface. That way, I can write data classes to map the objects to a MySQL database, but if I use another way to store the data in the future, I can inject objects from a different dataclass. These objects will not create other objects, and I refuse to use the \"new\" keyword in them. I want them to be testable in complete isolation. For example, I instantiate a TimesheetDay object like this (in a container):               $mTimesheetDayData = new TimesheetDayMysqlData($databaseHost, $timesheetDayId);     $mTimesheetDay = new TimesheetDay($mTimesheetDayData);      TimeSlot objects will be constructed the same way:               $mTimeSlotData = new TimeSlotMySqlData($databaseHost, $timeSlotId);     $mTimeSlot = new TimeSlot($mTimeSlotData);      My problem lies in getting TimeSlot objects that the TimesheetDay contains. I can't have the TimesheetDay class creating objects. Otherwise, I might write a method that returns an array of TimeSlot objects, something like:               $timeSlotsForThatDay = array();     $timeSlotsForThatDay = $mTimesheetDay->getTimeSlots();      But, that would require the method getTimeSlots() to create objects. How would you handle this?"}
{"_id": "80120", "title": "Recommend self-talk logger software or technique", "text": "I observed that discussing with your self about a problem is a fairly common practice. I find it is even better to write what you think. Not only it forces you to materialize your problem, but the written material can serve you as a log for future reference. I have been trying different ways to log my self chatter, I created a gtalk account to whom I would talk to. But I found that this way I would ways have to set a lot of context before going to the problem. Made a small script where I would just append a text, properly dated, into the end of a journal file in the current working directory. By being in the project directory I would set part of the context I was in, and it would even leave some information to project contributors. I started to like this method, and I was about to improve over my script, but then I thought that maybe this is a solved problem. Some people like to blog. I tried that, but post are generally a synthesis of the whole story, and most of the time I would forget pieces that were relevant. I could be more atomic. Tweeter would seem a better fit for it, but then it falls into the context argument I described above. I thoughts? tweet"}
{"_id": "176085", "title": "What is appropriate way for managing MySQL connection through C#", "text": "My question, at the bottom line, is what is the appropriate(best) way to manage our connection towards MySQL db with C#. Well, currently I'm working on some C# (winforms type) <-> MySQL application and I've been looking at Server Connections in MySQL Administrator, been witness of execution of my mysql_queries, connection opens an closes, ... an so on! In my C# code I'm working like this and this is an example:               public void InsertInto(string qs_insert)             {                 try                 {                     conn = new MySqlConnection(cs);                     conn.Open();                          cmd = new MySqlCommand();                     cmd.Connection = conn;                     cmd.CommandText = qs_insert;                     cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();                 }                 catch (MySqlException ex)                 {                     MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());                 }                 finally                 {                     if (conn != null)                     {                         conn.Close();                     }                 }             }      Meaning, every time I want to insert something in db table I call this table and pass insert query string to this method. Connection is established, opened, query executed, connection closed. So, we could conclude that this is the way I manage MySQL connection. For me and my point of view, currently, this works and its enough for my requirements. Well, you have Java & Hibernate, C# & Entity Framework and I'm doing this :-/ and it's confusing me. Should I use MySQL with Entity Framework? What is the best way for collaboration between C# and MySQL? I don't want to worry about is connection that I've opened closed, can that same connection be faster, ..."}
{"_id": "134176", "title": "How should standards and process improvements be introduced to an organization without them?", "text": "I've been tasked with improving the software development process through the implementation of process improvements, of which we will most likely be using CMMI for Development, Version 1.3 as a guideline and adopting the best practices in whole or in part. What is the best way to introduce standards and process improvements so that the degree of push back and resistance from developers is minimized?"}
{"_id": "48575", "title": "Declarative input language strategies", "text": "I need to develop a simple declarative language to drive an application. I have various computational modules, some of them depending on other modules which also need setup. The problem is that I don't know how to manipulate the keywords. I will explain myself with an example               Task optimize     Units meters     System {        // input data     }          Optimizer {          type Simplex          convergenceCriteria 0.001     }          PointEvaluator {          type MyEvaluatorTechnique          convergenceCriteria = 0.1     }      this is a solution, which has header very generic entities which describe the meaning of each section, but I could also have sections that explicity concern specific techniques               Task {          type optimize          optimizer Simplex     }     Units meters     System {        // input data     }          Simplex {          convergenceCriteria 0.001          PointEvaluator MyEvaluatorTechnique     }          MyEvaluatorTechnique {          convergenceCriteria = 0.1     }      I would like to hear your opinion on which method may sound better in terms of design correctness, and pros and cons of both solutions. One thing I don't like in the first solution is, for example, the fact that depending on the type, I may have options that do not make sense for that specific type. In the second solution, however, I am setting up not the generic task (which then uses specific types of subsystem). Instead, I specify the specific subsystems performing the task."}
{"_id": "211968", "title": "Which of these two shuffle algorithms is more random?", "text": "Which of below two shuffle algorithms (`shuffle1` and `shuffle2`) is more random?               public final class Shuffle {         private static Random random;              public static void shuffle1(final Object[] array) {             if (random == null) {                 random = new Random();             }                  for (int i = array.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {                 swap(array, i, random.nextInt(i + 1));             }         }              public static void shuffle2(final Object[] array) {             if (random == null) {                 random = new Random();             }                  for (int i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {                 swap(array, i, i + random.nextInt(array.length - i));             }         }              protected static void swap(final Object[] array, final int i, final int j) {             final Object tmp = array[i];             array[i] = array[j];             array[j] = tmp;         }     }      The `shuffle2` algorithm guaranties that all elements are directly touched, but, in `shuffle1` algorithm, the element with index = 0 is never directly touched because of the condition `i > 0`."}
{"_id": "62293", "title": "Suggest other people's code to study", "text": "What open source Java code would you suggest for me to study? EDIT: I'm interested in the design, simplicity(?), their programming style, logic. EDIT2: The first thing that came to my mind is JUnit source code. I started looking into it and I was impressed by how 'Money' is designed/represented. Similarly are there any suggestible open-source projects."}
{"_id": "211963", "title": "Open source project question in interview", "text": "I've recently applied for a position as C# developer, and during the interview, the interviewers asked me many times if I contribute to develop one or more open source project. Since they let me write a lot of code (from basics to TDD,MVVM,MVP), I didn't get the meaning of such a question, especially cause they insisted a lot on the topic and the thing started to bother me. I wish I could have time enough to develop open source software, but I don't get why a company that sells software pretend that their employees work for free in their spare time. What's the real reason of this question (apart from checking your code)?"}
{"_id": "211962", "title": "Well designed Open Source WPF Applications", "text": "I'm just wondering if anyone knows about some well designed .NET Open Source Applications using WPF? I have already tried to search at the usual sites like GitHub and Sourceforge, but I wasn't very satisfied by the results at all. Actually I'm interested in the right usage of MVVM, Data Binding etc. in the context of relatively large Software (at least more than the few lines of sample code, you will find at most Tutorials and Books). Also ORM with NHibernate lies in my main concern. Currently I also do have the overall impression WPF is not used very extensively at all, am I right with that? Which closed source (commercial) Software Products are out there, using it?"}
{"_id": "252863", "title": "Updating settings on embedded systems device with non-reliable comms", "text": "I am writing a JavaFX GUI program for user configuration of an embedded systems device. The device will be connected by a wired or wireless serial connection which is not 100% reliable. Therefore when the user makes settings changes in the GUI, the program sends a set message to the device, then must verify they are set. My question is what program structures are useful for this purpose. My current approach is   * A class called `Sync` which contains two variables related to the particular setting. One is bound to the setting as it appears in the GUI and another to the setting as it has been received from the device.   * A property in `Sync` that describes if the two settings are the same, the device is setting is newer or the GUI setting is newer. Field decorations then bind to this setting.   * A button called `set` that sends a set message to the device   * A loop that continually polls the device for its settings (which are stored in the Sync class). The decorators then give feedback to the user whether the settings have synced. I'd like to do something a bit more elegant where the Sync class takes care of sending messages and checking if the setting were set. Some specific questions:   * Should I remove the 'set' button and have the Sync class update the device whenever it has valid settings?   * Is a decoration enough to indicate whether or not the setting has been set? Would a dialog box be better? Some general questions:   * Is there a best practice approach to this problem?   * Are there common classes that would be useful?   * Any other alternative designs? Edit: A constraint: I'd like to keep the device as dumb as possible. I've implemented custom protocols with CRC, ack/nack, retries, message buffers, etc. before, albeit between two embedded systems. The software will be modified for different beginner Arduino projects and I want to keep most of the logic (even validation) on the GUI side."}
{"_id": "252865", "title": "Confusion in understanding the theorem on Amortization", "text": "I was reading a book on Algorithm Analysis by Micheal T Goodrich. I came across amortization technique and I got struck in understanding the proof of theorem. I am putting the theorem and the proof and the part that I need some more explanation. Please help me: **Theorem:** A series of _n_ operations on an initially **empty** clearable table implemented with an array takes O(n) time Definition of clearable table: This Abstract data type stores table of elements, which can be accessed by their index in the table. In addition this ADT supports the following two methods: > add(e): Add the element _e_ to the next available cell in the table.   >  clear : Empty the table by removing all its elements. **Proof** : Let M0....,Mn-1 be the series of operations performed on S, and let Mi0,....,Mik-1 be the clear operations within the series. We then have, > 0<= i0 < .... < i k-1 <= n-1. > > Let us also define i-1 = -1. The running time of operation Mij (a clear > operation) is O(ij \\- ij-1), because at most ij \\- ij-1 -1 elements could > have been added into the table (using the add operation) since the previous > clear operation Mij-1 or since the beginning of the series. Question:   1. Why and how i-1 = -1 is defined?   2. I did not understand \"because at most ij \\- ij-1 -1 elements could have been added into the table (using the add operation) since the previous clear operation Mij-1 or since the beginning of the series\". Please explain me more on this statement on why **-1** came into the picture."}
{"_id": "149341", "title": "An alternative for Game Maker on Linux?", "text": "Are there any alternatives to Game Maker built for Linux that get the job done using a familiar interface, similar converting scripting language(eg, Javascript) that DOESN'T export the games as either Flash or HTML5? Frankly, that's pretty specific, but hey. Multiple heads are better than one, especially when scrounging the dark depths of the Internet. :/"}
{"_id": "44671", "title": "How should a programmer decide whether to get an MBA vs continuing as a programmer?", "text": "As I am from India, here most of the people think that if somebody has more than 5 Years of experience, he/she should not continue with it. Should go for an MBA degree and apply for the managerial job. What do you say?"}
{"_id": "86567", "title": "I need to hire a web developer but I'm not sure which qualifications/skills they should have to do what I see in my head. Any help?", "text": "I'm looking to develop a simple image editor wherein a user can cycle through multiple layers (6-10) of images to develop a unique avatar. For example, the initial image layer will be a 2D character of their choice, mostly void of any accessories. The next image layer would be a shirt, another pants, another jewelry etc. I like the idea of frontend HTML5 so it can be a web app compatible across most platforms, but I'm lost on the backend requirements of such a project. #noob Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "193653", "title": "Custom use of Authorization header in a REST API", "text": "I'm building a REST api where clients are authenticated using client certificates. A client in this case is not an individual user, but some sort of a presentation layer. Users are authenticated using a custom approach and it's the responsibility of the presentation layer to see that this is properly done (note: I know this is not the proper approach, but the api is not public). I would like to pass the user name for each request (not the password), but I'm not sure where to do this. Would it be a good idea to use the Authorization header?"}
{"_id": "243027", "title": "Best Practice: What can be the hashCode() method implementation if custom field used in equals() method are null?", "text": "What is the best practice to return a value for hashCode() method if custom field used in equals are null ? I have a situation, where equals() override is implemented using custom fields. Usually it is recommented to override hashCode() using that custom fields used in equals(). But if all the custom fields used in equals() are null, then what would be the best implementation for hashCode()? Example:               class Person {         private String firstName;         private String lastName;                 public String getFirstName() {             return firstName;         }                 public String getLastName() {             return lastName;         }         @Override         public boolean equals(Object object) {             boolean result = false;             if (object == null || object.getClass() != getClass()) {                 result = false;             } else {                 Person person = (Person) object;                 if (this.firstName == person.getFirstName()                     && this.lastName == tiger.getLastName()) {                     result = true;                 }             }             return result;         }                 @Override         public int hashCode() {             int hash = 3;             if(this.firstName == null || this.lastName == null) {                 // <b>What is the best practice here, </b>                 // <b>is return super.hashCode() better ?</b>             }                     hash = 7 * hash + this.firstName.hashCode();             hash = 7 * hash + this.lastName.hashCode();             return hash;         }     }        1. is it required to check for null in hashCode() ?   2. If yes, what should be returned if custom values are null ?"}
{"_id": "139032", "title": "Is Multithreading Appropriate for Setting up Multiple Windows in the Same Application?", "text": "I am currently working with a Qt Application which tries to use multi threading to accomplish two task   * To Prevent the Main Thread's Event Loop from being blocked   * To increase computation efficiency You would think it is a good idea, but it turns out that this might be inefficient. In Qt, the client is not permitted to instantiate a QWidget subclass **only in the main thread**. The code I have seen so far seems really messy. The program has a \"executive thread\", in other words a background thread that manages user request (ie button click for a new gui panel), and of course there are 3 other thread (networking, script processing, and ofcourse the Main Thread) The setup is kind of funky to say the least, the action event (ie Button Click) is signaled to the executive thread, which then sends a **functor to the main thread** to instantiate the user requested gui panel. The above described make no sense. I am guessing that the original designers were concerned about the thread being blocked, but that shouldn't matter. Regardless of what thread instantiated in, it still ends up back in the main thread, and blocking it anyway. **This might not the be the best design choice, or is it? I am not sure, maybe there is someone here more experience that can shed light on this.** I personally think it would be better to let one thread handle all user interaction, and any intensive user processing should can be threaded. The other threaded parts make sense, having a seperate thread for processing scripts, networking actually could increase efficiency, while not blocking the main event loop so the gui can remain interactive. Also could some one also elaborate on when Multithreading is a good choice in GUI, and in regular circumstances? **Thanks**"}
{"_id": "139035", "title": "Scrum for specialists teams", "text": "Scrum is best for teams with generalists members, that is teams where 2 people at least can do the same tasks. My main concern is to find good solutions **to adapt scrum (what to keep, what to remove, what to improve) for teams made of specialists?** Suppose you have a team of 5 developers (not real, just for the example):   1. One mathematician with strong skills in C;   2. One DB developer;   3. One Web Developer;   4. One UX/GUI developer;   5. One software architect; Here, all are specialists and no one can replace someone else (I don't care about the risks of building such a team, I want to focus on scrum). So, in a scrum context, here are my thoughts:   1. **Useless spring plannings:** indeed, when the mathematician says that a specific task is worth 2 points, nobody can vote against him;   2. **Useless team velocity metric:** as everybody can allocate any number of points to his own tasks, computing velocity makes not sense;   3. **Replace daily scrum meetings with weekly (longer) scrum meetings:** as each member of the team is working on his own tasks, daily scrum meetings should be really important to keep a \"team spirit\". However, daily scrum meetings are supposed to last around 15 minutes. This is clearly not sufficient to understand what the others are doing and will do. Moreover, the mathematician will most of the time answer the same things: \"I am still doing _% &Lo( + ?$$_+&)\"... Weekly meetings would give more time. To keep the same meetings time between \"initial\" scrum meetings and \"weekly\" scrum meetings, each weekly scrum meeting should last (5 days a week, with 4 weeks sprints, with sprint meetings lasting 4 hours and daily meetings lasting 15 minutes): (4*60 + 20*15)/ 4 => 2h-2h30 which seems reasonable. Or is scrum still usable? Maybe another agile technique should be used? Thanks for any help. Best regards."}
{"_id": "251743", "title": "Which license should I use in the program?", "text": "I have developed software that I would like to sell commercially. I don't know which license I should use. I've never used one before. I don't I think need/should to write one myself. Basically, I want to restrict end-used from doing these things without contacting me first:   * share binary program with others   * (re-)sell the software"}
{"_id": "139039", "title": "Are there established practices on versioning of a shared web service?", "text": "We are working on an ASP.NET-based XML Web Service that we will be using for our own purposes as well as using it as part of a product offering for our integration partners. Once it goes live we will be working on future phases of the project, and it occurs to me that the service's details may need to change over time (method signatures, object types, etc.) and since we are not the only ones using the web service, we will need to have some level of coordination with our partners. What I'm not sure about is the best way to do this. When we update the web service in such a way that the WSDL would be changed, should we deploy it to a separate URL? Should we overload the existing methods? Have differently named methods? Ideally we would just have everything coordinated and cut over to the new methods but I don't see that happening. Are there established good ways to handle this?"}
{"_id": "163736", "title": "What 's the essential difference between agile developing and plan based developing?", "text": "In agile process, the product owner put the unformal ideas/user story/backlog items to the sprint/iteration. Sprint/iteration is like a plan for a short term and it is drived by daily meeting. Planning is made in both processes. So what's the difference between agile and the old plan based developing?"}
{"_id": "161466", "title": "What's the benefit of Azure ACS if ASP.NET 4.5 includes OAuth and OpenID providers?", "text": "Azure ACS offers OAuth and OpenID providers, and now that ASP.NET 4.5 offers the same thing, without the added cost, is there any reason for a .NET developer to consider ACS? (Disclaimer, I don't know what version of oauth each service provides)"}
{"_id": "161467", "title": "Different kinds of safety", "text": "Programming languages and programs (as wells as individual functions, objects, etc.) are often described as being \"safe\" in one way or another. For example, they could be \"type safe\", \"memory safe\", \"exception safe\", \"thread safe\" - even \"reentrant\". Each of these concepts is about preventing erroneous or damaging code from executing, which makes them pretty important considerations in language and program design. So if I wanted to be super-pedantic about safety, what are all the different kinds of safety I could consider? Or could there be any number of them, leaving me to hope that I know all the ones which could be important for me? The context of the question involves comparing languages like Haskell to languages like C++: pure Haskell is great if you want to guarantee type, memory and thread safety. In C++, we can circumvent any of these. So I was thinking: \"If we wanted to make a perfectly safe language, what are all the kinds of 'safety' that we could consider?\""}
{"_id": "198085", "title": "Is it poor programming practice to pass parameters as Objects?", "text": "So, we've got a guy who likes to write methods that take Objects as parameters, so they can be 'very flexible.' Then, internally, he either does direct casting, reflection or method overloading to handle the different types. I feel like this is a bad practice, but I can't explain exactly why, except that it makes it more difficult to read. Are there other more concrete reasons why this would be a bad practice? What would those be? * * * So, some folks have asked for an example. He has an interface defined, something like:               public void construct(Object input, Object output);      And he plans to use these by putting several in a list, so it sort of builds bits and adds them to the output object, like so:               for (ConstructingThing thing : constructingThings)         thing.construct(input, output);     return output;      Then, in the thing that implements `construct`, there is a rickety reflection thing that finds the right method that matches the input/output and calls it, passing input/output. I keep telling him, it works, I understand it works, but so does putting everything into a single class. We're talking about reuse and maintainability, and I think he's actually constraining himself and has less reuse than he thinks. The maintainability, while probably high for him right now, will likely be very low for him and anyone else in the future."}
{"_id": "161469", "title": "How can I get more programming experience", "text": "I am going to be a third year computer science student and I have read Head first Java, Head First C, and I am currently reading C++ which is the language that I like the most since it has a good teaching style for people with experience. I am planning to either learn to make software with QT, learn objective-C(for iphone), or read Effective C++. How can I get experience as a programmer? Do I have the skills to join an open source project or do I need to learn php, mySQL or any other language. I love programming and computer science in general although some classes can be extremely hard (theoretical computer science). I also plan to become a guru in c++ but that's not going to be anytime soon."}
{"_id": "179253", "title": "Is the carriage-return char considered obsolete", "text": "I wrote an open source library that parses structured data but intentionally left out carriage-return detection because I don't see the point. It adds additional complexity and overhead for little/no benefit. To my surprise, a user submitted a bug where the parser wasn't working and I discovered the cause of the issue was that the data used CR line endings as opposed to LF or CRLF. Hasn't OSX been using LF style line-endings since switching over to a unix- based platform? I know there are applications like Notepad++ where line endings can be changed to use CR explicitly but I don't see why anybody would want to. Is it safe to exclude support for the statistically insignificant percentage of users who decide (for whatever reason) to the old Mac OS style line- endings? **Update:** To clarify, supporting Windows line endings (ie CRLF) doesn't require CR token recognition. For efficiency purposes the lexer matches on a per-char basis. By silently ignoring CR chars, the CRLF token simplifies to LF. As such, the CRLF token itself could be considered an anachronism all its own but that's not what this question is about. The last OS that provided system-wide support for CR style line endings was Mac OS 9. Ironically, the only application that still uses it as the default in OSX is Microsoft Excel."}
{"_id": "129045", "title": "Are there any podcasts (not lectures) about compiler development?", "text": "There are several podcasts with lectures from universities. I am looking for \"other\" podcasts. So are there any non-lecture podcasts about compiler development?"}
{"_id": "129041", "title": "It usually takes me a very long time to learn new a programming concept. Am I suitable to be a programmer?", "text": "I admit that I haven't seen how fast other people people learn. But I in my case, it usually takes me a long time to understand few lines of a new programming concept. For instance, I've been programing in jQuery and a little of JavaScript for some time. I've been checking this Backbone.js tutorial. And it is taking me a lot of time to understand a simple block like this:                var ListView = Backbone.View.extend({             el: $('body'), // attaches `this.el` to an existing element.              initialize(): Automatically called upon instantiation. Where you make all types of bindings, excluding UI events, such as clicks, etc.              initialize: function(){           _.bindAll(this, 'render'); // fixes loss of context for 'this' within methods                 this.render(); // not all views are self-rendering. This one is.         },      Even if it is all commented and explained (I still can't figure out what is `el` or why there is an underscore before `_.bindAll`, and I've been stuck with this for about an hour). This really make me wonder if I'm suitable to be a programmer or not?"}
{"_id": "129043", "title": "What are the relative advantages of dictionaries versus databases?", "text": "I have an environment that supports both dictionaries (json style) and databases (not relational or anything, just formatted data by row and column). My application doesn't really need database functionality, butI'm somewhat more comfortable with the database system than I am with dictionaries. Is there a major performance advantage to dictionaries? What situations are there where a dictionary is better than a database?"}
{"_id": "247099", "title": "An algorithm for reconstructing a graph from its shortest path information?", "text": "I have some shortest path data for a graph. Can I reconstruct the graph itself from this data? More precisely, I have a boolean (0/1) matrix for each vertex _v_ in graph _(V, E)_. Matrix element _[s,d]_ is equal to 1 iff _v_ is in the shortest path from source vertex _s_ to destination vertex _d_. All edges in the graph have the same length. For example, for the graph               (V1) -- (V2) -- (V3)      the three matrices would be: V1:               1 1 1     1 0 0     1 0 0      V2:               0 1 1     1 1 1     1 1 0      V3:               0 0 1     0 0 1     1 1 1      My questions: 1) is there an algorithm to reconstruct the set of edges E from these matrices? 2) is solution always unique? (this is more of a personal curiosity than a real requirement) 3) can the algorithm be generalized to nonuniform edge lengths?"}
{"_id": "247302", "title": "Coupling business logic with class definitions", "text": "Perhaps it is my scripting background, but my perspective is that the purpose of an object should be to contain data. Classes are necessary in that they provide templates and standard ways to classify and construct objects with particular data attributes. Standard protocol in object oriented design seems to be to include business logic in class definitions. In a system that depends on state, I understand the motivation behind binding methods with the sole purpose of altering or retrieving the state of an object to the class definition. So let's exclude simple getters, setters, and constructors from the scope of the conversation. The problems, as I see them, start when _processes_ are bound to an object. Consider a simple \"string.equals()\" method that accepts a string as a parameter, and returns a boolean indicating whether strings are equivalent. I think this simple method can cause enormous problems. Let's say I have a LocationString class that inherited from String, where equals() is overridden as follows:               Boolean equals(LocationString otherLocation) {         return extractCountry().equals(otherLocation.extractCountry());     }          String extractCountry(){         return this.getCountry();     }      Now, assume I have a thousand such different objects with different equals() definitions, some of which are the same, and some of which are vastly different. Suddenly, the definition of equality changes for some of my classes. It becomes extremely painful to work out which equals definitions need to be changed. It becomes painful to work out whether other internal processes which called the equals method need to be changed. And eventually as the system expands, more hours are wasted searching through the code than analyzing it. As such, to me it makes far more sense that a generic equals rule is defined that modifies its behavior polymorphically depending on the inputs it receives. Consider the following definition:               public static Boolean equals(Object a, Object b) {         List locationClasses = Arrays.asList(\"LocationString\")         if (locationClasses.contains(a.getClass().getName()) && locationClasses.contains(b.getClass().getName()){             return equals(a.extractCountry(), b.extractCountry());         }          else {             return StringUtils.equals(a,b);         }     }      If all processes were defined externally, a change in process would not be all that difficult to correct and provided these more generic rules could be stored and categorized logically, they would be easy to find and would only need to change once as the business logic changes. This approach seems relatively simple and straight forward. Why then, has it been generally rejected in favor of the typical object oriented coupling of data with methods?"}
{"_id": "87563", "title": "License for code snippets", "text": "I'm wondering if there is a common license that would be good for _snippets_ of code (eg. things you might just paste into a file), which has the following conditions:   * Modifications of this snippet must be open-sourced   * No restrictions on code that uses the snippet Or would this license be too prone to workarounds to exist?"}
{"_id": "232572", "title": "Is it right to persist a computed property to the DB?", "text": "I would like to know what do you think about persisting an \"autocomputed property\" to the database. For example I have these properties               decimal Price {get;set;}     decimal Tax {get;set;}     decimal PriceWithTax {get {return Price + Tax;}}      I think I need persist `PriceWithTax`. I can use this column, for example, in DB views. But I feel that this solution can lead to hidden bugs. What do you think? Edit: Ok, I try to explain our real problem. We have a class \"Order\" which has collection of items - class ItemOrders. Class ItemOrder has property Price and class Order has property TotalPrice. And implementation of TotalPrice:               TotalPrice {get { return ItemOrders.Sum(i => i.Price); }}      And we need sorting, grouping in the database. So its not a bussiness rule but a \"data rule\"."}
{"_id": "247309", "title": "Referencing official documentation in source-code documentation", "text": "What are your preferences for referencing official documentation (like a white paper) for an algorithm from comments in the code that implements it? I'm trying to decide between two methods, as illustrated by the examples below, but am open to other suggestions. RFC 1321, for instance, describes the MD5 hash algorithm. If I were implementing MD5 in Python using the paper as a guide, and documented my code as I went, which of the following implementations of an example function `pad_string(str)` would you recommend, if not something entirely different? ### option 1               def pad_string(str):         \"\"\"         Pads the string to be hashed to an appropriate length. See RFC 1321 3.1.         \"\"\"      where the relevant section of the RFC is:               3.1 Step 1. Append Padding Bits              The message is \"padded\" (extended) so that its length (in bits) is         congruent to 448, modulo 512. That is, the message is extended so         that it is just 64 bits shy of being a multiple of 512 bits long.         Padding is always performed, even if the length of the message is         already congruent to 448, modulo 512.      **or** ### option 2               def pad_string(str):         \"\"\"         Pads the argument string such that its length is congruent to 448, modulo 512.         \"\"\"      Here, **option 1** simply references relevant parts of the \"official\" MD5 documentation by section number, where **option 2** doesn't make any mention of the paper and basically reiterates its contents where necessary. The advantage of the first is that the documentation adheres somewhat to DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself, in this case with respect to the RFC), but its disadvantage is that it relies on a third-party resource: if it's an obscure technical specification hosted in one place and the link provided inside the code documentation dies, then you're out of luck. The advantage of the second approach is that your source is self-contained: you don't need any other information when reading through it, and our example MD5 script would become as much a description of the algorithm as its implementation; this, of course, requires more writing on the code author's part, can bloat documentation, and, more importantly, may end up with mis-copied information and other errors. Is there any consensus on which is better?"}
{"_id": "54384", "title": "Why is code sometimes called \"listings\"?", "text": "When reading _Programmers at Work_ (by Susan Lammers), they often refer to code as \"listings\". Why is that?"}
{"_id": "111069", "title": "How would you go about creating a class diagram for a JPA/JSF application", "text": "I was creating a class diagram for an application I was working on today and I didnt include the JPA entities since I had all the information I thought was important in my DAOs, for example, I just care about how to register a user regardless of what information does a User object contain, so I only included the UserDao in my class diagram and added an operation called register which has a parameter of type User without having a User class in my diagram. My question is if its necessary to include every single class I have in my diagram or can I omit the classes that I will be forced to add because I am using a certain framework such as JSF or JPA?"}
{"_id": "252289", "title": "Running Python script in background on Mac", "text": "I have a Python script that counts the number of file in a folder, and if the number of files exceeds 10 then it creates a popup window to ask the user to clean up the folder (I use tkMessageBox). How can I have the program run in the background so that it consumes only minimal resources? I tried running it as a daemon and as an agent but I couldn't see anything happen (no popup window)."}
{"_id": "206479", "title": "how do design the database tables for file download statistics", "text": "I have the web application where i am serving file downloads in php. All is working fine and i have the download column in `file field` where i increment it. But i want to have full statictics of downloads like how many downloads on `each day` or in `month` or `time of day` or from `which location` But i am not able o find how to design the mysql tables for that. Do i need to lo every download request in database for that. Any design pattern or example of that in real world"}
{"_id": "111063", "title": "IClass, Class, ClassImpl pattern?", "text": "I've been seeing a lot of code recently that looks like this:               public interface IFoo { int Bar(); }          public static class Foo      {         public static IFoo Create() { return new FooImpl(); }         private class FooImpl : IFoo         {             public int Bar () { ... }         }     }      Basically, there is a contract defined by an interface, the the main business object class is a static class that provides factory methods, and there is an embedded class that provides the actual implementation. There are some advantages to this pattern especially, the clean separation between the contract and the implementation. Still, it seems a little ugly to me: especially the naming of a static factory class with a business object name rubs me the wrong way. My questions are...   1\\. Is there a name for this pattern or style of development?   2\\. What do you think about this pattern? Are there any other advantages besides a rigorous hiding of implementation? Is there a better way to achieve the same goals?"}
{"_id": "123718", "title": "How do I add another script engine to web browsers under Linux / Windows / Mac?", "text": "In my ample (NOT!) spare time, I'm fiddling with Lhogho and wondering how to go about morphing it into a script engine for web browsers, viz               <h1>My First Web Page</h1>          <script type=\"text/lhoghoscript\">        print [Hello World]     </script>          </body>     </html>       Any suggestions where to start? For Windows, I suppose Microsoft Windows Script Interfaces - Introduction. What about Linux and Mac? On the way there, I'm also trying to figure out how to make Lhogho into a server-side language, rather like PHP or ASP, viz               <head>     <title>Lhogho Preprocessor</title>     </head>     <? print [Hello world] ?>          <body>     </body>     </html>      I figure that'll be slightly easier. Maybe."}
{"_id": "44090", "title": "how to deal with parallel programming", "text": "I know that parallel programming is a big resource in computer graphics, with moder machines, and mayebe a computing model that will be grow up in the near future (is this trend true?). I want to know what is the best way to deal with it. there is some practical general purpose usefulness in studying processor n-dimensional mesh, or bitonic sort in p-ram machines or it's only theory for domain specific hardware used in real particular signal elaborations of scientific simulations? Is this the best way to acquire the know how for how to become acquainted with cuda or opencl? (i'm interested in computer graphics applications) and why functional programming is so important to understand parallel computing? ps: as someone has advice me i have forked this discussion from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4908677/how-to-deal-with-parallel- programming"}
{"_id": "95008", "title": "How to Improve this socket over TCP-IP system", "text": "Im new to Socket programming and im building a Socket over TCP-IP system with this architecture: ![system](http://i.stack.imgur.com/N2txX.png) **Server:** Basically a TCPIP Listener that waits for connection from the clients. **Client:** It knows the server Ip and try to connect, when the connection is set i can send commands from another client that acts like the ADMIN. In other words its like a chat system adapted to this use case. Once the client receive the commands form the admin console it pass it to the LED display connected by Serial Port. My question is: If want to remove those clients(Laptop, PC) from the system, and connect directly to the led Display, how can i do it? What happen to the Client logic? Can i send the commands from the server directly to the led display?"}
{"_id": "123716", "title": "What are the software technologies behind real time web apps?", "text": "What are some of the software technologies behind \"real-time\" web apps, like Twitter, Trello, or even Gmail? I know there's a webserver and probably a database on the backend, but what are the software pieces that make for that rich web interaction that I'm seeing more of today?"}
{"_id": "123714", "title": "What is a good code pattern for single retry then error?", "text": "I am writing a routine which has the following form:               TRY A     IF no success, B     IF no success, RETRY A     IF no success, throw error      It's not trivial to extract either A or B into it's own routine, so **what is most simple structure that will allow me to retry A without code duplication?** Currently, I have a `do..while` that allows `N` retries:               int retries = 1;          do {         // DO A              if ( /*success*/ ) {             break;         } else if (retries > 0)  {             // DO B                  if ( /*success*/) {                 break;             }         } else {             // throw Error         }     } while (retries-- > 0);      This is ugly and not ideal as it implies that I might want to ever retry more than once, which I don't. I will have to use a loop, but there has to be a more simple way that I'm not seeing. For context, this is code generated in Java, executing SQL statements to try an `UPDATE` first, then if no entry to update is found, `INSERT`, and if that command fails (concurrency, already created), try `UPDATE` again."}
{"_id": "53423", "title": "How to teach a class in management information systems without access to computers?", "text": "I teach evenings in a prison. The students need a computer course in management information systems to fulfill a degree requirement. There are no computers or calculators available and I am not allowed to bring equipment into the prison. Most of what I've found on the internet regarding this question is created for young children. I need something for adults."}
{"_id": "216590", "title": "Design pattern: static function call with input/output containers?", "text": "I work for a company in software research department. We use algorithms from our real software and wrap them so that we can use them for prototyping. Every time an algorithm interface changes, we need to adapt our wrappers respectively. Recently all algorithms have been refactored in such a manner that instead of accepting many different inputs and returning outputs via referenced parameters, they now accept one input data container and one output data container (the latter is passed by reference). Algorithm interface is limited to a static function call like that:               class MyAlgorithm{     static bool calculate(MyAlgorithmInput input, MyAlgorithmOutput &output);     }      This is actually a very powerful design, though I have never seen it in a C++ programming environment before. Changes in the number of parameters and their data types are now encapsulated and they don't change the algorithm callback. In the latest algorithm which I have developed I used the same scheme. Now I want to know if this is a popular design pattern and what it is called."}
{"_id": "206473", "title": "How much does the data model affect scalability and performance in so called \"NoSQL\" database?", "text": "You can't ever have a talk about so called \"NoSQL\" database without bringing the CAP theorem (Consistency, Availability, Partition : pick two). If you have to pick say, between MongoDB (Partition, Consistency) and CouchDB (Availability, Partition), the first you need to think about is \"Do I need correct data or do I need access all the time?\". Those new database were _made_ to be partitioned. But what If I _don't_? What if I just think its pretty cool to have a Key/Value, Column, Document, whatever database instead of a relational one, and just create one server instance and never shard it? In that case, wouldn't I have both availability and consistency? MongoDB wouldn't need to replicate anything, so it would be available. And CouchDB would have only one source of data, so it would be pretty consistent. So that would mean that, in that case, MongoDB and CouchDB would have little difference in term of use case? Well, except of course performance, API, and al, but that would be more like choosing between PostgreSQL and MySQL than having two fundamentally different set of requirements. Am I right here? Can I change a AP or CP database to an AC one by not creating more than one instance? Or is there something that I am missing? Let's ask the question in reverse. What if I take a relational database, let say MySQL, and put it in a master/slaves configuration. I don't use ACID transactions If I require that any write be synchronized to the slave immediately, wouldn't that make it a CP database? And what if I synchronise it a some predefined intervals, and it doesn't matter if a client read stale data from a slave. Wouldn't that make it an AP database? Wouldn't that mean that if I give up ACID compliance I can still use the relationnal model for a partionned database? In essence : is scalability about what you are ready to give up in the CAP theorem, more than the underlying data model? Does having Column, Document, Key Value, whatever give a boost to scalability over a relational model? Could we design a relational database designed from the ground up for partition tolerance? (Maybe it already exists). Could we make NoSQL database ACID compliant? Sorry, its a lot of questions, but I have read a lot about NoSQL database recently and it seem to me that the biggest benefit of using them is that they fit better the \"shape\" of your data, rather than just the partition, CAP and giving up ACID compliance. After all, not everyone has so much data that they need to partition it. Is there a performance/scalability benefit to not using the relational model _before I even think about partitioning my data?_"}
{"_id": "10230", "title": "Is it out of line to give unsolicited constructive criticism to a programmer?", "text": "I recently started work at new office that uses a proprietary program written by a solo developer. He's occasionally around as part-time tech support, but the company has signed off on this software and he's no longer being paid to develop it. As a user of his software there are many issues that leap out to me as a source of concern:   * very simple to directly view the DB as a low-privilege user   * passwords stored as plaintext   * dictionary admin passwords   * app uses the DB root account   * DB doesn't meet 1NF (eg. appointment1, appointment2, etc.) I feel like these are serious issues and that if I were him I'd want them pointed out to me, but I'm not a qualified programmer (I'm a social worker) and I don't know if it would be rude of me to just buttonhole him and start blabbering about salted hashes and normal forms, especially when this is no longer a paid task of his. Is it out of line? If not, how would you broach it? **Edit - more info prompted by comments:**   * The application holds sensitive data.   * It's for internal use, but it's running on lots of machines in several cities and many visitors come through our offices.   * My concerns are for the developer's future projects as well as this specific one."}
{"_id": "255489", "title": "Technique for distorting part of an image to take features from another image?", "text": "I have a project of a community website, where people can alter/manipulate photos that they upload, in a particular way. For example, a person could select various contours and control points on their nose, and do the same for an image of another person's face, and hence morph their own photo so that it distorts the nose to match that of someone else's. The setting up of a profile based site, where images can be uploaded, is under the belt, but I was wondering if someone can point me in the right direction for image manipulation. I have been searching for scripts/libraries - chiefly php and python but gotten nowhere. I tried searching composite picture scripts, but what I found just stuck one picture onto another. Like cutting and pasting one nose onto another picture, without blending it in. I tried searching morphing scripts, but I just found scripts that turned one image into another image. I tried searching for image superposition, but that just gave composite image script. Neither of the above are what I am trying to do. What is the technique for distorting part of an image to take features from another image?"}
{"_id": "1745", "title": "What's the most absurd myth about programming issues?", "text": "To put it another way... What is the most commonly held and frustrating misunderstanding about programming, you have encountered? Which widespread and longstanding myths/misconceptions do you find **hard for programmers to dispel/correct**. Please, explain why this is a myth."}
{"_id": "255481", "title": "Modeling e-Commerce Content Relations with Entity Framework", "text": "I'm building an e-Commerce system in my spare time to better lean the ins and outs of ASP.net MVC, WebAPI, and Entity Framework. One of the things I'm struggling with is how to model the relations for the content pieces (categories, products, and webpages).   1. Categories can have 1 or no parent category.   2. Products can have 0 or more categories, but 1 may be specified as primary (for default breadcrumbs).   3. Webpages can have 0 or more categories, but 1 may be specified as primary (for default breadcrumbs).   4. I want to be able to specify the default sort order for each within the parent category. This tells me I'm going to need a many-to-many table with a sort column.   5. I want to be able to efficiently count and/or display products further down the category tree. For example: Using categories **Apple => MacBook** and **Apple => iMac** , I want to be able to display products from MacBook and iMac on the Apple category. Since categories, products, and webpages all share some similar properties like Name, Page Title, Meta Description, Main Content, and Published, I created an abstract base class called CatalogPage that they all inherit from. Since category, product, and webpage all have an optional default/parent category I also included nullable **DefaultCategory/DefaultCategoryId** properties on the CatalogPage class. I assume that if I want #5 to be efficient I'm going to have to store some redundant data. For example, store a Macbook Air 11\" as a child of both Apple and Macbook. What are some good ways to model the rest of the relationships?"}
{"_id": "119181", "title": "What type of encoding can I use to make a string shorter?", "text": "I am interested in encoding a string I have and I am curious if there is a type of encoding that can be used that will only include alpha and numeric characters and would preferably shorten the number of characters needed to represent the string. So far I have looked at using Base64 encoding to do this but it appears to make my string longer and sometimes includes `==` which I would like to avoid. Example: > test name|120101 becomes > dGVzdCBuYW1lfDEyMDEwMQ== which goes from 16 to 24 characters and includes non-alphanumeric. Does anyone know of a different type of encoding that I could use that will achieve my requirements? Bonus points if it's either built into the .NET framework or there exists a third party library that will do the encoding."}
{"_id": "245683", "title": "update methods in simple factories", "text": "I have simple factory class with differently named methods which create the same object but differently. These created objects are persisted to db. These are then retrieved from the db elsewhere and modified differently based on different conditions. I want to leave the conditional logic inside the service class and centralize this object modification, just like I did with object creation. Is it valid to add update* methods inside a simple factory ? Is there another pattern I should be using instead ? In an ideal world I could add these update methods to the Dao itself, but I am using JPA repositories for Dao. So it is not straight forward to add the update methods to Dao. These Message object updating methods have to live somewhere else and I cannot decide where.               public class Message {          // has some properties      }     public class Messagefactory {              public Message createMessageForConditionA() {}              public Message createMessageForConditionB() {}              public Message createMessageForConditionC() {}              public Message createMessageForConditionD() {}              // Is this okay ?         public Message updateMessageForConditionE() {}              public Message updateMessageForConditionF() {}          }          public class MessageService {              @Autowired         private MessageDao messageDao;              public Message createMessage(String condition){             Message message = null;             if(condition.equals(A)) {                 message = createMessageForConditionA();             } else if(condition.equals(B)) {                 message = createMessageForConditionB();             } else if(condition.equals(C)) {                 message = createMessageForConditionC();             } else if(condition.equals(D)) {                 message = createMessageForConditionD();             }             messageDao.save(message);             return message;         }              public Message updateMessage(string messageKey, String condition) {             Message message = messageDao.findByMessageId(messageKey);                  if(condition.equals(E)) {                 message = updateMessageForConditionE();             } else if(condition.equals(F)) {                 message = updateMessageForConditionF();             }                  messageDao.save(message);             return message;         }     }"}
{"_id": "252134", "title": "What is the reasoning behind these design choices?", "text": "In ReactJS tutorial you are guided in the building of a commenting system. It's a very useful tutorial to understand ReactJS library, but there are some design choices I can't fully understand. So let's start from the initial setup: The system is composed of three components: CommentBox, CommentList, Comment and CommentForm. The hierarchy is the following               CommentBox         CommentList             Comment         CommentForm      The tutorial then implements all the data-fetching logic in the CommentBox component, which then pass this data to CommentList that renders it in the DOM. **Q1: Why? Is an arbitrary choice or there is some reasoning behind?** Then, when the tutorial come to the logic of new comments submission, it states: > When a user submits a comment, we will need to refresh the list of comments > to include the new one. It makes sense to do all of this logic in CommentBox > since CommentBox owns the state that **represents the list of comments**. **Q2: Why CommentBox represents a list of comments when there is another component representing it (CommentList, as the name seems to suggest)?** Further, implementing the submission logic, the code handling the comment POST to the server is part of the CommentBox component, wrapped in a method which is passed to CommentForm as a callback. So when the CommentForm form is submitted, it calls this CommentBox function to perform the server request, while the rest of the logic is implemented in CommentForm's functions. **Q3: Why isn't all submission logic implemented in CommentForm?** _EDIT: as I stated in a comment, \" I already understood the application architecture and the concept of box. I'm arguing about the \"individual implementation\" details and **why some choices are preferable than others** \"_"}
{"_id": "252133", "title": "UI Applications and operations in background threads", "text": "I am not really sure about what is the best way to deal with operations executed in background threads in an application I am writing. I am writing it in C# and I am following the MVVM design pattern. Some user actions are expensive and I'd like to run them in a background thread, which is a quite straightforward approach. The worker thread then modifies my model, which notifies the ViewModel that something changed and finally the change gets propagated to the View. My problem is that the chain of events triggered would cause the modification of the View from the background thread, when it is only allowed in the UI thread. I know I can use the UI thread dispatcher but I am not really sure where (could the view-model be the right place?) so I'd like to know if you follow any design pattern to address this situation."}
{"_id": "252132", "title": "Is this approach to CSS correct?", "text": "Reading SASS basic features on their website, I stumbled upon the `@extend` feature. The example they give is the following:               .message {         border: 1px solid #ccc;         padding: 10px;         color: #333;     }          .success {         @extend .message;         border-color: green;     }          .error {         @extend .message;         border-color: red;     }          .warning {         @extend .message;         border-color: yellow;     }      That compiles to               .message, .success, .error, .warning {         border: 1px solid #cccccc;         padding: 10px;         color: #333;     }          .success {         border-color: green;     }          .error {         border-color: red;     }          .warning {         border-color: yellow;     }      Thus with this snippet of HTML               <div class=\"success\">hello world</div>      you style your element with properties of `.message` and `.success`. However I feel this way of writing HTML (and CSS) very poor, in terms of semantic (you don't explicitly see from the markup above that the element has _also_ the styling of `.message`). Shouldn't the snippet above be               <div class=\"message success\">hello world</div>      ? I feel it to be more descriptive, and more easily reusable. For example I could assign the `.success` class (as written in the above CSS but without the `@extend`) to other elements which are not messages, and so using the class as a modifier, in a BEM-fashion. **So my question is, is the SASS example approach more desiderable than mine?**"}
{"_id": "245686", "title": "How can I use guice to replace code dependent on service locator implementation?", "text": "Consider I have a service called FileSystem, and that this FileSystem is used by various classes throughout the application. Typically, the service is acquired via some static class method ServiceLocator.getService(FileSystem.class) Now consider I have a class Game, that depends on the FileSystem object to open up some UI resources. The game will also construct a world, using a WorldFactory. The WorldFactory also requires the FileSystem service. Here is where I encounter the problem, I construct a new instance of WorldFactory - which requires an instance of FileSystem to be injected into it. However, Guice will not inject into objects it has not constructed. So WorldFactory is left without a FileSystem injected into it. So I could pass a FileSystem object to the WorldFactory but then in essence Guice hasn't solved any of my problems and I have come to realize I haven't been using Guice correctly because I can do all of this without it? So then you get an odd instance where the constructor of a game entity requires that you pass an instance to the AudioSystem to it which it can play audio through. It just gets very messy with all these objects/services being explicitly passed around. Thanks. I'm still new to guice and trying to figure out how to use it."}
{"_id": "178590", "title": "How can I give my client \"full access\" to their PHP application's MySQL database?", "text": "I am building a PHP application for a client and I'm seriously considering WordPress or a simple framework that will allow me to quickly build out features like forums, etc. However, the client is adamant about having \"full access\" to the database and the ability to \"mine the data.\" Unfortunately, I'm almost certain they will be disappointed when they realize they won't be able to easily glean meaningful insight by looking at serialized fields in wp_usermeta, etc. One thought I had was to replicate a variation on the live database where I flatten out all of those ambiguous and/or serialized fields into something that is then parsable by a mere mortal using a tool as simple as phpMyAdmin. Unfortunately, the client is not going to settle for a simple backend dashboard where I create the custom reports for them even though I know that would be the easiest and most sane approach."}
{"_id": "221864", "title": "Should I create a \"placeholder\" parent case, or set up Areas?", "text": "I'm using FogBugz for Project Management, and I'm unsure how to structure my cases. I have different features which require implementing as part of this project. For example, if I have a new feature to include autocomplete on a search text box, this would have cases such as:   * Method for returning search terms   * Front-end changes to request method   * Front-end changes to display search terms Should I create these as **subcases** under a \"Autocomplete\" case, or should they be created as top-level cases under an **area** called \"Autocomplete\"?"}
{"_id": "178596", "title": "Looking for best practice for version numbering of dependent software components", "text": "We are trying to decide on a good way to do version numbering for software components, which are depending on each other. Let's be more specific: Software component A is a firmware running on an embedded device and component B is its respective driver for a normal PC (Linux/Windows machine). They are communicating with each other using a custom protocol. Since, our product is also targeted at developers, we will offer stable and unstable (experimental) versions of both components (the firmware is closed-source, while the driver is open-source). Our biggest difficulty is how to handle API changes in the communication protocol. While we were implementing a compatibility check in the driver - it checks if the firmware version is compatible to the driver's version - we started to discuss multiple ways of version numbering. We came up with one solution, but we also felt like reinventing the wheel. That is why I'd like to get some feedback from the programmer/software developer community, since we think this is a common problem. So here is our solution: We plan to follow the widely used _major.minor.patch_ version numbering and to use even/odd minor numbers for the stable/unstable versions. If we introduce changes in the API, we will increase the minor number. This convention will lead to the following example situation: Current stable branch is 1.2.1 and unstable is 1.3.7. Now, a new patch for unstable changes the API, what will cause the new unstable version number to become 1.5.0. Once, the unstable branch is considered stable, let's say in 1.5.3, we will release it as 1.4.0. I would be happy about an answer to any of the related questions below:   * Can you suggest a best practice for handling the issues described above?   * Do you think our \"custom\" convention is good?   * What changes would you apply to the described convention?"}
{"_id": "178597", "title": "In Subversion, how should I set up a new major version of my application?", "text": "I'm about to start work on a new version (version 4) of my commercial application. I use Subversion. Based on your experiences, mistakes, and successes, how would you recommend I set up the new version in Subversion? Here's some info: I intend to keep releasing critical updates in version 3 for some time after version 4 is released. However all development of new features will be solely in version 4. In case it is relevant: I'm a solo developer on this product, and that is likely to remain the case. EDIT: I'm aware of SVN's tags and branches. I guess what I need is an optimal strategy for using tags and branches in my situation."}
{"_id": "70971", "title": "I feel stuck in the center of Python, How to get past beginner", "text": "I really apologize if this doesn't follow the S.O rules but I need a little help, I personally still classify myself as a beginner in python, Yet I've wrote a very small and VERY SURE impractical program for my boss to use. I know I'm still a beginner because simple things still perplex me but every book I read for beginners honestly just rehashes what I do already know but every 'more advanced' book doesn't really allow me to learn, they depend on example files and I never really understand why they built 'said' function or 'said' class. So onto my question... Is there any recommendations on a book or ANYTHING that pushes me out of this stage, I've used head first and normally they are really good but my issue there is they have me back tracking just to move forward again, It worked in HTML but its confusing in Python, basically I think I need to build a program while following along, Again I like HeadFirst's style but I need something that isn't going to make me have to remember one thing just to forget it... for record, I've checked into some O'Reilly books"}
{"_id": "212227", "title": "Software Licenses: No Distribution and Private Selling Using Dual Licenses", "text": "I recently wrote a couple of WordPress Themes in PHP and was wondering what license I should put on it. I don't mind users reusing my code, but I don't want them to be able to sell and redistribute my themes as I want to retain that right. I heard somewhere that an _all rights reserved_ link would stop the distributing etc... Is that true or do I need to include another license and dual license my Themes? So to sum it up I want to use a license to stop others from selling and distributing my themes, while at the same time letting others use the code if they want to."}
{"_id": "11175", "title": "Have you tried Chronon the Java \"Time Travelling Debugger\" -- if so, is it worth trying and why?", "text": "First heard about it from Google Tech Talks, back 2009 when it was called Silver Bullet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpfmKIxusZY It's now called, Chronon... http://chrononsystems.com/ \"Sounds\" nice, have you tried Chronon the Java \"Time Travelling Debugger\" -- if so, is it worth trying and why?"}
{"_id": "28376", "title": "Is macros support in a programming language considered harmful?", "text": "The first abuse that comes to my mind in C is:               #define if while       But at the same time it is extremely handy and powerful when used correctly. Something similar happens with Common Lisp macros. Why doesn't all the programming languages support macros like this and what are the alternatives? Is it they are considered harmful?"}
{"_id": "104975", "title": "Website for code review", "text": "I know that we all are trying to improve our structure and style of our code, striving to be truly agile. Websites like Stack Overflow are great when you want an answer to a specific question but what about when you want to get your work critiqued. Are there any communities out there that focus on code review or, even better, agile solutions or even better still focus on T/BDD solutions?"}
{"_id": "105862", "title": "Online Code Reviews", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Website for code review Where can I post my code online so people can comment, make suggestions, and/or criticism? I tried 4chan but people lose interest fast if you don't say something really stupid. Ideas? My language can be located at http://github.com/tekknolagi/gecho/tree/testing"}
{"_id": "77466", "title": "Code Review Services", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Website for code review As a sole developer on a Sharp Architecture project, I'd like to find a way to get some code review. How do people do this? Are there services that people can recommend? Edit: Specifically, I need code review for the overall project - a big task."}
{"_id": "126295", "title": "How to get collaborators for an Android project?", "text": "How do I get people to want to collaborate on a project idea I have/actually contribute? I am a bit sensitive about my idea for a couple reasons:   1. I don't want people to take my idea.   2. I have gotten a couple people who wanted to help but then work/family/school stops them from having time and makes me less enthusiastic in the process. For now it's actually ok because it has forced me to become familiar with PHP and servers and I have just been working on it on my own because I want to learn and its fun, but at some point I will need others to help in order to make it robust and ready to distribute. How do I get collaborators when I will need them? I feel like I should start figuring that out now. I have just been learning how to write software using mainly Stack Overflow, idiot guides and YouTube. Great to learn, but development is slow."}
{"_id": "126292", "title": "Planning Development Projects", "text": "We are currently re-evaluating the way we manage, plan and run our projects (an area that I think we can massively improve upon) so I just wanted to get some ideas as to how other development teams go about starting new a web application project. At present, following the initial client meetings we produce a simple planning document that outlines what we intend to create for them (this usually contains screen shots of the various sections of the app and some detail about what each page will do). Once we have sign-off on this, this is what is used to by the developers as a blueprint to develop from. I can't help but feel we are lacking here as the client planning document simply isn't detailed enough and doesn't really show any of the business logic decisions made in the application. Following development, the application goes to testing where the testers record bugs in an Excel spreadsheet. I feel this is also a very basic way of doing things, I have looked at web apps like Sifter and think this is how we should be doing things. We use TFS as our source control but the bug-tracking in there is overkill for what we need. So what I'd love to know from you guys is, what sort of documentation you produce for projects and what processes you follow during planning and development."}
{"_id": "126293", "title": "SQL Servers Resource Governor - Pros and Cons", "text": "From what I have read about SQL Server Resource Governor, there really aren't any cons. I'm looking at implementing it into our infrastructure where we host websites as well as a management system plus reporting. The management system requires data to be loaded which has to be done out of hours because its quite resource intensive and has a knock-on effect to the websites. So, using the Resource Governor to split out the resources makes sense. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "164175", "title": "Algorithm to calculate trajectories from vector field", "text": "I have a two-dimensional vector field, i.e., for each point `(x, y)` I have a vector `(u, v)`, whereas `u` and `v` are functions of `x` and `y`. This vector field canonically defines a set of trajectories, i.e. a set of paths a particle would take if it follows along the vector field. In the following image, the vector field is depicted in red, and there are four trajectories which are partly visible, depicted in dark red: ![trajectories](http://i.stack.imgur.com/u78WF.gif) I need an algorithm which efficiently calculates some trajectories for a given vector field. The trajectories must satisfy some kind of minimum denseness in the plane (for every point in the plane we must have a 'nearby' trajectory), or some other condition to get a reasonable set of trajectories. I could not find anything useful on Google on this, and Stackexchange doesn't seem to handle the topic either. Before I start devising such an algorithm by myself: **Are there any known algorithms for this problem? What is their name, for which keywords do I have to search?**"}
{"_id": "228238", "title": "How to write an optimal LAN messenger software?", "text": "I am asking this question as an extension to the following question: https://superuser.com/questions/713409/how-to-message-any-user-on-your-lan I don't think I have a real answer. I found it quite difficult to get the `net send` command working on Windows 7 and even if I could have it would have been enabled only for admin users. So I have decided to write my own program to solve the problem. Using `python` I can write a program to check for messages on a common file (which I can store on a common harddrive which we have on our LAN). So the program will write `from:192.168.23.44 to:192.168.23.45 Hello`. Assuming the program is installed on both machines, I can ask the machines to poll this file every few seconds and pop-up a message if a message has been written for it, by searching for it in the `to:` field. If writing to a single file becomes an issue I will make multiple files which will act as inboxes for each of the computers on the LAN. However, this approach is very inelegant. I don't suppose internet messengers, Google talk for instance, poll a server to check whether there are any new messages for the user. So my question is: what is the optimal way to write a LAN messenger program. Now that I think of it, I am looking for a minimalist approach. I will just put the program in the `Startup` folder of all the machines and it should come alive whenever any user logs in. I was just able to configure the machine to respond to the `ping` command by making a new rule for the ICMPv4 protocol (ref: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-networking/how-to- enable-ping-response-in-windows-7/5aff5f8d-f138-4c9a-8646-5b3a99f1cae6). I am guessing that answer lies in `python` and the `ICMPv4` protocol, but I needed some direction."}
{"_id": "223974", "title": "Are the IETF BCP 47 language tags defined as enums anywhere in JDK?", "text": "Are the IETF BCP 47 language tags defined as enums anywhere in JDK? For `Locale.forLanguageTag()` we pass values like `fr-FR`, `jp-JP` etc. Are there any enums already provided by JDK for it? Or should the developer be writing a custom enum for that? How to handle it in i18n application?"}
{"_id": "199368", "title": "Git Branch Model for iOS projects with one developer", "text": "I'm using git for an iOS project, and so far have the following branch model:                feature_brach(usually multiple) -> development -> testing -> master      Feature-branches are short-lived, just used to add a feature or bug, then merged back in to development and deleted. Development is fairly stable, but not ready for production.   Testing is when we have a stable version with enough features for a new update, and we ship to beta testers. Once testing is finished, it can be moved back into development or advanced into master.   The problem, however, lies in the fact that we can't instantly deploy. On iOS, it can be several weeks between the time a build is released and when it actually hits users. I always want to have a version of the code that is currently on the market in my repo, but I also have to have a place to keep the current stable code to be sent for release.   So:   * where should I keep stable code   * where should I keep the code currently on the market   * and where should I keep the code that is in review with Apple, and will be (hopefully) put on the market soon?  Also, this is a one developer team, so collaboration is not totally necessary, but preferred because there may be more members in the future."}
{"_id": "194393", "title": "Service as a Model in MVC", "text": "I have a PHP MVC application and a file table. I need to implement the functionality: mark all as read. The best solution for the code I found so far was to put the actual implementation in a Model/Service/FileService.php The problem is the class FileService will get bloated really fast with different functionality. What would be a good solution to avoid bloated Services. Should I created different Services for each action?"}
{"_id": "114250", "title": "You write the server, I write the client: Best practices for designing an API?", "text": "I'm working on a brand new application that involves a client and a server. Specifically, it's a native mobile app talking to a web server, using a custom API that we will define. I was hired to write the client and another guy (I've never met) has been hired to write the server. To get started we need to agree on an API. We both have very different perspectives on it, working with different technologies. Each of us might not even be sure what sort of small changes make things easier or harder for the other guy. I can't deliver a client if his server isn't working, and his server is pretty useless without a client. What are good strategies for dealing with arrangements like this? I know the answer usually boils down to \"it depends on your situation\" but if I can learn from anybody else's mistakes, I'd sure like to avoid making them again on my own."}
{"_id": "114253", "title": "Which microsoft qualification should a C# ASP.NET Web developer work towards?", "text": "I've been working as a vb.net ASP.NET web developer for the past 4 years, and I'm currently making the change over to C# Apart from school/sixth form qualifications, I'm currently lacking any industry related qualifications, and I'm keen to start working towards a Microsoft qualification. What would be the best suited qualification for me to work towards? Any relevant links would be most appreciated."}
{"_id": "49850", "title": "How to deal with \"software end-of-life\" situations?", "text": "When a vendor declares that they no longer intend to provide any support or services to a piece of software (and stated the intent to exit the business - offering no upgrade paths), what kind of recourse is available to the customer? Please consider this from the _customer's_ viewpoint. The customer's IT staff will likely only consider the technical options, but there are likely non- technical options which the customer can pursue as well. Also, what kind of reasonable steps can be taken by the customer ahead of time to minimize disruption, such as in contract terms? Things I can think of:   * Need to purchase spare hardware and set up a spare environment on which the software can continue to operate.   * Various data export methods which do not require vendor involvement. (This can include trivial techniques such as examining the data stored in a commodity database backend, to the more involved techniques such as screen scraping, printing to image followed by re-scanning, etc)   * Parallel systems where staff will duplicate the old data into a new system manually or semi-automatically   * Legal means, in case the vendor is in financial trouble (as in the case of source code escrow) Any other ideas?   * Assuming that there is no \"circumvention\" involved (no DRM, no DMCA), is data recovery or reverse engineering legal/acceptable? _**Edited note:_** _It is a combination of several anecdotal, but real stories. I am not directly involved in any of those. It is simply my desire to learn about how \"software end-of-life\" situation is handled in general. It is not my intention to make the original story sound like too \"difficult\" to be solved._"}
{"_id": "160418", "title": "Sencha Ext JS run time license", "text": "Do you need to buy a run time license from Sencha if your application code written is developed in Ext JS and deployed on a web server? http://www.sencha.com"}
{"_id": "118588", "title": "Collaborate on UML online", "text": "Some friends and I are starting up a hobby programming project. I wonder if there is any good method/tool/service which lets us collaborate on UML diagrams online. This can be in any form (online direct edit, source-control style, etc.) as long as we can make changes independent of each other."}
{"_id": "254999", "title": "How to let the outside world decorate my private field?", "text": "Imagine a simple `Controller` (as in process control) interface. I have some concrete classes, say `PIDController`, that implement it. I also have some decorator classes that extend these classes somehow, say `ITAETuningDecorator`. Now imagine that a `FloodGate` class has a private `Controller` field. I would like, from the outside and at runtime, to attach to the `Controller` in `FloodGate` an `ITAETuningDecorator`. How can I do it? I have no access to the field from the outside and obviously the decorator needs a reference to the original controller to be built."}
{"_id": "254998", "title": "Redundancy caused by polymorphism", "text": "I have two chat rooms, one has administration behaviour, and one doesn't. I have factored out all of the common code into a base chat room, but the `AdministerChatroom` behaviour I have pulled out into an interface called `IAdministrable` and it sits on the base chatroom class. My issue is that because the interface is on the base class, which allows for the behaviour to polymorphic, the `NonAdministratableChatroom` chatroom class must implement that behaviour even though it will do nothing. I have seen some developers put the interface on only one subclass: the class that has the behaviour, in this case the `AdministerChatroom` method, and when a chatroom is being used, they simply check the existence of the the `IAdministrable` interface, something like `if(Chatroom is IAdministrable){ // do something }`, which seems like a violation of the \"tell don't ask\" principle. I seem to have two choices: I stick to the polymorphic strategy pattern, or I test the instance for an interface; the former seems preferable but I am wondering if there are any other options? The code for the classes is as follows:               public interface IAdministrable     {         void AdministerChatroom();     }          public abstract class BaseChatRoom : IAdministrable     {         public void Close()         {         }              public abstract void AdministerChatroom();     }          public class AdministrableChatroom : BaseChatRoom     {         private readonly Administrator _administrator;              public AdministrableChatroom(Administrator administrator)         {             _administrator = administrator;         }              public override void AdministerChatroom()         {             _administrator.DoSomethingSpecial();         }     }          public class NonAdministratableChatroom : BaseChatRoom     {         public override void AdministerChatroom()         {             // do nothing as this is not administrable         }     }          public class Participant     {          }          public class Administrator : Participant     {         public void DoSomethingSpecial()         {             // implement something special here         }     }"}
{"_id": "160410", "title": "TDD: Mocking out tightly coupled objects", "text": "Sometimes objects just need to be tightly coupled. For example, a `CsvFile` class will probably need to work tightly with the `CsvRecord` class (or `ICsvRecord` interface). However from what I learned in the past, one of test-driven development's main tenets is \"Never test more than one class at a time.\" Meaning you should use `ICsvRecord` mocks or stubs rather than actual instances of `CsvRecord`. However after trying this approach, I noticed that mocking out the `CsvRecord` class can get a little hairy. Which leads me to one of two conclusions:   1. It's hard to write unit tests! That's a code smell! Refactor!   2. Mocking out every single dependency is just unreasonable. When I replaced my mocks with actual `CsvRecord` instances, things went much more smoothly. When looking around for other peoples' thoughts I stumbled across this blog post, which seems to support #2 above. For objects that are naturally tightly coupled, we should not worry so much about mocking. Am I way off track? Are there any downsides to assumption #2 above? Should I actually be thinking about refactoring my design?"}
{"_id": "160411", "title": "What is a legitimate reason to use Cucumber?", "text": "I've worked in several contracts where the client used Cucumber and I've often felt that the testing suite didn't really have a place in our stack. From what I understand, business analysts/non-technical coworkers write up the tests and the developers make the step definitions work. My problem with this approach is the tests are never valid or terse enough to be used without rewriting the whole file."}
{"_id": "118583", "title": "increasing productivity - mastering a language vs. selecting efficient tools", "text": "I'm looking for advice from experienced developers on this question. In my work there's a need for a lot of one-off code. It's tempting to just dip into the right python/perl library calls to do these little tasks as quickly as possible. I used to be of the philosophy of - \"use most efficient tool for the task\". However, I'm afraid that over time, this means that I won't have a deeper experience and expertise, so recently I've been forcing myself to use C++ (w/ Boost and STL) for everything, even if I could do the task in python or perl much more quickly. I'm hoping that in the long run, this will make me a more productive developer. I hope to reach a level of familiarity that I can do things in C++ as quickly as I can in python (and also have the practice to work on bigger projects that would require C++). Is this a good strategy towards long-term productivity and deeper skills? Or am I unnecessarily wasting time / torturing myself?"}
{"_id": "207478", "title": "Best Object Oriented way of parsing a model with several fields(>50) and with null checks", "text": "I have a JSON-based data which contains many fields from a particular model. Any value from the list of fields can be null. I am trying to find the best object oriented way of parsing it and also it has to be light-weighted as it's a mobile application. PS: Want to avoid numerous \"if-checks\" Structure of JSON Data:               data=(                                 classId=\"\"             classDesc=\"\"             items=(                 {                     //Array of 50 Items                 },{                     //Array of 50 Items                 },{                     //Array of 50 Items                 }                );         },        //Remaining Items         );"}
{"_id": "190935", "title": "Have they missunderstood currying or have I?", "text": "This question is similar to the question posted on Does groovy call partial application 'currying'?, but not completely the same, and the answers given there do not really satisfy me. I would like to state right at this point, before I go any further, that currying is one of the concepts that have been hard to fully understand. I think the reason for that is the fact that there seem to be two general definitions of currying, and they don't really mean the same thing both in theory and in application. That being said, I think currying is a very simple concept once you decide to take only one of the two definitions and stick to it. In fact, currying should not be difficult to understand at all, but in my experience, understanding currying has been the equivalent of showing a little boy an apple and telling him that fruit is called apple, and then you go on calling that fruit an orange. The boy will never understand the simple concept of an apple because you have caused an enormous amount of confusion by calling the apple an orange. The definition of currying that I've accepted as the right one is that currying is taking a function of an arbitrary arity and turning it into multiple chainable functions each of which accepts only one parameter (unary functions). In code, it would look like this:               f(1,2,3);     //becomes     f(1)(2)(3);      However, some people, including well known programmers like John Resig, explain currying as something completely different. For them, currying is no more than simple partial application. There is even a generally accepted javascript function for currying:               Function.prototype.curry = function() {         var fn = this, args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);         return function() {           return fn.apply(this, args.concat(             Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments)));         };       };      This functions does not really curry anything, but rather partially applies the supplied arguments. The reason why I don't think this function curries anything is because you can end up with a function that accepts more than one argument:               var f2 = f.curry(1); //f accepts 3 arguments f(1,2,3);     f2(2,3); // calling the resulting \"curried\" function.      So, my question is, have I misunderstood currying or have they? I wanted to post links to the material I've read on currying, but I cannot post more than 2 links since I don't have a reputation of at least 10. I will leave you with this post that explains currying in javascript, but in a way in which I don't really see any currying: https://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/curry-cooking-up-tastier- functions/"}
{"_id": "118586", "title": "How Does A Compiler Work?", "text": "_Note: I am surprised that this hasn't been asked before, and if it has I could not find it in a search._ I've been on tons of websites, I've read tons of articles, and I have heard tons of explanations. Most of them were good, but they were all either to broad or too complicated or just plain bad. So my question is , how does a compiler work? If this is a difficult, broad question, please tell me. But if not, please answer the question."}
{"_id": "8487", "title": "Compiler optimization examples", "text": "I'd like to see (good) examples of optimizations performed by compilers (static and JIT). Why?   * To learn what we don't have to optimize ourselves (often leading to better code)   * To be amazed"}
{"_id": "110005", "title": "What's the best way to show a CLI CRUD app to client?", "text": "I'm developing a CRUD application on command line for a non-tech client. What's a simple (for both parties) way for me to demo the application remotely? A middle-ground between SSH (easy for me) and setting it up as a webapp (easy for the client) would be great."}
{"_id": "110006", "title": "What is the best way to introduce algorithms to undergraduate students?", "text": "If you are given the task of designing the courses leading up to a degree in computer science and are allowed just two courses on the topic of 'Algorithms', how would you structure the courses? My specific questions are:   1. Should the first course introduce some of the fundamental algorithms of Sorting and Searching without introducing the notions of time and space complexity?    2. A second course on designing algorithms. This course would cover not only time and space complexities but also generic algorithm design techniques such as Divide and Conquer, Dynamic Programming etc.. This is the typical profile of the students I am designing this course for:   1. Most would be new to the notion of programming though familiar with the use of computers.   2. They would be learning C programming in the same semester that they learn about algorithms.   3. They Would be taking a simultaneous course on introduction to computer science.  Most of the text books I have considered are either too voluminous or too intimidating for the student with over emphasis on the analysis of the complexity of algorithms. Any suggestions on either the appropriate text books or methodology for teaching would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "110007", "title": "How do I protect my website (Codes, Database, FTP informations) from freelancer?", "text": "I'm developing a website using Joomla and many other 3rd party plugins and also I want to make some custom components so I'm hiring some freelancer developers and few are an online companies they say located in UK or somewhere. After explaining them about the component's functionality and layouts they are requesting access to my website's FTP, Database, CPanel. In this case how I'm going to protect my website? What if they take my other code and make a clone site or something? Is there any ideas besides company contract?"}
{"_id": "114780", "title": "Do you need to buy Visual Studio to develop/deploy an ASP.NET web application?", "text": "Since the .NET Framework SDK is free, is Visual Studio anything more than an IDE? If yes, do I need to buy Visual Studio to deploy my ASP.NET web application (written in C#)? I'm using MySQL for the database. I'm a student that is going to graduate college soon, and I'm exploring technologies for a web application that I'm building for a startup."}
{"_id": "28995", "title": "What job is better for a newbie, one that requires you to create a new program frequently, or something like software maintenance?", "text": "One of my friends has just completed his college degree and is ready to join the programmers' world. Today he has two offers, one with new projects every time, and another with software maintenance. The remaining factors are not important to him, what he wants to know is which option is better? My experience goes with second option because my first job was the maintenance one and **I could learn how my fellow programmers made mistakes while coding** . But I soon switched to a new job which required me to create new project every time. I enjoyed both but I must admit that my first job has given me a more advantage today. But it's not necessary that my experience can give benefit to him. But I want to know what is general approach? If I have to give him final verdict on these two, what should I tell him? _**Edit_** Everybody deserves one up vote here, I am really learning a lot from you guys."}
{"_id": "126871", "title": "What is an algorithm to find simple cycles?", "text": "I have a graph with an Eulerian cycle and no Hamiltonian cycles. I would like to divide this graph into simple cycles.   Edges may not be repeated in simple cycles. How can this be done?"}
{"_id": "126875", "title": "Dependency Injection and Singleton. Are they two entirely different concepts?", "text": "I've been hearing about using the dependency injection over Singleton for my colleague. I still can't make out if it they are two orthogonal patterns which can be replaced with one another? Or is DI a method to make the Singleton pattern testable? Please take a look at the following code snippet.                   IMathFace obj = Singleton.Instance;              SingletonConsumer singConsumer = new SingletonConsumer(obj);              singConsumer.ConsumerAdd(10,20);      The `SingletonConsumer` is accepting a parameter of type `IMathFace`. Instead of accessing the singleton class internally, `SingletonConsumer` will get the singleton instance passed by the caller. Is this a good example of consuming singleton class via dependency injection?"}
{"_id": "148155", "title": "How do programs like subversion detect when a file has been edited as opposed to created/deleted?", "text": "This is my first question here so I hope it is not off topic. Although I am using the Linux `inotify` library to listen for changes to files, and I compare use of that against the `Subversion` program, I am specifically looking for the algorithm used. To a human it is very easy to tell if a file has been created or modified. Clicking the `New` button constitutes the former, and clicking the `Save` button constitutes the latter. To Linux, both those actions have serious overlap. In text editors, for example, generally a swap file is created and then copied/moved. This makes it difficult to distinguish via `inotify` between a minor edit to a file and a deliberate overwrite of a file. What I am trying to understand is how a program such as `Subversion` recognizes the difference between a user having modified a file with a text editor, and a user having actually deleted the file and opened a new file with the same name. **Edit:** It has been pointed out that subversion does not do what I want it to do, so it was a blunder on my part to use it as an example. Instead allow me to rephrase the question: \"Is there any known program or programming approach to match high level actions such as creating new files and saving them to low level actions such as modifying, moving, copying, etc. such that I can log all the files in the system and changes to them\"?"}
{"_id": "118639", "title": "Is it a good practice set connection strings in a web config?", "text": "Recently I have a discussion with some of my colleagues at my work because they said that it's better have in a .DLL a string connection encrypted. And I said why just don't use the string connection defined in the web.config encrypted? it's the same and it's better because entity framework, for example looks for the name of the connection in the web config of the application, Now i want to know from a security point what's better or what's the best practice??"}
{"_id": "220769", "title": "How is DRY principle ( applied at class level ) related to SRP?", "text": "In other words, is DRY (don't repeat yourself) applied at a class level a subset of SRP (single responsibilty principle)? What I mean is that while SRP states that each class should have only a single responsibility ( ie. class should only have one reason to change ), is it the application of DRY at class level that prevents two classes from having the same responsibility ( thus it is DRY that prevents the repetition/duplication of same responsibility in two different classes )? Thank you"}
{"_id": "253421", "title": "Running time of simple for-loops", "text": "I'm reading algorithms and I understand most of it, one thing that I can still struggle with a lot is something as simple as running times on different for- loops. Everyone seems to have easy with that, except for me and therefore I search help here. I am currently doing some excercises from my book and I need help completing them in order to figure out the different running times. The title of the exercise is: \"Give the order of growth(as a function of N) of the running times of each of the following code fragments\" a:               int sum = 0;     for (int n = N; n > 0; n /= 2)       for(int i = 0; i < n; i++)         sum++;      b:               int sum = 0;     for (int i = 1; i < N; i *= 2)       for(int j = 0; j < i; j++)         sum++;      c:               int sum = 0;     for (int i = 1; i < N; i *= 2)       for(int j = 0; j < N; j++)         sum++;      We have learned different kinds of running times/order of growth like n, n^2, n^3, Log N, N Log N etc. But I have hard understanding which to choose when the for loop differs like it does. the \"n, n^2, n^3\" is not a problem though, but I can't tell what these for-loops running time is. Here's an attempt of something.. the y-axis represents \"N\" value and the x axis represents times the outer loop has been run. The drawings in the left is: arrow to the right = outer-loop, circle = inner loop and the current N value. I have then drawn some graphs just to look at it but I'm not sure this is right though.. Especially the last one where N remains 16 all the time. Thanks. ![My drawing](http://i.stack.imgur.com/35QwR.jpg)"}
{"_id": "114484", "title": "Domain knowledge vs Programming", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How important is Domain knowledge vs. Technical knowledge? I often hear from my colleagues and sometimes from interviewers that, > \"There is nothing so great in having excellent programming knowledge. One > must gain the domain knowledge as the 1st priority. If you have a good > domain knowledge, then writing code for that is not a big deal.\" (Here domain knowledge is something related to area you are working in. For example, I work in telecom domain, someone might be in Finance or Pharma or Web development or Embedded and so on.) I disagree with above passage and think exactly opposite. In my career _till now_ , I have seldom missed any deadline for bugfix or feature enhancement. I have kept changing the domains (within telecom) but stuck with learning the programming techniques. Though I might be wrong. **Questions** :   * Is my current approach correct ?   * Given a choice between domain or programming (with limited time) which one should be chosen ?   * Is there a good future for a person, who is primarily a very good coder but not so great in a domain (of course initially) ? I ask this because, I feel that every domain ultimately boil down to code sea in which one has to dive!"}
{"_id": "220762", "title": "How to store historical user data?", "text": "I'm trying to think of fine way to store historical data for my web application. The application has users that add photos, comment and grade them. All this is stored in relational database. The users also have ability to delete own photos (and thus comments/grades) and own account. I want to store those deleted entities as historical data. **The aim of it is to distinguish categories of what people like to photograph and classify users towards those categories**. Should I store it in some NoSQL database? Or maybe in my origin database by marking it with `is_deleted` field? Maybe different table e.g. `archived_users`, `archived_photos`? Another database instance for only historical data? Has anybody dealt with such task and is willing to share thoughts? * * * So far, I'm using `is_deleted` flag for photos and backup table (`archived_users`) for users. Why such distinction? To avoid violating `unique` constraint on `username` field. This solution has 3 problems to me.   * It is incoherent to do same thing in 2 ways. Or maybe it's ok?   * It is somehow strange moving `user` to another table (with associations to photos). It creates some superficial fields. Or maybe it's ok?   * \"Living\" data is mixed with historical data. Could it be a performance problem when database is really huge?"}
{"_id": "51265", "title": "Internal and external API architecture", "text": "The company I work for maintains a successful SaaS product that grew \"organically\" over the years. We are planning to expand the line with a suite of new products that will share data with the existing product. To support this, we are looking to consolidate business logic into a single place: a web service layer. The WS layer will be used by:   * The web applications   * A tool to import data   * A tool to integrate with other client software (not an API per se) We also want to create an API that can be used by our customers that are capable of using it to create their own integrations. We are struggling with the following question: Should the internal API (aka the WS layer) and the external API be one in the same, with security and permission settings to control what can be done by who, or should they be two separate applications where the external API just calls the internal API like any other application? So far in our debate it seems that separating them may be more secure, but will add overhead. What have others done in a similar situation?"}
{"_id": "253429", "title": "Is table inheritance the wrong approach", "text": "If we take the two below entities as en example.               public class Person     {         public string Username {get;set;}         public string DisplayName {get;set;}     }          public class Worker:Person     {         public string Title {get;set}         public int SecurityId {get;set;}     }      When anyone first registers with this app, basic information would be captured and a Person would be created. Once an admin comes along, they may want to assign a role to this Person. Now Roles in the sense of Authorisation are not in question, there is a RoleProvider. However, if I make someone a worker, some additional details need to be captured. How those new details are best stored is what is in question.   * I could have a WorkerProperties class with the fields and give Person \\--> Worker a 0.1->1 relationship.   * I could have all the fields as part of Person and just fill in what is required. At runtime accessing the Persons role would be needed to work out what fields would be required.   * I could create a Worker as shown above. Inheriting from Person. With this option there is the problem that the PK is the username registered with. I would need to somehow change the discriminator column generated by EF to essentially change the object type to Worker."}
{"_id": "220765", "title": "Open Close Principle (OCP) vs Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP)", "text": "I was trying to understand the difference between Open Closed Principle (OCP) and Dependency Inversion Princible (DIP). Based on research I've made on the internet so far, I came to the conclusion that 'DIP is one option through which we can achieve OCP'. I'm I right on this? Can you give me an example which doesn't follow DIP but follows OCP ?"}
{"_id": "220764", "title": "Should my statefull widget generate necessary html itself?", "text": "What behaviour should be preferred for widget initialization: 1) Required HTML is generated by widget itself: Layout:               <div id=\"my-widget\"/>      Initialization:               $('#my-widget').myWidget(); // Creates HTML      2) Required HTML is placed to the page by user:               <div id=\"my-widget\">       <div class=\"foo\"/>       <div class=\"bar\"/>     </div>      Initialization:               $('#my-widget').myWidget(); // Won't create nested div's      Mark Otto (one of Bootstrap creators) suggest not to generate markup by javascript: https://github.com/mdo/code-guide#javascript-generated-markup Currently, I use the following function, which appends element to the root of the widget (this.$element) only if it doesn't exist:               function($content) {       var $child = this.$element.children('.' + $content.attr('class'));       return $child.length ? $child : $content.appendTo(this.$element);     };"}
{"_id": "213571", "title": "Should Uncle Bob's example be refactored to an AbstractFactory or a SimpleFactory?", "text": "In the book \"Clean Code\" Robert Martin makes a statement regarding the following code:               public Money calculatePay(Employee e) throws InvalidEmployeeType {   switch (e.type) {         case COMMISSIONED:           return calculateCommissionedPay(e);         case HOURLY:           return calculateHourlyPay(e);         case SALARIED:           return calculateSalariedPay(e);         default:           throw new InvalidEmployeeType(e.type);   } }      Statement: The solution to this problem (see Listing 3-5) is to bury the switch statement in the basement of an ABSTRACT FACTORY,9 and never let anyone see it. What I don't understand is why does he call it an Abstract Factory? If the solution is to create 3 Employee subclasses each implementing it's own CalculatePay method then the logic is moved up to let's say the controller. But then we have to create a \"Simple Factory (Idiom)\" not an Abstract Factory as presented in the original book from the GOF. The Abstract Factory has the intent to: \"Provide an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.\" but this is clearly not the case."}
{"_id": "213577", "title": "Rich Domain Models -- how, exactly, does behavior fit in?", "text": "In the debate of Rich vs. Anemic domain models, the internet is full of philosophical advice but short on authoritative examples. The objective of this question is to find definitive guidelines and concrete examples of proper Domain-Driven Design models. (Ideally in C#.) For a real-world example, this implementation of DDD seems to be wrong: The WorkItem domain models below are nothing but property bags, used by Entity Framework for a code-first database. Per Fowler, it is anemic. The WorkItemService layer is apparently a common misperception of Domain Services; it contains all of the behavior / business logic for the WorkItem. Per Yemelyanov and others, it is procedural. (pg. 6) So if the below is wrong, how can I make it right?   The behavior, i.e. _AddStatusUpdate_ or _Checkout_ , should belong in the WorkItem class correct?   What dependencies should the WorkItem model have? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QKWNn.png)               public class WorkItemService : IWorkItemService {         private IUnitOfWorkFactory _unitOfWorkFactory;              //using Unity for dependency injection         public WorkItemService(IUnitOfWorkFactory unitOfWorkFactory) {             _unitOfWorkFactory = unitOfWorkFactory;         }              public void AddStatusUpdate(int workItemId, int statusId) {                  using (var unitOfWork = _unitOfWorkFactory.GetUnitOfWork<IWorkItemUnitOfWork>()) {                 var workItemRepo = unitOfWork.WorkItemRepository;                 var workItemStatusRepo = unitOfWork.WorkItemStatusRepository;                      var workItem = workItemRepo.Read(wi => wi.Id == workItemId).FirstOrDefault();                 if (workItem == null)                     throw new ArgumentException(string.Format(@\"The provided WorkItem Id '{0}' is not recognized\", workItemId), \"workItemId\");                      var status = workItemStatusRepo.Read(s => s.Id == statusId).FirstOrDefault();                 if (status == null)                     throw new ArgumentException(string.Format(@\"The provided Status Id '{0}' is not recognized\", statusId), \"statusId\");                      workItem.StatusHistory.Add(status);                      workItemRepo.Update(workItem);                 unitOfWork.Save();             }         }     }      (This example was simplified to be more readable. There are other entities, and for instance the AddStatusUpdate has some extra behavior -- IRL it actually takes a status category name, and if that category doesn't exist, the category is created.) ## Update @AlexeyZimarev gave the correct answer, a perfect video on the subject in C# by Jimmy Bogard, but it was apparently moved into a comment below because it didn't give enough information beyond the link. I have a rough draft of my notes summarizing the video in my answer below. Please feel free to comment on the answer with any corrections. The video is an hour long but very worth watching."}
{"_id": "141860", "title": "Should I be concerned that I can't program very fast without Google?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Google is good or bad for programmer? I'm currently in college to be a software engineer, and one of the main principles taught to us is how to learn for ourselves, and how to search the web when we have a doubt. This leads to a proactive attitude - when I need something, I go get it. Recently, I started wondering how much development would I be able to do without internet access and the answer bugged me quite a bit. I know the concept of the languages and how to use them, but I was amazed by how \"slow\" things were without having the Google to help in the development. Most of the problems I have are related to specific syntax. For example, reading and writing to a file in Java. I have done this about a dozen times in my life, yet every time I need to do it, I end up googling \"read file java\" and refreshing my memory. I completely understand the code and fully understand what it does, but I am sure that without Google it would take me a few tries to get the code correct. Is this normal? Should I be worried and try to change something in my programming behaviour?"}
{"_id": "223219", "title": "Private comments in git", "text": "I need to add a feature to some code in a big project and due to the complexity I find it very helpful to add detailed comments to many lines to keep track of what's happening. This is only for my own understanding however and I will delete the comments before pushing the code. The problem however is that if I do private commits during my development, when I push to the main server, I guess git will show the lines that I commented and then uncommented (but didn't otherwise modify) as being modified by me, making \"blame\" more opaque. I suppose the only way to do this cleanly is to have 2 private branches, one for development and one for commenting, or can anyone recommend a better way?"}
{"_id": "25067", "title": "Which management book would you recommend to read for a fresh Team Leader?", "text": "Which management book would you recommend to read for a fresh Team Leader?"}
{"_id": "120436", "title": "What is a benefit of having source code for ICS?", "text": "People are so happy the source code of Ice Cream Sandwich became available for syncing. Why is that cool?"}
{"_id": "176553", "title": "LL(\u221e) and left-recursion", "text": "I want to understand the relation between LL/LR grammars and the left- recursion problem (for any question I know parcially the answer, but I ask them as I don't know nothing, because I am a little confused now, and prefer complete answers) I'm happy with sintetized or short and direct answers (or just links solving it unambiguously):   1. What type of context free-language isn't LL(\u221e) languages?   2. LL(K) and LL(\u221e) have problems with left-recursion? Or only LL(k) parsers?   3. LALR(1) parser have troubles with left or right recursion? What type of troubles?   4. Only in terms of the LL/LALR comparision. What is better, Bison (LALR(1)) or Boost.Spirit (LL(\u221e))? (Let's suppose other features of them are irrelevant in this question)   5. Why GCC use a (hand-made) LL(\u221e) parser? Only for the \"handling-error\" problem?"}
{"_id": "151955", "title": "What is the definition of \"Big Data\"?", "text": "Is there one? All the definitions I can find describe the size, complexity / variety or velocity of the data. Wikipedia's definition is the only one I've found with an actual number > Big data sizes are a constantly moving target, as of 2012 ranging from a few > dozen terabytes to many petabytes of data in a single data set. However, this seemingly contradicts the MIKE2.0 definition, referenced in the next paragraph, which indicates that \"big\" data can be small and that 100,000 sensors on an aircraft creating only 3GB of data could be considered big. IBM despite saying that: > Big data is more simply than a matter of size. have emphasised size in their definition. O'Reilly has stressed `\"volume, velocity and variety\"` as well. Though explained well, and in more depth, the definition seems to be a re-hash of the others - or vice-versa of course. I think that a Computer Weekly article _title_ sums up a number of articles fairly well \"What is big data and how can it be used to gain competitive advantage\". But ZDNet wins with the following from 2012: > \u201cBig Data\u201d is a catch phrase that has been bubbling up from the high > performance computing niche of the IT market... If one sits through the > presentations from ten suppliers of technology, fifteen or so different > definitions are likely to come forward. Each definition, of course, tends to > support the need for that supplier\u2019s products and services. Imagine that. Basically \"big data\" is \"big\" in some way shape or form. What is \"big\"? Is it quantifiable at the current time? If \"big\" is unquantifiable is there a definition that does not rely solely on generalities?"}
{"_id": "182085", "title": "php return values", "text": "I have a codeigniter app and in my model, I always return true or false for all functions, and if I have data that needs to be passed, I also set a property that contains my data. The only trouble is, in my controller, if I have to call 3 or 4 methods in my model, the code gets really repetitive.               If ( $this->my_model->functionA() )      {         $localvar = $this->my_model->data();     }     else     {         show_error(\"Error A\");     }     If ( $this->my_model->functionB() )      {         $localvar = $this->my_model->data();     }     else     {         show_error(\"Error B\");     }     If ( $this->my_model->functionC() )      {         $localvar = $this->my_model->data();     }     else     {         show_error(\"Error C\");     }      I'm wondering if i change the logic so that the functions don't return true, but return the data instead... does it simplify things alot? I think I'd still need code like this:               If (! $this->my_model->functionA() )      {         show_error(\"Error A\");             }     else     {         $localvar = $this->my_model->data();     }      Or is there a way I can combine my $localvar assignment statement with the if statement? Is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "756", "title": "Where can I find programming puzzles and challenges?", "text": "I'm trying to find places where I can hone my craft outside the context of school or work. Are there places online, or books available, where I can access lists of programming puzzles or challenges?"}
{"_id": "191990", "title": "Confusion over a hacker-howto article", "text": "I have gone through http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html What I understand from the article:   1. develop a hacker attitude.   2. learn programming language (eg. python)   3. solve interesting problems Point 3) is where I'm stuck. Where do I find these interesting problems? Sure, I can go to UVA Online and other sites which have good set of programming problems. But solving these problem I just like an exercise from which I can polish my python skills and learn how to go about solving a problem. I want to do something real/fun problems which the above programming problems lack. I need a bit of guidance on the issue."}
{"_id": "131969", "title": "Fun Learning Exercises Recommendations", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where can I find programming puzzles and challenges? Recently in our workplace we have been playing Design Pattern Poker. This is fun and really helps the participants to understand design patterns and to think of useful way to apply them. Can anyone recommend any other similar, fun games that will help us improve our development skills?"}
{"_id": "132806", "title": "Good collection of short code samples in different languages to solve programming problems?", "text": "I am interested in learning some new programming languages and looking for the collection of short solutions for programming problems provided in different languages. The optimal format would be: > **Problem description**   >  Language A: .... (solution)   >  Language B: .... (solution) etc It would be best if I could sort/filter the samples basing upon the languages and programming paradigms. What I am currently doing is using the Project Euler and some other sites for programming contests where I first have to solve a problem on my own and then I can pick the examples in the languages I am interested in the forum thread of this particular problem. This is ok, but sometimes it is a somewhat too long way for me."}
{"_id": "113273", "title": "Site for programming tasks", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Programming Puzzles This may sound crazy, but is there a website where you can pick and choose a programming task for someone? Unpayed. As a matter of exercise. I would like to have some real world challenges that I can do in my spare time maybe."}
{"_id": "90228", "title": "Exercises for starting programmer", "text": "I'm learning how to program with a book on Objective-c. I know, that's not great start, but anyway. What I want to find is exercises which gradually increase in difficulty from starting ones like hello world to fairly complex ones which require few hours to complete. Is there any site out there that offers those excercises? Not necessarily language-specific. I have seen Project Euler but it is more math based, and I'm not too good in math. I know loops, got some grasp on classes, inheritance. What I want is to make something useful. I can't understand where to start."}
{"_id": "166156", "title": "Spending a good fortune on a certificate holding Scrum Master or a Veteran XP coach?", "text": "There is a very prestigious company that delivers a well-sold software about financial systems. It has more that 20 years of history, and is staffed with about 20 programmers and much larger number of managerial staff. Dissatisfied customers have reported strange bugs and no one has a clue what is wrong, hard to read code, and customization is prohibitively expensive. In a word, the software is rotten. The company decided to spend a fortune and found the Agile thing as the remedy but they are stuck about what it is they need most urgently. Is it about the process or the developers or both? The challenge breaks down to the following options:   1. They can hire a certificate holding Scrum Master to teach them Scrum. When asked about the value of doing it, the SM responded: \"I will prepare them to embrace Agile and only then they can go Agile and save the product\".   2. They can as well hire a veteran XP coach. When posed with the same question he responded : \"The most urgent problem is with the programmers and not the management, XP will save the product from rot and only then Scrum will make sense\" Developers are far from capable of doing agile programming practices at the moment. No unit tests, no pair programmings, no CI (huh? what is it?) ... you get the idea. Some say they would be far better trying to improve their programming first (hire option 2) and then go with the process. Many say quite the opposite. Any insights ?"}
{"_id": "166155", "title": "How do I parse a header with two different version [ID3] avoiding code duplication?", "text": "I really hope you can give me some interesting viewpoints for my situation, because I am not satisfied with my current approach. I am writing an MP3 parser, starting with an ID3v2 parser. Right now I`m working on the extended header parsing, my issue is that the optional header is defined differently in version 2.3 and 2.4 of the tag. The 2.3 version optional header is defined as follows:               struct ID3_3_EXTENDED_HEADER{         DWORD dwExtHeaderSize;          //Extended header size (either 6 or 8 bytes , excluded)         WORD  wExtFlags;                //Extended header flags         DWORD dwSizeOfPadding;          //Size of padding (size of the tag excluding the frames and headers)     };      While the 2.4 version is defined :               struct ID3_4_EXTENDED_HEADER{         DWORD dwExtHeaderSize;          //Extended header size (synchsafe int)         BYTE  bNumberOfFlagBytes;       //Number of flag bytes         BYTE  bFlags;                   //Flags     };      How could I parse the header while minimizing code duplication? Using two different functions to parse each version sounds less great, using a single function with a different flow for each occasion is similar, any good practices for this kind of issues ? Any tips for avoiding code duplication? Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "82221", "title": "When do you think of efficiency? Before/During/After actually coding?", "text": "I've been programming in Java for quite some time and I always find myself doing very little \"planning\" (I haven't worked on anything HUGE yet, but im no stranger to big projects) and develop ideas and fix code efficiency as I go. I tend to write a block of code, test it, test it again, try to break it, then make it look nice (visually) and then worry about modifying it to be more efficient (if possible). Is this how most people think/work? I'm wondering if anyone else takes the time to pretty up their code after its done or if they plan how its supposed to look and the most efficient method of writing it before actually coding anything. I'm trying to fine tune my own efficiency and hearing from the community will give me a broader idea of how professional and amateur programmers alike think."}
{"_id": "117782", "title": ".NET internals:Where is a good place to learn the \"under the hood\" stuff in .NET?", "text": "I'll be completely honest, one reason I love C# and .NET is that it has for ALL of my development career abstracted me from the well crafted under the hood stuff, I believe as a .NET developer I shouldn't need to know much about. This might seem like blasphemy for me to say I really do not care much about CLR, CIL, JIT, or MSIL and all the other internal technologies which up until now to be completely honest are more or less acronyms that mean very little to every day problems I find myself facing as a .NET developer, and solving with the bread and butter of .NET. My experience is varied like most of you guys with 2 years + experience. I've been using .NET since it was launched, and even back in the days when ASP.NET was called ASP+. I have yet to come across a situation where knowing how .NET does what it does provides me any practical value. I also fully believe that the authors of .NET very carefully planned .NET to provide this fantastic level of abstraction from specific hardware and OS version for this reason - simply put write your code and get on with your job! Long story short: Going for an interview next week, and I'm sure these theoretical questions will come up, and so I would like to put in about 4-5 hours to study the internals so I can (with confidence) satisfy an interview test. Is there a good book or site which details all the .NET internals in a way that is easy to understand? EDIT: To clear things up a bit, when I refer to .net internals - what I mean is not reflecting and inspecting framework code, mainly knowing how .net code from writing it ends up as executable byte code."}
{"_id": "117780", "title": "is there any relationship between a story point in two different projects? ", "text": "Assume we have two projects and one or more teams (one team doing the projects in serial or two teams doing the projects in parallel). If Team A decides that a task is 8 story points and Team B decides that a task on their project is also 8 story points, does that say anything about the relationship between the two tasks? Or is there no relationship between the complexity of the two tasks?"}
{"_id": "117786", "title": "high level design of a browser layout engine?", "text": "I'm interested in how browser layout engines like gecko, webkit and trident are architected from a high level. what are the key abstractions? how are they layered? what are the inputs/outputs for the different abstractions? Is there a diagram or article that explains this particularly well? I am sure the implementations vary, but I'm generally curious about how all the pieces fit together. I realize webkit is open source and I can just look at the code, but I wouldn't know where to start."}
{"_id": "37734", "title": "Coupling. Best practices", "text": "Following on from this thread I started The Singleton Pattern It got me thinking about how coupled my classes are and how best to achieve loose coupling. Please bear in mind I am a new programmer (4 months into my first job) and this is really the first consideration I have given to this, and am very keen to understand the concept. So, what exactly constitutes loose coupling vs heavy coupling? In my current(and first project), I am working on a c# winforms project, where the GUI section creates objects and subcribes to their events, when they are triggered, the GUI creates another object (in this example, a datagridview (a class that I have created that wraps around a standard datagridview and adds additional functionality) and attaches it to the GUI. Is this bad coupling or good? I really don't want to get into bad habits and start coding poorly, hence I would appreciate your responses."}
{"_id": "131446", "title": "What is inversion of control, and when should I use it?", "text": "I am designing a new system and I want to know what inversion of control (IOC) is, and more importantly, when to use it. Does it have to be implemented with interfaces or can be done with classes?"}
{"_id": "206703", "title": "British royal succession algorithm", "text": "I was reading about the rules for royal succession of the British monarchy and thought the easiest way I could understand it is with code (or pseudo-code). I came up with this (in a C# like pseudo-code):               EventHandler CurrentMonarch_Died {         CurrentMonarch = SuccessorRootedAt(Person.Electress_Sophia_Of_Hanover);     }          enum Gender { Male, Female };  // Male must come before Female          Person SuccessorRootedAt(Person person) {         if (person.IsAlive && IsQualified(person.Religion, person.Citizenship))             return person;              sortedChildren = person.Children.OrderBy(p => p.Gender).ThenBy(p => p.DateOfBirth);              foreach (child in sortedChildren) {             successor = SuccessorRootedAt(child);             if (successor != null)                 return successor;         }              return null;     }      Is it correct?"}
{"_id": "56128", "title": "Using an open source non-free license", "text": "Are there any projects/products out there that use an open source license that basically says \"free for small companies\" and \"cost money for larger companies\" in addition to \"make modifications available\"? (And are there any standard licenses with such a wording?) If I were to release a project under such a license, would it be automatically shunned by every developer on the face of the earth, or, assuming it is actually a useful project, does it have a fair chance at getting contributions from Joe Programmer? The second part of this question can easily become subjective, but any well argued point of view will be highly appreciated. For example, do dual licensed projects made by commercial entities have success with the open source communities?"}
{"_id": "206709", "title": "How to keep your programming resources, tips, tools and snippets handy and easy to find?", "text": "In my everyday work and on my free time, I tend to discover/learn/find pieces of information that can be really useful if used at the right moment but also really easy to forget and/or to find again when it's required. To give you examples, I am thinking about things such as :   * nice algorithms or concepts from a book   * crazy options for a compiler   * neat online tools such as interpreters/compilers.   * snippet of codes   * documentation of different languages   * programming tips from a forum and/or SE.question   * page of an interesting github project As you can imagine, most of them could be saved as bookmarks but not all of them. Also, bookmarks wouldn't have any explanation/documentation/tagging/nice formatting around it. At the moment, I was thinking about creating a plain HTML page or a personal wiki to keep everything somehow organised. Thus, I was wondering which support/tool programmers were using to keep that kind of resources handy and easy to find when required and how they were organizing them?"}
{"_id": "98316", "title": "Pushing changes to an open web page", "text": "I have a warehouse management app that I have written that handles batching of orders for batch picking, scanning of items for packing and accuracy. Part of this app is a Dash or control panel that the different managers in the warehouse work out of. It shows who's picking, packing, who's available, how many orders are available to be batched and a BUNCH of other details and controls. Right now i have an ajax call that checks a time stamp that runs every 30 seconds or so to see if the page should be updated (a change made on another managers workstation). A manager does something that should be shown on all other workstations that are viewing the \"dash\". Maybe they batched some orders and pickers that were available are no longer available. Right now when the change is made i update a timestamp saved in a database. On the html page the timestamp that was in the db at last page load is saved in a hidden div. The javascript takes that timestamp and checks the database at an interval if its different the page updates. Its a bit more complicated than this as sections of the page get changed not the whole thing but the description sums up the process. This works but i don't like it. It requires a database hit from each workstation every 30 seconds. Seems overly complex. I am looking for some thoughts on how I might push a change as it occurs and minimize or eliminate some of the database interactions. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "57294", "title": "Adding to the System namespace in C#", "text": "Would it be acceptable for some very generic utilities or classes to be added in the `System` namespace? I'm thinking of really basic stuff like a generic `EventArgs` (`EventArgs<T>`), Use case: would be shared in a company's core library (so that it can be recompiled in a new project as-is, without changing the namespace);"}
{"_id": "194107", "title": "Why it is not possible to Instantiating Types with Wildcards in Java", "text": "I am trying to instantiate               LinkedList<?> op = new LinkedList<?>();      But I get error               Cannot instantiate the type LinkedList<?>      Why is it that this cannot be instantiated in Java?"}
{"_id": "138561", "title": "Pros/cons between emphasizing client-side or server-side processing", "text": "Why would I want to write a web app with lots of processing server-side? To me, writing the program client-side is a huge advantage because it takes away as much server load as possible because it only has to send data to the client with minimal processing. I see very little on writing web-apps besides writing it server-side and treating client-side as _only a view_. Why would I ever want to do this? The only advantage I see is that I can write in whatever language I want (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html)."}
{"_id": "194108", "title": "HTTP Session or Database approach", "text": "I am confused a little as what should be my approach, Working on a design of shopping cart and i need to store shopping cart either in session or in database but not sure which approach would be best.here are the use case   1. User is not logged in and adding product to cart (Anonymous user)   2. User is logged in and adding product to cart. First case is more confusing to me, since there can be many cases where user just visiting web-shop and adding product without logging in and can be quite possible that he might not going for a checkout process. But still we need to create a Shopping-Cart for this user, in order to create and save shopping-cart i have two option.   1. When user adding a product, create a cart in the database and associate this cart with this user, moment he logged in move this cart to logged in user.   2. Create Cart, add product to it and save it to the Session, when user logged in create Cart in the database and associated logged in user with this cart with User. I know that both database driven Cart system as well Session based can have there positive as well negative aspects, but not sure which one might be the best approach taking in to account following points   1. Scalability   2. Flexibility   3. Extensibility   4. Application Should take care of speed Looking for input on this aspect to decide the path."}
{"_id": "198830", "title": "Need help understanding \"An Image Signature for any Kind of Image\"", "text": "I'm trying to implement the paper titled An Image Signature for any Kind of Image, but I'm having trouble understanding what they mean in this paragraph: > For each column of the image, we compute the sum of absolute values of > differences between adjacent pixels in that column. We compute the total of > all columns, and crop the image at the 5% and 95% columns, that is, the > columns such that 5% of the total sum of differences lies on either side of > the cropped image. We crop the rows of the image the same way (using the > sums of original uncropped rows). First, what do they mean by \"sum of absolute values of differences between adjacent pixels in that column\"? If start at the top-left pixel and work downwards (down the column), we can compute the difference between (0,0) and (0,1), but what about the next pixel? Am I supposed to compute the difference with just the pixel below, or the pixels on either side, or perhaps even the 4 or 8 neighbours? And then, as I understand it, we sum these differences for each column such that each column is reduced to a single number? Then we use this information to crop the _left_ and _right_ edges of the photo, right?"}
{"_id": "117256", "title": "How often do you take notes, and how are you able to maintain a consistent amount?", "text": "I take notes about language features, project details, etc. I've noticed that I tend to take a lot of notes when I start learning a new aspect of a language or start working on a new project, but then as the momentum builds my note taking drops off. I often wish I would take more notes, since I frequently find them helpful months later when I encounter a problem for the second time or when I want to remember some past detail. Do you take a lot of notes? and how do you or don't you maintain the volume of notes you take? My problem is that once I'm going on something, jotting done a note feels like an interruption; even though, I know it will be useful in the future. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "210175", "title": "Apache 2 License and copyrighted Libraries", "text": "I am working on my first big(ger than before) project at my university which is coded under the Apache 2 License. So here is the question: Can I use copyrighted material/libraries (no restrictions and free to use) inside that project? I want to be specific: The library is flot (flotcharts.org) My guess is yes, but guesses do not count."}
{"_id": "117253", "title": "C++ skills higher than C skills?", "text": "I feel that the often seen C/C++ doesn't really describe my skills in my CV. So I'm planning to separate it into advanced C++ knowledge and mediocre C skills. Do you think this is confusing for the reader? She could think: \"C is a subset of C++, so what is this guy trying to tel me?\" Well, what I'm trying to tell is: I have done several real world C++ projects while pure C projects where just a hobby thing. Do you agree that a skilled C++ programmer not necessarily is a qualified C guy or do you think that this switch is done easily?"}
{"_id": "198838", "title": "Books on software development career path", "text": "Can you recommend books **and other material(video)** on how to build career , what path and wayouts are there in the whole area of software engineering? **What a developer can evolve into?** Some sort of evolution path from development? I m not asking just for 2 well- known directions: project management and freelancing, i m asking for the whole range of possibilities where these skills can be useful I m not asking for stuff about:   * frameworks, languages    * certifications for Microsoft, Oracle etc"}
{"_id": "117258", "title": "Is depending on references a common process or should I be memorizing syntax?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it important for a programmer to memorize the syntax of the language? For example I could not write a SQL connection string from scratch if I tried. I always either Google it or copy and paste it from a previous project. For some reason this bothers me, but I don't know if it should or if it's just not a big deal. There are probably other people who can relate and think of other examples as well."}
{"_id": "105002", "title": "If I have two developer license accounts with Apple, can I easily switch between the two for app development and publishing?", "text": "I've been interested in iPhone development since the release of the iPhone, however, I am on a limited personal budget. I've never been willing/able to fork out the money necessary for an iPhone and a Macbook. I know, some may argue that it's not that expensive, but for a hobby it hasn't been worth the price. By some twist of amazing fortune, the company that I work for is wanting me to develop an iPhone and iPod app. This means I am getting pretty much all the hardware you would want to develop on-- an awesome Macbook, Thunderbolt display, an iPhone, an iPad, a few accessories. In short, it's basically my \"wish list\" that I have dreamt of one day owning. In my free time, I will be allowed to use the hardware to develop whatever software I desire but since my development laptop will primarily be used for my employing companies project I need assurance that any work I do under my own developer license will not affect my developer license associated with my work account. Can I easily switch between two developer accounts when developing and publishing applications? What if one account is a standard one and the other is an enterprise? As of yet, I don't have any hardware or any developer licenses and I'm asking in complete ignorance. Can I do this or will the accounts collide? **REQUESTING UPDATE/SECOND OPINION** Thanks to **mouviciel** for promptly answering this question with a straight- forward response. However, I've been working with with XCode for quite a while and I've also had experience with downloading sample projects and modify them so that I can run them on my iOS device. This lends me to believe that answering my initial question might involve tweaking PList files and other project settings, but should still be doable without having to create a separate account on my Macbook. So I ask again, can I easily switch between two developer accounts when developing and publishing applications, strictly using one account on my Macbook? If the answer is, yes, (which is what I assume is the case) how must I redefine my personal projects which may initially inherit user setting associated with my business account and credentials?"}
{"_id": "97333", "title": "Where can you find your first customers as a freelancer?", "text": "I want to start doing freelance work, but no matter how I look at it, it seems like the best way to get customers and to have work most of the time, you have to already be in the freelancing game. Most freelancers I've talked to have had the same customers over the years or got new customers because their satisfied clients referred them. What I'd like to know from the successful people here that work as freelancers is how do you start doing business when you haven't yet set foot in freelancing? I want to start small, creating websites that won't require me to hire other people other than maybe a designer I already know. (I'd like to create desktop applications as well, but I think I should keep that for later when I'm more experienced) . I thought about localized Google ads or visiting companies and meeting the people in charge there, but I wouldn't know which kind of businesses to look for or if it's even a good way to approach this. Anyone care to share their personal startup experiences / advice that can help future freelancers?"}
{"_id": "64536", "title": "Creating a web-end for a C++ program", "text": "I was wondering what would be the best method for creating a web end for interfacing with a C++ program on the server. At first I simply thought just using shell execution from the web server side language (like `shell_exec()` in PHP), but I was wondering if there is a \"better\" way. Maybe something more native or is this a bad practice for some reason?"}
{"_id": "226544", "title": "Algorithm/research on detecting language of text", "text": "I am interested in finding an approach that will detect what language a string of text is. As Google translate does."}
{"_id": "193779", "title": ".NET software design and Oracle ODP.NET UDT", "text": "I'm working on a new common .NET software design (mainly) for WCF-based web service applications with related client frontends (all written in C#). As far I've chosen some frameworks (NUnit,Autofac/Castle Windsor) as basis for the application. Now I'm doing some research concerning db abstraction. I'm considering NHibernate (together with FluentNHibernate) as persistence framework. But there are some concerns about NHibernate. Database interfaces provided by our db dev team heavily rely on stored procedures and often use UDT objects as output parameters (sometimes also ref cursors). Many already existing applications are using auto-generated UDT C# classes. NHibernate seems to work well with Oracle (with appropriate configuration and usage of ODP.NET). See Fluent NHibernate - how to configure for oracle?, Fluent NHibernate - Configure Oracle Data Provider ODP. Also ref cursors and stored procedure calls seem to work with nhibernate (see Calling an Oracle store procedure with nHibernate and Oracle stored procedures, SYS_REFCURSOR and NHibernate). Is it appropriate to use NHibernate in this case (stored procedures and UDT/ref cursor output)? Or would it be better to keep auto-generated UDT C# classes and implement custom data access objects? Design A (with auto-generated UDT classes):   * Create business objects in the domain model (e.g. `class Product`)   * Define database-independent interfaces e.g. `IDataAccessProduct`.    * Implement it in classes e.g. `OracleDataAccessProduct` that represent specific data access objects. For example this class calls performs a mapping of auto-generated UDT classes (entities) to `Product` domain objects and vice versa. Design B (with NHibernate):   * Create business objects in the domain model (e.g. entity class `Product : IEntity<Product>`.)    * Add interface an IProductRepository for the repository. In the domain model. Add `ProductRepository` that extends the e.g. base class `Rhino.Commons.NHRepository`.    * Usage of hibernate-mapping for domain objects to db table (`Product.hbm.xml`). So which design would you prefer?"}
{"_id": "64535", "title": "What are the differences between a website and a web application?", "text": "How do you differentiate a web application from websites? It's language/platform agnostic."}
{"_id": "165625", "title": "What is the difference between web designers and developers?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are the boundaries between the responsibilities of a web designer and > a web developer? Web designers and developers work in the same project, I've been searcing for an hour and can't find what's the difference? I found some slides on Slideshare that discuss the difference, but I'd like more explanation on the topic."}
{"_id": "149934", "title": "How should I implement an unsubscribe feature for text messages?", "text": "On many e-mail subscription lists, the is a link at the bottom that says something to the effect of: > You are subscribed to our e-mail list as you@example.com. To unsubscribe, > click here What is the best way (and is there a way?) to emulate this when sending out mass text messages through SMS gateway?"}
{"_id": "250195", "title": "Dividing 2D grid to most efficient search", "text": "## Requirements   1. I have `Grid` of unlimited size (I don't and can't know what its size)   2. There is `Object` that should be placed on the grid, every object have hes stream distance (in other words: range, default: 300) and 2D coordinates (position)   3. There is function `find` that takes 2D coordinates and should return what object are shown It seems that R-tree is the answer to my question, is there any explanation about how exactly the algorithm works? ## My way   1. Dividing the cell sizes to levels, level 1 is 600x600 (2 times bigger than default stream distance), level 2 is 1200x1200 and so on... (every time the cell sizes is multiplied by 2).   2. Associate the objects in the corresponding cell by multiplying the stream distance by 2 and round to the next multiple of 600, for example: stream distance is 450, multiplying it by 2 gives 900, rounding it to the next multiple of 600 gives 1200.   3. Every time object inserted check what cells does the object fit and adding the object to the cell object list.   4. When function `find` get called he search's only in the cell of the given coordinate. [ Assume triangle is an object ] ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BUWJz.jpg) ## Similar Questions   * Most efficient way of finding entities in a grid? (The accepted answer )"}
{"_id": "116786", "title": "Does switching from one programming language to another cause a loss in experience?", "text": "If I was working for a programming language X and want to switch to Y (from Java to C++, or from Java to Objective-c), does this cause my years of experience in the previous languages to be lost (from point of view for companies)? For example, if I was a Senior in X, and want to move to Y, will I start Junior at Y or Senior? I believe that languages are just tools, and the experience is in problem solving and way of thinking, but do companies concern?"}
{"_id": "196074", "title": "Should my async task library swallow exceptions quietly?", "text": "I've just learned that .NET 4.5 introduced a change to how exceptions inside a `Task` are handled. Namely, they are quietly suppressed. The official reasoning for why this was done appears to be \"we wanted to be more friendly to inexperienced developers\": > In .NET 4.5, Tasks have significantly more prominence than they did in .NET > 4, as they\u2019re baked in to the C# and Visual Basic languages as part of the > new async features supported by the languages. This in effect moves Tasks > out of the domain of experienced developers into the realm of everyone. As a > result, it also leads to a new set of tradeoffs about how strict to be > around exception handling. (source) I've learned to trust that many of the decisions in .NET were made by people who really know what they're doing, and there is usually a very good reason behind things they decide. But this one escapes me. If I were designing my own async task library, what is the advantage of swallowing exceptions that the developers of the Framework saw that I'm not seeing?"}
{"_id": "60091", "title": "Programmers and Database Professionals in Performance Based Companies", "text": "Anybody here work for a company (or know of someone that does) in the fields of programming or anything related to DBs and not have set work hours? Where you are paid for performance rather than how many hours you sit in a chair at the office? Any project / company I have been apart of always has pretty strict primary hours with the \"great opportunity\" / expectation to stay until the job is done. Is this type of flexibility really feasible in a group environment in these fields? Would pay for performance work within a company in these fields? With having strict primary hours I notice a lot of inefficiencies. Some weeks or days there is only so much that can be done (for whatever the reason may be) and if your work is done it doesn't help moral to force someone to stay for 8 hrs/day or 40hrs/week if the next week they may have to pull a 60+hr work week. I know that a lot of flexibility can come from working independently or as a consultant so this question really does not encompass those types of positions."}
{"_id": "240856", "title": "What can I do to let our team have code reviews of branch merges having hundreds of screens worth of Github diffs?", "text": "\"Code review\" (aka \"peer review\") seems like a really great idea, so my team started practicing it. For a little while it worked well, but then a co-worker merged a branch in, and asked for a review of the code. When I went to review her code, the Github diff page was about 420k pixels in height. Given that my screen is about 500px, that works out to 840 screens worth of code to review. To read the code, fully \"grok\" it, and write appropriate comments, I probably need an average of one minute per screen, which works out to 14 hours. Now to be fair, some libraries got checked in to this commit, so some portion of that can be skipped ... but even if libraries took up 6 hours worth, that still leaves me with an entire day spent reviewing this merge. That can't be the most effective use of my time. And this is just one merge; we will no doubt have other large merges to review in the future as well. So, my question is, what can I do (either in terms of procedure or in terms of utilizing review tools) to let our team have code reviews of branch merges, while at the same time not eating up entire days on reviews?"}
{"_id": "107534", "title": "Submit issue, pull request, or both for a very small fix?", "text": "I've made a 4-line bug fix to a minor issue in a library on github. The project is actively maintained with changes every few days. What is the ideal way to submit a fix that small? Is it to fork, fix and submit a pull request; file an issue _and_ a pull request; or just file the issue with my fix copy-pasted? (Or something else?)"}
{"_id": "113576", "title": "Is hungarian notation a workaround for languages with insufficiently-expressive (i.e. Haskell-style) static typing?", "text": "### Edit To be clear, I'm _not_ talking about annotation variable names with the _data_ type, but rather with information about the _meaning_ of the variable in the context of the program. For example, a variable may be an integer or float or double or long or whatever, but maybe the variable's _meaning_ is that it's a relative x-coordinate measured in inches. This is the kind of information I'm talking about encoding via Hungarian Notation (and via Haskell types). ### Original Question: In Eric Lippert's article What's Up With Hungarian Notation?, he states that the purpose of Hungarian Notation (the good kind) is to > extend the concept of \"type\" to encompass semantic information in addition > to storage representation information. A simple example would be prefixing a variable that represents an X-coordinate with \"x\" and a variable that represents a Y-coordinate with \"y\", regardless of whether those variables are integers or floats or whatever, so that when you accidentally write `xFoo + yBar`, the code clearly looks wrong. But I've also been reading about Haskell's type system, and it seems that in Haskell, one can accomplish the same thing (i.e. \"extend the concept of type to encompass semantic information\") using _actual types_ that the compiler will check for you. So in the example above, `xFoo + yBar` in Haskell would actually fail to compile if you designed your program correctly, since they would be declared as incompatible types. In other words, it seems like Haskell's type system effectively supports compile-time checking equivalent to Hungarian Notation So, is Hungarian Notation just a band-aid for programming languages whose type systems cannot encode semantic information? Or does Hungarian Notation offer something beyond what a static type system such as Haskell's can offer? (Of course, I'm using Haskell as an example. I'm sure there are other languages with similarly expressive (rich? strong?) type systems, though I haven't come across any.)"}
{"_id": "191681", "title": "Designing a self-describing JSON document system", "text": "I'm trying to devise a document system for a specific domain involving simple objects (People, Companies, Invoices, etc.) that would also be able to completely describe itself. This self-description ability would ideally be recursive. The document system will be based on JSON, but I believe the principle in question applies to any structured notation. To illustrate what I mean, let's say I have the following JSON document that describes a person (company, invoice, etc. are basically all the same, only with different properties):               {       \"Name\": \"John Doe\",       \"Email\": \"john.doe@example.org\",       \"BirthDate\": \"1976-07-04\"     }      Then, I have a second JSON document that describes the structure of the first one. Let's call this a \"Level 1 Meta-document\":               {       \"Type\": \"Person\",       \"Properties\": {         \"Name\": { \"Type\": \"String\", \"Required\": true },         \"Email\": { \"Type\": \"String\" },         \"BirthDate\": { \"Type\": \"Date\" }       }     }      This would be simple enough, if not for the requirement, that system should also be able to fully describe this meta-document. To put it in more general terms: I'm looking for a way to define a self- sufficient \"Level N Meta-document\", that would be able to describe a structure of the \"Level N-1 Meta-documents\". **NOTE** : I'd be willing to go with a solution for N = 2, but instinct tells me that a true solution for N = 2 would also work for any N. Now that I think of it, this may be more of a math puzzle than programming one. :) Is this even possible? If yes, can you give me some examples? If not, what are my other options? **EDIT: I've included a naive example of how a \"Level 2 Meta-Document\" would look, based on the above:**               {       \"Type\": \"MetaLevel2\",       \"Properties\": {         \"Properties\": { \"Type\": \"Hash\", \"Required\": true }       }     }      The problem with this is that it doesn't describe the object that describes the property details (i.e. the one with the \"Type\" and \"Required\" attributes). If I were to include description of those, I'd have to add another attribute **to the very same object I'm trying to describe** :               {       \"Type\": \"MetaLevel2\",       \"Properties\": {         \"Properties\": {           \"Type\": \"Hash\",           \"Required\": true,           \"ValueProperties\": { \"Type\": \"String\", \"Required\": \"Boolean\" }         }       }     }      Unfortunately, this throws me into recursive problem, because I now lack the description for \"ValueProperties\". In fact, for every new attribute I invent on level N, I have a problem describing it on level N+1 without introducing yet another attribute that needs description. What I'm looking for is a solution that wouldn't suffer from this problem. To be clear: I'm aware of XSD, but I'm not sure how to apply its principles to my case. Unless I'm missing something, XSD would suffer from the same recursive problem. This gives me reason to believe I have a problem with the approach itself."}
{"_id": "9521", "title": "What constitutes a dead programming language?", "text": "Imagine you were elected coroner of IEEE or somesuch governing body and you had to pronounce a programming language as dead. What signs would you look for? Are there any zombie languages out there that don't know they're already dead?"}
{"_id": "81679", "title": "Zend Framework: Should I worry about the details of the MVC implementation?", "text": "I've been studying Zend Framework's MVC for a few weeks, and am having a really, really difficult time with it. I'm new to OOP, but I understand OOP in PHP without too much difficulty; I understand how to use some of the packages in Zend's library, etc. I understand interfaces, abstract classes, composition, etc. etc. etc. I understand MVC on a high-level, but does anyone know if/where there is a resource that describes the MVC implementation on the ground level? Or should I just stop worrying about it and try to ignore the mechanics of the implementation initially? I've been working through several books and resources online on the MVC implementation, and it seems extremely complex. (Also, earlier versions had different implementations, making it slightly more confusing to understand). The tack I'm trying to take is what I usually do when I want to understand something: go through it line by line and follow the logic around until it all becomes clear. After trying this over and over (and not getting very far), I'm wondering if I'm not going about this the wrong way. After all, OOP is all about not worrying about the implementation, right? I mean, I hear myself saying that and I cringe. I don't like not knowing what's going on, but I'm finding this extremely complicated, and I would really like to get to the part where I actually create something. From what I can tell, though, Zend is incredibly well-conceived (perhaps too thoroughly well-conceived, if that makes any sense). All of the i's are dotted and t's crossed, which makes it very difficult to dig through (lots of abstract classes, some interfaces, objects being passed here and there, etc.-- hard to follow). But the books and sites I've looked at don't go into significant detail about how the process works, only high level descriptions, or they are outdated and using an different implementation. I would prefer to understand it at a lower level."}
{"_id": "153439", "title": "Caching strategies for entities and collections", "text": "We currently have an application framework in which we automatically cache both entities and collections of entities at the business layer (using .NET cache). So the method GetWidget(int id) checks the cache using a key Widget_Id_{0} before hitting the database, and the method GetWidgetsByStatusId(int statusId) checks the cache using Widgets_Collections_ByStatusId_{0}. If the objects are not in the cache they are retrieved from the database and added to the cache. This approach is obviously quick for read scenarios, and as a blanket approach is quick for us to implement, but requires large numbers of cache keys to be purged when CRUD operations are carried out on entities. Obviously as additional methods are added this impacts performance and the benefits of caching diminish. I'm interested in alternative approaches to handling caching of collections. I know that NHibernate caches a list of the identifiers in the collection rather than the actual entities. Is this an approach other people have tried - what are the pros and cons? In particular I am looking for options that optimise performance and can be implemented automatically through boilerplate generated code (we have our own code generation tool). I know some people will say that caching needs to be done by hand each time to meet the needs of the specific situation but I am looking for something that will get us most of the way automatically."}
{"_id": "167285", "title": "Two interfaces with identical signatures", "text": "I am attempting to model a card game where cards have two important sets of features: The first is an effect. These are the changes to the game state that happen when you play the card. The interface for effect is as follows:               boolean isPlayable(Player p, GameState gs);     void play(Player p, GameState gs);      And you could consider the card to be playable if and only if you can meet its cost and all its effects are playable. Like so:               // in Card class     boolean isPlayable(Player p, GameState gs) {         if(p.resource < this.cost) return false;         for(Effect e : this.effects) {             if(!e.isPlayable(p,gs)) return false;         }         return true;     }      Okay, so far, pretty simple. The other set of features on the card are abilities. These abilities are changes to the game state that you can activate at-will. When coming up with the interface for these, I realized they needed a method for determining whether they can be activated or not, and a method for implementing the activation. It ends up being               boolean isActivatable(Player p, GameState gs);     void activate(Player p, GameState gs);      And I realize that with the exception of calling it \"activate\" instead of \"play\", `Ability` and `Effect` have the exact same signature. * * * Is it a bad thing to have multiple interfaces with an identical signature? Should I simply use one, and have two sets of the same interface? As so:               Set<Effect> effects;     Set<Effect> abilities;      If so, what **refactoring** steps should I take down the road if they become non-identical (as more features are released), particularly if they're divergent (i.e. they both gain something the other shouldn't, as opposed to only one gaining and the other being a complete subset)? I'm particularly concerned that combining them will be non-sustainable as soon as something changes. The fine print: I recognize this question is spawned by game development, but I feel it's the sort of problem that could just as easily creep up in non-game development, particularly when trying to accommodate the business models of multiple clients in one application as happens with just about every project I've ever done with more than one business influence... Also, the snippets used are Java snippets, but this could just as easily apply to a multitude of object oriented languages."}
{"_id": "167280", "title": "What can procs and lambdas do that functions can't in ruby", "text": "I've been working in Ruby for the last couple weeks, and I've come to the subject of procs, lambdas and blocks. After reading a fair share of examples from a variety of sources, I don't how they're much different from small, specialized functions. It's entirely possible that the examples I've read aren't showing the power behind procs and lambdas.               def zero_function(x)         x = x.to_s        if x.length == 1         return x = \"0\" + x        else         return x        end     end          zero_lambda = lambda {|x|       x = x.to_s        if x.length == 1         return x = \"0\" + x        else         return x        end     }          zero_proc = Proc.new {|x|       x = x.to_s        if x.length == 1         puts x = \"0\" + x        else         puts x        end     }               puts zero_function(4)     puts zero_lambda.call(3)     zero_proc.call(2)      This function, proc, and lambda do the exact same thing, just slightly different. Is there any reason to choose one over another?"}
{"_id": "167281", "title": "How long to spend estimating programming tasks?", "text": "For example, if I break a project into n discrete work products (say classes or functions or components) is there a time t such that n*t is a suitable amount of time to spend on estimation?"}
{"_id": "167288", "title": "Is it better to define all routes in the Global.asax than to define separately in the areas? ", "text": "I am working on a MVC 4 project that will serve as an API layer of a larger application. The developers that came before me set up separate `Areas` to separate different API requests (i.e `Search`, `Customers`, `Products`, and so forth). I am noticing that each `Area` has separate Area registration classes that define routes for that area. However, the routes defined are not area-specific (i.e. `{controller}/{action}/{id}` might be defined redundantly in a couple of areas). My instinct would be to move all of these route definitions to a common place like the `Global.asax` to avoid redundancy and collisions, but I am not sure if I am correct about that."}
{"_id": "152600", "title": "Should functions of a C library always expect a string's length?", "text": "I'm currently working on a library written in C. Many functions of this library expect a string as `char*` or `const char*` in their arguments. I started out with those functions always expecting the string's length as a `size_t` so that null-termination wasn't required. However, when writing tests, this resulted in frequent use of `strlen()`, like so:               const char* string = \"Ugh, strlen is tedious\";     libFunction(string, strlen(string));      Trusting the user to pass properly terminated strings would lead to less safe, but more concise and (in my opinion) readable code:               libFunction(\"I hope there's a null-terminator there!\");      So, what's the sensible practice here? Make the API more complicated to use, but force the user to think of their input, or document the requirement for a null-terminated string and trust the caller?"}
{"_id": "210799", "title": "Where to validate domain model rules that depend on database content?", "text": "I'm working on a system that allows Administrators to define Forms that contain Fields. The defined Forms are then used to enter data to the system. Sometimes the Forms are filled by a human via a GUI, sometimes the Form is filled based on values reported by another system. For each Field, the Administrator can define a Validation Rule that limits the allowed values for the Field. The Validation Rules can be anything from \"the value entered in the Field must be True or False\" to \"the value entered in the Field must exist in column A of table B in the database\". The Administrator may at any time change the Validation Rule for the Field. In this scenario, what in your opinion is the most suitable place for validating that each Field is filled correctly? I currently have two main approaches in mind: **Option #1: Validate in the Domain Model** Each Field object would contain the Validation Rule specified by the Administrator. The Field objects would also have a reference to an IValidator. When an attempt is made to set the value of the Field, the Field would pass the given value and the Validation Rule to the IValidator. If the given value is not valid, a ValidationException would be thrown and appropriately handled in the GUI/interface to the other system. _Pros:_   * Strong protection against Fields being accidentally assigned values that violate the Validation Rule _Cons:_   * The Data Access Layer needs to be able to bypass the validation and construct Fields that violate the current Validation Rule. Despite the Administrator changing the Validation Rule for a Field, we still need to be able to construct Field objects based on the old data e.g. when rendering a Form that was filled years ago. This could potentially be resolved by storing the current Validation Rule whenever we store the Field.   * In this design, the Field model has an indirect link to the Data Access Layer/Repository via the IValidator. The injection of Services/Repositories to Domain Models seems to be generally frowned upon. **Option #2: Validate in a Service** Try to ensure that all attempts to set the value of a Field pass through a Service that ensures the Validation Rule holds. If the Validation Rule is violated, throw a ValidationException. Of course, the Data Access Layer would **not** use the Service when creating Field objects that have previously been persisted in the DB. _Pros:_   * Does not violate the \"don't inject Services/Repositories into your Domain Models\"-thinking.   * No need to persist the current Validation Rule when persisting the Field. The Service can simply look up the current Validation Rule for the Field; when looking at history data, the value of the Field will not be changed. _Cons:_   * No guarantee that all logic that should use the Service to set the Field value actually does so. I see this as a major drawback; all it seems to take is someone writing \"thisField.setValue(thatField.getValue())\" and the Validation Rule of thisField might be violated without anyone being the wiser. This could potentially be mitigated by ensuring that the value of the Field matches with the Validation Rule when the Data Access Layer is about to persist the Field. I currently prefer Option #1 over Option #2, mainly because I see this as business logic and feel that Option #2 poses a greater risk of introducing bad data to the system. Which option do you prefer, or is there another design that fits this scenario better than the two options described? **Edit (Complexity of validations)** The validation cases that have come up for now are relatively simple; the Field value must be e.g. numeric, a date, a date with a time or be an existing value in a database column. However, I suspect complexity to gradually increase over time. For example, the validation solution needs to be built with internationalization in mind - things such as Dates may be input in a locale-specific syntax. I've decided to proceed with Option #1 for now, attempting to take care not to assign too many responsibilities to the Domain Model. Those facing a similar situation may also want to check out the related questions Validation and authorization in layered architecture and Data input validation - Where? How much?."}
{"_id": "190482", "title": "Why use a database instead of just saving your data to disk?", "text": "Instead of a database I just serialize my data to JSON, saving and loading it to disk when necessary. All the data management is made on the program itself, which is faster AND easier than using SQL queries. For that reason I have never understood why databases are necessary at all. Why should one use a database instead of just saving the data to disk?"}
{"_id": "190485", "title": "Client Server .NET application with queuing message", "text": "I am new, so forgive me if my question is mistaken or anything, just give me an alert and I'll be glad to fix it. Me and my team is about to develop a system where the database is located in a private server, and the applications is distributed between clients on distant location. It is actually a simple CRUD application, but our primary concern is how poor the internet connection on some remote clients. I thought to give a try to WCF queue message so that when the connection is down, I can save the message to later send it again when it is up, but I don't have a real clear solution in mind. Currently, my solution would be something like this : > **CLIENT** > > **MySolution.sln** > > \\-- **MyDataAccess** > > \\---- Entities (Contains my object class definitions and properties) > > \\---- Repositories (Handles database communication) > > \\---- Services (Handles message queue to server CRUD) > > \\-- **MyClassLibraries** (Contains third party's DLLs) > > \\-- **MyHelper** (Contains helper classes and functions) > > \\-- **MyCore** (Main application project) > > \\---- Model > > \\---- View > > \\---- ViewModel and for the server : > **SERVER** > > \\-- **MyBackgroundService** (Responsible for fetching incoming message and > doing CRUD to database) Is there a better solution to this? I am not good enough yet to see it. Please let me know if I violate some rules here. Cheers !"}
{"_id": "190488", "title": "How to store weekly-occuring time spans in Java objects", "text": "My school programming club is setting up a tutoring program. We have 12 tutors who specialize in a range of different languages, and each is available for a different set of hours each day of the week. I want to set up a web interface where students can select the language they need help in, and then be shown a list of the time spans each day that there is a tutor in that language available to help them. My main question at this point is how I should go about storing tutor availability data - should I use a database (and if so, how), or should I simply store availabilities as fields in POJO \"Tutor\" objects. If the latter would be best, what data-type should I use? Can I get by simply storing them as strings or should I use joda or java.util Date objects? The task that seems particularly tricky to me at this point is combining availabilities of multiple tutors into a single time-span for each day - i.e., if I have one tutor available from 10-2 and one available from 12-4, I want a single line saying \"10-4\" to be presented to the user. I'm just beginning to design my approach to this task, so I'm very open to general suggestions and/or having unforeseen problems pointed out to me. I would like to use a Java JApplet as my web interface."}
{"_id": "197457", "title": "Services in Model Layer", "text": "I understand services should have no state and no business logic.   * How can you implement a service like AuthentificationService considering these rules?   * All the methods in a service should be static?"}
{"_id": "157078", "title": "Is it worth moving from Microsoft tech to Linux, NodeJS & other open source frameworks to save money for a start-up?", "text": "I am currently getting involved in a startup, I am the only developer involved at the moment, and the other guys are leaving all the tech decisions up to me at the moment. For my day job I work at a software house that uses Microsoft tech on a day to day basis, we utilise .NET, SqlServer, Windows Server etc. However, I realise that as a startup we need to keep costs down, and after having a brief look at the cost of hosting for Windows I was shocked to see some of the prices for a dedicated server. The cheapest I found was \u00a3100 a month. Also if the business needs to scale in the future and we end up needing multiple servers, we could end up shelling out \u00a310's of \u00a3000's a year in SQL Server / Windows Server licenses etc. I then had a quick look at the price of Linux hosting for a dedicated server and saw the price was waaaaaay lower than windows hosting. One place was offering a machine with 2 cores for less than \u00a320 a month. This got me thinking maybe the way to go is open source on Linux. As I write a lot of Javascript at work (I'm working on a single page backbone app at the moment), I thought maybe NodeJS and a web framework like Express would be cool to use. I then thought that instead of using SQL why not use an open source NoSQL database like MongoDB, which has great support on NodeJS? My only concern is that some of the work the application is going to do is going to be dynamically building images and various other image related stuff, i.e. stuff that is quite CPU heavy - so I'm thinking of maybe writing anything CPU heavy in C++ and consuming it as a module in Node. That's the background - but basically is Linux a good match for:   1. Hosting a NodeJS/Express site?   2. Compiling C++ node modules?   3. Using a NoSQL DB like MongoDB? And is it a good idea to move to these unfamiliar technologies to save money? * * * ## 3 MONTH UPDATE I've been working on this for the past few months now so thought I would give an update in case anyone is interested. In the end I decided against using a NodeJS & Linux stack for the simple reason of time. I am doing this startup on the side, so I am working 9 hour days, then going home and working until late on the startup. While working in this way I obviously need to be as efficient with my time as possible, or I will never end up shipping the product. After taking some of the advice on this thread I did apply for Microsoft BizSpark, and was accepted. This means I now have access to Visual Studio license, Windows Server license etc, all for free. Which is awesome. Hopefully by the time we are required to begin paying for everything we will be turning over enough that will make it a non-issue. Do not think I am only using Microsoft tech, however, as I have tried to use open source stuff where possible. The main place I have done this is my data layer, where I have decided to use PostgreSQL and MongoDB. I am also using BackboneJS on my front end. Below is a summary of the tech/frameworks I am currently using:   * Standard DB stuff: PostreSQL   * Logging & Data Store: MongoDB   * ORM: Entity Framework 5   * Core libraries: .NET (C#)   * Web Framework: ASP.NET MVC3   * UI: Razor view engine / BackboneJS"}
{"_id": "94157", "title": "Inserting copyright notice", "text": "What is the easiest way to insert copyright notice in lots of PHP files.   It's not possible to do it manually."}
{"_id": "68178", "title": "Which skills would you look for in an offshore junior developer?", "text": "Suppose you have to interview a developer for a (not senior) developer position. The catch is that the developer is not from your country and your company would have to invest some money and time to bring him to your country. You have to make the interview. What skills would you look for in such a candidate? **For the sake of context** , suppose it is a position of a web developer or desktop developer. Thanks in advance **EDIT** : This question is related to the _developer_ point of view, so in this case, the answers should be oriented to help the developer in which to expect..."}
{"_id": "116123", "title": "How should I go about learning PHP given a background in C#.NET?", "text": "I have developed a few websites and applications using C#, and lately I've been developing a website in ASP.NET MVC. To be honest, this has pissed me off somewhat as it has me feeling like I have zero knowledge. So many things work under the hood in .NET that I'm just not able to focus and understand what is left to the developer and how these things are done. Now, the question that prompted me to make this post is: **How should I proceed for learning PHP from a very basic standpoint?** Mind you, I have no idea about this language at all, just seen some code and heard people talking."}
{"_id": "157072", "title": "Refactor class (extract methods) in a main / helper classes", "text": "Simply spoken, one of my c# classes got too big and I'm currently splitting this class in several subclasses by clustering semantically related methods (actually actions, which do side effects). So, to give you an example:               class ViewModel     {       // a lot of properties bound to view (MVVM pattern)       public Property 1 //bound to view       public Property 2 //bound to view            // a lot of actions, containing the controller logic of the view       //Function 1 changes Property 1 -> shall be moved to class MyViewModelHelper       Function1() {}      That is, when I create a helper class for the viewModel, it needs to to receive the instance reference of the main view model in its constructor, so that it has access to the public properties. I do not want that the view has to have the knowledge about the helper classes, that is the main view model shall provide all the properties... but the functions shall delegate the work to the helper classes to keep the viewModel class maintainable. Is there any known add in /tool for visual studio, which can automatize this?"}
{"_id": "98867", "title": "Is information hiding more than a convention?", "text": "In Java, C# and many other strongly-typed, statically checked languages, we are used to write code like this:               public void m1() { ... }     protected void m2() { ... }     private void m2() { ... }     void m2() { ... }      Some dynamically checked languages don't provide keywords to express the level of \"privateness\" of a given class member and rely on coding conventions instead. Python for example prefixes private members with an underscore:               _m(self): pass      It can be argued that providing such keywords in dynamically checked languages would add little use since it is only checked at runtime. However, I can't find a good reason to provide these keywords in statically checked languages, either. I find the requirement to fill my code with rather verbose keywords like `protected` both annoying and distracting. So far, I have not been in a situation where a compiler error caused by these keywords would have saved me from a bug. Quite in contrary, I have been in situations where a mistakenly placed `protected` prevented me from using a library. With this in mind, my question is: **Is information hiding more than a convention between programmers used to define what is part of the official interface of a class?** Can it be used to secure a class' secret state from being attacked? Can reflection override this mechanism? What would make it worthwhile for the compiler to **enforce** information hiding?"}
{"_id": "53272", "title": "The Default State of Unused Memory", "text": "In an embedded device, during the initializing of memory locations, is there any convention that are being practiced. I mean, say setting every byte to zero or 0xFF or any other value."}
{"_id": "162102", "title": "What makes for a good architect/manager/lead developer?", "text": "I am the Lead Developer for a small software company. Over the past two years, my team has grown from one developer (me) to a group of about nine people. Most of us are very capable, senior engineers (20+ years of experience building software per person), so very little hand-holding is generally necessary. We use Scrum to manage our efforts, and we usually get a lot done quickly with minimal written requirements. As the team has grown, I've reached the point where it is difficult for me to retain technical oversight over the entire project while also writing significant amounts of new code myself, so it is time for me to adjust my role. How can I make myself most useful to the team when I'm no longer spending most of my time developing? **My goal is to allow my group to grow even further (i.e. increase Scrum velocity) by adding more developers** , so I don't want to simply become the \"architecture police\" who imposes my will on the team. In other words, I want to be the guy who helps things work better/smoother, rather than be the guy who slows things by down by adding an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Still, one of our main risks is that things will spin out of control if we add more people without having enough structure to keep us all on the same page. What is the best way to achieve my goal?"}
{"_id": "90645", "title": "Are there any drawbacks to the Major.Minor.YMDD.Build version strategy?", "text": "I'm trying to come up with a good version strategy to fit our specific needs. We've proposed settling on this and I wanted to ask the question to see if anyone's experience would suggest avoiding this or altering it in any way. Here's our proposal: Versions are released in this format: MAJOR.MINOR.YMDD.BN. Here it is broken out:   * MAJOR & MINOR are typical; we'll increase MINOR when we feel code and new feature sets warrants it; once every few months most likely. MAJOR will increase ~yearly.   * YMDD: Y will be the last digit of the current year, so \"1\" for 2011, \"2\" for 2012, etc. A non-padded month will be used to keep the number smaller (9 instead of 09 for example). DD of course is the day, padded with a zero for days under 10.   * BN: BN is the build number and increases by one anytime we make a change to a branch of the code represented by the build, for example: If were to make a build today, our release would be version 5.0.1707.1. I release to QA today and 3 days from now QA finds that a change broke the save functionality on a page. Instead of me changing our current development code, I'd go back to the code that I used to create version 5.0.1707.1, make the fix there, then increase the BN portion of the version and would then re-release 5.0.1707.2 back to QA. In short, anytime a change is made to a branched version that isn't the active dev branch, we'd use the original version number and increase only the BN portion (even if the change happened 3 days, 3 weeks or 3 months from the initial release of that version). Anytime we make a new release from our Active dev branch, we'd come up with a new version based on the M/D of the release using the outlined strategy. We do this once every 2-3 weeks. Are there holes or pitfalls with this? If so, what are they? Thanks **EDIT** To clarify one point that I didn't get out very well - Oct/Nov/Dec will be two digits, it's only the year that won't be. So 9 for Sept, 10 for Oct, 11 for Nov, etc."}
{"_id": "36840", "title": "listing my programming experience on my resume", "text": "On my resume, I list myself as having \"7 years of hands-on experience programming in C++\". To clarify, I am a self-taught C++ programmer with some college courses thrown in the mix. I've worked on some small personal projects, and I consider myself to be more competent than a CS grad with no actual real-world experience, though by no means am I anywhere near being an expert. The issue is this... I keep getting calls and emails from recruiters that see my resume on job sites, inquiring about my interest in senior developer positions, contracts, etc., of which I feel that I am completely under- qualified for. My resume only has 3 years of work experience listed (which is all IT stuff), so when they ask about my prior experience in C++, I have to clarify that it was personal work, not professional work. I'd really like a job as a developer, but I don't want to get hired for something that I can't handle, nor do I want to misrepresent myself while trying to show off my strengths. I deliberately chose the phrasing \"hands-on\" to imply that it wasn't professional. How should I phrase my C++ experience on my resume to clarify it better?"}
{"_id": "198309", "title": "Is XML, HTML/CSS, XSL analogous to Model, View, Controller?", "text": "For some time in personal projects I have been using XSL to convert my raw XML data into human-friendly HTML/CSS (in simple projects, I have no JavaScript, so let's leave that out of the equation for simplicity). Now I'm trying to understand the MVC architectural pattern (not my first experience with it, but it is taking some work to go from understanding it basically to understanding it well), and I'm wondering if there is an analogy between the two.   * **XML** : data model; lacks the complexity/logic of a full-blown model component, but intent seems similar   * **XSL** : converts raw data for viewing--seems like a controller   * **HTML/CSS** (rendered): the viewable output Is this analogy fitting? What in it matches well and what does not? (One dissimilarity, I suppose, is that in my example I am not getting any input back from the view--only producing output.)"}
{"_id": "108719", "title": "Has JPA replaced CMP?", "text": "No question too stupid right :) Came across this on wikipedia > The Java Persistence API replaces the persistence solution of EJB 2.0 CMP > (Container Managed Persistence). My understanding was the CMP is still there i.e Pooling,Transactions etc can be done via CMP where as JPA is ORM for me. I did not think there are even same thing . I thought may be CMP VS JTA might make sense but obviously not.   I know how off track I am but thats why I am here may some can help me get things in perspective."}
{"_id": "71825", "title": "Does current evidence support the adoption of Contextual over Canonical Data Models?", "text": "The \"canonical\" idea is pervasive in software; patterns like Canonical Model, Canonical Schema, Canonical Data Model and so on, seem to come up again and again in development. Like many developers, I've often followed, uncritically, the conventional wisdom that you _need_ a canonical model, otherwise you'll face a combinatorial explosion of mappers and translators. Or at least, I _used to_ do that until a couple of years ago when I first read the somewhat-infamous EF Vote of No Confidence: > The hypotheses that once supported the pursuit of canonical data models > didn\u2019t and couldn\u2019t include factors that would be discovered once the idea > was put into practice. We have found, through years of trial and error, that > using separate models for each individual context in which a canonical data > model might be used is the least complex approach, is the least costly > approach, and the one that leads to greater maintainability and > extensibility of the applications and endpoints using contextual models, and > it\u2019s an approach that doesn\u2019t encourage the software entropy that canonical > models do. The essay presents no evidence of any kind to support its claims, but did make me question the CDM approach long enough to try the alternative, and the resulting software didn't explode, literally or figuratively. But that doesn't mean a whole lot in isolation; I could have just been lucky. So I'm wondering, has any serious research been done into the practical, long- term effects of having a canonical model vs. contextual models in a software system or architecture? Or, if it's too early to be asking that, then have any developers/architects written about personal experiences switching from a CDM to independent contextual models, or vice versa, and what the practical effects were on things like productivity, complexity, or reliability? What about the differences at different levels, i.e. using the same model across a single application vs. using it across a system of applications or an entire enterprise? (Facts only, please; war stories are welcome but no speculation.)"}
{"_id": "71824", "title": "Python Metadata Files and Project Organization", "text": "I have a project in Python where I have a server. The server can have a variety of different services, but I don't know what those are until I start it up. I want it to do a search of available plugin files to know what services are available. Right now, I'm doing that by just having the metadata files as Python source code and loading it using imp.load_source. My question is where do I store these metadata files? The metadata files need to contain information pointing to files on the filesystem. For example, one of the programs the service needs to launch is a java program. I have the jar file and I compile it myself, but when I'm working on the project the compiled file goes into the build directory. When I'm going to want to install this on a machine, I'll need to store the files somewhere else. I want to keep the source directory and build directory separate (as it makes the clean command easier). What standard practice is done to handle the need for metadata files and where they are located? EDIT: I'm trying to target both Windows and Linux systems (and hopefully Mac systems too, but that's less important). For Linux, most important are the major distributions (such as Fedora and Debian) and hopefully others (although this is dependent on others trying to use it on whatever distribution, as I cannot test all of them and will only test on Fedora and Debian myself)."}
{"_id": "168263", "title": "3d point cloud render from x,y,z 2d array with texture", "text": "Need some direction on 3d point cloud display using OpenGL in c++ (vs2008). I am brand new to OpenGL and trying to do a 3d point cloud display with a texture. I have 3 2D arrays (each same size 1024x512) representing x,y,z of each point. I think I am on the right track with               glBegin(GL_POLYGON);      for(int i=0; i<1024; i++)      {           for(int j=0; j<512; j++)           {                 glVertex3f(x[i][j], y[i][j], z[i][j]);           }      }      glEnd();      Now this loads all the vertices in the buffer (I think) but from here I am not sure how to proceed. Or I am completely wrong here. Then I have another 2D array (same size) that contains color data (values from 0-255) that I want to use as texture on the 3D point cloud and display. I understand that this maybe a very basic OpenGL implementation for some but for me this is a huge learning curve. So any pointers, nudge or kick in the right direction will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "168260", "title": "Is it the job of a developer to suggest IT requirements?", "text": "I am the only developer working on a web application which is nearing to its end. Now we are looking into making it Live in maybe a couple of months time. This is a web application for a non IT company. Though they have their own internal IT team, they have asked me on what will be the hardware requirements for the live servers eg. RAM, 32 bit or 64 bit. Shouldn't the internal IT team be doing this or since I am the only person working on the project is it my resposiblity to let them know of the any specific hardware requirements which may impact the performance of the project? The reason I am asking this question is that, I have not done this before. All the times I used to be given a server and asked to deploy apps on it. I never used to worry about the server configuration, etc."}
{"_id": "58219", "title": "Advice: How to convince my newly annointed team lead against writing the code base from scratch", "text": "I work in a pretty reknowned MNC, and the module that I work in has been assigned to a new \"lead\". The code base is pretty huge (~130K or more, with inter dependencies on other modules) , but stable - some parts have grown ugly over the years, but its provably in working state. (Our products are running for years on them, even new ones). The problem is, our lead wants to rewrite the code _from scratch_ , to encompass \"finer granularity and a proactive design\". I know in my guts thats not a very good idea, but how do I convince him/the rest of the team(who are pretty much more senior than me in terms of years of exp), without sounding too pedantic myself (Thou shalt not rewrite , as Joel et al have clear articles prohibiting it)? I have a good working relation with the person concerned, and don't want to ruin it, but neither do I want to be party to a decision which would surely plague us for _years_ to come !! Any suggestions for a milder,yet effective approach ? Even accounts of how you have tackled such a situation to your liking would help me a lot! EDIT: The code base I'm talking about is not a product/GUI, but at kernel level with all the critical functionalities for our product. I hope now you know why i sound so apprehensive !!"}
{"_id": "62880", "title": "More job responsibilities, yet still entry level?", "text": "I currently work for a large-ish manufacturing company that has a variety of pay grade levels. I've put some serious time and effort into my work over the past 4 years and I've managed to make a significant enough impact that they moved me into a new branch of the company to start an in-house software development branch dedicated to serving our international interests. This has implied a ton of traveling and working at night due to time zone differences. While this is a great opportunity and sounds impressive to my friends/family, I'm still working at the lowest possible pay grade level. I assumed with all the additional job responsibilities that I'd also receive some kind of promotion. Is this common? Do I need to speak up in order to get a promotion? Do I even deserve one? Should I just wait it out? I'm lost..."}
{"_id": "62883", "title": "Is it reasonable for QA department to get higher average salary than that of development department?", "text": "I just talked to a friend. He said that in his company, QA persons get higher salary than developers, that on average it is 2 times higher. I'm quite surprised because I have thought that QA persons will get lower salary than developers (on average). (true confession: my company does not have QA department) So, how is your company's QA salary compared to developer's? Is it reasonable for QA department to get higher average salary than that of development department?"}
{"_id": "104844", "title": "Starting a second undergraduate degree", "text": "## Some background I've started programming when I was about 10 years old and truly loved it ever since. This year I've graduated from a mediocre university with a CS degree in Eastern Europe and two months later got a job offer at Google in Mountain View as a software engineer. ## The problem The problem is with my education - when I went through any curriculum from the top 10 US universities (an a lot of my co-workers are from such universities), and watched some of the online-available video lectures from these universities and the assignments that their students had during their studies, I've noticed that my university does not even come close to their level. I just feel that I was wasting time at my university, when I see that others got incomparably better training in CS. I would say that the courses at my university covered at most 30% of what the top-10 universities did - despite having identical classes. They just have better teachers, better curriculum, harder projects, better resources and they go more in-depth. Now, I feel quite comfortable with solving algorithmic problems, with programming in general, but still - each time I look at any of the undergraduate courses in these universities I find a lot of nuances that weren't covered in my classes. Some of them are significant, other less. ## The question Now being in the US, being financially and legally able to afford paying for an undergraduate CS course - is it worth going to one of the top 10 US universities and complete a second CS bachelor degree to fill in the gaps left over my first degree?"}
{"_id": "58216", "title": "Why isn't protection against SQL injection a high priority?", "text": "On Stack Overflow, I see a lot of PHP code in questions and answers that have MySQL queries that are highly vulnerable to SQL injection attacks, despite basic workarounds being widely available for more than a decade. Is there a reason why these types of code snippets are still in use today?"}
{"_id": "148635", "title": "Javascript MVC in principle", "text": "Suppose I want to implement `MVC` in JavaScript. I am not asking about MVC frameworks. I am asking how to build it _in principle_. Let's consider a search page of an e-commerce site, which works s follows:   * User chooses a product and its attributes and press a \"search\" button.   * Application sends the search request to the server, receives a list of products.   * Application displays the list in the web page. I think the _Model_ holds a `Query` and list of `Product` objects and \"publishes\" such events as \"query updated\", \"list of products updated\", etc. The _Model_ is not aware of DOM and server, or course. _View_ holds the entire DOM tree and \"subscribes\" to the _Model_ events to update the DOM. Besides, it \"publishes\" such events as \"user chose a product\", \"user pressed the search button\" etc. _Controller_ does not hold any data. It \"subscribes\" to the _View_ events, calls the server and updates the _Model_. Does it make sense?"}
{"_id": "148631", "title": "designing large scale applications in a low level language", "text": "I have been learning C for a while but still get confused about designing large programs within C (a large application such as the Linux kernel). Moving from Java where you have classes it's difficult to understand how to design a large application in C. What advice/links can people advise from moving from a high level language to designing applications in a low level language such as C?"}
{"_id": "148638", "title": "Copyright question about building a similar app", "text": "A client wants me to build a Wordpress plugin similar to an app on Windows Phones. Although the app that I will build will be different in many ways (such as the UI, logos, graphics and a couple of more functions) but the basic functions will be similar to the app currently available on Windows Phone. I am doing this as a freelance project. I would like to know once I complete the development and send over the files to the client, and in case the original owner of the app on the Windows Platform comes out saying that the Wordpress plugin has a lot of features from their app. Who would be the one in trouble? Can he file a case against me or will it only be my client who will be held responsible as he will own all the rights after I send him the files and he makes a payment. Update : thank you for all your inputs and help. Much appreciated. To clarify on some of the questions raised :   1. Yes, this is a work for hire project.    2. The freelancing contract says that all rights and files including source code have to be transferred to the client after he makes the payment and thereafter he owns all the code and the app.    3. The app to be made is a utility app, but i am not sure how common such kind of an app is and whether i can really relate it to the accounting app example.   4. I am writing my own code, I have no access to the original app source"}
{"_id": "200447", "title": "View is calling constructor method in the Model instead of passing model to the controller method", "text": "The problem is the UserTypes property (used to populate a drop down list in the AddUser view) is not being retained after POSTback of the form. **Here is my AddUserModel:** (which inherits from EditUserModel which doesn't have properties for UserTypes/UserTypesSelectList - probably part of the problem?)                public class AddUserModel : EditUserModel         {             public AddUserModel() : this(new Dictionary<string, string>())             {              }                  public AddUserModel(Dictionary<string,string> userTypes)             {                 UserTypes= userTypes;             }                  //properties etc                  public Dictionary<string, string> UserTypes{ get; private set; }                  public SelectList UserTypesList             {                 get { return new SelectList(UserTypes, \"key\", \"value\"); }             }     }      **The view has the following** but it calls the parameterless constructor in the above code first instead of the AddUser() method in the controller:                  using (Html.BeginForm<MyController>(c => c.AddUser(Model)      I can see when debugging that this is because the parameterless constructor method in the AddUserModel is being called first instead of the controller method being called (thereby instantiating an empty AddUserModel). I found this question on this site but I still do not understand. Debugging shows that after POSTback of the form the AddUserModel contains no data, but the EditUserModel does contain the data (except the UserTypes data because it doesn't have a property for that) Should both the Add and Edit Models have the same properties? i.e UserTypes and UserTypesSelectList? Is there something I'm missing in terms of how Models inherit from each other and relate to Views? **Edit** After abit of research and deciding to use a shared model I was able to fix the above. Please refer to my answer for more details."}
{"_id": "142779", "title": "Introducing Agile development after traditional project inception", "text": "About a year and a half ago, I entered a workplace that claimed to do Agile development. What I learned was that this place has adopted several agile practices (such as daily standups, sprint plannings and sprint reviews) but none of the principles (just in time / just good enough mentality, exposing failure early, rich communication). I've now been tasked with making the team more agile and I've been assured that I have complete buy-in from the devs and the business team. As a pilot program, they've given me a project that just completed 15 months of requirements gathering, has a 110 page Analysis & Design document (to be considered as \"written in stone\"), and where I have no access to the end users (only to the committee made up of the users' managers who won't actually be using the product). I started small, giving them a list of expected deliverables for the first 5 sprints (leaving the future sprints undefined), a list of goals for the first sprint, and I dissected the A&D doc to get enough user stories to meet the first sprint's goals. Since then, they've asked why we don't have all the requirements for all the sprints, why I haven't started working on stuff for the third sprint (which they consider more important but is based off of the deliverables of the first 2 sprints) and are pressing for even more documentation that my entire IT team considers busy-work or un-related to us (such as writing the user manual up- front, documenting all the data fields from all the sprints up front, and more \"up-front\" work). This has been pretty rough for me as a new project manager, but there are improvements I have effectively implemented such as scrumban for story management, pair programming, and having the business give us customer acceptance tests up front (as part of the requirements documentation). So my questions are:   1. What can I do to more effectively introduce change to a resistant business?   2. Are there other practices that I can introduce on the IT side to help show the business the benefits of agile?   3. The burden of documentation is strangling us - the business still sees it as a risk management strategy instead of as a risk. What can we do to alleviate their documentation concerns and demands (specifically the quantity of documentation and their need for all of it up front)?   4. We are in a separate building from our business, about 3 blocks away and they refuse to have their people on the project co-habitate b/c that person \"won't be able to work on their other projects while they're at our building.\" They expect us to always go over there and to bundle our questions so that we can ask them all at once and not waste that person's time with \"constant interruptions.\" What can we do to get richer communication from them? Any additional advice would also be appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "132349", "title": "How can we inspire \"hacker\" culture?", "text": "I came across these essays the other day whilst dreaming of becoming a Lisp hacker: http://paulgraham.com/yahoo.html, http://paulgraham.com/gba.html and they crystallised for me that the reason for the unrelenting failure I'm seeing in so many software projects I find myself working on is that programming is seen as a low-end commodity resource that is an afterthought in comparison to the heavyweight layers of non-technical management that strategise above the code. Given our commodity nature, what practical steps can we take to inspire hacker culture in our fellow commodities?"}
{"_id": "79390", "title": "Learning About Data Feeds", "text": "How and where can I learn more about financial data feeds? I'm specifically interested in learning how feeds are implemented, i.e. are feeds implemented as SOAP/RESTful Web Services? Or if they are implemented differently, how so and as what?"}
{"_id": "252298", "title": "Moving a multi-activity android app into a navigation drawer activity", "text": "I'm making an Android app and have it structured as a simple multi-activity app. I want to add a navigation drawer to it, and it looks like I will need to completely restructure the app and load everything as fragments. (http://developer.android.com/training/implementing-navigation/nav- drawer.html) How should I begin performing this \"movement\" of code? Should I completely copy and paste my class variables and functions into a giant file? This definitely feels like it would be prone to bugs and errors. Perhaps there's a method of separating the class files but still having one navigation drawer?"}
{"_id": "65270", "title": "want to switch from Enterprise software development to C programming", "text": "I'm a software engineer with 5years of IT experience in a reputed (tier 1 indian MNC) service based software company in peoplesoft and informatica. But unfortunately i'm interested to switch to a programming career, esp. C. Can anyone please let me know what is a way to switch to a C programming career? Also, what are the pros and cons for such a switch?"}
{"_id": "198384", "title": "Mono patent safety", "text": "Could you please share you thoughts about Mono patent safety? Is it risky to use Mono in production for commercial projects? In case of WEB application, for example the following technology stack: \"Linux + PostgreSQL + C# Mono + EntityFramework(Mono) + ASP.NET MVC(Mono)\", can I be sure that if I will use implemented by Mono Project frameworks (ADO.NET, ASP.NET/MVC, EntityFramework, WCF) and run them on Linux I will not get a persecution from Microsoft caused by some patent violation? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "214523", "title": "Which timeout should I set to an external service?", "text": "This service is a remote session pool. I need to ask for a session to work with other services. In most cases, this pool will have a session available, so in 15ms I will have a response. But sometimes, it will need to create a session on demand, requiring up to 800ms to create it. I have two options in mind to handle this situation:   1. To set a 15ms timeout, and to implement a retry policy up with an exponential back off until 800ms. This service will create the required session no matter whether I am connected to it.   2. To set a 800ms timeout, and to keep connected to the service until a session is available for me. In both cases, there's no guarantee that I will have a session after 800ms. **Which are the pro/cons for each option?**"}
{"_id": "99732", "title": "What are some interesting problems to solve using GA's?", "text": "I want to start messing around with Genetic Algorithm's in my spare time. I've been thinking of some ways to incorporate them either into personal projects or work projects. I work in financial software - so a lot of risk analysis and things like that using derivative markets. Not sure how GA's would fit into that. Was curious to see if anyone had any cool ideas about how I could use GA's to cure some boredom and do some really cool stuff!"}
{"_id": "222313", "title": "What is a good use case for native XML databases?", "text": "What would be a good use case to use a native XML database such as Apache Xindice and eXist-db? I have used XML features of SQL Server in the past and they were of great value, but there it is possible to use XML for 5% and traditonal storage for 95% of the application. Which application types would benefit from a 100% XML storage?"}
{"_id": "186610", "title": "Good platform to teach Programming 101?", "text": "Years ago, I used to suggest Visual Basic 6 to rank beginners as a way to learn what programming is. Key point: This was NOT for career training, but just as a primer to the basic concepts of programming. I subscribe to the KISS principle (many programmers do not) Detest Microsoft as we may, the instant graphical nature of VB6 really helped kickstart things for the rank beginner (GUI control methods/events vs, cmdline programming) VB may have been a \"toy\", but it allowed real programming concepts to be applied. One could learn these UNIVERSAL topics in any language, including VB6:   * Datatypes, variables and constants   * Conditionals (If....Then....Else Blocks, Select Case)   * Random number generation / seeding   * Introduction to threads/timers   * Loops (while loop, for loop)   * Functions & procedures (and passing parameters)   * Using arrays    * GUI controls (properties, methods and events)   * GUI animation (manipulating top, left, visible properties)   * Creating and adding external modules    * Debugging (breakpoints, watches, debug window) What environment or platform would you suggest to use today? Is Java/Eclipse making things too complex? To some extent, I think Java is overkill for this type of goal (OOP, etc). Would the path of least resistance be Visual Basic Express Edition 2012? or something else entirely like some sort of smartphone IDE? Or is that just too distracting, too complex, or too easy? And what do you lose compared to VB (Think how trivial it is to learn basic animation with the Timer and .top and .left) The KEY is to keep it EASY while not watering it down. Again, suggesting some esoteric language just because it's more \"elegant\" misses the entire point. What would you tell your neighbor's 15 year old kid to use if he wanted to know what programming is? (He does not want to become a professional programmer, and is not a good independent learner) Thank you."}
{"_id": "137640", "title": "Why does the stack grow downward?", "text": "I'm assuming there's a history to it, but why does the stack grow downward? It seems to me like buffer overflows would be a _lot_ harder to exploit if the stack grew upward..."}
{"_id": "137644", "title": "PDF help in the software manual", "text": "Just need a bit of advice here, if we embed Adobe Reader as an activex control, as well as have a fallback PDF viewer (in case the user doesn't have Adobe Reader installed) would it be wiser to put screenshots in the manual using whatever the latest version of Adobe Reader is, or using the fallback reader? I can see the drawbacks and benefits of both. For one thing, the look and feel of the fallback reader is constant, whereas Adobe Reader changes, so we don't have to redo the manual as often. But we expect that 90% of users will have Adobe Reader, so what they see in the manual won't even be what's in the program if we use the fallback reader for screenshots. So what's the solution. Adobe, Fallback Reader or Both? (For the record, the manual is a CHM, not a PDF)"}
{"_id": "216799", "title": "Sharding / indexing strategy for multi-faceted search", "text": "I'm currently thinking about our database structure and how we modify it for scale. Specifically, we're thinking about using ElasticSearch to provide our search functionality. One common pattern with ElasticSearch seems to be the 'user-routing' pattern; that is, using routing to ensure that any one user's data resides on the same shard. This is great for client-specific search e.g. Gmail. Our application has a constraint such that any user will have a maximum of a few thousand documents, so this pattern seems like a good candidate. However, our search needs to work across _all_ users, as well as targeting a specific user (so I might search my content, Alice's content, or all content). Similarly, we need to provide full-text search across any timeframe; recent months to several years ago. I'm thinking of combining the 'user-routing' and 'index-per-time-interval' patterns:   * I create an index for each month   * By default, searches are aliased against the most recent X months   * If no results are found, we can search against previous X months   * As we grow, we can reduce the interval X   * Each document is routed by the user ID So, this _should_ let us do the following:   * search by user. This will search **all indeces** across **1 shard**   * search by time. This will search **~2 indeces** (by default) across **all shards** Is this a reasonable approach, considering we may scale to multi-million+ documents? Or should I be denormalizing the data somehow, so that user searches are performed on a totally seperate index from date searches? Thanks for any pros-cons of the above scenario."}
{"_id": "216798", "title": "What is the need of Odata when I have JSON ?", "text": "I am trying to understand the point of Odata and when it would make sense. Right now how I work is I use ASP.NET and MVC/WebApi controller to serialize/deserialize objects into JSON and have javascript do something with it. From what I can tell the benefit of OData is being able to query directly from the URL ... But since I am writing the client and server code there is no need for that. Would anyone ever parse the results of a ODaya query in javascript?? Maybe OData is more about providing a generic endpoint for ALL clients to get detailed information from a query that JSON does not provide ? So if I was a provider of data then I suppose that is what odata is for ? Help me understand the purpose and use of REST/JSON/ODATA."}
{"_id": "158804", "title": "Bringing your own computer to work", "text": "I recently joined a startup, and we've been growing quickly over the last year. However, I've noticed that out of all the new hires (mostly sales and support) they are bringing in their own laptops to work. Is that normal? Most of the developers have basic linux boxes provided for them. Meanwhile the company keeps telling us every month that they've set a new revenue record."}
{"_id": "156382", "title": "How do you keep track of the meaning of your SQL fields?", "text": "The more SQL fields I add to my tables and the more primary/foreign keys I add the more I lose the overview for specific fields for certain scenarios like Get/Add/Delete/Update data. I use SQL Management Studio (SQL Server) to design my database in the database diagram designer. Maybe there is a better tool or good approach how to keep track of the meaning of all those fields?"}
{"_id": "216792", "title": "Side effect-free interface on top of a stateful library", "text": "In an interview with John Hughes where he talks about Erlang and Haskell, he has the following to say about using stateful libraries in Erlang: > If I want to use a stateful library, I usually build a side effect-free > interface on top of it so that I can then use it safely in the rest of my > code. What does he mean by this? I am trying to think of an example of how this would look, but my imagination and/or knowledge is failing me."}
{"_id": "216791", "title": "Best Practices for serializing/persisting String Object Dictionary entities", "text": "I'm noticing a trend towards using a dictionary of string to object (or sometimes string to string), instead of strongly typed objects. For example, the new Katana project makes heavy use of `IDictionary<string,object>`. This approach avoids the need to continually update your entity classes/DTOs and the database tables that persist them with new properties. It also avoids the need to create new derived entity types to support new types of entity, since the Dictionary is flexible enough to store any arbitrary properties. Here's a contrived example:               class StorageDevice {          public int Id { get; set; }          public string Name { get; set; }     }          class NetworkShare : StorageDevice {         public string Path { get; set; }         public string LoginName { get; set; }         public string Password { get; set; }     }          class CloudStorage : StorageDevice {         public string ServerUri { get; set }         public string ContainerName { get; set; }         public int PortNumber { get; set; }         public Guid ApiKey { get; set; }     }      versus:               class StorageDevice {                  public IDictionary<string, object> Properties { get; set; }     }       Basically I'm on the lookout for any talks, books or articles on this approach, so I can pick up on any best practices / difficulties to avoid. Here's my main questions:   * Does this approach have a name? (only thing I've heard used so far is \"self-describing objects\")   * What are the best practices for persisting these dictionaries into a relational database? Especially the challenges of deserializing them successfully with strongly typed languages like C#.    * Does it change anything if some of the objects in the dictionary are themselves lists of strongly typed entities?   * Should a second dictionary be used if you want to temporarily store objects that are not to be persisted/serialized across a network, or should you use some kind of namespacing on the keys to indicate this?"}
{"_id": "157926", "title": "Good reasons for destroying mutexes with waiting threads", "text": "I'd like to see some valid examples of needing to let a thread enter a locked, non-re entrant mutex, then destroying the mutex (which supposedly terminates the thread). I can't think of any good reason to do this. I can't remember precisely what we were arguing about earlier today, but my colleague insists such techniques are needed for \"point-of-no-return\" problems (again, forgive me, but I forgot the example he gave me)."}
{"_id": "68824", "title": "Are all dirty fixes created equal?", "text": "I have seen some dirty code in my time. I have heard varied feedback about \"dirty fixes\" too: a) a dirty \"fix\" is not a fix b) some fixes dirtier than others but dirty fixes are not acceptable c) some fixes dirtier than others and some dirty fixes are more acceptable than others d) dirty fixes show a pragmatic use of ones time but should be discouraged e) dirty fixes show a pragmatic use of ones time and should not be discouraged f) other Which of the above would you agree with and why? How do you stop attitudes like (e) from becoming standard practice?"}
{"_id": "68821", "title": "What techniques should be used to ensure clear communication from the customer?", "text": "Some customers use terms from the domain language interchangably and incorrectly. This has, on several occassions, lead to an implementation of a feature in a way that was not desired by the customer. Are there any techniques that can be used to enforce the correct use of terms? Are there any techniques that can be used to prevent someone from handing \"back of a cigarette packet\" requirements to a developer?"}
{"_id": "68820", "title": "do you use built in Stack/Queue/List or Vector in your program?", "text": "Yesterday i saw in a post a guy said that built in Stack/Queue are 5x slower than a normally coded Stack/queue !   Is it true ?   If true then why Microsoft (C#.NET,VB.NET) or Oracle (JAVA) is giving such ADT ?   Which one you prefer ? Writing your own or using the built in ? [I think most of the people prefer the built in as the code have been tested many times and is very very optimized]"}
{"_id": "188501", "title": "Is there an idiom for a loop that executes some block of instructions between iterations? (In Ruby in particular)", "text": "I often need to do some operations in a loop and some other operations between the iterations. A simple example would be collecting words from an array into a string, spelled backwards and separated with commas. Is there an idiom or language support for this in any language? (For now i am mostly interested in Ruby.) I usually do something like               a = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']     s = ''     n = a.size - 1     i = 0     loop do       s << a[i].reverse       break if i == n       s << ', '       i += 1     end      But i know no way to save this half iteration if using a ruby iterator:               s = ''     ['foo', 'bar', 'baz'].each do |w|       s << w.reverse       # ???     end"}
{"_id": "195470", "title": "Is there any difference between interfaces and abstract classes that have abstract methods only?", "text": "Let's say we have an abstract class and let this class has only abstract methods. Is this abstract class different from an interface that has same methods only? What I am looking to know is if there are any differences both philosophically, objectively and in the underlying programming language implementation between an Abstract Class with only abstract members and an equivalent Interface?"}
{"_id": "109446", "title": "Is this the right strategy to convert an in-level order binary tree to a doubly linked list?", "text": "So I recently came across this question - Make a function that converts a in- level-order binary tree into a doubly linked list. Apparently, it's a common interview question. This is the strategy I had - Simply do a pre-order traversal of the tree, and instead of returning a node, return a list of nodes, in the order in which you traverse them. i.e return a list, and append the current node to the list at each point. For the base case, return the node itself when you are at a leaf. so you would say               left = recursive_function(node.left)     right = recursive_function(node.right)     return(left.append(node.data)).append(right);`      Is this the right approach?"}
{"_id": "109444", "title": "Is microoptimization worth it in mobile devices?", "text": "Usually microoptimization is considered not worth it with the following explanation: it might speed up the program by less that one percent, but noone cares of that minor boost - that's just too little of a change to be noticed. Furthermore, there might be some event handler that fires one thousand times per second and exits very fast - before it is fired again. Noone cares how fast it is - making it faster can't be noted, because it already \"as fast as can be observed\". However in mobile devices energy consumption is an important factor. The same event handler optimized to run ten percent faster will lead to less energy consumed and that's longer battery life and a longer operating device. How accurate is the latter judgement about mobile devices? Are there any real life examples that confirm or disprove it?"}
{"_id": "109442", "title": "Difference between networking programming and socket programming", "text": "Are there any major differences when we talk about \"socket programming\" compared to \"network programming\"? Are there some topics that cover \"network programming\" but not \"socket programming\"?"}
{"_id": "196419", "title": "Is this solution RESTful and secure?", "text": "Our product registers new players on our service, and we've chosen to host it on Azure (we're using .NET) and we wanted it to be stateless (for scalability) and relatively secure. Since this is the first REST WS I'm writing, I wanted to get some feedback on whether or not it's a solid solution. Some presumptions to know about our app:   1. Users are logged into the service anonymously, without requiring a password from a user   2. The WS must be completely stateless to allow horizontal scaling   3. We're connecting using HTTPS (SSL) to prevent 3rd party snooping **EDIT:**   1. We target for native iOS/Android devices   2. Our main concern is making sure only non-tampered clients are able to send requests And the abstract authentication process:   1. The client creates a simple hash (UDID:Timestamp) and encrypts it using the timestamp with some basic algorithm (for example, secret key is every 2nd character from the hash)   2. The client sends his UDID, Timestamp & hash to the server   3. The server rebuilds the hash and decrypts the encrypted hash sent from the user   4. If the two are equal - we know that it was actually sent from our client (and hopefully not from a malicious sender) Any input/suggestions would be great - obviously since it's the first time I'm handling this issue I might have designed it incorrectly. Thanks! **2nd update:** Reading the security specs for OAuth, it seems that there is no real answer to my question - since the client and server must know the secret keys and the client is locally stored on our users' mobile devices (as opposed to a web app). From the OAuth security guide (http://hueniverse.com/oauth/guide/security/): > When implementing OAuth, it is critical to understand the limitations of > shared secrets, symmetric or asymmetric. The client secret (or private key) > is used to verify the identity of the client by the server. In case of a > web-based client such as web server, it is relatively easy to keep the > client secret (or private key) confidential. > > However, when the client is a desktop application, a mobile application, or > any other client-side software such as browser applets (Flash, Java, > Silverlight) and scripts (JavaScript), the client credentials must be > included in each copy of the application. This means the client secret (or > private key) must be distributed with the application, which inheritably > compromises them. > > This does not prevent using OAuth within such application, but it does limit > the amount of trust the server can have in such public secrets. Since the > secrets cannot be trusted, the server must treat such application as unknown > entities and use the client identity only for activities that do not require > any level of trust, such as collecting statistics about applications. Some > servers may opt to ban such application or offer different protocols or > extensions. However, at this point there is no known solution to this > limitation."}
{"_id": "194486", "title": "Permuting a list of numbers by pushing and popping onto a stack", "text": "Suppose we have some long stack of numbers. There is another intermediate stack, and a destination stack to be returned in the end. The only two operations allowed is transferring the top of the old stack to the top element of the intermediate stack and transferring the top element of the intermediate stack onto the top of the new stack. List all the possible new stacks that can be produced, assuming the original stack is used up. I'm using Racket/Scheme. Purely functional solutions are more preferable ;) Any ideas on how to do it? By some handwaving it seems that the following function correctly predicts whether a certain output sequence is possible, given that the input sequence is sorted from small to big:               (define (possible? lst)       (match lst         [(cons a b)          (and (if (andmap (\u03bb(x) (< x a)) b) (sorted? b) #t) (possible? b))]         [x #t]))      thus I can simply generate all permuations of the input list and filter out the impossible ones. It seems that there should be a more elegant solution though, which preferably uses recursion and functional programming instead of nested loops and mutation."}
{"_id": "156030", "title": "IPC linux huge transaction", "text": "I'm building and application that requires huge transactions/sec of data and I need to use IPC to for the mutithreaded mutliprocceses communication, I know that there are a lot of methods to be used but not sure which one to choose for this application. This is what the application is gonna have, 4 processes, each process has 4 threads, the data chunk that needs to be transferred between two or more threads is around 400KB. I found that fifo is good choice except that it's 64K which is not that big so i'll need to modify and recompile the kernel but not sure if this is the right thing to do? Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions and I'd like to squeeze your experience in this :) and I appreciate it in advance."}
{"_id": "194480", "title": "I'd like to write an \"ultimate shuffle\" algorithm to sort my mp3 collection", "text": "I'm looking for pseudocode suggestions for **sorting my mp3 files in a way that avoids title and artist repetition**. I listen to crooners - Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald etc. singing old standards. Each artist records many of the same songs - Fly Me To The Moon, The Way You Look Tonight, Stardust etc. My goal is to arrange the songs (or order the playlist) with the maximum space between artists and song titles. So if I have 2000 songs and 20 are by Ella I'd like to hear her only once in every 100 songs. If 10 artists sing Fly Me To The Moon I'd like to hear it once in every 200 songs. Of course I want to combine these two requirements to create my \"ultimate shuffle\". I know this is a fairly wide open question. I haven't started programming it yet so I'm just looking for suggestions of a good approach to take. I actually have some other requirements regarding evenly spacing other song attributes but I won't get into that here. * * * As a starting point I'm modifying code I found here to manipulate mp3 files and read ID3 tags. I wrote a small app that satisfies my need using parsifal's answer below. I also wrote a follow up question here. Thanks for all the great responses!"}
{"_id": "94073", "title": "How does git/GitHub handle changed local and changed pushed repositories?", "text": "I'm working with a few other people on projects, and today I ran into a situation I'm sure I'll see often. One of my co-workers and myself had split up some tasks to do on the same project and began working. He finished his tasks, and pushed his changes to our shared repository. I was still working on my changes, but I was afraid to push them and overwrite the code he had worked on with my project, only containing half the needed changes. For this situation (just to be safe, I had a presentation on the code in a few minutes and didn't want any major setbacks), I made a copy of my local code, pulled his new code, copied the files I had edited into the project I had just pulled (we were working in two separate sections, but I'm curious as to how git/GitHub handles this issue when working in the same files), and then pushed our combined code. So how does git (or how should we) handle one project with two different changes to the same file?"}
{"_id": "184943", "title": "Overcoming circular reference", "text": "I am working on an asp.net MVC web application which contains several projects. One is BusinessObjects, which contains business logic / processes. Another is EmailGeneration which is used to send marketing campaign / customer emails. The EmailGeneration project references the BusinessObjects project because it need to generate templated emails based on Business Objects. I need to be able to trigger emails from business objects so that I can, say, automatically send an invoice when an order is completed. However, I can't add the reference as it would create a circular reference. This suggests that my design is flawed. How can I change my design to reduce coupling between the components?"}
{"_id": "196416", "title": "What's the dominant naming convention for variables in PHP: camelcase or underscores?", "text": "The consensus seems to be that one should follow the convention of the platform they're developing for. See: Underscore or camelcase? Naming conventions: camelCase versus underscore_case? However, PHP doesn't seem to strictly follow any convention internally (no surprises there), even for methods and functions (e.g. `mysqli::set_local_infile_default`, `PDOStatement::debugDumpParams`); however, underscores seem to be dominant in function names. However, what I couldn't find was this: **what's the dominant naming convention for variables in PHP?**"}
{"_id": "137011", "title": "Where to use C++ today?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there any reason to use C++ instead of C, Perl, Python, etc.?   >  When to use C over C++, and C++ over C? I am going to enter university next fall in computer sciences, but have been programming already for a few years. I am currently doing web application development. I use Python and Java mainly. I also know C++, but never really pacticed it because everytime I think of a project, there seems to be a language that is better suited for the job than C++. For example, Java seems to give the same result as C++, but in a more productive way (even performance-wise, Java is not far behind C++). Not to mention that the Java library is much greater than the C++ one. This makes me wonder where, in the world of web development, could I use C++ and get an advantage that other languages won't give me? I currently believe that it would be as an add-on to a language like Java or Python."}
{"_id": "216245", "title": "How to test issues in a local development environment that can only be introduced by clustering in production?", "text": "We recently clustered an application, and it came to light that because of how we're doing SSL offloading via the load balancer in production it didn't work right. I had to mimic this functionality on my local machine by SSL offloading Apache with a proxy, but it still isn't a 1-to-1 comparison. Similar issues can arise when dealing with stateful applications and sticky sessions. What would be the industry standard for testing this kind of production \"black box\" scenario in a local environment, especially as it relates to clustering?"}
{"_id": "76886", "title": "Why do most languages provide a min-heap instead of a max-heap implementation?", "text": "I just noticed something and I wonder if there is any reason for that. Except for C++ (std::priority_queue is a max heap), I don't know any other language that offers a max heap. > Python's heapq module implements a binary min-heap on top of a list. > > Java's library contains a PriorityQueue class, which implements a min- > priority-queue. > > Go's library contains a container/heap module, which implements a min-heap > on top of any compatible data structure. > > Apple's Core Foundation framework contains a CFBinaryHeap structure, which > implements a min-heap. I find a max-heap more intuitive than a min-heap and I believe technically the implementation difference is only a question of changing a comparison operator. Is there any real reason? Most of the applications need a min instead of a max heap? Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "79536", "title": "How far should you be from your closest data backup?", "text": "Pretend for a moment that something catastrophic happened; you're hacked, and your production database becomes a mess. How far (time) should you be from your rolling out your latest backup and resuming operations as normal? Of course, \"immediately\" is \"ideal\", but I'd like to see some real answers. Perhaps some existing, real-life situations that you're currently in with regards to backups."}
{"_id": "91683", "title": "Completing a project successfully despite hostile management?", "text": "I work for a subsidiary of a large world wide company. This was not a subsidiary from the beginning, it was a company bought by the larger company. We seem to be heading toward a death march and I'm wondering if there is anything I (or my team) can do to either resolve the management problems or complete the project in spite of them. It's a typical Daily WTF situation:   * Unrealistic deadlines (management \"estimated\" 6 months, dev team needs 18 months _minimum_ );   * Long (up to 3h) daily meetings, further cutting our productivity;   * Management refuses to budge on the schedule because they want to look good to the new owners;   * Developers being bullied, accused of incompetence, put on a \"wall of shame\", etc.   * Team lead just resigned and morale is at an all-time low. I'd like to leave - most of the dev team is considering it - but I'm reluctant to quit. I really need the money, and I've also only been here for a short time (5 months) after a period of unemployment, so quitting now might raise red flags for prospective employers. Are there any strategies which might be effective in fostering more cooperation from the management, or at least minimizing the ongoing disruptions? **EDIT:** _I received great advice from answers to this question. I can't really accept an answer because I can't accept more than one and it would be unfair for the others._ _We've decided to do our best at work given the circumstances. We're pushing back on management to see if we can actually obtain help from them (as new people, new deadline etc). At the same time I'm looking for a new job (as my colleagues were already doing)._ _We'll see what happens and plan accordingly. But one thing is sure: Sacrificing ourselves on the corporate shrine is out of the question._ _Thank you all!_"}
{"_id": "79538", "title": "Java but no JEE experience", "text": "I have quite extensive Java experience (many years of Swing, desktop apps, gigantic applets), but have done very little JEE - only one single gig for 9 months, but that was very narrow work where I was basically just implementing business logic (in a highly abstracted internal company IDE) and at most tweaking some JSP pages. Never really picked up the macro flow of the JEE framework in depth. In the meantime, I've done some very limited maintenance of an ASP.NET MVC app at my previous job ( _very_ limited) and am currently playing around with Ruby on Rails at home. I feel like I have the basic gist of web development down, but nothing that I can call solid \"industrial strength experience\" with any of these frameworks. I'm still a bit in the \"cargo cult programming\" stage with web development, can't really say that I could plug leaks in the abstractions if they broke, so to speak. So what I'm wondering is: with this background (extensive Java and a decent grasp of how web frameworks work), is JEE going to be be relatively logical and easy to pick up, or will it be a huge and steep learning curve? Basically, I'm planning to learn it, and want a preliminary idea about how big an effort it's going to be."}
{"_id": "131695", "title": "How long does it take for one to become really comfortable in a programming language and coding starts being fun?", "text": "I am just starting out in programming learning Aspect and I'm nearing the end of the introduction. I've learned about algorithms and functions and types of code and Python and briefly the basic ideas of programming. And I have to say it totally fits the description of a language it is like learning how to speak again. So what I would like to know is after this trivial and trying stages of learning just how to get into this gate of overstanding, does programming become easier and more fun? Also I would like to get an idea of how long or far into the learning process it is, before you can speak this language and do things like write an application or design on the web and all these electrifying things are graspable and doable?"}
{"_id": "105827", "title": "Do I need to understand pointers to use C++?", "text": "Well, I love C++, I have been using it for a while: I like all the libraries (Allegro, SDL, QT, Ogre, etc.), but I have a problem: I don't understand pointers. Do I really need them ? I just program for fun: but I want to study it some day. Thanks."}
{"_id": "101762", "title": "Do you sign each of your source files with your name?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you keep track of the authors of code? One of my colleagues is in the habit of putting his name and email address in the head of each source file he works on, as author metadata. I am not; I prefer to rely on source control to tell me who I should be speaking to about a given set of functionality. Should I also be signing files I work on for any other reasons? Do you? If so, why? To be clear, this is in addition to whatever metadata for copyright and licensing information is included, and applies to both open sourced and proprietary code."}
{"_id": "126230", "title": "Is it a good practice by commenting with owner name?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you keep track of the authors of code? Here's several scenarios which may comment with owner name:   1. bug fixing, i.e. `// fixed bug 123 by xxx, solution is ... ...`   2. fixme/todo tags, i.e. `// TODO: .... by xxx.`   3. hacks, i.e. `// HACK! ... by xxx` For case #2, please refer to Comment Tags The obvious advantage is that we can ease tracking by names. The downside is the risk of abuse. Actually my previous company allowed this way of commenting style, but current employer completely disallows names appearing in code. In my opinion, I would vote for discreetly commenting with author names. I'm open to hear from you if this commenting style is good or bad. Thanks."}
{"_id": "109191", "title": "dbdeploy (phing) and development teams", "text": "Does anyone here use dbdeploy (phing) in a commands? If so - how do you manage the migrations? Let's suppose we have 2 different features developed in different branches of mercurial repository (phing build file and dbdeploy migrations are stored in mercurial). Which IDs to give to each feature changes?"}
{"_id": "131698", "title": "How can I debug exceptions that are not easily reproducible and only occur in a production environment?", "text": "I am working on an issue where the exception only occurs in our production environment. I don't have access to these environments, nor do I know what this exception means. Looking at the error description, I'm unable to understand the cause.               javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure      Would someone please advise me on how to approach this kind of problem?"}
{"_id": "199712", "title": "In which cases build artifacts will be different in different environments", "text": "We are working on automation of deployment using Jenkins. We have different environments - DEV, UAT, PROD. In SVN, we are tagging each release and placing same binaries in DEV, UAT, PROD. The artifacts already contains config files w.r.t each environment but I am not understanding why we are storing binaries in environment folder again. Are there any scenarios where deployment might be different for different environments."}
{"_id": "180758", "title": "Design Parts DB", "text": "I'm developing a tool that handles (electrical) parts. The parts can be created, viewed, modified, deleted, grouped and so on... In order to make this question useful for future visitors I like to keep this question universal since managing parts in a DB is very common no matter what parts are in the DB (CDs, cars, food, students, ...). I am thinking of 3 different DB designs:   1. Using a parts table and derived tables for specialized part attributes.              Parts      (id, part_type_id, name)     PartTypes  (id, name)     Wires      (id, part_id, lenght, diameter, material)     Contacts   (id, part_id, description, picture)        2. Using only specialized part tables.              Wires      (id, name, lenght, diameter, material)     Contacts   (id, name, description, picture)        3. Using a Parts-, PartTypes-, ValueTypes- and PartValues table that contain all values.              PartTypes  (id, name)     ValueTypes (id, part_type_id, name)     Parts      (id, part_type_id, name)     PartValues (part_id, value_type_id, value)      Which one to prefer and why? Or is there a better one?   I am concerned about the DB queries. I don't want the queries become overly slow or complicated. ## Update The number of types in the DB are pretty much given and static since they rest on a international standard and will be enhanced seldomly."}
{"_id": "180757", "title": "is it possible to monitor more than one stream simultanously?", "text": "E.g.   \\- $stream1 is the STDOUT of a child process and $stream2 is the STDERR of the same child process   \\- $stream1 is one child process and $stream2 is another child process Is there a possiblility in perl to monitor two or more streams at the same time? So we loop as long as anything pops-up in any of the streams and we take whatever comes first either in $stream1 or $stream2. Something like               while (my $line = <$stream1 or $stream2> ) {           #do something with the $line     }      ??"}
{"_id": "145922", "title": "How can I do test automation using a python script to test a c program?", "text": "I was wondering if I can use a Python script to test a C program automatically. Suppose I have a very simple C program which reads data (numbers as test cases) from the console, calculates them, then outputs it to the console. Now I want to read data from a file then output whatever the program outputs into a file. Suppose in the original C program I use `while` loop and`scanf` to read two numbers into two variables `a` and `b` for several times and do different calculations according to the values of `a` and `b`, like this:               if(a>4 && a<10){...}     else if(a>=10){...}      Now can I use a Python script to test the program automatically? And do I need to modify my C program? How? EDIT: If any method is permitted, then what is the best way to test the C program automatically without using frameworks?"}
{"_id": "81248", "title": "Prevent Casual Piracy for Simple Utility", "text": "I've written a small utility that I wish to sell for less than $10. My primary concern is \"casual piracy\". The scenario that plays out in my mind is this: > User buys the program, enjoys using it and tells their friends. The friends > copy the application to their USB drives and take it home - using the > application for free (maybe never realizing they should have purchased it. Since I've got absolutely no protection built in, it would just be a simple copy'n paste to pirate the app. The users who would be using the app are in close proximity to each other (work in the same environment), so casual piracy would likely occur frequently. **Any ideas?** Keeping in mind the app is cheap (partly to reduce casual piracy), and the level of effort to write the app hasn't been very demanding. Update: the app will run on any system that supports .NET 3.5."}
{"_id": "233175", "title": "suggest structure for classes that maps to json with dynamic data without using dynamic or object reference", "text": "this is a kind of data i have to de-serialize               {         \"id\": \"M:11427\",         \"title\": \"DAX30\",         \"nextStartId\": \"S:727831\",         \"sections\": [             {                 \"type\": \"HIGHLIGHTS\",                 \"baseResults\": [ values of type highlights ],                 \"hasMore\": true             },             {                 \"type\": \"CHART\",                 \"hasMore\": false,                 \"chartTypes\": [ string values ]             },             {                 \"type\": \"TWEETS\",                 \"baseResults\": [ values of type tweets ],                 \"hasMore\": true             }]     }      I have to serialize & deserialize them all. I want to create something that can hold the values corresponding to baseResults. there is a main class that represent the whole json               class Data      {     ...     ObservableCollection<Section> sections{get;set;}     ...     }      then there is a class that represents the data in **sections** array of main json               class Section     {     string type{get;set;}// thi elements decides what kind of data would be in baseResults     dynamic baseResults{get;set;} //it should hold ObservableCollection of either Highlights or Tweets etc.     }      base class for type of data coming in **baseResults** array is an abstract class `class CategoryData` and its children are `class Highlights` & `class Tweets` I am using `dynamic` since I can not assign an `ObservableCollection<CategoryData>` with `ObservableCollection<Highlights>`. But I don't want to use this dynamic or object type instead I want something relevant. please suggest me what could be a better approach for this problem."}
{"_id": "181482", "title": "Git-friendly spreadsheet format?", "text": "We're trying to move our project documentation process from Google Documents to a set of self-hosted Git repositories. Text documents are Git-friendly enough, since we usually do not need any fancy formatting, we'll just convert everything to, say, multimarkdown with an option to embed LaTeX for complex cases. But spreadsheets are quite different story... Is there a spreadsheed(-like) format that is friendly to version control systems (and, preferably, is as human-readable as Markdown)? _\"Friendly format\": Git works well with the format (itdoesn't with XML) and it generates human-readable diffs (extra configuration involving external tools is OK)._ Obviously, Markdown flavors allow one to build static tables, but I'd like to be able to use stuff like `SUM()` etc... (Note that CSV has the same problem.) No WYSIWYG is OK, but decent editor/tool support would be nice. _Update: Linux-friendly answers only, please. No MS Office stuff._"}
{"_id": "181483", "title": "Root cause analysis in event correlation", "text": "I'm to write an event correlator module for the device we produce. When a fault occurs the resulting avalanche of logs about derivative conditions from various modules is readable only to a person skilled in the task - a layman will be utterly lost. The event correlator is supposed to solve this problem - find root cause and present a friendly message guiding the user to the origin of the problem. I can collect tokenized events from all the modules and observe the internal state of the main module. I can even write history a few seconds back. Now, the hard part and my actual question: writing the analysis algorithm. I tried the Wikipedia page, but it's awfully sketchy on the specific Root Cause Analysis part, and the RCA article linked is more about a business practice than about something that can be phrased as computer algorithm. The net is full of event correlators as software to be bought or used, but I have trouble finding anything about making one. So, summarizing:   * a history of events and states dumped at the moment of error (the \"black box\")   * a set of rules (preferably in human-editable form in some external file)   * a set of root causes, derived from the events according to the rules.   * a program interpreting these rules, then processing the black box through them and producing a set of root causes matching. How do I even approach writing something like that?   * What would be the format of the ruleset file and a parser for the rules - lexical parsing alone is easy enough but what would it produce?   * How to represent _a rule_ internally? As some kind of object probably, but how would that object look like? How to chain the rules together in a decision tree?   * processing black box data through these rules. Seems an awful lot like running data through a script, but the data contains a lot of of noise. How to assure obtaining _some_ results? Now, some caveats:   * I'd prefer to avoid bayesian or other statistical approach - I'd prefer a fully deterministic solution so that given set of conditions will produce the same result in laboratory analysis, and the precise set of rules is fully human-readable and human-editable.   * Not all components are directly monitored, and some faults can be derived only indirectly. The root cause will not always be one particular message in the black box. Sometimes it will be something that led to a certain set of logs.   * Not always the sequence of events is maintained, as messages sometimes are delayed on the message bus.   * If the main power goes out, we're not guaranteed to capture all the data. Examples: 1.   * Module 1 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * Module 2 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * Module 4 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * PSU module reports external power is okay, internal power has been disabled (per blockade line.) Root cause: Module 3 failed gracefully, serious hardware condition activated the blockade line correctly but it was unable to send its message out. 2.   * Module 1 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * Module 2 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * Module 4 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * PSU module reports external power is okay, internal power has been disabled (per blockade line.)   * Module 3 reports halt; No power in its output line. Activating the blockade line. Root cause: Burnt fuse of output line of Module 3 Now Module 3 was mean by sending out its message last, while pulling the blockade line first. 3.   * Module 3 reports halt; No power in its output line. Activating the blockade line.   * Module 1 reports halt; blockade line is active.   * PSU module reports external power is okay, internal power has been disabled (per blockade line.)   * Module 2 reports halt; No power in its output line. Activating the blockade line.   * Module 4 reports halt; No power in its output line. Activating the blockade line. Root cause: Main fuse of internal power disengaged. Likely reason: short circuit in the PSU or fuse disengaged manually. Note how Module 1 got late with detecting lack of power, say, its output was inactive and the capacitors kept it active long enough that it detected blockade line (engaged by other modules) first, before detecting power failure. Also, normally PSU would report a fault condition of internal power going out, but it's simply slower - less sensitive than the output modules, and they will pull the blockade line before it detects power is out, and by then it will assume this is correct behavior. The difference between cases 2. and 3. is only the number of simultaneous \"no power\" faults: it's extremely unlikely several fuses go out at the same time, while using the main fuse to disable power for service works is the \"traditional\" approach and it is expectable at least a few modules will detect \"power out\" if the main fuse is disengaged."}
{"_id": "109087", "title": "Will taking a job in web development prevent a low-level programming career?", "text": "I'm a computer science student in my last year, and I want to get a job, but have difficulties finding one in my city where I can use what I already know pretty well. There is a company which does PHP/web that insists to work for them, and it is tempting, because pay would be good (for someone who is still a student) and the working conditions are great; the problem is that in no way I want a career in web developement, because I love low-level programming (C++, C, a bit of C# and Python - for my thesis I'm working on a complete C compiler with optimizations - I will make it open source later this year). This job would be only until I graduate and find something I like. Now the question: could taking this job reduce my chances in being accepted on a job where low-level things are done? I think it might, because the interviewer could say something like \"Well, if you pretend to know so much low-level stuff, why did you choose a job where you're doing the complete opposite?\" Here PHP is considered by many a language used by novice programmers (I know it's not entirely true) and I fear it doesn't give a good impression to claim I have deep knowledge of low-level stuff while having a PHP job (and the only one) listed on my CV."}
{"_id": "144347", "title": "When or why should one use getters/setters for class properties instead of simply making them public properties?", "text": "I program primarily in ColdFusion but this is a general OOP question. Is there any benefit to using:               getProp() {         return prop;     }          setProp(val) {         prop = val;     }      As opposed to simply               obj = new Obj();     obj.prop = \"1\";"}
{"_id": "77289", "title": "Getting your user agreement right", "text": "I'm planning to provide a little service with which you can control your computer from anywere. It exists out of a server (which I will be providing), and two clients (a controlled one and a controlling one). Now I want to provide that service for a little fee. However, the server is actually a small old Dell laptop with a broken screen at my home with Ubuntu as OS. It's not very reliable, but I want to use it, because it's cheep. Now, as I said already, the laptop maybe isn't the most reliable machine, along with my Internet connection, which also can go down if there are some unexpected problems. But I don't want to take risks, and let the user, before he pays, know that this can occur. But I also want me to be safe, so I won't need to give any money back. It is my first application that I will be giving away for a little fee, and I don't know about the legal responsibility I have to take. Basically I don't want to give any money back, even at a 100% downtime (which will be very unlikely), but I also don't want it to be my fault if someone loses data, by using my software, even if it is a bug, or someone intercepted his data. So, I have put this in the agreement, and this only. Is it enough and is it legally binding? What should I also know? >   * iControl actually implements a client-server-client protocol, where one > client let's the other client execute a shell command. Then the controlled > client will return the termination status, the standard output, and the > standard error of that command. >   * iControl uses no encryption to send data over the network. It is a > potential security risk to use this service, because all data is sent raw > over the network. You can compare it with the FTP protocol, the HTTP > protocol, which you're using right now, and the telnet protocol. >   * iControl's maker does not in any way stand in for the damage this > service can do. Not by misuse by the user, not by a bug in the software. No > illegal activities maybe done using this service. The provider of this > service may suspend you from his service at any time without an explanation, > without a money-back guaranty. The collector of the rent fees does not need, > in any circumstances, to return the payed money. >   * The iControl service is maintained by one man and one man only. Any > downtime of the used server may occur. In case of any length of downtime, > the service provider does not have to give any money back, however he'll do > his best to make you as happy as possible by trying to make the service be > up all of the time. > I'm planning to let the user check a box that they read this and agreed to it, when they register. Is this enough?"}
{"_id": "221152", "title": "Freelance charging based on tasks completed", "text": "I've just started freelancing and have two projects where I am splitting my week with both companies, one I'm charging hourly and everything is fine, the other one however they have said they will pay me based on a points basis using Pivotal Tracker. For example, there's a fixed rate per point and they work on an estimate that I will complete two points per day, I was just wondering if this is something that is used regularly or if I should try and get them to switch to hourly? My concern is that points are only used for features and if a feature has a bug this isn't taken into consideration so any time spent fixing that bug won't be charged. Correct?"}
{"_id": "50675", "title": "What's the most productive coding environment", "text": "I was speaking with an ex-colleague the other day about the most productive way to write code and he said he found it best \"to CIMP, or Code In My Pants\". When I asked him exactly what he meant, he explained he found it best to work at home, coding at his own pace, dressed comfortably (in his pants), and communicating with his team through emails, IM, or the telephone. Digesting his approach (which he describes to clients as the Complete Integrated Method of Programming), I realised my coding is also more productive when working in an isolated environment, which made me wonder if the software industry has got it all wrong and should development be really done by dispersed teams of individuals, or are there advantages to geographical herding that make up for the added interruptions it brings? So has business got it wrong? Should development occur predominantly across geographically isolated individuals to increase productivity, or are there real reasons why herding developers together makes sense?"}
{"_id": "209703", "title": "How will I restrict the number of users logged in based on session?", "text": "I have a software (in cloud) with so many registered users. I want to restrict the number of users logged in at a time to certain number (configuration based, let's say 100). If the 101 user tries to login he should be placed in queue with priority 1, subsequently 102 user should be 2 in queue, I know at every time a logged in users request is hitting the server the `sess_file` access time will be updated. What should be the logic from here? Should I check the last accessed time of all the `sess_file` and log-out the uses that are idle? and how will I manage the waiting queue? Software is done with PHP-MySQL. When the user is logged in I mark the column as logged in in user table, and when the log-in page is loaded if the total logged in user count is 100, the 101 user who is trying to log-in is directed to a intermediate page which will check via ajax call fired at an interval of 5 mins that if any user is logged out. If a slot is available it redirects to the log-in page, automatically logs in and redirects to the user dashboard. But I want to know any better practice is there. Mostly I want to know the invalidation of logged in user by checking the access time of `sess_file` is the right way to do it?"}
{"_id": "50673", "title": "Internal Libraries (Subversion Externals, 'library' branch, or just another folder)", "text": "Currently working on multiple projects that need to share internal libraries. The internal libraries are updated continually. Currently only 1 project needs to be stable but soon we will need to have both projects stable at any given time. What is the best way to SVN internal libraries? Currently we are using the 'just another folder' like so... > trunk\\project1   >  trunk\\project2   >  trunk\\libs It causes a major headache when a shared library is updated for project1 and project2 is now dead until the parts that use the library are updated. So after doing some research on SVN externals I thought of this... > trunk\\project1\\libs (external to trunk\\libs @ some revision)   >  trunk\\project2\\libs (external to trunk\\libs @ different revision)   >  trunk\\libs\\ I'm a little worried about how externals work with commits and not making library commits so complicated that I am the only one capable of doing it (mostly worried about branches with externals as we use them extensively). On top of that we have multiple programming languages within each project some of which don't support per-project library directories (at least not easily) so we would need to check out on a per project basis instead of checking out the trunk. There is also the 'vendor' style branching of libraries but it has the same problem as above where the library would have to be a sub folder of each project and is maybe a little to complicated for how little projects we have. Any insight would be nice. I've spent quite a bit of time reading the Subversion book and feeling like I'm getting no where."}
{"_id": "221156", "title": "Should a DR & CR entry both be created or a single-entry accounting is fine", "text": "A new project has an amount. It is always related to a client. One client can have many projects. And he may pay in steps for a particular project. In order to keep track of client payments, I've created a table namely `client_ledger` which contains information about date, time, amount, mode of payment & related project. But then in one of the software screens, I have to reports pertaining to a client's debit & credit. So there are 2 things that can be done :   1. Either I can get the total amount of all projects of that client and his total payments & then can show how much balance is left to be paid.   2. Or if I'd created an entry in the `client_ledger` table for `DR`, then as soon as a project is created, an entry is made in the table for `DR` and subsequent payments received will be `CR`ed into the data-base. In this case, if a project's amount is modified/edited later, then either the original `DR` entry has to be modified, or a new `CR` entry followed by the new project amount's `DR` entry should be made. Which of these processes should be followed ?"}
{"_id": "92088", "title": "Developers inheriting code. What to ask the old developer to better help the new developer?", "text": "I know nothing about code. We've had our old iOS developer drop out and we're looking for a new developer or a team to pick up where he has left off. I'm aware there can be issues with developers inheriting code etc. What are some questions that I can ask my old developer to better help the new developer understand what stage the code is at, what needs working on etc etc. Just general type questions? So that when I meet with potential new developers I can hand them a 'fact sheet' of where the code is at form the old developer."}
{"_id": "145690", "title": "Is there a need for a factory class for creating viewmodels?", "text": "A colleague of mine suggested using a factory class for creating viewmodel objects in our ASP.NET MVC solutions. The idea being that it can help with the design, and maintainability, of the way viewmodels are built in our apps. I wanted to find out if anyone else has experience of this. I've done some research and found very little on this practise. Currently we create viewmodel objects at the controller level eg               public ActionResult Index()     {         return this.View(this.BuildIndexViewModel());     }      So this.BuildIndexViewModel() is responsible for creating the viewmodel class (obviously :). But we're looking into the possability of:               public ActionResult Index()     {         return this.View(ViewModelFactory.CreateIndexViewModel());     }      This is an interesting idea, but I'm not 100% convinced. I was interested in other people's opinions on this."}
{"_id": "100373", "title": "Switching to Windows Identity Foundation - Should we use the SQL Server role and membership provider?", "text": "We have an application which uses SQL Server as the back end. It was client server based, now it will be web based. Our implementation to logon was a user ID and password hash/salt stored in the database. Additionally, all policies and roles were stored in our table schema and assigned to users and or user defined groups. So, they would login, authenticate, and then we would pull the role(s) and policies for that user so they could use the parts of the application that thier role(s) and policies allowed for. We are investigating WIF now that it is web based. Ideally we would like to re-use our current model, that is, be able to logon using our existing table(s) and then pull the roles and polices afterward. However, there is a SQL Server role and membership provider. Would it be easier to switch the login, roles, and membership using the built in SQL Server provider and deprecate our table schema? Or should we build a provider from scratch?"}
{"_id": "199948", "title": "How can I keep a production Python environment secure?", "text": "Most of my work is creating websites in Django (a Python web framework) and deploying them to my own or clients' servers. I work from a `virtualenv` to separate site from system packages and have perhaps 60-80 packages installed in there and that lot is shared between two-dozen sites. This obvious limitation to this approach is needing to test every site if I upgrade a package it uses. I consider that a fair trade-off for not needing to keep on top of umpteen separate virtualenvs. And that is essentially my whole problem. **How on earth are you supposed to keep on top of`virtualenv` deployments?** People just seem to treat them like a dumping ground but if the programming universe has learnt anything this past week from the Ruby on Rails explosion, using old versions of software is unacceptable. I have a simple script that attempts to check for current package versions with the latest `pip` counterpart but it's quite inacurrate. It also doesn't differentiate between security upgrades and feature upgrades (which require days of testing and fixing). I am looking for something better. I am looking for something that can let me know if Django has a new security release out, or if something is end-of-life. I want something to help me (and other Python devops) not become the next batch of people crying after a wave of kids with scanners and scripts convert our servers into a botnet. Does such a thing exist?"}
{"_id": "92081", "title": "What is the difference between bug and new feature in terms of segregation of responsibilities?", "text": "We are planing to introduce Help Desk and Support Desk in our project. Our current development team would be divided into two smaller teams: Support Desk and Development team. Support Desk would be responsible only for bug fixing. Development team would be responsible for making enhancements and new features development. What value do you see from such responsibilities and teams segregation? Can we find a differences between bug and new features in terms of development activities? Is there any real value of doing such things?"}
{"_id": "110949", "title": "Does hierarchial inheritance belong to the past?", "text": "Recently it came to my attention that hierarchical inheritance may be a relic of thinking of classes as \"structs with functions\" rather than a product contract-driven mentality. Consider, as a simple specimen the implementation of \"Unmodifiable Iterator\" from Guava. http://guava- libraries.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javadoc/com/google/common/collect/UnmodifiableIterator.html It's an iterator which throws an \"UnsupportedOperationException\" on invocation of remove(). Now, I'm sure most people would agree that implementing a contract and then having one of its methods always throw an exception is bad form -- when you implement a contract you're implicitly guaranteeing that all the methods would work. Yet, what are our options here? We could declare an interface which does not contain the remove method but that would render our return type incompatible with all methods which work on iterators. We could blame the Java API designers for forcing the remove() method to be a part of every iterator, rather than moving it to a higher level interface such as \"RemovableIterator\". If they did that it would indeed avoid some problems but let's say we need an iterator which can also set values called \"SettableIterator\" (implements setValue(T) ) and also a resettable iterator. If we require a combination of these functionalities we are forced to declare an interface for every combination. RessetableSettableIterator, RessetableRemovableIterator, RemovableSettableIterator , etc. The combinations grow exponentially to the extra features we add to the interface. What we are usually trying to express is something like 'this function requires a parameter which is Iterable, Settable and Ressetable' or 'this function returns a value which is Iterable and Resettable'. Yet languages like C#, Java and C++ do not allow us to do this without very awkward use of generics. Are there recent methods that make this kind of design obsolete?"}
{"_id": "74955", "title": "Which UML colors should this example be represented by?", "text": "See UML colors here. Here is the example, I have following entity classes:               User(name)          MailBox(owner: User, label)          Mail(from: User, to: User, subject, body, composeTime)          MailCopy(type, from: User, to: User, subject, body)          MailDelivery(mailCopy, mailBox)      Use case: Every users have three mailboxes by default: `MailBox(*, draft)`, `MailBox(*, received)` and `MailBox(*, sent)`. `User(alice)` composed a new `Mail(alice, bob, hello, world)`, and clicked the \"send\" button. A new `MailCopy(SOURCE, alice, bob, hello, world)` is created and delivered to the `MailBox(alice, sent)`, and another copy `MailCopy(DEST, alice, bob, hello, world)` is created and delivered to the `MailBox(bob, received)`. I want to know how to classify these entities according to the UML colors archetype?"}
{"_id": "85506", "title": "Is there a canonical book on mathematics for programmers?", "text": "I'm a self-taught programmer. I am honestly not good in math. What advice you can give to improve my Mathematical skills so that I will not be so insecure around my fellow programmers? What are the steps or guidelines that you can recommend to improve my mathematical skills? Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on mathematics for programmers? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "125689", "title": "How would you go about education yourself in math in a way that is relevant to programming?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on mathematics for programmers? My undergraduate math educating was mostly breadth with little to know depth. Yes, I passed the tests; i got my As, but I do not feel competent in mathematics. If you were to change that? How would you go about doing it? What books? What order? What would you emphasize? What would you skip altogether?"}
{"_id": "110941", "title": "Is there such a thing as too much asynchronous code?", "text": "I am at the moment messing around with clients and servers in C# winforms and I'm trying to implement it all asynchronously. However, I'm beginning to wonder, should I use asynchronous code for everything? Here's a list of what I'm doing asynchronously at the moment:   1. TcpClient.BeginConnect with TcpClient.EndConnect   2. NetworkStream.BeginRead with NetworkStream.EndRead   3. TcpListener.BeginAcceptTcpClient with TcpListener.EndAcceptTcpClient   4. Listening thread on server for client connections   5. Listening thread on client for incoming data from server   6. Listening Task on server for incoming data from each client   7. New Task created every time an event such as ConnectionLost is raised (so the respective form can update). Think Delegate.BeginInvoke. Everything is set up asynchrously and it works well, but I'm beginning to wonder if all of these _should_ be asynchronous. I mean, it all sounds nice and people claim it to be efficient due to IO completion ports not blocking or something, but is it really? I can understand having a single thread for listening on both the client and server, and for reading it makes sense as well. But every time an event is raised (which may be quite often!), should its invocation really be asynchronous? It seems like I am using Tasks for everything that _can_ be made asynchronous and I'm not sure whether or not that is best practice."}
{"_id": "130870", "title": "Parent and child permission schemes", "text": "Which approach makes most sense to use, the destructive one or the non- destructive one? Does anyone have real-world experience with one, both or even a different approach? **Model** A permission scheme has a set of permissions linked to it. It can also have a parent from which it inherits permissions. **Destructive** Taking away permissions from a parent scheme also takes away those permissions in any child scheme. Reason to use this: when later re-enabling those permissions for a parent scheme, they are not automatically re-enabled for child schemes. Reason to not use this: accidently taking away permissions from a parent scheme means the permissions for child schemes have to be restored separatly. **Non-destructive** Taking away permissions from a parent scheme has no effect on child schemes. The parent and child schemes are combined to determine the correct permissions. Reason to use this: accidently taking away permissions from a parent scheme does not require the child schemes to be restored separatly. Reason to not use this: when later re-enabling those permissions for a parent scheme, they are automatically re-enabled for child schemes."}
{"_id": "110944", "title": "what is \"graceful degradation\"?", "text": "I hear a lot about this term \"Graceful degradation\". For example ,                \"An application server should gracefully degrage when it is under heavy load \"            \"Graceful degradation of user interfaces.... \"      The term looks like an abstract thing to me. Any concrete example of what it means?"}
{"_id": "210900", "title": "How to Implement Error Handling", "text": "Even though I've programmed on a professional level for some years I still do not fully understand error handling. Although my applications work fine, the error handling isn't implemented at a professional level and is a mix and match of a number of techniques. There is no structure behind my error handling. I'd like to learn and understand how it's implemented at a professional level. This is one area where I lack knowledge. When should I use an exceptions and when should I return a success status, to be checked in the logic flow? Is it OK to mix exception and returning a status? I code in C# mainly."}
{"_id": "189361", "title": "Building automated unit tests for tools which don't have an xUnit implementation", "text": "# Preamble I have been bitten by the bug of automated unit testing. I feel the benefits and the confidence in a code base it can deliver. I am also feel I have a reasonable intuition as to what parts of the code _deserve_ to be unit tested. Code that has logic, code that might be messy (because it's dealing with some messy requirements) that you are happy to have encapsulated, that may have a few odd fringe conditions. # Unusual Context At my place of work, we leverage a number of tools which are fairly niche. For the sake of argument I can certainly see that these tools deliver on features and efficiencies making them indispensable for getting their particular job done. The challenge I have is that I certainly have implemented logic in these tools which my gut says \"this should be covered with a unit test\". I have tested these bits of code...   * In a throwaway fashion - try several inputs to exercise the code until satisfied it works - this has the downside of being lost effort when it comes to people maintaining the code in the future   * In a less throwaway but manual fashion - writing up the test cases and steps to poke the code to produce output; with test data; such that the above throwaway tests are not thrown away - this retains the investment in time, but is slow and subject to people knowing about the tests and running them   * In a slightly more automated fashion - with scripts to do the poking of the code; perhaps even check the output to a degree - this is more pleasant to re-run but is far from leveraging a mature framework in a consistent manner like when writing the xUnit style tests While the progression feels nice, I feel I'm missing the xUnit experience I've become a fan of. # What kind of languages/platforms exactly am I dealing with here?   * An ETL tool, akin to SSIS, called RedPoint Data Management: not open source so I'll describe, it has projects which have tools, these tools are linked by data flows, and some have some logic I wish to unit test   * A composition tool, this for the uninitiated is a product which takes a data file and outputs a print file. Imagine XML in, PDF out.   * DOS script functions: I promise this is a real feature of good'ol'fashioned DOS scripts, tutorial here   * (I'll add this to the list, not strictly what I need help with, but may be more clear than the above if my tool set is difficult to empathise with) COBOL data transformations, using CopyBooks to specify the formats of the flat file inputs and outputs. When compiled results in one big-ball-of-mud binary even if functionally decomposed inside # The Actual Question Are xUnit style tests fundamentally aimed at Object Oriented languages?"}
{"_id": "189360", "title": "Optimal Data Structure for our own API", "text": "I'm in the early stages of writing an Emacs major mode for the Stack Exchange network; if you use Emacs regularly, this will benefit you in the end. In order to minimize the number of calls made to Stack Exchange's API (capped at 10000 per IP per day) and to just be a generally responsible citizen, I want to cache the information I receive from the network and store it in memory, waiting to be accessed again. I'm really stuck as to what data structure to store this information in. Obviously, it is going to be a list. However, as with any data structure, the choice must be determined by what data is being stored and what how it will be accessed. What, I would like to be able to store all of this information in a single symbol such as `stack-api/cache`. So, without further ado, `stack- api/cache` is a list of conses keyed by last update:               `(<csite> <csite> <csite>)      where `<csite>` would be               (1362501715 . <site>)      At this point, all we've done is define a simple association list. Of course, _we must go deeper_. Each `<site>` is a list of the API parameter (unique) followed by a list questions:               `(\"codereview\" <cquestion> <cquestion> <cquestion>)      Each `<cquestion>` is, you guessed it, a cons of questions with their last update time:               `(1362501715 <question>) (1362501720 . <question>)      `<question>` is a cons of a `question` structure and a list of answers (again, consed with _their_ last update time):               `(<question-structure> <canswer> <canswer> <canswer>      and `               `(1362501715 . <answer-structure>)      This data structure is likely most accurately described as a tree, but I don't know if there's a better way to do this considering the language, Emacs Lisp (which isn't all that different from the Lisp you know and love _at all_ ). The explicit conses are likely unnecessary, but it helps my brain wrap around it better. I'm pretty sure a `<csite>`, for example, would just turn into               (<epoch-time> <api-param> <cquestion> <cquestion> ...)      **Concerns:**   * Does storing data in a potentially huge structure like this have any performance trade-offs for the system? I would like to avoid storing extraneous data, but I've done what I could and I don't think the dataset is that large in the first place (for normal use) since it's all just human-readable text in reasonable proportion. _(I'm planning on culling old data using the times at the head of the list; each inherits its last-update time from its children and so-on down the tree. To what extent this cull should take place: I'm not sure.)_   * Does storing data like this have any performance trade-offs for that which must use it? That is, will set and retrieve operations suffer from the size of the list? Do you have any other suggestions as to what a better structure might look like?"}
{"_id": "61236", "title": "Other than the Linux kernel, which operating system kernels should you study?", "text": "The Linux kernel is often listed as a code base which you are recommended to read and, even if it is poorly commented (or the files I have looked at have all been), it does have some really good code in it. Now, putting the Linux kernel aside, which other operating system kernels do you recommend people interested in systems programming and/or operating systems to study? **Why?** What is so great about the code base? Would it show you very different approaches from what the Linux kernel has gone with? Do they use interesting technologies? Something else...? That the kernels are under an open source license is more or less necessary."}
{"_id": "71920", "title": "What are some good open source c++ packages to study in order to learn advanced software construction?", "text": "I've heard that you should read 10 times more than you should write. This applies to both literature and source code. Therefore, I'd like to study the best c++ packages we've developed. I'm interested in discovering extremely high quality software packages that use c++, c and assembly. This begs the question, \"What determines high quality?\". Well, that's kind of up to you. Could you provide a bulleted list of **_your reasons for choosing your packages_** and also **_the list of open source c++ packages_**. For example my list of qualities that I think make good software are:   * Well commented (with full javadoc comments for every function, method and class signature)   * Well organized (files broken up into logical, manageable pieces)   * Well documented (a reasonable amount of up to date, bug free documentation. Hopefully with some documentation on the high level structure)   * Well named classes and variables (succinct, verbose variable names; this should reduce the need for inline comments, however inline comments are always welcomed; no single-letter variables)   * Should have unit tests.   * Consistent style and formatting.   * Hopefully demonstrates clean and recommended usage of a good library like Boost, Qt, STL, etc. My list of packages is:   * TrueCrypt (Though is doesn't have full javadoc signatures)   * Chrome   * OpenSceneGraph I'm aware of this post. It's two years old and doesn't have the list of reasons. Thank you very much for your contributions, in advance. :-) UPDATE: I've created a github repository will all of the packages listed below. I'll continue to update it as more are added. https://github.com/homer6/c_reading"}
{"_id": "77757", "title": "Difference between a pseudo code and algorithm?", "text": "Technically, Is there a difference between these two words or can we use them interchangeably? Both of them more or less describe the logical sequence of steps that follow in solving a problem. ain't it? SO why do we actually use two such words if they are meant to talk of the same? Or, In case if they aren't synonymous words, What is it that differentiates them? In what contexts are we supposed to use the word pseudo code vs the word algorithm?"}
{"_id": "22019", "title": "What's the cheapest way to host hobby projects?", "text": "What's the best place to put your hobby web projects(the web app itself, not the code) ? Typically, the projects are such that: a) I just want to test out an interesting idea without exploring the business angle to it, just to see how people take it. b) I don't expect a lot of traffic c) I don't want to scale immediately d) I don't want to be tied down to one technology(I want to do different projects to get familiar with various web stacks, langs and libs) Google app engine seems very restrictive for such exploratory stuff ... Restrictions like no outbound request can go beyond 10 seconds and every request has to return with 30 seconds, etc. piss me off, I know they are needed for scale, but I would like them to be optional. Amazon EC2 micro nodes are free for a year. But they ask for credit card information which I am not sure if I want to give away when I'm not paying initially. What other free/cheap alternatives do I have?"}
{"_id": "73072", "title": "Make my project Open Source but protect my Company", "text": "My Company is developing a web application, similar to GMail or Remember the Milk. We are on the verge of releasing the source code under AGPL. We are just afraid somebody will take the code and set up as a competitor. What can we do to prevent that? We were thinking to keep the code that powers our API closed, as it is the most important asset of the Company. We don't like that very much, so we would like to find alternative routes."}
{"_id": "73070", "title": "What's your approach to assuming someone else's project?", "text": "I think this is a fairly common and challenging topic for anyone that has ever inherited code from another programmer or team. I can think of two common scenarios in my professional career that I've run into; diving into an open source project, and strictly inheriting the code of an individual's project. I'm coming up on the latter and will be inheriting a project created by an individual, and while thinking about how to best approach this, I figured I would ask for the intelligence of p.se so I can learn from your experiences. When Magento (large scale eCommerce application) came out, I was really lost in the Zend framework. There was little documentation out during alpha, so it was hard to use the community resources. I ended up using `grep` a lot and back tracing methods to get a firm understanding of what it does. By doing that, I eventually learned more about the application design, although it did take a little while. What is your approach when you're up against a project that has little documentation? I feel like it is almost finishing the painting of someone else, which is always an interesting task."}
{"_id": "77750", "title": "JRE for 64-bit and 64-bit Java?", "text": "FWIK Java can run on 64-bit system, no problem. I'd like to know how Java support 64-bit features, e.g., `System.identityHashCode()` returns a 32-bit int, it's common to see the object pointer (memory address) is returned. Should 64-bit Java returns long instead? If not, how would Java scale to 64-bit systems?"}
{"_id": "198044", "title": "Order collisions in ecommerce", "text": "Suppose I have a web app where sellers add their products and set them as available for sale. Then I show a list of products in my mobile app, where I get products via my REST API. My problem: suppose two clients view the same product(and there's only 1 item available from the seller) and they make simultaneous order. How do I resolve such collision? My technology stack: RoR, PostgreSQL, heroku."}
{"_id": "141330", "title": "User input and automated input separation", "text": "I have a MySQL database and an automation script which modifies the data inside once a day. And these columns may have changed by an user manually. What is the best approach to make the system only update the automated data, not the manually edited ones? I mean yes, flagging the cell which is manually edited is one way to do it, but I want to know if there's another way to accomplish this? Just curiosity. BTW, the question is about cell values, not rows."}
{"_id": "141331", "title": "Continuous integration (with iOS and Android projects)", "text": "I'm trying to make some positive changes in my company and one of the changes is implementing continuous integration. We do mobile development (iOS/Android) so I need a CI that supports both types of projects. As you can tell I don't know a lot about CI but I've googled a little bit and I think that Jenkins and Hudson are the two most popular. I have a two part questions.   1. Your thought on Jenkins?   2. Is there a way for CI to check if the project is compiling to the   coding standards (like loose coupling and so on)?"}
{"_id": "77758", "title": "Why are there multiple Unicode encodings?", "text": "I thought Unicode was designed to get around the whole issue of having lots of different encoding due to a small address space (8 bits) in most of the prior attempts (ASCII, etc.). Why then are there so many Unicode encodings? Even multiple versions of the (essentially) same one, like UTF-8, UTF-16, etc."}
{"_id": "93681", "title": "Storing T&C acceptance in database - best practice", "text": "I wondered if anyone could advise on the best way of storing a users acceptance of the Terms and Conditions in the database. I am in the UK if this changes anything. I have had the T&Cs drawn up by a UK Lawyer so don't need any advice on that part! At the moment I am thinking at the time of signup having a checkbox saying \"I agree to the [linked] terms and conditions\" and making sure this is checked to sign them up. In the database I will have a boolean saying True and also a Timestamp along with the email address they used to signup. Is this enough, if a user ever decided they wanted to challenge their acceptance is this recognised as proof? I have been able to find very little, if no, information about this on the web."}
{"_id": "165349", "title": "What's a good, quick algorithms refresh?", "text": "I have programming interviews coming up in a couple weeks. I took an algorithms class a while ago but likely forgot some key concepts. I'm looking for something like a very short book ( **< 100 pages**) on algorithms to get back up to speed. Sorting algorithms, data structures, and any other essentials should be included. It doesn't have to be a book...just looking for a great way to get caught up in about a week. What's the best tool for a **quick** algorithms intro or refresher?"}
{"_id": "93684", "title": "Questions about TDD and unit testing", "text": "I am a junior software developer and I have been researching some of the practices in the industry to make myself better. I have been looking at unit testing briefly and I cannot see how the extra time writing a ton of unit tests is going to make my code better. To put things into perspective:   1. The projects I work on are small   2. I am the only developer on the said project (usually)   3. The projects are all bespoke applications The thing I don't get the most is, how can a unit test tell me whether my calculate price function (which can depend on things like the day of the week and bank holidays etc, so assume 20-40 lines for that function) is correct? Would it not be quicker for me to write all the code and the sit through a debugging session to test every eventually of the code? Any examples that are forms-based would be appreciated (examples I have seen from the MSDN videos are all MVC and a waste of time IMHO)."}
{"_id": "165341", "title": "Listing technologies on a resume for a software position when your background is game programming?", "text": "So I'm thinking about applying for a entry level position in the software industry but my limited experience working and all my notable experience in college is with game technologies. Sure, the languages transfer over well but most of the technologies I have experience with are all related to graphics programming, engines of various types, and such, and do not transfer over at all. I feel like it would be inappropriate to just take my game programming resume and basically replace the word game with software for the reasons mentioned but on the other hand if I take them out I will only have languages and some technologies that I have some small passing experience with- which will obviously not reflect well on me. Should I leave them out or put them in, and if so how can I spin them to be appropriate?"}
{"_id": "98451", "title": "How Do You Pull Something from a Release?", "text": "Let's say your team is working on 10 features/fixes for a sprint. At the end of the sprint, there are one or two things that the product owner does not accept. But, they would really like the other 8 or 9 to be released. How do you handle this? Using subversion, what would be the best methodology to manage a sprint with the possibility that this could happen?"}
{"_id": "98458", "title": "Reading Java book -- I'm confused on this explanation of the difference between information and data?", "text": "From \"Demystifying Java\".. > For many of us, the terms _information_ and _data_ are synonymous. However, > information and data are distinctly different in programming. Data is the > smallest amount of meaningful information. Can someone please give me an example that could help me out, and perhaps relate to a 14 year old? I _sort of_ understand, but when I try to seperate the two in my head, I'm having problems for some reason (probably thinking of them as the same for my whole life is the reason for this)."}
{"_id": "224925", "title": "Where should I start reading AngularJS's source code?", "text": "After reading this article I realized that I really didn't read any \"serious\" source code during my 3-years as a professional developer. Recently I started a new web-project which makes heavy use of AngularJS, so I decided to start my reading - or, better, _decoding_ [as the blogger wrote] - activity from something that is both challenging and professionally useful. Now I just need to be pointed in the right direction. Should I just start from the start of the source code or is there a better starting point?"}
{"_id": "138729", "title": "How to effectively find, hire and work with contractors?", "text": "I know there are some questions that are sort of similar to this one, but I don't think any of them really ask or answer my set of questions. A bit of background: Approximately 6 mos ago, I went from working for a large, bureaucratic, process-driven software company to a very small start-up. I wanted to work for a smaller, faster team and company -- note: be careful what you wish for! :) Although I have a much fancier title, I am mostly a dev manager (and part-time software architect and technical lead). One of my biggest challenges in my career has always been hiring. On average, I probably get 1 good dev for about every 5 I hire. It's a huge waste of time and money. I find that I still struggle with it, but that now that I work primarily with contractors, the challenges are a bit different (the good news is that contractors are easier to fire than full-time US based employees). First things first... Finding, interviewing and Hiring: What sources do you use? What questions do you ask? Do you ask for references? Do you ask for them to work problems/submit code samples? Note: I never want to risk someone submitting someone else IP, but I have had potential employers in the past ask me to create an app for them to solve a problem, etc. I don't want this to be a cultural thing, but do you ask different questions based on country of origin? Again, I don't want it to turn into don't use contractors from this or that country because they are crap... there are good devs everywhere, but a lot of bad ones, too. Do you find it better to work with individuals or contracting companies? I guess I've spent a lot more time working with larger companies. Once hired, how to effectively work with them? What technologies do you use? For example, I can't imagine trying to do this kind of work without a DVCS. I don't think I'll ever go back to SVN! :) What collaboration tools/websites do you use? Have you had better experiences with fixed priced or hourly contracts? I've managed both and I understand some of the pros and cons of each, but I swear I still haven't figured out which is the better \"bet\" (and yes, it's pretty much a bet in my opinion). I think for me, I need to start hiring hourly because I don't like the control that I seem to give up over the code when it's fixed priced? Do you demand to have access to the code during development so you can review and see if you feel like you are getting quality work? How do you handle poor code? What SLAs do you demand in the contract? For example, unit-test coverage? etc. Finally, I know that most people could take any one of these things and write a bunch on the topic. Please feel free to answer just one part of the question. Or provide a link to a blog post where you think someone has answered a similar set of questions."}
{"_id": "224921", "title": "Naming interfaces for persistent values", "text": "I have 2 distinct types of persistent values that I'm having trouble naming well. They're defined with the following Java-esque structure, borrowing Guava's Optional for the example and using generic names to avoid anchoring:               interface Foo<T> {         T get();         void set(T value);     }          interface Bar<T> {         Optional<T> get();         void set(T value);     }        * With `Foo`, if the value hasn't been set explicitly then there's some default value available or pre-set.   * With `Bar`, if the value hasn't been set explicitly then there's a distinct \"no value\" state. I'm trying to optimize the names for their call sites. For example, someone using `Foo` may not care whether there's a default value involved, only that they're guaranteed to always have a value. How would you go about naming these interfaces?"}
{"_id": "224920", "title": "Is this a design pattern?", "text": "I have following C# code. It helped me to avoid some code repetition in a good way. The `ExecuteQueryGenericApproach<T>` method receives a `Func` generic delegate as argument. The delegated method has a parameter which receives `IDataRecord` as argument. That is, the `ExecuteQueryGenericApproach<T>` method provides the required IDataRecord to the functions passed to it. **QUESTIONS**   1. What is the name of this pattern? (Based on `GoF` design patterns)   2. Is there any other scenario where this pattern is used? **Note** : Knowing the name of this pattern will help me to better research on this and find opportunities to use it. CommonDAL               public class CommonDAL     {         public static IEnumerable<T> ExecuteQueryGenericApproach<T>(string commandText, List<SqlParameter> commandParameters, Func<IDataRecord, T> methodToExecute)         {             string connectionString = @\"Server=XXXX;Database=AS400_Source;User Id=dxxx;Password=xxxx5\";                  //Action, Func and Predicate are pre-defined Generic delegates.             //So as delegate they can point to functions with specified signature.                  using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))             {                 using (SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand())                 {                     command.Connection = connection;                     command.CommandType = CommandType.Text;                     command.CommandText = commandText;                     command.CommandTimeout = 0;                          if (commandParameters != null)                     {                         command.Parameters.AddRange(commandParameters.ToArray());                     }                          connection.Open();                     using (var rdr = command.ExecuteReader())                     {                         while (rdr.Read())                         {                             yield return methodToExecute(rdr);                         }                         rdr.Close();                     }                 }             }         }     }      EmployeeDAL                public class EmployeeRepositoryDAL         {             public static List<Employee> GetEmployees()             {                 string commandText = @\"SELECT E.EmployeeID,E.EmployeeName,R.RoleID,R.RoleName FROM dbo.EmployeeRole ER                                         INNER JOIN dbo.Employee E  ON E.EmployeeID= ER.EmployeeID                                         INNER JOIN dbo.[Role] R ON R.RoleID= Er.RoleID \";                      //IEnumerable<Employee> employees = MyCommonDAL.ExecuteQueryGenericApproach<Employee>(commandText, commandParameters, Employee.EmployeeFactory);                      //Group By is needed for listing all the roles for an employee.                 IEnumerable<Employee> employees = CommonDAL.ExecuteQueryGenericApproach<Employee>(commandText, null, Employee.EmployeeCreator)                                                         .GroupBy(x => new { x.EmployeeID, x.EmployeeName },                                                                 (key, group) =>                                                                                 new Employee                                                                                 {                                                                                     EmployeeID = key.EmployeeID,                                                                                     EmployeeName = key.EmployeeName,                                                                                     Roles = group.SelectMany(v => v.Roles).ToList()                                                                                 }                                                                 ).ToList();                           return employees.ToList();             }                   }      Entity               public class Employee     {         public int EmployeeID { get; set; }         public string EmployeeName { get; set; }         public List<Role> Roles { get; set; }              //IDataRecord Provides access to the column values within each row for a DataReader         //IDataRecord is implemented by .NET Framework data providers that access relational databases.              //Static Method         public static Employee EmployeeCreator(IDataRecord record)         {             var employee = new Employee             {                 EmployeeID = (int)record[0],                 EmployeeName = (string)record[1],                 Roles = new List<Role>()             };                  employee.Roles.Add(new Role { RoleID = (int)record[2], RoleName = (string)record[3] });             return employee;              }     }"}
{"_id": "199309", "title": "What concept am I missing with private methods and testing?", "text": "I've read a lot o blogs arguing about private methods and testing. Some people say you should not test private methods, they say you should make them public or put those methods in a new class. But then, what about encapsulation? let's say:   1. I have this method which is simple enough for not being part of a new class, and    2. It can be useful only for internal stuff, so there's not a good reason to make it public. My general rule about methods being public or private is simple, if it's useful outside it's public, if it's useful just inside then it's private. Am I missing something with this logic?"}
{"_id": "100958", "title": "Is it wise to accept for a backend developer to work only on the Front end part of the application only because you even know it well?", "text": "I am a python developer , i have experience in developing web applications using python. Since i deal with web , i have to know some knowledge about the front end part , hence i even learned HTML, CSS & JS. I have chosen python as my career domain. I recently moved onto a new R & D company , they hired me as a python developer with a huge package and gave me a web application to develop. They doesn't had any designer to work on the front end part , so in my first few weeks i developed its design and i started developing the application by myself doing the front end and the back end. Everyone were very much impressed about the design and the flow of the application on the front end part. In two months i almost finished 30% of the work. So far everything was good. Suddenly they hired a new guy who have experience in Perl for another project and since the manager wanted to finish off my project soon he asked the perl guy to work temporarily on the back end part of my app ( Python ) and asked me to do the only the Front end part. Now i feel like this will degrade my profile. Since i have not given any python work as of now. They hired me as a python developer and since i took initiative and did the front end of app , so that i wanted my product to look good. And now since they all liked the way i did its design they now made me a full time front end developer. **Few Details About Me:** Before getting in this company i had got 5 offers for python job including some of the giant companies but i chose this since this was only the R & D company and even the highest package. And this company had conducted around 4 rounds for python and after selecting me they had said that they were waiting for a guy like me for the past six months. All of the people who interviewed me for python were from other team. Then once i started developing the project i came to know python work is somewhat less compared to the front end js part , since it is a whole SPI application with fully ajax driven. And in my previous company i used to do even the JS and the back end python for my projects. Since i am doing the python part , i felt good working in that way. Then in the new company also am working in the same way , but since now the manager came to know that python has less work , he asked a less experienced guy to take care of it. So that the project will get finished soon. The manager is thinking only about finishing the project , he is not caring about we employees and our main domain. **The Reason to choose python:** I think i can say in confidence that i am already expert in the front end side , but i feel like python is a huge side , and i may require many more years experience to get expert in it. And python is the domain which has given me a rapid boost in my career , when i compare with my friends in other web technologies like php. What my heart says is become expert in python in its every field. Please any one suggest me how will i deal with this? Do i need to inform manager anything of how i feel? Do these product companies work in this way? Should i switch my job?"}
{"_id": "100956", "title": "What kind of licensing is required for Visual FoxPro?", "text": "I am thinking of developing customized software for desktops in Visual FoxPro 9 and want to know what type of licensing is required. As a developer, would I need to have a Visual FoxPro 9 license and would my users need to have the End User License? What type of licenses would be needed for commercial release? How would the licensing change if I released this as freeware?"}
{"_id": "224929", "title": "Is CSV a good alternative to XML and JSON?", "text": "Is CSV considered a good option against XML and JSON for programming languages? I generally use XML and JSON (or sometimes a plain text file) as flat file storage. However, recently I came across an CSV implementation in PHP. I generally have seen CSV used for inputs in Excel files though, but I have never used it with programming. Would it be better than XML or JSON in any way?"}
{"_id": "138860", "title": "Why GWT .. what are the advantages?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are proven advantages of tools like GWT over pure JavaScript > frameworks? When should we decide to use GWT, what are it's advantages over normal web app design with html/jsp, css, js etc. Still we need to design our pages, css/styles but cant debug with tools like Firebug ... Seems to be complex Java coding to design web pages - which is ultimately html having never understandable complex javascript. Can we do complex web page design easily with GWT?"}
{"_id": "138724", "title": "Is it considered best practice to dynamically bind return types from the Entity context?", "text": "MyDbEntities context = new MyDbEntities();     var result = context.StoredProcedureName(userId);      In the situation above, is it considered best practice to use `var` or `ObjectResult<ComplexType>`?"}
{"_id": "130257", "title": "Optimistic work sharing on sparsely distributed systems", "text": "What would a system like BOINC look like if it were written today? At the time BOINC was written, databases were the primary choice for maintaining a shared state and concurrency among nodes. Since then, many approaches have been developed for tasking with optimistic concurrency (OT, synchronization primitives like vector clocks, virtual synchrony, shared iterators etc.) Is there a paradigm for optimistically distributing units of work on sparsely distributing systems which communicate through message passing? Sorry if this is a bit vague. P.S. The concept of Tuple-spaces is great, but locking is inherent to its definition. **Edit2** : The entire system is sparsely distributed - they can communicate only through WAN. And communication _can_ be slow and faulty. The question is about how to best distribute units of work among them without a central co-ordinator and with as little consensus as possible (because consensus is expensive). The answers here seem to be talking about databases - data isn't the problem. The problem is in distributing work. **Edit** : I already have a federation system which works well. I'm looking to extend it to get clients to do units of work."}
{"_id": "27454", "title": "Should I focus on being deep or broad", "text": "I have been a professional developer for just over half a year and have been amazed at how big the world really is out of college. I have continued to learn in my free time but I am wondering where should I focus? FOCUS 1) The development stack used by my company. Quickest payoff in my day to day development. #Deepest FOCUS 2) A different language with the same paradigm. See if I can generalize my knowledge and way of thinking. FOCUS 3) Different language, different paradigm. Expand my borders and learn new ways to do things. #Broadest If anyone has a different focus feel free to put that out there."}
{"_id": "132173", "title": "Coding in known language or learning a new one in free time?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should I focus on being deep or broad Doing which of {coding,learning} will you recommend for a programmer in his/her free time? Of course,this question is valid in case of coders who are able to do reasonable things in at least one mainstream language.The reasons why I'm asking this question are,   * Coding will improve skills on the language already learned, but there will be situations in which we have to use other languages.   * If one learns a new language,instead of using what he/she learned, it will cause losing at least some knowledge on the language already learned.   * No doubt,no one can completely learn a language,so moving to a new language may make him/her nothing"}
{"_id": "141654", "title": "is it better to spend my free time mastering a language I work with or learning a new one?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should I focus on being deep or broad I work full time on an android project and am very comfortable with both java and the android framework. On a good day, I would rate my abilities at an 8, and maybe a 7 on a bad day. I've recently found myself with more free time then I'm used too, so I have been working on a lot of personal projects. I am beginning to wonder what others think about this; is it worth my time to continue experimenting and pushing Android, or would I be better off learning another language? What do you all think about this? What would you do with more free time and energy than you know what to do with?"}
{"_id": "130250", "title": "Why doesn't \"object reference not set to an instance of an object\" tell us which object?", "text": "We're launching a system, and we sometimes get the famous exception `NullReferenceException` with the message `Object reference not set to an instance of an object`. However, in a method where we have almost 20 objects, having a log which says an object is null, is really of no use at all. It's like telling you, when you are the security agent of a seminar, that a man among 100 attendees is a terrorist. That's really of no use to you at all. You should get more information, if you want to detect which man is the threatening man. Likewise, if we want to remove the bug, we do need to know which object is null. Now, something has obsessed my mind for several months, and that is: **Why doesn't .NET give us the name, or at least the type of the object reference, which is null?**. Can't it understand the type from reflection or any other source? Also, what are the best practices to understand which object is null? Should we always test nullability of objects in these contexts manually and log the result? Is there a better way? **Update:** The exception `The system cannot find the file specified` has the same nature. You can't find which file, until you attach to the process and debug. I guess these types of exceptions can become more intelligent. Wouldn't it be better if .NET could tell us `c:\\temp.txt doesn't exist.` instead of that general message? As a developer, I vote yes."}
{"_id": "181154", "title": "Type systems: nominal vs. structural, explicit vs. implicit", "text": "I'm a bit confused about the difference between nominal and structural type systems. Can someone please explain how they differ? From what I understand:   * Nominal: Type compatibility is based on type name.   * Structural: Type compatibility is based on the type structure, e.g. in C if 2 variables are struct types with different names but the same structure, then their types are compatible. Now about explicit and implicit: why is it different from static and dynamic typing? In static typing, types will be explicit while in dynamic typing, types are implicit. Am I right?"}
{"_id": "181157", "title": "How to program thread allocation on multicore processors?", "text": "I would like to experiment with threads on a multi-core processor, e.g. to create a program that uses two different threads that are executed by two different processor cores. However, it is not clear to me at which level the threads get allocated to the different cores. I can imagine the following scenarios (depending on operating system and programming language implementation):   1. Thread allocation is managed by the operating system. Threads are created using OS system calls and, if the process happens to run on a multi-core processor, the OS automatically tries to allocate / schedule different threads on different cores.   2. Thread allocation is managed by the programming language implementation. Allocating threads to different core requires special system calls, but the programming language standard thread libraries automatically handle this when I use the standard thread implementation for that language.   3. Thread allocation must be programmed explicitly. In my program I have to write explicit code to detect how many cores are available and to allocate different threads to different core using, e.g., library functions. To make the question more specific, imagine I have written my multi-threaded application in Java or C++ on Windows or Linux. Will my application magically see and use multiple cores when run on a multi-core processor (because everything is managed either by the operating system or by the standard thread library), or do I have to modify my code to be aware of the multiple cores?"}
{"_id": "181150", "title": "Difference between language virtual machine and emulating vm?", "text": "I'm having a hard time understanding the difference between an emulation virtual machine and a language vm. I started with the research and implementation of an emulation virtual machine. Primarily emulating quite old 16-bit architectures. I want to get the basics down for a language virtual machine. Are both systems similar? Do they both use register-based architectures and stack-based? I'm under the impression a language VM is basically a run time environment. Depending on the complexity of the VM, it may have a garbage collector, JIT compiler, etc... Would that assumption be correct? EDIT: I'm also talking about bytecode VMs, but native machine code works too."}
{"_id": "128468", "title": "Books that every software system architect/data modeller must read", "text": "I hope I'm not confusing the term system architecture with the data model/database. Is there a book out there that's the standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on designing the architecture and the data model for a web-based application? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "220208", "title": "Cost Benefit Analysis of choice of javascript framework for excel-like web app", "text": "I am engaged by a telco company sales team to develop a web application to replace their current workflow. Their current workflow consists of many spreadsheets containing product, pricing, and sales data. I have successfully done this, but they continuously want me to allow them to download certain data into excel files for them to view. I appreciate why they want this because a) sometimes they want a lot of data and pagination on the web app just does not work for them. b) they have been so used to Excel and its functions that it is hard to wean them off it completely. As a vendor, I want to marry the convenience of both Excel and a web application, that I ended up surfing for javascript frameworks that allow me to simulate an Excel software on the web app. My web application is developed in CakePHP 2.4.2 using MySQL as the database. I have narrowed down to 2 choices: dhtmlx and wijmo. This web application is hosted within the company's intranet system. The top Excel features I noticed the sales team is using:   1. They want tabs   2. They want to be able to see the formula bar so that they know why a figure is 1,789.45 for e.g.   3. They want to be able to select a bunch of cells and then find out either the sum of the figures in the cells or the count.   4. They want to be able to do sorting and filtering the way it is done in Excel with checkboxes. See the attached screenshot. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RlkPm.png) Although I have narrowed my choice to these 2 javascript libraries, I am open to other choices. Another important thing is that the library must be as simple for a beginner me to write the application as possible."}
{"_id": "93350", "title": "Is it legal or good idea to have a backup of all client sites on my own server", "text": "I have seen many times that if we build a website for a client then there is a possibility that this site gets changed over a period of time. I was thinking that from now onwards whichever site I make I will host a copy of the site on a personal server. Like `client1.myserver.com` so that even if they change it I have the copy of it. So that if I need to show someone or I need to refer myself few things I have the proof there. I will not make them public but will password protect it. I want to know whether this is legal and a good idea or not."}
{"_id": "128461", "title": "Strictly from an employability perspective, what is the best web development framework to learn right now?", "text": "Even though Ruby on Rails seems to be the most popular with the most job openings, is there a compelling employability reason to learn django for example? Maybe because everybody's learning RoR and there's a shortage of django developers in relation to the demand? Or is php along with a popular php framework the way to go simply because of the sheer volume of php related jobs out there?"}
{"_id": "128462", "title": "Evidence of Bad Design: Updating feature A breaks/interferes with existing feature B", "text": "I am working on a Javascript Web App & I am finding as I expand the program & add new features(new animations) it causes existing features to break or work differently than prior to adding that new feature. So as I continue to finish the app, it keeps breaking old features & I have to go back & redo/update those features. So it seems I never complete a feature because I am always coming back to it so I can get it to work nicely with other features. Is this indicative of bad application design? Or is this a normal feature of computer programming, ie just like how in any program you will spend 20% of time developing the program & 80% of the time fixing bugs(or is it maintaining the program?)? **Are there design &/or any other techniques I can employ to avoid having this problem occur?** The application is a renderer (which takes an XML file which contains information about objects that perform animations - move around, fade etc.) that creates HTML elements & animates them. The design is OOP, with as close as you can get to classes in Javascript by using prototype. It employs ALOT of multiple inheritence. It also makes use of the anonymous functions where possible so I think it would be very much like a Java project because they both have OOP, anon functions & inheritence. There is a class purely dedicated towards animation called AnimatedObject & many objects inherit from this class. You just perform an animation by simply calling a function from that class such as myAnimObj.performFade() or myAnimObj.performRotate()."}
{"_id": "122608", "title": "Clang warning flags for Objective-C development", "text": "As a C & Objective-C programmer, I'm a bit paranoid with the compiler warning flags.   I usually try to find a complete list of warning flags for the compiler I use, and turn most of them on, unless I have a really good reason not to turn it on. I personally think this may actually improve coding skills, as well as potential code portability, prevent some issues, as it forces you to be aware of every little detail, potential implementation and architecture issues, and so on... It's also in my opinion a good every day learning tool, even if you're an experienced programmer. For the subjective part of this question, I'm interested in hearing other developers (mainly C, Objective-C and C++) about this topic.   Do you actually care about stuff like pedantic warnings, etc? And if yes or no, why? Now about Objective-C, I recently completely switched to the LLVM toolchain (with Clang), instead of GCC. On my production code, I usually set this warning flags (explicitly, even if some of them may be covered by -Wall):   * -Wall   * -Wbad-function-cast   * -Wcast-align   * -Wconversion   * -Wdeclaration-after-statement   * -Wdeprecated-implementations   * -Wextra   * -Wfloat-equal   * -Wformat=2   * -Wformat-nonliteral   * -Wfour-char-constants   * -Wimplicit-atomic-properties   * -Wmissing-braces   * -Wmissing-declarations   * -Wmissing-field-initializers   * -Wmissing-format-attribute   * -Wmissing-noreturn   * -Wmissing-prototypes   * -Wnested-externs   * -Wnewline-eof   * -Wold-style-definition   * -Woverlength-strings   * -Wparentheses   * -Wpointer-arith   * -Wredundant-decls   * -Wreturn-type   * -Wsequence-point   * -Wshadow   * -Wshorten-64-to-32   * -Wsign-compare   * -Wsign-conversion   * -Wstrict-prototypes   * -Wstrict-selector-match   * -Wswitch   * -Wswitch-default   * -Wswitch-enum   * -Wundeclared-selector   * -Wuninitialized   * -Wunknown-pragmas   * -Wunreachable-code   * -Wunused-function   * -Wunused-label   * -Wunused-parameter   * -Wunused-value   * -Wunused-variable   * -Wwrite-strings I'm interested in hearing what other developers have to say about this. For instance, do you think I missed a particular flag for Clang (Objective-C), and why?   Or do you think a particular flag is not useful (or not wanted at all), and why? **EDIT** To clarify the question, note that `-Wall` only provides a few basic warnings.   They are actually a lot more warning flags, not covered by `-Wall`, hence the question, and the list I provide."}
{"_id": "141594", "title": "How does one pronounce \"cron\" as in \"cron job\"?", "text": "Before someone ban-hammers this question as they do with all other pronunciation questions, let me explain its relevance. Verbal communication among co-workers and partners is important; today I was on a conference call with people discussing what I thought was something to do with \"Chrome\", as in Google Chrome. I pronounce the \"cron\" in \"cron job\" with a short O, much like \"tron\", \"gone,\" or \"pawn\", but this individual pronouced it with a long O, as in \"hone\", \"bone\", or \"stone\" (notice the e at the end of all those!). Is there a _standard_ pronunciation? Or is this a matter of opinion. For example, there's nothing ambiguous about the pronunciation of \"Firefox\", but debate is raging over \"potato\" and \"tomato\"."}
{"_id": "246419", "title": "Dynamic query in Mysql", "text": "I'm doing a J2EE web application with Struts2, Mybatis and a MySQL database, so what I want to allow to the user is to be free to choose different parameters to perform a select to a table in the database. For example, I have a Table called SALES, so I want to that the user select different parameters according to what he needs. Maybe, he wants to filter by dates and the employee name, and then he want to filter just by customer and so on. Should I show all the necessary data to filter on the client side with js, or can I do a query to several tables after the user choose the parameters? if that is possible, how should I write the query with parameters that could be present or not?"}
{"_id": "122601", "title": "peer to peer inside a web browser", "text": "I've built peer to peer app a while ago in QT and C, but I had to build the whole thing with a friend of mine. I'm wondering if it possible to build such an application in web browser. Is there an opensource lib, API or anything that could help me achieve that on a browser?"}
{"_id": "177", "title": "What are your thoughts about the Actor Model?", "text": "The Actor Model which is used by Erlang seems to be a very different way to do concurrent programming. What are your thoughts about the Actor Model? Will it be a popular solution for concurrency?"}
{"_id": "85426", "title": "Can PHP be used for desktop application development?", "text": "I want to know whether it is possible to develop desktop applications using the PHP language. In my case, I have never developed one with it. If it possible, please give me referral link or detailed understanding of where i can improve my skills."}
{"_id": "74223", "title": "Introducing a new JVM programming language into an established enterprise environment", "text": "Imagine that your current workplace is a Java shop. There is a lot of built-up knowledge about the Java language and there is a comprehensive build and deployment process in place to handle everything in a smooth and Agile manner. One day, a project comes along that just screams out to be written in, say, Ruby. Only the senior developers have any clue about Ruby but there's a general notion that since JRuby exists for the JVM then existing infrastructure could continue to be used and supported. Also, JRuby could show the way to a better way of implementing the current applications with less code so this could represent an ongoing migration. Remember that JRuby is just an example, it could equally be Clojure or Groovy or whatever else runs on the JVM. The question is how would you go about introducing this kind of change - if at all?"}
{"_id": "85422", "title": "Well documented open source projects to study for a beginner?", "text": "I've been reading up on/learning C for a week or two and was wondering if anybody could recommend some extremely well documented open-source projects I could study? Things like sourceforge are great and so on, but there's a great deal of things I don't understand about most of the projects on there and could do with a bit more hand-holding to begin with. Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "36303", "title": "Why should you get MCTS certified?", "text": "I just found out about MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist). But why should you become certified? Why not just study the stuff, and don't take the exam. It saves you a few bucks and you know just as much."}
{"_id": "185674", "title": "Is it possible to use GNU GPL for application that has no source?", "text": "I mean, it is possible to create application without source code - for example using HEX editor or some debugger that can assembly instructions (actually every decent debugger can). Creating programs this way is of course hard, but possible for small applications. I even can imagine cases, where it is the only possible way - for example, on some very old hardware where you simply does not have any development tools. For another example - read the article \"Programming in extreme conditions\", published in Assembly programming journal, issue 9 So, what if the author of such application wants to distribute it under GNU GPL?"}
{"_id": "118703", "title": "Where did the notion of \"one return only\" come from?", "text": "I often talk to Java programmers who say \"Don't put multiple return statements in the same method.\" When I ask them to tell me the reasons why, all I get is \"The coding standard says so.\" or \"It's confusing.\" When they show me solutions with a single return statement, the code looks uglier to me. For example:               if (blablabla)        return 42;     else        return 97;      \"This is ugly, you have to use a local variable!\"               int result;     if (blablabla)        result = 42;     else        result = 97;     return result;      How does this 50% code bloat make the program any easier to understand? Personally, I find it harder, because the state space has just increased by another variable that could easily have been prevented. Of course, normally I would just write:               return (blablabla) ? 42 : 97;      But the conditional operator gets even less love among Java programmers. \"It's incomprehensible!\" Where did this notion of \"one return only\" come from, and why do people adhere to it rigidly?"}
{"_id": "77530", "title": "Best practices concerning exit in Delphi", "text": "A co-worker and myself are having a debate on whats best. Both concepts work and work well but is there a general consensus on not making a call to exit? Whats better? To call exit within a procedure to avoid doing the rest of the code as in ...               if Staging.Current = nil then exit            DoSomethingA(FileNameA);       DoSomethingB(FileNameB);       Staging.DeleteCurrent;      or to not call exit and instead wrap it in a begin and end               if Staging.Current <> nil then       begin          DoSomethingA(FileNameA);         DoSomethingB(FileNameB);         Staging.DeleteCurrent;        end;      Both work. I prefer to use the exit statement since it results in fewer lines of code and looks cleaner to me, but is there any reason or any consensus among programmers to avoid using exit to leave a procedure?"}
{"_id": "233410", "title": "Python - only one return per method?", "text": "I'm trying to sort out whether this is just a personal preference thing or whether it's actually bad practice to do this one way or another. I did try to reference PEP8 first, and I did not see an answer. What I'm talking about here is the use of more than one `return` statement. In these examples, it's not _such_ a big deal, as they are very short and easily read.               def foo(obj):         if obj.condition:             return True         return False          def bar(obj):         answer = False         if obj.condition:             answer = True         return answer      It bugs me to assign a variable every time `bar()` is called, instead of just determining the answer and returning it. But in a longer function a second `return` might be hidden and so someone reading the code may have not realized that the function might return a value before hitting the end of the line:               def spam(obj):         blurb = \"Francis\"         if obj.condition:             blurb = map(gormf, [z for z in porp(obj)])             return blurb[2]         elif not obj.condition and dreg(obj.jek):             blurb = obj.hats * 17             if blurb % 13: return blurb         else:             blurb = obj.name         return \"Whales and %s\" blurb      That's a terrible function, but I think you see what I'm poking at. So is it preferable to create a function to have a _single, clear exit_ \\- even if it's a few more operations than you actually need? Or should one try to root this out whenever possible in favor of shorter code?"}
{"_id": "18454", "title": "Should I return from a function early or use an if statement?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where did the notion of \"one return only\" come from? I've often written this sort of function in both formats, and I was wondering if one format is preferred over another, and why.               public void SomeFunction(bool someCondition)     {         if (someCondition)         {             // Do Something         }     }      or               public void SomeFunction(bool someCondition)     {         if (!someCondition)             return;              // Do Something     }      I usually code with the first one since that is the way my brain works while coding, although I think I prefer the 2nd one since it takes care of any error handling right away and I find it easier to read"}
{"_id": "198587", "title": "What are the pros and cons of temporary variables vs multiple returns", "text": "Take the following examples:               public static String returnOnce() {         String resultString = null;         if (someCondition) {             resultString = \"condition is true\";         } else {             resultString = \"condition is false\";         }         return resultString;     }          public static String returnMulti() {         if (someCondition) {             return \"condition is true\";         }          return \"condition is false\";     }      Is one approach objectively better than the other, or is it just a matter of preference? The first requires a temporary variable, but has just a single place where the method returns. Does the decision change if the method is more complex with multiple factors that could change the result?"}
{"_id": "250653", "title": "\"Proceed if true\" vs \"stop if false\" in if statements", "text": "While I was writing a private helper method in Java, I needed to add a check for a precondition that would cause the method to do nothing if not met. The last few lines of the method were just off the bottom of the editing area in the IDE, so in an epic display of laziness, I wrote the check like this:               function(){         if (precondition == false){             return;         }         //Do stuff     }      as to opposed finding the end of the block to write a more \"traditional\" statement like this:               function(){         if (precondition == true){             //Do stuff         }     }      This made me wonder: is there a reason to avoid my version in favor of the other, or is it just a stylistic difference? (Assuming they are used in such a way that they are _meant_ to be functionally equivalent)"}
{"_id": "104551", "title": "Should a function use premature returns or wrap everything in if clauses?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where did the notion of \"one return only\" come from? Which is better? I see pros and cons for both, so I can't really decide on which one to stick to. ## Wrap in if clause               function doIt() {        if (successfulCondition) {           whenEverythingGoesWell();        }     }        * **Pro** : Shows programmer's intention through indentation.   * **Con** : Indentation can get really deep if you need to short circuit many times. For example, `doThirdThing()` requires the success of `doSecondThing()`, which in turn requires the success of `doFirstThing()`. This happens a lot in web development where many web services are not reliable.  ## Premature return               function doIt() {        if (!successfulCondition) {           return;        }        whenEverythingGoesWell();     }        * **Pro** : Subversion checkins would be succinct. Sometimes, I see co-workers wrap super long functions in an if clause. The whole shebang gets checked in and makes reading Subversion diffs difficult.   * **Con** : Requires you to read the whole function to figure out the various run paths."}
{"_id": "201320", "title": "function exit condition on parameter consistency check", "text": "When checking for parameter consistency a the top of a function body, what is the best strategy? This one:               protected void function(Object parameter)         if (parameter == null)              return;              //... do things     }      ...or this one:               protected void function(Object parameter)         if (parameter != null) {                 //... do things         }     }"}
{"_id": "74228", "title": "What advantage is there in pairing when programming that there isn't when pairing in other jobs?", "text": "Surely two people sitting together doing countless other jobs you would see the same benefits. Why has programming been singled out for this practice?"}
{"_id": "185672", "title": "kindle paperwhite", "text": "How good is the kindle paperwhite to read programming e-books?, I was looking info but anyone gives any answer from the own experience, and the current answers are outdated (> 2 years) It is a kindle paperwhite recommended as reading tool for developers? I would like to hear people's actual experiences."}
{"_id": "200552", "title": "Which is architecturally correct for Data Access Layer method names - Fetch or Select?", "text": "I have seen the words Fetch and Select used seemingly interchangeably when naming data access layer methods (ex. Person.Select or Person.Fetch). Which one is correct? My instinct is that the point of the data access layer is to abstract data access and thus the term Fetch would be more of an abstraction perhaps than Select would be. But if one can imagine for a moment that SQL was not an existing technology, the term Select on its own might be appropriate."}
{"_id": "135750", "title": "Is there any proprietary PHP MVC framework?", "text": "I was doing a small list of PHP MVC framework (like Zend, CakePHP, Yii etc...) and I noticed that all of them are open source. Then I tried to find some proprietary framework, but my research was unsuccessful. **Is there any proprietary PHP MVC framework? Why they are so few(if there is any)?**"}
{"_id": "135753", "title": "Is specializing beneficial in IT industry?", "text": "For the past few years I started wondering if it makes sense to learn advanced techniques in some fields of IT, or is it better to be just good at everything, and use the simplest code possible everywhere. I will use C++ as a language for comparisons, since I'm a C++ developer. As a C++ developer you can write truly interesting code, ranging from code that looks like C with simple functions all around, to template meta- programming stuff, sometimes intermixed with pure abstract classes. I've started noticing that I'm leaning towards the later lately. The problem is, that with larger solutions programmers are rarely working alone, and most likely skills don't overlap that much either. So some parts of code I write might be confusing to other team members, and the other way around. I might like STL and templates, while other people might prefer pure abstract classes everywhere, others will rely on dynamic_casting, or code generated by VC wizards. While some just enjoy everything written in a very simple, C like manner. This also backfires with the fact that people who haven't worked with, say, with virtual classes, might not even know why the new class they've derived is broken because of simple missing virtual destructor. So the code you write paves a way toward memory leak if some other people decide to reuse your code later on. Do you have experience working in environments with multiple developers with different skill-sets? Do you try to find a common dominator in your environments? Does using the skill-sets of every person even works in larger projects?"}
{"_id": "205700", "title": "If the spec is flawed, should it still be followed?", "text": "I have been assigned to develop an integration to one of my employer's applications to an external system developed by our client. Our client's specification for the integration that has some blatant flaws related to security. The flaws would allow an unauthorized user access to the system to view restricted data. I have pointed out the flaws and their potential security risks if they are implemented as designed, and provided an alternative without the flaw, but (in short) have been told \"do it the way we specified\" by the client. Does a programmer have an ethical responsibility NOT to implement code with known security risks? At what point do a client's requirements outweigh the ethical responsibility we have as software developers to create secure applications?"}
{"_id": "200554", "title": "How my website should use its own API?", "text": "Im building small web-service which will provide my users with data through API. Also, some data will be available right on my website. The question is about how to use my own API? Should my website make a query to, for example, `http://website.com/api/users/?format=json` and then render data? Because I can use standard Django ORM features, but this is not corresponding with using of own API. For more explanation please look this gist: https://gist.github.com/xelblch/bde4c8f107f1ed398a7e update: Imagine that I have a database full of games with release date, game name, game platform etc. And on my own website I will show this games as a list or a grid. Also, this data can be reached through API in JSON format, this data can be updated through API and even deleted. And on my own website I have html forms that allow me to do this actions in a user-friendly way. So how should I access my own API? Via POST request to my API or via django ORM directly to database?"}
{"_id": "139234", "title": "people fork my project but don't fetch from upstream - what can I do?", "text": "Several people have forked my github repo but they have not fetched-merged from upstream. So my original repo has evolved significantly since the fork took place, and meanwhile these people are showing an old outdated version of my work, which kind of makes me look bad (e.g. what they're displaying is incomplete, contains bugs that I've fixed since then, etc.). These people apparently don't understand what a fork is for; they just push the fork button (perhaps as a way of saying \"this is cool\") and then walk away. Ideally what I'd like is for them either to keep their fork updated from upstream or make a significant contribution or delete the fork. Is there anything I can do about this? (There isn't, is there? This is just the price of being open source, isn't it?)"}
{"_id": "200559", "title": "How would you get all your expectations done within a user story?", "text": "I'm setting up some requirements for a software extension and try to use user stories to describe what I want to achieve. > As a creator I want to add a new entry, to let users access it through the > main page. I have the idea of adding an entry via Drag&Drop. My company has some guidelines, to have every command always available via context menu and ribbon. Should I split up my origin story into separate actions?   * As a creator I want to drag a new entry onto the main page, to let users access it.   * As a creator I want to create a new entry on the main page via ribbon, to let users access it.   * As a creator I want to create a new entry on the main page via context menu, to let users access it. That approach would result in at least three user stories per feature what won't feel comfortable to me. I could add these expectations during the discussion, but then it seems like giving a \"way-to-follow\" for developers. So how would I ensure that the required quality/user experience is achieved?"}
{"_id": "205708", "title": "Average video frame size for video codec", "text": "In simple words, is it true that an average size of an encoded video frame would be `FrameSize = BitRate/FrameRate`? Because `BitRate` shows how much data we are transferring per time unit, and `FrameRate` shows how many frames does this time unit contain."}
{"_id": "204075", "title": "Can compilers and interpreters have bugs, and what can we (as users) do to deal with them?", "text": "If a compiler's work is essentially translating source code into machine level code, can there be any glitch in a compiler, i.e. a faulty \"translation?\" The same goes for an interpreter: can it fail to output the required content sometimes? I have not heard of any bugs in compilers/interpreters, but do they exist?"}
{"_id": "87373", "title": "How can I get the business analysts more involved in BDD?", "text": "I am a proponent of Behavior Driven Development, mainly with Cucumber and RSpec, and at my current gig (a Microsoft shop) I am introducing SpecFlow as a tool to help with testing. I'd like to get the business analysts on my team involved in writing the features and scenarios, but they are put off by the \"technical\" aspect of it, meaning creating the files in Visual Studio (or even having Visual Studio on their machines). They want to know if we can put all the scenarios for a feature in Jira. What I'm looking for is suggestions for a workflow that will work well with BA types that are accustomed to project management/work tracking tools like Jira (we also use Greenhopper)."}
{"_id": "87370", "title": "Is there a secure way to add a database troubleshooting page to an application?", "text": "My team makes a product (business management software) that our customers install on their own servers. The product uses a SQL database for data storage and app configuration. There have been quite a few cases where something strange happened in the customer's database (caused by bugs in our app and also sometimes admins who mess with the database). To figure out what is wrong with the data, we have to send SQL scripts to the customer and tell them how to run them on the database server. Then, once we know how to fix it, we have to send another script to repair the data. Is there a secure way to add a page in our application that allows an application admin to enter SQL scripts that read and write directly to the database? Our support team could use that to help customers run these scripts, without needing direct access to the SQL server. My big concerns are that someone might abuse this power to get data they shouldn't have and maybe to erase or modify data that they shouldn't be able to modify. I'm not worried about system admins, because they could find another way to do the same thing. But what if someone else got access to the form? Is there any way to do this kind of thing securely?"}
{"_id": "134409", "title": "what does \"domain\" mean when referring to DDD", "text": "What does the word domain mean regarding driven design/development? Not in terms of semantics or a scholarly definition but in terms of how it modifies processes or philosophies? I was reading a post: Your software-problem-solution approach I came across this buzzword, DDD, and didn't really know what that meant."}
{"_id": "249993", "title": "Is there still any value in learning assembly languages today?", "text": "Specifically for a game programmer. If you really needed some assembly routines you could look for help, whereas back in the 80s/90s it was one of the mainstream languages. I read that compilers can generally equal (or beat) most hand written assembly code, so unless you are an embedded programmer who can only program some device in assembly, for example, is there any real point in learning it nowadays?"}
{"_id": "87379", "title": "OpenCart (GPLv3)", "text": "I'm planning to use OpenCart to build a web site. According to the licence (GPLv3) it's necessary to provide the source code of any modifications made. Is it acceptable to provide this on request or should it be linked to from every page on the shop?"}
{"_id": "134403", "title": "LINQ TO SQL or ADO.NET?", "text": "What is the best choice LINQ TO SQL (.DBML) or using ADO.NET with procedures for a database with 29 tables and about 30 concurrent users that will run the system that I am going to build? I know that ADO.NET is faster than LINQ TO SQL but it is so much simpler to work with LINQ TO SQL. Will LINQ TO SQL handle all the concurrency? Or will there be problems in performance? The system I am going to build will be a WCF service using multiple layers:   * Service layer   * Business    * Repositories   * Data Access Layer"}
{"_id": "138180", "title": "Should a standard include header be specified in each file or as a compiler parameter?", "text": "I've got a file such as this:               #ifndef STDINCLUDE     #define STDINCLUDE          #include <memory>     #include <stdexcept>          #endif      I want this file to be included in every header file, because I use stuff from those headers so much. Is it preferable to include this via compiler options (`-I stdinclude.hpp`), or should I physically include them in each header? (`#include <stdinclude>`). Note that I am attempting to be cross-platform- minded. I use cmake to serve atleast Unix and Windows."}
{"_id": "218306", "title": "Why not expose a primary key", "text": "In my education I have been told that it is a flawed idea to expose actual primary keys (not only DB keys, but all primary accessors) to the user. I always thought it to be a security problem (because an attacker could attempt to read stuff not their own). Now I have to check if the user is allowed to access anyway, so is there a different reason behind it? Also, as my users have to access the data anyway I will need to have a public key for the outside world somewhere in between. Now that public key has the same problems as the primary key, doesn't it? * * * There has been the request of an example on why do that anyway, so here is one. Keep in mind that the question is meant to be about the principle itself not only if it applies in this example. Answers addressing other situations are explicitly welcome. Application (Web, Mobile) that handles activity, has multiple UIs and at least one automated API for intersystem communication (e.G. the accounting department wants to know how much to charge the customer based on what has been done). The Application has multiple customers so separation of their data (logically, the data is stored in the same DB) is a must have of the system. Each request will be checked for validity no matter what. Activity is very fine granular so it is together in some container object, lets call it \"Task\". Three usecases:   1. User A wants to send User B to some Task so he sends him a link (HTTP) to get some Activity done there.   2. User B has to go outside the building so he opens the Task on his mobile device.   3. Accounting wants to charge the customer for the Task, but uses a third party accounting system that automatically loads the Task / Activity by some code that refers to the REST - API of the Application Each of the usecases requires (or gets easier if) the agent to have some addressable identifier for the Task and the Activity."}
{"_id": "218304", "title": "WCF or ASMX WebService", "text": "I have been asked to create a web service that communicates with Auth.NET CIM and Shipsurance API. My web service will be used by multiple applications (one a desktop and another a web application). I am confused whether I should build a WCF or an asmx web service. Auth.NET CIM and Shipsurance API have asmx web services which I would be calling in my newly created web service. So is WCF the right approach or can I stay with asmx?"}
{"_id": "253752", "title": "How to change the state of a singleton in runtime", "text": "Consider I am going to write a simple file based logger `AppLogger` to be used in my apps, ideally it should be a singleton so I can call it via               public class AppLogger {         public static String file = \"..\";              public void logToFile() {             // Write to file         }              public static log(String s) {             AppLogger.getInstance().logToFile(s);         }     }      And to use it               AppLogger::log(\"This is a log statement\");      The problem is, what is the best time I should provide the value of file since it is a just a singleton? Or how to refactor the above code (or skip using singleton) so I can customize the log file path? (Assume I don't need to write to multiple at the same time) p.s. I know I can use library e.g. log4j, but consider it is just a design question, how to refactor the code above?"}
{"_id": "83869", "title": "Interview approaches and questions for a software developer intern", "text": "What are some good ideas, common approaches and appropriate questions that you would bring when interviewing a software development intern to join your team? I really don't have expectations of any kind for this person, I understand that as an intern with no prior work experience that he won't have much to bring to the table. I am more or less looking for a good attitude and somebody willing to learn. What would be appropriate if you intend to put this intern 70/30 (QA Testing/Coding)? Would that be a good internship experience in your opinion?"}
{"_id": "202953", "title": "Placeholders in strings", "text": "I find that I sometimes use placeholders in strings, like this:               $ cat example-apache     <VirtualHost *:80>         ServerName ##DOMAIN_NAME##         ServerAlias www.##DOMAIN_NAME##         DocumentRoot /var/www/##DOMAIN_NAME##/public_html     </VirtualHost>      Now I am sure that it is a minor issue if the placeholder is `##DOMAIN_NAME##`, `!!DOMAIN_NAME!!`, `{{DOMAIN_NAME}}`, or some other variant. However, I now need to standardize with other developers on a project, and we all have a vested interest in having our own placeholder format made standard in the organization. Are there any good reasons for choosing any of these, or others? I am trying to quantify these considerations:   1. **Aesthetics and usability**. For example, `__dict__` may be hard to read as we don't know how many underscores are in there.   2. **Compatibility**. Will some language try to do something funny with `{}` syntax in a string (such as PHP does with `\"Welcome to {$siteName} today!\"`)? Actually, I know that PHP and Python won't, but others? Will a C++ preprocessor choke on `##` format? If I need to store the value in some SQL engine, will it not consider something a comment? Any other pitfalls to be wary of?   3. **Maintainability**. Will the new guy mistake `##SOME_PLACEHOLDER##` as a language construct?   4. **The unknown**. Surely the wise folk here will think of other aspects of this decision that I have not thought of. I might be bikeshedding this, but if there are real issues that might be lurking then I would certainly like to know about them before mandating that our developers adhere to a potentially-problematic convention."}
{"_id": "70835", "title": "How does one think about object oriented design and Aspect oriented Design  for  solution", "text": "I have worked on few projects in which both AOP and Object oriented paradigm were used. But, AOP usage was limited to logging only. I think AOP is a much more powerful technique. My question, to those who have worked with both AOP and OOP paradigm in projects, is, how do they come up with a solution, combining these powerful paradigms. Do they think AOPwise first and then design objects or vice versa. My general question to those who have used AOP extensively is, whether they find it a powerful modularizing technique. If yes, please quote examples."}
{"_id": "203399", "title": "Are the technologies used in an application part of the architecture, or do they represent implementation/detailed design details?", "text": "When designing and writing documentation for a project an architecture needs to be clearly defined: what are the high-level modules of the system, what are their responsibilities, how do they communicate with each other, what protocols are used etc. But in this list, should the concrete technologies be specified or this is actually an implementation detail and need to be specified at a lower level? For example, consider a distributed application that has two modules which communicate asynchronously via AMQP protocol, mediated by a message broker. The fact that these modules use the Spring AMQP library for sending and receiving messages is a fact that needs to be specified in the architecture or is a lower-level detailed design/implementation detail?"}
{"_id": "203398", "title": "How to familiarize myself with Python", "text": "I'm a Python beginner. I started programming with Python 1.5 months back. I downloaded the Python docs and read some parts of the tutorial. I have been programming on codechef.com and solving problems of projecteuler. I am thinking of reading Introduction to algorithms and following this course on MIT opencourse ware as I haven't improved much in programming and I am wasting a lot of time thinking just what should I do when faced with any programming problem. But I think that I still don't know the correct way to learn the language itself. Should I start with the library reference or continue with the Python tutorial? Is learning algorithms useful for languages such as C and not so much for Python as it has \"batteries included\"? Are there some other resources for familiarization with the language and in general for learning to solve programming problems? Or do I need to just devote some more time?"}
{"_id": "70831", "title": "Is objected oriented programming paradigm outdated since it is anti-modular and anti-parallel?", "text": "I have read the controversial article Teaching FP to freshmen posted by Robert Harper who is a professor in CMU. He claimed that CMU would no longer teach object oriented programming in the introductory course sine it is \u201cunsuitable for a modern CS curriculum.\u201d And he claimed that: > Object-oriented programming is eliminated entirely from the introductory > curriculum, because it is both anti-modular and anti-parallel by its very > nature. Why consider OOP as anti-modular and anti-parallel?"}
{"_id": "15874", "title": "Tips on persuading boss that code review is a good thing", "text": "Let's say one works in a hypothetical company that has several developers that rarely worked together on projects and the Boss didn't believe that code reviews are worth the time and cost. What are various arguments that could be presented in this scenario that will portray the benefit of code review? Furthermore, what are the potential arguments against code review here and how can these be countered?"}
{"_id": "15873", "title": "EE vs Computer Science: Effect on Developers' Approaches, Styles?", "text": "Are there any systematic differences between software developers (sw engineers, architect, whatever job title) with an electronics or other engineering background, compared to those who entered the profession through computer science? By electronics background, I mean an EE degree, or a self-taught electronics tinkerer, other types of engineers and experimental physicists. I'm wondering if coming into the software-making professions from a strong knowledge of flip flops, tristate buffers, clock edge rise times and so forth, usually leads to a distinct approach to problems, mindsets, or superior skills at certain specialties and lack of skills at others, when compared to the computer science types who are full of concepts like abstract data types, object orientation, database normalization, who speak of \"closures\" in programming languages - things that make little sense to the soldering iron crowd until they learn enough programming. The real world, I'm sure, offers a wild range of individual exceptions, but for the most part, can you say there are overall differences? Would these have hiring implications e.g. (to make up something) \"never hire an electron wrangler to do database design\"? Could knowing about any differences help job seekers find something appropriate more effectively? Or provide enlightenment or some practical advice for those who find themselves misfits in a particular job role? (Btw, I've never taken any computer science classes; my impression of exactly what they cover is fuzzy. I'm an electronics/physics/art type, myself.)"}
{"_id": "123551", "title": "Rails generators for subscription and payment processing services?", "text": "I've been thinking about making a generator for managing subscriptions with options for a couple different payment processing services, it is something that I would use. Are there any existing examples of this, or any thoughts on a generator. I thought it might work like the scaffold function, similar to the authentication function in nifty-generators. EDIT: Also, It seems that there should be a lot of security concerns when implementing payment processing, having a consistent and common way to generate this would let me make sure best practices and security are followed the same in all my apps."}
{"_id": "137988", "title": "Geo IP data on stackoverflow API?", "text": "Have just looked at stackgeography and at soapi. I cannot see where the geo data comes from as it's not on the soapi. Can anybody shed some light on that? More info on the stackgeography"}
{"_id": "147993", "title": "(How can I / Am I allowed to) Use Google Maps as a Texture on an OpenGL object?", "text": "_**Note** : I asked a very similar question on StackOverflow but did not get much attention, so was directed to http://programmers.stackexchange.com as licensing issues seem to have more interest here..._ I am not an expert in Google Maps policies although I am aware that downloading / caching map tiles is not encouraged at all. In Android, developers were given the MapActivity and MapView classes which attempt to provide all possible services for displaying map tiles and even modifying them on the fly if needed, but they are pretty useless for me as I would like to use map tiles as a texture on a 3D OpenGL object. I'd like to know under which conditions the use of map tiles as an OpenGL texture is allowed. Anyone? _**UPDATE to clarify my question after Gavin's comment:_** **\"Given that the Google Maps API does NOT provide a way to directly access map tiles as low level bitmaps, which is required by OpenGL texturing functions, is there any way to implement this without breaking Google licensing policies?\"**"}
{"_id": "147996", "title": "Learning the Operating Systems concepts and Programming Languages for elderly", "text": "I am not sure if this would be the right forum to ask the question (Please let me know and I will move the question to appropriate forum). I would like to know what can be the best way for elders (in my case, my parents) to learn how to program. I was looking at Qimo 4 kids as a possible platform so that my parents can have a closer look at Linux environments. But it seems like Qimo mostly consists of educational games. I also don't know about which programming language would make the best choice. If anyone can provide me with information on how to go about with this \"project\", that would be grateful!!!"}
{"_id": "253656", "title": "single for-loop runtime explanation problem", "text": "I am analyzing some running times of different for-loops, and as I'm getting more knowledge, I'm curious to understand this problem which I have still yet to find out. I have this exercise called \"How many stars are printed\":               for (int i = N; i > 1; i = i/2) System.out.println(\"*\");      The answers to pick from is ` A: ~log N B: ~N C: ~N log N D: ~0.5N^2` So the answer should be A and I agree to that, but on the other side.. Let's say `N = 500` what would `Log N` then be? It would be 2.7. So what if we say that `N=500` on our exercise above? That would most definitely print more han 2.7 stars? How is that related? Because it makes sense to say that if the for-loop looked like this:               for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)      it would print `N` stars. I hope to find an explanation for this here, maybe I'm interpreting all these things wrong and thinking about it in a bad way. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "237999", "title": "What is the best way to store multilingual data in MongoDB?", "text": "I want to save/serve multilingual data in my CMS application using Mongoose. Is this the correct way?               name: {         global: {             type: String,             default: '',             trim: true,             required: 'Please fill name',         },         en_US: String,         tr_TR: String,         sv_SE: String     }"}
{"_id": "232743", "title": "How do you approach writing a piece of code?", "text": "I'm a junior php/js developer and have been working for about a year. When I start working on a task I tend to have a quick think about what needs to be done then jump straight in, in a somewhat brute force approach. However I think this hinders my productivity since I haven't defined path to completing the task. What have you found to be the best approach and way to prepare writing code? Especially dealing with legacy code"}
{"_id": "237992", "title": "jQuery - When to Bind Event Listeners?", "text": "I'm building a medium-sized \"single-page\" JavaScript application using jQuery. If you include all possible functionality of the application, there are 134 `click` bindings. Since most of the content is dynamically loaded, I can't just do this: `$(element).click(function() { ... });` Instead, I'm doing this: `$(document).on('click', selector, function() { ... });` Currently, I'm binding all of these on `$(document).ready`. But is that bad practice? Is this a speed issue? The alternative would be to bind the event listeners every time the content is loaded, for example:               $('#content').html(...);     $('#newcontent').click(function() { ... });      The problem with that is it's difficult to organize. What advice can you give me?"}
{"_id": "237993", "title": "Python shelve class rename", "text": "The main reason I use Shelve is to be able to quickly develop code without worrying about db table structure. Unfortunately changing a class name from, say, 'class1' to 'class2' gives \"AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'class2'\" on the next run. What is the canonical way to rename a Shelved class? What other similar surprises are lurking deeper into the Shelve db structure?"}
{"_id": "232746", "title": "Do Design Patterns Stifle Creativity", "text": "Many years ago, I was talking with an Economics professor about design patterns, how they were establishing a common language for programmers and how they were solving well known problems in a nice manner, etc etc. Then he talked back to me that this is exactly the opposite approach he would use to his Economics students. He usually presented a problem and asked them to find a solution first, so they could think about it first and try to find ways to solve the problem first, and only after that, he presented the \"classical\" solution. So I was thinking if the \"design pattern\" approach is really something that makes programmers smarter or dumber, since they're many times just getting the \"right solution for this problem\" instead maybe of using creativity and imagination to solve some problem in a new and innovative way. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "83288", "title": "My first job in a dev team - what should my priorities be?", "text": "I just landed my dream job - working in a big (famous) company as a frontend web developer. I've never even worked in a proper dev team before - the last 4 years since I started learning web dev I've been working on my own just building sites and apps for small business clients I found. I want to make the best possible start in my new job but it's not going as easily as I thought it might - there's very little induction or training - its a bit like being thrown in at the deep end, and to make matters worse most of the other developers in the office whilst being friendly and supportive, are speaking a language I don't understand very well. When they do speak english they use a lot of technical terms / jargon / names of products / systems etc that I've never heard of. I want to make a good impression and don't want to show myself up by asking too many dumb questions. What advice would all of you seasoned veterans of development teams suggest?"}
{"_id": "237997", "title": "Is there a metric that can be equated to complexity in laymens terms?", "text": "Often times users cannot comprehend the complexity of software. They think that because a problem is easy to describe then it is easy to solve. I want to equate the complexity of a \"simple program\" I have built with the complexity of a process with a tangible result. Is there a system that can take tangible processes and assign them a complexity such as: Building an outhouse = 5   Building a house = 50   Building the empire state building = 5000 that I can then equate to the software in a meaningful way: thisProject = 5 Maybe the project weight is determined by Cylcomatic Complexity. Whatever it is is not that important. What is important is that such a system exists. Does such a system exist? **Update**   I'm looking for a means to compare the complexity of two complete systems. I am not looking for estimation methods. The limitation I see in using \"money and man hours\" is that the laymen (or maybe even somewhat technical) individual could attribute the reason the project took so long and cost so much money is because the developer(s) were simply not good at their jobs. Thinking out a possibility... I imagine a solution to this problem could be similar to Dijkstra's algorithm. Create a flowchart for System1 and another for System2. Give each decision a weight based on how many routes the decision contains. Give each action a weight as well. The cumulative weight of each respective chart can then be used to compare the two processes.   1. For the \"tangible process\": If some engineer mapped a flowchart for \"building an outhouse\" then we could use such an algorithm to obtain a \"total weight\" for the process.    2. For the \"intangible process\": Assuming the entire program can be mapped to a Finite State Machine then it can be described as a flowchart and assigned a weight as well. So the outhouse process is weighted at 50 and \"my program\" is weighted at 60. So it's about as complex as building an outhouse."}
{"_id": "233290", "title": "What is the idiomatic way to persist the data in this simple data-based application?", "text": "I'm looking at developing a simple application in Java for a game which allows a user to keep track of which items they own and how much experience they have obtained while using the item. All of this data is input by the user. What is the idiomatic/standard way to persist the data that is being manipulated (the model)? The immediate possibilities seem to be saving it to a file, serialization, databases, etc, but many of these seem to be overkill for simple text fields that don't seem to necessitate objects. What is the idiomatic/traditional way to handle something like this?"}
{"_id": "171088", "title": "Object oriented wrapper around a dll", "text": "So, I'm writing a C# managed wrapper around a native dll. The dll contains several hundred functions. In most cases, the first argument to each function is an opaque handle to a type internal to the dll. So, an obvious starting point for defining some classes in the wrapper would be to define classes corresponding to each of these opaque types, with each instance holding and managing the opaque handle (passed to its constructor) Things are a little awkward when dealing with callbacks from the dll. Naturally, the callback handlers in my wrapper have to be static, but the callbacks arguments invariable contain an opaque handle. In order to get from the static callback back to an object instance, I've created a static dictionary in each class, associating handles with class instances. In the constructor of each class, an entry is put into the dictionary, and this entry is then removed in the Destructors. When I receive a callback, I can then consult the dictionary to retrieve the class instance corresponding to the opaque reference. Are there any obvious flaws to this? Something that seems to be a problem is that the existence static dictionary means that the garbage collector will not act on my class instances that are otherwise unreachable. As they are never garbage collected, they never get removed from the dictionary, so the dictionary grows. It seems I might have to manually dispose of my objects, which is something absolutely would like to avoid. Can anyone suggest a good design that allows me to avoid having to do this?"}
{"_id": "233298", "title": "OOP what is meant by object-to-object communication", "text": "I've been reading in basic concepts of OOP,as i'm trying to make this shift from transactional scripts to more oop manner in php, and i often come across this definition : > An object stores its state in fields (variables) and exposes its behavior > through methods (functions). Methods operate on an object's internal state > and serve as the primary mechanism for object-to-object communication and a simple example like : > Objects like real life objects have state and behavior. Dogs have state > (name, color, breed, hungry) and behavior (barking, fetching, wagging tail). from definition i see that methods should be either manipulating internal state (setters) or communicating with other objects; but when i try to apply this to a Blog example. composed of mainly 2 domains User and posts. **what could be the`User object` Behavior ?** I cannt find any !   1. login, its an auth lib. thing so i should not include it in user.   2. posting articles is a Post object thing; again user conduct it; but its more of a post object concern to create a post right ? User may be the main Aggregate object in a blog; yet the user is more like the Creator of Other Objects but he does not have a Behavior i can think of; he is being used -and his state- by other objects in most cases that all ! **in a nutshell :** what are allowed type of methods inside an object ?"}
{"_id": "212028", "title": "Portlets (and portals) vs usual webapps", "text": "I am working on a big project containing (among others) two web applications: one is implemented with Spring MVC and the other is meant to be implemented using Web Experience Factory (portlets).   One big problem whith using Web Experience Factory is its poor community.   The main motive to use portlets in the second application is the already existing user management system inside IBM Websphere Portal (like any other portal).   A next step will be to integrate the first application (Spring MVC) into the Websphere portal. So I have a bunch of questions here:   1) Is the integration of a web application (Spring MVC) into Websphere portal obvious ? And what kind of problems should I be ready to encounter ? 2) Is it really a good reason to use a portal only to get advantage of its user management (authentication/authorization) system, knowing that both of the apps to be integrated are implemented by the very same team ? I really appreciate any hints especially if they came with solid arguments."}
{"_id": "132809", "title": "Is the Leptonica implementation of 'Modified Median Cut' not using the median at all?", "text": "I'm playing around a bit with image processing and decided to read up on how color quantization worked and after a bit of reading I found the Modified Median Cut Quantization algorithm. I've been reading the code of the C implementation in Leptonica library and came across something I thought was a bit odd. Now I want to stress that I am far from an expert in this area, not am I a math-head, so I am predicting that this all comes down to me not understanding all of it and not that the implementation of the algorithm is wrong at all. The algorithm states that the _vbox_ should be split along the lagest axis and that it should be split using the following logic > The largest axis is divided by locating the bin with the median pixel (by > population), selecting the longer side, and dividing in the center of that > side. We could have simply put the bin with the median pixel in the shorter > side, but in the early stages of subdivision, this tends to put low density > clusters (that are not considered in the subdivision) in the same vbox as > part of a high density cluster that will outvote it in median vbox color, > even with future median-based subdivisions. The algorithm used here is > particularly important in early subdivisions, and 3is useful for giving > visible but low population color clusters their own vbox. This has little > effect on the subdivision of high density clusters, which ultimately will > have roughly equal population in their vboxes. For the sake of the argument, let's assume that we have a vbox that we are in the process of splitting and that the red axis is the largest. In the Leptonica algorithm, on line 01297, the code appears to do the following   * Iterate over all the possible green and blue variations of the red color   * For each iteration it adds to the _total_ number of pixels (population) it's found along the red axis   * For each red color it sum up the population of the current red and the previous ones, thus storing an accumulated value, for each red  _note: when I say 'red' I mean each point along the axis that is covered by the iteration, the actual color may not be red but contains a certain amount of red_ So for the sake of illustration, assume we have 9 \"bins\" along the red axis and that they have the following populations > 4 8 20 16 1 9 12 8 8 After the iteration of all red bins, the _partialsum_ array will contain the following count for the bins mentioned above > 4 12 32 48 49 58 70 78 86 And _total_ would have a value of 86 Once that's done it's time to perform the actual _median cut_ and for the red axis this is performed on line 01346 It iterates over bins and check they accumulated sum. And here's the part that throws me of from the description of the algorithm. It looks for the first bin that has a value that is _greater_ than _total/2_ Wouldn't _total/2_ mean that it is looking for a bin that has a value that is greater than the _average_ value and not the _median_ ? The median for the above bins would be _49_ The use of _43_ or _49_ could potentially have a huge impact on how the boxes are split, even though the algorithm then proceeds by moving to the center of the larger side of where the matched value was.. Another thing that puzzles me a bit is that the paper specified that the bin with the median value should be located, but does not mention how to proceed if there are an even number of bins.. the median would be the result of _(a+b)/2_ and it's not guaranteed that any of the bins contains that population count. So this is what makes me thing that there are some approximations going on that are negligible because of how the split actually takes part at the center of the larger side of the selected bin. Sorry if it got a bit long winded, but I wanted to be as thoroughas I could because it's been driving me nuts for a couple of days now ;)"}
{"_id": "41686", "title": "Moving Forward with Code Iteration", "text": "There are times when working on my programming projects, and I get to a point where I'm ready to move on to the next part of my program. However, when I sit down to implement this new feature I get stuck, in a sense. It's not that I don't know how to implement the feature, it's that I get stuck on figuring out _the best_ way to implement said feature. So I sit back for a day or two and let the ideas ferment until I am comfortable with a design. I get worried that I may not write something as well as it could be, or that I might have to go back and rework the whole thing; so I put it off. This is a big reason why I've never really finished many personal projects. Anyone else experience this, and how do you keep your self moving forward in your project?"}
{"_id": "41683", "title": "Helpful articles on the subject of managing programmers?", "text": "What are the most helpful articles on the subject of managing programmers? I came across this one recently, and thought it was excellent - The unspoken truth about managing geeks What else is out there?"}
{"_id": "84484", "title": "Considering career change to patent agent/patent engineer", "text": "After programming professionally for 17 years, I'm considering change careers and becoming a patent agent/engineer. Has anyone else pursued or evaluated that path? Any insight, rants or raves?"}
{"_id": "40555", "title": "Communicating with Management", "text": "What are some concrete suggestions and techniques for communicating with management? My premise for this question is that as programmers we think in a much more granular/detail-oriented way than managers. It's not that managers can't think at this level, it's just that their decision making and judgement applies to a different spectrum. Where the manager may think in terms of \"done\" / \"not done\" the developer may think in terms of individual features, test cases, or bugs. Where a manager may be thinking \"lots of bugs\" / \"bug free\" a developer may think in terms of a ratio of feature to bugs or feature complexity or test coverage."}
{"_id": "83135", "title": "Creating a library in two languages simultaneously", "text": "I'm planning on writing an open source HTML parsing library in .Net so that I have a project out in the wild when I start looking for developer jobs. Now, in my Masters program I started learning Java and found that I like it as well and was also thinking that I could also write the library in Java at the same time, to improve my Java skills at once. Would that be advisable? Does the fact that Java and C# are similar languages play into the decision to do two libraries at once? My main concern is instead of having one great library, I end up with two mediocre libraries. Being new to development, are there any other pitfalls I should look out for? Also would having the library on the JVM and .Net work to my advantage any more than just one of those platforms when it comes to future employers? I did see this question, but my motivations aren't the same and I plan on releasing this code as well, so I'm not sure if the answers will differ."}
{"_id": "165010", "title": "skills that can't be outsourced- web development related", "text": "I never know where it's acceptable to post something like this, so please forgive if it's in the wrong place. I'm very interested in going further in to web development; I know a bit of javascript, a bit of php, and so forth, but I'm now seeing these services that will go from psd to wordpress for 200 bucks and I'm wondering how the hell is anyone able to compete with this? So I'm wondering if those more knowledgeable than me could tell me what areas are the least likely to be able to be outsourced, for 5 bucks to some kid in Uzbekistan( no offense to that kid).. do you think it's on the database management side, or maybe app development? ideas appreciated."}
{"_id": "137329", "title": "Convince a lone developer to use a separate build tool instead of the IDE one-click build", "text": "In my years of programming Java and more recently Scala, I've never used Ant, Maven, Gradle or any of those build tools for Java. Everywhere I've worked there was a build manager who took care of all of that -- I'd compile locally with the IDE for development and unit testing, then check in the source code and notify the build manager who did what was necessary to compile everybody's files for the shared environment. Now that I'm between contracts I've been working on my own self-funded project and it's getting to the point where it could be good enough to actually make money. I even have a potential investor lined up and plan to show them a beta version in the next few weeks. But all along I just click the build button on the IDE, and it creates the Jar file and it works just fine. Of course, the conventional wisdom suggests that I \"should\" be writing my own Ant/Maven/Gradle scripts and using that instead of the IDE, but what are the concrete advantages of that in my situation (working alone)? I've done some reading about how to use those build tools, and it just looks like I'd be writing hundreds of lines of XML (or Groovy or whatever) to do to what the IDE does in one click (the IDE-generated Ant XML for the project is over 700 lines). It just looks error-prone and time-consuming and unnecessary for my situation. Not to mention the learning curve, which would take away time from all the other work I'm doing to get the product ready to show people."}
{"_id": "108457", "title": "WinRT and .NET: What is it, where do i place it and what does it change?", "text": "Say I'm a .NET developer and want to build my application on WinRT. What I've read is that it is a completely new API for Windows 8, strongly related to Metro-style apps. I'm assuming that I can develop for WinRT in .NET/C#? How does it relate for example to WPF or Silverlight? Does WinRT provide it's own UI framework, or can I build a WPF application on top of WinRT? What about basic I/O. .NET provides methods for that, if I develop with/for WinRT, do I have to use other methods, or will the .NET framework use WinRT under the hood? Besides these specific questions, the overal question is really how does it relate to the other APIs and frameworks I'm currently familiar with as a .NET/C# developer?"}
{"_id": "108454", "title": "Product Owner introduces ungroomed (unfamiliar, not estimated) User Story(s) into the Sprint Planning meeting", "text": "A problem that I am facing and would like some input into is; a Product Owner introduces ungroomed (unfamiliar, not estimated) User Story(s) into the Sprint Planning meeting. The issue that this has caused is the team rushes to understand and estimate the User Story(s), which puts significant time pressure on the commitment portion of the Sprint Planning meeting. The team also seems to be unsure of their estimate due to the rushed nature of grooming them in the Sprint Planning meeting. The end result of this is a rushed, half hearted Sprint commitment, which is usually an under-commitment due to so much uncertainty. I have seen two distinctly different causes for the late introduction of the User Story(s):   1. The team is new to Scrum and has been having difficulties grooming stories, prior to planning.    2. A brand new high priority User Story has appeared just before the Sprint Planning meeting. I have discussed these issues with the Product Owner and we have decided upon on actions, I am wondering what have you tried when the Product Owner introduces a brand new high priority User Story just before or even in the Sprint Planning meeting? What worked, what failed? The team that is having difficulty grooming User Stories in new to Scrum; hence I suspect that some facilitation of their grooming sessions, mentoring and some time will help them. Do you have any other suggestions for helping teams come up prompt Planning Poker estimates?"}
{"_id": "108451", "title": "What should I include in XML documentation comments?", "text": "I'm trying to make a point of documenting my code better, especially when it comes to the XML comments on class members, but often it just feels silly. In the case of event handlers, the naming convention and parameters are standard and clear:               /// <summary>     /// Handler for myCollection's CollectionChanged Event.     /// </summary>     /// <param name=\"sender\">Event Sender</param>     /// <param name=\"e\">Event Arguments</param>     private void myCollection_CollectionChanged(object sender, NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)     {         // actual code here...     }      I also frequently have simple properties that are (IMO) named clearly so that the summary is redundant:               /// <summary>     /// Indicates if an item is selected.     /// </summary>     public bool ItemIsSelected     { get { return (SelectedItem != null); } }      I don't feel like such comments don't add any information that the declaration itself doesn't already convey. The general wisdom seems to be that a comment that repeats the code is best left unwritten. Obviously, XML documentation is more than just regular inline code comments, and ideally will have 100% coverage. What **_should_** I be writing in such cases? If these examples are OK, what value do they add that I may not be appreciating now?"}
{"_id": "178860", "title": "Are there bots that download new iOS apps without being asked?", "text": "I noticed on the first day my iOS app hit the app store I got a download from Albania and another one from China. The app is only useful to a specific group, all of which are in a certain U.S. city. Are there bots that automatically download every new app? If so, to what end?"}
{"_id": "178863", "title": "Where can I learn more about JavaScript and Python?", "text": "Been teaching myself how to code over the past four months or so -- mainly in JavaScript, but just started Python -- and had a revelation today. I can write in JavaScript pretty well, but I don't actually know what JavaScript **is**. Basically I know how to use it, but not the advantages/disadvantages, its origination, its purpose, etc. What is the purpose and background behind Javascript and why was it created?"}
{"_id": "202047", "title": "What determines which Javascript functions are blocking vs non-blocking?", "text": "I have been doing web-based Javascript (vanilla JS, jQuery, Backbone, etc.) for a few years now, and recently I've been doing some work with Node.js. It took me a while to get the hang of \"non-blocking\" programming, but I've now gotten used to using callbacks for IO operations and whatnot. I understand that Javascript is single-threaded by nature. I understand the concept of the Node \"event queue\". What I DON'T understand is what determines whether an individual javascript operation is \"blocking\" vs. \"non-blocking\". How do I know which operations I can depend on to produce an output synchronously for me to use in later code, and which ones I'll need to pass callbacks to so I can process the output after the initial operation has completed? Is there a list of Javascript functions somewhere that are asynchronous/non-blocking, and a list of ones that are synchronous/blocking? What is preventing my Javascript app from being one giant race condition? I know that operations that take a long time, like IO operations in Node and AJAX operations on the web, require them to be asynchronous and therefore use callbacks - but who is determining what qualifies as \"a long time\"? Is there some sort of trigger within these operations that removes them from the normal \"event queue\"? If not, what makes them different from simple operations like assigning values to variables or looping through arrays, which it seems we can depend on to finish in a synchronous manner? Perhaps I'm not even thinking of this correctly - hoping someone can set me straight. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "202044", "title": "Is this considered an implementation of a Layer Supertype pattern?", "text": "**1.** According to Fowler's definition this pattern is implemented by having all classes in a layer inherit from a superclass. But after some googling it appears all of the following are considered as implementations of a _Layer Supertype_ pattern: a - all classes in a layer inheriting from the same superclass   b - having only some ( thus not all ) of classes in a layer inheriting from a superclass   c - layer having superclasses **S1** and **S2** , where classes **A** and **B** inherit from **S1** , while **C** inherits from **S2** So which of above are considered as implementations of a _Layer Supertype_? **2.** If a,b and c are all considered implementations of a _Layer SuperType_ , then I fail to see how this pattern is any different from a regular _class inheritance_. In other words, couldn't we then claim we're using _Layer Supertype_ any time some class inherits from another class? thanks"}
{"_id": "207671", "title": "Which component is responsible for updating the database schema?", "text": "We have what can be called a _distributed application_ : One full-blown web app and a small REST service. Both must be separately deployable. Both access the same database schema (they actually share only two tables). The common functionality is encapsulated in a common artifact (a JAR file here, since it\u2019s all Java). So far, so good. However, I\u2019m unsure how to handle schema changes properly. The web app uses Flyway for its schema updates, it works like a charm. But what should be the recommended procedure if one of the _shared tables_ needs an update? Whose responsibility should the upgrade be? (At the moment it is the web app that performs all the upgrades, perhaps that\u2019s good enough, but it worries me.) I thought of perhaps even changing the architecture to have a separate application or service that has both web app and REST service as a client, but this would only make things difficult, not actually remove the problem."}
{"_id": "47684", "title": "Do developers ever contract by retainer? If not, why?", "text": "I'm leaving my current employer in two weeks, but have an excellent relationship with them and am somewhat emotionally attached to a project that I have developed over the last couple of years. They've asked me if I'd be willing to contract with them to continue supporting that project. I was thinking of proposing a monthly retainer that would assure them 5-10 hours of support, including answering support E-mails, fixing any bugs, and small stability enhancements and feature tweaks. I haven't ever seen any mention of software developers contracting under retainer; is this done? If not, is there something that makes it is a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "212791", "title": "Am I barking up the wrong tree with Scala?", "text": "Having some spare time, I've decided to learn a new programming language while developing - for fun, will never see the light of day - an insurance administration web application (insurance is the industry I know). So I chose Scala as the language to learn but the more I learn the more I wonder if Scala fits the bill for the app I want to build. I don't want to bother learning functional programming and ignore all the best practices by making my domain objects - Policy, Section, Coverage, Insured, Insurer, etc. - mutable. Insureds have Policies which have Sections which have Coverages provided by Insurers blah blah. So there is this inter-relationship between all these objects and I don't understand how to update one object in the functional paradigm. Is it possible and worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "14472", "title": "What's are best Windows 7 gadgets for programmers?", "text": "I am looking for a theme with gadgets that will make my life easier as a programmer.   Googling from the desktop is one feature I am looking for.   Integration with SharePoint or other bug trackers are the second.   Any other idea that might make me more productive is a good one."}
{"_id": "14474", "title": "Noobie wants to use source control, how would you guide them?", "text": "Let's say you know of an anonymous noobie that wants to be lead upon the path of righteousness. This noobie wants to use some sort of source control tools simply for the experience of using source control tools (and possibly for whatever benefits they bring along with them). To constrain things further (and to make this possibly even more noobie- tastic), let's say they're stuck in windows developing in visual studio. How would you guide your neophyte?"}
{"_id": "197338", "title": "Origin of the name \u201cOpenServer\u201d for the SCO Unix operating system", "text": "I was looking over the evolutionary history of Unix and Unix-like systems on Wikipedia and one operating system name stood out to me: **OpenServer**. Judging from the image, SCO's **OpenServer** is completely _closed sourced_ ; so why does SCO **OpenServer** have the word \"open\" in its name if the operating system is proprietary and contains no open source code? I suspect this is because the original **Unics** operating system had a mixed/shared license, but that seems like a pretty distant ancestor when the proprietary **Xenix** came before **OpenServer** as well. Can anyone shed some light on the reason for this name?"}
{"_id": "171626", "title": "Combining template method with strategy", "text": "An assignment in my software engineering class is to design an application which can play different forms a particular game. The game in question is Mancala, some of these games are called Wari or Kalah. These games differ in some aspects but for my question it's only important to know that the games could differ in the following:   * The way in which the result of a move is handled   * The way in which the end of the game is determined   * The way in which the winner is determined The first thing that came to my mind to design this was to use the strategy pattern, I have a variation in algorithms (the actual rules of the game). The design could look like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mk3EA.png) I then thought to myself that in the game of Mancala and Wari the way the winner is determined is exactly the same and the code would be duplicated. I don't think this is by definition a violation of the 'one rule, one place' or DRY principle seeing as a change in rules for Mancala wouldn't automatically mean that rule should be changed in Wari as well. Nevertheless from the feedback I got from my professor I got the impression to find a different design. I then came up with this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3Ad2p.png) Each game (Mancala, Wari, Kalah, ...) would just have attribute of the type of each rule's interface, i.e. `WinnerDeterminer` and if there's a Mancala 2.0 version which is the same as Mancala 1.0 except for how the winner is determined it can just use the Mancala versions. I think the implementation of these rules as a strategy pattern is certainly valid. But the real problem comes when I want to design it further. In reading about the template method pattern I immediately thought it could be applied to this problem. The actions that are done when a user makes a move are always the same, and in the same order, namely:   * deposit stones in holes (this is the same for all games, so would be implemented in the template method itself)   * determine the result of the move   * determine if the game has finished because of the previous move   * if the game has finished, determine who has won Those three last steps are all in my strategy pattern described above. I'm having a lot of trouble combining these two. One possible solution I found would be to abandon the strategy pattern and do the following: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uiopy.png) I don't really see the design difference between the strategy pattern and this? But I am certain I need to use a template method (although I was just as sure about having to use a strategy pattern). I also can't determine who would be responsible for creating the `TurnTemplate` object, whereas with the strategy pattern I feel I have families of objects (the three rules) which I could easily create using an abstract factory pattern. I would then have a `MancalaRuleFactory`, `WariRuleFactory`, etc. and they would create the correct instances of the rules and hand me back a `RuleSet` object. Let's say that I use the strategy + abstract factory pattern and I have a `RuleSet` object which has algorithms for the three rules in it. The only way I feel I can still use the template method pattern with this is to pass this `RuleSet` object to my `TurnTemplate`. The 'problem' that then surfaces is that I would never need my concrete implementations of the `TurnTemplate`, these classes would become obsolete. In my protected methods in the `TurnTemplate` I could just call `ruleSet.determineWinner()`. As a consequence, the `TurnTemplate` class would no longer be abstract but would have to become concrete, is it then still a template method pattern? To summarize, am I thinking in the right way or am I missing something easy? If I'm on the right track, how do I combine a strategy pattern and a template method pattern?"}
{"_id": "171623", "title": "Who owns the IP rights of the software without written employment contract? Employer or employee?", "text": "I am a software engineer who got an idea, and developed alone an integrated ERP software solution over the past 2 years. I got the idea and coded much of the software in my personal time, utilizing my own resources, but also as intern/employee at small wholesale retailer (company A). I had a verbal agreement with the company that I could keep the IP rights to the code and the company would have the \"shop rights\" to use \"a copy\" of the software without restrictions. Part of this agreement was that I was heavily underpaid to keep the rights. Recently things started to take a down turn in the company A as the company grew fairly large and new head management was formed, also new partners were brought in. The original owners distanced themselves from the business, and the new \"greedy\" group indicated that they want to claim the IP rights to my software, offering me a contract that would split the IP ownership into 50% co-ownership, completely disregarding the initial verbal agreements. As of now there was no single written job description and agreement/contract/policy that I signed with the company A, I signed only I-9 and W-4 forms. I now have an opportunity to leave the company A and form a new business with 2 partners (Company B), obviously using the software as the primary tool. There would be no direct conflict of interest as the company A sells wholesale goods. My core question is: **\"Who owns the code without contract? Me or the company A? (in FL, US)\"** **Detailed questions:**   1. I am familiar with the \"shop rights\", I don't have any problem leaving a copy of the code in the company for them to use/enhance to run their wholesale business. What worries me, **Can the company A make any legal claims to the software/code/IP and potential derived profits/interests after I leave and form a company B?**   2. **Can applying for a copyright of the code athttp://www.copyright.gov in my name prevent any legal disputes in the future? Can I use it as evidence for legal defense?** Could adding a note specifying the company A as exclusive license holder clarify the arrangements?   3. **If I leave and the company A sues me, what evidence would they use against me? On what basis would the sue since their business is in completely different industry than software (wholesale goods). Every single source file was created/stored on my personal computer with proper documentation including a copyright notice with my credentials (name/email/addres/phone).** It's also worth noting that I develop significant part of the software prior to my involvement with the company A as student.   4. **If I am forced to sign a contract and the company A doesn't honor the verbal agreement, making claims towards the ownership, what can I do settle the matter legally?** I like to avoid legal process altogether as my budget for court battles is extremely limited at the moment.   5. **Would altering the code beyond recognition and using it for the company B prevent the company A make any copyright claims?** My common sense tells me that what I developed is by default mine in terms of IP, unless there is a signed legal agreement stating otherwise. But looking online it may be completely backwards, this really worries me. _I understand that this is not legal advice, and I know to get the ultimate answer I need to hire a lawyer. I am only hoping to get some valuable input/experience/advice/opinion from those who were in similar situation or are familiar with the topic._ Thank you, PT"}
{"_id": "171622", "title": "Pure C++ for iOS apps", "text": "Is it possible to use only C++ to create iOS apps? Is there any downside to that? I read somewhere that you have to use a mix of objective C and C++ if you want to use C++ that bad."}
{"_id": "108180", "title": "Namespaces and naming", "text": "I'm having some trouble working this one out, probably more than I should. This is a pretty large project, with a very clearly defined structure, with no obvious problems, but I can't seem to figure out the optimal solution for this case, even after reading several convention documents and such. For example, given the following namespace:               \\vendor\\core\\lib\\view;      Obviously it refers to a \"view\" namespace...which technically also has a 'view' class in it:               \\vendor\\core\\lib\\view\\view      This is clearly not ideal, but I can't come up with a better way to name these. Take for example the cache namespace:               \\vendor\\core\\lib\\cache;      Same deal, the cache class becomes confusing when inside this namespace:               \\vendor\\core\\lib\\cache\\cache;      Should I just move these 'core' classes from their namespaces, and put them in the parent namespace?               \\vendor\\core\\lib\\cache (class)     \\vendor\\core\\lib\\cache\\adapter\\redis (class)      Or is there a better term to refer to these types of classes? Pardon my circularity, it's a bit late and my head's not quite working in optimal condition."}
{"_id": "31578", "title": "Interview questions on C++ for developers with mainly Java/.NET experience", "text": "What questions would ask a candidate with mainly Java/.NET experience (10 years+) in an interview for a C++ position?"}
{"_id": "230674", "title": "Programs that claim they are not \"multi-core\" friendly", "text": "You see this phrase or similar kicked around from time to time, generally referring to a program that claims they were not designed to take full advantage of multi-core processors. This is common especially with video game programming. (of course a lot of programs have no concurrency and do not need it, such as basic scripts, etc). How can this be? A lot of programs (especially games) inherently use concurrency, and since the OS is in charge of task scheduling on the CPU, then are these programs not inherently taking advantage of the multiple cores available? What would it mean in this context to \"take advantage of multiple cores\"? Are these developers actually forbidding OS task scheduling and forcing affinity or their own scheduling? (Sounds like a major stability issue). I'm a Java programmer, so maybe I have not had to deal with this due to abstractions or whatnot."}
{"_id": "201638", "title": "Use the word \"Apple\" and \"Safari\" in my application", "text": "I am developing an application and i want to use two words somewhere in my application. First i want to use the word \"Safari\" in a menu option which labels \"Open in Safari\"(for a url). The second is the word \"Apple\" in my Terms pages where i want to use it in the phrase \"....as provided by Apple\",referring to technologies and API's provided by Apple. Can i use them and if yes with in which conditions?(adding \"TM\" or \"Copyright\" signs maybe?). Thanks."}
{"_id": "230673", "title": "How do memory-clean apps work?", "text": "In terms of operating system architecture, what does a memory-clean software to get rid of all data that fill the virtual memory? I assume that it simply saves all RAM data into a file, but how does it exactly do this? What happens if you delete a file while a process that has resources on that file is executing? Hope this is not a too-broad question."}
{"_id": "238461", "title": "What do I gain by using the Strategy pattern in this case?", "text": "I wrote a program with Java that plays simple music. Currently chords have only one way ('strumming pattern') to be played. I want to expand this and create different 'strumming patterns' that chords can use to play their notes. The `Chord` class has a `play()` method that is responsible for playing the chord. Currently it contains the logic for the only 'strumming pattern' of how the notes are played. To add new strumming patterns, the simplest approach is to change `play()` to something like this:               void play(int strummingStyle){         if(strummingStyle == REGULAR_STYLE) playRegular();         if(strummingStyle == SOMETHING_ELSE_STYLE) playSomethingElse();         // .. etc     }      Have a method for each strumming style, and parameterize the method to play a specific style. However using the Strategy pattern feels like a better approach. What I mean is to encapsulate each strumming pattern in a subclass of `StrummingPattern` and set the `Chord` to a specific strumming pattern: `chord.setStrummingPattern(StrummingPattern pattern);`. `play()` would then simply delegate to the strumming pattern like so:               void play(){         pattern.play();     }      While this clearly **feels** like the better, more OO approach - I find that I can't explain myself what the actual benefits are. And it's important for me to actually understand _why_ I'm doing something. Please explain why using the Strategy pattern in a case like this is a better approach than the more naive 'a method represents a behavior' approach. **What exactly are the Strategy pattern's benefits in this kind of situation? Why should I use it?**"}
{"_id": "96934", "title": "Objective Metrics for Software Quality", "text": "There are various types of quality that can be measured in software products, e.g. fitness for purpose (e.g. end use), maintainability, efficiency. Some of these are somewhat subjective or domain specific (e.g. good GUI design principles may be different across cultures or dependent on usage context, think military versus consumer usage). What I'm interested in is a deeper form of quality related to the network (or graph) of types and their inter-relatedness, that is, what types does each type refer to, are there clearly identifiable clusters of interconnectivity relating to a properly tiered architecture, or conversely is there a big 'ball' of type references ('monolithic' code). Also the size of each type and/or method (e.g. measured in quantity of Java byte code or .Net IL) should give some indication of where large complex algorithms have been implemented as monolithic blocks of code instead of being decomposed into more manageable/maintainable chunks. An analyis based on such ideas may be able to calculate metrics that are at least a proxy for quality. The exact threshold/decision points between high and low quality would I suspect be subjective, e.g. since by maintainability we mean maintainability by human programmers and thus the functional decomposition must be compatible with how human minds work. As such I wonder if there can ever be a mathematically pure definition of software quality that transcends all possible software in all possible scenarios. I also wonder if this a dangerous idea, that if objective proxies for quality become popular that business pressures will cause developers to pursue these metrics at the expense of the overall quality (those aspects of quality not measured by the proxies). Another way of thinking about quality is from the point of view of entropy. Entropy is the tendency of systems to revert from ordered to disordered states. Anyone that has ever worked on a real world, medium to large scale software project will appreciate the degree to which quality of the code base tends to degrade over time. Business pressures generally result in changes that focus on new functionality (except where quality itself is the principle selling point, e.g. in avionics software), and the eroding of quality through regression issues and 'shoe-horning' functionaility where it does not fit well from a quality and maintenance perspective. So, can we measure the entropy of software? And if so, how?"}
{"_id": "201630", "title": "Do all programs run in a loop?", "text": "I was wondering whether all programs run in a Loop, checking for variable changes then acting upon said changes followed by another Loop. Or do they run in a While statement, waiting for a variable to change before they execute a routine? Or am I just completely wrong?"}
{"_id": "230679", "title": "If an object should be flagged, should it be built with the flag attribute?", "text": "Let us assume I have a basic object with a handful of self-relevant points of data.               class A(object):         def __init__(self, x, y, width, length):             self.x = x             self.y = x             self.width = x             self.length = x      And so we go on to instantiate several `A` objects and shove them into a list, as programmers are wont to do. Now let us assume that these objects need to be checked for a particular state every so often, but we needn't check them on _every_ pass, because their state doesn't change particularly quickly. So a checking method is written somewhere:               def check_for_ticks(object_queue):         for obj in object_queue:             if obj.checked == 0 and has_ticks(obj):                 do_stuff(obj)             obj.checked -= 1      Ah, but wait - it wasn't designed with `obj.checked` attribute! Well no big deal, Python is kind and lets you add attributes whenever, so we change the method a bit.               def check_for_ticks(object_queue):         for obj in object_queue:             try:                 obj.checked =- 1             except AttributeError:                 obj.checked = 0             if obj.checked == 0 and has_ticks(obj):                 do_stuff(obj)      This works, but it gives me pause. My thoughts are mixed, because while it's a functional attribute to give an object and it solves a problem, the attribute isn't really used by the object. `A` will probably never modify its own `self.checked` attribute, and it isn't really an attribute that it 'needs to know about' - it's just incredibly convenient to give it that attribute in passing. But -- what if there are multiple methods that might want to flag an object? Surely one does not create the class with every attribute that some other method might maybe want to flag it for? Should I be giving objects new attributes in this way? If I should not, what is the better alternative to just giving them new attributes?"}
{"_id": "238466", "title": "Is there a name for this technique in testing?", "text": "When I've written tests for some code and want to make sure that it's actually testing what it's supposed to, I'll mess up or remove the code-under-test, and see if the tests fail. If they don't, I've got a problem. Is there a name for this technique? It's a real bother having to talk in sentences everytime I want to suggest to someone that they do it."}
{"_id": "199735", "title": "Static or non-static?", "text": "For example I have these two classes: First               public class Example     {         public Example()         {         }              public int ReturnSomething         {            return 1;         }     }      Second               public class Example         {             public Example()             {             }                  public static int ReturnSomething             {                return 1;             }         }      I want to use the `ReturnSomething` method, which of the two classes allocated less/more memory? When I use               int x = Example.ReturnSomething;      or when I use               Example object = new Example();     int x = object.ReturnSomething();"}
{"_id": "234412", "title": "Why have private static methods?", "text": "I just wanted to clear up a question I have. What is the point of having a private static method as opposed to a normal method with private visibility? I would have thought an advantage to having a static method is that it can be called without an instance of a class, but since its private is there even a point to it being static? The only reason I can think of is that it helps conceptually understanding the method on the class level as opposed to object level."}
{"_id": "234747", "title": "Dependency Inversion Principle vs \"Program to an interface, not an implementation\"", "text": "I'm trying to understand how the Dependency Inversion Principle differs from the \"program to an interface, not an implementation\" principle. I understand what \"Program to an interface, not an implementation\" means. I also understand how it allows for more flexible and maintainable designs. But I don't understand how the Dependency Inversion Principle is different from the \"Program to an interface, not an implementation\" principle. I read about DIP in several places on the web, and it didn't clear up my confusion. I still don't see how the two principles differ from each other. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "234741", "title": "Location services on Mobile platforms", "text": "Do location based services on mobile devices know what business you are in exactly or does it just have a general approximation of where you are and you have to manually check in to be specific? Trying to see if it's possible for a application on a mobile phone to use location services to determine how many given people are in a particular business without having to manually check in. Is this possible,and if so, would this be accurate information or a loose approximation? Thanks in advance ^_^"}
{"_id": "38361", "title": "What design is best for data transformation?", "text": "My company's database makes available data to a lot of external applications. So I need to transform the same data to a lot of _dynamic_ views. I can see that a former database developer had implemented many long chains of view- function-procedure call sequences to do transformation more common to all external applications. I think, this architecture and so long requests (stored proc calls a function, then function calls some view and this view based on other one and so on) are a performance problem, at least query optimizer does not resolve these issues (please confirm my guesses). Is it a good approach? Does it cause degradation of performance? If yes, how can I reimplement objects of the database. At this moment I see these steps to do this:   * analysis of source data structure (own data)   * analysis of all external systems (what formats does database have to provide for)   * separate views, functions, stored procs for every external subsystems (I have to avoid long chains, common to many subsystems DB objects, if it is a cause of problem)"}
{"_id": "251182", "title": "How to handle a Restful Call in a RESTless state?", "text": "I have a bit of a dilemma. We are choosing our DBContext using a dynamic builder. This is done because in the current database structure we have a separate server for every \"Customer\". All of these Customer Databases use the same model so they are all exactly the same structure. Enter picking the context to use with each call. We are using WebApi 2 and angular. What we do is on the first \"page\" you pick your customer and we pass the customerId down and I need to store this value until the user decides to swap. That being said Session and WebApi2 are not friends. I have a base repository that needs the customerId every time a call is made to one of the repositories. We have to verify that we are using the right context for that customer. So.... That's where I am. Should I break the rules and use Session to store the customerId? I could use my DI container to inject an instance of HttpContext.Current into every call so that I would ignore the fact that session is null on a WebApiController. Is there another way to handle this?"}
{"_id": "5613", "title": "Is the abundance of frameworks dumbing down programmers?", "text": "With all of the frameworks available these days, ORMs, dependency injection (DI), Inversion of control (IoC), etc., I find that many programmers are losing or don't have the problem solving skills needed to solve difficult issues. Many times, I've seen unexpected behaviour creep into applications and the developers unable to really dig in and find the issues. It seems to me that deep understanding of what's going on under the hood is being lost. **Don't get me wrong** , I'm not suggesting these frameworks aren't good and haven't moved the industry forward, only asking if, as a unintended consequence, developers aren't gaining the knowledge and skill needed for deep understanding of systems."}
{"_id": "85997", "title": "Learning how to integrate JavaScript with other languages", "text": "After learning JavaScript syntax, what are some good resources for learning about integrating JavaScript with other languages (HTML, XML, CSS, PHP) to create real, useful applications? I'm most interested in reading articles or other people's code - not so interested in books. Basically, I'm looking to move from programming puzzle- solvers to programming complex applications and could use some advice."}
{"_id": "38368", "title": "what kind of online technical documentation system would you recommend?", "text": "the goal is to have an online documentation system, with these major requirements:   * will be mainly used as an intermediate stage for the final technical docs of all our application (which will probably never get completed though :]). It would be typically used as so: someone has a problem, I fix it, and write down the fix immedeately. What happens now is getting unmanagable: someone has a problem, I fix it, both me and someone are happy but 2 months later somebody else has the same problem and nobody remembers what the fix was.   * accessible from everywhere, running behind our apache server   * user/group managment, allowing read-only/read-write/admin access   * the format is not too important: plain text would do, wiki-style would be nicer though   * cheap or free some ideas of mine:   * just serve files on a file share or through ssh (cons: not too copmatible with windows, pros: simple, can be any file type)   * keep it in an SCM (svn/git, idem as above but easier to access and control access)   * Confluence: we use Jira already, is Confluence worth it? How does it integrate with Jira?   * something else? Please don't hesitate commenting on these or share your experience with other systems."}
{"_id": "225648", "title": "Why can python webapps keep sessions between restart and not java?", "text": "I've used both webapp2 + GAE for python and a number of Java/JEE webapp frameworks. The python WSGI framework could keep users logged in while I redeploy the app while none of the Java web framework that I tried could do it. If I redeploy, users of the Java webapp will get logged out but if I use GAE for python then a redeployment doesn't log users out. Is this a general \"feature\" of python vs Java webapps and is this true in general or just a coincidence that the ones I tried had these features? Is there a name for this feature, ability to keep users logged in between redeployments and also keeping caches (e.g. memcache) without getting the cache erased for updating the app="}
{"_id": "245339", "title": "How to avoid Memory Error", "text": "I am working with quite large files (pytables) and I am having problems with the `Memory Error` when I try to load the data for processing. I would like some tips about how to avoid this in my python 32bits, since I am new working with pandas and pytables, and I do not know how to work splitting the data in small pieces. My concern also comes when, if I get to split the data, how to calculate statistics like mean, std, etc without having the entire list or array, etc. This is a sample of the code that I am using now, this works fine with small tables:               def getPageStats(pathToH5, pages, versions, sheets):              with openFile(pathToH5, 'r') as f:             tab = f.getNode(\"/pageTable\")                  dversions = dict((i, None) for i in versions)             dsheets = dict((i, None) for i in sheets)             dpages = dict((i, None) for i in pages)                       df = pd.DataFrame([[row['page'],row['index0'], row['value0'] ] for row in tab.where('(firstVersion == 0) & (ok == 1)') if  row['version'] in dversions and row['sheetNum'] in dsheets and row['pages'] in dpages ], columns=['page','index0', 'value0'])                     df2 = pd.DataFrame([[row['page'],row['index1'], row['value1'] ] for row in tab.where('(firstVersion == 1) & (ok == 1)') if  row['version'] in dversions and row['sheetNum'] in dsheets and row['pages'] in dpages], columns=['page','index1', 'value1'])                          for i in dpages:                           m10 = df.loc[df['page']==i]['index0'].mean()                 s10 = df.loc[df['page']==i]['index0'].std()                      m20 = df.loc[df['page']==i]['value0'].mean()                 s20 = df.loc[df['page']==i]['value0'].std()                      m11 = df2.loc[df2['page']==i]['index1'].mean()                 s11 = df2.loc[df2['page']==i]['index1'].std()                      m21 = df2.loc[df2['page']==i]['value1'].mean()                 s21 = df2.loc[df2['page']==i]['value1'].std()                      yield (i,m10, s10), (i,m11, s11), (i,m20,s20), (i,m21,s21))       As you can see, I am loading all the necessary data into a Pandas DataFrame to procoess it, just the mean and the std by now. This is quite fast, but for a pytable with 22Millions of rows I get `Memory Error`"}
{"_id": "213773", "title": "content fingerprint algorithm", "text": "I have a database containing just simple URLs. It is as simple as it sounds for now and URL can link to a website or a document(i.e. anything parseable to text). Now I have a simple code which inserts records to database. The problem is that website/document may be actually the same, just:   * Hosted somewhere else   * Not available so linked from Google Cache   * Not available so linked from archive.org   * Page can be republished from another source   * etc... _**I would like to get some kind of fingerprint of a website/document and think of a way to do so._** What I have thought of: **I can rely on title** because even if content is published somewhere else or cached on some server it will probably will have the same title. That's ok, as title is usually short and doesn't consume a lot of space. Downside - this works only on website. Maybe a filename is appropriate for documents but these can be renamed too. **I can rely on keyword count** But the problem is that I just enter URL and no keywords nor do I want to do so. It is a simple URL storage engine. **I can get a some kind of checksum of all the content** But this method would be a total guess. **SO MY QUESTION IS:** How can I fingerprint a content so later on I could identify possible duplicates ? **EDIT** I don't want to fingerprint just the title. I want to fingerprint the whole content. Content stays the same but can be hosted anywhere and it's structure(title too) can change. For documents - filename can change too. I want to fingerprint content. All the text so I can later on identify possible duplicates."}
{"_id": "213771", "title": "Mixed licenses inside product", "text": "This question relates to software-licensing. Someone familiar with open-source licensing may be able to answer this question. I am facing an issue in trying to interpret/understand some Licenses, due to a language barrier (English is not my first language). My situation is that I am using three products inside a distributable closed-source commercial product. These are:   * Jersey (Common Development and Distribution License)   * Jetty (Dual Apache & Eclipse)   * RXTX (LGPL) The tools above are not modified in my project and are used 'as is' included with Maven. My question is what step/s should I take to be perfectly sure I am not violating any Licence agreements? Should I (for example):   * Put some information inside the README file that I am using this software inside?    * Print something in command line?    * Should I place the full-license texts of those tools in separate files (but this could be misleading to customer, because my product doesn't have any Licence)?    * Could I extract these Licenses text files during the first JAR run?  I am looking for practical information, not necessarily from a lawyers."}
{"_id": "228078", "title": "Data Access Layer for application", "text": "I am working on a retail application where currently I'm using raw SQL like               insert into some_table values (Textbox1.Text, Textbox2.Text, ...)      and               update some_table set some_column = value      for save and update, but the problem is I need to write this everywhere that a save or update is needed. Is there a better solution for handling CRUD operations, like a separate class to contain data access logic which would use methods in the data access layer to perform CRUD operations?"}
{"_id": "228077", "title": "How to combine Google Analytics with Relational Database", "text": "I have a website with quite a lot of registered users, they are stored in a PostgreSQL database. I also running Google Analytics on the website to track the users. Is there a way to individually combine the GA data with the registration data from the website, e.g. finding out the e-mail address of a user we found in GA? Also, is there a way for non-technical people to access the SQL database without knowing SQL? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "218899", "title": "Automating tests in a browser not supported by selenium", "text": "I work on a company that have a payment system that runs under a executable kiosk instance of internet explorer 7. when the application is running the process name is not similar with iexplore.exe or something like that. The name of the windows process is the same as the executable.exe. We cannot run the system under a local webserver because the executable expect some pages in pure .html to process the data and give the users change. The executable pass information to the .html forms and vice-versa. So we cannot user another browser. I think selenium will not work with this browser. Any idea how i can automate tests on the interface? **EDIT** Selenium fail trying to start my executable: _Exception: Failed to start new browser session: org.openqa.selenium.server.RemoteCommandException: Error while launching browser_ I think the executable its not the browser itself. Its just a executable that make some security tasks and after that call a internet explorer instance somehow. But the internet explorer process don\u00b4t appear on the windows process."}
{"_id": "11565", "title": "What programming skill do you use most often that you are terrible at?", "text": "What are the techniques that you use just about everyday, but are still awful at? Are you bad at it because of the difficulty of the task, laziness to learn better, or some other reason?"}
{"_id": "47028", "title": "How could we rewrite the 'No Evil' license to make it 'free'?", "text": "I did not find the lawyers' SE site, so I thought it best to post here.               /*      * ...subject to the following conditions:      *      * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all      * copies or substantial portions of the Software.      *      * The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.      *      * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\"...      */      This is the 'non-free', Crockford, No-Evil, MIT-style, license. This license is considered non-free because of this phrase: \" **The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.** \" How could we rewrite this to become a 'free' license, while retaining the original spirit of the sentence?"}
{"_id": "103563", "title": "Making a basic computer that adds number passed by the user", "text": "What are the things that I should be familiar with to make my own computer that can add two numbers, in the same way that happens in a calculator? Can anyone please give me links that teach these things in detail? I know how to program but have never programmed at the root level."}
{"_id": "250302", "title": "How to identify and run the most relevant automated tests?", "text": "Suppose you have a reasonably large codebase (0.5 - 1 msloc) with a large test-suite (6-7hr single-threaded runtime; with a mix of unit-tests and integration-tests built with different tools). You have a proposed patch (or diff or pull-request) for the codebase, and you want to automatically run the most _relevant_ tests. Running _all_ tests would be too expensive. Running smoke-tests would be too shallow. The goal is to find something in-between. By automating the selection of relevant tests, you can help new developers participate in TDD -- and provide timely pre-merge feedback (as part of code- review). What techniques or arrangements would you use to identify \"relevant\"? (A basic example: if a patch modifies \"src/(.*).php\", then run \"phpunit test/{$1}Test.php\".) What, if any, existing tools come to mind? Or what new tools are needed? Or is it impossible for tooling to help? (For context: In my particular use-case, I work with LAMP-based web-apps, so tools or techniques that work with PHP/JS/bash are most helpful. But similar issues probably arise with any large app/deep stack, so examples from other stacks could provide insight.)"}
{"_id": "103567", "title": "What is the most orthogonal programming language?", "text": "I find myself repeatedly annoyed by having to teach freshmen about special language rules (like array-to-pointer decay) that have absolutely nothing to do with programming in itself. So I wondered: What is the programming language with the smallest number of special language rules, where everything is first class and can be composed without annoying technical restrictions? Wouldn't such a language be the perfect teaching language? > ### Moderator Note > > We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. > Don't just list a language: please explain _why_ you think the language > answers the question. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. > See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information."}
{"_id": "82424", "title": "What suitable Q & A application can integrate with a Java portal?", "text": "I'm looking for suggestions on whether **we should build** _or_ **are there readymade applications** that do the following:   * Allow admins to build a structured workflow of support Q & A, similar to Windows Troubleshooting i.e. when you try one tip, you then get the next one.   * Allow end-users to search and follow the Q & A We have an existing Liferay portal which we would like to plug in this app to it - is there some suitable app like a CMS which does this? I mean building the structured questions - not just plain content like a wiki. Open source options are welcome, but I'd like to know of COTS as well."}
{"_id": "155655", "title": "Best practice for marking a bug as resolved in Bugzilla ?", "text": "I am wondering what is the best way to handle the situation of marking a bug as resolved and providing a version of component/product in which this fix can be found. **Context** For a project I am working on, we are using Bugzilla for issue tracking, and we have the following:   * A product \"A\" with a version number like vA.B.C.D, This product \"A\" have the following components:   * Component \"C1\" with a version number like vA.B.C.D,   * Component \"C2\" with a version number like vA.B.C.D,   * Component \"C3\" with a version number like vA.B.C.D. Internally we keep track of which component versions have been used to generate the product A version vA.B.C.D. Example: Product \"A\" version v1.0.0.0 has been produced from component \"C1\" v1.0.0.3, component \"C2\" v1.3.0.0 and component \"C3\" v2.1.3.5. And Product \"A\" version v1.0.1.0 has been produced from component \"C1\" v1.0.0.4, component \"C2\" v1.3.0.0 and component \"C3\" v2.1.3.5. Each component is a SVN repository. The person in charge of generating the product \"A\" have only access to the different components tags folder in SVN, and not the trunk of each component repository. **Problem** Now the problem is the following, when a bug is found in the product \"A\", and that the bug is related to Component \"C1\", the version of product \"A\" is chosen (e.g. v1.0.0.0), and this version allow the developer to know which version of component \"C1\" has the bug (here it will be v1.0.0.3). A bug report is created. Now let's say that the developer responsible for component \"C1\" corrects the bug, then when the bug seems to be fixed and after some test and validation, the developer generates a new tag for component \"C1\", with the version v1.0.0.4. At this time, the developer of component \"C1\" needs to update the bug report, but what is the best to do:   1. Mark the bug as resolved/fixed and add a comment saying \"This bug has been fixed in the tags v1.0.0.4 of C1 component\" ?   2. Keep the bug as assigned, add a comment saying \"This bug has been fixed in the tags v1.0.0.4 of C1 component, update this bug status to resolved for the next version of the product that will be generated with the newest version (v1.0.0.4 of C1)\" ?   3. Another possible way to deal with this problem. Right now the problem is that when a product component CX is fixed, it is not sure in which future version of the product A it will be included, so it is for me not possible to say in which version of the product it will be solved, but it is possible to say in which version of the Component CX it has been solved. So when do we need to mark a bug as solved, when the product A version include the fixed version of CX, or only when CX component has been fixed ? Thanks for your personal feedback and ideas about this !"}
{"_id": "82429", "title": "Is FPA incompatible with Agile?", "text": "I am currently working in an Agile + SCRUM based project. I work on a lower level module. This leads to a peculiar problem. The work I do cannot be directly associated with a user story many times. Since I cannot relate a user story directly to my work I often face the problem that my requirements are unclear. Also I tend to \"miss out\" a few things which only become clear to me late in the sprint. And my layers work cannot be tested directly. On a similar note our GUI team was generating a lot of bugs due to missing out minor implicit requirements. For instance, the text field width was less than anticipated, etc. I had used FPA before in another project and I think it is a good way to break down requirements to the tiny atomic details , clarify the minor points and then build your software using the points as a checklist. I really felt that it would benefit our project and my layer in particular. I suggested it in my team meeting bit it was turned down becuase of the documentation involved. The \"wise guy's\" rationale: FPA is documentation-heavy and Agile frowns on heavy documentation. I argued that Agile is about producing good products and if an Agile process cannot be moulded to add a process that will reduce defects and produce good code, then it simply isnt \"agile\". In the end the team voted down the proposal claiming that it wasnt \"Agile\". however I suspect the reason was more likely to be laziness. Is FPA really incompatible with Agile due to the amount of documentation involved? What about the lofty aims of the Agile Manifesto? Is it just \"wroking code\" or \"good working code\"?"}
{"_id": "51115", "title": "Is there a canonical book for learning Java as an experienced developer?", "text": "I have been a .NET developer now for about the past 5/6 years give or take. I have never done any professional Java development and the last time I really touched it was probably back in college. I have been toying with the Scala language a little bit but nothing serious. Recently, I've been offered an opportunity to do some pretty cool work, but using Java instead of .NET. I think I can get by alright with my current skill set, meaning I already know how to program well and am familiar with languages such as C# and C++, etc. So, the syntax and all that language stuff are really not a problem. What I need is a really good reference book and a book about how to think in Java. Each language/Framework/Stack tries to address things a certain way and I'm sure Java is no different. What are some great Java books that you simply can't live without? Are there any books that talk about the most important parts of Java that must be understood before all else? As a side note, I will be doing mostly Java web development. Not really 100% on what types of stuff they are using for persistence, framework, server, etc."}
{"_id": "187787", "title": "Effective Java for experienced Java programmers?", "text": "I own and read 'Java Puzzlers', 'Clean Code' and GOF's 'Design Patterns' and more specific technology books however I have not yet read 'Effective Java'. Whenever I see a list of must read books I always see a copy a 'Effective Java' but I have put off buying it seeing as a learn to write Java book rather than a write better Java book. Is it still worth a read or even a purchase. What is special about this book that I am missing out on by not reading this. I know my design patterns and practice TDD and attempt to write clean code :), what will I gain from this book?"}
{"_id": "106647", "title": "Most efficient way to learn java if you already know how to code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book for learning Java as an experienced developer? I've been coding for close to 25 years now in basic, (C64 & Amiga), (Object) pascal, C, LPC and for the last few years, Python. Python is definitely my favourite (and strongest) language. However, lately I've been forced to do stuff in Java - I have never written a single line of java code so far. So I'm asking your advice - what is the fastest and most efficient crash course to learn java. **EDIT** : I'm really looking for something along the lines _teaching java to people who know how to code and what OOP is_ \\- not something that has _with no previous programming experience_ in the synopsis."}
{"_id": "141144", "title": "what is best book to learn optimized programming in java", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book for learning Java as an experienced developer? > Let me elaborate a little: I used to be a C/C++ programmer where I used data structure concept like trees, queues stack etc and tried to optimize as much as possible, minimum no. of loops, variables and tried to make it efficient. It's been a couple of years that I started writing java codes, but it is simply not that efficient in terms of performance, memory intensive etc. > To the point: I want to enter **programming challenges** using java so I need to improve my approach at things I program. So please suggest me some books that can help me learn to program better and have a chance in solving challenges in programming."}
{"_id": "201093", "title": "OOP concept: is it possible to update the class of an instantiated object?", "text": "I am trying to write a simple program that should allow a user to save and display sets of heterogeneous, but somehow related data. For clarity sake, I will use a representative example of vehicles. The program flow is like this:   1. The program creates a **Garage** object, which is basically a class that can contain a list of vehicles objects   2. Then the users creates **Vehicles** objects, these **Vehicles** each have a property, lets say _License Plate Nr_. Once created, the **Vehicle** object get added to a list within the **Garage** object   3. \\-- ** _Later on_** \\--, the user can specify that a given **Vehicle** object is in fact a **Car** object or a **Truck** object (thus giving access to some specific attributes such as _Number of seats_ for the Car, or _Cargo weight_ for the truck) At first sight, this might look like an OOP textbook question involving a base class and inheritance, but the problem is more subtle because at the object creation time (and until the user decides to give more info), the computer doesn't know the exact Vehicle type. Hence my question: **how would you proceed to implement this program flow? Is OOP the way to go?** Just to give an initial answer, here is what I've came up until now. There is only one Vehicle class and the various properties/values are handled by the main program (not the class) through a dictionary. However, I'm pretty sure that there must be a more elegant solution (I'm developing using VB.net):               Public Class Garage         Public GarageAdress As String         Private _ListGarageVehicles As New List(Of Vehicles)              Public Sub AddVehicle(Vehicle As Vehicles)             _ListGarageVehicles.Add(Vehicle)         End Sub     End Class          Public Class Vehicles         Public LicensePlateNumber As String         Public Enum VehicleTypes             Generic = 0             Car = 1             Truck = 2         End Enum         Public VehicleType As VehicleTypes         Public DictVehicleProperties As New Dictionary(Of String, String)     End Class      NOTE that in the example above the public/private modifiers do not necessarily reflect the original code"}
{"_id": "143263", "title": "Resources on concepts/theory behind GUI development?", "text": "I was wondering if there were any resources that explain concepts/theory behind GUI development. I don't mean a resource that explains how to use a GUI library, but rather how to create your own widgets. For example a resource that explains different methods on how to implement scrollable listboxes. I ask because I have an idea for a game tool where I would like to create my own widgets and let users drag and drop them onto some kind of form. How do GUI libraries usually draw widgets? I'm not sure if reskinning widgets from a GUI library fits my needs, since widget behavior needs to be dynamic based on user interaction."}
{"_id": "225984", "title": "What are the valid test cases for method calls within if-else condition", "text": "I have a discount service that gets called if certain conditions are met. I need to write test cases to check if the discount service is called. My doubt is checking if the discount service is NOT called for type 4 and 5 is a valid test case scenario.               public void ApplyDiscount(int typeId, double amount)     {          if(typeId == 1)     {       //call discount service     }          else if(typeId == 2)     {       //call discount service     }          else if(typeId == 4)     {        //do other stuff     }     else if(typeId == 5)     {        //do some other stuff     }          }"}
{"_id": "97131", "title": "What revision control has the best merging engine?", "text": "When it comes to merging, each control version has it's engine to do it. Conflicts are unavoidable but the question is - which revision control has best AI to avoid conflict. Is it possible to measure such thing? More specifically, we are thinking to move to GIT cause it has nice hype and rumour that handles conflict better... Any comment is appreciated..."}
{"_id": "240325", "title": "Should a user story be shared between developers?", "text": "I commonly see stories that have back-end and front-end development. For example, consider a large dialog with a few tables and some dynamic controls. We'll make several stories (maybe one for each table and another for the dynamic control system). The dev team will then split with one person on the back-end and another on the front-end. This makes it easy for the back-end person to just worry about the structure of the SQL layer while the front-end person focuses on stuff like layout. After the initial interface between back- and front-end is agreed, the two developers can focus their attention to get their part done by the end of the sprint. Then comes the chaos. Who \"owns\" which story? What does \"in progress\" mean or \"done\"? Should we make two separate stories for back-end and front-end? If so, doesn't that break the idea of user stories based on feature? Our system has a notion of \"sub-tasks\", which eases some of these problems. But sub-tasks add an extra complexity. Is there a better way? Is this a \"bad\" way to use Scrum? I have been using some form of Agile over the past few years at a couple places. I have no official training yet, so please forgive any wrong terminology or ideology. I'm just trying to learn practical ways to improve our process."}
{"_id": "229468", "title": "Use global variables or methods in an API's frontend", "text": "I am currently designing a graphics library in Java and now it's come to making the frontend I am curious why I have never seen libraries using global variables for their settings/properties - in-fact some go out of their way to protect them such as JavaScript libraries, and of course choose to use getters and setters such as:               Viewport.VSyncEnabled(true)      instead of simply               Viewport.VSyncEnabled = true;      I assume that it is to let the library know what is happening, but there are so many variables that simply don't need monitoring such as output debug data.   I would really like to use global variables however if it very against the convention and there are benefits (that I don't know of right now) then I'll be happy to use methods. My reason for wanting to use global variables instead is by my benchmarks it is faster to access directly like that."}
{"_id": "200949", "title": "Class design with bi-directional relationships", "text": "This is a purely design question. I want to port a nice educational \"game\" Bug Brain to Java. In this game you design neural networks which consist of three elements: neurons, nodes and synapses. Neuron is used to perform some kind of processing on its input signals to produce the desired output; it can be connected with other neurons/nodes (connections are uni-directional and weighted). We can think about nodes can as of junctions - they can also be connected with other neurons/nodes (and these connections are also uni-directional and weighted), but the weight of we cannot change weights of input connections. Synapse is a connection between these two elements. To sum up: neurons and nodes have both inputs and outputs (to other neurons/nodes) and they do some inputs->outputs processing. Q: Now, how would you design this class structure? This is a sketch I \"produced\" so far: screenshot of the design Because the operation \"connect two joins (i.e. neuron/node)\" has three responsibilities (add synapse, add output to join A, add input to join B) I've decided to put it as a static methid in a controller class. Of course I could avoid such two-directional relationships between elements: I don't have to keep track of outputs, only inputs but there are some other limitations eg. there can be only 8 I/Os per join so then I'd have to iterate over all synapses every time I add a connection to see if there is still some place to add it. In this case (this game) you won't have too many connections so it would not hit performance, but I'd like to know how to deal with such situations in general. As it's the foundation of this whole logic of this project I'd like to have it properly made. All suggestions are warmly welcome ;)"}
{"_id": "244665", "title": "What is the concept behind writing a cancel operation in c++?", "text": "I'm attempting to write a cancel operation for a software download application. This application will first transfer the software to the device and then install the software on it. (These are givens I'm not allowed to change). What should the cancel operation do? When a user presses 'cancel', the application should stop transferring/installing the software immediately. Question: Since I've never written a \"cancel\" function, I'm wondering what are the types of things to consider when writing the code, and what are the common bugs I should expect and how to deal with them? Couldn't find anything in google so if you have some links that would be good reads I'd really appreciate it since I'm not looking for answers I'm just looking for guidelines/macro/concept help"}
{"_id": "200945", "title": "Why do C# and Java use reference equality as the default for '=='?", "text": "I've been pondering for a while why Java and C# (and I'm sure other languages) default to reference equality for `==`. In the programming I do (which certainly is only a small subset of programming problems), I almost always want logical equality when comparing objects instead of reference equality. I was trying to think of why both of these languages went this route instead of inverting it and having `==` be logical equality and using `.ReferenceEquals()` for reference equality. Obviously using reference equality is very simple to implement and it gives very consistent behavior, but it doesn't seem like it fits well with most of the programming practices I see today. I don't wish to seem ignorant of the issues with trying to implement a logical comparison, and that it has to be implemented in every class. I also realize that these languages were designed a long time ago, but the general question stands. Is there some major benefit of defaulting to this that I am simply missing, or does it seem reasonable that the default behavior should be logical equality, and defaulting back to reference equality it a logical equality doesn't exist for the class?"}
{"_id": "173176", "title": "JavaScript objects and Crockford's The Good Parts", "text": "I've been thinking quite a bit about how to do OOP in JS, especially when it comes to encapsulation and inheritance, recently. According to Crockford, classical is harmful because of new(), and both prototypal and classical are limited because their use of constructor.prototype means you can't use closures for encapsulation. Recently, I've considered the following couple of points about encapsulation:   1. Encapsulation kills performance. It makes you add functions to EACH member object rather than to the prototype, because each object's methods have different closures (each object has different private members).   2. Encapsulation forces the ugly \"var that = this\" workaround, to get private helper functions to have access to the instance they're attached to. Either that or make sure you call them with privateFunction.apply(this) everytime. Are there workarounds for either of two issues I mentioned? if not, do you still consider encapsulation to be worth it? Sidenote: The functional pattern Crockford describes doesn't even let you add public methods that only touch public members, since it completely forgoes the use of new() and constructor.prototype. Wouldn't a hybrid approach where you use classical inheritance and new(), but also call Super.apply(this, arguments) to initialize private members and privileged methods, be superior?"}
{"_id": "39013", "title": "Need advice: Staying techie or going the MBA way?", "text": "I know this is a very subjective question and I am the best person to decide this for myself...but I am just looking for your views. I have 5 years of experience as a professional developer. I have a decent background in Maths and have done my bachelors in engineering in CS. I have still not reached a stage in my career where growth is difficult and do not foresee this happenning for a very long time if ever because I find myself constantly (self) motivated to pick up new skills. A lot of my friends have however been getting through their MBA lately ...and not from the likes of Harvard or Kellogs, just mediocre colleges. They've however been landing paychecks fatter than me even though they have little or no work experience. Given that I have the option of pursuing an MBA an have my finances in order (and am planning an MBA from INSEAD / IE) would it make sense for me to sell out what I like doing and go for an MBA? Will I regret not doing an MBA later, given that I am in the right age/experience group to do an MBA? I absolutely love what I am doing right now and also the people I'm doing it with, but am just worried if this career would be as rewarding financially as the one after a management degree."}
{"_id": "177668", "title": "How to avoid big and clumsy UITableViewController on iOS?", "text": "I have a problem when implementing the MVC-pattern on iOS. I have searched the Internet but seems not to find any nice solution to this problem. Many `UITableViewController` implementations seems to be rather big. Most examples I have seen lets the `UITableViewController` implement `<UITableViewDelegate>` and `<UITableViewDataSource>`. These implementations are a big reason why `UITableViewController`is getting big. One solution would be to create separate classes that implements `<UITableViewDelegate>` and `<UITableViewDataSource>`. Of course these classes would have to have a reference to the `UITableViewController`. Are there any drawbacks using this solution? In general I think you should delegate the functionality to other \"Helper\" classes or similar, using the delegate pattern. Are there any well established ways of solving this problem? I do not want the model to contain too much functionality, nor the view. I believe that the logic should really be in the controller class, since this is one of the cornerstones of the MVC-pattern. But the big question is: **How should you divide the controller of a MVC-implementation into smaller manageable pieces? (Applies to MVC in iOS in this case)** There might be a general pattern for solving this, although I am specifically looking for a solution for iOS. Please give an example of a good pattern for solving this issue. Please provide an argument why your solution is awesome."}
{"_id": "177666", "title": "How to structure classes in the filesystem?", "text": "I have a few (view) classes. Table, Tree, PagingColumn, SelectionColumn, SparkLineColumn, TimeColumn. currently they're flat under `app/view` like this:               app/view/Table     app/view/Tree     app/view/PagingColumn     ...      I thought about restructuring it, because the Trees and Tables use the columns, but there are some columns, which only work in a tree, some who work in trees and tables and in the future there are probably some who only work in tables, I don't know. My first idea was like this:               app/view/Table     app/view/Tree          app/view/column/PagingColumn     app/view/column/SelectionColumn     app/view/column/SparkLineColumn     app/view/column/TimeColumn      But since the SelectionColumn is explicitly for trees, I have the fear that future developers could get the idea of missuse them. But how to restructure it probably? Like this:               app/view/table/panel/Table          app/view/tree/panel/Tree     app/view/tree/column/PagingColumn     app/view/tree/column/SelectionColumn          app/view/column/SparkLineColumn     app/view/column/TimeColumn      Or like this:               app/view/Table     app/view/Tree          app/view/column/SparkLineColumn     app/view/column/TimeColumn          app/view/column/tree/PagingColumn     app/view/column/tree/SelectionColumn"}
{"_id": "234487", "title": "Classes in OOP , methods and attributes memory internals", "text": "I would assume that instances of the same class would actually share their methods, and just have save different attributes in their namespace. How often do you arbitrary add methods to a single instance? Yet for example in Python that's not the case. Instances' methods are all different objects. Even if you decorate them as `@classmethods`, (or use `__slots__`) they seem to be different objects in memory. Can someone give me a definition of what I'm describing here, or even given same details on why this model was chosen? What happens in other languages?"}
{"_id": "240323", "title": "Term For Errors That Occur In Certain Environments", "text": "What is the term for an error or bug that exhibits itself on computers with certain environments/setups only? **Context:** We have produced our own anti-piracy software. We distribute applications that are locked using this anti-piracy software. The anti-piracy software is simply a windowless Windows OS executable. When it runs; it downloads an encrypted file (Client File) from our server, decrypts it, checks that the users serial number occurs in the Client File and writes the result (hashed) to a Result File. Each of our companies products 'consults'/accesses this executable to verify that the user is allowed to run and use our product. On some of our clients computers, our anti-piracy executable is being blocked from running or blocked from downloading the Client File (its unknown what the cause is yet). These clients are Civil Engineering firms that have their Windows OS's very controlled and 'sandboxed' for security reasons. _So to sum up, the anti-piracy software works and passes our tests on most of our clients computers and on all our in-house test nodes. The software fails on these few Civil Engineering clients computers._ **What would be the term (if any) for this kind of error or bug in software?**"}
{"_id": "191443", "title": "Why do relational databases only accept SQL queries?", "text": "As far as I know, most relational databases do not offer any driver-level API for queries, except a `query` function which takes an SQL string as an argument. I'm thinking how easier it would be if one could do:               var result = mysql.select('article', {id: 3})      For joined tables, it would be slightly more complex, but still possible. For example:               var tables = mysql.join({tables: ['article', 'category'], on: 'categoryID'});     mysql.select(tables, {'article.id': 3}, ['article.title', 'article.body', 'category.categoryID'])      Cleaner code, no string parsing overhead, no injection problems, easier reuse of query elements... I can see a lot of advantages. Is there a specific reason why it was chosen to only provide access to queries through SQL?"}
{"_id": "191444", "title": "Are generic programming and OOP mutually exclusive?", "text": "I never did generic programming before, being more of a python guy, and generally using OOP. As I moved into generic programming, I faced some issues. I read the FAQ, but I am not satisfied. What I want to ask are the following questions (I am mostly interested in the first, but answering the others will be extremely welcome): Are generic programming and OOP mutually exclusive? Meaning, for example, are you supposed to have methods and functions accepting the template, instead of baseclass or abstract pure class? * * * Some other questions I've got, only to provide context to my lack of understanding are: How do traditional design patterns react to generic programming approach and concepts? How to prevent (or control) the genericity of each class/template to \"bubble up\" in the dependencies dictated by the program logic, in particular when two types are related and go always together (e.g. a RealNumberProducer class and double vs ComplexNumberProducer and std::complex)?"}
{"_id": "19911", "title": "How is determined an impact of a requirement change on the existing code?", "text": "How companies working on large projects evaluate an impact of a single modification on an existing code? * * * Since my question is probably not very clear, here's an example: Let's take a sample business application which deals with tasks. In the database, each task has a state, 0 being \"Pending\", ... 5 - \"Finished\". A new requirement adds a new state, between 2nd and 3rd one. It means that:   * A constraint on the values 1 - 5 in the database must be changed,   * Business layer and code contracts must be changed to add a new state,   * Data access layer must be changed to take in account that, for example the state `StateReady` is now 6 instead of 5, etc.   * The application must implement a new state visually, add new controls for it, new localized strings for tool-tips, etc. When an application is written recently by one developer, it's more or less easy to predict every change to do. On the other hand, when an application was written for years by many people, no single person can anticipate every change immediately, without any investigation. So since this situation (such changes in requirements) is very frequent, I imagine there are already some clever techniques and ways to predict the impact. Is there any? Do you know any books which deal about this subject? * * * Note: my question is not related to How do you deal with changing requirements? question. In fact, I'm not interested in evaluating the cost of a change, but rather the way to predict the parts of an application which will be concerned by the change. _What_ will be those changes and _how difficult_ they are really doesn't matter in my question."}
{"_id": "110431", "title": "What are the benefits of not including other header files in a header file?", "text": "Sometimes, a header file uses objects that are in declared in other header files. The user of this header file would have to include the dependency anyway and get the order correct too."}
{"_id": "19912", "title": "Overview of computer science, programming", "text": "Where I can find overview of computer science, programming etc.? I graduated in physics and want to begin programming or similar and I'm not even sure of what's out there or where to begin. What I'm looking for is some broad overview of existing technologies - just like you have a book \"Physics of elementary particles\" that explains general view of that area, but for computers/programming of course. Do you have some book to recommend?"}
{"_id": "39594", "title": "Tips for working at home?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I program from home. What can I do to be more productive? What about if your office is your home? I'm not talking about a self-employed devoloper. I'm talking about been hired and work from your home. Do you have some tips for been focus on work? Thanks"}
{"_id": "195535", "title": "Nested classes vs namespaces", "text": "Is it good to use nested classes or should I use namespaces instead? In context: I have a templated codec loader and a codec have In objects and Out objects               template<class TypeOfData>     class Codec         {         private:             typename TypeOfData::In* reader;             typename TypeOfData::Out* writer;         };      On the other hand, I cannot use               using TypeOfData;      if i dont want to :: my way to a static method."}
{"_id": "119843", "title": "What specific task could be given to a Java web development candidate during an interview?", "text": "I'm looking for ideas for tasks that I can give to a Java programmer candidate to check his knowledge of Java; I'm specifically looking for a Java developer for web applications."}
{"_id": "221609", "title": "How to simulate and estimate long running application", "text": "We are building a large, modular application that is intended to run across multiple processors. I need to develop a method to estimate how long it will take to run all of the functions. I already have the function's execution time on a single processor. Now I need to find a way to account for the communication overhead. I also need to identify if there is a difference in execution time based upon particular functions being spread across a number of processors instead of remaining on the same processor. How should I simulate the overall application in order to identify the communication overhead and to provide an estimate for what the total execution time would be?"}
{"_id": "245802", "title": "Is there a downside to using AggressiveInlining on simple properties?", "text": "I bet I could answer that myself if I knew more about tools to analyze how C#/JIT behaves but since I don't, please bear with me asking. I have simple code like this :                   private SqlMetaData[] meta;              [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining)]         private SqlMetaData[] Meta         {             get             {                 return this.meta;             }         }      As you can see I put AggressiveInlining because I feel like it should be inlined.   I think. There's no guarantee the JIT would inline it otherwise. Am I wrong? Could doing this kind of thing hurt the performance/stability/anything?"}
{"_id": "245801", "title": "Web app that runs other applications?", "text": "I am trying to write a web application that interacts with a service that would run scripts at the system level. Something like a website that you can schedule a job, the service will run the job with the given inputs, write the outputs to a database, and inform the website of its status. A few questions: How is this typically done? Do I write to a \"JOBS_QUEUED\" table in my database and have the service check that? How can I pass a \"% done\" back to the web page? Is there a name for this type of thing? Not sure if it matters, but I am working with Ruby on Rails right now."}
{"_id": "215327", "title": "Dealing with the node.js callback pyramid", "text": "I've just started using node, and one thing I've quickly noticed is how quickly callbacks can build up to a silly level of indentation:               doStuff(arg1, arg2, function(err, result) {         doMoreStuff(arg3, arg4, function(err, result) {             doEvenMoreStuff(arg5, arg6, function(err, result) {                 omgHowDidIGetHere();             });         });     });      The official style guide says to put each callback in a separate function, but that seems overly restrictive on the use of closures, and making a single object declared in the top level available several layers down, as the object has to be passed through all the intermediate callbacks. Is it ok to use function scope to help here? Put all the callback functions that need access to a global-ish object inside a function that declares that object, so it goes into a closure?               function topLevelFunction(globalishObject, callback) {              function doMoreStuffImpl(err, result) {             doMoreStuff(arg5, arg6, function(err, result) {                 callback(null, globalishObject);             });         }              doStuff(arg1, arg2, doMoreStuffImpl);     }      and so on for several more layers... Or are there frameworks etc to help reduce the levels of indentation without declaring a named function for every single callback? How do you deal with the callback pyramid?"}
{"_id": "100031", "title": "one programmer, many languages -- the name dilemma", "text": "When you work across multiple programming languages, there is a problem you encounter... _**A valid name (identifier) in one language is invalid in another._** For example... `var` `new` `function` `this` are a keywords in JavaScript, but you can use them freely in Python. Similarly `list` `dict` `def` can be used in JavaScript without problems. This is a very common and something programmers generally quickly become acquainted with when they program in multiple languages. However, when you're working in collaboration, you have to lay out some rules/guidelines for your team members to ensure consistency and uniformity in the code. With teams, this issue becomes more important than simply remembering what's valid and what's not while you program. So, my question is, what strategies you adopt...   * simply take a union of all the reserved words present in all the languages you use, hand out a list to everybody and abstain their use?   * accept the diversity and take extra pains when \"context switching\"   * adopt an intermediate ground where one language can use the other's, but not vice-versa (Note: i am only talking about Python and JavaScript in this question ... but please answer the question more broadly) **\\-- UPDATE --** Thanks for all the answers. So the general consensus i see emerging is to let programmers use any name regardless of what they do other languages -- as long as names are descriptive, it doesn't hurt."}
{"_id": "64610", "title": "What would you do if a senior level programmer stole your code?", "text": "This was my experience at a previous company. As it was a small startup company, some of the normal software development procedures were not followed strictly. One of my colleagues was a senior programmer with the company for 2 years. His skills were quite lacking. He would allocate his tasks to me and then take credit for the work himself. He did this regularly, while I would also have to finish my own tasks. I felt that I couldn't express this situation to senior management as that colleague had their trust. Later, I tried to delay his tasks assigned to me so that reflect poorly on him (as he couldn't finish tasks) Also, client complaints piled up unresolved issues. Now the company knows about him. Actually, now I'm heading to a new company as a Lead. Now I'm completely free with these situation. Have any of you experienced situations like this? What would/did you do?"}
{"_id": "120144", "title": "What happened to the this type of naming convention?", "text": "I have read so many docs about naming conventions, most recommending both Pascal and Camel naming conventions. Well, I agree to this, it's ok. This might not be pleasing to some, but I am just trying to get your opinion on why you name your objects and classes in a certain way. What happened to this type of naming conventions, and/or why are they bad? I want to name a structure, and I prefix it with \"struct\". My reason is that, with IntelliSense, I see all structures in one place, and anywhere I see the struct prefix, I know it's a \"struct\":               structPerson     structPosition      another example is the enum, although I may not prefix it with \"enum\", but maybe with \"enm\":               enmFruits     enmSex      again my reason is that in IntelliSense, I see all my enumerations in one place. Because .NET has so many built-in data structures, I think this helps me do less searching. Note that I used .NET in this example, but I welcome language agnostic answers."}
{"_id": "81197", "title": "What did Alan Kay mean by \"assignment\" in The Early History of Smalltalk?", "text": "I have been reading The Early History of Smalltalk and there are a few mentions of \"assignment\" which make me question my understanding of its meaning: > Though OOP came from many motivations, two were central. The large scale one > was to find a better module scheme for complex systems involving hiding of > details, and the small scale one was to find a more flexible version of > assignment, and then to try to eliminate it altogether. (from _1960-66--Early OOP and other formative ideas of the sixties_ , Section I) > What I got from Simula was that you could now replace bindings and > assignment with _goals_. The last thing you wanted any programmer to do is > mess with internal state even if presented figuratively. Instead, the > objects should be presented as _site of higher level behaviors more > appropriate for use as dynamic components_. (...) It is unfortunate that > much of what is called \"object-oriented programming\" today is simply old > style programming with fancier constructs. Many programs are loaded with > \"assignment-style\" operations now done by more expensive attached > procedures. (from _\"Object-oriented\" Style_ , Section IV) Am I correct in interpreting the intent as being that objects are meant to be fa\u00e7ades and any method (or \"message\") whose purpose is to set an instance variable on an object (i.e. an \"assignment\") is defeating the purpose? This interpretation appears to be supported by two later statements in Section IV: > Four techniques used together--persistent state, polymorphism, > instantiation, and methods-as-goals for the object--account for much of the > power. None of these require an \"object-oriented language\" to be employed-- > ALGOL 68 can almost be turned to this style--and OOPL merely focuses the > designer's mind in a particular fruitful direction. However, doing > encapsulation right is a commitment not just to abstraction of state, but to > eliminate state oriented metaphors from programming. ...and: > Assignment statements--even abstract ones--express very low-level goals, and > more of them will be needed to get anything done. Generally, we don't want > the programmer to be messing around with state, whether simulated or not. Would it be fair to say that opaque, immutable instances are being encouraged here? Or is it simply _direct_ state changes that are discouraged? For example, if I have a `BankAccount` class, it's OK to have `GetBalance`, `Deposit` and `Withdraw` instance methods/messages; just make sure there isn't a `SetBalance` instance method/message?"}
{"_id": "215328", "title": "What are the types of dynamically typed languages arrays?", "text": "For example, in JavaScript, I can do such things:               var arr = [1, \"two\", /three/, [4]];      There is no way to do such a thing in C! Except by using a `void*`, which is not an efficient/safe way. Is this how implementations do it? Using `void*` everywhere?"}
{"_id": "63042", "title": "Recommended Payment Schedule for Freelance Development", "text": "I've been a freelance developer for many years and am setting up a system designed to attract clients through one of my developer websites. If successful, these would be clients I do not know, and some jobs may be very small. When working with clients I know on larger projects, I'm accustomed to doing the work before I get paid. But, here, that seems risky. I'm looking for suggestions on the payment schedule I should require for small projects. I suspect potential clients will not be willing to pay the full amount up front, and so the solution will probably be some sort of compromise."}
{"_id": "254382", "title": "Event notification for ::SCardListReaders()", "text": "In the PC/SC (Personal Computer Smart Card) Appln, I have (MSCAPI USB CCID based) 1) Calling ::SCardListReaders() returns SCARD_E_NO_READERS_AVAILABLE (0x8010002E). This call is made after OS starts fresh after reboot, from a thread which is part of my custom windows service. 2) Adding delay before ::SCardListReaders() call solves the problem. 3) How can I solve this problem elegantly ? Not using delay & waiting for some event to notify me. since a) Different machines may require different delay values b) Cannot loop since the error code is genuine c) Could not find this event as part of System Event Notification Service or similar COM interface d) platform is Windows 7 Any Help Appreciated."}
{"_id": "254383", "title": "How to know whether to create a general system or to hack a solution", "text": "I'm new to coding , learning it since last year actually. One of my worst habits is the following: Often I'm trying to create a solution that is too big , too complex and doesn't achieve what needs to be achieved, when a hacky kludge can make the fit. One last example was the following (see paste bin link below) http://pastebin.com/WzR3zsLn After explaining my issue, one nice person at stackoverflow came with this solution instead http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25304170/update-a-field- by-removing-quarter-or-removing-month When should I keep my code simple and when should I create a 'big', general solution? I feel stupid sometimes for building something so big, so awkward, just to solve a simple problem. It did not occur to me that there would be an easier solution. Any tips are welcomed. Best"}
{"_id": "152445", "title": "How can I speed up the process of typing up specification during a meeting with developers?", "text": "I'm studying source code with other developers, and my job is to type up the specifications as the lead programmer describes what each function does. Are there any tips/tricks to doing this faster? a lot of times I have to ask him to repeat himself, as I didn't hear it well. How can I be a better specification writer?"}
{"_id": "152440", "title": "What options are there for splitting UI layout from code logic using a markup language?", "text": "What tools similar to GWT's UIBinder exist in other languages? By this I mean a system where you can define your UI layout in a markup language (preferably html+css) and attach the functionality to the layout using the code. I'm most interested in anything for python, but answers in other languages would interest me as well. I'm interested because the benefits of having a non-programmer work directly on the layout without needing to touch the code and adjust a bunch of UI toolkit method calls is very productive. I'm aware of Flex for flash, but is there anything else out there? What search terms might I use to find such frameworks? I've looked around but I haven't found anything concrete. Edit: I'm not only interested in web frameworks, but desktop applications as well. Edit2: My question appears to be close to a duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2962874/what-are-the-open-source- alternatives-to-wpf-xaml"}
{"_id": "149120", "title": "How can I satisfy this project requirement?", "text": "I'm part of a two-person team that is building a web-based virtual tour application with specific extra functionality that doesn't exist in current applications. This is a summer school project. The team lead wants this application to be as platform and dependency-agnostic as possible. To do this, we're using Google's Fusion Tables and StreetView APIs to display the images and serve as a database. This way, a client installing this application on their server doesn't have to worry about configuring and maintaining a local database and all that is necessary on their end is a Google Apps account and the images themselves. My issue is how does the client make requests for images and data without a server-side language? Most, if not all of the data will be textual, and thus be able to render as JSON and parsed as such. However, that leaves the issue of the images themselves. They will be hosted on a to-be-determined location, and I need some way to access them. Using Ajax, I can execute a PHP call to load an image easily, and I already know how to do this. Its been suggested that I use the Java client library to interface with GData services, but I think this is overcomplicating things. My arguments for including PHP as an application requirement are   1. PHP is synonymous with hosting. I've yet to run across a commercial host that doesn't offer PHP   2. I already know how to implement the Ajax calls to the PHP function.    3. As this application has a 6 week deadline, I'd like to stick with what I know rather than learning a whole new methodology His arguments for looking somewhere else are   1. No guarantee that PHP will be loaded on the server to be used. Our school's CMS is based in Java, and PHP is not installed   2. Java is a standard inclusion in server and client configruations    3. The application should be server and dependency agnostic in the sense that it can be uploaded to a folder and accessed without any configuration Honestly, if I had the time, it would be an interesting side project to include this type of functionality, especially since I've never done it before and it sounds interesting. But I keep thinking about that 6 week deadline, and as I'm the one that will be doing the majority of the coding, I just don't think I can do it in time without PHP."}
{"_id": "212801", "title": "Implementation of a serial communication protocol", "text": "I need to implement a serial protocol to communicate with a device using .NET (C#). This implementation should be a library (.dll) to be used in different projects. I have the datasheet that describe the protocol (baudrate, stop bits, message protocol, commands, etc.) and I know that I need to use `SerialPort` class from `System.IO.Ports` namespace. But I have some doubts on how to struture/organize the code. Here are some questions:   1. Should I be concern about thread management or this aspect should be managed by how is using the library?   2. Can I manage received/sent data using strings or should I use bytes?   3. Commands and fixed contents should be stored using `enums`, `constants` or something else? Maybe those questions could be subjectives, but I would like to have some feedback from someone with more experience than me. If someone has some examples, tips, best pratices, etc. on this subject, I will be very grateful."}
{"_id": "212800", "title": "which directory to initialize git repo", "text": "I'm just getting started with Git. I'll be doing PHP development and was wondering if I should initialize my repo within my server root folder, or any directory on my hard drive and publish my changes to the server root. Does it really matter, any pros/cons? For now, this is just to keep track of personal projects I'm doing for fun, but any feedback on best practice, personal preference/experience, do's and don'ts will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "149124", "title": "What is the benefit of hypermedia (HATEOAS)?", "text": "I don't understand the benefit to HATEOAS for APIs intended for use by programs (as opposed to humans directly browsing your API). Sure, the customer isn't bound to a URL schema but they are bound to a data schema which is the same thing in my mind. For example, assume I want to view an item on an order, let's assume I've discovered or know the order URL already. HATEOAS:               order = get(orderURL);     item = get(order.itemURL[5]);      non-HATEOAS:               order = get(orderURL);     item = get(getItemURL(order,5));      In the first model I have to know the fact that the order object has an itemURL field. In the second model I have to know how to construct an item URL. In both cases I have to \"know\" something ahead of time so what is HATEOAS actually doing for me?"}
{"_id": "219853", "title": "Why REST Api do not follow the Facade design pattern", "text": "In comparing REST [api] structure with a OO model, I see these similarities: Both:   * Are data oriented      * REST = Resources      * OO = Objects   * Surround operation around data      * REST = surround VERBS (Get, Post, ...) around resources     * OO = promote operation around objects by encapsulation However, good OO practices do not always stand on REST apis when trying to apply the facade pattern for instance: in REST, you do not have 1 controller to handle all requests AND you do not hide internal object complexity. ![Simple object relation between 2 concepts](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SyVav.png) ![Analogy between OO and REST](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1CAFF.png) On the contrary, REST promotes resources publishing of all relations with a resource and other on at least two forms:   1. via resource hierarchy relations (A contact of id 43 is composed of an address 453) : `/api/contacts/43/addresses/453`   2. via links in a REST json response: > >     >> GET /api/contacts/43 >     << HTTP Response { >        id: 43, ... >        addresses: [{ >           id: 453, ... >        }], >        links: [{ >           favoriteAddress: { >               id: 453 >           } >        }] >     } >   ![Basic complexity hidden by objectA](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xwaSC.png) Coming back to OO, the facade design pattern respect a `Low Coupling` between an _objectA_ and its ' _objectB client_ ' and `High Cohesion` for this _objectA_ and its internal object composition ( _objectC_ , _objectD_ ). With the _objectA_ interface, this allow a developer to limit impact on _objectB_ of the _objectA_ internal changes (in _objectC_ and _objectD_ ), as long as the _objectA_ api (operations) are still respected. In REST, the data (resource), the relations (links), and the behavior (verbs) are exploded in different elements and available to the web. Playing with REST, I always have an impact on code changes between my client and server: Because I have `High Coupling` between my `Backbone.js` requests and `Low Cohesion` between resources. I never figured out how to let my `Backbone.js javascript application` deal with \" _REST resources and features_ \" **discovery** promoted by REST links. I understand that the WWW is meant to be served by multi servers, and that the OO elements had to be exploded to be serviced by many hosts in there, but for a simple scenario like \"saving\" a page showing a contact with its addresses, I end up with: > >     GET /api/contacts/43?embed=(addresses) >     [save button pressed] >     PUT /api/contacts/43 >     PUT /api/contacts/43/addresses/453 >   which lead me to move the saving action atomic transactional responsibility on the browsers applications (since two resources can be addressed separately). _With this in mind, if I cannot simplify my development (Facade design patterns not applicable), and if I bring more complexity to my client (handling transactional atomic save), where is the benefit of being RESTful ?_"}
{"_id": "247400", "title": "What is the simplest archive file format to aim for when writing collections of files?", "text": "I've created a PHP-based document management system and hosted it on my Raspberry Pi. I created a \"backup\" function that zips together all the documents, but it takes too long due to the hardware constraints of the Pi, as well as the fact that compression cannot be disabled when creating zip files in PHP. This has led me to think that perhaps I should just devise some sort of binary file format that allows multiple files to be stored in it, and dump all my uncompressed documents into it when the user asks for backups. Oddly, I'm not necessarily concerned about the lack of possible \"unarchivers\". Which file format is the easiest to implement, whether a standard format, or a proposed new format? Is there any other alternative for solving my problem that does not require implementing a custom archiver? Note that I wish to avoid the following:   * Shell commands (not portable).   * Installing third party dependencies (may not work on a third party hosted system).   * Rewriting my system in a different language."}
{"_id": "21631", "title": "Should my colleagues review each others code from source control system?", "text": "So that's my story: one of my colleagues uses to review all the code, hosted to revision system. I'm not speaking about adequate review of changes in parts that he belongs to. He watches the code file to file, line to line. Every new file and every modified. I feel just like being spied on! My guess is that if code was already hosted to control system, you should trust it as workable at least. My question is, maybe I'm just too paranoiac and practice of reviewing each others code is good? P.S: We're team of only three developers, and I fear that if there will be more of us, colleague just won't have time to review all the the code we'll write."}
{"_id": "49540", "title": "Are there efforts to build a collaboratively edited HTML/JS/DOM reference?", "text": "W3Schools has a reputation of being incomplete, sometimes incorrect, and ridden with advertising; still, when looking to look up some things or link to documentation when answering a SO question, it still is the only handy cross- browser resource. There are other resources like the Mozilla Developer Network that is doing an increasingly great job documenting JavaScript, and the legendary and great Quirksmode. But they, as brilliant as they are, cover only parts of the areas I am talking about, and provide no community editing and quality control options. Is anybody aware of efforts to create a collaboratively edited, cross-browser HTML/CSS/JavaScript/DOM encyclopedia? If you will, I'm thinking of a challenger to W3Schools like SO was to Experts Exchange."}
{"_id": "219858", "title": "Scripts to run Java programs - e.g. Ant", "text": "My team currently use an Ant script to _execute_ various Java programs. Note that I am not asking about managing the build/deployment cycle for which we are already using Maven (quite happily). For example, we use something like the following:               <path id=\"lib\">       <fileset dir=\"path/to/lib\" />     </path>          <path id=\"run\" >       <path refid=\"lib\" />     </path>          <target name=\"aJavaProgram\" >       <java classname=\"path.to.AJavaProgam\"              classpathref=\"run\" fork=\"yes\" failonerror=\"false\" append=\"true\" />     </target>          <target name=\"anotherJavaProgram\" depends=\"aJavaProgram\" >       <java classname=\"path.to.AnotherJavaProgam\"              classpathref=\"run\" fork=\"yes\" failonerror=\"false\" append=\"true\" />     </target>      We originally chose Ant for the following reasons (or rather I didn't choose Ant, it was that way when I joined, but I think these are good reasons for the choice):   * it was an easy way of managing dependencies (although we now pick up these from Maven)   * it allows us to easily build/maintain dependencies between particular jobs   * we can deploy the Ant script, and the Java libraries, and easily run particular jobs - i.e.      * we don't have to worry about classpaths (configured in the Ant script)     * we don't have to worry about building jars with main classes specified in the manifest     * we can use Ant to create / store / manage arguments passed to main() methods   * we can plug these ant scripts into our IDEs and run the jobs from there. Generally speaking, we have been very happy with this. However, an increasing issue is the ant-java-shutdown hook issue \\- this means that if one of these Java programs fails but doesn't finish, terminating the Ant process from which it was started doesn't terminate the Java process - which then has to be done manually, and is a real bind. Also, I'm conscious of two other (possible) factors:   * this is using Ant in a slightly unusual way, which is perhaps not how Ant was intended to be used (or at least, so it seems to me...)?   * I'm not really sure, but it seems that fewer and fewer developers/teams are using Ant these days, with preference for other technologies. So, to clarify:   * I want a flexible approach to execute various Java programs   * the approach that we have been using was to do this via Ant scripts, but this had the following problems:      * terminating the Ant task does not kill the Java program      * this \"feels\" like Ant is not the right tool for the job   * how might we meet the needs specified above?      * if not Ant, the solution should not face the termination / shutdown hook issue"}
{"_id": "247407", "title": "Is this a good practice or not?", "text": "I have a colleague who has come up with a way of 'genericizing' information from a database so that all his web application's drop-down lists can share the same object in his MVC.NET C# code and Views, which can contain different data depending on what tables it is being used against. We work for a government agency, and we have facilities divided up into areas called \"Regions\", which contain further subdivided areas called VISNs, which each contain \"Sites\" or \"Facilities\". My colleague has developed a very complex security scheme whereby people can be granted access to data based on their permission level which can be assigned by Region, VISN, Site, or any mixture of the three. It's a nice scheme and very clever. However, he has stored procedures that return lists of Regions, VISNs, and Sites based on a person's User Id, and he is returning \"generic\" values like `TextFieldID`, `TextField`, and `TextParentID`. My first problem with this, is that looking at this data coming out of the database, I would not know what the data is. I feel that fields coming from a query or stored procedure should be descriptive of the data they are delivering. What does everyone else think? The deeper issue for me however is that he is taking some of the data, concatenating it in his stored procedure like this               SELECT DISTINCT         t.VisnID,         NULL,         t.StationID,         'V' + CAST(t.VisnID as varchar) + ': ' + t.Station3N + ': ' + t.StationName,         t.Inactive     FROM Stations t       and sending it back in a \"TextField\" property, instead of sending back the discrete data separately (`Station3N`, `StationName`) and concatenating it in the View, which would allow for different concatenation depending on what device what accessing the application (perhaps mobile and desktop). His justification is that he can send all his various drop down data and capture them all, regardless of content, in the same C# object named \"LookupValue.\"               public partial class LookupValue : IEquatable<LookupValue>     {         public LookupValue(string textFieldId, string textField, bool inactive)         {             TextFieldID = textFieldId;             TextField = textField;             Inactive = inactive;         }              public LookupValue(string textParentId, string textFieldId, string textField, bool inactive)         {             TextParentID = textParentId;             TextFieldID = textFieldId;             TextField = textField;             Inactive = inactive;         }              public LookupValue(string textParentId, string textSelfParentId, string textFieldId, string textField, bool inactive)         {             TextParentID = textParentId;             TextSelfParentID = textSelfParentId;             TextFieldID = textFieldId;             TextField = textField;             Inactive = inactive;         }              /// <summary>         /// Returns a custom string identifier if the Inactive property is true.         /// </summary>         public string GetInactiveString()         {             string value = \"\";             if (Inactive)             {                 value = \"[I]\";             }                  return value;         }              /// <summary>         /// Returns a custom text label that concatenates the TextField property with the custom string identifier of the Inactive property.         /// </summary>         public string GetDisplayNameWithInactiveString         {             get { return TextField + \" \" + GetInactiveString(); }         }              public bool Equals(LookupValue other)         {             //Check whether the compared object is null.               if (Object.ReferenceEquals(other, null)) return false;                  //Check whether the compared object references the same data.               if (Object.ReferenceEquals(this, other)) return true;                  //Check whether the products' properties are equal.               return TextFieldID.Equals(other.TextFieldID) && TextField.Equals(other.TextField);         }              // If Equals() returns true for a pair of objects         // then GetHashCode() must return the same value for these objects.         public override int GetHashCode()         {             //Get hash code for the TextFieldID field if it is not null.               int hashTextFieldId = TextFieldID == null ? 0 : TextFieldID.GetHashCode();                  //Get hash code for the Code field.               int hashTextField = TextField.GetHashCode();                  //Calculate the hash code for the product.               return hashTextFieldId ^ hashTextField;         }     }      He believes the re-usability of this object is worth the violation of Separation of Concerns and possible future difficulties in handling more than one display variation for a drop-down. I should point out that this object is contained in his Data project namespace (our projects are separated into Data, Web, Services, etc.) instead of the Web project namespace and he also returns this object to the Web layer via his Repository queries which call the stored procedures that I described earlier, which is gross violation of Separation of Concerns in my opinion. I am just looking for some confirmation from other programmers that this is in fact a bad practice, and also looking for ideas I can present him on better ways to do what he is attempting. I have my own ideas, but again I'm just looking for other's ideas so I have more options to present to him. \\--Edit -- I forgot to mention that we are using Entity Framework as an ORM, and his Repository classes in his DAL are dumping the data from the stored procs into this LookupValue object."}
{"_id": "162349", "title": "Should I prefer instance methods over class methods in Ruby?", "text": "I'm working on a rails application, and I've been pulling functionality out of my rails code and into pure ruby classes in lib/. I've found myself often writing classes like this:                class MailchimpIntegration          def subscribe_email(email, fname, lname)         Gibbon.list_subscribe(:id => NEWSLETTER_LIST_ID, :email_address => email,           :merge_vars => {'fname' => fname, 'lname' => lname },           :email_type => \"html\",  :double_optin => false, :send_welcome => false)       end            def unsubscribe_email(email)         Gibbon.list_unsubscribe(:id => NEWSLETTER_LIST_ID, :email_address => email)       end            def change_details(old_email, email, fname, lname)         Gibbon.list_update_member(:id => NEWSLETTER_LIST_ID, :email_address => old_email,           :merge_vars => {'email' => email, 'fname' => fname, 'lname' => lname })       end            def get_email_info(email)         Gibbon.list_member_info(:id => NEWSLETTER_LIST_ID, :email_address => [email])[\"data\"].first       end     end      My question is: Should I change these methods to be class methods? It seems reasonable to do, as I'll probably end up calling these by just newing up a MailchimpIntegration class each time. However, I generally prefer to have instance methods as they can be more easily stubbed etc, although this seems to be less of an issue in ruby. I have several classes like this in my system, so I'd be keen to see what people think about this."}
{"_id": "69195", "title": "The role of determination of the variable type (floating point or fixed point) in program performance", "text": "I know with changing the variable type, the speed of the program change. I want to understand the other effects of this change in the software performance. I want to know if we use a floating point variable instead of fixed point variable,the amount of memory consumption and speed of program, what will change?"}
{"_id": "154291", "title": "How to design highly scalable web services in Java?", "text": "I am creating some Web Services that would have 2000 concurrent users. The services are offered for free and are hence expected to get a large user base. In the future it may be required to scale up to 50,000 users. There are already a few other questions that address the issue like - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2567254/building-highly-scalable-web- services However my requirements differ from the question above. For example - My application does not have a user interface, so images, CSS, javascript are not an issue. It is in Java so suggestions like using HipHop to translate PHP to native code are useless. Hence I decided to ask my question separately. This is my project setup -   1. Rest based Web services using Apache CXF   2. Hibernate 3.0 (With relevant optimizations like lazy loading and custom HQL for tune up)   3. Tomcat 6.0   4. MySql 5.5 What are the best practices to abide by in order to make a Java based application scalable?"}
{"_id": "69193", "title": "Learning about a new technology", "text": "I have approx 9 years of experience in the IT field. I've mainly worked on web applications and currently am looking forward to become a technical architect for J2EE applications. I usually face this challenge; in order to learn a new technology in depth I usually refer to a book. I was recently going through 'Java Persistence with Hibernate' to get in depth knowledge on Hibernate. It takes usually a month for me to complete reading the books/doing some R & D to know about how the APIs work and writing some sample program from books. I should mention that my reading is mostly done in spare time out of my regular project work. At the end of this exercise I get a decent idea about the technology and how it works (its uses in applications etc...). However after couple of months, I also start forgetting about what I read in my previous book (or about previous technology). Mainly because the project on which I work on do not use those technology, so if you do not practice, you will forget those things. For ex: I recently read about FTL, but in my project at the same time we were using plain JSPs, so I did not get chance to apply my FTL knowledge there and I forgot most of what I read about FTL. On one hand, I love to know more about the technologies around us and at the same time I want to keep that knowledge with me so that I could use it in future when needed. What am I doing wrong here? I sometime think that:   1. I should spend more time on one technology before switching on next, so that I could remember most of it.   2. My approach towards learning about new things this way is wrong.   3. Learning through Books might not be a good approach.   4. I need to do something extra to keep my learning up to date (but frankly what is that extra; I don't know). I need some help here."}
{"_id": "162340", "title": "When should I use StringBuilder or StringBuffer?", "text": "In a production web application, my fellow programmers used StringBuffer everywhere. Now I am taking care of application development and corrections. After reading StringBuilder and StringBuffer I have decided to replace all the StringBuffer code with StringBuilder because we don't need thread safety in our data beans. For example: (In each data bean I can see the use of StringBuffer)               @Override     public String toString() {         StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();// replace it from StringBuilder         sb.append(\" ABCD : \").append(abcd);         sb.append(\", EFGH : \").append(efgh);         sb.append(\", IJKL : \").append(ijkl);     }      We create a separate data beans for each session/request. A session is used by a single user no other user can access it. Should I consider other points before migrating? If there is a single thread (no waiting threads/no new thread will be looking for object lock), it performs equally with either StringBuffer or StringBuilder. I know in the case of StringBuffer, it takes time to take the object lock but I want to know if there is any performance difference between them except the hold/release of the object lock."}
{"_id": "162341", "title": "What is the name of the method to find index from array, in Objective-c?", "text": "I have a following method to find index of a book object which have a book name:               +(NSInteger)indexXXX:(NSString *)bookName XXX:(NSArray *)books     {       for (NSInteger i = 0; i < books.count; i++) {         NSDictionary *book = [books objectAtIndex:i];         if ([[book objectForKey:@\"bookName\"] isEqualToString:bookName]) {           return i;         }       }       return -1;     }      But I don't know what name should I use for this method.   Could you tell me some method names commonly used for this kind of method."}
{"_id": "203884", "title": "application logic, business logic, models, controllers - where to put the application's brains?", "text": "I'm trying to wrap my head around models, views, and controllers, but I feel as though the more I read, the more conflicting information I seem to encounter. I guess the general goal is--as far as I've seen--to shoot for fat models and thin controllers, but I'm still a bit baffled by where to put what. Can I give an example from something I'm working on? This is just a personal project that I'm messing about with in PHP for fun--a mini-game of sorts. Adding timed tasks to an itinerary and collecting rewards when the task completes. So a class kind of like this exists:               class ItineraryEntry {         public $user_id;         public $task_id;         public $completion_time;     }      And another class like this:               class Task {         public $task_id;         public $description;         public $duration; //in seconds     }      So in the user interface, the user sees a task description and clicks something like \"Add to Itinerary\". Now if I'm understanding correctly, the controller needs to pick up that request and do something with it. But...how much? So for example, I need to figure out when the task will complete. Keeping it simple, that's merely time() + the duration of the task. So does the controller do that calculation and then give it to the model to validate, or does the model just handle all of it? And the controller is really just a glorified router of data? Then the second part is what happens when an itinerary task completes. So from the user interface, a task will show as completed if the completion time is in the past, and the user will have to click something like, \"Claim Rewards\". Let's just say it's...I don't know...XP (i.e., experience points)--something that gets updated on the user's account. And let's say that the amount of XP is calculated in some way based upon the difficulty of the task, time required, etc. So where would I put that calculation? Is that inside the model class for my user object, or do I have a controller that figures all of that out and then sends it to the user object? In the model for my itinerary entry model? And the reason I ask this specifically is because any kind of Claim Rewards code would have to do a couple of things at least:   1. Actually claim the reward and update the user's account   2. Clean up the expired task from the database (or marking it completed or something) So it would be interacting both with the user and the itinerary entry. A little specific guidance would be really helpful. My brain is starting to hurt from reading all of these explanations that are kind of like what I need to know, but not totally. So thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "46844", "title": "What should I call the process of converting an object to a string?", "text": "We are having a game of 'semantic football' in the office over this matter: I am writing a method for an object which will represent the object as a string. That string should be such that when typed (more likely, cut and pasted) into the interpreter window (I will keep the language name out of this for now), will produce an object which is, for our purposes, identical to the one upon which the method was called. There is a spirited discussion over the 'best' name for this method. The terms **pickle** , **serialize** , **deflate** , _etc_ have been proposed. However, it seems that those terms assume some process for the de-pickling (unserialization, _etc_ ) that is not necessarily the language interpreter itself. That is, they do not specifically refer to the case where strings of valid code are produced. This is closer to a **quine** , but we are re- producing the object not the code, so this is not quite right. any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "135412", "title": "How best do you represent a bi-directional sync in a REST api?", "text": "Assuming a system where there's a Web Application with a resource, and a reference to a remote application with another similar resource, how do you represent a bi-directional sync action which synchronizes the 'local' resource with the 'remote' resource? Example: I have an API that represents a todo list. GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /todos/, etc. That API can reference remote TODO services. GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /todo_services/, etc. I can manipulate todos from the remote service through my API as a proxy via GET/POST/PUT/DELETE /todo_services/abc123/, etc. I want the ability to do a bi-directional sync between a local set of todos and the remote set of TODOS. In a rpc sort of way, one could do POST /todo_services/abc123/sync/ But, in the \"verbs are bad\" idea, is there a better way to represent this action?"}
{"_id": "135413", "title": "Should a view and a model communicate or not?", "text": "According to the wikipedia page for the MVC architecture, the view is free to be notified by the model, and is also free to query the model about its current state. However, according to Paul Hegarty's course on iOS 5 at Stanford, lecture 1, page 18 all interaction must go through the controller, with Model and View that are never supposed to know each other. It is not clear to me if Hegarty's statement must be intended as a simplification for the course, but I am tempted to say that he intends the design as such. How do you explain these two opposite points of view ?"}
{"_id": "49896", "title": "Is Lambda function same as Actor? How can it be explained?", "text": "Sometime back I read (from a book) that conceptually Lambda function is similar to Actor. However I am clear on the concept, and will appreciate any insight or explanations for this. If they are indeed similar how? If not is there any relationship between the concepts?"}
{"_id": "125462", "title": "What's the best way to learn the MS Business Intelligence stack?", "text": "What's the best/easiest way to get into the MS BI stack on my own (preferably with a [kindle] book)? Specifically, I'd like to learn more about SSIS, SSRS, and SSAS in that order. I've tried looking at books on amazon, but I really have no idea. Some background: I just graduated with my bachelor's in computer science, and am going back for my masters in comp sci. I work right now as a C# developer, with some web and database background. I don't necessarily want to become a BI master, but I'd like to gain an intermediate-level understanding of the platform."}
{"_id": "152191", "title": "What does path finding in internet routing do and how is it different from A*?", "text": "**Note:** If you don't understand this question then feel free to ask clarification in the comments instead of voting down, it might be that this question needs some more work at the moment. I've been directed here from the Stack Excange chat room Root Access because my question didn't fit on Super User. * * * In many aspects path finding algorithms like A star are very similar to internet routing. For example: > A node in an A* path finding system can search for a path though edges > between other nodes. > > A router that's part of the internet can search for a route though cables > between other routers. In the case of A*, open and closed lists are kept by the system as a whole, sepratly from any individual node as well as each node being able to temporarily store a state involving several numbers. Routers on the internet seem to have remarkable properties, as I understand it: > They are very performant. > > New nodes can be added at any time that use a free address from a finite > (not tree like) address space. > > It's real routing, like A*, there's never any doubling back for example. > > Similar IP addresses don't have to be geographically nearby. > > The network reacts quickly to changes to the networks shape, for example if > a line is down. > > Routers share information and it takes time for new IP's to be registered > everywhere, but presumably every router doesn't have to store a list of all > the addresses each of it's directions leads most directly to. I'm looking for a basic, general, high level description of the algorithms workings from the point of view of an individual router. **Does anyone have one?** I presume public internet routers don't use A* as the overheads would be to large, and scale to poorly. I also presume there is a single method worldwide because it seems as if must involve a lot of transferring data to update and communicate a reasonable amount of state between neighboring routers. For example, perhaps the amount of data that needs to be stored in each router scales logarithmically with the number of routers that exist worldwide, the detail and reliability of the routing is reduced over increasing distances, there is increasing backtracking involved in parts of the network that are less geographically uniform or maybe each router really does perform an A* style search, temporarily maintaining open and closed lists when a packet arrives."}
{"_id": "152195", "title": "Is there a massive other side to software development which I've somehow missed, revolving entirely around Microsoft?", "text": "I'm still a beginning programmer; I've been at it for 2 years. I've learned to work with a few languages, a bit of web development technologies, a handful of libraries, frameworks, and IDEs. But over the past two years (and long before I even started, really), I keep hearing references to these...things. A million of them. Things such as C#, ADO, SOAP, ASP, ASP.NET, the .NET framework, CLR, F#, etc etc. And I've read their Wikipedia articles, in-depth, multiple times, and they all mention a million other things on that list, but I just can't seem to grasp what it all _is_. The only thing I've taken away with any certainty is that Microsoft is behind all of it. It sounds almost like a conspiracy. Are all these technologies just for developing on the Windows platform? What _is_ .NET? Do some software developers dedicate their entire career just to that side of things? Why would I want to get into it, and what advantage does...whatever it is...have over all the other technologies there are? I hope this makes sense. It's a broad question, but inside it there's a very specific question asking about something I don't know the name of. Hopefully you can grasp my confusion."}
{"_id": "46849", "title": "How to legally protect yourself from malicious and/or dumb users?", "text": "When building a public facing website that allows visitors to post comments, link to media and/or upload media (e.g. audio, video, images) ... what should I do to protect myself legally in the case such visitors link to or upload content that they shouldn't (e.g. adult oriented media, copyrighted images and/or media owned by someone else, etc...)? Some questions that come to mind in particular:   1. Should I allow folks to post anonymously?   2. If I make visitors agree to some kind of statement whereby they take full responsibility for what they upload, what should the copy of such a statement be? Please provide as specific as possible steps one should take if possible."}
{"_id": "46848", "title": "Qt's future in the light of Nokia-Microsoft partnership", "text": "In case you missed it, a lot has happened in the last two day that could potentially impact the Qt framework, for the worse. :-( It will impact the mobile sector in several and probably not currently acknowledged ways, for sure. It started yesterday with Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop internal letter depicting Nokia sitting on a burning platform and the need for a big and aggressive shift in business. A day later, at the Nokia World conference, Nokia announced the partnership with Microsoft, which at the moment resumes to Nokia adopting the Windows Phone 7 platform and development environment, dumping Symbian along the road and tagging Meego as **R &D**(a pretty dangerous keyword if you ask me), as for Maemo/N900 series I guess it's bye bye for good. I know what you're thinking but no, Qt is not going to be ported to the Window Phone platform. And I'm also scared about this. You can watch the Elop & Ballmer joint press release here. Now after reading this huge thread on the Qt-interest mailing list I can't help but wonder, what is the future of Qt at Nokia, now that they aren't focused(at all?) on Qt anymore(remember the **full** focus switch on Qt as main development framework for all Nokia products(including Symbian, yes) back in October?). I love Qt, in my opinion it is the only true cross-platform application development framework and one of the few to make C++ development a joy(to the extent possible) and good things has happened to the framework and considerable momentum while under Nokia, thus i am wondering, what are the chances that Qt might suffer a slow death at Nokia after this? Yes i know about KDE.org and the fact that Qt is easily spawnable, but I still feel uneasy. It also must be horrible for all of the efforts either by Nokia employees or third parties that have gone into Symbian and all of the Ovi Store Symbian/Qt content and business and why not, Maemo/Meego. There are also massive layoffs planned, I suspect Symbian techs and Qt? I'd love to hear your input on this? Is Qt future safe&proof? LE: The question as been gradually revised, improved and better referenced, thus you might want to throw a quick re-read to see what you might have missed."}
{"_id": "241257", "title": "Should a package manager modify your .bashrc file?", "text": "I am writing a package for something that requires an environment variable to be set in order to execute properly. Should the install step of a package manager modify a user's environment, or simply prompt the user to do so themselves? My intuition would be the latter, but I can see arguments for the former."}
{"_id": "149698", "title": "Provide a URL to a CouchDB document attachment without giving the username/password?", "text": "I posted this question on DBA, but it got closed and was never reopened even after I rewrote the whole thing to be more specific. I think its more appropriate for programmers anyway :) ## Background Information I have a CouchDB server (Server B) that is accessed by another server running PHP (Server A). My web app (Client-side Javascript) makes a request for a file to Server A. Server A sends requests to Server B with the access credentials (username:password). Server B returns JSON objects that correspond to matched files, then Server A returns that data to the client. The response includes some meta data about the file and a URL to the file on Server B. The actual file data itself is not included in the response. ## The Problem The URL to the document attachment included in the JSON response from Server B includes access credentials (username:password). Server A responds to the client-side request by returning those JSON objects. The client now has this information:               https://username:password@host:port/dbname/path/to/file.whatever      Currently all data contained within Server B resides in one database instance. If the client has access to the username:password to the CouchDB then all data could be queried with those access credentials. Like so,               https://username:password@host:port/dbname/_all_docs      ## Server-side considerations CouchDB on Cloudant ## Client-side considerations The Javascript running on the client requires a URL string to the file. The files that are being referenced are KML layers for Google Maps. A new KML layer is created using this constructor. ## What I am looking for Essentially my solution would come if I can provide a link to a CouchDB document attachment without giving the username/password.               https://host:port/path/to/file.whatever      ## What I did I had to enable cURL for PHP on Server A.               sudo apt-get install curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl     sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart      Got a bit of code from David Walsh's blog. My Javascript client code gets a list of JSON file meta data from Server A. This data includes unique DB IDs and file names (No passwords or API keys). I then pass the document ID and filename to another service on Server A which echoes the value of,               get_data('https://username:password@Server B:port/dbname/path/to/file.whatever');      I can now serve out the files to the client without revealing username or password for CouchDB on Server B."}
{"_id": "158775", "title": "Eager Loading Constraints", "text": "The thing is, eager loading some object with all of it's associations reduces the queries made to the database, but the query time is greatly increased.   The question is: This increased query time in the end pays off the database not being hitted so often? It seems to me that you are avoiding one problem and falling into another one.   Obs.: Would put eager-loading tag if i had reputation enough. Someone could create it and edit this observation."}
{"_id": "190311", "title": "Why is (position < size) such a prevalent pattern in conditionals?", "text": "In a condition statement (IF) everyone use `(position < size)`, but why? Only convention or there is a good reason for that? Example:               if (pos < array.lengh) {        // do some with array[pos];     }      why not               if (array.lengh > pos) {        // do some with array[pos];     }      ?"}
{"_id": "149691", "title": "Teaching Programming Concepts Without a Specific Language", "text": "I'm teaming up with a guy who has no programming experience. We're using a tool to make our game (RPG Maker) that has an event-based system that allows you to do pretty much everything you want. They have a GUI and a simple text editor for events. My friend has no programming experience. None. I need him to understand basic stuff, like control flow (if/else, do/while), variables/constants, etc. What can I use to teach him this, bearing in mind that I don't care about specific language syntax? Ideally, I'm looking for a \"programming\" book that talks about these ideas (perhaps visually) and doesn't care much about code. Does something like this exist? My \"google-fu\" failed me."}
{"_id": "158779", "title": "How have languages influenced CPU design?", "text": "We are often told that the hardware doesn't care what language a program is written in as it only sees the compiled binary code, however this is not the whole truth. For example, consider the humble Z80; its extensions to the 8080 instruction set include instructions like CPIR which is useful for scanning C-style (NULL-terminated) strings, e.g. to perform `strlen()`. The designers must have identified that running C programs (as opposed to Pascal, where the length of a string is in the header) was something that their design was likely to be used for. Another classic example is the Lisp Machine. What other examples are there? E.g. instructions, number and type of registers, addressing modes, that make a particular processor favour the conventions of a particular language? I am particularly interested in revisions of the same family."}
{"_id": "160277", "title": "What software models are appropriate for daily builds and continuous integration?", "text": "On reading the joel test and about daily builds, a discussion with a few tech- lead friends of mine in various companies revealed that they never did daily builds or continuous integration because according to them:   1. Daily builds were meant for projects following Agile practices. It does not work for the waterfall model.    2. Continuous integration required automated testing which their OpenGL/OGRE/OSG type-of graphics project couldn't use, because apparently automated testing is impractical for projects where the graphics part is under (re)development.    3. One of them believes that it's not necessary to have configuration management. It's just enough to follow the philosophy of it, by defining small 2-3 day tasks, perform all activities of the development cycle for each task (code, code-review, unit test, integration), deliver to integration stream and build and generate the setup.    4. Even if they created scripts for the entire build and burn-to-cd process, creating automated tests were a problem because in any program you create, you can't always know what tests you'd have to run and scripting a test case for it takes up too much time and automated testing tools may not always support the specific kind of tests you might want to make. Is daily builds and continuous integration really practical for non-agile projects? Is it meant only for test driven development? And is it really sufficient to follow the point 3 (above) kind of philosophy? I was talking to them about the build-in-one-step kind of scripted automation that Joel talks about, but they weren't willing to buy the idea. p.s: I've been through the questions on this site about daily builds etc, but I believe this question is different. **EDIT: Point 3 should've started with \"One of them believes it isn't necessary to integrate configuration mangaement with development tools\"**"}
{"_id": "162698", "title": "Why are cryptic short identifiers still so common in low-level programming?", "text": "There used to be _very_ good reasons for keeping instruction / register names short. Those reasons no longer apply, but short cryptic names are still very common in low-level programming. Why is this? Is it just because old habits are hard to break, or are there better reasons? For example:   * Atmel ATMEGA32U2 (2010?): `TIFR1` (instead of `TimerCounter1InterruptFlag`), `ICR1H` (instead of `InputCapture1High`), `DDRB` (instead of `DataDirectionPortB`), etc.   * .NET CLR instruction set (2002): `bge.s` (instead of `branch-if-greater-or-equal.short`), etc. Aren't the longer, non-cryptic names easier to work with? * * * When answering and voting, please consider the following. Many of the possible explanations suggested here apply **equally** to high-level programming, and yet the consensus, by and large, is to use non-cryptic names consisting of a word or two (commonly understood acronyms excluded). Also, if your main argument is about **physical space on a paper diagram** , please consider that this absolutely does not apply to assembly language or CIL, plus I would appreciate if you show me a diagram where terse names fit but readable ones make the diagram worse. From personal experience at a fabless semiconductor company, readable names fit just fine, and result in more readable diagrams. What is the _core thing_ that is different about low-level programming as opposed to high-level languages **that makes the terse cryptic names desirable in low-level but not high-level programming?**"}
{"_id": "162699", "title": "Boundary conditions for testing", "text": "Ok so in a programming test I was given the following question. > Question 1 (1 mark) > > Spot the potential bug in this section of code:               void Class::Update( float dt )     {         totalTime += dt;         if( totalTime == 3.0f )         {             // Do state change             m_State++;         }     }      The multiple choice answers for this question were. > a) It has a constant floating point number where it should have a named > constant variable > > b) It may not change state with only an equality test > > c) You don't know what state you are changing to > > d) The class is named poorly I wrongly answered this with answer C. I eventually received feedback on the answers and the feedback for this question was > Correct answer is a. This is about understanding correct boundary conditions > for tests. The other answers are arguably valid points, but do not indicate > a potential bug in the code. My question here is, what does this have to do with boundary conditions? My understanding of boundary conditions is checking that a value is within a certain range, which isn't the case here. Upon looking over the question, in my opinion, B should be the correct answer when considering the accuracy issues of using floating point values."}
{"_id": "53755", "title": "Should we put the specification documents in source control system such as svn?", "text": "Today, One of my colleague and I have a debate about \"Should we put the specification documents in source control system such as SVN?\". In my opinion, It should be. Everything relate to developing project should be controled carefully with source control system. Is it a wrong concept in software development process?"}
{"_id": "162696", "title": "Why don't interviewers  ask the applicant to read some code?", "text": "I had a dozen interviews in my life (I'm about to graduate) and I wonder why I was only once asked to read and explain some code. Roughly, 90% jobs are mostly about maintaining existing systems. IMO ability to read someone else's code is an important skill. Why don't interviewers check it?* *Among my friends I am the only one that was asked to review some code."}
{"_id": "163569", "title": "How to manage 2 DAO methods in a single transaction?", "text": "In an interview someone asked me : How do we manage 2 transactional/dao methods in a single transaction. Desired capabilities:   1. If anyone of them fails we need to rollback both methods.   2. Both of the methods can be called separately attached with a single transaction.   3. The management should be on DAO layer, not on service layer. I think : the question relates to spring transaction management."}
{"_id": "160185", "title": "Can I legally and ethically take an open-source project with community contributions to closed-source?", "text": "Let's say I start and develop some project under open-source license, and accept some community contributions. How shaky is the ground I stand on if I decide to take the project commercial and closed-source (or split license)? This question doesn't directly address the issue of a project with community contributions, which feels like different territory, at least as far as ethics are concerned. Legally, this might be iffy as well, because I'm not sure whether contributions fall under my copyright, or whether the contributor hold the copyright to the part of the project he added. Am I safe (ethically and legally) as long as I'm up front with the possibility that I may take the project commercial in the future?"}
{"_id": "137006", "title": "Starting with Ruby on Rails? I see a lot of criticism everywhere. Is it okay to start with Rails now in 2012?", "text": "I have worked on C before and have never tried my hands on any web application creating framework. After some convincing from one of my friends I thought of giving Rails a go. Before starting to work on Rails I have just started learning Ruby a little and hence some curiosity to know what is being talked about the framework. In the last few days, I have seen a lot of criticism of Rails as a framework. Should I try my hands on Rails or should I try something else? Is python with Django the way to go? Is Nodejs the way to go? Is there some other ruby based framework which can work for me? Please suggest with an open mind. I want to be absolutely clear in my mind before I decide. [Note: The question was closed on Stackoverflow and I was suggested that the this is a better place]"}
{"_id": "163563", "title": "Most appropriate OSS license for infrastructure code", "text": "I'm looking into potentially releasing some infrastructure code (related to automated builds and deployments) as OSS and I'm curious about how the various OSS licenses effect it. Specifically, LGPL prevents the code _itself_ (part/whole) being modified into a commercial product (which is what I'm after), but allows it to be \"linked to\" in the creation of commercial products (also ok). How does the \"linked to\" clause relate to infrastructure code, which is not deployed with the product itself? Would the application still be required to provide \"appropriate legal notices\" (which I'm not fussed over)? Would I be better off looking at the Eclipse Public License?"}
{"_id": "188440", "title": "Is it possible to half-way synchronize javascript functions that include async calls?", "text": "I am wondering if there exists a way to half way synchronize javascript functions, where data is requested on the fly. I don't want to make it purely blocking (which I guess is impossible), I just want a nice way to write the overall algorithm in one piece. Let's take the following example:               function(){         command1;         var x1 = something;         async_function(x1, callback1);     }     function callback1(data){         var x2 = command2(data);         async_function2(x2, callback2);     }     function callback2(data1){         command3(data1);     }      I would like to write something like:               function(){         command1;         var x1 = something;         call(async_function, [x1], callback1);         var x2 = command2(data);         call(async_function2, [x2], callback2);         command3(data1);     }        * I tried playing around with the `caller` property of functions, but I'm not familiar enough with the execution environment.   * I also tried writing a function \"call\" like above, using the `apply` function to pass in a custom callback which returns the result of the async function to it's caller. What bugs me is that while programming\\debugging, I have to follow the code from one function into another into another (just like the movie inception). I want one place to write the high-level algorithm without decomposing it into many functions.   For example, If I want to write A* algorithm, but the \"getNeighbors\" function is asynchronous."}
{"_id": "164696", "title": "What's special in July 26th and why is it used in examples for Expires header so often?", "text": "I've noticed that July 26th (my birthday) is used really often in various PHP examples related to preventing http caching using `Expires` header, like: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12398714/cache-issue-with-private- networking-stream http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2833305/how-to-expire-page-in-php-when- user-logout http://expressionengine.com/archived_forums/viewthread/81945/ What's special in that date?"}
{"_id": "246753", "title": "Why is mixing plural with singular and camel case with underscores in cake php naming convention better than a simpler convention?", "text": "I have been using cake php for over a year and generally I like it but I struggle to understand the advantages of the complex naming conventions over something simpler. Cake uses plural here and singular there (controllers vs models and reported controller names) for it's names and uses camel case and underscores too (method names and class variables vs database tables and view variables). As far as I can see picking either plural or singular and either underscores or camel case and using just one of each choice everywhere would still yield all of the advertised benefits but would be simpler to use for the programmer. What are the advantages of cake php naming convention which could not be achieved with the above system? Please demonstrate why a simpler system wouldn't work for any given assertion."}
{"_id": "164695", "title": "Caching factory design", "text": "I have a factory `class XFactory` that creates objects of `class X`. Instances of `X` are very large, so the main purpose of the factory is to cache them, as transparently to the client code as possible. Objects of `class X` are immutable, so the following code seems reasonable:               # module xfactory.py     import x     class XFactory:       _registry = {}            def get_x(self, arg1, arg2, use_cache = True):         if use_cache:           hash_id = hash((arg1, arg2))           if hash_id in _registry:             return _registry[hash_id]         obj = x.X(arg1, arg2)         _registry[hash_id] = obj         return obj          # module x.py     class X:       # ...      Is it a good pattern? (I know it's not the actual Factory Pattern.) Is there anything I should change? Now, I find that sometimes I want to cache `X` objects to disk. I'll use `pickle` for that purpose, and store as values in the `_registry` the filenames of the pickled objects instead of references to the objects. Of course, `_registry` itself would have to be stored persistently (perhaps in a pickle file of its own, in a text file, in a database, or simply by giving pickle files the filenames that contain `hash_id`). Except now the validity of the cached object depends not only on the parameters passed to `get_x()`, but also on the version of the code that created these objects. Strictly speaking, even a memory-cached object could become invalid if someone modifies `x.py` or any of its dependencies, and reloads it while the program is running. So far I ignored this danger since it seems unlikely for my application. But I certainly cannot ignore it when my objects are cached to persistent storage. What can I do? I suppose I could make the `hash_id` more robust by calculating hash of a tuple that contains arguments `arg1` and `arg2`, as well as the filename and last modified date for `x.py` and every module and data file that it (recursively) depends on. To help delete cache files that won't ever be useful again, I'd add to the `_registry` the unhashed representation of the modified dates for each record. But even this solution isn't 100% safe since theoretically someone might load a module dynamically, and I wouldn't know about it from statically analyzing the source code. If I go all out and assume every file in the project is a dependency, the mechanism will still break if some module grabs data from an external website, etc.). In addition, the frequency of changes in `x.py` and its dependencies is quite high, leading to heavy cache invalidation. Thus, I figured I might as well give up some safety, and only invalidate the cache only when there is an obvious mismatch. This means that `class X` would have a class-level cache validation identifier that should be changed whenever the developer believes a change happened that should invalidate the cache. (With multiple developers, a separate invalidation identifier is required for each.) This identifier is hashed along with `arg1` and `arg2` and becomes part of the hash keys stored in `_registry`. Since developers may forget to update the validation identifier or not realize that they invalidated existing cache, it would seem better to add another validation mechanism: `class X` can have a method that returns all the known \"traits\" of `X`. For instance, if `X` is a table, I might add the names of all the columns. The hash calculation will include the traits as well. I can write this code, but I am afraid that I'm missing something important; and I'm also wondering if perhaps there's a framework or package that can do all of this stuff already. Ideally, I'd like to combine in-memory and disk- based caching. EDIT: It may seem that my needs can be served well by a pool pattern. On further investigation, however, it\u2019s not the case. I thought I'd list the differences:   1. Can an object be used by multiple clients?     * Pool: No, each object needs to be checked out and then checked in when no longer needed. The precise mechanism may be complicated.     * XFactory: Yes. Objects are immutable, and can be used by infinitely many clients at once. There\u2019s never a need to create a second copy of the same object.   2. Does pool size need to be controlled?     * Pool: Often, yes. If so, the strategy to do so may be quite complicated.     * XFactory: No. An object must be delivered on demand to the client, and if an existing object is unsuitable, a new one needs to be created.   3. Are all objects freely substitutable?     * Pool: Yes, the objects are typically freely substitutable (or if not, it\u2019s trivial to check which object the client needs).     * XFactory: Absolutely not, and it\u2019s very hard to find out if a given object can service a given client request. It depends on whether an existing object is available that was created with (a) the same arguments and (b) the same version of the source code. Part (b) cannot be verified by XFactory, so it asks the client to help. The client fulfills this responsibility in two ways. First, the client may increment any of its several designated internal version counters (one per developer). This cannot happen in runtime, only a developer may change these counters when he believes that the source code change makes existing objects unusable. Second, a client will return some invariants about the objects that it needs, and XFactory will verify that these invariants are not violated before serving the object to the client. If any of these checks fail, XFactory will create and deliver a new object.    4. Does performance impact need careful analysis?     * Pool: Yes, in some cases a pool actually hurts performance if the overhead of object management is greater than the overhead of object creation/destruction.     * XFactory: No. The computation costs of the objects in question is known to be very high, and loading them from memory or from disk is without doubt superior than recalculating them from scratch.   5. When are objects destroyed?     * Pool: When the pool is shut down. Perhaps it might also destroy objects if told to (partially) release resources or if certain objects have not been used for a while.     * XFactory: Whenever an object was created with the version of the source code that is no longer current, as evidenced by either invariant violation or counter mismatch. The process of locating and destroying such objects at the right time is quite complicated. In addition, time-based invalidation of all objects may be implemented to reduce the accumulated risks of using invalid objects. Since XFactory is never certain that it is the sole owner of an object, such invalidation is best achieved by an additional \u201cversion counter\u201d in the client objects, which is incremented programmatically on a periodic basis, rather than by a developer.   6. What special considerations exist for multithreaded environment?     * Pool: Has to avoid collisions in object checking out / checking in (don\u2019t want to check out an object to two clients)     * XFactory: Has to avoid collision in object creation (don\u2019t want to create two objects based on two identical requests)   7. What needs to be done if client does not release an object?     * Pool: It may want to make the object available to others after waiting for some time.     * XFactory: Not applicable. Clients do not notify XFactory about when they are done with the object.   8. Do objects need to be modified?     * Pool: May have to be reset to the default state before being reused.     * XFactory: No, the objects are immutable.   9. Are there any special considerations related to persistence of objects?     * Pool: Typically not. A pool is about saving the cost of object creation, so all the objects are kept in memory (reading from disk would defeat the purpose).     * XFactory: Yes, XFactory is about saving the cost of performing complex calculations, so storing pre-calculated objects on disk makes sense. As a result XFactory needs to deal with the typical problems of persistent storage; e.g. at initialization, it needs to connect to persistent storage, obtain from it the metadata about which objects are currently available there, and be ready to load them into memory if requested. And object may be in one of three states: \u201cdoesn\u2019t exist\u201d, \u201cexists on disk\u201d, \u201cexists in memory\u201d. While XFactory is running, the state may change only in one direction (to the right in this sequence). In summary, the pool's complexity is in items 1, 2, 4, 6, and possibly 5, 7, 8. The XFactory complexity is in items 3, 6, 9. The only overlap is item 6, and it\u2019s really not the core function of either pool or XFactory, but rather a constraint on the design that is common to any pattern that needs to work in a multithreaded environment."}
{"_id": "237505", "title": "Why is studying an lisp interpreter in lisp so important?", "text": "I have seen many CS curriculums and learning suggestions for new programmers that call for the aspiring programmer to study a lisp interpreter that is specifically written in lisp. All these sites say things similar to, \"its an intellectual revelation\", \"it is an enlightenment experience every serious programmer should have,\" or \"it shows you hardware/software relationships,\" and other vague statements, particularly from this article taken from this reputable how-to. The general sentiment of my question is, how does lisp achieve the above goals and why lisp? Why not some other language? I am asking this because I just finished writing a scheme interpreter in scheme (taken from SICP http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ ) and now I am writing a python interpreter in scheme and I am struggling to have this legendary epiphany that is supposed to come specifically from the former. I am looking for specific technical details between the two languages that I can exploit in their scheme interpreters to gain understanding about how programs work. More specifically: > Why is the study of an interpreter that is written in the language it > interprets so emphasized - is it merely a great mental exercise to keep the > original language and built language straight or are there specific problems > whose solutions can only be found in the nature of the original language? > > How do lisp interpreters demonstrate good architecture concepts for one's > future software design? > > What would I miss if I did this exercise in a different language like C++ or > Java? > > What is the _most used_ takeaway or \"mental tool\" from this exercise? ** ** I selected the answer I did because I _have_ noticed that I have gained from this exercise more skill in designing parsing tools in my head than any other single tool and I would like to find different methods of parsing that may work better for the scheme interpreter than the python interpreter."}
{"_id": "237509", "title": "Persist AJAX values", "text": "I have a simulator that pulls data from a DB - calculates and return JSON result to an ajax call that renders a table for the results. The calculation procedure are as follow:   1. grab X number of data that are group together and have weights to them.   2. use historical data and run a weight distribution algorithm on the group.   3. return as a JSON the metrics of each data, the old value, and the calculated new value 2 Questions: 1) Is Javascript calculation better or worse (or equal) to PHP calculation in order to yield the results. 2) IF Javascript calculation is faster or on par to PHP then I would assume the trip to call ajax is a small bottleneck. So one possibility would be to pre-load data and have it calculated on the fly. Now how would you persist that pre-loading efficiently? Would that just simply load everything in a simple var via ajax? Thus far it takes approx 55 seconds for the result to return 2000 entries on 14 days worth of data."}
{"_id": "175531", "title": "Unit test: How best to provide an XML input?", "text": "I need to write a unit test which validates the serialization of two attributes of an XML(size ~ 30 KB) file. What is the best way to provide an input for this test? Here are the options I have considered:   1. Add the file to the project and use a file reader   2. Pass the contents of the XML as a string   3. Create the XML through a program and pass it Which is my best option and why? If there is another way which you think is better, I would love to hear it."}
{"_id": "179293", "title": "Behavior-Driven Development / Use case diagram", "text": "Regarding growing of Behavior-Driven Development imposing acceptance testing, are use cases diagram useful or do they lead to an \"over-documentation\"? Indeed, acceptance tests representing specifications by example, as use cases promote despite of a more generic manner (since cases, not scenarios), aren't they too similar to treat them both at the time of a newly created project? From this link, one opinion is: > Another realization I had is that if you do UseCases and automated > AcceptanceTests you are essentially doubling your work. There is duplication > between the UseCases and the AcceptanceTests. I think there is a good case > to be made that UserStories + AcceptanceTests are more efficient way to work > when compared to UseCases + AcceptanceTests. What to think about?"}
{"_id": "254655", "title": "Drawing a custom rendered control in Windows - resizing", "text": "Some background: in order to learn GUI programming and drawing in Windows I'm starting to create my own GUI toolkit in Windows (so this is a didactic exercise, please don't suggest \"use Qt\" or \"use MFC\"). I would like to draw the entire window area from memory DCs in double buffering (thus also handling mouse and keyboard events myself) but I'm now wondering how should I handle resize events from the window: suppose I have a text control and a sidebar and my window gets a resize command ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YTwfs.png) the sidebar should grow larger and the text control should show more text (it is also larger). The first thing that comes to my mind is to redraw all the widgets on the memory DC and then BitBlt it to the screen. Anyway some widgets might not have changed at all or might be changed just a bit (the portion _\"Text here, text here, te\"_ hasn't changed at all during the resize). What can be done to exploit this fact and avoid redrawing (even in memory DC, not device DC) the parts which haven't changed?"}
{"_id": "254651", "title": "c++ GUI application in linux without toolkit", "text": "We all know , there are number of toolkits available for GUI application in c++ for Linux. But for some reasons I want to create a GUI application without any toolkit.I know this question is ask earlier but there is no proper answer provided. So please tell the ways through which I can create GUI application on Ubuntu 12.04. Please do not suggest me toolkit, That's not an option for me."}
{"_id": "203880", "title": "Rewriting C# Formula Calculations in T-SQL", "text": "We have a 3-tier application with a C# client that connects to a C# web service via WCF and requests data from a SQL Server database. One feature in our application is a user-created form app in which our customers setup forms that have fields. The fields refer to values that can be imported, entered by the user, or calculated. The calculations can be thought of as Operation / Value / Timeframe. Each value referenced in a calculation might also be a calculated value. (Care is taken to ensure circular calculations do not exist.) For example, a user might setup a field that shows Cash Over / Short that subtracts the value Total to Account For and Total Accounted For. These fields might in turn add up sales, credit card payments, cash totals, etc. Changing Grocery Sales in the form UI would trigger a change that recalculates the Total to Account For, and that field's change triggers the Cash Over / Short field to recalculate itself. Complicating the calculations are historical values. Some calculations might be phrased in English like \"Subtract Today's Totalizer Value from Yesterday's Totalizer Value\". Or, someone might simply set a Last Year Sales field to the value of Total Sales exactly 365 days ago. All this calculation is done in the C# user interface. The C# code builds dependency trees and sets up event handlers when values change. Changing a value triggers an event, and calculations that depend on the changed value are recalculated. We also have a recalculation engine that verifies the totals are correct before making permanent changes (i.e. before drafting someone's account, so the amounts better be correct). This recalculation engine uses the same C# calculation engine across multiple threads. This incurs penalties of reading from the database, creating the C# objects, performing calculations, and writing to the database. The timeframe dependencies mean we really need to calculate in some kind of day order. I could use some kind of cursor to move day-by-day, gather up all the data on each day, figure out the dependencies, join to historical values, but... **My question: how would you approach performing complex user-defined calculations in a set-based manner in SQL?** I don't see how to do this without RBAR operations on each calculated value."}
{"_id": "254659", "title": "Multithreaded Pre/Post Functions", "text": "I'm programming an application for an embedded device. We are using an RTOS that supports multi threading. The device is supposed to mimic an older project that was programmed in plain C (without threads). The original project uses a stack and START / END functions at the beginning and end of each function that can be called throughout runtime. Each time START is called a constant number (identifying the function) will be put on the stack - END will remove it from the stack and check if the top is equal to the called function. If it is different something really bad has happened and the device will recover/reset. This feature is great for debugging purposes as it fully displays how functions are called. It would be very lovely to have such a feature in the multi-threaded version. I implemented START and END as a class in C++ using constructor and destructor which makes the handling fairly easy. Running this single-threaded works like a charm. Anything multithreaded will destroy the stack as the scheduler switches context and writing to one stack would not make sense. The most basic solution in my mind would be having one START/END stack for each thread -> Problem each function has to know which threads it runs on. Is there a better solution to this problem?"}
{"_id": "255525", "title": "How to make script with faster queries?", "text": "# I have project to share useful urls with some information about the url. ## the project using:   1. add new post ( opening bootstrap with textarea )    2. user add content (url , hashtags, text)    3. the js fetch urls   4. the js fetch hashtags   5. the js send 1st url to php curl   6. php return title, description, images, site-name by tags title and meta-tag and    7. user select Image and share the post I did all that above, but there is some errors and new steps wanna ask about ## Errors ### On fetching url content   * some sites didn't have good data to fetch it ( title, description, images )   * PHP Curl fetching take long time ## The help:   * how can get the right data from any url   * how can make the Curl faster   * is there are any php class make this faster and secure  # new steps I wanna make ### 1 - I wanna display posts like as Twitter time line   * ( unread new posts button with #no of posts ) real time on click append new posts   * ( load older posts on scroll down )   * ( make it fast ) # Suggests load queries result to json file and update it by time will be faster ? if users posting the same url get it from db with out fetching ? will need to save the fetching on db ? i've insert all post as a json array on db table just the site name not url on other column? is that's good ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nxlA3.png)"}
{"_id": "255526", "title": "Do I need to use Node.js, Java or both for a multi-platform application?", "text": "I'm new on Java and I have experience building Node.js apps, so I'm thinking to create a program that it's kind of \"multi-platform\" where there's going to be a tablet kindle that's going to run the Java app, a PC that will show queues made from this java app in many tablets and another PC that's going to manage the data on the application (those could be web application from Node.js). So, Node.js could be the server managing queries and database while Java could be on Kindle Fire app making requests to the server, I really don't know Java too much but by the time I don't know if this project structure is fine, maybe it could work better using both sides on Java or Node.js web-app. Let's say this project is for a restaurant, waiters are going to have kindle fire (java app) instead of books, on a side there's going to be a big screen showing queues (this could be shown from Node.js) made from waiters on kindles, and the entrance there's going to be a PC that's going to manage the money and other stuff (maybe Node.js as well)."}
{"_id": "255521", "title": "Passing the HR Screening Process", "text": "Just a quick question here. I already have a Bachelor's degree in Statistics, and I am thinking of getting the Graduate Certificate in Software Engineering offered by Harvard Extension. Assuming that I hold both BS in Statistics and Graduate Certificate in Software Engineering, Would it be possible me to pass the HR screening process if I apply for a programming job later on? (I am asking this because many programming analyst jobs seem to require a degree or diploma in Computer Science or Computer Engineering) Thanks,"}
{"_id": "54198", "title": "User roles in GWT applications", "text": "I'm wondering if you could suggest me any way to implement \"user roles\" in GWT applications. I would like to implement a GWT application where users log in and are assigned \"roles\". Based on their role, they would be able to see and use different application areas. Here are two possible solution I thought: 1) A possible solution could be to make an RPC call to the server during onModuleLoad. This RPC call would generate the necessary Widgets and/or place them on a panel and then return this panel to the client end. 2) Another possible solution could be to make an RPC call on login retrieving from server users roles and inspecting them to see what the user can do.   * I'm also considering java security frameworks like Apache Shiro and Spring Security... What do you think about them? What do you think about? Thank you very much in advance for your help!"}
{"_id": "255529", "title": "FXML Boiler Plate Code", "text": "Is there a way to address a typical boiler plate code to instantiate and load FXML? A typical version:               public void start(Stage primaryStage)      {            URL fxmlUrl = this.getClass().getResource( /* your string path*/ );              FXMLLoader loader = new FXMLLoader(fxmlUrl);              try          {                primaryStage = loader.load();             this.controller = loader.getController();         }          catch(IOException ioe)         {             ioe.printStackTrace();         }              primaryStage.show();     }      Note for the code above, the backing FXML file has `<Stage></Stage>` as root. This is just my preference. The loading and matching up to the FXML root can adjust accordingly. In any case, the loading of the FXML file and obtaining reference to a controller is the crucial part (for most of the time). I've attempted to create a utility method such the one below to help prevent this boiler plate code:               <R, C> void loadFXML(R root, C controller, String path)     {         URL fxmlUrl = this.getClass().getResource( path );              FXMLLoader loader = new FXMLLoader(fxmlUrl);              try          {                root = loader.load();             controller = loader.getController();         }          catch(IOException ioe)         {             ioe.printStackTrace();         }     }      However, at some stage there was null pointer errors, or the loading was incorrect. I believe it has something to do with the Generics and/or casting. How can the this code be imporoved? Or perhap can another type code be suggested to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "54191", "title": "Is there a process-oriented IDE?", "text": "My problem is simple : when I'm programming in an OO paradigm, I'm often having part of a main business process divided in many classes. Which means, if I want to examine the whole functional chain that leads to the output, for debugging or for optimization research, it can be a bit painful. So I was wondering : is there an IDE that let you put a \"process tag\" on functions coming from different objects, and give you a view of all those functions having the same tag ? **edit** : To give an example (that I'm making up completely, sorry if it doesn't sound very realistic). Let's say we have the following business process for a HR application : receive a holiday-request by an employee, check the validity of the request, then give an alert to his boss (\"one of those lazy programmer wants another day off\"); at the same time, let's say the boss will want to have a table of all employee's timetable during the time the employee wants his vacations; then handle the answer of the boss, send a nice little mail to the employee (\"No way, lazy bones\"). Even if we get rid of everything not purely business-related (mail sending process, db handling to get the useful info, GUI functionalities, and so on), we still have something that doesn't really fit in \"one class\". I'd like to have an IDE that would give me the opportunity to embrace quickly, at the very least :   * The function handling the validation of the request by the employee;   * The function preparing the \"timetable\" for the boss;   * The function handling the validation of the request by the boss; I wouldn't put all those functions in the same class (but perhaps that's my mistake ?). This is where my dreamed IDE could be helpful."}
{"_id": "20275", "title": "Mono is frequently used to say \"Yes, .NET is cross-platform\". How valid is that claim?", "text": "In What would you choose for your project between .NET and Java at this point in time? I say that I would consider the \"Will you always deploy to Windows?\" the single most important (EDIT: technical) decision to make up front in a new web project, and if the answer is \"no\", I would recommend Java instead of .NET. A very common counter-argument is that \"If we ever want to run on Linux/OS X/Whatever, we'll just run Mono\", which is a very compelling argument on the surface, but I don't agree for several reasons.   * OpenJDK and all the vendor supplied JVM's have passed the official Sun TCK ensuring things work correctly. I am not aware of Mono passing a Microsoft TCK.   * Mono trails the .NET releases. What .NET-level is currently fully supported?   * Does all GUI elements (WinForms?) work correctly in Mono?   * Businesses may not want to depend on Open Source frameworks as the official plan B. I am aware that with the new governance of Java by Oracle, the future is unsafe, but e.g. IBM provides JDK's for many platforms, including Linux. They are just not open sourced. So, under which circumstances is Mono a valid business strategy for .NET- applications? * * * Edit: Mark H summarized it as: \"If the claim is that _\"I have a windows application written in .NET, it should run on mono\"_ , then not, it's not a valid claim - but Mono has made efforts to make porting such applications simpler.\"."}
{"_id": "94563", "title": "What is idiomatic?", "text": "I understand an \"idiom\" to be a common operation or pattern that in a particular language is not simplified by core language syntax, such as integer increment:               i = i + 1;      In C++, this idiom is simplified by an operator:               ++i;      However, when someone uses the term \"idiomatic\", I am not sure how to understand it. What makes a piece of code \"idiomatic\"?"}
{"_id": "94560", "title": "SQL injection attacks, how do I test and secure coldfusion queiries?", "text": "I'm running Coldfusion 8 and SQL server 2008. I've been building serveral forms that insert data into the database from external users, we have a custom built security module built by the guy who I've taken his job. 1) How can we test our HTML forms to ensure that we're protected from SQL injection attacks? 2) How do I secure CFqueries in CFC's? 3) What are some best practices in terms of SQL & Coldfusion for security? \\-- A lot I know!"}
{"_id": "161589", "title": "Efficient algorithm to sort html list of players", "text": "We have list of players, which is represented in form like this:               <div class=\"players_list\">        <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"500\">             <div class=\"name\">Player1</div>             <div class=\"position\">1</div>        </div>             <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"400\">             <div class=\"name\">Player2</div>             <div class=\"position\">2</div>        </div>        <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"300\">             <div class=\"name\">Player3</div>             <div class=\"position\">3</div>        </div>        <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"200\">             <div class=\"name\">Player4</div>             <div class=\"position\">4</div>        </div>       </div>       Something happens, and Player 4 recieves 600 points. So it goes on 1st place. With him - player3 recieves 300 points and goes on 2nd place. It happens after same event - let's assume, that they get these points from server, but that's all load that is allowed on server and server does not calculate positions. What is most efficent way to get view like this:               <div class=\"players_list\">        <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"800\">             <div class=\"name\">Player4</div>             <div class=\"position\">1</div>        </div>        <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"700\">             <div class=\"name\">Player3</div>             <div class=\"position\">2</div>        </div>             <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"500\">             <div class=\"name\">Player1</div>             <div class=\"position\">3</div>        </div>             <div class=\"player\" data-points=\"400\">             <div class=\"name\">Player2</div>             <div class=\"position\">4</div>        </div>     </div>       It's not question about code, it's question about:   * What kind of task it is? Just sort?    * Is it ok to use JavaScript to solve this task if lists are less than 500 rows?    * Is it ok to re-render whole players list, or there are some ways to just change div element position(index in DOM or something like this)?    * Are there any tools and libraries around, that can help solve this task efficiently?  P.S.: If we want to animate all this story - we should create a queue of animation tasks each time scores for all players recalculates? **Update:** I have followed @Jalayn's answer, and stuck on following problem: Let's assume that list `[1,2,3,4]` transforms to `[2,3,4,1]`. If we map it, we will get following position diffs `[+1, +1, +1, -3]`.. Now, if we move one by one elements to it's position change, all will be ok, till we get to negotiate position diff - 1st position diff can't move down any more.. So, my update to question - how we can animate rows more than twice? **And final problem, on which I am stucked:** Not sure, if it most be solved in this question. BTW, if 2 players have same points - animation plan brakes and element_ids duplicates. My question now is how to make following transformation of structures list: `[(#id1, 1, 100),(#id2, 2, 50), (#id3, 2, 50), (#id4, 4, 25)] => [(#id3, 1, 150), (#id1, 2, 100), (#id4, 3, 75), (#id2, 4, 50)]` For now my solution is to refresh whole list, but not completly regenerate it - just move all elements to the first position in order they sorted in backed JSON. Animation is too complex to be done cause of final problem."}
{"_id": "29743", "title": "Delphi vs C# for GUI programming", "text": "I'm coming from PHP and Python background with little knowledge of C, I have done many web based application now I'm thinking of Desktop application for windows platform. A friend told me to go for Delphi and others are saying C# is the best, well, what I'm looking for is   1. Simplicity   2. Productivity   3. Good API documentation   4. Speed   5. Drag and Drop   6. Multi threading & Good Network API Thanks"}
{"_id": "29742", "title": "What kind of positions could a beginning developer expect to qualify for in five years?", "text": "I am a Junior developer, just landing in a job after completing my Masters. I'm not clear on what positions or roles I could possibly be in after five years? So My Question is, What kind of positions can an Entry level programmer like me seek in 5 years?"}
{"_id": "164035", "title": "java application architecture", "text": "We have to write an administration panel for many customers. But we want to have just one administration panel, and use it in various projects. This admin panel will have basic components such as access control logic, maker-checker system in changes, user logging and etc. It will also have reporting for the customer, logs of transaction of the customer (which can vary according to the industry such as mobile banking, banking, ticket sales). These components may have to be modified according to the business. So we are thinking about the architecture here, Is it OK to use jars of every basic components, and bring them together on a glue application? Or should we build each component as WARs and make interfaces between them? If there are any more ideas, it will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "1151", "title": "Where does the word \"Programming\" come from?", "text": "Where does the word \"Programming\" come from? I'm referring to the word \"program\" as referring to \"to instruct a computer\". Programming, programmer etc..."}
{"_id": "164039", "title": "What is a zombie process or thread?", "text": "What is a zombie process or thread, and what creates them? Do I just kill them, or can I do something to get diagnostics about how they died?"}
{"_id": "97917", "title": "My company won't let me listen to music anymore", "text": "I began programming at the age of 14 and over a decade has gone by, during this time, a day hasn't gone by when I don't listen to music, radio or podcasts. When I'm programming at home or in work, I always like to listen to music, sometimes the same album or playlist throughout the week, as it becomes a constant, and I almost don't notice its there. 1 headphone in usually means, talk to me, both headphones is known to the girlfriend and friends as \"code mode\". They know better than to get more than a few words out of me. I'm sure you guys understand! So, I use to work for a big ATM company dealing with banks on a daily basis, I was more of a number than a person, and when I worked I could listen to music all day and night. If anyone had any issues, they would ping me on MSN or give me a tap. I was fine with that, and so was everyone else (as they all did the same). Now I've moved on (had to relocate) I have a new job in a much smaller company. The company is NOT software orientated at all, I am the only on site programmer, all previous work was outsourced. We have around 30 people in the office (mixture of admin, accounts but mainly noisy sales teams), I probably talk to 2 of them. They're not a social bunch, I'm fine with that, as I know what they do has no impact on what I do and vice versa, so I sit quietly, put my headphones on and code. I know (they kind of know) that I'll be leaving this time next year, as they're a small company we established in the interview that after 2 years I might struggle to find projects. So... back to my problem (I promise that was all relevant) in my first week I set up my coding environment, and began working. The IT manager pulled me aside and said \"we have a slight issue, you can't wear your headphones\" when I asked why they responded \"the boss will go mad\". So after a few months of no headphones, or sneakily wearing them when it got really loud. I became confident to wear them, as the boss himself acknowledged I wore them. I told him \"it helps me concentrate, and gets me in the zone\". He didn't say anything at this point (and never has). I had no issues for around 4-5months. Then last month I was called into a meeting with one of the MDs, he told me I can no longer wear headphones. Again I asked why, this time they said \"the sales team are wearing them\". They don't, I know they don't because I sit next to them all. I tried to argue my point, I received the 'I know I feel for you' speech, and that was that. No more music. I returned to the office and had a few pairs of eyes on me, looking pretty happy with themselves. One even turned to the receptionist behind me and said \"have you noticed\", the receptionist responded... \"what?\" then got up looked over the divide straight at me. Subtle huh. I like to call this \"Small Company Fever\"... they don't like change when trying to 'save the world' everyday. So now after a month, I find I can't concentrate fully, my mind wanders. To make it worse... they've moved my desk from the middle of the office, to the main door, which happens to be next to the toilets, the huge photocopier/printer and the kitchen. Its loud, really loud. Its actually starting to stress me out, and make me want to look for a new job. So heres is my dilemma. Am I just being a big girls blouse, should I just shut up and just get on with it as its only for another year and a bit... or do you think I have a genuine problem, and if so... how would you deal with it? Sorry for War & Peace II. All the best! Rocky"}
{"_id": "179872", "title": "To map - word usage in software context", "text": "I always get confused about how to use the verb \"to map\" in the context of associating objects with each other, particularly if the mapping is directional. Is there a distinction between > mapping users to IDs and > mapping IDs to users In the given example, which would be the better way to put it?"}
{"_id": "245628", "title": "Analogy for Android fragments", "text": "I'm trying to understand the flow of Android apps. I come from a RoR background, so I try and use that background to understand new concepts in Android. Here's my question: How can I think about fragments? Are they like partials in Rails? If so, how? If not, why?"}
{"_id": "17443", "title": "What does it mean to write \"good code\"?", "text": "In this question I asked whether being a bad writer hinders you from writing good code. Many of the answers started of with \"it depends on what you mean by good code\". It appears that the term \"good code\" and \"bad code\" are very subjective. Since I have one view, it may be very different from others' view of them. So what does it mean to write \"good code\"? What is \"good code\"?"}
{"_id": "193155", "title": "LGPL, .lib, .dll, and linking", "text": "I am trying to build a project which uses an unmodified copy of libconfig (http://www.hyperrealm.com/libconfig/). libconfig is LGPL, but I don't want to open source any of my code. By my understanding, LGPL means I need to provide the source for the library (easy), and _a means for them to use their own modified version of the library_. It's the latter component that confuses me a bit (apologies for some c naivete). Currently, my VS2010 solution has my project, and the libconfig project. The libconfig project builds a dll, but I also need to link my project against the .lib of libconfig to get the dll's definitions (Can someone explain why this is necessary, when I'm already including the header file?). Despite the linking, the .dll file needs to be present at runtime for the binary to be able to run Do I need to provide all of the .obj and .lib files I produce to satisfy the LGPL? Is there a way to avoid the linking of the .lib file? I've looked into LoadLibary and GetProcAddress but it looks way more complicated than I'd like. Or am I simply overestimating the requirements of the LGPL here? If there's another, more permissive config library for c++, that would also solve my dilemma. But I haven't been able to find something (and I'd like to avoid boost)."}
{"_id": "161634", "title": "How should I deal with Time Zones in a .NET WCF application?", "text": "Our company runs a SaaS application where users log in from across the world (although mostly in the US). We store all our time relevant information as UTC, but we need to display times using local time. The application is web based, and we would like to \"auto-detect\" the user's Time Zone by using javascript to determine their UTC offsets during various times of the year. The user's offset info would be passed to our server in their first request and the server will look up all the Time Zones that it knows about and see which valid time zones match. I'd like to use the built in TimeZoneInfo object, but I understand that               TimeZoneInfo.GetSystemTimeZones();      relies on the server's registry settings. We currently have 18 load balanced web servers that host our WCF service layer, and I _believe_ our TechOps team is vigilant in making sure that all servers are patched with the same service pack at all times. I also need to pay special attention to the various US Time Zones, specifically Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern. Can I assume that the string based Id field will _not_ change anytime soon? For example, if I call               TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(\"Pacific Standard Time\")      I want the appropriate TimeZoneInfo object to be returned. So a few questions:   * What is the best way to deal with time zones, especially when it comes to the changing rules (US time zone rules changed in 2006) and determining offsets. Should I be trying something else? Keep in mind that the product team doesn't want the user to have to select their time zone and they are fine with time zones being inaccurately reported under certain conditions (e.g. if the user is in Mexico, it is ok to be reported as \"Pacific Standard Time\" instead of the more accurate \"Pacific Standard Time (Mexico)\".   * If I assume that all of our load balanced web servers are always running the same OS version and patch level, can I assume that I will get consistent results?   * Are there any other things I need to consider?"}
{"_id": "211342", "title": "raw aql query in framework with Active Record pattern based ORM", "text": "I use yii framework that implements Active Record pattern as ORM base. It has CActiveRecord class that is a table wrapper class with attributes reflecting table columns. So each object of this class represents a database row. Wiki says about Active Record pattern: > Active record is an approach to accessing data in a database and > A database table or view is wrapped into a class. Thus, an object instance > is tied to a single row in the table. So far so good. But where should I put complex raw sql query that retrieves statistics data for example? And, more generally, where should I put methods that retrieve some data that can not be an active record object (like data retrieved with aggregation queries) or if I knowing do not want to retrieve an object but an array instead for example?"}
{"_id": "161639", "title": "Filtering lists in an Android App offline or online?", "text": "I have an android app that fetches a list of about 100 Items.   Trying to get the server load down, I've built a filtering feature that   does everything offline, so basically instead of calling the server (and thus a MySQL query every call)   It filters on its own.   However I've noticed the app tends to lag (while the only change is the offline filtering).   Is the processing of relatively big object-lists something that should be done offline or should I live the load on the server ?"}
{"_id": "191949", "title": "Benefits of combining programming languages", "text": "I know there are different ways to combine programming languages (Haskell's FFI, Boost with C++ and Python, etc...). I have an odd interest in combining programming languages; however, I have only found it \"necessary\" once (I didn't want to rewrite some older code). Also, I notice that this interest is shared (there are an abundance of questions about integrating languages on SO). My question is, simply, are there any other benefits in combining programming languages? Is there value in mixing different programming paradigms (e.g. functional+OO, procedural+aspect-oriented)? Any from-the-field examples would be much appreciated. **UPDATE** When I say \"combine two languages\" I am talking about using them in conjunction, in ways not necessarily originally intended. For example, suppose I use Boost to incorporate Python code in C++."}
{"_id": "191944", "title": "How do you schedule software updates, major releases, milestones (what is this?)", "text": "What are the common terminology used to schedule software update and support. For example, I really have no clue how releases and updates differ, how often are updates released (not everyday I hope)? Most importantly communicating stuff like milestone (what is this mean?), roadmaps, basically I want to know how I can offer support to end users by using industry terminology."}
{"_id": "191941", "title": "Hating your own code - for good or bad, how do you deal with it?", "text": "Have you ever had this feeling that your code is bad, the whole project is a mess, and you just want to step off? On your daily job you can explain this feeling away with your coworkers, asshole boss, or something like this. But with side/pet projects there is really no excuse. For example I'm currently maintaining my Firefox extension - fixing bugs and adding new features. Quite frequently when I go back to the code written months ago the feelings that arise inside me are quite controversial - \"Did I write that? Really??\" Knowing that proper implementation of new feature \"the right way\" requires throwing away whole module and still putting together a quick hack - sometimes I don't even hesitate. As the project grows, features are added there remains less and less room for refactoring... Do you have any recipes for dealing with this kind of emotional state? Do you just pull yourself together and give the whole project another thought, rewrite version 2? Or maybe just ignore all this - \"working code is better than perfect code\"?"}
{"_id": "238850", "title": "Drawbacks to redefining method in precompiled header", "text": "I have a lot of calls to `NSLog(...)`. I need to change all of these calls to `CLSNSLog(...)`. So I added this to my precompiled header (.pch):               #import <CrashlyticsFramework/Crashlytics.h>     #define NSLog(...) CLSNSLog(__VA_ARGS__);      Everything works. I don't see any drawbacks to this -- the team can continue to use NSLog(...) and I can revert pretty easily. But am I missing anything, or are there any design issues this will create later on?"}
{"_id": "238851", "title": "Identify this programming style", "text": "Some of the legacy code I've inherited uses the fact that C# supports multiple assignment to write code like:               void DisableControls()     {         ddlStore.Enabled                =         ddlProgram.Enabled              =         ddlCat.Enabled                  =         btnSaveProxy.Enabled            =         btnCancelProxy.Enabled          =         btnViewMassManagerProxy.Enabled =         grdPromo.Enabled                = false;     }      It's a very _pretty_ style, with all the `=` lined up neatly, and the value being assigned down at the bottom, but it's also a rather annoying one to work with. (And yes, those are tabs lining things up, not spaces). I would like to know what, if anything, this style implies about the original coder, since I've only seen it on a few occasions before. Does it indicate a C++ background? .NET 1.1? Just someone's personal preference? ~~Is there any reason that the chained assignment like this would be more efficient than individually setting each control's`.Enabled`? Less so?~~ (This part was answered by @gnat's comment: `This way makes it easy to insert btnWhatever.Enabled = as new buttons are added and delete as some buttons are deleted`) * * * Edit: Other elements of this person's style, assuming the whole file was written by one person (likely but not certain), include putting function arguments on the next line, and putting commas at the beginning of a line instead of the end of the previous line. Example:               PromoUpdate[] GetPromoUpdates(                                 StateField field)     {         List<PromoUpdate> updates   = new List<PromoUpdate>();         foreach (PromoOptInState p in field.States.Where(                                                         x => x.IsDirty))         {             updates.Add(new PromoUpdate() {                 promoCode   = p.Code                  , optIn     = p.IsOptedIn             });         }         return updates.ToArray();     }      It's very weird."}
{"_id": "238855", "title": "Does using Xapian in Django-Haystack enforces GPL?", "text": "Consider the following situation:   * She uses Django (BSD) for a website.   * She uses Haystack (BSD) for textual search in the website.   * She uses the backend of haystack, xapian-haystack (GPL), to use Xapian (GPL) as the search engine of Haystack. Question: must she distribute the source code of her website under GPL (or equivalent)? My question is specific on whether the source code is considered to be a derivative GPL code. Pragmatically, I would say the code is written entirely in Python+Django+Haystack, and Xapian could be substituted by other search engine. Indeed, the difference in the code is as simple as               HAYSTACK_CONNECTIONS = {         'default': {             'ENGINE': 'haystack.backends.xapian_backend.XapianEngine',             'PATH': os.path.join('tmp', 'test_xapian_query'),             'INCLUDE_SPELLING': True,         }     }      or               HAYSTACK_CONNECTIONS = {         'default': {             'ENGINE': 'haystack.backends.elasticsearch_backend.ElasticsearchSearchEngine',             'URL': 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/',             'INDEX_NAME': 'test_default',             'INCLUDE_SPELLING': True,         },     }      But I would like very much to have a second opinion on this."}
{"_id": "238856", "title": "Why does Java support brackets behind variables and even behind method signatures?", "text": "Java allows this:               class X{         int i,j[]; // j is an array, i is not     }      and even worse, it allows this:               class X{         int foo(String bar)[][][] // foo actually returns int[][][]         { return null; }      }      Okay, the reason for this might be that it was lent from C/C++. However, Java meant to be easier than C/C++. Why did the Java inventors decide to allow this hard-to-read construct. The convoluted types of C where the variable name is in the middle of the type are just hard to read and provoke programming errors. Especially the brackets behind the method signature. I have never seen these in use and that is for a good reason. No one looks behind the signature when checking the return type of a method. While the first example may save some keystrokes (because `int` does not have to be written twice), the brackets behind the signature do not even save any, so I see absolutely no gain here. So is there a good reason for this (especially the second one) that I am missing?"}
{"_id": "12858", "title": "Using Windows tools to edit Linux project files", "text": "In the spirit of getting new people on the project up to speed and leveraging their familiarity with existing Windows tools, what are possible options for cross-platform editing/development? Of course, the Windows people could learn vi/Emacs, X, Eclipse/NetBeans, etc, but this would involve a period of learning, per-person. Is there any combination of technologies/tools that would let developers that are most familiar with a Windows tool-chain help out on a Linux-based project? E.g. One developer would like to use UltraEdit. For reference, the Linux project(s) are all daemon processes written in C++ and the development server has:   * Version Control systems include RCS, CVS and SVN.    * Compile tools are GCC and a Make-like build system.   * X Windows   * Telnet/RSH/SSH Suggestions don't have to be free/open-source, but an indication of licensing terms would be greatly appreciated (Updated to add language)"}
{"_id": "92248", "title": "What problem does automated user interface testing solve?", "text": "We are currently investigating automated user interface testing (we currently do automated unit and integration testing). We've looked at Selenium and Telerik and have settled on the latter as the tool of choice due to its much more flexible recorder - and we don't really want testers writing too much code. However, I am trying to understand the overall benefit. What are peoples' views and what sort of things work well and what doesn't? Our system is under constant development and we regularly release new versions of our (web based) platform. So far the main benefit we can see is for regression testing, especially across multiple client deployments of our platform. Really looking for other people's views. We \"think\" it is the right thing to do but in an already busy schedule are looking for some additional insight."}
{"_id": "154902", "title": "Is there any research about daily differences in productivity by the same programmer?", "text": "There has been a flurry of activity on the internet discussing a huge difference between the productivity of the best programmers versus the productivity of the worst. Here's a typical Google result when researching this topic: http://www.devtopics.com/programmer-productivity-the-tenfinity- factor/ I've been wondering if there has been any research or serious discussion about differences in day-to-day productivity by the same programmer. I think that personally, there is a huge variance in how much I can get done on a day by day basis, so I was wondering if anyone else feels the same way or has done any research."}
{"_id": "92241", "title": "What do you feel is the best way to increase colleagues knowledge?", "text": "Our team recently joined up with a few smaller teams, and as we had some direction and standards to our development it was decided that it would be best to train those up in our chosen languages and methodologies. Some members take years to achieve an acceptable level of competence, and I've noticed that there seems to be this assumption that a developer with less knowledge requires almost 50% of a more knowledgable persons time. When I started devloping several years ago I had no mentor, I had a project in front of me, a good book, and later on I had the internet, and that's pretty much paved my learning approach over the years, as a result of that I can taken on a language or methodology and learn very quickly, the only time I need to seek advice from colleagues is for design work, code reviews and standards discussions. The staff who have this allocated time to mentors appear to be constrained, and I strongly feel that when it comes to technology, you shouldn't need much human interaction, if you rely on someone to **_walk you through_** technologies I fear that they will only remember that and therefore be constrained in the learning. So my question is, how do you deal with training up staff? My way has always been to **not find out the solution** but to **find out how to achieve the solution**. I don't quite understand the whole **_spending time shadowing another developer_** , maybe that's just me, but there must be a standard approach to this. Would like to some input please."}
{"_id": "119027", "title": "Munging intro level knowledge of set theory with intro level knowledge of electronics to parse and evaluate the content of HL7 messages", "text": "This question is being asked for the purposes of evaluating whether or not attempting to use things I picked up in college was a good idea, or even remotely defensible. Last year I wrote a 'formula creator' for figuring out what to do with fields or how to populate fields of HL7 data. The fact that it's HL7 data is almost unimportant, except for the fact that it's not always known whether or not an HL7 field is going to exist or if it's going to repeat. Therefore, I thought, if I need to get a list of these fields I can return myself a set of them. If I don't find them at all, I can add an undefined, fuzzy value, to the set. Then I can evaluate certain things on the set, (i.e. do all of them exists, do more than 6 match some regular expression, do the ascend from greatest to least). Everything works OK, except what to do with 'All Of' and empty set. For the interest of making a program easy to use, should 'all of []' return true or false? I tried to make a case that \"In set theory, the existential operator yadda yadda deaf ears\". I'd like an answer to the first question, because it may require going back to the drawing board, but I'll fast forward a to a few months ago we got around that problem by never having an empty set. If we encountered 0 fields in the HL7 message, we'll just ploink undefined in the set. The way I wanted to use undefined was as some sort of catalyst for, \"I have no idea\". So True or Undefined = Undefined, False and Undefined = Undefined and Not Undefined = Undefined. I made it a point to be very consistent in my programming with this, but everything that ailed the program could have been alleviated by making \"Not Undefined\" = True. I told the two guys who actually use my program to 'always make his formulas to expect the true case', cuz that's how Don Knuth does it. In summary, my program works. The problem is that it is encumbered by my adherence to principles, clearly outside the domain of the problem, that if I slackened would make the program flow better and function without requiring me to consult the source code. My question is, should abstractions match the domain? Can I legitimately argue to a nurses, bosses and (more military minded) programmers that \"all of an empty sack is true\" or \"the opposite of unknown is still unknown\"?"}
{"_id": "66563", "title": "Burnout... Project Issues... Now They're Witholding My Salary... What Should I Do Next?", "text": "I've been working at a startup for 9 months. Except for the first 3 months, I've been miserable. It started when I joined the organization. I didn't join as a fresher. My first task was to create a replica of the mobile application that was being developed by a senior developer. Mobile development was new to me, but I managed things gracefully and the application got client acceptance. During this time, that senior developer got fired, and I was the only developer left on the team. Soon, I was told to move over to the new mobile development platform to help the team there, who was having trouble with the initial release of the application. I helped them, and they were able to ship the initial release gracefully. With my efforts, I got management's attention, and as the fog of worry (temporarily) faded, they told me to do some research about a core piece of that app. The research took me two months, and meanwhile the team messed up the application. I was told to take charge of the main development and abandon research until further instructions. Those \"further instructions\" never came. When I took charge, we were a team of two. We were both new to technology and we were struggling. Within a month my teammate left the company, and I was alone. While my learning process continued, the client reported some serious design issues. During the development phase, it took me 10 days to troubleshoot these issues and another month to solve them. During this time, I was doing 4 tasks (i.e. development, design, research, and QA) all alone. `I was weak in design and QA`, and for that I was criticized a lot by both the client and management. It took me one week to cope with the burnout; and it took me three months to stablize the project. I wasn't granted any leave during those 3 months, was called every weekend for 5 weeks, and forced to work for at least 12 hours each day. I once tried to oppose this and my salary was on hold for 10 days without any explanation. Today, the status is this:   * Among three versions of that application (including mine) every team has at least one feature that is not acceptable.   * The whole project is 3 months behind schedule.   * Two weeks ago, our project leader, for the first time, acknowledged that his initial work estimates were wrong.      * So he wanted us to estimate the remaining time.     * He told us that he would convince the client to accept these new dates.     * In three days, our estimations were rejected thrice by the project leader himself and weren't discussed with the client.     * We were three days behind our schedule for the release (and a week behind the schedule reported to the client).     * Still, the project estimates were not accepted by the client and there are 5 minor bugs open in that application.  After this, they moved me from that application to a different application which was abandoned by a developer some 7 months ago. The client wanted its beta delivered quickly with all of its issues resolved. There were 12 issues and, among them, 10 issues were resolved. I sent a \"test beta\" to the client and he mostly accepted it. But there were some problems and the client forced me to solve the remaining two issues at any cost in the given timeline. As the sole developer, the project leader requested my opinion about those two bugs. Both tasks were impossible. One was unsupported by the api and the other couldn't be completed in the given timeline even if somebody worked 24 hours/day. But he wasn't convinced and he asked me to complete these two bugs in the given timeline, thus forcing me to work the weekend. He even froze my salary again, and this time I am in a financial crunch. > **What should I do in this situation?** I am inclined to leave, but the question is - Should I leave **immediately**? If I do, that will put them in jeopardy and will make them realize that something was wrong on their side. I am not worried about relations with them, but I am worried about the next developer who will take my place (if they can find one). The only problem is that I have to suffer economically somewhat for a month. OR Should I wait for my salary? I do not believe that my salary will be credited tomorrow, and I don't have enough mental strength to face them and still be calm and able to work. But if I pursue this tact, it's at least somewhat _more likely_ that I will have _some_ money and that I can support myself and my family. Or do you have some other option in mind? Thanks for patiently reading my question."}
{"_id": "151368", "title": "Designing A 2-Way SSL RESTful API", "text": "I am starting to develop a WCF API, which should serve some specific clients. We don't know which devices will be using the API so I thought that using a RESTful API will be the most flexible choice. All devices using the API would be authenticated using an SSL certificate (client side certificate), and our API will have a certificate as well ( so its a 2 Way SSL) I was reading this question over SO, and I saw the answers about authentication using Basic-HTTP or OAuth, but I was thinking that in my case these are not needed, I can already trust the client because it possesses the client-side certificate. Is this design ok? Am I missing anything? Maybe there's a better way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "66565", "title": "How to deal with IDE Addon creep?", "text": "I'm sure I am not alone in this issue so I wanted to see what others do to handle this problem. Whenever I have to reinstall my IDE, one of the first things I do is go out and look for addons. It starts out just grabbing whatever I plan on primarily doing but ends up with getting anything that looks interesting or may find useful in the future. \"But it's addtional functionality _for free!_ \" In the end I just end up with a dev environment with a lot of bloat. Also happens over time so you reinstall only to start the cycle over again... Is there a good way of handling this?"}
{"_id": "66569", "title": "Should a web developer understand TCP/IP and how routers manage requests?", "text": "I had a job interview today for a Job position as developer on an important site. They asked tonnes of programming language related questions, which I managed to answer without problems, but then they started asking question about how TCP/IP requests were made once I made a request on my PC to a web server. I did received those contents as a student, but I dont remember them well, because I'm working mostly in web development, my question is: As a software developer, mainly working on web applications, do I need to have **extensive** knowledge of TCP/IP and how routers manage requests or it's just black box knowledge to me?"}
{"_id": "151360", "title": "How to unit test with lots of IO", "text": "I write Linux embedded software which closely integrates with hardware. My modules are such as : -CMOS video input with kernel driver (v4l2)   -Hardware h264/mpeg4 encoders (texas instuments)   -Audio Capture/Playback (alsa)   -Network IO I'd like to have automated testing for those functionalities, such as integration testing. I am not sure how I can automate this process since most of the top level functionalities I face are IO bound. Sure, it is easy to test functions individually, but whole process checking means depending on tons of external dependencies only available at runtime."}
{"_id": "245476", "title": "problem on calculating Big O complexity", "text": "i have this function on which i have to calculate the time complexity with the **Big O notation** :               public void print(ArrayList<String> operations, ArrayList<LinkedHashSet<String>> setOfStrings) {         int numberOfStrings = 0;         int numberOfLetters = 0;         String toPrint = operations.get(1);         for (Iterator<LinkedHashSet<String>> iteratorSets = setOfStrings.iterator(); iteratorSets.hasNext();) {             LinkedHashSet<String> subSet = iteratorSets.next();             if (subSet.contains(toPrint)) {             for (Iterator<String> iterator = subSet.iterator(); iterator.hasNext();) {                 numberOfLetters = numberOfLetters + iterator.next().length();             }             numberOfStrings = subSet.size();             break;             }         }     }      the method does this operation: For example, if have as operation `print foo`, I have to do these steps,first of all, I have to find where `foo` is:   * Inside `setOfStrings`, I can have this situation:                       position 1 : [car, tree, hotel]             ...             position n : [lemon, coffee, tea, potato, foo]        * When I find the string `foo`, I have to save the number of strings inside that position and the number of letters of each string, so in this case, I will save:                 5(number of strings) 23(sum of number of letters)      some considerations:   1. For the `arrayList` of `operations`, I get always a specific position, so I don't iterate. It is always `O(1)`.   2. For the `ArrayList<LinkedHashSet<String>>` , I have to iterate, so the complexity in the worst case is O(n)   3. the operation `if (subSet.contains(toPrint))`, it will be O(1),because hashSet has mapped all objects inside it.   4. the iteration inside the hashset made with `for (Iterator<LinkedHashSet<String>> iteratorSets = setOfStrings.iterator(); iteratorSets.hasNext();)` , it will be O(m),because i have to iterate inside the entire hashset to sum the letters of each words **_so in conclusion i think the time complexity of this algorithm is`(O(n)*O(m))`_** are these considerations all corrects? thanks."}
{"_id": "61039", "title": "Smart Pointers inside class vs Normal Pointers with Destructor", "text": "Regarding pointers which are members of classes. Should they be of a smart pointer type or is it enough to simply deal with them in the destructor of the class they are contained in?"}
{"_id": "245470", "title": "Version Control & Deployment on Large Ecommerce Site", "text": "I am currently Front End Dev for a large ecommerce store and I'm wanting to switch the entire site to a Version Control System (Git) and Deployment service (Beanstalk). I'm having trouble understanding a couple of things though. Firstly, my only experiance with version control has been my personal Wordpress Site, where things were simple. I would have a local copy of the site on ampps, and there was the live site. I would make changes locally, then when happy push to bitbucket which in turn deployed to the live site via FTPloy. Simple. Now we have two servers, dev and live. At the moment we simply edit the files on the dev via FTP and when signed off, upload those to the live server. If I was to implement version control, how do I develop on the dev server efficiently? Without being able to have a local version of the site, each minor change (a simple css property for eg) would have to be pushed to the dev server to see the results, no? Surely this isn't how it's done, it would be way too much hassle, especially if working on it for hours... I can't seem to find any examples on the web of how this is handled when you don't have a local environment set up. Which isn't possible in this case. I think I'm missing something fundamental to be honest, not being entirely clued up on how it works. If you need more details just let me know. Cheers."}
{"_id": "127287", "title": "Simple issue tracker for 1-2 developers", "text": "I'm currently working mostly alone on a project (in Java). I'm mostly alone as I have an advisor that gives me high level instructions on what to do, and will seldom make any code contribution. She will code in a couple of acceptance tests from time to time, though. I've never used an issue tracker before, and was thinking about starting to use one now, as I'd like to have a place where I can log possible bugs I find and keep track of them in a centralized manner. Would it be possible to integrate the issue tracker with Eclipse, better yet. So here are the constraints:   1. It's NOT a open-source project. Our code is not to be shared with anyone!   2. we are and will be using Subversion;   3. we have our own Subversion server and we will keep using this same Subversion server;   4. it must be free;   5. it must allow at least 2 users. What is your advice on what to pick? I'm looking for the simplest solution available."}
{"_id": "189169", "title": "How to synchronize configuration for Findbugs between build server/Maven and several programmers", "text": "Here's a common scenario for developers who want to integrate static analysis in their workflow. Any suggestions on how to get this working with a minimum of pain? The situation is similar to the one discussed here: http://enterprise-it- solutions.blogspot.dk/2011/02/maven-configure-checkstyle-pmd-eclipse.html The dev system uses a centralized build server based on Maven and Hudson. The developers use Eclipse and Java, and use a standard tool (git, svn or baazar) for source control The developers need a local version of the static analysis tool to avoid having to deal with a dozen quality issues at once when they want to check in a change. The build server (Maven + Hudson) has a Findbugs configuration that defines \"Current standard for quality\". For each programmer, there should also be a standard configuration for Findbugs that is at least as restrictive as the server-side configuration, and perhaps even identical to it. The programmer should be able to change his local configuration, because - let's face it - he's gonna do that anyway at least once, yet it should be relatively easy to reset to standard. Changes should only flow from the server to the developers, not the other direction."}
{"_id": "61036", "title": "Can I use this GPL'd PGP library internally in my company?", "text": "This PGP library was bought up by Network Associates and then eventually Symantec Corporation. The source code is available and is licensed under the GPL (it was linked to from here). They have a source code license here: > http://www.pgp.com/developers/sourcecode/sourcecode_license.html Even though this code is licensed under the GPL, are they restricting me from using it for business purposes. i.e. I am not making any modifications to the code, I am not linking the code into any other commercial or otherwise business application. I just want to run the command line and desktop applications as part of the normal day-today goings on of my business (signing and encrypting emails). Is this permissable? **Update:** After having carefully re-read this page: > http://www.pgp.com/developers/sourcecode/index.html I have just noticed that the library itself _is not_ licensed under the GPL: > **Modifications to GPL Code**   >  Although PGP\u00ae software itself is not subject to the GNU General Public > License (GPL), PGP Corporation utilizes certain code subject to the GPL However, the question and answers, had the library been fully GPL'd did help."}
{"_id": "245478", "title": "How to create animated Gifs of programming examples?", "text": "I've seen this a few times on GitHub. You visit a repo and there are animated Gifs showing how to use the open source project via a console or IDE. These Gifs show text as a person is typing. It's clearly a screen capture taking place, but I was wondering how these are created? Here is an example repo: https://github.com/YuriyZanichkovskyy/ReReflection Here is an example GIF: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ck4GP.gif) > If this is the wrong place for this question. Please point me in the right > direction."}
{"_id": "223224", "title": "How to include license for MIT-licensed CSS?", "text": "I have a project licensed under the GPL. However, it includes a bit of code from animate.css, which uses the MIT license. How would I include the appropriate licensing information for that CSS? I've included that bit of css (maybe 25 or so lines) in my main stylesheet, so I'd rather not have a huge stamp like what's on this page, if I can avoid it."}
{"_id": "26544", "title": "Is there any way to use Python to replace Flash for in browser animation, gaming, whatever?", "text": "Is there any way to use Python to replace Flash for in browser animation, gaming, webapps, whatever? Pretty straight-forward IMHO. Does anyone know how to do this?"}
{"_id": "216913", "title": "Naming conventions for language file keys", "text": "What is your strategy for naming conventions for the keys in language files used for localization? We have a team that is going to conversion of a project to multiple languages and would like to have some guidelines to follow. As an example, usually the files end up being a series of key/value pairs, with the key being the placeholder in the template for the language specific value.               'Username': 'Username',     'Enter Username': 'Enter your username here'"}
{"_id": "1", "title": "\"Comments are a code smell\"", "text": "A coworker of mine believes that _any_ use of in-code comments (ie, not javadoc style method or class comments) is a code smell. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "201657", "title": "Forcing people to read and understand code instead of using comments, function summaries and debuggers?", "text": "I am a young programmer (finished computer science university but still under a year of working in the industry) and I recently got a job working on some C code for a decent size web service. Looking at the code the only places I saw comments were when people were stashing their old code. Function and variable names are similarly informative most of the time - `futex_up(&ws->g->conv_lock[conv->id%SPIN]);`. Confronting a senior programmer about the situation and explaining that adding comments and meaningful names would make the code more maintainable and readable in the future, I got this reply: > In general, I hate comments. Most of them time, like the case you mention > with the return value, people use comments to get around reading the code. > The comments don't say anything other than what the guy thought the code > does at the time he put in the comment (which is often prior to his last > edit). If you put in comments, people won't read the code as much. Then bugs > don't get caught, and people don't understand the quirks, bottlenecks, etc. > of the system. That's provided the comments are actually updated with code > changes, which is of course totally unguaranteed. > > I want to force people to read the code. I hate debuggers for a similar > reason. They are too convenient and allow you to step through dirty code > with watches and breakpoints and find the so-called problem, when the real > problem was that there are bugs in the code because the code has not been > simplified enough. If we didn't have the debugger, we would refuse to read > ugly code and say, I have to clean this up just so I can see what it is > doing. By the time you are done cleaning up, half the time the bug just goes > away. While what he wrote goes against a lot I have been taught in the university, it does make some sense. However, since experience in the studies sometimes doesn't work in real life, I would like to get an opinion of people more vetted in code. Is the approach of avoiding commenting code to make people actually read the code and understand what is going on make sense in a medium-sized coding environment (one that can be reasonably read in whole by every person working on it within a month or two), or is it a recipe for a long-term disaster? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approach?"}
{"_id": "119600", "title": "Beginner's guide to writing comments?", "text": "Is there a definitive guide to writing code comments, aimed at budding developers? Ideally, it would cover when comments should (and should not) be used, and what comments should contain. This answer: > Do not comment WHAT you are doing, but WHY you are doing it. > > The WHAT is taken care of by clean, readable and simple code with proper > choice of variable names to support it. Comments show a higher level > structure to the code that can't be (or is hard to) show by the code itself. comes close, but it's a little concise for inexperienced programmers (an expansion on that with several examples and corner cases would be excellent, I think). **Update** : In addition to the answers here, I think this answer to another question is highly relevant."}
{"_id": "121775", "title": "Why should you document code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  \"Comments are a code smell\" I am a graduate software developer for an insurance company that uses an old COBOL-like language/flat-file record storage system. The code is completely undocumented, both code comments and overall system design and there is no help on the web (unused outside the industry). The current developers have been working on the system for between 10 and 30 years and are adamant that documentation is unnecessary as you can just read the code to work out what's going on and that you can't trust comments. Why should such a system be documented?"}
{"_id": "173118", "title": "Should comments say WHY the program is doing what it is doing? (opinion on a dictum by the inventor of Forth)", "text": "The often provocative Chuck Moore (inventor of the Forth language) gave the following advice[1]: > Use comments sparingly! (I bet that's welcome.) Remember that program you > looked through - the one with all the comments? How helpful were all those > comments? How soon did you quit reading them? Programs are self-documenting, > even assembler programs, with a modicum of help from mnemonics. It does no > good to say: > > `LA B . Load A with B` > > In fact it does positive bad: if I see comments like that I'll quit reading > them - and miss the helpful ones. What comments should say is what the > program is doing. I have to figure out how it's doing it from the > instructions anyway. A comment like this is welcome: > > `COMMENT SEARCH FOR DAMAGED SHIPMENTS` Should comments say _why_ the program is doing what it is doing? * * * In addition to the answers below, these two _Programmers_ posts provide additional insight:   1. _Beginner's guide to writing comments?_   2. An answer to _Why would a company develop an atmosphere which discourage code comments?_ ### References 1\\. _Programming a problem-oriented-language_, end of section 2.4. Charles H. Moore. Written ~June 1970."}
{"_id": "216918", "title": "Is there really anything to gain with complex design?", "text": "I've been working for a consulting firm for some time, with clients of various sizes, and I've seen web applications ranging in complexity from really simple:   * MVC   * Service Layer   * EF   * DB To really complex:   * MVC   * UoW   * DI / IoC   * Repository   * Service   * UI Tests   * Unit Tests   * Integration Tests But on both ends of the spectrum, the quality requirements are about the same. In simple projects, new devs / consultants can hop on, make changes, and contribute immediately, without having to wade through 6 layers of abstraction to understand what's going on, or risking misunderstanding some complex abstraction and costing down the line. In all cases, there was never a need to actually make code swappable or reusable - and the tests were never actually maintained past the first iteration because requirements changed, it was too time-consuming, deadlines, business pressure, etc etc. So if - in the end -   * testing and interfaces aren't used   * rapid development (read: cost-savings) is a priority   * the project's requirements will be changing a lot while in development ...would it be wrong to recommend a super-simple architecture, even to solve a complex problem, for an enterprise client? Is it complexity that defines enterprise solutions, or is it the reliability, # concurrent users, ease-of- maintenance, or all of the above? I know this is a very vague question, and any answer wouldn't apply to all cases, but I'm interested in hearing from devs / consultants that have been in the business for a while and that have worked with these varying degrees of complexity, to hear if the cool-but-expensive abstractions are worth the overall cost, at least while the project is in development."}
{"_id": "60929", "title": "Sticking to a Task vs Varying It", "text": "When you have several programming tasks to do at once, do you prefer to go through them one at a time, or to vary them, perhaps based on subtasks or on time? Why? For myself, I find that: Pros for sticking:   * If I lose my concentration or train of thought, it takes a while to get back into it. If I chug through one task, I'll probably get more done.   * Getting to cross things off a todo list feels good and looks good to my employer. Pros for varying:   * Sometimes my most productive work is in the first hour or so that I'm working on a task. If I vary, I get several first hours in a day.   * Getting stuck on a task when you're not making any progress is not much fun. Giving it some time often allows you to come up with solutions in a more relaxed manner. What do you do? Is there a particular time frame between varying tasks that works best?"}
{"_id": "44649", "title": "Better programming by programming better?", "text": "I am not convinced by the idea that developers are either born with it or they are not. Where\u2019s the empirical evidence to support these types of claims? Can a programmer move from say the 50th to 90th percentile? However, most developers are not in the 99th or even 90th percentile (by definition), and thus still have room for improvement in programming ability, along with the important skills. The belief in innate talent is \u201clacking in hard evidence to substantiate it\u201d as well. So how do I reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements? I think the lesson for software developers who wish to keep on top of their game and become experts is to keep exercising the mind via effortful studying. I read a lot of technical books, but many of them aren\u2019t making me better as a developer."}
{"_id": "65208", "title": "Have you ever organised a \"Code War\"?", "text": "The IT management classic PeopleWare suggests organised \"Code Wars\" as a way to boost morale. Has anyone ever put this into practice? How did you do it?"}
{"_id": "214518", "title": "Managing p/t consultants like Open Source contributors?", "text": "I just assumed tech lead for a project which has had a problem with its very part-time (maybe 2-5 hours / week) contractors:   * submitting code that brings down the production app,    * pull requests that cannot be auto-merged,    * writing misnamed tests that don't actually test what they claim, and    * not writing tests for the new submitted features. A big problem is that these remote, part time contractors aren't in the office to respond immediately if there's a problem with their code. Also, I'm the only full time developer on the app, and we can't afford to have my time spent checking and debugging others' code. My idea is to adopt an open-source working style with them. I.e., would a big, important project (like Linux, Ruby, Rails, etc.) accept the proposed changes? We find out the criteria they have and then enforce that. We let go any contractor who doesn't play by the rules. Is this the way to handle the relationships? EDITED: To highlight the very part-time nature of the contractors. Less than 10 hours per week, usually 2-5."}
{"_id": "214517", "title": "Are we queueing and serializing properly?", "text": "We process messages through a variety of services (one message will touch probably 9 services before it's done, each doing a specific IO-related function). Right now we have a combination of the worst-case (XML data contract serialization) and best-case (in-memory MSMQ) for performance. The nature of the message means that our serialized data ends up about 12-15 kilobytes, and we process about 4 million messages per week. Persistent messages in MSMQ were too slow for us, and as the data grows we are feeling the pressure from MSMQ's memory-mapped files. _The server is at 16GB of memory usage and growing, just for queueing._ Performance also suffers when the memory usage is high, as the machine starts swapping. We're already doing the MSMQ self-cleanup behavior. I feel like there's a part we're doing wrong here. I tried using RavenDB to persist the messages and just queueing an identifier, but the performance there was very slow (1000 messages per minute, at best). I'm not sure if that's a result of using the development version or what, but we definitely need a higher throughput[1]. The concept worked very well in theory but performance was not up to the task. The usage pattern has one service acting as a router, which does all reads. The other services will attach information based on their 3rd party hook, and forward back to the router. Most objects are touched 9-12 times, although about 10% are forced to loop around in this system for awhile until the 3rd parties respond appropriately. The services right now account for this and have appropriate sleeping behaviors, as we utilize the priority field of the message for this reason. **So, my question, is what is an ideal stack for message passing between discrete-but-LAN'ed machines in a C#/Windows environment?** I would normally start with BinaryFormatter instead of XML serialization, but that's a rabbit hole if a better way is to offload serialization to a document store. Hence, my question. [1]: The nature of our business means the sooner we process messages, the more money we make. We've empirically proven that processing a message later in the week means we are less likely to make that money. While performance of \"1000 per minute\" sounds plenty fast, we really need that number upwards of 10k/minute. Just because I'm giving numbers in messages per week doesn't mean we have a whole week to process those messages. =============== edit: ## Additional information Based on the comments, I'll add some clarification:   * I'm not sure serialization is our bottleneck. I've benchmarked the application, and while serialization does show up in the heat graph, it's only responsible for maybe 2.5-3% of the service's CPU utilization.   * I'm mostly concerned about the permanence of our messages and potential misuse of MSMQ. We are using non-transactional, non-persistent messages so we can keep queueing performance up, and I would really like to have at least persistent messages so they survive a reboot.   * Adding more RAM is a stopgap measure. The machine has already gone from 4GB -> 16GB of RAM and it's getting harder and harder to take it down to continue adding more.   * Because of the star routing pattern of the application, half the time an object is popped then pushed to a queue it doesn't change at all. This lends itself again (IMO) to storing it in some kind of key-value store elsewhere and simply passing message identifiers.   * The star routing pattern is integral to the application and will not change. We can't application-centipede it because every piece along the way operates asynchronously (in a polling fashion) and we want to centralize the retry behavior in one place.   * The application logic is written in C#, the objects are immutable POCOs, the target deployment environment is Windows Server 2012, and we are allowed to stand up additional machines if a particular piece of software is only supported in Linux.   * My goals are to maintain current throughput while reducing memory footprint and increasing fault tolerance with a minimum outlay of capital."}
{"_id": "127753", "title": "Defining classes in JavaScript that exist in your back-end", "text": "Doesn't it seem relatively duplicative to define your Models in your backend code AND on your front end for a rich internet application? I'm porting a GUI application I had written to have a web interface, which is all grand and nice any all, but things like Spine, SproutCore, JavascriptMVC would have you define your models and views and implement specific controllers. Being that I've got a well defined MVC pattern on my backend code (which is making this super easy to port; the views in my app took python dicts and returned python dicts to the controllers which could easy interface with the models; I can just convert these to JSON back and forth to speak to the web front end), why would I want to recreate the entire pattern again on the front end? What are good ways to work around this? Should I just say \"screw this\" and use something like http://pyjs.org? Should I write a bunch of code to export my models into JSON and then write some JavaScript code to build the Models on the front-end automatically so I'm still only defining them once? What would be the best approach to this?"}
{"_id": "214512", "title": "An extensible logging architecture for Android?", "text": "The end goal is to have a variety of data sets that can all be graphically plotted against eachother. All data should correspond to a date, so that when plotted against each other, they show the correct relationship through time. The key feature though, is to be able to add a new parameter to log at any time which will then be logged simultaneously and will then be able to be plotted against other data sets (from the time the later began onwards). As a sub point, it also needs to be able to deal with sparse information which is sometimes available and sometimes not. An example of the data can be seen below. C is sparse data and D is a data field added half way down the table. ![Example of data](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1Q30u.jpg) I have considered SQLite but the thought of all the column changes due to columns added by myself and users didn't appeal. Currently, I am thinking of creating an object which keeps track of time and contains a data field list of different data lists such as A, B, C and D as in the image. The thinking being that to add a new data field, I could just add a new parameter (e.g D) list to the data field list which already contains A, B, C. Then I could just serialize this into JSON to keep it persistent and when I want to graph anything with sparse data, I could interpolate it. That is my current solution but I would very much appreciate any opinions on better practices or flaws in my current solution."}
{"_id": "127754", "title": "Is this a good code documentation practice?", "text": "I'm working on 2 projects `projA` and `projB`, and both projects are maintenance projects. For `projA` there are 3 programmers and for `projB` there are 2 programmers. In each case all are working on separate points. As code documentation is very important, can you tell me which one is the better practice? Examples:                 {Author : lee    -verion 1.7    -date 30 dec  -asked by someGuy  -decription: to antialiase a line}          procedure antiAlias(thisline);       begin          //do the anti aliasing...        end;      or                  {*123}       unit testone;     ..     ..     ..              procedure antiAlias(thisline);       begin          //do the anti aliasing...        end;     ..     ..           end. //end of the unit..          {*123}       {Author : lee    -verion 1.7    -date 30 dec  -asked by someGuy  -decription: to antialiase a line}      the `{*123}` represent the point I have done for the particular unit. So the next point `{*124}` will be at the end of the unit. This is done (very rarely though) as the code looks clean without the commented part and lots of decription at the end."}
{"_id": "209421", "title": "Best practice to store DateTime based on TimeZone", "text": "Developing a web application which should allow User to schedule appointment based on their TimeZone. And I am storing the User scheduled datetime as server datetime into database field. While showing schedule information retrieved the value from Database and converted into user timzone. processing in Code base I am converting the DateTime based on the user timezone. Please suggest is this best practice or any easy way is exist?"}
{"_id": "165637", "title": "Best Practice - XML To Excel", "text": "I've to read a big XML file with a lot of information. Afterwards I extract the needed information (~20 Points(columns) / ~80 relevant Data (rows, some of them with subdatasets) and write them out in a Excel File. My Question is how to handle the extraction (of unused Data) part,   * should I copy the whole file and delete the unused parts, and then write it to excel   * or is it a good approach to create Objects for each column?   * should I write the whole xml to excel and start to delete rows in excel? What would be performant and a acceptable solution?"}
{"_id": "173491", "title": "Releasing Mobile Application under multiple platforms, same time or?", "text": "I've always had this idea circling around until I am facing this issue. We made an android app, it is ready, but we are planning to release the same app on iOS and possibly Windows Phone; Now, should we just release the Android app and promise the clients that the iOS version is coming soon (create anticipation before release)   or delay the release until the iOS version is ready? Same applies if we have a premium and free version, should we release the free version and promise that the better premium is coming soon, or release them both the same time? EDIT: as requested, the APP is a social APP, it depends on people's activity to succeed, and the manpower is the same, we made the iOS version, but to compile it we are waiting for the company to get us better Mac Machines (will be in a week for most)"}
{"_id": "114423", "title": "Are there restrictions on table and column names in DB2?", "text": "I'm working with a DB2 database and I can't help but notice - these table and column names are really confusing! I realize that good names are important in every facet of software development, and it's quite possible that the non-intuitive names are unique to my experience, but someone told me that DB2 places severe restrictions on table and column names. **Is this true?** Or could it be that DB2 admins have traditionally followed a certain naming convention that seems foreign to SQL Server veterans like myself?"}
{"_id": "114420", "title": "Patient Record Tracking System", "text": "## Background At a medical facility, staff can remove patient records (file folders) from a room. The room is locked using a standard tumbler lock (i.e., no swipe cards). The medical facility does not have much funding available. All staff members have a computer in their office (some computers are several years old). All staff members, who have permission to fetch file folders, have a computer and a known location. ## Problem A significant amount of time is spent physically \"tracking down\" the location of patient records. This is inefficient for the person trying to find the files and disrupts other staff who are queried during the search. Eventually (possibly years hence) the records will be digitized. This is a classic library book check-out problem. ## Solution Architecture This is what I am thinking:   1. Web service that tracks file folders by ID.   2. Print QR Code (or bar code) label stickers with ID.   3. Label all the physical patient record file folders.   4. Equip all computers with inexpensive scanner (e.g., web cams).   5. Install QR Code (or bar code) reader software on each computer.   6. Write software that passes scanned document to code reader software (e.g., press CTRL-F12).   7. Write a web service that updates a file folder's location given an IP address. The part that remains is another web service that allows a person to search for an ID. The search result indicates the last known office where the folder was scanned. The tracking process becomes:   1. Staff takes file folder and returns to office as usual.   2. Staff holds folder to scanner, presses hot-key.   3. System audibly (and/or visually) acknowledges new location. ## Question What inexpensive solution would you put in place to substantially reduce the time taken to track down patient records (and curtail disrupting other staff)? Ideas for hardware components (e.g., inexpensive bar code readers) are appreciated. Inexpensive bar code readers requiring resident driver software that takes several megabytes of RAM, however, would not be feasible (due to older hardware and budget constraints). The system likely does not need to be perfect, but it should offer a dramatic reduction on the amount of time it takes to locate a physical file folder, with minimal overhead. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "114427", "title": "What to do after accidentally erasing many database entries?", "text": "Today at work I did an update to production. The update involved replacing old items from two tables with new data. I of course did a back up of the tables before that. Well, now 6 hours after getting home I realized at shower that there was a foreign key reference on cascade delete for many tables and when I replaced the older data it also removed lots of other data -- I'm not even sure I know all of the data that got removed... The thing is, there are about 270 tables and I've been to the company for 3 months. I was supposed to do this update today and the CTO was away doing remote work. I tried to contact via Skype and email, but he's away. I figured not to call him at this time of day (late evening here). What should I be doing here? It's the beginning of weekend and I feel bad leaving the system in such a condition for two days... and especially because I screwed up things. The client is doing billion dollar business and its the biggest client the company has so this was a major drawback. If the hosting provider does not have nightly backups I will probably get fired. Damn I hate automatic magic like FKs. :( What would you do in my position?"}
{"_id": "114424", "title": "How do you address the gap on your resume after a self-funded sabbatical?", "text": "There are a ton of questions on Programmers.SE about whether or not taking extended time off is a good idea and what to do during that time off to maintain your skill level: Will taking two years off for school in a related field destroy a mid level development career? Can I take a year off without hurting my career? If you take a year or two out from being a developer, is it really that hard to get back into it? Is taking a break in career to learn stuff \"a bad idea\" They've been really helpful, but I still have a question about the logistical details of take a self-funded sabbatical. I'm coming to the end of a year off from working as a software developer (after 7 years in the field.) I've taken this year to let myself explore interests that I'd never had enough time for: baking, sewing, photography, and making new and interesting friends. During this time, I've also been working on pet development projects in technologies and disciplines that I would never have had the chance to explore otherwise. in addition, I've read all of those software development books I'd never had time to read and kept up with programming news and blogs. The development projects have all had an eye towards being part of a Micro ISV, but only one of the projects has made it to any sort of production stage. That project is impressive, but not very successful (yet!) I've got a reasonably active programming blog that I believe reflects a high dedication to software development and demonstrates that I haven't just put my programming skills on a shelf for a year. My question is: **What is the best way to transmit this information to a potential employer at the resume/cover letter level?** I'm reasonably confident that I can explain this sabbatical in an interview setting. I know that at the resume level though, hiring managers will use any excuse they can to throw my resume out (I've done hiring and I would probably have thrown out my own resume if it didn't handle this time off really well, maybe it's karma.) So I feel like the resume/cover letter is the really tricky part in getting a kick-ass new job. I have a few ideas about what to do, but I'm not sure what the larger community sees as acceptable. Here are the approaches I'm considering:   1. Put a special section on my resume for the sabbatical time in which I outline the personal projects. If I do this, what's a good way to label it?   2. Create a personal company name and put these projects in the work experience section of my resume under that company. This seems like the most go-getter way to do it, but I'm worried it could be perceived as trickery when I get to the interview stage. Also if I do this, what do I put as my title?   3. Leave my resume as-is and explain everything in my cover letter, with a link to my active blog.   4. There's probably something I'm not thinking of, I'm open to any other ideas. I know I've included a bunch of special-snowflake information about my personal situation, but I would prefer answers for the more general case. The personal details are here more as an example than as a request for answers designed specifically for me."}
{"_id": "104258", "title": "How does one get a group of programmers together for a project?", "text": "I recently pitched a project I've been working on to a small company that I know, coincidentally, has a need for something similar. They seemed excited by what I have, and what I said I could do, but worried that, as a lone (actually, they said 'rogue') programmer I could up and leave them with a non- functional program. They suggested that I get a few people together, write up a solid proposal, and meet with them again. They've promised office space and a good budget because this is an application that would greatly increase productivity for them. The problem is I'm still quite new to the field, I have no professional experience, and while I know I could complete this project, I don't know how to find other people to bring in on it. Does anyone have any experience in situations like this? Any ideas on where I could look? Also, the company and I are both located in Manhattan, if that helps determine where to look for people."}
{"_id": "220048", "title": "Internal-use websites: Is there a compelling case against SQLite?", "text": "Many web frameworks, such as Flask or Django use SQLite as their default database. SQLite is compelling because it's included in python, and administrative overhead is pretty low. However, most high traffic public production sites wind up using a heavier database: mySQL, Oracle, or postgresql. _The questions_ : Assume:   * Site traffic is moderate, and concurrent read/write access to the database will happen   * We will use SQLAlchemy with SQLite write locks (although this comment makes me a little nervous)   * The database will contain perhaps 60,000 records   * Data structures do not require advanced features found in heavier databases Is there ever a compelling case against SQLite concurrency for websites that serve as moderate-traffic internal corporate tools? If so, what conditions will cause SQLite to have concurrency problems? I'm looking for known specific root causes, instead of general fear / unsubstantiated finger pointing."}
{"_id": "37294", "title": "Logging: Why and What?", "text": "I've never written programs which make significant use of logging. The most I've done is to capture stack traces when exceptions happen. I was wondering, how much do other people log? Does it depend what kind of application you are writing? Do you find the logs actually helpful?"}
{"_id": "55649", "title": "Idea for a physics\u2013computer science joint curriculum and textbook", "text": "I want to write (and have starting outlining) a physics textbook which assumes its reader is a competent computer programmer. Normal physics textbooks teach physical formulas and give problems that are solved with pen, paper and calculator. I want to provide a book that emphasizes computational physics, how computers can model physical systems and gives problems of the kind: write a program that can solve a _set_ of physics problems. Third party open source libraries would be used to handle most of the computation and I want to use a high-level language like Java or C#. Besides the fact I'd enjoy working on this, I think a physics-computer science joint curriculum _should_ be offered in schools and this is part of a larger agenda to make this happen. I think physics students (like myself) should be learning how to use and leverage computers to solve abstract problems and sets of problems. I think programming languages should be thought of as a useful medium for engaging in many areas of inquiry. Is this an idea worth pursuing? Is the merger of these two subjects in the form of an undergraduate college curriculum feasible? Are there any specific tools I should be leveraging or pitfalls I should be aware of? Has anyone heard of college courses or otherwise that assume this methodology? Are there any books/textbooks out there like the one I'm describing (for physics or any other subject)?"}
{"_id": "93116", "title": "Handling \"backup\" files with Git", "text": "I have a project folder that has multiple duplicate files that are named slightly differently to create \"backups\". So I have \"file1.txt\" and \"file1 backup.txt\". Is there a preferred method to capture the old history when I make the folder into a git repository?"}
{"_id": "86857", "title": "Should all, none, or some overridden methods call Super?", "text": "When designing a class, how do you decide when _all_ overridden methods should call `super` or when _none_ of the overridden methods should call `super`? Also, is it considered bad practice if your code logic requires a mixture of supered and non-supered methods like the Javascript example below?               ChildClass = new Class.create(ParentClass,     {        /**         * @Override         */        initialize: function($super) {           $super();           this.foo = 99;        },             /**         * @Override         */        methodOne: function($super) {           $super();           this.foo++;          },                  /**         * @Override         */        methodTwo: function($super) {           this.foo--;          }     });      After delving into the iPhone and Android SDKs, I noticed that `super` must be called on _every_ overridden method, or else the program will crash because something wouldn't get initialized. When deriving from a template/delegate, _none_ of the methods are supered (obviously). So what exactly are these \"je ne sais quoi\" qualities that determine whether a _all_ , _none_ , or _some_ overriden methods should call super?"}
{"_id": "211101", "title": "Assert equality in mstest when types may differ", "text": "I've been working on some MSTest automated test infrastructure, that is testing a tool that merges data sets into SQL Server database tables. The basic structure of the test is to:   1. Define the incoming dataset using anonymous types   2. Apply the data using the reconcile tool   3. Read records from the output tables   4. Compare result rows to input data, column by column Example input data:               public class InputData : List<dynamic> {} // Inspired by Massive etc          InputData input = new InputData()     {         new { ExternalID = 1, PropertyName = \"hello\", Agent = \"test\" },         new { ExternalID = (Int64)2, PropertyName = \"fred\", Agent = \"test\" } // Fixes the problem with a cast     };      The issue I'm dealing with, is that the type inferred on my anonymous objects will be an Int32, but the corresponding column in my target table is a bigint, and hence the record will have an Int64 value. As a result, when I use Assert.AreEqual across each column, it fails on any int fields:               Assert.AreEqual failed. Expected:<1 (System.Int32)>. Actual:<1 (System.Int64)>      You can see I have cast the int on my second anonymous object, this can be used to fix the issue. The primary aim of these tests is to make the sample data as slim and easy to read/write as possible, and I'd prefer to avoid the visual noise of all those casts. I'm thinking about the best way to deal with the assertions. It seems like I should use dedicated assertions based on type. I guess the real question is, how aggressive should I be in converting between types automatically?"}
{"_id": "139028", "title": "How is software for machines such as ATMs or TVs built?", "text": "As a beginner programmer I've only worked with programming computer based applications, but a question has been coming to my head very often since I started programming and I can't get it answered properly. Machines don't act on their own, that's the programmer's job, he tells it what to do and when to do it, but my curiosity lies beneath computers. I'll take the examples of an ATM software on this post but keep in mind there are many others such as a washing machine display, or a TV, mobile phone, you name it. How exactly is the software for these kind of machines built? I imagine it can't be identical to computer-based programming. What language do they use to make such things work and how does one get the job done? Are there programmers specialized on this kind of programming? What is the process of making these machines come to life?"}
{"_id": "98127", "title": "Rewarding programmers based on application importance", "text": "Is it correct for management to give more importance or reward programmers who have worked on strategic and important application versus someone who has worked on a general application?   Both may have put the same efforts."}
{"_id": "98126", "title": "how can you avoid version nightmare?", "text": "I am in charge of the deployment or implementation work.Due to my company's immaturity product,there is a version upgrade serveral days. Each time there is a upgrade version,I had to notify the customer they had to replace their old version product.What I do is reconfigure all the configuration files for different customers who has its specific needs. Finally email them the new version of products and tell them ... Doing all this work is boring. Is there anyone have similar experiences? Any advice is welcomed. More context: I get a updated version from svn respository,it's configuration files is default.And each customer needs serveral configuration files different from each other,but their own configuration files is normally stay unchanged.My work is to export serveral products from the svn folder for each customer and copy their own configuration files in."}
{"_id": "25385", "title": "What to do about \"next piece syndrome\"?", "text": "Inspired by this question: What to do about \"stopping point syndrome\"? I often find myself a half hour away from knocking-off time having just wrapped up a component of my work, and facing a \"next piece\" that is going to take more than half an hour. (That's happening right now, as a matter of fact. Hence my surfing stackexchange during business hours!) What do you do? Launch into the new piece knowing you'll have to stop in the middle? Set it aside and twiddle your thumbs until the clock runs out?"}
{"_id": "167675", "title": "Do App Stores Have Exclusivity on Your Apps?", "text": "Let's say I write a mobile app and I want to sell it on all three:   1. Apple Market Place   2. Android Market Place   3. Windows Market Place Will any of these market places tell me that it's not possible, that in order to sell it I must only go through them and not through the other ones? p.s I know Angry Birds sells on all three. But how is that? I mean, don't books, for example, have exclusivity deals with their distributors?"}
{"_id": "2185", "title": "When is the time right to bring a project to the alpha/beta/public phase?", "text": "When should a project be released to alpha, beta and to the public? Is it a good idea to extend the alpha and beta phases when it is needed? When in a later phase (eg. beta), is it wise to go back to an early phase (eg. alpha) if it didn't work out?"}
{"_id": "209390", "title": "Pair Programming/Collaboration in a small company", "text": "I work at a small development company as the lead developer. We have two other developers, as well as my boss who is a developer, but doesn't really do much of the actual coding anymore. The problem I am trying to overcome is multifaceted. We have a tendency all to work on our own projects without much collaboration between us. As a matter of fact, I (as the most advanced developer) ask for the others' opinion/help more than they do mine, because I value the input of an outside eye. I want to increase our collaboration, and have expressed that to them. In large part because I'd like to show them some things about how to become better developers and follow better practices. But given our other developers' personality types, I think they are more comfortable working alone. I've been reading about pair programming, and I have read (in some forums) that it doesn't work well when you have one developer being more advanced than the others (which I am). And yet, I feel it is imperative that we start to collaborate so that our work is not so disparate. My question is whether anyone has ever been in a similar situation, and what worked for them? I realize this is not a one-size-fits-all situation, but I'm willing to give multiple approaches a shot. We all work in a common area, developers don't have have individual offices / cubicles."}
{"_id": "209397", "title": "Efficiently \"moving\" data upward through a communication stack", "text": "I have implemented an application protocol stack that moves an incoming stream of data upward through several layers, as follows:   1. **copies** a TCP segment from an OS buffer to `my_buffer`.   2. after identifying a record boundary, splits the record in `my_buffer` into tab-separated strings which are **copied** into `deque<string> my_deque` (rather than into a vector because I then have to immediately pop a couple of fields from the front)   3. **copies** `my_deque` to `vector<string> my_records[n]` where it is presented without further copying to the application. I'm wondering whether it's best to stick to a clean architecture (layering) and pay the price (whatever that is) of copying payload from layer to layer, or if there are some simple optimizations that people use. Is it customary to use separate buffers for separate layers, or is this something which can easily be optimized away without dangerously compromising the independence of the layers?"}
{"_id": "222575", "title": "Breaking the \"ubiquitous language\" by having an IoC Container in Domain Model?", "text": "I am a bit new to DDD and bear with me if my understanding seems way off. My question is about Udi's solution to domain events, particularly the class `DomainEvents` (see code below) An excerpt from Udi's code. It lives domain model as a static class.               public static class DomainEvents     {         [ThreadStatic] //so that each thread has its own callbacks        private static List<Delegate> actions;             public static IContainer Container { get; set; } //as before             //Registers a callback for the given domain event        public static void Register<T>(Action<T> callback) where T : IDomainEvent        {           if (actions == null)              actions = new List<Delegate>();                actions.Add(callback);       }            //Clears callbacks passed to Register on the current thread       public static void ClearCallbacks ()       {            actions = null;       }            //Raises the given domain event       public static void Raise<T>(T args) where T : IDomainEvent       {          if (Container != null)             foreach(var handler in Container.ResolveAll<Handles<T>>())                handler.Handle(args);               if (actions != null)              foreach (var action in actions)                  if (action is Action<T>)                      ((Action<T>)action)(args);       }     }       Based on the code above, in order for the `DomainEvents` to be used by the domain model, both must first be in the same assembly. Which makes the `DomainEvents` part of the domain model right? (I may be wrong here) So my question is: **Does`DomainEvents` itself breaks the rule _\"ubiquitous language of DDD\"_**? Because it's implementation does not pertain to any domain. My other concern is that the static member `IContainer` creates an ioc- container-dependency in the domain model. Though I am not really sure if Udi's `IContainer` is an interface or an actual IoC container. My 2nd question is: **What is this`IContainer` in the `DomainEvents` class?** If it is truly an IoC container then doesn't it break the rule of _\"DDD should not have an infrastructure in the domain\"_? Is my understanding correct that an IoC-Container is considered an infrastructure? (Please correct me if I'm wrong) If you may find any of this confusing, please say so. **EDIT:** I have built my projects where the domain model is separated on its own assembly (I call this business layer) with absolutely no references to any infrastructure components. See onion architecture. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xN3GJ.png) Now I want to incorporate the domain events pattern. But doing so forces me to add infrastructure components to my business layer. Components being the `DomainEvents` and an IoC framework just to satisfy the `IContainer`, both having no relation to the domain whatsoever. **Isn't one of the idea of DDD is about separating the infrastructure from the domain?** Now I will play the pragmatic programmer, I just wanted to know that is it generally ok to do so? are there alternatives? What are you thoughts on this approach? Am I missing something basic here?"}
{"_id": "222576", "title": "Critique the Structure of my Horse Racing Betting Platform", "text": "I am creating a program (mostly just for fun) that displays live prices for horse racing markets and the prices that several models predict they should be. I am very interested in the optimal way to structure this kind of data. I need a `Dictionary<int, (something)>` to store `<raceId, data>` where the key (raceId) is a number I generate (to get rid of old races from the dictionary when the race is over). The vales (data) consists of the actual prices for each selection in the race and the prices of 3 separate models that correspond to each selection. The dictionary will contain 20-60 races depending on the time. Here is an example of the data for each race:               ActualPrice    ModelAPrice    ModelBPrice    ModelCPrice     3.25           3.26           3.29           3.20     5.60           5.63           5.55           5.57     etc.      The number of rows is usually around 40. Some of the models don't offer prices for some of the rows, but for each actual price there is at least 1 model price. Additionally, for each race data I store strings for the RaceCourse, StartTime, Location, etc. I also store marketIds in the form of ints, these correspond to several rows at a time (these are used to place the actual bets), there are about 6 marketIds per race. I was using a class to store all the data in called RaceData that is made up of fields for strings (i.e. RaceCourse, Location), ints (i.e. WinMarketId, PlaceMarketId) and doubles (i.e. HorseA_ActualPrice, HorseA_ModelAPrice, etc). So my dictionary is made up of `<RaceId, RaceData>`. But I was wondering if instead it would be better to store the data over 3 Dictionaries.               Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, string>>      <RaceId, <StringName, StringValue>>      Example of usage: Use RaceId=102313 and StringName=\"RaceCourse\" to get Value=\"Flemington\"          Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, int>>     <RaceId, <MarketName, MarketId>>     Example of usage: Use RaceId=131231 and MarketName=\"WinMarket\" to get MarketId=1321313          Dictionary<int, Dictionary<string, double>[]>     An array of dictionaries (one for each column of the data).     <RaceId, <RowName, Price>>     Example of usage: Use RaceId=12313 and RowName=\"HorseAWinPrice\" to get Price=3.25      I'm not really sure if an array of dictionaries is needed for the last one, as I could just change the keys to have the column at the front, i.e. \"ModelA_HorseBWinPrice\" or \"Actual_HorseBWinPrice\". Which one is better? Speed is a major concern when I have ~60 races and ~200 primatives for each. I have to perform several basic calculations using the values in each row for all of the races. I also need to display the racename/time in a listbox, and for the selected item in the listbox, display all of the prices on the form (in several list boxes). It is worth noting that each listbox corresponds to a marketId. Which is a better solution or can you suggest a better one that I have not put forward?"}
{"_id": "57645", "title": "What could be a reason for cross-platform server applications developer to make his app work in multiple processes?", "text": "We consider a server app development - heavily loaded with messing with big data streams. An app will be running on one powerful server. A server app will be developed in form of crossplatform application - working on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. So same code, many platforms for stand alone server architecture. We wonder what are the benefits of distributing applications not only over threads but over processes as well, for programmers and server end users? Some people said to me that even having 48 cores, 4 process threads would be shared via OS through all cores, is that true?"}
{"_id": "237805", "title": "Can I scrape a website for font stylings?", "text": "I am trying to scrape websites for valuable text for example the title of an article, the author's name, and other distinguished text. I cannot always guarantee that this sort of text will have informative tags, and but this needs to be done as quickly as possible. As a possible short cut I think that I could just try to pull the text with unique styling. The title is normally bigger than the body text, and the by-line is normally smaller. Is there a way to quickly pull all of the font stylings of a page and then rank them by size and how often it is used?"}
{"_id": "220590", "title": "Is using static-typing the solution to domain-driven design and decreasing the number of errors?", "text": "We are using PHP (a dynamically-typed language) in our project. However, I have found my colleagues asking questions such as http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20438322/modeling-a-binary-relationship- between-two-types. I\u2019m feeling like we have a paranoia that we are going to get unexpected errors (E.G. if you look at that example question, you will see that the poster is asking how to ensure that a `like` does not get initialized for a `Person`), and we are using static-typing (something that doesn't exist in PHP) along with unit tests to help ourselves rest easy at night. :-) Now, the thing that tells me our approach is wrong is the number of big websites written using dynamically-typed languages: Google uses Python extensively, Facebook is written using PHP, Twitter and GoodReads are written using Ruby. So what I feel is that web applications\u2014at the very least\u2014are moving toward dynamically-typed languages. However, no matter how I try to comprehend this, i can\u2019t. Don\u2019t these guys have trouble comprehending the domain? Don\u2019t they have problems that arise when using dynamically-typed languages (E.G. \u201cProperty `whatever` is not defined on this object.\u201d)? If they do, how do they deal with those while keeping the agility that comes with using dynamically-typed languages?"}
{"_id": "153457", "title": "amount of code in code review", "text": "In my experience, most teams in the company review the code of team member with a small amount of code, always less than hundreds of lines. Is it appropriate to review large amount of code, for example a module, when the code is complete and ready to get reviewed once for all?"}
{"_id": "106095", "title": "Being stupid to get better productivity?", "text": "I've spent a lot of time reading different books about \"good design\", \"design patterns\", etc. I'm a big fan of the SOLID approach and every time I need to write a simple piece of code, I think about the future. So, if implementing a new feature or a bug fix requires just adding three lines of code like this:               if(xxx) {         doSomething();     }      It doesn't mean I'll do it this way. If I feel like this piece of code is likely to become larger in the nearest future, I'll think of adding abstractions, moving this functionality somewhere else and so on. The goal I'm pursuing is keeping average _complexity_ the same as it was before my changes. I believe, that from the code standpoint, it's quite a good idea - my code is never long enough, and it's quite easy to understand the meanings for different entities, like classes, methods, and relations between classes and objects. The problem is, it takes too much time, and I often feel like it would be better if I just implemented that feature \"as is\". It's just about \"three lines of code\" vs. \"new interface + two classes to implement that interface\". From a product standpoint (when we're talking about the _result_ ), the things I do are quite senseless. I know that if we're going to work on the next version, having good code is really great. But on the other side, the time you've spent to make your code \"good\" may have been spent for implementing a couple of useful features. I often feel very unsatisfied with my results - good code that only can do A is worse than bad code that can do A, B, C, and D. Are there any books, articles, blogs, or your ideas that may help with developing one's \"being stupid\" approach?"}
{"_id": "222688", "title": "Using std::sort et al. with user-defined comparison routine", "text": "In the evaluator of a custom language, I would like to replace our own sort routines with `std::sort` or other routines, possibly `tbb::parallel_sort`. The problem is that we allow users of the language to supply their own comparison routine, and in the implementations I have tried, `std::sort` does not take kindly to routines that fail to be a strict order. In particular, it quickly starts looking at \u201celements\u201d outside the iterator range to sort. I assume that if I put an indirection layer on top of the iterators, I could avoid that by using virtual sentinels, but there is no reason to assume that the resulting calls would necessarily ever terminate. So, given a black box `bool f(widget const &a, widget const &b)` and a non- user-controlled total order `operator<(widget const &a, widget const &b)`, what would be the minimal amount of calls I would need to make to get a sort call that does terminate and that does order according to `f` if that is, in fact, an order? It looks to me like the following should work, but I am hoping that I could get by with fewer calls to `f` by some clever method, possibly remembering previous comparison calls:               bool f_stabilized(widget const &a, widget const &b) {       bool fab = f(a, b);       bool fba = f(b, a);       return (fab != fba) ? fab : (a < b);     }      Would it be reasonable to start out by just calling `f` and only after seeing n^2 calls for a list of length n to fall back to such a \u201cstabilized\u201d version? I realize that there is no reason to assume the result would be correctly ordered and I would need to start over from the beginning with such a wrapper."}
{"_id": "106092", "title": "Is it okay to have many Abstract classes in your application?", "text": "We initially wanted to implement a Strategy pattern with varying implementations of the methods in a commmon interface. These will get picked up at runtime based on user inputs. As it's turned out, we're having **Abstract classes implementing 3 - 5 common methods** and **only one method left for a varying implementation** i.e. the Strategy. _Update: By many abstract classes I mean there are 6 different high level functionalities i.e. 6 packages , and each has it's Interface + AbstractImpl + (series of Actual Impl)._ Is this a bad design in any way? Any negative views in terms of later extensibility - I'm preparing for a code/design review with seniors."}
{"_id": "102964", "title": "Portable programming style", "text": "I'm a Python programmer that prefers to develop on Windows but still end up deploying to a Linux server. I've just finished writing a little script: stuff that downloads files from a site, generates a sitemap, gzip it, pings the search engines and emails the response code. Nowadays most GNU tools are available and compiled also for Windows and I sure do use Wget and Grep whenever I need to. Until now I've always tried to implement the functionality I needed in Python (gzipping and opening urls require very few lines of code) but I found myself thinking if maybe I could write more resilient code if I didn't reinvent the wheel and just scripted everything in a bash script style where a big part of the functionality is delegated to an external process such as mail, wget, curl, etc and the other tools *nix makes generally available. What is your take on this? When you target *nix do you glue tools together or you tend to implement all the functionality in your scripting language of choice?"}
{"_id": "60073", "title": "What ways are there to determine if an idea for change is viable or not?", "text": "A recent discussion on here about whether or not program windows should still be called screens or if we should have improved terminology got me thinking... Dangerous I know! People as a whole tend to be fairly resistant to change. We get comfortable in our niches and used to the way things are. While some changes lead to good results and improve our lives or the way things are done, others are clearly not enough of a change or overall bad and not even worth attempting. What guides can we use as we program to determine if an improvement (whether it be to coding style, terminology, user interface, language use, etc) is really an improvement or not? I'm sure to some extent nothing will replace the try-it-out approach but are there any tests or guides that can be used to eliminate certain ideas that would eventually turn out to be worthless or a waste of time to pursue? EDIT: For anyone who is wondering the discussion that brought this question up in my mind is found here: Does your organization still use the term \"screens\" to describe a user interface?"}
{"_id": "186387", "title": "Does it violate the DRY principle to use an MVC server-side framework and a client-side MVC framework", "text": "When using a MVC pattern for server side code (in my case django), the model definition is defined once in the model component. When using a client side MVC based library(in my case backbone) the model definition or some subset is **redefined**. If I were to make a change to my server side model definition, let's say add a field to a model, then I would have to make a similar model change to my client side model definition to include that new field. Is this a violation of the DRY principle? Should server side model definitions auto-generate client side javascript based model definitions or is this an acceptable violation of the DRY principle?"}
{"_id": "251634", "title": "Best practices in designing a social network app?", "text": "What are best practices when it comes to designing a social network app for Android (possible iOS port later depending on uptake)? It's my first time architecting something this scale from scratch, and I'm probably already making mistakes in the design phase. What I already have in mind is to:   1. Have a Postgresql backend to store customer data. I'm going to set up one 'app' user to handle all the incoming RESTful requests, which leads to my next point..   2. Connect the database to the app through a RESTful interface (I don't think the platform is overly important but I'm looking at either Go or Puma/Sinatra or Flask as I want to minimise overhead and keep everything as efficient as possible).   3. Authenticate users using whatever authentication plugin is suitable within the RESTful interface and then..   4. Tunnel all traffic through a SSL socket which I'll open on the app which will connect to the interface (this is one of the areas where I don't have a great amount of knowledge/experience)   5. Load data pertaining to other users and store it locally in an encrypted sqlite db on the Android device which I will create as part of the app start-up process. Images will be the only media type I'll allow. I'll wipe the sqlite db each time the user logs in to the app or once it reaches a certain size i.e. over 3 mb.   6. Make the app subscription based so along with checking the user credentials each time they log on I'll check their subscription status and enable different behaviour accordingly.   7. Deal with heavy load connection issues by putting Pgbouncer on the db.   8. Store the user images on my server as normal image files and when the relevant users are selected I'll send them to the app over the socket.   9. Run the entire server as a VM, possibly from CoreOS/Docker machines, which sounds like a good fit from what I've read. Is there anything wrong with any part of my intended design? Is there anything necessary I've missed out?"}
{"_id": "251630", "title": "Should client ideas about the UI turn into User Stories?", "text": "I'm trying to learn about Agile methodologies through the Head First Software Development book and after reading about it, I've tried to apply the concept of User Stories to a recent mini-project (set of new features added to an existing application). Besides the fact that I have a hard time not thinking in terms of \"tasks\", I've also had trouble with the fact the client has asked things in a way that, to me, include implementation. For example, instead of asking \"we want Limited Users to have an Address now, just like Regular Users\" and leaving the rest to us, they would say \"we want Limited Users to appear in the same list as Regular Users and we want them to have an Address too, and it should be editable in the same Address Editing screen as Regular Users\". It seems to me that User Stories are meant to express a business need, but not its technical implementation, nor its UI implementation. That said, does it make sense that a client would impose its vision of the UI and have that be their business need? How would I turn the client's request into one or more User Stories? Should I say \"woah there! Tell me your ultimate goals and we'll see how we can get the UI to accomodate them later\"? Should I make multiple stories, one for the main business need (Limited Users have an Address) and additional ones for the UI requests? Should I just make the business need a single story and have other concerns as details / acceptance tests? Admittedly I'm quite wet behind the ears when it comes to Agile and User Stories and I have trouble defining how much goes into them and where the rest would go too."}
{"_id": "237808", "title": "MVC: Controller often simply delegates to Model when notified by View of GUI events. Is this reasonable?", "text": "Since I learnt about MVC, I used it for every app I made (which is arguably not the best idea, but that's not the topic of this question). All of them small, 1000 LoC apps. I am using Java and Swing for the GUI. What usually happens is this: The view (the GUI class) reports to the controller about any GUI event (most commonly a button click) made. For example when a button is pressed, the view simply calls `controller.someButtonPressed()` or `controller.someOtherButtonPressed()`. It's only reaction to user input is reporting to the controller, nothing else. This, I think, is fine and is proper MVC View implementation. The part I'm having doubts about is the following: In the controller's `someButtonPressed()` methods, it very often simply delegates to the model. For example:               public void someButtonPressed(){         model.doTheAppropriateThing();     }      Nothing more. No 'decision making' or actual 'interpretation' of what the view reported. Very often, only simple delegation to the model. **Is it considered reasonable when implementing MVC structures and specifically controllers, to have the controller often simply delegate directly to the model in reaction to GUI events?** Or does this signal that maybe I'm doing something wrong?"}
{"_id": "193630", "title": "Summary of differences between Java versions?", "text": "What are the major differences in between Java version in terms of software development? Where can one find a summary of the most important changes related to programming? The Release Notes such as http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/releasenotes-136954.html can be hard to read. For example there is new code structure \"for each\" in Java 1.5."}
{"_id": "193638", "title": "Why didn't == operator string value comparison make it to Java?", "text": "Every competent Java programmer knows that you need to use String.equals() to compare a string, rather than == because == checks for reference equality. When I'm dealing with strings, most of the time I'm checking for value equality rather than reference equality. It seems to me that it would be more intuitive if the language allowed string values to be compared by just using ==. As a comparison, C#'s == operator checks for value equality for strings. And if you really needed to check for reference equality, you can use String.ReferenceEquals. Another important point is that Strings are immutable, so there is no harm to be done by allowing this feature. Is there any particular reason why this isn't implemented in Java?"}
{"_id": "199771", "title": "Should Cross browser testing be explicitly mentioned in the scope of a project?", "text": "I do freelance web development and front end dev is not my strongest point. This question came to me in my recent fixed bid project. Nowadays we use Jquery and Bootstrap and these take care of lots of cross browser stuff. Still, there are lots of errors in different browsers. It requires testing tools and a whole lot of other things to worry about. Should it be explicitly mentioned that the resulting site should be tested for cross browser compatibility in a contract? Or Does it come by default in the scope of the project? How can we estimate hours spent in cross browser compatibility? Edit: Some great answers here. But how should a scenario be handled when no browser discussions happened at all at the time of signing contract?"}
{"_id": "167093", "title": "What is the best way to go about testing that we handle failures appropriately?", "text": "we're working on error handling in an application. We try to have fairly good automated test coverage. One big problem though is that we don't really know of a way to test some of our error handling. For instance, we need to test that whenever there is an uncaught exception, a message is sent to our server with exception information. The big problem with this is that we strive to never have an uncaught exception(and instead have descriptive error messages). So, how do we test something what we never want to actually happen?"}
{"_id": "199778", "title": "Is MVVM in WPF outdated?", "text": "I'm currently trying to get my head round MVVM for WPF - I don't mean get my head round the concept, but around the actual nuts and bolts of doing anything that is further off the beaten track than dumb CRUD. What I've noticed is that lots of the frameworks, and most/all blog posts are from 'ages' ago. Is this because it is now old hat and the bloggers have moved onto the Next Big Thing, or just because they've said everything there is to say? In other words, is there something I'm missing here?"}
{"_id": "93806", "title": "Should I patent my software?", "text": "I go to a university where students are allowed to make their semester schedule based on the information about the subjects they are going to take, that is, the hours that the courses are available, the professors, and the remaining room for other people. Making these schedules by hand was a very difficult/boring task. I wrote a pretty nifty Python program that automates this process. You pick the codes for the subject you're going to take and filter out the professors you don't want. Then the program outputs all the possibilities there are if there aren't time conflicts. This program helped a lot of students. The time to make a schedule reduced from 2 days to less than 30 seconds! Now here begin the problems. My family and all the people that used the program tell me to patent the program before someone steals the idea (that could happen in my country). But I question that myself. Is it necessary to patent a web scraper mixed with a backtracking engine? It was difficult to make the program because I didn't know a lot of things, but now that I have finished, I feel that it would be very stupid/immature to patent such a thing. But on the other hand, I don't want someone else to get the credit for it. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "93801", "title": "Are Concurrency Abstractions Emulating UNIX Processes?", "text": "OK, I was pondering this today, and I've come to ask for _completely subjective and bias_ opinions on it. Paradoxically, despite this, I don't think it's flame-war fodder either. I think there is room for perfectly civilized conversation -- It's hardly Vim vs Emacs. I've used a lot of concurrency abstractions, specifically those built on top of threads. There's a big trend among them, whether it be message-passing, immutable-by-default, or thread-local-by-default or other ones. The trend is that they're all reversing the idea of threads by making data sharing explicit rather than implicit. That is, all data is not shared unless otherwise specified, which is the opposite of traditional threading found in languages like Java. (I know Java supports its own higher-level concurrency abstractions though.) For example, you explicitly pass messages. You explicitly state which variables are thread-local. You explicitly state which variables are mutable. These are just a few examples found in some languages. I thought this easy style of concurrency was a modern concept. I was mistaken. I started playing around with UNIX toys like fork() and pipe() recently, and I was shocked to discover that effortless, explicit concurrency mechanisms have been around since the start of UNIX. There's something a little strange about realizing that C + UNIX from the '70s makes concurrency _far_ easier than many modern trendy threading mechanisms. So, here's what I'm wondering... are these modern thread abstractions simply trying to emulate UNIX-style processes on top of threads, with all of their explicitness and not-shared-by-default traits? I know that some mechanisms like STM offer things like DB-style transactions which is genuinely a modern and innovative solution for concurrency, but most just seem like new ways of doing what UNIX coders were doing a long while back. Just to say, I'm not a UNIX fanboy, not by any stretch of imagination. I'm aware that processes are far slower than threads to initialize on many platforms, but I'm talking about this from a conceptual basis."}
{"_id": "191165", "title": "How to model and query spatial responsibilites of company local branches", "text": "what are best practices, to model and query spatial responsibilities of company local branches? My company has many local branches which are all in general responsible for 1 city. This is the easiest case. However, there are some exceptional cases. Here's a list of all possible cases:   * branch a is responsible for city a (general case)   * branch a is responsible for city a, b and c   * branch a is responsible for disctricts 1 and 2 of city a, whereas branch b is responsible for districts 3, 4 and 5 of city a   * branch a is responsible for city a and for Foostreet of district 2, whereas branch b is responsible for district 2 of city a   * branch a is responsible for city a and for odd housenumbers of Foostreet of district 2, whereas branch b is responsible for district 2 of city a   * branch a is responsible for city a for all customers whose surname begin with letters A-F, whereas branch b has G-K, and branch c has ....   * branch a is responsible for city a in case of handling Foos, whereas branch b is responsible for city a in case of handling Bars These are the possible responsibility cases, which could of course also be mixed. The planned system should provide the answer to the question: \"Which branch is responsible for city a (or b or c ...)?\". If there are exceptional cases, then the question has to be more specific. Is it possible to provide hints like: \"City a has more than one branch, please chose a district!\" or \"For which case are you asking? Responsible branch for handling Foos, Bars, ....?\" The question which would most likely to be asked is: \"Which branch is responsible for Foostreet 345 in 12345 Foocity?\" My requirements are Java Enterprise and a mySQL Database. It may be possible to use MongoDB or Neo4j if it really makes more sense. I already have database with every city, district, zipcode and street, with which the data could be \"connected\". I hope this question doesn't sound like: \"Please do my job for me.\", but my experience in spatial domain modelling is almost zero."}
{"_id": "191166", "title": "upgrading to newer version of compiler", "text": "I had legacy code that was originally build for some quite old version of compiler. We are talking about native code, not managed. Now it is ported to almost newest version of the compiler. Every compile error was fixed and now the product is properly compiling and running. But:   * although it compiles and even runs... how can I be sure is is working as expected?    * can I be sure that underlying runtime does not change in a way that it introduces new and unexpected runtime bugs?   * what are best practices when upgrading to newer version of the compiler?"}
{"_id": "221884", "title": "What format is the data going to Windows print drivers?", "text": "I have been tasked with writing a print driver. I have no experience with this and have been researching it for a few days. The goal of this is to essentially write the data coming to the driver to a file and then do some additional processing of it. If I understand it correctly, I can start other processes to do most of the work, but I'll need the driver itself to generate the initial file/data. I am confused about what state the data is in when it comes to the driver from an application. Is this something that is determined by the application, or is there a standard of some kind?"}
{"_id": "221887", "title": "Is lucene.net/solrnet a good solution for searching a list of names with fuzzy matching?", "text": "At the moment, we're using sql server full text search, but it's too inflexible. The main thing we do is look up names of people from a database based on a search query. The searches need to be fast, and they need to be fuzzy. SQL Full Text Search doesn't really support fuzzy matching especially when combined with the thesaurus option. Therefore I need a better solution. My research suggests that lucene and solr are widely used enterprise solutions, but my searching suggests these are more designed for indexing things like documents and webpages, or what it refers to as 'unstructured data'. Our data is very well structured, and therefore I'm unsure if it's suitable for this type of work or if I should be investigating another product. According to the book I have Solr 1.4 Enterprise Search Server it supports all of the above except for prefix matching out of the box, however it states there are performance issues with substring searches. Do you think that solr/lucene is a good technology to investigate for solving my problem? If not, do you have an alternative? Any advice is welcome. I am a .NET developer, hence solrnet rather than solr."}
{"_id": "102340", "title": "How to structure multiple overlapping solutions / projects in .Net?", "text": "I recently started out working for a new client with an _old legacy_ codebase in which there are multiple .net solutions, each typically hosts some projects unique to that solution but then \"borrows\" / \"links in\" (add existing project) some other projects which technically belongs to other solutions (at least if you go by the folder structure in TFS) I have never seen a setup this intertwined, there is no clear build order, sometimes a project in solution A just reference dlls directly from the output directory of a project hosted in solution B, sometimes the project has just been included directly even if it resides FAR away in the folder structure. It looks like everything has been optimized for developer laziness. When I confronted them with why they didn't have a CI server they responded that it is hard to set up with the code organized like it is. (I'm setting it up now and cursing this code-organization) The solutions are organized around deployment artifacts (stuff that needs to be deployed together are in the same solution) which I _think_ is a wise decision, but the contents of those solutions (the projects) are all over the place. Is there a consensus of a best practice to use when reusing common class libraries across multiple solutions / deployment artifacts,   * How to structure code in the VCS   * How to facilitate sharing of business logic between separate deployment artifacts"}
{"_id": "102346", "title": "Difference between statechart and sequence diagram", "text": "I realise these two diagrams are very similar, with the obvious difference one models the sequence of a certain function, whilst the other models the state throughout a function being carried out. The differences that I have identified are as follows - probably incorrect:   1. State chart is more of a logical view of any functionality, showing a wider array of deviating paths - however, saying that, sequence diagrams also have the ability to provide alternate (alt) paths, conditions, loops etc.   2. A sequence diagram is aimed at one specific function, e.g. withdrawing money from your bank account, whereas a state chart can model a whole system. State chart example & Sequence diagram example"}
{"_id": "102347", "title": "How do you manage cross-class dependencies on destruction/design (more of a C++ question)", "text": "So if I understand correctly, from SOLID design principles, every class should keep a single responsibility. So there should be one class that creates and manages a resources, a second class that does resource processing/update, the third class that connects the resource to some other resource and so on. The question is, how do you cleanly express that in code? Because, in C++, the class destruction order plays an important role. So you basically come to a situation where you get               ResourceClassInstanceManager cf;//does the ResourceClass creation, accounting and destruction?     ResourceClass &rcInstance = cf.GetResourceClass();//creates the instance of resource     ResourceClassUpdater rcu(&rcInstance);//updater that works on the class instance     ResourceConnector rcc(&rcInstance, &instanceOfAnotherClass);      The problem here is that if cf leaves the scope first, or rcInstance is deleted before rcu or rcc. The other classes will still reference the nonexisting instance of ResourceClass. This seems somewhat messy, as the whole creation/destruction chain has to be followed very carefully, and becomes really troubling as soon as you have pointers to objects and deeper nesting levels. Is there a clean solution for this design problem?"}
{"_id": "78547", "title": "How do you tell if advice from a senior developer is bad?", "text": "Recently, I started my first job as a junior developer and I have a more senior developer in charge of mentoring me in this small company. However, there are several times when he would give me advice on things that I just couldn't agree with (it goes against what I learned in several good books on the topic written by the experts, questions I asked on some Q&A sites also agree with me) and given our busy schedule, we probably have no time for long debates. So far, I have been trying to avoid the issue by listening to him, raising a counterpoint based on what I've learned as current good practices. He raises his original point again (most of the time he will say best practice, more maintainable but just didn't go further), I take a note (since he didn't raise a new point to counter my counterpoint), think about it and research at home, but don't make any changes (I'm still not convinced). But recently, he approached me yet again, saw my code and asked me why haven't I changed it to his suggestion. This is the 3rd time in 2--3 weeks. As a junior developer, I know that I should respect him, but at the same time I just can't agree with some of his advice. Yet I'm being pressured to make changes that I think will make the project worse. Of course as an inexperienced developer, I could be wrong and his way might be better, it may be 1 of those exception cases. My question is: what can I do to better judge if a senior developer's advice is good, bad or maybe it's good, but outdated in today context? And if it is bad/outdated, what tactics can I use to not implement it his way despite his 'pressures' while maintaining the fact that I respect him as a senior?"}
{"_id": "187479", "title": "Encapsulate external JavaScript library", "text": "I am about to develop a ASP.NET MVC 4 project that will make use of maps. Our company has it's own map API which is very basic at the moment, but is intended to be further developed in future to match some specific customer needs. The project will have a mobile/tablet interface in addition to it's web interface and needs to be developed now. So we have planned to start use the Google Maps v3 API. I would like to encapsulate the API, so our applications don't have Google API specific calls. The same approach as if I would like to use som external API i C# and wanted to encapsulate it in order to be able to switch API in future without having to re-code the entire application. But I haven't been able to find similar examples, so the following questions arise:   1. Is it a good and reasonable approach? Let me hear your pros and cons.   2. How would it be done in practice?"}
{"_id": "223769", "title": "How to simulate a REST API?", "text": "I am working on a new project which will query data from a 3rd party REST API. This is for a real time sports data feed, so the feed only works when a game is actually taking place. Although the 3rd party provides good documentation (XSD, etc), they have no way to simulate a game happening, and so to test code I have written against this API I would have to wait for an actual game to be happening. My only recourse is to write code to simulate a game on my own, but it seems like a lot of work. Has anyone any experience with any tools similar to Apiary to do this? How would you approach this? Thanks"}
{"_id": "187470", "title": "Can profiling be used to verify if optimization was successful?", "text": "I know that profiling is useful to identify bottlenecks and determining what parts of the code require how much time to execute. The latter isn't always very easy to track in the midst of other paths being executed, so once I decide what I want to optimize it might be problematic to see the improvement in numbers. This is especially true in desktop apps which run constantly and it is difficult to: execute the same path and execute it the same number of times to have reliable comparison. It won't help me if before optimization the function ran X times and took 500 milliseconds, and after optimization it run Y times and took 400 milliseconds. In such cases, can I somehow use a profiler to determine improvement or do I have to resolve to other options?"}
{"_id": "223762", "title": "Bloom filters or similar, but with no false positive", "text": "To improve some lookups, I am considering the use of Bloom Filters. But in my use-case, the most probable outcome is that the element do exists in the target set. Bloom filters can have false positive, but no false negatives. That would make me check the real (big and slow) storage most of the time because of the uncertainties. Is there another algorithm/data structure with the same properties for space and computation speed (and parallelism of query) that can assure no false positive and a low probability of false negative? (The max size of the set will be around 300k items, the items will be strings of, at most, 512 characters, and I will have hundreds of sets like that.)"}
{"_id": "112219", "title": "Java Swing in real world software development?", "text": "Is Java Swing really used for constructing real-world software? I'm taking an introductory course in Java, but nothing more than drawing some shapes, lines & basic tables."}
{"_id": "112218", "title": "What teamwork methods can be learned without being in a team?", "text": "I've worked in team-based environments most of my career, but not as a programmer. (I am trained as a musician/composer.) I'm becoming aware of _programming specific_ team-based concepts, though--slowly but surely--such as Version-Control, SDLC, documentation, etc. I'm getting a certain theoretical understanding, but not really feeling confident about it. **I'd like to practice anything I can to help me learn how to work more effectively in a team.** ...before I actually go and bother someone with my heavy-handedness or ignorance. I'm not sure if it's possible or even recommendable to attempt to 'practice' team-based methodologies privately. Maybe the only way to really learn how to work in a team is to just experience it. Likewise, I wouldn't know how to explain teamwork to another musician, but as musicians we don't really have codified methodologies in the same way that programmers do, and I think that could make all the difference. In music there are certain conventions and inflexibility due to the mechanical nature of the instruments/recording equipment (akin to hardware/language, I suppose), but otherwise we kind of make it up as we go along (and I assume programmers do a little bit of that, too, depending on the context--I wouldn't know. That's kind of what I'm trying to figure out). I'm pretty sure that the inevitable answer is that I should work on something open-source; the world is flat, after all, and it's not difficult to communicate across great distances as a programmer (like it often is with musicians). But my feeling is that I'm not ready for that. I would feel safer learning _how_ to approach teamwork with programmers before just diving in, because programmers can perhaps be a little persnickety. I'm trying to avoid a trainwreck-type of experience that might cause some irrational fear. So is there anything I can study beforehand, and if so, is there a generally accepted way to go about it? Like mock-teamwork, team-related practices that can be practiced privately; is any of this making sense?"}
{"_id": "235207", "title": "How to store progress of abstract events?", "text": "I making a game in node.js. I have players and they can perform a lot of actions. Actions are all coded as functions, and they change certain variables in either User object or other objects that are stored in a database. Actions are like: 1\\. Player enters room (filled with other players and some objects)               room.players.push(player);      2\\. The room distribute some things to the players (increments a variable in player object) who were already in the room, and the player that just entered.               player.gemDiam++;      3\\. A host player in the room asks the player to give up something (decrement some variable) of his own.               player.potion--;         host.potion++;      4\\. The player asks other players to give something else to the room. (decrement their own and increment some of the rooms's variable)               room.players.forEach(function(player){             io.sockets.socket(player.socketID).emit('askNicely');             io.sockets.socket(player.socketID).on('agree', function(){                 player.gemCirca--;             });         });      5\\. They all give up what the room game them originally (delete the variable Room set a value for on them) and walk out.               room.players.forEach(function(player){         player.gemDiam--;     });      Now, mind that the players are actual players (that are controlled via client- side socket.io) and these actions are just one of many I chose for this example. How should I go about storing all that in a way that I can reproduce without actual players, sort of like a history of what happened in that room?"}
{"_id": "146846", "title": "How to read from a database, and write to a file asynchronously / non blocking way in Java", "text": "I'm trying to modify a serial program that reads from a database, and writes results to a file, this is done in a blocking way and I think we can get performance boost of there is a memory buffer and have the file being written in the \"background\" asynchronously I can think of the \"job interview\" solution, using Threads, shared resource, syncronized blocks etc... but I'm sure there is a better way (is there a nice little \"delayed write\" library out there that will do it for me?) Does any of the java.util.concurrent package offer any help? java.nio? or perhaps JMS/ActiveMQ? What about PipedOutputStream / PipedInputStream as a basis for my buffer? How do I implement a delayed / background / buffered / non-blocking / asynchronous file writter in Java?"}
{"_id": "71980", "title": "Has the license changed for the parts of BOOST that have been accepted into C++11?", "text": "The Boost Software Library is licensed under the BOOST License Now, if you only use C++11, does this mean you're bound by the BOOST license terms if you use those parts of C++?"}
{"_id": "7733", "title": "Good questions to ask a potential new boss?", "text": "Imagine you were working as a software developer. Imagine that the manager of your team leaves and your company is looking for a replacement. Imagine that as part of the hiring process you had the opportunity to talk with him. You are not the only person doing an interview, and while it is not ultimately your decision whether or not to hire him, you do have an influence. What questions would you ask? What would you talk with him about?"}
{"_id": "108699", "title": "Why does Java's Collection.size() return an int?", "text": "Why does Java's Collection.size() return an int? This limits the size of collections to just over 2 billion entries. With the rapidly increasing amounts of memory available to us, this seems a little short-sighted - no?"}
{"_id": "197643", "title": "\"Is\" prefix and \"On\" suffix as reasonable exceptions to a \"non-hungarian\" naming standard?", "text": "First, I believe I've seen this question discussed here before, but I cannot find it. My apologies if you do find it. I'm starting a new project, and trying to figure out why IsResolved and/or ResolvedOn make more sense to me than Resolved. Obviously, when something is named \"CompanyName\" (for example), I'm fairly confident I'll test it as a string. However, when I see \"Resolved\", and I know the object it describes may not have a valid value for a resolution date, it bothers me that I have to inspect the type to determine how to test it: for undefined/null/etc. (as a date), or as a boolean value. Is it reasonable to claim that Is and On typically do more than declare the variable type; they declare the intent? Or perhaps simply that it makes the code clearer for some other reason I'm not quite able to codify? Arguing the other side, if I look at the type of Resolved, and see that it is a boolean, I will have my answer. Perhaps this is no different than knowing that I'll need to inspect a \"Feasibility\" variable to determine if it is an int, enum, or something else. (Although perhaps just that means \"Feasbility\" would be a sub-optimal name also.) And regardless, in the case of \"ResolvedOn\", I still have to inspect whether it is nullable to determine if I additionally need to inspect an \"IsResolved\" value. What is the point of the verbosity, encoding a second time in the variable name that which can be deduced from the type? Please give me a hand understanding **why Is[Property] and [Property]On make sense to me** , although Hungarian in general does not. Or, explain why an exception like this wouldn't make sense? Note: I primarily work with SQL, C#, and JavaScript."}
{"_id": "157228", "title": "How to motivate students for a programming section?", "text": "Last year I tried establishing a programming section at my alma mater. We started with a clear document detailing our plans and goals and a solid attendance (around 20 students). I ran into following problems:   * I found it hard to manage such a large team   * the majority of students had little or no programming experience other than `C` starting courses I tried splitting the section into 4 teams of approximately 5 students each, with more experienced programmers at the head of each team. We defined some real world problems to solve to make it more interesting for students and got to work. However, with upcoming exams attendance dwindled and then finally stopped. At the time I felt that the students were not willing to put in the effort to learn something new. Later, I believe that they felt the task was too hard for them, and motivation suffered as a result. My question is therefore: how would you motivate students?"}
{"_id": "157223", "title": "Am I shooting myself in the foot if I use Mercurial for Rails development?", "text": "I'm a Rails developer and I prefer Mercurial over Git. However, I know that the Rails community is very pro-Git. So my question is it possible that my choice of version control system would turn back some developers?"}
{"_id": "157225", "title": "Genetic Algorithm - solving a matrix with hard and soft constraints", "text": "I'm writing a Genetic Program that I need some advice on for crossover operations. The GP is attempting to find the best solution for a matrix that has hard row constraints and softer column constraints. For a given solution in the population, the rows contain a random combination of object type ids from a fixed set. The GP is trying to find a solution where, after the rows are laid out, if you tally the id's in each column, the number of each type must fall within a recommended range for that id. I wrote a fitness function that allows me to grade the solution on how close it comes to the columns constraints - 100% being all the columns fall within specs. Since fitness is tied to columns it seems logical that the crossover operation should grab columns of two parents to create a candidate offspring. Should a multipoint crossover be a better way to go? My concern is a crossover operation, almost certainly, will break the row contraints. Thanks for any advice."}
{"_id": "211071", "title": "help in theory regarding prefix_suffix_set", "text": "I found this question at codility.com, but I don't understand the question. Can you help me figure out what do they want? I am more interested in the theory than a code. A non-empty zero-indexed array A consisting of N integers is given. A prefix_suffix_set is a pair of indices (P, S) such that 0 \u2264 P, S < N and such that:   * every value that occurs in the sequence A[0], A[1], ..., A[P] also occurs in the sequence A[S], A[S + 1], ..., A[N \u2212 1],   * every value that occurs in the sequence A[S], A[S + 1], ..., A[N \u2212 1] also occurs in the sequence A[0], A[1], ..., A[P]. The goal is to calculate the number of prefix_suffix_sets in the array. For example, consider array A such that:   * A[0] = 3   * A[1] = 5   * A[2] = 7   * A[3] = 3   * A[4] = 3   * A[5] = 5 There are exactly fourteen prefix_suffix_sets: (1, 4), (1, 3), (2, 2), (2, 1), (2, 0), (3, 2), (3, 1), (3, 0), (4, 2), (4, 1), (4, 0), (5, 2), (5, 1), (5, 0). Write a function:   * function solution(A); that, given a non-empty zero-indexed array A of N integers, returns the number of prefix_suffix_sets."}
{"_id": "67310", "title": "Should you use \"internal abbreviations\" in code comments?", "text": "Should you use \"internal abbreviations/slang\" inside comments, that is, abbreviations and slang people outside the project could have trouble understanding, for instance, using something like `//NYI` instead of `//Not Yet Implemented`? There are advantages of this, such as there is less \"code\" to type (though you could use autocomplete on the abbreviations) and you can read something like `NYE` faster than something like `Not Yet Implemented`, assuming you are aware of the abbreviation and its (unabbreviated) meaning. Myself, I would be careful with this as long as it is not a project on which I for sure will be the only developer."}
{"_id": "186269", "title": "What should junior developer expect from their senior team lead", "text": "Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer. I work for a small company, in which few people are developers, others are QA/Test and 1 is a Manager. I joined this company 1.5 years ago. 3 senior developers have 8+ years of experience. These are the observations which I made about the team lead. (considering me as a fresher with less experience compared to them in all aspects )   1. They never discuss 1:1 or they never consider the junior suggestion (I agree that it's up to them, whether they accept it or not, at least they should consider an opinion).    2. As senior team leader they can try to refactor the codebase with new technologies ( including the factor of rolling out new technologies is possible and other developer and infrastructure also ready), but these team leader feel less in-secure to work with new technologies, as they are not up to date. (reason I am telling, they don't know what current programming trend, *(such as popular open source projects like modernizr, bootstrap and many others).    3. In our codebase more than 10000+ lines are repeated, so I told them about `DRY: Don't Repeat yourself`. Their reply was : \"It is a fascinating article, but never works in practice\". I just told them if we do not make it 100% DRY, we can at least use interfaces, but that also was not considered. *(interfaces can be added for new features, not touching the previous codebase, if they are not ready to refactor)    4. All senior developers do maintenance and hot fixing of patches. The rest of the time they just spend on entertainment sites. They are just happy to finish the task.    5. Introducing new technology is bad? *(including factor of feasibility can be done).    6. Manager also least concerned about the things which I am talking about.    7. Junior expects they can learn many things from team lead. *(not by asking help or senior coding for them).  My questions are:   1. Am I too aggressive about the changes which I am proposing?    2. What should I expect from senior dev leads who have 8+ years experience?    3. Am I wrong to expect to learn and gain experience from a company? Update : Why they feel DRY is impractical: because they don't want get involved with OOP concepts. They are happy with repeating tasks. New technologies I am proposing:   1. Usage of Minification of CSS, JS, SPrite images    2. Usage of Interfaces and .net framework 4, generics and many others.   3. Client side libraries such as modernizr, knockout js, bootstrap for responsive,"}
{"_id": "37981", "title": "Who is using the MVVM architecture for large applications?", "text": "I am currently working on an LOB application which I am basing on the MVVM architecture. Going by the answers to the questions I'm asking, it seems like there are not that many people building _large_ and/or _complex_ applications in MVVM. Hopefully, there is a number of you who have built such animals. If so, have you found that MVVM scales?"}
{"_id": "220862", "title": "I've been on C# course and struggle to remember things?", "text": "I'm an apprentice and I've been on a couple of training courses in C#, I understood the concept of c# programming and covered inheritance etc, but when I've came to code for my coursework \"I've got to make a shopping basket and save the contents into a .txt\" I just seems to not know what to do, as if I've got no idea how to program. I've got a copy of the end product apart from it's altered so we can't copy it whole, so I've just been taking code and not really understanding everything that's doing on. I just seem as if I don't want to program as if I'm in a different mind set, I just seem to go blank at the thought of creating a simple program from scratch and have no Idea where to start? Any one got any ideas for help ? :) thx"}
{"_id": "238925", "title": "I'm not sure how to add common functionality to my business objects using DTOs/DDD?", "text": "I have created a couple of projects to create a better division of my code: I have a Portable Class Library targeting all frameworks that contains just basic DTOs (auto-generated against a database). These DTOs will contain some basic DataAnnotations for the class representing the table. For example:               [DataContract]     public class OrderDetail     {         [DataMember]         public virtual int Id { get; set; }              [DataMember]         [Required]         [StringLength(32)]         public virtual string OrderCode { get; set; }              [DataMember]         public virtual DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }              [DataMember]         public virtual DateTime? ShippedDate { get; set; }     }      * * * Now, the problem I have is that I want to create a \"Business Object\" and provide common features such as n-level Undo/Redo, marking child objects for deletion, etc. The ways I could think about doing this is as follows: **Option 1** : Inherit the DTO to add the additional members (build out the object graph). I can use partial classes and interfaces and even some AOP to implement the common features. For example:               // OrderDetail.generated.cs: Auto-Generated/T4     public sealed partial class OrderDetail : DTO.OrderDetail, IUndoRedo     {         // Common Features coded here (i.e. n-level Undo/Redo)     }          // OrderDetail.cs: Custom Code     [DataContract]     public sealed partial class OrderDetail     {         [DataMember]         [Required]         public Address ShippingAddress { get; set; }              [DataMember]         [Required]         [Cardinality(1, Cardinality.Infinity)]         public ICollection<ProductDetail> Products { get; set; }     }      Now, the problem with this is that every single Auto-Generated business object extension of each DTO (`OrderDetail`, `Address`, `ProductDetail`, etc.) needs to have the common business features available (i.e. n-level Undo/Redo), but they can't inherit from some sort of `BusinessBase` class because they inherit from the DTO. **Option 2** : Inherit each business object from a `BusinessBase` abstract class which already has common features built into it. Then, simply wrap the DTO properties and re-expose them?               [DataContract]     public abstract class BusinessBase : IUndoRedo     {         // Common Features coded here (i.e. n-level Undo/Redo)     }          [DataContract]     public sealed class OrderDetail : BusinessBase     {         // Wrapped Properties         private Dto.OrderDetail Dto { get; set; }              [DataMember]         [Required]         [StringLength(32)]         public string OrderCode         {             get { return Dto.OrderCode; }             set { Dto.OrderCode = value; }         }              // etc ...              // Custom properties (Object-Graph)         [DataMember]         [Required]         public Address ShippingAddress { get; set; }     }      The problem with this is all the wrapped up DTOs, and it lacks inheritance, so the \"Business\" version of OrderDetail isn't a type of DTO OrderDetail, and the wrapped properties can get redundant. I'm really stuck as to what should be done here, is one option better, or maybe some other way of doing this that wasn't accounted for (Option 3, 4, 5, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "169949", "title": "How to visualize the design of a program in order to communicate it to others", "text": "I am (re-)designing some packages for R, and I am currently working out the necessary functions, objects, both internal and for the interface with the user. I have documented the individual functions and objects. So I have the description of all the little parts. Now I need to give an overview of how the parts fit together. The scheme of the motor so to say. I've started with making some flowchart-like graphs in Visio, but that quickly became a clumsy and useless collection of boxes, arrrows and-what-not. So hence the question:   * Is there specific software you can use for vizualizing the design of your program   * If so, care to share some tips on how to do this most efficiently   * If not, how do other designers create the scheme of their programs and communicate that to others? * * * Edit: I am NOT asking how to explain complex processes to somebody, nor asking how to illustrate programming logic. I am asking how to **communicate** the **design** of a program/package, i.e.:   * the objects (with key features and representation if possible)   * the related functions (with arguments and function if possible)   * the interrelation between the functions at the interface and the internal functions (I'm talking about an extension package for a scripting language, keep that in mind) So something like this : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pohJ4.png) But better. This is (part of) the interrelations between functions in the old package that I'm now redesigning for obvious reasons :-) PS : I made that graph myself, using code extraction tools on the source and feeding the interrelation matrix to yEd Graph Editor."}
{"_id": "59975", "title": "How to learn to translate real world problems to code?", "text": "I'm kind of a beginner to Java and OOP and I didn't quite get the whole concept of seeing a real world problem and translating it to classes and code. For example, I was reading a book on UML and at the beginning the author takes the example of a tic tac toe game and says: \"In this example, it's natural to see three classes: Board, Player and Position.\" Then, he creates the methods in each class and explains how they relate. What I can't understand is how he thought all this. So, where should I start to learn how to see a real world problem and then \"translate\" it into code?"}
{"_id": "144996", "title": "Learning MVC - Why does home and about share the same controller?", "text": "Let me start this out by saying I've been a asp.net web forms developer for a while now and that I understand mvc is a new way of doing things. As I'm learning mvc and going through tutorials and training videos, I have questions that these tutorials don't address. This is my attempt to address them here... I started a new project with the new internet application template in Visual Studio. I'm looking around the project trying to wrap my head around the mvc paradigm and I notice there is a Home and an About page. In the views, there is a file for each of these two pages. That makes sense. But why do they share the same controller? I think it would make sense if I had several screens that edit/view/delete the same data table, but the home and the about page don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. Does this mean if I create other pages that don't need a full blown controller (like a sitemap or something), I should just stick their views in the \"Home\" views folder? It just doesn't seem right. I know this basic stuff isn't that big of a deal, but this is the type of stuff that bugs the hell out of me. Thanks in advance for the clarification!"}
{"_id": "30355", "title": "How to become a \"faster\" programmer?", "text": "My last job evaluation included just one weak point: timeliness. I'm already aware of some things I can do to improve this but what I'm looking for are some more. Does anyone have tips or advice on what they do to increase the speed of their output without sacrificing its quality? How do you estimate timelines and stick to them? What do you do to get more done in shorter time periods? Any feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks,"}
{"_id": "169941", "title": "What are unique aspects of a software Lifecycle of an attack/tool on a software vulnerability?", "text": "At my local university, there is a small student computing club of about 20 students. The club has several small teams with specific areas of focus, such as mobile development, robotics, game development, and hacking / security. I am introducing some basic agile development concepts to a couple of the teams, such as user stories, estimating complexity of tasks, and continuous integration for version control and automated builds/testing. I am familiar with some basic development life-cycles, such as waterfall, spiral, RUP, agile, etc., but I am wondering if there is such a thing as a software development life-cycle for hacking / breaching security. Surely, hackers are writing computer code, but what is the life-cycle of that code? I don't think that they would be too concerned with maintenance, as once the breach has been found and patched, the code that exploited that breach is useless. I imagine the life-cycle would be something like:   1. Find gap in security   2. Exploit gap in security   3. Procure payload   4. Utilize payload **What kind of differences (if any) are there for the development life-cycle of software when the purpose of the product is to breach security?**"}
{"_id": "91183", "title": "What is easier to do with web applications compared to native GUI applications?", "text": "I have the impression that more and more applications with a user interface use HTML+CSS+JavaScript client-side instead of a native GUI framework. I wounder what are the most important driving forces for this? or in other words what are native GUI frameworks lacking to be competitive? e.g. is it easier to do some kind of things with HTML+CSS+JavaScript than with native GUI frameworks. If we suppose the application is a client-server application where the client has a graphical user interface. **What is the most important things that are easier to do in HTML+CSS+JavaScript than in the most popular native GUI frameworks?**"}
{"_id": "229500", "title": "Doing work in vector's push back", "text": "I often use the following syntax:               std::vector<foo> vec;     vec.push_back( someClass.getFoo(...).modifyAndReturn() );      Considered about exception safety, I quote the standard on vector's push back behavior (23.3.7.5): > If an exception is thrown other than by the copy constructor, move > constructor, assignment operator, or move assignment operator of T or by any > InputIterator operation there are no effects. If an exception is thrown by > the move constructor of a non-CopyInsertable T, the effects are unspecified.   * Is it a good practice to use complicated push backs?   * Are there any perils exception wise?"}
{"_id": "229501", "title": "Validation and Authorisation in Domain Models and Carrying that through a Service Layer to MVC", "text": "With the current project I'm working on there's an architecture question being asked which feels like it might just be asking too much. System Basics:   * HTML/JS MVVM   * Asp.net MVC   * Web Services   * EF   * SQL 2012 The Web Services deal with DTOs passed back and forth either to the presentation layer (MVC or mobile app) or to various other external services. The **big question** at the moment is whether it's possible to somehow define our **DTOs** in such a way as to **include** all **Validation and Authorisation rules**. This then needs to be carried into, for example, our MVC presentation layer or View Models. The idea here is that we'll end up with 1) Validation rules on the ViewModel which then plug into the MVC framework 2) Only fields that the user is allowed to edit should be shown as editable. Some have mentioned Fluent or other mechanisms that will consist of an extra definition class somewhere used define these rules, then during compilation code may be injected into various view model classes or base view model classes are generated which one can inherit from. The overall objective is to keep validation and 'data authorisation' (can user X edit fields 1, 2 and 3 based on their permissions/roles) rules in one place. Is this stretching it, or is it possible?"}
{"_id": "232838", "title": "What is the underlying mechanism behind va_list and where is it defined?", "text": "http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstdarg/va_list/ According to the above link, `va_list` is an argument or parameter used in some macros - `va_start`, `va_arg`, `va_end`. These macros are present in the `stdarg.h` file. I know that `va_list` can hold multiple values but what kind of an entity is `va_list`? My question is what is the underlying mechanism behind `va_list`? How is it able to hold multiple values? (For example, an array can hold multiple values and the mechanism behind it is multiple memory locations referenced by subscript values. Array is a predefined data structure present in C.) My second question is where is `va_list` defined?"}
{"_id": "228677", "title": "Is it better to use a switch statement or database to look through 5,000 to 10,000 instances?", "text": "I have some JSON data in this format (5,000 instances for now):               {\"id\":\"123456\",\"icon\":\"icon.png\",\"caseName\":\"name of case\"}      I am allowing the user to search for the name of the case and then return the id and icon to them, and in some situations, **use** the case id to run other functions, based on the search. How should I read this data? I'm currently leaning towards a switch because I want the switch to allow me to define multiple cases giving me the same result:               name of case and name-of-case should return me the id 123456      I can easily use a switch based on the string, listing out different cases, to do this. Probably going to be extremely tedious, but it's an option. So, my options I can think of are as follows:   1. Run a massive switch based on the query string (probably in a separate PHP file)   2. Store this result in a MySQL database, then based on the query string, retrieve the data, and I probably need to do indexing (which I understand, but have no idea how to implement). Also, I would like to prepare for the scenario that this 5,000 instances increases to 10,000 instances at some point in time. What's the best way of going about this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "232830", "title": "Unit test JSON parsing code?", "text": "In my humble view of unit testing a unit test tests a single unit of code. For me, this means a single class. Every dependency for that class is mocked in the corresponding test class, and passed in the constructor (or injected via a DI container). This allows you to test the class in complete isolation from the rest of the system. I take this as the gospel truth of what a unit test is supposed to be. If you are testing multiple _real_ classes (more than one class in your test class is not a mock) then you don't have a unit test, you have an integration test. Given this point of view, there are things that _seem_ to fall outside of the realm of unit testing even though it seems as if you are testing a single class. One of these types of tests is data parsing tests. For example, given a data class:               public class Person {       private Name name;       private PhoneNumber phoneNumber;       private Address address;     }      a purported unit test then attempts to validate correct parsing:               @Test     public void shouldParsePerson() {         String json = \"{ the json would be here }\";         Person person = new Gson().fromJson(json, Person.class);              assertThat(person.getName().getFirst()).isEqualTo(\"Jim\");         // more assertions based on what the JSON was would be here     }      What is this really testing? For me, it appears to be testing that Gson works. The test is tightly coupled to both the structure of the JSON and the class in Java that it maps to. Is the test really worth writing? Is it worth maintaining? Is it useful? Wouldn't an integration test somewhere else that relies on the parsing code catch this anyways? There is another question here that is related to my question, but it is actually different because it is asking **how** to unit test consumers of an API that wraps third parts classes, while I'm asking what constitutes a valid _unit_ test that involves a third party class. My question is more philosophical in nature, while the other is more practical. My question could also be extended to things like testing configuration code which isn't necessarily involving third party classes."}
{"_id": "250134", "title": "OpenGL's relationship to OpenGL ES (3.0)", "text": "I'm beginning my journey into graphics programming and want to learn OpenGL. Because I'm green to graphics programming but not to C and C++, a familiar question came up when I looked at OpenGL and ES... Is OpenGL a superset of OpenGL ES? I read in an ES 3.0 guide that it uses shader-based implementations that exist as part of OpenGL's embedded libraries, and that ES avoids using similar/redundant libraries provided by big 'ol OpenGL due to mobile hardware limitations... Are shader-based implementations which are a huge part of OpenGL ES less efficient solutions when programming on the desktop? OR should I look at the two APIs as different beasts altogether? thx in advance."}
{"_id": "228673", "title": "How does the product owner decide how successful a Sprint was?", "text": "Obviously if the product owner judges solely based on whether the committed stories were done, it wouldn't be good, because then the team will just commit to fewer stories next Sprint. On the other hand if the team made a tremendous job and overcame huge technical problems, but the commitments were not met, its also not good. I think that some measure is needed though, because if there is no feedback from the product owner, the team doesn't know what to improve, if at all. So what, in your opinion, are the criteria for the success of the Sprint?"}
{"_id": "55091", "title": "Why did Facebook use C++ beside PHP?", "text": "What is the main reason that made Facebook need to use C++ beside PHP? I am wondering if I make a website with alot of vistors would I need to use C++ as well?"}
{"_id": "147710", "title": "How to include database changes during application publish", "text": "I am maintaining a WinForms application, which talks to a SQL Server database. Sometimes I have to change database schema (for example to alter a sql procedure or add new one). For this purpose I have a SchemaChange.sql file, where I put the corresponding sql code. When I create an installer for my project, the msi package is created. It contains my application, referenced assemblies, COM+ assemblies,... Alongside the msi package I provide an SchemaChange.sql file, which has to be run on the production sql server. But sometimes I forget to add something to SchemaChange.sql file during development or I forget to execute it on production server after upgrading my application on client machines. Any advice how to automate this to avoid further problems?"}
{"_id": "147713", "title": "Where are null values stored, or are they stored at all?", "text": "I want to learn about null values or null references. For example I have a class called Apple and I created an instance of it.               Apple myApple = new Apple(\"yummy\"); // The data is stored in memory      Then I ate that apple and now it needs to be null, so I set it as null.               myApple = null;      After this call, I forgot that I ate it and now want to check.               bool isEaten = (myApple == null);      With this call, where is myApple referencing? Is null a special pointer value? If so, if I have 1000 null objects, do they occupy 1000 object memory space or 1000 int memory space if we think a pointer type as int?"}
{"_id": "91230", "title": "Addressable memory unit", "text": "From Wikipedia: > the term endian or endianness refers to the ordering of individually > **addressable** sub-components within a longer data item as stored in > external memory (or, sometimes, as sent on a serial connection). These sub- > components are typically **16- or 32-bit words, 8-bit bytes, or even bits**. I was wondering what \"addressable\" means? For example, in C, the smallest addressable is a byte/char. How can a bit be addressable? Thanks and regards!"}
{"_id": "103762", "title": "Developers Terms and Conditions", "text": "I've recently been approached to do some development work for a start up. The fellow has requested my terms and conditions. Being new to the industry, what sort of information would/should I include in this? Obviously pay rate and maybe information about ownership of Intellectual Property perhaps. Is there anything I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "103765", "title": "What is a good intro to cloud-computing architecture?", "text": "Awhile ago I tried reading about Google App Engine, from its site and from the Wikipedia article. What I realized was that not only did I not understand what it did, I didn't even know what problem it was solving. I am a competent programmer in a variety of languages, but I have little experience with large frameworks. Is there a book/site that explains cloud computing in a way similar to how \"Programming with POSIX Threads\" explains threading, ie identifying specific problems and the mechanics of how they are solved, from a programmer's perspective? I tend to be a low-level bits-bytes-and-memory-addresses sort of person, so abstract explanations of the architecture tend to give me a giddy and uneasy feeling. I suppose cloud computing can't be understood at the byte-level, but the lower down it is the better I'll understand it."}
{"_id": "91235", "title": "For what purpose I can use c++ to increase my skills?", "text": "I want to learn new things. Initially I was a PHP programmer. Then I thought it was not enough. Then I started learning Java thing. It took me 3 months to learn. Java, J2EE, Spring, Hibernte, Spring Security, Spring Roo and many design patterns MVC and stuff like AOP, DI . I never knew that before but I got the idea what J2EE. After 3 months, I just made a simple page with Registration form integrated with Spring Security. I wanted to make one complete project in it but that was too much for me and I didn't want spend more time on it as then i need to host that as well so I left that. Then I started learning Python and made few sys admin scripts and then Django and now I am finishing a complete web app in Python. Now I want to learn C++, but before that I need to find out what i can do with it. Just like I know Python is very useful because I have my own servers so I can write scripting and websites so Python is good for me. But I am confused in which areas C++ can help me. I don't want to end up like I have with Java where either I have big projects or nothing for day to day use."}
{"_id": "103767", "title": "Tips to succeed in a new job for my situation", "text": "Here is my situation:   * I am switching to a new company in a new city as an engineer [code, test, performance etc].   * I was not particularly successful in my previous role [at least not as per my immediate manager] and finally decided to quit on good terms.    * The new job is exciting [I haven't started it yet]. I am the first engineer for this new team and there is no existing code for what I would be working on, except an old prototype.    * I have to work closely with sister teams to bootstrap my product.    * I am due for a performance review within 5 months. I will have to take a few weeks vacation toward the end of it. I am a little anxious about this since I think 5 months isn't much time for me to bootstrap and show some early successes.   * I am working in a new space I am not familiar with though the stack is mostly Java, Apache, etc. which I am more comfortable than other stacks out there.  I am currently reading _First 90 Days_ though it is a bit more focused on leadership rather than engineers. I am an engineer and not manager though would like to move to leadership roles future in my career. Thanks for your input and I will add more details if someone requests."}
{"_id": "91237", "title": "how to start fixing bugs in open source softwares", "text": "I a student and have good knowledge in C programming and like to contribute any open source project which is developed in C. I searched sourceforge and selected 7-Zip because its widely used one and developed using C. I thought to start first by fixing bugs (which was suggested by many people in their websites) and gone through few bugs but couldn't understand how to respond to them and how to start fixing them.. I didn't understand anything. Could you please explain how to approach this.. I have even gone through some files in the source code which I downloaded but didn't understood anything. Please help me!"}
{"_id": "34189", "title": "How do you update copyright notices?", "text": "So now it's 2011, and as I carry on coding on our active projects it's time to update some copyright notices. eg. Copyright Widgets Ltd 2010 to Copyright Widgets Ltd 2010, 2011 My question is when do you update the copyright notices?   * Do you change the notice in the head of a file the first time you work on that file?    * Since a module is one piece of code consisting of many files that work together, do you update all notices in that module when you change a single file in that module?    * Since a program is one piece of code (maybe consisting of many modules), do you update all notices in that program when you change a single file in that program?    * Or do you just go through and change en-mass over your morning coffee on the grounds your about to start programming and updateing things?"}
{"_id": "186407", "title": "Why Bootstrap 3 changes camelCase to dashes - is it more readable?", "text": "I'm wondering what's the reasoning behind Bootstrap's decision to change all camel case names into hyphenated names in v3.0. I searched on Google, and looked in a few books, but I can only find opinions one way or the other - no hard data. Are there any studies that suggest camel case variable names are more readable than dashes, or is this just a matter of personal preference?"}
{"_id": "111976", "title": "Gap year in a computer science course", "text": "Due to circumstances outside of my control, I might have to take a gap year from my computer science course at university. The trouble is that due to other circumstances, for example, living in the middle of nowhere, and even entry-level programming jobs requiring a completed degree, there's a realistically zero prospect of getting a job in this period. What else can I do to significantly progress my career or education in this time frame?"}
{"_id": "115294", "title": "What is Business systems exposure?", "text": "I saw this job adverted for db admin and one of the things they are looking is for someone who can demostrate in business systems exposure. What does Business systems exposure mean? Have I selected the right tag? Thanks"}
{"_id": "143414", "title": "Java - multirow array", "text": "Here is my situation: a company has x number of employees and x number of machines. When someone is sick, the program have to give the best possible solution of people on the machines. But the employees can't work on every machine. I need a code for making little groups of possible solutions. this is a static example private int[][] arrayCompetenties={{0,0,1,0,1},{1,0,1,0,1},{1,1,0,0,1},{1,1,1,1,1},{0,0,0,0,1}}; => row is for the people and columns are for machines                   m1  m2  m3  m4  m5  m6  m7     p1  1               1            p2      1   1   1   1            p3          1       1       1     p4      1       1       1        p5  1       1       1       1     p6              1   1   1   1     p7  1       1   1   1   1   1      my question => with what code do i connect all the people to machine in groups (all the posibilities) like: p1 -> m1 , p2->m2 , p3 -> m3 , p4->m4 , p5 -> m5 , p6->m6 p1 -> m1 , p2->m3 , p3 -> m3 , p4->m4 , p5 -> m5 , p6->m6 p1 -> m1 , p2->m4 , p3 -> m5 , p4->m4 , p5 -> m5 , p6->m6 p1 -> m1 , p2->m5 , p3 -> m3 , p4->m4 , p5 -> m5 , p6->m6 p1 -> m1 , p2->m2 , p3 -> m3 , p4->m4 , p5 -> m5 , p6->m6 .... i need a loop buth how? =D thanks!"}
{"_id": "143413", "title": "Differences between symfony 2 and 1?", "text": "I'm starting symfony and interested in learning where symfony is coming from. In terms of it's architectural challenges. What are the architectural or philosophical differences between symfony 2 and 1? What changes make it so different from the other point version?"}
{"_id": "115291", "title": "How much does a progammer giving a free service make from donations?", "text": "I know this is long-shot question but if there's anyone making money from donations, would you share how much you're making from which service/website?"}
{"_id": "35272", "title": "Is there a way to dispute or challenge poor iPhone app reviews?", "text": "Problem: user has left review of iPhone app which is simply incorrect Question: is there a way to make contact with the reviewer and a) explain how what they've said is incorrect and help them with their issue or b) challenge the review?"}
{"_id": "180120", "title": "How does a binary delta update work?", "text": "Both Android and iOS seem to support their application having a binary delta update. But how does it work? I build a binary program, neither of the distribution sites have the source code - how does the update process know what is changed?"}
{"_id": "180121", "title": "Is there a formula for this?", "text": "TL/DR: Any way to work out if known numbers between a known start and ending figure should be positive or negative numbers? I am developing an application in PHP which can import and read PDFs. The PDFs are financial ones such as bank statements with records of transactions in and out of a bank account. I only have PDFs to work with, no other formats such as CSV unfortunately. I convert the PDF to HTML using pdftohtml and start parsing the data, the intended end result is an array of transactions. So far I have it working smoothly collecting dates, descriptions and balance. Converting the XML instead doesn't help. There are other pieces of transcriptional data such as debit or credit amounts. In the PDF, the credit amount is in one column and the debit amount is in another column so it is quite clear in the PDF. However, when converted to HTML, the formatting is lost and therefor I don't know if the amount was a credit or debit amount. So, my question is, given a starting balance and an ending balance and several known figures in between, is it possible for a programme to work out if those known figures in between are credit or debit amounts? I imagine there could potentially be several combinations of those known values to reach the ending balance so I'd like to apply a formula to return the correct credit/debit sequence only if its the only possible solution. If there are several ways of adding/subtracting the known values to reach the end balance, I can ask the user to look at it manually but I'd like to keep this to a minimum if possible. Possible to do, do you think? Thank you in advance for any help."}
{"_id": "66048", "title": "Should I use a root namespace?", "text": "I'm currently working on a couple projects in Flash ActionScript, and I've been building up a small library of classes. I've been using a naming convention similar to: `foo.events.Bar` and `foo.controls.Baz`, but I've noticed that many people have released their libraries in the `com` and `org` package/namespace (i.e. `com.foo.events.Bar` and `com.foo.controls.Baz`). I assume the meaning of `com` is `common` or `community`, and that `org` is `organization`. Is there a particular reason to adding an _additional_ namespace? Is this common for namespaced languages (Java, C#, AS3,...)?"}
{"_id": "180125", "title": "Maintenance wise, is `else while` without intervening braces considered safe?", "text": "Is `else while` without intervening braces considered \"safe\" maintenance wise? Writing `if-else` code without braces like below...               if (blah)         foo();     else         bar();      ...carries a risk because the lack of braces make it very easy to change the meaning of the code inadvertently. However, is below also risky?               if (blah)     {         ...     }     else while (!bloop())     {         bar();     }      Or is `else while` without intervening braces considered \"safe\"?"}
{"_id": "188718", "title": "How do I document a communication protocol on top of message queues and channels?", "text": "I'm working on a large project at the moment and I'm trying to document the communication protocol that sits on top of a message queue middleware. The documentation is intended for another organisation that is going to be implementing a new back end to the client. The messages format uses protocol buffers, so I'm less interested in describing the wire format. I'm interested in documenting the interactions between the service and client. A typical interaction might be something like:   1. Client subscribes to Channel1   2. Client pushes RequestForStream to Queue1   3. Service reads from Queue1 publishes StreamResponse (containing endpoint to subscribe to, Channel2) to Channel1 and if successful starts publishing notifications to Channel2   4. Client receives from Channel1 and subscribes to Channel2   5. More stuff... How can I best document scenarios like this? Does anyone know of any examples of documented interactions with Queues and channels? Edit: I am not writing a Message Queue. I am using a JMS-like middleware named Nirvana. I want to document the application built on top of the Message Queue system. Edit 2: In UML how would I model a Queue or Channel? Would I show them on a sequence diagram?"}
{"_id": "136309", "title": "Why don't software libraries solve all our problems?", "text": "Modular programming and reusable software routines have been around since the early 1960's, if not earlier. **They exist in every programming language.** Conceptually, a software library is a list of programs, each with its own interface (entry points, exit points, function signatures) and state (if applicable). Libraries can be high quality because modules are focused on solving narrow problems, have well-defined interfaces, and the cost can be amortized across all future software programs that will ever use them. Libraries are purely additive: adding new modules does not introduce bugs or limitations in existing modules. So why don't software libraries solve all our problems? Why can't we write software as merely a composition of high-quality software modules? Can we fix these problems with software libraries and unleash the full potential of this incredibly powerful mechanism for writing high-quality programs faster? Or are these problems intrinsic to libraries and can never be solved? _Note: Several comments said that I have too many questions. Please treat the above questions as the real questions and everything that follows as points for discussion._ It is true that software libraries are widely used. Some programming languages such as C, Java and Python have enormous software libraries. But there are numerous problems.   1. Some well-known languages have less than ideal library support (e.g. C++, Lisp). To some extent this is mitigated by piggybacking on a virtual machine platform (e.g. JVM, CLR). A corollary question, should all future software be written for a virtual machine platform to increase library support? This is problematic for scripts that don't want to incur the cost of launching a virtual machine every time.   2. There is a lot of \"reinventing the wheel\". Have you ever written a linked-list module in C? Yes, of course you have. I don't enjoy writing linked lists in C, but what is the alternative?   3. Can a given library (e.g. libfoo-0.1.2) be trusted as as a basis to write your important software? Is the library tested, documented, and does it implement the features you need? How can you tell?   4. Learning a library's API can be as time consuming as learning a whole new programming language.   5. If a bug is discovered in a library, what is the proper procedure for fixing the bug in your software? How should the bugfix be distributed to all library users?   6. How should libraries be built and distributed? (For example, autotools obviously got it wrong.) Semantic Versioning is good, but how can this be verified and enforced?   7. How should library dependencies be handled? Can we download and install automatically? Will the versions and licenses be compatible?   8. Is the license for a given library compatible with your software? How can you tell?   9. What should you do if the library is abandoned before starting your software? What about after starting your software?"}
{"_id": "23240", "title": "Nested CSS styles ~ Where have I seen this concept before?", "text": "I can't find this now but I've read it before on various blogs discussing the topic. I'll give an example and hopefully it's clear (albeit it may not clarify anything at all). Given this piece of markup (arbitrary on purpose):               <div class=\"myWrapper\">       <a href=\"somepage.url\" class=\"img\">         <img url=\"someimage.url\">       </a>     </div>     <div class=\"yourWrapper\">       <a href=\"somepage.url\" class=\"img\">         <img url=\"someimage.url\">       </a>     </div>      While the CSS could read like this:               .myWrapper .img img {border: thin black solid;}     .myWrapper .img {margin:10px;}     .yourWrapper .img img {border: thick red dashed;}     .yourWrapper .img {margin:20px;}      It could also be written like this:               .myWrapper {       .img {          margin:10px;         img {             border: thin black solid;         }       }     }     .yourWrapper {       .img {          margin:10px;         img {             border: thick red dashed;         }       }     }      But I can't remember seeing where that was discussed or if it's something in the works. Anybody know what the hell I'm talking about? And I don't think this is an SO question or I would've put it on SO."}
{"_id": "132683", "title": "Build Process for Web Application", "text": "I have a web application with lots of Javascipt and CSS code. I want to minify the CSS and JS code using something like UglifyJS. However, I don't want to program with the minified code and I want my team to checkout only the non-minified code. What's the most common way of doing this? I guess you would push both the minified and non-minified code and have the code reference only minified files. Do most people create a file call BUILD that runs all JS/CSS files through the minifier? Programmers would then have to run the BUILD script before pushing right?"}
{"_id": "154004", "title": "Why did Golang discontinue the \"netchan\" package?", "text": "The Golang \"netchan\" package seems to have been discontinued. That makes me think that the concept of \"networked channels\" were not a good practice after all. (Why wouldn't them just \"let it be\" otherwise?) Is this the case? And if it is, why is that?"}
{"_id": "109253", "title": "People's experience of Cloud Computing (using Force.com)", "text": "I would like to know about people's experience of working with APEX and the SalesForce.com platform, was it easy to work with? How similar to Java and C# is it? What did you like? What don't you like? Would you recommend it? Do you think cloud computing has a long term successful future? My reason for asking is that I am currently looking at a new position which involves working with APEX on the SalesForce.com platform. The position interests me but I just want to try and understand what I might be signing up for with regards the languages/platform as it is completely different from what I have worked with before. I have seen lots of videos/blog posts online (mainly from the recent Dreamforce event) and they obviously are very positive but I was just after some experiences from developers, both positive and negative. I find cloud computing a very interesting idea, but I am very new to the subject. The position I am looking at offers a fantastic opportunity but I was just after some opinions on APEX and the platform as I have no real world experience just what I have seen from the online videos. I guess ultimately what I am asking is:   * Are APEX and the SalesForce.com platform good to get involved in? **Is development on the Force.com just a \"career dead end\"?**   * Is cloud computing just a fad? Or does it have a long term future? Apologies in advance if this is the wrong place to ask such a question. Thanks"}
{"_id": "87920", "title": "Is Tracking Software Usage Illegal?", "text": "Let's say if I am doing desktop application, and I am interested to know whether our software really gets used or not. Is it alright to insert in code that tracks whether our software is used, for how long and so on? Note that no person-identifiable information will be collected, all I am interested to know is how frequent and for how long the software is used. The information will be sent to our server for diagnosis. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "194695", "title": "Online courses focussed on learning LISP for beginners?", "text": "I'm looking for an online course that I can use to learn programming using Lisp (especially Scheme), from scratch. I didn't find anything similar on Coursera/Udacity - the only resource I found was on MIT Openware, but I'm not sure if its something that is tailored for an online audience, and also the fact that the lectures are based on the first edition which is not the one I have... I'm not looking for explicit video lectures - a set of good lecture notes, with exercises/assignments and if possible, an exam at the end would be great to get me started!"}
{"_id": "177464", "title": "Can someone provide a short code example of compiler bootstrapping?", "text": "This Turing award lecture by Ken Thompson on topic \"Reflections on Trusting Trust\" gives good insight about how C compiler was made in C itself. Though I understand the crux, it still hasn't sunk in. So ultimately, once the compiler is written to do lexical analysis, parse trees, syntax analysis, byte code generation etc, a separate machine code is again written to do all that on compiler? Can anyone please explain with a small example of the procedure? Bootstrapping on wiki gives good insights, but only a rough view on it. PS: I am aware of the duplicates on the site, but found them to be an overview which I am already aware"}
{"_id": "130686", "title": "Is there a design pattern that would apply to discount models?", "text": "Are there any known design patterns for implementing discount models? By discount models, I mean the following:   1. If a customer buys Product X, Product Y and Product Z he gets a discount of 10% or $100.    2. If a customer buys 100 units of Product X, he gets a discount of 15% or $500   3. If a customer has brought in the last year more than $100K, he gets a flat 20% discount   4. If a customer has purchased 2 units of Product X, he gets 1 unit of Product X (or Product Y) free.    5. ... Is there a generic pattern that can be applied to handle all of the above scenarios? I am thinking of a few models, but unable to come across a generic one."}
{"_id": "72515", "title": "Examples of permission-based authorization systems in .Net?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out how to do roles/permissions in our application, and I am wondering if anyone knows of a good place to get a list of different permission-based authorization systems (preferably with code samples) and perhaps a list of pros/cons for each method. I've seen examples using simple dictionaries, custom attributes, claims-based authorization, and custom frameworks, but I can't find a simple explanation of when to use one over another and what the pros/cons are to using each method. (I'm sure there's other ways than the ones I've listed....) I have never done anything complex with permissions/authorization before, so all of this seems a little overwhelming to me and I'm having trouble figuring out what what is useful information that I can use and what isn't. What I DO know is that this is for a Windows environment using C#/WPF and WCF services. Some permission checks are done on the WCF service and some on the client. Some are business rules, some are authorization checks, and others are UI-related (such as what forms a user can see). They can be very generic like boolean or numeric values, or they can be more complex such as a range of values or a list of database items to be checked/unchecked. Permissions can be set on the group-level, user-level, branch-level, or a custom level, so I do not want to use role-based authorization. Users can be in multiple groups, and users with the appropriate authorization are in charge of creating/maintaining these groups. It is not uncommon for new groups to be created, so they can't be hard-coded."}
{"_id": "140295", "title": "Moving away from .Net to Ruby and coping without intellisense", "text": "I am in the process of trying to learn Ruby, however after spending nearly 10 years in the MS stack I am struggling to get by without intellisense. I've given RubyMine a try which does help however ideally I would like to go free which would mean no RubyMine. How have other people learnt to cope with remembering everything instead of relying on Ctrl-Space? Any advice is appreciated at the moment as I am feeling very stupid (no jokes about MS devs please ;))"}
{"_id": "140296", "title": "Interview questions for programming tutor?", "text": "My family is looking for a programming/computer science tutor. Personally, I want to learn Java or some other brand of web programming. I am best described as a PC \"power user.\" I have never programmed in the past and would like a good jump start. I am a very quick learner and do not expect the tutor to have to teach me the ultra basic stuff that I can learn myself. My son also needs a programming tutor. He just got into Carnegie Mellon as a computer science major. Having done only robotics and mathematics in the past he is very nervous that he does not have the same level of knowledge as his future classmates. I need some help coming up with a list of questions to ask potential tutors and some criteria to judge them by. Thanks! Edit: So far I have come up with just the obvious... >   1. Where did you receive your education? >   2. What languages are you familiar with? >   3. How long have you been tutoring? >   4. What made you decide to become a tutor? >   5. What software projects have you worked on? >   6. What work references can you give me? >   7. How much do you charge? >"}
{"_id": "131084", "title": "Designing web-based plugin systems correctly so they don't waste as many resources?", "text": "Many CMS systems which rely on third parties for much of their code often build \"plugin\" or \"hooks\" systems to make it easy for developers to modify the codebase's actions without editing the core files. This usually means an **Observer** or **Event** design pattern. However, when you look at systems like wordpress you see that on every page they load some kind of _bootstrap_ file from each of the plugin's folders to see if that plugin will need to run that request. Its this poor design that causes systems like wordpress to spend many extra MB's of memory loading and parsing unneeded items each page. **Are there alternative ways to do this? I'm looking for ideas in building my own.** For example, Is there a way to load all this once and then cache the results so that your system knows how to lazy-load plugins? In other words, the system loads a configuration file that specifies all the events that plugin wishes to tie into and then saves it for future requests? If that also performs poorly, then perhaps there is a special file-structure that could be used to make educated guesses about when certain plugins are unneeded to fullfil the request. Any ideas? If anyone wants an example of the \"plugin\" concept you can find one here."}
{"_id": "131086", "title": "SVN: Working with branches using the same working copy", "text": "We've just moved to SVN from CVS. We have a small team and everyone checks in code on the trunk and we have never ever used branches for development. We each have directories on a remote dev server with the codebase checked out. Each developer works on their own sandbox with an associated URL to pull up the app in a browser (something like the setup here: Trade-offs of local vs remote development workflows for a web development team). I've decided that for my current project, I'll use a branch because it would span multiple releases. I've already cut a branch out, but I am using the same directory as the one originally checked out (i.e. for the trunk). Since it's the same directory (or working copy) for both the branch and the trunk, if for e.g. a bug pops up in the app I switch to the trunk and commit the change there, and then switch back to my branch for my project development. My questions are:   * Is this a sane way to work with branches?    * Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of?    * What would be the optimal way to work with branches if separate working copies are out of the question?  I haven't had issues yet as I have just started doing this way but all the tutorials/books/blog posts I have seen about branching with SVN imply working with different working copies (or perhaps I haven't come across an explanation of mixed working copies in plain English). I just don't want to be sorry three months down the road when its time to integrate the branch back to the trunk."}
{"_id": "253241", "title": "Poltergeist and factories", "text": "I've just come across the Poltergeist anti-pattern \\- and maybe it's because the morning coffee hasn't kicked in yet, but I read the description: > a poltergeist (or gypsy wagon) is a short-lived, typically stateless object > used to perform initialization or to invoke methods in another, more > permanent class. and thought that this sounds a lot like some implementations of Factory that I've seen (and written myself) - particularly in web development where a Factory might only be used once per request. Unfortunately, the wiki article is fairly superficial. Could someone explain a bit more about how a Factory should be implemented, and also why a Poltergeist is an anti-pattern."}
{"_id": "92762", "title": "How to completely decouple Model from View/Controller in Java Swing", "text": "Is there a collection of commonly-agreed-upon design guidelines for separating the Model classes from the View/Controller classes in a Java Swing app? I'm not so concerned that the View/Controller know nothing about the Model as the other way around: I'd like to design my Model to have no knowledge of anything in javax.swing. Ideally it should have a simple API enabling it to be driven by something as primitive as a CLI. It should be, loosely speaking, an \"engine.\" Communicating GUI events to the model isn't too hard -- the Action Performers can call the model's API. But what about when the model makes its own state changes that need to be reflected back to the GUI? That's what \"listening\" is for, but even \"being listened to\" is not entirely passive; it requires that the model know about adding a listener. The particular problem that got me thinking involves a queue of Files. On the GUI side there's a `DefaultListModel` behind a `JList`, and there's some GUI stuff to choose files from the file system and add them to the JList. On the Model side, it wants to pull the files off the bottom of this \"queue\" (causing them to disappear from the JList) and process them in some way. In fact, the Model code is already written -- it currently maintains an `ArrayList<File>` and exposes a public `add(File)` method. But I'm at a loss as to how to get my Model working with the View/Controller without some heavy, Swing-specific modifications to the Model. I'm very new to both Java and GUI programming, having always done \"batch\" and \"back-end\" programming up to now -- hence my interest in maintaining a strict division between model and UI, if it's possible and if it can be taught."}
{"_id": "230999", "title": "Constants vs public properties for configuration", "text": "My application has a few high level configuration options such as directories which will be used for various things, database connection information and a few other settings which are required for the application to run. I'm debating with myself whether or not constants are better than variables for this purpose and would like some input. By having:                $config = new Config;      new Whatever($config->foo, $config->bar);      Instead of:               new Whatever(Config::FOO, Config::BAR);      I get the power of polymorphism, I can quickly swap between configuration settings by instantiating $config as a different class with the same class members. There's obviously a trade-off here. Anything which needs the config options must instantiate a $config object, using memory and creating extra code as well as making it so the config options are no long immutable. The immutability problem could by solved with a method e.g. $config->get('Foo'); so that is potentially a non-issue, although it does add to verbosity and a method call is more expensive than reading a constant or variable."}
{"_id": "230998", "title": "Is this proper OO design for C++?", "text": "I recently took a software processes course and this is my first time attempting OO design on my own. I am trying to follow OO design principles and C++ conventions. I attempted and gave up on MVC for this application, but I am trying to \"decouple\" my classes such that they can be easily unit-tested and so that I can easily change the GUI library used and/or the target OS. At this time, I have finished designing classes but have not yet started implementing methods. The function of the software is to log all packets sent and received, and display them on the screen (like WireShark, but for one local process only). The software accomplishes this by hooking the send() and recv() functions in winsock32.dll, or some other pair of analogous functions depending on what the intended Target is. The hooks add packets to SendPacketList/RecvPacketList. The GuiLogic class starts a thread which checks for new packets. When new packets are found, it utilizes the PacketFilter class to determine the formatting for the new packet, and then sends it to MainWindow, a native win32 window (with intent to later port to Qt).1 ![UML Class Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dtPwP.png) Full size image of UML class diagram Here are my classes in skeleton/header form (this is my actual code):               class PacketModel     {     protected:         std::vector<byte> data;         int id;     public:         PacketModel();         PacketModel(byte* data, unsigned int size);         PacketModel(int id, byte* data, unsigned int size);         int GetLen();         bool IsValid(); //len >= sizeof(opcode_t)         opcode_t GetOpcode();         byte* GetData(); //returns &(data[0])         bool GetData(byte* outdata, int maxlen);         void SetData(byte* pdata, int len);         int GetId();         void SetId(int id);         bool ParseData(char* instr);         bool StringRepr(char* outstr);         byte& operator[] (const int index);     };          class SendPacket : public PacketModel     {     protected:         byte* returnAddy;     public:         byte* GetReturnAddy();         void SetReturnAddy(byte* addy);     };          class RecvPacket : public PacketModel     {     protected:         byte* callAddy;     public:         byte* GetCallAddy();         void SetCallAddy(byte* addy);     };          //problem: packets may be added to list at any time by any number of threads     //solution: critical section associated with each packet list     class Synch     {     public:         void Enter();         void Leave();     };          template<class PacketType> class PacketList     {     private:         static const int MAX_STORED_PACKETS = 1000;     public:         static const int DEFAULT_SHOWN_PACKETS = 100;     private:         vector<PacketType> list;         Synch synch; //wrapper for critical section     public:         void AddPacket(PacketType* packet);         PacketType* GetPacket(int id);         int TotalPackets();     };          class SendPacketList : PacketList<SendPacket>     {          };          class RecvPacketList : PacketList<RecvPacket>     {          };          class Target //one socket     {         bool Send(SendPacket* packet);         bool Inject(RecvPacket* packet);         bool InitSendHook(SendPacketList* sendList);         bool InitRecvHook(RecvPacketList* recvList);     };          class FilterModel     {     private:         opcode_t opcode;         int colorID;         bool bFilter;         char name[41];     };          class FilterFile     {     private:         FilterModel filter;     public:         void Save();         void Load();         FilterModel* GetFilter(opcode_t opcode);     };          class PacketFilter     {     private:         FilterFile filters;     public:         bool IsFiltered(opcode_t opcode);         bool GetName(opcode_t opcode, char* namestr); //return false if name does not exist         COLORREF GetColor(opcode_t opcode); //return default color if no custom color     };          class GuiLogic     {     private:         SendPacketList sendList;         RecvPacketList recvList;         PacketFilter packetFilter;         void GetPacketRepr(PacketModel* packet);         void ReadNew();         void AddToWindow();     public:         void Refresh(); //called from thread         void GetPacketInfo(int id); //called from MainWindow     };      I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything considerably wrong. From what I've read, design review is on-topic for this site (and off-topic for the Code Review site). Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this."}
{"_id": "32727", "title": "What are invariants, how can they be used, and have you ever used it in your program?", "text": "I'm reading _Coders at Work_ , and in it there's a lot of talk about invariants. As far as I've understood it, an invariant is a condition which holds both before and after an expression. They're, among other things, useful in proving that loop is correct, if I remember my Logic course correctly. Is my description correct, or have I missed something? Have you ever used them in your program? And if so, how did they benefit?"}
{"_id": "101188", "title": "On-site interview without phone interviews - meaning?", "text": "I recently applied to work at a tech company which - to the best of my knowledge - usually does two rounds of phone screening before bringing applicants in for the on-campus interview. They contacted me and want to bring me up without doing a phone interview. I know this isn't much to go on, but should I take this at face-value or should I read something into this? Call me an optimist, but it seems like a positive thing. Maybe somebody on the inside recommended me without my knowing? Or They found something on my resume/online they liked the look of? Or maybe there's some sort of interview quota they had to fill? Any insights from hiring managers/HR people would be greatly appreciated. If this is a common thing that means something specific, knowing what it is might be to my advantage. Thanks! EDIT: Since a few people seem to indicate that it might depend on the company in question, let's say that it's a large national company (not Google or Microsoft, though), and that I don't live anywhere near the headquarters (it's about as far away as two places can be in the continental US)."}
{"_id": "101187", "title": "Are there problems with using Reflection?", "text": "I don't know why, but I always feel like I am \"cheating\" when I use reflection - maybe it is because of the performance hit I know I am taking. Part of me says, if it is part of the language you are using and it can accomplish what you are trying to do, then why not use it. The other part of me says, there has to be a way I can do this without using reflection. I guess maybe it depends on the situation. What are the potential issues I need to look out for when using reflection and how concerned should I be about them? How much effort is it worth spending to try to find a more conventional solution?"}
{"_id": "230992", "title": "How can I capture an incoming email with ASP.net-mvc?", "text": "I would like to write a web system that can capture and parse incoming emails, traditionally the web system I write are asp.net-mvc, running in a cloud hosted environment like AppHarbour or Azure. How can I leverage those (and potentially my DNS) to acheive this?"}
{"_id": "101182", "title": "Learning PHP with a Rails/Django/Lift background", "text": "While I have been at university studying a CS degree I have been picking up web development on the side. As I started in the last couple of years, I have mainly been using Rack/Ruby based frameworks such as Rails and Sinatra but I have also looked at - and occasionally used - Web.py, Django and Lift. I realised that I have never used or seen PHP used for web development. This might seem strange but, as a young twenty something, learning PHP doesn't seem like the most fun/hip route to take. Given this background (which I am sure is relevant to many people my age). What is the best way to approach learning PHP web development? What are the key differences/similarities? Also, what frameworks are widely used and/or respected?"}
{"_id": "189445", "title": "Why does Resharper prefer \"as\" to \"is\"?", "text": "When I write code like this, where obj is a local variable:               if (obj is IMyInterface)     {        var result = (IMyInterface)obj;        // ....     }      Resharper offers to change it into code like this:               var result = obj as IMyInterface;     if (result != null)     {        // ...     }      I prefer the former, as it offers no opportunity for accidental null reference exceptions. What reasons are there for preferring the other form? Why does Resharper recommend this?"}
{"_id": "182411", "title": "What are the pros and cons of Inter process communication done via sockets vs shared memory?", "text": "I understand that two of the many more options for inter process communication can be :   1. Shared memory   2. Sockets  Actually I saw these two options being exposed by Intellij Idea for debugging a Java application . I want to know what are the pros and cons of each approach ."}
{"_id": "189440", "title": "How to avoid repetitively logging in to web site?", "text": "While developing web sites it can be annoying that I have to login to the site. Every time the session runs out I have to go through a flow like...   Open logon page -> enter username/password -> click link to navigate to my page. I sometimes use Selenium to record this flow, and then automate it. But Selenium doesn't work in all browsers, and it still takes too long to load etc.   I would like to be able to just refresh the page, exactly like I would if the site didn't have a login page. Does anyone use any strategies to achieve this? Any way to disable login during development? Or other tools which can help improve the situation?"}
{"_id": "182418", "title": "Aggregate Root and Lots of Data Efficiency", "text": "It's more of a scenario, but it isn't far fetched at all. Let's say I have an Aggregate Root (AR) Warehouse which it's used to manage product stock. The Product itself is an AR in a different bounded context (BC) but in this BC is represented only by an id. In the Warehouse I can add a new product (must be unique), Ican remove it and i can update stock. Of course, I can communicate the stock for a product and maybe even keep the in/out flow for a product. THe problem is you can easily reach hundreds or thousands of products. So, for any wareohuse action you'll have to load everything even if that action won't use all that info. It's highly inefficient. A solution I could think of is to pretty much 'break' the warehouse AR in specialiazed objects for different actions. But this means we no longer have an AR and we're back to a CRUD like solution. Even more so, the AR was split not becasue the Domain need it, but because the technical details need it. It looks like you can do DDD until a certain point, after that you go CRUD or buy a MUCH BIGGER and expensive server. What do you think? Can we have both DDD and efficiency when lots of data is involved?"}
{"_id": "50118", "title": "Avoid GPL violation by moving library out of process", "text": "Assume there is a library that is licensed under GPL. I want to use it is closed source project. I do following:   1. Create small wrapper application around that GPL library that listens to socket, parse messages and call GPL library. Then returns results back.   2. Release it's sources (to comply with GPL)   3. Create client for this wrapper in my main application and don't release sources. I know that this adds huge overhead compared to static/dynamic linking, but I am interested in theoretical way."}
{"_id": "235862", "title": "Rails engine testing - use dummy app or real parent app?", "text": "I'm using Rails engines to break up a big app into smaller pieces. The parent app mostly handles users and authentication. In one of my engine tests I want to log in a user before each test. How should I access this user log in functionality, which exists in the parent app, from the engine? It seems there are two options: 1) Build user authentication into the dummy app. When you run `rails plugin new app_name --mountable` a \"dummy app\" - just a plain Rails app - is created in your test folder. During tests the engine is mounted on to this dummy app. For feature (integration, acceptance, what-have-you) tests, I thought it would be good to use real objects whenever possible. So I was planning on using a factory to create a real user and then log in that user. To do this with the dummy app, I would need to build that user functionality in. This seems like a pain because if the real parent app changes, I need to change this dummy app as well. 2) Put all my tests in the parent app. This will work fine, I think, but it seems fishy. I feel like I should put my engine tests in the engine."}
{"_id": "43835", "title": "Recommended Reading for Polishing JavaScript coding style?", "text": "I've been coding in JavaScript for a while now and am fairly familiar with some of the more advanced coding features of the language (closures, self- executing functions, etc). So my question is, what advanced books/blogs/or anything else would be recommended to help tighten up my coding style? For example, recently I was coding something similar to:               var x = ['a', 'b', 'c'];     var exists = false;     for(var i = 0; i < x.length; i++){         exists = x[i] === 'b' ? true : exists;     }      But found that the following condensed code would work better:               var y = {'a':'', 'b':'', 'c':''};     var exists = 'b' in y;      Both store the same value in 'exists', but the second is less common, but much cleaner. Any suggestions for where I should go to learn more tricks like this? Edit: I recently found this blog with a lot of good detail on the intricacies of JavaScript: http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/"}
{"_id": "43838", "title": "Do you own your tools?", "text": "A colleague of mine wrote a post a while ago asking Do you own your tools. It raises an important question. Do you? I answered way down in the comments. As an independent, I do own my tools. Even when I wasn't independent, I had my own (fully licensed) tools that I used for personal development. I don't think buying your own tools are something to puff your chest up about (just because you can buy a $100 pair of basketball sneakers they won't make you as good as Michael Jordan), but it IS an investment in yourself that shouldn't be taken lightly. What do you think good people?"}
{"_id": "140872", "title": "Why hill climbing is called anytime algorithm?", "text": "From wikipedia, Anytime algorithm > In computer science an anytime algorithm is an algorithm that can return a > valid solution to a problem even if it's interrupted at any time before it > ends. **The algorithm is expected to find better and better solutions the > more time it keeps running.** Hill climbing > Hill climbing can often produce a better result than other algorithms when > the amount of time available to perform a search is limited, such as with > real-time systems. It is an **anytime algorithm** : it can return a valid > solution even if it's interrupted at any time before it ends. Hill climbing algorithm can stuck into local optima or ridge, after that even if it runs infinite time, the result won't be any better. Then, why hill climbing is called anytime algorithm?"}
{"_id": "121568", "title": "PHP rand function (or not so rand)", "text": "I was testing PHP rand function to write on a image. Of course the output shows that it's not so random. The code I used:               <?php      header('Content-Type: image/png');     $lenght = 512;     $im = imagecreatetruecolor($lenght, $lenght);     $blue = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 255, 255);     for ($y = 0; $y < $lenght; $y++) {         for ($x = 0; $x < $lenght; $x++) {             if (rand(0,1) == 0) {                 imagesetpixel($im, $x, $y, $blue);             }         }     }            imagepng($im);     imagedestroy($im);     ?>      My question is, if I use image width/lenght (variable $lenght in this example) number like 512, 256 or 1024, it is very clear that it's not so random. When I change the variable to 513 for an example, it is so much harder for human eye to detect it. Why is that? What is so special about these numbers? 512: ![512 pixels](http://i.stack.imgur.com/T0qjD.png) 513: ![513 pixels](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vDzXS.png) **Edit: I'm running xampp on Windows to test it.**"}
{"_id": "140874", "title": "How to store a list of Objects that might change in future?", "text": "I have set of Objects of the same class which have different values of their attributes. and I need to find the best match from a function under given scenarios out of these objects. In future these objects might increase as well. Quite similar to the way we have Color class in awt. we have some static color objects in the class with diff rgb values. But in my case say, I need to chose the suitable color out of these static ones based on certain criteria. So should I keep them in an arrayList or enum or keep them as static vars as in case of Colors. because I will need to parse through all of them and decide upon the best match. so I need them in some sort of collection. But in future if I need to add another type I will have to modify the class and add another list.add(object) call for this one and then it will violate the open-close principle. How should I go about it ? **EDIT:** To be more precise I have a roughly 7-8 branches of restaurants which wont increase that much..may be by 3-4 in few years and I need a function that will return the nearest Restaurant satisfying few other criteria. and For that I need to parse through all of them to decide which one suits the customer the most."}
{"_id": "70822", "title": "How to use Open Source Licenses and what do you recommend to me", "text": "I have a code that I'd like to share, but I'd like to publish it using an open source license. But I don't know how you have to use that licenses. How do you have to activate an open source license? Just including the text of the license in all files? What else do I have to do? Do I need to buy some right? Include a readme.txt in all the directories? I mean, what do I have to do if I want my code is protected by the legal test of a license? The second question is what it is the better license for this conditions:   * I don't care what people do with my code, educational purposes, to make money, I don't mind whatever they want to do with it.   * But I want people don't delete my name from the code, and If they use my code force them to mention me. If they change my code and someone ask for those modifications, they give the code with the modifications.   * But I don't want to force people to publish the code of they applications, even if they are using my code. What is the best license to that purposes?"}
{"_id": "194979", "title": "FOSS licensing decision: What to read? What factors to consider?", "text": "Which reasoning would you follow to choose one license over another? Which literature would you expect someone to read, if he wants to make a meaningful decision about licensing? I specifically don't go too much into detail about my current project, because I am looking to learn how to make this decision correctly without getting a degree in law first."}
{"_id": "88707", "title": "Questions about software licensing", "text": "I've been having a discussion about licensing and open source software. Basically - the other guy is saying that licensing is easy, if you're going to build a product you can use an (any) open source project and make money by selling that code. My issue is that say I create a website or app with a project that uses a GPL license the restrictions aren't so straight forward - correct me if i'm wrong on each of these scenarios: 1 - i create an iPhone app using GPL code and put that app into the appstore - the code must be freely available to people buying that app. 2 - i create a website that my client hosts - they must have access to the code. 3 - i create a website as SaaS that my client \"leases\" but does not own - though it is hosted on their infrastructure - they must have access to that code Am i right on each of those assumptions? Are there any other issues i should be aware of under any other licensing terms for other licenses?"}
{"_id": "85380", "title": "How can I control Visual Studio's window creation behavior?", "text": "I have recently installed Visual Studio 2010. By default it has a nice layout, and when I open files, the tabbed windows for those files appear where I like them to appear: source code on the upper half of the screen, compiler output, test status, trace windows on the bottom half. But, after a period of using it, I fat finger something, and then the window positioning logic goes haywire. One of the tabs gets undocked, and then after I redock it, nothing else operates like it used to operate. So maddening! It opens source code on the bottom, it opens other windows in unpredictable places. I undock and redock the windows where I want them, and the next time I open them, they go to the wrong place again. WTF? Even the \"start page\" gets moved. This is what it looks like when I start up: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8sKDn.png) I know I can do the `devenv /resetsettings` thing to restore to the original, and I have done this (Several times), but really I would like to know:   1. How is this happening? What am I doing to cause this behavior? How can I avoid it?    2. Can I undo it - get it to behave sanely again - without stopping visual studio, and restarting with the /resetsettings switch? What are the magic mouse clicks to make it revert? I know it's challenging to describe UI gestures, but if you have hints, I'd love to hear them. Does anyone else have this problem?"}
{"_id": "75895", "title": "Flowcharting and Method Calls", "text": "I am doing out some flow charts and am wondering if I am approaching this correctly. In essence, I have several method calls and I am flowcharting each separately. However, several of these methods make a method call for some info and then continue. See this example: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bmqBD.png) I have 3 other methods that also call GetQueue() and I am wondering if I am representing this correctly. The AddQueue() flow visually looks like it is broken. NOTE: Changes made in my flowchart: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pWa9Q.png)"}
{"_id": "200291", "title": "How much programming should I know before looking for first job/internship in tech company?", "text": "Im in college and just started to learn programming. How much should I atleast know before I start to look for jobs/internship so that they wont laught me out of office. I just started to learn programming and CS and literally don't know anything about it before college."}
{"_id": "200297", "title": "Should you reward based on overall project completeness or velocity?", "text": "The development team I'm in has been working on a VERY large project for months now and we recently started to implement a kanban board with agile practices into our process. We have seen MASSIVE improvement in our throughput! Its so exciting! But we have one struggle right now. We have a total ticket count for the project and our supervisor has given us incentive(candy and popcorn boxes) for when we get down to 100 and 50 tickets. It at first felt like a great idea but it feels like new tickets are created just as fast as we can resolve them, and its making the team feel worse about our progress. So heres my question: Should you reward based on overall project completeness or velocity? And if completeness how do you make that feel more reachable?"}
{"_id": "203924", "title": "HTML + CSS or HTML5 + CSS3 or HTML5 + jQuery", "text": "I want to be a good UI Developer. I'm confused whether I should learn ( **I need some serious suggestions** ): 1) **HTML + CSS + JavaScript or HTML5 + CSS3 + JavaScript or HTML5 + CSS3 + jQuery** 2) Is it required to learn CSS first before learning CSS3 ??? 3) If the above technologies needs to be prioritize then what would be the order?"}
{"_id": "184717", "title": "Randomly select from list with increased odds", "text": "I have a list of entities. Every entity contains a number that holds how many times the entity has been selected. I need to make a function that selects `n` (say 25%) of the entities, randomly. What I want to do is increase the odds for entities that have been selected the least times. Suppose after 5 runs the times the entities have been selected can be anywhere from 0 to 5. But I don't want to have such a spread. I want the times the entities are selected more or less to be equal. How can I write a function that increases the odds for entities that haven't been selected as often as others? One way I could think of is to make a list that has more occurrences of lesser selected entities, increasing the chance the randomizer selects that entity. Any hints, tips, ideas? **EDIT:** Wow. Closed as not being a real question and reopened again. For not being a real question it did get a lot of answers and comments. Thanks for that. I got exactly what i wanted from them. I got some nice ideas to work out and to test."}
{"_id": "130952", "title": "What's the best way to learn nature-inspired algorithms?", "text": "I completed the Machine Learning course (Stanford) and got very interested, also after some research, I decided that I'd like to learn nature-inspired algorithms. I've found some resources like:   * Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes (Book)   * Wyss institute (Website)   * Programming Game AI by Example (Book) The first reference look good and complete with pseudocode (giving me the possibility to implement everything in Ruby, my prefered language), and also gives ruby implementations for every code. But it lacks of exercises to practice, which I think is a key feature. The second is something that inspired me a lot to start studying this area, but they don't have any course or material to study. The third one looks good too, but has only a little amount of exercises, and might be too focused (I do like games, but I also want to study everything else related to nature-inspired algorithms). Also it is focused on C++ (not that it is a hard language, but I don't like its limitation compared to ruby), and I'd prefere something in Ruby or pseudocode (although it is not my main priority). Does anyone know something that also have exercises to complement the theory? Is there anything better to learn, with a particular focus on exercises? (Maybe courses or video lectures)."}
{"_id": "205514", "title": "Is it necessary to follow the standard , take the C standard for that matter?", "text": "May be this question is a duplicate and I am a dumb to ask it here, but I searched a bit and none of the titles suggested to answer my question exactly . There are some very experienced folks on SO who always talk about the C standard. People seem to not like non-portable solutions, even if they work for me. Ok, I understand that the standard needs to be followed , but doesn't it put shackles on programmer's creativity? What are the concrete benefits that come from following a standard? Especially since compilers may implement the standard slightly differently."}
{"_id": "200741", "title": "Tic tac toe class diagram", "text": "I'm in a software engineering class and I want to practice some skills on the most basic case possible : tic tac toe. I know this is overkill but I want to do it in \"proper\" OOP. I designed a class diagram for it but there is one point where I don't clearly see what would be the best design decision. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/US5Er.jpg) (\"Joueur\" means \"Player\", \"PlancheDeJeu\" means \"Game board\") Given this diagram, according to the `Expert`, `Low coupling` and `Strong cohesion` design patterns (sorry if those are not the correct english terms, I am translating) the score should be kept by the user class (Joueur). However, since there is no direct relation between Joueur and Syst\u00e8me I don't exactly know how the game could display the score in a clean way. In this diagram, Syst\u00e8me would have to ask the PlancheDeJeu object about the score and it would itself have to get it from Joueur. This seems wrong. I am trying to think of how to design an intermediary object that would link Joueur and Syst\u00e8me but I can't come up with a good idea. What would be the best way to go here ? Thanks !"}
{"_id": "200740", "title": "Use case decomposition for class registration system", "text": "I am currently working on refactoring a summer camp registration system to include some new features and will also be using it as the basis for a new after-school class registration system. For this new version of the system, I want to start out by writing use case descriptions for the registration process (and ultimately I plan to document all the use cases). I understand that the purpose of a use case is to accomplish a user's goal, but I'm still not sure how the registration process should be divided into use cases. Here are the options I've been thinking about:   1. One big \"Register Student(s) For Classes\" use case   2. Divide it into separate use cases: \"Enter Student Information\", \"Select Classes\", \"Pay for Registrations\"   3. Have separate use cases but also have a \"Register Student(s) For Classes\" use case which \"includes\" the more granular use cases Another factor to consider is timing: parents may want to enter their students' basic information (name, age, etc.) prior to the time when registration begins, but of course some parents will complete the whole registration process in one sitting. Also, payment won't always immediately follow class selection; in some cases parents will be allowed to complete their payment later (within a 48 hour window). I read some articles about use cases on Alistair Cockburn's website but I'm still confused as to what the guidelines are for dividing up use cases in a case like this. My inclination is to go with option 3 since the system will have a wizard interface that could potentially guide the user through the registration from start to end, accomplishing the \"user goal\" of registering his/her student(s) for classes, but the \"included\" use cases could also be initiated on their own. I was also wondering if I should have a separate \"Modify Class Selections\" use case for the case when the parent logs back into the system later and changes class selections on behalf of the student, or whether that should just be an alternative scenario of the \"Select Classes\" use case. What would you recommend, and why? What guidelines should be used in general when analyzing use case boundaries, beyond the idea of a \"user goal\"? * * * **Update:** I found this quote from the first chapter of Alistair Cockburn's book to be helpful: > Depending on the level of view needed at the time, the writer will choose to > describe a multi-sitting or **summary** goal, a single-sitting or **user > goal** , or a part of a user goal, or **subfunction**. Communicating which > of these is being described is so important that my students have come up > with two different gradients to describe them: by height relative to sea > level (above sea level, at sea level, underwater), and by color (white, > blue, indigo). It seems to me that \"Register Student(s)\" is a summary level goal, since it could potentially take multiple sittings to complete. The line is blurred in this case, but I think this idea of a summary use case suggests that my approach #3 above is a reasonable one."}
{"_id": "200746", "title": "How could distribution and reuse flexibility be hurt by linking my program as a static or dynamic library?", "text": "I'm writing a small program that I want to be able to link with other programs. I also intend to run it from a command line interface, and maybe later with a GUI interface. How could distribution and reuse flexibility be hurt by linking my program as a static or dynamic library? Distribute it as a library and   * Dynamically link for GUI and command line interfaces   * Statically link for a stand alone binary"}
{"_id": "205513", "title": "Refactoring Tomcat webapp deployments", "text": "**Background** We have several webapps running on Tomcat 7.0.x (on Linux). For historical reasons, we have populated the \"Common\" lib (i.e. $CATALINA_HOME/lib) with many application jars. These jars include Spring, Jackson, and our own persistence-layer jars. As we deploy new persistence-layer jars, we are embroiled in a classpath hell: some jars are OK in ~/webapps/foo/WEB-INF/lib, but some must be excluded and placed in Common. Recent adventures show that some may have to be in _both places_. Our local (Windows) build is similarly messy: we have one folder filled with jars. We build with Eclipse (not Gradle, Ant, etc) and do not have an explicit list of jars used by the web applications. The Linux build does use Ant, but semi-selectively globs jars into the WAR files. **Question** I would like to white-board a strategy on how to extricate ourselves from this predicament. One approach is listed below, but I would appreciate any refinements, or alternative approaches. The goal is to correct the deploy process, not the local build. **Strategy** On local machine, use Gradle to compile each web application:   * add compile-time dependencies until compilation is OK   * locate Gradle's local cache (or observe output) to find transitive run-time dependencies   * add all jars to ~/WEB-INF/lib for the web app, with explicit references in the formal Ant build   * deploy into a fresh, pristine Tomcat install   * observe startup logs for any \"ClassNotFound\" exceptions, both for 3rd-party libraries and our application libraries   * add these libraries to the formal Ant build   * perform regression QA tests on application and monitor for \"ClassNotFound\""}
{"_id": "205512", "title": "LuaJit FFI and hiding C implementation details", "text": "I would like to extend an application using LuaJit FFI. Having seen http://luajit.org/ext_ffi_tutorial.html this is surprisingly easy when comparing this to the Lua C API. So far so good. However I do not plainly want to wrap C functions but provide a higher level API to users writing scripts for the application. Especially I do not want users to be able to access \"primitives\", i.e. the `ffi.*` namespace. Is this possible or will that ffi namespace be available to user's Lua scripts? On the issue of Sandboxing Lua I found http://lua-users.org/wiki/SandBoxes which is not talking about FFI though. Furthermore, the plan I have described above is assuming that the introduction of abstraction layers happens on the lua side of code. Is this an advisable approach or would you rather abstract functionality on the statically compiled code (on the C-side)?"}
{"_id": "205518", "title": "Getting related foreign keys from parent entities", "text": "I'm thinking about a design issue which affects my project's data base. Supposing there are three diferent tables:   * CLIENT    * ORDER    * PACKING_SLIP * * * Each **order** has its **client** and different **packing slips**. So there are some foreign keys which are compulsory, there would be _clientId_ for the `ORDER` and _orderId_ for the `PACKING_SLIP` table. That makes full sense.            ![First diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DLSEq.png) Now suppose in my logic I want to have access to the client from the packing slip. As I'm using an ORM tool as Hibernate, that involves firstly accessing the order from the packing slip and after getting the client from it. If I want to have access to the client directly, I should add the _clientId_ foreign key also to the `PACKING SLIP` table.                                  ![Second diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7jwu0.png) My question is, is that a correct design if there's a possibility to get the client joining the `ORDER` table? Isn't it a bit redundant? I think it's a control problem and the data base part shouldn't take care about it..."}
{"_id": "249541", "title": "Multivariable decisions", "text": "I am running into a situation where my program can have different outcomes depending on the state of some variables. 4 variables are involved and they can all have different ( 3 to 4 different states). All the possible combinations are leading me to about 48 different cases which would be resolved using a 4 level deep nested if/else structure. So, I have a couple of questions,   1. Is there a better technique to draw logic or decision tables or some other structure so that you can model a decision tree for this many outcomes? When a decision is dependent on only 2 variables you can easily model this on a spreadsheet which is two dimensional by its nature but how do you deal with a case like the one I mentioned?   2. Other than a 4 level deep nested if/else structure is there a better programming technique to deal with this?"}
{"_id": "38543", "title": "What techniques/methodologies do you use to organize your own open source projects, and why?", "text": "Aside from using a specific tool such as JIRA or Bugzilla, what techniques or development methodologies do you use to keep your OSS development efforts organized? and more importantly, how do you prioritize which features to deliver when there really isn't any paying clients that decide which features are the most important to deliver?"}
{"_id": "249547", "title": "HDD Failure Paranoia", "text": "HDD Failure Paranoia I tend to make small programs for myself. Whenever I make an application I use a database application like MS Access or MySQL. I can CRUD my data as I want. No problem in finishing a task. The problem is when I try exploring more into File IO. I have heard of HDD crashes due to high read/write operations. I used to think that these happened only on server machines. But then I came to know that it happens on desktop machines too! So I now I have this huge mental blockage. Whenever I try converting my former software into ones with raw FILE IO, I lose the \"mental drive/motivation\" and freeze. I get thoughts like \"OMG this task will cause this many reads/writes to the disk\". I fear for loosing my hard disk. My goodness! It has happened so many times that I wish that the computer engineers had redesigned the internals of the computer to fix the problem and so I curse them a lot. A lot of my time gets wasted remotivating myself and the projects never get completed. Ya, ya, I know that behind the scenes the database applications use raw File IO to do their work! But who thinks of that when using them. All you are mostly thinking of is SQL and the resulting table in the resultset/recodset. The database applications are like a black box to raw File IO. Does anyone else think the same? Are my fears valid? What should I do? Any views/ consolations? Help! This makes me mad and unproductive!"}
{"_id": "246593", "title": "Should I persist notification before or after publishing it through Redis pub/sub?", "text": "I'm implementing a mechanism to notify a group of users about newly inserted blog comments. The architecture uses the Redis Pub/Sub mechanism. By definition, the pub/sub mechanism aims to propagate message to the right subscribers, without storing/persisting anything. Although blog comments are obviously persisted in DB, I also expect all notifications to be sent to be persisted in order to be retrieved at any time by an offline user that gets logged again. Of course, Redis could have persistent messages, but the cost for that is pretty high. I use a distinct main database, let's take for the example MySql. Currently, the workflow is:   1. A blog comment posted by a user is handled by my backend and firstly stored in DB.   2. An event is raised, let's call it \"CommentedBlogEvent\", that triggers a worker aiming to detect all the targeted user of the comment.   3. Assuming that 10 users are target of the comment, I insert 10 \"notification rows\" in my database associating the commentId and the targeted userId, each specific to a user since it would have a flag read/unread.   4. Then, once all notifications have been persisted, I use Redis Pub/Sub to trigger subscribers aiming to push results to the concerned online clients (through WebSockets for instance). **The \"issue\" is that the process could be slow because of the step 3.** Would it be tolerated to make the step 4 before the step 3, meaning before persisting it in DB, since a potential data loss isn't dramatic in my case (non-financial data etc)?   Advantage: Client gets result more quickly.   Drawback: User could receive a notification that failed to be stored in background, leading to a missing notification when user refreshes the page. What is the best way to handle this case, while keeping my main database as the notifications store?"}
{"_id": "208597", "title": "how do you cope with long hours of coding?", "text": "I am just a high-school student but for a while now I have been coding for weeks (from early in the morning to late at night). I really enjoy it, however it can be really monotone. I usually listen to some webradios but they take my attention from coding sometimes. How do you cope with long hours of coding? How often do you take breaks how do you spend them? Do you have any kind of further advice?"}
{"_id": "208592", "title": "Can PHP handle mouse events?", "text": "I'm a newbie in php and i want to know if php can handle mouse events such as upon mouseCicked, mouseDoubleClicked, mouseMoved, mouseHovered etc.. And can events like button click , like displaying alert after clicking the submit button If yes, how can it be done ? I know that this can be done in Javascript               <script>         window.onbeforeunload = \"Are you sure you want to leave?\";     <script/>      Are there any other ways to do it ? Thank You !"}
{"_id": "246599", "title": "Should we live by using Suhosin with PHP?", "text": "A lot of my security experienced friends have told me that I need to code my web applications for working under the Suhosin PHP patch, Suhosin being _\"an advanced protection system for PHP installations [...] designed to protect servers and users from known and unknown flaws in PHP applications\"_. Sense stating that feat, I have had to rewrite quite a bit of of my functions and classes. Is this the new standard of making secure web applications so that it is harder to exploit and compromise? Is Suhosin now a _common_ requirement for web development in PHP?"}
{"_id": "5074", "title": "What are the proper uses of the various \"Sign-in\" terminologies?", "text": "What are the preferred use cases for the following sets of terms:   1. Log in / Log out   2. Log on / Log off   3. Sign in / Sign out   4. Sign on / Sign off From what I can guess, \"Logging in\" should be used for a long-lived session (like a website), whereas \"Sign in\" should be for something that you will be attending to (like IM or a financial transaction). I'm a little fuzzy here..."}
{"_id": "208591", "title": "Efficient way of evaluating an array of strings then add to an array in Ruby", "text": "I am looking for an efficient way of evaluating an array of strings against a series of rules and then adding them to another array. For example I have an array of strings:   1. something   2. a   3. 1234   4. #gohere I want to iterate through all the items in the array and evaluate them based on a series of rules. For example:   * Strings greater that 1 in length   * Strings that don't start with the # character I was thinking of either:   1. Nested loop of if statements evaluating the string for each rule and if they all pass then add to another array   2. Evaluating the string against rule 1 then adding to the array then performing another evaluation - I have discounted this since it requires lots of array read/write operations to evaluate the complete ruleset. Please note that I have kept the number of rules to two for brevity however I could be needing up to 10 rules. Additionally, I do not control the original array since the function I am calling returns an array of strings. I know I may have answered my own question with the nested loop however I wondered if anyone had any ideas for optimizing this type of situation. Also, I know I asked this question in the reference of Ruby but any pseudo- code would suffice."}
{"_id": "70112", "title": "What do you think of an interpreter written in Java?", "text": "I am currently working on the implementation of a new programming language, for fun. I realize that most languages never become popular, but I still want the language to have a high-quality implementation. The language is loosely lisp-like. It supports closures, first-class continuations, a homoiconic syntax, first-class functions, etc. In addition, I want my language to be able to have access to already established library code (specifically the Java Standard library, etc). Dynamically compiling to JVM byte-code is essentially out of the question, because of the difficulty of implementing the stated feature set (excluding first-class functions) using a virtual machine that is not designed to support it. On the other-hand, compiling to C/C++ or some other lower-level language will lead to an unwanted degree of platform-dependence and/or reduce/remove the ability to use the Java standard library via programs written in my language. My (largely-completed) approach to the implementation is to implement a custom p-code interpreter in Java. The high-level language simply compiles its code on-the-fly to essentially an array of instructions for this custom virtual machine. Each instruction is an object that implements a common interface. When executed, the instructions manipulate a stack-machine. Unfortunately, executing each instruction requires a virtual method call; whereas, the normal implementation of such interpreters does not use object based instructions. However, current micro-benchmarks and guess-based-estimates indicate that the completed implementation should match the speed of Python, given equivalent programs. **So do you think this method of implementation is crazy or amateurish, given the language's design goals?** **What would you do differently?**"}
{"_id": "70118", "title": "Are there any tools for testing drag & drop Windows desktop applications?", "text": "I need to develop a Windows desktop application (win32 API) which will use drag & drop extensively in many formats, including my own. I need to test it, for example, with CF_TEXT dragging, CF_RTF, CF_DIB, CF_METAFILEPICT, and many others. The tool needs to have the following features:   1. Displaying the content of DataObject dragged into it with all available format viewers.   2. Allows preparation of a few samples of different clipboard formats together in a single DataObject, ready for dragging into my app.   3. Allows including my own format names into the formats list of the testing tool."}
{"_id": "55543", "title": "Company internal Android Market", "text": "i want to establish Android in our company. Since our company doesn't want our future internal Android Apps distributet to the Google Android Market i would need to setup an internal market. But i can't find any resources. Maybe someone here knows more!"}
{"_id": "255498", "title": "Publishing VS2010 Web Solution to WordPress", "text": "I am wondering if it's possible to publish a website that I have created onto WordPress? If so, how? The site was created using VS2010. I've done some searching online, and all I've came up with are tutorials on WordPress on how to publish your Visual Studio site onto other things not related to WordPress. Thank you"}
{"_id": "5384", "title": "How do you deal with people who ask you to fix their computer?", "text": "Because I'm a programmer, people constantly ask me to fix their computer. How do you handle this situation? Do you make exceptions for relatives, friends and coworkers? Do you charge people for it?"}
{"_id": "33096", "title": "What server-side language(s) should be used for user-created information sites such as Facebook, SE, Blogs, etc.?", "text": "What server-side language(s) should be used for user-created information sites such as Facebook, SE, Blogs, etc.?"}
{"_id": "236669", "title": "How to restrict the violation of an N-Tier Architecture", "text": "Recently we fitted a 4-Tier Architecture in our project composed by the following four main layers :   * User Interface Layer.   * Data Access Layer.   * Domain Layer.   * Business Layer. All the layers fulfill their usual roles in 4-Tier Architecture and interact which each one in the usual way. We use SVN to maintain our CVS. My problem is that we have many inexperienced programmers developing in a well formed architecture, and we have to be checking all the time the code to find violations of the architecture. For example:   * Sometimes include access to database in the User Interface Layer and not in the Business Layer which is where interact with the Data Access layer to read or save data in the database. Problems like the above occurs all the time. My question is: How to check the code before the programmers can submit his new changes to the repository and report violations of the architecture? How to avoid doing this manually?"}
{"_id": "253249", "title": "How can I share a managed DBConnection across various objects?", "text": "I am implementing what I thought was a simple object wrapper around a database where one object \"PartRecord\" represents one row of a database table. I want a client to be able to request a given record and to receive an object that contains the data. The data read and exposed properties are all a piece of cake, but I am trying to share the MySqlConnection object in a coherent way. My initial naive implementation was to keep a private MySqlConnection object in a VB module and to have a functions that my classes can call. This would effectively be a singleton that any of my classes could share.               Private MySqlCn as MySqlConnection          Friend Function GetMySqlConnection() as MySqlConnection        If IsNothing(MySqlCn) then  MySqlCn = New MySqlConnection(cnstring)        if MySqlCn.State = ConnectionState.Closed then MySqlConnection.Open(cnstring)        Return MySqlCn     End Function          Friend Sub CloseMySqlConnection()        If Not IsNothing(MySqlCn) AndAlso (Not MySqlCn.State = ConnectionState.Closed) Then  MySqlCn.Close     End Function      With this method you can generally ensure that the objects will share a connection and that it will be open whenever the database is available, but you cannot guarantee that the connection gets closed until the program ends. Some alternatives that I have tried:   1. close connection after every read               'in PartRecord constructor:     Using MySqlCn as MySqlConnection = GetMySqlConnection       'read data     End Using     'this causes an open and close for every object you instantiate     'obviously bad        2. just leave it open              'in constructor:     Dim MySqlCn as MySqlConnection = GetMySqlConnection     'read data     'no close or dispose, open for the next guy     'we are sharing an open connection, but     'the connection won't really close until the program ends.     'I think it will close then, but I was a lot more certain of it     'in the COM days when I could wrap it in a class and     'close it in the Terminate event when the reference count hit zero        3. quit having public constructors and have a object factory that implements IDisposable to manage the connection              'maybe not as nice for the client code     'but does force a sharing of connections     'and the client can call PartFactory.Close or PartFactory.Dispose when they are done     'the PartFactory replaces the singleton     'even though you could have more than one if you wanted        4. your better idea . . . **I would like to know if I can keep my preferred style of public object constructors for a given record, but still manage the shared connection in a responsible way.** I think this might be impossible since the standalone publicly creatable objects do not know when the client is ever done. I think I must leak the \"we are connecting to a database y'know\" abstraction to the client or else cause open connections or unnecessary network traffic. Also, the documentation tells you that IDisposable is usually used for unmanaged things (files, handles, etc). Is is appropriate/necessary for holding a managed object like a .NET DBConnection object? I like that the client would have the Using syntax and that I am signalling that it needs closed in a standard way, but is the deterministic close that I am trying to get necessary and worth my effort in a garbage collected world? I am not comfortable saying \"well the connection will close eventually when no one wants it\" since this component will be eventually be used by many different clients in the organization. What if they crash, or we use it in a long- running server process? If it matters, this is the first of several DB wrapper classes. Whatever scheme I use here, I want to maintain across the entire component."}
{"_id": "237078", "title": "open source social network allowing advertising", "text": "I want to build up a social network, targeted to a specific interest. I want to generate revenues in form of ads. I first thought of building it from scratch, which will take a lot of time (even if it's something simple), then i remembered there are open source options like Diaspora or Friendica. I don't know if there are others... My question is, with these previously mentioned projects or any other, \u00bfis it possible to legally generate revenues? Diaspora license is: AGPLv3,[3][4] some parts dual-licensed under MIT License[5] as well Friendica: AGPL \u00a1Thank you!"}
{"_id": "252417", "title": "Learning but then forgetting", "text": "I am teaching myself to program in C and have been for a few months. I recently took a one month break and came back a week ago, and it's all gone. I had to look up some things that I really put effort into understanding (see: pointers) and some others just stuck with me. Now learning about `malloc` and dynamically allocated memory is also getting a bit tough. What do you suggest for keeping it all retained? Will it just come with time and experience?"}
{"_id": "237077", "title": "Using JDBC to asynchronously read large Oracle table", "text": "What strategies can be used to read every row in a large **Oracle** table, **only once** , but as fast as possible with JDBC & Java ? Consider that each row has non-trivial amounts of data (30 columns, including large text in some columns). Some strategies I can think of are:   * Single thread and read table. (Too slow, but listed for clarity)   * Read the id's into ConcurrentLinkedQueue, use threads to consume queue and query by id in batches.   * Read id's into a JMS queue, use workers to consume queue and query by id in batches. What other strategies could be used ? _For the purpose of this question assume processing of rows to be free._"}
{"_id": "255490", "title": "online quiz app android", "text": "I'm interested in working on a project. The project involves a test taking app with 2 modules where there is one quizzer and multiple test takers. I want to make a web application which also has an android app for the same. How should i go along with making this project so that there are no issues as some user can be on the web app and some on the android app? How can i do it so that i don't have to write separate code for the web app and the android app? What should be my approach because i have never made an internet based android app? ( i only have some basic android programming experience, and i'm willing to learn more) but i have a fair experience with developing with jsp/servlets and frameworks. UPDATE: I do not want detailed answers. Just point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "85657", "title": "Why should main() be short?", "text": "I've been programming for over 9 years, and according to the advice of my first programming teacher, I always keep my `main()` function extremely short. At first I had no idea why. I just obeyed without understanding, much to the delight of my professors. After gaining experience, I realized that if I designed my code correctly, having a short `main()` function just sortof happened. Writing modularized code and following the single responsibility principle allowed my code to be designed in \"bunches\", and `main()` served as nothing more than a catalyst to get the program running. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I was looking at Python's souce code, and I found the `main()` function:               /* Minimal main program -- everything is loaded from the library */          ...          int     main(int argc, char **argv)     {         ...         return Py_Main(argc, argv);     }      Yay python. Short `main()` function == Good code. Programming teachers were right. Wanting to look deeper, I took a look at Py_Main. In its entirety, it is defined as follows:               /* Main program */          int     Py_Main(int argc, char **argv)     {         int c;         int sts;         char *command = NULL;         char *filename = NULL;         char *module = NULL;         FILE *fp = stdin;         char *p;         int unbuffered = 0;         int skipfirstline = 0;         int stdin_is_interactive = 0;         int help = 0;         int version = 0;         int saw_unbuffered_flag = 0;         PyCompilerFlags cf;              cf.cf_flags = 0;              orig_argc = argc;           /* For Py_GetArgcArgv() */         orig_argv = argv;          #ifdef RISCOS         Py_RISCOSWimpFlag = 0;     #endif              PySys_ResetWarnOptions();              while ((c = _PyOS_GetOpt(argc, argv, PROGRAM_OPTS)) != EOF) {             if (c == 'c') {                 /* -c is the last option; following arguments                    that look like options are left for the                    command to interpret. */                 command = (char *)malloc(strlen(_PyOS_optarg) + 2);                 if (command == NULL)                     Py_FatalError(                        \"not enough memory to copy -c argument\");                 strcpy(command, _PyOS_optarg);                 strcat(command, \"\\n\");                 break;             }                  if (c == 'm') {                 /* -m is the last option; following arguments                    that look like options are left for the                    module to interpret. */                 module = (char *)malloc(strlen(_PyOS_optarg) + 2);                 if (module == NULL)                     Py_FatalError(                        \"not enough memory to copy -m argument\");                 strcpy(module, _PyOS_optarg);                 break;             }                  switch (c) {             case 'b':                 Py_BytesWarningFlag++;                 break;                  case 'd':                 Py_DebugFlag++;                 break;                  case '3':                 Py_Py3kWarningFlag++;                 if (!Py_DivisionWarningFlag)                     Py_DivisionWarningFlag = 1;                 break;                  case 'Q':                 if (strcmp(_PyOS_optarg, \"old\") == 0) {                     Py_DivisionWarningFlag = 0;                     break;                 }                 if (strcmp(_PyOS_optarg, \"warn\") == 0) {                     Py_DivisionWarningFlag = 1;                     break;                 }                 if (strcmp(_PyOS_optarg, \"warnall\") == 0) {                     Py_DivisionWarningFlag = 2;                     break;                 }                 if (strcmp(_PyOS_optarg, \"new\") == 0) {                     /* This only affects __main__ */                     cf.cf_flags |= CO_FUTURE_DIVISION;                     /* And this tells the eval loop to treat                        BINARY_DIVIDE as BINARY_TRUE_DIVIDE */                     _Py_QnewFlag = 1;                     break;                 }                 fprintf(stderr,                     \"-Q option should be `-Qold', \"                     \"`-Qwarn', `-Qwarnall', or `-Qnew' only\\n\");                 return usage(2, argv[0]);                 /* NOTREACHED */                  case 'i':                 Py_InspectFlag++;                 Py_InteractiveFlag++;                 break;                  /* case 'J': reserved for Jython */                  case 'O':                 Py_OptimizeFlag++;                 break;                  case 'B':                 Py_DontWriteBytecodeFlag++;                 break;                  case 's':                 Py_NoUserSiteDirectory++;                 break;                  case 'S':                 Py_NoSiteFlag++;                 break;                  case 'E':                 Py_IgnoreEnvironmentFlag++;                 break;                  case 't':                 Py_TabcheckFlag++;                 break;                  case 'u':                 unbuffered++;                 saw_unbuffered_flag = 1;                 break;                  case 'v':                 Py_VerboseFlag++;                 break;          #ifdef RISCOS             case 'w':                 Py_RISCOSWimpFlag = 1;                 break;     #endif                  case 'x':                 skipfirstline = 1;                 break;                  /* case 'X': reserved for implementation-specific arguments */                  case 'U':                 Py_UnicodeFlag++;                 break;             case 'h':             case '?':                 help++;                 break;             case 'V':                 version++;                 break;                  case 'W':                 PySys_AddWarnOption(_PyOS_optarg);                 break;                  /* This space reserved for other options */                  default:                 return usage(2, argv[0]);                 /*NOTREACHED*/                  }         }              if (help)             return usage(0, argv[0]);              if (version) {             fprintf(stderr, \"Python %s\\n\", PY_VERSION);             return 0;         }              if (Py_Py3kWarningFlag && !Py_TabcheckFlag)             /* -3 implies -t (but not -tt) */             Py_TabcheckFlag = 1;              if (!Py_InspectFlag &&             (p = Py_GETENV(\"PYTHONINSPECT\")) && *p != '\\0')             Py_InspectFlag = 1;         if (!saw_unbuffered_flag &&             (p = Py_GETENV(\"PYTHONUNBUFFERED\")) && *p != '\\0')             unbuffered = 1;              if (!Py_NoUserSiteDirectory &&             (p = Py_GETENV(\"PYTHONNOUSERSITE\")) && *p != '\\0')             Py_NoUserSiteDirectory = 1;              if ((p = Py_GETENV(\"PYTHONWARNINGS\")) && *p != '\\0') {             char *buf, *warning;                  buf = (char *)malloc(strlen(p) + 1);             if (buf == NULL)                 Py_FatalError(                    \"not enough memory to copy PYTHONWARNINGS\");             strcpy(buf, p);             for (warning = strtok(buf, \",\");                  warning != NULL;                  warning = strtok(NULL, \",\"))                 PySys_AddWarnOption(warning);             free(buf);         }              if (command == NULL && module == NULL && _PyOS_optind < argc &&             strcmp(argv[_PyOS_optind], \"-\") != 0)         {     #ifdef __VMS             filename = decc$translate_vms(argv[_PyOS_optind]);             if (filename == (char *)0 || filename == (char *)-1)                 filename = argv[_PyOS_optind];          #else             filename = argv[_PyOS_optind];     #endif         }              stdin_is_interactive = Py_FdIsInteractive(stdin, (char *)0);              if (unbuffered) {     #if defined(MS_WINDOWS) || defined(__CYGWIN__)             _setmode(fileno(stdin), O_BINARY);             _setmode(fileno(stdout), O_BINARY);     #endif     #ifdef HAVE_SETVBUF             setvbuf(stdin,  (char *)NULL, _IONBF, BUFSIZ);             setvbuf(stdout, (char *)NULL, _IONBF, BUFSIZ);             setvbuf(stderr, (char *)NULL, _IONBF, BUFSIZ);     #else /* !HAVE_SETVBUF */             setbuf(stdin,  (char *)NULL);             setbuf(stdout, (char *)NULL);             setbuf(stderr, (char *)NULL);     #endif /* !HAVE_SETVBUF */         }         else if (Py_InteractiveFlag) {     #ifdef MS_WINDOWS             /* Doesn't have to have line-buffered -- use unbuffered */             /* Any set[v]buf(stdin, ...) screws up Tkinter :-( */             setvbuf(stdout, (char *)NULL, _IONBF, BUFSIZ);     #else /* !MS_WINDOWS */     #ifdef HAVE_SETVBUF             setvbuf(stdin,  (char *)NULL, _IOLBF, BUFSIZ);             setvbuf(stdout, (char *)NULL, _IOLBF, BUFSIZ);     #endif /* HAVE_SETVBUF */     #endif /* !MS_WINDOWS */             /* Leave stderr alone - it should be unbuffered anyway. */         }     #ifdef __VMS         else {             setvbuf (stdout, (char *)NULL, _IOLBF, BUFSIZ);         }     #endif /* __VMS */          #ifdef __APPLE__         /* On MacOS X, when the Python interpreter is embedded in an            application bundle, it gets executed by a bootstrapping script            that does os.execve() with an argv[0] that's different from the            actual Python executable. This is needed to keep the Finder happy,            or rather, to work around Apple's overly strict requirements of            the process name. However, we still need a usable sys.executable,            so the actual executable path is passed in an environment variable.            See Lib/plat-mac/bundlebuiler.py for details about the bootstrap            script. */         if ((p = Py_GETENV(\"PYTHONEXECUTABLE\")) && *p != '\\0')             Py_SetProgramName(p);         else             Py_SetProgramName(argv[0]);     #else         Py_SetProgramName(argv[0]);     #endif         Py_Initialize();              if (Py_VerboseFlag ||             (command == NULL && filename == NULL && module == NULL && stdin_is_interactive)) {             fprintf(stderr, \"Python %s on %s\\n\",                 Py_GetVersion(), Py_GetPlatform());             if (!Py_NoSiteFlag)                 fprintf(stderr, \"%s\\n\", COPYRIGHT);         }              if (command != NULL) {             /* Backup _PyOS_optind and force sys.argv[0] = '-c' */             _PyOS_optind--;             argv[_PyOS_optind] = \"-c\";         }              if (module != NULL) {             /* Backup _PyOS_optind and force sys.argv[0] = '-c'                so that PySys_SetArgv correctly sets sys.path[0] to ''                rather than looking for a file called \"-m\". See                tracker issue #8202 for details. */             _PyOS_optind--;             argv[_PyOS_optind] = \"-c\";         }              PySys_SetArgv(argc-_PyOS_optind, argv+_PyOS_optind);              if ((Py_InspectFlag || (command == NULL && filename == NULL && module == NULL)) &&             isatty(fileno(stdin))) {             PyObject *v;             v = PyImport_ImportModule(\"readline\");             if (v == NULL)                 PyErr_Clear();             else                 Py_DECREF(v);         }              if (command) {             sts = PyRun_SimpleStringFlags(command, &cf) != 0;             free(command);         } else if (module) {             sts = RunModule(module, 1);             free(module);         }         else {                  if (filename == NULL && stdin_is_interactive) {                 Py_InspectFlag = 0; /* do exit on SystemExit */                 RunStartupFile(&cf);             }             /* XXX */                  sts = -1;               /* keep track of whether we've already run __main__ */                  if (filename != NULL) {                 sts = RunMainFromImporter(filename);             }                  if (sts==-1 && filename!=NULL) {                 if ((fp = fopen(filename, \"r\")) == NULL) {                     fprintf(stderr, \"%s: can't open file '%s': [Errno %d] %s\\n\",                         argv[0], filename, errno, strerror(errno));                          return 2;                 }                 else if (skipfirstline) {                     int ch;                     /* Push back first newline so line numbers                        remain the same */                     while ((ch = getc(fp)) != EOF) {                         if (ch == '\\n') {                             (void)ungetc(ch, fp);                             break;                         }                     }                 }                 {                     /* XXX: does this work on Win/Win64? (see posix_fstat) */                     struct stat sb;                     if (fstat(fileno(fp), &sb) == 0 &&                         S_ISDIR(sb.st_mode)) {                         fprintf(stderr, \"%s: '%s' is a directory, cannot continue\\n\", argv[0], filename);                         fclose(fp);                         return 1;                     }                 }             }                  if (sts==-1) {                 /* call pending calls like signal handlers (SIGINT) */                 if (Py_MakePendingCalls() == -1) {                     PyErr_Print();                     sts = 1;                 } else {                     sts = PyRun_AnyFileExFlags(                         fp,                         filename == NULL ? \"<stdin>\" : filename,                         filename != NULL, &cf) != 0;                 }             }              }              /* Check this environment variable at the end, to give programs the          * opportunity to set it from Python.          */         if (!Py_InspectFlag &&             (p = Py_GETENV(\"PYTHONINSPECT\")) && *p != '\\0')         {             Py_InspectFlag = 1;         }              if (Py_InspectFlag && stdin_is_interactive &&             (filename != NULL || command != NULL || module != NULL)) {             Py_InspectFlag = 0;             /* XXX */             sts = PyRun_AnyFileFlags(stdin, \"<stdin>\", &cf) != 0;         }              Py_Finalize();     #ifdef RISCOS         if (Py_RISCOSWimpFlag)             fprintf(stderr, \"\\x0cq\\x0c\"); /* make frontend quit */     #endif          #ifdef __INSURE__         /* Insure++ is a memory analysis tool that aids in discovering          * memory leaks and other memory problems.  On Python exit, the          * interned string dictionary is flagged as being in use at exit          * (which it is).  Under normal circumstances, this is fine because          * the memory will be automatically reclaimed by the system.  Under          * memory debugging, it's a huge source of useless noise, so we          * trade off slower shutdown for less distraction in the memory          * reports.  -baw          */         _Py_ReleaseInternedStrings();     #endif /* __INSURE__ */              return sts;     }      Good God Almighty...it is big enough to sink the Titanic. It seems as though Python did the \"Intro to Programming 101\" trick and just moved all of `main()`'s code to a different function called it something very similar to \"main\". Here's my question: Is this code terribly written, or are there other reasons to have a short main function? As it stands right now, I see absolutely no difference between doing this and just moving the code in `Py_Main()` back into `main()`. Am I wrong in thinking this?"}
{"_id": "85655", "title": "Term for Production Rollback", "text": "The firm I work at keeps a copy of the compiled source code on production. So basically on our Production server, we have two folders:               ProductionServer\\SourceCode\\          ProductionServer\\SourceCodeRollback\\      The Rollback folder always contains one version older code. This is done so that on deployment nights, if something is wrong with the new code, the deployer(who is not familiar with source control software) has the older version to revert back to. My question is: Is there an official computer science term/nomenclature for the Rollback folder? Or is \"Rollback\" itself the official term?"}
{"_id": "146439", "title": "How do I approach this PHP/MYSQL query?", "text": "I have a reservation system that I have coded and my final task is to allow the user to enter a set of dates and then show them all available options. The reservation table is set up with `unit_id`, `check_in` and `check_out`. There are twelve different unit numbers. So I have to somehow iterate through them and find the units that have no taken dates during the date range the user has put in. Just having some trouble conceptualizing what needs to happen. Pseudo code               $units = array (all the units);          foreach($units as $key = $value){              Run a query searching through all reservations for that unit,          if the unit is available, add to our $available_units array for the view later          }      Checking availability has me stumped too though. What is the most efficient way to use the customers available date range and compare to the date ranges in the db?"}
{"_id": "128161", "title": "Sort algorithms that work on large amount of data", "text": "I am looking for sorting algorithms that can work on a large amount of data, i.e. that can work even when the whole data set cannot be held in main memory at once. The only candidate that I have found up to now is merge sort: you can implement the algorithm in such a way that it scans your data set at each merge without holding all the data in main memory at once. The variation of merge sort I have in mind is described in this article in section **Use with tape drives**. I think this is a good solution (with complexity O(n x log(n)) but I am curious to know if there are other (possibly faster) sorting algorithms that can work on large data sets that do not fit in main memory. **EDIT** Here are some more details, as required by the answers:   * The data needs to be sorted periodically, e.g. once in a month. I do not need to insert a few records and have the data sorted incrementally.   * My example text file is about 1 GB UTF-8 text, but I wanted to solve the problem in general, even if the file were, say, 20 GB.   * It is not in a database and, due to other constraints, it cannot be.   * The data is dumped by others as a text file, I have my own code to read this text file.   * The format of the data is a text file: new line characters are record separators. One possible improvement I had in mind was to split the file into files that are small enough to be sorted in memory, and finally merge all these files using the algorithm I have described above."}
{"_id": "133659", "title": "How would I use a browser as a GUI for Emacs apps?", "text": "I've started using Emacs, and love it. Naturally, I'm thinking about ways of extending it. I' m particularly fascinated by the thought of creating browser based GUIs for some stuff I would otherwise do in emacs, particularly reviewing fairly static data. An example: I have a bunch of txt files (created and edited in Emacs) containing quotes and passages from my favorite books. It would be cool to present them in a more visually striking/engaging manner. For example with unique color schemes and typefaces for different authors, and several columns of text to use more screen real estate (like in Stanza, the .epub reader). Are there simpler ways of rendering HTML derived from plain text files that are open in Emacs than browsers?"}
{"_id": "36116", "title": "Development Approach: User Interface In or Domain Model Out?", "text": "While I've never delivered anything using Smalltalk, my brief time playing with it has definitely left its mark. The only way to describe the experience is MVC the way it was meant to be. Essentially, all the heavy lifting for your application is done in the business objects (or domain model if you are so inclined). The standard controls are bound to the business objects in some way. For example, a text box is mapped to an object's field (the field itself is an object so it's easy to do). A button would mapped to a method. This is all done with a very simple and natural API. We don't have to think about binding objects, etc. It just works. Yet, in many newer languages and APIs you are forced to think from the outside in. First with C++ and MFC, and now with C# and WPF, Microsoft has gotten it's developer world hooked on GUI builders where you build your application by implementing event handlers. Java Swing development isn't so different, only you are writing the code to instantiate the controls on the form yourself. For some projects, there may never even be a domain model--just event handlers. I've been in and around this model for most of my carreer. Each way forces you to think differently. With the Smalltalk approach, your domain is smart while your GUI is dumb. With the default VisualStudio approach, your GUI is smart while your domain model (if it exists) is rather anemic. Many developers that I work with see value in the Smalltalk approach, and try to shoehorn that approach into the VisualStudio environment. WPF has _some_ dynamic binding features that makes it possible; but there are limitations. Inevitably some code that belongs in the domain model ends up in the GUI classes. So, which way do you design/develop your code? Why?   * GUI first. User interaction is paramount.   * Domain first. I need to make sure the system is correct before we put a UI on it. There's pros and cons for either approach. Domain model fits in there with crystal cathedrals and pie in the sky. GUI fits in there with quick and dirty (sometimes really dirty). And for an added bonus: How do you make sure the code is maintainable?"}
{"_id": "84529", "title": "Where can I find interesting project to work on?", "text": "If I want to learn a new programming language, I cannot master it without digging it deeply. Maybe a project would be good, but I am lacking idea for them. Where can I find projects to work on, maybe some open-source project?"}
{"_id": "203210", "title": "Is context inheritance, as shown by Head First Design Patterns' Duck example, irrelevant to strategy pattern?", "text": "In Head First Design Patterns it teaches the strategy pattern by using a Duck example where different subclasses of Duck can be assigned a particular behavior at runtime. From my understanding the purpose of the strategy pattern is to change **a single** object's behavior at runtime, yet they are using inheritance of Duck to change the behavior of various types of Duck. ![Strategy Pattern](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EIsOf.png) ## Relevance? **Is context inheritance of Duck irrelevant to the strategy pattern or is varying Duck types and also varying their behaviors a good reason to employ the strategy pattern?** Do situations where you need to vary both constitute a good reason to use strategy pattern? Why would they include this as the strategy pattern example? ## A Simpler Example Could I further simplify this example by just having a Duck class (no derived classes)? Then when implementing one duck object it can be assigned different behaviors based on certain circumstances that aren't dependent on its own object type. For example: FlyBehavior changes based on the weather or QuackBehavior changes based on the time of day or how hungry a duck is. I realize this would be solving a different problem than from the one in the book, but what I am looking for is a relevant strategy pattern example to fall back on. Would my example above constitute the strategy pattern as well? ## Edit: I was successful in finding 2 simpler strategy pattern examples that adhere more strictly to being just strategy patterns without context inheritance: Hunter.java and solver.py."}
{"_id": "203211", "title": "What would be the fastest way of storing or calculating legal move sets for chess pieces?", "text": "For example if a move is attempted I could just loop through a list of legal moves and compare the x,y but I have to write logic to calculate those at least every time the piece is moved. Or, I can store in an array [,] and then check if x and y are not 0 then it is a legal move and then I save the data like this [0][1][0][0] etc etc for each row where 1 is a legal move, but I still have to populate it. I wonder what the fastest way to store and read a legal move on a piece object for calculation. I could use matrix math as well I suppose but I don't know. **Basically I want to persist the rules for a given piece so I can assign a piece object a little template of all it's possible moves considering it is starting from it's current location** , which should be just one table of data. But is it faster to loop or write LINQ queries or store arrays and matrices?               public class Move     {         public int x;         public int y;     }          public class ChessPiece : Move     {             private List<Move> possibleMoves { get; set; }              public bool LegalMove(int x, int y){           foreach(var p in possibleMoves)           {              if(p.x == x && p.y == y)              {  return true;  }              }         }     }      Anyone know?"}
{"_id": "203214", "title": "Subsumption architecture vs. perceptual control theory", "text": "I'm a new person to AI field and I have to research and compare two different architectures for a thesis I'm writing. Before you scream (homework thread), I've been reading on these two topics only to find that I'm confusing myself more.. let me first start with stating briefly what I know so far. **Subsumption** is based on the fact that targets of a system are different in sophistication, thus that requires them to be added as **_layers_** , each layer can suppress (modify) the command of the layers below it, and there are inhibitors to stop signals from execution lets say. **PCT** stresses on the fact that there are nodes to handle environmental changes ( ** _negative feedback_** ), so the inputs coming from an environment go through a comparator node and then an action is generated by that node, HPCT or (Hierarchical PCT) is based on nesting these cycles inside each other so a small cycle to avoid crashing would be nested in a more sophisticated cycle that targets a certain location for example. My questions, am I getting this the right way? am I missing any critical understanding about these two models? also any idea where I can find simplified explanations for each theory (so far been struggling trying to understand the papers from Google scholar). * * * **Edit:**   * The acceptable result would be to compare and contrast subsumption with PCT as alternative control structures in behaviour-based robotics.   * The experiments will be done on Mindstorm NXT 2.0 robot and the implementation will be done using PureData.   * I'm not seeking complex behavior, only several models that will demonstrate capabilities of PCT and Subsumption and come up with weaknesses and strengths about each approach.   * As for the other points 'rwong' mentioned, I don't believe they're part of my research scope. _**my main target here is to get he concepts fully understood as this is my critical phase to implement a fully correct solution that would allow the comparison_**"}
{"_id": "218511", "title": "Entity framework and Eager loading and enterprise application with DDD aproach", "text": "We are trying to create an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using entity framework with domain driven development style pattern approach. As you can see in our part of domain layer, we have a complex design. We need to load entity with lazy as well as eager methods. Unfortunately we have big problem with these methods in entity framework. As we understand, for eager loading in EF we have to use the `Include` method and give string of properties and properties of properties etc. (In Hibernate and java we could use annotation top of member to load eagerly and it was so much easier than this approach). But the horrible problem is that we have inheritance structures and heavy polymorphism, in these states we don\u2019t have that\u2019s string we should given to include because we don\u2019t know which derived class of class is selected to understand which properties should include. ![Our model](http://i.stack.imgur.com/b5OCM.png) For example as you can see a result has a collection of items and then decides to add some group to this collection and each of those groups have some groups and fields (like the composition pattern). Now imagine we want to load a result is like the one talked above. When I want to write a string of given include I don\u2019t know what items of this result are groups. Because we can\u2019t predict these items are groups and so these groups have collection of items which should load.               this.Items = new List<Item>                  {                     new Group(                         a,                         new List<Item>                         {                              new Field(b),                             new Field(c),                             new Field(d),      At last we have a critical question: is entity framework designed for Enterprise Applications with a complex domain and DDD approach? If not, how we follow the approach of Martin Fowler and Eric Evans in software engineering and enterprise application in C#?"}
{"_id": "129418", "title": "Better way to train new hires", "text": "The team I currently am part of experiences fairly high turnover, with members typically moving to different projects within the same company. Currently our \"training\" for new members is to pair them with a primary contact (usually the most recent person to complete their training) who will provide them with hands-on experience and will ask more senior developers if the newer hire ask something the mentor doesn't know. It provides a chance for the new hire to get involved quickly, and challenges the mentor to improve his/her understanding of the system also. However, as you can imagine, this style of training is very time consuming, and doesn't provide a very good knowledge transfer (misconceptions propagate, gaps expand). I've been tasked with generating documentation and training materials for our future new hires. I already do technical writing occasionally, but it's for the end user and is highly specific with lots of screenshots and consumes a large amount of time to complete. Creating the new documentation for new hires is considered low priority and I've only currently got ~40 hours to work on it. Documenting the system the current way I write technical documentation would barely scratch the surface in 40 hours. Especially considering I have to document not only about the code base, but also about deployments and support. How can I quickly write documentation to get new hires up to date as quickly as possible without investing significant time in writing the documentation? **Additional Information:**   We currently have both a wiki, and some training documentation, however both are kind of sparse."}
{"_id": "39639", "title": "How to inform a colleague of .NET and C# coding guidelines without offending him?", "text": "I have a good colleague at work that I work often and he is pretty smart. He is not a .NET programmer but now is coding for a long time too, mainly C++, Python, etc. I see that he is using Python like guidelines in naming, etc, and in shared code, it looks non-uniform to have things like: getEffectById, etc and many other Python names, etc. How do you guys think I should tell this to him so he isn't offended or think I am looking down on his code or skills, because I don't."}
{"_id": "137828", "title": "Why should I choose Java, Flash, or HTML5 for an online game with server communication", "text": "I'm starting to design a game that is going to have the following characteristics, and I'm trying to decide how I should program it. I'll also give a bit of my experience after, to help make the decision a bit better.   1. The game should be able to support both Facebook integration, and a stand alone version.   2. I don't want to do it right away, but I am thinking it would be a good idea to port this to Android/ iPhone at some point in time.   3. The game will involve communication with a server. The method of communication is still opened, but I imagine most of it will be over HTTPS. I'm suspecting most of the work is going to be done on the server at this point in time, and that the client is mainly going to show the results of the previous frame, and select what to do for the next frame.   4. I suspect that at some point in time, I'm going to want to put in animations and the like, but this is not critical for the beginning of the game.   5. The game is essentially an online board game, complete with cards, a board, etc. I'm currently looking at Flash, HTML 5, and a Java applet. Some random pieces of information.   1. I have access to Adobe Flash, actually the whole Design Premium, CS5.   2. I have some experience with programming Android apps.   3. I have done work with HTML, but it has been quite a while. I've only done a little bit of Javascript, but I don't recall it being particularly hard.   4. I routinely program in C, C++, Matlab, and Android (Java). I fairly often program in Python, Perl, Shell, and I have programmed before in Basic, HTML, Javascript."}
{"_id": "198907", "title": "Is it bad practice to run Node.js and apache in parallel?", "text": "I have an idea in mind and would like to know if that's the way to go for my end application. Think of my application as a social networking system in which I want to implement chat functionality. For that, I'd like to push data from the server to the client. I have heard I could use Node.js for that. In the meanwhile, I want a 'regular' system for posting status updates and such, for which I'd like to use PHP and an apache server. The only way I can think of is having Node.js and apache running parallel. But is that the way to go here? I'd think there would be a somewhat neater solution for this."}
{"_id": "250052", "title": "How are OOP \"objects\" and \"classes\" organized in memory in terms of assembly language?", "text": "How are objects organized in memory? For instance, I know that a function is a piece of code in memory, that expects parameters via the stack and/or the registers and handles it's own stack frame. But objects are a much more complicated structure. How are they organized? Does each object have \"links\" to methods and passes address to itself to that method? It would be great to see a good explanation of this topic. UPD. I made the question more exact, and I'm mainly interested in statically typing languages."}
{"_id": "209356", "title": "How would I design an interface such that it's clear which properties may change their value, and which will remain constant?", "text": "I am having a design issue regarding .NET properties.               interface IX     {         Guid Id { get; }         bool IsInvalidated { get; }         void Invalidate();     }      **Problem:** This interface has two read-only properties, `Id` and `IsInvalidated`. The fact that they are read-only, however, is by itself no guarantee that their values will remain constant. Let's say that it were my intention to make it very clear that\u2026   * `Id` represents a constant value (which may therefore be safely cached), while    * `IsInvalidated` might change its value during the lifetime of an `IX` object (and so shouldn't be cached). How could I modify `interface IX` to make that contract sufficiently explicit? **My own three attempts at a solution:**   1. The interface is already well-designed. The presence of a method called `Invalidate()` allows a programmer to infer that the value of the similarly-named property `IsInvalidated` might be affected by it. This argument holds only in cases where the method and property are similarly named.   2. Augment this interface with an event `IsInvalidatedChanged`:              bool IsInvalidated { get; }     event EventHandler IsInvalidatedChanged;      The presence of a `\u2026Changed` event for `IsInvalidated` states that this property may change its value, and the absence of a similar event for `Id` is a promise that that property will not change its value. I like this solution, but it's a lot of additional stuff that may not get used at all.   3. Replace the property `IsInvalidated` with a method `IsInvalidated()`:              bool IsInvalidated();      This might be too subtle a change. It's supposed to be a hint that a value is computed freshly each time -- which wouldn't be necessary if it was a constant. The MSDN topic \"Choosing Between Properties and Methods\" has this to say about it: > _Do use a method, rather than a property, in the following situations. [\u2026] > The operation returns a different result each time it is called, even if the > parameters do not change._ **What kind of answers do I expect?**   * I am most interested in entirely different solutions to the problem, along with an explanation how they beat my above attempts.   * If my attempts are logically flawed or have significant disadvantages not yet mentioned, such that only one solution (or none) remains, I would like to hear about where I went wrong. If the flaws are minor, and more than one solution remains after taking it into consideration, please comment.   * At the very least, I would like some feedback on which is your preferred solution, and for what reason(s)."}
{"_id": "45501", "title": "How to simulate events that cause exceptions to test try/catch blocks?", "text": "I understand how exceptions work and how to catch and handle them in C# but how can I simulate events that may cause an exception to ensure that it is caught correctly? For example, is it possible to run an application in a kind of test bed where it's possible to simulate network problems, database problems, etc? Exceptions by their nature seem hard to reproduce thus making it hard to ensure your code can cope with them. Although I mainly develop using C#/.NET/Visual Studio, answers or resources relating to other languages could be useful."}
{"_id": "159994", "title": "Pass ID or Object?", "text": "When providing a business logic method to get a domain entity, should the parameter accept an object or an ID? For example, should we do this:               public Foo GetItem(int id) {}      or this:               public Foo GetItem(Foo foo) {}      I believe in passing objects around, in their entirety, but what about this case where we're getting an object and we only know the ID? Should the caller create an empty Foo and set the ID, or should it just pass the ID to the method? Since the incoming Foo will be empty, except for the ID, I don't see the benefit of the caller having to create a Foo and set its ID when it could just send the ID to the GetItem() method."}
{"_id": "159991", "title": "Is there a way to compare and record changes to code without VCS?", "text": "I'm working for a client that has no version control system in place. I want to record changes to code without having to add all changes to a spreadsheet. I'm restricted to using Notepad++ so would a plugin or macro for this be another option?"}
{"_id": "71799", "title": "Have you ever dealt with writing a spec late in the development lifecycle?", "text": "We have an existing code base which has been developed to meet the needs of most of our clients, which has accumulated features and bug fixes as they were needed and as projects developed universally useful features. Right now, we're running into the problem that there's no real documentation for its capabilities outside of the code itself, and on larger jobs it can mean that it's difficult to determine what should be included in the scope of work. How would you approach writing a defined spec for an existing application or framework?"}
{"_id": "37643", "title": "Why has the PowerCollections C# library recently declined in popularity?", "text": "I just looked at the statistics for the PowerCollections C# library and noticed a sharp decrease in quantity of downloads. What may be the cause? Is there something better I should be using?"}
{"_id": "233312", "title": "Representing a deck of cards in C (not C++)", "text": "So far my best ideas have been as fallows A) Represent a \"card\" in one structure and have a \"deck\" in another a deck being an array of 52 cards and a card being 2 chars one for and rank one for suit. B) The second seems like it might be easier to manage but less obvious in code. Creating an array of ints each with a different value ranging from 1-52. Then crating a conversion function that would translate the value to a card structure that would have a string for the suit and a string for the rank. The value of zero could indicate a card that has not been \"dealt\". Just trying to find a better way of doing this."}
{"_id": "233316", "title": "Is there a name for the number of values a variable can take?", "text": "For example, a bit or a boolean can be either 0 or 1 so the number 2 is associated with it. Similarly, for a byte which is 8 bits, the maximum number of different assignments would be 2^8. Is there a name for this number? When we pass everything through our system that has ECMAScript, Java and MySQL, then a boolean does not have only two possible assignments. For instance, a false boolean gets saved as a 0 and the boxed value could be null so a boolean suddenly can get true, false, 0, 1, null or even undefined or `<missing>`. I think it could get problematic in tests to guarantee that the values are not inconsistent. For instance, a value `boolean locked` could become `null` and then when a script or a layout template evaluates it then it will evaluate to `false` somewhere if the real value was `null` and similar problems. So why don't we always assert that a boolean has the same number of possible values (2 values) and similarly for other types? There is a mathematical term named \"arity\" that is something similar but not exactly, and statistics and probability theory also has the concept of \"event space\" that would be almost exactly what I mean. For instance, the event space for a boolean would be the set `{0,1}` which has cardinality 2 and that cardinality doesn't get preserved throughout the system, especially when data is passed as polyglots and/or serialized (json, jsonp, xml, yaml)."}
{"_id": "71792", "title": "Setting Up a Development Environment", "text": "I am part of an organization that is formalizing their software development processes/capabilities/etc. While the organization is not traditionally a software organization, they want to do this right and provide the developers who work in the organization (which includes me) a solid set of tools in which to work from. In particular, we are looking at standing up: source control, bug tracking software, documentation tools (for the developers - not for end-users), and, in general, project management software (continuous integration, project tracking, code review, software push). Some of the high-level requirements are:   * Free is better. While we will consider purchasing tools, there is so much support in the FOSS community for development tools, I want to look there first.   * Integration across systems. (For example, the bug tracking software should be able to link back to the source control.)   * Easy to Import To and Export From. I do not want lock-in.   * (Relatively) Easy to learn. At this point, here is what I am looking at so far as my recommendations:   1. Source Control - Mercurial or Git \\- I am personally leaning more towards Mercurial based on my research and the fact that Mercurial appears to be easier to setup in our environment.   2. Bug Tracking - I'm at a loss here. I have used Bugzilla in the past, but, it makes me cringe when I use it.   3. Documentation - MediaWiki, Screwturn Wiki, Atlassian (of course, this costs money so that is not ideal) I am looking for other suggestions of productivity tools/development tools that you have used. Please remember that we are a small organization, so I don't want to go over the top, but I do want to give developers good tools to use."}
{"_id": "229264", "title": "Managing Maven dependencies between multiple components with multiple teams making changes", "text": "In a situation where there are multiple teams making changes to some Maven projects with dependencies between them (otherwise unrelated projects i.e. no super POM or anything like that), with each team working in a separate working branch on all of these projects and merging them back to trunk only after a story is complete and tested, how should one handle the dependencies between snapshot builds that each team produces? Note that any of the teams could be making changes in any of the projects: they work on different pieces of functionality of the same system, and the projects are more like different layers. Before the split into multiple teams, artifacts were deployed to a central Nexus repository. Of course, it would be possible to set up separate Nexus repositories for each team, and an additional one for trunk, but I'm hoping there would be a better way to deal with this."}
{"_id": "30016", "title": "Assembly & The Programming Field", "text": "As it were, I do enjoy programming in assembly. I know that as a rule, assembly is platform specific so 'x' assembly will not help me if I had to work with 'y' machines. That said, how common are (at least competent) assembly programmers and how in demand are they?"}
{"_id": "76229", "title": "Predicting the output of PHP's rand()", "text": "I've read in numerous sources that the output of PHP's rand() is predictable as its a PRNG, and I mostly accept that as fact simply because I've seen it in so many places. I'm interested in a proof-of-concept: how would I go about predicting the output of rand()? From reading this article I understand that the random number is a number returned from a list starting at a pointer (the seed) -- but I can't imagine how this is predictable. Could someone reasonably figure out what random # was generated via rand() at a given moment in time within a few thousand guesses? or even 10,000 guesses? How? This is coming up because I saw a auth library which uses rand() to produce a token for users who have lost passwords, and I assumed this was a potential security hole. I've since replaced the method with hashing a mixture of `openssl_random_pseudo_bytes()`, the orignal hashed password, and microtime. After doing this I realized that if I were on the outside looking in, I'd have no idea how to guess the token even knowing it was a md5 of rand()."}
{"_id": "8055", "title": "Can a developer get a discount for Microsoft products?", "text": "If I would start to focus on the .NET platform and be self-employed, then I probably would like to have some Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2010 licenses just for the development environment and for testing, and then a few licenses for the production environment (a Windows Server 2008 Web) and added to that upgrades when new versions is available. This will end up in a quite big amount of money. Is there any kind of bundle discount that I can get from Microsoft in such a case? And what is the requirement to be able to get that discount?"}
{"_id": "76226", "title": "Bug cleanups in the middle of a project", "text": "In my current company, in all software projects I've been in, there's usually a phase at the end of a project that eats some good amount of time and is dedicated to polishing new features so that they're ready for launch. In Steve McConnell's book \"Software project survival guide\", he advocates doing that after each major milestone that's completed on a project (and possibly launching at that point too). Let's say that we don't want to launch after completing major milestones, because our product needs to be launched in a more coherent state. Have any of you had a positive experience with serious bug cleaning efforts done a couple of times during the project lifespan, as opposed to doing that before launch?"}
{"_id": "123071", "title": "Why isn't rich code formatting more common?", "text": "I was reading _Code Complete_ and in the chapter on layout and style, he was predicting that code editors would use some sort of rich text formatting. That means, instead of code looking like this               Procedure ResolveCollisions     { Performs a posteriori collision resolution through spatial partitioning algoritm }     (       CurrentMap : SpriteContext,       PotentialColliders: SpriteList     )     var Collider  : Sprite,          Collidee  : Sprite,          Collision : SpriteCollision     begin       DoStuff();     end.      it could look something like this: # Procedure `ResolveCollisions` _Performs a posteriori collision resolution through spatial partitioning algorithm_ **Parameters**   * `CurrentMap : SpriteContext`   * `PotentialColliders : SpriteList` **Local Variables**   * `Collider : Sprite`   * `Collidee : Sprite`   * `Collision : SpriteCollision`                   DoStuff();      * * * I've seen syntax coloring and highlighting and even parentheses coloring, but nothing that looked like this in actual code. I was wondering if this sort of thing actually ever existed, or perhaps if it was decided that it didn't have enough benefit or that it was an entirely bad idea. Have any of you seen richly-formatted code like this before, or know if the idea was ever considered and eventually rejected?"}
{"_id": "145784", "title": "How to be a successful programmer without a CS degree", "text": "### Disclaimers (Please read before jumping to answer): I've seen a number of questions similar to the one I would like to ask, so here are some _similar_ questions. IMHO They are neither completely what I'm asking, nor are they as thorough as I hope to be (I don't mean to brush off the answers to the below questions, nor am I discrediting the askers, I just want to be a little more thorough): > Can a CS degree benefit an older programmer? > > Importance of certifications for Java programmer without BS degree? > > In the absense of a CS degree, how can I \"fill in the gaps\" so to speak? > > Importance of CS degree when applying for development jobs? ### Let me be clear, I'm not asking the following:   * How to teach myself programming from scratch (without a degree in CS)   * How to market myself as a good software developer (without a degree in CS)   * How to get a great high paying job as a software developer (without a degree in CS) ### A little context: Now that I have disclaimers out of the way, let me flesh out my question, starting with a brief history of my experience as a software developer. First off, I have been incredibly lucky. I've been given several job opportunities (a couple heavy backend PHP/MySQL projects, and several WP7 apps in XAML/C#) through which I really learned everything I know about software development. Nearly all of the software development jobs I've had were ones that I was not rightfully qualified to have (and I made that clear to my employers before they hired me). I don't want to give myself credit where it's not due, but I would say that perfect humility dispenses with modesty. In nearly every single development job I've had, I have exceeded the expectations of my employer, and proved to be a valuable asset. There are of course exceptions1. But my point is I'm fairly intelligent and was able to teach myself what I needed to know in order to be successful at my job. With each job I had, I was stretched more and more. I attend the University of Washington's Seattle campus, and am currently in my fourth year with two years left, working on a Math degree. During the various jobs I've had (see my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 if you want that list) I've also been attending school as a full time student. As I think most developers would agree, studying the typical general ed undergraduate courses, including introductory programming courses ABSOLUTELY PALES in comparison with writing real code, building real2 products, working with awesome people, and positively affecting the lives of users3. So... as things go... I spent far more of my time and energy working instead of focusing on my studies. At times I performed very horribly, but for the most part I was able to stay afloat with my grades. However the computer science program at UW is _very_, _very_, _very_, _very_ competitive. So, it was no surprise to me when I got rejected by the program. Twice. Ironically enough, the same half-hour window in which I received the always polite, albeit disheartening rejection notice via email, I got a phone call from Amazon offering me a summer internship4 as an SDE. As I look around at other 'gents my age (21), who share the same goals as myself in software development, I find myself feeling pretty good about where I'm at, what I'm learning, who I am, and what I can do. There are of course much, much, much more brilliant 21 year olds out there than myself, I don't mean to say I stand out in a crowd, merely that I feel like I'm not abysmally behind the progress of my average peer. I feel confident about my ability to be successful in the world of software. More importantly I feel confident in my ability and desire to continue to grow, learn, and be embarrassingly humbled when I really need it. ### Math Degree I find myself pursuing a Math degree with the sole purpose of having a degree. There are those that say I should drop out and start working now (as I've had opportunity to do), and there are those that say I should really finish my degree. I've made up my mind to go ahead with my degree for entirely different reasons than either camp tends to bring up, so please don't encourage me one way or another on that matter. Consider the issue \"closed\" :) _*DEEP BREATH*_ ...sorry this is longer than I anticipated. ### This in essence, is my question:   * How do I objectively determine what areas of study, general knowledge, and other skills I would have gained through a CS degree that I may or may not be lacking in now?    * How do I sort these skills in order of most importance?    * What is the best way (over the next two years) to supplement my education to attain those attributes in such a way to match or even surpass the level of a CS undergrad from a top university? **Here are the steps that I am taking already:**   1. Ask the development community (this post)    2. Pursue mentorships with seasoned developers who share a similar career path with me    3. Define short and long term \"learning\" goals and subsequent syllabi outlining topics of study    4. Continue to write code and work on projects that I'm passionate about  If you've gotten this far, you deserve a cookie :) I appreciate you bearing with me. So... development community, seasoned developers, fellow students who are in the same boat as me, what advice would you have? Also... please do keep in mind my disclaimers at the top of this post about what I'm _NOT_ asking for. ### Update: I realize that I did not provide very concrete parameters for what I deem a successful \"answer\" to my question(s). I think the question is very vague, and could warrant a number of \"correct\" answers. After a reasonable amount of time I will select the answer that fits the following attributes:   * Explains the _why_ behind their answer   * Can speak from some level of experience (be it hiring/interacting with or being someone who has/is in my shoes)   * Is concise but thorough, gives broad principles preferably coupled with specific examples   * Lastly, considering the length that matching the above would seem to require, please make it a good well communicated answer that's pleasant to read. Others who may be interested in this in the future I would hope would be entertained as well as educated by the response. So there are some parameters for \"correct\". They're very high I think, but I've designed them as kind of an outline for what I envision the \"best\" answer would be. Obviously given enough time I'll select the closest matching response as the \"answer\". * * *               (1) - I worked on a prior version of this website, and while we did not have an explicit            conversation about it, I felt that I was not able to do very well at all (this can be            evidenced by the fact that they have since changed their website entirely)     (2) - Firstly, yes, it's a real product (even though I'm writing this post in Chrome...), and           it kicks ass. Secondly, I was a high school intern developer in test, wrote proof of            concept code for some of the new features for IE8... so it was a while ago.     (3) - At the time of this posting I am the developer who wrote this app, I am no longer           responsible for it's code base     (4) - My internship will start in June of 2012, and I'll be working in the Web Store            team."}
{"_id": "123074", "title": "SQL Triggers and when or when not to use them.", "text": "When I was originally learning about SQL I was always told, only use triggers if you really need to and opt to use stored procedures instead if possible. Now unfortunately at the time (a good few years ago) I wasn't as curious and caring about fundamentals as I am now so never did ask to the reason why. What's the communities opinion in this? Is it just someone's personal preference, or should triggers be avoided (just like cursors) unless there is a good reason for them."}
{"_id": "49990", "title": "What are the technical contributions of the pornography industry?", "text": "I recently read that the pornography industry contributed to technical innovation. What the heck are they talking about? Do these companies have R&D budgets?"}
{"_id": "206197", "title": "Is it appropriate to have positive comments in code reviews, or is it exclusively for constructive criticism?", "text": "I have been doing a lot of code review lately, and I am unsure of the positive and negative effects and professionalism of putting positive and/or funny comments in code reviews. We use Github as our code review platform on my team, so the comments are viewable by anyone. I generally try to use this platform so the entire process from start to finish is visible and historical."}
{"_id": "219644", "title": "Add behavior without changing existing class", "text": "I have a class `Container`, which represents wrapper around `std::list`. This class contains following public methods:   * `void add(Shape *item)`   * `void next()`   * `void setBegin()`   * `Shape* curr()` and protected variables   * `std::list <Shape*> _container`   * `std::list <Shape*>::iterator _iter` Now I need add sorting of Container without changing existing class code. Which pattern should I use? I think, that Decorator is most appropriate pattern in this case. Should I redesign class Container?"}
{"_id": "226529", "title": "In iOS, y-axis starts from the top and grows downward. It is the opposite to OSX. What is the rationale and technical advantage behind this change?", "text": "In iOS, the coordinate (0, 0) means the top left corner. In OSX it is the bottom left corner. What is the Apple's rationale or technical advantage of this coordinate system?"}
{"_id": "254750", "title": "How is it possible that facial recognition software can work, but a reCAPTCHA can't be solved by a computer", "text": "If software can be built to recognize faces and match those faces to names, then how is that CAPTCHA works? Recognizing letters seems a lot easier than matching faces."}
{"_id": "219649", "title": "Splitting object definitions (catalog) from instances (physical objects)", "text": "I am wondering if there is a design pattern for such problem: Let's say we are building a web shop for a doors and windows manufacturer, where customer has a catalog (list) of products, from which he can choose some and customize them, before placing an order. Each product has it's properties defined, like name, price, description. Obviously, the customer is not allowed to change any of these properties. But there is a space to customize the product. When he chooses a window, then he can choose it's colour, dimensions, perhaps a color of glass and choose some additional features. When he chooses doors, then he can choose a color, dimension, but also a type of the lock. First idea that came to my mind is:   1. Create products definitions classes (WindowDefintion, DoorsDefinition), which hold information about the name, price, description. These are listed in a catalog   2. Create product instances classes (Window, Doors), which hold reference to the product, but also add customizable fields, which are specific to certain instance. Disadvantages are perhaps silly, because it is mostly about creating a definition class for each instance class, but this involves more doubled amount of database tables and repositiories as well. I was just wondering if there is some other solution? This example is not the case. I am using it to ease understanding of the problem. In the case, products don't have a good common generalization, which a Product would give in this case (good for having name, description and price properties)."}
{"_id": "226524", "title": "How to handle affinities?", "text": "Assume we have an abstract class having several concrete classes which interfaces publish an information under several equivalent forms, with the difference that each class has a preferred form which can be consulted at no cost while consulting the others might require a time-consuming computation. How to implement a strategy selecting an algorithm based on this \u201caffinity\u201dof one class for one information form? ## Example The original example is a complicated example of a very specialised field, so I will do my best to figure out an example that will be familiar to most programmers. Assume we have an abstract class representing I/O devices which has two concrete subclasses, one for char-based devices and one for block-based devices. Each class provides block-based access and cahr-based access, but each class has an affinity to one of these methods: block-based access is preferred for block-based devices, etc. Say, we want to implement a copy procedure, so that, if the source and the target devices are block-based then the copy is performed block-per-block, in all other cases, a char-by-char approach is preferred. ## Discussion Assume now we have not only I/O devices but several abstract classes offers access to several logically equivalent methods, but whose implementation differ greatly in perormance, thus displaying a greater affinity to one method over the others. We want to implement a strategy working on an aggregate of such classes and selecting an algorithm taking the affinities of these classes into account. Because of the combinatoric complexity brought by the aggregate, the visitor- pattern does not seem useful here. ## Question How can each concrete class expose its affinity for one or the other access method in a way that is useful to a strategy component picking up an algorithm suited to these affinities? The combinatorics yield a large number of combinations of affinities and the strategy only needs to consider a few \u201clucky cases\u201dand use a generic algorithm to handle the vast majority of combinations."}
{"_id": "254753", "title": "if else brackets on same line, best comment style?", "text": "I used to do this:               // If the cat is black     if ( $catColor == 'black' )      {       ...     }     // Otherwise eat a taco     else     {       ...     }      But I've more recently started to move toward this style of conditional statements:               if ( something ) {       ...     } else {       ...     }      But now, where is the best place to put a comment for my else block?               if ( something ) {       ...     // Otherwise...     } else {       ...     }      That just looks weird cause its in the if block. Only other alternative is               if ( something ) {       ...     } else { // Otherwise       ...     }      But that looks/feels weird. What is the best approach to comments with this style of conditional blocks?"}
{"_id": "126645", "title": "When should I invalidate a cache of a user's credentials?", "text": "We develop a Windows client application that locally caches a user's credentials for connecting to our server application using the **Windows Credential Management API**. **Our caching logic works in the following way:**   1. The user opens the application and **selects a server** in the UI. It then queries the server for authentication requirements. (If no credentials are needed, then we just connect without authentication.)   2. The application **reads the cache** to see if there are cached credentials.   3. If there are **existing cached credentials** , they are used. Otherwise, the Windows API is used to bring up a **dialog box**.   4. The application attempts to **authenticate with the server** using the credentials.   5. If the connection is a success, then the credentials used are **cached for the lifetime of the Windows session** (this is a feature of the Windows API). Otherwise, we **clear the cache** and return to step 3. **The question is: are there other valid situations where the credential cache should be cleared?** In other words, what would you consider to be best practices on how to manage the lifetime and invalidation logic for this potentially sensitive information? _(Since I will probably be asked, the information we store using this API is encrypted using our own encryption logic, and stored in memory via SecureString. No doubt there are potential holes in this approach, but that is for another discussion.)_"}
{"_id": "212611", "title": "Developer failing developer interviews", "text": "I'm a Java developer, mostly doing Spring stuff. I understand the patterns, OOP, bean injection, multithreading and everything that goes with it. I don't feel like I'm a bad developer, I get my stuff done. So let's say I go to some developer interview. It shouldn't be a problem to get a job, right. No. I go on an interview, and usually I pass the interview where they ask about my dreams, salary and all that personality stuff. Then they give me a technical assignment, something to program, some tricky question, a codility test in limited time. I fail. I get below average results. I don't understand why? Am I that bad? It even pisses me off, that I have to prove myself and fail. In general I've been programming for four years. It's not like I'm writing some crap, that barely somehow works; it's structured. I got the current job by showing something I had done in my spare time, and it impressed. It's impossible for me to get a developer job by passing all those tricky hoops. Also, the actual work is not that hard, all the sorting algorithms, cryptography and somewhat difficult problems are usually encapsulated. Why are the interviewers asking you to do something you did once back in university many years ago? Is this normal? Is there something I can do to improve myself? How do I get the job?"}
{"_id": "158112", "title": "How to distribute a web app (that's hosted by the customer)", "text": "We're developing a web app that visualizes financial data. We have our first customer, but hope to get more. The terms are that   1. the customers pay a setup fee, to customize the app for their needs   2. the customers pay a monthly fee to license the app   3. the customers install and host the app on their own servers (Some details: the server just requires a simple node.js installation. There is no database required. Everything is easily installed via npm. All the modules used a open source.) Our source code is not public, but it doesn't need to be obfuscated or hidden from the customer. My Questions:   1. How should we distribute the source code to customers? GitHub seems logical, with the idea that customers just use git to deploy and update. But a customer should only have access to the source code with the customizations made for them \u2013 not for other customers. What's a good approach to setting up repositories for distributing these different versions? Where do those live in relation to the development branch?   2. How do we go about licensing the code? That's a big question. Hopefully not too big. Partial answers or links to articles are welcomed. Thanks..."}
{"_id": "127510", "title": "Best practices for moving large MS Access application towards .Net?", "text": "We have a really huge MS Access application developed in-house initially for our personal needs which then was turned into a commercial software and successfully sold. The software is a sort of \"all-round-software-for-your- business\" and contains several modules including Document Management System, Enterprise Resource Planning, Inventory Management, Customer Relationship Management, Data Analysis etc. We are quite satisfied with the current functionality of the application, but in order to meet the requests from our clients we realize that we have to move to something new. We decided to gradually move our application towards .Net because we can stick to Visual Basic .Net: even though it is a new language for most of the developers here, we have deep knowledge of VBA and several dozen small projects implemented in VB6. We already started moving the data layer functionality of our application to MS SQL Server, so that every data manipulation and search is performed directly on the server. What we are looking for are best practices for gradually moving our extensive GUI (about 500-600 different forms including subforms, about 200 reports with multi-language support etc). Following the recent request from our potential customer to implement asynchronous data encryption on documents in DMS we would be also happy to completely decouple this part from MS Access and implement it in .Net. The question is how to seamlessly integrate the .Net application with the existing MS Access system, so that we can invoke it with certain parameters (user rights etc.) and enable data exchange between this application and running MS Access application. * * * **EDIT:** We tried to apply some practices from Martin Fowler's book \"Enterprise intergration patterns\" to achieve some integration between the MS Access application and some small utilities we implemented in .Net for various needs. But we only managed to use the \"shared database\" pattern and weren't really satisfied with our solution. For instance, we implemented a small utility running as a Windows service which automatically downloads all messages from the mail server using POP3 connection and stores them into one table, whereas all attachments are stored in file system. What we mainly did is we used ADO.NET to directly access MS Access databases in MDB format and populate table with some processed data (like the data about mail messages from the example above: we have fields for FROM, TO, CC, BCC, Subject and Body). **There is absolutely no problem to work with MDB data format from .Net** , moreover we don't want to stay with MDB and upsized almost everything to MS SQL Server 2008 -- this gives us much more freedom concerning the data management and scalability. The main problem here is that **we don't know how to implement a sort of \"callback\"** in Access so that we can trigger the execution of certain VBA code on data update. We had great hopes with MS Access 2010 supporting **update and insert triggers for data tables** , but it turned out that we can only use MS Access Macros for these triggers and there is no way to execute any custom VBA code within the trigger. We also tried some solutions with **sending keystrokes directly to MS Access window** to mimick some user-invoked data requery. This works, but we don't think this is a realiable solution that can be used in production. We also looked into DDE for MS Access, but **we couldn't find any good sample solution implementing DDE commands** and using them for in-memory data and command exchange. So, the main problem is to have MS Access and .Net application co-exist and interact with each other. **EDIT2** : I forgot to mention what **we also implemented MSMQ library in VBA** for message passing between .Net and MS Access, the problem was again the lack of callback here: we really had to poll the queue for new messages and given that VBA does not really support multi-threading it wasn't really a nice solution."}
{"_id": "214754", "title": "Alternatives to Pessimistic Locking in Cluster Applications", "text": "I am researching alternatives to database-level pessimistic locking to achieve transaction isolation in a cluster of `Java` applications going against the same database. Synchronizing concurrent access in the application tier is clearly not a solution in the present configuration because the same database transaction can be invoked from multiple JVMs concurrently. Currently, we are subject to occasional `race conditions` which, due to the `optimistic locking` we have in place via `Hibernate`, cause a `StaleObjectStateException` exception and data loss. I have a moderately large transaction within the scope of my refactoring project. Let's describe it as updating one top-level table row and then making various related inserts and/or updates to several of its child entities, each being one-to-many. I would like to insure exclusive access to the top-level table row and all of the children to be affected but I would like to stay away from pessimistic locking at the database level for performance reasons mostly. Does it make sense to start a single (perhaps synchronous) message queue application into which this method could be moved to insure synchronized access as opposed to each cluster node using its own, which is a clear race condition hazard? I am mentioning this approach even though I am not confident in it because both the top-level table row and its children could also be updated from other system calls, not just the mentioned transaction. So I am seeking to design a solution where the top-level table row and its children will all somehow be pseudo-locked (exclusive transaction isolation) but at the application and not the database level. I am open to ideas and suggestions, I understand this is not a very cut and dried challenge."}
{"_id": "127512", "title": "When must arbitrary precision arithmetic functions be used in PHP?", "text": "My colleague uses the Binary Calculator functions in bandwidth calculations; as much as terrabytes, and with percentage splitting on allocation. His usage of these functions appears correct in order not to lose a byte; although he seems to be using them now for everything. The manual only says: > For arbitrary precision mathematics PHP offers the Binary Calculator which > supports numbers of any size and precision, represented as strings. How much is any size? Is it really necessary? How big is the default float in PHP? Are there any good advice regarding this or things to keep in mind?"}
{"_id": "245102", "title": "Guidance on connecting a common database to several instances of the same application", "text": "I'm looking for advice regarding a future development of mine, concerning a application that may be run in several machines that need to use and manipulate the same data. As this sounds somewhat vague let me elaborate on it. Picture a desktop application where the user manages information about clients, appointments, client history and what not. Now assume a handful of users using the same application in different machines need to use the same data mentioned. I believe the best way to tackle this situation would be storing the database in a central location, provided an API (REST for example) is in place to be used by every application instance. Assuming there could be about 5 to 10 application instances running requests on the database. Would this be the best way to go about providing low response time reply to requests by each instance? Does anyone know of something better or if this is the best way to go. What suggestions, advise, guidance, best practices, do and don't do would you tell me about. Thanks. **EDIT: Question clarification and its context on the application** The development will be composed of a client application that will connect to a server application, initially the client application will be a desktop application, however, future web and mobile client applications may be also developed if the user baseline demonstrates such desire. This is yet a basic sketch of how things might be since we still iron out the edges. The client application will be composed pretty much by the user interface and client server end to end communication. The server application will be devised in three layers:   * Service layer: This layer provides means by which the clients issue requests to the server and replies are sent back. Additionally this layer also acts as a client to other third party services like email (SMTP) and text message delivery (SMS Gateway) when clients request such actions.   * Logic layer: Business logic regarding requests issued by the clients is processed here.   * Data layer: Where database operations are performed. My doubt is about the service layer when connecting with client applications, I believe I should develop my own communication protocol with sockets and serialized objects to reduce the time it takes the client to reconnect with the server to issue new requests. The time I'm referring too is the time it would normally take for a regular HTTP request to perform an handshake before sending the request to the server like a regular REST API anyone would access via a web server. Should I develop my own connection protocol with a persistent socket connection and serialized objects being exchanged or go with a regular REST API. Some clients might send many requests one after the other for hours, but yet others might send a couple requests and that would be the end of it. I'm undecided on the path I should follow here, REST or a custom socket connection protocol like mentioned before? **UPDATE: Socket will be the way to go.** We have chosen to create a custom communication protocol with sockets and keep alive available when the client application notices high demand on part of the user, this also allows us to have clearer view of which clients are connected and maintains a open channel with the client application, which might be useful for feature upgrades in the future."}
{"_id": "245103", "title": "Showing a View from another View in MVP", "text": "This question is regarding MVP triads. Lets say I have two triads and first one has `View1`, `Mode1` and `Presenter1`. Second triad has `View2`, `Model2` and `Presenter2`. Now what I trying to do is, I just want to display the `View2` when I click a `button` in `View1`. You'd show the `View1` calling it's presenter's show method.               View1Presenter presenter1 = new View1Presenter (view1, Model1);     presenter1.show();      Now When I click `btnShowView2` button on the `View1`, it should display the `View2`. So how to call `presenter2.show()` from `View1`?"}
{"_id": "214753", "title": "TotalPhase Aardvark driver's GPL license", "text": "I'm using an SPI host adapter for a project. The Aardvark from TotalPhase. And I did something crazy, I read that EULA license that everyone just clicks through. The driver installation license includes these bits: > This driver installer package also includes a WIN32 driver that is entirely > based on the libusb-win32 project (release 0.1.10.1). > > ... > > LICENSE: > > The software in this package is distributed under the following licenses: > > Driver: GNU General Public License (GPL)   >  Library, Test Files: GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Now, my understanding of of the GPL is that it's sticky and viral. If you include software then the whole project has to be released under the GPL (if you distribute it, you can do whatever you want with in-house projects). If the driver was like the library, and was licensed under the LGPL, it could be used by my closed source proprietary project, as long as it's source and license was passed along with it. But it's not, it's pure GPL. If I include this driver in my project and distribute it, am I required to release my project under the GPL?"}
{"_id": "127517", "title": "Get attribution when other people use my code", "text": "I have this portfolio website containing some personal projects/algorithm implementations. I want to get attribution if and when other people use my code or snippets of it. I initially thought of using Creative Commons but, as CC itself points out, CC doesn't fit well with software/code distributions. I would've used CC0 but CC0 does not enforce attribution. So, is there a way for me to enforce attribution on my code ala CC? Including a copy of a FOSS license with every code distribution I have seems overkill--- the license itself might be longer than some of my codes. Will copyright claims on top of source codes work if I say there that attribution is required?"}
{"_id": "154822", "title": "Does it work when a developer is the project manager's boss?", "text": "I am in the planning stage of a project and I am looking to hire a project manager. I would like to do some coding and keep eye on all parts of the project. However, i have a feeling that a project manager will get better results. I have the following options: 1) manage the project and not code 2) hire a project manager and code myself I am worried that the project manager will feel impeded by having the project owner in the development team. If I run the project, the team might fall apart causing the project to fail. To stick within budget, I have to be involved in one capacity or another. Does anyone have experience with this situation, any suggestions? more info: 4 in-house developers each responsible for a specific area. The developers can also outsource work if agreed to by the project manager."}
{"_id": "154824", "title": "Integrated ads in phone apps - how to avoid wasting battery?", "text": "Considering the PCWorld review that came out in March: > ### Free Android Apps Packed with Ads are Major Battery Drains > > ...Researchers from Purdue University in collaboration with Microsoft claim > that third-party advertising in free smartphone apps can be responsible for > as much as 65 percent to 75 percent of an app's energy consumption... Is there a best practice for integrating advert support into mobile applications, so as to not drain user battery too much? > ...When you fire up Angry Birds on your Android phone, the researchers found > that the core gaming component only consumes about 18 percent of total app > energy. The biggest battery suck comes from the software powering third- > party ads and analytics accounting for 45 percent of total app energy, > according to the study... Has anyone invoked better ways of keeping away from the \"3G Tail\", as the report puts it? Is it better/possible to download a large set of adverts that are cached for a few hours, and using them to populate your ad space, to avoid constant use of the Wi-Fi/3G radios? Are there any best practices for the inclusion of adverts in mobile apps?"}
{"_id": "160844", "title": "Should I take help of Internet and other programmers or I should do all programming myself?", "text": "I am a developer in a good company. I was given a task by my company to accomplish within a week however I finished the same in 4 days, my boss, the client, and other team members all are happy by my work; even I was! However suddenly I got a thought in my mind: \"For my work I took some code from internet and mixed it up with my programming and gave the result faster however, my worry is that I should have done the task all of my own so that I would have a better understanding of it (even which was taken from internet)\". Can anyone tell me if I am ruining my programming career this way (I mean by using others code)?"}
{"_id": "241324", "title": "WPF properties memory management", "text": "I'm trying to build binding system similar to the one that is used in WPF and I ran into some memory leaking problems, so here comes my question - how is memory managed in WPF property system? From what I know in WPF values of `DependencyProperties` are stored in external containers - what I wanna know is how are they collected when `DependencyObject` dies? Simplest solution would be to store them is some weak reference dictionary - but here comes the main problem I ran into - when there is a listener on property that needs reference to its (this property) parent it holds it (the parent) alive (when value of weak reference dictionary points somewhere, even indirectly, to key - it can't be collected). How is it avoided in WPF without the need of using weak references everywhere?"}
{"_id": "244850", "title": "User Story or User Stories for this specific requirement", "text": "I have to write a user story for a requirement that involves passing search filters to the same URI and retrieving corresponding results. I have 5 filters. I plan to write 5 different stories of type: As a URI user I can search by #filter1 so that I can retrieve results based on #filter1. And then a 6th story that involves searching one or more or all six filters in conjunction. Is this is a sensible route to take?"}
{"_id": "207827", "title": "Does a programming language increase/decrease value?", "text": "Let's say you develop a software program for Windows in C#, then Joe Blow develops the same software program for Windows but instead codes it using C++. If Joe Blow were to sell that software program, what would determine who would get more money for it given the different languages? Assuming, both used the same licensing system and the only difference between the programs was the source code."}
{"_id": "207824", "title": "What is the proper way to store an object with many attributes in Objective-C?", "text": "I have an object that I am downloading over HTTP, that has approximately 50 attributes. What is the proper way to store this information in Objective-C? Should I have an NSObject with a property for each attribute (if so, what would be a good way to initialize this object?)? Should I use an NSDictionary with 50 key-value pairs?"}
{"_id": "3272", "title": "Job hopping, is it a problem?", "text": "How would you, as someone involved in the hiring process (manager,interviewer, etc) feel about a candidate that has changed jobs every 1-2 years? **update**   Thanks for all the input everybody, some really great responses, and good info in every post. I asked it because I'm currently at my 3 job in the last 5 years and I'm feeling like my position is going nowhere (like the position should have been contract in the first place, not full-time). My only options here seem like transition to a different team doing something I'm not really interested in or look for new work, but I'm a little afraid my recent job history is all short stints."}
{"_id": "213259", "title": "What's is the point of PImpl pattern while we can use interface for the same purpose in C++?", "text": "I see a lot of source code which using PImpl idiom in C++. I assume Its purpose is to hide the private data/type/implementation, so it can remove dependence, and then reduce compile time and header include issue. But interface/pure-abstract classes in C++ also have this capability, they can also be used to hide data/type/implementation. And to let the caller just see the interface when creating an object, we can declare a factory method in the interface's header. The comparison is:   1. **Cost** : The interface way cost is lower, because you don't even need to repeat the public wrapper function implementation `void Bar::doWork() { return m_impl->doWork(); }`, you just need to define the signature in the interface.   2. **Well understood** : The interface technology is better understood by every C++ developer.   3. **Performance** : Interface way performance not worse than PImpl idiom, both an extra memory access. I assume the performance is same. Following is the pseudocode to illustrate my question:               // Forward declaration can help you avoid include BarImpl header, and those included in BarImpl header.     class BarImpl;     class Bar     {     public:         // public functions         void doWork();     private:         // You don't need to compile Bar.cpp after changing the implementation in BarImpl.cpp         BarImpl* m_impl;     };      The same purpose can be implemented using interface:               // Bar.h     class IBar     {     public:         virtual ~IBar(){}         // public functions         virtual void doWork() = 0;     };          // to only expose the interface instead of class name to caller     IBar* createObject();      So what's the point of PImpl?"}
{"_id": "241378", "title": "Is it realistic to test web application with tomcat while production server are using WebSphere?", "text": "In our company we use WebSphere Application Server to hold web application but it is not available for developers because of license issue. We have been using Tomcat to test the web application and hope that it works fine with WebSphere on production phase. I would like to adapt spring framework into our POJO web application servlet with oracle JDBC and I am not sure of how much WebSphere support spring framework. I checked with the IBM site and it seems not realistic to test web application with tomcat because there are some pitfalls in using spring in WebSphere as a container. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0609_alcott/0609_alcott.html P.S. I have no experience in using spring or any java framework."}
{"_id": "241373", "title": "Algorithm for flattening overlapping ranges", "text": "I am looking for a nice way of flattening (splitting) a list of potentially- overlapping numeric ranges. The problem is very similar to that of this question: Fastest way to split overlapping date ranges, and many others. However, the ranges are not only integers, and I am looking for a decent algorithm that can be easily implemented in Javascript or Python, etc. **Example Data:** ![Example data](http://i.stack.imgur.com/NRAkh.png) **Example Solution:** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HP8Ri.png) Apologies if this is a duplicate, but I am yet to find a solution."}
{"_id": "241377", "title": "Jasmine BDD vs Integration Tests", "text": "Let's say I need to write a test for the front end, in the following BDD style:               A user visits buysomething.com,      saves something to their wishlist,      and a saved item count is updated.       The result of the test is that DOM gets manipulated. In my heart I feel this is better suited as an integration test - but my team is currently using jasmine to load fixtures and test such interactions. This can lead to brittle tests as they are reliant on a static fixtures instead of the actual markup. Are we misusing Jasmine here?"}
{"_id": "241376", "title": "Storing primary keys of objects in Redis and then querying them in Postgres through Django", "text": "This is probably my second time posting in programmers. I'm usually on stackoverflow but this question is more fit for the community here. All suggestions, advice and insight on this matter is extremely appreciated. I require you're brutal honesty as well. If you think what I'm currently doing in terms of design is really stupid, TELL ME! because I'm a self-taught back- end software engineer and I can use all the advice I can get. I use Django, Redis & PostgreSQL. Let's say for example I have a User, Post & Location model.               #models.py     from django.db import models     from django.contrib.auth.models import User          class Post(models.Model):             user = models.ForeignKey(User)             media_url = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True)             related_location = models.ForeignKey('Location')          class Location(models.Model):             name = models.CharField(max_length=200, blank=True)             address = models.CharField(max_length=255, blank=True)             city = models.CharField(max_length=140, blank=True)      Great, now that's out of the way, let's say users wanted to see all the posts tagged at a certain location. This location has an ID of 1812. The normal way of doing this is to make a simple query and return posts where the related_location has an ID of 1812. I would paginate the results so that user will see 10 objects at a time. If they want to see more, they need to make another request. I used to do things this way, until recently I've had the scare of databases growing potentially large and queries becoming really slow. So I decided to create indexes on Redis for each Location object. For example, let's say posts 7, 33, 18, 12, 89, 56500, 34000, 30 we're all tagged at location 1812. I would create a Redis List called 'location:1812' and in that list, it would contain the IDs of all the posts that we're tagged there, in this case redislist = [7, 33, 18, 12, 89, 56500, 34000, 30]. I would then take this list and query against it:               queryset = Post.objects.filter(pk__in = redislist).order_by('-pk')      Is this a smart thing to do? Immediately I began to think of the pros and cons of the approach. For one, queries to the DB would be faster since I already know which objects I need to grab. However, in terms of design, is it worth it? For something like unique location objects, that table in postgres alone can grow infinitely large (Can have over a billion rows). Storing a list for each location object in Redis can be costly (memory running out). So it all comes down to this. Is the DB good enough, or should I continue doing what I am doing?"}
{"_id": "192121", "title": "Are database developers considered under DBA jobs?", "text": "This isn't career advice, this is more of a question of logistics. When looking at job market and such there is a lower than what I think would be out there of database admins but I'm curious if database admins actually include strictly database developers, or of database developers are more under a blanket term \"Programmers\" or \"Software Developers\"? Like someone who enjoys programming SQL/Queries/Stored Procedures and such but probably knows some about settings a database up and such? Would this be under the DBA term or something else? (Since I haven't seen any reports for Database Developer in \"job market forecasts\" and such)"}
{"_id": "174825", "title": "How does a browser determine that a script has run for too long?", "text": "How does a browser determine that a script has run for too long ? Is it actually configurable through some advanced settings ?"}
{"_id": "174826", "title": "How does font rendering actually work?", "text": "I realize that I know essentially nothing about the way fonts get rendered in my computer. From what I can observe, font rendering is generally made in a consistent way throughout the system. For instance, the subpixel font hinting settings that I configure in my DE control panel have influence on text which appears on window borders, in my browser, in my text editor and so on. (I should observe that some Java applications show a noticeable difference, so I guess they are using a different font rendering mechanism). What I get from the above is that probably all applications that need font rendering make use of some OS (or DE)-wide library. On the other hand, browsers usually manage their own rendering through a rendering engine, that takes care of positioning various items - including text - according to specific flow rules. I am not sure how these two facts are compatible. I would assume that the browser would have to ask the OS to draw a glyph at a given position, but how can it manage the flow of text without knowing beforehand how much space the glyph will take? Are there separate calls to determine the glyph sizes, so that the browser can manage the flow as if characters were little boxes that are later filled in by the OS? (Although this does not take care of kerning). Or is the OS responsible for drawing a whole text area, including text flow? Does the OS return the rendered glyph as a bitmap and leaves it to the application to draw that on the screen?"}
{"_id": "81548", "title": "How should a programmer prepare for a new job?", "text": "I have just graduated from college and have about 2 months time before I start working at the company. I have experience in C, C++, Java and a bit of Android (developed an app last summer, stopped working on that later). I just want to learn something new while improving on my basic C , C++ and Java skills. I really need some advice on what I should start learning so that I will be able to work on whatever is given when I start my job... or in the sense that helps me improve from my present level... or that helps me understand things much better, assists me in getting a good understanding of things, etc."}
{"_id": "81545", "title": "Educational, well-written FOSS projects to read, study or discuss", "text": "Before you say it: yes, this \"question\" has been asked other times. However, I could not fine many of such questions and not that easily, and those I found had similar results. What I'm trying to say that there are no comprehensive lists of well written Open Source projects, so I decided to set some requirements for the entries (one or possibly more):   * **Idiomatic** use of the language in which they are written   * The project should be **lightweight**. Not as in \"a few kbs\", as in \"clean\" and possibly following the UNIX philosophy, making an efficient use of resources and performing its duty and nothing more. **No code bloat** , most importantly. Projects like Firefox and GNOME wouldn't qualify, for example.   * Minimal reliance on external, non-standard libraries, with exceptions for some common FOSS libraries (curses, Xlib, OpenGL and possibly \"usual suspects\" like gtk+, webkit and Boost). Reliance on well-written libraries is welcome.   * **No** reliance on **proprietary** software - for obvious reasons (programs that rely on XNA, DirectX, Cocoa and similar, for example).   * **Well-documented** code is welcome. Include link to web interfaces to their repositories if possible. Here are some sample projects that often pop up in these threads: _**Operating Systems_**   * Plan 9 from Bell Labs: More or less, the official \"sequel\" to UNIX. Written in C by the same people who invented C!    * NetBSD: The most portable BSD implementation, written in C and also a good example of portable and organized code.  _**Network and Databases_**   * Sqlite: Extremely lightweight and extremely efficient, one of the best pieces of C software I've seen. Count the lines yourself!   * Lighttpd: A small but pretty reliable web server written in C. _**Programming languages and VMs_**   * Lua: extremely lightweight multi-paradigm programming language. Written in C.    * Tiny C Compiler: Really tiny C compiler. Not really comparable to GCC or Clang but does its job.   * PyPy: A Python implementation written in Python.    * Pharo: OK, I admit it, I'm not really a Smalltalk expert but Pharo is a fork of Squeak and looked rather interesting.   * Stackless Python \\- An implementation of Python that doesn't rely on the C call stack - written in C (with some parts in Python) _**Games and 3D:_**   * Angband: One of the most accessible roguelike codebases around here, written in C.   * Ogre3D: Cross-platform 3D engine. Gets bloated if you don't skip the platform-specific implementation code, otherwise is a pretty solid example of good C++ OO.    * Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection: Title says it all. _**Other_** \\- dwm: Lightweight window manager. Written in C. _**Emulation and Reverse Engineering_** \\- Bochs: x86 emulator, written in C++ and tiny enough. \\- MAME: If you want to see C at one of its lowest levels, MAME is for you. May not be as clean as the other projects but it can teach you A LOT. Before you ask: I didn't mention Linux because it has become quite bloated in the last few years, Linus has also confirmed it. Nonetheless, it'd be a great educational read the same, even if for other reasons. Same for GCC."}
{"_id": "124890", "title": "How do you code without offending?", "text": "What I mean by that is, how do you go about developing on a code base you share with developers who have been working on it for years and are very familiar with it? I don't want to step on anyones toes, but I get not so subtle complaints about the way I do things, whether it be how I whitespace my code, or how frequently I checkin to SVN (too often). So while I can change those things easily -- I want to be a better team developer in general. I'm not sure what to do, other than ask, but maybe you guys have some thoughts I could put to practice. **UPDATE** There isn't any style guide to speak of -- it's just people aren't used to sharing the codebase. Everyone has their own little siloed code-world. This is a perl shop, but I'm sure these apply to any language **UPDATE 2** The CTO who later became CEO was a complete megalomaniac and was the primary source of these complaints. If you didn't do things exactly how he liked, whether it was using a Mac, or Emacs, or 4 tab spaces instead of 2, or dress a certain way, you were inferior. It was a horrific situation that I tried to correct, but the only correct answer for me was leaving. I am convinced that this was an instance of **bullying** in a workplace, and subsequently, I'm more aware of what might be subtle bullying and inappropriate behavior in a work environment. **To any developer looking for answers to a situation like this, leave immediately. You can't teamwork your way out of a bad team situation.**"}
{"_id": "96454", "title": "Is adding Ad Hoc reporting to an application worth the effort?", "text": "We have an application which collects a lot of data and has reporting baked in to it. The first iteration was a Crystal Reports integration which worked nicely. Create the report in Crystal Report designer and then import the RPT file into the application. This worked nice but users needed the application to run a report and additionally users couldn't create a report. We added filters, sorters, and groupings so that RPT file was customizable, but they couldn't create one from scratch. The second interation was a web based solution using SSRS, SSAS, and the report builder tool from Microsoft. This required some database work and some work to get the cubes up and running from the OLTP schema, but in the end, it was much easier to create rollup reports. However, we still have to create the reports using the report builder tool, publish then out, etc. We also added filters, sorters, and groupers to make it \"customizable\". In both of these sceanarios we have about 30 to 50 out of the box reports created over time. Now there is some discussion about adding ad hoc reports so that users can create a report from scratch on the fly. Now our data model is very complex and requires a good working knowledge of it to make sense of it. To do this at a minimum would require a good amount of work to get the data model into a schema that is \"more reportable\" and easier to understand. I don't think our application is suitable for ad hoc reporting (not worth the effort). Has anyone had any success with providing ad hoc reporting? What tool set did you use? Did it have an impact on the success of your application?"}
{"_id": "103247", "title": "Implementing technical paper algorithms in C++ or MATLAB", "text": "I am an Electrical Engineering undergrad. I've reading many technical papers about Signal and Image processing algorithms (reconstruction, segmentation, filtering, etc). Most of the algorithms shown in these papers are defined over continuous time and continuous frequency, and often give the solutions in terms of complicated equations. How would you implement a technical paper from scratch in C++ or MATLAB in order to replicate the results obtained in said paper? More specifically, I was looking at the paper \"A general cone-beam reconstruction algorithm\" by Wang et al (IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 1993;12(3):486-96), and I was wondering, how do I even start implementing their algorithm? Equation 10 gives you the formula of the reconstructed image at . How would you code that up? Would you have a for-loop going through each voxel and computing the corresponding formula? How would you code functions of functions in that formula? How would you evaluate functions at arbitrary points? I've read the book \"Digital Image Processing\" by Gonzalez and Woods but I'm still at a loss. I have also read about the Numerical Recipes book series. Would that be the correct way? What are your experiences programming algorithms from research papers? Any tips or suggestions?"}
{"_id": "65047", "title": "How do you choose to use a specific programming language?", "text": "I was having a small talk between teammates about how you choose a programming language for use in a project which lead me to think that there are many criteria to choose one in the beginning of a project but no real standard. Do you chose a programming language for the syntax and semantics? Or do you choose one because it has the best support to do certain things? Or because you have better libraries? Or do you choose it for the paradigm? What criteria do you use to choose one language when you are going to do a project?"}
{"_id": "96852", "title": "Develop on the lastest and greatest or stick with the well documented version?", "text": "Should I develop on the latest and greatest 1.7 version of Joomla or stick with the well documented version of 1.5? I'm new to Joomla (and webDev in general), so I bumble around, search online, and ask those wiser then myself. The problem is that the answers are for version 1.5, and don't apply to 1.7, so I'm floundering. Usually I'd go with using the latest and greatest.   * It should be supported longer   * It should have bug fixes    * New awesome things will be developed won't be backwards compatible   * The extensions and components for the old version won't be maintained  But I need to crank this site out in a month. And if I'm fighting bad or lacking documentation, it's going to be an uphill battle. So, stick with the latest and greatest or go install what all the tutorials, guides, and videos are geared towards?"}
{"_id": "16025", "title": "Why is OOP difficult?", "text": "When I started using an object-oriented language (Java), I pretty much just went \"Cool\" and started coding. I've never really thought about it until only recently after having read lots of questions about OOP. The general impression I get is that people struggle with it. Since I haven't thought of it as hard, and I wouldn't say I'm any genius, I'm thinking that I must have missed something or misunderstood it. Why is OOP difficult to understand? _Is_ it difficult to understand?"}
{"_id": "19030", "title": "Should I tell the interviewer I already know the answer to the question being asked?", "text": "In a programming interview if I am asked a question I already know the answer for, such as giving an algorithm for a particular problem. Should I disclose that to the interviewer? This issue only makes sense when there's a novelty aspect to the question. One example is \"How would you reverse each word in a string, but not their order?\". There also seems to be a division between easier stuff, that you are \"supposed\" to know, such as my example and harder more contrived problems. Whats your policy and rationale for dealing with this issue? If you are already familiar with the question/brainteaser, should you disclose this in addition to answering the question? Is there any ethical dilemma involved with not disclosing your prior knowledge of the question?"}
{"_id": "19031", "title": "Written communication skills courses, how important are they for developers?", "text": "We usually worry about coding standards, ethics, latest technology etc. But at times we tend to ignore our writing skills and communicating skills. Do we need to pursue a communication skills courses? Which ones do you prefer? Any online courses available which you might have tried?"}
{"_id": "60270", "title": "Gossip protocol in a Ring topology", "text": "I am implementing a gossip based membership detection mechanism. Lets say we have a ring topology, i.e. node1 only knows about the 2 nodes (node4 and node2) around it.                               node1                  -        -               -              -           node4              node2               -              -                 -         -                    node3      Now, gossiping says: Pick a node at random from the membership list. But, if we strictly follow the ring topology, then node1 should only try to gossip with node2 or node4. Other wise, only for communication the topology will become a clique rather than being a ring. Background: According to the Amazon dyanmo paper: > Each node contacts a peer chosen at random every second and the two nodes > efficiently reconcile their persisted membership change histories. If, that is the case, then is dynamo's implementation not following a \"true\" ring topology and only using ring for consistent hashing (replication) and using a clique for membership detection?"}
{"_id": "60272", "title": "Programming using an old computer(s)", "text": "Anybody still programming using old computers, e.g. ZX Spectrum BASIC, Amiga BASIC, dumb terminals? If so, do you find it useful for programming using today's technologies? Lastly why do you do it? For fun?"}
{"_id": "52361", "title": "SSD harddisks & programming", "text": "SSD harddisks have been on the rise lately. And I've been wondering if it's worth buying one as a programmer. Being able to save five minutes when starting my PC is fun but won't convince my boss. How does it impact a typical visual studio project containing hundreds of files? Compile times, accessing files, waiting for visual studio to do its thing... Are there any benchmarks that checked this? And ideally, how much time would one win each week by upgrading?"}
{"_id": "153698", "title": "For an ORM supporting data validation, should constraints be enforced in the database as well?", "text": "I have always applied constraints at the database level in addition to my (ActiveRecord) models. But I've been wondering if this is really required? **A little background** I recently had to unit test a basic automated timestamp generation method for a model. Normally, the test would create an instance of the model and save it without validation. But there are other required fields that aren't nullable at the in the table definition, meaning I cant save the instance even if I skip the ActiveRecord validation. So I'm thinking if I should remove such constraints from the db itself, and let the ORM handle them? **Possible advantages** if I skip constraints in db, imo -   * Can modify a validation rule in the model, without having to migrate the database.   * Can skip validation in testing. **Possible disadvantage?** If its possible that ORM validation fails or is bypassed, howsoever, the database does not check for constraints. What do you think? **EDIT** In this case, I'm using the Yii Framework, which generates the model from the database, hence database rules are generated also (though I could always write them post-generation myself too)."}
{"_id": "52366", "title": "What is the most complicated data structure you have used in a practical situation?", "text": "The germ for this question came up from a discussion I was having with couple of fellow developers from the industry. Turns out that in a lot of places project managers are wary about complex data structures, and generally insist on whatever exists out-of-the-box from standard library/packages. The general idea seems to be like use a combination of whats already available unless performance is seriously impeded. This helps keeping the code base simple, which to the non-diplomatic would mean \"we have high attrition, and newer ones we hire may not be that good\". So no bloom filter or skip-lists or splay trees for you CS junkies. So here's the question (again): Whats the most complicated data structure you did or used in office? Helps get a sense of how good/sophisticated real world software are."}
{"_id": "255137", "title": "higher order functions equivalent construct in TIOBE top 10 languages", "text": "I'm trying to find a language construct equivalent to higher order functions in the top 10 languages from TIOBE index. Here are my results so far:   1. **C** \\- function pointers   2. **Java** \\- anonymous methods, lambdas   3. **Objective-C** \\- function pointers, selectors, blocks, delegates (as explained here)   4. **C++** \\- function pointers, lambdas   5. **Basic** \\- [ _missing_ ]   6. **C#** \\- anonymous methods, delegates, lambdas   7. **Python** \\- [ _I know it's possible, but don't know how it's called_ ]   8. **PHP** \\- anonymous functions   9. **Perl** \\- [ _missing_ ]   10. **JavaScript** \\- functions Could You please help me with missing parts? And eventually correct any mistakes? I'm not looking for workarounds, but for built-in language constructs that allow to pass a function to another function."}
{"_id": "90859", "title": "How best to handle database refactoring within a team?", "text": "We are currently usign a roll-forward approach to DB changes, akin to `Migrations`, where each developer creates and checks in a script that promotes the latest version of the DB to a new state. Problems arise when multiple developers concurrently work on non-trivial tasks and end up making changes to the DB that interfere with each other. The 'non-trivial' bit is significant because if the tasks take long enough, and if DB changes occurr early enough in the cycle, neither dev ends up being aware of the other's changes, and we end up with either a DB merge nightmare (preferred case) or an inadvertently broken database. Can these situations be easily avoided? Are there database refactoring strategies that effectively handle the scenario of multiple developers actively changing the schema? If it matters, we use SQL Server."}
{"_id": "215482", "title": "What are the safety benefits of a type system?", "text": "In _JavaScript: The Good Parts_ by Douglas Crockford, he mentions in his inheritance chapter, > The other benefit of classical inheritance is that it includes the > specification of a system of types. This mostly frees the programmer from > having to write explicit casting operations, which is a very good thing > because when casting, the safety benefits of a type system are lost. So first of all, what actually is safety? protection against data corruption, or hackers, or system malfunctions, etc.? What are the safety benefits of a type system? What makes a type system different that allows it to provide these safety benefits?"}
{"_id": "222642", "title": "Are go-langs goroutine pools just green threads?", "text": "The commentator here offers the following criticism of green threads: > I was initially sold on the N:M model as a means of having event driven > programming without the callback hell. You can write code that looks like > pain old procedural code but underneath there's magic that uses userspace > task switching whenever something would block. Sounds great. The problem is > that we end up solving complexity with more complexity. swapcontext() and > family are fairly strait-forward, the complexity comes from other unintended > places. > > All of a sudden you're forced to write a userspace scheduler and guess what > it's really hard to write a scheduler that's going to do a better job that > Linux's schedules that has man years of efforts put into it. Now you want > your schedule to man N green threads to M physical threads so you have to > worry about synchronization. Synchronization brings performance problems so > you start now you're down a new lockless rabbit hole. Building a correct > highly concurrent scheduler is no easy task. Another critique is here: > A single process faking multiple threads has a lot of problems. One of them > is that all the faked threads stall on any page fault. My question is - **arego-lang's goroutines (for a default pool) just green threads? If so - do they address the criticisms above?**"}
{"_id": "90850", "title": "How to start with 2d or 3d modeling?", "text": "My goal is that i can show fractals either into a plane or an space... I thought opengl is the best beggining, but which is the best book oriented to \"maths\" and \"maths graphics\"?   1. Red book? http://www.opengl.org/documentation/red_book/   2. Opengl superbible? http://www.opengl.org/documentation/books/#opengl_superbible_4th_edition   3. Any other? And... can you suggest any IDE?"}
{"_id": "235008", "title": "What are security advantages of Google Caja over using the web worker API?", "text": "I am currently looking into Google Caja to run user-supplied JS code in the browser and in Node. So far, I understand, that, in a browser context, \"cajoled code\" disallows reading and messing with the window state by running unsafe code through a full-blown parser that gets rid of all kinds of attack vectors, and then safely executing that code in an `iframe` of the same origin. However, I am currently working on a solution using HTML5's `Worker` (see here) and it seems to have the same effect. What does Caja have to offer that Worker does not have, other than the ability to customize security policies? Does it have any additional safety features?"}
{"_id": "235009", "title": "Generics list without generics", "text": "I am using a very primitive Java that doesn't have Generics, and also I can't use reflection. I want to create a generic list so it would be typed safe (i.e. I only have a list that contains Objects and I want to create a list that contains specific object and not a mix). On the other hand I also don't want to create a different class for each possible list. Is there any other way to do that without the use of Generics?"}
{"_id": "235006", "title": "Managing deployment scripts in the process of continuous delivery", "text": "My question concerns **deployment scripts** in the process of **continuous delivery**. Continuous delivery recommends that deployment scripts should be versioned into SCM just as normal code.   * What is the best practice to avoid issues such as checking out (e.g. from Git) a script that does not have the right permission or is not executable?   * Also, where in the SCM repository should deployment scripts be located?"}
{"_id": "235007", "title": "Strategy for storing passwords/credentials in the context of continuous delivery", "text": "It is common sense not to store passwords/credentials into SCM. I would like to know then what would be a **good strategy for storing passwords/credentials** in the context of continuous delivery.   * Where and how do I store credentials?   * How do I retrieve and use those credentials/passwords?"}
{"_id": "155443", "title": "Is there a website where we can discuss and improve upon code snippets?", "text": "Is there a website where we can discuss and improve upon code snippets? For example, if I have written some function and want to know what others think of it."}
{"_id": "214284", "title": "What is exactly bug in the requirements?", "text": "I've just looked for a formal definition and haven't found one. The term - \"bug in the requirements\" was always confusing for me, what does mean exactly?"}
{"_id": "155446", "title": "Why #pragmas are not part of the C++ standard?", "text": "Usually the problem of having possible multiple inclusions is solved with a series of `#ifdef` `#ifndef` but the pragmas just solves this with a single line, apparently they are really useful and can make the code better in terms of readability. Why they are not part of the C++ and C standards? there is a better way to avoid multiple inclusions?"}
{"_id": "214281", "title": "Why does the instruction \"do\" require a \"while\"?", "text": "Since this statement is so common: `while (true)` (Java) or `while (1)` (C) or sometimes `for (;;)` Why is there not a single instruction for this? I could think that an instruction that could do it is just `do` but `do` requires a `while` at the end of the block but it would be more logical to write an infinite loop like this               do {          //loop forever          }      Why not? AFAIK the instruction `do` always requires a `while` at the end but if we could use it like above then it would be a clear way to define something like `while (true)` which I think should not be written like that (or `for (;;)`)."}
{"_id": "214280", "title": "Interview for job that uses skills you have no experience with?", "text": "I am currently employed as a software developer using C# and C++. However, I want to find a new job for personal reasons and applied for a job ad that listed PHP, CSS, and Javascript as the skills the company is looking for. I am interested in learning about PHP, CSS, Javascript. That company wants to interview me. However, I have very little experience with those so I don't know how to prepare. Is it likely that I won't even be asked questions about PHP, CSS, Javascript? What kinds of technical questions do you guys think I will be asked? To succeed, I just need to demonstrate that I am really eager to learn PHP, CSS, Javascript?"}
{"_id": "155448", "title": "How to implement an email unsubscribe system for a site with many kinds of emails?", "text": "I'm working on a website that features many different types of emails. Users have accounts, and when logged in they have access to a setting page that they can use to customize what types of emails they receive. However, I'd like to also give users an easy way to unsubscribe directly in the emails they receive. I've looked into list unsubscribe headers as well as creating some type of one click link that would unsubscribe a user from that type of email without requiring login or further action. The later would probably require me to break convention and make changes to the database in response to a GET on the link. However, am I incorrect in thinking that either of these would require me to generate and permanently store a unique identifier in my database for every email I ever send, really complicating email delivery? Without that, I'm not sure how I would be able to uniquely identify a user and a type of email in order to change their email preferences, and this identifier would need to be stored forever as a user could have an email sitting in their inbox for a long time before they decide to act on it. Alternatively, I was considering having a no-login page for managing email preferences. In contrast to above where I would need one of these identifiers for each email, this would only need one identifier per user, with no generation or other action required on sending an email. All of these raise security issues, and they could potentially be used by people to tamper with others' email preferences. This could be mitigated somewhat by ensuring that the identifier is really difficult to guess. For the once per user identifier approach, I was considering generating the identifier by passing a user's ID through some type of encryption algorithm, is this a sound approach? For the per-email identifiers, perhaps I could use a user's ID appended to the time. However, even this would not eliminate the problem entirely, as this would really just be security through obscurity, and anyone with the URL could tamper, and in the end the main defense would have to be that most people aren't so bored as to tamper with other people's email preferences. Are there any other alternatives I've missed, or issues or solutions with these that anyone can provide insight on? What are best practices in this area? **Edit:** Here is the alternative I missed for anyone coming across this later. The smart way to do this is to include in the unsubscribe link a cryptographic signature of the user to be unsubscribed and what they are to be unsubscribed from. Nothing at all needs to be stored in the database, while being on par with security with the solutions I'd been considering."}
{"_id": "69013", "title": "C# Certification possibilities?", "text": "I have been studying C# for about six months at University. I would like to have something to show for my work. I know the certification scene changes from month to month and I'd appreciate if anyone can give me advice on what certification options are available to me. Thank you very much for your time. Mariko"}
{"_id": "240427", "title": "What is the proper way to extract and pass parameters to call javascript functionality from my PHP page?", "text": "This is my situation: I have a search results page in PHP where most of the logic resides in a javascript file in order to avoid refreshing the page every time an action is performed. The first thing I do using PHP is filter out and save valid query string values to PHP variables and I make use of the htmlspecialchars function to prevent injection. Now, I'd like to call my javascript function using those variables, so I created a script tag at the bottom of the page in order to pass the PHP variables to it (see my example). When I put all of my javascript code inside of its own scope (as I read this was a good security practice), I realized that I could no longer call my function from outside of it. I also realize that the javascript method can still be called with anything a hacker wants, so does that mean I can't really make use of htmlspecialchars in my situation? Here's a stripped-down version of my code:               <?php     try {              if (isset($_GET[\"id\"])) {         if (!is_numeric($_GET[\"id\"]))           throw new Exception(\"URL is not in a correct format\");         $id= $_GET[\"id\"];       }       elseif (isset($_GET[\"keyword\"])) {         $keyword = htmlspecialchars($_GET[\"keyword\"]);       }     }     catch (Exception $e) {       // handle error     }     ?>     <html>     <head></head>     <body>       <div class=\"searchResults\"><!-- placeholder --></div>       <?php       if (isset($id)) {          echo '<script type=\"text/javascript\">ShowSearchResults(\"id\",'.$id.');</script>';               }       elseif (isset($keyword)) {          echo '<script type=\"text/javascript\">ShowSearchResults(\"keyword\",\"'.$keyword.'\");</script>';        }       ?>     </body>     </html>      This is basically the js:               function ShowSearchResults(key,value)     {         $.getJSON(\"includes/search_results.php?\"+key+\"=\"+value,          function(data) {           // populate search results           $(\".searchResults\").html( \"search results\" );         })         .error(function() {             $(\".searchResults\").html( \"no results\" );         });     }      My questions are (while keeping security and best practices in mind): Is it bad practice to pass the query string values to my javascript function from within the body? I initially did this because I had the impression that it was not a good idea to extract query string values using javascript. Maybe I'm wrong there. Should I be extracting the query string values from the $(document).ready function, and then calling the appropriate javascript functions from there? What is the appropriate way to do that (htmlspecialchars equivalent)? Keep in mind that within my javascript code, I use $.getJSON to call another server side function (in PHP) that can reject anything insecure. Any insight would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "154313", "title": "Switching from abstract class to interface", "text": "I have an abstract class which has all abstract methods except one which constructs objects of the subclasses. Now my mentor asked me to move this abstract class to an interface. Having an interface is no problem except with the method used to construct subclass objects. Where should this method go now? Also, I read somewhere that interfaces are more efficient than abstract classes. Is this true? Here's an example of my classes               abstract class Animal {         //many abstract methods         getAnimalobject(some parameter) {             return //appropriate subclass          }     }          class Dog extends Animal {}     class Elephant extends Animal {}"}
{"_id": "215151", "title": "Nested Entities and calculation on leaf entity property - SQL or NoSQL approach", "text": "I am working on a hobby project called Menu/Recipe Management. This is how my entities and their relations look like. A `Nutrient` has properties `Code` and `Value` An `Ingredient` has a collection of `Nutrients` A `Recipe` has a Collection of `Ingredients` and occasionally can have a collection of other `recipes` A `Meal` has a Collection of `Recipes` and `Ingredients` A `Menu` has a Collection of `Meals` The relations can be depicted as ![Menu Entities and Relationships](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Un7Pr.png) In one of the pages, for a selected menu I need to display the effective nutrients information calculated based on its constituents (Meals, Recipes, Ingredients and the corresponding nutrients). As of now am using SQL Server to store the data and I am navigating the chain from my C# code, starting from each meal of the menu and then aggregating the nutrient values. I think this is not an efficient way as this calculation is being done every time the page is requested and the constituents change occasionally. I was thinking about a having a background service that maintains a table called MenuNutrients (`{MenuId, NutrientId, Value}`) and will populate/update this table with the effective nutrients when any of the component (Meal, Recipe, Ingredient) changes. I feel that a GraphDB would be a good fit for this requirement, but my exposure to NoSQL is limited. I want to know what are the alternative solutions/approaches to this requirement of displaying the nutrients of a given menu. Hope my description of the scenario is clear."}
{"_id": "124277", "title": "How was the first Malbolge interpreter tested?", "text": "According to Wikipedia, Malbolge was so difficult to understand when it arrived that it took two years for the first Malbolge program to appear. If this is true, how was the first Malbolge interpreter tested (to check if it did the right thing when a Malbolge program was given)? Was it tested at all?"}
{"_id": "20840", "title": "Correcting indentation", "text": "I work for a multi-national I.T. services company. I'd thought they'd be applying good development practices but they aren't. One example is the source code base for a Java project that is currently being developed for a client. It's full of incorrectly indented code. There's mixtures of tabs and spaces on lines (no they're not using the GNU formatting style) as well as 2 or 3 or 4 space indents. Everywhere else I've worked people have agreed to a fixed indentation coding standard and stuck with it, so that's why I find this project an anathema. How do I diplomatically get them to indent properly?"}
{"_id": "232865", "title": "Thoughts and Best Practices on Static Classes and Members", "text": "I am very curious as to thoughts and industry best practices regarding static members, or entire static classes. Are there any downsides to this, or does it participate in any anti-patterns? I see these entities as \"utility classes/members\", in the sense that they don't require or demand instantiating the class in order to provide the functionality. What are the general thoughts and industry best practices on this? See the below example classes and members to illustrate what I am referencing.               // non-static class with static members     //     public class Class1     {         // ... other non-static members ...              public static string GetSomeString()         {             // do something         }     }          // static class     //     public static class Class2     {         // ... other static members ...              public static string GetSomeString()         {             // do something         }     }      Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "240429", "title": "A 'task' system which has an ending, to get ready for next task", "text": "I want to make a system, so that there are certain tasks. For example, let's talk about a game. I want to make it so there are 100+ tasks doing different things, but when the player's magic level is 5, it will do the magic task, if the player's fighting skill is level 5, it will fight. I have that already, however here is the catch. I want to make it so once the task executes, it will have an 'ending'. So, it will do something before it finally gets killed. My code so far:               for (GameTask a : s.gameTasks) {         if (a != null) {             if (a.validate()) {                 a.execute();             }         }     }      It will loop all the tasks and execute them, however how can I implement an 'ending' to it, so that it will get ready for the next task? I hope I have written it clearly as English is not my first language. tl;dr, I want to add an 'end' to each task so that it can be killed and can be ready for next task."}
{"_id": "141182", "title": "Data base structure of a subscriber list", "text": "I am building a application that allow different user to store the subscriber information   * To store the subscriber information , the user first create a list For each list, there is a ListID. `Subscriber` may have different attribute : email phone fax .... For each list, their setting is different , so a `require_attribute table` is introduced. It is a bridge between subscriber and List That store `Listid, subid, attribute, datatype` **That means the system have a lot of list, each user have their own list, and the list have different attribute, some list have email , phone , some may have phone, address, name mail.. And the datatype is different, some may use 'name' as integer, some may use 'name' as varchar**   * attribute means email phone, it is to define for `which list have which subscriber attribute`   * datatype means for each attribute, what is its datatype              Table :subscriber :             Field :subid , name,email          Table :Require Attribute:          Field : Listid ,subid , attribute, datatype      The attribute here is {name, email} So a simple data is               Subscriber: 1 , MYname, Myemail          Require Attribute :           Listid , 1 , 'email', 'intger'           Listid , 1 , 'name', 'varchar'      I found that this kind of storage is too complex to handle with, Since the subscriber is share to everybody, so if a person want to change the datatype of name, it will also affect the data of the other user. Simple error situation: Subscriber:               list1,  Subscriber 1 , name1, email1          list2, Subscriber 2  , name2 , email2          Require Attribute :               List1 , Subscriber 1 , 'email', 'varchar',               List1 , Subscriber 1  , 'name', 'varchar',                Listid , Subscriber 2 , 'email', 'varchar',                Listid , Subscriber 2, 'name', 'integer',       **if user B change the data type of name in require attribute from varchar to integer, it cause a problem. because list 1 is own by user A , he want the datatype is varchar, but list 2 is won by user B, he want the datatype to be integer** So how can I redesign the structure?"}
{"_id": "118369", "title": "What type of problem is this?", "text": "Business Analyst creates a requirement. Requirement implemented by developer. BA performs QA. Bug report includes various bugs that were never requirements. E.G. A requirement is made to display a report. The report is displayed. In QA, the analyst see's that a user can enter invalid data. The invalid data makes the report invalid. Per the requirements, an error message is displayed. The analyst decides that they want the previously run report to have its data cleared. Currently, when entering into an invalid state the system displays results from the previous report along with an error message. In this case, the problem is that we are in an error state. The error state requires an error message, but is otherwise undefined. Is this \"bug\" scope creep, poorly defined requirements, lack of an overall business process for error management, lack of technical foresight on part of the BA/Dev, a valid request or other? How can you minimize these types of problems? **Other details (specific to this app)**   Web app. Persistent State is an overall part of the design (thus the reason you see the report still displayed). There are little to no HTTP POST/GET operations performed outside of AJAX. Navigation menu changes pages without full postbacks. Instead, perform HTTP GET to load HTML/JSON into portions of the web page on click."}
{"_id": "152878", "title": "Overload or Optional Parameters", "text": "When I have a function that might, or might not receive a certain parameter, is it better to overload the function, or to add optional args? If each one has it's ups and downs - when would I use each?"}
{"_id": "210508", "title": "How can I stop myself overwriting member variables with 'new' ones?", "text": "The bulk of my programming experience has been with C++ and (shudder) FORTRAN (I'm a scientist not a programmer as such, but I do my best). I've recently started using python extensively and find it great. However, I just spent a frustrating few hours tracking down a bug that turned out to be caused by me creating a new object member in a function, i.e.               def some_func(self):         self.some_info = list()      but, I had already created elsewhere the member `some_info` for this object for a different purpose, so bad things obviously happened later on, but it was tricky to track back to here. Now obviously in a language like C++ this is impossible to do, since you can't just create object members on the fly. Because I'm used to the language taking care of this, I don't have a well developed procedural discipline to prevent me abusing the freedom that python (and other dynamically typed languages) provides. So what is the best way to prevent this kind of mistake when using languages like python?"}
{"_id": "16689", "title": "What causes overtime and how can it be avoided?", "text": "Today, my manager **_told_** me that I must work over time to make up for a lack of planning and project management. Instead of incentivizing this unpaid mandatory overtime, my manager has made it clear I have no choice in the matter. This isn't a single project. We currently have a dozen projects all on the go at one time, and I simply can't get them all done. Therefore, I must work overtime so we don't have to push deadlines.   * Is this a sign of an ignorant or disrespectful manager, or simply an inexperienced one?   * I'm in this position because of a lack of planning and project management (I think). How might I avoid this in the future? I'm no Project Manager, it isn't my strength.   * What are good ways to get an employee to work overtime if you can't directly pay them? Good incentives, etc. From what I hear, gaining your employee's respect is the single best way to get your employees to work over time, although you should never make a habit of it."}
{"_id": "152871", "title": "For nodejs what are best design practices for native modules which share dependencies?", "text": "Hypothetical situation, I have 3 node modules all native, A, B, and C.   * A is a utilities module which exposes several functions to javascript through the node interface, in addition it declares/defines a rich set of native structures and functions   * B is a module which is dependent on data structures and source in A, it exposes some functions to javascript, in addition it declares/defines native structures and functions   * C is a module which is dependent on data structures and source in A & B, it exploses some functions to javascript, in addition it declares/defines native structures and functions So far when setting up these modules I have a preinstall script to install other dependent includes, but in order to access all of another modules source what is the best way to link to it's share library object (*.node) ? Is there an alternative best practice for native modules (such as installing all source from other modules before building that single module)? Reply"}
{"_id": "16687", "title": "How do you get a client to understand the importance of a project lifecycle?", "text": "Situation is I have a number of in-house clients who continue to have trouble grasping the concept of defining clear requirements for a project and committing to them. Unfortunately my job situation is that I can't decline such projects, and I am often forced into situations that I can tell are doomed to scope creep (or worse) from the very start. Telling them that detailed requirements are vital and why we need them (using examples of past troubled projects due to this) have not helped. I am looking for techniques, tips, words, etc that you might use to motivate or illuminate clients in such situations to the necessity of requirements,setting milestones, etc. I am only a developer, and not a manager."}
{"_id": "210501", "title": "ASP MVC Action parameters all strings vs explicit type", "text": "A colleague and I were developing an ASP.NET MVC project and during this we created a new action method to handle one of our views. I initially started created the action like so:               public ActionResult Index(int id, int numberOfAssessments, int age)     {         // do stuff     }      However when I started writing we had a little discussion: **Him** : _\"Why am I making these ints, they should all be strings\"_ **Me** : _\"Well they are ints so it makes more sense to make them strongly typed and so stop potential errors later in the code block\"._ **Him** : _\"Back what if we wanted to change the id to a alpha-numeric representation. We know have to change this signature everywhere where if it was a string it would already handle this\"._ **Me** : _\"It's not a string now and we don't have any plans for making it a string at this moment though\"._ We didn't really decide explicitly what to do but it did get me thinking. **Question** : Should parameters to Action methods be all strings if that is going to make it more flexible in the future, or should they be specific to their type so that we can leverage MVC binding and error handling? What is the best or accepted practice in these situations. Are there too many considerations to take in for any definitive answer?"}
{"_id": "152875", "title": "Taking Object Oriented development to the next level", "text": "Can you mention some advanced OO topics or concepts that one should be aware of? I have been a developer for 2 years now and currently aiming for a certain company that requires a web developer with a minimum experience of 3 years. I imagine the interview will have the basic object oriented topics like (Abstraction, Polymorphism, Inheritance, Design patterns, UML, Databases and ORMs, SOLID principles, DRY principle, ...etc) I have these topics covered, but what I'm looking forward to is bringing up topics such as Efferent Coupling, Afferent Coupling, Instability, The law of Demeter, ...etc. Till few days ago I never knew such concepts existed (maybe because I'm a communication engineer basically not a CS graduate.) Can you please recommend some more advanced topics concerning object oriented programming?"}
{"_id": "195471", "title": "CSS3 shorthand properties", "text": "Working on my own I tought I need to learn that css3 shorthand properties, because - as I know now, it affects website's loading time, so I need to optimize it a little bit. I was thinking - is there any order how to write property values, when using shorthand prop's? For example: `font: 1em/1.5em bold italic serif`"}
{"_id": "166879", "title": "Scenarios for differences between UICulture and Culture", "text": "In .NET there are two \"culture\" values, UICulture and Culture. The first one is for localized texts on the UI, while the latter sets the culture for date and number formats. I can't come up with any reason or scenario for those two values to be different. Is there some reason to do so?"}
{"_id": "166875", "title": "Metrics / Methodology for estimating resource utilization for software in planning stage", "text": "I'm looking for approaches to estimate the resource utilization of an (web-)application in a JEE environment. The overall target is to get a forecast for hardware/software requirements while the application is still under development or even in planning stage.   Is this task too complex (many different factors) to get a fairly reliable proposition without spending too much time?"}
{"_id": "166870", "title": "External file (images, sounds) naming convention at Xcode", "text": "* What is better naming conventions at Xcode regardng External File (images, sounds) etc?   * Is there any guideline from vendor Apple?   * As we store our projects at SVN, is there any complicity from Hosted Server (we use Linux + Server SVN ) ?"}
{"_id": "99543", "title": "What is the difference between K&R and One True Brace Style (1TBS) styles?", "text": "I have read the Wikipedia article on Indent Styles, but I still don't understand. What is the difference between K&R and 1TBS?"}
{"_id": "99548", "title": "What factors influence you to try out a new framework or tool?", "text": "I'm in the process of putting the final touches on an open-source framework that I hope to release in the next few months. It's something that I'd like to develop a community for and so I'm curious about what factors influence your decision to use a new framework or tool and why. Some of the specific things I'd like to know more about (feel free to add to this):   * Types of documentation/tutorials/instruction   * Community support (comments/forum)   * Updates (blog/social media/feeds)   * Look and feel of the project website design   * White papers/testimonials   * A big feature list   * Community size   * Tools   * Ability to contribute   * Project test coverage (stability/security)   * Level of buzz (recommended by friends or around the web)   * Convincing marketing copy Ideally, I'd like to have all of the above, but what specific features/qualities will carry greater weight in getting programmers to adopt something new? **What says, 'This is a professional-grade project,' and what are red flags that keep you from trying it out?**"}
{"_id": "70767", "title": "Planning Before Starting a Project", "text": "How much planning should one do before starting a project? Should they have everything already planned when they begin coding or should they just get a basic idea of what they want and then make things up on the fly? For instance, I want to create a YouTube client that allows for streaming videos and for downloading multiple videos simultaneously (similar to Minitube). I know what I want the interface to look like when the program is first opened. Is this enough for now? Should I create this and then plan the next step or should I continue planning? How much planning is enough?"}
{"_id": "7966", "title": "What traits do the best managers you've worked for have in common?", "text": "I have been listening to Scott Hanselman and Rob Conery's podcast, This Developer's Life. In the latest episode, they discuss personality traits: > 1.0.4 - Being Mean. > > What makes people mean in our industry? What about aggressive? Confident? > What's the difference? Would you rather have a drill sergeant for a boss, or > a zen master? We talk to Cyra Richardson and Giles Bowkett. It got me thinking, what traits did the best managers _you've_ worked for have in common? EDIT: Just to clarify, as there have been a few close votes, I'm interested in whether there are traits common to managers of developers that are not necessarily those traits that a manager of some other profession requires. As for whether this is programming related or not, well I don't want to ask this question on a site that isn't about programming because, frankly, I'm not as interested in what people who make cans of soup for a living want from their managers as I am interested in what _developers_ want from their managers."}
{"_id": "9175", "title": "Do you handle Out-Of-Memory conditions?", "text": "What do you do when `malloc` returns 0 or new throws exception? Just halt or try to survive OOM condition/save the user's work?"}
{"_id": "95435", "title": "How to handle large scale js+jquery projects using well written, Object-Oriented JavaScript and jQuery code?", "text": "I love the whole user experience/interface thing and put a lot of jQuery and JavaScript (pure JavaScript for HTML5 stuff, like canvas, file API, etc). The problem I face now is that my codes are growing large, 3-4 files per project with each file around 1000 lines of code, and maintaining and extending them is becoming a headache. I know that Object-Orientated JavaScript coding can solve a lot of my problems. I know the basic concepts of Object-Orientated Programming, have done a decent amount of it in C++, Java and Python in school and college projects. I want to read some good examples large scale OO programming in JavaScript (and jQuery), or if possible, some book specifically on writing big OO programs in JavaScript. EDIT1: Checked out backbone.js, guess thats what i needed, will be sure once i use it in my next project, thanks Raynos, also, my question should have been about handling large js projects, and not what it is, sry"}
{"_id": "95432", "title": "Finding a new job when my skillset isn't matching the job ads", "text": "I am a C++ programmer and have worked on various web apps using Perl, Ruby, etc.. I have decent a knowledge of Java as well. The problem I face while applying for jobs is companies have specific requirements like, \"Experience with C# 3.5/4. Should have experience experience building web apps with ASP.NET\". What should you do in these situations?   1. Not consider these companies and look for companies with your expertise?   2. Just put that in your resume, and learn the technology before interviews? After all, how hard is it for a developer to wrap their brains around new languages?   3. Try to convince the employer in the cover letter that you are good at one thing but can a learn a new language a tool pretty easily?   4. Something else?"}
{"_id": "95431", "title": "Priority list of tasks stored in a database", "text": "I am trying to think of the best way to do the following: I have a list of tasks stored in the database. A task has a priority assigned to it. You can change the priority of a task to reorder the order they should be carried out. I am thinking of something very similar to Pivotal Tracker. So imagine we had the following:               1 Task A     2 Task B     3 Task C     4 Task D     5 Task E      We decide that E is now the most important task               1 Task E     2 Task A     3 Task B     4 Task C     5 Task D      I need to update all 5 tasks to give them a new priority. If Task B then becomes more important then A I would I would have               1 Task E     2 Task B     3 Task A     4 Task C     5 Task D      I need to update Task B and A only. What ways would go about structuring this in a DB? I imagine that you would have a differnt projects stored in the same table that would have there own weight. Would it be better to point a Task that takes place after it (a bit like a link list). This is just a brain dump really. Just was wondering how you would go about implementing something like this."}
{"_id": "230970", "title": "How to develop custom functions on top of Ejabberd?", "text": "I'm developing a real time chat app. After searching around for a while, I found Ejabberd and Erlang is a good option. The question is the Ejabberd is not providing all the functions I need. I need some custom features such as location based matching and anonymous login. So how to development custom functions on top of Ejabberd? write modules for it? or develop another standalone server app (web or other kind of server app) to interact with it? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "42193", "title": "what are the benefits of closure, primarily for PHP?", "text": "I am beginning the process of moving code over to PHP 5.3 and one of the most highly touted features of PHP 5.3 is the ability to use closures. My understanding of closures is that they allow anonymous functions, can be assigned to variable names, and have interesting scoping abilities. From my point of view the only seeming benefits in real world applications is the reduction of clutter in the namespace because closures are anonymous. Am I wrong in this? Should I be trying to put closures wherever I code? **EDIT** : I have already read this post on Javascript closures."}
{"_id": "16975", "title": "Does your team function well without following a work methodology (such as scrum)?", "text": "I've worked in a number of small teams over the last 9 years. Each had the obvious good practices, such as short meetings, revision control, continuous integration software, issue tracking and so on. In these 9 years, I've never heard much about development methodologies; for example, there's never been a \"we're doing scrum\", or \"lets do agile\", or anything more than a passing reference. All of the teams seemed to function fine, without following much process, we were just freeflowing and just naturally worked well. Has anyone else progressed for long periods of time without encountering scrum/agile/etc? The only exposure I've had to these is through sites like this one. I read questions like http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/16905/sprint- meetings-what-to-talk-about ... and all the talk seems to describe almost robotic like people who follow a methodology finite state machine. Is it really (though exaggerated) like that? I wonder if the people posting on the internet just loud supporters of \"best practice\", with similar textbook views, not really reflecting how people work... Or that I've encountered some teams making their processes up naturally. Furthermore (I am in the UK, which may be relevant)... I think if a methodology were introduced to any of the teams I'd work on, they'd just reject it as being silly and unnecessary... then carry on. I'd tend to agree, following processes seems a bit unnatural. Is this typical or common?"}
{"_id": "17081", "title": "How can I measure my competency level or skill-set in ASP.NET?", "text": "> As a ASP.NET developer with 5+ year experience. I like to measure my > competency level in ASP.NET & SQL Server. Basically my goal is to raise my > competency level and skill-set in ASP.NET; before that I need to know what > is my level considering current ASP.NET and related technologies... Please provide some pointers...   * Is there are any skill-set measuring Quiz or exam, which account experience and technology ?    * How do you measure your or your junior developers skills or competency? Note: This question was originally asked in SO, I am reposting here to get more input."}
{"_id": "97496", "title": "What does it mean if a job requires a \"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field\"?", "text": "Specifically, what is meant by \"related field\"? I'm in the process of pursuing an IT Infrastructure B.A.S. from the U of M (Twin Cities), but have been playing around with the idea of just doing the CSCI B.S. I don't want to be a hardcore programmer, but would having the CSCI degree, instead of the ITI degree, open more doors to whatever profession within the IT world I end up setting my sights on?"}
{"_id": "97490", "title": "Is having a switch to turn mocking on or off a code smell?", "text": "I have a method that looks like this:               def foobar(mock=False, **kwargs):         # ... snipped      `foobar` actually makes several calls to Amazon S3 and returns a composed result. In order to make this testable, I introduced the `mock` parameter to turn off making live network connections. It feels like a code smell for me but testability is also very important. What else can I do if I want to do away with the parameter ?"}
{"_id": "118989", "title": "Using static classes as namespaces", "text": "I have seen other developers using static classes as namespaces               public static class CategoryA     {         public class Item1         {             public void DoSomething() { }         }         public class Item2         {             public void DoSomething() { }         }     }          public static class CategoryB     {         public class Item3         {             public void DoSomething() { }         }         public class Item4         {             public void DoSomething() { }         }     }      To instantiate the inner classes, it will look like the following               CategoryA.Item1 item = new CategoryA.Item1();      The rationale is that namespaces can be hidden by using the \"using\" keyword. But by using the static classes, the outer-layer class names have to be specified, which effectively preserves the namespaces. Microsoft advises against that in the guidelines. I personally think it impacts the readability. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "121001", "title": "Why is Conway's \"Game of Life\" used for code retreats?", "text": "Code Retreat is an all-day training event that focuses on the fundamentals of software development. There's a \"global\" code retreat day coming up, and I'm looking forward to it. That said, I've been to one before and have to say there was a huge amount of chaos... which is fine. One thing that I still don't get is why the \"Game of Life\" is a good problem for TDD, and what good and bad TDD for it feels like. Realize this is a pretty open ended question, so feel free to comment."}
{"_id": "121004", "title": "Which of these algorithms is best for my goal?", "text": "I have created a program that restricts the mouse to a certain region based on a black/white bitmap. The program is 100% functional as-is, but uses an inaccurate, albeit fast, algorithm for repositioning the mouse when it strays outside the area. Currently, when the mouse moves outside the area, basically what happens is this:   1. A line is drawn between a pre-defined static point inside the region and the mouse's new position.    2. The point where that line intersects the edge of the allowed area is found.    3. The mouse is moved to that point. This works, but only works _perfectly_ for a perfect circle with the pre- defined point set in the exact center. Unfortunately, this will never be the case. The application will be used with a variety of rectangles and irregular, amorphous shapes. On such shapes, the point where the line drawn intersects the edge will usually not be the closest point on the shape to the mouse. I need to create a new algorithm that finds the _closest_ point to the mouse's new position on the edge of the allowed area. I have several ideas about this, but I am not sure of their validity, in that they may have far too much overhead. While I am not asking for code, it might help to know that I am using Objective C / Cocoa, developing for OS X, as I feel the language being used might affect the efficiency of potential methods. My ideas are:   * Using a bit of trigonometry to project lines would work, but that would require some kind of intense algorithm to test every point on every line until it found the edge of the region... That seems too resource intensive since there could be something like 200 lines that would have each have to have as many as 200 pixels checked for black/white....   * Using something like an A* pathing algorithm to find the shortest path to a black pixel; however, A* seems resource intensive, even though I could probably restrict it to only checking roughly in one direction. It also seems like it will take more time and effort than I have available to spend on this small portion of the much larger project I am working on, correct me if I am wrong and it would not be a significant amount of code (>100 lines or around there).   * Mapping the border of the region before the application begins running the event tap loop. I think I could accomplish this by using my current line-based algorithm to find an edge point and then initiating an algorithm that checks all 8 pixels around that pixel, finds the next border pixel in one direction, and continues to do this until it comes back to the starting pixel. I could then store that data in an array to be used for the entire duration of the program, and have the mouse re-positioning method check the array for the closest pixel on the border to the mouse target position. That last method would presumably execute it's initial border mapping fairly quickly. (It would only have to map between 2,000 and 8,000 pixels, which means 8,000 to 64,000 checked, and I could even permanently store the data to make launching faster.) However, I am uncertain as to how much overhead it would take to scan through that array for the shortest distance for _every single mouse move event_... I suppose there could be a shortcut to restrict the number of elements in the array that will be checked to a variable number starting with the intersecting point on the line (from my original algorithm), and raise/lower that number to experiment with the overhead/accuracy tradeoff. Please let me know if I am over thinking this and there is an easier way that will work just fine, or which of these methods would be able to execute something like 30 times per second to keep mouse movement smooth, **or** if you have a better/faster method. I've posted relevant parts of my code below for reference, and included an example of what the area might look like. (I check for color value against a loaded bitmap that is black/white.)               //     // This part of my code runs every single time the mouse moves.      //          CGPoint point = CGEventGetLocation(event);               float tX = point.x;     float tY = point.y;          if( is_in_area(tX,tY, mouse_mask)){              // target is inside O.K. area, do nothing     }else{          CGPoint target;           //point inside restricted region:     float iX = 600; // inside x     float iY = 500; // inside y               // delta to midpoint between iX,iY and tX,tY     float dX;     float dY;          float accuracy = .5; //accuracy to loop until reached          do {         dX = (tX-iX)/2;         dY = (tY-iY)/2;              if(is_in_area((tX-dX),(tY-dY),mouse_mask)){                  iX += dX;             iY += dY;         } else {                  tX -= dX;             tY -= dY;         }          } while (abs(dX)>accuracy || abs(dY)>accuracy);              target = CGPointMake(roundf(tX), roundf(tY));         CGDisplayMoveCursorToPoint(CGMainDisplayID(),target);          }      Here is \"is_in_area(int x, int y)\" :               bool     is_in_area(NSInteger x, NSInteger y, NSBitmapImageRep *mouse_mask){              NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];              NSUInteger pixel[4];         [mouse_mask getPixel:pixel atX:x y:y];              if(pixel[0]!= 0){             [pool release];             return false;         }         [pool release];         return true;     }      ![bitmap for the \"allowed area\" \\(allowed area is black\\)](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MHaNC.png)"}
{"_id": "121005", "title": "CQRS without using others patterns", "text": "I would like to explain CQRS to my team of developers. I just can't figure out how to explain it in the simplest way so they can implement the pattern rapidly without any others frameworks. I've read a lot of resources including video and articles but I don't find how to implement CQRS without using others patterns like a service Bus, event sourcing pattern, domain driven design. I know the purpose of these pattern but for the first step, I don't want them to think CQRS and these patterns must be tied together. My first idea is to say that CQRS is about separating the read part and the write part. The read part is composed only of the UI project, and DAL project. Then the write part is composed of a typical multilayer architecture: UI/BLL/DAL. Then, does CQRS say we must also have two datastore ? What about the notion of commands which reveal the user's intention, is it also something part of CQRS or DDD ? Basically, how to implement CQRS without using others patterns. I concede it's also not that clear in my mind because I've used to work with NCQRS/DDD/Event Sourcing/ServiceBus in my personal project."}
{"_id": "152255", "title": "Is OOP becoming easier or harder?", "text": "When the concepts of Object Oriented Programming were introduced to programmers years back it looks interesting and programming was cleaner. OOP was like this               Stock stock = new Stock();     stock.addItem(item);     stock.removeItem(item);      That was easier to understand with self-descriptive name. But now OOP, with pattern like Data Transfer Objects (or Value Objects), Repository, Dependency Injection etc, has become more complex. To achieve the above you may have to create several classes (e.g. abstract, factory, DAO etc) and Implement several interfaces Note: I am not against best practices that makes Collaboration, Testing and Integration easier"}
{"_id": "152252", "title": "HTML5 file API or Java bridge to acces to local Files?", "text": "I've to access to files on the software user and I don't know if it's better to use a full JS app with HTML5 File Api rules or use Java and communicate with it ?"}
{"_id": "152251", "title": "What does a programmer really need to become a professional?", "text": "There are huge numbers of programmers, especially juniors, who need good assistance in becoming professional. I've heard a lot of about \"books every programmer should read\", etc. I have two years of programming experience, feel good in C++, but currently have a strange feeling, that I do not know anything about programming. I should read Algorithms by Cormen, Code Complete by McConnell etc., but I don't know the exact steps required to become a professional. What should we do? What should we learn? Operating systems? Computer organization? Algorithms? C++ in depth? How much time do we have to spend to become what we want?"}
{"_id": "236060", "title": "Inheritance: Is code from superclass virtually *copied* to subclass, or is it *referred-to by subclass*?", "text": "Class `Sub` is a subclass of class `Sup`. What does that mean practically? Or in other words, what is the practical meaning of \"inheritance\"? **Option 1:** The code from Sup is virtually _copied_ to Sub. (as in 'copy- paste', but without the copied code _visually_ seen in the subclass). Example: `methodA()` is a method originally in Sup. Sub extends Sup, so `methodA()` is (virtually) copy-pasted to Sub. Now Sub has a method named `methodA()`. **It is identical to Sup's`methodA()` in every line of code, but entirely belongs to Sub - and doesn't depend on Sup or is related to Sup in any way.** **Option 2:** The code from Sup isn't actually _copied_ to Sub. It's still only in the superclass. But that code can be accessed through the subclass and can be used by the subclass. Example: `methodA()` is a method in Sup. Sub extends Sup, so now `methodA()` can be accessed through Sub like so: `subInstance.methodA()`. But that will actually invoke `methodA()` in the superclass. Which means that **methodA() will operate in the context of the superclass, even if it was called by the subclass.** **Question: Which of the two options is really how things work? If none of them is, than please describe how these things actually work.**"}
{"_id": "8889", "title": "What do you do to convince your boss to update your development environment?", "text": "I've barely succeeded in this, I'm just wondering how you convinced your boss to update and if you're faring better than me. Here's where I stand:   1. I'm using Delphi 7.   2. We've bought Delphi 2009 for each programmer.   3. I'm still using Delphi 7.   4. It's almost 2011 and Delphi 2010 and Delphi XE area already out. So I'm stuck in a timewarp, there are too many commitments to bother about creating bugs by updating our IDE. I have a bad feeling that when we do finally start using Delphi 2009 it'll be as obnoxious as Delphi 7. (This may be a bad generic example as there are special Unicode considerations in the 2009 update, but I'd like general answers - because I do more than just Delphi programming for my company)"}
{"_id": "21463", "title": "Writing the minimum code to pass a unit test - without cheating!", "text": "When doing TDD and writing a unit test, how does one resist the urge to \"cheat\" when writing the first iteration of \"implementation\" code that you're testing? For example:   Let's I need to calculate the Factorial of a number. I start with a unit test (using MSTest) something like:               [TestClass]     public class CalculateFactorialTests     {         [TestMethod]         public void CalculateFactorial_5_input_returns_120()         {             // Arrange             var myMath = new MyMath();             // Act             long output = myMath.CalculateFactorial(5);             // Assert             Assert.AreEqual(120, output);         }     }      I run this code, and it fails since the `CalculateFactorial` method doesn't even exist. So, I now write the first iteration of the code to implement the method under test, writing the minimum code required to pass the test. The thing is, I'm continually tempted to write the following:               public class MyMath     {         public long CalculateFactorial(long input)         {             return 120;         }     }      This is, technically, correct in that it _really_ is the minimum code required to _make that specific test pass_ (go green), although it's clearly a \"cheat\" since it really doesn't even _attempt_ to perform the function of calculating a factorial. Of course, now the refactoring part becomes an exercise in \"writing the correct functionality\" rather than a true refactoring of the implementation. Obviously, adding additional tests with different parameters will fail and force a refactoring, but you have to start with that one test. So, my question is, how do you get that balance between \"writing the minimum code to pass the test\" whilst still keeping it functional and in the spirit of what you're actually trying to achieve?"}
{"_id": "122763", "title": "High School Dropout - Is It Always This Difficult?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Can someone find a job as a programmer without an education? I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger and never ended up graduating from even my ninth-grade classes (this is Canada and I'm going to admit ignorance as I'm not sure how the educational systems differ between countries). I'm 24 now and have been looking for work in regards to programming for quite some time. Everybody seems to want degrees (be it University or College) in computer programming of some kind, so that leaves me at an impasse. I don't have my high school degree, let alone one that is post-secondary. What does a guy like me do to be taken seriously as a programmer? I am self- taught, but no one seems to put much stock in that this far in Northern Ontario. I've considered coding in open-source and trying to build a portfolio out of that, but, again, I don't know if that'll be taken very seriously. I've even considered blogging about programming, if not to just have some sort of validation that I know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, it's way too easy to pretend to know anything about **anything** these days, so I'm just wondering - are any of you drop-outs and, if so, how did you get taken seriously? Also, if there are people who hire programmers, what would someone have to do to be considered in your eyes? Thanks."}
{"_id": "94887", "title": "Are abstract classes / methods obsolete?", "text": "I used to create a lot of abstract classes / methods. Then I started using interfaces. Now I am not sure if interfaces aren't making abstract classes obsolete. You need a fully abstract class? Create an interface instead. You need an abstract class with some implementation in it? Create an interface, create a class. Inherit the class, implement the interface. An additional benefit is that some classes may not need the parent class, but will just implement the interface. So, are abstract classes / methods obsolete?"}
{"_id": "21467", "title": "UI design and confirmation paradigm", "text": "I just saw this lecture by Spolsky, where he questions the need for choices and confirmation dialogs. At some point he has a MacOS settings window and he mentions that \"now some are getting rid of the OK button\". The window indeed has no OK (or cancel) button. Changing a setting makes it change, when you're done configuring, you close that window, period. Being a long time Windows user and a recent Mac owner, the difference is noticeable at first. I looked for the OK button for a while, only to find out, quite naturally and painlessly, that there was none. I expressed satisfaction and went on my merry way. However, I'm curious to know if this UI design pattern would succeed in the Windows-based world. Granted that if Microsoft brought it out with say Windows-8 (fat chance, I know), people would get used to it eventually. But is there some experience out there of such an approach, of changing the \"confirmation paradigm\" on a platform where it's so prevalent? Did it leave users (especially the non-technical ones) confused, frustrated, scared, or happy? TL;DR: Remove OK/cancel confirmation, what happens? EDIT: Mac GUI for appearance settings. ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YtoYX.png)"}
{"_id": "142123", "title": "Can we set up svn server on a local computer without any network access?", "text": "I want to set up an SVN repository on my computer without any network access. I am working on a code without any collaborator, so I don't want it to be publicly available. I read this post, but it suggests using online SVN repository services that give free repositories. In that case, my code will be publicly available (as is included in the terms of free plans). So I was wondering if I can set up a local server on my Windows XP machine that only I access even when I don't have any internet connection?"}
{"_id": "53521", "title": "What exactly is OO reuse?", "text": "And why is it often talked about? Like I know what OO programming is obviously... but people always say \"Oh OO reuse is the biggest programming myth ever\". What exactly does this mean?"}
{"_id": "45614", "title": "Are there issues with learning to program on a Virtual Machine?", "text": "I'm not a programmer, but financial analyst by profession who is learning how to code (Python, Django, C w/ ctypes when I need something to go really fast) in a virtual Ubuntu setup on my work laptop. Question: I just assumed that coding on a Virtual machine was no different from if Linux was my main OS. Is this a bad assumption? Is there anything I need to watch out for? Thanks, Mike"}
{"_id": "106568", "title": "How to Quantify the Value of Unit Testing", "text": "Our organization is considering integrating unit testing into our software development workflow. I've heard lots of anecdotal stories about how it encourages better, easy to maintain, and well-planned code. As a programmer, I understand the benefits. However, in order to build consensus around using unit testing in projects that might affect customers, I would like to demonstrate its value quantitatively, in terms of saving hours of developer time. Does anyone in the community have any historical data or experience they would be willing to share as quantitative evidence in my case for unit testing?"}
{"_id": "39368", "title": "Automated unit testing, integration testing or acceptance testing", "text": "TDD and unit testing seems to be the big rave at the moment. But it is really that useful compared to other forms of automated testing? Intuitively I would guess that automated integration testing is way more useful than unit testing. In my experience the most bugs seems to be in the interaction between modules, and not so much the actual (usual limited) logic of each unit. Also regressions often happened because of changing interfaces between modules (and changed pre and post-conditions.) Am I misunderstanding something, or why are unit testing getting so much focus compared to integration testing? It is simply because it is assumed that integration testing is something you have, and unit testing is the next thing we need to learn to apply as developers? Or maybe unit testing simply yields the highest gain compared to the complexity of automating it? **What are you experience with automated unit testing, automated integration testing, and automated acceptance testing, and in your experience what has yielded the highest ROI? and why?** If you had to pick just one form of testing to be automated on your next project, which would it be? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "78478", "title": "How to explain the value of unit testing", "text": "I want to introduce the concept of unit tests (and testing in general) to my co-workers; right now there are no tests at all and things are tested by actually performing the tasks via the UI to see the desired result. As you might imagine, the code is very tightly coupled to the exact implementation - even resulting in code that should be in a class and reused across the system being copied and pasted across methods. Due to changed requirements, I have been asked to modify a module I previously wrote and that is fairly loosely coupled (not as much as I would like, but as best I can get without having to introduce a lot of other concepts). I've decided to include a suite of unit tests with my revised code to \"prove\" that it works as expected and demonstrate how testing works; I'm not following true TDD as some of the code is already written but I'm hoping to follow some TDD concepts for the new code I'll have to create. Now, inevitably I'm sure I'll be asked why it's taking me more than a day or two to write the code, since parts of what I'll be interacting with already exist in the system (albeit without any tests and very tightly coupled), and when I check the code in I'll be asked just what this \"Tests\" project is. I can explain the basics of testing, but I can't explain the actual benefits in a way the others would understand (because they think testing requires you to run the app yourself, since often the actual UI matters in determining if the feature \"works\" or not). They don't understand the idea of loose coupling (clearly evident by the fact nothing is loosely coupled; there aren't even any interfaces outside of the code I've written), so trying to use that as a benefit would probably earn me a \"Huh?\" kind of look, and again I can't be as loose as I would like to without having to rework several existing modules and probably introduce some kind of IoC container, which would be viewed as wasting time and not \"programming\". Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can point to this code and say \"We should start creating unit tests\" without coming off as either condescending (e.g. \"Writing tests forces you to write good code.\" which would probably be taken to mean code except mine is _bad_ ) or without making it seem like a waste of time that doesn't add any real value?"}
{"_id": "238452", "title": "How do you prevent confused tests?", "text": "Testing code for correctness is important. Whether you do strict TDD or not, tests are really the only way a project can scale in size beyond a point where every team member can reasonably keep all the code knowledge loaded in their brains at once. After that point, tests are imperative in order to ensure future modifications don't break old logic (that or you're burning lots of resources doing the same thing manually). The majority of people understand what I've stated above -- not much to argue with there. However, without much of a CS background, there is a lot open to interpretation. Naively, _tests_ are likely to simply mean _code that runs other code_. While this is true, it doesn't paint the entire picture. Without much concern for proper testing, in my experience, people will tend to generate a bunch of **integration** or **functional** tests when asked to write **unit** tests. Whether you aren't privy to testing nuances, or whether you simply choose to ignore them (in the interest of time or because you don't like testing), the result is the same. You get a project with a bunch of \"confused tests\", or tests that don't really respect the line between unit, functional, and integration styles of testing. In other words, you get tests that don't have a clear purpose other than to exercise as much code as possible. This is frustrating because it becomes increasingly cumbersome to parse the result of those tests for meaningful information.   * _Did the tests fail because my remote server is down, or is my logic incorrect?_   * _Why is this \"unit\" test failing when I swap [un]related system component`x` for component `y`?_ And so on. How can you illustrate this distinction in a way that someone with a more engineering/get-it-done mindset can identify with? In essence, how do you make people _care_ about the distinction? Indeed, at a recent Android testing meetup at Twitter, the team asserted that full blown testing of software is a project in-and-of itself. And projects require resources. You can't just slip testing in on the side and not think much about it. _Resources must be allocated and developers must take it seriously_. That's a good start, but we can't just throw retrospective resources and attention at code that's already been written. I'm curious, what approaches work to remedy a confused test landscape, and how you can prevent confused tests from happening in the first place?"}
{"_id": "203320", "title": "How do I explain the importance of NUNIT Test cases to my Colleagues", "text": "I am currently working in Software Development for applications including lot of Mathematical Calculations. As a result there are lot of test cases that we need to consider. We donot have any NUNIT Test case system, I am wonderring how should I get the advantages of implementing the NUNIT testing in front of my colleagues and my boss. I am pretty sure, it would be of great help for our team. Any help regarding the same, will be higly appreciated."}
{"_id": "45611", "title": ".Net community in Germany", "text": "I recently moved to Germany and I'm interested in what German .Net community looks like. Do you know any regularly held workshops in Germany (around Mannheim preferably)?"}
{"_id": "20596", "title": "Cross border data obfuscation and how to deal with it?", "text": "I am currently facing a situation where I will need to obfuscate data for legal reasons (these are countrywide rules and not specific to me) I will still need to work with teams outside this area who will still need to access applications/databases for testing/deployment and so on, however the data must be fully obfuscated. What are your experiences of this scenario? e.g. Who owns what stage of the process, what access do the various parties have, how strong is the encryption, how do updates occur"}
{"_id": "211675", "title": "Why isn't iostream included as a header file anymore?", "text": "First of all I have gone through this question Why is #include <iostream.h> bad? and there the reason was simply that it is outdated but I personally think that as a header iostream was better cos you don't have to declare objects like cout and endl in global scope cos they were already in global scope and moreover since # is not used anymore that means it does not comes under a pre-processor directive. I just need to know that why was this done? I still use turbo sometimes and am comfortable in using it in c++ programs even though gcc and g++ provide better debuggers and everything."}
{"_id": "211677", "title": "Optimization of time-varying parameters", "text": "I need to find an optimal set of \"n\" parameter values that minimize an objective function (a 2-hr simulation of a system). I have looked at genetic algorithm and simulated annealing methods, but was wondering if there are any better algorithms and guidance on their merits and limitations. With the above optimization methods I can find the optimal parameter values that hold true for the entire simulation duration. Incase, I want to find the optimal \"time varying\" parameter values (parameter values change with time during the 2-hr simulation), are there any methods/ideas other than making each time varying parameter value a variable to optimize? Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "211673", "title": "GitHub Organizations for a project spanning multiple repositories?", "text": "I've started a project that involves at least three repositories on GitHub. One of the repositories is a generic documentation-and-examples dump, and the other two contain the implementation of two programs that form the backbone of the project. Should I use a GitHub Organization to handle such a configuration?   Or should I just dump it all to my own account, along with a dozen other, completely unrelated repositories?"}
{"_id": "251873", "title": "Structuring an application that reads from a .properties file", "text": "I have a Java app with three classes: `Foo`, `Bar` and `Baz`. All three depend on a bunch of what are currently constants defined in each class in order to determine how to run. On top of that, `Baz` interacts with a number of builder classes that need to be set up in various ways. I'd like to refactor out all of the configuration info in to a .properties file so that I don't have to recompile every time I change a constant. But I'm not sure how to structure it: Do I have a `ConfigInfoSingleton` that holds all of the parameters of the application in static properties, and have other classes ask it for information when they need it? That seems wrong, as it introduces global state. Do I pass around a `ConfigInfoMap` as a parameter to all of the classes that need that info? Then I need to have `Foo`, `Bar`, and `Baz` parsing strings in order to decide what they're going to do, and that seems very wrong. Especially in the case of `Baz`, where I can't just pass around values, but I need to use `switch` statements on configuration info to determine builder method calls. Do I parse the info in a different class, and have that class tell the others how to set themselves up? Then I have a class that needs to know about everyone else's implementation details, which seems wrong, but less so than the other options. This seems like a really basic question but I'm not sure how to proceed in terms of good software design, and I haven't had much luck Googling. Whats the \"right\" thing to do?"}
{"_id": "251872", "title": "What time should be recorded against story points in order to determine velocity and hours per point", "text": "We recently tried to correlate the hours spent on a sprint against the stories assigned to the project (to try and get an idea of velocity and hours per point). However our recording system only allowed us to put time against a project and so included time such as:   * Customer meetings / phone calls   * Scrums   * Development / testing Should all of the time for these be taken into account when trying to determine velocity. Or should only the development / testing time be taken into account that occurred against specific stories. If everything, what should scrums and meetings be against. Should there be a separate story for these, or just recorded against a different metric i.e. project-elaboration vs project-development. If only development do we need a finer grained recording system for recording time spent on a project? **EDIT** : As well as velocity we are also trying to get a better idea of hours per point **EDIT** : I've had a few comments saying this isn't the way to do it (that's great). However no-one in those comments has suggested how we can give a priced quote for the next lot of work if we won't know how long the points took on an hour basis. The customer wants to know how much cost the next lot of work will be. Some additional points to note are: 1\\. The team isn't solely dedicated to this project. Some time is spent on other work for some people and this may vary. 2\\. The team may vary in size as the project goes with a member coming and going (I guess this effects estimations, but how?)"}
{"_id": "124821", "title": "Single or multiple files for unit testing a single class?", "text": "In researching unit testing best practices to help put together guidelines for my organization, I've run into the question of whether it is better or useful to separate test fixtures (test classes) or to keep all tests for a single class in one file. Fwiw, I am referring to \"unit tests\" in the pure sense that they are white-box tests targeting a single class, one assertion per test, all dependencies mocked, etc. An example scenario is a class (call it Document) that has two methods: CheckIn and CheckOut. Each method implements various rules, etc. that control their behavior. Following the one-assertion-per-test rule, I will have multiple tests for each method. I can either place all of the tests in a single `DocumentTests` class with names like `CheckInShouldThrowExceptionWhenUserIsUnauthorized` and `CheckOutShouldThrowExceptionWhenUserIsUnauthorized`. Or, I could have two separate test classes: `CheckInShould` and `CheckOutShould`. In this case, my test names would be shortened but they'd be organized so all tests for a specific behavior (method) are together. I'm sure there are pro's and con's to either approach and am wondering if anyone has gone the route with multiple files and, if so, why? Or, if you've opted for the single file approach, why do you feel it is better?"}
{"_id": "243199", "title": "Find points whose pairwise distances approximate a given distance matrix", "text": "**Problem.** I have a symmetric distance matrix with entries between zero and one, like this one:               D = ( 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.5 )         ( 0.4 0.0 0.2 1.0 )         ( 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.7 )         ( 0.5 1.0 0.7 0.0 )      I would like to find points in the plane that have (approximately) the pairwise distances given in D. I understand that this will usually not be possible with strictly correct distances, so I would be happy with a \"good\" approximation. My matrices are smallish, no more than 10x10, so performance is not an issue. **Question.** Does anyone know of an algorithm to do this? **Background.** I have sets of probability densities between which I calculate Hellinger distances, which I would like to visualize as above. Each set contains no more than 10 densities (see above), but I have a couple of hundred sets. **What I did so far.**   * I did consider posting at math.SE, but looking at what gets tagged as \"geometry\" there, it seems like this kind of computational geometry question would be more on-topic here. If the community thinks this should be migrated, please go ahead.   * This looks like a straightforward problem in computational geometry, and I would assume that anyone involved in clustering might be interested in such a visualization, but I haven't been able to google anything.   * One simple approach would be to randomly plonk down points and perturb them until the distance matrix is close to D, e.g., using Simulated Annealing, or run a Genetic Algorithm. I have to admit that I haven't tried that yet, hoping for a smarter way.   * One specific operationalization of a \"good\" approximation in the sense above is Problem 4 in the Open Problems section here, with k=2. Now, while finding an algorithm that is _guaranteed_ to find the minimum l1-distance between D and the resulting distance matrix may be an open question, it still seems possible that there at least is some approximation to this optimal solution. If I don't get an answer here, I'll mail the gentleman who posed that problem and ask whether he knows of any approximation algorithm (and post any answer I get to that here)."}
{"_id": "251878", "title": "Long running task initiated in the web site", "text": "The plan is to develop generic solution for long running task initiated in web site by users such as: 1\\. upload large file and do some custom processing and then insert in the database. 2\\. export large amount of data But we do not want to run these tasks on web servers and instead run on dedicated other sever. I have a couple of following solutions but looking for suggestion on these solutions or a new option.   1. Web site calls WCF service on other server (one-way operations / fire-forget). WCF service has all the information to process request and task will run in WCF service.    2. Window service but not sure how Window service will start the job as soon as possible as we do not want any delay between user submitted the form and process start time. Need some kind of flag for Window service to start."}
{"_id": "223853", "title": "How to publish my application as open source software?", "text": "Recently I wrote some (I hope) useful application. I would like to share it with every person on the world, making it open source. I would like to publish the source code as well as binary files (both for Windows and Linux). I used only free tools to write my application: Code::Blocks, MinGW, gcc/g++, Linux Ubuntu/Linux Mint, Windows 7 with the license I bought. I read about different types of licences but still have some doubts. I looked into the source code of some open source software, for example, here: https://polarssl.org/aes-source-code or here: http://qt- project.org/doc/qt-5/qtnetwork-blockingfortuneclient-blockingclient-h.html. Those files have some header, where you can find the license as a comment. Here are my questions:   1. Is there any place in the internet where I can read about these things? Licensing, how to publish my code?   2. Should I copy the license to every file of my source code when I want to publish it? From where I can take the license to copy it? (meaning should I copy it both in `*.h` and `*.cpp` file?)   3. For Windows version of my application I used Visual Studio Express Edition and Qt. To make an `*.exe` which will run out of the box with no additional installations, I need to redistribute with my `*.exe` file some files from Qt and Visual (`*.dll` files). How and where can I check if its free to redistribute those files with my application?   4. Which license would be the best for my needs? I did a little research and found that license: http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause. Is it 100% good for my needs, any advices?"}
{"_id": "243190", "title": "Software monetization that is not evil", "text": "I have a free open-source project with around 800K downloads to date. I've been contacted by some monetization companies from time to time and turned them down, since I didn't want toolbar malware associated with my software. I was wondering however, is there a non-evil way to monetize software ? Here are the options as I know them:   * **Add a donation button.**     * I don't feel comfortable with that as I really don't need \"donations\" - I'm paid quite well.     * Donating users may feel entitled to support etc. (see the second to last bullet)   * **Add ads inside your application.     * ** In the web that may be acceptable, but in a desktop program it looks incredibly lame.   * **Charge a small amount for each download.**     * This model works well in the mobile world, but I suspect no one will go for it on the desktop.      * It doesn't mix well with open source, though I suppose I could charge only for the binaries (most users won't go to the hassle of compiling the sources).     * People may expect support etc. after having explicitly paid (see next bullet).   * **Make money off a service / community / support associated with the program.**     * This is one route I definitely don't want to take, I don't want any sort of hassle beyond coding. I assure you, the program is top notch (albeit simple) and I'm not aware of any bugs as of yet (there are support forums and blog comments where users may report them). It is also very simple, documented, and discoverable so I do think I have a case for supplying it \"as is\".   * **Add affiliate suggestions to your installer.**     * If you use a monetization company, you lose control over what they propose. Unless you can establish some sort of strong trust with the company to supply quality suggestions (I sincerely doubt it), I can't have that.     * Choosing your own affiliate (e.g. directly suggesting Google Toolbar) is possibly the only viable solution to my mind. Problem is, where do I find a solid affiliate that could actually give value to the user rather than infect his computer with crapware? I thought maybe Babylon (not the toolbar of course, I hate toolbars)?"}
{"_id": "101125", "title": "Any success stories continuously using commercial static analysis tools for C++?", "text": "I can't decide whether an offer of a commercial static analysis tool is worth spending the resources. We tried the tool on several million lines of our C++ code and it found something like 50 real issues. We wanted to find how those issues might have affected users. We grabbed a year old version of stable branch and analyzed it and then looked into the defects base - none of the issues found in the old code has caused any of the problems users reported. Not only those defects don't seem to manifest themselves to users but using the tool requires nontrivial effort - address false positives, analyze every warning the tool produces. Also the tools doesn't find all defects, it of course only finds some defects. So once again   * a noticeable effort   * very low number of issues found   * issues found don't seem to affect customers The tool is licensed at 7K euro for a team of five per year. Currently it looks like it's a lot of money and effort and no return except _now our code will maybe have less defects that likely don't manifest themselves_. It feels like we could have spent that effort on addressing issues that hurt right now. The supplier claims that using their tool in the development process helps _drastically_ improve code quality. I currently can't get any explanation of what this _drastic_ improvement can be - all the facts I considered are listed above. I'd like to hear stories that go like this: _before we licensed X we were miserable, because (what specifically was wrong), now using X at all times we have (what's much better now than before), so we're pretty happy - money were spent well_ and negative experience with enough details would also be helpful. Has anyone had really positive experience continuously using commercial static analysis tools? Is there a drastic improvement in source code quality that directly affects customers? Was the result worth the license fee and effort?"}
{"_id": "160028", "title": "1 to 1 Comparison and Ranking System", "text": "I'm looking to create a comparison and ranking system which allows users to view 2 items, click on the one that they feel is the better one and then get presented with 2 more random items and continue to do this until they decide to stop. In the background, I want the system to use these wins and loses to rank each item in an overall ranking table so I can then see what is #1 and what isn't. I haven't got a clue where to begin with the formula, but I image I need to log wins and loses. Any help/direction appreciated!"}
{"_id": "157755", "title": "Lisp Macros: A practical approach", "text": "On my way to learn Lisp I have discovered the all powerful and feared so called Macros, then after spending a hard time trying to understand them and their usefulness I said to myself, I FINALLY GOT IT.   I couldn't be more wrong, I was thinking that the only purpose of Macros was to define new control structures and that was all I needed to know until I start reading more and more on the subject and a whole new world has comes to me ! One can use Macros for new **Domain Specific Language** , **Code Transformation** and to avoid **Boilerplate Code**. Hence, if a few examples at which the aforementioned usages of macros and others as well, with a concise and simple-to-understand explanation could be given it would be really nice."}
{"_id": "157754", "title": "\"Read\" a file without using a file pointer", "text": "I was asked this question in an interview. I'm somehow supposed to \"read\" a file into my C program as input without using a file pointer (including \"f\" functions, e.g. fgets, fscanf etc.). I'm also not allowed to redirect it using the terminal, i.e. no system or exec calls. The program will not get the file during runtime (that's what he said). The interviewer did not answer the question even though I requested him a lot, and I'd like to know how it'd be possible to do this."}
{"_id": "235185", "title": "What's the reason of choosing PascalCasing over camelCasing or vice versa from a programming language design POV?", "text": "I like both but I notice languages that use camelCasing for members sometimes need more adjustments when you want to edit your code. For example (in Python):               node.customData()      vs               node.setCustomData()      custom changes casing. It could be avoided if it was:               node.getCustomData()      In C# they will use PascalCasing for example. I know some even use no casing so:               node.getcustomdata()      It seems to be that scripting languages generally prefer camelCasing more than PascalCasing to be more relaxed? Is there a reason for choosing one over the other from a programming language design POV?"}
{"_id": "158929", "title": "Domain Objects with Interfaces", "text": "I'm in a situation where part of my system has a dependency on another module in the same system, but the modules themselves need to remain independently deployable, where the parts they depend on would be filled in with another implementation. A module in this instance is the concept of a bunch of components that all contribute to servicing a business function. The system is also built in C#. So, where I depend on another module, the source module defines an interface describing the functions it needs the dependent party module to implement. The contract types (domain model objects) are also interfaces for the dependent module. Here is where it gets a bit hazy to me. The dependency inversion principle doesn't sit well in my head at this point. Both of those \"modules\" are of the same importance as each other. Which should define interfaces and force the other to reference it? I'm suspecting a 3rd project sitting between the modules that handles setting up the dependencies (probably a DI container). Should the entities in the modules be interfaced? They are simply bags of get/set (no DDD here). Can anyone offer any guidance here? Thanks in advance. **Edit 1:** The project structure:               Module1.Interfaces        IModuleOneServices     Module1.Models        ModuleOneDataObject     Module1        Module1 implements IModuleOneServices          Module2.Interfaces        IModuleTwoServices          Module2.Models        ModuleTwoDataObject - has property of type ModuleOneDataObject          Module2        Module2 implements IModuleTwoServices            depends on IModuleOneServices      Module2 needs to be deployable by itself, and remains compilable, and sometimes, run without a Module1 present at all."}
{"_id": "160027", "title": "How to capture different build verisons of the same production release artifact version in Artifactory?", "text": "Let's say I have artifacts \"mylibrary-5.2.jar\" and \"mylibrary-5.3.jar\" representing the 5.2 and 5.3 versions of a library that our project creates and publishes for one of our other projects. Does Artifactory support having multiple \"versions\" of each of these artifacts to represent the different builds that were performed during a release to construct this artifact? For example, to produce the final version of the 5.2 release of \"mylibrary\" aka the artifact: **mylibrary-5.2.jar** , we went through 3 builds to get to a version that passed our integration environment's automated tests and our user acceptance tests. So there were three separate builds that produced three separate artifacts for release 5.2. We want to be able to retain and potentially recall these different build's artifact at a later date (for testing, etc). In order to do this, which of the following options would work?   1. Capture the artifacts as separate Artifacts, i.e. build-5.2-b1.jar (build 1's artifact), build-5.2-b2.jar (build 2's artifact), build-5.2-b3.jar (build 3's artifact), and build-5.2.jar (the final production release; which matches build 3)   2. Capture a SINGLE artifact named \"build-5.2.jar\" which has VERSIONS of the artifact which capture builds 1 through 3 and which can be recalled later, by version number.    3. Some other option we have not considered, but should"}
{"_id": "240901", "title": "Is it appropriate to remove redundant code explicitly assigning the default values?", "text": "Sometimes while I'm editing something I see some useless code added by other developers, probably due to habit. Editing this code will not make any difference, so is it appropriate? In my specific case I'm talking about Java private fields like this:               private int aSimpleInt = 0;     private boolean myBool = false;     private MyObject obj = null;      declaring the default values is redundant and useless.   Should I remove them or just skip?"}
{"_id": "178280", "title": "Can I maintain copyright of the name/logo of an otherwise copyleft (GPL) application?", "text": "I'd like to release an application that basically has the license of \"the code is GPLd but forks cannot use the name or logo\", with the intent of avoiding confusion to users. Is that possible or is it an all or nothing deal?"}
{"_id": "178281", "title": "Does distributing non-GPLd assets with a GPL application violate the license?", "text": "This is somewhat related to my other question, but is actually different. I would like to license a Windows Phone application under the GPL. All other Windows Phone Marketplace issues aside (I'll ask those on the forums), I'd like to include icons that ship with the SDK in my application. While this is common practice (documentation points to the icons' location), I'm not sure if I'd be forcing GPL on the icons (a move expressly forbidden by the Application Provider Agreement). How is this usually handled in GPL or am I simply out of luck? **EDIT** The icons in question are copied into the project's source tree and distributed with the application. The license that ships with the SDK states that you may **not** : > modify or distribute the source code of any Distributable Code [incl. the > icons] so that any part of it becomes subject to an Excluded License. An > Excluded License is one that requires, as a condition of use, modification > or distribution, that > >   * the code be disclosed or distributed in source code form; or >   * others have the right to modify it. > My question now becomes: can I distribute the icons with my GPL'd application in any way (for example, by including provisions in my license text) that would not violate either the GPL or the SDK agreement?"}
{"_id": "178285", "title": "Should we hire a new developer now, or wait until the code is refactored to make it suitable for a team environment?", "text": "I support and develop a large system that uses various technologies e.g. c++,.net,vb6 etc. I am a sole developer. I am debating whether now is the right time to approach my manager (who is not a developer) to ask if another developer can be recruited. I don't have any experience working in software teams. I have always been a sole developer. The concerns I have are:   1. There is still a lot to do. Training another developer would take time and distract me from my duties.    2. The company does not invest heavily in tools e.g. source control    3. The code in this system needs to be refactored to introduce concepts such as interfaces, polymorphism etc, which are supported by methodologies such as Agile (I inherited the system about 12 months ago). I am gradually trying to refactor the code. I believe I have two options:   1. Approach my manager now    2. Wait until I have had time to refactor the code so it is more suitable for a team environment. Which option is best? I am hoping to hear from other developers who have been in my situation."}
{"_id": "209973", "title": "Understanding unit testing for dynamically changing condition", "text": "I was trying to understand how to write unit tests for a few days now. I'm confused with following scenarios in the existing code. In first function the max value changes depending on the object created at run time but in the second case it is a constant. NOTE: The following functions are not related. These are two different scenarios.               SomeFunction1(arg1,....)     {       if(arg1 > someObject.MaxAllowedValue)       {          throw exception;       }     }                    SomeFunction2(arg1,....)     {       if(arg1 > maxAllowedValue)       {          throw exception;       }     }      I am trying to test whether the function throws an exception when max value is exceeded. Does the unit test remain the same in both the cases or is it different?"}
{"_id": "54016", "title": "What do you do when you realize your job requires you to do something out of your depth?", "text": "For a large software project recently, I was really out of my depth. And I did actually know this; and that the only reason I was employed was mostly a lack of other qualified candidates. The job was to build a large application on top of PHP/MySQL, a system I had little experience with. (I did advise the employer of this beforehand -- I've been spoiled by C# ASP.NET/MVC and MSSQL Server) The main reason I applied was location, location, location -- on campus jobs which actually have any programming component are relatively rare. For almost a year and a half I've slogged through this, and I think I can say I know (at least somewhat) what I'm doing now. I've made some mistakes, torn out some hair, and moved on. (I'm still working on this system nowadays, but I no longer feel completely lost) In the future though, I'd like to keep my personal and professional self a little healthier than what occurred in this case. So I'm curious -- what's the best way to handle a situation like this?"}
{"_id": "58577", "title": "Shifting between XML schemas and C# classes in a sensible fashion", "text": "A .NET/C# system receives XML messages for processing and further transmission. Since working directly on XML documents would be very inconvenient, it is necessary to deserialize the message to a C# object and then serialize just before delivery. Up until now this has been done with Microsoft's XSD tool (xsd.exe) and it gets the job done, but poorly. The tool is old and buggy and generates outrageous class names and code representations of the various XML schema constructs. Are there better ways to accomplish this in .NET, or should I go a whole other way about it?"}
{"_id": "28468", "title": "Key bindings war in my brain", "text": "How many key bindings are there in your brain? I personally use Intellij Idea as my primary IDE for development, but sometimes switch to Eclipse and Netbeans a bit, and sometimes I use Jedit,Notepad++, Emacs, Vim. I am always trying to find a perfect key bindings that I can use crossing all the editors. What's your idea to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "151751", "title": "List structures in memory", "text": "Could anyone give an overview of how list structures which are composed of a head and a tail which references the rest of the list i.e linked list are represented in memory of the computer? Does the computer make use of cpu registers to hold the pointers the head and rest of the list?"}
{"_id": "151755", "title": "How to temporarily save the result of the query, to use in another?", "text": "I have this problem I think you may help me with.   P.S. I'm not sure how to call this, so if anyone finds a more appropriate title, please do edit. ## Background   * I'm making this application for searching bus transit lines.    * Bus lines are a 3 digit number, and is unique and will never change.   * The requirement is to be able to search for lines from stop A to stop B.   * The user interface is already successful in hinting the user to only use valid stop names.   * **The requirement is to be able to display if a route has a direct line, and if not, display a 2-line and even 3-line combination.** ### Example: I need to get from point A to point D. The program should show:   * If there's a direct line A-D.   * If not, display alternative, 2 line combos, such as A-C, C-D.   * If there aren't any 2-line combos, search for 3-line combos: A-B, B-C, C-D. Of course, the app should display bus line numbers, as well as when to switch buses. ## What I have: My database is structured as follows (simplified, actual database includes locations and times and whatnot):               +-----------+     | bus_stops |     +----+------+     | id | name |     +----+------+          +-------------------------------+     |    lines_stops_relationship   |     +-------------+---------+-------+     |  bus_line   | stop_id | order |     +-------------+---------+-------+      Where `lines_stops_relationship` describe a many-to-many relationship between the bus lines and the stops. Order, signifies the order in which stops appear in a single line. Not all lines go back and forth, and order has meaning (point A with order 2 comes after point B with order 1). ## The Problem   * We find out if a line can pass through the route easily enough. Just search for a single line which passes through both points in the correct order.   * How can I find if there's a 2/3 line combo? I was thinking to search for a line which matches the source stop, and one for the destination stop, and see if I can get a common stop between them, where the user can switch buses. **How do I remember that stop?**   * 3 line combo is even trickier, I find a line for the source, and a line for the destination, and then what? Search for a line which has 2 stops I guess, but again, **How do I remember the stops?** ## tl;dr How do I remember results from a query to be able to use it again? I'm hoping to achieve this in a single query (for each, a query for 1-line routes, a query for 2, and a query for 3-line combos). _**Note:_ I don't mind if someone suggests a completely different approach than what I have, I'm open to any solutions.** Will award any assistance with a cookie and an upvote. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "17105", "title": "Being productive during downtime", "text": "Lets say you are somewhere where coding and getting online isn't possible (On a busy flight, for example)what do you do to stay productive? Things I would do are read whatever tech book I am currently slogging through and maybe doodle some UI stuff or workflows. What else could I be doing?"}
{"_id": "20335", "title": "When do you have enough experience?", "text": "I've worked on three successful projects (freelanced) throughout my highschool career; however, they primarily involve web technologies. I know that I'm proficient in setting up LAMP stacks, working with PHP, databases, and designing with strict markup, version control, usability testing, and all that fun stuff but since I began programming, I've seen an evident gap between the complexity from hash maps to binary search trees (Java is the ultimate PL for learning no matter its condition in the industry). Although I'm attempting to pursue some multifarious career in software design, is it really necessary to push for a University education (Berkley or Stanford ideally in CS) before I fully commit myself to programming? Are three successful projects regarding web design, web development, and video streaming (and all concomitant technologies) enough to be regarded as \"experienced\"? Could that experience get me hired? Ultimately, when is there enough experience such that University degrees become irrelevant?"}
{"_id": "256064", "title": "MongoDB Embedded vs Reference Private info", "text": "I have searched extensively for a similar Mongo schema design and can't find relevant examples. I have a store (with public info), each store has an account (with private account info).               // store object     {       name: \"Departement Store\",       email: \"contact@store.com\",       account: { // private info not returned by API         manager: \"Steve\",         employees: [...]       }     }      The stores will be searched through a public API. I am limiting the search queries using MongoDB's features to limit the returned data:               db.stores.find({}, {account:0});      **My question** : is it more efficient to keep the private data as a subdocument or in a separate collection? It seems a separate collection with account info is the best choice as I will be picking and choosing from an embedded document. References:   * mongo schema (embedding vs reference)   * Embedded document vs reference in mongoose design model?"}
{"_id": "1588", "title": "What is better for coding - desktop or laptop?", "text": "Use of desktops are decreasing day by day in daily life but for coding purpose are there any reasons for using desktop over laptop?"}
{"_id": "256066", "title": "Class hierarchy question - do you implement separate classes for the same behavior?", "text": "**NOTE:** The language I am using is C#. I am currently working on a 'The Quest' mingame where there is a player and some enemies. My design so far involves a base abstract class called 'Mover' and an interface called 'IAttacker', since the Player object and the Enemy object(s) both move and attack, albeit in different ways. However I also think this may be unnecessary because I could just create one big combination interface, 'IMoveAttack' or something like that. Moreover, my friend who gave me the challenge recommeded that the Weapon class (the player can pick up weapons along the way which are lying on the floor) to be a subclass of Mover, even though the Weapons don't really need to move, they just need to spawn at random locations at every level. What is the best design principle in this case?"}
{"_id": "48481", "title": "Do we need use case levels or not?", "text": "I guess no one would argue for decomposing use cases, that is just wrong. However sometimes it is necessary to specify use cases, which are on lower, more technical level, like for example authetication and authorization, which give the actor value, but are further from his business needs. Cockburn argues for levels when needed and explains how to move use cases from/to different levels and how to determine the right level. On the other hand, e.g. Bittner argues against use case levels, although he uses subflows, requires the vision documents which contain information about the purpose of the system in the business, much like use cases on the higher level, and at the end of his book mentions, that at least two levels are needed most of the time. My questionis, do you find use case levels necessary, helpful or unwanted? What are the reasons? Am I misssing some important arguments?"}
{"_id": "48483", "title": "How can the process of creating and maintaining documentation be improved?", "text": "I know it's a very subjective question , but this is one section of Software Engineering wherein I haven't seen any improvement in terms of how we can do it in a better way. I guess every programmer does documentation with some frustration, but when working I feel it's the most important tool for me. How can the process of creating and maintaining documentation be done in a better way?"}
{"_id": "256062", "title": "can a logic error happen way later than its cause?", "text": "For comparison, for a runtime fatal error, it is often that the cause of the error is way before the error crashes a program. For a logic error, it doesn't crash a program. It happens when the state of the execution of the program isn't what we expect for the first time. The cause of a logic error in a program, I think, just like the cause of a runtime fatal error, is where you make correction and the program will not have the logic error. I wonder if the cause of a logic error must be where the error happens, or can be way before that? Thanks."}
{"_id": "62105", "title": "Assertions in private functions - Where to draw the line?", "text": "We use assertions to check for illegal behaviour which just shouldn't happen if everything is working as it should be, such as using `NULL` as argument when it clearly shouldn't. This is all very well when you write public functions since you can't trust that the programmer who will use them won't make a mistake. But what about private functions, which won't be accessible from the outside? Of course, the function which uses those private functions may contain a bug (i.e. _you_ made a mistake), but should we _always_ use assertions in private functions? Is there a line where we can say \"Hey, we don't need an assertion here because due to previous assertions and usage of the private function, we can assume that the parameters are always safe\"? Now I myself am a bit skeptical about that last part - can we ever safely assume that things are always as they should be?"}
{"_id": "48489", "title": "Who should write the test plan?", "text": "I am in the in-house development team of my company, and we develop our company's web sites according to the requirements of the marketing team. Before releasing the site to them for acceptance testing, we were requested to give them a test plan to follow. However, the development team feels that since the requirements came from the requestors, they would have the best knowledge of what to test, what to lookout for, how things should behave etc and a test plan is thus not required. We are always in an argument over this, and developers find it a waste of time to write down things like:-   1. Click on button _A_.    2. Key in _XYZ_ in the form field and click button _B_.   3. You should see behaviour _C_. which we have to repeat for each requirement/feature requested. This is basically rephrasing what's already in the requirements document. We are moving towards using an Agile approach for managing our projects and this is also requested at the end of each iteration. Unit and integration testing aside, who should be the one to come up with the end user acceptance test plan? Should it be the reqestors or the developers? Many thanks in advance. Regards   CK"}
{"_id": "237331", "title": "How to explain that catch(...) is wrong?", "text": "I have a problem: Now Microsoft has changed, and in respect with the C++ Standard, and starting from from Visual Studio 2005 now:   * Access Violation are not to be catched in `catch(...)` However, if one compile with `/EHsc` or other similar flags under VS2003 and before, then Access Violation are really caught in `catch(...)`. Yes, really. In my new company, they have protected their whole application accordingly. And now I have a **whole application** with hundreds, maybe thousands, of `catch(...)` compiled in VS2003. Those `catch` don't put an end to the process. Sometimes they hopefully trace something like \"unexpected error in...\", but only sometimes. How can I explain to them it's plain wrong ? That it hides corruptions until a point where it's impossible to tell what is going wrong ?"}
{"_id": "252997", "title": "How to chain together points in an array", "text": "I have a series of points with lengths and rotations like this: ![points](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xiG62.jpg) I need to create separate chains from points whose lines overlap but I\u2019m having real trouble doing this efficiently. I have an array of simple Point objects, in no particular order, and I can loop through them and test them with a simple \"intersect\" function. I need to end up with an array of chains, each with an ordered list of points. (Or another way of representing the chains). At the moment every avenue I explore seems to involve a convoluted hack of arrays, nudges and fudges. Having never studied Computer Science I wonder if there is some sort of data structure or technique that would lend itself well to this sort of thing."}
{"_id": "67557", "title": "What differences can I expect on the Java 6 Exam compared to the Java 5 Exam?", "text": "I am taking a Java class that teaches based on a Java 5 book and the prof. says that if we get the Java certification then we instantly pass the class, sounds like a deal. My question is, since I want to go for the most recent certification (Java 6), what can I expect to be different? I was told that Java 6 is so similar to Java 5 that learning Java 5 is not useless, but what about when it comes to exam differences?"}
{"_id": "143659", "title": "What was the most used programming language before C was created?", "text": "C is a language written between '69 and '73 according to WIkipedia. I imagine it made programming a whole lot easier and opened the gate for other programming languages. My question, however, is what programming language dominated the market before C appeared? I'm tempted to say fortran and/or BASIC but I wasn't even alive back then so I have no idea. By \"most used\", I mean a MUST-LEARN programming language, which most programmers were using at the time."}
{"_id": "115059", "title": "What responsibilities does a Management Information Systems job entail?", "text": "At my school there is apparently a Computer Science degree, which is located under the \"department of natural sciences\", while Management Information Systems is considered \"business\". Besides the usual descriptions that can be found about both jobs, I was wondering how the job of MIS actually differs from say, that of a software engineer or programmer. Just curious, thanks"}
{"_id": "67552", "title": "How to output library test/benchmark data in a web framework?", "text": "I am writing an MVC framework. I have a folder full of library classes, each are self contained, and could be ripped out of the framework and used by themselves. The only problem is that a few of these libraries (benchmarking, unit testing) display HTML to report results. I am wondering, do I display this HTML in a view file, or hard code it into the class? If I use view files, these modules will no longer be able to be used by themselves, and will require the print_view() method found in another class. If I hard code this HTML into the library class however, the class becomes difficult to read, as well as makes it harder to modify the design aspects of the reports. Any suggestions/thoughts?"}
{"_id": "179485", "title": "Dependency Management tool for REST endpoints", "text": "I work in a Rest Oriented environment. The number of endpoints is quite large and span multiple applications. The dependencies between the endpoints are large in number as well and not very well planned. Applications have cyclic dependencies amongst each other. Unfortunately, there is no central location where all the endpoints are documented and declare dependencies (the endpoints that they inturn call). Is there a tool that will help in such dependency management. I tried searching for a tool online, but not know what such a thing would be called, I am unable to find anything."}
{"_id": "144602", "title": "How do I make complex SQL queries easier to write?", "text": "I'm finding it very difficult to write complex SQL queries involving joins across many (at least 3-4) tables and involving several nested conditions. The queries I'm being asked to write are easily described by a few sentences, but can require a deceptive amount of code to complete. I'm finding myself often using temporary views to write these queries, which seem like a bit of a crutch. What tips can you provide that I can use to make these complex queries easier? More specifically, how do I break these queries down into the steps I need to use to actually write the SQL code? _Note that I'm the SQL I'm being asked to write is part of homework assignments for a database course, so I don't want software that will do the work for me. I want to actually understand the code I'm writing._ More technical details:   * The database is hosted on a PostgreSQL server running on the local machine.   * The database is very small: there are no more than seven tables and the largest table has less than about 50 rows.   * The SQL queries are being passed unchanged to the server, via LibreOffice Base."}
{"_id": "115050", "title": "How do I convince some one that test should do assertion (not assertions) and not the helper methods", "text": "Joined a new employer and came across a new style of writing tests.               @Test()     public testMethodWhichDoesNotDoAnyAssertion() {         LoginPage loginPage = signUpPage.doLogin(\"username\",\"password\");         oneMoreCommonMethodCalledHere()         anotherCommonMethodCalledHere()     }          public void doLogin(String userName, String password) {          //login here          Assert.assertTrue(\"Login Successful\")     }          public void oneMoreCommonMethodCalledHere() {          //Some more operations here.          Assert.assertTrue(\"This also succeeded\")     }          public void anotherCommonMethodCalledHere() {          //Some more operations here.          Assert.assertTrue(\"Even this succeeded!!! Your code is awesome!!!\")      So far I have been doing assertions in tests and not in the methods which are invoked from test method. The problems I have with approach are multiple - There are two many assertions happening in one method, though indirectly and it defeats the idea of one responsibility per test There are times when I want to do one assertion in my test method while testing for a work flow. And many of the helper methods which would be called would assert things and might even fail which would hamper work flow test. Now thing I have heard in favour of this approach - It is easy for any one to just plug in helper method in a test while not worrying about the assertions which should be carried out for a scenario, as helper method takes care of it. Comments?"}
{"_id": "115051", "title": "How to present asynchronous state change in chart or diagram?", "text": "I started to study about _state transition chart_. As I see, it assumes all state transition is done instantly with no time consuming. But in most of my case, I'm heavily depending on asynchronous I/O, so it seems to be less efficient modeling them with the chart. How do you think about how to represent asynchronous state change? Please recommend something to me :)"}
{"_id": "66687", "title": "Does single inheritance limit what we can do with generalisation?", "text": "As a rule of thumb, generalisation is used only in specific circumstances. For example, when we can say that X is literally a subclass of Y. So, we can happily say that a Horse is a subclass of Mammal. I have always been lead to believe that we should use generalisation and inheritence here. If we do not have this strict correspondence between two objects then we should not. A Horse is a Mammal. However, it is also literally a mode of transportation. So what happens in a world of single inheritance where horse cannot inherit from both? Do we then subjugate the fact that a horse is literally a mode of transportation to realisational, i.e., an interface such as ITransportable?"}
{"_id": "178758", "title": "Why is using C++ libraries so complicated?", "text": "First of all, I want to note I love C++ and I'm one of those people who thinks it is easier to code in C++ than Java. Except for one tiny thing: libraries. In Java you can simply add some jar to the build path and you're done. In C++ you usually have to set multiple paths for the header files and the library itself. In some cases, you even have to use special build flags. I have mainly used Visual Studio, Code Blocks and no IDE at all. All 3 options do not differ much when talking about using external libraries. I wonder why was there made no simpler alternative for this? Like having a special .zip file that has everything you need in one place so the IDE can do all the work for you setting up the build flags. Is there any technical barrier for this?"}
{"_id": "66682", "title": "What can we learn from inactive assembly languages?", "text": "There are still groups of programmers who support old microprocessors, e.g., Z80, 6510, 68000, etc. What can we learn from old assembly languages at a time when functional programming is becoming fashionable? **EDIT** I imagine that there would be more to learn for embedded systems. However, assembler styles apply to a more limited extent for web programming where caching is used and the size of routines does not really matter. The guideline for best practice for embedded and web styles differs massively (server and client styles being different). For example, the optimising a sprite multiplexer to run in say, under 30 bytes, is different to types of optimising we would make for code we intend to run on a web server. The types of optimisation are very different. The sprite multiplexer is written with memory usage as the main priority but regarding our web server routine, we want maximum performance which has little to do with efficient use of memory unless we are talking about shared resources."}
{"_id": "188150", "title": "Compile GPL-code into a JNI-capable shared library and use it in commercial software", "text": "I am developing an application for Android in JAVA which calls GPLed C-code via JNI. I have modified & capsulated a GPL-software under a JNI-interface and compile it as a shared library (.so) which I can use via JNI from my JAVA-part (the commercial part with closed source). Because I have stripped the original GPL-software from everything which is not needed by my software, that GPL-software has no more other GPL-dependencies which explicitly forbid using it as a shared library in a closed-source software (like SecretRabbitCode for example forbids it). I have no problem to set my modified version of the GPL-software online, but I cannot do this with my commercial software. Because I need the modified version of the GPL-software in my software, I have to bundle it in one package (a APK-file in Android). Sadly, the GPL-software has 1 or 2 more dependencies to GPL-code (just C-files like aes.c), so it's not as easy as just ask the author of this GPL-software. Because the Android-way of \"packing JAVA and .so-files together, bundle it and distribute it\" is quite new, it's not as easy as with pure JAVA or pure C code. Who can help out?"}
{"_id": "145553", "title": "Sharing API's between different Programming languages?", "text": "I was just wondering how API's can be shared between different Programming languages. I mean, MS have .Net which uses VB.net C# and various other technologies.   I doubt .Net is written for each programming language.   How are structs and classes shared between languages? Also the same for Unity3D - Javascript shares API's with C# and BOO.   How?"}
{"_id": "66689", "title": "What would happen if a bit of GPL code sneaked into the Windows source code?", "text": "Imagine that an unfaithful (or maybe careless) employee at Microsoft managed to sneak in three lines of GPL code into a the core of a distribution of Windows. Wouldn't this mean that Microsoft would need to publish all their source code under GPL as well? Or could they just rewrite the three lines once they are notified about the issue? Shouldn't Microsoft be scared to death about this? **Edit** In the comments below, Kenneth states that it has actually happened, so I would be most intereted in any references. I also do not understand how this question could get closed."}
{"_id": "178755", "title": "Setting up ASP.NET structure for code", "text": "I've always coded in C# MVC3 when developing web applications. But now i wanted to learn a bit more about developing web sites with just ASP.NET. But now i'm wondering what a good setup for my code would be. For me, an MVC like pattern seems to be a good way to go. But obviously ASP.NET doesn't have any `router` and `controller` classes. So i guess people have a different way of setting up their code when they do ASP.NET. So i'm looking for more information on how to get started with this. So not really the basics of ASP.NET, but something that focuses on a good code setup. Any good tutorials/information about this/?"}
{"_id": "225307", "title": "Another way of expressing 'Dirty' coding", "text": "I'm writing a brief for a new starter at the company.   I've pointed out the aims of what I want to achieve and now I'm writing some suggested (but not concrete) solutions. For each of the aims, I'd like to suggest a fast, dirty method, and a slower, but more robust solution. I don't mean 'dirty' as in uncommented and untabbed code, but simply as in faster, hackishy code. I'm happy that the new starter takes whichever pathway they feel are necessary, and I feel my use of the word 'dirty' is going to put them off that particular solution. They're probably going to try to impress the management, and I don't want the 'dirty' solution to be a turn-off if that's what they're most comfortable with. Can you help me decide on a slightly better terminology than dirty? I aim to contrast between the hacky/fast solution (which is still valid) and a more robust, scalable solution. For a project as trivial as the one we're producing, then either method will be accepted."}
{"_id": "143387", "title": "Which topics do I need to research to enable me to complete my self-assigned \"Learning Project\"?", "text": "I want to continue learning C#. I've read parts of a few books recommended on here and the language is feeling more familiar by the day. I'd like to tackle a mid-sized personal project to take my expertise to the next level. What I'd like to do, is create an application that 'manages expenses', that runs on multiple machines on a LAN. So for example, say we have person1 and person2 on seperate machines running the application, when person1 enters an expense, it will appear on person2's (pretty UI) view of the expenses database and vice versa. What topics do I need to research to make this possible for me? I plan on learning WPF for the UI (though the steep learning curve (or so I'm told) has me a little anxious about that at this stage. With regards to the database, which database would you recommend I use? I don't want a 'server' for the database to run on, so do I need to use an embedded database that each client machine runs a copy of that updates to each other (upon startup/entering of expense on any machine etc)? What topics under networking should I be looking at? I haven't studied networking before in any language, so do I need to learn about sockets or?"}
{"_id": "143386", "title": "best practice for initializing class members in php", "text": "I have lots of code like this in my constructors:-               function __construct($params) {              $this->property = isset($params['property']) ? $params['property'] : default_val;          }      Is it better to do this rather than specify the default value in the property definition? i.e. `public $property = default_val`? Sometimes there is logic for the default value, and some default values are taken from other properties, which was why I was doing this in the constructor. Should I be using setters so all the logic for default values is separated?"}
{"_id": "161774", "title": "What relationship do software Scrum or Lean have to industrial engineering concepts like theory of constraints?", "text": "In Scrum, work is delivered to customers through a series of sprints in which project work is time boxed to a fixed number of days or weeks, usually 30 days. In lean software development, the goal is to deliver as soon as possible, permitting early feedback for the next iteration. Both techniques stress the importance of workflow in which software work product does not accumulate in development awaiting release at some future date. Both permit new or refined requirements and feedback from QA and customers to be acted on with as little delay as possible based on priority. A few years ago I heard a lecture where the speaker talked briefly about a family of concepts from industrial engineering called theory of constraints. In the factory, they use an operations model based on three components: drum, buffer, and rope. The drum synchronizes work product as it flows through the system. Buffers that protect the system by holding output from one stage as it waits to be consumed by the next. The rope pulls product from one work station to the next. Historically, are these ideas part of the heritage of Scrum and Lean, or are they on a separate track? It we wanted to think about Scrum and Lean in terms of drum-buffer-rope, what are the parts?   * Drum = {daily scrum meeting, monthly release)?    * Buffer = {burn down list, source control system)?    * Rope = { daily meeting, constant integration server, monthly releases}? Industrial engineers define work flow in terms of different kinds of factories.   * I-Factories: straight pipeline. One input, one output.   * A-Factories: many inputs and one output.   * V-Factories: one input, many output products.   * T-Plants: many inputs, many outputs.  If it applies, what kind of factory is most like Scrum or Lean and why?"}
{"_id": "67882", "title": "When, if ever, can code standards be ignored?", "text": "My company has decided to use stored procedures for everything dealing with the database (because they didn't know of any other way besides raw SQL), and as the saying goes \"When in Rome...\" so I try to follow. Recently I had to add a hack fix that required grabbing a database value, and since it was a single value from a single table I wrote it as inline SQL (parameterized, of course) since there didn't seem to be a need for a stored procedure for one trivial line of code used in a single part of the application as a kludge. Of course, I've now been told to fix it and only ever use Stored Procs for anything related to the database. This feels just a bit too much like blindly following dogma instead of using common sense. Don't get me wrong, I understand the purpose of having coding standards but I am also a proponent of ignoring standards when they don't make sense, not just blindly following them as though they were Gospel."}
{"_id": "129351", "title": "Splitting Logic, Data, Layout and \"Hacks\"", "text": "Sure, we all heard of programming patterns such as MVVM, MVC and such. But that isn't really what I'm looking into as Layout, Data and Logic is already pretty much split up (XML-Layout markup, Database, _insert your language of choice here_ ). The platform I am developing for is hard to maintain over the updated versions and older OSes. The project significantly grew up over the last few months and dealing with different platform versions really is a pain. For example simply disabling an user interface control for all existing versions took me around 40 lines of code in the logic layer, wrangling around with invocation, delegation, singletons that provide UI handling and so on. Is there a clean way to keep track of those \"hacks\" by maybe excluding it into separate classes or even packages? Should I overwrite existing framework code in order to handle _my_ requirements correctly? If so, does that concept have a name?"}
{"_id": "129354", "title": "Simulating/developing_a_testing_strategy for factors that might cause the same algorithm to produce different results in Distributed Systems", "text": "This is a **Purely Academic Question** **Context:** I am working with some algorithms which are meant to arrive at a consensus in distributed systems. I intended to tackle Byzantine faults with these algorithms. For this I have implemented several algorithms published in IEEE papers and need a platform to test these algorithms. I wanted to test the merit of existing algorithms. For this I implemented thousands of Linux Containers on my system and now i want to do message passing between them, or say _simulate_ my distributed system. But the question is the data that is flowing must have _faults_. This is the genesis of this question. Why I need something more _sophisticated_ than RNG's is that I will need to attach some real credibility to my work. I want it to tackle some real world application generating faults rather than just fix the faults I myself generated in an algorithm. So, I need to simulate the factors that result in Byzantine faults. OR, to quote FrustatedWithFormsDesigner: `I need to develop a testing strategy that will have a deliberate number of faults to test fault-handling` To Summarize: **Say I am running a program in a distributed environment, then what are the factors that might end up generating Byzantine faults and is it possible for me to inculcate these factors in my simulation and how?** So, what I need is: A program that will make a small no. of mistakes every now and then, and I should not know what mistakes it has made and when. _I do not need it to make multiple mistakes in one set(run of the algorithm), but rather I plan on making (say) 10,000 runs of the program, and I need it to make mistakes 2000 times .._ Very importantly, I must be sanguine that there are no more than (1/5)n mistakes, where n is the total no. of results generated using the program. The _results_ that I am talking about here can be anything that is quantifiable and verifiable, like eg. an array of values. Doing something like this:               1for(int i=0; i<10000; i++)     2   //one fifth of the times put garbage in the array using random function!!     3   for (int j=0; j<5; j++)     4      array[j]=j;      using a RNG in step `2` to _hide_ where the fault is present is too simplistic, trivial and not _real_ enough. I thought I could use some algorithm built around some mathematical function that is bound to fail 1/5th of the times, But I could not think of any. P.S. Please tell me if you need more data to understand the problem."}
{"_id": "184654", "title": "I've been told that Exceptions should only be used in exceptional cases. How do I know if my case is exceptional?", "text": "My specific case here is that the user can pass in a string into the application, the application parses it and assigns it to structured objects. Sometimes the user may type in something invalid. For example, their input may describe a person but they may say their age is \"apple\". Correct behavior in that case is roll back the transaction and to tell the user an error occurred and they'll have to try again. There may be a requirement to report on every error we can find in the input, not just the first. In this case, I argued we should throw an exception. He disagreed, saying, \"Exceptions should be exceptional: It's expected that the user may input invalid data, so this isn't an exceptional case\" I didn't really know how to argue that point, because by definition of the word, he seems to be right. But, it's my understanding that this is why Exceptions were invented in the first place. It used to be you _had_ to inspect the result to see if an error occurred. If you failed to check, bad things could happen without you noticing. Without exceptions every level of the stack needs to check the result of the methods they call and if a programmer forgets to check in one of these levels, the code could accidentally proceed and save invalid data (for example). Seems more error prone that way. Anyway, feel free to correct anything I've said here. My main question is if someone says Exceptions should be exceptional, how do I know if my case is exceptional?"}
{"_id": "220252", "title": "Either Monad and Exceptional Circumstances", "text": "I have a function returning an Either such as GetUserFromDb(int id). If the database is offline, should I catch the error in the function and wrap it in a failure / Left case or should I let it bubble out as an exception as there is nothing I can do and it really is an exceptional situation?"}
{"_id": "237492", "title": "Should I use an Exception in a case like this?", "text": "I have a Windows service with a fluent interface like this:               aRequest = Repository.getRequest()                          .createProcess()                          .validate();      Sometimes `getRequest()` could return a `null` value and this would cause an error in `createProcess()`. I could banally split `getRequest()` from `createProcess()`, but if I wouldn't do that what way should I follow, what way is better:   * Check if request (`this`) is null and in the case return null:              if(this is null)       return null      I could do this check in every method next to `getRequest()`. At the end `aRequest` will be `null`.   * Throw an exception if `createProcess()` method receive a `null` value:              if(this is null)        throw new NullRequestException();      PRO of the second way: Only second method need a check, independently of the number of method in the chain. CON of the first way: Every method in the chain needs a check Now the question: Is second way a bad use of exception concept, since could be normal the absence of request sometimes?"}
{"_id": "67888", "title": "Which Programming Languages Support the Following Features?", "text": "My personal programming background is mainly in Java, with a little bit of Ruby, a tiny bit of Scheme, and most recently, due to some iOS development, Objective-C. In my move from Java to Objective-C I've really come to love some features that Objective-C has that Java doesn't. These include support for both static and dynamic typing, functional programming, and closures, which I'm trying to leverage in my code more often. Unfortunately there are trade-offs, including lack of support for generics and (on iOS at least) no garbage collection. These contrasts have lead me to start a search for some of the programming languages that support the following features:   * Object Oriented   * Functional Programming Support   * Closures   * Generics   * Support for both Static and Dynamic Typing   * Module Management to avoid classpath/dll hell   * Garbage Collection Available   * Decent IDE Support Admittedly some of these features(IDE support, Module Management) may not be specific to the language itself, but obviously influence the ease of development in the language. Which languages fit these criteria?"}
{"_id": "186439", "title": "Is declaring fields on classes actually harmful in PHP?", "text": "Consider the following code, in which the setter is deliberately broken due to a mundane programming error that I have made for real a few times in the past:               <?php              class TestClass {                  private $testField;                  function setField($newVal) {                 $testField = $newVal;                 // deliberately broken; should be `$this->testField = $newVal`             }                  function getField() {                 return $this->testField;             }              }              $testInstance = new TestClass();         $testInstance->setField(\"Hello world!\");              // Actually prints nothing; getField() returns null         echo $testInstance->getField();           ?>      The fact that I declared `$testField` at the top of the class helps conceal that programming error from me. If I hadn't declared the field, then I would get something similar to the following warning printed to my error log upon calling this script, which would potentially be valuable to helping my debugging - especially if I were to make an error like this in a large and complicated real-world application: > PHP Notice: Undefined property: TestClass::$testField in /var/www/test.php > on line 13 With the declaration, there is no warning. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'm aware of only two reasons to declare class fields in PHP: firstly, that the declarations act as documentation, and secondly, that without declarations one can't use the `private` and `protected` access modifiers, which are arguably useful. Since the latter argument doesn't apply to public fields - assigning to an undeclared field of an object makes it public - it seems to me that I ought to at least comment out all my public field declarations. The comments will provide the exact same documentation value, but I will benefit from warnings if I try to read an uninitialized field. On further thought, though, it doesn't seem to make sense to stop there. Since in my experience trying to read an uninitialized field is a much more common cause of error than trying to inappropriately read or modify a private or protected field (I've done the former several times already in my short programming career, but never the latter), it looks to me like commenting out all field declarations - not just public ones - would be best practice. What makes me hesitate is that I've never seen anybody else do it in their code. Why not? Is there a benefit to declaring class fields that I'm not aware of? Or can I modify PHP's configuration in some way to change the behavior of field declarations so that I can use real field declarations and still benefit from \"Undefined property\" warnings? Or is there anything else at all that I've missed in my analysis?"}
{"_id": "253113", "title": "Real time data synchronization techniques between two systems", "text": "I need to come up with a design for real-time data update from a COTS product (a Point of Sales system) to a custom-built .NET application (an Inventory Management system). Particularly, any sales transaction happening in POS system needs to update the inventory database (present in Inventory Management system) immediately (in real time). The only way any other system can communicate to the POS system is via its API exposed as web services. I have thought about introducing a Service Bus (or any such EAI tool) in between the two systems and taking advantage of the publish-subscribe model so that any sales depletion happening in POS system will trigger data update to the IM system via the service bus. My questions are:   1. Is it a good/feasible solution?   2. Do you have any other suggestions for such real-time data synchronization between different systems?"}
{"_id": "29149", "title": "White Boards -- Who Uses Them?", "text": "So as both a full-time programmer and hobbyist as well (developing my own things for personal use and maybe to sell one day), I feel that me purchasing a big white board to hang in my room at home or something would be very useful. Does anyone here have one as well, to use for high level designs (UML, Architecture, etc.) and things like very early UI mockups, etc.? If you guys do have them, which ones have you bought? I can't seem to pin one that would be good for home use and I'm not sure of the pricing/other things. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "253118", "title": "I'm always reimplementing observer/subject code in Java. Is there a better option?", "text": "I'm always writing observer/subject interfaces in a particular Java project, e.g.:               /**      * Registers the receiver to the dispatcher.       * When data arrives that the receiver can process,       * it will be passed to the receiver.      * ...      */     void addReceiver(IDataReceiver receiver);          /**      * @return      *      True, if the receiver has been registered, false otherwise.      * ...      */     boolean hasReceiver(IDataReceiver receiver);          ...      When a class implements these interfaces, I have to implement the code, test it, debug it, etc. It feels so futile to keep reimplementing such similar logic. Is there _any_ better option in Java?"}
{"_id": "59221", "title": "How to hire a web-programmer : for non-programmer", "text": "I am a non-programmer that has used the services of : freelancer, odesk, etc I've tried asking for what i need but, I can't find anyone who can show me any type of example similar to what I request in the specs for the web- programming. They have front ends and back ends, but they don't fulfill true \"live\" website requirements. \"live\" as to be ready to support traffic, keys in hand, can be updated constantly by me, ... How do I figure how to evaluate a programmer ? How do I bid the appropriate price for the services ?"}
{"_id": "150800", "title": "Why is the \"kill\" command called so?", "text": "Why was it decided to call the `kill` command \"kill\"? I mean, yes, this utility is often used to terminate processes, but it can actually be used to send any signal. Isn't it slightly confusing? Maybe there are some historical reasons. All I know from `man kill` that this command appeared in Version 3 AT&T UNIX."}
{"_id": "61481", "title": "Open Source Etiquette", "text": "I've started working on my first open source project on Codeplex and came across some terrible code. (I did learn that C# still has the \"goto\" statement) I started adding features that the \"owner\" wanted and after exploring the code base and seeing what a mess it was (e.g using \"goto\") I wanted to clean it up a bit. But I am a bit concerned and that is why I'm turning to you all: is it proper etiquette for me to \"fix\" the \"bad code\" or should I let it be and work on new features? Like I said before, I'm new to the whole OSS scene and working on a team in general so I would like to not mess it up."}
{"_id": "150807", "title": "When should I use AtomPub?", "text": "I have been conducting some research into RESTful web service design and I've reached what I think is a key decision point so I thought I'd offer it up to the community to get some advice. In keeping with the principles of a RESTful architecture I want to present a discoverable API, so I will be supporting the various HTTP verbs as fully as possible. My difficulty comes with the choice of representation of those resources. You see, it would be easy for me to come up with my own API that covers how search results are to be presented and how links to other resources are provided, but this would be unique to my application. I've read about the Atom Publishing Protocol (RFC 5023), and how OData promotes its use, but it seems to add an extra level of abstraction over what is (currently) a rather simple API. So my question is, when should a developer select AtomPub as their choice of representation - if at all? And if not, what is the current recommended approach?"}
{"_id": "142652", "title": "Reasons to Use Version Control", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I'm a Subversion geek, why I should consider or not consider Mercurial or > Git or any other DVCS?   >  What is the value of using version control? I am a relative noob to programming, and am not going to be developing super- good software or even programming professionally anytime soon. With this predicament, is there really any reason to learn git or subversion or any other version control systems?"}
{"_id": "74815", "title": "What is the value of using version control?", "text": "I'm new to version control (currently using SVN), but I don't understand how this helps developers. What does version control do that makes it useful in a development environment?"}
{"_id": "35077", "title": "The use of Test-Driven Development in Non-Greenfield Projects?", "text": "So here is a question for you, having read some great answers to questions such as \"Test-Driven Development - Convince Me\". So my question is: **\"Can Test-Driven Development be used effectively on non- Greenfield projects?\"** To specify: _I would really like to know if people have had experience in using TDD in projects where there was already non-TDD elements present? And the problems that they then faced._"}
{"_id": "92169", "title": "MASS equivalent for intel compilers and architectures", "text": "I was looking for an Intel alternative to MASS IBM libraries (Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem). I know Intel implements MKL libraries, but I d'nt know if there is a specific Math acceleration library in it."}
{"_id": "73629", "title": "How do you get consistency in source code / UI without stifling developer's creativity?", "text": "We have a small team (2-3) of programmers writing a program with a lot of forms and dialogs. We have a problem where we cannot keep good consistency in what we write, or how we write it. The latest issue I've noted is that we have lots of places where we have a date range, and we use all kinds of wording to indicate this range is it Start/End or From/To or \"Between **_ and _** \". The other side of this is that one of the developers might come up with a better way of doing something (like maybe initializing the state of a check box from the settings file). And then we'll have all of the \"old\" stuff written in the old/poor way, and new stuff written in a better method. I try to be constantly vigilant about the first thing, but it seems like I'm always finding new failures. The second one creates a huge burden if we're going to go back and fix all the old stuff as soon as we come up with a slightly better way of doing something. Either that, or we ignore all old stuff until something is broken, and then we have no clue what the heck the software is doing because its written completely differently than what we write currently. One last thing, if we push the burden of \"fix it everywhere now that you've found it\" on the developer who comes up with the better solution, its self defeating, because its like great, that's a better way to check for that error, now fix it everywhere in the code. Bosses don't really ever seem to care about the quality of the code, just when we'll be able to release the next version (but that's a different discussion)."}
{"_id": "73623", "title": "What is the best way for a top-down procedural programmer to learn OOP?", "text": "I'm an old school top-down procedure programmer. I started with Turbo Pascal on the DOS environment. Every time I try to learn OOP on my own I stumble. I try and make OOP somehow fit into my top-down mindset. It's very frustrating, I seem to have a mental block. What is the best way for someone like me to learn OOP?"}
{"_id": "177651", "title": "How do developers find the time to stay on top of latest technologies?", "text": "I was a freelance web developer until circa 2004 when I started going down the management route but have decided to try to get back into development again (specifically JavaScript and HTML5 web/mobile web apps) and I really get the impression to be truly good at these and similar fast moving technologies a constant amount of time is required to be set aside to invest in getting better at existing skills in addition to learning new skills. I understand right now since I am getting back into things there is a pretty steep learning curve, but seeing how good many guys are out there - the only way I see of getting up there is putting in a serious amount of time. For those working as fulltime developers, what I am trying to understand is this - on most days, how much time in the office is spent actually grinding out code compared to learning/research. I could easily spend 2-4 hours daily getting on top of the best ways to go about doing things. Do most good developers who are employed full time invest significant hours outside of work sharpening their skills? Or maybe I'm looking at all of this completely wrong?"}
{"_id": "235232", "title": "How to guarantee invariants / Inner logic in setter methods", "text": "According to DDD-principles I use factory-methods to create consistent objects and to ensure that the objects are in the right state. Now I'm in doubt about inner logic of setter methods. I'm tied up with an object, that's similar to the following code snippet, so let's take it as an example:               public class UserCredentials {              private String username;              private UserCredentials() {             super();         }              public static UserCredentials create (final String username) {             String username = username.toUpperCase();             UserCredentials newInstance = new UserCredentials(username);             return newInstance;         }              private UserCredentials(final String username) {             this.username = username;         }              public String getUsername() {             return this.username;         }              public void setUsername(final String username) {             this.username = username;         }              public void checkConsitency() {             ...             isUppercase();             ...         }     }      We do have an invariant: The username of the credentials must always be uppercase. Now I want to make sure, that changing the username doesn't violate the invariant. But how do I guarantee the rule?   1. I do rewrite the setter method and add the conversion logic to the setter. Drawback: Setter contains logic.   2. I rely on clients, that they always provide uppercase username and I will throw consistency exceptions in the case of violation. Drawback: Origin of the wrong usage is hard to discover, moreover its bad practice at all.   3. I remove the setter method and replace it with a domain method like `changeUsername(String username)` that contains the conversion logic. Drawback: external developers may miss the setter method. Because of the statement \"username of credential must always be uppercase\" I tend to prefer alternative 3. But is there a smarter solution?"}
{"_id": "189286", "title": "Entity Framework eager loading/reference data", "text": "I'm struggling to get my head around how best to eager load entities, and how to assign relationships when creating new entities. I'm using EF5 POCO, by the way. I'm retreiving a large hierarchy of entities from a database, representing chemical analysis results. As a simple example I have an \"AnalysisResult\" entity with two generated properties that relate it to a \"ChemicalElement\" entity - `ChemicalElement` and `ChemicalElementId`. Standard stuff so far. I started out by retrieving my AnalysisResults from the database _and_ eager loading the related ChemicalElements using the `.Include` LINQ statement, meaning I could access a result's chemical element simply via `AnalysisResult.ChemicalElement`. This was fine for results loaded from the database, but what if I wanted to create a new AnalysisResult - how would I get the ChemicalElement entity that I wanted to assign to it? As chemical elements never change, I decided to treat them as \"reference/lookup data\", so I dropped the eager loading, and I now retrieve _all_ ChemicalElements into a separate collection that I can refer to whenever I need. The downside of dropping eager loading is that an AnalysisResult loaded from the database has a null .ChemicalElement property, so I have to use its .ChemicalElementId property to lookup the ChemicalElement entity in my \"reference collection\". Have I overcomplicated the solution? Should I keep the idea of the ChemicalElement \"reference collection\" _but also_ eager load them when retrieving existing AnalysisResults? It seems wasteful to (potentially) retrieve them twice - once when I retrieve them all, and again when eager loading during the AnalysisResults retrieval."}
{"_id": "78908", "title": "Best practices for backing out a feature from a QA trunk", "text": "I have a question regarding source control in a general sense and specific to TFS. Let's say you have a three-tier system (Development branches, QA main trunk and Production branch). At a certain point, the changes from the dev branches are merged to the QA branch and the QA branch is tested. After the initial test, \"feature A\" is broken and needs to be fixed or removed, how should a feature be updated or removed from the QA branch? Should it be edited directly? or should the developer checks in the changes to dev and let it propagate up to QA again? Any thoughts on this (in general)? Also if this is done in TFS is there any tools that can help out with this situation? thanks!!"}
{"_id": "8310", "title": "What is the best way to bring a new programmer up to speed on a project?", "text": "When you add a programmer to a project with a large code base, what is the best way to get them involved right away? Do you give them formal training in the code base or let them figure it out themselves? What tasks are best to get them up to speed? What kind of tasks are \"safe\" until they are familiar enough with the project to contribute to it with a full understanding of what they're doing? How do you determine if they've reached a level of full understanding? **Edit** : The project isn't behind a deadline. I work alone and want to add employees soon. I'd like to know how best to familiarize them with the code base."}
{"_id": "8311", "title": "Are programmers good at learning \"spoken\" languages?", "text": "This might be slightly off topic, but I'll risk it, as the site is about _Programmers_ ! Programmers are good at constantly learning new programming languages, but how good are they at learning a new spoken language ? Have you taken up a foreign language (French/Spanish/etc) **as an adult** and mastered it? Was it easy? I ask because I have been trying to learn French for quite some time now, and I'm still at the annoying \"Je parle un peu de Fran\u00e7aise\" stage. I've attended two French courses, one where the majority of the class were programmers, and one where they weren't and the difference in ability was quite apparent. Does a mathematical / logical inclination hinder learning a spoken language where grammar is not in ones and zeros? Or am I just transferring blame instead of simply accepting that I am not good with languages. _[It is important that you have not been taught the language in school, as early exposure really gives you the upper hand. I've picked up and got quite good at languages I've been exposed to under the age of 10.]_"}
{"_id": "166461", "title": "Does comparison operand order affect speed?", "text": "I notice that someone in my organization programs comparisons like:               if (100 == myVariable)      rather than:               if (myVariable == 100)      He claims the former is quicker in languages like C++. I can't find any evidence. We program in C#. Is this true for any programming language?"}
{"_id": "189283", "title": "How can architects work with self-organizing Scrum teams?", "text": "An organization with a number of agile Scrum teams also has a small group of people appointed as \"enterprise architects\". The EA group acts as control and gatekeeper for quality and adherence to decisions. This leads to overlaps between the team decision and EA decisions. For instance, the team might want to use library X or want to use REST instead of SOAP, but the EA does not approve of that. Now, this can lead to frustration when team decisions are overruled. Taken far enough, it can potentially lead to a situation where the EA people \"grabs\" all power and the team ends up feeling demotivated and not very agile at all. The Scrum guides has this to say about it: > Self-organizing: No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development > Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable > functionality. Is that reasonable? Should the EA team be disbanded? Should the teams refuse or simply comply?"}
{"_id": "79189", "title": "Using work time effectively: How to create code quickly?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  How can I be more productive at work? (additional context inside)   >  How to code on a very tight schedule? Sometimes we create new code quickly. And sometimes we can't concentrate. Development process has different _thinking stages_. There is a _fast_ stage when we create code as a result of our ideas. And there is a _slow_ stage when we think. And it is important not to be disturbed when _slow_ stage or thinking time may be extended. Do you know another recomendations to use work time effectively? May be good guide?"}
{"_id": "64818", "title": "How to code on a very tight schedule?", "text": "I'm working on a project that has very tight schedule. I don't have much time to code and test (even though I work more than 12 hours everyday, it's still delayed), and the result is very fragile. Its code is also very dilemma. This program is used by all offices in our customer's company, which is located in many countries. I regularly get phone calls at midnight about errors from our user/tester or about them not knowing how to use some features. After three years on this project, I feel very stressed and I can't sleep well because I'm very worried about errors and phone calls. I have a few questions:   1. For three years, all the code I've written is just the perfect usage scenario code (so it break easily). It's poorly designed and doesn't have any unit tests. I have lots of problems because of this fact. Therefore, I want to know whether is it's feasible to write code that works when the project has a very tight schedule?   2. How can I write better code in the same amount of time?   3. How can I clear my mind and don't get worried about work when I go to sleep? I also welcome any suggestions."}
{"_id": "78906", "title": "tracking web traffic with Python", "text": "I learned of Compete.com and I am interested in how they track web traffic from other websites. I am most interested in doing this with Python but when I Google I can't find snap. Probably my English. Could someone tell me of existing modules that I may look at, and in general how to track web traffic from other sites (what do they look at when tracking)?"}
{"_id": "119617", "title": "Should I keep separate client codebases and databases for a software-as-a-service application?", "text": "My question is about the architecture of my application. I have a Rails application where companies can administrate all things related to their clients. Companies would buy a subscription and their users can access the application online. Hopefully I will get multiple companies subscribing to my application/service. What should I do with my code and database?   1. Seperate app code base and database per company   2. One app code base but seperate database per company   3. One app code base and one database The decision involves security (e.g. a user from company X should not see any data from company Y) performance (let's suppose it becomes successful, it should have a good performance) and scalability (again, if successful, it should have a good performance but also easy for me to handle all the companies, code changes, etc). For the sake of maintainability, I tend to opt for the one code base, but for the database I really don't know. What do you think is the best option?"}
{"_id": "115948", "title": "Is it unnecessary to use Github (social coding) even if you are the only one working on a project?", "text": "I started using Github now that I'm working on a project with some guys. And I started to wonder if I should use it in my personal projects too. I'm not sure if this will help me in some way or if it is unnecesary?"}
{"_id": "119613", "title": "Single click handler for all buttons in Javascript? Is it a pattern? Whats the benefit?", "text": "I have been told that when there are multiple buttons on the page for same purpose but targeting different item e.g. delete item on a grid of items, they say it is recommended to just register for click handler only on the top most element like 'body' and check what was clicked instead of hooking up click with every delete button. Whats the benefit of this? Creating more handlers causes problems? Is it an optimization of some sort? Is it a pattern? Does it have anything to do with performance? Where can I read more about it?"}
{"_id": "119610", "title": "GPL: does one line of GPLed code make program a \"derived work\"", "text": "I've recently run into some argument with a person that claims to be a lawyer (I have my suspicions about this not being completely true, though). As far as I know, copying even one line of code from GPLed program into proprietary body of code requires you to release the whole thing under GPL, if you ever decide to publish the software and make it available to the public. The person in question claims that it is \"absurd\" (I know it is, but AFAIK that's how GPL works), it is \"redefining the copyright\", \"GPL has no power to do that\", and claiming that \"one line of GPLed code makes you release the whole thing under GPL\" is absurd. That contradicts the GPL FAQ. Can somebody clarify the situation? Am I right in assumption that copying even smallest subroutine from GPL program into your code automatically makes your program a \"derived work\" which means you are obliged to release it under GPL license if you publish it?"}
{"_id": "119618", "title": "Should the developer be involved in setup of test data in QA and UAT environment?", "text": "When QA or UAT comes, should the developer still be involved in setting up data or finding test data for the QA tester or business user? Or will this introduce bias to the developer who coded the system changes that are being tested in the said environments?"}
{"_id": "119619", "title": "What undergraduate course to choose for a mature programmer returning to study", "text": "I have been developing applications (mostly web-based) for almost 10 years now and have learnt pretty much everything I know through experience (and the internet!). I wouldn't call myself an advanced programmer, but I am quite proficient in several languages (C#, Javascript, Ruby, HTML/CSS etc) and spend a quite a bit of time working on personal projects and reading countless books & articles. I am looking to emigrate to Canada, hopefully Vancouver (im from the UK) and one way would be on a student visa, if I was going to be studying for a minimum of 2 years. Having never been to university or achieved anything higher than A-Levels I am quite tempted by this path. The thought of learning is more exciting to me now than it was 10 years ago! What would be people recommend as a good undergraduate course to take that would complement this career path? Would Math be beneficial, if so which area of Math? TL;DR What undergraduate course/area of study would complement 10 years of (mostly web-based) programming experience?"}
{"_id": "107938", "title": "THREADS: Kernel threads vs. Kernel-supported threads vs. User-level threads?", "text": "Does anyone know what the difference between these are? It seems to me that kernel threads correspond to the code that runs the kernel (intuitively), but I'm not sure about the other two... Also, would the pthreads standard be considered user-level and kernel- supported, since you are accessing a library while the kernel does all the thread scheduling/switching?"}
{"_id": "191103", "title": "What skills should I cultivate to become a development/technical lead?", "text": "I am currently a professional programmer. I want to expand my skillset, but I also want to make the career jump to being a dev lead as part of a team. I know there's got to be a lot to learn (and this won't be an instant thing) but I think I'm smart enough to do it and I'm up to the challenge. I'm sure that many of the members here have probably gone through this themselves, and are now successful dev leads. Unfortunately, even though I know some personal areas I'd like to improve (depth of knowledge, breadth of knowledge, skillsets, etc), I'm not really sure how I would start something like this. As a programmer now, what steps should I take to get me to this goal? What should I prioritize?"}
{"_id": "137285", "title": "Developer to team leader", "text": "How much experience is considered enough for a developer to become a team leader? For IT managment what is the measure to check if the current team member is good enough to become a team leader (technical level, interpersonal level) * * * updated: removed second part of the question for being duplicate (see comments)"}
{"_id": "110532", "title": "What kinds of copyright or privacy issues apply to tweets?", "text": "If I want to use the data on Twitter in my application, what are the restrictions? What user data should I avoid touching? For example, if I want to collect information from certain type of tweets about users and use this information on my site as profiles for these users in my site, does this require permission from the users first or can I directly go and get the information? Technically, from anyone with a public account on twitter, we can get data of his/her tweets and create profile information for him/her, but does twitter privacy policy allow this? If you published some tweet on Twitter, am I allowed to take that tweet content and put it in my site (stating that it is written by you) but without asking you for permission? I found this in the Twitter Terms of Service: > Tip We encourage and permit broad re-use of Content. The Twitter API exists > to enable this. But also found this on the Twitter API Terms: > You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected from end users of > your Client to create or maintain a separate status update or social network > database or service."}
{"_id": "114090", "title": "Are value converters more trouble than they're worth?", "text": "I'm working on a WPF application with views that require numerous value conversions. Initially, my philosophy (inspired in part by this lively debate on XAML Disciples) was that I should make the view model strictly about supporting the _data_ requirements of the view. This meant that any value conversions required to turn data into things like visibilities, brushes, sizes, etc. would be handled with value converters and multi-value converters. Conceptually, this seemed quite elegant. The view model and view would both have a distinct purpose and be nicely decoupled. A clear line would be drawn between \"data\" and \"look\". Well, after giving this strategy \"the old college try\", I'm having some doubts whether I want to continue developing this way. I'm actually strongly considering dumping the value converters and placing the responsibility for (almost) all value conversion squarely in the hands of the view model. The reality of using value converters just doesn't seem to be measuring up to the apparent value of cleanly separated concerns. My biggest issue with value converters is that they are tedious to use. You have to create a new class, implement `IValueConverter` or `IMultiValueConverter`, cast the value or values from `object` to the correct type, test for `DependencyProperty.Unset` (at least for multi-value converters), write the conversion logic, ~~register the converter in a resource dictionary~~ [see update below], and finally, hook up the converter using rather verbose XAML (which requires use of magic strings for both the binding(s) ~~and the name of the converter~~ [see update below]). The debugging process is no picnic either, as error messages are often cryptic, especially in Visual Studio's design mode/Expression Blend. This isn't to say that the alternative--making the view model responsible for all value conversion--is an improvement. This could very well be a matter of the grass being greener on the other side. Besides losing the elegant separation of concerns, you have to write a bunch of derived properties and make sure you conscientiously call `RaisePropertyChanged(() => DerivedProperty)` when setting base properties, which could prove to be an unpleasant maintenance issue. The following is an initial list I put together of the pros and cons of allowing view models to handle conversion logic and doing away with value converters:   * Pros:      * Fewer total bindings since multi-converters are eliminated     * Fewer magic strings (binding paths ~~\\+ converter resource names~~ _)     * ~~No more registering each converter (plus maintaining this list)~~_     * Less work to write each converter (no implementing interfaces or casting required)     * Can easily inject dependencies to help with conversions (e.g., color tables)     * XAML markup is less verbose and easier to read     * Converter reuse still possible (although some planning is required)     * No mysterious issues with DependencyProperty.Unset (a problem I noticed with multi-value converters) *Strikethroughs indicate benefits that disappear if you use markup extensions (see update below)   * Cons:      * Stronger coupling between view model and view (e.g., properties must deal with concepts like visibility and brushes)     * More total properties to allow direct mapping for every binding in view      * ~~`RaisePropertyChanged` must be called for each derived property~~ (see Update 2 below)     * Must still rely on converters if the conversion is based on a property of a UI element So, as you can probably tell, I have some heartburn about this issue. I'm very hesitant to go down the road of refactoring only to realize that the coding process is just as inefficient and tedious whether I use value converters or expose numerous value conversion properties in my view model. Am I missing any pros/cons? For those who have tried both means of value conversion, which did you find worked better for you and why? Are there any other alternatives? (The disciples mentioned something about type descriptor providers, but I couldn't get a handle on what they were talking about. Any insight on this would be appreciated.) * * * **Update** I found out today that it's possible to use something called a \"markup extension\" to eliminate the need to register value converters. In fact, it not only eliminates the need to register them, but it actually provides intellisense for selecting a converter when you type `Converter=`. Here is the article that got me started: http://www.wpftutorial.net/ValueConverters.html. The ability to use a markup extension changes the balance somewhat in my pros and cons listing and discussion above (see strikethroughs). As a result of this revelation, I'm experimenting with a hybrid system where I use converters for `BoolToVisibility` and what I call `MatchToVisibility` and the view model for all other conversions. MatchToVisibility is basically a converter that lets me check if the bound value (usually an enum) matches one or more values specified in XAML. Example:               Visibility=\"{Binding Status, Converter={vc:MatchToVisibility                 IfTrue=Visible, IfFalse=Hidden, Value1=Finished, Value2=Canceled}}\"      Basically what this does is check if the status is either Finished or Canceled. If it is, then the visibility gets sets to \"Visible\". Otherwise, it gets sets to \"Hidden\". This turned out to be a very common scenario, and having this converter saved me about 15 properties on my view model (plus associated RaisePropertyChanged statements). Note that when you type `Converter={vc:`, \"MatchToVisibility\" shows up in an intellisense menu. This noticeably reduces the chance of errors and makes using value converters less tedious (you don't have to remember or look up the name of the value converter you want). In case you're curious, I'll paste the code below. One important feature of this implementation of `MatchToVisibility` is that it checks to see if the bound value is an `enum`, and if it is, it checks to make sure `Value1`, `Value2`, etc. are also enums of the same type. This provides a design-time and run-time check of whether any of the enum values are mistyped. To improve this to a compile-time check, you can use the following instead (I typed this by hand so please forgive me if I made any mistakes):               Visibility=\"{Binding Status, Converter={vc:MatchToVisibility                 IfTrue={x:Type {win:Visibility.Visible}},                 IfFalse={x:Type {win:Visibility.Hidden}},                 Value1={x:Type {enum:Status.Finished}},                 Value2={x:Type {enum:Status.Canceled}}\"      While this is safer, it's just too verbose to be worth it for me. I might as well just use a property on the view model if I'm going to do this. Anyway, I'm finding that the design-time check is perfectly adequate for the scenarios I've tried so far. **Here's the code for`MatchToVisibility`**               [ValueConversion(typeof(object), typeof(Visibility))]     public class MatchToVisibility : BaseValueConverter     {         [ConstructorArgument(\"ifTrue\")]         public object IfTrue { get; set; }              [ConstructorArgument(\"ifFalse\")]         public object IfFalse { get; set; }              [ConstructorArgument(\"value1\")]         public object Value1 { get; set; }              [ConstructorArgument(\"value2\")]         public object Value2 { get; set; }              [ConstructorArgument(\"value3\")]         public object Value3 { get; set; }              [ConstructorArgument(\"value4\")]         public object Value4 { get; set; }              [ConstructorArgument(\"value5\")]         public object Value5 { get; set; }              public MatchToVisibility() { }              public MatchToVisibility(             object ifTrue, object ifFalse,             object value1, object value2 = null, object value3 = null,             object value4 = null, object value5 = null)         {             IfTrue = ifTrue;             IfFalse = ifFalse;             Value1 = value1;             Value2 = value2;             Value3 = value3;             Value4 = value4;             Value5 = value5;         }              public override object Convert(             object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)         {             var ifTrue = IfTrue.ToString().ToEnum<Visibility>();             var ifFalse = IfFalse.ToString().ToEnum<Visibility>();             var values = new[] { Value1, Value2, Value3, Value4, Value5 };             var valueStrings = values.Cast<string>();             bool isMatch;             if (Enum.IsDefined(value.GetType(), value))             {                 var valueEnums = valueStrings.Select(vs => vs == null ? null : Enum.Parse(value.GetType(), vs));                 isMatch = valueEnums.ToList().Contains(value);             }             else                 isMatch = valueStrings.Contains(value.ToString());             return isMatch ? ifTrue : ifFalse;         }     }      **Here's the code for`BaseValueConverter`**               // this is how the markup extension capability gets wired up     public abstract class BaseValueConverter : MarkupExtension, IValueConverter     {         public override object ProvideValue(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)         {             return this;         }              public abstract object Convert(             object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture);              public virtual object ConvertBack(             object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)         {             throw new NotImplementedException();         }     }      **Here's the ToEnum extension method**               public static TEnum ToEnum<TEnum>(this string text)     {         return (TEnum)Enum.Parse(typeof(TEnum), text);     }      * * * **Update 2** Since I posted this question, I've come across an open-source project that uses \"IL weaving\" to inject NotifyPropertyChanged code for properties and dependent properties. This makes implementing Josh Smith's vision of the view model as a \"value converter on steroids\" an absolute breeze. You can just use \"Auto-Implemented Properties\", and the weaver will do the rest. **Example:** If I enter this code:               public string GivenName { get; set; }     public string FamilyName { get; set; }          public string FullName     {         get         {             return string.Format(\"{0} {1}\", GivenName, FamilyName);         }     }      ...this is what gets compiled:               string givenNames;     public string GivenNames     {         get { return givenName; }         set         {             if (value != givenName)             {                 givenNames = value;                 OnPropertyChanged(\"GivenName\");                 OnPropertyChanged(\"FullName\");             }         }     }          string familyName;     public string FamilyName     {         get { return familyName; }         set          {             if (value != familyName)             {                 familyName = value;                 OnPropertyChanged(\"FamilyName\");                 OnPropertyChanged(\"FullName\");             }         }     }          public string FullName     {         get         {             return string.Format(\"{0} {1}\", GivenName, FamilyName);         }     }      That's a huge savings in the amount of code you have to type, read, scroll past, etc. More importantly, though, it saves you from having to figure out what your dependencies are. You can add new \"property gets\" like `FullName` without having to painstakingly go up the chain of dependencies to add in `RaisePropertyChanged()` calls. What is this open-source project called? The original version is called \"NotifyPropertyWeaver\", but the owner (Simon Potter) has since created a platform called \"Fody\" for hosting a whole series of IL weavers. The equivalent of NotifyPropertyWeaver under this new platform is called PropertyChanged.Fody.   * **Fody setup instructions:** http://code.google.com/p/fody/wiki/SampleUsage (replace \"Virtuosity\" with \"PropertyChanged\")   * **PropertyChanged.Fody project site:** http://code.google.com/p/propertychanged/ If you'd prefer to go with NotifyPropertyWeaver (which a little simpler to install, but won't necessarily be updated in the future beyond bug fixes), here is the project site: http://code.google.com/p/notifypropertyweaver/ Either way, these IL weaver solutions completely change the calculus in the debate between view model on steroids vs. value converters."}
{"_id": "107930", "title": "Comparing Visual Foxpro with .NET", "text": "I used Foxpro 2.6 a decade ago. In my present company, few new projects are being developed in Visual Foxpro 9.0 and few projects are on .NET platform. From time-to-time I notice how Visual Foxpro is more powerful as compared to .NET when comparing dependency issues. Here are some of the advantages of VFP I noticed:   1. There is no hard and fast rule to use another full-fledged RDBMS. Even though the latest version of Visual Foxpro can be connected to SQL Server, but I have seen very large projects still, happily, using the old DBF. With .NET you have to connect to another RDBMS and it just adds to your Setup dependency.   2. Foxpro has built-in rich reporting capability since the time of DOS era, whereas .NET developers have to depend on Crystal Reports, SSRS or other third-party variants.   3. Visual Foxpro 9.0 has .NET capabilities as well. However, it is not dependent on .NET and therefore your final executable doesn't need .NET framework installed, which is again a dependency.   4. I have seen very large databases of Foxpro in few major government organizations, successfully running from a long time. These organizations don't feel a need to shift to SQL Server, not because of migration risks, but because they are happy with VFP. I want to step into VFP world but I read somewhere that Microsoft is stopping further developments of VFP and also stopping support to VFP 9.0 from 2015 onwards. What you guys suggest?"}
{"_id": "101717", "title": "Scrum re-estimation of stories", "text": "Every day, after the stand-up, my team and I update our estimates for each story. I have a feeling that there is something wrong with the way we do it, so I need your help. This is how we do: Story A estimate: 24 hours (8 hours per day - we use \"ideal days\" as the measure)   * Day N: developer starts working on Story A in the morning (8 hours of work completed by the end of the day)    * Day N+1: Story A re-estimation = 16 hours (one workday taken out of Story A, from day N)   * Day N+2: Story A re-estimation = 8 hours (one workday taken out of Story A, from day N+1)   * Day N+3: Story A should be done by now. But it's not. The developer reckons it will take another 3 hours to finish. We update the story on the whiteboard and burndown accordingly.   * Day N+4: Story A took the whole day to be finished instead of only 3 hours! Now it's done. The difference, 5 hours, is completely unaccounted for in our planning. How should we be daily re-estimating our stories?"}
{"_id": "112705", "title": "Javascript - is this a grey area for anyone else?", "text": "I have a firm understanding of HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL (and to some extent apache/linux) and find that one of the things missing from my 'web development knowledge base' is javascript - creating richer user interfaces. I'd like to learn Javascript before I look at any frameworks (I've used light javascript/jquery before, but that's besides the point). Can anyone recommend a firm book or online documentation from 'absolute beginner' to 'expert' for javascript? I seem to be finding too many 'display the time' and 'hello world' tutorials..."}
{"_id": "117540", "title": "Conceptually speaking, how would I pull facebook wall posts from 100k users?", "text": "Not looking for any code snippets here, so here goes: Let's say 100,000 users on my web app have authorized my application to connect to facebook (with or without `offline_access`). I want to build a sort of \"pull\" mechanism, whereby when a user posts to their facebook wall, I can grab it from the Graph API and store it locally on my server. I would assume that this would require a call to the Graph API every _n_ minutes to pull their latest wall posts. Ideally, this would be done for Twitter as well. I know LinkedIn does this, but I am not sure of the exact details. Question 1: I'd need to make an individual Graph API call for each user, right? Question 2: If I suddenly bombard the Graph API with 100k Graph API calls, wouldn't I run head-first into the rate limiter? Question 2b: If not, what if I had a million users? Surely..."}
{"_id": "220659", "title": "How should I draw the (special) is predicate, which is used for arithmetic, in a Prolog search tree?", "text": "I normally construct my search tree by following the common convention:   * Place Queries or Goals in need of unification inside node boxes.   * Write down decision points on the edges, where Prolog has assigned an element to a variable.   * Leaf nodes which are fully satisifed will be an empty box, they represent a solution.   * Leaf nodes which can not be satisifed and represent failed attempts will have the unfulfilled goal in their box, to make them even more clear I also follow the convention of marking them by placeing a cross symbol below them. The above way has the nice side effect that it's easy to see the decision points. But what about creating a search tree for something like:               accLen([_|T],A,L)  :-    Anew  is  A+1,  accLen(T,Anew,L).     accLen([],A,A).       How should the assignment of Anew be represented in the search tree? It's not a decision point, the code has no other option then assigning it 1 plus the current value of A. Do you still place it on the edge, but underline it or something?"}
{"_id": "220658", "title": "How can we calculate Big-O complexity in Functional & Reactive Programming", "text": "I started learning functional programming, I am trying to compare between different algorithms that are written in an imperative, functional , parallel programming and using Collections and Lambda expressions. In order to make my question clear and avoid sharing long algorithms that I am working on. I will take as an example the well-known modified Fibonacci algorithm (Euler Problem 2): Here is the problem : http://projecteuler.net/problem=2               //Iterative way:           int result=2;     int first=1;     int second=2;     int i=2;          while (i < 4000000)     {         i = first + second;              if (i % 2 == 0)         {            result += i;         }              first = second;         second = i;      }           Console.WriteLine(result);          // Recursive functional way:      FibonacciTerms(1, 2).TakeWhile(x => (x <= 4000000) )     private static int SumEvenFibonarciTerms()     {         return FibonacciTerms(1, 2)                 .TakeWhile(x => (x <= 4000000)).Where(x => x % 2 == 0)                 .Sum();     }          //Asynchrounous way      let rec fib x = if x <= 2 then 1 else fib(x-1) + fib(x-2)          let fibs =         Async.Parallel [ for i in 0..40 -> async { return fib(i) } ]         |> Async.RunSynchronously      How can I calculate the Big-O in algorithms that are written using Lamda expression (Complexity of functions like: filter, where, reduceleft, reducright, .. ) In the functional and Asynchrounous algo, the both are written in the same way ? Should we consider their complexity the same knowing that there is difference in the time of execution ?"}
{"_id": "220656", "title": "How to get requirements from Non-technical client?", "text": "I\u2019ve working as a software engineer for last 4 years. Throughout my small experience I worked for IT organizations, where we had separate role of project manager, analyst, quality engineer and software engineers and many more. Also we applied complex agile process working in large/small team. I personally participated on every step of software developer life cycle. Few months before I got good opportunity on a co-operate company and I\u2019m serving right now. I\u2019m assigned few internal projects which are company goals. The problem is, I\u2019m spending most of the time in getting requirements and my boss is not willing to give me input. He is giving me full blame that I did not deliver the tasks. I\u2019m unable to explain that without requirements I can\u2019t work and even I can\u2019t commit any deadline. He uses to say me often that please make my dreams come true. How can I get this divine requirement? It took around 1 month just to give me rights on my machine to install IDE and internet connection. In short, they did not give me any requirements or documents, the targets are still unclear and also team is not contributing. I\u2019m not trying to leave this company, I\u2019m consider it as a challenge to get things right. As a programmer, how can I handle this issue?"}
{"_id": "166791", "title": "From Imperative to Functional Programming", "text": "As an Electronic Engineer, my programming experience started with Assembly and continue with PL/M, C, C++, Delphi, Java, C# among others (imperative programming is in my blood). I'm interested in add to my previous knowledge, skills about functional programming, but all I've seen until now seems very obfuscated and esoteric. Can you please answer me these questions? 1) What is the mainstream functional programming language today (I don't want to get lost myself studying a plethora of FP languages, just because language X has the feature Y)? 2) What was the first FP language (the Fortran of functional programming if you want)? 3) Finally, when talking about pure vs. non pure FP what are the mainstream languages of each category? Thank you in advance"}
{"_id": "166795", "title": "schedule compliance and keeping technical supports and resolving issues", "text": "I am an entrepreneur of a small software developer company. The flagship product is developed by myself and my company grew up to 14 people. One of pride is that we've never have to be invested or loaned. The core development team is 5 people. 3 are seniors and 2 are juniors. After the first release, we've received many issues from our customers. Most of them are bug issues, customization needs, usage questions and upgrade requests. The issues from customers are incoming many times everyday, so it takes little time or much time of our developers. Because of our product is a software development kit(SDK) so most of questions can be answered only from our developers. And, for resolving bug issues, developers must be involved. Estimating time to resolve bug is hard. I fully understand it. However, our developers insist they cannot set the any due date of each project because they are busy doing technical supports and bug fixes by issues from customers everyday. Of course, they never do overwork. I suggested them an idea to divide the team into two parts: one for focusing on development by milestones, other for doing technical supports and bug fixes without setting due days. Then we could announce release plan officially. After the finish of release, two parts exchange the role for next milestone. However, they say they \"NO, because it is impossible to share knowledge and design document fully.\" They still say they cannot set the release date and they request me to alter the due date flexibly. They does not fix the due date of each milestone. Fortunately, our company is not loaned and invested so we are not chocked. But I think it is bad idea to keep this situation. I know the story of ant and grasshopper. Our customers are tired of waiting forever of our release date. Companies consume limited time and money. If flexible due date without limit could be acceptable, could they accept flexible salary day? What is the root cause of our problem? All that I want is to fix and achieve precisely due date of each milestone without losing frequent technical supports. I think there must be solution for this situation. Please answer me. Thanks in advance. PS. Our tools and ways of project management are Trello, Mantis-like issue tracker, shared calendar software and scrum(collected cards into series of 'small and high completeness' projects)."}
{"_id": "166797", "title": "Should I Use WCF For My Purpose?", "text": "I wrote two programs that server and client can connect to each other (one program for server and another for client) with their IP addresses (socket programming). Now I want to modify it so that if the client or server for example wrote something in `textbox` other user be notify of that. My programs are Windows Form Application. For this purpose, should I use WCF?"}
{"_id": "166374", "title": "is Java free for mobile development?", "text": "Q1. I would like to know if it's free for a developer (I mean, if I have to pay no royalties to Sun/Oracle) to develop (Android) mobile apps in Java? After reading this snippet about use of Java field, I'm getting the impression that Java is **not** free for mobile development, is that right? > ..\"General Purpose Desktop Computers and Servers\" means computers, including > desktop and laptop computers, or servers, used for general computing > functions under end user control (such as but not specifically limited to > email, general purpose Internet browsing, and office suite productivity > tools). The use of Software in systems and solutions that provide dedicated > functionality (other than as mentioned above) or designed for use in > embedded or function-specific software applications, for example but not > limited to: Software embedded in or bundled with industrial control systems, > **wireless mobile telephones, wireless handheld devices,** netbooks, kiosks, > TV/STB, Blu-ray Disc devices, telematics and network control switching > equipment, printers and storage management systems, and other related > systems are excluded from this definition and not licensed under this > Agreement... and from http://www.excelsiorjet.com/embedded/ > Notice : The Java SE Embedded technology license currently prohibits the use > of Java SE in cell phones. Q2. how come these plethora of Android Java developers aren't paying Sun/Oracle a dime?"}
{"_id": "36241", "title": "Your experience with haxe and other languages that compile to PHP?", "text": "I would like to hear opinions from people who have used a language that compiles to php. One such language I know is Haxe. Other ones I've read about are Kira and Pharen. How well do these languages integrate with PHP? Is it relatively easy to write a plug-in for a PHP CMS in them? How mature are their implementations and tools? Would you recommend them to someone who has to use a php cms but hates php?"}
{"_id": "227921", "title": "How to store currency ranges in a Postgres table?", "text": "I am using Postgres 9.3. I have to store range data like `<$250K, $250K-$4M,` etc which we will display in a dropdown. now I am making a table for all possible options that can be configured from an admin interface. Should I take separate column for min,max,currency_type(dollar,euro) and a column to store K,M etc or there is a better way to do that ?"}
{"_id": "227922", "title": "Is saving SQL statements in a table for executing later a bad idea?", "text": "Is saving SQL statements in a MySQL table for executing later a bad idea? The SQL statements will be ready for execution, i.e. there will be no parameters to swap or anything, for example `DELETE FROM users WHERE id=1`. I guess I'm being lazy, but I thought of this idea because I'm working on a project that will require quite a few cron jobs that will execute SQL statements periodically."}
{"_id": "25773", "title": "How big sites scale up and optimize to massive traffic?", "text": "How do sites like Facebook and Twitter optimize their sites for massive traffic. Aside from spending big bucks on getting the best servers, what can be optimized in your code to accommodate massive traffic? I've read about caching your pages to static HTML, but that's impractical for social networking sites where the pages are constantly updated."}
{"_id": "186889", "title": "Why Was Python Written with the GIL?", "text": "The global interpreter lock (GIL) seems to be often cited as a major reason why threading and the like is a touch tricky in Python - which raises the question \"Why was that done in the first place?\" Being Not A Programmer, I've got no clue why that might be - what was the logic behind putting in the GIL?"}
{"_id": "253515", "title": "Reflective discovery of an inner class in an API", "text": "Let me ask you, as this bothers me for quite a while but appears to be subjectively the best solution for my problem, **if reflective discovery of an inner class for API purposes is that bad idea**? First, let me explain what I mean by saying \"reflective discovery\" and all that stuff. I am sketching an API for a Java database system, that'll be centered around block-based entities (don't ask me what that means - that's a long story), and those _entities_ can be read and returned to the Java code as objects subclassed from the `Entity` class. I have an `Entity.Factory` class, that, by means of fluent interfaces, takes a `Class<? extends Entity>` argument and then, uses an instance of `Section.Builder`, `Property.Builder`, or whatever builder the entity has, to put it into the back-end storage. The idea about registering all entity types and their builders just doesn't appeal to me, so I thought that the closest solution to the problem that'd suffice my design needs would be to discover, using reflection, all inner classes of `Entity` classes and find one that's called `Builder`. Looking for some expert insight :) And if I missed some important design details (which could happen as I tried to make this question as concise as possible), just tell me and I'll add them."}
{"_id": "186883", "title": "Is it considered poor practice to include a bug number in a method name for a temporary workaround?", "text": "My coworker who is a senior guy is blocking me on a code review because he wants me to name a method 'PerformSqlClient216147Workaround' because it's a workaround for some defect ###. Now, my method name proposal is something like PerformRightExpressionCast which tends to describe what the method actually does. His arguments go along the line of: \"Well this method is used only as a workaround for this case, and nowhere else.\" Would including the bug number inside of the method name for a temporary workaround be considered bad practice?"}
{"_id": "25779", "title": "Social networking sites static caching", "text": "In sites like facebook or orkut or friendster what's displayed at the bottom instead of main web address like static.ak.fbcdn.net or profile.ak.fbcdn.net? Are these different servers or they are just used to misguide the hackers?"}
{"_id": "253801", "title": "Allocating memory inside a function and returning it back", "text": "I want to pass a pointer to my function and allocate the memory to which this pointer points. I've read in other posts that I should pass a double pointer to this function and I did so, but I keep getting segmentation fault:               #include <iostream>     #include <stdlib.h>          using namespace std;          void allocate(unsigned char** t)     {         *t=(unsigned char*)malloc(3*sizeof(unsigned char));         if(*t == NULL)             cout<<\"Allcoation failed\"<<endl;         else             for(int m=0;m<3;m++)                 *(t[m])=0;     }          int main()     {         unsigned char* t;         allocate(&t);          cout<<t[0]<<\" \"<<t[1]<<endl;         return 0;     }      the result is always this: Segmentation fault (core dumped) I don't think that there's anything missing from this code. What could be wrong?"}
{"_id": "24828", "title": "Who should participate in time estimation?", "text": "In an IT project:   1. Who should **participate** in time estimation? Developer, team leader, scrum master and etc?   2. Whose **vote** should be counted most?"}
{"_id": "18192", "title": "Does Working (Java,DotNet etc) Technology determine long term growth?", "text": "I have learned Java, .NET, etc and now in iPhone development in my studies and work and I could make myself flexible in any domain I work with. But as I am a fresher as an iPhone developer, I can't predict my future about my long term growth in the software industry. Does one's working technology determine long term growth?"}
{"_id": "24826", "title": "Responding or Maintaining Emails - best practice", "text": "I would like to hear how you manage your emails when you get lot of emails on a day basis. Here some of the things that I follow,   1. Read emails and respond for 2 hours once. I will not disturb my work for intermediate emails unless until I got the email with high priority status.   2. Even I responded the emails, I maintain the incomplete tasks in a separate folder with follow-up tag and set reminder. I could do the proper follow up.   3. Usually archiving emails every month and take a backup of them in DVD. Email size quota issue can be avoided. As well as it wont take much time to configure if you have less number of emails in your server if you have to move to the another machine/laptop.   4. Created a rule to categorize the emails based on the To address and give more attention to the emails if it is directly addressed to me only. Some of them above are not relevant or not needed for everyone. however, i feel that this is an important thing in management to have a smooth communication with higher/subordinate in any organization."}
{"_id": "24823", "title": "who should move the sprint status to complete in agile scrum model", "text": "we ask the developers themselves to close the sprint once they completed the sprint. Just want to confirm, if it has to be closed by TL after he reviewed the tasks completion."}
{"_id": "242911", "title": "POST and PUT requests \u2013 is it just the convention?", "text": "I've read quite a few articles on the difference between POST and PUT and in when the two should be used. But there are still few things confusing me ( hopefully questions will make some sense ): **1)** We should use PUT to _create resources_ when we want clients to specify the URI of the _newly created resources_ and we should use POST to create resources when we let service generate the URI of the _newly created resources_. **a)** Is it just by convention that _POST create request_ doesn't contain an URI of the _newly created resource_ or _POST create request_ actually can't contain the URI of the _newly created resource_? **b)** PUT has idempotent semantics and thus can be safely used for **absolute updates** ( ie we send _entire state of the resource_ to the server ), but not also for **relative updates** ( ie we send just _changes to the resource state_ ), since that would violate its semantics. But I assume it's still possible for PUT to send **relative updates** to the server, it's just that in that case the _PUT update_ won't be idempotent? **2)** I've read somewhere that we should \" _use POST to append a resource to a collection identified by a service-generated URI_ \". **a)** What exactly does that mean? That if URIs for the resources were generated by a server ( thus the resources were created via POST ), then ALL _subsequent resources_ should also be created via POST? Thus, in such situation no resource should be created via PUT? **b)** If my assumption under **a)** is correct, could you elaborate why we shouldn't create some resources via POST and some via PUT ( assuming server already contains a collection of resources created via POST )? **REPLY:** **1)** Please correct me if I'm wrong, but from your post and from the link you've posted, it seems: **a)** The Request-URI in POST is interpreted by server as the _URI of the service_. Thus, it could just as easily be interpreted as _an URI of a newly created resource_ , if server code was written to recognize Request-URI as such **b)** Similarly, PUT is able to send **relative updates** , it's just that service code is usually written such that it will complain if _PUT updates are relative_. **2)** > Usually, create has fallen into the POST camp, because of the idea of > \"appending to a collection.\" It's become the way to append a resource to a > list of resources. I don't quite understand the reasoning behind the idea of \" _appending to a collection_ \" and why this idea prefers POST for create. Namely, if we _create 10 resources via PUT_ , then server will contain a _collection of 10 resources_ and if we then create another resource, then server will append this resource to that collection ( which will now contain _11 resources_ )?! Uh, this is kinda confusing thank you"}
{"_id": "115967", "title": "The usual metadata objects or: How to move a typical ExtJS App to jQuery, and: What's missing in the middle?", "text": "I have entered into an existing project that is all about maintaining nested data structures. You have companies which are assigend to accounts, and contacts and notes and... basically the usual bunch of 1:1, 1..n, n:m Database relations, stored in mysql or postgres, wrapped by Doctrine. Of course, every node comes with the usual set of metadata, that needs validation in terms of type (number, text, ...) and semantically (email, url, 'enums' like status, type, currency). More specifically what I stepped into I would describe (also from previous experience) as typical ExtJS hell. **Does this sound familiar to anyone?**   * a typical single URL-Application: No history, no meaningful specific bookmarks, oh and dare you pressing the back button...   * tabbed browsing is impossible (the not so rare use case of looking at Customer A, while entering something meaningful into Account or Customer B side-by-side)   * you have that typical navigation tree on the left, the stuff on the right is called in by Ajax. Data, but also a lot of executable java code.   * a strong \"MS Office feel\": CSS sprites are far, far way, simple pullDowns and multiple-Choice buttons need effort to be 'dressed down' to be usable.   * Not to mention all the clobbered div-s as opossed to few clean, semantically meaningful tags   * a hell of javascript (some of it quite akwardly created in PHP) to suit hard-to-debug controllers and stores and plenty of redundant code, to ensure the same thing over and over again for the various data fields.Sure, there is OOP class hierarchy for those Ext.[ux.]grids and windows, but of limited help. From previous experience I would LOVE to switch this to a straight REST-ful API, stuff is actually done between page request, the URl gives it to you just as it should look:               foo.com/accounts/16324/contact/create     foo.com/customer/search/state=California      And make the whole think jQuery-based, where I gain more control. That brings me to my general question: **Do I miss a middle layer?** Trouble: I wonder, how to fill certain gaps (that other 'Converts' are likely to encounter, too, hence I dare to ask such broad question):   1. _what plugins would be good for (editable) tables? Including resizable, sortable comments? I know about jQueryUI and jQueryTools but I don't think that alone fits the bill. I need a really good table/grid think, probably with backend routines that fit._   2. *Generally speaking, I feel, that I miss a middle layer between ORM and UI if I tinker with data structures, can I bring some automatism like \"Here's my data structure, including types and validation rules, (oh, and the exisiting/default data) now build the form from it\" Since this might vary from customer to customer, is another reason to not complete hardcode this to much. Also the Ext-JS-ish store functionaliy of only sending back fields that truly changed would be worthwhile. As is recognizing dirty-ness (aka the need to confirm 'save/cancel' on dialog closing).*   1. **Very** valuable would be generic mechanisms of \"tentativene sub-Dialogs\", e.g. Windows Screensaver do: So going into a Menu, from there to a submenu, saying ok on sub-dialog, then cancel on main ==> cancels the whole thing, nothing stored. In other words: Storing a few hierarchical data sets flexibly in the Session would be good. And pushing them into the DB (by repetive, generic means) when I got the actual \"OK\". Any good pointers for me the table-editing part in the frontend and/or the data-structure middle part? Thank you, Danke, Merci, Mille grazie, Xie xie! Fronker"}
{"_id": "98088", "title": "certified scrum master", "text": "hello Im learning about Scrum, and noticed that there is a certified scrum master course is this worth it? or can I learn all of that from books and online, to implement in my work? thanks!!"}
{"_id": "242912", "title": "Infinite loop with a singleton - does this type of issue have a name?", "text": "I ran into an unusual error while working on my project. To better learn from and remember it, I'd like to know if this type of error has a name or some definition. (The error itself `OutOfMemoryError` isn't unusual, I'm talking about what lead to this error). My (simplified) situation was this: I had a class `Singleton`:               class Singleton extends ClassA{         private static Singleton instance;              private Singleton(){ // implicitly calls super() }              public static Singleton getInstance(){             if (instance==null) instance = new Singleton();             return instance;         }     }      And it's superclass `ClassA`:               abstract class ClassA{         public ClassA(){             ClassB objectB = new ClassB();             // .. some logic ..         }     }      And a class `ClassB` that uses `Singleton` in it's constructor:               class ClassB{         public ClassB(){             Singleton singleton = Singleton.getInstance();             // .. some logic ..         }     }      What happens is the following: 1- `ClassB` is instantiated somewhere. It's constructor is invoked and calls `Singleton.getInstance()`. 2- `Singleton.getInstance()` sees that `instance == null` and executes `instance = new Singleton()`. 3- The constructor of `Singleton` is run. It's empty, but it implicitly calls the superclass' (`ClassA`) constructor. 4- The superclass of `Singleton` instantiates a `ClassB` object `new ClassB()`. 5- `ClassB`'s constructor is invoked and calls `Singleton.getInstance()`... Since the instantiation of `instance` in `Singleton` never reached it's finish, `instance == null` still returns `true`, and the cycle never ends. Resulting in an infinite loop, that finally resulted in an `OutOfMemoryError`. So my question is: **is this kind of infinite-loop-with-singletons error a common issue?** **Any ideas how I can avoid it in the future?**"}
{"_id": "3645", "title": "I code rarely. Is this a bad sign?", "text": "I am a computer science student and learning Java now a days. I want to be a good developer/programmer. I like reading books. I search on the internet for the related topics and study them. I refer to StackOverflow and other good programming websites daily but I code rarely. Is this a bad sign? If yes then what should I do to overcome this problem?"}
{"_id": "98083", "title": "Can't I just use all static methods?", "text": "What's the difference between the two UpdateSubject methods below? I felt using static methods is better if you just want to operate on the entities. In which situations should I go with non-static methods?               public class Subject     {         public int Id {get; set;}         public string Name { get; set; }              public static bool UpdateSubject(Subject subject)         {             //Do something and return result             return true;         }         public bool UpdateSubject()         {             //Do something on 'this' and return result             return true;         }     }      I know I will be getting many kicks from the community for this really annoying question but I could not stop myself asking it. Does this become impractical when dealing with inheritance? Update:   Its happening at our work place now. We are working on a 6 month asp.net web application with 5 developers. Our architect decided we use all static methods for all APIs. His reasoning being static methods are light weight and it benefits web applications by keeping server load down."}
{"_id": "209218", "title": "What are the advantages/disadvantages of using objects as parameters to other object methods?", "text": "I'm mostly thinking of PHP here, but if you want to refer to other languages that's fine. An object has a method that requires data contained in another class of object. Should I extract that data from the other object into a variable and then send just that data to the requesting object? Or should I pass the entire data-containing object into the data-requiring object, and then have the requesting object perform the data extraction operations? I'm asking because I'm working on a big project that I've written 100% of the code for, and some of my early code takes string or numeric arguments, but my later code seems to be leaning toward passing around objects. As I bump into some old code, I'm wondering if I should convert it to object parameters."}
{"_id": "153864", "title": "Languages with a clear distinction between subroutines that are purely functional, mutating, state-changing, etc?", "text": "Lately I've become more and more frustrated that in most modern programming languages I've worked with (C/C++, C#, F#, Ruby, Python, JS and more) there is very little, if any, language support for determining what a subroutine will actually do. Consider the following simple pseudo-code:               var x = DoSomethingWith(y);      How do I determine what the call to _DoSomethingWith(y)_ will actually do? Will it mutate _y_ , or will it return a copy of _y_? Does it depend on global or local state, or is it only dependent on _y_? Will it change the global or local state? How does closure affect the outcome of the call? In all languages I've encountered, almost none of these questions can be answered by merely looking at the signature of the subroutine, and there is almost never any compile-time or run-time support either. Usually, the only way is to put your trust in the author of the API, and hope that the documentation and/or naming conventions reveal what the subroutine will actually do. **My question is this:** Does there exist any languages today that make symbolic distinctions between these types of scenarios, and places compile- time constraints on what code you can actually write? (There is of course _some_ support for this in most modern languages, such as different levels of scope and closure, the separation between static and instance code, lambda functions, et cetera. But too often these seem to come into conflict with each other. For instance, a lambda function will usually either be purely functional, and simply return a value based on input parameters, or mutate the input parameters in some way. But it is usually possible to access static variables from a lambda function, which in turn can give you access to instance variables, and then it all breaks apart.)"}
{"_id": "209216", "title": "What do you do to estimates for agile stories where developers are pair programming?", "text": "If it was a 2-point story for one person, would you double it if people are pairing? Pairing isn't always necessarily done 100% of a dev task, so it seems that doubling the story points seems wrong. And it might not be obvious how much of the task will require pairing until the end, so you wouldn't know what the points the story should be until you've finished - and it seems strange to change an estimate midway through a sprint. However, if velocity is going to be an accurate representation of how much work we can get through during a sprint, it seems right to change the estimates if more than one person is working on a task. But also, this seems like it adds a lot of admin overhead. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "26080", "title": "If someone offers you an unverified statement regarding software development practices, do you respond with \"citation needed\"?", "text": "Recently I attended a lecture given by Greg Wilson (Chief Scientist of Software Carpentry). From the abstract: > The idea that claims about software development practices should be based on > evidence is still foreign to software developers, but this is finally > starting to change: any academic who claims that a particular tool or > practice makes software development faster, cheaper, or more reliable is now > expected to back up that claim with some sort of empirical study. Overall, the lecture was very informative and left me thinking quite deeply about my approach to development. In particular, I now find myself looking for citations to back up a lot of statements. Previously, I had slipped into the habit of simply repeating offered truths, with perhaps a mental note to go check up on it later. Putting it bluntly, **I was being gullible**. Here's an example taken from the lecture: > \"If more than 25% of the code needs refactoring, it's quicker to rewrite > it\". Sounds plausible, but is it true? Where's the study backing this up? Is it true for all languages? And so on. OK, it's quite possible to take this to an extreme and not believe anything by anyone unless you have derived it yourself from first principles. That way lies madness (or maybe mathematics ;-) ). But, if someone comes up to you with a statement along the lines of \"Hey, by doing this in [pick language of moment] we'll be able to boost productivity by [pick multiple of 10]%\" are you inclined to just accept it, or are you going to ask for proven evidence? If it's the latter (and I hope it is) then   1. where would you go to find this evidence?    2. how stringent would you be? In short, if someone offers you an unverified statement, will you respond with \"citation needed\"?"}
{"_id": "204623", "title": "How to implement a message queue over Redis?", "text": "### Why Redis for queuing? I'm under the impression that Redis can make a good candidate for implementing a queueing system. Up until this point we've been using our MySQL database with polling, or RabbitMQ. With RabbitMQ we've had many problems - the client libraries are very poor and buggy and we'd like not to invest too many developer-hours into fixing them, a few problems with the server management console, etc. And, for the time being at least, we're not grasping for milliseconds or seriously pushing performance, so as long as a system has an architecture that supports a queue intelligently we are probably in good shape. Okay, so that's the background. Essentially I have a very classic, simple queue model - several producers producing work and several consumers consuming work, and both producers and consumers need to be able to scale intelligently. It turns out a naive `PUBSUB` doesn't work, since I don't want _all_ subscribers to consume work, I just want _one_ subscriber to receive the work. At first pass, it looks to me like `BRPOPLPUSH` is an intelligent design. ### Can we use BRPOPLPUSH? The basic design with `BRPOPLPUSH` is you have one work queue and a progress queue. When a consumer receives work it atomically pushes the item into the progress queue, and when it completes the work it `LREM`'s it. This prevents blackholing of work if clients die and makes monitoring pretty effortless - for instance we can tell if there is a problem causing consumers to take a long time to perform tasks, in addition to telling if there is a large volume of tasks. It ensures   * work is delivered to exactly one consumer   * work winds up in a progress queue, so it can't blackhole if a consumer ### The drawbacks   * It seems rather strange to me that the best design I've found doesn't actually use `PUBSUB` since this seems to be what most blog posts about queuing over Redis focus on. So I feel like I'm missing something obvious. The only way I see to use `PUBSUB` without consuming tasks twice is to simply push a notification that work has arrived, which consumers can then non-blocking-ly `RPOPLPUSH`.    * It's impossible to request more than one work item at a time, which seems to be a performance problem. Not a huge one for our situation, but it rather obviously says this operation was not designed for high throughput or this situation   * In short: _am I missing anything stupid?_ Also adding node.js tag, because that's the language I'm mostly dealing with. Node may offer some simplifications in implementing, given its single-threaded and nonblocking nature, but furthermore I'm using the node-redis library and solutions should or can be sensitive to its strengths and weaknesses as well."}
{"_id": "165844", "title": "Framework for Everything - Where to begin? [Longer post]", "text": "Back story of this question, feel free to skip down for the specific question * * * Hello, I've been very interested in the idea of abstract programming the last few years. I've made about 30 attempts at creating a piece of software that is capable of almost anything you throw at it. I've undertook some attempts at this that have taken upwards of a year, while getting close, never releasing it beyond my compiler. This has been something I've always tried wrapping my head around, and something is always missing. With the title, I'm sure you're assuming, \"Yes of course you noob! You can't account for everything!\" To which I have to reply, \"Why not?\" To give you some background into what I'm talking about, this all started with doing maybe a shade of gray hat SEO software. I found myself constantly having to create similar, but slightly different sets of code. I've gone through as many iterations of way to communicate on http as the universe has particles. \"How many times am I going to have to write this multi-threaded class?\" is something I found myself asking a lot. Sure, I could create a class library, and just work with that, but I always felt I could optimize what I had, which often was a large undertaking and typically involved frequent use of the CRTL+A keyboard shortcut, mixed with the delete button. It dawned on me that it was time to invest in a plugin system. This would allow me to simply add snippets of code. as time went on, and I could subversion stuff out, and distribute small chunks of code, rather than something that encompasses only a specific function or design. This comes with its own complexity, of course, and by the time I had finished the software scope for this addition, it hit me that I would want to add to everything in the software, not just a new http method, or automation code for a specific website. Great, we're getting more abstract. However, the software that I have in my mind comes down to a quite a few questions regarding its execution. I have to have some parameters to what I am going to do. After writing what the perfect software would do in my mind, I came up with this as a list of requirements:   * Should be able to use networking   * A \"Macro\" or \"Expression system\" which would allow people to do something like : =First(=ParseToList(=GetUrl(\"http://www.google.com?q=helloworld!\"), Template.Google))   * Multithreaded   * Able to add UI elements through some type of XML -- People can make their own addons etc.   * Can use third party API through the plugins, such as Microsoft CRM, Exchange, etc. This would allow the software to essentially be used for everything. Really, any task you wish to automate, in a simple way. Making the UI was as also extremely hard. How do you do all of this? Its very difficult. * * * So my question: With so many attempts at this, I'm out of ideas how to successfully complete this. I have a very specific idea in my mind, but I keep failing to execute it. I'm a self taught programmer. I've been doing it for years, and work professionally in it, but I've never encountered something that would be as complex and in-depth as a system which essentially does everything. Where would you start? What are the best practices for design? How can I avoid constantly having to go back and optimize my software. What can I do to generalize this and draw everything out to completion. These are things I struggle with. P.s., I'm using c# as my main language. I feel like in this example, I might be hitting the outer limit of the language, although, I don't know if that is the case, or if I'm just a bad programmer. Thanks for your time."}
{"_id": "165846", "title": "Do other developers feel that as they get better, it becomes harder to get jobs?", "text": "When I was starting out, it seemed I had a much better time getting interviews and passing them. But now that I'm more experienced, I'm finding that its harder and harder to find a job. Do other developers out there feel the same way? I'll give you an example. I did an interview last Wednesday. It was a small start-up with only one other engineer and the CEO. They flew me in from Ohio (they are SF based). When I got there, they had me write them a link shortener, which took me about 10 minutes to write. I was supposed to be there all day working on this. When I finished it early, the interviewer seemed kind of shocked. After that, we were talking, and I asked him what they use to store data. He told me Mongo. I ask why he decided to use mongo. He then stammered and mumbled his answer, which basically boiled down to \"We're using it because Mongo is a the trendy database technology and we don't want to be left out\", which I've found is pretty much most common reason people use NoSQL these days. The interviewer quickly ended the interview and pretty much shoved me out the door. I was supposed to have lunch with the CEO, but I he kicked me out before I had a chance. The intervier wasn't mean or rude, (and neither was I). After I got back to Ohio, I got an email from them saying \"I wasn't a fit\". This sot of thing happens to me all the time. I'm starting to think \"not a fit\" can sometimes mean \"are too high of a skill level that we are\". Is this all in my head, or do other experienced developers notice the same thing happening? Back when I used to struggle with coding problems, I would work with the interviewer and it would be a positive thing and I'd get hired. But now I usually blow through the coding part, and the interviewer being left speechless is working against me. Should I feign struggling with coding problems?"}
{"_id": "225514", "title": "IS a command-line (Console) is important to learn for ASP.NET developer?", "text": "I saw many RoR developers use command line to interact with interfaces and to deploy their web applications. Is that necessary step to earn for asp.net developer?"}
{"_id": "253518", "title": "Are first-class functions a substitute for the Strategy pattern?", "text": "The Strategy design pattern is often regarded as a substitute for first-class functions in languages that lack them. So for example say you wanted to pass functionality into an object. In Java you'd have to pass in the object another object which encapsulates the desired behavior. In a language such as Ruby, you'd just pass the functionality itself in the form of an anonymous function. However I was thinking about it and decided that maybe Strategy offers more than a plain anonymous function does. This is because an object can hold state that exists independently of the period when it's method runs. However an anonymous function by itself can only hold state that ceases to exist the moment the function finishes execution. In an object-oriented language that supports first-class functions, does the strategy pattern have any advantage over using functions?"}
{"_id": "99973", "title": "Measures of Javascript engine performances over time?", "text": "Since the beginning of the Javascript race -- which I would situate around Google Chrome launch in 2008 -- the improvement in the Javascript engine performances have been impressive. The web is crowded with comparisons such as \"Firefox V3.42.7 vs. Safari 3.0-prealpha2\", and the winner of those comparisons changes every few months and differs on each benchmark. But the big picture, independently of who got their new version out last, is that the average speed of current up-to-date browsers has improved a lot over the last years. Yet this long-term improvement is difficult to quantify:   * people usually compare the last version of each browser, and not different versions of one browser   * announced performance improvements do not generally pile up: when someone announce V3 twice as fast as V2, and later V4 twice as fast as V3, this does not mean that V3 is fourth times as fast as V1, because they usually mean \"in a favorable case\", and the favorable case in the V3-4 transition are not necessarily the same as in the V2-3 transition   * benchmarks themselves evolve over time; what is referred as \"the Sunspider test\" today is not the same as in 2008, so we cannot compare raw scores over time. Does anyone know of a valuable measurement of javascript engines performance improvement over the last few years?"}
{"_id": "165849", "title": "Cross-platform desktop programming: C++ vs. Python", "text": "Alright, to start off, I have experience as an amateur Obj-C/Cocoa and Ruby w/Rails programmer. These are great, but they aren't really helpful for writing cross-platform applications (hopefully GNUStep will one day be complete enough for the first to be multi platform, but that day is not today). C++, from what I can gather, is extremely powerful but also a huge, ugly behemoth that can take half a decade or more to master. I've also read that you can very easily not only shoot yourself in the foot, but blow your entire leg off with it since memory management is all manual. Obviously, this is all quite intimidating. Is it correct? Python seems to provide most of the power of C++ and is much easier to pick up at the cost of speed. How big is this sacrifice? Is it meaningful or can it be ignored? Which will have me writing fast, stable, highly reliable applications in a reasonable amount of time? Also, is it better to use Qt for your UI or instead maintain separate, native front ends for each platform? EDIT: For extra clarity, there are two types applications I want to write: one is an extremely friendly and convenient database frontend and the other, which no doubt will come much later on, is a 3D world editor."}
{"_id": "99975", "title": "What are pros and cons of using temporary \"references\"?", "text": "In C and C++ (and I guess other languages that allow taking a \"reference\" to an array element or something similar), when you have an array like type, accessing individual elements of such an array can be done \"directly\" or via a temporary reference or pointer. Example:               // Like this:     for(int i=0; i<n; ++i) {        theArray[i].frobnicate();        theArray[i].shrub();        if(i % 2) {           theArray[i].modulize();        }     }          // Or like this:     for(int i=0; i<n; ++i) {        TheType& elem = theArray[i];        elem.frobnicate();        elem.shrub();        if(i % 2) {           elem.modulize();        }     }      Obviously _if_ the loop body becomes too complex some refactoring should be used and the whole access moved to a separate function/method that would naturally operate on a single element of the array, but for cases where there are few acesses that are only used in one loop, it may be more convenient to keep them directly in the loop. We have been debating which form we should prefer in our team and opinions are mixed, therefore I'm interested in whether there exist some guidelines, especially wrt. C++. Edit: This is purely about style if you will. Performance is irrelevant, as our C++ compiler actually should generate exactly the same code in both versions."}
{"_id": "105797", "title": "How have you got chances to learn multiple languages?", "text": "I read A programmer should concentrate on at least how many languages?, and I found out that I don't know languages in number 2, 3 of first answer. I want to learn more languages to increase my knowledge and programming skill. However, usually in companies they use fixed framework and languages and changes seldom. So I'm not sure if I can get a chance to learn those languages and I think it would be same to other programmers. However, I've seen many developers who knows multiple languages in here. How do you get chances to learn many languages? **Update** I think, there are many people who feel uncomfortable because it seems I don't want study in my spare time at all. Actually, that's not true.:) I'm an enthusiast programmer and that's why I posted this kind of question here. I study in my spare time but I just thought it would be not enough to be skillful in languages. Anyway, thanks for all answers!"}
{"_id": "196817", "title": "Is there any design pattern to remove elements from a hash map?", "text": "In my application I keep track of the running threads via a hash map, in that way I can retrieve the correct thread and do any actions. The app evolved in a way that new threads are created and old threads must be destroyed. My concern is if I'm removing the elements of the hash correctly, or if there's any efficient pattern. I'm developing in Java but I'll share the pseudo code:               # HashMap mainHashmap already initialized     List toDelete = new List();     # First step, stop the threads     For (each element in HashMap)     {       if (element.value is ThreadA)       {         element.value.stopThread();         toDelete.add(element.key);       }      }      # Then remove the element from the array      For (each key in toDelete)      {         mainHashmap.remove(key);      }      Thanks"}
{"_id": "196819", "title": "How should I assess answers to the programming assignment I use for hiring", "text": "After our phone screen, but before a face to face interview, I ask our candidates to complete a short programming assignment. It involves writing a small command line program in C, which should run to around 100-200 LoC and take 3-4 hours to complete. We allow the candidate 72 hours to complete the task and get it back to us. It involves a little simple file and string handling and a simple data structure (which the candidate has to select appropriately). We ask for a solution that is \"reasonably efficient, concise and easy to understand\" to hint that we don't expect it to be super clever or micro-optimized at the expense of readability. The task is not completely specified, so we make it clear that we'd like to see any assumptions document. **So my question is: how should I rate the solution?** I have seen a couple of solutions so far (it's early days). But I'm a bit disappointed that there have been bugs that I've found within a few minutes of hand testing or looking at the code. But what sort of standard should I expect? If anyone has any links to good general advice on the topic, it would be very much appreciated."}
{"_id": "116633", "title": "What is Module Object and Function Object?", "text": "I am currently teaching myself Python, using the GNU licensed book \"Introduction to Computer Science using Python.\" In chapter 3, functions are covered. While I understand the concept of functions and how they simplify code by executing a defined sequence of statements whenever they care called, and that Modules are collections of related functions and variables, stored in a file, I do not understand the concept of module objects and function objects. For example, when \"import math\" is executed, it says, a module object is created. Also, when a function is defined and is executed, a function object is created. Could someone please explain what these \"objects\" are to me?"}
{"_id": "25197", "title": "How do you guys feel about organization specific frameworks?", "text": "I know that there should be a kind of standard for developing software but in the organization where I work for (30,000+ employees), we have a very strict framework for Java development. In my opinion such a framework is prehistoric as we are therefor running at least 10 years behind (Standard is Java 1.5 but with support 'til java 1.2). Further the framework slows down performance, user satisfaction drops and I'm writing more boilerplate code than is good for my health :-). Any suggestions on the advantages of such a framework? What are good practices for such a framework for not running behind the facts?"}
{"_id": "36757", "title": "As the current draft stands, what is the most significant change the \"National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace\" will provoke?", "text": "A current draft of the \"National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace\" has been posted by the Department of Homeland Security. This question is not asking about privacy or constitutionality, but about how this act will impact developers' business models and development strategies. When the post was made I was reminded of Jeff's November blog post regarding an internet driver's license. Whether that is a perfect model or not, both approaches are attempting to handle a shared problem (of both developers and end users): How do we establish an online identity? The question I ask here is, with respect to the various burdens that would be imposed on developers and users, what are some of the major, foreseeable implementation issues that will arise from the current U.S. Government's proposed solution? For a quick primer on the setup, jump to page 12 for infrastructure components, here are two stand-outs:   * An Identity Provider (IDP) is responsible for the processes associated with enrolling a subject, and establishing and maintaining the digital identity associated with an individual or NPE. These processes include identity vetting and proofing, as well as revocation, suspension, and recovery of the digital identity. The IDP is responsible for issuing a credential, the information object or device used during a transaction to provide evidence of the subject\u2019s identity; it may also provide linkage to authority, roles, rights, privileges, and other attributes.    * The credential can be stored on an identity medium, which is a device or object (physical or virtual) used for storing one or more credentials, claims, or attributes related to a subject. Identity media are widely available in many formats, such as smart cards, security chips embedded in PCs, cell phones, software based certificates, and USB devices. Selection of the appropriate credential is implementation specific and dependent on the risk tolerance of the participating entities. Here are the first considered actionable components of the draft:   * Action 1: Designate a Federal Agency to Lead the Public/Private Sector Efforts Associated with Achieving the Goals of the Strategy   * Action 2: Develop a Shared, Comprehensive Public/Private Sector Implementation Plan   * Action 3:Accelerate the Expansion of Federal Services, Pilots, and Policies that Align with the Identity Ecosystem   * Action 4:Work Among the Public/Private Sectors to Implement Enhanced Privacy Protections   * Action 5:Coordinate the Development and Refinement of Risk Models and Interoperability Standards   * Action 6: Address the Liability Concerns of Service Providers and Individuals    * Action 7: Perform Outreach and Awareness Across all Stakeholders    * Action 8: Continue Collaborating in International Efforts    * Action 9: Identify Other Means to Drive Adoption of the Identity Ecosystem across the Nation"}
{"_id": "186268", "title": "When to write Unit Tests : Is there any or list of terms to take right decision", "text": "To write Unit Tests we have to write extra bits of code. For several projects we do Unit Tests and for several projects we do not. As a Team Leader I face trouble to make the right decision. Is there any or list of terms by which I can take the right decision whether we will do Unit tests or not? **EDIT:** Please provide a comment while down voting the question. It will help me to improve my question."}
{"_id": "186265", "title": "Why are some languages (e.g Visual Basic) considered more enterprise ready than others (Python)", "text": "Reading about various techie sites, there is often a feeling that Microsoft Languages / Oracle etc. are considered \"enterprise ready\", while there seems to be more doubt about languages such as Python or Ruby. Why is this? Do Microsoft languages actually have less security holes or not?"}
{"_id": "186262", "title": "Should a programmer always be able to do everything a user could do?", "text": "Should a programmer be able to perform all operations programmatically on a object that a user could do? By way of example, I'm working with a list selection object. To populate the list List.AddItem(itemData) is repeatedly called until it is built. A user can then:   * View the entire list   * Select a single item from the list However there is no programmatic way to list all of the items. Nor is there an easy way to set an item as selected. You can if you keep track of what was added to the list and call List.SelectItem(itemData). This means you'd have to maintain an independent list of the items separate from the object, which could cause it's own problem (This bit of ugliness isn't necessary to the question, but part of the motivation). In general if a user can get information about an object or perform an action on an object should this same functionality be available to the programmer and not hidden? I suspect the answer is \"yes\" but recognized I may be overgeneralizing from this one case that I'm unhappy with."}
{"_id": "186260", "title": "Why does flask use Jinja2 and not xpath?", "text": "I'm just starting out with python and since I'm coming from a PHP background (thus have to adjust my mind to wrap around new concepts) one major question still stands without answer - why does Flask need a **template engine**? The way I was used to go about things, was to have a `template.html` that contained valid html without any logic and then, when needed, just load the file into a `DOMDocument` object and navigate it using `DOMXpath`. This made perfect sense to me - leave the UI part separate from the LOGIC part. But now since I'm starting to learn a new language, it kinda forces me to get back to mixing in logic with the UI. So it boils down to this - is it me, is the DOM and xpath route just something I do to make my life \"harder\", or is Flask wrong to use a template engine?"}
{"_id": "104775", "title": "Using TSQL for the first time some basic instructions", "text": "I am writing an application that will use many tables and I've been told that I must not use stored procedures in this project because it will be too slow. It has been suggested that I use TSQL. I have only used stored procedures until now. Is using TSQL different? Is this the way to go for faster data access or are there other methods?"}
{"_id": "53930", "title": "How to do pragmatic high-level/meta-programming?", "text": "Imagine you have implemented the creation of a nice path-based star shape in Lisp. Then you discover Processing and you re-implement the whole code, because Processing/Java/Java2D is different. Then you want to tinker with libcinder, so you port your code to C++/Cairo. You are (re)writing a lot of boiler plate code, while the actual requirement \"create a star shape\" (or \"create a path, moveto x y, lineto x y\") has not changed. What are the options to encapsulate those implementation details? Some sort of pragmatic meta-programming? Maybe an expert system? How would you define your core business logic as language-independent as possible? **EDIT:** This has been a real business problem for some people, if you look at Schlep or Stella. The idea is that you've written your core library e.g. in Java and now need to write an iOS app. On what language do you bet you future? How can you save your investment in your current code base?"}
{"_id": "104778", "title": "Best open source ASP.NET MVC e-commerce projects", "text": "I need to get a e-commerce site up and running, but I really don't want to program it from the bottom up if I don't need to. I want to program it using ASP.NET MVC. I'm looking for a good open source alternative (or one for purchase if it's modular enough) that I can use as a base and enhance with the needed functions? It has to have all \"normal\" e-commerce functions, and also the possibility to integrate with a credit card API of my choice. If anyone have any recommendations for me here, I would appreciate it :)"}
{"_id": "53937", "title": "outsourcing code review/refactoring", "text": "I have a small project (3000 lines in Python) that I wrote myself; it has no known bugs and has some decent parts, but is largely a mess because of my lack of time. Unfortunately, I have to be the one who continues writing and maintaining the code. Is it a good idea to hire a highly experienced developer, explain to them the requirements (verbally, since I don't have them documented), and let them review the code and refactor it (in close discussion with me)? I am concerned that: (a) this work is so annoying that highly experienced developers wouldn't want to do it. (b) I would spend so much time explaining the requirements and what my current code does that it would be faster for me to do the actual work myself."}
{"_id": "58908", "title": "Integrating into a new team", "text": "I've just joined a new company where a lot of the developers have been working for more than ten years. How do I integrate into the team without stepping on too many toes?"}
{"_id": "105424", "title": "Programmer Ethics: Can I fork a project from one code host to another?", "text": "Say I find this great snippet of code on Bitbucket. I really, really like it but there's a small bug I want to fix. On the other hand, I have all of my code on GitHub. Is it ok to start a new repo on Github and refer to the original by a comment or on the wiki?"}
{"_id": "105428", "title": "Why were concepts (generic programming) conceived when we already had classes and interfaces?", "text": "_Also on stackoverflow.com:_ I understand that STL concepts had to exist, and that it would be silly to call them \"classes\" or \"interfaces\" when in fact they're only documented (human) concepts and couldn't be translated into C++ code at the time, but when given the opportunity to extend the language to accomodate concepts, why didn't they simply modify the capabilities of classes and/or introduced interfaces? Isn't a concept very similar to an interface (100% abstract class with no data)? By looking at it, it seems to me interfaces only lack support for axioms, but maybe axioms could be introduced into C++'s interfaces (considering an hypothetical adoption of interfaces in C++ to take over concepts), couldn't them? I think even auto concepts could easily be added to such a C++ interface (auto interface LessThanComparable, anyone?). Isn't a concept_map very similar to the Adapter pattern? If all the methods are inline, the adapter essentially doesn't exist beyond compile time; the compiler simply replaces calls to the interface with the inlined versions, calling the target object directly during runtime. I've heard of something called Static Object-Oriented Programming, which essentially means effectively reusing the concepts of object-orientation in generic programming, thus permitting usage of most of OOP's power without incurring execution overhead. Why wasn't this idea further considered? I hope this is clear enough. I can rewrite this if you think I was not; just let me know."}
{"_id": "58900", "title": "Why if statements do not introduce scope in ruby 1.9?", "text": "if statements do not introduce scope in Ruby 1.9, what is the rationale behind this change from ruby 1.8?"}
{"_id": "58903", "title": "Ruby freelancing: realistic expectations?", "text": "I'm in a situation where I only need $100 to live at a place. How is this relevant to programming? Well, I would like to hear the opinions of those on this site if it is at all realistic to expect a Ruby noobie to be able to make $100 freelancing by a month from now, assuming a great deal of effort and enthusiasm o_O I'm a noob, learning Ruby before Rails."}
{"_id": "134856", "title": "What is the difference between distributed and non-distributed version control?", "text": "What are the internal structural differences between distributed (e.g Git & Mercurial) and non distributed (Subversion) version control? The question came from a discussion group where a tool was interacting with CVS and it was argued whether it would be easily ported to other systems or not."}
{"_id": "188905", "title": "Methods to share memory or state across JVMs?", "text": "This is long question I know. I have a few options for what I want. I don't want to know \"this is obviously the best,\" but maybe any pros or cons I may be missing about the options, as well as any options I'm unaware of. We have a java application seperately run as multuple daemons, each a seperate JVM. Right now SQL is used to store data and effecticvely our 'shared memory', but luckily not much is dynamic once in memory. We will soon be dynamically creating and destroying connections and that will mean dynamic changes happening semi-fast and need something better then a SQL database. We _think_ all the dynamic stuff will happen in only one daemon, but we aren't certain. We will need a faster method of saving and loading this state data, going to disk each time is just too slow. The current database needs an overhaul for this change anyways, so we're open to modification or tossing of it as well. We can re-learn all the state we keep in memory; but it's a slow process. Persisting some or all of the data to a DB between runs to save time learning state at bootup is nice, if we can be certain it gets persisted right. Ability to easily query a 'database' to see current state for debugging is a major plus. The solutions I have considered, and some of the pros & cons are: 1) some sort of hibernate solution combined with an in-memory sql database. I haven't used hibernate yet (really want to!), but I think it can address persistance and avoid stale objects between JVM's for us and sql will still be close to the speed of other options if in memory? I don't know how much the overhead for this is or how it scales to multuple JVM's and possible (semi?) fast changes to data. Presumable this is slower then all the other options, but think it's fast enough for our needs? 2) Have each JVM store it's own internal state without any shared system. Use reliable intercommunication (probably JVM) to try to keep state consistent. Most important state is in one daemon, so there won't be that much sharing of dynamic state, but still need to address inconsistent state and dataraces when it does occure. I'm uncertain of how we would want to record persistant state to allow fast reboot even if daemon dies unexpectedly. Also, this solution would require implementing some quick messages to allow fetching a description of memory state to help debugging. It would offer the highest performance once we get it right, but probably the most time consuming to implement (I anticipate obscure bugs due to data-race and inconsistent data?). 3) Use a system to allow some shared memory between JVMs. Quick research suggested MappedByteBuffer and Ecache as possible options, there could be more. Only looked into this a little so far so don't fully know pro's and cons yet. Slightly afraid of creating a single point of failure if our memory is all shared. 4) Some sort of alternative I don't know about or possible merging of two of these idea."}
{"_id": "146140", "title": "What makes a hashing algorithm \"secure\"?", "text": "After reading this interesting question, I felt like I had a good idea of which insecure hashing algorithm I'd use if I needed one, but no idea why I might use a secure algorithm instead. So what is the distinction? Isn't the output just a random number representing the hashed thing? What makes some hashing algorithms secure?"}
{"_id": "146141", "title": "Rotate, Scale and Transform in video games", "text": "IF a 3 dot vector and a 3x3 matrix can rotate, scale and transform things in a virtual 3D space, could you use a 3x3x3 matrix and a 3.3.3 vector to do something to the games sense of time?"}
{"_id": "146146", "title": "One man company looking to expand already built in PHP. Is now the time to switch to Ruby?", "text": "I'm a website owner and I develop in Yii so in short, I think I'm working with more or less the \"best\" PHP has to offer (e.g. PDO, OOP...etc). My primary website (which is not built in any framework just native PHP) of 2.5 years is finally making enough money I can hire my first employee who I want to be a developer to convert it over to Yii. I've also started a new site which is just four weeks into development built with Yii but instead of building anything this week I'm going through RubyKoans because I keep wrestling with the idea that now there is no better time to convert to using Ruby on Rails... I go through Yii and a lot of the most awesome stuff is ported from Rails (e.g. scopes). A lot of really great websites are built in rails (e.g. Twitter, GitHub, Hulu). Rails developers are \"more\" expensive but if you hire one are you not guaranteed a certain level of quality where as with PHP there's a lot of crummy devs out there? If I ever do make the switch, is it not better to do it now when it will be less painful? If I want to create a company that attracts talented developers, why not work in ruby so my company stands out? At the same time PHP is fast, reliable, and when you're working with the \"best\" (e.g. Yii, Symfony2) I think it's a pretty nice and maintainable language. A lot of big sites are built in it too (Facebook, Digg, Craigslist, Hootsuite) plus all the porn sites which we all must admit deal with tons of traffic. Also there is way more PHP devs out there so as long as I use good interview practices will it not be easier to find some good PHP devs? Or would it be easier knowing every dev who came in for an interview already used ruby? Also a big part of me just wants to get started and not spend six months wading through ruby till I'm confident enough I want to port my existing projects over to it. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "188903", "title": "What would be the best way to store movements on a game to allow a rollback?", "text": "I'm developing a board game that has a game class that controls the game flow, and players attached to the game class. The board is just a visual class, but the control of the movements is all by the game.   The player can try to make false movements that lead to the game telling the player that this kind of movement is not allowed (and tell the reason behind it). But in some cases, the player can just make a movement and realize it's not the best move, or just miss click the board, or just want to try another approach.   The game can be saved and loaded, so an approach could be storing all the data before the movement and not allow a rollback, but allow the user to load the last autosaved turn. This looks like a nice approach, but involves user interaction, and the redrawing of the board could be tedious to the user. Is there a better way to do this kind of things or the architecture really matters on this thing? The game class and player class are not complicate so it's cloning the classes a good idea, or separate the game data from the game rules a better approach, or the saving/loading (even automatic on an asked rollback) is ok? UPDATE: how this game works: It has a main board where you make moves (simple moves) and a player board that react on the moves makes on the main board. It also has reaction moves according to other player moves and on yourself moves.You can also react when is not your turn, doing things on your board. Maybe I can't undo every move, but I like the undo/redo idea floating in one of the current answers."}
{"_id": "83417", "title": "What's the best release strategy for an Android application?", "text": "I'm close to the completion of a first set of features for a free application I'm developing on the Android platform and I'm starting to wonder about the best time to release it to the market. On one side I'm fond of the \"ship as early as possible\" model though considering that users can vote for applications I don't want to release too soon an application in beta and with a limited set of features as I won't get high ratings. I could explain that it is a beta version but will non technical users understand or care ? I don't think so. On the other side, if I go for a waterfall model and I wait until the application is feature complete I will have a more competitive application in terms of features but the downside is that as the application grows bigger so the number of problems users are likely to experience. I know I can test my application but I don't think that's enough considering that some applications have slightly different behavious on different devices. I work at this app part-time so I fear I won't have the time to fix in a short time the issues that will eventually pop up and this will lead again to negative ratings. I want to know from developers that have already gone through this dilemma, is it best to release an incomplete, beta quality product early or waiting until it's feature complete and then deal with the bugs all at once ? Please provide answers specific to the Android platform and market."}
{"_id": "83411", "title": "Returning to programming/math after a years long inactivity; becoming a better professional; setting goals", "text": "I am in a somewhat, hopefully, common situation to many of my peers in NYC. I will be brutally honest here. I've graduated with CS degree (minor math) from a top 20 school, worked programming/qa jobs in software shops for 4 years, and then slowly moved to finance, taking jobs on Wall St (about 2+ years now). While I still do some programming, which is predominately in C/C++ (I kid you not). Most of the programming work revolves around maintaining a system or fixing minor bugs. And comparatively, I've been doing less and less of actual programming. And I've had almost no motivation to improve on that outside of the office. Bars, side hobbies, gym, women and most importantly LAZINESS are the essential culprits. To be fair, I feel that I've NOT learned anything new, been forgetting old, and lagging behind all the cool technologies, as well as NOT getting better at or building on what I had known. I don't take part in the community (in college I posted on news boards, subscribed to major publications,etc). My math has also suffered tremendously. I've also noticed that my notion of \"programming\" changed from cool/hacky to uncool/geeky/quick-route-to STOP gettting laid. This by itself is enough to explain why I've not evolved as a developer. In a nutshell, I feel that instead of becoming a better professional, and thereby improving my skills in relevant areas, I head south at an alarming rate. I'm 30 now, and I do NOT want to exacerbate my situation even further. Ironically, I am very well paid, and living it up. I admit it's all facade, and one day it will all come crushing, once _correction_ takes place. Very soon. This weekend, I started re-reading Effective C++ series (by Scott Meyers), listening to math/cs video lectures on www.khanacademy.org/ and http://see.stanford.edu/see/lecturelist.aspx?coll=11f4f422-5670-4b4c-889c-008262e09e4e I want to get back on track, but I don't have a definite goal and a plan, just ideas that I should (more like - MUST) to get my shit together. I would wholeheartedly appreciate some guidance, suggestions, recommendations. Please advise on what the best practices are. I need a plan. Thank you so much! Edit: _Guys (and girls) -- thanks so much for support, valuable feedback, encouragement thus far. I'm glad this post was taken seriously and not dismissed as another troll attempt or attention hoarding. You have no idea -- all this will pay off in million ways for me._"}
{"_id": "210260", "title": "Converting between data and presentation types", "text": "I'm quite new to stuff like DI, MVVM and WPF altogether, so it's fairly possible this reads like a giant _WTF_... I have defined an interface in my business layer, `ISomeEntity`; then in my data layer, I have a `public class SomeEntity : ISomeEntity` entity type. The thing to note here is that the business layer does not reference the data layer. In the presentation layer, I can list these items, given that my window's ViewModel has a `IEnumerable<ISomeEntity>` property (or should it be `IEnumerable<SomeEntityViewModel>`?). Now I wanted to be able to mark a list item as \"to be deleted\", and since I'm eventually going to have a whole bunch of such \"deletable\" types I created an `IDeletable` interface. The `SomeEntity` type in the data layer doesn't need to know about `IDeletable`, so I implemented the interface in a `SomeEntityViewModel : ISomeEntity, IDeletable` class, in the presentation layer (part of me is starting to think it should be defined in the business/domain layer instead). The problem I'm having, is that my model is spitting out `ISomeEntity`, which really is `SomeEntity` from the data layer: I need a way to convert from `SomeEntity` to `SomeEntityViewModel`, and given that `SomeEntityViewModel` is declared in the presentation layer, my only option seems to have my ViewModel class have a constructor like this:               public SomeEntityViewModel(ISomeEntity poco)     {         // set the properties from the POCO implementation     }      ...and then in the class that holds the presentation logic, I can bridge between the two implementations by doing something like this:               _viewModel.Items = _model.SelectThoseItems() // returns IEnumerable<SomeEntity>                              .Select(e => new SomeEntityViewModel(e))                              .ToList();      ...and it works, but somehow doesn't feel right... or does it? Given `ISomeEntity`, `SomeEntity`, `SomeEntityViewModel` and `IDeletable`, what would be the \"common\" or \"normal\" way of implementing this? Or do I have it all wrong?"}
{"_id": "202503", "title": "Offline version of dynamic pages", "text": "Researching archiving systems like archive.org, found out main issue of such is the dynamic content. Initial analysis shows that content 'dynamicity' can be assigned to one of the following levels:   1. **Static html content** \\- plain old web page which is represented only by html markup with auxiliary css-referred resources (usually images).   2. **Static html powered by javascirpt** \u2013 same as Level 1, but has javascript code, which only manipulates existing markup (such as expand/collapse).   3. **\u201cOnload\u201d page construction** \u2013 web page with javascript code, which makes a certain additional requests during page load phase. After loads phase page content is fully constructed.   4. **Dynamic client-side content** \u2013 UI elements are modified by javascript code on-the-go, as user traverses through interface. Usually these are modern SPA (single-page-applications, like gmail.com), \u201cendless\u201d lists (list tail is loaded when user scrolls down to the list bottom) , loading content on demand (smart expanders) and so on. So I assume that Levels 1 and 2 can be archived pretty easily. Could you please suggest how to handle Levels 3 and 4? Looks like it should involve page rendering, but some details would be helpful. _Update_ : To clarify the question: ideally offline version should be fully- functional, at least within the site level (ignoring external domains content). Also, if Level4 is too hard to automate fully - is there an approach involving human operator who makes hints to the system about content?"}
{"_id": "251400", "title": "Do I need to care about 'Thread safety' in java web applications", "text": "I have general understanding that what thread safety means , but I don't know much about threads in context of a java webapplication. I am just curious to know that do I need to concern about thread safety while working with web application. Can their be chances that my web application will cause some problems if I have written codes without concerning about \"Thread safety\"? Do I need to think about that whether I am using a thread safe collection or not?"}
{"_id": "251405", "title": "Have I created a Big Ball of Mud?", "text": "I'm working on a WPF application, trying to stay strict in separating View, ViewModel and Model. My application has a few different views in a relatively flat hierarchy. There is one view for editing something we call a substance, and one for classifications, where each substance has a number of classifications. My question is about the ViewModel classes for the substances and classifications, each is about 1000 lines! The thing is, the code is mostly consisting of get/set properties, with some inherent logic working against my model, as well as some commands and private functions. So I could easily divide the class into a bunch of smaller classes (like one per GroupBox in my view or whatever) with one class owning instances of the other, to get smaller classes. But this doesn't seem meaningful to me, it seems like solving a symptom, like doing it for its own sake. The size of the class clearly depends on the number of fields related to the substances and classifications, and I can't do anything about that. Do you think I'm in trouble here? Is it normal for WPF applications to be so dominated, size-wise, by the ViewModels? How serious should I be about limiting class sizes? I could reduce it significantly by changing the way I write braces, but I think it looks more clear now than with Egyptian brackets. My question isn't really about whether my code is muddy or not (some of it is), but rather if you can actually say that a ViewModel class is muddy just because it's large. To give some perspective, my substance view has 7 lists/datagrids/similar, 13 buttons, 9 comboboxes, 5 checkboxes, 9 textboxes and 3 radio buttons. All in all, that's about 26 rows per control. There are some cases where there's interaction going on between different controls, setting a value in one control will disable and nullify another one etc. Some code samples:               public RelayCommand AddSubstanceNumberCommand         {             get             {                 return new RelayCommand(                     (x) =>                     {                         var number = new SubstanceNumber();                         number.SubstanceID = Id;                         number.ModifiedBy = Main.op.LoginName;                         number.ModifiedDate = DateTime.Now;                         number.CreatedDate = DateTime.Now;                         number.Type = Converters.NumberTypeToStringConverter.translation.First(t => t.Value == SelectedNewSubstanceNumberType).Key;                         number.NumberText = Validator.Normalize(NewSubstanceNumber, SelectedNewSubstanceNumberType);                         var temp = NewSubstanceNumber.Replace(\"-\", \"\");                         number.NumberValue = Int32.Parse(temp.Substring(0, temp.Length - 1));                         if (NewSubstanceNumber != null && !SubstanceNumbers.Any(sn => sn.NumberText.Replace(\" \", \"\") == number.NumberText && sn.Type == number.Type))                             SubstanceNumbers.Add(number);                              NewSubstanceNumber = \"\";                     }, param => this.CanAddSubstanceNumber);             }         }                    public ObservableCollection<SubstanceGroup> SubstanceGroups         {             get             {                 return Substance.SubstanceGroups;             }             set             {                 Substance.SubstanceGroups = value;                 OnPropertyChanged(\"SubstanceGroups\");             }         }                    public RelayCommand OpenAllClassificationsCommand         {             get             {                 return new RelayCommand(                 (x) =>                 {                     // Opening tabs for all classifications that don't already have a tab open                     var currentSubstanceTab = Main.SelectedTab;                     var classificationTabsNow = currentSubstanceTab.Tabs.Where(t => t.GetType() == typeof(ClassificationViewModel));                     var toOpen = Classifications.Where(c => !classificationTabsNow.Any(ctn => ctn.Id == c.SubstanceClassificationID));                     toOpen.ToList().ForEach(o => Main.SelectedTab.Tabs.Add(new ClassificationViewModel(Main, o.SubstanceID, o.SubstanceClassificationID, false, new Services.MessageBoxNotifyUserService())));                 });             }         }      And here's one that's particularly muddy, and repeated:               public OccupationalExposureLimitUnit OccupationalExposureLimitUnit5         {             get             {                 if (SubstHasOccExpLimits)                     return Substance.OccupationalExposureLimitUnit5;                 else if (GroupForLimits != null)                     return GroupForLimits.OccupationalExposureLimitUnit5;                 return null;             }             set             {                 bool hadValue = SubstHasOccExpLimits;                 if (value.Name_SV == \"\")                     OccupationalExposureLimitShortTerm2 = null;                 Substance.OccupationalExposureLimitUnit5 = value;                      if (!hadValue && SubstHasOccExpLimits)                     TransferLimitValuesFromGroupToSubstance();                 OnPropertyChanged(\"OccupationalExposureLimitUnit5\");             }         }      This property includes some fallback-functionality for when the substance lacks a certain set of values, and some state changes for going to substance- has-values-state when the user starts editing one of the values. There is certainly room for improvement here, but even without it, the class would be a number of times larger than the 200 rows some recommend for class size."}
{"_id": "99026", "title": "Skills required for senior developer who knows C# and WPF", "text": "I have average level of knowledge in both C# and WPF. I want to move to next level. What are the skills needed for that means for Senior developer?"}
{"_id": "27847", "title": "Is it advisable to disable the Microsoft enforced coding standards in VC# 2010?", "text": "Coming from eclipse I've developed my own coding standards which I got used to. In Visual C# 2010 however, it appears that some coding standards that MS recommends are enforced in the default configuration. E.g.: I'm used to write conditional statements like this:               if (somecondition) {         return true;     } else {         return false;     }      But the braces are forced to a newline in visual c#. Is it recommended to use that standard ?"}
{"_id": "107481", "title": "Which software methodology works when you are in learning phase of a technology?", "text": "In my scenario, we have a team of experienced developers with 3+ years and they are not co-located. We are in a learning phase in terms of the domain and technology. I want some recommendations in regards to what software methodology we should adapt. I have thought of implementing waterfall, since we have to design upfront and we know all the design issues and technical challenges. Using agile on teams that are not co-located, we aren't sure how to estimate on per week bases when dont have a complete grasp on the technology."}
{"_id": "194529", "title": "Vagrant's Users: What are its drawbacks?", "text": "I've been studying http://www.vagrantup.com/ for several days and I'd like a feedback by people using it in a professional context or for personal projects. I think I get what positive things can bring Vagrant but I have questions about its drawbacks:   * I'm a php developer and I work in a small company. I'm wondering if Vagrant could be useful for me and newcomers in my company since it's forcing a total development environment. I mean, people often prefers to work on their OS (Linux/Mac/Windows). How do you deal with that, do you force everyone to use Linux for example?   * Doesn't it add complexity since you are entirely working on a Virtual Machine?   * Don't you fear your VM main file get corrupted one day and you wouldn't be able to use it again? I feel nervous about using VM because of that. Thank you."}
{"_id": "65438", "title": "Corporate vs Personal email for Corporate Sponsored OSS", "text": "In the absence of a written policy, what is the preferred email domain (corporate or personal) when contributing to an open source project that your employer sponsors? \\--Edit--   I'm interested in the programmer's preference assuming the company doesn't care either way."}
{"_id": "194524", "title": "Google Blink (new WebKit fork): Meaning of \"Moving DOM into Javascript\"?", "text": "From the Blink Blog: > Finally we\u2019d like to explore even larger ideas like moving the entire > Document Object Model (DOM) into JavaScript. What does this mean? Does it mean WebKit's DOM is currently _not_ coded in JavaScript but in some other language? Does it mean that they want to expose more public accessors to the DOM? Or what?"}
{"_id": "99240", "title": "Best JavaScript Coding Structure Using Object Literal?", "text": "Object Literal has no doubt been established in recent years as one of the essential components to best JavaScript coding practices. However, I am not very sure about what is the best way to structure my codes using Object Literal. It has been suggested earlier before that Module Pattern might be a good technique to structure your codes [1] [2], but criticisms regarding Module Pattern have begun to surface as people spent more times exploring the extent of the technique. [3] [4] So, my question is: as of summer 2011, what is the acknowledged best way to structure your codes utilizing Object Literal? Is it still Module Pattern, or has some other technique emerged already as a yet better replacement?"}
{"_id": "233158", "title": "Should I use HTTP search", "text": "I am working on a web api and I am curios about the `HTTP SEARCH` verb and how you should use it. My first approach was, well you could use it surely for a search. But asp.net WebApi doesn't support the `SEARCH` verb. My question is basically, should I use `SEARCH` or is it not important? PS: I found the `SEARCH` verb in fiddler2 from telerik."}
{"_id": "233152", "title": "Tablet development for a dedicated system", "text": "I need to make an architectural decision for developing (actually porting) my embedded solution on a tablet.   The choice comes down to Ubuntu or Android, so I have some specific questions to help me decide.   * On Android, is it possible to develop applications outside of Dalvik, using Python? If yes, can I access the hardware this way, without the API's provided by the Android SDK?   * On Android, can I control the process' `core_affinity` to bind a process to a single core? And can i use `isolcpus` to isolate other processes from that core making it a (almost) dedicated core for a process? This is possible in regular linux, not sure if it can be done in Android.   * On Ubuntu, how much control over the HW do I have outside Ubuntu SDK?"}
{"_id": "233155", "title": "Functional problems due to localization", "text": "With localization come various UI issues such as untranslated or badly translated strings, clipped strings, incorrectly formatted dates or numbers, wrong sorting order and more. However are there any non display related issues that cause major loss of functionality? One such example might be storing in a DB a floating number in a comma separated format, and then parsing it in a culture invariant dot separated format. This is likely to crash the application or produce wrong calculations. Being a Test Manager in my organization, I am wondering what other non display issues have you encountered and are likely to happen in a localized environment. Specific examples are very welcomed."}
{"_id": "233157", "title": "Can one determine the creation date of an email account?", "text": "Is it possible to determine the creation date of the email supplied with the authentication process flow; Or at least determine that the email was/was not created the same day as signup (or specifically after confirmation)? A use case is to flag such accounts for closer scrutiny as part of a risk management system. What general considerations do you think come into play in approaching this problem? I imagine that solutions might be specific to different email providers but if I could determine this information for the major ones it's a good place to be. Would love specific answers in any language or pseudocode assuming this is solvable within ethical principles. _Disclaimer: I have asked this question on Stackoverflow. Some nice person said that email providers would not allow it for privacy reasons. Completely acceptable, but IMHO I think that the age of an email has little to do with personal privacy. Also there are too many smart people using the stack* forums for me to just lie down and die._"}
{"_id": "15159", "title": "Real world T4 usage", "text": "How many of you have ever used (or even know of) the Visual Studio Text Templating Engine? I mean, T4 templates have been around for quite some years now. The where initially included in Visual Studio 2005 SDK, and they where moved to Visual Studio 2008 core just before releasing it. What I want to know is if this is really used out there. I mean, why doesn't the VS team invested in a descent minimal editor for the templates? It doesn't even have syntax couloring! I know there are a couple of good T4 editors out there, but as they don't come built in, I tend to think that this is an unknown feature for most developers. Have you ever used T4 templates in any of your projects? I'm really interested in answers that explain how they created their own T4 to accelerate, automate, or generate artifacts for your project."}
{"_id": "15158", "title": "Do you ever read language specs?", "text": "While trying to answer questions on SO site (particularly C++ questions) I find that most of the times one person or the other includes a quote from the standard. I myself have hardly read the language spec. Even when I try to read it, I can't get my head around the language used in the specs. So, my question to become a good developer in a particular language is it essential to read its spec and know all its dusty corners which invoke undefined/implementation defined behavior?"}
{"_id": "80425", "title": "How do you spec out your project?", "text": "all. I'm wondering how do you spec./plan out your project? For example, for webiste you can use Wireframe. How about for desktop or add-ins such as MS Office add-ins? I want it as simple as possible and don't want spend all day using some sort of diagram software to sketch it out. Do I simply write down what features I want to build for the software then filter out what is possible and what is not possible? Any tips is appreciated."}
{"_id": "76021", "title": "How do I set up a source code control system for myself?", "text": "I program on my desktop in my office, but also sometimes at home in a different room on my laptop, and even away from home. What I need is a system that automatically or on-demand syncs my work from one to the other, at need. I do not have a home network setup, and although I guess I could do it, that would be a question for another board, perhaps. I've thought about some kind of system that would keep the source code in the cloud, but I don't know enough about this to get started. I need a kind of free or cheap way to do this. I work in .NET (Windows Phone 7, in fact)."}
{"_id": "39535", "title": "Argument notation in Python documentation", "text": "I read the Python documentation a lot and sometimes I am baffled by this notation: > os.path.join( **path1[, path2[, ...]]** ) I somehow make that **[, path[,...]]** is a list but I would like to know if I am reading it correctly. Bear with me, this is coming from a Java developer who is trying out Python. X)"}
{"_id": "112022", "title": "Alternatives to *documents* in the SDLC?", "text": "Since no one prints anything any more, the concept of actual project documents (meaning, a monolithic piece of formatted text) seems like it could be improved on. Problems with documents are things like Word version incompatibilities, endless messing around with templates, the fact people hate reading them... I'm wondering if there are alternatives, like websites that would help manage the content, imposing some structure, but allowing things like linking to individual bits. But I guess the site would have to be able to spit out a \"document\" for the times it's needed (filing, showing sponsors who ask, etc) For example, instead of a \"project plan document\", I'm imagining a project planning site where you can work on just the resourcing with relevant people, then you work on scheduling with other relevant people, and work packages with other relevant people. Instead of an SRS document, some site that lets you manage requirements, assigning priorities, phases etc...but that could ultimately generate an actual SRS document if you needed it. Thoughts? The context here is small, agile teams but with occasional need to produce documents to demonstrate progress. We're certainly not big enough to warrant anything like Rational or whatever they use these days in big companies."}
{"_id": "78172", "title": "Is developing for a niche tablet market worth it?", "text": "As an avid fan of tablets, I finally bought a Nook Color a while back. Since it's based on Android and I have Java experience, I'm intrigued by the possibility of developing for it. I've seen that it has an estimate of a few million units shipped (those stats were fairly recent), and the app market is rather small at this time (which I presume would be an advantage to a new app). What I'm wondering is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of developing for such a small, reading-based market - in terms of app popularity and use? Am I wrong in assuming the small app market is an advantage? Does developing for a niche tablet have any synergy with the larger phone market, in terms of cross-development or promotion?"}
{"_id": "88416", "title": "How will we be able to produce websites without using cookies with the new law?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do I comply with the EU Cookie Directive? Under this new EU law we are not allowed to use any cookies without asking first, I for one need to use a cookie to register the user logged on, as if not with a cookie they can log on more than once and breach the license terms of the software. so i find myself asking what can we use instead of cookies to perform this task?"}
{"_id": "115555", "title": "How can we plan projects realistically while accounting for support issues?", "text": "We're having a problem at work: we're trying to schedule work so that we can assess time scales and get deadline dates. The problem is that it's difficult to plan for a project without knowing everything that's going to happen. For instance, right now we've planned all our projects through the start of December, however in that time we will have various in house and external meetings, teleconferences and extra work. It's all well and good to say that a project will take three weeks, but if there is a week's worth of interruption in that time then the date of completion will be pushed back a week. The problem is 3 fold:   1. When we schedule projects the time scales are taken literally. If we estimate three weeks, the deadline is set for three week's time, the client is told, and there is no room for extension.   2. Interim work and such means that we lose productive time working on the project.   3. Sometimes clients don't have the time that we need to take to do the work, so they'll sometimes come to us and say they need a project done by the end of the month even when we think that the work will take two months - not to mention we already have work to be doing. We have a Gantt chart which we are trying to fill in with all the projects we have and we fill in timesheets, but they're not compared to the Gantt chart at all. This makes it difficult to say \"Well, we scheduled 3 weeks for this project, but we've lost a week here so the deadline has to move back a week.\" It's also not professional to keep missing deadlines we've communicated to the client. How do other people deal with this type of situation? How do you manage the planning of projects? How much \"extra\" time do you schedule into a project to account for non-project work that occurs during a project? How do you deal with support issues and bugs and stuff? Things you can't account for during planning? **UPDATE** Lots of good answers thank you."}
{"_id": "131983", "title": "In a legacy codebase, how do I quickly find out what is being used and what isn't?", "text": "I've been asked to evaluate what appears to be a substantial legacy codebase, as a precursor to taking a contract maintaining that codebase. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation. In the present instance, the code is for a reasonably high-profile and fairly high-load multiplayer gaming site, supporting at least several thousand players online at once. As many such sites are, this one is a mix of front- and back-end technologies. The site structure as seen from the inside out, is a mess. There are folders suffixed \"_OLD\" and \"_DELETE\" lying all over the place. Many of the folders appear to serve no purpose, or have very cryptic names. There could be any number of old, unused scripts lying around even in legitimate-looking folders. Not only that, but there are undoubtedly many defunct code sections even in otherwise-operational scripts (a far less pressing concern). This is a handover from the incumbent maintainers, back to the original developers/maintainers of the site. As is understandably typical in these sorts of scenarios, the incumbent wants nothing to do with the handover other than what is contractually and legally required of them to push it off to the newly-elected maintainer. So extracting information on the existing site structure out of the incumbent is simply out of the question. The only approach that comes to mind to get into the codebase is to start at the site root and slowly but surely navigate through linked scripts... and there are likely hundreds in use, and hundreds more that are not. Given that a substantial portion of the site is in Flash, this is even less straightforward since, particularly in older Flash applications, links to other scripts may be embedded in binaries (.FLAs) rather than in text files (.AS/ActionScript). So I am wondering if anyone has better suggestions as to how to approach evaluating the codebase as a whole for maintainability. It would be wonderful if there were some way to look at a graph of access frequency to files on the webserver's OS (to which I have access), as this might offer some insight into which files are most critical, even though it wouldn't be able to eliminate those files that are never used (since some files could be used just once a year)."}
{"_id": "88500", "title": "Does anyone work 10 hours shifts as a developer?", "text": "I would like to switch from a 5 day week to a 4 day, but maintain a 40 hour working week. Would the 10 hour days affect your ability to be productive? I hate our public transit system so if I could reduce my transportation by 20% I would be happy.   If other developers who work 10 hours shifts could be clear as the their experiences with it that would help me. I think my boss is flexible enough that he would be cool with it."}
{"_id": "229714", "title": "Using Scrum on small projects where Owner doesn't want to be involved", "text": "Recently I've been reading and learning quite a lot about scrum and I like it a lot. However, I do have a couple of likely scenarios in my head to which I don't know the solution. So let's say that I might want to organize an agile team of (for instance) four web developers (one of them UI/UX designer). This team would operate on scrum principles. Initially we would probably be working on projects like landing pages for ordinary people's small businesses, like renting apartments, selling cookies... Such customers simply can't be set with Product Owner role (IMHO), because they usually expect to hire a company, give them the overall project goal with some details, and then expect the job to be done (including a lot of decision making) with as little of their involvement as possible (in their opinion, they have more important things to do). Let's say I'd like to engage myself in a developer/scrum master role (I know that even that is debatable, being a team member and scrum master at once), so I simply shouldn't take the role of the product owner as well. So as for my questions: If I'm my company's business owner, do I simply need to be a product owner as well (do these roles include each other)? Can I employ a sales person which might have the product owner role? Would it be better if it is an experienced developer instead of a sales person? Is this even a smart move? Lastly, is there another agile approach that might better suit my position? * * * **EDIT:** Thank you everyone for good inputs. I added some comments, any aditional info will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "109682", "title": "What's the title of someone who presents software for a living?", "text": "I'm wondering what the title of someone who's main job is to present software/products (basically do presentations) (internally or externally)? I'm not really talking about salespeople, but more on the side of people who go out there and make presentations as a key part of their job, while still having some parts of involvement with the development? A possible title: Product Evangelist. Is it only the program managers and VP's who go out and present to the \"higher-ups\" or the public?"}
{"_id": "34067", "title": "Nested Classes: A useful tool or an encapsulation violation?", "text": "So I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I should be using these or not. I feel its an extreme violation of encapsulation, however I find that I am able to achieve some degree of encapsulation while gaining more flexibility in my code. Previous Java/Swing projects I had used nested classes to some degree, However now I have moved into other projects in C# and I am avoid their use. How do you feel about nested classes?"}
{"_id": "131989", "title": "Where is a good place to start to learn about custom caching in .Net", "text": "I'm looking to make some performance enhancements to our site, but I'm not sure exactly where to begin. We have some custom object caching, but I think that we can do better. **Our Business** We aggregate news stories on a news type of web site. We get approximately 500-1000 new stories per week. We have index pages that show various lists of the items and details pages that show the individual stories. **Our Current Use case: Getting an Individual Story**   1. User makes a request   2. The Data Access Layer(DAL) checks to see if the item is in cache and if item is fresh (15 minutes).   3. If the item is not in cache or is not fresh, retrieve the item from SQL Server, save to cache and return to user. **Problems with this approach**   * The pull nature of caching means that users have to pay the waiting cost every time that the cache is refreshed. Once a story is published, it changes infrequently and I think that we should replace the pull model with something better. **My initial thoughts**   * My initial thought is that stories should ALL be stored locally in some type of dictionary. (Cache or is there another, better way?). If the story is not found, then make a trip to the database, update the local dictionary and send the item back.   * Since there may be occasional updates to stories, this should be an entirely process from the user.   * I watched a video by Brent Ozar, How StackOverflow Scales SQL Server, in which Brent states \"the fastest database query is the one that you don't make\".  **Where do I start?** At this point, I don't know exactly what the solution is. Is it caching? Is there a better way of using local storage? Do I use a Dictionary, OrderedDictionary, List ? It seems daunting and I'm just looking for some good starting points to learn more about how to do this type of optimization."}
{"_id": "224766", "title": "Why function returning by Address can not be a Lvalue?", "text": "Why it is not possible to make it LValue if a function return by address (while possible in case of reference)?               int* returnByAdress()     {         int x =20;         return &x;     }          int& returnByReference()     {         int x =30;         return x;     }          int main()     {         returnByReference() = 23; //possible         int x = 23;         returnByAdress() = &x;//not a lValue error          *returnByAdress() = 245;//possible              return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "133851", "title": "Exceptions as asserts or as errors?", "text": "I'm a professional C programmer and a hobbyist Obj-C programmer (OS X). Recently I've been tempted to expand into C++, because of its very rich syntax. So far coding I haven't dealt much with exceptions. Objective-C has them, but Apple's policy is quite strict: > **Important** You should reserve the use of exceptions for programming or > unexpected runtime errors such as out-of-bounds collection access, attempts > to mutate immutable objects, sending an invalid message, and losing the > connection to the window server. C++ seems to prefer using exceptions more often. For example the wikipedia example on RAII throws an exception if a file can't be opened. Objective-C would `return nil` with an error sent by a out param. Notably, it seems std::ofstream can be set either way. Here on programmers I've found several answers either proclaiming to use exceptions instead of error codes or to not use exceptions at all. The former seem more prevalent. I haven't found anyone doing an objective study for C++. It seems to me that since pointers are rare, I'd have to go with internal error flags if I choose to avoid exceptions. Will it be too much bother to handle, or will it perhaps work even better than exceptions? A comparison of both cases would be the best answer. Edit: Though not completely relevant, I probably should clarify what `nil` is. Technically it's the same as `NULL`, but the thing is, it's ok to send a message to `nil`. So you can do something like               NSError *err = nil;     id obj = [NSFileHandle fileHandleForReadingFromURL:myurl error:&err];          [obj retain];      even if the first call returned `nil`. And as you never do `*obj` in Obj-C, there's no risk of a NULL pointer dereference."}
{"_id": "39287", "title": "Preserving version control commit history vs Refactoring and Documentation", "text": "It costs almost nothing to use the commit history maintained by the version control system. However, during a major project refactoring (or reorganization / cleanup) effort, functions and classes and even namespaces will be moved around; sometimes several files will be merged together and other files will be split. These changes often lead to the loss of the original commit history of a few files. In my personal opinion, the up-keeping of the organization of the project is more important than keeping the source code history. Good project organization allows new features to be added continuously with reasonable effort, while the value of source code history appears to be dubious. Furthermore, with the use of unit testing, regression issues are quickly identified. As long as the latest version continues to satisfy all of the software requirements, do we actually need to preserve the history of the source code? I understand that any _shipped_ source code must be preserved because of the need to provide support to the customers without requiring them to perform a major version upgrade. But aside from this, is there any value in keeping the history of source code commits? Does source code commit history play any role in the communications between team members? What if we abolish the commit history, but instead rely on \"source code\" + \"unit testing code\" for communication? Does the existence of commit history make one complacent about the long-term documentation of important information about the project, such as the major design/requirement changes and the streams of thought that drove those changes?"}
{"_id": "184137", "title": "How to write \"SMART\" Objectives as an agile developer?", "text": "Like many corporations the company I work for is transitioning to a performance review system based on SMART objectives. My team is a high functioning agile development team employing practices from both SCRUM and Extreme Programming. To our great benefit our employment of agile practices has the full support of immediate and upper management. To accomplish work our team utilizes three week iterations. Beyond the immediate iteration we have a general plan laid out into quarters. Meaning that what we will have accomplished a few quarters from now is a lot hazier than what we will be accomplishing in the immediate quarter. We certainly have a general idea of where our project is headed, but the keyword here is general. Given our approach to project planning members of our team and myself are finding it difficult to write objectives which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Two existing questions on Programmers.se do a good job of addressing some of our concerns:   * What is an example of a good SMART objective for a programmer?   * Are SMART goals useful for programmers? However, the questions elicited more general responses than specifics for dealing with SMART goals when working on an agile development team. As an agile developer how do you write five to seven, year long objectives which are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound?"}
{"_id": "199852", "title": "Does domain specific languages use other programming languages?", "text": "Does a domain specific language use other languages like c++ or java, or is it standalone?"}
{"_id": "108086", "title": "Is programming a profession not for a person with speech impairment?", "text": "My friend has 15 years of programming experience and Ph.D. in mathematics. He has also cerebral palsy with speech impairment. Because of his handicap, he chose to being a software developer after his Ph.D. As far as I can see, he is still an excellent c# developer. Nowadays, however, he has hard time to find a job for himself because most of developer jobs require good communication skills. Looking at him struggling so much, do I have to advise him software industry is not suitable for him any more? It will be extremely difficult for me to do that to the friend but I think it would be better than making him wasting his time. What do you think? **Update:** Thanks a lot for your excellent answers. I can see most answers recommend against my advice and I really really hope you guys are right. In reality, however, he has been rejected in 100 or so phone interviews. That's where I want to be a potential bad adviser rather than a politically right friend."}
{"_id": "108083", "title": "Is it an inefficient workflow to write out code and THEN go back and optimize?", "text": "I'm a newer enthusiast programmer. I've been doing small and big projects on and off for the past two or three years. I always hit small snags in my code that add up to big memory hogs or unnecessary lines of code down the road. My philosophy on big projects has always been to just 'get it out of my head' and write all the code into a working product, then going back and reducing the code to a simpler, more optimized form. However, this doesn't always work: when doing database structures, I tend to have to go back many times to add in features that come up spur-of-the-moment. Entire blocks of code have to be erased because of a spontaneous brainchild. My question to you is, **is it more efficient to write an entire program and THEN go back and optimize it, or should I optimize code as I write it?**"}
{"_id": "68515", "title": "Code licensing question. Client stole my code", "text": "A client I did a project for accidentally ended up with the source code of said project. Stupid i know. The arrangement was that they would get the product, never the source code. However, obviously, they are now trying to pull a fast one and use the source code to create their own products for other clients. Now i don't want to make a huge deal out of it, but i am contemplating releasing the code as an open source project for anyone to use so that their 'unique' selling point (my code) is moot. What do you guys suggest i do / release the code under if they decide to be *ssholes about this?"}
{"_id": "157414", "title": "Open source software with good code documentation to improve design skill", "text": "As I'm trying to get better at designing good software I'm wondering if there are out there good (as in well written) open source software with lot of code documentation that aims to explain details about why this or that design choice was made in the context of that specific problem set. I'm interested in OOP and I don't really care much about the language (php / java / c# are preferred tho :)) Example: Problem: X   Possible way to handle this problem: A, B, C.   We choose B because... (technical details about the implementation, pros and cons, code comments etc)"}
{"_id": "183640", "title": "How should we draw the release burndown chart?", "text": "I have been in various Agile projects and seen many release burndown chart styles. Most of them were handled manually since somehow all the tools that I have run across don't produce really useful burndown charts. In reality, we may not be dealing with all stories estimated and we just keep burning down. Many times, the scope is added during the release. Currently, I am dealing with these problems with the burndown chart and have questions about the following things:   1. How do we represent added scope in the release burndown chart?   2. How do we deal with unestimated stories in release burndown chart assuming that there is high probability that we will do it but we just do not have time to estimate them yet?   3. How do you project the end of the release? The burndown chart below is from the fictional case study in the appendix of classic Mike Cohn's Estimating and Planing book. ![Mike Cohn's burndown](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MXQ5o.png)"}
{"_id": "206970", "title": "Which layer does async code belong?", "text": "I am developing an application that consumes data from an external service. The application is being implemented following a typical layered architecture with UI, Presentation, Domain and Data layers. The service client resides within the Data layer. As is typically the case, I do not want the UI to 'lock-up' while waiting for calls from the external service to complete. However, implementing the service agents with asynchronous methods results in a complicate model chaining async methods up the layers so the UI can stay responsive. For example: In the ViewModel:               TheRepository.LoadDataAsync().ContinueWith(t => { _data = t.Result; });      In TheRepository:               public Task<TheData> LoadDataAsync()     {         return ServiceClient.GetDataFromServiceAsync();     }      (Note, this is a significant over-simplification meant to convey what I mean by task chaining.) Because the requirement is a UI requirement (prevent the UI from 'locking'), doesn't it make sense to keep the Domain and Data layers synchronous and leave it up to the Presentation layer to decide when it needs to perform some operation asynchronously? On the other hand, it is so easy and natural to implement the service client/proxy with async methods (VS will auto-generate them if needed) because this is what we think of when we think about the need for async. If the application was pulling data out of a database instead of making a service call, the layers wouldn't be any different and it shouldn't really change how the UI, Presentation or Domain layers have been implemented, right? In this case, we wouldn't think twice about having the data access be synchronous. Would it be a better design to model the Domain synchronously and leave it to the Presentation layer to address performance issues in the UI? Or, in the emerging async world, should we just accept async as the norm and make everything fit this model?"}
{"_id": "224493", "title": "What is casting supposed to mean?", "text": "When coding in low level languages like C I find that casting sometimes means 'reinterpret these bytes as if it had always been of this other type' and at other times as 'convert this value intelligently into this other type'. What is the original meaning of the word and is there any consistency in when to expect a conversion and when to expect a raw reinterpretation?"}
{"_id": "159528", "title": "Learning new programming languages and technologies", "text": "Some time ago I was to learn iOS development at my work. I didn't manage to learn it because I was moved to more important task with another technology already familiar to me. But the short time I spent on iOS, I felt that I could do better if I spent a few hours at the workplace during which I could discuss some matters concerning iOS with my colleagues who know it, and the rest of the time working at home. I think many developers would share my opinion and prefer to learn the new technology at home. Is there any accepted practice? Has any developer had an experience when the company encouraged the developers to choose where they feel more comfortable to learn new technologies?"}
{"_id": "159529", "title": "How to structure template system using plain PHP?", "text": "I was reading this question over on stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/104516/calling-php-functions-within- heredoc-strings and the accepted answer says to do plain PHP templates like this: template.php:               <html>         <head>             <title><?=$title?></title>         </head>         <body>             <?=getContent()?>         </body>     </html> index.php:               <?php          $title = 'Demo Title';          function getContent() {         return '<p>Hello World!</p>';     }          include('template.php');          ?> To me the above isn't well structured in the sense that template.php depends on variables that are defined in other scripts. And you're using an include() to execute code when you do `include('template.php')`(as opposed to using include() to include a class or a function which isn't immediately executed). I feel like a better approach is to wrap your template inside a function: template.php:               <?php          function template($title, $content) {         ob_start(); ?>          <html>         <head>             <title><?=$title?></title>         </head>         <body>             <?=$content?>         </body>     </html>              <?php return ob_get_clean();     }          ?> index.php:               <?php          require_once('template.php');          print template('Demo Title', '<p>Hello World!</p>');          ?> Is the second approach better? Is there an even better way to do it?"}
{"_id": "180590", "title": "Is Agile a variant of RAD?", "text": "Wikipedia says that Agile is a type of \"RAD\" which I guess is incorrect. From what I know, Agile was developed becasue RAD itself was not that sucessfull in 90'S (too rigid for changes). Or am I wrong? A reference from a book Radical Project Management (Thomsett) > \"..new development fad such as RAD, Agile, Object oriented...\" CISA Certified Information System auditor: > ..aware of **two alternative** software dev. methods: Agile and Rapid > Application Development Agile management for Software: > Agile methods are mostly derived from lightweight approach of RAD. Software estimation best practices: > The major methods of sw. dev. can be summarized as follows:   >  1\\. Waterfall ..   >  4\\. RAD   >  5\\. Agile The point of this question is:   **Is Agile type of RAD or standalone development approach?**"}
{"_id": "100671", "title": "Making money from developing Open Source Software. How does that work?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Making money with Open Source as a developer? I've been hearing recently that more and more developers contribute their efforts to many open-source products. Being a novice in many aspects of software development I've never thought about myself as being a member of a team that builds a product almost anybody can use for free. But this trend is getting more and more attention, and today it is almost considered that any self-respected software engineer should have at least one example when they participated in an open-source project. It gives you a few more credits on the interview, it's cool, it means something very good, especially if the product is popular and successful. However, it seems that it's not just cool, but somehow it is prosperous business today. Not just some students or passionate enthusiasts anymore, but well known developers quit their jobs and start spending most of their time in that sector, proprietary companies spend good amount of money to support them. I understand there are many different types of licensing and stuff. But I simply don't understand, how those developers get paid? How the companies make their revenue of it? I don't believe that behind all that is just people's altruistic nature, and they just happy to work for virtually nothing. Can you explain me taking any well known project as an example, the business model of it? How can somebody participate? What should you know first? How can you monetize your efforts? Is there any \"guide to beginners\" or \"complete manual for idiots\" to start with?"}
{"_id": "233470", "title": "Is open-sourcing previously-commercial engines a smart move?", "text": "I saw that the Unreal Engine is going open-source on github (see link1 and link2) and that made me wonder: \"is open-sourcing a previously commercial engine a smart move?\" What's the benefit to Epic Games in open-sourcing their core code in this manner? How can they not be concerned about people stealing parts of it just because they put a copyright and license statement on the code? It seems like there has to be a catch. How does releasing their source code benefit Epic Games?"}
{"_id": "108338", "title": "Does TDD's \"Obvious Implementation\" mean code first, test after?", "text": "My friend and I are relatively new TDD and have a dispute about the \"Obvious Implementation\" technique (from \"TDD By Example\" by Kent Beck). My friend says it means that if the implementation is obvious, you should go ahead and write it - **before** any test for that new behavior. And indeed the book says: > How do you implement simple operations? Just implement them. Also: > Sometimes you are sure you know how to implement an operation. Go ahead. I think what the author means is you should test first, and then \"just implement\" it - as opposed to the \"Fake It ('Till You Make It)\" and other techniques, which require smaller steps in the implementation stage. Also after these quotes the author talks about getting \"red bars\" (failing tests) when doing \"Obvious Implementation\" - how can you get a red bar without a test?. Yet I couldn't find any quote from the book saying \"obvious\" still means test first. What do you think? Should we test first or after when the implementation is \"obvious\" (according to TDD, of course)? Do you know a book or blog post saying just that?"}
{"_id": "108337", "title": "Search multiple tables", "text": "I have developed a web application that is used mainly for archiving all sorts of textual material (documents, references to articles, books, magazines etc.). There can be any given number of archive tables in my system, each with its own schema. The schema can be changed by a moderator through the application (imagine something similar to a really dumbed down version of phpMyAdmin). Users can search for anything from all of the tables. By using FULLTEXT indexes together with substring searching (fields which do not support FULLTEXT indexing) the script inserts the results of a search to a single table and by ordering these results by the similarity measure I can fairly easily return the paginated results. However, this approach has a few problems:   * substring searching can only count exact results   * the 50% rule applies to all tables separately and thus, mysql may not return important matches or too naively discards common words.   * is quite expensive in terms of query numbers and execution time (not an issue right now as there's not a lot of data yet in the tables).   * normalized data is not even searched for (I have different tables for categories, languages and file attatchments). **My planned solution** Create a single table having columns similar to               id, table_id, row_id, data      Every time a new row is created/modified/deleted in any of the data tables this central table also gets updated with the `data` column containing a concatenation of all the fields in a row. I could then create a single index for Sphinx and use it for doing searches instead. Are there any more efficient solutions or best practises how to approach this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "218610", "title": "Understanding velocity update in Binary Particle Swarm Optimization", "text": "I am wondering how to interpret the velocity update in a _BinaryParticle Swarm Optimization_ (PSO). To recap the velocity update :               V(t+1) = V(t) + c1 * r1 * (XlocalBest  - X(t))                     + c2 * r2 * (XglobalBest - X(t))      I understand that the binary position vector maps to values in the discrete domain. However, the binary vector contains only `0` and `1`s, where the length of this vector is `n`-dimensional. What I don't get is that the `n` real valued velocity vector takes the `n` binary vector (position), and takes e.g the difference between the local best position at a given index and the current position. Is it correct that there's only `0`,`1` values that are subtracted for each `X` value in the update ? (So that e.g `c1 * r1` is only multiplied either with `0`, `1` or `-1`)? How can I use this information in relation to the sigmoid function that is often used in these PSOs? Should I update the velocities, and for example take a particles velocity vector where each element is in the domain `[0,1)`, and put this into the sigmoid function, and turn the corresponding bit positions on or off in the particle's binary vector such as `r < sigmoid(velocity value)`, where `r` is random in `[0,1)`? Does this sound about right, or did I get it wrong?"}
{"_id": "108330", "title": "Io (Language) IDE/Compiler", "text": "Can you recommend a free compiler/IDE for writing some simple Io programs? I want to learn the language at home in my spare time."}
{"_id": "79227", "title": "Microsoft's current best practices for building a .NET data tier? And reality?", "text": "The development team I'm working with will be moving to .NET 4.0 soon, however, the data access class library we use still uses ADO.NET \"classic\", meaning SqlDataReader, DataTable, and the like. Meanwhile, it seems like Microsoft and probably the rest of the world is moving forward with Entity Framework and WCF Data Services. I didn't find anything on MSDN that indicated which of the data access technologies Microsoft considers best practices. Does Microsoft have a preference? What data access are most people using currently? Are there good reasons to stay with ADO.NET classic and not move to Entity Framework?"}
{"_id": "103487", "title": "What was the first hierarchical file system?", "text": "\"Directories containing directories and files\" seems to have been around forever, but there must have been a first."}
{"_id": "79221", "title": "How to report the progress of my project (Agile) to my employer (who is not a programmer)?", "text": "I have a problem on reporting progress to my employer. I am a part-time programmer, handling a software project for my school's (non-technical) department. Contact person:   1\\. The staff who actually uses the software and raises feature requests,   2\\. My boss (non-programmer), and she is not the software's user. The project's nature:   It is a ready-made software, which has been bought from third-party. I have to modify or add feature/function to this software in order to cater for department's need. This is a software is need to use throughout the semester. Not all features needs to be used at the beginning. Hence we are using the Agile model: When the staff needs a certain feature, they raises a request, and I make the changes. By the end of the semester, I suppose all the required features will be raised and implemented. The problem:   Everytime my boss asked me how the progress, I can't answer, because I don't know how to answer. I don't have complete list of all the required features. Even though I have completed features which were raised last week, I still can't tell my boss I have \"completed\", because new features are coming in too, and I don't know how much. I can't tell \"We have how many % completion\" nor \"We are going to complete it by xxx\". Sometime out of 3 requests, I manage to complete 2, I would tell my boss \"I have completed 2, but there is one feature not complete yet\". After a long period of time, I sounds like \"I always have something not finish, after so long\". Being unable to report the progress makes me looks really bad. It's not about how much I've done, it's about how to let people know. If I were the manager, and my staff keep failing to report the progress to me for months, I will feel this guy is incapable too. Do you guys have any idea how to report, or answer question as simple as \"what is the status / progress of the software modification\"? **UPDATE** My boss doesn't involve in development task directly, so she doesn't have a clue on what I am doing, or how the program works. We don't meet regularly as she is busy, and I feel it will be waste of time because she is not the main user, she doesn't know the detail of the program. I meet regularly with the staff who uses and knows better about the software. I feel hard to explain the progress to my boss."}
{"_id": "239144", "title": "How other thread can show the incremented value unless the 1st thread reaches the return statement?", "text": "My code is given below. In the for loop I am getting unexpected output i.e.   before completing the execution of for loop by 1st thread the 2nd thread comes in for loop and shows incremented value.               public class ThreadSafe {         public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {             System.out.println(\"main()\");                  B b=new B(\"1st Thread\");             B b1=new B(\"2nd Thread\");             B b2=new B(\"3rd Thread\");             b.start();             b1.start();             b2.start();         }     }          class MyCounter {         private static int count;              public static int getCount(){             for(int m=0;m<2;m++){                 System.out.println(count+\" \"+Thread.currentThread().getName());             }                  return count++;         }              }          class B extends Thread{         public B(String tname) {             super(tname);         }          public void run() {         MyCounter.getCount();         }     }      The question is when 1st thread executes for loop then other threads executing return statement is this the reason of showing increment value or something else? How other thread can show the incremented value unless the 1st thread reaches the return statement?"}
{"_id": "72230", "title": "How to architect a website's presentation layer?", "text": "I have been going back and forth in different approaches for designing the presentation layer for websites. Many people swear by one of the different CMS packages which is too constraining and inflexible. Many people suggest writing the HTML by hand which seems not to scale in the case of many pages. I have a new web application I am designing and I really want to have a \"correct\" and \"elegant\" and practical approach in how I architect it. Has anyone done this in a way in which they are happy with and can plug in various modules and libraries with no problems? Any tips or pitfalls I should watch for?"}
{"_id": "73547", "title": "What is the best practice to develop a visual component in Flex Hero?", "text": "What is the best practice to develop a visual component in Flex Hero? I do it like this: I consider a component has 2 \"parts\", the declarative part (the visual sub-components) which I define in the skin (just mxml) and the code part (event handlers...) which I define in an action script class. I load the skin in the ctor of the action script class. I also define skin parts, states, and I bind event handlers in the partAdded function. I am having an argument about this; that I should define the component purely in an .mxml, with listeners in the script tag, and maybe attach a skin (but the skin should be loose - maybe for reuse :-?) I come from .NET and maybe I am biased with the code behind pattern, and I am wondering from your experience and Adobe's intent, what is the best practice to usually implement a visual component?"}
{"_id": "73544", "title": "What skill set should an engineer have in order to build a large social networking site?", "text": "I am trying build a social media site, but I need a hands on senior engineer/architect to guide and assist me in the server-side development since I am a rookie. Technology (which I am familliar with) to be used includes Java, JAX-RS, Spring and Hibernate. Unfortunately, I dont know what other technology skills an engineer/architect should have besides those mentioned above? The SNS I am trying to build is like Facebook which can guide you in terms of features and functionalities."}
{"_id": "71358", "title": "Good references for End User documentation examples and advise", "text": "Our in house software has been used for many users and the training department asked us for any tips of end user documentation format. Does any know where can I find good examples of software end user documentation that a training department to use for inspiration or any sites with good advise? This is similar to this question however I am looking for end user documentation for use used by non-technical users."}
{"_id": "211636", "title": "Should user documentation include screenshots?", "text": "This question focuses on _user_ documentation, not on code documentation. I just finished my software project, and the people I work for are expecting me to write user documentation, describing everything the software does. All the documentation they had until now (about the rest of the software they use) is full of screenshots, and sometimes barely contains any text. I think it's awful. I've been struggling for hours to understand how screenshots were connected, and most of the time I had to ask for help from someone else. I wrote a Java desktop application, and its appearance is likely to depend on the current Windows theme and Java update. I don't think screenshots can form reliable, definitive reference. Taking hundreds of screenshots and annotating them will take forever, and I don't believe it will help more than accurate, plain text documentation. **How should I approach putting the user documentation together? What guidelines should I follow regarding the use of screenshots versus explaining in text with user documentation?**"}
{"_id": "59895", "title": "I sold my source code to a client, can I now re-build similar code and sell to someone else?", "text": "So we built a website and software for a client, charged our fee and handed over the code. The client then got a request from another company about the software. The client passed on the request but said since they owned the code they would need to recieve money for it. I'm thinking there are 2 options here:   1. Work with the client as requested   2. We've actually re-built the software, made it much better and use it for other projects. Am i in my rights to sell that direct to the company that enquired about it instead of going through the client?  Any help on this would be much appreciated"}
{"_id": "132727", "title": "Java - using single class or multiple class for each type?", "text": "I currently have a Java class called \"node\" which has a number of fields. Which fields in the class are used depends on a field called \"type\". There are close to 10 (this can grow) different types of \"nodes\". I was wondering if it is good to have a single class to handle all types or have different class for each type. What is the best programming practice in these cases? I would like to know (or a link to similar question/tutorials) how the performance will be affected (like memory etc.) if I use a single class?"}
{"_id": "132726", "title": "Is it possible to release a library based on the ASIO SDK under the LGPLv3?", "text": "I'm wondering if it's possible to write and release a library based on the ASIO SDK under the LGPLv3. More specifically, the ASIO license says something I'm not sure how to interpret (2.2) : > The Licensee has no permission to [...]. This includes re-working this > specification, **or reverse-engineering any products based upon this > specification.** Which sounds like it could conflict with LGPL's: > You may convey a Combined Work under terms of your choice that, taken > together, effectively do not restrict modification of the portions of the > Library contained in the Combined Work and reverse engineering for debugging > such modifications Also, 5.a) is kind of bugging me : > Accompany the combined library with a copy of the same work based on the > Library, uncombined with any other library facilities The way I see it, my Library will have no use, point or effect on its own, when uncombined with the ASIO SDK. Will I still have to release an uncombined dummy piece of software to respect 5.a) if I choose LGPL?"}
{"_id": "132723", "title": "is there a java library to create assisted wizard flow into your desktop application?", "text": "I am looking to create a step by step introduction/wizard guide to help users create a job on my application. For example, they will told what to click, and will be asked what actions they would like to take next etc. Framework or library that aides this? What do you call this wizard/step-by- step workflow in software? Found something: http://code.google.com/p/cjwizard/"}
{"_id": "241172", "title": "NCurses, scrolling of multiline items, \"current item\" pointer and \"selected items\"", "text": "I am looking for hints/ideas for the best (most effective) way on how to scroll multi-line items as well as emphasizing of the \"current item\" and \"selected items\" such as:               1 FOO ITEM       1 Foo sub-item       2 Foo sub-item       3 Foo sub-item          2 BAR ITEM       1 Bar sub-item          3 BAZ ITEM       1 Baz sub-item       2 Baz sub-item          4 RAB ITEM          5 ZZZ ITEM       1 Zzz sub-item       2 Zzz sub-item       3 Zzz sub-item       4 Zzz sub-item      using _NCurses_ (some combination of windows, sub-windows, pads, copywin? Uff! In fact, the lines could exceed the `stdscr`'s width so that possibility to scroll left/right would be also nice - pads?)... The whole items (including the sub-items) are supposed to be emphasized as full-width window/pad areas. The \"current item\" (including it's set of lines) should be emphasized (i.e. using `A_BOLD`), selected set of items of choice (including the set of lines for each the selected item) should be emphasized in another way (i.e. using `A_REVERSE`). What would you choose to cope with it the most effective NCurses way? (The less redrawals/refreshes the better and terminal is supposed to have the ability to change it's size - such as XTerm running under \"floating window\" management.) Thank you for your ideas (or perhaps some piece of code where something similar is already solved - I was not able to find anything helpful on the Internet. I mean I am not going to copy/paste foreign code but programming NCurses _properly_ is still somehow difficult to me). P.S.: Would you suggest to \"smooth-scroll\" +1/-1 screen line or rather \"jump- scroll\" +lines/-lines of the items? (I personally prefer the latter one.) Sincerely, \\-- mjf"}
{"_id": "241171", "title": "Algorithm for detecting windows in a room", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/kvzbf.png) I am dealing with the following problem and i was looking to write a Pseudo- code for developing an algorithm that can be generic for such a problem. Here is what i have come up with thus far. **STEP 1** In this step i try to get the robot where it maybe placed to the top left corner.               Turn Left -> If no window or Wall detected keep going forward 1 unit..          if window or wall detected ->Turn right --> if no window or Wall detected keep going forward..          if window or wall detected then top left corner is reached.      **STEP 2** (We start counting windows after we get to this stage to avoid miscounting) I would like to declare a variable called **turns** as it will help me keep track if robot has gone around entire room.               Turns = 4;      Now we are facing north and placed on top left corner.               while(turns>0){          If window or wall detected (if window count++)           Turn Right          Turn--;          While(detection!=wall || detection!=window){          move 1 unit forward          Turn left (if window count++)          Turn right          }               }      I believe in doing so the robot will go around the entire room and count windows and it will stop once it has gone around the entire room as the turns get decremented. I don't feel this is the best solution and would appreciate suggestions on how i can improve my Pseudo-code. I am not looking for any code just a algorithm on solving such a problem and that is why i have not posted this in stack overflow. I apologize if my Pseudo-code is poorly written please make suggestions if i can improve that as i am new to this. Thanks."}
{"_id": "87887", "title": "Where to start for writing a simple java IDE?", "text": "I would like to start working on my own custom IDE. The biggest reason I want to work on the IDE is to help me gain an even greater, more intimate understanding of java (and other languages I add into it.) I don't want to do anything super fancy or revolutionary, I'd be happy if I could create something as compact as the BlueJ IDE I used in high school and be content. I have a few question on the specifics of the task that I hope I can get cleared up before I start investing time in this:   * Is there anything I should be aware of when writing the parser?   * Does anyone have any pointers that I should be aware of; pitfalls, brick walls or other constraints?"}
{"_id": "87888", "title": "What is the proper name for this design pattern in Python?", "text": "In Python, is the proper name for the PersonXXX class below PersonProxy, PersonInterface, etc?               import rest          class  PersonXXX(object):              def __init__(self,db_url):             self.resource = rest.Resource(db_url)              def create(self,person):             self.resource.post(person.data())              def get(self):             pass              def update(self):             pass              def delete(self):             pass               class Person(object):              def __init__(self,name, age):             self.name = name             self.age = age              def data(self):             return dict(name=self.name,age=self.age)"}
{"_id": "218552", "title": "iOS7 apps only using iPad only", "text": "I would like to develop iOS apps but due to budgetary issues I can only afford an iPad mini gen1 or iPod touch 5th gen. Is it possible for me to make apps for all iPhones and iPads/iPods using just a single device? Another question is how does the latest iOS7 work on ipad mini gen 1/iPod touch and what are the limitations when working with these devices when compared to an iPhone(My target apps are trivia and endless runner games). Thanks P.S. I do have a mac with xcode on it and I am developing a cocoa app right now and the question is if i can develop for all io7 devices using just one deceive for final testing."}
{"_id": "241179", "title": "Should I always encapsulate an internal data structure entirely?", "text": "Please consider this class:               class ClassA{              private Thing[] things; // stores data              // stuff omitted              public Thing[] getThings(){             return things;         }          }      This class exposes the array it uses to store data, to any client code interested. I did this in an app I'm working on. I had a `ChordProgression` class that stores a sequence of `Chord`s (and does some other things). It had a `Chord[] getChords()` method that returned the array of chords. When the data structure had to change (from an array to an ArrayList), all client code broke. This made me think - maybe the following approach is better:               class ClassA{              private Thing[] things; // stores data              // stuff omitted              public Thing[] getThing(int index){             return things[index];         }              public int getDataSize(){             return things.length;         }              public void setThing(int index, Thing thing){             things[index] = thing;         }          }      Instead of exposing the data structure itself, **all of the operations offered by the data structure are now offered directly by the class enclosing it, using public methods that delegate to the data structure.** When the data structure changes, only these methods have to change - but after they do, all client code still works. **Note that collections more complex than arrays might require the enclosing class to implement even more than three methods just to access the internal data structure.** * * * Is this approach common? What do you think of this? What downsides does it have other? Is it reasonable to have the enclosing class implement at least three public methods just to delegate to the inner data structure?"}
{"_id": "244525", "title": "Why is the function called lseek(), not seek()?", "text": "The C function for seeking in a file is called lseek(). Why ins't it called just seek()?"}
{"_id": "244520", "title": "Who owns the copyright in a patch file?", "text": "I'm trying to determine OSS compliance for a body of source code, part of which includes sections from OpenEmbedded, and contains a lot of patch files, as they (seem to) try to adapt various tools. In these patch files I find a range of copyright possibilities   * the patch file removes a hunk of code from an original, hence 90% of the patch file itself is the original code, so the patch file is \"derived\" and the original copyright still applies   * In betweenies   * the patch file contains just a few lines of actual patching (or is primarily additions), and has a large number of lines as comment explaining why it is needed. Seems fair to assign the copyright in that file to the patch author, not the original How should copyright be identified for the inbetweenies? What lines can be drawn? The tool I am using is insisting on attribution per file, so I have been assessing a \"ratio of contribution\" for original/patch authors and picking one. Is that a reasonable/fair/legal approach? Also: I have been applying the merger doctrine the context lines in a patch file (those lines around the actual change). Hence excluding them from \"what ratio is original/patch?\") and that tends to bias the ratio toward the patch author, not original author - is that fair?"}
{"_id": "124074", "title": "In what types of programming environments is Reactive Management better than Proactive Management?", "text": "Most everyone seems to agree that Reactive Management is worse than Proactive Management; however, it seems that I am constantly seeing Reactive Management from development managers. Logic would suggest that there is some benefit to Reactive Management, since it is seen so often. I tend to see nothing but negative issues coming from this type of management, but I may be naive. In what sorts of programming environments/situations would Reactive Management be advantageous?"}
{"_id": "206737", "title": "Collection interfaces in C#, coming from Java", "text": "In Java, I'm used to declaring collections using the most-abstract interface possible and then constructing them using the concrete implementation that makes sense at the time. It usually looks something like this:               public class MyStuff {         private Map<String, Address> customerAddresses;         private List<ToDoItem> tasks;         private Set<Person> people;              public MyStuff() {             customerAddresses = new HashMap<String, Address>();             tasks = new ArrayList<ToDoItem>();             people = new HashSet<Person>();         }     }      This allows me more flexibility to change a collection's implementation later when all I really depend on is the high-level interface (i.e. I need something to store key-value pairs, or something to store ordered data), and it's generally considered a standard \"best practice\" in Java. I'm just starting to program in C#, though, and I'm not sure if there's an equivalent practice for C#'s collections hierarchy. Collections in C# differ from collections in Java in several ways: `Collection` is a concrete type, the `ICollection` interface exposes similar methods to Java's `Set` while the `ISet` interface specifies a lot more features, and the key-set or value-set of a `Dictionary` is not an `ISet`, to name a few. Does it make sense to do something like this in C#?               public class MyStuff {         private IDictionary<String, Address> customerAddresses;         private IList<ToDoItem> tasks;         private ISet<Person> people;              public MyStuff() {             customerAddresses = new Dictionary<String, Address>();             tasks = new List<ToDoItem>();             people = new HashSet<Person>();         }     }      Or are there different \"standard\" interfaces and implementations to use for such collections? Should I be using `ICollection` and `Collection` in place of either the `Set` or the `List`? I'm tempted to use the C# classes and interfaces that \"look closest\" to the Java ones I'm used to, but I'd rather use the setup that better fits with C# paradigms and standards."}
{"_id": "230540", "title": "Why can't we program without compiling (using an IDE/debugger)?", "text": "I find it very interesting that even people who design a particular framework still have to rely on compiling to ensure the code is correct. I don't mean for 100s of lines of code, but 2-10 lines. I say this because they mention the code they wrote might not compile/work because it's untested. But why can't we write even the most basic code without relying on compiling? Is it because of the languages or the frameworks? Or is it because we have gotten used to using IDEs too much? I am not against doing this, but just wondering the reasons."}
{"_id": "185772", "title": "Good practices to implement mappers in a multi-tier application", "text": "When you are working with a multi-tier application very often you run into task of converting objects in one layer to objects in another layer. This could be converting database objects into domain objects, service objects into domain objects, domain object into view models, etc. I've seen it being done in multiple ways, those include:   1. In-line conversion   2. Creating a translator class with static helper methods   3. Using extension methods to simplify conversion   4. Overriding cast operators   5. Creating sepearate mapper classes for every possible translation   6. Utilizing solutions such as automapper What would be the \"proper\" way to handle it. The application I currently work with utilizes separate mapper class for every possible translation, and although it has benefits of testability we are using dependency injection and we have to pass all those mappers as dependencies in the constructor. Has anybody figured out a better way to do it? **UPDATE** I am using .NET stack here (EF +Business Layer + MVC)"}
{"_id": "185773", "title": "Library design: provide a common header file or multiple headers", "text": "There are essentially two camps of library designers concerning the design of the final header file inclusion:   * Provide a single header file that includes every other header file that makes up the public API. For example, GTK+ dictates that only `gtk.h` shall be included. This does _not_ mean that everything is explicitly written into that common header file.   * Have the user include the header file whose functionality he is most interested in. The most prominent example would be the standard library where he has to include `stdio.h` for I/O, `string.h` for string manipulation etc., instead of a common `std.h` Is there a preferred way? libabc gives no advice on that matter, whereas an answer to a similar question suggests to keep them separated but does not specifies why."}
{"_id": "130762", "title": "Why does email sent from my site end up in SPAM folders?", "text": "I am developing a course registration website in Django. New users must confirm their email address by clicking on a link emailed to them. Unfortunately, this message is consistently ending up in people's spam folders. What steps can I take to prevent this from happening? Should I include an unsubscribe paragraph? Should I send less mass mail from my site (I occasionally send out a message to 500 emails.)?"}
{"_id": "181646", "title": "Is there a correlation between the type of a company/industry and the software engineering rigor?", "text": "I would like the answer to explain what impact, if any, does the type of company/industry have on the rigor, depth and breadth with which software engineering is practiced. The best would be some links to support the answer with references. As a control point, let's declare an assumption that a company which follows the SWEBOK or CMMI (any level) is doing 100% (the best) whereas one which does not follow anything at all is 0% (worst). Would it be possible to find out what companies or what industries score highest, average, and lowest? **EDIT:** CMMI (any level) refers to any organization which is CMMI certified. **EDIT 2:** The middle paragraph specifies that a company which follows some rigorous software engineering standard should score higher than a company which doesn't. **EDIT 3:** The SWEBOK is not only organizing content. It does much more, i.e. the **SWEBOK characterizes the contents of software engineering body of knowledge**. The **SWEBOK promotes a consistent view of software engineering worldwide** which is the main point. It is aimed at both practitioners and academics, individuals and organizations. For example, see the CSDP and consider companies who hire them. These are the companies that follow the SWEBOK. **EDIT 4:** Note that the answer should tell us about industries or companies that follow some rigorous software engineering standard in the prescribed depth and breath, and those who don't. What is the correlation between the type of company/industry and their software engineering rigor? Throwing in a bunch of links for reference would be great."}
{"_id": "181647", "title": "Resources for small programming excercises", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Books or websites containing easy programming problems? Are there any resources that offer small programming exercises? I am looking for problems that are relatively small but taxing in some way or another. It would be nice if the problems focussed on specific areas of skill - i.e. algorithm, logic, problem solving, performance etc. So that they can be picked for purpose. I am looking for one program for every few days that I can use to better my programming skills. Also I am trying to learn tdd and these excesses will help me this too. I am struggling to think of problems every few days and would prefer exercises that are known to push specific programming skills forward."}
{"_id": "181641", "title": "Wrapping Primitives to Enable Returning null -- Bad Practice?", "text": "I am frequently tempted to wrap integers, etc, solely for the purpose of writing methods that can return `null`. Negative 1 can work in many cases, but too often (especially in sound) it's a valid return value. Often, to get around this, I am returning a reference to a larger object that contains the primitive in question and calling a getter. This seems less efficient than the wrapper, and in some cases less encapsulating. So, are there any penalties with wrapping for this reason? Does anybody do this? Does this smell?"}
{"_id": "231963", "title": "Is Factory method subclass of Abstract factory in essence", "text": "Is it correct to say that factory method is essentially just a particular case of the abstract factory which produces the only one object not a group? I know that classic realizations assumes the architectural differences, but the point of a pattern is not only a concrete realization but a conceptual abstraction, isn't it?"}
{"_id": "233044", "title": "Why can't the Factory Method pattern create a family of objects?", "text": "There are two main differences between the design patterns Factory Method and Abstract Factory. Difference 1 is that Factory Method is mainly based on inheritance. A class in a way uses it's subclass to create objects. The objects created depend on the subclass used. While Abstract Factory is based on inheritance but in a way also on composition - A client 'owns' an Abstract Factory instance to hold a concrete factory. Difference 2 is that Factory Method creates one object, while Abstract Factory creates a family of related objects. Difference 1 I understand (although I'm having trouble understanding why anyone would prefer to subclass a class that needs a factory instead of just 'giving' it a factory using composition [unless that class already has a subclass]). But difference 2 I don't understand. Why can't Factory Method create a family of products instead of one product? It can certainly return an array of products of the same family. All of these products share a common interface - the method can return an array of that type. Why is it said that this method only produces one product? Additionally, a factory method inside a concrete subclass of an abstract factory creates different products using different methods that are called by the client. Why can't a concrete factory in the Factory Method pattern do the same? Have different factory methods for different products?"}
{"_id": "81832", "title": "Why we should build with the highest warning level in .NET?", "text": "I heard that we have to build with the highhest warning level. **Is it true? why?** And **how to change default .NET warning level?**"}
{"_id": "81835", "title": "Single-responsibility and custom data types", "text": "In the past months I've asked for people here on SE and on other sites offer me some constructive criticism regarding my code. There's one thing that kept popping out almost every time and I still don't agree with that recommendation; :P I'd like to discuss it here and maybe things will become clearer to me. It's regarding the single-responsibility principle (SRP). Basically, I have a data class, `Font`, that not only holds functions for manipulating the data, but also for loading it. I'm told the two should be separate, that loading functions should be placed inside a factory class; I think this is a mis- interpretation of the SRP... ## A Fragment from My Font Class               class Font     {       public:         bool isLoaded() const;         void loadFromFile(const std::string& file);         void loadFromMemory(const void* buffer, std::size_t size);         void free();              void some();         void another();     };      ## Suggested Design               class Font     {       public:         void some();         void another();     };               class FontFactory     {       public:         virtual std::unique_ptr<Font> createFromFile(...) = 0;         virtual std::unique_ptr<Font> createFromMemory(...) = 0;     };      The suggested design supposedly follows the SRP, but I disagree -- I think it goes too far. The `Font` class is not longer self-sufficient (it is useless without the factory), and `FontFactory` needs to know details about the implementation of the resource, which is probably done through friendship or public getters, which further expose the implementation of `Font`. I think this is rather a case of _fragmented responsibility_. Here's why I think my approach is better:   * `Font` is self-sufficient -- Being self-sufficient, it's easier to understand and maintain. Also, you can use the class without having to include anything else. If, however, you find you need a more complex management of resources (a factory) you can easily do that as well (later I'll talk about my own factory, `ResourceManager<Font>`).   * Follows the standard library -- I believe user-defined types should try as much as possible to copy the behavior of the standard types in that respective language. The `std::fstream` is self-sufficient and it provides functions like `open` and `close`. Following the standard library means there's no need to spend effort learning yet another way of doing things. Besides, generally speaking, the C++ standard committee probably knows more about design than anyone here, so if ever in doubt, copy what they do.   * Testability -- Something goes wrong, where could the problem be? -- Is it the way `Font` handles its data or the way `FontFactory` loaded the data? You don't really know. Having the classes be self-sufficient reduces this problem: you can test `Font` in isolation. If you then have to test the factory and you know `Font` works fine, you'll also know that whenever a problem occurs it must be inside the factory.   * It is context agnostic -- (This intersects a bit with my first point.) `Font` does its thing and makes no assumptions about how you'll use it: you can use it any way you like. Forcing the user to use a factory increases coupling between classes. ## I too Have a Factory **(Because the design of`Font` allows me to.)** Or rather more of a manager, not merely a factory... `Font` is self-sufficient so the manager doesn't need to know _how_ to build one; instead the manager makes sure the same file or buffer isn't loaded into memory more than once. You could say a factory can do the same, but wouldn't that break the SRP? The factory would then not only have to build objects, but also manage them.               template<class T>     class ResourceManager     {       public:         ResourcePtr<T> acquire(const std::string& file);         ResourcePtr<T> acquire(const void* buffer, std::size_t size);     };      Here's a demonstration of how the manager could be used. Notice that it's used basically exactly as a factory would.               void test(ResourceManager<Font>* rm)     {         // The same file isn't loaded twice into memory.         // I can still have as many Fonts using that file as I want, though.         ResourcePtr<Font> font1 = rm->acquire(\"fonts/arial.ttf\");         ResourcePtr<Font> font2 = rm->acquire(\"fonts/arial.ttf\");              // Print something with the two fonts...     }      ## Bottom Line... (It'd like to put a tl;dr here, but I can't think of one. :\\ )   Well, there you have it, I've made my case as best as I could. Please post any counter-arguments you have and also any advantages that you think the suggested design has over my own design. Basically, try to show me that I'm wrong. :)"}
{"_id": "205234", "title": "What must testers be able to do to be 'highly qualified'?", "text": "**Are modern testers like 'stupid' users which try to find a bug clicking and filling fields or they have solid knowledge about product cores?** What modern testers must be able to do?   * Must they be coders creating independant/embed tests?   * Must they understand source code of products and even can fix easy bugs?   * Other things? I'm interested in real practice."}
{"_id": "139528", "title": "Javascript naming conventions", "text": "I am from Java background and am new to JavaScript. I have noticed many JavaScript methods using single character parameter names, such as in the following example.               doSomething(a,b,c)      I don't like it, but a fellow JavaScript developer convinced me that this is done to reduce the file size, noting that JavaScript files have to be transferred to the browser. Then I found myself talking to another developer. He showed me the way that Firefox will truncate variable names to load the page faster. Is this a standard practice for web browsers? What are the best-practice naming conversions that should be followed when programming in JavaScript? Does identifier length matter, and if so, to what extent?"}
{"_id": "233933", "title": "Building a webservice with mvc", "text": "I'am planning my website over here based on MVC. And I am thinking about a webservice (who knows, maybe one day I'll create an android app or something). The site and the webservice will behave diferently from each other. So what should I do? Write different controllers for each... or stuff IFs all over the place? For example: on the site, the controller will act as such:   Password correct?   \\---->redirect user to welcome screen   Password incorrect?   \\---->render login page again   But the webservice will simple show a json like:   {message: 'wrong password/sucess'} Which one you think is the best approach?"}
{"_id": "139525", "title": "Tooling and support for message format specifications", "text": "How do most companies define and manage message format specifications? Is it common for companies to create custom tools for creating and working with these documents? At work we have a lot of systems that communicate via UDP messages. Each system has its own Interface Control Document (in Word or in HTML) which describes its message scheme. The documents have descriptions of each message along with its fields, and usage notes. We're looking to standardize the format of these ICDs and write some tools that help create them. I was thinking we should create an ICD schema, and define the ICDs in some data-interchange format (XML, JSON, protobuf). Then we could create parsers that generate human-readable documentation (HTML, PDF), or even message parsing code (where useful and appropriate). I don't want to reinvent the wheel, and I don't want to get too carried away. Does the above proposal sound reasonable?"}
{"_id": "140481", "title": "Should I create my own Assert class based on these reasons?", "text": "The main reason I don't like Debug.Assert is the fact that these assertions are disabled in Release. I know that there's a performance reason for that, but at least in my situation I believe the gains would outweigh the cost. (By the way, I'm guessing this is the situation in most cases). And yes, I know that you can use Trace.Assert instead. But even though that would work, I find the name Trace distracting, since I don't see this as tracing. The other reason to create my own class is laziness I guess, since I could write methods for the most usual cases like Assert.IsNotNull, Assert.Equals and so forth. The second part of my question has to do with using Environment.FailFast in this class. Would that be a good idea? I do like the ideas put forth in this document. That's pretty much where I got the idea from. One last point. Does creating a design like this imply having an untestable code path, as described in this answer by Eric Lippert on a different (but related) question?"}
{"_id": "139523", "title": "Can the JSF 2.0.0 code be converted to JavaScript/HTML5?", "text": "I am developing an application using WebSocket to exchange messages; it is based on JSF 2.0.0, but the idea is similar and HTML5 have WebSocket support. Is the only difference between those language the used tag and the syntax? Is the logic behind it the same? I wonder if there any converter for this."}
{"_id": "140483", "title": "Is it a waste of time to free resources before I exit a process?", "text": "Let's consider a fictional program that builds a linked list in the heap, and at the end of the program there is a loop that frees all the nodes, and then exits. For this case let's say the linked list is just 500K of memory, and no special space managing is required.   * Is that a wast of time, because the OS will do that anyway?   * Will there be a different behavior later?   * Is that different according to the OS version? I'm mainly interested in UNIX based systems, but any information will be appreciated. I had today my first lesson in OS course and I'm wondering about that now. **Edit:** Since a lot of people here are concerned about side effects, and general 'good programming practice' and so. You are right! I agree 100% with your statements. But my question is only hypothetical, I want to know how the OS manages this. So please leave out things like 'finding other bugs when freeing all memory'."}
{"_id": "10334", "title": "Is Silverlight only for eye-candy, or does it have a use in business?", "text": "Granted that Silverlight may make eye-popping websites of great beauty, is there any justification for using it to make practical web applications that have serious business purposes? I'd like to use it (to learn it) for a new assignment I have, which is to build a web-based application that keeps track of the data interfaces used in our organization, but I'm not sure how to justify it, even to myself. Any thoughts on this? If I can't justify it then I will have to build the app using the same old tired straight ASP.NET approach I've used (it seems) a hundred times already."}
{"_id": "195170", "title": "Class table inheritance... To 'type' or not to 'type'", "text": "I currently have a database that uses Class table inheritance model. Three different tables inherit from this table. The child tables have all a FK to the parent table and the fields are properly indexed. We hare currently having some issues at the application level because it is difficult to figure out what child table we are referencing from the parent. In addition to this, a query where we organize by type seems costly. One developer argues that we should just join with all 3 tables to figure out what child the parent record corresponds to, and as long as the tables have the proper index queries shouldn't be costly. In the other hand we could avoid a lot of confusion and problems if we add a discriminator field in the parent table, that way we would know without having to do any joins the 'type' of record we are dealing with. Also grouping by type would be much simpler.   * Should we add a type in the parent table?    * What would be the disadvantages?   * Is it really not costly to join with multiple tables (as long as they are properly indexed) compared to having a discriminator field?   * Other thoughts? We are currently using an implementation of active record for PHP, and it doesn't support Class Table Inheritance."}
{"_id": "121248", "title": "Where should we put External Libraries in our SVN?", "text": "We have the following SVN structure.   * Projects: Our work   * Clients: Projects for clients, needs to be different   * Shared: Shared libraries we created   * Docs: Documents explaining how software development flows within the company (has nothing to do with my question anyway) Where should we put the external libraries? Let's say from opensource projects etc. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dYENF.png)"}
{"_id": "121249", "title": "For what types of applications is Python a bad choice?", "text": "I just started learning Python, and I'd like to get some more context on the language. I realize that, in many cases, Python is a slow language relative to C or C++. Thus, Python is probably not the best choice for applications that need to run as quickly as possible. Outside of this, it seems like Python is a great general purpose language that is easy to read and write. The available libraries give it a huge amount of functionality. Outside of performance critical applications, where is it a bad choice to use Python (and why)?"}
{"_id": "195177", "title": "How can I decouple configuration data from the program that uses it?", "text": "I am a beginning programmer who has written a spider application in PHP. Currently there are three parts:               1) The Spider (spider.php)     2) The Harvester (harvest.php)     3) The Configuration file (for example, craigslist_config.php)      I use the spider to search the web for items I want to buy. An item can be found on any website, like ebay, craigslist, etc. The Harvester provides three functions to spider so it can act on the data it finds - `get_title_from($markup)`, `get_description_from($markup)`, and `get_price_from($markup)`. Each web site that I want to spider has, of course, different markup surrounding the data that I want to extract. My config file contains a configuration array that holds the regex patterns for each of the items I want to find. The structure of the file is always the same, the only thing that changes is the regex patterns. So, I would have craigslist_config.php, ebay_config.php, etc.               $conf = array(         'title' => ' specific_site title pattern',         'description => 'specific_site description pattern',         'price' => 'specific_site price pattern'     );      My problem is when I want to add a new website. I have to edit the Spider.php file and add to an ever-growing \"if, elseif\" statement that detects what site is currently being read, and load the correct config file, which in turn feeds the correct REGEX data to the harvester functions. How can I decouple my configuration from my Spider.php file? What I have designed does not feel like a flexible, scalable solution, and I don't want to have to mess with spider.php everytime I want to add or take away a new site. Ultimately, what I am trying to achieve is the ability to simply drop in a new configuration file into my config directory and move the 'if, elseif' logic somewhere else so that the spider and harverster functions never have to worry about what files are or are not included in the config directory. It's the \"somewhere else\" I am having trouble figuring out. Actually, it would be even better if I could get rid of the 'if else' logic all together so that everything just 'works.' My current design is not an OOP approach, however I am not opposed to one. I am currently reading, \"PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice\" to get up to speed on OOP and related design patterns, so feel free to suggest in that direction should you feel it a solution. **EDIT:** Based on Doc Brown's direction, I have come up with the following. I have individual configuration files with content like so:               $conf['specificwebsite1.com'] = array(         'title' => 'title pattern',         'price' => 'price pattern',              etc...     );        In my Harvester file I have a new function called `load_config($url, $config)`. As suggested, I loops through all the configuration files and load them into one large $conf array. Then, the `load_config` function checks if the key is a sub string of the url I'm currently reading. If so, then it loads all the necessary values to continue parsing. This is the function:               function load_config($url, $config){       foreach($config as $key => $value){         if(stristr($url, $key) !== FALSE){           ## see if a key in our config file           ## is a substring of our url.            $conf = $config[$key];           break;         } else {                $conf = FALSE;         }       }            return $conf;     }      This is working really well, so I'll accept that as the answer. But please feel free to make suggestions for improvements in the comments or as another answer."}
{"_id": "236261", "title": "Which one of these answers regarding functions is incorrect?", "text": "So while I've been doing some lengthy compiles I decided to take the C++ general test on ODesk and came across this question. ![This question](http://i.imgur.com/tyX95lv.png) If I'm not mistaken, given the wording (or lack thereof) **all** of these could be true. **a.**               int Foo() { }     int Foo(int bar) { }      **b.** Well, _\"return`void`\"_ would be incorrect semantically but functions can obviously have `void` return types.               void Foo() { }      **c.** This is the definition of inline functions, yes. **d.** Without going into much detail about the placement of the following elements,               typedef void (*Func)(int);          Func functions[2];          void Foo(int bar) { }     void Bar(int foo) { }          functions[0] = &Foo;     functions[1] = &Bar;      Further, you could always do this using lambdas and functors. **e.**               void Foo(int& bar)     {         ++bar;     }          int foobar = 5;     Foo(foobar);      **f.**               int bar = 5;          int& GetBar()     {         return bar;     }          GetBar() = 6;      **g.**               int bar = 5;          int* GetBar()     {         return &bar;     }          (*GetBar()) = 5;      * * * I fail to see where this question has any _truly false_ answers. Am I missing something? Needless to say I ran out of time and failed the whole thing. I guess I'm a bad C++ programmer. :("}
{"_id": "162853", "title": "Asking for a code sample of the company at an interview", "text": "Asking a job seeker to show some code is a fairly common practice for a software company. However, would it be acceptable for the candidate to ask the interviewer to show him a small piece of code that he thinks is well written?"}
{"_id": "176418", "title": "Freelancing - Getting paid for the quote or estimate", "text": "It is often necessary to spend time designing a solution, breaking down the design into tasks and sub tasks and estimating the time it will take to complete each task in order to produce a reasonable estimate or quote for a programming task. This process can be a serious investment of time, often without any guarantee that the estimate/quote will be acceptable to the potential client and more often that not the time was 'wasted' with no hope of getting paid for it (in the event of not winning the job). Is it the case that this is a cost of doing business and what can be done to minimise this unpaid time?"}
{"_id": "173428", "title": "Bump version before kicking off new development or when tagging a release, which is better?", "text": "Some projects bump version before kicking off a new development, while the other projects bump version when tagging a release. Which approach is better? If version number not changed at the start of new phase, the developers may forget to change it and simply release the program. If version number changed before tagging release, then 2 the version numbers (tag and Makefile/AssemblyInfo.cs) do not match. `git describe` may give you v1.2.3.4-15-g1234567 if current revision is after v1.2.3.4, but you have already changed the files to have v1.2.3.5"}
{"_id": "236269", "title": "How to make C# methods work like javascript functions?", "text": "I'll keep it simple, I want to make C#'s methods work like javascript's functions. Mainly so I can convert this -               function makeVariable(terp) {         var me = {value: 0};         return function () { terp.stack.push(me); };     }      into C#. Is there ANY way, no matter how complex or time consuming, to do this?"}
{"_id": "182208", "title": "Remote pair programming set up over a VM", "text": "We are looking for a new way of doing pair programming. It's looks like best way of programming, it is faster and you push out great tested code. But there are some downsides. Ad hoc items that pop up.   crashing.   back ups.   there is only ever one driver. What we thought might be the best possible environment is that we have a server running a VM. Both myself and my programming partner SSH inside and run some sort of VNC, or teamviewer locally between so that we can both work on files simultaneously and say one person works on the views and the other works on setting up apache. So we are looking at working on the same system from two different computer simultaneously. This way we could then when needed link to our other branches and have pairing \"systems\" that we could like to. Or if someone needs to jump out and work on something else the other person can carry on without him. What do we need to learn to set up such an environment, or accomplish something like this?"}
{"_id": "173423", "title": "Does NASA license the software that it develops?", "text": "NASA provides a visualization software called Panoply. There is a Credits and Acknowledgments page that acknowledges and lists the licenses of software dependencies, but provides no information about its own license. I have looked at other software produced by NASA, including the source code for GISS and can not find any information about a licence. The closest information that I can find is in the FAQ for the global climate model EdGCM Global that says the code is in the \"public domain\"   * is it standard practice at NASA to release code into the public domain?      * are there exceptions?      * Can I assume that Panoply is public domain and can be used without restriction other than than those imposed by licenses of software dependencies?     * Is the absence of specific permission to reuse the code a concern (this issue was raised in the answer to a separate question)    * How common is this practice across government agencies?"}
{"_id": "141280", "title": "My first development job working at a company, what things to look out for?", "text": "So I've worked on my own all this time, selling software, creating a few web applications on my own. I had an Arts background I was self taught. It was a bit difficult to find a development position after endless trying, I finally landed a LAMP position. What I realized was it was all confidence issue. Before when I didn't know a few things I panicked but after spending such a long time working on my own projects and solving various problems, I felt confident enough that I could fulfill requirements on my own. I hope this helps other people applying for jobs This is the first time I will be developing with other team members in an office, are there anything I should prepare for my first day at work next week? Any tips and pointers while working as a developer at a company? I'm kinda nervous but excited."}
{"_id": "210149", "title": "More Accurate Random in C", "text": "I have 3 IPs and every IP has a weight, I want to return the IP's according to its weights using the random function. For example if we have 3 IP's   * X with weight 3   * Y with weight 3   * and Z with weight 3 I want to return X in 33.3% of cases and Y in 33.3% of cases and Z in 33.3% of cases, depending on random function in C. I have tried this code :               double r = rand() / (double)RAND_MAX;     double denom = 3 + 3 + 3;     if (r < 3 / denom) {     // choose X     } else if (r < (3 + 3) / denom) {     // choose Y      } else {     // choose Z     }      I repeat the function 1000 and I get: Choose x 495 times and Choose y 189 times and choose z 316 times. But what I want is to get X:333 y:333 Z:334 How can the weighted random be more accurate?"}
{"_id": "135847", "title": "Can a British programmer relocate to the US?", "text": "I'm considering a career change after having worked as a financial software developer in London over the past 8 years. I'd quite like to move to Silicon Valley but I'm not clear on the practicalities. 1) Given the visa requirements, am I limited to joining a large software firm such as Google? Or are startups or self employment open to me? 2) Does the visa requirement put me at a disadvantage compared to local hires?"}
{"_id": "135841", "title": "How to implement smart card authentication with a .NET Fat client?", "text": "I know very little about smart card authentication in general so please point out or correct me if anything below doesn't make sense. Lets say i have:   * A Certificate Authority \"X\"-s smart card (non-exportable private key)   * Drivers for that smart card written in C    * A smart card reader    * CA-s authentication OCSP web service   * **A requirement to implement user authentication in a .NET fat client application via a smart card, that was given out by the CA \"X\".** I tried searching info on the web but no prevail. What would the steps be ? My first thought was: Set up a web service, that would allow saving of (for example) scores of a ping pong game for each user. Each time someone tries to submit a score via the client application, he can only do so by inserting the smart card into the reader. Then the public key is read from the smart card by native c calls through .NET and sent to my custom web service, which in return uses the CA-s authentication OCSP web service to prove the validity of the public key/public certificate (?). If the public key is okay and valid, encrypt a random sequence of bytes with the public key and send it to the client application. If the client application sends back the correctly decrypted random sequence of bytes along with the score of the ping pong game, then the score is saved in the database for the given user. My question is, is this the correct way to do it ? What else should i know about smart card authentication ?"}
{"_id": "200460", "title": "SharePoint + InfoPath Joins", "text": "I am trying to do something somewhat unique, and the best path I can find at the moment is to use List joins, but I'm not sure this is possible. I'm hoping someone can suggest a best course of action. The issue at the moment is that I have several lists (i.e. Employees) that all have a lookup to the Assets list. I also have a Scheduling list that contains start and end dates during which assets are unavailable, which also has a lookup to the Assets list. I am trying to find a way to filter a selection list in an InfoPath form to only include Employees that are available. The problem is that I am dealing with five or six types of Assets, so I can't have the Scheduling list directly look up the Employee list (or any other Asset type). I am trying to find a way to have this work done server-side, so that the form doesn't get too heavy. I am accessing the lists via the REST API built in to SharePoint, and I am doing my form design with the InfoPath designer. Any thoughts as to how I can get this form working? **UPDATE 1:** My current thinking is that I may be better off splitting the Scheduling table into individual lists for each Asset type, then finding a way to toss everything back together when I need it later. Does this seem reasonable? I have no idea how difficult it would be to put the pieces back together later- has anyone attempted something like this? **UPDATE 2:** New line of though- I have resigned myself to being unable to do the joins that I would like to do, and instead am trying to accomplish my goal by filtering the data that appears in the selection lists. I am pulling the relevant data from the Scheduling list and all of the data from the Employees list, and trying to filter the Employees list for entries NOT IN the Scheduling list. Does anyone know how to do this, as it will accomplish the goal without having TOO much unneeded data downloaded to the form..."}
{"_id": "247386", "title": "subclass reference to another subclass", "text": "Imagine I have the following code:               class A:         pass          class B(A):         pass          class C(A):         def __init__(self):             self.b = B()      Is the above code correct in terms of correct inheritance? I mean is it a good practice to reference another subclass in a subclass?"}
{"_id": "121791", "title": "Getting in to smart card programming", "text": "I have a Compaq nw8440 with a smart card reader that is: > Compatible with ISO 7816 compliant Smart Cards. PC/SC interface support I have been interested in smart cards and wanted to start playing around with them. If I wanted to get in to programming smart cards where can I find resources on how to do it, and would I need any additional hardware other than what my laptop provides (besides the cards to program)?"}
{"_id": "125033", "title": "How should I go about learning new technologies?", "text": "In a career of software engineer, you need to learn new technologies very often and always in less time due to deadlines. So just need to know how programmers should go about learning the technologies really quick still thoroughly. What approaches do you follow?"}
{"_id": "247385", "title": "How to deal with a new version of visual studio's directory?", "text": "When upgrading Visual Studio to a newer version, a new directory is created e.g. \"Visual Studio 2013\". I understand that that makes sense as we want to differentiate between code targeting different versions of .net. But since some projects use other projects as their dll's for some repeated code - this raises a question - should we copy everything and have everything separate for .net 4.0 from .net 4.5 or should we have one library that works for both (since 90% of the code will be the same) and only create a special library for code that can't run on 4.0? Just suggesting doing \"whatever works for you\" is not a good solution - at the moment both look viable. If one of the options has some disadvantages, they might become apparent only after we have many internal links from solution to solution, and there's no real way to change all links at once - one must search for every one of them manually, hoping not to miss anything. Since we're obviously not the first facing this question, I'd like to hear from those with experience in the matter. (or anyone else, of course.) (Though there might not be a clear cut answer to this question, I hope it will be allowed here just as the highest voted question on this site is.)"}
{"_id": "229968", "title": "What are the advantages of pass by value?", "text": "I always thought pass by value is a legacy from the early languages, because the designers had never seen anything else. But after seeing the brand new languages like Go adapting the same principle confused me. The only advantage I can think of is you make sure that the value you are passing won't be modified. But every time you need to pass a big structure to a function, you need to pass the pointer (or reference) to prevent copying, if the language permits it. To prevent modification of parameters, some `const`ness mechanism could be introduced instead of making the whole language pass by value. I have been coding for years and I rarely needed to pass by value. Almost always, I don't need my value/object to be copied to a function call; and often I don't need it to be modified inside the function*. What is the motivation behind making modern languages pass by value? Are there any advantages that I am not aware of? **Edit:** When I say pass by value, I don't mean primitives. They are easy and cheap to pass by value. My main focus is objects or structs that consists of more than 1 primitive and thus _expensive_ to copy. *: I have asked around and others reported similar thing with their parameter usage."}
{"_id": "208257", "title": "Utilizing a Java Concurrent Utility from a Web App", "text": "I have the following lines of code in my application:               return \"Service is alive since: \" + TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(mxBean.getUptime()) + \" minutes\";      It uses the following package:               import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;      My application is a web application. Does it means that I have something wrong logically if I use something from concurrent package at a web application?"}
{"_id": "255771", "title": "Problem with opening JFrames from LWJGL", "text": "I'm making a program that uses LWJGL to render a Display window, and it also listens for keyboard input to prompt it to open a swing window. The problem is, upon the first keyboard prompt, it opens the window successfully. But when you close it and try it again, it seems the LWJGL window 'sticks' down the key you just pressed and instead starts opening up infinite new Swing windows... I'm not sure how to resolve this issue. Here is some code to demonstrate my problem... public class Launcher{               public static void main(String[] args){         new Launcher();     }          public Launcher(){         loadGUI();         go();     }          public void go(){         while(!Display.isCloseRequested()){             listen();             glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);             Display.update();             Display.sync(60);              }     }          private void listen(){         if(Keyboard.isKeyDown(Keyboard.KEY_SPACE)){             System.out.println(\"fk\");             Example e = new Example();         }     }          private void loadGUI(){              try{             Display.setDisplayMode(new DisplayMode(480,480));             Display.setTitle(\"Example\");             Display.create();         }catch(LWJGLException e){             e.printStackTrace();             Display.destroy();             System.exit(1);         }              glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);         glLoadIdentity();         glOrtho(0, 480, 480, 0, 1, -1);         glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);          }          private class Example extends JFrame{              public Example(){             add(new JPanel(), BorderLayout.NORTH);             pack();             setResizable(true);             setTitle(\"Test\");             setVisible(true);         }          }      }"}
{"_id": "255772", "title": "What is the best way to make UI in iOS?", "text": "I am frustrated with the numerous options available for creating UI in iOS. Each with their own downsides. I like doing programmatic UIs but the compile- debug loop is quite slow (10s each compile) which slows me down when I am endlessly trying to get programmatic auto-layout UIs to work. I would like to know what is the best approach to use for 2 specific screens with code examples. This might be a good way to compare the pros and cons of each approach. Here are two screens of a very common and simple interface - WhatsApp's phone number verification flow: http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/iphone/20902747 # Options   * Auto layout     * Apple NSLayoutConstraint SDK API     * Apple Visual Format Language     * Apple Interface Builder     * 3rd party library        * Pure Layout       * Masonry/KeepLayout   * Non auto layout Thanks!"}
{"_id": "204545", "title": "Which parallel pattern to use?", "text": "I need to write a server application that fetches mails from different mail servers/mailboxes and then needs to process/analyze these mails. Traditionally, I would do this multi-threaded, launching a thread for fetching mails (or maybe one per mailbox) and then process the mails. We are moving more and more to servers where we have 8+ cores, so I would like to make use of these cores as much as possible (and not use 1 at 100% and leave the seven others untouched). So conceptually, as an example, it would be nice that I could write the application in such a way that two cores are \"continuously\" fetching emails and four cores are \"continuously\" processing/analyzing the emails (since processing and analyzing mails is more CPU intensive than fetching mails). This seems like a good concept, but after studying some parallel patterns, I'm not really sure how this is best implemented. None of the patterns really fit. I'm working in VS2012, native C++, but I guess from a design point of view this does not really matter and just some pointers on how to organize this would be great!"}
{"_id": "45369", "title": "When in the project life-cycle would you fit in external penetration/security testing of the software?", "text": "Assuming that you're working on a piece of software which is required to pass a third party security/penetration test before being released to the client, at which point in the project life-cycle would you perform the tests? Passing the test means that no major flaws are detected, or, more likely, that any flaws detected have been properly corrected before release."}
{"_id": "138697", "title": "How important is it to pick the best IDE for your programming language of choice?", "text": "As I learned some basic programming languages I came across tens of IDEs, and tens of compilers. Most people you ask will tell you \"Go with that IDE or go with the best\" etc, however they do not provide a proper statement as to why this is important. I understand a good IDE will provide you with functionalities to save time and money, such as debugging or quick-word-fill, but I doubt that's the whole reason a programmer picks a good IDE. At school we work on old compilers (Money probably isn't the reason) because the theory \"As long as you learn it's good\" works. The bottom-line question is: How important is it to pick the best IDE for your programming language? YOu have Eclipse for Java, C++, Python and more, but can't you simply use a different one? What difference does a good IDE to your programming skills or your programming time?"}
{"_id": "141750", "title": "Dual-licensing LGPL 2.1 and LGPL 3", "text": "I maintain a software, a small PHP library, that is released under the LGPL version 3 license (LGPLv3). Someone wants to use the library in their software which has the GPL version 2 license. This license compatibility matrix suggests this is not possible without changing the licensing terms of one of the software. I have been requested to dual-license my code under LGPLv2.1 and LGPLv3. Does it make sense, and what might the drawbacks be? Thank you."}
{"_id": "198803", "title": "Multiple orders in a single list", "text": "I have a problem with a ranking system I am using. Scenario: An online game with around 10k players calculates a real time ranking of points when a certain event occurs. Events don't occur that often, around 1 time per minute. This ranking is kept in the cache for quick calculations, sorting and access. Now players can form groups and play against each other, but the scoring system is the same, only the ranking is based for the players in that group. At first I created for every group a separate ranking, effectively having the same scores as the complete ranking, but with different positions in the ranking. This is trivial because there are over 1.000 groups and every time an event occurs all the groups would have to be updated. So what I did now is when the group ranking is requested take only the players that are in that group from the complete ranking and show them. The positions would have to be re-counted. That re-counting is where the problem is. Because the sub-list is by-reference from the complete ranking list I cannot change the position of the player in the sub-ranking without updating it in the complete ranking, because it's just a reference. I came up with two solutions:   * Create a copy from the record every time it is requested and do some output caching (not very desirable because the rankings are live)   * Create a copy and store this in a cache which is reset when an event occurs.   * Create a sub-list with just the positions which is updated when an event occurs. And the last solution: do the position counting in the output instead in the business side. This would be the best solution, only problem is that on some pages this text appears: \"You are on position # in the ranking\" where # is your ranking position. This number would be tedious to get then. Does anybody have any suggestions to this problem?"}
{"_id": "138692", "title": "Display dynamic content from embedded web server", "text": "I have an embedded device running a slimmed down version of a HTTP server. Currently, it can display static HTML pages. Here is an example of how it displays a static HTML page:               char *text=\"HTTP/1.0 200 OK\\r\\nContent-Type: text/html\\r\\n\\r\\n\"     \"<html><body>Hello World!</body></html>\";     IPWrite(socket, (uint8*)text, (int)strlen(text));     IPClose(socket);      What I'd like to do is display dynamic content, e.g. a reading from a sensor. What I thought of so far is to have the page refresh every once in awhile with               <meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"600\">      and use sprintf() to attach the sensor reading to the _text_ variable for the response. Is there a way I can do this without having to refresh the page constantly?"}
{"_id": "141754", "title": "Are there any actual case studies on rewrites of software success/failure rates?", "text": "I've seen multiple posts about rewrites of applications being bad, people's experiences about it here on Programmers, and an article I've ready by Joel Spolsky on the subject, but no hard evidence or case studies. Other than the two examples Joel gave and some other posts here, what do you do with a bad codebase and how do you decide what to do with it based on real studies? For the case in point, there are two clients I know of that both have old legacy code. They keep limping along with it because as one of them found out, a rewrite was a disaster, it was expensive and didn't really work to improve the code much. That customer has some very complicated business logic as the rewriters quickly found out. In both cases, these are mission critical applications that brings in a lot of revenue for the company. The one that attempted the rewrite felt that they would hit a brick wall if the legacy software didn't get upgraded at some point in the future. To me, that kind of risk warrants research and analysis to ensure a successful path. Have there been actual case studies that have investigated this? I wouldn't want to attempt a major rewrite without knowing some best practices, pitfalls, and successes based on actual studies. **Aftermath:** okay, after more searching, I did find three interesting articles on case studies:   1. Rewrite or Reuse. They did a study on a Cobol app that was converted to Java.    2. The other was on Software Reuse: Developers Experiences and Perceptions.   3. Reuse or Rewrite Another study on costs of maintenance versus a rewrite. I recently found another article on the subject: The Great Rewrite. There the author seems to hit on some of the major issues. Along with this was the idea of prototyping by using the proposed new technology stack and measuring how quick the devs picked it up. This was all as a prelude to a rewrite, which I thought was a great idea!"}
{"_id": "138690", "title": "Data structure to use for complex lookups in an event engine?", "text": "What would be an optimal way to organize arbitrary data types into a structure that allows for complex (non-index based) lookups into the data without performing full loop-through's? For a little background, I am not looking for an answer on how to architect an Event engine, rather I am looking for methods to improve a current implementation. With the 5 second tour, I have a architecture in place with the following components,   * Signals - Signals what handles to execute   * Handles - Executes when a signal is received   * Queue - Manages handles   * Engine - Manages the queues and processes signals, new handles etc.. My current implementation has a few pitfalls,   1. Signals are currently coupled into a Queue, this is done so the engine can identify Queues in storage and the signals they represent.   2. There are two separate Queue storages, indexed and non-indexed, index exists for lookups on strings/int's, non-index exists for complex signals such as regex, array comparisons etc.. I think that I may have a solution but would like the thoughts of others that have developed similar systems. With the new architecture I have thought of, it would consist of the following,   1. Queues would store only a \"data\" property rather than a signal which, would be would passed to the engine for signal comparisons.   2. The engine would no longer have non-index and index storage, rather a single storage would be used that would require loop through lookups. The library is written in PHP (if that matters), if you want to see the source it's at http://www.github.com/nwhitingx/prggmr."}
{"_id": "133448", "title": "Unit/Integration Testing my DAL", "text": "So I've done some research on this but I couldn't quite come to a conclusion, so I figured I'd ask you guys to see if I could get some other opinions. All of my database access is currently done through stored procedures. I am going to make no direct calls using custom queries. Because of this, my DAL is going to be pretty simple. It's basically going to just contain a bunch of methods that more or less interface out the different stored procedures in the database. It will always be in sync with the procedures that are there, and never call into the database any other way. I'm not sure if this is the greatest way to do things, and I am aware of the advantages and disadvantages of only using stored procedures, but it's just the way I've chosen. I think it will be the cleanest in the long run. But I want to test this DAL. I want to test this at a low level opposed to only testing it via the Business Objects that are going to be tied to these calls. I figure doing that will give me confidence that the procedures are working correctly, and than at a high level I can just mock this out and test business logic - but I'm fighting with how I test this stuff. If I write unit tests by the book, I would mock out the actual calls to the database and just make sure that they are getting called, or create some stubs or whatever that return fake data and do it that way (both make sure the function is actually called). However, what good is this if the _only_ thing these methods are doing are taking parameters and calling a stored procedure? All my mocks would be doing would be making sure I'm calling the method from the test more or less, and that seems like a huge waste of time and not really that effective. Now if I integration test this stuff, I could be dealing with real test data, real database calls, which is fine, but then it wouldn't be 100% considered a unit test, and since within the Business Objects I'm mocking these calls out, I'd technically never have official unit tests for this stuff, only integration ones. Does this all make sense? Basically, this seems fine to do for me. Have integration tests for the DAL, and have that be the only time the DAL itself is tested. When I unit test the business logic and mock out the DAL, I'd know it handles data correctly, and that would be comforting enough for me. What I'm asking is, am I approaching this correctly? Is there anything else you guys do that I am missing here that would shine some light on this stuff? Any feedback is much appreciated :)"}
{"_id": "80879", "title": "Why does microsoft's own included MVC3 template not follow fat models, skinny controllers?", "text": "**From Microsoft's own built in template for MVC3** The model is extremely skinny, having basically no code. **Model**               public class RegisterModel     {         [Required]         [Display(Name = \"User name\")]         public string UserName { get; set; }              [Required]         [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]         [Display(Name = \"Email address\")]         public string Email { get; set; }              [Required]         [StringLength(100, ErrorMessage = \"The {0} must be at least {2} characters long.\", MinimumLength = 6)]         [DataType(DataType.Password)]         [Display(Name = \"Password\")]         public string Password { get; set; }              [DataType(DataType.Password)]         [Display(Name = \"Confirm password\")]         [Compare(\"Password\", ErrorMessage = \"The password and confirmation password do not match.\")]         public string ConfirmPassword { get; set; }     }      While the Controller on the other hand seems to be fat, doing more that simple routing... **Controller**               [HttpPost]     [AllowAnonymous]     public ActionResult Register(RegisterModel model)     {         if (ModelState.IsValid)         {             // Attempt to register the user             MembershipCreateStatus createStatus;             Membership.CreateUser(model.UserName, model.Password, model.Email, null, null, true, null, out createStatus);                  if (createStatus == MembershipCreateStatus.Success)             {                 FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(model.UserName, false /* createPersistentCookie */);                 return RedirectToAction(\"Index\", \"Home\");             }             else             {                 ModelState.AddModelError(\"\", ErrorCodeToString(createStatus));             }         }              // If we got this far, something failed, redisplay form         return View(model);     }"}
{"_id": "133440", "title": "Is studying more than one programming language as a beginner confusing?", "text": "Intuitively it seems like this might be the case. Is there real research or authoritative anecdotal data (yes, please) supporting (or contradicting) this theory?"}
{"_id": "33036", "title": "Which self balancing binary tree would you recommend?", "text": "I'm learning Haskell and as an exercise I'm making binary trees. Having made a regular binary tree, I want to adapt it to be self balancing. So:   * Which is most efficient?   * Which is easiest to implement?   * Which is most often used? But crucially, which do you recommend? _I assume this belongs here because it's open to debate._"}
{"_id": "236881", "title": "Why do we have to use divs?", "text": "This morning, as I was writing some html and haml, it occurred to me that the way divs are used is ridiculous. Why are divs not implied? Imagine if this:               <div class=\"hero-img\">        <img src=\"http://whatever.com/this.jpg\">     </div>      was this:               <hero-img>        <img src=\"http://whatever.com/this.jpg\">     </hero-img>      If the \"div class\" portion of the element was assumed, HTML would be more semantic, and infinitely more readable with the matching closing tags! This is similar to HAML, where we have:               .content Hello, World!      Which becomes:               <div class='content'>Hello, World!</div>      It seems to me the only thing that would have to happen for this to work in browsers is that the browsers could start interpreting every element without an existing html element definition as implying `<div class=\"<element name>\">`. This could be completely backward compatible; for CSS and jQuery selectors etc, \"div.hero-img\" could still work, and be the required syntax to select the elements. I know about the new web components specification, but that is significantly more complicated than what is suggested here. Can you imagine how pleasant it would be to look at a website's source and see html that looked like that?! So why do we have to use divs? If you look at Mozilla's html5 element list, every element has a semantic meaning, and then we get to `<div>` and it says: \"Represents a generic container with no special meaning.\" ..and then they list the arbitrary elements they are adding to html5 like `<details>`. Of course, if this concept of implied divs was added to the html spec, it would take ten years to become standard, which is a million years in web time. So I figure there must be a good reason this hasn't happened yet. Please, explain it to me!"}
{"_id": "215657", "title": "Are there any significant advantages to using a native language for mobile app development?", "text": "Forgive me if this question has already been answered but I couldn't quite find the answer I was looking for. What I wanted to know was, is there any significant advantage to using a native language when developing and deploying apps to a mobile environment? The reason I ask is for a long while now I've been using Objective-C, Apple's native language for iOS, to build my apps. However I've been wondering whether or not there is any real benefit to doing this, over using a non-native language like JavaScript and then deploying it through a service like 'Phone Gap'? I do stress _'significant'_ advantages as native languages are always more likely to have the upper hand when it comes to speed and access to the latest APIs. However in general I don't see using a non-native language or a service like 'Phone Gap' causing and major slow down to my apps or restricting my development. Additionally having the ability to deploy to multiple services is also very handy indeed. This is why I put the question, are there any significant advantages to using a native language for mobile app development?"}
{"_id": "41195", "title": "Writing a partnership contract for a website", "text": "My boss has offered me a 25% share, in exchange on more input from my side, of a website ( a crawling engine in php and a front end using ajax ) I developed for him. What are the things I should consider in writing the contract so that my share is future proof?"}
{"_id": "41196", "title": "TDD with limited resources", "text": "I work in a large company, but on a just two man team developing desktop LOB applications. I have been researching TDD for quite a while now, and although it is easy to realize its benefits for larger applications, I am having a hard time trying to justify the time to begin using TDD on the scale of our applications. I understand its advantages in automating testing, improving maintainability, etc., but on our scale, writing even basic unit tests for all of our components could easily double development time. Since we are already undermanned with extreme deadlines, I am not sure what direction to take. While other practices such as agile iterative development make perfect since, I am kind of torn over the productivity trade-offs of TDD on a small team. **Are the advantages of TDD worth the extra development time on small teams with very tight schedules?**"}
{"_id": "164244", "title": "Data classes: getters and setters or different method design", "text": "I've been trying to design an interface for a data class I'm writing. This class stores styles for characters, for example whether the character is bold, italic or underlined. But also the font-size and the font-family. So it has different types of member variables. The easiest way to implement this would be to add getters and setters for every member variable, but this just feels wrong to me. It feels way more logical (and more OOP) to call `style.format(BOLD, true)` instead of `style.setBold(true)`. So to use logical methods instead of getters/setters. But I am facing two problems while implementing these methods: I would need a big switch statement with all member variables, since you can't access a variable by the contents of a string in C++. Moreover, you can't overload by return type, which means you can't write one getter like `style.getFormatting(BOLD)` (I know there are some tricks to do this, but these don't allow for parameters, which I would obviously need). However, if I would implement getters and setters, there are also issues. I would have to duplicate quite some code because styles can also have a parent styles, which means the getters have to look not only at the member variables of this style, but also at the variables of the parent styles. Because I wasn't able to figure out how to do this, I decided to ask a question a couple of weeks ago. See Object Oriented Programming: getters/setters or logical names. But in that question I didn't stress it would be just a data object and that I'm not making a text rendering engine, which was the reason one of the people that answered suggested I ask another question while making that clear (because his solution, the decorator pattern, isn't suitable for my problem). So please note that I'm not creating my own text rendering engine, I just use these classes to store data. Because I still haven't been able to find a solution to this problem I'd like to ask this question again: how would you design a styles class like this? And why would you do that?"}
{"_id": "164249", "title": "One page using querystring or many folders and pages?", "text": "I have an application where I have the 'core' code in one folder for which there is a virtual directory in the root, such that I can include any core files using /myApp/core/bla.asp. I then have two folders outside of this with a default.asp which currently use the querystring to define what page should be displayed. One page is for general users, the other will only be accessible to users who have permission to manage users / usergroups / permissions. The core code checks the querystring and then checks the permissions for that user. An example of this as it is now is default.asp?action=view&viewtype=list&objectid=server. I am not worried about SEO as this is an internal app and uses Windows Auth. My question is, is it better the way it is now or would it be better to have something like the following:   * /server/view/list/   * /server/view/?id=123   * /server/create/   * /server/edit/?id=123   * /server/remove/?id=123 In the above folders I would have a home page which defines all the variables which are currently determined by the querystring - in /server/create/ for example, I would define the action as 'create', object name as 'server' and so on. In terms of future development, I really have no idea which method would be best. I think the 2nd method would be best in terms of following what page does what but this is such a huge change to make at this stage that I would really like some opinions, preferably based on experience. PS Sorry if the tags are wrong - I am new to this forum and thought this was a bit too much of a discussion for StackOverflow as that is very much right / wrong answer based. I got the idea SE is more discussion based."}
{"_id": "176336", "title": "C Minishell Command Expansion Printing Gibberish", "text": "I'm writing a unix minishell in C, and am at the point where I'm adding command expansion. What I mean by this is that I can nest commands in other commands, for example:               $> echo hello $(echo world! ... $(echo and stuff))     hello world! ... and stuff      I think I have it working mostly, however it isn't marking the end of the expanded string correctly, for example if I do:               $> echo a $(echo b $(echo c))     a b c     $> echo d $(echo e)     d e c      See it prints the c, even though I didn't ask it to. Here is my code: msh.c - http://pastebin.com/sd6DZYwB expand.c - http://pastebin.com/uLqvFGPw I have a more code, but there's a lot of it, and these are the parts that I'm having trouble with at the moment. I'll try to tell you the basic way I'm doing this. Main is in msh.c, here it gets a line of input from either the commandline or a shellfile, and then calls processline (char *line, int outFD, int waitFlag), where line is the line we just got, outFD is the file descriptor of the output file, and waitFlag tells us whether or not we should wait if we fork. When we call this from main we do it like this:               processline (buffer, 1, 1);      In processline, we allocate a new line:               char expanded_line[EXPANDEDLEN];      We then call expand, in expand.c:               expand(line, expanded_line, EXPANDEDLEN);      In expand, we copy the characters literally from line to expanded_line until we find a $(, which then calls:               static int expCmdOutput(char *orig, char *new, int *oldl_ind, int *newl_ind)      orig is line, and new is expanded line. oldl_ind and newl_ind are the current positions in the line and expanded line, respectively. Then we pipe, and recursively call processline, passing it the nested command(for example, if we had \"echo a $(echo b)\", we would pass processline \"echo b\"). This is where I get confused, each time expand is called, is it allocating a new chunk of memory EXPANDEDLEN long? If so, this is bad because I'll run out of stack room really quickly(in the case of a hugely nested commandline input). In expand I insert a null character at the end of the expanded string, so why is it printing past it? If you guys need any more code, or explanations, just ask. Secondly, I put the code in pastebin because there's a ton of it, and in my experience people don't like it when I fill up several pages with code. Thanks."}
{"_id": "246389", "title": "function naming: plural form of \"if not exists\"", "text": "This is a question about function naming. I am writing some code that updates the structure of a database according to a specification. Somewhere in this code I have something like this:               void createIndices(Table tbl){         for(Index idx : table.getIndices()){             if(notExists(idx)){                 createIndex(idx);             }         }     }          void createIndex(Index idx){         ...     }      As you can see, the function `createIndices` is not well named because it doesn't quite create the indices. It creates only those indices _that do not already exist_. I can come up with a variety of names for the function:   * `createIndicesIfNotExist`   * `createIndicesThatDoNotExist`   * etc. However, because \"if not exists\" is such a recurring idiom in programming, I was wondering if there is some kind of standard for its plural form. Just like `createIndexIfNotExists` could be considered the standard singular form, even if it's not grammatically correct."}
{"_id": "246388", "title": "Wrapping function in closures to make testable functions", "text": "In my nodejs project, I have functions like this for socketio.               socket.on('draw', function (data) {         socket.broadcast.to(socket.room).emit('draw', data);         addEvent(socket, [\"draw\", data]);     });      I'd like to rewrite them to something like this:               function onDraw(socket, config) {         return function (data) {             socket.broadcast.to(socket.room).emit('draw', data);             addEvent(socket, [\"draw\", data]);         }     }          socket.on('draw', onDraw(socket, config));      The idea is that by placing all of my functions in simple closures like this, I can put them in different modules and it will make it easier to test by passing mockup objects to the function that construct the callback. **I was wondering if it was overkill or if there is a better way to make my code testable?**"}
{"_id": "5225", "title": "Does open source licensing my code limit me later?", "text": "Suppose I develop a useful library and decide to publish it as open source. Some time later I have a business need to do something that wouldn't comply with the open source licence. Am I allowed to do that? How should I publish the software in a way that I keep ownership and don't block myself from using the library in the future in any way? Keep in mind that at least in theory, other developers may decide to contribute to my open-source project. Can I specify in a licence that I as the original developer get ownership of their contributions as well? Don't get me wrong here, I'm not trying to be evil and get ownership of other's work - I just want to keep ownership of mine, and if someone posts an important bugfix I could be rendered unable to use the original code unless I use his work as well."}
{"_id": "70326", "title": "How viable is a PhD in software security research?", "text": "I am planning to do a Ph.D in software security. My school is giving a full scholarship for \"Detecting security vulnerabilities from source code and binary code\" project. Is is worth taking it? I feel software security is a bit saturated field, I mean there are already lots of software vulnerability detection tools available in the market. Is this still a viable research field? Is software security a solved problem?"}
{"_id": "205381", "title": "Is R6RS backwards compatible with R5RS?", "text": "Is the new Scheme standard, R6RS which was published in 2007, backwards compatible with the older standard R5RS? If not, is there a compatibility mode in R6RS?"}
{"_id": "237136", "title": "Is it a good practice to decouple the membership system?", "text": "Currently I'm developing a project that basically is built with ASP.NET Web API. The membership system I'm using is ASP.NET Identity. The only problem I'm seeing with this is that the membership system is being highly coupled with the API I'm bulding. In that case I've thought on bulding interfaces to expose the membership system functionalities the app needs and then use dependency injection to inject the current Identity system. The only thing is that on all the time I've been looking on the internet about authentication and authorization in ASP.NET I've never seem this done. So I've started to wonder whether this is or not a good practice. Is this a good practice or no? If not, why?"}
{"_id": "175141", "title": "How do you handle objects that need custom behavior, and need to exist as an entity in the database?", "text": "For a simple example, assume your application sends out notifications to users when various events happen. So in the database I might have the following tables:               TABLE Event         EventId uniqueidentifier         EventName varchar          TABLE User         UserId uniqueidentifier         Name varchar          TABLE EventSubscription         EventUserId         EventId         UserId      The events themselves are generated by the program. So there are hard-coded points in the application where an event instance is generated, and it needs to notify all the subscribed users. So, the application itself doesn't edit the `Event` table, except during initial installation, and during an update where a new `Event` might be created. At some point, when an event is generated, the application needs to lookup the `Event` and get a list of `User`s. What's the best way to link the event in the source code to the event in the database? ## Option 1: Store the `EventName` in the program as a fixed constant, and look it up by name. ## Option 2: Store the `EventId` in the program as a static `Guid`, and look it up by ID. ## Extra Credit In other similar circumstances I may want to include custom behavior with the event type. That is, I'll want subclasses of my `Event` entity class with different behaviors, and when I lookup an event, I want it to return an instance of my subclass. For instance:               class Event     {         public Guid Id { get;  }         public Guid EventName { get;  }         public ReadOnlyCollection<EventSubscription> EventSubscriptions { get; }         public void NotifySubscribers()         {             foreach(var eventSubscription in EventSubscriptions)             {                 eventSubscription.Notify();             }             this.OnSubscribersNotified();         }         public virtual void OnSubscribersNotified() {}     }          class WakingEvent : Event     {         private readonly IWaker waker;         public WakingEvent(IWaker waker)         {             if(waker == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"waker\");             this.waker = waker;         }              public override void OnSubscribersNotified()         {             this.waker.Wake();             base.OnSubscribersNotified();         }     }      So, that means I need to map `WakingEvent` to whatever key I'm using to look it up in the database. Let's say that's the `EventId`. Where do I store this relationship? Does it go in the event repository class? Should the `WakingEvent` know declare its own ID in a static member or method? ...and then, is this all backwards? If all events have a subclass, then instead of retrieving events by ID, should I be asking my repository for the `WakingEvent` like this:               public T GetEvent<T>() where T : Event     {         ...         // what goes here?         ...     }      I can't be the first one to tackle this. What's the best practice?"}
{"_id": "138343", "title": "Is it a good practice to use Auto Format the text?", "text": "I'm using Eclipse and I will talk about it as an example but I am sure that this is the case in any other IDE. Eclipse has the `CTRL`-`Shift`-`F` command which automatically formats your code. Is it a good practice to use this kind of formatting? I'm asking in the context of a big project in which there may be many programmers working on the same files and all these are administrated by a CSV system. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "175143", "title": "Brief explanation for executables in a GNU/Clang Toolchain?", "text": "I roughly understand that cc, ld and other parts are called in a certain sequence according to schemes like Makefiles etc. Some of those commands are used to generate those configs and Makefiles. And some other tools are used to deal with libraries. But what are other parts used for? How are they called in this process? Which tool would use various parser generators? Which part is optional? Why? Is there a brief summary get these explained on how the tools in a GNU or LLVM/Clang toolchain are organised and called in a C/C++ project building? Thanks in advance. EDIT: Here is a list of executables for Clang/LLVM on Mac OS X: ar clang dsymutil gperf libtool nmedit rpcgen unwinddump as clang++ dwarfdump gprof lorder otool segedit vgrind asa cmpdylib dyldinfo indent m4 pagestuff size what bison codesign_allocate flex install_name_tool mig ranlib strip yacc c++ ctags flex++ ld mkdep rebase unifdef cc ctf_insert gm4 lex nm redo_prebinding unifdefall"}
{"_id": "179647", "title": "tips, guidelines, points to remember for rendering professional code?", "text": "I'm talking about giving clients professional looking code. The whole nine yards, everything you hardcore professional highly experienced programmers here probably do when coding freelance or for the company you work in. I'm fresh out of college and I'm going into freelance. I just want to be sure that my first few projects leave a good after-taste of professionalism imprinted on the clients' minds. When I Googled what I'm asking here, I was given pages that showed various websites and tools that let you make flashy websites and templates etc. The `$N package` and such stuff. I can't recall the word experts use for it. Standard, framework [I know that's not it]. English isn't my first language so I'm sorry I don't really don't know the exact phrase for it. That abstract way of writing code so that you don't come across as a sloppy programmer. That above mentioned way for programming **websites and desktop software [in python/C/C++/Java]**. EDIT: I can work on the accruing vast knowledge and know-how and logic building etc. what I'm asking for is the programming standard/guidelines you guys follow so that the client on seeing code feels that its a professional solution. Like comment blocks, a particular indentation style something like that. Is there any book on it or specific list of points for enterprise type coding by them? Especially here as in my case, for building websites [php for now..], and desktop software [c/c++/java/python]"}
{"_id": "175146", "title": "Should tests be in the same Ruby file or in separated Ruby files?", "text": "While using Selenium and Ruby to do some functional tests, I am worried with the performance. So is it better to add all test methods in the same Ruby file, or I should put each one in separated code files? Below a sample with all tests in the same file:               # encoding: utf-8     require \"selenium-webdriver\"     require \"test/unit\"          class Tests < Test::Unit::TestCase              def setup             @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :firefox             @base_url = \"http://mysite\"             @driver.manage.timeouts.implicit_wait = 30             @verification_errors = []             @wait = Selenium::WebDriver::Wait.new :timeout => 10         end                   def teardown             @driver.quit             assert_equal [], @verification_errors         end              def element_present?(how, what)             @driver.find_element(how, what)             true             rescue Selenium::WebDriver::Error::NoSuchElementError             false         end              def verify(&blk)             yield             rescue Test::Unit::AssertionFailedError => ex             @verification_errors << ex         end              def test_1                  @driver.get(@base_url + \"/\")             # a huge test here              end              def test_2                  @driver.get(@base_url + \"/\")             # a huge test here              end              def test_3                  @driver.get(@base_url + \"/\")             # a huge test here              end              def test_4                  @driver.get(@base_url + \"/\")             # a huge test here              end              def test_5                  @driver.get(@base_url + \"/\")             # a huge test here              end     end"}
{"_id": "175147", "title": "Alternate method to dependent, nested if statements to check multiple states", "text": "Is there an easier way to process multiple true/false states than using nested if statements? I think there is, and it would be to create a sequence of states, and then use a function like `when` to determine if all states were true, and drop out if not. I am asking the question to make sure there is not a preferred Clojure way to do this. Here is the background of my problem: I have an application that depends on quite a few input files. The application depends on .csv data reports; column headers for each report (.csv files also), so each sequence in the sequence of sequences can be zipped together with its columns for the purposes of creating a smaller sequence; and column files for output data. I use the following functions to find out if a file is present:               (defn kind [filename]       (let [f (File. filename)]         (cond           (.isFile f)      \"file\"           (.isDirectory f) \"directory\"           (.exists f)      \"other\"            :else            \"(cannot be found)\" )))          (defn look-for        [filename expected-type]         (let [find-status (kind-stat filename expected-type)]           find-status))      And here are the first few lines of a multiple if which looks ugly and is hard to maintain:               (defn extract-re-values       \"Plain old-fashioned sub-routine to process real-estate values / 3rd Q re bills extract.\"       [opts]       (if (= (utl/look-for (:ifm1 opts) \"f\") 0)             ; got re columns?         (if (= (utl/look-for (:ifn1 opts) \"f\") 0)           ; got re data?           (if (= (utl/look-for (:ifm3 opts) \"f\") 0)         ; got re values output columns?             (if (= (utl/look-for (:ifm4 opts) \"f\") 0)       ; got re_mixed_use_ratio columns?               (let [re-in-col-nams  (first (utl/fetch-csv-data (:ifm1 opts)))                     re-in-data      (utl/fetch-csv-data (:ifn1 opts))                     re-val-cols-out (first (utl/fetch-csv-data (:ifm3 opts)))                     mu-val-cols-out (first (utl/fetch-csv-data (:ifm4 opts)))                     chk-results     (utl/chk-seq-len re-in-col-nams (first re-in-data) re-rec-count)]      I am not looking for a discussion of the best way, but what is in Clojure that facilitates solving a problem like this."}
{"_id": "178511", "title": "Why is heap size fixed on JVMs?", "text": "Can anyone explain to me why JVMs (I didn't check too many, but I've never seen one that didn't do it that way) need to run on a fixed heap size? I know it's easier to implement on a simple contiguous heap, but the Sun JVM is now over a decade old, so I'd expect them to have had time to improve this. Needing to define the maximum memory size of your program at startup time seems such a 1960s thing to do, and then there are the bad interactions with OS virtual memory management (GC retrieving swapped out data, inability to determine how much memory the Java process is _really_ using from the OS side, huge amounts of VM space wasted (I know, you don't care on your fancy 48bit machines...)). I also guess that the various sad attempts to build small operating systems inside the JVM (EE application servers, OSGi) are at least partially to blame on this circumstance, because running multiple Java processes on a system invariably leads to wasted resources because you have to give each of them the memory it might have to use at peak. Surprisingly, Google didn't yield the storms of outrage over this that I would expect, but they may just have been buried under the millions of people finding out about fixed heap size and just accepting it for a fact."}
{"_id": "162951", "title": "My work isn't being used... what can/ should I do?", "text": "Several months ago I was approached by a small business, who had seen my work previously and asked me to create a website for them. Since then, the website hasn't changed one bit and I haven't heard a word from them. This sucks for them as they paid for a website and haven't used it. It''s frustrating for me because I spent a huge amount of time on the website and feel that all of that effort has been wasted, furthermore, I don't feel I can use the website on my portfolio/ CV. I was _thinking_ of offering to go round to their office for one day, and update the website for them then and there; but I'd need their support whilst there (to get the content for the about page, to get information for on their products etc.) and I don't want to disrupt their work day, nor do I want to sit there like a spare tyre and get nowhere. Furthermore, if I were to do this, should I expect to receive money for it? It's a day of my life, but I'm doing it for my benefit rather than theirs (but they benefit as well). Has anyone else had experience of a client not using their product; how did you handle it? **Additional background for those who want it:** The company is a local travel agent, and the website lets them CRUD offers and locations, and has several other static pages (about, contact, etc.) At the time of creating the website, I filled the static pages with lipsum, and the offers and locations with fake information, so that I could give the business an idea about what the final pages would look like; during the hand over, I guided them through the CRUD forms (they made notes) and said if they sent me the text for the pages, I'd update it."}
{"_id": "162956", "title": "How to manage scripting language file (Python, for example)?", "text": "I am writing python, but I find that the I can put all the script files on the directory, but it seems very messy. So, is there any conventions in the community to deal with the script files? Thanks."}
{"_id": "162955", "title": "How to translate formulas into form of natural language?", "text": "I am recently working on a project aiming at evaluating whether an android app crashes or not. The evaluation process is                 1.Collect the logs(which record the execution process of an app).       2.Generate formulas to predict the result         (formulas is generated by GP)       3.Evaluate the logs by formulas             Now I can produce formulas, but for convenience for users, I want to translate formulas into form of natural language and tell users why crash happened.(I think it looks like \"inverse natural language processing\".) To explain the idea more clearly, imagine you got a formula like this:                 155 - count(onKeyDown) >= 148      It's obvious that if count(onKeyDown) > 7, the result of \"155 - count(onKeyDown) >= 148\" is false, so the log contains more than 7 onKeyDown event would be predicted \"Failed\". I want to show users that if onKeyDown event appears more than 7 times(155-148=7), this app will crash. However, the real formula is much more complicated, such as:                 (< !( ( SUM( {Att[17]}, Event[5]) <= MAX( {Att[7]}, Att[0] >= Att[11]) OR SUM( {Att[17]}, Event[5]) > MIN( {Att[12]}, 734 > Att[19]) ) OR count(Event[5]) != 1 ) > (< count(Att[4] = Att[3]) >= count(702 != Att[8]) + 348 / SUM( {Att[13]}, 641 < Att[12]) mod 587 - SUM( {Att[13]}, Att[10] < Att[15]) mod MAX( {Att[13]}, Event[2]) + 384 > count(Event[10]) != 1))      I tried to implement this function by C++, but it's quite difficult, here's the snippet of code I am working right now. Does anyone knows how to implement this function quickly?(maybe by some tools or research findings?)Any idea is welcomed: ) Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "17945", "title": "About compilers, coding, large code bases, and some other stuff too", "text": "This is not purely a programming question. I work in a large company. We have lots of code written in C++ language:   1. Multiple simultaneous projects in progress and implementations that have to be supported.   2. Multiple code paths due to first reason. Some are ~10 years old.   3. Multiple target platforms. Most of the code has to be standard. Compiler specific code is frowned upon.(Which is a good thing I suppose)   4. A large number of processes (>30 easily) each having in excess of 10k lines even in the smaller processes.   5. Multiple developers per process, multiple processes per developer, multiple owners for a process over time(Who may now be unavailable as some processes have had a fair number of owners). This means there is no definite authority on a process for some processes.    6. Not all functionality of all the processes are used all the time. There may exist many bugs in your process you don't know about simply because you haven't come across a situation where a certain branch of code is executed at runtime. Eliminating all these are not so easy.   7. Timeline constraints and allocation to multiple projects and multiple processes mean that developers are usually left with no choice rather than to make do with existing code and try and work around limitations rather than to radically change the coding of a process so that it can be much better.   8. Most processes are performance critical. This is a huge incentive for people to adhere to C style coding and shy away from OOP.   9. templates, STL and metaprogramming usage is near to non-existent.   10. Use of third party libraries is next to impossible. i.e. No Boost! Oracle is an exception.    11. Basic functionalities needed are implemented in libraries which expose C like interfaces which make you look like an idiot if you are trying to write something in OOP or using templates because every time you use them, you have to wrap them up to hide the C like interface or just forget about the whole thing and do C like coding yourself. Not to mention additional bugs you may introduce by trying to wrap. The libraries themselves have been heavily used and are quite reliable in most cases. So the natural inclination is to go with them in a time constrained project.   12. People are not very receptive to new ideas. I do not have **ANY** idea how to remedy this. I myself am curious and willing to try out new stuff. I find it hard to accept when other people don't. Especially when those people are not in managerial positions. Management decisions I can tolerate even if I don't agree. But what is there to do about decadence in developers? Q1: What are the questions I should be asking myself? Please note that I love C++, and I have no intention whatsoever of quitting my job because the company is great. And it's the best in my country. Q2: What are the ways I can, and help others improve? Q3: I had this discussion with a dev lead about upgrading our compiler to the newer version because it has a lot of nice features in c++0x and I thought the sooner we try to adjust to those, the better. His concern was the risk associated with it. Reasoning:   1. Do we really need those features?   2. Our current main OS does not support for compiler version XXX. Of course we can always use XXX, but if something goes wrong the OS can say \"Hey, we don't support that!\".   3. It has to be a gradual process not an overnight one. (In my opinion this implies that we should always be a couple of years or more behind the current front) I know this is not a \"yes no question\", but what is the correct approach to this problem? Q4: Are all or some of the above stupid questions? Thanks for any feedback. p.s. Writing this has also made me realize stuff that had not occurred to me before. So I guess it would not go to waste if someone were to close this even without a single answer (Which I hope will not happen). :)"}
{"_id": "17947", "title": "How do you rate Hosting?", "text": "1) Up-time   2) Latency   3) Throughput   4) Server software such as SQL, etc.   5) $$$ -- transfer, overages, etc. What else? And is there a web site rating hosts by this criteria that is actually reliable and not simply a dishonest advertising site... or do you guys have any recommendations? (BTW, someone with 150+ rep should create \"hosting\" and \"web hosting\" tags.)"}
{"_id": "196212", "title": "How can I make being code reviewed by someone who doesn't know the language easier?", "text": "I'm in a team where I am the only Java developer. The rest of the team are VERY experienced in their own programming language, but their area of expertise is not object orientated. I found the first time that I had a code review, it was a lengthy process that involved a lot of tangents about how Java works, or how OOP works etc. The second time, we got caught up on something and they had to bail as it was taking too long. **How can I make this process easier**?   I desperately want my code reviewed as I myself am quite new to Java programming, and really to programming in general, but this is taking a long time (especially as, for instance I'm writing quite large chunks of code by refactoring old code that the last Java dev worked on)."}
{"_id": "207168", "title": "Internal exposure of implementation details on inheritance", "text": "I'm reading the \"Effective Java\" book which suggests to favor composition over inheritance. The example it gives shows something like this:               public class InstrumentedHashSet<E> extends HashSet<E> {          // The number of attempted element insertions           private int addCount = 0;               public InstrumentedHashSet() { }               public InstrumentedHashSet(int initCap, float loadFactor) {              super(initCap, loadFactor);          }               @Override public boolean add(E e) {              addCount++;              return super.add(e);          }               @Override public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends E> c) {              addCount += c.size();              return super.addAll(c);          }               public int getAddCount() {              return addCount;         }     }      This presents a problem because the implementation of `addAll` in `HashSet` uses the method `add`. So, when calling `addAll` each new elements is counted twice - once in `addAll` and once in `add`. In the next chapter it is explained that if we choose to allow extending our class we should explicitly explain the inner working of our methods that use overridable methods (meaning - in the `addAll` documentation we should specify its use of `add` and commit to this implementation **forever** ). I think that a better practice would be to decide that each method that is both an overridable, API method and also used by inner implementation should be extracted to an inner, private method. So Our ideal `HashSet` would have these methods:               public class HashSet<E> implements Set<E> {          // Ignore irrelevant code                    @Override public boolean add(E e) {              // The new add implementation only wraps the innerAdd method              return innerAdd(e);          }               @Override public boolean addAll(Collection<? extends E> c) {             // Do the same logic as before but use innerAdd instead of add          }               private boolean innerAdd(E e) {              // The original add logic will be moved to here          }     }      This way we encapsulate inner implementation and allow extending the class without fearing to override a method which is used by inner implementation. Of course that we can use the original add as before because by calling `super.add(e)` we de-facto use the `innerAdd` so that's not a problem. I would like to know whether this might be a good practice (not for `HashSet<E>` which is already committed to the code that use it, but to new classes that are meant to be overriden)?"}
{"_id": "196211", "title": "How to maintain the 'LICENSE' file?", "text": "Many projects on Github comprise a `LICENSE` file, usually looking like:               Copyright (C) 2012-2013 Mr. Creator          Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:          ...etc...      My problems are:   1. If I create a project, should I add the name of every single contributor in `LICENSE`?   2. If I fork other's project, should I add my name in its `LICENSE`?   3. What if I add some files under another license?"}
{"_id": "246038", "title": "Is hadoop designed only for \"simple\" data processing jobs, where communications between the distributed nodes are sparse?", "text": "I am not a professional coder, but rather an engineer/mathematician that uses computer to solve numerical problems. So far most of my problems are math- related, such as solving large scale linear systems, perform linear algebra operations, fft, mathematical optimization etc.. At smaller scale, these are best handled by Matlab (and similar high-level math packages). At large scale, however, I have to resort to old-fashioned (and VERY TEDIOUS) lower-level languages such as Fortran or C/C++. That is not all, when the problem become excessively large, parallelization becomes necessary, and MPI in that regard is a nightmare to wrestle through. I have been hearing about hadoop and \"big data\" recently on a regular basis. But my impression was hadoop is NOT a general-purpose parallel computing paradigm, in the sense that it handles data that need minimal mutual communications (correct me if I am wrong). For example, in a general LA operation on a large data set distributed among many nodes, rather than processing one's own piece of data independently, each node must communicate with EVERY other node to send/get info before it's own data can be correctly processed, and the whole data set is updated only after ALL communications have been done. I hope I made my point clear: in numerical applications, data- processing is naturally GLOBAL, and the \"graph\" for communication often is a FULL GRAPH (though there ARE exceptions). My question is, is hadoop suitable for such purpose, or is it only designed for \"simple\" data processing jobs, where communications between the distributed nodes are sparse?"}
{"_id": "94931", "title": "Did eastern PKUFFT algorithm beat FFTW3 (Fastest FFT on the west) 20 fold?", "text": "I wonder if PKUFFT is Chinese algorithm/library and is it really better than FFTW, MKL ? Thank you Edit: I will elaborate. My personal programmers interest is in fast parallel algorithms like FFTW3, which was my favorite until I stumbled upon chinese claim of superior run with PKUFFT. It is on google, if you search for FFTW3, Intel MKL, GPU and things. I dont know anything about this library, but I would be very interested to learn. I can guess PKU stands for Peking Univ. There is nothing on web except presentation and mentioning of some commonly available hardware (GPU, infiniband, etc.). everything, including compilers was available for years. The improvement of 2000% is significant. The news are 1 year old. But no details about algorithm itself. It will be interesting to know if there is genuine discovery in algebra, or just technical effect with unfair advantage of knowing specific platform better than competing teams."}
{"_id": "56772", "title": "Checking out systems programming, what should I learn, using what resources?", "text": "I have done some hobby application development, but now I'm interested in checking out systems programming (mainly operating systems, Linux kernel etc.). I know low-level languages like C, and I know minimal amounts of x86 Assembly (should I improve on it?). What resources/books/websites/projects etc. do you recommend for one to get started with systems programming and what topics are important? Note that I know close to nothing about the subject, so whatever resources you suggest should be introductory resources. I still know what the subject _is_ and what it includes etc., but I have not done systems programming before (but some application development, as previously noted, and I'm familiar with a bunch of programming languages as well as software engineering in general and algorithms, data structures etc.)."}
{"_id": "254077", "title": "What are steps in making an operating system in C ?", "text": "I am trying to make an my own OS. This is for educational purpose only, so that I get to understand the internals as well as get a good idea of low level programming. I have some prior application development experience in C#/python/C++/C. I am a noob in assembly language(very less experience and knowledge). I understand that in writing an operating system,we can't go without assembly language. Currently, I have just printed a string in assembly language in the boot sector using qemu and BIOS interrupts.   What I want is that, can someone specifically point out the steps that I need to follow to make my operating systems run C programs. So that, I can start writing my OS in C.   Any other piece of advice to help a newbie, regarding the same is also welcome. Although, I have looked into many os development related tutorials/websites, I can't seem to find this information anywhere."}
{"_id": "246034", "title": "Power of 2 and performance in SQL Server", "text": "Many mathematical operation (such as division, multiplication, etc.) are supposed to be computed faster when dealing with power of two numbers (C++, C#?, ...) For instance 15 * 256 = 0x0e right shifted (fast) 8 bits = 0x0e00 = 3840   Whereas 15 * 255 = 0x0e multiplied by (slow) 0xff = 0x0ef1 = 3825 Does this kind of optimization even happen in SQL Server? I don't think there are, I tried measuring a difference of execution time of queries such as those:               SET STATISTICS TIME ON          SELECT         AVG(N / 256)     FROM DBO.V_VIRTUAL_NUMBERS     WHERE N < 1048576               SELECT         AVG(N / 255)     FROM DBO.V_VIRTUAL_NUMBERS     WHERE N < 1000000          SET STATISTICS TIME OFF      which resulted in:                SQL Server Execution Times:        CPU time = 0 ms,  elapsed time = 0 ms.     SQL Server parse and compile time:         CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 0 ms.          (1 row(s) affected)           SQL Server Execution Times:        CPU time = 203 ms,  elapsed time = 207 ms.           SQL Server Execution Times:        CPU time = 0 ms,  elapsed time = 0 ms.     SQL Server parse and compile time:         CPU time = 0 ms, elapsed time = 0 ms.          (1 row(s) affected)           SQL Server Execution Times:        CPU time = 218 ms,  elapsed time = 206 ms."}
{"_id": "122267", "title": "What would be the prototype of printf?", "text": "look at these calls closely:               printf(\"hello, world\\n\");     printf(\"%d\", 2);     printf(\"%d%g\\n\", 2, 2.3);      we see that printf can accept any type and any number of args. however we know that functions in c only take fixed length args and should have a compatible prototype to match the arg. what would be the prototype of printf ?"}
{"_id": "83994", "title": "Setting up CI with [Jenkins, TeamCity, etc] - which source code control?", "text": "I am bound and determined to setup CI at work. I have played with Jenkins, and will download TeamCity when I get home (damn you work enforced download filters!) I have no IT support, and only so much spare time. My main question: Can Jenkins or TeamCity integrate with git or mercurial repositories that exist only on a shared drive rather than a true server (via http, https, ssh, etc)? I would like to use a DVCS with my CI setup, but would also be ok with settling on SVN because it is familiar, and already setup (but no projects to migrate if I decide on a DVCS). I am familiar with the benefits of DVCS and I don't think they will come into play very often in my current environment. My CI will live on a plain Windows XP box on the network. Given the above, will it be fairly easy to integrate either Jenkins or TeamCity with git/mercurial, or should I just stick with SVN as it is more or less ready to go?"}
{"_id": "252209", "title": "Rule order for Parsing Lists with LALR(1)", "text": "When creating the grammar for parsing a list (something like \u201c`ITEM*`\u201d) with a LALR(1) parser, this basically can be done in two ways:               list         : list ITEM         |         ;      or               list         : ITEM list         |         ;      What are the pros and cons of these two possibilities? In general, can an advice be given which one to choose, or does this depend on the complete grammar? What about the case \u201c`ITEM+`\u201d, i.e.               list         : list ITEM         | ITEM         ;      and               list         : ITEM list         | ITEM         ;      Do the same pros and cons apply here, or others?"}
{"_id": "123797", "title": "C++ and system exceptions", "text": "Why standard C++ doesn't respect system (foreign or hardware) exceptions? E.g. when null pointer dereference occurs, stack isn't unwound, destructors aren't called, and RAII doesn't work. The common advice is \"to use system API\". But on certain systems, specifically Win32, this doesn't work. To enable stack unwinding for this C++ code               // class Foo;     // void bar(const Foo&);     bar(Foo(1, 2));      one should generate something like this C code               Foo tempFoo;     Foo_ctor(&tempFoo);     __try {         bar(&tempFoo);     }     __finally {         Foo_dtor(&tempFoo);     }     Foo_dtor(&tempFoo);      and it's impossible to implement this as C++ library. * * * **Upd:** Standard doesn't forbid handling system exceptions. But it seems that popular compilers like **g++** doesn't respect system exceptions on _any_ platforms just because standard doesn't require this. The only thing that I want - is to use RAII to make code readable and program reliable. I don't want to put hand-crafted try\\finally around every call to unknown code. For example in this reusable code, `AbstractA::foo` is such unknown code:               void func(AbstractA* a, AbstractB* b) {         TempFile file;         a->foo(b, file);     }      Maybe one will pass to `func` such implementation of `AbstractA`, which every Friday will not check if `b` is NULL, so access violation will happen, application will terminate and temporary file will not be deleted. How many months uses will suffer because of this issue, until either author of `func` or author of `AbstractA` will do something with it? * * * Related: Is `catch(...) { throw; }` a bad practice?"}
{"_id": "123794", "title": "Reasonable to use different version controls for different parts of a web application?", "text": "I am contemplating a few different techniques for organizing code for a larger web application. For this situation, the server runs some Microsoft solution (probably ASP.NET MVC or OpenRasta) and the client (JavaScript, CSS, etc.) will consume this. Traditionally in an MVC application, the controllers and models along with the client codebase all live in the same project/solution. Our current solutions use TFS for source control. I want to start using Sass and Compass for the front-end, which will require Ruby, and I would like to use git for the version control of the front-end and continue to use TFS for the server components. The problem I have is that in order for someone to run the solution, you would need to pull from both repositories, and I am not sure if that is reasonable. Would you attempt something like this? Can you think of a better way for the projects to be structured so that front-end is separated from back-end? If I have not explained this well enough I will be happy to elaborate."}
{"_id": "252204", "title": "Extending database model of ORM in subproject", "text": "I have a maven project which contains some entities which are stored in a database. The purpose of this project is to manage personal information, users, locations, etc. This project can work on its own. I also have a project which depends on the first which imports data into the database. But it's more than a simple import so it needs additional information to these entities. This information is only needed if it's imported data otherwise it is not set. ## The problem The problem is that I don't know how to \"attach\" this information to the entities in the first project without declaring them there. It wouldn't make sense to declare them there because the y don't belong there and it would just mix two domains. Putting both projects into one is not an option either because both are already big and still growing. ## Approach to the problem One approach I was thinking of is to use another entity which contains all information needed in the importer project and associate it with the original entity. This would almost work but it would create a terrible database model which I would never create if I wouldn't use an ORM. I'm starting to think if I even should use a ORM because of the ORM I use (Hibernate) I also had to make several changes of the design to the worse just because the ORM doesn't support it (using the Null Object Pattern or Interface segregation principle, for example)."}
{"_id": "252207", "title": "Menu building pattern", "text": "I'm having troubles getting my head around the active-state handling of a menu when the menu isn't used for routing. I come from Drupal where the menu system handles the routing as well. so setting active state and active-trail state is handled by the route (that acts as a menu rendereing system aswell). Now, a lot of PHP frameworks have Router classes that handle the routing. This seems a good seperation since a Menu should not be aware of POST || OPTIONS || ... requests. But when writing the frontend, I found myself hardcoding the menu. Or storing everything in the DB and passing those values to a view. What I don't like of this approach is that you are kind of creating a copy of what you allready wrote in your Router but now using the Menu class. An example:               Route::get('/somewhere','routename.somewhere','showStuffController');     Route::post('/somewhere','routename.somewhere','saveStuffController');          Menu::add('label.somewhere','routename.somewhere');      You are seperating concerns here, so that is nice. But Menu depends heavily in Route to set it's active state. Menu will also have to know about hierarchy to set active-trail. So yes, setting active trail, and active status classes is actually a view thing. But having               if ( Route::currentName() === $menuitem->getRouteName() ) { print 'active'; }      allover your views seems stupid. Then add all those noying active-trail if's and its a real bloat. Handling that before the view get renders and setting a active-trail flag to true just seems so ugly the way I do it know (a foreach looping over all children that loop over all children, ...) My question is: Is there a pattern or a smart way to get this cleaner, better, ... ? How should one handle the active-trail 'problem'? I was thinking of rendering child -> parent. So start of ad the deepest level and then work my way up. But then the child knows about it's parent but the parent knows nothing about his children (seems weird)."}
{"_id": "252203", "title": "Why do we need to serialize data using a serialization framework e.g. avro", "text": "In this book, the author is using avro to serialize data before it is being processed by pig. What I don't understand is, why we need to do it using a serialization framework like avro? Why don't we just use json as the serialization data format? This way we can just use serializer/deserializer library in a language e.g. `data.json` in clojure."}
{"_id": "118501", "title": "From Delphi to C# for Dummies", "text": "I'm a Delphi and C# coder and have been given the assignment to introduce the most fundamental concepts of .Net/C# to my coworkers in some trainings. They are seasoned Delphi Win32 coders but still use an fairly old version, so they aren't familiar with some language features which are commonplace today like generics and they never used .Net before. Now I'm thinking about the best way to tackle this. Which are the most predominant topics I should cover? I will have maybe 1-2 days for this so I can't delve into specifics too far but have to give them a good birds eye view especially of the features that will matter to them. I plan to emphasize the differences to Delphi, I think this will help them. I'd like to build a small Zoo-application and add something to it for every step I explain. So they can have a look at the created examples later whenever they want. My topics so far:   * Short introduction of .Net, CLI, CLR   * Short introduction of Visual Studio   * Showing class/object equivalents, inheritance, creating some objects Animal->Cat->Tiger, explaining Namespace on the way   * Garbage Collection and Interfaces (very different from Delphi), Bird gets ICanFly   * Events / Delegates (short multicast example), Ape calls all other apes because he found a bunch of bananas or something like that   * Generics, creating generic animal list   * LINQ, query animals by categories   * Parallel Task Libary, the same but this time multithreaded Some topics I'm not sure I should include:   * Attributes   * Operator Overloading   * Anonymous Methods / Lambdas   * Nullable Types   * Reflection   * P/Invoke Maybe this should be delayed to a second session, maybe its too much for the beginning, I'm not sure. I'm also undecided if I should include the coming asynchrony functionality in .Net 4.5. Maybe this is premature. Then I will have to introduce WPF but I think this should be a question for itself."}
{"_id": "66919", "title": "Should every front-end developer understand the basic aspects of design?", "text": "I'd say that we're developing software in a world where the front-end of an application is probably the most important. The increasing ability for a user to access and interact with software almost instantly in the cloud is making the first few minutes of user interaction crucial in determining whether the application will get any further attention, making UI design and the \"intuitiveness\" of the application extremely important factors. As a developer, I've never really appreciated the important of the design of my applications. I usually write the code that works, and take advice from either a graphics designer or project leader on ways to improve the usability / look of the app. But maybe this isn't the way to develop any more. I can't help but wonder the time and resources wasted on a developer being told by a graphics designer to move a button 2 pixels to the left (for example) when, if that developer had a basic understanding of software front-end design, they'd be able to make the decision themselves. I can understand large design decisions, such as the overall look of an application and the global fonts used etc, are all jobs that should be done by someone with the appropriate knowledge of such an arena, but should we, as the developers of the front-end, know enough of design theory to be able to make smaller design decisions by ourselves?   * Should the front-end design of software and some basics of user interaction be taught alongside the current programming package?    * What level of knowledge should a developer expect to have in regards to user interaction & design?   * Should an understanding of design hold a higher ground than it does at present in the context of resum\u00e9s and qualifications? The subject is somewhat of a hobby for me, I find it fascinating studying users' interaction with a program, but it should it be part of the core of software development? Just to clarify, when I talk about \"design\" I'm talking about front-end design, rather than the design of the software architecture (something which every developer should understand)."}
{"_id": "238372", "title": "Auto Create VM and display IE", "text": "I have just acciquired an old Dell Poweredge SC1425 from an old friend, this server will act as a development box for web based applications. All has been going well, I have installed the following packages onto the system. **Packages**   1. Apache2   2. PHP5 (including MCrypt & PHP5-JSON)   3. MySQL   4. SSH Server & Client   5. Git & Subversion   6. SFTP Server   7. VirtualBox   8. Node.JS   9. Python   10. Buildlibs (g++, build essentials, fakeroot, make, checkinstall)   11. WebMin   12. Samba The server is running Debian 7 64bit with the included packages above, I have setup some virtual machines (Windows XP & Windows 7) and what I would like to do is when the user starts the VM I want the OS to start Internet Explorer automatically. The reason why is so that i can test my web based applications on older OS's and browsers. After the user has finished with the box or mistakenly left it switch on for X amount of time, I would like the VM to shutdown automatically and also wipe any data which was added during that session. Am not sure if what I am asking can be done so I thought I would ask."}
{"_id": "232601", "title": "How to Think like a computer Scientist. Chapter 3, Question 2", "text": "http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/thinkcspy/PythonTurtle/helloturtle.html I'm stuck on question 3. Give three attributes of your cellphone object. Give three methods of your cellphone. This is just a intro question. We haven't created a cellphone class, so I don't know how to instantiate a cellphone object yet (Is this the right lingo?). Can someone help me with what are looking for? How do I find the properties and methods of the cellphone object? Is the question just asking for possible future properties of my cellphone? Is it just assuming that I will create some code that will allow me to change the properties of my phone? So all I need to do is list 3 properties of my cellphone like color, brand, and length? Is that it? Oh, and possible methods would be cell number dial, web browser address, and address book addition? Is that it? If so, please upvote this so I can ask questions again in stackexchange."}
{"_id": "245602", "title": "Why can't arrays be passed as function arguments in C?", "text": "Following this comment, I've tried to google why, but my google-fu failed. Comment from link: > [...] But the important thing is that arrays and pointers are different > things in C. > > Assuming you're not using any compiler extensions, you can't generally pass > an array itself to a function, but you can pass a pointer, and index a > pointer as if it were an array. > > You're effectively complaining that pointers have no length attached. You > should be complaining that arrays can't be passed as function arguments, or > that arrays degrade to pointers implicitly."}
{"_id": "245604", "title": "What is a typical team size for a complex half million lines-of-code C# desktop application?", "text": "Imagine the following scenario:   * Codebase of 600,000 lines of code (C#)   * All in a single desktop application   * All written by a single developer (myself) over 8 years (3 years worth of actual coding time).   * The software is powerful and flexible (obviously vague), thus there is inherent complexity in the code, even if it is modular and low in debt.   * The software is in a niche machine control industry, so there is a very long ramp up for domain knowledge of both the machines, and the code.   * The software will become more and more custom where individual customers get their own addons and enhancements What would be a recommended software team size for a half million line codebase (C# desktop) like the one above? What would be ideal for a typical 500k LOC C# desktop application? This software is not 'end to end' lifecycle. It is 'end to infinity' meaning it will continue to grow and get bigger and and more powerful and complex. Especially as more engineers are added to the team."}
{"_id": "213865", "title": "Could a reflog replace tags for bookkeeping?", "text": "My repository has a branch `production` and is filled with countless tags of the format `production-20130101-1234` that point to what has been actually shipped on the given datetime. I think this solution is somewhat messy and unwieldy and I wonder if reflogs would skip in here better. The objective is **\"make sure you can always find out what version has been deployed and when exactly\"**. Tags do the job, but reflogs sound even nicer because:   * They are made automatically,   * They allow a good amount of awesome, like in the form of `git checkout origin/production@{3 months ago}`. That said, I don't know that much about reflogs and I'm not sure about possible downsides of such approach.   1. I assume `origin/production` has its own reflog totally independent of my local remote-tracking `production` \\- is that correct?   2. Doing 3 consecutive no-ff merges from an integration branch to my local `production` branch would make 3 entries in my local reflog, but pushing it to the central repo (as a part of the deployment procedure) would make 1 new entry in the \"oracle\" `origin/production` reflog, correct?   **I'd like to maintain the \"1 deployment = 1 record\" invariant.**   3. How to make sure a reflog of `origin/production` isn't pruned and continues to provide complete historical information for everyone?   4. Any downsides or possible problems I didn't think of?"}
{"_id": "220726", "title": "Contract Based Programming vs Unit Test", "text": "I am a somewhat defensive programmer and a big fan of Microsofts Code Contracts. Now I cannot always use C# and in most languages the only tool I have is assertions. So I usually end up with code like this:               class     {                function()         {                 checkInvariants();              assert(/* requirement */);                   try              {                  /* implementation */              }              catch(...)              {                   assert(/* exceptional ensures */);                                }              finally              {                   assert(/* ensures */);                   checkInvariants();              }         }              void checkInvariants()         {              assert(/* invariant */);         }     }      However, this paradigm (or whatever you would call it) leads to a lot of code cluttering. I have started to wonder if it is really worth the effort and whether proper unit test would already cover this?"}
{"_id": "218720", "title": "Compiler doesn't inline anything?", "text": "I've rolled my own _SIMD_ -accelerated math library. It's gotten pretty complete, so naturally I went to conduct speed tests and optimize it. Btw this isn't premature optimization, the lib is actually complete in functionality, I really need it to be fast now. So anyway, I'm testing some vector dot product methods against the ones in Microsoft's DirectXMath. The difference between my vectors and the ones in DirectXMath is, that in DirectXMath XMVECTOR is just a naked __m128, while mine is a __m128 inside a vector_simd class that is 16 byte aligned and with an aligned allocator. Now one would assume that with all possible optimizations enabled in release mode they would compile to the same thing. I mean `int a;` and `int arr[1];` compile to the same thing in release mode, just like my array template class has the same performance as a raw array and so on... but to my surprise my class's methods came up _2 times_ slower. I even tried just pasting the SSE code from DirectXMath into my class's method, it still came out slower. So the only thing left was the difference that one is a class and the other is raw. It seemed for a while that the overhead of accessing it as a class member and/or the extra overhead from the constructor (which is empty...). However I put all the definitions of my vector class methods in it's header and still it came up 2x slower than DirectXMath. Maybe the overhead comes from the __m128 being a class member? I don't understand why the compiler can't optimize that away, it's like having a struct with a single integer in it?Has anyone else had such issues? **EDIT:** OK, so it seems that my vector_simd class is 32 bytes, while __m128 is only 16 bytes, which is strange. When I removed the 16-byte alignment from my class it also became 16 bytes large. But this makes no sense, aligning a 16-byte class to 16 bytes should make it remain 16 bytes...."}
{"_id": "218721", "title": "What's the best Git workflow for working with an open source project with employer-specific changes?", "text": "At my current employer, we are using an open-source project hosted on Github as a component of our application. I have been working on this project to both add some features that we need and to integrate it with our build systems. My manager and I are in agreement that we would like to submit as much of our work on this component as is reasonable back to the open-source project. My question is about what the best workflow/technique is to maintain my Git commits in such a way that I can easily seperate out things that make sense to add back to the open-source project - bug fixes and new features that are sufficiently general - from things that are specific to our project, like build locations and application constants. What I have been doing so far is to maintain a private Git branch where I commit all of my changes, with appropriate granularity. I then use `cherry- pick` to add the open-sourceable commits to the master branch, and submit those back to Github. It seems like I ought to be using merge to do this, so that I don't keep creating separate commits with identical contents, but I'm not sure how to do this while excluding the company-specific commits and keeping a reasonable workflow. For example, I suppose I could commit open-sourceable things on master and company-specific things on the private branch, and then merge master into that branch as needed, leaving the master branch pointing at the commit before the merge, such that I could commit open-sourceable things to it again and then merge again. What seems awkward about this workflow is that I would need to decide in advance for everything I do which branch it belonged on, work on that to what seemed like completion, then commit it and merge before testing. One of the things that I really like about Git is how easy it is to just do whatever you need to make your application work, and then decide later how and where to commit your changes. As far as I can tell, if you're currently on a branch and have some work done, there's no easy way to just submit some of that work to another branch, since changing to that branch would require a clean working directory. Is what I'm doing a reasonable workflow for long-term contributions? Can anybody recommend a different workflow that might be better, and why it's better?"}
{"_id": "218725", "title": "Doesn't dockerfile initial configuration defeat one of the key arguments of docker?", "text": "I'm very excited about Docker, if you're a developer in a big project you've suffered too much at the _machine_ hands of environments and multi-platforms. One of the key selling points of Docker is that by snapshotting/committing image state you avoid the risk of building an environment with a different version, possibly incompatible, of a given dependency. I get that, great! Doing the tutorials on dockerfile, isn't this exactly the same concept as running `npm`, `chef` or `bower`. Of course unix libraries would be more stable than most of the ones found on these library stores I just mentioned but isn't this the same workflow that docker is fighting? Isn't the goal to tailor a container to your needs and then commit it's state to then multiply at will? Am I missing something trivial, or this is the case? Does docker still gives you a chance for building up images from script files and by that it steps on it's toes?"}
{"_id": "218726", "title": "DDD, creating an aggreagate from outside the application service layer", "text": "I have a service(webservice) that is used to access to the domain logic. One of the methods of the webservice is createFoo, where Foo is my aggregate. So the class that implements the webservice's method calls my application service that contains the createFoo method which is responsible of doing some stuff and persisting the new Foo instance. This new Foo instance the is returned by the application service to the class that implements the web service's method. Finally, the Foo instance is converted to something like FooWsResponse and then the web service returns the FooWsResponse instance. Right now all this is more or less implemented like this:               public class CreateFooService{              private FooService appService;              private Converter<Foo, FooWsResponse> converter;              public FooWsResponse createFoo(CreateFooParams params){             Foo foo = FooFactory.createFoo(params);             foo = appService.createFoo(foo);             return converter.converter(foo);         }     }      The problem with the code above is that the Application Service method is misleading because is not creating a Foo instance, is only working on the domain logic associated to the creation of Foo and persisting the instance. So, the things that I want to know are:   1. Is it ok create the aggregate outside the service layer?. I know that I can pass the CreateFooParams as parameter appService.createFoo but I don't want to do this because my service layer will be coupled to the web service framework. Also, I don't want to pass all the properties of the class CreateFooParams as parameters of appService.createFoo because I will end with a method with 15 parameters!. Finally, creating the Foo instance before calling appService.createFoo method but now the method's name is not accurate and also all clients of my appService should need to create how to create an instance of Foo to pass it as parameter of appService.createFoo which is very bad and may lead to many issues.   2. Should I create a FooDto that receives all the data of CreateFooParams and pass it to appService.createFoo method?. This looks like a better option but having 3 different classes with almost the same properties feels very redundant I want to know what is the right thing to do according to the DDD guidelines. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "40248", "title": "Is \"call and return\" a pattern or an antipattern?", "text": "Imagine to have this code:               class Foo:       def __init__(self, active):         self.active = active       def doAction(self):         if not self.active:           return           # do something          f=Foo(false)     f.doAction() # does nothing      This is a nice code; I actually have (not in Python) a global active variable called \"dosomething\" and a routine called \"something,\" where the first thing happening inside the \"something\" routine is `if not dosomething return`. An alternative implementation would call to a routine that always performs an action, and the flag is checked at invocation time, as in the following code:               class Foo:       def doAction(self):         # do something          doaction = False          f=Foo()     if doaction:       f.doAction()      What is your opinion on this? I personally find that the first solution violates the least surprise principle: The caller is invoking an action which is never performed in response to a status which has been set somewhere else, but from the code it looks like the action is performed. Would you consider it a total pattern, a total antipattern, or just an option with no strong opinion for or against it?"}
{"_id": "47732", "title": "Standard survey questions for gauging job satisfaction", "text": "Are there any standard surveys or questions that are useful for gauging software engineer or programmer job satisfaction? I hypothesize that determining software engineers' attitudes toward their jobs can reveal problems within an organization. I'm thinking about questions such as the following:   * Are you reaching your full potential?   * Are you learning or improving skills that you could put on a resume?   * Are your skills valued within the company?   * Are your skills utilized?   * Is your voice heard?   * Do you have a mentor?   * Are you satisfied with your supervisor's leadership?   * Are you able to experiment and try new ideas? Obviously the questions would need to be tweaked to get useful answers from a survey."}
{"_id": "212407", "title": "How common is string manipulation, really?", "text": "I've noticed a lot of programming introductions (almost any language) usually include a heavy barrage of string manipulation quite early, such as:   * Count the number of \"xx\" in the given string. We'll say that overlapping is allowed, so \"xxx\" contains 2 \"xx\".   * Reverse the given string and remove all vowels from it.  Not just online courses, but even in degree programmes. But the thing is, I've never encountered a situation in \"real life\" where you had to do anything like that. Is it just luck, or do you really need to do heavy manipulation in the above manner in some fields of programming? Can you give a description or an example where it is needed? Edit:   Just to clarify, not necessarily string processing itself as in echoing variables to a html template, or other basic stuff like that, but the more arcane type of processing, like reading every second character? But yes, perhaps it is just for training purposes instead of direct needs. The file format conversion is a good note, though."}
{"_id": "195928", "title": "In a module-core program, how should modules interact with each other?", "text": "Short background: I'm using MEF/C# for developing a program that has one core (singleton) and multiple MEF parts (I call them modules, each module is a separate assembly with one class that contains the MEF export). The core imports all parts that are needed/available and initializes them (makes them read their configuration files, that stuff happens in the constructors, business as usual) Now, my problem is that I need modules to interact with each other (say, module A, a graphical user interface, needs to get some data from a database, it'd need to somehow call a function on the database module (module B).) How'd I do that? Sure, I could just make those parts/modules public in my core, add a reference to the core in my module and be done with it, but somehow, that'd feel ugly/bad. (mainly because I've security concerns over such an implementation, everyone could just call that function, unless I use something like this, but still it doesn't feel right). Another approach would be to put all of those functions into the core, where they just call the corresponding function of the module. That feels bad, too because I'd have to add a lot of stuff to my core and in some cases that'd be something that a potential customer won't ever use because he doesn't need/have the specific module. Does anyone know a better method of doing this? Maybe my train of thought went completely wrong somewhere?"}
{"_id": "82110", "title": "Can I use the code created by another agency when working for a client?", "text": "Let's assume that my client ( _C_ ) has a corporate website, created by an agency ( _A_ ). _A_ created a pretty simple, yet well designed website which uses plain HTML and no backend to edit any of the data. _C_ has to issue (and of course pay) _A_ every time they want any changes to their website which has become pretty expensive. Now _C_ asks _Me_ to write a dynamic module that integrates into the existing website. This module should be an event-planner that enables _C_ to change at least that part of the website on his own. I am a little bit worried whether it is ok for me to simply take some of _A_ 's graphics and HTML/CSS to use on my project (since I need the new module to be a part of the website). Is there any legal stuff to be considered? Who's property is the already existing website? Can one make a general assumption at all or is this something that necessarily needs to be issued in a contract?"}
{"_id": "48811", "title": "What design patterns are the worst or most narrowly defined?", "text": "For every programming project, Managers with past programming experience try to shine when they recommend some design patterns for your project. I like design patterns when they make sense or if you need a scalbale solution. I've used Proxies, Observers and Command patterns in a positive way for example, and do so every day. But I'm really hesitant to use say a Factory pattern if there's only one way to create an object, as a factory might make it all easier in the future, but complicates the code and is pure overhead. _So, my question is in respect to my future career and my answer to manager types throwing random pattern-names around:_ Which design patterns did you use, that threw you back overall? **Which are the worst design patterns** , that you shouldn't have a look at if it's not that only single situation where it makes sense (read: which design patterns are very narrowly defined)? (It's like I was looking for the negative reviews of an overall good product of amazon to see what bugged people most in using design patterns). And I'm not talking about Anti-Patterns here, but about Patterns that are usually thought of as \"good\" patterns. **Edit:** As some answered, the problem is most often that patterns are not \"bad\" but \"used wrong\". If you know patterns, that are often misused or even difficult to use, they would also fit as an answer."}
{"_id": "82114", "title": "Should Version Control Softwares be used from Command Line or GUI", "text": "I was going through some tutorials on TortoiseHg. Despite having a rich GUI, the first examples are given using command line options. Does the ideal usage involve command line or it was started that way so one has idea of what is happening under the hood and GUI internally uses this command anyway."}
{"_id": "195926", "title": "Separation of concerns: Whose concern is this?", "text": "My senior reviewer colleague wants me to do the following. We have (on iOS, iPhone) a hierarchy of views in one of our screens. There is a simple rectangle that represents a Business card of a person (visually matches business cards style). As this card is reused many times in many screens, I have written a custom class called `PFXBusinessCard` that has four labels, each label representing person's data like Name, Phone number, account and email. These four labels are exposed as properties of that custom class. In my controller, I am passing the data for a particular label in a following manner. I get the person, read the particular value for a property and set this property in a controller. That is, I am setting the name, phone number etc.. But my colleague says I should instead handle this inside the `PFXBusinessCard` class. I should create a `populateWithPersonsData` method in the class, and I would just pass a person to the card in my controller. The card would then populate its labels itself. Is this approach ok? Why would the card should know about the person? The UI object should not know anything about the data. Should it?"}
{"_id": "12401", "title": "Be liberal in what you accept... or not?", "text": "_[Disclaimer: this question is subjective, but I would prefer getting answers backed by facts and/or reflexions]_ I think everyone knows about the Robustness Principle, usually summed up by Postel's Law: > Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept. I would agree that for the design of a widespread communication protocol this may make sense (with the goal of allowing easy extension), however I have always thought that its application to HTML / CSS was a total failure, each browser implementing its own silent tweak detection / behavior, making it near impossible to obtain a consistent rendering across multiple browsers. I do notice though that there the RFC of the TCP protocol deems \"Silent Failure\" acceptable unless otherwise specified... which is an interesting behavior, to say the least. There are other examples of the application of this principle throughout the software trade that regularly pop up because they have bitten developpers, from the top off my head:   * Javascript semi-colon insertion   * C (silent) builtin conversions (which would not be so bad if it did not truncated...) and there are tools to help implement \"smart\" behavior:   * name matching phonetic algorithms (Double Metaphone)   * string distances algorithms (Levenshtein distance) However I find that this approach, while it may be helpful when dealing with non-technical users or to help users in the process of error recovery, has some drawbacks when applied to the design of library/classes interface:   * it is somewhat subjective whether the algorithm guesses \"right\", and thus it may go against the Principle of Least Astonishment   * it makes the implementation more difficult, thus more chances to introduce bugs (violation of YAGNI ?)   * it makes the behavior more susceptible to change, as any modification of the \"guess\" routine may break old programs, nearly excluding refactoring possibilities... from the start! And this is what led me to the following question: When designing an interface (library, class, message), do you lean toward the robustness principle or not ? I myself tend to be quite strict, using extensive input validation on my interfaces, and I was wondering if I was perhaps too strict."}
{"_id": "171134", "title": "Which web framework to use under Backbonejs?", "text": "For a previous project, I was using Backbonejs alongside Django, but I found out that I didn't use many features from Django. So, I am looking for a lighter framework to use underneath a Backbonejs web app. I never used Django built in templates. When I did, it was to set up the initial index page, but that's all. I did use the user management system that Django provided. I used the models.py, but never views.py. I used urls.py to set up which template the user would hit upon visiting the site. I noticed that the two features that I used most from Django was South and Tastypie, and they aren't even included with Django. Particularly, django-tastypie made it easy for me to link up my frontend models to my backend models. It made it easy to JSONify my front end models and send them to Tastypie. Although, I found myself overriding a lot of tastypie's methods for GET, PUT, POST requests, so it became useless. South made it easy to migrate new changes to the database. Although, I had so much trouble with South. Is there a framework with an easier way of handling database modifications than using South? When using South with multiple people, we had the worse time keeping our databases synced. When someone added a new table and pushed their migration to git, the other two people would spend days trying to use South's automatic migration, but it never worked. I liked how Rails had a manual way of migrating databases. Even though I used Tastypie and South a lot, I found myself not actually liking them because I ended up overriding most Tastypie methods for each Resource, and I also had the worst trouble migrating new tables and columns with South. So, I would like a framework that makes that process easier. Part of my problem was that they are too \"magical\". Which framework should I use? Nodejs or a lighter Python framework? Which works best with my above criteria?"}
{"_id": "110804", "title": "Why are zero-based arrays the norm?", "text": "A question asked here reminded me of a discussion I had with a fellow programmer. He argued that zero-based arrays should be replaced with one-based arrays since arrays being zero-based is an implementation detail that originates from the way arrays and pointers and computer hardware work, but these sort of stuff should not be reflected in higher level languages. Now I am not really good at debating so I couldn't really offer any good reasons to stick with zero-based arrays other than they sort of feel like more appropriate. Why _is_ zero the common starting point for arrays?"}
{"_id": "244381", "title": "Is it necessary to start variable from zero (var i = 0 ) of ' for loop '?", "text": "Is it necessary to start variable from zero (`var i = 0`) of any looping ? When should I use `var i = 1;` and when `var i =0;`?"}
{"_id": "250337", "title": "Why is first column of list called 0th in so many languages?", "text": "If you want first element of list or array you reference it as 0 in many languages (like C or Clojure). Is there are some really good reasons why the programming languages was design this way? In old days in assembly languages it makes perfect sense because all possible values needs to be used. But what are nowadays to keep it this way? There is very little advantage when modulo arithmetic and ranges (Wikipedia article.) but not much more. On a disadvantages side it should be: It makes confusion because it human language the first is connected with 1 (1st and it is not in english only). It makes confusion even in XPath (W3School:\"Note: In IE 5,6,7,8,9 first node is[0], but according to W3C, it is [1].\"). There are troubles between languages who use 1-based and 0-based system. Want to know hat are the good reasons to use zero-based numbering and why even creator of new languages (like Clojure) choose this way?"}
{"_id": "178968", "title": "\"static\" as a semantic clue about statelessness?", "text": "this might be a little philosophical but I hope someone can help me find a good way to think about this. I've recently undertaken a refactoring of a medium sized project in Java to go back and add unit tests. When I realized what a pain it was to mock singletons and statics, I finally \"got\" what I've been reading about them all this time. (I'm one of those people that needs to learn from experience. Oh well.) So, now that I'm using Spring to create the objects and wire them around, I'm getting rid of `static` keywords left and right. (If I could potentially want to mock it, it's not really static in the same sense that Math.abs() is, right?) The thing is, I had gotten into the habit of using `static` to denote that a method didn't rely on any object state. For example:               //Before     import com.thirdparty.ThirdPartyLibrary.Thingy;     public class ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper {         public static Thingy newThingy(InputType input) {              new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build();         }     }          //called as...     ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(input);                    //After     public class ThirdPartyFactory {         public Thingy newThingy(InputType input) {              new Thingy.Builder().withInput(input).alwaysFrobnicate().build();         }     }          //called as...     thirdPartyFactoryInstance.newThingy(input);      So, here's where it gets touchy-feely. I liked the old way because the capital letter told me that, just like Math.sin(x), ThirdPartyLibraryWrapper.newThingy(x) did the same thing the same way every time. There's no object state to change how the object does what I'm asking it to do. Here are some possible answers I'm considering.   * Nobody else feels this way so there's something wrong with me. Maybe I just haven't really internalized the OO way of doing things! Maybe I'm writing in Java but thinking in FORTRAN or somesuch. (Which would be impressive since I've never written FORTRAN.)    * Maybe I'm using staticness as a sort of proxy for immutability for the purposes of reasoning about code. That being said, what clues _should_ I have in my code for someone coming along to maintain it to know what's stateful and what's not?   * Perhaps this should just come for free if I choose good object metaphors? e.g. `thingyWrapper` doesn't sound like it has state indepdent of the wrapped `Thingy` which may itself be mutable. Similarly, a `thingyFactory` sounds like it should be immutable but could have different strategies that are chosen among at creation.  I hope I've been clear and thanks in advance for your advice!"}
{"_id": "96399", "title": "Documenting a REST interface with a flowchart", "text": "Does anybody have suggestions on creating a flowchart representation of a REST-style web interface? In the interest of supplying thorough documentation to co-developers, I've been toying around in dia modeling the interface for modifying and generating a product resource: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tSwye.png) This particular system begins to act differently with user authentication/resource counts, so before I make modifications, I'm looking for some clarification:   * Complexity: how would you simplify the overall structure to make this easier to read?   * Display Symbol: is this appropriate for representing a page?   * Manual Operation Symbol: is this appropriate for representing a user action like a button click? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. My apologies for the re-post. The main stackexchange site suggested this question was better presented on programmers."}
{"_id": "96395", "title": "Is kick-starting myself into the programming world by reading from a book about VS 2008 & .NET 3.5 a bad idea?", "text": "Basically what the title says. I'm completely new to programming and decided C# to be the best language to start learning, so I went ahead and installed Visual Studio Express 2010 C# to get started. I started reading Learning C# 3.0: Master the fundamentals of C# 3.0 and got worried when I got to the part, which to quote said: > \"Unless we specifically say otherwise, when we refer to C# in this book, we > mean C# 3.0; when we refer to .NET, we mean the .NET 3.5 Framework; and when > we refer to Visual Studio, we mean Visual Studio 2008.\" Does this mean that the book is out-dated and I should find something else? Does this mean I should just read the book anyway and continue in Visual Studio 2010? Does this mean I should uninstall 2010, and get VS 2008, and continue reading? I don't want to learn something that is outdated, and I'm aware of .NET 4.0 being available so I'm not sure if it would be a waste of time. I don't even know if there is a difference, does it just add more features and one could still use the same \"basic\" code in each? Sorry for being a clueless, I have never programmed before, I just need a kick-start in the right direction so I can start LEARNING just don't want to do so in the wrong way :)"}
{"_id": "193441", "title": "Efficient way to create a code estimation/technical specification in a fast-moving environment", "text": "To better understand my question, let me elaborate the background of the subject matter. I work in a financial institution where the business module (credit finance) is constantly changing. In the IT world, however, the developers have a 6 week cycle taking list of projects/enhancements, put it in a timeline and business expect delivery on those projects. During each cycle, each developer gets assigned work that needs to be completed by a certain date. That date is already finalized by IT Change Managers and codes must be done by then. The code will then be synced, built to create a package and deployed to the test environment for QC (Quality Centre) team to test. The problem, however, is that developers get given the code 3 weeks before the code cycle ends. We are then told to do a technical specification and work estimation for each project/enhancements/bug fixes we are going to do. I have constantly talked to my managers that that is a backward mentality having to do estimations knowing when we need to deliver the finished code. My challenge: Is there a better estimation/technical specification model that cater for this kind of environment? If not, how can I tackle this issue such that it doesn't conflict with the deadline. Thanks. PS: I totally disagree in providing a business requirement to developers and expecting them to do a technical specification document as well as estimations during a code cycle. I do believe that technical specification document should be done before-hand and completed as well with functional/non-functional document and signed off by business. This is not happening currently."}
{"_id": "193442", "title": "Are \"normal order\" and \"call-by-name\" the same thing?", "text": "I was studying the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and in section 1.1.5 The Substitution Model for Procedure Application the author explains the concepts of _normal order_ and _applicative order_ , which I believe I have understood well. Now, I am taking a course on Coursera called Function Programming Principles in Scala and there the professor Martin Odersky (who based much of his course in the book cited above) explains the same concepts under the names of _call- by-name_ and _call-by-value_. In his course, professor Odersky says the substitution model is based on the Lambda Calculus, so I consulted a book on my library An Introduction to Functional Programming Though Lambda Calculus and in page 22, the author does define the terms as applicative order and normal order. Interestingly in his definition he says that applicative order is like Pascal's call-by-value whereas normal order is like Algol's call-by-name. The use of the words \"is like\" in his explanation is what made me doubt. Thus my questions:   * Are these two terms equivalent or are there any subtle differences?    * Can I use one or the other interchangeably without risking making a mistake in the meaning they convey?   * Are there any reasons you know about that justify the existence of different terminology to refer to the same thing?"}
{"_id": "193445", "title": "I'm not sure what this license allows me to do", "text": "I'm using the BigRational class from bcl.codeplex.com. It will be opensourced when it's finished, and it's modified. However, I don't get legal jargon, so even though it's quite short, could someone explain to me what it does/doesn't allow you to do?"}
{"_id": "193444", "title": "Byte code weaving vs Lisp macros", "text": "I have been reading about the libraries people have written for languages like Java and C# that make use of byte code weaving to do things like intercept function calls, insert logging code, etc. I have also been reading up on Lisp/Clojure macros in an attempt to better understand how to utilize them. The more I read about macros, the more it seems like they provide the same kind of functionality as byte code weaving libraries. By functionality, I mean the ability to manipulate code at compile time. Examples of libraries I have been looking at would be AspectJ, PostSharp, and Cecil. Is there anything that can be done with one and not the other? Do they actually solve the same problems or am I comparing apples and oranges?"}
{"_id": "193447", "title": "Format text in a generic and reusable way", "text": "I would like to write some long text in some structure to allow a set of operations on that text. The question is which structure or format should I use, which suits best the use that I plan to do of that text? Next I describe that use:   * I would like to write text in natural language, possibly with translations to several languages. Translations would simply be the same structure with different data (text).   * I would like to keep that text in a VCS, check diffs, branch and merge, etc. The structure should fit well this use.   * I would like to keep the text free of as much clutter as possible so that it is human-readable.   * I would like to easily convert the text to other formats, not necessarily many but at least html and pdf would be fine.   * I would like to be able to manipulate that text easily, for instance changing the order of some elements, filtering them, etc. based on metadata in that text.   * Metadata is data, that means it may be printed or not, or it may be printed in different ways. Here are the main options I have considered so far:   * **Latex** : basically it is a language designed for this task. The problems I see are that it is not as readable as other options, for instance Markdown, and it is not really structured text. The text is there and the metadata about formatting options and so on can be separated with a set of macros, but the text is not really structured, changing the order requires either parsing it or defining all the text as macros so that only the order of the macro invocation needs to be changed. It's great for what it does, but becomes clumsy when it falls short in some feature, as structuring the text. I don't see a good separation between control information and data to be printed. It is a very good option to convert to pdf.    * **XML** : The structure in this case is fairly good, but in the current context, I see no advantage in using XML when HTML could be used instead, it provides the same features and some more.   * **HTML** : the conversion to HTML would be immediate in this case but the conversion to pdf is not so clear. In terms of human readability maybe markdown could be better, but HTML is probably the most widespread and used language for the task at hand, there are supporting languages like CSS (Less, Sass, too many options) that can make life easier, Javascript can handle it, anyone with a browser can easily read it, etc. Maybe some special HTML could be converted to quality Latex and there to pdf, I don't know.   * **Markdown** : a very good option in terms of readability, but I'm uncertain about how could it be manipulated, maybe through conversion to HTML and then using DOM manipulations or any other processing that could be done on XML and thus on proper HTML. I'm uncertain about how flexible may be for defining metadata (for instance a paragraph that is a summary of other paragraphs) when this could be easily done with XML or HTML via classes or other attributes.   * **JSON** : most languages include a parser for JSON thus it is very friendly for programming languages and easy manipulation m. Obviously some standard should be defined for JSON, but the same holds for the rest of the options, including latex (macros).   * **CoffeeScript** : this removes some clutter from the usual JSON, it may be more readable and can be converted into JSON easily.   * **Mixing** : the problem with JSON and CoffeeScript is that the structure to hold the contents is very flexible (maybe too much) but it doesn't support in a natural way inline annotations. A possible solution is to use Markdown or HTML for these fragments of text, including bold text or what may be needed. The objective is to write a manifesto, or something that looks like a manifesto and evolves. This is based on some ideas that recommend using VCS systems. The point is to have a structure that allows to write once and publish as many times as may be needed and in different ways, maybe blog posts, pdfs, etc., because a lot of effort to reach the consensus has to be put to write the text, rewriting and rewording does not seem a good idea. This discards some other nice options, like a wiki, but it would be nice to be able to have it structured in some way such that a set of pages like a wiki could be built from the source data. In the end the technology may not be there yet, but I think it is not too far. There are actually so many options that a clever use of some of them should be enough."}
{"_id": "133925", "title": "Best-practice to manage concurrency into a basket in a e-commerce website", "text": "What is the best practice to manage the case where two customers add in the same time a product whose the stock was only 1 ? Must there be a check in the code of the basket to avoid one of these 2 customers to add the same product ? Or does this check must be carried out in the payment phase in doing for instance a second query to confirm the concerned product is still present in stock (means not bought yet by the concurrent customer) ?"}
{"_id": "219191", "title": "Novice to node.js, what is the advantage gained using callbacks over events?", "text": "I am a novice JavaScripter and have no real knowledge of what goes on inside the V8 engine. Having said that, I am really enjoying my early forays into the node.js environment but I find that I am constantly using events.EventEmitter() as a means to emit global events so that I can structure my programs to fit a notifier-observer pattern similar to what I would write in say an Objective-C or Python program. I find myself always doing things like this:               var events = require('events');          var eventCenter = new events.EventEmitter();          eventCenter.on('init', function() {         var greeting = 'Hello World!';         console.log('We're in the init function!);         eventCenter.emit('secondFunction', greeting);     });          eventCenter.on('secondFunction', function(greeting) {             console.log('We're in the second function!);             console.log(greeting);         eventCenter.emit('nextFunction');     });          eventCenter.on('nextFunction', function {         /* do stuff */     });          eventCenter.emit('init');      So in effect I'm just structuring 'async' node.js code into code that does things in the order I expect, instead I'm kind of \"coding backwards\" if that makes sense. Would there be any difference in doing this in a callback-heavy manner, either performance-wise or philosophy-wise? Is it better to do the same thing using callbacks instead of events?"}
{"_id": "206789", "title": "Are there any SQL servers that support compiled queries?", "text": "Can SQL queries be compiled into byte code or equivalent to enhance performance? I know that most database servers support prepared statements, but is that the same thing as compiling? Most applications have to prepare statements on run- time so there is no benefit of pre-compiled byte code. Since it's prepared each time the application runs. I'm also not referring to stored procedures, but strictly SQL statements you execute to get a result set."}
{"_id": "206784", "title": "Erlang and Go concurrent programming, objective differences between CSP and Actors?", "text": "I was looking into concurrent programming in Erlang and Go programming languages. As per my finding they are used Actor model and CSP respectively. But still I am confused with what are the objective differences between CSP and Actors? is it just theoretical different only but the same concept?"}
{"_id": "206781", "title": "JSON object and storage of nosql", "text": "I have read Would a NoSQL DB be more efficient than a relational DB for storing JSON objects? and am building a small test project in Asp.Net. I have a webapi up in Azure. It returns a `List<Company>` and Company is my object which has several properties and child list and a lat/long value.               //id, name etc.     public List<Certification> Certifications { get; set; }     public float Latitude { get; set; }     public float Longitude { get; set; }     public GeoCoordinate Cordinate // etc. GeoCoordinate is from System.Device reference      I return this List of companies and use the JSON output. Now internally, loading this list I load the complete list of companies out of a json file. and if there is no file, a file will be created. This is all good. But the Latitude and Longtitude is empty on the initial basis. So I fill it using googles reverse geocode. That works, but has a request limit. So I'd like to load the list and if lat/long is empty, retrieve the values from google's service and store it. But I am looking for a solution not to store the complete json list to a file again. And I am not looking for a relational database solution, because that is something that I have done enough. Now I have read about mongoDB. But it is a bit hard to set up on Azure. I have had Redis on Azure. What easy and fast solution do you recommend for me to store my list of objects? Do you even recommend it to store it as JSON? or something else? like XML? and use xpath to update values? So I am looking for an architecture/design to update all lat/longs untill google gives the quota limit error and give it a go next try I access the list of companies. ps. I do not want to store a list of `Certification`'s. I am curious if I can keep it as property of company and store the complete company project."}
{"_id": "206783", "title": "How to maximise the features of MySQL when used with php", "text": "I asked this question a while back on SO (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15506040/maximising-the-features-of-php- and-mysql-when-used-together) but it's a recurring topic, so I thought I'd ask in a different way over here. Basically, we are stuck with the infamous php and MySQL combination (for various reasons), and are trying to produce applications which follow best- practice as much as possible. We notice that time and again, we are tightly coupling the application to the database and vice-versa, despite trying to adhere to SOLID principles. One of the main reasons is to maximise the features of a relational database (such as strict datatypes, hierarchical data structures, relationships, enforcing foreign keys, firing triggers, etc.) This means that some of the application logic bleeds over into SQL. However, there are features that other RDBMS's offer which MySQL doesn't (such as CHECK constraint most notably) so, we end up using php to get round those. This means we end up using php for some of things MySQL doesn't do well and we use MySQL to do things which aren't feasible in php. So, even though every text book encourages programmers to keep things loosely coupled, does anyone have any examples of how to overcome limitations you have come across, or examples of other applications that mix the two up in a similar way?"}
{"_id": "244957", "title": "delegating program logic to lower-level objects", "text": "I'm writing a library for use in scientific computing and ran into a bit of a quandary. The types at work here are a class `M` which consists of some `data` and a reference to a container class `C`. There are many different implementations of `C` and I devoted a lot of work to making sure that `M` objects could use `C` objects without knowing their internal representation. The code may be used for high-performance scientific computing someday, so speed actually is a concern. If `M` were to break the encapsulation of `C` objects, the code could run faster. I tested this and indeed I could get a 50% speedup. But, that would involve lots of repeated code and violation of the open-closed principle. Alternatively, I can take the behavior that `M` needs to perform and delegate it to `C`. By default, `C` will use the same implementation-agnostic algorithm that I had before, but the logic has just moved downtown to a new class. The advantage of this approach is that, if `CO` is an implementation of `C` which can do substantially better than the default implementation, it can override that method with its own version. There is, at present, only 1 method that `M` will need to delegate to `C`. I can imagine at most 2 more behaviors that will need to be dealt with in this way. There may be a bit of repeated code, but it could be handled with a code generator too. Is this a common approach? If so, what's it called? If not, is that because it's a terrible idea for some reason that I haven't noticed? It's not quite the strategy pattern; most of the container objects don't even bother implementing their own strategy, they use the default."}
{"_id": "244955", "title": "How would I do a vim-style character text editor in a graphical application?", "text": "There's a cool guitar tabbing application that I've used before where you can use the keyboard to move around a character grid. You can put any digit in any character cell. Here is an image: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tIcil.png) This is similar to the VIM editor, where you have a block cursor and you can move around and place characters on the grid. I am using Qt as my GUI application. How would I go about adding this type of single-character editor control in my application? I have not run across this type of widget in any of my exposure to GUI programming; hence, I'm not even sure what to call it or how to describe it succinctly. Thanks."}
{"_id": "244952", "title": "How the Stream.filter() method works?", "text": "I know how the lambda expresion works and I know it is an argument for `.filter()` that establish the criteria to filter with. But I don't get how `.filter()` uses the argument, in this case a lambda expression, because .filter() does't have an implementation or at least require one at compile time. I search for this unknown implementation in the Oracle's site but there are just a few words explaning how it works and no code at all. Is that implemetation hidden or is created automatically by the java compiler? Does an aggregate operation need one?               double average = roster       .stream()       .filter(p -> p.getGender() == Person.Sex.MALE)       .mapToInt(Person::getAge)       .average()       .getAsDouble();      `roster` is a `List<Person>` instance of `ArrayList<Person>` `Person` is a simple class that represents a person"}
{"_id": "244953", "title": "Whole Program in CASE", "text": "I'm going to start by saying, this may not be the correct place to post this. So...I'm working in Embedded Development, using C. Is there any benefit or disadvantages to doing the following:               while (1)     {        i++;        switch (i)        {           case 1:              x_get_inputs();              break;           case 2:              x_react();              break;           case 3:              x_set_outputs();              i = 0;              break;           default:              break;         }     }      Rather than a standard list of function calls? I think this is similar to a _Round Robin RTOS_? My logic is that the program cycle time will be shorter, and as such this should be more efficient?"}
{"_id": "244950", "title": "How would I change the precision of a variable in Python?", "text": "I'm working on a 2D-physics engine, and I need a certain variable to be precise only to the hundredths. Are there any methods for basically shaving off all of that unneeded precision? I have tried things like               \"{0:.2f}\".format(a)      but that obviously produces a string, not a number. I'm moving an object based upon its speed, and I want it to(obviously) stop when its value is 0.0, but it keeps going because its speed is really something like 0.0000562351."}
{"_id": "219331", "title": "C# LinqExtensions implement multiple inheritance", "text": "According to WikiPedia \"Some languages do not support mixins on the language level, but can easily mimic them by copying methods from one object to another at runtime, thereby \"borrowing\" the mixin's methods. Note that this is also possible with statically typed languages, but it requires constructing a new object with the extended set of methods.\" 1) LinqExtensions static library functions ( .Where() ) applied to collections of regular objects (int[]) that implement IEnumerable do essentially this. They use a _new object_ (LinqExtensions) to add the _extended set of methods_ ( Where(),etc ). Conclusion. LinqExtensions are mixins with all classes that support IEnumerable. 2) According to WikiPedia \"In object-oriented programming languages, a mixin is a class which contains a combination of methods from other classes. How such combination is done depends on language, but it is not by inheritance. If a combination contains all methods of combined classes it is equivalent to multiple inheritance.\" By mixing **ALL** methods of classes that support IEnumerable ( List.HashCode, List.ToString, other List hierarchy baseline capabilities ), with **ALL** methods from the LinqExtensions static library ( .Where(), Max(), etc ) **an equivalent to multiple inheritance** is produced. An equivalent to multiple inheritance is produced, yes or no?"}
{"_id": "19203", "title": "What are the benefits of using Dependency Injection and IoC Containers?", "text": "I'm planning to do a talk on Dependency Injection and IoC Containers, and I'm looking for some good arguments for using it. What are the most important benefits of using this technique, and these tools?"}
{"_id": "155768", "title": "What OO Design to use ( is there a Design Pattern )?", "text": "I have two objects that represent a 'Bar/Club' ( a place where you drink/socialise). In one scenario I need the bar name, address, distance, slogon In another scenario I need the bar name, address, website url, logo So I've got two objects representing the same thing but with different fields. I like to use immutable objects, **so all the fields are set from the constructor**. One option is to have two constructors and null the other fields i.e:               class Bar {          private final String name;          private final Distance distance;          private final Url url;               public Bar(String name, Distance distance){               this.name = name;               this.distance = distance;               this.url = null;          }               public Bar(String name, Url url){               this.name = name;               this.distance = null;               this.url = url;          }               // getters     }      I don't like this as you would have to null check when you use the getters In my real example the first scenario has 3 fields and the second scenario has about 10, so it would be a **real pain having two constructors** , the amount of fields I would have to declare null and then when the object are in use you wouldn't know which `Bar` you where using and so what fields would be null and what wouldn't. What other options do I have? Two classes called `BarPreview` and `Bar`? Some type of inheritance / interface? Something else that is awesome?"}
{"_id": "158307", "title": "Technology Choice for a Client Application", "text": "Not sure this is the right place to ask... I'm involved in the development of a new system, and now we are passing the demos stage. We need to build a proper client application. The platform we care most about is Windows, for now at least, but we would love to support other platforms, as long as it's free :-). Or at least very cheap. We anticipate two kinds of users:   1. Occasional, coming mostly from the web.   2. Professional, who would probably require more features, and better performance, and probably would prefer to see a native client. Our server exposes two APIs:   1. A SOAP API, WCF behind the scenes, that supports 100% of the functionality.   2. A small and very fast UDP + Binary API, that duplicates some of the functionality and is intended for the sake of performance for certain real-time scenarios. Our team is mostly proficient in .Net, C#, C++ development, and rather familiar with Web development (HTML, JavaScript). We are probably intending to develop two clients (for both user profiles), a web app, and a native app. Architecturally, we would like to have as many common components as possible. We would like to have several layers: Communication, Client Model, Client Logic, shared by both of the clients. We would also like to be able to add features to both clients when only the actual UI is a dual cost, and the rest is shared. We are looking at several technologies: WPF + Silverlight, Pure HTML, Flash / Flex (AIR?), Java (JavaFx?), and we are considering poking at WinRT(or whatever the proper name is). The question is which technology would you recommend and why? And which advantages or disadvantages will it have regarding our requirements?"}
{"_id": "158309", "title": "understanding the encoding scheme in python 3", "text": "I got this error in my program which grab data from different website and write them to a file:               'charmap' codec can't encode characters in position 151618-151624: character maps to <undefined>      I am not familiar with all the encoding decoding thing and I have been okay with what python 2 did. Although the python officially said that they made the change in order to make things better, it seems to get worse. I have no idea how to fix these errors. However I am a pro-active person so I would really like to know what is causing the problem and how to solve it. I have check the official site but the words are hard to understand. Could I have a simple elaboration on that? Another page is also acceptable. EDIT: I've check this page, the Unicode HOWTO in Python 2.7. My understanding is that we must translate the unicode string into binary format while we're writing it to file and it require an encoding. Obviously 'utf-8' is the best one, but why it didn't force the python interpreter to use 'utf-8'? Instead, it use some strange codec such as 'charmap' and 'cp950' and 'latin-1'."}
{"_id": "215837", "title": "When should method overloads be refactored?", "text": "When should code that looks like:               DoThing(string foo, string bar);          DoThing(string foo, string bar, int baz, bool qux);          ...          DoThing(string foo, string bar, int baz, bool qux, string more, string andMore);      Be refactored into something that can be called like so:               var doThing = new DoThing(foo, bar);          doThing.more = value;     doThing.andMore = otherValue;          doThing.Go();      Or should it be refactored into something else entirely? In the particular case that inspired this question, it's a public interface for an XSLT templating DLL where we've had to add various flags (of various types) that can't be embedded into the string XML input."}
{"_id": "13757", "title": "Pronunciation in programming?", "text": "How do you correctly or erroneously pronounce programming terms? Any that you find need strict correction or history into the early CS culture? **Programming** `char` = \"tchar\" not care? `!` = bang not exclamation? `#` = pound not hash? Exception `#!` = shebang `*` = splat not star? `regex` = \"rej ex\" not \"regg ex\"? `sql` = \"s q l\" not \"sequel\" (already answered, just i.e.) **Unixen** `|` = pipe not vertical bar? `bin` = bin as in pin , not as in binary? `lib` = lib as in library , not as in liberate? `etc` = \"ett see\" , not \"e t c\" (as in `/etc` and not \"&c\") **Annoyance** `/` = slash not backslash `LaTeX` = \"laytek\" not \"lay teks\""}
{"_id": "250117", "title": "In wikipedia it is referred that Remote Socket Address is the Client Socket Address but i doubt that", "text": "In the context of Network Socket , which one is the REMOTE SOCKET ADDRESS?? Does the Client Socket Address refer to the Remote Socket Address?"}
{"_id": "201781", "title": "Algorithm for generating hyperexponential distribution", "text": "I need to generate a hyperexponential distribution for my project. I have already implemented a poisson generating algorithm given by Donald Knuth, but I couldn't find an algorithm for generating a hyper exponential random variable. I am provided with the mean and variance required of the distribution and I need an algorithm which can generate a random variable from this distribution when I execute it."}
{"_id": "82803", "title": "Subversion Pre-Commit Check", "text": "In a config file for a PHP project, I have some settings that should not go out in production. Can anybody offer some specific examples or help on how to automatically check these fields and make sure their values are not the development/demo settings before the files get committed into subversion? Our IDE is JetBrains PHP Storm, and we use the latest version of subversion. Some of us develop on Linux, while others are on Windows."}
{"_id": "150688", "title": "How would you unit-test or perform the most effective automated testing on graphics code?", "text": "I'm writing a game and the accompanying graphics engine on top of OpenGL in C++. Im also a fan of good coding processes and automated testing. Graphics code + testing seems pretty immiscible, since the output is often visual only, or very heavily visual-oriented. For example, imagine analyzing the raw image-stream that is rendered to the screen byte-by-byte - you need test-data to compare with, which is hard to create/obtain, and often the rendered images aren't identical on a byte level when running at different times - small changes in algorithms will wreck this approach completely. I'm thinking of creating a visual unit-test suite, in which I can basically render different test-scenes, showing stuff like shadow mapping, animation, etc etc etc. As part of CI, these scenes would then be rendered to a video file (or possibly leave it as a executable) with different metrics. This would still require manual inspection of the video file, but atleast it would be somewhat automated and standardised. What do you think? I'm hoping there are better ways?"}
{"_id": "161982", "title": "How to edit existing user stories", "text": "I'm quite new to working in Agile and with user stories and scenarios in the BDD tool Cucumber and ideally I'll need to go on a course of all of this. I have a set of user stories that need to be edited for an upcoming release. As an example one of the user stories is:               'As a user     I want a visual indicator on entry into the application'      This needs to be changed to:               As a producer, I don\u2019t want a textured background in the application       The Acceptance Criteria (In Gherkin format for those familiar with Cucumber) for the original user story (the first one above) is                   Scenario: Show background image when video is not playing              Given the application restarts      When the home menu is displayed     Then the full-screen textured background should be visible at the correct resolution      For the new user story (second one above), the acceptance criteria that I have written, but not certain of is:               Scenario: Show dark grey background when video is not playing          Given the application restarts      When the home menu is displayed     Then the dark grey background should be visible at the correct resolution      Does this look right? Or am I missing information? I'm, quite new to this, so please bear with me."}
{"_id": "255215", "title": "Knowing who is the user in every request (every action, every view, every time)", "text": "I have many model classes that are mapped from/to tables using EF. Two of them are `User` and `UserCookie`, which are stored in tables `Users` and `UserCookies`.               public class User     {         public long UserId { get; set; }         public string Fullname { get; set; }         public string Email { get; set; }              (...)     }          public class UserCookie     {         public long UserCookieId { get; set; }         public long? UserId { get; set; }         public virtual User User { get; set; }         public string CookieValue { get; set; }     }      Every controller in my ASP.NET MVC application is a child (inherits) of `MyController`, which is like this:               public class MyController : Controller     {         protected MyDbContext dbContext;         protected UserCookie userCookie;         protected User currentUser;         protected string cookieValue;              public MyController() : base()         {             this.dbContext = new MyDbContext();             this.cookieValue = \"\";             this.currentUser = null;             this.userCookie = null;         }              protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)         {             base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);                  HttpCookie cookie = Request.Cookies[\"LoginCookie\"];                  if (cookie != null)             {                 this.cookieValue = cookie.Value;                 this.userCookie = db.UserCookies.SingleOrDefault(c => c.CookieValue.Equals(cookieValue));                      if (userCookie != null)                     this.currentUser = userCookie.User;             }         }              protected override ViewResult View(string viewName, string masterName, object model)         {             ViewBag.CurrentUser = currentUser;             ViewBag.UserCookie = userCookie;             ViewBag.CookieValue = cookieValue;                  return base.View(viewName, masterName, model);         }     }      When the user sign in successfully, I create a cookie in him with a random value, like this:                  public ActionResult Login(...)         {             (...)                  HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(\"LoginCookie\");             cookie.Value = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();             Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);                  userCookie.User = user;             userCookie.CookieValue = cookie.Value;             db.UserCookies.Add(userCookie);                  db.SaveChanges();      The problem with all this that I've shown is that I'm doing a request to the database in every HTTP request (that is, in every call to one of my actions). I'm also not happy with the table `UserCookies` because it has to be cleaned and is not intuitive. Also the generated `Guid` is not safe. I know **how wrong** is all this, but... I can't figure out an elegant way of achieving the same benefits. The main benefit of this is that I have access to `currentUser` in every action, so I can do stuff like this easily:                   if (!currentUser.Privileges.Any(p => p.Privilege == PrivilegesEnum.Blah))         {              (...)         }      I also have access to `currentUser` in all of my views. Questions:   1. What is the most common way of achieving this in real professional software?   2. If I wanted to use cache (like Redis), do I have to change a lot of stuff in the presented scenario?    3. If I do use cache, should I store just the `userId` instead of the entire User object?"}
{"_id": "199128", "title": "Increasing User Changes/Requirements in Agile Methodology", "text": "My question is quite simple. How to handle a situation where the team is applying agile methodology in software projects and there so many iterations and change in requirements, that the schedule is highly affected? Plus you have your manager who is always wanting things to get done within schedule and it is something you cannot control?"}
{"_id": "167204", "title": "Testing vs QA - output?", "text": "I was trying to find a relevant source of information for the above, but I failed. What is the output of software testing? Some say its \"list of bugs\", others say \"answer whether or not the software conforms to what customer wanted\". I know testing is a part of QA but not sure what is its aim and output in this context."}
{"_id": "167206", "title": "When to use functional programming approach and when not? (in Java)", "text": "let's assume I have a task to create a `Set` of class names. To remove duplication of `.getName()` method calls for each class, I used `org.apache.commons.collections.CollectionUtils` and `org.apache.commons.collections.Transformer` as follows: _Snippet 1:_               Set<String> myNames = new HashSet<String>();     CollectionUtils.collect(             Arrays.<Class<?>>asList(My1.class, My2.class, My3.class, My4.class, My5.class),             new Transformer() {                 public Object transform(Object o) {                     return ((Class<?>) o).getName();                 }             }, myNames);      An alternative would be this code: _Snippet 2:_               Collections.addAll(myNames, My1.class.getName(), My2.class.getName(), My3.class.getName(), My4.class.getName(), My5.class.getName());      So, when using functional programming approach is overhead and when it's not and why? Isn't my usage of functional programming approach in _snippet 1_ is an overhead and why?"}
{"_id": "2575", "title": "How often are the unfortunate stereotypes associated with older techies true?", "text": "How often are the unfortunate stereotypes associated with older techies true? When people get settled into a career--Do people lose their passion to learn new things? Do people get comfortable and stuck with one skillset and incapable of change? **How common is this?** I don't mean to be offensive with this question. I know many skilled older programmers. But you do sometimes see a \"failure mode\" when people get too comfortable in their jobs, skills, and lifestyle--too much so that they get irritated at the thought of having to learn something new. I see this and I'm deathly afraid of it happening to me. I want to emphasize I think there is also a \"failure mode\" for youth -- not really having the experience to know how to get a project done. The \"youth\" failure mode may be worse then the one I'm describing. I think the best teams have both junior and senior members. Am I just rehashing old, wrong stereotypes? Is there something to guard against when one gets settled into a career? Or am I just another ageist young programmer keeping the old-(wo)man down?"}
{"_id": "201258", "title": "Will git whine if I create my projects in multiple directories?", "text": "I'm new to git (and github). I work in Java and Python. Right now, I manage my projects in only one directory - let's call it `Code` and the folder is on my Desktop. I want to group my projects by the language I code in. So, I want:               /Code/     ++ /Java/     ++ /Python/      I do not know if Git would be happy with this or not. If it would be, what should I set my home directory to be? And how should I manage it with my github account? For example, I create a new repo on GH for a `new-project` in Python (but I already have files on my local machine in `/Code/Python/new-project`), how should I about committing the files to GH making sure any other directories are not messed up with? EDIT: Just to be clear, I have unrelated projects in `/Code/project_1`, `/Code/project_2`, `/Code/project_3` etc. But I want to arrange them as `/Code/Java/project_1`, `/Code/Java/project_1`, `/Code/Python/project_1` etc."}
{"_id": "235206", "title": "how do live tutorials work e.g http://try.mongodb.org/ and http://try.redis.io/", "text": "I was wondering how do http://try.redis.io/, http://try.mongodb.org/ etc. work? Do they have one live (dedicated) user session on the server per user session in the web?"}
{"_id": "197996", "title": "Underlying infrastructure behind something similar to Code School", "text": "I'm working on a venture similar to Code School: it features a code editor (currently, i'm using ACE Editor) and a real-time \"Run\" option. I have no idea how Code School works with this... i thought about creating/destroying VMs on Amazon for each student, but that would be very expensive. Or, does it run inside an application that delegates execution to many different machines? And what about security?"}
{"_id": "191353", "title": "Managing an undercover SVN repository", "text": "The project I am working on is version controlled by SVN, and the unspoken rule at work is to commit only when a new stable feature is added (in order to have a \"clean\" revision history with no revert) so I work sometimes for a few days without commiting. However I am kind of a commiting maniac (several commits per day on my previous git projects) and this workflow doesn't suit me. Ideally I would like to fork the project, commit unstable version under the \"submarine repo\" and merge into the stable one whenever the feature is stable enough ( my unstable commits must not appear in the stable repo). How can I do this ? With SVN : I've look for Vendor Branches and Externals but I didn't really find what I want. With Git : is it possible to use Git on the undercover unstable repo and SVN for the stabilized repo without conflicts between the two CVS during merges ?"}
{"_id": "201256", "title": "High-Load Java Server for Multiplayer", "text": "I am making a multiplayer game. Now I am trying to choose the technology to connect the android devices to the server. The clients run on Android, and the game is MMORPG. I would like to write the server in java. Right now I have only 3 ideas for it: _**1) creating multithreading environment with plain java and sockets. In this way it will be easier to perform full-duplex connection between the game client and the server. But I have the following concerns:_** 1.1) The game is MMORPG with a large number of objects, and I am not sure how such solutions are scaled if there are for example 5000 people playing at the same time. How many threads will I be able to run on java Machine? How can I approximately calculate that? In case 1 thread is reading for each socket and 1 thread is writing to the socket (so 2 threads for 1 player). 1.2) When the number of players grows, how will I be able to scale my self- written jar-archive to distribute over several servers? Maybe there is some special trick to do that? 1.3) A lot of programming overhead - sockets API is quite low level. _**2) Creating a Servlet-interface for serving HTTP requests._** 2.1) Easy to control sessions (and authorization) as long as each player has his/her own session. 2.2) can connect to java EE EJB or whatever - a lot of complications with system-level programming are taken away. So I can concentrate on writing business logic. 2.3) Can serve all types of clients with HTTP - mobile devices + browsers. 2.4) High-speed - even 1 servlet container can serve a few thousand requests per second so it will be really fast. 2.4) But this approach cant provide a full-duplex communication. I will have to send requests every 1 second to check for updates. 1 second delay does not make a lot of difference for the game as it is turn-based, but still it generates a lot of traffic. Is it feasible when there are many players playing? I heard about some COMET technology, but it seems like if the server has to push many messages in row, I will still have to send requests every time + this technology is not well established yet. _**3) Creating sockets and connecting them through JMS to the java EE server._** 3.1) Cool because allows for full duplex communication between clients and server + provides all cool features of java EE. Later can be extended to browser through servlet interface. 3.2) It seems like some kind of overengineering. Is it really how people would do that? I mean is it even the correct way? Would any sane developer do it like that? I would like you to help me out with the choice please. I dont have much experience with doing some work like that. And would like to stick to the best practices."}
{"_id": "57217", "title": "What do you do when one thinks the code isn't complicated enough?", "text": "After six months of development on a project, our stakeholders have had a \"gut check\" and have decided that the path that we've been walking (a custom designed application framework and data access layer) is holding us (the developers) back from quickly developing the features they would like to see. After several days of debate management and the development team have decided to scrap the current incarnation and start over using ASP.net MVC, with Entity Framework as the bases of the a 'quick and dirty', lets just get it done project. In days following, our senior developer who has never worked with MVC or Entity Framework has finally gotten into a sample project and done some work. His take on ASP.net MVC, \"this is not software engineering\". So my question is this; what do you do, when one doesn't think the code is complicated enough?"}
{"_id": "190409", "title": "A Unicode sentinel value I can use?", "text": "I am desiging a file format and I want to do it right. Since it is a binary format, the very first byte (or bytes) of the file should _not_ form valid textual characters (just like in the PNG file header1). This allows tools that do not recognize the format to still see that its not a text file by looking at the first few bytes. Any codepoint above `0x7F` is invalid US-ASCII, so that's easy. But for Unicode it's a whole different story. Apart from valid Unicode characters there are _private-use characters_ , _noncharacters_ and _sentinels_ , as I found in the Unicode Private-Use Characters, Noncharacters & Sentinels FAQ. **What would be a sentinel sequence of bytes that I can use at the start of the file that would result in invalid US-ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16LE and UTF-16BE?**   * Obviously the first byte cannot have a value below `0x80` as that would be a valid US-ASCII (control)character, so `0x00` cannot be used.   * Also, since _private-use characters_ are valid Unicode characters, I can't use those codepoints either.   * Since it must work with both little-endian and big-endian UTF-16, a _noncharacter_ such as `0xFFFE` is also not possible as its reverse `0xFEFF` is a valid Unicode character.   * The above mentioned FAQ suggests not using any of the _noncharacters_ as that would still result in a valid Unicode sequence, so something like `0xFFFF` is also out of the picture. What would be the future-proof sentinel values that are left for me to use? * * * 1) The PNG format has as its very first byte the non-ASCII `0x89` value, followed by the string `PNG`. A tool that read the first few bytes of a PNG may determine it is a binary file since it cannot interpret `0x89`. A GIF file, on the other hand, starts directly with the valid and readable ASCII string `GIF` followed by three more valid ASCII characters. For GIF a tool might determine it is a readable text file. This is wrong and the idea of starting the file with a non-textural byte sequence came from Designing File Formats by Andy McFadden."}
{"_id": "118571", "title": "Career change question: going from systems analyst to embedded systems development", "text": "How should I go about making a switch from doing help desk type work to embedded software development or any type of development that is done at a lower level? I will finally finish my degree in December and really want to get started building systems. My degree is an Applied Computer Science degree. I have taken classes in Assembly, C++, VB.NET, and Java but have not been able to use any of these to a great extent in any of my jobs. If anyone has advice on how to go about getting into the embedded development field that would be great."}
{"_id": "190405", "title": "Fastest way to find the closest point", "text": "I have a list in Python 2.7 of about 10000 point co-ordinates, like               [(168, 245), (59, 52), (61, 250), ... (205, 69), (185, 75)]      Is there a faster way to search for all the points in a bounding box, instead of just iterating over the entire list each time and checking if the co-ord is inside the 4 sides??   I'm using this \"algoritm\" to see if any point, which is randomly moving, has come inside the stationary bounding box..(if it helps)"}
{"_id": "60406", "title": "Which programming language first introduced 'Hello World'", "text": "Which programming language first introduced 'Hello World' as a first program to code for beginners?"}
{"_id": "60405", "title": "Job Interview Challenges", "text": "I'm not entirely sure if this belongs here, so feel free to move/close it, if necessary. The other day, in our PHP class, our teacher gave us a challenge used by a friend of his in job interviews. It works in every programming language, so it's not limited to PHP. He said that his friend uses this 'riddle' to weed out the people who can't think of a fast answer when it comes to logical challenges. The people that don't solve it won't get a job, of course. The riddle is as follows:                   $a = 3;         $b = 7;              echo \"a = $a\";        // has to become 7         echo \"<br />\";         echo \"b = $b\";        // has to become 3      You basically have to switch the contents of both variables without doing lame things like `$b = $a + 4`. You **cannot** use a temporary variable either! I struggled with this, I have to admit that; I was like 'oooh yeah' when we finally got the answer. I don't want to spoil this for anyone, so instead of posting the solution I'll just put a link. Now, as for my question. I was wondering if there are more riddles like these out there, that people (that's you, SO) use in job interviews, etc. Perhaps even a bit harder than this one. My goal is to train my logical thinking a bit and get better in solving issues like this. Perhaps there are any books or websites out there devoted to stuff like this?"}
{"_id": "60404", "title": "What web development frameworks questions should I include in my thesis?", "text": "I'm busy working for my thesis about Web Development Frameworks. I want to write about frameworks that have been used in the past and frameworks that have a good chance of lasting in the future, such as JQuery and PrimeFaces for example. I also want to do a survey and I am looking for good questions to ask on this survey. My questions is what web developers themselves are most interested in answering and what you think would be good questions in this survey to ask? For example, I was thinking about giving a list of current technologies and giving the possibility to give a score from 1 tot 10 to indicate which they prefer the most."}
{"_id": "153080", "title": "Is there a pattern or logical structure I can follow for Event Log Numbers?", "text": "What are some ideas or structure I can use when assigning EventID to events that will be saved to the Windows Event Log? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UT2UA.png) Some options I've considered   * Sequential (0... int.Max)   * Multiple of 10, where the \"0\" is replaced with how noisy the debugLevel is set.   xxx0 may represent exceptions, critical information, start, stop etc.   * ...? What numbering approach gives you the most insight when a user describes the event in an email or phone? What is the most useful to support staff?"}
{"_id": "64180", "title": "Good use of try catch-blocks?", "text": "I always find myself wrestling with this... trying to find the right balance between try/catching and the code not becoming this obscene mess of tabs, brackets, and exceptions being thrown back up the call stack like a hot potato.  For example, I have an app I'm developing right now that uses SQLite. I have a Database interface that abstracts the SQLite calls, and a Model that accepts things to go in/out of the Database...  So if/when an SQLite exception occurs, it has to get tossed up to the Model (whom called it), who has to pass it off to whoever called the AddRecord/DeleteRecord/whatever...   I'm a fan of exceptions as opposed to returning error codes because error codes can be ignored, forgotten, etc., whereas an Exception essentially has to be handled (granted, I _could_ catch and move on immediately...)   I'm certain there's got to be a better way than what I've got going on right now. **Edit:**  I should have phrased this a little differently.  I understand to re-throw as different types and such, I worded that poorly and that's my own fault.   My question is...   how does one best keep the code clean when doing so?   It just starts to feel extremely cluttered to me after a while."}
{"_id": "17120", "title": "Do you use debugging in rails application? Why, when and how?", "text": "In Java, C and C++ I see people using intensively debugging strategies (because mostly they don't know about TDD). On the other hand, debugging too can help to understand software abstractions. So, when and how do you use debugging in Rails applications?"}
{"_id": "17121", "title": "What does \"Human Readable\" mean? Is it a misnomer?", "text": "Two examples spring to mind:   * One of the reasons that .Net programmers are encouraged to use .config files instead of the Windows Registry is that .config files are XML and therefore human-readable.   * Similarly, JSON is sometimes considered human-readable compared with a proprietary format. Are human-readable formats actually readable by humans? In the example of configuration data:   1. The format doesn't change the underlying meaning of the information - in both cases, the data represents the same thing.   2. Both registry and .config file are stored internally as a series 0s and 1s. To that extent, the underlying representaion is equally unreadable by humans.   3. Both registry and .config file require a tool to read, format and display those 0s and 1s and convert them into a format that humans can read. In the case of configuration stored in the Windows Registry, this is a Registry Editor. In the case of XML it could be a text editor or XML reader. Either way, the tool makes the data readable, not the data format. So, what is the difference between human-readable data formats and non-human- readable formats?"}
{"_id": "198836", "title": "Give advice from experienced to beginner programmer on reinventing my wheel(solution)", "text": "i ve just tried to do coding bat exercise. There are posted solutions to the problem i tried to solve. However, I was stubborn, i ignored them and tried to code it up my own way(basically reinventing my own wheel - square,bad working wheel). After 4 hours it looks nasty and fails some tests. Now i realize that my logic was totally wrong and wasteful. So the question :   * When do you start to give up solving problem your own way(reinventing the wheel) and start to look around to see other solution?    * How long should a developer be 'stubborn' in trying to find his 'unique' or complicated solution?    * When do you give up and begin to search for another logic?"}
{"_id": "251248", "title": "Complexity limits of solutions created in Google Spreadsheets", "text": "I am creating a solution where I essentially put all rules regarding communication with customers (including automatic invoicing, reminder emails, welcome emails, etc.) into a Google Sheets and use Ultradox to create emails and PDFs based upon Google Docs templates. For the three automatic emails I have currently implemented this is working out really well, the whole thing is very transparent to our organization since even non-technical people can inspect and correct the \"Excel\"-formulas. My concern is that in 2-3 years we will probably have 200 unique emails and actions that we need to send out for the various occasions and given the various states that customers can be in. Of course I could aim at limiting the number of emails and states that our customer can be in, but this should be choice based upon business realities and not be limited by the choice of technology. **My question** is therefore, what are the limits of complexity (when will it become unmaintainable) that can be reasonably implemented in a solution based upon Google Apps Scripts and Google Sheets, given that I will attempt to expose as many of the rules as possible to Google Sheets? And what pitfalls should I be aware of when basing myself on a spreadsheet formulas, and what strategies should I follow to avoid the pitfalls? **Some of my own strategies** So far I have come up with the following strategies to increase maintainability:   1. Using several Google Sheets, each with its own purpose, each with its own dedicated \"export\" and \"import\" sheets so it is clear, which columns are dependent on the Google Sheet. Such sheets also help maintain referential integrity when inserting columns and rows.   2. Using multi-line formulas with indentation for formula-readability   3. Experimenting with the \"validation\" function to reduce the variability of data   4. Experimenting with Arrayformulas to ensure that formulas will work even if additional rows are added   5. Potentially offloading very complex formulas to Google Scripts and calling them from spreadsheet formulas   6. Using Named Ranges to ensure referential integrity Please notice that I am not asking about performance in this question, only maintainability. Also, I am unsure of how software complexity can be measured, so I am unsure of how to ask this question in a more specific way."}
{"_id": "251242", "title": "Server should accumulate several requests and to retrurn response for all", "text": "For example I have a server [c#] and 4 clients. When the first client sends a request to the server I want to push a notification to the other 3 clients that they should send a request to the server with some required data. After I receive requests from all clients I want to send the same response to all of them. What is the best way/pattern to implement something like this?"}
{"_id": "235212", "title": "What is the main goal of MVVM pattern?", "text": "Could you tell me what is the goal of the MVVM pattern? What are the arguments or the reasons I can give to a team and product owner to respect and develop according to this pattern? I would like a simple answer. Something in one sentence or one word. Is it for   * maintenance   * security   * testing   * something else?"}
{"_id": "156585", "title": "Are Persistence-Ignorant objects able to implement lazy loading?", "text": "_Persistence Ignorance_ is an application of single responsibility principle, which in practice means that Domain Objects ( **DO** ) shouldn't contain code related to persistence, instead they should only contain domain logic. a) I assume this means that the code which contacts lower layers ( ie persistence layers ) lives outside of the domain model in other classes ( **OC** ) of a business logic layer? b) If my assumption under _a)_ is correct, then **DO** , say `Customer`, never contains methods such as `GetCustomers` or `GetCustomerByID`? c) If my assumptions under _a)_ and _b)_ are correct, and assuming `Customer` domain object uses lazy loading for some of its properties, then at some point `Customer`'s internal logic must contact **OC** , which in turn retrieves deffered data. But if `Customer` needs to contact **OC** to receive deffered data, then we can't really claim that Domain Objects don't contain logic related to persistence?! Thank you **REPLYING TO jkohlhepp** 1) I assume `OrderProvider` and `CustomerProvider` classes are contained within business logic layer? 2) I gather from your reply that my assumptions under _b)_ are correct? 3) > ... I would check to see if some private orders field was populated or if it > was null. If it is null ... But as far as I can tell, as soon as domain code needs to check whether private `order` field was populated, and if it isn't,contacting OrderProvider, we are already violating **PI** principle?!"}
{"_id": "235217", "title": "Organising data access for dependency injection", "text": "In our company we have a relatively long history of database backed applications, but have only just begun experimenting with dependency injection. I am looking for advice about how to convert our existing data access pattern into one more suited for dependency injection. ### Some specific questions: Do you create one access object per table (Given that a table represents an entity collection)? One interface per table? All of these would need the low level Data Access object to be injected, right?   What about if there are dozens of tables, wouldn't that make the composition root into a nightmare? Would you instead have a single interface that defines things like `GetCustomer()`, `GetOrder()`, etc? If I took the example of EntityFramework, then I would have one `Container` that exposes an object for each table, but that container doesn't conform to any interface itself, so doesn't seem like it's compatible with DI. ### What we do now, in case it helps: The way we normally manage data access is through a generic data layer which exposes CRUD/Transaction capabilities and has provider specific subclasses which handle the creation of `IDbConnection`, `IDbCommand`, etc. Actual table access uses `Table` classes that perform the CRUD operations associated with a particular table and accept/return domain objects that the rest of the system deals with. These table classes expose only static methods, and utilise a static `DataAccess` singleton instantiated from a config file."}
{"_id": "62800", "title": "What are your experiences selling on the Android Market? 1 year on", "text": "Follow up to this question So a lot has changed in the smartphone market in the last year (Specifically Androids market share, OS updates and marketplace updates). Given these changes I think it is appropriate to ask this question again. I would love to quit my job and write Android apps fulltime. :-) Is this yet feasible for the average lone developer? What have volumes been like? (Happy to turn this into a community wiki before all the Grinch's start moaning but looks like I don't have the option)"}
{"_id": "62802", "title": "How much storage space do developers really need on work systems?", "text": "> Not Counting the OS And the requirements to run the Development software. > The storage space required. Strictly speaking from work perspective(company setup and not freelancers).A individual developer ( not considering a build system) unless into areas of video,audio processing( huge raw files) 3d/graphics development. How much storage space would be required.   * Even if we account for the software trials to download or reading material.is it Right or Safe to assume 20GB would most suffice and any thing more would be a waste and or would be improperly utilized?.   * What is the typical hard disk space allotted per developer in an office setup.This may differ per role or specific requirement and on what type of work the company is into. but on an average for a developer/programmer how much space is normally allotted. Edit: **To Clarify Intent** These are questions i had faced by business/management people.I only wish to understand more in this regard to give an answer(or better answer)the next time i come across them. I am neither making assumptions or intend to give offense to any one in this regard.It would be helpful if some links to data online were provided in this regard. Edit 2:   * The issue as i understand was restricting the storage space to only the saving of work files to discourage extraneous usage...    * Not about scrimping/cost saving on hardware."}
{"_id": "153338", "title": "Changes in licence in forked project what are my rights?", "text": "Hi I'm intrested in using the apparently now defunct app-mdi libray in a flex application for a paying customer. http://sourceforge.net/projects/appmdi/ It appears that the app-mdi project has been forked from flex-mdi and indeed the code has so much in common it would appear almost identical to the origional code. Now in the original source flex-mdi the following licence appears in the source code > /* Copyright (c) 2007 FlexMDI Contributors. See:   >  http://code.google.com/p/flexmdi/wiki/ProjectContributors Permission is > hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this > software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to deal in the > Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to > use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell > copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright > notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or > substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", > WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED > TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND > NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE > LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF > CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE > SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. */ However in the app-mdi library on the same file the following licence appears. > Copyright (c) 2010, TRUEAGILE All rights reserved. > > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > >   * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. >   * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright > notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the > documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. >   * Neither the name of the TRUEAGILE nor the names of its contributors may > be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without > specific prior written permission. > > > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" > AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE > IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE > ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE > LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR > CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF > SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS > INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN > CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) > ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE > POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */ Now I've no problem with the licence except for the line. > Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation > and/or other materials provided with the distribution. The copyright notice in its entireity makes no sense in binary material. Specifically talking about redistobutions in the binary form. Finally the question is what exactly has to be shown on web clients who access softare that utilises this library? Also is changing the licence in this manner actually allowed?"}
{"_id": "48385", "title": "Anybody using VB with ASP.net MVC?", "text": "When a .net project use newer technologies like ASP.net MVC or Silverlight, is VB.NET being used? Or it is used just in the legacy projects? What is the situation now?"}
{"_id": "254145", "title": "Am I violating LSP if the condition can be checked?", "text": "This base class for some shapes I have in my game looks like this. Some of the shapes can be resized, some of them can not.                  private Shape shape;              public virtual void SetSizeOfShape(int x, int y)         {             if (CanResize()){                 shape.Width = x;                 shape.Height = y;             }             else {                 throw new Exception(\"You cannot resize this shape\");             }              }         public virtual bool CanResize()         {             return true;         }      In a sub class of a shape that I don't ever want to resize I am overriding the `CanResize()` method so a piece of client code can check before calling the `SetSizeOfShape()` method.                   public override bool CanResize()         {             return false;         }      Here's how it might look in my client code:                   public void DoSomething(Shape s)         {             if(s.CanResize()){                 s.SetSizeOfShape(50, 70);             }         }      Is this violating LSP?"}
{"_id": "254140", "title": "Is there a difference between fibers, coroutines and green threads and if that is so what is it?", "text": "Today I was reading several articles on the Internet about fibers, coroutines and green threads, and it seems like these concepts have very much in common, but there are slight differences, especially when we talk about fibers and coroutines. Is there a concise, correct summary of what makes them different from each other?"}
{"_id": "224398", "title": "Implementing Settings/Preferences in JavaScript", "text": "I am making a simple web app mostly in JavaScript. I was wondering as to how do I deploy settings/preferences? Do I just store user preferences somewhere and make use of if...else... statements all over the code? I think that there must be a better alternative. I am know JS, jQuery & PHP and willing to learn anything new if at all required. I have already made the app, only the settings are remaining. I know what options to give users and how to program them in js. What's the most optimal way? How is it done in professional web apps and software made by companies (I am independent Student Developer - this is my first \"BIG\" project)? **EDIT:** For all the modifications that the settings are supposed to make (in this particular app), the whole js code base would litterally be filled with many branches of if...else...statements and I think that would make the code a lot harder to read and maintain. In my app, the whole database table to be fetched from the database and the number and types of HTML DOM manipulation to be done, new elements to be added to HTML dom and whether some are visible or not would change. How do I deal with all that?"}
{"_id": "187142", "title": "Should I split out synchronization from my class and what's it called?", "text": "When thinking about testability and modular code, I recently thought about whether I should split out the synchronization part of a class from the actual behavior part. By example: The app \"needs\" this:               class Mogrifier { // Mogrifier accesses are thread safe     private:       unsigned int m_state;       mutex m_sync;     public:       Mogrifier()       : m_state(0)       { }            unsigned int Mutate() {         lock_guard<mutex> lock(m_sync);         const unsigned int old = m_state;         m_state += 42;         return old;        }            :::     };      Seems simple enough, except that locking and the actual stuff the class does aren't really related. So I though about whether it's a good idea to split this up:               class Mogrifier { // Mogrifier is *not* synchronized     private:       unsigned int m_state;     public:       Mogrifier()       : m_state(0)       { }            unsigned int Mutate() {         const unsigned int old = m_state;         m_state += 42;         return old;        }            :::     };          class SyncedMogrifer {     private:       mutex m_sync;       Mogrifier m_;     public:       unsigned int Mutate() {         lock_guard<mutex> lock(m_sync);         return m_.Mutate();       }     };        * Would you do this?    * Will it help with unit testing?   * I'm awful with Pattern names ... what is it called?   * Is there a simple way to \"generate\" such a wrapper in C++ for an arbitrary calls?"}
{"_id": "42652", "title": "using a wiki for requirements", "text": "I'm looking into ways of improving requirements management. Currently, we have a Word document published on a Web site. Unfortunately, we cannot (to my knowledge) look at changes from one revision to the next. I would greatly prefer to be able to do so, much like with a wiki or VCS (or both, like the wiki's on bitbucket!). Also, each document describes changes devs are expected to meet by a given deadline. There is no collection of accumulated app features documented anywhere, so it's sometimes hard to distinguish between a bug and a (poorly- designed) feature when trying to make quick fixes to legacy apps. So I had an idea I wanted to get feedback on. What about:   1. Using a wiki so that we can track who changed what when (mostly to even see _if_ any edits were made since the last time one looked).   2. Having one, say, wiki page per product rather than one per deadline, keeping up with all features of the product rather than the changes that should be implemented. This way, I can look at a particular revision of the page to see what the app should do at a given point in time, and I can look at _changes to the page since the last release_ for the requirements to be implemented by the next deadline. Waddayathink?"}
{"_id": "210718", "title": "Specific reasons to create own array class over using std::array?", "text": "What specific conditions or requirements should you create your own array over using `std::array`? Here is my background: I'm developing a small simple library that a small group of people will use and _hopefully_ build upon. The current structure allows for both `std::vector` and `std::array` using `iterators`, however, a lot of the people do not like and cannot seem to use `std::array` and find the notation confusing to work with the library. I have attempted to make my library work for better for `std::array` however, it dawned on me that maybe I should provide my own and adding in the functionality needed? For example: `library::array<int, 2> myArray; myArray.fill(1, 100);` and I thought it would be a good project in order for me to develop my skills, particularly in `templates` and other `sorting` algorithms."}
{"_id": "46571", "title": "Onsite Interview : QA Engineer with more Emphasis on Java Skills", "text": "I'm having a onsite interview for QA engineer with Startup. While phone interview the person said he would want to test my JAVA, JUnit and SQL skills on white board with more importance on Object-oriented skills, So what all can i questions can i expect ? **One more important issue : How do i overcome the fear of White board interview ?. I'm very bad at White board sessions, i get fully tensed. Please suggest me tips to overcome my jinx**"}
{"_id": "159204", "title": "Can someone help me understand this GPL license", "text": "I can't understand the last line of this GPL license. > Copyright (C) 2011 Some Name > > This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it > under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free > Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) > any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be > useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General > Public License for more details. > > You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with > this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 > Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA > > Linking SOMEAPP statically or dynamically with other modules is making a > combined work based on SOMEAPP. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU > General Public License cover the whole combination. > > **In addition, as a special exception, the copyright holders of SOMEAPP give > you permission to combine a portion of SOMEAPP with other binary code > (\"Program\") under any license the copyright holders of Program specified, > provided the combined work is produced by SOMEAPP.** I want to know can I use this code in a shareware application."}
{"_id": "198657", "title": "how to map controllers , models, and views as a todo list", "text": "Before starting on a current project I was wondering if there is a terminology for what I am planning on doing? Basically what I want to do is map out every object in layers such as all the controllers and what they'll be called, the methods that will exist under the controllers and their purpose; Including, the models that the methods will be interacting with and the views that will be displayed based on certain actions. This way I've created a detailed to-do list and can catch any duplicates and make them as one call. I've heard of something called doctrine but I'm not sure if it will be what im looking for since i dont know how to use it but have heard of it having to do with documentation."}
{"_id": "210711", "title": "Are there presently any standardized \"grammar\" rules for HTML & CSS?", "text": "Over the years I have assigned values to classes and html elements in all sorts of ways:   * myClass   * MyClass   * my_class   * my-class . . .and so on. As I am always trying to hone my craft and make my code more readable for others, I am going to discipline myself to stick to one convention moving forward. I am leaning towards all lower case and hyphenated, but that is a purely subjective choice. So I wanted the input of the SE community--is there a standard or recommended convention already in place? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "69532", "title": "What's a propeller-head coder?", "text": "What's a propeller-head coder?"}
{"_id": "80407", "title": "Leaving for the desert soon, need suggestions", "text": "I just got the news that I'm (finally) getting to spend the next few months in Afghanistan with my fellow AF maintainers, and I was hoping to get some suggestions of good offline content to learn from. I've got a few textbooks from ck12.org, downloaded the offline versions of the MSDN docs for VCS Express 2010, but I would love to have something more general to learn from, maybe that covers data structures and algorithms (specific to C# would be awesome. Oh, and if anyone knows of any good offline WPA tutorials that would be even better."}
{"_id": "125955", "title": "Using GPL licensed jQuery scripts on website with ads", "text": "I'm making a web application that will generate revenue from displaying ads. The system is meant for me to run and not sold/distributed to anyone else. My questions are:   * Can I use GPL licensed jQuery scripts on the website?   * Can I use GPL licensed scripts while generating ad revenue from the page?   * Do I need to provide my sites source to everyone if I use GPL licensed scripts?"}
{"_id": "196767", "title": "Is it better to save output from command in memory and store later or save in a temporary file and then move to final location?", "text": "I hope this is not off topic. I have to save output from a command to file, but only if length of this output is positive. I've thought about two solutions:   * save output to a python variable, check length, if positive save to destination file;   * save output to a temporary file, check length, if positive rename to destination file. Is there any best practice for this little problem, or which one usually performs better between my proposed solutions? Typical configuration:   * file length is usually 1KB   * we are not using ssds, usually 7200rpm hard disk   * average RAM is usually 10-20 GB    * I don't know if filesystem is important, anyway ext3 I know this is a bit unclear, but I was hoping there was some best practice to apply in this case. Thanks"}
{"_id": "45007", "title": "Should I blog about specifically about programming in English or in my native language?", "text": "I had a blog which was written in my native language, but now I'm wondering if I should switch to english because of a wider audience given that the technical field's default language is English. For sure, I want to share my knowledge, but at the meantime I'd like to get hired or be recognized from my peers. Reputation can be important and it can help in making my professional network larger. Do you have any feedback? Btw, my native language is french if that matters."}
{"_id": "196763", "title": "Feature branches, beta branches, and scrapped features", "text": "I've been thinking a lot about best practices regarding branching in distributed version control systems such as git an mercurial (the two dvcs's I have experience with and use on a daily basis). The way I've been doing it is slightly different in each of these, but generally follows these guidelines:   * master branch - concurrent with production code   * development branch - concurrent with \"beta\" code   * feature branches - for feature development Development is done in a feature branch (usually created off of the master branch, so we know we're working with a stable code base), and when dev is completed, reviewed, and developer-tested, it's pushed/merged into the development/beta branch, put out on a beta server, and tested. If all goes well, the feature is approved, and we can merge it into the master/stable branch, stage it, do final testing, and get it into production. If it doesn't go well, though, things break down. If, for instance, a feature is scrapped or just delayed indefinitely, we probably want to remove it from the dev/beta branch. However, since merges from master/stable (hotfixes, content changes, etc.), and other new features have probably been put into the dev branch, it becomes difficult to remove a single feature from that branch. I'm coming to the conclusion that this workflow is just broken, but it seems like it should work. So, specifically:   * Is it possible to remove a particular feature from this type of branch?   * Is this just a broken workflow? And more generally:   * Given long-term development of features, and a need to have a branch concurrent with live, what are the best practices involved in dvcs?"}
{"_id": "196760", "title": "Design pattern to dynamically create patterns found in a list of links", "text": "Can anyone help me think of a way to dynamically generate the patterns section of a tool I am creating? I'm not sure how to store and generate these \"patterns\" dynamically. What the program does is take a big list of links (100,000), puts them in a database, groups them by domain and then curls a page from each domain looking for backlinks. Here is the database scheme, you can see that the Domains table is were most of the information is stored because we group the URLs together by the domain: http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/9a4d7 So now we know that some domains are live (and have a backlink) and some are dead (no backlink). This is relatively easy but now for the fun part. I need to derive \"patterns\" from the live links. For example find a list of all live link domains that have more than 25 links from that domain. So if joesblog.blogspot has 33 pages that link to my domain that matches this pattern. Here is my list of patterns:   * Domains that include a homepage link   * Domains grouped by top level domain (.com, .org etc)   * Domains that returned a 405 header response   * URLs with matching directory structures   * Domains that contain the word _ _ _.   * URLs that contain the word _ _ _ in their path.   * Common anchor text.   * Common title tags.   * Common backlink targets (what page of your site does the link point to). The problem is that the patterns are changing CONSTANTLY. There being moved around, added, edited, removed and anything else you can think of. I really need a to build a content management system of sorts to handle these patterns. But how would I store something this intricate in a database? Has anyone ever delt with a similar problem and how did you solve it? If I could just store whole functions and MySQL statements in the database that would be great (but horrible wrong). (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript / JQuery) DISCLAIMER: This is an internal tool. Please don't ask me why I'm building this or claim that the requirements are wrong. This was designed by my manager and its my task to make it work because I am a developer at the company that needs this tool. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "196768", "title": "Decrement operator difference between C++ and Java?", "text": "Please tell me why the same piece of code behaves differently in C++ and JAVA. **Ok first I implement a function to calculate the factorial of an Int RECURSIVELY** In JAVA:               int f(int x)         {                  if(x==1)return 1;             return(x*f(x-1));         }      System.out.println(f(5)); -----> outputs 120, ok that makes sense. JAVA METHOD 2:               int f(int x)         {                  if(x==1)return 1;             return(x*f(--x));         }      System.out.println(f(5)); -----> outputs 120, ok that makes sense too. But here is a twist in C++: C++ METHOD 1:               int f(int x)     {         if(x==1)return 1;         return (x*f(x-1));          }      cout << f(5) ; -----> outputs 120, ok now keep reading! C++ METHOD 2:               int f(int x)     {         if(x==1)return 1;         return (x*f(--x));          }      cout << f(5) ; -----> outputs 24. This is surprising. But Why?? I have tried tracing this multiple times and have failed. It makes sense in java because each recursive call gets its own piece of memory and pre decrement operator -- will decrease and yield the decreased value. Why does it work as expected in JAVA but not In C++?"}
{"_id": "216717", "title": "Understand how the TLB (Translation Lookaside buffer) works and interacts with pagetable and addresses", "text": "So I am trying to understand this TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer). But I am having a hard time grasping it. in context of having two streams of addresses, tlb and pagetable. I don't understand the association of the TLB to the streamed addresses/tags and page tables.               a.  4669, 2227, 13916, 34587, 48870, 12608, 49225     b.  12948, 49419, 46814, 13975, 40004, 12707                    TLB     Valid   Tag Physical Page Number     1   11  12     1   7   4     1   3   6     0   4   9                    Page Table     Valid   Physical Page or in Disk     1   5     0   Disk     0   Disk     1   6     1   9     1   11     0   Disk     1   4     0   Disk     0   Disk     1   3     1   12      How does the TLB work with the pagetable and addresses? The homework question given is: Given the address stream in the table, and the initial TLB and page table states shown above, show the final state of the system also list for each reference if it is a hit in the TLB, a hit in the page table or a page fault. But I think first i just need to know how does the TLB work with these other elements and how to determine things. How do I even start to answer this question?"}
{"_id": "156300", "title": "Should we use an outside CMS?", "text": "I work at a web design/development shop. Everything we do is centered around the Joomla! CMS. I'm a bit worried-if anything goes wrong with Joomla (major security flaw revealed, Joomla folds and ceases development) we're sunk. I'm meeting with the CEO to plan the next few steps for our company. Should I recommend that we create our own in-house CMS or am I just being paranoid about a single point of failure?"}
{"_id": "10477", "title": "What does a typical programming journal entry consist of?", "text": "I read that a lot of people seem to favor the journal, or diary, form to keep notes on their work related activities. I've had a more structured approach myself, which involves outlines and categorization.   While this has its advantages for information retrieval, I find it can become an hindrance when it comes to entries of a broad, subjective or reflective nature. I've been thinking about using a more diary-like format for this purpose, but since I've never held one before, I wonder about what sort of information it would contain. Can anyone give an example of their typical journal/diary entry's content ?   What do you keep notes of, and how do you structure it ?"}
{"_id": "216714", "title": "Why appending to a list in Scala should have O(n) time complexity?", "text": "I am learning Scala at the moment and I just read that the execution time of the append operation for a list (:+) grows linearly with the size of the list. Appending to a list seems like a pretty common operation. Why should the idiomatic way to do this be prepending the components and then reversing the list? It can't also be a design failure as implementation could be changed at any point. From my point of view, both prepending and appending should be O(1). Is there any legitimate reason for this?"}
{"_id": "216711", "title": "Matching users based on a series of questions", "text": "I'm trying to figure out a way to match users based on specific personality traits. Each trait will have its own category. I figure in my user table I'll add a column for each category:               id    name    cat1    cat2    cat3     1     Sean    ?       ?       ?     2     Other   ?       ?       ?      Let's say I ask each user 3 questions in each category. For each question, you can answer one of the following: `No, Maybe, Yes` How would I calculate one number based off the answers in those 3 questions that would hold a value I can compare other users to? I was thinking having some sort of weight. Like:               No    -> 0     Maybe -> 1     Yes   -> 2      Then doing some sort of meaningful calculation. I want to end up with something like this so I can query the users and find who matches close:               id    name    cat1    cat2    cat3     1     Sean    4       5       1     2     Other   1       2       5      In the situation above, the users don't really match. I'd want to match with someone with a +1 or -1 of my score in each category. I'm not a math guy so I'm just looking for some ideas to get me started."}
{"_id": "156309", "title": "Working with Git on multiple machines", "text": "This may sound a bit strange, but I'm wondering about a good way to work in Git from multiple machines networked together in some way. It looks to me like I have two options, and I can see benefits on both sides:   * Use git itself for sharing, each machine has its own repo and you have to fetch between them.      * You can work on either machine even if the other is offline. This by itself is pretty big I think.   * Use one repo that is shared over the network between machines.      * No need to do git pulls every time you switch machines, since your code is always up to date.     * Never worry that you forgot to push code from your other non-hosting machine, which is now out of reach, since you were working off a fileshare on this machine. My intuition says that everyone generally goes with the first option. But the downside I see is that you might not always be able to access code from your other machines, and I certainly don't want to push all my WIP branches to github at the end of every day. I also don't want to have to leave my computers on all the time so I can fetch from them directly. Lastly a minor point is that all the git commands to keep multiple branches up to date can get tedious. Is there a third handle on this situation? Maybe some third party tools are available that help make this process easier? If you deal with this situation regularly, what do you suggest?"}
{"_id": "156308", "title": "Developing an analytics's system processing large amounts of data - where to start", "text": "Imagine you're writing some sort of Web Analytics system - you're recording raw page hits along with some extra things like tagging cookies etc and then producing stats such as   * Which pages got most traffic over a time period   * Which referers sent most traffic   * Goals completed (goal being a view of a particular page)   * And more advanced things like which referers sent the most number of vistors who later hit a goal. The naieve way of approaching this would be to throw it in a relational database and run queries over it - but that won't scale. You could pre-calculate everything (have a queue of incoming 'hits' and use to update report tables) - but what if you later change a goal - how could you efficiently re-calculate just the data that would be effected. Obviously this has been done before ;) so any tips on where to start, methods & examples, architecture, technologies etc."}
{"_id": "167971", "title": "Rendering design. How can I effectively deal with forward, deferred and transparent rendering?", "text": "I have many objects in my game world that all derive from one base class. Each object will have different materials and will therefore be required to be drawn using various rendering techniques. I currently use the following order for rendering my objects.   * Deferred   * Forward   * Transparent (order independent) Each object has a rendering flag that denotes which one of the above methods should be used. The list of base objects in the scene are then iterated through and added to separate lists of deferred, forward or transparent objects based on their rendering flag value. The individual lists are then iterated through and drawn using the order above. Each list is cleared at the end of the frame. This methods works fairly well but it requires different draw methods for each material type. For example each object will require the following methods in order to be compatible with the possible flag settings.               object.DrawDeferred()     object.DrawForward()     object.DrawTransparent()      It is also hard to see where methods outside of materials, such as rendering shadow maps, would fit using this \"flag & method\" design.               object.DrawShadow()      I was hoping that someone may have some suggestions for improving this rendering process, possibly making it more generic and less verbose?"}
{"_id": "167975", "title": "What can Haskell's type system do that Java's can't and vice versa?", "text": "I was talking to a friend about the differences between the type systems of Haskell and Java. He asked me what Haskell's could do that Java's couldn't, and I realized that I didn't know. After thinking for a while, I came up with a very short list of minor differences. Not being heavy into type theory, I'm left wondering whether they're formally equivalent. To try and keep this from becoming a subjective question, I'm asking: what are the major, non-syntactical differences between their type systems? I realize some things are easier/harder in one than in the other, and I'm not interested in talking about those. And to make it more specific, let's ignore Haskell type extensions since there's so many out there that do all kinds of crazy/cool stuff."}
{"_id": "198387", "title": "Best github repository layout for snippets in multiple programming languages", "text": "I have to create a github-presence for an open-source organization. The aim is to distribute _code snippets_ and _reference implementations_ in **different** programming languages. These contributions are going to be (ideally) created by people outside of the organization and should be collected. I know that good practice is to create **one repository per project**. To this end, each implementation (in a specific programming language) should be considered a standalone project and should get its own repository. The point is that this approach makes hard for external people to contribute, because github pull-requests can only be made against existing repositories. By creating a **single repository** with a subdirectory per programming language code contribution becomes easier, but I'm afraid that some IDEs may complain about the directory layout. I'd like to know whether someone already solved this very specific problem in a satisfactory way."}
{"_id": "78379", "title": "Need Advice on PHP Search Functionality", "text": "I'm coding a Linux/PHP site for an organization. The site has two views, activated by a login $_SESSION variable indicating whether one is logged in as a member or not. I need to provide search functionality for both the public and for members. The members area is private. Note that Google Custom Search can't be used here in that case. Does anyone have any recommendations on F/OSS scripts (or perhaps cheap scripts I can purchase) that would provide this functionality with two separate indices, one public and one private, and which would provide paginated results and a keyword search form? Otherwise, I guess I'll have to code one myself. I'm trying to save time, and therefore keep more money in my pocket. P.S. Note I can't ask this on StackOverflow because they want programmer questions there. This isn't a \"how do I code this?\" question, but \"what F/OSS scripts or cheap sitescripts would solve this problem?\" type of question. Note also that this won't help me either. I mean, look at the answers of that question."}
{"_id": "198389", "title": "simple 'defrag' logic that minimizes changes?", "text": "edit: so clearly I didn't explain this well, so let me try again with examples. I have a 'pipe' of a given size with signals routed through it at given offsets. The pipe can get fragmented with signals in different offsets making it impossible to fit a new signal. I want an algorithm that will tell me how to arrange the signals to defragment the pipe; but with a minimal number of signals actually being moved! So for the example.. Say I have a pipe of size 16. It has the following signals with the sizes and offsets described.               offset 0: A (size of 4; fills slots 0-3)     offset 5: C (size of 2, fills slot 5-6)     offset 8: B (size of 4, fills 8-11)     offset 14: D (size 2, fills 14-15)          Pipe: AAAA_CC_BBBB__DD      In this case I have 1 slot open at offsets 4 & 7, and two at offset 12-13. Now lets say I want to add a size 4 signal to this pipe. There is no continuous space for it now, but I know I have enough space for it if I defragment. The 'obvious' solution is to group all the signals together at the 'top' like this:               offset 0:  A (size 4, fills 0-3)     offset 4:  B (size 4, fills 4-7)     offset 8:  C (size 2, fills 8-9)     offset 10: D (size 2, fills 10-11)          Pipe: AAAABBBBCCDD____      this leaves slots 12-15 free for my new signal. However, to do this I repositioned 3 signals(B-D). For each signal I moved I have to send commands down to hardware and wait for a non-trivial amount of time. If I was smarter I could realize there is another approch. I could reposition like this:               offset 0:  A(size 4, fills 0-3)     offset 8:  B(size 4, fills 8-11)     offset 12: C(size 2, fills 12-13)     offset 14: D(size 2, fills 14-15).          Pipe: AAAA____BBBBCCDD      I can now fit my new signal in offsets 4-7; AND I only had to reposition one signal(B). Thus saving on hardware calls. I'm wondering if there is a good algorithm to detect sitations like this; where I can 'fit' a signal onto a pipe with the minimum number of signals moved. The aproch thta comes to mind is an N! algorithm; which basically amounst to \"generate every possible distribution, calculate how many moves it resulted in\". I'm loking for a faster approch. The approch does _not_ have to be 100% perfect, I'm looking primarily to minimize the average case, so long as the worst case isn't made too horrendous. I know that I will never have more then 255 signals on a given pipe; so I may be able to 'get away' with N! as bad as that sounds. I also know each signal's size is a power of 2, as is the pipe size. also, are there any briliant algorithms for placing of signals that minimize fragmentation? * * * Question answered; see below. I wanted to expain on the answer slightly to better explain how defragmentation would occure for anyone reading; buddy does explan it I wanted to point out a simpler approch to conceptualize and explain the defraging part in more detail since that was the original question. I'm explaining my approch, which is a slightly different/simpler approch but effectively keeps the 'buddy' concept. I'm not precomputing blocks or labeling them, this is too much effort to implement and maintain. For me the CPU cost of calculating where a signal will go is pretty trivial compared to actual placing/deletion of signals; so I can afford to lose a tiny, linear, amount of CPU by not pre-computing to simplfy my logic. So the process is: for insertion: All signals are kept in signal boundaries equal to the signal size, so a signal will start on offset where offest % signalsize=0. For actuall offset we walk through and figure out intervals that keep this boundry. So if my signal is size 4 on a 16 size pipe I'll look at intervals 0-4, 5-7, 8-11, 12-15. For each interval check if all space in that interval is free. In the simple case we have a interval with no signals in it and we just put the signal at that interval. Important, we look at the intervals in order and place our signal in _the first free_ interval, this ensure we break the smallest possible 'block' (using buddy terms) when we add our signal. This should be equivlent to the buddy approch described by im3l96; except without precomputation of blocks. if no interval is completely free we have to defrag. For this we find the the signal with the most unused slots. If multuple intervals have the same number of slots unused select the first interval. We then find the largest signal in this interval and recursively call same insert algorithm for the smaller signal (except mark the interval we selcted to insert our first signal as unavailable somehow). This moves the signal to somewhere else that it will fit. We then find the next smallest signal in our selected interval and do the same until we moved all signals. Worst case of 2^n-1 signals moved; where N is the number of potential signal sizes <=our signal (assuming signals are multuple of 2 then N=log2(signalSize)). Here is an example. * stands for a slot marked as unavailable when we recursively call this method (ie the interval that the calling method wanted to place it's signal in, and thus doesn't want the recursive call to try to place a signal into) Here is an exaple, simplest case I could come up with that still demonstrates full complexity. Note: the following structure would be hard to create, but _could_ result from the buddy approch if someone tried very very hard.               FFFFFFFF__AA_B__EEEE_HGGCC_DII_J      Someone passes in a signal Z of size 8 we select offset 8: defragInsert(z, size 8)               effective structure: FFFFFFFF__AA_B__EEEE_HGGCC_DII_J          placing signal in interval: __AA_B__      defragInput(A, size 2)               effective structure: FFFFFFFF********EEEE_HGGCC_DII_J     place signal in interval (offset 20)  _H      defragInput(H, size1)               effective structure: FFFFFFFF********EEEE**GGCC_DII_J     place signal between C & D      return defragInput(H, size1)               effective structure: FFFFFFFF********EEEE__GGCCHDII_J     place H at offset 20 now that it's open      return defragInput(A, size 2) effective structure: FFFFFFFF_ ___ _B__EEEEAAGGCCHDII_J move B now... defragInput(B, size1) effective structure: FFFFFFFF* ****** *EEEEAAGGCCHDII_J place B between I & J return defragInput(B, size1) effective structure: FFFFFFFF_ **__** _EEEEAAGGCCHDIIBJ add B return defragInsert(z, size 8)               fianl structure: FFFFFFFFzzzzzzzzEEEEAAGGCCHDIIBJ"}
{"_id": "95606", "title": "Is there a simple, flat, XML-based query-able data storage solution?", "text": "I have been in long pursuit of an XML-based query-able data store, and despite continued searches and evaluations, I have yet to find a solution that meets the my needs, which include:   1. Data is wholly contained within XML nodes, in flat text files.   2. There is a \"native\" - or at least unobtrusive - method with which to perform Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD) operations onto the \"schema\". I would consider access via http, XHR, javascript, PHP, BASH, or PERL to be unobtrusive, dependent on the complexity of the set of dependencies.   3. Server-side file-system reads and writes.   4. A client-side interface element, accessible in any browser without a plug-in. Some extra, preferred (but optional) requirements include:   1. Respond to simple SQL, or similarly syntax queries.   2. Serve the data on a bare bones https server, with no \"extra stuff\", either via XMLHTTPRequest, HTTP proper, or JSON. A few thoughts: What I'm looking for may be possible via some Java server implementations, but for the sake of this question, please do not suggest that - unless it meets ALL the requirements. Java, especially on the client-side is not really an option, nor is it appealing from a development viewpoint.* I know walking the filesystem is a stretch, and I've heard it's possible with XPATH or XSLT, but as far as I know, that's not ready for primetime, nor even yet a recommendation. However the ability to recursively traverse the filesystem is needed for such a system to be of useful facility. At this point, I have basically implemented what I described via, of all things, CGI and Bash, but there has to be an easier way. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "58291", "title": "Duplication in parallel inheritance hierarchies", "text": "Using an OO language with static typing (like Java), what are good ways to represent the following model invariant without large amounts of duplication. I have two (actually multiple) flavours of the same structure. Each flavour requires its own (unique to that flavour data) on each of the objects within that structure as well as some shared data. But within each instance of the aggregation only objects of one (the same) flavour are allowed. FooContainer can contain FooSources and FooDestinations and associations between the \"Foo\" objects BarContainer can contain BarSources and BarDestinations and associations between the \"Bar\" objects               interface Container()     {        List<? extends Source> sources();        List<? extends Destination> destinations();        List<? extends Associations> associations();     }          interface FooContainer() extends Container     {        List<? extends FooSource> sources();        List<? extends FooDestination> destinations();        List<? extends FooAssociations> associations();     }          interface BarContainer() extends Container     {        List<? extends BarSource> sources();        List<? extends BarDestination> destinations();        List<? extends BarAssociations> associations();     }          interface Source     {        String getSourceDetail1();     }          interface FooSource extends Source     {        String getSourceDetail2();     }          interface BarSource extends Source     {        String getSourceDetail3();     }          interface Destination     {        String getDestinationDetail1();     }          interface FooDestination extends Destination     {        String getDestinationDetail2();     }          interface BarDestination extends Destination     {        String getDestinationDetail3();     }          interface Association     {        Source getSource();        Destination getDestination();     }          interface FooAssociation extends Association     {        FooSource getSource();        FooDestination getDestination();        String getFooAssociationDetail();     }          interface BarAssociation extends Association     {        BarSource getSource();        BarDestination getDestination();        String getBarAssociationDetail();     }"}
{"_id": "195158", "title": "Resources for writing a parser combinator library", "text": "I often use parser combinator libraries, but I've never written one. What are good resources for getting started? In case it matters, I'm using Julia, a functional (but not lazy) language."}
{"_id": "58292", "title": "With a small development team, how do you organize second-level support?", "text": "Say, you have a team of 5 developers and your inhouse customers demand a reasonable support availability of say 5 days a week, 9am-6pm. I can imagine the following scenarios:   * **the customers approach the same guy** , every time. Downside: single point of failure, if the guy is unavailable.   * **each developer is assigned one week of support duty**. Downside: how to you distribute the work evenly in times of planned (vacation) and unplanned (sickness) unavailability?   * **each developer is assigned one day of support duty**. Downside: similar to above, but not as bad.   * a **randomly picked developer handles the support request**. Downside: maybe not fair, see above. What is your experience?"}
{"_id": "142087", "title": "Why rails use yaml to config database instead of plain ruby code?", "text": "Most of configuration files in ruby such as Gemfile, gemspec, are just ruby code itself. Why database configuration file in rails is the exception?"}
{"_id": "142086", "title": "Why the recent shift to removing/omitting semicolons from Javascript?", "text": "It seems to be fashionable recently to omit semicolons from Javascript. There was a blog post a few years ago emphasising that in Javascript, semicolons are optional and the gist of the post seemed to be that you shouldn't bother with them because they're unnecessary. The post, widely cited, doesn't give any compelling reasons _not_ to use them, just that leaving them out has few side- effects. Even GitHub has jumped on the no-semicolon bandwagon, requiring their omission in any internally-developed code, and a recent commit to the zepto.js project by its maintainer has removed all semicolons from the codebase. His chief justifications were:   * it's a matter of preference for his team;   * less typing Are there other good reasons to leave them out? Frankly I can see no reason to omit them, and certainly no reason to go back over code to erase them. It also goes against (years of) recommended practice, which I don't really buy the \"cargo cult\" argument for. So, why all the recent semicolon-hate? Is there a shortage looming? Or is this just the latest Javascript fad?"}
{"_id": "236741", "title": "Why did Microsoft dropped the RESX model for RESW in Windows Store applications?", "text": "Why did Microsoft choose to change the resources management system from .NET's RESX files? RESX had useful code generation, providing developers auto-completion for resources names and outputting IMHO very readable code. The new RESW format is as far as I know, the same bare XML files, but without any code generation, forcing developers to write more code, and depriving them of compile time error detection."}
{"_id": "112629", "title": "Learning path for web developer .NET or Java", "text": "I am interested to know how many real world web application servers are hosted by windows? I am going to learn C# and ASP.NET and want to convert my self from an embedded developer to a web app developer. My friends told me that there are ways more Linux based servers than windows servers. He also mentioned the Java skills stack is much more useful than .NET in the world of web application. My experience of Java and C# are rougly the same. I am an experienced C++ developer though. Can anyone give me some suggestion about it? Many thanks"}
{"_id": "143069", "title": "Programming Test", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Good interview programming projects We are looking to hire some more Java developers onto our team, and plan to test their coding abilities with a test. We currently use a web-based Java test that automatically compiles and runs the code, but it is very flaky and we're having problems with our candidates losing their work on this site. Not only is this frustrating for everyone, it makes us look like we don't know what we're doing. Is there a popular testing suite out there? What do you use? I'm **not** interested in dogmatic arguments on whether or not I should be testing my candidates in this way, I'm looking for a tool that will help me do it."}
{"_id": "196492", "title": "Design for using your own API", "text": "So I'm planning to use APIs for my host app. But the APIs are built such that it requires a sessionkey for every request. So my question is, how would I dogfood my API? Cause, apparently I'm thinking in the line of creating a \"special\" key for my host app (cause it makes no sense to request for a key for my own use), but, anyone inspecting the headers of the request could find this key and literally use it and bypass requesting their own keys. Maybe there's a best practice for dogfooding our own API without a special key or someway to differentiate whether the request is coming from the host app or the public. I couldn't use IP to differentiate too, cause the public could be using the same server to call the APIs. That's just the way it is, and is a one of the constraints to keep in mind."}
{"_id": "59524", "title": "C++ Commitee Members?", "text": "I have been searching the web for information regarding what people (and their backgrounds) are in the C++ commitee. However, to my surprise I have not found any such information. Where can I find information about the C++ commitee members?"}
{"_id": "196496", "title": "How to manage large scale project in node.js keeping everything Asynchronous?", "text": "I have a large module which have to process more than 10k request/ response per second. Every request has a json and need to process it and verify it on the database and generate the response on the basis of the db query. Here is an example                Function 1           function  ('/get' , fucntion (req1 , res1 , next ){            //to process the req data        processData(req1 , res1 );           });                Function 2               processData(req1 , res1 ){                var J = JSON.parse (req1.body)          //it has to read db three times           //process the json build the response and return                      condtionCheck(J , res1){                              var a = someVlaue(){                         //select a value from a collection set of nosql which have                          //more than 1000 document and                          //i have to itrate a for loop to check the condition .....etc                          //...........                                }                         ........                                dataRead(var a , res1){                  // is it possible to send response for the req1 object here                              res1.send({value b: abcd123})                         }                        }                }               Function 3 ..... and so on       The major problem is all the code i have written inside the process data is synchronous. Bacaue each code depends upon the previous call back and there are so many condition check are used in several times. So It is good to put such a large processing in synchronous way inside node ? If i write the code using async some times all scenario got in a deadlock condition How to avoid such behavior? Does async or function like step have affect on performance ? On such a series of function how can we reduce latency ?"}
{"_id": "196499", "title": "Why should CS teachers stop teaching applets?", "text": "Why should CS teachers **stop** teaching Java applets? As a veteran of applets and forums, I think it is high time to make a call that teachers should stop teaching applets in general, & especially AWT based applets. Applets are an advanced and specialized type of app. that has little place in the real world around us (most things that are done by applets can instead be better achieved using Javascript and HTML 5)."}
{"_id": "34267", "title": "How to program something with the expectation that it will work the first time?", "text": "I had a friend in college who programmed something that worked the first time, that was pretty amazing. But as for me, I just fire up the debugger as soon as I finally get whatever I'm working on to compile - saves me time (kidding of course, I sometimes hold out a little bit of hope or use a lot of premeditated debug strings). What's the best way to approach the Dijkstrain ideal for our programs? -or- Is this just some sort of pie-in-the-sky old fools quest for greatness applicable only to finite tasks that no one should hope for in our professional lives because programming is just too complex?"}
{"_id": "34265", "title": "What HR policies prevent you from finding skillful programmers?", "text": "During our interview process we give the candidate a programming test as well as a programming design problem. Our HR department has told us to stop administering the programming test due to legal concerns. This would really hinder our ability to screen candidates. Are there other HR policies that prevent you from hiring capable programmers?"}
{"_id": "251936", "title": "How does a stack VM manage with only one stack?", "text": "Lately I've been asking a lot of questions here about VMs. Here's another one: I understand that often stack based VMs use only one stack - the call stack - for everything. E.g. it is also used for evaluation of arithmetic expressions. What I don't understand is, how doesn't this complicate things a whole lot? I'll demonstrate what I mean with an example. Please consider the following psuedocode program:               func main:         funcA()          func funcA:         2 + 4 * 8      This would compile to the following bytecode:               main:     call funcA     end     funcA:     push 2     push 4     push 8     mult     add     end      (In this bytecode, the program starts at `main:`. `call` pushes the program counter onto the stack and jumps to the specified label. When an `end` is reached, the top of the stack - assumed to be a line number - is popped and we jump there.) So let's see what happens here: In `call funcA`, we push the program counter (i.e. next line number) onto the stack. Then we jump to `funcA`. In `funcA` some computation is made. After the computation, the number `34` is left at the top of the stack. When we reach `end`, we pop the top of the stack, assuming it's the line number we should return to But it isn't, the line number to return to is buried underneath. How should `end` know about this? To avoid all this mess, we can just have a separate data stack and call stack, and not mix the two. So my question is: why do some VMs (such as the JVM) use one stack for everything, and when the do: how do they handle situations such as the one described above?"}
{"_id": "251932", "title": "Open Source-Only license", "text": "I want to know if a license exists that is similar to GPL but allows only source distribution (that is no binary distribution). Why do I want this? The idea is that I want fellow programmers to be able to have the benefits of open source software BUT also retain control over the consumer binary distribution. Specifically I want to prevent my software to be picked by organazations like the linux distributors. I want the users of my software to dowlnload binaries only from my site. Is this possible? Thanks"}
{"_id": "194404", "title": "Silverlight support from Microsoft", "text": "I heard Silverlight will not be supported any more by Microsoft. It is true? If so, could anyone share with me Microsoft announcement? And if there are already application developed by Silverlight, what is the new technology to migration to? thanks in advance, Lin"}
{"_id": "212678", "title": "Should you hard code your data across all unit tests?", "text": "Most unit testing tutorials/examples out there usually involve defining the data to be tested for each individual test. I guess this is part of the \"everything should be tested in isolation\" theory. However I've found that when dealing with multi tier applications with a lot of DI, the code required for setting up each test gets very long winded. Instead I've built a number of testbase classes which I can now inherit which has a lot of test scaffolding pre-built. As part of this, I'm also building fake datasets which represent the DB of a running application, albeit with usually only one or two rows in each \"table\". Is it an accepted practice to predefine, if not all, then the majority of the test data across all the unit tests? **Update** From the comments below it does feel like I'm doing more integration than unit testing. My current project is .net MVC, using Unit of Work over EF Code First, and Moq for testing. I've mocked the UoW, and the repositories, but I'm using the real business logic classes, and testing the controller actions. The tests will often check that the UoW has been committed, e.g:               [TestClass]     public class SetupControllerTests : SetupControllerTestBase {       [TestMethod]       public void UserInvite_ExistingUser_DoesntInsertNewUser() {         // Arrange         var model = new Mandy.App.Models.Setup.UserInvite() {           Email = userData.First().Email         };              // Act         setupController.UserInvite(model);              // Assert         mockUserSet.Verify(m => m.Add(It.IsAny<UserProfile>()), Times.Never);         mockUnitOfWork.Verify(m => m.Commit(), Times.Once);       }     }      `SetupControllerTestBase` is building the mock UoW, and instantiating the `userLogic`. A lot of the tests require having an existing user or product in the database, so I've pre-populated what the mock UoW returns, in this example `userData`, which is just an `IList<User>` with a single user record."}
{"_id": "251939", "title": "Does the pattern of passing in one object instead of many parameters to a constructor have a name?", "text": "If you have a constructor that takes a lot of parameters, like this:                 public OrgUnitsHalRepresentation(List<OrgUnitSummaryHalRepresentation> orgUnitSummaryHalRepresentationList,       int count, int providedCount, int total, int page, int filterLimit, boolean hasNextPage, boolean isDefaultCount)      You can use a separate class that takes nothing in the constructor and set these parameters using setters and pass in this into the constructor instead:               public OrgUnitsHalRepresentation(Pagination(Name of pattern) p)      Does this have a name so that I can use it in my class name?"}
{"_id": "49924", "title": "Collocation in Code", "text": "Quite some time ago I remember reading an article from 'Joel on Software' that mentioned collocation of information in code was important. By collocation, I mean that relevant information about the code is present when the code is. I'm currently writing an article that has a small bit in it about collocation so I went searching for sources and found the quote in the article 'Making Wrong Code Look Wrong' > In order to make code really, really robust, when you code-review it, you > need to have coding conventions that allow collocation. In other words, the > more information about what code is doing is located right in front of your > eyes, the better a job you\u2019ll do at finding the mistakes. When you have code > that says For me, collocation isn't just about the code itself, but the tool used to view the code. If it can help with the 'collocation factor' (term coined by me?) I believe it can help with the programmers productivity. Take for example the modern IDEs that show you the variables type by hovering over it. **Are their any other articles written about collocation in code and/or are their other terms that this is known by?**"}
{"_id": "158687", "title": "Any empirical research comparing IT project failure rates to other domains?", "text": "IT projects are legendary for high failure rates, cost overruns, and schedule overruns. Hence the motivations for questions like this. Is there any actual empirical research that compares the failure rates of IT projects to those in other domains, in particular to engineering domains? For example, has anybody compared cost and schedule overruns in IT projects to construction projects of comparable scope? There should be publicly available data here from government projects, but I'm not aware of anybody who's gone and done comparisons."}
{"_id": "158685", "title": "Is it possible to use RubyGnome2's/QtRuby's HTML renderers to make UI for a Ruby script?", "text": "I'd like to make a graphical user interface for my script, instead of running it from the console. I'm aware there's a wealth of UI libraries for Ruby, but I'm quite familiar with HTML and CSS and I'd like to use them for building an interface. So the question is: Is it possible to use a HTML rendering library to make such an UI? From what I understand, it's relatively easy to put in a HTML rendered view of something, but is it possible to communicate back with the script? Like when I push that big red button, it actually tells the script to act on it? Obviously it's possible if the script run on the server side, but I'd like to run it as a desktop application."}
{"_id": "251110", "title": "Why would programmers ignore ISO standards?", "text": "One of the things I run into often is problems caused by programs which don't conform to ISO standardss. One example would be not using the ISO country tables but making up their own shorthands, which goes okay for the United States (US), or the Netherlands (NL) but goes spectacularly wrong for the United Kingdom (GB, not UK) or Spain (ES, not SP) and a lot of other countries. As another example, internal date notations. Why would anyone store a date as 01/02/2014 ever? It is completely unclear whether that is 1st February or January 2nd, whereas if you use the ISO standard you just store 2014-02-01* and it's unambiguously February 1st. My question: When and why should a programmer make up their own constructs when there is an ISO standard available? * Store 2014-02-01, and format the date accordingly when showing it to an end user."}
{"_id": "147561", "title": "Why use Pascal with Cocoa/Cocoa Touch?", "text": "I'm surprised to find that it might be possible to use Pascal with the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks. This is an interesting turn of events, as Pascal was the favored language for Mac development for a short while early in the history of Macintosh. It looks like someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make Pascal work with Objective-C frameworks like Cocoa and Cocoa Touch, but I'm not sure I see the point. Is this mainly a refuge for Pascal developers coming from other development environments like Delphi, or are there compelling reasons to use Pascal in place of Objective-C or other languages. I don't mean to ask which language is \"better.\" I'm just wondering if there's a reason beyond language preference that one would choose to use Pascal for MacOS X or iOS development."}
{"_id": "147566", "title": "How would you create a mobile (android) offline wiki site?", "text": "My apologies in advance if this is not a good forum for this question; pointers to others happily accepted. On the off chance it matters, I'm not going to commercialize this idea or anything; if anything in here is interesting to you, use it as you see fit. My basic problem is this: My favorite place to do non-code writing (essays, fiction, etc) is on my Android phone when I'm traveling. Said traveling often causes the phone to lose all signal/web connection. I would like a system that auto-syncs with the phone in some fashion, can be written in a fairly wiki-ish style (i.e. links are supported but I don't have to actually type out also be edited easily at a regular computer when needed. I'd prefer the editing on the phone be as close to plain text as possible, because fine manipulation like that required to set something to bold or whatever is a pain; I'd rather just be able to type things out. Nice-to-have is the ability for other people to collaborate on documents. Very-nice-to-have is authentication so that some documents can be private, without having to get into the auth quagmire myself. There really doesn't seem to be any such thing out there. The two options I've thought of for implementing this:   1. Now that there exists a proper 2-way sync dropbox app ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync ), I could just use a plain-text editor on the phone and have a simple web app that presents the text via a wiki markup library of some kind out of the relevant dropbox folder. Advantages: Dead simple. Disadvantages: No easy auth or collaboration.   2. I could use Google Docs, and have a not-so-simple Web app that pulls documents from there, treats them as wiki text, maybe does some cashing, and presents them as a coherent-ish web site(s). Advantages: If I can get the auth to pass through properly, auth and collaboration are free. Disadvantages: Much more complex, and this is just a one-off personal project. I'm curious as to whether I've missed anything, any other easier ways to solve this problem. I'm actually a little surprised that no-one seems to have thought of backing a wiki on Google Docs; there's the Google app wiki stuff, but that pretty much requires a browser AFAICT, whereas there are several Google Doc apps on pretty much everything with offline sync options."}
{"_id": "149501", "title": "Given an idea for an application, how should I decide which web technologies to use?", "text": "Background: I'm an experienced Java developer, know basic Javascript, HTML, and CSS (and find it easy to figure out how to do something), and have a little experience in Python. I've seen Ruby before and edited a few lines of existing scripts. I'm curious not so much about any given technology, but mainly about what my thought process should be when deciding which technologies to use. Let's take a simple application - maybe an online address book where I can enter contact information, and create groups of contacts. How should I go about evaluating the options that are out there? The number of frameworks out there is daunting to say the least. This should be a learning experience for me, but also I want the knowledge that I gain to be relevant, and I'm afraid of using something that I'll never use again."}
{"_id": "131610", "title": "Is it justifiable for a prospective employer to ask you to make a decision without full information?", "text": "## The Story I am currently in the process of finding a new job. Several days ago I had two interviews with prospective employers, both of which expressed interest for a second meeting.   * Company A asked me to come over to talk today. There was no further interview, they simply made me an offer and explained terms.   * Company B has scheduled me for a hands-on evaluation tomorrow, after which I will know their final answer within a week. I am fully confident they will also make me an offer and moreover that it will be financially preferable to that of Company A. Since Company A offered first, I told them that I cannot evaluate their offer before Company B also let me know of their decision. This did not sit well with the person I was talking with (the COO). Here are his two main objections and the gist of my answers:   * _\"We do not want to be anyone's second best option\"_ I explained that in fact they were my first option, in that all other things being equal I would prefer to work for them. In addition, since the meeting was chronologically first there was really no way for me to be honest with them without letting them know; so this is not a matter of being my second option but rather of me being level at the negotiating table.   * _\"We cannot wait for you to make up your mind\"_ I explained that as they surely understand, making a decision without evaluating all alternatives would be me acting against my own best interest. In addition, the skill and modus operandi of evaluating before deciding is definitely something they will expect of me on the job (and something that factored into their decision to make an offer). Finally, there is a hard limit on how long they would have to wait for an answer (a week); I also volunteered to tell company B \"I would appreciate it if you could inform me of your final decision as soon as possible, since I am also considering another offer\". ## The Facts At this point I am fairly certain that Company A just want to intimidate and pressure me into making an uninformed decision. Evidence towards this conclusion include:   * Their playing hardball during the first interview, which was quite intense and slightly uncomfortable. Initially I justified this as a result of their sense of technical excellence, but after this second meeting I have reconsidered. After all, if the reason for their behavior was the bar being too high for me then making me an offer without any other intermediate step would not be logical.   * The first interview being conducted mostly in \"senior personnel\" mode (they only asked two questions having straight and definite technical answers, which took maybe a minute out of almost two hours total time), but their offer being for a lower-ranked position.   * Their ominous references to how bad the employment situation is right now in Greece where I live; things like \"we always pay on time and in euros\" (with the obvious suggestion that in case of Greece defaulting they will not be affected because they only do business with customers in the US). This I regard as pure FUD.   * Their insistence that I need to give them an answer by tomorrow at most. I am fairly certain (due to other information I have) that they are not considering any other employee for the same position; rather, for them it's a question of \"do we pick this guy up or not?\". Also, what kind of employer would agree to sign you up today but turn you down next week? And why would they ask me to behave in a manner that actually gives you away as someone they _wouldn't_ want to hire? It does not make sense. In fairness, I should also mention that these people _look like_ they have achieved a high Joel Test score in an environment where the median score is either zero or one (for using version control). They look like their conduct of everyday operations is dramatically better than most other IT shops around here. And they only work with US customers, which implies they achieve a level of professional standard shall we say, _uncommon_ here in Greece. ## The Moral? Is there any convincing justification of why they would require an answer within two days at most? Especially since I told them I 'm expecting another offer _and_ the _worst_ case scenario is an answer within a week? Or am I correct in reconsidering if I want to work for them at all? Thank you for your valuable input."}
{"_id": "143027", "title": "What is the proper jargon to refer to a variable wrapped inside a function closure?", "text": "In JavaScript, there is no such thing as a \"private\" variable. In order to achieve encapsulation and information hiding in JavaScript, I can wrap a variable inside a function closure, like so:               var counter = (function() {             var i = 0;         var fn = {};         fn.increment = function() { i++; };         fn.get = function() { return i; };         return fn;     {)();         counter.increment();     counter.increment();     alert(counter.get()); // alerts '2'      Since I don't call `i` a private variable in JavaScript, what do I call it?"}
{"_id": "50361", "title": "Custom Request Templates", "text": "What kind of information do you require from the project management team before you can proceed on a project? Is there a certain format they utilize on Programming Requests which helps you to understand exactly how the development team can succeed with this project. Example: I always like it when project managers mock up forms. It helps significantly to know how they are visualizing the UI for many tasks. Any suggestions on how we can assist the Project Management team in issuing Programming Requests that are as clear as day will be greatly appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "187126", "title": "Why does the .Net world seem to embrace magic strings instead of staticly typed alternatives?", "text": "So, I work in .Net. I make open source projects in .Net. One of my biggest problems with it isn't necessariyl with .Net, but with the community and frameworks around it. It seems everywhere that magical naming schemes and strings is treated as the best way to do everything. Bold statement, but look at it: ASP.Net MVC: Hello world route:                       routes.MapRoute(                 \"Default\",                                              // Route name                 \"{controller}/{action}/{id}\",                           // URL with parameters                 new { controller = \"Home\", action = \"Index\", id = \"\" }  // Parameter defaults             );      What this means is that ASP.Net MVC will somehow look up `HomeController` in your code. Somehow make a new instance of it, and then call the function `Index` apparently with an `id` parameter of some sort. And then there are other things like:               RenderView(\"Categories\", categories);     ...or..     ViewData[\"Foobar\"]=\"meh\";      And then there are similar things with XAML as well. `DataContext` is treated as an object and you have to hope and pray that it resolves to the type you want. DependencyProperties must use magic strings and magic naming conventions. And things like this:                 MyData myDataObject = new MyData(DateTime.Now);             Binding myBinding = new Binding(\"MyDataProperty\");       myBinding.Source = myDataObject;      Although it relies more on casting and various magical runtime supports. Anyway, I say all that to end up here: Why is this so well tolerated in the .Net world? Aren't we using statically typed languages to almost always know what the type of things are? Why is reflection and type/method/property/whatever names(as strings) prefered so much in comparison to generics and delegates or even code generation? Are there inherit reasons that I'm missing for why ASP.Net's routing syntax relies almost exclusively on reflection to actually resolve how to handle a route? I hate when I change the name of a method or property and suddenly things break, but there don't appear to be any references to that method or property and there are of course no compiler errors. Why was the apparent convenience of magic strings considered \"worth it\"? I know there are also commonly statically typed alternatives to some things, but they usually take a backseat and seem to never be in tutorials or other beginner material."}
{"_id": "50362", "title": "Proposal for a new position at work", "text": "I have an idea at work for a new Product Manager position at our office. I work with several developers, and it would be helpful to have someone working in a type of \"Scrum Master\" capacity, dividing out assignments and making sure they get complete. This position does not currently exist, however I feel that I have enough evidence to indicate that it be very helpful for our business. What is the best way to present this proposal to my boss? Is there a specific template that you know of for new position? It should be able to describe the qualification for the position, their responsibilities, and what metrics we would use to measure them. **UPDATE** With Anna's suggestion, I gave more details about this specific position. However, I would ideally like the most generic way to present a new position to my boss."}
{"_id": "187123", "title": "Is there a code tag to indicate \"need improvement\" on code comments?", "text": "TODO indicates \"task to be completed\", FIXME to be fixed etc. Is there a code tag to indicate \"need improvement\" on code comments?"}
{"_id": "187122", "title": "Proper Git setup between designers and developers?", "text": "Basically we now have 2 developers for an iOS project, 2 developers for an Android project and 1 designer doing designs for both projects. Right now, the way we exchange designs and images is through mail...so not very advanced or efficient. We're switching to Dropbox, but I feel like we could go a step further and somehow integrate the process into Git. For the iOS project, we are using Git, and I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to introduce the designer as well to Git. The problem is that, being a designer, it might be a bit difficult for him to understand source version control. As the 2 iOS devs, we'll probably be doing a lot of commits, branching, merging, but the designer will most likely only have to update images every now and then. We'd like to keep the setup as simple as possible (especially for the designer). We are using GitHub, so their OSX application might come in very handy for this. Does anyone else have experience or best practices about how to set up the branching/merging and integrating a designer into a technical Git project? Articles, blog posts etc. are welcomed as well."}
{"_id": "197444", "title": "Building a WordPress-like filter system", "text": "This question is purely hypothetical. I use WordPress a lot and know the filter structure from an implementation point of view. I'm now wondering what's the best way to implement such a structure (not the way WordPress uses, but the _best_ way). I will give a short overview of what the WordPress filter structure is. After that, I'll list my requirements and thoughts. At last, I'll ask some questions. ### WordPress' filter structure WordPress sends nearly every data through a _filter function_ before it outputs the data to the browser. The WordPress Codex gives information in the Plugin API and the Filter Reference. For a plugin developer, it's quite easy to add a filter: >   1. Create the PHP function that filters the data. >   2. Hook to the filter in WordPress, by calling `add_filter()` >   3. Put your PHP function in a plugin file, and activate it. > Let's look at these steps in some more detail:   1. A filter function is a PHP function that takes one parameter, the input, and returns the output. It should not `echo` or `print` anything.    2. The `add_filter` function (reference) looks like:               add_filter ( 'hook_name', 'your_filter', [priority], [accepted_args] );      `hook_name` is the _action hook_ at which the filter should be called.   `your_filter` is the name of your filter function.   `priority` gives the, well, the priority of the filter (default: 10), where lower numbers are more important.   `accepted_arguments` tells WordPress the filter function will take more parameters, but let's leave that out here, it's not one of my requirements.   3. I don't have to explain this step, I think. ### Requirements I'd like to know how to implement a filter structure like WordPress has and for the sake of an actual answerable question, I have made up a hypothetical case with some requirements. My case is a forum, in which I have several cases in which I'd want to use filters for the content, like:   * A linkify filter to make bare URLs into nice, working hyperlinks   * A smiley filter to replace ASCII smileys like ':D' into an image ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IRi6N.gif) (sorry for the imgur abuse) I think the advantages of using filters for this would be:   * Code clarity   * Filters can be easily reused   * Making it easy to implement that a user can switch a filter on and off   * Easy implementation of additional filters in the future ### My thoughts I imagine WordPress keeps a multidimensional array like `$filters[$hook][$filter]`. Here is `$hook` the name of the hook when the filter has to be called and `$filter` an array of the filter settings, basically those that were passed to the `add_filter()` function. When an action hook point is reached, WordPress can iterate through the `$filters[$current_hook]` array and execute every filter. ### Questions   1. Is this the best way to include a filter system with the requirements I listed? If so, why? If not, why not; and what would be a better system and why?   2. As I said I want users to be able to switch filters on and off.  I thought of adding a `enabled_filters` column to the user table in the database, which would be a bitmask of the enabled filters. That would mean every filter would have a unique identifier, but more important that there aren't very much filters possible. So this wouldn't be the way to go. I also thought of adding a table `enabled_filters` with columns `userId`, `filterName` and `enabled`, to set the filters on and off with a new row. With using the filter name in every row, this would cost some data space on much users and filters, so a better but similar idea would be adding a table `filters` with `id` and `filterName`, and changing the `filterName` column of the `enabled_filters` table into a `filterId` column. This would also allow an additional field in the `filters` table, `allow_disable`, to disable the disabling of the filter. Is this second approach a good one, or are there better options? Key requirement is that I don't want to have to modify the base system when adding a filter.   3. WordPress wants programmers to not print anything in a filter function, but return a new string. That means you'll have a variable `$return` in your filter function, to which you append new data all the time with `$return .= '...';`. Using `echo` or `print()` could be easier for programmers, also to make it easier to port existing code (which uses print functions) to a filter function. The filter system could use the `ob_*` functions to capture the printed data instead of sending it to the browser. Would this be a good way to implement filters? Are there any disadvantages, like speed?    4. The last question is about when to use filters, and when not. It seems clear to me that the listed cases (linkify and smileys) are cases where filters are well-used. For things like signatures or avatars, to stick with the forum, it's different. I've tried to figure out why it feels different, and think it's because that would limit the use of a filter to one place.  For example, avatars and profile overview filters could only be used next to a post. One of the nice things of a filter is that you can add the same filter function to a different action hook, so that you can pass both the post and the signature content through the linkify filter. Am I right here? Is it true that one shouldn't use filters for avatars, profile overviews and signatures? What can be said about general rules when and when not to use a filter? If I were to write documentation on my system for third-party developers, what should I write down on this topic?"}
{"_id": "92556", "title": "Do variable names affect the performance of websites?", "text": "Do variable names affect website performance? I know this will going to be very low number, but still can any one provide the reasons for not choosing a long variable name in aspect of performance?"}
{"_id": "234310", "title": "What should a repository really do?", "text": "I've heard a lot of the repository pattern, but I quite didn't understand what a repository should really do. When I say \"what a repository should really do\" I'm mainly concerned about which methods it should provide. For instance, should a repository really provide CRUD methods, or should it provide some different kind of method? I mean, should the repositories contain business logic, or should they simply contain the logic to communicate with the data store and manage the entities to be saved or loaded? Also I've heard that repositories are units of persistence for aggregates. But how is that? I fail to understand how this works in practice. I thought that we should have just one interface `IRepository` which contains the CRUD methods, and then for any entity the implementation would simply contain the logic to save and retrieve such type from the data store."}
{"_id": "58436", "title": "Skills for RAD developer", "text": "I am about to embark on an exquisite journey. I have applied for an event, where in span of 48 straight hours, strangers meet, throw around some great ideas, decide on teams, and make a working prototype of IT project. All within 48 hours. I anticipate, that this will be very skill and ability intensive experience, and I want to be prepared. Since i will need to develop my part of the code quickly, I have a following question: **What would be the most needed skills for these 48 hours?** I do know, that things like proper documentation, version control and such are pretty important for a full fledged application/program/web development, but for this span of frantic coding? _Background: I am a web developer, so answers applicable to web development would be more appreciated than others._"}
{"_id": "66274", "title": "10 years out of programming, wanting to return... How to best approach it?", "text": "I've searched, but found nothing directly applicable. I have 15 years or so development experience, in Unix, C, C++ mainly, (along with assorted script / minor languages) the last 5 years of this was contracting. My various testimonials and references over the years eventually convinced me I was pretty good at it too. Now, for the last 8 years I've been entirely non-technical and now know that to have been the wrong choice. The problem I face now apart from the skill set on the resume would put off some potential employers, is I've almost completely forgotten C++ and the little Java I had. I don't much fancy starting from scratch again! But that's how it feels when I sit and look at any non trivial C++ code. All that OO and class stuff and I'll pretty much give you a blank look. Surprisingly my C is still ok, well syntactically, though I imagine my design capabilities have taken quite a hit too. Anyone had experience of something similar? Am I realistically looking at years to get back to being half decent again? Apart from much practice and reading anything I can usefully do to get up to speed again faster? Ideally I don't want to face being stuck with the career change I **mistakenly** made 8 years ago. Help!"}
{"_id": "24252", "title": "Diplomatically point out the obvious problem in a product", "text": "As we all know, every software has bugs in it. It is matter of time to discover it. Suppose if you just found your product has potential big issue and it was not developed by you. How would you deal with it? I usually speak up with some data & analysis even if it is not my part of code. I am wondering if it is too offensive because I often faced on some resistance(depending on the issue), which would eventually be gone."}
{"_id": "160618", "title": "Is it OK for a function to modify a parameter", "text": "We have a data layer that wraps Linq To SQL. In this datalayer we have this method (simplified)               int InsertReport(Report report)     {         db.Reports.InsertOnSubmit(report);         db.SubmitChanges();         return report.ID;      }      On submit changes, the report ID is updated with the value in the database which we then return. From the calling side it looks like this (simplified)               var report = new Report();     DataLayer.InsertReport(report);     // Do something with report.ID      Looking at the code, ID has been set inside the InsertReport function as a kind of side effect, and then we are ignoring the return value. My question is, should I rely on the side effect and do something like this instead.               void InsertReport(Report report)     {         db.Reports.InsertOnSubmit(report);         db.SubmitChanges();     }      or should we prevent it               int InsertReport(Report report)     {         var newReport = report.Clone();         db.Reports.InsertOnSubmit(newReport);         db.SubmitChanges();         return newReport.ID;      }      maybe even               Report InsertReport(Report report)     {         var newReport = report.Clone();         db.Reports.InsertOnSubmit(newReport);         db.SubmitChanges();         return newReport;      }      This question was raised when we created a unit test and found that its not really clear that the report parameters ID property gets updated and that to mock the side effect behavior felt wrong, a code smell if you will."}
{"_id": "200777", "title": "Would this development environment cover the bases for iOS and Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 apps?", "text": "I'm an experienced C# developer. I've created a couple Windows Phone apps and a Windows 8 app but have wanted to develop for iOS too. What I'm thinking is adding the following equipment and software to make this possible:   1. MacBook Air - necessary to compile/deploy to Apple's App Store and for some development tasks, as well as tools like PaintCode   2. iPad Mini - less expensive and able to do double duty testing for both iPhone and iPad screens (Ideally I'd have the budget for a phone too, but not in the cards)   3. Xamarin Studio Business Edition - pricier but integrates into Visual Studio, which is my primary dev environment and also home to Win8/WP8 app code Basically, I'm just looking for a reality check. Is this overkill? Not enough? I know I could save a few hundred getting a Mac Mini, but have other uses for a laptop. Can I get by with the Indie version of Xamarin or am I crippling productivity by constantly switching environments? (As soon as I get the hardware I'll start by testing the free version to help answer that question)."}
{"_id": "164726", "title": "Storing Projects on Google Drive (Cloud)", "text": "I've started using Google Drive for my cloud needs and backing up pretty much everything. I've got the app installed so it auto-sync's all my content in most things. My question is this, I am currently coding for iOS (although this applies to any coding project) and am split on storing my project files on Google Drive while using sync. My theory is that if I did use it, I'd never have to worry about system crashes or lost code before backups, but if I do use it it will be sync'ing a-lot and I thought there might be problems with it detecting changes and trying to sync for example half way through compiling. Bandwidth isn't an issue as I have fast connection and unlimited monthly allowance. Has anyone ever used this, or similar cloud-based sync'ing (dropbox etc) for this and knows whether it works or not or whether there are any potential problems etc."}
{"_id": "114846", "title": "Why has C prevailed over Pascal?", "text": "My understanding is that in the 1980s, and perhaps in the 1990s too, Pascal and C were pretty much head-to-head as production languages. Is the ultimate demise of Pascal only due to Borland's neglect of Delphi? Or was there more, such as bad luck or perhaps something inherently wrong with Pascal (any hopes for its revival?). I hope it's not an open, unanswerable question. I'm interested in historical facts and observations one can back up, rather than likes and dislikes. I also failed to find a duplicate question, which actually surprised me somewhat."}
{"_id": "72036", "title": "What parts of my configuration and my code should I not post?", "text": "When people post code on forums they tend to change or blur out parts of their code. Probably because they want to protect certain parts that might be exploited if it ends up in the wrong hands, I guess?   But is it really necessary to do this? Here are a couple of things I see a lot:   * Renaming id's and class names in html and css   * Renaming variables and functions in code   * Bluring out parts of a folder structure    * Changing stored procedure names and it's parameters   * Posting of example code rather than real code Passwords and connection strings to the DB are obvious things you shouldn't post but how a bout the rest? Is it ok to give out a DB name? Is there anything in the web.config you shouldn't post? How about the .htaccess file on Apache or a folder structure on the system, etc... Basically what I'm asking is which parts are safe to post and which are not?"}
{"_id": "28582", "title": "Do you have any teamguidelines regarding exceptions?", "text": "My team recently inherited a project from a team where the amount of developers dropped so low they had to offload some work. One of the projects we inherited was a project littered with nested code, and awful exception handling (Exceptions were in effect handled as goto statements and thus used as a part of the normal program flow.). All in all it was a hairy code ball someone had been coughing up for a few years. Now we've been having a few team guidelines in place for quite some time, but all of the regards to the structures of objects, coding styles and what not. But we havn't covered exception handling. So I'm wondering if you have any guidelines in your teams regarding exception handling, and if so how you enforce them?"}
{"_id": "164728", "title": "Is it bad practice to output from within a function?", "text": "For example, should I be doing something like:               <?php     function output_message($message,$type='success') {       ?>       <p class=\"<?php echo $type; ?>\"><?php echo $message; ?></p>       <?php     }     output_message('There were some errors processing your request','error');     ?>      or               <?php     function output_message($message,$type='success') {       ob_start();       ?>       <p class=\"<?php echo $type; ?>\"><?php echo $message; ?></p>       <?php       return ob_get_clean();     }     echo output_message('There were some errors processing your request','error');     ?>      I understand they both achieve the same end result, but are there benefits doing one way over the other? Or does it not even matter?"}
{"_id": "28585", "title": "Ruby and Enterprise. Any future?", "text": "After Heroku acquisition by SalesForce, is there any chance for Ruby being adopted in enterprise development?   If you know any good examples already, please point to them."}
{"_id": "77201", "title": "ODBC Lic Restrictions / Need way around limitation here are me thoughts? What do you suggest?", "text": "We are currently using an old legacy ERP system (Thoroughbred) that we have been bolting on functionality by means of web apps we design in house. I interact with the legacy system via ODBC and have to pay on a per connection base via Licenses. I would like to build in intermediate system that would take the sql requests and process them so that any of our apps could just connect to it to avoid the lic issue. What would be the best way to build this adapter. I was thinking a web service but to be honest I am not even sure technically what a web service is. I envision that it just takes in requests and \"does stuff\" with the data and then returns results back to the requester. Sorry about being vague but like I said, I don't have a lot of experience working with web services. Maybe a web service isn't the best way to handle it and I should come at the problem from another direction. My current strengths are Python and turbogears so if I can stay within my comfort zone it's a plus but is not a requirement. Thanks for any and all input!"}
{"_id": "73783", "title": "Seeking Windows file compare which accepts directories and filters for source code only", "text": "There are some good free file compare programs out there and most of them will compare directories too. But what I am look for is one where I can specify a filter like *.cpp and have it ignore object files, makefiles, executables, etc without me having to manually remove those before compare. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "68882", "title": "Recommended guidelines for Mercurial setups", "text": "I've just recently installed mercurial, and have been playing around it with. Overall, it seems like a great way to do version control. However, the distributed nature of its architecture makes it _so_ flexible, I'm not really sure what the ideal configuration/topology is. I'm well aware that asking something like \"what is the ideal Mercurial topology\" will never get a meaningful answer without more specific details ranging from business requirements, number of developers, security concerns, nature of the project, etc. However, are there any general guidelines or \"best-practices\" when it comes to setting up a Mercurial system? In particular, I'm interested in hearing if most companies/projects setup a centralized, \"canonical\" repository. Mercurial doesn't require that you do this, and you could essentially say _anything_ is the \"canonical\" repository. (Perhaps you could consider the lead developer's working repository the \"canonical\" one.) But is it generally a good idea to setup a dedicated \"source control\" server which simply hosts the canonical repository, so every developer can clone it and work locally? Or is this unnecessary?"}
{"_id": "209783", "title": "Not copyrighting code and then reusing functions later", "text": "I'm coding something for my job to copy directories and then use regex to make all the filenames uniform. I'm an undergrad student programmer for my university and I'm not sure what a professional coder would consider reasonable in this case. My job is mostly to implement mathematical research. The current assignment is outside what I've been doing and seems like it would be really useful to have some of the functions available in case I (most likely) encounter a similar assignment at some point in my career in the future. It's going to be really useful because the current filenames are so screwed right now that the admin assistants can't really keep up (and even trying to do so might just cause more human error). I'm thinking that it may not overall be useful outside the current assignment because the regex will be so customised to the way the file are incorrectly named. I'm wondering if this is simple work for a pro coder, and therefore I'm making this program to be much more important in my head than it actually is, or if this is something that a coder would really want to copyright or otherwise retain the ability to use this whenever and wherever else they feel like. They've already told me that there is no question that I'll be given credit for the work, which I'm excited about. My only concern was whether I should be thinking about reusing this code later or if this task is so generic that a pro coder would laugh about keeping the rights to such code. This thread was interesting but seems different from my situation: How can I reuse generic code for consulting between companies? EDIT: Florida, USA"}
{"_id": "28632", "title": "What is an \"assertion framework\"?", "text": "I was reading about the js-test-driver unit-testing framework, when I found out that the guys behind the framework intend it to be integrated with an assertion framework. What is an assertion framework? Is it a kind of unit- testing framework? If it is the case what is specific to such frameworks?"}
{"_id": "237686", "title": "What are the bad points of using Core Data for iOS like an ORM", "text": "I just starting to use `Core Data` for my iOS app and I am thinking about how use Core Data for my needs. **What are the features of my app:**   1. The user look for products proposed from a catalog.   2. The user can add products into a basket.   3. The user can customise each selected product.   4. The user have to create an account to purchase the order.   5. The user have to add recipients for his order.   6. The user pay the order. **How I would persist the datas with`Core Data`:**   * If the user isn't logged on `iCloud` or on my `RESTful API`: Persist the datas on the device.   * If the user is logged on `iCloud` but not on my `RESTful API`: Persist the datas on `iCloud`.   * If the user is logged on my `RESTful API`: Persiste the datas on my back-end. **Question** : After reading some articles about `Core Data`, I quickly understood that it is really verbose and I will rewrite lot of similar code in my app. After researches I found a wonderful article about libraries for `Core Data` by `NSHipster` and I am really interested by using Objective-Record library for my app. But one sentence on the `NSHipster`'s article alerts me on the consequences of using such a library: > Using Core Data as an ORM necessarily limits the capabilities of Core Data > and muddies its conceptual purity. I would have more informations about the \" _limits the capabilities_ \" of using a library inspired by `Active Records`. I wouldn't regret the choice of using Objective-Record library on my app if it can pose problems for the development of feature for me later. Thanks ! **Update:** The good point for me to use Core Data with a library inspired by Active Record is I have to do a lot of \"requests\" inside my app and this will allow me to write less code."}
{"_id": "79041", "title": "How to apologize when you have broken the nightly build", "text": "My first commit in my project resulted in the nightly build being broken and people are all over me as we are nearing the release. I want to send an apology email that should sound sincere and at the same time hinting that this was my first commit and this would not be repeated any more. Being a non-native English speaker, I have difficulties coming up with correct words. Can someone please help ?"}
{"_id": "94164", "title": "Feature vs. Function", "text": "Often I hear PMs (Project Managers) talk about feature and function. And I'm just so puzzled to differentiate them. Sometimes I think of a feature to be equivalent to a user story. Something like \"As a user, Bob should be able to see a list of his payments\", and they call it a feature. Sometimes it gets as big as a subsystem, something like \"the ability to send SMS via web application\". Function on the other hand sometimes gets as small as a task, \"implementing digit grouping for number inputs\", while there are cases when it gets as big as a whole CRUD operation. My question is, how can we differentiate feature from function?"}
{"_id": "197171", "title": "MVC URL formatting/design", "text": "In refactoring a lot of MVC code, I have run into an issue with my URL design. For example, let's say we have a `Venue` object               public class Venue      {         public long ID { get; set; }         public List<Event> Events { get; set; }     }      and an `Event` object               public class Event     {         public long ID { get; set; }         public Venue Venue { get; set; }     }      So my initial set up was to have an action set up in the `EventController` like               public ActionResult List (long? ID) // http://example.org/API/Events/List/12      where the `ID` specified the Venue, so it would return a list of events for that venue. If an `ID` is not specified, it returns a list of **all** events. This results in a confusing URL, because the `ID` parameter is ambiguous and misleading. I then thought to change it to               public ActionResult List (long? VenueID) // http://example.org/API/Events/List?VenueID=12      which makes a lot more sense and is more clear. An even cleaner URL would exist if the action was moved to the `VenueController` and set up like               public ActionResult Events (long? ID) // http://example.org/API/Venue/12/Events      as the `ID` would clearly specify the `Venue`'s `ID`. The issue with this URL is that you are primarily dealing with `Event` objects in the `VenueController`, which seems wrong. I have been leaning towards the first option (`http://example.org/API/Events/List?VenueID=12`) because, even though the other option is cleaner, it seems like I should keep the `Event` pages (as I view this List page as more related to the `Event` object) in the `EventController`. Any recommendations?"}
{"_id": "197170", "title": "Getting practicality of PHP from Ruby or Python", "text": "I have a rather odd problem. I love the practicality of PHP - specifically that I can fairly safely assume that on any random server I'll have access to the MySQL libraries, and that I can go between PHP/HTML with `<?` and `?>`. That said, I find the language atrocious - Ruby and Python are considerably more expressive, yet since they're not web-specific, they lack both of those features - at least last I used them both. So my question is, is there some way to get the practicality of PHP from Ruby or Python (specifically the two issues I mentioned)? If not, is there some other language that doesn't feel like a C/C++ parser gone wrong?"}
{"_id": "72787", "title": "Are wikis really appropriate to store documents for software development?", "text": "Everybody knows that well-documented software development leads to success. However, it usually means that not only plain text but also binary content will be involved in the document, such as a UML diagram. And I've heard many people say that. The version control system is not the appropriate place for the binary files. I totally understand and agree with the issue. I asked several seasoned developers where the best place to store documents should be and the answer I got was \"wiki\". Wiki is good but I considered another potential issue. How can the source code which has been stored in a version control system connect to its related document in wiki? Let's say someone clones the repository of git or mercurial. How can he/she find the document easily? Or have I just missed something? **Updated:**   I know some wiki systems have the ability to integrate with source control systems. But my concern is not about the ability of integration. If you have cloned source code from a git repository and after a while you get on a train and want to continue to work offline on the train (which is a big feature of DVCS). Then you suddenly realize you don't have any access to document since you are working offline on the train. On the other hand, if the document was stored in git repository you would have access to the document with repository cloned."}
{"_id": "38516", "title": "XML in the attribute of other XML", "text": "Today, another developer was talking to me about how he addressed an issue he was working on. The solution he found was to stick a string of escaped XML into the attribute of another XML element. In my head I was screaming \"Is that even safe and wise to do???\". According to him, that has been done on tons of other projects within the company that transmit XML back and forth. My question is this -   1. Is that a safe/smart thing to do (xml in an xml attribute)?    2. If not, should I bring that up? I have only been with the company for 2 years and have noticed many things that are just asking for a major catastrophe to happen someday (both in and not in projects I work on). I don't want to be the one that always says that they are doing things wrong... Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! **FYI - UPDATED INFO RE: APPLICATION -** Flash is calling this API and parsing the XML it gets in the response. I do not think the Flash is using XPath or anything, just string parsing (but I could be wrong). I do not work on the Flash aspect, so I do not know where to look (nor would I understand it)."}
{"_id": "50585", "title": "Computer Science Degrees and Real-World Experience", "text": "Recently, at a family reunion-type event I was asked by a high school student how important it is to get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer in lieu of actual programming experience. The kid has been working with Python and the Blender project as he's into making games and the like; it sounds like he has some decent programming chops. Now, as someone that has gone through a computer science degree my initial response to this question is to say, \"You absolutely MUST get a computer science degree in order to get a job as a programmer!\" However, as I thought about this I was unsure as to whether my initial reaction was due in part to my own suffering as a CS student or because I feel that this is actually the case. Now, for me, I can say that I rarely use anything that I learned in college, in terms of the extremely hard math, algorithms, etc, etc. but I did come away with a decent attitude and the willingness to work through tough problems. I just don't know what to tell this kid; I feel like I should tell him to do the CS degree but I have hired so many programmers that majored in things like English, Philosophy, and other liberal arts-type degrees, even some that never went to college. In fact my best developer, falls into this latter category. He got started writing software for his church or something and then it took off into a passion. So, while I know this is one of those juicy potential down vote questions, I am just curious as to what everyone else thinks about this topic. Would you tell a high school kid about this? Perhaps if he/she already knows a good deal of programming and loves it he doesn't need a CS degree and could expand his horizons with a liberal arts degree. I know one of the creators of the Django web framework was a American Literature major and he is obviously a pretty gifted developer. Anyway, thanks for the consideration."}
{"_id": "221484", "title": "Choosing an ubiquitous language across different bounded contexts", "text": "If my domain has several Bounded Contexts, but only **ONE** team will work on all contexts, should I develop an Ubiquitous language for each context? or should I have only one and force to into all contexts? The bounded context definition from Evan's book states: > A BOUNDED CONTEXT delimits the applicability of a particular model so that > team members have a clear and shared understanding of what has to be > consistent and how it relates to other CONTEXTS. Within that CONTEXT, work > to keep the model logically unified, but do not worry about applicability > outside those bounds. In other CONTEXTS, other models apply, with > differences in terminology, in concepts and rules, and in dialects of the > UBIQUITOUS LANGUAGE. I don't understand what is meant by _\"dialects of the UBIQUITOUS LANGUAGE\"_. Should I develop a universal ubiquitous languge then modify it for each bounded context? My main problem is if a single team is going to work on all context they might get confused by the constant change in the terminology. **UPDATE** :   Let's use an example to illustrate the problem. If I have 2 bounded contexts `Operations` and `CustomerService` and an entity `Order`.   A customer may request a refund. In the Operations context this is called a `refund` while in the CustomerService context it is called a `cancellation`. In my models I gonna have something like `order.refund()` or `order.cancel()`. The question is should I have 2 models for the order entity one with a method called `refund()` while in the other context a method called `cancel()`? or should I force a single terminology? The implementation of the refund process might the same or different."}
{"_id": "221480", "title": "Package diagram for an MVC patterned project?", "text": "We are required to make a package diagram for our senior project. Since our project uses MVC patter design, we created an MVC class diagram, now, our problem is in creating the package diagrams from our class diagram. Is it possible to have packages with MVC at the same time? so it would be something like this: Package: Account   * Account Model   * Profile Controller   * Registration Controller   * Profile View   * Registration View These are the controller that cannot exists without the Account model, so I included them. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "208545", "title": "Which language for which job?", "text": "Today I asked myself a quite fundamental question, well .. I guess it is one. But google- and SEing couldn't give me the answer I was looking for. I'm writing programs for quite a few years now, but the languages in which they were written, was always given by higher seniors, customers or by myself for learning purpose. Let's say for instance that I want to write a application with basic functions, like database access, calling webservices and so on.   Which language should be used, and why? Ignoring factors like cross- platforming, UI, which DB system or webservices are used ... imagine something like a black body in physics. As example, why should I use Java over C++ or Python over Ruby? Not saying that this question is limited to these languages. Are there good reasons for choosing an specific language, like performance or memory usage, or is it, in case of a \"black-body-situation\", just the personal preference which determines the actual used language? Thanks in advance. ... and sorry if this question is to general."}
{"_id": "130569", "title": "Should I Prefer Session Timeouts Based off of Prime Numbers?", "text": "While researching some information regarding managing state and session in web applications, I stumbled across this nugget of information: > 67 is the first useful prime number after 60. (Yes, 61 is a prime, too, but > it's too close to 60 to be of use.) Setting timeouts in durations of primes > is common because it lessens the likelihood that two timeout sessions will > overlap. > > Of course, that's completely anecdotal and may not in any way be the reason > why they chose 67 minutes, but that's always made sense to me. At first glance, this seems to make perfect sense to me, and traditionally, I've never given a lot of thought to the variance of sessions timing out, but I wonder how much (if any) this strategy has been put into place in practice? Would making a change to timeouts ending on prime numbers really have that much of an effect long-term in a large scale application? Or would a change like this go mostly unnoticed? In other words, is this _really_ anecdotal? Or is it something that should be strongly considered as a best practice?"}
{"_id": "130566", "title": "What is the name for the programming paradigm characterized by Go?", "text": "I'm intrigued by the way Go abandons class hierarchies and seems to completely abandon the notion of class in the typical object oriented sense. Also, I'm amazed at the way interfaces can be defined without the type which implements that interface needing to know. Are there any terms which are/can be used to characterize this type of programming methodology and language paradigm (or perhaps specific aspects of it)? Is the Go language paradigm sufficiently new and distinct from the classical OOP paradigm and sufficiently important in the history of computer programming to warrant a unique name?"}
{"_id": "114114", "title": "Should I move invariant out of cycle", "text": "Should I care about moving invariants out of cycle scope if it worsens code readability? Let's take a look at a simple example:               for (var i = 0; i < collection.Count; i++)     {        ...     }      vs.               var collectionCount = collection.Count;     for (var i = 0; i < collectionCount; i++)     {        ...     }      The performance of second piece of code is better or equal to first one. It will be equal only if collection is fixed-size and Count is not calculated every time. It will be much better if, for example, collection is Linked List which doesn't cache somewhere its Length. I understand that second approach will unlikely kill my application performance (it is much more likely some inefficient SQL query will) but at the same time I don't feel comfortable when I write second piece of code as I miss (small) optimization. But at the same time from readability point of view I like the first piece of code more (less lines of code, less variables). I guess it is minor thing and may be it doesn't worth discussing but I would like to hear your opinion."}
{"_id": "181402", "title": "How to manage the task of reviewing localized strings by a non-developer?", "text": "In .NET Framework, localized strings are located in an XML file (or multiple files). Those files are part of the project and are committed to the source control as any other source code file. Usually, Visual Studio is used to display those files as a table and edit the localized strings. I work in a small team on a product which should have a multilingual interface.   1. As a developer, I draft the localized strings in both languages, given that the translation may be inexact,   2. Another person from the team (a non-developer) reviews the content in both languages and corrects it if needed. The current issue is that the non-developer person would not use neither source control, nor an IDE, since it would be too cumbersome and difficult (version control _is_ difficult for non-developers) for this person. An alternative solution would be for me to export the localized strings as an Excel file, wait for this person to review the Excel, then to re-import the modified strings. The caveat here is that I may be creating other strings, renaming existing ones, etc., making it difficult to diff the local version with the reviewed one. What to do? How does it happen in other teams?"}
{"_id": "32953", "title": "Data validation best practices: how can I better construct user feedback?", "text": "Data validation, whether it be domain object, form, or any other type of input validation, could theoretically be part of any development effort, no matter its size or complexity. I sometimes find myself writing informational or error messages that might seem harsh or demanding to unsuspecting users, and frankly I feel like there must be a better way to describe the validation problem to the user. **I know that this topic is subjective and argumentative.** I've migrated this question from StackOverflow where I originally asked it with little response. Basically, I'm looking for good resources on data validation and user feedback that results from it at a theoretical level. Topics and questions I'm interested in are:   1. **Content**     * Should I be describing what the user did correctly or incorrectly, or simply what was expected?     * How much detail can the user read before they get annoyed? (e.g. Is \"Username cannot exceed 20 characters.\" enough, or should it be described more fully, such as \"The username cannot be empty, and must be at least 6 characters but cannot exceed 30 characters.\"?)   2. **Grammar**     * How do I decide between phrases like \"must not,\" \"may not,\" or \"cannot\"?   3. **Delivery**     * This can depend on the project, but how should the information be delivered to the user?      * Should it be obtrusive (e.g. JavaScript alerts) or friendly?     * Should they be displayed prominently? Immediately (i.e. without confirmation steps, etc.)?   4. **Logging**     * Do you bother logging validation errors?   5. **Internationalization**     * Some cultures prefer or better understand directness over subtlety and vice-versa (e.g. \"Don't do that!\" vs. \"Please check what you've done.\"). How do I cater to the majority of users?   6. **Accessibility** (edit)      * This is an extension of the _delivery_ topic, but what are the best options for providing feedback to the visually impaired (color blindness or full blindness)? I may edit this list as I think more about the topic, but I'm genuinely interested in proper user feedback techniques. I'm looking for things like research results, poll results, etc. I've developed and refined my own techniques over the years that users seem to be okay with, but I work in an environment where the users prefer to adapt to what you give them over speaking up about things they don't like. I'm interested in hearing your experiences in addition to any resources to which you may be able to point me."}
{"_id": "32951", "title": "PyQt design issues", "text": "I've been working on a my first real project using PyQt lately. I've done just a little bit of work in Qt for C++ but nothing more than just messing around. I've found that the Qt python bindings are essentially just a straight port of C++ classes into python, which makes sense. The issue is that this creates a lot of messy, unpythonic code. For example if you look at QAbstractItemModel, there's a lot of hoops you have to go through that forces you to hide the actual python. I was just wondering if there's any intention of writing a python implementation of Qt that isn't necessarily just a wrapper? Either by Nokia or anyone else? I really like Qt but I would love to be able to write more pythonic code. I hope this is OK to ask here. I'm not trying to start a GUI war or anything."}
{"_id": "213942", "title": "If I try to monetize free software, what could possibly prevent someone from forking that software and creating a proprietary version?", "text": "I've only recently begun to learn about the tensions between free and proprietary software, and I've been very confused by the way that free software can make money. I understand that free software is \"free as in speech, not as in beer,\" but if I release an open source program and then try to monetize it, what could possibly prevent someone from forking that software and creating a proprietary version? Is the only thing that stops them the investment of other members of the open source community in improving the software? It seems like every improvement free software makes is transparent so a proprietary copycat can make sure they are always up to date with the latest features in the free version, and then add their own features on top of that independently. I'm confused about how free software can survive in serious competition with proprietary software."}
{"_id": "13902", "title": "What processes do you follow when developing code for large corporations?", "text": "I'm interested in learning about any process you need to follow when coding for a large corporation. For example, it would be nice to see a little insight into how you (or your manager) handles   * Code reviews   * Deployment to production   * Procuring HW/SW for development   * Evaluating vendors   * SOX Compliance   * Security reviews  ... or anything else I may have missed. It would also be nice to see if you think there is any benefit to the paperwork, or if there is a comparable software alternative. I'm interested in everything from paperwork, meetings, routines, or even software tools you may use."}
{"_id": "251116", "title": "How to communicate side effects in a RESTful API on the server to the client?", "text": "I have been thinking a lot about Hypermedia REST-APIs for the last couple of weeks. One thing I am not quite sure about is how I want to model side effects on the server side. In my current project, I am using JSON+HAL as the content-type, and am making use of links and embedded resources. For example: Let's say some resource A gets PATCHed by the client, e.g. because a money value gets updated. Suppose this resource is used by another resource B. This resource B represents the sum of all resources that are of A's kind. Hence resource B would have provide a new value after A has been updated. What's the best way to communicate this to the client? The following options come to my mind:   1. Return all possibly updated links in the PATH response, i.e. especially a link to B. The client will then try to GET all provided links.   2. Embed those resources that may have been updated, and provide links to all other relevant resources.   3. Return a link to a parent resource of both A and B, because the whole state of A and B has been changed, and possibly even more. Option 1) seems not right, because I may provide links to resources that are not really in the vicinity of A. Also, I cannot distinguish between resources that I should GET because they were updated, and resources that may be useful in other ways (for navigation, manipulating application state, creating new resources, ...) Option 2) is basically the same as 1), but with the advantage that an embedded resource tells me directly the state of the resource, which is useful when I embed B. Option 3) sounds the best to me so far. In this example I might have a parent resource \"spreadsheet\", which contains row resources, like A, and a sum resource, like B. If I change one of the rows, I get a link back to the spreadsheet, which the client can then GET, and either get all rows and sums embedded or as links. Maybe I am missing some other options. I am really not sure what the best practice here is."}
{"_id": "189677", "title": "Why is \"working with files\" is an important subject when learning Objective C?", "text": "I'm reading a book on Objective C, and I was wondering how important the subject Working with files for learning to develop iOS in particular? On you tube the tutorials are very short, maybe 10 min of video that teaches you how to do stuff with files and URL's. But in the book its a very long chapter with lot's of detail. The basics of working with files and URL's if very clear and simple, so I was wondering when I be really need this and this information become handy, and if I need to dig that deep in this topic right now? The main question is, if I know the basics, can I move on and come back when I need it? or it's a really crucial to dig in right now?"}
{"_id": "22363", "title": "Highly scalable and dynamic \"rule-based\" applications?", "text": "For a large enterprise app, everyone knows that being able to adjust to change is one of the most important aspects of design. I use a rule-based approach a lot of the time to deal with changing business logic, with each rule being stored in a DB. This allows for easy changes to be made without diving into nasty details. Now since C# cannot Eval(\"foo(bar);\") this is accomplished by using formatted strings stored in rows that are then processed in JavaScript at runtime. This works fine, however, it is less than elegant, and would not be the most enjoyable for anyone else to pick up on once it becomes legacy. Is there a more elegant solution to this? When you get into thousands of rules that change fairly frequently it becomes a real bear, but this cannot be that uncommon of a problem that someone has not thought of a better way to do this. Any suggestions? Is this current method defensible? What are the alternatives? Edit: Just to clarify, this is a large enterprise app, so no matter which solution works, there will be plenty of people constantly maintaining its rules and data (around 10). Also, The data changes frequently enough to say that some sort of centralized server system is basically a must."}
{"_id": "61726", "title": "Define \"production-ready\"", "text": "I have been curious about this for a while. What exactly is meant by \"production-ready\" or its variants? Most recently I was looking for information about sqlite and found this thread, where many people suggest sqlite isn't ready for production. I know the difference between development/testing and production; my definition of production is anything that is provided to the customer or will be used by non-programmers. However, there seem to be many items that aren't defined as production-ready. But in reality, they may be perfectly suited and people just have a predujice against them, e.g. sqlite, python, non-MS products, etc. Small office vs. enterprise? Single user vs. multi-user? Client vs. server? Where do you draw the line?"}
{"_id": "27787", "title": "Optimizing XML based protocol", "text": "We have recently replaced binary based communication protocol with XML one (between browser based client and server). The implementation is almost complete, however I am looking for ways to improve its performance both for faster transmission and parsing. Any ideas ? Please post link along with the answer."}
{"_id": "145074", "title": "Do non-pure interpreters still make the guarantees of functional programming?", "text": "I am assuming the implementations/compilers/generated C code (referred to hereinafter as generic, 'interpreter') for most functional programming languages are written in non-pure functional languages. If this is the case, the underlying interpreter for any given functional programming language exhibits destructive updates and is referentially opaque. Functional constructs are designed to make certain guarantees, such as concurrency and provability. If the interpreter is indeed an imperative program, how is it able to guarantee the 'no side-effects' properties of pure functional programs? Surely optimisations to functional code by the interpreter include changing the nature of recursive functions to imperative ones? My question is: **How do imperative interpreters still make guarantees about the functional program they are executing without being inherently functional themselves?**"}
{"_id": "183934", "title": "How to implement a hybrid role-based access control model?", "text": "I am writing an enterprise web-forms-frontend application for in-house use. It has Direct access control (DAC) masquerading as Role-based access control (RBAC). For anonymization purposes, let's call the main unit of information stored in my application a Document, and the roles in the company a Boss, a Grunt and a C-level executive. There are also Externals (e.g. somebody working for a business partner of ours). The general guideline is that everybody but externals should be able to read all documents, C-level execs can write everything, Bosses can write the Documents belonging to their own department, and Grunts can only write Documents personally assigned to them. Fairly standard thus far. But what users actually want is that they can make arbitrary exceptions to the above. They want that any person in the system can be granted write access to any Document, and that Externals can be granted Read access to any document. (Actually, it is more complicated than that, with more roles and finer granularity of permissions, including management of who can propagate which permission to others, but the above description illustrates the core of the problem well enough). So what I have is basically permissions on a personal level, and the roles are only a convenient way of having default settings for the personal-level permissions when a user or a Document is added to the system, instead of having somebody fill out a whole row or column in an access control matrix by hand. Now I have already designed a Permissions table in my database, which has a User FK, Document FK and columns for the different types of permissions. What I am not sure is what I should save in the table.   * Alternative 1: I save all permissions in this table (pure DAC) and have the logic tier mimic a RBAC. E.g. when a new Boss is added, a row for each Document in the system is added to the DB, with Read permissions for all documents and Write for the Documents of her department.    * Alternative 2: I save the deviations from the role guidelines only. So when a new Boss is added, nothing is written to the permissions table. But when an executive gives a Boss the rights to write to a Document from a different department, then a single row is added to reflect that information.  I am not sure which alternative would be better. The first one feels closer to textbook implementation, and if a principle has made it into a textbook, then there is normally good reason to use it. But in my case, it also hurts the DRY principle - after all, if the information that a C-level exec can write to Document X is derivable from his role, writing a row with this information in the DB is redundant. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach in terms of a) application performance and b) complexity of implementation? What headaches can I expect from each? Keep in mind that 1) I don't plan to implement a full logic tier. The whole application is practically a convenient CRUD frontend to a database, so I will be doing DB queries for each page view instead of keeping a collection of Document objects in memory. (I know the advantages of a MVC pattern, but it was decided that it will be overkill for this project). 2) I am programming this in ASP .NET 4.5, so the closer I stay to roles, the more I can let the framework do the heavy lifting for me. 3) I have thought of implementing groups orthogonal to the roles to manage access, but it doesn't make sense in my case."}
{"_id": "183935", "title": "How would I make a suggestion for a change to the SQL standard", "text": "If I wanted to make a suggestion to a change to how the `UPDATE` statement works in `SQL`, how would I go about it? Is there a website for the next standard? I googled, but just kept getting the Wikipedia page."}
{"_id": "145078", "title": "Should You Log From Library Code?", "text": "If I am developing a Java library, is it good practice to issue log statements from within the library's code? Having logging within the library will make debugging and troubleshooting more transparent. However, on the other hand, I do not like littering my library code with logging statements. Are there any performance implications to consider as well?"}
{"_id": "60890", "title": "Where can I read exemplary Scheme code?", "text": "Edi Weitz's libraries are often brought up when people ask for exemplary code in Common Lisp, the kind to read and learn from. Are there any open-source Scheme projects or libraries that you can recommend above others? I'm working in Gambit, so I'd prefer code without the Racket extensions. Applications in games or scientific/numeric computing would be a plus, but really I'm just looking for code to learn from. (Game and numerical code just tends to be easier to dive into for me, since the overall point of the project is readily understandable.) **Edit:** I am looking for complete projects and libraries, rather than isolated snippets such as those in a book. (Partially this is because I'm already reading SICP, and I'm looking for real-world applied examples to complement it, rather than another source of isolated functions/macros.)"}
{"_id": "183933", "title": "Programming languages classification / taxonomy", "text": "Is there a rigorous way to classify programming languages ? If so, can the various \"dimensions\" be quantified ? (degree of purity) For instance, I just went on the Shade language website (I am not affiliated with it in any way) and saw :   * \"semi-functional\" -> But how much is that language semi-functional ? -> quantification need   * \"full type checking\" -> So type checking can be partial -> can be quantified too ?   * Objectif model / no object model..."}
{"_id": "162117", "title": "Sequence Diagram for Response Redirect in ASP.Net Webforms", "text": "In asp.net webforms I have a home aspx page that has a \u201cGo\u201d button. [This is the only control in this page]. When this button is clicked, the user is redirected to \u201cUserProfile.aspx\u201d page. How can we represent this redirect action in sequence diagram? Any reference articles/blogs for this?"}
{"_id": "125712", "title": "For what reasons  should I choose C# over Java and C++?", "text": "C# seems to be popular these days. I heard that syntactically it is almost the same as Java. Java and C++ have existed for a longer time. For what reasons should I choose C# over Java and C++?"}
{"_id": "100553", "title": "Should we choose Java over C# for a new project?", "text": "We have a team of .NET developers (C#) with a range of experience from 2 to 6 years. Over the last few years we have been developing Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, and WPF applications. However, there is a new two year project which means we will develop a HTML5 application on Linux. The company I work for would like all developers across their offices to use the same programming language which is Java. Although there is talk of using Mono but using the same language and sharing modules, services, etc. already created in Java is the main reason for moving to Java. Some of the developers here are upset. How do I find something positive in moving over that will convince the other developers? There will be a training budget, but the thought of learning to work with Java libraries and a new platform (Linux) will be scaring a lot of the guys. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "23942", "title": "Drag-n-drop programming - would it fly?", "text": "All programming languages I know of are written - i.e. typed out as lengths of text one way or another. But I wonder if there's any programming language where you can just drag-n-drop the whole program; to get a loop, you select this box over here and drag it to that section of the \"code\" over there, and so on. And if there isn't one like this, would it fly if one was invented? Personally I don't believe it would be such a good idea, but I'd like to hear what you think."}
{"_id": "205033", "title": "Static linking with modified LGPL code", "text": "I'm writing a library which links with modified LGPL library,so two questions:   1. Do I have to make my code LGPL in case of static linking with LGPL library?   2. in case of dynamic linking?"}
{"_id": "205030", "title": "In-memory datastore in Haskell", "text": "I want to implement an in-memory datastore for a web service in Haskell. I want to run transactions in the `STM` monad. When I google _hash table steam Haskell_ I only get this: `Data. BTree. HashTable. STM.` The module name and complexities suggest that this is implemented as a tree. I would think that an array should be more efficient for mutable hash tables. Is there a reason to avoid using an array for an `STM` hashtable? Do I gain anything with this steam hash table or should I just use a steam ref to an `IntMap`?"}
{"_id": "27252", "title": "How should calculations be handled in a document database", "text": "Ok, so I have a program that basically logs errors into a nosql database. Right now there is just a single model for an error and its stored as a document in the nosql database. Basically I want to summarize across different errors and produce a summary of the \"types\" of errors that occured. Traditionally in a SQL database the this normalization would work with groupings, sums and averages but in a NoSQL database I assume I need to use mapreduce. My current model seems unfit for the task, how should I change the way I store \"models\" in order to make statistical analysis easy? Would a NoSQL database even be the right tool for this type of problem? I'm storing things in Google AppEngine's BigTable, so there are some limitations to think of as well."}
{"_id": "205035", "title": "How to deploy a GNU GPL software with Java Web Start?", "text": "I deploy an interactive software using Java Web Start. This is a quiet useful deployment technology and I don't want to change. Besides I am about to publish my software under a GNU GPL license. Usually, when a user installs a new software he is asked to read the license terms and accept it. Is there any equivalent process with Java Web Start ? How can I ask my user to accept the license terms before using it ?"}
{"_id": "205038", "title": "Building a web app with encrypted MySQL database entries?", "text": "I have some experience in building PHP based websites with MySQL access, storing encrypted user details, but all other fields being plain text. My most recent project will require sensitive data to be stored in the database. All of which I'm hosting myself. I want to set up a system where a user can access his own entries and see the plain text results, but even if he was able to access someone else's they would be encrypted, unintelligible strings. I have an idea of how to accomplish this, but perhaps it's not optimal or there exist tools to do this already in a more efficient way.   1. Store username as plain text, and password encrypted with sha1(). Or both encrypted with sha1().   2. Take the user's password (not the encrypted one, but the one he typed in and use it do define a key specific to that username and password, which will then be stored as a session variable.   3. Encrypt, or decrypt all of that users data with that key. In my opinion even if someone gained access to the database and saw a list of plain text usernames and encrypted passwords they couldn't figure out the specific key since it's not stored anywhere. Therefore even if access was gained, they couldn't decipher the content of the sensitive database fields. Of course I'm building in ways to stop them accessing the database anyway, but as a catch-all effort this seems like a good set of steps. Could the experts please comment on this, and offer some advice? Thanks a lot."}
{"_id": "51185", "title": "What do you need to know before you build something like Facebook / Twitter / YouTube?", "text": "Of course you will need a programming language! But what other things that you should know before you build your first steps for a large website which will be for the community!   * What else do you need to learn in the programming language itself?"}
{"_id": "220287", "title": "Starting with BI / Data Analysis", "text": "We have a bunch of data about our customers and we'd like to learn more about it. Writing queries to pull data out is not a problem, and we're doing that right now, but we'd like to take it to the next level. I keep hearing about BI, data analysis, regression, predictive analysis, etc. So, if we want to glean more information from our data, where should we start? Should we look into a BI tool? Should we just start learning about data analysis? Or maybe look into R? Any books you would recommend to start? Should I go back to school (college level math, but nothing fancy -- willing to learn)? Any online courses you recommend? Ultimately we would like to end up with more intelligent filters that would allow us to seep through our data more efficiently. Something like \"only include people outside of cities in state X and Y because Z and Q\". Thank you for any suggestions you may have. **EDIT** : Per JeffO's request. It's not necessarily about tools. More like: What should be the next step in learning more about our data, about the relationships within our data that we may not know about? Or where should we start exploring things like regression or predictive analysis?"}
{"_id": "114002", "title": "Is it a good idea to always use Google as the first step to solving a problem?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Importance of learning to google efficiently for a programmer? Avoiding lengthy discussions, as a senior level student in CS, how can I get away from Googling problems I run into? I find myself using it too much; I seemingly reach for the instant answer and then blindly copy and paste code, hoping it works. Anyone can do that. I've read the related threads about being a better programmer, but mostly those recommend practicing on pet projects, which I have done, but again I feel EVERY wall encountered, from design through completion, was hurdled with Google. Do professionals instantly \"research\" their problem? Or do you guys step back and try and figure it out yourselves? I'm talking about both 'algorithm/design' problems as well as compiler issues."}
{"_id": "238729", "title": "Can recursion be done in parallel? Would that make sense?", "text": "Say, I am using a simple recursive algo for fibonacci , which would be executed as:               fib(5) -> fib(4)+fib(3)                 |      |           fib(3)+fib(2)|                     fib(2)+fib(1)      and so on Now, the execution will still be sequential. Instead of that, how would I code this so that `fib(4)` and `fib(3)` are calculated by spawning 2 separate threads, then in `fib(4)`, 2 threads are spawned for `fib(3)` and `fib(2)`. Same for when `fib(3)` is split to `fib(2)` and `fib(1)` ? (I'm aware that Dynamic programming would be a much better approach for Fibonacci, just used it as an easy example here) (if someone could share a code sample in C\\C++\\C# as well, that would be ideal)"}
{"_id": "214827", "title": "Ping one remote server from another remote server", "text": "It's simple to ping a server in C#, but suppose I have servers A, B and C. A connects to B. A asks B to ping C, to check that B can talk to C. A needs to read the outcome. Now, first of all is this possible without installing an application onto B? In other words, can I perform the entire check from just running a program on A? If so, can anyone suggest the route I would take to achieve this? I've looked at sockets but from the examples I've seen these require a client AND server application to function."}
{"_id": "214825", "title": "Is avoiding the private access specifier in PHP justified?", "text": "I come from a Java background and I have been working with PHP for almost a year now. I have worked with WordPress, Zend and currently I'm using CakePHP. I was going through Cake's lib and I couldn't help notice that Cake goes a long way avoiding the \"private\" access specifier. Cake says > Try to avoid private methods or variables, though, in favor of protected > ones. The latter can be accessed or modified by subclasses, whereas private > ones prevent extension or re-use. in this tutorial. Why does Cake overly shun the \"private\" access specifier while good OO design encourages its use i.e to apply the most restrictive visibility for a class member that is not intended to be part of its exported API? I'm willing to believe that \"private\" functions are difficult test, but is rest of the convention justified outside Cake? or perhaps it's just a Cake convention of OO design geared towards extensibility at the expense of being a stickler for stringent (or traditional?) OO design?"}
{"_id": "102541", "title": "Software Design Idea for multi tier architecture", "text": "I am currently investigating multi tier architecture design for a web based application in MVC3. I already have an architecture but not sure if its the best I can do in terms of extendability and performance. The current architecure has following components   * DataTier (Contains EF POCO objects)   * DomainModel (Contains Domain related objects)   * Global (Among other common things it contains Repository objects for CRUD to DB)   * Business Layer (Business Logic and Interaction between Data and Client and CRUD using repository)   * Web(Client) (which talks to DomainModel and Business but also have its own ViewModels for Create and Edit Views for e.g.) Note: I am using ValueInjector for convering one type of entity to another. (which is proving an overhead in this desing. I really dont like over doing this.) My question is am I having too many tiers in the above architecure? Do I really need domain model? (I think I do when I exposes my Business Logic via WCF to external clients). What is happening is that for a simple database insert it (1) create ViewModel (2) Convert ViewModel to DomainModel for Business to understand (3) Business Convert it to DataModel for Repository and then data comes back in the same order. Few things to consider, I am not looking for a perfect architecure solution as it does not exits. I am looking for something that is scalable. It should resuable (for e.g. using design patterns ,interfaces, inheritance etc.) Each Layers should be easily testable. Any suggestions or comments is much appriciated. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "214822", "title": "Macro vs. Static functions in Header", "text": "for a lot of quick tasks where one could employ a function `f(x,y)`, in plain C, macros are used. I would like to ask specifically about these cases, that are solvable by a function call (i.e. macros used for inlining functions, not for code expansion of arbitrary code). Typically C functions are not inlined since they might be linked to from other C files. However, static C functions are only visible from within the C file they are defined in. Therefore they can be inlined by compilers. I have heard that a lot of macros should be replaced by turning them into static functions, because this produces safer code. Are there cases where this is a not good idea? Again: Not asking about Code-Production macros with ## alike constructs that cannot at all be expressed as a function."}
{"_id": "214821", "title": "Which are the best ways to organize view hierarchies in GUI interfaces?", "text": "I'm currently trying to figure out **the best techniques** for organizing **GUI view hierarchies** , that is dividing a window into several panels which are in turn divided into other components. I've given a look to the Composite Design Pattern, but I don't know if I can **find better alternatives** , so I'd appreciate to know if using the Composite is a good idea, or it would be better looking for some other techniques. I'm currently developing in Java Swing, but I don't think that the framework or the language can have a great impact on this. **Any help will be appreciated.**               ---------EDIT------------      I was currently developing a frame containing three labels, one button and a text field. At the button pressed, the content inside the text field would be searched, and the results written inside the three labels. One of my typical structure would be the following:               MainWindow         |         Main panel            |            Panel with text field and labels.            |            Panel with search button      Now, as the title explains, I was looking for a suitable way of organizing both the MainPanel and the other two panels.   But here came problems, since I'm not sure whether organizing them like attributes or storing inside some data structure (i.e. LinkedList or something like this). Anyway, I don't really think that both my solution are really good, so I'm wondering if there are really better approaches for facing this kind of problems. **Hope it helps**"}
{"_id": "241286", "title": "Methodology To Determine Cause Of User Specific Error", "text": "We have software that for certain clients fails to download a file. The software is developed in Python and compiled into an Windows Executable. The cause of the error is still unknown but we have established that the client has an active internet connection. We suspect that the cause is due to the clients network setup. This error cannot be replicated in house. What technique or methodology should be applied to this kind of specific error that cannot be replicated in house. The end goal is to determine the cause of this error so we can move onto the solution. For example;   * Remote Debugging: Produce a debug version of the software and ask the client to send back a debug output file. This involves alot of time (back and forth communication) and requires the client to work and act in a timely manor to be successful.    * In-house debugging: Visit the client and determine their network setup, etc. Possibly develop a series of script tests before hand to run on the clients computer under the same network.    * Other methodologies and techniques I am not aware of?"}
{"_id": "55952", "title": "How much system and business analysis should a programmer be reasonably expected to do?", "text": "In most places I have worked for, there were no formal System or Business Analysts and the programmers were expected to perform both the roles. One had to understand all the subsystems and their interdependencies inside out. Further, one was also supposed to have a thorough knowledge of the business logic of the applications and interact directly with the users to gather requirements, answer their queries etc. In my current job, for ex, I spend about 70% time doing system analysis and only 30% time programming. I consider myself a good programmer but struggle with developing a good understanding of the business rules of a complex application. Often, this creates a handicap because while I can write efficient algorithms and thread- safe code, I lose out to guys who may be average programmers but have a much better understanding of the business processes. So I want to know \\- How much business and systems knowledge should a programmer have ? \\- How does one go about getting this knowledge in an immensely complex software system (e.g. trading applications) with several interdependent business processes but poorly documented business rules."}
{"_id": "166615", "title": "Learning Java with a simple project", "text": "As i remember the time when i was learning PHP, it was suggested to build a simple blog or a forum after reading the language fundamentals. I was told/read that this would cover everything that I would need to learn about PHP from a beginners book. This advice was out there in a number of places, and after following and working with PHP it seems quite good advice. Now, i am learning Java and reading the book \"Thinking in Java\" by Bruce Eckel. I wonder if there is any such set of similar, small projects that I could take up, that would cover all the essentials and most of what is covered in the book."}
{"_id": "142867", "title": "Which is a better design pattern for a database wrapper: Save as you go or Save when you're done?", "text": "I know this is probably a bad way to ask this question. I was unable to find another question that addressed this. The full question is this: We're producing a wrapper for a database and have two different viewpoints on managing data with the wrapper. The first is that all changes made to a data object in code must be persisted in the database by calling a \"save\" method to actually save the changes. The other side is that these changes should be save as they are made, so if I change a property it's saved, I change another it's save as well. What are the pros/cons of either choice and which is the \"proper\" way to manage the data? **EDIT** To provide more information, we're using Node.js, and we're writing our own wrapper for Neo4j because we feel that the current one available is not complete, or have run into issues where we need more functionality. That being said, an example of the save as you go method (these examples are in Javascript):               // DB is defined as a connection to the database via HTTP(REST)     // \"data\" being an object that would represent new data     var node;     db.getNodeById(data.id, function(err, result) {       node = result;       // This function task an optional callback as a third parameter because in       // in addition to setting the property on the \"node\" object it saves the       // new value to the database by making an HTTP request.       node.set(\"firstName\", data.newFirstName);       // auto saved as well       node.set(\"lastName\", data.newLastName);       // end here as the node has already been updated with your changes.     });      And the opposing example would be:               // DB is defined as a connection to the database via HTTP(REST)     // \"data\" being an object that would represent new data     var node;     db.getNodeById(data.id, function(err, result) {       node = result;       // This changes the value for the node object only, nothing in the       // database is changed.       node.set(\"firstName\", data.newFirstName);       node.set(\"lastName\", data.newLastName);       // Save all your changes       node.save();     });"}
{"_id": "26349", "title": "How do you go about training a replacement?", "text": "I recently asked about leaving a position and got a lot of great answers. One of the common threads was that being around to train the new person would be expected and could go a long way. Now considering that (I think) most people don't stay at a company for a long time after they've given notice, and it will take time for the company to interview/hire one - that leaves for a short amount of time to get someone up to speed. I've also never trained anyone before. I did a bunch of tutoring in University and College, but teaching a language/technology is far different from training someone to replace you on your job. So the question is: how do you go about training someone to replace you in a, potentially, short amount of time?"}
{"_id": "246648", "title": "How to transfer code responsibility to another developer", "text": "I'm in a situation at work where I have to transfer responsibility of a large code base that I inherited, re-factored and enhanced to another developer. This is the first time that I have to do such a thing and although I always thought it would be trivial the actual steps I have to follow seem vague. The code base I maintain is a module that includes a lot of stuff such as   * A persistence layer   * A service layer   * A presentation layer which sadly has a lots of business code in it   * An interface for module interaction I also have very good knowledge of the business assumptions made when it was developed as well as its technical foundation. I know that I can go with my mind's flow and give it my best but I prefer to do it in the most professional manner I can. So, I would like to ask you for advice on how I should approach this situation. Are there any standard procedures and good practices that I could follow?"}
{"_id": "97758", "title": "job handover checklist", "text": "I have resigned my old employer to start a new job, and I need to prepare a handover [documentation to be taken by some new employee that haven't arrived yet, and would be some weeks from when I go to when they fill the position again]. So what important points should I make sure to cover, I was making some iOS apps, [90% completed], and a web portal [60% completed] the other IT engineer is here so he can update on passwords etc. Should I use some system like a wiki to leave things there for access? or just a normal doc? what other things should I consider?"}
{"_id": "195373", "title": "Impact of ending contract with know-ins-and-outs lead developer of a project", "text": "I have a long time running project. Its been running for about 6 months. The project is very big. The lead developer/team leader designed the project and the whole project is in his brain. He knows all ins and outs. I also know almost everything. But I am not confident like him. Problem is recently he is charging quite high for simple bug fix and small change request. I am worried if I end the contract what will be the future of the project. I had 2-3 public demos. I must launch soon. The project is still in development alpha.   1. What happens to the project if I end the contract?   2. Are the high charges is because he knows I can not end the contract now?"}
{"_id": "33851", "title": "What actions to take when people leave the team?", "text": "Recently one of our key engineers resigned. This engineer has co-authored a major component of our application. We are not hitting Truck number yet though, but we're getting close :) Before the guy waltzes off, we want to **take actions necessary to recover from this loss as smoothly as possible** and eventually 'grow' the rest of the team to competently cover the parts he authored. _More about the context: the domain the component covers and the code are no rocket science but still a lot of non-trivial stuff. Some team members can already cover a lot of this but those have a lot on their plates._ These are the actions that come to my mind:   1. Improve tests and test coverage - especially for the non-trivial stuff,   2. Update high level documents,   3. Document any 'funny stuff' the code does (we had to do some heavy duct-taping),   4. Add / update code documentation - have everything with 'public' visibility documented. Finally the questions: What do you think are the actions to take in this situation? What have you done in such situations? What did or did not work well for you?"}
{"_id": "140125", "title": "Code ownership: What should I do when a dev leaves or team splits?", "text": "There are multiple ways of tracking code ownership (i.e., collective, team or individual). In case of team or individual ownership, how do you:   * track ownership?   * deal with situations when dev leaves or team splits/re-organizes for new projects?"}
{"_id": "16365", "title": "Questions to ask before someone leaves", "text": "Apart from the obvious questions relating to specific project work someone is working on are there any questions I should be asking a fellow dev who is leaving the company? So far I am thinking about;   * Locations of things on the server he uses that not maybe everyone does.   * Credentials he has set up that we wouldn't have needed.    * Client details he has not yet saved into our CRM system."}
{"_id": "251592", "title": "New project from a third party and documentation", "text": "I'm going to become the custodian of an iOS project developed by a third party and my boss just asked me for a list of documentation that I think we should be asking the third party for when they hand over the code. I did some light searching on this and I've found incredibly varying answers to this, so I figured I'd ask a question more tailored to my particular situation. I'm working on a team of 7 individuals of varying experience levels, and I'm sure I'll be called upon to maintain or add features to this project in the future. What should I ask the third party to include when they hand off the code to help make my life easier? AppleDoc? UML diagrams?"}
{"_id": "189091", "title": "Understanding high cohesion principle for methods in object oriented design", "text": "I know the idea of strong cohesion applies to methods as much it applies to classes. Just to be clear when I say _strong cohesion_ of a method I mean a method which does only one task and does it well. This idea really works for simple _getters_ and _setters_. But sometimes we usually come across methods that does more than one task internally , although it seems to be doing a single task if you look at a higher level of abstraction. An example of such a method can be :                public void startUp() {             List<SubSystem> subSystems = getSubSystems();             sychronized(subSystems) {                 for (SubSystem subSystem : subSystems) {                     subSystem.initialize();                 }             }         }      And inside those `subSystem#initialize()` methods a lot is going on. So is this a violation of the _high/strong cohesion_ principle ?"}
{"_id": "142860", "title": "Is there a term for quasi-open source proprietary software?", "text": "Say a company wants to keep development of new features of a piece of software internal, but wants to make the source code for previous versions public, up to and including existing public features, so that other people can benefit from using and modifying the software themselves, and even possibly contribute changes that can be applied to the development branch. Is there a term for this sort of arrangement, and what is the best way of accomplishing it using existing version control tools and platforms?"}
{"_id": "166612", "title": "Schema.org vs microformats", "text": "They both serve the same purpose: Providing a vocabulary for semantic markup. Schema is recognized and standardized\u2026 but the microformats standard is by an open community process. Schema exploits microdata in documentation, while microformats go on classes. (Of note: microdata means that an element must be of a single `itemtype`, while microformats allow several classes to apply to the same element. I can markup xFolk+hAtom with classes, but not with microdata.) Is this a black-and-white situation? Google says I can't use both \"because it may confuse the parser\". What's the consensus on these?"}
{"_id": "223394", "title": "Clarification about Grammars , Lexers and Parsers", "text": "**Background info** ( _May Skip_ ): I am working on a task we have been set at uni in which we have to design a grammar for a DSL we have been provided with. The grammar must be in BNF or EBNF. As well as other thing we are being evaluated on the Lexical rules in the grammar and the Parsing rules - such as if rules are suitable for the language subset, how comprehensive these rules are, how clear the rules are ect. What I don't understand is if these rules are covered in a grammar defined in BNF (it's a new topic for us). **The Question** : Does a grammar for a given language that has been defined in either BNF or EBNF contain / provide rules for **_Lexical Analysis_** and/or **_Parsing_**? ( _or do these have to be specified else-where?_ ) Also what would be considered a lexical rule? And what would be considered a parsing rule?"}
{"_id": "189099", "title": "What is proper etiquette for releasing a complete rewrite of an existing project?", "text": "I'm new to the opensource world. The project I'm working on resides on Github. (Just for reference) The project I'm working on is a plug-in for the Plex Media Server. I plan to submit my plug-in to Plex so that it will be included in their \"app store\". Now to my question. When I first started out, I found an older semi-abandoned plugin that did some of what I wanted but not very well. I started by contributing to that repo. I was immediately made a collaborator with full rights to the repo since the current owner said he was too busy to mess with it anymore. However, as I started to dig deeper into the code I realized that it was futile. The existing code base was terrible and there was no efficient way to fix it. I ended up just starting from scratch. The only code I used in my new plugin was the code I committed initially. Now the project is ready to be released. However I am unsure as to how to go about doing this. I see my options as follows:   1. Create a new repo and just forget about the existing one. I'm not sure if I should even mention the previous repo and or its contributors. I didn't use any of that code/resources and have created an entirely new code base. While the plugin does some of the same things the old one did, it does it in an entirely new way and more efficient way.    2. I fork the existing repo, delete the existing code, and commit my new code. I'm really new to Git, so I'm not sure if this is even possible.    3. I commit my changes to the existing repo and see how the current contributors have to say.  Of the three options, I'm strongly leaning towards the first. BUT! I'm new to open source and I want to make sure I'm doing things according to proper etiquette. I don't want to have my first project blow up in my face and become a disaster. Option two doesn't sound bad but I'm not sure if I'm supposed to do that. I'm not sure how the history and diffs would work. We're only talking about 500 - 1000 lines of code at most. So it's not a huge code base. Thanks for any input you can provide!"}
{"_id": "205783", "title": "Where should UI errors be generated and printed from? Log errors?", "text": "Function `A()` calls `B()` calls `C()`, which encounters an error. Which function writes to the log and which function reports to the user? My first inclination is that all functions should write to the log, and that the inner-most UI-facing function should be responsible for outputting the error to the user. However, the _fix_ needs to be done in `C()`, so perhaps instead of having an super-long log file which will take a while to parse, I should simply have the function which encountered the error log the error and the parameters used to call it. Likewise, I'm not too convinced that the inner-most UI-facing function should output the error (consider CLI apps, as opposed to web or GUI apps). That was more of a gut-feeling decision, so any insight into actually _engineering_ a solution would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "52986", "title": "Where, in an object oriented system should you, if at all, choose (C-style) structs over classes?", "text": "C and most likely many other languages provide a `struct` keyword for creating structures (or something in a similar fashion). These are (at least in C), from a simplified point of view like classes, but without polymorphism, inheritance, methods, and so on. Think of an object-oriented (or multi paradigm) language with C-style structs. Where would you choose them over classes? Now, I don't believe they are to be used with OOP as classes seem to replace their purposes, but I wonder if there are situations where they could be preferred over classes in otherwise object- oriented programs and in what kind of situations. Are there such situations?"}
{"_id": "227882", "title": "How is intermediate data organized in MapReduce?", "text": "From what I understand, each mapper outputs an intermediate file. The intermediate data (data contained in each intermediate file) is then sorted by key. Then, a reducer is assigned a key by the master. The reducer reads from the intermediate file containing the key and then calls reduce using the data it has read. But in detail, how is the intermediate data organized? Can a data corresponding to a key be held in multiple intermediate files? What happens when there is too much data corresponding to one key to be held by a single file? In short, how do intermediate partitions differ from intermediate files and how are these differences dealt with in the implementation?"}
{"_id": "104637", "title": "What comes first, the ruby chicken or the homebrew egg?", "text": "Whilst installing Ruby on OsX I noticed I could do so by using a package manager called Homebrew. This seemed like an easy option, so I took it. Everything worked smoothly. Life was good. Being a curious fellow, I looked into what other benefits having homebrew installed would give me, and in my study found that Homebrew is written in ruby. Woah, wait a minute! How is it then, that I can install Ruby using something that is written in Ruby, not already having Ruby on my system, and once installed said ruby based system I STILL have to install ruby separetely? **Warning:** _Do not read this question aloud. You risk getting a Kaiser Chiefs single stuck in your head for the remainder of the day._"}
{"_id": "57554", "title": "ERP/CRM Systems. Desktop Based ? Web based?", "text": "I have seen 2-3 ERPs in action. I am wondering what is better. Desktop based application or webbased displayed on a browser. My first experience was with a web based ERP when i was 14 years old.. It was web based and terribly slow... For most simple task you had to do lots of clicks... no keyboard support ..... Pages took ages to load. Last year I worked for migrating to a newer computer some old terminal based cobol application. The computer that worked till today and still has no problem was from 1993.   The user interface ofcourse was textbased.. The speed that guys placed orders was amazing! just typing the name of the customer , then 5-10 keys to add a product to order.... Comparing to this ERP the page for placing orders Link (click sales orders) seems terribly slow to add a product... No keyboard shortcut works to save what you added and generally I believe you need 4 times more time to place an order compared to the text interface...   Having to use both mouse and keyboard for this task is BAD and sadistic... So how can the heck these people ever use a system like that ??? So in the long run desktop application seems the only way... Of course browsers support shortcuts but the way to overide the defaults that browsers uses isn't cross compatible... That is a huge problem. Finnaly, if we MUST/forced use cloud in near future what about keyboard shortcuts?? I feel confused... I have seen converters of desktop applications to browser applications but are SLOW as hell... The question is what about user friendliness? What kind of application would you use?"}
{"_id": "39865", "title": "How do you convince management to throw away a prototype?", "text": "I love prototyping as a fast effective way to put a UI in front of a user. Many times though, management get their beaks in the way, and the prototype is dragged kicking and screaming into main stream development. How do you manage management into not doing this?"}
{"_id": "26454", "title": "Is it ever too old to learn how to become a programmer?", "text": "If you want to be a good developer, but start developing at the age of 26, is there any way to became a good programmer ?"}
{"_id": "225213", "title": "How big can a mobile development team be without being too big?", "text": "I work for a company that is moving heavily into mobile. We find the majority of our customers use our mobile app pretty regularly. We have tons of things we want to add to it -- as well as to deliver all these new features on Andriod- and iOS-native apps. But I wonder how big we could possible make a mobile development team without making it too big to be practical. Can we have a mobile team that's 5 people? 10? 50? 100? If it made sense for us to build that many new features, from an Engineering standpoint is it practical? Or is there some limit of the amount of Engineers that could support a single app (across multiple platforms)?"}
{"_id": "105322", "title": "Are there any free software tools to aid software cost estimation using object points?", "text": "I'm looking for a free (or if there is none, then paid too) software that could aid estimating the effort to create a software using object points. If anyone knows any other software that is able to aid cost estimation (and it's quite fast and reliable) then I would also be happy to hear about it. :)"}
{"_id": "105326", "title": "Is it common to lie in job ads regarding the technologies in use?", "text": "> Wanted: Experienced Delphi programmer to maintain ginormous legacy > application and assist in migration to C# _Later on, as the new hire settles into his role..._ \"Oh, that C# migration? Yeah, we'd love to do that. But management is dead-set against it. Good thing you love Pascal, eh?\" I've noticed quite a lot of this where I live (Scotland) and I'm not sure how common this is across IT: a company is using a legacy technology and they know that most developers will avoid them to keep mainstream technology on their resumes. So, they will put out a advertisement saying they are looking to move their product to some hip new tech (C#, Ruby, FORTRAN 99) and require someone who has exposure to both - but the migration is just a carrot on a stick, perpetually hung in front of the hungry developer as he spends each day maintaining the legacy app. I've experienced this myself, and heard far too many similar stories to the point where it seems like common practice. I've learned over time that every company has legacy problems of some sort, but I fail to see why they can't be honest about it. It should be common sense to any developer that the technology in place is there to support the business and not the other way round. Unless the technology is hurting the business in someway, I hardly see any just cause for reworking the software stack to adhere to whatever is currently vogue in the industry. **Would you say that this is commonplace?** If so, how can I detect these kinds of leading advertisements beforehand?"}
{"_id": "231967", "title": "Optionally Using GPL Library via System API in Closed-Source Application", "text": "Please consider the following situation: You write a closed-source application, let's call it A. A depends on a system API (i.e. provided by the OS), that is in turn configurable to use different backends. Each backend is identified by a simple string value and also selected via this identifier. The API itself is not bound by any GPL-like requirements. Now, a specific backend (B) would be preferred but is GPL-licensed. The application would run without it, and there are other backends available, just with worse performance or other downsides. Is any of the following permitted?   1. Hard-coding the identifier to B   2. Automatically selecting any available backend, but preferring B if available   3. Letting the user select a backend (and strongly suggesting B) Would it also depend on whether I ship A and B together, or just A and suggest the user that installing B would improve the application performance? I would generally think that all three options are o.k. since passing a specific string to a system API would hardly qualify for a _derived work_ (IMHO), but the FAQ of B basically state that _it does not matter how you call a function of B, any usage makes your program a derived work_. Are they right even in the three cases outlined above? P.S.: It is not my decision to make A closed-source, so GPL'ing it is not an option. P.S. 2: I omitted the names of the system API and B to keep the question more generic, but I can add them if it makes any difference. edit: From another point of view: When does the user (as opposed to the programmer) create a derived work? In the third case, it should be clear that the user creates the derived work since he installed A and B and actively selected B. This would be in line with MSalters' arguments in his comment. The second case at least makes it clear that the work does not depend on B, so this could be o.k., too. Probably it would be most in the _spirit_ of the GPL to just contact the authors; however, I'm not sure if their FAQ entry is in line with the _actual text_ of the GPL."}
{"_id": "141518", "title": "Is there any algorithm book that teaches like Head First series?", "text": "As a Java programmer I need to learn algorithms (for programming Challenges). I read some Head First Series (JAVA owned by me) and they are pretty brain friendly. So I was wondering is there any algorithm book that will be simple to understand and also goes to the crux of each algo."}
{"_id": "227771", "title": "What are the essential mathematics topics that a programmer should know in order to learn algorithms?", "text": "Being a electronics engineer, I was never exposed to any algorithms. Now I am a experienced programmer and want to learn Algorithms. I started with CLRS. But I was overwhelmed by the maths in the book. So which are the minimum maths topics should I know before I start Algorithms? Are there any good tutorials or books on this? I did find one book on maths by Donald Knuth, but i guess its too details and tough for beginners."}
{"_id": "227770", "title": "DDD and the persistence of value objects; must we denormalize?", "text": "I've been reading up a lot on Domain-Driven Development, and I came to the question of how to preserve lack of distinct identity with value objects (VOs). While in the DDD world, this is a requirement (yet I'm not sure I understand the full power of this) it poses problems for the lower ORM layers in terms of persistence. Tables, for the most part, like to be normalized. It makes life easy in terms of having no delete or insertion anomalies. My concern comes when implementing VOs; they do have primary keys - identities by definition (and foreign keys to their parent). Making them entities is violating DDD in favor of persistence. Instead, I could make a wrapper class that accepts a \"bag\" of parameters, and then attaches them to each parent's foreign key. While mechanically messy, it sounds like it will work. I've read a lot of responses on the internet (Stack Overflow also) about denormalizing tables. This concerns me, as now we're violating persistence for DDD. How to allow VOs to exist by their proper definition without a denormalization?"}
{"_id": "141512", "title": "Resources for creating a turn-by-turn navigation system", "text": "I'm trying to create a kind of turn-by-turn satellite navigation system using the iOS SDK. I get the directions from the server and draw them on the map, then I keep getting location updates from the iPhone's GPS chip. Currently I start by finding the nearest turning point then, each time the user comes within a certain distance of the next turning point, a verbal cue is given and the turning point index is incremented. This is a delicate system and I'd like to make it more robust so I can tell when the user is going the wrong direction etc. Basically I'm looking for some literature about turn-by-turn navigation, in terms of tracking the user's progress and whether they're going the right direction. I'd have thought there's a lot of research out there but I can't seem to find anything apart from simple tutorials on how to use a given SDK or directions API. Can anyone direct me to a good run-through of the various techniques used in software such as TomTom or Google Maps Navigation?"}
{"_id": "227772", "title": "Design pattern for overlapping actions and animations?", "text": "Is there a design pattern for dealing with overlapping UI actions and animations? A few examples:   1. Let's say I have an interactive table row that expands to reveal an extra control when the user clicks on it, and vice versa if they click on it again. If the user clicks on the row while the expand animation is in progress, I want it to stop animating and shrink back to its original size from the place where it stopped.   2. I have a set of rows from example 1 inside a group. When the last row is deleted, I want the group to shrink and then remove itself in a callback. However, while the group is shrinking, the user could still add another row to it. If that happens, I want the group to stop shrinking, expand to the correct size, and add the row.   3. What if I have a sorting function for the UI in example 2? If the user clicks on the sort button, the rows shuffle and animate into their new positions. However, I still want the user to be able to click on table rows, delete rows, and do everything else that my UI allows. The UI should behave sensibly, with the shuffle animation taking precedence. You could automatically fast-forward all animations for a UI element when a new action is performed on it, and/or block user input in all animating UI elements. But that seems inelegant to me. As a user, I really admire UIs that don't stutter or block me from doing what I want \u2014 UIs, in other words, that behave like real objects \u2014 and I'd like to do the same in my own applications. It seems to me that you'd need to have constraints for each action/animation in order to make this a robust system. For example, you might need to ensure that any changes to your data/state/model happen _only_ in the callback to your animation, not before. In example 2, you can't delete the group in your model as soon as the user clicks the button to delete the last row; it has to be done at the end of the animation, and at the end of the animation only. (Otherwise, if the user decides to add another row during the delete animation, reverting the group delete would be very difficult.) You might also need to design the animation system in such a way that if two animations from two different actions overlap, any mutually exclusive properties would continue animating as before. (In other words, if the user sorts the table while a row is expanding on click, the width expansion should not stop just because the row is moving to its new position.) And what about starting defaults for each animation? If a row fades out when deleted, and then another action implicitly cancels the delete, the fade out should stop and animate back in, even though the other action might not necessarily know about it. There's also the higher-level issue of animations (visual property changes) vs. actions (sequences of events, with potential model changes, that include animations). In example 2, \"delete last row\" is clearly an action, since the end result is that a group gets removed. However, in most UI libraries, you'd add the callback to the animation, conflating the two. This is also an issue in games. If I need to trigger a grenade throw after my character's throw animation finishes, how do I represent that in my code? How do I place the grenade throw on my timeline without mixing model and view code, while still allowing the animation to slow down and speed up based on external factors? The more I think about this, the more my head hurts, and the more I'm convinced that somebody has already thought this through a lot more carefully than me. Any ideas? (At the moment, I'm mostly interested in this for web UI, but I'm also interested in a general approach for my future, non-web projects.)"}
{"_id": "227777", "title": "Common practice to transfer named parameters in Tcl", "text": "Using Tcl8.5, what is the common practice to transfer **named** variables to a proc/method? Something that will be similar to defining the class members when instantiating a class object _[incr Tcl]_. Something like this:               # Passing 3 parameters: \"hello\", \"how\" and \"doing\".     procName -hello world -how you -doing today     # We can easily add or remove any parameters to/from any location      **Edit #1:**   Same example as above, but more similar to python:               procName hello=world how=you doing=today"}
{"_id": "227776", "title": "String and Suffix Matching from a Suffix List", "text": "I'm having trouble finding an algorithm that matches (or fails to match) a substring of a string to a suffix from a list of suffixes. The hits I'm finding are for suffix trees and suffix arrays, but they are not quite what I am looking for. My particular problem is a fully qualified hostname - possibly malformed - and trying to match the suffix provided by the banned suffix list published by Mozilla. As a concrete example, given `w.x.y.z.example.com`, I need to identify it as hostname `w`, domain `example.com`, and know that `example.com` is valid domain. As a degenerative example, I may need to take `example.com` and know that its a domain with no host, and that matching it to `*.com` would be wrong. And the negative cases only get worse when you factor in suffixes like `pvt.k12.ma.us`, `nasushiobara.tochigi.jp`, `\u516c\u53f8.cn` and `\u0627\u0644\u0633\u0639\u0648\u062f\u06cc\u0629`. The eventual application will be DNS hostname matching in X509 certificates. Hence the reason there may be malformed input from miscreants. I think this algorithm should run in _m log n_. _log n_ for each lookup into the [sorted] list of suffixes, and _m_ for each DNS label. I think it may be a case of not seeing the forest through the trees. Does anyone know of an efficient algorithm for matching substrings from a list of suffixes?"}
{"_id": "63815", "title": "In what way(s) is LLVM Low Level?", "text": "In what way(s) is LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) Low Level? (At the time of writing, I did not find this expansion of the abbreviation \"LLVM\" on its web site, but on Wikipedia.) Is it called \"Low Level\" in what is it designed for (a compiler infrastructure) or because it is works on a \"lower level\" than other tools? As a (kind of) \"illustration\" of this, is LLVM lower-level than the JVM and CLR, or is it only _designed_ for \"lower level\" uses?"}
{"_id": "185893", "title": "Customer ask firmware source file", "text": "Recently my company was asked by a customer to develop a control board that includes firmware and PCB layout development. After finishing development the customer will buy the control boards at certain quantity every year. We are now at making contract stage, the customer is wanting my company to handover both the firmware source files and PCB layout files after development. We could give the PCB layout files but we don't want to give the firmware files as we're worried about they may find third party to produce the control board so that we may have nothing. However from the customer point of view, they are concerned that they could be in risk situation if my company for some reason stops selling the boards. Is there any \"common\" practice to make contract regarding this?"}
{"_id": "113236", "title": "Should all developers on a team have equal role/responsibility in writing and updating software design documents", "text": "I've asked a very similar question few days ago, but because I presented too much of my company's current situation, most answers focused completely on something that I wasn't looking to answer. So I wanted to try again... Given just about any agile team, you always have people with varied a) knowledge of the product b) experience in producing designs and c) general level of competence. So let's say you take an agile team and using the factors (a), (b) and (c) above you come up with an overall score for each engineers (mental exercise only). Now we sort them in ascending order and get a continuous spectrum. So the question I wanted to ask is this: _Should every single person on this spectrum be given equal responsibility as it comes to writing/updating software design specifications?_ I'm not talking about coming up with software design, in agile teams that is usually done by more than one person in a more collaborative setting. But at the end of the day, someone has to go back to his desk open their favorite (and company/team approved) document editor and type it all in. The reason I ask this question is because it seems people on high end of the spectrum tend to produce documents which are more readable, concise but have exactly the information you would want in a design specification so that future people who read it have much more benefit. People on the opposite side of the spectrum tend to produce documents which are not nearly as useful or clear and a lot of times, even with several iterations of design reviews, their work doesn't seem nearly as helpful (so specs they produce become write only dumping ground that no one reads or trusts because of the way they are written). I'm not proposing that the agile team be segregated and only certain individuals given certain roles that will never change. I'm asking... 1) what do you do in your teams with people who have vastly different (a)x(b)x(c) scores 2) Does it make sense to not give equal responsibility to everyone. Instead, give only smaller (or none) update tasks to those on the low end of the spectrum. But then work with these individuals by identifying (a), (b) and (c) factors that they'd need to improve and as those get improved give them more responsibility. Personally, I'm not sold on one way or another, I'm just curious how other teams are dealing with this."}
{"_id": "113237", "title": "When you should NOT use Regular Expressions?", "text": "Regular expressions are powerful tool in programmer's arsenal, but - there are some cases when they are not a best choice, or even outright harmful. Simple example #1 is **parsing HTML with regexp** \\- a known road to numerous bugs. Probably, this also attributes to parsing in general. But, are there other clearly no-go areas for regular expressions ? * * * p.s.: \" _The question you're asking appears subjective and is likely to be closed._ \" - thus, I want to emphasize, that i am interested in examples where usage of regexps is known to cause problems."}
{"_id": "147912", "title": "Need to process 2 million 100k messages per second and route them to a particular event, delegate or multicast delegate", "text": "I need to process 2 million messages per second (perhaps in a scale out configuration) and route each message to a N delegates or multicast delegates. **Question** How should I structure my application in C# so that I can achieve the best performance when receiving the message, and routing it to the correct delegate? **Additional Details** Each inbound message has the following properties in the format of a JSON array:   * Customer   * Category   * TopicID   * DateTime   * Data[] Each message will be processed by a delagate function that is interested one or more of those properties. **Simple examples of delegate processing needed:**   * A customer counter function may count the quantity of messages per customer,    * A category counter may count the quantity of messages that counter   * A customer-counter will count messages unique to that customer."}
{"_id": "37476", "title": "Can anyone recommend coding standards for TSQL?", "text": "We've long had coding standards for our .Net code, and there seem to be several reputable sources for ideas on how to apply them which evolve over time. I'd like to be able to put together some standards for the SQL that is written for use by our products, but there don't seem to be any resources out there on the consensus for what determines well written SQL?"}
{"_id": "37475", "title": "What are developer's problems with helpful error messages?", "text": "It continue to astounds me that, in this day and age, products that have years of use under their belt, built by teams of professionals, **still** to this day - fail to provide helpful error messages to the user. In some cases, the addition of just a little piece of extra information could save a user hours of trouble. A program that generates an error, generated it for a reason. It has everything at its disposal to inform the user as much as it can, why something failed. And yet it seems that providing information to aid the user is a low- priority. I think this is a huge failing. One example is from SQL Server. When you try and restore a database that is in use, it quite rightly won't let you. SQL Server _knows_ what processes and applications are accessing it. Why can't it include information about the process(es) that are using the database? I know not everyone passes an `Applicatio_Name` attribute on their connection string, but even a hint about the machine in question could be helpful. Another candidate, also SQL Server (and mySQL) is the lovely `string or binary data would be truncated` error message and equivalents. A lot of the time, a simple perusal of the SQL statement that was generated and the table shows which column is the culprit. This isn't always the case, and if the database engine picked up on the error, why can't it save us that time and just tells us which damned column it was? On this example, you could argue that there may be a performance hit to checking it and that this would impede the writer. Fine, I'll buy that. How about, once the database engine knows there is an error, it does a quick comparison after-the-fact, between values that were going to be stored, versus the column lengths. Then display that to the user. ASP.NET's horrid Table Adapters are also guilty. Queries can be executed and one can be given an error message saying that a constraint somewhere is being violated. Thanks for that. Time to compare my data model against the database, because the developers are too lazy to provide even a row number, or example data. (For the record, I'd never use this data-access method _by choice_ , it's just a project I have inherited!). Whenever I throw an exception from my C# or C++ code, I provide everything I have at hand to the user. The decision has been made to throw it, so the more information I can give, the better. Why did my function throw an exception? What was passed in, and what was expected? It takes me just a little longer to put something meaningful in the body of an exception message. Hell, it does nothing but help _me_ whilst I develop, because I know my code throws things that are meaningful. One could argue that complicated exception messages should not be displayed to the user. Whilst I disagree with that, it is an argument that can easily be appeased by having a different level of verbosity depending on your build. Even then, the users of ASP.NET and SQL Server are not your typical users, and would prefer something full of verbosity and yummy information because they can track down their problems faster. Why to developers think it is okay, in this day and age, to provide the bare minimum amount of information when an error occurs? It's 2011 guys, come _on_."}
{"_id": "187944", "title": "The suffix Exception on exceptions in java", "text": "Specifying a suffix of Exception on exception classes feels like a code smell to me (Redundant information - the rest of the name implies an error state and it inherits from Exception). However, it also seems that everyone does it and it seems to be good practice. I am looking to understand why this is good practice. I have already seen and read the question why do exceptions usually have the suffix exception in the class name The question is for PHP and while the responses are probably valid for Java. Are there any other arguments or is it really as simple as explicitly differentiating them? If we take the examples from the previous question - could there really be classes in java with the name `FileNoFound` that is not an exception? If there could be, does it warrant suffixing it with `Exception` ? Looking at a quick hierarchy in eclipse of `Exception`, sure enough, the vast majority of them do have the suffix of exception, but there are a few exceptions. `javassist` is an example of a library that seems to have a few exceptions without the suffix - e.g. `BadByteCode`, `BadHttpRequest` etc. `BouncyCastle` is another lib with exceptions like `CompileError` I've googled around a bit as well with little info on the subject."}
{"_id": "187947", "title": "I need advice developing a sensitive data transfer/storage/encryption system", "text": "I got closed on SO and told to post this here as it's about general application design as opposed to specific code. ## Intro I'm currently working on a project which involves the daily extraction of data (pharmacy records) from a VisualFox Pro database, and uploading some of it to a WordPress site, where clients of the pharmacy can securely view it. I would like some advice in terms of the general methodology of my software - I am able to code it, but need to know if I'm going the right way about it. I'm writing both the PC software (in C#/.NET 4.5) and the PHP WordPress plugin. (It doesn't matter much that it's in WordPress, the actual code for this will pretty much run separately). ## Question 1: Encryption The current process for encrypting the data server-side I plan to use is based on this article. Summarised, it advocates encrypting each separate user's data asymmetrically with their own public key, stored on the server. The private key to decrypt this data is then itself encrypted symmetrically using the user's password, and stored. This way, even if the database is stolen, the user's password hash needs to be broken, and even then the process needs to be repeated for every user's data. The only weakness, pointed out by the author himself, and the main point of my question, is the fact that while the user is logged in, the decrypted key is stored in session storage. The way the article suggests to deal with it is to just limit the time the user is logged in. I thought a better solution would be to store that key in a short-lived secure cookie (of course the whole process is happening over HTTPS). That way, if the attacker has control of the user's computer and can read their cookies, they can probably just keylog their password and log in, no need to steal the database, while even if the attacker gains access to the server, they cannot decrypt the HTTPS traffic (or can they? I'm not sure.) **Should I use secure cookies or session storage to temporarily store the decrypted key?** ## Question 2: Storage The second thing I still want to work out is how to store the data - this is more of an efficiency problem. Since every user has their own key for encryption, it follows that records for every user must be stored separately. I don't know if I should store a \"block\" of data for every user, containing encrypted JSON with an array of objects representing records, or whether I should store records in a table with the actual data structure, and encrypt each data field separately with the key. I am leaning towards storing the data as one block - it seems to me to be more efficient to decrypt one big block of data at a time, than perhaps several thousands separate fields. Also, even if I stored the data in its proper structure, I still wouldn't be able to use MySQL's WHERE, ORDERBY etc, since the data would all be BLOBs. **Should I store the data as a big block per user, or separated into the different fields?** ## Question 3: Transfer I extract the data from the DBF file, and essentially make a \"diff\", whereby I compare the current extracted data from the last day's data, and only upload the blocks of the users that have changed (I can't only upload the records, as I probably will end up storing the users' data in blocks). I also include \"delete\" instructions for users which have been deleted. This is as there are hundreds of thousands records in the database, totalling over 200mb, and the size increases every day. My current plan is to write all this data to a JSON file, gzip it and upload it to the server. My question is, how do I do that while ensuring the security of the data? Naturally, the upload will happen over HTTPS, and I have an API password in place to only allow authorised uploads, but my main concern is how to protect the data if the server is compromised. I don't want the attacker to just grab the JSON file from the server while it's being processed. One idea I had was to get the server to send me a list of public keys for the users, and perform the encryption in my software, before the upload. It seems to me like that's the only way of protecting that data. I could encrypt the whole JSON file, perhaps with an API key or a special password, but that's moot if the attacker can just access the decrypted file as it's being processed on the server. Is that a good solution? **Should I encrypt the data individually client-side, or is there a way to securely transfer it to the server and encrypt it there?** Thanks in advance for any answers, I'd love to hear from someone who's dealt with problems like this before. Matt **EDIT: I'm pretty decided on 1 and 2 - thanks @Morons. I'll use secure cookies and store data in blocks. My main question is now question 3, would love to get some input on that.**"}
{"_id": "3438", "title": "Rigorous Definition of Syntactic Sugar?", "text": "It seems like in language holy wars, people constantly denigrate any feature they don't find particularly useful as being \"just syntactic sugar\". The line between \"real features\" and \"syntactic sugar\" tends to get blurred in these debates. What do you believe is a reasonable and unambiguous definition of syntactic sugar that avoids it being defined as any feature the speaker/writer doesn't find useful?"}
{"_id": "249915", "title": "How to operate a computer without an operating system?", "text": "How a computer can be used when there is no operating system? What tools or knowledge do I need to do it? Do I have to give all the commands in binary to use computer hardware resources like a monitor?"}
{"_id": "138101", "title": "What aspects of a project should be covered when presenting it in an interview?", "text": "I am working as a .Net developer for a couple of years. I don't have experience in presenting projects but I have an interview and I will be expected to present the projects that I worked on in the past. How much/what kind of technical details should be covered? What other aspects of a project should be covered?"}
{"_id": "198241", "title": "BASE_DIR/URL with or without trailing slash?", "text": "When you have basedir/url constants or variables, do you put a trailing slash? In theory I think ultimately one should, since /path/to/dir/ is a dir while with /path/to/dir if I'm not mistaken the server checks if there's a file called 'dir', and then adds a trailing slash for you. However, I think `$my_url = BASE_URL . '/my/dir/'` looks better than this: `$my_url = BASE_URL . 'my/dir/'` Better yet, this: `<img src=\"<?php echo BASE_URL; ?>/my/dir/\">` looks a lot more readable to me than `<img src=\"<?php echo BASE_URL; ?>my/dir\">`. Obviously this might be personal preference, and fine as long as one is consistent, but what is most common? What approach do you prefer? Any opinion appreciated."}
{"_id": "84771", "title": "Do companies actually send their developers to events abroad?", "text": "I was looking at the DevConnections conferences and lamenting the fact that the UK one was cancelled as there's absolutely no way I'll be going to any of the others, which got me thinking: **Do any companies actually send their developers to conferences abroad, or is that just a utopian ideal of which I'm irrationally envious?**"}
{"_id": "199244", "title": "UML modelling semantics", "text": "In today's lecture about Modelling techniques with respect to MDD using UML the lecturer stated that it's absolutely necessary to give a (possibly) textual description about the semantics of each diagram you produce. In my opinion it's not necessary to describe semantics of diagram elements which are already standardized by UML. I can see that it's completely appropriate if you extend the standard UML by stereotypes/tagged values for any reason. In contrast, I think that standardization has in the ordinary case the intention to let people reason and talk about diagrams without the need to explain semantics every time. The only precondition is of course that they all rely on the same UML specification. Another point regarding MDD is that using different semantics from time to time for the same diagram kind makes code generation and automatic model transformation difficult in the end.   1. Am I right with this notion?   2. Are there some inherent interpretation ambiguities in UML to make it more general usable?"}
{"_id": "167567", "title": "Preparing yourself for Code challenges", "text": "Just a few days ago I discovered Codility, and I tried their challenges. And I must say. I got my behind handed to me on a platter. I'm not sure what the problem was, but I'll lick my wounds and wait for the solution to come out and compare it with my own. In the meantime, I want to get ready for the next challenge so I'm reading their previous blog posts and seeing how to solve their previous problems. There are a lot of new things I haven't heard about like (Cartesian trees, various sort algorithms, etc.) So, how does one prepare for such challenges (especially the O(x) time and space complexity). What should I read to prepare for such a task?"}
{"_id": "203068", "title": "How should modules access data outside their scope?", "text": "I run into this same problem quite often. First, I create a namespace and then add modules to this namespace. Then issue I always run into is how best to initialize the application? Naturally, each module has its own startup procedure so should this data(not code in some cases, just a list of items to run) stay with the module? Or should there be a startup procedure in the global namespace which has the startup data for ALL the modules. Which is the more robust way of organizing this situation? Should some things be made centralized or should there be strict adherence to modules encapsulating everything about themselves? Though this is a general architecture questions, Javascript centric answers would be really appreciated!"}
{"_id": "70527", "title": "Implementation of communication between packages (Java)", "text": "I'm making a project with 5 packages. The packages can communicate with each other by sending Messages to a central MessageQueue in the Main package and that MessageQueue takes care of all the messages. (cfr.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Message_Service) Provided this image: ![Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/u26Bo.gif) the packages would be the clients (both publisher and subscriber) and the MessageQueue would be the topic. I'm now implementing the MessageQueue (a.k.a. the Topic in the image above) and packages can already subscribe to Messages and packages can also publish a Message.   Publishing a Message is just adding the Message to a queue 'inside' the MessageQueue. So at a given time during execution there can be 0, 1 or more messages in the MessageQueue and now i must make sure the MessageQueue processes all these messages correctly (and in order). A way of doing this could look like this:               public class MessageQueue {              public MessageQueue(){             //initialising etc.             processMessages();         }              private void processMessages(){             while(/*program is running*/){                 if(queue.isNotEmpty()){                     /*process first message in queue*/                 }             }        }      However, i believe this is not a great design and is sometimes referred to as _busy waiting_?   How could i approach this in a better way (without using any standard APIs ofcourse)? I would also like to apologise that the image isn't embedded, but i need 10 reputation before i can do that. If someone with more reputation could edit my post so that the image is embedded, i would greatly appreciate that."}
{"_id": "209004", "title": "Using WPF rather than WinRT for Windows 8 Pro tablet app: good or bad idea?", "text": "Our business is considering writing a line of business application for tablets to enable road warriors and executives access our data. This will be primarily used for dashboards, reports and some form filling input: quite typical scenario. Our other apps being built in .Net (WinForms) with lots of related class libraries DLLs (for data access layer, business logic, etc), it seems natural to want to use Windows 8 for this. I am a rather put off by Windows RT as it doesn't implement the whole .Net Framework and seems quite limitating, so we are rather considering the Windows 8 Pro tablets than WinRT ones. However, we want a smooth and pleasant tablet experience and I don't think WinForms would be great for this as not built for touch support. My question is would WPF be good for this? I see there are UI vendors selling touch controls kits but I wonder whether the \"touch\" experience in WPF is equivalent to the one found WinRT/Metro apps? Probably this could be answered by playing around with the tablet but I unfortunately do not have one at the moment and can't get the budget to buy one until I have settled this."}
{"_id": "108984", "title": "How to use a 3rd party web API", "text": "I am trying to understand the concept of using 3rd party web API. From what I understand so far, web API look like regular URLs with some parameters etc. Will the client program need to download and install any package/bundle etc from the website/server etc providing APIs and include it with their product or no bundle is needed to download from service provider. the client program just uses the web API URLs (like how we do it in browser) What are the variants in common use? Does it boil down to how much we want to do on client side and how much we want to do on server side? like not downloading anything from web API service provider means everything happens on web API provider side.."}
{"_id": "71699", "title": "What is considered a suitable notice period for a software developer?", "text": "I'm being asked by the company I work for to extend my notice period. I'm not outright against it (in fact it's somewhat flattering in a way) but it has made me wonder what a typical notice period might be for a C# software developer?"}
{"_id": "229204", "title": "How to use Git with ASP MVC Code-First Entity Framework", "text": "**TLDR:** What is an effective way to use Git to handle ASP MVC code-first EF? Which files need to be included for NuGet? Which files should be left out? We have an **ASP MVC code-first Entity Framework** project that we are building as a school project. For our versioning, we are using **Git to Bit Bucket**. The basic workflow to add a feature or revamp code is to create a branch off of a _Dev_ branch, commit to the new branch until finished and intial testing is done, then merge/pull request back into the _Dev_ branch. We have run into issues with the project setup breaking when a user tries to merge changes to the their branch before merging back into _Dev_. Some questions are:   **For the NuGet Packages, what should be included in the Git repo?** There are some files that seem to update every time, forcing Git to go through all of them during a commit. **Should the Entity Framework be included in the repo?** We have the migrations, but they seem to break any time anyone pulls changes onto their machine. **Is there a good way for Git to handle Visual Studio Project (.csproj) Files?** We had a merge nightmare involving project files when one developer pulled changes from the _Dev_ before trying to push back. For our .gitIgnore, we used an ASP and added a few of our own. A copy of it is at Pastebin.com. Also, as for the horrific mangling of project files, we have looked on StackOverflow and saw this: .NET + Git: how I deal with Visual Studio files?. Is this something that would resolve the Visual Studio project files issue?"}
{"_id": "252445", "title": "Patterns for undo in multi-user applications on relational data", "text": "I want to build a web application that will allow multiple users to collaboratively populate the contents of a fairly conventional relational database. (The database will have a fixed schema, which is known in advance). I can see how to define the schema for the necessary object types, relations, and foreign key constraints (items, items as members of categories, links between items, and so on). Basic CRUD operations to instantiate and modify objects are no problem. But for resilience against vandalism and mistakes, I can foresee that it will be necessary to have undo/rollback functionality, so that moderator-level users can undo changes made by other users. I'm having trouble figuring out a suitable approach to take for two key functional pre-requisites:   1. Capturing all the database changes that result from an initial user request. For example, there's a many-to-many relationship between items and categories. Therefore, if a category is deleted (triggered by a user submitting an HTML form), all the category-item relation records corresponding to that category will get deleted due to referential integrity constraints on the many-to-many relation. How can I record all the cascading consequences of an initial operation, so that's it's possible to completely undo it later?   2. How can I isolate undo operations so that a bad action by one user can be undone without also needing to roll back all the beneficial changes which have been made by other users, in between the bad action and the moderator's review? The Undo patterns I've seen described (e.g. \"Command\" pattern) all assume that there is a stack of commands and undo operations are always applied in strict reverse order of initial application (no support for out-of-order undos). Are there any standard patterns for handling undo capability in relational databases which would help meet these two goals? At the moment, I'm looking for generic algorithms and patterns which help solve the problems listed above, rather than platform-specific details."}
{"_id": "219038", "title": "What is the difference between self-types and trait inheritance in Scala?", "text": "When Googled, many responses for this topic come up. However, I don't feel like any of them do a good job of illustrating the difference between these two features. So I'd like to try one more time, specifically... **What is something that can be done with self-types and not with inheritance, and vice-versa?** To me, there should be some quantifiable, physical difference between the two, otherwise they are just nominally different. If Trait A extends B or self-types B, don't they both illustrate that being of B is a requirement? Where is the difference?"}
{"_id": "14162", "title": "How do you track bugs in your personal projects?", "text": "I'm trying to decide if I need to reassess my defect-tracking process for my home-grown projects. For the last several years, I really just track defects using `TODO` tags in the code, and keeping track of them in a specific view (I use Eclipse, which has a decent tagging system). Unfortunately, I'm starting to wonder if this system is unsustainable. The defects I find are typically associated with a snippet of code I'm working on; bugs which are not immediately understood tend to be forgotten, or ignored. I wrote an application for my wife which has had a severe defect for almost 9 months, and I keep forgetting to fix it. What mechanism do you use to track defects in your personal projects? Do you have a specific system, or a process for prioritizing and managing them?"}
{"_id": "139482", "title": "Why are statements in many programming languages terminated by semicolons?", "text": "Is there a reason that a semi-colon was chosen as a line terminator instead of a different symbol? I want to know the history behind this decision, and hope the answers will lead to insights that may influence future decisions."}
{"_id": "222112", "title": "Optimal way to implement this specific lookup table in C#?", "text": "I want to create a lookup table for this data: The \"input variables\" (what is used to \"lookup\") are 4 different doubles that can each take on 1 of 200 numbers (the numbers range from 1-1000 but there are only 200 possible numbers that each can be (these 200 possible numbers that each of them can be are known to me)) the doubles are all 2 decimal places. If any one of the four were changed it would slightly change the output variables. There is also 1 integer (enum really) that can take on a value from 1-5. There is a condition on 3 of the input variables that (1/x + 1/y + 1/z must be less than 1.02). Could this be used in a hashing algorithm? The \"output variables\" (what is returned) are ~30 doubles (mostly 2 decimal places but one has 10 decimal places). (will be packaged in an object) ranging from 1 to 1000 (2 decimal places). I expect there to be ~150 million records. Should I use a big dictionary and load it into memory then I start the program? Would a Database and LINQ be best? Can I use Trees or Hashing in some way to speed it up? I've never had to make a LUT this big before, where speed is a major factor. **Clarification:** Because of the condition that (1/x + 1/y + 1/z must be less than 1.02, see above) there is only ~150 million combinations of input variables. Not ~(200)^4. **Update:** I have looked at some stats (min and max observed values and discovered some relationships) for my input variables and have found that if we call the 4 input doubles A, B, C, D: `A and B have ~200 possible values each,   C has ~50 possible values, and   D has ~120 possible values` Of these, there are several relationships that mean that there are only ~27 million combinations of these rather than the ~150 million I originally thought. So there will be ~27 million records in the LUT. There is also definitely a relationship that I haven't been able to figure out between (A, B, C) and D which will also bring down the number of combinations. Would it be optimal to run the LUT from RAM now that I have reduced the entries from 150 to 27 million (and probably lower)? Now that it's down to 27 million would storing them as ints by multiplying them by 100 (2 decimal places) still be optimal? As DocBrown suggested, I should store the doubles as ints (multiply by 100 because they have 2 decimal places) and then combine the 5 different ints (4 doubles (see above) and 1 enum (value:1-5)) into a key for the LUT. How to do this such that I will have a unique value for each combination of my 5 input variables (the 5 ints) AND this method is open to expansion of each of the input variables, i.e. should I need to expand the double C's combinations to 70 instead of 50 I will need unique key values for the new entries that are result of the expanded number of total combinations of the input variables."}
{"_id": "106167", "title": "What is the best way to INSERT a large dataset into a MySQL database (or any database in general)", "text": "As part of a PHP project, I have to insert a row into a MySQL database. I'm obviously used to doing this, but this required inserting into 90 columns in one query. The resulting query looks horrible and monolithic (especially inserting my PHP variables as the values):               INSERT INTO mytable (column1, colum2, ..., column90)      VALUES     ('value1', 'value2', ..., 'value90')      and I'm concerned that I'm not going about this in the right way. It also took me a long (boring) time just to type everything in and testing writing the test code will be equally tedious I fear. How do professionals go about quickly writing and testing these queries? Is there a way I can speed up the process?"}
{"_id": "91626", "title": "Dependency analysis for tests", "text": "Google built a testing system that can infer which tests need to be run after a change. In their own words: > ... we built a continuous integration system that uses dependency analysis > to determine all the tests a change transitively affects and then runs only > those tests for every change. > > ... > > ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wVwpL.png) Inspired by that, I have created a tool for Python that also uses dependency analysis to detect which tests need to be run. The difference is that it is not tied to a CI system. It is meant to be run locally and looks for file changes since the last time the tests passed, instead of looking at commits on the version control system. Visual Studio 2010 has a featured called \"Test impact analysis\" that \"inform the developer of what tests they should run to verify the code changes they are making\". My question is: Is there a name for this approach? I believe I read somewhere that this is called \"Incremental Testing\", but I cannot find the reference anymore."}
{"_id": "102677", "title": "Masters vs. PhD - long", "text": "I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the _most_ important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I don't think I can accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have all of that at once obviously, but knowing I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money\u2026get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long\u2026not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the \"publish or perish\" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say \"I made this\" rather than \"I managed a group of people that made this.\" I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry\u2026just some really great new application or system\u2026there is a shelf- life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, \"The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will.\" Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years\u2026I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help."}
{"_id": "51553", "title": "Checklist for starting an open-source project", "text": "To start an open-source project is not just to throw up the source code on some public repository and then being happy with that. You should have technical (besides user) documentation, information on how to contribute etc. If creating a checklist over important things to do, what would you include on it?"}
{"_id": "103195", "title": "Data Mining Books", "text": "I'm passionate about _data mining_ , I have read some books like _Programming Collective Intelligence_ , and I would like to know more good **books** , specially practical ones, **about _data mining_** in conjunction with _AI_. Any tips will be appreciated as well. Thanks."}
{"_id": "232435", "title": "How can NSObject contain an NSString if NSString is an NSObject", "text": "How can NSObject contain an NSString if NSString is an NSObject               /* NSObject.h     Copyright (c) 1994-2012, Apple Inc. All rights reserved.     */          (NSString *)description;      NSObject has a property named 'description' that is an NSString but isn't NSString an NSObject? How is it that this works?"}
{"_id": "232436", "title": "How to use specific Request Header", "text": "I am learning how to work with XMLHttpRequests. I know that request.setRequestHeader() is an important factor. I just don't understand why. It took me a while but I have at least found a list of Headers here and here, but I still don't understand what each one of them does, and what value goes with each. Is there a resource that gives an example and explains what they are for?"}
{"_id": "230363", "title": "Iteratively improve software architecture & quality in an agile process?", "text": "Or to put it another way how to ensure that architecture or quality doesn't suffer, doing agile. Some of the understandings in handling architecture in agile are below(generally applies to testing as well) *** Do architecture until risks fall off your radar * minimal design up front, so that you will not pay a horrible price for reasonable change requests. * \"just enough\" architecture/infrastructure per each feature/requirement** (The above were found in searching other related StackOverflow questions) * * * A **hypothetical example/scenario** is that there is a requirement to develop a order processing module in the existing system. The below guidelines are negotiated and agreed upon.   1. The architecture for module should be able to handle processing of 10 orders in the span of a minute.   2. Time to market is 4 weeks, planning is done to handle 2 sprints of 2 weeks.   3. The Business is satisfied with average performance expectations. Once the module is delivered, lets say the following improvements/changes are requested.   * Improve the processing to 15 orders per minute.   * Improve performance by 25%.   * Time to market is 2 weeks. So assuming the further requirements from the customer/business come and which are welcome, but in future as the iterations go on, the architecture needs to be overhauled, and testing the quality of the module also becomes more time consuming. * * * _And the above is not a happy result, as estimations increase, and there is an understandable inability to meet further expectations or requirements quickly. Even if it can be done in the given timeframe with sufficient quality, just wish that we could have done something about it well before and not face this situation at this point of time._ _In hindsight, architecting to scale in the first iteration would be ideal, but that was not the goal and focus. The focus is always on Time to market, and on acheiving on meeting the business/customers expectations in a given timeframe. Unfortunately, in the long run it does take a toll on development._ **What can be done to avoid the mentioned pitfall in the example, in improving the architecture or testing process iteratively?**"}
{"_id": "18316", "title": "Comparison with an outsourced dev center", "text": "We are part of a software company which was just acquired by a larger one. This company has a large development center in India; we are based in Europe. We don't yet know what will happen with our projects, maybe they will be outsourced, maybe not but I want to know if we can rival an indian programmer as what salary is concerned. I know there are a lot of factors involved here, not just the salary issue, but I just want to get an ideea of the difference. Can someone mention salaries (in euros or dollars) and associated years of experience. I found some info on the web but it is not that recent. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "234873", "title": "Should developers \"own\" the build server(s)?", "text": "The build server at our company sucks. The build agents (there are a dozen of them, each is a separate VM, and apparently they are all living on their own ESX server) are SLOW. The web interface is SLOW and is running on a Windows VM, also on ESX. Everything is SLOW, SLOW, SLOW. Artifact upload sometimes fails for unknown reasons. Sometimes the web interface reports in the UI that it has run out of memory and it seizes up then crashes. It seems like IT is rebooting it at least once every day. Today they are rolling back a minor update because it has caused problems. Currently IT owns the hardware that the build servers run on and we have zero visibility into that. We do have admin control over the software. We (the developers) are constantly complaining about it but nothing seems to really improve. Does it make sense for developers to own the build server(s)? IT doesn't really have as much incentive to make them reliable and fast as developers do. In order to get IT to fix the problems we have to complain to our managers and then they have to talk to their managers who then tell IT to fix it. We can report problems to IT directly but that just doesn't seem to work to get things fixed because IT has lots of other things they need to deal with. Also, the developers are the ones who are actually using the build system and are probably a lot more familiar with it than IT. How does it work at other companies? We are about a 150 person company. So probably half of that is engineering, but a third of that is probably hardware, so we have maybe 40 or so devs."}
{"_id": "234871", "title": "Correct way to undo the past few git commits including a merge?", "text": "My team is working with git for the first time and has really messed up our git remote due to our inexperience. I'm trying to help educate them on git to solve the problem in the long term, but in the meantime, the commits that have been made are totally wrong. We haven't made very much progress at all, and I don't see the value in retaining these commits when they could cause confusion/additional problems down the line. The most recent commit was a merge between the master branch and a second branch that one of the team members unintentionally created. If I try to revert, git states that I must be using the -m flag, but I'm not sure whether I should be reverting or trying to rebase in this case, or how I would do it given the structure of the past couple of commits. What is the best way to resolve this issue and how should I go about doing it?"}
{"_id": "38059", "title": "Project size vs. Team size", "text": "I'm a freelance solo web developer/designer/iPhone app maker by night (IT technician by day) and i'm interested in developing a social network site to go public (like Facebook, fingers crossed for half a billion users). But i'm concerned that i'm not going to manage this on my own, being only able to dedicate weekends/evenings to it. I would class my self as an intermediate web dev but by no means have i written something as large scale as an online community. When does a project become too big for one person and when do you bite the bullet and hire someone/team up with another web dev?"}
{"_id": "246236", "title": "Is this a good task for machine learning - grouping pieces of DNA based on sequence?", "text": "Say I have a list of 50 DNA sequences all of the same length (6, 8 or 16 bps/ chars). I want to group these to sets of say 5 or 6 sequences per set. I have some criteria that need to be met based on the sequence: 1) There has to be at least three mismatches (different characters),               ACGTAC     ACTTAT       has 2 mismatches - positions 3, and 6 , so would not meet the criteria 2) if we say A and C are red C and T are green (the laser colours on the sequencing machines), then we must have a green and red laser in each position.               ACACTG     AATGAC     CCATGC      is equivalent to (r is RED, g is green)               RRRRGG     RRGGRR     RRRGGG          So the last four positions match the criteria (we have a red and a green in each position), but the first two positions are all red, so this set would not meet the criteria. I have tried brute forcing this, and it works, but after the set size gets big enough, the number of combinations needed to check gets huge. So would this be a suitable task for some \"machine learning\" algorithms. Is there a type of algorithm / process that I should be looking at in particular? (I just started a Coursera course, but the problems being discussed just now are linear regression, which seems to be a different class of problem)."}
{"_id": "229039", "title": "Spring JDBC Template without DAO?", "text": "I am rather new to writing applications that interact with databases, and I'm curious about a project I'm working on. I have to write a very simple web app which is going to be displaying metric data based off a handful of various queries (probably not over 15) to various database tables. Based on my own research, Spring JDBC Template seemed like a good technology to go with based on the rather simplistic nature of my project. Every example I see for using it though seems to involve the use of the DAO pattern. I was under the assumption that usage of the DAO pattern wouldn't be necessary for what I'm doing, but it seems extremely pervasive in the examples, so perhaps I'm mistaken. What criteria would be used to evaluate whether I should be implementing a DAO pattern with Spring JDBC Template for my project?"}
{"_id": "40000", "title": "Going from webforms, VS 2008, 3.5 framework to the \"next level\" based on my goals", "text": "I've got a few choices to make as I develop some business websites that will run for the next two to three years. Currently I run ASP.NET 3.5 with Visual Studio 2008. I do my development rather crudely in WebForms because that's what I learned and am most productive with. I don't use Membership or any other frameworks in my projects. I use a simple class that maintains a few session keys for each user based on basic database tables for users and roles. (I have about 3,000 users). So far I've kept the data simple, using ADO.NET against SQL Server and a data access class (Circa 2000, I know) to build my sites. My questions are as follows:   1. Under what conditions would I be better off moving to MVC?   2. Under what conditions would I find LINQ and ORM a better way to go than standard ADO.NET?   3. Would I benefit, in my current state of development, from going from Studio 2008 to Studio 2010?"}
{"_id": "83209", "title": "Floyd's algorithm", "text": "Is it possible(expected) for an individual to figure out(having never seen it before) the algorithm if asked at an interview? What other problems have equally interesting solutions? Edit: Due to the confusion of the actual algorithm I am referring to, it is the Floyd's cycle-finding algorithm, aka, tortoise and hare algorithm."}
{"_id": "83207", "title": "How to experience gradual improvement of knowledge while a newbie does .NET maintenance programming?", "text": "I started my career as a software developer about 6 months ago. This is my first job, and I am the only developer in this company. I gained .NET knowledge by self study and also by doing some university projects. Our systems have old foundations based on an earlier version of .NET, and I'm starting to feel that I am not improving since I am a maintenance programmer here. Everything is old and my manager is not really taking any chances on gradually improving the software. What is your opinion? What should I do? I am newbie and also work hard to find my way through. There is no other developer, not even a senior one to help me here. I need your advice on my situation. And one last thing, can I get a new job with doing maintenance programming? I mean don't managers say that you do not have the experience of developing a new software from scratch? I feel redundant, what do I do?"}
{"_id": "83202", "title": "Is there certain payoffs between working for a company in the IT industry, and working for the IT department of a company in some other industry?", "text": "I am a software engineering student and am in the process of making some career choices. I need to understand what the major differences are in the above two scenario. Anyone with experience of both, insight from you would be really helpful. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "147001", "title": "Choosing a rate to charge a client for training their programmer", "text": "We've been put in a bit of a difficult situation and I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with it and how to charge for it. We've built a custom web app for a customer and I've been maintaining it for the last 1.5 years. They sent email an email a couple weeks ago saying they've hired a developer and would like to take the project in house. (Nothing had been mentioned regarding taking it in house before.) I was of course surprised as I had expected to be working on the project for another year or more. I met with the developer a week ago and went over the basics of the site. After my offer (including suggestion of a different rate) and follow-up email, they asked me if I'd be willing to do some training on how to continue development of the app using the libraries/techniques currently used. (The developer is experienced with the language, but not with the libraries.) I'm wondering how much I should charge for 1-on-1 training tailored specifically for the site and the libraries (libraries which are reusable)? I'm thinking the training would between 3 and 6 hours, depending on how much the developer's skill level. Here are my difficulties in coming up with the rate:   * We're going to be loosing 10s of thousands of dollars by not having the client and project any more (not to mention future opportunities). So in part, I'd like to replace some of this income through training.   * I'm essentially training someone to do what we do and giving them the opportunity to compete against us. They are a reasonably large company that has the possibility of competing against our company directly, although it's not likely our 2 companies will be direct competition.   * We've spent years learning the libraries (50% external and 50% ours) and the technology behind them (which we haven't been paid for directly).   * I'm not sure what the going rate for training is the area, specifically for 1-on-1 training.   * I want to do the right thing because there is a slight possibility of affecting other business relationships. My first thought was to to charge something around 5 times the rate we're charging them currently, but I have a feeling they'll think this is high. (We're not terribly concerned with getting the contract to do the training, but it would be a unique opportunity where we could learn as well.) Thanks for your suggestions and ideas. I know this is a bit of a subjective question, but I'm just looking for suggestions or something I'm not thinking of."}
{"_id": "85910", "title": "Is it wrong not to create Javadoc for my code?", "text": "I do a lot of Java programming at my work (I'm an intern) and I was wondering if it is generally a rule to create javadoc to accompany my code. I usually document every method and class anyways, but I find it hard to adhere to Javadoc's syntax (writing down the variables and the output so that the parser can generate html). I've looked at a lot of C programming and even C++ and I like the way they are commented. Is it wrong not to supply javadoc with my code?"}
{"_id": "147009", "title": "Why hasn't Caja been popular?", "text": "Google released Caja around 2008(Capability JavaScript). It is still mainly a laboratory language. But XSS and other attacks would be prevented if there was widespread integration of Caja."}
{"_id": "89064", "title": "How and when to use UNIT testing properly", "text": "I am an iOS developer. I have read about unit testing and how it is used to test specific pieces of your code. A very quick example has to do with processing JSON data onto a database. The unit test reads a file from the project bundle and executes the method that is in charge of processing JSON data. But I dont get how this is different from actually running the app and testing with the server. So my question might be a bit general, but I honestly dont understand the proper use of unit testing, or even how it is useful; I hope the experienced programmers that surf around StackOverflow can help me. Any help is very much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "138817", "title": "How many user stories per person should be completed per sprint?", "text": "Just ran across this figure, and wondering if there's another well know source than would help confirm these numbers: > Based on data I analyzed on successfully finished sprints, I determined that > a team should average around 1 to 1-1/2 user stories (product backlog items > of any sort, really) per person per sprint. SOURCE: Mike Cohn's Blog on \"Should the Daily Standup Be Person-by-Person or Story-by-Story?\""}
{"_id": "205818", "title": "Responsive Design vs. Separate applications/views", "text": "I'm involved in a project for a redesign of an existing site. The Designer Team delivered us -the Engineering Team- four separate HTML/CSS prototypes of how the site should look:   * On a Desktop Browser.   * On a Table Device, a similar but simplified design of the Desktop View   * A High-Tech Smartphone, the design is mobile-app like and very different from the Desktop and Tablet designs. Also, less content is shown there.   * A Low-End Smartphone, a simplified version of the precedent design but still very similar. My first impulse was build one HTML/CSS prototype using Responsive Web Design, and merge the prototypes made by the Design Team, but now i'm having some concerns:   * Merging disparate prototypes might produce low-quality code.   * We might be sending code/files to some mobile devices that they don't need.   * We need to handle the situation where -for example- some option must be present in Tablets but must be hidden in Smartphone. Using CSS to hide can be bandwidth waste, so maybe there's a need of some server side code. Because of that, the idea of building two different Web Applications -or even better, handle two Views in a same web application using some server side Framework like Spring Mobile\\- was being considered. I am not an expert on Responsive Design, so I wan't to know what's the best approach is this situation or the standard way to tackle this problem. **PS:** If it's worth saying, I'm building a Portal using WebSphere Portal as Portlet Container and building the Portlets using Spring Portlet MVC."}
{"_id": "205819", "title": "Create an automated program to check a site every day", "text": "Is it possible to create an automated program that will visit a web page every day? I'd like to make it run in the background (preferably non-visibly) when my computer loads and I have internet connection and navigate to a specific web page. I would think it would be pretty simple, but I'm not sure what language I'd use or what means to do it. Is it possible and by what means could I do it? **Edit based off of comments below** The only functionality the program would need to have is to 1. check to see if it's logged in and 2. log in if it's not. I'd only be using Windows. I'm interested in using existing programs or creating a program myself (for the experience). I'm a noob when it comes to using OSes and machine-based programming (I'm a web guy). Essentially I just thought it'd be a cool thing to create and good practice to learn more OS/offline programming Added thought: I'd also like to make sure it runs once per day, when it turns on (if it was off) or at a specific time if it's been on, but somehow check to see if it's been ran earlier in the day sometime"}
{"_id": "206048", "title": "Is a Factory class still a Factory class if the objects it returns already exist?", "text": "I can't decide what to name my class. So far I've labelled it up as a Factory, but I am not sure. Here is the class. As you can see, it exists to return a concrete type of an Interface (`ResolveRegistrationIssue`) based on the argument supplied to the getter method (`ResolutionFamilyEnum`):               @SuppressWarnings(\"serial\")     @ManagedBean(name = \"resolveIssuesFactory\")     @ViewScoped     public class ResolveIssuesFactory implements Serializable {              @ManagedProperty(value = \"#{resolvePrimaryIssuesFactory}\")         private ResolvePrimaryIssuesBean resolvePrimaryIssuesBean;              @ManagedProperty(value = \"#{resolveSecondaryIssuesBean }\")         private ResolveSecondaryIssuesBean resolveSecondaryIssuesBean ;              @ManagedProperty(value = \"#{resolveTertaryIssuesBean }\")         private ResolveTertaryIssuesBean resolveTertaryIssuesBean ;              public ResolveRegistrationIssue getResolutionBean(                 ResolutionFamilyEnum familyEnum) {                  //null safety             if(null ==familyEnum) {                 throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"The family which determines the Resolution Bean to be used may not be null.\");             }                  if (familyEnum.equals(ResolutionFamilyEnum .PRIMARY)) {                 return resolvePrimaryIssuesBean;             } else if (familyEnum.equals(ResolutionFamilyEnum .SECONDARY)) {                 return resolveSecondaryIssuesBean;             } else if (familyEnum.equals(ResolutionFamilyEnum .TERTERY)) {                 return resolveTertaryIssuesBean;                         } else {                 throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"Could not determine the correct Resolution Issue bean for the provided family.\");             }         }      Now, I understand that a Factory class accepts arguments which define the entity to be **developed** and then **delivered** (returned). However in my case, my entities are already developed, as they are EJB references. Thus this method only delivers them. So is this still a Factory?"}
{"_id": "238174", "title": "How can I \"inspect\" C++ code?", "text": "For reference, I am a JavaScript developer learning C++. The browser is a pretty powerful debugger, and I can easily place a breakpoint in my code, hover over a variable or expression and get the value of that expression. Is this even possible in C++ or am I in a different world entirely? I'm starting to write a bit of C++ code for an online course, and debugging with Code::Blocks gives me very opaque information. For example, I see stuff like this: `0x8049bc3 push ebp` in the 'watches' window. Even if I write something like `int foo = 3;`, I have found no way of telling that `foo` is 3 while I'm stepping through my code. Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "238173", "title": "License issue of Spring Data Neo4j?", "text": "If I use Spring Data Neo4j to develop a software, and I want to publish it for commercial use with charging, does there exist any license issue? I survey many posts about the license issue of Neo4j and Spring Data Neo4j. It seems Neo4j has two versions, community and enterprise, respectively. The Community version is GPL-3.0, and the enterprise version is AGPL-3.0. Spring Data Neo4j is Apache License-2.0. The role of spring data neo4j in my software: 1.It is only part of my software to deal with storing relationship and searching data. 2.I will combine it with MongoDB or DB2."}
{"_id": "238171", "title": "C++ Web Development for REST API", "text": "I've been a C# developer for long time, focused on ASP MVC the most. Two years ago, basiclly due to the lower costs and ease of deployment/management I began to migrate my projects to linux using Node.js for serving HTML and Mono for all the backend operations. They talk to each other using HTTP REST API. As my skills in Linux have improved more and more I find this Node.js/Mono combination kind of weird. Mono is a great thing but there are issues now and then, more related to the implementation itself than the language. Now I have like three weeks available in between projects and I would like to dive into C++ as my backend. I have tried some Python and I really liked it, but I require fastest responses, that's why C++ came to me. Java is not an option, because although the language itself is pretty close to C#, it has a bunch of stuff I really wouldn't like to bother with (Maven to name one) and at the end of the day, that would decrease my productivity, at least while I become more proefficient on Java (just configuring Eclipse for a Jersey tutorial took me like 2 hours!). I really don't need anything fancy, since all that node.js does for me is serving html/css/javascript, some real time notifications (socket.io) and that's it. My backends are more reading from tables, complex SQL transformation and validation of the data the client sends. The template engine I use is Jade which is cool since I type less, but I wouldn't mind to switch to plain HTML. 99% of the job in my projects is done using Angular.js via JSON calls. Most of them are single page applications with lots of logic on the client and consuming REST API's. I really would like to cut all Mono/.NET dependencies and develop on something more native to Linux. At the same time I would like to say goodbye to Node.js as well in trade for one backend to serve my API and static HTML pages. If you have been here before, please let me know what are the current choices and anything that would help me on this experiment. Thanks a lot in advance for taking the time to read my concerns. EDIT: I forgot to mention I read about Casablanca project. It looks promising but again, it belongs to Microsoft under the covers of the white open source, just what I have been avoiding lately."}
{"_id": "222316", "title": "Is there any particular reason for the use of lists over queues in functional programming languages?", "text": "Most functional programming languages such as Scheme and Haskell use lists as their main data structure. Queues are identical to lists, except for the fact appending to the end - not to the begin - has constant time. Every algorithm that is written elegantly using lists with `head` and `tail` can be written elegantly using queues with `init` and `last`. Considering appending to the end is more common than the opposite, I'd guess queues are more natural than lists. Is there any reason lists have always been preferred?"}
{"_id": "136413", "title": "Use of a profiler tool to aid in the analysis of a brute force algorithm in Java", "text": "I was asked to profile (using some tool, such as YourKit or JVisualVM) a couple of implementations of the Traveling Salesman Problem (find the minimum path that visits all the given set of cities), in the context of a Algorithms Analysis and Design graduate course. Taking in consideration the brute force approach of the algorithm, I'm wondering, though, how to best use the tools (for instance, JVisualVM) to analyze the spatial and temporal complexities of the algorithm. If I'm not in error the algorithm has spatial complexity of O(n), as it basically grows linearly with the number of cities, while it is O(n!) in temporal complexity. The math isn't the issue here. After playing for a bit with both the referred tools, I'm having some hard time understanding how can they be of any use to my problem. Sure I can see which methods are being used the most and which % of the time is being used in each one of them, and what is the actual memory footprint, so that can be all be regarded as hints where to optimize. But other than that, and other than seeing the % of the CPU which is actually being used (or IO accesses, which never occur in this program), I can't see how can I actually learn something about the algorithm with these tools than the math before referred didn't. What should be my main concerns when using profilers to the analysis of algorithms? Also, I've put basic time recording capabilities embedded in my program. Maybe I could use the profiling tools to better do that job? Thanks"}
{"_id": "136411", "title": "Is there a resource for beginning programming student misconceptions?", "text": "Many programmers tasked to teach a beginning programming class have forgotten a lot of the things that they didn't know or wouldn't know back before they learned how to program themselves. And there are lots of ways to not understand a topic. But some seem to pop up very often among students, no matter what common beginning programming language or textbook is used. An answer to this question lists several misconceptions or lack of conceptions that seem to occur more when teaching programming to people who have zero programming background: What is the best way to teach beginners? (such as confusion about the difference between the environment when a program is written and when it is run, that (basic block) program code executes sequentially, the difference between a variable and its contents, etc.) Another example are the questions from new programmers who simply assume that ordinary variables (in C, Python, etc.) can exactly represent common fractions (1/100ths). Is there an online list or book that covers these concepts, that have to be taught above and beyond the syntax and semantics of the chosen programming language and IDE?"}
{"_id": "229692", "title": "Designing storage service data structure for decoupled models sharing same data", "text": "Surely most of you remember the Norton Commander application where similar (sometimes the same) data is displayed in separate decoupled views. I'm building a web application that follows the same principle. The amount of data is too big to be fetched/displayed entirely on the page, and potentially overlapping subsets of data need to be displayed in separate views. My architecture looks like this: > >                                \u250c\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500 EventBus \u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2500\u2510 >                                \u2502             \u2502            \u2502 >                                \u2502      StorageService      \u2502 >                                \u2502       \u2571          \u2572       \u2502 >                          PresenterLeft\u2524            \u251cPresenterRight >                             \u2571     \u2572    \u2572          \u2571    \u2571      \u2572 >                       ViewLeft   ModelLeft      ModelRight   ViewRight >   The application creates both presenters and passes them the instance of EventBus and StorageService. The presenters, in their turn, create their respective models and views. The StorageService is passed down to models. The communication between presenters is done via the EventBus. In this scenario the left side has no awareness of the right side, yet models should possess the same information without a need to do a double round trip to the server. To achieve this I use the StorageService. Models implement the `model.fetch()` method which asks the storage for data. If the same data was previously requested, the storage will simply return it acting like an in-memory cache. Here comes the actual question. **In the above context, how to design a data structure for a _network-wise efficient_ storage service for the following use case:**   1. Left model requests `GET /files?limit=100`   2. Right model requests `GET /files?limit=110` (but actually I only need the last 10) My attempted approach was:   * store the requests made by models   * for every additional request, do my best to figure out the request diff   * do the diff request (e.g. `GET /files?offset=100&limit=10`)   * store the fetched items under `{\"files\": {\"id1\": item1, ..., \"id110\": item110}}` Unfortunately the above steps don't help, because there's no relation between the url and the ids. When a model requests the next set of values, I never know if they are actually in the in-memory cache. Of course, I could use the per-url in-memory caching strategy, but then I would have duplicate entries in the cache, which is something I'd like to avoid. What are your thoughts? I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel here. Is there a better/simpler/commonly-accepted method? Perhaps my architecture is flawed..."}
{"_id": "142743", "title": "Bug once in a while, but high priority", "text": "I am working on a CNC (computer numerical control) project which cuts shapes into metal with help of laser. Now my problem is once in a while (1-2 times in 20 odd days) the cutting goes wrong or not according to what is set. But this causes loss so the client is not very happy about it. I tried to find out the the cause of it by   1. Including log files    2. Debugging   3. Repeating the same environment. But it wont repeat. A pause and continue operation will again make it to run smoothly without the bug reappearing. How do I tackle this issue? Should I state it as a Hardware Problem?"}
{"_id": "229694", "title": "Multiple var statements in JavaScript", "text": "Writing a single var declaration per function is considered to be good for readability and maintainability. But, when I went through some of standard libraries, their dev version doesn't strictly follow this. For example, Underscore code has multiple var statements in many function which are spread randomly and declared as required. Is there any reason to not to follow the single-var-rule?"}
{"_id": "87459", "title": "Question about the no-endorsment clause on the BSD license", "text": "I'm developing a non-free library and I want to use Bcrypt.Net in it. The clause in question:   * Neither the name of BCrypt.Net nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. To what extent does this mean I can't use the name of Bcrypt.Net? For instance, could I say \"the only ASP.Net authentication library capable of using Bcrypt\" or can I even include \"supports Bcrypt for password hashing\" in promotional materials? Note: I do not actually modify any of Bcrypt.Net's code"}
{"_id": "229697", "title": "Where to put comments, class declaration or constructor?", "text": "For a given class, where should the comments about the purpose of the class go?               /// <summary>     ///       <----------------- describe the class here (1)?     /// </summary>     public class Message     {       ...       //class members here       ...       /// <summary>       ///      <--------------- or here (2)?       /// </summary>       public Message()       {       }     }      If I go with the first option, the purpose of the class is very easy to find when I open the file, it's in the same place, on approximately the same line. When you have lots of classes, this is easier for the eyes. You don't have to scroll down past the members to find the constructor If I go with the second option, I get Intellisense when creating an object of the class, stating it's purpose and explaining the parameters, which is very nice. From what I can tell, I can't get both advantages by using just one method. The only solution I can think of is putting the same comment in both places, but that's just duplicate information and I don't like it."}
{"_id": "173245", "title": "Can Scala be considered a functional superset of Java?", "text": "Apart from the differences in syntax, can Scala be considered a superset of Java that adds the functional paradigm to the object-oriented paradigm? Or are there any major features in Java for which there is no direct Scala equivalent? With major features I mean program constructs that would force me to heavily rewrite / restructure my code, e.g., if I had to port a Java program to Scala. Or can I expect that, given a Java program, I can port it to Scala almost line-by-line?"}
{"_id": "231434", "title": "How should one prepare to allow others to add languages?", "text": "Seeing as many, many open source products are offering translations in multiple languages, I decided I may want to design my application around this requirement. I currently have a niche application that has positive reviews - In English. If I wanted to expand the audience to allow users who speak other languages in, I need to find translators who also program. That's not what this question is about. What technique is standard for allowing Joe Developer who speaks English and French, to add in the French language for all the text, and how should I allow them to submit the changes? Is a separate text/language file the way to go?"}
{"_id": "95202", "title": "If someone was making software, able to display content in any written language, what would they have to consider?", "text": "I know you'd have to use Unicode. And that Japanese is read vertically and reverse of English. What are some of the things one would have to take into consideration?"}
{"_id": "109761", "title": "Scrum meeting - dealing with the last question", "text": "In the 5/15 minute scrum meeting the 3 questions are asked. For the last question \"what impediments are getting in your way\" If a dev has problems - the xyz is going to have problems, this is likely going to draw the meeting out past 15 mins and could go into a hour long discussion. Is it the scrum masters job to help this user, is there something to stop this from going on more than 15 mins. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "109760", "title": "Difference between complexity and performance guarantee", "text": "I'm a bit confused with the performance guarantee and complexity of selection sort. I checked through internet and the complexity of selection sort is O(n^2). This O(n^2) is in terms of time complexity, am i right? So how about performance guarantee? Is the performance guarantee in my case measured in terms of swapping or in time complexity as well? If the performance guarantee is in terms of swapping, so best case of swapping is zero swaps (the array is already sorted) and the worst case of swapping is n-1 step? The performance guarantee is then equal to (n-1)/0=undefined, am I correct? Please correct me if im wrong...or is the performance guarantee is in terms of running time? Then performance guarantee will be (n-1)/(n-1) = 1? Can someone please clear my doubts?"}
{"_id": "206547", "title": "Is Business Intelligence (BI) the Right Job Title?", "text": "There is a department at my company called Business Intelligence (BI). They mostly build reports and configure SSRS, SSIS and related Microsoft technologies. Most of them barely understand SQL (even though they work with databases all day long) and fewer know anything about writing software. At other companies, BI had very little to do with IT. I am curious if my current company is simply mislabeling/misunderstanding what these folks do. Or is this what BI is really all about? If they aren't true BI, does anyone know what the proper name for their position is? It will be helpful when trying to hire new people so we don't end up wasting their time."}
{"_id": "228349", "title": "Should entities be accessible from all layers of an application?", "text": "I am googling this issue now for weeks, but cannot find a good discussion. It boils down to this: As POCO entities used in a dbContext are in fact a definition of the database, shouldn't they be constrained to the Data Access Layer and not be visible outside it? On the other hand: it is convenient to hide some POCO entities in the ViewModels. so that changed properties can be passed back easily to the Data Access Layer. I find many examples of Entities that make their way into the user interface, but also many examples of where AutoMapper is used to map the properties of a ViewModel to an Entity. Can someone point me to some good working examples or discussions that could help me make a well informed choice?"}
{"_id": "228348", "title": "When is it worthwhile to replace working mature code with frameworks+patterns", "text": "I fear that frameworks in many cases have become a fashion or trend and are being abused. In many ways people are sacrificing speed just because they want to keep up with every single lib that comes out. I am for a more conservative approach that only makes use of new libraries and frameworks when it absolutely makes sense. Related: When NOT to use a framework **Case** We have a Tomcat6 Servlet production that has been ongoing development since 2008 and there are many hours of work behind it. The code is very mature but it does not use any frameworks. A new team member loves using frameworks and patterns for everything. Except for the love of frameworks, they also love cutting edge new releases and even proposed migrating from Tomcat6 to somethiong newer (JBOSS,GLASSFISH, or TOMCAT8). I would never move a core production service to a container/server/web-server that just came out. Not against refactoring code to keep it clean though! I am against adding frameworks and patterns that add delay to production code servicing thousands of requests per second. **Serialization to stream (JSON/XML) while maintaining backwards compatibility** When a request comes, we produce both XML and JSON documents containing data related to the request params. Since we maintain backwards compatibility for older clients changes must not break older support. Since we also support both JSON and XML, we make use of the Jackson but also KXML libraries. For both formats we have 2 different serialization methods that use the **streaming API**. Except for being faster, I also find it is MUCH more flexible for maintaining backwards compatibility. I like to use a sysyem of Major and Minor version. All minor changes to the backend that cause changes to the serialized document I add with IF statements in the serialization method. Once quite a few changes have accomulated (over 1 year), we add a new serialization method. So, all requests specifying version=1.00 to 1.99 are sent to serializeJSON1. All requests using version 2 to 2.99 are sent to serializeJSON2. I've heard the argument that we should use ANNOTATIONS and MAP to objects. I find this very distastefull as I have read streaming is the fastest. The streaming API allows you to make necessary changes on the fly while MAPPING would require to store multiple versions of the same data as different objects, or jump through other hoops.                output.startTag(null, TagTable.PRODUCT);           output.startTag(null, TagTable.ID);      output.text(ID);      output.endTag(null, TagTable.ID);           output.startTag(null, TagTable.DESCRIPTION);           if (locale != null && Translations.containsKey(locale) && version >= 1)          output.text(this.DescriptionURL + \"/\" + locale);      else          output.text(this.DescriptionURL);           output.endTag(null, TagTable.LONGDESCRIPTION);           if (version >= 1 && version < 1.5) {          output.startTag(null, TagTable.POPULARITY);          output.text(String.valueOf((int) this.pop));          output.endTag(null, TagTable.POPULARITY);      } else if (version >= 1.5) {          output.startTag(null, TagTable.RATING);          output.text(String.valueOf((int) this.rating));          output.endTag(null, TagTable.RATING);      }      In the specific 3 cases above I really don't see the point to replace working mature code with frameworks/libs/patterns that may add additional overhead and cost additional development time. So, when is it worthwhile to replace working mature code with frameworks+patterns?? Comments? **Update: Some benchmarks** For the first two examples posted previously, using REST and HASHMAPs does not make overly that big a difference in performance but does make the code more readable. Now for the more interesting issue about serialization when used in a hotspot. Since the actual servlet in question had too much other code I made a toy example to test streaming vs mapping. The code is available at: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21781540/ By all means test it, change it, run it. What is very interesting is that the Just in time optimizer in java ends up making the difference negligable over time. So, here is how the percentage between mapping and streaming changes the more iterations there are.               Iter    Stream  Mapping     0       36,71%  63,29%     20      44,75%  55,25%     40      45,65%  54,35%     60      45,95%  54,05%     80      46,24%  53,76%     100     47,09%  52,91%     120     47,09%  52,91%     140     47,37%  52,63%     160     47,64%  52,36%     180     47,92%  52,08%     200     47,64%  52,36%     220     47,92%  52,08%     240     47,92%  52,08%     260     47,92%  52,08%     280     48,19%  51,81%     300     48,45%  51,55%     320     48,45%  51,55%     340     48,45%  51,55%     360     48,45%  51,55%     380     48,45%  51,55%     400     48,45%  51,55%     1000    48,72%  51,28%     2000    49,24%  50,76%     3000    49,24%  50,76%     4000    49,49%  50,51%     5000    49,75%  50,25%     6000    49,75%  50,25%     7000    49,75%  50,25%     8000    49,75%  50,25%     9000    49,75%  50,25%      I also re-ran one more time have first 20 iterations more detailed:               0   39,76%  60,24%     1   41,18%  58,82%     2   40,83%  59,17%     3   40,12%  59,88%     4   40,48%  59,52%     5   40,83%  59,17%     6   40,83%  59,17%     7   40,83%  59,17%     8   40,48%  59,52%     9   40,12%  59,88%     10  41,52%  58,48%     11  42,53%  57,47%     12  42,86%  57,14%     13  42,86%  57,14%     14  43,18%  56,82%     15  43,50%  56,50%     16  43,50%  56,50%     17  43,82%  56,18%     18  43,82%  56,18%     19  43,82%  56,18%     20  44,75%  55,25%      After 10,000 iterations (or calling JSON generation code 1000 times) here is the screenshot from VisualVM profiling (visualVM snapshot NPS file): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/gjl61.png) So, if this optimization behavior holds up in Tomcat servlets as well, it means there really is **no point NOT to use mapping** (and many other convenience functions/libs since the JVN will optimize over time). **Conclusions** Based on the answers/comments, I think at the end of the day whether to rewrite working production code is affected by business requirement, and specific cost-benefit analysis for each project. Based on the benchmarking, it turns out avoiding some libs/frameworks may make no difference in the long run due to JIT JVM optimizations. **Update: After leaving code running all night** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7ESGK.png) After 275,137 iterations and approximately 30,000 MS:               Mapping -   19,80%     Streaming -  80,20%      I really wonder what JIT optimizations happen here and whether the behavior holds for a servlet."}
{"_id": "228345", "title": "enum for Java reference types", "text": "I need a simple `enum` declaring the Java reference types, as:               public enum ReferenceType {         STRONG, SOFT, WEAK, PHANTOM;     }      Does such `enum` exist somewhere in the Java API or a general utility library such as Guava ? I have not been able to find it in either place, although I found third party projects that declare it (e.g. google-guice: RefrenceType). I just try to avoid polluting my project with silly classes/enums that may exist somewhere else. **UPDATE** I found that Guava in fact used to have this, but they dropped it: http://tinyurl.com/ndaqpet"}
{"_id": "234121", "title": "DB Design: How to link a single column to a collection of entities", "text": "I have a db design question that I am sure has been quite extensively covered but I cannot find a good answer already. The problem is how to efficiently link a single school course to a collection of textbooks, a course may have 0 books and it may have 10. The problem here is that multiple courses can use the same textbook as well. My first thought was to include the textbook tables PK as a FK in the courses table. Then the courses table has a composite PK of course id and textbook id. The problem with this approach is that the courses table could potentially have a lot of columns, and then I am repeating the entire course row for every textbook addition, in addition to having to set a fake textbook_id for courses that do not have a textbook. **courses**   * course_id   * course_name   * FK textbook_id   * PK(course_id, textbook_id) **textbook**   * textbook_id   * textbook_name  My next thought was to have a table that has 10 columns for textbooks, that I use for linking a course to all the textbooks. But, I'm not sure if there is a better approach (this will end up using less space), when I think about this I think why not have textbook1, textbook2 columns in the courses table in the first place. **courses**   * PK course_id   * course_name   * FK textbooks_ids **course_textbook**   * FK course_id   * FK textbook_1   * FK textbook_2   * FK textbook_3   * FK textbook_4 **textbook**   * isbn   * textbook_name A bit of background as well, using MySql, Hibernate ORM, and writing a separate search indexer. Anyone have any suggestions on a better approach or thoughts on which of these two approaches is better? Thanks in advance for the help"}
{"_id": "19449", "title": "How to end my dependency on .NET?", "text": "I have been developing Windows GUI applications since many years and jumped into .NET in early 2005. .NET is a undoubtedly a remarkable platform and I am still using it, but with a variety of technologies out there, I don't want to remain dedicated to this camp. I want to learn new languages with which I can develop GUI applications. I am learning Ruby and just installed Python. I read about WxRuby, a framework for developing Windows GUI app. in Ruby. I am searching for a similar framework for Python. Apart from that I want to know which language is more suitable for a production-level GUI app. I doubt that Ruby is more focused on Web platform with it's glamor, Ruby on Rails. I know that I may not get those rich .NET classes and that impressive Visual Studio IDE, but still I want to follow the road less traveled. I don't want to go with IronPython and IronRuby, however sometime later, I may dip hands to explore them."}
{"_id": "170579", "title": "Why do Git users say that Subversion does not have all the source code locally?", "text": "I'm only going on what I've read on SO, so forgive me, but all I read says that one major advantage of Git over Subversion is that Git gives all the source code to the developer locally, not having to do anything on the server. With my limited using of SVN and TortoiseSVN, I had all the source code, or at least I thought I did. For example, I have a website. I upload it to SVN. I am still running my website locally, aren't I? If someone submits a change and I'm not connected, it wouldn't matter if I had Git or not, until I reconnect to the server. I do not understand. I'm not asking for a rehash of one vs. the other except this one point."}
{"_id": "234124", "title": "\"Sensitive Data\" clause in Bitbucket's Customer Agreement", "text": "I'm using Bitbucket for a few projects, but as of April 28, 2014 they will replace their End User Agreement with a new Customer Agreement. The new agreement mentions in 7.7.2: \" _You will not submit to the Hosted Services ... any personally identifiable information_ \" One of my projects clearly contains such information, and I'm now trying to figure out what to do. These are the three possible options I could come up with:   1. I may keep all existing projects and continue to work with them, as long as no new patch involves sensitive data. This is under the assumption that what I have done so far has been in accordance with the current agreement, and that the new agreement only concerns information submitted after April 28.   2. I have to remove that particular project, but may keep the others. This seems likely if 7.4 in the new agreement means that any data that have been submitted to the \"Hosted Services\" will be treated equally, regardless of under which agreement it was submitted: _\" **Your Data** \" means any data, content, code, video, images or other materials of any type that you upload, submit or otherwise transmit to or through Hosted Services._   3. I have to terminate the agreement, and thus remove my account and all of my projects. This is a possible interpretation if the continuation of 7.4, about the company's right to _\"collect, use, copy, store, transmit, modify and create derivative works of Your Data\"_ , means that they can still do whatever they want, even with data that were submitted under the terms of an older agreement and have since then been removed."}
{"_id": "234125", "title": "Who has right over the code that comes from contributions in an open source project?", "text": "If somebody starts an open source project (for example with a GPL license) where people will make contributions, than who will own these contributions in the level of the whole project? Will the new code become the property of the original author or the contributors will be authors too? Who has the right over the ongoing project? For example who has the power to release the code in a second license? The original author only? Can the contributors separately do that as well, or do they have to make a joint decision with the original author and all of the contributors?"}
{"_id": "127941", "title": "Copyright Laws for Apps", "text": "For my app that I'm about to release, I have used a bunch of 3rd party classes found for free online. I checked all the liscenses before using the code and each one said I could use the code commercially So now what I'm concerned about is do I have to give credit somewhere in my app to the creater of that class? Also, I plan on having my app be free, but if in the future I charge for it, does that change things? The most common license I see in an MIT License: > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy > of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to > deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the > rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or > sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright > notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or > substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", > WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED > TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND > NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE > LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF > CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE > SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. The part I'm unsure about is: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Is it enough for this license to be at the top of the class file embedded in the binary, or do I have to make it literally accessible to the user? Of course I'm not asking for expert legal advice, but any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "103698", "title": "ASP vs javascript vs jQuery vs User Controls vs AJAX", "text": "Increasingly when developing sites I find myself utilising more client side technologies such as Javascript, jQuery and AJAX. For three different pages I measured the size of the HTML sent to the browser (excluding images and CSS). What I found was:   * A page that has normal ASP.NET controls + a little bit of jQuery: approx. size = 30kb    * A page using some user controls that have AJAX and client side support: approx size = 50kb   * A page that uses more complex user controls from a library with heavy client side support: approx. size = 110kb  As you can see the size of data transferred seems to increase as client side support and AJAX features are added. This adds to the bandwidth requirements of the site and presumably the servers I/O load which may reduce the number of concurrent users that can be served. Should I worry about balancing rich client side features and interactivity with server's load and bandwidth use? What are the priorities, if any?"}
{"_id": "170574", "title": "Should HTTP Verbs Be Used Semantically?", "text": "If I'm making a web application which integrates with a server-side backend, would it be considered best practice to use HTTP methods semantically? That is, for example, if I'm fetching data (e.g., to populate a menu, etc.), I would use GET, but to update data (e.g., save a record), I would use POST. (I realise there are other methods that may be even more appropriate, but we need to consider browser support.) I can see the benefits of this in the sense that it's effectively a RESTful API, but at a slightly increased development cost. In my previous projects, I've POST'd everything: Is it worth switching to a RESTful mindset simply for the sake of best practice?"}
{"_id": "231189", "title": "Why additional code and complexity when data model and interaction are simple is considered a disadvantage in MVC model", "text": "According to the slides given by my lecturer, one of the disadvantages of MVC model is > additional code and complexity when data model and interaction are simple Why is this so, I would assume it would make no difference since data model and interaction are on two different components of the MVC model?"}
{"_id": "229961", "title": "Frameworks/methodologies for documenting functional/use case scenarios and mapping them to code base", "text": "Is there an established framework or methodology for documenting functional or use cases and mapping them to units of code? E.g. assume you are a new developer hire assigned to work on an application. What better way to get up to speed would there be than going through a list of that application's features or functional case scenarios, i.e. what all you can do with the application? For example, let's take Evernote (my favorite SaaS) as an example:   1. Successfully log in (duuhh, but still technically a use case)   2. Fail to log in (what happens next)   3. Create some notebooks   4. Create a basic, text only note   5. Move the note from one notebook to another   6. Create a note with media attached   7. Delete a note   8. Share a note publicly through a fixed URL etc. Now, that is simple. But what I would like to be able to do is have a way to map each one of those items to the pieces of code that utilize it. That way, when inspecting or learning or reverse engineering the code base, you could (provided that the documentation is up to date) easily trace a function, method, script, HTML document, REST service, servlet etc. to all the functional cases that utilize it and are affected by it."}
{"_id": "224514", "title": "Will we go back(?) to fixed-point arithmetic in the near future?", "text": "As far as I recall, this has been the ongoing trend of the past, I'm just a student, so I might be wrong:   * Long ago: Integer numbers and calculations. Very precise, however cannot present a big range.   * At a later point: Added single-precision floating point numbers (`floats`), and also added FPU's which are incredibly fast at calculating with them.   * Quite recently(?): Double-precision floating point numbers (`doubles`) are starting to become more common. For example in OpenGL Shader Language they are steadily introducing more and more methods that work with doubles natively. I think they are also working on FPU's for doubles? But also there has been a change to 64-bit processing a few years ago, so I've got a few questions:   * Are there more options now to calculate with fixed-point numbers (maybe two int64 registers?)?   * Why are there, as far as I know, no specific units for fast integer calculation with respect to fixed-point numbers? Maybe most of what I'm saying does not make much sense, but I think the question remains valid. Is there a switch we switch to fixed-point arithmetic in the near future?"}
{"_id": "100528", "title": "New Silverlight app. MVVM. RIA Services vs CSLA", "text": "Another 2 days of reading and watching demos and here we go. For my enterprise LoB Silverlight app I'm going to use:   1. Prism for UI aspects and modularity.   2. MVVM pattern (using Prism)   3. ??? to bring data over and validations...   4. Entity Framework for Data access   5. SQL Server for data Ok, main dilemma is #3. If I won't use any framework then I will have to figure out how to do all CRUD stuff myself. I can do RESTful WCF, I can do SOAP. All that == MANUAL coding. I can do RIA Services. I kind of see what it does and it is nice for direct match with my data layer BUT it is not that great if there will be lot of business logic. Where would I put it? In my ViewModel? Another question is how those services maintained. Once I generated it - I should maintain them by hand if data changes? I also found CSLA which seems to be nice on one hand but receives lot's of critique.. CSLA will allow me to write business logic and shape object as I needed and than I can pass it \"through\" ViewModel and all is well. Something tells me that RIA Services will be much quicker to write. Also, I like the fact that I don't have to include extra dependencies. There is no blogs or mentioning of RIA Services since 2010. Is it going under table? Not widely accepted? Not scaling well for big apps? I'm trying to decide which one I need to bet on. CSLA or RIA Services. OR?"}
{"_id": "100529", "title": "Price Comparison Database Scema", "text": "I have a bunch of data from multiple retailers. Each product that each retailer sells may or may not be sold by another retailer in the database. If multiple retailers sell the same product, then the product can be identified by a SKU. I currently have 1 database for each retailer. I'm having a problem trying to conceptualize an appropriate database schema to identify how many retailers are selling the same product. Should I have 1 table with all retailers?"}
{"_id": "73995", "title": "Crucial programming-for-hire contract points?", "text": "**What are some important and easily-overlooked points that should be in a programming-for-hire contract?** We recently had a learning experience as a client hiring a programming company: in the contract we signed, there was no mention of billing practices such as   * Minimum billable unit. A 5 minute phone call was billed as 1 hour.   * Division of work. If two contractors at the company worked on something in the same day they had their hours billed _and rounded up_ separately.   * What kinds of things were billable. We were billed for them to \"install Visio\" even though we'd asked them to use it on our VPN-accessible terminal server). We prefer learning from _other_ people's experiences rather than our own, thus hope to get the community's ideas about other important points we might be missing. I am interested in both sides of the coin as I have been and will again be a contract programmer myself, even though at this time I'm thinking of it more for my company's hiring needs. So points important for both the client and the contractor are welcome."}
{"_id": "180419", "title": "Self taught programmer seeking advice", "text": "I need some general advice on how to continue my programming studies. I'm a self taught programmer and I picked up programming somewhere in the fall of 2011. I began with C++ and Java books and I learned everything up to OOP (except memory handling in c++). I later decided that I wanted to work with web-development so I learned the PHP syntax and started my first project in the summer that resulted in http://doostr.com (obviously work in progress) The main reason why I started the project was that I would be forced to solve different kind of problems that I knew I would face along the way. I learned about relational databases and designed my own tables in MySQL (third normalization form), learned SQL logic and functions, became more fluent in programming by extensively utilizing basic programming tools (variables, loops, arrays, functions, classes), PHP native functions, MVC, Javascript (jQuery library) and the basics of CSS/HTML. I've used twitter-bootstrap as a base for design since I wanted to speed up the design and focus on programming. Now I feel like I'm just iterating through things that I've learned before. I feel like I need to come in contact with more experienced programmers in a professional developing environment that I can learn more from so I'm preparing myself for applying for a backend programmer trainee job (unpaid) and use my project as a resum\u00e9 (I dont have a computer science degree). I need some general advice from working professionals on how I not only should prepare myself considering what I want to work with, but also how I should continue my programming/developer path generally. I've asked a friend that works with java and he said that I should find a good design patterns books. You guys have any good suggestions? Any other language that would be good to combine with PHP/MySQL? I know Java/C++ syntax. I'll take any advice you might have. You can go to my site, create an account and test the functionality and it might give you a hint of what I'm capable of. Thanks for reading."}
{"_id": "181425", "title": "Expensive AOT Optimizations", "text": "I've seen it stated several times that AOT can run some more expensive optimizations that take too long to be used by a JIT. But I've never seen it stated what exactly these optimizations are. So I'm wondering, what are these optimizations?"}
{"_id": "180417", "title": "Fastest Haskell library sort implementation", "text": "I am implementing an application in Haskell and, for sorting, I use the library function `Data.List.sort`. However, I was wondering whether this is the fastest sort implementation in the Haskell standard library (perhaps lists are not the best choice for efficient sorting). I have found different alternatives, e.g. heap sort on arrays, sort on sequences (but the documentation does not say what kind of algorithm is used). My question is: what is the fastest sorting implementation (container type + sort function) provided by the Haskell standard library? Is there some documentation page listing all library sort functions and comparing them wrt performance? **EDIT** To provide some more context, I am running a benchmark. I have written a simple program in C, Java, Python and Haskell that   1. Reads 1000000 strings (lines) from a text file.   2. Sorts the strings using a built-in (library) sorting algorithm.   3. Writes the sorted list of strings to a file. For each implementation, I only measure the sorting time (leaving out the time needed for disk IO). Running the benchmark on Ubuntu 12.04, I get   * C (gcc 4.6.3, `qsort` on `char **`): 0.890 s   * Java (OpenJDK 64-Bit 1.7.0_09, `Collections.sort()` on `java.util.LinkedList<String>`): 1.307 s   * Python (Python 2.7.3, `list.sort()`): 1.072 s   * Haskell (GHC 7.4.1, `Data.List.sort` on `[Data.ByteString.UTF8.ByteString]`): 11.864 s So I wonder if there is another data type / library function in Haskell that can give better performance."}
{"_id": "180414", "title": "Using MVC in a Java app", "text": "I need to write a cross-platform GUI application to process (in multiple threads) and visualize fairly large quantities of data. Ideally the application should be relatively fast and look good. The app's interface will consist of a table widget, a tree widget, and a custom figure-drawing widget. The user will be able to modify the data from any one of these widgets and the changes should be immediately reflected in the other widgets. Naturally, I am planning to use MVC. However, I normally do all my GUI programming in C++/Qt, and have very limited exposure to Java. So I would really appreciate any advice on how to organize such an app in Java. In particular, should I use Swing or JavaFX? Which widgets would you pick for the job? Could you recommend any books/online tutorials that cover these aspects of the Java platform? I will greatly appreciate any feedback. Thanks! (this question was originally posted on Stack Overflow, but this site was suggested as a more appropriate place to ask it)"}
{"_id": "180415", "title": "Is it better to use $filehandler or FILEHANDLER?", "text": "It seems like FILEHANDLER is more commonly used as a handler naming convention than $filehandler. But it can give a bareword error if one forgets to use *FILEHANDLER in some constructions. What are advantages and disadvantages of HANDLERS and $handlers? Which naming convention is a better practise, and why?"}
{"_id": "245881", "title": "C# server side application 100 GB dataset + Garbage Collection", "text": "If I have server with 256 Gb of ram. I was wondering can I create a C# application which has a 100 GB of memory footprint? I want to create a dictionary like               Dictionary<DateTime,Dictionary<string,Dictionary<string,DataClass>>                    Fist dictionary     DateTime - Max 40 distinct values          Second Dictionary     string : 2000 distinct values          Third dictionary     string : 100 distinct values      Object will be removed from the DateTime part (after every say 1 hour), till 1 hour, various internal members are populated. With Java I am told even if the server has large memory, JVM will stall because of GC."}
{"_id": "245889", "title": "Is PHP the only popular language that mixes simple and associative arrays into a single type?", "text": "I'm doing a research on PHP and wondering if there any other commonly used programming langues that use an associative array for both simple indexed element storage and key-value functionality. Does it make PHP unique in this sense? For example, a language like C# distinguishes clearly between a simple array and a map\\dictionary\\hash               T[] array = new T[];     Dictionary<T, S> map = new Dictionary<T, S>();      Meanwhile PHP makes no such distinction (at design time)               $array = array(1, 2, 3);     $map = array(\"one\" => 1, \"two\" => 2, \"three\" => 3)"}
{"_id": "81118", "title": "Has anyone attempted to create a system which uses e style capabilities in Javascript?", "text": "The object level capabilities that show up in E seem like an interesting addition to the Javascript language, especially considering the security issues that Javascript programs face. Has anyone tried implementing an object- capability type security system in Javascript, or by modifying a javascript VM?"}
{"_id": "4063", "title": "Why did an interviewer ask me a question about people eating curry?", "text": "I had an interview question once which went... Interviewer: \"Could you tell me how many people will eat curry for their dinner this evening\" Me: \"Er, sorry?\" Interviewer: \"Not the _actual_ number just an estimate\" I actually started to stumble my way through it, when I stopped and questioned what it had to do with anything about the job. The interviewer mumbled something and moved on. I guess the question is, what is the point in the ridiculous questions? I just don't understand why they started coming up with these things."}
{"_id": "4061", "title": "A Programmers Version of Pygmalion", "text": "How long would it take and what resources would you need to train someone right out of high school and make them a 'technically' employable programmer? Granted they may not be mature enough to pass many inteviews, have the required time-based or domain experience."}
{"_id": "43725", "title": "How to build a team of people not working together?", "text": "I am in charge of a group of about 30 software development experts and architects. While these people are co-located in the companies organization chart, they do not really feel as a team. This is due to their work enviroment: 1) The people are spread over eight locations, with a max. distance of about 1000km (this is Europe). 2) The people don't work as team but instead get called as single people (and sometimes small groups) into projects for as long as the projects run. 3) Travelling is somewhat limited as this requires business reasons. Lot is done via phone. Do you have ideas or suggestions on how I could make these people feeling part of a joint organization where they support others and get supported by others. So that they get to know their peers, build a network, informally exchange information? So that they generally get the feeling of having common ground and derive motivation and job satisfaction?"}
{"_id": "22153", "title": "Effectively Learning 3 Languages Simultaneously", "text": "So I have been developing with PHP for a year and a half now. Somewhere along those times, I decided to pick up skills in Python and Ruby, and learn ASP with C# just recently (as my first compiled language). Adding to that I'm a sucker for good CSS and Javascript coding. What I'm worried about is that this is a huge undertaking. Please don't tell me \"you should focus on one language\" right now because it's just that my damned brain is telling me to study the aforementioned languages and get up and running ASAP. I'm 21, and work at a small web dev company. They're not that strict so I can sneak some time learning Python and improving my PHP. At home I work with Ruby and C#. I have done the following to effectively manage my learning process:   1. Focus on web-only projects   2. Reuse my codes from PHP and convert rewrite them according to the language syntax (to Ruby, to Python)   3. Create an online blog to store some of my codes in case I need to get back to them later I know it's quite insane to juggle 4 server languages and 2 frontend languages at once but hey, I am having fun doing this. I'm not saying I want to master them immediately, because I know it takes years to master a single language. Have you done this before? How did you manage your learning process? Did you give up halfway and just focused on one?"}
{"_id": "205877", "title": "How can I work on multiple programming languages at same time", "text": "It always happen to me that if I leave the stuff for 1-2 months I forget the stuff. 5 months back I had symfony project and I did that. At that time I was very much confident that I can do any project in symfony2. Then we got one Python project in django and I worked full time on that for few months. But now when I had to fix the error in symfony2, I completely forgot the structure and I keep mixing python stuff with php symfony. I want to know that how people work with different languages at same time. Should I need to keep studying all languages at same time so that I don't forget? I am confused what should I do. Or whenever I do some project then I keep notes of each and every step so that I can follow that later on how I did it?"}
{"_id": "196391", "title": "Revisiting Learned Languages", "text": "I'm an aspiring programmer, I really wish to be great at multiple programming languages. I began programming from my school where they didn't teach me well, they didn't follow the standards, they didn't even tell the difference between an IDE and a compiler, they kept calling the Turbo C++ IDE a compiler, which sucked. And at that time I didn't have good internet access. But I do have internet, now I can learn new things and how to do them properly. The problem I'm having now is how to relearn everything and at the same time learn new things. I'm trying to do JavaScript and Ruby at this time but I can't concentrate on any of these because I'm worried about the one I am not learning (and also when I find something interesting, I get attracted to that and not the one I'm looking for, eg. attracted to C function pointer while I'm trying to learn callbacks in JavaScript) . How do I manage this? Make a routine? And many of us recommend practicing by making, but I have no idea what to make or making what would be better as a programming practice. Really need help. Edit: How is my question a duplicate? The mentioned question asks whether it \"is\" better to learn multiple languages simultaneously or not. What I'm asking here is how to be able to concentrate and manage on learning languages properly. Therefore it is not a duplicate, plus the answers I'm getting here are great (which are not there in that question, I'd like to point out the moderators to quit judging like that)."}
{"_id": "212889", "title": "How can a beginner develop an algorithm for this problem?", "text": "Before I'm flamed, I'm just a beginner in programming. I have been learning Python for about 1 week by myself. I have a real problem to solve: **Goal:** The fastest route through a pathway. **Problem:**   * Walk forward to get to the goal. The pathway is 128 steps.   * Walking 1 step increases the danger value by 113   * If the danger value is over the limit then there is a fight. The fight takes 15 seconds to win.   * The limit is randomly assigned on each step.   * The danger value resets to 0 after a fight. **Here's the essence of the problem though:** There are two possible options if there is a fight:   * The fight can be escaped. Escaping takes 2 seconds. But does NOT reset the danger value.   * Accept the fight. Resets the danger value.   * The higher the danger value, the higher the chance of getting a fight. I've written the code to take one step. And I've written the code for the relevant randomness of the danger value, etc. I've even made a graph that shows exactly the pathway and potential fights, with the respective limits. This graph shows what happens when you accept every fight (don't escape): ![Fighting Pathway](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7p4Nv.png) **Being self-taught, I just don't know how to write a search algorithm for finding the quickest way through a particular route.** I believe I need to write a **backtracking algorithm** ; essentially a kind of **brute force**. I just don't know how to translate it from english into code. It's been around 4 days of just thinking about this, and I cannot write anything that expresses the even attempts to solve the problem. Any books or advice on how to even start solving this? As I've said, I have all of the code for what happens on each step (here: http://pastebin.com/LnV4h9NV). I just don't know how to even begin trying to brute force/search."}
{"_id": "255471", "title": "In IT companies employees are working in the same project mean how they will join these part of work (programs) together?", "text": "In IT companies employees are working in the same project mean how they will join these part of work(programs) together? I mean I am working in `.zul` file (client side), some of my teammates are working in server side or other Java files, in the end of the day how they can join those programs from different system to single system?"}
{"_id": "212880", "title": "Chain-of-Command/Responsibility pattern for my simple API. A good idea?", "text": "I need to write a simple API for a project I'm working on. This API will be used internally to perform some server side actions that were triggered by AJAX calls. To make things easier for me, I thought of using the Chain-of- Command/Responsibility pattern. Here are more details about what I want to do: I am creating a \"dashboard\" where admins of my app will be able to update information (meta data) about items stored in a database. To make things easy and simple for the admins, I chose to use AJAX. So, if an admin wants to delete an item, (s)he clicks on the \"delete button\". A POST request is then sent to `edit.php` page with all the information needed to perform the deletion (action : delete, element : link, id : xx ...). Where `action`, `element` and of course `id` can change. This is why I opted for a mini-API that will, depending on the `action` and the `element` data, call a different function from a different class. Now, to implement the API, I decided to use Chain-of-Responsibility design pattern. Why? Because I can easily add, delete or update classes without having to modify the API itself. Is the Chain of Responsibility design pattern good fit for my case?"}
{"_id": "212887", "title": "Rethinking testing strategy", "text": "Working on Plone projects our team tries to achieve full test coverage at least for important products. The kind of tests we write are unit tests, functional tests and integration tests. (Also stress-tests, but those aren't in the scope of this question). The goal is two fold at least: to facilitate upgrades and to catch bugs (sometimes it even happens in the process of writing tests). However, Plone/Zope is a complex system, and with years of experience I've noticed, that test strategy should be re-thought. First of all, unit tests, which often require to use a lot of mocking, are not that (cost)efficient. They are mostly easy and beneficial when some core, logic-heavy functionality is being written, like pure Python modules, which have negligible couplings with Plone/Zope, databases, etc. I rarely seen unit-tests catching any bugs at all, except while writing them. So, when doing the usual thing (writing views/portlets/viewlets), from my experience, it's much more efficient to write functional and integration tests. The rationale of it is that in case Plone/Zope changes (in an upgrade) we can catch the mishaps in our code. Views usually do not have a lot of \"algorithmic\" logic, they glue together several data sources (like catalog queries), maybe with some form handling and preprocessing for templates. It is quite often views call one or more tools to do some routine job (like getting navigation tree or looking up site root). Mocking it all seems unwise. For example, sometimes Plone/Zope changes some default to another type and all those mocked tests happily continue to work while code fails in the real instance. Functional/Integration tests may be at times fragile (HTML can change), but they are cheaper to produce too. They provide basic coverage, and trigger alarms when underlying system changes. Spotting the source of mishap is usually not an issue. ( **update** : Wrong: spotting where integration test fails can be a big issue, but **our** code's unit tests are usually of no help.) The question is, am I overlooking something of importance confining unittesting to functions and classes, which do not require mocking the environment heavily and are instead \"purely\" logic-heavy? I can't find any justification for writing unit-test \"first\", or even at all, for every piece of code in Plone/Zope (I do not mean the core of the system, just our own additions for our clients). To make the question less opinion based, are there other reasons, I have not mentioned or tackled above, which necessiate to consider writing more unit tests (and less integration tests) in a situation when code heavily depends on a complex (and somewhat hairy) framework, and code serves more as a glue for framework's subsystems?"}
{"_id": "212884", "title": "Interview Coding Assignments\u2026 how much do they account for?", "text": "So I've ran into a couple of companies that requires completing coding assignments before they give you a phone interview. I'm curious, do these coding assignments account for anything after the interviews? Or are these assignments just there to see if you're worthy of their time to be phone- interviewed? I'm more interested in hearing from those who had involvement in an actual hiring process that included a coding assignment. I would appreciate if you can mention your involvement (e.g., you were the hiring manager or one of the people on the team that did the hiring). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "214730", "title": "Should I close database connections after use in PHP?", "text": "I wonder if I should close any unnecessary database connection inside of my PHP scripts. I am aware of the fact that database connections are closed implicitly when the block stops executing and 'manually' closing the connections could kinda bloat the codebase with unnecessary code. But shouldn't I do so in order to make by code as readable and as easy understandable as possible, while also preventing several possible issues during run time? Also, if I would do, would it be enough to `unset()` my database object?"}
{"_id": "245160", "title": "Data Access Levels of Abstraction", "text": "I'd like to describe this situation from two perspectives. I have a system called `Accounts`. This system is made up of subsystems which handle different account-based activities. For example:               Company.Accounts.NewAccounts     Company.Accounts.Loans     Company.Accounts.Transactions      **Perspective One** From this perspective, imagine I have a shared data access tier:               Company.Accounts.DataAccess      This subsystem is built seperately and each of my other Accounts subsystems reference the built assembly. This Company.Accounts.DataAccess subsystem connects to multiple tables. Some of the tables are specific to certain subsystems, and some of them are shared. There are separate modules for use by some specific subsystems, but also one or two common modules that multiple subsystems reference. The common modules include a lot of basic CRUD activities, but also a good number of low/medium complexity actions. So from this perspective, would it be fair to keep this architecture, but to pull out the subsystem-specific logic into a subsystem-specific data access layer? That way, each subsystem has their own specific Data Access piece, but also still references the original Data Access Tier for the common modules.               Company.Accounts.NewAccounts         Company.Accounts.NewAccounts.DataAccess          Company.Accounts.Loans         Company.Accounts.Loans.DataAccess          Company.Accounts.Transactions         Company.Accounts.Transactions.DataAccess          Company.Accounts.DataAccess      **Perspective Two** From this perspective, imagine I have existing Data Access Layers for each subsystem:               Company.Accounts.NewAccounts.DataAccess     Company.Accounts.Loans.DataAccess     Company.Accounts.Transactions.DataAccess      They are logical layers as part of each subsystem, and only each subsystem references its own data access piece. So there are no cross references here. Each of these Data Access Layers perform operations against their own specific Database Tables. However, each of them also has code to perform common operations against tables that are shared amongst all subsystems in the Accounts system. So from this perspective, would it be fair to keep this architecture, but to abstract the common operations into a subsystem-agnostic data access Tier? That way, each subsystem keeps its own logical layer for specific operations, but also references an externally built tier for the common operations.               Company.Accounts.NewAccounts         Company.Accounts.NewAccounts.DataAccess          Company.Accounts.Loans         Company.Accounts.Loans.DataAccess          Company.Accounts.Transactions         Company.Accounts.Transactions.DataAccess          Company.Accounts.DataAccess      **Conclusion** So as you can see, the ending is the same, but coming at the description from two different perspectives. My idea is to have two different levels for data access. So a subsystem references its Data Access Layer for its own data operations, but also references a common Data Access Tier for common operations. Is that legitimate? Is there already a pattern named for this?"}
{"_id": "19990", "title": "Typing skills do developers need a formal training?", "text": "Developers key in lots of code, write bogs, write software designs and stuff. Do we need formal typing training? I have seen many developers struggling with keyboard thus slowing down development momentum. At least we can play around with a software typing emulator to begin with."}
{"_id": "245162", "title": "factors that are important for success when letting an agile framework emerge for the whole organisation?", "text": "I previously posted a question [link] on programmers.stackexchange.com asking when it makes sense to adopt an existing enterprise scale agile framework and when it makes sense to allow your own enterprise scale agile framework to emerge (e.g. through trial and error). This question takes the previous question a step further and asks for **the factors that are important for success** when you have decided to go down the route of letting your enterprise scale agile framework emerge? \\-- Downvoters: down voting without adding a comment provides no opportunity for improving the question. Please let me know why you are down voting so that I can improve the question."}
{"_id": "189654", "title": "NoSQL Document Database as a Message Queue", "text": "I am considering using a NoSQL Document database as a messaging queue. Here is why:   * I want a client to post a message (some serialized object) to the server and not have to wait for a synchronous response.   * I want to be able to pull messages off of the \"queue\" based on some criteria, which may be more sophisticated than just a priority level (I am working on a hosted web app, so I want to give all of my customers a fair amount of \"computing time\", and not let one customer hog all of the processing).   * I want the queue to be durable - if the server goes down I want any remaining messages to be handled when it comes back up. So, I am considering using MongoDB or RavenDB as a message queue. The client can post the message object to a web service which writes it to the database. Then - the service doing the work can pull the various message types based on any criteria that may arise. I can create indexes around the scenarios to make it faster. So - I am looking for someone to shoot a hole in this. Has anybody successfully done this? Has anybody tried this and failed in some way?"}
{"_id": "38874", "title": "Where do you go to read good examples of source code?", "text": "I have heard a few people say that one of the best ways to improve your coding ability is to read others code and understand it. My question, as a relatively new programmer, where do I go to find good source code examples that are not too far over my head?"}
{"_id": "81932", "title": "Good introduction to artificial intelligence?", "text": "I have been told that as part of my degree year I will be learning about Artificial Intelligence. My lecturers have recommended a couple of books: Artificial Intelligence: A Systems Approach (Computer Science)   Artificial Intelligence (A Modern Approach) I've watched a couple of lectures hosted by Jeff Hawkins, they were good although a little advanced for me. Could someone recommend any other books or lectures that introduce the topic?"}
{"_id": "13340", "title": "Is Power++ worth buying/learning?", "text": "I found Power++ and to my suprise it looks like a good alternative for Delphi and Visual Studio. Anyone used it? Can you tell me if it is worth it buying/learning it?"}
{"_id": "13341", "title": "Hard-copy approaches to time tracking", "text": "I have a problem: I suck at tracking time-on-task for specific feature/defects/etc while coding them. I tend to jump between tasks a fair bit (partly due to the inherit juggling required by professional software development, partly due to my personal tendancy to focus on the code itself and not the business process around code). My personal preference is for a hard-copy system. Even with gabillions of pixels of real-estate on-screen I find it terribly distracting to keep a tracking window convienient; either I forget about it or it gets in my ways. So, looking for suggestions on time-tracking. My only requirement is a simple system to track start/stop times per task. I've considered going as far as buying a time-clock and giving each ticket a dedicated time-card. When I start working on it, punch-in; when done working, punch-out."}
{"_id": "244750", "title": "How can my team avoid frequent errors after refactoring?", "text": "To give you a little background: I work for a company with roughly twelve Ruby on Rails developers (+/- interns). Remote work is common. Our product is made out of two parts: a rather fat core, and thin up to big customer projects built upon it. Customer projects usually expand the core. Overwriting of key features does not happen. I might add that the core has some rather bad parts that are in urgent need of refactorings. There are specs, but mostly for the customer projects. The worst part of the core are untested (not as it should be...). The developers are split into two teams, working with one or two PO for each sprint. Usually, one customer project is strictly associated with one of the teams and POs. Now our problem: Rather frequently, we break each other's stuff. Someone from Team A expands or refactors the core feature Y, causing unexpected errors for one of Team B's customer projects. Mostly, the changes are not announced over the teams, so the bugs hit almost always unexpected. Team B, including the PO, thought about feature Y to be stable and did not test it before releasing, unaware of the changes. How to get rid of those problems? What kind of 'announcement technique' can you recommend me?"}
{"_id": "244751", "title": "How does Telnet work?", "text": "**Is telnet just a simple socket connection?** I usually have a difficult time in the networking area so I use some code from the internet to help me out, but I can't seem to find a library for Telnet in Objective-C. The closest thing I've found is `CocoaAsyncSocket` I was wondering, _Is telnet just plain socket connections?_ _Do I just create a socket to the server and send the commands?_"}
{"_id": "186602", "title": "need advice for building evaluation system in Java for the web", "text": "I have made a java program that allows to mark an exam made by one student. In the interface the student chooses between a set of options for each question, and by an array (that holds the correct answers) I get the score of the student. By the way this simple program is made using console java, no swing or applets at all. The information of which answers are correct are stored in a vector, so each answer of the students is compared with this vector for getting the final score. I would like to put his program into one domain that I recently got, so that one student at the moment of entering into the webpage could make the exam; and another program installed in the server will check the correct answers and give other questions, in case the student wants to practice. One friend told me that it is possible to wrap the console java application into java for web, but I just dont know the details for doing that. What would anybody suggest or if there is any online tutorial that could help me with that? My domain has the following extensions:   * FTP    * MySQL    * Apache    * SharedTomcat Please this is not a discussion to know which tool is better, I want just to use Java, but I am pretty lost with all the web technologies that one can use with this language."}
{"_id": "244758", "title": "Failed to allocate memory - What is it trying to say?", "text": "In my early days of programming I often used to get memory related fatal errors in the following format:               Fatal error: Allowed memory size of <some big number> bytes exhausted      (tried to allocate <some small number> bytes) in /path/to/filename.php      on line <some line number>      I'm a little embarrassed to state that even though I have figured out how to solve them and take steps to avoid them altogether, I'm still not quite sure what exactly does the message translate to in simple words. For example, if I get a message such as:               Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 4000 bytes)      in ........ on line 34      As things stand at the moment, I assume it to be stating that the script consumes 67108864 bytes of data, but only 4000 bytes are available during runtime.   * Am I right in my assumption?   * If not, what's the correct interpretation?"}
{"_id": "235981", "title": "Design Hash table with simple hash function", "text": "I want to learn to Design Hash table with simple hash function for better understanding. I understand that the hash table will work as long as the hash function maps each key to a non-negative integer less than the size of the hash table, but it will only perform well if it distributes different keys across different buckets. My question is : What's a alternative ways to implement hash function using ASCII code. I found ASCII code hash function implementation it's easy to build a hash function on the idea of treating each character of the string as a digit in a number. I try to represent a number is to use a radix-10 system with the Arabic numerals. For example, I could represent numbers using the letters \"a\" - \"z\" for the numbers 0 through 25 to obtain the Radix-26 system described in your text book. Characters in the computer are often stored using 7-bit ASCII codes (with values 0-127). So we can treat a string of ASCII characters as a Radix-128 number."}
{"_id": "218103", "title": "MVC Design Pattern to Combine Multiple Models for use", "text": "In my design, I have multiple models and each model has a controller. I need to use all the models to process some operation. Most examples I see are pretty simple with 1 view, 1 controller, and 1 model. How would you get all these models together? Only ways I can think of are 1) Have a top-level controller which has a reference to every controller. Those controllers will have a getter/setter function for their model. Does this violate MVC because every controller should have a model? 2) Have an Intermediate class to combine every model into a one model. Then you create a controller for that new super model. Do you know of any better ideas? Thanks."}
{"_id": "235985", "title": "Best practice for projects architecture - server side", "text": "The usual way (that I'm familiar with) to divide the server side is the n-layer architecture :   1. **DAL** \\- data access layer, usually has the Entities and the context (and maybe include also a repository)   2. **BLL** \\- business logic layer   3. **Contract** \\- Interfaces   4. **Services** \\- classes which implement the interfaces ( could be a Web API for E.G ) Of course there is also the n-tier Architecture which i don't want to discuss . lately I've seen more and more a \"Modules\" architecture and i was wondering about it ( I'm not familiar with the professional term of this architecture ) Where each module is not a table in the database but a group of tables that have a shared concept . something that looks like that : ![Modules and DAL architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qPrqb.jpg) Is there any known good architecture that separate the layers by modules on the server side? if so, what is the professional term for this kind of architecture and what are the advantages / disadvantages of each of this architectures ?"}
{"_id": "235987", "title": "What is the right way to parse HTML?", "text": "I've heard, that parsing HTML using the Cthulhu way is not very good. But what are the right ways to parse HTML? Or is it possible to parse it at all?"}
{"_id": "235989", "title": "Is there a purely technical term for 'monkey patching'", "text": "**EDIT** The original title of the question was **Is there a non-derogatory term for 'monkey patching'**. As I have learned that the term is actually not derogatory, or is at least not meant to be, I changed the name to free it from mistaken implications. * * * I would like to describe a piece of software, and try not to use emotionally biased language. However I am not aware of an unbiased alternative to 'monkey patching'. The term is meant to be derogatory for a reason. Many see it as a useful but problematic technique. I am aware of an alternative, but it is equally derogatory: 'duck punching'. I see 'open classes' not as an alternative name, but as a prerequisite for monkey patching. 'Overriding' does not seem right either. I would like to differentiate between monkey patching and the regular overriding as part of inheritance-based polymorphism."}
{"_id": "42091", "title": "What should I know about C++?", "text": "I've recently started learning C++, and I enjoy it a lot. I've often read it's easier to write bad code in C++ than in most languages, and that it is a lot deeper than what it seems. As I'd like to avoid writing bad code, I was wondering what exactly I shouldn't do, and what I should do, to write good code in C++."}
{"_id": "42094", "title": "Selling middleware", "text": "I am close to completion of a useful suite of tools for 2D game development (with mobile platforms in mind), for working with sprites and animations. Can anyone advise the best way to sell and promote my product (without investing capital). I am aware that there are lots of websites that can market and sell software to end consumers, but I need to target game developers specifically as middleware is completely meaningless to your average joe. So, aside from using PayPal on my website, are there any marketplaces for game middleware? How can I promote the application outside my website without spamming developer forums?"}
{"_id": "42097", "title": "How long of a trial period do you use with programmers - how quickly can you tell if they are talented and a good fit?", "text": "It seems most jobs that I've been exposed to come with a 3 month trial period, during which the employer decides whether the employee is doing good enough work, and is a good fit. 3 months seem like overkill to me, for most cases we've known much sooner whether someone wasn't a good fit. How long does it take you, on average, to evaluate whether a newly hired programmer is both talented and a good fit for your team?"}
{"_id": "101340", "title": "What \u201cIndustry Classification\u201d is Computer Programming?", "text": "Whenever I fill out a survey (especially, but not limited to trade- papers/mags/sites), there\u2019s one question (or any derivation thereof) that always trips me up: > Which industry classification best describes your line of work This is usually followed by a list of things like _Retail_ , _Health_ , _Education_ , _Construction_ , _Manufacturing_ , etc. I can never figure out exactly what industry computer programming falls in. I usually just end up picking either _Manufacturing_ because I suppose in a way, I\u2019m manufacturing something, _Retail_ since in a way, I am producing goods, or else whatever option happens to mention either \u201ccomputers\u201d or \u201celectronics\u201d (if any). I tried Googling it but came up empty. Does anyone know what the \u201ccorrect\u201d answer is? What do other programmers enter in these surveys?    * * *    ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YOTmp.png)"}
{"_id": "80247", "title": "PHP - How to Automatically Post Form in Another Website and Parse the Result", "text": "I am planning to create a website like what http://dohop.com is doing that will allow a user to pull the airlines price rate and date from the http://airasia.com website. Currently the site will only allow the user to view the flight schedule for one day and if they wish to view x days ahead they need to repost the data. I would like to collect the data in x days ahead and group them in table so that user can view all the flight prices & schedule variances in one screen without reposting. I have checked the `AirAsia.com` site and they currently don't have any API support which would allow me to extract their data. While they are using 'aspx' for their website and POST method. Can anyone give me some guidance on what is the method, approach or technique for me to harvest the data?"}
{"_id": "101346", "title": "What is best practice on ordering parameters in a function?", "text": "Sometimes (rarely), it seems that creating a function that takes a decent amount of parameters is the best route. However, when I do, I feel like I'm often choosing the ordering of the parameters at random. I usually go by \"order of importance\", with the most important parameter first. Is there a better way to do this? Is there a \"best practice\" way of ordering parameters that enhances clarity?"}
{"_id": "163147", "title": "Is a 1:* write:read thread system safe?", "text": "Theoretically, thread-safe code should fix race conditions. Race conditions, as I understand it, occur because two threads attempt to write to the same location at the same time. However, what about a threading model in which a single thread is designed to write to a location, and several slave/worker threads simply read from the location? Assuming the value/timing at which they read the data isn't relevant/doesn't hinder the worker thread's outcome, wouldn't this be considered 'thread safe', or am I missing something in my logic?"}
{"_id": "48635", "title": "Is software innovation still primarily North American and European? Why, and for how much longer?", "text": "Since this site is read by a global audience of programmers, I want to know if people generally agree that the vast majority of software innovation - languages, OS, tools, methodologies, books, etc. - still originates from the USA, Canada, and the EU. I can think of a few exceptions, e.g. Nginx webserver from Russia and the Ruby language from Japan, but overwhelmingly, the software I use and encounter daily is from North America and the EU.   * Why? Is history and historical momentum (computing having started in USA and Europe) still driving the industry? And/or, is some nebulous (or real) cultural difference discouraging software innovation abroad?   * Or are those of us in the West simply ignorant of real software innovation going on in Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, etc.?   * When, if ever, might the centers of innovation move out of the West? Your experiences and opinions welcome, thanks!"}
{"_id": "256234", "title": "Example cases for each data structure?", "text": "I've been looking all over the Internet for a page that lists **cases** for when to use each abstract data type. I expect that reading through a series of both surprising and obvious uses for each type will help readers recognize future opportunities for applying a particular ADT in their algorithms. For example: > **Trees** > >   * File System >   * HTML DOM tree >   * Family Genealogy >   * Syntactic Parsing of Strings >   * etc... > I'll provide a list of basic ADTs that should be included; feel free to add more, or to specify subtypes:               Arrays, Linked-Lists, Sets, Dictionaries/Maps, Stacks, Queues, Trees, Graphs."}
{"_id": "205716", "title": "Is it worth writing a unit test for a DTO with the most basic getter/setters?", "text": "The advantage is it protects your DTO against future \"enhancements\" ?"}
{"_id": "256231", "title": "Java EE - Configuration over convention?", "text": "I'm a systems administrator and am also pursuing a more specific career in development. I started about a year and a half ago with Javascript and C#/.NET ... one day I decided I wanted to learn Java. Then I have found myself amazed with all of the options available and the community seems wonderful and I think the JVM is a great piece of technology and development platform. However...one thing about Microsoft is that everything is completely out of the box. If you want to build an infrastructure or just a simple app then you are dealing with one technology, one vendor, one IDE, one set of forums ... you just point, click, develop. I know there have been huge strides made with Java. More specifically I am spending most of my time with the Pivotal stack. Spring, Spring Boot, Grails, etc. But because there are so many options and everything is so open it seems that the tutorials on different sites are kinda hard to follow and because everything is changing so fast I finally find a good book or tutorial and the layout for everything just changes. I am able to build simple Java apps and I can also get a Grails project up and running in an instant. Also the Play! framework ... wow. But the point is .. just wanting a little bit of advice as someone who is new to Java development. I know that if I can just dig through all of these XML files and just figure it all out that I'll be able to really start taking advantages of these technologies. Just wanted to know if there is a de facto tutorial I should start with. Spring is pretty easy even though sometimes my stuff just ... doesn't work. Even when I'm following the guide on the site. And another part of this question is should I go with Maven or Gradle? I haven't used any of these tools. Is this supposed to make everything easier? All the projects I have created have come straight from the IDE (Spring Tool Suite). .. Ok this is getting long .. I really want to get an application up and running with Spring Data/Rest and start building an Angular JS frontend. Lots of options..a little overwhelming. But want to learn it well and the only thing I miss about .NET is the ease of use. Anybody feel anything similar when learning Java web development? Whats the best place to shut up and start?"}
{"_id": "201906", "title": "How to map the english dictionary to UNSPSC codes?", "text": "Is there a db which maps the words from the english dictionary to the UNSPSC codes?(http://www.unspsc.org/) My problem is the following: I am building a search system. And the customer searches for 'pencil' and 'pencil sharpeners' are also returned. Each of the returned item has a UNSPSC code associated with it. So one possible solution would be to search only for those items in the categories the search word belongs to. But this solution would require a mapping from english words to the UNSPSC codes..."}
{"_id": "201907", "title": "Redis & MongoDB for Metrics Platform", "text": "I'm in the process of writing an app that will ultimately display analytics to the user. I've written a service that collects data from an API. This data will then be processed, stored, then when the user requests the data, pulls it from the store and displays it. Fairly straightforward. We plan on using MongoDB for the app database (storing users, settings, etc.). I've read that Redis is good for storing metric information because of the key/value pair nature. My question is, what would be the best way to go about interchanging how the data comes from the API service to the user being able to request it? I've initially come up with storing the API data in another MongoDB store, seperate from the app. Then having another service that runs at a longer interval than the API service that aggregates the raw data in Mongo, moves it into Redis, then archives the parsed Mongo data into either some log file or something. The app would then be able to reach into Redis to grab the metrics based on predetermined keys. Is Redis even the right option for something like this? I've also considered swapping out MongoDB with Postgres or MySQL since operations like SUM run well on a relational platform."}
{"_id": "201905", "title": "Javadoc for a static \"overloaded\" method", "text": "My problem is the following: I have an interface that requires its implementations to implement a static method, namely `void load()`. However, until Java 8, it seems we won't get static methods in interfaces. I trust my users to still implement it correctly, but my problem is how to write a proper doc. There are up to 50 implementations of this interface and not being able to inherit the javadoc is a bother. What is the best way to proceed in my case? Should I document a random implementation and add `@see` annotations in the others? It seems dirty to me. Any suggestion is welcome."}
{"_id": "124551", "title": "Best design for Windows forms that will share common functionality", "text": "In the past, I have used inheritance to allow the extension of Windows forms in my application. If all of my forms would have common controls, artwork, and functionality, I would create a base form implementing the common controls and functionality and then allow other controls to inherit from that base form. However, I have run into a few problems with that design.   1. Controls can only be in one container at a time, so any static controls you have will be tricky. For example: Suppose you had a base form called BaseForm which contained a TreeView which you make protected and static so that all of the other (derived) instances of this class can modify and display the same TreeView. This would not work for multiple classes inheriting from BaseForm, because that TreeView can only be in one container at a time. It would likely be on the last form initialized. Though every instance could edit the control, it would only display in one at a given time. Of course, there are work-arounds, but they are all ugly. (This seems to be a really bad design to me. Why can't multiple containers store pointers to the same object? Anyhow, it is what it is.)   2. State between forms, that is, button states, label text, etc., I have to use global variables for and reset the states on Load.   3. This isn't really supported by Visual Studio's designer very well. Is there a better, yet still easily maintainable design to use? Or is form inheritance still the best approach? **Update** I went from looking at MVC to MVP to the Observer Pattern to the Event Pattern. Here is what I am thinking for the moment, please critique: My BaseForm class will only contain the controls, and events connected to those controls. All events that need any sort of logic to handle them will pass immediately to the BaseFormPresenter class. This class will handle the data from the UI, perform any logical operations, and then update the BaseFormModel. The Model will expose events, which will fire upon state changes, to the Presenter class, which it will subscribe (or observe) to. When the Presenter receives the event notification, it will perform any logic, and then the Presenter will modify the View accordingly. There will only be one of each Model class in memory, but there could potentially be many instances of the BaseForm and therefore the BaseFormPresenter. This would solve my problem of synchronizing each instance of the BaseForm to the same data model. Questions: Which layer should store stuff like, the last pressed button, so that I can keep it highlighted for the user (like in a CSS menu) between forms? Please criticize this design. Thanks for your help!"}
{"_id": "124555", "title": "Are stand up meetings really useful?", "text": "My coworkers tell me stand up meetings are useless. My project manager also makes us end every morning meeting with a company chant."}
{"_id": "124554", "title": "Trade-offs of local vs remote development workflows for a web development team", "text": "We currently have SVN setup on a remote development server. Developers SSH into the server and develops on their sandbox environment on the server. Each one has a virtual host pointed to their sandbox so they can preview their changes via the web browser by connecting to developer-sandbox1.domain.com. This has worked well so far because the team is small and everyone uses computers with varying specs and OSs. I've heard some web shops are using a workflow that has the developers work off of a VM on their local machine and then finally push changes to the remote server that hosts SVN. The downside to this is that everyone will need to make sure their machine is powerful enough to run both the VM and all their development tools. This would also mean creating images that mirror the server environment (we use CentOS) and have them install it into their VMs. And this would mean creating new images every time there is an update to the server environment. What are some other trade-offs? Ultimately, why did you choose one workflow over the other?"}
{"_id": "201908", "title": "What is the best way of storing date?", "text": "I am a new to storing dates based on time zones. Need to know the standard way to store the date in the datastore. My requirements are   1. Easy to query the date based on the date range.    2. show the date with the client appropriate time zone selected by him(I am having a table maintained for the timezone separately)    3. Able to query using the datastore Admin console also. Any suggestions/ideas regarding this will be a great help in proceeding further."}
{"_id": "79755", "title": "Discovered large security hole in someone elses website... What to do?", "text": "A chap I'm bidding to do some development for has a social network he wrote himself. Not the next facebook by any stretch. But a few thousand local users. I went to have a look at it to see what level of knowledge he had so I knew how to position myself for this potential job. I tapped a single quote into the login box on the front page and up pops a SQL error. So I tried a simple \" a' or 'a'='a \" in each box and was immediately logged in as the administrator. He had written a fairly comprehensive administration site by the looks of things. At the bottom of the page a \"Download SQL Backup\" button. This is where I stopped. My question is this. What do I do? As a developer myself I would appreciate the heads up. But as someone who's hopefully going to be paid to do some work for him I wouldn't want to throw all sorts of trust issues into the mix. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "44731", "title": "Why are there separate L1 caches for data and instructions?", "text": "Just went over some slides and noticed that the L1 cache (at least on Intel CPUs) distinguishes between data and instruction cache, I would like to know why this is.."}
{"_id": "236184", "title": "Do I need to publish deployment scripts for deploying AGPL licensed work (MongoDB)", "text": "MongoDB is dual-licensed with AGPL (the engine) and ASL 2.0 (the drivers). In a nutshell, merely using MongoDB through the drivers does not dictate to release your source code (due to drivers' ASL 2.0 license). AFAIK, only if you directly call the mongo engine, you need to give out your code that's using it (but still not the _application_ code that talks to mongo via the drivers). Check this MongoDB blog entry: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/103832439/the-agpl What if you deploy (install, configure) mongodb in your deployment scripts. And then start/stop/restart those processes. And then maybe create some users via mongo shell. Do you need to publish your _deployment scripts_? (A bonus question: how can they publish the drivers as ASL 2.0 if those drivers use the AGPL-licensed part of MongoDB over the network? Because they are authors of both?)"}
{"_id": "236185", "title": "How to design an IDisposable that unconditionally needs to be disposed?", "text": "Consider a class that implements `IDisposable`, and that has members in such a way that it will never become eligible for garbage collection when it is not disposed. And as it will not be garbage collected, it will not have the chance to use the destructor for cleaning up. As a result, when it is not disposed (e.g. unreliable users, programming errors), resources will be leaked. Is there a general approach how such a class can be designed to deal with such a situation or to avoid it? _Example_ :               using System;          class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             new Cyclical();             GC.Collect();             GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers();             Console.ReadKey();         }     }          class Cyclical     {         public Cyclical()         {             timer = new System.Threading.Timer(Callback, null, 0, 1000);         }              System.Threading.Timer timer;              void Callback(object state)         {             Console.Write('.');  // do something useful         }              ~Cyclical()         {             Console.WriteLine(\"destructor\");         }     }      (Omitted `IDisposable` to keep example short.) This class uses a `Timer` to do something useful at certain intervals. It needs a reference to the `Timer` to avoid it is garbage collected. Let\u2019s assume the user of that class will not dispose it. As a result of the timer, somewhere some worker thread has a reference to the `Cyclical` instance via the callback, and as a result, the `Cyclical` instance will never become eligible for garbage collection, and its destructor will never run, and resources will leak. In this example, a possible fix (or workaround) could be to use a helper class that receives callbacks from the `Timer`, and that does not have a reference, but only a `WeakReference` to the `Cyclical` instance, which it calls using that `WeakReference`. However, in general, is there a design rule for classes like this that need to be disposed to avoid leaking resources? * * * For the sake of completeness, here the example including `IDispose` and including a workaround/solution (and with a hopefully less distracting name):               class SomethingWithTimer : IDisposable     {        public SomethingWithTimer()        {           timer = new System.Threading.Timer(StaticCallback,              new WeakReference<SomethingWithTimer>(this), 0, 1000);        }             System.Threading.Timer timer;             static void StaticCallback(object state)        {           WeakReference<SomethingWithTimer> instanceRef              = (WeakReference<SomethingWithTimer>) state;           SomethingWithTimer instance;           if (instanceRef.TryGetTarget(out instance))              instance.Callback(null);        }             void Callback(object state)        {           Console.Write('.');  // do something useful        }             public void Dispose()        {           Dispose(true);           GC.SuppressFinalize(this);        }             protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)        {           if (disposing)           {              Console.WriteLine(\"dispose\");              timer.Dispose();           }        }             ~SomethingWithTimer()        {           Console.WriteLine(\"destructor\");           Dispose(false);        }     }        * If disposed, the timer will be disposed.   * If not disposed, the object will become eligible for garbage collection."}
{"_id": "135499", "title": "Is there a difference between the terms \"Open Source\" and \"Open Source Software\"?", "text": "Until today, I have always used the terms **open source** and **open source software** interchangeably. But then I read Phil Haack's blog post in which he suggests that the two terms are not necessarily referring to the same thing. He proposes the following definitions: **Open Source Software** is source code which is licensed under a license that meets the Open Source Definition. **Open Source** is a development methodology which includes certain characteristics:   * Developed in the open with community involvement   * The team accepts contributions that meet its standards   * The end product has an open source license. This encompasses open source software, open source hardware, etc. So Phil argues that the end product of open source development is open source software, but open source software is _not necessarily_ the product of open source development. Since he also mentions that there are many different understandings of what open source means, what do you think about these definitions? Do you agree with the distinction he has made?"}
{"_id": "139777", "title": "RDF and OWL: Have these delivered the promises of the Semantic Web?", "text": "These days I've been learning a lot about how different scientific fields are trying to move their data over to the Semantic Web in order to \"free up data from being stored in isolated silos\". I read a lot about how these fields are saying how their efforts are implementing the \"visions\" of the Semantic Web. As a learner (and from purely a learning perspective) I was curious to know why, if semantic technology is deemed to be so powerful, the efforts have been around for years but myself and a lot of people I know have never even heard of it until very recently? Also, I don't come across any scholarly articles deeming \"oh, our inferencing engine was able to make such and such discovery, which is helping us pave our way to solving....\" etc. It seems that there are genuine efforts across different institutions, fields, and disciplines to shift all their data to a \"semantic\" format, but what happens after all that's been done? All the **ontologies** have been created/unified, and then what?"}
{"_id": "135495", "title": "In MVC, what is the difference between controller and router?", "text": "Do they mean the same thing (attaching URLs to actions, or actions to URLs) or is there any difference I'm missing? Example: http://github.com/dannyvankooten/PHP-Router vs. http://konstrukt.dk"}
{"_id": "41019", "title": "How do I (tactfully) tell my project manager or lead developer that the project's codebase needs serious work?", "text": "I just joined a (relatively) small development team that's been working on a project for several months, if not a year. As with most developer joining a project, I spent my first couple of days reviewing the project's codebase. The project (a medium- to large-sized ASP.NET WebForms internal line of business application) is, for lack of a more descriptive term, a disaster. There are three immediately noticeable problems with the coding standards:   1. **The standard is very loose.** It describes more of what not to do (don't use Hungarian notation, etc..) than what _to_ do.   2. **The standard isn't always followed.** There are inconsistencies with the code formatting **everywhere**.   3. **The standard doesn't follow Microsoft's style guidelines.** In my opinion, there's no value in deviating from the guidelines that were set forth by the developer of the framework and the largest contributor to the language specification. As for point 3, perhaps it bothers me more because I've taken the time to get my MCPD with a focus on web applications (specifically, ASP.NET). I'm also the only Microsoft Certified Professional on the team. Because of what I learned in all of my schooling, self-teaching, and on-the-job learning (including my preparation for the certification exams) I've also spotted several instances in the project's code where things are simply not done in the best way. I've only been on this team for a week, but I see so many issues with their codebase that I imagine I'll be spending more time fighting with what's already written to do things in \"their way\" than I would if I were working on a project that, for example, followed more widely accepted coding standards, architecture patterns, and best practices. This brings me to my question: **Should I (and if so, how do I) propose to my project manager and team lead that the project needs to be majorly renovated?** I don't want to walk into their office, waving my MCTS and MCPD certificates around, saying that their project's codebase is crap. But I also don't want to have to stay silent and have to write kludgey code atop _their_ kludgey code, because I actually want to write quality software and I want the end product to be stable and easily maintainable."}
{"_id": "134729", "title": "What is the best design pattern for asynchronous message passing in a Chrome extension?", "text": "I have a background script that is responsible for getting and setting data to a `localStorage` database. My content scripts must communicate with the background script to send and receive data. Right now I send a JSON object that contains the command and the data to a function. So if I'm trying to add an object to the database I'll create JSON that has a `command` attribute that is `addObject` and another object that is the data. Once this is completed the background scripts sends a response back stating that it was successful. Another use case of the function would be to ask for data in which case it would send an object back rather than a success/fail. The code gets kind of _hacky_ once I start trying to retrieve the returned object from the background script. It seems like there is probably a simple design problem to follow here that I'm not familiar with. Some people have suggested future/promise design problems but I haven't found a very good example. Content Script               function sendCommand(cmdJson){     chrome.extension.sendRequest(cmdJson, function(response){         //figure out what to do with response     });     }      Background script               if (request.command == \"addObject\"){       db[request.id]= JSON.stringify(request.data);          sendResponse(\"success\");     }     else if(request.command == \"getKeystroke\"){       var keystroke = db[request.id];       sendResponse(keystroke);     }"}
{"_id": "161506", "title": "Why don't inherited methods use child properties? (PHP)", "text": "I'm trying to get the code below to work in child classes. But it keeps failing because it is checking the `basicDbClass` rather than the child class. For those complaining and voting my question down because of my use of static methods and variables, the static getBy method serves the purpose of returning an array of matching class objects. If you have a complaint about that methodology, then rather voting down every question that uses code you don't agree with, look for the next question about that subject and then give them your brilliant answer. If you're really antsy, I'll even do you the favor of asking that question so that you can get this out of your system. The main problem is in `static::$data_table`. When I do the following, I get a fatal error: > access to undeclared static property: basicDbClass::$data_table * * *               $obj_array = childClass::getBy('id',5);               class basicDbClass {              public static function getBy($property,$value) {             if(!property_exists(get_called_class(),$property) ) {                 debug::add('errors',__FILE__,__LINE__,__METHOD__,$property . ' is not a valid property.');                 return false;             }             $obj_array = array();             dbConnection::connect(MAIN_DB);             $sql = sprintf('SELECT `id` FROM `%s` WHERE `%s` = \\'%s\\'',static::$data_table,mysql_real_escape_string($property),mysql_real_escape_string($value));             $result = mysql_query($sql);             if($result === false) {                 return false;             }             while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {                 $obj_array[$row['id']] = new static($row['id']);             }             return $obj_array;         }     }          class childClass extends basicDbClass {       protected static $data_table = 'child_class_table';       protected $name;       protected $id;     }"}
{"_id": "134725", "title": "How do large-scale applications handle GUI creation?", "text": "I'm interested in developing GUI-based Windows applications in C++, but I'm not sure how it's done in professional or large-scale settings. It seems it would take a lot of development time to describe all the elements (e.g., dimensions and such) within code. Presumably it's not all done visually, right? How is it normally done? What methods are used to prevent a lot of time wasted on defining each and every property a UI control might have?"}
{"_id": "179563", "title": "What problems will I face if I remove the concept of interfaces from my code?", "text": "I have been programming for many years but I am still not comfortable with the concept of \"Interfaces\". I try to use interfaces but many times I don't see a mandatory use for it. I think this is probably because the projects weren't so big, or because interfaces are more useful when teamwork is involved. So, making another attempt to understand the importance of interfaces, here is my question: What problems will I face if I remove the concept of interfaces from my code?"}
{"_id": "179561", "title": "Java-style package naming and second-level country domains", "text": "I own a .co.uk domain, and I whenever I've dealt with Java-style package naming, I've gone with `uk.co.domainname`. Once I encountered package that did the following: `co.uk.domainname`. Is one of these right, or is it something that's up to the developer's discretion? Is there some sort of convention that deals with this?"}
{"_id": "129123", "title": "Were the first assemblers written in machine code?", "text": "I am reading the book The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, which contains projects encompassing the build of a computer from boolean gates all the way to high level applications (in that order). The current project I'm working on is writing an assembler using a high level language of my choice, to translate from Hack assembly code to Hack machine code (Hack is the name of the hardware platform built in the previous chapters). Although the hardware has all been built in a simulator, I have tried to pretend that I am really constructing each level using only the tools available to me at that point in the real process. That said, it got me thinking. Using a high level language to write my assembler is certainly convenient, but for the very first assembler ever written (i.e. in history), wouldn't it need to be written in machine code, since that's all that existed at the time? And a correlated question... how about today? If a brand new CPU architecture comes out, with a brand new instruction set, and a brand new assembly syntax, how would the assembler be constructed? I'm assuming you could still use an existing high level language to generate binaries for the assembler program, since if you know the syntax of both the assembly and machine languages for your new platform, then the task of writing the assembler is really just a text analysis task and is not inherently related to that platform (i.e. needing to be written in that platform's machine language)... which is the very reason I am able to \"cheat\" while writing my Hack assembler in 2012, and use some preexisting high level language to help me out."}
{"_id": "129121", "title": "Given some code, how can I learn where it loads resources from if the developer failed to document?", "text": "According to this tutorial OpenNI does not support custom gestures. However, Youtube has videos of people doing just that. Now, clearly this thing loads gestures from somewhere. How can I find out where if they've managed to obfuscate the code successfully?"}
{"_id": "254583", "title": "Entity Component System Coupling", "text": "Lately I've been working on a small personal project which is basically an Entity Component System framework with autoupdated Systems. While I have a pretty good idea on the way the framework should work, because of lack of experience I am having trouble with actually keeping everything decoupled. Some details on the framework: Each entity is defined by it's components. Systems are responsible for the actually modifying the entities by changing their components. In order to improve locality of reference, instead of keeping each component in the appropriate entity, all components are stored in homogenous vectors and each entity keeps a list of indices to each vector. Since each System modifies specific components, it should keep a list only of the entities with the corresponding components. How I dealt with all of this until now was to have a ComponentManager, an EntityManager and a SystemManager. These classes however have very tight coupling with each other. The EntitManager needs to have access to the ComponentManager in order to handle the size of the the index lists and the mapping of each component type to them. It also needs access to actually add the components in the appropriate vector. Another coupling is between the EntityManager and the SystemManager. Whenever an entity is created, it needs to be added to the list of the appropriate Systems. A general event bus would appear to help but I am not sure how to implement it without making it global. How do I improve this design by removing coupling while still maintaining the system's functionality?"}
{"_id": "10103", "title": "How to enter flow experience for SW development?", "text": "What are your strategies to improve the flow experience when doing work?"}
{"_id": "247225", "title": "Where you are both the Authorization Server and Resource Server does it make sense to use OAUTH2 for security?", "text": "I'm curious if there are any use cases where it makes sense to use OAUTH2 where you are both the protected resource and the authorization server. In this case you have the passwords already for example so are protecting your own resource. Seems pretty heavy handed - is this a common practice or would it make sense to look at simpler solutions?"}
{"_id": "247226", "title": "Can sequence alignment algorithms be used for search implementation?", "text": "Hi I want to implement a search on a website which includes imperfect search results. Meaning, if the search term is misspelled or slightly different from a 100% match, the function should still return results which are sorted by similarity in terms of the search keyword. I already have implemented algorithms like Smith-Waterman and Needleman-Wunsch which also can be used for database searching. So my idea was to run those algorithms against every keyword in the database and sort them by the score of each result. Is this a good idea? I am using ASP.NET in C#. Are there any tools or tricks which can accomplish this for me without using my own methods? My biggest concern is performance, after all those algorithms create at least one two dimensional matrix, calculate its values and perform a traceback. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "247223", "title": "Managing debug information of C program for Debugger", "text": "I am not sure if the title is appropriate. I have written a parser for CDB files in C# and ANTLR that creates runtime objects for me such that I can pass it to the TCF Agent which takes care of everything that needs to be taken care of on the side of Eclipse. Such a CDB file consists of Symbol Records, Function Records, Module Records and also Type Records and so on. It describes a C program compiled with SDCC. I already have a good structure for local variables which debug information I can retrieve by resolving an ID that consists of   * **scope_flag** Indicates the scope of the symbol: `L` local, `G`global, `F`File, ...   * **module_base** The address of the modules where the local variable is declared   * **level** and **level** A tupel that points to a node of a tree where each node is a scope `{ .. }`. It doesn't matter if it is a function scope or a control command (`if`, `for`, etc.)   * **index** The index of the symbol inside a node (Therefore it is an ordered list) This works and should be fast enough even for large programs. If Eclipse wants to know anything about a symbol wheter it's the name, type or value it sends me an ID that looks something like this (values in hex):               L@C415.E.1.1      and I can identify the symbol in my parser. The main problem I got now are global symbols like global variables, function names and so on. At the moment I have a `Dictionary<T>` that maps the name of a symbol to its runtime object:               /* Dictionary that holds all global-scoped symbols. */     private Dictionary<String, CDBSymbol> m_nameToGlobalSymbolDict = new Dictionary<String, CDBSymbol>();      Now consider a very large program where a lot of global symbols may occur. Is such a large hash-table the best I can do? At the moment a global symbol ID looks like these:               G@function_name1     G@global_integer1     G@function_name2      The only thing that I might could do would be to add identifiers for functions, variables etc. like               G@C.function_name1     G@E.global_integer1     G@C.function_name2      where `C` means code and `E` internal RAM but that would only allow me to split the hash-table and nothing else. Can anybody suggest me a solution or tell me if this is already okey the way I'm doing it? I hope it is clear what I am asking for. If not please let me know."}
{"_id": "121450", "title": "How should I design a correct OO design in case of a Business-logic wide operation", "text": "**EDIT:** Maybe I should ask the question in a different way. in light of ammoQ's comment, I realize that I've done something like suggested which is kind of a fix and it is fine by me. But I still want to learn for the future, so that if I develop new code for operations similar to this, I can design it correctly from the start. So, if I got the following characteristics:   * The relevant input is composed from data which is connected to   several different business objects   * All the input data is validated and cross-checked   * Attempts are made in order to insert the data to the DB   * All this is just a single operation from Business side prospective, meaning all of the cross checking and validations are just side effects. I can't think of any other way but some sort of Operator/Coordinator kind of Object which activates the entire procedure, but then I fall into a Functional-Decomposition kind of code. so is there a better way in doing this? **Original Question** In our system we have many complex operations which involve many validations and DB activities. One of the main Business functionality could have been designed better. In short, there were no separation of layers, and the code would only work from the scenario in which it was first designed at, and now there were more scenarios (like requests from an API or from other devices) So I had to redesign. I found myself moving all the DB code to objects which acts like Business to DB objects, and I've put all the business logic in an Operator kind of a class, which I've implemented like this: First, I created an object which will hold all the information needed for the operation let's call it InformationObject. Then I created an OperatorObject which will take the InformationObject as a parameter and act on it. The OperatorObject should activate different objects and validate or check for existence or any scenario in which the business logic is compromised and then make the operation according to the information on the InformationObject. So my question is - Is this kind of implementation correct? PS, this Operator only works on a single Business-wise Operation."}
{"_id": "176628", "title": "PHP MVC error handling, view display and user permissions", "text": "I am building a moderation panel from scratch in a MVC approach and a lot of questions cropped up during development. I would like to hear from others how they handle these situations.   1. **Error handling** Should you handle an error inside the class method or should the method return something anyway and you handle the error in controller? What about PDO exceptions, how to handle them? For example, let's say we have a method that returns true if the user exists in a table and false if he does not exist. What do you return in the catch statement? You can't just return false because then the controller assumes that everything is alright while the truth is that something must be seriously broken. Displaying the error from the method completely breaks the whole design. Maybe a page redirect inside the method?   2. **The proper way to show a view** The controller right now looks something like this:              include('view/header.php');     if ($_GET['m']=='something') include('view/something.php');     elseif ($_GET['m']=='somethingelse') include('view/somethingelse.php');     include('view/foter.php');      Each view also checks if it was included from the index page to prevent it being accessed directly. There is a view file for each different document body. Is this way of including different views ok or is there a more proper way?   3. **Managing user rights** Each user has his own rights, what he can see and what he can do. Which part of the system should verify that user has the permission to see the view, controller or view itself? Right now I do permission checks directly in the view because each view can contain several forms that require different permissions and I would need to make a seperate file for each of them if it was put in the controller. I also have to re-check for the permissions everytime a form is submitted because form data can be easily forged. The truth is, all this permission checking and validating the inputs just turns the controller into a huge if/then/else cluster. I feel like 90% of the time I am doing error checks/permissions/validations and very little of the actual logic. Is this normal even for popular frameworks?"}
{"_id": "176621", "title": "Automated Qt testing framework", "text": "Can someone recommend a good robust \"Free\" testing framework for Qt? Our requirements:   1. Should be able to test basic mouse click / mouse move events   2. Should be able to handle non-widget view components   3. Should have \"record\" capability to generate test scripts.   4. Should be automatable for running it daily. We looked at:   1. Squish - this solves all our problems. But it is just too da** expensive.   2. KD Executor - the download page now links to the squish page and says that's what they recommend for testing. Not sure what they mean by that.    3. TDriver - from nokia.qt. Super difficult to install. Very little documentation. Having a hard time to just install. I wonder how much harder it would be to write tests.   4. qtestlib - Could not handle non-widget components. Everything has to be a widget to be tested. No \"record\" feature.  Can someone help with any other alternative?"}
{"_id": "176623", "title": "Saving all hits to a web app", "text": "Are there standard approaches to persisting data for every hit that a web app receives? This would be for analytics purposes (as a better alternative to log mining down the road). Seems like Redis would be a must. Is it advisable to also use a different DB server for that table, or would Redis be enough to mitigate the impact on the main DB? Also, how common is this practice? Seems like a no brainer for businesses who want to better understand their users, but I haven't read much about it."}
{"_id": "176624", "title": "Programming language features that help to catch bugs early", "text": "Do you know any programming language features that help to detect bugs early in the software development process - ideally at compile-time or else as early as possible at run-time? Examples of well-known and effective bug-reducing features are:   * Static typing and generic types: type incompatibility errors are detected by the compiler   * Design by Contract (TM), also called Contract Programming: invalid values are quickly detected at runtime (through preconditions, postconditions and class invariants)   * Unit testing I ask this question in the context of improving an object-oriented programming language (called Obix) which has been designed from the ground up to 'make it easy to quickly write reliable code'. Besides the features mentioned above this language also incorporates other Fail-fast features such as:   * Objects are immutable by default   * Void (null) values are not allowed by default The aim is to add more Fail-fast concepts to the language. If you know other features which help to write less error-prone code then please let us know. Thank you."}
{"_id": "11855", "title": "Why have minimal user/handwritten code and do everything in XAML?", "text": "I feel the MVVM community has become overzealous like the OO programmers in the 90's - it is a misnomer MVVM is synonymous with no code. From my closed StackOverflow question: Many times I come across posts here about someone trying to do the equivalent in XAML instead of code behind. Their only reason being they want to keep their code behind 'clean'. Correct me if I am wrong, but is not the case that: XAML is compiled too - into BAML - then at runtime has to be parsed into code anyway. XAML can potentially have more runtime bugs as they will not be picked up by the compiler at compile time - from incorrect spellings - these bugs are also harder to debug. There already is code behind - like it or not InitializeComponent(); has to be run and the .g.i.cs file it is in contains a bunch of code though it may be hidden. Is it purely psychological? I suspect it is developers who come from a web background and like markup as opposed to code. EDIT: I don't propose code behind instead of XAML - use both - I prefer to do my binding in XAML too - I am just against making every effort to avoid writing code behind esp in a WPF app - it should be a fusion of both to get the most out of it. UPDATE: Its not even Microsoft's idea, every example on MSDN shows how you can do it in both."}
{"_id": "11856", "title": "What's wrong with circular references?", "text": "I was involved in a programming discussion today where I made some statements that basically assumed axiomatically that circular references (between modules, classes, whatever) are generally bad. Once I got through with my pitch, my coworker asked, \"what's wrong with circular references?\" I've got strong feelings on this, but it's hard for me to verbalize concisely and concretely. Any explanation that I may come up with tends to rely on other items that I too consider axioms (\"can't use in isolation, so can't test\", \"unknown/undefined behavior as state mutates in the participating objects\", etc.), but I'd love to hear a concise reason for why circular references are bad that don't take the kinds of leaps of faith that my own brain does, having spent many hours over the years untangling them to understand, fix, and extend various bits of code. **Edit:** I am not asking about homogenous circular references, like those in a doubly-linked list or pointer-to-parent. This question is really asking about \"larger scope\" circular references, like libA calling libB which calls back to libA. Substitute 'module' for 'lib' if you like. Thanks for all of the answers so far!"}
{"_id": "205330", "title": "Using a Directory Service instead of a Database", "text": "I've just started working on an existing application that uses an LDAP directory service as its object store instead of a database. Many of my coworkers have been commenting how an application should never use a directory service instead of a database as its object store. I've got to work on it regardless, and won't be able to change it from LDAP to a database anytime soon. That said, my coworkers comments brings up the question in my mind: _Why is it bad to use a directory provider instead of a database as an object store?_ Could there ever be cases where this would not only acceptable, but even better than using a database?"}
{"_id": "231646", "title": "Visual Design implementation timing in Agile", "text": "We work in Scrum with the caveat that we don't have a potentially shippable product at the end of each Sprint, instead requiring several hardening/stabilization Sprints before release. One of the reasons for this is that our chief UX designer prefers that we'll complete all the visual work (such as colors, fonts, exact layout and controls) at the later stages of the project. On one hand it makes sense because a feature with decent UI based on a wireframe is usually good enough to receive feedback from the users, so working too hard on the final visuals and styles is not necessary for risk reduction. It might even be wasteful if the feature fails at usability tests or if after further user feedback we'll decide to change the visual design for the entire system, including features that were already implemented. On the other hand with this approach we will have a list of features that are not completely developed, and with the final polishes being left out until the final Sprints. What do you think we should do? Should we go with the recommendation of the chief UX designer or should we go for a potentially shippable product? Thank you."}
{"_id": "98786", "title": "Programming as a career option for a computer science graduate vs other fields?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why does a computer science degree matter to a professional programmer?   >  Do I need a degree in Computer Science to get a junior Programming job? There are various kinds of professions like : doctors - various degrees are required for this and you become a doctor or a surgeon after you complete it. engineers - electrical engineer, civil engineer, electronics engineer and many more. now when I see programmers working in companies, they have different degrees like a civil eng. degree, biotechnology degree, Mcom degree, mechanical eng degree.... and many more. It seems rather pointless that those people got those degrees but anyway but does your degree matters when you are a good programming. say somebody is good at C++ and is a civil engineer .... **what about stackoverflow or any other companies, would you consider such people for an interview or you would strictly mention that computer science is a must for applying.**"}
{"_id": "59092", "title": "Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Performance", "text": "I've noticed since installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 that I'm having huge performance issues. It will randomly freeze up on me quite a bit. I had no performance issues with Visual Studio 2010 before the upgrade. The only add-on I have running is ReSharper. I'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing performance issues? If so have you found a way to fix them?"}
{"_id": "241395", "title": "Is ok to leave untranslated advanced log?", "text": "I just had a little fight with my boss over this topic (well, the boss always wins so I will do what he wants to be done) but I'd like to have the opinion of others about this: We are making a complex application that will be used by expert users (like the one who manages the company backups). I made an **Advanced log** , which contains 3 types of log:   * messages   * alerts   * errors Every error is translated and handled by the GUI, so the user will always know why something went wrong. My concern is about the **messages** : The main goal of those messages is to have a detailed idea of what is happening and help the expert user to solve problems by himself without calling for assistance. To do this I log a message (that will remain in RAM only, with a max message count) for every little kind of stuff, like               Connecting to server     Connection successfully     Request file list from path XXX     Starting receiving file list     File list successfully received      This can help to know **when** a problem occurred and to determine who is guilty for it. The main problem is: Our program is translated in more than 10 languages! Translating that HUGE amount of little messages will be expensive and it will be used only by some users. You can access to this messages list using an **Advanced console panel** , so it's clear it's for **Advanced** users. My boss wants those messages to be translated, but he doesn't want to spend a lot in translation, so he asked me to limit myself in using those messages. If I limit myself this message log can become useless, but if we don't translate it our program loses its \" _friendly, translated approach_ \". What is the best thing to do? Pay more and translate everything? Limit message usage? Try to convince my boss that Advanced Users **SHOULD** know English?"}
{"_id": "59096", "title": "Why (not) logic programming?", "text": "I have not yet heard about any uses of a logical programming language (such as Prolog) in the software industry, nor do I know of usage of it in hobby programming or open source projects. It (Prolog) is used as an academic language to some extent, though (why is it used in academia?). This makes me wonder, why should you use logic programming, and why not? Why is it not getting any detectable industry usage?"}
{"_id": "125205", "title": "Using IIS as a server for non-http server", "text": "I am developing a system that is designed for multiple forms of interfacing. There is a website, but that is connected through an SDK, as well as an HTTP query interface to access data. But to improve speed and quality, I was thinking of creating a system inside IIS that get any message sent to the server, any response, but still let IIS manage SSL and normal socket connections. Is there a way to host my project in IIS without ASP or any other kind of script with extra behavioral events?"}
{"_id": "200129", "title": "Uses of WCF Binding", "text": "From MSDN, we have the following definition of WCF Binding > Bindings specify how a WCF service endpoint communicates with other > endpoints. > > At its most basic, a binding must specify the transport (for example, HTTP > or TCP) to use. You can also set other characteristics, such as security and > transaction support, through bindings. I am looking for practical uses of WCF. The scnearions in which people tweak the abilities of WCF Binding. Some of them are listed below.   1. **Exporting Metadata** : - Custom policy assertions are exported by implementing the IPolicyExportExtension interface on a BindingElement class. What are the other practical uses of Binding that you usually use?"}
{"_id": "139866", "title": "Making LISPs manageable", "text": "I am trying to learn Clojure, which seems a good candidate for a successful LISP. I have no problem with the concepts, but now I would like to start actually doing something. Here it comes my problem. As I mainly do web stuff, I have been looking into existing frameworks, database libraries, templating libraries and so on. Often these libraries are heavily based on macros. Now, I like very much the possibility of writing macros to get a simpler syntax than it would be possible otherwise. **But** it definitely adds another layer of complexity. Let me take an example of a migration in Lobos from a blog post:               (defmigration add-posts-table       (up [] (create clogdb                (table :posts (integer :id :primary-key )                  (varchar :title 250)                  (text :content )                  (boolean :status (default false))                  (timestamp :created (default (now)))                  (timestamp :published )                  (integer :author [:refer :authors :id] :not-null))))       (down [] (drop (table :posts ))))      It is very readable indeed. But it is hard to recognize what the structure is. What does the function `timestamp` return? Or is it a macro? Having all this freedom of writing my own syntax means that I have to learn other people's syntax for every library I want to use. > How can I learn to use these components effectively? Am I supposed to learn > each small DSL as a black box?"}
{"_id": "84233", "title": "Active Record library with support for both SQL and NoSQL?", "text": "I'm looking for a PHP Active Record library that supports both SQL and NoSQL drivers (mongodb in particular). It doesn't matter if it actually has the NoSQL driver, I can write it myself, as long as the library itself supports it. In particular I'd need one that supports writing custom AR methods in the driver, in case they are methods that simply cannot be transferred to other drivers. The reason I want this is because I'd like to be able to talk to my databases the same no matter the driver, this will allow me to fairly easily transfer my data between different databases for performance testing. I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask for this, if not I apologize and would love to know what stackexchange site would be appropriate. For the record, I HAVE googled it, and all I can come up with is AR libraries for SQL databases, I haven't found a single one that combines SQL and NoSQL. Thank you."}
{"_id": "201139", "title": "Why would anyone invest time in Microsoft \"Roslyn\"?", "text": "I have just been reading through some of the white papers & examples from Microsoft \"Roslyn\" and the concept seems very interesting. From what I can tell, it opens up the black box that is the compiler and provides an interface that we can use to get information and metrics about code written in Visual Studio. Roslyn also appears to have the ability to \"script\" code and compile/execute it on the fly (similar to the CodeDom) but I have only come across limited uses for that type of functionality in my experience. Whilst the code analysis & metrics element is an interesting space...it is something that has been around for a very long time and there are numerous providers that have already invested a lot of money into code analysis & refactoring tools (e.g. ReSharper, CodeRush, nCover, etc) and they do a pretty good job of it! Why would any company go out of their way to implement something that can be provided at a fraction of a cost through buying a license for one of the existing tools? Maybe I have missed some key functionality of the Roslyn project that places it outside the domain of the mentioned tools..."}
{"_id": "252079", "title": "How modularized should my interfaces be?", "text": "I stumbled upon a specific instance where it seems that modularity and simplicity are at conflict with each other. Usually that's not the case, so I was really unsure how to resolve it. Suppose I would like to make a `queue` interface:               template<typename T>     class queue {      public:       virtual ~queue() {}       virtual void enqueue(const T& t) = 0;       virtual void enqueue(T&& t) = 0;       virtual T dequeue() = 0;     };      As I was making a couple implementations (some of which are atomic), I noticed that I could really save time by having an \"abstract class\" which called on `empty()` or `full()` methods to help implement condition variables. That way any synchronized class I implement could also just extend that \"abstract class.\" The abstract class, in turn, implemented an extended interface:               template<typename T>     class bounded_queue : public queue<T> {     public:       virtual ~bounded_queue() {}       virtual bool full() = 0;       virtual bool empty() = 0;     };      But wouldn't it be simpler if I just shoved those methods into `queue`, perhaps returning `false` by default? The answer to this question is not immediately obvious to me. If it is, then consider the other end of the spectrum. I'm not even sure the above design (in the link) works as expected! How do I decide on something simple, yet modular?"}
{"_id": "156854", "title": "Were method cascades ever considered for C#?", "text": "Smalltalk supports a syntax feature called \"message cascades\". Cascades are being adopted by the Dart Programming language. As far as I know, C# doesn't support this. Were they ever considered during the design of the language? Is it conceivable that they could appear in a future version of the language?"}
{"_id": "252070", "title": "Domain model for a notification system", "text": "I'm trying to build a modular notification service in a ASP.NET MVC web application. The application generates notifications and the service is responsible for delivering the notifications to the right users. When creating a domain model for the notification service, inheritance naturally comes to mind. ![Notification domain model](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jXxy3.png) One of the requirements for the notification service is that users can be subscribed to particular notification types. For example, **User** can subscribe to receive **NewMessage** notifications but not **ProfileNotification** notifications. How would one represent a relationship where a User has a Subscription to a notification type, but the notification type is represented through inheritance. Of course, this could be possible via reflection, but I was wondering if there was a domain model that came naturally from my requirements since I couldn't think of one. ![User has subscription](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XqX4g.png) I'm using ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework Code First, but I think the question is general enough for any object oriented programming language."}
{"_id": "156856", "title": "How should I implement permissions?", "text": "I am using cppcms to create a blog like application and I'm trying to write a permission system, although I'm confused as to what would be the most efficient and manageable method. At the moment, I have a table with permission id, user id, permission type (int) and permission value (an optional parameter, of sorts). For each separate permission, a row must be added. Which method would you recommend? If you want any clarification or extra information, feel free to ask."}
{"_id": "156850", "title": "Does this BSD-like license achieve what I want it to?", "text": "I was wondering if this license is:   * self defeating   * just a clone of an existing, better established license   * practical   * any more \"corporate-friendly\" than the GPL   * too vague/open ended and finally, if there is a better license that achieves a similar effect? I wanted a license that would (in simple terms)   * be as flexible/simple as the \"Simplified BSD\" license (which is essentially the MIT license)   * allow anyone to make modifications as long as I'm attributed   * require that I get a notification that such a derived work exists   * require that I have access to the source code and be given license to use the code   * not oblige the author of the derivative work to have to release the source code to the general public   * not oblige the author of the derivative work to license the derivative work under a specific license Here is the proposed license, which is just the simplified BSD with a couple of additional clauses (all of which are **bolded** ). > Copyright (c) (year), (author) (email) > > All rights reserved. > > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > >   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. >   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright > notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the > documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. ** >   3. The copyright holder(s) must be notified of any redistributions of > source code. >   4. The copyright holder(s) must be notified of any redistributions in > binary form >   5. The copyright holder(s) must be granted access to the source code > and/or the binary form of any redistribution upon the copyright holder's > request.** > > > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" > AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE > IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE > ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE > LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR > CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF > SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS > INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN > CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) > ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE > POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE."}
{"_id": "154987", "title": "Why would he say \"We don't want to support MVC3\"?", "text": "I work in a small shop at a fairly big company doing intranet web applications. By small, I mean there is 1 other guy in my position... and he graduated with me last December. (we aren't the only IT, but the only ones in our field) We are switching out an old COBOL system and converting it's only used application suite to a Web App. My company has contracted to a Web Application firm to help with this process who has chosen ASP.NET MVC, during one of the important meetings I asked if they will be using MVC2 or MVC3. Their lead developer said: > \"MVC2, we don't want to support MVC3. haha\" My question is, why is this? This was several months ago and I've been doing extensive and self training gearing up for the MVC switch. From everything I am understanding, MVC3 is just like MVC2 if you don't use Razor and it fixes a number of smaller bugs that MVC2 had. So in my eyes, I can't see any reason to **NOT** use MCV3. There has to be something I'm missing. Since I don't really have any mentors to turn to in the real world, I'm coming here. What problems are there with MVC3 that might possibly lead him to say this that I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "5415", "title": "How to handle demanding clients?", "text": "Frequently, I have been finding myself overloaded with contracts. Most of the time, I find myself juggling with at least 2 projects, in addition to the numerous websites I have to upkeep and perform maintenance on. Unfortunately, many of my clients will expect updates constantly - are constantly adding more to the to-do list than any one programmer could keep up with, and freaking out because the deadline was already overdue when I started on a project. I constantly run into the fact most clients do not really understand the amount of work that can be involved behind the scenes, especially if it is non-visually-impacting. Does anyone know of good ways to handle these situations I might be overlooking?"}
{"_id": "126159", "title": "Insert grammatical mistakes in a correct sentence", "text": "I'd like to insert grammatical mistakes (not typo) in a correct sentence, to make a small game. For instance:               My name is John     -> My name are John     He leaves the room     -> He leave the room      I only found some tools to detect languages but nothing about verb/noun/adjective detection/transformation. Is there a tool that could help me ?"}
{"_id": "28035", "title": "How do you maintain productivity outside of work? (Programming Schedule)", "text": "I enjoy programming, but programming at work is just that, work. I would like to further develop my own personal interests in programming. Throughout the week I imagine myself completing a small project on the weekend or finishing up a programming related book. However, in reality I often fall short of my expectations. I often will get just one or two chapters of reading done and even less coding. In reality I will spend time surfing the net, watching television, or visiting friends and slacking off... because it is the weekend. But when Sunday evening rolls around I often reflect on my weekend and I am sorely disappointed with my use of time. So my question is how do you maintain your productivity outside of work? I am sure some programmers could care less about programming on their free time. Although, I think the majority of programmers, especially on stackexchange, are passionate about programming.   1. Should I spend the weekend programming, or will I burn out and resent programming if I dedicate that much time to it?    2. How should I go about programming on my free time? Should I set a schedule? How much time should I dedicate to it? **Most importantly how do I follow that schedule?** Its only human nature to procrastinate.  I know there is a lot of questions here. Feel free to answer the ones that relate to how you remained focused outside of work. I am passionate about programming but after 40 hours of programming it can be difficult to maintain that enthusiasm."}
{"_id": "126157", "title": "How do delegates fit into ASP.NET?", "text": "A developer told me they used delegates to bind most of their events in ASP.NET. Until then, I did not even know it was possible to use delegates in ASP.NET in a meaningful way. My understanding is that ASP.NET/MVC3 works via HTTP verbs, not events/delegates. Is it even possible to have an event fire from the client to the server? This strikes me as an invalid form of IPC."}
{"_id": "216999", "title": "What are the tradeoffs involved in referencing Context in a library?", "text": "`Context` is one of the core classes of Android, and many functions it contains are useful in Android library projects, particularly accessing configuration. What are the trade offs involved in accessing the `Context` in a library, either by injection or by subclassing `Application` in the library, and subclassing that in the application. Does this make the application brittle or introduce inappropriate coupling?"}
{"_id": "216998", "title": "Updating password hashing without forcing a new password for existing users", "text": "You maintain an existing application with an established user base. Over time it is decided that the current password hashing technique is outdated and needs to be upgraded. Furthermore, for UX reasons, you don't want existing users to be forced to update their password. The whole password hashing update needs to happen behind the screen. Assume a 'simplistic' database model for users that contains:   1. ID   2. Email   3. Password How does one go around to solving such a requirement? * * * My current thoughts are:   * create a new hashing method in the appropriate class   * update the user table in the database to hold an additional password field   * Once a user successfully logs in using the outdated password hash, fill the second password field with the updated hash This leaves me with the problem that I cannot reasonable differentiate between users who have and those who have not updated their password hash and thus will be forced to check both. This seems horribly flawed. Furthermore this basically means that the old hashing technique could be forced to stay indefinitely until every single user has updated their password. Only at that moment could I start removing the old hashing check and remove the superfluous database field. I'm mainly looking for some design tips here, since my current 'solution' is dirty, incomplete and what not, but if actual code is required to describe a possible solution, feel free to use any language."}
{"_id": "216997", "title": "Authenticate native mobile app using a REST API", "text": "I'm starting a new project soon, which is targeting mobile application for all major mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Windows). It will be a client-server architecture. The app is both informational and transactional. For the transactional part, they're required to have an account and log in before a transaction can be made. I'm new to mobile development, so I don't know how the authentication part is done on these platforms. The clients will communicate with the server through a REST API. Will be using HTTPS ofcourse. I haven't yet decided if I want the user to log in when they open the app, or only when they perform a transaction. I got the following questions: 1) Like the Facebook application, you only enter your credentials when you open the application for the first time. After that, you're automatically signed in every time you open the app. How does one accomplish this? Just simply by encrypting and storing the credentials on the device and sending them every time the app starts? 2) Do I need to authenticate the user for each (transactional) request made to the REST API or use a token based approach? Please feel free to suggest other ways for authentication. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "129874", "title": "Code Generation and IDE vs writing per Hand", "text": "I have been programming for about a year now. Pretty soon I realized that I need a great Tool for writing code and learned Vim. I was happy with C and Ruby and never liked the idea of an IDE. Which was encouraged by a lot of reading about programming.[1] However I started with (my first) Java Project. In a CS Course we were using Visual Paradigm and encouraged to let the program generate our code from a class diagram. I did not like that Idea because:   1. Our class diagram was buggy.    2. Students more experienced in Java said they would write the code per hand.    3. I had never written any Java before and would not understand a lot of the generated code.  So I took a different approach and wrote all methods per Hand (getter and Setter included). My Team-members have written their parts (partly generated by VP) in an IDE and I was \"forced\" to use it too. I realized they had generated equal amounts of code in a shorter amount of time and did not spend a lot of time setting their CLASSPATH and writing scripts for compiling that son of a b***. Additionally we had to implement a GUI and I dont see how we could have done that in a sane matter in Vim. So here is my Problem: I fell in love with Vim and the Unix way. But it looks like for getting this job done (on time) the IDE/Code generation approach is superior. Do you have equal experiences? Is Java by the nature of the language just more suitable for an IDE/Code generated approach? Or am I lacking the knowledge to produce equal amounts of code \"per Hand\"? [1] http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/eclipse.html"}
{"_id": "160757", "title": "What do you call an interface with no defining methods used as property setters", "text": "In ASP.NET and C# I've ran across this before. Your class needs to implement interface `ISomething` in order for something in the super class to supply something to you. I can't remember the details, as I ran across it quite a while ago, but it had something to do with session variables in ASP.NET C#. It was part of the .NET framework. At first, I thought this practice was rather silly and could be more gracefully implemented. However now I'm finding myself implementing this in the architecture of a home-grown project I'm working on. Using reflection, I detect the toggle a behavior on or off based on if it implements ISomething. Just an empty interface with no methods at all. What is the technical name for this and is it good practice?"}
{"_id": "160754", "title": "How do you deal with the costs of too-rapid change?", "text": "Like most modern developers I value Agile principals like customer collaboration and responding to change, but what happens when a product-owner (or whoever determines requirements and priorities) changes requirements and priorities too often? Like several times a day? I recently inherited a smallish code base that was buggy, incomplete, and couldn't even handle the simplest scenario it was supposed to. I can deal with the technical issues but I get several emails, texts, or phone calls a day saying \"OMG you MUST work on this RIGHT NOW! TOP PRIORITY! This is a MUST!!!oneone\" (that's only a slight exaggeration) What makes it even worse is that most of the things are minor details that aren't even relevant to what the software is actually supposed to do and would take days to implement anyway. I've tried explaining that there's only so much time and that we should focus on the most important things first, but something seems to get lost in translation because the same thing happens a day or two later. Is there some sort of Product-Owner-Handler role, in-depth study, metaphor, or quote that can help me reduce the amount of wasted effort or at least explain the costs of this chaotic behavior?"}
{"_id": "81620", "title": "Does Rhino have a future?", "text": "I'm looking to add serious scripting into my Java app and JavaScript would be a great language choice. My concern though is the Rhino project and its future. While Groovy/Jruby etc have seen constant updates, and engines like V8 and SpiderMonkey make continuous and significant performance boosts; Rhino languishes with its last release in March '09. I've seen some work on hacking Rhino:   * Great Thundering Rhinos! presentation from Oracle   * Explore and implement JDK7 InvokeDynamic Google Summer of Code project But nothing solid about actually merging this code into the project and getting an active committer community around it. What is the Rhino road map? For example, is there any plan to bring `invokedynamic` to the Rhino world?"}
{"_id": "216270", "title": "How to know how much detailed requirements should be?", "text": "This doubt has to do with the requirements gathering phase of each iteration in one project based on agile methodologies. It arose because of the following situation: suppose I meet with my customer to gather the requirements and he says something like: \"I need to be able to add, edit, remove and see details of my employees\". That's fine, but how should we register this requirement? Should we simply write something like \"the system must allow the user to manage employees\", or should we be more specific writing for points   1. The system must allow the user to add employees;   2. The system must allow the user to see details of employees;   3. The system must allow the user to edit employees;   4. The system must allow the user to delete employees; Of course, this is just an example of a situation I was in doubt. The main point here is: how to know how much detailed I must be, and how to know what I should register? Are there strategies for dealing with these things? Thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "114352", "title": "How do you avoid working on the wrong branch?", "text": "Being careful is usually enough to prevent problems, but sometimes I need to double check the branch I'm working on ( _e.g._ \"hmm... I'm in the `dev` branch, right?\") by checking the source control path of a random file. In looking for an easier way, I thought of naming the solution files accordingly ( _e.g._ `MySolution_Dev.sln`) but with different file names in each branch, I can't merge the solution files. It's not that big of a deal but are there any methods or \"small tricks\" you use to quickly ensure you're in the correct branch? I'm using Visual Studio 2010 with TFS 2008."}
{"_id": "114357", "title": "Storing page-specific javascript on an AJAX driven site?", "text": "I have a general question about the placement of javascript code in a AJAX- driven web application. At a previous job, we tended to throw everything in one monolithic file. When maintaining that file became too difficult, we split it up into multiple smaller files and \"glued\" them back together with a php \"loader\" (pretty much just a bunch of include statements) Since all of my pages are dynamically loaded through AJAX, I cannot simply have different files called separately per page. The obvious disadvantage to this method is that all of your javascript is loaded by the end user, even if it is not required on first page load. (Which compounds the problem, the more pages you have) To get around this, I started putting page-specific javascript on the template page itself, in a `<script>` tag at the bottom, which works as intended. Only the javascript I want is loaded. However, I am unsure of whether this practice is taboo, or if there are better strategies for loading my javascript. I get the feeling that mixing my template with my scripted code is a recipe for disaster.."}
{"_id": "207332", "title": "Does cohesion really reduce coupling?", "text": "' _Cohesive classes reduce coupling_ ' So, if cohesive classes or connected classes reduce coupling (union), which piece of the puzzle is missing me? BTW, I took this sentence from an article about identifying classes before any developmemt, which I'm trying to figure out the whole sense of why, when, how to use 'that' particular classes, polymorphism, abstraction, etc. For sure I'm in the beginner stage about OOD. I have read some books but I don't understand the relationship between cohesion and coupling."}
{"_id": "254899", "title": "Pros and cons of using generic delegates as nested functions", "text": "I've written code like this before:               private void Strings_CollectionChanged(object sender, NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)     {         var onAdd = new Action(() =>         {             if(e.NewItems != null)             {                 foreach(string item in e.NewItems)                 {                     // Do something                 }             }         });         var onRemove = new Action(() =>         {             if(e.OldItems != null)             {                 foreach(string item in e.OldItems)                 {                     // Do something                 }             }         });              switch(e.Action)         {             case NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Add:                 onAdd(); break;             case NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Remove:                 onRemove(); break;             case NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Replace:                 onRemove(); onAdd(); break;         }     }      I find this style useful when there is some small reusable function that only applies within the scope of another function. However during code review, I received feedback that this was unnecessarily complicated and hard to read. Personally I find this style somewhat elegant, but I can see the argument for readability. What other benefits and drawbacks are there to this style?"}
{"_id": "207339", "title": "Programming structural question, controlling lots of states and specific transitions between states case by case", "text": "This is a theory question for me just to try and write better code. I am pretty new so hopefully I am using terms like state in the correct way. How I should be thinking about this problem? I am coding something that sort of works but whatever I do it seems complicated, hard to understand and hard to modify. I'm playing a video clip with an id, I also want it to be able to dynamically switch to a thumbnail view of that video clip. I want to be able to set this video blank also and shut down any connections that are not needed, I'm trying to do all of this efficiently - not reconnecting to the server when I don't need to etc. **so I have-** connected -> on/off video id -> a string mode -> streaming video/thumbnail view/disabled **Hopefully you will see my dilemma with some examples-** _Case 1.The user starts from scratch and wants to view a thumbnail of video \"a\"_ -connect to server for \"a\", send request for thumbnail, turn thumbnail object on. _Case 2.The user starts is viewing a thumbnail of video \"a\" and wants to start watching a stream of video \"b\"_ -compare strings \"a\" and \"b\"- see they are different. hide thumbnail object and clear its buffer. Disconnect from server for \"a\" and connect to \"b\" server. start streaming video, turn video object on, request thumbnail from the server so its loaded in memory in case the user wants to switch to thumbnail mode. _Case 3.the user is watching a stream of \"b\" and wants to view a thumbnail of \"b\"_ -compare strings \"b\" and \"b\"- see they are the same and stay connected to the server, hide video object and stop streaming, turn thumbnail object on, send another request to server for the thumbnail... All these options are doing my head in, I want it to choose the most efficient way to get from one state to another but all the different options are confusing me. I guess Im looking for help about whats the best way to structure this, because what Im doing at the moment seems very confusing, i end up with huge tree of nested ifs of lots of specific cases and then patching up where it goes wrong.               if (connected but used to be disconnected) {          if (mode streaming but used to be thumbnail) {...         if (mode streaming but used to be streaming) {...          if (connected but used to be connected) {....          if (disconnected but used to be connected) {....          if (disconnected but used to be disconnected) {...      it goes on forever.."}
{"_id": "126135", "title": "Should I keep a technology I haven't used in a long time on my CV?", "text": "I worked with OfBiz and Opentaps for a couple months in 2005, and became very comfortable in coding with these back then. Now a few weeks back, I had a look to Opentaps code, and I don't think I understand or remember anything of the current codebase. Is it time to remove it from my CV as a technology I am familiar with?"}
{"_id": "111650", "title": "Using a SDK with crazy code", "text": "I recently had to work with an SDK that had a lot of crazy parts*. Not using the SDK was not an option as it had to talk to some third party software. What is the best way to deal with the crazy code? I genrally used static methods to convert between sensible data types to the format they required (ie bool to yesNo). That method did however lead to lots of calls to very unintuative static methods (which one of the three dateToString methods should be called where?) Would a better approach be to store almost everything as a string in the database? Or possibly convert each datatype inline so its clear (although with repeated code). Possibly there is some more elegent solution I hadent thought of? * _Certain methods required an enum called yesNo which contained \"Yes\",\"y\",\"No\" and \"n\". There were also multiple diffrent formats of string they wanted to represent datetimes used inconsistently. There were also other smaller bits of crazy code._"}
{"_id": "111657", "title": "Is there really a relationship between number of people assigned to a project and the number of defects?", "text": "Here is a quote from a training manual at work regarding SLIM and software estimation: > Notice also, there is a correlation between Effort and Defects. This means, > the more people there are assigned to a project of a given size, the more > Defects there will be. Effort is person-time (person-years, person-months) for the project. Defects is the count of defects detected at any point in the lifecycle. Size is defined as the use cases, function points, or SLOC that compose the project. This seems counterintuitive, assuming a good process and capable engineers. For example, having more people means more eyes on all of the artifacts (requirements specs, designs, code, tests). Aside from having more eyes, my intuition suggests that there is little relationship between effort and defects on a project that utilizes appropriate quality techniques. I haven't been able to find any documents, aside from those about the Putnam Model (which is used by SLIM), that suggest any kind of known relationship between defects and effort or defects and number of people on a project. Is this a known relationship, and is the assertion that \"more people = more defects\" valid?"}
{"_id": "111655", "title": "Using Jython and Tomcat in bundle - should we even try to?", "text": "Have you ever used Jython in bundle with tomcat in any serious, production- ready service? What pros and cons can you name? Is it worth trying if all guys in team has no problems with coding on Java, but know python as well?"}
{"_id": "95839", "title": "WCF service which takes XML file", "text": "I have a client requirement where I need to expose a web service which takes XML. Client will consume my web service and send XML . This web service need to be async. Could you please suggest any good proven approach ? with advantage / disadvantage"}
{"_id": "95836", "title": "Is Assembly still relevant?", "text": "Are there major differences between assembly language and higher level languages when it comes to coding and/or managing projects? Obviously it takes more statements in assembly language to carry out a particular operation than in most other languages, but are there differences that affect how a project needs to (or should) be run based on targeting assembly language (specifically x86/x64 assembly language)? To the extent that there are differences between assembly language and other languages, it seems reasonable to guess that at least some of these are advantages for the other languages. Can anybody point out specific disadvantages of assembly language, and ways to mitigate those disadvantages? One specific example would be staff availability. Has anybody had trouble finding experienced assembly language programmers, and if so, what steps can be taken to mitigate this problem?"}
{"_id": "89500", "title": "What is a Real-time system", "text": "What is the most appropriate definition of a Real time system? Is online railway reservation a real time system ? Is Aircraft control system a real time system? Is Process control system a real time system?"}
{"_id": "89506", "title": "One Developer, Two Machines", "text": "I currently use a Mac Pro for Xcode development, but am considering buying a MacBook Air when the newer models are released. How should I collaborate with _myself_ when using both machines on the same project? Should I use Git, or should I just acess the Mac Pro as a networked drive from the MacBook, or something else?"}
{"_id": "195889", "title": "What are some database designs that support lineage tracing?", "text": "# Environment   * PostgreSQL 9.1   * Java # Problem I'll try to illustrate the problem here as simply as possible: I'm trying to record the following relationship: Node 1 => Node 2 => Node 3 Where Node 1 is the parent of Node 2, and Node 2 is the parent of Node 3. In the database table, the initial design is tracking this data in a linked list fashion. However, I am finding this extremely inefficient because each time I want to trace the lineage of say Node 1, I'd have to retrieve Node 2, then with Node 2, I'd retrieve Node 3. Since I would be displaying the lineage of Node 1 to the user, I'd have to make 3 separate calls to the database to display this information. I'd also like to backtrack, but for the sake of simplicity I left that part out. # Alternatives Some alternatives I have considered, but I can't go to at this time are Neo4j and other solutions like it. Unfortunately, at this time, I have to stay in Postgresql. # Question Is there a design pattern such that I can retrieve all this information at once? If there is, how would you implement with the example above? # UPDATE With @MichaelT's comment, and finding Common Table Expressions, I've been lead to this link, which seems to provide more information on this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/53108/is-it-possible-to-make-a-recursive- sql-query"}
{"_id": "195885", "title": "Should I store UK postcode data in my database", "text": "I am building a website for a UK audience that will utilise location data to offer search results based on a desired location or home address. I have a large list of UK postcodes and geographic locations that I could parse and input to my DB to use in searches I am wondering if this is the right thing to do? Would it be better to just rely on an API such as google geolocation?"}
{"_id": "51343", "title": "What are the main programmers web sites in other countries?", "text": "Looking at the demographics of sites like this one, there seems to be a very heavy US weighing of users. I know there have been discussions about using English as a programmer, but the are some large countries with large programmer bases that must be using localized sites. Countries like Brazil and China, in particular, what sites do programmers go for discussions? Do a lot of the threads link up to English speaking sites like these? In France they obviously prefer their own language, what do the equivalent sites look like? I don't want to turn this into an English language speaking discussion like this one, it's more a general trans-cultural programming curiosity."}
{"_id": "127158", "title": "Extensibility in multi-tenant systems?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you manage extensibility in your multi-tenant systems? I asked this on StackOverflow, but I thought it might be more appropriate for Programmers. * * * I've got a few big web based multi-tenant products now, and very soon I can see that there will be a lot of customizations that are tenant specific. An extra field here or there, maybe an extra page or some extra logic in the middle of a workflow - things like that. Some of these customizations can be rolled into the core product, and that's great. Some of them are highly specific and would get in everyone else's way. I have a few ideas in mind for managing this, but none of them seem to scale well. The obvious solution is to introduce a ton of client-level settings, allowing various 'features' to be enabled on per-client basis. The downside with that, of course, is massive complexity and clutter. You could truly introduce a huge number of settings, and over time various types of logic (presentation, business) could get way out of hand. Then there's the problem of client-specific fields, which begs for something cleaner than just adding a bunch of nullable fields to the existing tables. So what are people doing to manage this? Force.com seems to be the master of extensibility; obviously they've created a platform from the ground up that is super extensible, you add on to almost anything with their web-based UI. FogBugz did something similiar where they created a robust plugin model that, come to think of it, might have actually been inspired by Force. I know they spent a lot of time and money on it and if I'm not mistaken the intention was to actually use it internally for future product development. Sounds like the kind of thing I could be tempted to build but probably shouldn't. :) Is a massive investment in pluggable architecture the only way to go? How are you managing these problems, and what kind of results are you seeing?"}
{"_id": "127205", "title": "Software to organize and maintain project documentation, specification?", "text": "I'm looking for software to organize and maintain projects internal documentation, specification, requirements, etc. Currently we store all documentation as lots of MS Word DOC files in a source control repository, which gives us version control, and that's nice. But you can't search this information, create links between them, categorize, collaborate. _Requirements, preferences:_   * Zero install on client side (WEB based).   * Document version control.   * Document annotations.   * Document linking.   * Full search (all documentation).   * MS Word (*.doc) import\\export.   * WYSIWYG text editor. _Systems I have discovered and tried so far:_   * MediaWiki   * XWiki   * Confluence"}
{"_id": "151857", "title": "Why most use Cygwin and not Uwin?", "text": "Most academic researchers I know target just *nix, and rely on Cygwin to make their applications available on Windows. I have tried many of these projects and always found them too unstable for serious use when running on Cygwin. Uwin looks like a promising alternative to Cygwin. I haven't tried it yet, but I found several comments that it is faster and more stable. However, I haven't seen any use of Uwin to support running *nix apps on Windows. What are the social and/or technical reasons behind Uwin's lack of popularity?"}
{"_id": "25305", "title": "Choosing a diff program for Mercurial", "text": "I decided to try to contribute Firefox development, and they use Mercurial for source control. In the documentation about using Mercurial it was advised to choose a diff program and to do it before you start coding. They list a bunch of options, one of which appears to be the standard Unix/Linux diff program, which I'm somewhat familiar with via basic use. The thing is, I hadn't realized that the diff program can even be an issue and I have a feeling that I won't know how to pick one until I pick the wrong one and get screwed by it somehow. So to skip this unnecessary hurdle, I'd like to ask what should I look at when choosing a diff program, and in what cases is the choice important (and in what way)?"}
{"_id": "110291", "title": "How to help team members value each others input?", "text": "The sad reality is that team members in different roles see each other with different eyes. The above link presents a very true picture of how we regard each other in the SDLC. However the truth is that as a team, we need each other to perform in order to succed. And by working together rather than against each other, your performance as a team increase exponentially. As a team member (leader, head, coworker) who understands this, how should one manage to create an atmosphere of respect for each other's role in the process? For example, how do you get developers to understand the importance of QA testers and the value of designers? How do you get designers to value developer input? etc..."}
{"_id": "150181", "title": "How do the algorithms to solve problems encountered in interviews translate into real world solutions?", "text": "I have recently finished an undergraduate course in computer science and I am looking for a job. During the search I encountered several interesting (and tough) problems that needed clever algorithms to solve. I also use google code jam as a practice set. I cannot understand how those solutions translate in solving real world problems. Many problems appear (to me) not only contrived and fantastical but also highly specific to be a general purpose solution (although it isn't impossible to extend them using ingenuity). Are these problems there only to test the problem solving skills or are these some aspect of real world problem camouflaged?"}
{"_id": "82301", "title": "Wise to list proprietary language experience on resume?", "text": "My entry-level position suddenly sprung a proprietary scripting language into everyone's lap. Think of it as PASCAL/PERL. Anyway, since this is an entry-level job, I'll definitely be moving on some time in the future. Would it be wise to list that I have experience using proprietary languages on my resume? I figure it would imply that I am quick to learn new style and syntax on the fly, but that seems like an unnecessary perk to a career that involves years of study."}
{"_id": "150183", "title": "Checking for emptiness of collections with (in)equalities - what's the best practice?", "text": "For a long time now I've been in the habit of checking whether a collection (array, dictionary, whatever) is non-empty with a nonequality. Like this:               if ( MyArray.Length < 1 )     {         // Do something if the array is empty     }      Sometimes I do this for strings too, and other kinds of collections. In practice, this should be the same as               if ( MyArray.Length == 0 )     {         // Do something if the array is empty     }      Because the length of collection should never be less than 0 anyway, right? So I always thought - what the heck, I'll include the inequality and be double- safe even in the case the sky falls down. But today a though struck me that the second version might be more readable than the first. It expresses more clearly that the case I'm looking for is the empty array, which is not immediately apparent from the first version. So maybe I should use that instead? Since, you know, if a collection length is less than 0, then I'm screwed anyway. Which version do you use, and which would you suggest others to use (and why)? **Clarification:** This was meant as a question about simple collections, where obtaining `.Length` is O(1) or otherwise inexpensive. If `.Length` itself is a nontrivial operation (such as necessitating the iteration through a linked list, or contacting the DB), then this is the wrong approach altogether. The question was about `x < 1` vs `x == 0` where x is a nonnegative integer (although it might not be typed as such)."}
{"_id": "65281", "title": "Stack and Heap memory in Java", "text": "As I understand , in Java, Stack memory holds primitives and method invocations and heap memory is used to store objects . Suppose I have a class               class A {            int a ;            String b;            //getters and setters     }        1. where will the primitive 'a' in class A be stored ?   2. Why does heap memory exist at all ? Why cant we store everything in stack ?   3. When the object gets garbage collected , is the stack associated with the objected destroyed ?"}
{"_id": "155357", "title": "How do you manage your javascript unit tests?", "text": "When you are writing JavaScript unit tests, where do you put all the test code? I see two potential approaches:   1. Leave all your test code with your regular web project and explictly don't release the code to production.    2. Maintain a separate project that runs all your tests. I see pros and cons for both. I'm curious what more experienced JavaScript developers have ended up using."}
{"_id": "150184", "title": "'dock' working in simple words", "text": "I would like to know the idea behind the working of 'docking' in applications. I have worked with applications where components from individual forms are docked on a single main form to provide the necessary GUI. But I don't have any idea whats happening in the background. According to Wikipedia   _A dock is a graphical user interface element that typically provides the user with a way of launching, switching between, and monitoring running programs or applications._ Now I am a bit confused if it is some component or an event or a property or something else. EDIT : The applications was developed in Delphi on windows platform. There is something more in Delphi (manual dock and automatic dock)."}
{"_id": "161083", "title": "Condition based function declarations", "text": "I recently came across a weird piece of code               if(foo == bar){      function foo_bar(){        // Function definition      }     }      Is this a good practice of coding ?"}
{"_id": "163811", "title": "Is programming language that is non-visual ... possible?", "text": "In common life we use text for programming. But why not gestures or voice? **Are there any researches around this topic?**"}
{"_id": "195770", "title": "How do I avoid writing lots of pass-through functions in a wrapper?", "text": "I have a class, which wraps another class of a common base type. Because the base type interface is quite large this involves writing a lot of pass-through functions. I am looking for a way to avoid this. Let's make an example:                     Car          /   \\     Volvo     VolvoWithTrailer      Now I have to implement each and every function in the car interface for VolvoWithTrailer and call the appropriate function on the wrapped Volvo object except maybe GetMaxSpeed() which will return something lower. Basically I will have many functions like               int VolvoWithTrailer::GetNumSeats() {       return mVolvo.GetNumSeats()     }      An obvious way to solve this would be to make VolvoWithTrailer a subclass of Volvo                   Car          |        Volvo          |     VolvoWithTrailer      but that seems to violate the principle of favoring composition over inheritance. How else could I avoid writing all those wrappers (the language is C++)? Or - if that is your position - why should I just write them/just use inheritance? Is there any template magic that could help with this?"}
{"_id": "163817", "title": "Externalising SQL Queries in Java", "text": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of externalising SQL queries in Java (or similar general-purpose object-oriented programming language. Externalizing means storing all SQL in a separate non-java file or files. Several good examples are here. Does it make debugging harder or easier?"}
{"_id": "96561", "title": "Isn't SQLite a bit underestimated?", "text": "Before I ask the question, let me first describe my thoughts about SQLite. I happen to like tools that are small, fast and, more importantly, have only the really necessary functionality. That's why I like SQLite and I like MS-SQL a bit less. For example: MS-SQL may have much more functionality, scalability, etc. etc., but it can also be a pain to install if you're unlucky. Of course, I'm not saying that a difficult installation is a reason to not choose a particular database. Don't understand me wrong: MS-SQL is a fine quality product. I'm very experienced with MS-SQL; I understand the product very well as a professional. I just prefer it less in some circumstances where it's _not really needed_ (= not many users, < 10-15). How much of a database's functionality do you really use? In my experience it's often just the normal SQL (SELECT, INSERT and UPDATE). I like SQLite. Is fascinating fast. It's extremely easy to \"install\". I think SQLite can do more than it claims it can do. Why only use it for one- process/single user applications? After all: not many applications are constantly accessing a database. For example: consider a ERP application with, let's say, 15 users. Why can't SQLite used for that? Let's face it: in my professional experience most of the time users of this kind of application will access the database for about 5-10% of the total time they are using the application. In the other 90-95% they are just watching the information on the screen, entering data in a grid/form and when they save their input that's not more than 1 second of database time. F.e.: 1,5 minutes of input time vs. 1 second of saving time. If the SQLite database file is locked during the \"saving time\" other users that need to access the database just wait, but they don't notice that because the waiting time will be very small (unnoticeable). In code you just have to deal with the possible \"busy\" time of the database, to avoid exceptions, but that isn't difficult to do. Some guy, who must think the same like me, has even build a client-server solution for SQLite: SQLitening. This made me more convinced that I may be not fooling myself. Of course there are database intensive applications where SQLite doesn't fit. But as I now think about it, many multi-users applications, if they don't exceed 15 users or so, should do just fine with SQLite. Many of our customers don't spend much on hardware, so I often encounter a sole server with everything on it (Exchange, SQL(s), clients, etc.) and because of that are almost \"out of breath\". If I could deliver a product that hasn't high system requirements, then my customer would be happy. SQLite doesn't add any weight (at least not much), MS-SQL does. So I would not choose SQLite because it's free, cheap, or easy to install. I would choose it for practical/technical reasons. FYI: In my profession we sell products (custom and standard, mostly ERP related) to customers where, on average, no more than 5-6 people will use the product. There are some exceptions, but no more than 10-15 users. _Question is:_ Am I right in thinking that I can use SQLite for some multi- user application like the example I describe? Are there any technical disadvantages which I should know of? What are your experiences (negative or positive) that will help me making the right choice? Update: Please don't see this as a negative judgment of other databases. They are mostly all fine products. Just sharing my thoughts here and interested in your opinions about this."}
{"_id": "191257", "title": "OO Design: hint EntityManager to preload some datasets", "text": "say I have an EntityManager that can `read(PK)` a dataset from the DB and return it. I have an application that will process multiple records, iterate over them and for each, use the EntityManager to read each record. Therefore it would be nice to inform that EntityManager about the coming workload so it is able to preload the necessary data more efficiently. How would you integrate such optional hints into a clean, SoC OO-Design? Thanks alot"}
{"_id": "191252", "title": "What endpoints should I provide, if any, to permit connectivity testing for my web services?", "text": "What endpoints should I provide, if any, to permit connectivity / availability testing for my web services / Web API? * * * **TL;DR** I am developing both the server and client in an enterprise environment. The client will interface with the server via an RESTful Web API. I would like to provide an indication to the user that they have correctly entered the Web API's root URL correctly. I would also like to implement connectivity monitoring of the API in the future. None of the public APIs (Facebook, Twitter etc) that of have looked have a dedicated end point for connectivity testing. There are a number of web sites that provide availability monitoring of public APIs. One of them, Watchmouse, reported they preform their availability testing by actually exercising the API (logging in, perform an action, and testing the results). On the other hand calling the root URL for CouchDB returns and configurable message and the CouchDB version. Should I provide dedicated endpoints for connectivity / availability testing? If so what endpoints? Or should I just exercise existing endpoints?"}
{"_id": "191253", "title": "which version of Windows should use I to develop an app", "text": "I need to develop a Windows application which can be installed on any version of Windows from XP through 7. Which version of Windows should I use for application development. I'll be using Qt-C++/GTK+ for development. How do I decide/determine which Windows version is to be used for development?"}
{"_id": "117119", "title": "Learning Each Type of Programming Language", "text": "I have heard several times that every programmer should learn one of each type of language. Now, this is not necessarily true, but I believe it is a good idea. I've learned a Procedural Language (Perl), but what **are** the other types? What are the differences between them and what are some examples of each?"}
{"_id": "210030", "title": "Testing responsive designs for large displays... on a laptop", "text": "I use a 13\" laptop. I want to test my responsive site designs on displays larger than 1280x800. Is there an easy way to do this? Or should I just set that as my top media query?"}
{"_id": "255855", "title": "What to change in Ruby on Rails?", "text": "In my last interview I was asked what would I change on Ruby on Rails to make it better. I use Ruby on Rails daily and I was not able to give an answer. So, my question is: 'What could be changed in Ruby on Rails to make it better?'"}
{"_id": "105120", "title": "What is the most compatible, widely used production language to export knowledge and skills gained from Haskell?", "text": "I like Haskell, plain and simple. While Haskell is used in production software, it's not especially widely deployed from what I've seen. What is the most similar and still widely used language in regards to production projects so that I might have a snowball's chance of using something similarly awesome in industry? Also is the same language from the first part available on large numbers of platforms? If not, what is the best alternative that has wide platform deployment? I'd like a single language to put on my to-do list rather than a massive swarm or family. Hard evidence would be a plus."}
{"_id": "255856", "title": "Port forwarding and C++ Winsock Client-Server applications", "text": "As the title says, I'm creating a TCP client and a server program in C++. My question is, when running the client and server on two separate machines that go through a different firewalled router over the internet, does it matter which router has ports forwarded? Ex. Can just the router used by the client machine have the correct TCP ports forwarded and the client server connection be established?"}
{"_id": "255850", "title": "Understanding C# Delegates Structure", "text": "I've been trying to understand C# delegates using Pro C# 5. In short, the author describes the motivation for delegates as a structured way of dealing with function pointers and callbacks or two-way communication between objects. The part I find confusing is the syntax/implementation for this:   * On the one hand, an object of delegate type is seen as the _handler_ or the one responsible for invoking some method or list of methods. To this end, it has methods such as `Invoke()` etc.    * On the other hand, the delegate type is used as a 'wrapper' with which to pass around methods. For example, it seems strange to me that a call to a delegate's `GetInvocationList()` returns an array of delegates. Shouldn't there be something else with which to wrap methods? I expected there would be some other construct/type, say, `MethodContainer` which wraps methods. Then the syntax for adding methods to a delegate would be               class MyClass{ void Method(string s){} }          MyClass c = new MyClass();     MethodContainer container = new MethodContainer(c.Method);          delegate void MyDelegate(string s);     MyDelegate d = new MyDelegate();          d.Add(container);          d.GetInvocationList(); // returns array of MethodContainer"}
{"_id": "166365", "title": "Work experience before masters", "text": "I dont know if its the right place to ask such questions: I have a bachelors degree from an Indian university. I want to pursue a masters in one of the universities in USA. My profile is good enough to get me admitted to the school that I prefer. I also have an offer letter from one of the top software companies in India. I don't know which path to take, I know a masters degree will be of great help in future both in terms of money and career but I do not know whether I want to do it at this moment. I have signed up for both edx and coursera for some of the courses and I really liked learning them online. I am not sure if taking these courses can be a substitute for a masters degree. Also how will I be able to differentiate myself in the real world if I do not have a masters degree, since there are many in India who don't have it. And is it advisable for me to take some work experience say 1-2 years and then apply for a masters degree. Although universities do not explicitly mention work experience as a criteria, will any kind of work experience help me in deciding whether I want to do masters? Finally I want to know what are the cons of not doing a masters."}
{"_id": "149364", "title": "Using WebStorm for Razor Syntax MVC", "text": "I am building a lot of client-side heavy SPA-like apps with VS2010 and MVC3/4. VS2010 Javascript/HTML/CSS editing (mostly javascript) is interminably slow and sluggish. I'd love to use something like JetBrains' WebStorm to edit my .CSHTML files (with embedded javascript, etc. because I am using RAzor to pop in URL names, etc.) WebStorm seems to have all of the things I want.. better language recognition (\"intellisense\") and the ability to integrate additional outside libraries into this (I'm using Kendo), etc. Is this possible? How do you get WebStorm to recognize the @\"\" invoked Razor language inserts? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "255859", "title": "A simple menu - hide and show on click", "text": "I already posted this question over at stackoverflow, but they meant that this would be the better place to ask. So here i am :) I am new to Jquery and currently practicing. I wrote a little piece of code to show and hide a navigation on click and change the text of the button when the navigation is opened and close. Because i am fresh in this area i would love to get some feedback about the code, for example if there are any ways to do it better, with less code or any other area of the matter. Just a little code review for learning and practicing. (especially the second if is bothering me :)) Thank you And here the small line of code:               // Function Hide nav     function hideNav() {     $('nav').hide();     }          // Hide Nav     hideNav();          // Function Show Nav          function showNav() {     $('nav').show();     }          // Clickevent on Button     $('button').click(function() {     if($('nav').is(':hidden')){     // Show Nav on Clickevent     showNav();     // Change Text when Nav is showing     $(this).text('Close me');               }     else     hideNav();     // Change Text back when Nav is hiding     if($('nav').is(':hidden')){     $('button').text('Open me');     }     });"}
{"_id": "255858", "title": "History of protocols and Formats that gone wrong but still are used", "text": "I trying to find some historic evidence about protocols or formats that had different implementations where the interoperability led to problems we might still see today or bugs in implementations that became features. What I am trying to do, is to convince people to invest in a reference implementation of a format to avoid problems of interoperability. Best would be to provide examples from the past that didn't go so well, and caused many problems. For example STMP EHLO vs. HELO. As I remember EHLO is Microsoft only. thanks for your ideas."}
{"_id": "64881", "title": "What is Hadoop and what are some example applications of it?", "text": "The title basically says it all. I keep hearing about Hadoop, and from the wikipedia entry, it certainly _sounds_ interesting, but I'm curious if there are some good examples where it makes sense to pursue a solution using that technology? Put another way, if I pick up a new toy, I like to at least know how I'm supposed to play with it!"}
{"_id": "10930", "title": "Explaining programming to a child", "text": "How could I try to explain programming to a child, about 6 to 8 years old?"}
{"_id": "56375", "title": "Eliminating Magic Numbers: When is it time to say \"No\"?", "text": "We're all aware that magic numbers (hard-coded values) can wreak havoc in your program, especially when it's time to modify a section of code that has no comments, but where do you draw the line? For instance, if you have a function that calculates the number of seconds between two days, do you replace               seconds = num_days * 24 * 60 * 60      with               seconds = num_days * HOURS_PER_DAY * MINUTES_PER_HOUR * SECONDS_PER_MINUTE      At what point do you decide that it is completely obvious what the hard-coded value means and leave it alone?"}
{"_id": "116863", "title": "Can you learn functional programming in C?", "text": "As a result of the comment discussion here, I wonder whether you can learn Functional Programming in C?"}
{"_id": "221804", "title": "Why is Javascript faster than Jquery?", "text": "I was reading a thread and saw this post, which says that Javascript is faster than Jquery because it uses native code. But why is the use of native code faster? Is this always the case? What impediments does Jquery have in performance?"}
{"_id": "9447", "title": "Is there an optimal number of lines of code per function?", "text": "Functions are not only used to minimize duplication of code - they are also used to split up a long function into smaller ones to increase readability, as well as making the code self-commenting. Yet this gain is not directly inversely proportional to the number of LOCs per function or method; otherwise we would have tonnes of functions, all of which only contains a single line or two of code. This lead me to wonder: **Does there exist an optimal number of LOCs per function? If so, what is it, and does it deviate between languages?**"}
{"_id": "9445", "title": "How viable is \"Windows Workflow Foundation\"? What alternatives should I consider?", "text": "I started learning WF 3.0 back a few years ago and never quite got the hang of it. Has anyone learned WF 4.0 (now that it has been rewritten)? Is it a viable platform worth considering? What alternatives exist?"}
{"_id": "65425", "title": "Is it appropriate in a developer's job description to have \"error free\" as a key output?", "text": "As part of a review of all job descriptions, my company has decided to include the following as a key output: > website development completed on time, within specification and **error > free** Given that specifications regularly change, there is no formal change control process and environments are, shall we say, a little unpredictable, how realistic and reasonable is this KPI?"}
{"_id": "65423", "title": "Does anyone know of a way to acquire a REAL credit card that is specifically designated for ecommerce testing purposes?", "text": "What I mean is we always want to test something in the actual real world live production environment, regardless of any testing we do with any fake paypal credit card numbers or other sandboxed numbers. So instead of using our personal cards, I wonder if there is a credit company that will supply a fully feature credit card specifically for the purpose of this kind of real world testing? I suppose the answer may simply be just to get yourself a credit card and only use it for that, but I'd want to be sure it was 'out of the loop' when it came to affecting credit scores or that kind of thing."}
{"_id": "61961", "title": "How to choose the best approach when adding features/refactoring code", "text": "I've got a problem. I find really difficult to foresee the effect that my changes to the code will have over the whole application, either when I have to add new features or re- factor it. Very often it is not until testing time that I find out that I should have done things in a different way or that those changes produce an unexpected behavior. I would like to know how you guys approach changes in the code, how you get to know how those changes will affect your current code, what tips or tricks work best for you, or any recommended readings about the matter. Any help will be sincerely appreciated! Thanks a lot guys"}
{"_id": "172879", "title": "Is it actually possible to have a 'useful' programming language that isn't Turing complete?", "text": "Where it is accepted that a language has to be Turing complete to be any good, is it actually possible to have a 'useful' programming language that isn't Turing complete? I should clarify that this is quite specifically about 'programming' languages in the traditional sense, and not markup or query languages."}
{"_id": "207111", "title": "Are there non-turing complete dynamic languages which can be used to create useful programs?", "text": "While it takes a turing complete language to create any imaginable program, is it possible to compute most \"useful\" programs with a non-turing complete dynamically typed language? For example, is there a non-turing complete language capable of solving the Project Euler problems?"}
{"_id": "65428", "title": "In a company whose primary business is software, are the developers still considered to be \"IT\"?", "text": "My thinking is that a company who's primary business is making widgets groups developers with networking, support, etc because none of it is the business, it's support of the business. If your primary business IS selling software, then I would call the development group \"Research and Development\" or something similar. Maybe if you had some developers who worked strictly on internal apps then they would be in with IT/Support/Comms, etc. What is the norm for companies like Microsoft, Google, etc? Is there some dictionary for this type of thing in CIO magazine or something? What does your company do?"}
{"_id": "16445", "title": "What is a \"wrapper\" program?", "text": "Where I work, employees use a third-party desktop program for their clients. This program saves data to a flat file. My colleague wants to write a Java program that uploads that flat file to a remote server, opens the desktop program when the flat file is downloaded from a Web site, and checks if the desktop program is running or not by looking at the Windows processes. He keeps calling this helper/utility program a \"wrapper.\" But it doesn't wrap anything! I tried to clear it up with him, but he said, \"Well, I call it a wrapper.\" He now has everyone in the company calling it a \"wrapper.\" What would you call it? I say that it's a helper program or utility program."}
{"_id": "105699", "title": "Is Node.js \"considered\" to be its own programming language?", "text": "Whenever I read blog posts about a new app that had Node.js involved, bloggers often write \"the app was **written** in node.\" But I hardly ever see a phrase going like \"the app was written in JavaScript, with the Node.js runtime.\" Now I'm beginning to ask whether or not Node.js is merely a runtime, or perhaps the creators are now planning to add more features that JavaScript doesn't offer, or maybe because it's much easier to say \"written in Node\" rather than \"written in JavaScript, but runs on Node.\" What's the deal?"}
{"_id": "103779", "title": "Database Application Design Best Practices", "text": "Once upon a time it was common practice for both the business logic and database logic to be written in the same language (eg PL/SQL, Transact SQL, etc), more recently the practice is to separate the application into layers/tiers such as database, business logic, and presentation, with each tier written in a different language. Typically an ORM is used to help facilitate communication between the business logic and the database. From time to time however, especially when the application is relatively small, I still write applications with the business logic pushed down into the database layer, only the user interface is outside the database. I am aware of the various arguments for and against this, however I'm wondering as to whether there are any contemporary best practices if one was to write a database application in this manner? There are quite a few books on data models etc, but none really talk about how to structure the actual application code in terms of stored procedures, functions and so on. Also there are a number of books on database refactoring, or database anti-patterns, but again they broadly assume that the database is just being used to persist data. I did find this one paper by Blaha, \"Object-oriented design of database stored procedures\". Are there any other books, papers, or sample databases that illustrate contemporary database application design best practices? It actually seems relatively common to still build applications in this way, however it appears to be one of those things that people have accepted is not best practice so they want to avoid talking about it. Is it OK for a business stored procedure to access a table directly ? Or should all table access be through CRUD methods? Are there any code generation tools people recommend? Thanks."}
{"_id": "210393", "title": "Importance of stored procedures and triggers in building web applications?", "text": "Almost in every interview for the position of web developer, they ask about stored procedures and triggers well I am aware from their definition and basic usage but the truths is I have never used any of them in any of my project. Well I have seen other developers who used them but only when they were the only solution. My question is are they really important and interview is incomplete without asking questions about triggers and stored procedures. I tend to do keep almost all my logics in PHP, like if change in one database table row will require change in other database table row, I run another query from PHP rather than writing trigger, is it wrong or bad practice? do I need to change my approach? any examples in which use of stored procedures and triggers are better than performing similar operations in PHP?"}
{"_id": "194446", "title": "How much business logic should the database implement?", "text": "I've worked in some projects where most of the business logic was implemented on the database (mostly through stored procedures). On the other side, I've heard from some fellow programmers that this is a bad practice (\"Databases are there to store data. Applications are there to do the rest\"). Which of these approaches is the generally better? The pros of implementing business logic in the DB I can think of are:   * Centralization of business logic;   * Independency of application type, programming language, OS, etc;   * Databases are less prone to technology migration or big refactorings (AFAIK);   * No rework on application technology migration (e.g.: .NET to Java, Perl to Python, etc). The cons:   * SQL is less productive and more complex for business logic programming, due to the lack of libraries and language constructs the most application-oriented languages offer;   * More difficult (if possible at all) code reuse through libraries;   * Less productive IDEs. Note: The databases I'm talking about are relational, popular databases like SQL Server, Oracle, MySql etc. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "170808", "title": "Do stored procedures violate three-tier separation?", "text": "Some colleagues of mine have told me that having business logic in stored procedures in the database violates the three-tier separation, since the database belongs to the data layer whereas stored procedures are business logic. I think the world would be a very grim place without stored procedures. Do they really violate the three-tier separation ?"}
{"_id": "158535", "title": "How to avoid the pitfalls of static analysis", "text": "I'm working at a company that would score 11 on Joel Test - at least on paper. In practice, however, nothing works quite as well as expected, and the project has been on **DEFCON 1** for half a year. Now, most of my peers are happy if they can go back home at 6pm - on Sunday. One of the apparently good practices that struck me as not working is the use of static analysis tools. The project both tracks gcc -Wall warnings and a proprietary and very expensive _\"C/C++\"_ tool. Gcc warnings do more often than not point to real(if most of the time inoffensive) bugs. The proprietary tools, however, list things such as implicit casts and sizeof'ing a string literal. Implicit casts are also blacklisted on their stylebook. The standard practice is that people is pressed to make every single warning shut up. Note that this does exclude warnings that are predominantly false positives, this is not the problem. The result is:   1. People add type casts to every rvalue and to every argument hiding real problematic type mismatches in the process.   2. People introduce off by one bugs, or use a different problematic language feature.(strlen instead of sizeof, strncpy instead of strcpy, etc.)   3. The warnings are silenced.   4. The bug reports start rolling in. The main point is the original code was working and written by people who were playing safe within their language abilities whereas the fixes were not. Now, I don't really think this company can be saved. However, I would like to know if there is a better, preferably working, way to use the _\"pro\"_ tools or if I should just avoid using them altogether in case I am the one making the decision in the future. A solution which doesn't assume all programmers are geniuses that can't err. Because well, if they are, then there is no need to use the tools in the first place."}
{"_id": "154400", "title": "Best exception handling practices or recommendations?", "text": "I think the two main problems with my programs are my code structure/organization and my error handling. I'm reading Code Complete 2, but I need something to read for working with potential problems. For example, on a website, if something can only happen if the user tampers with data via javascript, do you write for that? Also, when do you not catch errors? When you write a class that expects a string and an int as input, and they aren't a string and int, do you check for that, or do you let it bubble up to the calling method that passed incorrect parameters? I know this is a broad topic that can't be answered in a single answer here, so what I'm looking for is a book or resource that's commonly accepted as teaching proper exception handling practice."}
{"_id": "154402", "title": "How do I mashup Google Maps with geolocated photos from one or more social networks?", "text": "I'm working on a proof of concept for a project, and I need to pin random photos to a Google Map. These photos can come from another social network, but need to be non-porn. I've done some research so far, Google's Image Search API is deprecated. So, one has to use the Custom Search API. A lot of the images aren't photos, and I'm not sure how well it handles geolocation yet. Twitter seems a little more well suited, except for the fact that people can post pictures of pretty much anything. I was also going to look into the API's for other networks such as Flickr, Picasa, Pinterest and Instagram. I know there are some aggregate services out there that might have done some of this mash-up work for me as well. If there is anyone out there that has a handle on social APIs and where I should look for this type of solution, I would really appreciate the help. Also, in cases where server-side implementation matters, I'm a .NET developer by experience."}
{"_id": "124963", "title": "Software Defect Patterns", "text": "Does the Pareto Principle, that being 20% of the causes are link to 80% of the problems, apply to software bugs, and if so, are there any common patterns of note on average within the 20% of cause?"}
{"_id": "120265", "title": "Easter eggs as IP protection in software", "text": "I work in embedded software, and for some reason, management wants to hide an Easter egg as means of IP protection. They call it a watermark, and since our software interact with the video preview feed (the image displayed on a screen before you take a photo), they want me to implement a trigger which will react to some unusual video input (a video konami code like dark - bright - dark - bright - whatever). When this trigger fires, something strange happens (which is outside of the normal behavior of the software). The goal is to check whether our software is included in a device. Does it sound like a good idea? I have many argument against this move:   * What if the konami code is too sensitive and user triggers it?   * Does this kind of `watermark` have any legal value?   * What if this \"feature\" is discovered by the client?   * The performance penalty should be very small, since the soft run on small devices.   * I am the one developping this trigger. If things go wrong, what is my responsibility? What is your opinion about this method? I can't find a link, but I remember seeing an answer on this site suggesting that putting Easter eggs for protection purpose was a good idea. Has anyone tried it with good results?"}
{"_id": "154408", "title": "How to promote my newly developed software ?", "text": "I have recently developed a registry cleaner. But as far as I am concerned, there are already so many registry cleaners on the market, and some of them have won great popularity. Does that mean there is little chance for me to get my customers' attention? How can I make my software known by my targeted customers?"}
{"_id": "199089", "title": "Nested Try Catch Error Handling with Log Files?", "text": "Best practice question for error handling in C#? In our system we will be writing out files, and with each file they will have a corresponding error file. The error file will get written every time even if there are not any errors. I'm looking at the best way to handle the errors for this. Assuming when we go to write the main CSV file, we would get a number of errors. From permissions on the folder, to a parsing exception when turning a Datatable to a CSV. If we get a permission error the error log file will fail as well. Would this be done in the exception? in another try catch (which would be bad.. I think). We would also want to get the exception to place in the error file. Some pseudo code below (without the try catch in the exception) or should this be broken down more and using methods, that contain their own Try / Catch that could bubble up the messages to log and write to files.                   Message.log(\"begin writing file\");             try {                try {                    // get data from DB                   // write to CSV file                   // all good, write Empty Error Log file and main file                }                 catch(Exception ex) {                   // Write Error File with ex.toCSV                   // write log message.                   Message.log(\"error : \" + ex.ToString());                }                  } catch (Exception ex) {                  var e = new Exception(string.Format(\"An unexpected error occurred for file.\\r\\n{0}\", ex.Message));                  Message.log(e);                  throw e.             }            Message.log(\"all files written\");"}
{"_id": "120268", "title": "Does calling a virtual protected method from a base class violate the LSP?", "text": "Let's say we have this base class:               class MyBase     {         public string Name { get; set; }              public string GetDescription()         {             var descriptionList = new List<string>() { this.Name };             descriptionList.AddRange(this.ExtraDescriptions.ToList());             return string.Join(\", \", descriptionList();         }              protected virtual IEnumerable<string> ExtraDescriptions()         {             return new List<string>();         }     }      Then add a derived class:               class MyDerived : MyBase     {         protected override IEnumerable<string> ExtraDescriptions()         {             return new List<string>() { \"a\", \"b\" };         }     }      It seems to me that this violates the LSP (because we're changing the behavior of the `GetDescription` method), and yet it's also a fundamental feature of object-oriented programming. The base class _obviously_ declares its intention to allow the `ExtraDescriptions` method to be overridden, but this isn't necessarily visible to a consumer of the class. Ever since I learned about the LSP, this problem has really been gnawing at me. So:   1. Does this violate LSP?   2. What's the correct alternative to this?"}
{"_id": "215648", "title": "best way to send messages to all subscribers with multiple subscriptions and multiple providers", "text": "I'm writing an application in which - Many users can subsribe to posts made by another users. So for a single publisher there can be many subscribers. When a message is posted by an user X, all users who have subscribed to messages of User X will be sent an email. How to achieve this ? I'm thinking of using publish-subscribe pattern. And then I came through JMS. Which is the best JMS implementation to use according to your experience ? Or else what else solution do you propose to the given problem ? Shall I go for a straight-forward solution ?: User x posts a message, I find all users (from database) who subscribe to user x and then for every user, I call the sendEmail() method. [EDIT] My intention here is not to send-emails. I'm really sorry if it wasn't clear. I also have to send kind of system-notifications apart from Email to all subscribers. Right now, I've implemented the email-sending as a threadPool"}
{"_id": "240919", "title": "Determine Cluster Label in K-means", "text": "I have dataset that is contain 150 data that is actually divided into 3 group. Each group has it\u2019s own label. I do clustering process with K-means algorithm to group the data. I need to assign the label of each group that is created by K-means process. So I could compare the result of K-means with the data training. Anybody could help to explain how to determine the label of each group?"}
{"_id": "164618", "title": "Why are many programmers moving their code to github?", "text": "For the past 6 months or more, I've been seeing many codes hosted at sourceforge.net as well as other hosting sites \"Move to GitHub\". A mere Google Search with the phrase \"Moved to Github\" returns several results containing the text moved to github. This is very confusing for me, and I'm wondering, why exactly are people moving? Does it mean that GitHub is better or is there some special advantage I'm not seeing?"}
{"_id": "118479", "title": "Should a programmer fix someone else's failed build?", "text": "One programmer committed some work to the SVN repository, then went home. After he left, the Hudson automatic build failed. Another programmer saw this, and after looking through the code changes, detected that the problem was the absence of one library. He added this library to SVN and the next build completed successfully. Did the second programmer do the right thing or should he have just waited until the first programmer fixed the issue?"}
{"_id": "152767", "title": "Is WCF a good fit for this problem?", "text": "I'm working to implement a data service solution that has 2 request functions but can respond with one of 3 transmission types:   1. x12 EDI    2. HTTP MIME multipart    3. SOAP/XML + WSDL  I would also need to include logging and username/password authentication to the services. I'm in the very early learning stages of WCF. Is WCF a good fit for this?"}
{"_id": "152763", "title": "HTML5 localStorage and encrypted sensitive data", "text": "I'm looking for a way to have a website remember sensitive data, but without actually storing it server side. And I was looking at HTML5 `localStorage` to do it. Here's the plan as I see it.   1. User enters sensitive data into form, and submits.   2. Server encrypts data via AES-256 with a strong key that is kept in private source control.   3. Server responds, providing encrypted data to rendered page.   4. Page runs javascript to save encrypted data to `localStorage` Later...   1. User visits a page that uses javascript to fetch encrypted data from `localStorage` and sends it to the server.   2. Server decrypts encrypted data, gaining access to sensitive information for that request. My thinking is that that allows either the client or server to compromised, and things stay secure. If the client is compromised, then the hacker can read only an encrypted string they do not have the key to decrypt. If the server database is compromised, the data is simply not stored there so it obviously can't be accessed by the hacker. (Obviously some types of server hacking could read sensitive data as it's coming in initially, but such a hack would work whether client storing it or not, so that doesn't apply to this discussion. Also client hacks that log keys and whatnot would still work, I'm simply talking about data storage getting compromised on either side here) But I'm no security expert, so I am wondering if my plan has any holes in it? Any glaring security vulnerabilities I am missing here?"}
{"_id": "22933", "title": "What is the point of a Gantt Chart, and will it help me?", "text": "My (non-technical) colleague has threatened me with a Gantt chart for a new project that we are currently planning. What is this likely to provide for us, and will it be a helpful tool?"}
{"_id": "21374", "title": "Your strategy to ensure vertical growth", "text": "What is the single most important thing that you do to ensure career progression ? In other words what is it that you have to learn\\unlearn\\implement every day so that you do not stagnate at a level in a company and there is constant vertical growth. These strategies might be different at each role and might vary for different segments like Development Teams\\ Sustaining Teams \\ QA Team and Technical Pub teams. The question is independent on which team you are in. P.S : Vertical growth can also be on technical path."}
{"_id": "1483", "title": "Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English?", "text": "I've heard it said (by coworkers) that everyone \"codes in English\" regardless of where they're from. I find that difficult to believe, however I wouldn't be surprised if, for most programming languages, the supported character set is relatively narrow. Have you ever worked in a country where English is not the primary language? If so, what did their code look like?"}
{"_id": "152891", "title": "Non-English Naming Conventions", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English? I know that there are non-English based languages out there, where keywords are in some other tongue, but popular languages are in English. However, if you're a non-native English speaker, developing for a non-English market, do you use your native language when naming functions, classes, variables, etc.? If you do, what kind of morphology do you adopt? For example, functions are often named with verbs (e.g., `buildData`), would you use the imperative form -- if your language has one -- in the name (e.g., `construisciDati` in Italian)? A related question: For users of non-Latin writing systems and languages that support Unicode naming, do you make use of it or stick with romanisation? e.g., `\u5efa\u9020\u6570\u636e`, for our `buildData` example in [Googled] Mandarin."}
{"_id": "113936", "title": "Is it a good practice to code in English?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English? I have a development comming that is intended to be sold across Latin America (Spanish speakers), but I've heard from some partners that is a good practice to always code in English, I mean just code (methods, classes, pages names, etc), labels on GUI are going to be all in Spanish... Code will be edited in the future by developer of companies across Latin America and just maybe some from outside. What do you think?, any experience with this?"}
{"_id": "245455", "title": "When should the programmer's spoken language be used during development?", "text": "I'm an Italian developer, but I have a good understanding of English. Sometimes, when developing an application targeted for an Italian audience, I wonder whether it is correct to use the Italian language in my code or not. By \"Italian language in my code\" I mean the names of methods, classes, comments, variables and so on. For example, when I write code like this:               /* Attenzione: metodo esageratamente complicato */     public double calcolaImposteDeiServizi() { ... }      Do I break any sacred law of programming because I didn't write that code as follows?               /* Caution: overly complicated method */     public double calculateTaxesOfServices() { ... }      I remember a project I worked on some time ago. It was about calculating VAT/taxes/bonuses. Some of this code was dealing with concepts that existed only in the Italian economy at that moment. I preferred to write that project using only Italian names for methods, otherwise it would clearly have become a mess understanding that _VAT_ was Italian's _IVA_ and so on. By using this example, should there be some kind of rule for deciding whenever to use your language or not in code? Did any highly authoritative programmer ever said something about this issue? How do you make this kind of decision in your projects?"}
{"_id": "147156", "title": "HTML/CSS in Other Spoken languages?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do people in non-English-speaking countries code in English? Do developers who don't natively speak English still code using english property and tag names? Like, would a Japanese front end web developer still need to know what border-radius means in English to use it, or would Japanese sites use Japanese CSS? I ask because I'm an English speaking web developer who aspires to be multilingual someday, and I might try to use that combination of skills to travel the world a little. Will I still code in English, even while building sites in China or Japan? If so, would that improve my chances of getting a job?"}
{"_id": "211348", "title": "\"Open source\" proprietary software licenses?", "text": "I am writing some software that (for once - usually I open source stuff on sourceforge/github/etc.) I plan on selling. To each source file, I want to attach a proprietary software license that doesn't allow anyone to use, modify, derive, etc. the software (and source code) without my express permission. I have been looking at the Microsoft Reference Source Licensing and would be happy to use that, however I'm not sure if I can (legally). So I ask: in the same way that there are well-known an regarded open source software licenses (ASL, GNU, etc.), are there well-know proprietary licenses that are \"open\" in the sense that I could use them to protect my product? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "211343", "title": "In an optimal software design, would you ever need to throw InvalidOperationException?", "text": ".NET defines the `InvalidOperationException` as > The exception that is thrown when a method call is invalid for the object's > current state. In an optimal software design, would it ever make sense to throw this exception? I would argue that the 'optimal' API prevents any misuse, including, never allowing a method to be called when its state is invalid."}
{"_id": "56953", "title": "How to teach computer science?", "text": "I am just starting to teach computer science. It's just the basic level. I'm finding that I sometimes don't know how to approach topics in a way that lets students easily understand. I've found that the best thing is to use analogies. A terrible one, that worked well, was presenting recursion by using the process of eating a burger. (You eat one bite, then you eat the rest). Interesting real world examples do wonders here. I'd like to know the techniques you have used for teaching, or teachers you've had have used that proved particularly effective. I'd also like to know your best analogies and examples for topics in CS101, especially for those harder to grasp topics. I'm teaching the class in Java (as required)."}
{"_id": "159295", "title": "Application Logic Vs DB Triggers for database cleaning", "text": "When cleaning out old data from a set of database tables, is it safer to have the logic in the application or in a database trigger? I am upgrading an application that I wrote a while back (and in a hurried fashion) and one of the things I want to clean up first is ensuring that data which is no longer being used is propmtly deleted. Currently this is being done in my application itself via a number of SQL calls to various tables. Some of these queries take a bit of time to run and as the application is PHP driven, I don't want users having to wait too long. I was therefore thinking about creating a database trigger on one table that would merrily clean up all the other tables and then allow the single row delete to occur from my master table. I am considering these pros and cons at the moment:   * _Database trigger_   * (+) Invisible to the application   * (+) Simplifies application logic - new objects can be simplified   * (-) Adds complexity to overall maintenance - have to maintain code and triggers during table changes etc.   * _Application Logic_   * (+) Keeps all maintenance tasks in one place   * (-) Longer page loads on certain tasks   * (-) More chance of a request timing out - orphaning data If you have any further insight, considerations I haven't thought of here, experience with one vs the other or can point me towards some reading on the matter I would love to hear it. Edit: I originally thought that my pages would run quicker, but if I am creating a _Before Delete_ trigger, will the page loads be the same - as in the application sends a tiny query through but it won't be actioned until the entire set of statements in the trigger complete?"}
{"_id": "167010", "title": "What is the process of planning software called? Or what is the job title of someone who does software planning?", "text": "For example, let's say a non-technical person comes to me with their rough initial specification. And I sit down with them over a couple weeks and help them hone, formalize and better plan the application that they want built. What is this called? Information architecture, software architecture, specification writing, software planning, requirements analysis? What is the best, most recognizable term for this?"}
{"_id": "102470", "title": "Is there a website where you can upload random useful applications that you have created?", "text": "From times to times, I need to solve a problem and I find it faster for me to create an application for the specific problem instead of searching all over the Internet for it. Most of the times it is an application created in .NET framework but there are also times that I create apps for linux. My question is: Is there a website where I can upload my free apps? I know that I can obviously upload everything to my personal website, but since I'm not very popular I'm afraid that most users that need my apps will not be able to find them if they are in my website. Keep in mind that I'm not talking about releasing my source code (just the binaries and the documentation) and I'm not talking about huge applications. To give you a better idea, in most cases the applications that I'm talking about will not even have an installation procedure: just a couple of executables and a config/data file. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "198023", "title": "MVC framework that uses classes instead of methods for actions", "text": "In most MVC frameworks, Controller class contains multiple methods, each representing one action. Then annotations and reflection is used to call those methods appropriately. But from OOP point of view, the whole class has many responsibilities, eg. one for each action. Then each action should be represented by it's own class. Does MVC framework that implements actions like this exist? And is there some kind of discussion that discusses pros and cons of both approaches? I believe it would be much cleaner to do it class-way, because it would allow simple extensibility through inheritance without need for annotations. But there would be 'overhead' of many more classes, making it harder to maintain the code."}
{"_id": "72079", "title": "Is it possible for a one-man start-up to follow agile methods like Scrum?", "text": "For a small start-up with only one or two programmers, is it possible to implement agile methods like Scrum? If NO, what is the minimum team size required? I guess Scrum needs few programmers to be onsite as well? _**_Edited **** I think the Agile methods are meant for team collaboration and improve workflow so a single man may not benefit much."}
{"_id": "71905", "title": "Are there tasks which require significantly less work with Ruby than C# 4.0?", "text": "I just finished reading the Ruby chapter of the book 7 Languages in 7 Weeks. Aside from some syntactic sugar here and there I can't really see anything which can't be done with C# with a similar syntax. I do understand both languages are inherently different, but my question relates to its usage rather than design. Relevant questions make me believe Ruby offers little more than C#:   * Why aren't c# programmers drawn to ruby as java programmers are?   * Is Ruby's code block same as C#'s lambda expression? I hardly worked with Ruby and my understanding of the language is still very limited, so perhaps somebody who experimented with both .NET 4.0 and Ruby can answer with concrete examples. **Which tasks require significantly less work with Ruby than C# 4.0?** P.s.: This question got closed on StackOverflow as too subjective and argumentative, although it did attract some attention. I was hoping it would be merged to here, but instead I'll just have to repost it."}
{"_id": "108613", "title": "What makes a piece of software an Engine?", "text": "The descriptor 'Engine' gets thrown around a lot: graphics engine, RegEx engine, AI engine, etc. but what actually makes a piece of software an Engine? Design, Input/Output, Purpose, Size?"}
{"_id": "190619", "title": "Presenting PHP source on the Web", "text": "I've written a patch for a GPL'ed JavaScript library. To check how the patch works one needs sample CGI (or PHP) backend. I want to write a demo PHP to show that my JS works and put the open code on my site. The question: What it the best way to have PHP on server both executed and viewed as the source? Note that recently I have ordered a Virtual Private Server with a 5 Gb disk, so there are no troubles with installing new software (if any needed) for me."}
{"_id": "17710", "title": "What is the career path for a software generalist?", "text": "A question on software specialties inspired this question. How valuable is a software generalist compared to a specialist? When I say generalist, I mean someone who can take a project from requirements to deployment, and is competent with all phases of the software development lifecycle. Someone who can put all the specialties together into a cohesive whole. An expert generalist knows his or her weaknesses and fills them by relying on specialists - example: Oracle specialists or UX specialists. What do you see as the ultimate career path of the software generalist?"}
{"_id": "59167", "title": "ScrumMaster Interview Questions", "text": "I have a bunch of ideas around questions I can ask a potential candidate for a ScrumMaster position, but I wanted to reach out to the awesome community as to interview questions/exercises to do for a potential ScrumMaster role:   1. What questions would you ask?   2. What exercises would you have them do?"}
{"_id": "53250", "title": "How are Programming Languages Designed?", "text": "After doing a bit of programming, I've become quite curious on language design itself. I'm still a novice (I've been doing it for about a year), so the majority of my code pertains to only two fields (GUI design in Python and basic algorithms in C/C++). I have become intrigued with how the actual languages themselves are written. I mean this in both senses. Such as how it was literally written (ie, what language the language was written in). As well as various features like white spacing (Python) or object orientation (C++ and Python). Where would one start learning how to write a language? What are some of the fundamentals of language design, things that would make it a \"complete\" language?"}
{"_id": "148577", "title": "Two database fields for date and time - should they be merged?", "text": "In the following question, field and table names have been changed to protect their identities. If I have two database columns:               MONKEY_DATE DATETIME NULL (with data e.g. 2012-05-14 00:00:00.000)     MONKEY_TIME DATETIME NULL (with data e.g. 1753-01-01 16:30:53.025)      _The date component of the time field is **mostly** set to 1st Jan 1753... but some data has 1st Jan 1899 and some has 1st Jan 1900._ I find that maintaining the code to query and report on these columns causes me (and our team) a headache that could easily be solved by merging the two columns. However, experience (and Terry Goodkind) has taught me that nothing is ever easy. See below some examples of why this is a headache. **My Approach** I'm thinking the following approach will have the desired effect of merging the two columns:   1. Use SQL to update the data, setting the value for the date field and the value for the time field both to the same value, which is a mix of the date component from the date field and the time component from the time field   2. Write any new code only using the MONKEY_DATE field   3. Eventually phase out the MONKEY_TIME field and any of the date/time component SQL (see examples)   4. Drop MONKEY_TIME This will mean we don't immediately have to go and make retrospective changes to the whole system... all existing code will continue to work... and we can begin to do things The Right Way. SQL for #1 might be (Oracle):               UPDATE MONKEY SET          MONKEY_DATE = TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_DATE, 'MM/DD/YYYY ') ||                            TO_CHAR(MONKEY_TIME, 'HH24:MI:SS'),                            'MM/DD/YYYY HH24:MI:SS')         MONKEY_TIME = TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_DATE, 'MM/DD/YYYY ') ||                            TO_CHAR(MONKEY_TIME, 'HH24:MI:SS'),                            'MM/DD/YYYY HH24:MI:SS')      **The Question** My questions to you are:   * Should these fields be merged?   * Is my approach reasonable to merge these two columns?   * Do you think it would be better to skip steps two and three?   * Do you have any other (constructive) comments or suggestions? **Examples** For example, to select all my monkey dates and times and order them by date and time, I need to do something like this (SQL Server):               SELECT            CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR, MONKEY_DATE, 101), 101) AS MONKEY_DATE         , CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR, MONKEY_TIME, 108), 108) AS MONKEY_TIME      FROM MONKEY      ORDER BY           CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR, MONKEY_DATE, 101), 101) DESC         , CONVERT(DATETIME, CONVERT(VARCHAR, MONKEY_TIME, 108), 108) DESC      or this (Oracle - slightly more explicit):               SELECT           TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_DATE, 'MM/DD/YYYY'), 'MM/DD/YYYY') AS MONKEY_DATE         , TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_TIME, 'HH24:MI:SS'), 'HH24:MI:SS') AS MONKEY_TIME     FROM MONKEY     ORDER BY           TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_DATE, 'MM/DD/YYYY'), 'MM/DD/YYYY') DESC         , TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_TIME, 'HH24:MI:SS'), 'HH24:MI:SS') DESC      I also often find myself selecting a merged date/time column (Oracle):               SELECT          TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(MONKEY_DATE, 'MM/DD/YYYY ') ||                  TO_CHAR(MONKEY_TIME, 'HH24:MI:SS'),              'MM/DD/YYYY HH24:MI:SS') AS MONKEY_DATE_TIME      FROM MONKEY      Because, almost all the time, we want to know the date and time of the monkey. The above SQL could be easily altered to:               SELECT MONKEY_DATE_TIME FROM MONKEY ORDER BY MONKEY_DATE_TIME      ... If only we had merged columns. **Background** I've inherited an old ASP system that stores dates and times in separate columns in the database. I've been told this is probably because the application started out in an early version of Access, where it was not possible to store both date and time in the same column. The whys and hows aren't really part of this question, but some people like to know. **P.S.** I really nearly posted this in SO.SE, so my apologies if I got the wrong site."}
{"_id": "53254", "title": "Geographically limited / gradual release process", "text": "I am looking for more information on a **gradual release process** \\- that is when you release new version of a software only to certain set of end users, mostly geographically limited (or limited by a reach of particular server). Google seems to be blind to this term - that indicates that's not how it's called. What's the name then? EDIT: An example of what I mean is when Facebook rolled out new image galleries they were first visible to certain users only, then to whole US and then to the rest of the world."}
{"_id": "118293", "title": "(Dis-)advantages of structural typing", "text": "I\u2019ve just watched this talk by Daniel Spiewak where he talks about the advantages of _structural typing_ as compared to Scala\u2019s ans Java\u2019s _nominal typing_. One example for this difference would be the following Java code               public interface Foo {       public int length();     }     public interface Bar {       public int length();     }          Foo f = ...;     Bar b = f;      which of course would not compile because type compatibility between `Foo` and `Bar` is determined by name. A structural type system on the other hand could declare both types being equal or compatible and thus, amongst other things, allow for checked duck typing. Now I think I do understand most of the advantages of a structural type system but I wonder if it would not invalidate type safety from examples like the following               class Foo {       class Bar { /* ... */ }       def takeBar(b: Bar) = { /* ... */ }       def getBar: Bar = new Bar     }          val foo1 = new Foo     val foo2 = new Foo     foo1.takeBar(foo1.getBar) // should compile     foo1.takeBar(foo2.getBar) // should not compile      Is my understanding correct that in a structural type system the last line would compile as well and if so, wouldn\u2019t this be a disadvantage with respect to type safety?"}
{"_id": "223988", "title": "Dynamic initialization, how does it work?", "text": "I have a question regarding dynamic initialization. Example code               void main()     {     int a = 100;     //Statement1     //Statement2     ...     float b = 6.32987; //StatementA     ...     return;     }      The `StatementA` allocates memory at the middle execution of program. How does process takes place and where does space gets allocated for variable `b` (stack or heap)?"}
{"_id": "147248", "title": "FSM drawing tool with export to XMI", "text": "I'm searching for good tool that will allow me to draw Finite State Machine and then export it into XMI file so I could easily read it into my program. Could somebody propose something?"}
{"_id": "37909", "title": "License question, what happens to a piece of source code when its owner passes away", "text": "I am using a piece of free source code in one of my projects. The source code was written in the 1990s and is available from a website that says the code may be modified and distributed freely. The source files contain no License indication but they have a \"Copyright All Rights Reserved\" comment. This morning I started to realize that I may have a License problem because my project is published under the GNU General Public License so I tried to contact the owner of the source code. Unfortunately the owner passed away and thus his company ceased work. What happens to the source code, is its Copyright sill valid, does it have an owner???"}
{"_id": "223983", "title": "storing and retrieving millions of documents using c#", "text": "I am working on an integration project, where my \u201capp/web service\u201d will sit in the middle serving documents. Basically, a request is sent with the document id as part of the query string, I check if it exists and if it does, write the document (pdf) back to the response. Now, this is very simple to do and we have done this many times. This is where it gets very tricky, there will be about 5200 new files added each week, that\u2019s 3GB per week (so about 150GB of data per year). We are expected to keep 10 years of data. What is the best way of storing these documents and searching has to be very quick. Some options are: If I choose to save all these files on a network share, initially it will be quick but over time it is going to be very slow. If I choose SQL to store these files, I can\u2019t really store all documents in a single table or utilize table partitioning, DB partitioning etc. If I go with DB partitioning that\u2019s still 150GB DB file each year to backup and restore. I was thinking implementing RBS for MS SQL but not sure how quick this is going to be. Any suggestions or other options I might have....?"}
{"_id": "223980", "title": "Should JavaScript and PHP objects be treated as different objects in an interaction diagram?", "text": "I'm drawing a communication diagram for an application where you can buy books. I'm using domain-driven design and have a 'shop' object, a 'cart' object, and a 'book' object. My **first communication diagram** , for when the user first comes to the site, is **straightforward**. I generate all HTML (to show all books and an empty cart) back end with the help of PHP. I use an MVC pattern; so first I send a message to a 'controller' which creates a 'shop' with 'book's and an empty 'cart' before sending these to the view. My **second communication diagram** is where I run into **problem** : It is about adding a book from the shop to the cart. I already have all the information I need to add the book to the 'cart' on the client side; since all book information is already in the shop. So when writing the communication diagram, should my first message, that is, AddBookToCart(bookId:int), be to a JavaScript object called 'shop' which gets the book info and send a message 'AddBookToCart(bookinfo:object) to 'cart' which in turn update the page? I have never done communication diagrams with JavaScript in mind before, so I'm really confused about how to deal with the front end. (I have been searching for over five hours, but I didn't find anything on this topic. It's like it's not even an issue to people. Am I viewing this problem completely wrong? Otherwise any resources, or even search terms to use to learn about how to model (and code) these kind of things would be much appreciated)"}
{"_id": "37905", "title": "What is the best plugin for Eclipse to work with GitHub?", "text": "What is the best plugin for Eclipse to work with GitHub? What does it do well? What does it do not so well? And how do you work around them?"}
{"_id": "76151", "title": "Functional Programming in Commercial Software", "text": "I was recently discussing functional programming with a co-worker. While the two of us both agreed that FP has some obvious benefits (simpler code, easier to reason about mathematically, etc.), we both wondered whether or not it is or will ever be used in commerical software. I know there are a number of open source and academic projects that are written functionally (e.g. I've seen this question on Stack Overflow) but I'm wondering if anyone can list some other commercial software that is written, at least in part, in a functional language (and what language)."}
{"_id": "113763", "title": "Which problems domains are more suited  to functional programming solutions", "text": "Which problems domains are more suited to functional programming solutions and why? Can anyone provide any examples? **EDIT** Just to clarify, I'm not asking for a list of problems. I want to know what **type** of problems are best suited to functional solutions. For example I have heard financial problems are solved well with functional programming."}
{"_id": "117276", "title": "Example of where Functional Programming is Superior to Imperative or Object-Oriented Programming?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Which problems domains are more suited to functional programming solutions I've been reading about functional programming. I've been using mostly C#.net recently, and I would like to know of a good real-world example of where a functional language such as Lisp or F# would be a clearly superior tool for getting a job done."}
{"_id": "48174", "title": "How can I improve my communication skills?", "text": "Jeff Atwood suggests that becoming a great programmer takes serious communication skills. What are the suggested ways for a programmer to develop his communication skills?"}
{"_id": "20427", "title": "I have only two languages on my resume - how bad is this?", "text": "I have a question that can be best answered here, given the vast experience some of you guys have! I am going to finish my bachelor's degree in CS and let's face it, I am just comfortable with C++ and Python. C++ - I have no experience to show for and I can't quote the C++ standard like some of the guys on SO do but yet I am comfortable with the language basics and the stuff that mostly matters. With Python, I have demonstrated work experience with a good company, so I can safely put that. I have never touched C, though I have been meaning to do it now. So I cannot write C on my resume because I have not done it ever. Sure I can finish K & R and get a sense of the language in a month, but I don't feel like writing it cause that would be being unfaithful to myself. So the big question is, are two languages on a a resume considered OK or that is usually a bad sign? Most resumes I have seen mention lots of languages and hence my question. Under the language section of my resume, I just mention: C++ and Python and that kinda looks empty! What are your views on this and what do you feel about such a situation? PS: I really don't want to write every single library or API I am familiar with. Or should I?"}
{"_id": "152580", "title": "What is an \"ontology\" in the context of the Semantic Web?", "text": "Okay, I have been learning SPARQL to query dbpedia and I can't seem to find clear and practical tutorials related to SPARQL and the Semantic Web. If I say that an ontology is analogous to an SQL table definition or maybe a specification of an object's members should I be slapped?"}
{"_id": "91106", "title": "Help me in choosing appropriate pattern", "text": "From last one week i was searching for most suitable architecture for a **new web application**. To be honest i did web development for only 1 year (back in 2007). And from last four years i am working in C++. Now, suddenly i am assigned a task to search for best architecture for a new web application. During my search i cam across following 3 options:   * Model View Controller   * Model view Presenter   * 3 Tier Archi (Presentation layer <\\--> BLL <\\--> DAL) # What we are going to Develop We are targeting towards the development of a social web application like facebook, twitter etc. Once we have launched the web version then we move towards the **mobile edition** of same application # What we will use We will use ASP.net and C# under framework 4.0 # Why I Post Question? To be honest, i don't have experience either in web development or mobile application development, so the major purpose of posting this question is to get hep from some experienced developers/architects. # My Question: I am looking for such an architecture that first allow me to start with web version and then allow me to provide mobile edition with less effort. With less effort i mean to say that I only want to develop two UI Layer two times (One for web and one for Mobile). I want my Business logic and data access layers remain same for both UI layers. Please help me in chossing appropriate pattern for above application. # What i did so far at my own? I read all above 3 architectural patterns in details and have basic understanding of all three but still unable to choose appropriate pattern for me, secondly i didn't find any more patterns so if there are some more please share their names only"}
{"_id": "222051", "title": "How is indirection different from aliasing?", "text": "Take from wikipedia, aliasing is defined as accessing a data location through different names. Also taken from wikipedia, indirection is defined as referencing something \"using a name, reference, or container instead of the value itself\". Am I missing something here - Are these two one and the same? If not, how are they different?"}
{"_id": "62611", "title": "Should I learn a web framework(python)?", "text": "I'm learning Python, and I wanted to advance my skills a bit further so I decided to learn django, then moved on to Flask before realizing that I was having difficulties understanding the very concept of web-frameworks. I don't have any ideas for a website yet so do you still advise me to continue learning a web framework?"}
{"_id": "222058", "title": "Sentence Tree v/s Words List", "text": "I was recently tasked with building a Name Entity Recognizer as part of a project. The objective was to parse a given sentence and come up with all the possible combinations of the entities. One approach that was suggested was to keep a lookup table for all the know connector words like articles and conjunctions, remove them from the words list after splitting the sentence on the basis of the spaces. This would leave out the Name Entities in the sentence. A lookup is then done for these identified entities on another lookup table that associates them to the entity type, for example if the sentence was: `Remember the Titans was a movie directed by Boaz Yakin`, the possible outputs would be: >   >  {Remember the Titans,Movie} was {a movie,Movie} directed by {Boaz > Yakin,director}   >  {Remember the Titans,Movie} was a movie directed by Boaz Yakin   >  {Remember the Titans,Movie} was {a movie,Movie} directed by Boaz Yakin   >  {Remember the Titans,Movie} was a movie directed by {Boaz Yakin,director}   >  Remember the Titans was {a movie,Movie} directed by Boaz Yakin   >  Remember the Titans was {a movie,Movie} directed by {Boaz Yakin,director}   >  Remember the Titans was a movie directed by {Boaz Yakin,director}   >  Remember the {the titans,Movie,Sports Team} was {a movie,Movie} directed by > {Boaz Yakin,director}   >  Remember the {the titans,Movie,Sports Team} was a movie directed by Boaz > Yakin   >  Remember the {the titans,Movie,Sports Team} was {a movie,Movie} directed by > Boaz Yakin   >  Remember the {the titans,Movie,Sports Team} was a movie directed by {Boaz > Yakin,director}   > The entity lookup table here would contain the following data:   > Remember the Titans=>Movie   >  a movie=>Movie   >  Boaz Yakin=>director   >  the Titans=>Movie   >  the Titans=>Sports Team   > Another alternative logic that was put forward was to build a crude sentence tree that would contain the connector words in the lookup table as parent nodes and do a lookup in the entity table for the leaf node that might contain the entities. The tree that was built for the sentence above would be: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/TJw5M.png) The question I am faced with is the benefits of the two approaches, should I be going for the tree approach to represent the sentence parsing, since it provides a more semantic structure? Is there a better approach I should be going for solving it?"}
{"_id": "67065", "title": "What's your favorite bit-wise technique?", "text": "A few days ago, StackExchange member Anto inquired about valid uses for bit- wise operators. I stated that shifting was faster than multiplying and dividing integers by powers of two. StackExchange member Daemin countered by stating that right-shifting presented problems with negative numbers. At that point, I had never really thought about using the shift operators with signed integers. I primarily used this technique in low-level software development; therefore, I always used unsigned integers. C performs logical shifts on unsigned integers. No attention is paid to the sign bit when performing a logical shift right. Vacated bits are filled with zeros. However, C performs an arithmetic shift operation when shifting a signed integer right. Vacated bits are filled with the sign bit. This difference causes a negative value to be rounded toward infinity instead of being truncated toward zero, which is a different behavior than signed integer division. A few minutes of thought resulted in a first-order solution. The solution conditionally converts negative values to positive values before shifting. A value is conditionally converted back to its negative form after the shift operation has been performed.               int a = -5;     int n = 1;          int negative = q < 0;           a = negative ? -a : a;      a >>= n;      a = negative ? -a : a;       The problem with this solution is that conditional assignment statements are usually translated to at least one jump instruction, and jump instructions can be expensive on processors that do not decode both instruction paths. Having to re-prime an instruction pipeline twice makes a good dent in any performance gain obtained by shifting over dividing. With the above said, I woke up on Saturday with the answer to the conditional assignment problem. The rounding problem that we experience when performing an arithmetic shift operation only occurs when working with two's complement representation. It does not occur with one's complement representation. The solution to the problem involves converting a two's complement value to a one's complement value before performing the shift operation. We then have to convert the one's complement value back to a two's complement value. Surprisingly, we can perform this set of operations without conditionally converting negative values before performing the shift operation.               int a = -5;     int n = 1;          register int sign = (a >> INT_SIZE_MINUS_1) & 1          a = (a - sign) >> n + sign;         A two's complement negative value is converted to a one's complement negative value by subtracting one. On the flip side, a one's complement negative value is converted to a two's complement negative value by adding one. The code listed above works because the sign bit is used to convert from two's complement to one's complement and _vice versa_. Only negative values will have their sign bits set; therefore, the variable **_sign_** will equal zero when **_a_** is positive. With the above said, can you think of other bit-wise hacks like the one above that have made it into your bag of tricks? What is your favorite bit-wise hack? I am always looking for new performance-oriented bit-wise hacks."}
{"_id": "99475", "title": "How can I give a good presentation to important, non-technical stakeholders?", "text": "At the end of the month, I have to give a presentation on a software project that I've been working on by myself that will basically decide whether or not I will get a full-time job at the company I'm a temporary hire for now. I will be giving my presentation to the president of our department, and two VP's. The president has less programming knowledge than the other two VP's and is ultimately the person I need to impress. What are the most important things I need to convey in the presentation? I've already been told by my manager to emphasize the following things:   1. I am steering this project in the right direction and am in full control of everything.   2. I am completing this project on schedule. What other things should I focus on during my presentation to make myself appear as hire-worthy as possible? I'm thinking of highlighting the efforts I'm making on a design level to reduce risk and uncertainty in the software (two things I imagine are very important to the higher-ups). One thing I'm particularly worried about is finding the right balance between technical and non-technical details in the presentation. If I don't include any technical details, the president of our department won't know about all of the \"under the hood\" features that are in the software, but if I'm too technical, he might get lost and not understand important points in the presentation. Any tips would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "115748", "title": "Learning Python from Beginner to Advanced level", "text": "I have some problems in my hand and would like to resolve them by myself (rather than hiring some professional, obviously due to cash problem!):   1. build a really good website (planning to set-up my own start-up).   2. build some good software (preferrably with exe installation files) on many mathematical and statistical techniques. To accomplish those tasks, is it worth to learn Python in advance level? I have advanced programming experiences with R and Matlab and VBA (and some sort of C), however not anything on Python. Be very grateful if experts put some guidance here. Thanks for your time."}
{"_id": "99470", "title": "Which database paradigm is suggested for a site with search capabilities?", "text": "Currently I'm trying to select the best DB paradigm to implement a web site with _full-text search_ and _faceted search_ capabilities. I have an important functional requirement: **The database paradigm should support strong conceptual schema modifications during every part of software lifetime.** As a example, our business can pose an extra data item over a registry that should be taken into account in any search. If we use a relational paradigm, this modification requires to alter the database schema (by adding or deleting rows and modifying foreign keys etc.). Obviously, this can lead to maintainability unwanted issues.   1. Should we use a document based DB? (i.e. an XML database)   2. This problem can be treated as a purely relational conceptual schema design challenge? (i.e. we could design the relational DB having in mind the stated constraint)   3. Do you think that this problem should be treated using a specific paradigm?"}
{"_id": "115744", "title": "Algorithm analysis refresher help", "text": "I haven't touched algorithm complexity stuff in quite a while, so I am trying to do a refresher. I am trying to figure out the number of steps in the following for loop.               for(i = 0; i < n; i++){         //code         for(j = i + 1; j < n; j++){            //code         }       }        The inner loop will be executed ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fsIDr.jpg) times   I mean t times for each value of j. Right? In the worst case tj will be equal to n-i. Since it will run for n-(i+1)-1 times. Well is my approach on this analysis correct?"}
{"_id": "186154", "title": "Possible with PHP MVC Framework? A better solution to client 'override' of core functionality?", "text": "**Background / The Problem** I need to make a (large) application with a certain set of _core_ functionality, and certain functionality for multiple _clients_ within it. Each client has _different_ requirements and while they may share some functionality, I need to separate the code for each client, so a change to one won't affect others. Each client section of the application should also inherit some features from the core application. Ideally I would like to separate the databases for each client too. In terms of a user system, _core_ users should be able to have access to each client's functionality, but _client_ users should only be able to interact with their specific client section of the site. **Current Solution** Each client has its own subdomain and the MVC can override the core's MVC files IF they exist. In a nutshell, my custom MVC's autoloader checks the client directory for the matching M,V, or C file when a subdomain is present in the URL and loads that particular client's file INSTEAD OF the core file. It's an override ability in a sense. **Questions**   1. Am I solving this problem in a way that would be considered good practice in terms of software design?   2. If I were to use an existing PHP Framework (I would like to), how might I go about setting it up to solve this problem? Specifically I have been looking at Yii and CodeIgniter. Thanks in advance! **Update:** I have discovered a design pattern called HMVC (Hierarchical MVC) and it seems to be essentially what I have described. I see that Kohana 3 is built using it and that Codeigniter has an extension that allows it."}
{"_id": "137129", "title": "python login form vulnerability?", "text": "<HTML>     <HEAD><TITLE>Login Page</TITLE></HEAD>     <BODY>     <CENTER>     <FORM method=\"POST\" action=\"http://yourserver/cgi-bin/login.py\">     <paragraph> Enter your login name: <input type=\"text\" name=\"login\">     <paragraph> Enter your password: <input type=password name=\"password\">     <paragraph> <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Connect\">     </FORM>     </CENTER>     <HR>          </form>     </BODY>     </HTML>      login.py:               #!/usr/local/bin/python     import cgi          def header(title):        print \"Content-type: text/html\\n\"        print \"<HTML>\\n<HEAD>\\n<TITLE>%s</TITLE>\\n</HEAD>\\n<BODY>\\n\" % (title)          def footer():        print \"</BODY></HTML>\"          form = cgi.FieldStorage()     password = \"python\"          if not form:        header(\"Login Response\")     elif form.has_key(\"login\") and form[\"login\"].value != \"\" and form.has_key(\"password\")       and form[\"password\"].value == password:     header(\"Connected ...\" )        print \"<center><hr><H3>Welcome back,\" , form[\"login\"].value, \".</H3><hr></center>\"        print r\"\"\"<form><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"session\" value=\"%s\"></form>\"\"\" % (form[\"login\"].value)        print \"<H3><a href=browse.html>Click here to start browsing</a></H3>\"          else:        header(\"No success!\")        print \"<H3>Please go back and enter a valid login.</H3>\"          footer()      I would like to make this login form vulnerable to RCE (remote code execution), is this possible with the function `eval()` or `exec()`. I am looking for functions that introduce a vulnerability within the login form. Are there whole classes/modules that contain dangerous functionally? Also would it be possible to make this login form vulnerable to remote code execution?"}
{"_id": "216690", "title": "What layer to introduce human readable error messages?", "text": "One of the things that I have never been happy with on any project I have worked on over the years and have really not been able to resolve myself is exactly at what tier in an application should human readable error information be retrieved for display to a user. A common approach that has worked well has been to return strongly typed/concrete \"result objects\" from the methods on the public surface of the business tier/API. A method on the interface may be:               public ClearUserAccountsResult ClearUserAccounts(ClearUserAccountsParam param);      And the result class implementation:               public class ClearUserAccountsResult : IResult     {         public readonly List<Account> ClearedAccounts{get; set;}              public readonly bool Success {get; set;}    // Implements IResult         public readonly string Message{get; set;}   // Implements IResult, human readable              // Constructor implemented here to set readonly properties...     }      This works great when the API needs to be exposed over WCF as the result object can be serialized. Again this is only done on the public surface of the API/business tier. The error message can also be looked up from the database, which means it can be changed and localized. However, it has always been suspect to me, this idea of returning human readable information from the business tier like this, partly because what constitutes the public surface of the API may change over time...and it may be the case that the API will need to be reused by other API components in the future that do not need the human readable string messages (and looking them up from a database would be an expensive waste). I am thinking a better approach is to keep the business objects free from such result objects and keep them simple and then retrieve human readable error strings somewhere closer to the UI layer or only in the UI itself, but I have two problems here: 1) The UI may be a remote client (Winforms/WPF/Silverlight) or an ASP.NET web application hosted on another server. In these cases the UI will have to fetch the error strings from the server. 2) Often there are multiple legitimate modes of failure. If the business tier becomes so vague and generic in the way it returns errors there may not be enough information exposed publicly to tell what the error actually was: i.e: if a method has 3 modes of legitimate failure but returns a boolean to indicate failure, you cannot work out what the appropriate message to display to the user should be. I have thought about using failure enums as a substitute, they can indicate a specific error that can be tested for and coded against. This is sometimes useful within the business tier itself as a way of passing via method returns the specifics of a failure rather than just a boolean, but it is not so good for serialization scenarios. Is there a well worn pattern for this? What do people think? Thanks."}
{"_id": "137123", "title": "Coding Guideline : Methods shouldn't contain more than 7 statements?", "text": "I was looking through the AvSol Coding Guidelines for C# and I agree with nearly everything but I'm really curious to see what other think of one specific rule. > AV1500 > > Methods should not exceed 7 statements A method that requires more than 7 > statements is doing too much, or has too many responsibilities. It also > requires the human mind to analyze the exact statements to understand what > the code is doing. Break it down in multiple small and focused methods with > self-explaining names. Do most of you follow this rule? Even if there's little to be saved from creating a new method (Your code is still DRY) aside from greatly increasing readability? And is your number still as low as 7? I would tend more toward 10. I'm not saying I violate this rule all over the place--on the contrary, my methods are 95% small and focused but saying you should never violate this rule really blew me away. I really just want to know what everyone thinks of NEVER violating this rule (It's a '1' on the coding standard--meaning NEVER do this). But I think you'd have trouble finding a codebase that doesn't."}
{"_id": "147799", "title": "Wrong use of CSS3 Animations or not?", "text": "Well, I started using some CSS3 animations a couple of days ago. After hardcoding I've started trying different tools like Adobe Edge Preview version. I made a short animation to get the functionality of the tool http://things.eyemade.ch/css3edge/ After that someone at Twitter took a look at it and said that it is wrong using divs to paint things like these. But I'm not sure about that. Things changed over the last years and if we keep in mind this stuff is going to be used in many web/mobile games, is it really wrong to use divs this way nowadays?"}
{"_id": "142549", "title": "How to \"translate\" interdependent object states in code?", "text": "I have the following problem. My UI interace contains several buttons, labels, and other visual information. I am able to describe every possible workflow scenario that should be be allowed on that UI. That means I can describe it like this - when button A is pressed, the following should follow -> In the case of that A button, there are three independent factors that influence the possible result when pushing the A button. The state of the session (blank, single, multi, multi special), the actual work that is being done by the system at the moment of pressing the A button (nothing was happening, work was being done, work was paused) and a separate UI element that has two states (on , off)..This gives me a 3 dimensional cube with 24 possible outcomes. I could write code for this using if cycles, switch cycles etc....but the problem is, I have another 7 buttons on that ui, I can enter this UI from different states..some buttons change the state, some change parameters... To sum up, the combinations are mindbogling and I am not able come up with a methodology that scales and is systematically reliable. I am able to describe EVERY workflow with words, I am sure my description is complete and without logical errors. But I am not able to translate that into code. I was trying to draw flowcharts but it soon became visually too complicated due to too many if \"emafors\". Can you advice how to proceeed?"}
{"_id": "74020", "title": "What have you seen go wrong when introducing SCRUM?", "text": "What was the single point of failure encountered when your company decided to replace the current processes with SCRUM? Can you give me some examples of things that have gone really wrong when a company tried to introduce SCRUM? I'd like to hear your anecdotes, something you experienced yourself, the big _fail_ that you saw coming but couldn't prevent. I hear a lot of concern about **missing documentation on decisions** about the implementation details, and about **story sizes** and **detail level** of the stories."}
{"_id": "136658", "title": "Terminology - Cache (Javascript)", "text": "I have watched a couple videos on JS where the presenter mentioned \"caching\" a variable but I didn't see them do anything in the code that would \"cache\" it beyond normal assignments. When i think of cache i think of something stored in local memory in which case aren't all js variables cached by definition. When you cache a variable in javascript what or you \"doing\" to it? EDIT: I have heard the term in several but the only one that comes to mind is Writing Modular Javascript - Tutorial. Which i just watched last night. I didn't post it because you have to pay to view and I hate feeling liking i am plugging a pay service on stackexchange."}
{"_id": "157842", "title": "Every SQL statement has to be reviewed by a DBA -- common?", "text": "I mean everything, not just schema changes. Even a simple SELECT on a primary key can't go into production, even though it has been code-reviewed by other developers (in context), without a DBA review of every statement, extracted from the code and submitted with EXPLAIN output, details of how often it will be called, etc, etc. If you've been in such an environment, did you find it to be a net gain, or a drag on development? As someone who has been working with relational databases for years, I find the \"developers can't be trusted to use databases\" attitude unwarranted, and I'm curious as to how common this situation is. For what it's worth, this is just for web development, not something critical."}
{"_id": "132576", "title": "How to Determine # of Programmers needed for a project", "text": "How do you know how many programmers a particular project needs to be successful? The company I work for fulfills orders for client companies. We have written an in-house warehouse management system that handles location based inventory management, order processing, bill-of-lading generation, invoicing, freight auditing and reporting (probably 50 reports). It also has barcode scanning functions and a client portal along with dozens of other smaller features. It also includes a full employee timeclock. It integrates with Quickbooks, UPS and FedEx. It handles work for at least 50 clients all differing slightly in their functionality. For example, we import orders from files the customers send but each customer sends a different file format (csv, excel, flat file and web services) so we have well over a dozen order conversion methods setup. Exports are the same story. The project is complex and growing in complexity every day with over a quarter million lines of code. It's about 250,000 lines of VB.NET code, 6,200 lines of Ruby code and maybe 5,000 lines of PHP. It also has a MySQL database with about 200 tables. Because of the constantly changing requirements and differing needs of dozens of clients the code itself varies greatly in the quality from extremely poor to relatively good code. Currently, this project has only a single programmer - myself. I also currently do all the product support for our company of 75 people or so. That includes troubleshooting and setting up new clients and any new features that are needed. Plus, we're trying to rewrite the whole thing to be 100% Ruby on Rails based. And we would like to market the whole system within the next year or so to be used by other companies. Currently, we have only myself as a programmer but I don't believe that is sufficient. Does anyone have any recommendations for how many programmers a project of this magnitude should have or how we should go about determining the answer to that question? Particularly given the fact that management would like the product to be commercial quality by next year?"}
{"_id": "147796", "title": "How does a website latency simulator work", "text": "Sites like webpagetest allow users to enter a website url and a test location, to run a speed test on the site from multiple locations using real browsers. Can anyone give me a basic idea of how sites like this work? You also have plugin's like Aptimize latency simulator or charles web debugging proxy app, that simulate the delay while accessing a site from different locations. I am assuming since these are plugin's these function in a different way. How do these plugin's work ?"}
{"_id": "142545", "title": "Time Tracking - Best method?", "text": "I'm looking to track the time it takes users to traverse through a few forms I have on a website. My old thought was to use something like jQuery to poll the server updating the time spent on a page, but it appears this would be incredibly resource intensive. Recently I've been reading about sockets.io and node.js. It seems like the connection and disconnection methods might be a perfect way to track time. Before I dive into learning all about sockets etc, is there a better way for doing this? I know I could do this server side, but it'll fall over if someone abandon's the site entirely midway through the process, and with sockets I could even track down to the length of time spent on each form field if I wanted."}
{"_id": "186487", "title": "Possible Designs for code block editor", "text": "I have started a project where I need to design an application that will work as a code-block editor, much like lego mindstorms and this google project. http://code.google.com/p/blockly/ What are the possible approaches for designing such an application in Java? More specifically, assuming I have one block A, how can I define which other blocks can be connected with it? What I think of is using subclasses and checking the hierarchy, or another possible solution could be some kind of 2D table that will verify a connection is valid(although I think it might get too big?). p.s: I need to force correct structure of code, and not check it with parser at the end. So only blocks that fit together should be connected."}
{"_id": "186484", "title": "Terminology: Really Delete vs set IsDeleted (\"soft delete\") flag", "text": "I have a site where a regular user can delete records, where what happens is that an `IsDeleted` flag gets set. On administrative pages, a privileged user can delete records where an actual SQL `DELETE` permanently discards such records. The difference is important for obvious reasons, and I want to use a consistent term to refer to the one form of deletion vs. the other. I've been playing with the words `Remove`, `Delete`, `Discard` and possibly `Recycle`, and `Archive`. My question is: are there standard user-facing terms that distinguish these two behaviors?"}
{"_id": "186483", "title": "Erlang/Haskell web service to server files", "text": "I have across a thread mentioning that Erlang would not be suited for a web application serving files. I was curious whether anyone had any experience building such webservice with erlang? Would Haskell be more suited for this, if so how ?"}
{"_id": "143490", "title": "Motivation Problems, Middle School Programmer", "text": "I'm in middle school at the moment and have been programming for about a year and a half. I mostly work with Python and Ruby, and am currently learning Rails. I know, you can never learn enough, it takes a looong time to master a subject, but I feel like I don't have much left to learn :(. I've learned many concepts in Python, learned basically the whole std lib and have written a ton of programs, same with Ruby. In Ruby I've also done a lot of metaprogramming. After I've learned all the concepts, and written a lot of programs, there is nothing really left for me to do! What can I do, now that I've learned all the concepts, and written some programs? I can't get a job working with real developers, and the programming camp I went to last year was far too easy."}
{"_id": "106572", "title": "Pass in single settings object vs multiple setter methods?", "text": "Working with C++. Suppose I have a class BoxFilter. The class is used to filter boxes which have properties such as height, width, depth, weight, etc. The filter might have something like MaxWidth so that boxes with a width greater than MaxWidth would not pass the filter. Usage would be something like (C#-style pseudocode):               IBoxFilter filter = new BoxFilter();          foreach(Box box in boxes)     {       if(filter.PassesFilter(box))       {          // do something         }     }      (sorry for the C# example but I think it's easier to understand) In setting up the filter object I need to configure the settings of the filter. The filter currently has 7 properties although it could get more over time. I'm debating whether the filter class should have multiple setters such as SetWidthMax(), SetWidthMinimum(), SetHeightMax(), SetHeightMinimum(), etc or should I create a BoxFilterSettings object/struct and then have a single method on the box filter class called SetSettings(BoxFilterSettings settings)?"}
{"_id": "109561", "title": "What should I be using to store data in a legacy web development project?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that uses a Webserver running in Windows CE 6.0. Since this server only supports classic ASP (i.e, no PHP, ASP.NET, etc.)/ I plan to use XML as the database. Is this the best approach, or there is an easier way to do this, taking in consideration that I'm used to work in C and not high level languages?"}
{"_id": "106576", "title": "How important is it to be syntactically correct during an interview?", "text": "When asking an interview candidate to write a program on the whiteboard, do you expect the candidate to write code that is syntactically correct? I had two candidates, one of which wrote a syntactically correct program but the logic was not up to the mark, and the other had the logic better written but the syntax was crap. I favor the first candidate."}
{"_id": "186489", "title": "Where to find the source code for the Linux command line functions", "text": "I would like to study the source code of the standard command line functions in Linux such as ls, echo, cat, etc. But I have been unable to find the source code (a Google search was useless). Does someone know where it's available? I know it's a naive question but I really can't find this source code."}
{"_id": "216524", "title": "How to enable a Web portal-based rich enterprise platform on different domains and hosts using JS without customization/ server configuration", "text": "Our company Coscend has built a Web portal-based communications and cloud collaboration platform by using JavaScript (JS), which is embedded in HTML5 and formatted with CSS3. Other technologies used in the core code include Flash, Flex, PostgreSQL and MySQL. Our team would like to host this platform on five different Windows and Linux environments that run different types of Web servers such as IIS and Apache. Technical challenge: Each of these Windows and Linux servers have a different host name and domain name (and IP address), but we would like to keep our enterprise platform independent of host server configuration. Possible approach to solution: We think an API (interface module with a GUI) is needed to accomplish this level of modularity and flexibility while deploying at our enterprise customers. Seeking your insights: In this context, our team would appreciate your guidance on:   1. Is there an algorithmic method to implement this Web portal-based platform in these Windows and Linux environments while separating it from server configuration, i.e., customizing the host name, domain name and IP address for each individual instance?   2. For example, would it be suitable to create some JS variables / objects for host name and domain name and call them in the different implementations? If a reference to the host/domain names occurs on hundreds of portal modules, these variables or JS objects would replace that.   3. If so, what is the best way to make these object modules written in JS portable and re-usable across different environments and instances for enterprise customers? Here is an example of the implemented code for the said platform. The following Web site (www.CoscendCommunications.com) was built using this enterprise collaboration platform and has the base code examples of the platform. This Web site is domain-specific. We like to make the underlying platform such that it is domain and host-independent. This will allow the underlying platform to be deployed in multiple instances of our enterprise customers."}
{"_id": "67390", "title": "Business programmer or a systems programmer", "text": "What is the fundamental difference between working as a business programmer or a systems programmer. An example of a business programmer to me would be someone that works in finance or insurance. What types of jobs would a systems programmer be?"}
{"_id": "216527", "title": "Cleaning a dataset of song data - what sort of problem is this?", "text": "I have a set of data about songs. Each entry is a line of text which includes the artist name, song title, and some extra text. Some entries are only \"extra text\". My goal is to resolve as many entries as possible to songs on Spotify using their web API. My strategy so far has been to search for the entry via the API - if there are no results, apply a transformation such as \"remove all text between ( )\" and search again. I have a list of heuristics and I've had reasonable success with this but as the code gets more and more convoluted I keep thinking there must be a more generic and consistent way. I don't know where to look - any suggestions for what to try, topics to study, buzzwords to google?"}
{"_id": "216522", "title": "Permission Management Algorithm", "text": "I have 3 levels of permission to see the product:   * `Brand` -> Allow/Deny   * `Category` -> Allow/Deny   * `Product` -> Allow/Deny For example, product A has:   * Category: Allow   * Product: Deny => product A cannot be seen because product A isn't allowed in `Product` level.               if(allowForCategory == true) {         if(allowForProduct == false) return false;         if(allowForProduct == true) return true;     } else {         ...     }      This is not a good choice because it will become more complex if we add brand level.               if() {         if() {             if() {}         }     }      So is there any general algorithm to deal with the permission problem just like `777` solution in Linux?"}
{"_id": "216523", "title": "What's the reason exceptions are heavily used in managed (C# and Java) languages but not in C++?", "text": "AFAIK, a lot of C++ projects don't allow exceptions and deny them in coding guidelines. I have a lot of reasons, for example, exception is hard to handle correctly if your binary needs to be compiled by separate and different compilers. But it doesn't fully convince me, there is a lot of projects which are just using one compiler. Compared to C++, exceptions are heavily used in C# and Java and the reason can only be that exception are not bringing enough benefit. One point is _debugbility_ in practice. Exception can not get the call stack in C++ code, but in C# and Java you can get the call stack from exception, it is significant and makes debugging easier. No-callstack is not the fault of the exception, it is the language difference, but it impacts the exception usage. So what's the reason that exceptions are frowned upon in c++ programs?"}
{"_id": "29026", "title": "what web system is the best to accommodate very high simultaneous web traffic?", "text": "Can PHP/mySQL handle 1,000,000 unique users onlinie at the same time? Or should we use a more powerful system like Zend? Or does it depend more on the web hosting systems like load balancing, etc?"}
{"_id": "79673", "title": "What are some good tests for OO modeling skills?", "text": "I'm looking for simple models with concise, concrete problem descriptions and greater than 50% chance that a particular answer provides a particular insight into one of a number of skills, to be given to prospective candidates for hire for a software engineering position. The coffee maker problem, for example, does not lend itself to a quick, in-office test taking scenario. Variations of shape, appliance, vehicle, coin or Lego\u2122 management systems would probably be good. Desired skills are primarily understanding of:   1. When to use inheritance vs. composition   2. When to use members for state vs. parameters or locals   3. Importance of utilizing business domain terminology   4. When to abstract out patterns vs. reducing complexity   5. How to model responsibility vs. convenience   6. When to use control inversion   7. When to use an association class My focus is on static structure."}
{"_id": "105902", "title": "Do the young minds need to learn the pointer concepts?", "text": "Why did the C master Dennis Ritchie introduce pointers in C? And why did the other programming languages like VB.NET or Java or C# eliminate them? I have found some points in Google, and I want to listen your comments too. Why are they eliminating pointer concepts in modern languages? People say C is the basic language and pointers is the concept that makes C powerful and outstanding and makes C still to compete with more modern languages. Then why did they eliminate pointers in more modern languages? Do you think knowledge of pointers is still important for new programmers? People are using VB.NET or Java these days, which supports more highly advanced features than C (and does not use any pointer concepts) and many people as I see now (my friends) choose these languages ignoring C as they support advanced features. I tell them to start with C. They say it's a waste to learn the concepts of pointers when you're doing the advanced things in VB.NET or Java which are not possible in C. What do you think? **Updated** : The comments I read on Google are:   1. The earlier computers were too slow and not optimized.   2. Using pointers makes it possible to access an address directly and this saves time instead of making a copy of it in function calls.   3. Security is significantly worse using pointers, and that's why Java and C# did not include them. These and some more what I found. I still need some valuable answers. That would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "105905", "title": "Is there a term for the error-handling anti-pattern of discarding all available info and just returning failure?", "text": "From time to time (unfortunately way too often) I have to fix code such as this:               // C++ code     bool anyOldFunction(Param p) {       try {       ...       if(some_condition_here) {         handleErrorX();         return false;       } else if(other_condition) {         return false; // (*stackexchange question comment*) Apparently no additional error action taken here       }       ...       return true;       } catch(...) {         // (*old comment*) Catch all possible error (FroobleFub and BrabbleBub can happen)         return false;       }     }      So, the original implementer actually had _some_ inkling what exceptions could be thrown (although the list may not be exhaustive) but had no idea how to do some decent handling and just discarded any info he might have gotten out of the exception objects, leaving the calling code / the calling context non-the- wiser. Is there a name for this anti-pattern? (If anti-pattern it is indeed.)"}
{"_id": "26747", "title": "How do you explain the source of an identifed problem without making it an \"excuse\"?", "text": "As practicing (as much as I can at least) \"egoless programming\", I'm focused on solving problems whoever wrote the code related (if that person don't make dangerous code) and I like to understand the problem fully to be sure to solve the source of this problem. However, when someone point my code to show an error, I often try to remember what was my mindset while writing the defect code and I try to explain it to the guy pointing the error to make clear what was the error source (for example when some names are badly choosen, you might use them in a way they were not intended too and with apparent success...). Now, I do this by reflex and most of my coworkers does understand this reflex. But I also worked in companies where coworkers were in a mentality of blaming the people that made the identified problems, with or without humour (for me it have the same not-sane effect anyway). In this kind of environnement, explaining why you got to write wrong code makes others think that you're trying to build an excuse. I remarked that most non-technical people (or non domain-expert, not sure, it's only personal experience) also react exactly like that when you try to explain why you did something wrong. So, when dealing with this kind of people/environnement, how do you manage to explain the real source of the error without looking like \"making an excuse\"? (and is it even worth trying to explain?)"}
{"_id": "194615", "title": "Setting up a refund policy for a commercial WordPress theme", "text": "I'm developing a WordPress theme and am planning to sell it myself. I was thinking of having a 14- or 30-day refund policy for customers, but my concern is that people can essentially get the theme for free, if they: 1) buy it, 2) download the files, and then 3) request a refund. Then they would have both the theme and their money back. I've been looking into software refund policies and noticed there are a few different schools of thoughts on providing customer refunds: **School of Thought #1** \\- Provide refunds. If your software is good quality, not many people will request a refund. My response: But in my case, even if users think the theme is high quality, they can still request a refund and also keep the theme. I have also put a lot of work into the development and testing of the theme, so it is quality work. **School of Thought #2** \\- Provide refunds, but some customers will abuse the refund process, so have an activation code and only provide refunds to people who have not activated the software. My response: This sounds like a good idea, but there isn't an activation mechanism for themes in WordPress, so I don't know how I could implement it. **School of Thought #3** \\- No refunds. My response: This seems really inflexible. I'm not against refunding customer payments for good reason, but I don't want to give away my work, either. Have you heard of any other good options in setting up a refund policy?"}
{"_id": "194614", "title": "How meaningful is the Big-O time complexity of an algorithm?", "text": "Programmers often talk about the time complexity of an algorithm, e.g. O(log n) or O(n^2). Time complexity classifications are made as the input size goes to infinity, but ironically infinite input size in computation is not used. Put another way, the classification of an algorithm is based on a situation that algorithm will never be in: where n = infinity. Also, consider that a polynomial time algorithm where the exponent is huge is just as useless as an exponential time algorithm with tiny base (e.g., 1.00000001^n) is useful. Given this, how much can I rely on the Big-O time complexity to advise choice of an algorithm?"}
{"_id": "194612", "title": "How to comply with the Java ASM License?", "text": "I am designing an open source Java library that I will likely release with an MIT license, and its sole dependency is the ASM dynamic bytecode injection library. According to their license: > Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation > and/or other materials provided with the distribution. What does this mean, _exactly_? Does it mean that in all my **Developer Guide** (which will be a PDF that will be distributed in the same ZIP file as my JAR)? Or does it mean something else? I guess I'm asking for an example of a _correct_ way of honoring this stipulation in the license. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "180659", "title": "Catching incoming HTTP Requests on server side with Node.js", "text": "I want to implement a server side application catching incoming http requests with a certain header.After catching the request it extracts information about type of HTTP request (GET,HEAD,PUT,POST etc.), requested url and sends it to another server, collecting the data ( a webservice or a server having a 3rd party tool like statsd). Application needs to be as lightweight as possible. On a side note corresponding server where the requests are coming to, will be in a high load, as a result application needs to perform well under such load. I know that this application can be implemented in any language, however I want to try something new. Is node.js suitable for developing such an application regarding complexity and performance?"}
{"_id": "50288", "title": "How to build Gantt chart from a set of Redmine tickets without filling dates in all of them?", "text": "Redmine 1.1.1 I've created a set of tickets for a new project. In each issue I filled Subject, Description and Estimated time fields. I also filled blocks/blocked by dependencies in Related issues. But the Gantt chart for this project is empty (that is, it contains all the tasks, but does not contain any \"bars\" for them). I need to get a Gantt chart (or any other visual representation) to show to other project members. I'd hate to type all that information again into OpenProj. Is there a way to get a serviceable Gantt chart from the Redmine? _Update:_ In the answers below I read that to get working Gantt chart I have to input start date and due date manually for each issue. I believe that this information should be inferred automatically from start date of first ticket (first \u2014 depenency-wise), estimated time of each ticket, dependency graph, resource assignment and working hours calendar. Just as it happens in any minimally sane Gantt chart project management tool. To enter this information by hand and to keep it up-to-date manually as the project evolves is insane waste of time. Is there a way to generate Gantt chart from the set of Redmine tickets without filling in all this information manually? (Solutions involving data export + import in sane tool or involving existing plugins are perfectly acceptable.)"}
{"_id": "50283", "title": "One good reason for a rewrite", "text": "I have a personal web project I cut my teeth on learning how to program. I wrote it in PHP and learned as I went. I eventually I re-factored it to use MVC and removed all mixing of php/html. Right now it has no users, save myself, and it makes no money. I have a strong desire to rewrite the entire app. Which really isn't that large of an app. I have a lot of reasons why I should not rewrite it. I know that I should move forward. It's a working app now and it will only set me back to rewrite it. But I can't shake this feeling that I would be better off using a different programming language in the long run. That I'd enjoy it more. That I'd feel comfortable with it. I feel like my one good reason to rewrite my app is that I have a gut feeling that I should. PHP seems like a hack thrown together. I want to use a language that feels more elegant to me. Any feedback you have would be welcome."}
{"_id": "187680", "title": "Algorithm for dividing a range into ranges and then finding which range a number belongs to", "text": "Having   * a minimum   * a maximum   * number of ranges   * a value between minimum and maximum I'm trying to come up with a method, or two, which would calculate which range the provided value belongs to. For min=1, max = 10, number of ranges=5 the ranges would be [1,2],[3,4],[5,6],[7,8],[9-10] The other method would behave like shown below:   * method(1)->[1-2]   * method(2)->[1-2]   * method(3)->[3-4]   * method(4)->[3-4]   * method(5)->[5-6]   * method(6)->[5-6]   * method(7)->[7-8]   * method(8)->[7-8]   * method(9)->[9-10]   * method(10)->[9-10] This would be used for generating a legend for a map where the size of the marker depends on the range a value belongs to. I wonder if there is a nice algorithmic solution for this. The numbers I work with are integers. Edit: Another example: For min=1, max = 3, number of ranges=2 the ranges would be a) [1-2],[3-3] or b) [1-1],[2-3] The other method would behave like shown below: a)   * method(1)->[1-2]   * method(2)->[1-2]   * method(3)->[3-3] or b)   * method(1)->[1-1]   * method(2)->[2-3]   * method(3)->[2-3] I don't have a preference for a) or b)."}
{"_id": "180653", "title": "How to properly include field validation in a Software Documenation", "text": "I'm developing a software documentation in a project, and much of it are just CRUD or CRUD based functions. As you can imagine, a lot of the rules are constraints about fields validation, things like length, range, data type and masks of the field. Writing all those rules would be cumbersome to write and to read, so I'm wondering, what are the option available to include such rules in a software documentation, in a way that it is not tedious to write/read it all? **Edit - Clarification** The rules and being taken from an old desktop legacy application, and we are going to document the current validations, features and forms; so the application will be implemented in a more up-to-date (web) platform, considering usability and consistency in the new system. The documentation is handwritten using the Sybase PowerDesigner tool, but the document can be written in doc inside the tool. Some of it are cross-field validation rules, for example;   * For a person of type X, residing on country Y, the value of field A must be validated using the B rule.   * For a person of type X, residing on country Z, the value of field A must be validated using the C rule, and the field D, validated through E rule. Type X, country Y, field A, field D, etc, are all values extracted from fields on the forms."}
{"_id": "180656", "title": "How can a single database work for website, mobile apps?", "text": "We have developed a job-portal where users can view jobs and and also post jobs. We have used Php and MySQL. We hosted this on web faction. Now we want to develop the mobile app of the job portal for android, ios and windows. As the database should be synchronous and aligned dynamically with apps and website database. As the back-end code has to be changed to Java in android and c# in windows, how to manage a single synchronous database?"}
{"_id": "188468", "title": "Can we make it easier to add data flows between distant parts of a large codebase?", "text": "When making changes to large systems, I often face the problem that some piece of functionality needs to get some data from another piece, but they're in different parts of a deep and branching call tree, possibly flowing through event listeners, deferred calls, etc. In this way a simple change can balloon quickly. A related quote from Yossi Kreinin's blog post at http://www.yosefk.com/blog/i-want-a-struct-linker.html: > You have some kind of data structure that you pass around a lot. Soon, the > most valuable thing about the structure isn't the data it keeps, but the > fact that it's available all the way through some hairy flow of control. Global variables are one classic way to let code \"shout out\" to distant code, but they're known to be problematic. Dynamically scoped variables are a more restricted way, but they're problematic as well. Is there any programming language research aimed at solving this problem? Can we make it easier to add unanticipated flows of data to a large codebase, while still having static checking, easy unit testing and other goodies?"}
{"_id": "211804", "title": "What is the correct implementation of <meta> element in HTML5?", "text": "I've been watching a video to learn HTML. I know about HTML but I just wanted to refresh my knowledge. The author declared that he is using HTML5 because the doctype was:               <!doctype html>      but I noticed that the author used the _meta_ element in a different style that I get used to, he used it without the the forward slash to close the element as follows:               <meta charset=\"utf-8\">       and what I know about this is that it should be like the follwing:               <meta charset=\"utf-8\" />      Which one of the above elements is considered HTML5? I tried to search online but it seems that every web designer has a different opinion which confused me. I like standards."}
{"_id": "34761", "title": "Thoughts on my new template language/HTML generator?", "text": "I guess I should have pre-faced this with: **Yes, I know there is no _need_ for a new templating language, but I want to make a new one anyway, because I'm a fool.** That aside, how can I improve my language: Let's start with an example:               using \"html5\"     using \"extratags\"          html {         head {             title \"Ordering Notice\"             jsinclude \"jquery.js\"         }         body {             h1 \"Ordering Notice\"             p \"Dear @name,\"             p \"Thanks for placing your order with @company. It's scheduled to ship on {@ship_date|dateformat}.\"             p \"Here are the items you've ordered:\"             table {                 tr {                     th \"name\"                     th \"price\"                 }                 for(@item in @item_list) {                     tr {                         td @item.name                         td @item.price                     }                 }             }             if(@ordered_warranty)                 p \"Your warranty information will be included in the packaging.\"             p(class=\"footer\") {                 \"Sincerely,\" br @company             }         }     }      The \"using\" keyword indicates which tags to use. \"html5\" might include all the html5 standard tags, but your tags names wouldn't have to be based on their HTML counter-parts at all if you didn't want to. The \"extratags\" library for example might add an extra tag, called \"jsinclude\" which gets replaced with something like `<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"@content\"></script>` Tags can be optionally be followed by an opening brace. They will automatically be closed at the closing brace. If no brace is used, they will be closed after taking one element. Variables are prefixed with the `@` symbol. They may be used inside double- quoted strings. I think I'll use single-quotes to indicate \"no variable substitution\" like PHP does. Filter functions can be applied to variables like `@variable|filter`. Arguments can be passed to the filter `@variable|filter:@arg1,arg2=\"y\"` Attributes can be passed to tags by including them in `()`, like `p(class=\"classname\")`. You will also be able to include partial templates like:               for(@item in @item_list)         include(\"item_partial\", item=@item)      Something like that I'm thinking. The first argument will be the name of the template file, and subsequent ones will be named arguments where @item gets the variable name \"item\" inside that template. I also want to have a collection version like RoR has, so you don't even have to write the loop. Thoughts on this and exact syntax would be helpful :) Some questions:   * Which symbol should I use to prefix variables? @ (like Razor), $ (like PHP), or something else?   * Should the @ symbol be necessary in \"for\" and \"if\" statements? It's kind of implied that those are variables.   * Tags and controls (like if,for) presently have the exact same syntax. Should I do something to differentiate the two? If so, what?      * This would make it more clear that the \"tag\" isn't behaving like just a normal tag that will get replaced with content, but controls the flow. Also, it would allow name-reuse.     * Like `tag` would be a normal tag, but `@tag` would be a directive like `@for`, `@if`, `@include`, `@using`   * Do you like the attribute syntax? (round brackets)   * How should I do template inheritance/layouts?      * In Django, the first line of the file has to include the layout file, and then you delimit blocks of code which get stuffed into that layout.     * In CakePHP, it's kind of backwards, you specify the layout in the controller.view function, the layout gets a special `$content_for_layout` variable, and then the entire template gets stuffed into that, and you don't need to delimit any blocks of code.     * I guess Django's is a little more powerful because you can have multiple code blocks, but it makes your templates more verbose... trying to decide what approach to take   * Filtered variables inside quotes:      * `\"xxx {@var|filter} yyy\"`     * `\"xxx @{var|filter} yyy\"`     * `\"xxx @var|filter yyy\"`     * i.e, @ inside, @ outside, or no braces at all. I think no-braces might cause problems, especially when you try adding arguments, like `@var|filter:arg=\"x\"`, then the quotes would get confused. But perhaps a braceless version could work for when there are no quotes...? Still, which option for braces, first or second? I think the first one might be better because then we're consistent... the @ is always nudged up against the variable. I'll add more questions in a few minutes, once I get some feedback. * * * **Semi-colons:** I'm going to use semi-colons to close tags without content. For example, div; would output and wouldn't eat the next token like it normally would. **Namespaces:** Since I'll be defining the tags in straight C#, and C# supports namespaces, I think I'll just use that namespace and it'll work seamlessly. `namespace.tagname`, but it won't be necessary to include the namespace unless you want to disambiguate. The most recently included (via @using directive) will take precedence. * * * @Tom Anderson:               div {         p \"This is a paragraph\"         p \"This is another paragraph\"     }          span(class=\"error\") \"This is going to be bright red\"          img(src=\"smiley.png\", alt=\":)\")          p {         \"This \" a(href=\"about-paragraphs.html\") \"paragraph\" \" contains a link.\"     }"}
{"_id": "72597", "title": "How To Effectively Set Deadline Times As A Freelance or Home-based Developer", "text": "I recently got into home-based hours-based programming work and one of the problems I am having is that deadlines I say to my clients are not often met. Some factors come into play:   1. I run into a coding problem that requires research time, which adds a couple of time to my specified deadline.   2. There are times when my internet is down for half a day or even a whole day.   3. There are some inquiries left unanswered (via email) and many other factors. I was wondering how I can specify deadlines which will take into consideration any unexpected factors that might delay it or something like that, which of course, will not put a frown into my clients' face, hehe. By the way, a client asked me to develop a site from scratch using Django in which I have not much experience of. He knew that and he consented to me doing some research while in development. I said I would finish the project in about 3 weeks yet I did not expect Django to be such a massive nerve-wracking framework, my internet was down during some days, and I only worked less than 10 hours on the holy week. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "188875", "title": "With libraries available, should programmers also learn the old way of writting the same things?", "text": "With pre written programs available, needing just editing, should programmers also learn writing them from scratch?"}
{"_id": "72593", "title": "How to abbreviate variable names", "text": "I always struggle in abbreviating variable names. Is there any standard for abbreviating variable names?"}
{"_id": "34768", "title": "Is there any one standard framework for developing Python GUI apps.?", "text": "There are so many frameworks for writing GUI application using Python. But is there any one key standard framework? For example we have a bundle of .NET/C# on Visual Studio. I am thinking in other perspectives also. In future if I give an interview for a Python programmer job, which GUI framework will be considered? I also wonder, there is no IDE that integrates the GUI and Python language. Choice of flavor is good but over-choice becomes a distraction."}
{"_id": "232940", "title": "Continous Deployment and database format changes", "text": "My current automated workflow looks like this:   * I commit changes   * I push changes   * Build (actually just a lot of tests using mock database) is triggered   * If all tests pass, the new code is deployed to the server Now assuming there is a change in database format - first 3 steps do pass, but the code will not work on server because existing data is not compatible with new source. The solution that I'd call nice is to also provide/test the migration code. Which looks like a lot of overhead for something that is executed only once. The solution that I'd call sane is to stop automatic deployment for such changes, perform the migration, then restart the deployment chain. Today I was lucky enough that my server is not really widely used yet (I could simply drop everything and live with it) and no changes were required at all. I wouldn't be so lucky in future though. How should I actually handle the database changes?"}
{"_id": "202541", "title": "Achieving Zero Downtime Deployment", "text": "I am trying to achieve zero downtime deployments so I can deploy less during off hours and more during \"slower\" hours - or anytime, in theory. My current setup, somewhat simplified:   * Web Server A (.NET App)   * Web Server B (.NET App)   * Database Server (SQL Server) My current deployment process:   1. \"Stop\" the sites on both Web Server A and B   2. Upgrade the database schema for the version of the app being deployed   3. Update Web Server A   4. Update Web Server B   5. Bring everything back online ### Current Problem This leads to a small amount of downtime each month - about 30 mins. I do this during off hours, so it isn't a huge problem - but it is something I'd like to get away from. Also - there is no way to really go 'back'. I don't generally make rollback DB scripts - only upgrade scripts. ### Leveraging The Load Balancer I'd love to be able to upgrade one Web Server at a time. Take Web Server A out of the load balancer, upgrade it, put it back online, then repeat for Web Server B. The problem is the database. Each version of my software will need to execute against a different version of the database - so I am sort of \"stuck\". ### Possible Solution A current solution I am considering is adopting the following rules:   * Never delete a database table.   * Never delete a database column.   * Never rename a database column.   * Never reorder a column.   * Every stored procedure must be versioned.      * Meaning - 'spFindAllThings' will become 'spFindAllThings_2' when it is edited.     * Then it becomes 'spFindAllThings_3' when edited again.     * Same rule applies to views. While, this seems a bit extreme - I think it solves the problem. Each version of the application will be hitting the DB in a non breaking way. The code expects certain results from the views/stored procedures - and this keeps that 'contract' valid. The problem is - it just seeps sloppy. I know I can clean up old stored procedures after the app is deployed for awhile, but it just feels dirty. Also - it depends on all of the developers following these rule, which will mostly happen, but I imagine someone will make a mistake. ### Finally - My Question   * Is this sloppy or hacky?   * Is anybody else doing it this way?   * How are other people solving this problem?"}
{"_id": "144261", "title": "Is there a clear list of requirement analyst's tasks?", "text": "I am reading about requirements analysis as a stage of requirements engineering. I have been having difficulties finding a clear list of the tasks in which the requirements analysis is in charge of. In the whole process of requirements engineering, where does requirements analyst role begin and where it end?"}
{"_id": "144263", "title": "What does \"enterprise\" means in relation to software architecture?", "text": "I see the term \"enterprise\" being thrown around software developers and programmers a lot and used loosely it seems. > **en\u00b7ter\u00b7prise/\u02c8ent\u0259r\u02ccpr\u012bz/** > > Noun: A project or undertaking, typically one that is difficult or requires > effort. Initiative and resourcefulness. Can someone please clarify what this term actually encompasses? \"At an enterprise level\", \"enterprise scale\"? There are even \"enterprise editions\" of things. What exactly does it mean? It obviously doesn't make sense judging by the above definition so more specifically to software what does one mean when using the word enterprise? **EDIT:** To add a spin on this - how does this term then fit into phrases such as Enterprise Framework Model? What does data access and data context have to do with company-wide descriptions?"}
{"_id": "131006", "title": "Should I intentionally break the build when a bug is found in production?", "text": "It seems reasonable to me that if a serious bug is found in production by end- users, a failing unit test should be added to cover that bug, thus intentionally breaking the build until the bug is fixed. My rationale for this is that the build _should have been failing all along_ , but wasn't due to inadequate automated test coverage. Several of my colleagues have disagreed saying that a failing unit test shouldn't be checked in. I agree with this viewpoint in terms of normal TDD practices, but I think that production bugs should be handled differently - after all why would you want to allow a build to succeed with known defects? Does anyone else have proven strategies for handling this scenario? I understand intentionally breaking the build could be disruptive to other team members, but that entirely depends on how you're using branches."}
{"_id": "131000", "title": "Website Country Detection", "text": "I have a web crawler, and I'm looking for hints that will help me automatically detect a website country of origin. And by country of origin I generally mean the country the website is targeting. For example:   * http://www.spiegel.de/ -> Germany   * http://www.lemonde.fr/ -> France   * http://publico.pt/ -> Portugal   * http://www.elpais.es/ -> Spain I know there's not a foolproof way of doing it, so I will likely rely on a scoring system.   * The domain name;   * The content language;   * The server's IP address;   * `Whois` information; What additional parameters would you use? For the previous examples a combination of domain and content language will do, but many websites have a `.com` domain and a language spoken in more than one country..."}
{"_id": "227756", "title": "Why is PHP's method of comparing different types bad?", "text": "I'm working on designing a new programming language and trying to decide how I will do variable comparisons. Along with many different types of languages, I've used PHP for years and personally had zero bugs related to its comparison operations other than situations where 0 = false. Despite this, I've heard a lot of negativity towards its method of comparing types. For example, in PHP:                2  <  100      # True     \"2\" < \"100\"     # True     \"2\" <  100      # True      In Python, string comparison goes like this:                2  <  100      # True     \"2\" < \"100\"     # False     \"2\" <  100      # False      I don't see any value in Python's implementation (how often do you really need to see which of two strings is lexicographically greater?), and I see almost no risk in PHP's method and a lot of value. I know people claim it can create errors, but I don't see how. Is there ever really going to be a situation where you are testing if (100 = \"100\") and you don't want the string to be treated as a number? And if you really did, you could use === (which I've also heard people complain about but without any substantial reason). So, my question is, not counting some of PHP's weird conversion and comparison rules dealing with 0's and nulls and strings mixed with characters and numbers, are there any substantial reasons that comparing ints and strings like this is bad, and are there any real reasons having a === operator is bad?"}
{"_id": "187355", "title": "System for checking code comments relevance", "text": "When I write comments for auto generated documentation it can become irrelevant after a few changes of the method. Do we have any system to automatically check, prevent such situation and warn developer to update comment? Maybe some VCS hooks?"}
{"_id": "50133", "title": "Weekly technology meeting?", "text": "I am thinking of introducing weekly technology meeting where programmers working on the same project can discuss things like:   * current status of the project on technical side   * technology backlog. Things that we may have skipped because of deadlines but now coming back to bite us.   * technology constraints that are limiting developers from being productive   * new and emerging technologies that may apply to the project Basically looking at the project from programmer's perspective, not the business side. - What would be some good guidelines for a meeting like this?   * How long should the meeting last?    * Is weekly too often?   * Should we time-limit each topic?   * What kinda of topics are good for a meeting like this and which ones are bad?   * Is 10 people too many? ..."}
{"_id": "199863", "title": "Developing Python on Windows and deploying to Linux", "text": "I have a client who would prefer to host their application on Linux. However, my coworkers and I have very little experience with Linux. This is a short project with a low budget, so making choices that save time and money are not just desired, they're a must. We are also heavy on continuous integration and automation, much of which we already have figured out in Windows and can reuse from previous projects. That said, having the development team learn Linux and rebuild our automation so we can develop on the same environment to which we intend to deploy is most likely not a viable option. (For a larger project, perhaps, but not this one.) The team _is_ familiar enough with Python that writing the application in Python is a viable option (even though most of our development is done in .NET), although we would need to figure out a good packaging mechanism that can run on Windows and be pushed to a Linux box. I don't anticipate needing any libraries unavailable on Windows. Most likely, we will only need `psycopg` and `sqlalchemy` in terms of libraries with native components. All this makes the notion of having developers create the application on Windows, deploying to a Linux testing environment, and then pushing to production after thorough testing seem like a fairly attractive option, but I'm skeptical about it. Linux and Windows are very different operating systems, and I'm concerned about gotchas that could creep up and make life very difficult. Are there any real concerns with doing this (beyond the typical file path differences and other common things easily solved by good coding practices)? I think that a lot of shared hosting providers host on Linux, and I can't imagine everyone using them has developed on Linux for the past umpteen years. Is this done more commonly than I'm aware?"}
{"_id": "50138", "title": "is OpenID really that bad?", "text": "I have seen this question on Quora where lots of people seem to agree that OpenID is bad, even going as far as stating that: > OpenID is the worst possible \"solution\" I have ever seen in my entire life > to a problem that most people don't really have Then I've seen articles and tweets referencing that question saying that OpenID has lost, and Facebook won. It's sad to read as I quite like the OpenID (or at least idea behind it). I literally hate getting yet another login/password for page (I'll forget it anyway) - it's a pretty serious issue for me and I know lots of people with the same problem. Thus I thought that OpenId is a great solution but I'm not sure anymore. So the question is should I still bother to implement OpenID or it's not worth it? What is the most robust and convenient (from the user perspective) way to identify and authenticate an user?"}
{"_id": "187358", "title": "In-house SMS (using a SIM card) receiving and sending?", "text": "My needs are very simple but I don't know the terms I should be Googling for: I need to occasionally send a SMS to a machine and that machine is going to answer with another SMS to the number that did send the first SMS. I've got no say as to how that machine works: it's closed and all it does is receive SMS and send SMS in reply to SMS received (and uniquely to the number that did send the first SMS) and there's no other way to interface with it. Upon receiving the \"response SMS\", I need to update a server / DB (a regular Java webapp server + SQL DB) with the infos contained in the SMS. There isn't going to be a lot of volume (only a few SMSes daily) and robustness isn't that important (a few SMSes can be missed). What would be a possible architecture for something like that? I was thinking about using two or three cheap smartphones and giving them SIM cards and then program them to regularly (once every height hours or so) send an SMS. Then these smartphones would receive an SMS back from the machine they contacted and I'd intercept that SMS and update my server/DB accordingly. _(I'll have physical control on these smartphones so giving any permission needed to any app won't be an issue)_. Is this something easily doable? Technically, if such a solution could work, how can I access the SMS functionalities of the phone? And how can I have the phone udpate my server/DB? (the phone can be hooked to the Internet, so I take it I can simply do an HTTP POST to my server). Or is there already some (preferrably free or open-source) offering a similar functionality? (maybe something not totally unlike what \"zapier\" of \"ifttt\" does, where I could create a rule saying: _\"If I receive a SMS containing the word xxx, then send the SMS using an HTTP POST to the URL yyy\"_ ). Note that I did configure the server(s) hosting the Webapp myself and develop the entire webapp myself: so the \"programming\" part ain't that much of a problem. My issue is that I don't know how to \"create a bridge\" between the SMS coming in response to another SMS and my webserver. I hope I explained the issue simply enough: basically I need some guidance on the architecture to use here (which fits programmers.stackexchange as far as I can tell from just having read its FAQ)."}
{"_id": "209661", "title": "What about using MVC as the way to provide Responsive Web Design?", "text": "Responsive Web Design shows the user different elements -- or elements arranged in different ways -- by using media queries (if the device is a desktop or laptop, show them this; if a tablet, show them that; if a \"phone,\" show them the other thing) or other methodologies. What about, though (especially if your app/site uses MVC anyway), leveraging MVC to return different Views based on the type of device / user agent? Each Model/Controller pair could have at least three Views (desklaptop, tablet, phone, as well as perhaps more granular gradations and/or Views tailored to larger devices) and, based on the size of the user agent's real estate, invoke the appropriate View. I'm thinking this might be a more natural and easier to implement way of optimizing the experience for all users, at least for those conversant with MVC. How exactly this is implemented (how the user agent is determined and the appropriate Controller ActionResult is invoked) I'm not sure, though... thoughts? ## UPDATE Response to the comment and answer: I'm thinking more along the lines of this scenario, for which, IMO, media- queries won't satisfactorily handle: Your app/site has as its centerpiece a map. There are ancillary but vital pieces that are placed around the map (top, botton, and side) that all fit on a tablet (barely) and larger devices just fine. On a phone, though - no way - there's only room for the map, and even then the map is almost too puny. The only way I can think of to deal with this is to show the map full-screen on the phone, with buttons or links in states like Wyoming, Montana, and Nevada that will invoke the parts that surround the map on larger devices but will monopolize the screen on a phone. In each case, the currently displaying View will need links to [re]open the other portions of the app/site. Otherwise, the only way it could be usable with a phone is if the user is carrying a magnifying glass around with him (or zooming and swiping around the screen like a madman, but IMO that's a pain in the gluteus maximus). And so, in such a scenario it seems to me that Views would be easier to implement than altering the CSS, as this is a major renovation of the screen, not just a rearranging of furniture."}
{"_id": "107227", "title": "Under what circumstances are flowcharts still a valuable and useful tool?", "text": "When I first started programming, I relied heavily on flowcharts (and printer spacing charts). While I was in COBOL class, I couldn't start writing any code until my flowchart was signed off by the instructor. Back then, I had to make flowchart for everything. Today, twenty-five years later, I find myself only flowcharting two types of things. Very specific algorithms where the logic is tricky or very general concepts to ensure that I get all the big steps defined and in the proper order. Are there other use cases for flowcharts that I've simply overlooked?"}
{"_id": "188795", "title": "Sorting rows off an autoincrementing primary key", "text": "Is it a bad practice to rely on an auto-incrementing primary key to sort rows in a table? A coworker and I were having an argument about this subject. We need to be able to find the last-inserted row in a table, and we have no create/update time columns (which might be considered a bad practice in itself, but that's a different argument). We obviously can't rely on the natural order of the rows, since that can be inconsistent. Is there anything inherently wrong with using the primary key in this way, given that it's an immutable value? I should have noted: our implementation is using Hibernate (an ORM) to fetch our objects. We're not using any native queries -- only JPQL or Hibernate's functionality."}
{"_id": "88784", "title": "Is it worth being computer languages polyglot?", "text": "You can often hear that programmers should learn many different languages to improve themselves. I still go to school and don't have big programming experience (a little more than year). But what was noble intention to improve programming skills turned into some kind of OCD: I feel that **I won't calm down until I learn all relatively known programming languages.** And here is question itself: Will being programming languages polyglot actually help you (And I don't mean usual \"Programmer should know at least all paradigms\", I mean really **all** languages you usually hear about)? Does anybody have similar experience? Does it help with job/skills/career? How often are you able to apply those skills?"}
{"_id": "24421", "title": "Is it getting harder to hire VB.NET developers?", "text": "I'm a consultant, and my last two engagements have been at VB.NET shops. It's become apparent to me that these organizations have a really hard time finding FTE developers. Have any of you observed that VB.NET developers are getting harder to find? Any thoughts as to why?"}
{"_id": "151440", "title": "Does heavy JavaScript use adversely impact Googleability?", "text": "I've been developing the client-side for my web-app in JavaScript. The JavaScript can communicate with my server over REST (HTTP)[JSON, XML, CSV] or RPC (XML, JSON). I'm writing writing this decoupled client in order to use the same code for both my main website and my PhoneGap mobile apps. However recently I've been worrying that writing the website with almost no static content would prevent search-engines (like Google) from indexing my web-page. I was taught about this restriction about 4 years ago, which is why I'm asking here, to see if this restriction is still in-place. **Does heavy JavaScript use adversely impact Googleability?**"}
{"_id": "100945", "title": "What's the best way to logically compare two XML files?", "text": "I want to compare two XML files logically. That means that following text lines should be the same for the comparison tool: 1.               <test><hello/><test/>      2.               <test>                                <hello/>                         <test/>      I'm a Windows developer and tried some comparison tools now: Beyond Compare, WinMerge, Total Commander, but all of them compare XML like a normal text comparison tool. Are there any other tools or approaches I can take?"}
{"_id": "182496", "title": "Which source is quoteable for the popularity of programming languages?", "text": "I'm writing a paper right now, and I need a quotable source for the popularity of programming languages. One source I know is the TIOBE index, however, there are several others if you search google, and the ranking is different on every index. Which one would you suggest to be quoteable?"}
{"_id": "61577", "title": "Should I keep my GitHub forked repositories around forever?", "text": "So I've forked someone else's repository, made a few changes, submitted a pull request, and my changes made it into the product. Great! But...what should I do with my forked repository? Is there a compelling reason for me to keep my repository around, or should I go ahead and delete it? I don't plan on making any additional contributions, but if I change my mind I assume I can always just re-fork it. I'm not really concerned about keeping a backup. I'm more worried about breaking links, losing commit messages, etc."}
{"_id": "61572", "title": "Project In A Week / development bootcamp", "text": "Our team is thinking of doing a \"Project In A Week\" (bootcamp), and I'm interested to know if anyone else has experience of doing this or has any advice? The idea behind it is to get away from the distractions of the office, motivate each other, and build our bonds within the team, in order to come up with an innovative and profitable product in a short space of time. The plan is to get the whole of the dev team (about 5 devs), a designer, a project manager, couple of sales and marketing people staying in a conference centre/hotel for a full working week. We'll be completely focused on building one web app (planned in advance) and getting it live and on the market within the week. We'll work quite long days but in the evenings we'll have some fun together as a team. There would be a couple of members of the team left in the office to ensure we're not distracted by day to day client support. Similar 'immersive' approaches are used by training companies such as Firebrand. Good idea? Terrible idea? What should we do to incentivise the team? Any thoughts/experiences/advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers"}
{"_id": "22118", "title": "Should we use progressing job titles for programmers?", "text": "I'm currently thinking about job titles for my team of programmers. Historically it's been pretty flat, with most people just \"Programmer\", and a very few people \"Senior Programmer\". But both those titles cover a wide diversity of experience and salary. I was thinking of replacing this with a progression of five levels -   * Developer   * Senior Developer   * Principal Developer   * Architect   * Senior Architect I'd be interested to hear what people think are the pros and cons of such a scheme. On the positive side, I've found that programmers actually covet good titles. On the negative side, it's been suggested to me that such a hierarchy can create resentment. I'd welcome your thoughts. **Update:** Thanks for all the great answers! It's certainly changed my thinking on this subject, and I will probably retain the flater structure at this point."}
{"_id": "77419", "title": "Migrating myself from .Net 1.1 to .Net 4.0", "text": "I have been working with .Net for 7 years. ASP Web Apps, Windows Forms, Windows Services, mostly done in C#, but some in VB.Net. And as we started to work with .Net 1.1, we stayed on .Net 1.1. Recently I did a few projects in .Net 4.0, which I'm sure are not different from those done in .Net 1.1, and I guess they can be easily compiled in .Net (haven't tried it, though). I see that there are some new tricks and methods, and obviously the framework has grown quite a bit...   1. I wonder if there is any difference from 1.1 to 4.0, in code, techniques, language abilities (you don't have to list them, just point out your favorites if there are any), etc?   2. What would you recommend I should do to learn those new things created in latter frameworks than 1.1?"}
{"_id": "228890", "title": "License for my Software", "text": "I am nowhere near good at coming up with what type of license to use and I don't want to be sued or have my work stolen so I am going to ask. Here is my situation: I am creating a software for my boss and the YMCA which helps keep track of our employees, their students, and the amount of lessons they have remaining (In a nutshell but the program is much more extensive then that), I am spent almost 100 hours creating it and its not completely done. Some of the hours spent were at work while being paid (Not sure if that plays a factor). Here is a list of conditions that I desire:   1. My software to not be redistributed in any way without my knowledge and written consent.   2. To not be liable for any damage it causes, for maintaining the software, or for its success.   3. I do not want the software to be sold without my knowledge and consent either.   4. I want the software to be closed sourced. If there is a way I can have all of these in my software licensed I would be grateful, also if someone could explain to me where I need the license displayed and if it needs to be in the source code (since I am having it closed sourced)."}
{"_id": "228895", "title": "MVC Widget optimization when accessing CSS and Resources", "text": "So we're trying to re-imagine our web solution in an MVC fashion. Going from an old webforms based solution to working with ASP.NET MVC with a bootstrap main menu and adding functionality in the forms of widgets using HTML.Action() that calls a controller and action to fill in the information on that part of the page. We're now thinking of how the CSS and resources that we are going to be getting for each widget separately in their own controller can be effectively used in this scenario. If we only use HTML.Action and letting a controller add our functionality to the page, we lose our connection to the page as a whole, and we could possibly load the resource package and CSS for the same type of objects over and over again. How would one solve this and make it possible for our web portal to have knowledge over which css and resource files have already been added to the solution?"}
{"_id": "104361", "title": "Is Razor or XSLT better for my project?", "text": "I'm in the early stages in the design of a system that will essentially be split into two parts. One part is a service and the other is an interface with the service providing data through something like OData or XML. The application will be based on the MVC architectural pattern. For the views, we are considering using either XSLT or Razor under ASP.NET. XSLT or Razor would help to provide a separation of concerns where the original XML or response represents your model, the XSLT or 'Razor view' represents your view. I'll leave the controller out for this example. The initial design proposal recommends XSLT, however I suggested the use of Razor instead as a more friendly view engine. These are the reasons I suggested for Razor (C#):   * Easier to work with and build more complicated pages.   * Can easily produce non-*ML output, eg csv, txt, fdf   * Less verbose templates   * The view model is strongly typed, where XSLT would need to rely on convention, eg boolean or date values   * Markup is more approachable, eg nbsp, newline normalization, attibute value normalization, whitespace rules   * Built in HTML helper can generate JS validation code based on DTO attributes   * Built in HTML helper can generate links to actions And the arguments for XSLT over razor were:   * XSLT is a standard and will still exist many years into the future.    * It is hard to accidentally move logic into the view   * Easer for non programmers (which I don't agree with).   * It's been successful in some of our past projects.   * Data values are HTML-encoded by default   * Always well formed So I'm looking for aguments on either side, recommendations or any experience making a similar choice?"}
{"_id": "240440", "title": "How do programmers with non-latin keyboards work?", "text": "I was reading a question on stackoverflow where the code was interspaced with Russian comments and I came to wonder; how do programmers who use non-latin keyboards work? Do they keeping switching keyboard layouts in the OS or use separate keyboards? And why do they really bother switching just to write one- liner comments?"}
{"_id": "98798", "title": "How to interview for .NET/C# job a guy with experience on Progress?", "text": "It is clearer how to interview someone experienced in Java / C++ or other languages closer to C#. In these cases the language and specific technologies are less important; what matters are the OOP principles. But how to do it with someone that comes from Progress to .NET and also, me as an interviewer, not knowing Progress at all? How much does Progress experience count for .NET/C# or OOP? Are there programming principles in common between the two worlds? Are these realy two different worlds?"}
{"_id": "75817", "title": "Large Multi-Touch Display Monitor?", "text": "I'm sure that most shops use a standard whiteboard or a more fancier \"glass- board\" to discuss ideas during a meeting. After the meeting, people will usually take photos of the artifacts using a point-and-shoot camera and then e-mail the digital photo to all the participants. I'm thinking of buying a really huge LCD screen support to facilitate discussion. This LCD Screen will be outfitted with a Multi-touch \"filter\" that will be connected to a PC via the USB port. The PC will be connected to the screen via the HDMI port. The PC will run on a standard Windows 7 installation. Instead of writing/drawing on a whiteboard using a marker, the participants will use their fingers to draw/write stuff on the screen surface. Whatever input the \"filter\" receives, it will be sent back to the PC. So the application that has the focus is the one responsible for making sense of the input. I'm thinking of using \"PAINT\" for now. After the discussion, the \"canvas\" will be saved as an image and forwarded to participants e-mail. ^That's the easy/boring part. Here's the cool part: We can write an application that will fully utilize the Multi-touch technology to facilitate discussion more effectively. I'm thinking of writing apps like those in the Microsoft Surface computing videos. We can also outfit the PC with a camera and use facial recognition technology to automatically figure out who the participants are so we can provide a single \"Distribute a copy of this canvas to the participants\" button. Question:   1. Has anyone used a gigantic multi-touch screen over a whiteboard to facilitate discussion?   2. If yes, how successful was it?   3. Are there already software available today that makes these things possible?   4. Do you know a vendor/provider that provides a complete solution for this kind of things? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "208047", "title": "Is modifying an object's __dict__ to set its properties considered Pythonic?", "text": "I have a class that inflates objects from rows found in a database (or another source, e.g. MongoDB, a CSV file, etc.). To set the object's properties, it does something like `self.__dict__.update(**properties)` or `obj.__dict__.update(**properties)`. Is this considered Pythonic? Is this a good pattern that I should continue to use, or is this considered bad form?"}
{"_id": "199957", "title": "Does Turing-complete implies possibility of malware?", "text": "Is it possible to build an operating system that contains some Turing complete compiler (language?) but is unable to run any malware? Or is there any definition for a malware? This question popped on my mind as I was wondering why Windows has more malware than Linux. If Linux contains a C programming language and its compiler, I think it is possible to write a Linux program that works similarly than Windows viruses. But there are less malware for Linux than for Windows although there is a Wine for Linux to simulate Windows programs."}
{"_id": "35412", "title": "Windows Forms Development - Books", "text": "So I'm reading a book for architecting applications for the enterprise from the Microsoft Press. It's a great book, and I'm learning a lot. However, it's very high level, and can be applied to a lot of different domains (not even just .NET, even though that's how the book is geared). The first project I want to develop after reading the book is a Windows Forms application in .NET 4.0. I want to use a lot of the books concepts to develop the app, but I really want a great Windows Forms dedicated book to read before starting that's really going to tell me all I need to know about developing Windows Forms apps. I found plenty of books for .NET 2.0 and stuff, but nothing for Windows Forms in the new .NET 4.0 Framework. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "35413", "title": "Should I understand SVN before I jump to GIT?", "text": "I work in a department where no one has ever used source control before, including myself. I am trying to push the concept. I have spent a little while researching SVN. I some basics learned. I can Create/update/checkout/commit with command line and from Tortoise. I am starting to learn how to tag and branch but still confused a lot about conflicts between branches and trunk etc. I am still learning, but I do not have a physical person who can show me anything. Its all from books/tutorials and trial and error. From what I have read online it seems like `git` is the better thing to know, but its also more complicated. I don't want to overwhelm myself. Should I continue to master svn before moving to git or would I be wiser to just jump to git now? Are there pros and cons to both approaches?"}
{"_id": "145130", "title": "Common name of the firmware that can test product board", "text": "This may be silly to ask. Consider the internal circuit board of any electronic device (cell phone, for example) driven by a micro-controller, also on the same board. I'm about to write a firmware that will have features to test various peripherals and other things on the board (IO pins, EEPROM, LCD etc). Is there any common name used for such firmware? For example, a bootloader is a kind of firmware that allow the code memory to be written during run time. EDIT: It will not be self test. External commands will be given to the micro and the micro will execute them. Each command will test a specific feature."}
{"_id": "73243", "title": "Choosing a particular stack because of the IDE, tools and ease setting up the dev env", "text": "I almost always choose the Microsoft stack over anything else because of Visual Studio, the available tools and how easily I can get started programming with a particular new framework. **Please, that was only an example; it may be other stacks for other people.** I am not building real time, mission critical apps where a nuclear power plant would explode if my app didn't perform well... More like small business apps. But when I tell this to other programmers, even before they react, I feel I might have embarrassed myself - choosing a stack because of the IDE?!.. ease of setup?! I feel the \"pros\" choose the stack by other \"important\" things I am not aware of and in the grand scheme of things, IDE and ease of setting up dev env don't matter much. I feel it is a little immature to do what I am doing. Is it really a bad thing? Note that I also choose the Microsoft stack because of a lot of other reasons (C# is an amazing language and .Net is an awesome platform).. but IDE, tools and dev env setup play a big part for me. Also note that I am a 1 man dev shop, very occasionally 2 or max 3."}
{"_id": "101107", "title": "What exactly undefined means in JavaScript? Why it's there? What usages it has? How it could be useful?", "text": "In JavaScript, we have something called **undefined**. I said something, because I really don't know if it's a base class, or a built-in variable, or a keyword, or anything else. I just know that it's there. To see it in action, you can simply write:               undefined;     typeof undefined;      Can anyone please explain to me why this **thing** has been inserted into JavaScript? We have `null` value in this language, thus it shouldn't be something like `null`. In other languages, when we don't know the value of a property or variable, we simply set it to null. Here we can do the same thing. How we can use this _thing_ in JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "230910", "title": "Not using Weak entities could denormalize DB?", "text": "In the following scenery in a ER and relational Model:               Object 1-----N [Part] 1-----N [Subpart] 1-----N [Item]     (Where \"1-----N\" is a 1 to N relationship; and [Entity] is weak).      Solution 1:   '\"Object\"' is a strong entity; and 'Part', 'Subpart' and 'Item' are weak entities:               Object (*IDObject,...)     Part (*IDObject, *IDPart,...)     Subpart (*IDObject, *IDPart, *IDSubpart,...)      Item (*IDObject, *IDPart, *IDSubpart, *IDItem,...)     (Attributes marked with * make the composed key of the table)      In this particular case of \"Items of Subparts of Parts of Objects\", another way of designing and implementing the same problem could be: Solution 2: Object 1-----N Part 1-----N Subpart 1-----N Item (All entities are strong) Table implementation:               Object (*AutoincrementID,...)     Part (*AutoincrementID,...)     Subpart (*AutoincrementID,...)     Item (*AutoincrementID,...)     (Each table having it's own ID: an unique autoincrement field)      My questions are:   I would like an academic response; I mean the theory about this practices.   1. Which is the correct way of designing and implementing this scenario?   2. Is the \"Solution 2\" a denormalized model/implementation? In which way?"}
{"_id": "230915", "title": "Common Methodologies for Writing \"Post-Mortem\" Reviews", "text": "We recently added a relatively large feature to our product that involved the entire R&D department (with all the different teams within it). This feature included UI development, server side development, and huge migrations of SQL schemes (and other stuff that I myself was not involved in at all). The development process for this feature was chaotic - Front-End and Server teams were not synchronized, SQL migrations broke the DB, and product specifications were incomplete which meant that with every step of the way we found new issues with the initial definition, requiring changes to core concepts that the developers had relied upon. All in all, a feature that was planned to be released within 10-14 days, took roughly 24 (intensive) days of development. I was requested to write a report of 'What went wrong' (from my team's side - each team writes such a report from their pov). What are the common methodologies for writing such reports, specifically in the field of software development?   Also - Is there some formal name for such reports? EDIT & ANSWER:   Apparently, such a report/review-process is commonly referred to as 'Project Post-Mortem' (other names exist as well).   After figuring this out, I found these two resources that outline suggested methodologies for gathering the necessary data, organizing it, analyzing it, and formulating solutions for discovered issues (as well as some general information on these reviews and their purposes): 'A Defined Process For Project Post Mortem' -   http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/undergraduate/345/spring12/mitchell/readings/aDefinedProcessForProjectPostMortemReview.pdf 'Post-Mortem Reviews: Purpose and Approaches in Software Engineering' - http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/ifi/INF5180/v10/undervisningsmateriale/reading- materials/p08/post-mortems.pdf"}
{"_id": "101102", "title": "Are static classes with static methods considered SOLID?", "text": "SOLID includes the Liskov substitution princicple which has the notion that \u201cobjects in a program should be replaceable with instances of their subtypes without altering the correctness of that program\u201d. Since static classes with static methods (a bit like the `Math` class) does not have instances at all, is my system considered SOLID if I have static classes with static methods?"}
{"_id": "165572", "title": "Where would my different development rhythm be suitable for the work?", "text": "Over the years I have worked on many projects, with some successful and a great benefit to the company, and some total failures with me getting fired or otherwise leaving. What is the difference? Naturally I prefer the former and wish to avoid the latter, so I'm pondering this issue. The key seems to be that my personal approach differs from the norm. I write code first, letting it be all spaghetti and chaos, using whatever tools \"fit my hand\" that I'm fluent in. I try to organize it, then give up and start over with a better design. I go through cycles, from thinking-design to coding- testing. This may seem to be the same as any other development process, Agile or whatever, cycling between design and coding, but there does seem to be a subtle difference: The methods (ideally) followed by most teams goes design, code; design, code; ... while I'm going code, design; code, design; (if that makes any sense.) Music analogy: some types of music have a strong downbeat while others have prominent syncopation. In practice, I just can't think in terms of UML, specifications and so on, but grok things only by attempting to code and debug and refactor ad-hoc. I need the grounding provided by coding in order to think constructively, then to offer any opinions, advice or solutions to the team and get real work done. In positions where I can initially hack up cowboy code without constraints of tool or language choices, I easily gain a \"feel\" for the data, requirements etc and eventually do good work. In formalized positions where paperwork and pure \"design\" comes first and only later any coding (even for small proof-of- concept projects), I am lost at sea and drown. Therefore, I'd like to know how to either 1) change my rhythm to match the more formalized methodology-oriented team ways of doing things, or 2) find positions at organizations where my sense of development rhythm is perfect for the work. It's probably unrealistic for a person to change their fundamental approach to things. So option 2) is preferred. So where I can I find such positions? How common is my approach and where is it seen as viable but different, and not dismissed as undisciplined or cowboy coder ways?"}
{"_id": "165573", "title": "How to maintain same code fragments on multiple projects", "text": "I am an indie developer working on multiple Android projects. I am having problem with maintaining same functionality on different projects. For example, three of my apps use the same 2 classes; since they are different projects, when I need to make a change in those classes, I need to make it three times. Is there a simple solution to this kind of common problem?"}
{"_id": "230919", "title": "How would I handle a set of differing event classes with differing handler interfaces in a single event processor?", "text": "I'm working on an event processor framework for a simple game I'm writing, in which multiple types of events are handled in a loop. Since these events carry distinct pieces of data (i.e. one carries a player and position, another carries a message and timestamp), I ended up creating different classes for them (though they still all implement a common interface, which is _currently_ a marker interface). Within my event processor, I have, for each type of event, a set of event handlers implementing a corresponding interface (e.g. anonymous class implementing `PlayerInteractHandler` that handles `PlayerInteractEvent`s). Since these interfaces are being implemented through a Javascript engine (Rhino) I am unable to use a single generic interface. In trying to implement the actual engine, I have currently code as follows (methods inlined to show idea behind code in a more compact representations):               if (recvdEvent instanceof FooEvent){         // getHandlerList() returns a List<EventHandler> due to limitations of generics         for(EventHandler eh : getHandlerList(FooHandler.class) {             FooEvent eventAfterCast = (FooEvent) recvdEvent         }     }      Obviously there are a bunch more `else if (recvdEvent instanceof BarEvent)` blocks, and I catch and handle ClassCastExceptions. The problem with this, is that it seems like a mis-use of an object-oriented language, and I have to stringently verify other code by hand to retain type safety. The other alternatives I know of are for my event to return the `Class<? extends EventHandler>` in a certain method, to use polymorphism / dynamic dispatch, but that would require a _reflective_ cast, or a polymorphic method in the handler class that would still break complete type safety (and another layer on top of the interface itself). Multiple event processors would lead to code duplication, and would imply having separate threads for each as the current event processor is designed. If I were to retain a single thread and processor I would need a single queue, whose declared type is `AbstractQueue<GameEvent>`, and I'd be back at square one. Am I approaching this in a completely incorrect manner?"}
{"_id": "165579", "title": "How to convince a non-technical client that their application spec needs to be simplified?", "text": "Often times I am faced with the situation where a new client comes to me with an application that has literally 100s of unnecessary features and it is quite clear that things need to be drastically simplified for the project to have any chance of succeeding. How do you convince the client to take a more Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach and simplify? edit: So the current top answer is to provide the client with a time/cost estimate for the huge application. I'm not too fond of this answer because it doesn't address the real problem with this situation. And that is - it's a bad practice to spec out a massive application and then try and build it from the get go. I feel much more comfortable initially building a small, simple MVP foundation. And then adding small features to that foundation one by one. So how do I convince the client to approach building software in this way?"}
{"_id": "181212", "title": "Best Practice to Avoid \"Playing Telephone\" with Constructor Arguments", "text": "I find that the encapsulation required by OO has me frequently passing paramenters down the line from parent to child to great grandchild to second grand nephew once removed (not actually that bad). But inevitably in the process, and especially if graphics are involved there will be garbling the by the third iteration of `someConstructor(int minX, int minY, int maxX, int maxY)`. I found at least one question here suggesting that parameter objects are the solution. These seem to me more like a kludge designed to satisfy a low parameter count fetish than genuinely useful. Besides, in these scenarios, I am generally cutting the numbers into smaller pieces (of screen) with each step. It occurs to me if these constructor calls are laid out line by line higher up the chain, I'd have easy comparisons. But this seems to lose all semblance of OOPiness. In my most recent adventure with find-the-transposed-measurements, I was drawing a music keyboard. I don't want the main view to know or care what or exactly where the G# key is. So, best practices? Please don't say, go slower, be less sloppy."}
{"_id": "51661", "title": "Ethics of soliciting App store app reviews?", "text": "I see more than a few developers soliciting 5-star ratings and good reviews for their App store apps, in their blogs, websites, app store descriptions, even dialogs that pop-up in the app after you've used them for awhile. What do people consider to be the ethical guidelines regarding such review and ratings solicitations? What's over the line? (Besides obviously evil stuff, such as paying to have someone forge multiple negative reviews about your competitor's apps, etc.)"}
{"_id": "181214", "title": "2 different tasks in template method", "text": "I've read about Template Method Pattern but I'm not sure about one thing. The steps (methods) of an algorithm are supposed to be in the template method. In the case my template method's algorithm is about 2 completely different tasks that I would like all my objects to perform, let's say the one is drawing and the other calculating, can I still put all these methods in one method and call this my template method?"}
{"_id": "55568", "title": "Is Oracle WebCenter 11g equivalent to a larger version of SharePoint?", "text": "I have some experience with SharePoint. My company has decided to use Oracle WebCenter to create a internal portal. None of the IT staff have any experience with Oracle WebCenter, and I think we could use SharePoint for this job, as we have been using it until now. So, what are the advantages to using Oracle WebCenter? Which are your experiences with Oracle WebCenter 11g? And how different is it from SharePoint? What can I do with Oracle WebCenter that I cannot do with Microsoft SharePoint?"}
{"_id": "140567", "title": "Should one use a separate database for application data and user data?", "text": "I\u2019ve been working on a project for a little while and I\u2019m unsure which is the better architecture. I\u2019m interested in the consensus. The answer to me seems fairly obvious but something about it is digging at me and I can't pick out what. **The TL;DR is:** how do you handle a program with application data and user data in the same DB which needs to be able to receive updates to the application data periodically? One database for user data and one for application, or both in one? **The detailed version is..** if an application has a database which needs to maintain application data AND user data, and the user data all references application data, it feels more natural to me to store them in the same database. But if there exists a need to be able to update the application data within this database periodically, should this be stripped into two databases so that one can simply download the updated application data database file as an update and replace the old one? Or should they remain as one database, and the application data be updated via a script which inserts the new data into the existing database? The second sounds clearly preferable to me... but for some reason just doesn\u2019t feel right, and I can't pick out quite why."}
{"_id": "140564", "title": "How can I work efficiently on a desktop sharing workflow?", "text": "I am a freelance Magento developer, based in Spain. One of my clients is a Germany based web development company and they're asking me something I think it's impossible. OK, maybe not impossible but definitely not a preferred way of doing things. One of their clients has a Magento Entreprise installation, which is the paid (and I think proprietary) version of Magento. Their client has **forbidden them to download the files** from his server. My client is asking me now to study one particular module of the application in order to interact with it from a custom module I'll have to develop. As they have a **read-only ssh access** to their client's server, they came up with this _solution_ : Set up a **desktop/screen sharing session** between one of their developer's station and mine, alongsides with a skype conversation. Their idea is that I'll say to the developer: > show me file foo.php The developer will then open this foo.php file in his IDE. I'll have then to ask him to show me the bar method, the parent class, etc... Remember that it's a read-only session, so forget about putting a `Zend_Debug::log()` anywhere, and don't even think about a xDebug breakpoint (they don't use any kind of debugger, sic). Their client has also **forbidden them to use any version control system**... My first reaction when they explained to me this was (and I actually did say it outloud to them): > Well, find another client. but they took it as a joke from me. I understand that in a business point of view rejecting a client is not a good practice, but I think that the condition of this assignment make it impossible to complete. At least according to my workflow. I mean, the way I work or learn a new framework/program is:   1. download all files and copy of db on my pc   2. create a git repository and a branch   3. run the application locally      * use breakpoints     * use Zend_Debug::log()   4. write the code and tests   5. commit to git repo   6. upload to (test/staging first if there is one, production if not) server I have agreed to try the desktop sharing session, although I think it will be a waste of time. On one hand I don't mind, they pay me for that time, but I know me and I don't like the sensation of loosing my time. On the other hand, I have other clients for whom I can work according to my workflow. I am about to say to them that I cannot (don't want to) do it. Well, I'll first try this desktop sharing session: maybe I'm wrong and it can actually work. But I like to consider myself as a professional, and I know that I don't know everything. So I try to keep an open mind and I am always willing to learn new stuff. So my questions are:   1. Can this desktop-sharing workflow work? What should be done in order to take the most of it?   2. Taking into account all the obstacles (geographic locations, no local, no git), is there another way for me to work on that project?"}
{"_id": "220363", "title": "is using a PUT with side affects acceptable (REST)", "text": "I want to create an undo history whenever the user updates a form. Because it's an update, I want to use a PUT request. However, I read that PUT needs to have no side effects. Is it acceptable to use PUT here? Are there better alternatives? `PUT /person/F02E395A235`               {        time: 1234567,        fields: {           name: 'John',           age: '41'        }     }      In the server               doGet('person/:personId',        // create a new person snapshot     )      Edit: The history will be visible to the user, calling multiple times would result in multiple versions. The solution was to check if the version was unique before creating it."}
{"_id": "145738", "title": "Should a string constant be defined if it's only going to be used once?", "text": "We're implementing an adapter for Jaxen (an XPath library for Java) that allows us to use XPath to access the data model of our application. This is done by implementing classes which map strings (passed to us from Jaxen) into elements of our data model. We estimate we'll need around 100 classes with over 1000 string comparisons in total. I think that the best way to do this is simple if/else statements with the strings written directly into the code \u2014 rather than defining each strings as a constant. For example:               public Object getNode(String name) {         if (\"name\".equals(name)) {             return contact.getFullName();         } else if (\"title\".equals(name)) {             return contact.getTitle();         } else if (\"first_name\".equals(name)) {             return contact.getFirstName();         } else if (\"last_name\".equals(name)) {             return contact.getLastName();         ...      However I was always taught that we should not embed string values directly into code, but create string constants instead. That would look something like this:               private static final String NAME = \"name\";     private static final String TITLE = \"title\";     private static final String FIRST_NAME = \"first_name\";     private static final String LAST_NAME = \"last_name\";          public Object getNode(String name) {         if (NAME.equals(name)) {             return contact.getFullName();         } else if (TITLE.equals(name)) {             return contact.getTitle();         } else if (FIRST_NAME.equals(name)) {             return contact.getFirstName();         } else if (LAST_NAME.equals(name)) {             return contact.getLastName();         ...      In this case I think it's a bad idea. The constant will only ever be used once, in the `getNode()` method. Using the strings directly is just as easy to read and understand as using constants, and saves us writing at least a thousand lines of code. So is there any reason to define string constants for a single use? Or is it acceptable to use strings directly? * * * PS. Before anyone suggests using enums instead, we prototyped that but the enum conversion is 15 times slower than simple string comparison so it's not being considered. * * * **Conclusion:** The answers below expanded the scope of this question beyond just string constants, so I have two conclusions:   * It's probably OK to use the strings directly rather than string constants in this scenario, **but**   * There are ways to avoid using strings at all, which might be better.  So I'm going to try the wrapper technique which avoids strings completely. Unfortunately we can't use the string switch statement because we're not on Java 7 yet. Ultimately, though, I think the best answer for us is to try each technique and evaluate its performance. The reality is that if one technique is clearly faster then we'll probably choose it regardless of its beauty or adherence to convention."}
{"_id": "38382", "title": "System Analyst vs Computer Programmer?", "text": "My question here is relative to jobs. I currently hold a System Analyst position. What is the difference between System Analyst and Programmer/Analyst? Is this position higher than a programmer? Or how should I upgrade myself ?"}
{"_id": "157590", "title": "Why is it preferred to write a commit message in present tense/imperative mood?", "text": "I often read/overhear that good commit messages should be written in present tense or to use imperative mood when describing the change eg. `Fix xyz` instead of `Fixed xyz`. What are the advantages of doing so? Are there differences between the various VCS (I mostly read these about git but that maybe because I mainly work with git)?"}
{"_id": "246519", "title": "Controlling version numbers in sprints", "text": "Traditionally software build numbers fit into the format   * Major   * Minor   * Release   * Build Where a Major version is implemented whenever there are breaking changes, Minor when new mini features are added, Release when something is published and Build each time it's built. I find the last two digits work really well in a CI environment, each CI build increases the Build number and each release to live increments the Release number. However major waterfall work and breaking change developments are discouraged in more modern methodologies. We prefer to release little and often and so don't tend to make great breaking changes. Given this it's very difficult to determine when to create a new Major version. We try to avoid making major breaking changes and so are getting very high minor/release numbers but haven't had the excuse to move up a major version yet. What criteria should be used to determine when Major and Minor builds should be made (particularly web based applications)? I'm aware there are date style versioning but I'm interested in the Major.Minor.Build.Release only."}
{"_id": "110978", "title": "Code Analysis & Reporting: Maven vs. Jenkins", "text": "My team (~10 devs) has recently migrated to Maven (multi-module project, ca. 50 modules) and we now use Jenkins for continuous integration. As the overall setup is running, we are planning to include code analysis and reporting tools (e.g., Checkstyle and Corbertura). As far as I can see, we basically have two options to generate such reports: either use Maven's reporting plug-ins to generate a site **and/or** use Jenkins plug-ins to do the reporting. **Which approach is better, and for which reasons?** It seems both have their merits: Maven-Reporting: * everything is configured in a single place (the pom files)  * report generation on a local machine (i.e., without Jenkins) is straightforward and does not require any additional steps Jenkins-Reporting: * adjusting the reporting configuration seems more intuitive than with Maven and does not interfere with the main task of maven in our setup (building and deploying)  * a single web-interface to check the overall status of the project, so that the reported issues are easier to find and harder to ignore (i.e., no need to click through the maven site, some nice history plots, notifications, etc.) Has anyone made a similar decision in the past, or is this a non-issue for some reason? (How well does it work? Any regrets?) Is it advisable to go **both ways** , or is that setup too tedious to maintain? Are there aspects of the problem that I am unaware of, or some advantages I have not noticed (e.g., is Maven-based reporting integrated nicely with m2eclipse)? Any pitfalls or typical problems that we are likely to encounter? **EDIT:** We tried out **Sonar** , as suggested below (including its Jenkins plug-in). So far, it works pretty well. Sonar is relatively simple to install and works on top of our Maven setup (one just invokes `mvn sonar:sonar` or re-configures a Jenkins job, that's all). This means we do not have to maintain a duplicate configuration, as all our Maven settings are used automatically (the only exception being exclude patterns). The web-interface is nice, and -- even better -- there is an **Eclipse plug-in** that retrieves all issues automatically, so that no one really _has to_ browse to the Sonar website, as **all issues can be automatically displayed in the IDE**."}
{"_id": "187269", "title": "Can I use the patented Octree algorithm in a public programming challenge?", "text": "Similar to this question, but for a very different situation. I've been working-up some example code to accompany a proposed programming challenge and asking questions about the difficult bits. In my latest question, the answer I've received suggests that I use an Octree instead of a BSP-Tree. But Wikipedia says it's patented. And a public programming challenge -- much more than a private program or even free (beer) software -- really is encouraging people to reuse the idea without regard to ownership. So I can't ( _legally_ or _in good conscience_ ) use it here, can I?"}
{"_id": "36262", "title": "What guidelines do you suggest for using Objective-C Properties?", "text": "Objective-C 2.0 introduced properties. While I personally think properties are nice addition to the language, I have seen a trend of making every instance variable as a property. Apple sample codes are no exceptions to this. I believe this is against the spirit of OOP, and since it exposes a lot more implementation details of a class to the client than they need to know. What guidelines do you suggest for the proper usage properties in Objective C?"}
{"_id": "25461", "title": "Shouldn't recruitment be the other way round?", "text": "I really don't know why nobody's thought of this so far, but recruitment should be the other way round. Engineers should have some sort of a common platform where they register skills or domains they are interested in, demonstrate their capabilities and companies should take it up from there. I think this is way more effective since if you are paid well to do work that you love doing, you will generally make a fine job out of it. Does anybody know of some recruitment platform like this?"}
{"_id": "4475", "title": "What are the best ways to get beta testers?", "text": "I have several projects coming up soon for public release, both commercial and open source. The projects are all downloadable, not web apps. I've worked on them alone and would like to get feedback during a beta period, but I don't currently have a large audience (though the markets are large). What are the best ways to get participation in the betas? Are there any existing sites or communities that specialize in software testing that I can reach out to? At this point, I'm specifically looking for technical testers who aren't intimidated diving into the code and can help spot security bugs, logical errors, etc. **Edit** : I'm looking for websites or communities similar to Invite Share. Invite Share itself would be perfect, but there doesn't seem to be any public information about how to submit a beta. **Bounty Explanation** : While Joel's article on running a beta is helpful, I wonder if there isn't an existing community available for beta testing of any sort, technical or user. As a self-taught and sole developer, I don't have a lot of technical contacts that would be appropriate approaching for testing. I did propose a Beta Testing site in Area 51 a few months ago, but it seems as if it either got buried, there wasn't a whole lot of interest, or it's a poor fit for StackExchange. If you know of existing testing communities, sites like InviteShare, or other ways to get testers, please share."}
{"_id": "186972", "title": "Which asp.net technology fits this situation best?", "text": "I think I can count WebAPI out, but WebForms, WebPages, and MVC are all possibilities. I want to create an asp.net web site that is primarily static content and links to other sites. The only \"fancy\" bit will be a Bing map with pushpins that I add - but even these are static. And there will be a photo gallery. Oh, and ads, too. And, finally, it needs to work well on phones and tablets as well as desktop browsers. Which asp.net technology \"flavor\" is most suited for this type of web site? ## UPDATE In VS 2012, Web Pages projects are not available beneath Templates | Visual C# | Web. What _is_ there:               ASP.NET Empy Web Application     ASP.NET Web Forms Application     ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application     ASP.NET MVC 4 WebApplication     ASP.NET Dyanmic Data Entities Web Application      Does this mean that Web Pages are passe, or that Web Pages and Web Forms are the same thing?"}
{"_id": "85301", "title": "Understanding the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL)", "text": "I'm looking at using a few open source products in a commercial software application I'm working on. One of them is licensed under MIT, which I understand as allowing commercial software linking. However, the other open source product is licensed under MS-PL but I don't understand if that license is fully compatible with commercial software. So the question is, can I use MS-PL licensed OSS in a commercial/proprietary/for-sale application? Thanks."}
{"_id": "74142", "title": "What does Dijkstra mean when he recommends an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue?", "text": "Dijkstra writes here: > Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's > native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer. I do not understand the latter part of this quote. Can you please explain or elaborate? P.S. I have grown up in India. I speak Bengali at home; I speak Marathi in the community that I live in; Hindi is the national language and very widely spoken, so I know that, and in school and college I was taught with English as the first language. Of course, now I think in a multitude of languages and I must admit I don't have _mastery over any_. Is this really affecting my programming aptitude? If yes how ? and are there any _solutions_?"}
{"_id": "85302", "title": "Flash development under Ubuntu", "text": "It's unfortunate, but I'm taking this course that would require me to work in Flash CS3 (specifically programming), which would make me use windows. I'm very used to development under Ubuntu, and booting into windows would require me to switch a hard drive. I was wondering if:   * I could use the Flex 4.5 SDK to develop (something like a console application), then later hook it in Windows with the GUI I'm required to design? (In other words, is Flex 4.5 SDK compatible with CS3)?   * Is there a good lightweight editor that I can edit actionscript 3 in?"}
{"_id": "85304", "title": "What is the best practice to deliver a task to a developer?", "text": "As a very new software PM/Team Leader, I just want to know what is the best practice of a way to deliver a full required information about a task to the developers in my team. In this time, I just provide them with:   * GUI Interface (if it used)   * DB Schema (if it is used)   * Blueprint of main classes. I think that's not enough. We usually have long discussions about the details; I just want to decrease the area of the discussion. What should I do? Do you think we should at least have a code review process?"}
{"_id": "85309", "title": "Does the Decorator Pattern exist in the Java IO classes?", "text": "For an assignment, I have to find out which of the Gang of Four design pattern the classes `java.io.Reader` and its subclasses `java.io.PushbackReader`, `java.io.BufferedReader` and `java.io.FilterReader` were built with. According to this post, the design pattern would be the Decorator Pattern. This only makes sense to me if `PushbackReader`, `BufferedReader` and `FilterReader` can be decorated to be used at the same time, creating effectively a `BufferedPushbackFilterReader`. Is that the idea?"}
{"_id": "200212", "title": "Determining the cost of impediments (waste)", "text": "For some time now our Scrum teams have experienced recurring impediments caused by external factors to the team. The teams have discussed the impediments in their retrospectives and also brought it up on \"Scrum of Scrums\". It seems that the impediments may require involvement by management as it requires some rather significant changes in that way we do things and the way our technical environments have been configured. In a small setting these kind of issues would probably have been easy to deal with because the team would have more control, but in this setting there are multiple teams, stakeholders and parties. I\u2019d like to hear your experience in making waste and costs visible. Do you simply estimate the hours wasted on the recurring impediments (such as, \u201cwe waste 10 hours every sprint waiting on the build server) or do you have a more systematic way of gathering and showing the waste? I would like to collect waste based on Six Sigma (and Lean Software Development) and estimate the waste cost in terms of story points. E.g. at every retrospective highlight the waste in seven categories with the number of story points wasted in each category. The seven categories would be: Partially Done work, Extra Features, Relearning, Handoffs, Task Switching, Delays, and Defects. In the end of the Retrospective, there would then be a clear indication of the cost of external impediments that management would easily be able to act on. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "200214", "title": "Cross Compile Arm Program to Intel", "text": "I have searched around for a way to run a program meant for ARM processors on an Intel computer, but I can only find ways to do the reverse, to compile Intel programs for ARM. Are there any open-source cross-compilers that will allow me to do so? Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "200216", "title": "Independency and estimation of user stories that rely on shared predecessor", "text": "Lest's say I have user stories about using product catalog in shop:   * As an administrator I can add/modify/delete catalog items (one or more user story, doesn't matter here)   * As a customer I can search product catalog   * As a customer I can view product details Each of this stories rely on predecessor: design and create database to store product information. I can express db creation as:   1. another story: As a shop owner I want to store information about products I sell    2. Task to be done in story which will be firstly chosen to do In first case I create story dependency, in second I wondering where estimate this additional task. Let's say it adds additional two story points. To which story should add this points? All (and re-estimate remaining stories in the future), none? I think that second option also can hinder estimation - I have to remember to add this story points to dependent stories and then possibly remove it. How to deal with such situations?"}
{"_id": "200219", "title": "Which could be a good design pattern for complex numeric calculations between three or more different data models?", "text": "The source code I'm working on at the moment performs numeric calculations between a bunch of different properties belonging to different data models. All the calculations are coded in a big method with a lot of If statements than make it very complex, difficult to change and it contains some bugs. I have not found a design pattern that fits into this problem that I think is very common in any financial application. Any help with this? The source code is c# with .NET fw 4."}
{"_id": "205688", "title": "Ported Functions Licensing", "text": "I have found several functions in python 2.7.2 to be very useful and I recreated them in C++ for my own uses. How do I properly give python credit for them? Do I even have to? I never actually looked at their source codes. I just wrote functions that output the same values as the python versions of the function."}
{"_id": "141522", "title": "if/else statements or exceptions", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Defensive Programming vs Exception Handling? I don't know, that this question fit better on this site, or Stack Overflow, but because my question is connected rather to practices, that some specified problem. So, consider an object that does something. And this something can (but should not!) can go wrong. So, this situation can be resolved in two way: first, with exceptions:               DoSomethingClass exampleObject = new DoSomethingClass();     try     {          exampleObject.DoSomething();     }     catch (ThisCanGoWrongException ex)     {          [...]     }      And second, with if statement:               DoSomethingClass exampleObject = new DoSomethingClass();     if(!exampleObject.DoSomething())     {          [...]     }      Second case in more sophisticated way:               DoSomethingClass exampleObject = new DoSomethingClass();     ErrorHandler error = exampleObject.DoSomething();     if (error.HasError)     {          if(error.ErrorType == ErrorType.DivideByPotato)          {              [...]          }     }      which way is better? On one hand, I heard that exceptions should be used only for real unexpected situations, and if programmer knows that something may happen, they should use if/else. On the other hand, Robert C. Martin in his book Clean Code wrote that exceptions are far more object oriented, and more simple to keep clean."}
{"_id": "166039", "title": "Why are exceptions considered better than explicit error testing?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Defensive Programming vs Exception Handling?   >  if/else statements or exceptions I often come across heated blog posts where the author uses the argument: \"exceptions vs explicit error checking\" to advocate his/her preferred language over some other language. The general consensus seems to be that languages that make use of exceptions are inherently better / cleaner than languages which rely heavily on error checking through explicit function calls. Is the use of exceptions considered better programming practice than explicit error checking, and if so, why?"}
{"_id": "135651", "title": "Do We Have a Responsiblity to Improve Old Code?", "text": "I was looking over some old code that I wrote. It works, but it's not great code. I know more now than I did at the time, so I could improve it. It's not a current project, but it's current, working, production code. Do we have a responsibility to go back and improve code that we've written in the past, or is the correct attitude \"if it ain't broke, don't fix it\"? My company sponsored a code review class a few years ago and one of the major takeaways was that sometimes it's just good enough; move on. So, at some point should you just call it good enough and move on, or should you try to push projects to improve old code when you think it could be better?"}
{"_id": "139173", "title": "Caching Business Objects in MVC application", "text": "I figured this was more of an architectural question, so I chose to post it here rather than Stack Overflow. So I'm building an MVC web application and have just finished writing the code that wraps my calls into the DB (DAL) and gives me access via an interface to Create, Update, and Delete my Business Objects. Quick example just so you can get familiar before I go into my real question - here's how I would load up a stored record in the database for someone on the front end:               BusinessObjects.Record record = DAL.LoadRecord(int recordId);      Now once the `record` is loaded up, I can provide it to the front end (web) via a `Model` to one of my pages, or by attaching it to the `ViewBag` or something similar. How it gets there isn't important or what I'm worried about, it's more so how I can maintain state in a stateless (web) environment. The problem I am dealing with right now is, say I provide this `record` to the front end, and my page reads from it and generates a UI around it. At this point, the `record` is more or less gone. It has been created, passed, and read, but because of the stateless environment, is now lost. I can re-create this record based on the data I have on the front end on its way back, but is something like this usually handled by adding this `record` to the cache, and then just working with it there until it's fully ready to be persisted once again (something like `Saver.SaveRecord(record);`)? This would make things a lot quicker for the user, because they wouldn't have to be calling `Save` and `Load` every single time a page switched or something happened, but I didn't know if this was the correct architecture or if there's a common pattern that I have ignorantly ignored. I've tried to load up some links and have just found examples of _how_ to set something like this up, but what I really want to know is, _should_ I be setting something like this up, or is there a better way to do it. You'll have to excuse the beginner question. It's pretty obvious this problem has been solved many times, I'm just unaware of some of the more common patterns for doing so, and therefore wasn't sure exactly what to search for."}
{"_id": "254532", "title": "What optimizations can be done for soft real-time code in C#?", "text": "I'm writing a soft real-time application in C#. Certain tasks, like responding to hardware requests coming in from a network, needs to be finished within a certain amount of milliseconds; however it is not 100% mission-critical to do so (i.e. we can tolerate it being on time most of the time, and the 1% is undesirable but not a failure), hence the \"soft\" part. Now I realize that C# is a managed language, and managed languages aren't particularly suited for real-time applications. However, the speed in which we can get things done in C#, as well as the language features, like reflection and memory management, make the task of building this application much easier. Are there any optimizations or design strategies one can take to reduce the amount of overhead and increase determinism? Ideally I would have the following goals   * Delay the garbage collection until it is \"safe\"    * Allow the garbage collector to work without interfering with real-time processes   * Thread/process priorities for different tasks Are there any ways to do these in C#, and are there any other things to look out for with regards to real-time when using C#? The platform target for the application is .NET 4.0 Client Profile on Windows 7 64-bit, with. I've set it currently to Client profile but this was just the default option and wasn't chosen for any particular reason."}
{"_id": "203748", "title": "Is there a tool or process to help FOSS authors agree on a license?", "text": "The Evercookie project has several contributors and there is no explicit license for the code. There is currently discussion on the dev mailing list trying to figure out what the licensing options are.   * Is there any tool or process that can be used to find consensus among the various licenses?   * What can be done if some contributors are non-responsive, can't be found, etc?"}
{"_id": "87236", "title": "Where should Acceptance tests be written against?", "text": "I'm starting to get into writing automated Acceptance tests and I'm quite confused where to write these tests against, specifically what layer in the app. Most examples I've seen are Acceptance tests written against the **Domain** but how about tests like: > Given Incorrect Data When the user submits the form Then Play an Error Beep These seem to be fit for the **UI** and not for the **Domain** , or probably even the **Service layer**."}
{"_id": "203745", "title": "Demonstration of garbage collection being faster than manual memory management", "text": "I've read in many places (heck, I've even written so myself) that garbage collection _could_ (theoretically) be faster than manual memory management. However, showing is a lot harder to come by than telling.   I have never actually **_seen_** any piece of code that demonstrates this effect in action. Does anyone have (or know where I can find) code that demonstrates this performance advantage?"}
{"_id": "203742", "title": "log4cxx: is it a stable option to include as part of distributed library?", "text": "We are porting our Java API library to C++. (Our target platforms are Linux and Windows.) Since we have minimal C++ experience, the learning curve has been pretty steep, but overall we have been able to make a clean port so far. In Java we use log4j, and are looking at to use log4cxx in the C++ version. It took us a few hours to get log4cxx to build on Windows (due both to our inexperience, and also build documentation seems out of date). We haven't yet tried to build on Linux. To my uninformed eye, log4cxx seems messy and somewhat outdated. Is there any consensus on whether this is a good logging framework to go forward with? (Log4j also seems to have been superceded by SLF4J and Logback.) I looked also at boost logging, but that does not appear to be part of the main distribution, so I wasn't sure if I was provided a more standard option with that or not. One other piece of information to add into the evaluation - the first client we are providing this to is already using log4cxx."}
{"_id": "41254", "title": "Gradual approaches to dependency injection", "text": "I'm working on making my classes unit-testable, using dependency injection. But some of these classes have a lot of clients, and I'm not ready to refactor all of them to start passing in the dependencies yet. So I'm trying to do it gradually; keeping the default dependencies for now, but allowing them to be overridden for testing. One approach I'm conisdering is just moving all the \"new\" calls into their own methods, e.g.:               public MyObject createMyObject(args) {       return new MyObject(args);     }      Then in my unit tests, I can just subclass this class, and override the create functions, so they create fake objects instead. Is this a good approach? Are there any disadvantages? More generally, is it okay to have hard-coded dependencies, as long as you can replace them for testing? I know the preferred approach is to explicitly require them in the constructor, and I'd like to get there eventually. But I'm wondering if this is a good first step. **EDIT:** One disadvantage that just occurred to me: if you have real subclasses that you need to test, you can't reuse the test subclass you wrote for the parent class. You'll have to create a test subclass for each real subclass, and it will have to override same the create functions."}
{"_id": "185443", "title": "What's a good strategy for managing static data in an SOA?", "text": "I'm working on a web application that sits on top of a number of RESTful web services, interacting primarily with those services through JSON formatted messages over HTTP. Our application has a great deal of static data that are read from these services (internationalization lookups, configuration, etc.) during operation. Unfortunately, we work pretty closely with the team who develops the webservces, so we know the backend architecture fairly intimately. Most of the services are using a MongoDB store for persistence, and our strategy thus far for managing the static data we require to be loaded is to utilize MongoDB dumps committed to version control that are loaded at deploy/upgrade time. We'd like to decouple our static data from the persistence store. The best ideas that have come forth thus far mostly involve storing static data formatted as it would be passed to services (JSON files) and then writing a \"loader\" process/script that will live as part of the deployment process which will interact with services to load the data. Are there patterns/strategies for managing/loading/deploying \"application\" data to services?"}
{"_id": "36191", "title": "Generic Content Player?", "text": "The general idea on the web appears to be that video/audio are to be separated with plain text. By separated, I mean you have a place that plays video/audio and a place that you read text. This is because it is widely understood that they are vastly different. However, audio and video are just another way of communication, just like text. So why do we separate the two even if they are nearly the same thing? Correct me if I'm wrong but, most tutorials are either plain text how-to's (wiki-style) or visual/auditory instructional videos (YouTube). Why aren't the two combined? Or, if it's already been done can someone reply with the link? This might be bordering off-topic and if it is off-topic then please point me to the right place so it won't be. This might also appear to be an obvious question, however I'm not sure if this subject has really been deeply thought-out by more than a few individuals."}
{"_id": "185446", "title": "Better way of storing key-value pairs in the database?", "text": "I have a C#/SQL Server program that sometimes needs to store data. The data could be a response from a web service, a result of a database query, or any number of other things. There's no way of knowing before the data is stored how many fields it might have or what the data structure might be. We have this kind of painful table we're using for this... four columns and lots of rows. An example of the data might be easier than an explanation.               InstanceID RowID PropertyName PropertyValue     1          1     Property1    Value1     1          1     Property2    Value2     1          1     Property3    Value3     1          2     Property1    Value1     1          2     Property2    Value2     1          2     Property3    Value3     2          1     OtherProp1   Value1     2          1     OtherProp2   Value2     2          2     OtherProp1   Value1     2          2     OtherProp2   Value2      These values will then be pulled back and fed into a dictionary object, which can be updated, then the fields will be fed back into the database. This can be painful to code against, and also requires a lot of inserts which can make it very slow. I can't think of a better way of doing this, but I feel like there must be one. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "36194", "title": "Help needed on a UI/Developer Interview", "text": "I have a phone interview with a major Internet company and it is a mostly front-end developer position. If anyone has experience with UI/developer interviews and can give some advice/questions asked etc. that'll be great. Additionally, what resources can be read and reviewed for the following:   * Designing for performance, scalability and availability   * Internet and OS security fundamentals **EDIT:** Now I am told that the interview I am told will be mostly on coding, Data Structures, design questions etc. Anyone?"}
{"_id": "218226", "title": "What parts of functionality should be refactored into a directive?", "text": "I am creating an application from legacy code using AngularJS. I wonder what parts of my code should be moved into a directive. For example, iI had thought of moving a table which is used multiple times across the application into a directive. The tables alter from headings and size. Is it worth the effort or even a good practice to turn such things into their own directives or should I create each table in a unique way?"}
{"_id": "185448", "title": "MVVM Clarification", "text": "We are about to write our first WPF application and are becoming familiar with the MVVM pattern. We've built many Winform applications and have an architecture that has been very successful for us. We're having a little bit of trouble translating that architecture or determining where certain pieces of our architecture fit in the MVVM model. Historically we have a Gui (the main exe) that then communicates to a BusinessLogic dll. The BusinessLogic communicates to a DAL dll through a web service and the DAL interacts with the DB. The DAL, BusinessLogic and GUI all reference the same BusinessObjects dll. ![AsIs Architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uWIvW.png) Some of the transition to MVVM is fairly straight forward. Our Gui will still contain the views, our BusinessOjbects will still contain the model and our DAL will still interact with the DB (although the technology to implement them may change). What we're not sure of is our BusinessLogic component. Historically this would provide functions for the GUI to call to then populate controls in the views (ie. GetCustomerList which would return a list of Customer objects or the typical CRUD functions). The main hang up we have is whether the MVVM pattern would call for an additional component to house the ViewModels or if we just change our thinking and migrate what we have used as our BusinessLogic component to the ViewModels? Does our BusinessLogic component represent the ViewModels?"}
{"_id": "30348", "title": "Best Practices for MVC Architecture", "text": "There are a number of questions on Stack Overflow regard MVC best practices, but most of those seem to revolve around things like using Dependency Injection, or creating helper functions, or do's and don'ts of what to do in views and controllers. My question is more about how to architect an MVC application. For example, we are encouraged to use DI with the Repository pattern to decouple data access from the controller, however very little is said on HOW to do that specifically for MVC. Where would we place the Repository classes, for instance? They don't seem to be model related specifically, since the model should likewise be relatively decoupled from the actual data access technologies. A second question involves how to structure the layers or tiers. Most example applications (Nerd dinner, Music Store, etc..) all seem to use a single tier, 2 layer approach (not counting tests) that typically has controllers directly calling L2S or EF code. If I want to create a multi-tier/layer application what are some of the best practices there in regards to MVC?"}
{"_id": "166004", "title": "How to learn to draw UML sequence diagrams", "text": "How can I learn to draw UML sequence diagrams. Even though I don't use UML much I find that type of diagrams to be quite expressive and want to learn how to draw them. I don't plan to use them to visualise a large chunks of code, hence I would like to avoid using tools, and learn how to draw them with just pen and paper. Muscle memory is good. I guess I would need to learn some basics of notation first, and then just practice it like in \"take the piece of code, draw a seq. diagram visualising the code, then generate the diagram using some tool/website, then compare what I'd drawn to what the tool result. Find the differences, correct them, repeat.\". Where do I start? Can you recommend a book or a web site or something else? **Update** : I decided that it might be worthwhile to upskill myself in UML, and found this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements- UML-2-0-Style/dp/0521616786 \\- reviews say it is best practices book on UML. Have you read it? Can you recommend it? Thank you."}
{"_id": "166000", "title": "Accessing Repositories from Domain", "text": "Say we have a task logging system, when a task is logged, the user specifies a category and the task defaults to a status of 'Outstanding'. Assume in this instance that Category and Status have to be implemented as entities. Normally I would do this: **Application Layer:**               public class TaskService     {         //...              public void Add(Guid categoryId, string description)         {             var category = _categoryRepository.GetById(categoryId);             var status = _statusRepository.GetById(Constants.Status.OutstandingId);             var task = Task.Create(category, status, description);             _taskRepository.Save(task);         }     }      **Entity:**               public class Task     {         //...              public static void Create(Category category, Status status, string description)         {             return new Task             {                 Category = category,                 Status = status,                 Description = descrtiption             };         }     }      I do it like this because I am consistently told that entities should not access the repositories, but it would make much more sense to me if I did this: **Entity:**               public class Task     {         //...              public static void Create(Category category, string description)         {             return new Task             {                 Category = category,                 Status = _statusRepository.GetById(Constants.Status.OutstandingId),                 Description = descrtiption             };         }     }      The status repository is dependecy injected anyway, so there is no real dependency, and this feels more to me thike it is the domain that is making thedecision that a task defaults to outstanding. The previous version feels like it is the application layeer making that decision. Any why are repository contracts often in the domain if this should not be a posibility? Here is a more extreme example, here the domain decides urgency: **Entity:**               public class Task     {         //...              public static void Create(Category category, string description)         {             var task = new Task             {                 Category = category,                 Status = _statusRepository.GetById(Constants.Status.OutstandingId),                 Description = descrtiption             };                  if(someCondition)             {                 if(someValue > anotherValue)                 {                     task.Urgency = _urgencyRepository.GetById                         (Constants.Urgency.UrgentId);                 }                 else                 {                     task.Urgency = _urgencyRepository.GetById                         (Constants.Urgency.SemiUrgentId);                 }             }             else             {                 task.Urgency = _urgencyRepository.GetById                     (Constants.Urgency.NotId);             }                  return task;         }     }      There is no way you would want to pass in all possible versions of Urgency, and no way you would want to calculate this business logic in the application layer, so surely this would be the most appropriate way? So is this a valid reason to access repositories from the domain? **EDIT: This could also be the case on non static methods:**               public class Task     {         //...              public void Update(Category category, string description)         {             Category = category,             Status = _statusRepository.GetById(Constants.Status.OutstandingId),             Description = descrtiption                  if(someCondition)             {                 if(someValue > anotherValue)                 {                     Urgency = _urgencyRepository.GetById                         (Constants.Urgency.UrgentId);                 }                 else                 {                     Urgency = _urgencyRepository.GetById                         (Constants.Urgency.SemiUrgentId);                 }             }             else             {                 Urgency = _urgencyRepository.GetById                     (Constants.Urgency.NotId);             }                  return task;         }     }"}
{"_id": "108790", "title": "Which Java framework meets these requirements?", "text": "Which Java framework meets these requirements? What set of frameworks would be best suited to meet these requirements? The requirements are:   * oriented for web   * support for transactions   * support for creating RESTful web services   * support for security, levels of security   * integration with some kind of ORM framework like Hibernate   * ability to change front-end without need of making changes to back-end. Firstly, I want to develop a flex based front-end but if I've ever wanted to change it to HTML5 then I don't want to make changes to my back-end   * ready for cloud   * free to use for commercial purposes To my mind comes Spring but are there any other alternatives meeting these requirements? What about if it is not necessary java? Do you know framework, set of frameworks combined together in other language which meet these requirements best?"}
{"_id": "205597", "title": "Have Superclass Contain List of Subclass?", "text": "For the GUI of a program, I want it to list several items, all of which are, from a programming side, just subclasses. They can add one of these items to a list. I don't want to hard-code which subclasses there are. What would be the best way to allow the GUI to know about the subclasses, only having the base class to refer to?"}
{"_id": "205591", "title": "Best way to develop a php open source application", "text": "I started to create a php application I'd like to make open source in the near future. However I do not know, if it's needed to follow any kind of code/documentation convention, to make it more usable and acceptable when released. Is there any model, to follow, to develop a good open source application? Do you think it is necessary(or better) to develop it entirely, or for the most, object oriented?"}
{"_id": "205592", "title": "Storing application users in SQL: create a new \"Users\" table or use built-in database user management?", "text": "I am specifically interested in SQL Server, but the same question applies in general. When creating a new application, the way I see it, there are two options:   * Create a table called \"Users\" and store the user name, password, etc. Set up one database user called \"application\" (and possibly more users for various components of the system).    * Set up each application user as the database user. This may allow for easier single log on setup on Windows-based systems. Which approach is generally preferred? Why? What are the drawbacks and benefits?"}
{"_id": "108792", "title": "Can we expect re-addition of Mobile SDK in future Visual Studio versions?", "text": "Microsoft stopped shipping the Mobile SDK in Visual Studio releases after the 2008 version. This wasn't a big surprise, as there were no takers for that feature and android made a big hole. But now, things have changed, Microsoft has partnered with Nokia, HTC rolling new mobiles with Windows OS. Also, Windows 8 is all set to make d\u00e9but on tablets. Can all these be seen as potential reasons for Microsoft to roll-out the Mobile SDK again in future releases of Visual Studio ?"}
{"_id": "204240", "title": "How can I determine what level (entry, mid, senior) I am?", "text": "I have an interview with a company headquartered in San Francisco. They are pretty popular, well publicized, and recently acquired by a semi-notable player in Silicon Valley. The team is probably 20-30 people. They want at least a mid-level candidate, and offer \"perks\" for senior/lead developers. I got an internship (for backend development) at a small startup halfway through a state school CS program, and was hired full-time a week into my internship as lead (well... only) iOS developer. I've worked here for 5 months and released an app (iOS constituent of our realtime communication suite). I've also released a location-based app for a niche community. I am familiar with TDD, GitHub, API's, AFNetworking and all the recent popular jazz, as well as dated concepts like pre-ARC memory management and xib/xibless programming. I can demonstrate a basic knowledge level of algorithms and formal programming (competent in code competitions) and I am a good communicator. But my notable experience is somewhat lacking. Would it be fair to call myself a mid-level developer?"}
{"_id": "204241", "title": "Adding correct documentation for a method", "text": "I have method like this:               methodA(someParams)     {       do some initializations,etc;       call methodB(someParams);     }          methodB(someParams)     {       do work;       if blah then raise exception::FileNotFound       if blahblah then raise exception::ResourceNotFound     }      When I am adding documentation for `methodB`, I am also documenting the exceptions it can raise. But how about documentation of `methodA` ? It IS consuming `methodB` that may raise exceptions, so should I still document those exceptions for methodA as well? Right? wrong?"}
{"_id": "203296", "title": "How to convince boss to buy Visual Studio 2012 Professional", "text": "The main advantage is the use of ReSharper and other add-ons but we need to make a convincing argument for the purchase of Visual Studio 2012 Professional. We are currently using Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows. It is quite good but is hard to switch from using the full Professional version in the past. So far the team has compiled the following list: >   1. Extract Interface function missing. Very useful for clean SOLID code. >   2. No add-on support. Can\u2019t install StyleCop or productivity tools. > AnkhSvn, Spell checker, Productivity PowerTools, GhostDoc, Regex Editor, > PowerCommands. >   3. The exception assistant is limited in Express edition. This is a big > annoyance. See http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/01/ive-given-up-on-visual- > studio-express-2012-for-windows-desktop-heres-why/ >   4. Different tools provided by MS like certificate generation. >   5. Possibility of create a Test project based on source code. > We do server development in C# so any web add-ons or anything else is useless. The reason I am asking is I am sure that people have been in the same position. What approach did you use and can you think of additions or ammends to the above list? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "218598", "title": "Layered Manufacturing Contour Generation", "text": "I am currently working on software for layered manufacturing (3D printing), and have come to a point where I no longer know what to do. I am at the stage where I must take a bunch of lines, and order them to create a seamless contour of a model. I have some basic ideas on how I am going to do this, but since I am using .STL files there are excess lines in some of the layers. ![sample](http://i.stack.imgur.com/S2wSL.png) In that image you can see that there is a simple square with a line connecting two corners to form two triangles. This is the base of a cube. Ideally the line connecting the two corners wouldn't be there, but because this was processed from a .STL file which uses triangles only it has to be there to turn the square into two triangles. My original thought was to print out that line too, but in a more complex model ( like a gear ) there would be too many and it would be impossible to create one seamless contour. My next thought was to just print it out as two triangles, but I cannot go over the same line twice, so that doesn't work especially in complex models. I have been thinking about this problem for quite a while, but I can never come up with a solution that would work for any model. I need to end up with series of lines that form contours of not just the outside, but possibly the inside as well if there are holes. For example a gear would have one set of lines that form the teeth all the way around, and another set of lines that form the hole in the middle. If anyone knows a solution to this, or has experience with this, I would greatly appreciate your input =)"}
{"_id": "101813", "title": "How does EF 4.1 stack up against ADO.NET SQL for stored procedures?", "text": "This question is _solely_ about using these technologies against stored procedures. I've been doing quite a bit of reading on pitting these two against each other, and far more than anything I've been seeing them compared with CRUD operations and other more complex queries - very rarely for calling stored procedures. I've read that it's hard to beat ADO.NET for performance when calling stored procedures. However, when calling them with Entity Framework 4.1, you get the benefits of entities (rather than just the data reader) which can be nicer to work with and pass around (imo). I ran a few tests today (not sure of the accuracy of them) and they suggest that over 100 or 1000 iterations, calling the same procedure, that ADO.NET is something like 5 milliseconds, on average, faster per call. (I haven't been able to test how long it takes to convert from the standard data reader object to a similar kind of entity, but I doubt it makes up for the 5 milliseconds) Is it worth the trade off in performance for the benefits in design and writing? Or are those 5ms per query just too much? Does the answer change between small projects, and environments like e-commerce?"}
{"_id": "218592", "title": "Use the filesystem or some noSql database for shared memory between processes?", "text": "I'm implementing a system that's basically a pipeline of XML documents: XML documents are retrieved over the Internet, validated, further processed etc. until they are ingested in a relational (non-XML) database. After the ingestion in the database they can be discarded. Since the various components of the pipeline are somewhat independent from each other I want to use a number of separate applications, each performing a \"step\" in the pipeline. What should be the reasoning behind choosing the file- system for data sharing between the above applications versus some noSQL database? The data to be shared is mostly XML files and total volume of data that goes through the pipeline maybe 10 gigabytes per day."}
{"_id": "218597", "title": "Understanding abstraction", "text": "I am trying to understand object oriented code better and I decided to start at abstraction. If I am not incorrect, abstraction means that you hide information that isn't relevant to what task you want to perform, i.e. If I turn on the TV I would not need to know the internal that is going on. Or If I have a class that handles Orders, and I would like to get the Total cost of a couple of Products, a getTotal() method would be the only thing that the User needs to know about to get the total sum of the products, and not how it's actually calculated. So per se, by using a class I am abstracting data?"}
{"_id": "249897", "title": "Web-app filtering information client-side vs server-side?", "text": "I have a web-app that provides data (that is updated on an interval) for intranet users, who are able to filter information by location. I was having a discussion with a co-worker about whether that filtering should take place on the client vs server side. The amount of information isn't large, but the users are typically interested in a certain location. My question..Is it preferable to let the database filter the data and send the results to the client, or return all data back to the client and then sort by location? If it's not clear cut, when would you choose on method over the other?"}
{"_id": "249890", "title": "When does a Monad become a hammer?", "text": "I realize my precursory understanding on Monads is severely lacking in detail considering my knowledge comes mostly from Douglas Crockford's Monads and Gonads talk and complicated with my sevear handicap with Haskell (which looks like a bunch of non-alpha numeric characters mushed between disjointed English words to my tragically disadvantaged brain). With that being said, I'd like to ask about programming practices concerning Monads and how they could be implemented in JavaScript. I'm prefacing this because I recognize that the very nature of the language can drastically affect how one perceives a concept and that because of my background in JavaScript this question could be inappropriate if it were based in a purely functional language like Haskell. Often times while designing an interface or coding an object I will find myself implementing a form of chaining which mutates the encapsulated data. I prefer this style over more declarative forms like passing in a multi-lined object literal.               function Declarative(options) {       this.options = options;     }     Declarative.prototype.compute = function() { ... }     var x = new Declarative({       foo: 'foo',       bar: 'bar'     });     x.compute();      Verses:               function Chained() { }     Chained.prototype.withFoo = function(v) {       this.foo = v;       return this;     };     Chained.prototype.withBar = function(v) {       this.bar = v;       return this;     };     Chained.prototype.compute = function() { ... }     var x = new Chained()       .withFoo('foo')       .withBar('bar')       .compute();      Both these examples (aesthetics aside) raise a few hairs on my back because a small voice mockingly squeals \"Mutability much?\" I begin thinking this might be a good time to conciser a Monad pattern. What I mean by that is each method would in short return a new object of the same type. Then adding composition functions on it like map, bind, etc. could off a world of potential like I get with Promises and other Monad type. (Obviously taking care to follow the three Monadic laws when implemented). Finally, my other half of the brain starts chiming in with \"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.\" Sigh. That is when my productivity and creativity crash here on SE curious and confused. While I continue my research for understanding (perhaps gaining enough courage to contemplate Haskell) I ask: When does the idea of Monads (that being composability of functions on objects (ie types) along with immutability) become a good idea to be cultivated and patterned? And, when is it nothing more then an over utilized hammer? (Concepts and learning opportunities welcomed, example code helpful)"}
{"_id": "249891", "title": "Add arguments to mysql in Django's \"dbshell\"", "text": "I'd like to add a couple of command-line arguments to my Django's `./manage.py dbshell` command, and I can't figure out how. In specific I'd like to add `-A` to prevent MySQL from scanning every table and every column, and `--prompt=LOCAL:` since I frequently keep multiple shells open. I can't figure out how to do this! I'm only idea is to create my own \"mysql\" command in /usr/local/bin and have it be a wrapper for mysql with my own flags. But I'd really like to avoid doing that."}
{"_id": "54591", "title": "Starting all over again?", "text": "Have you ever been developing something and just came to a point where you think that this is rubbish, the design is bad and although I will lose time it will be better to just start all over again? What should you consider before making this step? I know it can be drastic in some cases, is it best to just totally ignore what you did before, or take some of the best bits from it? Some real life examples would be great."}
{"_id": "249893", "title": "Privilege (Access/Permission) Control for Hierarchial Structured Resource", "text": "Question: Is there any standard model or industry defacto implementation for modeling and implementing Access Control in (i.e.) a Document Management System? Note: I studied a bit the security mechanism of Windows (which I do not want to use), and I saw Users and Groups and Policies. But I can't understand: 1 - How a single policy object can contain all information about allowed/denied actions on a subject for all users and groups, at a specific moment of time. 2 - How multiple policies on a specific subject, merge into one to provide least possible access. 3 - What is the mechanism (data structures, database, caching, implementation) of hierarchical resources like folders? Those king of queries are usually slow."}
{"_id": "61227", "title": "Why bother with detailed specs?", "text": "When writing software, what's the point of writing a formal, detailed dead- tree specification? To clarify, a somewhat informal, high-level specification for people who don't want to read the code makes sense to me. A reference implementation in well-commented, readable source code is about the most unambiguous specification of anything you're going to get, though, since a computer has to be able to execute it. Formal specs are often just as hard to read, and almost as hard to write, as code. What benefits does a formal specification offer over a reference implementation plus a little documentation about what behavior is undefined/implementation-defined regardless of how it works in the reference implementation. Edit: Alternatively, what's wrong with the tests being the formal specification?"}
{"_id": "123349", "title": "How do you determine velocity when the previous sprint was half User Stories and half Defects?", "text": "The following scenario often happens with my team at the office. Let's say we decided to plan our Sprint this way:   * 50% new features   * 50% bug fixing (they are high priority AND _unestimated_ as the fixes are easy, the hard and time-consuming bit is the investigation) The Sprint goes well and we finish all the features, say X story points, and quite a few unestimated bugs. Two questions come to mind:   1. What is our Sprint velocity? Is it X?    2. Assuming it is X; how do we plan the next Sprint using \"yesterday's weather\" (X story points) if we now want to do an 100% new features Sprint?"}
{"_id": "232662", "title": "Separate namespace just for exceptions?", "text": "I was doing a code review and came across something odd which I've never seen before. The developer decided to create a sub-namespace just to contain all the assembly's exceptions. I thought I had read that this was explicitly not a good use of namespaces and that exceptions should be kept at the \"lowest\" namespace from which they are thrown, but I haven't found anything on MSDN (or anywhere else for that matter). At the same time, it seems odd that I haven't come across this before in the framework itself or the third party libraries I've used. Are there any guidelines exist that would push away from keeping all exceptions in a .Exceptions sub-namespace?"}
{"_id": "235697", "title": "What kind of processes or static alaysis would you use to catch impropper buffer bugs such as the one that caused heartbleed?", "text": "What kind of process or static analysis would catch the heart bleed bug other than human code reviews which we already know failed. The Fix Commit is here."}
{"_id": "159911", "title": "How to contribute to jQuery?", "text": "I'm confused about the nature of the jQuery project. It can be licensed under either the GPL or the MIT license, according to the comments in the project. However, the jQuery web site provides a list of team members, as if this were a commercial product. I have written some code to improve jQuery to work around a nasty bug in Internet Explorer and I would like to know what is the best way to propose my idea to the project."}
{"_id": "159912", "title": "How to deal with code reuse philosophy?", "text": "I constantly find myself thinking about code reuse when starting a new project. To what extent should I make my code reusable?   Should I limit it to the application scope or should I make it reusable outside of the project? Sometimes, I feel like code reusability may stand in the way of a simple design. Please, share your own understanding and approach of code re- usability."}
{"_id": "132967", "title": "Jenkins without Automated Tests", "text": "I know that Jenkins is focused on continous building/testing, monitoring of batch jobs about the project. We have a legacy project which such condition : 1)Has a development team. 2)It has SVN for source code management 3)Some cronjobs for some operations. 4)Compile&Build don't take too much time, there is no very complex dependencies. 5)It doesn't have any automated test/junit classes and will not have. I'd like to ask to experienced users about Jenkins, is it still worth to use Jenkins for central build&management of the project ?"}
{"_id": "132965", "title": "Unit of work principle is causing a problem in MVC3 application", "text": "I am implementing a website using MVC3, Entity Framework 4.1 and Repositoty pattern, Unit of work principle. But I am facing a big problem while implementing this. I have developed a static ObjectContext class. This class is used across all the repositories so unit of work pattern is followed. I have e.g. ICustomer, IProduct repositories. I use specifically only one repository in a controller and that too is injected using NInject.               CustomerController(ICustomer customer)     {     }          ProductController(IProduct product)     {     }      Since object context class is static and IProduct, ICustomer have parameterised constructor which accepts the objectContext class, these two will share the same ObjectContext instance. When the execution is single threaded everything goes fine, but in multi- threading I get an unhandled exception, because of one repository closing the connection which was being used by other. I think if I make ObjectContext class not-static then this will solve the problem(Not tested yet) but then Unit of Work will not be observed. Can you please suggest a solution for this?"}
{"_id": "236176", "title": "Performance of One API vs Multiple API's", "text": "I was having a conversation with a colleague and although my opinion makes sense to me, I wasn't able to back it up. I'm in the process of creating an API that will be hit hundreds of thousands of times per day. It's fairly simple, and will just be doing some inserts into a relational database. There are essentially 3 functions I would need to create. The question is, what would have better performance, creating one API with different controllers (using .NET Web API or NodeJS something like that) or 3 different API's. My thought is that, for example with the .NET Web API, no matter whether there are 1 or 3 they are all being hosted, and using the same resources. His thought was that having 3 API's would be 3 times faster because it would have 3 times the resources. I simply didn't have the proof to disprove that."}
{"_id": "171745", "title": "Managing JS and CSS for a static HTML web application", "text": "I'm working on a smallish web application that uses a little bit of static HTML and relies on JavaScript to load the application data as JSON and dynamically create the web page elements from that. **First question** : Is this a fundamentally bad idea? I'm unclear on how many web sites and web applications completely dispense with server-side generation of HTML. (There are obvious disadvantages of JS-only web apps in the areas of graceful degradation / progressive enhancement and being search engine friendly, but I don't believe that these are an issue for this particular app.) **Second question** : What's the best way to manage the static HTML, JS, and CSS? For my \"development build,\" I'd like non-minified third-party code, multiple JS and CSS files for easier organization, etc. For the \"release build,\" everything should be minified, concatenated together, etc. If I was doing server-side generation of HTML, it'd be easy to have my web framework generate different development versus release HTML that includes multiple verbose versus concatenated minified code. But given that I'm only doing any static HTML, what's the best way to manage this? (I realize I could hack something together with ERB or Perl, but I'm wondering if there are any standard solutions.) **In particular** , since I'm not doing any server-side HTML generation, is there an easy, semi-standard way of setting up my static HTML so that it contains code like               <script src=\"js/vendors/jquery.js\"></script>     <script src=\"js/class_a.js\"></script>     <script src=\"js/class_b.js\"></script>     <script src=\"js/main.js\"></script>      at development time and               <script src=\"http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.2/jquery.min.js\"></script>     <script src=\"js/entire_app.min.js\"></script>      for release?"}
{"_id": "226036", "title": "Potentially Shippable Product Increment - what if users don't like the latest increment?", "text": "In our company we do usability test at the end of each Sprint. Many times we discover that the users don't like the implemented feature, so we either completely change it or scrap it in the next Sprint. However if we start doing potentially shippable product, thus fixing all bugs, running a lot of tests, preparing documentation for FDA and for users, fixing little UI issues - all this work will go to waste if users will not like the feature. Isn't it better NOT to do all this extra potentially shippable stuff until we are sure users actually like the feature?"}
{"_id": "219171", "title": "What workflow do you find efficient when simultaneously developing multiple inter-dependent GIT branches?", "text": "Let me start by saying that my GIT knowledge is fairly shallow, so I'm guessing that there might be something I'm missing. **THE SETUP:**   As an example, we have a project which is being developed as a collection of plug-ins/modules. Some modules, such as contact management, depend on others, such as validation. Each module has it's own branch. **CURRENT WORK FLOW:**   Our validation module is being concurrently developed with our other modules, just in a separate stream. In doing so, I am finding that I am having to do a **lot** of checking out back and forth (as well as a lot of stashing (and merging, but that I'm fine with)). For example, say I'm developing module_x which needs a new validation rule (which will have uses in other modules as well) ... I then:   1. stash my work   2. checkout the validation branch   3. write the rule   4. commit   5. checkout the module_x branch   6. pop the stash   7. merge the validation branch into module_x. Now, if I come up with an improvement for something in the validation branch (or just need to fix a bug), I have to go through all that all over again. Between new development, refactoring/improvements, and bug fixing, I feel like I'm spending entirely too much time just switching back and forth between developments streams, and can't help but think that there's a better way. **DO's and DONT's:**   Is this _really_ how it's done, or am I completely missing the bigger picture? :)   What works for you?"}
{"_id": "137244", "title": "Why doesn't java use a radix sort on primitives?", "text": "`java.util.Arrays.sort(/* int[], char[], short[], byte[], boolean[] */)` is implemented as a 'tuned quicksort' rather than a radix sort. I did a speed comparison a while ago, and with something like n>10000, radix sort was always faster. why?"}
{"_id": "40614", "title": "As developers is it our job to report issues if no one else in the org seems to care?", "text": "**edit:** I should point out; My personal view was that I should be proactive. I know sometimes I have to bite my tongue, and I wanted to get the communities input(was this one of those times). I couldn't find a more appropriate place to ask it in the SO family of sites. Here is the scenario --   * small org < 70 employees   * no qa department   * website viewed by thousands everyday.    * I am the sole website developer   * I have never had a single complaint that the site is broken in IE6   * I've discovered our site has not worked in IE6 for years. The person I replaced who created it must have been \"testing\" it only on IE7. I fired up Virtual PC and with IE6, and our site is a complete mess. You can not select some menu items they are so garbled. It looks terrible. So again, Is it our job to proactively seek out bugs, or do we just fix what the customer requests.... Personally, I want to leverage this opportunity with my org to drop any expectation of IE6 support or compatibility."}
{"_id": "178941", "title": "Why do operating systems do low level stuff in C and C++? Why not just C++?", "text": "On the Wikipedia page for Windows, it states the Windows is written in Assembly for the bootloader and task switcher, and C _and_ C++ for kernel routines. IIRC, you can call C++ functions from an `extern \"C\"`'d block. I can get using C for the kernel functions so pure C apps can use them (like `printf` and such), but if they can just be wrapped in an `extern \"C \"` block, then why code in C?"}
{"_id": "570", "title": "Will correctness proofs of code ever go mainstream?", "text": "All but the most trivial programs are filled with bugs and so anything that promises to remove them is extremely alluring. At the moment, correctness proofs are code are extremely esoteric, mainly because of the difficultly of learning this and the extra effort it takes to prove a program correct. Do you think that code proving will ever take off?"}
{"_id": "178949", "title": "Browser support for internal corporate tools", "text": "We are on the verge of a conversion. For years, our company supported only IE for its internal (intranet) home-built tools. Since a few of our users are still on XP, which means IE only goes up to 8... a heavily JS / jQuery site wont even load! We have been in the process of converting to use Chrome instead, to make use of its javascript performance. But, it has now been suggested that we support all common browsers... internally for these tools. Which means more development time to scale-back some of these new applications, more time to test in all browsers, and we are already under staffed. Are there any good informational sites/posts out there, that already make this argument?"}
{"_id": "202167", "title": "What's with the aversion to documentation in the industry?", "text": "There seems to be an aversion to writing even the most basic documentation. Our project READMEs are relatively bare. There aren't even updated lists of dependencies in the docs. Is there something I'm unaware of in the industry that makes programmers dislike writing documentation? I can type out paragraphs of docs if needed, so why are others so averse to it? More importantly, how do I convince them that writing docs will save us time and frustration in the future?"}
{"_id": "207531", "title": "Data Aggregation of CSV files java", "text": "I have `k` csv files (5 csv files for example), each file has `m` fields which produce a key and `n` values. I need to produce a single csv file with aggregated data. I'm looking for the most efficient solution for this problem, speed mainly. I don't think by the way that we will have memory issues. Also I would like to know if hashing is really a good solution because we will have to use 64 bit hashing solution to reduce the chance for a collision to less than 1% (we are having around 30000000 rows per aggregation). For example               file 1: f1,f2,f3,v1,v2,v3,v4             a1,b1,c1,50,60,70,80             a3,b2,c4,60,60,80,90           file 2: f1,f2,f3,v1,v2,v3,v4             a1,b1,c1,30,50,90,40             a3,b2,c4,30,70,50,90          result: f1,f2,f3,v1,v2,v3,v4               a1,b1,c1,80,110,160,120             a3,b2,c4,90,130,130,180      algorithm that we thought until now:   1. hashing (using concurentHashTable)   2. merge sorting the files   3. DB: using mysql or hadoop or redis. The solution needs to be able to handle Huge amount of data (each file more than two million rows) a better example: file 1               country,city,peopleNum     england,london,1000000     england,coventry,500000      file 2:               country,city,peopleNum     england,london,500000     england,coventry,500000     england,manchester,500000      merged file:               country,city,peopleNum     england,london,1500000     england,coventry,1000000     england,manchester,500000      The key is: `country,city`. This is just an example, my real key is of size 6 and the data columns are of size 8 - total of 14 columns. We would like that the solution will be the fastest in regard of data processing."}
{"_id": "207534", "title": "how to create database in which new columns have to be added periodically?", "text": "I want to create a database that tracks different projects and their finances. As finances are tracked monthly, a new column has to be created for each month. I could create all tables together at the start, yeah, but I guess it would be bad development strategy. Also I would be guessing the number of months. I will be creating an application to monitor those projects (like graphs and such)... so maybe I could code the program to do it at regular intervals."}
{"_id": "85235", "title": "Is code ownership a code smell?", "text": "This is something I've been thinking about ever since I read this answer in the controversial programming opinions thread: > **Your job is to put yourself out of work.** > > When you're writing software for your employer, any software that you create > is to be written in such a way that it can be picked up by any developer and > understood with a minimal amount of effort. It is well designed, clearly and > consistently written, formatted cleanly, documented where it needs to be, > builds daily as expected, checked into the repository, and appropriately > versioned. > > If you get hit by a bus, laid off, fired, or walk off the job, your employer > should be able to replace you on a moment's notice, and the next guy could > step into your role, pick up your code and be up and running within a week > tops. If he or she can't do that, then you've failed miserably. > > Interestingly, I've found that having that goal has made me more valuable to > my employers. The more I strive to be disposable, the more valuable I become > to them. And it has been discussed a bit in other questions, such as this one, but I wanted to bring it up again to discuss from a more point blank \" **it's a code smell!!** \" point of view - which hasn't really been covered in depth yet. I've been a professional developer for ten years. I've had one job where the code was well written enough to be picked up relatively quickly by any decent new developer, but in most cases in industry, it seems that a very high level of ownership (both individual and team ownership) is the norm. Most code bases seem to lack the documentation, process, and \"openness\" that would allow a new developer to pick them up and get working with them quickly. There always seem to be lots of unwritten little tricks and hacks that only someone who knows the code base very well (\"owns\" it) would know about. Of course, the obvious problem with this is: what if the person quits or \"gets hit by a bus\"? Or on a team level: what if the whole team gets food poisoning when they go out on their team lunch, and they all die? Would you be able to replace the team with a fresh set of new random developers relatively painlessly? - In several of my past jobs, I can't imagine that happening at all. The systems were so full of tricks and hacks that you \" _just have to know_ \", that any new team you hire would take far longer than the profitable business cycle (eg, new stable releases) to get things going again. In short, I wouldn't be surprised if the product would have to be abandoned. Obviously, losing an entire team at once would be very rare. But I think there is a more subtle and sinister thing in all this - which is the point which got me thinking to start this thread, as I haven't seen it discussed in these terms before. Basically: I think **a high need for code ownership is very often an indicator of technical debt**. If there is a lack of process, communication, good design, lots of little tricks and hacks in the system that you \"just have to know\", etc - it usually means that the system is getting into progressively deeper and deeper technical debt. But the thing is - code ownership is often presented as a kind of \"loyalty\" to a project and company, as a positive form of \"taking responsibility\" for your work - so it's unpopular to outright condemn it. But at the same time, the technical debt side of the equation often means that the code base is getting progressively less open, and more difficult to work with. And especially as people move on and new developers have to take their place, the technical debt (ie maintenance) cost starts to soar. So in a sense, I actually think that it would be a good thing for our profession if a high level of need for code ownership were openly seen as a job smell (in the popular programmer imagination). Instead of it being seen as \"taking responsibility and pride\" in the work, it should be seen more as \"entrenching oneself and creating artificial job security via technical debt\". And I think the test (thought experiment) should basically be: what if the person (or indeed, the whole team) were to vanish off the face of the Earth tomorrow. Would this be a gigantic - possibly fatal - injury to the project, or would we be able to bring in new people, get them to read the doccos and help files and play around with the code for a few days - and then be back in business in a few weeks (and back to full productivity in a month or so)?"}
{"_id": "230283", "title": "Applying the Art Gallery problem to optimal sensor placement", "text": "I am trying to design an algorithm for _optimal sensor placement_ in a given area. After doing some research I found the _Art Gallery Problem_. However, this problem assumes that the guards can see all the way to the perimeter from their positions, which is not the case with sensors (sensors have a range). Is it possible to solve the optimal sensor placement problem by mapping it to an art gallery problem, and trying some recursive solution? I would be grateful if someone could throw some light on this question or guide me to appropriate resource."}
{"_id": "47963", "title": "Recommendations for a web-based help system", "text": "I'm putting together a fairly large GUI. I'm a tech person, but more on the hardware side, not software. I'm wondering what software package would be best suited to enable me to generate a web-based help-system. Preferably it takes care of a lot of coding, allowing me to focus on the content. For example, the user would click on a link in the GUI when they have a question, that brings them to a web-based Help Guide, for example, providing an overview of how to use the GUI, perhaps a searchable index (key-word based index), table of contents, etc, for navigating through the Help Guide. My first thought was to program everything in XHTML using Dreamweaver, but my layout requirements are fairly modest (just figures and text, maybe a few equations), and I'd prefer not to spend a lot of time concentrating on the programming. Was wondering if any software existed that made generating web- based navigable pages easy to create/publish. Again, I'm not really a programmer, so if there's something obvious out there, I'm probably not aware of it."}
{"_id": "38799", "title": "Does taking a series of contracts hurt your career?", "text": "So I've been contracting for 6-7 months now. The problem I have is that I take a contract while looking for work and then don't want to bail on the people working in my contract. Then when the contract is up, I tell myself I'm going to take a contract while looking, etc. I'm concerned that if this trend continues it will not be good for my career. I'm particularly concerned about the fact that the contracts (3 to 6 months) aren't really long enough for me to participate in a full SDLC. Does taking a series of 3-6 month contracts make it more difficult to land a permanent, senior position later? For example, I can't imagine someone hiring a consultant to be a team lead. So if you are going from contract to contract, does it hurt your ability to eventually become a team lead?"}
{"_id": "175844", "title": "Is there an antipattern to describe this method of coding?", "text": "I have a codebase where the programmer tended to wrap things up in areas that don't make sense. For example, given an Error log we have you can log via               ErrorLog.Log(ex, \"friendly message\");      He added various other means to accomplish the exact same task. E.G.               SomeClass.Log(ex, \"friendly message\");      Which simply turns around and calls the first method. This adds levels of complexity with no added benefit. Is there an anti-pattern to describe this?"}
{"_id": "175848", "title": "Am I sending large amounts of data sensibly?", "text": "I am about to design a video conversion service, that is scalable on the conversion side. The architecture is as follows:   * Webpage for video upload   * When done, a message gets sent out to one of several resizing servers   * The server locates the video, saves it on disk, and converts it to several formats and resolutions   * The resizing server uploads the output to a content server, and messages back that the conversion is done. Messaging is something I have covered, but right now I am transferring via FTP, and wonder if there is a better way? is there something faster, or more reliable? All the servers will be sitting in the same gigabit switch or neighboring switch, so fast transfer is expected. EDIT:   The question goes on the server <-> server side of things. The servers are co- located in same LAN, so the security of the interconnection there is not expected to be the main issue."}
{"_id": "233537", "title": "Software trial: limited time or limited functionality?", "text": "I am currently developing my first serious piece of software in C#. It is a good learning experience so far. My software is basically a task scheduling tool with some advanced features and capabilities. I am not near the finishing stages yet, but I was wondering what people's opinions are on trial versions of software. Do you think it would be more beneficial, in general, to have a limited time trial (say 30 days) or a limited functionality version of the software? I think I know which I would go with, however I always like to listen to the opinions of others. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "238706", "title": "entity framework 6 agnostic enough different sql server and OS platforms?", "text": "It's my first time using sql server, I usually go with MySQL, so I'm unsure how to do this. The project I'm assigned will be deployed to multiple platforms particularly PC's with different SQL server ranging from 2008 to 2014, some of them are express edition, some are standard edition and in Windows ranging from XP, 7, 8 and 8.1 for both x86 and 64 bit systems If I use entity framework 6 in my development PC, 64-bit windows 8.1 and SQL Server 2012 Express. Will this pose a problem during deployment?"}
{"_id": "13961", "title": "How do you handle changes in client focus?", "text": "We are working on a large ongoing project that has continual feature changes. These features could take as long as 3 - 4 weeks to complete. This would of course be fine, except the client is always changing its priorities/focus based on pushes from THEIR clients who may want certain features implemented before others. So, we often have to shift gears in the middle of a major feature build and start a new feature that all of a sudden has a greater priority. We then of course have the time cost of merging everything together at some point, and also the cost of that lost momentum on the original feature. Our estimates are out the window at that point. Is there any good way to handle this? Some options I've thought of:   1. assume this is the way things will be, and apply a 'distracted client' factor of up to 100% on all estimates (this is dangerous in the case where we can actually complete a feature without interruption)   2. educate the client on the costs of shifting gears, and perhaps apply a change premium to previous estimates if they want us to change to working on a different feature   3. refuse to work on more than one feature/release at a time (aside from bug fixes). This is probably not realistic. I'm looking forward to hearing about how others have tackled this. It can't be uncommon."}
{"_id": "238700", "title": "Serving images from google cloud resized to 300x200", "text": "I am working on an application that uses Google Cloud storage to serve my app images. The images are submitted from an android app to google app engine code that is supposed to upload the images to gcs then create a link and update in my db. This works fine. The challenge am facing is i need different devices to serve the same image but in different dimensions. e.g device1 can request images to be served with size 300x300 while device2 can request the same image to be served with size 500x500. I have tried to google the issue but i dont seem to get a correct way to serve my image in different sizes but only got some url structure that will use a blob key then parse the size as a get parameter in the url and the image is cropped to the required dimensions. e.g. http://lh4.ggpht.com/TgjDT- cPRr6bjrpSVQeILk93o4Ouzjo1ygMB6KpmnCHhyH5vJKKRrqxCD2bC3T09CRIP6h5QFsV_l0hnhio5bN7z=s1000-c My images urls are in this format http://storage.googleapis.com/myappname.appspot.com/images/random_generated_imagename.jpg Can someone suggest an idea on how i can achieve this using the url that i have? I have tried reading image from the url, resizing it image to the size requested by the device then pushing back the image to the device but this looks tedious to me and utilizes alot of server resources given that i can have an average of 100 connections per second requesting for images."}
{"_id": "171546", "title": "Software licensing and code generation", "text": "I'm developing a tool that generates code from some various data. The tool itself will be licensed with the MIT license, which strikes a good balance for me in terms of allowing the freedom to use and modify it, while still holding the copyright. OK, but what is the legal status of the code _generated_ by the tool? Who holds the copyright for code generated by a tool? Do I need to give users of the tool a license for the generated code, or do they already have that by virtue of it being generated by them? What is different about this code generation system (which may be relevant) is that the source information about the code generation is provided by the system itself. The user doesn't feed source data in; the source data is bundled along with it. They simply have the means to transform it in various ways (filtering out parts of the data they don't want, etc). Obviously they could edit the bundled data. Does that affect anything about this?"}
{"_id": "214496", "title": "What options are there to programmatically use windows application in VB.NET? (Button Press and Keyboard Strokes)", "text": "I have this complex windows application that I need to create an automated testing system for. I need to use VB.NET, and it needs to be able to click all kinds of things, be conscious of the windows that open in the application, the dialog boxes, and do the things that a human would do in this application. Through my research, I discovered FindWindowEx will be useful for me. I would appreciate any feedback as to what direction I should go on creating this automated testing system. (are there any function, libraries, or other built in stuff that can help me? If so, what are they) Thanks, Phil"}
{"_id": "230131", "title": "Do we need Logging when doing TDD?", "text": "When doing the Red, Green & Refactor cycle we should always write the minimum code to pass the test. This is the way I have been taught about TDD and the way almost all books describe the process. But what about the logging? Honestly I have rarely used logging in an application unless there was something really complicated that was happening, however, I have seen numerous posts that talk about the importance of proper logging.   So other than logging an exception I couldn't justify the real importance of logging in a proper tested application (unit/integration/acceptance tests). So my questions are:   1. Do we need to log if we are doing TDD? won't a failing test reveal what wrong with the application?    2. Should we add test for the logging process in each method in each class?   3. If some log levels are disabled in the production environment for example, won't that introduce a dependency between the tests and enviroment?   4. People talk about how logs ease debugging, but one of the main advantages about TDD is that I always know what's wrong due to a failing test. Is there something I am missing out there?"}
{"_id": "18127", "title": "Is it a good idea to do TDD on low level components?", "text": "I'm considering writing a low level driver or OS components/kernels. The osdev.org folks seem to think that the important bits are not meaningfully testable this way, but I have read some discussions where people thought differently. I've looked around, but have failed to find any real life examples of TDD on low-level components. Is this something people actually do, or just something that people talk about in theory because there is not a good way to do it in practice?"}
{"_id": "242989", "title": "How to implement proper identification and session managent on json post requests?", "text": "I have some minor messaging connection to server from website via json requests. I have single endpoint which distributes requests according to identification data. I am using asynchronous server and handle data when it comes. Now I am thinking about extending requests with some kind of session. I tried using REST/JSON approach, passing single id in json. For example I register on page, get some kind token id as response and used that token with each post request. Post request has three simple parts: type, data, token_id. My problem is I am not sure how to cache token on browser side. I am using Tornado as webserver and saving token via cookies like this(http://technobeans.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/tornado-cookies/). Problem is I am not sure how long set expire time and how I should force to renew cookie. For example, should I when cookie expires (I really do not know proper way to detect it) to launch event on client side to register. Also I tried to drop requests and use socket like interfaces (sock-js) to transfer data. There I find that handling was way more easier: login open socket post data, close. Where I could implement it, I was happy with it. However I feel that having open connection is not solution to all problems, specifically to rare irregular data transfer events. I am searching for ideas how to have post requests properly identified and how to handle irregular json connections. To sum up:   1. **What is the best way to define post requests session?** Get cookie when registered and use token as long as session runs with each request? Should I implement timeout for token? Is there alternative methods? Can I cache tokens to same origin requests? What could I use on client side (Web browser)?   2. **How about safety?** What techniques I should use to throw away requests with malformed data, to big data, without choking server down? **Should I worry?**"}
{"_id": "89741", "title": "Low impact refactoring and code cleaning of sloppy code while waiting for requirements", "text": "I inherited an existing code base for a product that is reprehensibly sloppy. The fundamental design is woefully inadequate which unfortunately I can do little about without a complete refactor (HIGH coupling, LOW cohesion, rampant duplication of code, no technical design documentation, integration tests instead of unit tests). The product has a history, high exposure to critical \"cash-cow\" clients with minimal tolerance for risk, technical debt that will make the Greeks blush, VERY large codebase and complexity, and a battle-weary defeatist approach to bugs by the team before me. The old team jumped ship to another division so that they have the opportunity to ruin another project. It is very rare that I experience a Technical Incompetency Project Failure as opposed to a Project Management Failure but this is indeed one of those cases. For the moment I am by myself but I have a lot of time, freedom of decision and future direction and the ability to build a team from scratch to help me. My question is to gather opinion on low impact refactoring on a project like this when you have some free time during the functional requirements gathering phase. There are thousands of compiler warnings, almost all of them unused imports, unread local variables, absence of type checking and unsafe casts. Code formatting is so unreadable and sloppy that it looks like the coder suffered from Parkinsons disease and couldn't control the amount of times the space bar was pressed on any given line. Further database and file resources are typically opened and never closed safely. Pointless method arguments, duplicate methods that do the same thing, etc.. While I am waiting for requirements for the next feature I have been cleaning low-impact low risk things as I go and wondered if I am wasting my time or doing the right thing. What if the new feature means ripping out code that I spent time on earlier? I am going to start an Agile approach and I understand this is acceptable and normal to constantly refactor during Agile development. Can you think of any positive or negative impacts of me doing this that you would like to add?"}
{"_id": "102856", "title": "How to explain that it's hard to estimate the time required for a bigger software project?", "text": "I'm a junior developer and I find it hard to estimate how much time it takes to finish a bigger software project. I know how to structure the architecture in general, but it's hard for me to know what details I have to do and what problems I have to solve. So it's hard to estimate how much time it will take to finish a bigger project, because I don't know what problems I need to solve and how long it takes to solve them. How do I explain this to a person that is **not a software developer**?"}
{"_id": "33379", "title": "Sales Manager: \"Why is time-estimation so complex?\"", "text": "A few days ago a sales manager asked me that question. But at this moment I didn't know a answer which he can understand. He isn't a programmer! At the moment I work on a product which is over 8 years old. Nobody thought about architecture or evolvability. I have a swamp of code in front of me every day which is not tested. Because of that, time estimates are very difficult for me. How I can describe that problem to an **salesman**? Not only my swamp-code- problem, but general!"}
{"_id": "210788", "title": "Setting Deadlines in software development", "text": "I have been working on a system alone for about two years. I inherited the system from a contractor who spent about two years working on it before me (alone). The system is not particularly well designed because there is business logic, presentation logic and data logic mingled together. It is a very complex system, which I am trying to refactor as I go along and this takes time. A new developer was recruited but he seems to be taking more of a Project management role. He is very direct asking exactly how long things will take; questioning all my assumptions and predictions, which is difficult because of the complexity and because I am the only expert at the moment. I am very organised in my personal life. For example, I was asked what time I would arrive in Manchester last week so I provided an exact time catering for accidents and road works on the way. I find it difficult to apply the same principles at work in software development at the moment. Don't get me wrong. I have worked with project managers on less complex projects in the past and have had a good relationship, but then the projects were less complex and I always delivered before schedule. I am struggling with this particular project manager and it is causing stress. How do other developers deal with project managers who want answers and accurate deadline dates?"}
{"_id": "72923", "title": "Network application framework/API/etc", "text": "With all the web2.0 hype and webapps being all the rage, the only advantage from a corporate POV that I can think of webapps having is that it is easier to service your user base: upgrades become easier among several things. It's just that the browser is not a good platform. I've been mulling this over for a while now. My original idea was to use python, then I found out about QSA. I like QT. It's widgets are excellent for most purposes, and it's cross platform. A generic QT application is installed on the clients machine. They point it to a URL to begin executing the signed/encrypted application at that location. The actual application could be written in Qt script. It could be developed very much like a traditional MVC application. Or it could, and probably should, be developed like WT, so that a \"web\" application can be coded the same way as a \"desktop\" application. Before I go reinventing the wheel, are there any such platforms/frameworks in existence? If I do go inventing this wheel, what are some things I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "72928", "title": "What does Douglas Crockford mean when he says jQuery doesn't scale?", "text": "In the Q&A section of this talk, Douglas Crockford says that jQuery doesn't scale as well as some other popular libraries. What does he mean by that, and what is it about the other libraries that makes them more scalable?"}
{"_id": "30091", "title": "When returning from a period of not programming, do you find you've improved?", "text": "It seems as though whenever I take an extended break from programming--whether to pursue other interests or simply because I fall out of the habit for a while--I invariably find that when I return to a project and set to coding, I come with an abundance of new ideas, novel approaches, and just plain better code. It may be because I have a lot of other creative interests besides programming, and my mind likes to find correlation and crossover between them, so while I'm doing one thing, in the back of my mind I'm usually also applying it to another. So what's your experience? Do you ever return from a break (whether intentional or not) feeling not only refreshed, but also somehow _noticeably improved?_ Is it actually the norm?"}
{"_id": "228139", "title": "What is a uniform way to express Country, City, State? (ISO standard, etc)", "text": "I need to encode data into a user token that describes the user's Country, State, and city. I understand that different descriptors apply to different government hierarchies, but am looking for a standard of some type that has already sorted this out. What ISO standard, binary format, etc is best at describing a user who may be from any country?"}
{"_id": "201418", "title": "Getting rid of Massive View Controller in iOS?", "text": "I had a discussion with my colleague about the following problem. We have an application where we need filtering functionality. On any main screen within the upper navigation bar, there is a button in the upper right corner. Once you touch that button, an custom written Alert View like view will pop up modally, behind it a semitransparent black overlay view. In that modal view, there is a table view of options, and you can choose one exclusively. Based on your selection, once this modal view is closed, the list of items in the main view is filtered. It is simply a modally presented filter to filter the main table view.This UI design is dictated by the design department, I cannot do anything about it so let accept this as a premise. Also the main filter button in the navbar will change colours to indicate that the filter is active. The question I have is about implementation. I suggested to my colleague that we create a separate XYZFilter class that will   * be an instance created by the main view controller   * acquire the filtering options    * handle saving and restoration of its state - i.e. last filter selected   * provide its two views - the overlay view and the modal view    * be the datasource for the table in its modal view.  For some unknown reason, my colleague was not impressed by that approach at all. He simply wants to do these functionalities in the main view controller, maybe out of being used to do this in the past like that :-/ Is there any fundamental problem with my approach? I want to   * keep the view controller small, not to have spaghetti code   * create a reusable component (for use outside the project)   * have more object oriented, decoupled approach.   * prevent duplication of code as we need the filtering in two different places but it looks the same in both.. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "47347", "title": "Anyone knows good references for Machine Learning Algorithms and Image Recognition?", "text": "I need it for my thesis and for some reason I am having a hard time finding decent books or websites for it. My thesis topic is \"Classification of Modern Art Paintings using Machine Learning Approach\". My goal is to classify examples of modern art paintings to its respective modern art movement(expressionism, realism,etc..) using machine learning approach. Also, suggestions and comments about my thesis are greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "89297", "title": "Looking for the tool that generated JSON Rail-Road grammar descriptions", "text": "I am currently working on a little language, and I'd like to express its grammar more rigorously. I know about EBNF and it's great to generate parsers (Bison/Yacc), however it's not that easy to visualize. The Wikipedia page on Syntax Diagram points out that one of the success of JSON is due to the display of its grammar as a Rail-Road diagram. Indeed if one goes to the JSON webpage, one can see nice diagrams, that are easily accessible and (I find) visually attractive, for example: ![http://json.org/object.gif](http://i.stack.imgur.com/raLaZ.gif) It easily conveys the structure of an `object` in JSON, dealing with multiple alternatives and repetitions easily. A very similar way of expressing the grammar can be found on SQLite (though I prefer the JSON one). ![http://www.sqlite.org/images/syntax/delete- stmt.gif](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Oiv6H.gif) Does anyone know if there was a tool used to generate the JSON diagrams ? (and if so, where I can find it). The wikipedia page reference some generators but none seem to generate such nice diagrams."}
{"_id": "155111", "title": "What are some easy techniques to scan books for new information?", "text": "I find it irresistible to keep purchasing cheap programming and technical e-books in fields such as Drupal, PHP, etc., and also compulsively download free material made available such as those from Microsoft's developer blog... The main problem with the large library I've developed is that there are many chapters (especially the first few) in these books packed with information I already know, but with helpful tidbits hidden in between. The logical step would be to skip those chapters and read the ones I don't seem to know anything about, but I'm afraid I may lose out on really important information this way. But naturally it is tedious to have to read about variables, functions and objects all over again when you are trying to know more about the Registry pattern, for example. It's hard to research on the net for this, because my question itself seems vague and difficult to formulate into a single search query. I need people- advice - what do you do in this situation?"}
{"_id": "6556", "title": "What do you think about JavaFX script retirement?", "text": "Oracle will no longer develop JavaFX script ( the language ) and now the applications would be coded through the API. I think JavaFX script was kind of neat. Does it seem reasonable to stop the development of the language, and use it only through the API? Links: http://jonathangiles.net/blog/?p=916 http://java.dzone.com/articles/javaone-2010-alternative-jvm"}
{"_id": "213124", "title": "Is it bad practice to store metadata information in file names? Better solutions?", "text": "I have noticed where I work people are keen on storing information in file names, and parsing the file names. To me this doesn't seem to be especially good practice. I already see the occasional issues with scripts globbing for a file, and getting the wrong one because another file matches first.We are also discussing how to get around problems with separators for the fields. Is it considered bad practice or not? What are other accepted solutions for retrieving files from a file system based on some type of metadata?"}
{"_id": "225071", "title": "Load all templates at startup?", "text": "I am developing a jQuery mobile app. In this app, i often use Mustache.js templates in separate html files. Actually, every template is needed by the user, but my app loads a template (via GET method) only when it is needed. For now, all the templates are small and they're all used by the client at runtime. But obviously this won't be the case for long, in case I add extensions that will be needed or not by the users. I could load every template at once, but I'm afraid this could become a blocking point in the future. Based on your experience, what is the best thing to do? Load all templates at once, or load them one by one, when needed?"}
{"_id": "213121", "title": "Is there any standard for design document", "text": "This question is purely from academic point of view. As part of the software engineering lab, a design document is to be created after generating the SRS. Is there any standard for creating the design document. Since we followed IEEE standard for creating the SRS. What all things can be included in the design document from the academic point of view? I am thinking of including different UML diagrams."}
{"_id": "225073", "title": "How should I test my application?", "text": "I have made a simple application which searches for files and folders on users computer. Since, I am a student currently in my 1st year and don't have any formal training and have made my application while I was still learning C# and .Net framework, I didn't have knowledge about unit tests and other good testing methods used by professionals. Although, most of my code is working fine, sometimes it throws exceptions or some other unexpected situation occurs and the code breaks. Keeping the above experiences in mind, I don't think my application is ready for deployment and so , I would like to test my application in a professional way, and be assured that my application is bug free. Therefore, I want to ask professionals here, that keeping my situation in mind, how should I start testing my application.   What are the steps that I should follow, to ensure the quality of my application."}
{"_id": "225079", "title": "Unit Testing in iOS -- Should I split out my Data Model into it's own class?", "text": "I'm attempting to try out using unit test in for the first time in new iOS activity for work. I love the idea of unit testing, but always find the specifics to be... messy. I get the general principals -- I have read a lot about it so I wanted to ask a specific question. My situation:   * I have a UITableView that can have anywhere from 10 to 10,000 items. I would like to do partial loading. Load the first 100 or so, and then when the user scrolls down half way, load the next 100. Or something like that.   * My calls to the DB are asyc (I do not control this, although I guess I could block and wait on the main thread if I really wanted to). My first thought is to have an NSMutableArray and a function to load/update the data in my UIViewController. I also need to keep track of if the data is finished loading and if the data is currently being reloaded (because it's an async call). However, I'm wondering if it's better to split this into it's own class for testability? Let's call it SmartMutableArray? My concerns are   1. If I do this, it requires more selectors then before. I already need to create a call back for my call to the database, and now I need to create another one for my UIViewController to be notified when SmartMutbleArray is completed loading. I would think this makes my code harder to read.   2. Because my new array is updated in the background, I think I need to use `self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(addObjectsFromArray:) withObject:response.balances waitUntilDone:YES];` to update the new array in my new SmartMutableArray class. Which seems weird to me, that this class needs to know it's a data source for a UI element.   3. If I don't break it up, I have to test all this loading indirectly by calling my UITableView delegate commands. I've plowed ahead with creating the new class for this list... but I'm curious what people with more experience think of something like this. Is it overkill? Thanks for any input, sorry for the length. Please let me know if I'm missing any details that would be useful though."}
{"_id": "206668", "title": "Using multiple Git repositories instead of a single one containing many apps from different teams?", "text": "I am migrating a 10-years-old big CVS repository to Git. It seemed obvious to split this multiple-projects repository into several Git ones. But the decision-makers are used to CVS, therefore their point of view is influenced by CVS philosophy. To convince them to migrate from one CVS repo to different Git repositories I need to give them some arguments. When I speak with mates working on Git repo for years, they say that using multiple Git repo is the way to use Git. I do not know really why (they give me some ideas). I am a newbie in this field so I ask here my question. **What are the arguments to use multiple Git repositories instead of a single one containing different applications and libraries from different teams?** I have already listed:   * branches/tags impact the whole Git repository files => pollutes other team projects   * 4GB limit Git repo size but this is wrong   * git annotate may be slower on _bloat_ Git repo...        **EDIT:**   * Eamon Nerbonne has noticed the related question:    Choosing between Single or multiple projects in a git repository?   * The reason the team managers finally have accepted the split: the single Git repo (550 MB) was requiring 13 minutes to be cloned on Windows.    * The _bloat_ CVS repo split in 100 Git repositories:      * each dead apps in one repo     * each stabilized library in one repo (source code almost never changed any longer)      * related apps/libs kept together in one repo     * moved large files not used for compilation (config...) to other repos (Git does not like large files)     * skipped other unrelevant files (`*.jar`, `*.pcb`, `*.dll`, `*.so`, `*.backup` ...)    * Successfully installed the `repo` tool used by Android Open Source Project in order to handle all these Git repos:      * easy installation on Linux      * more difficult on Windows because of Cygwin and NTFS native symlinks requirements"}
{"_id": "206667", "title": "Where to put entity model classes in case of using a dataservice layer?", "text": "If my solution has both a \"dataservice\" project and a \"business logic\" project, where do the entity models, which represent database tables, belong? At first i thought putting them in the dataservice layer, but then i would need duplicate models in the business logic layer, if i wanted to provide reusable logic dealing with or being dependant of database data. Putting models in the business logic project, would force the dataservice layer to be dependant on the core project."}
{"_id": "206664", "title": "Custom PHP Template Engine", "text": "I've been developing a custom PHP template engine to suit just my needs and also to get a little more practice with PHP. What I did was to create a Template class that simply receives as constructor parameter a path to a template file and a string that should be the placeholder for the contents of the pages. In that case, the template file is an HTML file with some placeholders written as [placeholder]. These will be filled with real content by another class. So for instance, [title] should be filled with the title, [content] with the content of the selected page and so on. I've created also a Page class that receives as constructor parameter the directory of the pages and then has methods to set which name of file it should use (this is filled in as we like in the initialization, when working with friendly URL's the most common way I use this is setting as the first piece of the URL) and methods to set more data as pairs of placeholder string and real content. My only problem is with how to deal with titles and meta tags. For each page there's a title and a collection of meta tags. My only way to deal with this was to create in different files one array with titles and one array with meta tags. Both of them receives as index the name of the page file. So for instance $titles[\"home\"] should be the title of the home page and $meta_tags[\"home\"] should be the html code for the meta tags of the home page. The problem is that as soon as there are lots of pages this will have one unecessary cost of memory: the system would be loading for every requests all the titles and all meta tags, while it must load only the required one. I thought on using database, but it seems like killing one ant with an atomic bomb. So the next best thing I thought of was XML. Now, what's the best solution for this kind of situation? Use XML, use a MySQL database, or some other method? As I've said, I know that the recommended is that we use the template engines that are already out there since they are tested lots of times, are already stable and so on, but I'm struggling with those things as a way to get more practice developing with PHP. Thanks very much in advance for the help. Also, I didn't think it was needed to post any code I've written, but if some of the code will help, please ask and I'll post it."}
{"_id": "206663", "title": "C++ class with only pure virtual functions: what's that called?", "text": "So i'm looking for some input/consensus on what terminology we should be using to describe something that looks like this:               class Printable     {       public:         virtual void printTo(Printer *) = 0;         virtual double getWidthInPoints() = 0;         virtual double getHeightInPoints() = 0;     };      So this is a class that only has pure virtual methods. Any class that inherits it needs to implement the whole thing, i.e. there is no partial implementation. So what is this called? I have mostly seen two different names: 1) _Interface_ Used in Windows COM programming (perhaps it came from the IDL), it's a keyword in both C# and Java and also a compiler directive/keyword in Objective-C (but isn't the same thing). I've heard engineers using the phrase 'interface' synonymously with 'API', but, at least in this scenario, it's a single thing whereas an API could comprises more than one. 2) _Protocol_ I've seen this used in various open-source libraries such as Bloomberg BSL and it's a compiler directive/keyword in Objective-C, but does not necessarily need to be in the inheritance hierarchy. In the broader computer science sense, protocol is a formal definition of information exchange between two parties, like TCP and HTTP, but this definition kind of holds for the above class too. Is there any clear distinction between these in C++ or are they pretty much interchangeable?"}
{"_id": "28278", "title": "Two bosses, both want different way of implementation", "text": "Over lunch, a colleague of mine, that has a manager (person in direct charge of the project) and a BOSS up top was asked to resolve one issue. The manager had arguments with the boss regarding how it should be resolved. They both agreed they would go with the manager's way. When my colleague was starting to resolve the issue, the Boss calls and said, \"You do it my way.\" In this case, what would you do?!"}
{"_id": "168635", "title": "What does the python Codecs module do?", "text": "I just read through the documentation on the Codecs module, but I guess my knowledge/experience of comp sci doesn't run deep enough yet for me to comprehend it. It's for dealing with encoding/decoding, especially Unicode, and while to many of you that's a complete and perfect explanation, to me that's _really_ vague. I don't really understand what it means at all. Text is text is text in a .txt file? Or so this amateur thought. Can anyone explain?"}
{"_id": "239077", "title": "How to build child classes as parent configuration?", "text": "I'm using Codeigniter PHP Framework for developing a web application, and when developing an admin zone, I've ended building a generic parent class called AdminController which is extended by the child classes to develop my Admin zones. **I've shortened my code to show what I really want to show** , my code is something like: Parent Class:               class AdminController {          protected $url_action   = null;     protected $permissions  = null;     protected $formulario_gestion  = null;          function __construct() {         if ( empty( $this->permissions ) ) {             throw new Exception( 'No se ha definido permissions' );         }         if ( empty( $this->url_action ) ) {             throw new Exception( 'No se ha definido la url_action' );         }         if ( empty( $this->formulario_gestion ) ) {             throw new Exception( 'No se ha definido el formulario_gestion' );         }     }          public function create() {         if ( ! $this->checkPermissions( $this->permissions, $this->user ) {              redirect( base_url );           }              $formulario = new $this->formulario_gestion( null );         $formulario->setFormValues( $this->get_update_values() );              // More code below...     }          // Doing this to make sure I'll overwrite it     public function get_update_values() {         throw new Exception('No has definido get_update_values');     }          // More Methods and things...      And then, I use my child class to initiate all the values required in the parent, overwrite all the functions I need have to be overwritten, and go: Child Class               class Webs extends AdminController {          function __construct() {              // Initiating parent values:         $this->permissions = 'webs';         $this->url_action  = strtolower( __CLASS__) ;         $this->formulario_gestion = 'FormularioWebs';              parent::__construct();     }          // Overwriting what I need to be overwritten     public function get_update_values() {          $values = $array(              'field1' => 'value1'          ,   'field2' => 'value2'          );          return $values;     }      And this work quite well: All the pages share the same behaviour and I only write relevant code. **My problem is** : This is a nightmare when building a whole CRUD with it: I ended up with many properties I only use in some methods, and I don't know if there is a \"standard\" or correct way of doing it. I mean what are the flaws of doing this in this way? It is correct? I don't like having so many properties laying out there that are only going to be used in a method, and I don't know how to encapsulate them in a way only the method use it it'll have it. What I ended up is something like the code bellows, but I don't really like it, as you don't know in the parent where the value is declared. Method in Parent Class:               public function show() {          echo $this->var;     }      Method in Child Class:               public function show() {          $this->vars = 'value'          parent::show();     }"}
{"_id": "239070", "title": "Merging around 15 small Git repos of non-optional centralized web service components to a single large repo", "text": "In a centralized web service we break down the components into various small Git repos by software modules, e.g. authentication module, authorization module, data access module etc. (around 15 repos at the moment) The good thing is it is easy to manage the smaller code base, however, our productivity has decreased a lot since quite a lot of changes need to be update several repos at once. Also, deployment is more difficult as there are multiple versions of module involved, we always need to think about the dependency. I am considering to merge all the modules back to a single repo, because   * our services must require all the modules to exists, they are not optional for our service   * we are not a big team (3 people actually) and the overhead in maintaining too many repos does not worth it, they all need to have knowledge on all the code bases What do you think? Any pros and cons if we merge into a giant repo?"}
{"_id": "173039", "title": "Is modern C++ replacing C#? Is Microsoft pushing developers to adopt C++?", "text": "I hear about modern C++ popularity and some talks about migrating back to C++ from C# or other C-like languages. I know about C++11 features but I would like to hear your experiences, especially from developers who migrated from C# to C++. More importantly, does Microsoft push developers to use C++? If yes, why?"}
{"_id": "231666", "title": "What exactly is \u201ccomputer systems\u201d?", "text": "My professor made a comment today - \"...They've been having trouble with filesystem performance, and since they're more graphics guys, they asked us systems guys to help out...\". What exactly is \"computer systems\"? What does it mean to be a \"systems guy\"? And, what is a \"systems guy\" passionate about? For contrast, what is not computer systems? What would possibly bore a \"systems guy\"?"}
{"_id": "82672", "title": "One-time income with recurring costs: how to mantain an app in the cloud", "text": "You have an idea of a software/app/webapp/website that you would like to spend some effort and implement. Your idea uses a cloud system to keep things up and you think you could earn some money by distributing your product and charging a **small** one-time fee. But there is a problem: the first thing you realize is that one day that user using your system may eat all the money he gave you with his indirect recurring little spending in the cloud. How would you do the math to find out if your idea was feasible?"}
{"_id": "173037", "title": "iOS app with a lot of text", "text": "I just asked a question on StackOverflow, but I'm thinking that a part of it belongs here, as questions about design pattern are welcomed by the faq. Here is my situation. I have developed almost completely a native iOS app. The last section I need to implement is all the rules of a sport, so that's a lot of text. It has one main level of sections, divided in subsections, containing a lot of structured text (paragraphs, a few pictures, bulleted/numbered lists, tables). I have absolutely no problem with coding, I'm just looking for advice to improve and make the best design pattern possible for my app. My first shot (the last one so far) was a `UITableViewController` containing the sections, sending the user to another `UITableViewController` with the subsections of the selected section, and then one _strange_ last `UITableViewController` where the cells contain `UITextViews`, sections header help structure the content, etc. What I would like is your advice on how to improve the structure of this section. I'm perfectly ready to destroy/rebuild the whole thing, I'm really lost in my design here.. As I said on SO, I've began to implement a `UIWebView` in a `UIViewController`, showing a html page with JQuery Mobile to display the content, and it's fine. My question is more about the 2 views taking the user to that content. I used `UITableViewController`s because that's what seemed the most appropriate for a structured hierarchy like this one. But that doesn't seem like the best solution in term of user experience.. **What structure / \"view-flow\" / kind of presentation would you try to implement in my situation?** As always, any help would be **greatly** appreciated! * * * Just so you can understand better the hierarchy, with a simple example :                                         -----> Section 1   -----> SubSection 1.1   -----> Content                               |                  -----> SubSection 1.2   -----> Content                               |                  -----> SubSection 1.3   -----> Content                               |                               |                               |     UINavigationController  -------> Section 2   -----> SubSection 2.1   -----> Content                               |                  -----> SubSection 2.2   -----> Content                               |                  -----> SubSection 2.3   -----> Content                               |                  -----> SubSection 2.4   -----> Content                               |                  -----> SubSection 2.5   -----> Content                               |                               -----> Section 3   -----> SubSection 3.1   -----> Content                                                  -----> SubSection 3.2   -----> Content                                |------------------|   |--------------------|  |-------------|                       1 UITableViewController   3 UITableViewControllers  10 UIViewControllers                              (3 rows)              (with different         with a UIWebView                                                     number of rows)"}
{"_id": "82676", "title": "server and request understanding", "text": "I want to know what a server does to run a php application. Below is what I think: client A types www.blahblahblah.blah/   1. Server resolves url and directory etc.    2. Server go the index.php    3. index.php has a Singleton Pattern Class in it with a static variable called instance.  Now does the server allocate the memory to that static variable in its own RAM so that all the requests following this first one uses the same static variable? OR for every new request does the server allocate new memory and that new memory will have a new space allocated to that static variable? My Confusion: if every request is run in its own memory space then what is a persistant connection? Second thing I wondering about: Can I have a desktop program which is continuously sending a special key to my web application and my web application is sending the key back continuously to make HTTP a connection full instead of connection less? That way I can confirm who is connected to my APP as a client instead who is connected to INTERNET. I know sessions but they make http connection less and then chance of spoofing and session hijacking is there. I know you can make session secure but still my App won't know if the client is dead and can delete the data from the session and tell others that client blah is disconnected."}
{"_id": "173035", "title": "Performance impact of not implementing relationships at the database level?", "text": "Let's imagine a data model with customers and invoices. There is a 1 to n relationship between a customer and its invoices. We uses an ORM (like Hibernate). One can explicitely implement the 1-n relationship (using JPA for example) or not. If not, then one must do a bit more work to fetch invoices. However, it is much easier to maintain, improve and develop the data model of applications where relationships between objects are not explicitely implemented in the database. My question is, has anyone noticed a significant performance impact when not implementing the relationships in the database?"}
{"_id": "39119", "title": "Strategy / resources for writing LISP webservices?", "text": "Background: I'm looking to write some fully functional webservices in Common Lisp as an April Fools prank on the rest of the development team at my company. There are two pieces to this: reading info from / writing it to a MySQL database, and receiving / processing / responding to requests over HTTP. (Actually, there's a third piece, writing automated tests, but my QA partner- in-crime is going to handle that part.) After some Googling I found a good resource here ( http://www.ymeme.com/creating-dynamic-websites-lisp-apache.html ), but I'm surprised that there's seemingly only the one walkthrough. Does anyone know of others, or can anyone share personal experiences with writing webservices in CLisp?"}
{"_id": "74802", "title": "Cloud computing cost savings for large enterprise", "text": "I'm trying to understand whether cloud computing is meant for small to medium sized companies OR also for large companies. Imagine a website with a very large user base. The storage and bandwidth demands as well as the number of database transactions are incredibly high. The website might be hosting videos, music, images, etc. that keep the demands high. Does it make sense to be in the cloud when you know you need huge volumes of storage, bandwidth, and GET,PUT,etc. requests? (Each of these variables costs money in the cloud) OR does it make sense to build your own infrastructure? I can see the cost savings of cloud computing if you are a small business, but if you were aiming at the next big thing on the Internet, I can't quite see the benefits."}
{"_id": "16608", "title": "What would you think of a job based on mostly doing the proof of concept?", "text": "I'm working as a developer in a small software company whose main job is interfacing between separate applications, like between a telephony system and an environment control system, between IP TVs and hospitality systems, etc...And it seems like I am the candidate for a new job title in the company, as the person who does the proof of concept of a new interfacing project and does some R&D for prototyping. What do you think the pros and cons of such a job would be, considering mainly the individual progress/regress of a person as a software engineer? And what aspects would you consider essential in a person to put him/her in such a job position?"}
{"_id": "12777", "title": "Are null references really a bad thing?", "text": "I've heard it said that the inclusion of null references in programming languages is the \"billion dollar mistake\". But why? Sure, they can cause NullReferenceExceptions, but so what? Any element of the language can be a source of errors if used improperly. And what's the alternative? I suppose instead of saying this:               Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName(\"Goodman\"); // returns null if not found     if (c != null)     {         Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + \" \" + c.LastName + \" is awesome!\");     }     else { Console.WriteLine(\"There was no customer named Goodman.  How lame!\"); }      You could say this:               if (Customer.ExistsWithLastName(\"Goodman\"))     {         Customer c = Customer.GetByLastName(\"Goodman\") // throws error if not found         Console.WriteLine(c.FirstName + \" \" + c.LastName + \" is awesome!\");      }     else { Console.WriteLine(\"There was no customer named Goodman.  How lame!\"); }      But how is that better? Either way, if you forget to check that the customer exists, you get an exception. I suppose that a CustomerNotFoundException is a bit easier to debug than a NullReferenceException by virtue of being more descriptive. Is that all there is to it?"}
{"_id": "124109", "title": "Is there a canonical book on design patterns?", "text": "I am interested in learning design patterns and would like to know what are considered top tier books in learning this subject. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on design patterns? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "94310", "title": "Setting realistic expectations for deadlines", "text": "I'm a tech lead for a small team. One of the major tasks on my plate is communicating with the client. One thing I find particularly difficult is dealing with deadlines because they are mandated by the client and I'm frequently not consulted. Usually, the interaction follows the following pattern. The client comes up with a feature they want to add, Feature X. Feature X would look good in the next week's app release that is about 6 business days away. At this point, the feature request needs to go through approval and there are frequently other dependencies that need to be deal with. Eventually, N days later, the feature request trickles down to my team. Even if the original dead line (that was set by a non-developer manager) was achievable it no longer is. My team is blamed, ~~feels discouraged and there's an overall atmosphere of defeat~~ , I feel discouraged and defeated. Clearly the overall process is broken. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do because I'm not in a position of power here. My current approach is to gently remind the client about our start date versus the deadline, the scope of the Feature, etc. This feels a lot like I am making excuses though. Have you guys been in similar situations? What has/hasn't worked for you?"}
{"_id": "97768", "title": "Math Major wants to become a Software Engineer", "text": "I am a math major, what would be the best field of computer science/computer engineering for me to go into, where I could apply my skills that I used as a math major(i.e. Linear Algebra, Real Analysis, Number theory, Numerical analysis, etc...) Thanks"}
{"_id": "84857", "title": "How defensive should we be?", "text": "We've been running Pex over some code, and it has been showing some good things (well bad things, but showing them before it gets to production!). However, one of the nice things about Pex is that it doesn't necessarily stop trying to find issues. One area we found is that when passing in a string, we were not checking for empty strings. So we changed:               if (inputString == null)      to               if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(inputString)) // ***      That fixed the initial issues. But then, when we ran Pex again, it decided that:               inputString = \"\\0\";      was causing problems. And then               inputString = \"\\u0001\";      What we've decided is that defaults can be used if we encounter `// ***` and that we are happy seeing the exception caused by any other odd input (and dealing with it). Is that enough?"}
{"_id": "88168", "title": "What do you do to make sure you take proper/enough breaks, while avoiding unwanted side-effects of break taking?", "text": "preamble> It seems to me that computer programmers are one of a select few groups of people who actually take pleasure from sitting in front of computers for long periods of time. Most people in other professions actively dislike their time at computers, and do their best to avoid it (so, I assume, they don't have problems taking breaks). At least for me, having external cues for taking breaks, and clear instructions on what to do with each break (stretch, go for a walk, close my eyes, look into a distance of preferably a few km and focus on faraway objects, etc...), is a must. So far, I've just been making up the breaks and tools to get them as I go along, based on what looks to be low-specificity information found on the net (generic stuff ala ergonomics advice for office staff). This has led to all sorts of side effects - loss of attention as I get distracted if I walk around, breaks in flow with alarm clocks interrupting my thoughts, and people around me assuming I'm low on work due to the frequency of my walking around compared to everyone else. /preamble> **tl;dr**   * Taking breaks is important   * My internal break taking system doesn't work, and ad-hoc ones have unwanted side effects    * What do you do to make sure you take proper breaks?   * How do you avoid unwanted side-effects, such as getting distracted or interrupting flow or giving your co-workers the impression you're spending a lot of time goofing off?"}
{"_id": "97766", "title": "Roll your own web crawler to crawl one specific website that has multiple entries", "text": "What sort of languages would be able to handle writing your own web crawler? Could PHP handle this? I'm quite good with PHP (following best practices etc). But I'd like a good reason to learn a new language if I need to. The idea is to crawl one specific website that has multiple entries, much like an RSS feed, but they don't offer that an RSS feed of the site..."}
{"_id": "120063", "title": "Is it typical for a provider of a web services to also provide client libraries?", "text": "My company is building a corporate Java web-app and we are leaning towards using GWT-RPC as the client-server protocol for performance reasons. However, in the future, we will need to provide an API for other enterprise systems to access our data as well. For this, we were thinking of a SOAP based web service. In my experience it is common for commercial providers of enterprise web applications to provide client libraries (Java, .NET, C#, etc.). Is this generally the case? I ask because if so, then why bother using SOAP or REST or any standard web services protocol at all? Why not just create a client libraries that communicate via GWT-RPC?"}
{"_id": "229662", "title": "How to collect seed data for a Products/Services User review website?", "text": "Data = information like name, address of local businesses. Companies, their products, services etc. Once users start engaging then they themselves can add/edit data wikipedia style. because if there is no data initially then users will not be attracted to come, and if there are no users then cannot expand the data. What are the various options to bootstrap with a seed dataset ? \\- Crawl and find info from various web resources \\- Collect and enter it manually \\- Hire data collectors \\- Any place to buy such data \\- Any other ?"}
{"_id": "215407", "title": "Repository query conditions, dependencies and DRY", "text": "To keep it simple, let's suppose an application which has `Accounts` and `Users`. Each account may have any number of users. There's also 3 consumers of `UserRepository`:   * An admin interface which may list all users   * Public front-end which may list all users   * An account authenticated API which should only list it's own users Assuming `UserRepository` is something like this:               class UsersRepository extends DatabaseAbstraction {         private function query() {             return $this->database()->select('users.*');         }         public function getAll() {             return $this->query()->exec();         }         // IMPORTANT:         // Tons of other methods for searching, filtering,         // joining of other tables, ordering and such...     }      Keeping in mind the comment above, and the necessity to abstract user querying conditions, How should I handle querying of users filtering by `account_id`? I can picture three possible roads: ### 1\\. Should I create an `AccountUsersRepository`?               class AccountUsersRepository extends UserRepository {         public function __construct(Account $account) {             $this->account = $account;         }         private function query() {             return parent::query()                 ->where('account_id', '=', $this->account->id);         }     }      _This has the advantage of reducing the duplication of`UsersRepository` methods, but doesn't quite fit into anything I've read about DDD so far (I'm rookie by the way)_ ### 2\\. Should I put it as a method on `AccountsRepository`?               class AccountsRepository extends DatabaseAbstraction {         public function getAccountUsers(Account $account) {             return $this->database()                 ->select('users.*')                 ->where('account_id', '=', $account->id)                 ->exec();         }     }      _This requires the duplication of all`UserRepository` methods and may need another `UserQuery` layer, that implements those querying logic on chainable way._ ### 3\\. Should I query `UserRepository` from within my account entity?               class Account extends Entity {         public function getUsers() {             return UserRepository::findByAccountId($this->id);         }     }      _This feels more like an aggregate root for me, but introduces dependency of`UserRepository` on `Account` entity, which may violate a few principles._ ### 4\\. Or am I missing the point completely? Maybe there's an even better solution?    **Footnotes:** Besides permissions being a Service concern, in my understanding, they shouldn't implement SQL query but leave that to repositories since those may not even be SQL driven."}
{"_id": "215405", "title": "Object inheritance and method parameters/return types - Please check my logic", "text": "I'm preparing for a test and doing practice questions, this one in particular I am unsure I did correctly: We are given a very simple UML diagram to demonstrate inheritance: I hope this is clear, it shows that W inherits from V and so on:                                 |-----Y     V <|----- W<|-----|                       |-----X<|----Z      and this code:               public X method1(){....}     method2(new Y());     method2(method1());     method2(method3());      **The questions and my answers:**   1. **Q:** What types of objects could method1 actually return? **A:** X and Z, since the method definition includes X as the return type and since Z is a kind of X is would be OK to return either.   2. **Q:** What could the parameter type of method2 be? **A:** Since method2 in the code accepts Y, X and Z (as the return from method1), the parameter type must be either V or W, as Y,X and Z inherit from both of these.   3. **Q:** What could return type of method3 be? **A:** Return type of method3 must be V or W as this would be consistent with answer 2."}
{"_id": "120069", "title": "How can I justify a technology over another? (Java over .NET)", "text": "We are working in a Java/.NET company and my team and I are planning a project for a client. One of the requirements is that the project has to be done in .NET I've asked about this requirement, and the client said that it doesn't matter, and that if I have a good reason we can use other technology. But, I have to justify the decision. As a Project Manager / Analyst I'm interested in making the project in Java because:   * The team knows java much better, regarding the language and frameworks   * I don't know anything about .NET technology (and maybe we could make bad decisions thinking in a Java way to do things)   * There are other people in company that have more skills in .NET but they have other projects with more priority. For experience, I'm sure that if we use Java, the project will have much more quality. But this arguments could be weak from the client perspective. How can I justify making the project in Java? EDIT: I'm not asking if one technology is better than other. \"It's not a technology war\" question."}
{"_id": "154642", "title": "What is the difference between  a freelancer programmer and a Programmer working in a Software company?", "text": "I was told by a HR department that freelancing experience is not considered as professional experience. What could be the reason?"}
{"_id": "208396", "title": "Ruby: Multithreading a CSV with output", "text": "I have a script written in Ruby that has maxed out a core in my server's Xeon processor for the last 2 hours. Since it's currently only using 1 of four possible cores, I want to try and rewrite the script to take advantage of all four cores. I can use the .each_slice(n) method on the array that contains my data, but I'm curious as to what would then be the best/most efficient way to then write this data to a file. It seems that I have a couple options.   1. Pass the file object to the functions being called by the Thread.new function (I assume this is legal in ruby?) and have them write as they see fit.   2. Have each function store the results in arrays, return the array on completion and let the main program then write to the disk.   3. Pass the same array object to each item and have them all add to it, then sort it. My assumption is that although 2 would probably be more memory intensive, it'll by far be most efficient method. Is there a different way to accomplish what I'm doing?"}
{"_id": "153612", "title": "The architecture and technologies to use for a secure, fast, reliable and easily scalable web application", "text": "^ _For actual questions, skip to the lists down below_ I understand, that his is a vague topic, but please, before you turn the other way and disregard me, hear me out. I am currently doing research for a web application(I don't know if application is the correct word for it, but I will proceed w/ that for now), that one day might need to be everything mentioned in the title. I am bound by nothing. That means that every language, OS and framework is acceptable, but only if it proves it's usefulness. And if you are going to say, that scalability and speed depend on the code I write for this application, then I agree, but I am just trying to find something, that wouldn't stand in my way later on. I have done quite a bit reading on this subject, but I still don't have a clear picture, to what suits my needs, so I come to you, StackOverflow, to give me directions. I know you all must be wondering what I'm building, but I assure you, that it doesn't matter. I have heard of _12 factor app_ though, if you have any similar guidelines or what is, to suggest the please, go ahead. For the sake of keeping your answers as open as possible, I'm not gonna provide you my experience regarding anything written in this question. ^ _Skippers, start here_ First off - the weights of the requirements are probably something like that (on a scale of 10):   * Security - 10   * Speed - 5   * Reliability (concurrency) - 7.5    * Scalability - 10 _Speed and concurrency are not a top priority, in the sense, that the program can be CPU intensive, and therefore slow, and only accept a not-that-high number of concurrent users, but both of these factors must be improvable by scaling the system_ Anyway, here are my questions:   * **How many layers should the application have, so it would be future-proof and could best fulfill the aforementioned requirements?** For now, what I have in mind is the most common version:      1. Completely separated front end, that might be a web page or an MMI application or even both.     2. Some middle-ware handling communication between the front and the back end. This is probably a server that communicates w/ the front end via HTTP. How the communication w/ the back end should be handled is probably dependent on the back end.     3. The back end. Something that handles data through resources like DB and etc. and does various computations w/ the data. This, as the highest priority part of the software, must be easily spread to multiple computers later on and have no known security holes. I think ideally the middle-ware should send a request to a queue from where one of the back end processes takes this request, chops it up to smaller parts and buts these parts of the request back onto the same queue as the initial request, after what these parts will be then handled by other back end processes. Something *map-reduce*y, so to say.   * **What frameworks, languages and etc. should these layers use?**     1. The technologies used here are not that important at this moment, you can ignore this part for now     2. I've been pointed to node.js for this part. Do you guys know any better alternatives, or have any reasons why I should (not) use node.js for this particular job.     3. I actually have no good idea, what to use for this job, there are too many options out there, so please direct me. This part (and the 2. one also, I think) depend a lot on the OS, so suggest any OSs alongside w/ the technologies/frameworks.  Initially, all computers (or 1 for starters) hosting the back end are going to be virtual machines. Please do give suggestions to any part of the question, that you feel you have comprehensive knowledge and/or experience of. And also, point out if you feel that any part of the current set-up means an instant (or even distant) failure or if I missed a very important aspect to consider. I'm not looking for a definitive answer for how to achieve my goals, because there certainly isn't one, for I haven't provided you w/ all the required information. I'm just looking for recommendations and directions on what to look into. Also, bare in mind, that this isn't something that I have to get done quickly, to sell and let it be re-written by the new owner (which, I've been told for multiple times, is what I should aim for). I have all the time in the world and I really just want to learn doing something really high-end. Also, excuse me if my language isn't the best, I'm not a native. Anyway. Thanks in advance to anyone, who takes the time to help me out here. PS. When I do seem to come up w/ a good architecture/design for this project, I will certainly make it an open project and keep you guys up to date w/ it's development. As in what you could have told me earlier and etc. _For obvious reasonsthe very same question got closed on SO, but could you guys still help me?._"}
{"_id": "69542", "title": "How to explain OOP to a matlab programmer?", "text": "I have a lot of friends who come from electrical / physical / mechanical engineering background, and are curious about what is \"OOP\" all about. They all know Matlab quite well, so they do have basic programming background; but they have a very hard time grasping a complex type system which can benefit from the concepts OOP introduces. **Can anyone propose a way I can try to explain it to them?** I'm just not familiar with Matlab myself, so I'm having troubles finding parallels. I think using simple examples like shapes or animals is a bit too abstract for those engineers. So far I've tried using a Matrix interface vs array-based / sparse / whatever implementations, but that didn't work so well, probably because different matrix types are already well-supported in Matlab."}
{"_id": "152566", "title": "Any empirical evidence on the efficacy of CMMI?", "text": "I am wondering if there are any studies that examine the efficacy of software projects in CMMI-oriented organizations. For example, are CMMI organizations more likely to finish projects on time and/or on budget than non-CMMI organizations? _Edit for clarification:_ CMMI stands for \"Capability Maturity Model Integration\". It's developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University (SEI-CMU). It's not a _certification_ , but there are various companies that will \"appraise\" your organization to various levels of CMMI, such as level 2 and level 3. (I believe CMMI level 1 is an animalistic, Hobbesian free-for-all that nobody aspires to. In other words, everybody is at least CMMI level 1, even if you've never heard of CMMI before.) I'm definitely not an expert, but I believe that an organization can be appraised for CMMI levels within different scopes of work: i.e. service delivery, software development, foobaring, etc. My question is focused on the software development appraisal: is an organization that has been appraised to CMMI Level X for software projects more likely to finish a software project on time and on budget than another organization that has not been appraised to CMMI Level X? However, in the absence of hard data about software-oriented CMMI, I'd be interested in the effect that CMMI appraisals have on other activities as well. I originally asked the question because I've seen various studies conducted on software (e.g. the essays in The Mythical Man Month refer to numerous empirical studies, as does McConnell's Code Complete), so I know that there are organizations performing empirical studies of software development."}
{"_id": "152563", "title": "Is this a pattern? Proxy/delegation of interface to existing concrete implementation", "text": "I occasionally write code like this when I want to replace small parts of an existing implementation:               public interface IFoo     {         void Bar();     }          public class Foo : IFoo     {         public void Bar()         {         }     }          public class ProxyFoo : IFoo     {         private IFoo _Implementation;              public ProxyFoo(IFoo implementation)         {             this._Implementation = implementation;         }              #region IFoo Members              public void Bar()         {             this._Implementation.Bar();         }              #endregion     }      This is a much smaller example than the real life cases in which I've used this pattern, but if implementing an existing interface or abstract class would require lots of code, most of which is already written, but I need to change a small part of the behaviour, then I will use this pattern. Is this a pattern or an anti pattern? If so, does it have a name and are there any well known pros and cons to this approach? Is there a better way to achieve the same result? Rewriting the interfaces and/or the concrete implementation is not normally an option as it will be provided by a third party library."}
{"_id": "120019", "title": "What's the benefit of object-oriented programming over procedural programming?", "text": "I'm trying to understand the difference between procedural languages like C and object-oriented languages like C++. I've never used C++, but I've been discussing with my friends on how to differentiate the two. I've been told C++ has object-oriented concepts as well as public and private modes for definition of variables: things C does not have. I've never had to use these for while developing programs in Visual Basic.NET: what are the benefits of these? I've also been told that if a variable is public, it can be accessed anywhere, but it's not clear how that's different from a global variable in a language like C. It's also not clear how a private variable differs from a local variable. Another thing I've heard is that, for security reasons, if a function needs to be accessed it should be inherited first. The use-case is that an administrator should only have as much rights as they need and not everything, but it seems a conditional would work as well:               if ( login == \"admin\") {         // invoke the function     }      Why is this not ideal? Given that there seems to be a procedural way to do everything object- oriented, why should I care about object-oriented programming?"}
{"_id": "198675", "title": "What makes OOP \"good\"?", "text": "It's fairly obvious that OOP is viewed as a sort of silver bullet of programming today. In any computer science course, the merits of OOP are heralded. I would like to know why people like OOP. To be honest, combining procedures, types, and data structures into a single conglomerate seems bad to me. I'd much rather view data as simply data. I like to be able to think that I will pass the right data through a function and get the right output, and not have to consider that the data is capable of operating on itself. Also, I want to know if there are any good examples of robust programs written specifically with or without OOP, that have their source code available."}
{"_id": "219953", "title": "How is localStorage different from indexedDB?", "text": "localStorage and indexedDB are used for offline storage of data in HTML5. What are their key differences and which one is preferable in what situations?"}
{"_id": "241510", "title": "Efficient algorithm to find a the set of numbers in a range", "text": "If I have an array of sorted numbers and every object is one of the numbers or multiplication. For example if the sorted array is `[1, 2, 7]` then the set is `{1, 2, 7, 1*2, 1*7, 2*7, 1*2*7}`. As you can see if there's n numbers in the sorted array, the size of the set is 2n-1. My question is how can I find for a given sorted array of n numbers all the objects in the set so that the objects is in a given interval. For example if the sorted array is `[1, 2, 3 ... 19, 20]` what is the most efficient algorithm to find the objects that are larger than 1000 and less than 2500 (without calculating all the 2n-1 objects)?"}
{"_id": "229668", "title": "Running a process multiple times at the same time", "text": "I have a c++ program with opencv library which takes an image as input and perform pose estimation,color detection,phog. When I run this program from the command line it takes around 4-5sec to complete. It takes around 60%cpu. When I try to run the same program from two different command line windows at the same time the process takes around 10-15 sec to finish and both the process finish in almost the same time. The CPU Usage reaches upto 100%. I have a website which calls this c++ exe using exec() command. So when two users try to upload an image and run it takes more time as I explained above in the command line. Is this because the c++ program involves high computation and the CPU reaches 100% it slows down? But I read that the CPU reaching 100% is not a bad thing as the computer is using its full capacity to run the program. So is this because of my c++ program or is it something to do with my server(computer) settings? This is probably not the apache server problem because when I try to run it from the command line also it slows down. I am using a quad core processor and all the 4 CPU reaches 100% when I try to run the same process at the same time so I think that its distributed among all the processor. So I have few more questions: 1) Can this be solved by using multithreading in my c++ code?As for now I am not using it but will multithreading make the c++ code more computationally expensive and increase the CPU usage(if this is the problem). 2) What can be the reason of it slowing down? Is the process in a queue and each process is ran only a certain amount of time and it switches between the two process? 3) If this is because it involves high computation will it help if I change some functions to opencv gpu functions? 4) Is there a way I can solve this problems any ideas or tips? I have inserted the result of top when running one process and running the same process twice at the same time: Version5 is the process,running it once ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/V9KVi.png) Two Version5 running at the same time ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/h6aP4.png) Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "159148", "title": "Java sql annotations ManyToMany relationships", "text": "I was wondering your thoughts on the best way to implement a SQL ManyToMany relationship in Java using annotations - in this case eBeans \\- where there is extra data associated with the join. I have created a db diagram to help explain: ![An ERD](http://i.stack.imgur.com/brOxP.png) Using @ManyToMany on the organisation and users classes would create the join table but without the extra Job Title. Is the best way to implement this to create the Org_has_users class and use @OneToMany and @ManyToOne annotations? Would cascade on save ensure that I can access the full join relationships from both the Users and Organisations classes? I hope this is enough to get started. I am more interested in how you would implement this. Thanks! Anthony"}
{"_id": "162268", "title": "TDD with SQL and data manipulation functions", "text": "While I'm a professional programmer, I've never been formally trained in software engineering. As I'm frequently visiting here and SO, I've noticed a trend for writing unit tests whenever possible and, as my software gets more complex and sophisticated, I see automated testing as a good idea in aiding debugging. However, most of my work involves writing complex SQL and then processing the output in some way. How would you write a test to ensure your SQL was returning the correct data, for example? Then, say if the data wasn't under your control (e.g., that of a 3rd party system), how can you efficiently test your processing routines without having to hand write reams of dummy data? The best solution I can think of is making views of the data that, together, cover most cases. I can then join those views with my SQL to see if it's returning the correct records and manually process the views to see if my functions, etc. are doing what they're supposed to. Still, it seems excessive and flakey; particularly finding data to test against..."}
{"_id": "162264", "title": "Linux OS developers : do they unit test their code?", "text": "Linux OS developers : do they unit test their code ? If yes :   * since this OS is coded in C, how do they manage to write effectively unit tests in this language ?   * what are the \"zones\" in OS where unit testing is easier to write ? where is it harder ? where is it valuable ?"}
{"_id": "159140", "title": "Why categorization into \"Property\" and \"Methods\"", "text": "I am looking at the String class in Actionscript 3.0. It's having a property String.length . Internally it's a getter function ( or method ?) returning the length of string. Why it can't be String.getLength() ? Methods can take in 1, 2 or more values.. so their significance can be understood. But what significance \"property\" has. As it's afterall, a function only. So, why categorization into properties? Just adding an overhead botheration to remember that something has been categorized into property ? In other words, as a programmer, how i am helped, when i am told that String.length is a property of String class. And you can't find any method for the same. While writing a program, how i would know what is a property, and what is a method? Appreciate having some light on this. V."}
{"_id": "69090", "title": "which license fits my needs?", "text": "Which license would fit the following requirements the most?   * Everyone is welcome to make updates and use the source code    * But nobody should sell it or sell an application that is using it, unless they make a deal with owners"}
{"_id": "81327", "title": "Is it ok to include jQuery in a jQuery plugin?", "text": "The question jQuery plugin file including the jQuery library came up today on stackoverflow, and I strongly advised against including jQuery in the plugin. I didn't really get any support from others on this; in fact there was more support to include jQuery than not. Is this ok or are there good reasons not to do this? I think it's a really bad idea as I think it should be up to the developer using the plug as to what version of jQuery is being used."}
{"_id": "162262", "title": "CPU recommendation for learning multiprocessor programming", "text": "This might be an odd question and the place to ask might not be appropriate. I am very interested in working with multiprocessor programming and parallel algorithms, mostly for research purposes. I want to build a computer specially for this and it should have at least 8 cores (many algorithms have contention problems only starting with 8 cores). Looking at what Intel and AMD offer I think the 8-core Intel CPUs are far too expensive, so I would have to choose between:   \\- 6-core Intel i7 980X (3.33 Ghz)   \\- 8-core AMD FX 8150 (3.6 Ghz)   \\- 2x8-core AMD Opteron 4248 (3.0 Ghz, server version of FX 8150)   \\- 1x or 2x-12-core AMD Opteron 6172 (2.1Ghz, expensive, but sometimes affordable on Ebay) I'm inclined for the 2xOpteron, but I'm not sure how the Bulldozer architecture compares to the Intel one; from what I understand the 8 cores actually share some parts and are not compleltely independent like the Intel ones (ignoring the shared L3 cache). I'm not sure that the results I get would reflect the ones that would be obtained on a \" classical\" CPU. On the other side, the i7 is much more powerful and might be sufficient for testing the parallel algorithms. The 2x12-core Opteron would probably be the best for testing, but they are also the slowest by far and I would like to use this computer as a workstation too. What would be the best solution? Is the Bulldozer architecture suitable for research (mostly for the massive parallelization of a compiler I wrote)?"}
{"_id": "121088", "title": "How do you write straight to the point documentation without looking sloppy and informal?", "text": "I'm currently at a contract position and am looking to add to the documentation of the projects I worked on, to assist the next hiree taking over my projects. The documentation I received was overly technical (i.e. references code right away, references replacing certain values on certain lines, no high level description at all) How do I write documentation in simple plain English that is of actual benefit without looking sloppy? I find it difficult in areas such as outlining a system's flaws without coming off as judgmental, but still emphasize the severity of how detrimental some of the flaws are."}
{"_id": "190056", "title": "Will SSD make the distinction between column oriented DB and row oriented DB obsolete?", "text": "I had a discussion with a friend about row vs column oriented RDBMS. From my understanding, these things are closely linked with the fact that there's a concrete drive head reading and writing the data. This head moves and reading/writing data is faster if the head moves are limited. Still from my understanding, SSD drives drops those mechanical artifacts and accessing the data is now taking the same amount time regardless of where they are physically stored on the chip / device (don't know the right term). Considering these two points, will the SSD drives (when they'll have reached their full potential) make the distinction between row oriented and column oriented either obsolete or pointless?"}
{"_id": "135356", "title": "Extending Mono's C# compiler with additional custom features (more or less syntactic sugar)", "text": "I'm aware that this is a rather broad question, but here it goes anyway... What is, in your opinion, the most practical way to create own C# implementation with minor additions to the existing 4.0 feature set? For context: I'm thinking about adding a couple of (mostly syntactic) niceties to the dynamic feature set that would improve the whole duck-typing experience. For example, these would include the idea of a dynamic interface, as proposed in this debate (particularly in the last comment from MiddleTommy). I'm aware that nothing is stopping me from simply diving into the Mono sources. However, I'm compelled to first ask about potentially similar projects that may already exist in the wild. Any such extension efforts underway?"}
{"_id": "135350", "title": "How to debug/change Java code while the program is running?", "text": "I just saw a video showing how Notch (of Minecraft fame) is debugging and changing Minecraft while it is running. He pauses the game, changes something in the code and then unpauses the game where the change takes immediate effect without the need to restart the program. How does this work? Which kind of technique is used to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "200150", "title": "Object design where hard-coded values are used to instantiate objects?", "text": "I'm creating the design for a browser bookmark merging program and I've ran into a design problem that I've seen before yet I've never come up with a good solution for it. So lets say I have a Browser class:               Browser:       String bookmarkFilePath       String type       Bool bookmarkFileExists()      When my program runs I will want to have hard-coded values of common browsers and the locations of their Bookmarks file:               Object with hard-coded values:       \"~/Library/Application Support/Google/Default/Bookmarks\", \"Chrome\"       \"~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist\", \"Safari\"      **Is there a design pattern or object type that could effectively take an object with hard-coded values (Browser name / bookmarks file path) and uses it to instantiate (and possibly manage) other (Browser) objects?** Also, flexibility is important since there are edge cases such as Firefox's file path to the bookmarks file is always different and some searching needs to be done. **EDIT: I will be implementing this in Python. _Sorry for not mentioning this before_.**"}
{"_id": "121081", "title": "Trial/Free & Full Version VS. Free App + In-app billing?", "text": "I'm just wondering what would be the best strategy to publish an application on the Android Market. If you have a free and paid version you have two codes to update (I know it will be 99% the same but still) and besides all the popular paid apps are quite easy to find for \"free\" in \"alternative\" markets. Also if you have any stored data in the trial/free version you lose it when you buy the full version.. On the other hand if you put a free application but inside you allow the user to unlock options (remove ads/more settings/etc...) you only have to worry about one code. I don't know the drawbacks of that strategy and how easy/hard is to hack that to get all the options for \"free\"."}
{"_id": "49758", "title": "Is OCaml any good for numerical analysis?", "text": "I'm currently using C and some FORTRAN to solve numerically systems of differential equations. I'm a bit fed up with both of these languages but I need to have some (rather) efficient code... I'm thinking of switching to OCaml. Is it worth it?"}
{"_id": "125502", "title": "Application design for web/iPad/iPhone/Android application", "text": "I have a web application which is a pretty standard SAAS database driven app. I have a few customers asking for iOS or Android versions of the app. Is it better to build an API on the web app which is then used to drive the native mobile apps UI? This would be simplest but mean the mobile apps are not 'stand alone'. Alternatively I could try and implement a full mobile solution that then synchronizes with the web app somehow. This would be much more work as all the business logic needs to be build into the mobile apps rather than behind the API. What is standard practice for this kind of thing?"}
{"_id": "135359", "title": "Organizing MVC entities communication", "text": "I have the following situation. Imagine you have a MainWindow object who is layouting two different widgets, ListWidget and DisplayWidget. ListWidget is populated with data from the disk. DisplayWidget shows the details of the selection the user performs in the ListWidget. I am planning to do the following: in MainWindow I have the following objects:   * ListWidget   * ListView   * ListModel   * ListController ListView is initialized passing the ListWidget. ListViewController is initialized passing the View and the Model. Same happens for the DisplayWidget:   * DisplayWidget   * DisplayView   * DisplayModel   * DisplayController I initialize the DisplayView with the widget, and initialize the Model with the ListController. I do this because the DisplayModel wraps the ListController to get the information about the current selection, and the data to be displayed in the DisplayView. I am very rusty with MVC, being out of UI programming since a while. Is this the expected interaction layout for having different MVC triplets communicate ? In other words, MVC focus on the interaction of three objects. How do you put this interaction as a whole into a larger context of communication with other similar entities, MVC or not ?"}
{"_id": "121085", "title": "Can the customer be a SCRUM Product Owner in a project?", "text": "I just had a discussion with a colleague about the Product Owner role: In a project where a customer organization has brought in a sofware developing organization (supplier), can the role of Product Owner be successfully held by the customer organization, or should it always be held by the supplier? I always imagined, that the PO was the supplier organizations guy. The guy that ensured that the customer is happy, and continously fed with new and high-businessvalue functionality, but still an integral part of the developer organization. However, maybe I have viewed the PO role too much like the waterfall project manager. My colleague made me think: If the customer organization is mature and proffessional enough, why not let a person from their camp prioritize the backlog?? That would put the PO role much closer to the business, thus being (in theory) better to assess the business value of backlog items. To me, that is an intriguing thought. But what are the implication of such a setup??? I look forward to your input."}
{"_id": "190059", "title": "Is object-oriented conceptual thinking something you build with experience?", "text": "I know that the answer is pretty clear because you get better on everything with time and experience. But I'll tell you where I'm coming from: A couple of months ago I decided to learn iOS development, so I studied C (read the C primer plus book, pretty good book). Recently I finished \"Programming in Objective C\" and lately I started following the Stanford course for Winter 2013 (I'm really enjoying it. I'm only at the beginning of the course, on lecture #3, and had to do only 2 homeworks). I understand all the syntax and concepts so far, and I think Objective C is an amazing language. But something has been bothering me, I thought it might be because I'm new to OOP. For example when the instructor defines models (matching cards game for instance), I definitely understand the syntax and logic, but sometimes I'm trying to think if it as taking a task (card game for instance) and breaking it into the right logic. Is this something I will get used to with time? Because at this stage when I try to predict things I'm supposed to do, pretty often I go and see some of his logic and go back to code. Actually we haven't had to go from zero, he always tells us to follow the presentation with the code in this stage, but I really want to improve at taking a task and knowing how to break it into the right models, controllers, etc."}
{"_id": "158430", "title": "What is \"toolkit design\"?", "text": "What does \"toolkit design\" mean and what are the basic steps to design a toolkit for a specific task/project? It appears in a task description which says: \"This task deals with the design of detailed specification of the various tools that are employed in order to implement [insert some development task here]\" So what I understand is that: it's required to design and provide the specifications of a toolkit which will be used for doing some specific tasks. But how is toolkit design done? Searching Google hardly gives any meaningful result. They are mostly about \"design toolkits\" which is not what I'm looking for. For example this guy has designed a software toolkit in some of his previous projects http://logonpro.com/resume.doc"}
{"_id": "158435", "title": "Project Management - Asana / activeCollab / basecamp / alternative / none", "text": "I don't know whether this should be on programmers - I've been looking at the above three apps over the past few weeks just for myself and I'm in two minds. All three look good, are easy to use, and I came to this conclusion;   * Asana is the easiest to use    * ActiveCollab is the feature rich and easiest flow   * BaseCamp is the best UX / design But I didn't really find my workflow was any more quicker / efficient, in fact it was a bit slower and organized. Is there a realistic place for them in workflow - should programmers use them for themselves, or only when a project manager can take control of it?"}
{"_id": "158436", "title": "What is a good design strategy for retaining history of user activities and files like Visual Studio projects?", "text": "OK so I'm not so sure that \"project\" is the right term, but for my purposes, I define \"project\" as similar to what Visual Studio uses, or Microsoft word - files that the user can open and work on and then save, and when the user runs the application again the program is aware of the files that were worked on last time the application was open. So I ask, what is a good design strategy for retaining history of user activities and files like Visual Studio projects?"}
{"_id": "45699", "title": "Differences between a Unified Process and an Agile project plan?", "text": "There've been many discussions on SO about the differences between (Rational) Unified Process and the Agile methodology. Can someone please give me an example on how different a project plan would be if there are 2 teams doing the same project, but following these 2 different methods?"}
{"_id": "45698", "title": "What are the best XP practices?", "text": "In \"Extreme Programming Explained\", Beck lists 13 \"primary practices\". They are:   * Sit Together   * Whole Team   * Informative Workspace   * Energized Work   * Pair Programming   * Stories   * Weekly Cycle   * Quarterly Cycle   * Slack   * 10 Minute Build   * Continuous Integration   * Test-First Programming   * Incremental Design Which of these have you actually implemented in your workplace? Which has been the most useful?"}
{"_id": "41934", "title": "What software development process should I learn first for a solo project?", "text": "I want to develop a project on my own (if it is sucessful more people might start working on it too). Also I want to apply some proper software engineering from the first until the last day. On one hand just to try it out and compare results with previous projects that were just about writing code quick and dirty, and on the other hand to learn! I know the proper answer to this question is \"It depends very much on the project...\", \"There is no single correct answer...\". But I just need someplace to start, somewhere where every step is written down and tells me what to do. If I'm not happy next time I'll try something else. So, how/where should I start? I would love to hear some book suggestions cause I'm all about books :-D. EDIT: Answering a few of the questions that popped up: **Customer** : There is kind of a customer/friend. No real pressure.   **Version Control** : I have used subversion in the past and want to try mercurial.   **Bug tracking** : I was under the impression that for s single developer a checklist was enough (am I wrong there?)   **Testing** : I want to try Lime (because I use Symfony) and Selenium.   On the whole I will try out a lot of stuff I haven't used before but as I said one of the main points is learning. The Pomodoro Technique keeps popping up wherever I look, so maybe I should have a look at that..."}
{"_id": "10605", "title": "How can programmers improve their UX skills?", "text": "As programmers we can solve very complex problems, but then, when we have to design a user interface we tend to fail on making them easy to use. In small companies they can\u2019t afford having designers and UX experts, programmers have to do almost everything in the software. But these interfaces are rarely intuitive (the classic example). What is the problem? How can developers improve their skills in designing good user experiences?"}
{"_id": "90232", "title": "Original author rights in a licensed software project", "text": "I'm working on a software project where so far I'm the sole developer. As of right now the code is unlicensed, but the copyright of whatever I've written belongs to me (this is true at least in North America AFAIK). Before I release the software to the public, I'm going to license its distribution, probably under something like MPL or GPL. Question 1: As the original copyright holder, does this effect me in anyway? Or do I still have unrestricted distribution rights? Question 2: After some time, more developers join the project. Now much of source code copyright belongs to me+contributors. How do distribution rights work for the authors now? Regards, kfl"}
{"_id": "90236", "title": "What is the / your most effective QA process?", "text": "I'm looking for some ideas on how to improve our current Quality Assurance process. There is no official QA method in place right now, but we basically just get some requirements using a ticket system and we go back and forth until all the requirements are covered. The problem right now is some requirements change and we may spend a day or 5 days on multiple requirements but in the end they all get tossed because the end user decided it's not appropriate or wanted something else. So we lose time and money, but how can we have foreseen these situations? I have to believe there is an effective way to communicate with end users about their set of requirements so that we can EXTRACT and squeeze out any doubts to foreshadow a change in a range of requirements. And then we need to be very sure that the requirements won't be tossed or changed so drastically that our work was a waste. In some ways it is about understanding really really well what the user eventually wants. But what is this effective QA process? Any ideas are greatly appreciated. I'd be happy to clarify any concerns. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "236395", "title": "Estimed number of tries", "text": "**Problem:** The Oscar Committee wants to decide which person should get the best actor award among the given N actors.For that they decided to use a random function random_bit() which returns either 0 or 1 with equal probablity. For the results to be fair,the committee was asked to generate a random number between 1 to N (inclusive) , such that all actors have equal probability of being chosen (which in this case should always be equal to 1 / N. First of all Committee wants to know the expected number of times they will need to call random_bit() function to generate a random number between 1 to N.Also, while calling the function, they should follow the optimal strategy (i.e. the strategy that minimizes the expected number of function calls) * * * This is problem of past contests at codechef.com and here's the link to it. This site allows to see other users solution and till now only one solution has been accepted. The solution is in C++ code:               #include <iostream>     using namespace std     int main() {         int T;         cin >> T;         for(int ii = 0; ii<T; ++ii)          {              int N;              cin >> N;              double p = 1, ans = 0;              int x = 1 % N;              for(int i = 0; i<100000; ++i)              {                   ans += x * p;                   x = (x * 2) % N;                   p /= 2;              }              cout << ans;         }         return 0;     }      I know how the code runs and what it does, but I can't find the logic behind it. Any help/ clue? Also it would be nice if someone can post another algorithm."}
{"_id": "236391", "title": "What happens to equal elements when inserting into a binary search tree?", "text": "Most BST examples show a sample of a BST with unique values; mainly to demonstrate the order of values. e.g. values in the left subtree are smaller than the root, and values in the right subtree are larger. Is this because BSTs are normally just used to represents SETs ? If I insert an element say 4 which already exists in the BST, what should happen ? e.g. In my case, 4 is associated with a payload. Does it mean I override the existing node's payload."}
{"_id": "58644", "title": "How do you coordinate with interaction designers during implementation?", "text": "Programmers are largely responsible for helping move a product from design to implementation. This process is always full of snags:   * implementation details rear their ugly head and make parts of the design infeasible   * user feedback on early prototypes leads to changes in the design   * new technologies alter the field of what is possible, bringing back designs previously thought impossible   * priorities shift, schedules change, and requirements wander How do you keep design and implementation in contact during the implementation? What processes do you use? Tools? Artifacts? Guidelines? Communication strategies?"}
{"_id": "96966", "title": "Origin of \"Readme\"", "text": "When did people start writing Readme files? It seems that pretty much all programs have this file, regardless of the format. Is there any documented first use of this document?"}
{"_id": "53878", "title": "Dynamic vs Statically typed languages for websites", "text": "This statement suggests that statically typed languages are not ideal for web sites: > I\u2019ll contrast that with building a website. When rendering web pages, often > you have very many components interacting on a web page. You have buttons > over here and little widgets over there and there are dozens of them on a > webpage, as well as possibly dozens or hundreds of web pages on your website > that are all dynamic. With a system with a really large surface area like > that, using a statically typed language is actually quite inflexible. I > would find it painful probably to program in Scala and render a web page > with it, when I want to interactively push around buttons and what-not. If > the whole system has to be coherent, like the whole system has to type check > just to be able to move a button around, I think that can be really > inflexible. Source: http://www.infoq.com/interviews/kallen-scala-twitter Is this correct? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "11951", "title": "Production-safe SQL stored procedure debugging", "text": "We have an enormous number of nested SQL stored procedures, and a number of different ways of debugging them (varying from developer to developer). So far, our methods include:   1. An optional `@debug` parameter, that causes the procedure to `print`messages as it runs (passing the variable down to called procedures).   2. Checking `@@servername` against a table of test server names, and `print`ing as above   3. Writing everything the procedure does to a log table (in production and test) Which of these is preferable (and why), or is there a better method we've overlooked?"}
{"_id": "236398", "title": "Creating New Wrapper Objects and Extension Classes and Keeping it Organized", "text": "Here's my situation: I'm programming an embedded device with a very simple, but customizable LED array display. It's 10 RGB LEDs linearly setup. The LEDs will be used to display many different things depending on the device's mode. Now, I've started down the road, but feel after spending a lot of time coding and finding a lot of duplicate coding that this should be simplified with some abstraction and wrappers methods and classes. At the very bare minimum and starting point, I have a class, the LED driver, which represents the hardware driving the LEDS. It has one Method which is primarily used `TLC5940.Display(ushort[] greyscaleData)` where greyscaleData is an array of size equal to the amount of output pins, a multiple of 16(16 per chip, chips can be connected to each other).This array controls each pins individually allowing direct control of the leds. This lead me to creating different \"extension\" methods in a static class which had different routines of populating this array and then passing it into the `Display` method. This works ok for testing different methods, but I found a lot of duplicate code with how I populate the array because each RGB led consumes 3 physical pins(and 3 consecutive array values) to control a specific RGB LED. So, I need to write a consecutive chunk of three values to control an LED. I came up with this private method in the static extension class:               private static void FillLEDArray(ref ushort[] brightnessArray, ushort LEDNumber, ushort rVal, ushort gVal, ushort bVal, short ledStartPin = 2, ushort numLEDs = 10)     {         //logic for how to shift array for physical pin layout         if (ledStartPin == 2) { ledStartPin = 0; }         else if (ledStartPin == 1) { ledStartPin = -1; }         else { throw new Exception(\"Can only be 1 or 2\"); }              ushort pinStart = (ushort)(LEDNumber*3  + ledStartPin);         brightnessArray[pinStart] = bVal;         brightnessArray[pinStart-1] = gVal;         brightnessArray[pinStart - 2] = rVal;     }      It's simple and this makes things easier with my extension display methods so I can loop from 1 to 10 and call this method to write a specific LED to the array in one call. On a deeper level, I thought to make an LED object, which would contain an array of the 3 values and also offer some functions like LED.Colors.Red, LED.Colors.Blue, etc and return an array that would represent that color to make coding easier and more fun. Moreover, create a LED container object class to contain LED object. ex: `LEDS.LED(1).Color.Red` this could also generate an array on demand. One more level of complexity, My device is user customizable, so I have created a User Settings class, which contains all of the device's user settings, many of which apply to the LEDs like certain colors of the RGBs, overall brightness, color schemes, etc. These settings, such as brightness, would need to be applied the whole array before it's sent to the display also. If you've read this far, Thanks. **Question:** At this point have all the tools and ways to control the LEDs, but I'm looking to rewrite this all and wondering what's the best way to encapsulate all of this functionality? Is there a certain coding pattern or style that would apply to this? * * * My Own thoughts: In writing this out and getting it out of my head, maybe a new `DeviceDisplay` class which would contain an instance of the LED hardware and settings classes? Should this class be Static or Singleton? I'm also concerned about Memory/RAM/Speed because this is an embedded device. I would appreciate some feedback on this as it seems there's a lot of different dependencies and getting a little lost in my brain."}
{"_id": "176781", "title": "Child to Parent linking - bad idea?", "text": "I have a situation where my parent knows about it's child (duh) but I want the child to be able to reference the parent. The reason for this is that I want the child to have the ability to designate itself as most important or least important when it feels like it. When the child does this, it moves it to the top or bottom of the parent's children. In the past I've used a WeakReference property on the child to refer back tot he parent, but I feel that adds an annoying overhead, but maybe it's just the best way to do it. Is this just a bad idea? How would you implement this ability differently? Update 1: Adding more context. This is a rendering system so the parent container is a list of windows grouped together. The child item (window) that says \"I'm most important!\" wants to basically be rendered on the top of the rest of the windows. The parent is just a logical container to group these children together. I can see where adding an event to signal the request to be on the top is a good idea. But implementation (what the child wants to do with the parent) aside, why wouldn't you want to have child->parent linking? Doubly linked lists do this so people can traverse to and from something."}
{"_id": "176780", "title": "Too complex/too many objects?", "text": "I know that this will be a difficult question to answer without context, but hopefully there are at least some good guidelines to share on this. The questions are at the bottom if you want to skip the details. Most are about OOP in general. Begin context. I am a jr dev on a PHP application, and in general the devs I work with consider themselves to use many more OO concepts than most PHP devs. Still, in my research on clean code I have read about so many ways of using OO features to make code flexible, powerful, expressive, testable, etc. that is just plain not in use here. The current strongly OO API that I've proposed is being called too complex, even though it is trivial to implement. The problem I'm solving is that our permission checks are done via a message object (my API, they wanted to use arrays of constants) and the message object does not hold the validation object accountable for checking all provided data. Metaphorically, if your perm containing 'allowable' and 'rare but disallowed' is sent into a validator, the validator may not know to look for 'rare but disallowed', but approve 'allowable', which will actually approve the whole perm check. We have like 11 validators, too many to easily track at such minute detail. So I proposed an `AtomicPermission` class. To fix the previous example, the perm would instead contain two atomic permissions, one wrapping 'allowable' and the other wrapping 'rare but disallowed'. Where previously the validator would say 'the check is OK because it contains allowable,' now it would instead say '\"allowable\" is ok', at which point the check ends...and the check fails, because 'rare but disallowed' was not specifically okay-ed. The implementation is just 4 trivial objects, and rewriting a 10 line function into a 15 line function.               abstract class PermissionAtom {     public function allow(); // maybe deny() as well     public function wasAllowed();     }          class PermissionField extends PermissionAtom {     public function getName();     public function getValue();     }          class PermissionIdentifier extends PermissionAtom {     public function getIdentifier();     }          class PermissionAction extends PermissionAtom {     public function getType();     }      They say that this is 'not going to get us anything important' and it is 'too complex' and 'will be difficult for new developers to pick up.' I respectfully disagree, and there I end my context to begin the broader questions. So the question is about my OOP, are there any guidelines I should know:   1. _is_ this too complicated/too much OOP? Not that I expect to get more than 'it depends, I'd have to see if...'   2. when is OO abstraction too much?   3. when is OO abstraction too little?   4. how can I determine when I am overthinking a problem vs fixing one?   5. how can I determine when I am adding bad code to a bad project?   6. how can I pitch these APIs? I feel the other devs would just rather say 'its too complicated' than ask 'can you explain it?' whenever I suggest a new class."}
{"_id": "246896", "title": "Is it OK to let invalid arguments slip to another method?", "text": "For example lets take this method:               public List<string[]> ReadAll(int listCapacity)     {         List<string[]> list = new List<string[]>(listCapacity);              while (Read())         {             list.Add(GetCurrentRow());         }              return list;     }      If `listCapacity` is less than zero, an `ArgumentException` will be thrown by the constructor of `List<T>`. Does it make sense to double check this? Passing the argument to `List<T>` immediately seems careless, but checking it seems silly because `List<T>` will definitely check it. Important note: the code snippet is not just a copy-paste method, its part of a full utility."}
{"_id": "164956", "title": "Any good hackathons/competitions to refresh my programming skill?", "text": "I spent this summer as a PM, so my programming skills may have gotten a little rusty. I want to refresh those skills, and I'm looking for things like online hackathons or competitions. Preferably ones that happen every week or day so I can practice often. Where should I look ?"}
{"_id": "164958", "title": "Are UML class diagrams adequate to design javascript systems?", "text": "Given that UML is oriented towards a more classic approach to object orientation, is it still usable in a reliable way to design javascript systems? One specific problem that I can see is that class diagrams are, in fact, a structural view of the system, and javascript is more behaviour driven, how can you deal with it? Please, keep in mind that I'm not talking abot the real world domain here, It's a model for the solution that I'm trying to achieve."}
{"_id": "62450", "title": "Starter BOOKS On Data Analytics and Algorithms in Computer Science", "text": "Am Programmer cum Co-Founder of Start-up,Am a computer Science Graduate though am not good at Algorithms,I want to learn and sharp that side.Please suggest me some nice books for starters and Advance Level."}
{"_id": "179159", "title": "Link between tests and user stories", "text": "I have not see these links explicitly stated in the Agile literature I have read. So, I was wondering if this approach was correct: Let a story be defined as _\"In order to [RESULT], [ROLE] needs to [ACTION]\"_ then   1. _RESULT_ generates system tests.   2. _ROLE_ generates acceptance tests.   3. _ACTION_ generates component and unit tests. Where the definitions are the ones used in xUnit Patterns which to be fair are fairly standard. Is this a correct interpretation or did I misunderstand something?"}
{"_id": "136197", "title": "Should we use JavaScript and CGI variables to weed out bots from our visitor reports?", "text": "I am using ColdFusion 8 and jQuery 1.7. ** This is a programming question, because the solution I am questioning requires programming. It may not be the right solution to the problem, but if it is, then I need to figure out how to best program the concept. ** When a user comes to our site, we track their session by writing various CGI variables to a database using a CFC and stored procures. First we filter out non human traffic by keywords in the user agent such as \"bot\". Unfortunately a lot of bots and spammers mask their user agents. Later, we try to exclude from our visitor reports the bad bots and a few other known entities that are scraping pages and such. But this is a manual process. We are considering using an additional/alternate method of tracking usage. Once the user's page loads, we will use JavaScript to send the CGI variables from the client back to our server and store them. Specifically, we'll write the server variables to JavaScript on each page and then have JavaScript send them right back to us. If a bot or user doesn't fully view the page or have JavaScript enabled, the usage won't be counted is a real user. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is the same method that Google Analytics uses to track user behavior. Our goal is to eliminate good and bad bots from being counted as visitors in our reports. Does using JavaScript on a page like this minimize bots being counted? Is there a gaping hole in this plan?"}
{"_id": "120937", "title": "Rights and use of developed software", "text": "I have been working on a piece of software for a company, that they wish to resell. There was an mail-based agreement upon a flat hourly rate for my work, and eager me chose to accept a rather low fee. Due to the stress and tempo of the task, a direct contract was never formed or signed. The software was developed locally on my machine, and I was pretty much alone with it, except by excellent help from StackOverflow when I got stuck. Now, the software is nearing completion, I suddenly hear that they have hired a new developer to make the same piece of software as me, and that I was expected to resign within long. Confused I ask around, and realize that the CEO of the company had informed the rest of the company that I was terminally ill and had cancer, and was expected to leave the company soon. Since I'm perfectly healthy, this confused me even more, until I realized what was going on. When I confronted my boss with this, I was no longer seen as a member of the company, and I left the same day, never to return. Later, I raised the question about my missing pay, since I had been working for quite a bit, and not received any payment for my software. I saw that they had already sold a fair copy of my software, and since it's not exactly sold cheap, the company should have plenty of gold to pay me. The company refused, and said that they owned the software, and everything it contained. That was a lot of drama, but my question is this: **Who has the rights to the software ?** The source code had my personal watermarks and copyrights inprinted, but they have since simply deleted it. The company claim that they have all the rights, because they have a website made about the product, where they write that they have \"All rights reserved\" in the bottom. My instinct tells me that if a company buys a service like this, and then refuses to pay their developer, then they should not be allowed to keep, and much less resell the product. I have not signed any agreements about giving the company the use of this product, I have made it in my own time and without help from the rest of the company. This all takes place in Denmark, Europe, but I would guess that the rules about this is somewhat universal. Im not the strongest person to legal-talk, so I might be wrong."}
{"_id": "120934", "title": "best and most used algorithm for finding the primality of given positive number", "text": "When I was in college and as a programming language learner I wrote program for finding out prime numbers but then I never mind the program performance in terms of speed. Now after long time just started solving the problems from projecteuler.net. Now I wonder is there any best and most used algorithm for finding the primality of a given positive number which produces the result fast? Thanks"}
{"_id": "237620", "title": "What specifications in software development are relevant to the clients?", "text": "Say your company develops software, and a client wants you to handle their development. It just so happens, that they have their own IT-team, but it is fully tied up, so they outsource to you. The project is in a quotation phase, and your client's Head of IT now asks for a requirement specification (SRS), an architectural specification, and so on. The Head of IT wants to know functions, modules and other decisions that will be in construction. Other than the SRS for analysis, is your company obliged to provide these specifications, even before the project has been confirmed?"}
{"_id": "254513", "title": "Sending e-mail from a web application without being filtered out", "text": "For a web application I'm working on right now it's very important that automated e-mails arrive at the recipient. I've set up the mail server on the VPS that the application is going to run on. I've taken all the regular precautions to make sure that the e-mails it sends are not going to be filtered out: SPF, DKIM, e-mails have both a plain text and html part, html part is valid html etc. etc. Still some services - in particular Microsofts outlook.net addresses - either block the message or automatically mark it as junk mail. I've read up a little on how Microsoft determines if a message is junk and in our case it's most likely the reputation of the mail server. Since it's a new server it doesn't have any reputation yet. How do other developers deal with this type of problem? Do you use external SMTP services like Google Apps to send mail from your application? Any ideas or tips?"}
{"_id": "118905", "title": "Is there such thing as an example driven parser generator or ad-hoc DSL development?", "text": "I'm intrested to know if there exists a tool that lets you input examples of valid documents and lets you then generalize from that to a reusable parser. I can imagine this, but everytime i start learning about parsers it gets to the granularity of something like lex and yacc and it seems more complicated than my instincts say it should be. So I'm left wondering if   * a) it's just fundamentally that complicated and I need to see it or    * b) there's a way to build ad-hoc DSLs for relatively simple tasks that I could learn about Update: a simple example of an \"ad hoc\" dsl i might like to make quickly. Instead of the XML               <foo>       <item>bar</item>       <item>bat</item>     </foo>      I might want something like:               foo       bar       bat        * lines contain data items   * indentation produces parent-child relations My imaginary tool lets me convey the above information. Then, in my imaginary tool, I might highlight \"foo\" above and right click, at which point it would prompt me to restrict the values to a choice list.... Then I might extend the first one to:               foo       bar(5)       bat        * in a line, '(' and ')' surround a sub item The above might be qualified with a boolean value that specifies recursion or not, if set to true then bar(lala(4)) might work... This is the kind of train of thought I generally have that led me to ask the question. It's possible that now I've qualified it, the answer changes - if so I apologize in advance."}
{"_id": "118904", "title": "Is there a good Cognitive Architecture for implementing intelligent software agents?", "text": "So, I like dabbling in intelligent agent design (mainly video-game 'bots' but also some general task automation), but as a budding psychologist, I'd be really interested in a platform for developing such agents in a cognitively plausible setting. Such a platform would probably take the form of a cognitive architecture, but since these are meant to be implementations of psychological theories above all else, I'm worried that none of them are up for actually acting as an intelligent agent in a complex software environment like a video-game. Has anyone tried using such an architecture to produce an agent of the kind I've been describing? Failing that, do any cognitive architectures look particularly suitable for this sort of job? My current hunch is that a hybrid architecture like CLARION might work, but not having any experience with it, I'm still hesitant. I know that SOAR has famously been used to simulate a fighter pilot, but that took years of hand-coding production rules, and thus seems like an impractical platform from my standpoint."}
{"_id": "118906", "title": "Single Responsibility Principle Implementation", "text": "In my spare time, I've been designing a CMS in order to learn more about actual software design and architecture, etc. Going through the SOLID principles, I already notice that ideas like \"MVC\", \"DRY\", and \"KISS\", pretty much fall right into place. That said, I'm still having problems deciding if one of two implementations is the best choice when it comes to the Single Responsibility Principle. Implementation #1:               class User         getName         getPassword         getEmail         // etc...          class UserManager         create         read         update         delete          class Session         start         stop          class Login         main          class Logout         main          class Register         main      The idea behind this implementation is that all user-based actions are separated out into different classes (creating a possible case of the aptly- named Ravioli Code), but following the SRP to a \"tee\", almost literally. But then I thought that it was a bit much, and came up with this next implementation               class UserView extends View         getLogin //Returns the html for the login screen         getShortLogin //Returns the html for an inline login bar         getLogout //Returns the html for a logout button         getRegister //Returns the html for a register page         // etc... as needed          class UserModel extends DataModel implements IDataModel         // Implements no new methods yet, outside of the interface methods         // Haven't figured out anything special to go here at the moment         // All CRUD operations are handled by DataModel          //   through methods implemented by the interface          class UserControl extends Control implements IControl         login         logout         register         startSession         stopSession          class User extends DataObject         getName         getPassword         getEmail         // etc...      This is obviously still very organized, and still very \"single responsibility\". The `User` class is a data object that I can manipulate data on and then pass to the `UserModel` to save it to the database. All the user data rendering (what the user will see) is handled by `UserView` and it's methods, and all the user actions are in one space in `UserControl` (plus some automated stuff required by the CMS to keep a user logged in or to ensure that they stay out.) I personally can't think of anything wrong with this implementation either. In my personal feelings I feel that both are effectively correct, but I can't decide which one would be easier to maintain and extend as life goes on (despite leaning towards Implementation #1.) So what about you guys? What are your opinions on this? Which one is better? What basics (or otherwise, nuances) of that principle have I missed in either design?"}
{"_id": "255640", "title": "GPL- How much source must be released?", "text": "Suppose I have a GPL v2-licensed library that is of interest to a closed- source project (e.g. Wolfram Alpha). If some of my code were used in Wolfram Alpha, or a product that interfaces with Wolfram Alpha, would they have to release all of their code for Wolfram Alpha under the GPL v2 license?"}
{"_id": "255641", "title": "How to stop switching between keyboard and mouse", "text": "I touch-type since several years, but very often I need to switch between different applications. For text editing I don't need the mouse, but as soon as I need a web browser, I switch to the mouse. I guess I loose a lot of time and energy doing this. Since I do web development I often switch between keyboard and mouse. Do you have a working solution? Please don't tell me about browser plugins you have never used yourself. Thank you."}
{"_id": "255642", "title": "DataMapper for a MMO game plugin to send packets", "text": "I am working on an plugin for some game-server. The information about the plugin is not really necessary. _Few points you might find helpful to answer to this question:_ **The server** The server is programmed very badly. The whole design structure and how it handles things, therefore I cannot implement anything that will need to make me change how the server handles packets. The server has a list of all \"being-sent\" packets, and **sends them to the client every 600ms** So basically, the client is being updated every 600ms if there are incoming packets from the server. **My plugin** My plugin needs to update a few UIs of the client, such as new player names, change the current opened interface window, and so on. I can use a `DataMapper` class, which contains the object which has ability & access to add new packets to the list (it's not really a list; it's just a list of bytes and frames). Now look at this _dummy_ snippet (Note - this is not my plugin, but just a simple example of what I mean):               public class MyPluginPlayer {              private DataMapper mapper;         private int state;              public void setState(int state) {             this.state = state;         }              public void getState() {             return this.state;         }              public void selectWindowForState() {             if (this.state == 5) {                 mapper.createLongWindow();             }             else if (this.state == 4) {                 mapper.createWideWindow();             }             // .... etc ....         }     }      In my _dummy_ example, `MyPluginPlayer` is the lass which is responsible to handle business logic for the player that is part of my plugin, let's say my plugin is a small mini-game, like a cards game. So basically, imagine there is a manager class, which contains a List of `MyPluginPlayer` objects, and it loops through them all and works them out, setting the current state, and then calls `selectWindowForState()`. `selectWindowForState()` method basically reads all possible states, and then reads which state is the current state, and then calls the suitable method in the `DataMapper`, to send the right packet. The `DataMapper` class basically does all the dirty work such as creating new packet frame, writing the bytes, `int`s and whatever that is needed for the specific packet. **The problem** I call the use of `DataMapper` above bad, because I don't feel like the domain class should really have direct access to the `DataMapper`. I thought of making a `Queue` list and instead of calling `mapper.createWideWindow()` or whatever, it will add the action to the queue list, and then the `DataMapper` will access that list, and process all these packets to the server's global outgoing packet list. The `DataMapper` will do that at the end of every loop cycle that's done in the manager class.               for (Player p : players) {         MyPluginPlayer domain = p.getDomain();         // ...... management ..... //              p.getMapper().update(); //goes through the Queue list and adds all packets to the server outgoing packets     }      But I am not really sure on how to define these packet updates. The only method I can think of is, every packet will have an own class which implements an interface. But I will need to create a class for each packet, and I don't really like the design of many many classes for a small thing. What do you think of both of these methods? Could you suggest something better?"}
{"_id": "54098", "title": "What advantages switching to ruby might give me as a python programmer?", "text": "This is my first question on stackoverflow, so please bear with me. I'm trying to stay away from any form of trolling or flame baiting as i have a tremendous respect for both languages. I'm a python programmer (though not an expert) and i love it. My first language was C++. My line of work (web development) is pushing me towards other languages like php and javascript. Recently, I've been very excited by Ruby's increasing popularity. However I used to be under the impression that Python and Ruby were so close that there was little point in trying to learn and master both. But I get the sense that I was wrong, hence my question : I'd like to hear from python programmers who have either switched entirely to ruby or added ruby to their toolset. What specific benefits did you get from switching (entirely or partially) to Ruby from Python ? Ideally I'd like to hear from real world experiences."}
{"_id": "255645", "title": "Java for loop: why can't I declare two variables in the for loop 'header'?", "text": "I always wondered, why doesn't this compile?               for(int i=0, int q=0; i<a.length; i++){        ...     }      Why doesn't Java allow me to declare more than one variable in the for loop 'header'? Is there a logical reason behind this?"}
{"_id": "255648", "title": "The age-old question about beginning programming hasn't been answered for me", "text": "I've been wanting to learn how to program for years but thus far, every book and video has gotten over head very quickly. I eventually want to learn C# for both Windows software development and game development (Unity3D to be specific - it's a game engine that uses C#). I know absolutely nothing about programming/scripting, other than generally what can be achieved. I've been a web developer for years and know HTML very well, CSS semi-well, and Javascript not at all. I'm a pro at breaking scripts. :) I've sort of shifted away from web development and want to focus on learning programming itself. It's like a vicious cycle for me - every 6 months or so I get into the \"Ok I'm prepared to learn\" phase, find a tutorial or book, get overwhelmed, then give up. I'm writing this just after I saw a video series about C# fundamentals, but after 3 videos I was completely lost. It's like they all mention a concept like conditional strings, breeze over it, then assume you understand it. Although C# is the end-goal, is it worth learning an easier language like VB as a complete and utter novice at first? I know there's not a ton of difference and learning new languages gets easier and easier as it's mostly about syntax, but I feel like I can't wrap my head around even the most basic of concepts as a foundation. For example, I know exactly what I want a program to do and when I explain it to a programmer they normally code it very quickly. If I could write it in plain English I could do it myself. :) Should I keep trying to learn C# or should I delve into another language to get more of a basic understanding of coding itself then transition to it? Every house needs a foundation but I feel like I can't even grasp how concrete is made when building it."}
{"_id": "255649", "title": "To find the oldest/newest element in a heap", "text": "I want to find the oldest/newest element added into a heap of size k. At any given point of time if I have to find say the oldest element in the heap is there any approach with O(1) space and O(1) time. I was thinking of an approach of having a queue of the same size as that of the heap and add all the element into the queue as they are added to the heap. This yields a constant time solution but this requires an extra O(k) space. I would like to know if this problem can be solved with constant space."}
{"_id": "175782", "title": "Should I give the answer to a failed interview coding exercise?", "text": "We had a senior level interview candidate fail a nuance of the FizzBuzz question*. I mean, really, utterly, completely, failed the question - not even close. I even coached him through to thinking about using a loop and that `3` and `5` were **really** worth considering as special cases. He blew it. Just for QA purposes, I gave the same exact question to three teammates; gave them 5 minutes; and then came back to collect their pseudo-code. **All of them** nailed it and hadn't seen the question before. Two asked what the trick was... On a different logic exercise, the candidate showed some understanding of some of the features available within the language he chose to use (C#). So it's not as if he had _never_ written a line of code. But his logic still stunk. My question is whether or not I should have given him the answer to the logic questions. He knew he blew them, and acknowledged it later in the interview. On the other hand, he never asked for the answer or what I was expecting to see. I know coding exercises can be used to set candidates up for failure (again, see second link from above). And I really tried to help him home in on answering the core of the question. But this was a senior level candidate and Fizz-Buzz is, frankly, ridiculously easy even with accounting for interview jitters. I felt like I should have shown him a way of solving the problem so that he could at least learn from the experience. But again, he didn't ask. What's the right way to handle that situation? * * * * _Okay, that's not the link to the actual FizzBuzz question, but it is a good P.SE discussion around FizzBuzz and links to the various aspects of it._ _Footnote 2_ : To help clarify, this is the nuance of Fizz-Buzz I asked and it's from Project Euler's first problem. Substitute printing Fizz | Buzz for summing the numbers and you have the same fundamental question. `If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23.   Write a function that finds the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000.` _Footnote 3_ : This question attracted more attention than I had expected, and I appreciate all of the replies. Some of the later answers have really gotten to the core of my question, so I'll allow the community to review and up-vote before assigning \"the\" answer. _Footnote 4_ : I selected \"the\" answer based upon community votes at that point in time. And I think Yannis' answer is appropriate for interviews with newer devs. I think the collective response focusing on the lack of asking for the answer is spot-on as well."}
{"_id": "175780", "title": "What is meaning of the term \"Sans\" in a class name?", "text": "I was reading code of a java project where I found a class name like \"UserSansXml\". This class is dealing with user objects. I wanted to know the meaning of \"sans\"."}
{"_id": "155939", "title": "Java Cryptography Extension", "text": "I was told that in order to support AES256 encryption inside my Java app that I would need the JCE with Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files. I downloaded this from Oracle and unzipped it and I'm only seeing 2 JARs:   * `local_policy.jar`; and   * `US_export_polic.jar` I just want to confirm I'm not missing anything here! My understanding (after reading the `README.txt`) is that I just drop these two into my `<JAVA_HOME>/lib/security/` directory and they should be installed. By the names of these JARs I have to assume that its not the Java Crypto API that cannot handle AES256, but it's in fact a **legal** issue, perhaps? And that these two JARs basically tell the JRE \" _yes, it's legally-acceptable to run this level of crypto (AES256)._ \" Am I correct or off-base?"}
{"_id": "175789", "title": "C simple arrays and pointers question", "text": "So here's the confusion, let's say I declare an array of characters               char name[3] = \"Sam\";      and then I declare another array but this time using pointers               char * name = \"Sam\";      What's the difference between the two? I mean they work the same way in a program. Also how does the latter store the size of the stuff that someone puts in it, in this case 3 characters? Also how is it different from               char * name = new char[3];      If those three are different where should they be used I mean in what circumstances?"}
{"_id": "211894", "title": "How much time should jquery wait?", "text": "I'm programming a jQuery functionality for doing a search on articles while the user is typing in the search field. I implemented a bind in jQuery that at every `keyup`, it sets a `clearTimeout` and a `setTimeout` to the actual function doing the `post` to the server. This is because users can be writing something and I want to avoid multiple `post`s. I got \"stuck\" with: from the user interface point of view, what time should I set for the `setTimeout`? I tried different times (1s, 1.5s, 0.5s) but I have to admit the choice seems kind of random to me. This raised the broader question: Is there any reference or study that answers the question of what are the \"optimal\" times for dynamic web interfaces? I only now noticed that I've used more timers before (e.g. slides), that were also chosen \"randomly\". Putting in other terms, does anyone knows how to _justify_ why a given event in web interface has (or should have) a specific delta-time or range of delta- times? (I'm sorry if this question is not adequate to here, It seemed to me closer than SO.)"}
{"_id": "211896", "title": "Why using FMOD?", "text": "I'm creating a music player using C++ and QT, everyone says use FMOD. But QT has all the components, I can play audio, create playlist, and everything i need, so what does FMOD offer me, that can't be done with QT? I did some research, here and here and here, and so many other results; in fact if you just google _\"create music player\"_ you get _\"use fmod and qt as GUI\"_."}
{"_id": "128458", "title": "Best practices for team workflow with RoR/Github for designer + coder?", "text": "My friend and I have started to try to collaborate on some projects. For background, I come from a PHP/Wordpress/Drupal coding background, but recently I've become more experienced with the RoR framework, while he is more experienced as an HTML/CSS designer, working with PHP and WordPress. We're both relatively new to RoR I think, and so we're trying to figure out our collaborative workflow, but we have no idea where to start. For instance, we were trying to figure out how he could do some minor edits to the CSS file without having to do a full RoR deploy on his box. We still haven't figured out a solution, so I think it's best if we start to set some sort of workflow based on best practices. I was wondering if you guys have any insight or links to articles/case studies regarding this topic?"}
{"_id": "216320", "title": "Java regex patterns - compile time constants or instance members?", "text": "Currently, I have a couple of **_singleton_** objects where I'm doing matching on regular expressions, and my `Pattern`s are defined like so:               class Foobar {       private final Pattern firstPattern =         Pattern.compile(\"some regex\");       private final Pattern secondPattern =         Pattern.compile(\"some other regex\");       // more Patterns, etc.       private Foobar() {}       public static Foobar create() { /* singleton stuff */ }     }      But I was told by someone the other day that this is bad style, and `Pattern`s should **always** be defined at the class level, and look something like this instead:               class Foobar {       private static final Pattern FIRST_PATTERN =         Pattern.compile(\"some regex\");       private static final Pattern SECOND_PATTERN =         Pattern.compile(\"some other regex\");       // more Patterns, etc.       private Foobar() {}       public static Foobar create() { /* singleton stuff */ }     }      The lifetime of this particular object isn't that long, and my main reason for using the first approach is because it doesn't make sense to me to hold on to the `Pattern`s once the object gets GC'd. Any suggestions / thoughts?"}
{"_id": "216326", "title": "Finding the order of a set's elements", "text": "A little rephrased, in the form of a game, real-life problem: Suppose there is a set of elements {1, 2, ..., n}. Player A has chosen a single permutation of this set. Player B wants to find out the order of the elements by asking questions of form \"Is X earlier in the permutation than Y?\", where X and Y are elements of the set. Assuming B wants to minimize the amount of questions, how many times would he have to ask, and what would be the algorithm?"}
{"_id": "216325", "title": "How to Implement a Parallel Workflow", "text": "I'm trying to implement a parallel split task using a workflow system. I'm using .NET but my process is very simple and I don't want to use WF or anything heavy like that. I've tried using Stateless. So far is was easy to set up and run, but I may be using the wrong tool for the job because I'm not sure how you're supposed to model parallel split workflows, where you have multiple sub-tasks required before you can advance to the next state, but the steps don't require being performed in any particular order. I can easily use the dynamic configuration options to check my data model manually to see if the model is in the correct state (all sub-tasks completed) and can transition to the next state, but this seems to completely break the workflow paradigm. What is the proper, orthodox way to implement a parallel split process? Thanks"}
{"_id": "252915", "title": "Structural pattern for an unconventional use of a database", "text": "I'm writing a game client as a personal project and using using it as a vehicle to learn about Java database access, specifically Neo4j, and possibly Spring Data Neo4j if I decide it's appropriate. I'm well aware that my application is a bit unconventional, and this has raised questions that are hard frame narrowly. I hope this question is appropriate for this site. Maybe the best way to ask this is to first explain what I'm thinking of doing and why. My main reason for incorporating a database is persistence, not queryability. Because reaction times are critical, my plan is for the primary model of the game state to be an in-memory POJO graph. I want to update the persistent database in an asynchronous, eventually-consistent way. If I understand correctly, this is the reverse of most database applications, in which the database is authoritative and the in-memory data is just a snapshot copy. Is there a name for this pattern? If you've written something like this, what are some of the pitfalls I may encounter? Is it naive to even try this?"}
{"_id": "213940", "title": "Business rule to display data in all uppercase - how to handle?", "text": "Part of a system I am working on manages some securities information (stocks, bonds, etc...) and business rules specify certain fields be displayed only in all CAPS (stock symbols and CUSIPs for example). Users will have to look at data displayed on the screen as well as perform create/edit data-entry operations. Where is the best place to deal with this? _1\\. Presentation layer only_ user enters \"ibm\" as stock symbol, stored in database as \"ibm\", converted to uppercase when displayed in app (\"IBM\") _2\\. Convert to CAPS before storing in DB_ user enters \"ibm\", model class converts to uppercase and sends to database, stored as \"IBM\" Something like a custom setter:               private string _StockSymbol;     public string StockSymbol     {         get { return _StockSymbol; }         set          {             if (value != null)                 value = value.ToUpper();             _StockSymbol = value;         }     }      _3\\. Convert to CAPS at DB_ user enters \"ibm\", database insert query converts to \"IBM\" (for example, using the `UPPER` function in SQL) The end result is the same for the users - they see their data in all CAPS and the system doesn't care if their data input is in the proper case or not. The most \"MVC compliant\" answer seems to be #1, but if this data will never be used in any other format other than all CAPS, I would argue it should be validated as such before being stored in the database. That then becomes more of a controller or view model concern, right? I've heard people speak about accomplishing this client-side with Java (and even CSS), but that seems like a very poor solution. I think the question is language/system-agnostic, but if it matters, I'm using MS SQL with Entity Framework/ASP.Net MVC. What I'm scratching my head over is whether or not a presentational business rule like this should influence how the data is stored in the DB (CAPS vs no CAPS). The application doesn't care if the stock symbol IBM is input as \"iBm\" or \"ibM\" but it seems wrong to store the data like that (it will only ever be used/displayed in CAPS). Would you consider this a data validation issue to be handled at the controller/model level, or a presentational detail to be handled only at the view?"}
{"_id": "252910", "title": "Make Return Type an Interface - Problem with Initialization", "text": "I would like to make the return type of my method an interface rather than a class for similar reasons stated in c# List or IList, however I am having trouble figuring out how to initialize the interface to return it. I cannot use `new IA()` and `(IA) new A()` does not work as I cannot cast the result to `B`.               interface IA{}        class A: IA{}     class B: IA{}          class UseIA     {       public IA DesiredMethod()       {         return ???;// new IA()       }       public A UndesiredMethod()       {         return new A();       }     }"}
{"_id": "243118", "title": "storing map template in database", "text": "I am working on an application that displays choropleth maps. These maps are of all different types, some display state by county, country by state/province, or world by country. How should I handle storing the map information in the database? **My Thoughts:** I won't need to do queries to find POI inside a region, so I don't think there is a need to use spatial datatypes. I am considering storing a map as a geoJSON object (I am using JS mapping library that accepts geoJSON). The only issue is what if I want a map of the US northeast. Then I would have geoJSON for the US and a separate one for the US northeast, which would be redundant. Would it make sense to have a shape database where I had each state then when I needed a map of the US I could query for each state, and when I needed a map of the US Northeast I could again query for what I need? **Note** : I am not concerned with storing the data for each region, just the region itself. I will query for the data on the fly for the specific region."}
{"_id": "163606", "title": "Configuration data: single-row table vs. name-value-pair table", "text": "Let's say you write an application that can be configured by the user. For storing this \"configuration data\" into a database, two patterns are commonly used.   1. The _single-row table_                CompanyName  |  StartFullScreen  |  RefreshSeconds  |  ...     ---------------+-------------------+------------------+--------       ACME Inc.    |        true       |       20         |  ...        2. The _name-value-pair_ table                ConfigOption   |   Value     -----------------+-------------      CompanyName     | ACME Inc.      StartFullScreen | true (or 1, or Y, ...)      RefreshSeconds  | 20      ...             | ...      I've seen both options in the wild, and both have obvious advantages and disadvantages, for example:   * The single-row tables limits the number of configuration options you can have (since the number of columns in a row is usually limited). Every additional configuration option requires a DB schema change.   * In a name-value-pair table everything is \"stringly typed\" (you have to encode/decode your Boolean/Date/etc. parameters).   * (many more) Is there some consensus within the development community about which option is preferable?"}
{"_id": "163601", "title": "What does cheap copying/branching mean for a versioning system like SVN?", "text": "One of the advantages of SVN over CVS as given here is **cheap copying and branching**. What does \" _cheap copying and branching_ \" mean in SVN parlance? How is it different from CVS copying and branching?"}
{"_id": "163602", "title": "licensing a ' Sharepoint bug-Fix' to reserve it", "text": "My friend recently finished his personal work on a project that fixes a known bug in `sharepoint 2010`. The guy spent significant time\\effort to reach this point   He consulted me on how to license this `fix` and asked if this possible and is it accepted for a such type of solutions! Actually I don't have any experiences in this area, especially that he is willing to start selling the `fix` and don't want to be lost in the market P.S.: his current location is U.A.E TIA."}
{"_id": "168655", "title": "DI and hypothetical readonly setters in C#", "text": "Sometimes I would like to declare a property like this:               public string Name { get; readonly set; }      I am wondering if anyone sees a reason why such a syntax shouldn't exist. I believe that because it is a subset of \"get; private set;\", it could only make code more robust. My feeling is that such setters would be extremely DI friendly, but of course I'm more interested in hearing your opinions than my own, so what do _you_ think? _I am aware of 'public readonly' fields, but those are not interface friendly so I don't even consider them. That said, I don't mind if you bring them up into the discussion_ **Edit** I realize reading the comments that perhaps my idea is a little confusing. The ultimate purpose of this new syntax would be to have an automatic property syntax that specifies that the backing private field should be readonly. Basically declaring a property using my hypothetical syntax               public string Name { get; readonly set; }      would be interpreted by C# as:               private readonly string name;     public string Name     {         get         {             return this.name;         }     }      And the reason I say this would be DI friendly is because when we rely heavily on constructor injection, I believe it is good practice to declare our constructor injected fields as readonly."}
{"_id": "163609", "title": "How do I get from a highly manual process of development and deploy to continuous integration?", "text": "We have a development process which is completely manual. No unit tests, interface tests are manual, and merging and integration are as well. How could we go from this state to implementing continuous integration with full (or at least close to full) automation of build and test? We have a pretty intense development cycle, and are not currently using agile, so switching to agile with CI in one move would be a very complicated and expensive investment. How can we take it slowly, and still moving constantly towards a CI environment?"}
{"_id": "63910", "title": "Smartphones and tablets for testing", "text": "In my work I have started development of a website/webapp that will be viewed primarily on smartphones and tablet. I have now been given the task of buying the necessary hardware for testing the webapp. As I'm not really a mobile-nerd, I'm not really up to date with the latest and greatest on the mobile market. So I need some advice on which units to buy. Some initial thoughts   1. I would like to cover the browsers in the most common systems; iOS, Android and Symbian? (are there any more I should know about?).   2. I would like each browser in both Phone size and tablet size. iPhone and iPad seems like a given choice, but after that my knowledge is limited. I hope this is in the realms of this site, feel free to move this question to another SE site if this question fits better somewhere else. Thanks in advance! **Edit:** In this scenario there aren't really any customer who can pay, this is an app that shall be used by our customers but is developed on our own initiative. Secondly, I get the feeling that for example the iPhone simulator uses the safari desktop browser for rendering the content (am I wrong?), if that is the case, how does it cope with the slight defferences in the desktop version and the phone version (for eaxample videos not being able to autostart on the phone and stuff like that). I can be totally wrong here, just raising the question."}
{"_id": "121947", "title": "Is there ever a reason to use C++ in a Mac-only application?", "text": "Is there ever a reason to use C++ in a Mac-only application? I not talking about integrating external libraries which are C++, what I mean is using C++ because of any advantages in a particular application. While the UI code must be written in Obj-C, what about logic code? Because of the dynamic nature of Objective-C, C++ method calls tend to be ever so slightly faster but does this have any effect in any imaginable real life scenario? For example, would it make sense to use C++ over Objective-C for simulating large particle systems where some methods would need to be called over and over in short time? I can also see some cases where C++ has a more appropriate \"feel\". For example when doing graphics, it's nice to have vector and matrix types with appropriate operator overloads and methods. This, to me, seems like it would be a bit clunkier to implement in Objective-C. Also, Objective-C objects can never be treated plain old data structures in the same manner as C++ types since Objective-C objects always have an isa-pointer. Wouldn't it make sense to use C++ instead in something like this? Does anyone have a real life example of a situation where C++ was chosen for some parts of an application? Does Apple use any C++ except for the kernel? (I don't want to start a flame war here, both languages have their merits and I use both equally though in different applications.)"}
{"_id": "29553", "title": "Under what circumstances should error messages be presented to the user?", "text": "Should error messages ever be presented to an end user and if so what rules or advice should you have about what should be in them?"}
{"_id": "29550", "title": "How to keep a team well-trained?", "text": "I'm currently mentoring a small team of 4 junior dev in small software company. They are very smart and often achieve their tasks with a high-quality job but I'm sure they still can do better - actually I have exactly the same feeling for myself :) -. Besides some of them are more \"junior\" than other. So I would like to find of a funny way to improve their CS skills (design, coding, testing, algorithmic...) in addition to the experience they acquire in their daily work. For instance, I was thinking of setting up weekly sessions, not longer than 2 hours, where we could get together to work on challenging CS exercises. A bit like a coding dojo. I'm sure the team would enjoy that but is it really a good idea? Would it be efficient in a professional context? They already spend all their week to code so how should I organize that in order for them to get some benefits? Any feedback welcome !"}
{"_id": "191869", "title": "To integrate git versions as build numbers or not?", "text": "A colleague and I have been taking turns debating/discussing the issues/merits of integrating a version derived from the current git repository into our code whenever it builds. We think the merits include:   * No need to worry about human error in updating a version number   * Traceability between what we find in a device and the source code it was derived from The issues that have arisen (for us) include:   * IDE derived build systems (e.g. MPLABX) can make it hard to figure out where to put these kinds of hooks in (and it can end up pretty cheesy in the end)   * More work to actually integrate this into the build scripts/makefiles   * Coupling to a particular build approach (e.g. what if one person builds with XCode and the other MPLABX) may create downstream surprises So we're curious where others have landed on this debate. It's really easy for the discussion to become anecdotal. There are lots of people out there who are insistent on end-to-end automation, hang the amount of up front work and coupling it creates. And there are a lot of others on the other side of the debate, who just do the easiest thing that works and live with the risks. Is there a reasoned answer to which side is best to land on?"}
{"_id": "104004", "title": "Why the sudden rise in popularity of Lua?", "text": "Does anyone know why the Lua progamming language has seen such a rise in popularity recently? I am going by the TIOBE ratings. http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/paperinfo/tpci/Lua.html I've used Lua in the past when I worked at a game development shop, but did not think it was used outside of that arena. Now it is the 11th most popular language according to TIOBE http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html Has there been any recent activity or news that might have caused this sudden surge? Thanks! EDIT: I am particularly interested in the extreme increase over the last year as shown in this chart: ![Lua History](http://i.stack.imgur.com/krjpB.png)"}
{"_id": "174789", "title": "Forbidding or controlling \"Hidden IT...\" Who should write and maintain ad-hoc software applications?", "text": "Bigger companies usually have the problem, that it is not possible to write all programs employees want (to save time and to optimize processes) due to a lack of staff and money. Then hidden programs will be created by some people having (at least some) coding experience (or by cheap students/interns...). Under some circumstances these applications will raise in importance and spread from one user to a whole department. Then there is the critical point: Who will maintain the application, add new features, ...? And this app is critical. It IS needed. But the intern has left the company. No one knows how it works. You only have a bunch of sources and some sort of documentation. Does it make sense to try and control or forbid application development done ad-hoc outside of the IT department (with the exception of minor stuff like Excel macros)?"}
{"_id": "34959", "title": "How are Apache HTTP Server and Apache Tomcat related? (If at all)", "text": "I currently have Apache httpd running on a production Ubuntu VPS server. I write php scripts. I'm interested in learning Java and I was wondering how I would go about writing some server-side Java to work on my current set-up. How are _Apache Tomcat_ and _Apache HTTP Server_ related to each other? Can Tomcat be a module of httpd? Or are they simply just two very different projects that happen to be steered by the same organisation (Apache Software Foundation)?"}
{"_id": "63917", "title": "Entry point to Mobile Computing", "text": "I'm a novice programmer who has just learnt some languages and want to experiment & sharpen my skills. I've learnt quite a few languages like C, C++, Python, VC++, Java. I want to learn to program on Mobile(Hand-held) devices.What would be the best way to start? Could anyone please suggest me from where to start? I have heard that I would have to work on Emulators, but googling it didn't help. I know that there are quite a few experienced programmers who could help me and show me the appropriate path. As you'll must have guessed by just reading my question that I don't have a perfect picture of what I want, so may be my question isn't Bang On!! ... Please Help"}
{"_id": "178206", "title": "Is it appropriate to try to control the order of finalization?", "text": "I'm writing a class which is roughly analogous to a CancellationToken, except it has a third state for \"never going to be cancelled\". At the moment I'm trying to decide what to do if the 'source' of the token is garbage collected without ever being set. It seems that, intuitively, the source should transition the associated token to the 'never cancelled' state when it is about to be collected. However, this could trigger callbacks who were only kept alive by their linkage from the token. That means what those callbacks reference might now in the process of finalization. Calling them would be bad. In order to \"fix\" this, I wrote this class:               public sealed class GCRoot {         private static readonly GCRoot MainRoot = new GCRoot();         private GCRoot _next;         private GCRoot _prev;         private object _value;         private GCRoot() {             this._next = this._prev = this;         }         private GCRoot(GCRoot prev, object value) {             this._value = value;             this._prev = prev;             this._next = prev._next;             _prev._next = this;             _next._prev = this;         }         public static GCRoot Root(object value) {             return new GCRoot(MainRoot, value);         }         public void Unroot() {             lock (MainRoot) {                 _next._prev = _prev;                 _prev._next = _next;                 this._next = this._prev = this;             }         }     }      intending to use it like this:               Source() {         ...         _root = GCRoot.Root(callbacks);     }     void TransitionToNeverCancelled() {         _root.Unlink();         ...     }     ~Source() {         TransitionToNeverCancelled();     }      but now I'm troubled. This seems to open the possibility for memory leaks, without actually fixing all cases of sources in limbo. Like, if a source is closed over in one of its own callbacks, then it is rooted by the callback root and so can never be collected. Presumably I should just let my sources be collected without a peep. Or maybe not? Is it ever appropriate to try to control the order of finalization, or is it a giant warning sign?"}
{"_id": "111199", "title": "Using Node.js with Heroku to make a chat server?", "text": "I currently have a goal of creating a sort of chat website. I just finished trying with PHP and long polling, which hit a resource limit on my webhost's server. I was told that I should use Node.js and that it can be hosted with Heroku. I honestly have very little understanding of what Node.js or Heroku are. From what I've been told and have read after looking this up is that you can install Node.js and run apps online with it. The tutorial here: http://www.jamesward.com/2011/06/21/getting-started-with-node-js-on-the-cloud/ goes over installing and executing a script on heroku with Node.js. I have NO experience with command line, and wouldn't be able to do anything but copy the exact commands in that tutorial. I also don't understand when he accesses the script with localhost if the app is supposed to be on Heroku. Can anyone explain what Heroku is, and provide some resources on how to use it? How can I work my way up to knowing how to use it?"}
{"_id": "123627", "title": "What are the London and Chicago schools of TDD?", "text": "I\u2019ve been hearing about the London style vs. Chicago style (sometimes called Detroit style) of Test Driven Development (TDD). Workshop of Utah Extreme Programming User's Group: > _Interaction-style_ TDD is also called _mockist-style_ , or _London-style_ > after London's Extreme Tuesday club where it became popular. It is usually > contrasted with _Detroit-style_ or _classic_ TDD which is more state-based. Jason Gorman's workshop: > The workshop covers both the _Chicago school_ of TDD (state-based behaviour > testing and triangulation), and the _London school_ , which focuses more on > interaction testing, mocking and end-to-end TDD, with particular emphasis on > _Responsibility-Driven Design_ and the _Tell, Don't Ask_ approach to _OO_ > recently re-popularized by Steve Freeman's and Nat Pryce's excellent > _Growing Object Oriented Software Guided By Tests_ book. The post **Classic TDD or \"London School\"?** by Jason Gorman was helpful, but his examples confused me, because he uses two different examples instead of one example with both approaches. What are the differences? When do you use each style?"}
{"_id": "123621", "title": "Practical size limits of a Hashtable and Dictionary in c#", "text": "What are the practical limits for the number of items a C# 4 Dictionary or Hashtable can contain and the total number of bytes these structures can reasonable contain. I'll be working with large numbers of objects and want to know when these structures start to experience issues. For context, I'll be using a 64 bit system with tons of memory. Also, I'll need to find objects using some form or 'key'. Given the performance demands, these objects will need to reside in memory, and many will be long-lived. Feel free to suggest other approaches/patterns, although I need to avoid using third-party or open-source libraries. For specification reasons, I need to be able to build this using native C# ( _or C++\\CLI_ )."}
{"_id": "111193", "title": "Hooking up a Business Layer and Repository using Unit of Work Pattern", "text": "I am having a bit of trouble explaining precisely the question I have here so bear with me. it is similar to the unanswered question found here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5580651/what-is-the-correct-way-to-use- unit-of-work-repositories-within-the-business-laye Apologies if this is too rambling. Scenario: \\+ .Net solution \\+ IRepository used to retrieve objects from DB \\+ IUnitOfWork used to allow transactions across multiple repositories This makes sense to me and I have implemented something along these lines that works fine. Now I want to introduce a business logic layer and am having trouble organising the three elements (BLL, UnitOfWork and Repository) in my mind. My understanding: \\- Repository - data retrieval, manipulation \\- UnitOfWork - persistence \\- BLL - logic relevant to the business ('real world') (dislike that term!) Consider we have an ASP.Net MVC front end. I guess the question is: what does a BLL look like and what does the MVC controller that uses it look like? For reference: I wonder if perhaps my IUnitOfWork/IRepository implementation might be the underlying cause of my confusion.               public class IRepository<T>      {         private IObjectSet<T> objSet;         public IRepository<T>(IUnitOfWork uow)         {             objSet = uow.CreateObjectSet<T>();         }              public IQueryable<T> Add(T entity)         {             objSet.Add(entity);         }         //etc. etc. for delete, attach, getall     }      So I feel like if I have a BLL, I should be passing it the IUnitOfWork, so that it can use that to create the IRepository instances that it needs. But how will the BLL (separate DLL from the front end) 'know' what implementation of IRepository to build?"}
{"_id": "111196", "title": "How do I get over my .NET hump?", "text": "I've been teaching myself how to write code with the help of a very talented friend, who unfortunately is talented enough that he has never free time. I've read and worked out of a couple books, but I feel more like I'm going through motions, rather than elegantly solving real world problems. What did you guys do to get out of your larval stage? Is there a course or educational product out there that isn't quite the $1500 all encompassing lecture, but more than just a dry,\"regurgitate this example,\" type book?"}
{"_id": "95311", "title": "Leaving a contract from a recruiter for a permanent position", "text": "So after months of searching, I finally get an offer. It's a contract position through my recruiter. Then all of a suddenly I get another offer from one of the MAJOR software engineer companies. I already accepted my position at the first place, but this other offer gives me so much more money and it has benefits. Can I leave the contract from my recruiter to go to this other company?"}
{"_id": "148970", "title": "Is this an example of a pattern or an algorithm?", "text": "I feel like I have a reusable \"something\" here and I'm not sure whether to think of it as a pattern or an algorithm (or neither). It's characterized by having an unknown amount of work to accomplish a task because the subtasks can encounter various conditions which cause them to add \"Issues\" to a global queue. Then, the command is run repeatedly coupled with a round of \"Issue Fixing\" until either there are no issues left or the number of issues does not change. I'm just putting enough code here to show what I'm talking about - there's a bit more to it (let me know if I should post more).                       public void FindNewCampaigns()             {                 var findNewCampaigns = Locator.Get<ICommand<IEnumerable<Campaign>>>(\"FindNewCampaigns\");                 var campaigns = findNewCampaigns.Execute();                 var issues = Locator.Get<ICollection<Issue>>(\"CommandIssues\");                 while (issues.Count > 0)                 {                     int before = issues.Count;                     FixIssues(issues);                     issues.Clear();                     campaigns = findNewCampaigns.Execute();                     int after = issues.Count;                     if (before == after)                     {                         System.Console.WriteLine(\"No issues got fixed, quitting ({0}/{1}).\", before, after);                         break;                     }                 }                 if (issues.Count == 0)                 {                     CreateCampaigns(campaigns);                 }             }                  private void FixIssues(ICollection<Issues.Issue> issues)             {                 foreach (var issue in issues)                 {                     System.Console.WriteLine(\"ISSUE: \" + issue.GetType().Name + \" - \" + issue.ToString());                          if (issue is AdvertiserDoesNotExist)                     {                         var specificIssue = (AdvertiserDoesNotExist)issue;                         var command = Locator.Get<ICommand<string, DirectAgents.SynchService.Model.EomDatabase.Advertiser>>(\"CreateAdvertiser\");                         command.Execute(specificIssue.AdvertiserName);                     }                     else if (issue is AccountManagerDoesNotExist)                     {                         var specificIssue = (AccountManagerDoesNotExist)issue;                         var command = Locator.Get<ICommand<string, DirectAgents.SynchService.Model.EomDatabase.AccountManager>>(\"CreateAccountManager\");                         command.Execute(specificIssue.AccountManagerName);                     }                     else if (issue is AdManagerDoesNotExist)                     {                         var specificIssue = (AdManagerDoesNotExist)issue;                         var command = Locator.Get<ICommand<string, DirectAgents.SynchService.Model.EomDatabase.AdManager>>(\"CreateAdManager\");                         command.Execute(specificIssue.AdManagerName);                     }                     else if (issue is MediaBuyerDoesNotExist)                     {                         var specificIssue = (MediaBuyerDoesNotExist)issue;                         var command = Locator.Get<ICommand<string, DirectAgents.SynchService.Model.EomDatabase.MediaBuyer>>(\"CreateMediaBuyer\");                         command.Execute(specificIssue.MediaBuyerName);                     }                 }             }      Here's the code for `FindNewCampaigns`. It adds issues as it finds them. An _Issue_ is supposed to be something that needs to happen before a new campaign is able to actually get created in a target store.                   public class FindNewCampaigns : Command<IEnumerable<Campaign>>         {             private IFactory<CakeEntities> cakeEntities;             private IFactory<DADatabase> eomDatabase;                  public FindNewCampaigns(IFactory<CakeEntities> cakeEntities, IFactory<DADatabase> eomDatabase)             {                 this.cakeEntities = cakeEntities;                 this.eomDatabase = eomDatabase;             }                  public override IEnumerable<Campaign> Execute()             {                 using (var eom = eomDatabase.Create())                 using (var cake = cakeEntities.Create())                 {                     // Get EOM campaigns                     var campaigns = eom.Campaigns.Select(c => c.pid).ToList();                     // Get Cake offers                     var offers = cake.CakeOffers.Select(c => c.Offer_Id).ToList();                     // Get Cake offers that don't match to EOM campaigns                     var newOffers = offers.Except(campaigns).ToList();                     // Get default values                     int accountManagerID = DefaultAccountManagerId(eom);                     int adManagerID = DefaultAdManagerId(eom);                     int advertiserID = DefaultAdvertiserID(eom);                     int campaignStatusID = DefaultCampaignStatus(eom);                     // Create new campaigns in memory                     var newCampaigns = (from offer in cake.CakeOffers                                         where newOffers.Contains(offer.Offer_Id)                                         select new                                         {                                             Offer = offer,                                             Campaign = new Campaign {                                                 pid = offer.Offer_Id,                                                 campaign_name = offer.OfferName,                                                 campaign_status_id = campaignStatusID,                                                 account_manager_id = accountManagerID,                                                 ad_manager_id = adManagerID,                                                 advertiser_id = advertiserID,                                             }                                         }).ToList();                     // Set campaign status                     var campaignStatus = eom.CampaignStatus.ToDictionary(c => c.name, c => c.id);                     campaignStatus.Add(\"Private\", campaignStatus[\"Active\"]);                     campaignStatus.Add(\"Apply To Run\", campaignStatus[\"Active\"]);                     campaignStatus.Add(\"Inactive\", campaignStatus[\"default\"]);                     foreach (var item in newCampaigns)                     {                         string statusName = item.Offer.StatusName;                         if (campaignStatus.ContainsKey(statusName))                         {                             item.Campaign.campaign_status_id = campaignStatus[statusName];                         }                         else                         {                             AddIssue(new CampaignStatusDoesNotExist(statusName));                         }                     }                     // Set advertiser                     var cakeAdvertisers = cake.CakeAdvertisers.ToDictionary(c => c.Advertiser_Id);                     foreach (var item in newCampaigns)                     {                         int offerAdvertiserID = int.Parse(item.Offer.Advertiser_Id);                         var offerAdvertiser = cake.CakeAdvertisers.FirstOrDefault(c => c.Advertiser_Id == offerAdvertiserID);                         string offerAdvertiserName = offerAdvertiser.AdvertiserName;                         var eomAdvertiser = eom.Advertisers.FirstOrDefault(c => c.name == offerAdvertiserName);                         if (eomAdvertiser != null)                         {                             item.Campaign.advertiser_id = eomAdvertiser.id;                         }                         else                         {                             AddIssue(new AdvertiserDoesNotExist(offerAdvertiserName));                         }                     }                     // Set account manager                     foreach (var item in newCampaigns)                     {                         int offerAdvertiserID = int.Parse(item.Offer.Advertiser_Id);                         var offerAdvertiser = cake.CakeAdvertisers.FirstOrDefault(c => c.Advertiser_Id == offerAdvertiserID);                         string offerAccountManager = offerAdvertiser.AccountManagerName;                         if (offerAccountManager != null)                         {                             AccountManager am = eom.AccountManagers.ToList().SingleOrDefault(c => c.NameIsEquivalentTo(offerAccountManager));                             if (am != null)                             {                                 item.Campaign.account_manager_id = am.id;                             }                             else                             {                                 AddIssue(new AccountManagerDoesNotExist(offerAccountManager));                             }                         }                         else                         {                             AddIssue(new OfferHasNoAccountManager(item.Offer.OfferName));                         }                     }                     // Set ad manager                     foreach (var item in newCampaigns)                     {                         int offerAdvertiserID = int.Parse(item.Offer.Advertiser_Id);                         var offerAdvertiser = cake.CakeAdvertisers.FirstOrDefault(c => c.Advertiser_Id == offerAdvertiserID);                         string offerAdManager = offerAdvertiser.AdManagerName;                         if (offerAdManager != null)                         {                             AdManager ad = eom.AdManagers.ToList().SingleOrDefault(c => c.NameIsEquivalentTo(offerAdManager));                             if (ad != null)                             {                                 item.Campaign.ad_manager_id = ad.id;                             }                             else                             {                                 AddIssue(new AdManagerDoesNotExist(offerAdManager));                             }                         }                         else                         {                             AddIssue(new OfferHasNoAdManager(item.Offer.OfferName));                         }                     }                     return newCampaigns.Select(c => c.Campaign).ToList();                 }             }"}
{"_id": "186523", "title": "Difference between functional test and integration test", "text": "I am deeply confused the difference. I've read so many definitions and they always explain functional test as testing the requirement is satisfied. Well, that's just rephrasing the name `functional test`. That doesn't clarify the difference. I am interested in some real code to demonstrate the difference. Suppose we have a function in a library performs hashing:               def custom_hasher(scheme, val):         # use many hashing libraries...               def hasher(inlist, scheme):         \"\"\" Take a list and outputs the hashed values of a list. \"\"\"              output = list()         for val in inlist:             output.append(custom_hasher(scheme, val))         return output      Now for a functional test, I am guessing we want to test `['a', 'b']` is returned as something like `['jask34sdasdas', 'asasjdk234sjdk']` given some scheme. But that's just about what an integration test can do! I know exactly what type input I want (I want good execution so I pass in a list), or I want it to raise `Object has no append method` exception if I pass in a dictionary. I can do that in both. Where's the distinction? Another example is some web app:               @logged_in   # only logged in user can do this     @route(\"/invite\", method=['POST'])     def send_invite(request):        recp_email = request.data['recp_email']             # now do a bunch of logics before and after sending an email      So in my integration test, I will definitely do this over a network (have the server running). Send some request to this url. Same for functional test. How to draw a line? For this case, I can write a functional test that tests to find an email is sent by looking at the send log in some table. But that's a different function than what I am testing (the view `send_invite`). So I don't see how to differentiate the two. They both assert something. Please help."}
{"_id": "148978", "title": "What is the connection between literate programming and the semantic web?", "text": "I was (casually) researching semantic / ontology based approaches to technical documentation, when I stumbled upon this gem: > Literate Programming and the Semantic Web are ideas from different times, > which do have a connection. The linked paper, Literate Programming in XML by Norman Walsh, discusses XML technologies that are central to semantic web, however I fail to see the conceptual connection between literate programming and the semantic web _or_ ontology based documentation. Help?"}
{"_id": "111443", "title": "Pseudocode for Brodal queue", "text": "I'm trying to find more resources regarding Brodal heap. All I found is a haskell implementation of Brodal-Okasaki heap, but I _think_ that they are skew heaps, is this correct? Furthermore, I'm illiterate in Haskell so that does not help much. Does anyone have (or know of) an Brodal queue implementation in pseudocode, C, C++, Python? Also please correct if my assumptions above are wrong."}
{"_id": "155918", "title": "Is my first employer expecting too much?", "text": "This is my first job as a programmer. I am working using the following technologies:   * ASP.NET   * C#   * HTML   * CSS   * Javascript   * JQuery I work for a firm which develops software for small banking firms. Currently they have their software running in 100 firms. Their software is developed in Visual Fox Pro. I was hired to develop an online version of this software. I am the only developer. My boss is another developer, the only other developer in the firm. Therefore, my employer has a total of two developers. My boss does not have any experience with .NET development. I have been working on this project for 8 months. The progress is there, but has been very slow. I try my best to do what my boss asks. But the project just seems too ambitious for me. The company has not done have any planning for the project. They just ask me to develop what their older software provides. So I have to deal with front end, back end, review code, design architecture, and more. I have decided to give my best. I try a lot. But the project sometimes just seems to be overwhelming. **Question:** Is it normal for a beginner programmer to be in this place?   * Are my employers just expecting too much of a new programmer?    * As a programmer, am I lacking skills one needs to deal with this? I always feel the need to work in at least a small team, if not big one. I am just not able judge my condition. Also I am paid very low salary. I do work on Saturday as well. Please, help to clarify my judgment. Any suggestions are welcome."}
{"_id": "61376", "title": "Aggregation vs Composition", "text": "I understand what composition is in OOP, but I am not able to get a clear idea of what Aggregation is. Can someone explain?"}
{"_id": "111449", "title": "What is the industry definition of an interpreter (as opposed to a compiler)?", "text": "In my compiler design courses, I have learned about and worked with a clear academic definition of an interpreter and a compiler, with an interpreter being > a program Pi from a language M capable of taking a program i from a language > I and an input and executing i with the given input and the correct > semantics for I on a machine capable of running programs from M and a compiler being > a program Pc that, when given a valid program i from a language I as an > input, produces a semantically equivalent program o in a language O This definition would clearly put the usual execution of Java bytecode by a JVM in the domain of interpretation, no matter how much JIT compilation is done. (Of course, Java is also compiled before, from Java code to Java bytecode.) I have encountered opinions in discussions on this site that clearly and vehemently state the opposite, i.e. that Java Bytecode execution thingies are compilers. Since I am about to make the leap from academics to industry, I am a little bit confused here: Is the above definition of interpreters false from the viewpoint of industry people in general? Or is it just false for Java people? Is the view of Java as a fully compiled language an alternate, but minority view? Or just a few loonies? (PS: Please do not move this to cstheory. I have deliberately put this question here since I would really like to get the view of the professional industrial, not the academic community.)"}
{"_id": "61373", "title": "What is the preferred way to protect ownership of one's code (e.g. copyright, licenses, etc)", "text": "I posted some open source code on soureforge, and someone got in contact with me stating they intended to use my algorithms for a commercial product. I don't want this to happen, what should I do? According to us copyright.gov site: \"Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.\" Which seems to grant some legal protection by doing nothing. I looked at getting an official copyright from them, and its more than I'd like to spend ($135). Is that what I need to get for my work? Or are licenses a cheaper and safe/legal alternative? Or something else? Or nothing at all?"}
{"_id": "189202", "title": "You're hired to fix a small bug for a security-intensive site. Looking at the code, it's filled with security holes. What do you do?", "text": "I've been hired by someone to do some small work on a site. It's a site for a large company. It contains very sensitive data, so security is very important. Upon analyzing the code, I've noticed it's filled with security holes - read, lots of PHP files throwing user get/post input directly into mysql requests and system commands. The problem is, the person who made the site for him is a programmer with family and children who depend on that job. I can't just say: \"your site is a script kiddie amusement park. Let me redo it for you and you'll be fine.\" What would you do in this situation? ## Update: I followed some good advice here and politely reported to the developer that I've found some possible security flaws on the site. I pointed out the line and said there could be a possible vulnerability for SQL injection attacks there, and asked if he knew about it. He replied: _\"sure, but I think that to exploit it the attacker should have information on the structure of the database; I have to understand better\"_. ## Update 2: I said that's not always the case and suggested he follows this Stack Overflow question link in order to deal with it properly: How to prevent SQL injection in PHP? He said he would study it and thanked me for telling him before. I guess my part is done, thanks guys."}
{"_id": "216810", "title": "Tender vs. Requirements vs. Solution Design", "text": "Conventionally, which of the above documents is deemed to hold the most weight when it comes to system acceptance? I recently had a conversation along these lines: It was argued that the initial requirements / tender documentation should be used to determine system acceptance. It was said that the solution design only serves to describe the way in which the system will solve the problem, not the problem it will solve. Furthermore, it was argued that if requirements are missed during solution design, the requirements should be referenced during system acceptance _and_ that if any requirements were missed then the original tender should be referenced. Conversely, I suggested that - while requirements may be based on the original tender - they supersede it once agreed with the stakeholders. Furthermore, during solution design, analysis is performed to address and refine these initial requirements, translating them into a system capable of meeting the actual requirements. Once signed off by the relevant users, this solution design should absolutely represent the requirements (by virtue of the fact that it's designed upon them) but actually supersedes them as the basis for system acceptance. Is one of the above arguments more valid than the other? _EDIT: Apologies for the ambiguous terms. In this situation, tender is the document the customer took to market when shopping for a provider - it includes details of all the high-level features they're looking for. Solution design is not a technical document, it's the functional specification._"}
{"_id": "216817", "title": "Requirement refinement between two levels of specification", "text": "I am currently working on the definition of the documentation architecture of a system, from customers needs to software/hardware requirements. I encounter a big problem with the level of refinement of requirements. The classic architecture is : PTS --> SSS --> SSDD --> SRS/HRS with PTS : Purshaser Technical Specification SSS : Supplier System Specification SSDD : System Segment Design Description SRS / HRS : Software / Hardware Requirement Specification. Requirements from PTS are reworked in SSS, this document only expressed the needs (no design requirements are defined at this level). Then, the system design is described in SSDD : we allocate requirements from the SSS to functions from the design and functions are then allocated to component (Software or hardware) (we are still at the SSDD level). Finally, for each component, we write one SRS or one HRS. Requirements in SRS or HRS are refinement of requirements from SSS (and traceability matrix are made between these two levels). My problem is the following one : Our system is a complex one, and some of the requirements in the SSS needs to be refined twice to be at the right level in the SRS (means that software people can understand the requirement to make their coding). But, with this document architecture, I can only refine once the requirements from the SSS. The second problem is that only a part of the requirements from the SSS needs to be refined twice. The other part only need one refinement. On the picture below, the green boxes are requirements at the right level for SRS or HRS. And purple boxes are intermediate requirements which can not be included in SSS since they are design requirements. Where can I put these purple requirements ?? Is there someone who has already encountered this problem ? Should I write two documents at SRS level ? Should I include intermediate requirements in SSDD ? Should I includes the two refinement levels (purple and green) in the same SRS document (not sure that's possible since a SRS is only for one component) ??? Thanks for your help and expertise ;-) ![Requirement refinement](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3xHyM.png)"}
{"_id": "151133", "title": "Why were annotations introduced in Spring and Hibernate?", "text": "I would like to know why were annotations introduced in Spring and Hibernate? For earlier versions of both the frameworks book authors were saying that if we keep configuration in xml files then it will be easier to maintain (due to decoupling) and just by changing the xml file we can re-configure the application. If we use annotations in our project and in future we want to re-configure application then again we have to compile and build the project. So why were these annotations introduced in these frameworks? From my point of view annotations make the apps dependent on certain framework. Isn't it true?"}
{"_id": "151139", "title": "How much should I worry about modeling/analyzing a web application?", "text": "I'm developing kind of a modern web application - scalable, robust and fast. I need to develop it as fast as I can. How much should I worry about the analysis phase or writing UML diagrams or ER diagrams for it? And what should be the flow on that? What should I start drawing?"}
{"_id": "207274", "title": "Should I bother to write unit test for UI/UX Components?", "text": "So I am building an application with Angular and have started to get into UI testing with DalekJS (http://dalekjs.com). As I have been writing these tests I have been thinking to myself, should I even bother with writing unit test that that are UI/UX components. Now my angular services generally don't have anything to do with the DOM or directly rendering stuff on the page so those I unit test and it make sense however angular directives are components that render things directly to the page and writing unit tests seems like 1. It is not an effective way to test UI/UX components and 2. It would overlap with UI/UX Tests. For point #1, unit test (at least ones I have seen) don't actually write anything to a browser and render it. For thing that require DOM, you generally mock the DOM in a variable and use that to test whatever you need to test. If you have an error with a test, you can't load it up in a browser and play around with it like you could with UI/UX tests (which in my experience runs against code that is the true application that renders and everything). For point #2, one of my directives has a property called contentVisible. Now I can write a unit test that make sure that property is the correct value at certain points but that really don't not test what I truly want to test because even if contentVisible is set to false, the content still might be rendering to the screen which UI/UX test would pick up. Is it still worth the effort to write unit test for UI/UX Components where UI tests would be able to pick up everything the unit test would plus also do a better job since it can test what is actually rendered? **Exception** The one exception case where I would need a unit test is for certain ajax requests. For example, making sure an ajax request is not made of that an ajax request that does not make and changes to the UI are things that can only be tested with unit tests."}
{"_id": "207273", "title": "Distributing cryptographic software on GitHub", "text": "I am developing a cryptographic program and i am planing on distributing it using GitHub, But there are some regulations on the export of cryptographic software, how do make myself not liable if someone takes it out of the county? what disclaimer should i include with my software when i distribute it?"}
{"_id": "212317", "title": "What would be a good \"umbrella\" term for HTML, CSS, SQL, JavaScript and the like?", "text": "There appears to be a pretty clear consensus on the question about whether HTML and CSS are programming languages. They are not. HTML is a markup language and CSS is a stylesheet language. You could probably also argue that SQL isn't really a programming language either, and JavaScript is as the name implies more a scripting language than a programming language. However, what's a good \"umbrella\" term for these? Could i just say they are \"technologies\"?"}
{"_id": "212316", "title": "How to factor out data layer in nopCommerce and replace MS SQL with RavenDB?", "text": "I am new to nopCommerce and ecommerce in general but I am involved in an ecommerce project. Now from my past experiences with RavenDB (which mostly were absolutely pleasant) and based on the needs of the business (fast changes with awkward business workflows) It seemed to be an appealing option to have RavenDB handling all sort of things related to the database. I do not understand design and architecture of nopCommerce fully so I did not reach to a conclusion on how to factor data parts, since it seems the services layer actually does not abstract data-layer concepts away; like bringing in EF working model to other layers. I have found another project which used NuDB as it's database as a nopCommerce fork. But it did not help because NuDB still has the feeling of a RDBMS and is not as different as RavenDB. Now first how can I learn about the internals of nopCommerce (other than investigating the code)? It's workflows? It's conventions? Second has anyone tried something similar before with a NoSQL database (say like MongoDB or RavenDB)? Is it possible to achieve this in a 1 (~2) month time frame? Thanks in advance;"}
{"_id": "242795", "title": "What is the \"Free Monad + Interpreter\" pattern?", "text": "I've seen people talking about _Free Monad with Interpreter_ , particularly in the context of data-access. What is this pattern? When might I want to use it? How does it work, and how would I implement it? I understand (from posts such as this) that it's about separating model from data-access. How does it differ from the well-known Repository pattern? They appear to have the same motivation."}
{"_id": "212312", "title": "Mutual observer pattern in Java", "text": "I want to improve my multi-threading and design pattern skills. As such I'm designing an Instant Messaging server. I'm writing the Server first. My plan so far is to have Client \"Proxy\" Classes to handle the socket connection for each Client. I want to have an \"Exchange\" Class that takes a message from a Client Proxy and hands it to the recipient Client Proxy. I was thinking of having both the Client and Exchange observe each other in this situation via the Observer Pattern. Mutual observers as it were, with Client Proxy and Exchange being Observer and Subject. On further thinking, should I instead have just the Exchange be the Observer and the Client Proxies as multiple Subjects for the Exchange? \\-- Further thoughts It seems people quite like the idea of mutual observation between Proxy and Exchange. I was planning on each Client Proxy running in a separate thread. Would the Exchange become the bottleneck if there's only one Object? It sounds to me like I might need a pool of exchange objects, but I'm unsure how that would then map to the Observer pattern, even if I had some kind of broker in front of my pool of workers."}
{"_id": "212310", "title": "Memory allocation of Classes that don't have any global data and locks", "text": "static void Main(string[] args)         {             var c2 = new Class2();             var c3 = new Class3();             var c1 = new Class1(c2, c3);             c1.Method1();         }              class Class1         {             readonly Class2 _class2;             readonly Class3 _class3;             public Class1(Class2 class2, Class3 class3)             {                 _class2 = class2;                 _class3 = class3;             }             public void Method1() {                 _class2.PerformM1();                 _class3.PerformM2();             }         }         class Class2         {             public void PerformM1()             {                 //do some operation             }         }         class Class3         {             public void PerformM2()             {                 //do some operation             }         }      **Question based on above code:**   1. How much memory does object of Class1 has when it is created?   2. Does any memory increases or decreases when I perform c1.Method1(); keeping in mind that none of the classes have any global fields that might acquire any space. * * * **Edit** Expanding with one more question:   1. If creating new objects of Class1 and calling methods of c1 object does not involve much memory usage, then is it correct to say that I don't need a lock in the above provided sample code.  I can simply create n number of objects and assign individual object to individual Task( or thread)?"}
{"_id": "214418", "title": "Is choosing ASP.NET WebForms to design web applications now a bad practice?", "text": "I have no time to code in MVC and jQuery, I just want this job to \"get done\", and honestly I like WebForms after 3 years of MVC programming. So my question is, technically, is it bad practice to choose ASP.NET WebForms over MVC ?"}
{"_id": "250980", "title": "External libraries licensing", "text": "The problem I have might seem trivial for some of you but in general I have a question about all those \"free\" software licenses (mainly for PHP libraries). Let's assume that I want to create project for end-user and I want to sell it to them and if possible encrypt my source code. For example for Zend Framework licence is New BSD License and for Laravel it's MIT license. On Zend framework there is such short info: > Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this > list of conditions and the following disclaimer. > > Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation > and/or other materials provided with the distribution. but it means nothing for me. What does it mean the first one? Should I simple download Zend Framework and put in directory and when I don't do anything with it I can forget about it or maybe I should tell my client that I used framework and my software may not working because > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" > AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES ... I really don't understand how those licenses work and what are differences between those licenses. Could you provide me some help or external resources where this issue is explained in a simple way?"}
{"_id": "22468", "title": "Data structures for bioinformatics", "text": "what are some data structures that should be known by somebody involved in bioinformatics? I guess that anyone is supposed to know about lists, haseshes, balanced trees etc, but I expect that there are domain specific data structures. Is there any book devoted to this subject? Thanks, Lucian"}
{"_id": "127011", "title": "Get a Programming Internship if you don't know programming? Learning instead?", "text": "Is it possible to get an internship to learn programming if you've say only had one classs in visual basic? For example, I want to learn any programming language, but I've only taken 1 class in visual basic and SQL....can I be at a company to learn on the job?"}
{"_id": "245225", "title": "Format for getting clear directions on data paramters from users", "text": "As part of my job, I regularly get ad-hoc requests from users for snapshots of our very large database. However, there's no fixed format for delivering these and they usually come through in the form of bullet-pointed text, for example:   * All customers    * All active in last 0-24 months (including non-contactable customers)    * All committed In this instance, \"committed\" is a flag, and \"active/non-contactable\" is both a text-based status and a dynamic status based on their last purchase. So this request could be interpreted as:   * All customers who made a purchase in the last 24 months, regardless of status   * All customers who have a \"active\" or \"non-contactable\" status regardless of last purchase.   * One of the above and then \"either\" having a committed flag, or \"and\" having a committed flag. I won't labour the point - you see the problem. And it's worth adding that the possible range of parameters is quite large. Normally I have to talk to the requestor and go through a rigmarole of explaining the problem and trying to clarify the requirements. This situation can't be that uncommon. Is there a more effective way of capturing these details, with a checkbox-style grid or other visual aid? Does anyone have any examples of experience of useful solutions?"}
{"_id": "127015", "title": "Is the \"exposer (hack) pattern\" a newly identified pattern or does it have another name?", "text": "**EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION** In the past, I have seen a whole manner of resolutions and fudges. Some really stand out. One particular resolution that I initially thought of as a fudge possibly deserves a category of its own. It could be considered a hack or a pattern, as a design pattern is just a piece of reusable code. So, it still conforms to the definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern It possibly already has a name but I have not seen it in the literature. I was wondering if anyone knows another name for what I labelled the \"exposer (hack) pattern\". I have included an example of it below. This code is used to expose data that is not available to a data source. Instead, the results are not generated until a data bind method is called. Unfortunately, these results are not stored anywhere in the data source after execution. This is due to an oversight (or bad design) in the third party API. So, the results are passed a repeater to store locally, before returning these out as a populated PageDataCollection:               public static PageDataCollection Search(this SearchDataSource searchDataSource)     {                 PageDataCollection results = new PageDataCollection();                      //This is a dummy repeater whose only purpose is to provide a way of                 //iterating over the search results                 Repeater dummy = new Repeater();                      dummy.ItemDataBound += delegate(Object sender, RepeaterItemEventArgs e)                 {                     if (e != null && e.Item != null && e.Item.DataItem != null)                     {                         PageData pageData = e.Item.DataItem as PageData;                              if (pageData != null)                         {                             results.Add(pageData);                         }                     }                 };                      dummy.DataSource = searchDataSource;                      dummy.DataBind();                      return results;             }"}
{"_id": "245222", "title": "Taxonomy / Classification of real world objects. Development suggestions", "text": "I have to develop a taxonomy/classification program based on classification algorithms and i would like to have some suggestions. The aim is to help the one using the program to categorize an object (could be a plant, a coin, an animal,...) and to teach what to look for in every step. The program is likely to be coded in PHP. The algorithm also should be able to be module based (multiple types of classification can exist at a determinare level and types of classification should be interchangeable). Example: ![Example of classification](http://i.stack.imgur.com/N8rrC.jpg) Should the program/algo be object oriented? can it be imperative (if/else, case)?"}
{"_id": "250429", "title": "Solution for multiple versions of one Software", "text": "I'm sorry if the title is a little hard to get. I've never built an entire big software my self, just some small apps in my free time, i was more familiar with the do-what-my-boss-told-me things. And our approach is a little amateur, obsolete also (Foxpro 8.0 and MS SQL 2000). Now i've started to work at another company and been assigned to build a software in C#.Net, but the problem is i'm not sure with the program's architecture My problem is, we're building a software. But we have variety of clients, and for example, we have a CalculateCostOfProduct funtion, and it might be different for each client. Says for party A, the function is :               function CalculateCostOfProduct()     return 5;       for party B :               function CalculateCostOfProduct()     return 10;       ... And there should be extra modules for specific needs also ! So there will be customized versions from the original standard. How should i manage this ? But we can't build different exe for different client! So please give me some ideas, or solutions that might solve this problem."}
{"_id": "250422", "title": "MVC: view/sidebar.php can load model?", "text": "I have a Route that activates a Controller which returns to me a page through a View. Let's call it **master page**. > route -> controller -> view [master page] The master page is divided into header, sidebar, body and footer. And as the sidebar can be loaded to other pages, and not only the master page, it has its own View file. However, the sidebar should receive the data from user, which would be obtained through a Model. And in theory, the Model could only be called by a Controller, who call the View, however, this View is the master page, not the sidebar. > [...] -> view [master page] -> view [sidebar] So I thought the possibilities were as follows, and the idea is to know whether it is right or wrong, or perhaps it is another way that I could not imagine.   1. **The Controller will load the data from the Model and apply the sidebar which, in turn, be applied to the master page.** The problem here is, in a \"deeper\" case, it would be extremely laborious and difficult to understand.   2. **The Controller run the Model, but send to the master page, which would be responsible for loading the View sidebar and pass the information of the Model to it.** In this case, the work would be passing on information between the layers, so far as was necessary to take the information.   3. **The Controller will only load the View master page, which will load the sidebar, which will be responsible for executing the Model (inside View).** The problem here is that a View theoretically should not run a Model, just print your information already processed in the Controller. What would be the most appropriate way to make this process run correctly?"}
{"_id": "26375", "title": "Separate servers vs local machine for builds, issue tracking etc on solo project", "text": "For solo projects, do you keep your build / management tools on your local machine, or on a separate server? If the server is not guaranteed to be safer or more reliable than my own machine I struggle to see the point, but maybe I'm missing some things. Note that I'm not debating the value of continuous integration or having a staging environment etc.. just the question of whether it exists on separate hardware."}
{"_id": "215105", "title": "Class design for calling \"the same method\" on different classes from one place", "text": "Let me introduce my situation: I have Java EE application and in one package, I want to have classes which will act primarily as cache for some data from database, for example:   * class that will hold all articles for our website   * class that will hold all categories   * etc. Every class should have some `update()` method, which will update data for that class from database and also some other methods for data manipulation specific for that data type. Now, I would like to call `update()` method for all class instances (there will be exactly one class instance for every class) from one place. What is the best design?"}
{"_id": "51586", "title": "Do employers hiring for software jobs care about the classes you took in a Computer Science Masters program?", "text": "I'm torn between two classes right now for next semester (Software Design and Advanced Computer Graphics). I would enjoy Advanced Computer Graphics more, but I feel the software design class would help me when approaching anything I ever build for the rest of my career. I feel though I could just buy the book (I already have both books actually) of the Software Design class and go through it, if I wanted. But think it would be a bit tougher to pick up the Advanced Computer Graphics class on my own. So do employers look at the graduate classes you've taken to decide if you would be a good fit or not? I think, more importantly, what I'm wanting to know is if I wanted to work for a high-end software company like Apple or Google would a company like that be more impressed by someone that took software engineering classes or hardcore CS classes?"}
{"_id": "197852", "title": "Best place to write SQL queries", "text": "I've been working on this project for my company. Currently I am embedding my SQL statements inside the program itself as and when they are needed. I do have two seperate classes -   1. QueryBuilder Class (Contains all the queries)   2. DbConnection Class (Executes the queries against the database, takes care of connectivity and such) What this does, is whenever I need to make the smallest adjustment in the query, I have to rebuild the entire application. I'm hoping there are better ways to deal with this. Somewhere I can store these queries, get them, pass the parameters **as command parameters** , then execute them and if I have to, change them without having to rebuild my application. There are a couple of ideas in my head.   1. Resource files.   2. Seperate DLL/Class files - Disadvantage is that, I'll have to rebuild that class if I make a change to that code. But the seperation does have it's advantage.   3. Text files, May get unmanageable when queries increase. I'd like to know if there is a better way to deal with this issue and if others have any way of circumventing this."}
{"_id": "197850", "title": "ViewController in programming", "text": "ViewController is a term for classes that handle views in a framework. This is especially used in MVC frameworks. I go through various projects, written by various programmers, who implement MVC in different ways. Especially, i get confused, about the relation between the MainView ( parent view ) and some CustomView ( widget etc) in the framework. **I personally pass reference of the MainView into the ViewController to be instantiated. All the subviews of ViewController are added to that reference of MainView. Additionally, ViewController itself is added as a child of MainView.** Like this : ![main-view and view-controller relation](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VkkVz.jpg) Want to know, if this is the right way to relate each other ?"}
{"_id": "165771", "title": "Where to place the R code for R+Sweave+LaTeX workflow", "text": "I spent the last week learning 3 new tools: R, Sweave, and LaTeX. One question that came to my mind when working through my first project: Where do I place the majority of the R code? The tutorials that I read online placed the majority of the R code in the LaTeX .Rnw file. However, I find having a bunch of R calculations in the LaTeX file distracting. What I do find extremely helpful (of course) is to call out to R code in the LaTeX file and embed the result. So the workflow I've been using is to place 99% of my R code in my .R file. I run that file first, save a bunch of calculations as objects, and output the .Rout file once finished (to save the work). Then when running Sweave, _I load up that .Rout file_ , so that I have the majority of my calculations already completed and in the Sweave R session. Then my LaTeX callouts to R are quite simple: Just give me the XTable stored in 'res.table', or give me the result of an already-computed calculation stored in the variable 'res'. So I push towards the minimal amount of R code in the LaTex file possible, to achieve the desired result (embedding stats results in the LaTeX writeup). Does anyone have any experience with this approach? I'm just worried I might run into trouble further down the line, when I start really trying to load up and leverage this workflow."}
{"_id": "93250", "title": "Why don't testers and programmers like each other?", "text": "During my career as a programmer I've seen various programmers and testers, and many of them didn't/don't like each other. I mean, programmers think that the job of a tester is not a \"real\" job, and testers think that programmers are too \"proud\". Is this the right decision made by me, why is it, and what can we do to avoid these kind problems?"}
{"_id": "190802", "title": "How to model hashtags with nodejs and mongodb", "text": "Existing architecture: nodejs server with mongodb backend. I have strings coming in describing images that can have #hashtags in them. I wish to extract the hashtags from the strings, store the hashtags and associate the image with that hashtag. So e.g. an image is uploaded with 'having fun at #bandcamp #nyc' `#bandcamp` and `#nyc` are extracted.   * If they don't exist as hashtags already, they're created and the image is associated with them both.   * If they do exist, that's recognised and the image is associated with both. So it will be possible to build a mongo find query that gets all images for a hashtag or multiple hashtags. I'm new to nosql, I understand that in relational I'd have:   * table hashtags   * table images   * table imageshashtags with a many to many relationship. An image can have many hash tags, and a hashtag can have many images. What sort of approach is suitable with mongo? From reading q&a like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8455685/how-to-implement-post-tags-in-mongo I see that I can implement a sub document in the image document with the tags. Is that efficient for searching and retrieving? I could then use http://cookbook.mongodb.org/patterns/count_tags/ \\- map reduce? So end up with: images collection withwith tags subdocument tags collection   * images document with tags subdocument with tags extracted and added to it when the image is created, and new tag added to the collection if it's not already present (i.e. tags must be unique) also create the tag in the tags collection, and run map reduce. Is that sound? Am I understanding things correctly and is my approach sensible?"}
{"_id": "165779", "title": "Teaching: How can you motivate students to comment?", "text": "I remember when I was taught, \"comments are the most important part of code.\" Or rather, when I was _told_ that comments are the most important part of the code. I don't think I was convinced, and I still see common cases where programmers are not convinced of the necessity of good & thorough comments. I am certainly convinced myself at this point - trying to read, in particular, complex formulae that call functions that call other functions that I don't understand - but I don't know how to convey this to students."}
{"_id": "190808", "title": "How do I convince manager to move me from services/support team to development?", "text": "I joined a company a few months ago as a Java developer. I like doing coding and it makes me happy. After my Java training I was put into services/support project. There is no coding in this team. When I ask my manager to move me into development project or roll me off from this project he questioned my \"Why do you want to do coding?\" This is the point where I am speechless to objectify why I want to do coding. How can I convince him to move me to development project? I want to keep gaining knowledge in Java and experience in development."}
{"_id": "55768", "title": "Charging for chrome extension?", "text": "I have a chrome extension that I think is fairly useful. It's already been posted and is free. How can I start charging for it with the Chrome webstore? $.99 or some such."}
{"_id": "215100", "title": "Is it possible to find a four-digit Username / Password by chance?", "text": "Imagine you have a login-form and it has two field :   * Username (Maximum length : 4 - digits only)   * Password (Maximum length : 4 - digits only) Is it possible to write a program to find the username and password? As I know in the worst case, we will have 100,000,000 checks. and it's crazy because it takes a very long time. So, what is your solution?"}
{"_id": "220161", "title": "Algorithm for recursive evaluation of postfix expressions", "text": "I'm reading Sedgewick's book on algorithms in C and I'm looking for an algorithm to evaluate postfix expressions (addition and multiplication only) without using a stack. I tried to implement one but I always get nowhere. I have a simple C implementation for **prefix** evaluation               int eval()     {       int x = 0;            while (a[i] == ' ')         i++;       if (a[i] == '+')         {           i++;           return eval() + eval();         }       if (a[i] == '*')         {           i++;           return eval() * eval();         }       while ( (a[i] >= '0') && (a[i] <= '9'))         x = 10*x + (a[i++]-'0');       return x;      }      and I was wondering if it's possible to do something as elegant as this but for postfix evaluation."}
{"_id": "240752", "title": "How to store the file names, start offset and length while avoiding the issue of self imposed limits (lookup table) or having to scan the entire file?", "text": "I am attempting to learn more about C and it's descendants(C++ mainly). I have decided that I would like to create a \"file system\" of sorts. Not a particularly advanced one mind you but something to play with. I have no intentions of making it mountable, securable or even recoverable. At the moment I am stuck in concept land with trying to decide how to implement the MFT/FAT. At first I thought that I would just use the first X number of bytes to store a lookup table, when I realized that there would then be a limitation to the number of files I could store I thought maybe use some type of metadata with each file but then I would have to scan the entire filesystem to locate a file. I have read through this and this although the z80 link seems like it is more up my alley. From a high level I want to be able to issue a command like:               ./myfs funnycat.jpg mystorage.mfs      Essentially appending binary data to the end of mystorage.mfs How can I store the information that would contain the file names, start offset and length while avoiding the issue of self imposed limits (lookup table length) or having to scan the entire file (metadata with binary data)? **Concise Explanation** I am looking for a way to label binary data stored in a single contiguous file so that I can pull data from a given offset range or by string.               ./myfs mystorage.mfs funnycat.jpg      Likely in order to accomplish this I will add some logic to myfs to check the first argument for signs that it is a blob containing other files or not."}
{"_id": "51062", "title": "Constructor parameter validation in C# - Best practices", "text": "What is the best practice for constructor parameter validation? Suppose a simple bit of C#:               public class MyClass     {         public MyClass(string text)         {             if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(text))                 throw new ArgumentException(\"Text cannot be empty\");                  // continue with normal construction         }     }      Would it be acceptable to throw an exception? The alternative I encountered was pre-validation, before instantiating:               public class CallingClass     {         public MyClass MakeMyClass(string text)         {             if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(text))             {                 MessageBox.Show(\"Text cannot be empty\");                 return null;             }             else             {                 return new MyClass(text);             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "56239", "title": "How many hours can you be really productive per day? How?", "text": "I find that I'm having a great deal of trouble staying alert 8 hours per day. I've heard of people who've negotiated work contracts of just 4 hours/day, arguing that they won't be able to do much more in eight hours. I am often overwhelmed with drowsiness, boredom, distraction. Some days, I seem to blaze through eight hours in a furious explosion of productivity; other days, I hardly get anything done at all. Most days, it's somewhere in between, and I feel bad for wasting a lot of time because I can't muster the concentration to be my best throughout much of the day. I'd like to hear your experiences (tell me I'm not alone!), and, if found, your solutions to this dilemma. Are you productive 8 hours/day almost every day? How?"}
{"_id": "110310", "title": "When is it preferred to combine Add/Edit functionality, and when to keep them separate?", "text": "I regularly come across situations where I need to Add or Edit an item, and sometimes I use separate methods for Add and Edit, and other times I combine them into a single method. Is one method preferred over the other? If so, why?               public void AddItem()     {         ShowEditingPopup(new Item(), \"Add Item\");     }          public void EditItem(Item item)     {         ShowEditingPopup(item, \"Edit Item\");     }      OR               public void EditItem(Item item)     {         ShowEditingPopup(             (item ?? new Item()),              string.format(\"{0} Item\", (item == null ? \"Add \" : \"Edit \"))         );     }      where `ShowEditingPopup` is defined as               public void ShowEditingPopup(object popupDataContext, string popupTitle)     {         PopupDataContext = popupDataContext;         PopupTitle = popupTitle;         IsPopupVisible = true;     }      **Edit:** Just to clarify, I am not Saving the item, I am opening it for Editing. I almost always implement a generic Save method for saving to the database **Edit #2:** Edited code samples so they more accurately reflect the sort of situation I am referring to"}
{"_id": "243135", "title": "Writing a method to 'transform' an immutable object: how should I approach this?", "text": "(While this question has to do with a concrete coding dilemma, it's mostly about what's the best way to design a function.) I'm writing a method that should take two Color objects, and gradually transform the first Color into the second one, creating an animation. The method will be in a utility class. My problem is that Color is an immutable object. That means that I can't do `color.setRGB` or `color.setBlue` inside a loop in the method. What I _can_ do, is instantiate a new Color and return it from the method. But then I won't be able to _gradually_ change the color. So I thought of three possible solutions: * * * 1- The client code includes the method call inside a loop. For example:               int duration = 1500; // duration of the animation in milliseconds     int steps = 20; // how many 'cycles' the animation will take     for(int i=0; i<steps; i++) color = transformColor(color, targetColor, duration, steps);      And the method would look like this:               Color transformColor(Color original, Color target, int duration, int steps){         int redDiff = target.getRed() - original.getRed();         int redAddition = redDiff / steps;         int newRed = original.getRed() + redAddition;              // same for green and blue ..              Thread.sleep(duration / STEPS); // exception handling omitted         return new Color(newRed, newGreen, newBlue);     }      The disadvantage of this approach is that the client code has to \"do part of the method's job\" and include a `for` loop. The method doesn't do it's work entirely on it's own, which I don't like. * * * 2- Make a mutable `Color` subclass with methods such as `setRed`, and pass objects of this class into `transformColor`. Then it could look something like this:               void transformColor(MutableColor original, Color target, int duration){         final int STEPS = 20;              int redDiff = target.getRed() - original.getRed();         int redAddition = redDiff / steps;         int newRed = original.getRed() + redAddition;              // same for green and blue ..              for(int i=0; i<STEPS; i++){             original.setRed(original.getRed() + redAddition);             // same for green and blue ..             Thread.sleep(duration / STEPS); // exception handling omitted         }     }      Then the calling code would usually look something like this:               // The method will usually transform colors of JComponents     JComponent someComponent = ... ;     // setting the Color in JComponent to be a MutableColor     Color mutableColor = new MutableColor(someComponent.getForeground());     someComponent.setForeground(mutableColor);     // later, transforming the Color in the JComponent     transformColor((MutableColor)someComponent.getForeground(), new Color(200,100,150), 2000);      The disadvantage is - the need to create a new class `MutableColor`, and also the need to do casting. * * * 3- Pass into the method the actual mutable object that holds the color. Then the method could do `object.setColor` or similar every iteration of the loop. Two disadvantages: A- Not so elegant. Passing in the object that holds the color just to transform the color feels unnatural. B- While most of the time this method will be used to transform colors inside `JComponent` objects, other kinds of objects may have colors too. So the method would need to be overloaded to receive other types, or receive `Object`s and have `instanceof` checks inside.. Not optimal. * * * Right now I think I like solution #2 the most, than solution #1 and solution #3 the least. However I'd like to hear your opinions and suggestions regarding this."}
{"_id": "167739", "title": "CI - How long is continous?", "text": "We currently are using CCNet as our continous integration server. Most projects check for changes every 30 seconds (the default) and if needed perform a build (unit tests, stylecop, fxcop, etc). We've gotten quite a few projects now, and the server spends most of its time near 100% cpu utilization. This has alarmed some of the development team, even though the server is responsive and builds are still about the same length of time they've always been. Its been suggested that we lower the check interval to about five minutes. To me that seems too long, and we risk people committing code and then going home for the weekend and now there's a broken build possibly holding up others. In response, the suggestion is that if someone needs to know the results they can force the build. But that seems to defeat the purpose of CI, as I thought it was supposed to be automated. My proposed solution is just to get another build server and split the builds amongst the servers. Am I thinking about this the wrong way, or is there a point where if integration isn't often enough you're not really doing CI anymore?"}
{"_id": "110316", "title": "To Domain or not to Domain", "text": "The SQL92 and SQL99 standards define `CREATE DOMAIN` DDL constructs. Not all databases support this, or have a different name for it (SQL Server has User Defined Types, for example). These allow one to define a constrained data-type to be used in their database, to simplify and enforce rules pertaining to the allowed values. Such a data-type could be used in column declarations, in inputs and outputs to stored procedures and functions etc... I would like to know:   * Do people actually use domains in their database designs?   * If so to what extent?   * How useful are they?    * What pitfalls have you encountered? I am trying to asses the viability of using these in future database development."}
{"_id": "96154", "title": "Can I use Linux/Mono instead of Windows/Visual Studio without any problem?", "text": "I have more than 6 years of experience with .Net (C#/ASP.NET) and Visual Studio. But recently I'm tempted to switch to Linux/Mono. It comes up with some questions:   1. Can I run my old Visual Studio projects and source codes in Mono correctly?   2. My clients use IIS for ASP.NET and MS Windows for Winform and Console projects. Does my migration affect them? In other words does my Mono projects runs in Windows/IIS without any change or problem?   3. Does Mono is dependable considering recent changes of Mono, Novell, Xamarin and Attachme?   4. Can I continue using my favorite open source and none open source projects like NHibernate, Castle, Cuyahoga, log4net, Microsoft Enterprise Library and DNN?   5. Can I host Mono ASP.NET web projects in Apache without any problem?   6. Can I use my skills in ASP.NET webforms and MVC in Mono exactly?"}
{"_id": "96157", "title": "Does W3C membership help future career?", "text": "Having international certificates from giant companies like Microsoft, Cisco, etc. can be a great help to your career. Also if you have a decent amount of experience, you're fine getting a job. How about free, but active membership of W3C? They don't give you certificates. You just become a member, think about recommendations and proposals, participate in decision-making process and that's all. Does W3C membership help future career?"}
{"_id": "104448", "title": "What has been your experience with SQL CLR for complex business logic?", "text": "So I thought I had a perfect use-case for a CLR SQL Procedure. I've search the Net for perhaps a similar example where data is retrieved, records added and updated. I have not looked at a SQL CLR procedure for awhile, but since it was released in 2005 (some 6 years ago!) I would have hoped there were plenty of examples! I'm considering it because I have to look at some data, run it through a bunch of procedural logic, update, and then get it back to the client. My thinking here is to get as close to the DB metal as possible, and use that hardware to make it happen quickly. Is anybody using SQL CLR? If you have, what has been your experience with it? p.s. originally posted on stackoverflow and moved here based on a comment."}
{"_id": "118123", "title": "In Scrum, what to do when story points and task hours don't roughly correlate?", "text": "Our development team is pretty new to the scrum process, so I would like to help refine our methods to make better use of it. In particular, I noticed that the correlation between story points and task hours is not very good. That is, we often have stories of lesser points decomposed into a total task hours greater than stories of higher points. Now, I am aware that these are two separate estimation processes and that we should use the hours to estimate only the remaining work for a sprint while using the story points to compute a velocity and be able to predict the length of the release cycle or the amount of features we will be able to address. However, it seems to me that if sprint points and task hours don't correlate well, then we must be doing a bad job at estimating either one or both of these. Since we only adjust the remaining work hours as opposed to recording the time spent, I can't easily tell if the problem is the initial task hour break-down or the story point estimates. So, my question is whether we should deal with this and how? I can think of several ways to start dealing with this:   * Record time spent in a task and use this information as feedback to help refine our estimation process by retrospectively identifying user stories which we under/over estimated. **_But I am not convinced that we want to record this information and I anticipate resistance to it._**   * At the planning phase, identify outliers after the task hour break-down process and look at these further. This way we could try to identify whether we misjudged the complexity of the story or if the task breakdown is missing some efforts or over-estimating the length of simple tasks. **_However, I'm afraid this would couple the two estimation efforts, which doesn't seem as the right thing to do either... This also assumes we would have decomposed all stories in the planning phase, otherwise we won't be able do much about stories which were misjudged._**   * Another method to approach this would be to try to independently incorporate methods to enhance the estimation process and raise the team consciousness about the importance of estimation. Then just keep monitoring the correlation between story points and initial task hour break-down as an indicator of how we are doing and whether we need to keep working at it. **_I'm inclined to think that this is the best approach, but less pro-active._** What is the best way to approach this issue and/or what other suggestions are there for enhancing the estimation process in this context?"}
{"_id": "136222", "title": "What are ways of drafting a workflow document that maps elements in the design close to their counterparts in code?", "text": "We're starting a medium sized PHP web app, written in MVC fashion, using CodeIgniter. Most of the functional specifications have been written, and there are a few features that will definitely be replaced with improved behaviour in later stages of the project. I'm tasked with writing a workflow document from a technical point of view and here's what I want to cover, ideally:   * The document should preferably be a diagram of some sort,   * A close mapping of elements in the document with with models/views/controllers/js functions/other important blocks in the code; let's call these modules That will suffice since I will be able to derive from that a way to test different modules independently and assign different modules to different programmers. The aspect of rewriting parts of the document when I discover that parts of the code need to be replaced isn't an issue, I'll make the rewrites to keep code and diagram in sync if/when I have to. My attempts so far with Petri nets and UML interaction diagrams have failed upon the realization that I have to expose too much of the decision making logic inside controllers. I'm looking for advice and I'm curious if anyone has done this before."}
{"_id": "253739", "title": "7 drived classes with one common base class", "text": "i have written the following code,                  //main.cpp          #include<iostream>          #include<string>          #include\"human.h\"          #include\"computer.h\"          #include\"referee.h\"          #include\"RandomComputer.h\"          #include\"Avalanche.h\"          #include\"Bureaucrat.h\"          #include\"Toolbox.h\"          #include\"Crescendo.h\"          #include\"PaperDoll.h\"          #include\"FistfullODollors.h\"          using namespace std;          int main()          {          Avalanche pla1;     Avalanche pla2;          referee f;     pla1.disp();     for (int i=0;i<5;i++)     {                   cout<<pla2.mov[i];         }          return 0;          }      in this program all included classes except referee.h and human.h are drived from computer.h. each drived calls has a char array variable which is initialized when a member of a drived class is declared. the problem is that when i declare tow diffrent drived class memebers lets say Avalache and ToolBox. upon printing the char array for one of them using for loop it prints nothing. However if i declare only one of them in main.cpp the it works properly. and the file for computer.h is as such:                   #ifndef COMPUTER_H     #define COMPUTER_H     class computer     {         public:         int nump;         char mov[];         void disp();     };     #endif      ToolBox.h is like this:                   #ifndef TOOLBOX_H          #define TOOLBOX_H          #include\"computer.h\"          class Toolbox: public computer          {              public:              Toolbox();          };          #endif      finally Avalanche.h is as following:               #ifndef AVALANCHE_H          #define AVALANCHE_H          #include\"computer.h\"          class Avalanche: public computer          {              public:              Avalanche();          };          #endif"}
{"_id": "253737", "title": "Is hashing of just \"username + password\" as safe as salted hashing", "text": "I want to hash \"user + password\". [EDIT: prehashing \"user\" would be an improvement, so my question is also for hashing \"hash(user) + password\". If cross-site same user is a problem then the hashing changed to hashing `\"hash(serviceName + user) + password\"`] From what I read about salted hash, using \"user + password\" as input to hash function will help us avoid problem with reverse hash table hacking. The same thing can be said about rainbow table. Any reason why this is not as good as salted hashing?"}
{"_id": "52009", "title": "How do you remember where in your code you want to continue next time?", "text": "When you interrupt the work on some code (be it because you have to work on something else or go on vacation or simply because it is the end of the day), once you close that Visual Studio project, what is your preferred way to remember what you want to do next when you start working on that code again. Do you set a Visual Studio bookmark or do write down something like `// TODO: continue here next time`? Maybe you have a special tag like `// NEXT:`? Do you put a sticky note on your monitor? Do you use a cool tool or Visual Studio plugin I should know? Do you have any personal trick that helps you find the place in your code where you left off the last time you worked on your code?"}
{"_id": "60131", "title": "What is the difference between a great programmer and a financially successful programmer?", "text": "What is the difference between people like Zukerberg, Page and Brin who are programmers and also extraordinarily successful financially, and the other wise great programmer who are not very much financially successful (like most of the employees at facebook and google)."}
{"_id": "102906", "title": "Is there a language out there in which parameters are placed inside method name?", "text": "in JavaScript:               function getTopCustomersOfTheYear(howManyCustomers, whichYear) {        // Some code here.     }     getTopCustomersOfTheYear(50, 2010);      in C#:               public List<Customer> GetTopCustomersOfTheYear(int howManyCustomers,       int whichYear)     {        // Some code here     }     List<Customer> customers = GetTopCustomersOfTheYear(50, 2010);      in PHP:               public function getTopCustomersOfTheYear($howManyCustomers, $whichYear)     {        // Some code here     }     $customers = getTopCustomersOfTheYear(50, 2010);      Is there any language out there which support this syntax:               function GetTop(x)CustomersOfTheYear(y)     {         // Some code here     }     returnValue = GetTop(50)CustomersOfTheYear(2010);      Isn't it more semantic, more readable form of writing a function? **Update:** The reason I'm asking this question is that, I'm writing an article about a new syntax for a new language. However, I thought that having such syntax for declaring methods could be nicer and more friendly to developers and would decrease learning-curve of the language, because of being more closer to natural language. I just wanted to know if this feature has already been contemplated upon or not."}
{"_id": "235581", "title": "Search for the (slowly moving) number with penalty for too high test value", "text": "You task is to design a search algorithm that will find my secret number, which is between 0 and 2^64. If your test value is too low you can test again in 1 second. If your test value is too high you are not allowed to test again the next 300 seconds. Every second I will add 1 to or subtract 1 from the number. I will not tell you what I have done, and while it may be random it also might not be random. How can you find the approximate number fast? The obvious answer is to use a binary search, but since the penalty is high for guessing too high, I would think it needs some adjustment. **Background** I need to find the speed of a system. The speed changes slowly. It takes 1 second to do a guess. If my guess is too low: no problem. If it is too high, then system reboots, causing a 5 minute delay. My goal is to get a decent estimate of the speed relatively fast."}
{"_id": "136227", "title": "Sprint Backlog Task Estimates - What Are the Hours Made Of?", "text": "For the sprint backlog, I read that the stories are broken into tasks, and estimated. Are these estimates typically development hours only, or development + QA? What are these hours typically consisting of? Thanks."}
{"_id": "250283", "title": "Should we avoid using design patterns in constantly changing projects?", "text": "A friend of mine is working for a small company on a project every developer would hate: he's pressured to release as quickly as possible, he's the only one who seem to care about technical debt, the customer has no technical background, etc. He told me a story which made me think about the appropriateness of design patterns in projects like this one. Here's the story. > We had to display products at different places on the website. For example, > content managers could view the products, but also the end users or the > partners through the API. > > Sometimes, information was missing from the products: for example, a bunch > of them didn't have any price when the product was just created, but the > price wasn't specified yet. Some didn't have a description (the description > being a complex object with modification histories, localized content, > etc.). Some were lacking shipment information. > > Inspired by my recent readings about design patterns, I thought this was an > excellent opportunity to use the magical Null Object pattern. So I did it, > and everything was smooth and clean. One just had to call > `product.Price.ToString(\"c\")` to display the price, or > `product.Description.Current` to show the description; no conditional stuff > required. Until, one day, the stakeholder asked to display it differently in > the API, by having a `null` in JSON. And also differently for content > managers by showing \"Price unspecified [Change]\". And I had to murder my > beloved Null Object pattern, because there was no need for it any longer. > > In the same way, I had to remove a few abstract factories and a few > builders, I ended up replacing my beautiful Facade pattern by direct and > ugly calls, because the underlying interfaces changed twice per day for > three months, and even the Singleton left me when the requirements told that > the concerned object had to be different depending on the context. > > More than three weeks of work consisted of adding design patterns, then > tearing them apart one month later, and my code finally became spaghetti > enough to be impossible to maintain by anyone, including myself. Wouldn't it > be better to never use those patterns in the first place? Indeed, I had to work myself on those types of projects where the requirements are changing constantly, and are _dictated_ by persons who don't really have in mind the cohesion or the coherence of the product. In this context, it doesn't matter how agile you are, you'll come with an elegant solution to a problem, and when you finally implement it, you learn that the requirements changed so drastically, that your elegant solution doesn't fit any longer. What would be the solution in this case?   * Not using any design patterns, stop thinking, and write code directly? It would be interesting to do an experience where a team is writing code directly, while another one is thinking twice before typing, taking the risk of having to throw away the original design a few days later: who knows, maybe both teams would have the same technical debt. In the absence of such data, I would only assert that it doesn't _feel right_ to type code without prior thinking when working on a 20 man-month project.   * Keep the design pattern which doesn't make sense any longer, and try to add more patterns for the newly created situation? This doesn't seem right neither. Patterns are used to simplify the understanding of the code; put too much patterns, and the code will become a mess.   * Start thinking of a new design which encompasses the new requirements, then slowly refactor the old design into the new one? As a theoretician and the one who favors Agile, I'm totally into it. In practice, when you know that you'll have to get back to the whiteboard every week and _redo the large part of the previous design_ and that the customer just doesn't have enough funds to pay you for that, nor enough time to wait, this probably won't work. So, any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "250281", "title": "Are Components ideal for packaging and reusing find() requests?", "text": "I find myself loading several models over and over again throughout my application. Instead of typing the code to load the model, run a find, would it be reasonable to put that code in a method and just call it from the controller. For example: **Instead of**               public function view() {         $this->loadModel('Foo');         $this->Foo->find('list');     }      **Could I use**               public function view() {         $this->ComponentName->fooLoad();     }"}
{"_id": "250280", "title": "How do you deal with being behind on a task?", "text": "I have a question for you guys. Say, you're given a task as an item in a product backlog. Say, you have a deliverable that's due the following day. If you're behind on the task compared to when you made your estimates, what do you do about it? Does it make you anxious knowing your behind schedule? How do you deal with this? Do you tell the scrum master or the product owner?"}
{"_id": "25116", "title": "Which Java based web ui framework to use?", "text": "* Wicket   * Click   * GWT   * Vaadin As I understand them, these frameworks all enable gui components to be created using java (with all its benefits) without having to do lots of html/javascript. As well as considering the technical factors, I am also interested to hear if any are gaining popularity fast. Is a particular framework is becoming the _leader of the pack_ , this will also effect the decision."}
{"_id": "210558", "title": "How do programming languages define functions?", "text": "How do programming languages define and save functions/methods? I am creating an interpreted programming language in Ruby, and I am trying to figure out how to implement function declaration. My first idea is to save the content of the declaration in a map. For example, if I did something like               def a() {         callSomething();         x += 5;     }      Then I would add an entry into my map:               {         'a' => 'callSomething(); x += 5;'     }      The problem with this is that it would become recursive, because I would have to call my `parse` method on the string, which would then call `parse` again when it encountered `doSomething`, and then I would run out of stack space eventually. So, how do interpreted languages handle this?"}
{"_id": "251778", "title": "I recently read about unit of work and repository design patterns; working with EF wondering if this is a good design pattern", "text": "I found myself creating child records that require a master record to exist, first, so that they can reference it by the master record's primary key (if that's the right term). To accomplish this using EF 6 I tried to call `SaveChanges()` twice - once to create the master record so that its identity key gets generated and once after the children have been created. The problem I ran into was that EF doesn't like multiple calls to `SaveChanges()` so I had to use a transaction. I don't like using a transaction because it feels messy for some reason I can't articulate. It's a somewhat common problem for me to have to do this so instead of a `using`, `try/catch` and `commit/rollback` I figured it'd be easier to have this each time:               this._dbContextWrapper.CommitIfTrue(() =>     {         // Multiple calls to SaveChanges() here              return true;     });      While also having `BeginTransaction()` exposed on my `_dbContextWrapper` so that if passing a `Func<bool>` isn't desirable.               public interface IRepository     {         IQueryable<TModel> Query<TModel>()             where TModel : class;              TModel Find<TModel>(params object[] key)             where TModel : class;              void Add<TModel>(TModel model)             where TModel : class;              void Update<TModel>(TModel updated, params object[] key)              where TModel : class;              IDataResult SaveChanges();              void Delete<TModel>(params object[] key)             where TModel : class;              IRepositoryTransaction BeginTransaction();              IRepositoryTransaction BeginTransaction(IsolationLevel isolationLevel);              IDataResult CommitIfTrue(Func<bool> transaction);              IDataResult CommitIfTrue(Func<bool> transaction, IsolationLevel isolationLevel);     }          public interface IRepositoryTransaction : IDisposable     {           void Commit();              void Rollback();     }          public interface IDataResult     {         bool IsSuccess { get; }              string ErrorMessage { get; }     }      I realize that this \"`IRepository`\" only a thin wrapper around `DbContext` \\- I'm doing it so that my classes can have a `Mock` implementation provided to them instead of having to mess with `Fakes` to get around the non-virtual aspect of `DbContext`'s methods. My question is: **Is my`CommitIfTrue` method reasonable? Is there a way to do something similar that's also more testable/involves no `Action`s or `Func`s?**"}
{"_id": "117092", "title": "What's The Difference Between Imperative, Procedural and Structured Programming?", "text": "By researching around (books, Wikipedia, similar questions on SE, etc) I came to understand that Imperative programming is one of the major programming paradigms, where you describe a series of commands (or statements) for the computer to execute (so you pretty much order it to take specific actions, hence the name \"imperative\"). So far so good. Procedural programming, on the other hand, is a specific type (or subset) of Imperative programming, where you use procedures (i.e., functions) to describe the commands the computer should perform. **First question** : Is there an Imperative programming language which is not procedural? In other words, can you have Imperative programming without procedures? **Update** : This first question seems to be answered. A language CAN be imperative without being procedural or structured. An example is pure Assembly language. Then you also have Structured programming, which seems to be another type (or subset) of Imperative programming, which emerged to remove the reliance on the GOTO statement. **Second question** : What is the difference between procedural and structured programming? Can you have one without the other, and vice-versa? Can we say procedural programming is a subset of structured programming, as in the image? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ip5eR.jpg)"}
{"_id": "85974", "title": "Getting paid through Ltd or Umbrella company?", "text": "I am working for a company as a web dev consultant at the moment, and they asked me whether I want to get payed through the Umbrella company or through my Ltd. Which is better for me and why? The @David Thornley made a good point in comments. Don't forget that we are talking about web developing here. I am not sure how is it in UK, but in the country I am from, you get taxed differently for the stuff you do."}
{"_id": "117098", "title": "Lean/Kanban *Inside* Software (i.e. WIP-Limits, Reducing Queues and Pull as Programming Techniques)", "text": "Thinking about Kanban, I realized that the queuing-theory behind the SW- development-methodology obviously also applies to concurrent software. Now I'm looking for whether this kind of thinking is explicitly applied in some area. A simple example: We usually want to limit the number of threads to avoid cache-thrashing (WIP-Limits). In the paper about the disruptor pattern[1], one statement that I found interesting was that producer/consumers are rarely balanced so when using queues, either consumers wait (queues are empty), or producers produce more than is consumed, resulting in either a full capacity-constrained queue or an unconstrained one blowing up and eating away memory. Both, in lean-speak, is waste, and increases lead-time. Does anybody have examples of WIP-Limits, reducing/eliminating queues, pull or single piece flow being applied in programming? http://disruptor.googlecode.com/files/Disruptor-1.0.pdf"}
{"_id": "193575", "title": "Performance overhead of standard containers and boost", "text": "Adap.TV has chosen C++ to develop their software. However, they've decided not to use the standard containers1 and boost for performance reasons, as they've blogged about it in the following article:   * Why we use C++ (without using STL or boost) It says (emphasis mine), > There are several rules that we are obeying **in order to keep the > performance high** ;   >  **Avoid malloc(), calloc() or new**   >  **No free() or delete** (and no need for tcmalloc)   >  **No STL, boost etc.**   >  Avoid locking as much as possible   >  # threads = # CPU cores (hyperthread is a trade-off between latency and > throughput) As we know, the standard containers use allocators which uses `new` and `delete` internally which are _expensive_ operations. So to avoid them, AdapTv has avoided using standard containers altogether. Instead of using `new` and `delete` (repeatedly), they _reuse_ memory (which implies they use a memory pool). I'm wondering what's stopping them from using custom allocators for the standard containers! The custom allocator could use a memory pool internally which means _memory reuse_. So I don't see how standard containers would hurt performance. Or am I missing something? Can't we avoid using `new` and `delete` with standard containers? Is there any other reason why would anyone avoid using standard containers? Or is it simply a lack of knowledge on their part which led to this decision? And how about boost? * * * 1) I suppose by _STL_ they meant _C++ standard containers_ , not SGI's STL."}
{"_id": "193574", "title": "Is it possible to integrate MS Project Server with SVN", "text": "We have been using Hosted SVN + Fogbugz for our source control and task/issue tracking. Our developers are very comfortable with SVN and we are hesitant to switch source control (e.g. TFS) providers at this point. However, Management extensively uses Microsoft Project for project management and are considering setting up MS Project Server. **EDIT** With SVN + Fogbugz (or several other task tracking tools), we can create a post-commit hook to update tasks (close/reopen/specify time) from commit messages. Does anyone know of a way to intergrate MS Project Server with SVN? Is it even possible? I searched online but could not find anything. Maybe I did not search correctly?"}
{"_id": "193577", "title": "Possible to Comment on a storyboard?", "text": "I recently started working for a company that has me making mockups for an app they'd like to see converted to an iPhone app. I have not been informed as to how all the boards fit together, but I do have a general idea on what they should look like. I would like to write notes or comments on each individual board about how things should be done once I have more information. Is it possible to comment on a board or is there some place close to the boards where I can leave notes on what to do next?"}
{"_id": "82530", "title": "How can I estimate the lifespan of a line of code?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out a way to analyze code longevity in open source projects: that is, how long a specific line of code is active and in use. My current thinking is that a line of code's lifespan begins when it is first committed, and ends when one of the following occurs:   * It's edited or deleted,    * Excluded from builds,   * No code within its build is maintained for some period of time (say, a year). NOTE: As clarification on why an \"edit\" is being counted as \"death\", edited lines would be counted as a \"new\" generation, or line of code. Also, unless there's an easy way to do this, there would be no accounting for the longevity of a lineage, or descent from an ancestor. What else would determine a line of code's lifespan?"}
{"_id": "161290", "title": "How to use the clients webcam for recording through a website?", "text": "I am building a site and idealy I would like to record the users interaction via their webcam. How do I intergrate webcam recording into my site. I have seen It done with flash. But Im trying to avoid using this. My site is being built using c#, javascript and designed for IE 7 and older. * * * I want to record the videos for later. They are not going to be used for chat e.t.c."}
{"_id": "161293", "title": "Choosing between Single or multiple projects in a git repository?", "text": "In a **`git`** environment, where we have modularized most projects, we're facing the _one project per repository_ or _multiple projects per repository_ design issue. Let's consider a modularized project:               myProject/        +-- gui        +-- core        +-- api        +-- implA        +-- implB      Today we're having _one project per repository_. It gives freedom to   * `release` individual components   * `tag` individual components But it's also cumbersome to **`branch`** components as often branching `api` requires equivalent branches in `core`, and perhaps other components. Given we want to `release` individual components can we still get the similar flexibility by utilizing a _multiple projects per repository_ design. What experiences are there and how/why did you address these issues?"}
{"_id": "98003", "title": "Best way to present a small application", "text": "I'm giving a presentation on a small Timeline Application I made over the past few weeks. How might I make this small application into a much larger speech, about 3 minutes long. **Should I focus on how it was made or should I just focus on why people should use it?**"}
{"_id": "253880", "title": "Finding a way to simplify complex queries on legacy application", "text": "I am working with an existing application built on Rails 3.1/MySql with much of the work taking place in a JavaScript interface, although the actual platforms are not tremendously relevant here, except in that they give context. The application is powerful, handles a reasonable amount of data and works well. As the number of customers using it and the complexity of the projects they create increases, however, we are starting to run into a few performance problems. As far as I can tell, the source of these problems is that the data represents a tree and it is very hard for ActiveRecord to deterministically know what data it should be retrieving. My model has many relationships like this:               Project        has_many Nodes        has_many GlobalConditions          Node         has_one Parent        has_many Nodes        has_many WeightingFactors through NodeFactors        has_many Tags through NodeTags          GlobalCondition        has_many Nodes ( referenced by Id, rather than replicating tree )          WeightingFactor        has_many Nodes through NodeFactors          Tag        has_many Nodes through NodeTags      ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4L3Rn.png) The whole system has something in the region of thirty types which optionally hang off one or many nodes in the tree. My question is: What can I do to retrieve and construct this data faster? Having worked a lot with .Net, if I was in a similar situation there, I would look at building up a Stored Procedure to pull everything out of the database in one go but I would prefer to keep my logic in the application and from what I can tell it would be hard to take the queried data and build ActiveRecord objects from it without losing their integrity, which would cause more problems than it solves. It has also occurred to me that I could bunch the data up and send some of it across asynchronously, which would not improve performance but would improve the user perception of performance. However if sections of the data appeared after page load that could also be quite confusing. I am wondering whether it would be a useful strategy to make everything aware of it's parent project, so that one could pull all the records for that project and then build up the relationships later, but given the ubiquity of complex trees in day to day programming life I wouldn't be surprised if there were some better design patterns or standard approaches to this type of situation that I am not well versed in."}
{"_id": "205717", "title": "Is there a Standard Visual Cue to Indicate the presence of a Tool Tip (Hover Text)?", "text": "A widely recognized cue that text is clickable is to underline it, set it in a different color, and change the cursor to a hand symbol when hovering over it. I have a situation where a column in a report may contain a tool tip -- hover- text that appears when the cursor is placed over it. I'm trying to come up with an obvious cue to the user for this. When I use a cue similar to a hyperlink, users instinctively click on it and wonder why nothing happens. Can you refer me to any real-world examples of an effective cue? Or, what cue have you successfully used in the past to accomplish this?"}
{"_id": "82539", "title": "Why learn hexadecimal?", "text": "I've taken quite a few intro programming classes in my day, mostly just to get my feet wet in every different kind of programming I find. Not surprisingly, just about every class runs through the same format : intro to hardware, intro to software, and then you get into the actual programming. While understanding how the hardware and software works is very important, I've always been confused by one topic that has been in every single course. In the intro to software section I've found, without fail, they always put large emphasis on being literate in binary, hexadecimal, and sometimes even octal number systems. I understand that it's good to understand what these things are, and how a computer would interpret them, but I've never found myself actually needing to know how to read and write any of those number systems. Really, the only time I've seen something other than base 10 is for colors in CSS, which is even easier if you use something like www.colorpicker.com Have I just been ignorant of the wonderful uses of these non-base-10 number systems in the programming world, or is just an old tradition to include these sections in all programming textbooks? Does anyone have a good example of where the average programmer would actually use an octal number?"}
{"_id": "253883", "title": "Cross browser client side storage", "text": "I am developing an angularjs app. The app has to run in current FF, IE, Chrome and on iOS/Android via Phonegap. I am looking for a solution to store data in the client. Phonegap offers a web sql api, that is also supported by Chrome. FF however does not support it, since it is abbandoned by w3c. Cookies and localStorage do not work reliable in iOS. How can i store data in all those browsers?"}
{"_id": "193578", "title": "VB.NET: Two tiers for three layers or three tiers for three layers", "text": "I asked a question on StackOverflow in November about separating a very large application into layers and tiers: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13342626/net-divorcing-layers. The previous developer included data logic and business logic in the business logic layer My question is about the tiers element. I researched on here and concluded that it is better to separate layers into tiers contained in separate DLLs i.e. the presentation layer, business logic layer and data access layer all have separate DLLs as described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13342626/net-divorcing-layers. This seems to be consistent with what I lEarnt at university. However, since then all the examples I am finding online suggest having two tiers (One for the presentation layer and one tier for the BLL and DAL). Is there any specific criteria that developers use to decide whether or not to use three tiers? I am using ADO.NET and have a shared SQL Helper class in the data access layer. The SQLHelper class is similar to this but for VB.NET: http://www.sharpdeveloper.net/source/SqlHelper-Source-Code-cs.html"}
{"_id": "167197", "title": "The Meaning of Unified in UML", "text": "UML and other related modelling languages are exists in most of the system engineering fields to represent the system, flow, relations in a structured way. UML also is one of the modelling language used in computer science like other industries to represent the systems in obeject oriented way by using different types of diagrams. Does 'Unified' UML has a special (or real) meaning here?"}
{"_id": "253748", "title": "SmartHeap crashes in _shi_removeFromFreeList", "text": "We have a multithreaded application in C++ which uses SmartHeap-10 on Linux. new, new[], delete and delete [] are overloaded. there is _inconsistent_ occurrence of SIGSEGV, only in delete[]. the backtrace shows -               #0  0x08b068bc in _shi_removeFromFreeList ()     #1  0x08b070d7 in _shi_freeVar ()     #2  0x08b086a7 in MemFreePtr ()     #3  0x081e91ea in operator delete(void*) ()      where MemFreePtr () is library function by SmartHeap. Any pointers to think of ?"}
{"_id": "188989", "title": "Explanation of Object-parameter-coupling as mentioned in Code Complete book", "text": "I have been reading up on the seminal and excellent book _Code Complete_. It discusses about the various kinds of couplings that can happen between modules(which may be classes as well as methods):   1. _Simple-data-parameter-coupling_   2. _Simple-object-coupling_   3. _Object-parameter-coupling_   4. _Semantic coupling_ The book has to say this about _object-parameter coupling_ : > Two modules are object -parameter coupled to each other if `Object1` > requires `Object2` to pass it an `Object3`. This kind of coupling is tighter > than `Object1` requiring `Object2` to pass it only primitive data types > because it requires `Object2` to know about `Object3`. What is the author trying to mean here?"}
{"_id": "191048", "title": "How to count hits in an HTTP API without bogging down the DB", "text": "I'm building an API and want to count hits for each user. It's a HTTP API implemented in Python. I could keep the count in a database (using PostGreSQL) but it'll be a very busy API, so I don't want the overhead in the DB. I'm looking at Redis or just writing plain text logs. But is there a better approach? It's a map tile service, so bursts of hundreds of hits per sec. I want to report usage per month to the user--not keep total count of hits."}
{"_id": "194035", "title": "About Artificial Intelligence", "text": "I am interested in starting a career in artificial intelligence. Can anyone suggest how I could prepare for this? What languages should I study that would be best for this career choice?"}
{"_id": "191045", "title": "Few big libraries or many small libraries?", "text": "Over the course of some months I've created a little framework for game development that I currently include in all of my projects. The framework depends on SFML, LUA, JSONcpp, and other libraries. It deals with audio, graphics, networking, threading; it has some useful file system utilities and LUA wrapping capabilities. Also, it has many useful \"random\" utility methods, such as string parsing helpers and math utils. Most of my projects use all of these features, but not all of them:   * I have an automatic updater that only makes use of the file system and networking features   * I have a game with no networking capabilities   * I have a project that doesn't need JSONcpp   * I have a project that only needs those string/math utils This means that I have to include the SFML/LUA/JSON shared libraries in every project, even if they aren't used. The projects (uncompressed) have a minimum of 10MB in size this way, most of which is unused. The alternative would be splitting the framework in many smaller libraries, which I think would be much more effective and elegant, but would also have the cost of having to maintain more DLL files and projects. I would have to split my framework in a lot of smaller libraries:   * Graphics   * Threading   * Networking   * File system   * Smaller utils   * JSONcpp utils   * LUA utils Is this the best solution?"}
{"_id": "188987", "title": "Good design for delegates in a service oriented architecture", "text": "My problem is quite complex to explain and my English is not excellent, so I hope you can understand my question. In a service oriented architecture there are some modules that own data used by all the others applications end these modules expose the data via Remote Method Invocation and Web Services. We the developers of the module have seen that the code that invokes these modules is repeated in all the other modules, so we decided to put in common the code and created a new module named _Common Delegates_. The responsabilities of this new module are:   * keep informations about the hostname, port and JNDI and/or web service names;   * instantiate and use the service locator;   * instantiate and call the stubs to the remote modules. But the methods exposed by the _Common Delegates_ modules use the same Request and Response classes that are defined in the called modules. This means that this module does not act as a layer of decoupling. In some cases this module created problems of circular dependencies during maven builds. Is it a good thing to split the _Common Delegates_ module into many different Maven artifacts to avoid circular dependencies, one for the called module? For example if I need to call via RMI the module A, I will have to use the _Module A delegate_. Is it a good thing to make this delegates to be also a decoupling layer, meaning that they will expose their own Request and Response beans and transform them into the beans used by the called methods?"}
{"_id": "135766", "title": "Static functions vs classes", "text": "Let's say that I want to build some utility functions to do some basic maths with de `BigDecimal`s, for example I want to have a function that computes the average of a `List<BigDecimal>`. What is the best approach? A static function or a utility class?               public static BigDecimal computeAverage(List<BigDecimal> numbers)      or               public class BigDecimalUtil          public computeAverage(List<BigDecimal> numbers)"}
{"_id": "93928", "title": "Prerequisite math skill for Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) book", "text": "I already have knowledge about basic algorithms. Now I plan to study more advance algorithms and I decide to go with Introduction to Algorithms. I'm not sure, do I need to refresh my math's skill before read this book or not? (I forget almost math that I learn in high school and college) If this book need strong math knowledge, please suggest subjects that benefit. **Update**   **P.S.** I want to learn about implementation, design and analysis of algorithms."}
{"_id": "193291", "title": "Does any well-known license require to make modifications available when only derived *output* is published?", "text": "Is there a way to make sure that modifications to free software are released even when no binaries of modified code are _conveyed_? Though it may sound odd and from what I understand, e.g., GPL requires to distribute source only if binary is _conveyed_ to other parties thus making it possible for unlimited private use as it does not fall into _propagation_. I would like to make sure that if someone publishes a final finding in a scientific literature derived with the aim of a modified code, then those modifications are made available. Does any well-known license have these provisions? If not, why would it be bad? From what I understand if I add those provisions explicitly, it would limit the freedom, e.g., rendering result non-GPLish. From one of the answers that disappeared, I guess I can add an _Additional Term_ but would not it be a _further restriction_ that can be simply ignored > If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice > stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a > further restriction, you may remove that term. From what I understand it looks like it depends on how I state it. If I require to make private modification used to derived a result that was published to make available, then it would be okay, otherwise it would be a _further restriction_ if I prohibit from privately using and not making modified code available. **Example** _A_ implements a super duper algorithm but they is bad with BLAS and it takes a long time for the simulation. _B_ claims that they refined the code using CUDA or whatever and can easily get results within second. Based on their work they found this and that from simulations and got it published. And that is it. No GPL violation and no better code for community. **Another example** Imagine if some animation studio took Blender, implemented an improved version of Cycles that allows them to render things way faster and with less problems. So now they have an advantage as they can deliver animations to clients faster. No software conveyance, no GPL violation, no improvements sharing."}
{"_id": "179794", "title": "Labeling algorithm for points", "text": "I need an algorithm to place horizontal text labels for multiple series of points on the screen (basically I need to show timestamps and other information for a history of moving objects on a map; in general there are multiple data points per object). The text labels should appear close to their points--above, below, or on the right side--but should not overlap other points or text labels. Does anyone know an algorithm/heuristic for this?"}
{"_id": "8090", "title": "Alternatives to time tracking methodologies", "text": "**Question first:** What are some feasible alternatives to time tracking for employees in a web/software development company, and why are they better options **Explanation:** I work at a company where we work like this. Everybody is paid salary. We have 3 types of work, Contract, Adhoc and Internal (Non billable). Adhoc is just small changes that take a few hours and we just bill the client at the end of the month. Contracts are signed and we have this big long process, the usual. We figure out how much to charge by getting an estimation of the time involved (From the design and the developers), multiplying it by our hourly rate and that's it. So say we estimate 50 hours for a website. We have time tracking software and have to record the time in 15 we spend on it (7:00 to 7:15 for example), the project name, and give it some comments. Now if we go over the 50 hours, we are both losing money and are inefficient. **Now** that I've explained how the system works, my question is how else can it be done if a better method exists (Which I'm sure one must). Nobody here likes the current system, we just can't find an alternative. I'd be more than willing to work after hours longer hours on a project to get it done in time, but I'm much inclined to do so with the current system. I'd love to be able to sum up (Or link) to this post for my manager to show them why we should use abc system instead of this system."}
{"_id": "97207", "title": "What does C++ do better than D?", "text": "I have recently been learning D and am starting to get some sort of familiarity with the language. I know what it offers, I don't yet know how to use everything, and I don't know much about D idioms and so on, but I am learning. I like D. It is a nice language, being, in some sort of ways, a _huge_ update to C, and done nicely. None of the features seem that \"bolted on\", but actually quite well thought-out and well-designed. You will often hear that D is what C++ _should_ have been (I leave the question whether or not that is true to each and everyone to decide themselves in order to avoid unnecessary flame wars). I have also heard from several C++ programmers that they enjoy D much more than C++. Myself, while I know C, I can not say that I know C++. I would like to hear from someone knowing both C++ and D if they think there is something that C++ does better than D _as a language_ (meaning not the usual \"it has more third- party libraries\" or \"there are more resources\" or \"more jobs requiring C++ than D exists\"). D was designed by some very skilled C++ programmers (Walter Bright and Andrei Alexandrescu, with the help of the D community) to fix many of the issues that C++ had, but was there something that actually didn't get better after all? Something he missed? Something you think wasn't a better solution? Also, note that I am talking about D 2.0, not D 1.0."}
{"_id": "196898", "title": "How can you prove an acyclic graph has n-1 edges?", "text": "I'm not so hot on the maths for this but for what I understand... A graph g exists with v vertices and edges. g = (V,E); The spanning graph for this is an acyclic copy of this where all the vertices are present, and all the edges are a subset of the graph with the condition that each connection is distinct. Apparently the MST should have n-1 nodes. How can this be proven ? **Sources:** http://youtu.be/zFbq8vOZ_0k?t=25m1s http://www.gtkesh.com/minimum-spanning-tree/"}
{"_id": "196895", "title": "How to handle many arguments in an API wrapper?", "text": "I'm writing a PHP API wrapper for a third party API. I want to make all the methods consistent, but I'm not sure how to handle the number of arguments some API routes accept. One API request accepts up to 30 arguments. Obviously, it would be unwieldy to list each argument as a parameter on the method. Currently, I'm writing it to accept the required arguments as method paramaters, while all the optional ones are accepted in a final \"additionalOptions\" array.               public function sampleApiMethod($reqVal1, $reqVal2, $additionalOptions) {         //Method Code     }      Unfortunately, there are API requests that have only optional arguments. In this case, either the only parameter is the array of options, or the method has individual parameters for optional arguments. When only passing an array, the method is consistent with the other methods, but it's not the most intuitive. With the latter option, I lose the consistent structure. Is there any sort of best practice or structure for an API wrapper that I should follow to try to have a consistent developer usage experience?"}
{"_id": "196890", "title": "Best strategy in SQL", "text": "Recently, a colleague told me that it wasn't advisable to make conditions in the **join clauses**. Instead he suggested to make conditions in the **where clause**. He told me that the SQL engine was optimized for this way. Here is a simple example to illustrate my question. In this case, I think it would make any difference. What strategy is the best? And why? Assume we have a parameter nammed `@user_id`. ## First strategy               SELECT      role.name     FROM        user_role     INNER JOIN  user ON user_role.user_id = user.id AND                         user_role.user_id = @user_id     INNER JOIN  role ON user_role.role_id = role.id      ## Second strategy               SELECT      role.name     FROM        user_role     INNER JOIN  user ON user_role.user_id = user.id     INNER JOIN  role ON user_role.role_id = role.id     WHERE       user.id = @user_id"}
{"_id": "53351", "title": "Who should determine team size?", "text": "Developers, managers, or customers? I was recently involved in a situation where I felt like the customers were arbitrarily demanding for more developers on a team which already had too many developers. They were scared the project was going to be late (and it probably will be). Personally, I was scared we were going to fulfill Brook's Law. The group of programmers already lacked in-depth business knowledge, and some were even new to the technology (.NET), yet the customer wanted to add more developers who had even **less** business knowledge. The impression was that this would make the project get done quicker. I started wondering if the customer, who is extremely bright, but presumably knows little about IT project management, should really be the one determining team size."}
{"_id": "195605", "title": "How can I ensure our SolidWorks files are covered by the GPLv3?", "text": "I am in charge of a project on github that has files that are and are not code based. Specifically, I am worried about our SolidWorks files. How do I ensure these files are covered by the GPLv3 license?"}
{"_id": "199547", "title": "Handling ground-breaking changes in a production system - Insert intermediate level Management object", "text": "As our client request, we are proceeding to change the base of our system. We already have the following structure: > A class has many students. (simple typical one - to - many) Now we must change it to: > A class has many groups. Each group has many students. (Intermediate Object > \"Group\" is inserted). That seems to be a \"simple\" change, but it breaks all of the management interface, from both mobile client to web views. And in database structure also. Our system is a data-management program where we have about 50 - 60 domain objects which are parts of a hierarchy model of around 5 levels. And the intermediate object is inserted in around the 2nd-stage. My question includes 2 aspects: 1) How to estimate the efforts needed. I'm making a new code branch, then insert the new domain object, after that break the relation of the class- student to insert the new \"group\" in. Then look in the error-report of Eclipse to locate the troubled code. However, it makes the whole project red, and I'm having troubles giving accurate time-estimation for the task. 2) How to avoid/prevent this situation to happen in the future. It happens once before, and at that time I have spent a week to write database conversion script, as well as making the changes. But at that time the system is still small. Now it has grown big."}
{"_id": "149491", "title": "Learning to program on punchcards", "text": "I'd like to try programming with punch cards once in my life. How can I do this? I'm in my 30s, and grew up entirely in the PC era, programming on computers with screens and keyboards. I want to experience the way my father and grandfather used to work. I imagine the hardware (and probably the cards themselves) are no longer manufactured. Are there any universities or museums with functioning punch card readers anymore? I'm in Boston, but I'm willing to travel to do this. I asked MetaFilter, and I got some mixed answers (along with a lot of \"no, don't do this\" nay-saying). I did get a pointer to the Retro-Computing Society Of Rhode Island, but I haven't received a response to my email to them yet."}
{"_id": "187536", "title": "Addition vs multiplication on algorithm performance", "text": "I am studying about optimizing alogrithms.(Prof. Skiena's Algorithm Guide book) One of the exercises asks us to optimize an algorithm:               Suppose the following algorithm is used to evaluate the polynomial     p(x) = a^(xn) + a^n\u22121(xn\u22121) + . . . + a(x) + a     p := a0;     xpower := 1;     for i := 1 to n do     xpower := x \u2217 xpower;     p := p + ai \u2217 xpower     end      (Here xn, xn-1... are the names given to distinct constants.) After giving this some thought, the only way I found to possibly improve that algorithm is as follows               p := a0;     xpower := 1;     for i := 1 to n do       xpower := x \u2217 xpower;          for j := 1 to ai              p := p + xpower          next j     next i     end      With this solution I have converted the second multiplication to addition in a for loop. My questions:   1. Do you find any other way to optimize this algorithm?   2. _Is the alternative I have suggested better than the original?_ (Edit: As suggested in the comments, this question though related to the problem deserves another question of its own. Please ignore.)"}
{"_id": "187531", "title": "Re-engineering an ASP.NET AJAX project as ASP MVC", "text": "I have been asked to investigate the possibility of re-engineering an existing ASP.NET AJAX Web Application as under MVC. The project, as it stands ATM, is very heavily relient on Telerik's ASP.NET AJAX controls. I've yet to have to opportunity to interview the person responsible for this request, so I'm unsure of the drivers for this, but I believe that as well as looking for a more structured solution (the original was developed in a very organic way) I believe that one of the goals is to _also_ get a lot of the code running client-side and to use a structured form for the development there also. So, My question is, is there a defined set of considerations for something like this? Or, if people do this kind of thing at all, do they just wing it?"}
{"_id": "187532", "title": "Is it a good idea to include Installer Project within single solution?", "text": "I have pretty large code base for the client product I am working on. I am using Visual Studio 2010 for my development and it's hectically slow. I can get rid off this by disabling the installer project within the solution file.   * Is it a good idea to include setup projects within the same solution?    * How can I increase the performance of Visual Studio when working with large projects (including installer?)   * How about a different build configuration separately for installer? Will that help?"}
{"_id": "107403", "title": "Licensing for a commercial Blackberry app", "text": "I want to develop an app for a website (let's say stackoverflow.com in this case). Will I violate the Blackberry terms of service if I list an (paid) app for a website which I do not own? What about the website I'm going to use?"}
{"_id": "187538", "title": "Writing Clean, Elegant Procedural Code (BASIC): Is There Such a Thing?", "text": "I learned to code in OO languages. I've always been interested in design patterns, clean code, etc., etc. - you know the type. Now at work I'm using a BASIC dialect. Given modern programming values, should we try to carry over these same principles to new procedural code? I'm pondering the following issues, and I wondering if I'm on the right lines. * * * **Variable Names** Variables are not strongly typed (nightmare!), they're given short names and written in ALL CAPS (why?!) - basically I find them hard to read and they could be _anything_. Once upon a time, I'm sure `XCNT = 1` would have offered performance gains over `int_EXISTINGCUSTOMERCOUNT = 1`, but we're past that now - surely? I choose the verbose name here. **GOSUB** I want to break down long blocks of code down into multiple smaller blocks. Internally, `GOSUB` is used (over a `FUNCTION`) if the helper is not re-usable by other programs / functions. Given its ability to add / modify variables without the safety of scoping (as we know it in the OO world) `GOSUB` scares me. This is typical:               GOSUB GET_BEST_CUSTOMER     IF RC = 0 THEN CRT CNAME      But I would write:               rc_GETBESTCUSTOMER = 1 ; !Default exception     str_CUSTOMERNAME = \"\"     GOSUB GET_BEST_CUSTOMER ; !set rc_GETBESTCUSTOMER, populate str_CUSTOMERNAME     IF(rc_GETBESTCUSTOMER = 0) THEN         CRT str_CUSTOMERNAME     END      With the caveat that `GET_BEST_CUSTOMER` would only modify `rc_GETBESTCUSTOMER` and `str_CUSTOMERNAME` in 'global' scope. * * * There's more, but it's all along the same lines. Given the editor of choice (Notepad++), I'd say my coding style makes the code easier to read and understand - therefore easier to maintain. But I'm sure some BASIC die-hard would readily tell me I'm doing it all wrong."}
{"_id": "187539", "title": "How do I alter my solution / project when the spec changes", "text": "I have a question about the best practice in this situation. At one point, my small application allowed the client to upload a file to a server, and download a file from the server (it would also compress / decompress as well). This was created in 1 solution which consisted of 4 projects:   1. FTP   2. CompressDecompress   3. UI   4. Tests Now, the spec has changed and there will 2 end users, one who only wants to upload, the other who only wants to download and they should never have access to anything else (ie downloading people cannot upload and vice versa). So, I have a few choices here. I could either   1. Keep it as 1 solution, and ask users to login, based upon the credentials will display a different UI    2. Alter my UI so it only shows tools to download, create a new solution which consists of just a UI project and reference my .dll accordingly.   3. Delete my UI, create 2 new solutions, each solution being created for either download or upload (and each solution probably only consisting of just 1 project, the UI) and again, referencing the .dll Does any one have any suggestions? Would any guidelines have allowed me to have not gotten into this situation in the first place (or at least made me more aware of the potential disasters)?"}
{"_id": "112312", "title": "Bringing my genius brain back", "text": "Well... I was hired because I did not take a comp-sci or engineering course, however I was really good at coding. My job is doing the heterodox stuff when needed... You know, the guy that sometimes has to use a goto, or invent some bizarre technology. When I started my job, I blasted though stuff I needed to do, then I got slower and slower until I almost got fired. Now I am more or less stable, but I am noticing I am slowing down again. I plainly open my source code, look at it, and have no idea what I have to do, sometimes I do not know even what I was doing. I think this is related to my lifestyle. My work is a two hour commute (meaning I lose 4 hours daily), and I have not completed university yet (so I need to do some university work at home), and on weekends I spend time with my significant other. Does anyone know what to do in a situation like this? I am depressed that I cannot write code like I could when I started, or when someone would throw some oddball problem at me and I would spit out a solution instantly. Now I am having trouble typing even 10 lines of code in a day, because I spend the entire day trying to figure what to do. In fact, I can't even procrastinate when I **want** to procrastinate, I open the browser, and I have no idea of what web page to open. It is really annoying :( I feel like my IQ dropped from its measured levels to something like 80..."}
{"_id": "37001", "title": "How do you do ASP.Net performance testing?", "text": "Our team is in need of a performance testing process. We use ASP.Net (both web forms and MVC) and performance testing is not currently built into our projects. We occasionally do some ad-hoc analysis, such as checking the load on the server or SQL Server Profiler, but we don't have a true beginning to end, built into the project performance testing methodology. Where is a good place to start? I'm interested in both:   1. Process - General knowledge, including best practices.   2. Essential list of tools. I'm aware of a few tools, such as what's built into the pricier versions of VS 2010 and JetBrains products, though I haven't used them."}
{"_id": "102150", "title": "What is a domain of automatic testing tools such as ScalaCheck?", "text": "I've seen not so many examples of testing with automatic tools, i.e. serializing/deserializing of JSON (which was paired in the following way: `val actual = deserialize(serialize(string))`), checking that appending symbols to string was done properly (and that's imho silly, cause it extremely hard to made a mistake in such plain operations). Can you provide really useful examples/use cases for automatic testing with ScalaCheck that will unveil it advantages? Does it meant to be used mostly in paired style (straight/inverse functions like in JSON example above)?"}
{"_id": "113958", "title": "At a higher level description, how is DLMALLOC supposed work?", "text": "There doesn't seem to be that many good descriptions that go into the specifics about how dlmalloc works. The sources I have come across so far _mention_ dlmalloc, but then only goes on to explain what malloc() and free() are, rather than describing dlmalloc. The Wikipedia description, on the other hand, was a bit hard for me to understand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malloc#dlmalloc_and_its_derivatives Can anyone explain the workings of dlmalloc, how to implement it, and any additional sources that could help?"}
{"_id": "49410", "title": "Is it worth becoming a programmer?", "text": "I'm a first year student in CS and I absolutely love programming. Many people have told me it isn't so good once you start working due to bringing your work home (thinking about how to solve problems throughout the day), working many hours when the deadline is near, and so on. I've heard being a system administrator is a less stressful job, since you don't have to worry about it at home. So my questions are (for experienced programmers):   * Is it worth becoming a programmer?   * Does your job satisfy you enough to overcome these problems? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "98916", "title": "Besides the IDE, libraries, and language, what are the main differences between iOS and Android development?", "text": "I'm coming from the iOS side. I'm particularly interested in knowing if there are similar hurdles on the Android side on these points:   * developer fee -- do you have to pay $99 a year to build for android?   * provisioning devices - do you have to go through a complex provisioning/digital certificate/device-id routine to get the app you're developing on a device for testing?   * marketplace distribution - do you have to go through an approval process to get your app to users?   * payment - is it easy to get paid for your app? What is Amazon's cut? Thanks. I know I could probably find these answers scattered on the web, but it would sure save me time to just hear from an experienced Android dev."}
{"_id": "98918", "title": "How can I \"get in the know\"?", "text": "My company posted a job listing to get me a helper. A recruiter called me today and all he kept saying was \"MVC this Entity Framework that...\" - He sounded shocked when I said the project uses DataSets and Linq2Sql over WinForms and ASP.NET WebForms. Then I was looking at options for automated website testing and I come upon this here: and I began to get agitated. > Most folks \"in the know\" are using presentation layers to make ASP.NET so > thin that a tool like NUnitAsp isn't helpful. This person is in the know, and his friends are apparently in the know. I want to be in the know too, because being out of the know makes me feel insecure and a little sad. In my efforts this past year to get with the times, I realized great benefits from Linq2Sql and the Unity container. They both were nothing but good for me - filling gaps that have been apparent to me for ages. Then I moved on to Model-View-Preseneter for WinForms GUIs and was again very happy with it for the same reason - I had been asking myself for a long time how to separate things out so that I could have a thick client and a web client share their common logic in a common code base. Yet, I am stuggling with the following. And I know a zillion people can't be wrong and I'm not smarter than the masses, but I need help to see:   * MVC as the evolution of WebForms   * WPF as the evolution of WinForms   * Entity Framework as the evolution of Linq2Sql (and, for that matter   the deprecation of Datasets) (I suspect it all stems from my, to date, lack of obtaining Test Fahrvergn\u00fcgen) Thus, I have been asking myself, and not hearing an answer to:   * What do I gain using MVC in a web application? I know I gain additional source code artifacts and a new DSL to learn. What else?   * What would happen if I used WPF objects without the MVVM pattern? Would I be hurting my chances to get a job somewhere else?   * For that matter, is WinForms really broken? Is it me or does Visual Studio have noticable visual lag on my dual core 2.8 GHZ machine with 8 Gigs of RAM? I like snappy. I want end users to experience snappy all the time without fail.   * Why are Datasets \"the old way\"? They seem quick efficient and succinct for many small to medium sized problems I have to solve (yet they are not even in Silverlight). I feel like big pile of complexity is on the plate and spreading it around won't make it go away. The intrinsic amount of complexity needs to be confronted head on, and maybe software engineering should become more like electrical engineering or mechanical engineering, or brain surgery."}
{"_id": "211132", "title": "Level of detail of a user story", "text": "I am about to start User story sessions in my team. It's quite new for them and I am also wrestling with certain things. For the current project we have some well worked out wireframes. I read a lot about the way of writing user stories. What the template should be like and about different aids like Invest The plan is to turn them around in user stories. Lets say I have a screen where a user could edit an order. There is a lot of detail on that screen. Now when creating a user story of this story. Will it suffice to say: > As an Admin I can edit a purchase order so that mistakes typed by the user > can be enhanced. Or should i specify each detail like: > As an Admin I can resend an invoice to the customer, so he can get a copy of > his lost one. > > As an Admin I can review the customer order so he has detailed information > about each purchase > > As an admin I can remove items forma on order so that in case the customer > made a mistake I can remove Items. * * * And how about the acceptance criteria. How should the be defined for a user story as such. Where do I define which fields need to be shown on an order detail page? Can this be part of the acceptance criteria?"}
{"_id": "211137", "title": "Why can static methods only use static data?", "text": "I don't understand why a static method can't use non-static data. Can anybody explain what the problems are and why we can't do it?"}
{"_id": "197079", "title": "github tools - is there a way not to copyright your app and stay its author", "text": "I am wondering... Recently I have observed github; I saw many Java projects' codes which don't have copyright at their headers... I mean, as I may guess, in this case the only thing which can prove the code author is - it is author's github account; So my question is... is it safe to protect open source code with github account only or there is a more optimal way to do so? Please share your experience; Thanks"}
{"_id": "108002", "title": "Mobile PC Remote", "text": "If I buy a symbian(S60, nokia E51) mobile, and I want to write a program to control the PC(launch programs, control mouse/keyboard):   1. Is it possible to make a mobile app and a windows app which communicates via WiFi, or its easier/faster via bluetooth?   2. Which framework should I choose? (symbian/java)   3. (other info that I might need)"}
{"_id": "234427", "title": "System Communication: Avoiding Including a Large \"HAS-A\" Hierarchy Which Isn't Used", "text": "The situation: **System A** Huge, complicated system. Uses an important Message object with many other Message objects attached, many of which have further Message objects attached. In total, this is about twenty different objects. Due to awkward timing with releases and introduction of code churn, System A cannot have its Message object hierarchy touched. **System B** Needs to use the same important Message object to communicate with System A to make use of one of its services. However, since the messages it will send off are going to be invariable, it only uses a very small portion of the Message object hierarchy. The Question: How could I allow System B to make use of the important Message object without (a) touching System A, or (b) including a hierarchy of nearly twenty objects, almost none of which are used at all? Is there a more advanced Design Pattern which could be put to use in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "234428", "title": "how and should I 'unit test' an entire package?", "text": "I'm still learning to be good about doing _unit_ level testing, as I've always been a little sloppy about only doing functional testing in the past, so I want to double check I'm doing this 'right'. I have a package which is responsible for auto-magically updating a particular configuration which is expected to change regularly during runtime. Provide a list of objects to monitor to the constructor of my main package class. Then at some point call update it will go to all the multiple places that define configuration, detect change, update the appropriate state for the objects it's monitoring, and provide a report of what was changed. This is all automatic and otherwise transparent to all other packages. My inclination is to test this as a unit, but it is a pretty 'big' unit, 5-6 classes and fetching from multiple files and a restful interface. It feels like testing any smaller units would take much longer, be less flexible to refactoring and only provide a slightly higher chance of detecting a defect, but that could just be my laziness talking. Would it be considered 'better' to test at a lower level? Assuming it is 'right' to test the package as a unit what is considered appropriate for mocking something like this? There are methods of classes which are instantiated by my main class (ie, not something I pass in directly so I can't just pass my own mock) that have methods I want to control. I believe I can use powerMock in the two cases I can think of (or could, after I research PowerMock some more), but I'm not sure if doing so is transparent enough. Is configuring PowerMock to detect and return a mock file object any time my package tries to open a configuration file, even if it's buried deep in my package logic, acceptable, or is this considered to be abusing my knowledge of implementation specific details? Would it be 'cleaner' to actually modify configuration files on the file system and let them be read normally without further mocking? I would need to modify the files regularly for testing... Edit: To clarify the question of coupling asked in one of the questions, I don't think that my classes are overly coupled. Effectively I have three classes that fetch state from A, B, and C, and then a 'main' class which takes the state from the three and decides how to combine it correctly (ie, if A and B don't match use A unless C). I could easily test A B and C separately and then mock them to test my 'main' class. However, it seems like the testing of my 'main' class would effectively test the comparatively simple interfaces for A, B, and C anyways if I didn't mock them. Thus it feels like duplicate work to test them individually. I may get some slightly better code coverage, maybe, with individual testing, and it's always nice to have one test test only one thing. But I don't know if it's worth all the overhead for minor benefits."}
{"_id": "68591", "title": "How do you manage minor changes that you want to keep local in mercurial?", "text": "I'm considering migrating a 14 year old cvs repository (history intact) to mercurial. I think I've got all the technical conversion bits down, but I still have some questions about working effectively in mercurial. One of the things I see a lot in individual developers' cvs sandboxes (including my own) is local uncommitted changes that aren't ready to be pushed to the mainline. My understanding is that this is a bad thing. Most of my experiments with hg suggest that uncommitted changes are a bad thing to have. The inability to merge with them is enough for that. So what I want to know is how other people who use mercurial in day to day coding deal with it. How do you deal with incomplete changes to code when it comes time to update your repository? How do you deal with local changes that you don't (yet) want to share with other developers?"}
{"_id": "157490", "title": "How to port this architecture to .net?", "text": "My team is currently locked into using a tool we dislike that takes the form of a Eclipse plugin and a .jar; the plugin gives us a button to quickly run a single file's code (via invoking the main .jar and passing to it the current file). We want to move to C#.net. Is there any way to get Visual Studio to replicate this behavior? Obviously we could put each runnable class into its own project in our solution, but that requires checking a lot of project files into source control. Ideally we'd have a main() method in each file and could tell visual studio to run just that file for development purposes, while the finished software would be run from a single entry point using command-line parameters. (I don't want to give too much information here regarding the purpose of the software, so please just accept that the current setup makes a lot of sense for what we're doing and changing it too much would be rejected by management.)"}
{"_id": "68592", "title": "How to disseminate Scala?", "text": "With the announcement of Ceylon, and after observing the slides describing its intent and feature list, I reckoned this language to be a Scala competitor. Furthermore, as a Scala programmer, I can see several points (as depicted in here) that state that Scala goes further in providing a quantum leap over Java, that is interoperable nevertheless. However, this language may be a symptom of failed comprehension over Scala features and/or lack of knowledge of the language itself, which may not be only their fault. Many great ideas have failed due to bad/insufficient marketing. Beta was, in some aspects, better than VHS but it lost its marketshare because of marketing. So my question is: Are we doing enough to explain/disseminate/evolve Scala? How can Scala professionals/enthusiasts propel the language forward in terms of acknowledge from their colleagues (i.e. Marketing)? How can we make natural selection work and prevent it from failing? Are sponsorships the way to go? Should there be already prepared presentations (e.g. like jrebel has on its page) to ease propagation?"}
{"_id": "30255", "title": "What are the drawbacks of sending XML to browsers and let them apply XSLT?", "text": "**Context** Working as a freelance developer, I often made websites completely based on XSLT. In other words, on _every_ request, an XML file is generated, containing everything we need to know about the page content: the name of the user currently logged in, the top menu entries, if this menu is dynamic/configurable, the text to display in a specific area of the page, etc. Then XSL process (caches, etc.) it to HTML/XHTML page to send to the browser. It has a good point to make it easier to create small-scale websites, especially with PHP. It is a sort of template engine, but which I prefer to other template engines because it's much more powerful than most of template engines, and because I know it better and like it. It is also possible, when need, to give an access to raw XML data on demand for an automated access, without the need to create separate APIs. Of course, it will fail completely on any medium-scale or large-scale website, since, even with good caching techniques, XSL still degrades overall website performance and requires more CPU serverside. **Question** Modern browsers have the ability to take an XML file and to transform it with an associated XSL file declared in XML like `<?xml-stylesheet href=\"demo.xslt\" type=\"text/xsl\"?>`. Firefox 3 can do it. Internet Explorer 8 can do it too. It means that it is possible to migrate XSL processing from the server to the client side for 50% of users (according on browser statistics on several websites where I may want to implement this). It means that those 50% of users will receive only the XML file at each request, thus reducing their and server's bandwidth (XML file being much shorter than its processed HTML analog), and reducing server's CPU usage. What are the drawbacks of this technique? I thought about several ones, but it doesn't apply in this situation:   * Difficult implementation and the need to choose, based on the browser request, when to send raw XML and when to transform it to HTML instead. Obviously, the system will not be much more difficult then the actual one. The only change to make is to add XSL file link to every XML, and to add a browser check.   * More IO and bandwidth usage, since the XSLT file will be downloaded by the browsers, instead of being cached by the server. I don't think it will be a problem, since XSLT file will be cached by the browsers (like images, or CSS, or JavaScript files are cached actually).   * Possibly some problems on client side, like maybe problems when saving a page in some browsers.   * Difficulty to debug code: it is impossible to obtain an HTML source the browser is actually using, since the only displayed source is the downloaded XML. On the other hand, I rarely go look at HTML code on client side, and in most cases, it is unusable directly (whitespace being removed)."}
{"_id": "4250", "title": "\"A\", \"an\", and \"the\" in method and function names: What's your take?", "text": "I'm sure many of us have seen method names like this at one point or another:   * `UploadTheFileToTheServerPlease`   * `CreateATemporaryFile`   * `WriteTheRecordToTheDatabase`   * `ResetTheSystemClock` That is, method names that are also grammatically-correct English sentences, and include extra words purely to make them read like prose. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of such \"literal\" method names, and prefer to be succint, while still being as clear as possible. To me, words like \"a\", \"an\", and \"the\" just look plain awkward in method names, and it makes method names needlessly long without really adding anything useful. I would prefer the following method names for the previous examples:   * `UploadFileToServer`   * `CreateTemporaryFile`   * `WriteOutRecord`   * `ResetSystemClock` In my experience, this is far more common than the other approach of writing out the lengthier names, but I have seen both styles and was curious to see what other people's thoughts were on these two approaches. So, are you in the \"method names that read like prose\" camp or the \"method names that say what I mean but read out loud like a bad foreign-language-to- English translation\" camp?"}
{"_id": "147451", "title": "What's so bad about the DOM?", "text": "I keep hearing people (Crockford in particular) saying the DOM is a terrible API, but not really justifying this statement. Apart from cross-browser inconsistencies, what are some reasons why the DOM is considered to be so bad?"}
{"_id": "225272", "title": "distributed computing with remote hetrogenous machines", "text": "The way i am doing it now is using boost::asio TCP sockets handling everything manually with a main server that orchestrates the processes between the available machines, but the number of machines is increasing and when i need communication between specific machines i have to do it through the server and the number of machines is just to much to be handled by one server, so i am thinking about Open MPI. However i have 3 problems   1. the machines are Heterogeneous.   2. the number of machines available can be for example 50 at a time and also can be only 10 and sometimes it gets to 300 which is too much for my server to handle and there is always tons of data to process, and i can seem to utilize more than ~70 connections at the same time.   3. most of the machines are remote and some of them share the same network. if i want to scale things with my current design i would get ugly trees with multiple layers, i don't have the money to hire network experts/programmers for a non profit project, but i am fairly good at grasping new concepts, so how would you go around this? and with the above problems is OpenMPI for me? In other words, i am looking for a better design than mine, and i have no problem implementing it from scratch no matter how long it takes and i will be supporting linux only at the start because i figured that native code has a measurable advantage, i would like to hear your ideas."}
{"_id": "225270", "title": "Is it correct to require end-users to clear their cookies?", "text": "Is it any indications of poor programming if the support staff for a given product requires you to clear the cookies in order to troubleshoot issues with their web-site? As a point of example, if you're trying to activate a new SIM on a tablet, and the carrier's activation web-site is giving you an error message that their web-site is down, even though there is no problem with actually accessing their web-server, which responds with the our-website-is-down page just fine. Subsequently, the support staff instructs the user to try clearing the cookies (even though this activation web-site is not know to have been accessed prior to the error message taking place)."}
{"_id": "225271", "title": "Where can I find Turbo Pascal dialect description/reference?", "text": "Where can I find Turbo Pascal dialect description/reference? Is it still availiable in some place? I'm looking for the famous Turbo Pascal dialect description/reference(yes, the one from 80s/90s time) but I'm not having luck with google."}
{"_id": "225275", "title": "Dangers when implementing features as plugins", "text": "_What kind of problems have you encountered when building plugin interfaces for your application? And how did you resolve them?_ **Background** I want to refactor an application so that various features can be moved into plugins, allowing them to be easily added and removed in future. I hope this will be a neater system than scattering `if (FeatureX_is_enabled)` branches throughout the code. (I may be wrong!) I believe I will need to define interfaces for each part of the system into which a features may plug in. I would like to benefit from your experience if you have already undertaken this kind of project. Perhaps you have endured mistaken designs, and can advise what _not_ to do. Perhaps you can recommend patterns or architectures that can make such a system more manageable. **Concerns** A few issues already spring to mind:   * I will need to provide some power to plugins so that they can get their job done. If I pass too little control, new plugins may be **too restricted** to do what they need (e.g. some Google Chrome extension authors complain about the inability to modify the core interface). However if I pass too much control, irresponsible plugins will have the power to break the whole application (e.g. Mozilla Firefox extensions).   * Some plugins may need to run in a **different order** on different events. I could register event handlers with a priority, e.g. 1-100, so that plugins can hook themselves into the appropriate order. Or I could just create `post_` and `pre_` events and hope nothing more finely grained is needed.   * If two plugins **depend** on another plugin to be available first then the plugin architecture will need some kind of dependency (and naming) system.   * Related, some plugins will need to know when other plugins are **present** , and perhaps even make calls into each other to handle edge cases.   * There may be difficulties **maintaining the state** of the application if plugins are enabled and disabled at **runtime**. (Chrome seems to handle this well, but many applications require a restart.)   * This kind of architecture will **obfusticate the flow** of execution (in exchange for keeping additional behaviour out of the core code). I will need to write neat interfaces so that unexpected behaviour is minimised.   * Sometimes the monolothic `if (FeatureX_is_enabled)` approach might be a better way to handle the situation than breaking out to a plugin, but I don't know how to recognise such situations. _It is likely there are other concerns I have not considered, so I would love to hear what you have had to deal with!_ **Related** Related question: How to turn on/off code modules? Related library: Bemson's curious Flow library for Javascript seems to provide various features to help adding and removing features to/from a program at runtime, but I have trouble getting my head around it!"}
{"_id": "106437", "title": "When conducting a code review, should the focus be on the completeness of the requirement?", "text": "Given that the reviewer is not part of the project, but was assigned to review because he has done some coding for the application being updated/enhanced. Is it the reviewer's job to ensure that the requirement is complete and correct? Or is this the QA and business tester's responsibility? If the developer and the reviewer misses a requirement which is discovered in UAT, is the reviewer also at fault (probably to a lesser degree)?"}
{"_id": "225279", "title": "Is input validation necessary?", "text": "This is a very naive question about input validation in general. I'm a MATLAB user (1.5 years old) and I learned about input validation techniques such as \"parse\" and \"validatestring\". In fact, MATLAB built-in functions are full of those validations and parsers. So, I naturally thought this is the professional way of code development. With these techniques, you can be sure of data format of input variables. Otherwise your codes will reject the inputs and return an error. However, some people argue that if there is a problem in input variable, codes will cause errors and stop. You'll notice the problem anyway, and then what's the point of those complicated validations? Given that codes for validation itself take some efforts and time, often with quite complicated flow controls, I had to admit this opinion has got a point. With massive input validations, readability of codes may be compromised."}
{"_id": "234396", "title": "How to manage a single branch", "text": "I read the _Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation_ book by **Jez Humble** and **David Farley**. The part that throw me off balance the most was their insistence on using a single branch. Thinking about it and what they are preaching, it does make sense. But the question is, how to achieve it?. At my company we are working on C# with TFS as our source control. And the following ideas came to my mind about how to achieve the idea of doing changes that you don't want to release yet, but you want to keep inside the vcs tool:   * Injections to be able to select the class that you want to use. So you can rewrite some functionality without affecting code that needs to be released.   * Related, an IoC container to make the above easy to achieve. So you can select at compilation (or even runtime) the ones that you want to use.   * Decorator pattern to add functionality in a very simple manner (which is just applying the other two above) At another similar question they talk about the **Release Line** from _Software Configuration Management Patterns_ (which I still have to ready). But the example that they are using deals with tags and creation of branches from them, which doesn't seem to be the same thing as what Humble and Farley talk about.   1. Do the techniques that I have described sound right for achieving a single branch strategy?   2. Is there anything else that could be done to manage having your code on a single branch?"}
{"_id": "183538", "title": "What are the advantages of a client/server architecture in webapplications as opposed to a server generated frontend application", "text": "In our company, we need to build a web interface onto an embedded Linux platform. I kind of see 2 options: You use a technology where the HTML and JavaScript is generated on the server side (Think JSP, Grails, but is is something that is using C++ and generates HTML/JavaScript) or you create a HTML5 'client' application that talks to a JSON or XML generating backend. I have the feeling that web applications currently tend to go with the latter, but what are the advantages of doing so (The developers on the project choose the former, mainly based on the fact that they know C++ much better then HTML and Javascript)"}
{"_id": "111838", "title": "How should I react to diminishing application performance?", "text": "Sometimes it comes to me that the biggest challenge for an engineer when he find his application getting worse in performance is lack of enough information. Imagine that you go through the weekly performance report from your application's access log, and find you get much lower response times from July. All you can do is to pray for it not to get worse the next time."}
{"_id": "143512", "title": "Junior developer support", "text": "I am a junior developer in my first work experience after university. I joined the company as PHP developer but I ended up developing using C# and ASP.NET. Right from the start I did not receive any training in C# and I was assigned with ASP projects with quite tight deadlines scoped by Senior developers. The few project hand overs I had from other developers were brief and it looked like I had to discover the system myself, in really short time. This is my first job as web developer and I wonder whether it is normal not to have a kind of mentor to show me how to do things, especially because I am completely new to the technology. Also, do you have idea how to tackle this? As you can imagine, it gets really frustrating."}
{"_id": "183531", "title": "How to refactor \"nested\" view classes to avoid deep method calls?", "text": "Lets say I'm displaying a bunch of data (`model`) using a `View` class for rendering. However, a lot of the data has sub-data (`model`s) complicated enough to require separate rendering classes. In my design, a `View` class has a `model` which it is rendering, and has many children `Views` which display the sub-data. In some cases, A `View`, while containing a model, may not have anything to render and serves more as a wrapper for it children. However, if you have very complex data and your sub-views have subviews,this design results in deeply nested method calls. Some methods are simply passing information to view classes who may do nothing with it except pass it to their children. This seems inefficient, so I figured there might to be a pattern or something that solves this more elegantly."}
{"_id": "186721", "title": "Level of detail in System Requirements", "text": "I've read in multiple places that the requirements must not be influenced by solution and must not contain solution. So in the below example , please can you help in letting me which is correct - Application A is interacting with Application B to install a new service / change the service type and disconnect a service. There 3 different service types 1,2 and 3. Application B does not support changing service from 1 to 2 or 1 to 3. Hence 1 must be disconnected and then 2 and 3 must be added. However service can be changed from 2 to 3 or 3 to 2 directly. In the above case , changing the service from 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 is a system level contraint. However from an end user's perspective this is a service change. In the above case , should I have a single system requirement stating system shall allow service to be changed for all the service types supported or should I have 2 different system requirement - 1 stating which all services can be upgraded directly and the 2nd stating in which cases service needs to be disconnected and installed?"}
{"_id": "188616", "title": "Technical interview graphics-related concepts fundamentals", "text": "I'm having a technical interview with a graphics society in a few time and I'd like to expand my knowledge related to the following subjects:   * TLB (translation lookaside buffers and their role)   * low level optimizations   * cache and how the process of fetching data for an instruction execution works   * threads and synchronization   * interrupts, deadlocks and spinlocks, irqs and interrupt masking Can you suggest some exceptionally explained book/resource about these topics?"}
{"_id": "16908", "title": "Doesn't \"if (0 == value) ...\" do more harm than good?", "text": "This is one of the things that I hate most when I see it in someone else's code. I know what it means and why some people do it this way (\"what if I accidentally put '=' instead?\"). For me it's very much like when a child goes down the stairs counting the steps out loud. Anyway, here are my arguments against it:   * It disrupts the natural flow of reading the program code. We, humans, say \"if value is zero\" and not \"if zero is value\".   * Modern compilers warn you when you have an assignment in your condition, or actually if your condition consists of just that assignment, which, yes, looks suspicious anyway   * You shouldn't forget to put double '=' when you are comparing values if you are a programmer. You may as well forget to put \"!\" when testing non-equality."}
{"_id": "66160", "title": "Most regrettable design or programming decision you made?", "text": "I would like to hear what kind of design decisions you took and how did they backfire. Because of a bad design decision, I ended up having to support that bad decision forever (I also had a part in it). This made me realize that one single design mistake can haunt you forever. I want to learn from the more experienced people what kind of blunders have they experienced and what did they learn from them. I'm sure this will be a lot of help to other programmers by helping them to not repeat those decisions. Thanks for sharing your experience."}
{"_id": "188619", "title": "Rules about the concreteness of method parameter types, return types and property types", "text": "Some time ago I read a kind of \"rule of thumb\" about the concreteness of method parameter types, return types and property types, but I just do not remember it. It said something about keep your return types as concrete as possible and your parameter types as abstract as possible... or vice versa. I don't know if it was actually a good or bad advice, so if you have your own thoughts about it, please let a comment. Cheers."}
{"_id": "181975", "title": "Why is the UI of nowadays application getting so \"plain\"?", "text": "Take a look at Google, Windows 8, etc. Why does everything look so plain now? Looks really ugly to me. Is it all because of smartphones and tablets? Do I have to follow that trend?"}
{"_id": "128971", "title": "Would like to add features to Text Editor - which editor to choose?", "text": "I would like to add some new features to a text editor. The main requirements I have are:   * Should be a programmer's editor   * I would like to target C# editor features to start with (since I work in Visual Studio most of the time).   * I have considered Visual Studio addins/extensibility development, but I need to know some pros/cons of that. Mainly I am interested in the XAML editor features of VS 2010.   * Some other open-source editors I have considered are Scintilla and AvalonEdit. Again, I would like to know the learning curve for working with those. Since I have not yet started, all editors seem equivalent. I would like to know the pros/cons of developing for each of these."}
{"_id": "196306", "title": "will an assembly language book for intel x86 processor be compatible with amd processors?", "text": "I'm wanting to get an assembly book to learn assembly, and was wandering if i get a book for intel x86 processor will there be any problems assembling the code on an amd processor?"}
{"_id": "29614", "title": "What are you telling yourself if you can't understand new concept, paradigm, feature ...?", "text": "Programming always required to learn new concepts, paradigms, features and technologies and I always have been failed at first attempt to understand new concept what i encounter. I start to blame and humiliate myself without remember before how i understood new concept which i hadn't understand it before. I can hardly stop to tell myself \"why i cant understand ? Am i stupid or idiot ? Yes, i am stuppiiddddd!!!\" What your inner voice tells if you can not understand new concept after spend long time till been tired or hopeless ? How do you handle your self-esteem in such situations ?"}
{"_id": "73892", "title": "What are \"User Process Components\"?", "text": "This article about application architecture design mentions \"User Process Components\" as part of the presentation layer. > **User process components**. Your user process components help synchronize > and orchestrate user interactions. This way the process flow and state > management logic is not hard-coded in the user interface elements > themselves, and the same basic user interaction patterns can be reused by > multiple user interfaces. It looks like this is a standard term, but I have never heard of it so far. Can you provide a more precide definition or examples of UPCs which illustrate the definition above? **EDIT** : what's puzzling me particularly is the phrase _\"help synchronize and orchestrate user interactions\"_. Can you provide an explanation of what could be meant? Can you give an example of a problem that is solved using UPCs?"}
{"_id": "73893", "title": "How to experiment with GPU programming on Linux+AMD/ATI card?", "text": "I've recently acquired a laptop with an Intel i3 CPU and an AMD/ATI 6300 card, running Ubuntu 10.10. How do I proceed in setting up a development environment that allows me to program the GPU? I assume I'll have to use OpenCL (CUDA is NVIDIA-only), but since I'm a novice with GPU programming, I'm asking the advice from more experienced programmers on the issue."}
{"_id": "73895", "title": "Do you run production boxes with logs completely turned off?", "text": "We are internally debating in our team if we should continue to run our production boxes with logs turned off completely and just log errors and exceptions with log rotations. I want to know how everyone else logs info in their production environment and any particular strategy/tool that has worked well for you. Thanks Isaq"}
{"_id": "156729", "title": "Procedural--enough?", "text": "_I posted a similar question on the PHP section of stackoverflow and was told that this might be a better forum in which to submit my question._ Without any programming experience whatsoever, I started studying PHP beginning in the second quarter of this year with the goal of slowly building my dream website starting later this summer. Just as I was wrapping my head around PHP and beginning--I felt-- to truly understand the different concepts and how the code works (this is why I prefaced my post with my non-experience--I've really had to bang and cram it all in my head), I come across Object Oriented PHP. I've taken the approach of of mastering (trying, as much as possible, at least) as many of the concepts and ideas before diving in to try and create my own scripts; much like learning how to dribble, throw a baseball or football well, before playing a single game. (of course I've played around with and done some code -drills). My question to the experts is this: Should or must I learn and delve deep into Object-Oriented-PHP, thus delaying my \"start-to-code\" date? Or will procedural PHP Programming suffice if one would like to build good E-commerce, forum/comment-type (like PHP Help) or basic social networking websites? How far will procedural programming take me? A site with 1,000; tens-of- thousands; hundred thousand visitors? Thanks in advance for your expert insights."}
{"_id": "248458", "title": "Identify algorithm for my resource allocation needs", "text": "I'm trying to automate a task and I lack the right vocabulary to look up the correct algorithm. It really feels like a common problem that has likely been solved many times before. All I'm looking for is for someone to point me in the right direction or help me with the right search terms to look up a solution / algorithm. If you happen to know of an actuall library (javascript), then even better. # Made-up scenario Say I have 3 'buckets', `Bucket A`, `Bucket B` and `Bucket C`. Each of these can hold a certain number of 'Balls'.   * `Bucket A`: Capacity 10 balls.   * `Bucket B`: Capacity 15 balls.   * `Bucket C`: Capacity 5 balls. Now, I also have an inventory of balls and each one can only be put into certain 'buckets'. One ball can only go in `Bucket 2`, The next ball can go into `Bucket 1` OR `Bucket 3`, and so on. Now.. I need to determine the best way to place the balls in order to try to fill up each 'bucket' to it's capacity (or as close as possible). # Real scenario My real reason for this is to schedule `people` (balls) to visit `locations` (buckets) for a requested number of hours (capacity of the bucket). However, due to the following reasons all the libraries/algorithms I've found while searching for \"scheduling\" so far do not work in my scenario.   * I do not care about start/end times at all, only `person` -> `location`   * My people (balls) all have a strict list of locations they can visit. Each one is unique.   * Each person is available for an arbitrary number of whole (integer) hours that they can spend at _exactly one_ `location`. Using someone that's available for 8 hours for only 7 of those hours is OK.   * Each location (bucket) requests a certain number of hours that I try to fulfill to the best of my ability with any combination of people. I have ~50 locations and ~100 people. It's not a requirement that I get a **perfect** solution, but 'pretty close'. I found schedule.js which looks fantastic, but I've been unable to abuse it to fit my needs."}
{"_id": "23472", "title": "Dealing with co-workers who do not have a consistent coding style?", "text": "What do you when you're working with someone who tends to write stylistically bad code? The code I'm talking about is usually technically correct, reasonably structured, and may even be algorithmically elegant, but it just _looks ugly_. We've got:   * Mixture of different naming conventions and titles (`underscore_style` and `camelCase` and `UpperCamel` and `CAPS` all applied more or less at random to different variables in the same function)   * Bizarre and inconsistent spacing, e.g. `Functioncall (arg1 ,arg2,arg3 );`   * Lots of misspelled words in comments and variable names We have a good code review system where I work, so we do get to look over and fix the worst stuff. However, it feels really petty to send a code review that consists of 50 lines of \"Add a space here. Spell 'itarator' correctly. Change this capitalization. etc.\" How would you encourage this person to be more careful and consistent with these kinds of details?"}
{"_id": "109066", "title": "Where should heavy development assets like specification documents and multimedia editor source files be stored?", "text": "It's not uncommon where I'm working on a site that includes things like binary (or effectively undiffable due to factors outside my control) specification documents (e.g., PDFs, Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets) and multimedia source files (e.g., FLA source files, Photoshop files, Illustrator files). How should these be stored? My instinct is to just throw them into git. Storage is cheap, but it does make the clone operation take much, much longer than it otherwise would. A potential alternative would be to use a wiki. I've tried it in some cases but never ran into a case where the wiki format's inherent strengths (layperson-accessible version history and easy access to latest copies) have or would have led to enough benefit to justify the additional work in maintaining the wiki. The third option is to just let them hang out locally and in email threads. So what approach should I take to this?"}
{"_id": "225892", "title": "Which mathematical properties apply to XOR Swap algorithm (and similar bitwise operator algorithms)?", "text": "Assume you have two variables a and b, and you need to swap them, and for whatever reason, making a temporary variable for storage is not an option. This is the algorithm in pseudocode               a \u2190 a XOR b     b \u2190 a XOR b     a \u2190 a XOR b      Based on examples I can see that this does work. But, _why_ does it work? More specifically, how was this derived? Was it a mere coincidence that `XOR` such and such values does this? This question applies to **all bitwise operators.** I understand perfectly what they do, and how they work, and various algorithms that take advantage of them. But, are there mathematical properties of these bitwise operators that these algorithms are derived from? What are those mathematical properties? And which of them apply to the specific example of an `XOR` swap?"}
{"_id": "109061", "title": "Should a software developer carry business cards?", "text": "I was at Google Developer Day yesterday and I was approached by several companies looking for hire and for freelance work. As I am interested in doing some freelance work I chatted a little with the representatives of these companies and they all gave me their business cards. I was a little taken aback by this since I didn't have a business card for myself and the fact that I find business card to be quite simply outdated. So, lacking a business card, I gave them my website address where I have a portfolio, links to my GitHub and LinkedIn accounts and a blog. Should I order some business cards and carry them around in these events? I can't shake the feeling that business card are outdated, am I just plain wrong?"}
{"_id": "76977", "title": "Outsourcing Quality Assurance and Testing", "text": "I was recently approached by a software firm that specializes in Quality Assurance and Testing. Up until this point, the developers at our (small) company have been responsible for their own QA for the most part and we've had mixed results. We're at the point where we are ready to hire a full time QA guy, but I was curious as to whether or not other's have used teams like this in the past and what the results were? I'm a bit skeptical but trying to be open-minded. **tl;dr What was your experience with an outsourced QA/testing team? Pros and cons?**"}
{"_id": "140153", "title": "Are there any ways to track for the visitor of my site , which site visitor come from?", "text": "This is a problem because when I do email campaign, There is a link on the email, that link to my company homepage, I would like to differentiate between the visitor come from another way (e.g. search on google) or the visitor come from the email I have sent. Is it able to check such kind of information ? Thankyou"}
{"_id": "76979", "title": "Should I just slog it out or discuss with my PM?", "text": "Having \"completed\" my task, I have recently been assigned by my PM to work on a maintenance project by another PM. In this other project, the client wants to add new features and I'm assigned to do a feature. I'm finding my job over my head for various reasons:   * code is difficult to understand/read as      * not well-documented     * standard naming convention is not followed (seems non-existent, and confusing at times because certain words are used in the wrong way)     * dead-code     * redundant code     * code such as (isTrue == true)     * temp variables that are not inlined and not prefixed with temp     * etc...   * visual sourcesafe is used   * visual studio 2005 is used, even though they have vs2008 and vs2010. I'm unable to use a plugin for quick navigation (more of an inconvenience)   * they just want to get things working, without caring about maintainability. I would love to refactor the code base, and suggest upgrading to svn and a newer version of VS. However, I don't feel that the PM or my new colleagues are amenable to such changes. On top of that, I don't have the confidence of delivering on time (if I'm even able to deliver), and if I do make these suggestions, he may assume that I think I feel that I am superior (not true) and I am competent enough for my assigned task, making it difficult for me to raise issues in the future. I just don't feel I have sufficient experience yet for a project of this complexity, and will likely end up writing copy-and-paste and googled code with lots of unpaid overtime. I will get surface learning without deep learning, and I feel the entire experience will mar my joy of programming, perhaps making me shun it completely. In the meanwhile, if I do nothing about it, I will probably just have to slog it out within the current constraints. To this end, I have borrowed books on brownfield application development and visual sourcesafe as references. What should I do? Should I make my suggestions? How early should I tell him if I don't feel I can deliver? Or should I just slog it out while risking not being able to get my task done?"}
{"_id": "244689", "title": "Why do we need fork to create new process", "text": "In Unix whenever we want to create a new process, we fork the current process i.e. we create a new child process which is exactly the same as the parent process and then we do exec system call to replace the child process with a new process i.e. we replace all the data for the parent process eith that for the new process. Why do we create a copy of the parent process in the first place and why don't we create a new process directly? I am new to Unix please explain in lay-man terms."}
{"_id": "177257", "title": "How do people deal with Android fragmentation?", "text": "I've spent the past few years working on iOS apps, and I'm now giving some serious consideration to creating an Android port of one of my apps. I'm sure that complaints about fragmentation are a frustrating cliche to experienced Android programmers, but as an iOS programmer, I'm quite honestly overwhelmed by the number of configurations and devices that my app might end up running on. There are literally thousands of Android devices in the wild, but I know there are successful Android developers in the world and I know they're not testing or developing for thousands of different devices. So how can a relatively small company deal with fragmentation? Is it possible to pick the five or six most popular devices, focus on those and prevent the app from being installed on any other devices? Are there any other strategies for practically dealing with the number of different configurations an app will face?"}
{"_id": "205998", "title": "Unit testing in node.js and mocking modules", "text": "I'm trying to test this wrapper to request that I made:               // lib/http-client.js     var app = require('app'),         request = require('request');          exports.search = function(searchTerm, next) {       var options = {         url: 'https://api.datamarket.azure.com/Bing/Search/Web',         qs: {           'Query': '\\'' + searchTerm + '\\'',           'Adult': '\\'Off\\'',           '$format': 'json',           '$top': 10         },         auth: {           user: app.get('bing identifier'),           pass: app.get('bing identifier')         }       };            request(options, function(err, res, body){              if (err) return next(err);         // TODO: parse JSON and return results       });     };      where `app` is an instance of express. The question is, how do I test the function of this \"module\" without having to touch the internet? If I was to do this in other languages I would have mocked the request module but I don't know if that's the best way to do it in node.js.               // NODE_PATH=lib          describe('Http Client', function(){       it('should return error if transport failed', function(){         var c = require('http-client'),             results = 'foo';         // request mock should return results when called         c.search('foo', function(err, results){           results.should.eql(res);         });         // TODO       });       it('should return an error if JSON parsing failed', function(){         // TODO       });       it('should return results', function(){         // TODO       });     });"}
{"_id": "228442", "title": "Event and Objects", "text": "I have an array of objects. Instead of me when performing a task asking every object If they have anything to say about that, I would rather like the following:               Perform Task          Object #4 Hey, I have something to say about that!       And If object #4 says something about that, maybe Object #17 has anything to add up with, because Object #4 did say something. Do you understand? How do I structure this?"}
{"_id": "50074", "title": "When required to convert code from a language you don't know, how do you go about it?", "text": "Scenario: Your boss tells you he needs a big chunk of code in language X converting into code Y. You know code Y but are only vaguely aware of X. You only have limited amount of time. Do you try and find a code converter? slowly hack through the code until it works? outsource? say you cant?"}
{"_id": "194868", "title": "Looking for companies with strong R&D departments, specifically for A.I., but I can't seem to find many. Are there only a handful?", "text": "I plan to get a PhD in CS, concentrating in some subfield of artificial intelligence, not sure which one at the moment. I'm looking into R&D departments in industry, but there don't seem to be too many. For example, I have literally found hundreds of labs for the basic sciences and other engineering fields, but for CS I've found: Google, IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Yahoo Research, AT&T Research and GE Research. Are there not tons of companies like there are in other disciplines?"}
{"_id": "228447", "title": "Three approaches for obtaining different sized versions of an image from the server", "text": "My android app needs different sized versions of images for different purpose and bandwidth preservation. Approach one:   * when the user uploads their avatar or another image, my php script creates 4 versions of that image: mini_200, medium_300, big_400 and original. those paths are then taken and stored in the database. Then, when I need the smallest image, I load it from `http://myserver.com/item_images/200_mini_27304lkewsjfimage.jpg` Approach two:   * same as approach one, but instead of adding prefixes to the names of the files, I store them in different folders - big, medium, mini. and in My app I just pass a parameter for which folder to look in Approach three:   * when the user uploads their avatar or another image, I only store the original. Then, when I need the smallest image, I load if this way: `http://myserver.com/image_resizer.php?image=\"93_iosdfj0sd9fj.jpg\"&new_width=200&new_height=200` Which one is better and why? I feel like reinventing the wheel here, because this topic is too broad and I dont know where to read about it"}
{"_id": "228444", "title": "What is best software design in creating methods?", "text": "I had created a extension method which extended the string type in C#.               // actually checks if the string is empty or null and then looks up the default     // promotion code which is set in the backend admin system.      promocode.HasPromode();       I thought that was fine and dandy, but another colleague thought I should inject the method through constructor injection, which should implement a interface. I think this is overkill to have a simple lookup function to do that. Another colleague thought that extending the string type makes it simpler to use it wrong and exposes it for the wrong purposes. Which one is right? All solutions work fine; but some of these solutions should be the best one, or does it matter actually? It should matter, because we are having those discussions and we're trying to make the code better."}
{"_id": "228445", "title": "JMS for synchronous calls vs leaving homebrewed messaging system?", "text": "I'm refactoring existing code. Right now the code has a main server with a CLI and restful interface as seperate applications which communicate with the server via a home-brewed message passing package that they share. The system is written by a few hardware engineers with no real programing experience. It looks a bit ugly at times, but it has been working in this code for a year+ with minimal hassle, beyond limiting passing of a single serialzed object per command. We now have to implement JMS communication to interface with a third system and I jumped all on it. I'm certain were use JMS queues to push some information that really should be pushed as well. My first inclination was to replace the whole home-brew message passing system with JMS. However, the home-brew system is written for synchronous calls, with an obvious \"I make a request, wait and send me a response\" sort of behavior. JMS is really used for async calls. I could make JMS work for synchrnous calls with a little hacking, but that hacking needs to exist in three applications... My question is, would it be better to remove an existin system that seems to mostly work with JMS to have the extra robustness of an enterprise level system, and a single communicaton protocol, or is it best to leave well-enough alone and not waste programing time trying to remove the homegrown system that seems to work? Incidentally, as far as I know there is no built-in tool to make JMS handle sycnrhnous calls without my maintaining a state machine is there? If there is a way I can tel JMS to send responses to my requests the way a restful interface would work and JMS will handle the blocking and keeping of tate to make it happen without my writing it I would definately switch entirely to JMS."}
{"_id": "194863", "title": "finds all possible permutations of a certain numbers of distinct digits", "text": "I am stuck on the following problem. I want to find an algorithm that finds all possible permutations of a certain numbers of distinct digits and then put them in a large matrix for instance. For instance for the digits 0, 1 and 2 I want to get the matrix: 2 1 2 0 1 0   1 2 0 2 0 1   0 0 1 1 2 2 Here they are in order but this is not required per se. Does anyone know a nice algorithm to achieve this? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "107382", "title": "Why most of large corporations websites are bad?", "text": "As a electronic customer, I sometimes have to go to manufacturer's websites to find information about products, drivers/firmware update, etc. More ore less, most of these websites, IMO, are bad. They're slow, not user-friendly (some time, really ugly), and take me lots of time to do what I need to. For example, in Sony's website, I must find \"Vaio laptops\" in a list of dozens (may be hundreds) products, then find my specific model in a list of hundreds model. Fail! I also see that on several websites, they may be slightly better, but still not good (HP, Dell, Lenovo (somewhat better), ...) Well, they may be have a large back-end system there, but that does not mean they can make the frond-end faster and more user-friendly. Is there an obvious reason that large corporation's website are that bad?"}
{"_id": "194865", "title": "Where did the html/css 'float' concept come from?", "text": "Pretty straightforward, was wondering what the inspiration or precedent for the CSS 'float' concept. I'm not familiar with any other graphic APIs or other layout DSLs that use this concept, but it's such a huge part of HTML layouts. I'm curious if a previous language had a similar concept, or if 'floats' originated from the land of HTML/CSS. Thanks."}
{"_id": "181397", "title": "Many Blocking VS Single Non-Blocking Workers", "text": "Assume there is an HTTP server which accepts connections and then it has _somehow_ wait for headers to be fully sent in. I wonder what is the most common way of implementing it and what are the rest pros and cons. I can only think of these: **Many blocking workers are good because:**   * It is more responsive.   * Easier to introduce new connections (workers pick them up them selves rather than outsider waiting till it can add it to a synchronized list).   * CPU usage balances automatically (without any additional effort) as number of connections increases and decreases.   * Less CPU usage (blocked threads are taken out of the execution loop and do not require any logic for jumping between clients). **Single non-blocking worker is good because:**   * Uses less memory.   * Less vulnerable to lazy clients (which connect to the server and send headers slowly or don't send at all). As you probably can see, in my opinion multiple worker-threads seem a bit better solution overall. The only problem with it is that it is easier to attack such server. **Edit (more research):** Some resource I found on the web (Thousands of Threads and Blocking I/O \\- The old way to write Java Servers is New again (and way better) by Paul Tyma) hints that blocking approach is generally better but I still don't really know how to deal with fake connections. P.S. Do not suggest using some library or applications for the task. I am more interested in knowing how it actually works or may work rather than have it working. P.S.S. I have split logic into multiple parts and this one only handles accepting HTTP headers. Does not process them."}
{"_id": "181392", "title": "(Dis)advantages of datetime vs. long in globally used applications", "text": "I am currently designing a web/mobile application the bulk of whose users will be distributed across the different U.S. time zones with a potential of scaling up to other countries and time zones as well I have worked with several other globally used apps and noticed they all used datetime to record timestamps with the default time zone being that in which the application is typically hosted. In displaying the times, they would typically do not care about the user preference (locale) and simply display the timestamp with the TZ and leave it up to the user to convert if (s)he wishes. I am entertaining the idea of shifting away from that paradigm and recording timestamps as one global time (GMT) in long milis regardless of the user location and collecting the user locale by their IP or letting them change their TZ as a preference in their profile, which would later be used for display formatting of all their GMT long milis. This seems like a simpler solution than confusing the app design with TZs. I am curious to hear feedback of pros and cons to this approach. I am also curious to hear some explanations why the, IMO overcomplicated time zoned datetime data type has ever been used across databases and not a uniform single time zone with conversions just for display."}
{"_id": "166250", "title": "How can I improve these online java programming puzzles I wrote for my (middle/high school) students?", "text": "I'm teaching some middle and high school students programming right now, and I found that some of them really liked online programming puzzles. So I created http://www.kapparate.com/coder/ , and right now there's 4 categories of puzzles. All the puzzles are set up right now so that variables are pre-initialized, and the user plugs in some code in the middle. For example, the problem might say these are pre-initialized:               int x = ????;     int y = ????;     int z;      and then the program might ask the student to write the final line of code: `z = x + y;`. Now I know I could go a long way in improving the usability of this site (like having an area that lists the pre-defined variables), but I was wondering if this concept seems sound. I know some sites have kids fill in functions, but not all of my students know what functions are yet, and I'm trying to introduce online programming puzzles before that."}
{"_id": "189561", "title": "When a garbage collector compacts objects in the heap, does it change the references on the stack?", "text": "This seems like a simple question, but after a lot of reading on the subject, I still haven't found a definitive answer (perhaps because it is so simple). My question is this: when a garbage collector compacts objects in the heap, how are the references to those objects in the stack updated? I can think of two possible solutions:   1. Go through the stack (and references in the heap) and update the reference to point to the new location of the object. In an analogy to moving, this would be like sending a letter to anyone who has your address and asking them to update their address book with your new address.   2. Provide some sort of look up table. This would be like leaving a forwarding address with the local post office. Do garbage collectors predominantly use one of these two methods? Some other method? Both?"}
{"_id": "6146", "title": "Is mod_security a good thing?", "text": "I've recently been frequented by erroneous error messages from mod_security. Its filter sets cover outdated PHP exploits, and I have to rewrite my stuff because Wordpress&Co had bugs years ago. Does this happen to anyone else? > Apache mod_security blocks possibly dangerous HTTP requests before they > reach applications (PHP specifically). It uses various filter sets, mostly > regex based. So I have a nice shared hosting provider, technically apt and stuff. But this bugged me: Just last week I had to change a parameter name `&src=` in one of my apps because mod_security blocks ANY requests with that. I didn't look up its details, but this filter rule was preventing the exploitability of another app which I don't use and probably never had heard about. Still I had to rewrite _my code_ (renaming parameter often suffices to trick mod_security) which had nothing to do or in common with that! And today, a silly regex blocks form submissions, because I wanted to submit php sample code. Given, this is the simple stuff that mod_security is there to protect against. But I don't believe mod_security can detect seriously obfuscated code, and just goes off at obvious (and in this case totally trivial) php snippets. Basically I'm getting penalized by mod_security because other people released bug-prone apps. (Not saying my apps are ultra secure - I'm pretty security wary, but make no hyperbolic claims.)   I've already asked my provider to disable it anyway, the benefits are too minuscle IMO and for my apps. * * * What do you think? Does mod_security make much sense outside of WP hosting? Or is it really just a bunch of blacklists of long passed security bugs? Which of its rules are actually helpful? Is there an application level equivalent?"}
{"_id": "189569", "title": "Moving from local storage to a remote database: how should I cache the data locally?", "text": "I have a .NET (C#) application that I am releasing soon, which also has some support files. Right now I am storing those files as .txt files, and I update them as necessary whenever the application version changes. I am wondering if a better solution might be to store the information in those files in a central database instead, and have all clients access that database when then launch. This would prevent the need to update the software each time those reference files change. My question for the gurus here is this: Is this a wise decision, and if so...what would be the best method of storing the downloaded data? A temp file? in memory? something else? Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "231436", "title": "How does jQuery's mechanism of event handlers work", "text": "I'm in the need of widen my perspective on the framework libraries, to be able to make well aware choices of if/which/when to add a framework to a website. One thing that got my attention was event handlers, as they seems to be somewhat more complex structured. For me, in the early days, an event handler were added inline with its element `<a onclick=\"DoSomething();\">...</a>` Later on they were removed from being inline and added globally `document/element.onlick = \"DoSomethingOnClick` or `document/element.onlick = \"function() {...}` As of today, the frameworks add their own mechanism on top and I am trying to grasp what/how that actually means/is done. By studying code parts it appears to me, and here describe in a VERY simple way, that they add the `onclick` event similar to above global and then pass the event when raised, into their own handler, which itself is an object structure containing stored/added functions and elements and their relationships. Is this a correct observation? If not, then how is it done? Can this be showed with a simple written sample in Javascript? Based on the following quote, > \"You can use the jQuery _on_ method to attach an event handler to the > document, and pass it a filter string that will cause your handler only to > fire when the event happens on an element that match the filter, and with > the matched element as _this_ value.\" how is the element that triggered the event identified in the handler (by the event object or ?) and how are the elements to be fired stored/identified? Do the other frameworks, other than jQuery, have a very much different structure of their implementation of event handlers?"}
{"_id": "142337", "title": "Using functions as statements on Python", "text": "A great feature of Javascript is function statements. You can do this:               (function myFunc(){         doSomething();         doSomethingElse();     })();       Which is a way to declare a function and call it without having to refer to it twice. Can that be mimified on Python?"}
{"_id": "131270", "title": "After writing code, why do I feel that \"I would have written better\" after some time?", "text": "I have been working on my hobby project in C++ for more than 2 years. Whenever I write a module/function, I code it with lot of thinking. Now see the problem,               do {       --> write the code in module 'X' and test it       --> ... forget for sometime ...       --> revisit the same piece of code (due to some requirement)       --> feel that \"This isn't written nicely; could have been better\"     } while(true);      Here `'X'` is any module (be it small/large/medium). I am observing that, this happens no matter how much effort I put while coding. So mostly, I refrain myself from seeing a working code. :) Is this a common feeling for many people ? Is this language specific phenomena ? (Because in C++ one can write the same thing in different ways). What should I do, if I get this **re-factoring** feeling for a real world production code, where changing the working code will not earn me much accolades but rather it may invite troubles if it fails."}
{"_id": "240623", "title": "Retried Operation with generic Exception", "text": "I am looking for a way to get the logic of retrying an operation in a single method while keeping the exception types of the operation. I.e., the implementation to retry an operation could look like this:               public void retriedOperation(Operable operable, int maxAttempts) throws Exception {         for (int attempt = 0; attempt < maxAttempts; attempt++) {             try {                 operable.doOperation();                 break;             } catch (Exception e) {                 if (attempt + 1 > maxAttempts) {                     throw e;                 }             }         }     }      This implementation is however only capable of throwing an unspecified `Exception` and thereby looses lots of information. Unfortunately, generic Exceptions can ~~neither be caught nor thrown~~ not be caught in Java, thus something like               public void <ExceptionType extends Exception> retriedOperation(...) throws ExceptionType { ... }      would only allow to catch an unspecific Exception, check if it is of the right type and then cast it. But if it is of another type, it cannot be thrown with this method header. **Is there a way to implement a generic retry function that preserves specific exceptions?**"}
{"_id": "128598", "title": "How often is appropriate to destroy objects?", "text": "I know this is hard to answer without examples, so I'm looking for general principles or guidelines here. I'm thinking within the realm of small- to medium-sized mobile games and apps. I've read a few times the object reuse is a touchstone of creating efficient programs. So, I generally strive to reuse everything possible. But, then I came to realize that every object I'm keeping around has to exist _somewhere_ in memory, so it's begun to seem **inefficient**. I've thought it would be fine, as long as I'm not trying to render the objects' visual or auditory aspects. And I've feared that construction and re-construction of these objects would be too expensive to perform every time I just want to toggle their presence. Let's say, for instance, I've got a GUI comprised of 30 different objects that each represent a screen state-- buttons, panes, text, a background, maybe some animated UI components. Does it seem more sensible to initialize and de- initialize these objects, keeping them around in memory, but disabling their rendering, animations, etc? Or should I just be destroying these things and re-creating them? Other examples of things I keep around might be game objects like non-playable characters, weapons, items, etc."}
{"_id": "200397", "title": "Unit Test OR Console Application", "text": "I am to write some one-off code in c#.net that will do some db manipulation of existing records and call a third party REST Api to update those records. I proposed writing a unit test that does it. And running it in vs2012. My team mates were not too happy with the approach and preferred writing a console application to do it. What does the community think? Which ones do you prefer and what are the pros and cons of each approach. Update #1 - Exact scenario (to keep everyone happy) is as follows An in-house API handles newsletter subscription for my website (well.. the website i work on). So these details are with this API (emails and their preference (subscribe or unsubscribe)). But to achieve certain things we keep a track of these preferences in our application db as well (SQL Server, as a table). Now there is some data in the applicaton's SQL db which is not in sync with the records that API manages. To do this, i want to be able to write a unit test/console app that will read some emails from a given list (maybe an excel), call the api to get preferences associated with those email ids and then update application's SQL db table. Update #2 - Why i want to use unit test to preform this functionality   1. I want to add this test/tests to my existing test project. This way i will have access to ALL Dtos and Contracts (and objects in general) which are used in my application. Saves me time repeating/duplicating any code that i may need into a separate console app.    2. Since it will be part of the existing source control repo, i dont have to maintain a seprate project/application which i will have to if i do a console (if i want to share it with people)"}
{"_id": "200390", "title": "Need help understanding Constructor Chaining", "text": "I'm trying to understand constructor chaining better. I understand that this technique can be used to reduce code duplication for initialization of a class object and I also understand the order in which they're executed. I found the following example and I cannot see clearly what the benefits are in the code? And whether it's necessary? I don't understand why both constructors have '`this`' keyword in them, would calling either constructor (and passing in relevant parameters) have the same result?               //Constructors     public MyClass(double distance, double angle) : this(distance, angle, 0)      {     }          public MyClass(double distance, double angle, double altitude) : this()     {     Distance = distance;     Angle = angle;     Altitude = altitude;     }"}
{"_id": "200391", "title": "GPLv3 Software vs. BSD (3-Clause) OpenSource Project .. i don't get it", "text": "**Preamble:**   * If I say \"BSD\" I mean the 3-Clause BSD license   * If I say \"GPL\" I mean the GPLv3 license   * I am NOT the author of the GPL project   * I am the author of the BSD project **Simple Task:** I wan't to use a 3rd party software (GPL) in (or better 'with') my open source project (BSD) **Situation:**   * I won't change any of the GPL project code (using it AS IS)   * I want to use it as kind of a library (i know about LGPL but it's not available)   * I will use the GPL software as bulk, NOT only parts of the code   * I will indicate the use of the GPL project with license, homepage and where and why it is used in my BSD project (in readme file)   * I will not take the credits for the functionality of the GPL project   * I will take the credits for my project and the \"Adapter\" connecting my BSD project to the GPL project   * I don't want to re-license the GPL project as BSD (!)   * I won't charge any fees or something like that to gain insight you can find the BSD project at GitHub: MOC-Framework (see /Extension/FlowPlayer and /Module/Office/Video) and the GPL project here: Flowplayer (free flash-version) **Simple Question:** Is this possible? **Closing Words** I found some discussions, stating: \"it is possible\", others say \"no\". Most of the \"no\" was for commercial projects. Most of the \"yes\" are referring to: \"include BSD in GPLv3\", but that's not what I mean. I want GPLv3 along with BSD.. I simply can't figure it out."}
{"_id": "181027", "title": "Data decoding initialization/Constructor error handling", "text": "I have a set of loadable data decoders for a specific type of data and a stream to read containing data. Now I want the program to select the correct decoder in a reliable way so I want to use a trial-and-error algorithm. It seems resonable to create a decoder and connect it to the stream using a constructor:               // C++ code     // codecs is an array of structs containing function pointers loaded from a dll     FileIn src(\"foo.wav\");     for(size_t i=0; i<N_CODECS; ++i)         {         try             {             WaveIn wavein(codecs[i],src);             //Process data             return;             }         catch(...) //Swallow error. It's likly that another codec works. But if it were another error??             {             src.reset();             }         }     //no codec found (definitly an error)      Here, there is probably no true error before we have tried all codecs in the list. The reason to try-catch here is that it is not possible to get return code from the ctor. Would it be better to use zombie objects in this case? EDIT: What the constructor does, is the following               WaveIn::WaveIn(Vtable& vt, FileIn& src):m_vt(vt)         {         m_handle=m_vt.create(src);         if(m_handle==NULL) //Resources allocated in DLL were released in this case.              {throw \"Bad file\";}         }      The dtor:               WaveIn::~WaveIn()         {         m_vt.destroy(m_handle);         }"}
{"_id": "135598", "title": "Creating Compelling Desktop Application in .NET", "text": "I'm about to create an open source desktop application. I'm primarily a .NET developer , with experience in ASP.NET and SharePoint. I've created basic Windows Forms applications before, but I have never developed using WPF or Silverlight before. I want a compelling, highly interactive UI for my desktop application. What are my technology choices for doing this, using .NET? In particular, is HTML5 something I should be considering?"}
{"_id": "200399", "title": "Automatically observing changes in database tables", "text": "currently I'm working on a project with the following setting:   * There is a proprietary application which performs transactions on a Microsoft Access database (which is actually stored as an .mdb file)   * The API of the application doesn't have enough functionality for the requirements we're facing   * Our application has direct access to the database We're designing a C# application which has to react to events which are not triggered through the API, so the only way I can think of is to somehow observe the database directly and react accordingly to custom events. One approach would probably be to query the DB time triggered and react, but this possibly leads to performance issues when the DB is large. I would rather appreciate an approach, where the DB itself notifies our application if specified events occur. EDIT: The proprietary application is Enterprise Architect modeling tool, so the expected number of concurrent users will definitely not exceed 10 users and the database size will not be larger than 50 MB. Would it probably be an acceptable solution to outsource the polling activity in a separate thread and notify the rest of the application by events? Concerning the number of users and database size, which load can the MS Access database approximately handle? Is there any well-known pattern/approach for this kind of problem available and if you don't know any, how would you face this problem?"}
{"_id": "128597", "title": "Can we say objects have attributes, states and behaviors?", "text": "I was reading through Oracle's introduction to OOP concepts and I came across this description: > Real-world objects share two characteristics: They all have state and > behavior. Dogs have state (name, color, breed, hungry) and behavior > (barking, fetching, wagging tail). Software objects are conceptually similar > to real-world objects: they too consist of state and related behavior. My problem with that passage is that when describing _state_ its mixes _attributes_ there too. For instance, the name and color of a dog are its attributes, while it being hungry or thursty are its states. So in my opinion it's more accurate to break the characteristics of objects into three parts: **attributes, states and behaviors**. Sure, when translating this into a programming language I can see that the three-fold partition becomes a two-fold one, because both attributes and states will be stored into fields/variables, while behaviors will be store into methods/functions. But conceptually speaking it makes more sense to have the 3 things separate. Here's another example: consider a lamp. Saying that both the lamp size and whether or not it's turned on are states is a stretch in my opinion. The lamp size is an attribute, not a state, while it being turned on or off is a state. Or did I miss something?"}
{"_id": "22705", "title": "Is it more important to focus on a business domain or a programming stack/technology for career growth?", "text": "i just basically realized that it's almost impossible to truly learn and master each programming language/technology before a new version is released. so my initial thought was to focus on the .net platform, but then what about the business domain side of the thing? does it make more sense to pursue more knowledge about the platform including taking MCPD, etc or does it makes more sense in the long run to focus on the business domain, i.e. web commerce and only things that is related? i'm just a starting up as programmer and would like to know what's a good way to direct myself to growth so that i could master a certain area for career growth. any tips or article would be nice ;)"}
{"_id": "231273", "title": "How to get better understanding of the users as a programmer", "text": "I work at a company that wants to be agile, but the business analysts often provide us \"user stories\" that are more solution than problem statement. This makes it difficult to make good design decisions, or in more extreme cases, leaves few design decisions to be made. It does not help the programmers understand the user's needs or make better design decisions in the future. Our product owner makes an effort to provide us with problem statements, but we still sometimes get solution statements, and that tends toward a \"code monkey\" situation. An additional challenge is that some (not all) of my teammates do not see a problem with this, and some of them honestly want to be told what to do. Thus, when we receive a solution statement on our backlog, they are eager to jump right in and work on it. I believe that as a software engineer part of my job is to understand the user's needs so that I can build the right thing for the user. However, within our organization structure, I have zero contact with the user. What kind of things can I do to better understand our users?"}
{"_id": "231272", "title": "Testing the Consumers of Subclassed Data Structures", "text": "PHP's SplQueue does not include a clear() or reset() function to wipe data out of the data structure. My application requires that functionality. This leaves two options: A) Create a subclass of SplQueue. Example:               class UserQueue extends SplQueue     {       public function clear() {         //dequeue everything       }     }      The problem with this approach is that I can't see a way to test _consumers_ of this subclass without relying on clear() as defined in the subclass. In essence I can't think of a way to stub that functionality in PHPUnit short of just depending on UserQueue's own tests. B) Implement the clear() function in every consumer of SplQueue that requires it (most consumers in my application), which seems obviously terrible but would appear to be the only testable method. I am hoping someone out there can tell me there is an obvious way to test option A that I've missed. I also considered wrapping SplQueue but I don't see how this improves matters. Or I could monkey patch it with runkit, but a nearly-allergic aversion to runkit has been beaten into me."}
{"_id": "182286", "title": "serving static or dynamic web-content based on user group", "text": "I need help understanding a problem I have, and that others surely have had as well. I'm working on a web-application that allows users to interface with a database. The application in general has multiple pages with tabbed navigation, that displays and allows _most_ content to be editable. So far, it works well. I need to restrict access to certain pages and disable dynamic (editable) content of the application based on the group (in the database) that the User belongs to, sounds simple, maybe it is. The issue is though, the editable pages have `input` of type buttons and text which should disappear for a user in a restricted group. Also, certain tabbed-navigation selections should not be displayed for Users of a restricted group. At what point in my application should this logic be handled? Using javascript for this logic seems like the wrong approach (using a library like `underscore.js` with templates), but I do need to hide or disable multiple options. My other thought was having dynamic and static web-pages and serve those based on User group. It's clear that I'm lost on this subject, and could use some insight as how this problem should be approached in a way that is sane so the next guy behind me won't say...wtf. I'm not sure if this question is better suited for stackoverflow or here. So hopefully this is the right place!"}
{"_id": "231276", "title": "How do desktop applications talk to remote database server?", "text": "I have often seen desktop applications in stores and banks. How do these desktop applications talk to a remote database central server? There will be a desktop application which is installed on multiple computers in multiple different locations. How do all these machines talk to one central remote database server?"}
{"_id": "182283", "title": "Should one declare alternative response types (e.g. JSON) in Rails controller actions even if not utilising them?", "text": "Just wondering what the accepted convention is for Rails controller design. Currently, every controller in my app that I've written it set up to send a JSON response when necessary. Thing is, I only ever utilse HTML responses in my app. So is it a good idea to have them defined? For example:               def show       @dog = Dog.find(params[:id])            respond_to do |format|         format.html         format.json { render json: @dog } # needed?       end     end      It makes the controller code less readable (because more LOC) and it also means I have to think deeply about what a good JSON response should be when HTML is not being is used, so it decreases the speed of my controller development. This is especially true when you have conditional responses. For example:               def create       @dog = Dog.new(params[:dog])            respond_to do |format|         if @dog.save           format.html { redirect_to @dog }           format.json { render json: @dog, status: :created, location: @dog }         else           format.html { render action: \"new\" }           format.json { render json: @dog.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }         end       end     end      The only positive I can see is that it \"future-proofs\" the controllers (i.e. if I need JSON responses later on then they are already written). But if I'm writing JSON responses just _because_ then by that same logic I might as well write XML responses (i.e. `format.xml`) too..."}
{"_id": "22709", "title": "How long should I wait before re-contacting someone I've interviewed with for a web development/programming job?", "text": "After the interview has occurred, and after the thank you letter has been sent, how long should I wait to re-contact them? Should I wait two weeks? One week?"}
{"_id": "77623", "title": "Best practice to keep the changes in the project well documented", "text": "What is the best practice and software you use to document change related document. lso, how you prefer to document the changes in the project. Let say, you got a requirement to make some changes in the project. How do you proceed?   * Do you take the complete backup before processing. Will this backup be documented. If yes, then how?   * How the change will be documented? Any template? How this will be shared between the peers?   * What will be the content of the change request procedure?    * Do you keep the affected code, queries etc in some folder/document?"}
{"_id": "204892", "title": "Drop table if it already exists and then re-create it?", "text": "I was just learning about sqlite in android programming from the New Boston Travis videos and I have come across something strange: It is said that if the database does not already exists, onCreate() method is called to create it. so far, so good. But, if the database already exists, then onUpgrade() method is called which simply drops the database and then re- creates it. What is the sense behind such an update? why not just leave the database alone?"}
{"_id": "204890", "title": "What's meant by, \"TODO Auto-generated method stub\"?", "text": "I am using eclipse for android programming, and every here and there i see the statement, \"TODO Auto-generated method stub.\" I understand that these methods were generated automatically by eclipse upon creation of classes and other trigger activities but I do not understand the need to have it mentioned everywhere. What's the need to have it mentioned everywhere repeatedly?"}
{"_id": "77629", "title": "Expanding knowledge of python / Next book and/or Topic to read/research", "text": "I have been programming python and web apps awhile now but never delved very deep into OOP. I use classes all the time but I am pretty sure i am not fully getting what I could get from OOP. So today I popped open Learn Python (mark lutz) which i had read awhile ago, flipped through the oop section in about 5 minutes and realized it contained nothing new. What would you suggest as a next step in becoming better at understand OOP?"}
{"_id": "184614", "title": "hginit - #ifdefs ridiculous", "text": "I was reading Joel Spolsky's mercurial introduction when it struck me: > \"And now what they do is this: each new feature is in a big #ifdef block. So > they can work in one single trunk, while customers never see the new code > until it\u2019s debugged, and frankly, that\u2019s ridiculous.\" Why is this so _ridiculous_ anyway, isn't this, if nothing else, simply simpler to handle? It's nothing fancy but does the trick - at least if you are already \"married\" with subversion. What is the downside? I kind of don't get the argument."}
{"_id": "184615", "title": "Blocking IP address for web-scraping service", "text": "# Background Consider the following scenario:   1. **Link.** User provides a link to some poorly formatted website (e.g., _creative commons content_ ).   2. **Scrape.** Server downloads the content (web scrape), always throttled.   3. **Format.** Server formats the content (e.g., performs natural language processing).   4. **Return.** Server posts formatted results back to user. # Problem The server hosting the poorly-formatted website ( **host** ) can block the server that pulls down the content ( **scraper** ). If this happens, the user can no longer use the service to automatically change the format. Assume that the terms of service do not forbid scraping, nor is there an API available to pull the data directly. ## Comments Regarding Copyright   * The content is not subject to copyright: it is either creative commons content or already in the public domain.   * The content would be from whitelisted domains that have been vetted (e.g., U.S. federal government works).    * For what it's worth, I don't even know if the sites will block the requests (especially given how infrequent the requests will be and I will likely do some pre-caching). It's mostly academic at this point # Question What strategies would you employ (such as using a virtual network, or cloud service) such that the IP address of the **scraper** can easily (potentially dynamically) change to avoid being blocked by the **host**?"}
{"_id": "141206", "title": "Call constructor using an arguments object in javascript?", "text": "Is it possible to call the constructor using an arguments object?               var MyClass = function(a, b){       this.a = a;       this.b = b;     };     var myClassInstance = function(){       //This line would not work, but is what I'm asking. Is there a way besides eval?       return new MyClass.apply(?, arguments);     }('an A value', 'a B value');"}
{"_id": "230895", "title": "Accepting a numerical range in a function call", "text": "I have encountered two ways of doing it:               void foo(int from, int to); /* 'from' inclusive, 'to' exclusive */          void foo(int startIndex, int rangelength);      Has one style historically been preferred over the other? If so, was it just a matter of convention or was it due to some deeper underlying reason? I'm currently programming in Java and noticed that the Arrays class uses the former style. The exclusivity of the `to` argument felt somewhat unintuitive to me, which led me to ask this question."}
{"_id": "205411", "title": "Why does git use hashes instead of revision numbers?", "text": "I always wondered why git prefers hashes over revision numbers. Revision numbers are much clearer and easier to refer to (in my opinion): There is a difference between telling someone to take a look at revision 1200 or commit 92ba93e! (Just to give one example). So, is there any reason for this design?"}
{"_id": "205412", "title": "How to represent days and time graphically for a project I have done", "text": "How to represent the days and hours of different tasks(design, development, testing) of a software project in a graphical way. I tried using a Gantt chart for it, but it does not represent the hours but just days, of a particular task, in a project. Is there any way to do this in software management, I need this to show it to a client for a project I did. Here is some of the values I intend to use.               \u25cf   Research time        \u25cb    Days 10 - 8 hours * 10 = 80     \u25cf   Design time         \u25cb    Days 10 -8 hours * 10 = 80     \u25cf   Development time        \u25cb    Days 15 \u2013 8 hours times 15 = 120          \u25cf   Testing time        \u25cb    Days 3 \u2013 8 hours times 3 = 24"}
{"_id": "119228", "title": "How to deal with the programmer's block?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Dealing with frustration when things don't work Something I find myself coding something difficult and after hours of struggle my mind goes blank and I don't know what I am doing anymore. I'm not sure if this happen to a lot of programmers. Does this happen to you How do you deal with it?"}
{"_id": "205414", "title": "Difference between Zend Framework & Zend Server?", "text": "The title tells everything about my question but still let me elaborate to clarify : I know very well about the ZEND Framework but what about the Zend server? Does it work like Apache server or anything else? What is the main difference between these two? I also know that Zend Server is a product of the Zend Company but where is it used?"}
{"_id": "205418", "title": "What is the proper way of nesting resources in REST model?", "text": "I'm designing a REST API of service and got stuck on proper way to nest resources. Resources: partners, tickets, settings Connections between resources:   * partner has many tickets,   * partner has set of settings, Bussines logic:   * you can list all partners as anonymous user,   * you can add new ticket to specified partner as anonymous user,   * only partner can list his tickets,   * only partner can modify his tickets,   * only partner can list settings,   * only partner can modify settings, What I did till now: **Partner resources** GET /partners - list all partners   GET /partners/:id - show details of the partner specified by :id parameter   GET /partners/:partner_id/tickets - list of partner's tickets   GET /partners/:partner_id/tickets/:id - details of the specified partner's ticket   POST /partners/:partner_id/tickets - saves new ticket   PUT /partners/:partner_id/tickets/:id - updates the ticket specified by :id parameter   GET /partners/:partner_id/settings - list partner's settings   PUT /partners/:partner_id/settings - update partner's settings **Problem/Question** Would it be proper way to split nested resources (tickets, settings) to seperate resources or duplicate them as seperate resources? E.g. GET /tickets/:id   POST /tickets   PUT /tickets/:id GET /settings   PUT /settings"}
{"_id": "42930", "title": "Are specific types still necessary?", "text": "One thing that occurred to me the other day, are specific types still necessary or a legacy that is holding us back. What I mean is: do we really need short, int, long, bigint etc etc. I understand the reasoning, variables/objects are kept in memory, memory needs to be allocated and therefore we need to know how big a variable can be. But really, shouldn't a modern programming language be able to handle \"adaptive types\", ie, if something is only ever allocated in the shortint range it uses fewer bytes, and if something is suddenly allocated a very big number the memory is allocated accordinly for that particular instance. Float, real and double's are a bit trickier since the type depends on what precision you need. Strings should however be able to take upp less memory in many instances (in .Net) where mostly ascii is used buth strings always take up double the memory because of unicode encoding. One argument for specific types might be that it's part of the specification, ie for example a variable should not be able to be bigger than a certain value so we set it to shortint. But why not have type constraints instead? It would be much more flexible and powerful to be able to set permissible ranges and values on variables (and properties). I realize the immense problem in revamping the type architecture since it's so tightly integrated with underlying hardware and things like serialization might become tricky indeed. But from a programming perspective it should be great no?"}
{"_id": "42936", "title": "Need help deciding if Joomla! experience as a good metric for hiring a particular prospective employee", "text": "My company has been looking to hire a PHP developer. Some of the requirements for the job include:   1. an understanding of design patterns, particularly MVC.   2. some knowledge of PHP 5.3's new features.   3. experience working with a PHP framework (it doesn't matter which one). I interviewed a man today who's primary work experience involved working with Joomla!. As an employee, he will be required to work on existing and new web applications that use Zend Framework, CakePHP and/or CodeIgniter. It is my opinion that we shouldn't dismiss hiring a developer just because he has not used the same technologies that he'll be using on the job. So, I'd like to know about the kind of coding experience working with Joomla! can provide. I've never bothered to take more than a brief look (if that) at the Joomla! package, so I'm hoping to lean on the knowledge of my peers.   * Would you consider Joomla! to contain a professional code-base?   * Is the package well organized, and/or OO in general, or is it more like WordPress where logic and presentation are commingled?   * When working with Joomla!, is the developer encouraged to use best practices?   * In your opinion, would experience working with Joomla! garner the skills needed to get up to speed with Zend or CakePHP quickly, or will there be a steep learning curve ahead of the developer? I'm not saying that Joomla! is a bad technology, or even that it is lower on the totem pole when compared to the frameworks I've mentioned. Maybe it's awesome, I dunno. I simply have no idea!"}
{"_id": "138614", "title": "Is there a certain number of lines of code to be followed /maintain?", "text": "I am developing a software system (Patient Administration System) and I have noticed it already had 451 lines of code(in one namespace). Is this bad? Or does the number of lines of code not matter as long as the methods and comments are useful and they doing what they are intended to do? Or there is a number of lines of code to maintain like a namespace should only have 500 lines of code something like that"}
{"_id": "249467", "title": "Use camera to analyze homogeneity", "text": "We are working with some screens whose in the production process change their state from a transparent state to a colored state. This colored state is achieved to block light transmittance. In this process where the screen gets tinted, this tint must be applied homogeneously. This is a very important point of the process. To check this homogeneity, I've been asked to develop a mobile app (Android) in which using the camera I could check if the tint is applied homogeneously. I'm an android programmer so the knowledge about android is not a problem. But I've never worked with images this way so I ignore if such a thing like this could be done. My first idea is to develop an app which using the camera takes a photo, this is the easy part. After this, I should process the image some way that I could identify non homogeneous parts, maybe convert the image to grey scales and check for clearer or darker tones. I'm not asking about how should I programm that, as this is just a first idea on how could I achieve this, what I'm asking help for is to know how could I do that kind of image processing that could detect homogeneity."}
{"_id": "183880", "title": "should F12's request headers show session id as cookie?", "text": "I'm trying to educate myself on potential web attacks. I just found a site (which will rename anonymous) where it shows me what looks to be like the php session id inside the cookies section of the request header. My immediate reaction was \"wow, that's bad\"... but then i couldn't really come up with a scenario as to how someone could use this to mess up the site. But maybe its because I'm a newbie to this stuff. But assuming that I got someone else's session id... I'd have to hack the site with their session id before it expires right? So my question is, how real is this threat? And is this common, where web developers store session ids in cookies, thereby making it visible in F12? Sorry for the remedial questions. I read the article: Why popular websites store very complicated session related data in cookies -- and what does it all mean? And i get that sometimes, you want to use cookies to move data off server to client... but I think I need more clarification on how serious a security breach this is."}
{"_id": "183881", "title": "How do you debug without an IDE?", "text": "Every time I look for an IDE (currently i'm tinkering with Go), I find a thread full of people recommending Vi, Emacs, Notepad++ etc. I've never done any development outside of an IDE; I guess I've been spoiled. How do you debug without an IDE? Are you limited to just logging?"}
{"_id": "128725", "title": "How to write a good app store description?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to improve the quality of app descriptions I've just finished writing an iPhone app, and I've completed everything on my app store submission checklist except the description. Has anyone got any advice on how to write a really catchy description that's likely to get users interested?   * What things are important to include in the description?   * What _not_ to include? I really have no experience with this, as this is the first app I'll ever release to the store."}
{"_id": "70016", "title": "Why don't software vendors use existing scheduling facilities for automatic upgrades?", "text": "It is common for software vendors to offer automatic updates. The research and installation of these updates can be done   * at application startup   * through a service or process in the background (which often can be seen in the icon tray)   * Sometimes at the opening of a session or boot The problem I encounter today is that Google, Sun Java, Adobe and others... updates system seem to squander resources of my computer to watch for updates continuously. One uses a service, the other a running process... Why do those suppliers not use the scheduling tools offered by the operating system, like the **Task Scheduler**?"}
{"_id": "96331", "title": "How should I charge for programming things which take two minutes to fix?", "text": "I am really confused with this. I believe that the more I am getting experience, the more I am becoming an expert at finding mistakes and fixing them quickly. Now my boss got website from a programmer who does very very bad coding. Now he sends the list of problems to fix. Suppose it's the stylesheet problem, and the old guy does not know how to fix it, but due to my experience I know straightaway what the problem is, and I can fix it in two minutes and many similar problems like that. But after fixing all that I realise that I fixed all problems in 15 minutes which other guy was not able to solve. I get 25$ per hour, so I feel very bad charging 6$ for that list of things which took many years of experience to learn. Is it OK to charge 6$ or should there be some way to charge things?"}
{"_id": "125740", "title": "When a task can be accomplished by either Javascript or CSS, is it better to use CSS?", "text": "I always veto JavaScript by using CSS as much as possible. i.e. I create tabs and rollover buttons using CSS rather than JavaScript. I have seen some solutions\u2014specifically the Wt web-framework\u2014which advocate JavaScript; but gracefully downgrade to CSS if the browser isn't capable/js- disabled. I know CSS and JavaScript have different purposes, however there is overlap; which is the _bourne_ of this question. **Should I continue using CSS as much as possible over JavaScript?**"}
{"_id": "104129", "title": "How to make models do more than setting and getting data and validation", "text": "I am asking this question because after developing a few small custom cms solutions in a framework, I developed the idea that Models can be easily substituted with ORMs which ease up the task of validating, getting and setting data, as thats all they are needed for.   I recently got an order for a complex custom client management solution. After researching a bit on how to proceed on it, I found this:   http://blog.astrumfutura.com/2008/12/the-m-in-mvc-why-models-are- misunderstood-and-unappreciated/      Now the idea is not new as thats what i had read about the MVC approach, models handle the business logic. But I am finding it hard to plan out an approach in which Models handle the business logic and are classes which are complete in themselves because of the type of work i have gotten used to.   Please help me out here by explaining the idea and pointing me to some examples, articles etc"}
{"_id": "122775", "title": "A Project's Initial Commit to Source Control", "text": "I'm probably over-thinking this and it might not matter in the scope of things, but I'm wondering how people build up initial versions of their projects in source control? I'm talking about when you start with nothing but an idea, so no forking an existing project or anything.   * When do you do your commits before having an official or even unofficial version?   * At what point do you start branching for features, or do you this right away? I'm so used to working with existing code bases that I'm not really sure I know if there's a \"best\" way to build up a project history."}
{"_id": "223820", "title": "I need advice for a subsystem design?", "text": "I'm doing it in C++, I can't post the entire thing, because it's gigantic, I'll just sum it up with a simple example.I have:               class B;          class A     {      //Members and methods...       void DoSomething(B* owningSystem);     };          class B     {      //Members and methods     A memberA;     }      So the problem is, A needs to know about B to use its DoSomething method and A is actually a member of B.I have an array of B's, who's number is determined at run-time.This might sound like overdoing it, but I need extreme optimization in this specific project and I was wondering - is it better to pass B* owningSystem or to just store a pointer of each B inside its A member?I don't think DoSomething will ever be inlined, since their count and pointer locations are determined at run-time, but I can chose storing a pointer vs. passing it in the function.I need to minimize the overhead at this point by as much as I can, it's critical.I'm open to any suggestions, please"}
{"_id": "33195", "title": "portfolio building, working for closed-source vs open-source?", "text": "I've currently graduated from my first run at higher education, landed my first full-time gig as a web application developer, and absolutely love it. My question is that in looking for jobs I ran across many jobs that require a certain level of experience and code examples. Much of the work I am doing is both protected by a login, and closed source. How does someone, that is just starting out and needs to be building a resume, go about preparing for the next job. (no matter how much i love my current job, i feel like it's only responsible to always be preparing)"}
{"_id": "236800", "title": "Building a DBAL from scratch", "text": "I am considering building a **DBAL** from scratch with PHP to use within my projects and also to learn through the process. I have noticed on _SO_ and other reputable forums that whenever this is mentioned most users advise to use an established DBAL like Doctrine and to not \" _reinvent the wheel_ \". Why is it that with this specific piece people continuously recommend to use a pre-made one? Is it that hard/problematic to create and build as you go? If so what are the main problem points? I assume security is one. In regards to the established DBALs like Doctrine, I have downloaded and inspected the contents and noticed its rather big, for those who have experience with this, is all of this really necessary? Do you use all of this functionality provided(and know whats happening in the backend)? From what I inspected I am finding it hard to see how I would use more than 40% of the libary, along with this I have the feeling that I am not completely sure whats happening in the backend with such a big library. Perhaps this is a common feeling and you get over it?"}
{"_id": "236802", "title": "Poker software architecture", "text": "I have some classes so far.   * **Hand** stores information like SB, BB, ante, collection of Players   * **HandState** inherits from class Hand. has members like phase {POSTING BLINDS, PREFLOP, FLOP, TURN, RIVER, SHOWDOWN }, pot. I consider every action in a poker hand as a handState. Players post ante (if any), Small blind and big blind posts blinds, the first player to act (UTG) calls the blind, the 2nd player (UTG+1) raises, etc...   * **Player** members: name, position, list of actions so far, stack, etc...   * **Action** members: type {FOLD,CALL, RAISE, RERAISE}, amount The program receives as input the blinds, players, which player to act. Since the input I get is string (its a console program) I have to build the root handState. After I have the root handState, I can build a gameTree where every node is a handState. eg.:               stacks = \"1000,2000,2300,1400,230\";     actions = \"200\";     playerToAct = 2;     BB = 400;     SB = 200;          function makeRoot()     {         stacks = makeArray(stacks)         for(i=0; i < stacks.size; i++)         {             player = new Player;             player.position =  \"UTG\"             if (i > 0)                 player.position += i;             if (i == stacks.size-2)             {                 player.position = \"SB\";                 player.bet(SB);             }             if (i == stacks.size-1)             {                 player.position = \"BB\";                 player.bet(BB);             }         }                   }      My problem that Player and HandState has no connection. What if player has not enough chips to pay the BigBlind (230<400)? SB has enough chips, but if he bets 200, HandState's pot wont know about it? Should I keep track in both class?               //HandState     player.bet(200);     this.pot += 200;          //Player     bet(amount)     {         this.stack -= amount;         this.actions.push(new Action(amount, \"BET\"));     }      I hope there is some seasoned programmer with some poker knowledge to tell some opinion, critique my approach."}
{"_id": "246308", "title": "Why is subclassing TraversableOnce not recommended", "text": "Reading http://www.scala- lang.org/api/2.11.1/index.html#scala.collection.TraversableOnce: > Directly subclassing TraversableOnce is not recommended - instead, consider > declaring an Iterator with a next and hasNext method, creating an Iterator > with one of the methods on the Iterator object, or declaring a subclass of > Traversable. Why is subclassing `TraversableOnce` not recommended?"}
{"_id": "246302", "title": "Should I use check or checked?", "text": "I'm designing a library that binds to html elements on a page. In this particular case the input[type='checkbox'] will be checked if the likeItem property returns true and unchecked if the likeItem property returns false. What's the best practice for naming properties? input { check: likeItem } or input { checked: likeItem } This would also apply to other things like enable/enabled, disable/disabled, etc."}
{"_id": "10340", "title": "How do you prevent the piracy of your software?", "text": "Is it still worth it to protect our software against piracy? There are reasonably effective ways to prevent or at least make piracy difficult?"}
{"_id": "84649", "title": "What is the best way to become a professional in PHP and Website Building?", "text": "I would like to become a professional in php, I have learned nearly all about the language syntax and concepts and I have a good knowledge in C and C++, which made it easier to become familiar with PHP. (Of course, I learned MySql too.) But I don't feel like being able to build even a little good website of my own! It looks like PHP is all about knowing lots of functions and using them, while in fact I don't think it's like that, is it? How can I become a professional in PHP and Website Building? I would do anything and spend whatever amount of time required for that. **EDIT** I've also a very good knowledge in HTML and a normal knowledge in CSS and JavaScript. Sorry for not mentioning that, I just thought it was implicitly included."}
{"_id": "241097", "title": "java.util.HashMap lock on actual HashMap object compare to lock on object that encapsulate the HashMap", "text": "The below Javadoc is an snippet of HashMap documentation. Why authors would emphasize on putting a lock on the object that encapsulate a HashMap? Lock on the actual HashMap Object makes for sense. > **Note that this implementation is not synchronized.** If multiple threads > access a hash map concurrently, and at least one of the threads modifies the > map structurally, it _must_ be synchronized externally. (A structural > modification is any operation that adds or deletes one or more mappings; > merely changing the value associated with a key that an instance already > contains is not a structural modification.) This is typically accomplished > by synchronizing on some object that naturally encapsulates the map. If no > such object exists, the map should be \"wrapped\" using the > Collections.synchronizedMap method..."}
{"_id": "203157", "title": "Does data size in TCP/UDP make a difference on transmission time", "text": "While discussing the development of a network component for our game engine, a member of our team suggested that transmitting either 500 bytes or 1k of data using UDP makes no difference from performance perspective of the system (the time it takes to transmit the data). He actually said that as long as you don't cross the MTU size, the size of the transmitted data doesn't really matter as it's all the same. Is that true for UDP? what about TCP? That sounds just plain wrong to me, but i am not a network expert. *I've been reading about other companies' game networking architectures, and it seems they're all trying to keep transmitted data to a minimum, making my colleague's claims seem even more unreasonable."}
{"_id": "39772", "title": "Is this Job Smell?", "text": "Went for an interview and from what I could gather from the interviewer:   * Development is done to a 'wire-frame' specification where users get constant feedback and can change their mind at will   * I could be expected to 'set up new computers' and 'configure servers'   * Occasionally I will have to do unpaid overtime - particularly towards the end of a project   * They use visual source safe   * The company has chopped and changed quite a bit recently (name, management)   * I will be doing an extra hours work per day as compared to my current position and taking 1 less days holiday   * They want me to complete a test which is some development for their in house system (perhaps they want free work done?) Now I understand all these points by themselves might not mean much, and I would be happy to do a few of them as part of my job. But all together its making me wonder. I've yet to get salary details but I'm thinking it would have to be quite a bit higher for me to consider jumping ship. How does this position sound to you? Depending on the answers I'm tempted to link to company here - so I'm giving them a fair chance and they can defend themselves. Its possible that there are some misunderstandings due to short- ish hour-long interview."}
{"_id": "39771", "title": "Do you prefix variable names with an abbreviation of the variable types? (Hungarian Notation)", "text": "In my current job, there are no coding guidelines. Everyone pretty much codes the way he wants. Which is fine, since the company is small. However, one new guy recently proposed to always use Hungarian Notation. Until now, some of us used some sort of Hungarian Notation, some of us didn't. You know, it's an engineering company, so coding styles do not really matter as long as the algorithms are sound. Personally, I feel that these little type abbreviations are kind of redundant. A well thought-out name usually delivers the same message. (Furthermore, most of our code has to run on some weirdo DSPs, where a concept like `bool` or `float` doesn't exist anyway). So, how do you feel about Hungarian Notation? Do you use it? Why?"}
{"_id": "218414", "title": "How to ensure that all the customers have the latest version of web application deployed on intranet?", "text": "How to update web application deployed on intranet? There is a Java Spring application that will be deployed on intranet of multiple customers. In case when there is a major update what should the developer do in order to ensure that all the customers have the latest version of his software? There is an option that an update module is implemented in the application and it will automatically query the central web repository for updates. This option doesn't work if there is the server where the application is installed doesn't have internet connection. Another possibility that comes to mind is to manually send a .war file to the IT personnel of all the customers for them to install the latest version. How to deal with updates in this situation?"}
{"_id": "218410", "title": "Generating a Nakagami Random Variable", "text": "Assuming the only tool for generating random numbers I have available is generating a uniformly distributed variable `u` on U(0,1). I want to generate a Nakagami Random Variable from it. I know I could just plug `u` into the inverse CDF of the Nakagami distribution, but unfortunately, the inverse CDF isn't trivial to compute."}
{"_id": "202829", "title": "ArrayList in Java", "text": "I was implementing a program to remove the duplicates from the 2 character array. I implemented these 2 solutions, Solution 1 worked fine, but Solution 2 given me UnSupportedoperationException. I am wonderring why i sthat so? The two solutions are given below;               public void getDiffernce(Character[] inp1, Character[] inp2){      // Solution 1:                   // **********************************************************************************              List<Character> list1 = new ArrayList<Character>(Arrays.asList(inp1));         List<Character> list2 = new ArrayList<Character>(Arrays.asList(inp2));         list1.removeAll(list2);              System.out.println(list1);         System.out.println(\"*********************************************************************************\");      // Solution 2:                   Character a[] = {'f', 'x', 'l', 'b', 'y'};         Character b[] = {'x', 'b','d'};              List<Character> al1 = new ArrayList<Character>();          List<Character> al2 = new ArrayList<Character>();          al1 = (Arrays.asList(a)); System.out.println(al1);         al2 = (Arrays.asList(b)); System.out.println(al2);           al1.removeAll(al2);         // retainAll(al2);               System.out.println(al1);                   }"}
{"_id": "202823", "title": "What did network programs use to communicate before sockets was invented (around 1983?)", "text": "Sockets were invented in Berkeley around 1983, but how did networked computer programs work before this? These days, pretty much everything uses sockets, so it's hard for me to imagine how else programs could communicate and Google turned up nothing."}
{"_id": "172994", "title": "Is conditional return type ever a good idea?", "text": "So I have a method that's something like this:               -(BOOL)isSingleValueRecord      And another method like this:               -(Type)typeOfSingleValueRecord      And it occurred to me that I could combine them into something like this:               -(id)isSingleValueRecord      And have the implementation be something like this:               -(id)isSingleValueRecord {         //If it is single value         if(self.recordValue = 0) {                  //Do some stuff to determine type, then return it             return typeOfSingleValueRecord;                  }         //If its not single value          else {             //Return \"NO\"             return [NSNumber numberWithBool:NO];         }     }      So combining the two methods makes it more efficient but makes the readability go down. In my gut, I feel like I should go with the two-method version, but is that really right? Is there any case that I should go with the combined version?"}
{"_id": "41773", "title": "Does TDD really work for complex projects?", "text": "I\u2019m asking this question regarding problems I have experienced during TDD projects. I have noticed the following challenges when creating unit tests.   * **Generating and maintaining mock data** It\u2019s hard and unrealistic to maintain large mock data. It\u2019s is even harder when database structure undergoes changes.   * **Testing GUI** Even with MVVM and ability to test GUI, it takes a lot of code to reproduce the GUI scenario.   * **Testing the business** I have experience that TDD works well if you limit it to simple business logic. However complex business logic is hard to test since the number of combinations of tests (test space) is very large.   * **Contradiction in requirements** In reality it\u2019s hard to capture all requirements under analysis and design. Many times one note requirements lead to contradiction because the project is complex. The contradiction is found late under implementation phase. TDD requires that requirements are 100% correct. In such cases one could expect that conflicting requirements would be captured during creating of tests. But the problem is that this isn\u2019t the case in complex scenarios. I have read this question: Why does TDD work? **Does TDD really work for complex enterprise projects, or is it practically limit to project type?**"}
{"_id": "12958", "title": "Managers X Motivation", "text": "As a programmer what do you think that is the thing that your manager does that mostly decreases your motivation? My manager insists in blocking web content (this week was msdn content and Microsoft domain sites) This is so stupid, make me think I am not a reliable professional or that I am stealing his internet. And not, it is not a small business. It is a huge enterprise where such dinossaurs should not exist anymore."}
{"_id": "70903", "title": "What should I consider before creating a Silverlight website?", "text": "I have opted to use silverlight for a website. This runs in all major browsers. The application could be highly graphically intensive. What have I missed? Edit: It runs on Android and other mobile platforms? I have since written about this here: http://carnotaurus.tumblr.com/post/4921541502/old-school-game-to-be-written- in-silverlight"}
{"_id": "70907", "title": "Windows 7 Phone -- what version of Visual Studio to use?", "text": "I am an iOS developer just getting started with Windows Phone. At the moment, I have the free product Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. I see that Microsoft has several higher-end IDEs, and some of them have some very fancy price tags. My question is -- will upgrading get me significant advantages? One thing I find very annoying is that unlike with Xcode, Visual Studio Express does not let me edit my source code while my app is running. (I don't need fix and continue; but it sure would be nice to be able to make changes while it is running, and have those changes applied the next time I run my app.)"}
{"_id": "236053", "title": "Why must directories be empty before being deleted?", "text": "As far as I know, deleting a non empty directory could work the same way as deleting an empty directory: by removing the pointer to the directory's metadata there would be no pointers to the items it contained, effectively deleting all its children recursively. If that's true, then why must directories be empty before being deleted? Is it just a safeguard to prevent erasing many files at once, or a technical limitation of some (possibly ancient) file system?"}
{"_id": "159895", "title": "Can WinRT really be used at just the boundaries?", "text": "Microsoft (chiefly, Herb Sutter) recommends when using WinRT with C++/CX to keep WinRT at the boundaries of the application and keep the core of the application written in standard ISO C++. I've been writing an application which I would like to leave portable, so my core functionality was written in standard C++, and I am now attempting to write a Metro-style front end for it using C++/CX. I've had a bit of a problem with this approach, however. For example, if I want to push a vector of user- defined C++ types to a XAML ListView control, I have to wrap my user-defined type in a WinRT ref/value type for it to be stored in a `Vector^`. With this approach, I'm inevitably left with wrapping a large portion of my C++ classes with WinRT classes. This is the first time I've tried to write a portable native application in C++. Is it really practical to keep WinRT along the boundaries like this? How else could this type of portable core with a platform-specific boundary be handled?"}
{"_id": "236056", "title": "Are VB.NET and C#.NET projects created from Microsoft Visual Studio \"Open Source\" safe?", "text": "I'm developing software in VB.NET and C#.NET and planning to release their source codes as fully open source. Are these projects \"open-source\" safe? **My doubts are:**   1. VB.NET and C#.NET are using the .NET framework which is not open source.   2. The source codes depends on the compiler and the IDE, although there's 100% open source and compatible alternatives provided, it is confirmed to be buggy and incompatible with my project.   3. My projects were using the Jet 4.0 OLE DB, which is not open source either.    4. Files like .Designer.vb, Microsoft ResX Schema, the Solution file, or the .vbproj etc that are generated by the Visual Studio Maybe I didn't have enough knowledge on open-source in the field where the codes released can be mixed with non open-source, or the codes can be released as open source even though developed and generated on a non open-source IDE. Am I still eligible to hold the \"open-source project\" title? Can the codes be released as open-source? If so, what kind of open source license that are compatible based on the criteria above?"}
{"_id": "211689", "title": "Are mutexes assigned to specific regions of memory?", "text": "I'm currently reading _C++ Concurrency in Action_ by Anthony Williams and I'm facing an obstacle in thought. First he describes deadlocks as when two threads lock simultaneously (at least, that's how I understood it), which makes sense. However, he goes on to explain how you can lock two mutexes at the same time. Obviously this has a function, but with the above (assumingly wrong) understanding that would instantly deadlock both threads. From that obstacle arises a new one; obviously it won't deadlock, which means the mutexes must have a more advanced use than just allowing a single thread to do work in a process. In the book, mutexes are given to particular objects. This leads me to my overall question(s): _Are mutexes assigned to specific memory regions_ , such as objects? If so, how? The book does a great job at explaining how mutexes can be used but never really describes what mutexes are at a low level. I realize they're implementation specific but I never really grasped what exactly they do or how the locking functions use them."}
{"_id": "52099", "title": "Is there a better term than \"smoothness\" or \"granularity\" to describe this language feature?", "text": "One of the best things about programming is the abundance of different languages. There are general purpose languages like C++ and Java, as well as little languages like XSLT and AWK. When comparing languages, people often use things like speed, power, expressiveness, and portability as the important distinguishing features. There is one characteristic of languages I consider to be important that, so far, I haven't heard [or been able to come up with] a good term for: **how well a language scales from writing tiny programs to writing huge programs**. Some languages make it easy and painless to write programs that only require a few lines of code, e.g. task automation. But those languages often don't have enough power to solve large problems, e.g. GUI programming. Conversely, languages that are powerful enough for big problems often require far too much overhead for small problems. This characteristic is important because problems that look small at first frequently grow in scope in unexpected ways. If a programmer chooses a language appropriate only for small tasks, scope changes can require rewriting code from scratch in a new language. And if the programmer chooses a language with lots of overhead and friction to solve a problem that stays small, it will be harder for other people to use and understand than necessary. Rewriting code that works fine is the single most wasteful thing a programmer can do with their time, but using a bazooka to kill a mosquito instead of a flyswatter isn't good either. Here are some of the ways this characteristic presents itself.   * **Can be used interactively** \\- there is some environment where programmers can enter commands one by one   * **Requires no more than one file** \\- neither project files nor makefiles are required for running in batch mode   * **Can easily split code across multiple files** \\- files can refeence each other, or there is some support for modules   * **Has good support for data structures** \\- supports structures like arrays, lists, and especially classes   * **Supports a wide variety of features** \\- features like networking, serialization, XML, and database connectivity are supported by standard libraries Here's my take on how C#, Python, and shell scripting measure up. Python scores highest.               Feature           C#          Python      shell scripting     ---------------   ---------   ---------   ---------------     Interactive       poor        strong      strong     One file          poor        strong      strong     Multiple files    strong      strong      moderate     Data structures   strong      strong      poor     Features          strong      strong      strong      Is there a term that captures this idea? If not, what term should I use? Here are some candidates.   * **Scalability** \\- already used to decribe language performance, so it's not a good idea to overload it in the context of language syntax    * **Granularity** \\- expresses the idea of being good just for big tasks versus being good for big and small tasks, but doesn't express anything about data structures   * **Smoothness** \\- expresses the idea of low friction, but doesn't express anything about strength of data structures or features Note: Some of these properties are more correctly described as belonging to a compiler or IDE than the language itself. Please consider these tools collectively as the language environment. My question is about how easy or difficult languages are to use, which depends on the environment as well as the language."}
{"_id": "18622", "title": "Do you still panic when you see a stack dump? Why?", "text": "A question for seasoned developers. Do you still get a sinking feeling when you see a stack dump? Any feelings of agitation, alarm, cold feet, confusion, consternation, dismay, dread, fear, trepidation? Why? For me it usually means that I'm not 100% sure about my design or I have not done enough testing of my code."}
{"_id": "33228", "title": "ASP.NET AJAX and my axe!", "text": "So, I'm seriously considering axing ASP.NET AJAX from my future projects as I honestly feel it's too bloated, and at times convoluted. I'm also starting to feel it is a dying library in the .NET framework as I hardly see any quality components from the open-source community. All the kick-ass components are usually equally bloated commercial components... It was cool at first, but now I tend to get annoyed with it more than anything else. I'm planning on switching over to the jQuery library as just about everything in ASP.NET AJAX is often easily achievable with jQuery, and, more often than not, more graceful of a solution that ASP.NET AJAX and it has a much stronger open-source community. Perhaps, it's just me, but do you feel the same way about ASP.NET AJAX? How was/is your experience working with ASP.NET AJAX?"}
{"_id": "15452", "title": "What is the state of TWAIN on the Macintosh today?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project where we want to interface with TWAIN scanners on both the PC (Windows) and the Macintosh. On Windows, we basically have everything squared away and the code works successfully with the vast majority of scanners. On Mac OS X, we also basically have everything working and with the main scanner we used to develop the application with works perfectly, but we're not having a ton of luck with other scanners. As a byproduct of development on this project, we have a fair number of scanners from various manufacturers on- hand to test with. The results vary wildly:   * The scanner we used to develop with works perfectly on Mac OS X as it does in Windows. Ironically this scanner is the cheapest and crappiest scanner (speed-wise) we've ever encountered but it's been a dream to work with.   * Another scanner works great - until the second or third scan, at which point the application crashes with no clear indication of what happened (we get an EXEC_BAD_ACCESS from the debugger)   * Another scanner apparently has no TWAIN support on Mac OS X (no data sources in the \"Image Capture/TWAIN Data Sources\" folder), although it does have TWAIN support in Windows.   * Another scanner has a generic data source that I'm thinking is supposed to cover all the possible scanners from this manufacturer but when we try to initiate a native scan (which is a requirement for all TWAIN data sources) we get no results. Also, trying to install a second scanner from this manufacturer gums everything up and requires a manual uninstall for everything from this company.   * Another scanner has a TWAIN data source that appears to be specific to the manufacturer, but it also fails to initiate a native scan (but a scan using the native GUI - which is incompatible with our project - works) So I'm not sure where to go with this. I'm still digging into the code to figure out what, if anything, we're doing wrong but in checking against the TWAIN standard it really does look like we're doing everything right, but we're getting very hit-or-miss results on most of the scanners we're testing against. Also, as part of the new Cocoa/Carbon Events model there's this additional consideration of a \"callback\" function that Mac OS X TWAIN data sources are supposed to implement and I'm not seeing it called from most of these data source/drivers. So all of this leads me to wonder - is it that we're just doing something wrong or is TWAIN just not supported properly by and large on the Macintosh? I'm really not seeing a lot of information on TWAIN on the Macintosh online - the occasional sporadic inquiry on twainforum.org tends to go unanswered. Windows also has a thing called WIA - Windows Image Acquisition - and on the Windows side we also include this as an option. Is there something else on the Mac we should be exploring instead of or in addition to TWAIN? **NOTE:** I've posted this same question on StackOverflow but got no responses and after consulting meta, I've decided to re-post it here (since it's more discussion than specific). If this is a big no-no feel free to delete this thing."}
{"_id": "229183", "title": "What are my options for using a C++11 library in a C# WPF application?", "text": "I am writing a cross-platform (OS X and Windows) desktop application in C++11. I intend to use the same C++11 core on both platforms, utilizing native frameworks for the UI (Cocoa and Objective-C on OS X and WPF and C# on Windows) as I believe the best UX experience is a native one. Currently the application runs as a console app on both platforms. The application performs some CPU-intensive work and provides callbacks for progress reporting and, when complete, instantiates a collection of Items (`std::vector<std::unique_ptr<Item>>`) representing the results of the processing. My goal is for the C++11 library to act as a model for the UI in a manner compatible with the MVC and MVVM patterns. The UI must:   * Allow the user to choose a file to process (open a file dialog and send the file path to the C++ library)   * Display progress (handle callbacks from the C++ library to update a progress bar)   * Display the results in a WPF form (access the Item class and display information it provides)  I've looked at WinRT and it seems there isn't a lot of information out there for use in desktop applications. I'm also not fond of the idea of creating the UI itself in C++. My goal is to get data in and out of the C++ app and use C# to handle the UI as I believe that's a more efficient way of working with WPF. I'm aware of P/Invoke but my understanding is that it only works with a C interface. Creating such an interface around the C++11 seems cumbersome. I'm also aware of C++/CLI but I'm not sure if that will meet my needs or if it is compatible with C++11. I took a look at CppSharp but it seems to be a work-in-progress and I doubt I'd know how to work around any issues that may arise. I have a lot of experience with C++ and a little with C# but I'm not sure if I'm missing better options or which of the above is a sound approach."}
{"_id": "229184", "title": "How to put lessons learned, good practices, etc into the \"work flow\"", "text": "As the title states it, I would like to get some suggestions about putting knowledge into action. We have many additional requirements that concern: coding practices feature development (all of them or only a subset), process, etc. The problem is that we have problems with introducing those practices into new projects and I want to help developers and reviewers to remember about it, but I don't want them to have everything just in theirs heads, but rather in some kind of a database that they can use easily. The list of practices is already defined in Excel. I would like all team members to apply these practices in their work but I don't know how make those information easy to find. When developer starts working on a feature he should be able to easily find all practices that he should use in these feature. To be clear with what I mean, I'm showing some examples of information we have to apply:   * (new design request) every feature must output logs (and it must not contain any sensitive data);   * (new design request) every feature has to have a flag in the configuration that allows to disable it;   * (good practice) always update docs when feature is ready;   * (retrospective feedback) QA must test only on release package (not in debug mode);   * (retrospective feedback) make stress tests for every new feature implemented;   * (lead's task) write release notes after each sprint that includes tasks completed and open bugs;   * (design usage) every event from \"ABCStoreManager\" must be disconnected after being invoked;   * (design usage) try-catch every event.Invoke() call; I thought for a while about a wiki, but it's no good, because it doesn't support tagging/categories or querying and I'm afraid that everybody would ignore it (people must know exactly where to look). My question can be summed up as how can I improve communication to our developers about the required development methodologies and practices listed above in an easy way? Remarks:   * this question is not about security issues or code smells per-se;   * I'm not looking for any heavy process (like RUP) or any process for that matter, which forces you to go step by step. Preferably I am looking for an agile approach   * Daniel Figueroa has suggested adding additional requirements to the \"definition of done\". And it seems like a good way. But the problem is that some features have, for instance, 20 additional requirements (\"all GUI features\"), some 10 (\"all server requests\"), etc. I would like to have this stuff aggregated in a one place and just use links (\"see: 'GUI feature' \");"}
{"_id": "237861", "title": "How to set up something like an integration server that measures the quality of code and reject the code if the score is below a certain number?", "text": "Even if I don't like enforcing people to do things (and I believe that it may decline the productivity and cause anger), I really want to enforce good coding style. Is there a way to set up something like an integration server that measures the quality of code (for example it runs `resharper` or some other static checker) and reject the code if the score is below a certain number? Also, do you think this is a good approach?"}
{"_id": "237862", "title": "Choosing name for open-source project -- how to view existing trademarks/names used for other programs?", "text": "I'm trying to choose a good name for a new open-source project. The problem is, there is already so much software in the world that Google search reveals one or more existing programs with every good name I can think of (and there have been several already). Obviously, names like \"Linux\" or \"Windows\" or \"Java\" or \"Excel\" are off- limits. But what about names which may have been used by some little-known program? Does it make a difference if the name is trademarked in one or more countries? In one case, I found that there is a commercial software package marketed by a Canadian company, using a name which I wanted to use. The same name is trademarked in the US, but by a different company. I couldn't find any evidence that the holder of the trademark is actually marketing software under that name. In Canada, the name is not trademarked. In other cases, I found several programs all using the same name, some commercial, some university-student research projects. So maybe this is normal in the software industry? What if I use a name which is not trademarked, and someone else trademarks it later? Could I face legal pressure to stop using it? Would it help to avoid legal problems if I prefix the name? For example, say I want to call my project \"Broomflip\", but other software is already being marketed under that name. If, assuming I am associated with an organization called \"Hoplock\", I call it \"Hoplock Broomflip\", would that be better? I'm hoping someone with a good understanding of IP law can shed some light on some or all of the above questions. Of course, personal opinions from those without special legal knowledge are also welcome, but please try to back them up with evidence or relevant references. Anecdotal evidence is welcome."}
{"_id": "229187", "title": "Is it necessary to science of DSP for a c++ programmer?", "text": "I am a C++ programmer. I would like to use DSP algorithms in C++. Is understanding the science behind Digital Signal Processing a prerequisite to implementing DSP algorithms?"}
{"_id": "8157", "title": "Creating a platform agnostic development team hegemony", "text": "I work at a company where we have a lot of different skillsets in the development team. We do all of the following (generally geared towards web):   * .NET (MVC, Umbraco, ASP.NET, Surface)   * Java (Spring, Hibernate, Android)    * PHP (Zend, Code igniter)    * Actionscript 3   * AIR   * Objective-C   * Html/Javascript (obviously) We're trying to streamline our development process. We currently have a TeamCity server that builds and deploys .NET projects with msbuild/msdeploy/nant. What I want is something like maven that will give us a standard project template structure that works for most projects to allow people from different teams to move between projects easily. Currently this works on one platform because we tend to do things in a standard way for that platform (as long as certain people have been involved) however I want to use something like maven to standardise how a project is laid out and built. Has anyone tried anything like this before? Experiences? Books?"}
{"_id": "240281", "title": "How is the Decorator Pattern actually used in practice?", "text": "I understand completely how to implement the Decorator pattern, and I also understand what it's intent is. The Decorator is used in one of two cases: **As an alternative to subclassing** \\- when there are multiple characteristics that an object can have, one could use inheritance in order to create subclasses for all the possible combinations. For example, three characteristics A, B and C will results in lots of classes: A, B, C, ABC, AB, AC, BC. This results in a 'class explosion'. With Decorator, one would have three decorators A, B and C, and a class D to 'decorate' - and that's it. **As a way to expand an object's functionality during runtime** \\- we can decide which decorators to 'wrap' an object with during runtime, thus 'customizing' an object dynamically. This was just to show that I do understand what Decorator is (I also totally understand how it's implemented). **Now my question:** I'm familiar with theoretical examples of when and how to use Decorator. And as you can see I know what is it's intent. But I'm still not sure when to actually use this in practice, in an actual application. Telling me \"it's used as an alternative to subclassing\", or \"it's used to dynamically add functionality to an object\" won't be helpful since I'm familiar with it's intent. Also telling me \"think of a UI window for example. It can have a border, or not, and can be resizable, or not\" isn't helpful, I'm already familiar with these theoretical examples. **So what I'm asking for is a concrete _real world_ example of Decorator, in a practical, real-world scenario,** with a brief explanation of the benefits of using a Decorator pattern there over other techniques. * * * Just to clarify, I'm not looking for a list of applications where Decorator was utilized. I'm looking for an example of where and how Decorator was used in a design, why it was a good design choice **and the concrete problem that it solved.** When I'll see **concrete problem** solved with Decorator hopefully I'll understand it better."}
{"_id": "206250", "title": "How to initialize all your references?", "text": "I have recently taken a project with another developer, and he has a certain way of initializing his references.               class Player     {         private:             Console &console;             Armor &armor1, &armor2;             Debugger &debugger;             sf::RenderWindow &window;             sf::Event &event;             public:            Player(Console &console, Armor &armor1, ...) : console(console), armor1(armor1), ... {};     }      And it's perfectly fine with me, but what if we add new stuff? Our constructor is massive, and so messy, I would like to know if there are better ways of initializing your references if you have a large project, because if we keep up with this, eventually our constructor will have more lines of code than what it actually does."}
{"_id": "34440", "title": "What would one call this architecture?", "text": "I have developed a distributed test automation system which consists of two different entities. One entity is responsible for triggering tests runs and monitoring/displaying their progress. The other is responsible for carrying out tests on that host. Both of these entities retrieve data from a central DB. Now, my first thought is that this is clearly a server-client architecture. After all, you have exactly one organizing entity and many entities that communicate with said entity. However, while the supposed clients to communicate to the server via RPC, they are not actually requesting services or information, rather they are simply reporting back test progress, in fact, once the test run has been triggered they can complete their tasks without connection to the server. The request for a service is actually made by the supposed server which triggers the clients to carry out tests. So would this still be considered a server-client architecture or is this something different?"}
{"_id": "171203", "title": "What are the difference between server-side and client-side programming?", "text": "> I've seen questions (mainly on Stack Overflow), which lack this basic > knowledge. The point of this question is to provide good information for > those seeking it, and those referencing to it. In the context of web programming, what are the differences between Server- side programming and Client-side programming? Which languages belong to which, and when do you use each of them?"}
{"_id": "245895", "title": "What does programming a server exactly mean?", "text": "I searched around a lot, but couldn't find it. I know what server-side programming is and I've done it myself-- getting user's data, storing it in a database etc. using a server-side programming language. My question is: is this what we call \"programming a server\"? Or it's some other, more complicated task? Thanks. :) EDIT: This is NOT a duplicate of the other question. This question seeks a different answer than what is given in the question claimed to contain the answer. Okay, crystal-clear question: (it's getting kindda funny now :D ) Is there a difference between \"server-side programming\" (from my understanding: handling user input got via POST, GET, databases and all) and \"programming a server\"?"}
{"_id": "188561", "title": "A simple definition of client-server", "text": "I'm looking for a simple definition of the concept of \u201cclient-server\u201d I'd like something similar to this definition of **_state_**. > ... That \"thing/information\" that you need to remember is called \"state\". Edit - This isn't a homework question (nor am I a student). My goal is to come up with a compact way of explaining REST to average developers. I didn't want to prejudice the response though."}
{"_id": "215734", "title": "Are VB.NET to C# converters actually compilers?", "text": "Whenever I see programs or scripts that convert between high-level programming languages they are always labelled as converters. \"VB.NET to C# converter\" on Google results in expected, useful hits. However \"VB.NET to C# compiler\" on Google results in things like comparisons between the C# and VB.NET compilers and other hits that are not quite what you'd be looking for. Webopedia defines Compiler as > A program that translates source code into object code Eric Lipper in an answer to: \"How do I create my own programming language and a compiler for it\" suggests: > One of the best ways to get started writing a compiler is by writing a high- > level-language-to-high-level-language compiler. Is a VB.NET to C# _converter_ really just a _compiler_? If not, What separates the converter from also being a compiler?"}
{"_id": "86734", "title": "Why should one want to disable compiler warnings?", "text": "This answer and the comments added to it show a way to disable several compiler warnings using `#pragma` directives. Why would one want to do that? Usually the warnings are there for a reason, and I've always felt that they're good reasons. Is there any \"valid case\" where warnings should be disabled? Right now I can't think of any, but maybe that's just me."}
{"_id": "212151", "title": "A better alternative to incompatible implementations for the same interface?", "text": "I am working on a piece of code which performs a set task in several parallel environments where the behaviour of the different components in the task are similar but quite different. This means that my implementations are quite different but they are all based on the relationships between the same interfaces, something like this:               IDataReader        -> ContinuousDataReader        -> ChunkedDataReader     IDataProcessor        -> ContinuousDataProcessor        -> ChunkedDataProcessor     IDataWriter        -> ContinuousDataWriter        -> ChunkedDataWriter      So that in either environment we have an IDataReader, IDataProcessor and IDataWriter and then we can use Dependency Injection to ensure that we have the correct one of each for the current environment, so if we are working with data in chunks we use the `ChunkedDataReader`, `ChunkedDataProcessor` and `ChunkedDataWriter` and if we have continuous data we have the continuous versions. However the behaviour of these classes is quite different internally and one could certainly not go from a `ContinuousDataReader` to the `ChunkedDataReader` even though they are both `IDataProcessors`. This feels to me as though it is incorrect ( possibly an LSP violation? ) and certainly not a theoretically correct way of working. It is almost as though the \"real\" interface here is the combination of all three classes. Unfortunately in the project I am working on with the deadlines we are working to, we're pretty much stuck with this design, but if we had a little more elbow room, what would be a better design approach in this kind of scenario?"}
{"_id": "212152", "title": "Importance of data structures in modern S/W development", "text": "During 1990s when there were no advanced frameworks/paradigms available for S/W development , knowledge on data structures was critical... which I can comprehend. But nowadays, for most of the problems (at least from Java/Android development) we can rely on an existing class to provide solution. As such I believe, an in depth knowledge of data structures is not needed for someone who is stepping into programming now. Is my belief right ?."}
{"_id": "214658", "title": "How to refactor when all your development is on branches?", "text": "At my company, all of our development (bug fixes and new features) is done on separate branches. When it's complete, we send it off to QA who tests it on that branch, and when they give us the green light, we merge it into our main branch. This could take anywhere between a day and a year. If we try to squeeze any refactoring in on a branch, we don't know how long it will be \"out\" for, so it can cause many conflicts when it's merged back in. For example, let's say I want to rename a function because the feature I'm working on is making heavy use of this function, and I found that it's name doesn't really fit its purpose (again, this is just an example). So I go around and find every usage of this function, and rename them all to its new name, and everything works perfectly, so I send it off to QA. Meanwhile, new development is happening, and my renamed function doesn't exist on any of the branches that are being forked off main. When my issue gets merged back in, they're all going to break. Is there any way of dealing with this? It's not like management will ever approve a refactor-only issue so it has to be squeezed in with other work. It can't be developed directly on main because all changes have to go through QA and no one wants to be the jerk that broke main so that he could do a little bit of non-essential refactoring."}
{"_id": "214659", "title": "Is it realistic to use designers for complex UI", "text": "When I created my first web application few years ago, I remember trying to use the designer in VS 2008. Before I can even remember I abandoned it to the favor of actual debug to understand how my UI will actually look like. Since then, I gave it few more shoots but I was never convinced that it's even possible to build an complex UI with it. How much progress designers have made in the recent few years? Are there any designers that can enable real-time view of highly complex UI? is it programming language/framework dependent? Thanks."}
{"_id": "245029", "title": "I don't know how to understand the Wildcard type in Java", "text": "I am reading the Core Java (9th edition) by Cay S. Horstmann and Gary Cornell. After making an effort, I cannot still understand the **? super Manager**. Here are some materials relating to this question.               public class Pair<T> {         private T first;         private T second;              public Pair(T first, T second) {             this.first = first;             this.second = second;         }              public void setFirst(T first) {             this.first = first;         }              public void setSecond(T second) {             this.second = second;         }              public T getFrist() {             return this.first;         }              public T getSecond() {             return this.second;         }     }      The **Manager** inherits from **Employee** , and **Executive** inherites from **Manager**. _Pair_ has methods as follows:               void setFirst(? super Manager)     ? super Manager getFirst()      Since _? super Manager_ denotes any supertype of **Manager** , why I cannot call _setFirst_ method with **Employee** (it is obvious that Employee is the supertype of Manager), but only with type **Manager** or a subtype such as **Executive** (but Executive is the subtype of Manager, not a supertype of Manager)?"}
{"_id": "245025", "title": "Why do people use markdown wysiwyg editors in web applications?", "text": "I understand the advantages of using markdown in local text files, and then taking those files and generating HTML. This is great for documentation, readme's in git repositories and posts for static site generators. It is very simple to create markdown syntax in any text editor, it's human readable, and you can create HTML from markdown relatively easily. What I don't understand, is the advantages of using a wysiwyg editor for markdown in web applications, especially those that use a database server. (non-flat-file). I thought the whole point of using markdown was to remove the need for a wysiwyg editor. What is the advantage of using a markdown wysiwyg editor over an editor that just outputs HTML (avoiding the overhead of converting markdown to HTML in the process)? **clarification:** basically I'm looking for technical advantages to having a WYSIWYG editor output markdown instead of HTML. To the end user the text form will look the same, so it's only dealing with markdown/html in the backend of an application. Anchor CMS sorta does this, and I'm wondering if there is an advantage over just plain HTML output."}
{"_id": "213681", "title": "What are the best practices and pitfalls of doing a JS app powered purely by RESTful API?", "text": "We are starting to build a new app and I would like to explore the idea of doing a thick JS client (backbone / angular) with only RESTful API exposed by our application layer. What are some of the best practices and potential pitfalls for doing this kind of web app?"}
{"_id": "245021", "title": "Need to provide an interface (for plugins) for taking input Type A, and returning output Type B", "text": "public interface IMyInputProviderPlugin     {         IMyOutput Provide(IMyInput data);     }      This is an interface I need to provide so that I can dynamically load the dlls and not have them bound to my implementation. However, upon reading this, it seems like this is an anti-pattern? http://blog.ploeh.dk/2011/04/27/Providerisnotapattern/ I'm confused, how does one do this if not this way?"}
{"_id": "245020", "title": "How to create a scoring system with time and correct answers for a game?", "text": "o create a scoring system with time and correct answers for a game? up vote 0 down vote favorite I have a small mobile quiz game, which consists of 30 questions, and a timer which starts from 0 seconds, and goes all the way up to 1 hour. Below you can see that my timer starts from 0, and it is displayed in the format of MM:SS.               var timestamp = new Date(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0);          function pad(n) { return (\"0\" + n).slice(-2); }          Number.prototype.pad = function (len) {         return (new Array(len+1).join(\"0\") + this).slice(-len);     }      So, what I actually need is, some kind of formula, or system in order to receive a final score. So the more correct answers a user has, and the faster finishes the quiz, the more points gets. I know that this is kind of unrelated question for this forum, but I'm kind of stuck. I would like to hear your opinions, about the scoring system. So the smallest score should be 0, and the highest, well no limit."}
{"_id": "40420", "title": "Why Groovy(Java)?", "text": "I am looking on a new language to pick up and found out about Groovy. According to the website, the language is 'agile dynamic' language.   1. How is it Agile?    2. How shorter are the syntax compared to Java's?   3. Can I use existing Java libs out there?   4. Lastly, can anyone share their experience on this lingo? What you love and hate"}
{"_id": "230077", "title": "Stopping spiders or unauthorised users from viewing files", "text": "I am stumped at this problem. Users authenticate at my client's website. Then the users see their profile page on my client's website. My client now wants me to provide a URL on their profile page, for his users, to download information from an external website. (This external website is not controlled by my client). That is to say, upon clicking this URL, it links out to an external website and gets a personalized file. As the information is considered sensitive (not critical), the external website should not allow anyone to download the personalized file. I'm stumped at figuring out how to allow only one authentication (on my client's website) instead of having the end users authenticating twice (once on my client's website and separately on the external website) Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "212484", "title": "How to create a lightweight WPF application including .NET Framework 4.5?", "text": "I want to create an application which is dependent on .NET Framework 4.5. If I am binding the framework with application setup the size of application increases to much but I need to bind the .NET Framework 4.5 with my setup. Is there any other option to bind the framework with application setup besides downloading it from the website during installation?"}
{"_id": "230072", "title": "Is there a practical use from learning Brainfuck?", "text": "Brainfuck is an esoteric programming language created in 1993 by Urban M\u00fcller. It was designed to challenge and amuse programmers, and was not made to be suitable for practical use. But still, it exists and some really cool stuff is written with it. My question is - will learning/practicing Brainfuck increase the depth of my knowledge of programming? For example: as a high-level programmer (using high- level languages) will it improve understanding of low-level methods and operations? Or is it really just a joke used to spend some time and amuse by showing code that really looks like \"code\" in a sense that's it's hard to read/understand."}
{"_id": "212482", "title": "Casual projects on Github omit error checking, logging, etc., for the sake of clarity?", "text": "I just started using GitHub to socialize some projects for simple chat and peer-to-peer apps. With respect to coding, is it customary to omit exception handling, error checking, logging, etc., to promote easy-to-understand and 'clean'-looking code, if those additions are not completely necessary to actually run the code? For instance, here's two extreme examples:                  if( msg != null){           NodeEvent event = NodeEvent.valueOf(msg.getAction());           switch (event) {              case NODE_CONNECTING:               if( nodeName.isInvalid())                  Utils.log(\"Invalid node name, ignoring...\");               else{                  String existingNodeAddress = _nodeNameAddressMap.get(nodeName);                  if( existingNodeAddress != null)                     Utils.log(\"Node address for '\" + nodeName + \"' updated\");                  else                     Utils.log(\"New node '\" + nodeName + \"' connected\");                        _nodeNameAddressMap.put(nodeName, nodeAddress);               }         }      Here's the same snippet minus the fluff, although this version can easily crash if fed bad data, but otherwise it will compile and run fine:                  NodeEvent event = NodeEvent.valueOf(msg.getAction());        switch (event) {             case NODE_CONNECTING:             _nodeNameAddressMap.put(nodeName, nodeAddress);      The clean version is easier to read, obviously, but is brittle. The verbose version is safer, it just looks cluttered. I'm just curious to know if it's more effective for a social projects to go for the cleaner look at the expense of fragility, allowing those who fork the project to fill in the blanks. A quick survey of github projects and it's clear most go for the clean look."}
{"_id": "230070", "title": "Microeconomical simulation: coordination/planning between self-interested trading agents", "text": "In a typical perfect-information strategy game like Chess, an agent can calculate its best move by searching the state tree for the best possible move, while assuming that the opponent will also make the best possible move (i.e. Mini-max). I would like to use this approach in a \"game\" modeling economic activity, where the possible \"moves\" would be to buy or sell for a given price, and the goal, rather than a specific class of states (e.g. Checkmate), would be to maximize some function F of the agent's state (e.g. F(money, widget) = 10*money + widget). How to handle buy/sell actions that require coordination between both parties, at the very least agreement upon a price? The cheap way out would be to set the price beforehand, maybe based upon the current supply -- but the idea of this simulation is to examine how prices emerge when freely determined by \"perfectly rational\" agents. A great example of what I do _not_ want is the trading algorithm in SugarScape -- paraphrasing from _Growing Artificial Societies_ p101-102: > when a pair of agents interact to trade, they each compute their internal > valuations of the goods, then a bargaining process is conducted and a price > is agreed to. If this price makes both agents better off, they complete the > transaction The protocol itself is beautiful, but what it cannot capture (as far as I can tell) is the ability for an agent to pay more than it might otherwise for a good, because it knows that it can sell it for even more at a later date -- what appears to be called \"strategic thinking\" in this pape at Google Books Multi-Agent-Based Simulation III: 4th International Workshop, MABS 2003... to get realistic behavior like that, it seems one would either (1) have to build an outrageously-complex internal valuation system which could at best only cover situations that were planned for at compile-time, or otherwise (2) have some mechanism to search the state tree... which would require some way of planning future trades. Note: The chess analogy only works as far as the state-space search goes; the simulation isn't intended to be \"zero sum\", so a literal mini-max search wouldn't be appropriate -- and ideally, it should work with more than two agents."}
{"_id": "212480", "title": "How do I alter an open source library for my own use?", "text": "I'm programming in Objective-C. I want to include a camera library, DLCImagePicker, in my project. There is a variable I need to change, but it is private and I have no access to it. I've thought of a few way to get around this, but am not sure on the best practice way to do it.   1. I can just copy the code into my own class and alter the variable.   2. I can alter it directly in the original class. However, I have included this code as a git submodule and I'm thinking that touching the source code is a bad idea in this case, and in general.   3. Subclassing. I can't imagine how this would work, as the variable is private.   4. I can perform some action with git that would create my own fork/branch of the project, and alter it there. I have never done this and am very primitive with git."}
{"_id": "14508", "title": "Something like LinqPad for C/C++?", "text": "I love the LinqPad not just for the Linq, but also for the various types of simple compile options it provides like single expression, statements and programs for C# and VB. Anyone knows something similar to this for C/C++?"}
{"_id": "234987", "title": "calling an abstract method in abstract class", "text": "Suppose i have an abstract base class Parent which defines an abstract Method A(some parameter) taking a parameter, also it defines an instance Method B which calls method A(parameter) inside its body and passing some parameter.Then we have an concrete child class B which extends the base class and provide its own implementation of Method A using the parameter passes. I have seen many implementation of this practice in frameworks. I want to know how it works and does it provide any benefits. Here is some code written in Android               public abstract class ParentActivity extends Activity {         public abstract void onResume(LoginToken token);              @Override             protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {                    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);                    Some implementation code             }              @Override             public void onResume() {                   super.onResume();                   Some implementation code                   onResume(token);             }     }          public class ChildActivity extends ParentActivity{             LoginToken token;         @Override             protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {                    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);                    Some implementation code             }              @Override             public void onResume() {                   Some implementation code                   super.onResume();             }              @Override             public void onResume(LoginToken token) {                  this.token=token;             }     }"}
{"_id": "186581", "title": "When to import names into the global namespace? (using x::y, from x import y etc.)", "text": "I've been programming in various languages for about 10 years now. And I still haven't figured out when it is a good idea to import something into the global namespace (`using x::y` in C++, `from x import y` in Python etc.), so I hardly ever do it. It almost always seems like a bad idea to me, if only because it limits the set of variable names I can use. For example: Where I to use `using namespace std;` or `using std::string;`in C++, I couldn't use `string`as a variable name anymore, which I occasionally do (e.g. for string utility functions). But I'm wondering: Are there some situations where importing a name into the global namespace really makes sense? Any rules of thumb?"}
{"_id": "208978", "title": "Is it bad to place \"include directive\" within main function?", "text": "It is always said that the `include directive`s should be placed at the beginning of a script. The main reason is to make the functions available throughout the script. Regardless of this fact, is it bad to place an `include directive` within the main function where it is needed? For example,               #include <stdio.h>     int main() {     #include <mysql.h>     }      Instead of               #include <mysql.h>     #include <stdio.h>     int main() {     }      I was unable to find any different in performance or compiled file size, but it is difficult to judge about this fact based on simple scripts. I wonder if it has any effect or drawback, or any reason to avoid this non-standard approach."}
{"_id": "207705", "title": "What is global mutable variable behaviour in dynamically-linked libraries?", "text": "When a dynamically linked library includes a global mutable variable, such as a container for state initialised when loading the library, how do references to that variable behave when running an application that links against it? Obviously the application cannot alter memory allocated to the dynamically- linked library by the OS, as that would have implications on the other applications using it, so one must assume references to the global mutable variables are rewritten to refer to some R/W memory space owned by the application. But exactly how do the compiler and linker collude to accomplish this?"}
{"_id": "207700", "title": "What are the characteristics or features of production-quality code?", "text": "This is the first time I will be delivering code for a freelance project (web- app), and, since I don't have much experience shipping code, I am having a hard time deciding whether my program is ready for deployment or not. My understanding is that a production-level code must have the following characteristics:   * **Fault tolerance** : ability to survive uncaught exceptions    * **Data redundancy** : never lose user data   * **Scalability** : Handling extra load should not require re-writing the app   * **Test Coverage** : a \"decent\" amount of code tested Some of these characteristics are specific to the program itself, while others are more environment-related (whether using multiple clusters). However, even the environment-dependent characteristics do affect the way the program is designed. My question then is: What are the other characteristics that make production- code so different than code not meant for production? Just to reduce the scope of the question, please focus only on **web apps**. **Edit** : I will try to narrow down the scope by asking for characteristics specific to my situation. As a freelance, I was responsible of everything from purchasing a VPS, to configuring it, to writing the code, to deploying it. Although the project and its setup is well documented, the customer will not be able to maintain it. The app is not complex, but depends on a lot of external components, which makes it really prone to break if these components change/disappear. The goal is to set up a service that would be able to last as long as possible without the customer's maintenance."}
{"_id": "136920", "title": "If competition is using 'lingua obscura' for development (why) should I be worried?", "text": "I was reading Paul Graham's essay - Beating The Averages (2003) and here's what he had to say: > The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the > company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. > You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they > wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, > that would be a bit frightening-- that's starting to sound like a company > where the technical side, at least, is run by real hackers Now, this is a dated essay. However, I fail to see how using a non-commonplace language (C/C++/Java, C#) would be _'less dangerous'_. If the programmers of an organization are very fluent with the development language they should be equally adept at cranking out code at a decent pace. In fact if you do use a non-commonplace language won't maintenance/enhancement problems hit you in the face since not too many programmers would be available, in the long run? For making quick-n-dirty systems I agree, that some languages allow you to take off relatively sooner than others. But does Paul Graham's essay/comment make sense in 2012 and beyond? If a startup were to use _typical IT_ languages for development, why should it's competition be less worried? I fail to see how the language itself makes a difference. IMHO it's the developers experience with the language that matters and the availability of frameworks so that you DRY (do not repeat yourself) not just coding in a particular language. What is it that I'm missing? Does it imply that startups better choose non IT- flavored languages (even if the developers may be extremely adept at them)? What are the (programming) economic/market-forces behind this claim? PS: 'lingua obscura' is not meant to hurt anyone's feelings :)"}
{"_id": "158383", "title": "Developing Razor Web Pages - Visual Studio and/or WebMatrix?", "text": "When I started learning about Web Pages I followed several of the Microsoft tutorials, all of which utilized WebMatrix. I did this until I realized that WebMatrix offered no debugging. Wait? What?? No way. And I quickly moved my Web Pages development to Visual Studio. While there were some things that I thought were nicely done in WebMatrix, I have found nothing that I cannot do in in Visual Studio. Also, unless someone who knows better than me enlightens me, I am vehemently against developing the same project with two different IDEs; It just seems like an unnecessary risk to me. Nevertheless, I would like to ask for your thoughts/insights about this. I am very curious to know if any of you use them in tandem and, if so, what aspects of each do you utilize the most? And, of course, does it cause problems?"}
{"_id": "158382", "title": "Cloud computing platforms only have one CPU. Does this mean I shouldn't use Parallel Programming?", "text": "Almost every cloud instance I can find only offers one CPU. Why is this only one CPU now, and should I expect this to increase in the future? Does this design impact my code design so that I exclude technologies like Task Parallel Library? This is on topic to Programmers.SE because it impacts the long-term scalability of muti-threaded code on cloud platforms."}
{"_id": "69979", "title": "Questions for Architecture with Ruby and Java", "text": "I am in the research phase of a project that needs to make use of 3rd party libraries that are in Java so I am stuck using Java to at least a small degree. I am considering implementing Ruby as the front-end layer. That would leave me with the option of calling the Java classes as a web service by hitting a certain URL, is that correct? Is that generally a solid approach to things? Also, how would it affect my build environment when I create the .war file using Ant? should I have src/java and src/ruby code, or do the ruby files go somewhere else? Any tips and pitfalls on this? I am a little bit new to Ruby so advice would be appreciated. Also, I considered JRuby, but it seemed like a less mature tool that just has a JVM for a smoother calling of Java classes, correct? I am concerned with the maturity of that tool and its bein neither Java nor Ruby."}
{"_id": "238511", "title": "MVC4 : How to create model at run time?", "text": "In my project I am dynamically creating table by giving table name (ex. student) and adding fields to that table and then save table. Now, my table is created in SQL Server database. Assume table has data and I want to show the data of table (ex student) on WebGrid. But, the problem is I have no model for that table (ex. student). So, how I can create model for newly created table or how I can show the the data on WebGrid?"}
{"_id": "43214", "title": "How do you educate your teammates without seeming condescending or superior?", "text": "I work with three other guys; I'll call them Adam, Brian, and Chris. Adam and Brian are bright guys. Give them a problem; they will figure out a way to solve it. When it comes to OOP, though, they know very little about it and aren't particularly interested in learning. Pure procedural code is their MO. Chris, on the other hand, is an OOP guy all the way -- and a cocky, condescending one at that. He is constantly criticizing the work Adam and Brian do and talking to me as if I must share his disdain for the two of them. When I say that Adam and Brian aren't interested in learning about OOP, I suspect Chris is the primary reason. This hasn't bothered me too much for the most part, but there have been times when, looking at some code Adam or Brian wrote, it has pained me to think about how a problem could have been solved so simply using inheritance or some other OOP concept instead of the unmaintainable mess of 1,000 lines of code that ended up being written instead. And now that the company is starting a rather ambitious new project, with Adam assigned to the task of getting the core functionality in place, I fear the result. Really, I just want to help these guys out. But I know that if I come across as just another holier-than-thou developer like Chris, it's going to be massively counterproductive. I've considered:   1. Team code reviews -- everybody reviews _everybody's_ code. This way no one person is really in a position to look down on anyone else; besides, I know I could learn plenty from the other members on the team as well. But this would be time-consuming, and with such a small team, I have trouble picturing it gaining much traction as a team practice.   2. Periodic e-mails to the team -- this would entail me sending out an e-mail every now and then discussing some concept that, based on my observation, at least one team member would benefit from learning about. The downside to this approach is I do think it could easily make me come across as a self-appointed expert.   3. Keeping a blog -- I already do this, actually; but so far my blog has been more about esoteric little programming tidbits than straightforward practical advice. And anyway, I suspect it would get old pretty fast if I were constantly telling my coworkers, \"Hey guys, remember to check out my new blog post!\" This question doesn't need to be specifically about OOP or any particular programming paradigm or technology. I just want to know: **how have you found success in teaching new concepts to your coworkers without seeming like a condescending know-it-all?** It's pretty clear to me there isn't going to be a sure-fire answer, but any helpful advice (including methods that have worked as well as those that have proved ineffective or even backfired) would be greatly appreciated. * * * **UPDATE** : I am **not** the Team Lead on this team. Chris is. * * * **UPDATE 2** : Made community wiki to accord with the general sentiment of the community (fancy that)."}
{"_id": "238513", "title": "Is allocating objects from a memory-pool a security anti-pattern?", "text": "In the wake of the heartbleed bug, OpenSSL has been rightly critizised for using its own freelist. With plain-old `malloc`, the bug would have almost certainly been found long ago. However, some kind of malloc wrapping is actually very common. For example when I have a big object that owns many small, fixed sized objects, I often allocate them from an array.               /* BigObj is allocated with `malloc`, but LittleObj using `alloc_little`. */     typedef struct {              /* bigObj stuff here */              int nlittle;         LittleObj littles[MAX_LITTLE];     } BigObj;           LittleObj *alloc_little(BigObj *big)     {         if(big->nlittle == MAX_LITTLE)             return NULL;         return = big->littles + big->nlittle++;     }      `alloc_little` is faster than `malloc()`, but the main reason is simplicity. There is no `free_little` to call, because the `LittleObjs` just remain valid until the `BigObj` is destroyed. So is this an anti-pattern? If so, can I mitigate the risks, or should I just abandon it? Similar questions go for any kind of memory pool, such as GNU Obstacks and the `talloc` used in Samba."}
{"_id": "174907", "title": "Can I use EPL licensed libraries and not Give out the Source code of my Application?", "text": "If I use EPL licensed software ( namely Eclipse jars ) in an application, do I have to give the users the source code and the right to redistribute? If that is not the case, what rules should I follow if I use EPL licensed software libraries in an application that I wish to distribute?"}
{"_id": "254201", "title": "Why should ViewModel route actions to Controller when using the MVCVM pattern?", "text": "When reading examples across the Internet (including the MSDN reference) I have found that code examples are all doing the following type of thing:               public class FooViewModel : BaseViewModel {         public FooViewModel(FooController controller) {             Controller = controller;         }         protected FooController Controller { get; private set; }              public void PerformSuperAction() {             // This just routes action to controller...             Controller.SuperAction();         }              ...     }      and then for the view:               public class FooView : BaseView {         ...              private void OnSuperButtonClicked() {             ViewModel.PerformSuperAction();         }     }      Why do we not just do the following?               public class FooView : BaseView {         ...              private void OnSuperButtonClicked() {             ViewModel.Controller.SuperAction();                  // or, even just use a shortcut property:             Controller.SuperAction();         }     }"}
{"_id": "81427", "title": "Can Agile and ISO 9001 interact well?", "text": "There are few academic papers addressing the relationship between lean software development and the practices covered by ISO 9001. Most articles says that _the divergence between these approaches is big_ , but some also point that _these concepts can be complementary and gains are much higher when using both approaches_. Academically it is very beautiful, but in practice is it anyway? So here's the question: do you work or worked at companies applying both Agile as ISO 9001? What is your perception? What is really good and what is inappropriate?"}
{"_id": "201701", "title": "Object Initializer in C# problem with readability", "text": "I wonder if object initializing have some performance gain in ASP.NET website. I have an office mate that told me that object initialization is much readable and faster than constructor. But one of my office mate disagree with that and said that it always depends. For example I am doing this:               using (var dataAccess = new DatabaseAccess { ConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[\"test\"].ConnectionString, Query = query, IsStoredProc = true })     {         //some code here     }      Is it better if I will do this way?               using (var dataAccess = new DatabaseAccess())     {         dataAccess.ConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[\"test\"].ConnectionString;         dataAccess.Query = query;         dataAccess.IsStoredProc = true;     }      Thanks in advance guys! \\--- **EDIT** \\---- is this somehow much better:               using (         var dataAccess = new DatabaseAccess          {             ConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[\"test\"].ConnectionString,             Query = query,             IsStoredProc = true         }     )     {         //some code here     }"}
{"_id": "201702", "title": "Similar references to themselves in two classes", "text": "How can I make 1 class (base, generic or something else) from these two classes?               class A     {       A Link { get; set; }     }          class B     {       B Link { get; set; }     }      **UPD:** This is what I have now:               class BSTree     {       public BSTNode Root { get; set; }     }          class AVLTree     {       public AVLNode Root { get; set; }     }          class BSTNode     {       public BSTNode Parent { get; set; }       public BSTNode Left { get; set; }       public BSTNode Right{ get; set; }       public int Key{ get; set; }     }          class AVLNode     {       public AVLNode Parent { get; set; }       public AVLNode Left { get; set; }       public AVLNode Right{ get; set; }       public int Key{ get; set; }       public int Height { get; set;}     }      And finally I want to get something like BaseNode and BaseTree."}
{"_id": "127654", "title": "What's a good notation for showing MVC interactions?", "text": "I'm developing various websites and functionality to cater to various different use-cases up in Django. Is there a good notation for showing what behaviour is at each stage, e.g., swimlanes. I use BPMN 2 notation for everything, but feel that I am overusing this, and probably abusing the notation :P Example: ![BPMN 2.0 diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PMCzW.png) Please recommend a suitable **notation for showing the interactions between model, view and controller, as well as some of the inner business-logic in each stage**."}
{"_id": "103361", "title": "How to deal with potential enterpreneur developer in a IT startup", "text": "In a software startup, how can we deal with the main developers/programmers of the company who are good at design and communication, and also have entrepreneurial skills? How do we get them work for us and avoid any kind of competition from them to our business? How can we convince the lead programmer that our startup is the place for him?"}
{"_id": "103363", "title": "Mahout's Flexibility for generating recommendations", "text": "I am currently working on a system that will generate product recommendations like those on Amazon: _\"People who bought this also bought this..\"_ **This is how I plan to do it** :   * Process the data using Apache Mahout and generate recommendations(data is stored in MySQL), currently item based only.   * Apply a clustering algorithm to make cluster of users and then apply the association rules subjective to each cluster. **My questions are:**   * Will Mahout provide me enough flexibility to tweak the existing algorithms according to my needs. If yes, how?    * Is there a better alternative like R?"}
{"_id": "155093", "title": "Why is better to use external  JavaScript or libraries ; and is it prefered to use jquery meaning more security?", "text": "I read this article Unobtrusive JavaScript with jQuery and I noticed these points in the slide page **11**   * some companies strip JavaScript at the firewall   * some run the NoScript Firefox extension to protect themselves from common XSS and CSRF attacks   * many mobile devices ignore JavaScript entirely   * screen readers **do** execute JavaScript but accessibility issues mean you may not want them to I did not understand the fourth point. What does it mean? I need your comment and responses on these points. Is not using JavaScript and switching to libraries like jQuery worth it? **UPDATE 1 :** whats the meaning of **Unobtrusive JavaScript with jQuery** ? and yes it does not say we should use libraries but we should have them on external files for that reason i asked my question."}
{"_id": "170260", "title": "How easy is it to change languages/frameworks professionally?", "text": "Forgive me for asking a career related question - I know that they can be frowned upon here, but I think that this one is general enough to be useful to many people. My question is: How easy/difficult is it to get a job using language/frameowork B, when your current job uses language/framework A? e.g. If you use C#/ASP.NET in your current job, how difficult would it be to get a job using python/django, or PHP/Zend, or whatever (the specifics of the example don't matter). Relatedly, if you work in client side scripting, but perhaps work on server- side projects in your own time, how difficult would it be to switch to server- side professionally? So, to sum up, does the choice of which languages/frameworks use at work tend to box you in professionally?"}
{"_id": "19174", "title": "Is Project Titan (Facebook email app) going to be a game changer from a programmers perspective?", "text": "Is Project Titan (Facebook email app) going to be a game changer from a programmers perspective? Although some details are still scarce, the internet is slowly learning more about this new software. From the perspective of a programmer, what if any functionality do you think this will bring to the mass communications sector of internet use? Will it in anyway be a \"game changer\" from the existing layer of highly successful web based email clients (such as hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail, etc) I'm interested if anyone thinks email fundamentally needs to change other than to add more \"connectedness\" to other sources of data such as social media profiles."}
{"_id": "120384", "title": "Why not Green Threads?", "text": "Whilst I know questions on this have been covered already (e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5713142/green-threads-vs-non-green- threads), I don't feel like I've got a satisfactory answer. The question is: _why don't JVM's support green threads anymore?_ It says this on the code-style Java FAQ: > A green thread refers to a mode of operation for the Java Virtual Machine > (JVM) in which all code is executed in a single operating system thread. And this over on java.sun.com: > The downside is that using green threads means system threads on Linux are > not taken advantage of and so the Java virtual machine is not scalable when > additional CPUs are added. It seems to me that the JVM could have a pool of system processes equal to the number of cores, and then run green threads on top of that. This could offer some big advantages when you have a very large number of threads which block often (mostly because current JVM's cap the number of threads). Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "116439", "title": "Why would a video game need  main(String[] args) in its own class?", "text": "My teacher just told me that whenever I create a class to run something for a video game company that uses Eclipse, I should make a run class with the main and any outputs. He says any arithmetic should then be put in its own class. Here's the example he gave us.               //triangle          import java.util.Scanner;     import java.lang.Math.*;     import java.lang.String;     public class Lab03a  //this class is used to test Triangle     {     public static void main( String[] args )     {         Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);              //ask for user input         System.out.print(\"Enter side A ::  \");         int a = keyboard.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter side B ::  \");         int b = keyboard.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter side C ::  \");         int c = keyboard.nextInt();                   Triangle test = new Triangle(a, b, c);         test.calcPerimeter();         test.calcArea();         test.toString();         System.out.println(\"Area \"+test.toString());              //ask for user input         System.out.print(\"Enter side A ::  \");         a = keyboard.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter side B ::  \");         b = keyboard.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter side C ::  \");         c = keyboard.nextInt();                   test.setSides(a,b,c);         test.calcPerimeter();         test.calcArea();         test.toString();         System.out.printf(\"%.3f\\n\",(test.toString()));              //add one more input section                         }     }      The other class:               import java.util.Scanner;     import java.lang.Math.*;          public class Triangle     {     private int sideA, sideB, sideC;     private double perimeter;     private double theArea;     private double s;     public Triangle()     {        setSides(0,0,0);        perimeter=0;        theArea=0;        s=0;     }          public Triangle(int a, int b, int c)     {         sideA=a;         sideB=b;         sideC=c;     }               public void setSides(int a, int b, int c)     {         sideA=a;         sideB=b;         sideC=c;          }          public void calcPerimeter( )     {         perimeter=sideA+sideB+sideC;          }          public void calcArea()     {         s=perimeter/2;         theArea=(Math.sqrt(s*(s-sideA)*(s-sideB)*(s-sideC)));     }          public String toString()     {         String output = \"\"+theArea+\"\\n\\n\";         return output;     }      } Is this universally true for gaming companys? True for some? Or would most accept this?"}
{"_id": "120381", "title": "What, if anything, to do about bow-shaped burndowns?", "text": "I've started to notice a recurring pattern to our team's burndown charts, which I call a \"bowstring\" pattern. The ideal line is the \"string\" and the actual line starts out relatively flat, then curves down to meet the target like a bow. My theory on why they look like this is that toward the beginning of the story, we are doing a lot of debugging or exploratory work that is difficult to estimate remaining work for. Sometimes it even goes up a little as we discover a task is more difficult once we get into it. Then we get into implementation and test which is more predictable, hence the curving down graph. Note I'm not talking about a big scale like BDUF, just the natural short-term constraint that you have to find the bug before you can fix it, coupled with the fact that stories are most likely to start toward the beginning of a two-week iteration. Is this a common occurrence among scrum teams? Do people see it as a problem? If so, what is the root cause and some techniques to deal with it?"}
{"_id": "94227", "title": "How loyal should I be to my present employer?", "text": "I come from a \"3rd world country\", moved a year ago to a \"first world country\", got a job doing customer support (networking/ management company) and web dev for my current employer. I started to cover for the main support engineer that was going for holidays; then my boss wanted an iPhone + iPad + server app for managing the employees (app on testing ground now); and gave the project to me. As I started in a new country, I got offered a very low salary, and was told it would be reviewed in a couple months, then it became \"when the app is ready\", and now that the app is ready, is at the end of this year (I started August last year). I was ok with the low salary as I was mostly learning (Objective-C) I come from microcontroller C and Linux background. Now my boss is in Europe for holidays and left everything (and everyone) for some weeks... I got now the need to make an average salary for a developer (mid level), and have been looking for jobs now that my boss is away. If I get a job before he comes back, I feel a bit guilty that he gave me a chance to learn and I pay him by leaving (and leave him with some web portals, and iOS apps)... But I really need to make more money for my family too, so I have clear I need to improve my conditions, but still feel thankful with the guy. But more important is my family! So how to proceed?"}
{"_id": "235164", "title": "Redmine - Database Structure/Normalization", "text": "I am using redmine for project management and issue tracking. I was looking at the database tables and the underlying structure and was wondering if anyone who is experienced with database architecture can comment on the structure. I am concerned that once there are many users and hundreds (or thousands) of projects (each project containing many issues, with each issue containing many messages, etc.), the database structure could possibly turn out to be a weak point. How is the performance impacted by this design? I would like to hear about the Pros/cons of how the tables are laid out and how the data is separated or normalized, and whether or not it might be worth re-structuring. What would be the benefits of separating the data out to more tables (with less columns per table)"}
{"_id": "235161", "title": "Types of unit tests based on usefulness", "text": "From value point of view I see two groups of unit tests in my practice:   1. Tests that test some non-trivial logic. Writing them (either before implementation or after) reveals some problems/potential bugs and helps to be confident in case logic is changed in the future.   2. Tests that test some very trivial logic. Those tests more like document code (typically with mocks) than test it. The maintenance workflow of those tests is not \"some logic changed, test became red - thanks God I wrote this test\" but \"some trivial code changed, test became false negative - I have to maintain (rewrite) the test without gaining any profit\". Most of the time those tests are not worth maintaining (except religious reasons). And according to my experience in many systems those tests are like 80% of all tests. I am trying to find out what other guys think on the topic of unit tests separation by value and how it corresponds to my separation. But what I mostly see is either fulltime TDD propaganda or tests-are-useless-just-write-the-code propaganda. I'm interested in something in the middle. Your own thoughts or references to articles/papers/books are welcome."}
{"_id": "235168", "title": "Simple search from an image list to bring up a specific logo", "text": "The current way i have my form is a user selects a drop down menu of a particular folder and it displays the current logos in that folder in a row below. These images are grabbed on page load all at once. The problem is, as of right now, i have around 700 logos totaling around 10mb, and every time the user reaches the form, it has to load all 700 images before the page loads, unless the images are already in the browser's cache. My problem isn't so much now, but later if I end up having 1500 logos, or more. I thought about 2 different ways to isolate this issue.   1. To have the drop down selected folder load the images AFTER selected. I asked how to get this accomplished in stack overflow with no success.   2. My second idea now is to create a simple search engine bar that will just show the logo they are searching for it on the fly instead of loading the images.  I know this is possible, i've seen it on a number of image search sites. my question is, does this type of search engine script already exist? if so .. could you point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "219049", "title": "How is MTU determined and can it be changed", "text": "I'm developing a multi-part solution that consists of an iOS application and OS X application which communicate over Bluetooth Low Energy. Everything works fine and I can send moderate amounts of text between the iPhone and my MacBook. I would like to be able to send larger amounts of data, such as an image, from the iPhone to the MacBook. I'm able to do this but it takes about 50 minutes for the transfer of 1 image, compressed as a JPEG with a 0.2 quality (on a scale of 0-1). Part of the problem is that in the iOS application when the central connects, it reports an maximum packet length of 20 bytes (plus 3 bytes for header). In iOS 7, the changed the MTU so it's not a hardcoded 23 bytes. I cannot find anywhere that would allow me to specify a higher MTU on my MacBook or in the IOBluetooth framework. I found a constant value in one of the bluetooth header files in the framework that specifies the MTU as 23 (20 + 3 for header), which leads me to believe this is just something hard coded into the framework that should be able to be changed somehow. An alternative would be to use BLE to negotiate some other form of transfer between the systems. Ultimately, the transfer shouldn't be required to go over the Internet (the way Bump does it) but if a direct WIFI or Bluetooth connection could be used without requiring any user configuration, that would work."}
{"_id": "219046", "title": "Initializing a variable as undefined", "text": "Doing some refactoring, I noticed an unusual pattern I'm not familiar with. Properties and variables that do not yet have a value are initiated with `undefined` declared explicitly, despite the fact that value-less variables and object properties would evaluate to `undefined` anyways:               var foo = undefined;     this.prop = undefined;      **Is there a reason to do this?**"}
{"_id": "213357", "title": "What kind of problems is an Android beginner likely to encounter in using Scala?", "text": "I am a hobbyist programmer who makes and maintains one production system, largely coded in Python, which now has to be ported to Android. I don't know Java at all. However, SL4A in Android makes Python a bit of a second class citizen re APIs, such as Google Cloud Messaging etc. However, for me, Java appears intimidating with its verbose syntax and strict typing. Scala's syntax is more appealing and seems like a possible compromise. From this question and this one on Stack Overflow it seems that Scala development on Android is feasible. However, as a 'beginner', I would like to know what problems I might encounter by using Scala instead of Java. The available information that I can find on the 'Net (including the question from this site cited above) is from early 2012, at the latest, and I imagine the situation has changed since then."}
{"_id": "241230", "title": "Should I use my own public API on my site (via JS)?", "text": "First of all, this question is far more different other 'public api questions' like this: Should a website use its own public API?, second, sorry for my English. **You can find the question summarized at the bottom of this question.** What I want to achieve is a big website with a public api, so who like programming (like me) and likes my website, can replicate my website's data with a much better approach (of course with some restrictions). Almost everything could be used by the public API. Because of this, I was thinking about making the whole website AJAX driven. There would be parts of the API which would be limited only to my website (domain), like login, registering. There would be only an INTERFACE on the client side, which would use the public and private API to make this interface working. The website would be ONLY CLIENT SIDE, well, I mean, the website would only use AJAX to use the api. * * * How do I imagine this? The website would be like a mobile application, the application only sending a request to a webserver, which returns a json, the application parses it, and uses it to advance in the application. (e.g.: login) My thoughts: **Pros** :   * The whole website is built up by javascript, this means I don't need to transfer the html to the client, saving bandwidth. (I hope so)   * Anyone can use up the data of my website to make their own cool things. (Is this a con or pro? O_O)   * The public API is always in use, so I can see if there are any error. **Cons** :   * Without Javascript the website is unusable.   * The bad guys easily can load the server with requesting too much data (like Request Per Second > 10000), but this can be countered via limiting this with some PHP code and logging.   * Probably much more work So the question in some words is: Should I build my website around my own api? Is it good to work only on the client side? Is this good for a big website? (e.x.: facebook, yeah facebook is a different story, but could it run with an 'architecture' like this?)"}
{"_id": "241232", "title": "Best practice to collect information from child objects", "text": "I'm regularly facing following pattern:               public abstract class BaseItem     {         BaseItem[] children;              // ...              public void DoSomethingWithStuff()         {             StuffCollection collection = new StuffCollection();             foreach(child c : children) c.AddRequiredStuff(collection);             // do something with the collection ...         }              public abstract void AddRequiredStuff(StuffCollection collection);     }          public class ConcreteItem : BaseItem     {         // ...              public override void AddRequiredStuff(StuffCollection collection)         {             Stuff stuff;             // ...             collection.Add(stuff);         }     }      Where I would prefer something like this, for better information hiding:               public abstract class BaseItem     {         BaseItem[] children;              // ...              public void DoSomethingWithStuff()         {             StuffCollection collection = new StuffCollection();             foreach(child c : children) collection.AddRange(c.RequiredStuff());             // do something with the collection ...         }              public abstract StuffCollection RequiredStuff();     }          public class ConcreteItem : BaseItem     {         // ...              public override StuffCollection RequiredStuff()         {             StuffCollection stuffCollection;                  Stuff stuff;             // ...             stuffCollection.Add(stuff);                  return stuffCollection;         }     }      What are pros and cons of each solution? For me, giving the implementation access to parent's information is some how disconcerting. On the other hand, initializing a new list, just to collect the items is a useless overhead ... What is the better design? How would it change, if `DoSomethingWithStuff` wouldn't be part of `BaseItem` but a third class? PS: there might be missing semicolons, or typos; sorry for that! The above code is not meant to be executed, but just for illustration."}
{"_id": "150574", "title": "I feel unprepared to start my first job out of college... how can I improve?", "text": "I just graduated from university with a degree in Computer Science/Engineering and was fortunate enough to land a job working in the pharmaceutical industry as a developer. My title is System Developer I, which will require the following skills: 0-3 years development experience with C# .NET and SQL Server Experience writing T-SQL and stored procedures XML Javascript I learned of the company at a job fair and was not aware that I would need those skills for the job until after they wanted to set up an interview with me. The interview consisted of talking about my background, an almost-too- simple logic test, and a couple SQL questions that anyone with any experience should be able to answer. I was honest with them and indicated that I had absolutely no experience with SQL Server, .NET, XML, or Javascript, but they offered me the position anyway. Of course, I accepted it, but I am now extremely worried that my skills will not be up to snuff. I fully realize from reading lots of Coding Horror, Stack Overflow, and The Daily WTF that a degree in Comp Sci in no way prepares me to be a software developer; I further realize that I will be a monumental noob in the presence of people who have been doing this for years. I feel like the only thing that makes up for my lack of development experience and programming knowledge are my social skills, innate writing ability, and humility (at least compared with some of my co-graduates who fancied themselves to be the next Steve Jobs... _barf_ ) You will never find me being the prima donna constantly complaining about the system, the language, etc... I just want to do my job like I'm told, work 9 - 5, and go home with my paycheck feeling like I'm competent. If that requires home-study, I'm more than willing because I do love programming and computer science. So far, I've familiarized myself a bit on using SQL Server Management Studio, gave myself a refresher on basic SQL, and started learning more about C# and .NET using Introducing Visual C# 2010 by Adam Freeman from Apress. Can anyone recommend anything else I can do in the meantime to: A. Chill the _*_ * out and enjoy my new job without worrying so much about getting canned for incompetence B. Improve my understanding of design patterns and OOP C. Get the low-down on writing T-SQL in the most efficient way possible Thanks everyone."}
{"_id": "65673", "title": "I might be starting to do Arduino development and I would like some advice", "text": "So, today I looked at Arduino; seems very interesting. I still don't want to shell out the money just yet, as I have some questions, namely:   1. Should I learn something about electronics? What and with what resources?   2. What stuff should I buy? I have a limited, but not _that_ small budget (probably up to 200\u20ac, but preferably _less_ ). I'm interested in getting a screen (mustn't be complex, but I would prefer one like that), some speaker, some way for it to move and a way to remotely control it. I would also want a battery. I also wan't to be able to use my board for many things in the future, so it shouldn't be too basic, I guess. I think I will go with the MEGA, is that smart?   3. What resources do you recommend? Any books? Good tutorials besides what you find on their site?   4. What are really cool extensions (e.g. screens) which I would be adviced to get/try? Help greatly appreciated. Also, I have _never_ developed for any embedded device, but I know C and computer architecture to some degree; I'm somewhat familiar with low level stuff."}
{"_id": "82730", "title": "Scrum overestimation and replanning", "text": "We are in the middle of our first Sprint and something dawn on us: we over estimated! We had planned 114 ideal hours for this 2 weeks iteration and at the end of the first week we finished the whole Sprint. What do we do now? The \"book\" says we should, and we will, get the next high priority items from the backlog. Though, how do we add them to the burn down chart? Do we re-write it to account for those stories as if they were there from the begining? Or simply add their estimates to the y axis in the day we start working on them (showing a 90o angle jump)? Any feedback is welcome!"}
{"_id": "82732", "title": "How do you name sprints in your projects?", "text": "Some Scrum software management tools give you this option to explicitly name your sprints. Do you have a preferred way of naming your sprints or do you just use a simple scheme like 1, 2, 3, ...?"}
{"_id": "215213", "title": "Permissions and MVC", "text": "I\u2019m in the progress of developing a web application. This web application is mostly a CRUD interface, although some users are only allowed to perform some actions and see only some parts of views. What would be a reasonable way to handle user permissions, given that some parts of views are not available to users? I was thinking of having a function `hasPermission(permission)` that returns `true` iff the current user has the given permission, although it would require conditionals around all parts of views that are only visible to some users. For example:               {% if has_permission('view_location') %}         {{ product.location }}     {% endif %}      I\u2019m fearing this will become an ugly and unreadable mess, especially since these permissions can get kind of complicated. How is this problem commonly solved in web applications? I\u2019m considering using Haskell with Happstack or Python with Django."}
{"_id": "215210", "title": "The balance between client and server functionality", "text": "I want to bring the discussion that started in our teams and get your opinion about it. Assume we have an user account which could have different credentials for authentication and associated email to recover. An user has possibility to do signup with an email or use his social profile to complete signup process. As an Rest API from the backend to client looks like:   1. Create account   2. Authorise   3. Update user data   4. Link social account   5. Register email   6. Verify email In addition our BE is distributed and divided between several services/servers/clusters. So different calls are related to different end points. As well we have different client - mobile native applications, web application. The usual registration flow looks for the client like this:   1. Ask user for email   2. Create account (Rest)   3. Authorise (Rest)   4. Ask user for his display name   5. Update data (Rest)   6. Register email (Rest) And future possible calls:   1. Verify email   2. Link social account to user With the Facebook signup:   1. Ask user to login to FB   2. Create account (Rest)   3. Authorise (Rest)   4. Link FB (Rest)   5. Register and verify FB user email (Rest)   6. Update user name based on FB data (Rest) But all these steps are possible to do on backend. So we proposed to have another end point which will hide/combine different calls on BE and return whole process result to the clients:   1. Ask user for FB login   2. New user with FB (proposed Rest)   3. BE is doing register/link verified email/update user data/authorise The pros for this approach:   1. No more duplication of functionality between clients   2. Speed up the networking and user experience The cons for this approach:   1. Additional work for backend   2. Probably most complex scenarios in future updates I would like to get your opinion or experience with this situation. Especially if you already experienced point \"Probably most complex scenarios in future updates\" from against reasons."}
{"_id": "215217", "title": "How to structure my GUI agnostic project?", "text": "I have a project which loads from database a XML file which defines a form for some user. XML is transformed into a collection of objects whose classes derive from single parent. Something like Control -> EditControl -> TextBox Control -> ContainterControl -> Panel Those classes are responsible for creation of GUI controls for three different enviroments: WinForms, DevExpress XtraReports and WebForms. All three frameworks share mostly the same control tree and have a common single parent (Windows.Forms.Control, XrControl and WebControl). So, how to do it? Solution a) Control class has abstract methods               Control CreateWinControl();     XrControl CreateXtraControl();     WebControl CreateWebControl();      This could work but the project has to reference all three frameworks and the classes are going to be fat with methods which would support all three implementations. Solution b) Each framework implementation is done in separate projects and have the exact class tree like the Core project. All three implementations are connected using a interface to the Core class. This seems clean but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Does anyone have a simpler solution or a suggestion how should I approach this task?"}
{"_id": "215216", "title": "Inherit one instance variable from the global scope", "text": "I'm using Curses to create a command line GUI with Ruby. Everything's going well, but I have hit a slight snag. I don't think Curses knowledge (esoteric to be fair) is required to answer this question, just Ruby concepts such as objects and inheritance. **I'm going to explain my problem now, but if I'm banging on, just look at the example below.** Basically, every Window instance needs to have .close called on it in order to close it. Some Window instances have other Windows associated with it. When closing a Window instance, I want to be able to close all of the other Window instances associated with it at the same time. Because associated Windows are generated in a logical fashion, (I append the name with a number: `instance_variable_set(self + integer, Window.new(10,10,10,10))` ), it's easy to target generated windows, because methods can anticipate what assosiated windows will be called, `(I can recreate the instance variable name from scratch, and almost query it: instance_variable_get(self + integer)`. I have a delete method that handles this. If the delete method is just a normal, global method (called like this: `delete_window(@win543)` then everything works perfectly. However, if the delete method is an instance method, which it needs to be in-order to use the `self` keyword, it doesn't work for a very clear reason; it can 'query' the correct instance variable perfectly well (`instance_variable_get(self + integer)`), however, **because it's an instance method, the global instances aren't scoped to it!** Now, one way around this would obviously be to simply make a global method like this: `delete_window(@win543)`. But I have attributes associated with my window instances, and it all works very elegantly. This is very simplified, but it literally translates the problem exactly:               class Dog             def speak                     woof             end     end          def woof             if @dog_generic == nil                     puts \"@dog_generic isn't scoped when .woof is called from a class method!\\n\"             else                     puts \"@dog_generic is scoped when .woof is called from the global scope. See:\\n\" + @dog_generic             end     end          @dog_generic = \"Woof!\"     lassie = Dog.new     lassie.speak #=> @dog_generic isn't scoped when .woof is called from an instance method!\\n          woof #=> @dog_generic is scoped when .woof is called from the global scope. See:\\nWoof!      **TL/DR:** I need `lassie.speak` to return this string: `\"@dog_generic is scoped when .woof is called from the global scope. See:\\nWoof!\"` @dog_generic must remain as an insance variable. The use of Globals or Constants is not acceptable. Could woof inherit from the Global scope? Maybe some sort of keyword:               def woof < global # This 'code' is just to conceptualise what I want to do, don't take offence!     end      Is there some way the .woof method could 'pull in' @dog_generic from the global scope? Will @dog_generic have to be passed in as a parameter?"}
{"_id": "64109", "title": "How to stay in the zone after finishing a task?", "text": "I've noticed that while I'm programming, I divide my work into tasks and until a task is complete I cannot stop, even if it takes hours. However, once that task is complete, I find it very hard to move onto the next task. I feel the urge to spend some time having a break, surfing the web, etc, and before you know it the rest of the work day has gone by. Sometimes if it only took 1-2 hours to complete a task, this still happens. Has anyone else experienced this? How do you deal with this so you stay in the zone till all your tasks for the day are done?"}
{"_id": "154056", "title": "Git: Fixing a bug affecting two branches", "text": "I'm basing my Git repo on A successful Git branching model and was wondering what happens if you have this situation: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/lLGpu.png) Say I'm developing on two feature branches A and B, and B requires code from A. The X node introduces an error in feature A which affects branch B, but this is not detected at node Y where feature A and B were merged and testing was conducted before branching out again and working on the next iteration. As a result, the bug is found at node Z by the people working on feature B. At this stage it's decided that a bugfix is needed. This fix should be applied to both features, since the people working on feature A also need the bug fixed, since its part of their feature. Should a bugfix branch be created from the latest feature A node (the one branching from node Y) and then merged with feature A? After which both features are merged into develop again and tested before branching out? The problem with this is that it requires both branches to merge to fix the issue. Since feature B doesn't touch code in feature A, is there a way to change the history at node Y by implementing the fix and still allowing the feature B branch to remain unmerged yet have the fixed code from feature A? Mildly related: Git bug branching convention"}
{"_id": "215219", "title": "Is there a reason someone would choose GPLv2 instead of GPLv3?", "text": "Is there any reason anyone would use GPL v2 over GPL v3 when starting a new project, or is GPL v2 still around only because older projects can't or haven't updated their license yet?"}
{"_id": "153000", "title": "Proper way to implement Android XML onClick attribute in Activity", "text": "I have used the android:onClick attribute extensively in my XML layouts for my Android application. **Example:**               <Button         android:id=\"@+id/exampleButton\"         android:onClick=\"onButtonClick\" />      Is it proper to create an Interface to enforce the implementation of those onClick methods in Activities that use that layout file?               public interface MyButtonInterface {         public onButtonClick(View v);     }"}
{"_id": "154050", "title": "Should I cache the data or hit the database?", "text": "I have not worked with any caching mechanisms and was wondering what my options are in the .net world for the following scenario. We basically have a a REST Service where the user passes an ID of a Category (think folder) and this category may have lots of sub categories and each of the sub categories could have 1000 of media containers (think file reference objects) which contain information about a file that may be on a NAS or SAN server (files are videos in this case). The relationship between these categories is stored in a database together with some permission rules and meta data about the sub categories. So from a UI perspective we have a lazy loaded tree control which is driven by the user by clicking on each sub folder (think of Windows explorer). Once they come to a URL of the video file, they then can watch the video. The number of users could grow into the 1000s and the sub categories and videos could be in the 10000s as the system grows. The question is should we carry on the way it is currently working where each request hits the database or should we think about caching the data? We are on using IIS 6/7 and Asp.net."}
{"_id": "148329", "title": "Has test driven development (TDD) actually benefited a real world project?", "text": "I am not new to coding. I have been coding (seriously) for over 15 years now. I have always had some testing for my code. However, over the last few months I have been learning test driven design/development (TDD) using Ruby on Rails. So far, I'm not seeing the benefit. I see some benefit to writing tests for some things, but very few. And while I like the idea of writing the test first, I find I spend substantially more time trying to debug my tests to get them to say what I really mean than I do debugging actual code. This is probably because the test code is often substantially more complicated than the code it tests. I hope this is just inexperience with the available tools (RSpec in this case). I must say though, at this point, the level of frustration mixed with the disappointing lack of performance is beyond unacceptable. So far, the only value I'm seeing from TDD is a growing library of RSpec files that serve as templates for other projects/files. Which is not much more useful, maybe less useful, than the actual project code files. In reading the available literature, I notice that TDD seems to be a massive time sink up front, but pays off in the end. I'm just wondering, are there any real world examples? Does this massive frustration ever pay off in the real world? I really hope I did not miss this question somewhere else on here. I searched, but all the questions/answers are several years old at this point. It was a rare occasion when I found a developer who would say anything bad about TDD, which is why I have spent as much time on this as I have. However, I noticed that nobody seems to point to specific real-world examples. I did read one answer that said the guy debugging the code in 2011 would thank you for have a complete unit testing suite (I think that comment was made in 2008). So, I'm just wondering, after all these years, do we finally have any examples showing the payoff is real? Has anybody actually inherited or gone back to code that was designed/developed with TDD and has a complete set of unit tests and actually felt a payoff? Or did you find that you were spending so much time trying to figure out what the test was testing (and why it was important) that you just tossed out the whole mess and dug into the code?"}
{"_id": "235296", "title": "Using GPL software with closed-source hardware", "text": "Does it violate the GPL v3 if I were to use a gpl licensed firmware with my closed-source hardware that I am selling? Or do both have to be open-source, or do I just have to make the firmware source freely available? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "118005", "title": "Should I open up to .net, c# and visual basic?", "text": "I am a huge linux fan and have been ignoring .net, C#, and visual basic due to their relationship with Microsoft. Am I foredooming them just for their relationship? Is there any advantage to learning them, when you are mainly a linux user?"}
{"_id": "118000", "title": "Developing a Project in a Statically Typed Language Entirely in VIM", "text": "I've recently started taking Scala to heart (sweet Python, I still love you, but your collections just can't match Scala's), and in doing so am now using IntelliJ IDEA almost entirely for development. However, IDEA's Scala plugin is far from perfect, and there are many times I wish I could just go back to my one editor love -- VIM. Unfortunately, there are a few Intellisense-like features I still don't know how to retrieve. Namely,   1. automatic imports   2. type inconsistency recognition   3. method definition lookup   4. a list of valid methods or variables for instances Can anyone recommend any tools to get these done? While Scala is the language most preferred, these concerns are equally valid for C++ and Java. I really would like to leave IDEs behind!"}
{"_id": "46064", "title": "How to make a good portfolio for IT student (who loves programming) like me?", "text": "I am currently a college student, and going to apply for an university in probably next month. Unlike art student who easily put on their works such as models, designs and so on on their portfolio; I am hitting a dead corner trying to find a \"creative\" way to showcase my work as a programmer. It would be normal if programmer shows his good project with source code and everything else. Well, it should be no problem with actual \"good\" projects, but all of my projects are crappy (can't help it because I am still student, and don't have much work experience) and I don't even know it's worth to show. Nonetheless, I have learned a lot in only 1 year since I started programming. I am now familiar with Java, PHP, Actionscript3, C#, Objective-C and on my way to learn Ruby. I plan to build a Flash portfolio using Actionscript with Ruby as backend to show what I have learnt. The problem is idea. How to show people that I learned a lot of useful thing? Otherwise I hit the dead end and LOL just show what I have on Github (but i certainly never want that...)"}
{"_id": "245202", "title": "What is the argument for singular nouns in RESTful API resource naming?", "text": "I understand that when naming RESTful URI's it is commonly accepted to use plurals to represent collections of resources. I am curious as to the argument for using singular nouns instead."}
{"_id": "82883", "title": "Checklist for starting a largeish ASP.NET MVC 3 project", "text": "Currently I'm in the very beginnings of the planning stages of a project I was hired to take part in. It's fairly large, but small enough to be handled by 1 or 2 programmers and a handful of others (for design, marketing, etc.). Mostly the designers and marketers are working on their plans right now, but I have to start thinking about how I'm going to approach it. I think I'm going to use C# and ASP.NET MVC 3 to build it. I'm familiar with C# and the MVC pattern, but haven't done a big project with this particular technology before. I'd like to build a \"checklist\" of things I need to look at, buy, become familiar with, etc. before starting the project:   * **Database** : I'm assuming that MS SQL server is the standard to use with .net, but: for larger projects, do I need to upgrade from whatever is free/comes with VS2010 express? What steps do I need to take in designing the database for use with MVC? Or LINQ?   * **Testing** : What testing framework is best for this type of application? What testing methodologies should I consider for a web application? How should I approach testing the models and views? Is there a difference between testing controllers from testing a class in any other application?   * **Development** : Is there a particular pattern/patterns which mesh well with MVC development? Do I write the models first, then the controllers? The views first, then the models? Controllers first? How do I write the application to allow for easy update rollouts?   * **Deployment** : What is involved in deploying a .net web application? Do I need to purchase IIS? What should I look into before deployment, wrt configuring the production server? How do I roll out updates with minimal downtime?   * **Etc.:** Is there anything else I should be aware of? Costs? Caveats? Books/websites I should read before ever launching VS?"}
{"_id": "161907", "title": "How to decide how backward-compatible my new Mac OS X application should be?", "text": "I'm currently contemplating writing an OS X version of my Windows software. My Windows application still supports Windows XP, and I know that if I drop support for it now, our customers will cry bloody murder. I'm new to OS X development, and as I learn the technology, APIs, etc., I realized that if I'm going to provide comparable level of backward compatibility (e.g. down to OS X 10.5), I would not be able to use many things that look very useful and relevant in my case (ARC, XPC communications, many others). This is quite different from Windows, in my opinion, where there are very little changed between Windows XP and Windows 7 from desktop application developer's standpoint. So, on one hand, it seems like a complete waste to stick to 2007 or 2009-level API in 2012. On the other hand, according to NetMarketShare report and Stat Owl report Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 market share is still 11% and 35%-40% respectively. However, I'm not sure if these older OS users are my target audience (buyers of software utilities) if they didn't bother to upgrade their OS... **My question** : Are there any other reasons I should take into account when deciding if I target 10.5 or 10.6 or 10.7 for a new application?"}
{"_id": "191535", "title": "Could submitting a Pull Request ever constitute accepting a Contributor Licence Agreement?", "text": "Some software projects have a Contributor Licence Agreement. The agreement could, for instance, assign copyright of 3rd-party contributions to the original project creator. Could submitting a Pull Request on github ever constitute accepting such an agreement?"}
{"_id": "99229", "title": "Why does the Lisp community prefer to accumulate all the parentheses at the end of the function?", "text": "Why does the Lisp community prefer to accumulate all the parentheses at the end of the function:               (defn defer-expensive [cheap expensive]       (if-let [good-enough (force cheap)]         good-enough         (force expensive)))      Why not employ a convention like C or Java?   Well ok, Lisp is much more older than those languages, but I'm talking about the contemporary Lispers.               (defn defer-expensive [cheap expensive]       (if-let [good-enough (force cheap)]         good-enough         (force expensive)       )     )      Note: Code snippet is from the book \"The Joy of Clojure\"."}
{"_id": "121328", "title": "Is it good practice to catch a checked exception and throw a RuntimeException?", "text": "I read some code of a colleague and found that he often catches various exceptions and then always throws a 'RuntimeException' instead. I always thought this is very bad practice. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "210331", "title": "Why would one transform a checked exception to an unchecked exception?", "text": "My buddy told me today that some programmers transform a checked exception (e.g. EJBException, SQLException...) to an unchecked (RuntimeException?) My buddy explained a call stack where if you change the bottom of the stack you would have to change every method that calls it if you change the bottom (innermost) method. Can you elaborate and/or examplify with code more in detail or did I misunderstand something? I don't think that I have had that problem since I never wrote `throws`."}
{"_id": "16836", "title": "How do programming languages benefit from being based on English?", "text": "I think the world now programs in English-based programming languages not only because of historical/economic circumstances, but because the English morphology in particular has some properties that suit algorithmic thinking best. But anyway it would be interesting to hear your opinions on this, especially if you are multilingual yourself. I've seen some mentioning of German-based languages (see Plankalkul for example, in fact the first ever programming language we know very little about, thanks to WW2), also a Russian-based flavor of Algol which existed back in the 80's at least on paper, not sure if it ever existed in binary or not. Both looked a bit sluggish because there were more shortened words and weird abbreviations than full words like in the EN-based languages. So if you know of any other national language-based PL's, even completely archaic and irrelevant today, purely theoretical or whatever, would be interesting to take a look at them. And back to the main question: so what, if any, makes the Shakespeare's language so good for programming? (There is actually a list of Non-English-based programming languages on Wikipedia (of course, where else?), but it would be interesting to hear opinions of native speakers of those languages on how a given \"national\" programming languages really feels like.)"}
{"_id": "195224", "title": "Extreme Programming practices make an application more error prone?", "text": "I am conducting academic research on the topic of Extreme Programming and whether its practices lead to creating space for more errors and bugs in applications. From the experiences I gathered from many, I have comments that fall on both sides. Many support it and consider it a daily necessity, with dynamics that can facilitate changing project requirements. Many others argue that it leads to many problems, such as:   * Over-involvement with the customer in the process leads to the expression of customer wishes rather than needs   * Many products have multiple customers which lead to conflicting needs and opinions, creating unnecessary blockades   * Many products don\u2019t have any external customers, where the product is made for internal use or to be sold in the future. In these cases, the team itself is playing the user as well as the developer, hence killing the effectiveness of the process.   * Not many things exist in formal documentation, this informality leads to vague vision and can create problems where the customer might say that this is not what we asked etc. etc. The questions is why such conflicting opinions exist regarding XP. Is it a matter of different scenarios? Is there something else? To what extent is the claim (as written in the title) true? I would like people who are working or have worked with XP here to contribute their learning and real world experiences. It would be ideal if you have any facts or references to support you answer."}
{"_id": "63685", "title": "Is it legal to reflector some .NET code and use it in a commercial application?", "text": "I'm working on a commercial application that requires .NET 4.0 **Client Profile** , but I need to make a call to `HttpUtility.ParseQueryString`, which is not included in the Client Profile but it is in the normal one. So I just figured out that I can use Reflector to get the whole method and all the other required methods for it to work and add it to my app. This way I won't need to change the requirement from Client Profile to the normal one which is a lot heavier just to call a single method. Would this be illegal? Do I **have** to change the applications target framework just for a single method?"}
{"_id": "60099", "title": "Beginning programming for real clients, what copyright should I put in the code?", "text": "So far, I've been writing projects for my friends and friends of my friends, which required no legal stuff. Now I've moved on to freelance programming on websites like vworker.com and I'm wondering what should I put in the comments on top of the code. I'm not doing big, serious serious projects, just frontends and scrapers/bots for what I gather is personal use. Would my usual `// Written by Igor Marvinsky, 2011` be enough?"}
{"_id": "95571", "title": "Should I include HTML markup in my JSON response?", "text": "In an e-commerce site, when adding an item to a cart, I'd like to show a popup window with the options you can choose. Imagine you're ordering an iPod Shuffle and now you have to choose the color and text to engrave. I'd like the window to be modal, so I'm using a lightbox populated by an Ajax call. Now I have two options: ### Option 1: Send only the data, and generate the HTML markup using JavaScript What's nice about this is that it trims down the Ajax request to the bear minimum and doesn't mix the data with the markup. What's not so great about this is that now I need to use JavaScript to do my rendering, instead of having a template engine on the server-side do it. I might be able to clean up the approach a bit by using a client-side templating solution. ### Option 2: Send the HTML markup What's good about this is that I can have the same server-side templating engine I'm using for the rest of my rendering tasks (Django), do the rendering of the lightbox. JavaScript is only used to insert the HTML fragment into the page. So it clearly leaves the rendering to the rendering engine. Makes sense to me. But I don't feel comfortable mixing data and markup in an Ajax call for some reason. I'm not sure what makes me feel uneasy about it. I mean, it's the same way every web page is served up -- data plus markup -- right?"}
{"_id": "95570", "title": "Web Site Development Software for VirtualBox Ubuntu 11.04", "text": "I'm doing some development of a website on a VirtualBox guest running Ubuntu 11.04 (host is running Windows, but I want to do the web development in a Linux environment). My development languages are primarily PHP and Javascript (using Apache and node.js). The question is this: is there a good IDE for work under these conditions that can handle running virtualized? I tried Eclipse, and was not particularly thrilled with the performance; I'm wondering if there's some other way to do this than to do all my text editing in emacs."}
{"_id": "68621", "title": "Which reporting tool you prefer for a web-based application?", "text": "For both PHP and ASP.NET, which reporting tool you prefer to create, preview and print reports? Not just printing the web-page directly, any professional third-party or an open-source tool."}
{"_id": "254496", "title": "C# - initialize variable inside method and use in whole class", "text": "this is a conceptual question, but if i initialize a variable in c# as public will it be able to be used in the class as I want a variable \"`player1`\" and a variable \"`player2`\" where either could be one of the two (or more)   1. Player   2. Computer  Here is what i would like to know how I would do:               public class Game       {            //equivalent of initializing it here         public bool islogging;           public string[] log;           public int draws, round;                public Game(player p1, computer p2)           {               public player player1 = p1;               public computer player2 = p2;                                                                    }         //other overloads here...         ...     }      trying this it doesn't work as the public keyword is rejected               public Game(player p1, player p2 )     {            public  player player1, player2;          player player3 = p1;          player player4 = p2;           }"}
{"_id": "254494", "title": "Are there any downsides to replacing js confirm boxes with \"mark record as deleted\"?", "text": "I believe in the user experience of always having a confirm pop-up for deletions. However (though we're very used to it), a separate small pop-up window is not ideal and for users on different browsing devices, using different input devices, they can be a nightmare. So I was thinking of changing all my 'confirm delete?' pop-ups into NOT having a pop-up, deleting the record immediately BUT then offering a link to restore the record on whatever page they user is put on after the 'delete'. This absolutely requires that I update the application so that instead of deleting the record, it is either marked as deleted, or moved to a 'deleted_original-table-name' and thus in either case can be deleted. There may then be an 'admin' process available to periodically delete them permanently. I am looking for thoughts on why this might be a bad idea and any pitfalls to watch for. I'd like to know if there are any advantages/disadvantages to moving it to a separate table vs. marking it has deleted."}
{"_id": "9346", "title": "Automatic code generators", "text": "One of my colleagues likes to use automatic code generators, which create large amounts of code that is poorly documented and very hard to maintain. Is the cost of using a code generator worth the hassle in maintenance, for the reduced time to creation?"}
{"_id": "40541", "title": "Managing International Programmers", "text": "My boss recently went back to our international office in his home country to interview some potential new employees, and we have decided to hire a few as programmers. They are fresh out of college and have very limited experience (similar to me when I first started working here). I am told they are able to read English, however I looked at the code they wrote as a part of the application process and all their variable names, method names, comments, etc are in Spanish. I am having doubts that they have any ability to _write_ English. I hear they are learners though, so maybe they can learn over time as we give them small training projects. I will be working with them closely, helping them learn good design principles and other things, and I will eventually get to the point where I am producing code with them. Has anyone dealt with this sort of situation and had it end well? What kind of pitfalls should I look out for? What kinds of tools do you know of that can assist in international collaboration and training?"}
{"_id": "235838", "title": "Is it possible to get probabilities from a support vector machine?", "text": "From what I understand, SVM's take a discrete number of x and y values from which to learn from, then when given new x values map it to one y value (category). Is it possible to use SVM's or something similar to instead map x values to probabilities of y values? Let me give you an example, say your x values are arrays of two integers: x = [[1,1],[1,0],[0,1],[0,0]], and you have two categories, a and b such that y = [a,a,b,b]. i.e. [1,1] and [1,0] map to a, [0,1] and [0,0] map to b. Given an x value of [1,0.9], the SVM would probably predict the y value to be the category a, given another x value [1,0.89], the SVM would probably still predict the y value to be a part of the a category. This is what I am looking for: Given x and y values as specified above, the \"predict\" function I am looking for would return an array of tuples for each category in y of the form: (category, probability x was in category). For example, with the case above, the output would look something like this: [(a,.93),(b,.07)] My application of this would be somewhat like a fuzzy logic system, using pseudocode:               if x is almost certainly in category a:         do something     if x is likely to be in category a:         do something else      Does a system like this already have a name? If not, how would I go about implementing something like this? I'm currently using scikit-learn in Python, so if there's something like this I could do with that library, that would be the best."}
{"_id": "254499", "title": "Is there a better alternative than abusing the IDisposable pattern?", "text": "Consider the following (Microsoft-sanctioned) code:               <% using (Html.Form<HomeController>(action=>action.Index())) { %>              <input type=\"text\" id=\"search\" />              <input type=\"button\" value=\"Submit\" />          <% } %>      The `using` statement has but one purpose here: _to add a`</form>` tag to the end of the generated HTML._ This feels dirty to me, for what I hope are obvious reasons:   1. It's not `using`'s raison d'etre.   2. It deliberately causes side-effects.   3. It's not intuitive that `Html.Form` would implement `IDisposable`.   4. The `using` statement is not actually required, but `Html.Form` will break without it (unless you emit `</form>` yourself, which kinda misses the whole point). This is not the only abuse that people have heaped onto the `using` pattern. The question is, is there a viable alternative that provides the same stylistic/readability benefits as `using`, without making you feel like taking a shower afterwards?"}
{"_id": "198741", "title": "Never had a job - Will it matter for internship?", "text": "On my 20 years on this planet I have never had a job. I am a CS student who just finished his first year at uni with a 3.8 GPA. I will be applying for internships next fall, and I will have a nice portfolio of \"stuff\" I can showcase (a mix of web, mobile, and desktop applications) on my resume. But... I don't have any work experience whatsoever. No job folding shirts in the mall; no flipping burgers at Wendy's; nada. Will it be difficult for me to land an internship given that I have no prior work experience? Should I try to find any kind of job in the interval between now and next fall, so I can at least put something down? On a side note, how would it look if I marked myself as \"self-employed\" as a freelancer selling custom-made websites and web apps (which is something I am planning on doing with a friend)? Would that make up for my lack of real world experience? Would employers eat that kind of thing up? Any and all insight is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "21702", "title": "Is Microsoft's Entity Framework a proprietary variant of NHibernate?", "text": "I have no knowledge of Entity Framework and NHibernate but definitely want to learn. I want to know how to start. Whether to first read documentation of NHibernate or the default Visual Studio Entity Framework? Is Microsoft's Entity Framework a variant of NHibernate?"}
{"_id": "184376", "title": "Why do some programmers prefer spaces over tabs?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why do some languages recommend using spaces rather than tabs? While reading over the style guides for PHP   1. PSR-0   2. PSR-1   3. PSR-2 I noticed the rule > Code MUST use 4 spaces for indenting, not tabs. I'm tabs person, I prefer the faster editing that comes with using tabs. But given that the language or markup doesn't require spaces instead of tabs (ala YAML), why force spaces which are more time consuming to edit?"}
{"_id": "142008", "title": "How can a computer render a CLI/console along with a GUI?", "text": "I'm confused when looking into graphics - specifically with operating systems. I mean, how can a computer render a CLI/console along with a GUI? GUI's are completely different from text. And how can we have GUI windows that display text interfaces, ie how can we have CLI in modern Graphics Operating system - that's what I'm mainly trying to grip on to. How does graphics get rendered to display? Is there some sort of memory address that a GPU access which holds all pixel data, and there system's within OS's that gather the pixel position of windows and widgets, along with the Z Index and rasterize them to that memory address, which then the GPU loads to the screen? How about the CLI's integrated with Graphics? How does the OS tell the GPU that a certain part of the screen wants to display text while the rest wants to display pixel data?"}
{"_id": "212979", "title": "Why do git commits not contain the name of the branch they were created on?", "text": "When working with git in a team using feature branches, I often find it difficult to understand the branch structure in history. **Example:** Let's say there was a feature branch **feature/make-coffee** , and bugfixing continued on **master** in parallel to the feature branch. History might look like this:               *     merge feature/make-coffee     |\\     | *   small bugfix     | |     * |    fix bug #1234     | |     | *    add milk and sugar     | |     * |    improve comments     | |     * |    fix bug #9434     | |     | *    make coffe (without milk or sugar)     | |     * |    improve comments     |/     *      **Problem** At first glance, I find it difficult to tell which side is the feature branch. I usually need to browse several comments on both sides to get an idea of which is which. This gets more complicated if there are multiple feature branches in parallel (particularly if they are for closely related features), or if there was merging in both directions between feature branch and master. As a contrast, in Subversion, this is significantly easier because the branch name is part of the history - so I can tell right away that a commit was originally made on \"feature/make-coffee\". Git _could_ make this easier by including the name of the current branch in the commit metadata when creating a commit (along with author, date etc.). However, git does not do this. _Is there some fundamental reason why this is not done? Or is it just that nobody wanted the feature? If it's the latter, are there other ways of understanding the purpose of historical branches without seeing the name?_"}
{"_id": "54970", "title": "Is Google's Friend Connect tool defunct?", "text": "Looking at the Friend Connect sites, documentation, example, I've noticed that:   * there haven't been updates in a long time   * many of the sites used as example sites are dead or abandoned   * the community (forums, message boards, etc) is relatively silent Is google's Friend Connect set of tools defunct/abandoned, or is it still actively being used, developed and marketed?"}
{"_id": "54971", "title": "Got an idea for an application, but part of it is patented, any suggestions?", "text": "so I've been working on developing an idea for an application that I think has the potential to be successful, however after some initial research I've discovered that at least part of my ideas are covered by a patent out there, the patent in particular is held by a really large company (I don't want to give away specifics for fear I'd draw their attention for sure). I'm debating a few options: 1) Develop patents around my ideas that don't conflict and maybe approach the company in question for a license exchange 2) Just approach them for a license outright 3) Just develop around it anyways and hope for the best :-p What have other people done in these situations? Are companies generally willing to grant patent licenses? Are they willing to grant them at reasonable prices? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "149056", "title": "Why do .NET modules separate module file names from namespaces?", "text": "In implementations of the Scheme programming language (R6RS standard) I can import a module as follows:               (import (abc def xyz))      The system will try to look for a file `$DIR/abc/def/xyz.sls` where `$DIR` is some directory where you keep your Scheme modules. `xyz.sls` is the source code for the module and it is compiled on the fly if necessary. The Ruby, Python, and Perl module systems are similar in this respect. C# on the other hand is a little more involved. First, you have dll files that you must reference on a per project basis. You must reference each one explicitly. This is more involved than say, dropping dll files in a directory and having C# pick them up by name. Second, There isn't a one-to-one naming correspondence between the dll filename, and the namespaces offered by the dll. I can appreciate this flexibility, but it can also get out of hand (and has). To make this concrete, it would be nice if, when I say this `using abc.def.xyz;`, C# would try to find a file `abc/def/xyz.dll`, in some directory that C# knows to look in (configurable on a per project basis). I find the Ruby, Python, Perl, Scheme way of handling modules more elegant. It seems that emerging languages tend to go with the simpler design. Why does the .NET/C# world does things in this way, with an extra level of indirection?"}
{"_id": "149051", "title": "Looking for a good approach and data structure to solve this", "text": "C# WinForms: A Combobox with some items in in.   A spread sheet with some items in it. Each row also has a check-box so users can select them. User picks an items in the combobox and clicks a Save button. It means associate that Combobox item to those selected items in the spreadsheet. **Q1:** What's a good structure I can use to keep track of which combobox item is associated with which items from the spreadsheet? NOTE: User can also Move up or Mode Down the items in the spreadsheet. So it gets a little tricky here, they might have associated some items, then they change the order or those items but we still need to know what items are selected for each combobox item **Q2:** What's a good approach to keep track of that?"}
{"_id": "149050", "title": "Should I change the name in the WTFPL?", "text": "I'm using the WTFPL in my personal projects published on GitHub. Currently I'm using it verbatim, but I have the suspicion I shouldn't be leaving               Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <sam@hocevar.net>       in there, and instead should use my name. But the license is very confusing about this. Half of the WTFPL is about the WTFPL itself, so I thought that copyright might refer to a copyright on the license text itself, and not on the project this is licensing. Also, it says > Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of > this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is > changed. So would I have to change the name, from WTFPL to, say, \"WTFPL-Domenic\"?"}
{"_id": "212971", "title": "How to securely store user credentials from external website", "text": "I'm developing an application where I'd like to use credentials from external websites. This will be used to login with the website API and get information for the user. Example: I want to use the user Reddit's account to warn him if more than X people reply to one of his comment. How would I go about storing the user's Reddit credentials on my end securely so I only ask once and can automate this process. Or is that even possible?"}
{"_id": "48301", "title": "Why make JavaScript class based?", "text": "JavaScript is a prototype language. To turn it into a class based language adds little value? I am not talking about best-practice here. I remember reading an article from way back, which claimed that the class-based worldview is perceivably more flawed than the one of prototypes. My summary can be found here: http://carnotaurus.tumblr.com/post/3248631891/class-based-javascript-or- not. I am resisting to use the class-based jQuery add-on and other attempts at faciliating class-based JavaScript. Peer pressure is strong but is there a stronger theoretical or practical reason why I should stop resisting?"}
{"_id": "48305", "title": "Trying to understand Single Responsiblity Principle", "text": "I'm having a difficult time understanding the `Single Responsibility Principle`. What should I look for to evaluate the various sources of information on the matter?   What should I look for in examples explaining the principle?"}
{"_id": "254722", "title": "Are a class's methods stored only once in memory?", "text": "When I create an instance of a class the system allocates memory for all instance variables of the class. Some languages may call them fields or properties. But what about the code of the class methods? Are those duplicated too or do I have the code only once in memory? I know all instances got their own values - even inside the methods - but I would like to know about the code. Do I have instance variables and separate \"instance methods\"?"}
{"_id": "44686", "title": "Should desktop developers know some web development and/or vice versa?", "text": "Do you think desktop application developers should know how to do web development, and/or vice versa? In the industry, is it common for desktop developers to do web development (to some degree) and/or vice versa (again)? To what degree should one of the two parties (if at all) know the other party's job? Should you not specialize at all?"}
{"_id": "254728", "title": "BackgroundWorker starting again in Completed event", "text": "I want a background worker to continue running and occasionally update the user interface. My first idea was to use a BackgroundWorker and in its completed event just fire it up again. **Is using a BackgroundWorker in this fashion acceptable?** Or are there potential issues from using the completed event to trigger the worker? * * * Below is some Pseudo code of what my intentions are               class Program     {         private static BackgroundWorker worker;         private static Int32 runs = 0;              static void Main(string[] args)         {             worker = new BackgroundWorker();             worker.DoWork += worker_DoWork;             worker.RunWorkerCompleted += worker_RunWorkerCompleted;             worker.RunWorkerAsync(runs);             Console.ReadLine();         }              static void worker_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)         {             //Do time consuming work             Thread.Sleep(3000);         }              static void worker_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)         {             //Update the UI and start time consuming work again             runs++;             Console.WriteLine(\"Completed run #\" + runs);             worker.RunWorkerAsync();         }     }"}
{"_id": "243096", "title": "Entities (DDD) when using CQRS on Akka", "text": "When using Akka, CQRS style, is still there a place for Entities? Or does everything now go to Aggregates, implemented as Actors + Value Objects. I notice that most entities are written as mutable objects with side effects - this doesn't seem to jive well with Actor based style."}
{"_id": "243095", "title": "Any patent issue if I want to call my classes \"signal/slot\" as in Qt?", "text": "I need to code a signal-like mechanism and I was thinking of using the same \"slot\" and \"signal\" terms to indicate the signal and the function that needs to be called. Since this is a commercial application I'd like to know if there might be any issue with using these names, e.g. if Qt has some sort of patent on them (I searched around but couldn't find it). I believe this is a stupid question since patenting a class name would be moronic, to say the least.. but anyway... To add some detail: my code is ENTIRELY different and has NOTHING TO DO with Qt except the above. I don't use moc or any Qt class."}
{"_id": "149582", "title": "Show \"hobby\" project during the interview?", "text": "I am developing this Android game (Technology wise 3D with OpenGLES2 and shaders, some nice AI with http://www.steeringbehaviors.de/ ) during my free time. The goal is to launched in the \"Android Market\" and apply for a mobile game development company.And during the interview to show my \"game project\". I was wondering if the company is not game company ,but a mobile development one ,is it still okay to show it even if they didn't ask about it ?"}
{"_id": "168196", "title": "GPLv2 - Multiple AI chess engines to bypass GPL", "text": "I have gone through a number of GPL-related questions, the most recent being this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3248823/legal-question-about-the-gpl- license-net-dlls/3249001#3249001 I'm trying to see how this would work, so bear with me. I have a simple GUI interface for a game of Chess. It essentially can send/receive commands to/from an external chess engine (ie: Tong, Fruit, etc). The application/GUI is similar in nature to XBoard ( http://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/ ), but was independently designed. After going through a number of threads on this topic, it seems that the FSF considers dynamically linking against a GPLv2 library as a derivative work, and that by doing so, the GPLv2 extends to my proprietary code, and I must release the source to my entire project. Other legal precedents indicate the opposite, and that dynamic linking doesn't cause the \"viral\" effect of the GPL to propagate to my proprietary code. Since there is no official consensus that can give a \"hard-and-fast\" answer to the dynamic linking question, would this be an acceptable alternative:   1. I build my chess GUI so that it sends/receives the chess engine AI logic as text commands from an external interface library that I write   2. The interface library I wrote itself is then released under the GPL   3. The interface library is only used to communicate via a generic text pipe to external command-line chess engines   4. The chess engine itself would be built as a command-line utility rather than as a library of any sort, and just sends strings in the Universal Chess Interface of Chess Engine Communication Protocol ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Engine_Communication_Protocol ) format.   5. The one \"gotcha\" is that the interface library should not be specific to one single GPL'ed chess engine, otherwise the entire GUI would be \"entirely dependent\" on it. So, I just make my interface library so that it is able to connect to any command-line chess engine that uses a specific format, rather than just one unique engine. I could then include pre-built command-line-app versions of any of the chess engines I'm using. Would that sort of approach allow me to do the following:   1. NOT release the source for my UI   2. Release the source of the interface library I built (if necessary)   3. Use one or more chess engines and bundle them as external command-line utilities that ship with a binary version of my UI Thank you. * * * Edit: For what it's worth, this is so I can keep my own code private, as I may want to re-use some of my rendering code in other independent projects. This is not a commercial attempt to just write a cheap UI to effectively \"wrap\" someone else's engine and profit from their hard work. In the end, I wrote my own simple chess engine (little more than a legal move validator, really) instead of using a GPL'ed component."}
{"_id": "169822", "title": "What IDE(s) or editor(s) do companies like Google, Apple, IBM, etc. use?", "text": "Even though I have quite some experience in using various tools, I still can't make up my mind whether I prefer using IDE or a simple editor for code editing. Most IDEs I have experienced are written in Java (like Eclipse) which makes them slow and bulky. What's good about them is that it provides lots of tools. On the other hand editors are usually VERY fast. They can also be extended to become more similar to IDEs but usually I don't do that. However, there is _Sublime Text 2_ which has some basic code completion built-in. My question would be whether most Enterprise companies like Google, Apple, IBM and etc (except Microsoft because they have AMAZING IDE which, I assume, is used by MS developers) force their workers to use IDEs and whether using plain editor with external tools is considered being not professional? P.S. Not talking about cases like Android development where working without IDE barely possible."}
{"_id": "96888", "title": "Is it reasonable to NOT provide technical documentation and unit tests to client?", "text": "As an independent vendor being contracted to write a product for a company, is it reasonable to ship only the source code and user documentation while leaving out design documents, architecture diagrams, unit tests etc (basically anything else not strictly needed to run the product or extend it)? The goal is to make the end product extensible for the client so they can further its development internally, but not for free. They would have dig deeply into source to make sense of some design decisions etc, and they'll be responsible for writing their own comprehensive tests to guard against regressions being introduced. The idea here is not to make the code unintelligible. I would just like to create future opportunity for being contracted to write extensions by virtue of the \"inside knowledge\" and expertise I have from being the original author. Would this be considered unethical? Edit: The contract is currently being negotiated, so the issue of what constitutes final deliverables hasn't been firmly decided. Additionally, I should have mentioned I will maintain ownership of the product. I will only grant to the client a usage license. Does this detail make a difference in whether this is regarded as bad form?"}
{"_id": "96889", "title": "Data \"unsort\" / homogeneity algorithm", "text": "In an attempt to not reinvent a wheel, I'm asking if anyone has ideas on a data homogeneity algorithm. A brief example: My data has several elements maybe like   1. Number    2. Color   3. Fruit   4. Letter There are around a 100 of these elements in an array. The algorithm needs to _sort_ the elements so that any 2 entries with the same number are spaced out from each other as much as possible, and the same with color, fruit, etc. It'd also be nice if I could prioritize the elements. It feels like you'd never reach 100% so you'd give it a number of passes to make, check out the result, then try more passes on it. I wouldn't be surprised if there's something out here that just works that I don't have enough google-fu to find."}
{"_id": "96882", "title": "What information should a good (method- / class-) comment contain?", "text": "This is something that has bothering me for a while now. I guess there are a couple of obvious important things that should go into a comment, such as:   * ~~The author(s)~~   * A description of the parameters (and their types, if we are in a dynamic language)   * A short description of what the method does, e.g. \"Trims leading and trailing white-spaces for unlimited length strings.\"   * If it throws exceptions.   * Semantics of the return value. But one could image all kinds of information that _could_ be added to such a comment, for instance:   * Usage examples   * Explanation of how the method is used in the project scope   * TODOs / Nice to haves for this method which are not yet implemented   * And probably many more Now my question is, how do you write a really good method or class comment (that is, what information do you put in it, and how do you make sure it is kept up-to-date), with just the right amount of information so that any developer who has to work with your code is up to the task, but considering the fact that as you add more and more information to your comment, the probability for it to become outdated rises (e.g. if I add pointers to where the method is / will be used in the project, it could be replaced in that location or it might very well never be used, even though it was intended to)."}
{"_id": "157655", "title": "Lock-free IPC in Linux for multi-core processors", "text": "I'm trying to find a way to write an application with lock-free IPC on Linux, in C, with multi-core processors. Let's assume I have process 1 and process 2 that write to a FIFO or shared memory. Then process 3 and process 4 will read from that shared memory or FIFO. Is this possible with a lock-free algorithm? Your guidance is highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "157656", "title": "General Architecture with Code Tables?", "text": "I've only worked at once place since graduating my CS degree. This is a pretty basic architecture question but i don't know any better since i've only worked at one place. Where i work we maintain a large number of code tables. For example say you have a Sales/Order system and you have an Order Status. We would maintain an order status table that would look like the following: OrderStatus:               OrderStatusId(PK TinyInt)  OrderStatusDesc(VarChar(50))       1                         Created       2                         Submitted      3                         Processing     4                         Canceled     5                         Verified     6                         Complete      We then create an enumeration off each code table. For example:               Public Enum TblSalesOrderStatus           eosCreated = 1           eosSubmitted = 2           eosProcess = 3           eosCanceled = 4           eosVerified = 5           eosComplete = 6     End Enum      Then in our code we have code like the following:               If OrderStatus = eosCreated OrElse OrderStatus = eosSubmitted Then         ...do some work     End if      On every screen we create we have the id's stored in the controls (like comboboxes). I don't know something about this has always made me think its bad design. Maybe i'm wrong though. Especially when i started getting into REST design. i wanted to pass the Ids rather than descriptions. Of course this doesn't seem right since i'd be the only one i've ever seen pass those type of Ids in a REST service. So is this bad design? Edit:   Trying to make thing a little clearer. Are Code Tables are only stored in two places: The Enum + The Database. When we need a new Id when email our database staff which creates a new code table value for us and emails us back the Id. When then put the new value into our enumerations. We never had problems with it getting out of sync but if we have needed either delete values or change them in the past (adding is easy) which has been pain because everything in the system had to be recompiled. We have went down the route of trying to make things semi-dynamic (which doesn't work out in every case but helps in some). There are tons of examples but a simple example is we have a IsVisible flag in some of the code tables. If we ever want to obsolete or make one of the values not selectable then we set the IsVisible flag = 0. They prefer this compared to having to change code/compile/deploy. Thinking about it i think it would be preferable to have it in buisness logic and have test around it (which we don't :-( ) depending on your prospective."}
{"_id": "158602", "title": "How to handle security of temporary data on web server?", "text": "I'm primarily an ASP.NET developer but this question really applies regardless of language. So obviously it is a good idea to prevent external attacks that arise from session hijacking and csrf attacks as well. But what about internal attacks when the data involved is temporary, needed for the entire session but also sensitive and worth stealing? There is the naturally just only hire trustworthy people route, but lets say that doesn't apply. Say it is a given you already have code reviews and strict production data access permissions to prevent theft by developers. The application encrypts sensitive data before storing to prevent theft by dbas. How do you protect your temporary sensitive data against web server admins? It seems that they could retrieve information by inspecting web server logs, traffic sniffing and inspection of process memory contents. Naturally I would say production web server admins do not have access to the raw source code."}
{"_id": "158603", "title": "What does the term \"Payload\" mean in programming", "text": "I was going through the source code of an open source framework, where I saw a variable \"payload\" mentioned many times. Any ideas what \"payload\" stands for?"}
{"_id": "59832", "title": "Best way to relate code smells to a non technical audience?", "text": "I have been asked to present examples of code issues that were found during a code review. My audience is mostly non-technical and I want to try to express the issues in such a way that I convey the importance of \"good code\" versus \"bad code\". But as I review my presentation it seems to me I've glossed over the reasons why it is important to write good code. I've mentioned a number of reasons including ease of maintenance, increased likelihood of bugs, but with my \"non tech\" hat on they seem unconvincing. What is your advice for helping a non-technical audience relate to the importance of good code?"}
{"_id": "162766", "title": "Why does JSF automatically generate names for html components and can this be overridden?", "text": "I'm reading up on JSF. One thing that I noticed that tags such as h:inputText and h:inputTextarea auto-generate a random name. Is there any way to over-ride this?"}
{"_id": "162767", "title": "Non-language-specific interview questions for a senior web developer", "text": "I came across a job posting for a senior web developer position. The posting said that the development will be done using **Ruby on Rails** , but no prior knowledge is required. I confirmed with a contact in that company that a PHP web developer can apply for it or even an ASP.Net developer. I also confirmed that the interview won't contain any questions specific to PHP or Ruby on Rails. Can anyone please provide a good list of questions for a senior web developer that isn't specific to a certain language? **Note** This question isn't a duplicate for similar posts asking for questions relating to PHP, .Net or Ruby. Also, I'm not looking for topics to learn as a web developer, but rather interesting questions for a technical interview given the former conditions."}
{"_id": "162762", "title": "How much should I rely on Visual Studio's Auto Generated Code?", "text": "I'm reading about ASP.NET (VB.NET) and I want to built my professionally website. I'm wondering though; I'm still using the basics so I'm really just a novice, but how much should I rely on Visual Studio to create my elements? Should I make my own text boxes and have my own login routine, or should I just use ASP.NET's login features? I know eventually you have to use your own classes and such which is where the real coding comes in, but I'm not sure how relaible, flexible and secure the pre-wrote elements are? Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "193979", "title": "How to handle \"animated\" game where the visual should \"animate\" instead of abruptly change?", "text": "I've been playing around and learning javascript/KineticJS by making some simple games (think like board games). I have the game model that is relatively logically simple. When a \"move\" is given to my game model, it updates the properties of all the pieces. However, I would like to make the view have some nice-looking animation. For example, when six pieces are taken I don't want them to disappear all at once, I'd rather have them animate out 1 by 1. To solve this problem, I basically have the game model tell my view \"I updated the following pieces: [list]\" And my view adds them to a \"visual update queue\" that a timer thread is always checking and handling one by one each time it triggers. I'm interested in any opinions on this approach, and since this has obviously been considered before, if any of you handle this problem differently. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "179054", "title": "Does a code inherit GNU GPL if it just link to GPL library?", "text": "Sorry for bad English. Suppose there is a library `xxx` under GNU GPL, that provide a function `yyy`. Suppose my code links to the library and use this function. Does my code inherit GPL license? IANAL, but my thoughts are conflicting:   * On one hand, my code is derivative from the library, so it should inherit GPL.   * On other hand, my code just use link to the `xxx`. Maybe there are other libraries, that has the same interface (particularly, they provide `yyy` function with same functionality, but different implementation). My code may link to any. My code really doesn't _directly_ derived from `xxx`, it just use its interface. So, my code shouldn't inherit GPL. I'm confused. **ADDED.** The question is absolutely abstract. I don't mean any concrete GPL library."}
{"_id": "163410", "title": "How should I select continuous integration tool?", "text": "I found this cool comparison table for integration servers on Wikipedia, but I am a little uncertain how to rank the tools vs. my needs and interests. The chart itself seems to have a lot of boxes marked unknown, so if you are comfortable updating it on Wikipedia, that could be great too. Are there a few top performing products so I can quickly narrow down to four or five options? Which products seems to have the largest user communities and most ongoing enhancements and integration with new tools? Are the open source offerings best, or are there high quality tools that can be a great deal for a single user at home? Will use of multiple systems (primary desktop, local only home network server, personal and work notebooks, multiple virtual machines spread across all) create problems and how can they be managed?"}
{"_id": "163413", "title": "Productivity strategies for one developer using many PCs", "text": "In a talk about time management, a famous computer scientist said: > \"One machine in your life is the right number.\" He recommended a laptop with a docking station. After trying this approach for about a month, I miss my more powerful desktop (i7 quad core hyperthread), but it is not in my technology road map (or budget) to upgrade from my old Intel Core 2 Duo (2006) notebook this year. What strategies can help me use the desktop while at my desk and without much manual effort the notebook when I am on the go?"}
{"_id": "168449", "title": "What are algorithmic paradigms?", "text": "We generally talk about paradigms of programming as functional, procedural, object oriented, imperative etc but what should I reply when I am asked the paradigms of algorithms? For example are Travelling Salesman Problem, Dijkstra Shortest Path Algorithm, Euclid GCD Algorithm, Binary search, Kruskal's Minimum Spanning Tree, Tower of Hanoi algorithmic paradigms? Or perhaps the paradigms are the data structures I would use to design these algorithms?"}
{"_id": "28506", "title": "Automatically turning text into hyperlinks - good or bad UI?", "text": "I use Trac, a personal wiki tool. I use SVN Tortoise , the subversion tool I use Outlook, Word etc In all these pieces of software, each time I want to type an url or an email address the software turns it into a hyperlink, suddenly altering the behaviour of the text, often treating as a single entity. (i.e a single back- space deletes the whole url, text-select leaps to select the whole url instead of single letters etc ) Its as helpful to me as the Microsoft Office paper-clip. Am I the only one that gets annoyed by these things? If it is generally considered bad UI to do unexpected things. Surely its bad UI. **Update** : As Sii says below : > \"Most of the time people prefer hyperlinks ... by default\" I suppose that is the truism that I am doubting. Is there any research or evidence to back this up?"}
{"_id": "54359", "title": "How would you explain multi threading to a seven year old kid?", "text": "If you have to explain the concept of multi-threading to a seven year old kid how would you do it? I recently got this question in an interview. I came up with a story using jobs (the task to be done) and workers (the threads) but it was not entirely convincing (considering the kid is too young). If you were asked to describe this, how would you do it?"}
{"_id": "160699", "title": "What tool sets and applications have affinity with multiprocessor programming?", "text": "In grad school I took a class in multiprocessor and distributed operating systems. I think multiprocessor software development will become increasingly important and will be driven by the need to maintain the gains we are accustomed to having from Moore's law as described in an article from Herb Sutter. The Free Lunch Is Over : A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm From the class we learned a little about threads, processes, mutual exclusions, spin locks, p-threads, semaphores, UMA and CCNUMA architectures, and OpenMP. But I think this is just a start.   * What should I learn to better prepare for this kind of work?   * Who is doing projects in this area?   * Is this going to a a common skill soon, and if so, how can I best leverage what I know today?"}
{"_id": "112846", "title": "Static functions question", "text": "Something came to my mind today. I have been doing a lot of the following               new Object().doSomething();      I create an object and call on of its functions, then forget about the object. I don't need it past this one instance. Does this signal a bad coding style. Is it best to convert these methods to a static function so a new object does not need to be created every time?"}
{"_id": "168535", "title": "Serializing Data Structures in C", "text": "I've recently read three separate books on algorithms and data structures, tcp/ip socket programming, and programming with memory. The book about memory briefly discussed the topic of serializing data structures for the purposes of storing it to disk, or sending it across a network. I can't help but wonder why the the other two books didn't discuss serialization at all. After an unsuccessful web/book search I'm left wondering where I can find a good book/paper/tutorial on serializing data structures in C? Where or how did you learn it?"}
{"_id": "112841", "title": "What is the general accepted way to name variables that end and start with the same letter?", "text": "Is something like this acceptable or is it frowned upon? String newsSymbol It just looks strange to me, but it's the best way to describe what the variable is and the data it will hold. I could rename it to something like String articleSymbol but then I'd have to rename a whole other bunch of variables. What are your thoughts? Yay or nay?"}
{"_id": "57", "title": "Tabs versus spaces\u2014what is the proper indentation character for everything, in every situation, ever?", "text": "The coding standards for the code hosted in drupal.org suggest to use two spaces to indent the code; other sites suggest to use tabs to indent the code. What is the proper indentation character for everything, and in every situation? Please explain the answer you give."}
{"_id": "114560", "title": "C++: Spaces vs Tabs", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Tabs versus spaces\u2014what is the proper indentation character for everything, > in every situation, ever? I have always used tabs in all my code (C, C++, python etc.) but I was just going through the Google C++ coding guidelines(1) and I found they they say that you _must_ use spaces and not tabs in your code. I couldn't think of a reason why they ask that. Is it because tabs show inconsistent results across different editors or something similar? Does anyone know what the reason is or might be?"}
{"_id": "155875", "title": "Facebook Payments & Credits vs. Real-World & Charities", "text": "I am having a difficult time understanding Facebook's internal \"e-commerce microcosm\" and what it allows Facebook App developers to do (and what it restricts them from doing). Two use cases:   * I'm an e-com retailer selling clothes and coffee mugs (real-world goods) on my website; I want to write a Facebook App that allows Facebook users to buy my real-world goods from inside of Facebook using real money ($ USD)   * I'm highschool student trying to raise money for my senior class trip and want to build a Facebook App that allows Facebook users to donate to our class using real money ($ USD) Are these two scenarios possible? If not, why (what Facebook policies prohibit me from doing so)? If so, what APIs do I use: Payments or Credits? And how (specifically) would it work? Do Facebook Users have to first buy \"credits\" (which are mapped to $ USD values under the hood) and pay/donate with credits, or can they whip out their credit card and pay/donate right through my Facebook App? I think that last question really summarizes my confusion: **can Facebook users enter their credit card info directly into Facebook Apps, or do you have to go through Payments/Credits APIs as a \"middleman\"**?"}
{"_id": "155870", "title": "Sharing ideas without risk of leaking", "text": "As freelancers, we meet somewhere and chat about a new idea for a project, brainstorm etc. Up to this point, we have taken notes of the ideas, but we would like to be able to share more efficiently the ideas with each other. However, I fear that if I use some online product (such as Google Docs) these ideas could be seen by people outside the team (employees of the company of the online product, other users...). I am not sure if I am being a little _Paranoid parrot_... One solution that we have considered is to install a Subversion with just one _ideas.txt_. But that would require a server in one of our houses, which is a little unconfortable. So how do you share your ideas for a new project with your team without risking the ideas to be _stolen_?"}
{"_id": "94765", "title": "Cucumber Web Interface for business", "text": "I am trying to find a way to make the projects I work on more transparent to the business size, even though backend programming is not quite visible all the time. So in order to this I want to try ATDD and building acceptance tests with `Cucumber`. Is there a friendly way to show these tests to the business - I still think that running them from the command line is as cryptic as things were until now ? I am thinking of a web interface or something like that."}
{"_id": "238186", "title": "Is it good style to check explicitly for null in unit tests?", "text": "Whether or not a value is `null` could be checked implicitly like this:               assertThat(value).isEqualTo(\"something\");      Or it could be checked explicitly:               assertThat(value).isNotNull();     assertThat(value).isEqualTo(\"something\");      The latter makes the expectations a bit more clear, but it blows up the test code. Is there a good reason to prefer the second approach over the first?"}
{"_id": "79024", "title": "Hungarian Notations/Systems Hungarian Should I?", "text": "I was wondering would it be worth using a form of standard such as Hungarian Notation/Systems Hungarian? Why would I bother if everything I'm doing now is working fine?"}
{"_id": "79020", "title": "Is it worth making Visual Assembly?", "text": "We already have:   * Visual Basic   * Visual C++   * Visual C# Why there is no Visual Assembly? Is it worth making it?"}
{"_id": "143750", "title": "Is it sane to use Document based NoSQL for store big data tables", "text": "In Document based NoSQL to create tables (AFAIK) I need: Create such many as many rows in table documents with same ID field (that will be table id) and each time need to set the columns (for each document). Then you first search documents by id (table) and next search what you need in the selection. Please correct if I understand it wrong... And is it sane? How could that be fast?"}
{"_id": "237476", "title": "Model Driven Architecture Approach in programming / modelling", "text": "I know the basics of the model driven architecture: it is all about model the system which I want to create and create the core code afterwards. I used CORBA a while ago. First thing that I needed to do was to create an abstract interface (some kind of model of the system I want to build) and generate core code later. But I have a different question: is model driven architecture a broad approach or not? I mean, let's say, that I have the language (modelling language) in which I want to model EXISTING system (opposite to the system I want to CREATE), and then analyze the model of the created system and different facts about that modeled abstraction. In this case, can the process I described above be considered the model driven architecture approach? I mean, I have the model, but this is the model of the existing system, not the system to be created."}
{"_id": "143754", "title": "How important is knowing functionality before coding?", "text": "I work for a software development company where the development work have been off shored to us. The on shore team handle the support and talk directly to the clients. We never talk to the clients directly we just talk people from the on shore team who talk directly to the clients. When requirements come, on shore team talk to the clients and make requirement documents and informs us. We make design documents after studying the requirements (we follow traditional waterfall model ). But there is one problem in the whole process: nobody in the either off-shore or on-shore understand the functionality of the application completely. We just know its a big complex web app handling complex order processing, catalog management, campaign management and other activities. We struggle with the design document as the requirements would not be clear. It then goes into a series of questions/answers back and forth between the on shore team,off shore team and clients. We would often be told to understand functionality from the code. But that's usually not feasible as the code base is huge and even understanding a simple menu item take days if not weeks. We tried telling the clients to give us _knowledge transfer_ about the application but to no avail. Our manager would often tell us to start coding even if the design document is not complete or requirements not clear. We would start by coding part of the requirement that seems clear and wait for the rest. This usually would delay the deployment by a month. In extreme cases we would have very low errors in the development and production but the clients would say that's not what they asked. That would start a blame game and a series of change requests and we would end up developing something very different. My question is how would you do development work if you don't know the functionality of the app fully? UPDATE About development methodology it isn't really my choice and I am not my team's lead It is the way it began. I tried to tell people about the advantages of agile but to no avail. Besides I don't think my team has the necessary mindset to work in AGILE environment."}
{"_id": "175624", "title": "Is a Hackathon a good place to present serious projects?", "text": "I'm participating in my first hackathon soon. I have a great idea that has been rolling around in my head for a while, and if it takes off I'd obviously like to have my name on it/make some money on it. Is a hackathon a good place to present a project I'm serious about? How will the ownership work? I think I could get the project functional over the weekend of the event, but I'd definitely want to develop it further after. I'd like to be cited with the concept, but people who work with me on it would obviously be partial owners (or whatever would be considered fair). My main goal is for this project to get off the ground, but I also don't want to be left out if it ends up making money."}
{"_id": "237471", "title": "RFC syntax definition", "text": "I would like to bring our specifications to a better level of fine-grained definition of syntaxes, semantics and the like. I read my fair share of RFCs and just love the way they define things like \"how an email adress looks like\" or \"what a correct URL is\". But, I haven't yet found a definition of the syntax of those definitions. Like, e.g. how do you define optional parts? How do you define repetition? How to correctly define alternatives (`/` vs `|`) Is there an RFC that defines the syntax all those other RFCs use to define their actual domain-specific definitions that I could adapt to our specifications?"}
{"_id": "32504", "title": "When profiling a function for time use, what information is desirable?", "text": "I'm writing a program similar to Python's `timeit` module. The idea is to time a function by executing it anywhere from 10 to 100,000 times depending on how long it takes and then report results. I've read that the most important number is the minimum execution time because this is the number that best reflects how fast the machine can run the code in question in the absence of other programs competing for processor time and memory. This argument makes sense to me. Would you be happy with this? Would you want to know the average time or the standard deviation? Is there some other measure that you consider more important?"}
{"_id": "180552", "title": "As a junior programmer, how do I quickly make changes to large unfamiliar software?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Tips or techniques to use when you don\u2019t know how to code something? I recently graduated on a Computing course, and luckily got a job as a junior programmer. Now, I have been given a series of tasks, from a bigger project. My company has (supposedly) bought a revenue/sales software written in PHP. Basically this whole big piece of software needs to be modified to meet my country standards. I have been given a large number of tasks to do in a relatively small time span. Now, this might be my very own understanding of the whole timing problem, but this seems a very big thing to do because I need to fully understand:   1. the whole system structure   2. the \"style\" in which it has been written, classes, functions, etc.   3. the database structure Considering the above, I need to add some functionality, some of which can be considered \"core\" ones which, in my opinion, is a too long of a job to be done in 6 days. I understand that I have given too little information for anyone to understand the level of difficulty of said tasks, since for some people might be impossible while for others might be a breeze, so I want to ask the following: To the people who went past a similar situation, what was your outcome? Can I start considering myself unprepared or maybe they are asking too much? What was your experience on a similar situation?"}
{"_id": "178012", "title": "Tree vs Graphs in search", "text": "Could anyone give a clear and concise explanation for when you use graphs vs when to use trees for data structures?"}
{"_id": "65446", "title": "Speech introduction", "text": "I'm currently working on a speech introducing an introduction to C++ programming manual. The speech itself is going to be about the topics within the manual (which are very basic concepts, such as data types, ect..) I'll be giving this speech to students who are **not familiar to C++ or even programming in general** , and I'm looking for an attention grabber to begin my speech with such as a fun fact or quote about C++, or an interesting statistic regarding C++. I am wanting something the students will understand, and that sparks their interest. Does anyone have any good ideas that I can use? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "190822", "title": "Best approach to including JBoss's standalone.xml in SVN structure?", "text": "Our application server is JBoss 7 as. We use SVN as our code repository. I need to ship our custom security domain in standalone.xml which is a jboss file (not packaged in my application's war file). However, I don't want to commit all of JBoss to the SVN. The approach I'm thinking of using is to commit standalone.xml in a separate folder in my SVN repository and move it to the correct location under JBoss when the application is deployed at production site. Is this the best mechanism?"}
{"_id": "68072", "title": "New Customer Project - Use Legacy Application or Design Something New", "text": "We are starting a new project with a new customer. We have a legacy application circa 1997 that we are planning on using to satisfy the customer's business requirements. I have been on the fence as to whether this is really the right course both for our company, and for the customer. I don't want to rewrite the app for no reason, but I feel that this older technology MFC, VC6 - has outlived its usefulness. If I am honest with myself - I don't want to spend any more of my career on the legacy app either. To that end, I have justified to myself that I should present to management a plan to develop a new, fresh solution based on current methodologies. 1) Am I wrong for doing thinking this is a good idea. 2) If not - how can I sell it to the business. There are definite advantages from the ongoing support perspective for the customer (more people with skill-sets in newer technologies - which in this case would probably be .NET with an XML or Lua based configuration) I'll be happy to answer any follow-on questions to clarify my intent."}
{"_id": "190821", "title": "OOP - Separate Manager class", "text": "I have started using OOP in PHP recently. For every model, I create two classes. One class for read operations and another Manager class for all the create / update / delete operations. For example,               <?php     // This is a sample class, just to convey the idea     class Image {         public static function loadById() {}         public static function loadByName() {}         public static function search() {}              public function __construct () {}         public function __get () {}         public function getData() {}         public function getRating() {}         public function getSimilar() {}         public function getRelatedNews() {}     }          class ImageManager extends Image {         public function __construct() {}         public function __set() {}         public function remove() {}         public function update() {}         public function save() {}         private function updateSomethingElse() {}     }     ?>      The reason I separated this into two classes was that I thought it was a bit more secure, since it did not expose the C/U/D methods to a normal user. Also, I thought this might be faster / memory efficient since I am loading only the smaller class for 95% of the requests. But now I think these reasons are too insignificant for maintaining two files. Is this a bad practice? Normally, the Manager classes are loaded only during admin operations. User actions rarely update the database (except maybe during a rating operation, or a cron job for updating view count). Should I combine both the classes into the `Image` class?"}
{"_id": "222978", "title": "Adding a new method to a class library for its new version and exposing a version option the users can select", "text": "Is it a bad idea to add a new method (that implements a new algorithm) to a class library for its new version and expose a version option the consumers can select? It is just for backward compatibility where an old application might need a constant sequence of random numbers for a certain seed number. The following code might speak my idea much better. Hopefully you get the essence.               //Class Library:     namespace MyGenerator     {         public sealed class MyRandom         {             public enum Version { One, Two }// add more options in the future              private int current;             private Version version;                  public MyRandom(int seed, Version version = Version.One)             {                 current = seed;                 this.version = version;             }                  public int Next()             {                 switch (version)                 {                     case Version.One:                         AlgorithmOne();                         break;                     case Version.Two:                         AlgorithmTwo();                         break;                     // add more options in the future                 }                 return current;             }                  private int AlgorithmOne()             {                 current = (current * 1234567890 + 987654321) & 0x7FFFFFFF;                 return current;             }                  private int AlgorithmTwo()             {                 current = (current * current + current) & 0x7FFFFFFF;                 return current;             }             // add more algorithm in the future         }     }      and               //Console Application (for testing purposes):          using MyGenerator;     using System;          namespace ConsoleApplication1     {         class Program         {             static void Main(string[] args)             {                 const int seed = 12345;                 MyRandom rnd = new MyRandom(seed, MyRandom.Version.Two);                 Console.WriteLine(rnd.Next());                 Console.ReadLine();             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "222977", "title": "What's a similar functionality in JavaScript that insures the object has X data before any actions are taken?", "text": "If java/C#/etc one might do something like create a constructor with a parameter, the parameter being the thing the rest of the object may act upon. How is this done in JavaScript? I'm trying to figure out what the best practice is with JavaScript to do something similar to this C#/Java Object.               public class Blagh{              public var ThingToActOn;  // Appropriate get & set methods here.               public new Blagh(variable ThingForObjectToActOn) {             this.ThingToActOn = ThingForObjectToActOn;         }     }      I was thinking something like this in JavaScript, but it seems maybe I'm missing something. I'm also aware that New in JavaScript is frowned upon for a number of reasons, but am not sure what the best solution is otherwise.               var Symphonize = function(generation_specification){         this.gen_spec = generation_specification;     }          Symphonize.prototype.act_on_object = function () {              // Do actions here on the generation_specification value.              return this.gen_spec;     }          blu = new Symphonize({\"gen\":\"stuff\"});"}
{"_id": "222971", "title": "Drawback of mixing C++ code with C for performance purposes", "text": "Often you can see answers like \u201cAvoid using C libraries in your C++ code\u201c or \u201cThis can be rewritten using STD/Boost in pure C++\u201c. I understand C++ produces more maintainable code and has many advantages, but is it actually bad using C libraries when performance is a priority? I mean writing in what is sometimes called C-with-classes. I\u2018ve been developing a text file parser with both C and C++ versions and the C one was considerably faster. What i would like to know is if using C libraries in C++ has hidden drawbacks apart from the obvious ones like making the code less maintainable."}
{"_id": "243325", "title": "How do you show the exception handler in a class diagram?", "text": "I have one exception handler class. I want to show this class in the uml -- class diagram. But, I do not know how to represent relationship between class `<X>` and exception handler class. How can I represent relationship between class in class diagram?"}
{"_id": "243326", "title": "Handling permissions in a MVP application", "text": "In a windows forms payroll application employing `MVP` pattern (for a small scale client) I'm planing user permission handling as follows (permission based) as basically its implementation should be less complicated and straight forward. **NOTE** : System could be simultaneously used by few users (maximum 3) and the database is at the server side. This is my `UserModel`. Each user has a list of permissions given for them.               class User     {         string UserID { get; set; }         string Name { get; set; }         string NIC {get;set;}         string Designation { get; set; }         string PassWord { get; set; }         List <string> PermissionList = new List<string>();         bool status { get; set; }         DateTime EnteredDate { get; set; }     }      When user login to the system it will keep the current user in memory. For example in `BankAccountDetailEntering` view I control the controller permission as follows.                public partial class BankAccountDetailEntering : Form         {             bool AccountEditable {get; set;}                  private void BankAccountDetailEntering_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)             {                 cmdEditAccount.enabled = false;                      OnLoadForm (sender, e); // Event fires...                      If (AccountEditable )                 {                     cmdEditAccount.enabled=true;                 }              }         }      In this purpose my all relevant presenters (like BankAccountDetailPresenter) should aware of `UserModel` as well in addition to the corresponding business `Model` it is presenting to the `View`.               class BankAccountDetailPresenter     {             BankAccountDetailEntering _View;         BankAccount _Model;         User _UserModel;         DataService _DataService;              BankAccountDetailPresenter( BankAccountDetailEntering view, BankAccount model, User userModel, DataService dataService )         {             _View=view;             _Model = model;             _UserModel = userModel;             _DataService = dataService;             WireUpEvents();         }              private void WireUpEvents()         {             _View.OnLoadForm += new EventHandler(_View_OnLoadForm);         }              private void _View_OnLoadForm(Object sender, EventArgs e)         {                  foreach(string s in _UserModel.PermissionList)              {                  If( s ==\"CanEditAccount\")                 {                     _View.AccountEditable =true;                     return;                 }             }         }              public Show()         {             _View.ShowDialog();         }     }      So I'm handling the user permissions in the presenter iterating through the list. Should this be performed in the `Presenter` or `View`? Any other more promising ways to do this?"}
{"_id": "243327", "title": "Is there an easy way to type in common math symbols?", "text": "_Disclaimer: I'm sure someone is going to moan about easy-of-use, for the purpose of this question consider readability to be the only factor that matters_ So I found this site that converts to easting northing, **it's not really important what that even means** but here's how the piece of javascript looks.               /**      * Convert Ordnance Survey grid reference easting/northing coordinate to (OSGB36) latitude/longitude      *      * @param   {OsGridRef} gridref - easting/northing to be converted to latitude/longitude      * @returns {LatLonE} latitude/longitude (in OSGB36) of supplied grid reference      */     OsGridRef.osGridToLatLong = function(gridref) {         var E = gridref.easting;         var N = gridref.northing;              var a = 6377563.396, b = 6356256.909;         // Airy 1830 major & minor semi-axes         var F0 = 0.9996012717;                        // NatGrid scale factor on central meridian         var \u03c60 = 49*Math.PI/180, \u03bb0 = -2*Math.PI/180; // NatGrid true origin         var N0 = -100000, E0 = 400000;                // northing & easting of true origin, metres         var e2 = 1 - (b*b)/(a*a);                     // eccentricity squared         var n = (a-b)/(a+b), n2 = n*n, n3 = n*n*n;    // n, n\u00b2, n\u00b3              var \u03c6=\u03c60, M=0;         do {             \u03c6 = (N-N0-M)/(a*F0) + \u03c6;                  var Ma = (1 + n + (5/4)*n2 + (5/4)*n3) * (\u03c6-\u03c60);             var Mb = (3*n + 3*n*n + (21/8)*n3) * Math.sin(\u03c6-\u03c60) * Math.cos(\u03c6+\u03c60);             var Mc = ((15/8)*n2 + (15/8)*n3) * Math.sin(2*(\u03c6-\u03c60)) * Math.cos(2*(\u03c6+\u03c60));             var Md = (35/24)*n3 * Math.sin(3*(\u03c6-\u03c60)) * Math.cos(3*(\u03c6+\u03c60));             M = b * F0 * (Ma - Mb + Mc - Md);              // meridional arc              } while (N-N0-M >= 0.00001);  // ie until < 0.01mm              var cos\u03c6 = Math.cos(\u03c6), sin\u03c6 = Math.sin(\u03c6);         var \u03bd = a*F0/Math.sqrt(1-e2*sin\u03c6*sin\u03c6);            // nu = transverse radius of curvature         var \u03c1 = a*F0*(1-e2)/Math.pow(1-e2*sin\u03c6*sin\u03c6, 1.5); // rho = meridional radius of curvature         var \u03b72 = \u03bd/\u03c1-1;                                    // eta = ?              var tan\u03c6 = Math.tan(\u03c6);         var tan2\u03c6 = tan\u03c6*tan\u03c6, tan4\u03c6 = tan2\u03c6*tan2\u03c6, tan6\u03c6 = tan4\u03c6*tan2\u03c6;         var sec\u03c6 = 1/cos\u03c6;         var \u03bd3 = \u03bd*\u03bd*\u03bd, \u03bd5 = \u03bd3*\u03bd*\u03bd, \u03bd7 = \u03bd5*\u03bd*\u03bd;         var VII = tan\u03c6/(2*\u03c1*\u03bd);         var VIII = tan\u03c6/(24*\u03c1*\u03bd3)*(5+3*tan2\u03c6+\u03b72-9*tan2\u03c6*\u03b72);         var IX = tan\u03c6/(720*\u03c1*\u03bd5)*(61+90*tan2\u03c6+45*tan4\u03c6);         var X = sec\u03c6/\u03bd;         var XI = sec\u03c6/(6*\u03bd3)*(\u03bd/\u03c1+2*tan2\u03c6);         var XII = sec\u03c6/(120*\u03bd5)*(5+28*tan2\u03c6+24*tan4\u03c6);         var XIIA = sec\u03c6/(5040*\u03bd7)*(61+662*tan2\u03c6+1320*tan4\u03c6+720*tan6\u03c6);              var dE = (E-E0), dE2 = dE*dE, dE3 = dE2*dE, dE4 = dE2*dE2, dE5 = dE3*dE2, dE6 = dE4*dE2, dE7 = dE5*dE2;         \u03c6 = \u03c6 - VII*dE2 + VIII*dE4 - IX*dE6;         var \u03bb = \u03bb0 + X*dE - XI*dE3 + XII*dE5 - XIIA*dE7;              return new LatLonE(\u03c6.toDegrees(), \u03bb.toDegrees(), GeoParams.datum.OSGB36);     }      I found that to be a really nice way of writing an algorythm, at least as far as redability is concerned. Is there any way to easily write the special symbols. And by easily write I mean NOT copy/paste them."}
{"_id": "67769", "title": "Best Practices and Tips for Reading Source Code", "text": "Code reading is an important part of a programmer's life because we usually work in groups and have to maintain, complete or contribute to the other developer's codes. From that point of view, code reading is inevitable. Our performance criteria is not only fast reading or interpreting. But also understanding and interpreting the code correctly is very important in our daily work-life. We usually have to deal with several different types of codes such as well documented ones, badly written, undocumented ones, buggy ones and even spaghetti ones. We usually have to deal with each one of them using different techniques and shortly my questions is how do you deal reading those codes, for instance consider dealing with undocumented and badly written codes. For example I apply some small methods for C/C++ code:   * Find the dependencies of the code and try to figure out the general overview of inter-class or inter-function relationships. Visualise on paper or board if necessary.   * Try to understand the coding conventions they have used and get used to it.   * Understand the general purpose of the functions in a file (figure out why are they populated in that file).   * Start from the main and find the places that you may have to change if necessary.   * Do some small modifications and put print statements in strategic locations to understand what a function or class is doing.   * Use cscope _My question is do you have any these kind of tips, tricks or best practices that you'd like to share?_ EDIT: Forgot to ask the question :)"}
{"_id": "67763", "title": "MVC 3 - Any new features to explore for an existing MVC 2 application?", "text": "I have an existing ASP.NET MVC 2 application that is working well and is usually easy to maintain. I had a lull in development yesterday so I upgraded the solution to ASP.NET MVC 3 and everything appears to be working. I've been researching ASP.NET MVC 3 and there are a number of improvements including the Razor view engine, integrated support for unobtrusive JavaScript, etc.. These all seem interesting but not necessarily for an existing application that already has dumb views, unobtrusive JavaScript with jQuery, dependency injection, unit testing, etc.. What ASP.NET MVC 3 features, if any, could have the greatest impact on an existing MVC 2 application?"}
{"_id": "129091", "title": "Should QA be part of the development department?", "text": "I work for a small company that has had a product development department for quite a while. What we haven't had, however, is a QA/testing group. We are looking to add a testing group, but are struggling to determine where best to put them in the organizational structure of the company. Specifically, we are going to hire a \"lead tester\" position. Should they be put in as part of the product development department, or should they be a new department? Should they be somewhere else? Our company is roughly structured as follows:   * CEO      * CTO        * Director Product Development       * Director Customer Care          * Developers       * VP Operations          * Network engineers     * Sales/sales engineers     * President        * Controller"}
{"_id": "89833", "title": "Standards for reading code out loud?", "text": "Has anyone defined a standard for reading code out loud, for any language? I imagine this is important to software like screen readers for the vision- impaired. This sort of thing also comes up when you are discussing code with someone, reviewing it in a group, or teaching a class. In the C family of languages, there are a lot of words with \"obvious\" pronunciations. Some are simply English words: `for`, `break`, `case`, `default`, etc. Some abbreviations, like `int`, are unambiguous. And then there's `char`. I always tend to say it (and hear it in my head) like the first syllable of \"charcoal\". It was jarring to me the first time I was talking about code with someone who pronounced it like \"car\", which actually makes more sense because `char` is really an abbreviation of the word \"character\", so clearly it should be pronounced the same. But even knowing that, char-as-in-coal feels more right to me. And then there are statements like `foo = bar ? *(++baz) : zardoz`. Has anyone anyone produced a document dictating the correct way (in their opinion) how to read code aloud? Either for a specific language or maybe code in general?"}
{"_id": "219593", "title": "Why do many languages not support named parameters?", "text": "I was just thinking how much easier it would be to read code if, when calling a function, you could write:               doFunction(param1=something, param2=somethingElse);      I can't think of any drawbacks and it would make code a lot more readable. I know you could pass an array as the only argument and have the array keys as the parameter names, however that would still not be as readable. Is there a disadvantage of this that I'm missing? If not, why do many languages not allow this?"}
{"_id": "23675", "title": "Android learning curve (Hello, Android 3rd ed. Book)", "text": "I am currently reading the book Hello, Android, and am about 100 pages in. The problem is that even though I understand the instructions and what the code should do, I can't really put things together as to how things are connected(methods, views, things passed around different files(!!)). The sudoku example the book is following is too complicated to follow; maybe they should of instead gradually show and _explained_ each step to building such an app (let the reader build up with simple examples to more complicated ones). Maybe later in the author starts to explain things more clearly. Should I just keep reading/coding the book or should I focus more on my Java book and finish that first? If someone has experience with the book, I would love to hear some thoughts."}
{"_id": "89839", "title": "How do I determine the runtime of a double recursive function?", "text": "**Given any arbitrarily double-recursive function, how would one calculate its run time?** _For Example (in pseudocode):_               int a(int x){       if (x < = 0)         return 1010;       else         return b(x-1) + a(x-1);     }     int b(int y){       if (y <= -5)         return -2;       else         return b(a(y-1));     }      Or something along those lines. **What methods could or should one use to determine something like this?**"}
{"_id": "126243", "title": "What kind of knowledge is needed to be a Financial Software Developer?", "text": "I have 4+ years of experience in software engineering. I am well competent in system design, analysis and development. I have worked heavily in Java and C++ and I am confident about my technical skills. Now I am thinking of finding a job in the financial sector. What kind of resources should I be looking for? What are the keywords I should look for? E.g. \"algorithmic trading\" Are there any books targeting software engineers?"}
{"_id": "188363", "title": "Suggestions for CSS frameworks?", "text": "So I've started developing web sites and have learned HTML and CSS fundamentals. However, I often run in to WTF-moments concerning layout; what looks good in one browser may look strange in another and I can't figure out why. Do I need to learn CSS beyond the fundamentals or are there any frameworks that can make life simpler for me?"}
{"_id": "150967", "title": "returning null vs returning zero, which would be better?", "text": "I inherited a project that I am managing and having to maintain pending the redevelopment of the code base. At the moment I am being tasked with adding little features all over the place and have gotten into the habit of returning `null` instead of zero in parts of the code where I am working on. The problem is we have a client that is using this code and parts of code that require data from my implemented features receive a `null` and dump the stack trace in the UI. I would like to avoid this entirely from my input but without the `NullPointerException` there's the potential that errors would be introduced into the client's data which may go un-noticed. Usually I would have come up with my own error notification system but I have never inherited a project before. So I am unsure whether to continue down this path. I still believe that the stack dump is preferable to un-noticed data corruption/inaccuracies."}
{"_id": "97862", "title": "Will all compilers start supporting C++0x as soon as it is officially out?", "text": "It's sometimes frustrating to know that one particular feature is working in one compiler and not in another. Even after downloading latest gcc4.6 few weeks back some C++0x features are not working. Will the **complete** C++0x support provided by the compilers (at least the popular ones) on the very 2nd day when the C++11 is released officially ? Have these compiler vendors decided any timeline to provide the full support ?"}
{"_id": "97861", "title": "Get code from one open source project and add it to another", "text": "I found some functions that I want to get from WordPress source code and add want to add them into my project which is going to be open source. Do I simply get the functions that I want and add them to my project with a little comment saying that I got it from WP like:               /**       * Author: WordPress     **/      or is there anything else I have to consider before getting the code? Also, is there anything else apart from the above question that I have to consider if I want to sell to someone my project with these functions?"}
{"_id": "59308", "title": "Do you do custom tests/work for a potential employer before the interview?", "text": "Every shop I've worked at we have followed what I thought was a standard hiring sequence:   1. Solicit resumes   2. Phone screen applicants we are interested in   3. In-person interview   4. In some shops, second in-person interview (just w/ CEO for example) Most places I apply to follow something along these lines. But some shops want to give me a test or ask me to build something after I send in my resume. They usually say \"congratulations, you've made it to stage 2 of our hiring process!\" But for all I know they are asking every applicant they get a resume from to do the same thing. This annoys me because it doesn't scale. If I'm applying for a lot of positions I can't spend all my time doing work that potentially can only land me one job. Plus there's no shared dedication to the process. If we do a 45 minute phone screen, that's 45 minutes the company commits to me and 45 minutes I commit to the company in hopes of a potential match. Do you guys have a policy regarding these sorts of things?"}
{"_id": "59309", "title": "My company claims all rights to my hobby iPhone apps. What is your company policy?", "text": "I am a mobile developer in my day job. During my free time (nights and weekends), I develop my personal hobby projects. After I have published my iPhone apps, my company told me they own all rights to any technology related stuff that I create during my term. I read the contract, it is true, it is harsh. Is there better company policy on developing hobby projects? What's yours?"}
{"_id": "161124", "title": "SQL Server 2000 vs 2008 Express?", "text": "Due to not wanting to pay licenses my company is still using SQL Server 2000 for new projects.   This is very limiting for multiple reasons.   I'm wondering what are the limitations of using SQL Server Express 2008?   Is there any reason NOT to use it to power ASP.Net MVC3 websites?"}
{"_id": "161122", "title": "Should I build a multi-threaded system that handles events from a game and sorts them, independently, into different threads based on priority?", "text": "Can I build a multi-threaded system that handles events from a game and sorts them, independently, into different threads based on priority, and is it a good idea? Here's more info: I am about to begin work on porting a mid-sized game from Flash/AS3 to Java so that I can continue development with multi-threading capabilities. Here's a small bit of background about the game: The game contains numerous asynchronous activities, such as \"world updating\" (the game environment is constantly changing based on a set of natural laws and forces), procedural generation of terrain, NPCs, quests, items, etc., and on top of that, the effects of all of the player's interactions with his environment are programmatically calculated in real time, based on a set of constantly changing \"stats\" and once again, natural laws and forces. All of these things going on at once, in an asynchronous manner, seem to lend themselves to multi-threading very well. My question is: Can I build some kind of central engine that handles the \"stacking\" of all of these events as they are triggered, and dynamically sorts them out amongst the available threads, and would it be a good idea? As an example: Essentially, every time something happens (IE, a magic missile being generated by a spell, or a bunch of plants need to grow to their next stage), instead of just processing that task right then and adding the new object(s) to a list of managed objects, send a reference to that event to a core \"event handler\" that throws it into a stack of all other currently queued events, which then sorts them out and orders them according to urgency, splits them between a number of available threads for as-fast-as-possible multithreaded execution."}
{"_id": "73708", "title": "H.264 documentation and ressources", "text": "I'm tasked to use an API on a small embedded linux device. The use of the API is rather simple, but there are a gazillion of (face it, not documented) parameters to control multiple aspects of the codec. These parameters seem to be undocumented because they are not the responsibility of the codec supplier but core components to the h264 spec sheets. I'd like to find more information with solid sources on this codec. So far the best I've found is wikipedia. It is a good start but I'm not really sure where to move to from there. I'm asking here because I'd like to find something not too painful to read."}
{"_id": "129540", "title": "How can I answer interview questions about developing in a team when I've always been a lone developer?", "text": "In an interview, I was asked about about my experiences in developing in team settings. However, I've been self taught and have only worked on projects on my own. How would you go about answering this question? I just brought up school clubs and how I was able to play well with others, but this isn't really developer related."}
{"_id": "238362", "title": "How to manage version control company wide?", "text": "Are there any industry standards or best practises on how to manage a rapidly changing code base? The types of applications I am developing always have a custom aspect to them. So there will always be some code written which is client specific for every project. The method we are using now is as follows: Several 'CORE' projects exist in isolation from one another, each core project is a class library which is capable of running on its own, or with dependencies on other core modules. All of these core modules are documented (Sandcastle) and NuGet packages created for them, which are served up via a private NuGet feed. When a customer purchases the software we create a customer specific project which implements the bespoke code that they require, and pulls in the NuGet packages from the core libs as needed. The build of this project is what is provided to the customer, and each customer project has it's own Git repository. This has worked fine for a year or so, but I feel that as we add features to the core libraries the number of nuget packages is growing quite quickly. Is there a better method of organising code, whilst making sure there are not seperate version of the same code lying around? I know in this stackoverflow post it states that: > Google manages to keep the source code of all its projects, over 2000, in a > single code trunk containing hundreds of millions of code lines, with more > than 5,000 developers accessing the same repository. But this seems like it produce problems for us, due to having bespoke deployments. Any ideas or comments on what I am doing wrong? ## Edit The problems I foresee going with the google way are mainly to do with release management and build issues. We use continuous integration, so that every commit a build will be triggered and test automatically run. If we use one all encompassing repo I am not sure what effect this will have on the build and test servers. Will it have to build every customers project? Or would there be a branch per customer? In which case is this any better than a repo per customer?"}
{"_id": "247251", "title": "Patent a program: possible or not?", "text": "Suppose I have devised a new algorithm that solves a particular problem faster/better than the currently available fastest algorithm for that particular problem. By faster and better I mean, **drastically** faster in execution time and better in terms of **very less space consumed** compared to an existing algorithm. My question is that can I patent this program? Do I need a second person as a partner? More importantly, **should I patent it?**"}
{"_id": "74731", "title": "C++ for Java Programmers", "text": "I am going to have a lecture about C++ for experienced Java programmers. Because C++ is a big language and I have just one lecture, I want to point out the most important \"gotchas\" and C++ features when migrating from Java to C++. I myself went the opposite way (C++ -> Java) and therefore I would like to hear different opinions on this topic. What would you mention if you were me? The to-mention list I have so far:   * Use cases for C++ (when to use C++ instead of Java)   * Compiler stages (preprocessor, compiler, linker)   * Differences in data types (atomic data types, arrays, structs, classes, unions, enums), automatic conversion   * Pointers and memory management, difference between pointers and references, stack vs. heap allocations   * Interfaces and inheritance in C++ (multiple inheritance, virtual functions and the need of virtual keyword, pure virtual functions)   * Rewriting generics to templates   * STL (thanks P\u00e9ter)   * Operator overloading   * Basics of macros EDIT: added suggestions from the answers"}
{"_id": "144635", "title": "How to answer to this HashTable interview question?", "text": "Today I was asked this question during an interview: > What's gonna happen if we do not override hashcode method for our class, > then add it to `HashTable` and then try to get objects? Could you help me answer that?"}
{"_id": "74736", "title": "Does profiling without benchmarking lead to micro-optimization?", "text": "**Read first:** For a definition of the two terms (\"profiling\" and \"benchmarking\") and the need for distinguishing them, please read this answer to a previous question. I have to admit that until I saw Winston Ewert's answer, I have never thought of the need to distinguish the two techniques. I simply think that \"profiling\" can be applied at different \"scale levels\" of software, and that when it is applied on the higher level, the profiling code in the lower levels ought to be turned off in order to lower the aggregate overhead. After I reflected on the answer, it might have explained why I fell prey to micro-optimization in my previous project. In an effort to optimize during that project, I implemented a low-overhead profiler (inserted into the source code) which is good at generating accurate profiling results at the millisecond level. I then spent all days tinkering with it, and optimized a lot of code based on the profiler's result. In the end, I was successful in reducing the _computation_ part of the project from several seconds to less than a fraction of a second. The next thing I learned, to my horror: when the optimized module was used in a larger project, _I/O and data conversion_ completely dominated the module's _computation_ time. The non-computation part is in the range of 1-2 seconds, making my optimization efforts moot. To this date, I still haven't got a chance to do a true \"benchmarking\", though I am going to give it a try very soon. Given that \"Did you do profiling?\" has become the cliche on both StackOverflow and Programmers.SE, is there a danger that my kind of ignorance is actually prevalent among fellow developers? Does this ignorance lead to micro- optimizations all over the places?"}
{"_id": "111767", "title": "What should I do if Scrum member leave half way?", "text": "Due to health condition of one of the scrum member, he has to leave the team. My question is, do I need to start a sprint planning session again? or change the burn-down chart? or ask all the team members to bite the bullet and do extra work to meet the target? Thanks"}
{"_id": "8454", "title": "Should a poll framework be closed sourced", "text": "I was having a chat with a coworker who is working on a polling app and framework. He was asking technical questions and I suggested he open source the application to get more quality opinions from developers who are interested in this problem and are willing to give it heavy though. He has a different point of view which I think is still valid so I want to open this question for discussion here. He says he believes something like a polling framework should **not** be open sourced because it will reduce its security and validity as people reveal loopholes through which they can cheat. Can't say I completely disagree. I see a somewhat valid point there, but I always believed that solutions by a group of people are almost always better than a solution thought by a single person asking a small number of coworkers, no matter how smart that person is. Again I'm willing to accept that maybe some types of applications are different. Does anyone have an argument in his favor? I'd really like to present your responses to him."}
{"_id": "196224", "title": "What would help when refactoring a large method to ensure that I don't break anything?", "text": "I'm currently refactoring a part of a large codebase with no unit tests whatsoever. I tried to refactor code the brute way, i.e. by trying to guess what the code is doing and what changes wouldn't change it meaning, but without success: it randomly breaks features all around the codebase. Note that refactoring includes moving legacy C# code to a more functional style (the legacy code doesn't use any of the features of .NET Framework 3 and later, including LINQ), adding generics where the code may benefit from them, etc. I can't use formal methods, given how much would they cost. On the other hand, I presume that at least \"Any refactored legacy code shall come with unit tests\" rule should be strictly followed, no matter how much would it cost. The problem is that when I refactor a tiny part of a 500 LOC private method, adding unit tests appears to be a difficult task. What can help me in knowing which unit tests are relevant for a given piece of code? I'm guessing that static analysis of the code would somehow be helpful, but what are the tools and techniques I can use to:   * Know exactly what unit tests should I create,   * And/or know if the change I've done affected the original code in a way that it is executing differently from now?"}
{"_id": "253381", "title": "How does code produced on an open-source framework is affected by it's original license (MIT in this case)", "text": "I'm looking into building a new PHP commercial app for a client that will be hosted as a paid service and possibly resold to third parties with a non- compete clause. I've tested a few frameworks and chose Laravel which is licensed under the MIT License. The framework itself will not be modified but the app will be heavily dependent on Laravel functions and architecture. How does the original license affects code produced with the software it's covering? MIT being a non-viral license, my humble guess is that my code can be distributed under a more commercial-friendly license that prevent third- parties to do anything else than using the app as a final product as long as the original licensed is kept for the framework part. Am I wrong? How should I do this?"}
{"_id": "115868", "title": "What are some alternative methods to IronPython for calling Python code from .NET?", "text": "There are some great libraries for Python that have cousins in the .NET world, but some are unmatched. Realizing that Python is a dynamic language, which makes it difficult to mix with a (largely) statically typed language like C# (though this is seemingly getting easier with .NET 4.0), there are options like IronPython which can help match up the two languages. I've never come across any other options for dovetailing Python libraries with .NET. Are there any other ways to do this that are tried and true? I have far less experience with Python, so it's entirely possible that I'm overlooking something."}
{"_id": "119151", "title": "How many copies are needed to enlarge an array?", "text": "I am reading an analysis on dynamic arrays (from the Skiena's algorithm manual).   I.e. when we have an array structure and each time we are out of space we allocate a new array of double the size of the original. It describes the waste that occurs when the array has to be resized.   It says that (n/2)+1 through n will be moved at most once or not at all. This is clear.   Then by describing that half the elements move once, a quarter of the elements twice, and so on, the total number of movements M is given by: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/cm5Mm.jpg) This seems to me that it adds more copies than actually happen. E.g. if we have the following:               array of 1 element     +--+     |a |     +--+          double the array (2 elements)       +--++--+       |a ||b |       +--++--+            double the array (4 elements)       +--++--++--++--+       |a ||b ||c ||c |       +--++--++--++--+            double the array (8 elements)       +--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--+         |a ||b ||c ||c ||x ||x ||x ||x |       +--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--+              double the array (16 elements)       +--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--+         |a ||b ||c ||c ||x ||x ||x ||x ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  ||  |        +--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--++--+         We have the x element copied 4 times, c element copied 4 times, b element copied 4 times and a element copied 5 times so total is 4+4+4+5 = 17 copies/movements. But according to formula we should have 1*(16/2)+2*(16/4)+3*(16/8)+4*(16/16)= 8+8+6+4=26 copies of elements for the enlargement of the array to 16 elements. Is this some mistake or the aim of the formula is to provide a rough upper limit approximation? Or am I missunderstanding something here?"}
{"_id": "178512", "title": "Practical Usage Of Structures in c#", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When do you use a struct instead of a class? While working in OOPs, we always battle around structures and classes. But in real world, we always sticks to classes. I just want to know what is the practical usage of structures in C# and where are they beneficial over the classes. Or they are just a topic for theory."}
{"_id": "59499", "title": "Ms Build publishing vs Visual Studio IDE publishing", "text": "I am currently working on ms build to publish my winform application based on the environment selected (Dev or Prod). I am using Ms Build Community Task and referencing this article to achieve this purpose. I had a few theoretical doubts based on publishing application. 1) Is there any difference in publishing through the visual studio ide and msbuild? 2) What do most developers prefer to use and why? 3) What are the advantages of using MsBuild to publish an application as compared to publishing through the visual studio IDE? 4) What is faster? I am using a .net 3.5 winform application developed in Csharp and my question is pertaining to clickonce windows applications only. Please help me clear these doubts"}
{"_id": "145341", "title": "Advice on which technologies to use for a client-server desktop application", "text": "I am writing a desktop application in Java which will allow clients to authenticate to a server with their credentials, and afterwards view and manipulate some data (orders, invoices, employees etc.) stored on the server. I have decided to use Java to write the client, with SWT for the GUI. However, since I haven't previously worked on any large Java projects, I am not sure what technologies to use to make my job easier in writing the server. The server application will be a frontend for an internal RDBMS, allowing the successfully-authenticated clients to perform various operations on the data the user has permission to work on (not all users have the same role). This will, in simpler terms, work in a similar fashion to a multiuser RDBMS where each database user is only allowed to execute certain stored procedures and nothing more. I would like to have to deal as little as possible with serialization, duplicated code, writing my own protocol for client-server communication, hand-written object-relational mapping etc. It would be nice to be able to have some data bindings between models and GUI and to abstractize away the networking (by some form of RPC, I imagine). The first question to be asked is whether the protocol would be stateful or stateless, but I assume stateless is better (providing the user with some session id after successfully authenticating). The next question is what technologies/protocols/libraries should I use? RPC or something else? SOAP, something else over HTTP, not HTTP? I realize this is somewhat a matter of preference, but I'm not really aware of what options I have. I am interested in what's commonly used in the Java world etc. I would probably also need some way of sharing the model classes' definition (to avoid code duplication) across the client and the server. The client would bind the models to the view and propagate the changes to the server (serializing the model before sending it probably). The server would then deserialize the model object and push it onto the database via some object- relational mapper. Of course, that's oversimplified and is just the way I imagine it would work, but I'm open to any suggestions. My initial impulse was to use Python for the server, because that would make things more interesting for me (plus I have more experience). However, I'm thinking that going in this direction might over-complicate things. It's probably easier to write some model class and use it in both the client and the server than write it once in Python and once in Java and make sure to never forget to sync the changes (but then again, I might be able to use some common format to describe the model and then have it generate code in both Java and Python; I think ASN.1 does something like that). Do you think I can do this using a Python server without too much time wasted caused by the fact that the client is Java? Thank you for taking your time to read this. All of your suggestions are appreciated."}
{"_id": "221409", "title": "Does Clojure borrow concurrency ideas from Haskell?", "text": "In code quarterly interview with Rich Hickey Michael Fogus hints that Clojure borrows a lot from Haskell: _Fogus: As someone who only knows Haskell enough to read the papers, Clojure appears to be influenced by it substantially. From the names and operation of core functions\u2014take, drop, iterate, repeat, etc.\u2014to its protocols facility, there is a lot in Clojure that a Haskell programmer would recognize. Can you elaborate on Haskell\u2019s influences on Clojure both positive and negative?_ _Hickey: I think Haskell is a fantastic, awe-inspiring piece of work. I haven\u2019t used it in anger, but it certainly was a positive influence. Haskell obviously goes much further than Clojure in pursuing the ideals of functional programing. In particular they differ in the approach to using types to enforce things._ **My question is - Does Clojure borrow concurrency ideas from Haskell?** Fogus hints at some syntax, and there is obviously functional laziness. What about the STM and concurrency operators? **Assumptions:**   * I'm asking this question in a positive tone. I think it is great that Rich could see some of the treasures in Haskell and use them."}
{"_id": "145344", "title": "Layers - Logical seperation vs physical", "text": "Some programmers recommend logical seperation of layers over physical. For example, given a DL, this means we create a DL namespace not a DL assembly. Benefits include:   1. faster compilation time   2. simpler deployment   3. Faster startup time for your program   4. Less assemblies to reference Im on a small team of 5 devs. We have over 50 assemblies to maintain. IMO this ratio is far from ideal. I prefer an extreme programming approach. Where if 100 assemblies are easier to maintain than 10,000...then 1 assembly must be easier than 100. Given technical limits, we should strive for < 5 assemblies. New assemblies are created out of technical need not layer requirements. Developers are worried for a few reasons. A. People like to work in their own environment so they dont step on eachothers toes. B. Microsoft tends to create new assemblies. E.G. Asp.net has its own DLL, so does winforms. Etc. C. Devs view this drive for a common assembly as a threat. Some team members Have a tendency to change the common layer without regard for how it will impact dependencies. My personal view: I view **A.** as silos, aka cowboy programming and suggest we implement branching to create isolation. **C.** First, that is a human problem and we shouldnt create technical work arounds for human behavior. Second, my goal is not to put everything in common. Rather, I want partitions to be made in namespaces not assemblies. Having a shared assembly doesnt make everything common. I want the community to chime in and tell me if Ive gone off my rocker. Is a drive for a single assembly or my viewpoint illogical or otherwise a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "221407", "title": "Python: Counter for Simultaneous calls of a PHP script?", "text": "I'm trying to create a queue processing script that's purpose is to find particular files and apply actions based on specific parameters, with the result being to call a PHP script that serves to process a list of message files that we generated and passed to it. One of the things I need to specify in a config file the maximum number of concurrent calls to the PHP processor that can be running at a given time, and if max number of calls is >= then loop until <= Also need to specify a timeout variable 'tOut' in seconds... So basically it looks for the oldest file in the directory, locates a variable in that filename 'chCode', searches for the next oldest files in the directory with the same chCode and reprefix them and output file a list of those reprefixed paths. Then using Popen or Pcall the script with run 'php /path/to/filepathlist' and if: it returns output '00' then continue... it returns any text other than 00 then reprefix and mv.. it returns nothing for tOut secs then reprefix and mv. The counter is the part I'm really needing help with, as this needs to be proper accurate and high performance with batches of hundreds of thousands of outgoing text messages being sorted using this. I can confirm the counter from the PHP script but as said it needs to be accurate. Using Python 2.7 on CentOS6."}
{"_id": "50501", "title": "Does the programming language or database you use have any effect on the selling of your site?", "text": "I was just wondering if the programming language or database you use has any effect on selling your site to another company? I mean is it easier to sell PHP site than other language? How about database type? If I was using Redis instead of MySQL, would that make any difference?"}
{"_id": "221400", "title": "Making my code more robust", "text": "I have recently finished a piece of code that passed all tests. (Here is some idea what it does and Here is some actual code.) Problems began, however, when I run my code on the cloud with actual data. Specifically, the remote database I am sending data to, rejects requests if data do not conform to certain scheme. E.g. I cannot send two hashes like that:               array(         array('key' => 'string'),         array('key' => array('string1', 'string2'))     )      Here the type of `key` must be fixed -- either string or array of strings (or sometjing else). I have tried to fix this problem quickly, which lead to some messy behaviour, showing that my code is not yet robust and my tests are not yet sufficient. I wonder what are best practices here. I've read Uncle Bob's book, where he recommends to test for _Boundary Values_. Does it mean to try all possible types of data as method arguments for testing? Does it mean I should start every method with multiple \"if statements\" to check for input validity, to make those tests pass? Are there cases where it is pointless to worry about errors but rather let them go and deal with them only if they occur? Is there good rule of thumb when to throw `Exceptions` and when only to log messages? I have tried to follow the approach to throw `Exception` when thing _should not happen_ and to output `message` when it can happen but I still want to continue. On the hand, I can still throw `Exception` and catch it later, so I am still not quite certain what is good approach here. I still haven't used custom `Exceptions`, any good practical examples you know to learn about them? Are there a good sources to learn about those things? I know it is a big topic and I've read long philosophical articles on TDD and BDD but they tend to dwell on the abstract level, without breaking down to simple practical rules supported by easy examples. So I am looking for more practical help here, many thanks!"}
{"_id": "209279", "title": "Building a strong robust client-server system", "text": "I need some help with regards to implement a pre-designed system that has 4 components and several constraints. I've spent approximately 50 hours trying to determine the best way to build this system; however, I do not think I have a strong enough solution as of right now. ### ~~~ The Background Information ~~~ The purpose of this project is to allows for business owners (and their developers) to access data remotely. It has 4 components.   1. A Web Service    2. A Client   3. A Database For the webservice   4. A Database For the Client The user interface must be in the form of a web service as it is one of the design requirements. The Client is stored on a business owners computer (Which houses their database). It is a local program programmed in the .net platform. Business owners access the web service which then accesses a client, requests for data and passes that data to the client. The above is known and unchangeable (as I am not the person who makes the project specification) ### ~~~ The Real Problem ~~~ The problem is, The Client may not necessarily be at the same place every time, the IP of the client is subject to change. The Client may also simply not be online at the time of the request from the business owner. ### ~~~ My Present Solution ~~~ My Present solution to this problem is to create a TCP/IP Server on the Client. When the Client is turned on or started, it can \"register\" its TCP/IP Server credentials (the information needed to contact it) into the server along with some identification information. ~~~Editted for clarity~~~ When the Web Service gets a request, it can open a random TCP/IP connection and let the client (Remember the TCP/IP Server is on the Client) know it has a request for data. The Client can then get the request, process it and send a response with a 'request Id'. Based on this request Id, the web service can receive a call, let the client know it has a request, the client can go query the web service for the request, retrieve the request, process the request and send a response back to the web service which can then process the response (extract the request Id from it) and send it back to the appropriate web service caller.   ~~~ End Edit ~~~ (wow that sentence is a mouthful to read out loud) ### ~~~ What I Would Like ~~~ I feel my solution is sketchy and I would really like some feedback as to potential pitfalls that I may not see and better ways of approaching it."}
{"_id": "223313", "title": "Style guide for C++", "text": "Right now I am using Google C++ Style Guide in my C++ code and I was pretty happy with it. Recently I was told that this guide is very bad: it is used internally by Google (I knew that), is outdated, and promotes some very bad practices. So I want to use another coding style. What good and fairly used C++ style guides are there? I write code for both gcc and Visual Studio, and I use a lot of the C++11 features. What I liked very much about Google C++ Style Guide was the indentation, the whitespace and the naming conventions (specially naming all classes, types - including typedefs, type aliases and template aliases - with capital first letter). I know any answer is subjective (I hope this is ok on this site) and I would appreciate any opinion, but I am interested which guides are used these days."}
{"_id": "117425", "title": "Two-way calendar sync with any client", "text": "I have a database of calendar events, that can be administered by the user through a web application. I would like to offer to the user, functionality for viewing their calendar in any client of their choice (to the extent that open standards are implemented), primarily Outlook and Google calendar. I would also want for the clients, such as Outlook, to be able to edit and delete events, which would then be pushed to the web application, or which the web application would pull, or simply: which would somehow be synced. Additionally, it would be neat to be able to create a tentative event in the database, send a meeting request to the client, and have the client's accept or reject status somehow reported back to the application. But if this can't be achieved, that's no big deal. What would be the best approach for such integration? Would my application have to have built in support for communication with every single client API, such as Exchange etc.? Or are there any open standards that I could adopt? My initial attempts with iCal have not been rewarding so far. Perhaps I'm trying to do something that iCal cannot do. In that case, are there other techniques that can?"}
{"_id": "178704", "title": "Opinions on logging in multiprocess applications", "text": "We have written an application that spawns at least 9 parallel processes. All processes generate a lot of logging information. Currently we are using Pythons QueueHandler to consolidate all logs into one file. Unfortunately this sometimes results in very messy files which make them hard to read (e.g. Track what exactly is going on in one thread). Do you think it is a viable option to separate all messages into dedicated files, or is this going to make things even more messy due to the high number of files? What are your general experiences when writing log files for multiprocessed/multithreaded applications?"}
{"_id": "117429", "title": "Agile method for a non-technical product owner + one developer", "text": "My current client has several internal products which the IT-department supports. All product owners are non-technical and each application is always developed by one developer (and so is all change requests). The current methodology is a bit like waterfall. All uses cases are defined first by the product owner. Then the application is developed and released into a test-environment. The user tests it and says yes/no. Any changes results in a change request and a new release (including setup-packages). And it continues like that until the user is happy which results in the product going to production. I want to introduce an agile method instead to capture changes quicker and focus on the most important features from start. Scrum seems to be overkill since there only is one developer per project. Any other suggestions? **Edit** My client isn't going use anything that isn't documented. So I'm looking for an established and documented method (if there are one which suits one developer)."}
{"_id": "223319", "title": "argument grouping with parenthesis are valid in C++?", "text": "On python I can group arguments into a tuple, something like               def func((a, b, c, d), x):         print a, b, c, d, x      I was wondering if it is possible to group arguments in the same way on C++, something like:               void func((int a, int b, int c, int d), float x)     {         cout << a << b << c << d << x << endl;     };"}
{"_id": "189019", "title": "Are Request/Response Parameter Wrappers Good Practice?", "text": "I've seen several different ways to design WCF services, and it seems some developers prefer parameter wrappers while others favor 'naked' parameters. To explain what I mean, consider the following service interfaces: **'Naked' Parameters**               [ServiceContract]     public interface IService     {         [OperationContract]         string[] GetValuesByType(string groupName, ValueTypeEnum valueType)     }      **Parameter Wrappers**               [DataContract]     public class GetValuesByTypeRequest     {         [DataMember]         public string GroupName { get; set; }               [DataMember]         public ValueTypeEnum ValueType { get; set; }     }          [DataContract]     public class GetValuesByTypeResponse     {         [DataMember]         public string[] Result { get; set; }      }          [ServiceContract]     public interface IService     {         [OperationContract]         GetValuesByTypeResponse GetValuesByType(GetValuesByTypeRequest request)     }      I suppose there are cases where parameter wrappers make it easier to maintain the service over different versions of the software, since you can control serialization of each member a bit more directly than you can with the first method. But to be honest, parameter wrappers just seem like a lot more code for very little benefit. Am I wrong here?"}
{"_id": "166699", "title": "python factory function best practices", "text": "Suppose I have a file `foo.py` containing a class `Foo`:               class Foo(object):        def __init__(self, data):           ...      Now I want to add a function that creates a `Foo` object in a certain way from raw source data. Should I put it as a static method in Foo or as another separate function?               class Foo(object):        def __init__(self, data):           ...     # option 1:        @staticmethod        def fromSourceData(sourceData):           return Foo(processData(sourceData))          # option 2:     def makeFoo(sourceData):        return Foo(processData(sourceData))      I don't know whether it's more important to be convenient for users:               foo1 = foo.makeFoo(sourceData)      or whether it's more important to maintain clear coupling between the method and the class:               foo1 = foo.Foo.fromSourceData(sourceData)"}
{"_id": "149879", "title": "Prevent Click Fraud in Advertisement system with PHP and Javascript", "text": "I would like to build an Advertising project with PHP, MySQL, and Javascript. I am talking about something like...   * Google Adsense   * BuySellAds.com   * Any other advertising platform My question is mainly, what do I need to look out for to prevent people cheating the system and any other issues I may encounter? My design concept. An Advertisement is a record in the Database, when a page is loaded, using Javascript, it calls my server which in turn will use a PHP script to query the Database and get a random Advertisement. (It may do kore like get an ad based on demographics or other criteria as well) The PHP script will then return the Advertisement to the server/website that is calling it and show it on the page as an Image that will have a special tracking link. I will need to...   * Count all impressions (when the Advertisement is shown on the page)   * Count all clicks on the Advertisement link   * Count all Unique clicks on the Advertisement link My question is purely on the query and displaying of the Advertisement and nothing to do with the administration side. If there is ever money involved with my Advertisement buying/selling of adspace, then the stats need to be accurate and make sure people can't easily cheat the system. Is tracking IP address really the only way to try to prevent click fraud? I am hoping someone with some experience can clarify I am on the right track? As well as give me any advice, tips, or anything else I should know about doing something like this?"}
{"_id": "166694", "title": "How to deal with almost the same enums?", "text": "I need to define **enums** in several classes. The **majority** of fields are the same in all of the enums. But one has one or two more fields, another has fewer fields. Now I wonder what is the best way to deal with this?   1. Create separate enums              public enum Foo {field1, field2, field5 };     public enum Bar {field1, field2, field3, field4 };        2. or use a general enum for them all               public enum FooBar {field1, field2, field3, field4 , field5};      The enumerations contain the list of actions available for each class. **Update** : sorry if the question was not clear enough . I want to use these enums as `parameters` in classes **methods** . for example `classOne` has a method as below :               public void DoSomeThing(Foo action,object moreData)     {         // operation desired     }      here I want **action** to be limited to `Insert` , `Update` and `Delete` while in `classTwo` :               public void DoSomeThingElse(Foo action)     {         // operation desired     }      I want to limit **action** availabe to `Insert` and `Select`"}
{"_id": "149876", "title": "Is programming in the real world much less about programming itself?", "text": "I am in the second year of my CS degree, and so far most of the projects I worked on were pretty \"programming intensive\", which I like. For example, developing a Sudoku solver, creating a database management system from scratch in C, implementing algorithms to find the shortest routes between cities and so on. Recently I started working on some projects outside of my academic environment. Those include a web app and a couple of Android ones, which I shipped and got some people using. What I noticed with those \"real world\" projects is that I spend much less time programming, and a lot more time learning about the platforms, searching the web for that library I need, trying stuff until it works the way I need, learning to use tools that might help on the project and so on. In other words, I end up writing 5 to 10 lines of code per day because the rest of the time is spent learning auxiliary stuff. **My question** : Is this normal for real world projects, or once you master the platform you are working with you'll go back to programming intensive work?"}
{"_id": "235514", "title": "One huge rails webapp or many small webapps?", "text": "We have a huge system to develop, it has 3 main functions:   1. API provider   2. Worker to automated data retrieval   3. Management of data built in workers They all share the same DB, but for scalability purposes we have at least one server for each function, that means initially we have thought on this server structure:   1. 1 server for DB (postgresql)   2. 1 server for load balancer (nginx + management section)   3. N servers for API providers (sinatra app)   4. N servers for workers (sidekiq or Resque) My problem with that is to handle migrations and models which I stated here on SO. Because I haven't found any solutions that we liked I started to think on build one rails app and ship everything inside of it (drop the sinatra and leave everything for the rails app)   1. Is this a good solution, to build a huge rails app and slicing it on each server?   2. Is this a good idea, to leave just the minimal code necessary to run a server?"}
{"_id": "25637", "title": "How should I make progress further as a programmer?", "text": "I have just left my college after doing graduation in computer engineering,during my college life I tried to do some freelancing in local market.I succeeded in the last year and earned some small amounts based on joomla,wordpress and visual basic based job.I had some small projects on php,mysql also. After finishing my undergrad life,I sat for an written test for post of python programmer and luckily I got the job and is working there(Its a small software firm do most of the task in python).Day by day I have gained some experience with core python. Meanwhile an USA based web service firm called me for the interview and after finishing three steps(oral+mini coding project+final oral)they selected me(i was wondered!).And I am going to join their with in few days.There I have to work in python(based on Django framework,I know only basic of this framework). My problem is when I started to work with python simultaneously I worked in Odesk as a wordpress,joomla,drupal,php developer. Now a days I am feeling that I am getting \"Jack of all trades master of none\". My current situation is i am familiar with several popular web technologies but not an expert.I want to make myself skilled. How should I organize myself to be a skilled web programmer?"}
{"_id": "25636", "title": "What kinds of non-source artifacts are vital to your development process?", "text": "The \"classic\" development artifacts are requirements documents and design specifications. But the development process includes many other non-source code artifacts: bug tracking databases, emails, wikis. What kinds of non-source code artifacts do you think are most vital to your development process? And how do you keep these documents up to date? Also, are there any artifacts that you don't necessarily find useful, but have to use because it's required by the contractor or management?"}
{"_id": "65330", "title": "How do I improve my memory and recall?", "text": "How do I go about improving my memory and recall as it relates to Programming? I have a tendency to cache API information short term and then immediately put it out of my head as I move on to something else. This sometimes makes me look bad as I can't recall API information on code I should be really familiar with. It also can be a big time sink, as I often know that I can do something with an API, but I have to look up the specifics on how to actually do it. Are there any tools or methods I could use to make up for my memory short comings?"}
{"_id": "253968", "title": "How to release bundled software with different licenses?", "text": "Recently, I was in a situation where I wanted to release a simple piece of JavaScript software under an open source license. However, I withdrew from it because the software contained several open source components that were released under different licenses. Under what license should the bundled software be released (given that various third party components are mixed into the software at code level)?"}
{"_id": "253967", "title": "iOS NSError with global handler", "text": "I am in the beginning of programming an iOS app. Having read the Apple guides on how to deal with errors, I got the following most important points:   * Exceptions are for programmers   * Use `NSError` for the user Now, `NSError` is usually passed as out-argument which can then be used inside and has to be checked by the caller. However, I'm asking myself whether it is a good idea to use a global error handler, say a singleton which wraps around `NSError` and could be used to trigger errors and error handling from within the called function. Is there anything against that method or would it be a bad practice?"}
{"_id": "253966", "title": "how to ask questions about bad practices in stackoverflow ( or other technical forums)", "text": "I had a case when I needed to do something in code that **I knew is a bad practice**. but because of a unique situation and after considering the risks thoroughly decided that is worth it. I cannot start explaining all my considerations that include buisness secrets over the internet but I do need technical assistance. when I tried to ask at SA I got heated responses why it is a bad practice instead of answeres to how to do this. poeple are so conserned about what is the right way to write code that they forget that there are other considerations as well. can anyone provide insight of how to correctly ask such a question in order to avoid \"this is a bad practice\" answers and get real answers?"}
{"_id": "253963", "title": "Code review revenge", "text": "In the company where I work we are doing code reviews. I gave some negative comments about the code (code duplication) of programmer A. My commit was OK and ready to merge and then programmer A added negative comments to my code in revenge. What do you think about this kind of situation?"}
{"_id": "24940", "title": "Does the usage of LINQ and Lambda Expressions lead to less readable code?", "text": "I'm having a discussion with a co-worker on Linq, I'll copy here: > Co-Worker: Lets be honest here. Linq syntax sucks. It's confusing and non- > intuitive. > > Me: oh come on, more confusing than T-SQL? > > Co-Worker: uh, yes. > > Me: it has the same basic parts, select, where, and from > > Co-Worker: Linq, to me, is a bastardization of relational + OO. Co-Worker: > Don't get me wrong - it's incredibly powerful, but they repurposed SQL to > use agains object collections. I'm of the opinion that using Linq + Lamda's is very powerful (he agrees), and also makes code easier to read (he disagrees on that point):               pickFiles = from f in pickFolder.GetFiles(\"*.txt\")     where ValidAuditFileName.IsMatch(f.Name)     select f;      or               var existing = from s in ActiveRecordLinq.AsQueryable<ScannedEntity>()     where s.FileName == f.FullName && s.DocumentType != \"Unknown\"     select s;      or (VB code here)                  Dim notVerified = From image In images.AsParallel          Group Join verifyFile In verifyFolder.GetFiles(\"*.vfy\").AsParallel.Where(           Function(v) v.Length > 0           ).AsParallel        On image.Name.Replace(image.Extension, \".vfy\") Equals verifyFile.Name          Into verifyList = Group         From verify In verifyList.DefaultIfEmpty         Where verify Is Nothing         Select verify      To me this is clean and easy (at least easier than the alternatives) to read, what are your opinions on it?"}
{"_id": "75469", "title": "Django - Using a JSON string as an attribute map to avoid subclassing", "text": "I have a Django model called Entity. Different types of Entity have different attributes (e.g. some have a currency associated with them, others don't). I'd rather not have to create a new subclass for every permutation of attributes. **Question** : Is it a bad design decision to create a CharField or TextField called \"attributes\" that uses a JSON-encoded map with the attribute names and values for a given entity? For the purposes of the answer, assume that I don't have many Entity records (~8,000) or users (~100 at one time, worst case) to deal with, so I'm not sure if the performance hit from dealing with a JSON object is a big problem."}
{"_id": "83553", "title": "Is it necessary to create a database with as few tables as possible", "text": "Should we create a database structure with a minimum number of tables? Should it be designed in a way that everything stays in one place or is it okay to have more tables? Will it in anyway affect anything? I am asking this question because a friend of mine modified some database structure in mediaWiki. In the end, instead of 20 tables he was using only 8, and it took him 8 months to do that (it was his college assignment). **EDIT** I am concluding the answer as: size of the tables does NOT matter, until the case is exceptional; in which case the denormalization may help. Thanks to everyone for the answers."}
{"_id": "102231", "title": "How to model future iPhone application GUI?", "text": "Say you're working on designing the world's greatest iPhone app. How do you decide what UI would be more effective, would be more intuitive etc? How do you take an idea and decide how to visually represent it? Do you use any programs (on a mac) to model something like that?"}
{"_id": "235435", "title": "How is the router configuration gui designed and implemented?", "text": "It's a rather simple concept, and each vendor seems to have their own \"Website\" for their config. I am curious to find out a few things. In my linksys router, if I go to 192.168.1.1, it asks for a simple log in, followed by the status page. Here ports/passwords and all that can be completely changed. What's interesting is how the firmware updater works. You can click upload, drop in their new firmware, and it presumably flashes the device. What technologies / frameworks would be ideal for creating my own custom router page? I've seen a custom one (Tomato)."}
{"_id": "75460", "title": "Microsoft Public License Question", "text": "Let preface this by saying that I understand that any advice I may receive is not to be taken as 100% correct, I am just looking for what people's understand of what this license is. I have been looking for a library that allow be to deal with archived compressed files (like zip files) and so far the best one I have found is DotNetZip. The only concern I have is that I am not familiar with the Microsoft Public License. While I plan to release a portion of my project (a web application platform) freely (MIT/BSD style) there are a few things. One is that I don't plan on actually releasing the source code, just the compiled project. Another thing is that I don't plan on releasing everything freely, only a subset of the application. Those are reason why I stay away form (L)GPL code. Is this something allowed while using 3rd party libraries that are licensed under the Microsoft Public License? **EDIT**   The part about the Microsoft license that concerns me is Section 3 (D) which says (full license here): > If you distribute any portion of the software in source code form, you may > do so only under this license by including a complete copy of this license > with your distribution. If you distribute any portion of the software in > compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that > complies with this license. I don't know what is meant by 'software'. My assumption would be that 'software' only refers to the library included under the license (being DotNetZip) and that is doesn't extends over to my code which includes the DotNetZip library. If that is the case then everything is fine as I have no issues keeping the license for DotNetZip when release this project in compiled form while having my code under its own license. If 'software' also include my code that include the DotNetZip library then that would be an issue (as it would basically act like GPL with the copyleft sense)."}
{"_id": "204709", "title": "Can continuous delivery work in a big enterprise environment with lots of connected systems?", "text": "Much has been said lately of continuous delivery. It does sound appealing, but runs against the grain of convention wisdom in big corporations.   * Jez Humble - Continuous Delivery   * Thoughtworks Presentation - Continuous Delivery - Part 1   * Thoughtworks Presentation - Continuous Delivery - Part 2 Assuming the following:   * You have a number of remote systems connected via ESB   * You have an established system with several years of coding changes applied to it   * This is a website that allows financial transactions   * There are multiple backend systems responsible for processing different types of transactions   * Currently production releases assume a multi $10K investment in a manual regression test Can Continuous Delivery be implemented in such an environment? (ie is the underlying assumption behind Continuous Delivery that you invest a large amount in automated regression testing that is coordinated across systems?) (Surely automated unit tests can prove a system is not incorrect, but can't prove it is correct)."}
{"_id": "204702", "title": "Learning basic graphics programming", "text": "After learning the basics of computing simple die throwing games and calendar applications, I want to explore simple graphics - drawing and moving around geometric objects is ok to start with, eventually adding pixel graphic of course. I've taken an introductory Java course but would rather do it in C++, Python or a combination of them (that's what we will eventually be using in school). I also want to learn the principles behind it, not just blindly applying incomprehensible syntax to make the compiler happy. Some posts seem to imply SFML is a solid choice, so I thought I'd get a book covering it and work through it, but there only seems to be ONE book on SFML available, and that one hasn't been reviewed at all. Not in the mood for a $30 gamble, so I'm feeling kind of lost! How should I approach learning basic graphics programming?"}
{"_id": "209550", "title": "What does it mean for the JSON interchange format to have a license?", "text": "A recent flurry of comments on a JSHint issue alerted me to the fact that the JSON data-interchange format has a license. The content of this license can be debated elsewhere. What I'm unclear on is what it means for JSON (or any other data-interchance format) to have a license. If an a library simply consumes and parses JSON, does it have to include this license? I understand that using a library that contains this license would require a user to include it. I'm talking about writing a library from scratch. What if I have to use JSON because a third party service only communicates via JSON. If I'm serializing and deserializing data according to the RFC, do I still need to refer to the license?"}
{"_id": "165920", "title": "Is there a title for someone who is both a Software Developer and a Business Analyst?", "text": "I usually see two job titles in the IT industry. My understanding of their most commonly accepted usage (simplified):   * **Business Analyst:** Main role is eliciting the users' needs   * **Software Developer** Main role is to design, build and test a software solution answering the needs I'm wondering: \" _How we should call somebody whose role is to do both of the roles above?_ \" Is this a common job title? And is trying to find people with these broadness of skills realistic, difficult? **EDIT:** I'm specifically interested to name Lead Software Developers who have eventually learned and can apply techniques of Business Analysis."}
{"_id": "165927", "title": "Tracking work history in a git repo", "text": "**Previous related questions:**   * Code bases for desktop and mobile versions of the same app   * Git branching and tagging best practices **Question:** I have split my repo into three directories (swing, android, and common) as suggested by @KarlBielefeldt in response to my previous question. Now I am jumping back and forth between developing my Android port and tweaking/adding features to my original Swing app. All of my commits are linear (fast-forward) and only my commit messages give hints indicating whether I'm working on my Swing app or my Android app. Is there a better way to keep track of the work flow in my git repo?"}
{"_id": "96052", "title": "Learn to Program by Chris Pine book question", "text": "I don't know where to post this, so sorry if this is the wrong place. I bought the book Learn to Program by Chris Pine on my iPad, I will be travelling for about two days so want to read this book and learn to program obviously but won't have access to a computer so is it worth reading this book while travelling? I flicked through it and has some exercises so was wondering what I should do. thanks"}
{"_id": "196912", "title": "Representing a parent/child hierarchy in a Relational Database", "text": "I am working on an application that connects to another application (Quickbooks) using an API by sending/receiving XML requests/responses. I am able to work with the data in the XML response and load it into a datatable in c#, so that's not the issue. What I am looking to do is write the data from the Quickbooks XML file to a relational database such as SQL Server so I can make it available to a web app or other applications. The problem I am having is that for the Accounts object, there are multiple child entities (up to 5) for a given parent. For example:   * Parent: Revenues    * Child: Charitable Donations   * Sub-Child: Homeless Shelter   * Sub-Sub-Child: Seattle Mission   * Sub-Sub-Sub-Child: Food This example is a bit extreme, as the particular file I'm working with only goes out to three levels, but a maximum of five is allowed by Quickbooks (thus I'm trying to come up with a solution that would scale well). When I create my datatable in C# from the data in the XML file, I have two columns: ParentID, ChildID. It would look like this:               ParentID     ChildID     Account               Balance     --------     -------     -------               --------     001          002         Revenues              45670     002          003         Charitable Donations   1500     003          004         Homeless Shelter        800     004          005         Seattle Mission         400     005          NULL        Food                    200      In this example, I am able to determine all of the child IDs of a parent, and then look to the ParentID with that ChildID and see if that child has any children, etc. I have a method which does a fairly good job of parsing through that, and it works fine for the time being, but is this really the best way to store it in a database if I wanted to permanently house the data in a relational database? It seems like there should be a more elegant solution, but I'm not sure what that would be."}
{"_id": "159964", "title": "How big does my project need to be for me to unit test it?", "text": "I assume that my project is decoupled enough to allow for unit testing. But how big, exactly, in terms of clases and functions does my project need to be to make unit testing worthwhile? We all make mistakes and no one's perfect, but I consider myself a decent programmer to handle small projects' errors with stepping through. Or is unit testing a hard necessity no matter of what size your project is?"}
{"_id": "116774", "title": "Is donationware non-commercial?", "text": "I use quite some \"non-commercial\" applications when working on software projects. For clarification, I mean developing **applications** here, for example smartgit, **not libraries** or anything that gets shipped. Is it legal to provide a donation button for projects made using the non- commercial of certain applications? I know, I know, \"consult a lawyer\". Here's the real world: I'm a 16 year old hobbyist programmer that doesn't have the time nor money to consult one - a quick question on the internet would probably be a better idea."}
{"_id": "116778", "title": "Is there an industry standard for structuring code and comments?", "text": "I've worked with a number of professional teams and it seems that class code structure ranges from highly organized to completely cluttered. I did a project with the State of California recently and they required using specific Regions in my VB code, along with inline XML comments for auto-docs. It was very structured, but in many classes, there was more commenting than code. I'm just curious if there is an industry standard for code structure and commenting. **EDIT** Maybe a more appropriate question would be, what are some good practices to adopt for readability and maintenance and why? I want to set good coding habits early."}
{"_id": "25093", "title": "Google Summer of Code Experience", "text": "I was a Google Summer of Code student this year and successfully completed my project. It was an awesome learning experience. Just wondering, from an industry point of view - how is or how well is a Summer of Code experience viewed? I mean, if you were going to hire me, would it mean anything to you? I am just asking this since doing SoC != an internship. As a SoC student, I was a independent contractor for Google. Sure, there was proper development, but I am interested in looking at it from the experience you guys have here. Would you prefer me? Sorry for not revealing my name; I'd hope you understand."}
{"_id": "220462", "title": "Using a web framework as python GUI", "text": "If I built some useful piece of python code to e.g. scrape a website or to calculate something big, at some point I might want to add a GUI to my project. For this I could use Tk, Qt, Pygame or any python graphic/GUI framework. Now I also want this tool to be usable by clients without the need for a python installation. Of course I could use something like py2Exe or py2Dmg. But wouldn't it be cooler to use a python-based web framework for this? Something like Django or Pyramid. What would be the drawbacks of doing this? Can I just use the framework to execute my code on a server and only return the result? Or will this get tricky when there are multiple users?"}
{"_id": "58823", "title": "Have you ever done a project using a languages that is not the mainstream choice for the specific niche of the project? Why?", "text": "I was thinking about my academic experience with Smalltalk (well, Squeak) a while ago and whether I would like to use it for something, and it got me thinking: sure, it's as good and capable as any popular language, and it has some nice ideas, but there are certain languages that are already well entrenched in certain niches of programming (C is for systems programming, Java is for portability, and so on...), and Smalltalk and co. don't seem to have any obvious differentiating features to make them the right choice under certain circumstances, or at least not as far as I can tell, and when you add to it the fact that it's harder to find programmers who know it it adds all sorts of other problems for the organization itself. So if you ever worked on a project where a non-mainstream language (like Smalltalk) was used over a more mainstream one, what was the reason for it? To clarify: I'd like to focus this on imperative languages."}
{"_id": "58826", "title": "where to get CodeIgniter views from", "text": "I just started using CodeIgniter I'm wondering if anyone knows where I can download pre-made views. For example right now I'm looking for an admin interface. I could write the code myself but I'm feeling lazy ;) Is there a place where you can get pre-made templates like you can for most CMS's? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "58827", "title": "Can a shop score 12 on the Joel Test and yet be anything but Agile (or Lean)?", "text": "Inspired by this question - can an agile shop really score 12 on the Joel Test: Can you come up with explanations or examples where a software development organization satisfies **technically** all 12 points of the Joel Test, but fails to live up to the agile or lean principles?"}
{"_id": "222197", "title": "Why are some classes or methods not \"parameter compulsory\" in java", "text": "Question title can be a little confusing but I didn't have a better way to put to put it. In Java you can have this:               JLabel HoHoHo = new JLabel();     ...     HoHoHo.setText(\"Ho Ho Ho\");      And this:               JLabel HoHoHo = new JLabel(\"Ho Ho Ho\");      In both cases, it gives a label with `Ho Ho Ho` on it. **Question** How is that possible? I mean, are there to JLabel classes, one with a `String` parameter and one without?"}
{"_id": "134952", "title": "Software Licences Wizard", "text": "Is there a license \"wizard\" question system that asks you questions about how you would like to use the software, and then either allows you to compare it against one or more license types. Background: In asking a question that requires the open source image recognition software to have a license commercial internal distribution without release of the source code even internal to all those who have the binary... I realized that the current answer using a GPLV2 license likely mean it's a bad fit. I'd like to make the question more clear by adding a list of licenses that are known to be a fit, and those that are not a fit, but I don't even have a clue as how to do that other than to ask if there's a wizard that will help do this."}
{"_id": "134953", "title": "When are scripts inside HTML not considered a bad practice?", "text": "I am new to web development. While studying the Play framework and JSP, I noticed that they both give an option to place script (in jsp scriptlet) inside HTML, but in both books I am reading they both say it is bad practice and don't give an explanation as to when should I use scripts, only writing not to. My question is, if both frameworks supply such an option, when would it be ok to use scripts inside HTML? Please note, I'm talking about server side scripts for creating dynamic HTML (i.e. JSP scriptlet)."}
{"_id": "222193", "title": "Why did the team at LMAX use Java and design the architecture to avoid GC at all cost?", "text": "Why did the team at LMAX design the LMAX Disruptor in Java but all their design points to minimizing GC use? If one does not want to have GC run then why use a garbage collected language? Their optimizations, the level of hardware knowledge and the thought they put are just awesome but why Java? I'm not against Java or anything, but why a GC language? Why not use something like D or any other language without GC but allows efficient code? Is it that the team is most familiar with Java or does Java possess some unique advantage that I am not seeing? Say they develop it using D with manual memory management, what would be the difference? They would have to think low level (which they already are), but they can squeeze the best performance out of the system as it's native."}
{"_id": "229897", "title": "OOP and relational databases", "text": "I see a lot of talk in the OOP world about principles and laws such as **Open/Close** and **Loose Coupling** , I can understand how they are so high valued, However I seem to have ran into a problem with applying these principles and laws once I start to include relational databases. For example purposes, if I have a application which we are able to separate well into multiple components( **Open/Close** design) and allow them to work with each other when if needed, I start to run into problems when trying to enforce **referential integrity**. If I enforce a relational setup, and enforce integrity through foreign keys and so on, the tables become dependent on each other, gradually my OOP application logic starts to fall apart and become one big system. I can of course remove all references to tables, but then I risk making data redundant and start to repeat code/data, which then goes against the Don't Repeat Yourself principle. Have you came across such problems before? If so how did you handle it? Perhaps there is a way to achieve both referential integrity and OOP open/close components. Thanks"}
{"_id": "10424", "title": "What are the non-technical reasons that make Object-Relational Mapping tools (ORMs) so difficult to write?", "text": "I know the technical pitfalls of writing an ORM are pretty well-known nowadays, but what are some non-technical factors (e.g., Scope) that make it difficult to writing a good ORM? EDIT: I have already read the technical reasons for why ORMs are so difficult to write from this Stackoverflow post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/404083/is-orm-still-the-vietnam-of- computer-science"}
{"_id": "36567", "title": "What skills in game development are common in other software development areas?", "text": "I am a game dev who was working in the game-industry and then ... got laid off. Ever since then, life has been stressful! During this time, I have met so many other devs who have also been laid off irrespective of the number of years they have been in the game. There just aren't many opportunities for game development where I live. I can't think of a domain/place where I can use my game development skills. I know graphics/simulation/visualization is huge, but I can't think straight and am left clueless where to go from here. What are some of the domains/companies where I can use my skills? What skills are common between game development and other areas of software development?"}
{"_id": "36562", "title": "How do you deal with design in Scrum?", "text": "How do you deal with design in Scrum? Do you still have well written design documents for each scrum iteration? Do you just do design notes featuring UML diagrams? Or do you just have well commented code? Each iteration may involve changing design so I just wanted to know how people capture this so new developers have an easy job of understanding the domain and getting on board as rapidly as possible."}
{"_id": "71593", "title": "What should I expect from my first programming job?", "text": "I just got hired for my first programming job! I am 25 and have been using Java academically for 6 years. Now that I have been hired I am nervous that my skills will not be what the employer expects. I am afraid I will be assigned to a project and have to ask lots of questions that my coworkers will feel are amateur. Is this a rational fear? What were your first programming job experiences? What should I expect? What advice could you give me? Thanks."}
{"_id": "251521", "title": "Creating system diagrams for a small app", "text": "I am learning system design (on my own) and still I am not clear on a few things. Assume there is a simple application with a front-end and a database for storing of the data. In the system architecture diagram, will there be only two parts (UI and DB) or should I include some UI modules for calculations, for example? And what about hardware devices that the system is using? To give a more precise example: I have an application that is used by two types of users (one has limited access). This app uses a DB and its modules are working with an external hardware device. I am not sure how should I start with the system diagram."}
{"_id": "63890", "title": "Well designed / high-quality open source software", "text": "I'm taking a software design class where I should choose an open source software to analyze from the Software Design point of view. It has to be a big project: not less then 100,000 lines of code. I would really like to choose a software that is very well designed and architected to have good insights on good software design. By good design I mean things like meaningful classes and architecture, good use of (design) patterns, good use of abstraction, good organization of components, high cohesion and low coupling between components, etc... Do you have any software to suggest me? Note that the software just need to have a good design, the design does not need to be documented! :) It does not need to be an application for the end user... It can also be a library, a tool, etc..."}
{"_id": "251527", "title": "Data model - inheritance", "text": "I just started working on a project where I am trying to implement some backend logic which includes creating a data model for the given problem. Here is a problem I came across and I am curious what approach would be more suitable for tackling it. **Model:** There are various users in the system with different rights and structures but there is a very simple inheritance between them. There is a basic `user` that can browse and view some data, psot comments etc. Than, there is a `member` who can do everything the `user` can + something more and they share the basic data structures + `member` has its own. And there is a `producer` which is again just an extension of `member`. Each `user` can (but does not have to) be a `member` and each `member` can (but does not have to) be a `producer`. 1) My current idea: Create table `user` and tables `member` and `producer` which would reference each other using user's id. There would be 0 to 1 relationship between these tables:               USER {     id     username     email etc..     }          MEMBER {     userid     some_member_attributes     }          PRODUCER {     userid     some_producer_attributes     }      The advantage is, that it would save me a lot of NULL values in a single table and it feels somehow natural to me. The disadvatage is that I would have to query three different tables every time I would like to get some data from a `producer`. 2) The other possibility is implementing this as a one table with attributes `isMember` and `isProducer`. But again, this will result in a lot of NULL values since most of the users wont be `producers`. And its not very typical to have many 0 to 1 relationships in one model, I think... What do you suggest? I hope its not an off-topic here, I am just trying to get this right so I wont have to reimplement is a dozen times in future. Thanks for any tips!"}
{"_id": "234758", "title": "The place of UI design when estimating and elaborating user stories", "text": "Our company is trying to follow Agile methodologies when it comes to estimating and prioritizing any new development work. The reading I've done makes this concept appear great so we are trying to give it a good crack at making it work for us and hence help with providing a better solution at the end of the day for our customer. A problem I have had recently is the position of UI design during the estimation of User stories. We kicked off a new project discussing what was required from a functional point of view and getting a set of user stories written down to be verified by the user. Our BA then asked us to estimate these stories. I went, hang on. Many of these stories might vary depending on the complexity of the UI design. However the BA wasn't ready to discuss UI just yet as she needed estimates so she could plan the sprints and get a costing for the project. So my main question is: > Where does UI design fit into the process between writing user stories and > estimation. Or, should it even fit in and just be a part of the development > work? Secondary question > How does agile fit into fixed price quotes for new work (based on your > estimations on the entire user stories set), and how then do you ensure you > deliver what you said as far as the user stories go against the quote given > i.e. a story is bigger than you thought so blows out My concerns around our process:   1. I can't estimate accurately enough at this stage of the process as some elements are missing i.e. UI. It's a new project for a new client so heading into some uncertain waters.   2. Some features are just too unknown to estimate (Do I need to just delve deeper into the murkiness to clear the waters to remove the unknowns??)  BA needs (as expressed to me)   1. Wants to have estimates so they can determine how many sprints this project will take   2. Wants to have estimates so they can determine the scope and cost of the project so that they can give it to the customer as a quote."}
{"_id": "20911", "title": "How do you typically become chief software engineer in a company?", "text": "I was under the impression that you start in a programming job, do a good job, demonstrate willingness, get sent to a bunch of internships by the employer, and make your way up until you are given responsibility of an entire project. But a friend of mine told me that you also need at least a Masters' degree to be considered for that job. Is that true? How do people typically get to be in that role? PS notice I said \"typically\". I want to hear the general case, not private cases about someone you know."}
{"_id": "20918", "title": "What to do when you're faced with a problem that you can't solve quickly?", "text": "I'm a beginner learning Java and after reading the docs I'm trying to solve some of the problems at codingbat.com. Some I managed to solve pretty quickly in a matter of seconds but some not quite. The problems themselves are easy (example http://codingbat.com/prob/p126212) but I sometimes have a hard time finding the solutions. In part because I think of the best possible solution and automatically discard the ones that might work but aren't so elegant and in part because I can't find the right algorithm. This is either due to my inexperience (I have used PHP for web development for about 2 months so I'm not a total beginner - even worked with one framework to build a website) or due to my inability to think of a good algorithm. I normally don't look at the solutions. I sometimes get stuck even for 1 1/5 hours at simple problems and some of them I eventually solve but some I can't so I eventually look at the solution. Is it normal/good/bad to concentrate this long if I find a problem I can't solve? I might overreact but should this be so hard for me? Is there such thing as not being able to think of algorithms even with much learning and reading? Thank you all in advance."}
{"_id": "99144", "title": "Unit Testing For Different Environments", "text": "How does one do unit testing for multiple environments that behave differently? Here is my problem. I have a PHP class for which I'd like to create unit tests. The class provides shortcuts for manipulating folders. On Linux, you can set the folder permissions without a problem, on Windows, you can't at all. Knowing this, what is the best practice for creating a unit test for this class? The test suite could be run on either Windows or Linux, but if you test the folder settings on Windows, the test will fail. Do you just live with the failing test, make it conditional on the OS, omit testing it altogether, or something else?"}
{"_id": "194205", "title": "How to maintain user relationship when user unfollows another user", "text": "I have a table of user relationship which stores who follows whom, the table structure is as follows               -id     -follower     -following      when someone follows any other user, I add a record with follower user id and id of user he is following, now my question=> When user wants to unfollow that user, I have decided rather than deleting the record I can add another column `break` at the end of this table, which I will set to `true` when user wants to unfollow, this way I can maintain consistency in the records, that is there wont be any gap like 1,2,4,7,8,9,15 if I delete records. If I dont delete the record, I can use it if that user want to follow that user again in future I can set break column of that record to `false` and the relationship will exist again..what do you guys think should I use this approach or I should delete the record? Tell me if the approach is good or there could be any issues associated with it and also tell me if there is any better way you know. Thanks"}
{"_id": "52064", "title": "What will be a good python script (or your favorite language goes here) to test a system's performance and capabilities?", "text": "Let's say you're in a computer store looking at 10 laptops, you want to really compare the system's capabilities. What will be an efficient \"your fav language goes here\" script that will allow you to do this? As an example, when I go to the store I usually open a macbook and a pro's terminal and write an equation in python, iterate it a million or so times, and time them. I like to compare the difference in time. What would be an ideal and simple script that can efficiently compare systems?"}
{"_id": "18421", "title": "Learning a new language and framework, should I spike a project, or first ground myself in the language fundamentals?", "text": "I've got substantial J2EE experience, have worked with Grails, and am comfortable with several languages (Perl, PHP, Smalltalk). I've decided to try a new project using Ruby on Rails. For those who've decided to migrate to a new technology stack, how do you make the transition? Do you learn the details of Ruby first (I've done a few tutorials, and feel like I've got a decent enough grasp of the language to start doing some basic work) or do you do a full Ruby on Rails tutorial, and expand your knowledge from there. I'm leaning towards the latter approach because I feel like I can delve into details of the language as I encounter them. For those who work in Ruby on Rails, how did you learn, and which resources do you recommend?"}
{"_id": "18427", "title": "Syndication feeds and show I bother with providing anything other than RSS 2", "text": "I'm creating a CMS and have lots of legacy code from other applications. I'm wondering should I bother providing other syndication formats except rss 2? I'm inclined to say no but was wondering what other peoples opinions were."}
{"_id": "18424", "title": "Can a non-programmer successfully run a software company?", "text": "Back in 2006, one Joel Spolsky made the following comment: > Watching non-programmers trying to run software companies is like watching > someone who doesn't know how to surf trying to surf. Overall the article is a great read (definitely take the time to read through it). Out of curiosity, **I would like to hear the experiences of folks here** who have seen programmers adopt the mantle and do a great (or rubbish) job, and the same for non-programmers who find themselves herding programmers (worse than herding cats I've heard). In short, what is the concensus of opinion on this matter?"}
{"_id": "198512", "title": "Benefits of using XML builder vs templating language like ERB?", "text": "I'm doing a lot of work with XML, our legacy XML generators use the ruby template language ERB to create the XML files. I've been experimenting with Nokogiri and the builder model of creating XML, but I seem to be able to accomplish everything I want using both methods. So, what should I be taking into account when choosing one common method going forward? What are the benefits of using a builder method to construct the XML vs a template language? One that I can think of is the builder method(nokogiri) provides methods for do much more than creating the file, such as searching and rearranging, etc. So if I use the builder method I can have a common tool for doing all xml related tasks."}
{"_id": "198513", "title": "Single Responsibility principle VS KISS principle", "text": "Let's assume the modeling of `User` model in a context of a social network. User concept is composed of two notions:   * Authentication elements like userName/Password/Email etc...   * Extra data information sometimes called \"User profile\" like firstName, birthday, pictures etc.. At first glance, this analysis involves separation of tasks/responsibilities if we want to keep SRP. However, typically in the case of a social network, **userName may be seen as a pure information belonging to a user's profile rather than a pure element of authentication.** Thus, there is three ways, according to me, to model the `User` concept. First, the whole in one class:   `User` (userName, password, email, firstName, birthday, picture etc...) Second, a one-to-one relationship between `User` and `UserProfile`:   `User`(userName, password, email) `UserProfile`(firstName, birthday, picture etc...) Third, a one-to-one but with a redundancy of the common fields (being as focused on authentication as a visible user information on the website):   `User`(userName, password, email)   `UserProfile`(userName, firstName, birthday, picture etc...) Why repetition here? Of course for consitency and at the same time to avoid joins in cases of relational database when one want to retrieve each Use's profile data. What is a good practice to model these both concepts? **Where should I place`userName` field?** **Dilemma being: keeping KISS (Keep it simple stupid!) or SRP ;)**"}
{"_id": "71612", "title": "Would it be ok if I decide to write all my Ruby as if it were Haskell?", "text": "Given that Ruby has good list operation capabilities in-built - reduce, map, select, collect etc. It has Procs, Blocks and Lambdas, and has nice iteration support (the `each` family), would it be a bad design decision if I attempt to write all my Ruby stuff in the most pure-functional way possible? Escpecially for code that has little or no I/O (thus less obvious side-effects)? I've been learning Haskell (called the 'real' Hacker's language), and am in love with it's way of doing things - I love Ruby, but think it can be even more fun when more Haskell spirit flows into it (well, didn't Ruby borrow / learn lots from it in the first place?) Constructive guidance is welcome..."}
{"_id": "245309", "title": "Determine Programming Language Used for Project Based on Source Code", "text": "Is there an easy way to determine which programming languages were used in a project assuming you have access to the source code? I have been programming for quite some time, so I can recognize most of the major programming language by syntax or file extension, but I realized that I could not answer this fairly simple question (A problem I often ask myself when dealing with unfamiliar open source codebases). I understand that you could examine each file extension and Google it to determine whether it belongs to a particular programming language. However, this seems tedious (examining every file extension for a large project) and I am guessing there might be a better way."}
{"_id": "15610", "title": "How is the JVM and Java's WORA different from other high level languages?", "text": "In the Java world, we often talk about the JVM, and when Java was new it had the supposedly killer feature of \"Write Once, Run Anywhere.\" From the way people talk and write, this seems different from the way that Python, for example, works. Yet I've not been aware of any way that Python code that I've written would work differently on another machine. (Though I haven't written that much Python.) So what am I missing? How is the JVM different from a Python interpreter? Is there a way that Python lacks Java's platform independence? Or is this just a cultural difference?"}
{"_id": "138898", "title": "Using php functions, reserved words as local identifiers", "text": "I'm thinking of some of the array functions. \"key\", \"each\", \"pos\", \"range\". These are often very useful as local identifiers! I have also seen code that (ab)uses $return, $list, $array, $string. What are other PHP programmers views on this? Local identifiers only! I wouldn't use them as members or method names of a class, even less global variables."}
{"_id": "17474", "title": "If you had more freedom and flexibility, what would you change in your employment contract?", "text": "For example, code ownership/authorship rights, non-compete terms, vacation/holidays, working hours, termination notices from any of the sides, etc."}
{"_id": "138897", "title": "Permission to reuse iOS sample code in commercial app?", "text": "Do we have permission to re-use iOS sample code from the apple developer website in a commercial app? Are we allowed to use it with modifications? Not sure of how to interpret all the legalese on the source. Obviously there's an \"All rights reserved...\" at the end, but there also a > \"Apple grants you a personal, non-exclusive license, under Apple's > copyrights in this original Apple software (theApple Software\"), to use, > reproduce, modify > and redistribute the Apple Software, with or without > modifications, in source and/or binary forms; provided that if you > redistribute the Apple Software in its entirety and without modifications, > you must retain this notice and the following text and disclaimers in all > such redistributions of the Apple Software.\""}
{"_id": "138896", "title": "Communicating details of method result?", "text": "I have code like this (pseudocode)               foreach(Box box in boxes)     {         if(boxFilter.PassesFilter(box))         {           // do something useful         }         else         {           Log.Log(format(\"Box %s was rejected\", box.BoxId))         }     }      But now I'm thinking I'd like the log message to have more information such as \"Box 1 rejected because too tall\" or 'Box 549 rejected: 25\" height exceeds Max height of 24\"'. What's the best idiom to get this information into the log? Do I have to create a `FilterResult` object that is returned from the `PassesFilter` method? Or I guess I could also throw an exception and catch it and log it? Or something else? I happen to be using C++. **Update** In addition to logging I might want to also present a message to the user in the UI."}
{"_id": "205890", "title": "What is the proper way to distinguish between keywords and identifiers?", "text": "I'm aware that most modern languages use reserved words to prevent things like keywords from being used as identifiers. Reserved words aside, let's assume a language that allows keywords to be used as identifiers. (For example, in Ruby a keyword can be used as a method name). During compilation, how would you deal with this ambiguity? The lexing phase doesn't seem like a good fit because it would have to consider the tokens around it. The parsing phase also doesn't seem like a good fit since ideally the parser would work with tokens that are _unambiguous_. If I had to design it myself, I suppose I would have the lexer yield an ambiguous token, then have another level that considers the ambiguous token in the context of the tokens around it, (e.g. does the ambiguous token follow a `def` keyword? Then it must be an identifier.) Then, I would hand the unambiguous tokens to the parser. **In languages that allow keywords to be used as identifiers, what is the standard way for the compiler to tell them apart?**"}
{"_id": "138890", "title": "Bugs that can be avoided with coding standards", "text": "I am looking for statistics (or estimations) that backup the claim that coding standards help reduce bugs. Hard-numbers would be nice, although I haven't had much look finding any. I've even looked at bug tracking for various open- source projects, but have not been very successful finding what I need. Does anyone out there know of any place I might be able to find this? Or do any of you contribute to any open-source projects that have had bugs that may have been avoided with better coding standards?"}
{"_id": "138892", "title": "Eclipse runs my java program 6 times faster... Can I achieve this performance without using it?", "text": "I've written a java program that generates all repetitive permutations based on the characters and the length given. When I execute my code in Eclipse, it generates a file with 1,000,000 permutations in only 15 seconds. Yet if I run the program on the same machine in the command prompt using \"java permutation\" It takes 1 minute 35 seconds to generate the same 1M permutations.. Why is this? And is there anyway I can get this type of performance without using eclipse? Edit: Added Java VisualVM results www.craftboom.co.uk/jvm.png - The CPU usage is higher when running in eclipse. Both CPU and memory usage seem to drop to 0 ocassionally in the shell o_O EDIT2: Turns out it is a problem printing to the screen. Didn't mention it in my original post, but the program prints each permutation to the console.. Commented that out and saved to a file instead.. now running equally fast in both shell and eclipse. :-) Thanks to all for replies."}
{"_id": "78032", "title": "How to handle the problem of modified encrypted files", "text": "I have a simple encryption/decryption application that I am testing to learn more about security. I found out that if the user modifies the encrypted file, then decryption fails because the hashing algorithm doesn't generate back the original content. What are the common practices that deal with the problem of encrypted files modified by users either intentionally or unintentionally? The only thing I can think of is timestamp checking, but I am not sure how useful that is. About my last statement, I guess I am not sure if there is a way to trick the OS so that the new timestamp is set back to the exact old time stamp although the content is modified."}
{"_id": "78030", "title": "How do we know if a problem is hardest in NP", "text": "I read that the definition of NP-complete is : These are the hardest problems in NP. Such a problem is NP-hard and in NP How do we know if a problem is hardest in NP, and no harder problem exists. I understand that let's assume that somehow magically we know that a problem L is hardest in NP and then we can find out more hardest problems H if we can reduce H to L and vice versa.But my question is how does it all begin? How do we know 1 hardest problem to begin with? Also, to be able to say that something is hardest (or any extreme), we need to know all possible problems in NP and then argue about the hardest.. How do we know all possible NP problems? Is this where turing machine comes useful and by using representation of output string in form of 1 and 0 in output tape, we can theoretically talk about all possible NP problems. I understand that I may not have been able to articulate my question well - due to confusion. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "171332", "title": "Why don't research papers that mention custom software release the source code?", "text": "Is there a reason why the source code of software mentioned in research papers is not released? I understand that research papers are more about the general idea of accomplishing something than implementation details, but I don't get why they don't release the code. For example, this paper ends with: > Results > > The human line drawing system is implemented through the Qt framework in C++ > using OpenGL, and runs on a 2.00 GHz Intel dual core processor workstation > without any additional hardware assistance. We can interactively draw lines > while the system synthesizes the new path and texture. Do they keep the source code closed intentionally because of a monetization they intend to make with it, or because of copyright ?"}
{"_id": "226449", "title": "Benefits of a leaderless team in Scrum", "text": "Scrum advocates assume that a team without a designated team leader (as it is in Scrum) is more effective than a team with a designated leader (as in traditional hierarchy). Although I can understand this point of view, I am not entirely certain that's the case. In Scrum teams leaders always emerge. Power vacuums get filled. So if the organization already recognizes certain people as talented leaders, why not assign them an official leadership role in the first place?"}
{"_id": "112105", "title": "Is there a pattern for subscribing to fired events/messages at specific intervals?", "text": "I'm not sure if this a common scenario or not, but I have a need along the following lines: I have an object (I'll call it node) and this object has methods X, Y, and Z. I want to be able to have subscribers be notified if the methods are called in a specific order with specific timing (a range of time would be ideal). For instance:   1. Node.X() get called    2. Node.Z() is called 5 to 7 milliseconds latter   3. Node.X() is called 1 to 2 milliseconds after that   4. Node.Y() is called 2 milliseconds seconds after that.   5. Finally, An event calling a subscriber to this sequence is fired. Now, in this example I am simply using parameter-less methods, but in real life I'd need to be more specific about the contents of the parameters (I'd be looking for specific messages). For reference I am using C# .net 4. Are there any frameworks/patterns/libraries that exist out there that are built for doing this?"}
{"_id": "37216", "title": "How do you combat programming fatigue?", "text": "Not fatigue as in 'I need sleep' but fatigue as in 'I just can't be bothered anymore' which usually sets in when you hit roadblocks in whatever project you're working on, generally the closer you get to deadlines. It can be in work projects or personal projects, but it's something I keep hitting more and more lately. I'll get an idea, get into working on it, have a few really good days and make progress, then just some niggly things will trip me up, I can't get things working the way you want, I've hit limitations in the framework, I've got problems I can't find documentation for, etc. and it just gets too frustrating. Or am I alone in this?"}
{"_id": "18391", "title": "Brain picking during job interview", "text": "Recently, I had a job interview at a big Silicon Valley company for a senior software developer/R&D position. I had several technical phone screens, an all day on-site interview and more technical phone screens for another position later. The interviews went really well, I have a PhD and working experience in the area I was applying for yet no offer was made. So far, so good. It was an interesting experience, I am employed, absolutely no hard feelings about this. Some of the interviewers asked really detailed questions to the point of being suspicious about new technologies I have been working on. These technologies are still in development and have not come to market yet. I know some major hardware/software companies are working on this too. I have had many interviews before and based on my former interviewing experience and the impression some of the interviewers left behind, I know now all this company wanted from me is to extract some ideas about what I did in this field. Remember, I am referring to a R&D position, not the standard software developer stuff. Has anybody encountered this situation so far? And how did you deal with it? I am not so much concerned about \"stealing\" ideas but more about being tricked into showing up for an interview when there is no intension to hire anyway. I am considering refusing technical interviews in the future and instead proposing a trial period in which the company can easily reconsider its hiring decision."}
{"_id": "18392", "title": "How much time a week do you spend on extracurricular programming?", "text": "Background: I'm a microsoft DBA/IT type person by day, an iOS and Mac developer by night. I have one app in the App Store and another one in the works. I try to spend as much time as possible working on my two apps, but with a new daughter and other (non computer) hobbies, I find it hard to spend more than a few hours every week programming. I'm wondering how this compares to other developers. I see a lot of apps out there written by single developers who don't do iOS development as their main job. Are they spending 4 hours a night working on their projects, or do they just plug away for a year or two before releasing anything?"}
{"_id": "37210", "title": "What's more important: To write programs fast or to write fast programs?", "text": "What's more important: To write programs fast or to write fast programs? According to: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/17478/how-quickly-with- better-tool it is better to write fast programs, but I wanted to ask this Q here to get the general gist of what you're thinking on this subject. Of course I'm taking as a given that all programs have to be correct etc. etc."}
{"_id": "115455", "title": "How to create scalable & side-effect free integration tests?", "text": "In my current project, I am having a hard time coming up with a good solution to create scalable integration tests that have no side effects. A little clarification on the side effect free property: it is mostly about the database; there shouldn't be any changes in the database after the tests are completed (state should be preserved). Maybe scalability and state preservation don't come together, but I really want to push for a better solution. Here is a typical integration test (these tests touch the database layer):               public class OrderTests {              List<Order> ordersToDelete = new ArrayList<Order>();               public testOrderCreation() {             Order order = new Order();             assertTrue(order.save());             orderToDelete.add(order);         }              public testOrderComparison() {             Order order = new Order();             Order order2 = new Order();             assertFalse(order.isEqual(order2);             orderToDelete.add(order);             orderToDelete.add(order2);         }         // More tests              public teardown() {              for(Order order : ordersToDelete)                  order.delete();         }     }      As one might imagine, this approach yields tests that are extremely slow. And, when applied to the whole integration tests, it takes around 5 seconds to test only a small portion of the system. I can imagine this number going up when the coverage is increased. **What would be another approach for writing such tests?** One alternative I can think of is having kind of global variables (within a class) and all test methods share this variable. As a result, only few orders get created & deleted; resulting in faster tests. However, I think this introduces a bigger problem; the tests are no longer isolated and it gets more and more difficult to understand & analyze them. It might just be that integration tests are not meant to be run as often as unit tests; therefore low performance might be acceptable for those. In any case, it would be great to know if someone came up with alternatives for improving scalability."}
{"_id": "229610", "title": "Indirection: Readability vs Performance", "text": "(I see there are a lot of similar questions, but answers are not really what I am interested at.) The thing that is bugging me is indirection. If I'm writing something, I do tend to inline as much stuff as possible. I might be less strict about it in compiled language hoping that compiler will do all the inlining for me. Still adding layers of indirection feels to me like \"I'll just add some more burden onto user in runtime so that I could have nicer code here\" - something that could be solved with either a comment or a different design (which I would actually prefer but it would take some more time). Seeing a small function that is used only once I have to actually fight the urge to inline it. Having a multitude of single-use classes makes me want to create a different (and usually totally procedure-oriented) solution. How bad is that? How many layers of indirection are actually OK to have?"}
{"_id": "229614", "title": "Using Type Parameter (or not)", "text": "Effective Java provides 2 ways to implement `swap`:               //\u00a0Two\u00a0possible\u00a0declarations\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0swap\u00a0method      public\u00a0static\u00a0<E>\u00a0void\u00a0swap(List<E>\u00a0list,\u00a0int\u00a0i,\u00a0int\u00a0j);      public\u00a0static\u00a0void\u00a0swap(List<?>\u00a0list,\u00a0int\u00a0i,\u00a0int\u00a0j);      Then, Mr. Bloch says: > Which of these two declarations is preferable, and why? In a public API, the > second is better because it's simpler. You pass in a list\u2014any list\u2014and the > method swaps the indexed elements. There is no type parameter to worry > about. As a rule, if a type parameter appears only once in a method > declaration, replace it with a wildcard. It appears that `swapNoWildCard` could be used rather than the `swap` and `swapHelper` method. Mr. Bloch explains the reasoning for using the 2nd signature above.               public static <E> void swapNoWildcard(List<E> list, int i, int j) {         E e = list.set(j, list.get(i));         list.set(i, e);     }          public static void swap(List<?> list, int i, int j) {         swapHelper(list, i, j);     }          private static <E> void swapHelper(List<E> list, int i, int j) {         E e = list.set(j, list.get(i));         list.set(i, e);     }      However, is this debatable given the fact that `swapNoWildCard` is almost half the # of lines of code compared to implementing the other 2 methods? Why is it so useful to leave out the type parameter?"}
{"_id": "231455", "title": "Writing tests for two methods that share functionality", "text": "I'm writing some tests for a NodeJS module, but this question can apply for any language / platform. I've got the following situation:               // in moduleA.js          exports.foo = function (var1, var2) {         // do something to var1 and var2 here              baz(var1, var2);     };          exports.bar = function (var1, var2) {         // do something completely different to var1 and var2 here              baz(var1, var2);     };          function baz(var1, var2) {         // do something to var1 and var2 yet again that both foo and bar need              moduleB.doSomething(var1, var2);     }      So, both `foo` and `bar` are public methods of `moduleA`. They've got some specific functionality (they do different things to `var1` and `var2`) but also some shared functionality (to keep things DRY I've moved it into a private method, `baz`) and then they both call a public method on `moduleB`. I've stubbed out `moduleB` so I know exactly what's going on after `foo` and `bar` have been called. I'm writing tests for `foo` and `bar`'s specific functionality but I'm not 100% sure how to approach testing the shared functionality in `baz`. It seems to me I've got three options:   * write identical tests for both `foo` and `bar` that test for the things in `baz`   * write a single test for `foo` and not write the same test for `bar` since know that `baz` works   * expose `baz` as another public method for the module and test it separately. I'm leaning towards the first option, but I feel I might be missing something."}
{"_id": "39360", "title": "How are hybrid VB6/.Net applications functioning in the Real World?", "text": "I am maintaining a VB6 application and we are studying how to migrate to .Net We are considering doing this gradually by implementing new features in COM visible .Net classes and migrating existing functionality slowly. I found some instructive 'Hello World' examples about how to do this and it works fine with our App. But how is the real world behaviour of these hybrid applications? Are they stable, maintainable? Particular of our program is that more users on the same computer will use it by switching user accounts. EDIT: The VB6 app reads data from a USB connection and stores it in an Access database. The user can call up various views on the data. The data is cached in a hardware device, so interuptions in the reading of it are not fatal."}
{"_id": "130415", "title": "What is the current state of Google's Dart programming language?", "text": "Dart has been out for ages (in internet years), but judging by Google Trends , it hasn't gotten much hype, and the fact that it only works in Chrome doesn't help either. Nonetheless, Chrome is gaining market share every day, which lends itself to a better view on Dart. What is the big picture now? What state is the language in? Do people regard highly of it? Market share? Web App showcase? Some feature implementations that make you go \"I _have_ to use it\"?"}
{"_id": "39363", "title": "How to improve and start client interaction", "text": "How to remove hesitation of interacting with client ? As a Devloper i want to develop my career but this require the better Client Interaction,but as now i haven't done any major client interaction , and i want to do major client interaction, how i can proceed in this way ?"}
{"_id": "180948", "title": "Why aren't user-defined operators more common?", "text": "One feature I miss in from functional languages is the idea that operators are just functions, so adding a custom operator is often as simple as adding a function. Many procedural languages allow operator overloads, so in some sense operators are still functions (this is very true in D where the operator is passed as a string in a template parameter). It seems that where operator overloading is allowed, it is often trivial to add additional, custom operators. I found this blog post, which argues that custom operators don't work nicely with infix notation because of precedence rules, but the author gives several solutions to this problem. I looked around and couldn't find any procedural languages that support custom operators in the language. There are hacks (such as macros in C++), but that's hardly the same as language support. **Since this feature is pretty trivial to implement, why isn't it more common?** I understand that it can lead to some ugly code, but that hasn't stopped language designers in the past from adding useful features that can be easily abused (macros, ternary operator, unsafe pointers). Actual use cases:   * Implement missing operators (e.g. Lua doesn't have bitwise operators)   * Mimic D's `~` (array concatenation)   * DSLs   * Use `|` as Unix pipe-style syntax sugar (using coroutines/generators) I'm also interested in languages that **do** allow custom operators, but I'm more interested in **why** it has been excluded. I thought about forking a scripting language to add user-defined operators, but stopped myself when I realized that I haven't seen it anywhere, so there's probably a good reason why language designers smarter than me haven't allowed it."}
{"_id": "180942", "title": "Is software design important to programmers?", "text": "I am studying software engineering, just finished the requirements course and going for more. I don't know how important software design is (in real world and actual projects) in later SDLC phases. As I read on the internet a lot of development teams like less documentation or design, and more coding. This makes my major worthless (in the real world). I am very good at programming and I like it but its not my main thing. I would like to hear from people about their experience with this, about a software engineer's actual role in real-world projects, and about how projects usually go?"}
{"_id": "218388", "title": "How do I create an environment where fixing tests is seen as a priority?", "text": "I am a software engineer at a medium sized company. We have a fairly robust testing platform running on TeamCity. It does unit tests on every checkin, and a daily unit test/BVT run. The problem is - we have a great deal of broken unit tests. Quite often, I bring up the pointlessness of unit tests if they are constantly breaking and unmaintained. Being unable to see if a change has caused a regression removes most of the value of a unit testing platform. I would like to get a seed planted that will create a culture of good habits - fixing tests when they're broken, seeing them as valuable, prioritizing the fixing of tests along with other work. I've tried bribery (baked goods!), just plain asking, and speaking to team leads. Everyone says that it's a good idea, but I see to be the only one doing anything about it. What is the best way to get started on encouraging others to fix their tests, and prioritize test fixing within their sprints? If there is a less subjective way to ask this, I would be happy to accept any tips."}
{"_id": "147088", "title": "How to go about training IComparable to a team?", "text": "I (am just a developer) am tasked with training my team on a technique or technology. I zeroed upon System Interfaces, IComparable and IEquatable to be specific. How does one go about teaching (even if it is 1 hour), what an IComparable is and where we can use it by giving them an example. However, I am not entirely sure whether that would make my team to understand and start using IComparable. In my project, however, I do have a Discount class and there are instances where I have to merge two lists of Discounts. Now, that would be a really good instance of where IEquatable would be helpful when I do the merge wouldn't it? I had the following template for training.   * Introduction: Why does one need IComparable? (And, I could not get an answer that I can use for teaching).    * Structure of IComparable (Again, what else can I talk about other than CompareTo method).    * Sample Code   * Where we can use that in our project   * Questions."}
{"_id": "147089", "title": "Why is Python slower than Java but faster than PHP", "text": "I have many times seen various benchmarks that show how a bunch of languages perform on a given task. Always these benchmarks reveal that Python is slower then Java and faster than PHP. And I wonder why is that the case.   * Java, Python, and PHP run inside a virtual machine   * All three languages convert their programs into their custom byte codes that run **on top of** OS -- so none is running natively   * Both Java and Python can be \"complied\" (`.pyc` for Python) but the `__main__` module for Python is not compiled Python and PHP are dynamically typed and Java statically -- is this the reason Java is faster, and if so, please explain how that affects speed. And, even if the dynamic-vs-static argument is correct, this does not explain why PHP is slower than Python -- because both are dynamic languages. You can see some benchmarks here and here, and here"}
{"_id": "68251", "title": "Why are inheritance and polymorphism so widely used?", "text": "The more I learn about different programming paradigms, such as functional programming, the more I begin to question the wisdom of OOP concepts like inheritance and polymorphism. I first learned about inheritance and polymorphism in school, and at the time polymorphism seemed like a wonderful way to write generic code that allowed for easy extensibility. But in the face of duck typing (both dynamic and static) and functional features such as higher-order functions, I've begun to look at inheritance and polymorphism as imposing an unnecessary restriction based on a fragile set of relationships between objects. The general idea behind polymorphism is that you write a function once, and later you can add new functionality to your program without changing the original function - all you need to do is create another derived class which implements the necessary methods. But this is a lot simpler to achieve through duck typing, whether it's in a dynamic language like Python, or a static language like C++. As an example, consider the following Python function, followed by its static C++ equivalent:               def foo(obj):        obj.doSomething()          template <class Obj>     void foo(Obj& obj)     {        obj.doSomething();     }      The OOP equivalent would be something like the following Java code:               public void foo(DoSomethingable obj)     {       obj.doSomething();     }      The major difference, of course, is that the Java version requires the creation of an interface or an inheritance hierarchy before it will work. The Java version thus involves more work, and is less flexible. Additionally, I find that most real-world inheritance hierarchies are somewhat unstable. We've all seen the contrived examples of Shapes and Animals, but in the real world, as business requirements change and new features are added, it's difficult to get any work done before you need to really stretch the \"is-a\" relationship between sub-classes, or else remodel/refactor your hierarchy to include further base-classes or interfaces in order to accommodate new requirements. With duck typing, you don't need to worry about modeling anything - you just worry about the _functionality_ you need. Yet, inheritance and polymorphism are so popular that I doubt it would be much of an exaggeration to call them the dominant strategy for extensibility and code reuse. So why are inheritance and polymorphism so wildly successful? Am I overlooking some serious advantages that inheritance/polymorphism have over duck typing?"}
{"_id": "47535", "title": "How does the use of a rules engine impact the design, implementation, and performance of an application?", "text": "I'm interested in the ability of rules engines to:   * launch and iterate over business driven logic   * have \"business users\" perform the actual modification of those rules rather than developers   * comprehend the business rules in general Also, does using a rules engine impact the quality of an application? Does the use of a rules engine change if you were deploying to a 1-machine setup vs. your architecture vs. a multi-tier cloud-based distributed architecture using thousands of machines? How would it be different?"}
{"_id": "68258", "title": "How can I get programmers to stop writing code vulnerable to SQL injection?", "text": "Sometimes you get busy and delegate small tasks to junior programmers. But if you don't pay close enough attention you find yourself with this kind of code in production:               class DivtoggleController extends Zend_Controller_Action {              public function closeAction() {             /* ... code removed for brevity ... */                  $req = $this->getRequest();             $formData = $req->getPost();                  $d = $formData['div'];             $i = $formData['id'];                  $dm = new Model_DivtoggleManager();             $rs = $dm->setDivToggleById($d, $i);              }          }               class Model_DivtoggleManager extends Zend_Db_Table {              public function setDivToggleById($div, $id) {             $result = $this->getAdapter()->query(                \"update div_toggle set \" . $div . \"=1 where id=\" . $id             );         }          }      So, given that I have removed the authentication / session management logic for brevity, who can tell me what possible problem there might be with this sample?"}
{"_id": "67406", "title": "How to keep management out of our development process", "text": "I'm a software engineer in an software development team. The last 3 years we worked for an internal customer on a new product. Now this product is finished we're going to work on major new features for existing products. For a particular feature, product management have guessed it takes 150 hours to develop. Together with our project manager we have created a very detailed plan and we come to an effort of 300 hours. Yesterday we discussed this and they think we have grossly overestimated things. In our planning we estimated hours for writing unit tests, their idea is to dump them to save time. The decision has not been made yet and I will defend this planning and the unit tests if needed. But what I really don't like here is that management is interfering with our development process. How do I keep them out of our development process? And what arguments could I use to keep the unit testing in place (besides quality and long term time saving)? As a side note our company has 3 engineering teams and the team I'm in delivers their software on time (give or take a 10% margin). While the other teams always deliver late, mostly due to underestimation in planning. They only plan the coding and not the management, testing and handling around it."}
{"_id": "184383", "title": "Why are custom PDF download options preferred over ctrl+p?", "text": "Why do I, as a developer, have to go through so much trouble developing PDF download options for my clients when everyone in the world can simply hit Ctrl+P and life is good? The current issue I'm working on is dealing with Google Charts, so I'm not stating that offering PDF downloads in general is relatively difficult. On the contrary, particular cases are more trouble than they seem to be worth. See also: `@media print {}` Update: With a little research, I was able to find a perfectly workable solution. \"Just hit Ctrl+P\" now sounds like a ridiculous thing to say. Thanks everyone for your input. If you're interested to know what I decided to do, I realized that Google Charts are output as SVG markup and I think I should be able to use TCPDF to render them in a PDF document."}
{"_id": "144571", "title": "Formalizing programmers errors", "text": "Every one of us make errors leading to bugs. Once I wanted to start logging my errors for future analysis, probably mentioning project title, approximate time spent and the most important, the type of error. For example when I copy- pasted a fragment about 'x' and replaced every occurrence of 'x' with 'y' and forgot to replace a tiny piece, this goes to 'copy-paste error'. The usefulness of this approach depends on whether I can formalize my errors at all and probably minimizing the number of types to choose from. Otherwise I would start postponing, ignoring and so on so make this system useless. Are there existing research in this area, probably a known minimum set of errors? Maybe some of you already tried to implement something like this and succeeded/failed?"}
{"_id": "183760", "title": "I hate one of our coding standards and it drives me insane, how to process it?", "text": "**Disclaimer** : Not as exaggerated as the title suggests, but it still makes me uncomfortable. I'm just going to express honestly, so take it with a grain of salt. Just pretend that I'm talking about _that_ coding standard that you don't like working with. **Edit** : The fact that I don't like it, doesn't mean I don't use it or enforce it. * * * I decided to ask this question in the spirit of how to get over a standard you don't like, not to get help on how to better argue how it can be changed (although any comments regarding this last part is appreciated). Besides, I work in a big company and such a change of something that has lived for so long and that matters so little is unlikely. The standard is the opening-curly-brace-on-dedicated-line standard:               somefunction()     {         //...     }      Instead of the ***clearly superior*** (note the joking/frustrated tone):               somefunction(){         //...     }      My personal arguments against the standard:   * **It bloats code** : extra unnecessary lines   * **Harder to type** : although probably this is just me struggling with the standard, I know one extra keystroke isn't that bad.   * **Not easier to read** : I start reading a function declaration, if statement, or any other scope-stacking statement and I already don't have to look for an opening brace. Nested blocks with this standard just make me angry for some reason.   * **Used by people who come from a Microsoft IDE background** : I think there should be an argumented reason (or more) behind a standard, not just take it in by paradigm. Their arguments (and my way of internally retorting to them):   * **Easier to read because you can see where blocks start and end right away** : I cannot understand this, what good is the block if you don't know what it is owned by, so then you have to read backwards.   * **I used it in a Microsoft IDE and I liked it** : Uhh... ok?   * **It is in the standard** : _*cringes*_ Am I the only one that struggles with an opinionated stance against a specific standard?, how have you gotten over these?, what is your opinion on what this particular standard should be (just for fun)?"}
{"_id": "144574", "title": "Should all public methods in an abstract class be marked virtual?", "text": "I recently had to update an abstract base class on some OSS that I was using so that it was more testable by making them virtual (I could not use an interface as it combined two). This got me thinking whether I should mark all of the methods that I needed virtual, or if I should mark every public method/property virtual. I _generally_ agree with Roy Osherove that every method should be made virtual, but I came across this article that got me thinking about whether this was necessary or not. I am going to limit this down to abstract classes for simplicity, however (whether all concrete public methods should be virtual is especially debatable, I am sure). I could see where you might want to allow a sub-class to use a method, but not want it overriding the implementation. However, as long as you trust that Liskov's Substitution Principle will be followed, then why would you not allow it to be overriden? By marking it abstract, you are forcing a certain override anyway, so, it seems to me that all public methods inside of an abstract class should indeed be marked virtual. However, I wanted to ask in case there was something I might not be thinking. Should all public methods within an abstract class be made virtual?"}
{"_id": "183766", "title": "How to increase the efficiency of an Immutable Queue in java?", "text": "I have been developing an Immutable queue in java, but the version I have developed is supposedly slow and I have been suggested to create a faster version of the same and I have no idea as to how to accomplish that.               import java.util.ArrayList;     import java.util.List;     import java.util.NoSuchElementException;     public class ImmutableQueueImpl<E> implements ImmutableQueue<E>     {              private List<E> queue;         public ImmutableQueueImpl()         {            queue=new ArrayList<E>();         }              public ImmutableQueueImpl(List<E> queue)         {            this.queue=queue;         }              public ImmutableQueue<E> enqueue(E e)         {                 if(e==null) throw new IllegalArgumentException();                 List<E> clone = new ArrayList<E>(queue);                 clone.add(e);                 return new ImmutableQueueImpl<E>(clone);         }              public ImmutableQueue<E> dequeue()         {                 if(queue.isEmpty())                 {                   throw new NoSuchElementException();                 }                 List<E> clone = new ArrayList<E>(queue);                 clone.remove(0);                 return new ImmutableQueueImpl<E>(clone);         }              public E peek()         {                 if(queue.isEmpty()) throw new NoSuchElementException();                 return queue.get(0);         }               public int size()     {         return queue.size();     }     }      Please suggest any improvements in the implementation or the libraries used . We remove elements from immutable lists all the time and dequeue is just a special case of that. The point is that the result is not really the element, but another immutable list without it. The point of this design is mutation safety and way better in parallelized settings than mutable data structures."}
{"_id": "159409", "title": "Enterprise Wide Keys", "text": "I have for a long time been working on an ODS as well as Data Warehouse. Both are integrating a wide variety of data sources from stove pipe applications. One of the uses of the ODS is to provide data to other stove pipe applications. Imagine one app maintains a database of personnel, and another app manages tracking sales. Occasionally the Sales app may need to have a drop down of personnel that someone can pick from, say to credit a particular employee with a sale/commission. The Sales application can query the ODS to get the list of personnel. This allows the Personnel app to change its data structure, and the ODS modifies the ETL process to adapt to that change. Thus all the other apps consuming that data will not be impacted by the change. The Sales app will need to save a PersonnelID to that sale/commission record in its own database. However, the next time the ODS is refreshed, if it is using a full load technique, the key will change. Since the PersonnelID stored in the Sales database is a separate database, there is no straight forward way to cascade that change. This creates a challenge where any changes made to the ODS have to be made very carefully, and may even limit certain designs because external applications are depending on those keys to never change. I would usually avoid exposing keys to users, but in this case it seems necessary to allow external apps to reference enterprise wide entities in their own applications. The same goes for lookup tables that are available in the ODS, where a lookup table has keys and text. After a full load of the ODS I can ensure the keys satisfy referential integrity within the database, but not with external databases utilizing those keys. Since there are some parts of the ODS currently coded as a full load, which would cause keys to be regenerated, I would need to recode that ETL to be incremental, so that external databases can reference those keys without fear of them changing. What techniques are used when you have an enterprise wide data source, and other applications consume that data and need to store foreign keys referencing entities in that data? How do you decouple the foreign key references as much as possible without complicating the access to that data? Currently I am using table valued functions to provide access to data. I chose this approach because it allows parameters, joins, and decouples access to underlying tables that may change later."}
{"_id": "224598", "title": "In Ruby, change global in thread safe block", "text": "In Ruby, I have a use case for a few common configuration options, e.g. NOOP, TRACE, SILENT. Right now I am using local vars instead of globals and passing them around all over the place and it's a pain. I be perfectly happy to use globals for these, if I could run a block where the globals can be temporarily changed and then reverted back. e.g.                global_configure(:TRACE=>true) do        ...      end      But how can I make that block of code thread safe, so that other threads can't change the globals on it?"}
{"_id": "224599", "title": "Extracting data from log files", "text": "I will be extracting certain bits from log files using regular expressions to filter out bit of data. Initially I was going to do this with Python. I later started to think about the fastest way I can perform this task. This lead me to parallel programming. I remember hearing somewhere that Python can't be truly parallel. I'm by far an expert programmer. I have been playing with Java for a bit and I was considering parallel programming in Java to perform this task. I was wondering what would be the fastest way to perform this task?"}
{"_id": "159401", "title": "What is a Spring AOP 'advice'?", "text": "As the question states. What is an 'advice'? More importantly, what does it even mean (semantics)? What's the etymology of 'advice' in the Spring context?"}
{"_id": "180499", "title": "Presentation VS Application layer in DDD", "text": "I have trouble drawing a clear line between Presentation and Application layer in Domain Driven Design. Where should Controllers, Views, Layouts, Javascript and CSS files go? Is it in the Application or the Presentation layer? And if they go all together in the same layer, what contains the other one? Is it empty?"}
{"_id": "137546", "title": "Best solution to run a Linux sandbox on my Windows machine?", "text": "I'd like to develop some node.js on my windows machine by using a virtual linux server that runs as a program and that I would access through ssh. I'd like this virtual linux instance to access the network as well. Is there any solution available? Preferably free ones."}
{"_id": "137545", "title": "Splitting 1 large object into 2 tightly-coupled ones - good, bad?", "text": "I have a complex object (call it BusinessLogic) which provides an RPC interface to semi-trusted users. The functions in the RPC interface have to decide which procedure to call, check authorisation for that function, perform some argument checking, and then call private functions to carry out the required functionality, and then return results to the caller. I decided to implement this by having the RPC functions in a separate stateless object (call it AppInterface), to separate out the concerns somewhat, so that BusinessLogic just moves its own data around and AppInterface decides which methods on BusinessLogic to call to implement the functionality it exposes. This works very well for the most part. However it feels a bit wrong to me. The BusinessLogic object has benefited from not having to worry about authorisation, argument checking, etc, which is good. But since the AppInterface implements all of its functionality in terms of BusinessLogic, it can just be a thin wrapper for some procedures (which makes me question its necessity) and is a complex wrapper in other procedures (which makes me wonder whether that complexity should be pushed back into the BusinessLogic, given that the BusinessLogic has all of the information needed to perform the task). It also means that AppInterface needs access to methods in BusinessLogic that would otherwise be private as nothing else uses them; think friend functions in C++. Finally, it means I can't effectively unit-test AppInterface without using a full BusinessLogic object as that is the only practical way to get valid output. I am happy to leave the system as it is, as it works, but I am curious as to whether there are obvious improvements I can make to such a system. (For what it's worth, I am using Python 2.7, in a primarily object-oriented style.)"}
{"_id": "136496", "title": "Is CSS resizing of images still a bad idea?", "text": "It's always been looked at that using width/height attributes on images which aren't what the original image actual is is a bad idea. It could mean pixalated images or download sizes bigger than nessary. But, is this still an issue? I wouldn't suggest up-sizing photos, but downsizing shouldn't be an issue provided that its not too much of a difference from the original and keeping to scale. For example, I have a photo that is 600x400 and I stick a width of 400px on it. Most modern browser scale the image down and it looks like rendering is still decent. So, what is everyones view on this?"}
{"_id": "136494", "title": "Better name for existsByUserNameAndPassword()", "text": "I wonder if there is a better name for a DB API function called `existsByUserNameAndPassword()` which returns boolean. There are more function called like this: `existsByOldId()`... It sounds a little bit unperfect... Is there a better concept for naming \"exists\" functions? I want to keep the \"exists\" somehow. To use this functions in a very speakable context like:               if ($DB->existsByUserNameAndPassword($name, $password)) {         // ...     }"}
{"_id": "136492", "title": "Unit testing invalid inputs; ArgumentException vs. Custom Exception", "text": "In unit tested code I often have multiple checks on the arguments on any method before the actual \"work\" of the method is begun:               public void DoSomething(string test)     {        if (string.IsNullEmptyOrWhiteSpace(test))        {            throw new ArgumentException(\"Test must not be empty\", \"test\");        }     }      In my corresponding test for this method I'll do the following:               [Test]     [ExpectedException(typeof(ArgumentException),         Message = \"Parameter name: test\",         MatchType = MatchType.Contains)]     public void TestNullInput()     {         var classToTest = new ClassToTest();         classToTest.DoSomething(null);     }      I'm thinking that this is quite a bad way to go about doing the test, however, as it relies on a specific named parameter (which does not necessarily hold true after any refactoring), as well as the format of the message of an ArgumentException. Another option might be to create a custom exception for this, some form of \"TestWasNullOrEmptyException\", but this also seems fairly awkward, as there will be many many different exceptions throughout the solution, each used to indicate only the absence/invalidity of a parameter. I am wondering if anyone else has dealt with this issue, and whether I'm simply going about my input validation tests the wrong way of it there's a more elegant solution. EDIT: This is C# code, and I'm using NUnit/Rhino Mocks."}
{"_id": "218386", "title": "Requirement gathering and use cases examples", "text": "I've heard a lot about requirement gathering and use cases in theory, but in practice often happens that we ask ourselves \"should we include this? should this be a use case? in which language should we write this particular requirement\" and so on. These questions are mainly because of lack of practice, and since we cannot go picking projects to \"learn in practice\" it's a little bit hard to get used to the kind of thinking we need in the process of gathering requirements for a new app. In that case, is there some place where can I find real life examples of requirements gathering and application of use cases? I've found some books, but they are mainly focused on teams and I work alone, so it becomes a little confusing."}
{"_id": "108271", "title": "what are your web application server side layering design rules and the best practices you like to apply?", "text": "A web application is often designed to be layered. Typically there would be a Repository (Dao) layer, a Service layer and a Control (web handling) layer. The Control layer uses the Service layer which in turn uses the Repository layer. Often you'll see the Control layer using the Repository layer directly. Also quite prevalent is Services using other Services. Quite often all Services inherit from a base service class which will contain all references to all Repository components. So my question is really how and why do you design your serverside application (in terms of layers) and what rules do you apply to them? What are the generally accepted justifications for these layers and these rules? What rules do you see that should be considered 'bad practice'? What rules do you considered essential? Have you tried anything new in this area that worked?"}
{"_id": "108274", "title": "Documentation often ommits to specify which flavour of regular expression to use, so is there a default flavour that we should all be familiar with?", "text": "Often I come across documentation that says \"use a regular expression here\" I have to spend quite some time digging around trying to work out _which regular expression_ format they are expecting. As far as I can tell, there are many types of regular expression. But, at my last place of work I was made to feel stupid when I suggested adding some text to our User Documentation to specify _the type_ of regular expression to be used. When someone says \"a regular expression\" what is _the_ regular expression syntax most people expect and where is it documented? Update: I was prompted to single-out some examples - but no disrespect to these great projects:   * eregi docs page is not particularly helpful in explaining expected syntax.   * Nor can I easily work out the syntax expected here if i just land on the page from a search.   * No explicit mention of the regular expression pattern expected by `PatternExpectation()` on the SimpleTest page.    * etc. etc.   * here is a highly voted SO answer that seems to assume there is only one flavour of regular expressions."}
{"_id": "136498", "title": "Object orientated data structures in database driven applications", "text": "I've started working for a company that maintains a small/medium sized commercial website. The website is written in c# asp.net, and uses SQL Server as a database. The structure of the code is very messy at the moment (for instance, ~5000 line `Utility.cs` file) so I want to move towards a better design on the asp.net side of the application. I'm trying to figure out the right way to do this. My basic plan is to create a class for every logically distinct item in the application (mostly mapping 1-1 to database tables, but sometimes N-1 or 1-N). Then, I plan to have some static factory methods to instantiate these classes by querying the database. The developer should be able to manipulate the resultant object, and then use a `UpdateDatabase()` method to save the changes to the database. For example, here is how an `Email` object would work:               public class Email {         Guid userId;         Guid emailId;         String emailValueInitial = null;         Sting emailValueNew = null;              private Email();              public static Email RetrieveEmail(Guid UserId, Guid EmailId) {             // .. query             return new Email(UserId,EmailId,emailValueInitial);                     }              public String EmailValue {              get {                 if (emailValueNew == null) return emailValueInitial;                 else return emailValueNew;                          }             set {                 emailValueNew = value;             }         }              public bool Update() {            // .. update database with value of emailValueNew or do nothing if it hasn't             // been changed         }          }      Notes:   * I could update the database whenever a field is changed, but this is obviously inefficient.   * I don't know what to do in the event that the developer wants to insert a `null` value into the database - I suppose I need different concepts for 'null as variable not yet used' vs 'null as database value null'. The above is a simple case. I'd also need some way of knowing about many-one relationships in tables. For instance, a User could work like this:               public class User {         Guid userId;              public Emails emails = new Emails(userId);              private User(); // etc..              public RetrieveUser();         public CreateUser();              public Update();     }          public class Emails {         List<Email> emails = new List<Email>();              Guid userId;              public Emails(Guid userId); // etc..              public bool CreateEmail(); // its convinient to create/delete from here         public bool DeleteEmail(); // as I can enforce, say, minimum 1 email per user     }      * * * These above are my first thoughts on how to solve this problem, but I've never done anything like this before, and I don't know what problems I might come across. I want to make a system that will be scaleable and easy to develop as we take on more programmers, so its really important to get the initial design correct. What kind of design should I use in an object-orientated language to best represent and link with a database? What are important things to consider? Is there existing literature on this subject, or important libraries/constructs I have neglected?"}
{"_id": "170069", "title": "What does well written, readable tests look like?", "text": "Doing unit testing for the first time at a large scale, I find myself writing a lot of repetitive unit tests for my business logic. Sure, to create complete test suites I need to test all possibilities but readability feels compromised doing what I do - as shown in the psuedocode below. **How would a well written, readable test suit look like?**               describe \"UserEntity\" ->       it \"valid name validates\"         ...       it \"invalid name doesnt validate\"         ...            it \"valid list of followers validate\"         .."}
{"_id": "199212", "title": "What's the difference between a stream and a queue?", "text": "What's the difference between a stream and a queue? They both have the concept of an ordered set of elements, but tend to have different implementations and a different vocabulary of 'insert'/'extract' (streams) vs. 'enqueue'/'dequeue' (queue). Are these interchangable? Do they suggest different concepts or patterns? If so, what are the differences?"}
{"_id": "234212", "title": "Looking for design pattern to represent shared state in music sequencer", "text": "I like to give lots of context, but also to state the basic question up top as concisely as possible. Feel free to read a little or a lot. I'm working on a music sequencer, and have been happy so far to be using a publish/subscribe approach to help decouple the major components of the application, which has helped testing and refactoring. However I'm wondering how components can share awareness of certain state without all adding a dependency on some new singleton OR abusing (published) events to each cache their own copies of this state. The specific example is the \"playhead\"; this and another example are explained below. Up until now, a playhead has been trivially represented as an instance of the immutable Timecode class, which has a measure, beat, and tick (essentially sub-beat unit). Components can subscribe to \"beat\" events and grab its timecode to update their internal \"playhead\" property. But as I get into other functionality like editing, I see components that track the playhead will also want to track the SequenceEvents active at the playhead time (e.g. notes). Also I need to add functionality for a \"step region\" which is a time segment (say, 1 measure), similar to the playhead but not a single moment in time, that components will similarly need to track. I've been stumped as to how to represent such objects in my application without introducing tighter coupling. The current approach where components listen for events does not seem a good fit. Right now, the Sequencer component emits a \"beat\" event which subscribers can use to update their playheads. Enhancing this event to include SequenceEvent data for notes, etc. smells bad as events typically are meant to be transient and consumed as they occur, not so that event consumers can update private state. Especially when that private state would be identical in each consumer. Also, other events than \"beat\" could signal a change of the playhead, e.g. the user clicks on another part of the score. If not events, any other approach seems to have multiple components dependent on some new \"playhead\" component, with bidirectional binding (that is, several components could both detect changes to the playhead and set its state). Even using dependency injection to reduce the dependencies for the sake of testing, this feels wrong to me. In case even more context helps illustrate the problem, read on... The app currently has several immutable data types that larger components may be dependent on (or may use without knowing their type): Timecode, SequenceEvent, Meter, Tempo, Stret (string/fret object), Pitch. Larger components which do NOT have construction-time dependencies include:   * Sequence: Represents a score, can be queried to iterate or random access sequence events.   * Sequencer: Handles playback and timing, currently emits the \"beat\" and \"note\" events.    * ScoreView: Renders a sequence as tablature (sheet music), and visually shows the playhead.    * NeckView: Shows a guitar neck with actively playing notes.    * GUI: This contains a number of simpler controls, including clock displays that update with the playhead. This component also instantiates ScoreView and NeckView components, but does not wire them to each other in any way.  All run-time \"wiring\" is internal to components, via PubSub.subscribe('eventName', handler). PubSub has pros and cons, but this has worked well to a point. However some cases where this approach breaks down are: 1) The guitar neck should show \"static\" markers for currently \"selected\" notes, in addition to playing active markers that animate when notes are played. This requires tracking state of which notes (strets) have start times at the current playhead. 2) Clicking on the guitar neck should toggle (add/remove) notes from the active sequence at the current playhead position. This would also be updated in the score view. 3) A new feature allows a \"step region\", which allows stepping through the score in increments like whole measures. So the current step could be larger than a single time point, and the neck and score views should be able to display static markers for all notes within the step region. This seems to be a duplicate of the same problem that applies to the playhead. Yet another approach that smells bad is to have these new entities all managed/owned by the Sequencer component, and have it publish events specifically like \"playheadUpdated\" and \"stepRegionUpdated\" that contain all the necessary data. This seems bad again because of the misuse of events to update redundant state in several components. This might be mitigated if the event referenced an immutable (or at least, not subject to change) object (e.g. for \"playhead state\"), maybe it would be less bad. But this approach still has the problem that other components cannot change the playhead or step region without publishing a request for the Sequencer to handle this change. Seems very wrong. Maybe others have solved this exact type of problem more elegantly than I'm thinking. Any pointers are appreciated."}
{"_id": "234210", "title": "Why do higher level languages have neither xor nor nand short-circuit operators?", "text": "While many higher level languages have bitwise (exclusive or) and bitwise (exclusive and), for instance C, C++, Java, etc. I'm curious why the ( _vastly more useful_ ) logical short-circuit operators don't have this functionality? Is it simply due to the capacity of being able to concatenate logic through use of \"not\"? This question is mainly to do with the language design considerations...."}
{"_id": "177599", "title": "Should I leave href empty when implementing click events via jQuery?", "text": "Is it preferable to have `#` in a link's `href` attribute when I am implementing the `click` event via jQuery, or is it ok to leave `href` empty? i.e.               <a id=\"myLink\" href=\"#\" />      vs               <a id=\"myLink\" href=\"\" />      When I'm doing               $(\"#myLink\").on('click', function() {        // do ajaxy stuff     });      Although I understand the click event could be on a span or other such element I'm interested in this case for particular best practices when using an `a` tag."}
{"_id": "77121", "title": "What is the name of book that offers guidance on when to use each verb for a method call?", "text": "What is the name of book that offers guidance on when to use each verb for a method call? For example, I might use GetApples() to return a list of Apple instances; or I might use BindApples(IControl control) if I want to bind these apples to a dropdown list. What book would suggest when you use Get or Bind as part of a method name?"}
{"_id": "77123", "title": "Data Persistency, patterns and approaches", "text": "Data persistency has recently become a really grip for me, especially how long to maintain database connectivity and how many connections are feasible for a given request. I've been using .NET; however, this is a generic question related to any lanaguage. From a .NET perspective, I'm connecting to database using EF4 and for a given website page I might create 6 connection per-request to render a page. The page might consist of news, stock prices, etc, and needs to be constantly updated. I've recently been looking at unit-of-work (i.e. per request) approach. So basically when a request starts, if required a database connection is opened and destroyed upon end of the request. I'm not convinced it's the best approach yet. I'm looking for opinions and experience on it."}
{"_id": "77125", "title": "How can a Mac or Unix owner fix/develop webpages for IE6/IE7?", "text": "I work on Debian and before Debian I was on Ubuntu. In my previous job, we simply ignored IE6, but at my present job a page must work flawlessly for IE6 onwards. The one wayout for me is to set up a Windows VM but that doesn't help every time. Consider this, if I was a freelance consultant and didn't want to or have enough money to buy licenses for every possible Windows version how could I deliver a web page that worked for IE6/IE7?"}
{"_id": "177595", "title": "Would you refactor this and if so, would you charge your client?", "text": "I am working on a freelance job at home. The client wants me to write some new functionality for his CMS, but it is taking me a lot of time to figure out what the code is doing, because it is written in a very unreadable style. Below is just an example of what I mean. The previous programmer made extensive use of anonymous functions, of eval(), he uses deeply nested ternary operators, he didn't indent code, didn't use comments, and he uses funny constructions like misusing the behaviour of logical operators || and && for creating if/else conditions (the second condition of && only gets tested if the first one is true, opening the possibility to use && as an if/else construction). All in all it's insane code and it's costing me a lot of time to find out how the current code works.               return ($this->main->context != \"ajax\" || in_array($this->type, $this->definition->ajax)) ? eval('return method_exists($this,\"Show'.ucfirst($this->type).'\") ? $this->Show'.ucfirst($this->type).'('.(count($args) ? join(\",\",array_map(create_function('$a','return (is_numeric($a) || preg_match(\"/^array/\",$a)) ? $a : \"\\\"\".$a.\"\\\"\";'),$args)) : \"\").') : null;') : '';      Would you refactor this code and how would you handle this sort of thing with your client, I mean financially?"}
{"_id": "177596", "title": "What build tools do not depend on java (or Ruby)?", "text": "I'm wondering what generic build tools out there include their binary run- times and do not depend on another environment not shipped with them. For example, ANT requires Java, Rake requires Ruby, etc.. would be great if talking about also target-platform-agnostic tools, where I'd just give whatever command for building, whatever command for testing, etc.. and can then define my artifacts in CI or so. Would see something like that useful for building .NET projects (say, on both Windows .NET and Mono), and Node JS projects especially. I do not want to install Java and / or Ruby if what I want is a .NET build or a Node JS build. This is a bit of general awareness question not an exact problem I'm facing, that's why it's here not on StackOverflow. **Update:** To explain a bit more, what I'm after is the build script that would run MSBuild for compiling for example ( in .NET, and then maybe several Node/NPM commands in Node, etc..), and then have the rest build/test steps, instead of setting these all in MSBuild (again, in .NET case, also, wondering if there is equivalent story in Node). **Update2:** My target is being able to have a developer on a vanilla machine to just clone the code without installing any dependencies except the platform the code targets be it .NET/Mono or Node (not even Java, Ruby, or Python) and still be able to build and run tests."}
{"_id": "232903", "title": "Print bottom view of a binary tree", "text": "For a binary tree we define horizontal distance as follows:                   Horizontal distance(hd) of root = 0         If you go left then hd = hd(of its parent)-1, and          if you go right then hd = hd(of its parent)+1.      The bottom view of a tree then consists of all the nodes of the tree, where there is no node with the same `hd` and a greater level. (There may be multiple such nodes for a given value of `hd`. In this case all of them belong to the bottom view.) I'm looking for an algorithm that outputs the bottom view of a tree. * * * Examples: Suppose the binary tree is:                        1             /  \\            2    3           / \\  / \\          4   5 6  7                 \\                  8      Bottom view of the tree is: 4 2 5 6 8 7                   Ok so for the first example,         Horizontal distance of node with value 1: 0, level = 1         Horizontal distance of node with value 2: 0 - 1 = -1, level = 2         Horizontal distance of node with value 3: 0 + 1 = 1, level = 2         Horizontal distance of node with value 4: -1 - 1 = -2, level = 3         Horizontal distance of node with value 5: -1 + 1 = 0, level = 3         Horizontal distance of node with value 6: 1 - 1 = 0, level = 3         Horizontal distance of node with value 7: 1 + 1 = 2, level = 3         Horizontal distance of node with value 8: 0 + 1 = 1, level = 4              So for each vertical line that is for hd=0, print those nodes which appear in the last level of that line.         So for hd = -2, print 4         for hd = -1, print 2         for hd = 0, print 5 and 6 because they both appear in the last level of that vertical line         for hd = 1, print 8         for hd = 2, print 7      One more example for reference :                        1           /     \\         2         3        / \\       / \\       4   5     6     7       / \\ / \\   / \\    / \\     8  9 10 11 12 13 14 15           So the output for this will be : 8 4 9 10 12 5 6 11 13 14 7 15               Similarly for this example     hd of node with value 1: 0, , level = 1     hd of node with value 2: -1, level = 2     hd of node with value 3: 1, level = 2     hd of node with value 4: -2, level = 3     hd of node with value 5: 0, , level = 3     hd of node with value 6: 0, level = 3     hd of node with value 7: 2, level = 3     hd of node with value 8: -3, level = 4     hd of node with value 9: -1, level = 4     hd of node with value 10: -1, level = 4     hd of node with value 11: 1, level = 4     hd of node with value 12: -1, level = 4     hd of node with value 13: 1, level = 4     hd of node with value 14: 1, level = 4     hd of node with value 15: 3, level = 4          So, the output will be:     hd = -3, print 8     hd = -2, print 4     hd = -1, print 9 10 12     hd = 0, print 5 6     hd = 1, print 11 13 14     hd = 2, print 7     hd = 3, print 15           So the ouput will be:     8 4 9 10 12 5 6 11 13 14 7 15      * * * I already know a method in which I can do it using a lot of extra space (a map, and a 1-D array for storing the level of the last element in that vertical line) and with time complexity of $O(N \\log N)$. And this is the implementation of this method:               #include <iostream>     #include <cstdio>     #include <map>     #include <vector>          using namespace std;          struct Node{            int data;            struct Node *left, *right;     };          Node* newNode(int data)     {         Node *temp = new Node;         temp->data = data;         temp->left = temp->right = NULL;         return temp;     }          int height(Node *node)     {         if(node == NULL)                 return 0;         else{              int lh = height(node->left);              int rh = height(node->right);                   if(lh > rh)                    return (lh+1);              else                    return (rh+1);         }     }          void printBottom(Node *node, int level, int hd, int min, map< int, vector<int> >& visited, int lev[], int l)     {          if(node == NULL)                  return;          if(level == 1){                   if(lev[hd-min] == 0 || lev[hd-min] == l){                           lev[hd-min] = l;                           visited[hd-min].push_back(node->data);                   }          }          else if(level > 1)          {               printBottom(node->left, level-1, hd-1, min, visited, lev, l);               printBottom(node->right, level-1, hd+1, min, visited, lev, l);          }     }          void findMinMax(Node *node, int *min, int *max, int hd)     {          if(node == NULL)                  return;               if(hd < *min)               *min = hd;          else if(hd > *max)               *max = hd;               findMinMax(node->left, min, max, hd-1);          findMinMax(node->right, min, max, hd+1);     }          int main()     {         Node *root = newNode(1);         root->left = newNode(2);         root->right = newNode(3);         root->left->left = newNode(4);         root->left->right = newNode(5);         root->right->left = newNode(6);         root->right->right = newNode(7);         root->left->left->left = newNode(8);         root->left->left->right = newNode(9);         root->left->right->left = newNode(10);         root->left->right->right = newNode(11);         root->right->left->left = newNode(12);         root->right->left->right = newNode(13);         root->right->right->left = newNode(14);         root->right->right->right = newNode(15);              int min = 0, max = 0;              findMinMax(root, &min, &max, 0);              int lev[max-min+1];         map < int, vector<int> > visited;         map< int,vector<int> > :: iterator it;              for(int i = 0; i < max-min+1; i++)                 lev[i] = 0;              int h = height(root);              for (int i=h; i>0; i--){             printBottom(root, i, 0, min, visited, lev, i);         }              for(it = visited.begin() ; it != visited.end() ; it++) {             for(int i=0 ; i < it->second.size() ; i++) {                 cout << it->second[i] << \" \";             }         }              return 0;     }      I am seeking help to do this in more optimized way, which used less space or time. Is there any other efficient method for this problem?"}
{"_id": "232904", "title": "Invalid data returned, which HttpCode to return?", "text": "My web application calls a third party API. If I successfully call the API but invalid data is returned which cannot be processed by my system what is the most appropriate HttpCode to return to the user calling me?   * 500, I'm not convinced. Although it was an internal error it's due to external factors   * 503, Perhaps, although very vague   * 400, 4XX errors are usually related to the client contacting our server and so could be misleading. Which is the most appropriate response to return to my client?"}
{"_id": "132441", "title": "Is it considered \"conveying\" if I share modified LGPL v3 code on GitHub?", "text": "It is critical to know what constitutes \"conveying\" under LGPL v3. I am considering creating some software based on LGPL v3. The software will be used to run a web application. Now I wonder whether the \"conveying\" clauses would get activated if I published the modified code on GitHub to the public. I understand that none of you are lawyers so IANAL is implied. I also understand that I could contact the developers of the LGPL software and ask for a different license."}
{"_id": "132443", "title": "How do I determine how many numbers are in a floating point number system?", "text": "I'm trying to make floating point number systems a bit more intuitive for myself. There are a few things I am confused about, and I think the best way to clear up my confusions would be for someone could guide me through one question: How many numbers are there in a floating point number system (Given the base, precision, max exponent, and min exponent)? This is what I am thinking: I figure that the maximum possible number (realmax) divided by the smallest possible number (realmin) would give all of the possible positive numbers. Part of me also believes I could divide realmax by the smallest increment, machine epsilon (eps), to figure out how many numbers there are. Just looking at the differences in magnitude between eps (10^-16 for IEEE double precision) and realmin (10^-308), however, tells me this isn't true at all. I can't think of an intuition for why! So the problem I am facing is determining the correct formula for realmax and realmin. The answer I get using my textbook's formulas differ radically from the one I got with wikipedia's formula. Help!"}
{"_id": "185380", "title": "IPv4 to IPv6. where is IPv5?", "text": "As all of us know that after IPv4 it came IPv6. How this transition happened? I just want to know was there any IPv5 also? or there is any other logic in naming this version of IP as IPv6?"}
{"_id": "185385", "title": "Should I use simple socket programming to communicate between 2 threads?", "text": "Is it a good idea to communicate between 2 threads using sockets in Java? What I am trying to achieve is Inter-process communication using socket programming/RPC mechanism."}
{"_id": "185386", "title": "How to manage a virtual group in a company?", "text": "I have worked as a software engineer for more than 6 years. Recently, my boss has asked me to build and manage a virtual team. While I'm glad I can do some management work, I don't think it will be easy to do the management. My team members are only part-time on this project, they come from several teams, and their direct manager is not me. They want to be given technical work but my boss wants us to organize some activities. I'm trying to work out how to balance these two conflicting requirements. Overall, my team manages several parts of an internal BBS which features topics about innovation. Unfortunately, the BBS is not very popular and few colleagues want to spend more than a second on it. They say that they are too busy, but more likely it is an excuse, probably because the BBS is not user- friendly. I don't know why BBS is so important. However, my boss likes the BBS and want my team to make it better. Personally, I don't know why this BBS is so important. Overall, I need some guidance about how to approach this."}
{"_id": "241033", "title": "How to avoid overhead while still implementing null object pattern?", "text": "I am implementing a binary search tree in java. Inside the BST class I have a protected class Node (in case I want to extend to an AVL tree). The code is below. I had a problem, both conceptually and aesthetically, implementing empty nodes as null pointers. So instead I opted for the null object pattern and created an EmptyNode object, the code for which is also below. However, even though this gives me prettier code and something more conceptually pleasing (to me), I now have the problem that when I'm working with a tree of height n, I can have as many as 2^{n+1} - 2^{n} instances of this EmptyNode class floating around, which takes up space for no good reason. How should I fix this code to avoid this overhead while still implementing the null object pattern? I feel like the EmptyNode should be something conceptually similar to a constant field of Node, but I can't implement that. I also feel like there should be only one copy of EmptyNode being referenced anywhere, but I can't figure out how to implement that either. Any help or recommendations are appreciated.               protected class Node<Key,E>{         protected Key key;         protected E value;         protected Node<Key,E> left;         protected Node<Key,E> right;         protected int height;         protected int balanceFactor;         public Node(){}         public Node(Key k, E v){             key = k;             value = v;             left = new EmptyNode<Key,E>();             right = new EmptyNode<Key,E>();             height = 0;             balanceFactor = 0;         }         public Node(Key k, E v, Node<Key,E> l, Node<Key,E> r){             key = k;             value = v;             left = l;             right = r;             height = Math.max(l.height(), r.height())+1;             balanceFactor = l.height() - r.height();         }         public Key getKey(){return key;}         public E getValue(){return value;}         public Node<Key,E> getLeft(){return left;}         public Node<Key,E> getRight(){return right;}         public int height(){return height;}         public int balanceFactor(){return balanceFactor;}         public void setKey(Key k){key = k;}         public void setValue(E v){value = v;}         public void setLeft(Node<Key,E> l){             left = l;             height = Math.max(l.height(), this.right.height())+1;             balanceFactor = left.height() - this.right.height();         }         public void setRight(Node<Key,E> r){             right = r;             height = Math.max(this.left.height(), r.height())+1;             balanceFactor = this.left.height() - right.height();         }         public boolean isEmpty(){return false;}         public boolean isLeaf(){             return (left.isEmpty()) && (right.isEmpty());         }         public boolean hasLeft(){             return !left.isEmpty();         }         public boolean hasRight(){             return !right.isEmpty();         }     }     protected final class EmptyNode<Key,E> extends Node<Key,E>{         public EmptyNode(){             key = null;             value = null;             left = right = null;             height = -1;             balanceFactor = 0;         }         @Override         public void setKey(Key k){}         @Override         public void setValue(E v){}         @Override         public void setLeft(Node<Key,E> l){}         @Override         public void setRight(Node<Key,E> r){}         @Override         public boolean isEmpty(){return true;}         @Override         public boolean isLeaf(){return false;}         @Override         public boolean hasLeft(){return false;}         @Override         public boolean hasRight(){return false;}     }"}
{"_id": "241034", "title": "Why HTML select is not searchable by default?", "text": "I was wondering why the default select tag of HTML, for example:               <select name=\"company_name\">         <option value=\"\"></option>         <option value=\"1\">Company 1</option>         <option value=\"2\">Company 2</option>         <option value=\"3\">Company 3</option>         <option value=\"4\">Company 4</option>         <option value=\"5\">Company 5</option>         <option value=\"6\">Company 6</option>     </select>      is not searchable by default. Of course this is a browser feature, but it is just really weird that none browser (as far as I know) doesn't have it. Am I missing something here? Is there any browser that actually have as default a searchable select tag? Is it so complicated to achieve it, or is it just that people doesn't want it? Is this a problem with OS? I know that I can achieve that easily with JavaScript (e.g. Jquery Chosen plugin... e.t.c.) but I was wondering if there is any plan for popular browsers like firefox and chrome to have it as default. The result that I am expecting is like the below image on Windows: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wyzpv.png)"}
{"_id": "91527", "title": "What do you consider the 1st principle(s) of programming?", "text": "I always liked to ask myself \"what's the first principle(s) of this?\" after I learned the basic stuff of something (e.g. programming). It's an inspiring question, IMO, that can force you to think about the most important principle(s) behind something, especially a skill such as programming. So, what do you think is the first principle(s) of programming? I'll give my answer below a little later."}
{"_id": "142470", "title": "Frustrated where I am, but not sure where to go with my career", "text": "I work (3 years now) as a lead developer for a team developing internal tools and websites for a customer account within large outsourcing company. I'm a self taught programmer and my previous incarnation was a 3rd line support guy, so I have a solid infrastructure knowledge. We use VB.Net/MSSQL/SSIS/SSRS ASP.NET (nTier) in house and I have about 8 years coding experience. Without going into too much detail, my boss is very ambitious and uses our team as his footing to get up the ladder. I've been in the team from the start and the only new dev's we have brought in have been people with a bit of VBA/VBScript experience, much to my chagrin, to bolster his empire. It's been a lot of hard work to bring them up to a standard, but there's still a lot for them to learn. This makes my life stressful as I always get the high profile/complex project work to do as other's simply cannot do it, or it'd take them twice/three times longer to do it. My boss is always seeking stuff for us to build for people who haven't asked for it, which usually get's thrown to me as I have the most experience and can pick new API's (etc) up quicker. He doesn't give us proper requirements, we don't get time to design properly before we code, he wants us to throw something (quick and dirty as he calls it) together so we can get it out ASAP. I take pride in my work so I like to do it properly, make my code clean, maintainable etc, and I train the other guys in the team to do the same. But, we always fall on our faces. The customer we drop the apps on say it doesn't do what they need (due to few requirements), or my boss doesn't like it/changes the spec, so we have to rework it, it get's drawn out, and it makes us and me look and feel like fools. We then get accused by boss of not being reactive enough to change. I've had enough. In order to get my skills and knowledge gap's filled, I've been reading Code Complete 2nd Ed (McConnell) and the Head First Design Patterns books. I'm forcing myself to move into C# from VB at home to broaden my horizons. I'm not sure where to go from here. I don't want to code all my life as I'd like to move into a higher level design/architects role at some point in time (I'm 35). Where do I/can I go from here?"}
{"_id": "240783", "title": "How to construct a cubie representation of a rubik's cube, given an array", "text": "Just to get this out of the way, I have seen this, and it is not what I'm looking for. So, let's say you are programming a Rubik's Cube. (I know, very unoriginal, but bored programmers have to do something..) This Rubik's Cube is defined by an array of six 2-D arrays (one for each face,) and these 2-D arrays' sizes vary, based on the size of the cube. For instance, if I had a 3x3x3 cube, the array would be 6x3x3. That is, it would have 6 3x3 arrays. Now, let's say I wanted to get an array of the cubies which make up this cube. Each cubie is defined by two things (I think..): the colors of it and its location on the cube. For example, if you had a solved cube, one of the cubies would be the red, green, and yellow cubie, and, assuming yours is sitting in the same orientation as mine, that cubie would be the front, right, up cubie. However, none of this answers my question: how do I go about defining a set of these cubies, given an array of variable sizes. I know, for instance, that the cubie previously mentioned could be defined as cube[0][0][dimension-1], cube[2][0][0], cube[4][dimension-1][dimension-1]. (For a bit of reference, the order in which I define my faces is front, back, right, left, up, down. Hence the 0, 2, and 4, making front, right, and up.) Anyway, with that said, I'd rather not hard-code all of this and was wondering if there was a simpler way. So, what's the best way to do something like what I was just describing? **Edit:** For clarification, I am trying to get the separate, individual, smaller cubes which make up the Rubik's Cube as a whole. For instance, the piece with the red, green, and white stickers on it."}
{"_id": "180237", "title": "Java style classes in c++", "text": "I came across this article proposing a style of coding in c++ that looks a bit weird at first. But after reading it over and pondering for a bit I'm really considering giving it a try. The most appealing benefit is the ease of refactoring methods. I find myself constantly changing method names, parameters and so on while writing a new class and in c++ it's quite annoying having to change a method name in two files (.h, .cpp). I tried to find something wrong with this style but apart from the fact that the code will look and feel **really** strange to seasoned c++ programmers I can't spot any major flaw. But since I am quite a inexperienced c++ programmer I hope that someone here might alert me to any potential dangers. So my question is: **Are there any serious drawbacks of using this style of coding?**"}
{"_id": "180234", "title": "Encapsulate bitmap (*.bmp) as C++ class", "text": "How would you implement / design a class which has to represent a bitmap? I'm stuck at handling the different possible color modes and I keep thinking that this should be somehow implementable using templates / design patterns in an elegant AND efficient way: Suppose you have a file.bmp. You then want to open that file to use it in your application:               Bitmap myBitmap();     myBitmap.open(\"file.bmp\");      The bitmap you just opened could have RGB colors, or it could be a grayscale image, or even a 1 bit per pixel image (i.e. black and white). In my application, I want to operate on the image (pixel) data. For example, I need some sort of brightness filter where I black out pixels whose (Red + Blue + Green) / 3 is below some filter value (i.e. 100). So I need access to the pixels:               Pixel somePixel = myBitmap.pixelAt(10,30);      But now I face the problem of NOT knowing what type of pixel this is. Of course, I could provide subclasses of `Pixel` (which then is an abstract base class) which ALL implement methods like `getRGB()`, `getGrayScale()`, ... where each subclass gives a way of converting between those colormodes (i.e. RGB to grayscale) But this feels ... hm, \"wrong\". Do you know some good way to implement this? A nice feature I was thinking about is something like:               myBitmap.getMode(); // A RGBMode object, RGBMode being a subclass of Mode     myBitmap.setMode(new BlackWhiteMode()); // Converts the bitmap to a 1bpp image      Any ideas, recommendations, improvements? * * * So the really hard part is to represent the different color modes, like RGB (8bit and 4bit), HSV, Grayscale, BlackWhite, ... without messing the applications code."}
{"_id": "180235", "title": "Emacs vs. vim -- what is the difference?", "text": "I've been programming for years now, mainly in VBA (the _horror_ ), Python, Javascript (Node.js mainly), HTML, and SQL. Most of these languages came with environments that made sense: for VBA I used the built-in editor for Microsoft Office, HTML I could use whatever and debugged with Chrome Dev Tools, and SQL doesn't really require anything fancy. However, for Python and Javascript, I switched around a bunch between editors. History of my usage: Python - IDLE, nano, Notepad++, Sublime Text 2, JetBrains PyCharm   Javascript - Notepad++, Sublime Text 2, Node interpreter, JetBrains WebStorm Languages I plan to learn (eventually): [Clojure | Common Lisp | Scheme], [C | C++ | Objective C], Ruby, Haskell, Assembly As I'm getting more serious into programming, I'm starting to look into the most famous editors--emacs and vim. I have some idea of what they do and don't have over IDEs. I'm a really quick typer so I like the idea of not having to use the mouse. I also love the functions that Sublime Text 2 has for quick switching for funcitons and across open files, and also the multiline select. However, despite lots of research, I'm having trouble figuring out the difference between emacs and vim, and I'd like to have a good understanding of them before deciding which one to commit lots of time to. ## TL;DR **Question:** What are the key differences between emacs and vim? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each for a developer? **Please note: I am _not_ asking which is better, which is higher quality, which is more useful--I'm not trying to restart a famous debate. I just want to know what is distinct about each in terms of functionality and user interface, so I can decide based on my own needs.**"}
{"_id": "180232", "title": "What factors should I consider when logging a (JSF) web-app?", "text": "I've recently read the article The Problem with logging and was wondering about my current logging strategy.   Usualy I use Log4J in my projects and just have to decide _which line/attributes_ I would like to log.   This strategy worked well for me in the past for all my projects without user- interaction. Now I want to set up logging for a WebApp with user-interaction like login, session-management, personalized user pages, etc. and was wondering what would be best practice. To clarify:   I don't ask you to help me decide **what** informations I have to log because that I know for myself (or find information in articles on this site or google).   I'm asking about the things connected with this topic:   * should I bind every log message to the corresponding user for traceability   * should I open up a new log file for every session   * are there other good libraries especially for logging webapps   * should I only log fatal errors in file and handle minor errors inside the view (e.g. show user)      * and how chatty should I be in those messages shown to the user I also know that this is a broad topic and that this question can easily be answered by \"it's personal flavor\" or \"it depends\" but I would highly appreciate anyone who's willing to give me some useful hints. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "180233", "title": "Can I license a program under Apache License 2.0, if it is using/including Eclipse Link (EPL or EDL)?", "text": "Can I license a program under Apache License 2.0, if it is using/including EclipseLink? (EclipseLink under Eclipse Public License or Eclipse Distribution License) I did not change anything in EclipseLink. I would realy like to distribute a Version that includes the needed EclipseLink jars, so that it is working \"out of the box\"."}
{"_id": "145621", "title": "Magic square check for N\u00d7N matrix with minimum complexity", "text": "Is there any algorithm that works better than `O(n\u00b2)` to verify whether a square matrix is a magic one (e.g. such as sum of all the rows, cols and diagonally are equal to each other)? I did see someone mention a `O(n)` time on a website a few days ago but could not figure out how."}
{"_id": "135129", "title": "Selective mutual exclusion in Dining Philosophers and Readers and Writers problem", "text": "I've been reading about selective mutual exclusion (SME). The idea I got is that if a process competes for its resources against a subset of all the other process instead of competing with all the other processes then I'm facing a SME problem. 1) Can you confirm my definition is right? Now, the dining philosophers problem is a classic example of this (SME by proximity) 2) In the distributed solution (in which each philosopher competes for both forks against two other philosophers), if instead of 5 philosophers, there were 3 of them, would it still be a SME problem? (I think not, because each philosopher will be competing with all of the others) 3) And in the centralized \"conductor\" solution, having 5 philosophers, would it still be a SME problem? (I think it would, because although all processes are competing to get to the waiter, each philosopher is only competing with two of the other to get both specified forks) Finally, in the readers and writers problem (SME by process type) 4) If only 1 reader and 1 writer were allowed, would it still be a SME problem? (I think not, because actually every process will be competing with all the others)"}
{"_id": "145628", "title": "How to model two similar tasks with the Use-case diagram", "text": "I am trying to draw a use-case diagram for a software project. Two requirements for the software I am trying to model in use-case diagram are:   1. A customer (i.e. `Client`) should be able to cancel its previous request. In this case, the client must select the relevant request from their list of request.   2. A `travel agent` should be able to cancel a request. in this case, the agent must the client from the list of clients and the request from the list of request issued by that client. How should I model this two requirements in a UML user-case diagram? I've ended up to something like this: ![My use-case diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VjW4B.png)"}
{"_id": "230463", "title": "Branch twice for unique condition", "text": "Consider an application that displays only Foobars belonging to themselves to normal users, and all Foobars to admins:               -- Normal users:     SELECT * FROM Foobar WHERE user_id=:user_id;          -- Admins:     SELECT * FROM Foobar;      Currently, this how the queries are represented in the codebase:               $sql = \"SELECT * FROM Foobar\";          if ( $user['type']!='admin' ) {         $sql.= ' WHERE user_id=:user_id';     }          $stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);          if ( $user['type']!='admin' ) {         $stmt->bindValue(':user_id', $user['id']);     }      I do not like this dual-branching approach from a maintainability standpoint. For instance, a bug like typing `$user['type']=='admin'` instead of `$user['type']!='admin'` would have to be found and fixed in two places instead of one. However, I also don't like the idea of separate functions for each case: admins and regular users. A third approach would be to branch once and there create the SQL to add and the values to bind:               $sql_to_add = '';     $array_to_bind = array();          if ( $user['type']!='admin' ) {         $sql_to_add = ' WHERE user_id=:user_id';         $array_to_bind = array( ':user_id'=>$user['id'] );     }          $sql = \"SELECT * FROM Foobar {$sql_to_add}\";     $stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);          foreach ( $array_to_bind as $k=>$v ) {         $stmt->bindValue($k, $v);     }      However I find this approach cumbersome. **Is there a design pattern for this situation?** What is the canonical way to handle situations where the code must branch in two separate locations on the same `if` condition?"}
{"_id": "101614", "title": "Further writings by Rob Pike on software complexity and design", "text": "in \"Notes on Programming in C\", in section \"Complexity\", Rob Pike writes: > Most programs are too complicated - that is, more complex than they need to > be to solve their problems efficiently. Why? Mostly it's because of bad > design, but I will skip that issue here because it's a big one. .../... Does anyone know whether Rob Pike has written more about software design and how to avoid complexity, and where this might be found?"}
{"_id": "230465", "title": "Chained ruleset parsing and evaluation code: recommendations?", "text": "So I have to write a filtering system, which may apply preprocessed ruleset to data - and trigger some actions defined in the ruleset while continuing its evaluation.               <ruleset name=\"1\">      <rule>       <conditions>        <and>         <or>          <match image=\"aceofspades\" level=\"70\" />          <match image=\"aceofdiamonds\" level=\"66\" />         </or>         <not>          <match image=\"aceofclubs\" level=\"60\" />         </not>        </and>       <action name=\"apply_ruleset\" ruleset=\"2\">      </rule>      <rule>       ...      </rule>     </ruleset>     <ruleset name=\"2\">     </ruleset>      (Good example of what it feels to be alike: sendmail configs; some Apache configs; IPTables ruleset, with multiple tables, JOIN/ACCEPT/DROP, etc). What bothers me with every current design I can think of:   * keeping state of and-or nodes   * being able to jump between main and sub- rulesets easily   * tracking circular references   * keeping a vast set of possible conditions   * runtime speed: parsing/hashing may take time, but each data packet must be passed through dataset as fast as possible. What should I read/think of to be sure that my parser will be nice enough to work with large sets and don't mess the speed/flexibility too much? _(Not to mention iptables code)_. * * * Target language is C++ (however would like to implement a similar system in Perl later..), was reading through this \\- but still not see a good solution for switching rulesets / keeping with boolean logics within rules."}
{"_id": "185039", "title": "Why doesn't CSS natively support variables and hierarchy?", "text": "I am new to UI development, but I feel very uncomfortable with how CSS works. My use case is that I wanted to apply some specific styles inside a particular `div` on a page. **CSS attempt:**               div.class1 {         font: normal 12px arial, helvetica, sans-serif;         font-color: #f30;     }     div.class1 div.class2 {         border: 1px solid #f30;     }      **LESS attempt:**               @red: #f30;     @font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;     div.class1 {         font: normal 12px @font-family;         font-color: @red;         div.class2 {             border: 1px solid @red;         }      The CSS version can induce bugs, since it forces you to repeat `#f30` & `div.class2` every time you try to achieve hierarchy and variable re-use. **My questions:**   * Why is that CSS makes things difficult?   * LESS does nothing special - just makes obvious improvements and translates to CSS?   * What is that CSS wants to motivate in users because of which it promotes such a redundant coding style? I strongly believe CSS should be what LESS is. Definitely I am overlooking some obvious advantage of why things are done that way in CSS. I thought it was a legacy problem, but I was surprised when I saw no attempts to solve this with CSS3. Please help me understand how should I approach CSS?"}
{"_id": "142475", "title": "How does const storage work? (Item 2, Scott Myers Effective C++)", "text": "In Item2 on page 16, (Prefer consts, enums, and inlines to #defines), Scott says: > Also, though good compilers won't set aside storage for const objects of > integer types... I don't understand this. If I define a const object, eg               const int myval = 5;      then surely the compiler must set aside some memory (of int size) to store the value 5? Or is const data stored in some special way? This is more a question of computer storage I suppose. Basically, how does the computer store const objects so that no storage is set aside?"}
{"_id": "181725", "title": "What makes a successful architecture team?", "text": "I was recently appointed as the leader of a newly formed architecture team (most similar to systems or enterprise architecture, not explicitly software architecture). My company is medium sized, and there are ~8 different engineering groups each with their own stacks, and their own culture. As part of this re-org, many of those groups are going to be consolidated and part of my team's job is to figure out how to bring their stacks into alignment. In thinking about the new team's charter, we've struggled with:   1. How should the architecture team engage and interact with the engineering teams without stepping on toes, while remaining effective? When should architecture stand back and let engineering do its thing?   2. (related to the above) When is it appropriate for the architecture team to build something versus when should the architecture team provide guidance, and allow the engineering team to build it themselves?    3. How can an organization measure the success of an architecture group? None of the goals of architecture seem easily quantifiable. **As an example:** Should the architecture team be involved with setting coding standards? Theoretically, this is something that the engineers use day to day, and could be set by engineering leadership, but it could also be tied to architectural needs. For example, if architecture defines the directory structure of a standard project, and how the build should be set up to fit within the CI that they've mandated, shouldn't they also have a say in the documentation and coding standards in order to be consistent with their directory structure. Maybe this is an inelegant example, but I think it illustrates our line of thinking. **Another example:** It is determined that we need a new key/value store to support the needs of a particular project, but it is not clear that the requirements of that project will ever be felt in future projects -- everyone else has a k/v store that works just fine. Clearly architecture will be involved in the decision of which technology to use (and vet whether a new technology is, in fact, _really_ needed), but should the architecture team be charged with building the infrastructure for the new tech? If it is not likely (we all know that means VERY LIKELY) that it will be re-used in different projects, it seems like the answer should be \"no\", but given the parenthetical above, I'm inclined towards \"yes\". Should architecture be involved in project- level tech decisions, and to what level should they be involved? **My initial thoughts:**   * The architecture team prototypes the new technologies/systems that it espouses and then transitions to relevant teams.    * By and large, architecture tries to avoid getting involved with project-level problems (it isn't \"you should use this new charting package that we think is cool\", it is \"we are trying to get everyone onto this uniform front-end framework, you need to use it\").   * Form an architecture committee that includes engineers and business leaders to make sure engineers are part of the decision making process.    * Architecture must stay tightly linked to business needs and goals without stepping on Product's toes. A core responsibility of architecture is to inform the business of un(der)utilized tech that offers potential upside.   * Architecture should ultimately make the lives of engineers better. Our main goal should be to solve problems once, so that they don't get solved many times, which means that engineers will have more time to work on 'the fun stuff'. Sorry to be so long winded. I'd love any feedback, especially from those who have worked at organizations with impactful and effective architecture teams."}
{"_id": "181724", "title": "Tasks incorrectly categorized with online text classifiers", "text": "**Context: Finding company to do the job** The use case of an application I want to write is that a user will describe a task to be performed by some company, e.g., > I want to move 10 boxes (30x40x50cm) of books and clothes from London to > Bristol next week. How much would that cost? and the application will find candidate companies that could do the task. In this case it would need to categorize the task as for _removal/transportation_ companies. **Problem: incorrect categorization** I tried a number of online services for text categorization but results are discouraging. uClassify classified my text as \"Home\", \"Games\", and \"Arts\"; Textimate.me \\--- as \"Science & Environment\"; Textwise returned \"Business/Consumer_Goods\", \"Services/Clothing\", and \"Arts/Design/Fashion\". The possible reasons for incorrect categorization:   * task description is very short and there is no evident characteristics in the text to differentiate what is more important for the user: boxes, clothes or maybe moving them,   * classifiers trained on other types of texts,   * classifiers trained with respect to a different taxonomy. How would you tackle such a problem? **Potential solution: harvest domain-specific corpus** Since the problem is quite specific to my domain I think about using supervised machine learning algorithm, that would learn with respect to already categorized corpus of such tasks. The corpus can be harvested from sites with tasks already categorized by customers (variation of e-bay). I could also pre-process text before machine learning: extract only verbs (\"move\") and nouns originating from verbs (\"translation\"), as they denote what has to be done. This requires quite a lof of work, so I'm curious whether this is the right direction."}
{"_id": "140054", "title": "Algorithm for perfect non-binary graph layout", "text": "I have a complex non-binary graph model.   Each tree node can have multiple children&parents (a node can also have a connection to it's \"brother\"). A node is represented as square on screen with lines to the connected nodes.   For that I want to use Draw2D and GEF libraries. The problem I am facing is the graph layout. I need a nice algorithm that can reposition the square nodes and the connections with minimum intersections and also make it symmetric as possible."}
{"_id": "140051", "title": "PHP and performance", "text": "I always hear that PHP is for medium and small websites whereas .NET and Java for enterprise applications. My question is about PHP. Why is PHP not a good option for enterprise web applications? Is it because if the web application becomes bigger then PHP will be slower as it is an interpreted language? I know that corporate world will choose .NET or J2EE because of the integration with their products and because of back end services, etc. However, if we just have PHP for building sites and web applications then how can we use it to perform well with big sites? In short, Is there a relationship between the performance of PHP and the size of the website? What are the factors that make PHP not appropriate option for big sites?"}
{"_id": "74473", "title": "Shouldn't the lazy evaluation/execution be syntactically differentiated from eager evaluation/execution in C#?", "text": "We know about the deferred execution or lazy evaluation features introduced in C#. But at times, people become confused with them. Because there is no significant difference. You can only know if you know the internals. Shouldn't there be a syntactical difference between them to remove confusion? I think the keyword `let` of F# can be imported to C# to specify the lazy evaluations. Like-               let selectedItems = Items.Where(i => i.Count < 5);      What do you guys think? Update:   In reply to the first answer, I am not proposing that the `let` keyword is to be used in the places where the lazy evaluation is already happening according to the present compiling model. Then it will be of no use actually. I am proposing that the `let` keyword should define the type of execution. To be clear-               var selectedItems = Items.Where(i => i.Count < 5).ToList();      will be executed eagerly by present model. But my proposal is, if we use               let selectedItems = Items.Where(i => i.Count < 5).ToList();      it will be executed later, just when required. Though this is not desirable as it will return different lists of same items each time. The 'thing' defined with `let` keyword can be thought of a constant 'expression' like F#. Update 2:   Linking this SO answer as a proof of people's annoyance with deferred execution- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/215548/whats-the-hardest-or-most- misunderstood-aspect-of-linq/215562#215562"}
{"_id": "128940", "title": "How to do lazy loading in a SOA fashion?", "text": "For example, I've got a root object exposed in a SOA service, say `Invoice` (`Invoice` has line items as children). Sometimes, I need to retrieve its detail line items. I'm thinking to make it lazy loading, because it's a traffic overhead to transfer line items every time `Invoice` is required. But in SOA fashion, it seems unlikely. Because all it can expose are `Invoice` POCOs, with contain no logic. Thus I cannot attach my lazy loading logic to `Invoice` to instruct it to load lines items when needed."}
{"_id": "74474", "title": "Am I competing with a client? is it fair?", "text": "I've been working as part of my service company for a client (ClientA) for a year now on building a platform. A few weeks ago another client (clientB) asked me for a quote for building a similar product. I said to clientB that we have been working on a similar product for a client and that we have a mature platform that they may use without all the hassles of doing it from scratch. So I sugested that they partner with my other client to use his platform instead. Unfortunately, the negotiation didn't went well because of many factors:   1. ClientA don't want to have a partnership with ClientB but instead want to keep owing the platform and provide it to clientB as a SAAS service: which I can understand because of the investment already made.   2. The platform doesn't have all the features that ClientB wants, so they need to invest money in developing those. However they are reluctant to invest such money in a platform they don't own. They are planning to sell it to thousands of their own clients, so basing their whole business on a product they don't have control over is not a good move for them. I've done my best to make them agree, but seems like they can't because of each one wanting to have control on the platform. Now clientB wants, as he already wanted at first, my company to build a similar platform and wants my company to partner in this. We'll share any ROI with them. It is a tough decision for me to take because I understand that we can't as a company keep working on those two platforms at the same time. The first version of the platform was obtained from a freelance website under the \"work for hire\" clause, so the code belongs to clientA. So we cannot reuse any part of that work. As a company manager, I'm in a dilemma because I suspect that clientA will take that move as an unfair one. What are your thoughts on that matter? Edit: There is no signed NDA and anyway would not have signed an NDA with a non competing clause."}
{"_id": "218182", "title": "Which is the most practical way to add functionality to this piece of code?", "text": "I'm writing an open source library which handles hexagonal grids. It mainly revolves around the `HexagonalGrid` and the `Hexagon` class. There is a `HexagonalGridBuilder` class which builds the grid which contains `Hexagon` objects. What I'm trying to achieve is to enable the user to add arbitrary data to each `Hexagon`. The interface looks like this:               public interface Hexagon extends Serializable {              // ... other methods not important in this context              <T> void setSatelliteData(T data);              <T> T getSatelliteData();     }       So far so good. I'm writing another class however named `HexagonalGridCalculator` which adds some fancy pieces of computation to the library like calculating the shortest path between two `Hexagon`s or calculating the line of sight around a `Hexagon`. My problem is that for those I need the user to supply some data for the `Hexagon` objects like the **cost** of passing through a `Hexagon`, or a `boolean` flag indicating whether the object is **transparent/passable** or not. My question is how should I implement this? My first idea was to write an interface like this:               public interface HexagonData {              void setTransparent(boolean isTransparent);              void setPassable(boolean isPassable);              void setPassageCost(int cost);     }      and make the user implement it but then it came to my mind that if I add any other functionality later all code will break for those who are using the old interface. So my next idea is to add annotations like `@PassageCost`, `@IsTransparent` and `@IsPassable` which can be added to fields and when I'm doing the computation I can look for the annotations in the `satelliteData` supplied by the user. This looks flexible enough if I take into account the possibility of later changes but it uses reflection. I have no benchmark of the costs of using annotations so I'm a bit in the dark here. I think that in 90-95% of the cases the efficiency is not important since most users wont't use a grid where this is significant but I can imagine someone trying to create a grid with a size of `5.000.000.000 X 5.000.000.000`. So which path should I start walking on? Or are there some better alternatives? _Note: These ideas are not implemented yet so I did not pay too much attention to good names._"}
{"_id": "99306", "title": "How to design a website with search capabilities?", "text": "Suppose you want to create a web page with some search capabilities over a database. Search has to be restricted both on some categorization of data and open text given by the users. Functional and non-functional requirements pose this constraints:   * Search has to be fast   * Data representation paradigm (i.e. Relational, Object-Relational, Semistructured...) should support big modifications on every stage of software lifetime.   * Database's paradigm should permit easy refactoring for existing client code Having this into account   1. Would you recommend a relational database? How would you tackle the constraints in this scenario?   2. Would you recommend a XML database? How would you tackle the constraints in this scenario?   3. If you think above solutions to be not useful in the light of this problem... what could be a useful approach? Please give some bibliography (or some websites) supporting your answers. thanks!"}
{"_id": "139447", "title": "Is PhoneGap scalable?", "text": "I'm a front-end developer that is looking into mobile apps development. When I'm searching for ways getting into app development PhoneGap comes as first and most familiar language stack development method. It's really sweet that I can develop an app with HTML/CSS/JavaScript using PhoneGap APIs. But is PhoneGap scalable enough? How far I can go with it in making complex apps and large scale apps? Why and why not I should start learning Objective-C to get into app development?"}
{"_id": "6790", "title": "How can I let prospective employers know I'm a great developer?", "text": "I've recently read through Joel's guide to finding great developers, and I feel really strongly that I am _smart_ and _get things done_. The problem is, I didn't learn how to _get things done_ until about halfway through college, so my GPA is less than stellar. Additionally, I've got a few other things going against me: late into the job market (~30), no internship, state college instead of university, and when I graduated, I pretty much had to take the first job that offered. With all of these things piled together, my resume (the first step to getting a job), is not terribly impressive. What can I do to let people know that I'm a great developer and would complement the best companies in the world?"}
{"_id": "177043", "title": "The idea of functionN in Scala / Functionaljava", "text": "From brain driven development > It turns out, that every Function you\u2019ll ever define in Scala, will become > an instance of an Implementation which will feature a certain Function > Trait. > > There is a whole bunch of that Function Traits, ranging from Function1 up to > Function22. > > **Since Functions are Objects in Scala and Scala is a statically typed > language, it has to provide an appropriate type for every Function which > comes with a different number of arguments.** If you define a Function with > two arguments, the compiler picks Function2 as the underlying type. Also, from Michael Froh's blog > **You need to make FunctionN classes for each number of parameters that you > want?** Yes, but you define the classes once and then you use them forever, > or ideally they're already defined in a library (e.g. Functional Java > defines classes F, F2, ..., F8, and the Scala standard library defines > classes Function1, ..., Function22) So we have a list of function traits (Scala), and a list of interfaces (Functional-java) to enable us to have first class funtions. I am trying to understand exactly why this is the case. I know, in Java for example, when I write a method say,               public int add(int a, int b){         return a + b;     }      That I cannot go ahead and write               add(3,4,5);      ( error would be something like : method add cannot be applied to give types ) We simply have to define an interface/trait for functions with different parameters, because of static typing?"}
{"_id": "177046", "title": "Container types in Golang", "text": "For a non-OOP language like google Go, is it idiomatic to go about implementing new container types using datatypes like arrays or lists so as to implement convenient functionality like `contains` method which is absent from all in built container types?"}
{"_id": "177045", "title": "java framework for a web wizard", "text": "I'd like to create a web wizard or a wizard on/within a website. I know there are several java frameworks for wizards but there is none for the web in particular. If I search for a framework, I always get wizards to create a website, applet, servlet and what not. But never how to create such a wizard itself. So the question(s) is: What framework should I use to create a web wizard? And what frameworks are there? The wizard will be the visualisation for a BPEL Process deployment on a apache ode. I thought a webapp would be an easy way because the apache is running anyway. I'm not bound to that, perhaps someone has a better idea."}
{"_id": "177049", "title": "Is there a formal definiton of software quality", "text": "I am looking for a formal definition of software quality. It is my understanding that ISO 25000 is intended to provide or measure the quality of a piece of software, but it doesn't appear ready yet and I can't tell if it specifically contains such a definiton. Currently ISO 9126 did contain one such definition, but my understanding is that it is being replaced with ISO 25000. So I ask, is there are formal definition of software quality?"}
{"_id": "254911", "title": "\"Used with permission\" reusable in a GPLv2 derivative work?", "text": "The LICENSE file of a GPLv2 application I am modifying contains a statement saying that certain resources used in the application were \"used with permission\" from 3rd parties - such as textual material from a published book and certain graphics. Question: in my derivative work based off of this application, am I required to seek permission from those 3rd parties to use those same resources? Or does the GPLv2 encompass the fact that the use of these resources was already permitted in the original work, and thus the 3rd-party permission \"flows through\" to my derivative work?"}
{"_id": "201985", "title": "Namespaces, why are they necessary for prefixes?", "text": "So I've been reading about namespace on w3schools and I understand they are to uniquely identify an element. But what is the point of having namespaces if you have to have prefixes along side them. Are you always required to have prefixes with namespaces? If not are you always required to have namespaces with prefixes? If so why? For example:               <root xmlns:h=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/\" xmlns:f=\"http://www.w3schools.com/furniture\">           <h:table>        <h:tr>        <h:td>Apples</h:td>        <h:td>Bananas</h:td>      </h:tr>                    <f:name>African Coffee Table</f:name>         <f:width>80</f:width>         <f:length>120</f:length>       </f:table>     </root>      Doesn't f and h uniquely identify the different element types? Thanks for your help. I'm really at a loss at understanding why namespaces exists."}
{"_id": "201981", "title": "State Pattern - should a state know about its context?", "text": "I am referring to the state pattern as described in this link. In the example class diagram, a context has numerous states. However, it does not show how does a state communicates with a context (perhaps an input in a state has impact on a setting in the context). The two examples on the page shows either passing the context to the state via a function, or storing a reference to the context. Are those advisable? Are there other ways for a state to communicate with a context? * * * Update to an edit: For instance, I am doing a remote control which can have several states. Say, the context has a setting for Volume, and I am in one of the states which allow me to tweak the volume. How should the state communicates with the context that the volume is being changed?"}
{"_id": "121369", "title": "Getting from a user-story to code while using TDD (scrum)", "text": "I'm getting into scrum and TDD and I think I have some confusion which I'd like to get your feedback about. Let's assume I have a user-story in my backlog, in order for me to start developing it as part of TDD I need to have requirements, right so far? Is it true to say that the product manager and the QA should be responsible for taking the user-story and breaking it down to acceptance tests? I think the above is true since the acceptance tests need to be formal, so they can be used as tests, but also human readable so that the product can approve they are the requirements, right? Is it also true that I later take these acceptance tests and use them as my requirements, i.e. they are a set of use-cases which I implement (through TDD)? I hope I'm not making too much of a mess but that's the current flow I have in mind right now. **Update**   I think my initial intentions were unclear so I'll try to rephrase. I want to know more details about the scrum flow of turning a user-story into code while using TDD.   The starting point is obvious, a user surfaces a need (or the user's representative as the product) which is a short 1-2 lines description in the known format and that is added to the product backlog.   When there is a spring planning meeting user-stories are taken from the backlog and assigned to developers.   In order for a developer to write code they need requirements (especially in TDD since the requirements are what the tests are derived from).   When, by whom and to which format are the requirements compiled?   What I had in mind was that the product and QA define the requirements via acceptance tests (I'm thinking of automatic using FitNesse or the sort but that's not the core I think) which help to serve 2 purposes at the same time:   1. They define \"Done\" properly.   2. They give a developer something to derive tests from. I wasn't sure when these were written (before the sprint they're picked then that might be a waste since additional information will arrive or the story won't be picked, during the iteration then the developer might get stuck waiting for them...)"}
{"_id": "121365", "title": "What naming convention for C# file that contains multiple classes?", "text": "In C# projects, we frequently group small and tightly related classes into the same `.cs` file. This practice reduces the friction of dealing with a myriad of files containing close to no actual code. Yet, is there an established practice to name the _file_ that contains multiple classes?"}
{"_id": "220311", "title": "Authoritative sources for exception handling best practices", "text": "My work place suffers from a bad case of the Pokemon Exception Handling anti- pattern with constructs like the following splattered across the code base:               try {         ...     } catch (Exception ex) {         // Log and pretend nothing happened.         Log.LogException(ex);             }      I've found lots of answers on Stack Exchange sites that explains why the above is bad. But I haven't found any _authoritative_ sources, like books, developer journal articles or msdn pages explaining why you shouldn't write code like the above. Are there any sources like that, if so, where? **Edit** : I'd say that \"famous\" bloggers also count as authoritative sources. My rule for what counts as authoritative or not is not exactly set in stone."}
{"_id": "231336", "title": "Why do all <algorithm> functions take only ranges, not containers?", "text": "There are many useful functions in `<algorithm>`, but all of them operate on \"sequences\" - pairs of iterators. E.g., if I have a container and like to run `std::accumulate` on it, I need to write:               std::vector<int> myContainer = ...;     int sum = std::accumulate(myContainer.begin(), myContainer.end(), 0);      When all I intend to do is:               int sum = std::accumulate(myContainer, 0);      Which is a bit more readable and clearer, in my eyes. Now I can see that there might be cases where you'd only want to operate on parts of a container, so it's definitely useful to have the _option_ of passing ranges. But at least in my experience, that's a rare special case. I'll usually want to operate on whole containers. It's easy to write a wrapper function which takes a container and calls `begin()` and `end()` on it, but such convenience functions are not included in the standard library. I'd like to know the reasoning behind this STL design choice."}
{"_id": "236105", "title": "How would another popular language avoid having to use the factory pattern while managing similar complexity as in Java/Java EE?", "text": "Factory pattern (or at least the use of `FactoryFactory..`) is the butt of many jokes, like here. Apart from having verbose and \"creative\" names like RequestProcessorFactoryFactory.RequestProcessorFactory, is there anything fundamentally wrong with the factory pattern if you have to program in Java/C++ and there is a usecase for Abstract_factory_pattern? How would another popular language (for example, Ruby or Scala) avoid having to use it while managing similar complexity? The reason I am asking is I see mostly the criticism of factories mentioned in the context of the Java/Java EE ecosystem, but they never explain how other languages/frameworks solve them."}
{"_id": "231334", "title": "Spreading incoming batched data into a real-time stream", "text": "I would like to display some events in 'real-time'. However, I must fetch the data from another source. I can request the last X minutes, though the source is updated approximately every 5 minutes. This means that there will be a delay between the most recent data retrieved and the point in time that I make the request. Second, because I will be receiving a batch of data, I don't want to just fire out all the events down a socket once my fetcher has retrieved it: I would like to spread out the events so that they are both accurately spaced amongst each other and in sync with their original occurrences (e.g. an event is always displayed 6 minutes after it actually happened). My thought is to fetch the data every 5 minutes from the source, knowing that I won't get the very latest data. The original data would be then queued to be sent down the socket 7.5 minutes from its original timestamp \u2013 that is, at least ~2.5 minutes from when its batch was fetched and at most 7.5 minutes since then. My question is this: is this the best way to approach the problem? Does this problem have any standard approaches or associated literature related to implementation best-practices and edge cases? I am a bit worried that the frequency of my fetches and the frequency in which the source is updated will get out of sync, leading to points where no data will be retrieved from the source. However, since my socket delay is greater than my fetch frequency, the subsequent fetch should retrieve newer data before the socket queue is empty. Is that correct? Am I missing something? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "231335", "title": "SQL string field lengths in a db having about 6 different types of addresses, with about 20 markets and environments", "text": "I have been advocating lately that all string fields should be ntext / nvarchar(max) - we're using MS SQL Server. The objections seem to be either \"it's not a good idea\" (without any reason) or \"that would allow the customer to send a lot of crap\". Since I believe in filtering out the crap before it hits the database, is there a _good_ reason why my idea is bad? My main argument for not limiting the string fields is that I have discovered that we have about six different types of addresses (customer, reseller and so on), with about 20 markets (each having its own database) and environments. I have spotted at least ten different lengths for say Address1 and the same thing happens for other fields. Instead of \"standardizing\" them and then discovering that we missed something, I suggested that we go ahead and limit the inputs and let the database handle anything. Does anyone have a pro/con I don't see? (I have seen Rule of thumb for field sizes but my focus is \"is making everything max sized wrong?\")"}
{"_id": "236100", "title": "Word recognition in a string without spaces or punctuation marks", "text": "I have a small C# project that reads a file and gives me an output: a string that does not contain spaces nor any types of punctuation marks. It may also contain a few misspellings. Ex. Output:   THEQUICKBROWNFOXJUMPSOVERTHELAZYDOG **I wonder if there is a way to analyze this string by using text mining/data mining and/or regular expressions to indentify the words (preferably nounds, verbs and so forth.) in the string?** I want to read a bunch of files giving me different outputs and put them in statistical order from the one with the most found words to the one which only contain a string of mumbo jumbo. Also, if the string contain misspellings like:   THEQUICGBROWNFOSJUMPSOVERTHHLAZYDOG   I know that regular expression can calculate the \"distans\" from a misspelled word and find the most matching one (using a corpus and probability) but this might prove more of a challenge as the string does not have any spaces or punctuation marks. Any ideas how I can solve this?"}
{"_id": "231330", "title": "How can I explain the A a = new B();?", "text": "Let's say we have some class structure:                    public interface IA { public void doA(); }          public class A implements IA { public void doA(){ System.out.println(\"A class doA\");}          public class B extends A { public void doA(){ System.out.println(\"B class doA\"); }      And now in a main I state this:                    //in a main          IA ia = new B();          ia.doA();      Am I correct in stating that the the runtime object of `ia` is a B class and it has inherited all the super classes methods and attributes? The printout from within the imaginary main is `B class doA` as the method `doA` in B will hide the same methods in its super classes?"}
{"_id": "231331", "title": "What is the difference between Enumeration and Iterator?", "text": "What are differences between Enumeration and Iterator This question is from early ages of interview , I have not seen this question on recent interviews but it was in 2012, now days questions like implementation of HashMap, ConcurrentHashMap etc has take its place, nonetheless its very useful to know fundamental difference between Iterator and Enumeration. Some time its also asked as Iterator vs Enumeration or Enumeration vs Iterator which is same. important point to note is that both Iterator and Enumeration provides way to traverse or navigate through entire collection in java"}
{"_id": "124627", "title": "Should I provide synonyms in an API?", "text": "I'm designing a small library and there is a strong temptation to provide synonyms to some of the exported functions.               var foldl = function(){ ... };     var reduce = foldl; //reduce is a synonym for foldl      I imagine that the multiple names might help the initial learnability of the API (since the user is more likely to stumble on the function he wants) but at the same time I worry the duplication will bring needless complexity. **What rules should I keep in mind when thinking about adding a synonym to a function in my API?** When whould I choose a \"there is more then one way to do it\" api and when should I incentivize there is one way to do it\" instead?"}
{"_id": "124629", "title": "How to measure time lost due to environment problems?", "text": "I'm trying to determine how we can measure how much time the developers are loosing to poorly managed environment and inefficient ways-of-working. **The goals are:**   1. Show managment how big the problem really is, in terms they can relate to. I.e $$$   2. Get a good baseline so that we can measure the progress.  **Short background:** We manage the programming environment for 500 developers. This includes IDE (mainly Eclipse and Visual Studio), version control systems (ClearCase), what programs they have available. Basically, everything related to the computer that involves programming. Examples: Not being able to work with tools they are used to due to strict security requirements. Using version control system in a bad way causing problems when working in parallell. Setting up project environment is done manually and different each time. Using homecooked frameworks, rather than what are industry standard. Building takes longer than needed due to homemade practices. Deploying takes longer than needed due to homemade practices. This does **not** include the actual coding pratices, project management or meetings. Sure, we can influence those things too, but for this questions those things are out of scope. **The question:** So, how can we determine how much time are lost due to the project environment? The only thing I can think of to get some good data are polls and questionnaires. Have anyone done something like this? What were the experiences and results? Are there other literature or reasearch where I can get ideas from or compare results with? _Other questions exists regarding programmers inefficiency (likethis), but those relate to coding practices and bugs._"}
{"_id": "128364", "title": "Where should I store my Image files for an app", "text": "So In my app, I have a bunch of images. And in order to keep the app size down, I could store those images on my serve, and just download and cache them as needed. But my question is, will that hurt user experience? Is it likely an iOS user won't have internet access while using my app?"}
{"_id": "128361", "title": "Mercurial Repository structure with heavyweight corporate comms, configuration management & test requirements", "text": "I am yet another Subversion user struggling to re-educate myself in the Tao of distributed version control. When using Subversion, I was a big fan of the project-minor approach, and, with most of my former employers, we would structure our repository branches; tags & trunk as follows:               branches-+              +-personal-+              |          +-alice-+              |          |       +-shinyNewFeature              |          |       +-AUTOMATED-+              |          |                   +-shinyNewFeature              |          +-bob-+              |                +-AUTOMATED-+              |                            +-bespokeCustomerProject              +-project-+                        +-shinyNewFeature                        +-fixStinkyBug     tags-+          +-m20110401_releaseCandidate_0_1          +-m20110505_release_0_1          +-m20110602_milestone     trunk      Within the actual source tree itself, we would use (something like) the following structure:                 (src)-+             +-developmentAutomation-+             |                       +-testAutomation             |                       +-deploymentAutomation             |                       +-docGeneration             |                       +-staticAnalysis             |                       +-systemTest             |                       +-performanceMeasurement             |                       +-configurationManagement             |                       +-utilities             +-libraries-+             |           +-log-+             |           |     +-build             |           |     +-doc             |           |     +-test             |           +-statistics-+             |           |            +-build             |           |            +-doc             |           |            +-test             |           +-charting-+             |           |          +-build             |           |          +-doc             |           |          +-test             |           +-distributedComputing-+             |           |                      +-build             |           |                      +-doc             |           |                      +-test             |           +-widgets-+             |                     +-build             |                     +-doc             |                     +-test             +-productLines-+             |              +-flagshipProduct-+             |              |                 +-coolFeature             |              |                 +-anotherCoolFeature             |              |                 +-build             |              |                 +-doc             |              |                 +-test             |              +-coolNewProduct             +-project-+                       +-bigImportantCustomer-+                       |                      +-bespokeProjectOne                       |                      +-bespokeProjectTwo                       +-anotherImportantCustomer-+                                                  +-anotherBespokeProject      The idea was (and still is) to use the structure of the repository to help structure communication between the engineering team; the customer-facing part of the business and various other stakeholders & domain experts. To wit: Source documents that sit in one of the \"project\" directories get used (and earn money) only once. Documents that sit in one of the \"productLines\" directories earn money as many times as a product from that particular line gets sold. Documents that sit in one of the \"libraries\" directories earn money as many times as any of the products that use them get sold. It makes the notion of amortization of costs explicit, and helps build support for source document reuse across the business. It also means that there is a common structure over which our build automation tools can operate. (Our build scripts walk the source tree looking for \"build\" folders within which they find configuration files specifying how each component is to be built; a similar process happens for documentation generation and testing). Significantly, the products on which I work typically take a LONG time to run performance measurement & characterization tests; from 20 to 200 hours; generating somewhere between several GB to several TB of processed test results/intermediate data (that must be stored and tied to a particular system configuration so performance improvement over time can be measured). This issue makes configuration management an important consideration, and also imposes some requirement for centralisation, as typically the computational resources needed to run the performance measurement and characterization tests are limited; (a small cluster of 64-128 cores). As one final note; the continuous integration system knows that it needs to trigger a build; static analysis; smoke test & unit test run each time trunk is modified, each time any \"tag\" branch is modified, and each time any \"AUTOMATED\" branch branch is modified. This way, individual developers can use the CI system with their personal branches, an important capability, IMHO. Now, here is my question: How can I replicate all of the above (and improve upon it, if possible), with Mercurial. \\--edit: My current line of thinking is to use a central Subversion Repository, to define the overall structure, but to allow the use of hg as a client so developers can have repos available locally."}
{"_id": "216418", "title": "Tell a user whether they have already viewed an item in a list. How?", "text": "It is pretty common for a web application to display a list of items and for each item in the list to indicate to the current user whether they have already viewed the associated item. An approach that I have taken in the past is to store HasViewed objects that contain the Id of a viewed item/object and the Id of the User who has viewed that item/object. When it comes time to display a list of items this requires querying the database for the items, and separately querying the database for the HasViewed objects, and then combining the results of these queries into a set of objects constructed solely for the purpose of displaying them in the view. Each e.g li then uses the e.g. has_viewed property of the objects constructed above. I think it is time to find a better approach and would like to know what approaches you would recommend."}
{"_id": "252714", "title": "Coping with build order requirements in automated builds", "text": "I have three Scala packages being built as separate sbt projects in separate repos with a dependency graph like this:                 M---->D       ^     ^       |     |       +--+--+          ^          |          S      S is a service. M is a set of message classes shared between S and another service. D is a DAL used by S and the other service, and some of its model appears in the shared messages. If I make a breaking change to all three, and push them up to my Git repo, a build of S will be kicked off in Jenkins. The build will only be successful if, when S is pushed, M and D have already been pushed. Otherwise, Jenkins will find it doesn't have the right dependent package versions available. Even pushing them simultaneously wouldn't be enough -- the dependencies would have to be built and published before the dependent job was even started. Making the jobs dependent in Jenkins isn't enough, because that would just cause the previous version to be built, resulting in an artifact that doesn't have the needed version. Is there a way to set things up so that I don't have to remember to push things in the right order? The only way I can see it working is if there was a way that a build could go into a pending state if its dependencies weren't available yet. I feel like there's a simple solution I'm missing. Surely people deal with this a lot?"}
{"_id": "200583", "title": "Benefits to using fragments in Android projects", "text": "I am learning Android programming and right now and i'm reading about fragments. I understand what fragments are, but either the tutorial is missing some steps or i'm missing something. So my question is when developing an Android UI, what are the benefits, if any, to using fragments as apposed to single page layouts? Are fragments more common than single page layouts or is it more based on the situation. Also, if fragments are more common, do you try to structure most situations so that fragments work?"}
{"_id": "208350", "title": "What do you call parentheses operators?", "text": "In most programming languages documentation where they talk about operators `+-*/=<>` they also include `()[]` as operators. There are _unary_ operators, _multiplicative_ operators, _additive_ operators, _bit shifting_ operators, etc. etc. I can find no terminology that separates _parentheses_ operators from the rest of them. Calling them just _parentheses_ operators doesn't seem right, because they can be used in very different contexts. Specify casts, or type conversions.                a = (int)x;      Invoke methods.                fooMethod();      Define order or operations.                x = (2+4)*8;      In the above examples. What is the correct terminology for each type of parentheses. I require this for documentation purposes."}
{"_id": "197883", "title": "How to document a project which is already developed?", "text": "I would like to know what options are available for documenting a project which has already been developed, as the developers who worked on didn't write even a single page of documentation. The project has no other details other than many pages of scripts with functions written and modified by developers who worked on this project from the past 2 years. All I have is the database schema and project files. I would like to know if there is any way to organize this project and document it so that it could be helpful for the developers who will be working on this project in the future. The project was developed with PHP and MySQL. The functions are poorly commented so I can't get good results when I run it with doxygen."}
{"_id": "219270", "title": "is there an order for resource bundle loading / searching sequence in java", "text": "just for a trial, I generate two ResourceBundle, one is a property file MyResourceBundle.properties and the other one is MyResourceBundle.java in the same directory.When I tried to get a key with this code,                   ResourceBundle bundle = ResourceBundle.getBundle(\"ResourceBundle\",currLocale);         System.out.println(bundle.getObject(\"name\"));      The value is brought from the MyResourceBundle.java file. How java decides to get values from in such a situation where all conditions are same ?"}
{"_id": "220296", "title": "How necessary is it to follow defensive programming practices for code that will never be made publicly available?", "text": "I'm writing a Java implementation of a card game, so I created a special type of Collection I'm calling a Zone. All modification methods of Java's Collection are unsupported, but there's a method in the Zone API, `move(Zone, Card)`, which moves a Card from the given Zone to itself (accomplished by package-private techniques). This way, I can ensure that no cards are taken out of a zone and simply vanish; they can only be moved to another zone. My question is, how necessary is this kind of defensive coding? It's \"correct,\" and it feels like the right practice, but it's not like the Zone API is ever going to be part of some public library. It's just for me, so it's kind of like I'm protecting my code from myself when I could probably be more efficient by just using standard Collections. How far should I take this Zone idea? Can anyone give me some advice on how much I should think about preserving the contracts in classes I write, especially for ones that aren't really going to be publicly available?"}
{"_id": "219275", "title": "Programming languages and variety", "text": "So the issue I have as an undergraduate Software Engineering student, is the topic on which languages must one carry under their belt for future markets. I've been having this debate with teachers and students alike on which language takes the stand. The other debate I've been having is: what does it mean to be \"knowledgeable\" or \"proficient\" when it comes to a specific language? More specific:   1. Is it how well you can organize and structure and construct your code, based on the language's syntax, structure etc, but little knowledge about what's under the hood, e.g libraries ?   2. Is it how much experience you've had working with language: graphics, animation, complex projects, vast knowledge of libraries etc. Although this may seem trivial, if a person has never coded in a specific field, such as graphics, does that make him less worthy of a candidate for a job? Does it make the person less \"knowledgeable\", if you will, in that language? In other words, if you've been working with C# for most of your career, and suddenly are faced with a Java-based project, given that you fall under category 1 (above), would you be worthy to be part of this project? The reason I'm asking this, is because I'm trying to figure what to learn and to what extent. Learning to do animations won't do you any good if you're future career is going to be doing everything BUT that. Or are things in the real world not measured in that way? If I don't make sense, I do apologize as I'm trying to make sense of it myself!"}
{"_id": "219274", "title": "What is the difference between method header and method signature?", "text": "I want to know what is exactly a method header and what is a method signature and is this the same among programming languages or just in C#? So, is it correct to say the following is a method header:               public void SumNumbers(int firstNumber, int secondNumber)      and the following is the method signature:               public void SumNumbers(int, int)      ?"}
{"_id": "141019", "title": "Should cookies be used in a RESTful API?", "text": "I'm specifically interested in how users perform authorized / authenticated operations on a web API. **Are authentication cookies compatible with the REST philosophy, and why?**"}
{"_id": "240726", "title": "How faster could a dedicated chip do sequential squaring modulo operations to break a time crypto capsule?", "text": "I'm facing a very real problem and, sadly, I cannot find the answer on my own: I'm hitting my limit as a programmer because my hardware knowledge is not sufficiently advanced at all. It's an issue I'm encountering during the development of the system (I need to find safe parameters value which depends on the answer to the question I'm asking here) (maybe _crypto.SE_ would be better but _crypto.SE_ seems more about theoretical questions about math/cryptography). For a project I'm working on I need to use a \"time capsule cryptosystem\". More specifically the following one, invented by Rivest (the 'R' in 'RSA'): Rivest's time capsule crypto puzzle It is an inherently sequential operation: parallelization here is of no use. An attacker could use a botnet of million computers: it wouldn't help. One million ASIC chips wouldn't help either. The solution can only be found sequentially, _by design_. Now I need to approximate (one or two orders of magnitude off is ok: an approximation 10x faster/slower or even 100x faster/slower ain't really an issue) how much faster could a dedicated chip solve that puzzle compared to a fast CPU (a fast _core_ , really). Basically solving that puzzle consists in doing a _lot_ of squarings modulo _n_. Let's consider there's no \"attack\" on that puzzle: I've chosen bit enough RSA integers etc. Would a GPU help compared to a CPU here? A FPGA? Would a dedicated chip like some ASIC chip help? If any of these would help, how can I determine how much faster it could be than a fast CPU? I'd need some back-of-the-envelope calculation and, as I stated previously, an approximation about 10x or 100x the actual answer ain't that a big problem. I guess my question boils down to something like (but feel free to rewrite if I'm mistaken): knowing that the problem is inherently sequential and consists in repeated squaring modulo `n` operation, can you build/program some hardware to only do sequential squaring modulo operations and how much faster would it be than an actual CPU?"}
{"_id": "45240", "title": "Best practices for coding date sensitive websites", "text": "I'm creating a website for an event that is coming up. It has some functionality related to the event (such as \"send me a reminder\"), other stuff that takes place during the event, and finally some stuff that comes after the event. I need to start working on code that takes place during the event and after the event, plus some fixes for the current site (which is already live). What is the best way to approach this problem? Some solutions that occur to me are creating branches for each state and merging stuff as needed. Other one is hiding and showing functionality based on the date, i.e               if (currentDate < eventDay) { reminder.show(); }      Ideas?"}
{"_id": "134230", "title": "Retexturing a model via API on the web", "text": "I'm looking at creating a site where a user could see our product and configure the options or look of it and see an image that represents that. The way I'm doing it now is if you have Piece A selected and then you choose Texture X, I have an image on the filesystem that is A with X applied to it. I just swap out my default image with that specific one. One product has 8 areas, with 10-70 pieces per area, and about 200 textures for each piece. Programming the site was pretty simple but we are getting bogged down in rendering all these pieces/textures and entering them into the system. What I would love to do is build a model and have some way to apply the textures via API and render it to the browser. I would even settle for exporting a flat image and pulling that into the browser. Is that possible with something like SolidWorks, 3DSMax, or something else? If the rendering is too time intensive it would still help to batch create all my images and use them the way I am currently."}
{"_id": "45246", "title": "Do you use to third party companies to review your company's code?", "text": "I am looking to get the following - Basic code review to make sure they follow the guidelines imposed. Security code analysis to make sure there are no loopholes. No performance bottlenecks by doing a load test etc. We have lot of code coming in from third parties and is becoming laborious to manage code reviews and hence looking to see if others employ such practices. I understand that it may be a concern for some and would raise the question \"Well, who is going to make sure the agency is doing their job right?\" But basically I am just looking for a third party who can hold all vendor code to the same standards."}
{"_id": "85721", "title": "Is JQuery or Javascript capable for image processing?", "text": "My plan is to develop a web based application in the future. I think I can name it \"Booth Reservation System\" for the Events companies here in our country. One of the main functionality of the system and the most tricky part/difficult part is that the user can upload a \"floor plan\" (the design of the area were the booth is located in any image format) and then select the specific location on the floor plan to reserve to the booth. Also, the user can create a floor plan on the system. What do you think? What programming language can I use?"}
{"_id": "202989", "title": "What can I do with Ruby beside RoR?", "text": "Beside RoR, what do people use Ruby for? Is there any use for Ruby on Windows platform? If you use ruby for scripting why not use Bash or Powershell?"}
{"_id": "85724", "title": "Asp.net certification", "text": "I want to get my certification in .NET, which certification is the best for me? For the past 8 months I have been working in the .NET 3.5 and 4.0 frameworks. How can I grow myself by appearing this exams? I know that \"certs != experience\", but I still want to get certified. Right now I am working in PHP 5.3 and PostgreSQL but I want to switch directions because .NET pays a good salary package as compared to PHP."}
{"_id": "44113", "title": "What training book should I choose after Microsoft's Application Development Foundation (70-536)?", "text": "I've just finished 70-536 (\"Microsoft .NET Framework - Application Development Foundation\") Microsoft training book from Microsoft Press. I found it quite good. I have also done the 70-528 (\"Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-based Client Development\") book. What book should I be reading next? I am job hunting, so I want to be marketable for a position as a software developer. What will make me stand out from the crowd and get the job?"}
{"_id": "202986", "title": "Does Agile (scrum) require one server environment?", "text": "Is it necessary/recommend/best practice/any other positive to use only one server environment to perform all development, unit testing and QA? If so, is it then wise/part of Agile to then have only one staging environment before Live? Considering that this could mean internationally distributed teams of developers and testers in different time zones is this wise? * * * This is something being implemented by our QA manager. The opinion put forward is that doing all the dev and testing on a single server is \"Agile.\" The staging environment would be a second environment, and then live."}
{"_id": "125282", "title": "Learning the domain-specific knowledge or dig deeper into fundamentals?", "text": "## **Context** I've graduated from college a couple of months ago and now I'm working as a software engineer for a company that builds software products. I consider myself lucky that I don't have to work on one of those line-of-business applications. The product we're working on is an authentication solution for - I would say - mass market. I understand that no product could be built without a deep understanding of it's domain. Either it was an industry it's addressing, or a particular set of protocols/use cases/scenarios. In case of a solution like ours, The domain knowledge is a deep understanding of the authentication protocols used by our potential clients, the scale at which it's used, the usage scenarios and other solutions it's going to interact with. ## **The Question** Now as being a relatively new to the industry, what would be your suggestion towards my education? Do you think it's more important to dig deeper into the domain I'm currently working on and dedicate my time to read books, blogs, experiment more in my free time about the set of protocols, standards and tools for building authentication solutions? Or maybe a better idea would be to dedicate my time to get a better understanding of computer science fundamentals that I wasn't taught in detail at the university, like for example:   * The language (C#/C++/Java/anything's) object model, understanding how really my source code is translated to assembly, what is augmented by the compiler, how can I expect thigs to be really laid out in memory (considering all the optimization, tricks, etc.. done by the compiler and/or run-time).   * Advanced multi-threading techniques, knowledge beyond the basics like shared r/w locks, task/data decomposition or basic atomicy/lockfreeness.   * Memory Layouts, Memory models, exact implementations of TEBs.   * Advanced algorithms for massive datasets, how to deal with enormous amounts of data, failure tolerance, etc.. I believe that the second category will make me a better engineer and will help me with designing any sort of product in the future by equipping me with the awareness of their existence - but again - the domain knowledge in the scope of my product is also very valuable and important. I would be thankful for sharing your thoughts on this matter"}
{"_id": "200632", "title": "Aren't structured programming and object oriented programming complementary?", "text": "It seems there is a lot of discussion on the web about the differences between these two paradigms, and how OOP is somewhat better than structured programming. But aren't they complementary? From my point of view one could organize his application following OOP principles and implement its logic using structured programming, couldn't he?"}
{"_id": "138425", "title": "Path forward into making Python web applications", "text": "I currently know a working knowledge of Python and some related libraries (including the included-with-Python SQLite) for the purpose of making **desktop** applications. I would now like to start to make **\"web applications\"**. By this, I mean that whatever is on the desktop application will be done by visiting a website...so the web page will have all the same sorts of widgets found in desktop apps (buttons, pulldowns, textboxes, etc). I am **not** interested in making just static web sites or online magazines or things like that. All I know about anything web-related is the basics of HTML and CSS. I also get the sense that I will have to learn Javascript and find a Javascript widget toolkit for the widgets. **I'm unclear on what else I will need.** I've heard a lot of good things about the Django web framework, but I'm not sure what the role of a \"web framework\" is in the mix here (and I got the sense that Django was used mostly to build things like online magazines, not web applications), though I get the sense I will need one to handle the basics of routing information through the web. I'm also open to the idea of using a different programming language than Python, though I like it and would prefer to keep using it. _I'd like to start simple and make small toy apps just to get the basic ideas, and then build from there._ **EDIT FOR SPECIFIC QUESTION: What are the minimum tools/services will I need to get/learn to produce web apps (as defined above) using Python?** **EDIT 2:** I'm removing references to SaaS. Let's just call it a widget-using web app."}
{"_id": "138426", "title": "Are there cases where it is a good idea to disallow remote access to a database?", "text": "My coworker is working on a project and decided to have the database subside entirely on the glassfish server with glassfish being the only thing that can directly access the database. He will then create web services and a library in Java to access this data. To me that sounds like a horrible way to structure the architecture of one of the most important databases in the company (contains all the employee data). I've mentioned to him that it is a bad idea because it isn't possible to easily get data out currently, to which he said he would write a java library to wrap the REST web service. The problem is that I deal with .NET and I told him that. The web service doesn't work and there is no documentation and currently I have to export data from the database to Excel using PhpMyAdmin and then read it from there since it would take a long time for me to properly format the SQL to work with MS SQL Server. My question is this: does my coworker have a decent design and I'm just suffering because it is in its infancy or am I correct and this design is awful. If it is an awful design, what are points I can bring up to help him see that it may be better to have a more open database?"}
{"_id": "41092", "title": "What is the difference between a Master's in Computer Science and a Master's in Software Engineering?", "text": "I am a college student and I am majoring in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. As I get closer to my senior year, I have noticed that continuing my studies is the best choice right for me now. I see that several universities offer an Computer Science Master's Degree and a Software Engineering Master's degree. What are their pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "164529", "title": "Code bases for desktop and mobile versions of the same app", "text": "I have written a small Java Swing desktop application. It seems like a natural step to port it to Android since I am interested in learning how to program for that platform. I believe that I can reuse some of my existing code base. (Of course, exactly how much reuse I can get out of it will only be determined as I start coding the Android app.) Currently I am hosting my Java Swing app on Sourceforge.net and use Git for version control. As I start creating the Android app, I am considering two options:   1. Add the Android code to my existing repository, creating separate directories and Java packages for the Android-specific code and resources.   2. Create a new Sourceforge project (or even host a new one) and creating a new Git repository. a. With a new repository, I can simply add the files from my original project that I will reuse. (I don't particularly like this option as it will be difficult to modify both copies of the same file in both repositories.) b. Or I can branch the original repository. This adds the difficulty of merging changes of shared source files. Mostly I am trying to decide between choices 1. and 2b. If I'm going to branch the existing repository, what advantages are there to hosting it as a separate SF project (or even using another OSS hosting service) as opposed to keeping all my source code in the current SF project?"}
{"_id": "170803", "title": "Forking an open source project using Git", "text": "There is an open source project that I want to fork for my own reasons. It currently has a Git mirror of its main SVN repository which I can use. What are the best techniques for forking a project whilst still maintaining the ability to merge future changes from the original project into your own forked repository using Git? Please note I will not be using Github at all for development so using any features from that is out of the question. The project will be hosted on a private VPS."}
{"_id": "170801", "title": "Is Unix/Linux adoption a measure of developer skill?", "text": "Is Linux/Unix based OS adoption for development (or recreation) a rough measure of the awareness, adaptability and/or skill of a developer, after considering factors like learning curve for effective code testing via the CLI, basic scripting, tweaking, etc."}
{"_id": "170807", "title": "How to structure an application that combines WCF and WPF", "text": "I'm in the process of learning how to use WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) to allow a client/server desktop application to communicate. The application's UI will be implemented using WPF, and we will probably use SQL Server for our database. What I'm struggling with, is understanding how to structure such an application. From what I've read, there are three components of a WCF application (which in the examples I've seen have existed as separate projects):   * A WCF service   * A WCF service host   * A WCF service client My question then, is - should these projects solely implement the functionality of sending/receiving data from the client/server? Would it make better sense this way? Would it make sense to create a separate WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) project to implement the UI for the application? And so, when I need to send/receive data from the client/server, I could simply invoke the operations provided in the WCF projects that I have created? For anyone who has built similar applications previously, perhaps you could explain what worked best for you in terms of structuring your application? For example, if I create a user registration page. When the user clicks the 'Register' button, the client application will need to send the data to the server. In this case, could I just invoke the methods provided in the WCF projects to send the data? Also, what data structures worked best for you when sending/receiving data? My initial thought is sending/receiving XML containing the data. Is this an option that is easy to implement? I realise that answers to this question may well be a matter of opinion - unless there are specific best practices that I'm not aware of. Thank you"}
{"_id": "70201", "title": "Should I be coding this myself?", "text": "As I've always liked doing things myself, I chose to code in C++ rather than Visual Basic at university because I could see what was going on and how it worked. However, sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time though, as there are so many 3rd party libraries out there. Here's an example of what I mean. A while ago I created my own collision detection function based on the x,y coordinates of the mouse and the dimensions of the sprite looping through each line checking for visibility of pixels. About a fortnight later I found out that there is already an identical function built into DirectX. Doing it your self helps you understand how it does it but you cant possibly understand everything about programming, there's to much and it keeps changing. Being young and relatively new to the commercial world I was wondering what experienced professionals opinion was on when to code something yourself and when to just used what's out there?"}
{"_id": "203580", "title": "What markup languages are good for programming articles/tutorials?", "text": "I very much wish to write a programming tutorial in my native language (Latvian). There are far too few of those. I am however unsure on what markup language to use for writing it. Here are a few things I would like to achieve:   * The same source can be compiled to both HTML for online viewing and printed form (PDF?). In HTML form it would allow superior interaction and appearance (see below), while the print form would look good on paper (layout etc).   * I have the idea that the tutorial could be multi-language. Different students have different requirements in their schools. For example, some schools teach Java, some teach C#. You could choose the language on the top of the HTML page and the relevant code snippets (and occasionally pieces of text) would swap out. Most of the text is the same anyway, only the language syntax is a bit different.   * The text would occasionally contain images too of course and these would need to be included in both the HTML and the printed version   * In the HTML version the code snippets should get automatic syntax coloring which should ideally be the same as in the recommended IDE for the tutorial. In case there are ambiguities, hints for the syntax colorer should be possible, but I don't want to do the whole coloring by hand.   * \"Output\" syntax coloring which would emulate a standard 80x25 text console (since many of the initial programs would be console applicatioins)   * Collapsible sections for answers to questions (aka \"spoiler tags\")   * Automatically generated index/table-of-contents   * Links to other parts of the tutorial (rendered as links in HTML and as references in print version)   * \"Side note\" sections, rendered as separate blocks on the side.   * Other functions useful in publications that I'm not aware of :) I know this is a bit much to ask, but is there something close enough that I could take it as a starting point and add the necessary features myself? Or is there something in the whole list (like the desire to have both HTML **and** print versions from the same source) that makes it all fundametally infeasible?"}
{"_id": "203583", "title": "Notifying a separate application of an event", "text": "I have an application that runs through various tasks as an automated process. My client would like me to create a file in a given folder for each task as a way to flag when each task completes. They prefer this to a database flag because they can be notified by the file system rather than continually polling a database table. I can do this but creating and deleting files as flags feels clunky. Is there a more elegant approach to notifying a third-party of an event?"}
{"_id": "237273", "title": "how do you manage api keys?", "text": "I have a few projects that use various webservices e.g. DropBox, AWS. For managing private information I use `bash_profile` which works great with heroku that uses env variables to manages secret informations. The problem is my bash_profile is growing significantly (HEROKU_ADD_ON_1 HEROKU_ADD_ON_2 etc.) and it bit me today. What's the better way?"}
{"_id": "71152", "title": "Should a developer be allowed to use VSS if he prefers it?", "text": "I introduced Mercurial to my department. I love it, but it is my first version control experience. I am using it with NetBeans PHP for web development. Another developer who works on internal company applications likes using Visual Source Safe and does not want to switch. He works in a Visual Studio environment. All the other developers have bought into Mercurial except this one. For the most part though, we all work pretty independently. I am trying to move this department in the right direction, I have set everyone up with an account on Kiln, I was hoping to get everyone using Fogbugz down the road as well (since there is currently no bug database being maintained.) I have never used VSS but I hear very bad things about it. Would it be better to just allow him to continue using VSS if that's what he prefers, or would it be in best interest to get him on board with Mercurial?"}
{"_id": "202670", "title": "Decorator not calling the decorated instance - alternative design needed", "text": "Assume I have a simple interface for translating text (sample code in C#):               public interface ITranslationService     {         string GetTranslation(string key, CultureInfo targetLanguage);         // some other methods...     }      A first simple implementation of this interface already exists and simply goes to the database for every method call. Assuming a UI that is being translated at start up this results in one database call per control. To improve this, I want to add the following behavior: > As soon as a request for one language comes in, fetch _all_ translations > from this language and cache them. All translation requests are served from > the cache. I thought about implementing this new behavior as a decorator, because all other methods of that interface implemented by the decorater would simple delegate to the decorated instance.   However, the implementation of `GetTranslation` wouldn't use `GetTranslation` of the decorated instance _at all_ to get all translations of a certain language. It would fire its own query against the database.   This breaks the decorator pattern, because every functionality provided by the decorated instance is simply skipped. This becomes a real problem if there are other decorators involved. My understanding is that a Decorator should be additive. In this case however, the decorator is _replacing_ the behavior of the decorated instance. I can't really think of a nice solution for this - how would you solve it? Everything is allowed, even a complete re-design of `ITranslationService` itself."}
{"_id": "202672", "title": "How to serialize and deserialize lambda expression in F#?", "text": "I serialized lambda expressions in C# before. Now I wanna use F# instead of C# for serialization and deserialization. I heard F# is better in this area. Is it true? How can I do that with F#? I\u2019d appreciate even if you just suggested a correlated link."}
{"_id": "207005", "title": "Big-O of this algorithm?", "text": "1. How can I describe the growth function in terms of n for the following algorithm?   2. What is the bounding function (the Big-O)? Is it O(n^3)? * * *               for(i = 0 to n - 1)     {         c = i + 1         for(j = c to n)         {             arr[j] += arr[i];                  for(k = c to 0 step -1) // what does the keyword \"step\" mean?             {                 arr[k] *= arr[j];             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "122101", "title": "Are there any resources on how to identify problems that could best be solved with templates?", "text": "I decided to improve my knowledge in template meta-programming. I know the syntax and rules and been playing with counteless examples from online resources. I understand how powerful templates can be and how much compile time optimization they can provide but I still cant \"think in templates\", I can't seem to know by myself if a certain problem could be best solved with templates and if it can, how to adapt that problem to templates. Is there some kind of online resource or book that teaches how to identify problems that could best be solved with templates and how to adapt that problem?"}
{"_id": "5494", "title": "Should we compile our website to a single dll, or a dll per page?", "text": "We're developing a new project that is to be deployed on a large number of client sites. The project contains a web-based GUI as one of it's \"access points\". Speed of the web interface is a priority for this project, second only to security. In the past, we've always created \"web sites\" in Visual Studio, which, when published, results in one dll and one aspx file for each page within the system. However, I am aware that you can actually create a \"web application\" and have it compile everything down to a single dll. To me (based on no real data, just gut feeling), compiling the site as a single dll sounds like it would be better for both security and speed (if only marginally). What are the considerations we should look at, and are there any obvious pitfalls we should be aware of when choosing the method that's right for us?"}
{"_id": "14200", "title": "Reporting in Visual Studio 2010 Express", "text": "I want to download Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition to learn all that is new in it. I find it insufficient as there is no Crystal Reports integration in it. Apart from that I want to learn other enterprise features that are bundled with the Professional Edition. If I download the VS 2010 Professional Edition, it is just limited to 90 days. Is there any other alternative for learners? Also, is there any FREE alternative for reporting in Express Edition."}
{"_id": "5490", "title": "Is MUMPS alive?", "text": "At my first workplace we were using Digital Standard MUMPS on a PDP 11-clone (TPA 440), then we've switched to Micronetics Standard MUMPS running on a Hewlett-Packard machine, HP-UX 9, around early 90's. Is still MUMPS alive? Are there anyone using it? If yes, please write some words about it: are you using it in character mode, does it acts as web server? etc. (I mean Cach\u00e9, too.) If you've been used it, what was your feelings about it? Did you liked it?"}
{"_id": "122109", "title": "How does a website like Mathway work?", "text": "I recently found a website called Mathway Basically, it works by allowing you to choose your \"level of math\" (which it uses to determine what tools it should provide to you) and then allows you to input a math problem which it then solves for you, and gives you detailed solutions (you have to try it, it's really cool). I was wondering how it worked on two levels. First off, how would they parse the math problem (and all the sometimes foreign mathematical operators)? How do they get from text to numbers, variables, and operators? Second, how do they generate the explanations? While you have to pay for the detailed solutions (which are explanations of how they solved the problem), I've seen their preview screenshots, and it looks very detailed. The explanations are given in full, accurate sentences. How would they generate something like that?"}
{"_id": "175351", "title": "Hallmarks of a Professional PHP Programmer", "text": "I'm a 19 year old student who really REALLY enjoys programming, and I'm hoping to glean from your years of experience here. At present, I'm studying PHP every chance I get, and have been for about 3 years, although I've never taken any formal classes. I'd love to some day be a programmer full time, and make a good career of it. My question to you is this: What do you consider to be the hallmarks or traits of a professional programmer? Mainly in the field of PHP, but other, more generalized qualifications are also more than welcome, as I think PHP is more of a hobbyist language and may not be the language of choice in the eyes of potential employers. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Above all, I don't want to waste time on something that isn't worth while. I'm currently feeling pretty confident in my knowledge of PHP as a language, and I know that I could build just about anything I need and have it \"work\", but I feel sorely lacking in design concepts and code structure. I can even write object oriented code, but in my personal opinion, that isn't worth a hill of beans if it isn't organized well. For this reason, I bought Matt Zandstra's book \"PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice\" and have been reading that a little every day. Anyway, I'm starting to digress a little here, so back to the original question. What advice would you give to an aspiring programmer who wants to make an impact in this field? Also, on a side note, I've been working on a project with a friend of mine that would give a fairly good idea of where I'm at coding wise. I'm gonna give a link, I don't want anyone to feel as though I'm pushing or spamming here, so don't click it if you don't want to. But if you are interested on giving some feedback there as well, you can see the code on github. I'm known as The Craw there. https://github.com/PureChat/PureChat--Beta-/tree/"}
{"_id": "175355", "title": "REST API wrapper - class design for 'lite' object responses", "text": "I am writing a class library to serve as a managed .NET wrapper over a REST API. I'm very new to OOP, and this task is an ideal opportunity for me to learn some OOP concepts in a real-life situation that makes sense to me. Some of the key resources/objects that the API returns are returned with different levels of detail depending on whether the request is for a single instance, a list, or part of a \"search all resources\" response. This is obviously a good design for the REST API itself, so that full objects aren't returned (thus increasing the size of the response and therefore the time taken to respond) unless they're needed. So, to be clear:   * **.../car/1234.json** returns the full Car object for 1234, all its properties like colour, make, model, year, engine_size, etc. Let's call this _full_.   * **.../cars.json** returns a list of Car objects, but only with a subset of the properties returned by .../car/1234.json. Let's call this _lite_.   * **...search.json** returns, among other things, a list of car objects, but with minimal properties (only ID, make and model). Let's call this _lite-lite_. I want to know what the pros and cons of each of the following possible designs are, and whether there is a better design that I haven't covered:   1. Create a Car class that models the _lite-lite_ properties, and then have each of the more detailed responses inherit and extend this class.   2. Create separate CarFull, CarLite and CarLiteLite classes corresponding to each of the responses.   3. Create a single Car class that contains (nullable?) properties for the _full_ response, and create constructors for each of the responses which populate it to the extent possible (and maybe include a property that returns the response type from which the instance was created). I expect among other things there will be use cases for consumers of the wrapper where they will want to iterate through lists of Cars, regardless of which response type they were created from, such that the three response types can contribute to the same list. Happy to be pointed to good resources on this sort of thing, and/or even told the name of the concept I'm describing so I can better target my research."}
{"_id": "87385", "title": "PCI Compliance with Offshore Developement", "text": "I run an offshore development team that produces a host of financial products. We are currently planning the work needed in order to gain PCI compliance. The offshore team is run by an outsourcing operation who employ the staff directly. In other words the developers are not directly employed by us, but are exclusivly resources to projects for our company. All our infrastructure is UK based (source control, development machines etc). Developers/Testers offshore remote desktop to the development environments they need to use. Is there anything in this setup that we should be concerned about from a PCI point of view? We have just started researching but I cannot find anything related to these points so any advice would be apprciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "246173", "title": "OPTION STRICT set to off", "text": "I am working on an application with over one million lines of code. OPTION STRICT is set to off!. I want to set it to ON during the next work iteration. I believe the only reason OPTION STRICT should be OFF is when converting a legacy system e.g. VB6 to .NET. You should then set OPTION STRICT to ON ASAP. Am I right in this thought or do developers leave OPTION STRICT to OFF permanently? Is there any guidance. I have looked here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zcd4xwzs.aspx, but I cannot find an answer to my specific question."}
{"_id": "196871", "title": "What Http verb should the route to log out of your web app be?", "text": "Browser support issues aside, if you're being an Http/hateoas stickler what verbs should the request to log into/out of a site be? DELETE would seem like the obvious choice but I'm not sure what the resource you're deleting would be."}
{"_id": "648", "title": "How to respond when you are asked for an estimate?", "text": "We, as programmers, are constantly being asked 'How long will it take'? And you know, the situation is almost always like this:   * The requirements are unclear. Nobody has done an in depth analysis of all the implications.   * The new feature will probably break some assumptions you made in your code and you start thinking immediately of all the things you might have to refactor.    * You have other things to do from past assignments and you will have to come up with an estimate that takes that other work into account.   * The 'done' definition is probably unclear: When will it be done? 'Done' as in just finished coding it, or 'done' as in \"the users are using it\"?   * No matter how conscious you are of all these things, sometimes your \"programmer's pride\" makes you give/accept shorter times than you originally suppose it might take. Specially when you feel the pressure of deadlines and management expectations. Many of these are organizational or cultural issues that are not simple and easy to solve, but in the end the reality is that you are being asked for an estimate and they expect you to give a reasonable answer. It's part of your job. You cannot simply say: I don't know. As a result, I always end up giving estimates that I later realize I cannot fulfill. It has happened countless of times, and I always promise it won't happen again. But it does. What is your personal process for deciding and delivering an estimate? What techniques have you found useful?"}
{"_id": "22854", "title": "How do you deal with time estimates?", "text": "If given too little time, quality suffers. If given too much time, developers will find a way to use all alloted time, no matter what. What would be a good way with dealing with estimates? Are they a necessary evil?"}
{"_id": "120281", "title": "When will be your project finished? How long does it take to complete it? Any idea how do you estimate such timing on the spot?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to respond when you are asked for an estimate? In my company, i have a strange managers, they always asks me before starting how is it going? And how long it will take to finish? From Day 1 to end of the project life. Behind the screen they do not have any idea what language i will need to use. I was myself forced to use PHP, C, Java, Vala, D, Bash, many other platforms etc etc, where i was only a Visual basic 6.0 programmer. But it takes me lot of time to complete a project, because i care about it before releasing, requires lot of testing etc etc. The problem is, i still do not have any best answer when someone asks me \"how long do you think it will take to finish this project?\", although i have done lot of projects. But i can not answer such questions, because in my mind its never finished, i always wanted to do more and more optimized code even after release. I would like to know how you guys tangle this question? (as pro-programmer way)"}
{"_id": "83891", "title": "Is SOA suitable for developers or only for business/IT management people?", "text": "Let's suppose you're the lead of a team of developers that needs to build a big information system such as an ERP or Human Resources software, or whatever system that is composed by multiple business modules. The system must delivered quickly, be scalable and have good evolution and maintenance capabilities. Your team has experience on SOA technologies and also on development of standard MVC/AJAX applications in ASP.NET, Spring, ExtJS, Smartclient or whatever mix of frameworks. You also have a good project manager in your team. Your stakeholder is baffled with so many technologies and changes in industry that he doesn't care about which thing you use, as long as the functional and non-functional requirements are satisfied. Would you use SOA practices (such as governance, service repository, service identification/discovery) and SOA infra-structure elements (such as an ESB, a BPEL engine, WSDL-base web services)? Or would you just use an agile and disciplined development process with your favorite/trustworthy frameworks and provide some RESTful services and other simple integration points with external systems? Or something else?"}
{"_id": "146542", "title": "What and how to unit test a django web application?", "text": "I am writing unit tests for a web frontend implemented in Django. I have written unit tests that check that all views return the correct status code (200, 302 etc) so that template errors (which give 500) are found. I also do HTML validation with `tidylib`. What else is there I should (or _can_ ) do? Models are unit tested elsewhere, forms have dependencies (namely on models) so is there way to unit test them - in general case there is something one can do, but what can I do (without a huge effort) leveraging the Django/python unit test framework?"}
{"_id": "146543", "title": "Separation of concerns in an RMR framework", "text": "I'm working on a new framework for PHP that utilises an architectural pattern called RMR, instead of the more common (pseudo)-MVC that most PHP frameworks currently implement. So far it feels like a better fit for web-apps than MVC was. I'm currently separating the various concerns involved with managing a page request/response cycle and have so far implemented objects for form validation, representing the request, representing the response, a front controller to wrap a complete HTTP request/response, a resolver to route a request to the appropriate resource and so on. This has led to an interesting question regarding separation of concerns, however. In an MVC framework I'd normally have a form validation object and a business object (model) wrapped in a controller action. The action would validate the input and hand it off to the business object if it passed validation, or back to the view for error display. However, in RMR, there is no controller. The architecture I'm considering has a form validation class like the MVC frameworks such as zend, but without a controller there isn't an obvious place to invoke it. I could invoke the form validation object from within the resource (the RMR equivalent of a model), but this feels wrong, because the resource needs to know more about how it's going to be used in this case. I know from the description of RMR that this isn't completely avoidable, the resource has to be able to understand a HTTP request, but I'd rather keep it to a minimum if at all possible so that resources can still be used outside of the context of the RMR framework without major modification. I could do form validation in the object that encapsulates the HTTP request, but this implies that the request object needs to know how the resource is intending to use the given input. For example, a resource representing a blog entry may allow comments to be added, votes to be collected or the original poster to edit it. If all three kinds of operations are submitted via a POST then the request object will need to be able to determine whether the given POST is for editing the blog, adding a comment or submitting a vote. If more functionality is added to the blog article resource, or if some functionality is removed, then the request needs to know about it. This seems to break encapsulation. I also considered moving form validation to the front controller, but this would have similar problems to having it in the request object. The front controller would need to know something about the inner workings of the resource before it could validate input for it. If anyone has any alternative approaches or commentary regarding this problem I'd appreciate any input you have. Maybe this problem is just highlighting that the approach I used in the past with MVC was wrong, and having form validation in the controller wasn't the proper way of doing things?"}
{"_id": "146540", "title": "How should \"git add /**\" work?", "text": "As noted in this question, I ran into an issue with `git add /**...`. I can't actually find any documentation on the \"/**\" form of path specifications - possibly because it's hard to google. How is it meant to work, exactly? I'm particularly curious that `git add /\\*\\*.py` can work but `git add /path/foo.py` won't - why is the slash allowed at the start of the string with the ** notation? EDIT more info:               $ echo /**.py     /**.py      (This version of Bash doesn't support `shopt -s globstar`) Yet:               $ git add /**.py      adds (silently) a file three directories beneath the current directory. Git apparently doesn't do any globbing at all, so I'm really curious what's going on here. These also work:               `git add '/**.py'`     `git add /*******.py`       This doesn't:               `git add **.py`      This seems to add all files anywhere in the current working directory. (Bash 3.2.48 on OSX)"}
{"_id": "232170", "title": "Single Responsibility Principle and higher levels of abstraction", "text": "Two common phrasings for the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) are \"each module should be responsible for a single feature or functionality in a system\", and \"each module should have only one reason to change\". My questions is: is this something that we should absolutely strive for in every class of a system, or should it be relaxed when we combine lower-level modules to compose the more abstract modules? At the extreme case, the top-level module in a system will be responsible for the entire gamut of system functions, so it looks like it may not be possible to respect the SRP in this kind of module."}
{"_id": "252567", "title": "Kerberos for key management?", "text": "We have half-implemented proper key management at our dev shop. We have a SOAP web service (the **key management web service** ) that can be used to retrieve passwords for other systems. So for instance, I might make a request to this service for the password to, say, a production PostgreSQL DB. I hit the web service with my AD credentials, and it determines whether I'm authorized to receive the DB password or not. If I am, then it is sent in the response. I can then use this service across all other software components instead of storing the DB password in a static config file (like Tomcat's `context.xml`, etc.). The problem, of course, is that with an automated process the AD credentials passed into the web service need to be stored somewhere. So, to obtain the password to a DB (or any other secured resource), one simply needs to gain access to what is used to store the AD credentials, and can then submit them to this web service, which will then authenticate/authorize them, and return the password for the requested resource. Classic key management problem. Hence, I'm trying to figure out a way to protect the AD credentials used to access the service. Someone mentioned Kerberos to me and I've began to dig in a little bit. My _understanding_ is that, with Kerberos, there would be 3 components:   * A **client** of the key management web service   * The key management web service   * A Kerberos (ticket granting ticket, **TGT** ) server My _understanding_ is that:   1. The client (somehow) obtains a TGT from Kerberos   2. The client then issues a a request for some resource, say, a DB, to the key management web service, but does _not_ supply any AD credentials, but instead, supplies the TGT   3. The key management web service is then reconfigured to take this TGT and ping the Kerberos server with an \" _is this TGT valid?_ \"-type request   4. The Kerberos server responds and says \" _yes_ \" (or \"no\") and honors the request for the DB password, sending it back to the client in the response So first, if anything about my understanding is incorrect, please begin by correcting me! Assuming I'm more-or-less correct, then I have a few questions about this setup:   1. How would the client first obtain the TGT from Kerberos?   2. Do Kerberos TGT's have expiration dates? How would then client \"re-request\" a new TGT?   3. Does the key management web service need to implement any specific TCP protocol to speak with Kerberos, or does HTTP suffice? If Kerberos has its own protocol, are there any Java libs that implement it? (I know its easy to Google \"java kerberos\" but not sure what specifically to be looking for because again, I'm not confident I understand the architecture here)."}
{"_id": "242693", "title": "How to safely copy an object?", "text": "This question is going to be a little long. Please bear with me. Something that happened in a project of mine made me think about how to safely copy objects. I'll present the situation I had and then ask a question. There was a class `SomeClass`:               class SomeClass{         Thing[] things;              public SomeClass(Thing[] things){             this.things = things;         }              // irrelevant stuff omitted              public SomeClass copy(){             return new SomeClass(things);         }     }      There was another class `Processor` that takes `SomeClass` objects, copies them (via `someClassInstance.copy()`), manipulates the copy's state, and returns the copy. Here it is:               class Processor{         public SomeClass processObject(SomeClass object){             SomeClass copy = object.copy();             manipulateTheCopy(copy);             return copy;         }              // irrelevant stuff omitted     }      I ran this, and it had bugs. I looked into these bugs, and it turned out that the manipulations `Processor` does on `copy` actually affect not only the copy, but also the original `SomeClass` object that was passed into `processObject`. I found out that it was because the original and the copy shared state - because the original passed it's field `things` into the copy when creating it. **This made me realize that copying objects is harder than simply instantiating them with the same fields as the original.** For the two objects to be completely disconnected, without any shared state, each of the fields passed to the copy also has to be copied. **And if that object contains other objects - they have to be copied too. And so on.** So basically, in order to be able to actually copy an object, **each class in the system must have a`copy()` method, that also invokes `copy()` on all of it's fields, and so on**. So for example, for `copy()` in SomeClass to work, it needs to look like this:               public SomeClass copy(){         Thing[] copyThings = new Thing[things.length];         for(int i=0; i<things.length; i++)             copyThings[i] = things[i].copy();         return new SomeClass(copyThings);     }      And if `Thing` has object fields of it's own, than it's own `copy()` method must be appropriate:               class Thing{         Apple apple;         Pencil pencil;         int number;              public Thing(Apple apple, Pencil pencil, int number){             this.apple = apple;             this.pencil = pencil;             this.number = number;         }              public Thing copy(){             // 'number' is a primitve.             return new Thing(apple.getCopy(), pencil.getCopy(), number);         }     }      And so on. Of course, instead of all classes having a `copy()` method, the copying mechanism can happen in all of the getters and the constructors of classes (unless places where it isn't suitable, for example when the field points to an external object, not to an object that 'is part' of this object). Still, that means that in order to be able to safely copy an object - most classes would have to have copying mechanisms in their getters. **My question is divided into two parts:**   1. How frequently do you need to get a copy of an object? Is this a regular issue?   2. Is the technique described common and/or reasonable? Or is there a better way to make safe copies of objects?"}
{"_id": "254810", "title": "How should a GUI application written in WinAPI be structured and organized?", "text": "I've done an extensive amount of GUI programming in Winforms and WPF using C#, and a tiny bit in C++ using MFC. I'm building a personal project using WinAPI mainly to gain a deeper knowledge in Windows Programming. I've found myself quickly stuck on how to organize the project because making even a simple windows application in WinAPI only takes a lot of boilerplate coding in just making UI elements. This wasn't much of an issue in Winforms or WPF since the framework itself somewhat forces you to separate the view and logic, making it easier to organize the code. Are the any recommended patterns / methods on how I should organize WinAPI projects? More specifically, how should I separate the logic between the UI elements and logic in Windows Programming? I'd also love to see any resources and examples on this."}
{"_id": "254816", "title": "C++ ofstream adding random data to a file!", "text": "Here is my code:               std::ifstream file2(imageToAdd.c_str(), std::ios::in | std::ios::binary);     if(file2){         file2.seekg(0,std::ios::end);         length = file2.tellg();         file2.seekg(0,std::ios::beg);         vector<char> tempImageVec(length);         file2.read(&tempImageVec[0],length);         int totalFileUpload=0;         std::ofstream f(\"test.data\");         f << (char)1;         totalFileUpload+=1;         vector<char> AddImagesize=print4Bytes(length);         for(int i=0; i<AddImagesize.size(); i+=1){             f << (char)AddImagesize[i];         }         totalFileUpload+=AddImagesize.size();         for(int i=0; i<tempImageVec.size(); i++)             f << tempImageVec[i];         totalFileUpload+=tempImageVec.size();         cout << totalFileUpload << endl;     }      As you can see, totalFileUpload should be count the amount of data that gets put into the file, however in this case, i add a file (Around 1.33mb), the cout statement outputs: 1,405,202 bytes However opening the fine in a program such as notepad++, or just viewing the properties of the file, shows that the file is now 1,409,439 So where did this extra 4,237 bytes come from? The only obvious thing i could spot was the possibility of the length of the file being read being incorrect, however it is correct, as it was the same as when i viewed the properties."}
{"_id": "236168", "title": "When doing social application development, is it ok to use my company credentials for all client work?", "text": "As a web application developer, recently my work in creating Social Applications has taken a lot of momentum (specifically, Social Login buttons.) Is it ok to use my company's social network developer credentials for this? I don't want to sign each client up for between 1 and 20 different services based on their needs. It's a lot easier to just open up my Google Console and click 'new.'"}
{"_id": "242695", "title": "Is there a common programming term for the problems of adding features to an already-featureful program?", "text": "I'm looking for a commonly used programming term to describe a software- engineering phenomenon, which (for lack of a better way to describe it) I'll illustrate first with a couple of examples-by-analogy: Scenario 1: We want to build/extend a subway system on the outskirts of a small town in Wyoming. There are the usual subway-problems to solve, of course (hiring the right construction company, choosing the best route, buying the subway cars), but other than that it's pretty straightforward to implement the system because there aren't a huge number of constraints to satisfy. Scenario 2: Same as above, except now we need to build/extend the subway system in downtown Los Angeles. Here we face all of the problems we did in case (1), but also additional problems -- most of the applicable space is already in use, and has a vocal constituency which will protest loudly if we inconvenience them by repurposing, redesigning, or otherwise modifying the infrastructure that they rely on. Because of this, extensions to the system happen either very slowly and expensively, or they don't happen at all. I sometimes see a similar pattern with software development -- adding a new feature to a small/simple program is straightforward, but as the program grows, adding further new features becomes more and more difficult, if only because it is difficult to integrate the new feature without adversely affecting any of the large number of existing use-cases or user- constituencies. (even with a robust, adaptable program design, you run into the problem of the user interface becoming so elaborate that the program becomes difficult to learn or use) Is there a term for this phenomenon?"}
{"_id": "236165", "title": "Best way to charge for redevelopment contract?", "text": "I took on a new project, and the task is to redevelop an existing application. I have been already working on the redevelopment for 6 weeks. I originally bid a fixed price for the first phase of development, despite the fact that the specifications they provided me with were pretty vague. It turns out what was supposed to take me only 4 weeks (which is what I based the bid on) ended up taking 6 weeks. In addition, there's still yet some work to do on the first phase, but the client has said they will pay me for the first phase anyway as it's taken longer than anticipated, and because I handled a bunch of extra, undocumented work. As you can see, I am finding fixed price challenging with this project. My question is what is the best way to bill for large programming projects you will be doing remotely? I have been considering hourly, daily, weekly and monthly. I sure find it challenging to accurately predict the amount of time something will take."}
{"_id": "129702", "title": "What are the chances of getting a good development job without the training in solving programming puzzles?", "text": "By \"good job\" I mean mostly a job that is well paid and involves the development of market-leading products/services (of course within my area of interest). I have a masters degree in economics and no formal education in computer science. I'm a completely self-taught programmer. I do have a few small projects that do solve a real-problem in my portfolio, as well as one year long \"career\" at some company as a junior programmer. So I expect that when interviewing for another job I will be given some qualifications test. **What are the chances that I will be given programming puzzles to solve?** (I'm interested in Europe mostly, if there are some big differences geographically.) I've seen a few of those and I'm positive I wouldn't be able to solve 90% of them on the spot, with a blank sheet of paper and no internet or book references. Add to that the stress of the interview. To tell the truth, I think only a very small percent of the population is able to solve those with no preparation - the rest passes them because they practice. During my studies I did have courses that required solving some economic optimization case studies, which were based on algorithms (although different from those typically associated with programming), so I know that the best method of learning how to solve such puzzles is solving a large number of them. Problem is, I believe it may take at least 6 months of full time study to practice some most often encountered puzzles, so that I have a fairly good shot at passing most interviews. And I'm a very practical guy, who values his time greatly. My economic gut tells me that I'd rather spend 6 months of my time polishing a commercial project, that I've been working on, rather than developing my \"interview passing skills\". Don't get me wrong. I am aware of the hard science behind programming. I do have a collection of books that I consult very often as soon as I encounter a mathematical/algorithmic problem, I do know where and how to ask questions, sometimes I do even browse PhD-level research papers (if I have an important but specific problem). But reading the whole Cormen's or Knuth's book and solving the puzzles in those books? I'm not that kind of guy and even if I were, I don't have time for this. I do fairly well in tests that target primarily the language or API, especially C++. That is because I work with them every day, and C++ being quite dangerous, I kind of had no choice but to master it. That was needed to complete a real life problem. On the other hand, it took me 3 years to come across a situation where I had to pick the most appropriate sorting algorithm and adapt it for my needs. Which leads me to think that if I don't explicitly train to solve camouflaged specific sorting algorithm puzzles, then I won't be able to solve them during interviews. Note that I cannot simply go to every interview and try my chances, as I live in the middle of nowhere and usually an interview is a major logistical challenge and a strain on my time (mostly the whole trip takes 3 days) and money."}
{"_id": "87651", "title": "How to set up for selective pushing with Mercurial?", "text": "I have a situation, when I'm working on a project, but at same time small issues arise which require quick fix. I would like to push just the fixes for these problems to the main repo while keeping the rest locally. Problem is that, as I've already found out, it's not possible to cherry pick changsets when pushing from my repository upwards. So the question is, how to set up my Hg environment to have such a possibility. I want to preserve all the Hg metadata, so sending patches around is not a option. BTW, if the whole thing can be managed directly from MercurialEclipse, that would be a big plus."}
{"_id": "87657", "title": "The state of build systems in Java", "text": "Is anyone else out there sick of the state of current build systems in the Java space? Why shouldn't I just write my next project's build scripts in Python, Ruby or another fully feature scripting language and get back some of that control? Does anyone have any experience in putting something like this together? If so did it work out well or was it a disaster?"}
{"_id": "87656", "title": "When to delete a branch in Git", "text": "I have a script project I've been managing with Git. Besides two main branches, several minor branches have been introduced over time to cover minor features, tweaks or temporary changes. Some of these branches are nearing end- of-life, and I won't be updating them any more. What's the different philosophies for handling branches like this? Should they be removed, or left in the repository unmaintained? If I do, won't I end up with a cluttered repository?"}
{"_id": "133275", "title": "Is TCP/IP an OSI Replacement or both are inter-dependent and meant to work together", "text": "I'm confused in differentiating the OSI Model and TCP/IP suite. As per my knowledge. OSI is a structure on top of which Networks are built and TCP/IP is the suite of protocols that operate on these 7 layers of OSI. Correct me if I'm wrong. Also, is TCP/IP a replacement to OSI and is used **IN PLACE** of OSI? or both these work **COLLECTIVELY** to form the Network? any good source to clarify my confusion will be appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "133277", "title": "Is a traditional client app which connects directly to a database a good idea?", "text": "After using Django's excellent admin interface, I was pondering creating a similar system which wasn't as tied to an ORM. Now, while considering this, I thought that overcoming webapps limitations (basic widgets, sessions, text/HTTP-based forms, distinct client-side/server- side languages in most cases with a limited communication mechanism, etc.) were a big timewaster, and that maybe traditional GUI development was a better option. So that brought me to using a desktop app, and then a server part which connects to the database and exposes it via RPC (web services, whatever) to the desktop app, handling security in the traditional webapp fashion. However, nowadays you can connect to databases remotely securely using SSL, and supposedly databases do provide sufficient role-based authorization (GRANT/REVOKE), so why not connect directly to the database and avoid having to code a server? Is that a good idea? Are there unassailable problems with this approach? [I think that coupled with good database introspection, one could write a relatively simple framework which would enable very nice RAD of database-based apps)? Which are theoretical problems and which ones are problems with specific implementations? bonus question: do databases provide enough authorization? While doing my research, I came across the following discussion thread: http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/4AE02DF0.40101@enterprisedb.com which pokes some holes into traditional view-based row access control in the PostgreSQL implementation."}
{"_id": "133270", "title": "I can't really create anything, what can I do about it?", "text": "I'm a C# programmer, and I don't really think I can create a software, for example: if I have a task to take a WAV and play it, I'll just use the .NET SoundPlayer class. if I need to present a picture I'll just use a picturebox. I'm not even sure how .NET handles the tasks, does it over treat it and takes a lot of memory? what do I do in cases .NET doesn't support? for example, if I want to play a WAV as mentioned, that's great. but if I want to play mp3 file, the only thing comes to my mind is look for a different library on the internet that supports it. I see a lot of programs out there and just don't understand how they do it. even if it's a simple task like having a folder's thumbnail like it's showed in Windows Explorer (as shown here: http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p_RvwMDp6PkWP- X_nOZbscmJTL1y32Vzd8pG0QCJbo3Wn-38GlzzclueXc- jT7-mbIX1B-d3ySoRWlzRk1aPWxw/HiloMediaPane.jpg?psid=1) I have no idea how it can be done. Also, when given a complicated task, say make a path-finder algorithm or anything that isn't a basic task, I'm blank and have no idea what to do. I feel like I'm missing something, and I'm sure a lot of people out there feel exactly like I do, what advice could you give them?"}
{"_id": "133272", "title": "Passing data between concrete states?", "text": "I have a state ~~machine~~ pattern implementation that's pretty straightforward, but I've got a design problem I don't know an elegant solution to. Here's some partly pseudo code to illustrate.               class MainRoomState:State              public override void HandleJoinSuccess(string gameName, List<LobbyPlayer> players)         {                  Context.CurrentState = new LobbyState(Context);             //the players list needs to be in the LobbyState             //that data is specific to the LobbyState         }      Basically, the event triggering the state change also is providing data that belongs in the new state, and I don't know if there's a nice way to do it besides a shared class in the parent Context object, or by mangling the constructor for this special case. **Edit** \\- in more detail I have my states setup to encapsulate state specific data as well as logic, which includes, in this case, a GUI screen belonging to the current state. This seems to be a more elegant way of handling not only separation of logic, but also state specific data. Here's what my abstract state looks like,               public abstract class GameState     {              public GameState(Game context)         {             Context = context;             Net = context.Net;         }              //Incoming events         public abstract void HandleConnected();         public abstract void HandleDisconnected(string reason);         public abstract void HandleNetworkNotification(string msg);         public abstract void HandleGameStarting();         //there's about 20 more methods not shown here       Here's my Game class, mainly functioning as a data holder, but it also controls the game loop timer, firing main events, etc.               public class Game     {         public Game()         {            //...bunch of init code here            CurrentState = new DisconnectedState(this);         }         public GameState CurrentState         {             get;             set;         }              //more methods, etc     }      You'll see that I opted for composite containment of the CurrentState rather than implementing pass-through methods. That was mostly because I disliked the messiness of passing through the calls when I really didn't need to. Also, the whole state stores a reference to Context, rather than passing it per method. I've got two questions/problems with the pattern.   1. Every concrete state MUST implement in some fashion, EVERY method in the abstract State. This is ridiculous overkill, and currently most of my states only use 20-40% of the methods, leaving me with a couple pages of this: > public override void HandleGameStarting() { //not handled in this state }   1. My second issue is that each state has it's own data that only needs to exist while in that state. I don't want to store a huge conglomeration of data in the Context object when a far more encapsulated way of handling it would be putting it in the state. Looking over your example, I suppose one answer to my original question is that I could properly pass through the methods to the Current State, and just do a kind of hack with the data, class Game               public override void HandleJoinSuccess(string gameName, List<LobbyPlayer> players)     {              CurrentState = new LobbyState(this);         CurrentState.HandleData(gameName,players);         //the players list needs to be in the LobbyState         //that data is specific to the LobbyState     }"}
{"_id": "218605", "title": "Neural network input preprocessing", "text": "It's clear that the effectiveness of a neural network depends strongly on the format you give it to work with. You want to preprocess it into the most convenient form you can algorithmically get to, so that the neural network doesn't have to account for that itself. I'm working on a little project that (surprise!) is going to be using neural networks. My future goal is to eventually use NEAT, which I'm really excited about. Anyway, one of my ideas involves moving entities in continuous 2D space, from a top-down perspective (this would be a really cool game AI). Of course, unless these guys are blind, they're going to be able to see the world around them. There's a lot of different ways this information could be fed into the network. One interesting but expensive way is to simply render a top-down \"view\" of things, with the entities as dots on the picture, and feed that in. I was hoping for something much simpler to use (at least at first), such as a list of the x (maybe 7 or so) nearest entities and their position in relative polar coordinates, orientation, health, etc., but I'm trying to think of the best way to do it. My first instinct was to order them by distance, which would inherently also train the neural network to consider those more \"important\". However, I was thinking- what if there's two entities that are nearly the same distance away? They could easily alternate indexes in that list, confusing the network. My question is, **is there a better way of representing this?** Essentially, the issue is the network needs a good way of keeping track of who's who, while knowing (by being inputted) relevant information about the list of entities it can see. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "83762", "title": "How frequently do you switch mode?", "text": "I tried VIM and liked it but something stopped from using it: I had to type ESC to often, very often, something like each 5 seconds, and it was highly uncomfortable, so I stopped using it as a primary text editor (now I use emacs, nice for programmer as I am). After my sad experience with VIM, I could get why some much intensive users love vim. But now I suppose that maybe, after a bigger training, the frequency of mode switching could decrease dramatically. So, to verify this hypothesis, I am asking to you, old vim users, how frequently do you switch the mode?"}
{"_id": "29921", "title": "Beginner need help on learning Qt programming", "text": "Thought of learning Qt. Need help from experienced ones out here. How should I begin. Some good books to refer. Some good tutorials to learn... Edit: Also which is the good IDE available out there for Qt programming. One that gives inline help, auto completion,indentation... I am using Debian Lenny"}
{"_id": "195806", "title": "Forward declaration vs include", "text": "`Reduce the number of #include files in header files. It will reduce build times. Instead, put include files in source code files and use forward declarations in header files.` I read this in here. http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialC++CodingStyle.html. So it says if a class (class A) in header file does not need to use the actual definition of some class (class B). At that time we can use the forward declaration instead of including the particular (class B) header file. Question: If the class (class A) in the header if doesn't use actual definition of a particular class (class B), Then how forward declaration helps to reduce the compile time?"}
{"_id": "47675", "title": "What are creative ways to unblock a development team?", "text": "The setting: Multiple development teams, lots of dependencies and constraints. If one team is blocked on developing some code, getting service calls, or moving to a QA environment, what are ways for teams to creatively look for work-arounds to their issues?"}
{"_id": "195800", "title": "Open Source, Copyright and Trivial Bugfixes", "text": "Say a developer has developed a library for their closed-sourced commercial application. Since they want to give back to the open source community, they publish this library under, say, the GPL, but continue to use it in their own application. Since they hold the copyright, that's fine. Now, a user of the GPL version finds a bug, fixes it and submits a patch to the original developer. As I understand it, to use this bugfix in their closed-source application, the developer needs to have permission from the submitter. If the submitter refuses, the developer has to find another way to fix the bug in the closed-source version. But what if the bugfix itself is really trivial? Like properly initializing a variable or checking for a null pointer? Something that any half-competent programmer can find and fix in a matter of minutes, given an error description? Is the patch for this still protected by copyright? Or can the original developer implement the identical fix in their closed-source application without consent of the submitter? _Note: This really is a hypothetical scenario, not one of those \"my 'friend' has this problem\" questions_"}
{"_id": "212720", "title": "Front end written in languages used for back end!", "text": "From my experice in web development, I know that languages like PHP,Java,Python..etc is used for backend development stuff (software that running on server), and for front end stuff languages like JS/HTML/CSS is used. But i see many companies say that they use for example PHP for front-end development and say python for the backend. Does that mean PHP is front-end for calling other services written in other languages via REST,RPC ..etc?"}
{"_id": "47678", "title": "Why did memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript, and C# retain the `new` keyword?", "text": "The `new` keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# creates a new instance of a class. This syntax seems to have been inherited from C++, where `new` is used specifically to allocate a new instance of a class on the heap, and return a pointer to the new instance. In C++, this is not the only way to construct an object. You can also construct an object on the stack, without using `new` \\- and in fact, this way of constructing objects is much more common in C++. So, coming from a C++ background, the `new` keyword in languages like Java, Javascript, and C# seemed natural and obvious to me. Then I started to learn Python, which doesn't have the `new` keyword. In Python, an instance is constructed simply by calling the constructor, like:               f = Foo()      At first, this seemed a bit off to me, until it occurred to me that there's no reason for Python to have `new`, because everything is an object so there's no need to disambiguate between various constructor syntaxes. But then I thought - what's really the point of `new` in Java? Why should we say `Object o = new Object();`? Why not just `Object o = Object();`? In C++ there's definitely a need for `new`, since we need to distinguish between allocating on the heap and allocating on the stack, but in Java all objects are constructed on the heap, so why even have the `new` keyword? The same question could be asked for Javascript. In C#, which I'm much less familiar with, I think `new` may have some purpose in terms of distinguishing between object types and value types, but I'm not sure. Regardless, it seems to me that many languages which came after C++ simply \"inherited\" the `new` keyword - without really needing it. It's almost like a _vestigial keyword_. We don't seem to need it for any reason, and yet it's there. **Question:** Am I correct about this? Or is there some compelling reason that `new` needs to be in C++-inspired memory-managed languages like Java, Javascript and C# but not Python?"}
{"_id": "195808", "title": "Simple questions to test understanding of Dependency Inversion Principle", "text": "I am preparing a short (1-2 hour) presentation about DIP to several (~5) junior developers (1-3 yr xp) in the office. At the end of the presentation I want to know whether they understood what I was presenting, what are some possible questions that I ask in order to figure out their understanding? Maybe something that can be answered and explained by them in 3 minutes or less?"}
{"_id": "15556", "title": "Do you think that storing a variable length encoding in std::string or std::wstring is OK and do you do it?", "text": "I'm kind of horrified that people actually suggest using UTF-8 inside a `std::string` and are OK with UTF-16 `std::wstring`. Do you actually do this? Do you think that it is OK?"}
{"_id": "175970", "title": "Open Grid Engine or Akka/Something more fault tolerant?", "text": "My use case is that I have a pipeline of independent, stand alone programs, that I want to execute in a certain order on specific pieces of data that are output from previous pipeline stages. The pipeline is entirely linear and doesn't do anything in terms of alternate paths through the pipe. I'm currently using SGE to do this and it works OK, however occasionally a job will overstep it's memory bounds, fail, and all jobs that require that output data will fail. The pipe needs to be restarted in that case, and it seems that whatever is providing the fault tolerance in akka might solve that for me?"}
{"_id": "8297", "title": "Customer relations in agile development", "text": "My management just asked an unprecedented question in my (admittedly brief) history with the organization: \"What can we do to help you?\" Simultaneously, we're working several big projects for a fairly new client whose ability to push requirements around mid-project is legend. Developing for these guys is like tap dancing on quicksand. Seems like a prime opportunity to propose a shift to a more agile approach. The thing I know I'm going to get asked, and that I don't have any idea about, is how to quote/bid/bill for that sort of project. Do you go hourly? Do you bid a range of prices? Do you charge by the sprint? More generally, the aspect of the Agile Manifesto that reads \"We value customer collaboration over contract negotiation\" is GOING to scare my management. How do you value that in the real world of customers who want a lot for a little?"}
{"_id": "48918", "title": "Getting started on Large Projects", "text": "I just graduated from my College with a B.S. in Comp. Science. Although it was a good school, we're the only accredited CS department in our state. I feel like im a decent programmer, not amazing, but not terrible. I got my first job about 2 weeks ago, it's a pretty entry level job: firmware development/tester. There isn't a whole lot of coding to be had right now (mostly simple stuff) but soon I will have the option of helping out with development (which is what I want to do). Thing is I have never worked on a huge project. In school we had \"group\" projects but nothing really big. So I'm not familiar with huge classes and such (main language was C++). Is this something I'll just get used to with time? Some fellow students were used to that with internships and such.but I never got that chance. My job was mostly a \"one man job\" kinda thing. Mostly little things. Plus in class we never did huge projects anyways. How do you guys \"plan\" out these things? Do you use a whiteboard and plan out classes and such or what? Another worry of mine is that I have to use google a lot for examples of code, because sometimes I just don't get how something works. Is this normal? I mean \"technically\" I've had 4-5 years coding experience but it really only feels like I had 2 years of actual experience."}
{"_id": "175978", "title": "Is Adobe Flash still viable for developing CBT (Computer Based Training) software?", "text": "From everything I have read about Adobe Flash over the past couple of years, it seems like the platform has received a lot of stigma in the web space. Regardless of that, is it still viable as a platform for building local applications such as CBT (Computer Based Training) courses?"}
{"_id": "69788", "title": "What is the history of the use of \"foo\" and \"bar\" in source code examples?", "text": "Why do many code examples, especially tutorials, use the names \"Foo\" and \"Bar\" so often? It is almost a standard. For example:               void foo(char* bar) {       printf(\"%s\", bar);     }"}
{"_id": "221", "title": "What's the origin of foo and bar?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Using \"Foo\" and \"Bar\" in examples I know AT&T labs used them in their Unix days, but do they have even deeper histories?"}
{"_id": "238669", "title": "Picking an image from a set of images that is most likely to be compelling to a typical viewer", "text": "Given a set of images on a webpage, what's a good way to pick a compelling image that is also representative of the webpage? The use case is displaying an image along with a description of a URL to a page, after a user includes it in a status update. I've found some techniques to find the most interesting part of a single image. Example: http://berk.es/smartcropper/ So maybe I can use this notion of entropy to compare images in a set? I am programming in ruby, so a pure ruby solution is preferable, but am open to others."}
{"_id": "206354", "title": "How Lua handles both integer and float numbers?", "text": "As far as I remember myself programming I was taught not to compare floating point numbers for equality. Now, while reading Programming in Lua about Lua `number` type, I found following: > The number type represents real (double-precision floating-point) numbers. > Lua has no integer type, as it does not need it. There is a widespread > misconception about floating-point arithmetic errors and some people fear > that even a simple increment can go weird with floating-point numbers. The > fact is that, when you use a double to represent an integer, there is no > rounding error at all (unless the number is greater than > 100,000,000,000,000). Specifically, a Lua number can represent any long > integer without rounding problems. Moreover, most modern CPUs do floating- > point arithmetic as fast as (or even faster than) integer arithmetic. Is that true for all languages? Basically if we don't go beyond floating point in doubles, we are safe in integer arithmetic? Or, to be more in line with question title, is there anything special that Lua does with its `number` type so it's working fine as both integer and float-point type?"}
{"_id": "206355", "title": "The Relative Cost Efficiency of (Acceptance) Test Driven Development", "text": "I would like to know what the overall impact of resource planning on a software project is, where the requirements and design of the project are driven by automated acceptance tests and unit tests, in contrast to a more \"traditional\" approach to software development. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3vNIF.jpg) What, in your experience, is the overall effect on resource requirements for completing a software project under TDD, as opposed to more \"traditional\" development methodologies? It seems self-evident to me that quality would increase, and the amount of uncertainty decreases because testing is done earlier, but requiring tests up front seems like it would require more developer hours to accomplish. How much does the development effort increase, or does it actually decrease due to the up-front elimination of bugs? How much more effort is required from the customer? Do they have to change the way they relate to the project, especially if they are used to big design up front? Does the number of hours required of the customer overall increase, or does it actually decrease? I would imagine that time estimates would be very vague in an iterative TDD process at the beginning of a TDD project (since there is no Software Development Plan). Is there a point, say, 20% into a project, where confidence increases enough that a more or less stable time and money estimate can eventually be provided to the customer? Note: I'm not looking for subjective opinions or theories here, so please don't speculate. I'm looking more for real-world experience in TDD."}
{"_id": "206352", "title": "Is there any theory or science for building complex visualization GUI's?", "text": "Most \"Canvas\" widgets in common GUI toolkits offer low level operations like drawing basic shapes of different colors/line-width/etc, or displaying sprites and images. Some seem to have slightly more advanced features like the ability to treat primitives drawn on the canvas as \"actors\" so they can be moved and manipulated independently after drawing. How do you go from such low-level operations to highly complex and interactive visualizations, for example the Integrative Genomics Viewer (screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3)? This tool lets you navigate various annotations and features located on a genome in a variety of ways, at the single- nucleotide level (ie, very low detail) to the whole-genome level (very high level overviews), handles very large data sets (100's of gb) and incorporates many different plot types many of which are unique to the application or at least bioinformatics. Beyond MVC, is there underlying theory or model as to how you should structure such an application?"}
{"_id": "233222", "title": "Why write tests for code that I will refactor?", "text": "I am refactoring a huge legacy code class. Refactoring (I presume) advocates this:   1. write tests for the legacy class   2. refactor the heck out of the class Problem: once I refactor the class, my tests in step 1 will need to be changed. For example, what once was in a legacy method, now may be a separate class instead. What was one method may be now several methods. The entire landscape of the legacy class may be obliterated into something new, and so the tests I write in step 1 will almost be null and void. In essence I will be adding _Step 3. rewrite my tests profusely_ What is the purpose then to write tests before refactor? It sounds more like an academic exercise of creating more work for myself. I am writing tests for the method now and I am learning more about how to test things and how the legacy method works. One can learn this by just reading the legacy code itself, but writing tests is almost like rubbing my nose in it, and also documenting this temporary knowledge in separate tests. So this way I almost have no choice but to learn what the code is doing. I said temporary here, because I will refactor the heck out of the code and all my documentation and tests will be null and void for a significant part, except my knowledge will stay and allow me to be fresher on the refactoring. Is that the real reason to write tests before refactor - to help me understand the code better? There's got to be another reason! Please explain! **Note:** There is this post: Does it make sense to write tests for legacy code when there is no time for a complete refactoring? but it say \"write tests before refactor\", but doesn't say \"why\", or what to do if \"writing tests\" seems like \"busy work that will be destroyed soon\""}
{"_id": "171077", "title": "Increase application performance", "text": "I'm writing a program for a company that will generate a daily report for them. All of the data that they use for this report is stored in a local SQLite database. For this report, the utilize pretty much every bit of the information in the database. So currently, when I query the datbase, I retrieve everything, and store the information in lists. Here's what I've got:               using (var dataReader = _connection.Select(query))     {         if (dataReader.HasRows)         {             while (dataReader.Read())             {                 _date.Add(Convert.ToDateTime(dataReader[\"date\"]));                 _measured.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"measured_dist\"]));                 _bit.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"bit_loc\"]));                 _psi.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"pump_press\"]));                 _time.Add(Convert.ToDateTime(dataReader[\"timestamp\"]));                 _fob.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"force_on_bit\"]));                 _torque.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"torque\"]));                 _rpm.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"rpm\"]));                 _pumpOneSpm.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"pump_1_strokes_pm\"]));                 _pumpTwoSpm.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"pump_2_strokes_pm\"]));                 _pullForce.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"pull_force\"]));                 _gpm.Add(Convert.ToDouble(dataReader[\"flow\"]));             }         }     }      I then utilize these lists for the calculations. Obviously, the more information that is in this database, the longer the initial query will take. I'm curious if there is a way to increase the performance of the query at all? Thanks for any and all help. **EDIT** One of the report rows is called Daily Drilling Hours. For this calculation, I use this method:               // Retrieves the timestamps where measured depth == bit depth and PSI >= 50     public double CalculateDailyProjectDrillingHours(DateTime date)     {         var dailyTimeStamps = _time.Where((t, i) => _date[i].Equals(date) &&                                             _measured[i].Equals(_bit[i]) &&                                             _psi[i] >= 50).ToList();             return                 _dailyDrillingHours =                 Convert.ToDouble(Math.Round(TimeCalculations(dailyTimeStamps).TotalHours, 2, MidpointRounding.AwayFromZero));     }          // Checks that the interval is less than 10, then adds the interval to the total time     private static TimeSpan TimeCalculations(IList<DateTime> timeStamps)     {         var interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 10);         var totalTime = new TimeSpan();         TimeSpan timeDifference;              for (var j = 0; j < timeStamps.Count - 1; j++)         {             if (timeStamps[j + 1].Subtract(timeStamps[j]) <= interval)             {                 timeDifference = timeStamps[j + 1].Subtract(timeStamps[j]);                 totalTime = totalTime.Add(timeDifference);             }         }              return totalTime;     }"}
{"_id": "171079", "title": "algorithm to print the digits in the correct order", "text": "I've been trying to write an algorithm that will print separately the digits from an integer. I have to write it in Pseudocode. I know how to write an algorithm that reverse the digits.               digi(n):        while n != 0:         x = n % 10          n = n // 10          print (x)      But I don't know how to write an algorithm to print the digits in the correct order. For example, the input is integer `123467` and the output is: `1 2 3 4 6 7`. The numbers will be input from the user, and we cannot convert them to a string. I need help getting started on writing algorithms."}
{"_id": "233228", "title": "How to write descriptive conditionals for ifs?", "text": "I've gotten into the habit of using excessively descriptive names. In addition, I've also gotten into the habit of creating the conditions for ifs like so:               bool user_is_female  = user.get_gender() == GENDER_FEMALE;     bool user_is_warrior = user.get_unit_class() == CLASS_WARRIOR;     bool user_can_wear_battle_skirt = user_is_female && user_is_warrior;          if (user_can_wear_battle_skirt) {         user.equip(EQUIPMENT_BATTLE_SKIRT);     }      So, yeah, I dropped the \"== true\" or \"true ==\" that I've been taught was good practice. It seems to need less comments too. It is quite wordy/lengthy though. I was going for making the code more readable. So should I continue using this method? Any alternatives?               if (user.can_wear(battle_skirt)) {         user.equip(battle_skirt);     }      Was a suggestion that I had to delete because I posted in the wrong place."}
{"_id": "117622", "title": "LINQ vs Data Access Layer", "text": "I've taught myself always to handle any data access code in a completely separate 'layer' to my business logic and UI code. This has always been a very good architecture for me and any 'rules' or best practices I see, still manage to fit into this style of coding, especially Single Responsibility Principle. For most of my home projects, I'd use my own ORM I created, which I always intended to make open-source. However since then, LINQ became available, which was very similar to the way my ORM worked (but.. better). There's nothing that I could previously do with my own ORM that I can't now do with LINQ (except bits of the REST integration). So my question is; **is LINQ my new Data Access Layer?** Do I need this layer at all anymore? Should my BLL just talk directly to LINQ? Or is this bad practice still? **Edit:** The original question was referring to LINQ to Entities, but there are many interesting answers regarding LINQ to SQL. What are peoples thoughts on both of them? I gather than LINQ to SQL can't really replace a DAL, but could the Entity Framework?"}
{"_id": "163897", "title": "Is there a way to determine if a database has been altered, then to push new data to the Application", "text": "All our (my company) currently applications pull information from that database, is their a way to get the following types of databses to either push data or push an event to allow the application to pull data.   * Access   * SQL   * Oracle   * File systems (Files and folders) The issue today is that most of our application spend a large amount of time constantly looking at databases and file system checking to see if data has changed . It would be better for the database to inform the application when data has changed. Are there tools within Visual studio to allow this or are there tools within the database / filesystem to do this? All ready asked this on stack overflow but go no answer. I've been doing some more research but I cant seem to get any further. My manager has asked to investigate it as it would mean our applications are much quicker and efficient."}
{"_id": "163898", "title": "Checking timeouts made more readable", "text": "I have several situations where I need to control timeouts in a technical application. Either in a loop or as a simple check. Of course \u2013 handling this is _really easy_ , but none of these is looking cute. To clarify, here is some C# (Pseudo) code:               private DateTime girlWentIntoBathroom;     girlWentIntoBathroom = DateTime.Now;          do     {       // do something     } while (girlWentIntoBathroom.AddSeconds(10) > DateTime.Now);      or               if (girlWentIntoBathroom.AddSeconds(10) > DateTime.Now)       MessageBox.Show(\"Wait a little longer\");     else       MessageBox.Show(\"Knock louder\");      Now I was inspired by something a saw in Ruby on StackOverflow: Now I\u2019m wondering if this construct can be made more readable using extension methods. My goal is something that can be read like > \u201cIf girlWentIntoBathroom is more than 10 seconds ago\u201d **1st attempt**               if (girlWentIntoBathroom > (10).Seconds().Ago())       MessageBox.Show(\"Wait a little longer\");     else       MessageBox.Show(\"Knock louder\");      So I wrote an extension for integer that converts the integer into a TimeSpan               public static TimeSpan Seconds(this int amount)     {       return new TimeSpan(0, 0, amount);     }      After that, I wrote an extension for TimeSpan like this:               public static DateTime Ago(this TimeSpan diff)     {       return DateTime.Now.Add(-diff);     }      This works fine so far, but has a great disadvantage. **The logic is inverted!** Since girlWentIntoBathroom is a timestamp in the past, the right side of the equation needs to count backwards: impossible. Just inverting the equation is no solution, because it will invert the read sentence as well. **2nd attempt**   So I tried something new:               if (girlWentIntoBathroom.IsMoreThan(10).SecondsAgo())       MessageBox.Show(\"Knock louder\");     else       MessageBox.Show(\"Wait a little longer\");      IsMoreThan() needs to transport the past timestamp as well as the span for the extension SecondsAgo(). It could be:               public static DateWithIntegerSpan IsMoreThan(this DateTime baseTime, int span)     {       return new DateWithIntegerSpan() { Date = baseTime, Span = span };     }      Where DateWithIntegerSpan is simply:               public class DateWithIntegerSpan     {       public DateTime Date {get; set;}       public int Span { get; set; }     }      And SecondsAgo() is               public static bool SecondsAgo(this DateWithIntegerSpan dateAndSpan)     {       return dateAndSpan.Date.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 0, dateAndSpan.Span)) < DateTime.Now;     }      Using this approach, the English sentence matches the expected behavior. But the disadvantage is, that I need a helping class (DateWithIntegerSpan). Has anyone an idea to make checking timeouts look more cute and closer to a readable sentence? Am I a little too insane thinking about something minor like this?"}
{"_id": "193328", "title": "Can a strategy be implemented as a nested member class?", "text": "Is it okay to have a strategy implemented as a non-static inner class or is it considered a bad practice?               public class SomeClass{            private final Strategy strategy;            public void someMethod(){        this.strategy = new Strategy();        //call some strategy method to run an algorithm         strategy.doSomeWork();       }            private class Strategy(){         private doWork(){};       }     }      **P.S** : `Strategy` does need access to the state of the `SomeClass`. So can't make it static.Another option is to have `Strategy` as an _interface_ and then inject a concrete `Strategy` inside the `SomeClass` constructor but at the moment I do not see this particular `Strategy` interface being used by another class. So thought of the first approach. However,if I do take the first approach how would I have my class work seamlessly with multiple strategies?"}
{"_id": "193329", "title": "Should methods always be closed for modification?", "text": "Say I have a method called 'functionA' that is called by a service and carries out a single piece of functionality, it is easy to unit test as it is does one thing only. If a few months later an new requirement comes in that requires another method 'functionB' to be called directly after 'functionA' has executed. What is the better approach to add functionB to my code. to call 'functionB' at the end of the 'functionA' method:               functionA() {         //do something..              functionB();     }          functionB() {         //do somehting...     }      Problem with this is that when I unit test functionA it will call functionB that will also be part of the test (so now it is more of an integration test). Or refactor the code with a new method 'functionX' that calls 'functionA' and then 'functionB'?               functionX() {         functionA();         functionB();     }          functionA() {         //do something..        }          functionB() {         //do somehting...     }      I can unit test both methods individually but now I have changed the API. I see the first approach so much in legacy code, is it best practice to always make methods closed for modification or are there examples when it is OK to use the first approach?"}
{"_id": "193326", "title": "Tracking scientific error when working with floating-point numbers", "text": "**Background** I hate the way .Net/IEEE-754 handles equality of floating-point numbers (FPNs) (i.e. double, float). It requires the programmer to be prescient with respect to the yet-to-be-determined history of the number, as the programmer must choose a 'reasonable' value of epsilon where frequently no such value can be determined (as the programmer cannot determine ahead of time how many operations, hence roundings, the number will be subject to). I would like to create a 'better' FPN within .Net. At creation, one would set its initial scientific error (or accept a default; the default being the minimum). When one performed operations on the FPN, those operations would update the scientific error (to account for the effect of rounding). When testing the equality of two FPNs, one could determine if their ranges overlapped (and even the probability that they are the same number). **Question** The code itself is simple, my questions are:   * How do operations (+ - * / to start with) affect the scientific error of a FPN? Are there formulae for determining this scientific error?   * I understand that an added complication is the uneven distribution of FPNs. This can obviously be accounted for by scaling the error in proportion to the inherent scientific error of the result; but is there a formula for determining the inherent scientific error present in a given FPN?"}
{"_id": "134746", "title": "What's the difference between simulation and emulation", "text": "I frequently see _Simulation_ and _Emulation_ in computer science. These two terms seem synonymous. Is there any difference between _Simulation_ and _Emulation_?"}
{"_id": "161003", "title": "How to fix a project with basically no structure?", "text": "I've been working on a software project mostly solo for over 5 years. It was a mess to begin with (I am the third or fourth developer to be working on it), and although it's less of a mess now it is still incredibly disorganized. The rate of progress in getting it under control is glacial and I'm starting to feel despondent over the state that it's in. How do I really start fixing it? Project specifics: It is a sales program written almost entirely in Visual Basic Classic (VB6) with a MySQL back end and a reporting engine written in C#. The C# reporting module is a joy to work on, it was only just written in the past couple years and before that all reports were done in Crystal Reports 9 (yes, we still have some reports that rely on it). The actual program itself, however, is a complete disaster. There are not quite 90k LOC total, and about 10k lines of comments (mostly not documentation, but old code that's been commented out). 158 form files, and 80 module files. I have no idea how many of those are actually used, because some features of the program are simply deprecated and (uh, sometimes) noted as such without having the associated code removed from the program. I would guess that only 50% of the code is in actual productive use. I am afraid of touching a lot of the code just because I am not sure if I'm breaking something that one obscure client relies on, it's happened on more occasions than I can count. It's like there are landmines strewn throughout the code. There is not really any structure to the project. It is not object oriented except in the few places I have had the patience to reform so far. If you need to get data on a form, you instantiate a database object, declare your query right there in the function, execute it and do what you will with the dataset. When I began working on the project there was no source control in use. I tried to encourage the other people I was working on to use it, but I was the new guy and my attempts to get people to use subversion all but failed. The company's lead developer finally caught a mercurial bug in the last couple years and he's made sure that all developers do use source control on all projects now, so at least that's some progress. I think if I was able to work on reforming the project full time I would be able to make decent progress and maybe even have an estimate for how long it would take me to fully makeover the project, but it is in active use and I am constantly being asked to put out fires, fix bugs, add features, etc. etc. So how do I start to really fix this project? Try to tool VB6 with another language? Try and rewrite the program in my spare time? Or is this completely hopeless? **Update** After this post I went back to the project with renewed zeal, but fell back into hopelessness within a few months after seeing such a slow rate of progress. I then repeated this cycle 2 or 3 more times over the next year or so. I have since moved on to a different job. Although after so many years of vb6, and only peripheral experience with other technologies the search was difficult and I faced many rejections along the way (around a dozen interviews over the course of a year). My advice to others in this situation is to consider leaving for this factor alone. Consider the damage you can do to your career by staying in a dead end position such as this."}
{"_id": "7566", "title": "Is it bad etiquette to ask a potential employer how they score on the Joel Test?", "text": "Developer interviews are different than most other places, because not only do you worry about the people you work with, benefits, job description, etc., you also have EXTRA to worry about after getting the job. Writing two application with exact requirements can be vastly different if you're working in a loud vs quiet environment, using VS2003/.NET 2.0 vs VS210/.NET 4.0., using SVN vs VSS. Is it ok to give the potential employer the straight-up Joel Test? I try to ask as many questions to get the type of environment I will be working in, which is extremely important from my perspective, but what's the best way to cut to the chase and just ask the tough questions (like they ask you during the same interview). NOTE: By the \"Joel Test\" I mean a specific list of things that are deal breakers that are important to you (not necessarily Joel), but you may not have time to get out using the traditional casual \"conversational\" way of asking them, so you decide to either email or schedule another meeting, or ask other people, etc."}
{"_id": "229390", "title": "Long vs short scripts? Big vs small scripts?", "text": "As a programmer, I have always wondered whether it is preferable to write **(a)** short modular functions that are each stored in their own script (i.e., file) or **(b)** long comprehensive scripts that contain all of their relevant functions. For example, if I code a data analysis stream that includes a variety of operations performed on the same data (e.g., data cleaning, feature selection, clustering, supervised learning, etc.), should I write a single file even if it runs for hundreds of lines? I have heard many opinions on the matter and I wonder what this community thinks. I understand that the answer may depend on the type of project, but, if this is the case, then it would be great to hear your thoughts on what factors one should consider in deciding between options **(a)** and **(b)**. I am currently coding in Python and I've wondered whether Python programmers have a preference to multiple functions in the same file or one file per function, but I imagine that this question is broader and applies to all programming languages."}
{"_id": "7859", "title": "Is there a canonical book on Agile?", "text": "As a solo developer, I think I'm using an Agile-like process, but I'd like to compare what I'm doing to real Agile and see if I can improve my own process. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, methodologies, and other helpful information on Agile? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "83507", "title": "Learning Agile & Scrum", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on Agile? I'm looking for a good book on learning Agile and Scrum for web application development. Can anyone suggest a good resource that guides one from the group up? We want to start implementing this into our business and web application development cycles."}
{"_id": "135175", "title": "Is there a book I can read to get up to speed with Agile development?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical book on Agile? I\u2019ve read the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, and the twelve principles behind it. What else can I read to get a reasonably comprehensive overview of what people (and by people, I mean people writing job adverts) specifically mean when they talk about Agile Software Development? I get the sense that there are a few people using the term pretty loosely, so I\u2019d like to have some more concrete ideas in my head to aid discussion (and, ultimately, actually help make software)."}
{"_id": "126731", "title": "What is the recommended way to separate current development from maintenance development in version control software?", "text": "I have some software application managed using Git. I just released a new version 2.x which I plan to maintain on the long term (bug fixes mostly). In the meantime, I would like to start working on version 3.x. What is the recommended way to manage this? Should I create a branch for version 2.x and have the 3.x development on the master? or the other way?"}
{"_id": "110160", "title": "Using vim: Is there a way to automatically un-tab everything in your source file by using a command?", "text": "And then to automatically re-indent after that? (I tried copying code from one terminal screen to the other, but the tabulation got all messed up) I didn't know what to call this functionality, so it was hard for me to find it on google (which generally returned things related to how to set tab size, which wasn't what I was looking for unfortunately.) Thanks"}
{"_id": "110167", "title": "Is there a general rule for when you should use 'make clean' instead of just 'make'?", "text": "I am writing a multiple-filed program right now, and apparently running only 'make' (as one would intuitively think needs to be done in most situations) for some reason causes my program to fail. I guess I can provide more detail of the problem, but the important thing is that it does run when using 'make clean'. So I was wondering if anyone knew the general rule of thumb for running 'make clean' instead of just 'make'"}
{"_id": "117199", "title": "Count a row VS Save the Row count after each update", "text": "I want to know whether saving row count in a table is better than counting it each time of the proccess. Quick Example : A visitor goes to Group Clan, the page displays clan information and Members who have joined the group,Should the page look for all the users who joined the clan and count them, or just display the number of members already saved in table ? I think the first one is not possible to get manipulated with but IT MIGHT cost performance Your Ideas ?"}
{"_id": "155680", "title": "Graphics Library", "text": "I would like to know about high end graphics library in C and Fortran. I have heard about OpenGl and Direct X. But I find that OpenGL is practically low end library. Is Direct X is in C too? I really need to have a very high end graphical library in C. Thanks in advance. Regards, hena"}
{"_id": "117192", "title": "How long would it take for someone completely new to programming to get enough knowledge to make it to the job market as a junior programmer?(C#)", "text": "I just want to know how long would it take me to become proficient enough (in let's say C#) in order to be able to get into the job market as a junior/entry level programmer. I have read all those articles and discussions about \"how long would it take\" but the answers always seem to be like \"...it will take you two weeks to know the syntax, but it will take you 10 years to become a good programmer...\" or \"...the same time that it would take you to learn German...\". Nevertheless, there is a continuum between the two extremes. I know that I'm not going to produce great code in a few months, I just want to know how long would it take me to write code \"good enough\" to be considered \"hirable\". I know that the answer depends on many factors, so I will be as specific as possible describing my situation: -I'm in my late 20's. -Haven't made it in programming beyond creating objects in C#. -Have some friends (5) who studied CS and are working as programmers. A couple of them are able to help me through my learning process though no full time. -Very underdeveloped mathematics skills. Never made it beyond very basic algebra, not because I didn't understand it, but rather because I studied something unrelated to mathematics. -Fast learner. I made it through a Basic Algebra book in less than two weeks and scored A in a test after more than 7 years without even opening an arithmetic book. I don't know the multiplication table, but I get by because I know in principle what multiplication is. If you ask me how much is 8*8 my brain goes like: it is 80-(2*8)... yeah, I'm at that level... -My IQ is consistently over 135 in standard tests.(to maple_shaft: yes, standardized tests, like the ones to complete for MENSA; anyway I'm not that proud about it at all since EQ is where the real deal is. I just brought it up because I know that in the field of programming it is a good trait to have.) -Very high capacity of abstraction and generalization. -I won't be able to study full time. I could study for an average of 1.5hrs on work days and 6hrs on days off. If you read this far maybe you would also be so kind to respond as concisely as possible to these two questions: A. Is it realistic for someone with no college education to make it to high levels in the industry? B. How would you describe the relation between the daily work of an **_application developer in an average project of an average company_** and **_mathematics_** (mainly: calculus, trigonometry, etc)? Physics <\\---> Mathematics (Strong Correlation. All great physicists are great mathematicians... there is no way around it). Architecture <\\---> Civil Engineering (Somehow Correlated, but you can earn your bread with only some general concepts of it). General Mechanic <\\---> Engineering (I'm just going to use the tools that you created to fix what you created, but how I do it is another thing). Thank you very much in advance for your replies. Please, please, no offensive or repetitive answers; I would appreciate serious answers. Thank you for your time."}
{"_id": "19320", "title": "What are some current opinions on WPF?", "text": "We are trying to make a decision about if we should create a program in WPF w/ a WCF server, and I was wondering what the current opinions are of WPF. I was looking around online but most of the arguments I saw for/against WPF were dated a year or two ago, and about WPF3.5. I was wondering if those opinions have changed in the past year or two with the release of WPF4.0. Some notes.... The program we are making is for use by a single-company in a controlled enviornment. With the exception of one or two Vista laptops, most users are on Terminal Servers or WindowsXP. It is not media-heavy and doesn't need a pretty UI (although it won't hurt). It needs to be extensible and allow for easy additions later on. Security and Performance are our key concerns. **EDIT** Primary concern about WPF is Support (MS and community), memory/cpu usage on terminal servers, and finding people to work on the project now and maintain it in the future. Some smaller things of concern are lack of library controls, development time, and learning curve. The primary alternative we were considering is ASP.Net/jQuery."}
{"_id": "19326", "title": "Is it possible to adopt agile methodologies for outsourced projects?", "text": "I've had experience as a developer or team lead on several projects that have been outsourced and have seen less than stellar results in all cases. Most of these projects have employed a waterfall philosophy, with large kickoff meetings, months-long requirements gathering phases, plenty of conference calls, and innumerable emails. One thing that's always frustrated me is an absence of early access to the code. The contracts are setup in a way where the offshore team is responsible for meeting functional requirements, which is what the executives are concerned with. This means, however, that architecture decisions, implementation details, pattern usage, and things that concern other developers are so deeply settled by the time the product is delivered that we're unable to offer feedback or request any real changes. Has anybody here managed an offshore project that hasn't experienced these problems? Specifically, I'm wondering if there's any way to structure the contracts to compel offshore teams to work in shorter cycles and re-factor or re-design based on feedback from on-shore developers. I haven't had too much experience with agile methodologies (I agree with the general principles, but work in a conservative shop that has it's entrenched methodologies), but wonder whether these could somehow be adapted to help manage offshore development. Overall, I'm looking to minimize the surprises and maintenance nightmares that inevitably arise when a development team is left to work in isolation for months at a time."}
{"_id": "158029", "title": "Open Source Project: Company to register copyright", "text": "I'm releasing an open source project. I want to make it as inclusive as possible for any community that might embrace it. Specifically, I don't want the code copyrighted in my name when an entire community might work on it; that approach seems self-centred and alienating. My immediate thought to avoid this issue is to assign the copyright to a company rather than myself. How do I do this? Do I have to register a corporation? Can I just give the name of a group and call that a company? What legal hurdles are there? I honestly have no idea when it comes to this sort of thing. (I'm in Canada and want to use the GPL, if that helps.)"}
{"_id": "88672", "title": "C++ track or Java track in college?", "text": "I'm starting some CS classes at a community college and they have two tracks. Either you take three courses in C++ or three courses in Java. Both cover the same fundamental material e.g. data structures, algorithms etc. Which would you recommend considering that I know python and may be consider doing a masters in CS some time down the road....my undergrad degree is in something else. And advice would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "120771", "title": "Where can I find inspiration for a good user interface?", "text": "I've got a mental block as far as desigining the main screen interface for a desktop application that I'm currently upgrading. When I first developed this program the screen resolution was 640 X 480. Today there are multiple screen resolutions out there. Where can I find ideas for a good main screen layout for a desktop application?"}
{"_id": "120772", "title": "What are functional-programming ways of implementing Conway's Game of Life", "text": "I recently implemented for fun Conway's Game of Life in Javascript (actually coffeescript but same thing). Since javascript can be used as a functional language I was trying to stay to that end of the spectrum. I was not happy with my results. I am a fairly good OO programmer and my solution smacked of same-old-same-old. So long question short: what is the (pseudocode) functional style of doing it? Here is Pseudocode for my attempt:               class Node       update: (board) ->         get number_of_alive_neighbors from board         get this_is_alive from board         if this_is_alive and number_of_alive_neighbors < 2 then die         if this_is_alive and number_of_alive_neighbors > 3 then die         if not this_is_alive and number_of_alive_neighbors == 3 then alive          class NodeLocations       at: (x, y) -> return node value at x,y       of: (node) -> return x,y of node          class Board       getNeighbors: (node) ->         use node_locations to check 8 neighbors         around node and return count          nodes = for 1..100 new Node     state = new NodeState(nodes)     locations = new NodeLocations(nodes)     board = new Board(locations, state)          executeRound:       state = clone state       accumulated_changes = for n in nodes n.update(board)       apply accumulated_changes to state       board = new Board(locations, state)"}
{"_id": "120776", "title": "Showing real time data using WCF call (silverlight)", "text": "Currently I have a WCF method which brings back all the data from the db and binds it to a grid, but I would like to call this method regularly to get the updated data back each time, to show the user real time data, what is the best way to go about this? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "153904", "title": "What are some good, simple examples for queues?", "text": "I'm teaching **CS2** (`Java and data structures`), and am having some difficulty coming up with good examples to use when teaching queues. The two major applications I use them for are `multithreaded` message passing (but MT programming is out of scope for the course), and `BFS-style algorithms` (and I won't be covering graphs until later in the term). I also want to avoid contrived examples. Most things that I think of, if I were actually going to solve them in a single-threaded fashion I would just use a list rather than a queue. I tend to only use queues when processing and discovery are interleaved (e.g. search), or in other special cases like length-limited buffers (e.g. maintaining last _N_ items). To the extent practical, I am trying to teach my students good ways to actually do things in real programs, not just toys to show off a feature. Any suggestions of good, simple algorithms or applications of queues that I can use as examples but that require a minimum of other prior knowledge?"}
{"_id": "64806", "title": "is it Ok to have a time for familialization of technology and tools once a project starts", "text": "I have been in several software projects but not as a leader. In all the projects we all knew the tools and languages etc. before the project started. I am wondering if it is ok or is it a good practice to have a time for developers to familiarize themselves with tools and technologies after project kicks off (eg. After requirements specification)?"}
{"_id": "64804", "title": "Is there a way to 'package' up my Visual Studio installation so I can easily deploy it on other machines?", "text": "I have a number of machines running VS, and each has a slightly different config - display styles, installed plugins, source control extensions, project templates, service packs and so on. Not only is this annoying when moving from machine to machine but also I have no real way of wiping an install and starting again. I know I _could_ use a virtual machine but I really don't like the added overhead of VMs. What I'm looking for is a way of rolling up a Visual Studio install, with all the extra plugins into an installable package so I can just define it once and deploy it everywhere. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "64802", "title": "Should the provider of an interface also provide a mock implementation for testing?", "text": "We wasted a lot of time on our last integration test on a bug that I think should have been found in unit testing. The problem was that an interface / service we called behaved different than we expected and the unit test didn't find this problem because we mocked that interface for the unit test and our mock was of course based on our mistaken interpretation of what the interface would do. Now I could be a bit angry at our dear coworker who provided the interface, because their description / specification of it (a terse JavaDoc comment) was ambiguous and contributed to our misunderstanding. On the other hand, I thought that the problem could have been avoided if those same coworkers had provided a mock implementation of their interface which we could call in our unit testing. Then the bug would have shown up much earlier and a lot of cursing could have been avoided. Now, what's the best practice in organizing the creation of mock objects among teams who provide and use shared interfaces? What are your experiences?"}
{"_id": "153903", "title": "Move from JSON to Protobuf. Is it worth it?", "text": "We have REST webservices that can serve XML or JSON (WCF). I'm toying with idea of implementing Protobufs. Why? PROS   1. Less load on servers.   2. Smaller message size - less traffic.   3. It is easier to switch now than later. CONS   1. Need to be implemented   2. Going to be harder to troubleshoot/sniff messages for debugging.    3. I can enable GZip on server and JSON will consume as much traffic What is your suggestion and/or experience on this?"}
{"_id": "96290", "title": "Effective Code Review Process for software maintenance ", "text": "I have been working with a code being maintained for years. We're using clear- case as version control. To submit the code for review and get the code count (for project metrics) are usually painful. What's the best way to conduct code review for maintenance software? How effective we can share the code for peer review (I understand it's tightly coupled with the version controls we're using). Any known standards or best practices? How can I get metrics like code count etc.?"}
{"_id": "82969", "title": "How to restrict viral file sharing", "text": "So I have a website I would like to make that would essentially be selling files. For the sake of discussion let's say that these files are like the raw text of a book. If somebody buys a file from my site, there really isn't anything preventing them from sharing that unlimited amounts of times with their neighbor or whatever. I know that the music industry has suffered from this type of thing for years, so there may not be an easy solution, but what could I do to try and limit the use of that text file to just one person? Is there any type of encryption or password verification that would help me solve this problem? Or do I just have to cope with the fact that it's 2010 and nobody will pay for anything they can find for free on the web?"}
{"_id": "155539", "title": "I need an approach to the problem of preventing inserting duplicate records into the database", "text": "A webservice that I call returns a list of data. The data from the webservice is updated periodically, so a call to the webservice done in one hour could return the same data as a call done in an hour. Also, the data is returned based on a start and end date. We have multiple users that can run the webservice search, and duplicate data is most likely to be returned (especially for historical data). However I don't want to insert this duplicate data in the database. I've created a db table in which the data is stored (most important columns are)               Id int autoincrement PK       Date date not null        --The date to which the data set belongs.       LastUpdate date not null  --The date the data set was last updated.       UserName varchar(50)      --The name of the user doing the search.      I use sql server 2008 express with c# 4.0 and visual studio 2010. Entity Framework is used as the ORM. If stored procedures could be avoided in the proposed solution, then that will be a plus. Another way of looking interpreting what I'm asking a solution for is as follows: I have a million unique records in my table. A user does a new search. The search results from the user contains around 300k records of the data that is already in the db. An efficient solution to finding and inserting only the unique records is needed. A combination of the `Date`, `LastUpdate` and `UserName` makes a record unique."}
{"_id": "46180", "title": "Java Developers Coding CSS/HTML/JQuery?", "text": "Are Java Developers better equipped to write front end stuff? Should Java Developers be coding HTML, CSS & JavaScript? What do people follow in your companies? What are some suggestions if they have too?"}
{"_id": "82961", "title": "Peer review for UI Development", "text": "I am the only front-end developer in a team composed for 3 .Net devs, 1 QA and 1 PM. Although we have another team from another office halfway around the world, to whom would i do code review with?   * me + front end developer from another office.   * me + one of the .net developers in local office.   * other choices/course of action to take? this in assumption that:   * .net developers have minimal experience in css and table-based layouts and as well as javascript;   * me and the ui dev's time difference is that im 8 hours ahead of him.   * sometimes most front-end and backend's mind doesnt jive."}
{"_id": "82963", "title": "Mercurial branch or rebase?", "text": "After using mercurial daily for over a year, we are about to find a better workflow for our DVCS. Inspired by a successful Git branching model we are about to move away from our \"push daily work into master repo and fork off release branches at regular intervals\" workflow into \"work on separate feature branches and merge finished features back into master\". Anyway, the problem I have had with branching and mergeing in mercurial (branch using clone) is the actual merge process. I have no problem with merges generating additional changesets, the problem I have is that it usually generates huge changesets that contains more changes than the original changeset+merges, The merge changeset also contains changesets from other heads as well. So I have recently realised that when we do pull from master repo,then update/merge and finally push, we create these unnecesary large changesets. What we should do is rebase instead of pull, update/merge. Now rebase was originally an extension to mercurial, it is still an extension but is nowadays shipped together with the mercurial distribution. When following other threads, especially those comparing git with mercurial, it seems like one of the largest difference between the two is the fact that git does not support branches, but has native support for rebase. Mercurial has no native suppport for rebase but support branches. So my question then, if we should adopt to a more flexible workflow using feature branches, we must have a solid branch/merge workflow that does not cause havoc in the master branch. The master branch should be **peach** containing only changesets containing a single feature without any extra changesets for any merge operations carried out. Now can that be done in mercurial without rebase support? As a separate issue, I would like some input on how to aggregate multiple changesets in a feature branch into one single changeset when pushing into the main branch. I have read A Guide to Branching in Mercurial but it never mentions the pros or cons regarding ease of mergeing, or more specifically, how the results of the merge is commited into the master branch."}
{"_id": "119568", "title": "Why decouple view and controller (web)?", "text": "Why can't we put them in the same page, like each action paired up with its view? Not using code island, but controller code at top then view code at bottom? What are the problems with this approach? By MVC, I am referring to frameworks such as ASP.NET MVC and Ruby on Rails, and I am under the impression that the V and C are actually the UI layer."}
{"_id": "116576", "title": "How can I improve my error checking and handling?", "text": "Lately I have been struggling to understand what the right amount of checking is and what the proper methods are. I have a few questions regarding this: What is the proper way to check for errors (bad input, bad states, etc)? Is it better to explicitly check for errors, or use functions like asserts which can be optimized out of your final code? I feel like explicitly checking clutters a program with a lot of extra code which shouldn't be executed in most situations anyway-- and not to mention most errors end up with an abort/exit failure. Why clutter a function with explicit checks just to abort? I have looked for asserts versus explicit checking of errors and found little to truly explain when to do either. Most say 'use asserts to check for logic errors and use explicit checks to check for other failures.' This doesn't seem to get us very far though. Would we say this is feasible:               Malloc returning null, check explictly     API user inserting odd input for functions, use asserts      Would this make me any better at error checking? What else can I do? I really want to improve and write better, 'professional' code."}
{"_id": "116575", "title": "iOS Resources/Luminaries?", "text": "In the .NET world, I was able to find several industry figures or luminaries' blogs to read or to follow on twitter to learn about features and trends. Moving into the iOS realm, I'm kind of surprised how difficult it has been to find analogous resources. What resources should I be reading/following/osmosing to get better integrated into the iOS community?"}
{"_id": "116572", "title": "Implementing Asynchronous Insert / Update for a web application", "text": "I am in the process of implementing a small web application using memcached for caching objects and sql server for database persistence. In all the projects I have done before I have done inserts/updates in the web thread itself. In this project I want to implement asynchronous inserts and updates. I will use memcached http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memcached to capture changes and an external service (windows service) to persist the changes in db. I understand premature performance tuning is evil but this is just a test project to learn memcached. Has anybody done this before. What are the disadvantages of using this ?"}
{"_id": "119561", "title": "Do you start writing GUI class first or reverse?", "text": "I want to write my first Java program, for example Phonebook, and I wonder what to do first. My question is should I write GUI classes first or util classes first? I am database developer and want to know best practice in building program."}
{"_id": "119562", "title": "Does Java have automatic memory management?", "text": "I have started learning about C# and I come to what is called 'Automatic memory management' or 'Garbage collectors' and I'm wondering if Java contains something like this as well? and if it does, does it do that as effective as C# when it comes to windows desktop application and web applications?"}
{"_id": "199009", "title": "Char and unsigned char", "text": "Where is unsigned char used in C ( please tell about some real-world examples )? Why would we need both char and unsigned char? Char ranges from -127 to 128 ( 8-bit integer ) Unsigned Char ranges from 0 to 255 ( 8-bit integer ) If the purpose is to store ASCII, why would we need both? Another question. Consider this:               char a = 127;     unsigned char b = 255;      When I print it using std::cout. It gives me different characters. Can you explain why? ( I'm using Microsoft vs11 compiler )"}
{"_id": "192055", "title": "For a web-application, should I programmatically create the database tables or provide a schema file and instructions?", "text": "The few LAMP web applications I have installed require me to create the necessary database tables myself, with a schema file, instead of doing it automatically with a script or setup page. Is this a normal and accepted practice? In my own hobby projects I find it much easier and hassle free to just create the tables in code. As the programmer I can make sure it's done correctly, and as the user I don't care - just make it work! However, I have very limited knowledge and experience in the world of web applications and database management, so I don't know the pros and cons of either approach. If I were to make my LAMP web applications available for download and installation by others, should I continue to do table creation in code or follow the example of the other applications I have installed, and just provide a schema file with installation instructions?"}
{"_id": "154483", "title": "Custom graph comparison?", "text": "I'm trying to compare two graphs using hash value ( i.e, at the time of comparison, try to avoid traversing the graph ) Is there a way to make a function such that the hash values compared can also lead to determining at which height the graphs differ? The comparisons between two graphs are to be made by comparing children at a certain level. One way to compare the graphs is have a final hash value for the root node and compare them, but that wouldn't directly reflect at which level the graphs differ, since their immediate children might be the same ( or any other case )."}
{"_id": "69787", "title": "How do I become a real expert?", "text": "Being a freelancer, I don't have a luxury of corporate training and a circle of professional employees. Even though I have been programming for the last few years and developed professional projects, but at times I find myself in a place where there is no help. Not even StackOverflow and other related sites can help. Take for instance, Crystal Reports. I am using it for the last few years in my projects. I learned it all by myself, but still I struggle with many issues. I am still not able to improve the performance of reports, not able to design fast and still I am able to use only 30% of the Crystal Report's power. I reside in a city where I can't find freelancers like New York or San Francisco, to hire them for learning. A handful of experts available online are not in my budget. I face the same problem with C# and other technologies. At StackOverflow, you can't keep an expert engaged. After two-or-three comments, he will loose focus of your question and jump to a new question out there. Few people suggested me to look into code written by others to learn fast. But again, how to get my queries answered. There are some aspects where you just can't write it down. You need personal assistance. I think freelancers in US have better choices and flexibility as compared to other countries."}
{"_id": "187512", "title": "Is a merging strategy like Git Flow really an anti-pattern?", "text": "My company is using Git, and is using a peculiar branching scheme - work is done in master, and branches are reserved for releases. This works fine, so long as all of the work done in an iteration makes it into the branch, but if a critical production issue comes up, we have to ensure that the work somehow makes it into both branches. Lately, we've been having some \"fun\" with those branches. It's been an administrative headache, ensuring that all of the work makes it into every branch, and some bugs which have been fixed on one branch don't make it into master until someone points it out, which is concerning. I came across Git Flow a while back, and I feel that it would be a solution to our problem - code not percolating all the way to the release, or all the way back down. The only catch is that my lead stated that this sort of development was an anti-pattern - developing furiously for two weeks, then spending three to resolve the merge conflicts. I'm not entirely sure I agree, and since I brought it up, work has resumed like normal. Only recently have we had some major pain points with this. I'd like to know - why would this sort of development scheme be seen as an anti-pattern? _Is_ it really an anti-pattern?"}
{"_id": "51926", "title": "TekPub Feedback", "text": "Following on from a previous thread that had a link to TekPub, I have just had a quick look and I think it looks pretty impressive. Are any of you guys subscribers and if so would you recommend it? I am mainly interested in general software design and, as a language, C# and it's features. Is there much content posted on a regular basis along these lines to warrant the outlay? Thanks."}
{"_id": "16117", "title": "Does \"don't reinvent the wheel\" ignore the limits of human memory?", "text": "One thing working in Haskell and F# has taught me is that someone in a university smarter than me has probably already found an abstraction for what I'm doing. Likewise in C# and object-oriented programming, there's probably a library for \"it\", whatever it is that I'm doing. There's such an emphasis on reusing abstractions in programming that I often feel a dilemma between: 1) just coding something short and dirty myself or 2) spending the same time to find someone else's more robust library/solution and just using that. Like recently one of the coders here wrote up a (de)serializer for CSV files, and I couldn't help but think that something like that is probably very easy to find online, if it doesn't already come with the .NET standard APIs. I don't blame him though, several times working in .NET I've patched together a solution based on what I know, only to realize that there was some method call or object or something _,often in the same library,_ that did what I wanted and I just didn't know about it. Is this just a sign of inexperience, or is there always an element of trade- off between writing new and reusing old? What I hate the most is when I run across a solution that I already knew about and forgot. I feel like one person just isn't capable of digesting the sheer quantities of code that comes prepackaged with most languages these days."}
{"_id": "233211", "title": "What should I do with too much interfaces needed for a dialog", "text": "Let me start by doing a small summary of the changes we did in our code in the last year. We have a software (VERY big) that is used to visualize multiples underground networks, enter data in the entities in the network and create simulation in this network. In the 20 years of development of this application (in MFC C++), multiple people have worked on it, lots of patch have been done and it's in constant developpement. Over the year, a monster class has been created. The class is called \"CNetwork\" and each network is a subclass of it. To illustrate this moment in the code history, the prototype of a typical dialog was this:               public SuperNiceDialog(int nID, CNetwork* pNetwork);      After a course on unit testing, it was obvious for me that we needed to create interface to make everything more testable. Since most of our \"functionnality\" were in the network,CNetwork was implementing a lot of them and now when we need to call the same dialog, it looks like this:               public SuperNiceDialog(int nID, ITranslateNetwork* pTranslate,                             IUnitManager* pUnitManager,                             ICommonVectorProviderAQ* pCommonVectorProviderAQ,                             INetworkInfo* pNetworkInfo,                             IDatabaseManager* pDatabaseManager,                             ISimulation* pSimulation,                             INetworkAutonumerotation* pNetworkAutonumerotation,                             ISpreadsheetInfoProvider* pChiffrierInfoProvider,                             IPolygonManager* pPolygonManager,                             ISetterValidation* pSetterValidation)      I will not unit test a dialog but a lot of class called inside this dialog could be tested but for most of them, I must passe a lot of interface to get the work done. And I can't juste pass the network because some of the interface are removed from CNetwork to slowly remove functionnality from a single class. So we think about it and one of the ideas that we had was to create a \"package\" object which could be a simple structure containing pointers to interfaces and getter to get access to these pointers (Like a Facade object). For example My dialog would be called like this               public SuperNiceDialog(int nID, CDialogInterfacePackage* pPackage)      And in the code, I would use it like that               m_pPackage->GetITranslation()->Translate(123456);      Since most of the Dialog needs the same interface, we could put 10 interfaces in it and just pass this to the dialog. We could create \"interface package\" for various module for example for simulation, spreadsheet, etc.. One part of me think it's a good idea but another part is telling me that I will be slowly creating a new \"CNetwork\" in some kind of way... Any idea about this problem of having too much interfaces? Is this a good approach? Thanks"}
{"_id": "201510", "title": "Is there a setting to enable anti forgery globally in ASP.NET MVC, and if not, why?", "text": "The tutorials I've read tell you to use [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] attributes and `<%= Html.AntiForgeryToken() %>` in your code. I was wondering why this isn't a built-in automatic setting or at least a global toggle in the web.config. Perhaps it is, and I haven't realised, but I am doing it by hand and I can't help but wonder if there is a good reason for not handling it automatically behind the scenes. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "201516", "title": "Representational Equality versus Value Equality", "text": "I am coding a system where I have objects which represent a set of resources. These resources are identifiable (they have an ID). There can only be one resource with the same ID, and so multiple objects with the same ID really should have the same values.   My problem is with the **equality** concept in this case. Should it be based on the ID or on the values alone? Is object A = object B because they have the same ID **OR** should object A == object B because their fields are the same. One possibility I was thinking of was to have the ID-based comparison be \"equals\" and the field-based comparison be \"equivalent\". Alternatively I could have it so the field-based comparison was \"equals\" and the ID based comparison was \"representSameObject\" (or something). Just a pseudo-code example:               class A {        String uuid;        int field1;        double field2;        List<String> listField;             @Override        public boolean equals(Object other) {            return uuid.equals(other.uuid);        }             public boolean equivalent( other ) {            if (this == other) {                return true;            }            if (null == other) {                return false;            }            if (other.getClass() != this.getClass()) {                return false;            }                 A rhs = (A) other;            return new EqualsBuilder().append(field1, rhs.field1).append(field2, rhs.field2).append(listField, other.listField).isEquals();        }     }      In the end this may come down to a personal preference coupled with system requirements, but I am very interested to learn how others have approached this concept. It has been annoying the heck our of me since I started on this project! If it makes a difference I am programming at the minute in Java. I don't mind where the answer comes from though as this is obviously a conceptual issue."}
{"_id": "247202", "title": "PHP4 constructor does not work with namespaces", "text": "Here's a scenario: whenever accessing class using namespaces in php, it doesn't launch the standard constructor, but only the 'magic' method. What's wrong here and what can be fixed? **hierarchy**                test.php      a      +-foo.php      **test.php**               <?php          spl_autoload_register();     spl_autoload_extensions(\".php\");          new a\\Foo();      **foo.php**               namespace a;          class Foo{      /* //if this ges added the __construct() is called         public function __construct(){             echo \"called magic constructor\";         }       */              public function Foo(){              echo \"called standard constructor\";          }     }      Launching test.php doesn't lounches the Foo constructor method, but only the __construct method if present."}
{"_id": "215395", "title": "Data Structure for Small Number of Agents in a Relatively Big 2D World", "text": "I'm working on a project where we will implement a kind of world simulation where there is a square 2D world. Agents live on this world and make decisions like moving or replicating themselves based on their neighbor cells(world=grid) and some extra parameters(which are not based on the state of the world). I'm looking for a data structure to implement such a project. My concerns are : I will implement this 3 times: sequential, using OpenMP, using MPI. So if I can use the same structure that will be quite good. The first thing comes up is keeping a 2D array for the world and storing agent references in it. And simulate the world for each time slice by checking every cell in each iteration and further processing if an agents is found in the cell. The downside is what if I have 1000x1000 world and only 5 agents in it. It will be an overkill for both sequential and parallel versions to check each cell and look for possible agents in them. I can use quadtree and store agents in it, but then how can I get the information about neighbor cells then? Please let me know if I should elaborate more."}
{"_id": "120193", "title": "Use of Service Bus in a Pub-Sub Engine", "text": "In one of our projects, we've built a Publisher - Subscriber Engine on Oracle Service Bus. The functionality being a series of events are published and subscribers (JMS queues) receive these whenever a new event is published. We are facing some technical issues now, performance-wise and hence an architectural review is underway. Now for my questions: Architecturally the ESB has to publish events into a DB and read from the DB which users wish to be notified, then push the event onto their respective queues. There is a high amount of DB interaction and the question is **whether ESB should be having such high amount of interaction with the DB in the first place**? Or should there have been some alternate component responsible for doing this. Alternately **is there any non-DB approach in which we can store the events and subscribers**? Where else can this application data be held within the ESB context?"}
{"_id": "229343", "title": "Can dyslexics be good at programming?", "text": "I am a big picture thinker (visual spatial) and enjoy abstract maths. However I struggle with sequential tasks and am struggling with programming. My bad working memory isn't helping either. I heard that good picture thinkers are good at programming in general. I just cannot figure out how to start writing a code etc. I am extremely frustrated. Have you seen any visual spatial person who are bad at programming? Or is it just me? I feel very devastated and feel like I don't fit in anywhere. Any tips on how I can improve? Or does my brain just not work in a logical way? My brain is always jumbled up. If you are a programmer and are dyslexic: What are your weaknesses caused by dyslexia? Are you good at sequential tasks?"}
{"_id": "11667", "title": "What is a proper term to describe a server running source control, bug tracking and CI tools?", "text": "I'm looking for a 'term' that describes holistically the set of various software development tools/services that most developers use on a day to day basis. While each tool by itself has a specific purpose and can be described, is there a plural term when they are grouped together and running as a holistic service. If a person said a server was a production test box, I'd expect it to be running the application that company are writing. If a person said box A is the office ware server, I'd know to expect email/communication related services."}
{"_id": "148282", "title": "C++11 includes std::stoi, why not std::itos?", "text": "I noticed to my glee that C++11 has a std stoX family of functions for easily unpacking ints/floats/longs whatever from strings. I'm surprised however, that the opposite isn't implemented. Why didn't the standards committee include a std::itos family of functions for going from ints/floats/whatever to strings?"}
{"_id": "235311", "title": "Rich domain model and container services", "text": "I have a long experience in programming Java EE projects, but as I noticed most of the job I have done was with `Transaction Script` (anti)pattern. So I want to learn using a rich domain model, but then there is a question, shall Domain Object be depended on container/system services (such a persistence, mail, ...)? I have read this article and I don't agree with it at all!   * How services are initialized and injected into domain entities?   * What about single responsibility paradigm?   * And isn't it against reusablity? I also read Applying UML and Patterns fantastic book, but I don't know why didn't author describe the how shall responsibilities be assigned to entities after defining data access layer (in chapter 38). So what is the best practice about having rich domain model, and do not having dependency on container/system services! * * * An example, consider following scenario in a software:   * There are agents (which work with the system)   * Our agents' business is selling insurance policies.   * Each insurance policy type has a special type of pre-printed card which is given to agents, and agents give them to insureds.   * We need to track each agent's number of available cards.   * So there is a use case, which records how many cards of each type is given to each agent.   * There is a use case, for recording agent's number of damaged unused cards of each type.   * And the cards are used as the agent sells insurance policies. I believe Rich Domain Model suggests that I shall have a method as following in agent class:               class Agent {         int computeRemainigCards(CardType cardType) {}     }      But then Agent shall depend on 3 DAO classes for just one responsibility:   * One for calculating SUM of count of each card type given to an agent.   * One for calculating count of used cards (by selling insurance policies).   * One for calculating SUM of damaged unsold cards. I believe that will make domain entities a mess. So what is the good practice?"}
{"_id": "235312", "title": "Is there a purely SQL alternate to looping?", "text": "Historically, I probably would have written a script (php or something) to loop through all spreadsheet rows and perform some calculations. I'm looking for a pure SQL solution on the presumption that SQL has better options than loops. How should I approach this problem while using a pure SQL approach? * * * **DATA OVERVIEW:**   We have a list (currently in a spreadsheet) of items for which we want to check trending.   Let's pretend that that spreadsheet contains these three items; 111111, 222222, and 888888. In the DB, we have a table of vendors' inventory snapshots. Here's a simplified example:   (see the fiddle here).               CREATE TABLE inventory_snapshots         ([id] int, [vendor_id] int, [item] int, [brand] varchar(1), [inventory_version] int, [quantity] int);          INSERT INTO inventory_snapshots         ([id], [vendor_id], [item], [brand], [inventory_version], [quantity])     VALUES         (1, 111, 111111, 'A', 5, 45),         (2, 111, 111111, 'B', 5, 43),         (3, 111, 222222, 'X', 5, 12),         (4, 222, 111111, 'B', 4, 5),         (5, 222, 888888, 'C', 4, 50),         (6, 222, 111111, 'D', 5, 10),         (7, 222, 888888, 'C', 5, 100),         (8, 111, 111111, 'A', 6, 40),         (9, 111, 222222, 'X', 6, 10);      Notice that a vendor can have multiple rows of an item in a given inventory version because of brand differences. **GOAL:**   Our goal is to see the trending over all vendors.   That means comparing a list (currently in spreadsheet form) of items against the DB to retrieve:   * item number   * starting qty (sum of qty's from the MIN version number for each   * vendor, items grouped by vendor_id,inventory_version) total increases (sum of each vendors version-over-version increases in qty) total   * increases (sum of each vendors version-over-version increases in qty)   * ending qty (sum of qty's from the MAX version number for each vendor, items grouped by vendor_id,inventory_version) For another example, see the comment in the fiddle. **SUMMARY:** It sounds like SQL Server _can_ do some looping, but that it's impractical. What's a better way to approach this?"}
{"_id": "235313", "title": "UML class diagram notations: Differences between Association, Aggregation and Composition", "text": "I'm confused about some of the notations of UML class diagrams. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bfBSY.png) Pretty sure I know what **Association** means. Any relationship between instances of two classes, where an instance of one class needs to know about an instance of the second class in order to perform it's work - is an Association relationship. An Association often means class A has a reference (field) to an instance of class B. However, I'm having trouble understanding what the **Aggregation** and **Composition** arrows mean. Part of my confusion was caused by encountering different definitions of these notations. Two definitions of the **Aggregation** notation: **Definition 1:** An Aggregation notation between two classes is suitable whenever an instance of class A **holds a collection** of instances of class B (e.g. a List, Array, whatever). **Definition 2:** An Aggregation link between two classes is suitable if an instance of class A holds a reference to an instance of class B, **and the B instance is dependent on the lifecycle of the A instance.** Meaning: When the instance of class A get's deleted, so will the instance of class B. The instance of class B is **entirely contained** by the instance of class A, as opposed to the instance of class A simply owning a reference to the instance of class B (which is regular Association). Regarding what the Composition notation means and how it differs from the Aggregation notation, I'm not sure. Please clarify the definitions and help me understand. Concrete examples would be welcome."}
{"_id": "148289", "title": "Should I use the new C++11 'auto' feature, especially in loops?", "text": "What are the pros/cons to using the auto keyword, especially in for loops?               for(std::vector<T>::iterator it = x.begin(); it != x.end(); i++)     {        it->something();     }          for(std::map<T>::iterator it = x.begin(); it != x.end(); i++)     {        it->second->something();     }          for(auto it = x.begin(); it != x.end(); i++)     {        it->??     }      Seems like if you don't know whether you have an iterator for a map or a vector you wouldn't know whether to use `first` or `second` or just directly access properties of the object, no? This reminds me of the C# debate on whether to use the keyword `var`. The impression I'm getting so far is that in the C++ world people are ready to adopt the `auto` keyword with less of a fight than `var` in the C# world. For me my first instinct is that I like to know the type of the variable so I can know what operations I can expect to perform on it."}
{"_id": "235318", "title": "how to design a stack without using java library or using list", "text": "I have a question how to design a stack without using list or array? This is one question that I want to think about as I want to better understand stack."}
{"_id": "11669", "title": "Why are parser generators used?", "text": "I saw some projects require BISON to generate C++ code. What is the advantage of having BISON/Yacc etc. generate C/C++ code instead of writing it yourself?"}
{"_id": "121828", "title": "Avoiding coupling", "text": "> It is also true that a system may become so coupled, where each class is > dependent on other classes that depend on other classes, that it is no > longer possible to make a change in one place without having a ripple effect > and having to make subsequent changes in many places.[1] This is why using > an interface or an abstract class can be valuable in any object-oriented > software project. _Quote from Wikipedia_ ### Starting from scratch I'm starting from scratch with a project that I recently finished because I found the code to be too tightly coupled and hard to refactor, even when using MVC. I will be using MVC on my new project aswell but want to try and avoid the pitfalls this time, hopefully with your help. ### Project summary My issue is that I really wish to keep the Controller as clean as possible, but it seems like I can't do this. The basic idea of the program is that the user picks wordlists which is sent to the game engine. It will pick random words from the lists until there are none left. ### Problem at hand My main problem is that the game will have 'modes', and need to check the input in different ways through a method called `checkWord()`, but exactly where to put this and how to abstract it properly is a challenge to me. I'm new to design patterns, so not sure whether there exist any might fit my problem. ### My own attempt at abstraction Here is what I've gotten so far after hours of 'refactoring' the design plans, and I know it's long, but it's the best I could do to try and give you an overview (Note: As this is the sketch, _anything_ is subject to change, all help and advice is very welcome. Also note the marked coupling points): ### Wordlist               class Wordlist {         // Basic CRUD etc. here!         // Other sample methods:         public function wordlistCount($user_id) {} // Returns count of how many wordlists a user has         public function getAll($user_id) {} // Returns all wordlists of a user     }      ### Word               class Word {         // Basic CRUD etc. here!         // Other sample methods:         public function wordCount($wordlist_id) {} // Returns count of words in a wordlist         public function getAll($wordlist_id) {} // Returns all words from a wordlist         public function getWordInfo($word_id) {} // Returns information about a word     }      # Wordpicker               class Wordpicker {              // The class needs to know which words and wordlists to exclude         protected $_used_words = array();         protected $_used_wordlists = array();              // Wordlists to pick words from         protected $_wordlists = array();              /* Public Methods */         public function setWordlists($wordlists = array()) {}         public function setUsedWords($used_words = array()) {}         public function setUsedWordlists($used_wordlists = array()) {}              public function getRandomWord() {} // COUPLING POINT! Will most likely need to communicate with both the Wordlist and Word classes              /* Protected Methods */         protected function _checkAvailableWordlists() {} // COUPLING POINT! Might need to check if wordlists are deleted etc.         protected function _checkAvailableWords() {} // COUPLING POINT! Method needs to get all words in a wordlist from the Word class          }      ### Game               class Game {              protected $_session_id; // The ID of a game session which gets stored in the database along with game details         protected $_game_info = array();              // Game instantiation         public function __construct($user_id) {             if (! $this->_session_id = $this->_gameExists($user_id)) {                 // New game             } else {                 // Resume game             }         }              // This is the method I tried to make flexible by using abstract classes etc.         // Does it even belong in this class at all?         public function checkWord($answer, $native_word, $translation) {} // This method checks the answer against the native word / translation word, depending on game mode              public function getGameInfo() {} // Returns information about a game session, or creates it if it does not exist         public function deleteSession($session_id) {} // Deletes a game session from the database              // Methods dealing with game session information         protected function _gameExists($user_id) {}         protected function _getProgress($session_id) {}         protected function _updateProgress($game_info = array()) {}          }      ### The Game               /* CONTROLLER */     /* \"Guess the word\" page */          // User input     $game_type = $_POST['game_type']; // Chosen with radio buttons etc.     $wordlists = $_POST['wordlists']; // Chosen with checkboxes etc.          // Starts a new game or resumes one from the database     $game = new Game($_SESSION['user_id']);     $game_info = $game->getGameInfo();          // Instantiates a new Wordpicker     $wordpicker = new Wordpicker();          $wordpicker->setWordlists((isset($game_info['wordlists'])) ? $game_info['wordlists'] : $wordlists);     $wordpicker->setUsedWordlists((isset($game_info['used_wordlists'])) ? $game_info['used_wordlists'] : NULL);     $wordpicker->setUsedWords((isset($game_info['used_words'])) ? $game_info['used_words'] : NULL);          // Fetches an available word     if (! $word_id = $wordpicker->getRandomWord()) {              // No more words left - game over!         $game->deleteSession($game_info['id']);         redirect();          } else {              // Presents word details to the user         $word = new Word();         $word_info = $word->getWordInfo($word_id);          }      ### The Bit to Finish               /* CONTROLLER */     /* \"Check the answer\" page */          // ??????????????????      ( http://pastebin.com/cc6MtLTR ) Make sure you toggle the _'Layout Width'_ to the right for a better view. Thanks in advance. ### Questions   1. To which extent should objects be loosely coupled? If object A needs info from object B, how is it supposed to get this without losing too much cohesion?   2. As suggested in the comments, models should hold all business logic. However, as objects should be independent, where to glue them together? Should the model contain some sort of \"index\" or \"client\" area which connects the dots? _Edit:_ So basically what I should do for a start is to make a new model which I can more easily call with oneliners such as `$model->doAction(); // Lots of code in here which uses classes!` How about the method for checking words? Should it be it's own object? I'm not sure where I should put it as it's pretty much part of the 'game'. But on another hand, I could just leave out the 'abstraction and OOPness' and make it a method of the 'client model' which will be encapsulated from the controller anyway. Very unsure about this."}
{"_id": "121826", "title": "Mobile (Client) to Amazon S3 (Server) - Architecture", "text": "let's start off with the problem statement: My iOS application has a login form. When the user logs in, a call is made to my API and access granted or denied. If access was granted, I want the user to be able to upload pictures to his account and/or manage them. As storage I've picked Amazon S3, and I figured it'd be a good idea to have one bucket called \"myappphotos\" for instance, which contains lots of folders. The folder names are hashes of a user's email and a secret key. So, every user has his own, unique folder in my Amazon S3 bucket. Since I've just recently started working with AWS, here's my question: What are the best practices for setting up a system like this? I want the user to be able to upload pictures directly to Amazon S3, but of course I cannot hard-code the access key. So I need my API to somehow talk to Amazon and request an access token of sorts - only for the particular folder that belongs to the user I'm making the request for. Can anyone help me out and/or guide me to some sources where a similar problem was addressed? Don't think I'm the first one and the amazon documentation is so extensive that I don't really know where to start looking."}
{"_id": "121825", "title": "Role of \"Refactoring\" in good programming pratices?", "text": "I have learned in Agile Development that: > Refactoring is the process of clarifying and simplifying the design of > existing code, without changing its behavior. I have heard about some GUI refactoring tools like ReSharper and DevExpress Refactor Pro! Here are my questions:   1. How does it takes place in the Software development process and how far it effects the system?   2. Does Refactoring using these tools really speed up the process of development/maintenance?"}
{"_id": "121822", "title": "How to choose a good namespace name? (Linguistically)", "text": "English in not my native language, therefore it is a little more difficult to pick a good name for a namespace. One example to make you see my problem a bit better: We have a set of classes that have to do with the way a company is organized (we can create organizational charts with it). Currently the namespace is `CFW.CoreSystem.Organizational`. Is this a good name? What is **linguistically** the best way to name a namespace? (`CFW.CoreSystem.Configuration` is better than `CFW.CoreSystem.Configurables`). [Moved it from StackOverflow]"}
{"_id": "250906", "title": "Should an abstract class always abstract its methods to an interface?", "text": "I had learned sometime ago that abstract classes should always abstract their functions to an interface. So instead of having something like this -               abstract class a{         public int i;         public int foo();     }          class b : a{         public int foo(){return 42;}     }      we have something like this -               interface Ia{         public int foo();     }          abstract class a : Ia{         public int i;     }          class b : a{         public int foo(){return 42;}     }      From my perspective, this is better because of single responsibility, modularity, and maintainability. My colleague disagrees though, and states that there is no perceivable advantage to this and that it only adds to complexity. I tried to find some writing on this topic, but I cant remember the pattern name and my googling hasn't turned anything up. Is this pattern an actual thing? Was I right to abstract everything as much as I can, or is my colleague correct?"}
{"_id": "250907", "title": "Trying to understand how MySQL license applies to code I wrote", "text": "I have an ERP, coded with Java and the database in MYSQL Community edition. When I was going to sell it to a client he asked me for the sources to my application (with the belief that it is GPLed). I already got an upfront payment from him. But now he asks me to deliver the source code for my ERP with the executable. When I told him no, he responds that as I am using MySQL community edition the project must be open source, and I must give him the sources. He is not willing pay extra for the source for what I wrote. It doesn't seem like the MySQL license should affect the license of the code I have written. But is that true?"}
{"_id": "52788", "title": "GPL'ing code of a third party?", "text": "I am facing the following dilemma at the moment. I am using code from a scientific paper in a commercial project. So basically I copied and pasted the code from the paper's pdf into my code editor and use it in my own code. The code in the paper **does not** have any copy restrictions or license(like the GPL) so I thought I would be ok using it in a commercial project. However, I have seen several gpl licensed open source projects that use the **exact** same code from the paper to the point of having the same variable names like in the paper. So what happened here is that a gpl license was put on a third parties non gpl'ed code. Are these open source projects in violation of the gpl or would I be in violation of the gpl because I use code which has been gpl'ed? My common sense tells me it is not allowed to gpl somebody elses non-gpl'ed (like in this case from the paper) code but I though I would ask anyway."}
{"_id": "27927", "title": "Python - Service, how to get a code review", "text": "I am usually a PHP and Delphi developer and have been getting into Python lately. I am developing an app and would love to get some feedback on the code, there are few things which I would love to tidy up myself but I am sure there are other things. Where / how is a good way to get in touch with an experienced Python dev? Paying is no problem."}
{"_id": "250903", "title": "Multiple many to many relations or one option table?", "text": "Let's say I have a database of persons who have some properties. For the sake of this problem let's say all of these properties relate as N-N. I can either create two tables for each property (one for different values and one for cross-referencing them to the main object). Or, I can make the following structure: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/S93FG.png) Basically having just one huge table of values. Are there any advantages to this approach? Also, does this approach or pattern have a name that I can look up? UPDATE: For example, we make classifier `pets` with properties `cat`, `dog` and `fish`. So one person may have a `cat` and a `dog` (or one pet, or none). And we make a classifier `hobby` with values `skiing`, `skating`, `football` and `TV`. So Joe has properties `cat`, `dog`, and `TV`. Then `cat` and `dog` are `pets` and `TV` is `hobby`. The question is, is it worthwhile to put this data using this diagram, or is it a better idea to just create `pets`, `pets_xref`, `hobby`, `hobby_xref` tables?"}
{"_id": "62925", "title": "Reviews of Company Codebases", "text": "Does anybody know of a solid source of information regarding the quality/details of a company's codebase? I'm asking as a potential employee of some companies, having been highly dissatisfied by the technology stack of some companies I've worked with in the past. I considered creating a website like this a while back, but ultimately decided that it was really just a subset of what features a site like Glassdoor could offer. Glassdoor has a great site for company reviews, but seems mostly geared towards salary information and is much more general-purpose than this."}
{"_id": "52780", "title": "Is prefixing symbols also considered as namespacing?", "text": "For example, the Objective-C convention is to prefix the symbols with two or three capital letters which are abbreviations of the project: NSString, CABasicAnimation, MGTwitterEngine\u2026 In C, many projects also do this (OpenGL and nginx for example). Is this also considered namespacing or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "99381", "title": "Is a Scrum Master needed on a high performing team?", "text": "My understanding of the duties of the scrum master are as follows:   * Enforce the process   * Remove impediments (that the developers cannot remove themselves)   * Prevent interruption from outside   * Facilitate scrum meetings (stand up, retrospective, etc.) If the developers on the team are disciplined, they will follow the process without someone coaching them. They will also have no problem holding retrospective and other scrum meetings. If the rest of the organization understands the sprint boundaries, outside interruptions and impediments that would require a scrum master are already minimized. As a team becomes high performing and an organization understands the sprint boundaries, it seems as though the needs for a scrum master reduce. Is it possible for a team to eventually get to the point where a scrum master is no longer needed?"}
{"_id": "215023", "title": "Why C# is not statically typed but F# and Haskell are?", "text": "There was a talk given by Brian Hurt about advantages and disadvantages of static typing. Brian said that by static typing he don't mean **C#** , but **F#** and **Haskell**. Is it because of `dynamic` keyword added to C#-4.0? But this feature is relatively rarely useful. By the way, there are `\u22a5` and `unsafeCoerse` in Haskell which obviously are not the same, but something that could blown your head off in runtime similarly like exception thrown as a result of `dynamic`. Finally, why F# and Haskell could be named a statically typed languages and C# couldn't?"}
{"_id": "215025", "title": "Attaching Events to Document Better Than Attaching Them to Elements?", "text": "While bouncing around StackOverflow, I've noticed a number of people attaching events (notably `click` events) to the `document` as opposed to the `elements` themselves. **Example:** Given this:               <button id=\"myButton\">CLICK ME</button>      Instead of writing this (using jQuery just for brevity):               $('#myButton').on('click', function() { ... });      They do this:               $(document).on('click', function() { ... });      And then presumably use `event.target` to drill down to the element that was actually clicked. Are there any gains/advantages in capturing events at the `document` level instead of at the `element` level?"}
{"_id": "60699", "title": "Is \"funny commenting\" a bad practice or not?", "text": "I want to ask you whether adding some \"easter eggs\" in the source documentation is unprofessional or not. Probably you have read the StackOverflow poll for funny comments in a source documentation, and I have personally stumbled at many such things during my work, including funny (or not) stuff in public API documentation (for example this weak BZZZTT!!1! thing in Android public documentation, I can give at least a dozen more examples). I can't come to a final opinion for myself, because I have contradicting arguments by myself. Pro argument:   * It can cheer up somebody, and make his/her day funnier/more productive. Major portion of the source code doesn't need to be commented anyway (if the project is done properly), because the specific method (for example) is self explanatory, or if it is a pile of strange crappy code, it can't be explained in a meaningful way, so a funny joke doesn't harm the possible info that you can obtain from the doc.  Cons argument:   * If you are very concentrated/frustrated, the last thing you need is somebody's stupid joke, instead of giving you information you need about the documented code portion, it can just make you even more frustrated. And the idea of what the documentation would look like if everybody starts doing so is horrible. Plus the guy who writes the joke may be the only one who thinks that it is funny/interesting/worth wasting time to read it. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "60694", "title": "What is the correlation between the quality of the software development process and the quality of the product?", "text": "I used to believe the practicing \"good\" software development methods tends to yield a better product in the long run. However, I've seen quite a few cases where \"quick-and-dirty\" \\ \"brute-force\" \\ \"copy-paste\" programming appeared to give decent results quicker, and cheaper. This appears especially in cases where time to market is more critical then maintenance overhead. Is there a correlation between the quality of the development process and techniques and the quality of the product?"}
{"_id": "64375", "title": "How can I get started as a freelance programmer?", "text": "Assume that I know zero about freelancing, but I am a good .NET programmer. I want to start freelancing. How would I get started?"}
{"_id": "153277", "title": "What are studies comparing programmer productivity in determined languages/environments?", "text": "I'm not sure if I'm using the right terms, but with productivity I mean the concept of transforming an idea/design in actual software."}
{"_id": "251051", "title": "OOD: class hierarchy with method arguments forming another hierarchy", "text": "I'd like to find out how do you guys handle the following situation: you have a class hierarchy, call it H1, with some polymorphic method that is supposed to accept an argument which type forms hierarchy H2 in the following way: the higher the class is in H1, the higher H2 argument it accepts.               +-----------+           +-----------+     |     A     |           |     A'    |     |-----------+           +-----------+     |method(A') |                 ^     +-----------+                 |           ^                 +-----------+            |                 |     B'    |     +-----------+           +-----------+     |     B     |                 ^     |-----------+                 |     |method(B') |           +-----------+      +-----------+           |     C'    |           ^                 +-----------+           |     +-----------+     |     C     |     |-----------+     |method(C') |     +-----------+      Before writing any code I mention that I have two protocol classes with methods `check` that have much in common, but request parameters are specific for concrete arguments -- transactions. The language is scala, but the problem is language-agnostic. At the first glance it should look like that:               trait BaseMerchantProtocol     {       def check(transaction: BaseTransaction) = {         // some common code...         println(requestParams(transaction))         // ...and here as well       }            protected def requestParams(transaction: BaseTransaction)     }          class SmsCommerceMerchantProtocol extends BaseMerchantProtocol     {       override protected def requestParams(transaction: SmsCommerceTransaction) = {         List(\"result specific for SmsCommerceTransaction class\")       }     }          class TelepayMerchantProtocol extends BaseMerchantProtocol     {       override protected def requestParams(transaction: TelepayTransaction) = {         List(\"result specific for TelepayTransaction class\")       }     }      But of course it does not compile as Liskov substitution principle is violated. Let's try this one:               trait IMerchantProtocol {       def check(transaction: SmsCommerceTransaction)       def check(transaction: TelepayTransaction)     }          class MerchantProtocol extends IMerchantProtocol     {       def check(transaction: SmsCommerceTransaction) = {         doCheck(transaction)       }            def check(transaction: TelepayTransaction) = {         doCheck(transaction)       }            private def requestParams(transaction: SmsCommerceTransaction) = {         List(\"result specific for SmsCommerceTransaction class\")       }            private def requestParams(transaction: TelepayTransaction) = {         List(\"result specific for TelepayTransaction class\")       }            private def doCheck(transaction: BaseTransaction) = {         // some common code...         println(requestParams(transaction))         // ...and here as well       }     }      But that won't compile as well -- and with the same reason: `doCheck` accepts `BaseTransaction`, but `requestParams`s have more strict preconditions. The only thing that I came up with and that works is the following:               class MerchantProtocol extends IMerchantProtocol     {       def check(transaction: SmsCommerceTransaction) = {         doCheck(transaction, requestParams(transaction))       }            def check(transaction: TelepayTransaction) = {         doCheck(transaction, requestParams(transaction))       }            private def requestParams(transaction: SmsCommerceTransaction) = {         List(\"result specific for SmsCommerceTransaction class\")       }            private def requestParams(transaction: TelepayTransaction) = {         List(\"result specific for TelepayTransaction class\")       }            private def doCheck(transaction: BaseTransaction, requestParams: List[String]) = {         // some common code...         println(requestParams)         // ...and here as well       }     }      But I don't like that all `check` methods belong to the same class. How can I split them by classes?"}
{"_id": "251053", "title": "How should a REST API handle PUT when missing parameters?", "text": "I have a list of users that are being assigned to a certain office. I use checkboxes to select each user and when the client is done, a PUT is performed:               PUT offices/:id          users[0] : 14     users[1] : 12     users[2] : 25      The problem occurs when the server has users saved, but the client decides to clear the board. So he deselects the users and hits save. The problem in this case is that the Ajax request is not sending an empty `users[0] :` parameter, because each checkbox is unchecked. In the case when a parameter is not included at all, should PUT overwrite that it and set it to null or should the request include the empty parameter somehow?"}
{"_id": "254020", "title": "C# inherit from a class in a different DLL", "text": "I need to make an application that needs to be highly modular and that can easily be expanded with new functionality. I've thought up a design where I have a main window and a list of actions that are implemented using a strategy pattern. I'd like to implement the base classes/interfaces in a DLL and have the option of loading actions from DLL's which are loaded dynamically when the application starts. This way the main window can initiate actions without having to recompile or redistribute a new version. I just have to (re)distribute new DLL's which I can update dynamically at runtime. This should enable very easy modular updating from a central online source. The 'action' DLL's all inherit their structure from the code defined in the the DLL which defines the main strategy pattern structure and it's abstract factory. I'd like to know if C# /.Net will allow such a construction. I'd also like to know whether this construction has any major problems in terms of design."}
{"_id": "251055", "title": "What next steps to gain contributors to my programming language Wake?", "text": "I have spent several months creating the language Wake. It is now in alpha status, meaning its highly usable but still has many planned features -- features which will be slow to create with only one developer. Being in an alpha release, I don't want to go for too much publicity too soon. I don't want to push anyone to use it in production, or have Wake remembered as \"that language that is in the works.\" The number one thing at this point is gaining contributors. I did a presentation (there's a video on youtube) to friends and family that might have gained me one or two, probably more help on styling and docs than feature development. Do you think the language is ready for   * sharing on reddit   * presenting at conferences   * pitching to companies for supplementary help   * adding to package databases like ubuntu, brew, chocolatey, etc   * sharing on lambda the ultimate And what other publicity actions could I take? Do you think I need to write \"how to contribute\" articles? I have been planning on making a blog post _From the ashes of Google's Noop comes a new language: Wake_ to take a piggy-back approach to marketing it. Is that sort of introduction good to broadly publicize right now?"}
{"_id": "118212", "title": "S-Shaped Perl Program?", "text": "In his Why I Hate Django presentation, Cal Henderson brings up this awesome program in Perl which is a giant \"S,\" which solves a Sudoku problem. Does anyone know where I could get access to this code? I've been searching for it and I'm just dying to be able to read it."}
{"_id": "190567", "title": "How to implement lazy evaluation of if()", "text": "I am currently implementing an expression evaluator (single line expressions, like formulas) based on the following:   * the entered expression is tokenized to separate literal booleans, integers, decimals, strings, functions, identifiers (variables)   * I implemented the Shunting-yard algorithm (lightly modified to handle functions with variable number of arguments) to get rid of parenthesis and order the operators with a decent precedence in a postfixed order   * my shunting-yard simply produces a (simulated) queue of tokens (by means of an array, my Powerbuilder Classic language can define objects, but only have dynamic arrays as native storage - not true list, no dictionary) that I evaluate sequentially with a simple stack machine My evaluator is working nicely, but I am still missing an `if()` and I am wondering how to proceed. With my shunting-yard postfixed and stack based evaluation, if I add `if()` as another function with a true and false parts, a single `if(true, msgbox(\"ok\"), msgbox(\"not ok\"))` will show both messages while I would like to show only one. This is because when I need to evaluate a function, all of its arguments has already been evaluated and placed on the stack. Could you give me some way to implement `if()` in a lazy way? I though about processing these as a kind of macro, but at early time I have not yet the condition evaluation. Perhaps that I need to use an other kind of structure than a queue to keep separately the condition and the true / false expressions? For now the expression is parsed before evaluation, but I also plan to store the intermediate representation as kind of precompiled expression for future evaluation. **Edit** : after some though on the problem, I think I could build a tree representation of my expression (an AST instead of a linear token stream), from which I could easily ignore one or another branch of my `if()`."}
{"_id": "190566", "title": "Audio Sync : Detecting current time of a program", "text": "I am trying to do some audio sync things (see Wikipedia on acoustic fingerprints). I know it is possible to place watermarks in an audio signal to analyse it later, but how would I do to get the current time of a video? Would it be something like placing a watermark each second? Wouldn't placing so much watermarks create the risk of having false positive? Also, I have tried to read audio frequencies on my Android phone (with zero crossing) but it is not very precise. So on a less conceptual topic: Could anyone advice me on a good way to detect audio watermark for smartphones/tablets?"}
{"_id": "80529", "title": "What's your suggestion if the company didn't recognize my contribution towards a big project?", "text": "I am an entry level developer with 1 year of experience. I have worked on a large scale project which I have played around 80% of the project work, those 5 months were terrible to me - late nights spent working, even Sundays. i have worked on whole Process Model , doing some of my colleagues work ,DB Design ,client feedback all this but the point is some of my work been owned by my Team Lead & hope now realize why i mention 80% of work is done by me! Now the project is completed, and the client seems completely satisfied with the work. But, I haven't found the company to give any sort of encouragement / appreciation. My seniors who where not involved in the project were given praise, leave, bonuses, etc. Also I was rejected permission to attend an important family function - that makes me ask \"what's the credit I have now\"? I have been wondering, is being honest/dedicated to the job what resulted in this situation? I have currently gotten 3 offers with good package - I've been thinking to move on to any of the companies now. What's your suggestion at this point of time?"}
{"_id": "190563", "title": "UTF-16 Pitfalls, Chinese", "text": "I'm going to be writing an application that is pure HTML5 and JS and MVC.net back-end. We have .resx files that are getting compiled to .js files for resources in the html5 application. The application has to work in English and in Chinese which I understand to mean that we need to use UTF-16 everywhere. Does anyone have any experience using UTF-16 for such a task, or any best practices thereof?"}
{"_id": "42756", "title": "Zend PHP 5.3 certification", "text": "I'm planning to give the Zend PHP 5.3 certification. Any suggestions on how to prepare for it? Also, what kind of questions can I expect? Can anyone remember what they were asked?"}
{"_id": "46236", "title": "Should you apply a language filter to a randomly generated string?", "text": "A while back I created a licensing system for my companies new product, as well as all products after this one. As with a lot of licensing systems mine generates codes: 25 character product and registration codes, as well as 16 character module unlocking codes. My question is, since some parts of these generated codes are random should I apply a language filter to it to avoid any embarrassing language being given to the end users? I chose to as it was not difficult at all. But has anyone else ever came across something like this? Any viewpoints as to if it is worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "245873", "title": "What is a good C++ API Design for HW registers?", "text": "I am designing an API for a driver that manipulates HW. I have done the following:               namespace HWRegister     {         //private:         namespace Data         {             //accessible only within this namespace                  //Represents one of the four HW blocks.             enum EHWUnit             {                 Block0,                 Block1,                 Block2,                 Block3             };                  enum EHWSet             {                 Rx0,                 Rx1,                 Rx2,                 Rx3,                 Tx0,                 Tx1,                 Tx2,                 Tx3             };         }              using namespace Data;              //Returns Error Code         int32_t enableHWUnit( const EHWUnit aHWNumber, const EHWSet aHWSet );         //Returns Error Code.         int32_t disableHWUnit( const EHWUnit aHWNumber );      I would like to get peoples opinion on this. I am wondering if those enums are a good idea, I declare them here and therefore people who use my API are forced to use them, will this cause more problems for the callers of my API? Can I improve this API somehow? I will add more documentation into the API when I am sure it is looking good."}
{"_id": "195582", "title": "How would I programmatically verify gift cards on a website?", "text": "I'm trying to include a feature on my website that verifies retail gift card balances on cards previously registered at the retailer's website by the card holder. Can this simply be done by writing an algorithm that pulls and aggregates this data on my site?"}
{"_id": "195587", "title": "Less code or less operation", "text": "Sometimes I hesitate between \"More code to avoid unnecessary operations\" and \"less code but with redundant operations\". Let me just take an example (Win32 API): I try to paint some controls manually when the cursor is over it. If the cursor is over this control and it is painted, then it doesn't need to be painted again before the cursor goes out from it. Of course, I can just paint this control whenever a `WM_MOUSEMOVE` appears. Or, I can use more variables to record the state of this control and paint it only when the state is changed. Although it is not a question (in practice) in my example, I still want to have a feeling for which is the better choice, in general. And if this depends on cases, any way to develop a good sense to do the choice? (I am not focus on \"efficient\". It is more or less like a question as: If you are an idealist of programming, which one is better in your opinion.)"}
{"_id": "245871", "title": "Project based prefix for class names", "text": "My project leader uses project based prefixes for class names, lets say projects name ABC, he create User class name as ABCUser. and he says he do this becasuse if he wants to make User.aspx Users get mixed. so I told him why not use namespace (Entity.User ie.) to make it specific but he against it. I would like to hear from you guys' opinion on this subject. We code c#.net and using visual studio for projects."}
{"_id": "122845", "title": "Learning C# in a unified manner", "text": "Microsoft technologies keep getting better but they do so on the expense of adding one more abstraction layer every time. In the early stages we used to play with C# code and SQL procedures to perform CRUD operations. Then generics came along with ADO.NET, DataSets, Entities. Next, LINQ came offering LINQ to SQL, to XML, to Entities, to Objects. To get more easier and more confusing, EF 4.1 came. C# just kept evolving and adding new abstractions layers again and again. The end result is that I am so confused that I don't know which one is which and when to use which one. When I try to follow books, some teach EF while some are stuck with ADO.NET. Seriously I have no clue whatsoever why we have evolved so much for data manipulation To be honest, all I know is the C# syntax and some basic stuff. Data manipulation is out of the window and so are the advanced features.   * Is there a unified manner to learn C# ? I don't want to use Entity Framework and LINQ when I don't understand them or what they offer. I just want to have a thorough understanding from Level 0 to Level 10.    * Also, I am thinking of learning PHP simultaneously because I feel learning some other language will might help me understand C# better. Is this the right thing?"}
{"_id": "122844", "title": "How relevant are Brainbench scores when evaluating candidates?", "text": "I've seen many companies using certification services such as Brainbench when evaluating candidates. Most times they use it as a secondary screen prior to interview or as a validation to choose between candidates. What is your experience with Brainbench scores? Did you try the tests yourself, and if so do you feel the score is meaningful enough to be used _as part_ of a hiring process? * * * Difficult choice. Consensus seems to be that BB cert are not very good as a certification. The biggest argument was around the fact that some of the questions are too precise to form a good evaluation. This view can probably be tempered somewhat but still, to hold someone's future solely on the results of this evaluation would be irresponsible. That said, I still think it is possible to use them properly to gain additional objective knowledge on a candidate's level of expertise provided the test is done in a controlled environment ensuring that all taking it stand on equal footing. Thus I went with the answer that best reflected this view keeping in mind that it is still just an hour long 50ish multiple choice question to evaluate skills and knowledge that take years to acquire. To be taken with a grain of salt ! In short, the tests have value but whether or not they are worth the money is another debate. Thanks all for your time."}
{"_id": "53787", "title": "UI Testing with Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2", "text": "One of the most intriguing items in the recently released Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 is the ability to create and edit UI tests in Silverlight. Here is an example of a coded UI test. I haven't had much time to use it yet, but for people who have, I am curious as to what your thoughts are. Is this something you have found to be particularly useful? I would like to be able to automate a significant amount of regression testing that we are currently performing manually. In your experience, has it made a major impact on the resources that you would normally have to dedicate to testing? Thanks"}
{"_id": "216617", "title": "Approach to Authenticate Clients to TCP Server", "text": "I'm writing a Server/Client application where clients will connect to the server. What I want to do, is make sure that the client connecting to the server is actually using my protocol and I can \"trust\" the data being sent from the client to the server. What I thought about doing is creating a sort of hash on the client's machine that follows a particular algorithm. What I did in a previous version was took their IP address, the client version, and a few other attributes of the client and sent it as a calculated hash to the server, who then took their IP, and the version of the protocol the client claimed to be using, and calculated that number to see if they matched. This works ok until you get clients that connect from within a router environment where their internal IP is different from their external IP. My fix for this was to pass the client's internal IP used to calculate this hash with the authentication protocol. My fear is this approach is not secure enough. Since I'm passing the data used to create the \"auth hash\". Here's an example of what I'm talking about:               Client IP: 192.168.1.10, Version: 2.4.5.2     hash = 2*4*5*1 * (1+9+2) * (1+6+8) * (1) * (1+0)     Client Connects to Server     client sends: auth hash ip version     Server calculates that info, and accepts or denies the hash.      Before I go and come up with another algorithm to prove a client can provide data a server (or use this existing algorithm), I was wondering if there are any existing, proven, and secure systems out there for generating a hash that both sides can generate with general knowledge. The server won't know about the client until the very first connection is established. The protocol's intent is to manage a network of clients who will be contributing data to the server periodically. New clients will be added simply by connecting the client to the server and \"registering\" with the server. So a client connects to the server for the first time, and registers their info (mac address or some other kind of unique computer identifier), then when they connect again, the server will recognize that client as a previous person and associate them with their data in the database. Edit: The approach I ended up going was this: I ended up using an approach similar to what OpenSSH does, but reverse. Since when a client connects, I'm not sure I can trust the client. If it is the first time a client is connecting, it will provide me with a public key and a unique identifier (In this case, I will be using a computer's service tag since the computers I'm going to be dealing with are all Dells). The server stores the id and public key in the database then sends the client a secret question encrypted using the public key. The client will then need to respond with the decrypted answer. Before a client can be accepted by the server, I may end up doing a unique id registration on the server manually before connecting the client for the first time, this way not any sly person can just generate public keys and emulate what a client does with a \"new unique id\". Thanks for the help! I hope this helps someone down the line. Feel free to tear apart the security flaws of this approach :)"}
{"_id": "53780", "title": "Will you work with much less experienced not passionate coworkers?", "text": "Will you work with much less experienced not passionate coworkers? Or they slow you so much that you should always try to work with at least as experienced and passionate as you coworkers. Will less experienced not passionate coworker reduce your productivity?"}
{"_id": "216615", "title": "Scuttlebutt Reconciliation from \"Efficient Reconciliation and Flow Control for Anti-Entropy Protocols\"", "text": "_This question might be more suited to math.stackexchange.com, but here goes:_ ## Their Version Reconciliation takes two parts-- first the exchange of digests, and then an exchange of updates. I'll first paraphrase the paper's description of each step. To exchange digests, two peers send one another a set of pairs-- (`peer`, `max_version`) for each peer in the network, and then each one responds with a set of deltas. The deltas look like: `(peer, key, value, version)`, for all tuples for which `peer`'s state maps the `key` to the given `value` and `version`, and the version number is greater than the maximum version number `peer` has seen. This seems to require that each node remember the state of each other node, and the highest version number and ID each node has seen. ## Question Why must we iterate through all peers to exchange information between p and q?"}
{"_id": "53788", "title": "Why big internet companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc) going open source way?", "text": "These very large internet companies using, developing, and promoting open source technologies like crazies. What is the rationale behind promoting and developing open source tools and technologies rather than closed source software like traditional tech companies (Microsoft, Apple, Adobe)?"}
{"_id": "163335", "title": "Dependency Injection/IoC container practices when writing frameworks", "text": "I've used various IoC containers (Castle.Windsor, Autofac, MEF, etc) for .Net in a number of projects. I have found they tend to be frequently abused and encourage a number of bad practices. Are there any established practices for IoC container use, particularly when providing a platform/framework? My aim as a framework writer is to make code as simple and as easy to use as possible. I'd rather write one line of code to construct an object than ten or even just two. For example, a couple of code smells that I've noticed and don't have good suggestions to:   1. Large number of parameters (>5) for constructors. Creating services tends to be complex; all of the dependencies are injected via the constructor - despite the fact that the components are rarely optional (except for maybe in testing).   2. Lack of private and internal classes; this one may be a specific limitation of using C# and Silverlight, but I'm interested in how it is solved. It's difficult to tell what a frameworks interface is if all the classes are public; it allows me access to private parts that I probably shouldnt touch.   3. Coupling the object lifecycle to the IoC container. It is often difficult to manually construct the dependencies required to create objects. Object lifecycle is too often managed by the IoC framework. I've seen projects where most classes are registered as Singletons. You get a lack of explicit control and are also forced to manage the internals (it relates to the above point, all classes are public and you have to inject them). For example, .Net framework has many static methods. such as, DateTime.UtcNow. Many times I have seen this wrapped and injected as a construction parameter. Depending on concrete implementation makes my code hard to test. Injecting a dependency makes my code hard to use - particularly if the class has many parameters. How do I provide both a testable interface, as well as one that is easy to use? What are the best practices?"}
{"_id": "78233", "title": "How Do You Effectively Use Trace And Debug", "text": "I'm a self taught C# programmer and up to now I haven't really been making use of Debug and Trace and feel as though I should use them. I've been leaning more on TDD to understand and get feedback from my code. The .Net Framework Developers Guide declines to specify general guidelines for strategic placement of trace statements _\"because applications that use tracinig vary widely...\"_ ; What are your experiences of using Debug/Trace? Does using them too much create code maintenance issues? How much output is too much? How much is too little? What sorts of things do you tend to record?"}
{"_id": "95729", "title": "Program Loaders in Linux and Windows", "text": "I was wondering what the loaders in Linux and Windows are called, i.e., their command names? Loaders' definitions are > In computing, a loader is the part of an operating system that is > responsible for loading programs."}
{"_id": "95720", "title": "Teaching programmer looking for a simple statically and weakly typed language", "text": "I'm trying to illustrate the differences between the four different type systems -- static vs. dynamic typing and weak vs. strong typing.   * Dynamic + weak = JavaScript   * Dynaimc + strong = Python   * Static + strong = Java (is there a good _purely_ interpreted language for this? The Java \"compiler\" can be annoying without a framework like Ant of Maven)   * Static + weak = ??? For static + weak the one that is most immediately apparent is C++, with operator overloading, pointer arithmetic, and, frankly, the ability to treat almost any data type as some form of number, it seems like it would be a very clear example of static typing and weak typing. But, it is also _incredibly_ complicated, especially if I want to teach a **beginner**. What alternative teaching languages are there for beginners which are both statically and weakly typed? Ideally something which is easy to install and get running with minimal effort? (Even more ideally, something which supports OOP in some form?)"}
{"_id": "95721", "title": "Offline demo of website - tools to handle \"saved\" external links", "text": "I am designing a test (demo to users) of a web site from my local machine without Internet access. The site will be hosted locally, but I would also like users to be able to follow links to certain external sites. Are there tools that can make the user think they are browsing a site online when they are actually browsing a local copy of the relevant external pages? The kind of tool I'm imagining would allow you to specify a proxy in the browser that would intercept certain URLs and hand them to the offline copy of a page. There would also be an easy way to save and manage these offline pages. The offline access requirement is a developing world thing - smart people don't rely on Internet access in places where there is little by way of infrastructure and they only have one chance to get something right."}
{"_id": "190699", "title": "When and why would we use immutable pointers?", "text": "In Java, the `String` object is both immutable and also a pointer (aka reference type). I'm sure there are other types/objects which are both immutable and a pointer as well and that this extends further than just Java. I can not think where this would be desirable possibly due to my own experience I've only used either a reference types OR immutable primitive types. Can some one please give me a situation where it would be useful so I can get an appreciation for their meaning/value/concept."}
{"_id": "81169", "title": "Why is the Apache HTTP Server so complex?", "text": "The Apache HTTP server is a fairly large project\u2014much larger than, say, `lighthttp` or `nginx` or certainly the \"simple HTTP servers\" you see floating around in C/C++ tutorials. What is the extra code for? Does it add security/stability (and if so, how?) or is it just for doing things like parsing Apache `conf` files/`.htaccess` type things (and, I guess, `VirtualHosts` etc). I ask not to critique Apache, but because I'm interested in writing a web server of sorts and I'd like to know things that, while perhaps not obvious, are important to remember for a secure, stable and fast web server."}
{"_id": "176095", "title": "Is the escaping provided by the Google-Gson library enough to ensure a safe JSON payload?", "text": "I am currently using the Google-Gson library to convert Java objects into JSON inside a web service. Once the object has been converted to JSON, it is returned to the client to be converted into a JSON object using the JavaScript eval() function. Is the character escaping provided by the Gson library enough to ensure that nothing nasty will happen when I run the eval() function on the JSON payload? Do I need to HTML Encode the Strings in the Java Objects before passing them to the Gson library? Are there any other security concerns that I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "176093", "title": "How to reduce tight coupling between two data sources", "text": "I'm having some trouble finding a proper solution to the following architecture problem. In **our setting (sketched below)** we have 2 data sources, where data source A is the primary source for items of type Foo. A secondary data source exists which can be used to retrieve additional information on a Foo; however this information does not always exist. Furthermore, data source A can be used to retrieve items of type Bar. However, each Bar refers to a Foo. The difficulty here is that each Bar should refer to a Foo which, if available, also contains the information as augmented by data source B. My question is: how to remove the tight coupling between SubsystemA.1 and DataSourceB? ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/Xi4aA.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Xi4aA.png)"}
{"_id": "12318", "title": "Why can people expect hardware/software requirements on software applications, but it's not for web applications?", "text": "Questions revolving around ways of getting customers to embrace new web technology / browsers so one can deliver better web software to the end user. It's hard to manage expectations of customers. Expectations such as:   1. Websites should work on older browsers. (ambiguous).   2. Websites should not require specific hardware.   3. Giving system / computer specs for running a website is unacceptable. Web development isn't as easy as many think. There's a lot that goes into creating a properly run web application (not just a website). Take a look at Google Docs or Microsoft Office online. These are more than just regular websites, and they force users to use newer browsers. MS Office Online will not work with IE6, and they are trying very hard to push people to use IE8 (soon IE9). Google pushes as well, same with many other strong web entities. You can do a lot on the internet, from playing games, watching movies, doing work, even coding and have the server you're connected to compile your code. With everything the web can do, I find it amazing that people still want to put unrealistic expectations on web applications just because it will require someone to use a browser that is only... 2-3 years old. I understand people don't like change. And we all know that many corporations will provide days/weeks of training to help their employees understand new internet browsers. There are also cases where people are forced to use old browsers because the archaic system they use for internal work only runs on that browser (ActiveX+IE6). **My Questions** How can you tell your end users that they will need to upgrade their browser to use the latest version of your website without a huge outcry? Why does the expectation exist that it's ok for software to require people to upgrade Windows/Mac versions, but a website cannot require a new browser version?"}
{"_id": "179247", "title": "What is a real-world use case of using a Chomsky Type-I (context-sensitive) grammar", "text": "I have been having some fun lately exploring the development of language parsers in the context of how they fit into the Chomsky Hierarchy. What is a good real-world (ie not theoretical) example of a context-sensitive grammar?"}
{"_id": "196596", "title": "Algorithm/Strategy or Data structure to capture priorities sub priorities in an app", "text": "I am working on a CMS that is starting to evolve a bit. We started off with content that had the following priorities ( columnn in the db on the content table): HIGH MED LOW. Data was fetched by priority HIGH being on top etc. Now after a few months a need has risen to have sub priorities: HIGH [ high, med , low ], MED [high, med, low ] etc. I have a test branch with a sub-priority column in the db. So fetch by priority now brings back HIGH(high) HIGH(med) HIGH(low) first. Wondering is there a better way to do this that I not seeing. There is a rails app."}
{"_id": "53436", "title": "shipping a recompiled plugin under lgpl", "text": "I have recompiled a plugin (making changes before they are accepted upstream) for the gstreamer media framework. I did not recompile the whole library -- just a plugin. If I want proprietary python code to use this plugin -- am I running afoul of the LGPL license? My code never _directly_ links to the modified plugin. MyPythonCode [proprietary] --> pygst/binary [LGPL] --> gStreamer/binary [LGPL] --> modifiedPlugin/binary(w/source)[LGPL] The source code for the modified plugin would be available per LGPL."}
{"_id": "49845", "title": "What should a C++ developer expect on an interview at a Rails company?", "text": "I have been working on C++ backend large scale apps for over 5 years. I'm doing TDD, using STL and Boost etc. I decided I need a change and about year ago started learning Ruby, and few months ago I started playing with Rails, HTML5 and CSS. I don't know JavaScript yet, I'm focusing on Rails now. What can I expect on an interview for a Ruby on Rails backend developer job? How can I present myself to take advantage of my C++ experience? I'm on a senior level now and I can't start from intern position. I consider myself really good in C++, I know also some Scheme, some Python and quite a bit of Ruby. I'll have one small Rails app ready and 1 simple Gem published before I'll start applying. Plus quite a few personal C++ projects. I have a bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering and I'm completing master degree in CS in June 2011."}
{"_id": "49842", "title": "PHP, structural or OOP based language?", "text": "I would like to discuss why is PHP called a structural language? what are the OO concepts that cannot be implemented using PHP?"}
{"_id": "78587", "title": "Facebook and Twitter authentication from Mobile Applications", "text": "I might be missing something with the Facebook and Twitter logins APIs. Something that is blocking me from understanding how they would be used in mobile applications. Both APIs seem like they need to redirect you to and then back to a website. How would that work from a mobile app? Or is there another way to use these APIs? I have to write a website that has native login, Facebook login and Twitter login. Then I am expected to turn around and open up a set of web services to an Android and iPhone mobile apps. Thought this was to \"loose\" of a question to ask on StackOverflow. What is the best approach? Any links on calling the API without UI interaction?"}
{"_id": "63342", "title": "What are some easter eggs that went wrong?", "text": "What are some easter eggs that went wrong and resulted in unintended consequences, e.g programmer(s) being fired, monetary losses, even human life loss, etc? Please share."}
{"_id": "157593", "title": "Convention on model names in ruby on rails", "text": "I was doing my ER diagram for a rails application I'm about to begin with and there I have an entity called `Class News` so I'd have a model `ClassNew` but I don't know if I will have problems in the future with the `New` part or what would be the right way to do this o how should I call the model? since the right thing would be `ClassNews` and the table should be `class_news`... What's the best thing to do when working with `News` at the time of creating models for ActiveRecord in Ruby on Rails. Thanks."}
{"_id": "157591", "title": "Adapting parts of an open-source project for my own use", "text": "I'm in the process of coding a game and almost done with the game mechanics to the point where it's pretty playable. I later discovered an open source version of the kind of game I'm making with the same mechanics, whereas I coded mine from scratch. However, in the interest of optimizing later on, I may want to adapt a small part of the open source project's code. The project is under the GNU GPL 2, and it's coded in a different language for a different framework (Android/Java versus mine on C#/XNA). What are my options as to copying functions / routines from a GPL open source project, if I would have to port the code anyways, for the language I'm using? These are not patented algorithms I'm talking about, just code I found that could possibly make my program more efficient or stamp out a bug."}
{"_id": "157596", "title": "How to indicate the word is method name in Objective-C?", "text": "You can indicate that `XXX` is method name by writing `XXX()`. But in Objective-C, you can not write `XXX()` for `XXX` method. If you write `XXX`, you can't tell if `XXX` is method name or other type of identifier. How can you indicate that `XXX` is method name of Objective-C class? _**EDIT_** Method call of Objective-C is different from other language. in Objective-C, method call is:               [self XXX];      in other language, method call is:               self->XXX();      In other language, for example, we can write in stackoverflow:               XXX() doesn't work      And we can know `XXX` is method thanks to `()`. But in Objective-C, we can't say:               XXX doesn't work      Instead, to make it clear that XXX is method, we have to say:               XXX method doesn't work"}
{"_id": "255379", "title": "What are memory addresses?", "text": "I have more or less 0 knowledge in low-level topics, so forgive my possible ignorance. I know that in languages such as C, pointers hold 'memory addresses', i.e. strings (or binary data?) written in hex such as `0x52A132F3`. Judging by the term 'memory address', I assume this number actually leads to some place in memory. But I'm having a hard time understanding what a 'place in memory' actually is and how a hexadecimal number can 'lead' to it. (A Java programmer here..) So two questions:   1. Do the memory addresses point to places on the CPU itself, or anywhere in the computer?   2. Is memory 'ordered' in hardware in some way that it makes sense to refer to it using an 'ordinal' number, such as `0x52A132F3`? How is memory ordered in hardware, and how and why does it make sense to access it using a numerical value?"}
{"_id": "149626", "title": "Properties under ARC: Always or public-only?", "text": "After reading an article humbly named \"The Code Commandments: Best Practices for Objective-C Coding\" by Robert McNally a little less than two years ago, I adopted the practice of using properties for pretty much every data member of my Objective-C classes (the 3rd commandment as of may 2012). McNally lists these reasons for doing so (my emphasis):   1. Properties enforce access restrictions (such as readonly)   2. _Properties enforce memory management policy (strong, weak)_   3. Properties provide the opportunity to transparently implement custom setters and getters.   4. Properties with custom setters or getters can be used to enforce a thread-safety strategy.   5. Having a single way to access instance variables increases code readability. I put most of my properties in private categories, so number 1 and 4 are usually not issues I run in to. Arguments 3 and 5 are more 'soft', and with the right tools and other consistencies they could become non-issues. So finally, to me the most influential of these arguments was number 2, memory management. I've been doing this ever since.               @property (nonatomic, strong) id object; // Properties became my friends.      For my last few projects I've switched to using ARC, which made me doubt whether creating properties for pretty much anything is still a good idea or maybe a little superfluous. ARC takes care of memory managing Objective-C objects for me, which for most `strong` members works fine if you just declare the ivars. The C-types you had to manually manage anyway, before and after ARC, and the `weak` properties are mostly public ones. Of course I still use properties for anything that needs access from outside of the class, but those are mostly only a handful of properties, while most data members are listed as ivars under the implementation header               @implementation GTWeekViewController     {         UILongPressGestureRecognizer *_pressRecognizer;         GTPagingGestureRecognizer *_pagingRecognizer;         UITapGestureRecognizer *_tapRecognizer;     }      As an experiment I've been doing this a bit more rigorously, and the move away from properties for everything has some nice positive side effects.   1. Data member code requirements (`@property`/`@synthesize`) shrunk down to just the ivar declaration.   2. Most of my `self.something` references cleaned up to just `_something`.   3. It's easily distinguishable which data members are private (ivars) and which are public (properties).   4. Lastly, it 'feels' more like this was the purpose Apple intended properties for, but that's subjective speculation. **On to the question** : I'm slowly sliding towards ~~the dark side,~~ using less and less properties in favor of implementation-ivars. Can you provide me with a bit of reasoning for why I should stick to using properties for everything, or confirm my current train of thoughts as to why I should use more ivars and less properties only where needed? The most persuasive answer for either side will receive my mark. _EDIT:McNally weighs in on Twitter, saying: \"I think my main reason for sticking with properties is: one way to do everything, that does everything (including KVC/KVO.)\"_"}
{"_id": "54784", "title": "Software architecture for authentication/access-control of REST web service", "text": "I am setting up a new RESTful web service and I need to provide a role-based access control model. I need to create an architecture that will allow users to provide their username and password to get access to the services and then restrict how they can use the services (which services they can use, read vs read/write, etc) based upon the roles assigned to that users. I have looked around at other questions and found pieces of what I want. For example there are several great discussions about how to handle passing credentials to REST services restful-authentication, best practices. There are also some great pointers on what programmers should know when creating websites (what every developer should know before building a public web site). But I haven't been able to find a good post, article, book on best practices and patterns for the software architecture that implements these solutions. Specifically:   * How should user details and access rights be stored? (data model, location, format)   * What are good design patterns for representing and tracking these in the server? (sessions in memory, db lookups each time, etc)   * What are good patterns for mapping these rights to the services in a secure way in the code base?   * What architectural choices can help keep the system more secure and reliable?   * What lessons learned do people have from the trenches? I am looking for are design patterns and recommendations for the software architecture outside of any specific technologies. (If the technologies matter, I am planning to implement this using python, twisted, and a postgresql database)"}
{"_id": "115129", "title": "Why do some teachers often consider bad practice things that are not?", "text": "In college, teachers often say that some things are bad practices while they are not. I'm referring to the recent Why is naming a table's Primary Key column \u201cId\u201d considered bad practice? question, or to the fact that my teacher told us that early returns are bad practice and must never be used. There are plenty of other examples everyone who have been in college remembers. Once learned, those things are hard to unlearn. When you deal with an intern who learned something wrong from her teacher, it's not always obvious to explain that the thing the teacher told is either not totally true or sometimes completely wrong. What makes those teachers mistakenly believe that things are bad practices, while in programming industry, most people would disagree with them? Don't they read programming books we, developers, read? Don't they talk frequently to developers?"}
{"_id": "80915", "title": "Fast algorithm for finding common elements of two sorted lists", "text": "Suppose I have two lists of N 3 by 3 vectors of integers. I need to find a quick way (say of running time at most N^(1+epsilon)) to find the vectors of the first list that have the same 1st coordinate with a vector of the second list. Of course, I could do the following naive copmarison:               for u in list_1 do     for v in list_2     if u[1] equals v[1] then     print u;print v;     end if;end for; end for;      This, however, would require N^2 loops. I feel that sorting the two lists according to their first coordinate and then look up for collisions is perhaps a fast way. Bubbleshort, etc., would probably take logN time, but I can't really see how to code the search for collision between the sorted lists. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "50202", "title": "Effective versus efficient code", "text": "**TL;DR: Quick and dirty code, or \"correct\" (insert your definition of this term) code?** There is often a tension between \"efficient\" and \"effective\" in software development. \"Efficient\" often means code that is \"correct\" from the point of view of adhering to standards, using widely-accepted patterns/approaches for structures, regardless of project size, budget, etc. \"Effective\" is not about being \"right\", but about getting things done. This often results in code that falls outside the bounds of commonly accepted \"correct\" standards, usage, etc. Usually the people paying for the development effort have dictated ahead of time what it is that they value more. An organization that lives in a technical space will tend towards the efficient end, others will tend towards the effective. Developers often refuse to compromise their favored approach for the other. In my own experience I have found that people with formal education in software development tend towards the Efficient camp. Those that picked up software development more or less as a tool to get things done tend towards the Effective camp. These camps don't get along very well. When managing a team of developers who are not all in one camp it is challenging. In your own experience, which camp do you land in, and do you find yourself having to justify your approach to others? To management? To other developers?"}
{"_id": "187603", "title": "Naming for a class that consumes an iterator pattern", "text": "The iterator pattern is very clearly defined. What would you call the consumer of an iterator?"}
{"_id": "168760", "title": "Guidelines for creating referentially transparent callables", "text": "In some cases, I want to use referentially transparent callables while coding in Python. My goals are to help with handling concurrency, memoization, unit testing, and verification of code correctness. I want to write down clear rules for myself and other developers to follow that would ensure referential transparency. I don't mind that Python won't enforce any rules - we trust ourselves to follow them. Note that we never modify functions or methods in place (i.e., by hacking into the bytecode). Would the following make sense? > A callable object `c` of class `C` will be referentially transparent if: > >   1. Whenever the returned value of `c(...)` depends on any instance > attributes, global variables, or disk files, such attributes, variables, and > files must not change for the duration of the program execution; the only > exception is that instance attributes may be changed during instance > initialization. > >   2. When `c(...)` is executed, no modifications to the program state occur > that may affect the behavior of any object accessed through its \"public > interface\" (as defined by us). > > If we don't put any restrictions on what \"public interface\" includes, then rule #2 becomes: > When `c(...)` is executed, no objects are modified that are visible outside > the scope of `c.__call__`. Note: I unsuccessfully tried to ask this question on SO, but I'm hoping it's more appropriate to this site."}
{"_id": "187609", "title": "Identifying Domain Services & Application Services when doing DDD", "text": "-I'm trying to figure out how to identify Application Services in my application. I think I can identify a Domain service by 2 things:   1. It acts as a facade to the repository.   2. It holds business logic that can't be encapsulated in a single entity. So I thought about this simple use case that I'm currently working on: An admin should be able to ban a certain user. The operation must be logged and an email must be sent to the banned user. I have a `UserRepository` which has a function `getUserById()`. I have a `User` entity which has a `ban()` function.   I'll create a `UserService` like this:               class UserService{         static void banUser(int userId){               User user= UserRepository.getUserById(userId);               user.ban();               UserRepository.update(user);         }     }      The `userId` is a `POST` variable that I'll be receiving in my `Controller` from a web form. Now where does the logging go? I need to log the ban process twice before and after the operation ex:               Logger.log(\"Attempting to ban user with id:\"+userId);     //user gets banned      Logger.log(\"user banned successfully.\");      Second, I need to send a mail to the user. where should the call go? I thought about putting the logging and email is the `UserService` class itself, but I think there are better solutions. Third, where do Application Services fit in all of this?"}
{"_id": "195385", "title": "Understanding stack frame of function call in C/C++?", "text": "I am trying to understand how stack frames are built and which variables (params) are pushed to stack in what order? Some search results showed that the C/C++ compiler decides based on operations performed within a function. For example, if the function was supposed to just increment a passed-in int value by 1 (similar to ++ operator) and return it, it would put all the parameters of the function and local variables into registers. I'm wondering which registers are used for returned or pass by value parameters. How are references returned? How does the compiler choose between eax, ebx,ecx and edx? What do I need to know to understand how registers, stack and heap references are used, built and destroyed during function calls?"}
{"_id": "160151", "title": "Methods for testing a very large application", "text": "I have a PHP app which is very large. There are usually 2-3 developers working on it full time and we are getting to the point where we are making changes and creating bugs (cough features!). The software isn't complex per say, just there is a lot going on (35~ controllers, about the same models, etc). Even being careful it's easy for a change in this view (tweaking an id on an element) to wreck an ajax query happening under some special condition (logged out while standing on one foot). Unit tests are the first things which spring to mind, but we tried these on another app, and it's so easy to forget them / or spend more time writing tests then doing tests. We do have a staging environment where code gets checked over before pushing live. Maybe we need a part time Q/A person? Anyone have any suggestions/thoughts."}
{"_id": "24353", "title": "New Starter Introduction and Induction Process", "text": "First day at work for a new programmer. Assuming that the company has covered all the usual corporate stuff (benefits, paperwork, health and safety and so on), **What are the things you should be talking a new developer through to get them up to speed and productive as soon as possible?** In additional what are the key things in making this process a success? What have you seen work particularly well? (Edit: Added a bounty. The current top answer is fine but I'm still thinking there is more that can be done to make a programmers first week as useful to them as possible. Really hoping for insights from good and bad starts to jobs people have had)."}
{"_id": "160158", "title": "Pricing of a collaborative work", "text": "I suppose there's no straight answer to this, but what ideas come to mind for determining how much each programmer would get for participation in a collaborative project if it were to be sold?"}
{"_id": "58779", "title": "Dealing with bilingual(spoken language) code?", "text": "So I've got to work with this set of code here for a re-write, and it's written by people who speak both English and French. Here's a snapshot of what I'm talking about (only, about 4000 lines of this)               function refreshDest(FormEnCours,dest,hotel,duration) {         var GateEnCours;         GateEnCours = FormEnCours.gateway_dep.options[FormEnCours.gateway_dep.selectedIndex].value;         if (GateEnCours == \"\") {               FormEnCours.dest_dep.length = 0           } else if (FormEnCours.dest_dep != null && FormEnCours.dest_dep.type && FormEnCours.dest_dep.value != \"ALL\") {           if (Destinations[GateEnCours] == null || Destinations[GateEnCours].length == 0) {                RetreiveDestinations(FormEnCours,GateEnCours,dest,hotel,duration);           } else { refreshDestSuite(FormEnCours,GateEnCours,dest,hotel,duration); }         }     }          function refreshDuration(FormEnCours,GateEnCours,DestEnCours,hotel,duration) {         // Refresh durations         var FlagMoinsDe5Jours = \"\";         var Flag5a10jours = \"\";         var Flag11a16jours = \"\";         var FlagPlusDe16Jours = \"\";     .......       Is there any approach that I, as a speaker of only one of these languages, can use to make this entire process a lot less painful for both figuring out what everything does, and then refactoring it?"}
{"_id": "158819", "title": "Conceptually what does it mean when it is said that each thread gets its own stack?", "text": "I have been reading Java Concurrency in Practice by Brian Goetz and inside the section **Stack Confinement** it is mentioned that each thread gets its own stack and so local variables are intrinsically confined to the executing thread; they exist on the executing threads stack, which is not accessible to other threads. What does he mean that each thread has its own execution stack ?"}
{"_id": "164642", "title": "At what point is asynchronous reading of disk I/O more efficient than synchronous?", "text": "Assuming there is some bit of code that reads files for multiple consumers, and the files are of any arbitrary size: **At what size does it become more efficient to read the file asynchronously? Or to put it another way, how small must a file be for it to be faster just to read it synchronously?** I've noticed (and perhaps I'm incorrect) that when reading very small files, it takes longer to read them asynchronously than synchronously (in particular with .NET). I'm assuming this has to do with set up time for things like I/O Completion Ports, threads, etc. Is there any rule of thumb to help out here? Or is it dependent on the system and the environment?"}
{"_id": "158817", "title": "Reasonable commision for position", "text": "My situation is that I have been offered a job working on a product for a small company. I'm currently working for a large corporation for a respectable salary considering my experience. Long term I am interested in creating my own products and starting up my own company. I've been offered a job to develop a product that I would be primarily developing. I looked at the idea and I think it is a pretty good idea and has a reasonable chance of being successful. I told him that I would be interested in earning a commission from the sales of the product. Considering that I would be developing the product what percentage would be reasonable to ask?"}
{"_id": "158813", "title": "What shoud I know or should be doing after six years of experience in software development?", "text": "Even after six years of experienece I am still doing the things which I was doing six years ago. Working on the same mundane CRUD stuff. Nothing has been real challenging. Since I am working in a small company, we dont even have a proper development process. We don't even do unit testing, for example. I am feeling like I am just not going to the next level in my career."}
{"_id": "164648", "title": "Function that requires many parameters", "text": "I have a problem related to this: Are there guidelines on how many parameters a function should accept? In my case, I have a function that describes a rounded rectangle. The caller specifies   * An integer which determines how the rectangle should be merged into previously created shapes   * An Anchor, which is a point that is used for alignment (right, left, top, bottom etc). (0,-1) means that position (next parameter) describes the top, middle point of the rectangle.   * The position of the rectangle   * Width and height   * Corner radius Should I use Parameter Object pattern in this case? It is hard to see how these parameters are related"}
{"_id": "152450", "title": "IDE for visually impaired", "text": "A visually impaired colleague has asked me to recommend an IDE with easy-to- find and easy-to-use controls for:   1. font size   2. background and foreground colors   3. changing syntax color scheme   4. support for at least C/C++ and Java He would prefer an IDE that is either portable or that has similar versions for Linux, Windows and Mac. He prefers a dark background and light colored fonts and needs to sit very close to the display."}
{"_id": "200340", "title": "What is the justification of use .inc files to declare and implement code is some Delphi RTL units?", "text": "Starting with #Delphi #XE2 many of the new RTL units related to Vcl styles, OSX and so on, uses inc files to declare types, classes and implement code (just like the FPC does), what is the justification to do that? you can see what i mean if you inspect one of these folders (source\\rtl\\posix, source\\rtl\\posix\\osx, source\\rtl\\sys )"}
{"_id": "212719", "title": "What is the big-O cpu time of Euclid's Algorithm of \"Greatest common divisor of two numbers\"", "text": "Looking at Euclid's algorithm for the \"Greatest common divisor of two numbers\", I'm trying to divine the big-O cpu time for numbers K, and N. Can anybody help? This is the algorithm as I understand it.. Where:   * max(A,B) = the greater of A or B such that: min(10,3) = 10   * min(A,B) = the smaller of A or B such that: min(10,3) = 3   * modulus(A,B) = the remainder of A divided by B such that: modulus(10, 3) = 1 The algorithm is:   1. r = modulus(max(K,N), min(K,N))   2. if r = 0      * then GCD is max(K,N)     * else:        * max(K,N) = r       * go to step 1 It appears to me that due to the division occurring, it can't be a linear algorithm which is why it's useful as something more efficient than a naive implementation that just tries all the possibilities from 0 to min(K,N). But I can't quite figure out just what the runtime is. Any pointers would be very helpful!"}
{"_id": "197585", "title": "Code Base with awful code conventions, follow them?", "text": "With no time to refactor, when you are working on legacy code, with the most awful conventions, what is the best practice? Will trying to follow _better_ coding style would improve readability or actually hurt it? For example, in java method names are usually camel cased: > myGoodNamedMethod But in the repository there are code with methods like this (not all, but the majority) > my_c_style_method_that_looks_off_in_java"}
{"_id": "170981", "title": "Alternatives to type casting in your domain", "text": "In my Domain I have an entity `Activity` which has a list of `ITask`s. Each implementation of this task has it's own properties beside the implementation of `ITask` itself. Now each operation of the `Activity` entity (e.g. `Execute()`) only needs to loop over this list and call an ITask method (e.g. `ExecuteTask()`). Where I'm having trouble is when a specific tasks' properties needs to be updated, as in configuring the task (not as part of the execute method). How do I get an instance of that task? The options I see are:   * Get the Activity by Id and cast the task I need. This'll either sprinkle my code with:      * `Tasks.OfType<SpecificTask>().Single(t => t.Id == taskId)`     * or `Tasks.Single(t => t.Id == taskId) as SpecificTask`   * Make each task unique in the whole system (make each task an entity), and create a new repository for each ITask implementation I don't like either option, the first because I don't like casting: I'm using NHibernate and I'm sure this'll come back and bite me when I start using Lazy Loading (NHibernate currently uses proxies to implement this). I don't like the second option because there are/will be dozens of different kind of tasks. Which would mean I'd have to create as many repositories. Am I missing a third option here? Or are any of my objections to the two options not justified? How have you solved this problem in the past?"}
{"_id": "91728", "title": "What drives the adoption, or not, of new programming languages?", "text": "I'd really like to focus on why some new programming languages are adopted in the mainstream, and others remain relatively niche. I'd like to know about things like specific use cases, backwards compatibility, or some new features, simple or complex implementation difficulty. Specific examples would be appreciated, but let's not get caught up on the exact definition of \"mainstream\" or \"niche\" here."}
{"_id": "34456", "title": "Business case for decentralized version control systems", "text": "I searched and couldn't find any _business_ reasons why git/mercurial/bazzr systems are better than centralized systems (subversion, perforce). If you were trying to sell a DVCS to a non-technical person what arguments would you provide for the DVCS **increasing profit**. I will shortly be pitching git to my manager, it will take some time converting out subversion repositories and some expense in buying smartgit licences. **Edit** I tried to make this question into a generic discussion on centralized vs decentralized, but inevitably it has turned into git vs subversion. Surely there are better centralized systems than subversion."}
{"_id": "106865", "title": "Why aren't Multi-Platform Programming Languages popular?", "text": "So I was talking to a friend and he mentioned > Using WAC I can write Javascript code that will compile and run in iOS, > Android, BB etc and there is this programming language that lets you write code that is _multi-platform_ : http://haxe.org/doc/intro I was wondering why these hasn't got that much attention yet because the idea is so good. So in a sense, what is probably wrong with these ideas in a real-world perspective(real deployable projects)? **EDIT:** So I have probably misused some terms so here are some clarifications. It goes something like, for example, I write code in one language, then I can run it in iOS and Android devices, both of which have their native programming languages. That means I have an app that I can run on both device without having to code any Java or Objective C That's the best I can do for clarifications because I myself am a little confused T_T"}
{"_id": "106862", "title": "How do you handle regular latecomers at the stand-up meetings?", "text": "We have our daily stand-up meeting at **8:45** while the workday starts at **8:30**. Even with the 15 minutes slack people keep coming too late, on a regular basis. This results in our meetings being small, incomplete, inefficient and sometimes even completely useless. We have tried to have people bring fruit for the team on the next day, but this didn't work as we'd be having multiple breakfasts every day (and after a while they didn't even bother to bring any anymore). We have been thinking of imposing a fine, but we find solutions like that quite childish. How do you handle regular latecomers at stand up meetings? What worked - and what didn't?"}
{"_id": "223516", "title": "How to represent compound elements within a database?", "text": "I need to design a database table that holds the data of programmers work hours. The problem is that I have a compound type - two pieces of data belong to a category. Specifically, the work hours are classified into categories: design, program, test, troubleshoot, etc... and each category is divided into two types: hours spent at work and hours spent at home. How can I design a compound type in the database side? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/gXob9.jpg) I thought about storing the two types in one field like \"6,2\" but that creates more problems to resolve. I would now have to convert and split data along with worrying about localization issues, missing data, or if another location was added to the categories. * * * Clarification:   Asking my question a different way, it's relatively easy to design a table without compound types like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/izuiu.jpg) But how to deal with it when each category is split into two types?"}
{"_id": "73133", "title": "What to name a parent thread that just delegates to workers?", "text": "I have a program where one thread creates a work queue and a bunch of workers that pull from it, and occasionally does some cleanup work for the workers. If the workers are all instances of `FooWorker`, what would I name the other class? One idea I've had so far is a `FooManager`, but maybe there's a better one?"}
{"_id": "165062", "title": "Calculations in Vector Register", "text": "How do vector registers work in terms of calculations and alloting data to them ? Is there a detailed reference available somewhere explaining how vector registers work and how data is fetched from them ?"}
{"_id": "197343", "title": "Why don't I see many unit test projects that bring up and tear down a DB? (ASP.NET MVC)", "text": "I see all the examples that demonstrate unit testing code and mocking the calls to the DB since you are not suppose to touch the DB. But it seems to me having a set up tasks that uses the actually schema, loads the lookup tables and then populates it with data using the methods to be tested... This way it is more real world testing and all the stored procedures are tested as well.. But I never have seen any examples like this... Is there some reason I do not understand why using this technique is not as useful as it seems ? EDIT1: Sorry.. I shouldn't have called it unit test.. yes. I will have unit tests as well that are for testing code.. But beyond that it seems like a good idea to bring up and tear down and DB and have code that modifies that DB and does assertions.. But I don't want this to be UI testing.. I just want to perform a lot of CRUD functions and a lot of assertions .. :My question is #1 does this make sense.. #2 how do I automate this all within visual studio ? How do I tell VS 2012 to run a SQL script before running the tests? is there some special API for this ?"}
{"_id": "66590", "title": "Why Python and not Lua?", "text": "Why has Python been backed by google and become so rapidly popular and Lua has not? Do you know why Lua has stayed in background?"}
{"_id": "165067", "title": "Should all new web projects build their backend based on xml/json result sets?", "text": "If you were building a new Saas project, would it make sense to start with all of the backend services returning xml/json? Because these days you need to build for both the web and mobile devices, and having a backend that is build from the start to return xml and json, you are ready to go mobile (all services have the business logic, so you won't be repeating anything). Now the web would be MVC, so the controller would just be routing the request to your service backend, and converting the json or xml to html. The obviousl downside is that you have to build a backend, and then another web project that calls your backend. But this also goes to you favor as it forces you to seperate your concerns, and not leak business logic in your controller/view layer. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "93768", "title": "ACM student chapter event ideas?", "text": "I was recently elected president of the student chapter of ACM at my university, and am trying to come up with some ideas for events for the following year. The big one we do every year is practice matches and try outs for the ICPC. I am hoping to host one or two more events this year, and was wondering if anyone has some cool ideas or has some past experiences that worked well. One idea that we have had so far is to do a hackathon but it generally seems difficult to convince the underclassmen that they have the skill to participate in events like this."}
{"_id": "255887", "title": "The bad habits formed in the process of learning the C programming language", "text": "In the Cambridge University Computer Science curriculum booklet of 2012-13 under the module entitled 'Foundations of Computer Science' it states: > The main aim of this course is to present the basic principles of > programming. As the introductory course of the Computer Science Tripos, it > caters for students from all backgrounds. To those who have had no > programming experience, it will be comprehensible; to those experienced in > languages such as C, it will attempt to correct any bad habits that they > have learnt. They seem pretty sure that one who has learned a little C, has formed 'bad habits' in the process. I wish to learn C for I am interested in reading and writing Kernel source code. How do I learn C without forming 'bad habits'?"}
{"_id": "181521", "title": "Representing a rule in a ruleset", "text": "How to represent rules for a rule engine as objects? A rule would be > if ( _booleanExpression(input)_ ) then _a chain of generic actions_ \" else > _next rule_ ...where the generic actions might be e.g. passing the input to a different chain of rules, returning a conclusion (terminating analysis with result), or gathering additional data - though probably other actions might prove necessary too. Now the problem of parsing arbitrary boolean conditions aside (let's assume we have a fully working `booleanExpression` class available), how would such a Rule object look like, and specifically, how would the Ruleset object containing orderly, interconnected grid of these look like, in particular in a structure that will be possible to process by the actual engine. (if the data structures don't make it obvious how such engine should process them, maybe a hint about it too?) This will be written in C++ but a language-agnostic answer is most welcome too. * * * This is derivative of my question about Event Correlator, which seems to be unanswerable simply because it's too broad to tackle in one answer, so I'm trying to split the problem into smaller, bite-sized chunks."}
{"_id": "235294", "title": "Maintaining indices for location in a sorted list in database rows", "text": "I have a fairly simple data structure like this:               create table project (id int auto increment primary key, name text);          create table item (id int auto increment primary key, name text,         project_id int not null,          project_sort_index int not null,         sort_index int not null,         foreign key fk_project(project_id) references project(id));      A `project` can have many `item`s. Items have two different fields for maintaining sort order, `project_sort_index` and `sort_index`. These sort order fields apply in the following way. When I view all items belonging to a project, I need a sort order specific to each project for the items. When I view _all_ items globally, I need a sort order for them globally. I have a couple of questions as to how best to maintain and modify sort order for these items. Lets say that I have moved an item at index 4 to index 2. How do I propagate that change to my database efficiently? For example, how do I now update all index numbers >= 2 to move everything down, yet close the gap left in place 4? Is there a better way of sorting lists in SQL?"}
{"_id": "195140", "title": "Is reverse debugging possible?", "text": "I know there are some products for reverse debugging. I am wondering that does reverse debugging mean going to one step back or starting over again up to one step back? I've found an explanation here."}
{"_id": "51554", "title": "Software license options", "text": "Is there a software license that allows free access to source code, but does not allow redistributing any binaries, either direct from the source code or modified source code for a limited time? The idea being much like a open source software patent; the original developer has the exclusive right to sell and distribute the product, and prevent others from copying the product for a limited time, and the source code would be disclosed to the public. Obviously the downside is enforcing this license, but larger companies (e.g. Microsoft) could possibly gain the benefits of open source projects but still keep their proprietary position."}
{"_id": "91898", "title": "Patterns and practices for Web Scraping in .Net (C#)", "text": "I will be putting together an application to automate an external web site/application. In some instances I will need to navigate the site as a user would (some links I need to follow cannot be predicted and must be parsed from a response) I am already using Html Agility Pack, and am aware of Tidy if that is needed. **Are there any other technologies I should be aware of?** **Are there any recommended patterns for being able to quickly adjust in the event that the external web app changes?** I\u2019m envisioning encapsulating the validation of responses as some type of strategy or similar pattern that can be easily separated/plugged in as necessary, but any specific suggestions would be great."}
{"_id": "111351", "title": "Are Quines useful as anything more than a programming puzzle?", "text": "Quines, which are programs that generate their own code as part or all of their output are a neat idea for a programming puzzle. However, do they have any use beyond that?"}
{"_id": "214017", "title": "Architecting multi-model multi-DB ASP.NET MVC solution", "text": "I have an ASP.NET MVC 4 solution that I'm putting together, leveraging IoC and the repository pattern using Entity Framework 5. I have a new requirement to be able to pull data from a second database (from another internal application) which I don't have control over. There is no API available unfortunately for the second application and the general pattern at my place of work is to go direct to the database. I want to maintain a consistent approach to modeling the domain and use entity framework to pull the data out, so thus far I have used Entity Framework's database first approach to generate a domain model and database context over the top of this. However, I've become a little stuck on how to include the second domain model in the application. I have a generic repository which I've now moved out to a common DataAccess project, but short of creating two distinct wrappers for the generic repository (so each can identify with a specific database context), I'm struggling to see how I can elegantly include multiple models?"}
{"_id": "189734", "title": "Why does Java require a servlet container for simple RPC service?", "text": "I have a big database controller which is written in Java. The controller reads information from the database, and interprets it into data structures which are then displayed in a CLI. Java was chosen because writing code in it is fast and easy. Now I want to create an RPC server on top of the controller (XML-RPC or JSON-RPC for future AJAX calls), but it looks like I need a servlet container for my RPC service. I am confused because last year when I needed this kind of capability for another project in python, it took me less than 5 minutes to create the same functionality using the SimpleXMLRPCServer The same ease of creation applies also to C# as far as I recall. But in Java the story is different; now I need a servlet and therefore a servlet container (i.e Tomcat, Jetty) which means I need to install and maintain web servers. From what I can tell, JSON-RPC requires `Spring` framework in order to work. I have already spent around two hours in learning the design and sort-of how Tomcat works without writing even one line of code. I searched the web and found out that I have standalone options: I can use this library, but it doesn't seem maintained and it is also somewhat complex (I'm looking for something with decorators / annotations).   The other option I found is to use the so called \"embedded\" jetty and then trying to set it and configure it by code which also seems a tedious task. Why isn't there a **standalone** mechanism for such a popular interface? Am I missing out something here?"}
{"_id": "143279", "title": "Attending my first software conference - any tips before I go?", "text": "My nice employer allowed me to visit a software conference in June (International PHP Conference, for those who care). Wanting to make the most of it, I would ask the more experienced conference goers in here to give me some tips on what I could do to maximize my learning experience on the conference, and to reduce beginner mistakes. Sorry that this question is a little ambiguous, but I think it's best to keep it a little bit more open, so I can get a wide range of Ideas, and it will be of more use to further people seeking for an answer."}
{"_id": "111358", "title": "Functional programming: Writing a small interpreter", "text": "I'm working on a small Unix shell, and am contemplating the idea of writing a script interpreter. While reading about the subject I inevitably hear of functional programming, lambda calculus, and find out about the whole fascination around Lisp. Before I jump into this I have some questions.   * Which language should I use? I am curious about functional programming, so that would be a great opportunity to start. I want my shell to have as little 3rd party dependencies as possible. I am wondering whether I should look for a compiled language. I would like being able to distribute it more easily. Is this a correct approach? if so, which language would you recommend?   * How do you embed an interpreter in your program? The way I see it is having the interpreter run in a second separate process. As far as I know, two processes communicating, are either listening to a pipe or sending signals to one another. Is this a realistic approach? Is there a particular language that handles this part? Are there other ways of embedding the interpreter?"}
{"_id": "189730", "title": "What design patterns does every developer need to know", "text": "I was wondering what design patterns **every** developer, no mather what dev language, should know and why?"}
{"_id": "110402", "title": "How would you go about looking for collaborators?", "text": "I seem to have a never ending stream of more-or-less original, more-or-less cool ideas for software/apps/stuff yet to be written on my mind. Sometimes, I decide to just start implementing my idea. Several hours later, I end up with a decent, more-or-less working prototype of what I'm trying to build. Then, my alarm clock goes ringing and I have to get back to the real world, tired as hell. In most cases, the stuff I started remains unfinished forever. Sometimes, that's okay. Other times, I honestly feel like that's a bummer. But I realize that there are sites like GitHub and there are many other coders out there. Is there a place where one can post ideas, proposals, concepts, or rough-around-the-edges-code in order to find people who are interested in collaborating on projects? **Edit:** I am aware of \"the usual way\" \u2013 keep developing on your own for some period of time, open-source the code, mention your project on dev blogs, IRC or wherever else you go; eventually attracts others. What I'm looking for is a place to connect with other devs (e.g. of different specializations) on the early stages of a project."}
{"_id": "130358", "title": "Can cross-platform development be speeded by really specific, complete pre-coding design?", "text": "I'm green at programming but not entirely noobish. I taught myself some Java about five years ago, and I learnt me some Objective-C recently. I was talking with a Unix guy a while back, and he said that if you do your object architecture and design very completely and correctly, cross-platform development becomes really easy. All you have to do is take the description of each element and implement it. Since your design is so complete, each individual element is composed of relatively simple tasks. I'd like to get some feedback on that concept. In theory it makes sense, but programming is about execution. And if you agree with the concept, can you point me to some material that would help me understand how to build those kind of complete, specific designs?"}
{"_id": "34843", "title": "Why are software schedules so hard to define?", "text": "It seems that, in my experience, getting us engineers to accurately estimate and determine tasks to be completed is like pulling teeth. Rather than just giving a swag estimate of 2-3 weeks or 3-6 months... what is the simplest way to define software schedules so they are not so painful to define? For instance, customer A wants a feature by 02/01/2011. How do you schedule time to implement this feature knowing that other bug fixes may be needed along the way and take up additional engineering time?"}
{"_id": "221674", "title": "WCF and object-oriented programming", "text": "I am building a program which would have WCF support. I am using the MVC pattern. For each controller there is a WCF service class. e.g. I have `CTRL.CTRLBooking`, `WCF.IWCFBooking` and `WCF.WCFBooking`. For each controller (total of 10) there is a WCF class and an endpoint. Is this a good approach or should I keep all the methods I provide in one single class e.g. `WCF.WCFService` (considering their count would be no more than 25-30)?"}
{"_id": "35491", "title": "Examples of different architecture methodologies", "text": "Is there a resource or site which illustrates building the same application (desktop or web) using several different contrasting architectures? Such as MVP versus MVVM versus MVC, etc. It would be very helpful to see how they look side-by-side using real-world code instead of comparing written theory to written theory. I've often found that something can be _described_ well in a book, but when you go to _implement_ it, the subtleties and weaknesses of the theory become readily apparent."}
{"_id": "204673", "title": "CQRS and validations", "text": "I'm starting to introduce myself in CQRS concepts, but I get stucked with the following situation: Supouse you have an entity that must have an unique name. In order to verify that, prior to create the entity you must make a query, thus you are verifing against the query subsystem. But what happens if the syncronization has not been happened between the command system and the query system yet? Other client just had sent the same name before you. What happens in that case?"}
{"_id": "204672", "title": "Best way to test a reimplemented web service", "text": "In my team, we are about to start the reimplement of a service. One of the important steps to do to accomplish this is how do we ensure that we are doing it in the right way and we are not introducing new bugs. So, what we have in mind is create a bunch of test to verify the following:   * The behavior. Both services should behave the same way (store data in the same places, send same, notificacions, etc...)   * Results. Object returned by the service's calls should be exactly the same. So, the things that we have thought is to do the following:   * Create a set of test that verifies the behavior and results of old service.   * Create the new service adding unit test, and whitebox integration test for the new service   * Create some kind of \"Mirror test\" that checks if the new service is working as the old one. Is there a way to do this? Thanks for any help. Note: None of the code of the previous version is reusable. There is no test for the older version of the service [Edited]replaced original word \"migrate\" with \"reimplement\""}
{"_id": "181299", "title": "How flexible can hardware get?", "text": "This subject is long time in the making for me and it particularly took off when I was researching bootloaders for computers and consumer electronics, which, I will note, differ drastically. I've learned how ancient and inflexible x86 hardware is and just how much the structure of software is constrained by it. Examples of what I am talking about:   * Bootloaders cannot have an arbitrary size.   * Specialized functions like memory-mapped hardware.   * An Intel processor's ties to a particular type of firmware. So I've wondered about systems that might be designed like this:   * Writing text to the screen handled pixel-by-pixel by an operating system instead of an intermediary microcontroller.   * Sectorless hard drives wherein a computer simply begins executing at the first address and the bootloader can be any size.   * Functionality of microcontrollers moved into the software. I understand that this would take away a lot of simplicity, but do systems like this exist? I am guessing this would be more prevalent in embedded systems. To better understand this question, imagine a device where there are no controllers or independent systems and everything is controlled by the CPU."}
{"_id": "253028", "title": "opensaml assertion signature validation", "text": "I have a SAML 2 response with one assertion which is signed and the response itself has signed again. I use below code to validate the signature profile of the response.               SAMLSignatureProfileValidator signatureProfileValidator = new SAMLSignatureProfileValidator();     signatureProfileValidator.validate(**response**.getSignature());      And below code block to validate signature.               SignatureValidator signatureValidator = new SignatureValidator(validatingCredential);     signatureValidator.validate(**response**.getSignature());      But I believe that these things validate the response signature and the response signature profile only. **Do I need to validate the assertion signature as well?** I have tried validating assertion signature using below code block. But it gives me the ValidationException which means it is not valid. But it should be.               SignatureValidator signatureValidator = new SignatureValidator(validatingCredential);     signatureValidator.validate(**assertion**.getSignature());"}
{"_id": "181293", "title": "Developing with confidence without a real development environment", "text": "I've recently been hired for a project that involves working with and around several third-party \"enterprise\" systems. Due to what I imagine would be the astronomical cost and effort required to build a sufficiently faithful replica of the production environment, the prospect of having a real development environment seems vanishingly slim. This is of course not ideal. On the bright side, I imagine there must be people out there safely testing and deploying software into unreplicable environments like this, and I can probably follow in their footsteps. How those who effectively deal with these kinds of situations do it?"}
{"_id": "253027", "title": "Has there really not been one thing in the past 20 years that provided huge software development gains?", "text": "In _No Silver Bullet_ , Fred Brooks makes a variety of predictions about the future of software engineering, best summed up by: > There is no single development, in either technology or in management > technique, that by itself promises even **one order-of-magnitude > improvement** in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity. His argument is very convincing. Brooks was writing in 1986: was he right? Do developers in 2014 produce software at a rate less than 10x faster than their counterparts in 1986? By some appropriate metric -- how large has the gain in productivity actually been?"}
{"_id": "181290", "title": "Verifying a debit card online - What information is checked?", "text": "I am eager to know what information is checked by the online companies to confirm that the card is yours? If a programmer has to implement this functionality, how can he access information like address of the client which is not written on the debit card? Thanks"}
{"_id": "253022", "title": "alerting that an object cannot be deleted (due to constraints)", "text": "Assume an application with a rich domain model with many classes (e.g `School`, `Classroom`, `Teacher`, `Student`, `Course`, `Exam`, `Submission`, ...) linking to each other. Model and links are mapped to the database which uses appropriate FKs and constraints (without cascade delete). In the admin panel the user has delete buttons next to each object. Attempting to delete an object has one of the following two outcomes:   * the object isn't being referenced from any other object, so it is deleted   * the object is being referenced by at least one other object so it cannot be deleted. An alert is shown to the user. I've got two ways to implement this:   1. prior to executing the sql delete, do whatever queries are necessary to discover whether this object can be deleted. If it cannot, then alert user.   2. go ahead and execute the sql delete and if that fails (due to the rdbms constraints) catch the sql exception and alert the user that it cannot be deleted. Both ways work well. The first way allows me to give the user a detailed reason why the object cannot be deleted (e.g it is being referenced by 2 `Course`s and 1 `Classroom`). The second way allows me to solve the whole problem by not writing any constraints checking code and rely on the solid (and existing) implementation of the db. Is there a reason why I should definitely choose one over the other?"}
{"_id": "181296", "title": "lightweight document indexing to handle less than 250k potential records", "text": "Recently I've found myself chafing at the limitations of document indexing engines. I was developing a small website that needed some fairly robust searching capabilities but due to their hardware constraints I couldn't deploy a Lucene-ish solution (such as Solr or ElasticSearch, like I normally would) to handle this need. And even then, while I needed to serve up some complex data and calculations that were database-intensive, I didn't need to handle more than 250k potential records. Deploying an entire Solr or ES instance just to handle this seemed like a waste. After I thought about it, it seems like a fairly large problem. Most people handle search requirements solely with SQL. They just run SQL queries for their data and that's that. Their search capabilities also end up being terrible.   * Doing a blanket full-text wildcard search can be painfully slow on some systems (shared hosts in particular) and bog down your database, especially if you have complicated queries and lots of joins.   * You end up doing multiple queries on a single request from the user. You might get around this with ever-more-complicated queries, but see the previous point.   * Lack of features typically present in full-text engines. Databases had the same problem of needing to be deployed as a server and then SQLite came along and suddenly we could deploy a database that is self- contained in a single file. My Googling has produced nothing - wonder if something exist like this for full-text indexing/searching. What factors to take into account when deciding whether to implement lightweight document indexing (eg as explained in answers to another question) or keep using SQL for these situations?"}
{"_id": "165685", "title": "WCF/webservice architecture question", "text": "I have a requirement to create a webservice to expose certain items from a CMS as a web service, and I need some suggestions - the structure of the items is as such:               item     - field 1     - field 2     - field 3     - field 4      So, one would think that the class for this will be:               public class MyItem     {       public string ItemName { get; set; }       public List<MyField> Fields { get; set; }     }          public class MyField     {       public string FieldName { get; set; }       public string FieldValue { get; set; } //they are always string (except - see below)     }      This works for when its always one level deep, but sometimes, one of the fields is actually a point to ANOTHER item (`MyItem`) or multiple `MyItem` (`List<MyItem>`), so I thought I would change the structure of `MyField` as follows, to make `FieldValue` as `object`;               public class MyField     {       public string FieldName { get; set; }       public object FieldValue { get; set; } //changed to object     }      So, now, I can put whatever I want in there. This is great in theory, but how will clients consume this? I suspect that when users make a reference to this web service, they won't know which object is being returned in that field? This seems like a not-so-good design. Is there a better approach to this?"}
{"_id": "165683", "title": "Removing an element not currently in a list: ValueError?", "text": "This is something that's bothered me for a while, and I can't figure out _why_ anyone would ever want the language to act like this:               In [1]: foo = [1, 2, 3]          In [2]: foo.remove(2) ; foo  # okay     Out[2]: [1, 3]          In [3]: foo.remove(4) ; foo  # not okay?     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------     ValueError                                Traceback (most recent call last)          /home/izkata/<ipython console> in <module>()          ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list      If the value is already not in the list, then I'd expect a silent success. Goal already achieved. Is there any real reason this was done this way? It forces awkward code that _should_ be much shorter:               for item in items_to_remove:        try:           thingamabob.remove(item)        except ValueError:           pass      Instead of simply:               for item in items_to_remove:        thingamabob.remove(item)      * * * As an aside, no, I can't just use `set(thingamabob).difference(items_to_remove)` because I _do_ have to retain both order and duplicates."}
{"_id": "165680", "title": "Designing a system with different business rules for different customers", "text": "My company is rewriting our proprietary business application. The current architecture is poorly done and inflexible. It is coded more procedural oriented as opposed to object oriented. It has become difficult to maintain. Our system is a web application written in .Net Webforms. I am considering ASP.Net MVC for the rewrite. We intend to rewrite it with a good, solid architecture with the goal of maintainability and reusable classes for some of our other systems and services. We would also like the system to be customizable for different customers in the event that we market the system. I am considering redesigning the system based on the layered architecture (Presentation, Business, Data Access layers) described in the Microsoft Patterns and Practices Application Architecture Guide. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff650706.aspx Hopefully this isn't too open ended, but how would you recommend allowing for different business logic/rules for different customers? I'm aware of Windows Workflow Foundation, but from what I've read about it, it seems many business rules could be too complicated to handle there. Also, Can anyone point me to where I can download an example of a .net solution that is based on the Application Architecture Guide? I have already downloaded the Layered Architecture Solution Guidance and the Expense Sample on codeplex. I was looking for something a bit larger and more robust that I could step through the code and see how it works. If you feel there are better architectures to base our redesign on please feel free to share. I appreciate your help!"}
{"_id": "197961", "title": "Is Domain Entity violating Single Responsibility Principle?", "text": "Single responsibility ( reason to change ) of an entity should be to uniquely identify itself, in other words, its responsibility is to be findable. Eric Evan's DDD book, pg. 93: > most basic responsibility of Entities is to establish continuity so that > behavior can be clear and predictable. They do this best if they are kept > spare. Rather than focusing on the attributes or even the behavior, strip > the Entity object's definition down to the most intrinsic characteristics, > particularly those that identify it or are commonly used to find or match > it. Add only behavior that is essential to the concept and attributes that > are required by that behavior. > > Beyond that, look to remove behavior and attributes into other objects > associated with the core Entity .Beyond identity issues, Entities tend to > fulfill their responsibilities by coordinating the operations of objects > they own. 1. > ... strip the ENTITY object's definition down to the most intrinsic > characteristics, particularly those that identify it or are commonly used to > find or match it. Add only behavior that is essential to the concept ... Once an _entity_ is assigned a _unique ID_ , its identity is established and so I would assume such an entity doesn't need any behavior to _maintain its identity_ or to _help it identify itself_. Thus, I don't understand what kind of behavior is author referring to ( besides `find` and `match` _operations_ ) with \" _behavior that is essential to the concept_ \"? 2. > ... strip the ENTITY object's definition down to the most intrinsic > characteristics, particularly those that identify it or are commonly used to > find or match it. ... Beyond that, look to remove behavior and attributes > into other objects associated with the core ENTITY. So any behavior that doesn't help identify the entity, but we'd still characterize that behavior as being an _intrinsic characteristic_ of that entity ( i.e. barking is intrinsic to dogs, flying is intrinsic to airplanes, laying eggs is intrinsic to birds ... ), should be put into other objects associated with that entity ( example: we should put barking behavior into an object associated with a dog entity )? 3. > Beyond that, look to remove behavior and attributes into other objects > associated with the core ENTITY. a) `MyEntity` delegates responsibilities `A_resp` and `B_resp` to objects `a` and `b`, respectively. Even though most of `A_resp` and `B_resp` work is done by `a` and `b` instances, clients are still served `A_resp` and `B_resp` through `MyEntity`, which means that from the client's perspective the two responsibilities belong to `MyEntity`. Thus, doesn't that mean `MyEntity` also has `A_resp` and `B_resp` responsibilities and as such is violating **SRP**? b) Even if we assume that `A_resp` and `B_resp` don't belong to `MyEntity`, `MyEntity` still has a responsibility `AB_resp` of coordinating the operations of objects `a` and `b`. So doesn't `MyEntity` violate **SRP** since at minimum it has _two responsibilities_ \u2013 to uniquely identify itself and also `AB_resp`?               class MyEntity     {         private A a = ...         private B b = ...                   public A GetA()         { ... }              public B GetB()         { ... }              /* coordinates operations of objects a and b */         public int AworkB()         { ... }     }          /* A encapsulates a single responsibility resp_A*/     /* A is value object */     class A     { ... }          /* B encapsulates a single responsibility resp_B*/     /* B is value object */     class B     { ... }      **UPDATE:** 1. > Behavior in this context is refering to semantic behavior. For example, a > Property on a class (i.e. attribute on a domain object) that is used to > uniquely identify it has a behavior. While this is not represented in code > directly. The expected behavior is that there will not be any duplicate > values for that property. So in code we would almost never need to actually implement a behavior ( i.e. an operation ) that would somehow maintain entity's identity, since as you explained such a behavior only exist as a concept in a domain model ( in the form of a ID attribute of an entity), but when we translate this ID attribute into code, part of its semantics is lost ( i.e. the part which implicitly makes sure the ID value is unique is lost )? 2. > Furthmore, a property such as Age has no context outside of a Person Entity, > and as such, makes no sense to move into a different object ... However that > information could easily be stored in a separate location that the unique > identifier, hence the confusing reference to behavior. Age could be a lazy > loaded value. a) If `Age` property is lazy loaded, then we may call it a behavior, even though semantically `Age` is just an attribute? 3. > You could easily have operations specific to Address such as verification > that it is a valid address. You may not know that at design time, but this > whole concept is to break down objects into their smallest parts While I agree that we'd lose context by moving `Age` into different object, the context wouldn't be lost if we moved `DateOfBirth` property into a different object, but we usually don't move it. What is the main reason that we'd move `Address` into another object, but not `DateOfBirth`? Because `DateOfBirth` is more intrinsic to `Person` entity or because there are less chances that somewhere in the future we may need to define operations specific to `DateOfBirth`? 4\\. I must say I still don't know whether `MyEntity` also has `A_resp` and `B_resp` responsibilities and why `MyEntity` also having `AB_resp` isn't considered a violation of **SRP** **EULERFX** 1) > The behaviors that the author is referring to are behaviors associated with > the entity. These are the behaviors that modify the state of the entity a) If I understand you correctly, you're saying that _entity_ should only contain those _behaviors_ that modify its _attributes_ ( i.e. its _state_ )? b) And what about the _behaviors_ that don't necessarily modify the _state of the entity_ , but are still considered as being an _intrinsic_ characteristic of that _entity_ ( example: _barking_ would be _intrinsic_ characteristic of a `Dog` entity, even if it didn't modify _Dog's state_ )? Should we include these behaviors in an _entity_ or should they be moved to other objects? 2) > As far as moving behavior to other objects, the author is referring to value > objects specifically. Though my quote doesn't include it, but author does mention in the same paragraph that in some cases _behaviors_ ( and _attributes_ ) will also get moved into _other entities_ ( though I understand the benefits of moving _behaviors_ to VOs ) 3) Assuming `MyEntity` ( see question **3.** in my original post ) doesn't violate SRP, would we say that a _responsibility_ of `MyEntity` is among other things also comprised of: a. `A_resp` **+** `B_resp` **+** `AB_resp` ( `AB_resp` coordinates objects `a` and `b` ) or b. `AB_resp` **+** delegating `A_resp` and `B_resp` to objects ( `a` and `b` ) associated with `MyEntity`? 4) Eric Evan's DDD book, pg. 94: > CustomerID is the one and only identifier of the Customer ENTITY ( figure > 5.5 ), but phone number and address would often be used to find or match a > Customer. The name does not define a person's identity, but it is often used > as part of the means of determining it. > > In this example, the phone and address attributes moved into Customer, but > on a real project, that choice would depend on how the domain's customers > are typically matched or distinguished. For example, if a Customer has many > contact phone numbers for different purposes, then the phone number is not > associated with identity and should stay with the Sales Contact. a) > CustomerID is the one and only identifier of the Customer ENTITY ( figure > 5.5 ), but phone number and address would often be used to find or match a > Customer. The name does not define a person's identity, but it is often used > as part of the means of determining it. Quote states that only _attributes_ associated with _identity_ should stay in an _entity_. I assume author means that _entity_ should contain only those _attributes_ that are often used to _find or match_ this _entity_ , while ALL other _attributes_ should be moved? b) But how/where should other _attributes_ be moved? For example ( assumption here is that _address attribute_ isn't used to _find or match_ `Customer` and thus we want to move _address attribute_ out of `Customer` ): if instead of having `Customer.Address` ( of type `string` ) we create a property `Customer.Address` of type `Address`, did we move the _address attribute_ into an associated VO object ( which is of type `Address` ) or would we say that `Customer` still contains _address attribute_? c) > In this example, the phone and address attributes moved into Customer, but > on a real project, that choice would depend on how the domain's customers > are typically matched or distinguished. For example, if a Customer has many > contact phone numbers for different purposes, then the phone number is not > associated with identity and should stay with the Sales Contact. Isn't author in the wrong here, since if we assume each of the many _contact phone numbers_ that `Customer` has only belong to that particular `Customer`, then I'd say these _phone numbers_ are associated with _identity_ just as much as when `Customer` only had _one phone number_? 5) > The reason the author suggests stripping the entity down is that when one > initially creates a Customer entity, there is a tendency to populate it with > any attribute that one can think of being associated with a customer. This > is a data-centric approach that overlooks behaviors ultimately leading to an > anemic domain model. Off topic, but I thought _anemic domain model_ results from moving _behavior_ out of an _entity_ , while your example is populating an _entity_ with lots of _attributes_ , which would result in `Customer` having too much _behavior_ ( since we'd probably also include in `Customer` the _behaviors_ which modify these additional _attributes_ ) and thus in violation of SRP? thanks"}
{"_id": "165688", "title": "How to negotiate with software vendors who do not follow HL7 standards", "text": "Take, for instance the \"\", I'd hope that anyone who has spent any time in dealing with HL7 messages knows that the \"\" signifies that something should be deleted. \"\" is not an empty string, it's not a filler etc... But occasionally, one may meet a vendor who persists in sending \"\" instead of just sending nothing at all. Since, I work for a small business and have an extremely flexible HL7 interface, I can ignore \"\"'s in received messages. But these things are adding up.   * Some vendors like to send custom formatted fields with psuedo-components that they leave others to interpret themselves.    * Some vendors send all their information in note segments and assume you're going to only show users the information they send in a monospace font.    * Some vendors even have the audacity to send Carriage Return Line Feeds at the end of each line of a file interface.    * Some vendors absolutely refuse to send decimal numbers and in-so-doing refuse to send any numbers. So, with all this crippling humanity against the simple plastic software man, how does one bend without breaking*? Or better yet, how does one fight back and still make money? *my answer is usually to create an interface for the interface and keep the HL7 processing pure, but I don't think this is the best solution"}
{"_id": "103285", "title": "How can you tell good programmers from the average one?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicates:**   >  How do managers know if a person is a good or a bad programmer?   >  How to recognize a good programmer? For your record, I am a programmer myself, and I still do coding. We are not doing your-just-another-CRUD-app, instead we are working on CAD apps. The nature of software development makes it really hard to gauge a programmer's worth. How can you tell whether a programmer is good or not-so- good? All programmers who are working with me work on different parts of the applications, and how difficult it is to get those parts working is only known to the person who spend most time in it, in this case it's the programmers themselves; me as an outsider would not be able to fully appreciate the amount of sweat, ingenuity, effort they put in into solving those problems precisely because I don't have a chance to do the same job. This gives me a hard time when I evaluate them. How do I know programmer A is really great at solving the problem at hand and therefore I can throw him a bigger, harder task? And how do I know programmer B is just working hard, but not working smart? How can I evaluate and compensate programmers fairly?"}
{"_id": "33816", "title": "How to recognize a good programmer?", "text": "Our company is looking for new programmers. And here comes the problem - there are many developers who look really great at the interview, seem to know the technology you need and have a good job background, but after two moths of work, you find out that they are not able to work in a team, writing some code takes them very long time, and moreover, the result is not as good as it should be. So, do you use any formalized tests (are there any?)? How do you recognize a good programmer - and a good person? Are there any simple 'good' questions that might reveal the future problems? ...or is it just about your 'feeling' about the person (ie., mainly your experience), and trying him out? Edit: According to Manoj's answer, here is the question related to the coding task at the job interview."}
{"_id": "55692", "title": "How to write efficient code despite heavy deadlines", "text": "I am working in an environment wherein we have many projects with strict deadlines on deliverables. We even talk directly to the clients so getting the jobs done and fast is a must. My issue is that i'd always write code for the first solution that comes to my mind, which of course I thought as best at that moment. It always ends up ugly though and i'd later realize that there are better ways to do it but can't afford to change due to time restrictions. Are there any tips by which I could make my code efficient yet deliver on time?"}
{"_id": "189190", "title": "Allow threads (in c) to print messages without interfering with user input", "text": "I'm a writing a small webserver for personal use in c (not c++). I want to allow user input in the console like \"shutdown server\" or \"restart server\". In order to allow this kind of input the server is running in a seperate thread (pthreads), so the console isn't blocked. I also want this thread to print output in the console like \"a new client connected\" or \"client requestet 'home.html'\". > The problem is: If I'm typing something like \"shutdown server\" and at the > same time the thread prints something like \"a new client connected\" > everthing mixes up and I get something like \"shuta new client connectedown > server\" Is there an elegant way to print the output of the thread and at the same time allow the user to enter commands without both interfering? Or is this a stupid idea to begin with? If yes: Is there a standard way to handle things like that (i.e. to control server)."}
{"_id": "189191", "title": "Why is test driven development missing from Joel's Test?", "text": "I was reading this blog by Joel Spolsky about 12 steps to better code. The absence of _Test Driven Development_ really surprised me. So I want to throw the question to the Gurus. Is TDD not really worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "98717", "title": "What methods were used for online payments before API's and Paypal, etc", "text": "What methods (in programming/web dev terms) were used to take payments online before such things as Paypal, Google Checkout and various gateways and API's. How were such transactions carried out?"}
{"_id": "189194", "title": "Command pattern design", "text": "I have this old implementation of the Command pattern. It is kind of passing a Context through all the _DIOperation_ implementation, but I realized later on, in the process of learning and learning (that never stops), that is not optimal. I also think that the \"visiting\" here doesn't really fit and just confuses. I am actually thinking of refactoring my code, also because a Command should know nothing about the others and at the moment they all share the same key- value pairs. It is really hard to maintain which class owns which key-value, sometimes leading to duplicate variables. An Example of use case: let's say **_CommandB_** requires **_UserName_** which is set by **_CommandA_**. Should CommandA set the key **_UserNameForCommandB_** = _John_? Or should they share a common _UserName=John_ key-value? What if the UserName is used by a third Command? How can I improve this design? Thanks!               class DIParameters {     public:        /**         * Parameter setter.         */         virtual void setParameter(std::string key, std::string value) = 0;         /**         * Parameter getter.         */         virtual std::string getParameter(std::string key) const = 0;              virtual ~DIParameters() = 0;     };          class DIOperation {     public:         /**          * Visit before performing execution.          */         virtual void visitBefore(DIParameters& visitee) = 0;         /**          * Perform.          */         virtual int perform() = 0;         /**          * Visit after performing execution.          */         virtual void visitAfter(DIParameters& visitee) = 0;              virtual ~DIOperation() = 0;     };"}
{"_id": "189197", "title": "Contributor's actions after rejected pull request", "text": "Imagine, there is an open-source project with a Maintainer and a Contributor. Both of them have theirs repos exported to some repository hosting (github, bitbucket, sourceforge --- whatever, but they are public). Imagine further, Contributor did several commits, pushed them into his repo and sent pull-request to the Maintainer. Maintainer did review, made several comments about commits (fix this, fix that, simplify there, blah-blah-blah) and **rejected** the pull-request. Note:   1. For Contributor it's obvious that it's better to just fix patches/commits than rewriting from scratch.    2. Please consider situation, when there are many commits and fixes have to be scattered between them. What should Contributor do in this situation before making next pull-request? Remove invalid repo, rewrite history and push new one? Make a fix commit into current one? May Maintainer demand, that incoming history should be clean? I.e. is it technically simple enough to do?"}
{"_id": "223291", "title": "Listing dependencies in the package.json for a node.js app on Heroku", "text": "I previously had an issue with my node.js app on Heroku. I added the dependency into my package.json and now it is working. But, is this the best way to do it?               {       \"name\": \"application-name\",       \"version\": \"0.0.1\",       \"private\": true,       \"scripts\": {         \"start\": \"node app.js\"       },       \"dependencies\": {         \"express\": \"3.4.4\",         \"jade\": \"*\",         \"stylus\": \"*\",         \"ejs\": \"0.8.5\"       },       \"engines\": {         \"node\": \"0.10.1\",         \"npm\": \"1.3.14\"       }     }      I ask because the other dependencies have a \"*\" which were there by default in my express app. What exactly does that mean and am I fine with leaving this file the way it is?"}
{"_id": "223296", "title": "What is meant by a step-by-step refactoring plan describing implementation of design", "text": "> What is meant by a step-by-step refactoring plan describing how to implement > a certain design? As little as I know about refactoring it regards improving a (UML) design model and has nothing to do with the implementation of it. Therefore I'm pretty much confused by what this question means. Does anyone know and willing to explain? EDIT: In the context the design corresponds to a UML diagram with classes, methods and underlying associations."}
{"_id": "205664", "title": "Java Compiler and VM Compatibility", "text": "A co-worker and I recently had a discussion about Java versions and the JVM. I use Java 7 but we use Java 6 for our client (while he says that some are still on 5). My immediate thought was, why can't we target those VMs too? The Java VM is somewhat different than a real machine in that it has a bunch of runtime features. Type checking, exception handling, garbage collection, etc. But it's still a virtual machine which has a bytecode. (Which is why we can have things like C to JVM compilers.) So why can't we target older VMs with newer version of Java? Why does the language and the runtime have to be tied together? Besides the obvious performance penalties, it seems like it should be completely possible to compile Java 7 code to the Java 6 JVM. (And considering how little changed from Java 6 to 7, I can't imagine the compiler changes being that extensive.)"}
{"_id": "107807", "title": "How to describe framework/features of a java application for client presentation?", "text": "I have been asked to put down the architecture and features of our Java application (more from infrastructure/software point of view). It will go on a Powerpoint presentation, so I need to provide the list. Please let me know how do I go about this."}
{"_id": "107800", "title": "Can daily reports decrease a developer's productivity?", "text": "In another question, I asked about why developers might don't like **daily scrum**. We talked to developers and we decided to not hold daily scrum for a while (to give it a try and customized scrum in our first attempt). This is the output of consulting with developers directly. On the other hand, we don't want to lose good parts of daily scrum, like getting a chance to coordinate developers everyday, or watching the work progress like a Key Performance Indicator, to take actions early. As an alternative to daily scrum, we're thinking about asking developers to provide daily reports with the following conditions:   1. No need to follow any specific format. Each and every format is accepted.   2. Even if the work is not done, we want to hear the amount of progress.   3. There is no need to mention the time spent on each task.   4. Development obstacles and coordination requirements should be mentioned.   5. There is no need to be obsessed with daily reports. It's not taken that strict. Do you think that this can decrease their productivity? Have you had any daily report experience? Do you have any suggestion for us, so that we can get sure that we're not micromanaging?"}
{"_id": "56522", "title": "Is there ever a situation where it's ok to initiate a Delete on a GET?", "text": "When building a simple web app with database delete functionality, you normally would take the following steps:   1. User initiates a GET request using a delete link   2. User confirms the deletion   3. Upon confirmation, browser initiates a POST request to the server to perform the deletion What are the reasons for this convention? I understand that it sets up a confirmation step which would prevent automated calling of the delete function (as with spiders and such) - are there other reasons?"}
{"_id": "57698", "title": "Ur/Web new purely functional language for web programming?", "text": "I came across the Ur/Web project during my search for web frameworks for Haskell-like languages. It looks like a very interesting project done by one person. Basically, it is a domain-specific purely functional language for web programming, taking the best of ML and Haskell. The syntax is ML, but there are type classes and monad from Haskell, and it's strictly evaluated. Server- side is compiled to native code, client to Javascript. See the slides and FAQ page for other advertised advantages. Looking at the demos and their source code, I think the project is very promising. The latest version is something 20110123, so it seems to be under active development at this time. My question: Has anybody here had any further experience with it? Are there problems/annoyances compared to Haskell, apart from ML's slightly more verbose syntax? Even if it's not well known yet, I hope more people will know of it. OMG this looks very cool to me. I don't want this project to die!!"}
{"_id": "223126", "title": "API design with references to root object", "text": "[Normally I post on StackOverflow but as this is more a design/theory question rather than a code question I'll give it a shot here] Most of my applications currently use a core object model that I originally wrote 6 years ago and which has just grown as needed - as with most of my stuff, it was coded as is, without thinking up a design first. Part of it is too inflexible, part is poorly designed and yet more is clunky. So I decided to start again from scratch rather than trying to retrofit a new API on top of the existing one. And I also decided to actually map out the full API first upfront, then write the code for it. So far that approach is paying off I suppose and I have a nice little model brewing. However, I have one quandary in the new design. If you consider the automation models offered by things like Microsoft Word, most primary objects have a property named `Application` which points back to a core object. My existing object model follows pretty much the same principle and I am using that in the new one too. The current API however has a mix of approaches. Some objects store a reference to that root object. Others don't, and the property simply looks at a singleton \"service\" object, which at it's heart has a `ServiceContainer` to look up registered objects. Yes, a service locator. Some get it passed in through a constructor, others look it up _then_ store a reference. I normally like consistency, but this is a mess. My new design isn't changing this approach - objects still will have a property back the the root object with the idea being all the objects behave the same and I don't have to (manually) go hunting for an application when writing code for a given implementation. With that background information out of the way, here's my question. Should each object hold a reference to the root object, or should it not store a direct reference, but look it up somehow, ie from a singleton or a service locator. With the former approach, I'm going to use more memory - 4 bytes extra per object per object as I currently compiled everything as 32bit. While that doesn't sound a lot and I'm sure I'm not going to be creating many thousands of objects I sort of want the base API to be as efficient as possible as no doubt the apps I stick on top of it won't be! This approach also means I'm going to have to pass that object reference around in every single constructor, not much of a problem for real code but makes writing tests a bit more complicated. The latter approach means I save memory, but then I continue to use the bad practice of a service locator, and I supposed there's a at least the hint of a performance issue as having to lookup a reference isn't quite going to be as quick as returning a direct one. Or, is there another approach that large object models use that I haven't considered above? As mentioned I normally just dive in, make something that works then leave it alone until it breaks or I need it to do something else. I'm guessing the answer is going to be \"just store the reference and stop complaining\" but better to get a feel for other peoples opinions!"}
{"_id": "223121", "title": "Development console commands registration", "text": "I have a DevelopmentConsole class. I am making functionality to register console commands for the subsystems. I don't want the console to know about them but also I don't want them to contain a debug code (like \"Console.RegisterCommand...\"). I think I should make an additional class hiearachy. For an example I have Player class.               IConsoleBuilder {          RegisterCommand(string command, Func<string[], string> action);      }          PlayerConsoleBuilderClient : ConsoleBuilderClient {          readonly Player _player =  ?inject?              public override void Visit(IConsoleBuilder builder) {              // builder.RegisterCommand(\"GetName\", args => _player.Name) ;          }     }      Here I need to use Reflection to find all ConsoleBuilderClient subclasses. It's not a very good idea, is it? Can you suggest how to do it in a better way?"}
{"_id": "141657", "title": "software developer designation related", "text": "What does designation \"Associate software developer Grade 10\" means? A company mention it in his offer letter. Here two words are confusing first \"associate\" and second \"GRADE 10\"."}
{"_id": "166089", "title": "Replacing out parameters with struct", "text": "I'm encountering a lot of methods in my project that have a bunch of out parameters embedded in them and its making it cumbersome to call the methods as I have to start declaring the variables before calling the methods. As such, I would like to refactor the code to return a struct instead and was wondering if this is a good idea. One of the examples from an interface:               void CalculateFinancialReturnTotals(FinancialReturn fr, out decimal expenses, out decimal revenue, out decimal levyA, out decimal levyB, out decimal profit, out decimal turnover, out string message)      and if I was to refactor that, i would be putting all the out parameters in the struct such that the method signature is much simpler as below.               [structName] CalculateFinancialReturnTotals(FinancialReturn fr);      Please advise."}
{"_id": "227639", "title": "Can I use Apache Software License, Version 2.0 and GNU LGPL 3 licence plugins in my commercial web application?", "text": "I have two plug-ins. One has the GNU LGPL 3 license and the other has the Apache Software License, Version 2.0. Can I use them in my commercial app? And if yes, what precautions should I take?"}
{"_id": "26243", "title": "What's the \"normal\" range for typing speed for developers?", "text": "Clearly, two finger typing is probably a sign the developer needs work to speed up his typing (or is lying about his experience as a developer), and 60+ WPM is more than sufficient. Has anyone studied this, though? How fast do developers type, on average, and what's the \"normal\" range of typing speeds?"}
{"_id": "250599", "title": "How reduce the usage of Magic Strings?", "text": "In the application database there is a configuration table with this schema: Table: ReleaseProperty   1. ReleasePropertyID   2. ReleaseID   3. Name   4. Value Currently to retrieve a specific property I pass to the Repository class the arguments ReleaseID (that come from the current web page address) and a Name, that is basically hard coded E.g.               var property = ReleasePropertyRepository.Select(ReleaseID, \"MyProperty\");      I don't like to use hard coded strings around my code, and the only idea to improve the quality of this code is to use a container class for constants.               var property = ReleasePropertyRepository.Select(ReleaseID, Constants.MyProperty);      Is there any other way to develop a better code?"}
{"_id": "26249", "title": "What could be a good thesis topic for software and business?", "text": "For my business studies, I need to explore the financial side of software engineering projects, but I am rather a technical person myself. What would be good place to start? What are the important financials (net-present-value does this make sense for software?) or performance-indicators of \"good\" software projects? What type of person in an organization I should contact? Thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "250594", "title": "Web-services REST security clarification", "text": "I'm newbie of web services programming and I have some problem to understand how to work authentication/security for REST WS pattern. I had read about OAuth but I haven't understand how it work in detail, however I think I don't need it because only my app use the API. I need authenticate the users that need to use the \"privates\" APIs, can you explain me the correct way for implement a REST WS authentication, or give me a good guide or flowchart?"}
{"_id": "250591", "title": "In BDD, going from feature to user story how does it works?", "text": "My background is the book BDD in action. How one goes from Feature to Stories? More specifically I would like to understand the following: 1- When does one provide the decomposition into stories? Do you do it while spotting the examples that illustrate your feature ? 2 - If so how do you proceed in your development then: Do you first start to on work on the stories while leaving your feature pending ? Do you right the feature scenario first and then, move on the stories that comes out of it, while leaving the feature test pending ? The key here is the process, if i do a decomposition of a feature into stories, before writing my actual scenario that spot those stories, i might be writing stories that are not relevant to the feature isn't it? This though make me think that stories must be fleshed out in the same way as unit test/integration test are fleshed out of a user stories? However if one does that well it is difficult to plan a feature for scrum iteration. I understand that it is just a planning tool, but it would be interesting to understand how this planning is actually used in the context of dealing with a feature. I believe one should not do too much upfront planning, not commit to things without being sure, but in the mean time, it seem to me that the decomposition into the different process (stories) involve into the feature process requires some upfront planning. I would appreciate a clarification on that point."}
{"_id": "168058", "title": "What are graphs in laymen's terms", "text": "What are graphs, in computer science, and what are they used for? In laymen's terms preferably. I have read the definition on Wikipedia: > In computer science, a graph is an abstract data type that is meant to > implement the graph and hypergraph concepts from mathematics. > > A graph data structure consists of a finite (and possibly mutable) set of > ordered pairs, called edges or arcs, of certain entities called nodes or > vertices. As in mathematics, an edge (x,y) is said to point or go from x to > y. The nodes may be part of the graph structure, or may be external entities > represented by integer indices or references. but I'm looking for a less formal, easier to understand definition."}
{"_id": "168059", "title": "Best practices for logging user actions in production", "text": "I was planning on logging a lot of different stuff in my production environment, things like when a user:   * Logs In, Logs Off   * Change Profile   * Edit Account settings   * Change password ... etc Is this a good practice to do on a production enviornment? Also what is a good way to log all this. I am currently using the following code block to log to:               public void LogMessageToFile(string msg)             {                      System.IO.StreamWriter sw = System.IO.File.AppendText(                     GetTempPath() + @\"MyLogFile.txt\");                 try                 {                     string logLine = System.String.Format(                         \"{0:G}: {1}.\", System.DateTime.Now, msg);                     sw.WriteLine(logLine);                 }                 finally                 {                     sw.Close();                 }             }      Will this be ok for production? My application is very new so im not expecting millions of users right away or anything, looking for the best practices to keeping track of actions on a website or if its even best practice to."}
{"_id": "101890", "title": "How do I transition from a large enterprise to a small startup?", "text": "I am shortly going to move from a large, multinational, enterprise software house to a start up where I will be the only full time developer. I've worked in start ups and in companies where there have been only three or four devs before so I'm fairly happy with many of the differences in general company feel. But having never worked as a sole dev there a couple things I've got used to in a large company that I think will take more adjustment. And was wondering if there was any advice on how to manage them?"}
{"_id": "37533", "title": "Books on improving JEE web application performance and responsiveness", "text": "Does anyone know of any good books on this topic? I did search on amazon but ones that I found are pretty old publications."}
{"_id": "37532", "title": "Best industry to work for as a developer", "text": "My contract has just ended and I'm wondering what possible jobs I might want to look at next. I've worked in banking and insurance industry for all my career (including one Fortune 500 company) and in my experience banking is the slowest (and most boring) industry to work for due to their strict business practices (which is fair enough). The upside is that they pay well. ### My questions are:   * What are the best and worst industries for developers to work in? That is, in the industries you have worked in, what was good and bad from a developer perspective (money, work, culture, benefits, colleagues, etc.)?    * How does working as a consultant affect your opinion of an industry?   * Seeing that I've mentioned boredom, which industry supports fast growth?"}
{"_id": "138222", "title": "Tips/tricks to manage a new team with new code", "text": "How do you handle yourself in a new team where you are the senior most developer and most others in the team are junior to you by several years. The task ahead of the team is something nobody else including you has accomplished in their career before. Management insists on higher productivity of the whole team, and as senior developer you are responsible. Any tips for coming out trumps in a situation like this? Clearly, the entire team needs time to learn and let's not forget the team's new. However, deadlines are up ahead as well..."}
{"_id": "79963", "title": "Best Usage of Multiple Computers For a Developer", "text": "I have two Macbook Pros - both are comparable in hardware. One is a 17\" and the other a 15\". The 17\" has a slightly swifter CPU clock speed, but beyond that the differences are completely negligible. I tried a setup a while back where I had the 17\" hooked up to an external monitor in the middle of my desk with the 15\" laptop immediately to the right of it, and was using teleport to control the 15\" from my 17\". All development, terminal usage, etc. etc. was being done on the 17\" and the 15\" was primarily used for email / IM / IRC... or anything secondary to what I was working on. I have a MobileMe account so preferences were synced, but otherwise I didn't really use anything else to keep the computers in sync (I use dropbox/git but probably not optimally). For reasons I can't put my finger on, this setup never felt quite right. A few things that irked me was   * the 15\" was way under-utlized and the 17\" was overutilized    * having 2 laptops and a 21\" monitor all on one desk actually took up lots of desk space and it felt like I had too much to look at. I reverted back to just using the 17\" and the external monitor and keeping the 15\" around the house (and using it _very_ sparingly). For those of you who are using multiple laptops (or just multiple machines for that matter), I'd like to see setups that work for you for when you have 2 or more machines that gives you optimal productivity and why. I'd like to give this one more shot but with a different approach than my previous - which was using the 15\" as a machine for secondary things (communication, reading documentation, etc. etc)."}
{"_id": "207945", "title": "Apple Dispatch Queue vs Threads", "text": "I've heard a lot about apple's famous dispatch queues and the **GCD** but today was the first time I decided to understand exactly what is going on, so I started reading Concurrency Programming Guide and this paragraph caught my eye. > If you have two tasks that access the same shared resource but run on > different threads, either thread could modify the resource first and you > would need to use a lock to ensure that both tasks did not modify that > resource at the same time. With dispatch queues, you could add both tasks to > a serial dispatch queue to ensure that only one task modified the resource > at any given time. This type of queue-based synchronization is more > efficient than locks because locks always require an expensive kernel trap > in both the contested and uncontested cases, whereas a dispatch queue works > primarily in your application\u2019s process space and only calls down to the > kernel when absolutely necessary. What I understand is that they are suggesting executing two tasks serially to avoid use of locks, which can be done the same way in threads. For example in Java you can put two functions in your thread's runnable and the thread will execute them serially and you will not need locks in that case two. Now my question is that am I missing something ?"}
{"_id": "75230", "title": "New to programming. How do I meet people to expand my programming knowledge and discourse?", "text": "I've been a tinkerer of tech and programming, but books and online resources only go so far. I want a community to engage in discussions about programming to take me beyond what books can give (also, often just to explain what the books are trying to convey). No one in my daily life is very tech-inclined in the slightest, so where do I go? Are online communities enough for you programmers out there? If not, where do you go, or recommend going? (specifically, I'm interested in C++, Linux, Python, & Objective-C, but that may not apply to the question)"}
{"_id": "138229", "title": "Python is slowly replacing C in universities. Does this move degrade the quality of CS students?", "text": "I believe learning C is one of the most important aspects for any programmer. It's a beautiful combination of a high and low level language. Some universities are moving to stop teaching C in the introductory stages and are using Python instead. Will this move to Python, from C, degrade the quality of CS students? If you miss out on some of the aspects of a low level language, are you missing something important from you CS degree?"}
{"_id": "167684", "title": "When to use identity comparison instead of equals?", "text": "I wonder why would anybody want to use identity comparison for fields in `equals`, like here (Java syntax):               class C {         private A a;              public boolean equals(Object other) {             // standard boring prelude             if (other==this) return true;             if (other==null) return false;             if (other.getClass() != this.getClass()) return false;             C c = (C) other;                  // the relevant part             if (c.a != this.a) return false;                  // more tests... and then             return true;         }              // getter, setters, hashCode, ...     }      Using `==` is a bit faster than `equals` and a bit shorter (due to no need for null tests), too, but in what cases (if any) you'd say it's really better **to use`==` for fields inside `equals`**?"}
{"_id": "167687", "title": "How often is seq used in Haskell production code?", "text": "I have some experience writing small tools in Haskell and I find it very intuitive to use, especially for writing filters (using `interact`) that process their standard input and pipe it to standard output. Recently I tried to use one such filter on a file that was about 10 times larger than usual and I got a `Stack space overflow` error. After doing some reading (e.g. here and here) I have identified two guidelines to save stack space (experienced Haskellers, please correct me if I write something that is not correct):   1. Avoid recursive function calls that are not tail-recursive (this is valid for all functional languages that support tail-call optimization).   2. Introduce `seq` to force early evaluation of sub-expressions so that expressions do not grow too large before they are reduced (this is specific to Haskell, or at least to languages using lazy evaluation). After introducing five or six `seq` calls in my code my tool runs smoothly again (also on the larger data). However, I find the original code was a bit more readable. Since I am not an experienced Haskell programmer I wanted to ask if introducing `seq` in this way is a common practice, and how often one will normally see `seq` in Haskell production code. Or are there any techniques that allow to avoid using `seq` too often and still use little stack space?"}
{"_id": "167688", "title": "What is the most efficient way to study multiple languages, frameworks, and APIs as a developer?", "text": "I know there are those out there who have read a slurry of books on a specific technology and only code in that one particular language, but this question is aimed at those who need bounce around between using multiple technologies and yet still manage to be productive. What is the most efficient way to study multiple languages, frameworks, and APIs as a developer without becoming a cheap swiss army knife? And how much time should one dedicate to a particular subject before moving to another?"}
{"_id": "250040", "title": "Is it wrong to use Agile when clients' requirements don't change at all?", "text": "I have seen a lot of posts recently saying that one of the major reasons why Agile is used is because clients often change the requirements. However, let's say the clients **do not change the requirements often**. In fact, the clients have firm requirements though might be a bit vague (but nothing unreasonably vague), but I use Agile anyway. The reason why I employ Agile is because the software is complex enough that there are details, problems that I wouldn't recognize until I actually face them. I could do a full scale heavy planning approach like waterfall, but then it would take a few months to finalize all the high level design and low level coding signatures. There is a very specific, fixed architectural design for the system though. My question is: Would this be considered as bad, cowboy coding, anti-pattern, etc..? Must we employ waterfall and plan as much as possible in great details before we start coding **when requirements are stable** instead of this 'let's do it' mentality in Agile? EDIT: The major point here is that: we CANNOT blame the clients for changing requirements. Assume the clients pointed us to a very concrete problem, give us a wish list in very reasonable details and leave us alone (ie the clients have their own productive things to do, don't bug them any more. Only demo to them near the end when you have a minimum working prototype). Would it be wrong to use Agile in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "204132", "title": "Using a Proxy as an ACL", "text": "I am building an MVC application in PHP, using Zend Framework. My model includes Domain Model and Mapper layers. I am trying to keep the domain model in pristine condition and have managed to keep it free from persistence-related code. Now I am trying to find a solution for ACL. I have 'general' ACL rules that can be easily enforced in a service layer, but I also have some very fine grained rules. The fine grained rules apply at the property level and affect whether the current user can alter a field, and if so, what the range of allowable values is. Currently I am thinking of using the proxy pattern, and that the proxy should extend the real object (to save me having to redirect 100% of calls). Does this sound reasonable? Is there a better option?"}
{"_id": "209327", "title": "Getting help in programming while holding the reins tightly", "text": "I am starting an Internet business. Basically the most important part, the part that is making me actual money is still missing. I tried to deal with those issues several times but I always get distracted by other things. This is a typical example of not rising to a challenge. I thought about hiring a programmer to continue my coding but I came up with two problems:   1. When revealing my current code the programmer could just run the business on his own. How do I choose someone who won't do that?   2. Which way of payment is appropriate for the programmer in this situation? Per hour? How do I figure out the right amount? The code to be written will be in PHP + MySQL."}
{"_id": "250047", "title": "Is WCF strictly an asynchonous comms platform?", "text": "Since I last had to do any comms/network programming, the field has exploded with acronyms. In fact, networking almost feels like it is now described by a whole new language. The very name \"Windows Communication Foundation\" suggests it should be all things to all people... but I need to be sure I can program up some synchronous real-time* comms on a dedicated gigabit ethernet network. Can someone confirm that WCF is not a starter for this task... or if it is, which of the many confusing acronyms I should get familiar with? * By real-time, I mean I need to reduce latencies down to an acceptably low level. For our application, which involves transmitting results of video & audio analyses continuously every few milliseconds, I need to ensure 99% or better of those analyses are presented at the UI within (ideally) 0.5 seconds so that the user has time to respond before the originating network node deletes data out of its buffer to make way for subsequent analyses."}
{"_id": "209325", "title": "Combine Data from Two Tables-Help Needed", "text": "I have developed a web site with a mysql backend, but am not satisfied with how I am getting one set of data and do not know how to get another dataset. The page in question is at: http://whistclub.org/test/ajax.php?vichill/results/1 The results are shown through October so there is some data to use. I am pulling the results from two mysql tables (see below), but the code I have used is too ugly for me to tolerate. Yeah, it works, but I have some standards! Think calls to the database for each team. I think joins should be used, but I can't get it to work.   Ideally (I think) the result array would convert the teamIDs to team names and use names for the winner and loser VP columns. The standings table on the page is not working at all--what you see is hand coded just to show what is needed. The tables are:               teams:          id--autoincremented     teamID--Asssigned to each team as part of the game     teamName          games:          id--autoincremented     gameID--I suspect this is not needed since it duplicates id.     teamA     teamB      date     winner     IMPmargin     winnersVPs     losersVPS      The game is bridge and IMP and VP are scores. VPs are derived from IMPs and the loser often gets a few VPs. See the webpage for the details, but I do not think that is relevant to my issue. Here is some data from the games table:               id  gameID  teamA  teamB  date        winner  IMPmargin  winnersVPs  losersVPs     1   1       11     18     2013-09-25  18      12         20          10     2   2       12     17     2013-09-25  12      22         22          8     3   3       13     16     2013-09-25  13      20         21          9     4   4       14     15     2013-09-25  14      0          15          15     5   5       19     99     2013-09-25  NULL    NULL       NULL        NULL      Team 99 is a dummy for a bye week for a team. If the tables are designed too badly, let me know how to make them work better. Hopefully, that is enough for someone to point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "234447", "title": "Is Object Oriented Design necessary when building Symfony web apps?", "text": "I am primarily a software developer, and as such, I do a lot of reading on the subject of Object Oriented Design; the 5 SOLID principles, design patterns, composition over inheritance etc. I currently work as a PHP developer building web applications in Symfony 2. Along with learning to use an Agile/BDD/TDD approach to building web applications, I try to incorporate some OOD by searching out the abstractions and jotting down some interfaces for classes to communicate with (dependency inversion). I was recently tasked with building a small, in-house CMS for a small, static website. This seemed a great opportunity to create, for example, an abstract \"content\" class and derive different types of content from it, or an interface for persisting content to the database. As it turned out, I didn't need any of the OOD knowledge that I have spent hours amassing. I just created Entities for each content type (albeit they derived from a base Entity), and I used the Symfony Form API to render forms for User input. Symfony functionality, when combined with Doctrine, handled all of the persisting to the DB. All that was left was to retrieve from the DB, process it, and pass it to the Twig template. So in consideration of this, I imagine that even had the application been much larger, it seems that the nature of most web applications is to take user input, process it, perhaps persist it, and render a view. None of this seems to require any OOD knowledge or design pattern knowledge. My question is whether my time is wasted learning OOD, or if I shouldn't place such importance on it, as perhaps modern web application development doesn't really fit that realm of \"software\" development. NB: I am aware that if I was to build a framework such as Symfony 2, then the OOD principles would apply, as that is truely building software from the ground up. My question is more related to when we use the Symfony (or any other) framework. **Edit** A better way to rephrase my question: do the majority of web application developers, whilst being rich in the knowledge of OOD, find that they needn't apply a vast majority of this knowledge when building web applications, because today's frameworks shelter you from such low level design. Does anyone have any examples of modules they have built that required Object Oriented methodology?"}
{"_id": "14047", "title": "How you prepared for your .NET interview?", "text": "I gave many interviews in the last few years and each time I found the interviewers are not satisfied with what I know. My first company only developed desktop Windows applications using .NET. They had nothing to do with features like: _Remoting_ etc. We also had limited use of _Generics_ , _Reflection_ and _Multi-threading_. When I appeared for the interviews, I was asked questions on above features even when I told them that I don't have real-life experience. Now the .NET interviews are even more complex. Seeing my experience, the interviewers target the latest framework. I have no real-life exposure to the new features and technologies like WPF, WCF etc. Please suggest me how to effectively prepare for the .NET interview. I have 3 years experience in .NET but I only developed Windows based applications. At present I work on .NET Framework 3.5. I never worked on ASP.NET, as in my present company I work on PHP for web-applications."}
{"_id": "163087", "title": "High-Level Application Architecture Question", "text": "So I'm really wanting to improve how I architect the software I code. I want to focus on maintainability and clean code. As you might guess, I've been reading a lot of resources on this topic and all it's doing is making it harder for me to settle on an architecture because I can never tell if my design is the one that the _more experienced programmer_ would've chosen. So I have these requirements:   * I should connect to one vendor and download form submissions from their API. We'll call them the `CompanyA`.   * I should then map those submissions to a schema fit for submitting to another vendor for integration with the email service provider. We'll call them the `CompanyB`.   * I should then submit those responses to the ESP (`CompanyB`) and then instruct the ESP to send that submitter an email. So basically, I'm copying data from one web service to another and then performing an action at the latter web service. I've identified a couple high-level services:   * The service that downloads data from `CompanyA`. I called this the `CompanyAIntegrator`.   * The service that submits the data to `CompanyB`. I called this `CompanyBIntegrator`. So my questions are these:   1. Is this a good design? I've tried to separate the concerns and am planning to use the facade pattern to make the integrators interchangeable if the vendors change in the future.   2. Are my naming conventions accurate and meaningful to you (who knows nothing specific of the project)?   3. Now that I have these services, where should I do the work of taking output from the `CompanyAIntegrator` and getting it in the format for input to the `CompanyBIntegrator`? Is this OK to be done in `main()`?   4. Do you have any general pointers on how you'd code something like this? I imagine this scenario is common to us engineers---especially those working in agencies. Thanks for any help you can give. Learning how to architect well is really mind-cluttering."}
{"_id": "197059", "title": "C++ or C#: Which language is Microsoft going to use in development of future Windows versions?", "text": "I heard almost all parts of Windows are written in C and C++ with some assembly. Why did Microsoft skip C#? Is there any scope for C# in the development of future Windows versions?"}
{"_id": "220961", "title": "using pre-commit / post-merge hook script to replace configuration values", "text": "I'm having some problem developing a web application with various developers, each one has an specific configuration to work. and i would like to use the less resource cosuming approach to avoid that any personal configuration goes to the repository. **the basic idea is:** to have a config file with all the pairs of key/values to store the configuration and substitute specific constants inserted in the code with the correpondent value in the code. I'm pretending to replace the values in the code with the key text using this syntax `{@KEY_TEXT}` in pre-commit and executing the opposite operation in the post-merge hook i'm doing this right? there's a more efficent way to do this? **EDIT:** Why i don't have all debug configuration in a single file, because all this values are inserted accross various files / and involves lot of different programming languages and differente context. i'm Using **PHP/javascript/Shell/Batch** file Language (Windows). in a cross plataform enviroment"}
{"_id": "232372", "title": "How much to charge for project support after one year?", "text": "We did a project and the cost includes one year bug fixes and supporting.   How much should we charge for supporting the website for another one year? is there a formula or standard way to calculate this?"}
{"_id": "222652", "title": "What's the reason for C standard to consider const-ness recursively?", "text": "The C99 standard says in 6.5.16:2: > An assignment operator shall have a modifiable lvalue as its left operand. and in 6.3.2.1:1: > A modifiable lvalue is an lvalue that does not have array type, does not > have an incomplete type, does not have a const-qualified type, and if it is > a structure or union, does not have any member (including, recursively, any > member or element of all contained aggregates or unions) with a const- > qualified type. Now, let's consider a non-`const` `struct` with a `const` field.               typedef struct S_s {         const int _a;     } S_t;      By standard, the following code is undefined behavior (UB):               S_t s1;     S_t s2 = { ._a = 2 };     s1 = s2;      The semantic problem with this is that the enclosing entity (`struct`) should be considered writable (non-read-only), judging by the declared type of the entity (`S_t s1`), but should not be considered writable by the wording of standard (the 2 clauses on the top) because of `const` field `_a`. The Standard makes it unclear for a programmer reading the code that the assignment is actually a UB, because it's impossible to tell that w/o the definition of `struct S_s ... S_t` type. Moreover, the read-only access to the field is only enforced syntactically anyway. There's no way some `const` fields of non-`const` `struct` are going really be placed to read-only storage. But such wording of standard outlaws the code which deliberately casts away the `const` qualifier of fields in accessor procedures of these fields, like so (Is it a good idea to const- qualify the fields of structure in C?): **(*)**               #include <stdlib.h>     #include <stdio.h>          typedef struct S_s {         const int _a;     } S_t;          S_t *     create_S(void) {         return calloc(sizeof(S_t), 1);     }          void     destroy_S(S_t *s) {         free(s);     }          const int     get_S_a(const S_t *s) {         return s->_a;     }          void     set_S_a(S_t *s, const int a) {         int *a_p = (int *)&s->_a;         *a_p = a;     }          int     main(void) {         S_t s1;         // s1._a = 5; // Error         set_S_a(&s1, 5); // OK         S_t *s2 = create_S();         // s2->_a = 8; // Error         set_S_a(s2, 8); // OK              printf(\"s1.a == %d\\n\", get_S_a(&s1));         printf(\"s2->a == %d\\n\", get_S_a(s2));              destroy_S(s2);     }      So, for some reason, for an entire `struct` to be read-only it's enough to declare it `const`               const S_t s3;      But for an entire `struct` to be non-read-only it's not enough to declare it w/o `const`. What I think would be better, is either:   1. To constrain the creation of non-`const` structures with `const` fields, and issue a diagnostic in such a case. That would make it clear that the `struct` containing read-only fields is read-only itself.   2. To define the behavior in case of write to a `const` field belonging to a non-`const` struct as to make the code above **(*)** compliant to the Standard. Otherwise the behavior is not consistent and hard to understand. So, what's the reason for C Standard to consider `const`-ness recursively, as it puts it?"}
{"_id": "207948", "title": "How do I find a good middle way to make this library safe for concurrent operations", "text": "I've made a little library called SignalR.EventAggregatorProxy Before I push it into 1.0 state I need to fix so it works safely with concurrent operations. Easiest way is lock all operations but thats a huge performance impact. The library queues event subscriptions and when a event comes in it checks the subscriptions and updates the clients using SignalR This is the class that holds the subscriptions There are 3 methods that write/read to the subscription collection(s) (I aggregate the subscription both on a client level and event level, so its two collections)   * Subscribe    * UnsubscribeConnection   * Unsubscribe And one that that reads   * Handle I realize since this is a library I can't make it optimum for all users of the library, but how do I find a good middle way that does not use locks? I think the Handle method is the most important method and should be prioritized for performance over the other 3. I made this little Unittest to test for Concurrency fail **update:** I choose to have locked writes and unlocked reads. The writes didnt mutate existing state but overwrite the collection completely."}
{"_id": "106044", "title": "Best way to use source control for a project (1-3 people)", "text": "So my partner and I are working on a practice management system and at first we didn't use any version control, then I persuaded him to use git. At the moment our system is that we have three branches: develop, master and release. Our git repo is on an external server, which has Apache, MySQL, etc. We do our daily coding on the develop branch (commits) and then we we have done some testing to make sure it's (semi) bug-free we merge it into the master branch. If we want to do something radical we just make a branch of master, mess around and if it works, good, we merge it back in, if not, we delete the branch. Finally when we go for our weekly release we merge to the release branch to make sure we have a copy of the project as it was when we released. Unfortunately we don't track all files in git as it slows down git too much (e.g. images, especially since this is on an old server with a single-core 1.4 GHz AMD Sempron), as a `git status` usually changes from around 3s to about 1 minute; or because we can't (mysql databases). For us the slowdown is not workable so we just leave them out, and this has never seemed to be a problem because we haven't deleted any images, but we may start to soon as we start to optimize. So when we checkout previous commits sometimes the files aren't there and so it is broken (a big problem is we can't use version control on the database (because we don't know how), so because the schema has changed it is also broken if we go back). And that's pretty much our workflow. So after my background, my question is: **Do you think that there are any improvements we could make to the above?** And on a side note: Does any know a reliable and easy-medium difficulty (i.e. not _too_ hard) way to track mysql databases in git?"}
{"_id": "222659", "title": "How to deal with hard configurations at the component level?", "text": "I distinguish three organisation levels while programming: the library level, the component level and the application level. A library defines functions to solve a range of related problems or preform related operations in _tools and no policies_ manner. An application lets several libraries interact and defines policies for diagnostic, error handling, internationalisation,\u2026 A component sits between the library and the application, it handles low-level errors and produce diagnostics, it might old global state and is aware of other components. Now I have a library implemented as a functor parametrised by a module holding a constant _n_ and values associated to different values of _n_ have incompatible types\u2014which is the purpose of implementing the library as a functor. I call such a configuration a _hard_ configuration, because it must somehow be hard-coded in the program. Now I am facing the following problem: In this setting, I want to allow the user of the program to choose the value of _n_ for the duration of the program. Since the library is a functor, one feels forced to write the component interfacing the library to the program as a functor. But I want the choosed value of _n_ to be a property of the component, not of the application, and I want component to be regular modules (no functor allowed). How can I wrap a parametric library (implemented as a functor) in a non- parametric component, so that parameters can be chosen when the application starts? I insist on being able to express the application logic at the highest level in terms of non parametric modules, and want to avoid russian-dolls- alike parametrised modules at this level."}
{"_id": "222658", "title": "Implementation of chess endgame engine without Endgame Tablebases", "text": "I'm interested in creating an chess endgame solving engine. The endgames in chess are usually solved using the endgame table-bases generated by `retrograde algorithm`. I have found that Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms have been applied to the chess programming. However, before starting the implementation I wanted to find out whether the chess endgames can be played without the endgame tablebases? If yes, then what are the pros and cons of these alternatives to endgame tables? Are there any other algorithms known for this problem?"}
{"_id": "53844", "title": "Website inheritance of ownership question", "text": "I paid for a web site for my motel business, then due to my landlord actions I was placed in a position to file for bankrupcy. I asked my IT manager and web developer to close down the web site for the business. He has since then sold my web site to the new owners. I took all the photos myself and I am in at least 4 of the photos on the site. There are no changes to the site as I left it and it now states that it is under the copyright on the new owners? I am not sure what I should do as this happen 10 months ago and I have just found this out. Thank you for your help, I am in Australia."}
{"_id": "53847", "title": "Keeping application backend and UI synchronised", "text": "I have an app that works with a list of objects so has one central keyed list. The main window has a tree containing these object with some information, which is easy enough to populate as a one off event after loading. Now, the complicated part, any part of the application can add, remove, and more importantly change the details of those objects at any time (all in the same process) and I'd like the tree to update to suit. I have a few options including passing events back down from the object to the list to the form which seems to be the most flexible way. I can also do it lazily and repopulate the tree each time or periodically (very hackish). Does anyone have any better thoughts on how to structure this? This is being done in C# 2.0 but the concepts apply to any environment. Thanks"}
{"_id": "167359", "title": "Pricing personalized software?", "text": "Currently i'm working on a Purchased Order System Application Project for a small scale company. The Software that i am working on is personalized based on the on their business requirement. **The company told me to create proposal include the price how much is the application is so they can process the check for me.** The person who give me this project is the company supervisor and also a former supply chain supervisor in my employer before which i work also in some of their applications back then.So i want to be fair. This is my first time to create an application as a sideline so i really never experienced pricing a software even though i am working as full time web developer in a big company. Any tips and help ?"}
{"_id": "185991", "title": "Will Authentication over HTTPS Slow My Application?", "text": "I am building a web application and RESTful web service. I have been reading various articles about the best way to authenticate the requests to the web service. The best option for me seems to be to use HTTP basic authentication. Pretty much every article ive read says that authentication should be encrypted over SSL or equivalent. Im not totally sure what this involves. Does this mean that my whole web service will have to be on a secure server? Will this slow things down?"}
{"_id": "53843", "title": "What is the best way to work with large databases in Java depending on context?", "text": "We are trying to figure out the best practice for working with very large DBs in Java. What we do is a kind of BI (business Intelligence), i.e analyzing very large DBs, and using them to create intermediate DBs that represent intelligent knowledge of the DBs. We are currently using JDBC, and just preforming queries using a ResultSet. As more and more data is being created, we are wondering whether more appropriate ways exist for parsing and manipulating these large DBs:   1. We need to support 'chunk' manipulation and not an entire DB at once(e.g. limit in JDBC, very poor performance)   2. We do not need to be constantly connected since we are just pulling results and creating new tables of our own.   3. We want to understand JDBC alternatives, with respect to advantages and disadvantages.   4. Whether you think JDBC is the way to go or not, what are the best practices to go by depending on context (e.g. for large DBs queried in chunks)?"}
{"_id": "151246", "title": "Is it possible to modify a video codec + distribute it?", "text": "this is my first question on this particular stackexchange node, not sure if it's the most appropriate place for this question (if not, guidance to the appropriate node would be appreciated). **the abstract:** I'm interested in modifying existing video codecs and distributing my modded codecs in such a way as to make them easily added to a users codec library... for example to be added to their mpeg streamclip, ffmpeg etc. **some details:** I've had some experience modifying codecs by hacking ffmpeg source files and compiling my hacked code (so that for ex: my version of ffmpeg has a very different h.263 than yours). I'm interested now in taking these modified codecs and somehow making them easily distributable, so others could \"add them\" to their \"libraries.\" Also, I realize there are some tricky rights/patent issues here, this is in part my motivation. I'm interested in the patent quagmires, and welcome any thoughts on this as well. **ctx link:** if it helps (to gauge where I'm coming from) here's a link to a previous codec-hacking project of mine http://nickbriz.com/glitchcodectutorial/"}
{"_id": "185998", "title": "What is the fitness landscape for minimal + viable solutions?", "text": "Let's say I'm trying to find a number from 1 .. 100. All numbers in this range are \"valid\", in that they could be interpreted as potential solutions. Let's say the ideal number is 50. And all numbers >= 50 are \"feasible\" in that they actual solve the problem. And all numbers < 50 are \"not feasible\" (but still valid). How would you code a scenario like this with a fitness function (assuming that the landscape is similar to but more complex than this contrived example)? Do you give \"bonuses\" to valid solutions? Do you measure how far an unfeasible solution has left to go before becoming optimal? And do you penalize excessive solutions?               if (solution < 50) {       maximalFitness = solution     } else if (solution >= 50) {       maximalFitness = 1_000 - solution     }      The curve wouldn't be continuous if all feasible solutions are strictly better than all unfeasible solutions, despite having a similar distance from optimal."}
{"_id": "121555", "title": "Why is trailing whitespace a big deal?", "text": "Trailing whitespace is enough of a problem for programmers that editors like Emacs have special functions that highlight it or get rid of it automatically, and many coding standards require you to eliminate all instances of it. I'm not entirely sure why though. I can think of one practical reason of avoiding unnecessary whitespace, and it is that if people are not careful about avoiding it, then they might change it in between commits, and then we get diffs polluted with seemingly unchanged lines, just because someone removed or added a space. This already sounds like a pretty good reason to avoid it, but I do want to see if there's more to it than that. So, why is trailing whitespace such a big deal?"}
{"_id": "72259", "title": "As a beginning programmer, should I favor building my own libraries over using 3rd-party libraries?", "text": "As a beginning Python programmer, is it a good idea to build and understand my own libraries before jumping to advanced 3rd-party libraries that contains the functionality I need? Some projects (e.g. web frameworks like Django) are probably too large for this approach. But other projects (e.g. Web Crawlers, graph libraries, HTML parser) seem to be feasible. I worry that early reliance on 3rd-party libraries would stunt my growth. Note: this question and this question seem to focus more an experienced programmers, who are probably more focused on the efficiency of reuse than the learning benefit. My question, I think, is focused on beginners."}
{"_id": "37398", "title": "Evolution in coding standards, how do you deal with them?", "text": "How do you deal with evolution in the coding standards / style guide in a project for the existing code base? Let's say someone on your team discovered a better way of object instantiation in the programming language. It's not that the old way is bad or buggy, it's just that the new way is less verbose and feels much more elegant. And all team members really like it. Would you change all exisiting code? Let's say your codebase is about 500.000+ lines of code. Would you still want to change all existing code? Or would you only let new code adhere to the new standard? Basically lose consistency? How do you deal with an evolution in the coding standards on your project?"}
{"_id": "18213", "title": "Any tips for designing the invoicing/payment system of a SaaS?", "text": "The SaaS is for real estate companies, and they can pay a monthly fee that will offer them 1000 publications but they can also consume additional publications or other services that will appear on their bill as extras. On registration the user can choose one of the 5 available plans that the only difference will be the quantity of publications their plan allows them to make. But they can pass that limit if they wish, and additional payment will be required on the next bill. A publication means: Publishing a property during one day, for 1 whole month would be: 30 publications. And 5 properties during one day would be 5 publications. ## So basically the user can:   * Make publications (already paid in the monthly fee, extra payment only if it passes the limit)   * Highlight that publication (extra payment)   * Publish on other websites or printed catalogues (extra payment) ## Doubts:   * How to handle modifications in pricing plans? Let's say quantities change, or you want to offer some free stuff.   * How to handle unpaid invoices? I mean, freeze the service until the payment has been done and then resume it.   * When to make the invoices? The idea is to make one invoice for the monthly fee and a second invoice for the extra services that were consumed.   * What payment methods to use? The choosen now is by bank account, and mobile phone validation with a SMS. If user doesn't pay we call that phone and ask for payment. Any examples on billing online services will be welcome! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "71424", "title": "What are the barriers to adopting best practice? How can they be overcome?", "text": "We've all seen (and most of us have written) plenty of poorly written code. Why? What makes us adopt poor practices rather than good ones? The most obvious answer (to me) is \"ignorance\", but I'm sure that isn't the only reason. What others are there? What can we do to overcome the temptation to write bad code?"}
{"_id": "208741", "title": "Web app outgrowing current framework", "text": "I have quite a bit of experience with using Django for websites and so when I started a new project I naturally chose to use Django for it. Everything went well for a time but now the application is really starting to rub up against what Django can comfortably cope with and I fighting all the time to ensure that things work as intended. I've been considering moving the site over to Java EE 7 now that it has been released. It certainly seems to provide the features I require as well as also being less forceful in the way that a project is laid out and maintained. I guess now that I have a good idea of how the application should be structured, development should be much faster. Have you felt the need to change the web framework you are using simply because it doesn't lend itself well to the type of project you are trying to produce?"}
{"_id": "208747", "title": "What to test when building websites using CMS?", "text": "My job is mainly building websites using CMS such as Drupal, eZPublish or Magento. Most of the work is templating, CRUD and adhering to the specs with this. Occasionally, there is some business-specific logic, but it's usually 20 lines or so. Most of the logic is a bunch of `if` in the templates. In this context, I find it hard to argue over unit testing. What should I test? Only integration tests? They usually can only be done at a very high level, such as using Selenium IDE. And Selenium is a pain to handle in project-mode products, because the requirements often change in 6 months and then the project is over. There are also other difficulties such as URLs being dynamic. (CMS don't always respect a RESTful architecture, especially for contents.) I am in favor of unit testing. For libraries or framework-based projects, I easily write them and sets up a Jenkins server for them. But for CMS-based projects, I just don't know how and where to get started."}
{"_id": "208745", "title": "Talking about Front End Web Development frameworks from a designer's perspective", "text": "I am a Web Developer working at a company where the fronted framework we have selected is Angular JS. I am now in the position where I am the 'resident expert' whatever that may mean. I have been tasked with teaching/explaining everything that our Designers need to know about Angular JS. Unfortunately my knowledge/understanding of design begins and ends with the color wheel. Therefore I have the following question: What, if anything would a designer need to know about a front end javascript framework in general/Angular JS in particular in order to streamline their productivity? What kind of things are irrelevant? What kind of things are important?"}
{"_id": "38924", "title": "Confusion in definitions of a method and a methodology in the book \"OOAD with Applicatons\" (Booch et al)", "text": "I am reading the book Object-Oriented Analysis and Design written by Grady Booch and others. In the Section : I Concepts in a subsection Bringing Order to Chaos authors suggest to separate between a _Method_ and a _Methodology_ : According to the book: **A method** is a disciplined procedure for generating a set of models that describe various aspects of a software system under development, using some well-defined notation. **A methodology** is a collection of methods applied across the software development lifecycle and unified by process, practices, and some general, philosophical approach. I understood that a _Method_ is used to built system models and a _Methodology_ is a set of such methods that are applied across software development lifecycle. To my knowledge, a software development lifecycle includes but is not limited to analysis, design, implementation and testing phases. How it can be that a _Method_ that is used to built system models is also applied in implementation or testing phase?"}
{"_id": "202477", "title": "Can too much abstraction be bad?", "text": "As programmers I feel that our goal is to provide good abstractions on the given domain model and business logic. But where should this abstraction stop? How to make the **trade-off between abstraction** and all it's benefits (flexibility, ease of changing etc.) **and ease of understanding the code** and all it's benefits. I believe I tend to write code overly abstracted and I don't know how good is it; I often tend to write it like it is some kind of a micro-framework, which consists of two parts:   1. Micro-Modules which are hooked up in the micro-framework: these modules are easy to be understood, developed and maintained as single units. This code basically represents the code that actually does the functional stuff, described in requirements.   2. Connecting code; now here I believe stands the problem. This code tends to be complicated because it is sometimes very abstracted and is hard to be understood at the beginning; this arises due to the fact that it is only pure abstraction, the base in reality and business logic being performed in the code presented 1; from this reason this code is not expected to be changed once tested.  Is this a good approach at programming? That it, having changing code very fragmented in many modules and very easy to be understood and non-changing code very complex from the abstraction POV? Should all the code be uniformly complex (that is code 1 more complex and interlinked and code 2 more simple) so that anybody looking through it can understand it in a reasonable amount of time but change is expensive or the solution presented above is good, where \"changing code\" is very easy to be understood, debugged, changed and \"linking code\" is kind of difficult. Note: this is not about code readability! Both code at 1 and 2 is readable, but code at 2 comes with more complex abstractions while code 1 comes with simple abstractions."}
{"_id": "133073", "title": "Is there a difference between casting and converting types in imperative programming languages?", "text": "The question came up in a discussion at StackOverflow. Is there a clean distinction between the two concepts **cast** and **convert** (concerning the type of an object), or are these two words describing exactly the same? How about languages other than C++, Python and Java? **EDIT** : What if the types in question are primitive types, like `int` to `float`?"}
{"_id": "113461", "title": "Involuntarily becoming a programmer: how to do it right?", "text": "My background is electrical engineering, DSP to be more precise. The company I currently work for does a lot of diverse projects, mostly building analog hardware. Being somewhat closer to computers than everybody else around here I'm often the one writing code for both embedded devices (which I'm perfectly fine with) and Windows or Linux OS. It is the latter that is foreign territory to me. I can code, and I know a few languages (C/C++, Java, some VB.NET), but I only used them for algorithm simulations in signal and image processing, neural networks, and other similar applications. For me programming has been a computational tool more than anything else. However, I get more and more projects where I have to write proper full-fledged software, and I don't really know how to do it, because I never had to do it, and I was never really interested enough. I have myself seen quite a few engineers who got converted into coders to a certain degree because of job demands, and most of them weren't that great at what they did. I'm sure many people have encountered the same. If I were to learn writing proper software with good user interface, good internal architecture and so on, how do I do it? We don't have anyone at work who could tell me what's good practice and what isn't. Given that I can write _code_ in the rawest sense of the word, what else is there to know about writing good software and how I do I get there on my own?"}
{"_id": "83568", "title": "Is it legal to put `FSharp.Core.dll` from FSharp redistributable package?", "text": "Is it legal to put `FSharp.Core.dll` from FSharp Redist Package into my application package and redistribute it with my application? I couldn't find any information about this."}
{"_id": "83566", "title": "Making it work V/S Making it work right", "text": "I am somehow a bit good at coding algorithms for small projects, but when it comes to make an attempt for some biggies, I make a total hodge-podge and marshmallows of my project's structure. I have studied a lot of books on software engineering and SDLCs where they say that becoming a developer is what every nook and crook can do, but the actual developer is the one who follows a systematic approach to the problem and solve it the way its meant to be. My code works fine for such jumbled up projects, but it gets too difficult for maintenance and further upgrades. So, **I would like suggestions so as what should be the proper approach to planning the big moves**"}
{"_id": "251318", "title": "Problem : Certificate for multi Clients of WCF", "text": "* If My WCF service have big number of clients through the Internet,then whether should all of them share the same Client Certificate(X509)?   * And if their certificates should be unique , what should I do on the WCF to identify all the certificates?   * Last question: Must I import the server-side certificate into TrustedPeople location on every Client ? (Which seems to be troublesome and any way convenient? )"}
{"_id": "112730", "title": "Windows Phone 7 app development - Is it worth it?", "text": "I've written a Windows Phone 7 application to display the Ordnance Survey maps that are loved so much in the UK (I am amazed that no-one else has done this yet). However I was about to shell out the \u00a365 to pay for the app hub and get my app to the marketplace when I started investigating how you actually get paid for the apps that people buy. Apparently if you are not a US developer then you have to start sending over forms e.g. W8BEN form? and even after this the IRS takes another 30% (after MS have taken their 30% share). It also mentions VAT so maybe there is more money taken off after this as well??? Has anyone from outside the US actually got all the paperwork sorted so they got paid? Did you get tax taken off as well? What percentage of the sales do you actually end up with? Is it all worth it? I don't expect to make much from the app but I would like to think I could recoup my \u00a365 and have enough to buy a couple of beers as well."}
{"_id": "112731", "title": "What does backslash \"\\\" escape character really escape?", "text": "What does backslash really escape? It's used as escaping character. But I always wonder what's escaping? I know \"\\n\" is a new line character. But what in it is escaping? Why is it called like that?"}
{"_id": "85812", "title": "Is CodeIgniter PHP Framework suitable for large ERP or Business Application?", "text": "Is CodeIgniter is recommended for a large web based ERP or Business Application? I want to use CodeIgniter for my future Project and I'm so confused whether to use it or not. Im so worried about in the long term process or lifetime of the application that it may crashed or produce a bug or error. I also worried about the performance of the framework when the data becomes larger and containing millions of records. I searched on the internet the answer but there is no exactly answer that will satisfy me. I think this question is important for the programmers like me who wanted to use PHP Framework for their large business application. I need an advice from you guys in order to decide whether to use it or not. thank you very much!"}
{"_id": "147168", "title": "What to charge for a ready-built piece of software?", "text": "Recently I was contacted by someone interested buying a piece of software that I wrote to automate a process. The 'client' knows little about the program, except what it outputs and how easy it is to use. They are now interested in purchasing it, and I need to give a reasonable price. I've never done anything like this before, so as you might be able to guess, I do not know where to start with a price. I spent a good 12 hours+ working on the program itself. The client will probably want some changes also. **My question: How can I work out what to charge for a piece of software that I built in my own time?**"}
{"_id": "47474", "title": "Adoption of Lean methods", "text": "Are there any studies on the adoption of agile methods based on Lean principles? Some of the stats I'm looking for:   1. How widely is Lean used?   2. In terms of Agile methods, how does the adoption of Lean compare with other Agile methodologies like Scrum, XP, etc?"}
{"_id": "47476", "title": "Should companies require developers to credit code they didn't write?", "text": "In academia, it's considered cheating if a student copies code/work from someone/somewhere else without giving credit, and tries to pass it off as his/her own. Should companies make it a requirement for developers to properly credit all _non-trivial_ code and work that they did not produce themselves? Is it useful to do so, or is it simply overkill? I understand there are various free licenses out there, but if I find stuff I like and actually use, I really feel compelled to give credit via comment in code even if it's not required by the license (or lack thereof one)."}
{"_id": "147160", "title": "Good resource for getting up to speed on windows forms development", "text": "I'm a .NET developer comfortable with C# and web application development. I need to improve my knowledge of Winforms. What is a good book or online resource that particularly covers the Winforms life cycle. Which events to use for what? How does OnLoad compare to Form_load etc."}
{"_id": "6884", "title": "How to recognize a bad client before you start to work for him?", "text": "I'm sure that many of you have encountered a bad client. I'm also sure you took some measures to prevent such encounters in the future. What is the most influential characteristic of a client that warns you to walk away?"}
{"_id": "222753", "title": "How do you read this line of code?", "text": "Forgive me for my poor English, me and my friend were doing school homework, suddenly he asked me to read this line of code `ptr = &array[1][1][1]` (ptr is a pointer to an integer). He said > ptr is pointing to the address of the second element of the second column of > the second row of an array. I think he will be right if it was an array of char. As far as it's an integer 3D array I have no idea how to read that line of code in plain English. How would you read it?"}
{"_id": "225566", "title": "What would a good work flow for a programming mentor look like?", "text": "I have read a junior mentoring topic which answered most of my doubts. However this topic gives general (though very good) advice on mentoring, while I am mainly interested in what a mentor's week looks like. This is my case. I have a junior (1 year of experience) who got a new project and I am mentoring him. While I am sure that he will use google and will not ask me silly questions, I want to make sure he's on the right path and not to create structures which are hard to maintain or slow in execution. Now, should I:   1. Check out the code each day and examine it?     * Pro: detect errors in its root     * Con: time consuming, may overlook something as there is a work day behind me as well.   2. When he needs to implement let's say singleton, do I tell him to find it on google and come back to me with a solution? Or I let him implement it and later review it?     * Pro: he does not wait for me to reply to him.     * Con: he may implement it wrongly and lose precious time.   3. Are there any situations when I can just check the result? Just like I am a QA. Or I must always stick to the code review?   4. At what point should I stop being a mentor? After how many projects or after how much time?   5. Anything else I have missed?"}
{"_id": "103139", "title": "MCPD: Webdeveloper 4 Visual Studio 2010 Training Stuff", "text": "I think about doing the 4 exams required to become a MCPD Webdeveloper 4 Visual Studio 2010. The examns can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcpd.aspx#tab2 I found only one book at amazon, having a rather bad rating. Can somebody recommend any training material for those examns?"}
{"_id": "225568", "title": "How should I introduce a new programmer to a complex project?", "text": "We have a pretty complex project with 100 or so classes, multiple custom elements, etc. We have a new senior programmer who will work on this project. How should we approach the task of introducing the senior programmer to the project? How can we make sure the programmer does not break some other feature while fixing the current one? I have seen too many similar situation.s Sometimes, new bugs are not noticed immediately -- but pop up months later. Shall I direct the programmer by first giving them smaller tasks and waiting for them to finish them? Or there is a better solution? I am asking this because I don't want to become micromanager but I also don't want to have nasty bugs created because of my bad approach to the new programmer."}
{"_id": "225569", "title": "A programmer as project manager or non-programmer?", "text": "We are a team of programmers and are employing a new person who will be a project manager only. Our project are only programming ones and we are not sure how to decide who will be the best for project manager. Shall we find a senior programmer from our programming field? Or we must find a regular guy (economics or management studies) who never coded in his life? **EDIT** A project manager will_   * Create tasks for developers   * Monitor that our ticket workflow is respected   * Warn developers is they cross estimated work time    * Manage weekly finance timesheets   * Help client and reply to his questions   * Set meetings between client and developers (internet meetings) And similar things. Now, when I wrote this I see that there are no IT tasks in here. But what about simple questions the clients ask and which an educated It person will be able to reply? we obviously cannot bother programmers for this all the time. this is the main reason whay we are in doubt."}
{"_id": "53970", "title": "C# books for the experienced programmer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a canonical source for learning C# and .NET internals? So I've been programming in C# for 3 years now (been programming in various languages for 3 years before that as well) and most of the stuff I learned I pieced together on the internet. The thing is, I want to understand C# more formally and in depth and so would like to get some books on the subjects. Any books you'd recommend? Also, I've heard good things about \"C# 4.0 in a Nutshell\", \"Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform\" and \"CLR via C#\". What do you think of these? (The people at stackoverflow told me to take it here. Please, Please tell me I'm in the right place this time)"}
{"_id": "238033", "title": "What does it mean when data is scalar?", "text": "I don't know what scalar means exactly, but I'm trying to see if I'm thinking about it correctly. Does scalar relate to arbitrariness where the type of data could be any type, or a system is not able to know what the data is in advance."}
{"_id": "238036", "title": "Where should I put bindings for dependency injection?", "text": "I'm new to dependency injection and though I've really liked it so far, I'm not sure where bindings should go. I'm using Guice in Java, so some of what I say might be specific to just Guice. As I see it, there's two options: **Accompanying the class(s) its needed for.** Then, just write `install(OtherClassModule.class)` in whatever other modules want to be able to use said class. As I see it, the advantage of this is that classes that want to use it (or manage classes that want to use it) don't need to know any of the implementation detail. The issue I see is that what if two classes want to use two different versions of the same class? There's a lot of customization possible because of DI and this seems to restrict it a lot. **Implemented in the module of the class(s) its needed for.** It's the flip of what I said above. Now you have customization, but not encapsulation. Is there a third option? Am I misunderstanding something obvious? What's the best practice?"}
{"_id": "238037", "title": "Why std::allocators are not that popular?", "text": "With the latest trends about C and C++ applications, and with latest I mean the latest years, I was expecting to see `std::allocator`s to be used way more frequently than what it really is. Modern applications are usually multithreaded or with form of concurrency in them, and they manage a significant amount of memory, especially in some fields like games and multimedia applications; so the usual high cost of the allocation/deallocations rises and impacts the performances even more than in old applications. But for what I can see this kind of memory management through `std::allocator`s is not popular, I can't even count 1 library that I know of, that is using any rationale about a standardize way of managing memory. There is a real reason why `std::allocator` is not popular ? Technical reasons ?"}
{"_id": "171279", "title": "What can I do in order to inform users of potential errors in my software in order to minimize liability?", "text": "I'm an independent software developer that's spent the last few months creating software for viewing and searching map data. The software has some navigation functionality as well (mapping, directions,etc). The eventual goal is to sell it in mobile app markets. I use OpenStreetMap as my data source. I'm concerned about liability for erroneous map data / routing instructions, etc that might result when someone uses the application. There are a lot of stories on the internet where someone gets into an accident or gets stuck or gets lost because of their GPS unit/Google Maps/mapping app... I myself have come across incorrect map data as well in a GPS unit I have in my car. While I try to make my own software as bug free as possible, no software is truly bug free. And moving beyond what I can control, OpenStreetMap data (and street map data in general) is prone to errors as well. What steps can I take to clearly inform the user that results from the software aren't always perfect, and to minimize my liability?"}
{"_id": "40692", "title": "Greater than or identical to?", "text": "While browsing my code in a weakly-typed language I was seeing that I've trained myself to use identity (`===`) where logical. Then I came across a greater (or less) than or equal to (`>=`), and it made me wonder... why is there no \"greater than or identical to\"? I suppose it would be `>==`. For example...               5 == 5    // true     5 === 5   // true     5.5 >= 5  // true     5.5 >== 5 // false     6 >= 5    // true     6 >== 5   // true      Basically, I would throw a false if it was of a different type. For example, if I want to check if $x is greater than $y, but I want them both to be integers (or floats, but no mixing), then wouldn't it make sense to have a single call that can do all that, rather than having to check separately to see if they were the same type? A quick google indicated that this may not exist in any language; why not? Is it just not as useful as I might think it is? :)"}
{"_id": "238039", "title": "Should data models know where / how they're stored?", "text": "I have some classes that represent, for the most part, data that's deserialized from XML. They also have some behavior in them, because I don't want to suffer from an anemic domain model. These domain objects don't have any XML specific code in them, but they do have properties that correspond exactly to the tags and attributes in the XML. Many of these classes' behaviors rely on resources loaded from disk, like images. For that, some properties / xml attributes are relative file paths to these resources. Now my problems begin. The absolute path to be constructed for these resources is based on a separate dependency - the root of the \"project\". Here's what I'm struggling with:   1. Should my domain objects store the full absolute path to their resources? Or just the relative paths? If they held the absolute path, then the classes that load them - my XML readers - will have to take a dependency on the project root in order to build the full path for them. If not, I'll have to make yet another layer of classes to handle that. I already have 3 layers, I don't know if I can handle any more!   2. Should my domain objects store _their own paths_ for where they are on disk? It makes sense for them to know where their dependencies are in relation to them, but to know their own location just feels wrong to me intuitively. This is sort of unrelated to the other part of the question, but I think if I go the wrong way on this it could bite me later."}
{"_id": "136519", "title": "Examples of operator overloading, which make sense", "text": "While I learning C#, I found that, the C# supports operator overloading. I have problem with good example which:   1. Make sense (ex. adding class named sheep and cow)   2. Is not an example of concatenation of two strings Examples from Base Class Library are welcome."}
{"_id": "238257", "title": "Optional dependencies in npm?", "text": "I have a similar question to this, but not quite the same. I would like for the user of my app to install it with whatever dependencies are needed for the way he would want to use it. So, for example, if they want to persist to MongoDB, then only Mongo-related libraries will be installed, but if they want to persist to Redis, then only Redis-related libraries will be installed. I don't want to make them download and install libraries they won't be using. I know I can do that for development purposes with `devDependencies`, but this goes farther than that. As the answer in the question above says, this is more closely related to Python's `setuptools` `extras_require` and Clojure's `leiningen` profiles. Anything like that in npm? I really feel like `devDependencies` should be a `dev` profile of a more versatile way of specifying dependencies."}
{"_id": "145261", "title": "Validation and authorization in layered architecture", "text": "I know you are thinking (or maybe yelling), \"not another question asking where validation belongs in a layered architecture?!?\" Well, yes, but hopefully this will be a little bit of a different take on the subject. I am a firm believer that validation takes many forms, is context-based and varies at each level of the architecture. That is the basis for the post - helping to identify what type of validation should be performed in each layer. In addition, a question that often comes up is where authorization checks belong. The example scenario comes from an application for a catering business. Periodically during the day, a driver may turn in to the office any excess cash they've accumulated while taking the truck from site to site. The application allows a user to record the 'cash drop' by collecting the driver's ID, and the amount. Here's some skeleton code to illustrate the layers involved:               public class CashDropApi  // This is in the Service Facade Layer     {         [WebInvoke(Method = \"POST\")]         public void AddCashDrop(NewCashDropContract contract)         {             // 1             Service.AddCashDrop(contract.Amount, contract.DriverId);         }     }          public class CashDropService  // This is the Application Service in the Domain Layer     {         public void AddCashDrop(Decimal amount, Int32 driverId)         {             // 2             CommandBus.Send(new AddCashDropCommand(amount, driverId));         }     }          internal class AddCashDropCommand  // This is a command object in Domain Layer     {         public AddCashDropCommand(Decimal amount, Int32 driverId)         {             // 3             Amount = amount;             DriverId = driverId;         }              public Decimal Amount { get; private set; }         public Int32 DriverId { get; private set; }     }          internal class AddCashDropCommandHandler : IHandle<AddCashDropCommand>     {         internal ICashDropFactory Factory { get; set; }       // Set by IoC container         internal ICashDropRepository CashDrops { get; set; }  // Set by IoC container         internal IEmployeeRepository Employees { get; set; }  // Set by IoC container              public void Handle(AddCashDropCommand command)         {             // 4             var driver = Employees.GetById(command.DriverId);             // 5             var authorizedBy = CurrentUser as Employee;             // 6             var cashDrop = Factory.CreateCashDrop(command.Amount, driver, authorizedBy);             // 7             CashDrops.Add(cashDrop);         }     }          public class CashDropFactory     {         public CashDrop CreateCashDrop(Decimal amount, Employee driver, Employee authorizedBy)         {             // 8             return new CashDrop(amount, driver, authorizedBy, DateTime.Now);         }     }          public class CashDrop  // The domain object (entity)     {         public CashDrop(Decimal amount, Employee driver, Employee authorizedBy, DateTime at)         {             // 9             ...         }     }          public class CashDropRepository // The implementation is in the Data Access Layer     {         public void Add(CashDrop item)         {             // 10             ...         }     }      I've indicated 10 locations where I've seen validation checks placed in code. My question is what checks you would, if any, be performing at each given the following business rules (along with standard checks for length, range, format, type, etc):   1. The amount of the cash drop must be greater than zero.   2. The cash drop must have a valid Driver.   3. The current user must be authorized to add cash drops (current user is not the driver). Please share your thoughts, how you have or would approach this scenario and the reasons for your choices."}
{"_id": "231554", "title": "How is the publish-subscribe pattern different from gotos?", "text": "My understanding is that Goto statements are generally frowned up. But the publish-subscribe pattern seems to be conceptually similar in that when a piece of code publishes a message, it performs a one-way transfer of control. The programmer may have no idea what parts of the program are subscribing to this message. I have see something similar in a lot of JavaScript programs in which events are used to conveniently \"hop\" across modules. Am I missing something about the publish-subscribe or event-driven patterns?"}
{"_id": "77865", "title": "Should I wait until Mango's release?", "text": "I was deciding whether to start a Windows Phone application, but it seems like it might be better to wait until Mango is released. Is Mango a new platform, or is it an upgrade to Windows Phone 7 (i.e. Windows Phone 8)? Is it expected to arrive in the near future? That is, should a project starting today worry about it?"}
{"_id": "193420", "title": "Best practise is not to poll...but isn't polling happening internally anyway when a thread calls wait()?", "text": "Say we have some thread that wants to check when another thread is finished its task. I have read that we should call a wait() type function that will make this thread wait until it receives a notification that the other thread is finished. And that this is good because it means we aren't performing expensive polling. But isn't polling happening internally at a lower level anyway? I.e. if we make the thread wait() isn't the kernal performing polling anyway to check when the other thread is finished so that it can then notify the first thread? I presume I a missing out on something here, can someone enlighten me?"}
{"_id": "77690", "title": "Design: Object method vs separate class's method which takes Object as parameter?", "text": "For example, is it better to do:               Pdf pdf = new Pdf();     pdf.Print();      or:               Pdf pdf = new Pdf();     PdfPrinter printer = new PdfPrinter();     printer.Print(pdf);      Another example:               Country m = new Country(\"Mexico\");     double ratio = m.GetDebtToGDPRatio();      or:               Country m = new Country(\"Mexico\");     Country us = new Country(\"US\");     DebtStatistics ds = new DebtStatistics();     double usRatio = ds.GetDebtToGDPRatio(us);     double mRatio = ds.GetDebtToGDPRatio(m);          My concern in the last example is there are potentially endless statistics (but let's say even just 10) you might want to know about a country; do they all belong on the country object? e.g.               Country m = new Country(\"Mexico\");     double ratio = m.GetGDPToMedianIncomeRatio();      These are simple ratios but lets assume the statistics are complicated enough to warrant a method. Where is that line between operations that are intrinsic to an object vs operations that can be performed on an object but are not part of it?"}
{"_id": "238785", "title": "The deference between Computer science and Computer information system?", "text": "I'm Asking you that question because you are an experts in programming , and maybe you could help me . Unfortunately in my country you can't get a job if you don't have a university certification, even if you are a great programmer , so this year i went to college and majored in Computer Science , But I'm so Confused between CS and CIS , and in what major should I spent my money on it ,, There is more than 25 subjects are mutual between us but there is some subjects are special for Computer science , also another subjects for Computer information system too , **Computer science specialization** :   1. Discrete Mathematics   2. Linear algebra And Numerical Analyses    3. Computation theory    4. Compiler Design    5. Wireless Networks security    6. Artificial Intelligence    7. Computer Organization & Architecture    8. Expert Systems  =========================================== **Computer information system specialization :** 1.Information retrieval systems   1. Management for network    2. Wireless network    3. Data base management systems    4. Information security    5. Data warehousing    6. Data mining    7. Intelligent systems"}
{"_id": "238786", "title": "Does C++ compiler remove/optimize useless parentheses?", "text": "Will the code               int a = ((1 + 2) + 3); // Easy to read      run slower than               int a = 1 + 2 + 3; // (Barely) Not quite so easy to read      or are modern compilers clever enough to remove/optimize \"useless\" parentheses. It might seems like a very tiny optimization concern, but choosing C++ over C#/Java/... is all about optimizations (IMHO)."}
{"_id": "31630", "title": "Best practices for managing and maintaining large Rails app?", "text": "What are best practices for managing and maintaining large Rails app?"}
{"_id": "238783", "title": "JavaScript strict mode compatibility", "text": "While reading about strict mode on MDN I really was surprised to read the following near the end of the page, quote: > Browsers don't reliably implement strict mode yet, so don't blindly depend > on it. Strict mode changes semantics. Relying on those changes will cause > mistakes and errors in browsers which don't implement strict mode. Exercise > caution in using strict mode, and back up reliance on strict mode with > feature tests that check whether relevant parts of strict mode are > implemented. Finally, make sure to test your code in browsers that do and > don't support strict mode. If you test only in browsers that don't support > strict mode, you're very likely to have problems in browsers that do, and > vice versa. As far as I understand it, strict mode is a redused set of \"nonstict\" mode, thus I can't imagine situation where strict code can't run correctly in a nonstrict browser. So, the question is this statement really makes sense? Is the any situation where strict to \"nonstrict\" switch will make code invalid?"}
{"_id": "225375", "title": "C# Design Issue", "text": "I am building a small application and I am trying to understand the best way to approach the design. I am looking for some guidance/advice how best to approach the following issue. What I have is that I receive a set of data, real time. I then analyze the data for patterns. The patterns are classes that derive from an abstract class which implements an interface. The number of patterns will change over time as patterns are added/removed. In addition, depending on the access level of the user, the data is analyzed with different pattern options. For example, if I have five patterns, A, B, C, D and E, level 100 access may only analyze the data with pattern A whereas access level 300 will analyze with patterns B, D and E, and access level 500 will analyze with all the patterns. The access levels are linked to the user, and a user can have different access levels on different data streams. My thought is to create a hash table or dictionary for the patterns and a db for the users and their various access levels. Is this the best way to go or is there a better approach that will work in real time?"}
{"_id": "42253", "title": "How do I account for changed or forgotten tasks in an estimate?", "text": "To handle task-level estimates and time reporting, I have been using (roughly) the technique that Steve McConnell describes in Chapter 10 of _Software Estimation_. Specifically, when the time comes for me to create task-level estimates (right before coding begins on a project), I determine the tasks at a fairly granular level so that, whenever possible, I have no tasks with a single-point, 50%-confidence estimate greater than four hours. That way, the task estimation process helps with constructing the software while helping me not to forget tasks during estimation. I come up with a range of hours possible for each task also, and using the statistical calculations that McConnell describes along with my historical accuracy data, I can generate estimates at other confidence levels when desired. I feel like this method has been working fairly well for me. We are required to put tasks and their estimates into TFS for tracking, so I use the estimates at the percentage of confidence I am told to use. I am unsure, however, what to do when I do forget a task, or I end up needing to do work that does not neatly fall within one of the tasks I estimated. Of course, trying to avoid this situation is best, but how do I account for forgotten/changed tasks? I want to have the best historical data I can to help me with future estimates, but right now, I basically am just calculating whether I made the 50%-confidence estimate and whether I made it inside the ranged estimate. I'll be happy to clarify what I'm asking if needed -- let me know what is unclear."}
{"_id": "103794", "title": "Is it acceptable to deploy web app to production directly from SVN", "text": "**Question** Is there a legitimate reason **NOT** to use SVN for production deploys, or is this merely a case of personal preference and there is no real case against SVN? **Background** My workplace has a culture of tagging release in SVN and then deploying those releases directly to the various web servers using `svn co` or `svn switch` including directly to production. I personally have a problem with this as I believe that without using a build and deploy script or some form or automated deploy you lose integration environment settings as they're undocumented. However more than that I have a gut feeling that there may be a hidden danger to doing that which has been overlooked, something which has yet to rear its ugly head. I've brought up my concerns with the operations staff who are responsible for deploying code to our various environments (staging, pre-prod, production) etc. Their arguments were pretty much that it's worked pretty well so far, no reason to change. **Edit:** _What I mean about build and deploy:_ For example, if a developer requires a web.config setting added for a particular environment. Web.config is generally not kept in svn and so these files are updated manually without any form of automated build script. So if they're lost or OPS forget to add a field to the web.config for a release then you have issues. A build script that say uses XMLPoke to automatically generate a web.config appropriate for a particular environment is ideal in that you have a versionable script which documents all changes necessary for each of your environments. _Current Build and Deploy Method_ For the project in question a developer builds a release manually, other projects have the build step automated either with NANT, or MSBuild which is OK. Database migrations for most projects are via DB scripts, or migration scripts (Migrator.NET), or CMS Packages. CI is usually done by Team City on a per checkin basis, we have a code review process that all tickets are done in branches and then peer reviewed for validation and correctness/quality prior to checking into trunk (works well). However actual code deploy is pretty much always via SVN, either via a checkout of a tagged release or more generally an SVN Switch. This is something that sticks odd with me that we're using our repository as part of the deploy process. Configuration doesn't generally change very often, the only things that will be in config files are environment specific information. Everything else is in the db. Don't get me wrong this works, it works well. However I want to try and push for an automated build and deploy. I've used this with Rails and Capistrano, and for personal projects using Cygwin, Nant and SSH. More importantly I would need very specific valid arguments to get my colleagues to change to using an Automated build and deploy. Or are there NO real valid arguments against using SVN specifically to deploy to production?"}
{"_id": "103797", "title": "Why the decline in search traffic for popular programming languages?", "text": "Is there any solid evidence behind the reasons for decline in search volume for popular programming languages? Could this possibly be due to improvements in finding necessary information (no need to search 10 times to find something) and quality of information? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Wfc7T.jpg)"}
{"_id": "234007", "title": "What kind of webservice can be called with just a browser url?", "text": "Can a webservice be written in such a way that it can be called via just a browser url? For eg. if the webservice is called GetStockQuote, then it should be callable by the following url on the browser               http://myserver.com/WebServices/GetStockQuote?sym=MSFT      Likewise, if there are more params, they can be passed via the URL. Unlike this one - http://www.webservicex.net/stockquote.asmx \\- where it doesn't look like the param can be passed via a URL. It seems to require either a program or a human to type in the param & click on invoke. Or does it always require a client program? Is there a way from the wsdl to figure out whether it can be called from a browser or not. How can I program a webservice which fulfils the above criteria?"}
{"_id": "170632", "title": "Is it okay to define a [] method in ruby's NilClass?", "text": "Ruby by default does not include the method `[]` for `NilClass` For example, to check if `foo[\"bar\"]` exists when `foo` may be nil, I have to do:               foo = something_that_may_or_may_not_return_nil     if foo && foo[\"bar\"]       # do something with foo[\"bar\"] here     end      If I define this method:               class NilClass       def [](arg)         nil       end     end      Something like that would make this possible, even if `foo` is nil:               if foo[\"bar\"]       # do something with foo[\"bar\"]     end      Or even:               if foo[\"bar\"][\"baz\"]       # do something with foo[\"bar\"][\"baz\"] here     end      **Question:** Is this a good idea or is there some reason ruby doesn't include this functionality by default?"}
{"_id": "88478", "title": "Pros and cons of hosted scripts", "text": "I have seen some developers use hosted scripts to link their libraries. `cdn.jquerytools.org` is one example. I have also seen people complain that a hosted script link has been hijacked. How safe is using hosted scripts in reality? Are the scripts automatically updated? For example, if jQuery 5 goes to 6 do I automatically get version 6 or do I need to update my link? I also see that Google has a large set of these scripts setup for hosting. What are the pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "170634", "title": "Avoiding duplicate bug reports", "text": "I use Linux and other open source software in my home. As I'm not a professional coder, I usually report bugs to developers as my skills are not enough to solve problems on my own. What kind of things you want me to check before I send a bug report? I mean, once I thought I found a bug in Gedit and I couldn't find similar bug in Bugzilla. But after I sent the report, some developer said that the bug is already in Bugzilla as the bug was in GTK+, not in Gedit. Sometimes it might be hard for an amateur to guess whether some previously known bug would solve the issue I found."}
{"_id": "42795", "title": "What do you consider to be a high-level language and for what reason?", "text": "Traditionally, C was called a high-level language, but these days it is often referred to as a low-level language (it is high-level compared to Assembly, but it is **very** low-level compared to, for instance, Python, these days). Generally, everyone calls languages of the sort of Python and Java high-level languages nowadays. How would you judge whether a programming language _really_ is a high-level language (or a low-level one)? Must you give direct instructions to the CPU while programming in a language to call it low-level (e.g. Assembly), or is C, which provides some abstraction from the hardware, a low-level language too? Has the meaning of \"high-level\" and \"low-level\" changed over the years?"}
{"_id": "196996", "title": "Why do some programmers categorize C, Python, C++ differently? - regarding level", "text": "I am taking an introductory course on python and the instructor says that python is a high level language and C and C++ are low level languages. It's just damn confusing. I thought that C, C++, Python, Java, etc were all high level languages. I was reading questions at stackoverflow on C, C++, etc and they all seem to refer to those languages as high level. it seems to me that some programmers use those terms interchangably. Please clarify this for me."}
{"_id": "225389", "title": "Model Driven Design with Bean Validation", "text": "If I have a rich domain library that gets included into a Java web application, but I want to achieve a level of dependency isolation with that domain library such that it is possible to build and test it totally independently(of larger libraries like Spring), how can I realistically use JSR-303 bean validation? The domain library itself can use the hibernate validation annotations, like @NotNull on fields and getters just fine, and this is still independent and testable. However, if I want to use newer features, such as method parameter validation, which requires AOP, how do I maintain minimal dependencies while maintaining testability (via JUnit)? Is this a simple matter of configuring the unit test to exercise the domain objects through an AOP proxy? The design philosophy of JSR-303 seems, on the face of it, to be at odds with rich domain design, favouring more of a dumb-bean, business layer service design."}
{"_id": "177947", "title": "Tomcat 7 vs. ehCache Standalone Server (Glassfish) Configuration with RESTful Web Services", "text": "My requirements consist of using ehCache to send and store data via RESTful web service calls. The data can be stored in-memory or via the filesystem... Never used ehCache before so I am having some issues deciding on which bundle to use. Have downloaded the following bundles: ehcache-2.6.2 ehcache-standalone-server-1.0.0 (1) What is the difference between the two? It seems the ehcache-2.6.2 contains src and binaries, which essentially enables one to bundle it with their webapps (by putting the compiled jar or binaries inside the webapp's WEB-INF/lib folder). But it doesn't seem that it has support for Restful web services. Whereas, ehcache-standalone-server-1.0.0 (comes with an embedded Glassfish server and has support for REST & SOAP) can be used to run as a standalone server. If I my answers to my own question are correct, then that means, I should just use the standalone server? (2) My requirements are to setup ehCache (with REST support) on Tomcat 7. So, how could I setup ehCache on Tomcat 7 as a separate app with REST & SOAP support? Thank you for taking the time to read this..."}
{"_id": "199370", "title": "Should I make a seperate unit test for a method, if it only modifies the parent state?", "text": "Should classes, that modify the state of the parent class, but not itself, be unit tested separately? And by separately, I mean putting the test in the corresponding unit test class, that tests that specific class. I'm developing a library based on chained methods, that return a new instance of a new type in most cases, where a chained method is called. The returned instances only modify the root parent state, but not itself. Overly simplified example, to get the point across:                   public class BoxedRabbits         {             private readonly Box _box;             public BoxedRabbits(Box box)             {                 _box = box;             }                  public void SetCount(int count)             {                 _box.Items += count;             }         }              public class Box         {             public int Items { get; set; }             public BoxedRabbits AddRabbits()             {                 return new BoxedRabbits(this);             }         }          var box = new Box();     box.AddRabbits().SetCount(14);      Say, if I write a unit test under the `Box` class unit tests:               box.AddRabbits().SetCount(14)      I could effectively say, that I've already tested the `BoxedRabbits` class as well. Is this the wrong way of approaching this, even though it's far simpler to first write a test for the above call, then to first write a unit test for the `BoxedRabbits` separately?"}
{"_id": "229800", "title": "OO design for a Windows application that communicates with an external machine via RS232", "text": "I'm after a bit of OO design advice... I'm about to start developing a Windows application that communicates with an external machine via RS232. The machine has an onboard \"system controller\" consisting of registers (addresses). You can write a value to a register (e.g. to turn a pump on), or read a value from a register (e.g. to see if the pump is running). The app will have a config file detailing each register's settings, e.g. its address, whether it's 16- or 32-bit, a friendly \"alias\" (so other code can deal with \"Pump XYZ\" rather than address \"50B3D124\"), and a few other things. My first thought was to have a `Register` class reflecting these properties, plus `Read()` and `Write()` methods. But this raises the first question - should the `Read()` method have a return value, or should it populate a `Value` property on the class? Similarly, should the `Write()` method include a \"valueToWrite\" parameter, or should it write whatever value is currently held in the `Value` property? I could take this one step further (possibly even answering the above question) - instead of Read/Write methods, put the functionality into the `Value` property's getter and setter? Using a property for this purpose doesn't feel right though. I then started wondering if a `Register` class was even necessary, as its read/write functionality would be doing little more than calling Read/Write methods on a `SystemController` class, e.g.               long ReadRegister(string registerAlias);     void WriteRegister(string registerAlias, long value);      Why not just let the rest of the application read/write registers via the `SystemController` class? (I suspect I would still need some concept of a `Register` class, even if it's just to represent a register's config settings)."}
{"_id": "177948", "title": "algorithm for project euler problem no 18", "text": "Problem number 18 from Project Euler's site is as follows:               By starting at the top of the triangle below and moving to adjacent numbers on the row below, the maximum total from top to bottom is 23.          3     7 4     2 4 6     8 5 9 3          That is, 3 + 7 + 4 + 9 = 23.          Find the maximum total from top to bottom of the triangle below:          75     95 64     17 47 82     18 35 87 10     20 04 82 47 65     19 01 23 75 03 34     88 02 77 73 07 63 67     99 65 04 28 06 16 70 92     41 41 26 56 83 40 80 70 33     41 48 72 33 47 32 37 16 94 29     53 71 44 65 25 43 91 52 97 51 14     70 11 33 28 77 73 17 78 39 68 17 57     91 71 52 38 17 14 91 43 58 50 27 29 48     63 66 04 68 89 53 67 30 73 16 69 87 40 31     04 62 98 27 23 09 70 98 73 93 38 53 60 04 23          NOTE: As there are only 16384 routes, it is possible to solve this problem by trying every route. However, Problem 67, is the same challenge with a triangle containing one-hundred rows; it cannot be solved by brute force, and requires a clever method! ;o)      The formulation of this problems does not make clear if   * the \"Traversor\" is greedy, meaning that he always choosed the child with be higher value   * the maximum of every single walkthrough is asked The `NOTE` says, that `it is possible to solve this problem by trying every route`. This means to me, that is is also possible **without**! This leads to my actual question: Assumed that not the greedy one is the max, is there any algorithm that finds the max walkthrough value without trying every route and that doesn't act like the greedy algorithm? I implemented an algorithm in Java, putting the values first in a node structure, then applying the greedy algorithm. The result, however, is cosidered as wrong by Project Euler.               sum = 0;          void findWay(Node node){         sum += node.value;         if(node.nodeLeft != null && node.nodeRight != null){                 if(node.nodeLeft.value > node.nodeRight.value){                     findWay(node.nodeLeft);                 }else{                     findWay(node.nodeRight);                 }             }     }"}
{"_id": "229804", "title": "Usage of __ while declaring any variables or class member in python", "text": "Is it good practice to use `__` convention while declaring the member variable? This also imparts private kind of feature of that data member. There have been cases when I found that its good to have hidden members of a class. This is certainly exposes only that feature that will help the the object to behave in more protected manner."}
{"_id": "229806", "title": "Design principles : classifying different types of class", "text": "I'm trying to clarify the design of a C++ application, and would like to define a clear classification among classes to aid clarity. However I'm struggling to find any literature to help me, probably because I don't really know what I'm searching for. To help, here is what I've got so far. Classes can be one of a number of types:   * Value object. Here I mean things like std::string, std::vector. These are concrete classes that are typically instantiated on the stack, can be copied etc.    * Service objects. Clients will interact with these through a pure virtual interface, and these will typically be injected, DI style. A persistence service might be a good example here. There would typically be once instance of a service, either injected or accessed through a ServiceLocator (yeah, I know).   * (Domain object?). Clients interact with these through a pure virtual interface, but these represent abstract domain objects and are constructed using an abstract factory, which itself will be a service. These would typically have identity, but you want to interact with them in an abstract way. So a database connection might be a good example (note that this is different from a persistence service -- the concrete implementation of persistence service may use a database connection, but the database connection would represent one actual connection, and there would be subclasses for Mysql, SqlServer etc). There will be many instances of such objects, they have identity.   * Other things that don't fit into the above, but which I've failed to come up with any clear classification.  Now someone must have documented this kind of taxonomy, but so far I can't find anything. Does anyone have any good references? Thanks."}
{"_id": "100448", "title": "UnitTests, will cleaning up your act-statement make your test more or less clear?", "text": "Lets say that we are testing `FooClass` with the following method:                   public void Foo(string stringParameter, int intParameter, Action<Bar> successCallback, Action<Exception> errorCallback);      If the call to `Foo` succeeds, the `successCallback` will be called with the result of `Foo` in the form of a `Bar` object. If it fails, the `errorCallback` will be called with an `Exception`. So the tests will look something like this:               [TestMethod]     public void Foo_UnderGivenConditions_WeExpectAGivenResult()     {         //Arrange         var fooObject = CreateFooObjectWithGivenConditions( ... );              //Act         fooObject.Foo(String.Empty, 0, (bar) => { ... }, (error) => { ... });              //Assert         Assert.AreEqual(..., ...);     }      Now, there are a lot of tests on this `Foo`-method, all of them containing a call to `Foo`, but not every test will care for all the parameters. Some may provide different string values, but doesn't care about the int param, and some will need to provide an error callback to assert that the right exception is thrown and so on. Now, since all the parameters are mandatory, we have to pass a string value to the `Foo` method, even though the value has no meaning for the test. There will be a lot of `\"I don't care\"` or `\"some text\"`. When some one else comes and read the test, they have to consider if the given value actually has a meaning for the test result or not. The same goes for the callbacks. Sometimes we need the callbacks to get to the result value or the exception, but most of the time we do not. So lets implement an extension method, `PerformFoo`, that defaults every parameter:               public static Bar PerformBar(this FooClass fooObject, string stringParameter = \"some text\", int intParameter = 0, Action<Bar> successCallback = null, Action<Exception> errorCallback = null);     {        Bar result = null;             var ourCallback = (bar) =>            {                result = bar;                if (successCallback != null)                    sucessCallback.invoke();           }             fooObject.Foo(stringParameter, intParameter, ourCallback, errorCallback);             return result;     }      The extension method will call `Foo` with default parameters, and even return the result if the successCallback is called. This lets us change the Act part of the test to something like:               //Act, all we care about is the string parameter:     fooObject.PerformFoo(\"A string that we care about\");          //Act, we need the resulting bar when the int parameter is 10:     var bar = fooObject.PerformFoo(intParameter: 10);          //Act, we still needs to provide a callback to get the exception      fooObject.PerformFoo(\"SomeInvalidValueCausingAnException\", errorCallback: (error) => { exceptionThrown = error; });       So the questions would be:   * Does this make the tests more readable?   * Is it easier to get what the test really tests?   * The fact that we call `PerformFoo`, which doesn't really exist on the class under test make the test less worth as an documentation?   * Would dropping the extension method for a regular method taking the fooObject as the first parameter be less of a 'lie'? (e.g. `PerformFoo(fooObject, intParameter: 10)` ) How far would you go to make your tests clean and clear?"}
{"_id": "230826", "title": "Least Change Problem with Thousands of Denominations", "text": "In a hypothetical economy there are currency units that can represent thousands of different values. So, for example there might be coins worth 1c, 3c, 5c, 7c, 7.5c, 80c, 8001.5c etc. Given a list of all of the possible denominations and an arbitrary value how would one return a list of coins representing the smallest number of coins needed to match that value. For bonus points, imagine that you have arbitrary finite quantities of each currency. So you may have only two 3c coins but thirty 18c coins. Sounds like a nightmare compsci class problem but it's something I ran into recently on a personal project of mine. The economy is a barter economy (tf2) in which every type of item has a distinct value relative to other items. I have an Item class where items have a Value attribute and this attribute is a double that represents the value of the item relative to a base item which has a value of 1. I'm trying to come up with a way so that if someone makes an offer of a value of 30 I can then look through a list of around 1200 item objects and find the smallest set of objects which combine in value to match 30. I cannot think of a remotely efficient way to do this, but I figured the problem was interesting enough that someone would like to ponder over it with me. My program is in c# but even a psuedocode brainstorm would be helpful."}
{"_id": "39196", "title": "MVC Pattern, ViewModels, Location of conversion", "text": "I've been working with ASP.Net MVC for around a year now and have created my applications in the following way. > X.Web - MVC Application Contains Controller and Views > > X.Lib - Contains Data Access, Repositories and Services. This allows us to drop the .Lib into any application that requires it. At the moment we are using Entity Framework, the conversion from EntityO to a more specific model is done in the controller. This set-up means if a service method returns an EntityO and then the Controller will do a conversion before the data is passed to a view. I'm interested to know if I should move the conversion to the Service so that the app doesn't have Entity Objects being passed around."}
{"_id": "184227", "title": "Migrating legacy procedural code to MVC without rewriting", "text": "I recently started working on a PHP application that was built many years ago before the advent of objects and namespaces in PHP. The code is procedural, does not separate presentation logic from business logic, lacks a front end point (front controller), and has files everywhere with a seemingly random folder heirarchy. However, it works great for customers and despite the code mess it's actually pretty fast. I'd like to slowly move the codebase into something more maintainable and organized. I put MVC in this title, but truthfully all I really mean is an organized and maintainable. Key objectives of this effort are:   * Not degrade the customer experience in any sort of way while this overhaul takes place (a rewrite is not an option)   * Fully separate views from logic    * At least have a \"best practice\" or method for implementing new application end points (routes)   * Have a consistent method or layer for persisting data   * Begin encapsulating as much code as possible in objects so that unit testing is feasible at some point in time."}
{"_id": "100442", "title": "How can a web site be set up using the MVC Pattern? (Without MS ASP.NET MVC)", "text": "We used a contractor to create the initial version of our site; they used their own MVC-pattern code-generator to create the (ASP.NET / C#) site and customized from there. That was turned over to us two years ago, and we've been working on it since. That's the environment I'm coming into, with little practical MVC experience. Thus I need to grok MVC in general but it seems that every article/tutorial/book I find is either extremely general in nature or very specific to MS ASP.NET MVC. Can someone here help with examples, a tutorial or walk-through of setting up a basic site using the MVC Pattern _without using Microsoft ASP.NET MVC_ so that I can better understand the concepts and see how they can be applied in real life?"}
{"_id": "206889", "title": "How to incorporate existing open source software from a licensing perspective?", "text": "I'm working on software that uses the following libraries:   * Biopython   * SciPy   * NumPy All of the above have licenses similar to `MIT` or `BSD`. Three scenarios:   1. First, if I don't redistribute those dependencies, and only my code, then all I need is my own copyright and license (planing on using the `MIT License`) for my code. Correct?    2. What if I use py2exe or py2app to create a binary executable to distribute so as to make it easy for people to run the application without needing to install python and all the dependencies. Of course this also means that my binary file(s) contains python itself (along with any other packages I might have performed a `pip install xyz`).   3. What if I bundle Biopython, SciPy, and NumPy binaries in my package? In the latter two cases, what do I need to do to comply with copyright laws."}
{"_id": "131561", "title": "IDEs for dynamic languages - how far can you get?", "text": "I find it frustrating how the speed of development that dynamic languages should offer gets significantly compromised by the lack of completions and other assets that IDEs would give you in their static counterparts. It's not just about typing less - it's the productivity boost and plain fun you get by browsing APIs without constantly having to refer to a documentation that is not integrated with the editor. To date all IDE + dynamic language combinations -which to be fair aren't that much- I've tried were:   * buggy   * slow   * clueless/overenthusiastic (as in showing all completions ever possible)   * or simply not as complete as, say, Eclipse + Java. I'm aware that dynamic code analysis is not a trivial task. But one can't help wondering - _is this piece of code really so hard to figure out_? So my question is: **Have any particular IDEs (or less all-in-one setups) achieved a totally outstanding support for a dynamic language, or is this still an 'unsolved' problem?**"}
{"_id": "159238", "title": "Implenting ActiveRecord with inheritance?", "text": "I recently converted an old application that was using XML files as the data store to use SQL instead. To avoid a lot of changes I basically created ActiveRecord style classes that inherited from the original business objects. For example               SomeClassRecord :SomeClass     //ID Property     //Save method      I then used this new class in place of the other one, because of polymorphism I didn't need to change any methods that took SomeClass as a parameter. Would this be considered 'Bad'? What would be a better alternative?"}
{"_id": "224389", "title": "Questions about the issue of getting stuck in a problem, and making snail's pace progress", "text": "Let me describe my background. I am currently a software developer co-op working at an architecture firm that has a large focus on research and development, mainly in mathematical modeling and physics simulations in better aid architecture design. I am one of the three main software developers. Realistically, we're all people that specialize in different topics, for example, one developer is an architect that's been programming and doing mathematical models since he was in high school (he's like 30 years old), and the other architect also has a Masters in data analytics. We all specialize in different things, making us part of a very multi-disciplinary group of nine people in total. Currently I am working on a project that handles Grasshopper 3D and Rhino 3D programming, making use of the Grasshopper SDK. I really enjoy what I am doing and appreciate the learning opportunity, however, with that said, the nature of Grasshopper programming has been difficult for me. I don't think I am that poor programming-wise, however, since most of my projects involve extending functionality beyond what the default Grasshopper SDK does, there are often times I have to spend a good couple hours or even days to understand a problem and then apply code to it. The very nature of this \"functionality beyond what the default Grasshopper SDK provides\" means that finding a solution to a problem isn't as simple as Googling, because of the relatively rare resources available, whether it's documentation or help threads online. The nature of getting stuck on an issue and the only remedy to said problem has been slowly chipping away at my confidence, and I evidently see that I am slowing down in shipping out components (that's what Grasshopper 3D \"tools\" are called). I've already made a good impression in the first couple months of my co-op in being known as efficient, quick, and comprehensive, however, in my three month review, once I began this task of working on Grasshopper programming, my advisors have noticed that my progress has not been as quick, and they mentioned that they are wondering what/where better to put me to work on that will bring out my full potential. I like the idea of working on another project, but I do not wish to do so until I've finished the current one I am on, which day by day I feel like I am making snail's pace progress because of some issues I am stuck with where finding help is a problem in itself. I dislike making a bad impression on my colleagues (and on my school as well, since I am a co-op employee), as I really believe I have the potential to do great. However, this issue of getting stuck on something, making small progresses, then getting stuck again, is simply chipping away my confidence. What are some things I can do? I feel like once I am stuck on a problem, I find myself closing up, unable to voice it, as if asking for help is a sign of incompetency."}
{"_id": "201351", "title": "What features should a programming language have to say it has good reusability?", "text": "What should a programming language have so that it can be said to promote good reusability? Only generics and functions come to my mind when I hear the word reusability. What else make a programming language good for writing easily reusable code?"}
{"_id": "159230", "title": "Is it possible to call a Javascript function from C?", "text": "I'd like to find a way to call Javascript functions from C. Are there any language bindings available for this purpose? I'm trying to make a library of Javascript functions accessible from C. (Something like a C -> Javascript foreign function interface would be suitable for this purpose, but I haven't been able to find one so far.)"}
{"_id": "86042", "title": "Switching domains in one's career?", "text": "I have been a C++,Qt programmer for the last 3.5 years and have hit a plateau in terms of doing something new. Work has been repetitive and routine. I personally believe it is time to move on but off late I am getting more offers in mobile development like Android,Iphone etc. The latest offer I have is for objective-C based profile. I do not have the slightest idea about objective-C apart from that it is Object oriented C resembling C++ but not exactly a clone. Questions in my mind are   * what are the pros/cons of this careers switch or for any such switch?    * Is it good for one's career to change domains after sometime?   * How difficult it is to get back to one's previous area of proficiency? Thanks"}
{"_id": "159232", "title": "Should we ever delete data in a database?", "text": "I am new to databases and trying to understand the basic concepts. I have learned how to delete data in a database. But one of my friends told me that you should never delete data in a database. Rather, when its no longer needed, it's better to simply mark it or flag it as 'not in use'. Is that true? If so, how would a big company like IBM handle their data for a hundred or more years?"}
{"_id": "204956", "title": "Mutable and Immutable version of Collection implementations or both stuffed into one via .makeImmutable()", "text": "I am currently working on a collection implementation in JavaScript. I need a mutable and an immutable version of that. So what I thought of first was something like:   * _Collection_   * _MutableCollection_ extends _Collection_   * _ImmutableCollection_ extends _Collection_. My main issue with this is that if I want to implement more specific collections like _List_ or _Set_ , they could still inherit from _Collection_ while their Mutable/Immutable implementations could not inherit from _MutableCollection_ / _ImmutableCollection_. So this made me think whether having all three, _Collection_ , _MutableCollection_ and _ImmutableCollection_ would actually bring any significant benefit. An alternative approach which came to me would be to only have _Collection_ and then have a _Collection.prototype.makeImmutable_ or _freeze_ there. I would then also introduce a _Collection.requireMutableInstance( collectionInstance )_ which can be used in functions explicitly requiring a mutable collection. Here are my main concerns about putting everything into just _Collection_ :   * The prototype definition is getting much bigger compared to defineing a _MutableCollection_ prototype as well which would then hold the code of all the operations for alteration. I guess I could solve this by just defining a second file anyhow which would then just extend the basic _Collection_ definition with those additional operations and the _makeImmutable_ operation.   * Documentation of those function signatures that actually care about mutable vs. immutable and not just require the basic collection would look less pretty. Take:               /**      * @param {MutableCollection} collection     /*     function messAroundWithSomeCollection( collection ) { /* ... */ }      vs.               /**      * @param {Collection} collection A collection not yet made immutable.     /*     function messAroundWithSomeCollection( collection ) { /* ... */ }      What would be the more _natural_ way of doing this in JavaScript? Especially without having interfaces I can check against and considering the flatter chains of inheritance if I would also implement a _Set_ and _Map_ collection, the everything-in-one approach seems more intuitive to me."}
{"_id": "86046", "title": "Codeigniter + JQuery + Processing.js to replace a Delphi App", "text": "So, I've got a mandate to make our aged trillion lined Delphi app web based and it needs to make heavy use of the `<canvas>` element (HTML5 compatibility doesn't seem to be a big issue since we can just make our clients use a compatible browser the way we'd make them use a compatible version of Windows in the win32 environment). The Delphi app in question is almost completely database driven and will still pretty much continue to be developed as the main product. What I am tasked with is pretty much recreating a scaled down version of the program that performs the major functions of the whole program. I couldn't find any frameworks that simulate windows forms using the canvas element, I'm assuming this is probably by design since it is easier just to use HTML, well, be that as it may, I still think it would be cool to have a few of my cool controls on the web (TRichView and TVirtualTree, etc...) So my question is, to anyone who has tried this before, A.) What can we use for an IDE to code this web app (I just use emacs, but no one else in my company does)? B.) Is it a good idea to mix PHP and Processing.JS? It seems like I'm using a lot of AJAX to get anything to happen. 3 calls just for one dialog box to pop up,   1. Loads the HTML for the dialog,    2. Loads the XML to populate the database info on the form   3. Loads the processing.js PJS file which draws the database info to the canvas.  Is three a lot, do people usually combine all their gets into one?"}
{"_id": "201359", "title": ".c FIle Dedicated to Data", "text": "Is it completely unheard of to have a `.c` file dedicated to just data? In my case, I'd be using it for global variables that are shared across two other `.c` files. Here's specifically how I'm using it.               // serverth.h          struct serverth_parameters {         struct { // right now, this is the only struct needed             char * root,                  * user,                  * public,                  * site;         } paths;              // I anticipate needing another struct here          };          #ifndef SERVERTH_SOURCE     extern struct serverth_parameters parameters;     #endif      * * *               // serverth.c          #define SERVERTH_SOURCE     #include \"serverth.h\"          struct serverth_parameters parameters = {         .paths = { // macros are actually used here             \"/srv\",             \"/user\",             \"/public\"             \"/site\"         }     };      * * * `parameters` is a struct that's used for a websockets server, in two files:   * One for HTTP (uses `parameters.paths.site`)   * Two for proprietary protocols (both use `.paths.user`, one uses `paths.public`) Is this a bad practice? Do people do this? Or, is it more conventional to just keep the data in the source file in which it is most relevant?"}
{"_id": "4142", "title": "What are some easy-to-implement scaffolding systems?", "text": "Often when stating a new project I'll require a _\"quick 'n' dirty\"_ content management solution. Ideally something that can read my database schema and generated HTML forms. Previously I've used; phpMyEdit and phpMyAdmin but they are lacking is key areas. My wish list woulds be:   1. Database independent   2. Foreign key aware   3. Handles views as-well-as tables   4. Generates modern HTML and CSS   5. AJAX interface. What's your swiss army knife when it comes to CMS on a project?"}
{"_id": "177362", "title": "Should I expect my peers to read or practice on a regular basis?", "text": "I've been debating asking this question for some time. Based several of the comments I read in this question I decided I had to ask. This feels like I'm stating the obvious, but I believe that regular reading (of books, blogs, StackOverflow, whatever) and/or practice are required just to _stay current_ (let alone excel) in whichever stack you use to pay the bills, not to mention playing with things outside your comfort zone to learn new ways of doing things. Yet, I virtually never see this from many of my peers. Even when I go out of my way to point out useful (and almost always free) learning material, I quite often get a sense of total apathy from those I'm speaking to. I'd even go so far as to say that if someone doesn't try to improve (or at least stay current), they'll atrophy as technology advances and actually become less useful to the company. I don't expect people to spend hours a day studying or practicing. I have two young kids and hours of practice simply aren't feasible. Still, I find **some** time; perhaps on the train, at lunch, in bed for a few minutes, whatever. I'm willing to believe this is arrogance or naivete on my part, but I'd like to hear what the community has to say. **So here's my question:** Should I expect (and encourage) the same from my peers, or just keep my mouth shut and do my own thing?"}
{"_id": "177363", "title": "How to move a car around an environment with hills in C++?", "text": "I don't have any code for this since I don't know how I am meant to do this. I have a car and I am able to move it around on a flat plane and I have that working correctly. However, I want it to also be able to move up hills accurately. So that when I drive up a hill the front wheels start going up first and then the back wheels follow like a normal car would. So far all I have managed to be able to do is when one point of the car reaches an incline the whole car moves to that new y value instead of just the section of the car that is supposed to. Does it require some kind of translation and rotation applying to it so that it reacts correctly?"}
{"_id": "241597", "title": "Modelling highly specific business requirements", "text": "How can one go about modelling highly specific business requirements, which have no precedent in the system? Take for example the following requirement: ` When a purchase order contains N lines, is over X value in total and is being recorded against project Y, an email needs to be sent to persons A and B with the details ` This requirement supplements other requirements surrounding purchase orders, but comes in at a much later date in response to some ongoing problem elsewhere in the business. Persons A and B are not part of any role or group in the system, and don't hold any specific responsibility; they are simply the two people the business has appointed to receive these emails in this very specific case. Projects are also data driven, so project Y has no special properties to distinguish it from any other project. The only way to identify it is to compare its identifier to a magic number. **How can one go about modelling this kind of case without introducing too much additional complexity?** That I can think of right now, there are a couple of options.   1. **Perform the checks and actions inline with the existing code.** Here we find the correct spot in the code, check the conditions in the requirement and send the emails to hardcoded addresses. Of course this is fraught with issues. At the very least it stops working if one of these people leaves or changes their email address. At worst you have to ensure that any tests and test data are aware that additional actions are taken for a specific set of criteria.   2. **Introduce some form of events system.** Here we introduce an eventing system, so that we might react to some event, and fulfil the requirement outside of the usual path of execution. This sounds like a cleaner solution than option 1, but the work involved is ultimately probably slightly overkill for this one small requirement. That said, having it in place does allow the system to handle these kinds of specific requirements consistently and easily in the future. **Are there any other (good/better) ways of handling highly specific requirements?** I mean other than telling the other parts of the business no!"}
{"_id": "241591", "title": "How to design console application with good seperation of UI from Logic", "text": "1. Is it considered an overkill for console application to be design like MVC , MVP or N tier architecture? If not which is more common and if you can link me to simple example of it.    2. I want to implement a tic tac toe game in console application.   I have a solution which hold two projects: `TicTacToeBusinessLogic (Class library project)` and `TicTacToeConsoleApplication (Console application project)` to represent the view logic. In the `TicTacToeConsoleApplication` I've `Program.cs` class which holds the main entry point (`public static void Main`).   Now I face a problem.   I want the game to handle its own game flow so I can: Create new GameManager class (`from BL`) but this causing the view to directly know the `BL` part. So I'm a little confused how to write it in an acceptable way. Should I use delegates? Please show me a simple example."}
{"_id": "185177", "title": "MySQL setup for remote site failover", "text": "I'm designing a custom web-based inventory management and workflow system for a client of mine. One of their remote sites has fairly sketchy internet access, and needs to have no (or very little) interruption of business when their connection to the universe goes down. I'm picturing some sort of local installation of the web app with MySQL replication keeping their local DB up to date. When their connection out of the building fails, they can manually kick over to the local URL, which is configured to hit their local MySQL, and they stay in business. Question is, replicating those changes back up to the real master. I know of such a thing as master-master replication, but will that really hot-sync divergent tables back together when the connection comes back up? It's some help that the remote site's use case is fairly unique, and it's likely (though not guaranteed) to write only to tables related to their wing of the business. I could perhaps limit the \"failover mode\" local application to only those pieces of the app that are unique to their location, which would be enough to keep them in business. How would you approach this?"}
{"_id": "185175", "title": "Specifying Query in Unit Test", "text": "When writing unit tests, should I specify the query that will be performed for interacting with the database? I can see both sides of this. On one hand, I want to make sure that the query that I specify is being performed. But I can be making the test more brittle due to the formatting of the query. **EDIT:** Basically the code would be a mapper object that interacts with the db layer. But I am wondering how specific do I need to be in my interactions with a Db object. **Edit:** As I want to mock any external dependencies to my objects when I am mocking my Database connection. Should I specify the query that is going to be performed. For example:               testGettingUsers() {         $mockDb = $this->getMockBuilder('My_DB_Connection')              ->setMethods(array('query'))              ->getMock();              $mockDb->expects($this->once())              ->method('query')              ->with('SELECT id, name FROM USERS WHERE name = foo')              ->will($this->returnValue($dbReturn));      Here I have specified my query as the parameter that I am going to call my DB connection with. Is that necessary?"}
{"_id": "185173", "title": "What .NET objects should I use to create a cookie based session in MVC?", "text": "I'm writing a custom password reset application that uses a validation technique that doesn't fit cleanly with ASP.NET Membership Provider's challenge questions. Namely I need to invoke a workflow and collect information from the end user (backup phone number, email address) after the user logs in using a custom form. The only way I know to create a cookie-based session (without too much \"innovation\" on my part) is to use WIF.   * What other standard objects can I use with ASP.NET MVC to create an authenticated session that works with non-windows user stores? Ideally I can store \"role\" or claim information in the session object such as \"admin\", \"departmentXadmin\", \"normalUser\", or \"restrictedUser\" * * * The workflow would look like this:   1. User logs in with username and password   2. If the username and pw are correct a (stateless) cookie based session is created   3. The user gets redirected to a HTML form that allows them to enter their backup phone number (for SMS dual factor), or validate it if already set.   4. The user can then change their password using the form provided The \"forgot password\" would look like this   1. User requests OTP code to be sent to the phone   2. User logs in using username and OTP   3. If the OTP is valid and not expired then create a cookie based session and redirect to a form that allows password reset   4. Show password reset form, and process results."}
{"_id": "246747", "title": "How to backup data and images in this project?", "text": "I have MS C# and MS SQL 2008 database project. It can capture employees' records with pictures of more than 1000 records. Presently, I'm able to capture say 150 records on PC1 using my installed C# application, save the records into XML or CSV file format. My friends are able to continue registration or entering (i.e from 151 to 1000) after restoring or uploading the information contained in that XML or CSV using another copy of my C# application installed on their laptops at another location.   1. How can the content be hidden or locked from user viewing its content except for my C# app reading or writing to it (not necessarily in XML or CSV format)?   2. If I still use same XML or CSV, how can the file be compressed to smaller sizes?"}
{"_id": "227671", "title": "What is the clean way to pass my LoginContext down through the layers to the data access layer?", "text": "I have inherited an API implemented using ASP.NET WebApi 2. The actions on the controllers are all like this:               public object Get(long id) {         LoginContext loginDetails = GetLoginDetails();         if (loginDetails.IsAuthorised) {             return _dependency.DoSomething(loginDetails, id);         }              return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCodes.Unauthorised);     }      The `_dependency` will have many methods all with similar signatures, and it will have dependencies of its own, and those will also use the `LoginContext` class until you finally reach the bottom of the call stack at the data access layer, where the `LoginContext` class is actually used. Dependencies are currently all injected into the constructor by the IoC container. So there are a number of issues here that bother me - the repetitive checking in each controller action that the user is authorized, and the need to have a `LoginContext` on every method of every dependency referenced anywhere by the controller. Now in the first case, I have created an action filter that handles the authentication, and writes a custom identity (which contains the `LoginContext` details) back to the `HttpContext`. That then leaves the meat of my question - what is the best way to pass my `LoginContext` down through the layers to the data access layer? **UPDATE:** just to clarify, in response to some of the questions below, authentication itself is not being checked by the data access layer (although the business layer will obviously do things differently based on the caller's authorisation claims); but rather we are passing data gathered during the authentication process to the data access layer, where it is then being used to access particular resources, or for infrastructure concerns such as auditing. The problem still remains though, should every method of my business layer and every method of my data layer, take a LoginContext as one of its parameters, or are there better ways?"}
{"_id": "181886", "title": "Is it okay to mock multiple objects in one class?", "text": "For developers with extensive experience using mocks, **is it okay to mock multiple objects in one class (ie satisfy multiple interfaces) or is this not recommended?** I am wondering because mocks are stubs anyway, from a testing perspective, it doesn't seem to make a big difference if I consolidate mocks. However, I do wonder if there are negative impacts from a maintenance/clarity POV."}
{"_id": "101799", "title": "What is the best strategy for quickly implementing small business applications?", "text": "I'm not a software developer, but I have previously developed a project- specific Access application for another employer. My current employer would like me to help organize their workflow and data for an upcoming project, and I was considering using Access again. In previous projects the staff used large piles of Excel spreadsheets; now they would like to keep their data more organized as well as automate some processes. I've found that it is difficult to create forms in Access that are pleasant and usable, due to the limited control over forms. Are there better options for quickly developing a business application, such as MS LightSwitch, Delphi, or .NET? The team that will be using the application is small - less than five users."}
{"_id": "193429", "title": "Is path in Set-Cookie URL encoded?", "text": "I'm writing some code that sets cookies and I'm wondering about the exact semantics of the `Set-Cookie` header. Imagine the following HTTP header line:               Set-Cookie: name=value; Path=/%20      For with path does this set the cookie? `/` or `/%20`(unescaped) (`/%20` or `/%2520` escaped)? The reason I'm asking is that I should support non-ASCII paths. Since HTTP header must only be ASCII my plan was to URL escape the path value but the HTTP specification is not as clear as I'd hoped for. **Edit** I know what Path is supposed to do. My question is: Is the value interpreted as percent encoded or not?"}
{"_id": "101796", "title": "App Store: Why did I get paid less than it says in iTunes Connect?", "text": "Ok so not really a programming question... but it is very relevant for any non-US Apple Devs. - Basically, iTunesConnect lists my last payment as $248 NZ (I live in NZ, I signed the basic US tax contract that says I do not live in the US). The payment I received in my bank account a while ago was $221. That's about a 10% difference, maybe because of some type of tax? However, I was under the impression that I should not be getting taxed, and that it was up to me to declare and pay the tax in my own country. - So for any other non-US iOS devs - do you also see this 10% difference - if so, where does the 10% go to (NZ, US, or my bank?). If not, what am I doing wrong, and how should I be doing it? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "181888", "title": "Versioned Resources to Improve Cacheability", "text": "Here's an API concept which could be useful for performance optimisation. It's an example of key-based cache expiry applied to a broader internet-wide context instead of the internal Memcached-style scenario it seems to be mostly used for. I want to make API calls almost as cacheable as static images. Using a news/feed subscriber as an example, which we might poll hourly, the idea is to send a last-updated timestamp along with each topic (it could just as easily be a version number or checksum):               {       username: \"Wendy\",       topics: [{         name: \"tv\",         updated: 1357647954355       },       {         name: \"movies\",         updated: 1357648018817       },       {         name: \"music\",         updated: 1357648028264       }]     }      To be clear, this resource itself comes directly from the server every time and is not cached on the edge or by the client. It's our subsequent calls for topics that we can aggressively cache, thanks to the timestamp. Assuming we want to sync all topics, we'd have \"N\" further calls to make in a naieve implementation (`/topics/tv` etc). But because of the timestamp, we can construct a URL like `/topics/tv/1357647954355.json`. The client usually doesn't make a call at all if it's already seen (and cached) the same version of that resource. Furthermore, even if it's new to the client, an edge cache (e.g. a reverse-proxy like Squid, Varnish, or service like Cloudflare) probably _has_ seen it before, because some other user has probably opened the latest version of this topic already. So we still bypass the application server; the server only ever creates topic JSON once after the underlying resource has updated. So instead of N+1 calls to the server, the client probably makes a much smaller number of calls, and those calls will rarely hit the app server anyway. **Now for my question** All this seems feasible and worth doing, but my question is if there's any prior art for this kind of thing and in particular, any HTTP standards to support it. I initially thought of conditional caching (ETags and modified dates), and I think they'd help to optimise this setup further, but I don't believe they are the answer. They are subtly different, because they require calls to be passed through to the application server in order to check something's changed. The idea here is the client saying \"I already know the latest version, please send that resource back to me\". I don't think there's any HTTP standard for it, which is why I propose a URL scheme like /topics/tv/1357647954355.json instead of some ETag-like header. I believe some CDNs work this way and it's surprising to me if there's no real HTTP standard around it. **Update:** On reflection, an important special case of this is what a web browser does when it fetches a new HTML page. We know it will immediately be requesting CSS+JS, so the same versioning/timestamp trick can be used to ensure those static resources are cache-friendly. That this trick has not been formalised by the spec gives me confidence that unfortunately there is no HTTP standard for it. http://www.particletree.com/notebook/automatically-version- your-css-and-javascript-files/"}
{"_id": "244413", "title": "Fiscal quarter vs calendar quarter", "text": "I'm building a Date/Time class with a \"configurable quarter\" system as follows.   * User specifies which month the quarter starts at (config)   * Set of functions to deal with quarters (next quarter, prev quarter, etc)   * All quarter functions respect the config Now this class is primarily to be used for fiscal quarter calculations. So assuming I have this class with a configurable \"quarter\" system, would I need another parallel set of functions for calendar quarters too? What are the applications for calendar quarters anyways? By calendar quarters I mean where Q1 is Jan-Mar, and Q4 is Oct-Dec. By fiscal quarters I mean whatever standard your Country uses (in India Q1 starts in April)"}
{"_id": "244410", "title": "Use a template to get alternate behaviour?", "text": "Is this a bad practice?               const int sId(int const id);          // true/false it doesn't matter     template<bool i>     const int sId(int const id) {         return this->id = id;     }                       const int MCard::sId(int const id){         MCard card = *this;              this->id = id;              this->onChange.fire(EventArgs<MCard&, MCard&>(*this, card));              return this->id;     }                       myCard.sId(9);          myCard.sId<true>(8);      As you can see, my goal is to be able to have an alternative behaviour for sId.   I know I could use a second parameter to the function and use a if, but this feels more fun (imo) and might prevent branch prediction (I'm no expert in that field). So, is it a valid practice, and/or is there a better approach?"}
{"_id": "244417", "title": "Dynamic Query Generation : suggestion for better approaches", "text": "I am currently designing a functionality in my Web Application where the verified user of the application can execute queries which he wishes to from the predefined set of queries with where clause varying as per user's choice. For example,Table ABC contains the following Template query called SecretReport \"Select def as FOO, ghi as BAR from MNO where \" SecretReport can have parameters XYZ, ILP. Again XYZ can have values as 1,2 and ILP can have 3,4 so if the user chooses ILP=3, he will get the result of the following query on his screen \"Select def as FOO, ghi as BAR from MNO where ILP=3\" Again the user is allowed permutations of XYZ / ILP My initial thought is that User will be shown a list of Report names and each report will have parameters and corresponding values. But this approach although technically simple does not appear intuitive. I would like to extend this functionality to a more generic level. Such that the user can choose a table and query based on his requirements. Of course we do not want the end user to take complete control of DB. But only tables and fields that are relevant to him. At present we are defining what is relevant in the code. But I want the Admin to take over this functionality such that he can decide what is relevant and expose the same to the user. On user's side it should be intuitive what is available to him and what queries he can form. Please share your thoughts what is the most user friendly way to provide this feature to the end user."}
{"_id": "13424", "title": "How do you keep focused through long compiles", "text": "I find it fairly simple keep focused on a task at hand whilst I am actively engaged on it, however, during a long compile (and our current main project can compile in 5-10 mintues on a bad day) that my focus will drift. I'll start procrastinating, check the web, talk to someone, start thinking about something else, and just generally lose my attention, and realise that the compile had finished a while back and I have lost my train of thought, or worse, a lot of time. This is hurting my productivity, and whilst it has not been mentioned by anyone, I think it's a habit I should stop. I have tried white-noise generators (brilliant whilst I have something to focus on), shutting down my web connection and the like, however, through long compiles what can I do rather than stare at the monitor? What tricks or tips can be used to keep focused without spending large amounts of your day starting at a compile in boredom, just to ensure you don't miss it finishing? Hang on, my build broke 10 minutes ago ... :) Finally, I am fairly sure this question isn't a dup of this, as as I am talking specifically about compile times, rather than waining motivation. Foosball is not an option, rather the problem :) **EDIT** People trying to gloat about their language of choice compiling faster are not really helping, nor being particularly amusing. Thanks anyway."}
{"_id": "124185", "title": "Experience With Similar Technologies: Convincing HR People?", "text": "Let's say that a job posting asks for experience in technology X. You have no experience in X but you do have experience in technology Y, which you're convinced is similar enough that the learning curve to be productive in X would be extremely short. How do you get hiring people, especially HR people without much technical background, to look past your lack of experience in X and take you seriously? Examples:   * You're applying for a Java job and have never used Java except for some very small toy projects. However, you do have substantial experience in C#, which is clearly derivative of Java and promotes the same style of programming (class-based OO, static typing, autoboxing, etc.)   * You're applying for a C job. You've never worked on anything written in straight C, but you have done substantial work in C++ and used the C-like subset (raw pointers, malloc/free memory management, void* pointers, etc.) for some of the low-level parts of the project.   * You're applying for a C++ job and you've done extensive work in D. D is intended to be a reengineering of C++ and includes the key concepts like RAII, templates, the ability to manage memory manually and do low-level work, etc. Furthermore, you're aware of exactly where the differences lie from extensive discussions on language design in the D community. Edit: I guess my more fundamental question that inspired this post is, \"Why do most job ads place so much emphasis on specific technologies (which aren't hard to learn on the fly if you grasp the underlying concepts) instead of fundamental language-agnostic skills?\" If I were running a language X shop, I'd much rather hire a top notch programmer regardless of specific technologies and assume he'd pick up X pretty fast than hire an expert in X who had mediocre fundamental, language-agnostic programming skills."}
{"_id": "125857", "title": "Translating between Python-Django and Javascript", "text": "I have a conceptual question about 'translating' between objects I have stored in Django (in Postgres) that I want to use on the front-end. So I have a user object in Python that holds basic things: an id, a username, a password. Let's say I want to output all of that information using Javascript on the client side. Can I just give JS a python object and it will make it into a JS object? I know JS is known for being 'fast and loose' with typing but that just seems absurd! I'm not looking for syntax, but just an overview of how this would work. Can I put Python objects in AJAX requests, then translate them client side, or is this going to be a basic break-down-things-on-server-side, ship them off, and recombine them on the client side type of thing?"}
{"_id": "254223", "title": "Looking for an algorithm to connect dots - shortest route", "text": "I have written a program to solve a special puzzle, but now I'm kind of stuck at the following problem: I have about 3200 points/nodes/dots. Each of these points is connected to a few other points (usually 2-5, theoretical limit is 1-26). I have exactly one starting point and about 30 exit points (probably all of the exit points are connected to each other). Many of these 3200 points are probably not connected to neither start nor end point in any way, like a separate net, but all points are connected to at least one other point. I need to find the shortest number of hops to go from entry to exit. There is no distance between the points (unlike the road or train routing problem), just the number of hops counts. I need to find all solutions with the shortest number of hops, and not just one solution, but all. And potentially also solutions with one more hop etc. I expect to have a solution with about 30-50 hops to go from start to exit. I already tried: 1) randomly trying possibilities and just starting over when the count was bigger than a previous solution. I got first solution with 3500 hops, then it got down to about 97 after some minutes, but looking at the solutions I saw problems like unnecessary loops and stuff, so I tried to optimize a bit (like not going back where it came from etc.). More optimizations are possible, but this random thing doesn't find all best solutions or takes too long. 2) Recursively run through all ways from start (chess-problem-like) and breaking the try when it reached a previous point. This was looping at about a length of 120 nodes, so it tries chains that are (probably) by far too long. If we calculate 4 possibilities and 120 nodes, we're reaching 1.7E72 possibilities, which is not possible to calculate through. This is called Depth-first search (DFS) as I found out in the meantime. Maybe I should try Breadth-first search by adding some queue? The connections between the points are actually moves you can make in the game and the points are how the game looks like after you made the move. What would be the algorithm to use for this problem? I'm using C#.NET, but the language shouldn't matter."}
{"_id": "254227", "title": "Should one reject over-scoped projects?", "text": "I spoke to my first potential client today and he told me about the requirements of his project - an Android app. He is a well-known designer / photographer in my country and now wants me to \"convert the website into an app, custom-tailored\". So the requirements, details stripped out, are as follows:   * eCommerce   * Aggregating all his content like videos, blogs, tweets, etc. into the app   * Live streaming any of his studio demos   * Augmented reality. So that people can see what his painting will look like on their wall before they buy it   * Taxi Sharing Now, for a freelance project, it seems too over-scoped. I am not saying that I cannot do it. I can. But let me be realistic:   * There is a steep learning curve when it comes to VR.   * I am not a tester. I have never white-box tested my own apps. I always black-box test.   * Since he is a renowned artist, something short of perfect _might_ harm his public image So, I asked him for 2 weeks' worth of time before I give him the final answer. Now knowing whom to consult for advise, I am posting the question here. Although interesting and personally challenging, I am split-minded about accepting a project like this. I will be **the only developer** for this. **Should one reject a project that seems to be over-scoped for one's own abilities?**"}
{"_id": "125850", "title": "How to model a many to many from a DDD perspective in UML?", "text": "I have a two entity objects Site and Customer where there is a many to many relationship. I have read you try not to model this in DDD as it is in the data model and go for a unidirectional flow. If I wanted to show this in UML, would I show it as it is in the data model: `Site * ----->*Customer` but the direction arrow gives the flow? or as following `Site ----->*Customer` But then this would imply that Customer can only go in one site."}
{"_id": "235665", "title": "How to measure the quality of my use cases?", "text": "When I'm coding something I know that there are many ways to see if my code is good or not. First is testing: I can do unit tests or even test the software by myself and see that it works or not. After getting it working, I can analyze the coupling of the code and so on to refactor and make it better. In that sense, I'm confident when coding because I have a way to know if what I did works or not and ways to think it better if it doesn't work. When designing the software though I'm mainly having difficulties to analyze whether the uses cases I write are good or not. I've read lots of theory on use cases, but the practice is being a little hard because I always find myself questioning things like: \"should this be included? is this necessary to say here? isn't it missing something?\" and all sorts of things like that. So, how can I \"test\" my use cases? How do I know if they are well written or not? I know in OOAD iterative approach, we don't try to get it right on the first iteration, however it should at least contain the exact information to get me started in coding, and I don't now how to discover if it does contain that information."}
{"_id": "218065", "title": "C# vector class - Interpolation design decision", "text": "Currently I'm working on a vector class in C# and now I'm coming to the point, where I've to figure out, how i want to implement the functions for interpolation between two vectors. At first I came up with implementing the functions directly into the vector class...               public class Vector3D     {         public static Vector3D LinearInterpolate(Vector3D vector1,             Vector3D vector2, double factor) { ... }              public Vector3D LinearInterpolate(Vector3D other, double factor { ... }     }      (I always offer both: a static method with two vectors as parameters and one non-static, with only one vector as parameter) ...but then I got the idea to use extension methods (defined in a seperate class called \"Interpolation\" for example), since interpolation isn't really a thing only available for vectors. So this could be another solution:               public class Vector3D { ... }          public static class Interpolation     {         public static Vector3D LinearInterpolate(this Vector3D vector,             Vector3D other, double factor) { ... }     }      So here an example how you'd use the different possibilities:               {         var vec1 = new Vector3D(5, 3, 1);         var vec2 = new Vector3D(4, 2, 0);         Vector3D vec3;              vec3 = vec1.LinearInterpolate(vec2, 0.5); //1         vec3 = Vector3D.LinearInterpolate(vec1, vec2, 0.5); //2              //or with extension-methods              vec3 = vec1.LinearInterpolate(vec2, 0.5); //3 (same as 1)         vec3 = Interpolation.LinearInterpolation(vec1, vec2,         0.5); //4     }      So I really don't know which design is better. Also I don't know if there's an ultimate rule for things like this or if it's just about what someone personally prefers. But I really would like to hear your opinions, what's better (and if possible why )."}
{"_id": "229779", "title": "Does OpenMp have support for Real Time Multiprocessor Computing?", "text": "I am working on a real time multiprocessor scheduling algorithm. I found very few results via google research related to it. A few simulators are available but are not robust enough. OpenMp is an API I have previously used for small parallel application development. But I am not sure if it provides any support for real time parallel computing which involves time related parameters such as task period, deadline etc. Are those features available in OpenMp? If not, are the underpinnings available so I could extend OpenMp instead?"}
{"_id": "235663", "title": "How to inherit from two parent classes", "text": "I have many classes with many relationship I draw Uml that relation between them: > ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tw1H9.jpg) Is this relation true and how to implement this?"}
{"_id": "221075", "title": "How is major software protected?", "text": "I am a new software developer and I wish to sell my software. I recently realized that from C++ code we can not stop the user seeing parts of the code that are related to scripts or system commands. Would you make some comments on how software written in C++/JAVA (distributed via CD-ROMs or available via download) is protected from reverse engineering, scanners for when the code is in memory and direct copy of parts (as system commands). What a small software company which just starts producing software should do to protect its product from the technological point of view (it should not be able to pay legal fees \u2026)?"}
{"_id": "131926", "title": "Will giving new recruits a separate subproject from experienced developers help the newbies ramp up more quickly?", "text": "We have 7 developers in a team and need to double our development pace in a short period of time (around one month). I know there is a common sense rule that \"if you hire more developers, you only lose in productivity for the first few months\". The project is an e-commerce web service and has around 270K lines of code. My idea for now is to divide the project in two more or less independent sub- projects and let the new team work on the smaller of the two sub-projects, while the current team works on the main project. Namely, the new team will work on checkout functionality, which will eventually become an independent web service in order to decrease coupling. This way, the new team works on a projects with only 100K lines of code. My question is: will this approach help newbie developers to adapt easily to the new project? What are other ways to extend the development team rapidly without waiting two months until newbies start producing more software then bugs?"}
{"_id": "253502", "title": "Using a binary from a project that violates GPL", "text": "There is an open source project which uses GPLv2. It had numerous releases that complied with GPL in the past where source code was available for given binaries. The newest source code is about 18 months old and is being called a last \"official release\". Since that OSed \"last version\" further development has been done by a single main developer. Features have been added and it is clearly visible that the code must have been changed. The main developer only holds part of the copyright for the whole package (it is not 100% his work, the project was started as a fork of another GPLed project). Lets call the ongoing development a TRUNK branch. The problem is that the latest development is done as closed source and **only binaries are being distributed for the TRUNK branch and no source code** was revealed yet. While this most likely is a GPL violation and is a bad thing itself, I dont mind this (even as I should) because I want to use the TRUNK binaries. My question is - **what is the legal status of such TRUNK binaries** that have no source available to them? Are these poised somehow? I want to use the binaries in my project which is open source itself but the binaries would be used in a standalone working unit that only is used for data acquisition so I most likely wont need to modify the unavailable TRUNK source code anyway."}
{"_id": "140242", "title": "Purpose of the csx folder in Azure projects?", "text": "I'm fairly new to Azure but I noticed that Visual Studio auto-creates the following folders (among others)               ...     /<nameOfAzureProject>/bin     /<nameOfAzureProject>/obj     /<nameOfAzureProject>/csx <==     ...      Now the bin and obj folders are fairly standard. But I'm not clear about the purpose of the **csx** folder. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "81907", "title": "How would you feel if your code editor formatted your code for you as you typed, without tabs/spaces?", "text": "As with most things, I'm sure this concept has been tried before - I just haven't come across editors that use what I've termed 'Virtual Formatting'. The principle is that there's a floating left-margin that simulates the effect of the padding space/tab characters that are conventionally inserted by the developer or the editor itself to format the code. The editor continously parses code (even when commented-out) as you type and calculates the required indent based on the context where each line-feed is found I'm developing this idea working specifically with an XML editor as XML has some peculiar problems with formatting characters and it tends to be heavily nested, however I believe many of the principles still hold for conventional code. Have you experience coding with such a tool or do you have a view on whether it would help or hinder? Would it cause problems with version-control systems? (it detects and strips out all existing padding characters) Unless you've tried it, the behavior of such a tool is hard to describe, it looks conventional until you actually start editing. I've put up a screencast video showing a prototype in action which demonstrates editing XML, changing it's hierarchy and doing drag/drop and copy and paste operations, and then how formatting is broken/fixed when invalid characters are typed. **Edit** All answers/comments have so far been negative - so to attempt to redress balance, some benefits of virtual-formatting to think about:   * No more debates on formatting standards, just place line-feeds where that conforms to your chosen/mandated convention   * Where space is at a premium (in a book/blog/documentation) you can word-wrap but still getting perfect indentation   * Each code-block can have a 'mouse-handle' immediately adjacent to where it starts, not squeezed into the screen edge - click this to select the whole block or inner-block   * Drag, drop and forget - becomes viable for the first time   * No time spent reformatting other peoples code   * No incorrectly formatted code (in the sense that there is none - just the rendering)   * Using Backspace instead of Ctrl+Backspace keeps your fingers on the keyboard guide-keys   * Flexible rendering - adapt rendered formatting to your environment, anyone tried reading code on a mobile phone/small-screen tablet?   * Consider that there are roughly 25% fewer editable characters (in a sample XSLT), doesn't that have efficiency benefits? **Edit - Conclusions so far**   1. Developers have established tools and working methods that efficiently overcome most of the disadvantages inherent in the use of padding characters used for indentation.   2. There is concern that removal of formatting characters will detrimentally affect some differencing tools.   3. Developers want the flexibility to 'fine-tune' formatting in such a way that automated rendering could not handle.   4. The removal of leading spaces/tabs means that a 'code-aware' tool capable of code-formatting is needed to review such code efficiently - a plain-text editor would show no formatting.   5. Those that feel there may be some hypothetical benefits (to virtual-indentation), have a view that the disadvantages outweigh those potential benefits - _conclusively_. **Edit - Verdict** The perception of the obstacles and few (if any) benefits is such that it would be unwise for me, as a sole-developer, to pursue this space-free editing concept for general languages. For XML/XSLT, however (because of its special treatment of whitespace), there seems to be some agreement of potential at least. **Edit - Product Shipped** In spite of the generally negative sentiment found here, I went ahead and shipped the editor. I made a free version in the hope it would bring criticism in the form of more concrete issues, based on real experience. Somewhat frustratingly, there have been no complaints so far (in fact barely any feedback considering download volume). I'd like to think this was because users adjusted to the idea so well that they see this as a 'so what?' kind of feature - but there's no way of telling..."}
{"_id": "81905", "title": "What's the rationale of not simply disclosing the license fees for a commercial libary or tool?", "text": "Some companies selling software or libraries simply put their licensing model on their web page and be done with it. (Many also contain a disclaimer that there are volume discounts and special arrangements possible.) Other companies (most notably those placing themselves in the \"enterprise\" market) don't disclose their fees, some don't even disclose their licensing model! When you are interested in their product and contact sales, you then discover that their price calculation is simply a per site / per developer / per core / per whatever thing and they could just as well have put that info on their webpage. Can fellow programmers give me an insight as to why I have to exchange 3 emails and 2 phone calls with a sales representative to find out if a product even remotely fits into our development price tag? I have found that me (and some of my co-workers) are extremely reluctant to even evaluate a product that doesn't disclose it's costs up front, so I cannot understand why anyone would do that for \"simple\" products - that is for libraries and software that really doesn't have negotiated license fees. Note again: I'm talking about single-installation software or libraries that are licensed per-site or per-developer and not about stuff that requires complicated licensing agreements."}
{"_id": "124457", "title": "How to move to Java enterprise development after Python and Ruby?", "text": "I used to develop in Django/Python and Rails/Ruby (and before that C/C++ and C#), and I'm now at a job where we do enterprise Java development (Spring, Hibernate, RESTEasy, Maven, etc.) for web applications and web services. Coming from the Convention over Configuration world, what's the best way to get up to speed doing enterprise Java web services development? I know Java (the language) well, and I've written GUIs in Swing and basic JSP before, but nothing of the kind I'm doing now. Are there any recommended tutorials to get up to speed on popular Java enterprise development tutorials?"}
{"_id": "45168", "title": "Should I achieve validation by handling errors in classic ASP?", "text": "I came across this while modifying an old ASP application:               ON ERROR RESUME NEXT          ivalue = CDATE(ivalue)          IF err.number > 0 THEN       ivalue = CDATE(date)     END IF     err.clear      This doesn't look like good practice. What is the purpose of doing it this way, and is there a better way to go about it? For example, I would've just used `ISDATE()`: is there something I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "20628", "title": "Best books on Managing a Software Development Team?", "text": "The canonical books on software development is fairly well established. However, after reading through a dreadful book full of bad advice on managing programming teams this weekend I am looking for recommendations for really good books that focus on the management side of programming (recruiting, performance measurement/management, motivation, best practices, organizational structure, etc.) and not as much on the construction of software itself. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "246817", "title": "Implement Generic DataSet Builder with C#", "text": "I want to create a data access library that can build a DataSets with relations which can easily be written to XML with `dataset.WriteXML()`. This is a get to know C# endeavor that will hopefully gain me some productivity as well (lots of converting relational tables to XML from different data sources for document generation) So far the only difference I see between the Data Access technologies (SQL, OLEDB, ODBC) with regards to how I will use them for this is that they require a type specified Connection and Adapter (SqlAdapter, OleDbAdapter, OdbcAdapter, etc). So in my mind I envision classes with two methods and a public data set that will be filled.               public DataSet DataSet { get; set; }          public void InsertTables(string ConnectionString, string[] TableNames, string[] Commands)          public void AddRelations(string[] PrimaryTables, string[] PrimaryKeys, string[] ChildTables, string[] ForeignKeys, bool[] NestingRules)      I already started with an OleDb Implementation that works well, and I want to set up something similar for other Data Access technologies. However, I want to be as efficient as possible with the code so am looking for advice on how to accomplish. I was thinking that the Template Method Design pattern could be a solid approach, but then I also thought that a single class that utilizes generics might work as well (I am new to C# and not that familiar with them). I am looking for a general example of how I could accomplish this with a good design pattern and/or generics. Here is what I have for the OleDbDesign. Any advice is greatly appreciated.                public class OleDbDataSetBuilder     {         private DataSet _DataSet;              public DataSet DataSet { get { return _DataSet; } }              public OleDbDataSetBuilder(string DataSetName)         {             this._DataSet = new DataSet(DataSetName);         }              public void InsertTables(string ConnectionString, string[] TableNames, string[] Commands)         {                  if (TableNames.Length != Commands.Length)             {                 throw new Exception(\"Error: Must provide a table name for each command.\");             }                  OleDbConnection cn = new OleDbConnection(ConnectionString);                  OleDbDataAdapter adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(\"\", cn);                  adapter.SelectCommand = new OleDbCommand(\"\", cn);                  for (int i = 0; i < TableNames.Length; i++)             {                 adapter.SelectCommand.CommandText = Commands[i];                      adapter.Fill(_DataSet, TableNames[i]);             }                  cn.Close();              }              public void AddRelations(string[] PrimaryTables, string[] PrimaryKeys, string[] ChildTables, string[] ForeignKeys, bool[] NestingRules)         {                  for (int i = 0; i < PrimaryTables.Length; i++)             {                 DataColumn pk = _DataSet.Tables[PrimaryTables[i]].Columns[PrimaryKeys[i]];                      DataColumn fk = _DataSet.Tables[ChildTables[i]].Columns[ForeignKeys[i]];                      DataRelation relation = _DataSet.Relations.Add(pk, fk);                      relation.Nested = NestingRules[i];             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "20624", "title": "GWT vs JSF vs ZK vs Restful+JS", "text": "I'm planning to develop a web based ERP, which should be full-ajax and with desktop-like UI. It will be a data-entry & data-report application. For developing it I'm considering all technologies. GWT: I saw that with GWT Designer you could create cool UIs, but databinding seems to be too complex JSF: Netbeans no longer supports the visual web editor ZK: supports databinding in a relatively easy way, and has got an Eclipse- based visual editor Some people talk about REST + javascript as a winning choice I'd like to have your opinion about what could be the right choice. Thank you very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "183865", "title": "Is it a good idea to provide different function signatures that do the same thing?", "text": "Here is a C++ class that gets constructed with three values.               class Foo{              //Constructor         Foo(std::string, int, char);          private:         std::string foo;         char bar;         int baz;     };      * * * All of the parameter types are different.   I could overload the constructor so that order doesn't matter.               class Foo{              //Constructors         Foo(std::string, char, int);         Foo(std::string, int, char);         Foo(char, int, std::string);         Foo(char, std::string, int);         Foo(int, std::string, char);         Foo(int, char, std::string);               private:         std::string foo;         char bar;         int baz;     };      But is that a good idea?   I started doing it because I knew what things a class/function needed;   I didn't always remember what order it took them in. * * * I've been assuming that the compiler optimizes this as if I called the same constructor.               //compiler will implement this with the same code?      //maybe not.. I could call a function to get a parameter,      //and that function could change the state of the program, before calling     //a function to get another parameter and the compiler would have to     //implement both     Foo foo1(\"hello\",1,'a');     Foo foo2('z',0,\"world\");      What are your opinions on overloading a function so that the order doesn't matter? * * * Also, If I'm writing some utility functions,   Is it a good idea to provide different function names that do the same thing? eg.               void Do_Foo();     void DoFoo();     void do_foo();     //etc..      * * * I don't often see these two but similar conventions.   Should I break or embrace the habit?"}
{"_id": "246812", "title": "What is the proper way to use an IDE to work on remote code?", "text": "One of the code bases I work on has a development environment that is running on a dev server and cannot be copied over to my PC to locally test and develop. I am wondering what is the proper way to work with this code base? It is object oriented and I have found it to be very tedious and time consuming to do my work using Vim when working on such a codebase. I have another project which I have running locally and I like to use Eclipse and sometimes Sublime text to make changes to the codebase. Is there a way to utilize such tools that I use locally with a remote project, and if so what is the proper way to set this up? Should I remotely mount my system? We do have git/hg setup with these environments however I like to test and debug things in very small changes and this would produce a lot of commits that are un-needed. As well it is also time consuming. Ideally it would be great to just be able to work like it is a local environment and when I save and refresh a page the change is there. Is my best solution mounting?"}
{"_id": "186748", "title": "Are there any tools for remote coding interview?", "text": "Firstly, I'm not exactly sure if this question is a better fit over here, or on workplace.SE. So forgive me if it is in the wrong place. We are interviewing some candidates for a development position, and currently they are not in our city. We would like to give them simple coding tests to see how they will perform on the typical issues that we face in our daily work. Are there any specific tools geared towards this? Right now we are using Skype and I feel this tends to decrease the performance of a lot of developers since they tend to be shy, and often can't work when someone is directly staring at them. The problem with sending them the test questions by email are as follows:   1. It is not possible to know what their thought process is, sine we just see the end result. There is no discussion, or clarification of the question, which is an Important step.   2. There is no guarantee that the problems were solved by the candidates themselves. They could send it to a smarter friend, and we wouldn't be able to know. How are these problems usually solved?"}
{"_id": "201821", "title": "Guid collisions", "text": "I have a product that lets game developers create games. Inside of their games they are required to give all the elements of their games GUIDs. I've told them that they need to generate their guids using a specific mechanism, but they seem to think that it won't cause any issues. What I'm concerned about is GUID collisions between games. Some developers just sequentially increment the last digit of their GUID, others zero out the last block and increment other parts, well others just pull together a random armada of numbers and letters for each one. My argument is that by doing this it dramatically increases the risk of colliding with other games that are both following the standard, and those that don't. Just as a heads up there are potentially hundreds of thousands of GUIDs involved here. Am I right in thinking this, or is it really improbable that this will really happen?"}
{"_id": "201829", "title": "Just in time prize winning algorithm", "text": "I'm building a contest where you can win prizes by opening boxes. Whatever the box is open, i just send a request to the server to test if the user won something. Since this contest is not a \"Register and we'll draw a winner after some time\" type of contest, i'm a bit puzzled at what algorithm i should be taking to calculate chances to win. I've devised in an excel spreadsheet what i call a progressive winning algorithm in the form of:               ([Number of prizes left] / [Prizes i should have left at this time of contest]) / 4      Which gives me a rough percentage change of winning an item off the pool of remaining items around 25%. If there are many winners within a close timespan, the algorithm should automatically lower the chances of winning while going in the opposite direction if the scenario is different. What i'm afraid of is that not all my items will be drawn by the end of the contest because it's a linear calculation of expected gifts left or i'm afraid that, by chance, most of my prizes will be won after only half of the contest (and by chance i mean that lots of player get truly great random odds and keep winning) So my question is, how should i tackle this kind of scenario, what are already known methods for this and please keep it simple, i'm no mathematician nor statistician. * * * **Variables to take into account**   * 100 prizes to give out total   * Contest lasts five whole days   * Unknown number of participants   * Unknown participation rule but will probably be once per day based on a unique credential such as an e-mail address.   * It's an online contest where a user opens a virtual box, nothing physical"}
{"_id": "80051", "title": "Practice programming guidance", "text": "I am a recent graduate so I understand a lot of the theory, object-oriented languages, and various data structures. I am competent in languages such as C++, Java, PHP, just to name the ones I'm strong at. Since graduation I bite the bullet and accepted a job outside of my field for now. So obviously I don't want to lose my edge and want to stay current. Most of my programming has been for academic reasons and a 3-month web programming (back-end) internship. I really want to program something to use my skills I've learned. I always hear program a game is great practice. However one problem with the Internet is it's robust volume of information and find myself reading one site then jumping to another & on & on. Where would you suggest is a good foothold to begin? It's always harder to start from scratch and that is where I am. I figure start with some 2D game and go from there, but then comes the question of which SDK to use, if any. I'm currently using Linux but I wouldn't mind developing in Windows either. I'm always thinking maybe I should try to develop a simple app for an Android phone as well. As you can tell I'm all over and just need a little direction. Any advice/website is greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "125587", "title": "What are the difference between an edge case, a corner case, a base case and a boundary case?", "text": "I'm not a native English speaker. In my native language I'm aware of some terms used to refer to the condition checked to stop a recursion, and to the condition checked for extreme, unlikely or super-simple cases. In English, I've encountered the terms \"edge case\", \"corner case\", \"boundary case\" and \"base case\", but I can't quite figure out the differences and which is used to refer to what; I'd love to get some summary of the differences between them. In particular, I would be very happy if someone could provide annotations for the lines in the following code sample:                   int transmogrify(int n) {     1.      assert(n <= 1000000);     2.      if (n < 0) return -1;     3.      if (n == 1000000) return PRE_CALC;     4.      if (n == 0) return n+1;            // For stopping the recursion     5.      if (n == 1251) return 3077;             return transmogrify(n-1);         }      I _think_ it's:   1. Sanity check   2. Input check   3. Boundary case? Edge case? Corner case?   4. Base case? Boundary case?   5. Corner case? Edge case?"}
{"_id": "125589", "title": "Using Scrum/agile with multiple customers ", "text": "I am a big believer in agile development. I just changed jobs, and I am now working for a company that coordinates big development projects for (rather large) groups of customer organizations. My job is to find the right contractors for the projects, and make sure that the customer organizations are as happy as possible, and control the process. There is nothing in the world that would make me happier, than if I could introduce Scrum or a similar agile method into this situation, making my company's main role the product owner. It would make sense on so many levels. There are some issues though: Since Scrum is a rapid-response method, I wonder if Scrum is the right method for a place like this, where not one customer but a big group of customers have to be involved in prioritizing of the backlog from sprint to sprint. It takes place in a quite political environment. What pitfalls and possibilities do you see in a situation like this? Can this situation simply be handled by longer sprints? There is a general understanding and empathy for the agile agenda in the company, but the issue I describe here seems to be a major obstacle. I would really appreciate your input. I need good ammo for my agile preaching :o)"}
{"_id": "254597", "title": "Making internal search engine return results that adhere to local permissions on an internal web application", "text": "I have an ElasticSearch search engine and an internal web application. Prior to applying the security model, search results were very fast. The security model restricts some users from accessing certain pages. We have 7 \"types\" of pages. Our process is currently this:   1. Search engine queries all records   2. For each type of result, I get all recordIds of that type from the database that the user is allowed to access. This ensures I only call the database a max of 7 times (once per type)   3. I do an intersect between the records the user can access and the records search is returning The above approach isn't fast enough. I have an autosuggest search and each query takes up to 2 seconds now. What is a typical way to make a search engine return results that adhere to security? Another developer has recommended I store the security permissions directly in ElasticSearch itself(essentially mirroring what our sql server has). Edit: Each record has a page. We can assume 200-500 users and 25000+ records."}
{"_id": "205305", "title": "Using two versions of a class in the same code", "text": "At my job, in our core project, we have a Validation class that has been evolving with the years. And ee have an old project with an User class that uses an old version of the Valdiation class. And we have to update some functionality that requires new validation methods. All those methods are implemented in our latest Validation class. But the new Validation class isn't backwards compatible, so we can't just put the new one in place. I thought that a good solution would be to upgrade all the code that references the Validation Class or making it backwards compatible but, obviously, both of them would take a lot of time. Finally, it was decided that adding the latest version and calling it Validation2 works just fine, some methods use Valdiation and others Validation2. I think that will bring a lot of problems later, because you don't know when to use one or another as the names stop being meaningful. What could be a better option to deal with this? Also, the Validation class was the best example, but we have the same problem with a lot of bigger and more complicated classes and now we have a lot of \"duplicated\" classes. The language is PHP, but could happen in other languages too."}
{"_id": "13084", "title": "Degree after BSc in Computer Science: Marketing, MBA, Techno-MBA, HCI?", "text": "Since a year I am a graduated Computer Engineer, and am now working in named field since 2 years. However, I'd like to get a Masters in a \"softer\" field and was thinking over the following choices:   * **MBA** : Master of Business Administration, to bridge the business world with the world of computer science. Would give me an interesting job, travel potential, high salary etc.   * **Techno-MBA** : Sort of an MBA, but aimed at people who already have a degree in Computer Science.   * **HCI** : Human Computer Interaction degree, something I have been **very** interested in, but feel like it doesn't have the growth potential of MBA/Techno-MBA   * **Marketing** : My most recent brainchild is a degree in Marketing, is this at all a good idea given my background? Growth potential? Main priority: Gaining a skill, and gaining a job allowing me to use my social skills. Which path has the best \"career potential\"? (Controversial I know) Any thoughts? Any feedback welcome. Edit: DOH. Realized that the first sentence makes no sense. Was running my own semi-successful business during last year of school."}
{"_id": "225217", "title": "When would you choose *not* to update a third-party library to a newer version?", "text": "Using third party libraries for productivity gains in software development is common. Unfortunately, along with the library's functionality we also import its bugs. Some of them get fixed in subsequent releases. So, to upgrade or not to upgrade, this is the question. I am interested in learning from experiences when upgrading to a newer version of the library was desirable, but after a cost/benefit analysis the conclusion was that upgrading was not a good solution \"in the grand scheme of things\". I am interested in finding out what _forces_ influence the decision towards _not_ upgrading."}
{"_id": "42225", "title": "Python vs. Java for embedded wireless module", "text": "We are developing a product at work which interfaces with basic I/O and sends data to a webserver over a GPRS connection. What i need to know before we commit to a product, is which language is more suited for this task: Java or Python? (or any language to be honest) As i said, it will run on a wireless module and open serial connections, read values, send data through GPRS connections to a webserver..."}
{"_id": "134008", "title": "Should PHP view files be called something other than '.php'?", "text": "By default, any file that PHP touches is usually suffixed with `.php`. It's universally understood by Apache / Nginx as the default for PHP files and most setups expect PHP files to end in this extension. In short, `.php` is the standard for everything PHP. However, I'm wondering if perhaps view files should have a different extension to help differentiate them from other PHP files. First, when it comes to views I have found that almost all MVC frameworks using a matching view file named after the controller or method. In addition, you generally also have a matching model named the same thing. This causes a problem with most IDE's and editors. For example, you might have a \"user\" controller, a \"user\" view, and a \"user\" model. The results in having three files open called \"user.php\" which makes it a bother when you are moving around and clicking on the wrong tabs. Second, separating views as a fundamentally different kind of PHP file (the presentation type) is another argument for changing the extension of the view files to something other than `.php`. Something that immediately tells your brain what type of content belongs in it. Third, some applications expose parts (or all) of the PHP files in the webroot and it's directories. Rather than adding something like `<?php if(!defined(ABC)) die('not allowed');` it would be nice to have an easy way to forbid access to views while allowing other files like the customary `index.php`. **Are there any other good/bad reasons to think it's a good idea to change the file extension of view files?**"}
{"_id": "134009", "title": "Lua-type Java integration with C++", "text": "So I'm curious: I've implemented Lua within C++ a few times before, and while it was relatively simple, it still didn't harness the power that I would have liked. I love how eclipse works, including javadoc locations, etc. and I was wondering if there was a way to integrate Java into a native application (that is cross-platform, of course) to do what Lua does, but with Java. This means I'd be able to build my own base classes and stuff, etc. Just an interesting thought! Any insight? EDIT: Also, what about MonoDevelop? Is it relatively easy to integrate? Is it compiled? Is it cross-platform-able?"}
{"_id": "227676", "title": "Using function points as a metric for the velocity of a Scrum team?", "text": "I came across the idea of using function points as a metric for the velocity of a Scrum team. I saw it in a team and I found two articles mentioning a link between estimates and function points (http://www.ifpug.org/ISMA5-2010/Amol%20Keote-FunctionPointsAndAgile-Hand-in- Hand.pdf and http://www.cosmicon.com/portal/public/FromStoryPointsToCOSMIC.pdf). I am not sure how this can work, because if I understand it correctly, function points measure the _value_ of a feature (e.g. from the users perspective) whereas the velocity measures the _effort_ of finished features. And in my view there's no direct connection between these two. To put it another way: If you have (let's say) a stable Scrum Team which works 2 week Sprints, the number of functions points they deliver per Sprint should vary (possible wildly), which would render a velocity based on function points quite meaningless (e.g. for planning purposes)... Am I missing something here?"}
{"_id": "6662", "title": "Have You Ever Had To Code \"Badly\" For Your Team?", "text": "I've been on the constant road of learning new concepts in OOP, Software Design, Architecture, etc. But there are times when you are in a team where those concepts are foreign to them and they don't have the time or the same eagerness to learn as you. The problem is if you design your code the \"right\" way, the people who code with 2kLOC classes won't understand it. Would you sacrifice good coding principles to support your team? What about a scenario where this will be a long term arrangement?"}
{"_id": "214528", "title": "Does usage of advanced language features decrease maintainability?", "text": "On a code review, I've stumbled on an interesting idea, which I can't properly judge alone. Is it OK to improve readability of code by means of not widely known language syntax? When the original writer didn't use a special syntax designated for solving a specific coding problem, and solved it by simulating with workarounds \u2014 is it worth to refactor it for clarity and conciseness? What if even the code reviewer didn't know about the language feature? To be specific, I'll bring the exact issue I've met on the code review \u2014 but keep in mind that this is just an example. So the original code was a little web service in Python. At some point, there arised a requirement for several request handlers to be protected with an authentication mechanism. Somebody solved it with inheritance:               class AuthOnlyAccess:         def GET(self, *args):             if not hasattr(self, 'PROTECTED_GET'):                 raise web.Nomethod()                  if check_auth():                 return self.PROTECTED_GET(*args)             else:                 raise web.Unauthorised()              def POST(self, *args):             if not hasattr(self, 'PROTECTED_POST'):                 raise web.Nomethod()                  if check_auth():                 return self.PROTECTED_POST(*args)             else:                 raise web.Unauthorised()          ...          class FooHandler(AuthOnlyAccess):         def PROTECTED_GET(self, a, b, c):             handle_foo_get(a, b, c)              def PROTECTED_POST(self, x, y, z):             handle_spam_eggs()          ...     <more handlers deriving AuthOnlyAccess>      The refactorer found this code ugly and introduced a decorator:               from functools import wraps     ...          def requires_auth(wrapped_func):         \"\"\" (a little doc telling that this is a decorator and how to use it) \"\"\"         @wraps(wrapped_func)         def decorator(*args):             if check_auth():                 return wrapped_func(*args)             else                  raise web.Unauthorized()              return decorator          ...          class FooHandler:         @requires_auth         def GET(self, a, b, c):             handle_foo_get(a, b, c)              @requires_auth         def POST(self, x, y, z):             handle_spam_eggs()          ...     <more refactored handlers>      The reviewer argues that this change actually **decreases** maintainability, because most of the team doesn't know decorator syntax. So the next person visiting the refactored code could be puzzled by the construct \u2014 but not with the previous version. There's also a convincing argument that **most of the codebase isn't in Python** , (the language is there only for that little web service), and hence team members aren't required to have even shallow knowledge of Python. However, to work with code, one's going to need to know its language, right? And if you have the temptation to say that python decorators aren't _that_ advanced syntax \u2014 please remember that this is only an example. Every language has its dark corners. (But to learn those corners means to become better.) So the question is... Can you read unknown syntax? Is the elegance worth the surprise? At least, what are the tradeoffs and/or guidelines you can name? I do really need some opinions from the community of programming professionals."}
{"_id": "203464", "title": "How do I initialize a Scala map with more than 4 initial elements in Java?", "text": "For 4 or fewer elements, something like this works (or at least compiles):               import scala.collection.immutable.Map;          Map<String,String> HAI_MAP = new Map4<>(\"Hello\", \"World\",                                             \"Happy\", \"Birthday\",                                             \"Merry\", \"XMas\",                                             \"Bye\", \"For Now\");      For a 5th element I _could_ do this:               Map<String,String> b = HAI_MAP.$plus(new Tuple2<>(\"Later\", \"Aligator\"));      But I want to know how to initialize an immutable map with 5 or more elements and I'm flailing in Type-hell. # Partial Solution I thought I'd figure this out quickly by compiling what I wanted in Scala, then decompiling the resultant class files. Here's the scala:               object JavaMapTest {       def main(args: Array[String]) = {         val HAI_MAP = Map((\"Hello\", \"World\"),                           (\"Happy\", \"Birthday\"),                           (\"Merry\", \"XMas\"),                           (\"Bye\", \"For Now\"),                           (\"Later\", \"Aligator\"))         println(\"My map is: \" + HAI_MAP)       }     }      But the decompiler gave me something that has two periods in a row and thus won't compile (I don't think this is valid Java):               scala.collection.immutable.Map HAI_MAP =             (scala.collection.immutable.Map)              scala.Predef..MODULE$.Map().apply(scala.Predef..MODULE$.wrapRefArray(                     scala.Predef.wrapRefArray(                             (Object[])new Tuple2[] {                                     new Tuple2(\"Hello\", \"World\"),                                     new Tuple2(\"Happy\", \"Birthday\"),                                     new Tuple2(\"Merry\", \"XMas\"),                                     new Tuple2(\"Bye\", \"For Now\"),                                     new Tuple2(\"Later\", \"Aligator\") }));      I'm really baffled by the two periods in this:               scala.Predef..MODULE$      I asked about it on `#java` on Freenode and they said the `..` looked like a decompiler bug. It doesn't seem to want to compile, so I think they are probably right. I'm running into it when I try to browse interfaces in IntelliJ and am just generally lost. Based on my experimentation, the following is valid:               Tuple2[] x = new Tuple2[] { new Tuple2<String,String>(\"Hello\", \"World\"),                                 new Tuple2<String,String>(\"Happy\", \"Birthday\"),                                 new Tuple2<String,String>(\"Merry\", \"XMas\"),                                 new Tuple2<String,String>(\"Bye\", \"For Now\"),                                 new Tuple2<String,String>(\"Later\", \"Aligator\") };          scala.collection.mutable.WrappedArray<Tuple2> y = scala.Predef.wrapRefArray(x);      There is even a `WrappedArray.toMap()` method but the types of the signature are complicated and I'm running into the double-period problem there too when I try to research the interfaces from Java."}
{"_id": "203461", "title": "unit testing variable state explicit tests in dynamically typed languages", "text": "I have heard that a desirable quality of unit tests is that they test for each scenario independently. I realised whilst writing tests today that when you compare a variable with another value in a statement like:               assertEquals(\"foo\", otherObject.stringFoo);      You are really testing three things:   1. The variable you are testing exists and is within scope.   2. The variable you are testing is the expected type.   3. The variable you are testing's value is what you expect it to be. Which to me raises the question of whether you should test for each of these implicitly so that a test fail would occur on the specific line that tests for that problem:               assertTrue(stringFoo);     assertTrue(stringFoo.typeOf() == \"String\");     assertEquals(\"foo\", otherObject.stringFoo);      For example if the variable was an integer instead of a string the test case failure would be on line 2 which would give you more feedback on what went wrong. Should you test for this kind of thing explicitly or am i overthinking this?"}
{"_id": "186847", "title": "A design pattern for data binding an object (with subclasses) to asp.net user control", "text": "I have an abstract class called Address and I am deriving three classes ; HomeAddress, Work Address, NextOfKin address. My idea is to bind this to a usercontrol and based on the type of Address it should bind properly to the ASP.NET user control. My idea is the user control doesn't know which address it is going to present and based on the type it will parse accordingly. How can I design such a setup, based on the fact that, the user control can take any type of address and bind accordingly. _I know of one method like :-_ Declare class objects for all the three types (Home,Work,NextOfKin). Declare an enum to hold these types and based on the type of this enum passed to user control, instantiate the appropriate object based on setter injection. As a part of my generic design, I just created a class structure like this :- ![Sample UML](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DyML8.png) I know I am missing a lot of pieces in design. Can anybody give me an idea of how to approach this in proper way."}
{"_id": "7340", "title": "Which operating system book do you recommend?", "text": "I want to read a good book about operating systems. More specifically, I want to read about how common problems - such as managing virtual memory, handling traps, doing context switches, managing processes and threads, etc. - are usually solved. To wit, I'm not looking for a book about how to program _towards_ an operating system; I'm looking for a book about how to _write_ an operating system. I hope this makes the question clear. Please only write **one book per answer** , for voting purposes."}
{"_id": "10021", "title": "What is a \"powerful\" language?", "text": "I have often seen people fighting over that their favorite language is more \"powerful\" than others. When it comes to describing a programming language, I can understand what an object oriented language is or what a dynamic language is, but I still can't figure out what exactly a \"powerful\" language is. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "247140", "title": "Is it a good idea for JS objects to draw themselves when the page loads?", "text": "So normally I would only use JS to modify the dom after the user interacts with something or some event goes off. This seems right for some reason. But I'm developing a widget based app where widgets need the capability to draw (print) themselves and it feels redundant to send the widget's html via the initial http request when I can just print them with the js method when the page loads. Should I be trying to avoid printing html elements with JS on the page load as a rule or is it just an optimization thing?"}
{"_id": "176706", "title": "Graduated transition from Green - Yellow - Red", "text": "I have am having algorithm mental block in designing a way to transition from Green to Red, as smoothly as possible with a, potentially, unknown length of time to transition. For testing purposes, i will be using 300 as my model timespan but the methodology algorithm design needs to be flexible enough to account for larger or even smaller timespans. Figured using RGB would probably be the best to transition with, but open to other color creation types, assuming its native to .Net (VB/C#). Currently i have:               t = 300     x = t/2     z = 0     low = Green (0, 255, 0)     mid = Yellow (255, 255, 0)     high = Red (255, 0, 0)      Lastly, sort of an optional piece, is to account for the possibility of the `low`, `mid`, and `high` color's to be flexible as well. I assume that there would need to be a check to make sure that someone isnt putting in `low = (255,0,0)`, `mid=(254,0,0)`, and `high=(253,0,0)`. Outside of this anomaly, which i will handle myself based on the best approach to evaluate a color. ### Question:   * What would be the best approach to do the transition from `low` to `mid` and then from `mid` to `high`?   * What would be some potential pitfalls of implementing this type of design, if any?"}
{"_id": "163688", "title": "What is an appropriate language for expressing initial stages of algorithm refinement?", "text": "First, this is not a homework assignment, but you can treat it as such ;). I found the following question in the published paper The Camel Has Two Humps. I was not a CS major going to college (I majored in MIS/Management), but I have a job where I find myself coding quite often. > For a non-trivial programming problem, which one of the following is an > appropriate language for expressing the initial stages of algorithm > refinement? > > (a) A high-level programming language. > > (b) English. > > (c) Byte code. > > (d) The native machine code for the processor on which the program will run. > > (e) Structured English (pseudocode). What I do know is that you _usually_ want to start your design implementation by writing down pseuducode and then moving/writing in the desired technology (because we all do that, right?) But I never thought about it in terms of **refinement**. I mean, if you were the original designer, then you might have access to the original pseudocode. But realisticly, when I have to maintain/refactor/ **refine** somebody elses code, I just keep trucking with the language it currently resides in. **Anybody have a definitive answer to this?** As a side note, I did a quick scan of the paper as I havn't read every single detail. It presents various score statistics, can't find where the answers are with the paper."}
{"_id": "163689", "title": "Should interfaces extend (and in doing so inherit methods of) other interfaces", "text": "Although this is a general question it is also specific to a problem I am currently experiencing. I currently have an interface specified in my solution called               public interface IContextProvider     {        IDataContext { get; set; }        IAreaContext { get; set; }     }      This interface is often used throughout the program and hence I have easy access to the objects I need. However at a fairly low level of a part of my program I need access to another class that will use _IAreaContext_ and perform some operations off it. So I have created another factory interface to do this creation called:               public interface IEventContextFactory      {        IEventContext CreateEventContext(int eventId);     }      I have a class that implements the _IContextProvider_ and is injected using NinJect. The problem I have is that the area where I need to use this _IEventContextFactory_ has access to the _IContextProvider_ only and itself uses another class which will need this new interface. I don't want to have to **instantiate** this implementation of _IEventContextFactory_ at the low level and would rather work with the _IEventContextFactory_ interface throughout. However I also don't want to have to inject another parameter through the constructors just to have it passed through to the class that needs it i.e.               // example of problem     public class MyClass     {         public MyClass(IContextProvider context, IEventContextFactory event)         {            _context = context;            _event = event;         }              public void DoSomething()          {            // the only place _event is used in the class is to pass it through            var myClass = new MyChildClass(_event);            myClass.PerformCalculation();               }     }      So my main question is, would this be acceptable or is it even common or good practice to do something like this (interface extend another an interface):               public interface IContextProvider : IEventContextFactory      or should I consider better alternatives to achieving what I need. If I have not provided enough information to give suggestions let me know and I can provide more."}
{"_id": "247146", "title": "Returning results of method on batch list?", "text": "The title is a bit vague so I'll try to elaborate. I have a function               makeFoo(int bar) -> returns Foo or throws Exception.      I also have a batch version of this               makeFoos(int[] bars) -> returns Foo[]      which basically loops through bars and runs makeFoo() on them. Issue is, if while running makeFoos(), makeFoo() throws an Exception, what do I do? I don't want to break out of makeFoos() because I want to continue processing the rest of the bars. But also, I want to retain the Exception that was thrown. My initial solution is, instead of returning Foo[], I return Result<Foo>[]. Where Result is a wrapper class:               class Result<T>:         T data;         Exception e;      Is there a better way that I can approach this? * * * Edit: Apologies if this is considered a duplicate post, but I posted a more general version of this question here: Result Object vs. Exceptions"}
{"_id": "176700", "title": "How do .so files avoid problems associated with passing header-only templates like MS dll files have?", "text": "Based on the discussion around this question. I'd like to know how .so files/the ELF format/the gcc toolchain avoid problems passing classes defined purely in header files (like the std library). According to Jan in that answer, the dynamic linker/loader only picks one version of such a class to load if its defined in two .so files. So if two .so files have two definitions, perhaps with different compiler options/etc, the dynamic linker can pick one to use. Is this correct? How does this work with inlining? For example, MSVC inlines templates aggressively. This makes the solution I describe above untenable for dlls. Does Gcc never inline header-only templates like the std library as MSVC does? If so wouldn't that make the functionality of ELF described above ineffective in these cases?"}
{"_id": "247148", "title": "Program Design clearness vs convenience", "text": "I've recently disputed with my colleague about the following situation: I've developed a framework that processes the resources (in java, although its not really important). It goes (simplified, pseudo-code) like this:               class Algorithm {         Processor processor = ...;         execute() {             forEach(Resource r : readResourceNamesFromFileSystem()) {                DomainObject do = convertResourceToDomainObject(r);                processor.process(do);             }                }           }          interface Processor {          process(DomainObject do);     }      Class **Algorithm** is an entry point to my framework. Resource is a representation of some content in the filesystem (it has methods for reading the data from file and the file name, which is important) Class **DomainObject** (declaration is omitted) is a java representation of the content of the file depicted by Resource. DomainObject only has data and doesn't have a filename inside. Class **Processor** represents the business logic layer, the DomainObject can be processed, stored in Database and so forth. The content data is supplied by others, we just know that these files contain the data that can be converted into DomainObject(s) which is a real object we work with in the framework. We store one DomainObject in one file. Now we argue about the file name. Colleague of mine wants the file name to be propagated into the Processor and potentially to all the layers because its easy to print the logging message/throw an exception that contains a file name if something goes wrong during the processing, or maybe to write the message like \"domain object stored in file ( **here__comes__filename** ) has been processed successfully\". I see the point of my colleague (convenience) but I'm sure it breaks the design and encapsulation because the processor module shouldn't really be aware of the \"origin\" of the DomainObject (today we store them in files one DomainObject per file, tomorrow we'll maybe use something else, something that doesn't necessarily has a filename). I claim that we better catch the exception in the Algorithm.execute method and rethrow the exception with a filename/ log the filename. The log file will be less readable but the encapsulation won't be broken. In my understanding its a design vs clearness. Could you please share your opinion, who is right, who is wrong? Should I sacrifice the design for the clearness of logs? BTW I've promised my colleague to ask this question so we'll read the possible answers together :) Thanks a lot in advance and have a nice day"}
{"_id": "163681", "title": "Shared FIFO file descriptor", "text": "is ok to open fifo with one FD and share it with multiple threads? or is it better to have multiple fds opened for the same fifo and share these fds with the threads? BTW, I'll be doing write and read. The environment is linux, C, pthreads"}
{"_id": "176708", "title": "Using Visual Studio as a Task-Focused IDE", "text": "Are there patterns or libraries or any official Microsoft SDK for using Visual Studio as a specifically Task-Focused UI? For example, both Revolution R (IDE for the R language) and SQL 2012 (and I think SQL 2008 and possibly 2005) use Visual Studio as the underlying IDE framework. Is there an officially supported SDK and/or examples/samples for doing this type of thing? I am building a language Parser for an existing language - whose only available IDE is INSANELY expensive - using Irony (and eventually will generate a Language Service as well). Any direct or indirect suggestions/answers are appreciated."}
{"_id": "236319", "title": "Relative encapsulation design", "text": "Let's say I am doing a 2D application with the following design: There is the Level object that manages the world, and there are world objects which are entities inside the Level object. A world object has a location and velocity, as well as size and a texture. However, a world object only exposes `get` properties. The `set` properties are private (or protected) and are only available to inherited classes. But of course, Level is responsible for these world objects, and must somehow be able to manipulate at least some of its private setters. But as of now, Level has no access, meaning world objects must change its private setters to public (violating encapsulation). How to tackle this problem? Should I just make everything public? Currently what I'm doing is having a inner class inside game object that does the `set` work. So when Level needs to update an objects location it goes something like this:               void ChangeObject(GameObject targetObject, int newX, int newY){      // targetObject.SetX and targetObject.SetY cannot be set directly      var setter = new GameObject.Setter(targetObject);      setter.SetX(newX);       setter.SetY(newY);      }      This code feels like overkill, but it doesn't feel right to have everything public so that anything can change an objects location for example."}
{"_id": "255176", "title": "What if any languages treat undisposed resources as an error?", "text": "I've seen lots of code like the following example. It's in Python, but the same mistake is made in all languages with managed resources:               f = open('foo.txt', 'rb')     for line in f: print line      That's it. The error is that `close(f)` wasn't called so the file handle is kept open until some indeterministic time in the future when the runtimes memory management decides to reclaim memory. Python has `with` and c# has `using` to help make resource cleanup easier, but let's disregard those features for a minute. Given that:   1. It's a programming error not to explicitly close open files.   2. The runtime can detect that an open file has not been closed. Why then doesn't the runtime throw an error instead of being \"helpful\" and closing the file for the programmer? That would be the fail fast and fail early strategy. Is there a technical reason why it can't? Is there any languages that does it? Has the idea been considered before (I've googled but not found anything)? Here is how you **almost** implement the feature in Python:               class mustclose:         def __init__(self, f):             self.f = f         def __del__(self):             if not self.f.closed:                 raise Exception(\"You forgot to close() me!\")     k = mustclose(open('foo.txt', 'wb'))     #k.f.close()      Two problems: It requires wrappers, Python doesn't like to throw exceptions from destructors. (Read this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2807241/what-does-the- expression-fail-early-mean-and-when-would-you-want-to-do-so SO question for background on why failing fast is often desirable)"}
{"_id": "133334", "title": "How do I preview my mobile web application on a Windows 7 PC?", "text": "I am developing a mobile web application that may be browsed in an iPhone. I would like to test this application, but I lack a mobile web device. How can I test this mobile application on a Windows 7 PC?"}
{"_id": "85231", "title": "What should I recommend a small company looking for C# developers", "text": "Here is the issue. I am a senior developer, and one of the start-ups I designed the system (management system/database/web) a long time ago, have grown and need software updates. I have left their system to another developer long time ago, but apparently he has left the job, and so they are asking me if I can suggest them where to find a new one. The problem is that the company has no clue that the IT is not cheap. They expect multiple features to be added for 40$, so that's an issue. Actually one of the reasons why I left the project when I did. Lots of expectations, little pay, also I know those people outside work, so I decided to avoided stressing the nonwork-relationships and left the project gracefully. Today they asked me for an advice, and I told them that the feature list they want is probably going to cost some if they'll get a senior developer for the job. So I guess their best bet is to find someone who loves coding and has just finished the school. Which would give someone a chance to code for money which is good for a student, and at the same time, allow the student to get some hands on experience. Then again, the system is not exactly 20 line console program, there is an MSSQL database, ASP.NET web page and content management system with all the AJAX stuff and some other things. So student straight out of school could have some problems with that. But, I thought about the issue some more, and I think that junior developer is a tricky deal, without mentoring, he can either screw up royally, or just do what's asked. Also, it seems no one is coming to interviews at all, which is weird, or maybe not. What should I suggest them?"}
{"_id": "70430", "title": "Maintaining Method Signatures across languages?", "text": "I'm finishing up a port I did of a portion of a Java Library. The library calculates sunrise and sunset for a given latitude and longitude. The original Java library also calculated various times based on sunrise and sunset, which I plan to get to later. That said, I'm working with Objective-C and the Cocoa touch framework. The original methods, being Java, all began with `get` and took their arguments in parenthesis. However, Objective-C has a different method structure, so the methods end up looking different. For example, `public double getUTCSunset(AstronomicalCalendar astronomicalCalendar, double zenith, boolean adjustForElevation)` becomes this: `- (double) getUTCSunsetForDate:(NSDate*)date andZenith:(double)zenith adjustForElevation:(BOOL)adjustForElevation`. The problem here is twofold. First of all, according to the Apple Documentation on coding convention, method names (and \"getters\"), should not include `get` in them. However, a second issue arises if we drop the `get`. We end up with a method signature that begins with a capital letter, which is also not supposed to happen. How would you rewrite this method, while keeping the method signatures similar enough to be recognizable to each other?"}
{"_id": "70437", "title": "Preparing For a New Programming Project", "text": "I consider myself to be a novice programmer -- a noob is you like. As such I'm still not sure how to get started on a project where I will be doing stuff that I've never done before. For instance, I would like to write a program that can download videos from YouTube and convert them to a format specified by the user. I've never done anything like this before and I really have no idea where to start. Rather, I have no idea what I should search for. If I search for \"YouTube Downloader\" then I get hit with a bunch of useless links to existing YouTube Downloader sites, most of which don't work. What I want to know is how to get started on a project that I know nothing about. How do I find out what is required for this project? How do I find out what languages are best suited for this? How can I find out if there are any APIs that would be particularly useful? Also, what other questions should I be asking myself when preparing to take on a new project?"}
{"_id": "70438", "title": "Optimizing programs by identifying and taking evaluation (calculation) shortcuts", "text": "Recently I am working on a project that involves a lot of simple numerical calculations being applied to large arrays. The numerical values are very simple but there are many different types, such as positive integers, negative integers, small floating point numbers, and so on. SIMD programming techniques (such as SSE) are widely used. I noticed that a lot of times processing speed can be improved if I can find shortcuts in the calculations. For example, if the inputs are integers and the outputs are also integers, I should try my best to avoid converting to floating point numbers if possible. For simple chained calculations this is easy. However, when we increase the number of operations that can be combined, we find that we have to manually code those SIMD instructions for each case. I have studied the approaches taken by various vectorization libraries, and observed that while their approaches are very elegant in code using metaprogramming techniques, most compilers aren't able to generate optimized machine instructions from the results. If I represent the calculations with command objects, will I have a better chance of matching small sections of the command chain and substituting with shortcuts?"}
{"_id": "121664", "title": "When to do code reviews when doing continuous integration?", "text": "We are trying to switch to a continuous integration environment but are not sure when to do code reviews. From what I've read of continuous integration, we should be attempting to check in code as often as multiple times a day. I assume, this even means for features that are not yet complete. So the question is, when do we do the code reviews? We can't do it before we check in the code, because that would slow down the process where we will not be able to do daily checkins, let alone multiple checkins per day. Also, if the code we are checking in merely compiles but is not feature complete, doing a code review then is pointless, as most code reviews are best done as the feature is finalized. Does this mean we should do code reviews when a feature is completed, but that unreviewed code will get into the repository?"}
{"_id": "121667", "title": "Calculation of Milestones/Task list", "text": "My project manager assigned me a task to estimate the development time for an iPad application. Lets assume that I gave estimation of 15 working days. He thought that the number of days where too many and client needed the changes to the application urgently (as in most of cases). So, he told me: \"I am going to assign **two** developer including you and as per my understandings and experience it won't take more than **seven** working days.\" **Clarifications** I was given the task of estimating development time for an individual. How could I be sure that 2 developers are going to finish it within 7 days? (I am new to team & I hardly know the others abilities) **Questions**   * Why do most of project managers / team leaders have understandings like:      * If one developer requires N days,     * Then two developers would require N/2 days,   * Do they think something like `developer = s/w production machines`?   * Should a team member (developer, not team lead or any higher post) estimate other developers work? I didn't deny anything in the meeting and didn't said, but what should be the appropriate answer to convince them that N/2 formula that they follow is not correct?"}
{"_id": "125320", "title": "Do TODO comments make sense?", "text": "I am working on a fairly big project and got the task to do some translations for it. There were tons of labels that haven't been translated and while I was digging through the code I found this little piece of code               //TODO translations      This made me think about the sense of these comments to yourself (and others?) because I got the feeling that most developers after they get a certain piece of code done and it does what it's supposed to do they never look at this until they have to maintain it or add new functionality. So that this `TODO` will be lost for a long time. Does it make sense to write this comments or should they be written on a whiteboard/paper/something else where they remain in the focus of developers?"}
{"_id": "121662", "title": "Requirement, architecture data capture tool", "text": "Are there any tools available for the following use case: I am planning to write a complex application and now I just know about the basic functional requirments. I am refining the functionality with more and more details. I am also writing down how to implement this in software architecture perspective. I am in a situation where there are multiple ways implement a certain functionality and based on the selected approach, other parts of the program will also change. At this moment, I don't want to decide on the approach to use, I just want to list down all the options, present to a wider audience and get it finalized. Are there any standard software tools to do this? I know I can use MS excel or some mind mapper tools, but just thinking of some standard tools (not just for programmers, but for managers and other) availability Thanks, Den"}
{"_id": "146116", "title": "What relationship would this be and how to implement", "text": "I have a pet project where I am making a Grade Book Application to better teach several different topics in DB, OOP and Planning. Im running into some issues with the database planning of things. For the record I am learning all of this by using online resources, books and trial and error in no way am I professional. I have 3 Tables (Teachers, Courses, and Assignments). 1) Many Teachers can Teach Many Courses - So this would be a M2M Relationship where I would need a third table to cross reference Teachers and Courses by their PK. Is it okay to have that third table have extra columns to show unique data about the courses like Title of the course or should that go into the course table? And if it depends how would you know which is the best way? 2) One Course can have Many Assignments or is it Many Courses can have Many Assignments? I feel this is a stupid question but I can not grasp on which would be a correct fact statement? 3) Does anyone know of any Database Diagrams that shown an example of a very simple gradebook layout, I have been looking on google but couldn't find anything that was not in my realm."}
{"_id": "251459", "title": "Sequentially/parallel algorithm for extracting blob outer perimeter/contour length", "text": "I have labelled the connected components in a binary image and found their areas and bounding boxes. The components are not necessarily filled, and may contain holes. I wish to identify the component that resembles a pupil the most. For this, I would also like to extract ( **only** ) their outer perimeter lengths, for calculating circularity, since these are good features for pupil detection. I plan to do this sequentially and then move the algorithm to CUDA afterwards, so the algorithm should be parallelisable to some extent. I should note that this work is for my thesis, and I am not asking you to solve anything for me, just provide some feedback on my research so far. I investigated tons of articles for this problem, but it seems most of them are concerned with connected component labelling and not feature extraction. Alas, I found three candidates, and ~~two~~ one of my own design:   1. **The Marching Squares algorithm**. It sounds promising (also embarassingly parallel), but it appears to extract all perimeter lengths, including inner contours, without modification, which will likely overestimate perimeter lengths. However, since I am looking for the pupil, a homogenously colored area, it will likely not overestimate the pupil. The overestimation might also yield bad results for other irregularly shaped blobs, which should be fine if they are then not selected.   2. **The Chain Code algorithm** (used by OpenCV's findContours function): Seems pertty good as well, and parallel solutions do exist, but I worry it might fail if the stopping criterion is not good enough (see here, at the bottom near Jacob's stopping criterion). However, it should be able to extract only the outer contour and give good approximations.   3. **The Convex Hull algorithms** : While parallel solutions exist, I worry that it might make a blob more circular than it really is, if points are scattered in a way that favors this. Should give good results for the pupil blob though.   4. ~~**Algorithm 1** : You could launch some threads that trace from each side of the blob's bounding box towards the opposite side. When the threads \"hit\" a pixel with the blob's label, they mark it as visited and sum the hits. When another side is traced, visited pixel are ignored, hit pixels are summed again etc., and the total is returned.~~   5. **Algorithm 2** : I also tried counting the number of pixels with a background pixel in their Moore neighborhood, but this overestimates the contour if enough holes are present. I would appreciate some suggestions before I try to code everything since I am on a schedule. Again, I'm just asking for advice, not solutions."}
{"_id": "211811", "title": "In what situations does it make sense to use an enumeration when writing object-oriented code?", "text": "Enumerations1 are often associated with procedural code rather than object- oriented code. They tend to give rise to similar switch statements scattered through the code, and in general, these are replaced by polymorphism in object-oriented code. For example, see _Replace Type Code with Class_ , _Replace Type Code with Subclasses_ , and _Replace Type Code with State/Strategy_ in _Refactoring_ by Martin Fowler. Closely related, see _Replace Conditional With Polymorphism_ in the same volume; Bob Martin also has quite a bit to say on the disadvantages of switch statements in _Clean Code_ (for example, heuristic G23 _Prefer Polymorphism to If/Else or Switch/Case_ ). However, since object-orientation, like any other good paradigm, can be a powerful tool but is not a silver bullet, are there times when using an enumeration is a good decision? * * * 1I use this term broadly; not just for something which is strictly an `enum` in a C-based language, but for any set of entities that are used to represent it (a class with a set of static members, etc...)."}
{"_id": "249597", "title": "In Asp.net, how browser knows a textbox is registered with server side TextChanged event?", "text": "When I evaluate asp.net control events, I am not able to identify how the browser is aware of asp.net textbox is subscribed to serverside textchanged event or not. When I look the server generated HTML code, there is not information about the TextChanged event. **ASP.Net Declaration**               <asp:TextBox ID=\"txtInput\" runat=\"server\" OnTextChanged=\"txtInput_OnTextChanged\"         AutoPostBack=\"false\" />      **Server Generated HTML Code**               <input name=\"ctl00$MainContent$txtInput\" type=\"text\" value=\"SivaText Input ChangedText Input Changed.V ChangedText Input Changed.V Changed\" id=\"MainContent_txtInput\">"}
{"_id": "84377", "title": "How to be better at reviewing code?", "text": "First I firmly believe in the code review process and always want someone else to review my code. My question really centers around how can I do a better job at performing a code review for someone else? I know that to perform a code review you need to have knowledge of the how the existing code works and a knowledge of what the local standard is, both of which I feel that I know very well. Still I feel like I never do a good enough code review for other people. Also I know that certain people seem to do a better job review code than others so I am wondering for those that are great code reviewers what are the techniques that you use?"}
{"_id": "211816", "title": "Handling multiple clients using single application", "text": "We are developing an ERP web application using Vaadin framework where each of the potential client companies will have their own data and file storage. Current implementation only allows having one client company per application instance, what consequently requires separate database schema and file storage. Some of the clients may want specific customizations based on their needs. Having few clients doesn't cause much trouble, but if number of clients would grow, then maintaining dozens of application instances will be a real challenge. We are reaching that point where we have to choose one these options:   1. Improve our architecture to allow all client companies manage their data on a single application instance and restrict personal customizations to the application;   2. Stick with the current implementation and just keep increasing number of running application instances on the server. Which of these options is considered better practice and would make the system easier to maintain? Is there a different solution for this kind of situation? Edit: Application is currently in development stage. The server with all the potential application instances will be run by ourselves. Each instance will be deployed in a WAR package via Apache Tomcat server."}
{"_id": "84379", "title": "What technologies are used for an Android/iPhone App to interact with a database", "text": "Do Android/iPhone Apps use AJAX to interact with the backend? If yes, is this common? Or do most apps use a different method for fetching database information. And if so, what other methods are there? Are server-side languages ever involved, and if so, is that more common to see with app development?"}
{"_id": "84378", "title": "What happens to get database information on the server-side with AJAX?", "text": "I'm slightly confused about how AJAX works. I mostly understand the PHP/MySQL model of retrieving database information for the user, but how does AJAX do it? From what I understand the AJAX engine sends an HTTP request to the backend which does some magic and returns XML data to the AJAX engine which translates it to HTML+CSS for the user to see, but what happens when it sends that first HTTP request to the backend? Is a server-side language acting as the middleman there to get data from the database for the rest of the process? Also, does HTML5 put any extra spin on the usage of AJAX?"}
{"_id": "119345", "title": "Meaningful concise method naming guidelines", "text": "Recently I started releasing an open source project, while I was the only user of the library I did not care about the names, but know I want to assign clever names to each methods to make it easier to learn, but I also need to use concise names so they are easy to write as well. I was thinking about some guidelines about the naming, I am aware of lots of guidelines that only care about letters casing or some simple notes. Here, I am looking after guidelines for meaningful but yet concise naming. For example, this could be part of the guidelines I am looking after:   * Use Add when an existing item is going to be added to a target, Use Create when a new item is being created and added to a target.   * Use Remove when an existing item is going to be removed from a target, Use delete when an item is going to be removed permanently.   * Pair AddXXX methods with RemoveXXX and Pair CreateXXX methods with DeleteXXX methods, but do not mix them. As the above samples show,I would like to find some online material helping me with naming methods and other item complying with English grammar and word meanings. The above guidance may be intuitive for native English speakers, but for me that English is my second language I need to be told about things like this."}
{"_id": "252333", "title": "WCF vs Web API, Deeper details?", "text": "**Before I continue, I just want to mention I have heavily researched and searched on this topic, but I need the opinion of people who have worked/and or have practical knowledge with regards to this topic.** We are currently looking at developing an API so that clients can utilize this. We are definitely set on REST as opposed to SOAP, but I am still a little unclear about what exactly the difference is, if you go down to microscopic detail. Having a look at msdn (Choosing which technology to use), the link below: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj823172.aspx The differences are clear. However, the first point states for **WCF** : Enables building services that support multiple transport protocols (HTTP, TCP, UDP, and custom transports) and allows switching between them. For **ASP.NET Web Api** : HTTP only. First-class programming model for HTTP. More suitable for access from various browsers, mobile devices etc enabling wide reach. So, both support HTTP, but WCF supports more protocols in addition. What makes ASP.NET Web API more suitable for, I quote: \"More suitable for access from various browsers, mobile devices etc enabling wide reach.\" if both support HTTP? We have until now, relied heavily on PC use. What I am getting to, and finally my question is: We plan on going mobile, and moving a lot more to multiple devices, browsers etc. But I just would not like to go on a service on the basis of a bit of text saying \"Web API\" is more suitable? IS it more efficient, less resource intensive etc.? With regards to future proofing? Would we be better of with WEB API and why? Just lastly, we have existing SOAP services, everything we have is built in SOAP. Please do not hesitate to go into detail, I am not an experienced dev, just trying to add a contribution to this project. Just a last couple of requirements: 1) We plan on utilizing JSON. 2) We are limited to .NET 3.5/4. 3) Must be REST."}
{"_id": "252337", "title": "boolean operations in C using bitfields", "text": "I am trying to implement boolean data type in C. Basically, I am working with sets. The following code can be used to access each bit but I am unsure whether I can represent sets using this method. Can somebody clarify this for me?               struct SET {     unsigned int b0     :1;     // bit 0 single bit     unsigned int b1     :1;     // bit 1 single bit     unsigned int b2     :1;      unsigned int b3    :1;      };      I can define two structures s1 and s2.. and I will be able to access each bit of these structures (treated as boolean strings). I will have to perform set operations like UNION, INTERSECTION and MEMBERSHIP. Is this even possible in C? Note: I cannot use Java, only C."}
{"_id": "185200", "title": "Does it make sense to implement OAuth for a 2 party system?", "text": "I'm under the impression that OAuth is for authentication between three parties. Does it make sense to implement OAuth in a context where there is just a client and server. We have a server, and a client (HTML/javascript). Currently we authenticate via the normal \"post credentials to server, get a cookie, use cookie to authenticate all subsequent requests\" method. Will implementing OAuth be a benefit in this situation?"}
{"_id": "5356", "title": "Do you consider mainframe as part of large application deployments?", "text": "When you are setting up your system landscape for large and/or multiple application deployments, do you consider mainframe? If not, why not? If so, what factors are you considering. If you take a _real_ TCO look at large ERP and/or consolidated application landscapes, mainframe is actually quite cost-effective. My own consultations have included recommendations for scale-up/mainframe/mid- size systems on some specific needs. Honestly, I've never had a customer take said recommendation, rather defaulting to countless scale-out VMs on Intel boxen (in non-trivial cost) and yet still to this day have system management and performance issues. Curious your take on this. We need to remember that the virtual machines we manage (and apparently love in IT departments) today have been done for decades on mainframe. Most mid-size and mainframe shops have small fractions of support persons managing larger and more complex applications. Your thoughts appreciated."}
{"_id": "5354", "title": "Are NoSQL databases going to take the place of relational databases? Is SQL going away?", "text": "Does anyone have experience with NoSQL databases (CouchDB, MongoDB, Google's BigTable, Dynamo, Cassandra...)? What was it like? Was it actual production/on the job experience? What will happen to the relational databases in 5 years? 10 years?"}
{"_id": "1058", "title": "When is it appropriate to use Microsoft's Enterprise Library (EntLib)?", "text": "I'm not exactly sure when to use Enterprise Library, and when not to... and that is making me not learn it at all. I feel that I have enough of a reason to **start learning** then perhaps one day I'll **use** it. Are there times when I should use EntLib? When shouldn't I use it?"}
{"_id": "1059", "title": "Have objects delivered in terms of code reuse?", "text": "I have often heard it said that objects have not delivered in terms of code reuse. Do you agree? If you believe that they haven't, why not?"}
{"_id": "33883", "title": "How to choose a new technology for mastering and not lose sense of reality and practicality?", "text": "How to choose the right next step in learning programming and mastering new technologies? I have experience with WinForms applications in C# .NET. Next what I see as a good area of expanding the knowledge is ASP.NET. Language I already know, C #, so I think there is now more a matter of mastering new technologies. Also I have interest in WPF. Perhaps the best is to work on ASP.NET and WPF at the same time. Sometimes the problem is when we do not have motivation, but also known to become a problem when we want to much :) How to choose a new technology for mastering and not lose sense of reality and practicality?"}
{"_id": "179734", "title": "Switch interface implementation using configuration", "text": "We want to allow the same core service to be either fully implemented or, as other option, to be a proxy toward a client legacy system (via a WSDL for example). In that way, we have both implementation (proxy & full) and we switch which one to use in the configuration of the app. So in a nutshell, Some desired features:   * Two different implementation (proxy, full) instead of one implementation with a switch inside   * Switch implementation using configuration: dependency injection? reflection?   * Nice-to-have: the packaged delivered to the client doesn\u2019t have to change depending on the choice between proxy or full   * Nice-to-have: Client can develop their custom implementation of the Core Interface and configure the applciation to use that one With this background, the question is: What alternatives we have to choose one implementation or other of an interface just changing configuration? Thanks"}
{"_id": "82933", "title": "how to create a data model for the following problem", "text": "How to tackle 2-D and 3-D space in data ? lets say you are working on a power grid problem. You need to represent Towers; transmission lines; transformers and every thing else in a 2-D space. How would you design a Data Model for this 2-D space ? I can use a               class tower  {     int x_cor;     int y_cor;     string power_properties     }      But how to represent the ... say map of the power grid itself ? is there some standard solution to this ? some logical template people follow here ? i want to be able to slice this map by shape or area etc; i should be able to compose small maps to make a large one .. So what is the solution here ?? By the way i am not working on a power-grid project (LOL) so please keep answers generic .. P.S. non-noobs please help me make the question better."}
{"_id": "216898", "title": "Possible problems in a team of programmers", "text": "I am a \"one man team\" ASP.NET C#, SQL, HTML, JQuery programmer that wants to split workload with two other guys. Since I never actually thought of possible issue in a team of programmer, there are actually quite a few that came to my mind. delegating tasks (who works on what which is also very much related to security). I found Team Foundation Service could be helpful with this problem and started reading about it. Are there any alternatives? security (do now want for original code to be reused outside the project) How to prevent programmers from having access to all parts of code, and how to prevent them from using that code outside of project? Is trust or contract the only way?"}
{"_id": "216899", "title": "Are there any technical obstacles for implementing `function* ()` syntax", "text": "In Python we have `yield` which is very similar to that one which is proposed in ES6 (in fact, pythonic co-routines were the main source of inspiration for implementing co-routines in I wonder what are the reasons for choosing a separate `function* ()` syntax for generators compared to just defining \"regular\" functions with yeilds - just like in python by the way? I'm talking strictly of technical issues and peculiarities. Why it had been decided that a separate form will be more appropriate?"}
{"_id": "200329", "title": "How do you demo software with No UI in the Sprint Review?", "text": "We are doing agile software development, basically following Scrum. We are trying to do sprint reviews but finding it difficult. Our software is doing a lot of data processing and the stories often are about changing various rules around this. What are some options for demoing the changes that occurred in the sprint when there isn't a UI or visible workflow change, but instead the change is a subtle business rule on a processing job that can take 10s of minutes or even a couple of hours?"}
{"_id": "122312", "title": "How to properly shield a Product Owner from outside?", "text": "**Update:** We are a very small team (3 people) and thus I (Scrum Master) and the Product Owner are also developers doing some coding. We are aware of this situation and we are actively trying to recruit some new talents. But it's hard! * * * Meanwhile... we need to adapt... so my question: The Product Owner complains about having too much outside noise (mainly stakeholders feature requests), and he can't focus on the sprint realisation. We agree that we should try to educate people on our process implications (sprint durations and product backlog), to reduce the noise. But as a Scrum Master, how am I supposed to shield a PO from outside? Isn't he supposed to be in contact with the management and business? Also, if people outside don't want to waste too much time learning agile, what is the best way to educate them?"}
{"_id": "111116", "title": "How to cope with the problem of (compiling) a large code base?", "text": "Although I can code, I don't yet have any experience with working on large projects. What I did so far was either coding small programs that get compiled in matter of seconds (various c/c++ exercises like algorithms, programming principles, ideas, paradigms, or just trying out api's...) or working on some smaller projects that were made in a scripting language(s) (python, php, js) where no compiling is needed. The thing is, when coding in a scripting language, whenever I want to try if something works - I just run the script and see what happens. If things don't work, I can simply change the code and try it out again by running the script again and keep on doing that until I get the result that I wanted.. My point is that you don't have to wait for anything to compile and because of that it is quite easy to take a big code base, modify it, add something to it, or simply play with it - you can see the changes instantly. As an example I will take Wordpress. It is quite easy to try and figure it out how to create a plugin for it. First you start by creating a simple \"Hello World\" plugin, then you make a simple interface for admin panel to familiarize yourself with API, then you build it up and make something more complex, in the mean time changing how it looks a couple of times.. The idea of having to recompile something as big as WP over and over again, after each minor change to try \"if it works\" and \"how it work/feels\" just seems inefficient, slow and wrong. Now, how could I do that with a project that is written in a compiled language? I would like to contribute to some open-source projects and this question keeps bugging me. The situation probably differs from project to project where some of them that were pre thought wisely will be \"modular\" in some way while others will just be one big blob that needs to be recompiled again and again. I would like to know more about how this is done properly. What are some common practices, approaches and project designs (patterns?) to cope with this? How is this \"modularity\" called in programmers world and what should I google for to learn more about this? Is it often that projects grow out of their first thought proportions which becomes troublesome after a while? Is there any way to avoid **long compiling** of not-so-well designed projects? A way to somehow modularize them (maybe excluding non-vital parts of program while developing (any other ideas?))? Thanks."}
{"_id": "114542", "title": "How can a large, Fortran-based number crunching codebase be modernized?", "text": "A friend in academia asked me for advice (I'm a C# business application developer). He has a legacy codebase which he wrote in Fortran in the medical imaging field. It does a huge amount of number crunching using vectors. He uses a cluster (30ish cores) and has now gone towards a single workstation with 500ish GPUS in it. However where to go next with the codebase so:   * Other people can maintain it over next 10 year cycle   * Get faster at tweaking the software   * Can run on different infrastructures without recompiles After some research from me (this is a super interesting area) some options are:   * Use Python and CUDA from Nvidia   * Rewrite in a functional language. For example, F# or Haskell   * Go cloud based and use something like Hadoop and Java   * Learn C What has been your experience with this? What should my friend be looking at to modernize his codebase? UPDATE: Thanks @Mark and everyone who has answered. The reasons my friend is asking this question is that it's a perfect time in the projects lifecycle to do a review. Bringing research assistants up to speed in Fortran takes time (I like C#, and especially the tooling and can't imagine going back to older languages!!) I liked the suggestion of keeping the pure number crunching in Fortran, but wrapping it in something newer. Perhaps Python as that seems to be getting a stronghold in academia as a general-purpose programming language that is fairly easy to pick up. See _Medical Imaging_ and a guy who has written a Fortran wrapper for CUDA, _Can I legally publish my Fortran 90 wrappers to Nvidias' CUFFT library (from the CUDA SDK)?_."}
{"_id": "114545", "title": "Need advice on which route I should take for porting app from Android to iOS", "text": "I have developed this android application  and I am looking to port it to iOS. My questions are: 1) I am planning to finance the iOS development with the money earn't from the android sales which is about $200 at the moment. Would it be reasonable to get the project done for this amount even if it is outsourced to elance or odesk etc? 2) I have heard the code quality for outsourced iOS projects to be bad, I dont want any memory leaks and crashes because of overflows etc. 3) I currently dont have a full time job so I can technically do the project myself, however I dont have a apple pc or iPhone (dont really want to get them either). I know C pretty well but I haven't really released a major C project that must be 100% stable. How many hours to learn iOs and do the port? And would it be worth my time taking into consideration that if I do enjoy it I may get into it fulltime. 4) What would the demand be like for someone that can do Android and iOS? Thanks"}
{"_id": "50958", "title": "Data encryption/protection - where to find info about high-level best practices", "text": "I feel that no one in the group I work in, myself included, _really_ groks encryption and security, or the reasons behind making certain decisions. For example, we recently had a conversation regarding encryption of data that we handle for another group that we work with - the data ends up in a database that is on our secure corporate network (I work in a small group in a large software company, so the integrity of the corporate network is very high), along with everything else we handle. Of course, standard guidelines call for \"encryption\" of this data. Obviously, that could mean many things - IPSec/encrypted connections, encrypted fileshares, encryption implemented in the DB (whole-DB or column), encryption of the actual bits in the file, etc. - and some people in the group are under the impression that the only kind of encryption that really counts is directly encrypting the bits that are stored, the argument being that everything else is too easy to circumvent - \"if the DB is encrypted, I could still log into it and see the data there; if the file share is encrypted, as long as I have permissions to the folder I can just grab the file; but if the bits are directly encrypted, I won't be able to read it\". My instinct says that that statement is based on limited understanding: they can see themselves logging into SQL Server Management Studio to see the data, but since they wouldn't know how to take a stream or array of encrypted data and use a certificate that they probably have access to to decrypt it, it's probably safe. Are they right? Am I right? No one seems to really know, so decisions get based on the opinion of the loudest or highest-paid person. Anyway, that's just kind of an extended example of what I'm talking about. I feel like it's the blind leading the blind here, with decisions based on limited understanding, and it's frustrating. I'm no expert on the technical bits of encryption, but I know how to use standard libraries to encrypt streams and arrays and the like - where I really need more knowledge is about architecting data security and information on which I can base decisions like the above. Where can I read about this kind of stuff?"}
{"_id": "110649", "title": "Why don't we use browser detection and platform-specific CSS?", "text": "Nowadays, the common phenomena is to develop a website for a browser and then corresponding apps for Android phones, iPhone, tablets and so on. Since all the platforms come with a browser, why aren't companies using CSS to accommodate them? Surely we can detect from the request which browser was used and from which platform the request came. Reading those values, why don't we just implement the corresponding CSS for different platforms. Like we do for IE, Chrome and Safari. This way we can use the platforms' browser capabilities and don't need to develop subsequent apps for a platform."}
{"_id": "110645", "title": "Why is the Repository pattern needed in NHibernate?", "text": "I am reading the official Your first NHibernate based application. While the tutorial is good and easy to follow, I am wondering why the Repository pattern is used. In the various `Add`, `Update`, `Remove` methods in the `ProductRepository` implementation, the code is nearly identical - they are all using transactions, and the difference is in the \"meat\" i.e. call `session.Save` int the `Add` method, `session.Delete` in the `remove` method. ( _The page lacks HTML anchors, but you can search the page for the relevant code like`public void Remove`, `public void Add`_) That code just \"feels wrong\". Why is the author using the Repository pattern - is it just for demonstration of using NHibernate or is that required or some other reason? Ps. My background is from Ruby on Rails using ActiveRecord so I'm trying to make sense of how NHibernate works/is used."}
{"_id": "50951", "title": "Best projects that illustrate the strengths of the languages they are implemented in?", "text": "I'm looking for a who's who list of projects(open source) that really illustrate the strength of the languages they are written in. Ideally the project should make use of some features of a given language that would otherwise be clunky or difficult to do in another language."}
{"_id": "66868", "title": "Scrum and Scrum Master on a global team", "text": "I work in a company that runs on a model of using one developer as tech lead (me), with an onshore co-ordinator/developer who co-ordinates the offshore team, and on the offshore team there's an off-shore co-ordinator. It sounds bizarre but it basically works. The rest of the developers are offshore. I happen to be on a project now that has an additional onshore developer. My question is, do you think I can use some agile methodologies here in a loose sense (we're a waterfall company, but maybe I could do scrum, sprints, planning poker, etc)? Also, do you think we could benefit from a scrum master? What if I didn't have the additional onshore developer (so basically I'd be one of two onshore developers then, and neither of us might be on the project full time)? What about me giving up the coding I do and becoming scrum master & tech lead? See my comment below for my duties now."}
{"_id": "190884", "title": "Do Flexibility and Inconsistency,Unsafety Overlap?", "text": "I was lately doing some research about different programming languages. I was interested particularly to learn unique features of popular programming languages and situations where these assets shine. I believe this can help me to decide what language to use depending upon the problem to solve. I found that many languages offering high level of flexibility (\"can adapt to new, different, or changing requirements\") are also inconsistent, for example in JavaScript (just an example, no offense to js people), arguments of a function get be manipulated either by naming them in the function declaration (classic approach):               function max(x,y)      Or by using the `arguments` variable:               function max() {         if (arguments[0] < arguments[1])             return arguments[1];         else             return arguments[0];     }          c = max(1,2);      The arguments variable is useful for many situations such as function overloading, however, it defeats the purpose of function prototyping (which is to give information about the function), and I saw many JavaScript samples where the argument variable is being used despite there is no need for it, which clearly makes the code harder to understand and debug. I know that this depends heavily on the users of the language, but usually, code written in a language offering high flexibility tends to be unsafe, harder to understand,optimize and to debug. Do flexibility and inconsistency overlap? How do languages designers make the choice? Edit: I'm not critiquing any particular language here, I'm rather focusing on the relation between Flexibility,Safety,Consistency of programming languages."}
{"_id": "66862", "title": "How to make a GPL license with more severe penalties?", "text": "I am considering open sourcing some software, but when I read the answers on this questions, it seems like the penalty of ignoring a GPL license is rather small, compared to the costs of the suing party to document that the other party has included GPL code in their proprietary code and the costs of suing. Therefore, I would like to know if there is a way to make a license or some kind of contract before source code is accessed, which is stricter than GPL. What I want to achieve is that a company including GPL code in their proprietary code have to GPL their whole code, and not just rewrite the GPL code. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "160560", "title": "What exactly is \"Web API\" in ASP.Net MVC4?", "text": "I know what a Web API is.   I've written API's in multiple languages (including in MVC3).   I'm also well practiced in ASP.Net.   I just discovered that MVC4 has \"Web API\" and without going through the video examples I can't find a good explanation of what exactly it IS.   From my past experience, Microsoft technologies (especially ASP.Net) have a tendency to take a simple concept and wrap it in a bunch of useless overhead that is meant to make everything \"easier\".   Can someone please explain to me what Web API in MVC4 is exactly? Why do I need it? Why can't I just write my own API?"}
{"_id": "160561", "title": "What useful expressiveness will be impossible in a language where an expression is not a statement?", "text": "I am contemplating writing a programming language. Most grammars define expressions as being a kind of a statement. But really I cannot come up with a single example of any useful expression that would pass as a statement. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19132/expression-versus-statement for an easy definition of expression vs statement. EDIT: Why are so many grammars making the distinction between expr and stmt when as noted in the answers, it makes no sense."}
{"_id": "66864", "title": "Choosing a restrictive licence for open source work", "text": "If you were putting some work of yours online (say, a research project still in development or something alike) and **_it had to_** be made available to the public, but you wished that if someone uses it, he has to acknowledge the original author (i.e. you don't want anyone pushing your research as their own) what would be a good licence to use? In other words, you wish to protect your own work which, were it not for some rules, would never been actually made public."}
{"_id": "127363", "title": "Science degrees that are complementary to programming", "text": "I hope this wouldn't be closed especially since I think a lot of people can benefit from this question that are in similar positions to mine. I'm been programming for a long time (since I was about 13/14, now I'm 22) and now I'm in that stage in life when I'm thinking whether and what to study. Since I'm programming for a long time I'm pretty certain that I will not pursue a degree in Computer Science/Software Engineering because I think a lot of the material will be about things I already know. Even if it will benefit me, I think I will lose a lot of motivation because I will be bored in class and I will always think to myself that \"I'm wasting time\" or that \"I'm not really gonna use the material that is taught in this class\". Science really interests me, especially Physics, but Chemistry/Biology is also interesting to me. and it's also possible to study two together like a BSc in Physics and Chemistry or Chemistry and Biology, which are both offered at the university I want to go to. So the question is, what Science degree can benefit me the most in a career as a programmer? Are there fields that incorporate software engineering and Physics/Chemistry/Biology and that have a lot of demand? or are expected to have a lot of demand? Are there any specific careers that you know of that incorporate software engineering and Physics/Chemistry/Biology? This is not a question of whether to study or not, this is a question of \"if I decide to do a Science Degree that isn't Computer Science/Software Engineering, but which will benefit me as a programmer or widen my range of opportunities, which one do you recommend?\""}
{"_id": "191374", "title": "Why interviewers want Optimal Algorithms", "text": "In an interview with a software company they asked me some algorithm design questions. Being strong in mathematics I was able to solve it mathematically, but each time when I propose my algorithm they were doubtful about its working and I have to prove it with examples. I didnt get a call for further rounds, I believe my solutions were correct. After googling I have found answers to most questions but they were implemented in a different way. Why do interviewers look for optimal answers rather than solutions, which came out of our thoughts rather than memorization of an optimal answer and delivering it."}
{"_id": "129936", "title": "What is the relevance of Unit Testing in an \"Release early release often\" environment?", "text": "Over last one year or so, I have driven my team towards the release-early- release-often mode of development (AKA: Rapid Application Development, not Agile). For more information about the manner in which we close the build, see my answer here: A simple ways to improve the release quality in RAD environment When we adopted RAD, people were quite independent and they were doing unit testing first; the integrated tests happened much later in the process. It was a natural process for them without much formal enforcement. Now the situation is quite different:   1. The entire platform is well integrated with established builds/releases working client-side without any hot spots.    2. New functionality requirements keep coming and we incrementally build them as we go.    3. The overall dynamics of the system are very important because while independent development groups might be following processes right, major failures have arisen due to complicated, non-obvious circumstances.    4. Many parts of the system involve new algorithms and research inputs so the challenges (and hence mechanism for testing) are not quite always foreseen correctly, like feature testing in well-defined software. Recently, I was trying to get better overall picture to see if we need process improvement. When I sat down with my team, many of them balked: \"We don't do unit testing anymore!\" while others thought we shouldn't start now because it will never be effective. Are unit tests useful in a relatively mature system? Should we at least need to weigh test scope depending on the maturity of units? Will unit testing slow down the pace of development? Is there a need to evaluate unit testing in a different way? What are the best practices of testing for a mature platform in a release- early-release-often environment?"}
{"_id": "245739", "title": "Web Application: Combining View Layer Between PHP and Javascript-AJAX", "text": "I'm developing web application using PHP with CodeIgniter MVC framework with a huge real time client-side functionality needs. This is my first time to build large scale of client-side app. So I combine the PHP with a large scale of Javascript modules in one project. As you already know, MVC framework seperate application modules into Model- View-Controller. My concern is about View layer. I could be display the data on the DOM by PHP built-in script tag by load some data on the Controller. Otherwise I could use AJAX to pulled the data -- treat the Controller like a service only -- and display the them by Javascript. Here is some visualization I could put the data directly from Controller:               <label>Username</label> <input type=\"text\" id=\"username\" value=\"<?=$userData['username'];?>\"><br />     <label>Date of birth</label> <input type=\"text\" id=\"dob\" value=\"<?=$userData['dob'];?>\"><br />     <label>Address</label> <input type=\"text\" id=\"address\" value=\"<?=$userData['address'];?>\">      Or pull them using AJAX:               $.ajax({       type: \"POST\",       url: config.indexURL + \"user\",                       dataType: \"json\",       success: function(data) {          $('#username').val(data.username);         $('#dateOfBirth').val(data.dob);         $('#address').val(data.address);       }     });      So, which approach is better regarding my application has a complex client- side functionality? In the other hand, PHP-CI has a default mechanism to put the data directly from Controller, so why using AJAX?"}
{"_id": "129931", "title": "Example of time-saving usage of compile-time meta-programming?", "text": "The webpage of Converge states that: > Converge has a macro-like facility that can embed domain specific languages > with arbitrary syntaxes into source files. I am most intrigued by the possibility to create domain specific languages. My understanding of the purpose of such languages, is that they enables the developer to become much more efficient when solving domain specific problems. So, I went on to read the \"about\" section. There are two examples of usage here, but none of them describe how the developer could save development-time by utilizing Converge. Can anyone come up with an example or refer me to an example? I am happy to read examples in other languages than Converge."}
{"_id": "214940", "title": "How to handle status columns in designing tables", "text": "How to handle multiple statuses for a table entry, for example an item table may have an active, inactive, fast moving, and/or batch statuses. And I wanted to handle them in single column with VARCHAR type. Also I might set each of those attributes as a boolean with different columns. But I am not sure what consequences this might lead to. So if you have experienced such situations which one would be the best way to handle it?"}
{"_id": "245730", "title": "Retrying a statement or call in a catch block - code smell or anti-pattern?", "text": "I'm wondering how better to perform this operation for a large amount of files. The bit I'd like some thoughts on **whether this copy/paste is acceptable enough of a tradeoff**.   * try to write a file   * if the target dir doesn't exist, create it   * try again to write the file. If something else throws and exception, let it raise.               try{        File.Copy(\"@D:\\foo.txt\", @\"C:\\mydir\\foo.txt\");     }     catch (DirectoryNotFoundException){            CreateDirectoryForFile(@\"C:\\mydir\");        File.Copy(\"@D:\\foo.txt\", @\"C:\\mydir\\foo.txt\"); //copy pasted from the try block     }      There's a simpler block that's easier to read, but leads to a higher number of disk IO calls that is necessary:               CreateDirectoryForFile(@\"C:\\mydir\\foo.txt\");     File.Copy(\"@D:\\foo.txt\", @\"C:\\mydir\\foo.txt\");      Can pattern 1 be improved?"}
{"_id": "206919", "title": "Do delegates defy OOP", "text": "I'm trying to understand OOP so I can write better OOP code and one thing which keeps coming up is this concept of a delegate (using .NET). I could have an object, which is totally self contained (encapsulated); it knows nothing of the outside world... but then I attach a delegate to it. In my head, this is still quite well separated as the delegate only knows what to reference, but this by itself means it has to know about something else outside it's world! That a method exists within another class! Have I got myself it total muddle here, or is this a grey area, or is this actually down to interpretation (and if so, sorry as that will be off topic I'm sure). My question is, do delegates defy/muddy the OOP pattern?"}
{"_id": "126940", "title": "Debug multiprocessing in Python", "text": "What are some good practices in debugging multiprocessing programs in Python?"}
{"_id": "110392", "title": "Algorithm for detecting a knob-turning gesture?", "text": "What is the math to identify a gesture for the motion made by two fingers turning a knob (tracking two sets for xycoords)? Is there a library/api anyone is familiar with that contains a good library of gestures for multitouch applications?"}
{"_id": "110394", "title": "Raw Sql vs SqlAlchemy when Django ORM is not enough", "text": "In a django project, if a situation comes that Django ORM is not able to execute some complex queries then there are 2 options:   1. Use Raw Sql queries    2. Use SqlAlchemy  I want to know if there are some rules like some pros and cons of both which can guide me to choose one of the above 2 options. Or is it entirely depends on what we like?"}
{"_id": "110395", "title": "Theta notation on constant time. Why we use the 1?", "text": "In asymptotic notation when it is stated that if the problem size is small enough (e.g. `n<c` for some constant `c`) the solution takes constant time and is writen as `Theta(1)`.   Why we write `1` inside the `Theta`?   What does the `1` mean? Why not `Theta(c)`?"}
{"_id": "163912", "title": "Generating CMakeLists.txt", "text": "I got a bunch of `C++` sources files and headers. They may use external libraries such as Boost e.g. I am interested in the process of building binaries for Windows and *nix.   * Makefiles (*nix) and .vcproj (Windows) call compilers with some specifications such as the order of compilation, compilation options and stuff.   * CMakeLists.txt can be used by CMake to build either makefiles or .vcproj and use very helpful commands such as recursive search of files, automatic linkage with known libraries, installers, variables that can be used in source files... Is there any existing tool that would generate a CMakeLists.txt from specified options ? Options could be like : scan this folder and make a library out of it, then scan this other folder and make an executable and automatically link both with Boost as well along with a user friendly installer with generated INSTALL.txt and README.txt. Something very powerful like that."}
{"_id": "163913", "title": "Getting out of my head", "text": "I've spent the last year as a one-man team developing a rich-client application (35,000+ LoC, for what it's worth). It's currently stable and in production. However, I know that my skills were rusty at the beginning of the project, so without a doubt there are major issues in the code. At this point, most of the issues are in architecture, structure, and interactions -- the easy problems, even architecture/design problems, have already been weeded out. Unfortunately, I've spent so much time with this project that I'm having a hard time thinking outside of it -- approaching it from a new perspective to see the flaws deeply buried or inherent in the design. **How do I step outside my head and outside my code so I can get a fresh look and make it better?** Is this a smaller issue than I think it is, or is this a problem experienced by others as well?"}
{"_id": "79561", "title": "Does there exist a decent monetary bounty system for open source software?", "text": "I personally would be willing to pay $10 to someone who can offer to make microphone drivers work with one of my laptops under Ubuntu 10.10. I thought that other users could contribute to the same thing, and thus find a willing developer. Does there exist such a project(s)?"}
{"_id": "195639", "title": "Is GCC dying without threads support on Windows?", "text": "I need some opinion. GCC was always a very good compiler, but recently it is losing \"appeal\". I have just found that on Windows GCC does not have `std::thread` support, forcing Windows users to use another compiler because the most exciting feature is still missing. But why really doesn't GCC still have threads support under Windows? License problems? ABI incompatibilities? (Well there are already several cross- platform libraries using multithreading: boost, POCO, SDL, wxwidgets, etc. Wouldn't it be simple to use already existing, and MIT/libpng licensed, code to fit this hole instead of shipping GCC releases with no thread support?) Recently, looking at compiler comparisons, GCC has the widest support for C++11 features with respect to other compilers, except for the fact that on Windows this is not true because we are still lacking atomics, mutexes and threads :/ I'd like to know more about this topic, but the only thing I can find is people asking for help because: > \"thread\" does not exist in std namespace Looking at tickets tracking and mail discussions of GCC/TDM-GCC, there were requests for thread support since 2009. Possible that after 4 years still no solution? What's really happening?"}
{"_id": "214492", "title": "Custom animation iOS", "text": "I have seen animation, and i can't figure out how to do something like in this video(youtube). I want to discuss how it's made. I don't think that they're using sprites. I have one idea how to do this: for example i want to create animation of \"walking\" animal (when animal moves, he's legs \"runs\" moving animation), i should create customView with imageView of animalBody 3 and two imageViews of animal legs 2. Then i make hard coded animation of moving legs and voila, i have custom animation. When i move customView, then i should start animation of legs. But is there better approach to do this? Thanks! ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/f1mdB.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wSdey.png)"}
{"_id": "193280", "title": "Web API URI Schema Design", "text": "I'm in the middle of designing an API for a very basic flashcard application for learning purposes and I'm wondering if you all think there can be any improvements. In the app, a Folder contains Folders and Sets. A Set contains Cards. The Homepage lists any top-level Sets and Folders that the I've created (but never cards). Here's the URI schema I've come up with: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/r8lES.png) Does this seem ok? My goal is to keep the URIs terse/concise/simple and push any relationship metadata (parentFolderId, parentSetId, etc) into the body of the request. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "127095", "title": "What do I need to include in my OOP design document?", "text": "I am a graduate student in aerospace engineering. A lot of my Master's thesis has been on developing an OOP software architecture in MATLAB to facilitate control of Arduino-based vehicles (blimps, cars, quadrotors, etc). All my code is heavily documented, but my thesis itself needs to be more than a reference of every class and method - it needs to describe at a high level how each piece works together, and _why_ my architecture is the way it is. I only have a minor in computer engineering and I consider myself a pretty competent programmer, but I have no experience writing this kind of document. What kinds of things need to be included in the document? (Diagrams, paragraph explanations of how each class operates, etc)? I don't want to just rehash my code comments (although at the start of each file there's paragraphs of comments about how that class relates to other classes). I also wonder if it's necessary to get rather technical (I implement some fairly advanced MATLAB concepts [that is, advanced for non-computer engineers] such as listeners and callbacks); my audience also hails from an aerospace engineering background. Examples would be appreciated if they exist. **EDIT** : The part my audience really cares about is not the software architecture (the stuff this question entails); this document is really for people who will use my work in the future - who are **not** computer engineers! So I guess the main question is, what needs to be in the document such that people who are not up to speed on the project (and we can assume competent with the language) can understand the architecture, maintain and use the software?"}
{"_id": "213441", "title": "Functional programming and stateful algorithms", "text": "I'm learning functional programming with **Haskell**. In the meantime I'm studying Automata theory and as the two seem to fit well together I'm writing a small library to play with automata. Here's the problem that made me ask the question. While studying a way to evaluate a state's reachability I got the idea that a simple recursive algorithm would be quite inefficient, because some paths might share some states and I might end up evaluating them more than once. For example, here, evaluating **reachability** of _g_ from _a_ , I'd have to exclude _f_ both while checking the path through _d_ and _c_ : ![digraph representing an automaton](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4JG7I.png) So my idea is that an algorithm working in parallel on many paths and updating a shared record of excluded states might be great, but that's too much for me. I've seen that in some simple recursion cases one can pass state as an argument, and that's what I have to do here, because I pass forward the list of states I've gone through to avoid loops. But is there a way to pass that list also backwards, like returning it in a tuple together with the boolean result of my `canReach` function? (although this feels a bit forced) **Besides the validity of my example case** , what other techniques are available to solve this kind of problems? I feel like these must be common enough that there have to be solutions like what happens with `fold*` or `map`. So far, reading learnyouahaskell.com I didn't find any, but consider I haven't touched monads yet. ( _if interested, I posted my code oncodereview_)"}
{"_id": "16646", "title": "Is throwing an exception from a property bad form?", "text": "I've always been of the mindset that properties (ie, their set/get operations) should be fast/immediate and failure-free. You should never have to try/catch around getting or setting a property. But I'm looking at some ways to apply role-based security on the properties of some objects. For instance an Employee.Salary property. Some of the solutions I've run across that others have tried (one in particular is the AOP example here) involve throwing an exception if the accessor doesn't have the right permissions - but this goes against a personal rule that I've had for a long time now. So I ask: am I wrong? Have things changed? Has it been accepted that properties should be able to throw exceptions?"}
{"_id": "213443", "title": "Sprite Sheets in PyGame?", "text": "So, I've been doing some googling, and haven't found a good solution to my problem. My problem is that I'm using PyGame, and I want to use a Sprite Sheet for my player. This is all well and good, and it would be too, if I wasn't using a Sprite Sheet strip. Basically, if you don't understand, I have a strip of 32x32 'frames'. These frames are all in an image, along side each other. So, I have 3 frames in 1 image. I'd like to be able to use them as my sprite sheet, and not have to crop them up. I have used an awesome, popular and easy-to-use game framework for Lua called L\u00d6VE. L\u00d6VE has these things called \"Quads\". They are similar to texture regions in LibGDX, if you know what they are. Basically, quads allow you to get parts of an image. You define how large a quad is, and you define parts of an image that way, or 'regions' of an image. I would like to do something similar to this in PyGame, and use a \"for\" loop to go through the entire image width and height and mark each 32x32 area (or whatever the user defines as their desired frame width and height) and store that in a list or something for use later on. I'd define an animation speed and stuff, but that's for later on. I've been looking around on the web, and I can't find anything that will do this. I found 1 script on the PyGame website, but it crashed PyGame when I tried to run it. I tried for hours trying to fix it, but no luck. So, is there a way to do this? Is there a way to get regions of an image? Am I going about this the wrong way? Is there a simpler way to do this? Thanks! :-)"}
{"_id": "246278", "title": "get all the combination of a given set of numbers", "text": "I m trying to get the possible combinations of a given set of numbers say for example 123 The possible combinations would be 123 132 213 231 312 321 For this i have written a code as below -               import java.util.ArrayList;          /* Name of the class has to be \"Main\" only if the class is public. */     public class Main {          /**      * @param args the command line arguments      */     static ArrayList list;          public static void main(String[] args) {         // TODO code application logic here         Main nm = new Main();         nm.list = new ArrayList();         /*         for(int i=1; i<= 4; i++) {             list.add(i);         }              list.remove(list.indexOf(1));              for(int i=0; i<= 2; i++) {             System.out.print(list.get(i));         }         */         nm.test1();             }          public void test1() {                 for(int i=1; i<= 4; i++) {             if(!list.contains(i)) {                 list.add(i);                 test1();                 list.remove(list.indexOf(i));             }         }                    if(list.size() == 4)          {             for(int i=0; i< 4; i++) {                 System.out.print(list.get(i));             }             System.out.println(\"\");         }     }      } This gives the correct output as shown here in the link I was thinking about if this the right approach or if there can be any optimizations done so that this code may be used to get combinations of numbers of 10 to 20 digits or more. Regards"}
{"_id": "146761", "title": "Design pattern for handling a response", "text": "Most of the time when I'm writing some code that handles the response for a certain function call I get the following code structure: example: This is a function that will handle the authentication for a login system               class Authentication{          function login(){ //This function is called from my Controller     $result=$this->authenticate($username,$password);          if($result=='wrong password'){        //increase the login trials counter        //send mail to admin        //store visitor ip         }else if($result=='wrong username'){        //increase the login trials counter        //do other stuff     }else if($result=='login trials exceeded')        //do some stuff     }else if($result=='banned ip'){        //do some stuff     }else if...          function authenticate($username,$password){        //authenticate the user locally or remotely and return an error code in case a login in fails.     }         }      **Problem**   1. As you can see the code is build on a `if/else` structure which means a new failure status will mean that I need to add an `else if` statement which is a violation for the _Open Closed Principle_.   2. I get a feeling that the function has different layers of abstraction as I may just increase the login trials counter in one handler, but do more serious stuff in another.   3. Some of the functions are repeated `increase the login trials` for example. I thought about converting the multiple `if/else` to a factory pattern, but I only used factory to create objects not alter behaviors. Does anyone have a better solution for this? **Note:** **This is just an example using a login system.** I'm asking for a general solution to this behavior using a well built OO pattern. This kind of `if/else` handlers appears in too many places in my code and I just used the login system as a simple easy to explain example. My _real_ use cases are to much complicated to post here. :D Please don't limit your answer to PHP code and feel free to use the language you prefer. * * * **UPDATE** Another more complicated code example just to clarify my question:                 public function refundAcceptedDisputes() {                         $this->getRequestedEbayOrdersFromDB(); //get all disputes requested on ebay             foreach ($this->orders as $order) { /* $order is a Doctrine Entity */                 try {                     if ($this->isDisputeAccepted($order)) { //returns true if dispute was accepted                         $order->setStatus('accepted');                         $order->refund(); //refunds the order on ebay and internally in my system                         $this->insertRecordInOrderHistoryTable($order,'refunded');                                             } else if ($this->isDisputeCancelled($order)) { //returns true if dispute was cancelled                         $order->setStatus('cancelled');                         $this->insertRecordInOrderHistory($order,'cancelled');                         $order->rollBackRefund(); //cancels the refund on ebay and internally in my system                     } else if ($this->isDisputeOlderThan7Days($order)) { //returns true if 7 days elapsed since the dispute was opened                         $order->closeDispute(); //closes the dispute on ebay                         $this->insertRecordInOrderHistoryTable($order,'refunded');                         $order->refund(); //refunds the order on ebay and internally in my system                     }                 } catch (Exception $e) {                     $order->setStatus('failed');                     $order->setErrorMessage($e->getMessage());                     $this->addLog();//log error                 }                 $order->setUpdatedAt(time());                 $order->save();             }         }      **function purpose:**   * I am selling games on ebay.   * If a customers wishes to cancel his order and gets his money back (i.e. a Refund) I must open a \"Dispute\" on ebay first.   * Once a dispute is opened I must wait for the customer to confirm that he agrees to the refund (silly as he's the one who told me to refund, but that's how it works on ebay).   * This functions gets all disputes opened by me and checks their statuses periodically to see if the customer has replied to the dispute or not.   * The customer may agree (then I refund) or refuse (then I rollback) or may not respond for 7 days (I close the dispute myself then refund)."}
{"_id": "206149", "title": "Java: The best way to learn it when MOOCs and books are not enough?", "text": "This topic was taken from Stack Overflow, but it was put on-hold due to Opinion-based question. So I moved it to here. I've had some great troubles with my homework exercises and I've used excessive time on doing simple programs like arrays and methods. For example it took me over 20 hours to create a program that asks user to enter row and columns size and then prints the matrix. I've read over 20 java books and tried 4 MOOCs, and even Buckys videos but it feels like I won't get in-depth understanding of Java fundamentals. Here's a list of problems that I face everyday when I'm coding java:   1. Problem solving   2. Creating methods and using them   3. Arrays   4. \"I've no idea how to do this\"   5. What is constructor and how to use it   6. \"Where can I find help?\" I've asked this question before but the answers have been like: \"Read books\" or \"Just start coding\" but neither of these haven't helped me because I've tried to code, but I haven't had any reasonable goals and reading books feels like eternal loop that just leads nowhere. I know that Internet is full of 'What is the best way to learn Java'-questions but I think that I've to try ask this because this topics question does not appear in Google Search + I think that there are people who are struggling with the same problem. Any advice would be appreciated. I'm eager to learn Java, I just need to find my own way to do it!"}
{"_id": "206142", "title": "Communication between programmers and system engineers. Tool for planning builds and maintenance jobs", "text": "We have Development department and the department of System Engineers that works on a big project (development of J2EE application). We are using _Build management system_ , _Bug tracking system_ and a _Wiki engine_ in our work. Sometimes we have a situation when some developer initiate a server restart or an application build that breaks the debug process for other developers (in some cases developers using the same remote _Developer_ server). At the present moment we are using the _chat_ application for approving the process of restart\\rebuild server (application). Can anyone share the experience of solving collision like I described above? * * * My vision is to use application which was able to do the following things:   * create request for server restart (or application rebuild\\redeploy);   * subcribing for notification on \"new request created\" event;   * manual approving the request (by several members) and automatic approving of request (in case nobody declined the request during the some period of a time);   * subcribing for notification on \"the request is approved\" event;   * the request solving;   * subcribing for notification on \"the request is solved (done)\" event. It looks like the request has its own lifecycle or workflow. I think that some _Bug tracking system_ (for example, _by Atlassian Jira_ ) can help to create the request and can start the workflow on it. But this solution does not look perfect (even good) for me - its too \"heavy and bulky\"."}
{"_id": "117015", "title": "How can I provide guidance on technology choices through user stories?", "text": "I'm a project manager for a team of firmware engineers making the transition to adopting Scrum and I'm moving to support the team in a Product Owner role. We've just gone through Scrum training and are beginning a month of coaching which is going to be invaluable. Coming from a technical background I can already see the challenge of shifting my point of view from the solution domain to focusing on business value. For me it's very tempting to think of \"how\" to solve a problem. But I like the concept of user stories and defining vertical slices of functionality that give value to the customer and letting the team determine the \"how\". Forgive me if this is a naive question, but as the PO how can I provide guidance on specific technical direction through user stories? My concern is that in some cases without guidance the team may head down the wrong path on key technical decisions. As a simplistic example I might have a user story: > As a clinician I want the device to record information about the patient's > treatment so that I can determine if the patient's therapy has been > effective. Now say time to market is critical and I want to fork out for an off-the-shelf file system stack to save time, what conveys that to the team? They might go off and start writing their own stack from scratch. Is this sort of guidance provided through:   1. Conversations during sprint planning and backlog grooming? But if so, is it my place as the PO to even be suggesting how to solve a problem.   2. Acceptance criteria? I don't really like this, I have a bad feeling about making acceptance criteria so prescriptive that they specify how to solve a problem.   3. Constraints? Thanks in advance. I could (and will) ask our Scrum coach but I won't be able to do that before Monday and this question has been really bugging me :)"}
{"_id": "255951", "title": "Proper Architecture for DBContext and Migrations with Multiple Projects", "text": "I have multiple projects that will be using the same business objects (customer, order) but the projects operate in different databases within the organization and I would like to understand the proper architecture that I should create to service such needs. Here is a list of the different types of projects in play:   * ASP.NET MVC front end to handle all general user actions. This front end is deployed to a dedicated instance per customer.   * Centralized Windows Service to process FTP files and transmit the data to each customer instance.   * ASP.NET MVC front end to manage all customers and their instances. All business objects (customer, order, etc) are located in a Core class library. Each of the projects will need to use the business objects at one point or another but connect to a different database. Should the DBContext reside in the Core library or in the project? Should Entity Framework migration be located in the same location as the DBContext?"}
{"_id": "255953", "title": "Python Socket Scripting. What am i doing wrong?", "text": "My socket program hangs at clientsocket, address) = serversocket.accept() and doesn't spit our an error or anything. I followed directions on https://docs.python.org/3/howto/sockets.html I've been trying to figure it out for an hour now, but to no avail. I'm using python3 btw. What am i doing wrong? EDIT: My intedentation is all screwed up because I pasted it wrong, but other than that my code is as I have it in my file.                   #import socket module         import socket         #creates an inet streaming socket.         serversocket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)         print('socket created')         #binds socket to a public host, and a well known port         serversocket.bind(('127.0.0.1', 1024))         #print(socket.gethostname())# on desktop prints 'myname-PC')         #become a server socket         serversocket.listen(5) # listens for up to 5 requests              while True:             #accept connections from outside             #print('In while true loop') This works, but we never get to the next print    statement. Why the hell is it catching at line 20?             (clientsocket, address) = serversocket.accept()             #clientsocket = serversocket.accept()          print('Ready to serve')     #now we do something with client socket...     try:         message = clientsocket.recv(1024)         filename = message.split()[1]         f = open(filename[1:])         outputdata = f.read()         #send an http header line         clientsocket.send('HTTP/1.1 200 OK\\nContent-Type: text/html\\n\\n')              for i in range(0, len(outputdata)):             clientsocket.send(outputdata[i])         clientsocket.close()          except IOERROR:         clientsocket.send('HTTP/1.1 404 File not found!')         clientsocket.close()"}
{"_id": "161219", "title": "Could implicit static methods cause problems?", "text": "This is a purely hypothetical question. Say I create a class method that contains no references to instance variables or other resources. For example (C#):               protected string FormatColumn(string value, int width)     {         return value.Trim().PadLeft(width);     }      As far as I can see, there is absolutely no reason why this method could not be declared static:   * It only uses method-scope variables.   * It doesn't `override` a base class method.   * It's not `virtual` or `abstract`. My questions are:   Is there any benefit to calling a static method over an instance method?   If so, why doesn't the compiler implicitly convert this to a static method? I'm certain I've missed some key point here. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "255955", "title": "What effect does using multiple childViewControllers views inside a ContainerViewController have on memory?", "text": "I have three childViewController views inside my ContainerViewController and these three views are inside a horizontal scroll view. My intention is to build an app that has a custom camera on one ChildViewController view, a tableView which will display JSON data on another view, and a page which will show a list of the users friends. The reason I am building it this way is to achieve a dragging/sliding effect between the three different child views. Although I get the result I want from a UI/UX perspective, i'm not sure how this will effect memory and performance. If i'm not mistaken my containerViewController will be handling a lot of activity. Would there be an alternative way to architect this type of application? I understand I could have three separate view controllers using a Navigation Controller but than I wouldn't achieve the UI/UX experience I want. I'm really after the dragging/sliding between different pages experience, similar if not the same as Snapchat/Tinder"}
{"_id": "255956", "title": "Which aids to decision-making exist for going open-source?", "text": "I am involved in the development of a software product that I'd like to see becoming open source. My bosses will ponder this request benevolently I assume, yet they still want to see some evidence that this is a good idea, at least that it is not a bad idea. They have little experience with open source themselves. We work in an academic public service environment, so financial interests are little to non- existing. I think their primary concerns are bad reputation by publishing a project and nobody is interested, and maybe the potential loss of control of the development process. I wonder whether there is (possibly peer-reviewed) material out there that advocates for going open source. But I'm also interested in documents describing a critical perspective towards such a step. Moreover, case studies would be helpful I think. The documents may be behind a journal paywall."}
{"_id": "255957", "title": "Anonymous access to api REST, protection", "text": "I have a public website that does not require authentication. It's a lighting calculator for indoor cultivation. Anyone can enter and complete the process and ultimately save your settings for future use sharing it on Facebook or twitter. The configuration is saved as a document in a database, using a REST api. At this time nothing prevents someone make a bot and fill my hard disk in a few hours. What steps can I take to give protection to my service?"}
{"_id": "255958", "title": "What is the largest size a HashSet or TreeSet be?", "text": "So I am working on a solo project that involves **a lot** of strings. In one of my smaller test cases there will be _at least_ 70 million elements. So my question is, what is the largest possible size a TreeSet or a HashSet can reach until it can no longer grow **OR** until it reaches a size that it can no longer be feasible to use in terms of efficiency."}
{"_id": "255959", "title": "Using a zLib like icensed library which has dependencies on LGPL or GPL libs; what license am I able to release my project under?", "text": "If I use an Open Source library which is released under a zLib like license, but it has dependencies on libraries that are using LGPL or GPL; what license am I able to release my project under? If I read things I find on the net it sounds like I can sell my project but I can't stop people from distributing it freely as per GPL?"}
{"_id": "245512", "title": "How to check the space complexity of this program?", "text": "I have written my version of strstr function in c. I am using a temporary array of size 26. Then is the space complexity O(1) or O(n)? This is my code :               void strcheck(char t[], int n, char p[], int m)     {         int i, j, k;         int temp[26];              for (i = 0; i < 25; ++i)             temp[i] = 0;         for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)         {             k = t[i] - 'a';             temp[k]++;         }         for (j = 0; j < m; j++)         {             k = p[j] - 'a';             if (temp[k] > 0)                 temp[k]--;             else                 break;         }         if (j == m)             printf(\"string occured\\n\");         else             printf(\"not occured\\n\");     }      The program is working correctly just wanna know about space complexity. Thanks"}
{"_id": "233180", "title": "Video conferencing server architecture", "text": "I am developing a video conference application with the following requirements:   * Audio works like call conference, where all participants may talk at the same time.   * However, video works like broadcasting, where only one designated client broadcasts one video to the rest. Clients will be Android devices. One way of doing this is to use a SIP stack (e.g. Asterisk) and use its conference call capabilities; however the video conference part of Asterisk looks pretty undeveloped. Also, there might be some issues using SIP, as the app will be used over 3G and/or restrictive firewalls. Another way is to use streaming media server like Wowza, which while it is impressive on live video streaming, it does not seem to have a conferencing capabilities. Is there a better way to approach this? It seems that this use case is pretty common and there are various similar solutions for desktop apps."}
{"_id": "16325", "title": "What should a CS grad know?", "text": "In thinking of making a good introductory resource guide for new Computer Science students... **What is a good list of expected knowledge and ability for a computer science BS grad?** And if you graduated a while ago, how does this compare to the standards for graduates at that time? And, are there any things you would want college grads to know that most entering the field don't? Many thanks!"}
{"_id": "16323", "title": "Object Oriented Programming Language performance ranking", "text": "After reading this post about ideal programming language learning sequence, I am wondering what would have been the answers if the question was performance -instead of learning- oriented ? Since there are many programming languages I chose to ask the question for OOL to be the least subjective. But any thought or comparison about no-OOL are appreciated :D If we omit the programming effort, time and costs. What is your ranking of the most powerful object oriented languages ?"}
{"_id": "19513", "title": "Opinions on distribution of software via virtual appliance", "text": "I've created a distribution of my open source application framework in a working virtual appliance. It includes everything to get started with the tutorial. The distribution is Fedora 14 running Tomcat 5.5 and Oracle 10g Express Edition, plus my framework. It is completely preconfigured and boots into a working running copy. Would this be something you might try? What assurances might you need to get you to try it? **Edit:** The VM is just over a 2Gb download. Alternatively it is also available via 23Mb download for the source and a PDF detailing how to configure the Tomcat and Oracle dependencies."}
{"_id": "96735", "title": "I've failed at PHP several times. Is Ruby the Cure?", "text": "_Extremely, extremely_ subjective question here, but its something I've been struggling with for quite a while. I've seriously tried to become a reasonable PHP coder for the past several years. But I've really failed every time. I hate to describe myself as a beginner, b/c I've been designing websites (using WordPress, Drupal, etc) for years, but still I just can't seem get better at programming. Could it be that I have some kind of allergy to PHP? I went through Chris Pine's awesome into to Ruby about a week ago (for about the fifth time), and though it did all all seem much clearer to me than PHP, I wondered if I was just switching languages to find an easy way out? The things I struggle with in PHP all seem elementary\u2014when to use a function, how to return database queries in foreach/while statements, when to turn those queries into reusable functions, adding arguments to functions, etc, etc. And all the OOP stuff that I keep seeing these days just files over my head. I guess my question(s) are: Am I going about learning how to program in the wrong way? Do I have some aversion to PHP that's preventing me from catch on? If I keep pushing at Ruby/Rails, will it just eventually 'click'. Or, the one I fear, am I just unlikely to ever be a programmer?"}
{"_id": "187828", "title": "How to balance Front End and Back End coding skill", "text": "This is a question specifically for web applications developers. In recent years I spent most of my time on SaaS products, which leads you dig deep into more back-end stuff, like how to use less memory resources, make session working with load balancer, write efficient SQL queries, performance tuning, solving technique difficulty. There is no web designer working with us, generally what we get is a snapshot of what the system should look like, but nobody here cares how you produce it. Since now the company plan changed and they are going to change and the SaaS product will reach end of life soon, and I just feel I lack of those HTML/CSS knowledge, I mean I never got a chance to check those things as a whole stuff, but only learn from what I need to work out. All those above seems made me out of fashion about front-end skills, I seems tend to ignore learn things about it. Till just now I realized that might be a mistake I made, for instance I still tend to use table layout in HTML and just realized how bad practice that is recently. I start wondering if I were going to find a new job, how good should I be on front-end coding compare to back-end skills? Is it OK for now as more and more web designers or user interface designers are hired so we don't need to worry about Html/Css too much? Or should I pause my back-end skill improvement and jump back on front-end a while and then make it half and half? Sorry English is not my native language so there might be something expressed not that clear. Thanks for reading this long post!"}
{"_id": "187829", "title": "OOP question for product catalog", "text": "I have a question bugging me for some days. I made a webshop for a good friend of me. The problem is I have an OOP class question. People can buy some clothing in the shop. The problem arise how to show different information for different products? What I have now is the following:   * abstract Product class   * Cloth extends Product   * Trousers extends Product Problem is that trousers can contain extra information like:   * fiber type   * structure How can I show those information in the shop? I query for all products and receive the Product class with only the selling price and name? What is the correct way to figure out it is a trouser to show those information like fiber structure on the detail page?"}
{"_id": "96731", "title": "Are ASP.NET Web Parts useful & common enough practice in the real world, outside of SharePoint projects?", "text": "Studying for the .NET 70-515 exam. There is a chapter on Web Parts. I will suck it up and learn what I need to learn here, but... I am wondering, do ASP.NET developers in the real world often turn to Web Parts _outside_ of SharePoint development? I do not **ever** plan to deal with SharePoint - I prefer working on large scale public-facing web sites and applications - and Web Parts (SharePoint, too) hardly seem useful to me in that context. But what do I know? Help me understand the relevance or irrelevance of this technology, please. Should I keep ASP.NET Web Parts on my _ignore-list_ , if SharePoint is already on it too? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "65742", "title": "Stored Procedures a bad practice at one of worlds largest IT software consulting firms?", "text": "I'm working at a project in one of the world's top 3 IT consulting firms, and was told by a DBA that company best practice's state stored procedures are not a \"best practice\". This is so contrary to everything I've learned. Stored procedures give you code reuse, and encapsulation (two pillars of software development), security (you can grant/revoke permissions on an individual stored proc), protect you from SQL injection attacks, and also help with speed (although that DBA said that starting with SQL Server 2008 that even regular SQL queries are compiled if they are run enough times). We're developing a complex app using Agile software development methodology. Can anyone think of good reasons why they wouldn't want to use stored procs? My guess was that the DBAs didn't want to maintain those stored procs, but there seem to be way too many negatives to justify such a design decision."}
{"_id": "214234", "title": "Basic Objective-C Questions", "text": "I'm new to objective C, I'm following \"Objective C 5th Edition Stephen Kochan and I don't have anyone to ask my doubts to. I'm confused with this question: Q. Is it necessary to use \"-\" or \"+\" before every property or method declaration in Interface? What will happen if I don't use \"-\" or \"+\" before every property or method declaration in Interface?"}
{"_id": "150443", "title": "Should I return iterators or more sophisticated objects?", "text": "Say I have a function that creates a list of objects. If I want to return an iterator, I'll have to `return iter(a_list)`. Should I do this, or just return the list as it is? My motivation for returning an iterator is that this would keep the interface smaller -- what kind of container I create to collect the objects is essentially an implementation detail On the other hand, it would be wasteful if the user of my function may have to recreate the same container from the iterator which would be bad for performance."}
{"_id": "150448", "title": "Is there a way for developers and their clients to make a 'safety net' for the final transaction of software for money?", "text": "First off, we presume that the projects in question are not large or important enough for the parties involved to establish a formal contract, and that the parties are not able to meet in person. So, how can the programmer(s) be sure that they will be paid(in full), and how can the client be sure that the their requirements are met, e.g. testing it without acquiring the full source code?"}
{"_id": "214239", "title": "Comparing TCP/IP applications vs HTTP applications", "text": "I'm interested in developing a large-scale user-facing website that is written in Java. As for design, I'm thinking of developing independent, modular services that can act as data providers to my main web application. As for writing these modular services (data providers), I can leverage an existing framework like Spring and develop these services following the RESTful design pattern, and expose resources via HTTP with a message format like JSON...or I can leverage an existing network framework like Netty (http://netty.io/) and serialization format like Protobufs (https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/overview) and develop a TCP server that sends back and forth the serialized protobuf payload. When should you choose one over the other? Would there be any benefit of using a serialization format like Protobufs and sending stream of bytes over the wire? Would there be overhead in just using JSON? How much overhead is there between using TCP/IP and using HTTP? When should you use Spring over Netty, and vice versa to build such a service?"}
{"_id": "250205", "title": "Using home server to develop, moving everything out of local machine", "text": "I'm sorry if this question is too broad, but I hope it's not :) I'm thinking about setting up small & cheap home linux based server (one of those $200-$300 micro PCs), to move my whole development environment out from my laptop (databases, interpreters etc.). The main reason is - while I earn my meal coding PHP, I'd like to try new things that require installing new stuff and I want to keep my laptop running smoothly. Other reason is that I find setting up and maintaining dev environment on OS X somehow disturbing (you just can't upgrade PHP, you have to do some tricks to do this). Setup I thought about is: 1\\. Mount server's drive via `Samba` 2\\. Use `NetBeans` saving directly to server, work, run apps on server Keeping that in mind, my main (and IMHO quite specific) question is - will it work? I mean - won't this setup slow down my development instead of making it cleaner and separated from development machine? By slowing down I mean: samba issues, configuration issues, gotchas and so on. Technologies I intend to use: `mysql`, `postgres`, `php`, `pyton`, (maybe) `java`, (maybe) `RoR`, (maybe) `Solr`."}
{"_id": "185130", "title": "How can I update a large legacy codebase to meet specific quality standards?", "text": "There is a lot of information about tools and techniques for improving legacy codebases, but I haven't come across any successful real world case studies. Most advice is on the micro level, and while helpful, doesn't convince many people because of a lack of evidence it can help at the macro level. I am looking specifically for incremental improvements that have been proven to be a success in the real world when updating a large legacy codebase to meet today's quality standards, and not a complete rewrite. Before:   * Large: greater than 1MLOC   * Legacy: no automated tests   * Poor quality: high complexity, high coupling, high escaped defects After   * Automated tests   * Easier updates/maintenance   * High quality: lowered complexity, decoupled code, few escaped defects What kind of incremental steps have been proven in the real world to update a large legacy codebase successfully to meet above quality standards, without going through a total rewrite? If possible, include an example company or case study of a large legacy project that has gone through a \"successful\" quality improvement process in your answer to back it up."}
{"_id": "250202", "title": "Loading dynamic css based on user", "text": "I want to provide different UI theme based on user who logged in. For that I have came up with following 2 options:   * create separate files for all themes duplicating all the common css. This way I can easily do some login in scripting and get the required css file. But I end up having same css classes code in many different theme files. This is real pain when you have to change something common to all files.   * make a common file and separate theme files containing only theme specific css. This way everytime I need to load 2 css files, one - common file by default and then load theme specific file to override default css classes. Please help me to choose better option. If there is other simple and easy way to do it then please do let me know."}
{"_id": "158278", "title": "How I identify true error?", "text": "I am writing a program to scrap some data from the web. The pages are sequential ( 1,2,3 ... ), but I have no idea when will it stops. I combine a prefix and a integer to make a link for the python urllib to parse on it. For example : 'http://some.domain.com/page' + '1' + '.htm'. So the request would fail if the link is invalid, however, there could be some other error such as network error, connection timed out which will resolve itself. I could retry a couple of times on these error. Aside from 'Page not found' error, there could be other error such as 'Internal Server Error' which was thrown when the server is down. There error won't fix themselves. I should probably move on or stop the program. Back to my program. Because I don't know when is the page index are going to end, so I set the end integer to 9999. The links may run out after some hundreds. I should identify this and send a 'break' to it. What will you do? Gather all the possible error and put them on the exception line and treat them differently? Now I just stop after 10 failures."}
{"_id": "158277", "title": "Decorators in Python", "text": "I am just learning python, and I am currently playing with Tornado framework. I see this class:               class AuthHandler(BaseHandler, tornado.auth.GoogleMixin):         @tornado.web.asynchronous         def get(self):             if self.get_argument(\"openid.mode\", None):                 self.get_authenticated_user(self.async_callback(self._on_auth))                 return             self.authenticate_redirect()      I am having trouble grasping what the decorator does there (@tornado.web.asynchronous). Does it overwrite that function? You can see the full source at https://github.com/facebook/tornado/blob/master/demos/chat/chatdemo.py"}
{"_id": "158276", "title": "scons and python unit tests best practices", "text": "I am using scons to build a large project containing a mix of C++ and Python. I would like scons to run Python unit tests either using nose or not. Currently, we have a long list of tests files and run a test builder on each one. This causes each test file to be run as a separate script which feel inelegant and inefficient. Is there a better way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "97284", "title": "which are the best front end web developer blogs", "text": "Looking for recommendations on industry-expert blogs from front-end web developers (emphasising RIA applications; e.g. HTML5, Javascript, AJAX, JQuery, Ext JS). Trying to sort out the best from the rest. Which blogs are the well respected and worth following?"}
{"_id": "215720", "title": "Is there a name for the Builder Pattern where the Builder is implemented via interfaces so certain parameters are required?", "text": "So we implemented the builder pattern for most of our domain to help in understandability of what actually being passed to a constructor, and for the normal advantages that a builder gives. The one twist was that we exposed the builder through interfaces so we could chain required functions and unrequired functions to make sure that the correct parameters were passed. I was curious if there was an existing pattern like this. Example below:               public class Foo     {        private int someThing;        private int someThing2;        private DateTime someThing3;             private Foo(Builder builder)        {            this.someThing = builder.someThing;            this.someThing2 = builder.someThing2;            this.someThing3 = builder.someThing3;        }             public static RequiredSomething getBuilder()        {            return new Builder();        }             public interface RequiredSomething { public RequiredDateTime withSomething (int value); }        public interface RequiredDateTime { public OptionalParamters withDateTime (DateTime value); }        public interface OptionalParamters {            public OptionalParamters withSeomthing2 (int value);            public Foo Build ();}             public static class Builder implements RequiredSomething, RequiredDateTime, OptionalParamters         {           private int someThing;           private int someThing2;           private DateTime someThing3;                public RequiredDateTime withSomething (int value) {someThing = value; return this;}           public OptionalParamters withDateTime (int value) {someThing = value; return this;}           public OptionalParamters withSeomthing2 (int value) {someThing = value; return this;}           public Foo build(){return new Foo(this);}        }     }      Example of how it's called:                  Foo foo = Foo.getBuilder().withSomething(1).withDateTime(DateTime.now()).build();        Foo foo2 = Foo.getBuilder().withSomething(1).withDateTime(DateTime.now()).withSomething2(3).build();"}
{"_id": "69668", "title": "Genetic programming", "text": "I recently was browsing Reddit and came across a post linking to a \"JavaScript genetic algorithm\" example. I've really been fascinated with the concepts of genetic algorithms and programming, however even after some Googling I am still left slightly confused. Can someone please explain to me how it works? I suppose the vocabulary terms are confusing me more than anything else. I've never taken a computer science class but I do program on my spare time and enjoy it. I'm 16 years old so I would appreciate brief examples and perhaps explanations. Just the concept of genetic programming and how I could implement it into my projects and why. Thanks."}
{"_id": "81599", "title": "Assigning effective complexity ratings to tasks", "text": "I want to make excellent estimations about, how much effort is required for a particular task. The constraint is, that I have already solved the problem and written down steps required to solve it. Also I have the description of what kind of problems it solves, compiled example program, it's source code with comments, tests and test data, language abnormalities involved with particular solution and etc. And I have done this for set of languages X. My sub questions are:   * did I ask right sub questions?   * is this a Fermi problem (or paradox)?   * on what should I base my decision upon?   * what elements should it contain to be effective?   * what should a I know, before giving a rough estimation?   * what kind of argument scales should it use: linear, logarithmic, ...?    * how does estimation change, if definition of required feature changes?   * how do I evaluate it, is there some-kind of table like this IBM's (bogus) one ?   * how does estimation differ, if i'm asked to solve it in language {x, y}? Where x \u2287 X and y \u2209 X. My question is: **What is the most efficient way, to rate task recreation difficulty?** ## About the question Although I have been learning the profession of software engineering for quite some time, only now I find myself going to work as one. In university I found, that 2 time managemanet techniques work really well:   * doing projects ASP - several weeks early also means virtually no competition at all, to be graded   * timesliceing - deciding how much continuous time I will spend on a task, before switching to a new one. If it's important, I'll just schedule a new time slice sooner, then I would.  Thy seem incompatible for this task or rather, it seems a complex problem to adapt them. ## Example: Irregular click event hot-spots Difficulty rating : \u2605 \u2605 \u2606 | Time estimation : 1 work day ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EhTHi.jpg) Example of required data creation process ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/okHb2.jpg)"}
{"_id": "69665", "title": "How easy/difficult is it to start using something like Python/Django in an existing Java project?", "text": "I have a Java project which uses Java to access some 3rd party libraries. For other things I'd like to use something newer like Python maybe. Is it easy to incorporate into an existing project? How do people usually do that? Thanks, Alex"}
{"_id": "154565", "title": "Where does a \"Technical Programmer\" fit in, and what does the title mean?", "text": "Was: \"What is a 'Technical Programmer'\"? I've noticed in job posting boards a few postings, all from European companies in the games industry, for a \"Technical Programmer\". The job description was similar, having to do with tools development, 3d graphics programming, etc. It seems to be somewhere between a Technical Artist who's more technical than artist or who can code, and a Technical Director but perhaps without the seniority/experience. Information elsewhere on the position is sparse. The title seems redundant and I haven't seen any American companies post jobs by that name, exactly. One example is this job posting on gamedev.net which isn't exactly thorough. In case the link dies: > **Subject** : Technical Programmer > > Frictional Games, the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the Penumbra > series, are looking for a talented programmer to join the company! > > You will be working for a small team with a big focus on finding new and > innovating solutions. We want you who are not afraid to explore uncharted > territory and constantly learn new things. Self-discipline and independence > are also important traits as all work will be done from home. > > Some the things you will work with include: > >   * 3D math, rendering, shaders and everything else related. >   * Console development (most likely Xbox 360). >   * Hardware implementations (support for motion controls, etc). > > > All coding is in C++, so great skills in that is imperative. _Revised Summarised Question_ : So, where does a programmer of this nature fit in to software development team? If I had these on my team, what tasks am I expecting them to complete? Can I ask one to build a new level editor, or optimize the rendering engine? It doesn't seem to be a \"tools programmer\" which focuses on producing artist tools, often in high-level languages like C#, Python, or Java. Nor does it seem to be working directly on the engine, nor a graphics programmer, as such. Yet, a strong C++ requirement, which was mirrored in other postings besides this one I quoted. **Edited To Add** As far as it being a low-level programmer, I had considered that but lacking from the posting was a requirement of Assembly. Instead, they tend to require familiarity with higher-level hardware APIs such as DirectX, or DirectInput. I wasn't fully clear in my original post. I think, however, that Mathew Foscarini has it right in his answer, so barring someone who definitely works with or as a \"Technical Programmer\" stepping in to provide a clearer explanation, I'll go with that. A generalist, which also fits the description of a more-technical-than-artist TA."}
{"_id": "154563", "title": "Which tools do you use to manage your todo list?", "text": "I would like to optimize the way I manage my todo list. My tasks are, for a large part, related to `C++` coding but also include readings, presentations, research... Lately I discovered the `@todo` command in doxygen, which is pretty cool for the coding part. I would like to keep a clear track of all my tasks in one big tool though. Any ideas ?"}
{"_id": "191549", "title": "Began with iOS development, skipped CS, and getting hit hard at interviews?", "text": "I'll start with a brief background: my degree is in Recording Arts, so mainly audio engineering and stuff relating to the music industry, with some synthesis and stuff which was my link into coding (via an environment called PureData). I've been working for an iOS developer for the last three years handling audio stuff (mainly musical), and having minimal coding work to do (things like localization, etc.) I've written some basic iOS projects myself which are increasing in complexity slowly, and am pretty comfortable with with the basic concepts of iOS development (MVC, delegation, KVC, etc.) I've been attending interviews just to test the water to see where I'd fit in with some junior iOS developer jobs that could really challenge me and help me grow as a developer, and I'm being hit really hard by interviewers who expect me to have a CS degree and really in-depth knowledge of basic CS concepts. This may be a statement born out of frustration, but they don't seem to want to touch any potential employee who didn't get a Computer Science degree, or has a thorough knowledge of it. As examples, one that hit me hard in an interview yesterday was something theoretical about behaviours belonging to classes and being accessible to a non-inherited class.. I had no idea, really. I can go in and code classes with inheritance, but discussing them on an abstract level with a sheet of blank paper in front of me is very daunting. Another example was discussing \"data structures\" - as far as I'm aware those are just variable types, and arrays/dictionaries, etc., but the guy acted like I knew 5% of the story there and seemed surprised. I've since looked up these things and learned a little more, but I think this is a band-aid on the problem. It's pretty demoralising to feel like I'm progressing as a developer but also feel like I'm still nowhere towards a proper career as a software developer, and I realise this post may well be closed (though I genuinely do think this is the best place for it and hope others can offer advice), but I'm trying to establish exactly how I can learn those core CS concepts without needing to reiterate the basic coding constructs I'm already very familiar with. I've tried watching along with various iTunes U courses, some of the MIT stuff online, etc., and they all jump straight into Java in lesson 1, 2, or 3 and begin talking about if statements, variables, etc., then move up in complexity while remaining almost exclusively with the code itself. Perhaps I'm making too big of a distinction between programming and CS, but I'm in a boat where I'm boring easily of hearing what an \"if\" statement or a \"for\" loop does over and over, and want to understand the underlying concepts that the interviews I've dealt with all expect me to know like the back of my hand. I'm hoping some folks here will have some advice on patching up those CS- shaped holes in my knowledge so that I can properly begin my career as a software developer, rather than simply getting better and better with iOS development and leaving a gaping hole where my actual education should have been. **EDIT:** I want to try to make this into a more specific question which can be answered as opposed to discussed, as per the rules, so: **Is it possible to overcome a missing CS education by just pushing forward with programming and learning concepts as you come across them?**"}
{"_id": "69663", "title": "PGAS Systems in the wild", "text": "Has anyone had any experiences with developing a Partitioned Global Address Space product or system, or an application that used PGAS, or anything PGAS- like? I'm looking for insights, warstories, and practical approaches with regards to languages used, wisdom learned, and ideas/applications either dreamed of or spun off from actual development."}
{"_id": "195755", "title": "How do distributed version-control systems deal with fragmentation?", "text": "Here is the scenario: X is the author of a software. X releases v1.0 on an open source license on Github and moves on. People interested in the software fork and improve the software. Now there are 15 different flavours of the software. Few also try to send a pull request back, however since X no longer works on the software, the pull request is just sitting idle on his project page. As a new user wanting to use the most active and stable release of the software, how does he learn which out of the 15 he should clone and use? He certainly would like to use the more active branch, since it may have more bug fixes and features upgrades. I see that the model works for bigger open-source projects, because the author of the software is usually well-known in the community. As a result, the user base inadvertently knows which branch to clone from. However, how does one solve a problem for a software, where the author, maintainer and several contributors all are practically unknown in the open-source community?"}
{"_id": "120094", "title": "Interviewing Process (using blank paper etc)", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are the pros and cons for the employer of code questions during an > interview? I am curious to know why do companies hand you a blank paper and ask you to write code? This confuses me, because these days intellisense, google, stackoverflow etc are common sources to look up syntax and / or IDE gives you a colored indicator if your syntax is wrong. I usually get stressed out during these situations. I am curious to know opinions of other developers. I am posting this on this forum, hoping to get helpful feedback from other experienced developers."}
{"_id": "46379", "title": "Does it make sense to develop open source python library for database inspection?", "text": "Some time ago I came up with an idea for a library for database inspection. I started developing it and got some very basic functionality, just to check if that's possible. Recently however, I get second thoughts, whether such project would really be useful. I am actually planning to develop following software suite:   * library for `python`, that would provide easy interface to inspect database structure,   * desktop application in `PyQt` that would use the interface to provide graphical database inspection,   * web application in `Django` that would use the interface to provide database inspection through the browser. Do you think such suite would be useful for other developers/database administrators/analysts? I know, that there is pgadmin for `PostgreSQL` and some tool for `sqlite3` and that there is `Java` tool called `DBInspect`. Usually I would be against creating new tool and rather join existing project, but I am not `Java` programmer (and I would rather stick to `python` or `C`, which I like) and none of these projects provide a library for database inspection. Anyway I would like to hear some opinions from fellow developers, whether such project make sense or I should try to spend my free time on developing something else."}
{"_id": "1877", "title": "How much information can a user reasonably process from a UI?", "text": "As an example, say there's an interface that contains a table/grid of information that is periodically updated. The table is meant to represent an event that has happened, perhaps the date and time of a stock price change . The acutal frequency of these events could be dozens of events per second. This is obviously too much information for a user to process/understand, so I'm trying to find out how much information a user COULD process in a given amount of time so that we can throttle the data and come up with an alternate display. I know some studies have been done on this, but I can't seem to find an authorative source."}
{"_id": "94397", "title": "Online Advertising And Marketing Your Services?", "text": "I have been working on freelance sites for a good 4 or 5 years, bending over backwards to build a decent portfolio and generate great ratings. I take huge pride in my work (web applications). I'm completely lost because when I think what would happen if I suddenly lost my freelance account it isn't a pretty picture. I have literally no idea where else I could advertise my services apart from google paid advertising. Any suggestions? I'd of course be more than willing to pay for marketing and such. I've been searching google for ages and can't find much advice on where to advertise to secure good clients for web development work. I say good clients because I mean actual business owners, not somebody else who is outsourcing to me (where do they find clients?). I'd appreciate any help."}
{"_id": "94390", "title": "In what visual format should I present an estimate for a software project?", "text": "What I mean is, do people print some kind of line item form? What data does it contain? What are the line items usually? Otherwise, do you just present a written document describing with a paragraph? Do you show the number of hours or just a lump sum? Perhaps you only show dollars per hour and an estimate of the hours. Do you give multiple estimates, a high and a low? Is there any best practice for making sure you don't screw yourself or your client? Just trying to get an idea of a few samples of what a client might want to hold in their hands or see on their LCD screen so they can authorize the work that is being presented and agree on the cost."}
{"_id": "199631", "title": "Architecture For Mockable DAL On Large Projects", "text": "I have recently been reading an article about creating a blog using ASP.NET and MVC, and in the article the user splits the Data Access Layer into a separate Class Library, and creates an interface for this to allow the DAL to be mocked for testing. This works great for small projects, but I am struggling to see how this will scale. For example in the article you end up with the following Interface:               public interface IBlogRepository     {         IList<Objects.Post> Posts(int pageNo, int pageSize);         int TotalPosts(bool checkIsPublished = true);              IList<Objects.Post> PostsForCategory(string categorySlug, int pageNo, int pageSize);         int TotalPostsForCategory(string categorySlug);         Objects.Category Category(string categorySlug);              IList<Objects.Post> PostsForTag(string tagSlug, int pageNo, int pageSize);         int TotalPostsForTag(string tagSlug);         Objects.Tag Tag(string tagSlug);              IList<Objects.Post> PostsForSearch(string search, int pageNo, int pageSize);         int TotalPostsForSearch(string search);              Objects.Post Post(int year, int month, string titleSlug);              IList<Objects.Category> Categories();         IList<Objects.Tag> Tags();              IList<Objects.Post> Posts(int pageNo, int pageSize, string sortColumn, bool sortByAscending);              void AddPost(Objects.Post post);     }      There is then an associated .cs file with the implementation of this interface. How would you implement a similar architecture for a much larger project? For example the project I have at work consists of 25 controllers, each having as a minimum list, add, edit, view, delete and count. That would lead to an interface with 150+ functions. Is this kind of architecture still suitable for larger projects, and if so how would you structure this to avoid having a single file implementing 150+ functions?"}
{"_id": "81040", "title": "Is there any hope for writing good code atop a horribly designed database?", "text": "Here's my predicament. One of several programs I've recently inherited is built with a horrible database on the backend. The esteemed creators of it apparently did not appreciate relational concepts. A table for each and every client, named as a unique client ID. Eighty-three cryptically named fields. The code is all procedural with dozens of concatenated inline SQL statements. As we weren't provided with an important ancillary application that runs off the same database, I've been tasked with recreating it from scratch. I'm a sole developer, which isn't even my primary responsibility as at least half of my time is taken up by operations stuff. There's an unavoidable deadline set for 30 days from now. Despite my inexperience, I'm certain I could have designed this database and existing application much better than they were, but I don't really think it's realistic for me to alter the database, adjust the existing application, and be sure I didn't break anything while needing to create the additional application this quickly. So let's assume I am stuck with the terrible database. Needing to work with such a bad structure, would anything I write that conforms to it just add to the heaping pile of technical debt to be shelved away until something completely breaks or new functionality is needed? How could I approach this situation and get something good out of it besides a hopefully functional application? edit: In case anyone's interested, we ended up scrapping this horrible database and the application that ran on it. We outsourced the creation of the ancillary application (I wasn't involved in setting this up) to ultimately two different contractors who both ended up falling through on us, accomplishing nothing. I ended up having to rush out a horrific, partially functional hack of a fix in three days that's still in use today."}
{"_id": "81041", "title": "Starting a job in the financial sector, advice needed", "text": "Starting a job in the financial sector in the next couple of weeks. I have never done financial programming (EG Loans, mortgages, etc). Just to get acquainted and familiar with this kind of thing, are there any open-source application libraries in C# that I could look at and get a feel for? Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "199635", "title": "Is there a time bomb in sequential process id allocation when the `unsigned` wraps?", "text": "I'm designing and implementing a multiprocessing postscript interpreter (\"lightweight\" processes simulated by a single OS-thread), and I need to generate a unique identifier for each process in the system, as well as maintain ids for any dead processes which still have live references. (Reference: Adobe PLRM, 2ed, Ch. 7 Display PostScript, http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/ps/psrefman.pdf\u200e) I've started with a simple increment, which arithmetically maps to the table index for the per-process data. http://code.google.com/p/xpost/source/browse/itp.c#115               unsigned nextid = 0;  // global (file-static) counter          unsigned initctxid(void) {  // generate a new cid         while ( ctxcid(++nextid)->state != 0 )  // .state == 0 means free             ;         return nextid;      }          context *ctxcid(unsigned cid) {  // get context data from cid         return &itpdata.ctab[ (cid-1) % MAXCONTEXT ];     }      But there's gonna be a big problem if (when) the unsigned wraps around. Perhaps not scary for a game or an application, but this thing is supposed to be a server. Eventually. I'd like to avoid writing (in earnest) the disclaimer, \"warning: will start having strange problems after running for a long time\". So, it should be easy enough to detect when it wraps, but what then? Bail out? So the situation/scenario so far is: you're a multitasking postscript server with a handful of processes with cids allocated during one _epoch_ of the generator, and the epoch has just turned. My thought (not impossible, just seems really hard) is to _compact_ these existing IDs down to the _0..N_ range (rewriting all references, scanning all memory if necessary) and reset `nextid` to N. But that's gonna be a pain-in-the-butt. Is there a different way to generate these IDs so I don't have to do a big garbage-collect on them, and have it work, you know, _perpetually_? Edit: A fact I neglected to mention was that the Display PostScript reference says IDs are not re-used during a running instance of the system. But since these IDs are not exposed, they cannot be saved in any form other than the context object. So re-use should be just fine as long as no running process can know about it (contains an old context object in accessible memory)."}
{"_id": "199636", "title": "Design suggestion required to create an Export plugin", "text": "I am trying to create Export Module for our application, this seems to me a bit complex so I am posting it here to get some guide lines. In our database we have a list of Products, which can be exported as XML, RTF or PDF The user can select one or many products from the list to export. After Selecting the product(s) he/she is presented with list of Export type(XML, RTF, PDF) and a list of Connections( where to send this export files) like FTP, HTTP, EMail etc whose details are already configured. And this export is used for many different users, who have different needs. For example User1 need only Description, User2 needs Description+Thumbnail etc. Should I create for Export type(XML, RTF, PDF) a Manager class? and For Connections also a Manager class? And for Different users should I create an Interface?"}
{"_id": "197562", "title": "Why is there no 'finally' construct in C++?", "text": "Exception handling in C++ is limited to try/throw/catch. Unlike Object Pascal, Java, C# and Python, even in C++ 11, the `finally` construct has not been implemented. I have seen an awful lot of C++ literature discussing \"exception safe code\". Lippman writes that exception safe code is an important but advanced, difficult topic, beyond the scope of his Primer - which seems to imply that safe code is not fundamental to C++! Herb Sutter devotes 10 chapters to the topic in his Exceptional C++ ! Yet it seems to me that many of the problems encountered when attempting to write \"exception safe code\" could be quite well solved if the `finally` construct was implemented, allowing the programmer to ensure that even in the event of an exception, the program can be restored to a safe, stable, leak- free state, close to the point of allocation of resources and potentially problematic code. As a very experienced Delphi and C# programmer I use try.. finally blocks quite extensively in my code, as do most programmers in these languages. Considering all the 'bells and whistles' implemented in C++ 11, I was astonished to find that 'finally' was still not there. So, why has the `finally` construct never been implemented in C++? It's really not a very difficult or advanced concept to grasp and goes a long ways towards helping the programmer to write 'exception safe code'."}
{"_id": "190716", "title": "Is relying on implicit argument conversion considered dangerous?", "text": "C++ has a feature (I cannot figure out the proper name of it), that automatically calls matching constructors of parameter types if the argument types are not the expected ones. A very basic example of this is calling a function that expects a `std::string` with a `const char*` argument. The compiler will automatically generate code to invoke the appropriate `std::string` constructor. I'm wondering, is it as bad for readability as I think it is? Here's an example:               class Texture {     public:         Texture(const std::string& imageFile);     };          class Renderer {     public:         void Draw(const Texture& texture);     };          Renderer renderer;     std::string path = \"foo.png\";     renderer.Draw(path);      Is that just fine? Or does it go too far? If I shouldn't do it, can I somehow make Clang or GCC warn about it?"}
{"_id": "190717", "title": "Is there any real value in unit testing a controller in ASP.NET MVC?", "text": "I hope this question gives some interesting answers because it's one that's bugged me for a while. **Is there any real value in unit testing a controller in ASP.NET MVC?** What I mean by that is, most of the time, (and I'm no genius), my controller methods are, even at their most complex something like this:               public ActionResult Create(MyModel model)     {         // start error list         var errors = new List<string>();              // check model state based on data annotations         if(ModelState.IsValid)         {             // call a service method             if(this._myService.CreateNew(model, Request.UserHostAddress, ref errors))             {                 // all is well, data is saved,                  // so tell the user they are brilliant                 return View(\"_Success\");             }         }              // add errors to model state         errors.ForEach(e => ModelState.AddModelError(\"\", e));              // return view         return View(model);     }      Most of the heavy-lifting is done by either the MVC pipeline or my service library. So maybe questions to ask might be:   * what would be the value of unit testing this method?   * would it not break on `Request.UserHostAddress` and `ModelState` with a NullReferenceException? Should I try to mock these?   * if I refractor this method into a re-useable \"helper\" (which I probably should, considering how many times I do it!), would testing that even be worthwhile when all I'm really testing is mostly the \"pipeline\" which, presumably, has been tested to within an inch of it's life by Microsoft? I think my point **really** is, doing the following seems utterly pointless and wrong               [TestMethod]     public void Test_Home_Index()     {         var controller = new HomeController();         var expected = \"Index\";         var actual = ((ViewResult)controller.Index()).ViewName;         Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual);     }      Obviously I'm being obtuse with this exaggeratedly pointless example, but does anybody have any wisdom to add here? Looking forward to it... Thanks."}
{"_id": "190710", "title": "Can I set the IMEI of a blustacks virtual device?", "text": "Using an app \"Get My IMEI\" I was able to retrieve an invalid IMEI for my bluestack emulator however I can't see how I can change it. The guys at XDA developers forum are talking about it, but it's an old post so I wanted to know if it is possible now? I am building an app that uses IMEI validation and bluestack is the device I use for development on Eclipse. It's way faster than the normal method and I don't need to keep track of the apk version installed or clean it like I would do if I used my physical device. If the device IMEI is already stored in the database I have no problem. The problem is when I have to register the device to the service (front-end) I need a valid IMEI. I know the IMEI can be spoofed like the mac address or the ip but it's just some extra security feature that is added. * * * _I asked the same questionat Stack Overflow but the guys didn't think it had anything to do with programming. So I added the context of what I am trying to do so at this point I don't even know if the question was rejected because I mentioned XDA._"}
{"_id": "197569", "title": "What does Uncle Bob mean by 'noun phrase names'?", "text": "I am reading _Clean Code_ by Uncle Bob. Because I am not a native-English speaker, I couldn't understand following statement: > Classes and objects should have noun or noun phrase names like `Customer`, > `WikiPage`, `Account`, and `AddressParser`. Avoid words like `Manager`, > `Processor`, `Data`, or `Info` in the name of a class. A class name should > not be a verb. As I know, none of the `Manager`, `Processor`, `Data`, and `Info` is a verb, isn't it? What is the actual point he want to emphasize?"}
{"_id": "190719", "title": "The difference between \"concurrent\" and \"parallel\" execution?", "text": "What is the difference between the terms _concurrent_ and _parallel_ execution? I've never quite been able to grasp the distinction. The tag defines concurrency as a manner of running two processes simultaneously, but I thought parallelism was exactly the same thing, i.e.: separate threads or processes which can potentially be run on separate processors. Also, if we consider something like asynchronous I/O, are we dealing with concurrency or parallelism?"}
{"_id": "210806", "title": "Does Java have a built in method to determine if an identifier is legal", "text": "Naming a variable or class, for example, must adhere to certain rules (such as not allowing keywords or reserved words as identifiers) I really don't want to code my own method to do such a thing. Does java have something already built in? My goal is that I am building an expression builder / code generator. It will recognize user specified variables and these must respect java's identifier rules or a warning is presented to user to rename his variable."}
{"_id": "17052", "title": "Mobile application development- suggestions for chosing the platform", "text": "I am planning to build a mobile application (a text editor based app) to primarily use with my symbian device. I have plans to make it commercial too, once its complete. Now the manufacturer (NOKIA) website lists some choices for mobile app development - java, native platform for symbian (using c) and QT. I am aware about the aspects of scaling and extending the app for other platforms. Android is increasing in it's market share like anything, symbian is losing too. Also if i need to get the platform specific functionalities (say reading the contact list or sending an sms) i should be compromising the portability. I was not able to find any comparisons between these portability and platform specific features aspects. If i chose java, i think i could easily port my application for android/iphone and make it commercial. I have no idea how portable the QT platform can be. I do not want to go by Nokia's suggestions since i doubt they are biased to their products(even if they provide excellent developer support) I have to start learning from the beginning, irrespective of whichever platform i chose (except languages) Please advice me if i have assumed something wrong, and your opinion about portability versus platform features. Thanks,   Abhi"}
{"_id": "52623", "title": "First Class Functions", "text": "I started seriously taking a look at Lisp this weekend (by which I mean I have only been learning Lisp and not reverting back to projects in C#) and must say I love it. I have dabbled with other functional languages (F#, Haskell, Erlang) but haven't felt the draw that Lisp has given me. Now as I continue to learn Lisp, I have started wondering why non-functional languages don't support first-class functions. I know that languages such as C# can do similar things with delegates and to an extent you can use pointers to functions in C/C++ but is there a reason why this would never become a feature in those languages? Is there a drawback to making functions first- class? To me, it is extremely useful, so I am lost as to why more languages (outside the functional paradigm) don't implement it. [Edit]I appreciate the responses so far. Since I have been shown that many languages now support first-class functions now, I'll re-phrase the question to be why would it take so long for languages to implement them? [/Edit]"}
{"_id": "52628", "title": "What's the better user experience: Waiting once at startup for a long time or waiting frequently for a short time?", "text": "I'm currently design an application that involves a lot of calculation. Now I have generally two possibilities which I have both tested: 1) During startup of the application I calculated only the most important values and these values that consume a lot of time. So the user has to wait approximately 15 seconds during startup. But on the other hand a lot of user interactions require recalculation so that the user often has to wait 2-3 seconds after clicking somewhere until the application has calculated and loaded all values 2) I load everything during startup. This takes from 90 to 120 seconds... This is quite a long time, but the big advantage is that all the user interactions are executed immediately. So what would you generally consider the better approach? Loading all time- consuming operations during startup or when needed?"}
{"_id": "17059", "title": "What is the difference between \"good\" designers and \"great\" designers?", "text": "While reading this wikipedia article, Brookes has told that there is a difference between \"good\" designers and \"great\" designers. What is the difference between them? How can I decide if a designer is good or great?"}
{"_id": "60719", "title": ".net data access technology", "text": "Iam new with .Net technology and i need a help with choosing correct path of creating application. I want to create application that get its data from web- service and small part from local SQLCE database. Mainly I have problems with database access and making database access clean in code. What .Net technology should i choose to accomplish that in good way with clean and easy to maintained code."}
{"_id": "116056", "title": "What language and topics should be covered when teaching non-CS college students how to program?", "text": "I have been asked by many of my non-computer science friends to teach them how to program. I have agreed to hold a seminar for them that will last for approximately 1 to 2 hours. My thoughts are to use Python as the language to teach them basic programming skills. I figured Python is relatively easier to learn from what I have researched. It is also a language I want to learn which will make holding this seminar all the more enjoyable. The topics I plan to cover are as followed:   1. Variables / Arrays   2. Logic - If else statements, switch case, nested statements   3. Loops - for, while, do-while and nested loops   4. Functions - pass by value, pass by reference (is this the correct terms for Python? I am mostly a C/C++ person)   5. Object Oriented Programming Of course, I plan to have code examples for all topics and I will try to have each example flow into each other so that at the end of the seminar everyone will have a complete working program. I suppose my question is, if you were given 1 to 2 hours to teach a group of college students how to program, what language would you choose and what topics would you cover? Update: Thank you for the great feedback. I should have mentioned in my earlier post above that a majority of the students attending the seminar have some form of programming experience whether it was with Java or using Matlab. Most of these students are 3rd/4th year Engineering students who want to get a refresher on programming before they graduate."}
{"_id": "235505", "title": "Does agile approach support taking a task from a team?", "text": "Can customer take one of tasks during the planning meeting, which was already assigned to this team, and put it to another team? For example because a customer think that the other team will be faster in implementing it? Is it normal for some agile methodologies? If yes, could you, please, provide me with the source of this information(book or web link), because I do not know how to handle it, especially because of team spirit: such a thing can make people in team demotivated and also there can origin some tenses in between these two teams... It is part of some agile methodology and what are the constraints to make this thing?"}
{"_id": "118391", "title": "Backtrack My \"Education\"", "text": "A while ago, I decided to start programming. I really, just jumped into a language (Perl) and went from there. What I regret is that I just jumped in: I didn't learn the basics (if you would call them basics). I didn't learn about Computer Science. This issue, I believe, is holding me back from my true potential. Where should I \"restart\"? Are there any books, articles, etc. that I should read? Are there any topics an experienced programmer should know? What's your advice?"}
{"_id": "90778", "title": "How do I prepare for an 'aptitude for programming' test?", "text": "I have a job interview tomorrow and it's for a junior web developer role. I am really excited about it because I really want to get my foot in the door in this industry. I have been told how the interview will pan out. It will consist of a 45 minute interview with two of their developers and an 'aptitude for programming' test. I am really worried about the 'aptitude for programming' test. Questions I am hoping the stack community can help me out with is:   1. What exactly is this? (as far as I understand it is a written test using a fictional programming language).   2. If you have done this before, either as the interviewer or interviewee, can you give me any advice, hints or help?   3. Are there any online sources that may help with this, i.e. blogs, websites, places I can practice a few online?"}
{"_id": "235506", "title": "Empty superclass for Collection of derived classes", "text": "Basically, what I would like to obtain is a way to iterate through ONE list, and call methods specific to the interface the objects in the collection implement. In my Java project, it would result in something like this:               //GameComponent would be my empty abstract class       HashSet<GameComponent> components = new HashSet<GameComponent>();      components.add(/* instance of a class that extends GameComponent and implements Drawable || Updatable */);            for (Drawable d : components)         d.draw();          for (Updatable u : components)         u.update();      My friends suggested me to just make two separate lists, but that means some objects will be in both lists.   I also think that it makes sense (abstraction-wise) to have one list of GameComponents and iterate through that one list.   But I also don't like having an empty class to inherit from, only for categorisation. So, the question is: does my approach make sense? If so, is it elegant? If not, what pattern could I follow?"}
{"_id": "90776", "title": "How does one securely and privately address security concerns inside code", "text": "I recently finished a practicum for which I desperately need a recommendation from. However when I was working on the code for the public face web-portal I noticed many sql injection possibilities and as well as other things. What bothers me is the complete ignorance of the indevidual managing the code. He wrote much of the code and is completely unaware of what SQL is supposed to be used for. In that manner he also doesn't know how to properly protect against SQL injection and the like. While I was working for the individual I tried to push him in the right direction of looking and seeing how broken the system was. But I really need a good recomendation for a job and didn't wish to upset him. The office is also a very close-knit office and there was no-one I felt would understand the severe need for code review. Why I feel that this issue must be addressed is because they system was for a School district to manage student records very personal student records. We (the developers including another student) had access to a clone of the live database for testing purposes and there my little brother is set to enroll in that school district next year. The lead developer is somewhat good at programming but with the lack of understanding regarding SQL and relation databases the system will be exploited and most likely within the next year as it's being rolled out district wide. I really feel I should have said something to someone. :( Besides phoning up the supervisor and asking him to do something what can I legally do. Can I phone the RCMP (I'm Canadian) and ask them to investigate (I know that's dumb but this is verging on criminal negligence)."}
{"_id": "112536", "title": "Should I get a service-oriented architecture certification?", "text": "In my place of work, we have a number of applications that seem to interact in a rather ad-hoc, haphazard way, and I feel I need to understand system integration better. I'm currently deciding whether to do an SOA School Profesional Certification. The certifications are well recognised, but from what I've read of them, I'm a bit concerned that even after I've passed the exams, I won't really be in a position to implement what I've learned, or that the information won't be hugely useful in my day to day job as a developer. It all seems a bit too theoretical. Will it be any practical use to me? Also, I've heard the 150 page booklet that costs $300 is not enough to prepare you for the exam. Is this correct? **Edit** Really, what this comes down to is whether SOA is really going to be the answer to my integration problems. At the moment, it seems to be the de facto answer."}
{"_id": "112530", "title": "Is it possible for two DLLs to conflict , preventing solution to build", "text": "Though I have a specific case, but I was wondering about the general situation. Can two DLLs, when added as Reference to a Visual C# project collide with each other to prevent the solution from building? If this is the case, what are the possible ways to mitigate this."}
{"_id": "54663", "title": "What are some high quality Enterprise Architecture conferences or training programs?", "text": "I am looking for a conference or training which will give me a broad exposure to enterprise level software architecture. I've been with the same company for 10 years and we've grown to the size where we really need to lay out a framework for the applications which support our company's business. The organic growth over the last 10 years has left us with a tightly coupled and fairly messy set of applications. We need to do a better job at componentizing our business entities and have more rigorous control on the interfaces between those entities and our business processes. I'm looking to get a broad, yet practical exposure on design patterns to support that architecture (SOA, messaging, ESB's etc). I'm hoping to gain insight from folks who have direct experience with implementing or working with what would be considered an enterprise class architecture."}
{"_id": "20542", "title": "How do you get into the zone? How long does it take? What steps do you take before?", "text": "Getting into zone is a pleasurable and fruitful process. We produce good source code and we get lots of satisfaction from our work done while being in the zone. But, how does one get into the 'zone'? Do you follow a specific process? Apart from switching of email system, mobiles and other mundane non- productive applications, is there anything else that can be done?"}
{"_id": "115628", "title": "How to divide work among development team members in a website project using MVC pattern", "text": "I am working on a webapp project using flask framework and sqlalchemy orm in python. Its the first time I am working on a project like this and I am having trouble in how to divide work properly among my teammates. We are 5 guys, one is handling designing, two front end and 2 on backend. I am on the backend. Flask follows MVC type pattern. How does teams divide work in MVC pattern? Moreover I am more confused in dividing work with my team mate in backend. Should one handle all the database queries and let the other one handle processing on those returned results? Need some advise on work division in web projects."}
{"_id": "143842", "title": "Why is there no here document syntax in .Net?", "text": "* Is it considered bad form? Maybe it promotes non-separate model / view?   * Is it inefficient?   * Was it just left out? I guess every language has features that certain developers wish were there, and not every language can have everything. I've just always found this feature to be pretty handy. Why does .Net not have a here document syntax?"}
{"_id": "115620", "title": "How does one minimize or prevent User lawsuits?", "text": "I work in a bunch of tools that do things to customer's computers. Some of these tools allow scripting, which allows someone to run a script to nuke files, registry keys, or the like. Of course, if the script is bad, or if there's a serious bug in the tool, it could cause damage to the person's system. I'm concerned that a user might become... angry... with me if something goes wrong. How do I minimize the likelihood of being sued as a result of publishing such a tool?"}
{"_id": "143847", "title": "Adding dynamic business logic/business process checks to a system", "text": "I'm wondering if there is a good extant pattern (language here is Python/Django but also interested on the more abstract level) for creating a business logic layer that can be created without coding. For example, suppose that a house rental should only be available during a specific time. A coder might create the following class:               from bizlogic import rules, LogicRule     from orders.models import Order          class BeachHouseAvailable(LogicRule):              def check(self, reservation):             house = reservation.house_reserved             if not (house.earliest_available < reservation.starts < house.latest_available )                 raise RuleViolationWhen(\"Beach house is available only between %s and %s\" % (house.earliest_available, house.latest_available))             return True          rules.add(Order, BeachHouseAvailable, name=\"BeachHouse Available\")      This is fine, but I don't want to have to code something like this each time a new rule is needed. I'd like to create something dynamic, ideally something that can be stored in a database. The thing is, it would have to be flexible enough to encompass a wide variety of rules:   * avoiding duplicates/overlaps (to continue the example \"You already have a reservation for this time/location\")   * logic rules (\"You can't rent a house to yourself\", \"This house is in a different place from your chosen destination\")   * sanity tests (\"You've set a rental price that's 10x the normal rate. Are you sure this is the right price?\" Things like that. Before I recreate the wheel, I'm wondering if there are already methods out there for doing something like this."}
{"_id": "80316", "title": "Online Computer Science BS Degree?", "text": "Does anyone know of a good online undergraduate Computer Science program? My girlfriend is almost done her Masters of Science in Nursing online at Vanderbilt. All her courses are online, she does clinicals at local hospitals and private practices, and flies to Nashville for a long weekend every couple of months. I've been looking for something similar for Computer Science, but can only seem to find programs at scam schools. If it's possible to get the credentials which will give you the ability to suture and prescribe narcotics online, shouldn't computer science be handled similarly? Yes, I am aware of the social implications (e.g. college is a great place to meet people, develop as a person, etc...). I did attend a traditional college, and have about 85 credits. The difficulty is, my business started making money, so I'm too busy to attend scheduled courses. The university wouldn't work with me, at all, so I stopped going. I see value in having a degree, and would like to finish, but it has to be on my time."}
{"_id": "80311", "title": "How do you define a node and an edge when talking about McCabes Complexity?", "text": "I am trying to understand the formula, but I am a bit in doubt how exactly you define edges and nodes. Edges seem to be every possible exit from a statement and nodes seem to be statements, is this definition wrong?"}
{"_id": "80312", "title": "What are the dangerous corners of Qt?", "text": "There's nothing perfect under the sun. Qt is no exception, and it does have limitations: we can't use pixmaps in a thread other than GUI, we can't use QImage with 16-bit-per-channel image format, etc.. Which situations have forced you to spoil the design because of Qt's limitations?   What are the most hated quirks?   **Which design decisions should one avoid while using Qt in his projects?**"}
{"_id": "137002", "title": "Grid framework for CSS", "text": "I see there are large number of grid frameworks in CSS like 960, heroku grid, etc being used by huge websites. I want to know whether using grid structure is really useful? If yes, then how? One of the biggest problem I saw with grid is **having equal heights for elements**. If we are using three grids like `grid_2`, `grid_7`, `grid_3` for 3 vertical panels then it becomes very difficult to have these three panels positioned in a way such that they have equal heights and all of them change height when any of the content exapnds or collapse. This is because elements are floated in grid system and they don't change height along with neighbouring element."}
{"_id": "38642", "title": "Understanding Abstract Data Types (ADTs)", "text": "Just browsing through Code Complete last night and I came across the explanation of abstract data types. I must have read it 5 times, and the Wikipedia article doesn't help much either. So what I'm looking for is a simple explanation of exactly **what is an Abstract Data Type**? Any solid examples? In C# or VB? I understand that String is supposed to be one, why is this? And why isn't Int32 one? Or is it? Any pointers much appreciated."}
{"_id": "167806", "title": "What is a good way to keep track of strings for dictionary lookups?", "text": "I am working through the Windows 8 app tutorial. They have some code about saving app data like so:                private void NameInput_TextChanged(object sender, TextChangedEventArgs e)             {                 Windows.Storage.ApplicationDataContainer roamingSettings =                      Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.RoamingSettings;                 roamingSettings.Values[\"userName\"] = nameInput.Text;             }      I have worked with C# in the past and found that things like using constant string values (like \"userName\" in this case) for keys could get messy because auto-complete did not work and it was easy to forget if I had made an entry for a setting before and what it was called. So if I don't touch code for awhile I end up accidentally creating multiple entries for the same value that are named slightly differently. Surely there is a better way to keep track of the strings that key to those values. What is a good solution to this problem?"}
{"_id": "167807", "title": "what are some good interview questions for a position that consists of reviewing code for security vulnerabilities?", "text": "The position is an entry-level position that consists of reading C++ code and identifying lines of code that are vulnerable to buffer overflows, out-of- bounds reads, uncontrolled format strings, and a bunch of other CWE's. We don't expect the average candidate to be knowledgeable in the area of software security nor do we expect him or her to be an expert computer programmer; we just expect them to be able to read the code and correctly identify vulnerabilities. I guess I could ask them the typical interview questions: reverse a string, print a list of prime numbers, etc, but I'm not sure that their ability to write code under pressure (or lack thereof) tells me anything about their ability to read code. Should I instead focus on testing their knowledge of C++? Ask them if they understand what a pointer is and how bitwise operators work? My only concern about asking that kind of question is that I might unfairly weed out people who don't happen to have the knowledge but have the ability to acquire it. After all, it's not like they will be writing a single line of code, and it's not like we are looking only for people who already know C++, since we are willing to train the right candidate. (It is true that I could ask those questions only to those candidates who claim to know C++, but I'd like to give the same \"test\" to everyone.) Should I just focus on trying to get an idea of their level of intelligence? In other words, should I get them to talk and pay attention to the way they articulate their thoughts, and so on?"}
{"_id": "167802", "title": "How important is it for a programmer to know how to implement a QuickSort/MergeSort algorithm from memory?", "text": "I was reviewing my notes and stumbled across the implementation of different sorting algorithms. As I attempted to make sense of the implementation of QuickSort and MergeSort, it occurred to me that although I do programming for a living and consider myself decent at what I do, I have neither the photographic memory nor the sheer brainpower to implement those algorithms without relying on my notes. All I remembered is that some of those algorithms are stable and some are not. Some take O(nlog(n)) or O(n^2) time to complete. Some use more memory than others... I'd feel like I don't deserve this kind of job if it weren't because my position doesn't require that I use any sorting algorithm other than those found in standard APIs. I mean, how many of you have a programming position where it actually is essential that you can remember or come up with this kind of stuff on your own?"}
{"_id": "167808", "title": "Instantiating Interfaces in C#?", "text": "I am reading/learning about interfaces in C# at the moment, and thus far I managed to understand how it differs from an abstract class. In the book I am reading the author explains that interfaces are the ultimate abstract class and that it simply sets the standard of certain methods the inheriting class will have, but then provides the following example.               static void Main(string[] args)     {     ...     Circle c = new Circle(\"Lisa\");     IPointy itPt = null;     try     {     itPt = (IPointy)c;     Console.WriteLine.(itPt.Points);     }     catch (InvalidCastException e)     {      Console.WriteLine(e.Message);     }     ...     }      The line that absolutely throws me off is the `IPointy itfPt=null;` did he just declare an interface? I thought interfaces are abstract and can only be inherited? What kind of sorcery is going on here?"}
{"_id": "216403", "title": "How can a website look different in safari Windows and Safari mac?", "text": "I have a website. I've been testing crossbrowser on my windows PC, and it looks good in all browsers, but on Mac in Safari it looks like the CSS is not getting interpreted right, or there is a critical javascript error. When I look in the console cross-browser, the error log shows exactly the same. Chrome on mac interprets the site as intended, so why do I have a problem with safari? It is the same across different computers, and iphone safari also shows the site wrong. How is this possible and how do I debug?"}
{"_id": "57814", "title": "Should we use RSS or Atom for feed generation?", "text": "For various reasons we are required to add feeds to our product. The main reason is to be able to say to potential buyers that \"yes, we have feeds\". We do not actually expect the feature to be used that much. Ideally we would like to provide both RSS and Atom feeds. However, at the moment we are severely pressed for time and are forced to select just one of these. Should we use Atom or RSS? Feature-wise we are fine with either, so I am only looking for information about the popularity and support for the various formats. Are there many feed readers out there without Atom support? EDIT:   The reason we only want to implement one format is not related to generating the actual feeds. That in itself will not be very time consuming. It is more of a UI problem. If we implement both Atom and RSS, we need to present the user with a UI where he/she can select between the different formats. For usability purposes we would also need help texts, tooltips etc. to make sure that the user can understand the different options. And since our product is localized into multiple languages all of the above would need to be translated, and someone has to pay for that. It all adds up and becomes a lot more work. If we settle on a single format we only need one button with a tooltip pointing to an .aspx with the feed. Besides, it is not my decision anyway. :) Someone above me has already decided that this functionality will be implemented for this release."}
{"_id": "216406", "title": "Since Garbage Collection is non-deterministic, why isn't it used for secure random number generation?", "text": "I get that /dev/random is a good source of entropy, and is what is usually used-- It's just as I'm reading up on GC, at least in Java, it seems accepted that the garbage collection daemon executes non-deterministically. If this it true, why don't we use the timing of the garbage collection as a source of entropy instead of the variable /dev/random?"}
{"_id": "95113", "title": "Has anyone used \"Design Pattern Framework (TM)\"?", "text": "Has anyone purchased Design Pattern FrameworkTM? Are these samples worth investment? Are they practical? What are the pro and cons of the guidelines? Anyone used this in the real-world development?"}
{"_id": "67298", "title": "What do you do when there is a last minute request to exclude a feature from a release?", "text": "There is a feature that has already passed acceptance testing, both internally and by the customer. It is a fully working feature. However, there is now a request to exclude this feature from an upcoming release. According to the customer, this feature should be removed because the users have not been trained on how to use it. What is the best course of action to handle this situation? Should we design software in anticipation that a feature might be excluded last minute using configuration settings? Are there context-dependent solutions that might be more correct in some situations than others?"}
{"_id": "67291", "title": "What do programmers at security firms do?", "text": "I have heard of security firms who consult on the security of a clients systems. All of the people I know in this field are network engineers, but I know programmers get involved in security as well. What do security programmers who perform audits/consulting actually do? Do they literally go through the codebase looking for every vulnerability in people\u2019s legacy systems? I have always assumed that is what they did, but it seems like this would be highly unreliable and not do much more than providing a false sense of security. Note: I\u2019m not talking about programmers who write encryption algorithms or anything like that, only those concerned with software security audits/consulting."}
{"_id": "198275", "title": "Extracting domain logic from the forms to which they are coupled?", "text": "Many applications do nothing to separate the interface from domain logic. I\u2019ve been programming for a couple decades and have worked at more than a dozen shops and none of them have taken any measure of separating the interface from the domain logic. That is, they're all using the Autonomous View pattern. This runs counter to all the wisdom I\u2019ve read about separating concerns. When the user needs to choose an item from a set of items, that selection is directly tied to a combo box rather than an abstraction. A huge drawback with all this coupling is that it makes it impossible to write unit tests. To run any unit tests the application in its entirety must first be loaded. In my mind, the use case should be encapsulated within an abstraction that can later have a database and an interface attached to it. This kind of separation would make implementing unit tests trivial by comparison. Given that the average shop has its interface and domain logic tightly coupled, how to we refactor to separation? That is, a complete rewrite is off the table. What I\u2019m talking about is taking a proposal to management about how to go about creating domain objects (whatever these happen to look like) that live in isolation from the database and the interface. In other words, it would be useful to be able to explain how this concept of presenting the user with a choice (something that is now represented by combos on forms) and to see how some methodology/framework/pattern represents that in an abstract sense and how that abstraction is then tied to the interface. This would make replacing combos with listboxes nothing more than a slight detail. What are some good ways for extracting abstractions (domain use cases) from forms? Any good online resources? My current shop is on .NET, though I am interested in ideas from any development platform. Ultimately, what I need to provide is a concrete example (code) of how this might be accomplished."}
{"_id": "168354", "title": "Do we ethically have the right to use the MAC Address for verification purposes?", "text": "I am writing a program, or starting at the very beginning of it, and I am thinking of purchase verification systems as a final step. I will be catering to Macs, PCs, and possibly Linux if all is said and done. I will also be programming this for smartphones as well using C++ and Objective-C. (I am writing a blueprint before going head first into it) That being said, I am not asking for help on doing it yet, but what I\u2019m looking for is a realistic measurement for what could be expected as a viable and ethical option for purchase verification systems. Apple through the Apple Store, and some other stores out there have their own \"You bought it\" check. I am looking to use a three prong verification system.   1. Email/password   2. 16 to 32 character serial number using alpha/numeric and symbols with Upper and lowercase variants.   3. MAC Address.  The first two are in my mind ok, but I have to ask on an ethical standpoint, is a MAC Address to lock the software to said hardware unethical, or is it smart? I understand if an Ethernet card changes if not part of the logic board, or if the logic board changes so does the MAC address, so if that changes it will have to be re-verified, but I have to ask with how everything is today. Is it ethical to actually use the MAC address as a validation key or no? Should I be forward with this kind of verification system or should I keep it hidden as a secret? Yes I know hackers and others will find ways of knowing what I am doing, but in reality this is why I am asking. I know no verification is foolproof, but making it so that its harder to break is something I've always been interested in, and learning how to program is bringing up these questions, because I don't want to assume one thing and find out it's not really accepted in the programming world as a \"you shouldn't do that\" maneuver. I am just learning how to program, and I am just making sure I'm not breaking some ethical programmer credo I shouldn't."}
{"_id": "168358", "title": "technique for checking modifications in configuration file while starting up a program", "text": "I'm writing a software for periodically checking a specific range of networked devices' reach-ability. I'm specifying the address range and the time frequency for checking their reachability, in an xml file. Which technique can I use to check that xml file during the start up of the program for any modifications done in either the range or the frequency and do the necessary update in specific database?"}
{"_id": "109357", "title": "When a team size gets over 10, can you still do release planning together?", "text": "When deciding what to work on for the next release, and estimating timings for each user story (and sub tasks for a given story), do you guys do this in a group or just managers? For a team size of 10, is this practical? How long does it take?"}
{"_id": "667", "title": "Writing a style guide, what are the best examples for breaking long lines?", "text": "You are writing a style guide and you are at the chapter about breaking long lines. What would be the best examples of long lines to demonstrate your rules of breaking long lines. The examples should be in a c-like syntax. I think it is best to keep the examples more or less language agnostic. You can use language specific features for extreme long lines like the many modifiers in java, the implements clause or the throws clause. Note: this is not about the rules of how to break long lines. This is about collecting the best examples for the rules of how to break long lines. I have prepared a question for the rules, but i wanted to collect the best examples first. Please not break your long line, at least not much. just break it as much so that it is readable in this website. You can break your long line to your hearts content in this question once we have a good set of example lines. One example per answer please."}
{"_id": "72144", "title": "Does anyone have any experience with scene7 image server?", "text": "Scene7 is Adobe's image server. It seems like many people are using it. We are considering using it. I want to know the developers experience. Was a pain to develop with or did it make things easier? What experiences have you had?"}
{"_id": "72147", "title": "What are the benefits of not having logic within integration tests?", "text": "In the excellent http://artofunittesting.com/, i saw recommendation to keep logic out of unit tests. Does this hold true for functional/integration tests?"}
{"_id": "10920", "title": "How to choose a research discipline in Computer Science?", "text": "I got my bachelor's degree in CS five years ago and after that I've been working as software engineer building Voice Over IP (VOIP) or Video Surveillance System. But now for some personal reason I feel that I would like go back to get a PhD degree. But now, the problem is, I am not quite sure which branch of Computer Science I should choose. As most of my working experience is related to multimedia, perhaps professors who study that would be more willing to accept my application. However, I am not quite sure if multimedia is still popular research domain in North America. And if there are not too much works left in this domain, what are other possible choices. I am also interested in programming languages, but I don't know if programming languages could be considered a research area. Another important question is, after I have decided in which domain I would like to study. How can I find most influential research results in this area to get an overview of it? In other words, since there must be plenty of papers in a domain, how can I know which I should read. BTW: If you happened to be a PhD student in Computer Science, what kind of skills or personality do you think your professors prefer? (This last question might be too subjective, so please ignore it if you feel it's ridiculous) Thanks a lot!"}
{"_id": "72140", "title": "If you use multiple computers, how do you sync everything?", "text": "I have like 4 or 5 computers now, and I need a better system for syncing everything. I use git and github a lot to sync my files for programming projects, but then there are databases, .bash_profile files, bash scripts, etc. Sometimes, instead of syncing files, I just ssh in from one computer to another. But this is getting fairly chaotic. Some of my computers are Ubuntu and others are OS X. Any suggestions for managing a workflow that spans multiple personal computers?"}
{"_id": "196389", "title": "Architecting Python application consisting of many small scripts", "text": "I am building an application which, at the moment, consists of many small Python scripts. Each Python script processes items from one Amazon SQS queue. Emails come into an initial queue and are processed by a script, and typically the script will do a small unit of processing (for example, parse email and store some database fields), then an item will be placed on the next queue for further processing, until eventually the email has finished going through the various scripts and queues. What I like about this approach is that it is very loosely coupled. However, I'm not sure how I should implement live. Should I make each script a daemon which is constantly polling its inbound queue for things to do? Or should there be some overarching orchestration program or process? Or maybe I should not have lots of small Python scripts but one large application? Specific questions: How should I run each of these scripts - as a daemon with some sort or restart monitor to restart them in case they stop for any reason? If yes, should I have some program which orchestrates this? Or is the idea of many small script not a good one, would it make more sense to have a larger python program which contains all the functionality and does all the queue polling and execution of functionality for each queue? What is the current preferred approach to daemonising Python scripts? Broadly I would welcome any comments or opinions on any aspect of this. thanks"}
{"_id": "196384", "title": "How do I tell a user that bps means bits per second or bytes per second?", "text": "I'm writing an application that deals with the network and the hard drive. For the network portion, the application measures in bits per second, while the disk portion measures in bytes per second. This becomes an issue as they both are abbreviated `b/s` or `bps` everywhere I've seen. How could I inform the user that one means _bits_ per second, while the other means _bytes_ per second? If I were writing a specification, I could just add a footnote, but as this is an application, I can't do that. So, my question is **How do I tell a user that one means bits per second while the other means bytes per second and how would I style the lettering (i.e. megabinarybytes is MiB, but what is megabinarybits)?**"}
{"_id": "115085", "title": "What sort of wiki or other solution can be used to put updates/software changes in our office?", "text": "We use sourcesafe to keep all of our code up to date in what we do in our office, but it's getting to the point where we need to write a few notes and attach different versions of our code for different things (mainly webapps, asp.net) Is there a wiki out there designed for this? Ive looked at Trac but i'm not sure it's best for the job. We really just need somewhere where we can login and see okay x did a release to our main server on y with z changes. We could make one but don't really have the time at the moment. Any suggestions? Thanks a lot, Tom"}
{"_id": "218467", "title": "How to configure these REST API Resources", "text": "I'm still in the design phase of my REST API, and I'm a bit stuck on how to configure the resources. The API will be consumed by mobile devices (Android, iOS, and Windows). Communication through HTTPS. These are the features the API will support:   1. View a list of previous reservations    2. View a previous reservation   3. Create a new reservation   4. Create a new anonymous reservation I was thinking of naming my resources as following:   1. api/users/{id}/reservations (GET)   2. api/users/{id}/reservations/{id} (GET)   3. api/users/{id}/reservations (POST)   4. api/users/0/reservations (POST) I'm not sure if the resource for 4 is a good design? Also 1, 2, 3 require a user to have an account and be authenticated. Authentication will be done using an access-token. This means the user has to log in every X period. Is it bad to store the user id on the device so it is able to perform requests where the user id is required? Or should I just remove the /users/ part from the resource and have the server decide based on the access-token which user is trying to perform a specific action? The REST API will be built using ASP.NET MVC4."}
{"_id": "29697", "title": "browser syntax highlighting", "text": "I find myself reluctant to read code without syntax highlighting. On an almost daily basis, I end up downloading or copy-pasting large blocks of code from a browser window into vim just for the sake of seeing it in color. Is there a more elegant solution? is there a plugin for firefox or chrome that allows me to apply syntax highlighting to any page?"}
{"_id": "223584", "title": "Using Ubuntu for commercial software development", "text": "I am plaining to use Ubuntu for developing Android and php application which I will sell in market. As far as I understand Ubuntu falls under GNU GPL license. In this case do I need to make my source code open for all?"}
{"_id": "29692", "title": "What's RAII? Examples?", "text": "Always when the term RAII is used, people are actually talking about deconstruction instead of initialisation ... I think I have a basic understanding what it might mean but I'm not quite sure. Also: is C++ the only RAII language? What about Java or C#/.NET? or is C++/CLI not RAII anymore?"}
{"_id": "114978", "title": "Recommendations for teaching kids math concepts & skills for programming?", "text": "I've got two very bright kids who are showing interest in learning programming. Of course their primary goal is to develop video games. They have decided they want to be game developers when they finish their schooling! However, I seem to have been reading a lot lately about how software companies are frustrated with the level of math skills in their job candidates - apparently schools are not teaching math adequately for programming. There are already other questions about how to teach programming to kids but I'm more specifically interested here in improving kids relevant MATH concepts & skills. What specific suggestions can you give? Just for the record, I'm not seeking to force math on them as a chore rather I'm wondering if there's something enjoyable I could get them to do and they could learn from it at the same time (e.g. similar to how Lego Mindstorms gets recommended for teaching kids programming). Mind you, if someone recommended some great math book that helped their kid that would be great too."}
{"_id": "238668", "title": "Writing a spell checker similar to \"did you mean\"", "text": "I'm hoping to write a spellchecker for search queries in a web application - not unlike Google's \"Did you mean?\" The algorithm will be loosely based on this: http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2006T13 In short, it generates correction candidates and scores them on how often they appear (along with adjacent words in the search query) in an enormous dataset of known n-grams - Google Web 1T - which contains well over 1 billion 5-grams. I'm not using the Web 1T dataset, but building my n-gram sets from my own documents - about 200k docs, and I'm estimating tens or hundreds of millions of n-grams will be generated. This kind of process is pushing the limits of my understanding of basic computing performance - can I simply load my n-grams into memory in a hashtable or dictionary when the app starts? Is the only limiting factor the amount of memory on the machine? Or am I barking up the wrong tree? Perhaps putting all my n-grams in a graph database with some sort of tree query optimisation? Could that ever be fast enough?"}
{"_id": "114971", "title": "Purely technical reasons for PHP as a first choice?", "text": "I know this may come off as a flame-y / troll-y, but I hope you will take my word for it that it's not my intention. I am just trying to understand the PHP phenomenon. After looking at the many technical issues with the language design of PHP, I am hard pressed to find any redeeming technical advantages where PHP surpasses all other languages. Before coming to the conclusion that there would simply be no reason to choose PHP as a development language **on purely technical grounds** , I would like to ask, if all non-technical factors were equal (such as what language the developers already know, what languages the hosting provider offers, language of existing code, cost, license, corporate fiat, etc.), would there be any type of **new** software system that would indicate making PHP a first choice for development? If so, what technical advantage does PHP have over **all** other languages that would cause you to choose it? **EDIT:** I am not interested in comparing PHP \"out of the box\" with other languages \"out of the box\". If PHP has a certain feature \"out of the box\" that another language has only after installing some readily available add-on, that is **not** considered an advantage for PHP for the purposes of this question."}
{"_id": "78795", "title": "Best representation for relative dates & durations", "text": "I use ISO 8601 to represent dates & durations and all is OK. But now I need to represent relative dates and durations like:   * The date for first day, at midnight, of the next week    * All the last month period. In fact I need to have a syntax for it, I prefer a standard one. I don't need code (I yet have all the code) but a syntax to store relatives date or durations just like ISO 8601 use \"P1Y2M10DT2H30M\" for a duration. Thanks..."}
{"_id": "91918", "title": "Cost of heavy autoloading in PHP applications?", "text": "I have an application which does heavy autoloading, meaning, that only two classes are \"included\" directly. For every module tha the application has (total like 14 modules), that module defines an autoloader. However, I wanted to know if is too time expensive to load all classes using autoloaders and what could I do to speed it up. As a side note, at this point I'm not experiencing a slow application, I'm just trying to predict if it could happen. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "72492", "title": "Grateful for opinions on Language and Framework for my Windows Application", "text": "I have read some related questions on this site, including: What language should I seek to learn if I would like to develop for Windows   and How to start programming in Windows but feel that my situation is slightly different and I have a few other questions that I would like some opinions on. I'm a mature student doing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. I have to choose an idea for my final year project pretty soon. I have my mind set on producing a specific Windows software product (desktop application - web enabled) when I leave uni, and see my final year project as an opportunity to get a head start on this. In particular I want to tackle all the hard parts such as networking and security. I'm not really concerned at the moment with cross-platform compatability, because the market for this product all use Windows, but I need to choose the language and framework that I should use pretty soon. I'm certified in Java (OCPJP (used to be SCJP)) and at uni we've been using Java, C and Occam (uurrghh). However, I was thinking of learning C++ so that I could use the Qt framework which looks pretty good. I do have some concerns though. Would it be quicker to use C#, rather than C++ and Qt? What would the advantages be of using Qt? I'm hoping it will make development quick and will make my software secure and difficult to crack. I am aware that I have to pay for the privilege (I do not want to use the option which is free, as I would have to make my source code available). If I use C#, then I will learn the .NET framework which is basically a lot of helper classes to speed Windows development, is that correct? I understand that I can use quite a few different languages with .NET and they'll all get compiled into the same intermediate language. What's the difference between the Microsoft Foundation Class Library and the Windows Presentation Foundation? Does anyone know the advantages of using either one? I don't think the software will be uber complex. I have professionally used 4 different products of the type that I want to make (I'm a mature student) and the actual processing part does not have to be cutting edge because the demand is never that great for even pretty low powered modern computers (obviously I will still try to be efficient), but the overall design and usability was suprising lacking in most of them and I'm hoping to do better. I just want to make sure that it looks good and that I can develop it quickly. Should I continue reading Ivor Horton's Visual C++ which covers C++, basics of Windows programming, Windows Forms and the Microsoft Foundation Classes? Or does someone have a better suggestion. Limited time available so I need to decide on the tools I'm going to use for the finished product now. I'm very sorry that this post is so long, but it's very important to me to get some good advice on this. Many thanks :) Edit: Good article on StackOverflow Another Edit: Is memory management something which is automatic when developing with C++/Qt? I understand that if you're using .NET with C++, then it's all garbage collected."}
{"_id": "72495", "title": ".NET Properties - Use Private Set or ReadOnly Property?", "text": "In what situation should I use a Private Set on a property versus making it a ReadOnly property? Take into consideration the two very simplistic examples below. First example:               Public Class Person              Private _name As String              Public Property Name As String             Get                 Return _name             End Get             Private Set(ByVal value As String)                 _name = value             End Set         End Property              Public Sub WorkOnName()                  Dim txtInfo As TextInfo = _                 Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo                  Me.Name = txtInfo.ToTitleCase(Me.Name)              End Sub          End Class          // ----------          public class Person     {         private string _name;         public string Name         {             get { return _name; }             private set { _name = value; }         }              public void WorkOnName()         {             TextInfo txtInfo = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo;             this.Name = txtInfo.ToTitleCase(this.Name);         }     }      Second example:               Public Class AnotherPerson              Private _name As String              Public ReadOnly Property Name As String             Get                 Return _name             End Get         End Property              Public Sub WorkOnName()                  Dim txtInfo As TextInfo = _                 Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo                  _name = txtInfo.ToTitleCase(_name)              End Sub          End Class          // ---------------          public class AnotherPerson     {         private string _name;         public string Name         {             get { return _name; }         }              public void WorkOnName()         {             TextInfo txtInfo = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo;             _name = txtInfo.ToTitleCase(_name);         }     }      They both yield the same results. Is this a situation where there's no right and wrong, and it's just a matter of preference?"}
{"_id": "256110", "title": "Developing linux p2p applications", "text": "I have been tossing the idea around in the old noggin of creating a simple p2p chat application that would run in a linux environment and possibly be written in C. It's been awhile since I have written an application that wasn't a web app and I have been wanting to do more with C. I have always been curious just how p2p applications function so I figure this would be a nice way to further my understanding of both the C programming language and the architecture of p2p apps. The only problem is I'm not quite sure where to start. I have done a bit of initial research and found the following C library for p2p applications here. Right now my questions would be:   1. What else should I research before starting the project?   2. Does anyone know of any other C libraries for p2p applications?   3. Does anyone have any good links or know of good books on p2p protocols? My final goal for this would be to have an executable that two people could open on their system and communicate back and forth...simple I know, but education is my primary goal here. Any other information on the topic is also greatly appreciated! Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "107305", "title": "How to pay more attention to detail as a developer?", "text": "Are there any resources for paying more attention to detail as a software developer? (Especially edge cases, or small mistakes in code, details in the problem description, ramifications for certain changes to a large system) Some thoughts so far:   \\- Books of some sort?   \\- Exercise of some sort (e.g. just solving math problems [a professor during undergrad mentioned math teaches attention to detail..although another said assembly language programming teaches detail too...])?   \\- Some type of method for decomposing problems/thinking to force attention to every detail?   \\- Some way of noting down details so as not to forget them later Example of what I mean: Someone said a good question to ask a prospective developer how many 7's between 0 and 100. I did it quickly and thought of 10, forgetting about 70-76 and 78-79. Basically it's just a lack of attention to detail.... Another example is during a white board coding interview, there was an easy problem and while the initial version was correct, as we kept making it more efficient I kept making more and more small mistakes. Once pointed out it was easy for me to fix them, but it was embarrassing to have them pointed out by the interviewer instead of me finding the issues on my own and fixing them. Another example is just compiling code. Initially I would write code, go over it once before compiling and catch many errors. Now I miss many more errors and the compiler (or interpreter) finds many more errors than it used to. Also I noticed that when I first came out of undergrad it was much easier to hang onto tons of detail where as now even the detail that I initially knew I seem to forget more as time goes on. Which is why in addition to paying attention to detail for new problems I could also use resources for keeping track of detail from older problems without having to rely on memory."}
{"_id": "67878", "title": "How to approach documentation translation for an open source project?", "text": "I'm going to start a little open source project with some friends from all over the world. As I know that one of most important things in open source projects is to help users use the project itself, I want to make some wiki/tutorials/whatever in different languages. What are best tools or way to think/act in general for managing translations? Can you give me some advice?"}
{"_id": "187011", "title": "ASP.NET Mvc3 - application/request lifetime and dependency injection", "text": "I thought of asking on SO, but it seems this is more of a \"concept\" type question than a \"problem\" type question. If it needs to be moved, please do so. Anyway, I'm having a tough time finding straight info on this. I'm using Unity.Mvc3 to setup dependency injection for controllers and other components the controllers might use. From what I understand from the Unity.Mvc3 website, anything that is `IDisposable` will be disposed at the end of the request from the container if it is registered with a `HierarchicalLifetimeManager`. Does that mean that things registered with the `ContainerControlledLifetimeManager` will be registered as the same instance for all requests for as long as the server/application is running? Can I register an instance using the `HierarchicalLifetimeManager` or does it have to be a type? How do the application/session/request lifetimes work? I ask, because I come from PHP and PHP has no scope outside the request, so this is obviously something I need to get a hang of."}
{"_id": "187016", "title": "Wrote an application for a friend. Who is the owner of the software?", "text": "Friend asked me to develop a software application for him. I did and he paid me. There was no written contract. I live in UK and he resides in Canada. My question is: who is the owner of the software now? Can my friend make and sell copies without my permission? Can I do the same? I'm asking this because another person also wants to buy it, but friend insists on receiving some kind of sale commission, because the software was originally written at his request."}
{"_id": "145857", "title": "What toolkit to use for card game?", "text": "I'm new at this and I was wondering if someone could suggest the most appropriate API to use to make a card game that is:   * cross-platform   * two-player   * peer-to-peer   * capable of laying out cards (png files)   * open-source   * beginner-friendly (well documented) If it helps to give a better answer, the game is based on _Set_ : http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm ### Edit 1 This will be a standalone client application using C#, or any other suitable language for cross-platform GUI-based applications (e.g., Ruby, Java & Swing, Python). ### Edit 2 There are a number of toolkits listed at:   * http://content.gpwiki.org/index.php/Game_Engines This helps, but which toolkit would be most suitable?"}
{"_id": "224142", "title": "What algorithm should I use to find the shortest path in this graph", "text": "I have a problem about the calculation of shortest paths on an unweighted and undirected graph. Which algorithm I use to calculate the shortest path between a node A and node B that passing through a node C on an undirected and unweighted graph?"}
{"_id": "224141", "title": "In ASP.NET MVC/Razor, how to add initializer JavaScript to a \"control\"?", "text": "Actually, I already have at least 3 different solutions for the problem, I just don't like any of them for various reasons. In ASP.NET MVC/Razor, there are no controls anymore, in the sense as they were in ASP.NET. An ASCX control used to be view+controller intertwined, so I get it. Instead we have html helpers that emit strings, html fragments. Let's say I want to create a helper method in a library that creates a jQuery UI date picker. First solution. I just write a method that first creates a textbox (actually I can just call `TextBoxFor` because it does the same thing for me), then it creates a small JavaScript code fragment that calls `$('#textboxid').datepicker()`. Then I can call that in my Razor views and it works. I don't like the fact that view-related stuff is done in code, and not in Razor, but all default editor templates are like that, sadly. I don't like the fact that there will be lots of small script fragments after each textbox in the output html. And my code fragment can get complex, if that initializer JS had many parameters, it would look ugly, there would be string escape issues, etc. Microsoft is pushing unobtrusive JavaScript architecture. I could just put a CSS marker class on my textbox, add some data-attributes if needed, and emit only one JavaScript that turns all my textboxes to date pickers, based on the CSS marker class. This one last part is the main problem, I do need an imperative JS code to do that. Unobtrusive AJAX and validation work well because they don't need that at all, they just respond to user interaction events. This is not the case, I need to turn my textboxes to date pickers whenever they appear. And they can appear dynamically in an editable grid, or after an AJAX call, whenever. Third solution, view should be done in Razor, so let's do it in Razor, as an editor template. Problem is, we're talking about a class library here. In the past, I have seen ugly hacks to embed .cshtml files as embedded resources or compile them to actual C# code during compilation. Last I checked, they seemed like ugly hacks and weren't supported. Is there another solution? If not, which of the above is the nicest, the one that most conforms to the state of the art coding conventions, or Microsoft's idea, etc?"}
{"_id": "224146", "title": "How has an increase in the complexity of systems affected successive generations of programmers?", "text": "As a \"new\" programmer (I first wrote a line of code in 2009), I've noticed it's relatively easy to create a program that exhibits quite complex elements today with things like .NET framework for example. Creating a visual interface, or sorting a list can be done with very few commands now. When I was learning to program, I was also learning computing theory in parallel. Things like sorting algorithms, principles of how hardware operates together, boolean algebra, and finite-state machines. But I noticed if I ever wanted to test out some very basic principle I'd learned in theory, it was always a lot more difficult to get started because so much technology is obscured by things like libraries, frameworks, and the OS. Making a memory-efficient program was required 40/50 years ago because there wasn't enough memory and it was expensive, so most programmers paid close attention to data types and how the instructions would be handled by the processor. Nowadays, some might argue that due to increased processing power and available memory, those concerns aren't a priority. My question is if older programmers see innovations like these as a godsend or an additional layer to abstract through, and why might they think so? And do younger programmers benefit more learning low-level programming BEFORE exploring the realms of expansive libraries? If so then why?"}
{"_id": "234248", "title": "Is the flyweight pattern a good security choice for managing permissions?", "text": "I'm designing a system, and it needs future expandability for the use of a permission system of some kind. I'm wondering if the flyweight pattern would be a good choice to implement this. I'm not responsible for the implementation right now, as it is just a prototype, and we're not prototyping any parts that need the right system. However, because of the demand for future extensibility to parts that need permission management the interface needs to be solid. This means that in the end it will be a thought experiment, rather than a real part of what I have to work on. However, I do need to be able to explain and justify my design in this area of the application. In favour of using the are that you can define permissions by having them symbolized through a token class, as represented in the flyweight pattern. If you're dealing with hundreds of users, this would somewhat simplify the handling and issuing of the rights a user holds, and the required rights a user needs for an action within the system; as well as the memory usage of the rights assigned to all the users. In the system I have in mind, a factory method of some kind will assign the rights needed at construction time. As I'm not really experienced with designing with security in mind, I'm having a paranoid line of thought of which I can't determine if it's justified, security wise. A shared pointer could be hijacked by 'evil intruders' to gain rights they should not be getting. This is the major argument against the use of a flyweight that keeps bugging me, Even though the 'how' is undefined, and I wouldn't know how someone would get it done. (no experience in the security mindset, or it's workings. However, I'm not really looking for a lecture in security beyond the secure use of patterns, unless motivated and clearly related to the question) Q: Is the flyweight pattern a suitable pattern to manage the representation of the rights of a user (or other some 'hand out' type of data) in the design of a software system that needs to be secure by design? Does the use of flyweight objects as representation of permissions pose more of a security risk than other patterns (I could also use a decorator chain for it, even though that would take up more memory) when dealing with permissions?"}
{"_id": "188696", "title": "Please help me understand the relationship between script file size and memory usage?", "text": "I am programming in PHP and I have an include file that I have to, well, include, as part of my script. The include file is 400 MB, and it contains an array of objects which are nothing more than configuration settings for a larger project. Here is an example of the contents:               $obj = new obj();         $obj->name = \"myname\";         ....          $objs[$obj->name] = $obj->name;     {repeat}     ....     return $objs;      This process repeats itself 40,000 times and ultimately is 650,000 lines long (the file is generated dynamically of course.) If I am simply trying to load a file that is 400MB, why then would memory usage increase to 6GB? Even if the file is loaded into memory, wouldn't only take up 400 MB of RAM?"}
{"_id": "188693", "title": "What is the better way to design flexible menus?", "text": "I would like to have a menu like this in surfdome. I don't mean the UI but the flexibility of this menu. I will try to explain it. I have some products. I want to match these products with some categories and have multiple type of menus based on these categories. e.g. _(in [] are the categories and in () are the products)_ A menu like               [Men] -> [Shoes] -> [Running] -> (Product1)     [Men] -> [Accessories] -> [Running] -> (Product2)     [Women] -> [Shoes] -> [Running] -> (Product3)     [Women] -> [Accessories] -> [Running] -> (Product4)      or               [Running] -> [Men] ->[Shoes] -> (Product1)     [Running] -> [Women] -> [Shoes] -> (Product3)     [Running] -> [Men] -> [Accessories] -> (Product2)     [Running] -> [Women] -> [Accessories] -> (Product4)      or               [Shoes] -> [Men] ->[Running] -> (Product1)     [Shoes] -> [Women] -> [Running] -> (Product3)     [Accessories] -> [Men] -> [Running] -> (Product2)     [Accessories] -> [Women] -> [Running] -> (Product4)      ... What i think it could be done with a `tag system`, but i would like to ask if anyone know a way to do it?"}
{"_id": "173371", "title": "Functional Methods on Collections", "text": "I'm learning Scala and am a little bewildered by all the methods (higher-order functions) available on the collections. Which ones produce more results than the original collection, which ones produce less, and which are most appropriate for a given problem? Though I'm studying Scala, I think this would pertain to most modern functional languages (Clojure, Haskell) and also to Java 8 which introduces these methods on Java collections. Specifically, right now I'm wondering about map with filter vs. fold/reduce. I was delighted that using foldRight() can yield the same result as a map(...).filter(...) with only one traversal of the underlying collection. But a friend pointed out that foldRight() may force sequential processing while map() is friendlier to being processed by multiple processors in parallel. Maybe this is why mapReduce() is so popular? More generally, I'm still sometimes surprised when I chain several of these methods together to get back a List(List()) or to pass a List(List()) and get back just a List(). For instance, when would I use:               collection.map(a => a.map(b => ...))      vs.               collection.map(a => ...).map(b => ...)      The for/yield command does nothing to help this confusion. Am I asking about the difference between a \"fold\" and \"unfold\" operation? Am I trying to jam too many questions into one? I think there may be an underlying concept that, if I understood it, might answer all these questions, or at least tie the answers together."}
{"_id": "239139", "title": "Why do arrays in Java not override equals()?", "text": "I was working with a `HashSet` the other day, which has this written in the spec: > [add()] adds the specified element e to this set if this set contains no > element e2 such that (e==null ? e2==null : e.equals(e2)) I was using `char[]` in the `HashSet` until I realized that, based on this contract, it was no better than an `ArrayList`! Since it's using the non- overridden `.equals()`, my arrays will only be checked for reference equality, which is not particularly useful. I know that `Arrays.equals()` exists, but that doesn't help when one is using collections such as `HashSet`. So my question is, why would Java arrays _not_ override equals?"}
{"_id": "61433", "title": "Resources or advice useful coming to C# from python 2.7.1", "text": "I'm a python monkey at heart. I eat drink sleep and dream in it, and have found that it's taught me much more about writing quality code than my degree in Computer Science ever did, however I've been asked to write an automated testing project in C# at work to link in with Team Foundation Server. Having looked at the language it looks very similar. I've noticed that it seems to be statically typed but I never had any problems with that in C++ or Ada. I've tried looking online for tutorials etc, but they all seem to start from the basics. I was hoping to be able to find information on differences and code translations et al similar to Norvig's lisp to python article. A search on google hasn't rendered any results for me so I was hoping to have a bit more luck here. * * * As a little background I have about 4 years of python, 2 of C++, but that was a few years ago, and bits and pieces of knowledge of other languages. I try not to mention BASIC any more...   It is because of my extended current experience with python that I wish to compare C# with it."}
{"_id": "77511", "title": "How do I work badges into my open-source project?", "text": "Stack Overflow has an awesome set of badges that recognizes a persons contribution to the community and allows an individual's capabilities to grow the more he contributes. What techniques can I use for open-source or coding projects? For example, a person's contribution to the code base earns them badges along with ever- increasing set of capabilities on the project? > ### Moderator note > > Providing a link to a recommendation is not enough: please provide detailed > answers about _how_ to incorporate gamification elements into an open-source > project. Any answer that doesn't do this **will be deleted.** > > See Good Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information about the types of > questions, and the types of answers, we're looking for on Programmers."}
{"_id": "228999", "title": "Corporate website design", "text": "We are redesigning our corporate website with the following functions:   * we want to give the marketing users flexibility and freedom to add new static pages, change the static pages or contents of static pages without the developer(s)/deployment team getting involved.   * we want developers to work on the dynamic portion of the website.  How to architect the website to make sure that the layout/look and feel of the website stays same across all the pages and achieve the above mentioned work? Any experience? Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "151275", "title": "how to avoid workaholic tag", "text": "As we all know a programmer just needs a computer and a network connection. When these things are available at your disposal you can program anywhere in the world.   Now this is causing me a bit of problems. Since its not necessary to work at your workplace only you are asked anytime of your vacation or week-off to help out the client on reported bug.   Also if you do enjoy doing it at your pass time, any one seeing you stare at the computer may treat you workaholic which I don't enjoy.   How do you make them realize that its not just about the work.It can be a hobby also.   In my understanding a workaholic is a person who _works to earn_ but an enthusiast is the one who _works to learn_."}
{"_id": "252448", "title": "Representation of a question mark in variable names", "text": "I once in my childhood read a SF story in which it was assumed that the capital letter `'P'` would be a good representation for a question mark, if you cannot use that character directly, eg. in variable names. However the story is quite old and things may have changed :) **Is this a good practice?** BTW: The story was called 'Enter P' or something like that. * * * ### Edit Additional questions that are answered below.   **Is this only writer's phantasy or is it based on an actual language's habit?**   **If yes, which language would that be?**"}
{"_id": "28129", "title": "Is there a good site to hire programmers for little projects?", "text": "I need to a piece of php code that goes beyond my abilities so I need to hire somebody to do it. It's not really something too long or complex so I wanted to know if there was a straightforward way to post my request and find somebody to do it for a certain amount. Does such a website exists or what's the best alternative? Anyway thanks a lot"}
{"_id": "165181", "title": "Why is the use of the STE template no longer recommended for EF5?", "text": "I was looking to upgrade my project from EF4.1/Framework 4.0 to EF5/Framework 4.5. After reading up on migrating the t4 templates for STE's (Self-Tracking Entities), I came across this link that indicates that STE's are no longer recommended. Why is Microsoft no longer recommending the use of STE's?"}
{"_id": "127101", "title": "Recommend a text that explains the physical implementation of C (stack, heap, etc)", "text": "One of the most popular questions on stackoverflow.com is this one: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4025768/what-do-people-find-difficult- about-c-pointers Many of the answers seem to gravitate toward the fact that students often don't get a good understanding of what is physically going on when code executes... the very most basic part of this seems to be stack/heap. I've read through K&R twice and finally have a good understanding of the language, but I don't think that is enough. Nearly every tough question here has the work \"stack\" or \"heap\" in the answer, and while I have a limited understanding of what those mean just from context and wikipedia searches, I prefer the comprehensive approach of a textbook. So, please recommend a textbook which explains things like stack, heap, memory allocation, etc from a physical standpoint, as it relates to C programming. I tried asking this question on stackoverflow and apparently it was not the right place to ask it. So I hope this site is a better location. If not, please consider migrating it to the proper stackexchange site. Thanks."}
{"_id": "165185", "title": "What problems can arise from emulating concepts from another languages?", "text": "I've read many times on the web that if your language doesn't support some concept, for example, object orientation, or maybe function calls, and it's considered a good practice in this other context, you should do it. The only problem I can see now is that other programmers may find your code too different than the usual, making it hard for them to program. What other problems do you think may arise from this?"}
{"_id": "165184", "title": "Is donationware a good monetization model for developers?", "text": "I've been developing for Android for about 2 years (and ~1 year for iOS), releasing freeware and open source applications (mostly because my AdSense account was disabled in 2010), but recently I had an idea for a great app that I wanted to get some money, since it would take some effort to develop and also I would like to test this \"commercial\" model to know if this could make me invest more time improving and making my apps better. Since my AdSense account was disabled and then I'll not be about to sell it on the Google Play Store, I thought about making it a donationware so I would distribute it for free (and probably open source too) and users that really liked the app and wanted to give me a thanks and a incentive to continue developing it could donate any amount of money. So, what's your experience with donationware? Is it worth compared to paid apps?"}
{"_id": "75919", "title": "Should package names be singular or plural?", "text": "Often, in libraries especially, packages contains classes that are organized around a single concept. Examples: **xml, sql, user, config, db**. I think we all feel pretty naturally that these packages are correct in the _singular_. > com.myproject. **xml**.Element   >  com.myproject. **sql**.Connection   >  com.myproject. **user**.User   >  com.myproject. **user**.UserFactory However, if I have a package that actually contains a **collection of implementations of a single type** \\- such as **tasks, rules, handlers, models, etc.** , which is preferable? > com.myproject. **tasks**.TakeOutGarbageTask   >  com.myproject. **tasks**.DoTheDishesTask   >  com.myproject. **tasks**.PaintTheHouseTask or > com.myproject. **task**.TakeOutGarbageTask   >  com.myproject. **task**.DoTheDishesTask   >  com.myproject. **task**.PaintTheHouseTask"}
{"_id": "38931", "title": "how can we improve documentation of project", "text": "We are planning to develop a database api for our project. I want to know how can we improve our documentation. The Current Structure of a document is :               Introduction :     Database Objects :List     Each Object (Table) Field List     List of Common Input Parameters.     loop of each command of database api        Input Parameter of command         Output Parameter of command         Example of using the command      End of loop      Please suggest if we can improve our documentation. :)"}
{"_id": "48413", "title": "In Java, should I use \"final\" for parameters and locals even when I don't have to?", "text": "Java allows marking variables (fields / locals / parameters) as `final`, to prevent re-assigning into them. I find it very useful with fields, as it helps me quickly see whether some attributes - or an entire class - are meant to be immutable. On the other hand, I find it a lot less useful with locals and parameters, and usually I avoid marking them as `final` even if they will never be re-assigned into (with the obvious exception when they need to be used in an inner class). Lately, however, I've came upon code which used final whenever it can, which I guess technically provides more information. No longer confident about my programming style, I wonder what are other advantages and disadvantages of applying `final` anywhere, what is the most common industry style, and why."}
{"_id": "115690", "title": "Why declare final variables inside methods?", "text": "Studying some classes of Android, I realized that most of the variables of methods are declared as final. Example code taken from the class android.widget.ListView:               /**     * @return Whether the list needs to show the top fading edge     */     private boolean showingTopFadingEdge() {         final int listTop = mScrollY + mListPadding.top;         return (mFirstPosition > 0) || (getChildAt(0).getTop() > listTop);     }          /**      * @return Whether the list needs to show the bottom fading edge      */     private boolean showingBottomFadingEdge() {         final int childCount = getChildCount();         final int bottomOfBottomChild = getChildAt(childCount - 1).getBottom();         final int lastVisiblePosition = mFirstPosition + childCount - 1;         final int listBottom = mScrollY + getHeight() - mListPadding.bottom;         return (lastVisiblePosition < mItemCount - 1)                          || (bottomOfBottomChild < listBottom);     }      What is the intention of using the final keyword in these cases?"}
{"_id": "208122", "title": "Why do some software packages have an \"amd64\" suffix for 64-bit systems?", "text": "When downloading various software packages, and executables for Windows, I always see two different types of executables to download. One just says `...32-bit` and the other always says `...amd64`. I know this has nothing to do with AMD, but it is referring to 64-bit operating systems, so why is this still a norm? Even large companies like Google and Ubuntu have packages set up like this. Thanks for any insight! ~Carpetfizz"}
{"_id": "98692", "title": "Where are octals useful?", "text": "I just banged my head against the table for some 20 minutes looking at a totally weird bug in PHP, and then I realized there's octal. The <%(*&#> octal. In short, I padded some literals with zeros so the code would be aligned, I know, big mistake. Forgot about octals. The question is, does anyone use octals for anything other than file permissions? (I personally prefer `chmod ugo+rwx` but I understand that if they have to be programmaticaly generated, it's useful to use octals.) But are they useful in any other situation?"}
{"_id": "208125", "title": "Tracking changes to posts", "text": "I'm currently in the process of writing a support ticket system... Let's say it's a small forum application, or something like Uservoice. Now I want my users to be able to edit their tickets, but still be able to see the old versions of them. Which route should I take in terms of Database-Design? I've thought of something like: SupportTickets   * Identifier   * Author   * Subject   * SupportTicketContentId SupportTicketContents   * Identifier   * Content   * CreatedOn Now when viewing a ticket, I'd simply query the most recent `SupportTicketContent` depending on the `CreatedOn` column... But is there a better way? Or is there a better naming of these tables?"}
{"_id": "35513", "title": "Developing iOS apps as web developer", "text": "My Boss has sold a few 'iPhone apps' to clients, we are a web development shop. I have explained to him that I do not know the first thing about them, but it's such a powerful buzz-word and we need to meet clients expectations. I do have some experience in C, Java and Python which should help if I need to use objective-C. I have even done a few Android tutorials. These apps will more or less be HTML, in my mind they are not real apps, but faux apps which have the same functionality as the clients' websites. To me a real app is something that uses the phones hardware inputs and outputs, gps, accelerometer, speaker etc. What resources can I use to get up to speed iOS development and how to build apps in html. I have no idea where to begin."}
{"_id": "35511", "title": "I love programming but never get projects started", "text": "I read this question and the most voted answer and said to myself \"Those things are what I want to do! But why the heck I'm not doing it?\" The problem here is that I can't get anything started. I hope you get some kind of idea what I'm interested in and can help me continue programming. I'm interested in embedded programming and I'd like to learn some ARM assembly. I think those could be combined with image processing. Also I'd love to create programs that are actually useful to some people but it seems like there are already multiple programs for pretty much every purpose. Maybe if I found an interesting program without open source alternatives I could get a great project to work on. How could I get myself to finally start a project or few and keep myself interested in them? I just want to get myself to do something I love."}
{"_id": "114023", "title": "Speed of Java vs. JS / HTML / CSS for web applications", "text": "I am creating a web application. I have primarily used Javascript specifically jQuery. Because of some very specific functionality, I am running into practical limitations of Javascript--they're not hard limitations but stuff that I would find easy in Java, like making an equation editor where you can edit directly as opposed to entering TeX, is difficult in JS even using MathJax as a base. I'm going to have to build even more complex functionality that involves 3D and physics engines. For a large scale application like this--specifically one that involves 3D and physics engines--would Java be slower or faster than Javascript when one is run within a browser? (Assume that code is written well in both cases.) Or is it completely uncertain--i.e. dependent on far too many specific variables? Thanks."}
{"_id": "236633", "title": "How do open-source licenses work when the application is for internal use only?", "text": "I am writing a MATLAB application that makes fairly heavy use of the MATLAB File Exchange. Most of the functions I use from here fall under the BSD license. My application is being deployed for _internal use only_ and is not meant for public consumption. While my particular case uses code that falls under the BSD license, generally speaking what implications are there for using open- source code (GPL, BSD, etc) for programs that will never go public? Do I have to include a license file to cover the code that was licensed as BSD?"}
{"_id": "204813", "title": "MVVM pattern - Best design approach to manage an application", "text": "One year ago, I discovered the WPF technology and I developed a little application, as first experiment, to compare the content of two different directories. The content of each directory is shown in a different DataGrid. At that time, I didn't develop the application using MVVM pattern, because it was only an experiment, not so good, but it worked. Now that I've much more experience with WPF and with the design patterns, I'm not so proud of that work, and I want to rewrite the application, improving it and following the recommended MVVM pattern. Actually, I designed the application in this way:   * the MainModel, with the main common algorithm.   * the MainView is the unique view of the application with the datagrids where I can show the results of my algorithms.   * a MainViewModel, that it will take care of handling the connection between other two ViewModels, the MainModel and the MainView.   * One ViewModel for each DataGrid. In this way, I'll separate the behavior and the data of the two DataGrids. The MainModel contains the main algorithm used to search the files in a given directory, like this:               public class MainModel     {         public MainModel()         {}              public List<Results> GetFiles(string directoryPath)     }      The MainViewModel will instantiate an object for each ViewModel (I have a ViewModel for each datagrid), using some properties to do it:               public class MainViewModel     {         public MainViewModel()         {             FirstViewModel = new ViewModelDG1();             SecondViewModel = new ViewModelDG2();         }              public ViewModelDG1 FirstViewModel         {get;set;}              public ViewModelDG2 SecondViewModel         {get;set;}     }      I wanted to apply a design pattern to help me manage the application, like a Factory Method or Builder, or a Template Method, but I think they're not suitable for my application for the different usages/conditions of those design patterns. I'm not so sure of this design, I don't know if this a is correct implementation of the MVVM pattern and if it promotes a loose coupling and high cohesion. Can you help me in the design? Is mine a correct implementation of the MVVM? If not, then what is the correct one? What are your opinions? Thank you."}
{"_id": "236630", "title": "Reusable and customizable charting library on top of d3js", "text": "I have started building a charting library on top of d3js using javascript's inheritance. My goal is to develop reusable and fully customizable chart components. I read the article: Towards Reusable Charts. Then, I went through the source code of nvd3. NVD3 uses boiler plate code in each chart like: copying and pasting definitions for width, height, margin etc. BUT I would rather use inheritance to avoid such boiler plate code. I would like properties like: dimensions, axes and functions like zooming and event listeners to be reusable among all charts and customizable through any instance (object) of the chart. Here is what my current library looks like. (It only supports bubble chart for now.)               var BaseChart = function(){         this.width = 200;          this.height = 200;//and others like: margin/ chart title     }          //XYChart inherits from BaseChart     var XYChart = function(){         //It contains members for axes, axis groups, labels, ticks, domains and ranges         //Example: One of the members it contains is \"this.yAxis\"         this.yAxis = d3.svg.axis().scale(this.scaleY)                 .orient(\"left\")                 .ticks(this.yTickCnt)                 .tickSize(-this.width);     }          //Extends XYChart and adds zooming     var ZoomableXYChart = function(){         this.zoom = function(){             this.svg.selectAll(this.dataShape)                 .attr(\"transform\", function(d, i) {                     var translate = that.calculateTranslation(d);                     return \"translate(\" + translate.x + \",\" + translate.y + \")\";                 });         }     }          //Extends zoomable XY chart and adds support for drawing shapes on data points     var BubbleChart = function(){         this.dataShape = \"path\";              this.drawChart = function()         {             this.prepareChart();//Attaches zooming, draws axes etc.             var that = this;             this.svg.selectAll(that.dataShape)                 .data(that.data)                 .enter()                 .append(that.dataShape)                 .attr(\"transform\", function(d) {                     return that.transformXYData(d);                 })                 .attr(\"d\", symbolGenerator().size(100).type(function(d) {                     return that.generateShape(d);                 }))                 .attr(\"fill\", function(d) {                     return that.generateColor(d);                 })                 .on(\"click\", function(d) {                     that.onClickListener(this, d);                 })         }     }      I can create a chart in this way:               var chart = new BubbleChart();     chart.data = someData;     chart.width = 900;     chart.elementId = \"#myChart\";     chart.onClickListener = function(this,d){}     chart.drawChart();      This solution allows me to use common properties and functions across all charts. In addition to that, it allows any instance of any chart to override default properties and functions (like: onClickListener). Do you see any limitations with such a solution? I haven't really seen javascript's inheritance used for d3.js and I wonder why? Is \"chaining\" that important? Using Mike Bostock's suggestions, how can we share functions like zooming across all XY charts? Isn't inheritance absolutely necessary to share functions and properties?"}
{"_id": "193537", "title": "Ext JS licensing issue", "text": "First of all I'm not asking for legal advice but just checking if anyone agrees with my suspicions. That might help in convincing Sencha to change their license. Their commercial license says: > The Open Source version of the Software (\u201cGPL Version\u201d) is licensed under > the terms of the GNU General Public License versions 3.0 (\u201cGPL\u201d) and not > under this License Agreement. **If You, or another third party, has, at any > time, developed all (or any portions of) the Application(s) using the GPL > Version, You** may not combine such development work with the Software and > **must license such Application(s) (or any portions derived there from) > under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3** , a copy of > which is located at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. Meanwhile there exist libraries licensed under MIT or BSD, that use ExtJS. GeoExt is one example. It's likely some contributors of those libraries have not bought the commercial license of Ext JS, and are using its GPL-licensed version. Reasonably GPL-licensed Ext JS shouldn't \"infect\" GeoExt code if it's distributed without the Ext JS library. Now the problem is, if I use GeoExt then likely \"portions\" of it **have** been \"developed using\" the GPL version. Specifically Sencha clarifies what they mean by \"develop using\" in their FAQ: > The license prohibits combining code that you **develop using a GPL licensed > version** of the software with code that you develop using a commercial > licensed version. In other words, **you may not begin development with our > GPL version and then \"convert\" it to our commercial version**. My interpretation is that it's not allowed by the Sencha commercial license to combine Ext JS with GeoExt and who knows what other libraries whose contributors at some point may have \"developed using\" a GPL version of Ext JS. This may or may not include OpenLayers, jQuery and other libraries developers would likely also need to use in their commercial projects. If Sencha then so desires, according to their commercial contract they can demand commercial customers who combined Ext JS with other libraries, to release their software under the GPL, since the commercial license doesn't offer any other resolution. My question is: do you agree that this sounds like developing commercial software using Ext JS may be risky, or is my interpretation incorrect?"}
{"_id": "165233", "title": "Event sourcing and persistence", "text": "I'm reading up on event sourcing and have a question regarding persistence. I can still have a DB with all entities, right? Or should the events be replayed every time the application is started to get the latest version of each entity in the memory? Seems like a waste on larger systems (as in large amount of data)? The point with event sourcing is that I can can replay the events to populate a data store if required? (or analyze the data)"}
{"_id": "130491", "title": "Why is a Bayes classifier used for spam filtering?", "text": "I've been reading about Bayesian spam filtering and I think I understand the theory, but I just don't see why this approach is needed in order to calculate the likelihood of a message being spam, given that it contains a certain word. If we have a set of messages already classified by the user as either 'spam' or 'ham' and we receive a new message (containing the chosen word) which we want to classify, then surely all we need to do is divide the number of spam messages that contain the word, by the total number of messages that contain the word... Why all the equations?"}
{"_id": "230816", "title": "What data cannot be compressed by huffman codes?", "text": "What kind of data cannot be compressed by using the huffman codes and why? I tried looking for the answer, but I only came across loss-less and lossy compression. I don't really understand what types of data cannot be compressed by huffman and why they can't be compressed using it."}
{"_id": "130496", "title": "Is there another name for Sql Azure's programming language?", "text": "According to this page on MSDN the sql language used on Sql Azure is called **transact-sql** (the same as on sql server). But is this the only way to refer to programming on Sql Azure? The Sql Azure variant of transact-sql doesn't support a bunch of features including global temporary tables, distributed queries and system tables; and has partial support for other areas. So is calling it transact-sql appropriate and does anyone know if another name has taken unofficial hold (azure-sql, a-sql ...)?"}
{"_id": "27094", "title": "Should a contract programmer have a portfolio?", "text": "I realize that the more you go towards the spectrum of \"freelance\", there is a need for a portfolio (at least for web development) but I would think that a structured contracted job (like a 3 month duration contract to hire, for example) would be a bit more professional in realizing that a professional programmer spends most of their time writing proprietary applications for companies and thus has no portfolio of these to show off.. The area where I live is not a major tech center so a lot of employers and recruiters here seem a bit less than professional when it comes to tech stuff (but it is a big U.S. city) and I get, fairly often, recruiters asking if I have a portfolio to share, etc.. Sure I have done my own projects but I don't keep them up to date and the work that I do for my current employer is my main focus. Anyways, I guess this is just a generalized question about how to differentiate between \"freelance\" and \"contract\" (even though I thought I had been doing so on my resume)"}
{"_id": "27096", "title": "When to Use Shared Libraries", "text": "Note: I'm not sure if this question is more suitable for Stack Overflow or Programmers. The thought process behind putting it here was that it doesn't actually relate to coding itself. I noticed a small freeware utility I have on my computer uses a couple of DLLs. From their names (\"RenderAllChunks\" and \"RenderSlice\"), it looks like they're being used just for specific functions. If outsourcing program- specific functions is really necessary, wouldn't it be better to just stuff them in a separate header file? It seems quite pointless to go through all the trouble of compiling, linking and distributing DLLs just for one function.   * Is it bad to use shared libraries for small projects?   * When/why are shared libraries preferable over static libraries (or even header files)?"}
{"_id": "27091", "title": "If you take a year or two out from being a developer, is it really that hard to get back into it?", "text": "I've been working as a developer for about 3 years now (straight from uni), I'm wondering, if I take a year or two out would it be impossible to get back into the industry? I didn't get the gap year thing out of my system after uni, and I'm thinking that I should probably do it before I hit 30 (24 now), my main concern is that if I leave the industry now, I might not get back into it at all and end up working some dead end job. The way I see things is, that general concepts / design patterns etc remain similar over the years, and it is mostly coding syntax / actual implementation that evolves, so it shouldn't move on dramatically. Also, women developers (yes there are some out there!) take years out to have kids and still carry on with their career afterwards, so it can't be impossible. Ultimatum : Would taking a year or two out destroy the (small) career I've built up so far?"}
{"_id": "51746", "title": "Structuring multi-threaded programs", "text": "Are there any canonical sources for learning how to structure multi-threaded programs? Even with all the concurrency utility classes that Java provides I'm having a hard time properly structuring multi-threaded programs. Whenever threads are involved my code becomes very brittle, any little change can potentially break the program because the code that jumps back and forth between the threads tends to be very convoluted."}
{"_id": "181312", "title": "Is there a synonym for \"Blittable\" that is more common?", "text": "Is there a more common name for a \"Blittable\" data type? In my software there is a distinction between a variable sized structure and a fixed size structure that has a similar behavior to \"blittable\" but I have only seen the name used in Microsoft software."}
{"_id": "232539", "title": "How to create a some kind of value for sentences?", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qLzG4.png)I want to identify most matching sentence using some pattern. That means by using java algorithm I want to create identical value for each sentences.Each sentence when entering to that algorithm can be out some kind of identical value. How can I develop it? What can I refer any web sites do you know? What sort of sites should I look for? Actually I want clarify about when I'm giving as ex: 5 sentence to algorithm that possible to generate some kind of 5 values.Then I compare with those values with previously generated values(I should be store those values in my database) and get the gap between new 5 value and previously stored values.Then I get the distance and I selected most suitable sentence as most lowest gap value. I'm use those things for my machine translation tool. As an example we think using my ruled based translation model generate 2 sentences. 1\\. I want eat an apple. 2\\. I want eat a house. In my corpus we think more sentences include and I store values for sentences in my database. (Value assign part is I don\u2019t know yet) I want to create java algorithm to assign value for each sentence. As an example if we think Sentence 1 value: 250.8 Sentence 2 value : 290.5 Database included values 248, 400,800 Then I got the difference. So we can see here most minimum difference get for 250.8 and most suitable sentence is 1 one."}
{"_id": "255874", "title": "How to abide the \"allocate in caller\" rule when the size is computed in the callee?", "text": "Let's say we have an opaque type `handle_t` that is managed through a simple interface with functions such as:               handle_t *handle_init(void);     int handle_do(handle_t *);     void handle_free(handle_t *);      The problem is that the size cannot be always determined in the initialization step and it has to be calculated in `handle_do`. One solution I have seen is calling `handle_do` two times, the first of which returns the size needed to allocate, but doesn't that affect the performance? Is it a bad practice to allocate or reallocate memory in `handle_do`? Does it even matter when using handle types (since the init/free routines are made clear)?"}
{"_id": "130143", "title": "Do programmers keep error reporting on or off?", "text": "I was wondering if php programmers keep error_reporting in php.ini on or off after delivering the website?"}
{"_id": "25782", "title": "Best IDE for HTML, CSS, and Javascript for mac", "text": "I'm currently looking to move to using an IDE for web development. The options I'm considering are:   1. Aptana Studio   2. Coda   3. Expresso Please base your answers on the following criteria, in descending order of importance:   1. Supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript   2. Powerful (having good code completion, good debugger, great syntax highlighting etc)   3. Fast and light   4. Supports HTML5, CSS3, and major JavaScript frameworks (JQuery or YUI)   5. Great design (both usability and aesthetics)   6. Supports PHP, Ruby, and Python   7. Has Git integrated I've updated the question to be more objective. I'm mainly looking for an answer that addresses how well each of the IDEs addresses my criteria."}
{"_id": "193696", "title": "What is the difference between a stock-hardware and a micro-coded machine in \"A Critique of Common Lisp\"?", "text": "I was reading this article: A Critique of Common Lisp and finding it hard to make out the precise definition of \"stock-hardware machine\" and its difference with \"micro-coded\" machines. I tried to search for a precise definition of the former to no avail. What I currently construe stock-hardware machine to be is that, it refers to the computer chip-set commonly available in the market (without much customization). So given that I would like to ask, what is meant by a stock-hardware machine (in the context of the paper) and how does it differ from a micro-coded machine?"}
{"_id": "224852", "title": "Best practice for copying static content between a web project and a self hosted EXE project", "text": "I have a visual studio solution that has, amongst other project the following three:   * **NamespacePrefix.NancyFX.csproj:** Some Nancy modules   * **NamespacePrefix.NancyFX.IISHosting.csproj:** A web solution to host the nancy modules   * **NamespacePrefix.NancyFX.Selfhost.csproj:** An exe to host the nancy modules In addition to rest services there is some html javascript and css in the Views/, Scripts/, and Content/ folders. I want this content in both the IIS Hosting and the Self hosting project. Currently I store the files in the Web project, and copy them over to the self hosting project bu editing the csproj xml like so:               <Target Name=\"BeforeBuild\">                                                                                                   <ItemGroup>                                                                                                                   <ContentItems Include=\"..\\NamespacePrefix.NancyFX.IISHosting\\Content\\**\\*.*\" />                                              <ScriptItems Include=\"..\\NamespacePrefix.NancyFX.IISHosting\\Scripts\\**\\*.*\" />                                               <ViewItems Include=\"..\\NamespacePrefix.NancyFX.IISHosting\\Views\\*.*\" />                                                    </ItemGroup>                                                                                                                <Copy SourceFiles=\"@(ContentItems)\" DestinationFiles=\"$(TargetDir)\\Content\\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)\" />       <Copy SourceFiles=\"@(ScriptItems)\" DestinationFiles=\"$(TargetDir)\\Scripts\\%(RecursiveDir)%(Filename)%(Extension)\" />        <Copy SourceFiles=\"@(ViewItems)\" DestinationFolder=\"$(TargetDir)\\Views\" />                                                </Target>                                                                                                                    This works fine, but is there a better way? This seems to give me the best intellisense, etc."}
{"_id": "186837", "title": "How to avoid \"managers\" in my code", "text": "I'm currently re-designing my Entity System, for C++, and I have a lot of Managers. In my design, I have these classes, in order to tie my library together. I've heard a lot of bad things when it comes to \"manager\" classes, perhaps I'm not naming my classes appropriately. However, I have no idea what else to name them. Most of the managers, in my library, are composed of these classes (although it does vary a little bit):   * Container - a container for objects in the manager   * Attributes - attributes for the objects in the manager In my new design for my library, I have these specific classes, in order to tie my library together.   * ComponentManager - manages components in the Entity System     * ComponentContainer     * ComponentAttributes     * Scene* - a reference to a Scene (see below)   * SystemManager - manages systems in the Entity System     * SystemContainer     * Scene* - a reference to a Scene (see below)   * EntityManager - manages entities in the Entity System     * EntityPool - a pool of entities     * EntityAttributes - attributes of an entity (this will only be accessible to ComponentContainer and System classes)     * Scene* - a reference to a Scene (see below)   * Scene - ties all the managers together     * ComponentManager     * SystemManager     * EntityManager I was thinking of just putting all the container/pools in the Scene class itself. i.e. Instead of this:               Scene scene; // create a Scene          // NOTE:     // I technically could wrap this line in a createEntity() call in the Scene class     Entity entity = scene.getEntityManager().getPool().create();      It would be this:               Scene scene; // create a Scene          Entity entity = scene.getEntityPool().create();      But, I am unsure. If I were to do the latter, that would mean I would have a lot of objects and methods declared inside my Scene class. ## NOTES:   1. An entity system is simply a design that is used for games. It is composed of 3 major parts: components, entities, and systems. The components are simply data, which may be \"added\" to the entities, in order for the entities to be distinctive. An entity is represented by an integer. Systems contain the logic for an entity, with specific components.   2. The reason I'm changing my design for my library, is because I think it can be changed quite a lot, I don't like the feel/flow to it, at the moment."}
{"_id": "224857", "title": "Question about moving to embedded systems", "text": "I currently work as a .net developer and have coming up to 3 years experience in the industry as well as a degree in computer science specifically software engineering (I know that means nothing but just wanted to explain that I'm not your general back bedroom programmer). When I finished Uni, I started contracting for a company. I wont mention their name but some of you may have heard of them just by the description. Basically they take in fresh graduates and in return for training and contracting experience you have to go to the clients they say for a minimum of two years. I cant say this was great but I do feel I know more than people with the same years of experience as me. The problem is that I've now started heading down the route of web development because of the lack of choice in clients. How difficult is it to change from a .net field to embedded/low level programming? I have the enthusiasm for it and the strive but I'm not quite sure how to go about moving. Unlike application development, knowing the language and having some business etiquette doesn't seem to be enough. > For example hardware wise I can set-up a computer but wouldn't know how to > manually attached wires and program these systems. Is this kind of knowledge > necessary? Thank you in advance. Also if anyone has similar experience of swapping, should I? tl;dr Developer that doesn't know how to get from web development roles into embedded systems. Edit:: Thank you all for the advice."}
{"_id": "183807", "title": "Can someone else patent my open-sourced algorithm?", "text": "I've written a recursive search algorithm to find the boundaries of a voxel data structure in order to render it more efficiently. I've looked around, and either it's such a simple and obvious technique that nobody's bothered to patent it, or it's novel and nobody's done it this way before. It's openly \"published\" on GitHub and protected under the GPL. I'd like to show it to others, to see if it can be improved, however... I fear that although I've written and published it, someone may attempt to patent the same idea. Am I safe, protected by the banners of open source software, or must I attempt to protect myself like the big guns and patent trolls do? It's my belief that software patents are evil, and that in order for the best software to be written, many eyes need to see it. I'm worried this may be a rather na\u00efve viewpoint on how software is written, though, and I'm curious as to what others think."}
{"_id": "140737", "title": "If you had two projects with the same specification and only one was developed using TDD how could you tell?", "text": "I was asked this question in an interview and it has been bugging me ever since. > You have two projects, both with the same specification but only one of > these projects was developed using Test Driven Development. You are given > the source for both but with the tests removed from the TDD project. How can > you tell which was developed using TDD? All I was able to muster up was something about the classes being more \u201cbroken up\u201d into smaller chunks and having more visible APIs, not my proudest moment. I would be very interested to hear a _good_ answer to this question."}
{"_id": "128512", "title": "Suggested HTTP REST status code for 'request limit reached'", "text": "I'm putting together a spec for a REST service, part of which will incorporate the ability to throttle users service-wide and on groups of, or on individual, resources. Equally, time-outs for these would be configurable per resource/group/service. I'm just looking through the HTTP 1.1 spec and trying to decide how I will communicate to a client that a request will not be fulfilled because they've reached their limit. Initially I figured that client code `403 - Forbidden` was the one, but this, from the spec: > Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated bothered me. It actually appears that `503 - Service Unavailable` is a better one to use - since it allows for the communication of a retry time through the use of the `Retry-After` header. It's possible that in the future I might look to support 'purchasing' more requests via eCommerce (in which case it would be nice if client code `402 - Payment Required` had been finalized!) - but I figure that this could equally be squeezed into a 503 response too. Which do you think I should use? Or is there another I've not considered?"}
{"_id": "140733", "title": "Are there any concrete examples of where a paralellizing compiler would provide a value-adding benefit?", "text": "Paul Graham argues that: > It would be great if a startup could give us something of the old Moore's > Law back, by writing software that could make a large number of CPUs look to > the developer like one very fast CPU. ... The most ambitious is to try to do > it automatically: to write a compiler that will parallelize our code for us. > There's a name for this compiler, the sufficiently smart compiler, and it is > a byword for impossibility. But is it really impossible? Can someone provide a **concrete example** where a paralellizing compiler would solve a pain point? Web-apps don't appear to be a problem: just run a bunch of Node processes. Real-time raytracing isn't a problem: the programmers are writing multi-threaded, SIMD assembly language quite happily (indeed, some might complain if we make it easier!). The holy grail is to be able to accelerate any program, be it MySQL, Garage Band, or Quicken. I'm looking for a middle ground: is there a **real-world problem that you have experienced** where a \"smart-enough\" compiler would have provided a real benefit, i.e that someone would pay for? **A good answer** is one where there is a process where the computer runs at 100% CPU on a single core for a painful period of time. That time might be 10 seconds, if the task is meant to be quick. It might be 500ms if the task is meant to be interactive. It might be 10 hours. Please describe such a problem. Really, that's all I'm looking for: **candidate areas for further investigation**. (Hence, raytracing is off the list because all the low- hanging fruit have been feasted upon.) **I am not interested in why it cannot be done.** There are a million people willing to point to the sound reasons why it cannot be done. Such answers are not useful."}
{"_id": "27323", "title": "How to manage Inquiries of more than one products?", "text": "I can't guess the perfect title of this question, so please read my case and please help me. We have 4 different products. Each is having their own site and database, means they are totally independent. Now I want a common system that can manage \"contact us\" page inquiries. Moreover I can pull out the contact inquires from each database. And even I should be able to send bulk mail to all of them. etc etc. So what kind of application is this? Is there any software available? If yes then which are those? Or do I need to create a new custom application? Please advise.."}
{"_id": "200318", "title": "Unit tests and language-native function calls", "text": "Is there a best practice for calling language-native functions when writing testable code? I have experimented a little with php code and have come up with two methodologies:   * create a wrapper class for all native functions and mocking this wrapper when writing tests   * using \"namespace magic\": calling all native functions without specifying the global namespace (`aFunction` in stead of `\\aFunction`) and then writing a method stub in the given namespace during testing, which will result in the code to be tested using the stub instead of the native function Is there a more commonly used approach? What are the benefits and shortcomings of the most commonly used methodologies to test language-native function calls?"}
{"_id": "200319", "title": "Is SQL declarative?", "text": "I ask because so many of the questions I see in SQL amount to: \"This is slow. How do I speed it up\"? Or are tutorials stating \"Do this this way and not that way as it's faster\". It seems to me that a large part of SQL is knowing just how an expression would be performed and from that knowledge chosing expression styles that perform better. This doesn't square with one aspect of declaritive programming - that of leaving the system to decide how best to perform the calculation with you just specifying what the calculation should produce. Shouldn't an SQL engine not care about if you used `in`, `exists` or `join` if it is truly declarative shouldn't it just give you the correct answer in reasonable time if possible by any of the three methods? This last example is prompted by this recent post which is of the type mentioned in my opening paragraph. **Indexes** I guess the easiest example I could have used relates to creating an index for a table. The gumph here on w3schools.com even tries to explain it as something unseen by the user that is there for performance reasons. Their description seems to put SQL indices in the non-declarative camp and they are routinely added by hand for purely performance reasons. Is it the case that their is somewhere an ideal SQL DB that is much more declarative than all the rest but because it is that good one doesn't hear about it?"}
{"_id": "253277", "title": "\"Middle ground\" architecture for client-server iOS apps?", "text": "I see two obvious approaches to the architecture for an iOS app which needs to talk to a server to do its job. **Pretend to be a web browser** Under this approach, the app fetches a chunk of data (typically JSON) from the server in response to a user action (navigating to a new view controller, tapping an \"Update\", whatever), puts up a spinner or some other progress indicator, then updates the view when the request completes. The \"model\" classes are mapped directly from the incoming JSON and possibly even immutable, and thrown away when the user moves off the screen they were fetched to populate. Under the \"pure\" version of this approach you set the appropriate headers on the server and let NSURLSession and friends handle caching. This works fine if you can assume the user has fast, low-latency network connectivity, and is mostly reading data from the server and not writing. **Sync** With the \"sync\" approach, the app maintains a local Core Data store of model objects to display to the user. It refreshes this either in response to user action or periodically, and updates the UI (via KVO or similar) when the model changes. When the user modifies the model, these changes are sent to the server asynchronously; there must be a mechanism for resolving conflicts. This approach is more suitable when the app needs to function offline or in high latency/slow network contexts, or where the user is writing a lot of data and they need to see model changes without waiting for a server round-trip. * * * Is there a third in-between way? What if I have an app which is _mostly_ but not always reads, but where there are writes the user should see those updates reflected in the UI immediately. The app should be usable in low/no network situations (showing any previously cached data until a request to the server has time to respond.) Can I get the best of both worlds without going full Core-Data-with-sync (which feels heavyweight and is difficult to get right) but without also inadvertently implementing a buggy and incomplete clone of Core Data?"}
{"_id": "253275", "title": "Best approach of testing ravendb database queries speed", "text": "Iv'e seached the internet for a while but am not able to find any examples how to test ravenDb query speed. What I'm trying to achive is to compare two session.query and find out witch of those two has the best performance speed. How can I do that? //Thanks EDIT: I'm buliding a mvc Notes-app were a user can create an account and save notes. Lets say I have these these two classes:               public class SingleNote : ContentPage     {         public string Header { get; set; }         public string Note { get; set; }         public string Category { get; set; }     }      And this one:                   public class LoginViewModel     {         [Required]         [Display(Name = \"Username\")]         public string UserName { get; set; }              [Required]         [DataType(DataType.Password)]         [Display(Name = \"password\")]         public string Password { get; set; }     }      Is it best to put a List of the users singleNotes in the LoginViewodel and store all the user notes there or should I put a property in the the SingleNote-ravenDocument that refers to the user. What I'm then trying to achive is to test these to diffrent type of queris and se witch of them gets the best performace speed. So, can I do some testing of that and compare these two queries witch gets best performance speed: Case 1: where I have put the prop string UserThatOwnsTheDoc in SingleNote- class               `var listOfSpecificUsersDocuments =             RavenSession.Query<SingleNote>()                     .Where(o => o.UserThatOwnsTheDoc == User.Identity.Name)                     .ToList();`      Case 2: where I have put the prop List SingleNotes in the LoginViewModel               var userDocumentWitchIncludesAListOfSingleNotes = RavenSession.Load<LoginViewModel>(\"UserName/1\");"}
{"_id": "27328", "title": "RSpec vs Test::Unit in Rails", "text": "I've never been really convinced of the advantages that you get by switching over to RSpec from Test::Unit in Ruby on Rails (despite reading from time to time about RSpec). What is it about RSpec that most Rails project seems to be using it? (some code examples clearly indicating advantages of one over the other would be much appreciated)"}
{"_id": "154931", "title": "one single compressed js file VS compressed requirejs module files", "text": "I just started using requirejs and I love it. I have one concern though. I've been compressing all my js files into one single file. Even with requirejs optimizer, I need to load module files from the server time to time and I'm concerned with it. Performance and user experience wise, which one is better?"}
{"_id": "134643", "title": "What factors should I consider when choosing names for identifiers?", "text": "What factors do I need to consider when choosing names for identifiers such as variables? I am concerned about space issues, i.e. extra memory consumption when choosing longer names. As an example, take these two variables:               bool noExp = true;     bool willNotExpireEver = true;      Each one will take up memory the size of `bool`. But what about the variable names? They are after all characters that have to be stored somewhere. Where does the space for them get allocated? Am I wasting pace by choosing longer names?"}
{"_id": "193786", "title": "Map of functions vs switch statement", "text": "I'm working on a project that processes requests, and there are two components to the request: the command and the parameters. The handler for each command is very simple (< 10 lines, often < 5). There are at least 20 commands, and likely will have more than 50. I've come up with a couple of solutions:   * one big switch/if-else on commands   * map of commands to functions   * map of commands to static classes/singletons Each command does a little error checking, and the only bit that can be abstracted out is checking for the number of parameters, which is defined for each command. What would be the best solution to this problem, and why? I'm also open to any design patterns I may have missed. I've come up with the following pro/con list for each: **switch**   * pros      * keeps all commands in one function; since they're simple, this makes it a visual lookup table     * don't need to clutter up source with tons of small functions/classes that will only get used in one place   * cons      * very long     * hard to add commands programmatically (need to chain using default case) **map commands -> function**   * pros      * small, bite-size chunks     * can add/remove commands programmatically   * cons      * if done in-line, same visually as switch     * if not done in-line, lots of functions only used in one place **map commands -> static class/singleton**   * pros      * can use polymorphism to handle simple error checking (only like 3 lines, but still)     * similar benefits to map -> function solution   * cons      * lots of very small classes will clutter project     * implementation not all in the same place, so it's not as easy to scan implementations **Extra notes:** I'm writing this in Go, but I don't think the solution is language-specific. I'm looking for a more general solution because I may need to do something very similar in other languages. A command is a string, but I can easily map this to a number if convenient. The function signature is something like:               Reply Command(List<String> params)      Go has top-level functions, and other platforms I'm considering also have top- level functions, hence the difference between the second and third options."}
{"_id": "146771", "title": "Can the Strategy pattern be implemented without significant branching?", "text": "The Strategy pattern works well to avoid huge if...else constructs and make it easier to add or replace functionality. However, it still leaves one flaw in my opinion. It seems like in every implementation there still needs to be a branching construct. It might be a factory or a data file. As an example take an ordering system. Factory:               // All of these classes implement OrderStrategy     switch (orderType) {     case NEW_ORDER: return new NewOrder();     case CANCELLATION: return new Cancellation();     case RETURN: return new Return();     }      The code after this doesn't need to worry, and there is only one place to add a new order type now, but this section of code still isn't extensible. Pulling it out into a data file helps readability somewhat (debatable, I know):               <strategies>        <order type=\"NEW_ORDER\">com.company.NewOrder</order>        <order type=\"CANCELLATION\">com.company.Cancellation</order>        <order type=\"RETURN\">com.company.Return</order>     </strategies>      But this still adds boilerplate code to process the data file - granted, more easily unit testable and relatively stable code, but additional complexity nontheless. Also, this sort of construct doesn't integration test well. Each individual strategy may be easier to test now, but every new strategy you add is addition complexity to test. It's less than you would have if you _hadn't_ used the pattern, but it's still there. Is there a way to implement the strategy pattern that mitigates this complexity? Or is this just as simple as it gets, and trying to go further would only add another layer of abstraction for little to no benefit?"}
{"_id": "185566", "title": "Does a BSD-licensed project need a signed statement from each contributor?", "text": "Today I read on Fossil SCM's mailing list: > The problem with BSD is that you really should get a signed form from each > contributor stating that their contribution is BSD. This is automatic with > GPL, since releasing your contributions under a compatible license is a > prerequisite for viewing the code in GPL. This makes GPL great for a highly > collaborative environment, with lots of contributors. BSD is more permissive > (less burdensome) for readers, but that makes it a little tougher for > writers since they now have to send in some paperwork. Could someone explain why, and what are the possible consequences of not having such a signed statement from project's contributors?"}
{"_id": "53468", "title": "WPF vs. WinForms - a Delphi programmer's perspective?", "text": "I have read most of the major threads on WPF vs. WinForms and I find myself stuck in the unfortunate ambivalence you can fall into when deciding between the tried and true previous tech (Winforms), and it's successor (WPF). I am a veteran Delphi programmer of many years that is finally making the jump to C#. My fellow Delphi programmers out there will understand that I am excited to know that Anders Hejlsberg, of Delphi fame, was the architect behind C#. I have a strong addiction to Delphi's VCL custom components, especially those involved in making multi-step Wizards and components that act as a container for child components. With that background, I am hoping that those of you that switched from Delphi to C# can help me with my WinForms vs. WPF decision for writing my initial applications. Note, I am very impatient when coding and things like full fledged auto-complete and proper debugger support can make or break a project for me, including being able to find readily available information on API features and calls and even more so, workarounds for bugs. The SO threads and comments in the early 2009 date range give me great concern over WPF when it comes to potential frustrations that could mar my C# UI development coding. On the other hand, spending an inordinate amount of time learning an API tech that is, even if it is not abandoned, soon to be replaced (WinForms), is equally troubling and I do find the GPU support in WPF tantalizing. Hence my ambivalence. Since I haven't learned either tech yet I have a rare opportunity to get a fresh start and not have to face the big \"unlearning\" curve I've seen people mention in various threads when a WinForms programmer makes the move to WPF. On the other hand, if using WPF will just be too frustrating or have other major negative consequences for an impatient RAD developer like myself, then I'll just stick with WinForms until WPF reaches the same level of support and ease of use. To give you a concrete example into my psychology as a programmer, I used VB and subsequently Delphi to completely avoid altogether the very real pain of coding with MFC, a Windows UI library that many developers suffered through while developing early Windows apps. I have never regretted my luck in avoiding MFC. It would also be comforting to know if Anders Hejlsberg had a hand in the architecture of WPF and/or WinForms, and if there are any disparities in the creative vision and ease of use embodied in either code base. Finally, for the Delphi programmers again, let me know how much \"IDE schock\" I'm in for when using WPF as opposed to WinForms, especially when it comes to debugger support. Any job market comments updated for 2011 would be appreciated too."}
{"_id": "139343", "title": "How to avoid halting of the JVM due to a deadlock in java?", "text": "I have read many websites talking about how to avoid and how to design etc. I completely understand those strategies. My question is based on the following preconditions:   1. You have a company with 1000's of developers.   2. There are different teams working on the same product but as modules.   3. New developers writing new code not knowing the overall system, please consider an Enterprise application.   4. High available software development where a downtime of 15 mins is considered as an SLA violation. I could write few more preconditions but I thought these could be strong enough to support my question about why I might need a recovering strategy for a \"Deadlock\" in a software. Please note that re-designing the modules whenever we find a deadlock is not realistic. Now this being said. Can someone take sometime to provide an input or brainstorm on an idea of how to resolve a deadlock if at all it happens, so that we can report it and move forward, instead of halting completely.   1. Run a deadlock detector that runs periodically to look for deadlocks in the system.   2. If a deadlock is detected, notify with an event to resolve the deadlock.   3. The deadlock event listener will then kick in and act upon the deadlocked threads.   4. For each thread identify the contention.   5. Write an intelligent algorithm that could either release the locks and kill the thread or release the locks and re-evaluate the thread.   6. In step 2 we handle the notification in multiple ways, out of which logging is one of the listener. I know how to go about steps 1,2,6. Will need help with 3,4 and 5. I know that Oracle RDBMS already has a deadlock detection and resolution strategy in place, I wonder if they would ever share their strategies in this thread :) Can't add my comment as an answer so adding it as a comment here. ================================================================= I completely understand the risk of killing the threads. I was 100% certain that I would get answers like this but I was also hoping that someone would suggest something new. I'll keep the thread open as there is no answer in here that I already do not know, thank you very much for trying though."}
{"_id": "74358", "title": "Do Makefiles Matter?", "text": "I'm currently working on a small library as a hobby project. I am the only one who actively codes for it, but a few of my friends have expressed interest in participating in the future. When using the library for my own purposes, I usually just add the appropriate source files to my project using an IDE. (E.g., dragging a `.h` and `.cpp` file into Xcode.) As the library grows in size and complexity, however, I've been trying to move towards a more professional approach to organization. I've considered setting up some sort of makefile that future participants can use to compile the library into a \"monolithic\" library file. This might be beneficial to me as well, since I code on multiple computers. Would such a venture be worth the effort? Note: I tried looking at the Boost library to see how they do things, but it's pretty difficult to navigate without any previous experience and I had trouble making sense of the structure."}
{"_id": "224758", "title": "Maximizing number of nested triangles", "text": "There is a finite set of points on a plane (about 1500 points in the current task). I need to construct triangles on those points such as each triangle lies completely inside one larger triangle: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GSvTE.png) Now I want an algorithm to maximize the number of such triangles. Where can I start? I think one of the ways would be to choose a \"center\" and to find three directions from this center with most point density near those directions. Or just choose an arbitrary center triangle manually and then iteratively choose a larger triangle with the least area or the least distance."}
{"_id": "74351", "title": "How can I convince my company to move to MVC?", "text": "I currently write web apps using asp.net web forms and getting my company to move to another technology is like [insert funny line here]. I would really like to start writing apps using MVC, but they fear any type of change. How is the best way to convince/ease them into using MVC? I guess this can go for moving to any new technology. ### Update Decided to go the rogue developer route and just started using it. I recreated a small app in MVC and learned the ropes that way, and moved up from there."}
{"_id": "85595", "title": "What method is the easiest/fastest way for developing Android Apps", "text": "Which one of these is the easiest/fastest choice for developing simple Android apps/games? I'm familiar with all this technologies.                  \u2022 Android SDK or NDK        \u2022 C# on MonoDroid platform        \u2022 Adobe Flash & Adobe AIR        \u2022 Corona SDK        \u2022 Converting tools like PhoneGap      Fundamentally, Could you explain adventages and disadventages of this methods."}
{"_id": "85596", "title": "Architecture diagram of a computer virus", "text": "I am looking for an architecture diagram of a computer virus. Does anyone have a link to a good example? **Edit** Looks like I am getting hammered with downvotes. I agree that there is no single architecture for a virus. But somethings must be included for a program to be a virus. Example for components in the SAD:   * Replication method   * Trigger   * Payload   * Hosts targeted   * Vulnerabilities targeted   * Anti detection method **Edit 2** Found a good example here: http://static.northpole.fi/download/1318959037124281/w32_duqu_the_precursor_to_the_next_stuxnet.pdf"}
{"_id": "166763", "title": "Service to test app on all the iPhones?", "text": "I have some developers creating an iPhone app, often the app will not work on one type of iPhone even though it worked on another one using the same version of iOS. Therefore, I am looking for a service where I can test the app natively on all the iPhone versions running various versions of iOS. I would like to be able to interact with the iPhones myself, so that I know that a specific bug has actually been fixed before, pushing to App Store and waiting 9 days for the review before I can hear the sad news from customers. Googling got me nowhere. Do such services exist?"}
{"_id": "166768", "title": "Abstract class + Inheritance vs Interface", "text": "Hello fellow programmers, I am reading a book on C# and the author is comparing Abstract classes and Interfaces. He claims that if you have the following \"abstract class:\"               abstract class CloneableType     {     public abstract object Clone();     }      Then you cannot do this:               public class MiniVan : Car, CloneableType     {}      This, I understand. However he claims that because of this inability to do multiple inheritance that you should use an interface for CloneableType, like so:               public interface ICloneable     {     object Clone();     }      My question is, isn't this somewhat misleading, because you can create an abstract class which is \"above\" class Car with the method Clone, then have Car inherit that class and then Minivan will inherit Car with all these methods, CloneAble class -> Car class -> Minivan Class. What do you think? Thanks."}
{"_id": "205493", "title": "What's the best approach to handle javascript/ajax code in a project?", "text": "In a general sense, for medium/big projects, what's the best way to handle javascript/ajax code? Is it better, to have a script file where to put each script or, to add the script directly into the html file between tags? I know it doesn't make any difference in terms of result, but i would like to understand what's is easier to mantain in long terms."}
{"_id": "89721", "title": "Is the MVC pattern used in industry a lot? What's all the hype?", "text": "I'm a student but I am hopefully moving into the software industry soon. There seems to be a lot of hype about the MVC software pattern. I noticed that PHP frameworks are often MVC, what about non-web languages.. is it the same with them? For my masters dissertation (C++), I chose the MVC pattern because it nicely separates out the logic and user interface. In industry is it used a lot? If so, what are the main reasons and what are other competing, popular designs?"}
{"_id": "70638", "title": "When the current sprint consists of mostly spikes, should the sprint be shortened?", "text": "Spikes are mostly quick research tasks aimed at establishing the feasibility or prototyping of some idea. Thus, they are structured so that the tasks either finish-fast or fail-fast. However, when a dozen or so spikes are added to the current sprint, there is a possibility that several of them will fail-fast altogether. Let's say there are 4 possible ways of doing something, and the task is to choose the most suitable one and come up with a prototype. If the first attempt fails then try the next possible way, and so on. If the first pick is already a clear winner, then the next 3 aren't necessary anymore. So, when the current sprint consists of mostly spikes, does it make sense to also shorten the sprint time to maybe a few days, so that reprioritization can happen more frequently?"}
{"_id": "204362", "title": "Can the version of Git vary between team members?", "text": "We are about 40 developers working on the same code base and we use Git for version control. My question is: can there be problems if, for example, some developers have a much older version of Git installed on their system ? Or should we try to enforce some rule that says something like \"you should upgrade Git on your machine to the latest version at least once per year\" ? Maybe in older versions of Git, the structure of the objects may be slightly different. Or there may be some bugs in the algorithm that calculates which lines were added/removed from files. These issues can cause corrupt repositories or different values for the SHA-1 hashes in places where it should have the same value.1 Obviously, since Git is a distributed VCS, a corrupt repository won't ever mean critical loss of data, since there are 40 other people from which you can clone a new copy. So it's more a curiosity than a concern. I suspect that backwards- compatibility is something extremely important when it comes to releasing a new version of Git; but still: the potential issues mentioned above are a possibility. 1 = as far as I know, we had no such problems... yet."}
{"_id": "101910", "title": "Incanter for real world statistical projects", "text": "I'm interested in statistical computing. **R** is a leader platform obviously but what about Incanter?   Incanter is at the top of my list since I'm a Clojure and JVM guy. Do you have any real world projects with Incanter? Is it a proven platform or I have to fall back to **R**?   What are the advantages of **R** over Incanter? What I'm going to miss?"}
{"_id": "71328", "title": "What cannot be unit-tested in mobile app?", "text": "I really value unit-testing in developing webapps. I haven't had any experience in developing mobile apps. Is there anything that cannot be unit- tested in mobile apps? And what is the workaround for this? Is there any common gotcha that we must be aware in unit-testing mobile apps?"}
{"_id": "33115", "title": "What is \"Simplified JavaScript\"?", "text": "Douglas Crockford makes reference to **Simplified JavaScript** in this article about **Top Down Operator Precedence**. Unfortunately he only makes references to it in this article. The best explanation I found **here**. But I still don't have a clue what it actually is. **What is Simplified JavaScript?**"}
{"_id": "71323", "title": "Transition from a \"look ma, I can do this\" web developer to someone who creates products that people and businesses can rely on", "text": "I am doing web development for the past 6 years. But somehow, I never got the feeling that I did a good job. I always felt that my code was not production quality. I felt like someone who delivers sub-par products. **An analogy:** Me developing apps for paying clients is like.... a 14 year old who just knows how to shoot and move around the basketball court without falling down, playing among professionals in the NBA. That should be an accurate description :| **I wouldn't buy from me, if I were the client.** I want to move from this current position to a stage where I feel confident that my websites web apps are \"professional\", \"secure\", \"scalable\", (insert all requisites of a product that is worth paying for or relying on for your business). **My question is:** **1\\. What are the things I should learn, and..** **2\\. From where can I learn those..** **..in order to create truly professional websites and web applications that other people/businesses can rely upon?** I am sick of feeling like an amateur even after so many years. I want help in getting started. I can learn if I know _what_ to learn. I can learn given enough time and things to experiment with, but I don't want to make my clients guinea pigs. **Here is what I know and don't know:**   * I know or can learn the needed syntax in C# to convert the required business logic from concept to working code.   * I can write somewhat complex select queries and even a few joins if needed to fetch data. Of course I can insert, update, delete. But that's it. I know nothing else in SQL server.   * I know enough web front-end technologies to develop good UI. This is not a problem area.   * I know enough about hosting/domains to register and buy hosting and point servers at each other so that example.com actually loads the website. Not much more than that.   * For all practical purposes, ZERO knowledge or experience in handling security and server load   * No idea about caching, at any level.   * I only know the coding best practices, dos and donts. I don't know the same for real world apps that thousands of people are going to use.   * Every time I read a question in SO that has anything to do with a production application, all the answers and the question itself is all Greek and Latin to me. I feel inspired that there is so much to learn, but I can't figure out how to start. * * * I will primarily be working with the Microsoft Stack. So any answer specific to it will also be great."}
{"_id": "121888", "title": "Is Java a good choice for cross-platform games?", "text": "I'm looking to create a game in Java and would like it to work on Windows, Linux, and Mac. I'm pretty sure C# is a bad choice for this, and I don't have enough experience in C or C++. I want to stay away from Flash. Therefore, is Java a good choice for me? Mostly, I use C#, and think that Java is similar, so I assume it won't be that hard to learn. But is it fast enough? Is there a language more suited for my needs than Java?"}
{"_id": "84171", "title": "Providing Estimates When working With Unfamiliar Technology?", "text": "I was presented with a new problem recently, to provide an estimate for a project in which I must use a framework (and potentially bits of another framework) that I am unfamiliar with. It's much easier for me to provide estimates when I'm at liberty to use what I'm familiar with, but it was as though a crippling paralysis by analysis had kicked in when an estimate was requested for work in unfamiliar territory. My solution, in retrospect, was wrong. I merely began working. How might I better estimate projects and tasks when I am required to work with unfamiliar languages/technologies/frameworks?"}
{"_id": "113344", "title": "Secure way to remember usernames and passwords", "text": "Maybe it was already discussed. After browsing through some alike questions here about password management, I still would like to ask this question. If there are 100 sites which require username password to login. It would be a nightmare to make up another username and password just for the uniqueness. However if we use the same username and password, we expose ourselves to crossite attack. Maybe we can make 100 different username and password, but how can we remember it? Brain is not trustworthy. Professionals recommend not to write down any password on paper. And there are those password management software. I've never used these software so I am rather blind there. Do you trust those things? Imagine if someone stole your computer and try to break into these software, do you has the risk to lose all your identity?"}
{"_id": "123428", "title": "Is Google App Engine's level of support robust enough for real-world production?", "text": "Google App Engine has been great for trying out ideas and learning stuff, but so far I haven't seen much confidence in the community in using it for production applications. One significant issue that has come up over and over again is that when things go wrong, it's nearly impossible to actually talk to anyone at Google. This is really scary if your company is depending on this service for the production app. However, their literature on Premier accounts looks promising, with the promise of better levels of support. What has been your experience with using Google App Engine when it comes down to resolving support issues? Does it really take 4 hours to just acknowledge a P1?"}
{"_id": "70981", "title": "Should I provide some way to disable my software post-delivery?", "text": "I'm debating the value of putting remote disable (or destruct) functions into my software before delivering it to clients... As a hypothetical example, consider the development of a Silverlight app where you're worried about the client not paying you. You create a function which when a specific query string is entered it deletes everything in the database. Destroying data might be a bit of an extreme example. Making the application either partially or completely unusable would be another example. What are the benefits and risks of doing this? If you've done it, why did you do it, and how did you go about it?"}
{"_id": "123422", "title": "Mask oAuth API key and token for pure client-side technologies", "text": "If I were to build a Twitter or Facebook application using pure client-side technologies like HTML and javascript, how would I mask/hide my API keys? For example, for Twitter I have consumer key and consumer secret. In order for me to call Twitter's API I'll have to pass these keys to authenticate my app. If I am using pure client side technologies, I leave myself exposed. Therefore, the API keys are up for grab and anyone can authenticate as my app. How can I prevent this? Can I prevent this at all? This question is very similar to this thread, however, it's not a desktop application."}
{"_id": "126126", "title": "Transitioning from being a bespoke development to a COTS development house", "text": "Currently one of the major applications that our organisation produces would be regarded as bespoke software as it is specifically designed for one specific client organisation. However, we have specifically retained the intellectual capital on the project and a number of different organisations in different countries (with different languages and character sets) now look like they want to purchase our software solution. Our current approach to development passes 9 \u00bd out of the Joel Test and is improving. However, our approach is all about satisfying the requirements of one specific client and responding quickly to their needs (regardless of whether something is a bug or a change request). If we want to transition to producing more of an 'Off the Shelf' approach with multiple client organisations---rather than just one client organisation---on a common code base, what are the major differences and what pitfalls do we need to be aware of to successfully make the transition?"}
{"_id": "180860", "title": "How to refer to specific areas of code in documentation?", "text": "I'm about to leave a project, and before I go my boss has asked for me to document code (I've not documented very well). It's not a big deal, the project is not terribly complex. But I'm finding places in my documentation where I would like to say, \"Notice on line XYZ that such-and-such happens.\" In this case, it doesn't make sense to refer to a specific line number, since adding or deleting a single line of code would immediately outdate the documentation. Is there some best-practice for referring to a specific line of code without referring to it by line number? I've considered littering the code with comments like:               /* linetag 38FECD4F */      Where \"38FECD4F\" is some unique tag for that specific line. Then I can put in the documentation, \"On the line tagged '38FECD4F', notice that such-and-such happens.\" Any other ideas? I feel like it's generally better to document code units as a whole, rather than specific portions of them, but in the case of this particular project there are LONG swaths of procedural code, which have never been refactored into smaller units."}
{"_id": "159810", "title": "Is STL implemented with OO?", "text": "There are several design patterns like Adaptor, Iterator implemented in STL. Does that mean STL is implemented with OO concepts?   What is the relationship between OO and template parts of C++? I learned that virtual member function which justifys the OO is contradict with template, is this correct?"}
{"_id": "182039", "title": "Selling a Joomla extension with third party jquery plugin", "text": "Let's suppose I want to create an extension for Joomla that uses a jQuery plugin or any third party library. Imagine that I create a Joomla module that uses jquery Nivo Slider plugin (MIT License) http://nivo.dev7studios.com/license/. I'm not sure If I could sell this module with this license. Could I sell it if the plugin has a GPL License?"}
{"_id": "182037", "title": "Is this XOR value swap algorithm still in use or useful", "text": "When I first started working a mainframe assembler programmer showed me how they swap to values without using the traditional algorithm of:               a = 0xBABE     b = 0xFADE          temp = a     a = b     b = temp      What they used to swap two values - from a bit to a large buffer - was:               a = 0xBABE     b = 0xFADE          a = a XOR b     b = b XOR a     a = a XOR b      now               b == 0xBABE     a == 0xFADE      which swapped the contents of 2 objects without the need for a third temp holding space. My question is: Is this XOR swap algorithm still in use and where is it still applicable."}
{"_id": "182034", "title": "Were there major changes in testing practices in ASP .NET between 3.5 and 4.5?", "text": "Obviously, testing methods are language-independent. An integration test stays an integration test no matter what the technology. But platforms implement some kinds of testing support. And the details vary between implementations, so a programmer has to learn how to use the tools of their framework. And platforms evolve, so best practices in one version may become obsolete or at least inefficient in the next version. See for example this StackOverflow question about unit tests for which at least the first three answers seem to be valid: One describing the correct solution for the current version, one describing the solution which used to be best before the .NET framework included an ExpectedException attribute, and one describing a generic solution which is tool-independent. My question is: were there any major testing-related changes between the .NET framework versions 3.5 and 4.5? Something as disruptive to testing as introducing generics was to programming in general, or introducing the Membership framework was to authentication? Or were there only small enhancing changes? I am asking this because I wonder whether learning materials written for 3.5 are still reasonably valid today."}
{"_id": "182032", "title": "What phases of a traditional waterfall project should Scrum replace?", "text": "My team and I are using Scrum to manage software development projects. In my company there has been a move towards more structure in all IT projects using a waterfall methodology. This is fine by me as there are lots of non-software- development projects which will benefit greatly from this and it is not threatening our use of Scrum. However, we need to work out how our Scrum processes (which do a great job of taking a Product Owner's requirements and turn them into working software) fit into the broader project process. Our new waterfall project process includes explicit activities for the following things (not necessarily sequentially and not necessarily in this order):   1. Production and approval of business case.   2. Resourcing.   3. Requirements analysis.   4. Design.   5. Build.   6. Test.   7. Training.   8. Communications.   9. Go live.   10. Risk & Issue Management.   11. Benefits realisation. Bear in mind that a project may be required to deliver more than just software. It may also include server infrastructure to host the software and network / desktop infrastructure to make it available to users. I think Scrum will manage 3, 4, 5 & 6 happily but probably only for teams who find it adds value, which is probably only software development... We could get other teams to use it for the production of infrastructure deliverables, but they don't see the need or benefit and nor do I (Scrum is good for large, risky projects and they are building a bunch of standard PCs). Likewise we could have a User Story in the Product Backlog for the Project Manager (not typically a member of the Scrum Team) to produce a benefits realisation plan. Are we approaching this correctly? Is there a better way to integrate these two styles of working or are they exclusive and we should use one or the other?"}
{"_id": "142648", "title": "What class structure allows for a base class and mix/match of subclasses? (Similar to Users w/ roles)", "text": "I have a set of base characteristics, and then a number of sub-types. Each instance _must_ be one of the sub-types, but can be multiple sub-types at once. The sub-types of each thing can change. In general, I don't care what subtype I have, but sometimes I do care. This is much like a Users-Roles sort of relationship where a User having a particular Role gives the user additional characteristics. Sort of like duck- typing (ie. If my `Foo` has a `Bar`, I can treat it like a `ThingWithABar`.) Straight inheritance doesn't work, since that doesn't allow mix/match of sub- types. (ie. no multi-inheritance). Straight composition doesn't work because I can't switch that up at runtime. How can I model this?"}
{"_id": "231255", "title": "Validating objects with each other - Design Pattern needed", "text": "I am running a zoo application. My zoo includes an abstract class of 'animal', and several deriving classes - 'zebra', 'elephant', 'orangutan', 'baboon' and so on. Of each class I have several instances. My question is: I want to check out if two animal instances can mate. The business logic is divided to two parts:   1. I want to check if each mating partner is fit for mating, e.g. not too young or too old or sick etc.   2. I want to check if the two partners match - e.g. a zebra cannot mate an elephant, but an orangutan can mate with a baboon. I assume the first requirement would be implemented by an abstract function which would reside under the animal baseclass. But what about the second requirement? How would you design the classes in the most general matter that adding new types of animals would not require much of an overhead?"}
{"_id": "202204", "title": "Finally block for methods - is it a bad idea?", "text": "The `finally` block for a `try-catch` structure is well known, and gives a really easy and elegant way to deal with some must-be-done code. Therefore, I can see no reason why It shouldn't be good for methods too. For instance, lets say I'm writing some very complicated logic in a method, and I expect to end up with a bunch of boolean flags that will in turn lead to some decisions. Many times in such kind of methods I have branches of code where I would want to \"break\" the flow and just perform the \"real stuff\" that I called this method for, with the satisfying information I gathered so far. So, Why isn't there such pattern? Or is there?"}
{"_id": "202205", "title": "Displaying items with a countdown timer", "text": "I am creating a widget for rotating topics. The functionality is as follows:   * Each topic is displayed one by one on the homepage and has a duration of 30 seconds.   * A countdown timer is displayed on the page. When it reaches zero the current topic gets marked as \"shown\" and the next topic is displayed.   * Users can choose to \"like\" topics, in which case the topic gets an additional 5 seconds duration (the countdown timer needs to update itself at this point).   * The countdown timer always needs to display the current allocated duration for the topic, so for example if a user \"likes\" a topic then people accessing the site should instantly see the updated duration for that topic. Basically everything needs to be shown in \"realtime\". The topics are stored in a MySQL database. I am having trouble with the last two points in the above. The way I have tried to do it so far is to have an AJAX request which is sent every second to deduct 1 second from the current topic duration. The request response is the current topic duration. The problem with this is that it will only work so long as somebody is accessing the site. I know I can probably create a CRON script to run this process in the background, but for it to run every second would be a bit crazy. There has got to a be a much simpler solution to this problem. What would be the most efficient way to go about this?"}
{"_id": "202202", "title": "Does the VS version setting in Settings.settings matter?", "text": "Looking through the server vs local code on a humongous legacy project, I see this in Settings.settings:               <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>          <SettingsFile xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2004/01/settings\" CurrentProfile=\"(Default)\">       <Profiles>         <Profile Name=\"(Default)\" />       </Profiles>       <Settings />     </SettingsFile>      Is there a problem with having this VS2010 project reference 2004 this way? Or does it not matter?"}
{"_id": "40715", "title": "How to query a very long list of properties fast", "text": "I have a structure for storing item properties on SQL Server:               ItemId PropertyId Value     1      1          a     1      2          b     2      1          a     2      2          5      Currently there are over 130000 items and 10000 properties and the numbers are growing. Current row count is a little over 15M. If I created a pivot table for this data, it would have a little over 1.3 billion cells, 15 million of which are not null. Users can form custom expressions on this data like:               X: P1 = 'a' (rule X selects items which have property 1 with value 'a')     Y: P2 <> 'b'     Z: P3 like '%c%'     T: P4 > 5 (rule T selects items which have property 4 with a value greater than 5)      and they form filters by using expressions like:               (X AND T) (items that match both X and Y)     (X AND Y) OR (Z AND T)     (X OR Y) AND (Z OR NOT T)     (X OR Y AND T) OR Z      I need to query the result of a few filters (generally 4 or 5) as a response of a single web request. How can I do this fast? Is there a storage method or a super efficient algorithm to get this filter results? It'd be great if this is possible on SQL Server but I am also open to solutions like storing this portion of data on a no sql database."}
{"_id": "40714", "title": "Hashing growth strategy", "text": "What is a good growth strategy for hash tables? If the number of elements exceeds the number of buckets, I increase the number of buckets with the following formula:               n = int(n * 1.618033988749895) | 1;      Does that sound sensible? (The `| 1` part makes sure I get an odd number.)"}
{"_id": "83331", "title": "Question on design of current pagination implementations", "text": "I have checked pagination implementations on asp.net mvc specifically and i really feel that there is something less efficient in implementations. First of all all implementations use pagination values like below.               public ActionResult MostPopulars(int pageIndex,int pageSize)     {          }      The thing that i feel wrong is pageIndex and pageSize totally should be member of Pagination class otherwise this way looks so much functional way. Also it simplify unnecesary paramater pass in tiers of application. Second thing is that they use below interface.               public interface IPagedList<T> : IList<T>     {         int PageCount { get; }         int TotalItemCount { get; }         int PageIndex { get; }         int PageNumber { get; }         int PageSize { get; }         bool HasPreviousPage { get; }         bool HasNextPage { get; }         bool IsFirstPage { get; }         bool IsLastPage { get; }     }       If i want to routing my pagination to different action so i have to create new view model for encapsulate action name in it or even controller name. Another solution can be that sending this interfaced model to view then specify action and controller hard coded in pager method as parameter but i am losing totally re-usability of my view because it is strictly depends on just one action. Another thing is that they use below code in view               Html.Pager(Model.PageSize, Model.PageNumber, Model.TotalItemCount)      If the model is IPagedList why they don't provide an overload method like `@Html.Pager(Model)` or even better one is `@Html.Pager()`. You know that we know model type in this way. Before i was doing mistake because i was using Model.PageIndex instead of Model.PageNumber. Another big issue is they strongly rely on IQueryable interface. How they know that i use IQueryable in my data layer ? I would expected that they work simply with collections that is keep pagination implementation persistence ignorant. What is wrong about my improvement ideas over their pagination implementations ? What is their reason to not implement their paginations in this way ?"}
{"_id": "766", "title": "What acceptance test frameworks have you used? What are the pros and cons?", "text": "For business or tester facing tests on projects (not unit tests), I've typically used FitNesse, but I've dabbled with RSpec and I'm interested in learning Selenium and Robot. Do you have experience in these (or other) acceptance testing tools? What are the pros and cons? For FitNesse, I can think of the following pros and cons initially. PROS:   * Wiki based editing, which most people understand   * Lots of support and plugins for different languages   * Completely self contained, you just download and go CONS:   * Refactoring the tests can be a little clunky   * You need to know (or document) the various properties that each method in your test fixture expects. There's no \"intellisense\" or IDE to do this for you that I'm aware of."}
{"_id": "83334", "title": "Can I use Xcode 4.2?", "text": "Can I use the new Xcode 4.2 to make apps for older version of the iOS? Will they work?   I like the new features like the Storyboard and Automatic Reference Counting."}
{"_id": "226282", "title": "The value of potential shippability when the product is not minimally viable yet", "text": "The main benefit of having a potentially shippable product at the end of each Sprint is the ability to release the product quickly in case market conditions change. However, usually in the first half year or more the product doesn't have enough value to be actually shipped. So why spend all this energy to make a potentially shippable increment each Sprint if you know with complete certainty that the product won't be shipped?"}
{"_id": "226283", "title": "Super Fast File Storage Engine", "text": "I basically have one big gigantic table (about 1.000.000.000.000 records) in a database with these fields: id, block_id, record id is unique, block_id is not unique, it contains about 10k (max) records with the same block_id but with different records To simplify my job that deals with the DB I have an API similar to this:               Engine e = new Engine(...);     // this method must be thread safe but with fine grained locked (block_id) to improve concurrency     e.add(block_id, \"asdf\"); // asdf up to 1 Kilobyte  max          // this must concatenate all the already added records added block_id, and won't need to be bigger than 10Mb (worst case) average will be <5Mb     String s = e.getConcatenatedRecords(block_id);      If I map each block to a file(haven't done it yet), then each record will be a line in the file and I will still be able to use that API But I want to know if I will have any peformance gain by using flat files compared to a well tunned postgresql database ? (at least for this specific scenario) My biggest requirement though is that the getConcatenatedRecords method returns stupidly fast (not so with the add operation). I am considering caching and memory mapping also, I just don't want to complicate myself before asking if there is an already made solution for this kind of scenario ?"}
{"_id": "219721", "title": "Clearing the lowest set bit of a number", "text": "I can see in this tutorial on bit manipulation, under the heading \"Extracting every last bit\", that - > Suppose we wish to find the lowest set bit of x (which is known to be non- > zero). If we subtract 1 from x then this bit is cleared, but all the other > one bits in x remain set. I don't understand how this statement is true. If we take `x = 110`, subtracting 1 would give `101`. Here, the lowest set bit is not cleared. Can anyone tell me how I'm approaching this problem in a wrong way?"}
{"_id": "61984", "title": "Are Vim or Emacs practical for languages like .Net or Java?", "text": "So, I am primarily a .Net developer who does some stuff in Java, Python and a few others from time to time. I have heard a lot of people praise Vim and Emacs for greatly increasing efficiency once the basics are nailed down. I can definitely see how many of the features could be very useful with sufficient practice, and even believe the learning curve is probably worth the effort. However...it seems that you would really have to be some sort of wizard of macros and hotkeys to be as efficient in Vim or Emacs as the average developer is in Visual Studio, Netbeans, Eclipse, or other platforms. I have been starting to learn to use Vim and think some of its features are awesome (column editing for example), but it seems that many of the tools provided by the heavy weight IDEs simply could not be replaced buy even the most juiced up text editor. A few processes I would be skeptical anyone could ever be more efficient at in Vim include (I know VS best, so I will stick to those):   * generating dbml files for Linq-to-SQL   * Automated testing   * designing UIs   * Creating/organizing projects and solutions I know Vim and Emacs can do a lot of the same things very powerfully that VS can (like intellisense, refactoring, etc.) and it may be able to do some or all of the examples that I provided, but is it realistic to say that someone working on these platforms would actually benefit from Vim or Emacs?"}
{"_id": "71585", "title": "Teaching Programming to Kid / Teen", "text": "I know this topic has be discussed before, but I thought this might be a bit more of a detailed question... A family friend is a 12yr old boy with ADHD, and a very bright kid at that. He seems to have a solid instinct of computers, and I really think he would excel at programming. For example, today he was kicking around our place and so I opened up Visual Studio Express C#, and showed him how to create a console application (he was the one typing it all out). In about 10 - 20 minutes he was writing his own code, ReadLine()s and Writeline()s etc, and even started working on a loop. Made me think that even something like C# would definitely be within his grasp. Although Lego Mindstorms came to mind, his family isn't particularly well off and is likely not feasible. I thought about lending him one of my intro to C# books, but with the ADHD I don't know if he would have the patience to actually go through it. I also think something like Alice or Scratch would be too childish for him, and wouldn't catch his attention... I'm trying to figure out what the best way to approach this would be, and what sort of material is out there that he could teach himself how to program. Any thoughts or suggestions?? One thought I had was this book, but it may be too advanced without a basic C# background at least... Amazon C# Game Book: Thanks!"}
{"_id": "38691", "title": "Difference between Web API and Web Service?", "text": "I have heard about Web Services and Web API's a lot, is there any difference between them or are the same?"}
{"_id": "208469", "title": "Benchmark of asynchronous code", "text": "Asynchronous programming seems to be getting quite popular these days. One of the most quoted advantages is performance gain from removing operations that block threads. But I also saw people saying that the advantage is not that great. And that properly configured thread pool can have same effect as fully asynchronous code. My question is, are there any real benchmarks that compare blocking vs. asynchronous code? It can be any language, but I think C# and Java would be most representative. Not sure how good would this benchmark be with Node.js or similar. **Edit** : My attempt at general question combined with unclear terminology seems to have failed. By \"asynchronous code\" I mean what some answers described as event or callback programming. In the final result, operations that would block thread are instead delegated to some callback system so threads can be utilized better. And if I wanted to ask specific question : _Are there any benchmarks that compare throughput/latency gain of async/await server code in .NET? Or any other similar comparison?_"}
{"_id": "208467", "title": "How would my custom language be categorized?", "text": "I'm developing my own scripting language to solve some unique challenges for a project. The language takes source code and converts the contents into tokens, and then a command factory is used to convert those tokens into something that can be executed. An example of a script might look like this.               accept: always;     reject: title has \"something\" or body has \"something else\";     reject: title length < 10;      Each line in the script ends with a `;` terminator, and each line starts with a named rule that ends with `:`. Each rule uses a command followed by arguments. The commands can be joined together using logical operators. The number of arguments a command can have is fixed. So when I find a command I can expect X number of additional tokens for the syntax to be correct. The goal is human readable code because non-programmers will be using it. An alternative way of writing the same above code using a C style structure would be.               accept(true);     reject(has(title,\"something\") || has(body,\"something else\"));     reject(length(title) < 10);      What is the term used for a parser that handles a language where `()` for structuring arguments is omitted, and there are no clear boundaries defined for arguments. I would like to read up on how these kinds of parsers are implemented. To ensure I'm not overly reinventing the wheel or running into common problems."}
{"_id": "208464", "title": "Align draggable elements in line and generate without overflow or new line", "text": "I have this script I'm working on. What it should do is generate a new div every time I press a button and I've already done that, but those are not draggable. I think that happens because of the onLoad function but alternative do I have? The second problem is that when I click one of the blue boxes, all of them must arrange in a line like you see them when you load my jsFiddle link, and if the line is full and you click the \"New Square\" button, instead of overflowing or add a new line, it would close the last box instead and add a new box before all of the other boxes. I'm sorry to bother you with those questions, but I am a PHP and MySQL programmer, I just started using jQuery. jsFiddle HTML:               <div id=\"container\">         <div class=\"round\"></div>          <div class=\"round\"></div>         <div class=\"round\"></div>         <div class=\"round\"></div>     </div>     <br><br><br>     <input type=\"button\" class=\"button\" value=\"New Square\">      jQuery:               $('.round').draggable();          $('.button').click(         function (){     $(\"#container\").append(\"<div class='round'></div>\");         });          $('.round').click (              );      I had more code in jQuery, but I removed all of the useless options because I want you to easily understand what I want to do."}
{"_id": "245462", "title": "Enforcing organizational standards for software in Scrum", "text": "Organizations, especially organizations with a recognized brand, have various standards for software. This includes things like security, usability, code quality and readability, UI design, test automation and so forth. In our organization we have a lead for each of these areas. Each lead is a very experienced individual and is trusted by management. Each lead is responsible for the software to meet the standards in the lead's area of expertise. The Scrum Guide says: \"Development teams are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;\" My question is how can an organization trust teams to produce a product that meets the various standards mentioned above, if the leads (trusted by the organization) have no ability to enforce the quality in each of the areas?"}
{"_id": "150702", "title": "Is hiring a \"chief intern\" a good idea?", "text": "I'm starting an internship program for our software department and I was wondering about creating a position (\"chief intern\", intern supervisor, or whatever one should call it) with the following responsibilities:   * **Train** interns   * **Coach** interns   * **Manage projects and tasks** for interns   * **Supervise** intern's work in terms of **rhythm and quality**   * **Act as a liaison** between the main team's needs and interns performance/aspirations   * Evaluate and facilitate intern's progress **when they want to grab a higher-level domain-specific task** (at this point, a main dev team member can do mentoring)   * **Get freely involved in the main team's software development tasks so that he himself can grow** , and have full mentorship from the main dev team. I'm thinking that an apprentice-level engineer (below Jr., or Jr.; but being a graduate and working full-time) can handle this for a while (he will be trained by the main dev team first), until one of two things happen:   1. He/she **decides to move on to the main dev team** by recommending an appropriate replacement (or me finding another one as a new hire)   2. **Keep leading** the interns while still being able to grow to Jr. Eng., Eng., Sr. Eng I know the notion of a \"chief intern\" is common within the medical world, but I don't really know about that in the software world (I was a freelancer for most of my university years). A side-intention to this is also that, if this ends up being a higher rotation position (organically) because the intern supervisor wants to join the main dev team, **this could help interns that aspire this position emerge as leaders**. **My main intention for this, though, is removing distractions from the main team but without making the interns suffer the lack of attention, which could lead to boredom and little intern retention.** Is this \"chief intern\" idea common (or good at least)?, are there any obvious risks to it that I might not be seeing? * * * **Edit** : I have a draft plan for the kind of work the interns would be doing: Are R&D mini-projects a good activity for interns? **Edit #2** : My intention is not keeping them isolated, but having someone focus on giving attention to them when we cannot. **Edit #3** : I'm now convince it is a good idea, but I will take the organic approach to hiring someone in such position: do it myself until I cannot. This way I'll know better what to expect from a person I hire for this role in the future, as well as what works and what doesn't with interns."}
{"_id": "232507", "title": "Communicating with Vendors", "text": "We are a small software team (as far as programmers go) and have a team of vendors on the other side of the world that program for us. We own the product, and simply dictate to them some of the tasks to work on. I am one of the lead programmers and also the project manager of this particular project, so I am a programming and fulfilling requirements as well as outlining them. I am having difficulties communicating with the vendors exactly what is expected of them. Let me start by saying we are fairly new at this and I don't have a lot of experience leading a team of vendors, especially when it is difficult to communicate verbally in English, and they work during my night and then I come into the code they pushed while I was asleep. Problem is, I end up spending a lot of my day just checking what they did, and fixing bugs and cases they didn't think of. They're not thinkers, they do exactly what I tell them, and nothing more or less. Most of the time, I feel like it would just be easier to do it myself. My question is how do most teams like this communicate? Right now we have weekly telephone meetings and I email them nightly the progress I made, as well as what is expected of them. When I think \"how to communicate with other programmers\" the answer seems to be UML. That's what it is. I certainly am very familiar with UML, learned it in school, but have never really used it on the job. It's just not something we do, in fact generally the requirements for a task are in my manager's head. I can get those into a spreadsheet or a flowchart, but never an official diagram. Is UML something teams like this actually use? In all reality, I feel like I learned a lot in school that no one actually does. If so, which diagrams are the most useful/used? From my knowledge, in this project where we are revamping something that exists in the system already from the ground up, I feel like the following would be a good approach:   * Create a quick ER diagram containing any added/updated/used entities in the project.   * Create a _detailed_ use case model, clearly defining and numbering each use case.   * Create a sequence diagram for the complex use cases (as well as their alternate flows) to show exactly what is expected each step of the way. I feel like this would be a good start. We don't really do a good job of capturing requirements currently, we kind of just start coding based on something we drew up on a whiteboard. Obviously this needs to change as well, to avoid getting a week into a project and realize that we forgot something. What are your suggestions/experience? Unfortunately we're sort of flying blind and just don't have anyone experienced enough in these situations to go to. I want the project to be a success, but I can't keep having the vendors (understandably) making mistakes because I assume they know X or Y. How can I utilize them more effectively?"}
{"_id": "172918", "title": "Custom HTML Tags: Are there any specifications stating a standard way to handle them?", "text": "It seems like for years they've just been given default styling and inline display. Is there a spec somewhere that has dictated this? I've looked over the RFC's but I'm not particularly good with RFC-ese, and I didn't notice anything anywhere. For example               <body>        Some content <mycustomtag>something else</mycustomtag> more content.     </body>      I can still style it with CSS, and the browser doesn't outright vomit... so it seems like there is some sort of expected behavior. Was that dictated by a specification?"}
{"_id": "241147", "title": "Understanding UML composition better", "text": "The difference between Composition and Aggregation in UML (and sometimes in programming too) is that with Composition, the lifetime of the objects composing the composite (e.g. an engine and a steering wheel in a car) is dependent on the composite object. While with Aggregation, the lifetime of the objects making up the composite is independent of the composite. However I'm not sure about something related to composition in UML. Say ClassA is composed of an object of ClassB:               class ClassA{         ClassB bInstance;         public ClassA(){             bInstance = new ClassB();         }     }      This is an example of composition, because `bInstance` is dependent on the lifetime of it's enclosing object. However, regarding UML notation - **I'm not sure if I would notate the relationship between ClassA and ClassB with a filled diamond (composition) or a white diamond (aggregation).** This is because while the lifetime of _some_ `ClassB` instances is dependent of `ClassA` instances - there could be `ClassB` instances anywhere else in the program - not only within `ClassA` instances. * * * **The question is:** if **_some_** ClassB objects are composed with ClassA objects (and thus are dependent on the lifetime of the ClassA objects), but **_some are not_** \\- would the relationship between the two classes in UML be an aggregation or a composition relationship??"}
{"_id": "172914", "title": "Simplifying C++11 optimal parameter passing when a copy is needed", "text": "It seems to me that in C++11 lots of attention was made to **simplify returning values** from functions and methods, i.e.: with move semantics it's possible to simply return heavy-to-copy but cheap-to-move values (while in C++98/03 the general guideline was to use output parameters via non-const references or pointers), e.g.:               // C++11 style     vector<string> MakeAVeryBigStringList();          // C++98/03 style     void MakeAVeryBigStringList(vector<string>& result);      On the other side, it seems to me that more work should be done on input parameter passing, in particular when **a copy of an input parameter is needed** , e.g. in constructors and setters. My understanding is that the best technique in this case is to use templates and `std::forward<>`, e.g. (following the pattern of this answer on C++11 optimal parameter passing):               class Person     {         std::string m_name;          public:            template <class T,                   class = typename std::enable_if                   <                       std::is_constructible<std::string, T>::value                   >::type>         explicit Person(T&& name)              : m_name(std::forward<T>(name))          {         }              ...     };      A similar code could be written for setters. Frankly, this code seems boilerplate and complex, and doesn't scale up well when there are more parameters (e.g. if a surname attribute is added to the above class). Would it be possible to add a new feature to C++11 to _simplify_ code like this (just like lambdas simplify C++98/03 code with functors in several cases)? I was thinking of a syntax with some special character, like `@` (since introducing a `&&&` in addition to `&&` would be too much typing :) e.g.:               class Person     {         std::string m_name;          public:            /*            Simplified syntax to produce boilerplate code like this:                 template <class T,                   class = typename std::enable_if                   <                       std::is_constructible<std::string, T>::value                   >::type>         */         explicit Person(std::string@ name)              : m_name(name) // implicit std::forward as well          {         }              ...     };      This would be very convenient also for more complex cases involving more parameters, e.g.               Person(std::string@ name, std::string@ surname)         : m_name(name),           m_surname(surname)     {     }      **Would it be possible to add a simplified convenient syntax like this in C++?** What would be the downsides of such a syntax?"}
{"_id": "76675", "title": "How can a Java programmer make the most of a new project in C or C++?", "text": "As a Java programmer, I'm looking to learn either C or C++ by writing a database manager. Obviously, Java shares many idioms with C and C++, but yet both bring vastly different program design challenges. I'm looking to for a way to make this exercise as educational as possible. **What aspects of taking on this project in C or C++ can help me make a decision about which approach will teach me the most, as a Java programmer?** One particular target of this exercise would be at least a subset of the spatial extensions in PostgreSQL. Obvious issues to consider would be goodness of fit of C vs. C++ for:   * modeling concepts of databases in general.   * modeling spatial modeling in particular Another major point would be the degree of expected difference from Java. Would a good, idiomatic design in C++ be enough different from a design in Java to teach new, different concepts, or would it mostly be the same concepts with slightly different syntax? Would a good design in C contain more concepts that were new or different than one in C++?"}
{"_id": "77988", "title": "Third-party open-source projects in .NET and Ruby and NIH syndrome", "text": "The title might seem to be inflammatory, but it's here to catch your eye after all. I'm a professional .NET developer, but I try to follow other platforms as well. With Ruby being all hyped up (mostly due to Rails, I guess) I cannot help but compare the situation in open-source projects in Ruby and .NET. What I personally find interesting is that .NET developers are for the most part severely suffering from the NIH syndrome and are very hesitant to use someone else's code in pretty much any shape or form. Comparing it with Ruby, I see a striking difference. Folks out there have gems literally for every little piece of functionality imaginable. New projects are popping out left and right and generally are heartily welcomed. On the .NET side we have CodePlex which I personally find to be a place where abandoned projects grow old and eventually get abandoned. Now, there certainly are several well-known and maintained projects, but the number of those pales in comparison with that of Ruby. Granted, NIH on the .NET devs part comes mostly from the fact that there are very few quality .NET projects out there, let alone projects that solve their specific needs, but even if there is such a project, it's often frowned upon and is reinvented in-house. So my question is multi-fold:   * Do you find my observations anywhere near being correct?   * If so, what are your thoughts on quality and quantitiy of OSS projects in .NET?   * Again, if you do agree with my thoughts on \"NIH in .NET\", what do you think is causing it?   * And finally, is it Ruby's feature set & community standpoint (dynamic language, strong focus on testing) that allows for such easy integration of third-party code?"}
{"_id": "233671", "title": "Removing dependencies on subclass-specific behavior", "text": "I have a `Message` class which can contain multiple types of payloads (or sometimes no payload), each derived from a common `Payload` class. However, this becomes problematic because the `Message` class wants to know about the `Payload` subclasses for various reasons such as:   * Checking for `Message` equality              if (message parts besides the payload are equal) {         switch(type) {             case Payload::Type::RESPONSE:                 return *static_cast<ResponsePayload*>(payload.get())                     == *static_cast<ResponsePayload*>(o.payload.get());                 break;                  case Payload::Type::SETUP:                 return *static_cast<SetupPayload*>(payload.get())                     == *static_cast<SetupPayload*>(o.payload.get());                 break;                  ...         }     }        * Deserializing (since the deserialization methods are static because the payloads are immutable)              switch(type) {         case Payload::Type::RESPONSE:             load = ResponsePayload::fromJSON(payloadValue);             break;              case Payload::Type::SETUP:             load = SetupPayload::fromJSON(payloadValue);             break;              ...              case Payload::Type::START:         case Payload::Type::STOP:         case ...:             break; // Load stays null              default:             THROW(Exception, \"Error in program logic: we forgot to parse some payload\");     }        * Ensuring a `Payload` is attached to a `Message` while constructing it:              switch(type) {         case Payload::Type::RESPONSE:         case Payload::Type::SETUP:         case ...:             ENFORCE(IOException, payload != nullptr, \"For this message type, a payload is required.\");             break;              case Payload::Type::START:         case Payload::Type::STOP:         case ...:             ENFORCE(IOException, payload == nullptr, \"For this message type, the payload should be null\");             break;              default:             THROW(Exception, \"Error in program logic: we forgot to handle some payload\");     }      Alarm bells are going are going off in my head - this violates SOLID like there's no tomorrow and obviously doesn't scale well since I have to add `case` statements every time I add a new payload. Is there a cleaner approach I could take?"}
{"_id": "233673", "title": "Why isn't java used as a build language?", "text": "If Java is a general purpose language, and building a program is something that can be described using the Java language, why isn't this the best way to write build files and instead we use tools like Ant, Maven, and Gradle? Wouldn't that be more straightforward, and also remove the need to learn yet another programming language? (BTW - this question can also be applied to other languages, like C#)"}
{"_id": "233672", "title": "How to use namespaces to separate interface from implementation, in c++?", "text": "As far as I can tell, you can make your interface known to others by providing your .h file. Your .cpp is the implementation. Then they can see the function names, the parameter types, the return type, maybe a description of how to use a function, and maybe what it does in the .h file. Then I read in posts here about using namespaces to separate the interface from the implementation. What does that mean? Doesn't a namespace only let you know that a name exists in that namespace? So please provide an example, I can't find any."}
{"_id": "127293", "title": "Learn HTML5 CSS3 and JavaScript", "text": "What is best way to learn these technologies which would enable me to understand all the 3 in a combined perspective rather than individually?"}
{"_id": "77984", "title": "Which programming frameworks offer good multilingual support?", "text": "I'm starting a new company, and our software will be a SaaS solution offered to municipalities around the world. Their interface will be web-based. I am trying to figure our which software development frameworks and which software platforms would be able to support a fully multi-lingual system. In this I mean that I need to be able to have the same screens operate in different native languages (including right-to-left), both for display and data-entry. I want to be able to maintain a single application for all languages. I need to be able to add new languages pretty quickly (= no development) once the system is set up.   Since I am starting from scratch, I have the privilege to research and choose in advance, and not force a solution into an existing application.   Also, I have experience in leading development on Java, .NET, C++ and C, so I am open to use any technology that will meet my business needs. I would appreciate recommendations with pros and cons."}
{"_id": "203625", "title": "Question about Java nested classes design decision", "text": "I was shocked today to discover that this code compiles cleanly in Java:               public class A {       public static class B {          private static void x() {}       }       private static class C {          private /* So, private to what exactly? */ static void x() {}       }       public static void main(String[] args) {         B.x(); C.x();       }     }      It seems Java's private keyword indicates only top-level-class-privacy; which, given the general convention to name Java source files by class, means that Java effectively provides only file-level private visibility, not true private visibility. (The equivalent code in C++ does not compile with a visibility error.) Would anyone be able to explain why Java was designed this way? Or is this just Java's way of telling everyone not to use nested classes? (It certainly hacks in an implementation of a two-way C++ friend relationship, but we already have package-level visibility for that; this seems to make the one-way equivalent impossible. Moreover, it necessitates the compiler creating more hidden accessor methods to circumvent the visibility, and under-the-hood downgrading of nested class visibility control to make all this not error out at runtime. Really, why the trouble?)"}
{"_id": "89666", "title": "Promotion or De-motivation", "text": "I am working as a programmer for last 3 years, recently my company has promoted me as a project manager. Now I am facing resource management issues and I am not comfortable as a manager and I want to continue my profession as a programmer. I have talked to my director to step me back as a programmer but he forced me to continue as a project manager as this is one step ahead from programming. Now suggest me what should I do?"}
{"_id": "14584", "title": "Do you actively think about security when coding?", "text": "When you're coding, do you actively think about your code might be exploited in ways it wasn't originally meant to do and thus gain access to protected information, run commands or something else you wouldn't want your users to do?"}
{"_id": "108566", "title": "can a team lead's work ever be done working remotely", "text": "I am currently a software developer. As a next milestone in my career I am thinking I must establish myself as team leader which leads a small development team in order to meet deliverables, deployments, etc. I've read various post in this site itself which discusses the pros and cons of working from home. But I am not sure if this aspect was quite discussed/debated. I haven't stepped into the team leading role per se, but I would like to know the responsibilities that come with the title, and if (and how) that can be managed while working from home."}
{"_id": "21336", "title": "How do you organize your local development environment?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you organize your projects folders? I'm interested to learn how everyone keeps their local development projects organized in a logical manner. What do you do to keep your dev projects organized in a manner that allows you to easily find things?"}
{"_id": "72802", "title": "Two related, but independent projects -- Two repositories or one?", "text": "I've made two \"complimenting\" projects. These two projects are stand alone, but are almost designed to be used together. They are both fairly small projects as well. I'm wanting to host the code on GitHub, but I'm not sure if I should use two repositories or one for this. What do you think I should do?"}
{"_id": "211532", "title": "Why is this syntax convention?", "text": "It says in the book (APress Ganesh / Sharma) about Java 7: > You create a method named `fill()` in the Utilities class with this > declaration: >   >   >     public static <T> void fill(List<T> list, T val) >   > > You declare the generic type parameter `T` in this method. After the > qualifiers `public` and `static`, you put `<T>` and then followed it by > return type, method name, and its parameters. This declaration is different > from generic classes\u2014you give the generic type parameters after the class > name in generic classes. But why `<T>` as in `public static <T>` ? The syntax looks odd and appears nowhere else in the Java language. What does the `<T>` mean in this case and why is it used?"}
{"_id": "234904", "title": "Is a PHP array an example of a dynamic data structure?", "text": "I did my homework, and it says that dynamic data structures are \"data structures that change in size as a program needs it to by allocating and de- allocating memory from the heap\". So I was wondering, are PHP arrays examples of dynamic data structures, or are they limited to binary trees and double-linked lists? Thanks."}
{"_id": "234900", "title": "Go-like interfaces + multi-methods make sense?", "text": "Thinking about the design of a potential new language, I wonder how related are the concepts of built a OO similar to GO interfaces and multi-methods (I get this from http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/manual/methods/). If I understand this right, the interfaces are simply a group of methods that must be implemented by each descendant, and multi-methods provide a nice way to specialize them without do a lot of boilerplate or casting. However, Is my intuition that both could work well together, but wonder if is correct. For example, if a interface declare:               type Animal interface {         Speak() string     }          func (d Dog) Speak() string {         return \"Woof!\"     }      but in julia is more like:               speak(x::Dog) = return \"Woof!\";      So this feel like that both do the same, but different. Will be a mess to do both? When could that make sense? Also, what make a \"better\" path, if only one must be used?"}
{"_id": "229108", "title": "What is the applicability of CORS?", "text": "I have a system which needs to do cross-origin requests and having trouble understanding the relevance of CORS. At first glance it doesn't appear to provide me with any type of security I'd actually want for my service.   1. Since CORS is honoured only on the client side my server must still make zero assumptions about the request. There is no guarantee a request is coming from a browser at all, thus CORS headers cannot be used as access control.   2. The target server decides who is allowed to talk to it, and the origin server has no control. My JavaScript is also not secure on the client and subject to alteration. A malicious server could simply accept all CORS requests and thus all data could leak out of my application. I see only a narrow scope of where CORS is actually helpful. This is the Facebook like scenario. Default cross-origin restrictions prevent a malicious page from making requests to Facebook on behalf of the user. CORS simply allows certain domains to do this. However, I still don't see the value in CORS here because some simple DNS setup would allow the same behaviour. So what I am missing about CORS? In which scenarios is it relevant and advantageous to use (compared to simple DNS CNAME's)?"}
{"_id": "229100", "title": "how much memory should android app use", "text": "We are planning to develop an android application. the application will use API and data transfer will be via SSL. I should write documentation and set functional and system requirements for the appliaction. One of the main requirements is that how much memory should the application use. Of course Android OS manages itself how much memory allocate to it at different satges of its activeness, but a great deal depends on appliaction. Is there any specific defined practice on how much memory should a typical android app use and that it is in use in advanced world of android developement, e.g. the appliaction of X type should use no more that 7 MB if they are active? How to set the requriement so that developers pay enough attention to this specific parameter?"}
{"_id": "225480", "title": "MySQL left join + performance", "text": "SELECT                        *    #Case 1                 cp.* #Case 2                  FROM crawl_page AS cp             LEFT JOIN artist AS a                 ON cp.cpURL LIKE CONCAT('%',a.artistPageID,'/',a.artistPageURL,'%')                  WHERE cpPageType = 'SONGS'                 AND cpPageAdded < (                     SELECT cpCrawlDate                      FROM crawl_page                      WHERE cpURL = 'http://www.example.com/page-52/'                 )                      AND a.artistID IS NULL                    LIMIT 1      In this query when I use 1st case (selecting everything from both tables) time taken for query is fine about 0.468 sec. But if I do case 2 (selecting only from main table) it takes hell much time 26 second. It's not problem just to use case 1, but I can't get the idea how does it work and why? Thanks"}
{"_id": "225487", "title": "Mapping values over a curve", "text": "I have a value between 0 and 8000 and I want this number to resolve to another number between 0 and 2000. I could just divide it by 4 but I have a special need here. For values above 4000 I want the mapped value to be biased towards the 2000. But for values lower than 4000 I want the mapped value to be biased towards 0. This is actually for a game where you are given bonus points between 0 and 2000 depending on how quickly you complete the task. So if you are very fast and do it in 7500 milliseconds you should get 1875 points (exactly 7500 / 4). If you do it in 6000 milliseconds you would get 1450 points (a little under 6000 / 4). If you are slow and do it in 1000 milliseconds you would get 50 milliseconds (well under 1000 / 4). The idea is to reward fast players more than slow players but still let slow players feel like they've achieved something. I feel an \"eased-out\" value mapping would achieve this. I hope this makes sense. Can you help me figure out some code that achieves this?"}
{"_id": "225486", "title": "Fortran 90 - How to create a coordinate system", "text": "So I need to code a simple program, and I need to define 2D coordinates? Is there any coordinate system I can use in Fortran? I was told it might have to be all in arrays? And if so, can anybody push me in the right direction as to how to set up 2d arrays? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "208182", "title": "Why are reference-counting smart pointers so popular?", "text": "As I can see, smart pointers are used extensively in many real-world C++ projects. Though some kind of smart pointers are obviously beneficial to support RAII and ownership transfers, there is also a trend of using shared pointers _by default_ , as a way of _\"garbage collection\"_ , so that the programmer do not have to think about allocation that much. Why are shared pointers more popular than integrating a proper garbage collector like Boehm GC? (Or do you agree at all, that they are more popular than actual GCs?) I know about two advantages of conventional GCs over reference-counting:   * Conventional GC algorithms has no **problem with reference-cycles**.   * Reference-count is generally **slower** than a proper GC. What are the reasons for using reference-counting smart pointers?"}
{"_id": "159571", "title": "Job prospects for open source project experience", "text": "I would like to know whether work experience in Open Source Projects will really brightens the job prospects/resume of a developer other than their day time programming job or doing certifications are more than enough for a developer?"}
{"_id": "171751", "title": "Application of LGPL license on a simple algorithm", "text": "The \"scope\" of the GNU license is troubling me : I know it has been answered many times ( here, here, ... ) but shouldn't we take into consideration the complexity and originality of a code before using GPL license ? I explain : I'm working on a pet project using the DTW algorithm that I have written in C using the pseudo-code given on the wikipedia page . At one point I decided to change it for a C++ implementation ( just for hone my c++ skill ) . After doing so, I've looked for an existing implementation on the web, to compare the \"cleanliness\" of it, and I found this one : Vectored DTW implementation, which is part of limproved, a C++ library licensed under GPL v3 . Personnally, I don't mind the GNU license because it is a personnal project, which will never led to any kind of commercial purpose, but **I wonder if this implementation can abide a company using it to open their code** ( and other FOSS permissions ). Theoretically, I think it can ( I may be wrong :p ), but the algorithm in question is so simple (and old) that it should not."}
{"_id": "171754", "title": "Client-Side V.S. Server-Side Searching?", "text": "I am currently helping to design a web site and application in HTML. We would like the user to be able to search the site/app for desired content via a search bar. We would also like to include an advanced search ability to allow for different search options and more concentrated searches. We are having trouble deciding whether to program the search function on the Client-Side (with JavaScript) or on the Server-Side (with PHP). What are the pros and cons of both and what would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "171757", "title": "Computational Complexity of Correlation in Time vs Multiplication in Frequency space", "text": "I am working with 2d correlation for image processing techniques (pattern recognition etc...). I was wondering if there is a theoretical approach on how to tell when to use multiplication in frequency space over correlation in time space. For sizes of 2x frequency space is obviously faster but how about small, prime sizes like e.g. 11?"}
{"_id": "132170", "title": "When learning Android, should I focus on the latest and greatest?", "text": "I'm a Java developer and I'm going to start working with Android to get familiar with mobile apps. I've worked with Ajax toolkits, but haven't done any mobile development. I've seen a huge change in development on certain toolkits where the learning curve really jumps up, as in GWT 1.5 versus 2.4. I'm just wanting to jump in and get the basics (along with best practices) down for now. I don't know if Android 2 versus version 4 would do that, but version 4 might just throw in extra features that I might not need to know about for now and take away from my main focus. Is it better to go with the latest version of Android or, to make sure the fundamentals are covered, take an older version that would be easier to get in and start developing with?"}
{"_id": "132174", "title": "How to Use Subversion Repository Inside Git Repository?", "text": "I'm developing a project in Git. IT depends on another project, that's in a Subversion repository. I'd like to be able to make changes to the Subversion project in the tree, and commit to/update from the Subversion repository from within the Git project. Is that possible?"}
{"_id": "213135", "title": "What to do when request is sent to server and while waiting for response internet connectivity lost?", "text": "I am sending a huge amount of data to server. Now while I have sent the data and waiting for server response, suddenly my android device gets internet connection lost.   So what I used to do is, showing an alert dialog of connection lost, but at server side the data was already processed and it updated somewhere e.g. on any URL. But my android phone does not know this as it did not get response ever. How to resolve it.   Whether it could be done on server side or on android itself How?   How server would know that android phone is not going to listen the response?   It may be client-server communication optimization perspective."}
{"_id": "205962", "title": "estimation method at the \"just finished definition phase\"", "text": "We are basically using Waterfall life cycle methodology. Requirement Analysis: I get a use case created by some one else. Design (talking only about Low level design): I get some little feeling about how would I design it, may be either instantly/ or after some time. Coding+Unit Testing: In case of unit Testing I am not using any TDD, but I am trying to get full code coverage, through mocks and etc. after the coding is done. I am being asked about estimates just after the Requirement walk through. Since I have only a fair amount of idea about how the design will look like, I have no way to say about estimates. As for the coding part is considered, how can I get the total number of methods at the \"just finished definition phase\" (I never know how much will I be refactoring at this stage), Unit Testing with full code coverage: I haven't written a code, then How can I know how many behaviors are there to test for one method and hence time. Is there some scientific way/ or other way to know this at this stage? **Note:** I have already read this possible similar question. I can break down all my tasks to small units, but I am having problem to give an estimate for each unit. **Edit1** This is part of my problem too it all started from here. Our Organization also unit tested (or correctly saying performed integration testing) manually or through emulators etc. So whenever some enhancements come for a particular client You need to create test data again, and what about any breaking changes You have introduced. So, I introducing Automated Unit Testing, but now there is again a problem for correct estimation which is necessary to give the organization farsighted view of \"time estimate of creating a test suite with code\" in simple words build to validation team. Kindly help."}
{"_id": "205963", "title": "Very-Loose Coupling and Dependency Injection for Database Management", "text": "I'm currently setting up a MongoDB database for a web-app. I'm running node.js and using Mongoose to help manage mapping, validation ect. I'm wondering if it's a good idea to really decouple MongoDB from my code, just on the off-chance we want to switch to something like CouchDB a little later. Specifically, I'd make a `databaseManger` module that is responsible for setting up Mongoose/Mongo, defining the mongoose models, managing replica sets, and doing some extra validation. This manager would export a generic API, and handle the details of the queries internally. The manager would then be passed around via dependency injection. Does this make sense? Or am I kind-of redoing some of the mongoose functionality? Any advice is appreciated."}
{"_id": "213604", "title": "Merge two different API calls into One", "text": "I have two different apps in my django project. One is \"comment\" and an other one is \"files\". A comment might save some file attached to it. The current way of creating a comment with attachments is by making two API calls. First one creates an actual comment and replies with the comment ID which serves as foreign key for the Files. Then for each file, a new request is made with the comment ID. Please note that file is a generic app, that can be used with other apps too. What is the cleanest way of making this into one API call? I want to have this as a single API call because I am in a situation where I need to send user an email with all the files as attachment when a comment is made. I know Queueing is the ideal way to do it. But I don't have the liberty to add queing to our stack now. So this was the only way I could think of."}
{"_id": "69768", "title": "Workflow on Development and Production Servers for a Consistently Updating Website", "text": "We have three developers, one system administrator, and an artist that primarily work on a single website (forum) on our spare time to consistently develop features for the forum (but there are other projects that we work on). Because our system administrator recently joined, we dropped managed hosting for a single server and decided to rent out two unmanaged servers (one for testing and the other for production). In the old server, we simply used Git as a middleman for pushing updates from the non-unified developer team into the server without conflicting updates. Pull other developer updates. Push our own updates. Revert if something breaks. Since we have two servers now, we plan to push updates to the development server and somehow have it push updates to the production server. Developer(s) -> development server (bare) -> production server We want to keep the repositories in the development server and the work tree of the web site on the production server (web server). Is there an efficient way to do this without pushing from the dev server to production? Is there a better workflow for two servers in general? P.S. The development team consists of high school teenagers and some college kids that have never developed on teams for for-profit businesses."}
{"_id": "202146", "title": "Game to decide which team member gets the window seat in a fair way", "text": "During team formation, we have a conflict where 2 developers both really want the same coveted window seat with a lush view of a creek & the woods. What sort of game / activity can we place them in that will:   1. Decide who gets the seat   2. Provide a random (not skill based) chance of winning   3. Allow both team members to participate in the selection   4. Not be a single player game masquerading as a two player game (drawing straws for example - the outcome is based off of the first player's actions when there's only 2 people)"}
{"_id": "205969", "title": "How should I architect a RESTful webservice to use 3rd party (i.e. Google, Facebook, Twitter) for authentication?", "text": "For my job we have a nice RESTful webservice we've built out that we use to drive a couple websites we have. Basically the webservice lets you create and work with support tickets, and the website is responsible for the front end. Any webservice requests use an auth header which we use to validate the user and their password for each call. This year we're looking to expand our login options so that users on the website can log in via Google, Twitter, and Facebook (possibly others). However I'm having a lot of trouble figure out how to architect this so the webservice can use the 3rd party authentication providers to ensure the users is who they say they are. Is there any best practices out there for how to do this? Currently we're thinking of having the website handle authenticating the users themselves, and then use a new setSessionId call that registers their current session with the webservice back end. Each additional request to the webservice will pass along that sessionId and will validate it. These seems okay, but I have that feeling in the back of my head that I'm not thinking this through and all my forum browsing and reading oauth and openid specs is just confusing me more. Any tips for how to tackle this?"}
{"_id": "225738", "title": "Reducing Coupling in a Series of Tasks", "text": "I am working on some code right now that involves processing user requests. Each request requires going through an approval. When a request is made, one or more records are created on the database recording what the request entails. Then a ticket is created and placed on the approver's work queue. For a typical request, approving it involves these steps:   1. The request is processed (usually resulting in a table getting updated)   2. The changes are recorded to a history table (record auditing).   3. The request is marked as approved by the approver (approval auditing).   4. The ticket is removed from the work queue.   5. The original requester is sent an email telling them their request was approved. We have a single class that kicks off these steps sequentially within a transaction (http://martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/transactionScript.html). For the most part, the sequence doesn't really matter and the email isn't really essential. The problem is each of these classes has at least 5+ dependencies (in reality, it's closer to 10+). I am stumped about how to reduce the number of dependencies when it comes to a workflow like this. I thought about grouping some of these items together, but there's no logical grouping. I don't see much of a point in creating an unnecessary layer like that, anyway. I also thought about doing some kind of observer pattern (.NET events). A class higher up could listen for the event, instantiate the needed classes and kick them off. However, that \"higher-up class\" would then be dependent on all of the classes again, so I'd be right back in the same situation. So, the only ways I've been able to think of reducing the number of dependencies is to either do artificial grouping of classes or to just make it the layer above's problem. Neither seem ideal and I wonder if I am missing something. If it helps, I am using Ninject with ASP.NET MVC. I have access to an IOC container (`DependencyResolver`). I am wondering if the solution is some sort of combination between using listeners/events and an IOC container."}
{"_id": "155012", "title": "How to become a passionate programmer?", "text": "I want to know how to be a `passionate programmer`? What are the things that `someone has to be focus to be a good programmer`?"}
{"_id": "243259", "title": "Cloning existing software for commercial purposes - legal implications", "text": "I have been asked to clone some existing software for a company. Basically its an old 16 bit DOS console app, which was supplied free of charge in I believe the late 80's. Having replaced the machine that needs to run it with a box running Win7 x64 they can't get it to work. It crashes every couple of minutes under DOSbox. The company that supplied it appears to no longer exist - if they did the company asking me to do this would almost certainly know about it. Its undetermined whether they have gone entirely or are just trading under a different name. If the latter they seem to have withdrawn from the market related to this product (because again, niche area, we **should** know about everyone there). What is the status to this with regards to copyright etc.? The main concern for the company involved is they want an identical interface to what they already have so I would have to clone this entirely. Having no source code / indication of the underlying mechanisms these would be written from scratch. Is an interface covered by copyright? / Does that still hold 30 years later? What is the assumed license when none at all is provided? Under UK law would I be under any serious risk were I to take on the project? How would this pan out if I then decided to sell the software on to other companies? Thanks"}
{"_id": "144843", "title": "Where does my database schema live in MVC?", "text": "I'm starting to check in the SQL files for creating/maintaining our database. Previously SQL files were kept totally separate from our codebase's version control. I'd like to pragmatically store my database construction/manipulation files with my other code. Do they make the most sense in a subdirectory of my Models or as a separate directory somewhere? For the most part the SQL statements _are_ the data my Models access, but some other stuff is maintenance scripts ect; stuff that doesn't pragmatically fit into my MVC folder structure."}
{"_id": "144842", "title": "Should I include dependencies for which I have the source as projects in my solution?", "text": "We have various projects in source control for web and desktop applications. Invariably, many of them use third-party open source projects or even common libraries within our organization as dependencies. Should we include the full projects of these dependencies in our various solutions? Or should we just include the .dll reference (or equivalent compiled binary) and maintain the source for said dependency elsewhere (say, for debugging purposes only)? I'm specifically thinking of .NET projects and solutions in Visual Studio, but feel free to replace those terms with JAR or whatever equivalent in other languages and frameworks. To further specify, I'm asking if a [fictional] Invoice Payments Web App solution tree should look like this:   * InvoicePaymentsWeb   * InvoicePaymentsDataModel   * InvoicePaymentsServices   * RickSoftUltraDataGrid   * MyCompanyCommonWebLib And you could individually compile (or change) the various dependencies since they exist entirely within your solution. As opposed to just having the first three projects, referencing the compiled DLLs of the other two, and having the source for the other two exist elsewhere on your machine (or elsewhere in source control). I'm wondering if this wouldn't potentially fracture the development and/or maintenance of the various dependencies since each solution could have its own specific changes to the source, unless the underlying source control handled sharing the projects internally. What other problems might exist? Would there be any benefit?"}
{"_id": "779", "title": "What's the worst question you were ever asked at interview?", "text": "It doesn't have to be programming or software development related, but just asked during an interview for an IT related job. I know some \"left field\" questions are meant to see how the candidate copes with unexpected and novel situations, but here I'm looking for a question that appeared to be completely unrelated to the job they were interviewing you for, or something that made you think \"what useful information could they possibly get from my answer to _that_ question?\"."}
{"_id": "218925", "title": "Interface at the class or function level?", "text": "I have been falling into a pattern lately where I have been defining routines that rely on an interface defined by a function that is specified as a parameter to the routine. (The language is C#, but this can be applied to any language with first-class functions.) For example, I have an API that exposes CRUD operations against a backing store. In the case of a GET operation on a particular resource, I can generalize the routine into:   * get the resource we are looking for      * return a not found response if resource does not exist     * return the resource if found What I ended up doing is defining a routine that accepts a delegate function for finding the resource. It's this delegate that defines the interface contract. This happens to work well for my situation because the information required to locate the resource can vary. In my case, it's looking up data in a database by keys, but the type and number of keys can vary. I can capture these in a closure in the calling routine and satisfy the delegate function interface. For example:               // Locate a simple record that only has one key     public SimpleRecord GetSimpleRecord(int recordID) {        return getResource(repository => repository.SimpleRecords.Find(recordID));     }          // Locate a complex record that has many keys     public ComplexRecord GetComplexRecord(int recordID, int userID, string token) {        return getResource(repository => repository.ComplexRecords.Find(recordID, userID, token));     }      This work, but seems like is a mix of OOP and functional style programming. If I need more than one delegate passed, it starts to get a bit messy. Some routines that I need everywhere I ended up defining as abstract methods that all sub-classes need to implement. So I have a hybrid. Does this type of technique have a name or pattern that I'm missing? Should the delegates be implemented in a defined class interface that gets passed to the caller? **UPDATE** with more concrete example: I'm trying to adhere to the DRY principal. I'm talking about controllers in a C# Web API application. Each and every request has some commonality which I have implemented in a base controller class:   * Handle all exceptions by returning the correct HTTP status code, (404 for resources that are not found, 201 for created resources, etc.)   * Map database entities to-and-from data transport objects that the client deals with I want to express _what_ to do in this base class, and delegate _how_ to the concreate class. The _how_ ends up being implemented by delegate functions. I may need to get a person from the database, by first name and last name, or a purchase order, by an integer id. In both cases, if the resource is not found, a 404 must be returned. One returns a person, one a purchase order. How to look them up and how to map the data to a client object differs. The base function may look like this:               T getResource<T> (Func<IRepository, T> find) {         T data = find(getRepository());         if (data == null) {             throw new DataNotFoundException();         }         return data;     }      Now, in the person controller and purchase order controller, I don't have to repeat the logic of what do to when the resource is not found--just implement the find delegate. (This is a simple example without mapping, adding, removing or other details that differ resource to resource).               public Person Get(string first, string last) {        return getResource<Person>(repository => repository.People.Find(first, last));     }          public PurchaseOrder Get(int id) {        return getResource<PurchaseOrder>(repository => repository.POs.Find(id));     }      Note how the closures above neatly deal with varying number and types of parameters for finding things, but satisfy the interface defined by the delegate find function. Is this possible to do with standard class interfaces? (And this question is not about the repository. That is resolved with dependency injection and is implemented with Entity Framework.)"}
{"_id": "47150", "title": "How can I make my PHP development environment more efficient?", "text": "I want to start a home-brew pet project in PHP. I've spent some time in my life developing in PHP and I've always felt it was hard to organize the development environment efficiently. In my previous PHP work, I've used a windows desktop machine and a linux server for development. This configuration had it's advantages: it's easy to configure Apache (and it's modules)/PHP/MySql on a linux box, and, at the time, this configuration was the same like on production server. However, I never successfully set up a debug connection between my Eclipse install and X-debug on server. Transferring files from my local workspace to the server was also very annoying (either ftp or Bazaar script moving files from repository to web root). For my new setup, I'm considering installing everything on my local machine. I'm afraid that it will slow down workstation performance (LAMP + Eclipse), and that compatibility problems will kick-in. What would you recommend? Should I develop using two separate machines? On one? Do you have experience using one of above configurations in your work?"}
{"_id": "154460", "title": "Using default parameters for 404 error (PHP with mvc design)?", "text": "I have a custom made Framework (written in PHP). It all works very good, but i have some doubts about a certain thing. Right now when a user call this url for example:               http://host.com/user/edit/12      Which would resolve to:   * user = userController   * edit = editAction() in userController   * 12 = treated as a param But suppose the controller 'userController' doesn't exist. Then i could throw a 404. But on the other hand, the url could also be used as params for the indexController (which is the default controller). So in that case:   * controller = indexController   * user = could be an action in indexController, otherwise treated as a param   * edit = treated as a param   * 12 = treated as a param That is actually how it works right now in my framework. So basically, i never throw a 404. I could ofcourse say that only params can be given if the controller name is explicitly named in the URL. So if i want the above url:               http://host.com/user/edit/12      To be invoked by the indexController, in the indexAction. Then i specifically have to tell what controller and action it uses in the URL. So the URL should become:               http://host.com/index/index/user/edit/12        * index = indexController   * index (2nd one) = the action method   * user = treated as a param   * edit = treated as a param   * 12 = treated as a param That way, when a controller doesn't exist, i don't reroute everything as a param to the index controller and simply throw a 404 error. Now my question is, which one is more preffered? Should i allow both options to be configurable in a config file? Or should i always use one of them. Simply because that's the only and best way to do it?"}
{"_id": "47154", "title": "What drawbacks does Java Swing GUI framework have?", "text": "I have used Java Swing for some desktop applications. But I haven't used other GUI frameworks that much so I can't compare them. There is definitely some things that I like with Swing and some that I don't like, but that is the situation with almost everything. What are the biggest drawbacks with the Java Swing GUI framework?"}
{"_id": "202239", "title": "How to compute a signature of a matrix", "text": "We know some signature/checksum methods for text, like md5,sha. Now, I want to compute a checksum for a matrix, to represent the exact matrix. Say, two matrixes with different sizes, or with different values, have different checksum. And slightly different matrixes(same size) result in slightly different checksum. So, both layout and values should be considered. Although the most intuitive method is to compare two matrixes directly, however, sometimes it's inconvenient to get the two matrixes in the same environment. Maybe I should check the md5 algorithm, and adapt a similar method. Just post it here for better advices."}
{"_id": "199066", "title": "Is licensing required for public repositories?", "text": "I am planning to start the public repository on github. In this repository I will be sharing code which I will be posting in my blog. I have seen lot of repositories without any license. Is it required to have a license file? Can't I just say \"You're free to use this code in whatever way you need\"? Please advise"}
{"_id": "52608", "title": "What is Object Oriented Programming ill-suited for?", "text": "In Martin Fowler's book Refactoring, Fowler speaks of how when developers learn something new, they don't consider when it's inappropriate for the job: > Ten years ago it was like that with objects. If someone asked me when not to > use objects, it was hard to answer. [...] It was just that I didn't know > what those limitations were, although I knew what the benefits were. Reading this, it occurred to me I don't know what the limitations or potential disadvantages of Object-Oriented Programming are. What are the limitations of Object Oriented Programming? When should one look at a project and think \"OOP is not best suited for this\"?"}
{"_id": "206431", "title": "Does dealing with legacy code help one evolve as a programmer?", "text": "I'm a Java developer with a bit more than a year of experience which places me somewhere above a junior, but not among mid-level developers yet. Recently I was offered a long-term project which is about studying an existing banking application code for 4 months and then introducing changes when needed. As a not-so-experienced programmer I'm looking for ways to develop and I wonder what such a project might give. Would you consider dealing with a big and probably not-so-well written application a good practice for a beginner?"}
{"_id": "87523", "title": "Embedded Linux Training", "text": "I have been working with an old `OS9`(not mac) operating system and I have been trying to get my organization to transition to an embedded `Linux` platform. We have money in the budget for training and I figure I would take advantage of it. A secondary impetus would be a good resume addition. What are some good vendors/bootcamps for Embedded Linux training?"}
{"_id": "231745", "title": "Multiple entrance points in project", "text": "My question is related to C++ but it comes from Java actually. When I was programming Java I had multiple classes, which were derived from a base \"Test\" class. Their purpose was to test things - run tests (unit tests/not unit tests). In order to run a test, I had a `public static void main` in every class. So the matter of running such a test was to click run in _Eclipse/Netbeans_ , whatever good IDE. I know this question maybe IDE dependent, it actually boils down to a makefiles, but is it possible to maintain a similar structure in C++ IDEs? Actually my question is: **how do you deal with tests?** Do you put a huge main method with some switch/enum based statements to run the tests or make different build configurations for each test, or have different solution to this? I know this question won't get a straightforward answer, but I'm curious how to deal with it so I can choose something for myself."}
{"_id": "231741", "title": "User interfaces for C function completion", "text": "In method call syntax in many object-oriented languages, the receiver object goes to the left of the method name, e.g. `someObject.someMethod()`. This comes in handy when using an IDE with code completion/code assist/Intellisense; when the user types a method call expression, the receiver has already been typed, so the IDE can narrow down its method choices to apply to that receiver (at least in statically-typed languages). What I'm wondering is, what is the user interface for method/function completion like in languages where the method or function name goes _before_ its receiver and/or arguments, e.g. Lisp or C? Does the user have to trigger a hotkey, to which the IDE responds by asking for the receiver and/or arguments, and then once the value is typed in the IDE pops up a list of methods or functions that are applicable to that list?"}
{"_id": "154465", "title": "Scrum - how to carry over a partially complete User Story to the next Sprint without skewing the backlog", "text": "We're using Scrum and occasionally find that we can't quite finish a User Story in the sprint in which it was planned. In true Scrum style, we ship the software anyway and consider including the User Story in the next sprint during the next Sprint Planning session. Given that the User Story we are carrying over is partially complete, how do we estimate for it correctly in the next Sprint Planning session? We have considered: a) Adjusting the number of Story Points down to reflect just the work which remains to complete the User Story. Unfortunately this will mess up reporting the Product Backlog. b) Close the partially-completed User Story and raise a new one to implement the remainder of that feature, which will have fewer Story Points. This will affect our ability to retrospectively see what we didn't complete in that sprint and seems a bit time consuming. c) Not bother with either a or b and continue to guess during Sprint Planning saying things like \"Well that User Story may be X story points, but I know it's 95% finished so I'm sure we can fit it in.\""}
{"_id": "16527", "title": "Netbeans support for struts 2?", "text": "I have just started learning struts 2. I have purchased the book named Struts 2 in action. But I want to use an IDE for developing Struts 2 applications. I basically use netbeans. Please tell me how can i develop applications using netbeans. Also, it would be great if somebody can point out a few tutorials on the same. regards P.S. I haven't used eclipse. Is it advisable to switch to it for struts 2, (if it is better than netbeans in this case)?"}
{"_id": "177979", "title": "Single statement non-braced ifs and code merges", "text": "I've seen code merges being used as an argument for bracing even single statement ifs. For example:               if (condition) {         do something;     }      Unfortunately I can't think of a change that would break a non-braced version during an automatic code merge. Could someone post an example?"}
{"_id": "88207", "title": "What constitutes proper use of threads in programming?", "text": "I am tired of hearing people recommend that you should use only one thread per processor, while many programs use up to 100 per process! take for example some common programs               vb.net ide uses about 25 thread when not debugging     System uses about 100     chrome uses about 19     Avira uses more than about 50      Any time I post a thread related question, I am reminded almost every time that I should not use more that one thread per processor, and all the programs I mention above are ruining on my system with a single processor. What constitutes proper use of threads in programming? Please make general comment, but I'd prefer .NET framework thanks"}
{"_id": "200873", "title": "Is the Glade GUI designer a good option for a beginner?", "text": "I am a student of Computer Science and I already have basic programming experience in Python 2.x, 3.x, C++, and HTML. I never made a program with a GUI. I have just programmed games, scripts/plugins, and console applications. First time developers in Ubuntu are recommended to use the GUI designer Glade, which creates GUIs for the GTK toolkit. They are also recommended to program in the Qt framework. I intend to create a cross-platform application (Linux/Windows/Android/iOS/OSX). Given my experience, is Glade a reasonable option for me to use in order to create a cross-platform application, especially in my first application that needs a GUI?"}
{"_id": "173660", "title": "Static DataTable or DataSet in a class - bad idea?", "text": "I have several instances of a class. Each instance stores data in a common database. So, I thought \"I'll make the `DataTable table` field static, that way every instance can just add/modify rows to its own `table` field, but all the data will actually be in one place!\" However, apparently it's a bad idea to do use static fields, _especially_ if it's databases: Don't Use \"Static\" in C#? Is this a bad idea? Will I run into problems later on if I use it? This is a small project so I can accept no testing as a compromise if that is the only drawback. The benefit of using a static database is that there can be many objects of type `MyClass`, but only one table they all talk to, so a static field seems to be an implementation of exactly this, while keeping syntax concise. I don't see why I shouldn't use a static field (although I wouldn't really know) but if I had to, the best alternative I can think of is creating one `DataTable`, and passing a reference to it when creating each instance of `MyClass`, perhaps as a constructor parameter. But is this really an improvement? It seems less intuitive than a static field."}
{"_id": "173667", "title": "Use of interfaces to ease rapid development/prototypes", "text": "Recently I've started to put almost all of my data structures into interfaces, and many of the classes that contain pieces of logic code as well, depending on how much work they are. I find that this makes development of applications much easier because I can easily swap out parts of my code when they do not work as well as intended without changing the rest of the application and swap them back in when I have corrected them, or if I need something simpler for the time being. I was wondering if I'm developing a bad habit here. Is this a anti-pattern I'm using here, or is it okay to do this?"}
{"_id": "239247", "title": "how can we have a person to allot and track tasks in agile development", "text": "I understand that Agile team should be self organized and self driven, but is there a provision that I can have someone who will allot tasks to developers and ensure that all user stories will be completed on time?? For example if there are two persons in an agile team who are not self motivated to take up tasks and they will work only when task is assigned to them with a deadline, how can we deal this in Agile? The problem I face is that no one is fixing the deadlines for the tasks and the team is under delivering for the last two sprints. It will be better if we can have someone who can fix deadlines. IS there a provision for this in Agile"}
{"_id": "184413", "title": "Automated object creation from user input", "text": "I am working on a command-line application that runs simulations. It has to be heavily configurable; the user should be able to provide a very large number (100+) of parameters, some mandatory and some optional. Obviously, these parameters will be used by a variety of classes in the application. I can see two approaches I can use; which one is a better design in the long run? **Approach 1** Have the (text) input file directly control object creation in the application. For example, user would provide the following input:               root=Simulation       time=50       local_species=Sentient         strength=3.5         intelligence=7.1       invading_species=Primitive         strength=5.1         sociability=2.6      The application would then recursively create objects of the class specified on the rhs of the equal sign, passing the class' constructor the arguments provided in the relevant sub-branch of the input file, if any. I'm using Python, which supports keyword arguments and default argument values when no argument is provided, but I hope the question isn't terribly language- specific. For example line 1 would tell the app to create an object of `class Simulation`, with three constructor arguments. The first constructor argument is `time=50`. The second argument is an instance of `class Sentient`, which is created by passing `Simulation`'s constructor arguments `strength=3.5`, `intelligence=7.1`. The third argument is an instance of `class Primitive`, which is created with by passing the constructor arguments `strength=5.1`, `sociability=2.6`. The whole object creation is handled automatically, with just a few lines of (recursive) code. The highest-level object (instance of `Simulation` in this case) would be passed to the visualization layer. **Approach 2** The input file still looks the same. However, the application's classes now have full control over how they interpret user input. The lhs and rhs values may or may not correspond to keyword parameters and classes. For example, the above input may result in the application creating an instance of `class InvasionSimulation` with arguments `strength_local=3.5`, `intelligence_local=7.1`, `strength_invading=5.1`, `sociability_invading=2.6`, and then calling its method `set_runtime(time=50)`, before passing the object to the visualization layer. * * * One obvious advantage of approach 2 is that the user's input can remain stable even as the application is completely redesigned internally. But I think there's nothing wrong with designating a subset of classes as \"public API\", and therefore ensuring that it doesn't change in the future, is there? On the other hand, if the application internally follows something quite similar to approach 1 anyway, it feels that approach 2 requires adding a lot of redundant code: instead of automatically interpreting user input, we now need to do it \"by hand\" for each class. Any additional considerations would be much appreciated. Are there any names for these approaches that I can search for?"}
{"_id": "177754", "title": "What to do when a project is too difficult to continue developing?", "text": "As a developer, can you tell your project manager that an application is _unworkable_? Or, if you're a project manager, how would you need this presented to you in order to be compelled? This isn't about \"how to work on a poor project\", it's assuming you cannot. I can provide an example of the situation if anyone thinks it's important, but I'm trying to avoid proposed solutions to \"plodding through\"."}
{"_id": "240893", "title": "Is there any point in writing a random tester for code that deals with inductive data structures?", "text": "Let's say we're writing a simple JSON parser and we've fully covered the code with unit tests:   * it can parse primitives `\"0\", \"123\", \"-456\", '\"\"', '\"asd\"', true, false`   * it can parse arrays `\"[]\", \"[1, 2, 3]\"`   * it can parse nested arrays `\"[[]]\"`   * it can parse objects `\"{}\", '{ \"a\": 1, \"b\": 2 }'`   * it can parse nested objects `'{ \"a\": {} }'` Every possible JSON can be either a primitive or an array/object holding other primitives/arrays/objects - this is what I mean by inductive data structure (is 'recursive' a better term?). It seems to me that any JSON parsing can be reduced to these few cases and if the parser passes these tests then it is fully correct (unless it was explicitly hard-wired to break when you try to parse special numbers). Is there still any point in creating a random tester that generates random stringified JSON in hope that one of them will break this parser? Would this random tester find anything interesting? P.S. I chose JSON just as an example of an inductive data structure; I'm not interested in writing a JSON parser."}
{"_id": "228762", "title": "Can I be forced to continue project which is outside my job duties?", "text": "I am a DBA / Report Writer in client support for a software company. Starting in my spare time, I wrote a reporting web application with live reports. The ca 2001 IE only site was horrific. My application eventually became a huge success with clients and was subsequently swallowed by dev. I think it was assumed that I would fail and I was told it would never be part of dev; it will always be a support project. Naturally, after such success, they wanted it. They assumed control, demanded I stop working on improvements, and started giving me tasks to \"stabilize\" it. I went from architect / designer / sole developer to code monkey. I have zero input anymore. It was fun to do, but that fun has left the building. I want to continue working on it, but my way. My way is why they have it in the first place, so it must work. Now I'm stuck in an AGILE loop. I don't see them giving back control so I want to stop. I'm not a developer or even work in that department. Can they force me to continue?"}
{"_id": "180524", "title": "Domino Solitaire Algorithm", "text": "**Problem Statement -** ![Problem Statement](http://i.stack.imgur.com/F6HJC.png) Given a 2xN grid of numbers, the task is to find the most profitable tiling combination (each tile covers 2x1 cells; vertically or horizontally) covering all tiles. I thought of approaching it in the greedy way, enqueuing the max possible for any cell, but it has a fallback that a low-profit choice at i, could yield a greater profit at i+n tiles. So what should be the approach? EDIT - Test Data Range - N<=105 Source - INOI 2008 Q Paper **UPDATE** \\- Working out the plausibility of a Dynamic programming Approach. **UPDATE 2** \\- Worked out an answer using DP."}
{"_id": "180522", "title": "C++ Design: Functional Programming vs OOP", "text": "**Design Question** Recently, I've been doing more and more FP in C++, mostly in the form of function templates and lambdas, and heavy overloading of a single function name. I really like FP for some well-defined operations, but I've also noticed that as with OOP, one could easily fall into anti-patterns of spaghetti-code if one isn't careful (eg circular dependencies, which is a bigger issue for state-based code). _My question is, when thinking about adding new functionality, how do you decide between using a FP-paradigm or a OOP-paradigm?_ I'm sensing it may have to do with identifying the **invariants** in the problem or in the design, but I'm not sure. For example, without an OOP model/simplification of the real world, it may not be immediately obvious what a Dog or a Cat class is (what are its states? what are its methods?). Otoh, from a FP POV, a Eat() function simply allows an Animal to turn Food into Poop and Energy. It's harder to imagine Eat() being anything else (for me, at least). I'm looking more for C++ answers, but this question could apply to any sub- module in any language that can handle multiple paradigms."}
{"_id": "180520", "title": "Cumulative charts within Webdesign", "text": "A rather simple question here, With regards to web design and the paperwork behind it (Which I am sure many people/companies don't actually do). Would there be any reason for using a Cumulative Chart? Specifically a Cumulative Resource chart, although I am unsure what the resources could even be! More to the point, there are a few ideas I have been thinking of, unsure of whether they are valid or not I have come to the guys behind programming a website! tl;dr : If it is possible, what can I make a cumulative resource chart for in relation to a website?"}
{"_id": "215526", "title": "In what situations do mutually dependent modules have an advantage?", "text": "Earlier today I created two mutually dependent, implicitly linked DLLs just to see if this was possible: http://i.imgur.com/GMACpnC.jpg I am just curious; in general, what advantages might this kind of mutual dependency have?"}
{"_id": "100632", "title": "Is this interview question real or a communication skills test?", "text": "I've been to about 50 interviews in my life. Many of them I've done just to get experience, and keep doing. The question I keep hearing again and again is > Are you more a front-end or a back-end developer? I program mostly for the web, but 2-3 years ago I was database developer, and even wrote a desktop app. And if I remember correctly, I heard this question at interviews that had nothing to do with the web. I can't remember exactly what I was answering. IIRC, usually I would say: it's hard to tell and that I had programmed an application X, Y and Z, and W. Last time I started answering and then said _\"Wait, how do **you** define backend?\"_ Now, does this question, whether I'm better at frontend or backend programming, really make sense nowadays?   * a website has a front end, true. But it's backend is usually the admin website. There's little difference between them.   * if I write a DB driver for a Django-driven website, is it really a front end thing? I remember at some interview I asked what are front and back ends, and got an answer that front end is for clients and used or visited a lot, and back end is something for internal use. Well, it makes no big difference. Things must work and work efficiently on both sides. I also led a dozen of interviews myself, and have never made this question, because it makes no sense and doesn't come to my mind. Is this just a test whether I jump into the hoop and start speaking or if I try to clarify the question?"}
{"_id": "120305", "title": "Is Ant still in the \"mainstream\" for Java builds?", "text": "We have been slowly replacing batch command files (windows .bat) which were simply jarring up the classes compiled in the developers IDE, with more comprehensive Ant builds (i.e. get from CVS, clean compile, jar, archive, email, etc.) I've spent a lot of time learning (and debugging issues) with Ant, so I'm most comfortable using it for these tasks. But I wonder if Ant is still in as wide usage as it was when I first started learning, or whether \"the world has moved on\" to something newer (and maybe slicker). (I've started to see more Maven build stuff distributed, which I've never used, for example.) The practical import of this question, is **whether I push new developers to learn Ant** , or whether they should be learning something else for builds? I'm never too on top of the trends, so it would be great to hear from other Java developers what they think is the best build tool, and what they think new developers should be learning."}
{"_id": "120302", "title": "Include all php files in one file and include that file in every page if we're using hiphop?", "text": "I understand that in normal php if we're including a file we're merging the source of it in the script and it would take longer for that page to be parsed/processed but if we're using HipHop shouldn't it be ok to just create one single php file and include every file in it (that contains some class) and every page which needs those classes (in separate file each) can just include one single php file? Would this be ok in presence of HipHop?"}
{"_id": "154762", "title": "Is it a good idea to write an OS in a scripting language?", "text": "Is it a good idea to create an OS that's written in a scripting language? For example, how about creating an OS using Python?"}
{"_id": "21032", "title": "Help me construct a list of best approaches for new C and C++ developers", "text": "Not specific code writing practices. Please also include reasoning. My start:   * use `GCC` or `Clang`     * gcc because it is unchallenged in the amount of static checking it can do (both against standards and general errors)     * clang cause it has such pretty and meaningful error messages   * when compiling C code using GCC use `-Wall -Wextra -Wwrite-strings -Werror`     * in 99,99% the warning is a valid error   * when compiling C++ code using GCC use `-Wall -Wextra -Weffc++ -Werror`     * you could skip `-Weffc++` (cause it can be confusing)   * always code against a standard C (C89, C99), C++ (C++98, C++0x)      * while compilers change, standards don't, coding against a standard gives at least some level of assurance that the code will also compile in the next version of the compiler or even a different compiler/platform   * make sure that the compiler checks your code against standard (`-std=c99 -pedantic` for C99, `-std=ansi -pedantic` for C++98 in GCC)      * cause automatic checking always good   * use `valgrind` or a similar tool to check for runtime errors (memory, threads, ...)      * free bug catching   * never duplicate functionality of the standard libraries (if there is a bug in your compiler, make a temporary patch, wrapper, ...)      * there is no chance that your code will be better then the code maintained by hundreds of people and tested by tenths of thousands   * make sure that you actually fix all bugs that are reported by automatic tools (GCC, valgrind)      * the errors might not cause your program to crash now, but they will   * never follow recommendations that include \"never use feature X\"      * such recommendations are usually outdated, exaggerated or oversimplified"}
{"_id": "63602", "title": "How should I restart a career in software development after a 7 year gap?", "text": "I am a graduate in electronics, and I worked in the analog electronics field for around 4 years, but now I have a gap of about 7 years in my career. What are my options to restart my career? Can anyone suggest some refresher courses to enter the software field?"}
{"_id": "63604", "title": "What should be on your \"Going Live Day\" checklist?", "text": "Aside from the technical specifics, what should be on your checklist for when you go live with a program? **Are there last minute things you can do to make a piece of software go into production smoothly?** (assuming you used sound principles in development and tested the average amount) More testing? Discussion with the client? Last minute optimizations?"}
{"_id": "241410", "title": "Is it feasible and useful to auto-generate some code of unit tests?", "text": "Earlier today I have come up with an idea, based upon a particular real use case, which I would want to have checked for feasability and usefulness. This question will feature a fair chunk of Java code, but can be applied to all languages running inside a VM, and maybe even outside. While there is real code, it uses nothing language-specific, so please read it mostly as pseudo code. **The idea**   Make unit testing less cumbersome by adding in some ways to autogenerate code based on **human** interaction with the codebase. I understand this goes against the principle of TDD, but I don't think anyone ever proved that doing TDD is better over first creating code and then immediatly therafter the tests. This may even be adapted to be fit into TDD, but that is not my current goal. To show how it is intended to be used, I'll copy one of my classes here, for which I need to make unit tests.               public class PutMonsterOnFieldAction implements PlayerAction {         private final int handCardIndex;         private final int fieldMonsterIndex;              public PutMonsterOnFieldAction(final int handCardIndex, final int fieldMonsterIndex) {             this.handCardIndex = Arguments.requirePositiveOrZero(handCardIndex, \"handCardIndex\");             this.fieldMonsterIndex = Arguments.requirePositiveOrZero(fieldMonsterIndex, \"fieldCardIndex\");         }              @Override         public boolean isActionAllowed(final Player player) {             Objects.requireNonNull(player, \"player\");             Hand hand = player.getHand();             Field field = player.getField();             if (handCardIndex >= hand.getCapacity()) {                 return false;             }             if (fieldMonsterIndex >= field.getMonsterCapacity()) {                 return false;             }             if (field.hasMonster(fieldMonsterIndex)) {                 return false;             }             if (!(hand.get(handCardIndex) instanceof MonsterCard)) {                 return false;             }             return true;         }              @Override         public void performAction(final Player player) {             Objects.requireNonNull(player);             if (!isActionAllowed(player)) {                 throw new PlayerActionNotAllowedException();             }             Hand hand = player.getHand();             Field field = player.getField();             field.setMonster(fieldMonsterIndex, (MonsterCard)hand.play(handCardIndex));         }     }      We can observe the need for the following tests:   * Constructor test with valid input   * Constructor test with invalid inputs   * `isActionAllowed` test with valid input   * `isActionAllowed` test with invalid inputs   * `performAction` test with valid input   * `performAction` test with invalid inputs My idea mainly focuses on the `isActionAllowed` test with invalid inputs. Writing these tests is not fun, you need to ensure a number of conditions and you check whether it really returns `false`, this can be extended to `performAction`, where an exception needs to be thrown in that case. **The goal of my idea** is to generate those tests, by indicating (through GUI of IDE hopefully) that you want to generate tests based on a specific branch. **The implementation by example**   1. User clicks on \"Generate code for branch `if (handCardIndex >= hand.getCapacity())`\".   2. Now the tool needs to find a case where that holds. (I haven't added the relevant code as that may clutter the post ultimately)   3. To invalidate the branch, the tool needs to find a `handCardIndex` and `hand.getCapacity()` such that the condition `>=` holds.   4. It needs to construct a `Player` with a `Hand` that has a capacity of at least 1.   5. It notices that the `capacity` _private int_ of `Hand` needs to be at least 1.   6. It searches for ways to set it to 1. Fortunately it finds a constructor that takes the `capacity` as an argument. It uses 1 for this.   7. Some more work needs to be done to succesfully construct a `Player` instance, involving the creation of objects that have constraints that can be seen by inspecting the source code.   8. It has found the `hand` with the least capacity possible and is able to construct it.   9. Now to invalidate the test it will need to set `handCardIndex = 1`.   10. It constructs the test and asserts it to be false (the returned value of the branch) **What does the tool need to work?**   In order to function properly, it will need the ability to scan through all source code (including JDK code) to figure out all constraints. Optionally this could be done through the javadoc, but that is not always used to indicate all constraints. It could also do _some_ trial and error, but it pretty much stops if you cannot attach source code to compiled classes. Then it needs some basic knowledge of what the _primitive_ types are, including arrays. And it needs to be able to construct some form of \"modification trees\". The tool knows that it needs to change a certain variable to a different value in order to get the correct testcase. Hence it will need to list all possible ways to change it, without using reflection obviously. What this tool will not replace is the need to create tailored unit tests that tests all kinds of conditions when a certain method actually works. It is purely to be used to test methods when they invalidate constraints. **My questions** :   * Is creating such a tool _feasible_? Would it ever work, or are there some obvious problems?   * Would such a tool be _useful_? Is it even useful to automatically generate these testcases at all? Could it be extended to do even more useful things?   * Does, by chance, such a project already exist and would I be reinventing the wheel? If not proven useful, but still possible to make such thing, I will still consider it for fun. If it's considered useful, then I _might_ make an open source project for it depending on the time. For people searching more background information about the used `Player` and `Hand` classes in my example, please refer to this repository. At the time of writing the `PutMonsterOnFieldAction` has not been uploaded to the repo yet, but this will be done once I'm done with the unit tests."}
{"_id": "216765", "title": "What are the steps to grouping related classes into packages", "text": "What are the steps needed to be taken to group related classes into packages in Java? In my case, I have about a number of .java files that I'd like to group into 3 packages according to the MVC pattern. One package for Model classes, one package for View classes and one package for Controller classes. I've identified which belong in what package, but not sure of the next step. I want to know how to seperate them into packages, do I make 3 folders and place the .java files in the folder that represents the package they belong in?"}
{"_id": "241412", "title": "How to unit test models in MVC / MVR app?", "text": "I'm building a node.js web app and am trying to do so for the first time in a test driven fashion. I'm using nodeunit for testing, which I find allows me to write tests quickly and painlessly. In this particular app, the heavy lifting primarily involves translating SQL data into complex Javascript object and serving them to the front-end via json. Likewise, the app also spends a great deal of code validating and translating complex, multidimensional Javascript objects it receives from the front-end into SQL rows. Hence I have used a fat model design for the app -- most of the real code resides in the models, where the data translation happens. What's the best approach to test such models with unit tests? I mean in particular the methods that have create javascript objects from the SQL rows and serve them to the front-end. Right now what I'm doing is making particular requests of my models with the unit tests and checking the returned data for all of the fields that should be there. However I have a suspicion that this is not the most robust kind of testing I could be doing. My current testing design also means I have to package my app code with some dummy data so that my tests can anticipate the kind of data that the app _should_ be returning when tests run. ## UPDATED QUESTION: Specific question: ### Does it make sense to inject a testing layer between my model and my database? Or would it be better to let the models work on a real database with pre-defined test data inserted into it? The second option I imagine will probably result in more accurate testing, but the first model seems more versatile in terms of granularity and makes the testing and development more portable (no db required)"}
{"_id": "236439", "title": "Why must essential mutable derived data have an inverse function?", "text": "I was reading the paper Out of the Tar Pit authored by Ben Moseley and Peter Marks when I came across the following section on page 25 regarding essential mutable derived data: > ### Essential Derived Data \u2014 Mutable > > As with immutable essential derived data, this can be excluded (and the data > re-derived on demand) and hence corresponds to _accidental state_. > > Mutability of derived data makes sense only where the function (logic) used > to derive the data has an inverse (otherwise \u2014 given its mutability \u2014 the > data cannot be considered _derived_ on an ongoing basis, and it is > effectively _input_ ). An inverse often exists where the derived data > represents simple restructurings of the input data. In this situation > modifications to the data can simply be treated identically to the > corresponding modifications to the existing _essential state_. I don't understand why essential mutable derived data must have an inverse function. For example consider the following JavaScript code:               inputbox.onchange = function () {         outputbox.value = md5(inputbox.value);     };      Here `inputbox.value` is _input_ to the system and `outputbox.value` is the essential mutable derived data. It is derived from `inputbox.value` using the `md5` function. However the `md5` function doesn't have an inverse. Nevertheless `inputbox.value` is still essential, mutable and derived. So what do the authors actually mean when they say that \"mutability of derived data makes sense only where the function (logic) used to derive the data has an inverse (otherwise \u2014 given its mutability \u2014 the data cannot be considered _derived_ on an ongoing basis, and it is effectively _input_ )\"? Do you have any examples to elucidate their point?"}
{"_id": "12189", "title": "How do I learn Python from zero to web development?", "text": "I am looking into learning Python for web development. Assuming I already have some basic web development experience with Java (JSP/Servlets), I'm already familiar with web design (HTML, CSS, JS), basic programming concepts and that I am completely new to Python, how do I go about learning Python in a structured manner that will eventually lead me to web development with Python and Django? I'm not in a hurry to make web applications in Python so I really want to learn it thoroughly so as not to leave any gaps in my knowledge of the technologies involving web development in Python. Are there any books, resource or techniques to help me in my endeavor? In what order should I do/read them? **UPDATE:** When I say learning in a structured manner, I mean starting out from the basics then learning the advanced stuff without leaving some of the important details/features that Python has to offer. I want to know how to apply the things that I already know in programming to Python."}
{"_id": "236434", "title": "What goes within the Architecture Overview of a Design Specification?", "text": "I have designed an management system for a medical practice and I am writing the design specification and I am kind of stumped by what to write for a section. It asks for me to write about the components of a system but I am perplexed. What exactly are components within a system? Is this generally considered as the features that a system has or does it mean something else altogether?"}
{"_id": "12182", "title": "What does 'opinionated software' really mean?", "text": "I've seen a lot of other framework/library developers throw the phrase 'we write opinionated software' around, but in practical terms, what does that really mean? Does it mean that the author of the 'Opinionated Framework X' says that because they write code a certain way, you should be writing the same type of code that they write? Isn't that a bit pretentious?"}
{"_id": "81207", "title": "These days is it required to test a desktop website for IE6 and IE7? Or is IE8 and IE9 enough?", "text": "These days is it required to test a desktop website for IE6 and IE7? Or is IE8 and IE9 enough? I heard that IE8 has replaced IE7."}
{"_id": "68997", "title": "Escaping strings in database layer", "text": "Can escaping functions (e.g. mysql_real_esacpe_string ) be moved down to the database layer where we would loop through all parameters passed for all queries and escape all strings. Would that be a good design?"}
{"_id": "81202", "title": "In what area is LISP's macro better than Ruby's \"ability\" to create DSL", "text": "One of things that makes Ruby shine is the ability to create Domain Specific Languages better, like   * Sinatra   * Rspec   * Rake   * Ruby on Rails' ActiveRecord Though one can duplicate these libraries in LISP through macro, I think Ruby's implementation is more elegant. Nonetheless, I think there are cases that LISP's macro can be better than Ruby's, though I could not think of one. So, in what area is LISP's macro better than Ruby's \"ability\" to create DSL, if any? **update** I've asked this because modern programming languages are approaching the LISP singularity, like   * C got macro expansion preprocessor, though very primitive and prone to error   * C# has attributes, though this is a read-only, exposed through reflection   * Python added decorator, that can modify the behavior of the function (and class for v 3.0), though feels quite limited.   * Ruby TMTOWTDI that makes elegant DSL, if care is applied, but in Ruby way.  I was wondering if LISP's macro is only applicable to special cases and that the other programming language features are powerful enough to raise the abstraction to meet the challenges today in software development."}
{"_id": "249628", "title": "Javascript and SQL Lite (multi browser offline SQL/database query)", "text": "I'm in the elections division of my county and am trying to simplify a voter lookup method for our poll judges during election time. Currently we are using a clunky heavy application that the judges must install, and we only support Windows. My goal is to have an offline (client-side) browser based solution that will work on any browser for any operating system. I think, based on research that I've done through google searches and w3 forums, that I should be using JavaScript + SQL Lite. I have read that HTML5 has a good solution, but please keep in mind that election judges are typically elderly and don't upkeep their updates, or deviate from the preinstalled browser (typically IE), so HTML5 is not a plausible solution for our needs. I've done a days worth of research on the subject and just come up empty handed, because honestly I'm NOT certain what I should be looking for. But as I said, the JS/SQLlite combo seems to be the solution. Unfortunately I can't find any tutorials that will help me reconcile these two systems. Do you have any suggestions? Anything is helpful at this point. Thanks!!!!"}
{"_id": "119933", "title": "Mission critical embedded language", "text": "Maybe the question sounds a bit strange, so I'll explain a the background a little bit. Currently I'm working on a project at y university, which will be a complete on-board software for an satellite. The system is programmed in C++ on top of a real-time operating system. However, some subsystems like the attitude control system and the fault detection and a space simulation are currently only implemented in Matlab/Simulink, to prototype the algorithms efficiently. After their verification, they will be translated into c++. The complete on-board software grew very complex, and only a handful people know the whole system. Furthermore, many of the students haven't program in C++ yet and the manual memory management of C++ makes it even more difficult to write mission critical software. Of course the main system has to be implemented in C++, but I asked myself if it's maybe possible to use an embedded language to implement the subsystem which are currently written in Matlab. This embedded language should feature:   * static/strong typing and compiler checks to minimize runtime errors   * small memory usage, and relative fast runtime   * attitude control algorithms are mainly numerical computations, so a good numeric support would be nice   * maybe some sort of functional programming feature, matlab/simulink encourage you to use it too I googled a bit, but only found Lua. It looks nice, but I would not use it in mission critical software. Have you ever encountered a situation like this, or do you know any language, which could satisfies the conditions? EDIT: To clarify some things: embedded means it should be able to embed the language into the existing C++ environment. So no compiled languages like Ada or Haskell"}
{"_id": "249620", "title": "Decrease probability of picking a list's item based on its index", "text": "I have a list of sounds that are to be played when the user presses a button.   For now I just generate a random number within the range of the list and just pick the sound with that index. (I also prevent that sound from being played the next time the button is clicked. Since that is easy, I would like to concentrate _only_ on the selection algorithm and leave the exclusion behind.)   Since that makes it possible for a few sounds to be played repeatedly in a pattern, I would like to adjust my algorithm: Once a file is played it gets moved to the end of the list. Sounds from the beginning have a greater chance of being played than those at the end - therefore minimizing repetition.   Instead of assigning a weight to each index, I want to have one factor determining the probability falloff. For example, I would set this factor to be 1.2 which means that each index is 1.2 times as probable to be played as the following one. This hopefully produces a nice falloff in probability. The fastest solution seems to be a mathematical function that maps the random number to the range of indices. That way I do not have to set up intervals, but can directly calculate the result based on the random number. I just cannot figure out the math and implementiation behind this idea, so I need you to lay it out for me. The algorithm will be used in an Android app, so the programming language I am using is Java."}
{"_id": "198247", "title": "Javascript and web application data", "text": "I am pretty new to Web Application programming and so to **OOP** Javascript and the new **Client-Server** interactions. I am encountering some trouble wondering about how much **AJAX** I should use or how much data I have to save \"locally\" . Explainig it better: at the moment , to manage the data that I obtain from AJAX request , I push them in **Data Structure** like **Array's** and then I handle them helping myself rendering html through template. Now, was I wondering : is all this necessary? Do I really need to store all this data in Data Structures or I can make AJAX call for every action users do on my application? I apologize for the explanation but it's a difficult concept for me to explain in English. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "43439", "title": "Do todays web pages use Web Semantics", "text": "Do todays web pages use Web Semantics? what is the potential in web semantics (i mean potential to enhance web)? web semantics is all about SEO?"}
{"_id": "215293", "title": "Role based access to resources for a RESTful service", "text": "I'm still wrapping my head around REST, but I wonder if someone can help with any suggestions or approaches to role based access control for a RESTful service, particularly from the point of view of securing the data and how the URLs might look. It's probably best to consider an example: Say I have a REST service for Customers, and want to split the users of this REST service into Admin, Editor and Reader roles:   * Admins can change all attributes of a Customer resource    * Editors can change only some    * Readers can only view them. Access control rights are assigned to the Customers entities individually. So for example a user of the service might have admin rights to Customers 1,2 and 3 but Editor access to 4,5 and Reader access to 7,8,9. Now consider the user calling the service. What is a good way to seperate the list of Customers for the current User? **GET /Customer** \\- this might get a list of all customers that the current user has Admin\\Editor\\Reader access to. But then on each Customer the consumer would need an indication of what role they have. Or would it be \"better\" having something like **GET /Customer/Admin** \\- return all customers the current user has Admin access to. Just looking for some high level pointers or reading on a decent way to secure\\filter the resources based on roles of the current user."}
{"_id": "159063", "title": "REST API Library Conventions", "text": "Most API libraries define one method for each endpoint. If there is an endpoint for getting user information, you might have a method like:               getUserInfo(userId);      That simple method is often a wrapper around another function that actually does the api call:               apiCall('/user/info', {userId: userId});      Another option I see less frequently is for the library to only contain the method that makes the API call. The first method only has the advantages of code discoverability, but it isn't that big of an issue for dynamic languages. Some say it also removes the need for the developer to read documentation for the APIs, but why would you ever want somebody using APIs without reading the documentation? The second method has three advantages that I see:   * The library is dramatically smaller   * Methods don't need to be updated if the API ever changes   * There is no need to maintain documentation for the library; the API documentation fulfills that purpose But I don't see the second method used very often, so perhaps I'm missing something. When is it appropriate or inappropriate to use either method of writing API libraries?"}
{"_id": "219732", "title": "Difference between Singleton pattern and auto_ptr<> resp. unique_ptr<>", "text": "I'm maintaining some legacy code of a physical simulation. The calculation object is build as a singleton, to ensure there is only one instance. A co- worker told me, that singleton are completely out-of-date and I should instantiate it through a smartpointer. But I think it is not the same, because the initialization by a smartpointer doesn't garanties me, that there is only one instance of this object, right? If I wanna have one single instance of an object in my code, which way is preferable: To use the singleton pattern or the initialize the object through one of this smartpointers (`auto_ptr<>` or `unique_ptr<>`)."}
{"_id": "135258", "title": "Sanity of design for my in-memory object representations of database rows", "text": "I've been trying to revise the structural design of the C#.NET-based system I'm currently working on. The new design involves a rather light-weight object-relational mapping framework (we're trying to stay away from ADO or linq2sql). Sorry, this came rather lengthy, but I cannot describe it shorter - it's a bit complex. The system has two primary functions:   1. Retrieve rows from an SQL relational disk-based database, then serve them up using `[DataContract]`-marked objects via ASP to a web-based client, as well as receive UPDATEs to those and reroute them to the database.   2. Read off and serve the same kinds of objects to server-side / distributed modules which work with these, generate some result, and push it back to the database.  The results (some might ask: \"why're you storing generated data?\") of module computation _do_ have to be stored in the database due to both size and length of computation required to obtain them, only to be retrieved in parts by the web-client through the (1) function. Currently, all row-representing objects are defined as separate C# classes with a common trend but little to no inheritance, and no common base class. I want to completely break this pattern, and instigate more extensive inheritance based on a tree of abstract classes and possibly interfaces. I've whipped up a \"due-for-test\" implementation in the past few days, but I'm concerned about the sanity of this design. Obviously, there is the object- relational impedance mismatch, which I deal with by only initializing the database-column-backed fields unless the other encapsulated objects are provided to the constructor. I'm not so concerned about that, and it's an issue for the old system design as well. Here's what I have so far: A `DatabaseColumnAttribute` class, which targets fields, and defines   * name of the column where the data for the field resides.    * database type (enum-backed locally) for this column. There's a fixed set of database types this system is designed to support, so be it.    * whether or not the column is nullable.   * read phrase(i.e. how do we represent this column in a SELECT query within an sql statement): this is generated automatically based on column type. There's a fixed number of types the data can be accessed in, so if there's a conversion involved when reading data from a column this will include it. Otherwise, just the column name.   * write wrapper (i.e. database function that converts the data sent into the column from C# to the appropriate representation) - also generated based on column type. All this is used within a `DatabaseFieldColumnWrapper` object, which contains all the methods required to transfer the data from the column to the field or vice-verse. The `DatabaseFieldColumnWrapper` is constructed for each location in the code where a `DatabaseColumnAttribute` is used, meaning it's not quite \"static\", but rather class-based, since it modifies fields of derived classes. The fields can back properties, there's a `BackedByFieldAttribute` class as well, I'll skip it for brevity. All of these are used within an abstract `DataElement` class, root of hierarchy. It defines the following abstract members: function that provides the backing-table's name for this class of objects, a read-only public Id property, a private function to set the Id (which corresponds to the primary key of the row in the table). It also provides a protected static helper function to retrieve the `DatabaseFieldColumnWrapper` objects for specific fields based on Linq Expressions (to avoid \"magic strings\"). This can be used in derived types to easily synch the database representation for specific fields/columns. It provides a `Delete()` method, which is (not a destructor, but a function) responsible for only deleting the database representation. The whole system is designed to allow asynchrony and multiple memory representations unless otherwise specified. Here is the \"less sane\" part: There is a `DataElementAttribute` class, which is designed to modify non- abstract derived types. It is _not_ fully constructed completely right away where it's defined, instead filled-in in a thread-safe manner upon the construction of the first object of a derived type. It not inherited, and contains only data specific to the _derived class_ required to speed up construction (i.e. construct all the necessary `DatabaseFieldColumnWrapper` objects before-hand and associate them with the fields). This basically _violates_ the C# OO model, since it's \"static only with respect to current class in the hierarchy\", not static to the whole chain. Basically, it makes the `DataElmentAttribute` object associate with a particular Type object. It's like a convenience structure, which is generated according to the rules specified in the base class _only_ , but initializes its members based on the fields marked as columns for each derived type. Each instance of that particular type has a reference to it. I don't know how to circumvent this issue, it seems to be best in terms of \"code reuse\", but it also seems like I'm violating a lot of things I shouldn't be when I do it. Any ideas, suggestions? In a more \"question\"-form: do you know of any better way to associate things with Types (without inheritance) and have these accessible from each instance of that Type, which conforms to the OO model? P.S. I'm not looking for a \"you shouldn't\" kind of answer, since that wouldn't allow us to reuse more code."}
{"_id": "49652", "title": "Modules already committed, client doesn't pay, what should I do?", "text": "So the story is simple, early stage EU portal hired me to do some extra modules. I got all the source code for local testing, did my job, committed new code. Now I am out of this project but client still haven't paid me yet and he is not even thinking about that. It has been couple of months and no contract was signed so I can't take any legal actions. What should I do with all the source code? Sell it? Run exact copy of that portal? Make all portal publicly available?"}
{"_id": "49650", "title": "Why is WCF is called Windows", "text": "I'm wondering why it isn't called Microsoft Communication Foundation. Does it rely on Windows and will it rely on Windows in the foreseeable future?"}
{"_id": "133186", "title": "Are there any good resources to learn how to write tech specs/design documents", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Writing a Software Requirement Specification   >  How to make a great functional specification I am starting to write more tech specs and design documents. However, I don't have a lot of time in school writing these, and don't have a lot of access to other people's examples. I have found a few good examples of how to structure these documents for example: Define the project goals Define the system architecture/infrastructure Define the user dialogs and the control flow Define the background tasks Define the database model Define the interfaces to other systems Define the non functional requirements (response times, security, ...) But I am looking for maybe a little more on best practices of actually writing the contents of these types of sections. I am not sure this is a dumb question or not since it is just documenting what is there but I get kind of a block with a blank canvas and start to just over think things"}
{"_id": "49741", "title": "How to make a great functional specification", "text": "I am going to start a little side project very soon, but this time i want to do not just the little UML domain model and case diagrams i often do before programming, i thought about making a full functional specification. Is there anybody that has experience writing functional specifications that could recommend me what i need to add to it? How would be the best way to start preparing it? Here i will write down the topics that i think are more relevant:   * Purpose   * Functional Overview   * Context Diagram   * Critical Project Success Factors   * Scope (In & Out)   * Assumptions   * Actors (Data Sources, System Actors)   * Use Case Diagram   * Process Flow Diagram   * Activity Diagram   * Security Requirements   * Performance Requirements   * Special Requirements   * Business Rules   * Domain Model (Data model)   * Flow Scenarios (Success, alternate\u2026)   * Time Schedule (Task Management)   * Goals   * System Requirements   * Expected Expenses ## What do you think about those topics? Shall i add something else? or maybe remove something? I rode every single answer, and i would like to thank all of you for the useful information. I am doing this side project for a company, and they spect from me a constant flow of communication and i will need to explain why i do every single thing, because i will have to administer the resources they will give to me. This will be my first func spec and as i said i want it to be useful, not just big and useless. I think this is something that has to be done, but i want to do it in the way that will be more useful for me and my team. Its bad that i we dont have a manager, so thats why i also need to take care about some administrative tasks... Regarding to the agile programming, i think this is 100% compatible with the agile aproach. I am an Agile programmer my self and i honestly fell more confident when someone already did the thinking for me. I still Junnior, but i worked before as a Tapestry web developer in other projects, were the organization was a total chaos. I dont agree i am doing a waterfall aproach, i think i am just trying to define some boundaries that will make the project being easier when the development starts."}
{"_id": "208238", "title": "Why do I have to keep my open source software license in the root?", "text": "Nearly all open source software licenses require (or at least lawyers generally suggest they require) users to include the full license in the root of the project that they are protecting. One lawyer I spoke to suggests this is a legacy of the CD age, when it was necessary that a full license be included in a jewel case. But today, we're living in the cloud age. Why can't I, for instance, simply host the full license at my website, and include the title + URL of that license in the header of my source files? **Bonus:** If it's generally agreed that established licenses must be kept intact in the root, why hasn't the OSI of FSF approved a license that you _can_ refer to by URL, and what is keeping someone from creating that license?"}
{"_id": "244592", "title": "What are the memory-management capabilities of MySQL + JDBC (in light of autonomic computing)?", "text": "I'm interested in implementing some kind of autonomic-computing functionality using MySQL. By autonomic-computing I mean roughly some failsafe abilities, whereby the application appears to be at least slightly \"intelligent\" For reference, the main parts of autonomic computing we'd like are the \"self- configuring\" and \"self-healing\" features (the other two - \"self-optimizing\" and \"self-protecting\", are too abstract/futuristic for us, at this time). Sofor example, if we have a sample Java application that utilizes a MySQL database, we might want to automatically restart the MySQL database if we take up too much memory. Or maybe we want to have the ability to dynamiccally adjust the database memory as needed. So for example, when we start the application the database begins with a 56 Megabyte buffer; but then as we insert so many rows we want to have it automatically jump up to 512 MB, then to 1024, until a max of 4096 MB. Does all of the above suggest that MySQL is too \"weak\" for the task? Do you suggest using Oracle database? My professor believes that by using Java we can basically make up for any memory-management deficiencies that MySQL has in relation to Oracle DB. I'm new to MySQL , but have experience with Oracle. If all of the above sounds wishy-washy, it is because I'm still fleshing it out. thanks"}
{"_id": "244593", "title": "Is my work on a developer test being taken advantage of?", "text": "I am looking for a job and have applied to a number of positions. One of them responded, I had a pretty lengthy phone interview (perhaps an hour +) and they then set me up with a developer test. I was told that this test is estimated to take between 6 and 8 hours and that, provided it met with their approval, I could be paid for my work on it. That gave me some pause, but I endeavored. The developer test took place on a VM accessed via RDP. The task was to implement a search page in a web project that requests data from the server, displays it on the screen in a table, has a pretty complicated search filtering scheme (there are about 15 statuses and when sending the search to the server you can search by these statuses) in addition to the string/field search. They want some SVG icons to change color on certain data values, they want some data to be represented differently than how it is in the database, etc. Loooong story short, this took one heck of a lot longer than 6-8 hours. Much of it was due to the very poor VM that I was running on (Visual Studio 2013 took 10 minutes to load, and another 15 minutes to open the 3 GB ginormous solution). After completing, I was told to commit my changes to source control... Hmm, OK. I get an email back that they thought that the SVGs could have their color changed differently, they found a bug in this edge-case, there was an occasional problem with this other thing that I never experienced, etc. So I am 13-14 hours into this thing now, and I have to do bug fixes. I do them, and they come back with some more. This is all apparently going into a production application. I noticed some anomalies in the code that was already in there where it looked like other people had coded all of one functionality and not anything else that I could find. Am I just being used for cheap labor? Even if they pay me the promised 50 dollars and hour for 6 hours, I have committed like 18 hours to this thing now. If I bug fix all of the stuff they keep coming up with, I will have worked at least 16 hours for free. I have taken a number of developer tests. I have never taken one where I worked on code that was destined for production. I have never taken one where I implemented a feature that was in the pipeline for development (it was planned for, and I implemented it through the course of the test). And I have never taken one that took 4 rounds and a total of 20+ hours. I get the impression that they are using their developer test to field some of the functionality, that they don't have time for in their normal team, on the cheap."}
{"_id": "162458", "title": "Should I use both WCF and ASP.NET Web API", "text": "We already have a WCF API with basichttpbinding. Some of the calls have complex objects in both the response and request. We need to add RESTful abilities to the API. at first I tried adding a webHttp endpoint, but I got               At most one body parameter can be serialized without wrapper elements      If I made it Wrapped it wasn't pure as I need it to be. I got to read this, and this (which states \"ASP.NET Web API is the new way to build RESTful service on .NET\"). So my question is, should I make 2 APIs(2 different projects)? one for SOAP with WCF and one RESTful with ASP.NET Web API? is there anything wrong architecturally speaking with this approach?"}
{"_id": "90579", "title": "Virus source code", "text": "Recently I read an article on the bbc about encrypted viruses. I have no idea about how one would even start programming something like that. I would love to see the source code for that or something similar. Does anyone have any relevent material? (Disclaimer: I dont want to create a virus of my own. My interest is purely acedemic)"}
{"_id": "244598", "title": "Modular Web App Network Architecture", "text": "Assuming that I am dealing with dedicated physical servers or VPSs, is it conceivable and does it make sense to have distinct servers setup with the following roles to host a web application?   1. Reverse Proxy   2. Web server   3. Application server   4. Database server ![cloud diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ycKgq.png) Specific points of interest:   1. I am confused how to even separate the web and application servers. My understanding was that such 3-tier architectures were feasible.   2. It is unclear to me if the app server would reside directly between the web and database server, or if the web server could directly interact with the database as well. The app server could either do the computational heavy-lifting on behalf of the app server or it could do heavy-lifting _plus control all of the business logic_ (as implied in the diagram above, thus denying the web server of direct database access).   3. I am also unsure what role the reverse proxy (ex. nginx) could and should fulfill as a web server, given the above mentioned setup. I know that nginx has web server features. But I do not know if it makes sense to have the reverse proxy be its own VPS, given that the web server\u2013in theory\u2013would be separate from the app server."}
{"_id": "214246", "title": "How unique should a UUID identified object be?", "text": "I am working on a fairly large open source project (Drupal) and the next major version will begin to use UUIDs for a lot of things, including configuration objects. If we put UUIDs into the configuration we ship with and then various sites change their configuration then there will be many, many objects in the wild with the same UUID but different properties. Is this... OK? Or is it better practice to ship without UUIDs and generate them on install?"}
{"_id": "214563", "title": "Construct your solution logic in syntax or in a faster and more efficient mental model?", "text": "I am a newbie, studying programming and I came across this question today: How can I make sure that I'm actually learning how to program rather than simply learning the details of a language? A commenter, ChaosPandion, had asked the question **if the programmer thinks in syntax or in a faster mental model**. I, while writing a solution will always think about the number of loops or condition to be used (for example). Am I doing it wrong? If so, how can I correct myself and what should I learn?"}
{"_id": "53111", "title": "What is needed to implement a usable functional language", "text": "I've done some programming in a more-or-less functional style, but I've never really studied pure functional programming. What is the bare minimum needed to implement a functional language? As far as I can tell, you need:   * The ability to define a function   * The ability to call a function   * parameter substitution   * Some kind of \"if\" operation that can prevent recursion like \"?:\".   * Testing operators or functions like \"Less than\" or \"Equals\"   * A core library of fundamental functions and operators (+ -...) This implies that you do NOT need:   * Looping   * variables (except for parameters)   * sequential statements This is for a very simple mathematical usage--I probably won't even implement string manipulation. Would implementing a language like this significantly limit you in some way I'm not considering? Mostly I'm concerned about the lack of sequential statements and ability to define variables, can you really do without these \"Normal\" programming features?"}
{"_id": "96800", "title": "How much technical detail is too much when talking to non-technical managers?", "text": "I have a boss that is not very technical. He can write some basic SQL, speak some dev lingo, but all in all not a pro dev. I get into trouble often, by giving him a lot of detail and asking him to make a decision as to which direction he wants to go. For example, recently he asked for a bunch of changes to go into a product. Then took 80% of the changes away saying he is not ready to release these yet. But then, I speak to our lead developer and he tells me to just push it all. This way we avoid having to manually merge code that we do want pushed vs code we do not want pushed (by push I mean move from dev to QA, forward merge). So, the lesson is...do what's easy. Don't tell the boss that you are pushing up all the stuff. This doesn't seem ethical to me, but this is what the solution turned out to be. So, where do I draw the line? Do you feel that hiding details is unethical or just a normal job function of a developer? I ask only highly experienced developers answer this question (10+ years). I know there's skilled guys with less experience, but I want experience to speak in this case, not just skills."}
{"_id": "236296", "title": "Can the DDD repository modify entity in the DB without an entity object?", "text": "Say I have an aggregate root `Entity` with some flags which are represented by an encapsulated object `EntityFlags`:               class Entity     {         /** @var EntityFlags */         private $flags;         ...     }      I have a repository for this entity. My goal is to modify flags in the DB. There are two ways I see:   1. Get entity from the repository, modify flags like `$entity->getFlags()->set($name, true)` and save it: `$repository->save($entity)`.   2. Create an additional method in the repository, e.g. `modifyFlags(EntityId $id, EntityFlags $flags)` I think the first way is redundant. But it also seems wrong to use repository for partial entity updates like in the 2nd way. Which way is the correct one? Maybe I missed something?"}
{"_id": "96805", "title": "Are languages just syntax or do they include the framework too?", "text": "In building a language history for Pascal I noticed that at some point languages changed from a strong line between the language and its common libraries to more of a blurry one. In the first few versions of Turbo Pascal there was no capability for reusable modules until version 4 introduced units. Later versions of Pascal had a very powerful collection of common libraries. With the introduction of Delphi it came with the **RTL** and **VCL**. Especially for the RTL, it is often considered part of the language. For example, Exceptions are part of the language, but you need to use the `SysUtils` unit to get proper handling. Additionally there is the built in `System` unit that always gets used in all Delphi projects. Then with Java you have the Java language with the Java run-time and the Java platform. You can't use the Java language outside of the Java platform. Now with .NET we have VB.NET and C# which are languages that don't exist without their framework either, while Phyton, Ruby and others exist both within .NET and without. So my question is, is a Language just the syntax and compiler, or is the platform and framework part of the language too? Where is the line? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "54467", "title": "Should you charge clients hours spent on the wrong track?", "text": "I took up a small CSS challenge to solve for a client and I'm going to be paid on a hourly rate. I eventually solved it, it took 5 hours but I spent roughly 25% of the time in the wrong track, trying a CSS3 solution that only worked in recent browsers and finally discovering that no fallback is possible via JS (like I originally thought). Should I charge the client that 25%? More details: I didn't provide an estimate, I liked the challenge per se, so I started working on it before giving an estimate (but I have worked with him before, so I know he's not one of those people that have unrealistic expectations). At the very worst I will have spent 5 unpaid hours on an intriguing CSS challenge. And I will give the fairest possible estimate for both of us, since I will have already done the work. :) Edit: Thank you all, I wish I could accept more than one answer! I ended up not billing him for the extra hours (I billed him for 3 and a half), but I mentioned them, so that he knows I worked more on it than I billed him for. Maybe that's why he immediately accepted the \"estimate\" (which in that case wasn't an estimate, hence the quotes)."}
{"_id": "58122", "title": "What is the general definition of something that can be included or excluded?", "text": "When an application presents a user with a list of items, it's pretty common that it permits the user to filter the items. Often a 'filter' feature is implemented as a set of _include_ or _exclude_ rules. For example:   * _include_ all emails from bob@example.com, and   * _exclude_ those emails without attachments I've seen this include/exclude pattern often; for example Maven and Google Analytics filter things this way. But now that I'm implementing something like this myself, I don't know what to call something that could be either _included_ or _excluded_. In specific terms:   1. If I have a database table of filter rules, each of which either _includes_ or _excludes_ matching items, what is an appropriate name of the field that stores `include` or `exclude`?   2. When displaying a list of filters to a user, what is a good way to label the `include` or `exclude` value? (as a bonus, can anyone recommend a good implementation of this kind of filtering for inspiration?) * * * ### Edit: My solution Thanks for your answers. I decided that to use **operation** to described an include or exclude. So the database fields and program variables are called operation. I like the name because it roughly aligns with the meaning of operation in set theory. As for how it's displayed to users, I fudged it by never labelling 'include' or 'exclude'. Instead it is always presented as part of a full sentence: ![Mockup](http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3695/examplerestrictionslist.png) The only label used is 'Restrictions' which I think is more specific than 'Filters'. Our users are ususlly not very technically savvy, so \u2014 much as I like the word operation \u2014 I decided that displaying a label called 'operation' would be unclear for most of our users. Using full sentences might be a little slower to read, but avoids confusion."}
{"_id": "246991", "title": "Screen out software engineers with poor communication skills?", "text": "Personally, I try to speak and write impeccable English. I try to capitalize proper nouns, get punctuation correct, use parallel form, and employ precise verbiage. (I'm also a fan of the Oxford comma, can you tell?) As a programmer, I put an equivalent amount of effort in the code I write, as code is read many more times than it is written. I pay close attention to style guides, use direct clear idioms, and try to follow recognized best practices. If I were looking for others to work with, I'd be looking for the same. My question is: is careful usage of human language a trait that correlates with better code? If so, could human resource personnel use this to good effect to screen out applicants, or would they be reducing their qualified applicant pool arbitrarily?"}
{"_id": "164858", "title": "Advantages of paid Java Application Servers?", "text": "What are the advantages of Weblogic or Websphere over Glassfish or JBoss, since they may reach costs of millions of dollars? Edit: Is there additional functionality? The all are Java EE Full Certified. **The question is about technology, not business or marketing. From the technological POV how are the servers different?**"}
{"_id": "246996", "title": "How do I deal with classes that are only used once, say in only a single function?", "text": "I have a class that basically builds up a memory-efficient version of a structure to be used in a performance-critical section of code. The resulting structure is ugly but extremely fast, so not using it isn't really an option, but I also can't use it as the only representation of my structure because it has parts not relevant to the analysis stripped. Did I mention it's also very ugly? Let's call this class `Fast`. I also have the original, pretty representation, let's call it `Pretty`. I have a function called `Process()` which is supposed to take in an instance of `Pretty`, convert it to `Fast` and then do a few million calculations on it and spit out a result:               Pretty pretty;     // do stuff with pretty          // in another hpp:     double Process(const Pretty& pretty)     {       Fast fast(pretty); // create my fast object            // do some processing on fast            return result; // at this point fast dies     }      The instance of `Fast` is created and dies within `Process`, but unfortunately I can't declare a class within a function, so I have to declare it elsewhere. What I would _like_ to do is make the entire class accessible only to `Process`, and not even have it _seen_ by anyone else (just like I would conversely declare a function `private` if the class were the only object that should have access to it). But I can't declare a class private! Here's my current attempt:               class Process     {     public:       static double DoProcess(Pretty pretty); // this is the process function          private:       class Fast       {         // construct fast here (only Process can see this class!)       };     };      And then I just call `Process::DoProcess()`. This isn't really a critical issue so I didn't post it on SO, but it's a style question and I would really like to have a neat solution! I've never come across this issue before and was wondering how others have dealt with it, and if they came up with a nicer solution."}
{"_id": "244623", "title": "when to use a scaled/enterprise agile software development framework and when to let agile processes 'emerge'?", "text": "There are quite a few enterprise agile software development frameworks available:   * Scott Ambler: Disciplined Agile Delivery   * Dean Leffingwell: Scaled Agile Framework   * Alan Shalloway: Enterprise Agile Book   * Craig Larman: Scaling Lean and Agile   * Barry Boehm: Balancing Agility and Discipline   * Brian Wernham: Agile Project Management for Government - DSDM, Scrum and others I've also spoken with people that state that your enterprise agile processes should just 'emerge' and that you shouldn't need or use a framework because they constrain you. **Question 1:** When should one choose an enterprise agile software development framework, and when should one just let their agile processes 'emerge'. **Question 2:** If choosing an enterprise agile software development framework, how does one select the appropriate framework to use for their organisation? Please provide evidence of your experience or research when answering questions rather than just presenting opinions."}
{"_id": "237749", "title": "How do languages with Maybe types instead of nulls handle edge conditions?", "text": "Eric Lippert made a very interesting point in his discussion of why C# uses a `null` rather than a `Maybe<T>` type: > Consistency of the type system is important; can we always know that a non- > nullable reference is never under any circumstances observed to be invalid? > What about in the constructor of an object with a non-nullable field of > reference type? What about in the finalizer of such an object, where the > object is finalized because the code that was supposed to fill in the > reference threw an exception? A type system that lies to you about its > guarantees is dangerous. That was a bit of an eye-opener. The concepts involved interest me, and I've done some playing around with compilers and type systems, but I never thought about that scenario. How do languages that have a Maybe type instead of a null handle edge cases such as initialization and error recovery, in which a supposedly guaranteed non-null reference is not, in fact, in a valid state?"}
{"_id": "60580", "title": "How do I quote a job with PHPUnit?", "text": "I've been doing website programming for 15 years and PHP for the last 5 years or so. I've always written solid code. HOWEVER, I have a client that is insisting on 80% of the code being unit tested. Since the client is ALWAYS RIGHT, I am planning on using PHP_CodeSniffer to make sure my code looks right and PHPUnit to do my unit testing. I'm hoping to learn something through this experience. Are these the right tools to use? How much time is involved in setting up PHPUnit and writing the additional code? It should take me around 8 weeks to write the webpages and self-test as I have done in the past. If I add 4 days additional (10%) for unit testing (PHPUnit), is that enough? Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks."}
{"_id": "120872", "title": "How should a developer reject impossible requirements?", "text": "Here's the problem I'm facing: * * * **Quote From Project Manager:** Hey Spark, I'm assigning you the task of developing a framework that could be used for many different iOS applications. Here are the requirements:   * It should be able to detect the thickness of the thumb or fingers being used to manipulate the UI.   * With this information, all elements of the UI should be arranged & sized _automatically_.   * For a larger thumb, elements should be arranged nearer the center of the screen.   * For a smaller thumb, elements should be arranged nearer the corners of the screen.   * For a larger thumb, all fonts should be smaller. (We're assuming an adult in this case.)   * For a smaller thumb, all fonts should be larger. (We're assuming a younger person in this case.) **Summary:** This framework is required for creating user-friendly user interfaces programmatically. The framework should be developed in such a way that we can use for as many projects as needed, so it must also be very developer- friendly. * * * I am the developer given this task, so my questions are as follows:   * How can I explain that these requirements are a little ridiculous?   * How can I explain that it would be better to concentrate on developing actual projects?   * How can I explain that even if this were possible, I wouldn't recommended developing such a thing?   * How do I say NO to this project politely, gently, and respectfully?   * How can I explain that even for a developer with 3 years of experience, this might not be possible?"}
{"_id": "120873", "title": "Do you need to know Java before trying Scala", "text": "I'm interested in learning Scala. I've been reading a lot about it, but a lot of people value it because it has an actor model which is better for concurrency, it handles xml in a much better way, solves the problem of first class functions. My question is do you need to know Java to understand/appreciate the way things work in Scala? Is it better to first take a stab at Java and then try Scala or you can start Scala with absolutely no java backround?"}
{"_id": "152352", "title": "Anonymous function vs. separate named function for initialization in jquery", "text": "We just had some controversial discussion and I would like to see your opinions on the issue: Let's say we have some code that is used to initialize things when a page is loaded and it looks like this:               function initStuff() { ...}     ...     $(document).ready(initStuff);      The initStuff function is only called from the third line of the snippet. Never again. Now I would say: Usually people put this into an anonymous callback like that:               $(document).ready(function() {          //Body of initStuff     });      because having the function in a dedicated location in the code is not really helping with readability, because with the call on ready() makes it obvious, that this code is initialization stuff. Would you agree or disagree with that decision? And why? Thank you very much for your opinion!"}
{"_id": "152351", "title": "How to manage a developer who has poor communication skills", "text": "I manage a small team of developers on an application which is in the mid- point of its lifecycle, within a big firm. This unfortunately means there is commonly a 30/70 split of Programming tasks to \"other technical work\". This work includes:   * Working with DBA / Unix / Network / Loadbalancer teams on various tasks   * Placing and managing orders for hardware or infrastructure in different regions   * Running tests that have not yet been migrated to CI   * Analysis   * Support / Investigation Its fair to say that the Developers would all prefer to be coding, rather than doing these more mundane tasks, so I try to hand out the fun programming jobs evenly amongst the team. Most of the team was hired because, though they may not have the elite programming skills to write their own compiler / game engine / high-frequency trading system etc., they are good communicators who \"can get stuff done\", work with other teams, and somewhat navigate the complex bureaucracy here. They are good developers, but they are also good all-round technical staff. However, one member of the team probably has above-average coding skills, but below-average communication skills. Traditionally, the previous Development Manager tended to give him the Programming tasks and not the more mundane tasks listed above. However, I don't feel that this is fair to the rest of the team, who have shown an aptitude for developing a well-rounded skillset that is commonly required in a big-business IT department. What should I do in this situation? If I continue to give him more programming work, I know that it will be done faster (and conversely, I would expect him to complete the other work slower). But it goes against my principles, and promotes the idea that you can carve out a \"comfortable niche\" for yourself simply by being bad at the tasks you don't like. **Update**   I've been impressed by the quality and insight of the answers I've received. Though most agree I should work to the individual team members strengths, there's been good debate back and forth. I want to clarify that I'm not trying to address this issue due to a grudge, or that I have a \"chip on my shoulder\" as was mentioned. I'm looking for advice on how to keep a well-rounded team, which is happy and motivated. By observing the variety of answers to this question, it seems like there are a lot of different opinions on how to achieve this."}
{"_id": "128652", "title": "What is the purpose of including header files in the solution in Visual Studio?", "text": "So I have including the files to my projects by simply : `#include \"myheader.hpp\"` and adding the headers into the solution explorer. But recently I have realized that I may omit the step of adding the headers to the solution explorer because it does not change anything. The only important fact is to define proper include directories in project properties. Am I missing something here ? Can someone clever explain this to me ?"}
{"_id": "125509", "title": "Programming language with native concurrency support for large graphs?", "text": "I'm currently looking for a new programming language to learn (currently working through some C++, know some C and Python), specifically one that has built-in concurrency support? I want to try to build a large graph library that can do processing across clusters or multiple cores.. I know C++'s Boost library has support for concurrency, but I also want to learn a new language and I'm guessing a language that was designed with concurrency in mind would also be more pleasant to do concurrent programming in. Overall I see this as a chance to learn a new language, learn about concurrent programming, and tackle a big project. From looking around, Clojure and Scala seem to be the two popular candidates when looking for concurrent programming support.. though I'm not sure how these two compare in terms of   1. Speed (specifically for concurrent large graph processing)   2. Community (thinking about pushing this project onto somewhere like GitHub)   3. Ease of programming concurrently Or are there other languages I should consider aside from Clojure or Scala? I have never programmed in a functional language before, but I'm open to learning it.. I've seen one of my friends program in Haskell and Clojure and it looks daunting but I've heard good things about functional programming, esp. for data processing. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "152359", "title": "Could someone break this nasty habit of mine please?", "text": "I recently graduated in cs and was mostly unsatisfied since I realized that I received only a basic theoretical approach in a wide range of subjects (which is what college is supposed to do but still...) . Anyway I took the habit of spending a lot of time looking for implementations of concepts and upon finding those I will used them as guides to writing my own implementation of those concepts just for fun. But now I feel like the only way I can fully understand a new concept is by trying to implement from scratch no matter how unoptimized the result may be. Anyway this behavior lead me to choose by default the hard way, that is time consuming instead of using a nicely written library until I hit my head again a huge wall and then try to find a library that works for my purpose.... Does anyone else do that and why? It seems so weird why would anyone (including me) do that ? Is it a bad practice ? and if so how can i stop doing that ?"}
{"_id": "211994", "title": "Is copyrights notice of a BSD licensed library considered as endorsement?", "text": "As I am reviewing a BSD license for an open source library to use it in my commercial product, I found this paragraph: > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided > that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are duplicated in all > such forms and that any documentation, advertising materials, and other > materials related to such distribution and use acknowledge that the software > was developed by the organization. Its clear that I have to mention the copyright notice, but as for the next paragraph: > The name of the organization may not be used to endorse or promote products > derived from this software without specific prior written permission. If I just put the copyright notice of the used library, is that considered as I am promoting my product by mentioning the library copyrights notice? Shall I seek a written permission? or I just need to add the copyright notice only?"}
{"_id": "122436", "title": "Should back end processes be included in use cases in requirements document?", "text": "We're writing a requirements document for our client and need to include the use cases of the system. We're following this template:               ID     Description     Actors     Precondition     Basic Steps     Alternate Steps     Exceptions     Business validations/Rules     Postconditions      In the Basic Steps section, should we include steps that the system performs in the back end or should we only include steps that the user directly interacts with? Example: Basic Steps for Search 1:               User goes to search page     User enters term     User presses search     System matches search term with database entries     System displays results      vs Basic Steps for Search 2:               User goes to search page     User enters term     User presses search     System displays results"}
{"_id": "9730", "title": "Functional Programming vs. OOP", "text": "I've heard a lot of talk about using functional languages such as Haskell as of late. What are some of the big differences, pros and cons of functional programming vs. object-oriented programming?"}
{"_id": "121830", "title": "How to write manageable code with functional programming?", "text": "I just started with functional programming (with JavaScript and Node.js) and from the look of things it looks as if the code I am writing would grow to be one hell of a code base to manage, when compared to programming languages that have a sort of object oriented paradigm. With OOP I am familiar with practices that would ensure your code is easily managed and extensible. But am nore sure of similar convention with functional programming."}
{"_id": "218558", "title": "When You Have Both Options, When Functional and When OOP?", "text": "Like (I suspect) a lot of JS devs, I tend to start with intuition first and then come to sound principles/practice with experience informing study of the comp. sci stuff I never really had any form training in that I like to look into in my spare time. Note: I tagged JS by way of identifying where I'm coming but I'm open to answers from any language where you might have the same dilemma. So, as I've come to understand more purely functional-oriented languages I've started to realize that I've occasionally been following that approach by accident. Essentially I'll have some data that doesn't change and a function or set of functions using those \"constants\" (yeah, yeah...) in conjunction with variable params to hand off a return value that won't necessarily be different on method firings. I tend to reach for whatever tool strikes me as likely to simplify the problem or reduce work the most but is there maybe something a little less ambiguous in terms of what are more formally considered the advantages of one vs. the other to come up with some heuristics to consider? So far the split is typically more with OOP at higher-level architectural concerns with occasional functional typically coming into play within or between objects."}
{"_id": "211999", "title": "Are Nested Static Library dependencies possible?", "text": "I am working in QT .   1. Can a static library depend on another static library?(Static Lib is made by linking another static lib)   2. If yes, is it possible that after linking to lib2, the generated lib(lib1) would not contain all the codes of lib2? In my Qt Project I am using a static library, which depends on multiple libraries. I had to add all the libraries (with all their headers in my project), although I need only one lib (and one .h of that class) in my code. Please explain the scenario."}
{"_id": "250553", "title": "Are there any benefits in not having referential integrity keys in database?", "text": "So Referential integrity is good, but are there scenarios where not having constraints is better? For example when all the logic of relationships is kept in code? or when the database upgrade is simplified? PS: I am not asking it is good not to have referential integrity, just that what scenarios would justify it"}
{"_id": "199166", "title": "Why does a contenteditable div not behave like an input element?", "text": "The motivation for the content editable div would be to allow user input inside a normal div element. Why does it then behave so differently to input element? Mainly I am referring to the addition of a `div` or a `br` on line break. Additionally it does not have a placeholder item. So my question is what is the point of content-editable div? Why would I want to use it at all?"}
{"_id": "246660", "title": "Entirely separate business logic layer from MVC", "text": "We are currently refactoring our controller methods in ASP.NET MVC application. At the beginning we've separated data access layer (our goal was to remove LINQ from controllers entirely). Now we are thinking about another step - how to create a business logic layer to reduce number of lines and logic in controller. Currently we have something like this:               public ActionResult CustomerProjects(some parameters)     {         var collectionOfSomeType = this.CustomerRepository.GetSomeData();         var anothercollection = this.ProjectsRepository.GetAnotherData(collectionOfSomeType);              var viewModel = CreateSomeViewModel(anotherCollection);              return View(\"Index\", viewModel);     }      Of course it's just an example with four lines of code. We have some methods which are bigger (but still IMO not so bad). We injected our helper classes through IoC container, more complex logic sits there. But now we'd like to remove even that parts. Is it worth our time to create another layer which would be our 'last gate' before controllers? The final result would be:               public ActionResult CustomerProjects(some parameters)     {         var viewModel = someSource.PrepareCustomerProjectsViewModel(params);              return View(\"Index\", viewModel);     }      What do you think?"}
{"_id": "94036", "title": "How do you pronounce eval()?", "text": "I'm not a native speaker so please excuse me if you think the question is silly, but how should I pronounce eval()?"}
{"_id": "243012", "title": "How does dependecy injection increase coupling?", "text": "On the Wikipedia page on dependency injection, the disadvantages section tells us this: > Dependency injection increases coupling by requiring the user of a subsystem > to provide for the needs of that subsystem. with a link to an article against dependency injection. Dependency injection makes a class use the interface instead of the concrete implementation. That should result in decreased coupling, no? What am I missing? How is dependency injection increasing coupling between classes?"}
{"_id": "209417", "title": "Copyright registration against future patents", "text": "**Short question:** Could registering a work containing probable patentable ideas at one or more copyright registraion services (such as CRS) be used to effectively prove _prior art_ in case someone tries to patent the idea? **Details:** The particular work is software and some related stuff which show some novelties, maybe patentable, maybe not in the US. I live in Europe, and even if I lived in the US, I wouldn't want to care (and leave tons of $$$ in patent offices) about patents: the thing is to be released under GPL when the time comes. I want to protect it in such a way that it could stay free, which, as I see, involves protecting it against probable patent ventures (trying to capture those novelties the project has). Reading about the subject I see that copyright registration services (such as CRS) exist which for an affordable price would archive the state of the work reliably with their registration date. So in case someone tries to \"attack\" the GPL'ed work in the aforementioned way, how useful could these proofs be in proving _prior art_? (Could you think of any other effective methods for someone who has no reliable connections to release a true _printed publication_ , neither much funds, and neither lives in the US?) My goals are _solely protecting the published GPL'ed work from legal takedown_. That is as I understand patenting it might be possible that someone patents an already existing technology (in this case my published GPL'ed work), and then sues the original author (inventor) for patent infringement. I only seek for protection against this type of abuse building up some robust enough proof of _prior art_ so the work may remain free."}
{"_id": "243015", "title": "How to handle mutiple API calls using javascript/jquery", "text": "I need to build a service that will call multiple API's at the same time and then output the results on the page (Think of how a price comparison site works for example). The idea being that as each API call completes the results are sent to the browser immediately and the page would get progressively bigger until all process are complete. Because these API calls may take several seconds each to return I would like to do this via javascript/jquery in order to create a better user experience. I have never done anything like this before using javascript/jquery so I was wondering if there was any frameworks/advice that anyone would be willing to share."}
{"_id": "168110", "title": "Lua & Javascript documentation generation", "text": "I am in the beginning phase of create a mobile MMO with my team. The server software will be written in JavaScript using NodeJS, and the client software in Lua using Corona. We need a tool to auto-generate documentation for both the server-side and client-side code. Are there any tools which can generate documentation for both Lua and Javascript? And as a bonus: we are hosting our project on Bitbucket and the Bitbucket Wiki uses the Creole markup language. So if it's possible I want the tool to export to Creole. Edit: I know about tools for generating documentation for one of both languages. However, I don't want 2 different styles for documentation in one project. Therefore one tool which can generate documentation for both languages would be great."}
{"_id": "168112", "title": "What to choose API based server or Socket based server for data driven application", "text": "I am working on a project which has a Desktop Application for MAC/COCOA, a native application for iPhone another native application in iPad. All the application do almost same thing. The applications are data driven applications. Every communication to server is made via a restful API developed in PHP. When a user logs in a lot of data is fetched from server. And to remain in sync with server polling is done. As there are lot of data to poll it makes application slower and un-reliable. A possible solution that comes into my mind is to use Socket based server. My question is that will it reasonably improve the performance? And which technology (of sockets) will be good as a server side solution for data driven application? I have heard a lot about Node.js. Please give your suggestions."}
{"_id": "168114", "title": "I seem to be missing a few important concepts with PhoneGap", "text": "I'm planning on developing an app on multiple platforms and I'm thinking that PhoneGap might be perfect for me. I had been reading that it's one codebase for all platforms but looking at the PhoneGap guide it seems there are separate instructions for each platform. So if i want to develop for iOS, Android, BB and WP7 I need to write 4 different sets of code? I'm sure i'm missing something fundamental here. Aside from that, how do people usually approach a PhoneGap build? You obviously / probably want the finished app to look like a native app - is it more common than not to use jQuery Mobile together with PhoneGap? Is there a preferred IDE? I see, in the guide, for iOS they seem to suggest Xcode. I'm fine using Xcode but it seems a bit overkill for HTML & CSS. Do I need to develop in Xcode and if not how do i approach it? Use a different IDE / Text Editor and then copy paste into Xcode for building and testing? I know this question is long-winded and fundamental but it something which i don't think is properly addressed in the guides. Thanks."}
{"_id": "40495", "title": "How to organize back-end database design and front-end application in software repository?", "text": "I have an application that has a back-end database (tables, procedures, database specific dlls) and front-end (application logic and UI) that separate people are working on. I was wondering what's the best way to organize it in my repository (I'm using GIT). The options I see are:   * all-in-one repository   * submodules of main repository   * two separate repositories   * other? Any suggestions are welcome."}
{"_id": "191184", "title": "Preventing crawler from interfering with user tracking", "text": "I'm scraping text from various webshops (no images/videos or other data). I'm no expert on user tracking, so I'd like to know if there's a way for me to write my crawler so it won't interfere with the webshop owners tracking. Perhaps this is already the case since the crawler isn't storing any cookies, requesting images or anything else but the actual pages, but I'd like to be sure. What would I do when requesting the pages to ensure that nothing is tracked in Google Analytics for instance? Should I send an e-mail to the owners telling them to filter a specific user-agent or...? I've seen How to be a good citizen when crawling web sites? where the last answer states that one should add \"crawler\" or \"spider\" in the user-agent. I'm not sure what to make of that as I can't find anything to back it up. (The crawler is written in node.js and uses the request-module to download websites) EDIT: For anyone interested, here's the infinitely simple crawler I've made. It doesn't obey robots.txt because I'm specifying what kind of links I want to follow myself (and I'm too lazy right now to write something that obeys robots.txt):               var request = require(\"request\")     , cheerio = require(\"cheerio\")     ;          exports.crawl = function(options) {         var links = [].concat(options.url) // Takes either an array of url's or just a string.         , ongoingRequests = 0         , index = 0         , done = false         ;         process.nextTick(ticker);         function ticker() {             if(ongoingRequests < options.maxRequests && index < links.length && !done) {                 var url = links[index++];                 ongoingRequests++;                 if(options.debug) console.log(\"Downloading \" + url);                 request({ url: url, encoding: options.encoding || \"utf-8\" }, function(err, response) {                     ongoingRequests--;                     if(err) {                         return;                     }                     if(!done) {                         var $ = cheerio.load(response.body)                         , shouldContinue = options.data($, response, url)                         ;                         if(shouldContinue === false) {                             console.log(\"Crawler interrupted.\");                             options.done();                             done = true;                         }                         var  newLinks = options.extractLinks($).filter(function(url, i) { return links.indexOf(url, i + 1) === -1; });                         if(options.debug && newLinks.length) console.log(newLinks);                         links = links.concat(newLinks);                         if((index - 1) % 5 === 0) console.log(\"Current index: \" + (index - 1) + \", links found so far: \" + links.length);                     }                 });             } else if(!ongoingRequests) {                 if(!done) {                     options.done();                     done = true;                 }                 return;             }             process.nextTick(ticker);         }     };      Use it like this:               var crawler = require(\"../crawler\");          crawler.crawl({         url: \"http://website.com\"         , debug: true         , maxRequests: 5         , data: function($, response, url) {             if(url.indexOf(\"/product/\") === -1) {                 return;             }             console.log(\"extract stuff from $ using CSS-selectors and a nice jQuery-like API\");         }         , done: function() {             console.log(\"DONE!!\");         }         , extractLinks: function($) {             return $(\"a\").map(function() {                 return $(this).attr(\"href\");             }).filter(function(url, i, a) {                 if(!url || url[0] !== \"/\") {                     return false;                 }                 return i === a.indexOf(url) // Remove duplicates                 && url.indexOf(\"/cart\") === -1                         && url.indexOf(\".htm\") > -1                 ;             }).map(function(url) {                 return \"http://website.com\" + url;             });         }     });"}
{"_id": "255450", "title": "Is DDD not appropriate for my website or should I introduce a Query Layer?", "text": "I have inherited an ASP.NET website application and the previous developer has used what I believe are some DDD concepts. I am new to DDD and I have to admit I am struggling with the practical side of it having come from an N-Tier Transaction Script background. One of the problems with the site is that it is slow. There is no paging on huge grids and also the business logic layer pulls down way more data than is needed for 90% of operations 70% of which are reads to bind data to grids. The general design is that the business logic layer has a Service class per aggregate root, with various \"GetByX()\", 'FindBestMatching()\" and \"Update()\" type methods on it. These Service classes are the points from which trees of domain objects are created such as \"Organisation\" and \"User.\" Back in my comfortable transaction script days, my service layer was similar: there would be some logic possibly, a call into a repository (or since EF 6 direct use of EF as it can be mocked for testing) and then the call would return. The objects that were returned would be DTO type objects containing return data relevant, including possibly some POCO entity objects. These DTOs would travel to clients via webservices, be bound to ASP.NET or Silverlight grids...all was good. My operations on my service layer could be very specific, allowing for queries like:               \"GetUsersWithSurnameIncludeChildren(string surname, int skip, int take)\"      allowing for nice narrow DB queries that supported paging and eager loading of related data. It was fast and loaded only the data that was actually needed. Now with this site I have inherited there is an actual OO model of the business domain. These classes are POCOs, not generated from EF, but EF is used database first as a repository (there is a lot of mapping between the domain objects and the EF objects). An example domain object is below (without any logic).               public class Organisation     {         public int OrganisationID { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }              public IList<Organisation> AssociatedOrganisations { get; set; }         public IList<User> Staff { get; set; }         public IList<User> Managers { get; set; }              // Business logic method implemented below here     }      Many of the classes are essentially copies of the underlying entity framework objects, others have a significant amount of logic encapsulated within them. The way the site works currently is that every time the OrganisationService service class creates a new Organisation domain object (and it may create a collection in one hit) it also populates ALL of the fields and collections in that object...and all of the fields and collections in those objects! A huge deep tree is created in memory and a stack of joins and unions (generated by EF) is needed to get all of the data. This is totally inappropriate for a website that mainly displays loads of flat grids. My questions are: 1) Is an application that is 70% pulling data out of a DB for display and 30% business logic actually a bad candidate for DDD? 2) If DDD is appropriate how are scenarios like this generally designed? Should I implement a separate \"Query Service\" that is designed just to pull out loads of flat data for binding to pages and grids (these could just be the EF POCOS themselves) and reserve the Domain objects just for parts of the application where logic must actually be performed? 3) Should I only load data into my Domain Object reference types and collections when it is actually accessed (like EF lazy loading...)? Previous posts I have read have suggested lazy loading in a Domain Object is a code smell: DDD Lazy Loading Code Smell I am about to buy a DDD book tonight :)"}
{"_id": "255455", "title": "What Algorithm can be use for task allocation based on location?", "text": "What algorithm can be use for task scheduling based on location? For example there are 100 students and 5 lecturers available. Each lecturer must get same amount of student using location allocation which is allocation of students depends on the nearest place to lecturer. The system must assign automatically students to lecturer depends on shortest distance between student and lecturer.               Student A      Lecturer A      Student B      lecturer B     Student c      Lecturer C      EXAMPLE : Lecturer A can get student c because when compare 3 students address student C is near to lecturer A. I have done some research on algorithms such as ant colony, bee colony, location allocation but what I can learn from that is it doesn't meet my requirement. So looking for some new algo. What type of algorithm can be use to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "41128", "title": "What is the purpose of the \"non-endorsement clause\" in the New BSD license?", "text": "_**Note:** This question is not about the \"obnoxious BSD advertising clause\". The New BSD license does not contain that clause, and is compatible with the GPL._ I'm trying to pick between the New BSD license and the MIT license for my own projects. They are essentially identical, except the BSD license contains the following clause: >   * Neither the name of the <organization> nor the names of its contributors > may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software > without specific prior written permission. > Why would anyone want to use this clause? What's wrong with gaining some notoriety if someone makes a well-known piece of software using your code? Also, wouldn't dictating what users can and cannot do with your given name fall outside the domain of intellectual property?"}
{"_id": "255457", "title": "RefactorException: Good idea or bad idea?", "text": "When I'm doing large scale refactors I'm often commenting out the contents of methods and using NotImplementedExceptions for stuff that I still need to refactor. Problem is that this is interfering with 'valid' NotImplementedExceptions. I'm thinking about introducing a custom RefactorException, that I quite easily find back by reference to see what I still need to do. Good idea or bad idea? What are other common ways to do large scale refactors in stages? (of course the idea is that all these exceptions are removed before the I commit the whole refactoring)"}
{"_id": "255456", "title": "Is it legaly allowed to state this in a software EULA?", "text": "Just read through the whole EULA from the game (\"Minecraft\") owned by (\"Mojang AB\"). And in there it was one sentence that got my attention:               We have the final say on what constitutes a tool / mod / plugin and what is not.      My questions are:   1. Is is legaly allowed to write this in a EULA?   2. Will this really hold up in court?      **EDIT:** As people apperently want more detail: I was initially thinking just generally but as more detail is required lets's take Sweden(Where's mojang is from) and USA(Just becase).."}
{"_id": "129014", "title": "What should a GetSelectedIndex method return when no rows are selected", "text": "I'm creating a UI table component that returns an array of selected indices. Some typical return values would be               var myRetVal1 = [0];//one value selected      var myRetVal2 = [0,1,2,3,8,11];//multiple value selected      as you can see I'm always returning an array. I had an idea to return `-1` when nothing is selected, but then I thought that might be confusing when in every other condition an array is returned. So checking for an empty set of values would be either               //returns -1     var selectedItems = tbl.GetSelectedIndex();     if(selectedItems !== -1){        //we have data to process     }      OR               //returns []     var selectedItems = tbl.GetSelectedIndex();     if(selectedItems.length > 0){        //we have data to process     }      OR               //returns null     var selectedItems = tbl.GetSelectedIndex();     if(selectedItems){        //we have data to process     }      Maybe I'm making too big a deal over this, but is there a standard expectation for this type of control? As I build other controls should they conform to a standard empty return value or should they always return a \"empty\" version of their expected return type?"}
{"_id": "161439", "title": "Query regarding VBA as career option", "text": "I am a dot net developer, with over 7 years experience in VB, Vb.net, C# and Asp.net. Would it be worthwhile to learn VBA/VSTO? Would it be adding value to my career? Would there be any companies hiring a person who knows both VBA and Dot net? I heard that VBA would be used mostly used in finance industry and it won't pay much. Is it true?"}
{"_id": "161435", "title": "best way to do the compile and check cycle", "text": "I am trying to learn lua and am experimenting on my linux machine. I am not a programmer, so I am looking for your help to give me some suggestions. What I want to accomplish is making my compile-rewrite-recompile cycle as efficient as possible. Here is what I do. I am using vim in one window to program. I have a shell open in another window. When I want to check my progress, I save the code in vim, switch to my shell, then execute the code. However, this is still kind of tedious, I was there was a faster, more elegant way. Any ideas? How do you go about this problem?"}
{"_id": "161436", "title": "How can we protect the namespace of an object in Javascript?", "text": "Continuing from my previous question: Javascript simple code to understand prototype-based OOP basics Let's say we run into console this two separate objects(even if they are called child and parent there is no inheritance between them):               var parent = {         name: \"parent\",         print: function(){            console.log(\"Hello, \"+this.name);         }     };          var child = {         name: \"child\",         print: function(){            console.log(\"Hi, \"+this.name);         }     };          parent.print()     // This will print: Hello, parent     child.print()     // This will print: Hi, child          temp =parent;     parent = child;     child = temp;               parent.print()     // This will now print: Hi, child     child.print()      // This will now print: Hello, parent      Now suppose that parent is a library, as a HTML5 application in a browser this cannot do much harm because is practically running sandboxed, but now with the advent of the ChromeOS, FirefoxOS and other [Browser] OS they will also be linked to a native API, that would be a head out of the \u201esandbox\u201d. Now if someone changes the namespace it would be harder for a code reviewer (either automated or not ) to spot an incorrect use if the namespaces changes. My question would be: Are there many ways in which the above situation can be done and what can be done to protect this namespaces? (Either in the javascript itself or by some static code analysis tool)"}
{"_id": "40832", "title": "Generic code or code easy to understand?", "text": "at work now I had an argument with co-worker, because I made a page that he feels is **too generic**. The page has **3 modes** (simple, adv and special) - it has to work like this, because we don't choose how the specification is written. in each mode **the page looks different** (the changes are not big - **it shows/hides 5 text fields** in different combinations based on the mode). My co-worker think it should be **3 pages** and when you change something you should just **merge** the changes to other two modes. The fields now has code like `rendered=\"#{mode!=2}\"`, etc. P.S. Now the difference is 5 fields, but **in the future no1 know how much it will be changed**. **EDIT:** We use Seam(JSF/Facelets), here is pseudo facelet code(to make it easier to understand). I did not put it in panelGroups to better present the problem.               <h:output rendered=\"mode=2\" value=\"Name: \" />     <h:input rendered=\"mode=2\" value=\"bean.name\" />     <h:output rendered=\"mode=2\" value=\"Surename: \" />     <h:input rendered=\"mode=2\" value=\"bean.surname\"  />          <h:output rendered=\"mode!=2\" value=\"Surename: \" />     <h:input rendered=\"mode!=2\" value=\"bean.surname\"  />     <h:output rendered=\"mode!=2\" value=\"#{mode==1?'My Name':'My friends name'}\" />     <h:input rendered=\"mode!=2\" value=\"bean.name\" />      **EDIT:** I duplicated version it would look like this(pseudo code)               <c:if test=mode=1>             <ui:include view=modeSimple.xhtml>     </c:if>     <c:if test=mode=2>             <ui:include view=modeAdv.xhtml>     </c:if>     <c:if test=mode=3>             <ui:include view=modeSpec.xhtml>     </c:if>               modeSimple.xhtml         <h:output value=\"Surename: \" />         <h:input value=\"bean.surname\"  />         <h:output value=\"My Name\" />         <h:input value=\"bean.name\" />     modeAdv.xhtml         <h:output value=\"Name: \" />         <h:input value=\"bean.name\" />         <h:output value=\"Surename: \" />         <h:input value=\"bean.surname\"  />     modeSpec.xhtml         <h:output value=\"Surename: \" />         <h:input value=\"bean.surname\"  />         <h:output value=\"My friends name\" />         <h:input value=\"bean.name\" />"}
{"_id": "162002", "title": "Can my company give IP rights away for an application I wrote off hours to another startup?", "text": "I am an intern for a health company (unpaid), let's call it _Company A_ and I noticed that they are using a lot of paper form for things that can be done on the computer. Excel files for things that shouldn't be in Excel. So I wanted to improve on my programming and figured that it was the best opportunity to do. I developed a couple of apps for their use. All these applications were outside company time. One application I did and they love and one of the director has a brother who has a health start up company. He wants me to give over my source code so his brother's company can further develop it and maybe sell it (I am out of the equation). I have no intention of handing over my code as I put a lot of time outside doing it but I also don't want to burn bridges with anyone in the company. I can't go to the director and tell him \"I don't think so\". I am fine with demoing to the brother how it works but the line is giving up my code. If they want to build something like it then they can go right ahead I have no problem with it. What is the correct way of approaching this and do they have the right to do this to me? Edit: there is no contract I never signed anything"}
{"_id": "178363", "title": "How is the DOM language independent?", "text": "Quoting from Wikipedia > The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent > convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and > XML documents. and from wc3 > In order to provide a precise, language-independent specification of the DOM > interfaces, we have chosen to define the specifications in OMG IDL Now I have been programming in Java, C# and PHP and in all these languages the keyword `interface` is provided, but how do you implement a language- independent interface? How come you can write an interface without a programming language? Moreover how can you interact with the DOM using any programming language? If someone invented a new programming language, what are the steps he needs to do to be able to interact with the DOM?"}
{"_id": "40838", "title": "Cloud availability of short-term \"virgin\" Windows instances?", "text": "I have a situation where we on a regular basis need a freshly installed \"virgin\" Windows installation to do various work in isolation on, and building one from scratch every time in a vmware instance is getting tedious. Perhaps there are cloud offerings providing a service allowing to request one or more Windows instances and after a very short while they were available for logging in through Remote Desktop? After usage they were just recycled without having to pay for a full Windows license every time. Do this exist for a reasonable price? What is your personal experiences with this?"}
{"_id": "216175", "title": "Why should I use MSBuild instead of Visual Studio Solution files?", "text": "We're using TeamCity for continuous integration and it's building our releases via the solution file (.sln). I've used Makefiles in the past for various systems but never msbuild (which I've heard is sorta like Makefiles + XML mashup). I've seen many posts on how to use msbuild directly instead of the solution files but I don't see a very clear answer on _why_ to do it. So, why should we bother migrating from solution files to an MSBuild 'makefile'? We do have a a couple of releases that differ by a #define (featurized builds) but for the most part everything works. The bigger concern is that now we'd have to maintain _two_ systems when adding projects/source code. _**UPDATE:_** Can folks shed light on the lifecycle and interplay of the following three components?   1. The Visual Studio .sln file   2. The many project level .csproj files (which I understand an \"sub\" msbuild scripts)   3. The custom msbuild script Is it safe to say that the .sln and .csproj are consumed/maintained as usual from within the Visual Studio IDE GUI while the custom msbuild script is hand- written and usually consumes the already existing individual .csproj \"as-is\"? That's one way I can see reduce overlap/duplicate in maintenance... Would appreciate some light on this from other folks' operational experience"}
{"_id": "216174", "title": "A good way to learn a language and fully understand its features and classes is to try all methods in the API", "text": "I have an idea that to learn a language (i.e. Java)I need to try all methods from language's API; i want to try to use methods from its API. is this a good idea? there are 10 000 methods in Java API. is this a good way to learn all language capabilities?"}
{"_id": "176935", "title": "Basic use of Business Rules", "text": "I have a query on whether the following requirements would need to be designed via Business Rules - this is for a JEE based application where currently this is coded as part of the Business logic. > System will create a tax account for every city, county and district > combination that imposes tax for only certain cities, counties or districts > depending on the taxpayer's business. > > When the user establishes an account which exists in all subdivisions (i.e. > at city or county level), the application must use his tax code and > automatically populate all the locations without requiring the user to data > enter every location. I assume this would mean a data lookup table from a master table (of tax accounts) and fetch and display all locations. Is there some way in which a Rules Engine can be used to manage these combinations?"}
{"_id": "163499", "title": "Can I use my company name instead of using ofbiz logo and name", "text": "Sorry this is not a programming questions. My company is looking to do some work on ofbiz. I read the license of apache and I am not sure if its legal to change the logo to our company logo. http://www.apache.org/foundation/license-faq.html#WhatDoesItMEAN"}
{"_id": "176931", "title": "How do I store an object in a way that I can use it even in a second execution of the program?", "text": "I am making program in Java in which I am making `Dialog box`, `button`, `checkbox`, etc. SWT widgets. Now my problem is, I want like if in one execution `button` is made and in second execution `checkbox` is made then they both should display in one box. So I need to store that box object. How can I do that?"}
{"_id": "163496", "title": "How should I create a mutable, varied jtree with arbitrary/generic category nodes?", "text": "_Please note: I don't want coding help here, I'm on`Programmers` for a reason. I want to improve my program planning/writing skills not (just) my understanding of Java_. I'm trying to figure out how to make a tree which has an arbitrary category system, based on the skills listed for this LARP game here. My previous attempt had a bool for whether a skill was also a category. Trying to code around that was messy. Drawing out my tree I noticed that only my 'leaves' were skills and I'd labeled the others as categories. ### What I'm after is a way to make a tree which attempts to separate Model and View, and allow adding an arbitary type of child node (with a separate way of being edited/rendered) to an arbitrary parent. ![A tree listing various skill from the above link](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vmcFs.png) _N.B Everything here is bought as a skill, even where it seems like a property. The End-Users will see this as buying skills (which they do on paper atm) so should be presented as such, all on the same page._ **Explanation of tree:** The Tree is 'born' with a set of hard coded highest level categories ( _Weapons, Physical and Mental, Medical_ and more etc.). From this the user needs to be able to add a skill. Ultimately they want to add the 'One-handed Sword Specialisation' _skill_ ( **not** item) for instance. To do so you'd ideally click 'add' with `Weapons` selected and then select `One-handed` from a combobox node that appears on that child, then click add again and enter a name in a text field on _that_ child node that appears. Then click add again to add/specify a 'level' or 'tier' for that leaf; first proficiency, then specialisation (for example). Of course if you want to buy a different skill it's a completely different route to the leaf. You might not need a combo box at the same level down the tree as you did with the weapon example, and need some other logic behind it too. This is what I'm having trouble getting my head around let alone programming in; how to make a set of classes and **not** specify what order to attach them together in, but still have them all fit. What is a good system for describing this sort of tree in code? All the other JTree examples I've seen have some _predictable_ pattern, and mine _doesn't_. I don't want to have to code this all in 'literals', with long lists of what _type_ (combo-box, text field etc) of children node should be allowed on what parent. Should I be using abstract classes? Interfaces? How can I make this sort of cluster of objects extensible when I add in other skills not listed above that behave differently? If there is _not_ a good system to use, is there a good process for working out how to do this sort of thing? ### The gears in my head are turning: I always need to:   * Check the parent   * Provide options based on the parent I'm begining to think becasue of this commonality I need some sort of abstract/interface `skill` class that defines/outlines common methods for skill and category. I can (hopefully) put rules and options in a database and read to-from there. The question is I think now, between an abstract or interface method and how to bes implement that."}
{"_id": "176938", "title": "How to check if 4 points form a square?", "text": "Assume I have 4 points (they are 2-dimension), which are different from each other, and I want to know whether they form a square. How to do it? (let the process be as simple as possible.)"}
{"_id": "179944", "title": "Advantages and disadvantages of structuring all code via classes and compiling to classes (like Java)", "text": "_Edit: my language allows for multiple inheritance, unlike Java._ I've started designing and developing my own programming language for educational, recreational, and potentially useful purposes. At first, I've decided to base it off Java. This implied that all the code would be written in form of classes, and that code compiles into classes, which are loaded by the VM. However, I've excluded features such as interfaces and abstract classes, because I found no need for them. They seemed to be enforcing a paradigm, and I'd like my language not to do that. I wanted to keep the classes as the compilation unit though, because it seemed convenient to implement, familiar, and I just liked the idea. Then I noticed that I'm basically left with a module system, where classes could be used either as \"namespaces\", providing constants and functions using the `static` directive, or as templates for objects that need to be instantiated (\"actual\" purpose of classes in other languages). Now I'm left wondering: **what are the upsides and the downsides of having classes as compilation units?** Also, any general commentary on my design would be much appreciated. An informative post on my language can be found here: http://www.yannbane.com/2012/12/kava.html."}
{"_id": "111096", "title": "Would using AJAX extensively improve server performance?", "text": "Clearly AJAX improves the user interface but does this also decrease server load? You would think it does because the entire page will not have to be served up each time, but maybe there are other variables I'm not considering."}
{"_id": "59387", "title": "Is OOP hard because it is not natural?", "text": "One can often hear that OOP naturally corresponds to the way people think about the world. But I would strongly disagree with this statement: We (or at least I) conceptualize the world in terms of _relationships_ between things we encounter, but the focus of OOP is designing individual classes and their hierarchies. Note that, in everyday life, relationships and actions exist mostly between objects that would have been instances of unrelated classes in OOP. Examples of such relationships are: \"my screen is on top of the table\"; \"I (a human being) am sitting on a chair\"; \"a car is on the road\"; \"I am typing on the keyboard\"; \"the coffee machine boils water\", \"the text is shown in the terminal window.\" We think in terms of bivalent (sometimes trivalent, as, for example in, \"I gave you flowers\") verbs where the verb is the action (relation) that operates on two objects to produce some result/action. The _focus_ is on action, and the two (or three) [grammatical] objects have equal importance. Contrast that with OOP where you first have to find one object (noun) and tell it to perform some action on another object. The way of thinking is shifted from actions/verbs operating on nouns to nouns operating on nouns -- it is as if everything is being said in passive or reflexive voice, e.g., \"the text is being shown by the terminal window\". Or maybe \"the text draws itself on the terminal window\". Not only is the focus shifted to nouns, but one of the nouns (let's call it grammatical subject) is given higher \"importance\" than the other (grammatical object). Thus one must decide whether one will say terminalWindow.show(someText) or someText.show(terminalWindow). But why burden people with such trivial decisions with no operational consequences when one really means show(terminalWindow, someText)? [Consequences are _operationally_ insignificant -- in both cases the text is shown on the terminal window -- but can be very serious in the design of class hierarchies and a \"wrong\" choice can lead to convoluted and hard to maintain code.] I would therefore argue that the mainstream way of doing OOP (class-based, single-dispatch) is hard because it IS UNNATURAL and does not correspond to how humans think about the world. Generic methods from CLOS are closer to my way of thinking, but, alas, this is not widespread approach. Given these problems, how/why did it happen that the currently mainstream way of doing OOP became so popular? And what, if anything, can be done to dethrone it?"}
{"_id": "111090", "title": "Does teaching programming make you a better programmer", "text": "I consider myself an intermediate Python programmer and have been offered an opportunity to be a trainer for a beginner Python programming class. I was wondering if this would really widen my programming repertoire. Has somebody had an enlightening experience after they successfully trained a group of people? Does it also depend on those people -- whether they're programmers or noob students? (In my case they are intermediate .NET and Java programmers) What should I expect from them? One of my fears is -- what if I choked when one of them asked a tangled question. Is this normal?"}
{"_id": "59381", "title": "Should I break contract early?", "text": "About 7 months ago I made the switch from a 5 year permie role (as a support developer in C#) to a contract role. I did this because I was stagnating in my old role. The extra cash contracting is really helping too. Unfortunately my team leader has taken a dislike to me from day 1. He regularly tells me I went out contracting too early, and frequently remarks that people in their 20's have no idea what they are talking about (I am 29). I was recently given the task of configuring our reports via our in house reporting library. It works off of a database driven criteria base, with controls being loaded as needed. The configs can get fairly complex, with controls having various levels of dependency on each other. I had a short time frame to get 50 reports working, and I was told to just get the basic configuration done, after which they will be handed over to the reporting team for fine tuning, then the test team. Our updated system was deployed 2 weeks ago, and it turned out that about 15 reports had issues causing incorrect data to be returned. Upon investigation I discovered that the reporting team hadn't even looked at them, and the test team hadn't bothered to test the reports. In spite of this, my team leader has told me that it is 100% my fault. As a result, our help desk got hit hard. I worked back until 2am that night to fix the highest priority issues (on my wedding anniversary!). The next day I arrive at work at 7:45 am to continue with the fixes. I got no thanks, but keep getting repeatedly told by my manager that \"I fucked up\" and \"this is all my fault\". I told my team leader I would spend part of my weekend working to fix the remaining issues. His response was \"so you fucking should! you fucked it all up!\" in front of the rest of the team. I responded \"No worries.\" and left. I spent a decent chunk of my weekend working on it. Within 2 business days of finding out about the issues, I had all the medium and high priority issues fixed. The only comments my team leader has made to me in the last 2 weeks is to tell me how I have caused a big mess, and to tell me it was all my fault. I get this multiple times a day. If I make any jokes to anyone else in the team, I get told not to be a smartass... even though the rest of the team jokes throughout the day. Apart from that, all I get is angry looks any time I am anywhere near the guy. I don't give any response other than \"alright\" or silence when he starts giving me a hard time. Today we found out that the pilot release for the next stage has been pushed back. My team leader has said this was caused by me (but the higher ups said no such thing). He also said I have \"no understanding of the ramifications of my actions\". My question is, should I break contract (I am contracted until June 30) and find another role? No one else in my team will speak up in my favour, as they are contractors too and have no interest in rocking the boat. I could complain to my team leaders boss, but I can't see that helping, as I will still be stuck in the same team. As this is my first contract, I imagine getting the next one will be hard without a reference. I can't figure out if this guy is trying to get me fired up to provoke a confrontation (the guy loves conflict), or if he is just venting anger, or what. Copping this blame day after day is really wearing me down and making me depressed... especially since I have a wife and kid to support)."}
{"_id": "118769", "title": "Simulating double-click, how long should I wait between clicks?", "text": "I'm simulating a double click programmatically and I want to have a slight pause between both clicks in order to better simulate a real user. I know the interval should be less than `GetDoubleClickTime` but am not sure what would be a good time to choose. Does anyone know of any data on how fast a typical person performs a double-click? I was thinking in the direction `GetDoubleClickTime()/3` but of course the magic number seems a bit iffy."}
{"_id": "121730", "title": "How can I make sure my evening project code is mine?", "text": "I'm a physicist with a CS degree and just started my PhD at a tech company (wanted to do applied research). It deals with large scale finite element simulations. After reviewing their current approach, I think that a radically different method has to be applied (they are using a commercial tool which is very limited). I'd rather base my research on an open source finite element solver and write a program which makes use of it. I'd like to develop this idea in the evenings, because that's the time that best suits me for programming (during the day I prefer reading and maths) and use it at a late stage of my PhD. I'd like to have the option to release my program as open source on my website as a reference, for future personal or even commercial (e.g. consulting) use. How can I make sure that my company doesn't claim the code ownership? I thought that a version control system could help (check out only in the evening). This would document that I programmed not during regular office hours (documented elsewhere). But these data can be easily manufactured. Any other ideas? I want to stress that I'm not interested in selling software and neither is my company. * * * Very interesting responses so far. This clearly helps me. Some remarks:   * I'm not restrained by my work contract. National law says that the company owns anything I produce during working hours and no special agreement has been made (my employer is not selling software and may be a bit naive on this side). They mostly use software and non of my colleagues is a serious programmer.   * Secondly, I need to rethink the point raised by @Mark about trade secrets. This is quite serious in the particular industry.   * Thirdly, I care a lot about no to upset my supervisor/ boss. But, and this is the motivation for this question, I'd like to keep the _innovative_ part of my work a bit separated so I can reuse it or at least demonstrate it as a reference work."}
{"_id": "164141", "title": "Have you used a Framework/Lib whose LGPL License? if yes, what are the impressions of your customers?", "text": "I am trying to make my first app for sale, I would like to ask some questions for those who have already sold their software:   * Have you used a Framework/Lib whose LGPL License?   * if yes, what are the impressions of your customers? for example, if your customers/ competitors from the market reveal technology/secrets that you used in your solution (as LGPL requires that you make a Dynamic Link (.DLL) for your libs and you clearly tell the use of a Lib/Framework). Full story: For my project, I used a framework LGPL/commercial (Dual License) the second one it was too expensive (about 3000 USD) which pushed me to use LGPL however I still concerned. That is why I ask for advise and especially motivations."}
{"_id": "123744", "title": "easy way to search github, googlecode, codeplex,etc at the same time?", "text": "Is there an easy way to search open repository such as github, googlecode, codeplex, etc at the same time? I wonder whether google is good at this."}
{"_id": "95050", "title": "How to solve an event-queue problem in a computer emulator in Java", "text": "I'm writing a _low-level_ emulator (in Java) of the IBM 1620, a late-50s computer. By \"low level,\" I mean that the lowest _observable_ unit of work is the 20-microsecond \"trigger\" -- machine instructions achieve their objectives by running a series of these triggers; and I've written code to emulate almost all of them. By \"observable\" I mean that the 1620's console contained a \"Single Cycle Execution\" key which allowed you to manually advance one trigger at a time - and most of the CPU's inner state (registers, PC, conditions) were displayed on a large console of lights. I am guaranteeing correctness of the state at the single-cycle level. Normally the emulator is either waiting for the operator to press START, or it's in its main run loop, executing trigger after trigger. It also needs to be able to respond to external events like a thrown toggle switch, or the afore-mentioned Single Cycle Execution key, which are conveyed to the CPU Thread from the GUI thread by an event queue. The run loop peeks at this queue before firing off the next trigger, and so far this has worked fine. Now, however, I'm implementing the card-reader I/O instructions, and I have a problem. All 1620 I/O was synchronous (the 1620 did not have interrupt capability), so when it executed the ReadCard instruction, it would literally wait in mid-trigger until the card reader delivered a card. This normally took a tenth of a second, _unless the operator had not mounted the card deck_! It's that latter contingency that creates the problem: the 1620 must wait in mid- trigger (i.e. the main run loop is not running), while remaining responsive to external events (thrown switches, the Reset key, or, of course, a card from the card reader). I can't seem to think of a clean, elegant way to design this. Polling for, and handling, \"unrequested\" events at the top of the run loop has worked well so far, but now I need a callable mechanism that does the same thing but is able to return control to its caller when the right event occurs. Here's what it looks like right now:               state:         MANUAL means unable to immediately process next trigger         AUTO means we can go ahead and process next trigger          do forever {         processQueuedEvents()  // event-processing never blocks         if (state == MANUAL) {            waitForEvents()     // this blocks until queue not empty         } else {               // state == AUTO            trigger = doTrigger(trigger) // run trigger and get next one         }     }      CPU trigger E30 sends a message to CardReader requesting a card buffer, and must wait to receive the event containing the buffer. In the meantime, the CPU must continue to receive and process events as usual. I could imagine this to be an operating-system design problem, but that's not my strong suit. Can anyone provide some guidance?"}
{"_id": "178090", "title": "Test driven vs Business requirements constant changing", "text": "One of the new requirement of our dev team set by the CTO/CIO is to become test driven development, however I don't think the rest of the business is going to help because they have no sense of development life cycles, and requirements get changed all the time within a single sprint. Which gets me frustrated about wasting time writing 10 test cases and will become useless tomorrow. We have suggested setting up processes to dodge those requirement changes and educate the business about development life cycles. What if the business fails to get the idea? What would you do?"}
{"_id": "238926", "title": "Fixing bugs generated by another team", "text": "I'm facing the following situation: There are 2 different teams working on the same project using Scrum, and every now and then, bugs related to user stories developed by team \"A\" are being assigned to team \"B\". We're used to fixing bugs made by other people when they belong to the same team, but things get a bit more complicated when different teams are involved. Some of the developers don't like working this way and say that the bugs must be fixed by the ones who made them, and this is causing some conflicts between the teams. While reading some of the similar questions I've found some interesting ones (Is fixing bugs made by other people a good approach? and also Parallel teams and scrum/agile), but they are not about the same situation, or at least I don't see them that way. During our discussions here we got 2 possible approaches: Leave the situation as is, or determine that the bugs must be assigned to the team that developed the feature. Do you guys have any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "178092", "title": "Why was Objective-C popularity so sudden on TIOBE index?", "text": "I'd like to ask a question that is pretty similar to the one being asked here, but for Objective-C. According to TIOBE rankings, the rise of popularity of Objective-C is unprecedented. This is obviously tied to the popularity of Apple products, but I feel like this might be a hasty conclusion to make since it doesn't really explain the stagnant growth of Java (1. There are way more Android O/S devices distributed worldwide, 2. Java is used in virtually every platform one can imagine) Now I haven't programmed in Objective-C at all, but I'd like to ask if there are any unique features or advantages about the language itself compared to other prevalent languages such as C++, Java, C#, Python etc. What are some other factors that contributed into the rise of Objective-C in this short span of time? > ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/3q0tW.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3q0tW.png)"}
{"_id": "50831", "title": "How do programmers in the West see programmers in the East?", "text": "The other half of this question: How do Programmers in the East see programmers in the West? * * * The eastern part of the world (India/China/Philippines ) mainly provide outsourcing services to the western world (USA and Europe). Do you have the experience of working with offshore teams? If yes, how was it? Do you hold any generalized ideas or opinions about the programmers from the East (e.g. Are they cooperative, do they deliver on time or do they do quality work?). What are these based on?"}
{"_id": "238929", "title": "Tree View Children condition indicator on topmost un-expanded parent", "text": "I am using a tree view in c# and i am creating custom icons for the nodes. Let say this is my hierarchy with a node that satisfies a certain condition:               Root1     |_Ax      |_Bx1      |_Bx2       |_Cx1       |_Cx2(condition true)      |_Bx3      |_Bx4     |_Ay      |_By1      |_By2       |_Cy1      when the tree it's collapsed I don't know if some inner child satisfies that particular condition so I want to display an icon on the topmost un-expanded parent. For example let say that the tree it's completely collapsed I would like this behaviour : 1) the first root will be like this :               Root1(!)      2) I expand Root1 and i see there is something the children of Ax :               Root1     |_Ax(!)     |_Ay      3) I expand Ax :               Root1     |_Ax      |_Bx1      |_Bx2(!)      |_Bx3      |_Bx4     |_Ay      4) Last I expand Bx2 to find the target node Cx2:               Root1     |_Ax      |_Bx1      |_Bx2       |_Cx1       |_Cx2(condition true)      |_Bx3      |_Bx4     |_Ay      The symbol **(!)** appears only on the topmost un-expanded parent and disappears once the node is expanded indicating a path to locate the target node Cx2. But I would like some idea on how to add the node indicator (!) in an efficient fashion. I need to do this in 2 steps \\- tree creation \\- node expanded In the first case as soon as I create the node Cx2 and I notice it satisfies that particular condition I need to put the indicator on the topmost unexpanded parent node. In the second case I need to change the indicator location dynamically when the node it`s expanded. What is the most efficient way to do that ?"}
{"_id": "148836", "title": "What would be the Impact of P=NP?", "text": "I am preparing for a test and I can't find a clear answer on the question: What would be the impact of proving that PTIME=NPTIME. I checked wikipedia and it just mentioned that it would have \"profound impact on maths,AI,algorithms..\" etc. Anyone can give me an answer?"}
{"_id": "148831", "title": "Is it considered bad practice to run different JavaScript for IE", "text": "Is it considered bad practice (and how bad) to run different JavaScript for IE? Currently im writing some JavaScript and the simplist way to work arround IE quirks seems to be to check for browser version and run different code               var browserName = navigator.appName;          if (browserName == \"Microsoft Internet Explorer\") {       //Do some stuff     }     else     {     //Do other stuff     }      It's quick and works well but does lead to duplication of code and feels \"hacky\"."}
{"_id": "9843", "title": "Business Objects - Containers or functional?", "text": "This is a question I asked a while back on SO, but it may get discussed better here... Where I work, we've gone back and forth on this subject a number of times and are looking for a sanity check. Here's the question: Should Business Objects be data containers (more like DTOs) or should they also contain logic that can perform some functionality on that object. Example - Take a customer object, it probably contains some common properties (Name, Id, etc), should that customer object also include functions (Save, Calc, etc.)? One line of reasoning says separate the object from the functionality (single responsibility principal) and put the functionality in a Business Logic layer or object. The other line of reasoning says, no, if I have a customer object I just want to call Customer.Save and be done with it. Why do I need to know about another class to save a customer if I'm consuming the object? Our last two projects have had the objects separated from the functionality, but the debate has been raised again on a new project. Which makes more sense and why??"}
{"_id": "9844", "title": "How to introduce a willing manager to IT and web development?", "text": "After experiencing quite a lot of problems with our small project's manager (we're a startup, and he's the only guy who has the appropriate education; the rest of us are programmers), we have finally identified the cause of our troubles: his understanding of the inner works of our project is limited, as is his understanding of a normal software development workflow. He has expressed the desire to quickly learn and to fill these gaps; however, I don't really know what books, articles or blogs to recommend to him. In short, can you recommend a good reading for a manager-type person who is not going to be a developer himself, but needs to understand web application development process well enough to understand our explanations when he requests them? P.S. No, kicking him and finding another manager is not an option at this moment."}
{"_id": "9849", "title": "How could I hire a programmer to add a small feature to an OSS project?", "text": "I'd like a feature added to Eclipse, as a small plug-in, but:   * It's a bit niche, so not high demand. So if I post it as a feature request it's unlikely to be followed-up.   * Still, I'm sure someone else would find it handy.   * I'm a programmer, but I don't know Java, and I don't think it's currently worth my time learning Java just to code this. What might be a good way to find a programmer who could code such an Eclipse plug-in, and pay them to do the job? My example is specifically about Java and Eclipse, but what might be an answer to this question in general terms?"}
{"_id": "151072", "title": "How abstract should you get with BDD", "text": "I was writing some tests in Gherkin (using Cucumber/Specflow). I was wondering how abstract should I get with my tests. In order to not make this open-ended, which of the following statements is better for BDD:               Given I am logged in with email admin@mycompany.com and password 12345     When I do something     Then something happens      as opposed to               Given I am logged in as the Administrator     When I do something     Then something happens      The reason I am confused is because 1 is more based on the behaviour (filing in email and password) and 2 is easier to process and write the tests."}
{"_id": "151076", "title": "Approaching Java/JVM internals", "text": "I've programmed in Java for about 8 years and I know the language quite well as a developer, but my goal is to deepen my knowledge of the internals. I've taken undergraduate courses in PL design, but they were very broad academic overviews (in Scheme, IIRC). Can someone suggest a route to start delving into the details? Specifically, are there particular topics (say, garbage collection) that might be more approachable or be a good starting point? Is there a decent high-level book on the internals of the JVM and the design of the Java programming language? My current approach is going to be to start with the JVM spec and research as needed."}
{"_id": "256141", "title": "Find all possible subarrays of an Array", "text": "I am lost I just can't seem to get my head around backtracking/recursion approaches. I understand how simple recursion problems like factorials work I can even trace those by hand. But when it comes to backtracking problems I am so lost. I keep trying. its been 5 hours I have been reading various approaches on forums and stack exchange but nothing has clicked. For instance say I have a array with `[1,2,3,4]` and my destination value is `5`. I am trying to find all possible combinations that equal to my destination value. I broke this problem down further to make it even more simple for my self to understand. First I can find all possible combinations of the array and then pass them to another function which checks if the sum of that array equals destination value and then only does it print it. Can someone advice how to approach this? I am not looking for code/answer I want to be able to think and imagine this in my head clearly."}
{"_id": "212219", "title": "Consolidating hotels data from various booking sites with different IDs or reference", "text": "In one of my projects, I have data for hotels, and other booking sites are able to book this hotel. For example: Hotel A - Booking (ID = 4002), Expedia (ID = 123), Priceline (ID = 147) The three booking engines each uses their own Id to reference to Hotel A. I would need to check manually and make the right reference to the hotel. If I have 100,000 hotels, I have to check manually 300,000 (considering 3 booking sites) times? They might provide API, then I can cross check the name, address or latitude/longitude, but if they differ a little bit then I might give the wrong reference to the wrong hotel. I'm sure there are better ways to do this. There are many travel sites out there which do hotel price checking on many booking sites, but how do they do to make sure they are checking the right hotel on these booking sites? Anyone has any experience on this?"}
{"_id": "212210", "title": "Mockup strategy for Responsive Web Design (from a programmer point of view)", "text": "When making mockups for _Responsive Web Design_ projects, should I separate them by **Page** or by **Screen Size**? Which one would be more helpful when I start writing the source code? What are the pros and cons of the following:   * Page based: All the home page mockups in all different screen sizes   * Screen-size based: All the pages for width <= 960px I'm using Balsamiq Mockups to make mockups and I prefer to store all related mockups in a file like `homepage, login` or `960px, 768px`."}
{"_id": "232360", "title": "What is the difference between Repository Pattern and Facades Pattern?", "text": "I've always used the repository pattern in my applications. But I have seen that many people use facades instead of the repository for naming convention, but the operation is the same, I Think. Why is there this difference? There are a real difference between them or not?"}
{"_id": "22549", "title": "Understanding Microsoft SQL certifications", "text": "I am royally confused about the certifications Microsoft has out for SQL server. From what I can gather from reading their site as well as others is there are various levels of tests (like in university) they have level 100 series tests, 200, 300... up to about 400 for the new master of SQL Server level. I wanted to knock a few out since I am doing daily SQL work now I figure I can get on the job practice and learning where I fall short. Where do I start? What test and test details do I need to know to take and pass each exam? what order should I take them in?"}
{"_id": "22542", "title": "Where is Smalltalk-80 best used?", "text": "I want to know in which applications/programming domain are most suitable for Smalltalk. Could anyone please provide me some useful links that could answer my query? Through googling I learned that some companies use it for: logistics and foreign trade application desktop, server and script development data processing and logistics, scripts and presentations but I cant find documents/research papers that can tell me which programming domain Smalltalk-80 (or Smalltalk) is best suited. Some of the programming domains are: - Artificial intelligence reasoning - General purpose applications - Financial time series analysis - Natural language processing - Relational database querying - Application scripting - Internet - Symbolic mathematics - Numerical mathematics - Statistical applications - Text processing - Matrix algorithms I hope you guys can help me. I am doing this for my case study. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "250961", "title": "Is there an official programming format?", "text": "A person can make their code readable and neat in their own way. However, is there a standard programming format that professional programmers are compliant to?"}
{"_id": "26438", "title": "How much business logic should be allowed to exist in the controller layer?", "text": "Sometimes we have some business logic represented in the controller code of our applications. This is usually logic that differentiates what methods to call from the model and/or what arguments to pass them. Another example of this is a set of utility functions that exist in the controller that may work to format or sanitize data returned from the model, according to a set of business rules. This works, but I am wondering if its flirting with disaster. If there is business logic shared between controller and model the two layers are no longer separable, and someone inheriting the code may be confused by this unevenness in location of business logic related code. **My question is how much business logic should be allowed in the controller and in what circumstances, if any?**"}
{"_id": "62986", "title": "What's an assessment day and what kind of individual & group based programming activities are involved?", "text": "The only things that I know:   * An assessment day is much more than a simple interview. Actually 1 or more interviews are just a part of it.   * Both individual and group based programming activities are involved. Any ideas about what kind of programming activities to expect (preferably by people who have already participated in an assessment day)?"}
{"_id": "62987", "title": "What about all those coding rules?", "text": "I always supported the idea of having coding rules for developers in a company or a specific project. Especially if the company is size greater than 10. The bigger the company the bigger the need. I know a lot of people will disagree, but I have seen projects that don't have them and the code looks like total disaster. The real problem that comes from this is how to make those hard headed ones that don't like to use brackets in if statements, or use the same connections string everywhere in the code, or whatever, to use the coding rules without making them oppose the idea?"}
{"_id": "34469", "title": "Adobe Air apps on the Mac App Store?", "text": "Before you chastise me for asking this, I have an Adobe Air app that has a lot of investment in it, and if there is a way to utilize the existing code-base in _any_ way, it is worth considering. I have heard news reports in passing about Adobe creating some kind of tool to allow flash or air apps to be ported to native objective-c code, but the information found in google is mostly commentary on the one-time Apple blockade. My question(s) is/are this:   1. Is it even possible, at any level, to use an existing Air app to create a Mac Store app?   2. If possible, what are the resources I can use to accomplish this?"}
{"_id": "157287", "title": "How to motivate co-workers to write unit-tests?", "text": "We're working on a large product which has been in production for about 5 years. The codebase is.. erm.. working. Not really well but it is working. New features are thrown into production and tested with a small QA. Bugs are fixed, etc. But no one, except me, is writing unit-tests. No one uses the power of \"tracking\" down bugs by writing unit tests to ensure this special bug (test case) would never, ever occur again. I've talked to management. I've talked to developers. I've talked to everyone in the whole company. Everybody says: \"Yep, we must write more unit-tests!\" That was about a year ago. Since then I have forced introduction of pre-commit code review (Gerrit) and continuous integration (Jenkins). I held some meetings about unit-tests and I also showed the benefits of writing unit-tests. But no one seems to be interested. **Q1: How do I motivate my fellow co-workers to write unit-tests?** **Q2: How do I stay motivated to follow my personal code quality standards?** (Sometimes it' s really frustrating!) PS: Some frustrating facts (reached in 1 year):   * Total unit-tests: 1693   * Total \"example unit-tests\": around 50   * Done by me: 1521 **Edit:** Am I expecting too much? Its my first working place and I'm trying to do my best. **Edit 2:** Based upon all answers I've made a small checklist for myself. I've talked to two developer in private and we had a good and honest talk. One of them told me, like Telastyn said, that he is really uncomfortable with unit-tests. He said that he would like to be \"more professional\" but he needs a kickstart. He also said that our unit-test meeting with all developers (around 9-11) was good, but it was too crowdy. Meh. Some critics for me, but I'll learn from that. (see answers below concering tdd kata meetings!) The other one said that he is not interested in writing unit-tests. He thinks that his work is good enough for his salary. He don't want to put more effort in. I was quite speechless. Typical 9-5 \"worker\". Next week I'm going to talk to the other developers. Thanks for your great answers (so far!) and your support. I really appreciate it! I'ved learned a lot, thank you very much!"}
{"_id": "117937", "title": "Conflicting versions of jQuery in Separate Extensions", "text": "I have built a few browser extensions that live in GMail. Since they are larger extensions, they incorporate jQuery 1.6.x. I am using jQuery as a content script which means it is injected into GMail then my scripts reference jQuery as they are loaded afterwards. I have found that when other extensions are installed alongside of my extensions and they incorporate earlier versions of jQuery the earlier versions are loaded first and my 1.6.x is ignored. The functionality I have that depends on 1.6.x no longer works, and that's a dealbreaker. I'm trying to come up with an elegant solution for this. My first instinct is to namespace my version of jQuery, but loading jQuery twice seams clunky. Possibly testing for jQuery and then doing a diff, but that seems tedious. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "117938", "title": "Ensuring successful merges in Subversion", "text": "Subversion Re-education actually convinced me, but for now I'll stick to svn - mastering the use of a very popular tool can't be bad. To date I've not used branching/merges in production code, now I decided to give it a try in a small team environment. I'm afraid of suffering the same pain as the described in Spolsky's article. **Is there a \"right\" way of working with branches in svn?**"}
{"_id": "92916", "title": "Why is Perl so heavily used in Bioinformatics?", "text": "What is it about Perl that makes it so useful in Bioinformatics ? Why isn't C++ or Matlab or Python the big language?"}
{"_id": "206212", "title": "Monitoring App: Client side or Server Side?", "text": "I have a monitoring web application which has a .Net Backend and a Silverlight frontend. The application crunchs big chunks of data, process them and presentates to user. Then user can interact with the data to see different graphs of log. He/She can unselect dimensions, group some values, choose metrics like transaction count, transaction amount(dollars) etc. Currently, I combine log data into 3 minute chunks. Then making a lookup from it and sending to clientside. With this raw form of data it's size is optimized for network. On clientside I have a lot of business logic to process this data for presentation. Also when user changes options clientside processes the data according to user's choices. We have chosen this path to serve this application only from one server. We don't have to scale with the user amount in the company because the whole thing happens on the clientside. This is good but we are sacrificing performance. I'm really curious about what is going to happen if I choose to do the all computation for user's choices on raw data at the serverside. -Is it going to be faster? -Do I need to scale immediately? -Is Fetching the data only once on the server then caching it something like redis than doing the computations according to user requests better solution? -If clientside approach is good, do I need to switch to Javascript and Javascript client side MVC frameworks like AngularJS? And I really don't know how to write the my whole business logic in Javascript at the moment. **Extra Info** Average desktop has 2gb ram and a dual core cpu which is core to duo. Our servers are in VM cluster. They have scalable ram min 8gb. And 8 core xeon cpus. 100-150 concurrent users can use it. Every user can do different manipulations on the data. That's why they all have their own data on the clientside. Thanks"}
{"_id": "110056", "title": "How would you approach developing a Hotel Reservation System?", "text": "Till now, I have had the experience of developing either a desktop application or a Website. But, with this Hotel reservation system, I am interfacing a problem that needs both. The application needs to be fulfil the following requirements :   * Manager can do the bookings/checkout of the incoming customers at the reception counter System.   * Customers should be able to book themselves online.  As you can see, the second requirements clearly means that a web app is required, whereas the first can be accomplished via desktop development. This type of requirement is pretty common. Like, in case of cinema seat bookings, We are free to book ourself online or we can go the ticket window and buy one. The question is how are these simultaneous and different requirements fulfilled for a single project. There has to be a sync or else the customer might book himself in an already booked room. From my understanding, there are two ways to develop this solution.   1. You develop a Web application with a back-end(admin panel) and host it on a server. The customers can book themselves on the front-end, while the manager(at reception desk) can use the administrator panel to carry out his bookings and checkouts. Since both front-end and back-end are using a single database, there is no requirement for sync.   2. Develop a desktop application for use at the Hotel and a website for the customers to book online. The two applications are maintaining a single datbase, therefore synchronization comes into play. Some definite development for the sync is mandatory or else the system will fail.  Which of the above solutions should I choose ?. This is also a common scenario for banks. They handle transactions at the local branch as well as over the Internet. How do they achieve this thing. Much like i mentioned above or something different."}
{"_id": "148168", "title": "Will the customer benefit from a DVCS in any way?", "text": "Some of us can say a Distributed Version Control System (e.g. Mercurial, git) will have a positive impact on developers only out of the experience of using one (under the right conditions: higher productivity, higher code-base stability, etc.), but, in what situations could a customer ( **i.e. the observer of the outcome of the software development lifecycle** ) tell there is a difference from using a CVCS and a DVCS?. Anyone with empiric evidence of a customer \"feeling\" a difference upon DVCS adoption gets a big double-chocolate cookie with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Note: \"tell the difference\" doesn't mean \"know there was a DVCS involved\" nor even remotely \"know what a DVCS is\""}
{"_id": "220755", "title": "Is there a special name for a condition which will break a loop if it increments a set number of times", "text": "Is there a name for including a limitation in a loop structure to prevent it from running if its primary condition becomes unwieldy. For example               for (var i = 0; i < len; i++){             some_function();          }      but if len is somewhere set to ten million, I don't want to run it, so I would do something like:               for (var i = 0; i < len && i < 50; i++){             some_function();          }      Is there a name for this type of hard-coded condition?"}
{"_id": "104320", "title": "Why is extending the DOM/built-in object prototypes a bad idea?", "text": "I'm looking for a definitive answer to why extending built-in prototypes is so heavily chastised in the JS developer community. I've been using the Prototype JS framework for a while, and to me doing `[1,2,3].each(doStuff)` seems much more elegant than `$.each([1,2,3], doStuff)`. I know that it creates \"namespace pollution,\" but I stil don't understand why it's considered to be a bad thing. Also is there any real performance degradation associated with extending built-in prototypes? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "127115", "title": "How to spread awareness for generic programming among team members?", "text": "I am staying in an environment, where people believe:   1. Java generics are the feature exclusively used for library writing and not for the real coding.   2. C++ is an OO programming language; `template` is an optional and avoidable feature Though, these people rely highly on the libraries written using generic programming (e.g. STL, Java containers). If I write a code using `template`s or `generics`, the code reviewer is most likely to reject it and will comment to write it in a **_\"proper / understandable / elegant\"_** way. Such mentality is applicable from normal programmer to senior most manager. There is no way out, because 90% of the time, these people have their lobbying. What is the best way ( _not being cut throat_ ) of explaining them, the practical approach of writing code which constitutes OO and generic programming both at the same time ?"}
{"_id": "61143", "title": "How do you know if you should use Self-Tracking Entities or DTOs/POCOs?", "text": "What are some questions I can ask myself about our design to identify if we should use DTOs or Self-Tracking Entities in our application? Here's some things I know of to take into consideration:   * We have a standard n-tier application with a WPF/MVVM client, WCF server, and MS SQL Database.   * Users can define their own interface, so the data needed from the WCF service changes based on what interface the user has defined for themselves   * Models are used on both the client-side and server-side for validation. We would not be binding directly to the DTO or STE   * Some Models contain properties that get lazy-loaded from the WCF service if needed   * There are permission checks on the server-side which affect how the data is returned. For example, some data is either partially or fully masked based on the user's role   * Our resources are limited (time, manpower, etc) So, how can I determine what is right for us? I have never used EF before so I really don't know if STEs are right for us or not. I've seen people suggest starting with STEs and only implement DTOs if they it becomes a problem, however we currently have DTOs in place and are trying to decide if using STEs would make life easier. We're early enough in the process that switching would not be a huge deal, but I don't want to switch to STEs only to find out it doesn't work for us."}
{"_id": "127117", "title": "How to convert a copy/paste/spaghetti programmer to see the light?", "text": "This question was inspired by this one. While that other question was deemed localized, I believe the underlying problem is something that is extremely common in our industry. I know there are some developers, who will read this and think I'm making this stuff up and then they might reply how everyone cares about their work and wants to learn, but just looking at other Programmers SE posts (case in point), I know that's not universally true. So let's say you have someone on your team (or maybe majority) who's standard operating procedure is to copy/paste and who believes that everything can be solved if only you add enough function calls and variables. This person never heard of TDD, DRY or SOLID and outside of 40 hours at work when they are busy working, they never once read a single methodology/pratices/design book. In the past I (and others) have asked, how to do you teach OOD. But now I'm thinking that's not the right question. The real question is how do you approach such a person/team and make them curious about better way of doing things? How do you inspire them to learn? Without that, it seems that all the teaching, meetings, lectures, discussions are useless if they are perfectly happy going back to their desk and doing what they've always done. I work with a bunch of people like that. They are actually quite bright individuals, but I hate when I hear, \"I'm done coding, just need to refactor and split into multiple classes to make DXM happy\". They don't refactor for cleaner, readable, maintainable code, but only because otherwise they'll get scolded. I know they are capable of learning, just seems that there's a general lack of motivation. When I deliver work, it generally has way fewer bugs and the work I owned never became 5000-line monstrosity of a class. Other's would make comments like, \"your code is much cleaner and readable than our stuff\", so they see the difference. But at the same time, I feel like they believe they get paid for 40 hours regardless of what they do, so they actually don't mind if they spend 3 full days in QA looking for a bug that shouldn't have been introduced in the first place. Or that they take a week to modify one class because there are so many dependencies they end up touching. The though, \"maybe that class should have been written differently\" never seems to pop up. Can anything be done in these situations? Has anyone succeeded? Or is it best to isolate such mindset to non-critical parts of the project and minimize the damage? **NOTE:** When I say \"lack of motivation\". I don't think it's lack of motivation to work or do a good job because they simply stopped caring. Most of our team is actually quite the opposite. They definitely care about the product. We have guys that will work nights and weekends. The part I'm trying to get through is with improved habits and skills, they actually wouldn't have to work as much. I guess that \"40 hours\" thing made this post sound a little too negative."}
{"_id": "61145", "title": "Merging functionality from two controllers; should I place all actions in one controller?", "text": "Say I have 2 controllers, `OrderController` and `StatusController`. `OrderController` has several CRUD actions for Orders and `StatusController` has several actions pertinent to changing the satus of Orders (from created to sent, cancelled, etc). `StatusController` really only has one view where several actions can be performed, but for the sake of usability I've decided to merge the functionality of this one view with the Index action of `OrdersController`. (This is just an adapted example for the question, so bear with me if it sounds silly). Only by copy/pasting the Html in the views from here to there everything works, of course, but... What should I do with the actions on `StatusController`? Should I move them to `OrderController` or Should I let `StatusController` exist even though it has no views? I think it might be better than having `OrderController` have 15 actions, but is this desirable? Is there a recommended good practice/approach in such case?"}
{"_id": "61144", "title": "Task scheduling for software development", "text": "I'm managing a team of 10 software developers and I'm looking for a tool which can be used to schedule/assign tasks. I envisage a fairly simple web-based tool which each developer signs into. Here they can see a list of tasks assigned to them. For each task it would be clear how long has been assigned (either the number of hours or number of days) and when it should be delivered. Drilling into a task would reveal any associated notes/specification, and each task would be associated with a client and a project. Each developer would 'sign off' a task when complete. An administrative interface would exist for managing users, clients, projects and tasks. Is there a free tool available which provides this basic functionality? Obviously we could write our own in a relatively short amount of time, but I'd be interesting in knowing if there are any (ideally open source) tools already out there that people have experience using."}
{"_id": "127112", "title": "Git workflow for multiple teams", "text": "We are going to start using Git (not using it yet), and I want to define the workflow. We have 4 teams at 4 different global locations, developing together the same product. Each team owns a part of product's code, but sometimes they also have to make changes in the code owned by other teams. Is there a recommendation for a Git workflow for such environment? I have already seen this article, but the approach here is \"we create additional branches as seldom as possible\", and I believe more in \"branch for each user story\" approach. Also, this article presents a nice approach. I had in mind having a master branch, a permanent branch per each team periodically merging to master, and a per-user-story branches merging to the teams' branches. Does it make sense, or it wouldn't work?"}
{"_id": "253475", "title": "An efficient + extendable way to store/reference a normalized set of \"causations\"?", "text": "I'm looking for a good way to define and store references to a normalized set of \"causations\". I have a well-defined set of reasons (short, descriptive strings) why certain objects are created and persisted, and I need an efficient way to store references to them. I also need the flexibility to add new reasons in the future. Oh, and I need to implement it in a way that will please the developers as well as the database guys :) Some context: I'm working with a Rails app and a relational database. There are `events` and `payments` (as well as many other models). When a `payment` is created, it should include a reference to a causation. Similarly, when an `event` is canceled it should reference a cause for the cancellation. In the case of a canceled event, the current implementation stores the index of the cause, pulled from an array of possible causes defined in the `Event` model. The implicit (and probably unwise) assumption is that the array won't change in a way that would break the reference. Also, there's some overlap with similar \"cause-arrays\" in other models. In an attempt to normalize how we store \"causation\" data, I built a `Causation` model and accompanying table. The `causations` table entries form a unique list of causes that can be referenced by id from any other model. The drawback is that whenever we want to define a new `causation`, we have to add it to the database before we can reference it. This is a bit cumbersome, especially when deploying to testing environments, but maybe that's just the price paid for enforced normalization? A coworker suggested moving the definitions into the `Causation` model itself, rather than storing them in the database, and I wonder if that's a good middle-ground between the overly-brittle/disorganized original code and my own cumbersome/restrictive solution. Maybe something like:               module Causation       module Refund         UNHAPPY_CUSTOMER = 175         UNUSED_SUPPLIES  = 192       end            module Fee         SHIPPING   = 214         EXTRA_FOOD = 294       end            MAPPINGS = {         Refund::UNHAPPY_CUSTOMER => \"Customer was dissatisfied\",         Refund::UNUSED_SUPPLIES  => \"Extra/unused supplies returned\",         Fee::SHIPPING            => \"Shipping cost\",         Fee::EXTRA_FOOD          => \"Ordered extra food\"       }     end          payment.causation_int = Causation::Refund::UNUSED_SUPPLIES     payment.save     ...     Causation::MAPPINGS[payment.causation_int]     => \"Extra/unused supplies returned\"      You can see by the absurd numbers that I haven't figured out an elegant way to ensure uniqueness and prevent collisions. Also, you'll notice I need to be able to group causations into categories. Is the namespaced-module approach a better way to go (and is there a way to avoid using \"magic numbers\" like above), or should I stick with my database implementation? Or maybe there's something better than either of the two?"}
{"_id": "253477", "title": "Knockout custom text binding handler", "text": "I created this custom binding handler :               ko.bindingHandlers.line = {         update: function (element, valueAccessor, allBindings) {             // First get the latest data that we're bound to             var value = valueAccessor();                  // Next, whether or not the supplied model property is observable, get its current value             var valueUnwrapped = ko.unwrap(value);                  // Now manipulate the DOM element             if (valueUnwrapped) {                 $(element).after('<br />');   // Make the element invisible             }             return ko.bindingHandlers.text.update(element, function () {                 return valueUnwrapped;             })         }     };      I'm wondering about the part where I do `ko.bindingHandlers.text.update`, is there a better way to solve this ? Question is: Is it the only way to update the DOM with ko.bindingHandler.text.update or is there any more straightfoward way to do it ?"}
{"_id": "144723", "title": "If everyone thinks that PHP sucks, why no one tries fixing it?", "text": "I'm a junior web developer in the first steps of my professional career. I'm starting off by maintaining projects written in PHP. Wherever I looked, I see people saying that PHP is a bad language and it's broken in so many ways but it's so widely used now and we can't just make everyone switch to something else. So, why people doesn't seem to try fixing it? Is it because of PHP? The dev core team? People just fed-up and went trying using something else? Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to be rude here, I just want to find some answers. :-)"}
{"_id": "215884", "title": "Can I rightfully claim this as my own project if I recieved help online?", "text": "Basically I'm new to network programming in Python, so I went on a tutorial online to find out about it. Using what was taught in the tutorial (creating a socket, connecting to ports, etc), I modified the code so that I made a program where two computers can send messages to one another. If I were to apply for a job and show this to my interviewers, would the code for it technically be mine? It is fair to say that I didn't modify the code by that much; However, what if for example I modified it into something like a tic-tac-toe game, where two users play each other from different PCs, would the code then be mine? I just don't want to look like a plagiarizer hence why I ask."}
{"_id": "222448", "title": "Is there any practical algorithm / data-structure that can't be done with non-recursive Lambda Calculus augmented with foldl?", "text": "In my search for a practical non-turing complete programming language, I've been paying attention to lambda-calculus with disallowed self-application - that is, `x x` forbidden. After taking that language and augmenting it with lists and the `foldl` and `range` operations, pretty much any algorithm I've tried so far is implementable. It is trivial to implement `filter`, `reverse`, `head`, `tail`, `map`, `scanl`, `zip` and many others - foldl replaces the need for recursion. Can you think in any practical, important algorithm that would be undoable in that language? > It is no coincidence that all of them use self-application\u2014the application > of an expression to itself. It is through self-application that repetitive > computation can be simulated in the lambda calculus. Indeed, the third of > the previous three examples is famous because it can encode recursive > function de\ufb01nitions. From http://people.cis.ksu.edu/~schmidt/705s13/Lectures/ch6.pdf ."}
{"_id": "120469", "title": "How should developers handle subpar working conditions?", "text": "I have been working in my current job for less than a year and at the beginning didn't have the courage to say anything about the things that bothered me. Now I'm a bit fed up and need things to get better. The first problem is not random but I'll mention it anyway. We are running out of space so every new employee gets a smaller table. We are promised that the space problem will be fixed soon. Almost every employee has a different keyboard, mouse, headphones (if any). Mine are $10 keyboard, some random cheap mouse and some random crappy headphones with a mic. All these were used and dirty when I got them. The number of monitor is 1-3 and with different sizes. I have 2 nice monitors and can't complain but some are given 1 small monitor. When it's their first job they don't have the guts to ask for 2 even if most others have 2. Nobody seems to care too. Project manager asked if it's ok? He obviously said he can handle the 1 small one. Then the manager said you can go ask for 1 more. I'm watching this and think go and ask where? The company is trying to hire more people but is not doing much after the person has signed the contract. We are put in one room that is open to the hallway and it's super noisy. Almost like a zoo at times. Even if nobody is talking the crappy keyboards make too much noise.   * Is this normal?   * Am I too negative and should I just do my job with what I was given?   * Should I demand better things?   * Should the company have some system that everybody gets things in some price range?"}
{"_id": "151920", "title": "How does the Java Virtual Machine execute code written in other languages?", "text": "Since Java 1.6 the JVM can run a myriad of programming languages on top of instead of just Java. I conceptually understand how Java is run on the Java VM, but not how other languages can run on it as well. To me, it all looks like black magic. Do you have any articles to point me to so I can better understand how this all fits together?"}
{"_id": "151924", "title": "What licence should I use for internal projects?", "text": "I need to package an internal project as a debian package. That project will never ever be downloaded by anyone outside of our company, but the debian packaging system insists on there being a `copyright` file. What should I choose for this file? There's a remote possibility that a sysadmin could stumble upon that package and would like to read its licence. What should it then read?"}
{"_id": "98321", "title": "How to better start learning programming - with imperative or declarative languages?", "text": "Someone is interested in learning to program. What language paradigm should I recomend him - imperative or declarative? And what programming language should he start with? I think that declarative because it is closer to math. And I would say that Prolog might be the best start because it is based on logic and programs are short. On the other hand at school we started learning from imperative languages and I am not sure whether there is a benefit to start with them instead of declarive ones. Thanks. :)"}
{"_id": "98485", "title": "TDD negative experience", "text": "What is a negative side of your TDD experience? Do you find baby steps (the simplest fix to make test green) annoying and useless? Do you find no-value tests (when test has sense initially but in final implementation checks the same logic as other test) maintanence critical? etc. The questions above are about things which I am uncomfortable with during my TDD experience. So I am interested whether other developers have similar feelings and what do they think about them. Would be thankful for the links to articles describing negative sides of TDD (Google is fullfilled by positive and often fanatic articles)."}
{"_id": "166167", "title": "Does a mature agile team requires any management?", "text": "After a recent heated debate over Scrum, I realized my problem is that I think of management as a quite unnecessary and redundant activity in a fully agile team. I believe a mature Agile team does not require management or any non- technical decision making process whatsoever. To my (apparently erring) eyes it is more than obvious that the only one suitable and capable of _managing_ a mature development team is their coach (who is the most technically competent colleague with proper communication skills). I can't imagine how a Scrum master can contribute to such a team. I am having great difficulty realizing and understanding the value of such things in Scrum and the _manager_ as someone who is not a veteran developer but is well skilled in planning the production cycles when a coach exists in the team. What does that even mean? How on earth can someone with no edge- skills of development manage a highly technical team? Perhaps management here means something else? I see management as a total waste of time and a by-product of immaturity. In my understanding a mature team is fully self-managing. Apparently I'm mistaken since many great people say the contrary but I can't convince myself."}
{"_id": "64469", "title": "WPF4: Is this indictment of DevExpress WPF controls valid and what is a good alternative vendor?", "text": "My company is starting a major greenfield development project using DevExpress WPF controls. I just read this critical review of their WPF controls. Do you agree that DevExpress does not understand the WPF paradigm and will cause our developers grief during development and maintenance? Can you suggest an alternate vendor of WPF controls? I'm looking for a vendor with WPF controls that will enhance our application while fitting well with the WPF API, binding and MVVM. You can read a quote from the blog post here."}
{"_id": "221392", "title": "What's the most readable way of echoing from PHP?", "text": "Should I use               <?php         if(!$user->is_logged_in()){             echo '<p id=\"login\">Click <a href=\"login\">here</a> to log in</p>';         }     ?>      or               <?php         if(!$user->is_logged_in()){     ?>         <p id=\"login\">Click <a href=\"login\">here</a> to login.</p>     <?php         }     ?>      ? Why? The first one will not have the HTML tags coloured so is less readable in code editors, but with the second one, it seems like it would be bad to take up three lines just to add a curly brace. Which should I be using?"}
{"_id": "148559", "title": "Generators in Javascript into the new ECMA standard", "text": "Generators are being introduced in the new version of the ECMA standards. Could any one suggest the importance and the usage of generators in the present Javascript world? Examples of generators in real world problems will be helpful."}
{"_id": "153560", "title": "How to visualize timer functionality in sequence diagram?", "text": "I am developing software for communication with external device through serial port. To better understand the new functionality I am trying to display it in sequence diagram. Flow of events is as follows. I send to the device command to reset it. This is asynchronous operation so there is some delay between request and response (typically 100 ms). There can be case when the answer never comes (for example device is not connected to the specified port or is currently turned off). For this purpose I create a timer with period twice the maximum answer time. In my case it is 2 * 125 ms = 250 ms. If the answer comes in predefined time interval, I destroy already running timer. If the answer doesnt come in predefined interval, timer initiates some action. After this action we can destroy it. How to effectively model this situation in sequence diagram? **Addendum 1:** Based on advices made by scarfridge i drew following UML diagram. Comment by Ozair is also helpful for simplifying the diagram even more. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/F4Vnh.png)"}
{"_id": "153567", "title": "How to get better at solving Dynamic programming problems", "text": "I recently came across this question: \"You are given a boolean expression consisting of a string of the symbols 'true', 'false', 'and', 'or', and 'xor'. Count the number of ways to parenthesize the expression such that it will evaluate to true. For example, there are two ways to parenthesize 'true and false xor true' such that it evaluates to true.\" I knew it is a dynamic programming problem so i tried to come up with a solution on my own which is as follows. Suppose we have a expression as A.B.C.....D where '.' represents any of the operations and, or, xor and the capital letters represent true or false. Lets say the number of ways for this expression of size K to produce a true is N. when a new boolean value E is added to this expression there are 2 ways to parenthesize this new expression 1. ((A.B.C.....D).E) ie. with all possible parenthesizations of A.B.C.....D we add E at the end. 2\\. (A.B.C.(D.E)) ie. evaluate D.E first and then find the number of ways this expression of size K can produce true. suppose T[K] is the number of ways the expression with size K produces true then T[k]=val1+val2+val3 where val1,val2,val3 are calculated as follows. 1)when E is grouped with D. i)It does not change the value of D ii)it inverses the value of D in the first case val1=T[K]=N.( As this reduces to the initial A.B.C....D expression ). In the second case re-evaluate dp[K] with value of D reversed and that is val1. 2)when E is grouped with the whole expression. //val2 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'true' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D i) if true.E = true then val2 = N ii) if true.E = false then val2 = 0 //val3 contains the number of 'true' E will produce with expressions which gave 'false' among all parenthesized instances of A.B.C.......D iii) if false.E=true then val3=( 2^(K-2) - N ) = M ie. number of ways the expression with size K produces a false [ 2^(K-2) is the number of ways to parenthesize an expression of size K ]. iv) if false.E=false then val3 = 0 This is the basic idea i had in mind but when i checked for its solution http://people.csail.mit.edu/bdean/6.046/dp/dp_9.swf the approach there was completely different. Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong and how can i get better at solving DP so that I can come up with solutions like the one given above myself. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "64467", "title": "Software Transactional Memory - Composability Example", "text": "One of the major advantages of software transactional memory that always gets mentioned is composability and modularity. Different fragments can be combined to produce larger components. In lock-based programs, this is often not the case. I am looking for a simple example illustrating this with actual code. I'd prefer an example in Clojure, but Haskell is fine too. Bonus points if the example also exhibits some lock-based code which can't be composed easily."}
{"_id": "238583", "title": "Javascript/ui framework to compliment WebAPI/TypeScript/ASP.NET MVC?", "text": "We're about to venture into building a brand new SAAS application that needs to have a great looking and sophisticated front end. The UI is meant to be single-page, built on top of Web API and using Typescript. Backend is in ASP.NET/MVC. UI will be heavy on charts/graphs/reports/dashboards as well as data/entry of parameters. Dashboards need to be \"live\", but all other data can be refreshed on screens manually, no need to live-push it. Goals for the framework revolve around the following criteria: 1) Ability to acceptance-test UI data layer without Selenium (ie: json only, don't want to maintain tests at the brittle HTML layer) 2) Ability to work with Typescript 3) Great tooling with respect to Visual Studio 4) Easy to work with, understand, and catch issues/errors. 5) Html5 and responsive design are very important Appreciate any advice or follow up questions"}
{"_id": "194172", "title": "Understanding Package Management Systems", "text": "I am attempting to understand what a Package Management System. I grasp the main concept of it but I have some queries.   * Does a package management system install features(compilers, libraries, virtual machines) necessary to run an application AND install an application or does it just install features necessary to run an application?    * Are package management systems external applications that you run with command line arguments or are they API libraries that you integrate into your installer code? To use an example; if my application uses python 2.7 and wxPython would a Package Management System ensure that python 2.7 is installed and wxPython is installed then finally install my application(python script files)?"}
{"_id": "188860", "title": "Why shouldn't a GET request change data on the server?", "text": "All over the internet, I see the following advice:               A GET should never change data on the server- use a POST request for that      What is the basis for this idea? If I make a php service which inserts data in the database, and pass it parameters in the GET query string, why is that wrong? (I am using prepared statements, to take care of SQL Injection). Is a POST request in some way more secure? Or is there some historic reason for this? If so how valid is this advice today?"}
{"_id": "194174", "title": "Diagrams used to model the architecture and functionality of a website", "text": "I am attempting to understand what UML models/diagrams can be used to communicate a websites architecture. The model or models' purpose is to communicate the architecture and functionality of a website to technical people (other software developers and engineers). Website Features:   \\- The website is a recipe search engine   \\- Server side code is Python. Client side uses HTML, CSS, JQuery and AJAX.   \\- The website will have a Web Crawler/Indexer   \\- Infinite Scrolling is utilised when viewing search results so I will need to model asynchronous requests (both GET and POST). The diagrams I am tending towards are Component Diagram (to communicate the architecture) and Sequence Diagram (to communicate the functionality of a HTTP request). What diagrams have you used in the past to communicate the architecture and functionality of a website to technical people?"}
{"_id": "198849", "title": "In MVC is it considered good practice to have private, non-action, functions in a controller class?", "text": "Sometimes action functions in the controller class can become huge and nasty, with many-many lines of code to simply control the flow of data from the Model to the View. At some point these huge functions completely lose track of the basic principles of good code, i.e. only doing one thing, being small, readable and manageable etc. Would it be considered good practice to break these huge action functions into smaller private functions in the controller class or should the need of such optimization mean we should rather add them in the model? I would vote for having the smaller functions as private in the controller so that they are relative to the action, but I have heard arguments that the controller should preferably be simple while the model can get huge and clumpy; and was just wondering which one would be the most preferred method."}
{"_id": "198843", "title": "Should a complex unifying class be doing computation?", "text": "I have a large application in Java filled with independent classes which are unified in a `PlayerCharacter` class. The class is intended to hold a character's data for a game called the Burning Wheel, and as a result, is unusually complex. The data in the class needs to have computations controlled by the UI, but needs to do so in particular ways for each of the objects in the class. There are 19 objects in the class `PlayerCharacter`. I've thought about condensing it down, but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't work anywhere in the application as it stands so far.               private String name = \"\"; private String concept = \"\";     private String race = \"\"; private int age = -1;            private ArrayList<CharacterLifepath> lifepaths = new ArrayList<>();          private StatSet stats = new StatSet();     private ArrayList<Affiliation> affiliations = new ArrayList<>();     private ArrayList<Contact> contacts = new ArrayList<>();     private ArrayList<Reputation> reputations = new ArrayList<>();     //10 more lines of declarations      I've been considering this problem for some time now, and have considered multiple approaches. The problem arises primarily when data is deleted - for instance, since pretty much everything else (but not some parts!) depends upon Lifepaths, when a lifepath is deleted, nearly everything else must be recalculated. However, if a Skill is deleted, only a few things must be recalculated. Additionally, the application must somewhere track certain values; skill points, trait points, etc. to ensure that the user is not unintentionally exceeding those values. So my question is generally as follows: Where should everything go? What makes this easiest? There are a couple options:   * Place point total calculations in the PlayerCharacter class (but how does this generate a warning?)   * Handle all calculation outside of the PlayerCharacter class, and just use PlayerCharacter as a container for all the character's information   * Place _all_ calculations in the PlayerCharacter class; after each item is changed, recompute the entire character. Then, if there are issues arising from deletion, throw warnings back at the UI. I'm slightly overwhelmed by the scope of this particular class - whereas everything I've done so far has been easily broken down into small manageable chunks, this beast seems to resist being tamed. If there's a better approach to this, I'm all ears! But as of right now, I'm slightly confused, and progressing aimlessly probably won't get me anywhere. Any advice is appreciated. I apologize if this is unclear - I'm certain I lack the software vocabulary to properly communicate my ideas. I would love to improve this question - any help here is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "210104", "title": "Will having ClassA extend ClassB slow down my runtime performance compared to having classC which contains all the members of ClassC?", "text": "I have a class with a lot of methods. I would like to group similar methods together in their own class, but _all_ of the methods need to extend another class, _ClassC_. So I was thinking of having _ClassA_ , which contains the first group of methods, extend _ClassB_ , which extends Class_C, etc. Is this inefficient in terms of runtime performance, or are they virtually the same? Note: there will be hundreds of instances of this class running at once, so I would really not want to waste memory."}
{"_id": "5751", "title": "Where do you have your Control key?", "text": "In relation to the fab question here: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/2254/what-are-good-keyboards- for-programming Where do you map your Control key and why? ![Control Key](http://i.stack.imgur.com/z0syX.png)"}
{"_id": "117201", "title": "How would I access trac on mobile phone?", "text": "as a programmer I live with Trac, how do you go about accessing trac projects via a mobile phone, nokia/android/iphone/windows mobile, the mobile platform is not important, I can get a new phone but trac is there to stay."}
{"_id": "198847", "title": "The best way of coding web system in term of performance", "text": "So far I've been using IPB and my custom scripts all coded in PHP but I am really disappointed of the long term performance of it. I would like to move to native coding, the learning time to put into doesn't matter at all. Ive found CppCMS and it seems to be the exact solution i was searching for. I would like to know from anyone who has chosen this way, what have you done? Is CppCMS the best one in term of performance? If yes, with what webserver should I run it with and any special configuration? I am really searching for the best way to go in term of performance (learning time and coding time does not matter)."}
{"_id": "58630", "title": "How far should 'var' and null coalescing operator '??' be entertained without hampering readability?", "text": "I know the title of the question is very subjective, but I was confronted with usage of `??` operator by my peers, where at the same time I was not very happy/comfortable with applying `var` in new up-coming code. The argument given for using `??` operator was, it takes away readability in code. My question is, doesn't the same thing happens when you start using `var`?"}
{"_id": "97369", "title": "What wiki/document system do you recommend for knowledge-management?", "text": "I'm founder of a web-site called Now.in. I wrote all programs by my-self at first. And we are going to run a start-up company. More people will soon get involved. Some know-how/overviews only exist in my mind, it takes time to explain to newcomers. Hence, I would like to write some documents for others to read. Here comes the problem, how to write documents? Which tool/platform should I use? I have some concerns. ## Portability For sure I can just write documents in Google Docs, run a Wiki, or even use wiki of BitBucket repo directly. But the problem is, what if I would like to use another document system rather than the current one? It would be difficult and costly to convert documents among markdown languages/Google Docs. ## Easy to use Diagrams are important in documents to explain things. Some of the simple wiki/doc systems don't support uploading images. You can upload the image somewhere else and insert the image tag in documents, which is kinda inconvenient to use. Also, it appears some of those markdown languages are difficult to learn and remember. I don't like to spend one month to learn something that looks like LaTeX and start to write a document, which will drive me crazy. Simple and expressive markdown/WYSIWYG would be nice. ## Code expression Google Doc is easy to use and powerful enough. But however, sometimes I would like to write code examples in documents. It's good to have syntax highlighting. But Google Doc isn't user friendly for code writing. Being code friendly, would be a nice to have feature, too. ## Integrate with API documents For overview/SOP/Know-how documents, it's fine to write them directly in the document system. But for my Python code base, there might be some generated API-level documents from those codes. It would be inconvenient to have two documents systems, one for API and one for overviews. So, I think it would be nice to have them integrated together. ## So.... What to use? Maybe I have some more concerns in my mind, but I can't recall them at this moment. I would like to know what kind of document system you are using? Could you recommend some? It's fine even if it takes some fee to use the platform/system, we can afford if it is not too expensive."}
{"_id": "105055", "title": "What is a good practice for reading culture (language) info for users of a web app?", "text": "I am trying to get an idea of what would be a better practice / implementation for the users of an application that I am going to localize. Which would be better and why?   * Read the culture info (preferred language) from the browser. or   * Have a language selection option in the application, commonly implemented using flags (icons) or a drop down. Or suggest a better idea."}
{"_id": "193740", "title": "Tricky compareTo, inheritance, easy to extend - Java", "text": "Let's say we have 4 classes A, B, C, D where: A is a superclass of both B and C and C is a superclass of D. I suppose, in a diagram, it should look like this:                  A      /   \\     B     C            \\             D      Moreover, the class A implements the interface               Comparable<A>       and also implements a method               public int compareTo(A another)      I'd like to be able to compare every pair of objects x, y such that they are instances of classes from the set {A, B, C, D}. Naturally, I should implement a compareTo method in each of these classes but by default I'm doing this with one sided effect, i.e. defining how to compare object c from C with b from B doesn't tell anything about how to compare b with c. Now, I could write a lot of code and handle all of those cases (this also means I would have to use 'isInstance' method to handle these, right?) but then every two classes have to be 'aware of' existence of others. So if I wanted to add another class, E, such that D is a superclass of E, I would have to serve all cases in the new class E and moreover I'd have to change something in classes A, B, C, D in order to 'be aware of E'. So I'm struggling to find an elegant solution to it, i.e. one that doesn't entail changing a lot while adding a new class to the hierarchy. How can I achieve this? Thank you in advance for help."}
{"_id": "97362", "title": "An application to get statistical data about HTTP Request/Response", "text": "I'm looking for an application which takes the address of a website, browses that website, and provides reports based on some user-defined criteria about the HTTP requests/responses. For example, this application should report how many images doesn't have Cach-Control response header, or how many items are more than 25KB in size (including images, scripts, styles, etc.). I know about PageSpeed or WebPageTest, or Firebug or YSlow and plugins like that. But they don't have customized reports, and you should manually go through each response to check something. Also they are not repeatable. I'm looking for an application in which you enter the parameters once, and then many times you can test a website during its development. Does such an application exist? Anyone have any reference?"}
{"_id": "97363", "title": "PHP programming in iPad", "text": "I want to develop some PHP applications on my iPad device but there is 2 problems! First , i can not find any local server applications on iPad like Wamp or Lamp, and second my Googling only returns Cloud based IDEs for this!!! any idea?"}
{"_id": "191674", "title": "What is the meaning of \"inversion\" in Dependency Inversion design principle?", "text": "I'm reading about design patterns. I know what this principle does. High-level and low-level classes depend on abstractions. But why we say this is _inversion_?"}
{"_id": "107566", "title": "Computer Science and other advance topics taught in javascript", "text": "I'm an 'okay' Javascript developer working on browser javascript and node.js. However because I'm self taught, starting from copying and pasting jquery, there are a lot of holes in my programming/CS education. I don't really have the time to devote myself to fully learning all the CS concepts that might be taught in a real college program, and learning C or Scala or whatnot, I'm just too addicted to hacking and making things that work. On some level studying CS seems to be 'premature scaling' in Hacker News parlance. But every so often I get struck by the thought that maybe there is something that I should really really learn to take my skills and productivity to the next level. Is there a book, a list of concepts or things that I can study and learn in my 'down time' that would see reasonable returns on my productivity and ability in 1 - 2 months? Thanks! And yes, the only language I _know_ and use is Javascript, though I have tinkered with Python (High School), Ruby (RoR), PHP (Drupal), and Assembly (Making Diablo 2 Mods) in the past. Please note that a book like O'Reilly's JavaScript Web Applications is too easy for me and not really what I'm talking about."}
{"_id": "102588", "title": "Is there a standard pseudocode for parallel algorithms?", "text": "The common styles of pseudocode are largely intelligible, and it is more or less clear how to write pseudocode for sequential programs. But if parallelism is not hidden behind a full library and is regarded as a regular part of programming, then it should be treated as the same way in regards to pseudo-code. Is there a consistent and widely used style of pseudocode for parallel algorithms? Are there good, practical examples of this?"}
{"_id": "107563", "title": "Should we embed virtual machines rather than languages", "text": "Ok, so I am trying to learn front-end programming. Trying to figure out how javascript is a pain, and various projects (GWT, Coffeescript, Capuccino's objective/j...) are trying to fix this with languages that compile to JS. What would you do if you were to reinvent the browser? I think I would embed a VM rather than a language (quite like Java applets except less complex and with a DOM API instead of a canvas and self-contained environment). I suppose this has been suggested many times, but I cannot find resources on this, and most of the embedding tutorial I stumble on address embedding languages (guile, lua, python, whatever). Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "36875", "title": "Conditions for a traditional friends system vs. open following system", "text": "I'm just curious for everyone who is developing social sites out there. When you build a method for connecting users, do you prefer to use a following- style system (follow me, you can see all of my information and I can just choose to follow you back), or instead do you choose to have a friends-style system (I have to allow you see all of my information on your homepage, even if it is open to the public, vise versa). Why and under what circumstances do you use each? How do you manage privacy between your users? Have you use another way to connect your users? Examples of what methods you've choose and how you manage the user's privacy (private by default vs open to the web) are awesome; it could show correlation and provides an actual look."}
{"_id": "230511", "title": "Keeping Backbone model in sync with editable view", "text": "I'm making a web form for editing some objects. I'll call these objects Foos. I have a Backbone model that represents Foos. I have a Backbone view that renders an editor form, filling in fields based on the state of the Foo model it is given. My goal is to keep the Foo model in sync with the form fields.    Idea 1: I could wire up `onkeyup` or `onchange` listeners on all of the input boxes. Whenever the user changes a field, the model would be immediately updated. Manually adding an event listener to each input box seems excessive, though.    Idea 2: I could add an `updateModel` method to my view. Calling this method would inspect the form fields and bring the model up to date. The problem with this is that if you forget to call `updateModel`, you will be working with a stale model.    What are some best practices for syncing a Backbone model with its user- editable view?"}
{"_id": "102580", "title": "How do I improve my skills working in a small shop?", "text": "I'm a self-taught programmer and I'm working for a company that doesn't deal directly with building software (a glass manufacturer with a small IT team). I'm the only .NET developer there, although there are 3 SAP programmers with a bit of Visual Basic 6 background. Now I'm only a medium-level developer myself and I want to improve my skills, but it's rather hard when you are the \"one-eyed king\" in the proverbial land of blinds. Without leaving the employer, what can I do to improve my skills in such a sub-par learning environment?"}
{"_id": "199462", "title": "How does one start mocking up a mobile app?", "text": "I have this idea for the \"best app in the world\". I know what it's going to do, the need it's going to fill, a high to mid-level idea of the code, and who i'm going to target. Now i'm ready to begin: I grab my pen, paper, thinking- cap, can-do-attitude, set the clock to GO-TIME--This app is gonna be awesome!......2 hours later, all i have on my paper is a big rectangle... One would think that the mockup would be the _easy_ part, but drawing a \"simple & sleek\" design harder than it sounds. Are there any techniques/advice that you can give on mocking up an app? Any references or rules-of-thumb guidelines you can provide would also be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "102586", "title": "How can I influence my team to become more agile", "text": "I consider myself an agile developer, I have set up CI in the last three teams I have worked with, and in my previous role worked in a style which revolved around writing failing tests before fixing bugs, extremely short feedback cycles (typically starting UAT of new features within a couple of days), and a very short release cycle. Now I find myself the only person to write a C# unit test in the last 6 months, battling inertia to improve code quality, and supporting a system in which new features are just released with the intention of fixing them later. What tricks can I employ to try and stabilise things? I have tried setting up CI, automated UAT deployment from a separate branch in source control, and publicising local free talks on software development, but with little success."}
{"_id": "191679", "title": "Stroustrup and the C++ complexity admission", "text": "I heard from a friend that Bjarne Stroustroup admitted that he doesn't know entirely the C++ programming language due to its vast complexity Is it true and there's some referrable sources or is it just an exaggeration? This affirmation should be present on his website, he told it in an interview/conference some time ago"}
{"_id": "107569", "title": "Why C++ cannot adopt D's approach for its concept implementation?", "text": "As many of you guys know, _concepts_ , C++'s approach for constraining possible types for a template argument has failed to be included in C++11. I learned that the D programming language 2.0 has a similar feature for its generic programming. Its solution seems to me quite elegant & simple. So my question is _why C++ cannot use a similar approach_.   * The C++ concept's goal might be bigger than what D's implementation provides?   * Or C++'s legacy prevents it from adopting such an approach?   * Or any other? Thanks for your answers. p.s. To see some examples of D's generic programming power, please refer to this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7300298/metaprogramming-in-c-and- in-d/7303534#7303534"}
{"_id": "15636", "title": "What should be in a coding standard?", "text": "What should be in a good (read:useful) coding standard?   * Things the code should have.   * Things the code shouldn't have.   * Should the coding standard include definitions of things the language, compiler, or code formatter enforces?   * What about metrics like cyclomatic complexity, lines per file, etc?"}
{"_id": "198594", "title": "What should I do in AJAX or PHP?", "text": "Since I discovered the joys of AJAX, I tend to do all my requests to the server using AJAX. Is this a good idea? According to you, what should I do in PHP and what should I do in AJAX? I like to do my requests to the server with AJAX because I can use it as a kind of web service."}
{"_id": "198595", "title": "Web applications have \"the todo list.\" What analogous program is there for systems programming?", "text": "You can find many frameworks with an example todo list for demonstrating a small but full application in the framework. You don't have to consider large problems like scaling or caching, but you still exercise most of the fundamentals of that framework in a todo list. Is there an analogous application for systems-level programming?"}
{"_id": "221935", "title": "Should I pass an object or values?", "text": "Let's say I have a model that has 'purchase' method. The purchase method should take care of purchasing a product. Signature of purchase               public function purchase($token, Model_Member $member, Model_Product $product, Model_Recipient $recipient);      To call this method, I need to make $member, $product, and $recipient in my controller. Is it considered a better approach to pass an array of values to the **purchase** so that purchase can make those required objects like below?               public function purchase($token, $member_id, $product_id, array $recipient);      in this case, **purchase** should pull up a member record from the database and make a model of it. What's the better approach?"}
{"_id": "84661", "title": "Git workflow - advise a newbie", "text": "I'm starting to work with git for the first time, and I'm trying to come up with a workflow that works for me, so I thought of coming and asking around. Right now, I'm in a couple of projects where I'm the only programmer and, in fact, the only pusher to origin. I'm working like this, where `c` is a commit, `p` is a push and `m` is a merge:                             /feature2-c-c-c-c-m-c-c-c-c                  /                 /     \\     master-----------------------m-p------m-p             \\                  /           \\                \\-feature1-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-m-c-c      Now I've gathered that rebasing would be more \"correct\" than those `merge master` I do in the feature branches, or at least that's how it'd seem.. but I'm not sure I'm doing it right. What I've realized now is that by merging master into my other branches, I mess with my branch's history, and add all the unrelated features' commits to it. Maybe I should branch more, by the subtask, adding a third level like this:                                ....................\\     master---------------------------m-p--m-p-....             \\                       /         \\              \\-feature1------------m-----------m.....                 \\                 /             \\                    \\-feature11-c-c-c          feature12-c-c-c..      This leaves unaddressed the fact that sometimes a feature is bigger than what a branch should be. These are my thoughts on the matter so far, so I'm very open to suggestions on what's the best git workflow on one or two person teams. I hope the diagrams are easy to follow."}
{"_id": "221936", "title": "What is the difference between 'code readability' and 'language conventions' used within a community?", "text": "When I'm looking at questions asked on sites like stackoverflow on how to make a particular piece of code \"more pythonic\" there are usually suggestions offered to use complex list comprehensions or generators or other python features that aren't available in, say, Java. I am a casual Python programmer, and sometimes I can't follow what's going on without carefully unwrapping the logic in my head. Sometimes the list comprehensions are nested in ways that I'm thinking \"you probably should just write it out using loops\". Of course, veteran Python users probably won't have an issue with this, but I'm increasingly getting the impression that \"pythonic code\" is preferred over writing code that would be readable for the \"average programmer\" that may not be very proficient in Python. In general, what are some guidelines and heuristics to follow when choosing between the readability of the code and following the conventions used in a specific programming language community?"}
{"_id": "105580", "title": "What is the best \"bucket-fill\" algorithm?", "text": "I'm pretty new to image processing, and I am currently working on a paint-like application that will feature a bucket-fill. However, I have no idea what the best algorithm for a bucket-fill is. I implemented an example I found from this site, however, it ran into infinite loop problems when a user tried to bucket-fill an area that had already been bucket-filled with the same color. I'm currently working around that problem by filling left, right, up and then down; however, I made it so that once a pixel has been filled in to the left, it cannot fill to the right, which means shapes such as: ![Example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bDHrE.png) will not be filled properly if the bucket tool is used at the red dot. Therefore, I am hoping someone knows of an algorithm or a link to one that will resolve all these issues. **Additional Information:** This will be implemented using Javascript as the paint tool. It will be used online utilizing the Canvas element."}
{"_id": "82377", "title": "Should Properties have side effects", "text": "Should properties in C# have side effects beside notifying of a change in it's states? I have seen properties used in several different ways. From properties that will load the value the first time they are accessed to properties that have massive side effects like causing a redirect to a different page."}
{"_id": "147260", "title": "Team work and agile development", "text": "I think this question related not only to agile but to teamwork in general. When we are working in a team and each member is working a user story to complete how to avoid creation of duplicate classes and conflict? I mean if my user story require the creation of class A and also my team member need the same class and created the same (he may create it with slightly different name), how would we plan so that we move smoothly?"}
{"_id": "197374", "title": "What is the time complexity of the algorithm to check if a number is prime?", "text": "What is the time complexity of the algorithm to check if a number is prime?   This is the algorithm :               bool isPrime(int number){          if(number < 2) return false;     if(number == 2) return true;     if(number % 2 == 0) return false;     for(int i=3; (i*i)<=number; i+=2){         if(number % i == 0 ) return false;     }     return true;     }"}
{"_id": "107695", "title": "Is there a specific design strategy that can be applied to solve most chicken-and-egg problems while using immutable objects?", "text": "Coming from a OOP background (Java), I'm learning Scala on my own. While I can readily see the advantages of using immutable objects individually, I'm having a hard time seeing how one can design a whole application like that. I'll give an example: Say I have objects that represents \"materials\" and their properties (I'm designing a game, so I actually really have that problem), like water and ice. I would have a \"manager\" that owns all such materials instances. One property would be the freezing and melting point, and what the material freezes or melts to. [EDIT] All material instances are \"singleton\", kind of like a Java Enum. I want \"water\" to say it freezes to \"ice\" at 0C, and \"ice\" to say it melts to \"water\" at 1C. But if water and ice are immutable, they cannot get a reference to each other as constructor parameters, because one of them has to be created first, and that one could not get a reference to the not-yet-existing other as constructor parameter. I could solve this by giving them both a reference to the manager so that they can query it to find the other material instance they need every time they are being asked for their freezing/melting properties, but then I get the same problem between the manager and the materials, that they need a reference to each other, but it can only be provided in the constructor for one of them, so either the manager or the material cannot be immutable. Is their just no way around this problem, or do I need to use \"functional\" programming techniques, or some other pattern to solve it?"}
{"_id": "213675", "title": "Control Flow of php", "text": "I have a php script example1.php How would the control flow be when I call another php script example2.php from example1.php. Foe E.g                example1.php looks like this      ....      ...      ....      example2.php (calling example2.php from example1.php)      .....      .....      How does the control flow work for this ? Does example1.php wait until example2.php completes execution and then continuous with rest of code logic or does it just continues allowing example2.php to run independently ?"}
{"_id": "49354", "title": "Why is Windows registry needed?", "text": "As I have debugged problems in com, side by side, dealt with dll hell, all while hating the windows registry with passion, I was wondering why is it needed. I never felt compelled to read an entire book on registry best practices, and then just \"get it\". I have, however, used Linux and Mac OS, and look at the ways one can install multiple versions of Python and its libraries on the same *nix computer. Because registry has somewhat of a free (albeit ugly) format, and is used for all sorts of purposes, I have never understood what essential problem it is trying to solve. For instance, Microsoft does not want you to have two different versions of MS Office installed side by side. They use registry to enforce this during installation. This limitation is artificial, in my opinion. If they really cared to allow a different behavior, they could have adjusted their architecture accordingly. In Mac OS you can install and remove apps by just dropping them into a particular folder. So, A) What essential problem it is trying to solve? B) How do other operating systems solve it?"}
{"_id": "98813", "title": "Is it good to start with a simple subset of requirements and then extend the program?", "text": "When I was assigned a program, I usually build them block by block. For example, I was required to write a program which enable FTP transfer of files, which also allow queueing of transfer and a multi-thread transfer instead of single thread transfer. What I would do is: 1) Try to make the program able to transfer 1 file 2) Try to make the transfer into a queue 3) Try to implement multi-threading Would you do this instead: 1) Read through all the material/tutorial of all 3 requirement 2) Try to assemble them into a general picture 3) Write the program at once. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "197488", "title": "Statistics collection engine for C++ systems", "text": "We have a research project with idea->prototype->statistics development cycle. Anyway, our final product is a prototype, so the statistics collection suite is not used persistently. Supposing I have following class:               class Transform {         private:             someData;              public:             transformForward (inp_block, outp_block);             transformBackward (inp_block, outp_block);     };      Imagine that it is a part of a big system. I need to periodically collect some statistics on such transform (internal data could be considered as well). It seems that adding statistical routines would be a violation of single- responsibility principle. The second smell is that I do not want to touch code that uses `Transform` instances to explicitly invoke these routines. I would be best if I could just trigger some kind of switch so that the statistics for that module will be collected. I've met that challenge a number of times and I have a feeling that I'm constantly reinventing the wheel. Is there some good practices for configuring and collecting the statistics suite for a compound system without interfering into it's internal code base? ## UPDATE: As I can see from the answers proposed, my question is too non-specific, so I'll provide more concrete example. Consider an image-compression system composed by two _huge_ blocks: `Predictor` and `Encoder`. There are a lot of various prediction and compression algorithms, during our research we need to explore the behavior of the components under various conditions. We should answer questions like \"how many times the pixel is processed within each context\", \"how well does this predictor works\", \"how does each predictor affects the `Encoder`'s internal state\" and many others. Anyway, our final product is just a _Codec_ with no statistical suite shipped with it; all kind of statistics collection is used internally during our research. Thus the question arises: how could one build flexible statistics engine that knows the very internals of the system? How could one keep the system itself independent of the statistics engine?"}
{"_id": "98810", "title": "How to organise Website CSS", "text": "I understand the concept of CSS. But on many projects I've found that I tend to lose myself and end up with a millions CSS files for a millions different pages! I realise that the point of CSS is that it cascades. Otherwise it would just be a style sheet! I would just like people to shed some light on how they use CSS to its full potential! On my current website I've got a MasterPage and one css file for that. then for all the sub pages i tend to write a separate css for every 5 pages or so. I dont like my css files to be HUGE cos then i just get confused. How do you do it? I find it hard to comprehend that some people use one css file for the WHOLE website. or is that the done thing?"}
{"_id": "186176", "title": "How to create high quality code producing teams? (as a group leader)", "text": "I come with a clear agenda on how to code correctly. I used to be a team leader, and I managed using significant amount of mentoring to create a team that creates high quality code. Now I have 3 teams under me, each one has its own team leader. My time is mostly spent on strategic meetings and I can't devote enough of it to mentor my teams. Once I do get to see code or design, I usually finds flaws in it, but I get to see little of that and I am afraid that all the code I can not see is designed or written poorly. How can I make sure my teams produce great code? Note: I am not in the position to fire anyone."}
{"_id": "197482", "title": "When are chained assignments (i.e. a=b=c) bad form?", "text": "I'm working on a VB.Net WinForms project and found myself writing code like this:               this.Fizz.Enabled = this.Buzz.Enabled = someCondition;      I couldn't decide whether that was bad code or not. Are there any .NET guidelines for when/when-not to do assignment chaining?"}
{"_id": "222035", "title": "Frontend vs Backend data handling", "text": "Firstly I would like an answer from an experienced person (not a one man band), someone whom has worked in a medium/large team and had to battle with this burning question before. **The problem** : I am constantly being asked to not submit **empty** rows by rows = I mean a list of items and properties. A good example would be, multiple file uploads.               <form>         <input type=\"text\" name=\"pic[0][label]\" />         <input type=\"file\" name=\"pic[0][file]\" />              <input type=\"text\" name=\"pic[1][label]\" />         <input type=\"file\" name=\"pic[1][file]\" />              <input type=\"text\" name=\"pic[2][label]\" />         <input type=\"file\" name=\"pic[2][file]\" />         <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Upload\" />     </form>       **The requirement states** : >   * As a user I should be presented with fields 3 (three) upload fields. >   * For each field there should be a corresponding title/name/label >   * There should be a \"Add more\" button, to allow me (the user) to add more > images. > The reason for the requirement above is user experience. (Less clicks are required) **The Backend argument** Submitting empty rows (to the server) is \"error prone\" or is seen as a \"validation corner\" **The Front-end argument**   * Backend should not dictate what the FE can/cannot do.   * JavaScript is very volatile and should not manage/validate whether empty rows should be sent or not **The question** if the user:   * Enters 1 (one) title/label   * Selects 1 (one) image from his/her local PC   * Clicks Upload   * Leaves the last 2 (two) upload fields empty. So in your opinion/experience with this kind of problem. Should the front end send empty rows or data to the server or not?"}
{"_id": "20708", "title": "What groupware/project-management apps (preferably self-hosted webapp) do you recommend for a small dev shop?", "text": "I run a small Drupal consulting shop and we've been trying different groupware solutions for what seems like ages, yet nothing we've found seems to be a good fit.   * We don't need CRM-overkill such as SugarCRM offers -- it's just too much for our small size.   * We do need git integration (at a minimum, an easy way to associate commits with issues)   * Time tracking on configurable or 15m increments   * per-project issue tracking   * billing (incl. recurring billing for support contracts, etc)   * some sort of per-project notes/wiki for things like login credentials, client contact info, etc.   * Contact logging (Client foo called at 2:20pm and asked to add bar to the spec, signed addendum with pricing due to client NLT CoB today, to be returned by CoB tomorrow)   * Open source solutions are greatly preferred to closed ones   * **Most of all, it should be very efficient to use.** Several solutions just fell out of use here because they required too many clicks for simple, frequent tasks like logging time spent on an issue or noting a call from a client. It shouldn't take 20 minutes to make a note. **Edit:** I almost forgot to mention: we're a mixed Linux/Mac shop with no Windows users."}
{"_id": "71870", "title": "Could developers learn anything from studying malware?", "text": "Malware uses interesting techniques for hiding themselves from anti-malware software and more. They can \"polymorph\" themselves: practically change the code while it continuing to mean pretty much the same to the executing machine, making antivirus definitions invalid etc. I wonder if there is anything (non-malicious) developers could learn from studying the source of such, or reversing them and studying whatever you get from that process if the source isn't available, that could be useful outside this (dark?) realm. **I am _not_ interested in writing malware.** (at least not for non- educational purposes) This question isn't meant to be a question about how to write malware or such, but what you could learn from already written malware. Also, maybe a bit unethical (I hope not), would there be any gains from writing your own piece of malware, just for better understanding of vulnerabilities/exploits/security, or the underlying operating system?"}
{"_id": "71872", "title": "Comparing features in a asp.net web application using different database methodologies", "text": "I have a webstore which sells components (it is a academic project) which looks like this. I have developed the same web application using following database methodologies:   1. MS Sql Server with Stored procedures and sql data reader   2. LINQ to Sql   3. DB4o using LINQ (Client/Server) What features can I compare apart from the technical and theoretical details between relational database and object oriented database ? It is my graduate/master's thesis final project. I want the features that i want to compare to be more practical and interesting so that I can draw some concrete and meaningful conclusions rather than abstract comparisons which don't create much interest and hard for inference. Please help me."}
{"_id": "198331", "title": "Private Repository Management for Potential Employers", "text": "I have some projects that I do not wish to be viewed publicly (some of them are school course work), but I want to show them to my potential employers. Ideally, I would be able to generate some bit.ly-like links that expire after certain period. I am guessing I can do this with Dropbox's public link where I put the link to the code on the resume and then I delete the folder after some time via `crontab`, but I am wondering if there are better options. I do have accounts on github and bitbucket."}
{"_id": "71878", "title": "Tips for a solo programmer's resume", "text": "**Short version:** I've been a solo programmer for 5 years, right out of school, and am looking to for resume tips as I aim to get a job with a larger, well structured company. **Long version:** I am a 26 year old who graduated in CS in 2007. I had an internship for a small company starting in 2006, and still work for them to this day. I'm looking to work for a larger company for reasons beyond the scope of this post. During this time I was the only programmer, and designed/coded/maintained four .NET applications for various industries. Those four projects kept me very busy. My applications have happy customers, they work well and look nice. I realize that being a solo developer has given me some strengths and some weaknesses compared to my peers.   * My strengths are that I can self educate well, and I've suffered the consequences of mistakes firsthand, so I can give VERY good reasons why I do things the way I do.   * My weaknesses are that I've lacked a mentor, and the missed opportunities to learn from him/her. I also lack team work with programming. I worked closely with other technical people, and had my own SVN/TFS servers, but never worked closely with other programmers, delegated orders, or really had a specific role other than \"do everything.\" I realize that the teamwork is a crucial component of a mature developer. So now, some questions about a resume and/or interview:   1. Should I be up front about being on a lonely island of programming so long?   2. When listing my projects in a resume, since I was a solo dev should I describe the projects in great detail, and say that I did everything rather than say \"I did xxx, yyy, zzz\"?   3. My current employer has web pages with videos/screenshots of my software in action, should I link to them?   4. Do you think my strengths make up for my weaknesses and leave me > 0?   5. Any other tips?"}
{"_id": "222693", "title": "When is it okay to reassign the model for a view in MVC?", "text": "Is it ever really acceptable to reassign the model for a view in MVC? (Or MV* where applicable.) In other words, for a single view instance, is it ever ok to reassign the view's model? That is, as opposed to using setters (mutators) on the model so that it does not have to be reassigned. Under what conditions (if any) is this acceptable MVC design? Here is an example in JavaScript, but the question is language-agnostic.               var Model = function (m) {         var message = m;         return {             getMessage: function () {                 return message;             },                  setMessage: function (m) {                 message = m;             }         };     };          var View = function (m) {         var model = m;         return {             render: function () {                 alert(model.getMessage());             },                  setModel: function (m) {                 model = m; // hmm, is this okay?             }         };     };          var model1 = new Model('hello world');     var view = new View(model1);     var model2 = new Model('hi there');     view.render();     view.setModel(model2); // reassign model     view.render();     model2.setMessage('hi again'); // mutate model via setter     view.render();      In the line `view.setModel(model2);`, the model is reassigned (the approach in question). In the line `model2.setMessage('hi again');`, the model is instead mutated via its own setter, which in my view seems generally preferred. One of the main drawbacks I can see to model reassignment is that it could complicate attempts to reuse the model elsewhere in the application. In some MVC applications a single shared model could be used to drive multiple views (e.g. list, editor, and display views of the same data), in which case model reassignment would be problematic -- it would at least require the added complexity of communicating the model reassignment to dependent views. Here I think the DRY principle trumps the no-mutators principle. (Open to argument here.) Can an even stronger case be made? To recap, under what circumstances might model assignment be acceptable, if any? Perhaps in certain languages, under extreme performance constraints...? Is _\"do not reassign models\"_ a good rule of thumb? A pointer to an authoritative source or real-world situation would be helpful."}
{"_id": "168258", "title": "What is the wireframe of a project?", "text": "What is the actual meaning of a wireframe of a project?"}
{"_id": "168259", "title": "How can I design my classes to include calendar events stored in a database?", "text": "I'm developing a web calendar in php (using Symfony2) inspired by iCal for a project of mine. At this moment, I have two classes: a class \"Calendar\" and a class \"CalendarCell\". Here you are the two classes properties and method declarations.               class Calendar     {         private $month;         private $monthName;         private $year;         private $calendarCellList = array();         private $translator;              public function __construct($month, $year, $translator) {}                             public function getCalendarCellList() {}              public function getMonth() {}              public function getMonthName() {}              public function getNextMonth() {}              public function getNextYear() {}              public function getPreviousMonth() {}              public function getPreviousYear() {}              public function getYear() {}              private function calculateDaysPreviousMonth() {}              private function calculateNumericDayOfTheFirstDayOfTheWeek() {}              private function isCurrentDay(\\DateTime $dateTime) {}              private function isDifferentMonth(\\DateTime $dateTime) {}     }          class CalendarCell      {         private $day;         private $month;         private $dayNameAbbreviation;         private $numericDayOfTheWeek;         private $isCurrentDay;         private $isDifferentMonth;         private $translator;              public function __construct(array $parameters) {}              public function getDay() {}              public function getMonth() {}              public function getDayNameAbbreviation() {}              public function isCurrentDay() {}              public function isDifferentMonth() {}     }      Each calendar day can includes many calendar events (such as appointments or schedules) stored in a database. My question is: which is the best way to manage these calendar events in my classes? I think to add a eventList property in CalendarCell and populate it with an array of CalendarEvent objects fetched by the database. This kind of solution doesn't allow other coders to reuse the classes without db (because I should inject at least a repository services also) just to create and visualize a calendar... so maybe it could be better to extend CalendarCell (for instance in CalendarCellEvent) and add the database features? I feel like I'm missing some crucial design pattern! Any suggestion will be very appreciated!"}
{"_id": "108768", "title": "What should take precedence: YAGNI or Good Design?", "text": "At which point should YAGNI take precedence against good coding practices and vice versa? I'm working on a project at work and want to slowly introduce good code standards to my co-workers (currently there are none and everything is just kind of hacked together without rhyme or reason), but after creating a series of classes (we don't do TDD, or sadly any kind of unit testing at all) I took a step back and thought it's violating YAGNI because I pretty much know with certainty that we don't require the need to extend some of these classes. Here's a concrete example of what I mean: I have a data access layer wrapping a set of stored procedures, which uses a rudimentary Repository-style pattern with basic CRUD functions. Since there are a handful of methods that all my repository classes need, I created a generic interface for my repositories, called `IRepository`. However, I then created a \"marker\" interface (i.e. interface that doesn't add any new functionality) for each type of repository (e.g. `ICustomerRepository`) and the concrete class implements that. I've done the same thing with a Factory implementation to build the business objects from DataReaders/DataSets returned by the Stored Procedure; the signature of my repository class tends to look something like this:               public class CustomerRepository : ICustomerRepository     {         ICustomerFactory factory = null;              public CustomerRepository() : this(new CustomerFactory() { }              public CustomerRepository(ICustomerFactory factory) {             this.factory = factory;         }                    public Customer Find(int customerID)         {             // data access stuff here             return factory.Build(ds.Tables[0].Rows[0]);         }     }      My concern here is that I'm violating YAGNI because I know with 99% certainty that there is never going to be a reason to give anything other than a concrete `CustomerFactory` to this repository; since we don't have unit tests I don't need a `MockCustomerFactory` or similar things, and having so many interfaces might confuse my co-workers. On the other hand, using a concrete implementation of the factory seems like a design smell. Is there a good way to come to a compromise between proper software design and not overarchitecting the solution? I'm questioning if I need to have all of the \"single implemenation interfaces\" or if I could sacrifice a bit of good design and just have, for example, the base interface and then the single concrete, and not worry about programming to the interface if the implementation is that will ever be used."}
{"_id": "197730", "title": "Effective team meetings", "text": "I'm a team leader of a team of 8 programmers in a company of about 20 technical people. They're working on a range of projects, these projects also involve people from other teams that are outside of my control. My organisation is not doing proper agile development, and they're somewhat resistant to change, but I've been holding daily stand up meetings within my team and we've all been finding them useful and everyone is engaged and we're done within 10-15 minutes. I also have weekly individual catch ups with every team member where we discuss various general topics (both technical and non- technical) in more detail, as well as various ad-hoc topical meetings. What I've been struggling with, however, is my weekly team meeting. It is losing steam and I have not been able to keep people interested. I still want to hold a longer meeting, even if it has to be fortnightly or monthly. The purpose was to discuss various topics that cannot be done during a stand up meeting because they require more time. Updates from me include a summary on every current project that they're working on (whether it is on schedule, various delays, etc), any changes in direction, future projects, changes to development process, etc. However, it ends up being a lecture from me, and at least 2 people are obviously zoned out and the rest are at most mildly interested. I tried getting people to be more engaged by getting them to talk about their week, but with 8 people it takes a long time and (partly because a lot of their work does not cross over all that much), most of the rest team does not care what their co-workers have been working on in more detail (they get a high level overview during stand ups). So, during these meetings, at least some people are very bored, and it is almost embarrassing for me to keep holding these. It is a stark contrast to our energised morning stand up meetings. Any advice on what I can do to keep people more engaged and more interested? And how can I get them to present things on their or start discussions that involve everyone instead of it being a monologue from me?"}
{"_id": "197737", "title": "Notation for the average time complexity of an algorithm", "text": "What notation do you use for the **average** time complexity of an algorithm? It occurs to me that the proper way would be to use big-theta to refer to a set of results (even when a specific try may differ). For example, average array search would be \u0398(n+1)/2. Is this right? Explanation of average search time being \u0398(n+1)/2: Given that the access time sum for the n first integers is n(n+1)/2, the average time for a large number of random access to the array will be (n(n+1)/2)/n = (n+1)/2. In this case I would say that \u0398(n+1)/2 will be the average access time. It makes sense (to me) but since I'm new to asymptotic notation (and programming in general), I'd like to know if this is common practice. I'm asking because I'm confused to see big-O being used for everywhere in pages like http://bigocheatsheet.com. eg: average case of array search O(n)."}
{"_id": "190108", "title": "How can a server initiate request in SIP protocol?", "text": "Either a client or a server can initiate request in SIP. How is it possible? How will the server know about the client?"}
{"_id": "58248", "title": "What is the value of checking in failing unit tests?", "text": "While there are ways of keeping unit tests from being executed, what is the value of checking in failing unit tests? I will use a simple example: Case Sensitivity. The current code is case sensitive. A valid input into the method is \"Cat\" and it would return an enum of Animal.Cat. However, the desired functionality of the method should not be case sensitive. So if the method described was passed \"cat\" it could possibly return something like Animal.Null instead of Animal.Cat and the unit test would fail. Though a simple code change would make this work, a more complex issue may take weeks to fix, but identifying the bug with a unit test could be a less complex task. The application currently being analyzed has 4 years of code that \"works\". However, recent discussions regarding unit tests have found flaws in the code. Some just need explicit implementation documentation (ex. case sensitive or not), or code that does not execute the bug based on how it is currently called. But unit tests can be created executing specific scenarios that will cause the bug to be seen and are valid inputs. > What is the value of checking in unit tests that exercise the bug until > someone can get around to fixing the code? Should this unit test be flagged with ignore, priority, category etc, to determine whether a build was successful based on tests executed? Eventually the unit test should be created to execute the code once someone fixes it. On one hand it shows that identified bugs have not been fixed. On the other, there could be hundreds of failed unit tests showing up in the logs and weeding through the ones that should fail vs. failures due to a code check-in would be difficult to find."}
{"_id": "64543", "title": "Does a web application have to live in a browser to be called a web application?", "text": "Does a web application have to live in a browser to be called a web application? Or is a thin client that uses a web service for most of it's functionality a web applicaiton?"}
{"_id": "246090", "title": "Is OAuth suitable for this scenario?", "text": "I need to create a simple web application for track expenses, with some basic actions (user must be able to create an account and log in, list expenses, edit them, etc) with a REST API for each one, and the trick is that I need to be able to pass credentials to both the webpage and the API. So, after some research I've found some examples using Digest Authentication and HMAC Authentication but lot of posts also mentioned OAuth as an alternative approach, so my question is, given this scenario, would be proper to use OAuth? I mean, as far as I understand OAuth is suitable when you want to share resources with other application, which I'm not doing for this project; besides that, when you try to access the shared resource it appears a page requesting permission for the foreign application, would that page appear at some point in my application? (maybe after the login?) In case OAuth wouldn't be suitable, is there any other option besides Digest authentication and HMAC authentication?"}
{"_id": "30110", "title": "What parameters to use to compare GUI frameworks / toolkits?", "text": "I'm doing some research on the best GUI toolkit to use for future products at the company. We're talking about a fairly large organizations with quite a bit of code and a complete rewrite project in planning. Don't ask. Anyway, I'm trying to create a list relevant parameters to judge the toolkits. What would you use to drive the comparison? Here's what I've got so far:   * Maturity   * Ease of development   * Ease of prototyping   * Ease of maintenance   * Size of hiring pool   * Available knowledge at the company   * Training costs   * Community size   * Community level of expertise (how hard to find good answers to complex problems)   * Amount of expert-level books available   * Ability to interface to other technologies   * Deployment considerations   * Visual aesthetics   * Ability to access OS resources   * Multiple monitor support (something that might come in handy in our particular application)"}
{"_id": "30116", "title": "the future of commercial products", "text": "I'm seeing that the open source solutions are growing rapidly & many companies use them now. What do you think the future for commercial products or solutions will be?"}
{"_id": "78611", "title": "Style and recommendations of commenting code", "text": "I want to hear from you any advice and experience of writing comments in your code. How do you write them in the most easy and informative way? What habits do you have when commenting parts of code? Maybe some exotic recommendations? I hope this question will collect the most interesting advices and recommendations forcommenting, something useful that everyone can learn from. OK, I will start.   1. Usually, I don't use `/* */` comments even when I need to comment many lines. **Advantages** : code visually looks better than when you mix such syntax with one-line comments. Most of IDEs have an ability to comment selected text and they usually do it with one-line syntax. **Disadvantages** : Hard to edit such code without IDE.   2. Place \"dot\" in the end of any finished comment. For example:              //Recognize wallpaper style. Here I wanted to add additional details     int style = int.Parse(styleValue);     //Apply style to image.     Apply(style);      **Advantages** : Place \"dot\" only in comments that you finished. Sometimes you can write temporal information, so lack of \"dot\" will tell you that you wanted to return and add some additional text to this comment.   3. Align text in the enumerations, commenting parameters etc. For example:              public enum WallpaperStyle     {         Fill = 100,     //WallpaperStyle = \"10\"; TileWallpaper = \"0\".         SizeToFit = 60, //WallpaperStyle = \"6\";  TileWallpaper = \"0\".         Stretch = 20,   //WallpaperStyle = \"2\";  TileWallpaper = \"0\".         Tile = 1,       //WallpaperStyle = \"0\";  TileWallpaper = \"1\".         Center = 0      //WallpaperStyle = \"0\";  TileWallpaper = \"0\".     };      **Advantages** : Just looks better and visually more easy to find what you need. **Disadvantages** : Spending time to align and harder to edit.   4. Write text in comment that you can't obtain by analyzing code. For example, stupid comment:              //Apply style.     Apply(style);      **Advantages** : You will have clear and small code with only useful information in comments."}
{"_id": "60049", "title": "Right mix of planning and programming on a new project", "text": "I am about to start a new project (a game, but thats unimportant). The basic idea is in my head but not all the details. I don't want to start programming without planning, but I am seriously fighting my urge to just do it. I want some planning before to prevent refactoring the whole app just because a new feature I could think of requires it. On the other hand, I don't want to plan multiple months (spare time) and start that because I have some fear that I will lose my motivation in this time. What I am looking for is a way of combining both without one dominating the other. Should I realize the project in the way of scrum? Should I creating user stories and then realize them? Should I work feature driven? (I have some experience in scrum and the classic \"specification to code\" way.) **Update** : How about starting with a \"click dummy\" and implementing the functionality later?"}
{"_id": "132378", "title": "What is the recommended learning path for PHP and Javascript?", "text": "For a couple of months now I have been wanting to learn Javascript and PHP but the lack of time didn't give me that opportunity. I'm in a position that have enough time to learn only one language and practice it or both in a row without doing any practice for about 1-2 months except the code in the books. I have a bit of Java programming background and have built 3 applications in Java , so I'm not totaly new when it comes to programming, but I can't say I'm at an intermediate level. I also have some experience with jQuery, which by the way I recently realised it was a mistake to learn jQuery before Javascript and XHTML/CSS. These are the recources that I am planning to read for both of them: Javascript:   1. Getting Good with JavaScript   2. Professional JavaScript for Web Developers 3rd Edition   3. JavaScript 24-Hour Trainer   4. Javascript Patterns   5. JavaScript: The Good Parts PHP:   1. PHP Solutions Dynamic Web Design Made Easy 2nd.Edition   2. PHP and MySQL Web Development 4th Edition   3. Oreilly PHP Cookbook 2nd Edition These were the resources that were recommended to me by a friend to fully grasp these two technologies exactly in that order and these are the ones I plan to read in the time that I have in the summer. If there is anything you would like to add please feel free to tell me. I am committed to learning them both to their full potential. So what I want to ask if it is appropriate to try and learn PHP immediately after learning Javascript or should I stick just to one of them until I learn it better and move to the other after?"}
{"_id": "246917", "title": "How to do documentation for code and why is software (often) poorly documented?", "text": "There are some good examples of well-documented code out there, such as java api. But, a lot of code in public projects such as git and internal projects of companies is poorly documented and not very newcomer friendly. In all my software development stints, I have had to deal with poorly documented code. I noticed the following things -   1. Little or no comments in code.    2. Method and variable names are not self describing.    3. There is little or no documentation for how the code fits into the system or business processes.    4. Hiring bad developers or not mentoring the good ones . They can't write simple and clean code. Hence its difficult or impossible for anyone, including the developer to document the code. As a result, I have had to go through a lot of code and talk to many people to learn things. I feel this wastes everyone's time. It also creates the need for KT/Knowledge transfer sessions for newcomers to a project. I learned that documentation is not given the attention it deserves because of the following reasons:   1. Laziness.    2. Developers don't like to do anything but code.    3. Job security. (If no one can understand your code easily, then you might not be easily replaceable.)    4. Difficult deadlines leave little time to document.  So, I am wondering if there is a way to encourage and enforce good documentation practices in a company or project. What are the strategies to be used for creating decent documentation for the systems and code of any project, regardless of its complexity ? Are there any good examples of when minimal or no documentation is needed ? IMHO, I feel that we should have a documentation review after a project is delivered. If it is not simple, concise, illustrative and user friendly, the developer or technical documentation engineer own the responsibility for it and be made to fix it. I neither expect people to make reams of documentation, not hope that it will be user friendly like the head first books, but I expect it to eliminate the need for hours of analysis and wasteful KT sessions. Is there a way to end or alleviate this madness ? \"Document driven development\" perhaps ?"}
{"_id": "37836", "title": "Understanding the stateless internet", "text": "I'm transitioning from being a desktop developer to a web developer, and I'm having trouble understanding why HTTP is stateless. What are the reasons for it? What are some ways a desktop developer like myself can make the transition to a stateless development environment?"}
{"_id": "132373", "title": "As a Junior Software Engineer should I say that something has been done wrong if I feel so?", "text": "I recently joined a company and it is my first job. When reading the code base, I felt that the code was not well written. It seemed to me that the code had most of the problems mentioned here and also seemed to have an Anemic Domain Model. There are no unit tests and they don't employ any code quality checking tools like findbugs or pmd. The problem I have is that the code is very difficult to understand. Maybe my conclusions are wrong because I am not that experienced. I need advice on whether to communicate the above facts to a superior or not. If I am to communicate, to whom(Tech Lead, Architect, Product Manager) and how? And if I do communicate will they take it badly since I'm a Junior and has no experience?"}
{"_id": "225133", "title": "Licensing question regarding no derivatives", "text": "I am working on a project where I'd like these licensing terms:   * Allow unmodified redistribution, with attribution to the author   * Disallow modified redistribution   * Non-commercial use Now the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license is perfect for this... however, it does not cover any software topics, and CC themselves say that you shouldn't really use the CC licenses for software projects. So what should you use in a case like this instead? LGPL comes close, but it does allow commercial use. Standard copyright, without a license, also comes close again, but allows commercial use while disallowing redistribution. BTW, I understand you guys aren't lawyers. But you might have experience with licensing to know what kind of license you should be looking for with my needs."}
{"_id": "225132", "title": "When using the Apache license, is there still a need for a Contributor License Agreement (CLA)?", "text": "I can certainly see the need for CLAs with a terser license like MIT or BSD, but the more verbose Apache seems to already have that type of verbiage in it. I would prefer to not add this level of complication an open source project if it is not necessary with the Apache 2.0 license. CLAs seem to primarily grant a copyright license and a patent license from the contributor to the project, both of which are already in the text of the Apache 2.0 license (sections 2 and 3). If I am using the Apache license, do I really need to also add the extra requirement for contributors to sign a CLA? I basically want to get the general benefits of a CLA (like the non-ambiguous right to relicense, though the contributor maintains ownership) without making contributors fill out a bunch of information and sign a contract in some third-party form. Doesn't the act of cloning a repository, modifying code, and sending a pull request indicate agreement to the terms of the associated license? Section 5 of the Apache 2.0 License explicitly states that contributions shall also be under Apache 2.0: > **Submission of Contributions** : Unless You explicitly state otherwise, any > Contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the Work by You to the > Licensor shall be under the terms and conditions of this License, without > any additional terms or conditions. Notwithstanding the above, nothing > herein shall supersede or modify the terms of any separate license agreement > you may have executed with Licensor regarding such Contributions. When combined with Sections 2 & 3 regarding grant of copyright license and patent license \"...to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, sublicense...\" it would seem that Apache 2.0 already covers the project's bases regarding submissions. Or am I misunderstanding a possible difference between a \"sublicense\" and actually changing the license of the project? (Since the Open Source Licensing Q&A site is still a just a proposal, I will accept IANAL answers here.)"}
{"_id": "225134", "title": "Can the GitHub pull request process constitute an electronic signature of a CLA?", "text": "I appreciate the need for a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) in open source software projects and even understand that some tools are starting to make this process easier (like the low-friction CLAHub for GitHub and Project Harmony). However, rather than requiring a third-party form submission for an electronic signature, would adding an extra sentence and the CLA itself to CONTRIBUTING.md, which GitHub links to when a contributor files a pull request (displayed as \"Please review the guideline for contributing to this repository\"), allow for a valid electronic signature (e.g. \"Submitting a pull request to this repository on GitHub with your name and email constitutes your agreement to and electronic signature of the following Contributor License Agreement...\")? Perhaps that argument hinges on the definition of \"electronic signature\" (ESIGN, UETA, etc.): > **\"Electronic signature\"** means an electronic sound, symbol, or process > attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by > a person with the intent to sign the record. And I would like to propose that the GitHub pull request \"process\" is \"logically associated\" with the CONTRIBUTING.md/CLA \"record\" and that the contributor has the \"intent to sign\" by adopting the process... (Since the Open Source Licensing Q&A site is still a just a proposal, I will accept IANAL answers here.)"}
{"_id": "129259", "title": "Apps for facilitating live code demos?", "text": "I really enjoy watching live code demos, especially when time is focused on what the code is doing instead of what the presenter is typing. Many seem to be using apps to manage their clipboard to paste code into the IDE. What apps are out there for skillfully managing your clipboard to seamlessly do a code demo? UPDATE: I found this app that Apple engineers use called _DemoMonkey_. It's actually an OS X app demo for, ironically enough, the clipboard and system services. The link includes the source so creating a PC equivalent would be easy, is there really nothing out there?"}
{"_id": "27509", "title": "What is the ettiquite for releasing a Perl module based on someone else's module?", "text": "I have written a Perl module by starting with an existing Perl module of related functionality and modifying heavily. In fact, acccording to git blame I have changed (or created) every line of non-biolerplate code in the module. Of course, I have also changed the name of the module, so if I uploaded it to CPAN, it would not directly conflict with the original module. Anyway, despite my heavy modifications, the module is still conceptually based on its predecessor, and I would like to give credit to its authors. However, I can see how they might not appreciate having their names and emails slapped on what appears to be a new module without their knowing. So should I just put myself as the sole author and put the original module's authors in an \"Acknowledgements\" section? What is the best way to credit the original authors in my module?"}
{"_id": "147664", "title": "What is \"swarming\"?", "text": "I've heard **swarming** mentioned in the context of Agile or Extreme Programming. It seems to be a complement to pairing. What exactly is it? When should it be applied? How do you do it well?"}
{"_id": "185300", "title": "Is unconditional code considered a branch?", "text": "Having simple code like this:               int A=5;     object X=Console.ReadLine()     if(Condition)        DoSomething();     else        DoStuff();     DoSomethingElse();      Some sources say there are actually 4 branches: First unconditional, two for the IF and another unconditional after the IF statement. Some say there are only two branches. What would be correct? E.g. here: http://www.ruleworks.co.uk/testguide/BS7925-2-Annex-B7.asp"}
{"_id": "147667", "title": "Where would I typically use a Deque in production software?", "text": "I'm fairly familiar with where to use Stacks, Queues, and Trees in software applications but I've never used a Deque (Double Ended Queue) before. Where would I typically encounter them in the wild? Would it be in the same places as a Queue but with extra gribbilies?"}
{"_id": "147668", "title": "What is the Bible of Hashing?", "text": "Is there a Cormen-like reference on Hashes and Hashing? This particular structure has seen little attention in my CS education for some reason but I'd like to learn more as they seem to be everywhere. I know Cormen covers it but I'm looking for something more specialized and in-depth."}
{"_id": "147669", "title": "Why does the add() method of a Linkedlist return true in Java?", "text": "Why does the `add` method of a Linkedlist return true in Java? http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/LinkedList.html#add(E) Why not just make it a void method? I know it says \"per the general contract of Collection.add\", but why doesn't this contract/interface make `add` a void method?"}
{"_id": "198006", "title": "Why do people consider Python a weak language?", "text": "I've been using Python for a little while now and I am enjoying it, but a few of my friends are telling me to start using a language like C# or Java instead and give these reasons:   1. Python is a scripting language   2. Python apps don't port well to people who don't have Python   3. It's hard to make good GUIs in Python since it's a scripting language I like the batteries included approach to Python and the ability to download and upload pre-built modules from PyPI is really useful to me. Is there any specific reason why Python is considered a weak language?"}
{"_id": "216230", "title": "Naming a release", "text": "OS X 10.9 not just called 10.9 but also Mavericks. iOS7 is just called iOS7. Android releases are named after sweets. What is the rationale of giving a name to a release version?   What are the benefits if any? Most apps simply increment the number as they push new releases. Is naming a release (Mavericks, Kit kat etc...) just for marketing purpose?"}
{"_id": "156009", "title": "Why .NET and C# are not available on Cloud Platforms?", "text": "I checked Google App Engine and Heroku but both don't support .NET/C# applications. Even though Google App Engine shows support for Windows Azure, but in the supported languages it doesn't show C# or VB. Is .NET not supported on Cloud Platform?"}
{"_id": "67488", "title": "Show your customers your roadmap", "text": "I read a while ago an article about \"Managing Expectations\" and I ask myself, is it a good or bad idea to share your roadmap with your customers? In your experience, what are the pros and cons of doing this?"}
{"_id": "67489", "title": "What is \"lambda\" code?", "text": "I have recently heard people talk about code being \"lambda\". I have never heard of this phrase before. What does it mean?"}
{"_id": "216238", "title": "Where Are Multiple JUnit Test Methods Typically Placed in Code?", "text": "I've just read the Vogella JUnit tutorial and found it very helpful in understanding how to use JUnit. However, I'm a bit confused about what the convention is for placing multiple test methods in code. The tutorial only places one test method in a class, then describes how you can use a test suite to group multiple test classes together. Does this mean that it's common practice for each test class to only have one test method and then test suites are used to chain them together? Or was that just unintended and instead common practice is to put multiple test methods in a class?"}
{"_id": "136271", "title": "Enterprise scalable vs internet scalable, what is the meaning & differences?", "text": "While reading about Java EE applications, somewhere I have seen people saying they're enterprise scalable, I am confused as to what that really mean? Are Java web applications mainly written & suitable for building enterprise management tools, not for the high traffic websites of today's world, that need to scaled to a large internet population?"}
{"_id": "74968", "title": "How do you organize your MVC framework while supporting modules/plugins?", "text": "There are a two main codebase structures that I have seen when it comes to MVC frameworks. The problem is that they both seem to have an organisational bug that goes with them. **Standard MVC**               /controller     /model     /view      _Problem: No separation of related components (forum, blog, user, etc..)_ **Modular MVC**               /blog         /controller         /model         /view     /user         /controller         /model         /view     /forum         /controller         /model         /view      Picking the module-based system leaves you with a problem.   * Long names (Forum_Model_Forum = forum/model/forum.php) (Like Zend)   * File system searches using `is_file()` to find which folder has the forum model? (Like Kohana) **Are their any other MVC structures that work well when trying to separate different modules?** Are there benefits from these structures that I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "66755", "title": "Do Python programmers find the whitespace issue inconvenient?", "text": "Many programmers, upon first encountering Python, are immediately put off by the significance of whitespace. I've heard a variety of reasons that this is inconvenient, but I've never heard a complaint from a Python programmer. Of course, I haven't met a lot of Python programmers, as I have spent my career in the Java world. So my question is for those of you that have participated in a large Python project (more than 3 months, with Python being the primary language used): Did you find the whitespace issue to be inconvenient and continually annoying? Or was it a non-issue once you got in the flow? I'm not asking the question because I'm for or against Python, or for or against its use of whitespace. I happen to like Python, but I've never used it for anything big. Please don't provide speculations if you are not experienced in Python."}
{"_id": "188083", "title": "Are design principles important, and if so, why don't more people use them?", "text": "I am a developer who works for an in-house information communications technology (ICT) department. I am usually quite critical when looking over code that I have not written as I find time and time again that it does not follow principles like SOLID (single responsibility etc). I used to assume that it was because I worked in an in-house ICT department rather than an outsourced ICT service. However, I am now trying to integrate an internally developed app with a few third party apps developed by large software vendors. However, again the code does not seem to be very well written e.g. there are no interfaces and every method is public. I see it time and time again were developers create a bunch of classes and that's it (i.e., everything related to Sales goes in the Sales class, etc.) I don't want to sound like I am whining; I just wondered whether other developers see design principles as important. I wonder if I am too narrow minded."}
{"_id": "188082", "title": "How do ORM'S manage CRUD operations in multi thread environment", "text": "Suppose I have code which retrieves an object and modifies it and submits it via any ORM from a web application. Below is the pseudo code: First request               var objCust = _dbContext.Customers.Where(c=>c.CustomerId == \"ALFKI\").SingleOrDefault();     objCust.Address =\"test address 1\";     //and add some orders     _dbContext.SubmitChanges();       Second simultaneous request               var objCategory = _dbContext.Categories.Where(c=>c.CategoryId == 1).SingleOrDefault();     objCategoryName = \"test name\";     _dbContext.SubmitChanges();      How does the first request only grasp the changes done to customers and submit the changes. Is there any mechanism inbuilt in ORM's to track changes to entities per thread or request."}
{"_id": "72754", "title": "Does this status show a green signal?", "text": "I have done this static code analysis with Code Analyzer. Is it a green signal or should I improve my coding standards? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UVXFb.jpg)"}
{"_id": "72750", "title": "Git Project Dependencies on GitHub", "text": "I've written a PHP framework and a CMS on top of the framework. The CMS is dependent on the framework, but the framework exists as a self-contained folder within the CMS files. I'd like to maintain them as separate projects on GitHub, but I don't want to have the mess of updating the CMS project every time I update the framework. Ideally, I'd like to have the CMS somehow pull the framework files for inclusion into a predefined sub-directory rather than physically committing those files. Is this possible with Git/GitHub? If so, what do I need to know to make it work? Keep in mind that I'm at a very, very basic level of experience with Git - I can make repositories and commit using the Git plugin for Eclipse, connect to GitHub, and that's about it. I'm currently working solo on the projects, so I haven't had to learn much more about Git so far, but I'd like to open it up to others in the future and I want to make sure I have it right. Also, what should my ideal workflow be for projects with dependencies? Any tips on that subject would also greatly appreciated. If you need more info on my setup, just ask in the comments."}
{"_id": "177515", "title": "What follows after lexical analysis?", "text": "I'm working on a toy compiler (for some simple language like PL/0) and I have my lexer up and running. At this point I should start working on building the parse tree, but before I start I was wondering: How much information can one gather from just the string of tokens? Here's what I gathered so far:   1. One can already do syntax highlighting having only the list of tokens. Numbers and operators get coloured accordingly and keywords also.   2. Autoformatting (indenting) should also be possible. How? Specify for each token type how many white spaces or new line characters should follow it. Also when you print tokens modify an alignment variable (when the code printer reads \"{\" increment the alignment variable by 1, and decrement by 1 for \"}\". Whenever it starts printing on a new line the code printer will align according to this alignment variable)   3. In languages without nested subroutines one can get a complete list of subroutines and their signature. How? Just read what follows after the \"procedure\" or \"function\" keyword until you hit the first \")\" (this should work fine in a Pascal language with no nested subroutines)   4. In languages like Pascal you can even determine local variables and their types, as they are declared in a special place (ok, you can't handle initialization as well, but you can parse sequences like: \"var a, b, c: integer\")   5. Detection of recursive functions may also be possible, or even a graph representation of which subroutine calls who. If one can identify the body of a function then one can also search if there are any mentions of other function's names.   6. Gathering statistics about the code, like number of lines, instructions, subroutines EDIT: I clarified why I think some processes are possible. As I read comments and responses I realise that the answer depends very much on the language that I'm parsing."}
{"_id": "177514", "title": "CSS vs codebehind, if I have to do part of the style in codebehind, should I do all of it there?", "text": "I'm working with ASP.Net and trying to style an ImageButton. I tried to do this via CSS only to discover that for some reason, .Net writes out an inline style setting the border width to 0 automatically. This overrides the border width from CSS, so I have to set it manually in the codebehind. My question is, should I do all the styling in the codebehind to keep it all in one place, or only do the border width there and do the rest in a style sheet? For clarification, I mean all the styling _for that object_ not for the whole site."}
{"_id": "177516", "title": "Creating and assigning console.log a new object", "text": "I have seen code like this in several places:               (function() {         var method;         var noop = function noop() {};         var methods = [             'assert', 'clear', 'count', 'debug', 'dir', 'dirxml', 'error',             'exception', 'group', 'groupCollapsed', 'groupEnd', 'info', 'log',             'markTimeline', 'profile', 'profileEnd', 'table', 'time', 'timeEnd',             'timeStamp', 'trace', 'warn'         ];         var length = methods.length;         var console = (window.console = window.console || {});              while (length--) {             method = methods[length];                  // Only stub undefined methods.             if (!console[method]) {                 console[method] = noop;             }         }     }());      Specifically I am interested in this line of code               var console = (window.console = window.console || {});      Why are we creating a new `window.console` object if `window.console` is not defined ? So why are we setting `window.console={}`?"}
{"_id": "105876", "title": "Are there decent entry-level tutorials on debugging?", "text": "In the tags I frequent on Stack Overflow, a big chunk of questions _should_ be answered with some basic knowledge about how to debug things - ie., teaching the OP to fish - instead of giving a fix for the piece of code presented. Are there any good debugging tutorials for newbies, especially   * Basic debugging techniques - understanding a piece of code, finding the problem by walking through it step by step instead of posting on SO and saying \"it doesn't work\"   * How to debug simple PHP scripts (For situations like \"my POST variables aren't showing\", etc.)   * How to debug Ajax scripts (How to use Firebug to see what gets sent, etc.) but also other languages and platforms?"}
{"_id": "105875", "title": "Macbook pro for a C++ programmer?", "text": "I am a computer science student and I'm thinking of getting a new laptop. Is Macbook C++ programmer friendly? Does OSX have enough tools as in Linux for programming. Does working on a macbook hinter my growth as a C++ programmer. EDIT: I mainly use gedit, gdb, g++, meld, ddd (gdb front end), valgrind etc in Ubuntu Does OSX have equivalent softwares."}
{"_id": "105870", "title": "PHP as a scripting language", "text": "I have reasonable knowledge of PHP, Perl, and Bash. I use Perl for most text processing on my system (find, replace, filter output, etc). I use PHP for web development, allowing a user to view and interact with database data via the browser. I use Bash for quick and dirty scripts often to supplement the more complex Perl scripts. I'm a big believer of focusing on as few languages as possible (to get the job done) and becoming an expert in them. So the question is, why not use PHP for the common tasks that Perl (and Bash) are used? Are there good reasons (limitations or features) why PHP is mostly used for web development, while Perl and Bash are mostly used for \"offline\" \"scripting\"?"}
{"_id": "228561", "title": "Limitations of using Hyper-V Virtual Machine as .NET Development enviroment", "text": "I've been thinking of using a Hyper-V Machine as instead of physical computer for installing my .NET / Azure / Xamarin / ASP.NET / Windows Phone development tools. That way I could easily move from my desktop to my laptop when I need to develop something on the go. Are there any limitations in this scenario that I should be aware of? Thanks, Adrian"}
{"_id": "228563", "title": "how to check email address exist or not in php", "text": "I have tried a lot but could not find a way by which I will find if an email id exists or not. My problem is that I do not want to make visitor to email me with fake email Id. Is there any solution for this? I do not want to use smpt service as it send mail to solve this."}
{"_id": "187193", "title": "Which license for an open source project which may be, but is not intended to be, used as a bot in some apps?", "text": "I'm wondering if there is some license which I could put on my website on which I could publish an open-source application that potentially could be used for purposes of cheating in one game for smartphones. Now, I have to stress that the goal of the application is in no way cheating, so with this license I want to eliminate the possibility that the authors of the smartphone game (in which my bot could be used) could sue me if someone else starts using the application to get better at their game. I may be too paranoid, but with all the weird laws you just never know. I did a little research and came up with Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0), but was wondering whether any of you guys were ever in a similar situation, and what you did in that case? By the way, I did read and consider the moral implications of the possible app appearing on my site, so now I just need some license as stated in the question."}
{"_id": "187190", "title": "Do I include association links for Objects that only have method scope in UML class diagrams", "text": "For example I have a utility Class which contains a few constants (GCMConstants), this class is used in one method in the application. However as it is not a member of the Class it should not be modeled via an association link. Should I continue as is and not include a link or should I include one? I've checked my UML books but none of them seem to cover stuff like this."}
{"_id": "194901", "title": "Do Windows mail clients actually care about the MIME type of binary attachments?", "text": "...or, in other words: When sending a mail programmatically, do I really need to go through the hassle of setting the correct MIME type or can I just use `application/octet-stream`? The mail clients I tested all do \"the right thing\" based on the file extension, even if the MIME type is just the generic `application/octet- stream`, so why bother? I know that it is considered \"good practice\". I'm asking out of scientific curiosity, because I want to know if it makes a practical difference or not."}
{"_id": "202801", "title": "Purpose oriented user accounts on a single desktop?", "text": "# Starting point:   * I currently do development for Dynamics Ax, Android and an occasional dabble with Wordpress and Python.    * Soon, I'll start a project involving setting up WP on Google Apps Engine.    * Everything is, and should continue to, run from the same PC (running Linux Mint). # Issue: I'm afraid of botching/bogging down my setup due to tinkering/installing multiple runtimes/IDE's/SDK's/Services, so I was thinking of using multiple users, each purposed to handle the task at hand (web, Android etc) and making each user as inert as possible to one another. What I need to know is the following:   * Is this a good/feasible practice? The second closest thing to this using remote desktops connections, either to computers or to VM's, which I'd rather avoid.   * What about switching users? Can it be made seamless?   * Anything else I should know?  * * * # Update and clarification regarding VM's and whatnot: The reason I wish to avoid resorting to VM's is that I dislike the performance impact and sluggishness associated with it.   I also suspect it might add a layer of complexity I wish to avoid. This answer by Wyatt is interesting but I think it's only partly suited for requirements (web development for example). Also, in reference to the point made about system wide installs, there is a level compromise I should accept as experessed by this for example. This option suggested by 9000 is also enticing (more than VM's actually) and by no means do I intend to \"Juggle\" JVMs and whatnot, partly due to the reason mentioned before. Regarding complexity, I agree and would consider what was said, only from my experience I tend to pollute my work environment with SDKs and runtimes I tried and discarded, which would occasionally leave leftovers which cause issues throught the session. What I **really** want is a set of well defined, non virtualized sessions from which I can choose at my leisure and be mostly (to a reasonable extent) safe from affecting each session from the other. And what I'm really asking is if and how can this be done using user accounts."}
{"_id": "194904", "title": "Number of sites to build before trying to become a web developer?", "text": "Someone has asked me this question and I couldn't answer as I am not on the web part of development so I'm asking here. If one has just finished college and is trying to break through into web development/web-design a portfolio of already developed projects/sites seems to be essential to me for going to interviews. What would you say is a good number of individual sites to create for your portfolio before sending your CV and going to interviews, for a web developer position? Also what would be a good number of sites to design if you were aiming for a web designer position?"}
{"_id": "171825", "title": "How is time calculation performed by a computer?", "text": "I need to add a certain feature to a module in a given project regarding time calculation. For this specific case I'm using Java and reading through the documentation of the Date class I found out the time is calculated in milliseconds starting from January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT. I think it's safe to assume there is a similar \"starting date\" in other languages so I guess the specific implementation in Java doesn't matter. How is the time calculation performed by the computer? How does it know exactly how many milliseconds have passed from that given \"starting date and time\" to the current date and time?"}
{"_id": "233968", "title": "Iteratively building a Test Framework", "text": "(Upfront, I'm not a test or agile expert, just trying to push us to be better. If I'm wrong on anything I'd love your guy's opinions). So I've been pushing for us to become a real agile shop and less of a \"calling ad-hoc agile\" shop. So I'm iteratively trying to improve our process. I've found that its been good to slowly build towards \"doing it right\": I can get buy in for small changes, or large changes on their own. So we've got slow iterations (about a month) that I've been using to slowly fold more and more in. My personal goal is to get us to a process that support continuous integration: at that point I think we can do things like speed up our iterations at much lower cost. The next bit that I've sold management on that we need to improve is our testing. We've never had a real solid test strategy, so I'd like to start to build up our capabilities there. We've already introduced \"Test Driven Development\", using Google Test (unit test) framework, which has brought us very far. But these unit tests are not enough to test the system as a whole. We're supplementing this with our old way of testing, ad-hoc system and functional tests that are really specific to the project, that are rewritten every time, and that are not automated. To make matters worse, our functional and system tests are often more similar to characterization tasks than pass- fail tasks: our system/functional test tools need to be able to support advanced plotting and number crunching, which mean a lot of them are in Matlab _shudder_. From what I can tell, a good automated test system has two parts: the Test Framework (something akin to the roboframework, ect) that figures out what tests to run, calls those tests, orgamizes the results, ect...the thing that actually does the automation. That uses the Test Tool(s), the fixture that actually performs your test. I may be viewing this wrong, but the Test Framework is like a huge batch file, and the Test Tools are the tests. So I see two possible ways to go with \"what to do next\".   1. Implement (could be writing our own, though I'd prefer to acquire/modify) a Test Framework. Leave our ad-hoc system tests, but let the framework take over automation. The goal would to have a way to hit \"Test\" and have all the tests run.   2. Figure out a way that we can use to make Test Tools more efficiently and effectively. I'm not sure what the best way to go is here, or if any of the following matter:   * We do both windows and linux development, though usually not at the same time   * While I want to focus on C++, C with CMake, we also do C# and Matlab development. The ideal framework would support all of these, even if it is different tools.   * The \"testers\", \"test automators\", and \"developers\" are all going to be pulled from the same group of highly-competent developers (for now.)   * I need to support command-line executable and libraries now, but would like to support GUIs (QT and .NET) in the future. The scope of 2 seems HUGE, though doing 1 first seems like putting the cart before the horse. Do I have a semi-accurate picture of whats going on? I've read a few things that use Google Test as their test framework, but doesn't better fit the definition of test tool? Am I biting off more than I can chew?"}
{"_id": "189683", "title": "Why Have People Started Deeming it Necessary to Separate JS hooks from CSS hooks in HTML?", "text": "Edit: Point of clarificatioon, IDs and classes as separate hooks is just one form of the applied idea in question which is to never use the same hooks for CSS as you do in JS. I've also seen people want things like js-combo_box and css-combo_box as classes on the same element. This is one I've started running into more and more in recent years. People wanting to only use IDs for JS and classes for CSS. Or they don't want JS to touch classes and IDs at all and rely on things like HTML5 data-attributes hooks (which is and will probably remain the slowest way to actually find an element even in modern browsers). In 5+ years of occasionally heavy-duty/insane-environment client-side web development including one very large totally messed up e-commerce retail operation where HTML nobody was even working with would mutate because we had 200 offshore devs of varying levels code illiteracy (completely on the low end, not kidding) jumping up and down on the back end codebase with no source control, I've never run into an issue where JS and CSS targeting shared attributes in the HTML caused any kind of maintainability or ease of modification problem for me. I guess I'm wondering what is informing this perceived need and whether I'm missing something that comes up for a lot of people? Isn't HTML via selectors and the DOM API effectively the point of abstraction that ties everything together? Why would JS and CSS concerns sharing the same attributes there ever cause a problem?"}
{"_id": "189689", "title": "Should I read a chapter about Memory management if now a days we mostly use ARC?", "text": "I'm reading a book on Objective C, and I was wondering about 2 things:   1. Should I take the time currently to read a whole chapter on memory management?   2. If you are doing a really good job on manual management, can you get to better performance than using ARC?"}
{"_id": "56508", "title": "Where can I find fellow developers who are looking for help to create a startup?", "text": "Where can I find fellow developers who are looking for help to create a startup? Are there any collaboration websites whereby people pitch ideas and a group of people 'join' the project in an effort to create some kind of prototype? **Edit:** @Vitor Braga - Seriously i'm not looking to make money, just finding developers who are interested in making a trivial little app with someone else. **Edit:** It may be worthy to explain that I live in a remote area of Australia."}
{"_id": "92072", "title": "Putting a programming language on your resume?", "text": "How much experience do you need in a language before you can put it on your resume? There is one language I'm in proficient in (Java) which I would definately put on the resume but say I took I couple of semester courses in college which involved extensive programming in C or selftaught myself C# but have written no meaningful projects in it, can I put those languages on the resume without having the employer laugh at it or percieve it as resume inflation?"}
{"_id": "100348", "title": "Choosing between CL and Python for web development", "text": "I'm coming from a Java / PHP background and after I read this little essay by Paul Graham I started wondering about picking up a new language namely Common Lisp to speed up my work (I'm a web developer). I'm writing pet projects currently but I have some business plans for the future. Paul speaks about LISP in his essay as a \"Secret weapon\". I don't know if this statement is true after 10 years but I dipped my toes into a nice CL tutorial and it looks like that LISP may be superior for web development. Paul also mentions Python as a nice choice which I actually familiar with. My question is: which one should I choose for my future web projects? What I was thinking about:   * I'm not going to develop desktop applications so I can choose whatever language I prefer.   * python seems to have a very large community thus a mutch more libraries / frameworks compared to lisp   * I found out that lisp has some functionality (like macros) which cannot be found anywhere else   * I mostly work alone or with 1-2 other programmers but finding someone with lisp knowledge can be hard So what do you think?"}
{"_id": "131137", "title": "Research on software defects", "text": "There is a chapter in _\"Making Software: What really works and why we believe it\"_ By Andy Oram and Greg Wilson about software defects, and what metrics can be used to predict them. To summarize (from what I can remember), they explained that they used a C codebase that was open source and had a published defect tracking history. They used a variety of well known metrics to see what was best at predicting the presence of defects. The first metric that they started with was lines of code (minus comments), which showed a correlation to defects (.i.e. as LOC increase so do defects). They did the same for a variety of other metrics (don't remember what off the top of my head) and ultimately concluded that more complex metrics were not significantly better at predicting defects than simple LOC count. It would be easy to infer from this that choosing a less verbose language (a dynamic language?) will result in less lines of code and thus less defects. But the research in _\"Making Software\"_ did not discuss the effect of language choice on defects, or on the class of defects. For example, perhaps a java program can be rewritten in clojure (or scala, or groovy, or...) resulting in more than 10x LOC savings. And you might infer 10x less defects because of that. But is it possible that the concise language, while less verbose, is more prone to programmer errors (relative to the more verbose language)? Or, that defects written in the less verbose language are 10x harder to find and fix? The research in _\"Making Software\"_ was a fine start, but it left me wanting more. Is there anything published on this topic?"}
{"_id": "187221", "title": "Strategy for keeping up with (Python) language changes", "text": "## Writing code that will still run years from now Programming languages change. Libraries change. Some code from 5, 10, or even 20 years ago might still run and produce expected results, whereas some code from 2 years might fail with a syntax error. This is partly inevitable, since languages evolve (at least, most do). Developers have a responsibility to maintain their code. But sometimes, stability is an important requirement in production code, and code should simply run for 10 years without the need for someone going through the code every year to adapt it for language changes. Or I might have small scripts, for example for scientific data analysis, that I need to revisit after not touching them for years. For example, at meteorological offices there is a lot of operational Fortran code even for non-speed-essential parts, and code stability is one of the reasons. I've heard fear for instability is one of the objects they have against moving to Python (apart from language inertia of course; it's only possible for new code not dependent on old code). Of course, one strategy for stable code is to freeze the entire operating system. But that is not always feasible. I'm using Python as on example, but the issue is not limited to Python in particular. ## Documents on Python compatibility issues In the case of Python, there are several documents outlining policy for backward-incompatible changes. ### PEP-5 According to PEP 5: > There must be at least a one-year transition period between the release of > the transitional version of Python and the release of the backwards > incompatible version. Users will have at least a year to test their programs > and migrate them from use of the deprecated construct to the alternative > one. Personally, I consider that one year is rather short. It means I might write some code, and 1\u00bd years from now it won't run anymore. ### PEP 291 PEP 291 contains an incomplete lists of guidelines of things that should be avoided in order to maintain backward compatibility. However, it relates only to Python 2.x. As Python 2.7 is the final release in the 2.x series and Python 2.7 is bugfix-only, this PEP is now only of historical interest. ### PEP 387 There is also PEP 387 on backward-incompatible changes. PEP 387 is a draft and not official policy. In June 2009, this was discussed on the Python-ideas mailing-list. Part of the discussion focussed on how developers can write code that is robust against language changes. One post listed some advice on what _not_ to do: > Along with this there are several rules you can infer that are probably true > most of the time: don't call stuff starting with `\"_\"`, don't monkey- patch > anything, don't use dynamic class replacement on objects from classes other > than your own, don't depend on the depth of inheritance hierarchies (for > example, no `\".__bases__[0].__bases__[0]\"`), make sure your tests run > without producing any DeprecationWarnings, be mindful of potential namespace > conflicts when adding attributes to classes that inherit from other > libraries. I don't think all these things are written down in one place > though. In addition, there were some points about \"mine fields\" (new features likely to change) and \"frozen areas\" (very sold APIs virtually guaranteed not to change). Quoting Antoine Pitrou: > I think the \"frozen area\" should be defined positively (explicit public APIs > and explicitly guaranteed behaviour) rather than negatively (an explicit > \"mine field\"). Otherwise, we will forget to put some important things in the > minefield and get bitten later when we need to change those things in a > backwards-incompatible way. There doesn't seem to be any conclusion from this thread, but it gets pretty close to the core of what I'm looking for. The thread is almost four years old, so perhaps the situation has changed or improved. What kind of code is likely to survive, and what kind of code is more fragile? ### Porting guidelines In addition to the documents outlined above, each Python version comes with a porting guideline: porting to Python 3.2, porting to Python 3.3, etc. ### Useful compatibility PEP 3151 introduced me to the concept of _useful compatibility_. In my own words, this boils down to the idea that only if code is carefully written language developers need to be careful to maintain compatibility. It doesn't really define _useful compatibility_ , but I think it's similar to the ideas I quoted from the PEP 387 discussion above. ## From the programmers' point of view As a programmer, I know that Python will change in the future and that people \u2014 most notably myself \u2014 will try to run my code perhaps several years from now in a Python version that is one, two, or perhaps three minor versions up. Not everything will be compatible, and in fact it's easy to come up with code that will fail (I once encountered code stating `if sys.version[:3] != '2.3': print 'Wrong version, exiting'`). What I'm looking for is a set of guidelines on _what to do and what_ **not** _to do_ to enhance the chances that my code will still run unaltered in the future. Are there any such guidelines? **How do I write Python code that will still run in the future?** My question relates both to the Python core, to its standard library, but also to commonly used add-on libraries, in particular `numpy`, `scipy`, `matplotlib`. * * * **EDIT** : So far, two of the answers relate to python2 vs. python3. This is not what I mean. I know about tools to migrate from Python2 to Python3. My question relates to language changes _yet to come_. We can do better than a _crystal ball_ in finding coding guidelines that are more stable. For example:   * `import module` is more future-proof than `from module import *`, because the latter can break code if `module` grows one or more new functions/classes.   * Using undocumented methods may be less future-proof than using documented methods, as something being undocumented may be a sign of something being not stable yet. It's this kind of practical coding advices that I'm after. Since it's about present\u2192future, we can limit ourselves to Python3, because Python2 is not going to change anymore."}
{"_id": "110933", "title": "How to determine the levels of abstraction", "text": "I was reading a book today called \"Clean code\" and I came across a paragraph were the author was talking about the levels of abstraction per a function, he classified some code as low/intermediate/high level of abstraction. My question is what is the criteria for determining the level of abstraction? I quote the paragraph from the book: > In order to make sure our functions are doing \u201cone thing,\u201d we need to make > sure that the statements within our function are all at the same level of > abstraction. It is easy to see how Listing 3-1 violates this rule. There are > concepts in there that are at a very high level of abstraction, such as > getHtml(); others that are at an intermediate level of abstraction, such as: > String pagePathName = PathParser.render(pagePath); and still others that are > remarkably low level, such as: .append(\"\\n\")."}
{"_id": "110936", "title": "What are the advantages of prototype-based OOP over class-based OOP?", "text": "When I first started programming Javascript after primarily dealing with OOP in context of class-based languages, I was left confused as to why prototype- based OOP would ever be preferred to class-based OOP.   1. What are the structural advantages to using prototype-based OOP, if any? (e.g. Would we expect it to be faster or less memory intensive in certain applications?)   2. What are the advantages from a coder's perspective? (e.g. Is it easier to code certain applications or extend other people's code using prototyping?) Please don't look at this question as a question about Javascript in particular (which has had many faults over the years that are completely unrelated to prototyping). Instead, please look at it in context of the theoretical advantages of prototyping vs classes. Thank you."}
{"_id": "187227", "title": "Advice on App/Service Architecture", "text": "I'm starting a project that will have a web front end for the users coupled with a database. There will then be a stand-alone service running that will, on a specified interval, poll an API and update the database with the changes it found. What I need advice on is how the service should be setup. When a user creates an account on the site, I\"ll need to create a \"hook\" in the service that will then go poll the API for that specific user. I looked at building the service using NodeJS because I could use the non- blocking structure of it along with callbacks then the API returns data that needs to be reflected in the database. I don't know how I will be able to create more monitors when a user creates an account since it's already running. Can NodeJS run in a continuous loop as as service? I am familiar with .Net and could use a Windows Service, but how would that scale with polling when the user numbers grow?"}
{"_id": "187229", "title": "Text Editor Document Model", "text": "I am working on a text editor in javascript. I have created the front end and i need to prototype a backend. I need to model the structure of the document using this as hierarchy: Character , Word , Tag , Document I am trying to create objects based on this hierarchy. For example: Characters are represented a linked list. Word are pointers to the first and last characters. Tags are another linked list of words, and a document is a collection of words and tags. I am was wondering if anyone has a better suggestion to model these relationships as classes. I receive a character from the keyboard and i need to store this as an object in my document model. thanks"}
{"_id": "50627", "title": "How do you get Business owners to buy off on properly requested product changes", "text": "I work for an in house IT shop. We use a scrum-like system. What we are struggling with now is getting the business owners to follow the process. They all like it in concept until they want something, then the process is for the other people. How do you convince them that following the process will give them more consistent results then just throwing a grenade over the fence and saying, \"make it work\"."}
{"_id": "193620", "title": "How to deal with warnings in a legacy project", "text": "I work on a C++ project that generates bajillions of warnings. Most of the warnings appeared after the code was written:   * Initially the project used Visual C++ 8, soon switching to 9, but there is little difference in the generated warnings. Warnings were either fixed or silenced, so there were no warnings then.   * Then a 64-bit target was added. It generated a huge amount of warnings, mainly because of sloppy use of types (e.g. `unsigned` vs. `size_t`). No one bothered, or had time, to fix them once the code worked for the purpose.   * Then support for other platforms using GCC (4.5 and 4.6, some 4.4 initially) was added. GCC is much more picky, so it generated many more warnings. Again nobody bothered, or had time, to fix them. This was complicated by the fact that GCC didn't have a pragma to silence a warning in particular bit of code until 4.5, and according to the documentation it is still not what one would need.   * In the mean time some deprecated warnings popped up. So now we have a project generating thousands of warnings. And I can't even say from how many places, since even `.cpp` files are compiled several times by different compilers and warnings in headers get printed over and over. Is there a best practice for cleaning up something like that? Or at least some positive experience dealing with it?"}
{"_id": "141367", "title": "How to build a web service to detect content change(s) at an external website?", "text": "I'm researching ways to build a web service to periodically traverse a predetermined list of web pages (of another external website) to detect if a page's content has changed from   1. editing of the page, and   2. deletion of the page. The end goal is to have this web service post push-notification events to mobile devices. FYI, I've searched and read \"Questions with similar titles\" here. Thank you for sharing your answers."}
{"_id": "184556", "title": "How to implement syntax sugar in OO", "text": "### The Problem I regularly find myself writing the same code over and over again. For example if I want a value from a nested array structure I end up writing something like this:               $config = function_to_get_nested_array();     $node = $config;     foreach(array('vendor','product','config','leave') as $index => $key){         if(! isset($node[$key])){           //throw exception         }         $node = $node[$key];     }      I would prefer to have something like               $config = function_to_get_nested_array();     $node = get_node($config, 'vendor/product/config/leave');      But how do I implement it? ### Possible Solutions   1. I could implement a function as I did above. _BUT_ my packages heavily rely on autoloading and are purely OO. Right now I just have to clone an submodule in the right directory and everything works fine.   2. I could implement this where I need it. _BUT_ this means I have to implement it countless times in independent projects.   3. I could use a trait, if I was not stuck with PHP 5.3. Not an option for me.   4. I could implement a static service provider.  For various reasons static classes and methods are usually a bad choice, but I am tempted to do so in this case.               use vendor\\product\\helpers\\ArrayTree as Tree     ...     $config = function_to_get_nested_array();     $node = Tree::getNode($config, 'vendor/product/config/leave');      Looks _very_ tempting, because it supports autoloading and namespaces. ### The Question Is there a better solution to implement this kind of helper functions?"}
{"_id": "184554", "title": "Node.js app private modules. Where to put them?", "text": "The situation would be: I develop 2 projects in my Node.js development environment, P1 and P2. P1 required the development of two simple modules, mod1 and mod2, which are stored in `P1/lib`. Each one of this modules resolves find their external dependencies in `P1/node_modules`. Necessary dependencies for P1 have been installed in this folder via npm. Now image we want to reuse mod1 in the other proyect P2, here's were my doubts come up. I could...   * Just copy mod1 to `P2/lib`. Replication, so I don't even consider this option.   * From P2, reference mod1 from P1: `require($PROJECTS_DIR + '/P1/lib/mod1')`. Not a good option, this way P2 would depend on P1.    * Put mod1 into a higher level directory or using NODE_PATH, so that P1 and P2 can resolve it by just doint `require('mod1')`. However, when deploying, I should also deploy this higher level directory which seems a bit dirty.   * I would like to treat mod1 as a npm module, so it can be easily installed in any project or environment, However, in this particular case, I can't publish the module to npm cause is too project-specific. I could create a private npm repository and put mod1 inside. The gist of this would be to set it up in order to be accessed also from the production envirnoment. Is it worth it?   * What about putting it all together in `node_modules`? (external depencencies and my own libraries). That would be great since modules can be just required like `require('module'). But it also seems quite dirty.   * Not sure how `npm link` would work when deploying. It creates a symbolic link, which is not followed when commiting code via Git or SVN. If I run `npm install` in production, will it also install the linked module? None of the above quite satisfies me. I don't know if one of these is suitable, or you guys have other suggestions, but, are there any preferred ways to structure own **private** libraries so that they can be easily reused in other projects?"}
{"_id": "141360", "title": "handling multiple interviews / offers", "text": "What's the best way to handle a situation where you have, or expect to have multiple offers? The ideal situation is that your several offers come in about the same time, and you make a choice. this is not how it happens though. You may have an offer, and several near-final interviews lined up for the following days or weeks. One way to handle it would be to ask for a longer time to decide on the first offers you receive. 2 weeks? This gives time to rush the rest of the things you have going through to an end. i question whether asking for 2 weeks to decide is reasonable though. My guess is that an employer would see through that and force your hand. Another way to handle it would be to accept the first offer, and ask for a reasonable period before your start date, then simply \"quit\" the first position before you ever start if something better comes along. On one hand, employment is at-will, and employers exercise this fact regularly. On the other hand, it seems morally the wrong thing, and has the potential to burn some bridges. And of course the last option is to simply evaluate each offer in isolation, and accept or reject within the given time frame. any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "189352", "title": "SQL W/ hibernate vs in-memory solution", "text": "I recently posted a question here: Methods to share memory or state across JVMs? and appreciate the answers. However, as I read the code and learned the system better I learned I was over complicating the problem. Only one of the JVM's really care about the dynamic data so there is no need to pass dynamic data across memory boundries. However, we still have a problem that they are manually maintaining state between in-memory and sql; the manual code isn't perfect and doesn't protect against stale data, data races, etc etc and I want to remove it entirely one way or another so I can feel more secure about the overal stability. Since only one JVM cares about dynamic data, and the dynamic data can be regenerated at bootup each time (with a small time penalty to do so) my inclination is to remove all the dynamic data from sql and just store everything in memory; why over complicate anything? Howver, they liked the sql as a debugging tool. This system is developed agile, it's on a live system but bugs and errors do come up due to the agile nature. When that happens they ssh to the live system and debug it on the fly; often by viewing the database. The SQL allows them to see the actual routes and pathing that are being used. They can also see when a route looks wrong, change it, then restart the module so that the fixed path is loaded into memory and used from then on. They like this ability to quickly fix bad routes don't want to lose it. There is now talk of keeping the database but backing it with hybernate to avoid the nightmare of trying to keep JVM and sql sychronized manually. There are some minor other gaines, but this is primarily so they can keep the sql and try to use it as a debug tool. Something feels wrong about all of this, but I'm not entierly certain WHAT is so wrong about it. If we droped the dynamic sql data I could partially emulate what they want by adding messages to print out the graph as it is, or to modify a graph on the fly, but obviously each message takes a bit of time to write. Does keeping SQL rather then trying to write messages to allow changing of memory on the fly make sense? I think using hibernate may make it a little harder to write our objects we use for generating and maintaining paths, having to keep the structor similar to a SQL database and all. But I think my real issue is the idea of pushing changes to our in-memory state by changing our database. That just feels dangerous to me; in much the same way improper encapsulation feels wrong. I don't think I like the idea of fixing a broken route by just manually changing the route in sql feels safe. But I don't know how to articulate why this all feels wrong. Maybe I should be suggesting a better debugging solution? So, am i right to worry or is hibernate really the best approch?"}
{"_id": "189354", "title": "IEC 62304 compliant Architecture definition", "text": "I am currently tasked with creating a software architecture for compliance with IEC 62304. These regulations are notoriously vague, and do not provide any real substance as to what is required for a \"software architecture\". The standard states > The manufacturer shall transform the requirements for the medical device > software into a documented architecture that describes the software's > structure and identifies software items. Now I went to an applied computer science school, so the vast majority of my teachings were around how to actually write code and working on projects, so as far as I can remember, we never covered anything involving creating software architecture diagrams. I've already basically written all of the software, but for regulatory submission purposes I need to create this documentation for the project. So in short my question is this: What exactly does a \"software architecture\" consist of?"}
{"_id": "184558", "title": "How to debug through a swing based application effectively", "text": "I am trying to understand how a radio button is created in a Dynamic field by reading from an XML using Netbeans 7.0. I know the radio button is created because of the XML being read from database, but I cannot see **how** the radio button is created. Also, since I don't know where to place the break points, I can't see how I would debug the creation of components on the Dynamic Editor. Maybe I am trying a wrong approach or something, so how do I efficiently debug an application like this?"}
{"_id": "77707", "title": "Are iframes a design smell?", "text": "We have some pretty old, clunky .Net 1.1 apps in our business that - rather than be forcably upgraded - just get an iFrame added so that new functions can be dropped in. It's become such a well-known option that many management staff who don't really have a great deal of technical knowledge or experience suggest just throwing an iframe on a page as if that would be the only way to solve the problem. I don't have an issue with the iframe element per se if it's absolutely necessary, but it does seem that it's a very convenient tool for something that might be better achieved with a little more thought and consideration for design. Are iframes the web design equivalent of a code smell?"}
{"_id": "165376", "title": "Web Page Execution Internals", "text": "My question is what is the subject area that covers web page execution/loading. I am looking to purchase a book by subject area that covers when things execute or load in a web page, whether it's straight html, html and Javascript, or a PHP page. Is that topic covered by a detailed html book, or should I expect to find information like that in a JavaScript of PHP book? I understand that PHP and Perl execute on the server and that Javascript is client side, and I know there is a lot of on-line documentation describing `<html>, <head>, <body>`, and so on. I'm just wondering what subject area a book would be in to cover all that, not a discussion of the best book or someone's favorite book, but the subject area."}
{"_id": "165375", "title": "Windows driver signing", "text": "My company is developing driver for our hardware. Now I need to sign my driver for 32 and 64 bit platforms. Please tell, now I need to buy Authenticode certificate, right? What CA to use? DigiCert?   GlobalSign? ( http://www.sslshopper.com/microsoft-authenticode- certificates.html )   Symantec? ( http://www.symantec.com/verisign/code-signing/microsoft- authenticode ) What is the difference between this CA offers? I need to use tools from WDK?"}
{"_id": "231759", "title": "How to locate source code that implemented a certain feature?", "text": "I was wondering what are some techniques to locate which code implemented a specific feature, on a desktop application. I am a junior developer, with only professional programming experience lying around web programming. In the Web it is easier to do that. For example, you \"inspect\" a button with the browser tools, and you can see what is being done when you click it. And then, presuming you have the full source code, you can drill down the hierarchy of the calls. But how do you do this in desktop applications? At least, without having to dive into the full codebase?"}
{"_id": "165379", "title": "What norms/standards should I follow when writing a functional spec?", "text": "I would like to know what documents (ISO?) should I follow when I write a functional specification. Or what should designers follow when creating the system design? I was told that there was a progress in last years but was not told what the progress was in (college professor). Thank you EDIT: I do not speak about document content etc. but about standards for capturing requirements, for business analysis."}
{"_id": "82743", "title": "RESTful reference representations - semantic link vs uri", "text": "We're designing a RESTful API to open up our customer's account information. We have representations that contain references to other resources related to the current resource. This is from a number of best practices we were able to find in public APIs as well as published materials. The representations can be either XML or JSON. For example for an account resource we would have references to the account's addresses and for a paginated list resource, we would have references to the first, next, and previous pages. The API was first designed using semantic links `<link title=\"\" rel=\"\" href=\"\" />` as described in an O'Reilly book and used in APIs by Netflix and Google. When it came time for our QA engineers to write the automation suite, they had problems deserializing the links. We've now suggested simpler uri string elements which have been used in APIs by Facebook and Twitter. Our QA enginners have since solved their deserialization issues, but I still have a concern of the ease of use of the current API spec with semantic links. Our API will primarily be consumed by our customers and some third-party partnerships and we've gone to REST because the previous XML-RPC API was too difficult for our consumers. tl;dr; Question:   ### Has anyone who has implemented a semantic link representation experienced consumer issues with the difficulty? * * * Update (6/21): I've decided to stay with semantic links and hope that the confusion was an edge case. I'll try to remember to answer the question with our experiences once the API is live with some consumers. * * * Edit: add examples Semantic Account JSON:               {         \"username\": \"paul\",         \"links\": [             {                 \"title\": \"addresses\",                 \"rel\": \"related\",                 \"href\": \"http://example.com/account/paul/addresses\"             },             {                 \"title\": \"history\",                 \"rel\": \"related\",                 \"href\": \"http://example.com/account/paul/history\"             }         ]     }      Semantic Account XML:               <account>         <username>paul</username>         <link title=\"addresses\" rel=\"related\" href=\"http://example.com/account/paul/addresses\" />         <link title=\"history\" rel=\"related\" href=\"http://example.com/account/paul/history\" />     </account>      Simple Account JSON:               {         \"username\": \"paul\",         \"addresses\": \"http://example.com/account/paul/addresses\"         \"history\": \"http://example.com/account/paul/history\"     }      Simple Account XML:               <account>         <username>paul</username>         <addresses>http://example.com/account/paul/addresses</addresses>         <history>http://example.com/account/paul/history</history>     </account>"}
{"_id": "205756", "title": "Am I a total misfit for Programming or is it Corporate Drama?", "text": "My background: Computer Science Engineer with around 4 and half years of experience as a programmer. In the last one year I have changed 4 programming jobs and it includes companies of size both big and small and both product and service based and in the end I have quit all four jobs. The following are some common issues that I face and how can I improve my situation in the next job?   1. Experienced programmers are expected to get on board and start implementing features even when I haven't fully seen how many classes are in play. Of course I do understand being experienced I cant take a long time to get hold of the project but literally asked in the first few weeks to start giving status updates.   2. Project managers almost always say or at least claim that they have been coders from a different technology sending out 2 messages at the same time. One being that they too have done programming in the past and second one that they cannot really help me out with the current project's technical problems.   3. The big challenge the project is currently going through is directly thrown at the new comer. Although new comer is not expected to solve it straight off but at least is expected to give plausible solution which the original team is struggling with for I don't know how long.    4. Programming is treated as though people just have solutions right off the head and the fact that almost everything in software development needs lot of research is completely ignored.   5. One more major common observation is that every project is somehow complex in its design and the code is slightly messy to begin with . If it is pointed out that the project needs redesign and cannot continue like a POC, it is often perceived by managers as though I am an incapable resource when design change was a must for the survival of the software itself . Most managers are simply not interested in hearing No as an answer for anything and they just want some hacking done so that they can report progress to their senior management.    6. Overall I found that all the four jobs felt like the same sweat shop with different people with almost the same kind of complexity and stress. While talking to other team mates about the way I feel, they tell me that's just the way it is and we have to put up with it. I was looking forward for some suggestions on how I can improve my current situation and also if changing career path to management might help?"}
{"_id": "135722", "title": "Getting and maintaining data from a large number of sources on the web", "text": "For the sake of an exercice I want to aggregate price listings with prices coming from a series of web sites in a structured form (XML, JSON...). If I have control on both sides how can I go about making price updates the most efficient possible? Edit: To clarify, I'm looking for a more efficient approach then having a script or application pull in price lists in their entirety from all sources for updates."}
{"_id": "135724", "title": "Separating data access in ASP.NET MVC", "text": "I want to make sure I'm following industry standards and best practices with my first real crack at MVC. In this case, it's ASP.NET MVC, using C#. I will be using Entity Framework 4.1 for my model, with code-first objects (the database already exists), so there will be a DBContext object for retrieving data from the database. In the demos I've gone through on the asp.net website, controllers have data access code in them. This doesn't seem right to me, especially when following the DRY (don't repeat yourself) practices. For example, let's say I am writing a web application to be used in a public library, and I have a controller for creating, updating, and deleting books in a catalog. Several of the actions may take an ISBN and need want to return a \"Book\" object (note this is probably not 100% valid code):               public class BookController : Controller     {         LibraryDBContext _db = new LibraryDBContext();              public ActionResult Details(String ISBNtoGet)         {             Book currentBook = _db.Books.Single(b => b.ISBN == ISBNtoGet);             return View(currentBook);         }              public ActionResult Edit(String ISBNtoGet)         {             Book currentBook = _db.Books.Single(b => b.ISBN == ISBNtoGet);             return View(currentBook);         }     }      Instead, _should_ I actually have a method in my db context object to return one Book? That seems like it is a better separation to me, and helps promote DRY, because I might need to get a Book object by ISBN somewhere else in my web application.               public partial class LibraryDBContext: DBContext     {         public Book GetBookByISBN(String ISBNtoGet)         {             return Books.Single(b => b.ISBN == ISBNtoGet);         }     }          public class BookController : Controller     {         LibraryDBContext _db = new LibraryDBContext();              public ActionResult Details(String ISBNtoGet)         {             return View(_db.GetBookByISBN(ISBNtoGet));         }              public ActionResult Edit(ByVal ISBNtoGet as String)         {             return View(_db.GetBookByISBN(ISBNtoGet));         }     }      Is this a valid set of rules to follow in the coding of my application? Or, I guess a more subjective question would be: \"is this the right way to do it?\""}
{"_id": "141093", "title": "Best approach for a database of long strings", "text": "I need to store questions and answers in a database. The questions will be one to two sentences, but the answers will be long, at least a paragraph, likely more. The only way I know about to do this right now is an SQL database. However, I don't feel like this is a good solution because as far as I've seen, these databases aren't used for data of this type or size. Is this the correct way to go or is there a better way to store this data? Is there a better way than storing raw strings?"}
{"_id": "75709", "title": "Delphi Conversion to Prism?", "text": "At my office, we are about to embark on an epic journey of converting an old Delphi 5 application to something more modern. One of our options is to convert to Delphi Prism, but we want to see what options are available to help us. So far, all I've found is Oxidizer (last worked on 2 years ago). Are there any other options for helping us convert reasonably quickly to Prism? Thanks."}
{"_id": "249708", "title": "Design Pattern : Static Array/List in Class Object", "text": "I'm a CS alumni, but we didn't learn much by the way of OOP, or Design Patterns. I've heard the phrase C with iostreams and thought it fitting. Anyway that's besides the point. I am just curious about what I perceive would be a very simple design pattern. Have any of you played the game Starcraft? You know how you can select/deselect units? Back to that in a second. Suppose I have a Unit class, and I wanted it to keep track of all the units that were selected. I had the idea that I could create a static list/arrray inside the Unit class, and the units themselves could add or remove themselves from the array as they were selected/deselected. That's just one example, there could be other applications of this \"pattern\". Say you wanted to maintain a list of visible \"tabs\" in a web browser or w/e, you could have them add a reference to themselves in a a static array in the class. The idea is that you could just call Unit.GetSelected() and get a pointer/reference to all of the \"selected\" or \"opened\" units/tabs. I am aware that there are other maybe better ways of solving these problems, but that is also besides the point. What would this pattern be called?"}
{"_id": "249707", "title": "Web Services of System Integration", "text": "I have been assigned to a system integration project. However, I do not understand part of the integration implementation architecture. For example, I have a passport scanner connected to a Windows Client application constructed in C++. The client application would pass the passport picture, name, address etc, (once the passport scanning is complete) to a WPF application. I'm not sure whether the communication between both system should be tie to a Web Services, or there is some other way to do so? If the Web Services proves to be the only solution, which party is the Web Service provider and requester? In my own perspective, the WPF application should becomes the Web Service requester. Meanwhile, the Scanner Client Application act as a Web Service provider would going to host the Web Services. However, in Visual Studio there is no way to add the WCF service file to the C++ Client Application project. Is there anyone can enlighten me about this?"}
{"_id": "130266", "title": "what techniques can be used to implement Facebook's People You May Know feature?", "text": "I'm curious to learn from a technical perspective what techniques can be used to make recommendations for e.g. Facebook's \"People You May Know\" (what algorithm do they use, etc.)? One of the things that come to my mind is the number of mutual friends. Other than this, what are the different parameters they use to make suggestions?"}
{"_id": "130267", "title": "What programming language to choose for this XML and data processing task?", "text": "I currently code in PHP. Recently I've been working on a project using PHP and Symfony that:   1. reads large XML files (lots of DOM parsing/reading),   2. converts large XML files to large arrays,   3. merges 2 large arrays (lots of array sorting),   4. takes the 2 large arrays and turns them into a large CSV file. I finished it in PHP but now it is kind of memory intensive and requires about 8-15 seconds to run. So now I have the following options and need help choosing one:   1. Try rewriting/refactoring it using better methods in PHP   2. Choose a different programming language (I have been wanting to learn one, possibly another language processes these things a lot faster?)   3. Do 1 or 2 and additionally set up something to be constantly reading xml files and write them to MongoDB documents to serve clients from the database instead of scrapping the data.  I am inclined to do 2 or 3 (using a different language), since I am sure there is another language that handles these kind of tasks much faster (e.g Python, C etc.). It's just that I am not sure which."}
{"_id": "130261", "title": "UUID collisions", "text": "Has anybody done any real research on the probability of UUID collisions, especially with version 4 (random) UUIDs, given that the random number generators we use aren't truly random and that we might have dozens or hundreds of identical machines running the same code generating UUIDs? My co-workers consider testing for UUID collision to be a complete waste of time, but I always put in code to catch a duplicate key exception from the database and try again with a new UUID. But that's not going to solve the problem if the UUID comes from another process and refers to a real object."}
{"_id": "93306", "title": "Getting started with system programming?", "text": "Ever since I discovered programming five years ago, I've done a lot of things. I've learned numerous programming languages and technologies and tried out many interesting things. I've written games, both console and with graphics, console and windowed applications that run in the desktop, CRUD web applications, my own (crappy) PHP XML-based flat file database. In addition to Web and desktop, I've tried mobile development with Android but didn't enjoy it, so I stopped that. I recently finished a Web project of mine and am learning functional programming right now (Haskell). But I have never dabbled into system programming before. The idea of building software (I'm not even sure if that's the correct terminology to use for it) at a low level that interacts with the operating system seems interesting. The problem is, I'm not sure how exactly to get started, and need more examples of what I do with this. Should I start by learning the Win32 API? I know some C++ as I've used it to make quite a few console apps and games, but haven't used it in a few years. Is that the way to go? Also, what about C? I am planning to learn some more about C (using the K&R book) before the summer ends and college starts. I want to get a good head start as a college freshman with a solid programming background."}
{"_id": "93302", "title": "Spending too much time debugging", "text": "Yesterday, I rolled out a v1.0 release of a Web project I've spent about 6 weeks working on (on and off, that is). I haven't made any exact records of my time, but according to my experiences I would estimate that out of all the time I spent programming, half of it was spent debugging. I estimate that to be about a good 15-20 hours spend debugging, which to me is precious time that could have better been spent writing new code or finishing the project earlier. It also especially doesn't help that I'll be a freshman in college in 5 weeks. The thing is, I feel bad for spending all that time debugging. All that time spent debugging makes me realize that I made some pretty stupid mistakes while I was developing my project, mistakes that cost me a damn good amount of time to fix. How can I prevent this from happening in the future? I don't want to spend 50% of my time debugging, I'd rather spend 10% debugging and the rest writing new code. What are some techniques I can try to help me reach this goal?"}
{"_id": "128492", "title": "Should unit tests be stored in the repository?", "text": "I'm a growing programmer who's finally putting unit testing into practice for a library that I'm storing on GitHub. It occurred to me that I might include the test suites in the repo, but as I look around at other projects, the inclusion of tests seems hit-or-miss. Is this considered bad form? Is the idea that users are only interested in the working code and that they'll test in their own framework anyway?"}
{"_id": "104048", "title": "What defines robust code?", "text": "My professor keeps referring to this Java example when he speaks of \"robust\" code:               if (var == true) {         ...     } else if (var == false) {         ...     } else {         ...     }      He claims that \"robust code\" means that your program takes into account all possibilities, and that there is no such thing as an error - all situations are handled by the code and result in valid state, hence the \"else\". I am doubtful, however. If the variable is a boolean, what is the point of checking a third state when a third state is logically impossible? \"Having no such thing as an error\" seems ridiculous as well; even Google applications show errors directly to the user instead of swallowing them up silently or somehow considering them as valid state. And it's good - I like knowing when something goes wrong. And it seems quite the claim to say an application would never have any errors. So what is the _actual_ definition of \"robust code\"?"}
{"_id": "86510", "title": "Why not XHTML5?", "text": "So, HTML5 is the Big Step Forward, I'm told. The last step forward we took that I'm aware of was the introduction of XHTML. The advantages were obvious: simplicity, strictness, the ability to use standard XML parsers and generators to work with web pages, and so on. How strange and frustrating, then, that HTML5 rolls all that back: once again we're working with a non-standard syntax; once again, we have to deal with historical baggage and parsing complexity; once again we can't use our standard XML libraries, parsers, generators, or transformers; and all the advantages introduced by XML (extensibility, namespaces, standardization, and so on), that the W3C spent a decade pushing for good reasons, are lost. Fine, we have XHTML5, but it seems like it has not gained popularity like the HTML5 encoding has. See this SO question, for example. Even the HTML5 specification says that HTML5, not XHTML5, \"is the format suggested for most authors.\" Do I have my facts wrong? Otherwise, why am I the only one that feels this way? Why are people choosing HTML5 over XHTML5?"}
{"_id": "170880", "title": "Are XML Comments Necessary Documentation?", "text": "I used to be a fan of requiring XML comments for documentation. I've since changed my mind for two main reasons: >   1. Like good code, methods should be self-explanatory. >   2. In practice, most XML comments are useless noise that provide no > additional value. > Many times we simply use GhostDoc to generate generic comments, and this is what I mean by useless noise:                   /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the unit of measure.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The unit of measure.         /// </value>         public string UnitOfMeasure { get; set; }      To me, that's obvious. Having said that, if there were special instructions to include, then we should absolutely use XML comments. I like this excerpt from this article: > Sometimes, you will need to write comments. But, it should be the exception > not the rule. Comments should only be used when they are expressing > something that cannot be expressed in code. If you want to write elegant > code, strive to eliminate comments and instead write self-documenting code. **Am I wrong to think we should only be using XML comments when the code isn't enough to explain itself on its own?** I believe this is a good example where XML comments make pretty code look ugly. It takes a class like this...               public class RawMaterialLabel : EntityBase     {         public long     Id                      { get; set; }         public string   ManufacturerId          { get; set; }         public string   PartNumber              { get; set; }         public string   Quantity                { get; set; }         public string   UnitOfMeasure           { get; set; }         public string   LotNumber               { get; set; }         public string   SublotNumber            { get; set; }         public int      LabelSerialNumber       { get; set; }         public string   PurchaseOrderNumber     { get; set; }         public string   PurchaseOrderLineNumber { get; set; }         public DateTime ManufacturingDate       { get; set; }         public string   LastModifiedUser        { get; set; }         public DateTime LastModifiedTime        { get; set; }         public Binary   VersionNumber           { get; set; }              public ICollection<LotEquipmentScan> LotEquipmentScans { get; private set; }     }      ... And turns it into this:               /// <summary>     /// Container for properties of a raw material label     /// </summary>     public class RawMaterialLabel : EntityBase     {         /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the id.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The id.         /// </value>         public long Id { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the manufacturer id.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The manufacturer id.         /// </value>         public string ManufacturerId { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the part number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The part number.         /// </value>         public string PartNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the quantity.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The quantity.         /// </value>         public string Quantity { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the unit of measure.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The unit of measure.         /// </value>         public string UnitOfMeasure { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the lot number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The lot number.         /// </value>         public string LotNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the sublot number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The sublot number.         /// </value>         public string SublotNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the label serial number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The label serial number.         /// </value>         public int LabelSerialNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the purchase order number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The purchase order number.         /// </value>         public string PurchaseOrderNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the purchase order line number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The purchase order line number.         /// </value>         public string PurchaseOrderLineNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the manufacturing date.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The manufacturing date.         /// </value>         public DateTime ManufacturingDate { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the last modified user.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The last modified user.         /// </value>         public string LastModifiedUser { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the last modified time.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The last modified time.         /// </value>         public DateTime LastModifiedTime { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the version number.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The version number.         /// </value>         public Binary VersionNumber { get; set; }              /// <summary>         /// Gets the lot equipment scans.         /// </summary>         /// <value>         /// The lot equipment scans.         /// </value>         public ICollection<LotEquipmentScan> LotEquipmentScans { get; private set; }     }"}
{"_id": "122638", "title": "Freelancers do you have a surcharge for going to client site to work?", "text": "I'm currently new to freelancing as a programmer and need to work out what some of the \"norms\" are without making myself look like an amateur. I've already won some work from a local company doing C# development and quoting an hourly rate for work that i am doing from my office. However on one upcoming project I've been asked to come on-site (client office) to work a full week. Is it reasonable to charge more than my regular hourly rate for working on site? And how should i justify the extra charges?"}
{"_id": "122639", "title": "How to be hired as a remote programmer abroad and not to be an entrepreneur?", "text": "The question is quite interesting as for me because I watched jobs adds and mostly they all:   * A) Require being located the same country a vacancy is   * B) Employers don't want to hire foreign programmers if they don't have H1B or something   * C) As a rule, most adds provide 6 month contract position I can keep adding the list for long time describing some job adds specifications, anyway, as a rule, most positions require non-employee cooperation status. I don't have a company for such kind of \"making projects by a client order\" so it is quite complicated; So I was trying, just, as for a statistics, to find out is there a way to be hired abroad as a remote programmer as if I get hired in my native city? The thing is not about being hired where I can be hired \"because I am located this or that place\" but the thing is about a possibility (not to relocate) which actually should provide nowadays technologies especially for IT specialists in many different fields; So the question is it possible to work any country in remote mode as if I am working in my own place? What do I need for that? Can you advice some useful web sites in this direction?"}
{"_id": "246468", "title": "What procedural languages support algebraic data types?", "text": "One of the things I like about the new Apple language Swift is that it combines procedural programming with algebraic data types. What other languages do this?"}
{"_id": "126", "title": "Should we move programmers between rooms to group them by project they're involved in?", "text": "Assume that a company runs several projects simultaneously. When a project reaches certain state (is completed, beta is shipped, etc) some people move to the other projects, then to the other, ad infinitum. It could be a good idea to assign rooms to specific projects, and make people move there as soon as they're added to the project as well. Some software methodologies, for example, Scrum and other agile ones, explicitly declare that having all programmers in the same room is a boon, and benefits development. However, a group of programmers that spends their work time in a common room for years creates a constructive and strong relationship between its members. The programmers inside it always know whom to ask for an advice about a specific technology, and the closeness makes people helpful and trusting. An advantage of a closer social interaction could also be taken. Should such an opportunity be missed just to arrange several peers for a specific short-term project? In other words, **how should we organize moving programmers between rooms?** Note: The best option, perhaps, is keeping each programmer in a separate office. But let's assume that the office under consideration is just not big enough for that."}
{"_id": "229698", "title": "Good Programming Practice for similar child classes", "text": "I am developing an iOS application, in which I have to draw some patterns on a view based on option selected by user. Let me explain you more clearly. User will be shown number of images as options to choose from. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pmxti.jpg) On selecting an option, a view will be drawn. This view is inheriting from a class say `ParentClass` where I have set up common properties for child classes. **ParentClass**               @interface ParentClass : UIView          -(ImagePlaceHolder *) imageHolderTouched:(CGPoint) position;          //common properties declared          @end      Right now, my approach is use of separate classes for each pattern. I override `drawRect:` for different patterns. So that's why I am creating separate child classes for each. **ChildDesign**               @interface ChildDesign : ParentClass          @end          @implementation CollageDesign          - (id)initWithFrame:(CGRect)frame     {         self = [super initWithFrame:frame];         if (self) {             // Initialization code             [self drawViews];         }         return self;     }          -(void) drawRect:(CGRect)rect     {     //different implementation for different classes     }          @end      There are many similar child classes just having different `drawRect` implementation. In main controller, I initialize pattern child class based on selection using switch case.               ParentClass collView;          switch (selectedOptionIndex) {                 case 1:                     collView = [[ChildDesign alloc] initWithFrame:newframe];                     break;                 case 2:                     collView = [[ChildDesign2 alloc] initWithFrame:newframe]; //similar other classes                     break;                 case 3:                     collView = [[ChildDesign3 alloc] initWithFrame:newframe];                     break;     }      Problem is that I have got alot of options, say 50 - 100. Creating separate inherited classes (50 - 100 .h and .m files) would be really bad approach in my opinion and is bad programming practice. So What pattern should I follow here to optimize my code? How should I create my child classes/ patterns? What will be best approach? An idea in my mind is to pass selected index to I hope my Question is clear.. Thanks. An idea in my mind is to create single child pattern class having selected index as a property. Based on selected index, I will implement `drawRect:` method. But there will be lot of if-else or switch cases."}
{"_id": "206425", "title": "Creating a Website Without a Framework", "text": "I've been using PHP Frameworks for so long that I've actually forgot the \"best practices\" for create websites without one. Usually I will use Symfony, or more recently I've been using Laravel. A client wants a very simple website, but with certain parts of it dynamic. Due to the nature of the site using Wordpress, or a Framework, is out of the question. I'm a sucker for priding myself on my code, but I feel like I'm asking such a basic question that it's killing me to ask. But, what are the best practices for creating websites without a Framework? I like to live by the K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid!) method of thinking. So, my idea was to just create the .php pages that are required, do any page processing or database interaction on that page, then have the HTML below the closing PHP tag. I would have any helpers/functions in a functions.php file. This is what I remember doing way before I was using Frameworks, and to me it seems like a very old school way of doing things. I've not created a site without a Framework for literally 2+ years, so I've lost my way with the basics. Any advice would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "140944", "title": "Unix tools in business use: are they helpful?", "text": "Do you think knowing Unix tools like sed, awk, LaTeX, Perl give you a great edge in the business world? (e.g. being a manager) From my short reflection, the only profession that needs those sort of (plain text) tools is programming. Because even when I do creative writing, I rarely ever need it. I mean, do CEOs and executives of large corporations ever learn this kind of stuff if they were not CS major to begin with?"}
{"_id": "140945", "title": "Sample code under MS-PL: must leave original comments?", "text": "I have some files in my project that started from a sample in the all-in-one code sample browser: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/4934b087-e6cc-44dd-b992-a71f00a2a6df Some files contain boilerplate code that I modify heavily. They contain MS comments at the top that mention the license, copyright microsoft etc. Am I required to leave the entire comment block at the top of the source files that I modify or is it okay to just include the MS-PL license in a separate file for the whole project?"}
{"_id": "125178", "title": "Do you have a find/replace list of C/C++ code improvements that doesn't cause side effects?", "text": "Time after time you have to work with code that's not as safe as you would like it to be. Either that's someone elses code, or something you wrote at 3am 5 years ago, but it happens. And in those cases it would be good to make that code a little bit safer and more typing-error prone. At the same time, you want to avoid extensive testing, and if code is not covered with unit-tests, well, let's be honest, even if it is, you can't be sure you won't break anything when doing most refactoring things. So, what I'm wondering is, what would be a shortlist for C/C++ code that can be automated to almost \"find/replace all\" that would make the code safer, without having high risk of changing the programs behavior. Few things that came to my mind:   * Make all member functions const   * Make all arguments for internally linked functions const   * Remove all C style casts and replace them with C++ style casts on errors   * Turn most macros into inline functions or templates   * Change enums to typed enums But most of them would need a recompile and manual verifications Do you have other candidates, and maybe even safer ones?"}
{"_id": "85414", "title": "if I want to learn to build web pages, should I bother with xhtml, or go straight to html5?", "text": "Is there a practical reason to learn xhtml still? Should I learn to make my webpages in xhtml instead of html5 still or does it matter?"}
{"_id": "140948", "title": "Qt Certification Exams", "text": "I'm wondering about doing a Qt Certification Exam this year, but I'm not 100% sure the investment is worth. I'm considering it because I think it could be a nice **+** on my resume, and as you know, I'm all for improving my software engineer persona. As I already earn a BSc and MSc degrees in computer stuff, I guess I see the certification process as some kind of adventure. Anyway, I know I'll spend a lot of time preparing myself for the exam and I just wanted to know if a Qt certification is worth the effort. Apparently there are 2 certificates that you can get in the Qt world:   * **Nokia Certified Qt Developer** (basic)   * **Nokia Certified Qt Specialist** (advanced) Nowadays I build cross-platform software in C++ and this exam would fit beautifully in my resume. My main concern is that, **given the obscure future of Qt** , I might be throwing time and money out the window. I'm looking for some advice regarding the usefulness of such certifications."}
{"_id": "125172", "title": "SONAR and DesignForExtensionCheck Rule", "text": "When enabling SONAR on an in-house Java project, there are a large number of violations being reported due to the rule `DesignForExtensionCheck`. Whilst I agree with the theory that all classes/methods should be marked up as being either Abstract, Final, etc. But is it strictly necessary for an in-house application where the developers have full contorl over the code base and unit tests etc? An example is a Value Object who's every getter/setter is required to be final to pass this check. When you have 500+ such issues being reported its a big ask to retrofit the code. Some people have stated that Java has some flaws, and one of those is that classes/methods are not final by default. Bearing in mind that we don't have final as the default behaviour how much effort do we realy have to go to declar everything as final? Note: I realise that API's being used by third parties must have tighter controls. This question is levelled at in-house applications."}
{"_id": "85412", "title": "What implementation of Scheme is good for studying SICP?", "text": "I heard about Dr. Scheme but haven't really used it. What is your experience with SICP, what set of scheme tools did you use when learning SICP?"}
{"_id": "45826", "title": "Cross platform mobile development VS Native Mobile Development: Present And Future", "text": "I just completed one year in Smart phone development, working on BlackBerry and Android and also developed one application exclusively targeted to nokia feature phones. And just a month ago I come to know about Titanium Appcelerator tool that enables cross platform development, but there are some developers who complain about it's sub-par functionalities. Even a little bit experience of mine says that developing in native environment rather than these cross platform tools will give you more advantages by giving a developer a chance to add more features with better performance. Do you have same experience? Or you find such cross development tools really useful regarding to advance functionality and performance? As porting (or co developing) same application to different mobile platform is common thing nowadays, what do you think will these cross platform tools evolve and force developers to get a hands on approach on them or majority will stick to the native development environment?"}
{"_id": "45827", "title": "How to avoid getting carried away with details?", "text": "When I program, I often get too involved with details. There might be some little thing that doesn't do _exactly_ what I want it to, or maybe there's some little feature I want to add. Either way, none are really essential to the application - it's just a minor niusance (if any). However, when trying to fix it, I may happen to spend way more time on it than I planned, and there are things much more important that I should be doing instead of dealing with this little detail. What can I do to avoid getting carried away with details, when there's more essential things that need doing? (I didn't know how to tag this question, so feel free to add whatever appropriate tags that are missing.)"}
{"_id": "232644", "title": "Why was \"goto\" originally supposed to be included in Java?", "text": "`goto` is still a keyword in Java, although it has no use. It was saved as a keyword in the beginning in case it would be decided to add `goto` functionality in the future. My question is: Why would a modern OO programming language even take into account the possibility of including `goto` statements in the language? As I understand `goto` is considered harmful and even primitive. It has no use in modern programming, never seen it in any OO code. Why did the Java creators even consider adding `goto`s to the language?"}
{"_id": "87301", "title": "Should I use \"Business logic\" term when speaking about non-business application?", "text": "Suppose there is a part of program that does not deal with initialisation, input, output. It just specifies what should be done, what is allowed or not. I use the term \"Business logic\" for this. But application can have nothing to do with business. Example: a game. Suppose there are following parts:   1. Input processing   2. Collision detection, physics, player control   3. Rendering the output   4. AI - How do NPCs attain the specified goal.   5. \"Business logic\" - what happens when player touch certain objects. What types of NPCs are there and what they do when ..., concepts of \"lives\", \"ammo\", \"levels\", \"score\". But it is not business, it's just a game. Wikipedia is not clear about it."}
{"_id": "83818", "title": "What does \"proxy to\" mean?", "text": "I keep coming across the word \"proxy\" used as a verb in tutorials, etc. Usually something will \"proxy to\" something else. What does this mean? Having spent some time googling for what it means in a programming context, I mostly found \"proxy server\" or some other noun use. I understand the word proxy generally means \"a stand in,\" so \"proxy to\" must mean \"to stand in for.\" Right? But I'm still confused, because it doesn't seem to be used like that. An example (from a PHP ZF tutorial): \"__get(), __set(), __isset(), and __call(): All of these methods simply **proxy to** the row instance stored in $_row. This provides an easy way to composite Zend_Db_Table_Row with our Model Resource Item.\" from Keith Pope, _Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development_ , 2009. What does the author mean by \"proxy to\" in this context?"}
{"_id": "14968", "title": "Why does adding more resource to a late project make it later?", "text": "It's a fairly common adage that adding more programmers to a late project will make matters worse. Why is this?"}
{"_id": "133767", "title": "Where should I locate the cache in a WCF service?", "text": "I am going to build a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service using Microsoft Enterprise Library for caching. I am wondering whether or not I should put the cache in the service layer. If I do this, do I have to use `InstanceContextMode = Single` for this to work? Are there better alternatives, because I prefer using `InstanceContextMode = PerSession`. Where could I put the cache?"}
{"_id": "202900", "title": "Nested entities in Google App Engine. Do I do it right?", "text": "Trying to make most of the GAE Datastore entities concept, but some doubts drill my head. Say I have the model:               class User(ndb.Model):         email = ndb.StringProperty(indexed=True)         password = ndb.StringProperty(indexed=False)         first_name = ndb.StringProperty(indexed=False)         last_name = ndb.StringProperty(indexed=False)         created_at = ndb.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True)              @classmethod         def key(cls, email):             return ndb.Key(User, email)              @classmethod         def Add(cls, email, password, first_name, last_name):             user = User(parent=cls.key(email),                         email=email,                         password=password,                         first_name=first_name,                         last_name=last_name)             user.put()             UserLogin.Record(email)               class UserLogin(ndb.Model):         time = ndb.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True)              @classmethod         def Record(cls, user_email):             login = UserLogin(parent=User.key(user_email))             login.put()      And I need to keep track of times of successful login operations. Each time user logs in, an `UserLogin.Record()` method will be executed. Now the question \u2014 do I make it right? Thanks. * * * ### EDIT 2 Ok, used the typed arguments, but then it raised this: `Expected Key instance, got User(key=Key('User', 5418393301680128), created_at=datetime.datetime(2013, 6, 27, 10, 12, 25, 479928), email=u'al@mail.com', first_name=u'First', last_name=u'Last', password=u'password')`. It's clear to understand, but I don't get why the docs are misleading? They implicitly propose to use:               # Set Employee as Address entity's parent directly...     address = Address(parent=employee)      But Model expects key. And what's worse the `parent=user.key()` swears that `key()` isn't callable. And I found out the `user.key` works. * * * ### EDIT 1 After reading the example form the docs and trying to replicate it \u2014 I got type error: `TypeError('Model constructor takes no positional arguments.')`. This is the exacto code used:               user = User('al@mail.com', 'password', 'First', 'Last')     user.put()          stamp = UserLogin(parent=user)     stamp.put()      I understand that Model was given the wrong argument, BUT why it's in the docs?"}
{"_id": "133768", "title": "Regulation of the software industry", "text": "Every few years someone proposes tighter regulation for the software industry. This IEEE article has been getting some attention lately on the subject. > If software engineers who write programs for systems that expose the public > to physical or financial risk knew they would be tested on their competence, > the thinking goes, it would reduce the flaws and failures in code\u2014and maybe > save a few lives in the bargain. I'm skeptical about the value and merit of this. To my mind it looks like a land grab by those that proposed it. The quote that clinches that for me is: > The exam will test for basic knowledge, not mastery of subject matter because the big failures (e.g. THERAC-25) seem to be complex, subtle issues that \"basic knowledge\" would never be sufficient to prevent. Ignoring any local issues (such as existing protections of the title Engineer in some jurisdictions): The aims are noble - avoid the quacks/charlatans1 and make that distinction more obvious to those that buy their software. _Can tighter regulation of the software industry ever achieve it's original goal?_ 1 Exactly as regulation of the medical profession was intended to do."}
{"_id": "83815", "title": "What's the deal with programming languages as strict job requirements?", "text": "I went to a \"job fair\" recently and I was surprised to see how much emphasis workplaces seem to put on the programming languages candidates are familiar with. From my (admittedly limited) experience, while truly mastering a programming language may take years, learning it to a reasonable level is a fairly simple affair to someone who already has experience with other languages, and can definitely fit within the timeframe employers usually allocate for the initial ramp-up. I'd think an employer would care more about how many languages / paradigms I am familiar with, or what's my algorithmic / software design experience, as opposed to the specific technology I'm skilled with at the moment. Say I already know Java, C++, Smalltalk and Prolog... should a workplace that relies on Objective-C really consider me unqualified because I lack experience in that language? Is this a flaw in recruiting methodologies, and if it is, what can I do to convince that workplace that my lack of experience with Objective-C should not matter? I'm asking hypothetically, not specifically about the mentioned programming languages. Alternatively, my experience is limited and I admit I may be missing something. Is previous experience with a programming language more crucial than what I think it is? Does it make a difference if it's a junior or senior position? _Should_ it make s difference?"}
{"_id": "83814", "title": "Dealing with a developer continuously ignoring edge cases in his work", "text": "I have an interesting, fairly common I guess, issue with one of the developers in my team. The guy is a great developer, work fast and productive, produces fairly good quality code and all. Good engineer. But there is a problem with him - very often he fails to address edge cases in his code. We spoke with him about it many times and he is trying but I guess he just doesn't think this way. So what ends up happening is that QA would find plenty issues with his code and return it back for development again and again, ultimately resulting in missed deadlines and everyone in the team unhappy. I don't know what to do with him and how to help him overcome this problem. Perhaps someone with more experience could advise? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "203360", "title": "Is there an industry standard for systems registered user permissions in terms of database model?", "text": "I developed many applications with registered user access for my enterprise clients. In many years I have changed my way of doing it, specially because I used many programming languages and database types along time. Some of them not very simple as `view`, `create` and/or `edit` permissions for each module in the application, or light as `access` or `can't access` certain module. But now that I am developing a very extensive application with many modules and many kinds of users to access them, I was wondering if there is an standard model for doing it, because I already see that's the simple or the light way won't be enough."}
{"_id": "255390", "title": "Mocks and Stubs - Classes and methods?", "text": "I'm trying to get a high level understanding of mocks and stubs. My language/frameworks are ruby, rails, rspec, jasmine I heard this very high level definition:   * Mocks are used to represent objects themselves   * Stubs are used for methods of instances of objects and will return a value I've heard others say, no not at all. But I haven't heard a simple, high-level definition of them that has stuck. Most of the definitions are very wordy with lots of lower level details. I'm not sure if there's a clear rationale about when to use which either. Sure use a stub if you don't want to call the actual method of an instance (or it doesn't yet exist), but when does it make sense to use a mock?"}
{"_id": "84457", "title": "What are the rules for coupling a ViewModel and a View in the MVVM pattern?", "text": "So given the _Separation of Concerns_ , how coupled should the View and ViewModel be? For example, I want the visibility of a Control in the View to be databound (databinded?) to a flag in the ViewModel. My first hunch would be to use a boolean value, `IsControlVisible` that returns true/false. However, in the View, visibility is set by an Enum. So I have a choice: change the property to an Enum, or use a Converter to convert the bool into the Visibility Enum. **Which is the proper approach when trying to follow idiomatic MVVM?**"}
{"_id": "84455", "title": "How mature is FreeBASIC?", "text": "A friend of mine is considering using FreeBASIC in a critical production environment. They currently use GWBasic, and they want to make a soft transition towards more modern languages. I am just worried that there might be undetected bugs in the software. I see that their version number is 0.22.0, which indicates, that it is not quite mature yet. I also read this discussion, without being able to conclude. Also on their Sourceforge pages there is no indication of whether it is Alpha or Beta (which anyways is not a very good indicator). Does anyone have own experience about the maturity, ideas on how to judge the maturity, or know of companies using FreeBASIC in a critical production environment?"}
{"_id": "218687", "title": "Why \"mainstream language\" is so opposed to \"built on a small core of orthogonal features\"?", "text": "On \"hammerprinciple.com\" website there are programming languages, statements about them and voting that associates languages with statements. In particular, there are statements:   * \"This language is built on a small core of orthogonal features\"   * \"This is a mainstream language\" Why they are so opposed to each other? Is being incoherent, history- encumbrant, ridden with extra special cases a must for being popular, \"mainstream\" programming language? Maybe is it similar reason as why beautiful and coherent artificial natural languages (like Esperanto) are not that popular?"}
{"_id": "218685", "title": "In what language could I track reference counting in the simplest and safest way? (Or track existing reference counting?)", "text": "I want to count references of objects, just like you would with (some) garbage collection, but all I want to do is turn this into a graph dataset that I can then analyze or visualize. What language, even a niche one, would allow this most simply? Edit: I thought this question was super-clear, but apparently I need to give an example:               var x = []     var y = x     var z = 1     x.extend(z)      resulting edges:               x -> [1]     y -> x         z -> 1"}
{"_id": "123580", "title": "Should you really keep your js, html and css separate?", "text": "I hear/read all the time that it is cleaner to keep your _js_ , _html_ and _css_ separated. Supposedly it makes it more easy to maintain, debug. Supposedly it is more efficient, because it allows caching/minifying _css_ and _js_ files. As far as I am concerned, using web frameworks (Django, Rails, ...), javascript templating libraries, ... I tend to split quite a lot a single html page into multiple reusable templates - some kind of widgets if you wish. For example I can have a _news feed_ widget, a _select multiple_ widget, etc ... each of them having a consistent layout throughout the different pages, and each being controlled by its piece of javascript. With this organization - which seems to me as clean as it can get, maximizing reusability - I have trouble to understand why it would be simpler to keep all _js_ and _css_ in separate files. I kind of think it would be so much simpler _for example_ : in the _select multiple_ widget file   * html   * basic css layout   * control of direct interactions and UX enhancements with a bit of JS. I think that way it is more reusable, much more maintainable, because you don't have to scroll through a fat _js_ file, then switch to and scroll through a fat _css_ file, switch again to your _html_ file ... back and forth. So I'd love to know how you guys organize your code, if you stick to the separation that is usually recommended.   * Are there really good reasons to do so ?   * isn't it that the guides on the web usually assume that you won't use any fancy tool (in which case I'd love to get more up-to-date online readings for best practices) ?   * Is it just a matter of preference ?"}
{"_id": "218683", "title": "Transactional Memory vs Mutex and Locks", "text": "Just found out that Intel processors now have Transactional Memory support !!!! I learned about Transactional operations in my dB/OS class, it is a very simple concept: entire operation is executed or nothing gets executed. How is programming under new Transactional Mem. model is different from Multithreaded model that uses locks and mutexes ? Does it mean that we will be getting rid of locks and mutexes ?"}
{"_id": "123584", "title": "Programming standards and principles to become better programmer", "text": "I am a c# developer. I have always been interested in increasing my skills and knowledge and trying to pickup new technology. However now I want to enhance my knowledge in Programming standards and principles. So for example I want to know about how to structure code, refactor code, coding standards and good practices etc... Does anyone have any recommendation on any books or website links?"}
{"_id": "37482", "title": "Having MSc or Bsc with Experience, what's it worth in industrial environments?", "text": "I'm a fresh graduate in Electronic & Telecommunication field, and in our University, we can have major and minor fields in the relevant subjects. So, I majored in telecommunication and minored in Software Engineering. As I learned programming long before, Now I'm passionate about SE and programming. And, I want drive into the SE field. And, I come to know that, in industries, most of them expect the candidates to have a Bsc + experience of two+ years, or having a MSc in the related field. [I'm referring to my surrounding environment, not all the industries]. My Question is how do they consider those MSc and BSc + experience guys in the industries? IMO, having MSc is great assert when compared to experience. Because, in the industry, you can drive in a particular technology (Java, .Net or some thing else), not all, and with MSc, we can get the domain knowledge, not a particular technology!"}
{"_id": "14281", "title": "Anyone know of any resources for someone who wants to learn WPF and F#", "text": "It's easy to find resources for learning WPF, similarly it's pretty easy to find resources for F#. But I feel that I could save some time if I could learn them both at the same time. So can anyone recommend any books, blogs, articles , something else? (I'm familiar with functional programming, winforms and c#)"}
{"_id": "14287", "title": "Now that Apple's intending to deprecate Java on OS X, what language should I focus on?", "text": "After getting shot down on SO, I'll try this here: I'm sure you'll all know of Apple's recent announcement to deprecate Java on OS X (such as discussed here). I've recently come back to programming in the last year or so since I originally learnt on ye olde BASIC many years ago. I have a Mac at home and a PC at work and whilst I have got Windows and Ubuntu installed on my Mac as VMs, I chose to focus my \"relearning\" on VB first (as it was closest to BASIC) and then rapidly moved to Java as it was cross platform (with minimal effort) and so it was easiest to work on code from both OSes. So my question, if the winds of change on Mac are blowing away from Java and in this post-Sun era, what would be the best language to focus my new efforts on? Please note, this isn't a general \"which language is better?\" thread and or an opportunity for the associated flame-war. There's plenty of those and it's not the point. I realise that in the long term one shouldn't be allegiant to an individual language so, taking this as an excuse, the question is specifically which is going to be the most quick to be productive on given the background whilst bearing in mind minimum portability rewrites (aspiration rather then requirement) and with a long term value of usage. To that I see the main options as: C# - Closest in \"style\" to Java but M$ dependent (unless you consider Mono of course)   C++ - Hugely complex but if even slightly conquered, then a win? Is it worth the climb up the learning curve?   VB.Net - Already have background so easiest to go back to but who uses VB for .Net these days? Surely if using a CLI language I should use C#...   Python - Cross-platform but what about UI for the end-user? **EDIT:** As a usage priority, I envision desktop application programming. Though the ability to branch in the future is always desirable. I guess graphics are the next direction once basics are in place."}
{"_id": "237943", "title": "Domain Services vs. Factories vs. Aggregate Roots", "text": "After dealing with DDD for months now, I'm still confused about the general purposes of domain services, factories and aggregate roots in relation to each other, e.g. where they overlap in their responsibility. Example: I need to 1) create a complex domain entity in a saga (process manager) which is followed by 2) a certain domain event that needs to be handled elsewhere whereas 3) the entity is clearly an aggregate root that marks a bounded context to some other entities.   1. The factory IS be responsible for creation of the entity/aggregate root   2. The service CAN create the entity, since he also throws the domain event   3. The service CAN act as a aggregate root (create 'subentity' of 'entity' with ID 4)   4. The aggregate root can create and manage 'subentities' When I introduce the concept of a aggregate root as well as a factory to my domain, a service seems no longer needed. However, if I'm not, the service can handle everything needed as well with the knowledge and dependencies he has. **Code Example** _based on the ubiquitous language of a car repair shop_               public class Car : AggregateRoot {              private readonly IWheelRepository _wheels;         private readonly IMessageBus _messageBus;              public void AddWheel(Wheel wheel) {             _wheels.Add(wheel);             _messageBus.Raise(new WheelAddedEvent());         }          }          public static class CarFactory {              public static Car CreateCar(string model, int amountofWheels);          }      _..or..._               public class Car {              public ICollection<Wheel> Wheels { get; set; }          }          public interface ICarService {              Car CreateCar(args);         void DeleteCar(args);         Car AddWheel(int carId, Wheel wheel);          }"}
{"_id": "232711", "title": "Complete immutability and Object Oriented Programming", "text": "In most OOP languages, objects are generally mutable with a limited set of exceptions (like e.g. tuples and strings in python). In most functional languages, data is immutable. Both mutable and immutable objects bring a whole list of advantages and disadvantages of their own. There are languages that try to marry both concepts like e.g. scala where you have (explicitly declared) mutable and immutable data (please correct me if I am wrong, my knowledge of scala is more than limited). My question is: **Does _complete_ (sic!) immutability -i.e. no object can mutate once it has been created- make any sense in an OOP context?** **Are there designs or implementations of such a model?** **Basically, are (complete) immutability and OOP opposites or orthogonal?** Motivation: In OOP you normally operate **on** data, changing (mutating) the underlying information, keeping references between those objects. E.g. an object of class `Person` with a member `father` referencing another `Person` object. If you change the name of the father, this is immediately visible to the child object with no need for update. Being immutable you would need to construct new objects for both father and child. But you would have a lot less kerfuffle with shared objects, multi-threading, GIL, etc."}
{"_id": "232765", "title": "Simulate desktop app with Chrome application shortcut", "text": "Technically I'm building an intranet web application, with web server running 24/7 and a central database, users can access it with any browser. However, for the user, the app should have the look and feel of a desktop application, and Chrome's application shortcut suits it best. But I don't want end user do the tasks of (1) install Chrome (2) access the web with url (3) create shortcut. Is it possible to make an installer package with Chrome inside, and automatically create the application shortcut (on the desktop and start menu)?"}
{"_id": "76421", "title": "How to write freelancing in resume for programmers job", "text": "I had 3 years full time work experience in web development. I had to leave the job and come to overseas (my home) for 1.5 years due to personal problem, but I did some free lance work in web development and maintaining a Linux VPS server. I did some certifications like CCNA, CCNP, RHCE during that time. I am going back and getting ready to apply for jobs. Now I am confused how can I fill that 1.5 year gap. Can I write free lancing there? How should I write it? Did my worth degrade as I had to leave full time job for 1.5 years? Or do I really need to write that I was away? Can I write that I was doing free lancing and now I want a permanent job?"}
{"_id": "7652", "title": "Identifying programming languages by a piece of code", "text": "Lets say you got some piece of code and you have no idea which language it was written in. What are the unique \"signature\" syntax constructions for each programming language that you can use to quickly determine code origin? _(PS. Mentioning only one language in an answer probably would be a good idea. Having more than one answer for the same language is fine, lets vote for the best one)_"}
{"_id": "7656", "title": "Do you ever write code with pen and paper, and should we do it more often?", "text": "Like the title says, do you ever write code with pen and paper? If so, why? Do those who don't do if have anything to gain by doing so more often?"}
{"_id": "159601", "title": "How to document and peer review design in scrum?", "text": "I am a relatively new developer in a small business (a team of 3 developers and an equally small QA branch) working on a medium-sized system. The current iteration is still under 100k lines of code (server & client combined), but I could imagine that, in the long term, the total size could be 200 kLOC or more. We are attempting to use Scrum for development, and we are working towards a CMMI level 2 appraisal. We are adopting peer review methods to verify our software design and source code. We elicit software requirements during the sprint planning meeting, and we document the software requirements in a master SRS. This also gives us a start into the software design, but we don't have a formal method for reviewing design concepts, such as OO design, UI design, re-usable design patterns, and more. For our source code, we are trying new techniques, such as using spreadsheets to document over-the-shoulder reviews and e-mail pass- around reviews, but it can be difficult for the reviewer to understand the design concepts from just looking at the source code. _(Please excuse me if I am misrepresenting concepts; we are attempting a lot of this from scratch.)_ We are not averse to using UML to express classes, objects, software interfaces, event patterns, or other design concepts, but we are not sure when or how to peer review our design efforts. Often, a developer can be 70+% complete with a user story and realize that a fundamental design element needs to be changed (and, subsequently, peer reviewed). In an attempt to avoid open discussion on the topic and promote concise answers, I'll try to propose two specific questions:   1. Does anyone know of any good resources (i.e. books, papers, articles) on the best practices of peer reviewing design concepts?   2. I have read that the code itself is the (implementation of the) design. Can the peer review of source code be utilized as the peer review of design? Thank you."}
{"_id": "226329", "title": "scoping concern when dealing with coupling", "text": "I'm learning ruby (and OOP in the process) and I find keep having to write the same patterns when logging progress so I want to wrap this up in a logging library that my other code can then just pass data to - say a string, a file name and a log level. This of course couples the logging library with other code - other code still has to be aware of how the logging library works (that it wants the string, name, & level). I tend not to like coupling like this but it seems like I can't really prevent it, but rather have to deal with it by consciously deciding to scope the library's use to an area of concern \"ie: snoweagle's personal tech projects\" Is this good design or is there a better way to approach coupling?"}
{"_id": "226328", "title": "Getting List of objects of same class", "text": "I have a class 'Task' which represents any Task that is done by an individual employee. For this class I wrote properties like EmpID, Priority, etc. and methods like `AddNewTask(),` `ArchiveTask(),` `MoveTaskToUser(int userid),` etc. Then I wrote a method               public List<Task> GetAllTasks()      This seemed incorrect to me with regard to OOP. I thought any single task object should represent one single task and it doesnt seem right to call `taskObj.GetAllTasks()` because object taskObj should carry out methods on the single Task that it represents. So I changed the method to static:               public static List<Task> GetAllTasks()      Now I call `Task.GetAllTasks()`. Is this the proper way to follow object oriented approach. Was the earlier idea of calling the method from single object correct?"}
{"_id": "219088", "title": "Multiple schemas vs aditional column per customer", "text": "If you have different database per customer as there is no need to share any data between them does the same apply if a customer has multiple stores ?   I believe that it is easier to do queries for statistics (some require 4-6 table join) if they are at a single schema rather than multiple schemas.   But everyone (haven't done anything yet) in team believes that cross schema queries is the way to go.They claim that postgres supports it well. Which is the way to go?"}
{"_id": "219089", "title": "Terminating a freelance contract before completion", "text": "I've been building a large web application for a company. Initially the project owner appointed a Graphic/Web designer to complete all design/front end works. Me and who ever I bring in to complete back end and all the view binding at the front. The initially front end/graphics guy dropped out and was replaced with a (better) graphic designer who ISN'T producing the html/css required. This deficit caused many months of overrun with me having to try to introduce front end devs to complete the missing pieces. On top of that, numerous articles of the initial spec have been changed and several items added. A month or so ago after receiving an incredibly aggressive phonecall from the project owner decided I was no longer interested in being involved in the project. Obviously all the source code, all documentation etc belong to the client for them to bring in another party. I at this point had been paid 2/3 of the agreed sum. Also shouldered hosting costs myself. The clients response was immediately to threaten me with legal action claiming I'd be breaching our contract by not completing and that I had already breached our contract by running over on delivery dates. He also stated that he felt it would be impossible to replace me on the project because of the obscure technology I'd selected to build it (ASP.Net MVC). He suggested he would intend to attempt to recoup all monies paid so far and damages that he \"calculates\" (see:made up) to be about \u00a370k. I do a lot of work for a company who's MD is a corporate lawyer. Who's confirmed that technically both parties are in breach of contract, but that's justified by the unforeseen changes in replacing designers etc... I've continued working to now. My (a little long-winded) question is morally and practically what would you do? I'm owed 1/3 of the remaining contract and hosting fees. (about \u00a33500 total) They have lined up another .Net dev to build on the out of spec items as I've stated they're not my responsibility. The site is just undergoing bug/acceptance testing/fixing which the client doesn't believe they should have any involvement in. Should I stick around for the cash, which also ties me into any corrective maintenance for 2 months. Or do I write it off as a \"make sure to re-agree terms when big things change\" lesson?"}
{"_id": "226320", "title": "On which abstraction level would you do TDD?", "text": "**Problem** I find myself nailing the class structure down by having too many unit tests which makes making changes hard. **Example** Assume we have a class A which uses classes B1 and B2. Class B1 uses classes C1 and C2. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XtOXG.png) I start off by writing tests first for class A. During that process, classes B1 and B2 are created. To make sure that classes B1 and B2 work, I start writing tests for B1 and B2. Same for C1 and C2. Now, I end up having unit tests for all the different levels off abstraction. Assuming class A was for example a payroll system and classes B1, B2, C1 and C2 came to existence while building A. **Question** Where did I go wrong in my process? Shouldn't I have written tests for levels B and C? Should my unit tests in level A cover all the functionality in levels B and C? What is the process which will lead to the \"correct\" unit tests and a flexible design? Perhaps you can make an example with two or more levels of abstraction and show me your process and the code (including unit tests and production code and design) that comes out of your process."}
{"_id": "212052", "title": "Unit testing methods which access an Internet API", "text": "Hi I'm developing a Wordpress plugin which accesses a couple of API's (Amazon Product API, Flickr, Freebase, Ebay). I've already started writing unit tests for it but I'm still wondering if its really the way to go since it takes a lot of time downloading data from the API primarily because my download speed isn't that fast (around 2 Mb/s max). Currently it takes 2 hours or more to run the whole test suite and sometimes I even reach the API limit and the test won't pass. Is there a better way of doing this? Perhaps automating the test or even allow me to upload the tests somewhere which has a faster download speed. Do I really need to be testing methods which access the API to begin with? Can I just make use of a mock data instead of querying the API directly? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "219081", "title": "PHP class data implementation", "text": "I'm studying OOP PHP and have watched two tutorials that implement user login\\registration system as an example. But implementation varies. Which way will be more correct one to work with data such as this?   1. Load all data retrieved from database as array into a property called something like _data on class creation and further methods operate with this property   2. Create separate properties for each field retrieved from database, on class creation load all data fields into respective properties and operate with that properties separately? Then let's say I want to create a method that returns a list of all users with their data. Which way is better?   1. Method that returns just an array of userdata like this:              Array([0]=>array([id] => 1, [username] => 'John', ...),            [1]=>array([id] => 2, [username] => 'Jack', ...),            ...)        2. Method that creates a new instance of it's class for each user and returns an array of objects"}
{"_id": "37155", "title": "What is a resonable workflow for designing webapps?", "text": "It has been a while since I have done any substantial web development and I'd like to take advantage of the latest practices but I'm struggling to visualize the workflow to incorporate everything. Here's what I'm looking to use:   * CakePHP framework   * jsmin (JavaScript Minify)   * SASS (Synctactically Awesome StyleSheets)   * Git **CakePHP:** Pretty self explanatory, make modifications and update the source. **jsmin:** When you modify a script, do you manually run jsmin to output the new minified code, or would it be better to run a pre-commit hook that automatically generates jsmin outputs of javascript files that have changed. Assume that I have no knowledge of implementing commit hooks. **SASS:** I really like what SASS has to offer but I'm also aware that SASS code isn't supported by browsers by default so, at some point, the SASS code needs to be transformed to normal CSS. At what point in the workflow is this done. **Git** I'm terrified to admit it but, the last time I did any substantial web development, I didn't use SCM source control (IE, I did use source control but it consisted of a very detailed change log with backups). I have since had plenty of experience using Git (as well as mercurial and SVN) for desktop development but I'm wondering how to best implement it for web development). Is it common practice to implement a remote repository on the web host so I can push the changes directly to the production server, or is there some cross platform (windows/linux) tool that makes it easy to upload only changed files to the production server. Are there web hosting companies that make it eas to implement a remote repository, do I need SSH access, etc... I know how to accomplish this on my own testing server with a remote repository with a separate remote tracking branch already but I've never done it on a remote production web hosting server before so I'm not aware of the options yet. **Extra:** I was considering implementing a javascript framework where separate javascript files used on a page are compiled into a single file for each page on the production server to limit the number of file downloads needed per page. Does something like this already exist? Is there already an open source project out in the wild that implements something similar that I could use and contribute to? Considering how paranoid web devs are about performance (and the fact that the number of file requests on a website is a big hit to performance) I'm guessing that there is some wizard hacker on the net who has already addressed this issue."}
{"_id": "212056", "title": "Implementing semantic actions in table driven predictive parsing", "text": "When doing table driven predictive parsing on an LL(1) grammar, (as explained in good detail here for example), how can we augment the algorithm to allow processing of semantic actions while doing the parsing. One technique could possibly use the same stack in the algorithm by defining the production rules with markers for the semantic actions, and pushing these markers on the stack the same way it's done with terminals/non-terminal in the rest of the production rule, and then processing the code designated by the marker when it gets popped out of the stack. So given something like this (from the Dragon book - actions in curly braces):               rest -> + term { print('+') } rest           | - term { print('-') } rest           | Epsilon          term -> 0 { print('0') }           | 1 { print('1') }           ...           | 9 { print('9') }      We can add a marker for each type of action, and push it in on the stack with the rest of the production terms, and then execute the corresponding code when the marker is popped out by the algorithm. Is this how this is done or is there better approaches?"}
{"_id": "212057", "title": "What is an example of a continuation not implemented as a procedure?", "text": "An interesting discussion about the distinction between _callbacks_ and _continuations_ over on SO has prompted this question. By definition, a continuation is an abstract representation of the logic needed to complete a computation. In most languages this manifests as a one argument procedure to which you pass whatever value needs continued processing. In a purely functional language (where all functions are pure and first class citizens), I would think a continuation could be entirely modeled as a function. This is, after all, how I've previously understood continuations up to this point. However, the world is full of state (sigh..) and so the general definition does not require that a continuation capture program state -- it need only encompass intent. To help my understanding, can an example be provided in a functional language where the continuation is expressed in a more abstract way than a function? I know Scheme allows you to grab the current continuation in a first-class manner (call/cc), but even so, it seems that the one argument procedure passed to call/cc is simply given the current continuation in the form of another one argument procedure to which the call/cc'd function can apply its result."}
{"_id": "83100", "title": "Learning barriers for beginners towards a programmers mind (Study)?", "text": "I stumbled upon this Study (of The Development of Programming Ability and Thinking Skills In High School Students)( **link only opens with left-click correct, not in new tab?! dunno why** ) claiming, that students seem to have serious problems learning how programming, abstraction into algorithms,... actually works. What do you think about this and has somebody links to newer free available studies investigating the learning process of programming newbies? Im wondering if this is mainly due to worse teaching or more abstract & difficult to learn languages like C in the past. Of course abilities in mathematics play likely also a bigger role, but this shouldnt be a fundamental hurdle? Is there maybe a connection to how difficult your mother language is structured (grammar, syntax, vocabulary). It is known that programmer newbies of distinct mother languages faster adapt to distinct programming languages? Are there programming languages specially oriented to, for example, chinese/german language? Is the origin of more and more new programming language a sign of individual adaption to a single programmer liked syntax? I would suppose that from a theoretical informatics view there should be a limit of use & different problem types how many different programming languages are really needed. But they seem to grow on and on."}
{"_id": "245341", "title": "How to get Datasource JNDI access to work with WebLogic reliably (no NameNotFoundException)?", "text": "in a WebLogic web application (bundled and deployed as a Jar) I sometimes get a NameNotFoundException when I try to fetch a datasource using JNDI lookup. The datasource is not shown in the JNDI tree then, but it can be seen under Services -> Datasources. It did work as expected and I don't think I changed anything since then. It seems like a race condition or something similar might play a role. This does not seem to be a common problem, which makes me think that I might be missing something very basic. I went through the wizard to create the datasource (Datasource and JNDI name are identical) and I tested it. Again, the programmatical access did work properly as well.               try {         Context context;         context = new InitialContext();         DataSource dataSource = (DataSource) context.lookup(datasourceName);         connection = dataSource.getConnection();     } catch (NamingException e) {         throw new ConnectionException(e);     } catch (SQLException e) {         throw new ConnectionException(e);     }      Are there any best practices or completely different ways to work with datasources? Anything you can think of that might make a difference?"}
{"_id": "202014", "title": "What is the origin/meaning of the name 'NHibernate'?", "text": "Been poking around the web because I was curious as to why they called it that but haven't found anything yet. Anyone know? _(I checked the FAQ and it wasn't clear if questions on history/origins were OK to put here or not, but I figured it wouldn't be good on StackOverflow, feel free to start closing it if it is out of scope and I will delete.)_"}
{"_id": "40508", "title": "Stopping endless technical discussions and making a decision", "text": "I always come across people who like to bang on for ages over the smallest \"technical things\". Don't get me wrong, I'm a geek programmer who loves what I do, but you know the type of conversation.   * Mac is so much better than Windows   * Don't use a For Each loop, use a While loop   * Don't buy an Intel based PC, get an AMD based one.   * We should use one IoC container over another. All these \"things\" have valid pro's and con's for both sides, and you'll never get a \"correct\" answer, and the person will never concede the point. (of course there will be some where there is an answer, maybe :). My question (I'm getting there!!) is: In a software team, how do you cut through these long discussions without inhibiting innovation, so that a decision can be made and you can get on to solving the real business problems."}
{"_id": "44888", "title": "Is there a Windows philosophy of programming?", "text": "I've been programming both in Unix and Windows environments. Mostly I've worked in Unix, where I've learned Unix Philosophy, which can be summarized as   * Write programs that do one thing and do it well.    * Write programs to work together.    * Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface. There seems to be a clear difference in programming cultures between Unix and Windows worlds, for example:   * GUI vs CLI   * Registry vs config files   * Lots of tools specializing for any given need vs group of generic orthogonal tools which can combined **Is there equivalent of \"Unix philosophy\" in Windows world?** What Unix- programmer can learn from Windows or should be aware of when moving to programming in Windows? I would like answers to focus on the best practices of Windows programming (and not a fight between Windows and Unix)."}
{"_id": "14422", "title": "You make websites? So then you must have heard about Web 2.0, right?", "text": "The other day someone asked me what type of work I do. I answered that I help to build web sites (Asp.net, c#, mostly). So he said \"so then you must do a lot of Web 2.0 stuff, right?\". I proceeded to respond by trying to define Web 2.0 as a change in the way that websites were designed 5+ years ago, incorporating more client-side scripting, ajax and standards-based approach to building web sites. I then said that almost anyone doing web design/development today who has stayed up to date with new standards and techniques over the past few years, should be using \"Web 2.0-like\" techniques, and it is not a really accurate statement to describe a website today as being \"Web 2.0\". (Person with whom I was talking was a programmer, but in a totally different domain - C++/VOIP stuff). How do you answer (well-intentioned) people who try to talk to you about programming using the catch-phrases of yesteryear? (\"Web 2.0\" could apply for web development, I am sure that there are similar terms in other areas as well.) Just nod and say yes? Try to explain yourself?"}
{"_id": "198405", "title": "Checklist for coding MVVM web application", "text": "We are a small team working on a web application using MVVM design pattern using technologies like .NET, Knockout and HTML. I am trying to come up with a code review checklist for this, so that my team can make use of it while coding as well as while reviewing. I tried to find in google, but no help there. Can you guys suggest me what I have to look for code review checklist?"}
{"_id": "236216", "title": "alternate approach of binary serialization/de-serialization", "text": "Is it possible to convert a list of object directly to byte[] (and vice versa) to gain performance (by avoiding serialization/de-serialization)? What I have in mind is that a list is somewhere in memory(heap). If I could read the bytes in heap for my list I could just assign it a variable (of byte[]) in my program. Is it possible? and if yes, how would I get back the original list from byte[] without de-serializing using BinaryFormatter?"}
{"_id": "207620", "title": "What are the downfalls of MVC?", "text": "I've been using MVC/MV* since I started actually organizing my code years ago. I've been using it so long that I can't even think of any other way to structure my code and every job I've had after being an intern was MVC based. My question is, what are the downfalls of MVC? In what cases would MVC be a bad choice for a project and what would be the (more) correct choice? When I look up MVC alternatives, nearly every result is just different types of MVC. To narrow down the scope so this doesn't get closed, let say for web applications. I do work on the backend and front-end for different projects, so I can't say just front-end or backend."}
{"_id": "131852", "title": "Never use Strings in Java?", "text": "I stumbled upon a blog entry discouraging the use of Strings in Java for making your code lack semantics, suggesting that you should use thin wrapper classes instead. This is the before and after examples the said entry provides to illustrate the matter:               public void bookTicket(       String name,       String firstName,       String film,       int count,       String cinema);          public void bookTicket(       Name name,       FirstName firstName,       Film film,       Count count,       Cinema cinema);      In my experience reading programming blogs I've come to the conclusion that 90% is nonsense, but I'm left wondering whether this is a valid point. Somehow it doesn't feel right to me, but I couldn't exactly pinpoint what is amiss with the style of programming."}
{"_id": "131857", "title": "Teaching Classes and Objects", "text": "I'm trying to teach how an object is just an instance of a class to a buddy of mine. However, he doesn't seem to understand it so well. I've heard a ton of the examples (blueprint to a house, etc.) But does anyone have a real concrete way of teaching this?"}
{"_id": "201661", "title": "Placing elements in graph with a streaming/online algorthm", "text": "We have a stream of points with about 1000 points per second. For each point, we have a complex vector (hundreds of dimensions). Our goal, for each point is to link it to the 5 closest points that we've already seen. We determine \"closest\" by computing a distance (euclidian or other) between 2 points. Obviously, in a perfect world we would have enough money and time to compute the distance between a new point with each of the points we've already seen and it would keep the 5 closest. The world is not perfect and we're looking for a solution. Has anyone worked with this before?"}
{"_id": "201669", "title": "How can a programmer contribute to planetary science?", "text": "I'm just getting back from WWDC13, and had the opportunity to see Bill Nye speak at the last day's lunch session. Of course, I grew up watching him, and left incredibly excited for what lies ahead for humanity ... but at the same time, I'm left wondering how can I, as a \"lowly\" software engineer, contribute to progress in the space industry. Of course, there are some obvious choices: I could donate cash to the Planetary Society. Or I could go to college and start doing physics research (I never went, though am really happy with my career arc over the last 14 years). So, I guess it's a bit of an open ended question, but what areas of opportunity might be available to someone with more time and skills than money that still wants to find a way to contribute?"}
{"_id": "232762", "title": "When internationalizing texts, should underscores (for keyboard shortcuts) be part of the texts to be translated?", "text": "I have a project where I need to translate a lot of words and text fragments in different languages. In these texts, underscores are currently added in these text (fragment(s)) to be used as keyboard shortcuts (used in Visual Studio). However, I was wondering if this is the way to go, or if it would be better to remove the underscores and add them AFTER translation. Is there some guideline to follow?"}
{"_id": "207993", "title": "Karger's algorithm for bin-packing?", "text": "I first came across that algorithm as the \"Random minimum cut\" algorithm. And recently a colleague was trying to pack a big quantity of small textures into one image file. Then it clicked - why not use Karger for this packing problem? I don't know a good way to map this problem to a graph defined in order to minimize the wasted space between images. Here I define the minimum cut as \"the atlas with less blank filler pixels\". So I need to generate a graph that represents a \"distance\" between images as an edge. Any suggestion on what type of distance to use? Here is the first idea I had: Given an image A(w, h) where w is width and h i height, if B(w', h') exists for w = w' or h = h' create an edge between A and B. (The same rule with a certain tolerance could be used, like + or - 1%). I would be very surprised if I am the first one to think about this. So if anybody knows about anything similar that has been done, please do say so."}
{"_id": "207990", "title": "Recommended sprint length when adopting Agile?", "text": "I'm new to a small development company (half a dozen programmers and should grow to possibly a dozen eventually). We also have a few external contractors working with us (just to add a bit of complication). I would like to slowly start adopting Agile, or more importantly short sprints. I was curios to know, from past experience, what would you recommend that our initial sprint length (in weeks) be? Maybe I can even go as far as asking what is the sprint length of a very mature and experienced Agile team (shorter [2 weeks] or longer sprints [4 weeks])? My initial thought was to use a shorter sprint, say 2 weeks and then in time, once we get the hang of things and all has smoothed out, we could simply double it to 4 weeks."}
{"_id": "160932", "title": "Why rpm and deb package formats are not unified into one standard system?", "text": "I had this question asked on stackoverflow, but it was closed _\"as not a real question\"_. So i decided to remove all rumbling and post that question here, assuming that this stackexchange is for _\"conceptual questions about software development\"_ The main question is in the title: **Why rpm and deb package formats are not unified into one standard system?** I think that this is very important step, which we need to do, because such format fragmentation is bad, and not only for independant software developers, but for other tools and languages, who reinventing own packaging, like vim, python, ruby, nodejs, php, eclipse and many many others"}
{"_id": "230624", "title": "What should I do when I've already waited too long between commits?", "text": "I was naughty... Too much \"cowboy coding,\" not enough committing. Now, here I am with an enormous commit. Yes, I should have been committing all along, but it's too late now. What is better?   1. Do one very large commit listing all the things I changed   2. Try to break it into smaller commits that likely won't compile, as files have multiple fixes, changes, additional method names, etc.   3. Try to do partial reversions of files just for appropriate commits, then put the new changes back. Note: as of right now I am the only programmer working on this project; the only person who will look at any of these commit comments is me, at least until we hire more programmers. **By the way:** I am using SVN and Subclipse. I did create a new branch before doing any of these changes. **More information** : I asked a separate question related to how I got into this situation in the first place: How to prepare for rewriting an application's glue"}
{"_id": "96211", "title": "What is a faster alternative to a CRC?", "text": "I'm doing some data transmission from a dsPIC to a PC and I'm doing an 8-bit CRC to every block of 512 bytes to make sure there are no errors. With my CRC code enabled I get about 33KB/s, without it I get 67KB/s. What are some alternative error detection algorithms to check out that would be faster?"}
{"_id": "88905", "title": "Find next occurence in a Tree", "text": "Have a tree of variable depth, and width. What is the best algorithm to find the next occurence of the node in that tree. Next = Search to the right side of the tree ( as in breadth first search ) The selection criteria for the next occurrence of the tree is changeable in different situations. For example, at one place, I want find the next occurrence of the node that contains the Value equal to the current node. In another, I want to select the next value that is less than the current value. Once the next Occurrence is found, the program can terminate and return the value or node.                         5          6           9      10  7  0      5 6 8     5  6   9 5      Suppose I've a pointer to node (depth = 4, value = 5, parent = 10)... when I perform the search I want to get the pointer to the node (depth = 4, value =5, parent=0). Say this is not there, then I want to get node(depth =1, value=5, rootNode)."}
{"_id": "225674", "title": "Why define a Java object using interface (e.g. Map) rather than implementation (HashMap)", "text": "In most Java code, I see people declare Java objects like this:               Map<String, String> hashMap = new HashMap<>();     List<String> list = new ArrayList<>();      instead of:               HashMap<String, String> hashMap = new HashMap<>();     ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<>();      Why is there a preference to define the Java object using the interface rather than the implementation that is actually going to be used?"}
{"_id": "103083", "title": "How can variables be created at runtime?", "text": "Is it possible to define variables dynamically? Last night I was writing some code (C and VB2010) and I ran into a problem related to defining variables in my program. The variables needed depend on the number of entries added by the user and the number of users. Even using dynamic memory allocation we have a size limit, but I wonder about this type of thing sometimes. We can define as many variables as we need (to a limit of course) when writing the code, but can't we define more at runtime? For example: say your whole program is done and when user says 'x', this cannot be created as variable; rather we require a variable to store that x. Why cant we make x a variable at runtime? Can't we build a bridge between compile-time and runtime with some rules?"}
{"_id": "225673", "title": "Implementing an interface from a framework vs simple java interface", "text": "This concept is unclear with me. I have worked on several frameworks for an instance Spring. To implement a feature we always implement some interfaces provided by the framework. For an instance if I have to create a custom scope in Spring, my class implements a org.springframework.beans.factory.config.Scope interface. Which has some predefined low level functionality which helps in defining a custom scope for a bean. Whereas in Java I read an interface is just a declaration which classes can implement & define their own functionality. The methods of an interface have no predefined functionality.               interface Car     {     topSpeed();     acclerate();     deaccelrate();     }      The methods here don't have any functionality. They are just declared. Can anyone explain this discrepancy in the concept? How does the framework put some predefined functionality with interface methods?"}
{"_id": "103086", "title": "What's happens if I develop a program taking inspiration from another GNU GPL application?", "text": "My friend and I are planning to develop a tiny and simple CMS by taking some inspirations from an already existing GNU GPL CMS. We take the ideas and try to develop it as simply we can, is it possible ? We are planning to set up the same licence, GNU GPL. Is it a good choice ? Which are the conditions to do it ?"}
{"_id": "131122", "title": "I feel I'm a good junior programmer, but how to become a good programmer who writes beautiful code?", "text": "As a beginner, I can say that in about six months I grasped very well many basic programming concepts. I began with php, then wen to c, then to java, and I know quite well the procedural and the object oriented concepts. Most important, I really enjoy programming, it's quite a lot a mental challenge than a duty for me. Reality is that I 100% (and more) improved my skills spending lots of time in the project Euler website (and I should be ashamed to say I just solved the first 30 problems, but all by myself without any external help, and I am proud of it). So I could think I'm in the right track. But at the moment I feel I'm in a phase when I don't know how and above all what to do then. In these months I also followed two courses, one for webdesigning (I know how to program css and html markups, and also know the basis of graphics processing), I'd setup a basic site easily, and the second course (which will finish on may) is going well meaning I have no problem to learn what the teachers tell me, and sometimes I find better solution than my php teacher (probably php being the language I'm most accustomed I find it easier). But apart from all the basic \"garbage\", all the simple exercises people do when learning and when beginning, I don't know how I'm supposed to go on. It's a fact many great coders say that I just have to begin to code, and code, and code, and I know that it is, but what code? If I should think about a real program, one of that you could be proud of it, I don't believe I know where I should begin. I also tried to read a couple of sources codes, and understanding them is one of the most difficult process I found and definitely depressing, as you think: \"omg how much I'm ignorant?\"; furthermore, my ideas are not clear; I would like to setup something but don't know how to put together all the things I could think, and I always think I'm forgetting something. I tried to read some documents and books about object oriented best practices, uml, design patterns, but it seems that, although all those readings make great sense to me, it stops then, I can't use nothing because I have this feeling I am still not enough good to use that and worst I am desperate to find the right track to do it, at the point I think that perhaps I'm not enough intelligent and programming is a too difficult task for me. Perhaps I should have a real job in some company where \"learn\" from other more experienced programmers, but companies hire just experienced programmers so what? Please can you address me in some intermediate-level activity I can take and enjoy in order to overcome this state? thanks."}
{"_id": "170305", "title": "Incorporating GPL Code in my Open Source Project", "text": "I have downloaded a currently inactive GPL project with a view to updating it and releasing the completed codebase as open source. I'm not really a fan of GPL though and would rather licence my project under BSD. What are my options? Is it just a case of keeping any existing non-touched code under the GPL and any updated stuff can be BSD (messy)? The source will essentially be the same codebase i.e. there is no logical separation between the two and they certainly can't be split into anything resembling different libraries. Are my only realistic options to either GPL the whole thing or seek the original author's permission to release everthing under BSD?"}
{"_id": "170304", "title": "Should I try to write simple key-value storage by myself?", "text": "I need a key-value storage in a simplest form we can think of.   Keys should be some fixed-length strings, values should be some texts.   This key-value storage should have an HTTP-backed API. That's basically it. As you can see, there is no big difference between such storage and some web application with some upload functionality. The thing is - it'll take few hours (including tests and coffee drinking) to write something like this. \"Something like this\" will be fully under my control and can be tuned on demand. Should I, in this specific case, not try to reinvent bicycles? Is it better to use some of existing NoSQL solutions. If yes, which one exactly? If, say, I'd needed something SQL-like, I won't ask and won't try to write something by myself. But with NoSQL I just don't know what is adequate and what is not."}
{"_id": "228040", "title": "Model and ViewModel for View", "text": "I am new to the MVVM pattern. I have a window which has 3 text boxes (`Name`, `Address`, `Description`), a save button, and a listview which displays the above fields. When the save button is clicked I want to save the fields into database as well as show the record in the listview. How do I design my Model, ViewModel for this interface ?"}
{"_id": "228773", "title": "Object Calisthenics - reducing to two attributes", "text": "I'm refactoring an expense tracker system using Object Calisthenics. I'm able to bring my Class down to five attributes. How do I go forward from here? This is my class right now.               public class Expense {         private Identifiers ids;         private AmountInCurrency amountInCurrency;         private Remarks remarks;         private UserList userList;         private ExpenseDate expenseDate;     }       Identifiers has attributes expenseId and reportId AmountInCurrency has an amount and a currency Remarks has a string with remarks. UserList has a List which is List as User has only userName (String). ExpenseDate is a Date object. Also I have a sql database where i'm storing the contents of the Expense object. Should I directly pass the expense object and retrieve the primitives or should I create an entity object which takes this expense object as a constructor argument? NOTE : This is not production code, I'm doing this just as an exercise."}
{"_id": "201596", "title": "Public-key cryptography security given NSA resources", "text": "I was wondering how secure public private key encryption methods are. If two individuals were sending emails back and forth forever, where each person would encrypt the body of the email they were sending with the other person's public key, would anyone be able to decrypt the body of those emails after a while? I'm assuming that each person creates their own private-public key pair and then if you wanted to send someone an email you would grab their public key and encrypt your message before sending it to them. They would then decrypt it with their own private key. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography) claims that its effectively impossible to decrypt email if all you know is the public key. But is this really true? What if you had the resources of the NSA, are they not able to brute force the decryption?"}
{"_id": "43081", "title": "Where should I start and how to progress when learning Java EE", "text": "I know basic stuff like, what are beans, jsp, servlet, jsf and how this stuff should work together. I know how to make basic jsp page with database query for example. Now I need to know what is the best path to learn all this stuff. My plan is to learn in this order:   1. jsp (including persistance and JSTL)   2. servlets + beans   3. jsf   4. The jump to frameworks (hibernate, struts, spring, etc) Also I'm not exactly sure about JSF, is it a must to make great pages or is it just a convenience to know?"}
{"_id": "43083", "title": "python vs php (for project managers)", "text": "Up to now, as a developer i preferred python for web programming and scripting. Now, i will manage some projects. I know that finding developers that know php is easier than finding developers that know python. I have a background of python, so if developers use python; i will be able to control and lead easier. This is a trade-off. What is your suggestion?"}
{"_id": "215538", "title": "Representing and executing simple rules - framework or custom?", "text": "I am creating a system where users will be able to subscribe to events, and get notified when the event has occured. Example of events can be phone call durations and costs, phone data traffic notations, and even stock rate changes. Example of events:   * customer 13532 completed a call with duration 11:45 min and cost $0.4   * stock rate for Google decreased with 0.01% Customers can subscribe to events using some simple rules e.g.   * When stock rate of Google decreases more than 0.5%   * When the cost of a call of my subscription is over $1 Now, as the set of different rules is currently predefined, I can easily create a custom implemention that applies rules to an event. But if the set of rules could be much larger, and if we also allow for custom rules (e.g. when stock rate of Google decreses more than 0.5% AND stock rate of Apple increases with 0.5%), the system should be able to adapt. I am therefore thinking of a system that can interpret rules using a simple grammer and then apply them. After some research I found that there exists rule-based engines that can be used, but I am unsure if they fit our need as they seem more appropriate for business logic, as hinted in Does Your Project Need a Rule Engine and Jess guildelines. Is there a open source Java framework suited for this area? If anyone can point me to the correct direction, or recommend some system, that would be great! **Edit:**   Thoughts for custom solution: I am thinking of using an event-to-rule mapping, where each rule is assosicated with a set of events. Then, when an event occurs, I know what rules that can be applied. If each rule is represented by is own class, then triggering the rule is simply to execute the class. Pros: Simple and easy implementation. No need for interpretation of events to find rules Cons: Each new rule requires coding. Cannot do deduction analysis. If you see any major flaws in this approach please do tell me!"}
{"_id": "118342", "title": "How can I convince my colleague to unit test his code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Colleague unwilling to use unit tests \"as it's more to code\" I've been trying in the last couple of months to convince one of my colleagues to start unit testing his code and drop the old \"print, run, debug\" way of doing things. I need clear and elaborated proofs that unit testing increases your productivity - this guy has a decent amount of experience and can give a counter-argument for all of the arguments I gave him until now. Unit testing is not a policy that's being enforced in the team, but is something that most of us do and it definitely worked for us, and we can see how print, run and debug isn't working for him - it's taking way too long to implement something and it's taking even longer to manually test his code."}
{"_id": "238392", "title": "MVC: Where should I store interchangeable algorithms used by the Model (whose names also need to be accessible to the View)?", "text": "Please consider a program, where the user chooses an algorithm from a list, and the Strategy pattern is utilized to set this algorithm as the model's operation. For example, an image procession application. There are a number of algorithms that can be used to manipulate an image (darken, brighten, contrast, etc). They are all encapsulated in objects, and the controller sets the model to use an algorithm from this list. The algorithms also need to be presented by name on the UI. This is how it will work: The user can select an algorithm from a list on the GUI. When he/she does, the controller is notified, and sets the suitable algorithm in the model. Later on, when the model is called `model.operate()`, it will delegate the operation to it's current algorithm. Classic Strategy pattern. Also, _the view needs access to the names of the algorithms_ , in order to allow the user to choose one from a list. My question is this: **Should I store the algorithms somewhere, where the controller will fetch them from when it needs to set an algorithm in the model? Or should the controller just instantiate a new algorithm whenever it needs to set an algorithm in the model?** If the answer is that it's good to store the algorithms somewhere - than where? In the model? - makes sense because the model encapsulates the business logic and data of the app. But how will the view fetch the names of the algorithms? In the controller? - makes sense because the controller is the one that sets the algorithms in the model. And also it can offer the view a method `getAlgorithmNames()`. But technically it shouldn't hold business logic objects, which is what the algorithms are. In a different class, where anyone interested can fetch the algorithms or their names from? I'm sure there have been a lot of applications where the user selects an operation, and the appropriate algorithm is set in the model. How do other applications do this?"}
{"_id": "215539", "title": "Algorithms or patterns for a linked question and answer cost calculator", "text": "I've been asked to build an online calculator in PHP (and the Laravel framework). It will take the answers to a series of questions to estimate the cost of a home extension. For example, a couple of questions may be:   * What is the lie of your property? Flat, slightly inclined, heavily inclined. (these suggestive values could have specific values in the underlying calculator like, 0 degrees, 5 degrees, 10 degrees).   * What is your current flooring system? Wooden, or concrete? These would then impact the results of other questions. Once the size of the extension has been input, the lie of the land will affect how much site works will cost, and how much rubbish collection will cost. The second question will impact the cost of the extensions flooring, as stumping and laying floorboards is a different cost to laying foundations and a concrete slab. It will also influence what heating and cooling systems are available in the calculator. So it's VERY interlinked. The answer to any question can influence the options of other questions, and the end result. I'm having trouble figuring out an approach to this that will allow new options and questions to be plugged in at a later stage without having things too coupled. The Observer pattern, or Laravel's events may be handy, but currently the sheer breadth of the calculator has me struggling to gather my thoughts and see a sensible implementation. Are there any patterns or OO approaches that may help?"}
{"_id": "159706", "title": "Does current JIT optimize generated machine codes for branch prediction based on runtime statistics?", "text": "Some JVMs would compile Java byte code into native machine code. We know that there are lots of optimizations we could apply for that. Recently, I also learn that a branch operation may block the CPU and affect the performance significantly, if a CPU makes a wrong prediction. Does anyone know if any JVM would generate machine codes easier for CPU making right prediction based on runtime statistics collected?"}
{"_id": "157275", "title": "Including local headers first", "text": "So I read up on the ordering of your includes, and this guy suggested you include your local header first so as to make sure it doesn't have prerequisites. Ok, I get that. I'm on board. The whole compartmentalization thing is good. But I've got this file, file.c which includes it's `file.h`, which declares functions to save files. Which passes around the `FILE*` type used by `fopen` and friends. If I include `file.h` before I include `stdio.h` then there's an obvious parsing error when it's building `file.h` because it doesn't know about the `FILE*` type. I know I've got to be missing something dirt simple, but I can formulate this into something google can use. Should I be doing something different in `file.h`? Is this simply something that needs to be included in a specific order? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "65139", "title": "Should data structures be integrated into the language (as in Python) or be provided in the standard library (as in Java)?", "text": "In Python, and most likely many other programming languages, common data structures can be found as an integrated part of the _core language_ with their own dedicated syntax. If we put LISP's integrated list syntax aside, I can't think of any other languages that I know which provides some kind of data structure above the array as an integrated part of their syntax, though all of them (but C, I guess) seem to provide them in the standard library. From a language design perspective, what are your opinions on having a specific syntax for data structures in the core language? Is it a good idea, and does the purpose of the language (etc.) change how good this could be of a choice? **Edit:** I'm sorry for (apparently) causing some confusion about which data structures I mean. I talk about the basic and commonly used ones, but still not the most basic ones. This excludes trees (too complex, uncommon), stacks (too seldom used), arrays (too simple) but includes e.g. sets, lists and hashmaps."}
{"_id": "103558", "title": "What is the difference between a prototype and a production level solution?", "text": "This question is purely for learning and to step-up my technical understanding. I know there is no perfect solution and this question has possible never ending solution list but I think it's very important for every architect to understand the difference between demo and a live project. I created many demo solutions in .Net in the past. I now have been assigned to architect and implement a production level web solution so I wanted to ask - on a very high level, what is required to convert a demo into a production level solution. From my understanding, this will require (other than functionally implementing clients' requirements):   1. Unit testing every method    2. Ensuring ~100% code coverage is achieved   3. Logging all exceptions and possible pointcuts - possible with AOP   4. Using interface design pattern, dependency injection, possibly by using a framework e.g. spring.net    5. Using performance counters and profilers for instrumentation    6. Applying appropriate security - i.e. windows authentication (if that's whats required by client).   7. Transaction management on every single method    8. Back up of the web application files before new deployment of solution **What else?** My question is more related to technical side instead of functional/documentation because otherwise we will go into another path :-) Thank you."}
{"_id": "213017", "title": "Is POST for an element generally not exposed or invalid in REST APIs?", "text": "I was browsing around wikipedia on REST, reading specifically the section on REST APIs Reading the different ways to treat elements from collections I read that POST is _not generally used_. How does that work in practice? When successful REST APIs are developed, when it comes to elements, does POST just not exist or return an error? Is there a reasoning behind that I haven't grasped?"}
{"_id": "214044", "title": "Is it practical to write exit codes in a script where the outcome is more complex than success/fail?", "text": "Where I work, we're in the process of automating a lot of tasks that currently need to be run manually by an IT person to determine if the next task can be performed (the second task depends on certain outcomes of the first task). We're ending the first phase of our script automation process, having reworked the first task to have better support for logging, error handling and even emailing a report, but we will not be able to get to reworking the second task right away so it will remain in its current state of manual use. In the meantime, it has been suggested that we implement exit codes into the first task so that we can simply chain the second task, in its current state, on a successful first task. The only issue here is that the first task is a little more complicated than just success/fail. There are many different parts that can pass that will allow the second task to be run a certain way. Now I know none of this is impossible with exit codes. We could take the time to implement the first task to return all these different exit codes so that the second task can be run in a semi-automated fashion based on these exit codes as a temporary solution to making the entire process automated until we have the time to go in and rework the second task the correct way. My question is, is it practical to take the time to implement exit codes into a script as a temporary solution to a larger problem where the script is more complex than success/fail? Note: The exit codes will take some time to implement as our rework of the first task was not designed to return exit codes (it is a self-contained script that handles its own logging and error reporting). Edit: It is a given that we **have** to go back and rework the second task in a way that the two tasks can be run independently of each other (their outcomes/state will be shared through a database). Edit: In general, I know it is useful to have exit codes, but my current situation involves spending a considerable amount of development time to go back and implement the exit codes properly (again because the outcome of the script is quite complex with many different levels of success/fail), when they aren't part of the overall solution, but a temporary hack to our new system in order to \"fake\" it as a completely automated system until we can actually complete the rework. I guess it's more of a \"Is the time spent to implement this hack, while not a complete solution, worth it if we have to go back and undo the hack later?\" question."}
{"_id": "213014", "title": "How to gracefully handle unsupported browsers?", "text": "Recently I have started experimenting with some of the newer W3C specifications such as WebGL and the Web Audio API that are not yet widely supported in browsers. As I want my page to look professional, I need a way to treat the unsupported browsers gracefully. Now I was wondering:   * Is there a standard or a guideline that details what a person should see when their browser does not support a certain page?    * Are there any pitfalls I should look out for when implementing a not-supported-message?    * And considering the extremely fast pace browsers release new, updated versions, how can I ensure that my script still works in future browser versions that actually do have the previously unsupported feature without blocking them?"}
{"_id": "155605", "title": "Is executing SQL through a WebService a really bad idea?", "text": "Typically when creating a simple tool or something that has to use a database, I go through the fairly long process of first creating a webservice that connects to a database then creating methods on this webservice that do all the type of queries I need.. methods like               List<Users> GetUsers()     {         ...     }     User GetUserByID(int id)     {           ...     }     //More Get/Update/Add/Delete methods      Is it terrible design to simply make the webservice as secure as I can (not quite sure the way to do something like this yet) and just make a couple methods like this               SqlDataReader RunQuery(string sql)     {          ...     }          void RunNonQuery(string sql)     {          ...     }      I would sorta be like exposing my database to the internet I suppose, which sounds bad but I'm not sure. I just feel like I waste so much time running everything through this webservice, there has to be a quicker yet safe way that doesn't involve my application connecting directly to the database (the application can't connect directly to database because the database isn't open to any connections but localhost, and where the appliction resides the standard sql ports are blocked anyway) Especially when I just need to run a few simple queries"}
{"_id": "127466", "title": "Best practices in comment writing and documentation ", "text": "Commenting nowadays is easier than ever. In Java, there are some nice techniques for linking comments to classes, and Java IDEs are good at making comment shells for you. Languages like Clojure even allow you to add a description of a function in the function code itself as an argument. However we still live in an age where there are often obsolete or poor comments written by good developers - I'm interested in improving the robustness and usefulness of my comments. In particular I'm interested in Java/Clojure/Python here, but answers don't need be language-specific. Are there any emerging techniques that validate comments and automatically detect either \"flimsy\" comments (for example comments with magic numbers, incomplete sentences, etc..) or incorrect comments (for example, detecting mispelled variables or the like). And more importantly: Are there accepted \"commenting-policies\" or strategies out there? There is plenty of advice out there on how to code - but what about \"how to comment?\""}
{"_id": "150230", "title": "Atomic Memcache Operations in PHP", "text": "This post is a follow up to this question: PHP Atomic Memcache on StackOverflow. Considering I am using Memcache (no d at the end) on PHP 5.3.10, I implemented a custom locking system where a client will wait until a lock key is destroyed before it begins to modify a key on memcache. So:               Client 1 connects, checks for an active lock on key 1, finds none, and gets the data     Client 2 connects a few microsecond after Client 1, requests the same data from key 1,        but finds a lock     Client 2 enters a retry loop until Client 1 releases the lock     Client 1 saves new data to key 1, releases the lock     Client 2 gets the fresh data, sets a lock on key 1, and continues      This works 90% of the time. It would work 100% of the time if two requests are made far apart from each other (say 500ms). But lets say two requests are made at almost the same time (10 to 100 microseconds apart) the above solution fails, and both clients write to the same key, resulting in incorrect data. I have tried many things, including a loop that varies in wait time every iteration:               while(/*lock key exists*/)     {         usleep(mt_rand(1000,100000);     }      This helps only a little. What would be the solution to this particular issue? These mecache processes must be atomic. I am willing to tolerate a 1% failure rate (since it means I just need to work a little harder to make it 0), but anything more is just too risky. I've broken my head trying to figure this out. There is no possibility to upgrade to Memcached, and the value changes are not simple (they are not increments)"}
{"_id": "87480", "title": "How to give life to my idea which belong to my company?", "text": "I wonder, what options do I have in the following situation. In the course of the several projects I realised the need in some auxilary software product (related to testing of the main products). I applied a creative approach to the matter and implemented a system which I think has a potential and looking promising (maybe not on the market but at least among some interested supporters). I have even more ideas related to this system and continue developing at my free and work time. It has become a work and hobby at the same time. Unfortunately, this work basically has nothing in common with the company's business and there is no way this will be organized in a form of standard development process and be presented to costumers as a product. What can you suggest in this situation? How to avoid breaching of contract? Have you had something similar in your career? What if my intention is to develop it as an open source project?"}
{"_id": "150236", "title": "Quantifying the price for source code and software product", "text": "I'm about to undertake a project. This requires me to write code, and tons of it. The client's requirement is to hand in all source code at the end of the project. My question is: How do I quantify the price for source code and the software product? Is there any metric that one follows to determine pricing? How would I quantify the software product? _Extra info:_ The application must run anywhere, in any OS, including tablets (iPad, Galaxy tabs, etc.), Smartphones (iPhone, Android phones, etc.) and also on the web. _(Now, imagine how much code this will be)_."}
{"_id": "82471", "title": "C# type system and dynamic type", "text": "I'm writing a paper about the C# (and Go) type system with focus on the dynamic aspect. Does anybody have suggestions for papers/literature? The things I found don't go much into detail. I would like to add some paragraphs on how it's implemented, comparisons with other languages, speed, memory allocation etc."}
{"_id": "153768", "title": "Reflective practice in programming using keystroke playback", "text": "I'm thinking of applying Reflective Practice to improving my programming skills. To that end, I want to be able to watch myself writing code. In general, what is a good method for applying Reflective Practice to the craft of programming? In particular, if it's a good idea, is there an editor that records keystrokes then plays them back at a later time - possibly running the keys together without delays, or replaying at a 2x/4x/8x accelerated rate? Screencasting with RecordMyDesktop is an option, but has downsides of waiting for encoding and ending up with a big video file instead of a list of keystrokes. * * * _Update_ : From \"watching myself code\" I expect to learn what kind of mistakes I make most frequently or where I waste time while coding. Then I can work on improving those aspects. It could be certain formatting, syntax or runtime errors, or maybe long pauses that indicate I hadn't considered some issue before I started coding, or maybe I re-write entire functions because my initial design was wrong. I understand that there's a lot more to programming than the act of writing code and this won't capture all of it. As recommended I should make more design notes and reflect on those too. Recording keystrokes may be more helpful to improving my technique in time- limited programming contests, and less helpful for improving day-to-day programming at the office."}
{"_id": "60560", "title": "Are you a functional programmer?", "text": "Are you a functional programmer? By that I mean   * employed full time   * paid by someone else   * using a recognized functional language (Haskell, Scala, Erlang, F# etc, not just using FP techniques in an imperative language like Javascript) If so, what do you do, and how did you get there?"}
{"_id": "120114", "title": "Studying parallel programming", "text": "I'm currently finishing my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and thinking a lot about which specialisation to choose in my Master's degree. One subject I'm particularly interested in is parallel programming. However, this topic does not seem to be a standard topic in Computer Science degrees, although it is something that is used more and more - new processors nowadays are usually dual or quad cores. So I was wandering: does anybody know a good study program in this field? I was mostly looking for it at universities in Germany, but they tend to combine the application side with some type of engineering or natural science. Thus, programs are more the \"Computational Engineering\" or \"Computational Science\" type, but I'm more interested in the Computer Science part of it, i.e. parallel programming, languages and compilers, algorithms and hardware."}
{"_id": "120116", "title": "Is a program linked against an LGPL library in linux still under GPL?", "text": "If I were to write say, an embeded linux video server, how much of the code do I have to offer to someone who requests the source? Do I have to offer the code that directly links against the GPL covered code or do I have to offer all code? For instance, if I use gstreamer, or any other LGPL code, on a linux platform in my program, does all of my code become under GPL simply because somewhere in the chain, the LGPL program had to link agaist GPL code? I guess this is an extension of the question. Can you write a C library that compiles in linux that does not become subject to GPL?"}
{"_id": "235394", "title": "Should refactoring be the exception or the rule?", "text": "I had a discussion with a co-worker yesterday about design philosophy. The other coder is more experienced then me, and I fully admit that he is likely much better at properly automating his testing, which I'm just now trying to break sloppy habits. However, it seems that some of our dispute is a philosophical issues where I'm unwilling to simply yield to his greater experience. Generally he is a Directing programmer, who follows all of the formal approaches. He has interfaces for nearly every class and has automated tests for everything down to getter and setters on basic POJO objects. He sees refactoring as a dirty word which is a sign that things weren't written/designed properly from the start, it\u2019s inevitable and done as necessary but everything should be done to avoid having to do it and you should feel bad when you have to. I feel I'm a more flexible/Enabling programmer. I feel that interfaces should be used as necessary, but not thrown in until they are needed (KISS), and that it's easy enough to pull an interface out of an existing object by refactoring if you decide an interface/polymorphism makes more sense later. I also felt that, while I admit I need to be better at testing then I am currently, the level of automated tests he suggested seemed too rigors since it would take so long to implement and, more importantly, make refactoring a nightmare since I wouldn't be free to modify the behavior of any non-private method. As my requirements grow and change I find myself refactoring heavily and that level of testing feels like it would kill my flexibility. His view is that I shouldn't _be_ refactoring so it doesn't matter if the tests make it harder to do. Ultimately all of the other philosophical discussions seemed to boil down to the word 'refactor'. I love refactoring, I feel it should be used liberally any time you feel that something isn't quite as clean and beautiful as it should be, and that the natural course of growing a program or adding new requirements will necessitate refactoring to better enable code reuse, moving logic to new classes/packages as it grows more complex, and yes fixing inevitable design mistakes which will happen from a flexible agile development approach (and that\u2019s not always bad if your code is written to allow modification!). He disagrees with all of that. I'm wondering what other's thoughts are on refactoring. How common should it be? Is writing code with a philosophy of \"I'm doing it simple now, I can refactor it later if more complicated logic proves necessary\" inherently flawed/dangerous? Does acceptability of refactoring depend on program approach and style? I generally am on rapid prototyping or \u201cclean up this ugly, but working, prototype some non-engineers wrote\u201d, while it sounds like he actually gets to do formal programming with official requirements that don\u2019t change; I\u2019ve never once had a job like that myself!"}
{"_id": "235395", "title": "Kibibtye or Kilobyte to represent 1024 bytes", "text": "I am working on a project with several older programmer and we were doing up the documentation of the program when I had a heated debate with one of the older programmers regarding the term : `Kilobyte`. He wanted to stick to the old way of using `Kilobytes` to represent 1024 bytes as he said most programmers understood the term : Kilobyte to represent 1024 bytes. I wanted the new way of using `Kibibyte` to represent 1024 bytes as we can't forever be stuck in our old ways and this has been updated by the community. How should I resolve this conflict with him so as to appease both of us ??"}
{"_id": "235393", "title": "Is there a named antipattern for unclear API not exposing the requirements?", "text": "In the source code I'm evaluating (jarjar), there exists java code that can be used like this:               JarJarTask fixture = new JarJarTask();     fixture.addConfiguredRule(new Rule());     fixture.execute();      Which will throw an exception like:               java.lang.IllegalArgumentException:     The <rule> element requires both \"pattern\" and \"result\" attributes.      Now, to me it is clear that the API is less than optimal here - if the rule element requires these attributes, it should ask for them in the constructor (or provide a Builder or similar that would require them). But I was unable to find coding conventions or java programming recommendations to agree with me. Is there some specific name for this that I can use to look this up in research, programming literature, style guides? Which terms could I use to find some discussion on this? Surely it's been discussed somewhere using some terms, but I seem to be unable to find anything. * * * I did find discussion around constructor injection as presented by Kent Beck in Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns and supported by Martin Fowler, which, according to this, makes it \"immediately clear what a class requires when it is instantiated, and furthermore it is impossible to instantiate the class without passing in the field\u2019s objects\". So that's a starting point at least to find some discussion."}
{"_id": "173146", "title": "C++ Building Static Library Project with a Folder Structure", "text": "I'm working on some static libraries using visual studio 2012, and after building I copy .lib and .h files to respective directories to match a desired hierarchy such as:               drive:/libraries/libname/includes/libname/framework          drive:/libraries/libname/includes/libname/utitlies          drive:/libraries/libname/lib/...      etc I'm thinking something similar to the boost folder layout. I have been doing this manually so far. My library solution contains projects, and when I update and recompile I simply recopy files where they need to be. Is there a simpler way to do this? Perhaps a way to compile the project with certain rules per project as to where the projects .h and .lib files should go?"}
{"_id": "46107", "title": "Do I need to notify a user if I am using statistics software in an iPhone app?", "text": "I am currently creating a (very simple) Objective-C client to send basic statistical data to my server for an iPhone app - just things like the state of the app (first-launch or launch, error, etc), along with the make/model/version (i.e.: \"iPod touch 4.2\"). No personally identifiable information or location data is sent. Is there anything, in the Apple Developer agreement or otherwise, that states that I must notify the user if I am doing this? I'm not interested in selling the data or anything, I just want to use the data to make my apps better. I am not adverse to telling the user I am doing this if it is required, I just don't want to scare the users (the paranoid \"oooh, they're tracking me, they know exactly where I am\" crowd) if I don't have to. Thanks for any advice."}
{"_id": "173141", "title": "Start with open source desktop application and move to iPhone/Android app", "text": "I'm a high schooler and I am competing in an open source software development competition. It must be a desktop application that runs on either Windows or Linux. I have a great idea for the open source desktop app, and I wanted to know if I could take it farther and port it to the iPhone or Android platform and make money (preferably through $.99 cost, not ads) I read somewhere that certain open source licenses allow me to do this... am I correct?"}
{"_id": "226265", "title": "Best way to display domain object summary information efficiently and in an OO way from a large inheritance tree?", "text": "**I've provided only simplified code as it's more of an abstract design question.** So I have many, many nested business/domain event objects, e.g.                public class Event      {       //bunch of properties and standard accessors      }           public class ExplosionEvent extends Event      {       //properties and standard accessors       }      And many more of these at different levels. If I need information about any given object chosen, I display it in HTML like so                private String generateHTML(Event event)      {         StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();             sb.append(\"<HTML><table>\");//simplified             sb.append(\"<TH>Time</TH>\");           sb.append(\"<TD>\" + event.getEventTime() + \"</TD>\");             if (event instanceof ExplosionEvent)        {          //append HTML and ExplosionEvent specific data        }             // ...many, many more calls like the one above             sb.append(\"</table></HTML>\");      }      As I have many event types, this means loads of duplicated HTML table tags and uses of `instanceof` so `generateHTML` is hundreds of lines long, split into methods of course but still, it's a lot of code that makes this hard to understand, navigate and therefore maintain. This is ugly and I need a better design for this. I had the idea of creating a method on `Event` which is overridable by all sub methods               //Using LinkedHashMap to preserve order as Properties wont do that     public LinkedHashMap<String, String> getAttributes()     {      LinkedHashMap<String, String> list = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();           list.put(\"Time\", eventTime);     }      sub-classes then override this, call their parent and add date specific to them to the list meaning that no matter how many `Event` classes there is, the existing `generateHTML` method (external to `Event` objects) will then simply be one small loop               private String generateHTML(Event event)     {       StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();            b.append(\"<HTML><table>\");            for (Entry<String,String> entry : event.getAttributes().entrySet())       {         sb.append(\"<TH>\" + entry.getKey() + \"</TH>\");            sb.append(\"<TD>\" + entry.getValue() + \"</TD>\");       }            sb.append(\"</table></HTML>\");     }      Is this putting too much logic in business/domain objects? **Is there a better way**?"}
{"_id": "162399", "title": "How essential is it to make a service layer?", "text": "I started building an app in 3 layers (DAL, BL, UI) [it mainly handles CRM, some sales reports and inventory]. A colleague told me that I must move to service layer pattern, that developers came to service pattern from their experience and it is the better approach to design most applications. He said it would be much easier to maintain the application in the future that way. Personally, I get the feeling that it's just making things more complex and I couldn't see much of a benefit from it that would justify that. This app does have an additional small partial ui that uses some (but only few) of the desktop application functions so I did find myself duplicating some code (but not much). Just because of some code duplication I wouldn't convert it to be service oriented, but he said I should use it anyway because in general it's a very good architecture, why programmers are so passionate about services?? I tried to google on it but I'm still confused and can't decide what to do."}
{"_id": "136671", "title": "How to get contributors assign copyright for copyright holder?", "text": "Let's say we have a company and we release our project under LGPL && GPLv3, as you know the only thing here is about contribution. People commit bug- fixes/features to the project, it's fine and we are GPL fans. Basically company makes money by this project. So what about contributors ? I know they commit code and software get better and it is actual repay to them, But how we can get contributors assign copyright for copyright holder?"}
{"_id": "238877", "title": "Overriding GetHashCode in a mutable struct - What NOT to do?", "text": "I am using the XNA Framework to make a learning project. It has a Point struct which exposes an X and Y value; for the purpose of optimization, it breaks the rules for proper struct design, since its a **mutable struct**. As Marc Gravell, John Skeet, and Eric Lippert point out in their respective posts about `GetHashCode()` (which Point overrides), this is a rather bad thing, since if an object's values change while its contained in a hashmap (ie, LINQ queries), it can become \"lost\". However, I am making my own `Point3D` struct, following the design of `Point` as a guideline. Thus, it too is a mutable struct which overrides `GetHashCode()`. The only difference is that mine exposes and int for X, Y, and Z values, but is fundamentally the same. The signatures are below:               public struct Point3D : IEquatable<Point3D>     {         public int X;         public int Y;         public int Z;              public static bool operator !=(Point3D a, Point3D b) { }         public static bool operator ==(Point3D a, Point3D b) { }              public Point3D Zero { get; }              public override int GetHashCode() { }         public override bool Equals(object obj) { }         public bool Equals(Point3D other) { }         public override string ToString() { }     }      I have tried to break my struct in the way they describe, namely by storing it in a `List<Point3D>`, as well as changing the value via a method using `ref`, but I did not encounter they behavior they warn about (maybe a pointer might allow me to break it?). Am I being too cautious in my approach, or should I be okay to use it as is?"}
{"_id": "191478", "title": "Designing models for a generic service layer", "text": "We are building a web interface to a tiered membership system, which will interface with a third-party CRM web service for the creation and management of accounts. The web service, unfortunately, is not yet built; however, we need to begin work. I have created an interface, `IMembershipService`, in which I am beginning to define \"best-guess\" prototypes, so we can begin building our User Controls. Most of these methods will return some data bundled in a Model object, e.g.:               ContactModel GetContact (string userId);      When the web service methods become available, I will create a concrete implementation of `IMembershipService` that will wire up the controls to the web service. The problem I have is that I don't yet know whether the web service will consist of:   * calls returning complex objects; e.g. a `User` object with a nested `Membership` object, which, in turn, has a nested `PaymentMethod` object   * simple calls for specific pieces of information; e.g. `String GetUserMembershipType (string userId);` This is causing me to have trouble specifying the structure of the models and interface, which is causing problems for the developers beginning work on the User Controls:   * If the service returns complex objects, I don't want my `IMembershipService` methods to be too simple, forcing me to use multiple web service calls where it is not necessary.   * If the service consists of simple calls, I don't want to have a load of complex models defined that I then can't implement, thereby having to do a load of refactoring. In theory, creating `IMembershipService` should allow me to abstract away from the actual nature of the web service, but the fact that each call to a method in `IMembershipService` will, ultimately, result in a web service call, thereby adding overhead, is making this difficult to spec. How can I design my models and `IMembershipService` in order to minimize the amount of refactoring I have to do when the nature of the web service becomes less elusive?"}
{"_id": "162392", "title": "Value passing by reference", "text": "What's the key deference between passing by reference and passing by value in PHP ?               function ( &$var1 ,$var2)     {           var1[$x]...          }      Function that passes an array by reference and value, what would the impact be."}
{"_id": "99305", "title": "What's better right now: IronRuby or IronPython?", "text": "I have plenty of experience with both Ruby and Python, and I'm looking to embed either one of these on a C# application I'm developing. I don't really care which, but I'd like to know which one currently has better support and is overall less buggy, and is the easiest to implement and deploy. I also took a good look at Boo, which I'm also messing around with. C# Is too complicated and verbose, so I'm leaving that as the last option. As for what I'm doing, I need to extend some classes in a friendly and dynamic way, without the need to recompile. They will also need to have access to a data structure created on the C# side of the code. So, any recommendations on which should I use?"}
{"_id": "99307", "title": "jQuery - programming style - many bindings vs. conditional single one", "text": "I frequently see code like that:               $(\"#foo\").live(\"mouseover mouseout\", function(e) {         if (e.type == \"mouseover\") {             $(\"#foo\").append(\"<div id='bar'>\");         } else {             $(\"#bar\").remove();         }     });      instead of more self-explanatory in my opinion:               $(\"#foo\").live(\"mouseover\", function(e) {         $(\"#foo\").append(\"<div id='bar'>\");     })     .live(\"mouseout\", function(e) {         $(\"#bar\").remove();     });      the same goes with               $('#contentPageID, #itemURL').change ( function () {         if ( $(this).is('#contentPageID') )             ...         else             ...     });      does it have any purpose or is it just different coding style (counter intuitive in my point of view) ?"}
{"_id": "262", "title": "Will Java still be relevant in 5 years?", "text": "Will Java have the same importance it had in the past, or it will be less relevant than nowadays?"}
{"_id": "195501", "title": "Oracle Database Integration with Team Foundation Server?", "text": "So my company is using TFS and SQL to Manage their Database (MS SQL Server). It integrates with the nightly build servers to do builds and produce scripts to build the entire Database. Also the Compare Schema tool that visual studio offers is really handy. We want to do the same with Oracle, Preferably with TFS if that's even possible. It can be done without, but is this a possibility? Also are there any tools to assist in automatically creating the Database in a Nightly Build? What about Managing Upgrades? Our Big worry is moving triggers and the MS SQL Service Broker to Oracle... this we might have to do manually though."}
{"_id": "19941", "title": "How long and what type of complexity would have been involved in Chris Sawyer writing most of rollercoaster tycoon in assembler?", "text": "From this question, I have another question about...   How long and what type of complexity would have been involved in Chris Sawyer writing most of rollercoaster tycoon in assembler? In order to specify and break this question down, I am interested in;   1. Approximately how many man hours (have a guess) do you estimate it would have taken Chris to write the game by himself? Or alternatively give an approximate percentage of the ratio of assembler coding hours to say, writing the whole thing in C/C++.   2. Do the programmers that know assembler well think of this as an overly complex task for such a low level language abstraction? Apart from performance benefits is this just a freakish natural ability that Chris has, or a skillset worthy of learning to that extent? I'm interested if people think the complexity/performance thing is worth learning assembler that well (in order to write), or is it only \"worth it\" if you have a lot of naturally developed skills in assembler (presumably from working with hardware/hardware drivers/electronics/etc)."}
{"_id": "245836", "title": "Object identification in Python", "text": "In learning Python, I found that when two \"names\" (or \"variables\") are assigned to the same value, both of them point to the same memory address. For example               >>> a = 10     >>> b = 10     >>> a is b     True      My question is, when assigning `b`, how does Python figure out that a `10` object already exists? One way might be to create the new object for `b`, scan pre-existing objects in memory to find a duplicate and, if found, point `b` to it. This sounds expensive, and tricky for more complex objects."}
{"_id": "219788", "title": "Is error suppressing bad practice?", "text": "On a SO question I asked here about some code I was unsure about, someone replied \"BTW, horrible code there: it uses the error suppressing symbol (@) a lot.\" Is there a reason why this is bad practice? With things like:               $db=@new mysqli($db_info) or die('Database error');      , it allows me to display just a custom error message. Without error suppressing, then it would still display the typical PHP message of: **Warning** : mysqli::mysqli(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: No such host is known. in **some\\file\\path** on **line 6** as well as 'Database error'. Is error suppressing _always_ bad, and if so, what specifically about the above is bad? Update: the actual code that I'm using is:               or error('Datatabase error', 'An error occurred with the database' . (($debug_mode) ? '<br />MySQL reported: <b>' . $db->error . '</b><br />Error occurred on line <b>' . __LINE__ . '</b> of <b>' . __FILE__ . '</b>' : ''))      which removes all previous output and displays an error message. So the fact that the error message doesn't include details about what specifically happened (which people seem to be suggesting as a reason why error suppressing is bad) is irrelevant."}
{"_id": "119877", "title": "Best practice Java - String array constant and indexing it", "text": "For string constants its usual to use a class with `final String` values. But whats the best practice for storing string array. I want to store different categories in a constant array and everytime a category has been selected, I want to know which category it belongs to and process based on that. Addition : To make it more clear, I have a categories `A,B,C,D,E` which is a constant array. Whenever a user clicks one of the items(button will have those texts) I should know which item was clicked and do processing on that. I can define an `enum`(say `cat`) and everytime do               if clickedItem == cat.A      ....     else if clickedItem = cat.B      ....     else if       ....      or even register listeners for each item seperately. But I wanted to know the best practice for doing handling these kind of problems."}
{"_id": "52475", "title": "Interview question ranking FizzBuzz (1), implementing malloc (10)", "text": "I'd like to have your opinion on the difficulty of the following interview question: **Find the contiguous subarray with maximum sum in an array of integers in O(n) time.** This trivial sounding problem was made famous by Jon Bentley in his Programming Pearls where he uses it to demonstrate algorithm design techniques. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being the FizzBuzz (or HoppityHop) test and 10 being implement the C stdlib function malloc(), how would you rank the above problem? I think the people who can best answer this question are those who have read Programming Pearls and have tried to solve this problem on their own. To motivate those who haven't, 'Programming Pearls' gets featured many times in the 'Top 10 programming books' list. A couple of comments might help get a better rating:   * Implementing malloc() is not as formidable as it seems. See K&R's C Programming Language for example. It sometimes gets asked at Microsoft.   * CLRS observation on problem solving: **_it is often more difficult to solve a problem from scratch than to verify a clearly presented solution, especially when working under time constraints**._"}
{"_id": "119872", "title": "Are there any good examples of open source C# projects with a large number of refactorings?", "text": "I'm doing research into software evolution and C#/.NET, specifically on identifying refactorings from changesets, so I'm looking for a suitable (XP- like) project that may serve as a test subject for extracting refactorings from version control history. **Which open source C# projects have undergone large (number of) refactorings?** **Criteria** A suitable project has its change history publicly available, has compilable code at most commits and at least several refactorings applied in the past. It does not have to be well-known, and the code quality or number of bugs is irrelevant. Preferably the code is in a Git or SVN repository. The result of this research will be a tool that automatically creates informative, concise comments for a changeset. This should improve on the common development practice of just not leaving any comments at all."}
{"_id": "235974", "title": "2D Game Data Structure in OpenGL ES 2.0", "text": "I'm trying to come up with some data structures for rendering my map on OpenGL. It is going to be ~ 100x100 blocks(squares) total, with each block being around 100 pixels. However, the screen will only display about 20x10 of these blocks at a time, depending on character location. So from this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19979031/android-only-game-in-opengl- performance-in-c-ndk-vs-java-dalvik?newreg=53760d542cb94d05afe42faa39d1aef6 It says that I shouldn't do a lot of allocation with ByteBuffers. So here are approaches I came up with:   1. Allocate all 10,000 blocks, and simply change the vertices on every frame, for the ones I need to display. So no dynamic allocation, but a lot of up-front space.   2. Only allocate blocks as I need them. So if in a frame I move left, and have to display new blocks, I will allocate 10 blocks in OpenGL. That way I have less memory allocated at once. However there is dynamic allocation and I need to set up the textures on every frame.   3. Cache a few blocks of each type, and update the vertex information for them as I need them, that way I don't need to allocate a lot in the beginning, and I don't need to allocate anything dynamically. (So have 100 wall blocks, 100 door blocks, 100 floor blocks, all set up from the beginning) Are any of these approaches the right way to go about doing this? Or how would one go about displaying a bunch of Bitmaps and updating their location on every frame? Or is Java a bad idea from the beginning, even for a simple 2D game?"}
{"_id": "235976", "title": "Is it common for the founder of a web app to lack technical expertise to scale it?", "text": "When I look at things like Twitter, it seems like the idea is so simple to implement initially that the founder does not have to be very technically talented. Basically it's just a guy with a good idea. But when an app / software blows up and entails much harder engineering problems, how does the founder deal with it? Have we seen cases in which the original guy with the good idea somehow falls off the enterprise as it becomes more about technical challenges and less about ideas?"}
{"_id": "9268", "title": "Should I insist that we perform code reviews before merging back to trunk?", "text": "Requested re-post from StackOverflow: I'm working in a small development time with very limited time for development. We develop a tool that is important for the result of our work, but not used daily. I am the only person in the team that has a background as a programmer. My problem is that I have been pushing for code reviews before merging back to trunk for over a year. Everyone agreed on this, but still it's only my code that has been reviewed. Returning from a long vacation I come back to a trunk with code comments as \"this is an ugly solution - remove as soon as possible\" and \"quick fix\". What also is new is that a guy has been appointed the responsibility for the tool. (A role that first was offered to me but I turned down due to a non work related reason.) And he thinks that this is an ok way to work: As we have such limited time to develop, we should cut corners like that. My concern is that the other developers write ugly code: often breaking encapsulation, writing huge classes, adding internal classes at strange places, having few or no unit tests, and so on. It will eventually be impossible to develop the tool further. Should I insist that we perform code reviews before merging back to trunk or am I just a code quality bitch?"}
{"_id": "10731", "title": "How to manage a project in school?", "text": "I just started doing PhD and we are supposed to do a project for a class, there are 14 people taking the class and we are supposed to develop a system all together. I was away from academia and working in the industry before, and I know it is very hard to manage even a couple of people towards the same goal. We are going to make the first meeting in a couple of weeks. First, I will suggest using a version control system like SVN. Second, I will try to take the lead for the architecture of the system, because I think I am more experienced. Since the class is about _computer vision_ and I anticipate that most of the people's background is research related so there is a big chance that I am more experienced. I will gladly hand architecture to someone else if he/she is more experienced. What else should we do to progress without much hassle? PS. You can assume every one of us is going to work remotely, and meet once in a week at it's best (not everyone will attend though). And the project needs to be finished in 2 months. It does not need to be a perfect, complete product, we just need to make a prototype. PPS. The aspects of the group reminds me of open source project groups, maybe the answers will be helpful for those groups as well."}
{"_id": "176011", "title": "Do functional generics exist and what is the correct name for them if they do?", "text": "Consider the following generic class:               public class EntityChangeInfo<EntityType,TEntityKey>     {         ChangeTypeEnum ChangeType {get;}         TEntityKeyType EntityKey {get;}     }      Here `EntityType` unambiguously defines `TEntityKeyType`. So it would be nice to have some kind of types' map:               public class EntityChangeInfo<EntityType,TEntityKey> with map        < [ EntityType : Person -> TEntityKeyType : int]         [ EntityType : Car -> TEntityKeyType : CarIdType ]>     {         ChangeTypeEnum ChangeType {get;}         TEntityKeyType EntityKey {get;}     }      Another one example is:                public class Foo<TIn> with map     < [TIn : Person -> TOut1 : string, TOut2 : int, ..., TOutN : double ]       [TIn : Car -> TOut1 : int, TOut2 :int, ..., TOutN : Price ] >         {             TOut1 Prop1 {get;set;}             TOut2 Prop2 {get;set;}             ...             TOutN PropN {get;set;}         }      The reasonable question: how can this be interpreted by the compiler? Well, for me it is just the shortcut for two structurally similar classes:               public sealed class Foo<Person>     {         string Prop1 {get;set;}         int Prop2 {get;set;}         ...         double PropN {get;set;}     }          public sealed class Foo<Car>     {         int Prop1 {get;set;}         int Prop2 {get;set;}         ...         Price PropN {get;set;}     }      But besides this we could imaging some update of the `Foo<>`:               public class Foo<TIn> with map         < [TIn : Person -> TOut1 : string, TOut2 : int, ..., TOutN : double ]           [TIn : Car -> TOut1 : int, TOut2 :int, ..., TOutN : Price ] >             {                 TOut1 Prop1 {get;set;}                 TOut2 Prop2 {get;set;}                 ...                 TOutN PropN {get;set;}                      public override string ToString()                 {                      return string.Format(\"prop1={0}, prop2={1},...propN={N-1},                                              Prop1, Prop2,...,PropN);                 }             }      This all can seem quite superficial but the idea came when I was designing the messages for our system. The very first class. Many messages with the same structure should be discriminated by the `EntityType`. So the question is whether such construct exists in any programming language?"}
{"_id": "152493", "title": "Good practice or service for monitoring unhandled application errors for a small organization", "text": "I'm working with multiple software with varying ways of monitoring for errors. When I make software, I usually send email with the stack trace to admins(usually me). Some customer software is monitored by a team who check that a particular batch run was successfull. Other software might not have any monitoring at all(someone will call when things go wrong horribly). Sending emails is good, except when things start going wrong, my mail gets filled fast. Also I don't want to solve the same problem in code for every software. Is there some relatively cheap and low maintenance software or practice to handle this. I want it to be cheap/low maintenance because usually I work alone or in teams of 5 or smaller. For example it would be great if errors would be aggregated so I don't get 10 000 emails when something unexpected happens... For clarification: By unhandled errors I mean Exceptions that were unhandled by application code that were propagated to Tomcat or Jboss. I don't need help with how to catch those errors. I need help with what to do with them. Is there any cloud application that I could send my errors to? Or some simple server to install? Or some library that can handle errors using configuration files. I use Java if that is any help."}
{"_id": "149158", "title": "How do I determine if my code is optimized?", "text": "I am only developer working on a project. The functionality that I have coded works to expectations(desired result) but since I am the only one I don't know if I can do anything better to it. How do I determine if my code is optimized (I want to increase the performance of some features)? One thing that comes into mind is _Code Review_ but there is no one free over here to review my code. I just keep on trying with alternate logic but at times things get stagnant and really dirty. Is there any other possible way?"}
{"_id": "212833", "title": "Datastructure for a factory pattern in practice", "text": "I'm implementing what's basically an event log system for a larger system. I used Single-table inheritance to build out the table. The problem I'm having is figuring out how to build out the classes from the database. It's easy enough for me to figure out what they are to load them into the database, but to pull them out and create objects and collections out of them is a little trickier. The only way I know of is to have a switch statement and hope that if someone implements a new object that they'll update the switch, but that doesn't seem practical. I'm sure I'm getting something wrong about how I'm thinking of the factory pattern here."}
{"_id": "12394", "title": "Choosing a licence for open source projects", "text": "I've done some open source projects, and I plan to do more in the future. So far, I've released all my code under GPL, but I've read a few articles which claim GPL is too restrictive for any code to be used in corporate environment. This, supposedly, reduces contributions. Here's what I wanted to accomplish: For **full applications** :   * no commercial use with the exception of selling _support_ for the application (i.e. the app cannot be sold, but everything around it can) For **libraries** (components, plugins, ...):   * can be included into commercial projects **without modifications**   * any modification the the library/component must be open sourced (contributed back) - the rest of the project, commercial or not, is not affected For applications, GPL still seems the logical choice. For libraries, my primitive understanding of licences makes me think that LGPL is a good match, but, I'm not sure. I've looked at MIT licence, and that seems too permissive. Most of the time, I want people to use my code anywhere they want to, as long as any improvements are contributed back. This brings me to my question(s): is LGPL a logical choice for open source libraries, components, plugins etc? Is there a better alternative? Is GPL a good choice for my applications or is there something better? **Update:** For those who are interested in my final decision, I've decided to release my libraries under multi-license scheme, MPL, LGPL and GPL. This enables virtually _everyone_ to use my code with no obligations, unless they modify it under MPL, in which case it would have to be contributed back. This means the code can be used by both FSF and proprietary software, but \"bad\" commercial exploitation is prevented (or so I'd like to think)."}
{"_id": "212837", "title": "Storing donor addresses in a relational database", "text": "I am building a donor database for a non-profit organization and one issue I'm mulling over is how to store some of the donor data. There are some families for whom we capture the names of both spouses, hence each spouse gets its own record in the DB, and naturally they share the same address. Because it is likely to happen that multiple people from a family will exist in the database, and they will share the same address (husband, wife, kids), I am considering storing the addresses in a separate table and having Address_ID be a foreign key on the Roster table. This would reduce the amount of duplicate data, and when it came to address changes, it would be far easier to handle for multiple donors that are part of a family.               Table: Roster     Columns:     Roster_ID (PK)     PrimaryRoster_ID (FK, references Roster_ID of the head of the household)     Address_ID (FK)     FirstName     LastName     Phone          Table: Address     Columns:     Address_ID     Street     Apt     City     State     ZipCode      I haven't build the GUI yet for entering the data - I'm still building the DB and populating it via scripts, but the idea is that when a new donor is created, he/she is assigned the Primary, and then any other donor who is part of the same family will have the primary donor's Roster_ID populated in the PrimaryRoster_ID column so that a link can be made between family members. People in the same family don't have to have the same address (if they don't, a separate Address record would be made for that donor), but if there are 4 people in a family, all with separate DB records and the user who enters the data assigns the same address record to all of them, only one record will exist in the Address table, with 4 records in the Roster table having that Address record as an FK to associate each individual to that address. Can anyone think of a better way of handling this, or would this design be sufficient? The size of the database right now is around 150 records in the Roster table, with maybe a max of 1000 records down the road. Edit: Changed table design slightly - I realized that Address_ID should really just be an FK in Roster instead of having a Roster_Address table."}
{"_id": "212834", "title": "User Story vs Requirement", "text": "User Story captures what the user wants to do with the system at a high level. I understand that the user story would further drive a number low level requirements. Is user story same as high level requirement for the system?"}
{"_id": "212835", "title": "Do we need a weekly project status meeting in Agile?", "text": "I am working in a small company with around 15 people (dev and qa). We are trying to practice Agile in our company. We are doing daily stand-up meetings. We are also doing a weekly project status meeting with our CTO. There we report our CTO regarding last week task and overall project status. My question is whether doing this weekly status meeting with our CTO supported in Agile or not?"}
{"_id": "124344", "title": "Datastructure for Peg Board Game", "text": "What datastructure would work for the triangular peg board game? It's a 5x5x5 triangle with 15 holes."}
{"_id": "124345", "title": "What are frameworks, stacks, and middleware?", "text": "Hey I'm a student programmer currently working in Java. I often see several terms thrown around alot and it would be very helpful for someone to explain the differences. I was prompted by my research that I did when reading this question. Anyway here are the terms (and wiki links), I've read their wiki's but am still uncertain. Software Stack Software Framework/Application framework - is there a difference? what are they? Middleware"}
{"_id": "69164", "title": "Storing credit card information: Looking for a creative solution", "text": "I recently found the need to do recurrent billing. I am extremely averse to storing people's credit card information and I refuse to take risks in that area. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, however. Using a gateway in my local area and currency is prohibitively expensive. Basically, as things stand, we can't do business through a gateway. Yet we need recurrent billing and the need to store credit card information has arisen. I thought of storing the credit card numbers (encrypted), partially or wholly, then saving the CCV number locally on an unwired machine. To bill customers, I would generate temp billing tables, and fire off a form manually for each customer that needs to be billed. I would manually populate the CCV and pipe a form to my payment processor (they will not store the data, unfortunately-- only process the payment). It's a manual PITA, and defeats the point of automation, but it's my best bet outside of storing the data outright. Can you give me any advice on my scheme?"}
{"_id": "250988", "title": "Filtering common starting/ending characters from array/list of strings", "text": "Ok so for example I have an array of strings with each string as below:               364VMS1029      364VMSH920      364VMSH192      364VMSU839      364VMN2382      364VMR223     364VMR2X3      364VMN829      364VMN8757      364VMN831      How can I dynamically get the program to recognise the common characters among all strings in the array, which in this case is `364VM` and filter them out? If there's no common character, then don't do anything."}
{"_id": "154261", "title": "Any suggested approaches to track bugs/defects?", "text": "What is the best way to track defect sources in tfs? We have various teams for a project like the vulnerability team, the customer, pre-sales, etc. We give a build and these teams independently test it. They do not have access to our tfs system. So they usually send in their defects via email. It will usually be send in an excel format. Our testing team takes these up and logs them into tfs. Sometimes they modify the original defect description (in excel) and add the expected/actual results. Sometimes they miss to cite the source. I am talking about managing the various sources as such. Is there a way we can add these sources into tfs, and actually link this particular source with the defects, with individual comments associated with them (saying where in the source we can find the actual material for the defect). Edit: I don't know if there is a way to manage various sources. Consider this: the vulnerability assessment team has come out with defects/suggestions. They captured it into an excel and passed that on to the testing team (in my case). The testing team takes the responsibility of elaborating the defect and logging it in tfs. Now say that the excel has come with 20 defect items. This is my source. (It answers the question _where did this defect come from_ ). So ultimately when I am looking at a bug I know from where it came from - I'll ultimately be looking at the email sent from the VA team which has the excel or the excel file itself sent by the VA team. It may be one of the 20 items in that excel. How should the tester link to this source just once? On the contrary, it does not make sense for the tester to attach the same excel 20 times (i.e. attach the same excel for the 20 defects while logging it into tfs) right? I hope you get my point."}
{"_id": "239222", "title": "When to add new project to solution?", "text": "I'm tidying up my company's Version Control Guidelines. One of my tasks is to determine how solutions should be organized in a very broad sense. I have somewhat come to my own conclusion that one broad requirement to document is that, for the most part, CSProj/VBProj projects should live on their own all at the same level in a branch. However, there are a measureable number of projects that aren't independent, and are tightly coupled to another. For instance, a Unit Testing project has no business by itself since it only exists in support of one other project. So it can (and should) be directly added to a solution with the project it supports. Same with an individual UI who's sole existence is to test one project. Or an implementation test project... and probably similar examples. So my goal is to mandate, in a way, that projects should not be added directly to a solution except in such examples. **Disclaimer** I'm not saying that one application cannot have a solution with multiple projects having been \"Add Existing Project\" to the solution. But in those cases, each of those projects should be addable/removable because they exist all at the same level of a namespace or folder organization. This would be easiest if there was some documentation I could find with a history of better wording. But any searches I do just end up with How-To tutorials to add projects to a solution. There are no Best Practies that get into this."}
{"_id": "250984", "title": "Encapsulate multiple properties into a single class to use as a custom DependencyProperty", "text": "My application is a WPF project implemented in C# .NET (4.5) using an MVVM architecture with no code-behind in the View. In order to eliminate the coupling between the View and the ViewModel I'm implementing some of the WPF- specific behaviours as custom DependencyProperties that can be bound to 'simple' properties exposed by the ViewModel. The View assembly now has several of these DependencyProperties that are bound by the top-level 'Windows' in the View. I can't see any obvious reason to collect them together into a single 'Controller' class, other than that when I do so the code suddenly looks prettier, but doing so introduces unnecessary coupling between these properties simply because they may be bound by a top- level View because not all ViewModel objects require all of the behaviours. Should I sacrifice some reduction in coupling by requiring that the top-level ViewModel objects expose a cohesive 'Controller' property for the View to bind to with a single, custom DependencyProperty? Would it be better to implement multiple, single-purpose custom DependencyProperties for each of the behaviours? Is there a completely different appropach I could use, such as providing some kind of 'behaviour container'? Single Controller approach:               using System;     using System.Threading;     using System.Windows;          using FrameworkMVVM.BindingControllers;   // For TopLevelViewController          namespace FrameworkMVVM.ViewBehaviours     {         public static class WindowBindableProperties         {             // One property that encapsulates the behaviours in a controller class             #region WindowControllerProperty                  private static DependencyProperty _windowControllerProperty =             DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached             (                 \"WindowController\",                 typeof(TopLevelViewController),                 typeof(WindowBindableProperties),                 new PropertyMetadata(null, WindowControllerPropertyChanged)             );                  public static DependencyProperty WindowControllerProperty             { get { return _windowControllerProperty; } }                  private static void WindowControllerPropertyChanged(                 DependencyObject d,                 DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)             {                 // Hook the events, EventHandlers, SynchronizationContext,                  // DialogResult, etc. here.             }                  #endregion         }     }      Multiple Properties approach:               using System;     using System.Threading;     using System.Windows;          namespace FrameworkMVVM.ViewBehaviours     {         public static class WindowBindableProperties         {             // Multiple properties, one for each behaviour.                  #region CloseViewEventProperty                  private static DependencyProperty _closeViewEventProperty =             DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached             (                 \"CloseViewEvent\",                 typeof(EventHandler),                 typeof(WindowBindableProperties),                 new PropertyMetadata(null, CloseViewEventPropertyChanged)             );                  // The rest of the CloseViewEvent implementation goes here.                  #endregion                  #region DialogResultProperty                  private static DependencyProperty _dialogResultProperty =             DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached             (                 \"DialogResultProperty\",                 typeof(Boolean?),                 typeof(WindowBindableProperties),                 new PropertyMetadata(null, DialogResultPropertyChanged)             );                  // The rest of the DialogResultProperty implementation goes here.                  #endregion                  #region ViewContextProperty                  private static DependencyProperty _viewContextProperty =             DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached             (                 \"ViewContextProperty\",                 typeof(SynchronizationContext),                 typeof(WindowBindableProperties),                 new PropertyMetadata(null, ViewContextPropertyChanged)             );                  // The rest of the ViewContextProperty implementation goes here.                  #endregion                  // Etc., etc., etc..         }     }"}
{"_id": "250987", "title": "An algorithm for finding subset matching criteria?", "text": "I recently came up with a problem which I would like to share some thoughts about with someone on this forum. This relates to finding a subset. In reality it is more complicated, but I tried to present it here using some simpler concepts. To make things easier, I created this conceptual DB model: ![Recipe model](http://i.stack.imgur.com/M9mvd.jpg) Let's assume this is a DB for storing recipes. Recipe can have many instructions steps and many ingredients. Ingredients are stored in a cupboard and we know how much of each ingredient we have. Now, when we create a recipe, we have to define how much of each ingredient we need. When we want to use a recipe, we would just check if required amount is less than available amount for each product and then decide if we can cook a dinner - if amount required for at least one ingredient is less than available amount - recipe cannot be cooked. Simple sql query to get the result. This is straightforward, but I'm wondering, how should I work when the problem is stated the other way round, i.e. how to find recipies which can be cooked only from ingredients that are available? I hope my explanation is clear, but if you need any more clarification, please ask."}
{"_id": "124348", "title": "Applications of Reverse Engineer, and very general process overveiw", "text": "As a student programmer, I only have very limited knowledge of the workings of much of the consumer software. I would love to one day be able to reverse engineer software to learn what makes it tick and implement it in different ways. My real question what is the general process that reverse engineering requires. I am aware that this is very broad. I was just wondering the tools such as decompilers that people use."}
{"_id": "124349", "title": "What skills does it take to develop an Android app?", "text": "What knowledge does it take to develop an Android app? How easy is it to publish one in the app market? I was thinking of trying one once I have a more firm grasp on Java. What skills should I focus on to meet that goal? Is it a long-shot to think I could develop an app like a photo editor (which I already can in Java) in the near future with intermediate Java experience, or are apps more for small teams or commercial software firms? This question serves as a personal to-do list on what to learn. I would like to develop an Android app in the near future from which I could make money."}
{"_id": "250982", "title": "Which algorithm is faster?", "text": "I'm creating a small game, where the computer generate pseudo random number in give range, and the user have to guess it. I also made the option to play computer vs computer. I mean the computer generate random number and the computer should guess it. The easiest way I found was to create for loop and increase a variable by 1 until it guesses it. But I decided to try to create my own algorithm about this.   Basically the variable that holds the guess number is equal to range / 2, and then the program enters into the while loop where if the random number > the number which is generated by logic(the one which is = to range /2) then 2 it to two and add 1 to it. If the number is < the program * by 2 and add one to it until it guess the number. Here is code in C++:               void aiVsAI(int range){ // range argument is used to be given to the randome generator func         int random_number = generate_random_number(range); // assigning the random number to variable         int guess = range / 2; // the computer guess number         int tries = 0; // how many tries the computer needed to guess the number         while(guess != random_number){ // while the guess isn't equel to the random number             if(guess > random_number){ // if the guess is > than the random number                 guess = guess / 2 + 1; // dev it to 2 and add one to it             }             else if(guess < random_number){ // if the number is < than the number then                 guess = guess * 2 + 1; // * it with 2 and add one             }             tries++; // increase the number of tires         }         std::cout << tries;     }      the generate_random_number is function that will generate pseudo-random number. _My question is which algorithm is faster this one or just using for loop and increasing variable with one until it guess the number?_ * * * Here is the full code if anyone need it for something:               #include <iostream>     #include <string>     #include <cstdlib>     #include <time.h>               //function that will generate random number     int generate_random_number(int range){  // the range argument is used to represent the maximum value of the number         if(range < 10){ // the range couln't be < 10 but can be ==             std::cout << \"range can't be less than 10\";             exit(1);         }         std::srand(time(NULL)); // making sure that the random number will be different every time         return rand() % range; // returning the random generated number in the specific range     }          //Game computer vs computer     void aiVsAI(int range){ // range argument is used to be given to the randome generator func         int random_number = generate_random_number(range); // assigning the random number to variable         int guess = range / 2; // the computer guess number         int tries = 0; // how many tries the computer needed to guess the number         while(guess != random_number){ // while the guess isn't equel to the random number             if(guess > random_number){ // if the guess is > than the random number                 guess = guess / 2 + 1; // dev it to 2 and add one to it             }             else if(guess < random_number){ // if the number is < than the number then                 guess = guess * 2 + 1; // * it with 2 and add one             }             tries++; // increase the number of tires         }         std::cout << tries;     }               // Game human vs human     void humanVsAI(int range){ // range argument is given to the generate random function         int random_number = generate_random_number(range); // assigning the random number to variable         int input = 0; // this var represents the user input         int tries = 0; // the number of tries user had make to guess the number         while(input != random_number){             std::cout << \"Enter number: \"; // alerting the user to enter a number             std::cin >> input; // getting the number             if(input < random_number) // checking if the input > than the random num                 std::cout << \"You didn't guess it,you are too low..., try again!\\n\"; // alerting the user             else{ // else it will be > than the number                 std::cout << \"You didn't guess it,you are too high..., try again!\\n\"; // alerting the user             }             tries++; // increasing tries by one for each try//         }         std::cout << \"\\n\\nYou guess it! You need \" << tries << \" to do this.\\n\\n\";     }               //game Human vs Human     void humanVsHuman(int range){         int number_to_guess; // the number which must be guessed         int user_guess; // user input         int guess;         std::cout << \"Enter number int range 1- \"<< range<<\": \\n\"; // alerting the user to enter number         std::cin >> number_to_guess; // entering number         for(int i = 0; i < 100;i++){ //Clearing the screen             std::cout << \"\\n\";         }         while(user_guess != number_to_guess){             guess++;             std::cout << \"Please enter numer:\\n\"; // alerting the user             std::cin >> user_guess; // Getting the user input             if(user_guess < number_to_guess)                 std::cout << \"You didn't guess it,you are too low..., try again!\\n\";             else if(user_guess > number_to_guess)                 std::cout << \"You didn't guess it,you are too high..., try again!\\n\";         }         std::cout << \"You guess the number\\n\";     }     int main(){         std::string game_type;         char play_game;         int range = 0;         while(1){             std::cout << \"Please enter range(type 100 to leave it as default)\\n\";             std::cin >> range;             std::cout <<\"What you want to play AI vs human, human vs human or AI vs AI ?\\n\";             std::cin.ignore(); // for get line             std::getline(std::cin, game_type); // getting the user input             std::cin.clear(); // clearing             if(game_type == \"AI vs AI\" || game_type == \"ai vs ai\"){ // if the user chose AI vs AI                 std::cout<<\"You choosed AI vs AI\\n\";                 aiVsAI(range); // calling the AI function             }             else if(game_type == \"human vs ai\"                     || game_type  == \"ai vs human\"                     || game_type == \"human vs AI\"                     || game_type == \"Human vs AI\"                     || game_type == \"Human vs ai\"                     ){ // if the user chossed AI vs human                 std::cout << \"You choosed human vs AI\\n\";                 humanVsAI(range); // calling the human vs human function             }             else if(game_type == \"human vs human\"                     ||game_type == \"Human vs Human\"                     ||game_type == \"Human vs human\"                     ||game_type == \"human vs Human\"){ // if the user choosed human vs human                 std::cout <<\"You choose human vs human\\n\";                 humanVsHuman(range); // calling the human vs human function             }             else{ // In case of any error                 std::cerr << \"An error occured!\";             }             std::cout << \"Do you want to play another game?\\n\"; // do you want another game????             std::cin >> play_game;             if(play_game == 'y' || play_game == 'Y')                std::cout <<\" starting another game\\n\";             else                 break;  // enough playing for now.         }         return 0;          }"}
{"_id": "69168", "title": "Gaining experience working with a team", "text": "I've always been a solo programmer and I would like to gain experience working with a team. Where are some places I can go to gain experience with a team assuming that I am willing to work for free in an open source project simply for gaining experience. (SIDENOTE) I think this question can be enhanced as I don't think in it's present form it is clear and concise. Basically I'm asking for resources on how to find a team to develop for to learn how to work with others. Please edit this question as you see fit. I apologize, at the moment I don't have enough points to make this into a wiki"}
{"_id": "168096", "title": "Native mobile app development - how do I structure my user stories?", "text": "I'm about to start on a project which will involve developing prototype native mobile apps (iOS and Android initially) as well as a web-based admin interface and an API for these apps to communicate with. We've got a list of stories already drafted up, however a lot of them are in the format:               As a mobile user I want to be able to view a login screen so that I can sign into the app      If this were targeted for a single platform, I wouldn't see a problem. However, since we're targeting multiple platforms, I'm not sure whether these should now be duplicated eg \"As an Android user\" or similar. This seems like duplication, but it's work that will need to be completed separately for each platform. This is the first mobile project we've gone native on - previously it was Phonegap and we lumped all stories in under \"As a mobile user\". Since essentially this was a web-based app wrapped in native code, this didn't present too much of an issue, but I'm conscious that wholly-native apps are a different ballgame!"}
{"_id": "125436", "title": "How does the license work for the LGPL open source framework?", "text": "Without knowing anything I wrote a big application, almost 1 year coding. It does Video/Audio such as softphone for commercial use (we sell it). I used a framework which was licensed under the LGPL, lesser Gnu Public License. Now before I release it to production, since I used the `H.264` video codec and a 'LGPL' framework, what should I know and what should I do? Or I do not need to do anything? This is my employer releasing and selling the application, I just did my job making the application and getting it to run without crashing. Do I need to apply for a license to court? Or do I apply for license to the framework programmers? How do I make myself valid before I let it go to my company management. **Follow up:** H.264 Encoder has GPL license H.264 Decoder has LGPL license Where do i buy encoder license? http://www.x264licensing.com/features Where do i buy decoder license? http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/AgreementExpress.aspx How much does it cost me license? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/h264-patents- how-much-do-they-really-cost/2122"}
{"_id": "152147", "title": "What are the advantages of GLSL's compilation model?", "text": "GLSL is fundamentally different from other shader solutions because the server (GPU driver) is responsible for shader compilation. Cg and HLSL are (afaik) generally compiled _a priori_ and sent to the GPU in that way. This causes some real-world practical issues:   * many drivers provide buggy compilers   * compilers differ in terms of strictness (one GPU can accept a program while another won't)   * also we can't know how the assembler code will be optimised What are the upsides of GLSL's current approach? Is it worth it?"}
{"_id": "254609", "title": "Is there any danger in writing raw bytes to a file?", "text": "I'm working through a problem in Programming Pearls -- specifically, the implementation of a program which sorts a file containing, at most, 10,000,000 integers (Column 1, Problem 3). Since the book doesn't specify how the data should be stored in the file, I'm considering storing the integers as raw bytes (there are some other constraints that make raw bytes a good option). I've never worked at this low of a level before, so I want to know if there's anything dangerous I should watch out for. Do I need to worry about accidentally using some sort of end-of-file sequence when I'm writing raw bytes to a file, for example? Edit: I realize now how broad my question was. I really meant problems of the more catastrophic kind, like accidentally overwriting other files on the disk. Sorry I wasn't clearer originally."}
{"_id": "152144", "title": "How should my local git workflow work?", "text": "At home, I have a server that is running some software (on a LAMP stack, but only accessible internally). I have another machine and a laptop that I both use for developing said software. What is the best workflow for me? Should I have a repository on my local server, create a live branch, staging branch and development branch, then checkout the development branch from my laptop/development PC to work on, commit that back when I'm done, then merge the development branch with the staging branch for testing, before further merging to the live branch? Would I simply checkout the production branch to my /www/var/ on my server? Or am I thinking/going about this all wrong? Thanks."}
{"_id": "249497", "title": "VB.net - Unable to delete/over ride files in Net App environment", "text": "I have been working on a change release application for some time now. The workflow is as follows:   1. Archive the staging file   2. Archive the current prod file   3. move staging to prod      * Delete prod file     * Copy staging file to prod dir     * Delete orig staging file When I execute my code against a Windows Server using UNC (i.e.: \\Server1\\d$\\Production) it works perfectly. My issue is that most our changes happen against a Net App file system. When I execute against this, I have gotten many different errors based on how my code is structured. Currently, I get 'The process cannot access the file '\\Netapp\\share\\files\\FILE_NAME.ext' because it is being used by another process.' Here is my current code:               Private Sub ReleaseToProd_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles ReleaseToProd.Click     Dim fs As System.IO.StreamWriter = My.Computer.FileSystem.OpenTextFileWriter(LogPath, True)     Dim i = 1          fs.WriteLine(\"--- \" & Now)          TextBox1.Text += \"Releasing to Production:\" & vbNewLine     For Each item In ListBox1.SelectedItems              If My.Computer.FileSystem.FileExists(Path.Combine(ProdDir, item)) Then             'Delete existing production file             Try                 File.Delete(Path.Combine(ProdDir, item))                 fs.WriteLine(\"Deleting \" & Path.Combine(ProdDir, item))                 'Copy staging to production                 Try                     File.Copy(Path.Combine(StageDir, item), Path.Combine(ProdDir, item))                     fs.WriteLine(\"Copying \" & Path.Combine(StageDir, item) & \"\\nTO: \" & Path.Combine(ProdDir, item))                     Try                         File.Delete(Path.Combine(StageDir, item))                         fs.WriteLine(\"Deleting \" & Path.Combine(StageDir, item))                     Catch ex As Exception                         MsgBox(item & \": issue deleting from staging!!\" & vbNewLine)                         TextBox1.Text += item & \": issue deleting from staging!!\"                         fs.WriteLine(\"--- Error Releasing - Step 3 ---\" & vbNewLine)                         fs.WriteLine(\"Stack Trace:\" & vbCrLf & ex.StackTrace & vbNewLine)                         fs.WriteLine(\"Stack Trace:\" & vbCrLf & ex.Message & vbNewLine)                     End Try                 Catch ex As Exception                     MsgBox(item & \": issue copying file to production!!\" & vbNewLine)                     TextBox1.Text += item & \": issue copying file to production!!\"                     fs.WriteLine(\"--- Error Releasing - Step 2 ---\" & vbNewLine)                     fs.WriteLine(\"Stack Trace:\" & vbCrLf & ex.StackTrace & vbNewLine)                     fs.WriteLine(\"Stack Trace:\" & vbCrLf & ex.Message & vbNewLine)                 End Try             Catch ex As Exception                 MsgBox(item & \": issue deleting production file!!\" & vbNewLine)                 TextBox1.Text += item & \": issue deleting production file!!\"                 fs.WriteLine(\"--- Error Releasing - Step 1 ---\" & vbNewLine)                 fs.WriteLine(\"Stack Trace:\" & vbCrLf & ex.StackTrace & vbNewLine)                 fs.WriteLine(\"Stack Trace:\" & vbCrLf & ex.Message & vbNewLine)             Finally                 TextBox1.Text += item + \" released\" & vbNewLine             End Try              Else             TextBox1.Text += item + \" released\" & vbNewLine             fs.WriteLine(\"Releasing Stage:\" & vbNewLine & StageDir & \"\\\" & item & vbNewLine & \"To:\" & vbNewLine & ProdDir & \"\\\" & item & vbNewLine & \"With Overwrite\" & vbNewLine)             My.Computer.FileSystem.MoveFile(StageDir & \"\\\" & item, ProdDir & \"\\\" & item, True)         End If         i = i + 1     Next          ListBox1.Items.Clear()     fs.Close()     End Sub      I know all my variables/constants are as they should be. I have full control over the destination directories, and I have launched the application as administrator Here are the stack traces received: > \\--- Error Releasing - Step 1 --- > > Stack Trace: at System.IO.__Error.WinIOError(Int32 errorCode, String > maybeFullPath) at System.IO.File.Delete(String path) at > ChangeManagementApp.Form1.ReleaseToProd_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) > > Stack Trace: The process cannot access the file > '\\Netapp\\share\\files\\FILE_NAME.ext' because it is being used by another > process. It obviously looks like a lock, but I am being assured that our application, that reads these files, does not hold locks... additionally, I can manually overwrite it with no issues at all. Any ideas on how I might be able to fix this issue? * * * The failing code is here:                   If My.Computer.FileSystem.FileExists(Path.Combine(ProdDir, item)) Then             'Delete existing production file             Try                 File.Delete(Path.Combine(ProdDir, item))                 fs.WriteLine(\"Deleting \" & Path.Combine(ProdDir, item))                 'Copy staging to production                 Try"}
{"_id": "118835", "title": "Can I use my username in a legal license?", "text": "I have an open source project, but I don't want to use my real name in the license file. Legally, can I just use my project hosting username instead? I know programmers Are Not Lawyers\u2122, but I'm looking for advice from people who may have dealt with simlar problems."}
{"_id": "254601", "title": "Best practice: dynamically handle variable data, multiple file uploads and encoding with jQuery, AJAX, PHP and MySQL", "text": "I'm currently writing an e-learing web-application. I'm sorry if this is information overkill but I think it's better to describe it in detail so you get the idea. I have made thought on every point and would just like to know if my approach is ok or totally off the mark for this is the first time I handle that much data \"on the fly\". The e-learning courses contain files of different types, e.g. Word files, PDFs, Flash (yes, sadly no way around it), videos etc. and have 1 or more sets of tests, each containing questions where images can be attached (one each question) and answers of course (single- or multiple-choice), which also can hold images (one each) in addition or instead of pure text. Upon completion a PDF (certificate) is created and stored on the server for the user to download at any time. Planned workflow:   1. Course creation is handled similar to a checkout in online shops, meaning you click on \"New course\" and a window pops up and at the top you see a flowchart showing where in the creation process you are right now. The whole process should be dynamic so information is only stored in the final \"checkout\". Each part of the process is on a separate \"page\" but you can go back and edit things. It'll be visualized like this (I will add text descriptions to the points of course): ![Workflow](http://i.stack.imgur.com/eFTwX.png)   2. First page contains only basic information, e.g. Name, version, short description and a list of topics being taught in this course.   3. 2nd page is where the fun starts: Upload multiple files with description. These file uploads should not disable the use of the form. Videos shall be uploaded and encoded in background.   4. 3rd page: Test-sets are created, this means categories (Test-sets) with subcategories (questions) and sub-subcategories (answers) also with multiple file uploads (images).   5. 4th page: final overview and confirm. How I want to handle things: **Data pre-storage** I would like to use temporary tables for this case to store the file paths and basic data. As the creation process can be cancelled at any time all files belonging to entries for this current creation process shall be deleted. This means creation starts --> Process is created in temporary table `creation- processes`. After the first page is filled the data is stored in a temporary table with fk to process id, same goes for any file uploaded. **Video encoding** As soon as a video file is uploaded I will run a background php-script which sets a database-entry in the temporary table for the video file and starts encoding via ffmpeg (3 files for each video file: mp4, ogg, webm). Uploaded files can have 4 states: \"Uploading\", \"Processing\", \"Finished\" and \"Error\". **Permanent storing** Upon completion the Data from the temporary tables is transferred into permanent tables and then deleted. Files still being processes (as video encoding can take some time) will also have their state transferred in the permanent table. The background-encoding-script checks for the filename (which is unique: timestamp+md5-hash of filename) in the temporary table first and then in the permanent table. If no entry exists in both it deletes the files it created. **Garbage collection** In addition to just using temporary tables I will have a permanent table \"tmp_files\" containing path information of ALL files being uploaded. The entries and the files listed in this table are deleted upon cancellation of the process, also after completion the entries are deleted (but not the files) for they are now stored in the regular table (course-files). So for things going wrong I can run a cron job every hour that compares the entries of \"tmp_files\" with the files in the regular table and the temporary table and if it holds an entry which is not present in one of the other tables this means there is a zombie file which must be deleted (together with the entry of course). Well that's it so far. I don't know if questions regarding planning of software are welcome here but I really would like to know if this is a good way to approach this process or not and if I'm missing something essential."}
{"_id": "58082", "title": "To what extent can choosing a particular job limit future opportunities?", "text": "I'm at the beginning of my career and I'm currently looking for jobs. I know that the farther you get away from college graduation, the more employers look at your experience as opposed to your actual degree. I'm wondering with the ultimate goal of being in software engineering/computer science, would taking a job in the IT field limit my options of getting into software engineering? Likewise would taking a job in software quality assurance limit me from pursuing a development position later, even though both are in software engineering?"}
{"_id": "58083", "title": "how to convince other we should move to hadoop?", "text": "Everything I've read about Hadoop seems like exactly the technology we need to make our enterprise more scalable. We have terabytes of raw data that is in non-relational form (text files of some kind). We're quickly approaching the upper limits of what our centralized file server can handle and everyone is aware of this. Most people on the tech team, especially the more junior members of the tech team are all in favor of moving from the central file system to HDFS. The problem is, there is one key (most senior, etc.) member of the team who is resisting this change and every time Hadoop comes up, he tells us that we could simply add another file server and be in the clear. So, my question (and yes, it's really subjective, but I need more help with this than any of my other questions) is what steps can we take to get upper management to move forward with Hadoop despite the hesitation of one member of the team?"}
{"_id": "58084", "title": "How indepth should a programmer develop his understanding of the Unified Process and UML?", "text": "I know a lot of places use UML and the unified process as their development model... but then there's a lot that don't. Would it be important to have more than a basic and functional understanding of these subjects or would it be better to focus on developing programming skills in other areas (i.e. language development, IDEs, etc)?"}
{"_id": "189750", "title": "How to associate a new/modified changeset with an existing review in VisualStudio 2012", "text": "I'm trying out the new Code Review tool in Visual Studio 2012. Which seems okay for the most part, but I've hit a wall in regards to when changes are required. How should this be handled in a code review in VS2012 land?   1. Joe submits a code review   2. Fred reviews and requests some changes   3. Joe makes the requested changes   4. ????? How does Joe associate a new changeset with the review so Fred can see it?   Abandon the existing review (thus losing all the original comments), and create a new one? Or is there a way to attach the new changes to the existing review?"}
{"_id": "58086", "title": "Design Code Outside of an IDE?", "text": "Does anyone design code outside of an IDE? I think that code design is great and all but the only place I find myself actually design code (besides in my head) is in the IDE itself. I generally think about it a little before hand but when I go to type it out, it is always in the IDE; no UML or anything like that. Now I think having UML of your code is really good because you are able to see a lot more of the code on one screen however the issue I have is that once I type it in UML, I then have to type the actual code and that is just a big duplicate for me. For those who work with C# and design code outside of Visual Studio (or at least outside Visual Studio's text editor), what tools do you use? Do those tools allow you to convert your design to actual skeleton code? It is also possible to convert code to the design (when you update the code and need an updated UML diagram or whatnot)?"}
{"_id": "21594", "title": "How to improve the programmers work environment", "text": "I manage a team of six programmers, working on diverse systems. We work in an open plan office, with members sitting in cubicles. A lot of people on these forums are big on private offices, but that is not an option for me. But I was wondering if there were ideas for other ways to improve and energize the working environment and experience. One suggestion is more plants. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "107242", "title": "Which database to prefer while developing a WPF medical inventory system?", "text": "I have a project to develop an inventory system for a medical shop. Till date, I confronted simple requirements which were fulfilled with XML as the backend db. My interaction knowledge with XML is pretty-good and I can make almost anything with XML using LINQ-TO-XML. Since, this is an inventory system, I am bit confused as to which database should I use. Can i stick with XML or proceed with SQL Server 2008. In case I use SQL Server, will I need to install the SQL Server on Client Machine as well. This is important information because SQL Server is a commercial product, hence i need to include this in my project estimation cost."}
{"_id": "211567", "title": "Why are different components of the \"web platform\" not modularized?", "text": "The web platform is hip these days. But the web platform consists of many parts that are conceptually separable, developed at different times and paces, and (most important to me) could be useful on their own. Basically the web platform is \"a browser\", but the browser lumps together several things:   * HTML/CSS renderer   * DOM   * scripting on the renderer and DOM (JavaScript)   * sandboxing (including cross-site scripting restrictions, limited access to local files, etc.)   * the browser itself, which is a GUI app with its own look and feel My question is, am I really the only one who thinks it would be useful to have each of these as separate components that are usable on their own, mixable and matchable with different versions of each other and with other programming tools? The renderer/DOM are the ones I'd really like to see abstracted, because HTML/CSS is a very nice way to describe interfaces, but it's annoying that it can only be used to describe interfaces on a web page. Most notably, the link between the rendering engine, JavaScript, and the browser GUI seems almost impenetrable. This makes it really annoying to use HTML/CSS for interface design, because your interface is always going to be running inside a browser that you don't control, and you have to use JavaScript. Compare that to other interface toolkits (like Tk, Qt, Wx), which often have bindings to multiple programming languages and can be leveraged in standalone apps that you have total control over. (This means, for instance, that browser-wide user preferences for things like fonts can interfere with your presentation, and it means any menus, keyboard shortcuts, or other UI doodadssyou create have to compete with those of the enclosing browser.) In similar fashion, it's very tough to write something that has an HTML/CSS interface, but stores data on your local computer, because browsers think it's an insecure web app, even if what you want it to be is just a \"regular app\". I know there are _historical_ reasons why people did all this together, but I find it baffling that at no point have people thought it would be worthwhile to make a separate, pluggable rendering engine that could be used with multiple programming languages, or a \"browserapp maker\" that would run a single web app in its own window, or anything like that. Or, do such things already exist? I'm aware of things like the web widgets in GUI toolkits, and XULRunner, but as far as I can see these still seem to be embedding a browser-like amalgam of several components. (In particular, there does not appear to be a stable, mature rendering engine with DOM-access bindings for languages other than JavaScript.) This makes them more heavyweight and less integrable into an application than it would be if you could just grab an HTML rendering library the same way you grab Qt or a PNG library or anything else."}
{"_id": "157512", "title": "Product owners with more than one product?", "text": "Is it normal and still proper (in agile/SCRUM-based software development) for a product owner to be in charge of more than one product?"}
{"_id": "141708", "title": "Optimal communication pattern to update subscribers", "text": "What is the optimal way to update the subscriber's local model on changes C on a central model M? ( M + C -> M_c) The update can be done by the following methods:   1. Publish the updated model M_c to all subscribers. Drawback: if the model is big in contrast to the change it results in much more data to be communicated.    2. Publish change C to all subscribes. The subscribers will then update their local model in the same way as the server does. Drawback: The client needs to know the business logic to update the model in the same way as the server. It must be assured that the subscribed model stays equal to the central model.   3. Calculate the delta (or patch) of the change (M_c - M = D_c) and transfer the delta. Drawback: This requires that calculating and applying the delta (M + D_c = M_c) is an cheap/easy operation. If a client newly subscribes it must be initialized. This involves sending the current model M. So method 1 is always required. Think of playing chess as a concrete example: Subscribers send moves and want to see the latest chess board state. The server checks validity of the move and applies it to the chess board. The server can then send the updated chessboard (method 1) or just send the move (method 2) or send the delta (method 3): remove piece on field D4, put tower on field D8."}
{"_id": "162643", "title": "Why is Clean Code suggesting avoiding protected variables?", "text": "Clean Code suggests avoiding protected variables in the \"Vertical Distance\" section of the \"Formatting\" chapter: > Concepts that are closely related should be kept vertically close to each > other. Clearly this rule doesn't work for concepts that belong in separate > files. But then closely related concepts should not be separated into > different files unless you have a very good reason. Indeed, this is **one of > the reasons that protected variables should be avoided**. What is the reasoning?"}
{"_id": "193838", "title": "What are the licencing requirements for publishing and distributing an ASP.net application", "text": "I started developing websites using PHP. I have read many times that PHP is free and open source which is an advantage over ASP.net. However, due to my current job requirements, I had to switch to ASP.net which is pretty good. Now after developing few applications, I am wondering how can I publish them for free. As PHP is free and opensource, it was never an issue for me. What's bothering me is this. Suppose I developed a web application using Visual Studio Express (or Professional version or any other version)   * Do I need any special permission/license from Microsoft to host my application on Internet   * If I create a desktop application and want to distribute it for free on internet, is any license required.   * If no, then what are microsoft licenses all about and how is PHP free and ASP is not free Thanks!"}
{"_id": "193839", "title": "Logging to database: Log first or action first?", "text": "Long story short, I'm working on a web-based frontend that interacts with a database, and one of the functions is that every action on a particular table gets logged to keep a full history of all changes to that table. An earlier attempt at using triggers in postgreSQL to handle the logging automatically ran afoul of a couple of other requirements of software that will use said database as a backend, so I'm back to manually creating the log entries and saving them. My question is, what's best practice? Creating and storing the log first, then making the change, or making the change first, then storing the log? I realize that it's essentially a moot point because I'm wrapping the entire process into a transaction anyway, but I'm suddenly wondering if there are arguments in favor of either methods."}
{"_id": "162644", "title": "What is the value of workflow tools?", "text": "I'm new to Workflow developement, and I don't think I'm really getting the \"big picture\". Or perhaps to put it differently, these tools don't currently \"click\" in my head. So it seems that companies like to create business drawings to describe processes, and at some point someone decided that they could use a state machine like program to actually control processes from a line and boxes like diagram. Ten years later, these tools are huge, extremely complicated (my company is currently playing around with WebSphere, and I've attended some of the training, its a monster, even the so called \"minimalist\" versions of these workflow tools like Activiti are huge and complicated although not nearly as complicated as the beast that is WebSphere afaict). What is the great benefit in doing it this way? I can kind of understand the simple lines and boxes diagrams being useful, but these things, as far as I can tell, are visual programming languages at this point, complete with conditionals and loops. Programmers here appear to be doing a significant amount of work in the lines and boxes layer, which to me just looks like a really crappy, really basic visual programming language. If you're going to go that far, why not just use some sort of scripting language? Have people thrown the baby out with the bathwater on this? Has the lines and boxes thing been taken to an absurd level, or am I just not understanding the value in all this? I'd really like to see arguments in defense of this by people that have worked with this technology and understand why its useful. I don't see the value in it, but I recognize that I'm new to this as well and may not quite get it yet."}
{"_id": "193834", "title": "What's the best practice for naming uploaded images?", "text": "Suppose I have a form in my web application where users can upload a profile picture. I've got few requirements about file size, dimensions etc, but when the user uploads the image, how should I name them on my system? I suppose it would need to be consistent and also unique. Maybe a GUID?               a5c627bedc3c44b7ae7c06a44fb3fcf8.jpg      A timestamp?               129899740140465735.jpg      A hash? Ex: md5               b1a9acaf295cf14ffbc5b6538294562c.jpg      Is there a standard or recommended way to do this? Maybe an ASP.NET framework I should use?"}
{"_id": "193830", "title": "Multiprocess RPC Architecture Design", "text": "I am currently working on a project that has client applications communicating with a server process. The client applications could be local to the same machine as the server process, on the same network, or over the internet. I had written a single-threaded asynchronous RPC module for the server process using Boost ASIO while Google Protobuf was used for RPC message serialization. The architecture was a pretty simple client-server model where a client would pack a request into protobuf message and send it to the server which would send back a response. The server process is written in C++ and the client applications were in varying languages. The main use case for this was to present a GUI to allow users to monitor, and interact with, the server process. In the future, the server process is going to be separated into functionally separate processes instead of one monolithic process. This presents an issue wherein I now have multiple processes for the client applications to connect to. I don't think this would be a problem in the case of the local or lan client applications but, over the internet, this could become unwieldy if the number of processes grow. Furthermore, I may want to enable IPC between server processes by sending each other RPC messages. I'm not sure what distributed application architecture would best fit this system going forwards. I don't want to reinvent the wheel if it's not necessary so I've taken cursory glances at D-bus and ZeroMQ, but seeing as I don't really have my architecture settled I thought I'd ask you fellow programmers. Would it be wise to have a single server process handling communication between client applications and server processes or is there a better architecture style I should be considering? If I want to enable IPC between server processes should I have them directly send messages to each other or should I use the single server process mentioned previously? Should I be looking at something like a publish/subscribe model?"}
{"_id": "163513", "title": "Severity and relation to occurence - priority?", "text": "I have been browsing through some webpages related to testing and found one dealing with the metrics of testing. It says: > The severity level of a defect indicates the potential business impact for > the end user (business impact = effect on the end user x frequency of > occurrence). I do not think think this is correct or what am I missing? Usually it is the priority which is the result of such a calculation (severe bug that occurs rarely is still severe but does not have to be fixed immediately). Also from this description, what is the difference between the effect on the end user and business impact?"}
{"_id": "239225", "title": "Coding: conciseness/efficiency vs readability", "text": "I am fairly new to c# and trying to learn best practices. I've been faced with many situations over the last week in which I need to make a choice between longer+simpler code, or shorter code that combines several actions into a single statement. What are some standards you veteran coders use when trying to write clear, concise code? Here is an example of code I'm writing with two options. Which is preferable? A)                   if (ncPointType.StartsWith(\"A\"))//analog points         {             string[] precisionString = Regex.Split(unitsParam.Last(), \", \");             precision = int.Parse(precisionString[1]);         }         else         {             precision = null;         }      B)                   if (ncPointType.StartsWith(\"A\"))//analog points             precision = int.Parse(Regex.Split(unitsParam.Last(), \", \")[1]);         else             precision = null;      C)                   precision = ncPointType.StartsWith(\"A\") == true ?                  int.Parse(Regex.Split(unitsParam.Last(), \", \")[1]) :                  null;"}
{"_id": "112966", "title": "How to link classes in different packages (on different pages)?", "text": "Extending the answer to this question, I have broken down a large system into a few classes per package. Each package is now shown in a different page for readability, but now how do I show the relationship of two classes in separate packages (separate printed pages)? **An example for clarification:** ![E has an association with A but are in separate packages](http://i.stack.imgur.com/b6Hs4.jpg) E has an association with A but are in separate packages (which means they are on different pages)"}
{"_id": "112962", "title": "When following SRP, how should I deal with validating and saving entities?", "text": "I've been reading Clean Code and various online articles about SOLID lately, and the more I read about it, the more I feel like I don't know anything. Let's say I'm building a web application using ASP.NET MVC 3. Let's say I have a `UsersController` with a `Create` action like this:               public class UsersController : Controller     {         public ActionResult Create(CreateUserViewModel viewModel)         {              }     }      In that action method I want to save a user to the database if the data that was entered is valid. Now, according to the Single Responsibility Principle an object should have a single responsibility, and that responsibility should be entirely encapsulated by the class. All its services should be narrowly aligned with that responsibility. Since validation and saving to the database are two separate responsibilities, I guess I should create to separate class to handle them like this:               public class UsersController : Controller     {         private ICreateUserValidator validator;         private IUserService service;              public UsersController(ICreateUserValidator validator, IUserService service)         {             this.validator = validator;             this.service= service;         }              public ActionResult Create(CreateUserViewModel viewModel)         {             ValidationResult result = validator.IsValid(viewModel);                  if (result.IsValid)             {                 service.CreateUser(viewModel);                 return RedirectToAction(\"Index\");             }             else             {                 foreach (var errorMessage in result.ErrorMessages)                 {                     ModelState.AddModelError(String.Empty, errorMessage);                 }                 return View(viewModel);             }         }     }      That makes _some_ sense to me, but I'm not at all sure that this is the right way to handle things like this. It is for example entirely possible to pass an invalid instance of `CreateUserViewModel` to the `IUserService` class. I know I could use the built in DataAnnotations, but what when they aren't enough? Image that my `ICreateUserValidator` checks the database to see if there already is another user with the same name... Another option is to let the `IUserService` take care of the validation like this:               public class UserService : IUserService     {         private ICreateUserValidator validator;              public UserService(ICreateUserValidator validator)         {             this.validator = validator;         }              public ValidationResult CreateUser(CreateUserViewModel viewModel)         {             var result = validator.IsValid(viewModel);                  if (result.IsValid)             {                 // Save the user             }                  return result;         }     }      But I feel I'm violating the Single Responsibility Principle here. How should I deal with something like this?"}
{"_id": "79101", "title": "Advanced learning topics for junior developers", "text": "I'm a junior developer at a company that has asked me to establish academic goals for the near future. I didn't realize how hard of a question this was until I could only come up with one answer, off the top of my head: Learn more Design Patterns What subjects have you learned, after you finished school, that have helped you significantly?"}
{"_id": "237532", "title": "Are random number generators security holes?", "text": "If I retrieve a random number from a database (e.g. RAND() in SQL Server) or using a programming language and send this in some form back to a client machine, is there an economic chance I will be sending an indicator of what's in my server's memory that might form a security problem (like revealing my schema, etc)?"}
{"_id": "13045", "title": "When am I ready to start using Jquery for Javascript?", "text": "I was told not to use Jquery as a beginner because it would hamper my learning of Javascript. Now I've read a couple books on Javascript, read loads of sites, and made a Javascript web app. Am I ready for Jquery? If not, then how will I know when I'm ready?"}
{"_id": "237537", "title": "Progressive Enhancement vs. Single Page Apps", "text": "I just got back from a conference in Boston called An Event Apart. A really popular theme amongst the speakers was the idea of progressive enhancement \\- a site's content should go in the HTML, and JavaScript should only be used to enhance behavior. The arguments that the speakers gave for progressive enhancement were very compelling. Not only is it a solid pattern for supporting older browsers, and devices on a network with low bandwidth, but HTML fails much more gracefully than JavaScript (i.e. markup that is not supported is just ignored, while if a browser throws an exception while executing your script - you are hosed). Jeremy Keith gave a particularly insightful talk about this. But what about single page web apps like Backbone and Angular? The whole design behind these frameworks seems to push the developer toward moving content out of the HTML, and into something like a JSON API. I can not seem to gel these two design patterns: progressive enhancement vs. single page web apps. Are there instances when one is better than the other? Or are they not even antagonistic technologies, and I am missing something here with my mental model?"}
{"_id": "54163", "title": "Origin of wParam and lParam", "text": "Given a standard windows procedure function: `LRESULT CALLBACK WindowProc(HWND hwnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam);` Where do the names wParam and lParam come from and what the history behind them?"}
{"_id": "234004", "title": "How does FDS (flat datacenter storage) make optimizations around locality unnecessary?", "text": "I was reading the following computer systems paper: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/osdi12/osdi12-final-75.pdf And I was trying to understand why it claims that it does not need data locality for it be perform well. Basically, in the abstract it says: \"...FDS multiplexes an application's large scale I/O across the available throughput and latency budget of every disk in a closer. FDS therefore makes many optimizations around data locality unnecessary.\" What I was not sure was, why does multiplexing an applications I/O across the servers in the datacenter, make it unnecessary to have to optimize in terms of data locality?"}
{"_id": "143145", "title": "How to recover from finite-state-machine breakdown?", "text": "My question may seems very scientific but I think it's a common problem and seasoned developers and programmers hopefully will have some advice to avoid the problem I mention in title. Btw., what I describe bellow is a real problem I am trying to proactively solve in my iOS project, I want to avoid it at all cost. By finite state machine I mean this > I have a UI with a few buttons, several session states relevant to that UI and what this UI represents, I have some data which values are partly displayed in the UI, I receive and handle some external triggers (represented by callbacks from sensors). I made state diagrams to better map the relevant scenarios that are desirable and alowable in that UI and application. As I slowly implement the code, the app starts to behave more and more like it should. However, I am not very confident that it is robust enough. My doubts come from watching my own thinking and implementation process as it goes. I was confident that I had everything covered, but it was enough to make a few brute tests in the UI and I quickly realized that there are still gaps in the behavior ..I patched them. However, as each component depends and behaves based on input from some other component, a certain input from user or some external source trigers a chain of events, state changes..etc. I have several components and each behave like this Trigger received on input -> trigger and its sender analyzed -> output something (a message, a state change) based on analysis The problem is, this is not completely selfcontained, and my components (a database item, a session state, some button's state)...COULD be changed, influenced, deleted, or otherwise modified, outside the scope of the event- chain or desirable scenario. (phone crashes, battery is empty phone turn of suddenly) This will introduce a nonvalid situation into the system, from which the system potentially COULD NOT BE ABLE to recover. I see this (althought people do not realize this is the problem) in many of my competitors apps that are on apple store, customers write things like this> \"I added three documents, and after going there and there, i cannot open them, even if a see them.\" or \"I recorded videos everyday, but after recording a too log video, I cannot turn of captions on them.., and the button for captions doesn't work\".. These are just shortened examples, customers often describe it in more detail..from the descriptions and behavior described in them, I assume that the particular app has a FSM breakdown. So the ultimate question is how can I avoid this, and how to protect the system from blocking itself? EDIT> I am talking in the context of one viewcontroller's view on the phone, I mean one part of the application. I Understand the MVC pattern, I have separate modules for distinct functionality..everything I describe is relevant to one canvas on the UI."}
{"_id": "175098", "title": "Adhering to a protocol and being a subclass at the same time?", "text": "In objective C, I have a situation where I would like to have an abstract protocol (interface) with 5 methods and 4 properties, but at the same time, I'd like to have a common implementation of 3 of those 5 methods. So my question is, is it ok to 1) have just an interface declaration with all the method and property declarations, 2) have a base class that adheres to that protocol (implements that interface) but also provides a common implementation of some of those classes, and only has empty stub method implementations for the rest of the methods, and then finally, 3) have a bunch of subclasses (from that base class), that will conform to that protocol - but - also inherit common method implementations -and - implement on their own those stub methods?"}
{"_id": "20240", "title": "What is the best PHP ORM library?", "text": "I want to build a PHP web application, but always faces the problem that I need to connect to database and deal with related objects. So I tried codeigniter and it uses a special way to connect to database named Active Record and I've known that its an ORM technique and there are lot of ORM libraries out there. What is the best, the easiest and the fastest of them?"}
{"_id": "256113", "title": "Backbone vs Angular/Ember for a 1-3 person development shop?", "text": "We are a really small (1-3) Ruby shop building a Rails application and need to pick one of the 3 (we've narrowed down to) JS Frameworks. Assume plenty of development experience overall but very little front end JS Framework experience (little with Backbone but absolutely nothing with the other two). If productivity and speed of development (and the need to do lesser rewrites down the road - where the road could be 6-12 months long) along with community support are key metrics, what would be a reasonable recommendation amongst these 3? And by Backbone, I am assuming the need for Marionette or Chaplin (most likely the former). I have to say that I like the fact that Backbone starts off in a rather minimalistic fashion allowing one to add the necessary modules progressively as opposed to starting off with them all (akin to Sinatra vs Rails) but having said that, I've chosen Rails (equally familiar with Sinatra at this point) simply to not worry about adding the dependencies one by one. So, I am a little unclear about the right choice and simply fear losing couple of months of development effort in the event Backbone loses traction in the community and/or it becomes difficult to find the necessary add ons or something like that. (Forgive the rambling - guess this is what happens after 2-3 sleepless nights of JS Framework comparisons)."}
{"_id": "175095", "title": "Because of over incumbent patents, is it possible to safely develop any software without the risk of legal action?", "text": "Take this System and method for restricting user access rights on the internet based on rating information stored in a relational database There are hundreds of thousands of them out there. So basically you can't program anything really without breaching one of thousands of software patents. If your program succeeds you will be sued by someone! Does this happen all the time and people get silenced? Do trendy startups get hit by things like this? Surely all major web properties would have been hit by the example above by AT&T?"}
{"_id": "256115", "title": "What can be done when you are the only person to care about consistency?", "text": "After reading this question I may have a partial answer to the issue at hand, but I'd like to explore the issue further. I seem to be the only person on my team (a team of 6 people working on an Enterprise software solution) who cares about consistency. At times I am vocal about it, but there are members of my team that are just as vocal against it. I can file tickets, as the question I linked recommends. Which sounds great. But, I think the issue I am having has to do with the mentality or attitude of myself and my co-workers. What concrete steps can be taken if your team-mates don't care about consistency? Do I clobber them with statistics from studies that have been done linking consistency of code with the speed at which code can be read? Do I flood our already overly full backlog with consistency issues that can then either be solved or put on record as being \"not important enough\"? Should I just shut-up, sit down, write code, and quit worrying about it? How best to handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "20246", "title": "Would you re-design completely under .Net?", "text": "A very extensive application began as an Access-based system (for database storage). Forms were written in VB5 and/or VB6. As .Net became a fixture in the development community, certain modules have been rewritten. This seems very awkward and potentially costly just to maintain because of the cross- technologies and extra work to keep the two technologies happy with each other. Of course, the application uses a mix of ~~ODBC~~ OleDb and MySql. ~~Would you think spending the time and resources to completely re-develop the application under .Net would be more cost effective?~~ In an effort to develop a more stable application, wouldn't it make sense to use .Net? Or continue chasing Access bugs, adding new features in .Net (which may or may not create new bugs between .Net and Access), and rewriting old Access modules into .Net modules under time constraints that prevent proper design and development? **Update** The application uses OleDb and MySql - I corrected my previous statement. Also, to lend further support to rewriting: I have since found out that when the _\"porting\"_ to .Net began, the VBA/VB6 code that existed was basically translated to the .Net equivalent. From my understanding, nothing was done to improve performance, or take advantage of new libraries or technologies. In my opinion, this creates a very fragile and unstable application. With every new update, this becomes more and more visible. As a help desk technician, I have noticed an increase in problems reported. The customers using the software have noticed an increase in problems and are commenting on it."}
{"_id": "29792", "title": "Should every member of a team use the same IDE?", "text": "Do you think it makes sense to enforce that every member of a team must use the same IDE? For instance all engineers that are already on the team use IDE X. Two new engineers come and want to use IDE Y instead because that's what they have been using for several years now. Do you have any experience with \"mixed IDE\" teams? If so what is it?"}
{"_id": "216039", "title": "Approximately how much is solid and broad knowledge of data structures and algorithms worth in the employment market?", "text": "I'm wondering how much I can boost my salary if I was to gain a strong and broad understanding of data structures and algorithms. I know the real basis but there are so many data-structures out there so I'm wondering what would be the financial benefit of cover these in depth?"}
{"_id": "129192", "title": "Algorithmic problem: Picking Cards", "text": "The problem below appeared on the last Code Sprint 2 programming competition (it's over already). The base cases are clear, but developing an algorithm that solves all possible cases has been a challenge so far. > There are N cards on the table and each has a number between 0 and N on it. > Let us denote the number on the Nth Ni. You want to pick up all the cards, > but you can only pick a specific Nth card if you already picked Ni cards > before. (As an example, if a card has a value of 3 on it, you can\u2019t pick > that card up unless you\u2019ve already picked up 3 cards previously) In how many > ways can all the cards be picked up? > > Input are the cards with their respective numbers, and the output should be > the total number of ways possible to pick them up.               Sample Input:     0 0 0      Sample Output:     6          Sample Input:     0 0 0 0      Sample Output:     24          Sample Input:     0 0 1     Sample Output     4          Sample Input:     0 3 3     Sample Output:     0"}
{"_id": "156644", "title": "How do I treat application aspects with regard to features and user stories?", "text": "When drawing up a backlog, I have several requirements that apply to a great many user stories, i.e. aspects of the application like error handling and feedback. How do I include these (without using an #include directive in each user story )? Should I treat error presentation as a feature, then have user stories for this feature like \"system catches exception, and shows info to user\"?"}
{"_id": "216033", "title": "Is Java easy decompilation a factor worth considering", "text": "We are considering the programming language for a desktop application with extended GUI use (tables, windows) and heavy database use. We considered Java for use however the fact that it can be decompiled back very easily into source code is holding us back. There are of course many obfuscators available however they are just that: obfuscators. The only obfuscation worth doing we got was stripping function and variables names into meaningless letters and numbers so that at least stealing code and renaming it back into something meaningful is too much work and we are 100% sure it is not reversible back in any automated way. However as it concerns to protecting internals (like password hashes or sensible variables content) we found obfuscators really lacking. Is there any way to make Java applications as hard to decode as .exe counterparts? And is it a factor to consider when deciding whether to develop in Java a desktop application?"}
{"_id": "156647", "title": "Should an API platform enforce only receiving JSON requests?", "text": "I am building an API platform. I have already ensured that the platform always returns JSON responses. My question is **Should my API platform enforce the rule that all requests must be JSON? What are the benefits of making all requests to be JSON?** I understand the benefits of making all responses to be JSON as this means consistency for the client apps using the API. I fail to see the benefits of making all requests to be JSON as well. I am asking this because GitHub API v3 appears to be enforcing this rule. My API platform will involve uploading of files in the requests. As far as I know, JSON requests does not work well with file uploads. Or do I do a hybrid? Enforce that anything NOT to do with file upload should send their requests as JSON? And allow an exception for file upload?"}
{"_id": "188247", "title": "Relation of CPU Hz's and network speed in clusters", "text": "In cluster the Amdahl's law, Gustafson's law exists. I though that there might be some law which states the relation between CPU Hz's and network speed: maximum network speed after which no additional Mbps would increase the calculations. Does such limits exists and what it depends on?"}
{"_id": "66515", "title": "Minimum Software for Learning C#, ASP.NET, Winforms", "text": "What is the minimum software list that one should be looking at for learning C#, ASP.NET, WinForms. I do have a system which has Windows 2003 installed in it. I am looking at something like WAMP for C#.NET development. Do we have a listing? Something along the following lines   1. Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition   2. IIS   3. My SQL (anything specific to C#.NET or should it definitely be SQL Server 2005/2008 Express Edition)   4. LINQPad   5. Anything else?"}
{"_id": "234123", "title": "Scheduling between child and parent process", "text": "When child processes are created using the fork system call what is there scheduling priorities..are they same? if so will always a child process run first and then parent...or is there a manipulation to this pattern. I have a implementation which apparently is running the parent process first. Is this expected?"}
{"_id": "71976", "title": "What are things to be taken care of before putting your app in android market?", "text": "I have developed a small android app. I am planning to release it in Google Android market. What are the things I should be aware of before doing this?"}
{"_id": "97948", "title": "What programming issues require a delay in processing a mail unsubscribe request?", "text": "Whenever I unsubscribe from a mailing list, I see that they say something like 'The change will take effect in 10 days/30 days/etc'. I would assume unsubscribing is just removing my email from some database. What is the idea behind making me wait so many days? Edit: Since this question is close here as off-topic, I have opened it here in Superuser. Closed in Superuser too. So rephrasing the question here."}
{"_id": "161602", "title": "Would this data requirement suit a Document -Oriented database?", "text": "I have a requirement to allow users to fill in journal/diary entries per day. I want to provide a handful of known journal templates with x columns to fill in. An example might be a thought diary; a user has to record a thought in one column, describe the situation, rate how they felt etc. The other requirement is that a user should be able to create their own diary templates. They might have a need for a 10 column diary entry per day and might need to rate some aspect out of 50 instead of 10. In an RDBMS, I can see this getting quite complicated. I could have individual tables for my known templates as the fields will be fixed. But for custom diary templates I imagine I would would need a table storing custom_field_types (the diary columns), a table storing entries referencing their field types (custom_entries) and then a third custom_diary table which would store rows matching custom_entries to diaries. Leaving performance / scaling aside, would it be any simpler or make more sense to use a document oriented database like MongoDB to store this data? This is for a web application which might later need an API for mobile devices."}
{"_id": "161601", "title": "Is there any advantage to learning C first?", "text": "I've got a little bit of history with programming, having gotten my start with Visual Basic. I let it slide as a hobby from a little after VB6 up until just a year or so ago when I got on the iPhone bandwagon, when I decided to take up Objective-C programming. I now have what I feel to be an intermediate level of knowledge on the language, but I can't help but feel that there's a substantial gap in where my knowledge is, given that there seems to be a substantial bit of the language I don't feel I understand. Would I benefit from reviewing the underlying C structure, or would I be better served from continuing to practice solely in Objective-C whilst reviewing the documentation for various features? **Edit:** Though I've accepted the first answer given, more insight is always appreciated from those with supplementary or opposing views."}
{"_id": "97942", "title": "Refactoring techniques for asp.net webforms application", "text": "I'm working on a large application written in asp.net web forms. It was developed under asp.net 1.0, and still uses DataGrid, though portions have been updated. Most of the code resides in either the codebehind, or in controller classes that can't be instantiated outside of a running IIS. (The controller framework we use provides lifetime management tied to session state.) Data access is through a custom DAL, meaning that most of that code also requires a live database with proper data inside it. I want to decouple the code from the database and the web server, so that I can run it under a test harness. Are there any good strategies for moving from this sort of code to a more testable structure?"}
{"_id": "161605", "title": "Dealing with units in arithmetic operations (multiplication and division)", "text": "I need to design a function to perform the basic arithmetic operations that are `addition (+)`, `subtraction (-)`, `multiplication (x)`, and `division (/)` between 2 numbers. That function takes 3 arguments:   -`number1`: composed of a `value` and a `unit`.   -`number2`: compoased of a `value` and a `unit`.   -`operation_type`: one of the 4 aforementioned operations.  and should return:   -`number3`: composed of a `value` and a `unit`.  Returning `number3`'s `value` is easy as all I need to do is use conditional statements to perform the corresponding operation (e.g. `if (operation_type == 'addition') { number3.value = number1.value + number2.value; }` ). However I'm having difficulties figuring out how I should represent and deal with the `unit` ( _for`multiplication` and `subtraction` operations, as for `addition` and `subtraction` it remains the same_) in a way that I can chain up multiple operations and properly update the resulting `unit` every time. Here is an example:               operations type: multiplications     number1.unit: Kw     number2.unit: h / user / year     number3.unit: Kwh / user / year  _                                       |     number1.unit: Kwh / user / year  <-     number2.unit: user     number3.unit: Kwh / year  _                                |     number1.unit: Kwh / year  <-     number2.unit: year     number3.unit: Kwh     ...      My only constraint is that the `unit` must initially be represented as a `string` because it is stored in the database, then we can parse parse it into an `object/array` as needed. Some of the problems I'm facing:   **Q1: how to ensure consistent order in the resulting unit (e.g.`h x Kw` and `Kw x h` should both give `Kwh`)?**   **Q2: how to deal with complex units (e.g.`foo / Kw x h / bar`)?** And because hope dies last:   **Q3: Are there any known algorithms / design patterns for dealing with this?**"}
{"_id": "178117", "title": "Is it conceivable to have millions of lists of data in memory in Python?", "text": "I have over the last 30 days been developing a Python application that utilizes a MySQL database of information (specifically about Norwegian addresses) to perform address validation and correction. The database contains approximately 2.1 million rows (43 columns) of data and occupies 640MB of disk space. I'm thinking about speed optimizations, and I've got to assume that when validating 10,000+ addresses, each validation running up to 20 queries to the database, networking is a speed bottleneck. I haven't done any measuring or timing yet, and I'm sure there are simpler ways of speed optimizing the application at the moment, but I just want to get the experts' opinions on how realistic it is to load this amount of data into a row-of-rows structure in Python. Also, would it even be any faster? Surely MySQL is optimized for looking up records among vast amounts of data, so how much help would it even be to remove the networking step? Can you imagine any other viable methods of removing the networking step? The location of the MySQL server will vary, as the application might well be run from a laptop at home or at the office, where the server would be local."}
{"_id": "178119", "title": "Why aren't Object Oriented databases used as much as Relational Databases?", "text": "I have come across many relational database management systems (RDBMS). But recently I used hibernate which made me start wondering why Object Oriented databases aren't more popular. If object oriented languages like Java or C# are so popular, then why aren't object-oriented database management systems (OODBMS) more popular too?"}
{"_id": "191997", "title": "How can I unit-test my REST web service?", "text": "I am new to unit testing, I've one REST web method that just calls DB and populates a DTO. Pseudo code is               public object GetCustomer(int id)     {       CustomerDTO objCust = //get from DB       return objCust;     }      My doubt is how to write tests for these methods and type of tests (Integration/Unit) to be included. And for unit tests, does it need to hit the DB. If it were and I pass a customer id and do few assertions, the data might change eventually resulting in failures. I think I am missing something here understanding these concepts."}
{"_id": "111680", "title": "How to become an Eclipse contributor?", "text": "I dont think I get enough programming at work so I'm thinking of doing some contributions to Eclipse. Seems that might be the only way to get some of my bugs fixed :) But how do I get started? What are the requirements in regards to software used? What is the typical process? Any special do/don'ts one needs to know?"}
{"_id": "27195", "title": "What are your thoughts on online editors?", "text": "Currently, I'm an Emacs user, (I'm used to the commands, and I work in a bunch of different languages day-to-day, one of which is Common Lisp, so it's the natural choice), but a recent-ish talk by Steve Yegge has gotten me thinking that an online editor/IDE (if done well) might provide a lot of benefits. Both in terms of tracking large code-bases, and in terms of supporting editing at the same highly-interactive level for many languages. The Bespin roadmap makes it sound like they're going in the same direction and there are also web-based implementations of both Emacs and vi (none of which I have any experience with). My question is twofold. First, are any of these editors ready for prime-time? Meaning, are they at least on-par with desktop based editors? If not, do they reliably bring any of they benefits that a server-based implementation could support (things like fully combined VCS/editor/server-side preview/storage, real IDE-level support for many disparate languages, support for team coding/remote pair programming, etc.)? I'm more interested in experience than speculation here. Second, where do you see the concept going? Are editors eventually evolving into services, are they staying on the desktop, or will we get to a hybrid system that supports local editing but provide certain, cluster-friendly pieces through a network connection? Feel free to speculate on this part."}
{"_id": "12808", "title": "Keeping a connection string secure when working with others", "text": "Say you've started an open source project and are posting it on a public repository. (like I have, using Codeplex.) One of the key files just makes the connection to the database, contains the login/password, and is just included from any other source file that needs a database connection. What's the best way to share the project without giving out your password? So far I've specifically removed it before committing any changes, but I'm thinking there has to be a better way."}
{"_id": "119051", "title": "Why does Java not permit the use of headers as in C++", "text": "I have a question that I did not find an answer for except the following answer that does not meet my requirements: > \"Because James Gosling didn't want to\" I know that Java can have interfaces (only pure virtual functions, no attributes), but it is not the exact same thing as class definitions."}
{"_id": "198641", "title": "What Does \"The Program Must Process Each Character Before Reading the Next One\" Mean?", "text": "From the book _Think Like a Programmer_ (emphasis mine) > The Luhn formula is a widely used system for validating identification > numbers. Using the original number, double the value of every other digit. > Then add the values of the individual digits together (if a doubled value > now has two digits, add the digits individually). The identification number > is valid if the sum is divisible by 10. Write a program that takes an > identification number of arbitrary length and determines whether the number > is valid under the Luhn formula. **The program must process each character > before reading the next one.** In a broader sense, what does it mean to process each character before reading the next one? What does this look like syntactically? What does the opposite mean and what does _it_ look like syntactically? **Update:** For some background, here's my attempt at the problem (in JavaScript):               Array.prototype.sum = function() {         var sum = 0,             itemCount = this.length,             i;              for(i = 0; i <= itemCount - 1; i++) {             sum += this[i];         }              return sum;     }          function validateNumberWithLuhnForumla(number) {         var numbersArray = number.toString().split(''),             numberCount = numbersArray.length,             i = 0,             isValid = false,             doubledDigit,             checksum,             numbersToSum = [];                   for(i = 0; i <= numberCount - 1; i++) {             if(i % 2 > 0 && i > 0) {                 doubledDigit = numbersArray[i] * 2;                 if(doubledDigit > 9) {                     numbersToSum.push(1, (doubledDigit - 10));                 } else {                     numbersToSum.push(doubledDigit);                 }             }         }              checkSum = numbersToSum.sum();              if(checkSum % 10 === 0) {             isValid = true;         }              return isValid;     }"}
{"_id": "221361", "title": "Syncing objects from code with the view in WPF", "text": "I've been reading some into it, but I am time pressed, so I would require a simple solution now and I promise to read up on it later. I come from a winforms c# background, and have lately been working with WPF. As the user interface I'm implementing is not that input intensive, I've gotten by with using INotifyPropertyChanged so far. Until I ran into this: I have a 3D interface from a third party library (MogreInWpf). Upon clicking an object in the 3D interface, I need to display some of the object's properties (position, size etc). Here's how my code-behind looks. I have a class, let's call it objectOfInterest, that saves all these properties, the 3D data and includes some methods that manipulate the object. In one of these methods, I generate a Grid containing textboxes to simulate name-value pairs of properties. Like \"X position:\" \"134\". As these properties are only user- changed, I've managed to bind the textbox on text changed event to respond to most changes, IE when the size is changed from 134 to 1345. Once this grid is generated, it is set to display in the main window using a ContentPresenter and setting its content to the objectOfInterest.grid. Works like a charm. Now, I have to implement a property that changes how the properties grid look like depending on a combobox included in this grid. For example, if the object is a cube, I want width/height/length to show, while I only want a radius property to show if it's a sphere. I'm kind of stuck here, as regenerating the grid upon combobox selectedValueChanged doesn't notify the view, and the generating occurs in the objectOfInterest class instead of the main window class, meaning I can't rebind the grid once it's regenerated (I cannot call contentPresenter.Content = objectOfInterest.grid again, as the main window has no idea the instances grid has changed). So, without completely understanding the MVVM methods and rewriting most of the application to fit the model, how can this be accomplished?"}
{"_id": "221362", "title": "processing Postfix log with python", "text": "I need to process all log messages from Postfix (`/var/log/mail/mail.log`), and print a summary/statistics (how many emails were sent/received and from/to which email addresses) The situation is made more complicated by the fact, that Postfix has multi- line log entries (in contrast, `Apache` for example, has single line entries and the task would have been much easier). A sample Postfix log might look something like this:               2013-12-03 14:40:45  postfix:  6F1AA10B: client=unknown[64.12.143.81]     2013-12-03 14:40:45  postfix:  6F1AA10B: message-id=<529DDF56.6050403@aol.com>     2013-12-03 14:40:45  postfix:  6F1AA10B: from=<martin.vegter@aol.com>, size=1571, nrcpt=1 (queue active)     2013-12-03 14:40:45  postfix:  6F1AA10B: to=<martin@example.com>, relay=local, delay=0.13, delays=0.13     2013-12-03 14:40:45  postfix:  6F1AA10B: removed          2013-12-03 14:52:07  postfix:  9DD9610B: client=unknown[209.85.219.65]     2013-12-03 14:52:07  postfix:  9DD9610B: message-id=<CANE3EAQUsGwj6ZBAU-awymzsG=76XZnHih@mail.gmail.com>     2013-12-03 14:52:07  postfix:  9DD9610B: from=<martin.vegter@gmail.com>, size=2388, nrcpt=1 (queue active)     2013-12-03 14:52:07  postfix:  9DD9610B: to=<martin@example.com>, orig_to=<martin@example.com>, relay=local     2013-12-03 14:52:07  postfix:  9DD9610B: removed      Every email message that was processed by Postfix has a unique message ID (in my example `6F1AA10B`). What would be the best approach to process the logs in Python? What data structure would you recommend to use for storing the entries?"}
{"_id": "50425", "title": "What is the difference between a Software Test Engineer and Software Test Analyst?", "text": "Do they differ in role and responsibilities. Or the terms are dependant on geographical area."}
{"_id": "229003", "title": "Difference between MPL 2.0 and LGPL 2.1 (+static linking exception)?", "text": "Is there a difference between MPL 2.0 and LGPL 2.1 ( **+static linking exception** )? If yes, what is it? As long as i understand the only difference between them is you can't use trademarks of contributors under MPL[1]."}
{"_id": "223216", "title": "Force users to update to the latest version of my app on the Google Play Store", "text": "Is there a way to have a \"critical update\" for my app on the Google Play Store that would require the user to update the app to keep using it? For instance, let say I push an update that brings a few bugfixes. Nothing mandatory, the user updates it if he wants to: that's a non-critical update. Now, say I correct a very serious security issue on my app and want all the users to update to this version to keep using the app: this is a critical update. Basically, if there is a critical update and the user has not updated yet, he cannot use the app until he does so. Is this possible using the Play Store? Thanks for your feedback!"}
{"_id": "55616", "title": "Am I too young to be worrying about college right now?", "text": "I'm 19 and have been a hobbyist programmer since I was a freshman in high school (2002). I recently graduated in May of '08. Right out of high school I had my first job programming contract work for a company (got noticed off of my personal website). Originally the CEO and I had discussed working for about a year from home before going out there, as recently graduated, no previous jobs, no money, and them wanting me to move across the United States, after 6 weeks of work and two projects I made my decision to stay with my family because my father might lose his job, and with my sister and mother trying to finish college I want to be here to help out in case things get real rough. - Contract work stopped there, which was fine with me, I expected it. During my time working for them I learned at a rapid rate, and I was very eager and happy to work well over 12 hours a day to get whatever they threw at me done. I worked directly under a senior developer, whose a friend of mine and they seemed to like my work and that I was doing a good job. Working for them as a whole was very good, professional, and very comfortable. I've always thought that school is a joke and doesn't really prove anything (my high school grades show it, minus all the technology classes I aced) - But I always feel that I don't truly know enough to secure a good programming job. Visual Basic .NET, C#, WinForms, sockets, are some of my skills.., but I am very modest about what I know, because there is just so much I need to learn. Question is.. how valuable can college \"really\" be? How can I really polish my skills up and fill in the holes of knowledge I may be missing? How can I really find out what I need to focus on, and where to go next? I find myself overwhelmed a lot of the time because I try to run a software development website, many projects, as well as helping other programmers who know much less than me, and of course personal life, its all very frustrating. I have many directions to go, but I'm paralyzed in which way to pick.. I've read many topics on this already here, and on the net, but I'm young still and it feels like a lot of it doesn't apply to me."}
{"_id": "55615", "title": "Best way to manage minutes of meeting", "text": "What is the best way of managing minutes of meeting on daily bases ? Do we have to manage the documents in a repository like VSS or it can be maintained in a excel sheet itself. Kindly share your experience for the same and guide. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "220095", "title": "Is securing the credit card data is considered a requirement from the customer", "text": "I'm taking an Introduction to Agile Software Development course, The instructor was discussing an example about online store and asked us to write the **User Stories** and the **Conditions of satisfactions** and one story was _As a user I can commit for marketing card that was selected previously in order to buy my goods_ , the conditions of satisfactions in this case contained some conditions in addition to **The system must secure the Credit Card data across the internet connection using https**   * I disagreed with that and said this is a thing that must be done, not just in case the user asked me to protect it, and it is a fatal threat like or more important than SQl Injections and this is a non-functional requirement at the technical level and if the user mention it or didn't this must be taken in our development, some project managers in the course showed their disagreement and said this is a time wast on features that the user didn't ask for!, the instructor didn't give my comment any attention and didn't reply to me. I really think I'm true and not convinced, but all of those trained people disagreed with me[I'm new in the software engineering field but used always to work as a developer], so I'm asking you about this."}
{"_id": "196079", "title": "Are there any large scale enterprise frameworks for PHP", "text": "I'm curious if there are any commonly used large enterprise frameworks for PHP that would be your whole or most of your environment if you were working in PHP. Something comparable to ASP.NET's WebForms or MVC in that when you're working in either one, most of your code and system is based off of working integratively within that framework. Edit: Specifically I'm looking for a framework that fit's the bill of basically being what you would use for 99% of your work in writing your website, this means:   * data retrieval, some kind of ORM in the framework   * data representation, some kind of data aware automatically configured UI controls that make reading and writing to a DB easy   * data caching   * data serialization   * data communication, an easy way to generate and host web services of various sorts"}
{"_id": "166558", "title": "How can I figure out if programming is right for me?", "text": "I have an IT background and was pretty confident until an opportunity came up at work to go into programming(C#). I have never programmed before this, and the software I am programming for is a program I have never used before (a 3D modeling software). It has been 6 months since then and I feel like giving up. I didn't get much training... about 3 weeks of training spread out over the last 6 months. I think I would be good at programming but this experience is making me rethink my decision. I'm not sure if it's just me, or if this frustration is normal. How can I figure out if programming is right for me?"}
{"_id": "166551", "title": "How do I make a .sh file that counts each time you compile?", "text": "I wanted to compile my program and I wanted to know how many times I have compiled it. How do I make a .sh file to do that? (I'm using mac, is it .sh file?)"}
{"_id": "189113", "title": "Best practices to avoid fake profiles?", "text": "When offering to create a profile (for example, login+pwd) for a web service, what are the best practices one should implement to avoid mass spamming/creation of fake profiles? I am thinking about email confirmation, captchas, etc... any other ideas that work in practice?"}
{"_id": "166555", "title": "Best C# database communication technique", "text": "A few days ago, I read an answer stating that writing queries within your c# code are long gone. I'm not sure what the specific person meant with the comment but, it got me thinking. At the company where i work, we maintain an assembly containing all the queries to the database (let's call it Queries). This assembly is reference by a QueryService (Retrieve the correct queries) assembly which in turn is referenced by a UnitOfWork assembly (The database connector classes, we have different connector classes for SQL, MySQL etc.). We use these three assemblies to perform operations on our database and all queries/commands are written by C# code. Is there a better way to communicate with the database and is there a better way to communicate with different database types?"}
{"_id": "166554", "title": "How would I go about measuring the impact an article has on the internet?", "text": "For an application of mine, I analyze the sentiment of articles, using NLTK, to display sentiment trends. But right now all articles weigh the same amount. This does not show a very accurate picture because some articles have a higher impact on the internet than others. For example, a blog post from some unknown blog should not weigh the same amount as an article from the New York Times. How can I determine their impact?"}
{"_id": "60910", "title": "Whats the best way to determine when it is appropriate to use a database?", "text": "I began my programming career in web development using PHP and MySQL. I got quite accustomed to utilizing db for storage of most dynamic data as well as some setting/parameter data. Sometimes there would be a lot of data while other times entries in the tables would be few. To me this just seemed natural and as far as I'm aware this is more or less an acceptable approach in web development. (Please correct me if I'm wrong...) I'm delving into desktop applications now and my natural inclination is to again utilize a db to store a lot of information that will be generated through the usage of the application. ~~However, as far as I can tell I don't see applications (that I use) utilizing a db very often.~~ _[EDIT: It has since been pointed out that this was a faulty assumption in that many applications do use lightweight dbs embedded into the program itself.]_ What is the reason for this? At what point is it appropriate to utilize a db? Are there any standards on this matter? Also what are the reasons to NOT use a db to develop a desktop application?"}
{"_id": "107889", "title": "When should I use a 2-property class over a pre-built structure like a KeyValuePair?", "text": "When should you put Key/Value type of data in it's own class instead of using a pre-built generic structure, such as a `KeyValuePair` or a `Tuple`? For example, most ComboBoxes I create contain a DisplayName and a Value. This is the kind of data I am trying to decide when to put in a new class, and when to just use a KeyValuePair. I am currently working on something that uses `iCalendar`, and the selected user's data ultimately gets combined into a `key1=value1;key2=value2;` type of string. I started out by putting the data in a `KeyValuePair<string,string>`, but now I am wondering if that should be it's own class instead. Overall, I am interested in finding out what guidelines are used when deciding to use an existing structure/class like a `KeyValuePair` over a 2-property object, and in what kind of situations you would use one over another."}
{"_id": "107883", "title": "AGPL - what you can do and what you can't", "text": "AGPL is a fairly new license that was meant to go GPL-over-networks. However, not being a lawyer, and actually not having read the whole license, I can't understand what exactly you can do freely and what not with AGPL. My uncertainty is fed by this post about MongoDB (which is AGPL) and even more by the comments below. If we follow the comments it turns out that you can use AGPL libraries with your closed-source, commercial server-side software, as long as you don't modify the library. Is that the case? Or you have to distribute your entire application when you use an AGPL licensed library? The case with MongoDB is that it uses Apache license for the client code, which poses another question. What happens if you use AGPL software, but deploy it as a different application that your closed-source commercial one? For example, take iText \\- it is an AGPL library:   * if you use it and modify it, do you have to open-source your entire application or you have to redistribute only the changes in iText?   * if you use it and **don't** modify it, do you have to open-source your entire application?   * If you wrap iText in another application that you start as a separate process, but use it from your main application, should you open-source everything, or just the wrapper application? (The wrapper application will be HTTP-based API that will take pdf files and will return the results of using iText as JSON). Can this be used to circumvent the AGPL license? Note: The question is about AGPLv3"}
{"_id": "138333", "title": "What are effective ways to introduce the concept of code kata into the workplace?", "text": "In your experiences, what are some effective ways to introduce code kata practice into an organization or company? To be clear, I'm not concerned with the usefulness of code kata. I'm interested in methods to introduce this concept to a development team."}
{"_id": "110484", "title": "Source control approach for plugins?", "text": "I'm writing an application and a set of many small plugins\u2014where \u201cmany\u201d means dozens and \u201csmall\u201d means one or two sources. It's not necessarily going to be possible to divide the plugins into neat, non-overlapping categories. Which would be the best strategy for source control:   * Many repositories, one for each plugin; or   * One repository, with a directory for each plugin? Other suggestions are of course welcome. I'm using Mercurial and hosting on Bitbucket."}
{"_id": "110487", "title": "My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product", "text": "Working as a freelancer, I often see _strange_ requests from my customers, some of which can negatively affect my daily work\u00b9, and others trying to set some sort of control. I usually encounter those things during preliminary negotiations, so it's easy enough at this state to explain to the customer that I do care about my work and productivity and expect my customers to trust my work. Things were much harder\u00b2 on a project I just accepted, since it's only after the end of the negotiations (the contract being already signed and not mentioning anything about video tracking) and after I started to work on the project that **my customer requested that I record a video of all I do on my machine when working on his project** , that is, a video which will show that I move the cursor, type a character, open a file, move a window, etc. I work in my own company, using my own PCs. I answered to this customer that such request cannot be accepted, since:   * Hundreds of hours of work on a dual-screen PC will require a large amount of disk space for the recorded videos. If I don't care about space, I do care about this customer wasting my bandwidth downloading those videos.   * Recording a video can affect the overall performance and decrease my productivity (which is not actually true, since the machine is powerful enough to record this video without performance loss, but, well, it still looks like a valid argument).   * I can't always remember to turn the video recording on before starting the work, and off at the end.   * It may be a privacy concern. What if I switch to my mails when recording the video? What if, to open the directory with the files about this customers project, I first open the parent directory containing the list of all of my customers?   * Such video cannot be a reliable source to track the cost of a project (I'm paid by the hour), since some work is done with just a pencil and a paper (which _is_ actually true, since I do lots of draft work without using the PC). Despite those points, **the customer considers that if I don't want to record the video, it's because I have something to hide** and want to lie about the real time spent on his project\u00b3. **How to explain to him that it is not an usual practice for the freelancers to record the videos of their daily work** , and that such extravagant requests must be reserved to exceptional circumstances\u2074? * * * \u00b9 The most frequent example is to be requested to work through Remote Desktop on a more-than-slow server which uses a more-than-slow Internet connection, or to be forced to use an outdated software as Windows Me without serious reasons as legacy support. \u00b2 In fact, I already did a lot of management and system design related work, which is essential, but usually misunderstood by customers and perceived as a waste of time and money. Observing the concerned customer, I'm pretty sure that he will refuse to pay a large amount of money for what was already done, since there is actually zero lines of code. Even if legally I can easily prove that there was a lot of work on design level, I don't want to end my relation with this customer in a court. \u00b3 Which is not as risky as it could be, since I gave to this customer the expected and the maximum cost of the project, so the customer is sure to never be asked to pay more than the maximum amount, specified in the contract, even if the real work costs more. \u2074 One case when I effectively record on my own initiative the video of actions is when I have to do some manipulations directly on a production server of a customer, especially when it comes to security issues. Recording those steps may be a good idea to know precisely what was done, and also ensure that there were no errors in my work, or see what were those errors. * * * **Update:** First of all, thank you for all your answers and comments. Since the question attracted much more attention and had much more answers than I expected, I imagine that it can be relevant to other people, so I add an update. First, to summarize the answers and the comments, it was suggested to (ordered randomly):   * Suggest other ways of tracking, as shown in Twitter Code Swarm video, or deliver a \"short milestone with a simple, clear deliverable, followed by more complex milestones\", etc.   * Explain that the video is not a reliable source and can be faked, and that it would be difficult to implement, especially for support.   * Explain that the video is not a reliable source since it shows only a small part of the work: a large amount of work is done without using a computer, not counting the extra hours spent thinking about a solution to a problem.   * Stick with the contract; if the customer wants to change it, he must expect new negotiations and a higher price.   * Do the video, \"but require that the customer put [the] entire fee into an escrow account\", require a lawyer to video tape all billable time, etc., in other words, \"operate in an environment void of trust\", requiring the customer to support the additional cost.   * Search for the laws which forbid this. Several people asked in what country I live. I'm in France. Such laws exist to protect the employees of a company (there is a strict regulation about security cameras etc., but I'm pretty sure nothing forbids a freelancer to sign consciously a contract which forces him to record the screen while he works on a project.   * Just do and send the videos: the customer will \"watch a few ten second snippets of activity he won't understand\", then throw those videos away.   * Say no. After all, it's _my_ business, and I'm the only one to decide how to conduct it. Also, the contract is already signed, and has nothing about video tracking.   * Say no. The processes and practices I employ in my company can be considered as trade secrets and are or can be classified.   * Quit. If the relation starts like this, chances are it will end badly soon or later. Also, \"if he's treating you like a thief - and that is what he's suggesting - then it's just going to get worse later when XYZ feature doesn't work exactly the way he envisioned\". While all those suggestions are equally valuable, I've personally chosen to say to my customer that I accept to do the videos, but in this case, **we must renegotiate the contract** , keeping in mind that there will be a **considerable cost, including the additional fee for copyright release**. The new overall cost would be in average three times the actual cost of the project. Knowing this customer, I'm completely sure that he would never accept to pay so much, so the problem is solved. * * * **Second update:** The customer effectively declined the proposal to renegotiate the original contract, taking in account the considerable additional cost."}
{"_id": "75545", "title": "Will you list C++/CLI on your resume?", "text": "A follow-up of Languages on a resume: Is it better to put \"C/C++\" or \"C, C++\"? Would you list `C++/CLI` on your resume? How? How would a resume reviewer initially react to it if `C++/CLI` is new to the reviewer? Will the reviewer feel that the candidate is not precise enough, just like resumes which list `C/C++` instead of `C, C++`? Will a resume parser splits them into two parts `C++`, `CLI` by using the slash as separator? Is it even a language? (Or, a _\"glue language\"_ )"}
{"_id": "127706", "title": "Why the Select is before the From in a SQL Query?", "text": "This is something that bothered me a lot at school. 5 years ago, when I learned SQL, I always wondered why we specify first the fields we want and then where we want them from. According to my idea, we should write:               From Employee e     Select e.Name      So why the norm says:               Select e.Name -- Eeeeek, what e means ?     From Employee e -- Ok, now I know what e is      It took me weeks to understand SQL, and I know that a lot of that time was consumed by the wrong order of elements. It is like writing in C#:               string name = employee.Name;     var employee = this.GetEmployee();      So, I assume that it has a historical reason, anyone knows why?"}
{"_id": "65276", "title": "How to learn/become capable of providing quality app design?", "text": "I'm interested in things a programmer should learn/know to provide extremely good application architecture design. As known any design can be regarded as good one for certain circumstances but when it comes to extending app feature set or providing some optimization and etc. it turns out that app was poorly designed or lacks some abstraction. How to be able to predict and include such stuff into app design? And from the other hand, software is here to be robust, efficient and fast. And it's main purpose from some point of view is to bring money (by saving or gaining them). So if one goes deep with abstraction and considered certain stuff that will be needed in 2 or more years, he's not going to end up with good app architecture (he's gonna have lots of unnecessary stuff). So how to understand to which extent certain stuff in app architecture is needed? Hope I made myself clear, else please comment on vague parts."}
{"_id": "65275", "title": "controlling 2 Windows simultaneously for a-b testing", "text": "I'm searching for an app that is cloning all my commands(mouse and keyboard) to a second window. Especially for Browsers. I'd like to test a web page and want to see the different behavior in two windows(different revisions of the page) directly. For example, in window 1 i click link3 and an a specific url opens. This should be done automatically in the second window. If i enter some formula data this should be cloned either. Is there any application for windows oder linux which serves this desire? i know that there are command line tools which clone commands in one terminal to several others."}
{"_id": "214521", "title": "Using lucene and sql server togheter. Newbie needs directions", "text": "Basically the whole thing can be explained simply: I need to index one or more SQL Server 2005 databases with lucene so I can search the various records. I found a lot of examples and documentation and I started to read it. The result is that I got confused and frustrated. So, as a beginner, what are the steps to implement it along with SQL server to search in the databases? I need some kind of workflow to follow so I can sort out a plan to work out the project. I don't really know where to start. -Bonus question: Is there a way to store the Lucene index directly into the SQL server database instead of a FSDirectory or RAMDirectory? -Last one: Do lucene supports similar word searchs? (I.E.: I search 'lu' and I get all the similar words show like the google suggestions, for example 'luke', 'lucene','lua' etc etc.) Please be as detailed as possible, I can program in C# and I've already wrote some SQL Server CLR assemblies to do various tasks, but Lucene mechanics are quite obscure to me. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "214529", "title": "How to create unit/integration tests for my web app?", "text": "I am currently developing an Ajax chat application that uses PHP on the back- end. Some of the features it has right now are different types of users (admin/mod/banned), public and private rooms, commands, and announcements. I recently learned about unit/integration testing and it sounds like a good alternative to manually testing everything every time I release a new feature. How can I get started with adding testing functionality into my PHP application? BTW: The app uses long polling (where PHP holds the connection through usleep() and constantly queries the database until new information is returned) so I think that might be a problem when testing it."}
{"_id": "250516", "title": "How should I include jQuery in a library?", "text": "I'm writing a JavaScript graphing library using canvas which I am licensing under MIT, and I'm using jQuery, as well as a couple of other open sourced libraries, all under MIT. I'm also using bower to manage my front-end dependencies. How should I best handle these dependencies without violating the license? Preferably, the user would not have to include multiple scripts, just one `<script src = \"graph.js></script>`, and it would include all of the plugins. Should I just ask the user to include jQuery and the other libraries in its own script tag, or should I concat all of the scripts together into one big file, headers included?"}
{"_id": "92898", "title": "How do you decide if you should take a project?", "text": "I am a fairly new developer. Professionally I have programed in C# for two years as an intern and 6 months as a junior developer. A friend of my family needs help with a project that is written in VB.net. I have never used VB.net, so I am a little worried there. But, the real question comes in the fact that once I looked at the documents for the project I have a feeling that nothing really good will come from it. I have a feeling that it will cause more stress then I would like to have in my life currently. How do experienced developers make the decision of whether to take the project or just let it go? What are some good metrics to make the decision easier? **Edit** This actually seems like a very large ERP that he would like me to work on and I don't believe that he knows anything about programming so I don't think the fact that I am very junior has even crossed his mind."}
{"_id": "250518", "title": "What is a good design for a method that can return several logically different results?", "text": "The question title is probably too abstract, so let me provide a particular example of what I have in mind: There is a webservice that encapsulates a process of changing passwords for users of a distributed system. The webservice accepts user's login, his old password and a new password. Based on this input, it can return one of the following three results:   1. In case user was not found, or his old password does not match, it will simply return with HTTP 403 Forbidden.    2. Otherwise, it takes a new password and makes sure that it conforms to a password policy (e.g. it is long enough, contains a proper mix of letters and numbers, etc.). If it does not, it will return an XML describing why the password does not conform to the policy.   3. Otherwise, it will change the password and return an XML containing an expiration date of the new password. Now, I'd like to design a class, ideally with a single method, to encapsulate working with this webservice. My first shot was this:               public class PasswordManagementWebService     {         public ChangePasswordResult ChangePassword(string login, string oldPassword, string newPassword)         {             ChangePasswordResult result;                  // send input to websevice, it's not important how; the httpResponse             // will contain a response from webservice             var httpResponse;             if (HasAuthenticationFailed(httpResponse)             {                 throw new AuthenticationException();             }             else if (WasPasswordSuccessfullyChanged(httpResponse))             {                 result = new ChangePasswordSuccessfulResult(httpResponse);             }             else             {                 result = new ChangePasswordUnsuccessfulResult(httpResponse);             }                  return result;         }     }              public abstract class ChangePasswordResult     {         public abstract bool WasSuccessful { get; }     }          public abstract class ChangePasswordSuccessfulResult     {         public ChangePasswordSuccessfulResult(HttpResponse  httpResponse)         {             // initialize the class from the httpResponse         }              public override bool WasSuccessful { get { return true; } }         public DateTime ExpirationDate { get; private set; }     }          public abstract class ChangePasswordUnsuccessfulResult     {         public ChangePasswordUnsuccessfulResult(HttpResponse  httpResponse)         {             // initialize the class from the httpResponse         }              public override bool WasSuccessful { get { return false; } }              public bool WasPasswordLongEnough { get; private set; }                 public bool DoesPasswordHaveToContainNumbers { get; private set; }         // ... etc.              }      As you can see, I've decided to use separate classes for return cases #2 and #3 - I could have used a single class with a boolean, but it feels like a smell, the class would have no clear purpose. With two separate classes, an user of my `PasswordManagementWebService` class now has to know which classes inherit from `ChangePasswordResult` and to cast to a correct one based on the `WasSuccessful` property. While I now do have a nice, laser-focused classes, I made a life of my users more difficult than it should be. As for the case #1, I've just decided to throw an exception. I could have created a separate exception for the case #2, too, and only return something from the method when the password _was_ successfully changed. However, this doesn't feel right - I don't think that a new password being invalid is a state exceptional enough to warrant throwing an exception. I am not very sure how would I design things were there more than two un- exceptional result types from the webservice. Probably, I would change a type of `WasSuccessful` property from boolean to an enum and rename it to `ResultType`, adding a dedicated class inherited from `ChangePasswordResult` for each possible `ResultType`. Finally, to the **actual question:** Is this design approach (i.e. having one abstract class and forcing clients to cast to a correct result based on a property) a correct one when dealing with problems like this? If yes, is there a way to improve it (perhaps with a different strategy for when to throw exceptions vs. return results)? If no, what would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "114474", "title": "Multiple Zend application code organisation", "text": "For the past year I have been working on a series of applications all based on the Zend framework and centered on a complex business logic that all applications must have access to even if they don't use all (easier than having multiple library folders for each application as they are all linked together with a common center). Without going into much detail about what the project is specifically about, I am looking for some input (as I am working on the project alone) on how I have \"grouped\" my code. I have tried to split it all up in such a way that it removes dependencies as much as possible. I'm trying to keep it as decoupled as I logically can, so in 12 months time when my time is up anyone else coming in can have no problem extending on what I have produced. Example structure:               applicationStorage\\ (contains all applications and associated data)     applicationStorage\\Applications\\ (contains the applications themselves)          applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\ (application grouping folder) (contains all external customer access applications)     applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\site\\ (main external customer access application)     applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\site\\Modules\\      applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\site\\Config\\     applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\site\\Layouts\\     applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\site\\ZendExtended\\ (contains extended Zend classes specific to this application example: ZendExtended_Controller_Action extends zend_controller_Action )     applicationStorage\\Applications\\external\\mobile\\ (mobile external customer access application different workflow limited capabilities compared to full site version)          applicationStorage\\Applications\\internal\\ (application grouping folder) (contains all internal company applications)     applicationStorage\\Applications\\internal\\site\\ (main internal application)     applicationStorage\\Applications\\internal\\mobile\\ (mobile access has different flow and limited abilities compared to main site version)          applicationStorage\\Tests\\ (contains PHP unit tests)          applicationStorage\\Library\\     applicationStorage\\Library\\Service\\ (contains all business logic, services and servicelocator; these are completely decoupled from Zend framework and rely on models' interfaces)     applicationStorage\\Library\\Zend\\ (Zend framework)     applicationStorage\\Library\\Models\\ (doesn't know services but is linked to Zend framework for DB operations; contains model interfaces and model datamappers for all business objects; examples include Iorder/IorderMapper, Iworksheet/IWorksheetMapper, Icustomer/IcustomerMapper)      (Note: the Modules, Config, Layouts and ZendExtended folders are duplicated in each application folder; but i have omitted them as they are not required for my purposes.) For the library this contains all \"universal\" code. The Zend framework is at the heart of all applications, but I wanted my business logic to be Zend- framework-independent. All model and mapper interfaces have no public references to Zend_Db but actually wrap around it in private. So my hope is that in the future I will be able to rewrite the mappers and dbtables (containing a Models_DbTable_Abstract that extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract) in order to decouple my business logic from the Zend framework if I want to move my business logic (services) to a non-Zend framework environment (maybe some other PHP framework). Using a serviceLocator and registering the required services within the bootstrap of each application, I can use different versions of the same service depending on the request and which application is being accessed. Example: all external applications will have a service_auth_External implementing service_auth_Interface registered. Same with internal aplications with Service_Auth_Internal implementing service_auth_Interface Service_Locator::getService('Auth'). I'm concerned I may be missing some possible problems with this. One I'm half-thinking about is a config.ini file for all externals, then a separate application config.ini overriding or adding to the global external config.ini. If anyone has any suggestions I would be greatly appreciative. I have used contextswitching for AJAX functions within the individual applications, but there is a big chance both external and internal will get web services created for them. Again, these will be separated due to authorization and different available services.               \\applicationstorage\\Applications\\internal\\webservice      \\applicationstorage\\Applications\\external\\webservice"}
{"_id": "41849", "title": "Machine Learning Web Jobs", "text": "I always see job positions for web companies for Machine Learning. For example facebook always has this type of job opening. Anyways, i was curious as to what exactly do web companies use machine learning for. Is it for giving people ads based on their site surfing history or something like that. I want to know because i have some experience with machine learning and it sounds like a fun thing to work on as long as i can convince the business guys to go ahead with it."}
{"_id": "79931", "title": "Data Access Layer, Business Class or Repository?", "text": "I've been having a debate within my team on what constitutes a Data Access Layer vs Data Functions vs Business Layers. My thoughts is all database access is done in a data access layer with Repository classes. The DAL contains utility classes & methods that populate a DataSet, List<>, POCO, Execute SQL, but as internal classes using your choice of Access method: ADO, EntityFramework, nHibernate, etc. The Business layer then interacts with the DAL without knowing any of SQL or data access methodology. A teammate has this approach. The stored procedure names and SQL are in the business classes. Then they are passed to the DAL which then populates and executes the SQL. Which is the best practice?"}
{"_id": "104281", "title": "How do you deal with errors in enumeration / list processing (lowish-level API)", "text": "Ive struggled with variants of this problem many times, experimenting with different solutions, happy with none. **Abstract:** Enumerating a list of items, an error for one item does not affect the others. Potential callers have varying requirements on how to treat these errors, goal of the API is to simplyfy use and reduce complexity. A more general case in which this problem occurs would be processing a list of independent items, and partial success is acceptable / desired, i.e. it's _not_ run as a transaction. * * * **Example scenario** : I am dealing with a low level C-Style enumeration API like this:                // gets called for each \"stuff\" item      typedef bool (*tEnumStuffCallback)(stuff * item, void * callbackArg);           // calls \"callback\" for each \"stuff\" item.       // caller enumeration context in callbackArgs      void EnumStuff(tEnumStuffCallback callback, void * callbackArg)      {          stuff * item = 0;          for(;;)          {              int err = stuff_get_next_item(&item);              if (err == no_more_stuff)                return;                   // === TODO: handle \"real\" errors ===                   // pass item  to callback, stop enumeration if requested              if (!callback(item, callbackArg))                return;          }      }      For backward compatibility and \"caller expectations\", I want/need to preserve the pure C style without exceptions. A higher-level wrapper, built on top, might look like this:                EnumStuffs(std::vector< boost::shared_ptr<stuff> > & items);      The caller may need one of the following strategies when enumeration errors occur:   * Stop enumeration on first error, e.g. because caller will ignore the entire list and enumeration is costly. A C++ client might want to throw an exception from the callback (allowed).    * Ignore the items - e.g. when enumerating connected devices, and looking for a specific one to be available, and device not found errors are handled separately   * Ignore, but log diagnostics in a caller-specific way (i.e. caller needs to know abotu errors)   * Caller needs detailed list of errors for further analysis, e.g. items may be \"retried\" on certain types of errors Note that this is _the callers choice_ , I can't force a decision. * * * **Note / Context** Example idealized, in practice, I have multiple enumerators involving different types; sometimes I have to provide the enumerator, sometimes the enumerator function comes from the OS. Error information can be more complex than a single `int`. The underlying API involves dozens of rather confusing types already, I want to avoid introducing the same amount of additional/wrapper types. Bridging different development styles is actually part of my job description, opportunities for educating either end is tricky (I have to pick my battles). * * * **My ideas / solutions**   * provide a separate callback for the errors. Enables all scenarios, but bloats the interface.    * Replace the enumerator function with a stateful object. Increases number of types, does not provide backward \"style\" compatibility.   * pass the errors to the enumerator. that's _sometimes_ a bit better than the previous solution, but usually requires an \"enumeration context\" structure instead of separate arguments. Goes against the plan to avoid additional types for each enumerator   * introduce an \"error type\", caller can either request a \"list of errors\" as a result, or get the \"stop/throw at first error\" behavior by default. I've used that before, but in the end the detailed information is typically used only to build some diagnostics, and isn't \"liked\" as it makes it \"complicated to deal with errors\". * * * **Questions** What are your thoughts? Do you have ideas for, or have you used other approaches? Under what circumstances would you use / not use above approaches? * * *"}
{"_id": "104285", "title": "Supplying code to people helping you debug?", "text": "I was wondering if it is wise or advisable to send over a large amount of source code of one's application for debugging and error solving purposes, I'm working on an iOS app that I hope to release to the App Store and am seeking help on Stack Overflow and I'm tempted to send over a large amount of the code so someone (they requested it) can help me. Would you recommend sending over a significant portion of your app to someone for debugging purposes?"}
{"_id": "165609", "title": "Using a GPL game engine", "text": "I am confused. I thought I would try and use a new game engine in order to expand my abilities, and found a nice engine called springrts. I was looking through the licensing info and it is licensed under the GPL 2 licence. If I remember correctly, does that mean that anything I make with it, I have to distribute the source code to?"}
{"_id": "104289", "title": "Are Java certifications important for an architect role?", "text": "My this question is career path related. I want to know how much Java Certifications (SCJP, SCWCD and others) are important for an architect position. If a person posses a good experience in Java development and want to pursue his career on architect level, do you guys think he need to have certification on his CV. If he has never worked on lead developer roles? If you conducting my interview for an architect position. And I have worked as a Java web developer in different teams having 5 years of exp. Never lead any. And I am having certification badges on my CV. How can a developer make his career path towards being an architect in a team?"}
{"_id": "251518", "title": "Testing an MMO server", "text": "I'm working on a **server** for a very large (feature wise) MMO. After some bad experiences with breaking changes that caused bugs weeks down the line, we'd like to add unit/automated/regression tests to our project before we get much father (we've implemented approximately 5% of our requirements). We haven't really used \"serious\" tests before (we've done the tutorial check- division-by-zero testing) so I thought I'd locate some guides for developing client-server test solutions. I was not able to find anything of much relevance. How should I deal with testing the following aspects of a typical server?   * Testing the client-server communication (API can be broken down into \"parsing\", \"handling\" and \"sending\" stages)   * Testing changes to an SQL database   * Testing security measures   * Testing **around** security measures (ie, making sure our tests don't trip our own security code)   * Testing timed events In case it's relevant, our language is C#, .Net 4.5"}
{"_id": "69954", "title": "Looking for suggestions on where to purchase vs.net 2010 from? which edition?", "text": "I need to purchase vs.net 2010 so I can use all the new features and entity framework. ANy suggestions on which edition I should get? Where is a good place to buy it on the cheap?"}
{"_id": "206122", "title": "Openning an Excel File (Like it opens in MS office when double clicked) but using java", "text": "some buddy told me there is nothing impossible in programming but i dont know about this one... :) well i want to open an .xlsx file and make it appear on screen normal in MS office, but the problem is, i want to write a program in JAVA for this, which control opening and closing of that file... ???? i dont want to convert it in csv or making my own spreadsheet to show, and also dont want to read constants (like using jxl or apache poi libraries ), i want let that file execute as it is, i want to make a program that make my Excel file open automatically in MS Excel.. could you please help me...!!!!!!"}
{"_id": "250091", "title": "In UML is it correct to have an association class with a composition or aggregation relationship?", "text": "An example of an association class is given here: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/rsarthlp/v9/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.xtools.modeler.doc%2Ftopics%2Fcassnclss.html Composition and Aggregation are also types of Associations, just with more defined semantics to what the association consists of. Can association classes also be part of a relationship by Composition or Aggregation? That is, in the case where there is a many-to-many relationship between two entities, with some additional attributes on the relationship. Or would it be more correct to model that as two separate one-to-many relationships onto a middle entity that hold the additional attributes?"}
{"_id": "162967", "title": "My father wants to learn PHP-MySQL to port his application. What I should do to help?", "text": "My father is a doctor/physician. About 15 years ago he started writing an application to handle his patient's medical records in his clinic at home. The app has the ability to input patient's medical records (obviously), search patients by some criteria, manage medicine stocks, output receipt to printer, and some more CRUDs. He wrote it in dBase III+. A few years later he migrated to FoxPro 2.6 for DOS and finally in a few more years he rewrote his app in Visual FoxPro 9. And now (actually two years ago) he wants to rewrite it in PHP, but he doesn't know how. The Visual FoxPro version of this app is still running and has no serious problem except sometimes it performs slowly. Usually there are 1-5 concurrent users. The binary and database files are shared via windows share. He did all the coding as a hobby and for free (it is for his own clinic after all). He also use this app in two other offices he managed. Some reasons of why he wants to rewrite in PHP-MySQL:   * He wants to learn   * Easier to deploy (?)   * Easier client setup, need only a browser What should I do to help my father? How should he start? I explored some options:   1. I let my father learn PHP and MySQL (and HTML (and JavaScript?)) from scratch.   2. I create/bundle framework. I'm thinking on bundling CodeIgniter and a web UI framework (any suggestion?) especially to reduce effort on writing presentation codes. What do you think? * * * ## tl;dr My father (a doctor) wants to rewrite his Visual FoxPro app in PHP-MySQL. He knows very little of PHP and MySQL but he wants to learn. What should I do to help? How should he start? * * * Some facts:   * My father is 50 years old.   * His first encounter with a PC is in early 1980s. It was IBM PC with Intel 8088.   * He knows BASIC.   * He taught me how to use DOS and how to program with BASIC.   * The other language he knows fairly well is dBase/FoxPro.   * I got my bachelor CS degree last year.   * I know the internals of my father's app because sometime he wants me to help him writing his app. * * * Update After reading early responses, there seem to be better alternatives to PHP for this case. I'm open for other language/technology suggestions."}
{"_id": "99848", "title": "Teaching Myself Computer Science, what should I learn?", "text": "I've already been programming for quite some time and have a firm grasp on programming itself, OOP, and a few other programming related things. However, **I'm interested in learning the same things that would be taught to a computer science graduate, and was wondering what I need to cover?** In case it's relevant, I've programmed with PHP, Java, Python, C & C++ and I'm looking into Lisp/Scheme."}
{"_id": "99842", "title": "VS2010 winform designer to learn, or \"bottom up\" approach?", "text": "Long story short, I'm president of a programming club at my university. We're all 1st and 2nd year programming students. We have a project we're about to start working on (converting a console program to a gui program, in c#). Only two of us have any experience working with winforms and event driven programming in general. We want to balance learning with production (getting the project finished) as most of us don't have time to commit to a full on, 40 hour a week project. Our adviser is trying to steer us in the direction of not using VS2010's winform designer, he's trying to make it a requirement that we code everything in a \"notepad++\" type environment. So basically, I need to get some answers to a few questions that I'm having trouble researching, so when we discuss how to proceed later today and tomorrow, I'm armed with some actual knowledge. (We are all, including the adviser, generally \"new\" to winforms,c#, and .net) In \"real world\" situations with winforms, how frequent is it that the designer would not at all be used? Are we (the club officers) right in our estimation that what we have figured at a 4-6 month project (using the designer) would double, if not triple coding everything without it? What are the merits of not using the designer at all as a learning tool to \"see how its done\"? Is it a valid learning opportunity if we use the designer, then look at the generated code to get more familiar with how our custom controls/event handlers should be done? I'm currently at a bit of a loss, and thank you all for your responses. (Also, if possible could you list your years in field, and degrees if you respond, our adviser is huge on only taking opinions from who he considers \"qualified\", thanks). Edit -- Also take into account that learning is also one of our priorities, not just time constraints (We're trying to strike a balance between learning every single thing that we can, and having a project that needs so much time invested in it that it becomes unfeasible for us)."}
{"_id": "167607", "title": "How can I reformat my condition to make it better?", "text": "I have a condition               if(exists && !isDirectory || !exists)     {}      how can I modify it, so that it may be more understandable."}
{"_id": "220540", "title": "Is UML a good way to shortly and simply explain a concept?", "text": "I was recently in a job interview that was mostly technical. One of the things that stood out was my difficulty explaining ideas and concepts. During the interview I decided not to use UML to explain those concepts, because I thought it can be too time consuming and I will make a mess on paper. So how can UML be used to explain ideas in a situation like an interview, where you need to be as concise as possible when explaining technical concepts and ideas? If you think UML is not a good solution for situations like this, then an alternative will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "220547", "title": "Custom directive or ng-show/hide", "text": "On my form I have an icon which represents whether my entity is locked (shown by a locked padlock) or unlocked (an open padlock). At the model level, this is represented by a boolean property (isLocked). The user can toggle the entity between locked and unlocked by clicking the icon. This also updates the icon tool-tip text. This calls a controller method that toggles the entity.isLocked property. It is like a fancy kind of checkbox. I can implement this in one of (at least) two ways: 1) Create a custom angular directive that changes the class of the icon element to show the correct icon and also sets the tool-tip text. The icon will then be a single DOM element in my view, decorated with the custom directive. 2) Put both the locked and unlocked icon elements in the DOM and show/hide each one using the custom ng-show directive. Option 1 involves writing custom code which feels like the wrong thing to do, whereas option 2 makes maximum use of the built in Angular features, but leaves the HTML more cluttered. In general, should I prefer the custom directive method (option 1) or the HTML method (option 2) or some other method? Which would be considered more idiomatic for Angular do you think? And, more importantly, why? I did consider putting this on StackOverflow, but it feels like it would be considered off-topic there because it is a matter of opinion in the end..."}
{"_id": "220549", "title": "Should timeout be a public static property or a parameter to every function?", "text": "**TLDR:** Should TIMEOUT be a public property on my static class, or a parameter to every function? * * * **Background:** I am releasing a c# client-api library that facilitates communicating with our REST api. The client-api consists of an object model and one large static class with a bunch of request extension methods for various types. 10 or so `.Get()` variations, a few `.Post()`, `.Put()`, etc. This static class full of extension methods is preconfigured with our server URL, and some other static configuration constants related to the connection. Because all the functionality is exposed via extension methods, there's no need to create an instance of this class. Any configuration is done via static properties and affects all requests made by the application. **Problem:** Right now, all requests use a default timeout of 3 seconds (which seems generous to us, as our API is meant to be very responsive.) Some users with a bad connection though might want to wait longer for a response. Our quick-fix solution is to expose the DEFAULT_TIMEOUT at a public static property on the class which can be set once on initialization, but is the proper thing to do to add a new optional parameter to every single one of our dozens of methods?               .Get(int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     .Get(..., int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     .Get(..., ..., int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     .Get(..., ..., ..., int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     ...     .Post(..., int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     .Put(..., int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     .Save(..., int timeout = DEFAULT_TIMEOUT) { ... }     ...      On the one hand, we want to be flexible to whatever the consumer of our client-api library might need, but on the other hand, I won't want to get in the habit of polluting every method with every optional parameter that might impact a request (server url, authorization tokens, etc.) What I don't want, is for the user to feel the need to do this:               ClientAPI.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT = 5000;     Thing found = new Thing(){ id = \"19473\" }.Get();     found.count += 1;     ClientAPI.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT = 20000;     found.Put();     ClientAPI.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT = 8000;     List<Widgets> widgets = found.GetSubresource(\"widgets\");     ...etc      Is it reasonable to assume users won't be micromanaging timeouts for individual requests like that?"}
{"_id": "105629", "title": "Web development in a small team - best practices", "text": "Currently developing a web app in a team of two maybe three in the near future. Tech stack is at the moment : flask, mongodb, and extjs for the fontend. I currently have the project under version control using mercurial and bitbucket. Question What is exactly the best way to work as a team on a we app peoject? I ussually work on the back end while my colegue works on the frontent. Sometimes i also help out on the front end. How should we do this? Each has a repo on their system but whee is the web server started? Curentlly i have it on my computer but that means that my partner needs to commit and push for each modification and i need to pull the changes and merge for each change. And for frontend stuff there needs to be a lot of changes. We tried having a server started on each of our machines but its a pain with multiple mongodb servers. Anyway any tips, clues and advices are greatly appreciated and welcomed."}
{"_id": "105621", "title": "HTML5 card game", "text": "I created a card game in Silverlight a year ago, in order to learn a bit about Silverlight. I am now wanting to make a HTML5 version of the game in an effort to learn a little bit more about that. I am thinking I'd like to take advantage of stuff like Knockout.js and WebSockets and the canvas element. Now what I'm confused about is how to lay out the cards on the screen. With Silverlight I was able to make a \"Hand\" control, which was made up of two sub controls: the cards the player has in their hand and the ones they have on the table. They were made up of Card controls. I don't believe there is the concept on a User Control in JavaScript; so I am possibly thinking about this in entirely the wrong way. I have a client side JSON object called game, which contains an array of players; each player has a hand which is made up of an array of in-hand cards and on-table cards. Ideally I would like to bind these to something using Knockout.js, but I don't know what I could bind to. How could I lay out some cards on the table, and perhaps make reuse of something for each player? Would I simply position images (of cards) on a canvas? Is there a way to make some kind of hand object that each player could have and that I could bind to?"}
{"_id": "105627", "title": "Can I brand my open-source application?", "text": "Is it possible for the author to register a logo or the name of his/her application when it is open-source because it uses a gpl library (for example)? The application uses the library but it has its own features, that is it's not a modification of the library. So everyone can see the source code, downloading an \"anonymous\" non-branded version from Sourceforge, but none can use the logo or the name and so the author can sell it from his/her web-site (for example) to non-expert users, only after payment. Is he/she obliged to give directly the source code, or it is enough that there is the non-branded version available on Sourceforge or other official repository?"}
{"_id": "52138", "title": "Do you keep intermediate files under version control?", "text": "Here's an example with a Flash project, but I'm sure a lot of projects are like this. Suppose I create an image with Photoshop. I then export this image as a jpeg for integration in Flash. I compile the fla as an asset library, which is then used in my Flash Builder project to produce the final swf. So it goes like :               psd => jpg -> fla => swc -> Flash Builder project => swf.          => : produce     -> : is used in      The psd, fla, and Flash Builder Project are source files : they are **not** the result of some process. The jpg and swc are what I would call \"intermediate\" files. They are the product of one (or more) source file(s) that are used as input in another tool or process. The swf is the final result. So, would you keep those intermediate files under version control? How do you deal with them?"}
{"_id": "143961", "title": "Optimum Number of Parallel Processes", "text": "I just finished coding a (basic) ray tracer in C# for fun and for the learning experience. Now I want to further that learning experience. It seems to me that ray tracing is a prime candidate for parallel processing, which is something I have very little experience in. My question is this: how do I know the optimum number of concurrent processes to run? My first instinct tells me: it depends on how many cores my processor has, but like I said I'm new to this and I may be neglecting something."}
{"_id": "102934", "title": "Big source tree refactor ahead - what tool to use?", "text": "We are doing a major refactor of the layout of our source tree. Masses of files are being moved, folders are being renamed, etc. etc. We currently have everything in SVN. We're going to move to either GIT or HG in the future. However, now we're thinking that maybe we should move to GIT or HG first and then do the refactor. We're worried that work in progress on svn branches aren't going to be able to merge the refactoring changes into their branch NOR are they going to be able to merge any changes to files that have been moved and/or renamed back into the trunk.   1. Which between GIT and HG would better handle this type of refactoring?    2. If we do move to GIT/HG and then do the refactor, what will be merging be like for the work in progress branches once they move to GIT/HG?"}
{"_id": "60007", "title": "OpenID implementation - PHP, Javascript, MySQL", "text": "I've started doing some research on the technologies that I will need for my website. I'm trying to implement a really simple website with OpenID user registration. The website will store a block of text for each user. I imagine this means that I will need a database with:   * User ID   * Open ID url   * Data Having said that, I'm still having trouble deciding what I really need to do this. I know that I will need the following for the actual site:   * Javascript   * JQuery   * CSS But on the back end, I'm kind of lost at the moment. I've been looking at the OpenID-Selector, which is coded in Javascript. It seems like it's exactly what is used on this site. Will I actually need PHP? MySQL for the data and user registration?"}
{"_id": "102932", "title": "How to tell if a license is compatible with your program?", "text": "I'm using a code sample from MSDN in my project. Accompanying the sample is this license: http://pastebin.com/K46NYf69 I've modified the code sample slightly to better suit my needs and I now want to release my program as open source. However, I'm not sure which licenses are compatible with this license because I cannot find it on Google. The license claims it is a Microsoft _Permissive_ License but I can only find Microsoft _Public_ License. Also, I'm not completely sure what this license allows. Can I modify the sample? Can I package it in my project under another license like the GPL or the Apache/BSD license? Thanks for reading."}
{"_id": "143968", "title": "Form Follows Function in Programming?", "text": "Does the saying, \" **form follows function** \" hold true in programming or language-design? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "113177", "title": "Why do languages such as C and C++ not have garbage collection, while Java does?", "text": "Well, I know that there are things like malloc/free for C, and new/using-a- destructor for memory management in C++, but I was wondering why there aren't \"new updates\" to these languages that allow the user to have the option to manually manage memory, or for the system to do it automatically (garbage collection)? Somewhat of a newb-ish question, but only been in CS for about a year."}
{"_id": "113176", "title": "What is the name for this variation to Adapter Pattern?", "text": "### Introduction An Adapter normally wraps another object, so that it can be used in an interface it wasn't designed for, e.g., when you want to use               interface Node {         Node parent();         Iterable<Node> children();     }      together with               class TreeModel {         private Node root;         // example method (stupid)         Node grandparent(Node node) {             return node.parent().parent();         }     }      and you're given a class like               class File {         File getParent() {...}         File[] listFiles() {...}     }      you need to write some `FileToNodeAdapter`. Unfortunately, it means that you need to wrap each single object and you also need both a way to get from `FileToNodeAdapter` to `File` (which is trivial, since it's embedded), but also from `File` to `FileToNodeAdapter`, which leads either to creating a new object each time or to using some `Map`, which must be either globally accessible or referenced in each `FileToNodeAdapter`. ### The Pattern Replace the interface `Node` by               interface NodeWorker<T> {         T parentOf(T node);         Iterable<T> childrenOf(T node);     }      and modify the `TreeModel` like               class TreeModel<T> {         private NodeWorker<T> nodeWorker;         private T root;         // example method (stupid)         T grandparent(T node) {             return nodeWorker.parentOf(nodeWorker.parentOf(node));         }         ...     }      Does this pattern have a name? Are there any disadvantages, besides the fact that it is little bit more verbose and only applicable when you are in charge of the `TreeModel` code?"}
{"_id": "36441", "title": "Hobbyist programmer releasing software with a donate button", "text": "I'd like to start this with a disclaimer that I realize that a full, clear-cut answer should be sought out by a lawyer. I am more so curious about what other users of this community have done * * * Say that I had a small program that I had developed for fun, that I wished to release to the public. I'll drop it out there with one of the various open- source licenses, and probably put it up on SourceForge or Git in case if anybody should ever want to fork/maintain/check out code. Also say that I wanted to accept donations for the project, with absolutely 0 expectation that people will send any money. However, if somebody donated in order to buy me a beer or a pizza for the work that they liked, I would accept gladly. The question, then, is what are the general requirements of accepting donations? Can it go into a personal account with no questions asked as a \"gift,\" or do I need to setup an LLC to avoid any taxation issues? (US citizen here). Again, yes this should be lawyer discussed, but I also know that many projects that I see have the ability to donate, and assume that the community probably has a decent amount of experience in this regard."}
{"_id": "36443", "title": "How not to suffer from ideologists when you're a pragmatic person?", "text": "I'm a pragmatic person (I think I am. But then again, Jon here has an interesting point ). Sometimes, the most simple solution to a problem to get the job done is the one that fits best for me, if it's not an utter blasphemy and reproach to any design principles. Check out my answer to this question on Stack Overflow. Simple. Works. Was accepted. Could be improved. Is clearly not perfect and not very elaborate. And along comes this guy. He downvotes me, comments on the question how his answer is better, more accurate etc and when I ask him why he downvoted me, he calls me _plain wrong_ in his comments. Reminds me of this comic strip. Just to get this straight: His answer is clearly better. But that's not the point! While on Stack Overflow I can laugh and not really care about these things because those people are far away, in the real world I'm suffering from ideologies every now and then. Heck, I'm not creating a miracle piece of software, I need to keep that huge legacy thing running, and it's an adventure to me every day. I'm good at some things and bad at other things. I'm eager to learn stuff. But I can accept one or two flaws in a system as what they are: flaws. Tomorrow, we're going to refactor all of them, but first let's do what the customer wants, and then have a beer. My questions are:   * How do you deal with ideologies / ideologists, when you're a pragmatic person?   * How do you deal with pragmatism / pragmatists, when you're an ideologic person? I'm interested in both point of views."}
{"_id": "21926", "title": "Is it possible to be good at both programming and graphic design?", "text": "The stereotypical view of a programmer can't do graphics very well, from what I've read and seen. However, I love programming (preferably OOP, PHP, C++, Objective-C) and can't deny the fact I have a unique taste in web design and others have said I am doing well at it (CSS). I thought to myself \"Hey, wait, I'm a programmer - how can I design well?\". Question is: is it possible to be good at programming and designing? Does anyone here feel the same? For the record: actual images I have created have been called programmer art several times before by friends"}
{"_id": "212291", "title": "Search algorithm", "text": "I would like to create a site where users can post articles with the following optional parts:   * A title   * Contents (text)   * Categories   * Keywords Articles will be stored in mongodb and the site will be built in node.js. Users can search the site using a normal search text box. I'm thinking about creating the following collections:   * Users   * Articles   * Keywords I will then create an entry for each keyword used in the Keywords collection with an array containing all the articles that use it. If a user conducts a search, the search is broken up into keywords and each keyword is looked up in the Keywords collection. Each article is then retrieved from the db and ranked based on relevance. My questions are:   1. Would it be efficient to use a Keywords collection like this, should I just use the Articles collection (Using full-text search or something) or should I structure it in some other way?   2. How would I incorporate the ability to search the title, contents or categories for articles instead of just the keywords?   3. Would it be better to use something like Apache Lucene than to build this functionality myself?"}
{"_id": "190257", "title": "How do I test my validation without being too much perfectionist, yet to leave most part of logic tested?", "text": "For example I would like to validate that name is letters only and is between 4 and 14 letters length. I have the following code in model:               validates: name, :format => { :with => /^[a-zA-Z]+$/,                                   :message => 'Name should be letters only. },                      :length => { :minimum => 4, :maximum => 14 }      So it clearly lets me do what I want. But as for unit tests, I have a bit too much perfectionism so I set something like               invalid_names = ['1234',                      'qwe',                      '1%#$#$',                      'Sam1',                      '%',                      random_string(15)] #I also have a test method to create random string with parametrized length          valid_names = %w['test',                      'Travis',                      'John',                      random_string(5),                      random_string(14),                      random_string(4)]      and test each of them in a loop with asserts, like               invalid_names.each do |name|         user = User.new(:name => name)         user.save         assert user.errors[:name].any?, \"#{name} is valid.\"     end      So it definitely works great. But it is too verbose (because of valid/invalid names arrays, and added `random_string` method), also I can't be sure my test actually tests all symbols and their combinations possible and all lengths and stuff, even though I am definitely sure it works as expected. So what is acceptable way to test my validation without being too much perfectionist, yet to leave most part of logic tested? Am I just set in a mind trick of trying to write a perfect code just to write a perfect code and forgetting about main finish goal: working product?"}
{"_id": "170003", "title": "My proposed design is usually worse than my colleague's - how do I get better?", "text": "I have been programming for couple of years and am generally good when it comes to fixing problems and creating small-to-medium scripts, however, I'm generally not good at designing large scale programs in object oriented way. Few questions   1. Recently, a colleague _who has same number of years of experience as me_ and I were working on a problem. I was working on a problem longer than him, however, he came up with a better solution and in the end we're going to use his design. This really affected me. I admit his design is better, but I wanted to come up with a design as good as his. I'm even contemplating quitting the job. Not sure why but suddenly I feel under some pressure e.g. what would juniors think of me and etc? Is it normal? Or I'm thinking a little too much into this?   2. My job involves programming in Python. I try to read source code but how do you think I can improve me design skills? Are there any good books or software that I should study?  Please enlighten me. I will really appreciate your help."}
{"_id": "197494", "title": "Seeking advice on design of application protocol", "text": "**UPDATE 1** as requested by Brendan. We are developing a Unix batch application for storing millions of customer records into a relational database. In order to allow multiple batch jobs to run in parallel, and to achieve a certain amount of concurrency while processing an input record, we've distributed the work across nine server daemons, all within the same LAN as the client, each of which is responsible for an isolated task (e.g. store the name in the name table, store the address in the address table, etc.). Each daemon will be able to accept connections and requests (concurrently) from multiple clients. Finally, whatever communication protocol we design (or adopt) must be extensible to accommodate different _kinds_ of connections - for instance, we'd like for a monitor tool to be able to connect to a daemon, over the same port as the clients, and request statistics or send commands. There will also eventually be different kinds of clients that require different functions to be performed by the daemons. In other words, a client connecting to a daemon will have to be able to declare \"I want to post customer records,\" or \"I want to apply a batch of changes-of-address to the database\" or \"I want to send you a few commands.\" I think it's a foregone conclusion that the underlying transport of these connections be TCP. Finally, apart from the \"command session\", these will be multi-million record batch jobs, and performance is critical. The processing is iterative, and every record has the same layout (so wrapping each one in XML, say, would be unnecessary and highly wasteful). I've no idea if this is enough information for someone to suggest some formats and protocols to use, but I'll gladly try to clarify or supply additional details if asked. **END OF UPDATE 1** * * * (Below is the original post, which may or may not be of any value.) * * * I'm in charge of designing an application protocol for a set of in-house, batch-oriented, client-server applications. I'm familiar with IBM LU 6.2 (a.k.a. \"Advanced Program-to-Program Communication\"), and for the past 15 years have worked in Unix environments. The client is a batch job that connects to a server process \u2014 which, in turn, connects to nine other \"sub-server\" processes. The client passes a customer transaction record to the server, which distributes different portions of the record to the sub-servers. Each sub-server processes its portion independently and concurrently, and passes some results back to the server which then passes them back to the client. These are TCP connections, and we decided that, first of all, we'd use newline-terminated ASCII strings (we call these **lines** ) as our Protocol Data Unit. A **record** is a line that is subdivided into tab-separated **fields** , and since each process will have its own data requirements, field#1 of every record will contain a **record type**. This is used as a key into a metadata store to find the **field names** , in the order they\u2019re expected to appear in the record, in order to know how to interpret the record. For example:               Metadata: NAME=(prefix, first_name, middle_name, last_name, personal_suffix, professional_suffix)     Record:\u00a0\u00a0 NAME||CHAP||HARRISON|JR|CTO#      (Here I use '|' to represent the tab character, and '#' to represent newline character) Very straightforward so far, I think. But then, new twists arose. The first was that, instead of sending all the data about one transaction in a single [large] record, we'd like to possibly use several records: a NAME record, an ADDRESS record, an EMAIL record, etc. So we invented the **block** \\- a series of records, preceded by a \u201cspecial\u201d **BB** record and followed by an **EB** record. The BB record\u2019s first field is, of course, 'BB', and the second field holds the **block type**. Block type, like record type, is a key into metadata listing the record types (required, or optional) in this block type. Understandably, each of these ten or so processes, having its own unique data requirements, has led to its own set of record types, enclosed in their own set of block types. That's a lot of metadata, but it isn't really a showstopper. The next thing requirement that emerged was a special \"context-setting\" message, to transmit certain configuration variables that would remain constant from transaction to transaction. This gave rise to a new record and block type, as well as a new column in the block metadata that indicated this kind of block was somehow \"special\". Then, envisioning circumstances where the \"context\" could _change_ during the runtime of the client, we lifted the rule that stipulated there could be only one \"context\" message, at the beginning of a connection. At the same time, we realized there was still a need for a true \"initialization\" message that could only come once, at the beginning, conveying \"session-global\" parameters. Thus the INIT block was born, and now there were three flavors of block: session- initialization, context-switching, and normal application data. Then, how about a connection that isn't for transaction-posting at all, but rather a control session for querying the health of the server, retrieving statistics, changing operational settings? The INIT block\u2019s role became more general, declaring the \"mode\" of the session, which could now be either \"posting\", or \"control.\" We've been trying to wedge all of this into a single-layered application protocol, and it's getting out of hand. Just defining a \"special\" BB record should have raised a red flag - it's constructed from application-level objects and metadata, but it is not application data - rather, it _frames_ the application data. * * * I think what has evolved is a 2-layer architecture atop TCP: one layer that simply provides typed containers (blocks and records), and a higher layer that uses those containers for a specific purpose, be it posting, or control, or something else - the true application protocols. However, I'm not well-versed enough in the design of protocols to recognize \"patterns\" that might be obvious to the pros. I'd appreciate any feedback on how to approach this. It also seems possible that someone may have written a guide to designing protocols, that addresses these very concerns. I just haven't found it. And my apologies for the length of this post. I hope none of it was immaterial. My deep thanks for your patience! Chap"}
{"_id": "210312", "title": "Coding Style for Visually Impaired Programmer", "text": "I am visually impaired. With glasses I see well enough to drive, but at the font size I'm comfortable working at I can only see about 15 lines of 100 characters at a time. This has affected my coding style. One thing I do is write shorter functions. My code tends to get good reviews because these short functions with good names make the higher level functions very readable, but in high performance situations some folks make comments about how much space I'm taking up on the stack by passing variables down several layers for processing. A second thing I do is divide classes up between files to make shorter files. This reduces the scrolling distance to get to relevant functions and depending on organization may allow me to put the files up on different monitors to look at them together. Both of these practices make for more documentable units that most coding styles require I document, which further aggravates the issue by extending the length of my file and the distance between related functions. I'm currently using Visual Studio, which allows code folding at the function and comment block level (which I use frequently) but does not fold at the bracket level like Notepad++ does. The editor that offers better code folding doesn't have all the intellisense features of VS. I could use regions in VS, but this looks very cluttered if used every 10 lines. Folding is occasionally helpful to get completed code out of view while I'm working on a different feature of the code. Can anyone recommend better coding practices to help with limited visibility of the code?"}
{"_id": "125836", "title": "Do you have to include a license notice with every source file?", "text": "I've been looking for various licenses that I can use for an open-source project of mine, but all of the projects that I've seen, with all kinds of licenses, appear to have a giant, obnoxious (in my opinion) notice in each source file that states that the file is listed under a certain license. I don't think that I've found a single source project that isn't public domain that _doesn't_ have a notice like that. This just seems like a waste of time and file space. I plan on putting `@license` and `@author` tags in my projects, but I don't see why I need to list such a giant notice in each individual file if I don't want to make my code public domain. Is there any reason why I would want to include such a notice in my projects, or would simply including a notice in the `README` and a `@license` tag be good enough? Does this affect the \"clearly stated\" rule of most licenses, or is it just overkill so that people won't argue?"}
{"_id": "233495", "title": "Copyright in all files or just a license file?", "text": "Does it have any legal merit to put a copyright comment on each class. Example:               //     // MyClass.h     // Companyname     // Created by DeveloperName on MM/DD/YY     // Copyright YYYY Companyname. All rights reserved.     //     public class MyClass { ... }      Or does it have the same effect as putting a license file in the root of the source code, like many do on github."}
{"_id": "15712", "title": "How much design happens in your implementation phase?", "text": "For those of you who work in big-design-up-front/waterfall groups: how much critical thinking and design is skipped in your design phase and left to your implementation phase? How complete and detailed are your functional and technical specifications delivered at the end of the design phase? It seems to me that there's a lot of room for interpretation in the level of detail that needs to be provided at the end of the Design phase, and it irks me when the design phase is rushed and then managers get angry that the build phase doesn't progress like we're churning out widgets on an assembly line. On the other hand, a design phase that's complete enough to make the build phase operate like an assembly line practically includes the implementation phase with it - all that would be left in \"build\" is to type stuff into the editor. Of course, it also means your design phase is gigantic. **I realize that this is a shortcoming of the waterfall model** , but if there's anyone out there that can provide some constructive advice: Where does one draw the line? What should the expectations for the design and build phases be, and what kinds of design shortcomings or mistakes should/shouldn't be tolerated in the build phase?"}
{"_id": "107714", "title": "Need advice on designing interactions between various parts of my application", "text": "I'm trying to design the \"main\" classe(s) of a Rich Desktop Application based on NetBeans Platform 7. This application will consume HTTP services and, through a \"push system\" over TCP, will receive messages.   * We are 3 developpers and we want to develop modules in parallel   * Application will be layered (Data, Business, Presentation)   * We'll use Presentation Model in order to separate responsibilites   * Some granular data (a bean Person for example) will be shared by several screens (and possibly displayed on several screens at the same time)   * ... We are able to develop individual screens, but We don't know exactly how to organize the whole application and define each module content.   1. So, have you any advice (a pattern / best practice / book / sample app) to coordinate/manage interactions inside of the whole application?   2. Any advice about how to define modules content? Thanks! * * * Small example to illustrate what I want to build: **A Foo User Management Application**   1. Launch the application   2. At the left [explorer] we have a list of platforms (list is stored in a local file)   3. At the top we have button to add a new Platform (also available with right click)   4. By double-clicking on a platform, the app calls a HTTP service a retrieve a complete list of users. This list is displayed in the [editor] (in a JTable)   5. A background process is started: through a TCP connection we receive messages   6. It is possible to Add new user thanks to a button in a Toolbar If the application is launched on another PC, and if the user is connected to the same platform, its User List will be updated dynamically (add/remove/status:{offline/online}) (thanks to messages) In the future it a Chat Module will be provided. My question is (in other words): any advice/best practice to decide on content of each module? If PM (Presentation Model) is a good way to separate view/business and data and create screens, what is the best way to link several screens based on PM? Imagine we develop the Chat Module, how to add an entry \"Discuss with...\" to the Context menu available with right click on User List?"}
{"_id": "113794", "title": "How can I properly manage commits, prevent feature conflicts, and manage dependencies with a VCS?", "text": "It\u2019s become an annoying factor of working with large teams: how do you manage checkins and prevent feature conflicts and manage dependencies with source control properly? Currently at my workplace we use TFS 2008 and we're migrating to TFS 2010 in early December. Firstly any source control is better than none but what approach has anyone found useful to prevent multiple checkins and rollback all over source control history? Is a volatile trunk the best way to go or branch off when your implementing a new feature and once you're happy merge back into the trunk? I'd really like to hear other people experiences and perhaps some best practices to managing source control."}
{"_id": "107716", "title": "Tdd on a datadriven webapp", "text": "How would one go about to use tdd/bdd on a mostly data driven webapp? For example a blog or a forum?"}
{"_id": "9741", "title": "Is it reasonable to assume/require the .NET framework these days?", "text": "**Background:** I have a project where I need to provide the user a download package with some sensitive data in it. The data needs to be encrypted. After they download it, they need to be able to view it (no editing required). For this question, let's approximate the data as a series of static html files. Because the data is sensitive, it needs to be encrypted any time it is on disk. We are thinking of providing the user with a download option that would give them a zip file containing two files:   * A data file (we'd probably use an encrypted zip file behind the scenes) with the data they asked for   * An application to view the data that would appropriately prompt for a passphrase and handle decrypting the data and displaying it via an embedded web browser. Additional details:   * Users are not under our control. They are consumers.   * We are not worried about cross platform in this question. This is just about Windows. We will have a separate download for Mac users. **Get to the question already:** For that application we need to create, we're internally debating if it is reasonable for that app to be a .NET winforms application. We want a single .exe, and we want the download to be reasonably small (e.g. 100k).   * Dare we use the .NET framework (we don't need to use a particularly recent version of .NET--2.0 would be fine)?    * Is it reasonable to assume that most consumers have .NET on their machines now due to Windows Update?    * Is it reasonable to ask the ones that don't have it to install it? We know that 100% of users will not have .NET. The real question is if it is _reasonable_ to ask them to have it in this day and age. P.S. Does anyone know of any reliable statistics of what percentage of people actually do have .NET installed already?"}
{"_id": "187400", "title": "What is a job in programming really like?", "text": "More specifically: **Is a job in programming really as bad as it sounds?** I'm still in high school, but I love programming. I take all of the programming classes that my school offers (which are actually quite a lot), and program in my free time. In college, I intend to do something related to programming, and then I eventually hope to get a job in programming something. However, from what I've read on the internet, a job in programming sounds really terrifying and intimidating, and I'm wondering what it's like, and if it's really as bad as it sounds."}
{"_id": "187401", "title": "Controller layer and 3-tier architecture", "text": "What is controller layer and where we put this in our 3-tier architecture?               1)UI     2)Business Logic Layer     3)Data Access Layer      I search in net but unable to get exact ans.Any links or sample example helps to understand better.Thanks."}
{"_id": "24157", "title": "If you had to go back and re-learn your skill set, how would you do it?", "text": "My younger brother is looking to start programming. He's 14, and technically- inclined, but no real experience programming. He's looking to me for guidance, and I don't feel as if my experience is enough, so I figured I'd ask here. He's more interested in web programming, but also has an interest in desktop/mobile/server applications. What would be a good learning path for him to take? I'm going to buy him a bunch of books for Christmas to get him started; the question is, what should he learn, and in which order? The way I see it, he needs to learn theory and code. I'd like to start him off with Python or Ruby or PHP. If he wants to get in to web, he's also going to need to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. Out of those three domains (Languages, Theory, Markup/Etc.), what is the best order do you think to learn in? Also, am I missing anything? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "187403", "title": "'import module' vs. 'from module import function'", "text": "I have always been using this method:               from sys import argv      and use `argv` with just **argv**. But there is a convention of using this:               import sys      and using the argv by `sys.argv` The second method makes the code self documented and I _(really)_ adhere to it. But the reason I prefer first method is it is fast because we are importing only the function that is needed rather than import the whole module (which contains more useless functions which python will waste time importing them). Note that I need just argv and all other functions from sys are useless to me. So my questions are. Does the first method really makes the script fast? Which method is preferred most? Why?"}
{"_id": "233024", "title": "Database Design for Web based RSS Feed Agreegator", "text": "I am working on an open source application which can allow users to add RSS feeds. All users of the site can read the content of those RSS feeds. It's not just for user's own feeds. Using PHP and SimplePie library I have created a simple app. I am trying to implement category based listing. I have a list of RSS/Atom feeds in a database. Each post in the feed can have a category/label associated to it and a single feed can have multiple posts falling under multiple categories. **Question:** I want to get only the posts of category \"Science\". In worst case, if I have 1000 RSS feeds, should I read posts from each feed and check the category of each post? Storing all posts of each feeds and its categories is not a good solution. How best can we have a database design for this? Database schema is provided below. Nothing is fixed and I am free to change any schema or design. http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/2b519/1 NOTE: The fiddle is just for reference and does not need to worry. Its optional as I thought it might help to make others understand."}
{"_id": "24159", "title": "Which programming language is the best to start learning/teaching about programming", "text": "As this question is closed, let me do an attempt that actually meets all 6 requirements. At our faculty, there's for the moment a big change in the classes \"informatics\". We used to teach Java, but this is going to be replaced with Matlab (and the class will be called \"Scientific Computing\"). Personally, I'm not in favor of that idea, because :   * Matlab is not freeware, hampering the possibilities for the students to get hands-on experience. They can on campus or via VPN, but not on their own computers.   * ~~Matlab isn't even a real programming language, but a mathematical environment that excells in that but fails in anything else.~~   * ~~Matlab isn't suited for general concepts of programming.~~ edit: these last two points seemed a bit strongly formulated. Matlab has progressed quite a bit since I last encountered it. Now I also had a problem with Java, as that turned out to be a real pain in the proverbial behind for many students, mainly because of the verbosity. As it's for a general course in programming, I think these points are important :   * all basic concepts of programming   * rather easy syntax without too much verbosity    * the possibility to easily program both procedurally and object oriented   * a short feedback loop on your programming    * a proven usefulness in many applications, especially in the scientific world (bioPerl, bioConductor, bioPython, bioJava, ...) so they can be used for practical work during their studies. **What's your idea about the best teaching language on a serious level (hence not the pseudo languages used in primary or secondary school, I'm talking bachelor level at university/college)?** * * * edited to keep the question more general. Originally I mentioned R, Python or Perl, and : R is maybe less of a good choice as that one is a vectorized language. This is far from general, so it might be too specific. **edit:** I consider it a blessing, but the argument here was that a vectorized language is not general enough for teaching purposes as people would get into trouble when moving to Perl and Python. I'm also not talking statistics education, we're talking students of level 1st bachelor. Any direction, any kind. I just added the personal experience."}
{"_id": "233022", "title": "How should I document a multi-tier application?", "text": "I have to create a documentation structure for a legacy application, and I'm not sure of how to organize it. **Documentation goals** :   * List of use-Cases   * Program flow for each of the use cases. ( _Flow-chart of all the logical steps the code does for a particular use-case_ ).   * As far as possible explanations of _why_ a certain business/code logic is followed.   * Documentation format if possible should not require installing a new tool, and at best be readable in Word or PDF Format (so that the business types can check it easily).   * Some questions that should be answerable using the documentation: \"What business logic does the code execute for a given use case?\";\"Is this code redundant elsewhere in the application?\"; \"If I change this code, what Use-Cases are affected?\"; **Application characteristics** : (it's generally a bit messy, with presentation and business logic slightly mixed in almost every layer)   * Presentation in .NET Web Forms using WebControls (GridViews, ObjectDataSource, Reports) and JavaScript(jQuery, jQuery-ui) in *.aspx pages   * Server-Side Code in C# in the *.aspx.cs to handle post-back events.   * C# Code-Pages and a Seperate Project integrated into the WebApplication supplying Business Logic as part of the Web-Application   * SQL Server for data persistence (Master-Data DB, Data Staging DB)   * Views including some data from others Servers   * C# CLR assemblies for business logic deployed on the SQL Server, and some minor SQL Stored Procedures/Triggers   * A File structure on the same server as the SQL DB that handles archiving, data-import from files.   * File interface to SAP (that I don't fully understand yet). **So far...** I've started documenting in Word. I have a separate Word file for the Front-End and the Database/File Structure. I begin each File with Use- Cases (user-initiated are in the front-end, scheduled jobs in the Database file), followed by the code structure. Each use case has a hyperlink to a flowchart/explanation of the code that first gets executed, which has a hyperlink to the flowchart/explanation of the code that next gets executed, etc... I do this so that each part of code is documented only once, and that other parts of code documentation can link to it if they execute it in the application. **Problems** :   * I can't navigate backwards from hyperlinks ( _i.e. I can't answer the question: \"If I change this code, what Use-Cases are affected.\" I can only go from Use-Case to Code, not the other way around._ )   * The word document already feels clunky and messy after I've barely started to write stuff into it. **Question** : How can I document this multi-tier application without making a great mess?"}
{"_id": "93787", "title": "How to effectively telecommute when working for a small firm?", "text": "I'd like to know what experiences others have had telecommuting full time? What software tools and processes helped maintain cohesion and maximized collaboration & productivity?"}
{"_id": "112227", "title": "Can we guarantee a program will never go wrong?", "text": "We have a system here. Recently there is a wrong calculation in one of the number in the report generated by the system. Through out our experience, we've never encounter any problem/error in this system for some years. Because the writer of this system had already gone, we can hardly trace the programs. But we've verify the input data, the setting and they are right. Now my question is, will a computer program suddenly go wrong without any logical reason? If I slam on the server machine, will one of the number which the computer is calculating, become another number and make the calculation wrong? I agree my idea there is quite mad, but I just want to know, how can we know the problem is not caused by the program and the input, but some other factors? P.S. This mad system has no log."}
{"_id": "30329", "title": "Can I remove all-caps and shorten the disclaimer on my License?", "text": "I am using the MIT License for a particular piece of code. Now, this license has a big disclaimer in all-caps:               THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY     OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT     LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF...     ...      I've seen a normally capitalised disclaimer on the zlib license (notice that it is above the license text), and even software with no disclaimer at all (which implies, i take it, that there is indeed a guarantee?), but i'd like some sourced advice by a trusted party. I just haven't found any. GNU's _License notice for other files_ comes with this disclaimer: > This file is offered as-is, without any warranty. Short and simple. My question therefore: Are there any trusted sources indicating that a short rather than long, and a normally spelled rather than capitalised disclaimer (or even one or the other) are safely usable in all of the jurisdictions I should be concerned with? For the purposes of this question, the software is released in the European Union, should it make any difference."}
{"_id": "207136", "title": "What is the difference between a Future and a Promise?", "text": "What is the difference between a Future and a promise? (In Akka and Gpars.) They look the same to me as both block and return the value of the future when get is called and a promise is to get the result of a future."}
{"_id": "59924", "title": "Technology choice for cross platform development (desktop and phone)?", "text": "I'm a Microsoft developer mainly, but there are a couple of small-ish projects I'd like to fiddle with which would benefit from being cross platform. The platforms I want to target are: Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and preferably iPhone, web (running in a browser). I need 3D (Around the level of support seen in something like Minecraft (I'm not writing Minecraft)), some networking. I'm pretty certain Java would work on all except iPhone. Looking at the \"related questions\" above it's offered up QT (no browser or phone afaik) and also HTML/CSS/Javascript (3D? package for desktop?) The other alternative is to have seperate versions for seperate platforms, developed with some common code where possible. That option isn't something I know anything about. Does anyone have experience of this sort of conundrum? I figured here was better than SO, because I imagine there are compromises which extend beyond technical choice. Finally, this is not a commercial operation, so some of the very expensive cross platform tools are out of the question unless they offer some sort of community edition."}
{"_id": "20790", "title": "What mistakes in managing software products must be avoided to keep people from hating the vendor?", "text": "A previous question about why people hate Microsoft was closed. This is an attempt at a somewhat more constructive question along the same general line. This one is both broader and narrower though. It's more general by being about software vendors in general, not just Microsoft. It's narrower by dealing only with management of software products. So, what steps should be taken (and/or avoided) in managing individual software products to assure that not only the individual products, but the company as a whole is respected/liked/seen in a positive light?"}
{"_id": "115791", "title": "Is the Product Owner also a developer on your team?", "text": "I'm confused about the PO's responsibility here. I was a developer on a Game Feature Team, but also a PO. The daily work of the developer is almost full time, so I have to work over time to take care my PO duty, and the responsibility of PO seems to be against developer's thoughts. As a PO, I will chose more features next sprint. Otherwise, I will tell myself not to do so, because I'm a team member to develop those features. This situation makes me confused, so I want to hear some ideas from you guys. I'm a new to Scrum and Game Dev (about 1 and half year), and also new to here and English."}
{"_id": "170106", "title": "Leadership does not see value in standard process for machine configuration and new developer orientation", "text": "About 3 months ago our lead web developer and designer(same person) left the company, greener pastures was the reason for leaving. Good for them I say. My problem is that his department was completely undocumented. Things have been tough since the lead left, there is a lot of knowledge both theoretical knowledge we use to quote new projects and technical/implementation knowledge of our existing products that we have lost as a result of his departure. My normal role is as a product manager (for our products themselves) and as a business analyst for some of our project based consulting work. I've taught myself to code over the past year and in an effort to continue moving forward I've taken on the task of setting my laptop up as a development machine with hopes of implementing some of the easier feature requests and fixing some of the no brainer bugs that get submitted into our ticketing system. But, no one knows how to take a fresh Windows machine and configure it to work seamlessly with our production apps. I have requested my boss, who is still in contact with the developer who left, ask them to document and create a process to onboard a new developer, software installation, required packages, process to deploy to the productions application servers, etc. None of this exists, and I'm spinning my wheels trying to get my computer working as a functional development machine. But she does not seem to understand the need for such a process to exist. Apparently the new developer who replaced the one who left has been using a machine that was pre-configured for our environment, so even the new developer could not set up a new machine if we added another developer. My question is two part:   1. Am I wrong in assuming a process to on-board and configure a new computer to be part of our development eco-system should exist?   2. Am I being a whinny baby and should I figure the process out and create a document on my own?"}
{"_id": "197677", "title": "How is transparency defined in context of the broker architecture?", "text": "I would like to know how transparency is defined, and what is the measurement for this in the context of a broker architecture. For example : from a developer point of view, [in the broker architecture] distribution is transparent. you talk to a broker one way or the other and it introduces an object model in which distribute services are encapsulated within objects."}
{"_id": "197675", "title": "Is there any way to get faster at solving bugs? I've just had a warning from my boss", "text": "I've just been told by my boss that I will receive a negative performance review on Monday. He wants to talk to me about why I am so slow and why my bug fix rate is so low. I love programming and solving problems but I actually do find my job really really hard. I've actually been a programmer for about 10 years. But this is my first multithreading embedded linux job - I've been here 2 years and it's obvious to everyone that I'm still struggling. And I think I've become so demoralised and feel so marginalised that I've lost a lot of the fire that I had at the start of the job. Has anyone ever been in a similar situation and how do you go about increasing your bug fix rate? * * * Update: I had the review. I have been put on a 3 month 'employee development program' (of the type mentioned by Dunk ). Not sure whether I can turn this around. But even if I do have to move on, I've learned a lot from this experience. ## Another Update It's now about 6 weeks since the first review. My advice to anyone facing the same situation is to be humble enough to take criticism and learn from your mistakes. And to not be afraid to look dumb. Ask loads and loads of questions. Let people know you're trying to learn and keep asking until you understand. But be prepared for it not to work out. I'm constructing a portfolio of code ... as well as giving it my best shot. ## Yet another update I am hesitant to put this on here, since I'm concerned that I will not be able to refer future employers to my stackoverflow profile... But anyway, it might be of interest for someone reading this question, but I actually lost my job a few weeks ago. I'm in the midst of brushing up on all the skills I need to - I've taken a lot from the advice given here."}
{"_id": "189969", "title": "Visiting points on a number line while minimizing a cost not related to distance", "text": "I need some help on this ACM ICPC problem. My current idea is to model this as a shortest path problem, which is described under the problem statement. **Problem** There are `N = 1000` nuclear waste containers located along a 1-D number line at _distinct_ positions from `-500,000 to 500,000`, except `x=0`. A person is tasked with collecting all the waste bins. Each second that a waste container isn't collected, it emits 1 unit of radiation. The person starts at `x = 0` and can move `1` unit every second, and collecting the waste takes a negligible amount of time. We want to find the minimum amount of radiation released while collecting all of the containers. **Sample Input:** `4` Containers located at `[-12, -2, 3, 7]`. The best order to collect these containers is `[-2, 3, 7, -12]`, for a minimum emitting of `50` units. Explanation: the person goes to `-2` in 2 seconds and during that time `2 units` of radiation are emitted. He then goes to `3` (distance: `5`) so that barrel has released `2 + 5 = 7` units of radiation. He takes `4` more seconds to get to `x = 7` where that barrel has emitted `2 + 5 + 4 = 11` units. He takes `19` seconds to get to `x = -12` where that barrel has emitted `2 + 5 + 4 + 19 = 30` units. `2 + 7 + 11 + 30 = 50`, which is the answer. **Notes** There is an obvious `O(N!)` solution. However, I've explored greedy methods such as moving to the closest one, or moving to the closest cluster but those haven't worked. I've thought about this problem for quite a while, and have kind of modeled it as a graph search problem:   1. We insert `0` in as a baseline position (This will be the initial state)   2. Then, we sort the positions from least to greatest.   3. We then do a BFS/PFS, where the `state` consists of      * Two integers `l` and `r` that represent a contiguous range in the sorted position array that we have visited already     * An integer `loc` that tells us whether we're on the left or right endpoint of the range     * An integer `time` that tells us the elapsed time     * An integer 'cost' that tells us the total cost so far (based on nodes we've visited)   4. From each state we can move to [l - 1, r] and [l, r + 1], tweaking the other 3 integers accordingly   5. Final state is [0, N], checking both ending positions. However, it seems that `[L, R, loc]` does not uniquely define a state, and we have to store `L, R, loc, and time`, while minimizing `cost` at each of these. This leads to an exponential algorithm, which is still way too slow for any good. Can anyone help me expand on my idea or push my into the right direction? **Edit:** Maybe this can be modeled as a dynamic programming optimization problem? Thinking about it, it has the same issues as the graph search solution - just because the current `cost` is low doesn't mean it is the optimal answer for that sub problem, since the `time` also affects the answer greatly. Greedy doesn't work: I have a greedy selection algorithm that estimates the cost of moving to a certain place (e.g. if we move right, we double the distances to the left barrels and such). Could you do a Priority-first search, with a heuristic? The heuristic could combine the cost of the current trip with the amount of time elapsed."}
{"_id": "211044", "title": "How to integrate google search results in a spring mvc app", "text": "Here's what am trying to do (and searching for similar hasn't shown any results anywhere): On my website - provide an input box which will search google for results. I want to display those results on my page and customize the URL of those search results. So whenever a user clicks on the displayed result, my application will (internally search for profile pages and) provide the future course of action. The only integration of google is, providing the search results (and probably the map coordindates) Env: Spring mvc, jsp, hibernate. Can some one please advise on how can I achieve this ?   I dont where to begin but I have read about the Google custom search, but I think that is only for searching within your site or to redirect users to relevant sites found from the result."}
{"_id": "68350", "title": "How do handle developer keys that are supposed to be non human readable in your app? (example: specific conflict with twitter api and twitter gem)", "text": "How do handle developer keys that are supposed to be non human readable in your app? From twitter's developer page, under My Access Token it says: \"Keep the oauth_token_secret a secret. Along with your OAuth consumer secret, these keys should never be human readable in your applications.\" However, the awesome twitter gem ( https://github.com/jnunemaker/twitter ) says to make an initializer with this:               Twitter.configure do |config|       config.consumer_key = YOUR_CONSUMER_KEY       config.consumer_secret = YOUR_CONSUMER_SECRET       config.oauth_token = YOUR_OAUTH_TOKEN       config.oauth_token_secret = YOUR_OAUTH_TOKEN_SECRET      end      What do you do about this type of conflict? You can't just reset the oauth_token and oauth_token_secret, as far as I know you have to create a whole new twitter app. I concerned as I am going to begin working with some freelancer programmers and to begin with I wouldn't want to trust them my apps private keys/tokens. Thanks."}
{"_id": "157259", "title": "What is the logic behind filtering/sanitizing input?", "text": "I have always found it more logic to validate input instead of filtering it. How to appropriately filter data depends on the situation, so IMO it should be done in output or when saving to a database. But I see that some frameworks provide automatic XSS filters for incoming POST and GET data. What is the logic behind this solution? I can't see any advantages in doing this except providing a quick and easy solution to \"lazy\" developers. Or is there some specific security reason I don't understand?"}
{"_id": "189962", "title": "Maintain a web application once the only developer is gone", "text": "I have a terminal disease and there is a very high chance that I will no longer be in this world by the end of the year. I have developed a web application that it is extensively used in my family\u2019s business (a small hairdressing shop). No member of my family has neither programming nor system administration skills. I have neither close friends with those skills. The business makes at most 10k in net profits per year. In fact, the business profits can only afford to pay the salaries of its 3 employees (father, mother and sister) and those are quite low and decreasing each year due to the financial crisis. In fact, I am not an employee of my family\u2019s business, I work for a normal software development company. I developed the application during my free time in order to help them. So far I do not care if another business also uses my application or even if the application itself loses my ownership. I just want that my family\u2019s business can continue using it, which means system administration support if something goes wrong and development for new features/bugs. I would like to ask you if you could give me the measures you think I could take in order to guarantee as much as possible the continuity of the application. The technologies of the application are: Platform: Tomcat (Java), MySQL and Linux Frameworks: mainly JPA and ZK"}
{"_id": "136846", "title": "How can I effectively explain technical concepts to a non technical boss when I'm not a good talker?", "text": "## Preface I work as web developer for a big retail company, which sells goods to smaller retails through its e-commerce web site, developing both for the e-commerce and intranet. The main source of profits is made through the sales through the e-commerce, followed by the ad-hoc customer management by the marketing department. Our department (web development) report directly to the top managment (AD, CEO, etc). ## My problem Even though my direct manager is an ex developer who understands the various programming issues, the department head is a marketroid who doesn't understand a thing about programming. He thinks that everything that doesn't yield benefits in a short span is a waste of time and not worthy, and his behaviour is hurting us developers. The main problem is I'm unable to explain technical concepts or issues to non technical people, so I fail to persuade him about what I should do or not do or what would make my work easier and more efficient. ## My questions Reading the similar questions I understood that I should   * Not make him feel stupid.   * Not look like I'm insubordinating.   * Not look like I'm trying to skip my work. But how the hell can I do that?   * How can I cross this \"cultural\" gap?   * How can I speak his language?   * What's the best way to convey him that thing X should be done Y way, that thing W is not a good idea and that tool Z is something really useful for us?   * Is there any good material on how to deal with non technical managers? Some of the answers around are suggesting examples he can understand, but I find these answers a little vague, I fail to come up with anything decent. Lately I'm starting to think that maybe we should take marketing classes or buy Mitnick's social engineering book... :\\ ## Beware Let me stop those who are starting to scream \"let your manager handle him\". When my manager fails to handle him, the ones who will pay the consequences are us, the developers. So, helping my boss getting the point through is helping myself keeping my sanity around, and certainly something worth the trouble. ## Some examples   * Both the password for the intranet user and the e-commerce customers are saved in clear text in the database and must be changed every sixty days. This is a nonsense to me: aside from all the implications of not encrypting passwords before saving them, forcing the user to change their password every two month is begging them for using weak passwords. (He thinks the first is not an issue and that changing password frequently is more secure.)   * When a customer log in, all the user informations are saved into a cookie and using HTTPS everywhere is only a burden. This too doesn't make sense to me: we're bouncing arounk 75 KiB of cookies with every request instead of looking up user details from database, and by sniffing the cookie (e.g. unprotected WiFi) you can impersonate the user and buy stuff (even really expensive things) under his name yet only the login process is encrypted. (The former is not worth refactoring, and the latter is a non issue to him.)   * A colleague handles trouble tickets quickly because he's been working for the company for twelve years, many of the tools he's been \"entrusted\" have been developed by him and tells the user \"don't do X\" instead of fixing the problem in the code, and we who have been working here for one or two years, are managing tools written by former employees and go digging through the code to fix the problem get chewed for out higher mean resolution times. (He tells us we should be quicker, like him, because the time spent dealing with trouble tickets is not profitable, yet he won't allow the rebuild of the most crappy tools which would save time in the long run.)   * An issue tracking a la Redmine is seen only as a time sink because it does not \"produce\" any tangible benefit, yet we're stuck on taking note of to dos and problems on paper or .txts and keeping spreadsheets of the modifications as reference."}
{"_id": "211049", "title": "XSLT and possible alternatives", "text": "I had a look at XSLT for transforming one XML file into another one (HTML, etc.). Now while I see that there are benefits to XSLT (being a standardized and used tool) I am reluctant for a couple of reasons   * XSLT processors seem to be quite huge / resource hungry   * XML is a bad notation for programming and thats what XSLT is all about. It do not want to troll XSLT here though I just want to point out what I dislike about it to give you an idea of what I would expect from an alternative. Having some Lisp background I wonder whether there are better ways for tree- structure transformations based upon some lisp. I have seen references to DSSSL, sadly most links about DSSSL are dead so its already challenging to see some code that illustrates it. Is DSSSL still in use? I remember that I had installed openjade once when checking out docbook stuff. Jeff Atwood's blog post seems to hint upon using Ruby instead of XSLT. Are there any sane ways to do XML transformations similar to XSLT in a non-xml programming language? I would be open for input on   * Useful libraries for scripting languages that facilitate XML transformations   * especially (but not exclusively) lisp-like transformation languages, or Ruby, etc. A few things I found so far:   * A couple of places on the web have pointed out Linq as a possible alternative. Quite generally I any kind of classifications, also from those who have had the best XSLT experience.   * For scheme http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/kk-sxslt/ and http://www.okmij.org/ftp/Scheme/xml.html"}
{"_id": "67367", "title": "How long should someone take classes in a language they don't plan to work professionally in?", "text": "I was late in my signing up for classes at the start of last term, so I signed up for the only programming class I could find C++. After doing well in that class I was allowed into intermediate C#, which I learned was what I needed to be in for my major. I also took intermediate C++ thinking that taking both would make them both easier. I was right. I will be moving on to ASP.NET next term, and while I really like C++, I'm not sure that it will help me overall with my future education in C#. I also have the option to move into java, so I would be taking ASP.NET and java at the same time. So do I take C++, Java, both, or neither? and why?"}
{"_id": "115240", "title": "Why were short, int, and long invented in C?", "text": "I'm having trouble understanding, what were the exact purposes of creating the `short`, `int`, and `long` data types in C? The reason I ask is, it doesn't seem like their sizes are bounded -- they could be of any size, so long as `short` is smaller than an `int`, for example. In which situations, then, should you use an `unsigned int` or `unsigned long`, for example, instead of a `size_t`, when doing so offers no hope of binary compatibility? (If you don't know the size, then how would you know when to choose which?)"}
{"_id": "197596", "title": "Who should support and maintain development infrastructure?", "text": "I am interested to know what other peoples' experiences are with managing development infrastructure are. I am talking about things like the build server, the central git repo etc etc. Any infrastructure which end users would probably not even know existed, but which are essential for the development team.   1. Do your dev/devops/ops teams consider them to be as important as 'true' production systems?   2. What happens when one goes down (both in terms of ramifications and recovery processes)?   3. Who should be responsible for managing them? Note: to complicate things (especially (3) above, our \"teams\" are small, about five or six devs and only the one sys admin. Hence, there is a lot of crossover of us devs in to ops, especially with the advent of the \"devops\" movement and technologies. Disclaimer - I am the author of this blog post about the subject."}
{"_id": "115247", "title": "Where are programming languages published?", "text": "I have read that a number of new programming languages are created each year, however I have never seen a single one. Where exactly are these things published? Is there some site out there that keeps track of them? (I don't have any intention to learn such languages - I am only interested)"}
{"_id": "137468", "title": "Should I care about Junit redundancy when using setUp() with @Before annotation?", "text": "Even though developers have switched from junit 3.x to 4.x I still see the following 99% of the time:               @Before     public void setUp(){/*some setup code*/}          @After     public void tearDown(){/*some clean up code*/}      Just to clarify my point... in Junit 4.x, when the runners are set up correctly, the framework will pick up the `@Before` and `@After` annotations no matter the method name. So why do developers keep using the same conventional junit 3.x names? **Is there any harm keeping the old names while also using the annotations** (other than it makes me feel like devs do not know how this really works and just in case, use the same name AND annotate as well)? **Is there any harm in changing the names** to something _maybe_ more meaningful, like `eachTestMethod()` (which looks great with @Before since it reads 'before each test method') or `initializeEachTestMethod()`? **What do you do and why?** I know this is a tiny thing (and may probably be even unimportant to some), but it is always in the back of my mind when I write a test and see this. I want to either follow this pattern or not but I want to know why I am doing it and not just because 99% of my fellow developers do it as well."}
{"_id": "137462", "title": "Technical interview and programmer ability", "text": "What I will say might be a tad controversial in nature but I am very disheartened today - and so I will ask this. I just had an interview with a major tech firm for an internship position, where I was asked a lot of typical algorithm oriented interview questions. Now, given my background, I consider myself to be strong in algorithms (I have also got good grades in graduate level algorithms -stuff involving NP- completeness and beyond (approximation and randomized algorithms), but unfortunately I flunked the interview. I could not think of a very efficient method of solving a string problem in approximately ~10 minutes. Once the interview was over, I had a glass of water, ate a banana and relaxed for a while and tried the problem again. And vola! there is the answer I could arrive in under 5 minutes. And the worst of it all - I was actually on that track and the interviewer did hint about it, but too much pressure cooked me. My entire experience got me thinking about tech interviews. I had some questions and I wanted to pose them in this forum -   1. Is it really possible to judge someone's technical ability in half an hour? Honestly? Or is it just a throw of dice?   2. Do technical interview questions measure problem solving ability? This point is very debatable? As a PhD student I know that Mathematical problem solving involves solving something that you have never heard about before. On the other hand questions like - merging two linked lists in sorted order, or printing all the elements of a binary tree in the kth level become \"mere exercises\" once someone has seen the solution or solved the problem beforehand?   3. Do people who come out with flying colors in these interview go on to become great programmers? Do they go on and design a sleek game engines, graphics libraries, write fast fork-join frameworks? Is there any evidence to point to a positive co-relation between doing well in technical interviews and actual programming ability? Or are these interviews more geared towards finding \"getting things done\" type of person (Spolsky)? I can bet that lots of academics publishing ground breaking ideas in - ICML, VLDB, Mobicom - will flunk these interviews. But I can assure you that they are some of the smartest people you will find on this planet. I am mainly in academia (grad student) - so I will greatly appreciate some perceptive from someone in the other side of the fence. Someone who actually conducts these interviews? [Ok everyone. Thanks for all the nice and thoughtful responses. Since I do not want to ask another question, I will ask you to answer this question for me. Suppose candidate X has a good public portfolio of works where he has contributed to some known open source project where - you can actually go and verify his patches, verify the bugs he has closed and take a look at the designs he has created. In that case, the question is how much weightage are you willing to give to his publicly available/verifiable work versus how well he does in answering some very contrived binary tree interview question in under 15 minutes?]"}
{"_id": "137464", "title": "Simple questions about apache and cgi", "text": "I'm just learning about using cgi in html files. I've read a lot of stuff on the web, but most of it is all about the trees and not enough about the forest. I'm a top-down learner and I'm having trouble understanding what's going on with cgi, apache, and html. At the moment I'm using python as my cgi scripting language, but if you'd care to answer using perl, I can handle that. Here's a MWE for a failed test I ran. HTML: (file is getname.html)               <html>     <head></head>     <body>     <form method=\"POST\" action=\"./test.py\">       <p>Your First Name: <input type=\"text\" name=\"firstname\">       <p>Click here to submit form: <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Submit\">       <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"session\" value=\"1f9a2\">     </form>     </body>     </html>        Python: (file is test.py)               #!/usr/bin/python     import sys, os, os.path, shutil, string, fileinput     import cgi, cgitb          print \"Content-type: text/html\\n\"     form = cgi.FieldStorage()     f = open('./testOutput', 'w')     if form.has_key(\"firstname\"):         f.write(form[\"firstname\"])     else:         f.write(\"Failure\")     f.close()      So, it _looks_ like what's happening is that the info the user enters into the form is put into a variable called 'firstname' (actually it's a key-value pair put into a hash-like thing in the scripting language. In python it's a dictionary). This variable is then sent as input to the cgi script (test.py), and the script is run. But, that isn't what's happening. When I hit the 'Submit' button in the html file, the test.py script is displayed in the browser and the script isn't run. BTW, the reason that I have the script write to a file is so I can see whether it gets run. When I run test.py from the command line, it works fine. The fact that test.py is displayed in my browser indicates, I think, that apache isn't running or is misconfigured or has permission problems. As far as I can see, none of those things is true, but I could be wrong. So here are my questions: 1) why is apache involved at all? Is it needed to send the variables gathered in the html form to the script? If so, why? I know that html is just a markup language, but I thought the 'form' tag had the ability to send a variable to a script and run the script. 2) Is there a way to test an apache configuration? Is it possible for apache to use 127.0.0.1 as the 'ServerName' (i.e. ServerName 127.0.0.1:80 in my httpd.conf file) Basically, I just want to write cgi scripts for some webpages I'm hand-coding and test them on my home laptop. I don't seem to know how to do that and I could use some help. TIA."}
{"_id": "136592", "title": "Can resizing images with css be good?", "text": "After reading Is CSS resizing of images still a bad idea?, I thought of a similar question. (too similar? should this be closed?) Lets say you need to use 10 different product image sizes throughout your website and you have 20k-30k different product images, should you use 10 different files for each image size? or maybe 5 different files and use css to resize the other 5? Would there ever be combination that would be good? Or should you always make separate image files? If you use css to resize them, you will save on storage (in GBs) but you will have slight increase in bandwidth and slower loading images(but if images are cached, and you show both sizes of the image would you use less bandwidth and have faster loads?) (But of course you wouldn't want to use css to resize images for mobile sites.)"}
{"_id": "136594", "title": "In Functional Programming, should domain-relevant simple functions (e.g., sorts) be reified?", "text": "In a functional application, should you wrap common higher-level functions in domain-meaningful names or should you leave them \"bare\"? For instance, if you have a list of Addresses, and \"sorted by zipcode\" is a common domain-meaningful ordering (targeted mailers, etc.), is it preferable to write:               val sortedCustomers = customers.sort((a,b) => (a.zipCode compareTo b.zipCode) < 0)       Or is it better to create a function `sortedByZip(cs : Iterable[Customer]) : Seq[Customer]`? Creating the function has the advantage of being (minutely) more abstract, but has the disadvantage of being opaque, creating a name to remember, etc. I'm asking in the context of a significant professional codebase, one that you intend to live for years, be as maintainable as possible, be \"true\" to the expectations of functional programmers, etc."}
{"_id": "108133", "title": "Are developers more productive at night?", "text": "I personally stay awake late at night, coding and enjoying working on personal projects. My other colleagues also feel the same and like coding at night. However, it's not about being passionate about personal hobbies, rather, I really feel that I'm more productive at night. I think that there is something about night, maybe its darkness, maybe its silence, maybe another attribute that makes developers become more productive. Is there some truth to this? Why do some developers believe that they are more productive at night? Is there any scientific proof to justify this proposition? Maybe something like \"in night, monitor light is less harmful\" or \"the natural air in night has more oxygen, thus is more suitable for thinking process\", or anything like that. > ### Moderator Note: > > The question is asking for **scientific proof** and otherwise cited > information on this subject. Answers that do not provide supporting > references will be removed. This is _not_ a poll where you should share when > you wake up and what parts of the day you personally are productive."}
{"_id": "76157", "title": "When they say its open source it means i can take their pictures?", "text": "when they say that a project is open source (i.e. LifeRay) does it mean that I can take anything I want from that project? I want to use some of the icons used in LifeRay portal for my own (commercial) apps. Is this legal?"}
{"_id": "120806", "title": "Is there a way to prevent others to steal your open source project and use it to make a profit?", "text": "This might seems like a silly question to ask, but I can't really figure out the answer. The title pretty much says it all. Let's say you have an open source music player, along comes someone, copies it, adds features, modifies the interface, etc and sells it. Nobody would find out. So how does it work? Related: I'm working in some projects myself to make me more employable, so employers can take a look at my code but with some of them I don't feel like uploading them to an online repository, ie sourceforge, and make them visible for the general public."}
{"_id": "234557", "title": "Why text editors are recommended over IDEs for beginners in books like Head First Java?", "text": "I am a programmer with some experience in C++ and I am learning Java. In most of the Java books (like Head First Java) authors ask readers to stay away from IDEs and recommend using a good text editor, but I could not find a convincing reason apart from the fact that a beginner might be overwhelmed by many options being thrown at once. However I started using Eclipse after writing a couple of small programs and I think that tools like auto-completion, inbuilt help debugging etc makes learning a better experience. I would like to know which approach is better and if I am missing out anything by using an IDE rather than a text editor."}
{"_id": "232866", "title": "Succinct Lazy Initialization Pattern", "text": "# Background I often use the following lazy initialization pattern:               public class Clazz {       private Object object;            private Object getObject() {         Object object = this.object;              if( object == null ) {           object = createObject();           setObject( object );         }              return object;       }            public Object setObject( Object object ) {         this.object = object;       }            protected Object createObject() { return new Object(); }     }      Member variables are only ever used directly twice (in the accessors), which includes internal calls. This also allows subclasses to inject new behaviour by overriding `createObject()`. # Problem This is a lot of code to ensure every member variable is always initialized. # Question What Java mechanism (syntactic sugar) can simplify the code? For example, Scala has the `lazy` keyword. # Ideas Ideally I would like to code:               public class Clazz {       @lazypolymorph       private Object object;            public Clazz() {         // Uses the object...         System.out.println( getObject().toString() );       }     }      The compiler would then expose a public mutator, a private value accessor, and a protected polymorphic creation method (used by the value accessor), following the typical Java naming conventions introduced in the background section."}
{"_id": "232860", "title": "Programmer Timeliness vs Effort", "text": "The engineering team I am on has a very laid back approach to work hours. People come in at 6am and at 11am, and work until things are done when necessary. Engineers will routinely work very late, on weekends, etc as pressing issues arise (and deadlines loom). Recently, the company has decided to implement a \"core business hours\" initiative, which is fundamentally incompatible with the Engineering Team's \"get it done\" approach. What would be a good way to expose the nature of the hard work the team does to the rest of the company, in such a way that: a) It does not come off as self congratulatory bragging b) It does not encourage the development of a no work-life balance culture"}
{"_id": "232869", "title": "How to find number of points with same minimal distances on matrix", "text": "I'm trying to find the number of points in a matrix with the same minimal distances. Start with a MxN matrix, where M and N < 50000\\. There is given a set of fixed points, with their respective coordinates.   The problem is to find the number of points in the matrix such as the minimal distance from any point in the set can be reached for at least two point in the set. The distance is measured by moving one units a time horizonatally or vertically. You can't move diagonally. An example would make things clearer.   Let's say we have 3 fixed point: (1,3), (3,1) and (3,6). Here the point (3,3) would be one point since the minimal distance is 2 units and it can be reached for the first two fixed points in the set. However, the point (4,4) doesn't satisfy the requirements. Although the distance from (1,3) and (3,1) is same, 4 units, the minimal distance is 3 units. My idea was to use any point with integer coordinates that lies on the bisector of a segment joining each par as a point that would fill our requirements. But I find a lot of false positives were a point satisfies the requirements, but doesn't lie on the perpendicular bisector. Brute-force methods won't work, because we need too check a billion of distance for each point and that one heck of a job to do. How should I go about solving this problem?"}
{"_id": "120802", "title": "Finding a definition for this anti-pattern", "text": "Working on a large and multi-tiered software project, I just found a recurring anti-pattern to be occurring in the code. I coulnd't find its definition in Wikipedia or other sources after a quick search, so I would like to ask you if there is a known anti-pattern for our current situation. I'll explain it both in the general way and by providing you an example. In general, this anti-pattern could be called like the Italian expression \"scaricabarile\" (lit. _passing the buck_ , avoiding your responsibility and giving it to someone else under you). ![Funny image describing this](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Td3JI.png) If there are several people on a [sub]project, and they are organized in a chain of responsibility, someone on the upper levels could decide to deliberately avoid resolving a design problem and leave it resolution to the person next to him, who could repeat this and ultimately \"leave the last developer in a mess of development complexity\". The anti-pattern appears when it's discovered that if the person on top of the chain resolved the problem on his own, much less work and rework would have been done by people under him. Real world situation (in general): you are developing a middle-tier service which handles calls from front-end and has to perform several calls to different back-end services (a DB, a web service, a file storage, outsourced services...) which are not very well documented. When you get an input field you immediately can't handle on your own, instead of asking further information you simply put it in your front-middle-end interface and require the front-end guy to supply you with this parameter that will be passed unprocessed to the back-end. The front-end guy may have to perform several calls to services to get a single value that could be else obtained by the middle-tier with few calls/instructions. In my case (assuming that in the middle-back-tier interface all values are considered to be `string`, and please don't comment on that becuase there are reasons), I discovered that the back-end services require fields such as `order`, `flagDescription` which can be thought to be respectively an enumeration of `ascending`, `descending`, and a `boolean`. One of the problems is to encode the enumeration. What does the service accept as values? `ASC`/`DESC`? `A`/`D`? `0`/`1`? Only BE developers know. In fact, we **ultimately** discovered that the original ME developer was too lazy to ask for detailed information about the possible values of these fields. He instead put them in the front-middle-end interface as two `string`s, leaving the FE guys angrily questioning \"where do we pick values these fields?\". I'll describe another case with a fictional example: suppose an outsourced back-end service define an operation as `doSomethingOnAPerson(string socialSecurityNumber, string phoneNumber, Date birthdate)`, your `Persons` DB table identifies people by a unique ID and contains all of these information. At a certain time, FE knows only person ID and a bunch of information insufficient to make a complete call. However, the middle tier exposes the same signature as the back-end instead of a simpler `doSomethingOnAPerson(long personID)` which can be implemented as a DB call followed by a service call. Since ME is already deployed, this forces the FE guys to request a rework for a new service to retrieve the missing information to call the middle end services, or in other cases request that the service is re-developed to change the signature and perform the missed operation. In general words, _the original developer didn't take the time to resolve the [very simple/simplified] problem of obtaining the required information from the smallest information of data available, but decided to **pass the buck** to the FE_ In a few words, a better design and much more attention could have prevented **both** situations. In fact, the first also led to troubles when switching from a mocked environment to **integration testing**. I would like to explain the team that we did wrong by passing the buck between ourselves rather than solving problems. ## Do you find a popular definition for what I have descripted so far? Can you help me find _articles_ about this, if it has been documented yet?"}
{"_id": "234080", "title": "Utterly Confused with OOP - How do I overcome a beginner's hurdle?", "text": "I have been reading and working through the exercises of Steve Lott's book _Building Skills in Python_. However, on the very **first** exercise dealing with OOP I have gotten completely stuck. **The problem set is here** : http://www.itmaybeahack.com/book/python-2.6/html/p03/p03c01_class.html#class- definition-exercises **My attempt** (sourcecode):               # Stock Valuation OOP     class StockBlock(object):         def __init__(self, purchdate =0, purchprice =0, shares=0):             self.date = purchdate             self.price = purchprice             self.shares = shares         def __str__(self):             return \"Price: %2f \\tDate: %s \\tShares: %d\" % (self.price, self.date,                                                        self.shares)         def getpurchvalue(self):             return self.price * self.shares         def getsalevalue(self, saleprice):             return saleprice * self.shares         def getroi(self, saleprice):             return (self.getsalevalue() - self.getpurchvalue()) / self.getpurchvalue()     blocksGM = [         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Jan-2001\", purchprice = 44.89, shares = 17),         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Apr-2001\", purchprice = 46.12, shares = 17),         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Jul-2001\", purchprice = 52.46, shares = 15),         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Oct-2001\", purchprice = 37.73, shares = 21),         ]     blocksEK = [         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Jan-2001\",purchprice = 35.86, shares = 22),         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Apr-2001\",purchprice = 37.66, shares = 21),         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Jul-2001\",purchprice = 38.57, shares = 20),         StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Oct-2001\",purchprice = 27.61, shares = 28),         ]     class Position(object):         def __init__(self, name, symbol, *blocks):             \"\"\"Accept collection of StockBlock instances.\"\"\"             self.name = name             self.symbol = symbol             self.blocks = blocks         def __str__(self):             return \"Symbol: %s \\tTotal Shares: %d  \\tTotal Price: %d \" % (self.symbol,                                                                            self.blocks[1],                                                                            self.blocks[2])         def getpurhvalue(self):             value = 0             for stock in self.blocks:                 value += stock.getpurchvalue()             return value         def getsalevalue(self, saleprice):             value = 0             for stock in self.blocks:                 value += stock.getsalevalue(saleprice)             return value         def getroi(self, saleprice):             (self.getsalevalue() - self.getpurvalue()) / self.getpurchvalue()          portfolio = [         Position(\"General Motors\", \"GM\", blocksGM),         Position(\"Eastman Kodak\", \"EK\", blocksEK),         Position(\"Caterpillar\", \"CAT\",                  [StockBlock(purchdate = \"25-Oct-2001\",                              purchprice = 42.84, shares = 18)])         ]     # display individual blocks purchased, and purchase value of the block     def main():         for position in portfolio:             StockBlock(position)          main()      There is no solution in the book, so I cannot check that way. It seems that I totally do not understand OOP? It's just so frustrating and I don't know what I should do to continue... My question is, when I get this utterly stuck learning programming, what strategies can help me overcome the problem? I think this is an important question because I am learning programming by myself. I cannot ask a teacher or friend for help (because I don't have any that are programmers.)"}
{"_id": "211378", "title": "Correctly value a development?", "text": "I started a discussion on StackOverflow earlier this week about one of my work project and how to lead it correctly. But it seems that this stack is a more appropriate place to ask those sort of questions, so here is my last question about my project: **How do you value your work? / How do you rate it in a financial way?** I'm working on a quite cool project with two other friends and people that we know ask us for an earlier access and how many it would cost per month for us to access it. Unfortunately, I was not able to answer this simple question due to the fact that I'm not agree with my friends on this specific topic. For me a bill of 80$/month/contract seems to be reasonable and appropriate for our targeted market (Institutions and Corporations) but my partner would rather count a charge of 500$/month/contract. Our project is an asset manager in SAAS mode, and I don't really think that our potential clients would be ready to pay more than 90$/month/contract even if they have a lot of money due to their situation. So, I would really like to have some opinions and advices on this kind of question. PS: If my post is not on the appropriate stack, feel free to tell me. PS2: I'm quite sorry if I'm not totally crystal clear, I'm not a native english, if you do not understand something, as above, feel free to notice me and I'll rephrase."}
{"_id": "103718", "title": "Always keeping 2 people expert on any one chunk of code", "text": "I interviewed for a job at a company where they said their policy is to make sure that at least 2 people understand any piece of code, just in case one of them \"goes on vacation\". They also said that some people don't last more then a few months at this company, although many have stayed for years. I think I get the message: They are inclined to fire people right away who don't like the work culture or who don't integrate into their cliques. But is there another interpretation? Thanks."}
{"_id": "232823", "title": "What are the principles of open source projects?", "text": "Although its generally agreed by organisations like the OSI and the FSF what is and isn't an open source software (basically, the the terms of the source code license) what are the guiding principals for open source projects? Other software movements have principals like the Agile Manifesto. It seems as though open source share some common values (such as transparency, collaboration, etc.). Are these documented somewhere?"}
{"_id": "144437", "title": "Which stages of the requirements analysis process in mobile requirements engineering are the most challenging ones?", "text": "I'm doing a research on formulating a requirements analysis model as a stage of requirements engineering for mobile-application development by considering the limitations and the needs of it ( agility and etc.. .), what I'm trying to figure out is that which parts of this process (requirements analysis for mobile development) are the most challenging ones ( so i can focus more on) , and if there is any stage that u think I need to include or exclude (exp. some may think a quality plan may or may not be necessary and etc.) to make it more clear below is the list of few of the areas in which I can focus on ( by the way your suggestions can be anything out of the below list.) -Requirements specification -Prototyping -Requirements Prioritization -Focusing on quality functions"}
{"_id": "144430", "title": "Was API hooking done as needed for Stuxnet to work? I don't think so", "text": "Caveat: I am a political science student and I have tried my level best to understand the technicalities; if I still sound naive please overlook that. In the Symantec report on Stuxnet, the authors say that once the worm infects the 32-bit Windows computer which has a WINCC setup on it, Stuxnet does many things and that it specifically hooks the function `CreateFileA()`. This function is the route which the worm uses to actually infect the .s7p project files that are used to program the PLCs. ie when the PLC programmer opens a file with .s7p the control transfers to the hooked function `CreateFileA_hook()` instead of `CreateFileA()`. Once Stuxnet gains the control it covertly inserts code blocks into the PLC without the programmers knowledge and hides it from his view. However, it should be noted that there is also one more function called `CreateFileW()` which does the same task as `CreateFileA()` but both work on different character sets. `CreateFileA` works with ASCII character set and `CreateFileW` works with wide characters or Unicode character set. Farsi (the language of the Iranians) is a language that needs unicode character set and not ASCII Characters. _I'm assuming that the developers of any famous commercial software (for ex. WinCC) that will be sold in many countries will take 'Localization' and/or 'Internationalization' into consideration while it is being developed in order to make the product fail-safe_ ie. the software developers would use `UNICODE` while compiling their code and not just 'ASCII'. Thus, I think that `CreateFileW()` would have been invoked on a WINCC system in Iran instead of `CreateFileA()`. Do you agree? My question is: If Stuxnet has hooked only the function `CreateFileA()` then based on the above assumption there is a significant chance that it did not work at all? I think my doubt will get clarified if: my assumption is proved wrong, or the Symantec report is proved incorrect. Please help me clarify this doubt. Edit: For more clarity of my question and what I'm looking for. Is it possible that the WinCC STL Editor be programmed in the following way?               //Pseudocode Begins     if (locale == ASCII Dependent) //like US, UK, Australia etc.     {          CreateFileA(); //with appropriate parameters     }     else if (locale == UNICODE Dependent) //like Middle East, China, Japan etc     {          CreateFileW(); //with appropriate parameters     } //Pseudocode ends      If it is possible then does it follows that Stuxnet would work appropriately in the US but not in China or Japan or Iran?"}
{"_id": "229887", "title": "How do programs like JAVA and C++ store variables in a database , does it still use MySQL like in PHP?", "text": "I imagine they have to have some sort of query to goes to a database , or maybe I'm wrong and they can just store it to their computer? Is MySQL for server - side scripting only?"}
{"_id": "186431", "title": "When do you 'speak' C++ fluently?", "text": "I see that many companies require the same skill. This skill is often described as following: > _\"Applicants are required to speak C++ fluently.\"_ I never really understand what _fluent_ meant for programming. So, my question is: When do you speak a programming language fluently?"}
{"_id": "103710", "title": "What has been learned about making variance part of the type?", "text": "In Java, the variance of parameterized types is indicated depending on how it's used:               <A extends B,B> void store(ArrayList<B> list, A elem) {         list.add(elem);     }      Whereas in Scala it is indicated in the class declaration with a `+` or `-`. What I want to know is, now that Scala has been around awhile, what has been people's experience with making variance a property of the type? Is it generally flexible enough for what you want to do? Are there aspects you would have done differently, knowing what you know now?"}
{"_id": "103711", "title": "When developing a piece of software, when do you start thinking/designing the concurrent sections?", "text": "Following along with the principle of not optimizing too early, I'm wondering at what point in the design / development of a piece of software do you start thinking about the concurrency opportunities? I can well imagine that one strategy would be to write a single threaded application, and through profiling identify sections that are candidates to run in parallel. Another strategy I've seen a little of is to consider the software by groups of tasks and to make the independent tasks parallel. Part of the reason for asking is that of course, if you wait until the end and only refactor the software to operate concurrently, you may structure things in the worst possible way and have a major task on your hand. What experiences have helped to determine when you consider parallelization in your design?"}
{"_id": "91202", "title": "What are some common algorithm optimization opportunities - mathematical or otherwise", "text": "What are some common algorithmic optimization opportunities that everyone should be aware of? I have recently be revising/reviewing some code from an application, and noticed that it appeared to be running considerably slower than it could. The following loop turned out to be the culprit,               ...         float s1 = 0.0;         for (int j = 0; j < size; ++j) {             float diff = a[j] - b[j];              s1 += (diff*diff * c[j]) + log(1.0/c[j]);         }     ... This is equivalent to, \u2211j { (aj-bj)2*cj \\+ log(1/cj) } Each time the program is run, this loop is called perhaps over 100k times, thus the repeated calls to log and divide result in a very large performance hit. A quick look at the sigma representation makes it pretty clear that there is a trivial fix - assuming you remember your logarithm identities well enough to spot it, \u2211j { (aj-bj)2*cj \\+ log(1/cj) } = \u2211j { (aj-bj)2*cj } + \u2211j { log(1.0/cj) } = \u2211j { (aj-bj)2*cj } + log(1.0/(\u03a0jcj)) and leads to a much more efficient snippet,               ...         float s1 = 0.0;         float s2 = 1.0;         for (int j = 0; j < size; ++j) {             float diff = a[j] - b[j];              s2 *= c[j];             s1 += (diff*diff * c[j]);         }         s1 += log(1.0/s2);     ... this lead to a very large speed-up, and should have made its way into the original implementation. I assume it did not because the original developer(s) either weren't aware, or weren't 'actively aware' of this simple improvement. This made me wonder, what other, similar, common opportunities and _I_ missing out on or overlooking, and how can I learn to better spot them? I'm not so much interested in complex edge cases for particular algorithms, but rather examples like the one above that involve what you might think of as 'obvious' concepts that crop up frequently, but that others may not."}
{"_id": "143428", "title": "Function like C# properties?", "text": "I've been thinking about how C# properties work and could work. I know the purpose that C# properties were originally designed for, which is certainly useful. However instead in this question I'm comparing them more abstractly to functions and other programic elements. Firstly, I wondered, if it were possible, and if so why not, to have a function like C# property. For example:               byte n = 4;          byte test // property     {         get         {             return n;         }         set         {             n = value;         }         func         {             n++;         }     }      To use as follows:               // n is 4     byte n2 = test; // get     test = 2; // set     // n is now 2     test; // function     // n is now 3      The 'n++' in this example being used only as a simple demonstration. I also noticed that there is room for more polymorphism than just in function parameter types. For example having overload resolution by return type, get/set and private/public as well.               public test     {         get         {         }         get byte         {         }         private get byte         {         }         get bool         {         }         get myType         {         }         set byte         {         }         set myType         {         }         func         {         }         func(bool)         {         }         func(byte, myType)         {         }         // etc...     }      The above example defines \"test\" along with reasonably fine detail involving different implementations for using test in various different ways. More examples: Read only:               byte test     {         get         {         }     }      Function like:               test     {         func         {         }     }      Function like with parameter polymorphism, returns a byte:               byte test     {         func(bool)         {         }         func(myType, Int16)         {         }     }      Behaves differntly depending on the type assigned to it:               test     {         set bool         {         }         set myType         {         }     }      Function like and could return a value or not, depending on the context it is used:               test     {         byte get         {         }         func(bool)         {         }         func(byte, byte, myType)         {         }     }      The additional possibility for expression and code tidiness should be apparent. However I have been challenged to find specific uses. One example of how this could be used is equality. Where a bool is expected, for example in an 'if' statement, the behaviour could be defined as being '==', however where there was either nothing to return to, or the return to was other than bool, the behaviour would instead be '='.               if (n.equals(4)) // if n == 4         n.equals(2); // n = 2      Another example is as follows:               class my_list<T>     {         List<T> store;         public count         {             get             {                 // unless otherwise apparent,                 // use the Int32 version.                 return (Int32)count;             }                  get byte             {                 byte n = 0;                 ForEach(var e in store)                     n++;                 return n;             }                  get Int32             {                 Int32 n = 0;                 ForEach(var e in store)                     n++;                 return n;             }                  private get             {                 // An implmentation of \"count get\" that only                 // occurs when count is used from inside the                 // my_list class.             }                  func             {                 print store.Count();             }                  set int             {                 if (value == 0)                     list.Clear();             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "72384", "title": "At what point should developers become involved in a triangular relationship among the client, the design agency, and the developers themselves?", "text": "Imagine that there is a project to be completed. This project involves three parties: client, a development organisation (a one that you work for), and a design agency. The design agency is a subcontractor of the client. The role of the design agency are largely responsible for doing styling; however in the past these designers have produced substandard work such as extensive use of id targetting in css instead of class targetting, etc. At what point should developers become involved in a triangular relationship among client, design agency, and themselves? What meetings or communication would you expect to take place at this point?"}
{"_id": "73478", "title": "Is there any legislation requiring how we store passwords?", "text": "Given the Sony data breach and other events recently, is there any actual laws or regulation regarding how to store passwords? I think there are with credit cards, you're not allowed to store the 3 digit key or something. Is it illegal to actually store plaintext passwords without warning the user? Or it there a level of encryption that has to be used? Are there any standard guidelines that anyone can point me to?"}
{"_id": "180172", "title": "Number of semi-random combinations / permutations given a set of constraints", "text": "### Background: There are around 60 students at the boarding school I work for. The counselor asked my colleague and me to come up with a better way to come up with seating arrangements for dinner than by hand. He would like assignments for the rest of the school year. He also asked us to try to solve some of the issues he has hearing about from students and faculty. ### Constraints:   * Most of the students are not from the US, so when they are surrounded by people of the same nationality (i.e., at the dinner table), they speak the language they are fluent in, instead of practicing English,   * Complaints are made when students have sat at a certain table \"too many\" times overall,   * or if they sit at the same table more than twice in a row,   * and some of the students do not get along, so they cannot sit together. ### Input: At run time, the program is supplied with:   * A set of people,   * A set of tables, and   * Each table has a different number of seats (repetition is allowed) The size of both sets, and the size of each table does not change between each assignment. ### Tests: I am using 18 people of different nationalities, and 4 tables of size 3 through 6, inclusive. I picked numbers that I thought made sense for that data set:   * No more than 3 people of the same nationality can sit together at a time   * No person can sit at a table more than 4 times ### Results: I have run the generator around 15 times without changing the input data. Each time, it comes with anywhere from 6 to 12 \"weeks\" of assignments. ### Questions: (least to most important)   1. Why do I get a different number of generated assignments every time I run the program? The data set isn't changing between runs.   2. How do I find the...      * minimum number of people of the same nationality that can sit at a given table,     * minimum number of overall times they sit at a given table, all while     * maximizing the number of generated assignments?   3. How do I guarantee that these actually are the correct numbers? ### Edit: Each time I generate a new assignment, I call `Collections.shuffle(List)` on the list of people to randomize their order. I then pass the list of tables and people to a backtracking method based off of kapilid's eight queens implementation on github to assign people to tables."}
{"_id": "50857", "title": "How do open-source projects grow?", "text": "I know of lots of software that is open-source. For at least some of it, someone, somewhere must have written the first version alone. How does good open-source software become well known? I'm most interested in the first steps. How does software written by one person gain its first new contributors? I'm looking for practical advise. I've started a project here, called aodbm. What steps can I take to give it the best possible start?"}
{"_id": "136337", "title": "Component Diagram, what's next?", "text": "I'm working on an iPhone application and I created a component diagram. I defined interfaces for each component. For example I have an AI component and I have made some interfaces for it. How should I carry on? Should I create a class diagram to go into details, should I go into details of each interface or should I just start implementing my interfaces? I am a bit confused on how to proceed."}
{"_id": "188762", "title": "How do I create a .NET WebService for File Upload", "text": "I need to create a web service using the .NET platform for accepting file uploads. What are the options available for doing this in C#? What is the best approach to use? Can please you provide me with blogs/code samples/references for further reading?"}
{"_id": "101711", "title": "Do you do any validation on directories when recursively deleting them?", "text": "How do you recursively delete paths of the data that your app created? The deleting process itself is trivial. The question is, do you do extra validation? And if so, what kind? From one point of view, maybe it's simply an uncomfortable task to do, but on the other, imagine if the program has a bug and something passes \"c:\\\" to the recursive function, or if there is a memory overflow and some data becomes corrupt, causing paths you work on to be truncated etc. Is there even a way to do a clean validation?"}
{"_id": "101716", "title": "In pseudo code what does := mean?", "text": "The section entitled Algorithmic Implementation has the following code:               // Return RC low-pass filter output samples, given input samples,      // time interval dt, and time constant RC      function lowpass(real[0..n] x, real dt, real RC)        var real[0..n] y        var real \u03b1 := dt / (RC + dt)        y[0] := x[0]        for i from 1 to n            y[i] := \u03b1 * x[i] + (1-\u03b1) * y[i-1]        return y      what does := mean?"}
{"_id": "188765", "title": "Why are references rarely used in PHP?", "text": "I have some C++ knowledge and know that pointers are commonly used there, but I've started to look at PHP open source code and I never see code using references in methods. Instead, the code always uses a return value instead of passing the reference to the variable to the method, which then changes that variable's value and just returns it. I have read that using references uses less memory, so why aren't they used in PHP?"}
{"_id": "146374", "title": "Object oriented versus function oriented for backend design in PHP?", "text": "I am curious as I am currently using functions exclusively in my webpages. The MVC pattern is very interesting, and I know Code Igniter utilizes classes which works very well. I want to be able to keep my code as clean as possible, and I thought about trying to move my functions into classes. Currently I am separating the files by logic, so I have functions that output the html with arguments that pass any dynamic content, and the functions which handle the user input. I also have functions that interact with the database. I require and include the necessary files between them. As one can tell, there are a lot of arguments being passed around. So that leads me to wanting to try a style of OOP in PHP that I can do the same without having any html inside of the actual class. I really don't want to hear anything about frameworks as the point is to learn and incorporate these ideas into my own website. That being said, I am fairly new at web development, so I do not understand the many different styles in setting up the logic of websites. I would like to get some insight on how to best clean up my code in OOP? EDIT: It is fairly obvious people have strong feelings about frameworks. So I decided to make this very clear; MY WEBSITE IS A PROJECT FOR LEARNING. I WISH ONLY TO LEARN FROM IT. THEREFORE I do not wish to use a framework as it makes more sense for me to learn how it all works before making my life easier and actually use a framework. A FRAMEWORK FOR MORE ROBUSTS PROJECTS. Thank you."}
{"_id": "230707", "title": "Reducing Valgrind Findings (uninitialised value)?", "text": "I'm trying to run some code though Valgrind. The code depends on OpenSSL, and OpenSSL is making Valgrind useless due to uninitialised values. I know where the use lies in OpenSSL's PRNG, but I'm getting hundreds more at the moment. I'd like to try an run a tool over the OpenSSL sources that initializes values. So:               int* p;     int n;      is changed to:               int* p = NULL;     int n = 0;      **Question** : Is anyone aware of a tool to perform bulk initialization on declarations of primitives? I'm more than happy to perform an un-needed initialization and have the optimizer remove it later. That's the optimizers job. For completeness, \"speed\" has never been a top concern for me. I'm more interested in \"correctness\" and assuring it. To me, it does not matter how fast someone arrives at the answer if its wrong."}
{"_id": "230701", "title": "How can resolve an URL on a specific DNS server", "text": "I'm currently facing a issue on a project. I'm resolving URL's on multiple DNS servers using a node.js server. Until here, everything is fine. But some ISP restrict the incoming requests from IPs outside their IP range. So how could I modify my request to those specific DNS servers to make it look like I'm one of their clients? If I understand DNS request correctly, there are no such things as x-forwarded-for header as an HTTP request would have. So can it be achieve ? Or am I facing a real blocker ? (I hope I am on the correct stackexchange for this question)"}
{"_id": "10035", "title": "Am I potentially hurting my career by taking a dev test position?", "text": "Background: If you haven't read much of what I've written here, then:   * I'm a sole developer   * I've developed professionally for ~3 years, personally for 13   * I love my work   * Top-to-bottom, I find the whole process of developing software interesting, fun and exciting (with the slight exception of marketing)    * I hate the environment I'm in now and had to leave Now: I've applied for a position as a Software Development Engineer in Test which potentially pays significantly more than I'm making now (~70%), is located somewhere I'd really like to be and looks like a company I'd really like to work for (interesting product, good tools, smart people - I was referred by an existing employee). So obviously, I'm really hoping that I get the position. I don't want to get pigeonholed as a test developer, however, because they can sometimes have a bad reputation as not being good 'production' developers (not sure why... and this could be wrong, but that's the vibe I've gotten). I'd prefer my career path to end up at a senior dev/lead dev position in 5-10 years. If I'm offered** the position, is there a possibility of hurting this desired path? ** I'm getting ahead of myself. I know. I haven't even had the interview yet. I'm anxious. Still, I interview well and I think that I have the knowledge/experience for the position."}
{"_id": "109171", "title": "What would the role of a \"Software Engineer in Test\" be?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Microsoft SDET position   >  How difficult is it to transition from a software test engineer to a > software development engineer? I interviewed for a Software Engineering role, but unfortuantely wasnt offered the position. The company said there were impressed with me and Inwas close behind the other cadidate and that they wanted me to go in and talk to about another role, Software Engineer in Test. So my question is as per the title really, What is the role of a Software Engineer in Test? What do you envisage the type of work would be involved in a role like this? Would taking a role like this limit me to moving into regular software engineering?"}
{"_id": "132658", "title": "Does any software come with a warranty?", "text": "> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, [blah blah > blah]. It's everywhere. **Is there any software which expressly comes with warranties** which can be taken seriously? That is:   * Provided by a group/company which has the **resources** to handle warranty claims, not uncle Bob.   * Assures something \" **useful** ,\" such as ACID or ISO-whatever compliance, not protection from meteor impacts."}
{"_id": "146376", "title": "How to improve the training of students regarding maintainability?", "text": "Maintainability is a major stake of professional software development. Indeed, maintenance is nearly always the longest part of a software life cycle, as it lasts from the project release until basically the end of times. Moreover, projects being in maintenance represent a large majority of the overall number of projects. According to http://www.vlegaci.com/298/interesting-statistics-%E2%80%93-numbers-of- programmers-in-maintenance-vs-development/, the proportion of projects being in maintenance is about 2/3. I recently came across this question, where the guy looks pretty surprised discovering that his job is mainly about maintenance. I then decided to open a discussion (french) on the main site of the French community of software development professionals (http://www.developpez.com/). The discussion is entitled \"Are students well-enough trained to the reality of professional software development?\" and is mainly about **maintainability**. It was pointed out that, at least in France, people are not well-enough prepared to face maintenance in both aspects of it:   * maintain existing code   * make maintainable code My question here echoes to this discussion and aims at finding a good way to teach maintainability.   * How can we teach maintainability?   * What kind of exercise would you suggest?   * If you have been well-trained regarding maintainability, what particular kind of courses did you take? [edit] After some misunderstanding, I think I must clarify my question. As a project leader and software developer, I often work with trainees or freshly graduated students. I once was freshly graduated myself. The thing is that students are usually unfamiliar with principles such as SOLID that increase the maintainability of a project. We often end up having important difficulties making projects evolve (low maintainability). What I am looking for here is a concrete academical example of successful teaching about the importance of maintainability and how to make better code regarding this particular point; or possible suggestions to improve the way students are trained."}
{"_id": "87972", "title": "OOP technology death", "text": "I've heard many times about the aspect-oriented programming, mostly that it is the \"next generation\" technology in programming and is going to 'kill' OOP. Is it right? Is OOP going to die or what can be reason for that?"}
{"_id": "181809", "title": "Is code duplication a necessary evil in C?", "text": "I'm rather new to C, and I'm wondering if code duplication is a necessary evil when it comes to writing common data structures and C in general? I could try to write a generic implementation for a `hash map` for example, but I'm always finding the end result to be messy. I could also write a specialized implementation just for this specific use case, keep the code clear and easy to read and debug. The latter would of course lead to some code duplication. Are generic implementations a norm, or do you write different implementations for each use case?"}
{"_id": "181802", "title": "How to Release to the App Store as an Individual", "text": "I've written an iOS app, and I'd like to release it on to the App Store. I'm an individual so it's not being released via a company or anything, just me. Is it typical to just release a free app under your own name? If so, what would be appropriate copyright information to submit?"}
{"_id": "132657", "title": "How can I obtain feedback from external developers?", "text": "One of our external devs is leaving after successfully completing a **short (1 month) project** which he was contracted for. I'd like to get some feedback from him by doing an exit interview to find out what could be better in our organization and development process. What sort of questions can I ask to get detailed feedback from him, and not just vague responses?"}
{"_id": "53872", "title": "I want to master ASP.NET - What concepts should I focus on/What concepts do you most value?", "text": "I start a job this summer doing work in ASP.NET 4 (C#). I plan on working with some legacy code as well as MVC. I want to get a running start. I have good understanding of HTML/CSS/Javascript, and pretty good understanding of C# itself, Design principles, Design Patterns, and understand masterpages, basic MVC2, and code behinds for web forms.   * In your opinion what aspects of ASP.NET are the most important to master for web applications?    * What do you value most in your usage of ASP.NET?    * Do you have a recommendation for understanding the internals of ASP.NET itself?"}
{"_id": "206805", "title": "Converting from web to PhoneGap", "text": "I was going through the `PhonGap Documentation` about how to package your `HTML/JS/CSS` to a platform specific `\"native app\"`. They have maintained separate documentations for the separate `Cordova` versions which seems fine. I essentially understand most of the things there. But the confusion I have is the disparity or the loss of information in the documentation from the older ones to the newer ones. For an instance, if you take a look at this documentation for the version `2.1.0` about setting up the android project and scroll a bit down, they have mentioned such things:   * In the root directory of your project, create two new directories:       * /libs     * assets/www   * Copy cordova-2.0.0.js from your Cordova download earlier to assets/www   * Copy cordova-2.0.0.jar from your Cordova download earlier to /libs   * Copy xml folder from your Cordova download earlier to /res ....   * Change the class's extend from Activity to DroidGap   * Replace the setContentView() line with super.loadUrl(\"file:///android_asset/www/index.html\"); ... and so on which clearly mentions the steps to follow while migrating or creating an app for a specific platform. But upwards from the `version 2.1.0`, these information are missing. Like in the newer documentations, all they have is just the `regular android setup stuffs and android hello world` which we can obviously find on the official android documentation. I tried searching the whole documentation for that version and I could not find any information regarding the steps I mentioned above in the older documentation. Otherwise how are the readers supposed to know those steps? Am I missing something here or have they provided?"}
{"_id": "177498", "title": "Cache While Developing or Finish Development then Cache?", "text": "I'm new to cache and haven't used it on my projects. I would like to know about what is best practice in caching. Should caching be done while developing or finish development then cache everything?"}
{"_id": "130656", "title": "Is 'process debt' a term people work with", "text": "As a result of a retrospective we were uncovering worse ways of developing software. We had a idea we though was great and tried it. We stayed with it during the development of a major update which took 3 months. After a retrospective with the maintenance engineers it turn out our idea does not work for them (we had discussions with them before we tried the idea and the also thought it was a great idea). We came to the agreement we better get back to the old situation. The team for the update is dismantled and the maintenance engineers don't have time to do so (although their project manager has agreed to invest the time). We're now in the situation the maintenance engineers pay the interest each time a minor release has to be made. This is very much like technical debt but has nothing to do with the product itself. Is this called process debt or is this put under the term technical debt? And what would be a good way of dealing with it? (Any other or concrete ideas to make it visible to product managers?) PS The idea was migrating a 4 product VSS database to SVN. The database heavily leans on shared files and is a mess to untangle and pour in a usable SVN structure. It's very counter intuitive but is seems some things are better kept in VSS."}
{"_id": "43867", "title": "What are some good resources for debugging/disassembling proprietary software?", "text": "From time to time, I experience different bugs with proprietary software that I need to interact with. In order to get through these bugs, I need to develop various workarounds. Is there a good book for debugging/disassembling proprietary software to write better workarounds?"}
{"_id": "43864", "title": "Quantify value for management", "text": "We have two different legacy systems (window services in this case) that do exactly the same thing. Both of these systems have small differences for the different applications they serve. Both of these system's core functionality lies within a shared library. Most of the time, the updates occur in the shared library and we simply deploy the updated library to both of these systems. The systems themselves rarely change. Since both of these systems do essentially the same thing, our development team would like to consolidate these two systems into a single service. What can I do to convince management to allocate time for such a task? Some of the points I've noted are:   * Easier maintenance   * Decrease testing/QA time Unfortunately, this isn't enough. They would like us to provide them with hard numbers on the amount of hours this will save in the future and how this will speed up future development. Since most of the work is done in the shared library and the systems themselves never change, it's hard for us to quantify how many hours this will save. What kind of arguments can I make to justify the extra work to consolidate these systems?"}
{"_id": "244496", "title": "Continuous Integration using Docker", "text": "One of the main advantages of Docker is the isolated environment it brings, and I want to leverage that advantage in my continuous integration workflow. A \"normal\" CI workflow goes something like this:   * Poll repository for changes   * Pull from repository   * Install dependencies   * Run tests In a Dockerized workflow, it would be something like this:   * Poll repository for changes   * Pull from repository   * Build docker image   * Run docker image as container   * Run tests   * Kill docker container My problem is with the \"run tests\" step: since Docker is an isolated environment, intuitively I would like to treat it as one; this means the preferred method of communication are sockets. However, this only works well in certain situations (a webapp, for example). When testing different kind of services (for example, a background service that only communicated with a database), a different approach would be required. What is the best way to approach this problem? Is it a problem with my application's design, and should I design it in a more TDD, service-oriented way that always listens on some socket? Or should I just give up on isolation, and do something like this:   * Poll repository for changes   * Pull from repository   * Build docker image   * Run docker image as container   * Open SSH session into container   * Run tests   * Kill docker container SSH'ing into the container seems like an ugly solution to me, since it requires deep knowledge of the contents of the container, and thus break the isolation. I would love to hear SO's different approaches to this problem."}
{"_id": "128860", "title": "How do you validate critical input that cannot be vetted?", "text": "How does one prevent users from creating erroneous input sets, when there is no practical way to vet the input? ### The scene I modify a small ERP package written in Visual FoxPro. One part of the package concerns itself with printing truck manifests and invoices to be sent with the drivers on their delivery routes. The print routine, when fed nothing as an input, will attempt to print everything, resulting in reams and reams of printer paper being wasted on a high-speed printer. I am not in a position to re-write any of the GUI interface elements, nor can I adapt any frameworks, tool kits, or other outside code to be used in this situation. The reasons are related to office politics, please do not suggest that I can override the existing ERP framework, as it is not an option for me. ### The issue The users are in a high-pressure, time-critical environment. Each process is measured in minutes or even seconds, which means that I have to minimize processing time as much as possible. Because of this environment, and possible distractions, users _frequently_ ignore the dialogs, pressing the [Enter] key which causes the focus to rapidly move through the form and eventually landing on the action button for the input dialog, resulting in them triggering an automatic printout. The input consists of a date range, route range, and sales order range. The input for date range cannot be auto-set to \"today's date\", as frequent back-printing is required. Also, the end-users work during midnight, i.e. date rollover makes this impractical without rigging a routine that auto-detects the change, etc. The input for routes cannot be hard-coded, nor can it be deduced from routes that have already been shipped, because re-prints are required (see above). The input for sales orders only has meaning when printing single orders or specific ranges. So, frankly, _there is no practical way to validate input_. The action button that triggers printing cannot be blocked. Any suggestions that a blocking dialog be placed in front of the user will be ignored. I am not at liberty to discuss why this is not an option, other than the concept has been already discussed elsewhere on the site (from a different vantage point) and was rejected. Blocking printouts when all inputs are empty was rejected as a design decision as the software _must_ accommodate this as a feature. ### The users The users have been repeatedly asked not to do this. They frequently ignore this advice. Triggering this unfortunate event is not something that their foremen/managers will address, so there is no pressure to end the behavior. ### The organization I do not have a say in the workflow involved, only the modification of existing software components affected by that workflow. ### The vendor The vendor second-sources the package as a custom installation from the original software vendor. The vendor requires that all code changes be sent back to them for integration into their codebase. Significant changes to architecture will result in increased future costs during version migrations due to the extensive customization involved; in some cases, the programmers have even told me that they will completely ignore such large changes and will do as they please. ### The software I have no say in the selection or installation of the software, so changing the platform is out of the question. Regarding the environment of the software, each invoice printed is a single call. There isn't a batch printing facility, and because of how the print facility is integrated into the system (and some language quirks as well) it isn't feasible to make a batch wrapper around that API. Topping this off, this part of the program calls another program that does the invoice print, which in turn calls the print-a-report API, which prints a single invoice. Horrid design, I know. Input forms are a weird combination of a form header that is devoid of input boxes, but can contain other GUI elements. Input boxes are defined at runtime. ### The objective The software will prevent the users from erroneously printing all paperwork. How would you solve this issue?"}
{"_id": "893", "title": "Is going to grad school going to hurt your engineering career?", "text": "I study software engineering and have every intention to become one and stay one. However, I also love logic, computability theory, automata theory, and similar computer sciency math topics, and would love to do at least a Masters degree _at some point_ after I graduate to study these topics more in depth. This is really something I want to do for myself, and not because it will contribute something to my career as a software engineer (and let's face it- it won't either), but I'm worried that a few years of absence from the field will be frowned upon, and will make it harder for me to get back on the horse, so to speak. Is that true? How _do_ employers react to such absence?"}
{"_id": "128867", "title": "interview for an internship but I think I may be unprepared", "text": "I have an interview for a C++ internship position. Now, the thing is I've taken two out of three quarters of the basic CS classes (in C++) at my community college and we covered the basics up to arrays, pointers, linked lists, recursion, etc (basically all of Walter Savitch's Absolute C++ book). I spoke to the interviewer on the phone and he said the interview will include technical questions on trees, hashes, probably some sorting algorithms, and other stuff like that. I have less than a week to prep for the interview. What can I do to familiarize myself with the absolute, bare, essentials of the aforementioned interview question topics? Or, is it just a waste of time for me until I take the next class that covers all of those things?"}
{"_id": "188496", "title": "Design strategies for storing and validating serial numbers", "text": "We are writing software to track Foo Widgets. Each Foo Widget has a serial number. The serial number is an 32-character alphanumeric string. The string is separated into five sets. Each set is separated by a dash (so the s/n is 32-characters NOT including dashes). So for example: 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111. But this may change, since our software isn't actually creating the serial numbers. I'd like to learn about different strategies for storing the serial number and doing user validation of the serial number in the UI. To start with, I'd like get talk about strategies for storing the the serial number in our system. This issue came up at Foo Widgets Incorporated, and there was a disagreement about whether we should store each serial numbers with or without the dashes. I think the most flexible way of doing this (but maybe not most simple) would be to store the serial number without the dashes, store the schema of the serial number (as a regular expression), and then create an identifier that is used to track which schema is used (so later if the manufacturer changes it we can support that and perhaps both schemas at the same time). The counter argument to this was that the dashes \"are a part of the data\" and that it's \"not like a phone number\". I'm having some trouble understanding this point of view."}
{"_id": "135020", "title": "How to store record statuses (like pending, complete, draft, cancelled...)", "text": "Quite a lot of applications require records in their tables to have a status, such as 'complete', 'draft', 'cancelled'. What's the best way of storing these statuses? To illustrate what i'm getting at here is a *very short) example. I have a simple Blog application and each post has a status one of: published, draft or pending. The way i see it there are 2 ways to model this in the database.   1. The Post table has a text field that includes the status text.   2. The Post table has a status field that contains the ID of a record in the PostStatus table The Blog example here is a very simple example. Where an enum (if supported) might suffice. However i'd like responses to the question to take into account that the list of statuses could change at any time, so more could be added or removed. Can anyone explain the advantages/disadvantages of each? Cheers! My initial optnion on this is that its better to use another table and look up the status as its better for normalisation and i've always been taught that normalisation is good for databases"}
{"_id": "135025", "title": "Separation of Concerns when adding new types", "text": "I have a system I've been working on this week where I'm having a hard time balancing separation of concerns with easy extensibility. I'm adding new types to the system, and it feels like shotgun surgery. The basic idea is that data is collected (polled) from a remote system and then made available to a number of different kinds of clients. To support their interface type (protocol), I'm doing a lot of translation. I'm going to try to simplify this so I can fit it in a question box. There's a FruitService out in the world with an SNMP interface. My publisher's job is to collect that data and then publish it.   1. So for each kind of new Fruit we decide to publish, I create a class that knows how to pull the attributes for that fruit via SNMP.   2. Internally Fruit is translated to DTOs (the same objects used to talk to client #1 (RMI)).   3. A cache is updated and checked for changes to trigger async notifications.   4. A class to translate the fruit into the xml schema used by another client (#2).   5. A class to translate the fruit into simple attribute/value pairs used by another client (#3). In the end I create 5 classes and edit 8 more to plug in a new type. It's not a lot of work; couple hours to write code, test, and check-in for a simple type. Note that there isn't a lot of commonality in the fruit types (e.g.: pear and coconut), so most of the common abstractions are based around the process of updating the data and not the data itself. My design concerns are:   1. The SNMP interface changes 2-3 times a year   2. The xml schema (client 2) changes 10 times a year.   3. Adding new types happens less frequently, generally when someone gets around to it. But maybe if it was easier... So the notional goal with the design was to handle those external changes easily. This lead to all the separation in the translation layers. But adding types feels harder than I'd like. Is there a technique or example I might look into? An idea I'm missing? Am I applying SRP wrong and there should be an Apple type that speaks SNNP, xml schema, DTO, etc? ![alt text](http://imgur.com/IaAEU.png) EDIT: Client #1, the RMI client, is custom written when a new fruit is added, to take advantage of all the fruit's capabilities. So if we decide to pull banana information from the FruitService we will also write a client that allows you to peel the banana, get a notification when it's ripe, and tell you which bunch it belongs to - along with the basic fruit attributes like size, weight, color, time till rotten, etc."}
{"_id": "254923", "title": "What are the disadvantages of a \"simple factory\"?", "text": "I am reading the book \u00bbHead First Design Patterns\u00ab from O'Reilly. Before explaining the Factory Method Pattern, they introduce a Simple Factory first. They are using the example of a pizzeria. In a first step they show the problem:               Pizza orderPizza(string type) {       Pizza pizza;       if (type.equals(\"Pepperoni\") { pizza = new PepperoniPizza(); }       else if (type.equals(\"Salmon\") { pizza = new SalmonPizza(); }       // ... and so on            pizza.Prepare();       pizza.Bake();       pizza.Cut();       pizza.Pack();       return pizza;     }      The obvious problem is that you had to change Pizzeria whenever you add or remove a Pizza.   Hence they introduce a \"Simple Factory Idiom\" first. They move the creating part into a class \"SimplePizzaFactory\". Now you don't need to modify Pizzeria anymore when adding or removing a Pizza. Then they say that this approach isn't that good, when you have more than one pizzeria (in several towns).   I don't really understand their reasoning. They give the following example code and then they say that each pizzeria wouldn't be using the procedure as implemented above but were using different methods in order to \"bake\", \"cut\" and \"pack\" the pizza.               BerlinPizzaFactory berlinFactory = new BerlinPizzaFactory();     Pizzeria berlinPizzeria = new Pizzeria(berlinFactory);     berlinPizza.Order(\"Pepperoni\");      Instead of using the Simple Factory, they suggest using the Factory Method Pattern. First, I don't see why the BerlinPizzeria is supposed to not using the procedure. It's still a Pizzeria and when you call Order, you're using the same procedure. My best guess is that they are implying that you are able to implement, let's say, a cafeteria (I'm deliberately using something entirely different to make my point) and use the factory (as it is independent of the pizzeria) and prepare the pizza in a way you want to. But even when using the Factory Method Pattern, nobody forces you to use the default procedure. It's even simpler to \"hide\" that you're doing it differently. Their code examples are given in Java and Java methods are virtual by default. So I would be able to implement BerlinPizzeria and override Order (or had to explicitly declare the method as final). The client, however, wouldn't notice that my BerlinPizzeria is doing things differently. In conclusion I don't see any significant difference between a Simple Factory and the Factory Method Pattern. The only advantage of the Factory Method Pattern I'm seeing is that you would save a few classes (namely, the 'outsourced' factories). So, what is really the disadvantages of a Simple Factory and why isn't is a good idea to 'outsource' the creating part?   Or what is really the advantage of the Factory Method pattern and why is it a good idea to force the creating part being implemented in the subclass?"}
{"_id": "155702", "title": "Open .doc file from my website in browser", "text": "What's the best way to give the end-user of my web application the ability to open, edit and save (via browser) word documents that are stored in my database? I have this working by doing an html conversion of the file (via Aspose Words) but this method seems not even close to flawless and i'm trying to improve this. Is integrating with google docs possible/good? Their edition seems awesome and very powerful. I can't use any Microsoft Word objects (and this is even discouraged by MS). EDIT: The application is developed in .NET and currently uses the .NET framework 2.0. However, as this is fairly obsolete the idea is to restart from scratch and therefore use the 4.0 framework and C# or VB."}
{"_id": "140542", "title": "Wolfram is out, any alternatives? Or how to go custom?", "text": "We were originally planning on using wolfram alpha api for a new project but unfortunately the cost was entirely way to high for what we were using it for. Essentially what we were doing is calculating the nutrition facts for food. (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=chicken+breast+with+broccoli). Before taking the step of trying to build something that may work in its place for this use case is there any open source code anywhere that can do this kind of analysis and compile the data? The hardest part in my opinion is what it has for assumptions and where it gets that data to power the calculations. Or another way to put it is, I cannot seem to wrap my head around building something that computes user input to return facts and knowledge. I know if I can convert the user input into some standardized form I can then compare that to a nutrition fact database to pull in the information I need. Does anyone know of any solutions to re-create this or APIs that can provide this kind of analysis? Thanks for any advice. I am trying to figure out if this project is dead in the water before it even starts. This kind of programming is well beyond me so I can only hope for an API, open source, or some kind of analysis engine to interpret user input when I know what kind of data they are entering (measurements and food)."}
{"_id": "205388", "title": "Complex fetching of Domain Objects", "text": "Usually whenever I want to fetch an aggregate root by ID I just use some type of Repository::findByID(...) function Whenever I started with DDD I thought factories where just a pattern to build _new_ objects, but after meeting some aggregates needing one or two extra queries to load, I realized that Factory::objectWithID(...) were useful to also create instances of objects already existing in the database. Now I have a tree relationship of entities, like **Project->Task**. The number of relations is huge and I have no framework providing lazy loading. Since Tasks can be nested, have complexity of their own, and should not be fully retrieved in one query, I made **Project** and **Task** different aggregate roots How should I retrieve and persist **Tasks**?. It seems that a **ProjectFactory** is not the solution this time because a **Project** does not contain the whole **Task** tree. I still want some aggregate root like features for my **Project** , and since I am avoiding queries inside my entities, I decided to write the relationships inside a Project-Service-Aggregate. Now I can retrieve a single **Project** with a Repo::findByID() function, but fetching a **Task** looks like               ProjectAggregationService *service = ProjectAggregationService.new(SomeProject)     Task task_1 = service.findTask(...)     Task task_1_child_2 = service.findTaskChild(task_1,2)      I am puzzled at this point because:   1. I have a service to represent entity relationships.    2. I am declaring many instances of a service, whereas before, services tended to be quite unique objects.   3. Not having a clear object tree like Project.tasks[1].subtask[3] make the code above look like more complex than necessary. Basically I could summarize my question to: Did I take the right approach? I would greatly appreciate any comment on my reasoning. I am mostly concerned about degenerating my code with overblown complexity, but I still think that keeping references to queries and repos outside my entities implementation is a good goal."}
{"_id": "205389", "title": "How to detect root cause of problem or bug", "text": "Often in coding, I find it very slow and difficult to detect the root cause of a bug and sometimes I end up going to wrong point in my code. It's painful. I know that to detect the root cause of a bug is a very important skill for programmers. Does anybody have a trick or technique to suggest a good way of finding the root cause?"}
{"_id": "131304", "title": "Confused About Virtual Memory for All Processes", "text": "I hope this is the right place. This is a homework assignment for my Operating Systems course and I have to implement a working virtual memory system in C++ so programming is directly involved. I've read some sources about Paging and Virtual Memory now (Tanenbaum, What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory, etc) and noticed that everybody starts off with the phrase `Every process gets its own virtual memory.` Then off they go into a detailed analysis about page size, page replacement algorithms, the MMU and TLB, etc. Those things are actually quite fine in my mind, what doesn't make sense is the concept of virtual memory. If I have four processes running simultaneously and each process uses it's own virtual address space, how is the physical memory protected? The MMU translated the virtual address 0 the same whether it comes from process one, two, three or four. Let me give an example: Every process has a 32-bit virtual address space that it can use. Every process starts off the same way               MOVI 10, 0  // r10 = 0      LOAD 11, 10 // r11 = MEM[r10]; value at address 0x00000000      I just don't understand this concept of distinct virtual address space if every process tries to call the same virtual address which will be translated the same way by the MMU. So all four processes will receive the same data? We have a page table which keeps an index of every mapped and unmapped page to a page frame. If each page entry is unique, then how can it account for the duplicated virtual address space that each process has? I'm at the point where I have written design drafts for the MMU, TLB and the Page Table, but I can't continue until I properly understand how the heck virtual space is defined and used for each process."}
{"_id": "182446", "title": "Is Clojure a 3GL or a 4GL?", "text": "A bit of background (in case I'm mistaken)... I think I understand that (it's an oversimplification):   * manually entering codes into memory (or on a punchcard) is \"first generation language\"   * using mnemonics corresponding to CPU instructions would be a 2GL (like assembly language)   * C/C#/Java/Objective-C are all 3GLs   * SQL is a 4GL Where would Clojure stand in such a classification? I'm particularly confused by this Wikipedia sentence: > The archetypical example of a declarative language is the fourth generation > language SQL, as well as the family of functional languages and logic > programming. This sentence seems to imply that all functional languages are declarative. Is that correct? Then Clojure can be used in a functional way (and it is probably recommended to use it \"as much as possible\" in a FP style), so is Clojure a declarative language ? Also, I can see that Clojure make it really easy to create 4GLs (e.g. as embedded DSLs, like core.logic reproducing logic programming in about 200 lines of code) but is Clojure itself a 4GL?"}
{"_id": "205382", "title": "What are the requirements for an open-source license inside an open-source license?", "text": "If I include an open source library in my project that is licensed under the MIT license, but contains BSD-licensed code that requires attribution (correctly attributed inside the project), is it my responsibility to attribute it again if I decide to use that library? Normally this is not a problem (I would just credit everyone regardless of the license) but on a mobile platform there is not a lot of real estate or efficient ways to show / bundle these licenses."}
{"_id": "205385", "title": "Polymorphism versus authorization", "text": "I have something bother me in the understanding of polymorphism (vs role):   Note: I am using rails (but it's a general question) I have **4 models** :   * User   * Pro   * Customer   * Company There is a **polymorphic association (profileable)** between Pro/Customer and User [because Pro has many more fields for the registration process than Customer]. User is used for the session (I am using the devise gem) Basically something very similar to this writing is used: http://jeffsaracco.com/blog/2012/03/04/ruby-on-rails-polymorphic-user-model/ ### Company association   * Now, I want to create my association with Company.   * By now, only **Pro has one Company** (but I figure it could be other profileable_type which can also have a Company).   * Customer doesn't have a Company. In that case which association is preferable: ### Approach 1   * User has_one Company   * Company belongs_to User   * and manage authorization (with a gem like cancan) to permit company creation only for Pro (with my profileable_type field in the user table) or: ### Approach 2   * Pro has_one Company   * Company belongs_to Pro   * So in that case I don't need any authorization management anymore (User (and by extension Customer) cannot create company by default) Looking for pros/cons of the 2 approaches. I am pretty sure the first one is the best solution as I have a user_id in my company table which would be more generic and expandable than having a pro_id.. I would be pleased to be sure. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "117893", "title": "How to add image support to client-server database application?", "text": "I have an architectural question about a project that I am working on. Currently it is a simple .NET C# application that runs on several client machines, and communicates with a central MySQL server for data storage. There is not an application or service on the server at this time, just MySQL. I would like to add image support so that users can add images to the database (and view after the fact), but after storing the images directly in MySQL as `BLOB` I've decided this approach is a bad idea, as suggested in many posts on SO. The application can't store images on the local filesystem because they would then be inaccessible to other users not on the same local host. That being the case, I'm not sure how best to implement image support otherwise:   * The machines are all Windows-based, I can set up a shared folder but then I have the headache of maintaining a mapped network drive and user credentials/permissions.   * I've thought of adding another application (or service) that runs on the server and handles reading/writing of images on the server side, but this seems redundant in light of the fact that the computers already are capable of file transfers.   * Should I consider creating an application on the server to handle all communications between clients and the SQL database, adding filesystem communication there?"}
{"_id": "124102", "title": "Writing to event log - best practice if log is full", "text": "I have an application that writes to its own Event Source. The Event Source itself is created upon install to prevent user vs admin access issues at runtime. Should writing to our own Event Source fail, the event is instead written to the Application log (two events actually, on for the original event data, and another saying 'Could not write to own event log because...' or something similar). We've recently discovered a problem that when the Application event log is full, the exception is unhandled. Now granted, I could just eat the exception (similar to what this answer says). So what is the best behavior? The application is attempting to log the issue and attempting to log that there is a problem. Should I eat the exception, let the logging operation fail silently and continue execution? Or should I let the exception bubble up the call stack so that user/developers know of the issue? What's the recommended approach under these conditions?"}
{"_id": "121556", "title": "Move a player to another team, with players stored in one arraylist and teams in another using java", "text": "Basically I have a team class, which has an array list that store the players in. In the driver class there's an arraylist that stores the teams. Anyhow I've worked out how to add a player to a specific team and likewise remove a player from said team. Where I'm hitting problems is when I try to transfer one player to another. My understanding is to scan through the first team, and get the player. Then somehow add this player to another, by scanning through the chosen team and add to it? I've tried this way but it seems to replace the original player with the new player in both teams. My other approach would be to somehow return the parameters of the player object, create another with the return parameters, remove the original then add the new instance in the other team? Really not quite generally how I can go about this, been trying all afternoon!   If someone could offer me a general idea, then I can go off and apply the understanding to practice."}
{"_id": "128282", "title": "How to store exception messages", "text": "How are exception messages commonly stored? for any domain. I'm thinking about this from a maintenance standpoint.               if(!Condition1)         throw new Exception(\"Some exception\");          if(!Condition2)         throw new Exception(\"Some exception\");      If it was decided that the exception message in that snippet needed to be changed, it would have to be changed in two places; leaving it wide open for inconsistent messages and such. How better to store exception messages then? Perhaps as a static class with constants?               public static Exceptions     {         public const string CONDITION_NOT_MET = \"Some exception\";     }     ...     if(!Condition1)         throw new Exception(Exceptions.CONDITION_NOT_MET);          if(!Condition2)         throw new Exception(Exceptions.CONDITION_NOT_MET);      Are they often (in production) hardcoded?"}
{"_id": "173553", "title": "Validation and Verification explanation (Boehm) - I cannot understand its point", "text": "Hopefully my last thread about V&V as I found the B.Boehm is text which I just do not understand well (likely my technical English is not that good). http://csse.usc.edu/csse/TECHRPTS/1979/usccse79-501/usccse79-501.pdf Basically he says that verification is about checking that products derived from requirements baseline must correspond to it and that deviation leads only to changes in these derived products (design, code). But he says it begins with design and ends with acceptance tests (you can check the V model inside). The thing is, I have accepted ISO12207 in terms of all testing is validation, yet it does not make any sense here. In order to be sure the product complies with requirements (acceptance test) I need to test it. Also it says that validation problems means that requirements are bad and needs to be changed - which does not happen with testing that testers do, who just checks correspondence with requirements."}
{"_id": "173554", "title": "Is there an open source license with proprietairy-like terms?", "text": "Is there any license meeting the following criteria:   * source code available (users allowed to browse the source)   * users are allowed to modify the code with credits to the original author   * not allowed to sell the software itself or any other program using code from it   * can be sold by original author"}
{"_id": "173557", "title": "Knowing so much but application is a problem?", "text": "In my work, my friends always tell me, you know so much about computer science, electronics engineering,..etc. But I have difficulty in applying them and my code is crap. How to solve that problem? Will I be better or programming isn't my career? For example, yes I know OCTree that is used for space partitioning in games and it is used for optimization, did I implement it? No, but I know about it in principle.. Do I know algorithms like Sorting, Searching,..etc? Yes, and I know them pretty well, but didn't implement them.. When I get a task, I struggle in applying the things that I know..."}
{"_id": "219333", "title": "When defining directory path, should a trailing slash be included?", "text": "Say I'm defining a directory and then including files from it. Is it better practice to do:               define('PATH', 'C:/xampp/htdocs/includes/');     require PATH.'header.php;      or:               define('PATH', 'C:/xampp/htdocs/includes');     require PATH.'/header.php;"}
{"_id": "173559", "title": "Using foldr to append two lists together (Haskell)", "text": "I have been given the following question as part of a college assignment. Due to the module being very short, we are using only a subset of Haskell, without any of the syntactic sugar or idiomatic shortcuts....I must write: _append xs ys : The list formed by joining the lists`xs` and `ys`, in that order_               append (5:8:3:[]) (4:7:[]) => 5:8:3:4:7:[]      I understand the concept of how foldr works, but I am only starting off in Functional programming. I managed to write the following working solution (hidden for the benefit of others in my class...) : > append = \\xs -> \\ys -> foldr (\\x -> \\y -> x:y) ys xs However, I just can't for the life of me, explain **_what the hell is going on!?_** I wrote it by just fiddling around in the interpreter, for example, the following line :               foldr (\\x -> \\y -> x:y) [] (2:3:4:[])      which returned `[2:3:4]` , which led me to try,               foldr (\\x -> \\y -> x:y) (2:3:4:[]) (5:6:7:[])      which returned `[5,6,7,2,3,4]` so I worked it out from there. I came to the correct solution through guess work and a bit of luck... I am working from the following definition of foldr:               foldr = \\f -> \\s -> \\xs -> if null xs then                                   s                                else                                   f (head xs) (foldr f s (tail xs) )      Can someone baby step me through my correct solution? I can't seem to get it....I already have scoured the web, and also read a bunch of SE threads, such as How foldr works"}
{"_id": "135683", "title": "Is having C++ header files without extension a good practice?", "text": "I have an argument with a collegue of mine regarding the C++ guidelines to follow. He currently designs all his libraries that way:   * He uses inconsistently uppercase and lowercase letters in his filenames   * Some of his headers don't have any extension I believe that having no extension is something reserved for C++ standard files and that using uppercase letters is error prone (espcially when you deal with code which is meant to work on both Windows and Linux). His point is that he follows `Qt` conventions (even for code that doesn't uses Qt) and keep saying : \"If Qt does it that way, then it can't be bad.\" Now I try to keep an open-mind, but I really feel bad when I have to work on/with his libraries. Is there a common established set of rules regarding this ? Does the standard tell something about it ? Thank you very much."}
{"_id": "156167", "title": "Dynamic Fields/Columns", "text": "What is the best way to allow for dynamic fields/database columns? For example, let's say we have a payroll system that allows a user to create unique salary structures for each employee. How could/should one handle this scenario? I thought of using a \"salary\" table that hold the salary component fields and joining these columns to a \"salary_values\" table that hold the actual values. Does this make sense? **Example Salary Structures:** Notice how the components of the salary can be shared or unique. \\-- Jon's Salary --               Basic           100        Annual Bonus    25        Tel. Allowances 15      \\-- Jane's Salary --               Basic             100     Travel Allowances 10     Bi-annual Bonus   30"}
{"_id": "208091", "title": "Best practices for deploying multilingual API", "text": "I have a hobby project and it looks like there is need to have some API library (which in turn is a wrapper over existing http API) at least for two languages - JavaScript and Python, adding support to Perl would be nice as well. The question is - what are the best practices for minifying the cost of supporting and developing of such multilanguage APIs? Is it better to choose one language and write just wrappers that for other ones? Or it's better do move slower but to implement thoroughly each method on each language."}
{"_id": "94715", "title": "Is Independent Java Development Worth it Compared to Objective-C?", "text": "First I would like to say that I'm not developer, but I love to code whenever I can. I mainly use Perl which is the language I use when doing System Administration. For different reasons (that I'm not sure of) I recently have been told to learn Java by my manager, so I'm starting to do so. I was thinking that I should take advantage to the situation to build some Android Apps. But it seems that Objective C has increased in popularity recently because of the iPhone and iPad. I want to know if it's worth it to develop with Java for Android compared with to develop with Objective C for iPhone (or iPad). Of course, not based on the APP functionality, let's say someone has developed the APP X for both platforms. In which platform would it become the worthiest? And no, I'm not gonna learn both (sadly ain't got much time) Thank you!"}
{"_id": "134379", "title": "industry averages for time spent on maintenance", "text": "A manager recently announced that were were spending far too much time fixing bugs. I guess he thinks we should write perfect code all the time (whilst still hitting those impossible deadlines of course!) and it made me wonder what the industry average of time spent bug fixing v writing new code was. So does anyone have any metrics on time spent bug fixing against new code development? Or is there any empirical analysis of bug fixing time for the industry as a whole? Is 50% spent bug fixing too much, or about right? How about 20% or 33%? I'm happy to accept anecdotal evidence from personal experience as that would form part of some statistics here that I could compare our performance against."}
{"_id": "203979", "title": "Shouldn't documentation be written together with tests rather than in the code?", "text": "It is popular to write documentation in the same file as the code and extract that using software to generate documents. In order to not affect performance, the documentation is written within commented lines, in a DSL designed just for the purpose of that. And that often results in cumbersome source file. Nowadays, test driven development is popular, and usually tests are written on separate files from the code. Since test files are not run during production, it does not interfere with performance, and hence test are not written within commented lines in a DSL, but are written in the same programming language as the code. Doesn't it make more sense to write documentation in the same file as tests not in commented lines but in the same programming language using DSL? For each syntactic element like class, method, first a documentation telling the features of it can be written, and then test can follow it. That would make things nicer in my opinion. I have scripting languages like Ruby in mind if that makes difference."}
{"_id": "81988", "title": "What \"code smells\" are there that are a symptom that an event listener model is required?", "text": "What are the symptoms in a code base that indicate that an event-listener approach is required? It seems to me that when there are classes that need to be called by multiple, not defined at design-time set of other classes, you need some sort of signaling framework, but I would like to hear what other situations are there that would be improved by changing to an event-based model."}
{"_id": "203975", "title": "Development Test Interview", "text": "I have a development test I am required to solve a given problem with any language of my liking in about 8 hours. The company is GFI if anyone was wondering. How can I truly prepare for such a test?"}
{"_id": "203977", "title": "How to continue development without the webservice?", "text": "We make iOS apps where we often get data in a list from an API, then we select the data and go to the next ViewController. Often it happens that the server is down or some API is not ready. What is a good development practice where we can continue our regular work flow without depending on the webservice and then when its ready without making much changes continue using the web-service and till then use some fixed data."}
{"_id": "134374", "title": "Is using dynamically generated code as cache a good idea?", "text": "I have a web search interface that can compare products in a table. This data set changes a few times a week. I have been storing a \"DISTINCT\" list (used for parametric selection) in a `cache` table. The query is computationally expensive because it involves table joins and thousands of records, hence the reason to cache it. I was wondering if it is a good idea to \"cache\" certain data in PHP in dynamically generated code. The idea is that I could create a cache.php file that is 'included' which has the data in arrays for PHP to use without going to the database. This PHP file could be cached using any of the PHP compiler caches out there. I'm not having speed issues (yet), but I don't like the idea of having to ask the database for cache data, as it seems the overhead of the php->mysql transaction is expensive."}
{"_id": "240379", "title": "Why is Java not 'pure' OOP?", "text": "Java is designed in a very OO approach, and somewhat even 'forces' programmers to program within the OO paradigm (which can be considered good or bad, a matter of opinion). However while _almost_ everything in Java is a class or an object, primitive data types (`int`, `double`, etc) are not. While I see no advantages to this, there are disadvantages. For example, when a method wants to take in as a parameter 'any value', it usually declares the parameter of type `Object`, the supertype of all classes in Java. However if the programmer wants to input an `int` to the method - a perfectly valid value - he/she has to 'box' the value in an instance of the `Integer` class, created specifically for these kinds of needs (as far as I understand). My question is: why aren't primitives in Java classes, like everything else?"}
{"_id": "81981", "title": "What naming anti-patterns exist?", "text": "There are some names, where if you find yourself reaching for those names, you know you've already messed something up. For example: **XxxManager**   This is bad because a class should describe what the class does. If the most specific word you can come up with for what the class does is \"manage,\" then the class is too big. What other naming anti-patterns exist? **EDIT** : To clarify, I'm not asking \"what names are bad\" -- that question is entirely subjective and there's no way to answer it. I'm asking, \"what names indicate overall design problems with the system.\" That is, if you find yourself wanting to call a component Xyz, that probably indicates the component is ill concieved. Also note here that there are exceptions to every rule -- I'm just looking for warning flags for when I really need to stop and rethink a design."}
{"_id": "156160", "title": "Does it make sense to use ORM in Android development?", "text": "Does it make sense to use an ORM in Android development or is the framework optimized for a tighter coupling between the UI and the DB layer? * * * **Background** : I've just started with Android development, and my first instinct (coming from a .net background) was to look for a small object- relational mapper and other tools that help reduce boilerplate clode (e.g. POJOs + OrmLite \\+ Lombok). However, while developing my first toy application I stumbled upon a UI class that explicitly requires a database cursor: `AlphabetIndexer`. That made me wonder if maybe the Android library is not suited for a strict decoupling of UI and DB layer and that I will miss out on a lot of useful, time-saving features if I try to use POJOs everywhere (instead of direct database access). * * * **Clarification** : I'm quite aware of the advantages of using ORM _in general_ , I'm specifically interested in how well the Android class library plays along with it."}
{"_id": "133688", "title": "Is C++11 Uniform Initialization a replacement for the old style syntax?", "text": "I understand that C++11's uniform initialization solves some syntactical ambiguity in the language, but in a lot of Bjarne Stroustrup's presentations (particularly those during the GoingNative 2012 talks), his examples primarily use this syntax now whenever he is constructing objects. Is it recommended now to use uniform initialization in _all_ cases? What should the general approach be for this new feature as far as coding style goes and general usage? What are some reasons to _not_ use it? Note that in my mind I'm thinking primarily of object construction as my use case, but if there are other scenarios to consider please let me know."}
{"_id": "42803", "title": "Is there a universal date format that anyone in the world can understand?", "text": "In Canada, everyone is familiar with the date format `YYYY-MM-DD`. In Europe or South Africa, they prefer `DD-MM-YYYY`. There are users from South Africa who get confused with the `YYYY-MM-DD` date format. Is there a way to handle this situation? I was thinking of using the following method format for all: `Feb 02, 2011`"}
{"_id": "23234", "title": "What are the hardest parts of the C++/C#/Java programming languages?", "text": "Just wondered what are the features of the three main programming languages which show you are an 'expert'? Please exclude 'practical' skills such as indenting. Am I right in saying for C++ the most difficult aspect to master is STL/generics? Java seems much easier as memory is handled for you. I'm not entirely sure on C# either? I'm trying to use this to guage my current level of ability and what i wish to aim for. ps this was posted on stackoverflow but got binned due to arguing, please do try to keep it civil as I am really interested in the answers from everyone :)"}
{"_id": "85605", "title": "Do programmers possess the means of production?", "text": "I was listening to The Servile State by Hilare Belloc this morning and pondering whether or not I possessed the means of production, as did the peasant of the Middle Ages; as did not his descendants after the oligarchs of England forced him into servitude. The means of production was the arable land that the serf was seated on, which, even though not legally his, was illegal to evict him from. So, as programmers, with the hitherto unknown supply of free tools and resources, have we reclaimed as a class of workers, unlike any others, the means of production? Given the chance, a midrange PC and a stable internet connection, could we not each of us be wholly self-sufficient and not just wage-earners?"}
{"_id": "143462", "title": "Web application deployment and Dependencies", "text": "I have a free software web application that using other free software scripts for appearance. I have trouble to decide whether should I copy source code of used scripts to my project main repository or list them as dependencies and ask user (who installs application to his server) to install them himself? Since some of scripts solving browser compatibilities issues and I'm not a good web designer (i hate to check my web site on IE to see compatibility) using the newest version of scripts is preferable and second solution works here. But it has problem with scripts aren't backward-compatible with versions I've used them for development. Maybe another method is well-known for this issues that I don't know them."}
{"_id": "135971", "title": "When is it not appropriate to use the dependency injection pattern?", "text": "Since learning (and loving) automated testing I have found myself using the dependency injection pattern in almost every project. Is it always appropriate to use this pattern when working with automated testing? Are there any situations were you should avoid using dependency injection?"}
{"_id": "70919", "title": "Why c++? Where to start?", "text": "I know there was many questions like this one, but please hold on one more. All programming languages I know now are made for web purposes. I've been learning ActionScript, php and a bit of Javascript, AJAX, etc.. I've liked php very much but I'm still looking something I'll really love! That's why I want to try something new. Can You tell me what are positives and negatives of this language? Is there some big example of C++ usage? Is it a good language to start this journey (maybe You can recommend something else)? Are there some good video tutorials which I can buy on CD/DVD? Could You recommend some books? @edit: After reading Your answers and some info on the internet I'm confused about two languages. Those are C++ and Python. Python can be used for web so it combine great with my current knowledge. But how about Python for desktop applications? Is it hard to build cross-platform apps? Could You compare for me this two languages? PS. I'm really glad about all of Your answers. It is very helpful for me & it forces me to productive thinking about my future ;)"}
{"_id": "200770", "title": "How can I translate my android app help and keep it up to date?", "text": "My Android application is almost done and I spend much time creating a set of very precise help pages in HTML that I display using WebViews. I am now ready for the next step, which is _i18n_. Translating my app is no problem, the strings.xml is not that long and I can easily ask friends to translate it. My problem is about these help pages. When I'll update my app, I'll probably have to update the help pages as well. I saw that it wasn't that simple, even with one language. I need your opinion on how to perform such a massive work (which is not at all my job as a developer). Do I need to:   * Manually update every language help page when I update the app, which means asking all of my translators to provide a new version of their work each time I change anything.   * Provide help only in a default language (probably English, even though the default language is French. French people would still have the French help ;-D).   * Google-translate the help pages, even if it _\"not well English is\"_. I don't know any way to do it automatically.   * Do something else, which you probably thought of long ago. Thanks for your answers, tips and tricks."}
{"_id": "200771", "title": "Creating a separate project for JPA entities", "text": "Where I work it is a common practice to create a separate for JPA entities and a project for the web application (the WAR). So basically you have (at least) two project for each application - appJPA and appWEB. The people who started this convention are no longer there, so I have been wondering about the benefit of having this separation. The only advantage I could think about is the Eclipse JPA facet which provides various tools for JPA. But if I am not mistaken, this facet can be applied to WAR projects as well. So my question is: is this separation unnecessary?"}
{"_id": "135974", "title": "How can I sell my boss on Python+Django instead of PHP+a different framework?", "text": "My boss has tasked me with a re-write of our intranet website. The existing system is very old PHP that doesn't use a framework. My preference is strongly to do the rewrite in Python and Django but my boss does not like Python syntax (he is also a developer). I'm on the opposite end... I don't like developing in PHP and my PHP experience is extremely limited but I've done a lot of work in Python. My boss is aware of my experience but still wants me to sell him on Python. Some of the things he mentioned he does not like about Python:   * indentation is the only marking for the begin/end of a code block (he loves his curly braces)   * documentation issues (I told him python documentation is great)   * IDE support is limited (mentioned PyCharm and Wing IDE, not sure which is better)   * he's had compatibility issues moving between older versions of python He may be the only other pair of eyes on the new code. How can I convince him that Python is a better choice? Is Ruby a potential middle ground?"}
{"_id": "134084", "title": "Assembly instructions execution time", "text": "Where can I find the x86 instructions execution time? How to find out which instruction is faster or smaller?"}
{"_id": "208541", "title": "Inserting HTML code with jquery", "text": "One of our web applications is a page that takes in a serial number and various information is returned and displayed to the user. The serial is passed via AJAX, and based on the response, one of the following can happen -   * An error message is shown    * A new form replaces the previous form Now, the way I am handling this is to use jQuery to destroy (using $.remove()) the table that displayed the initial serial form, then I'm appending another html table that contains another form. Right now I am including that additional form as part of the html source, and just setting it to display:none, then using jQuery to show it when appropriate. However, I don't like this approach because if someone views source on the page, they can see that table html code that is not being displayed. My next thought would be to use AJAX to read in another HTML file, and append it that way. However, I am trying to keep down the number of files this project uses, and since most pages in our project will use AJAX, I could see a case where there are multiple files containing HTML snippets - and that feels sloppy to me. What is the best way to handle a case where multiple html elements are being shown and removed with jQuery?"}
{"_id": "208540", "title": "What must I take into consideration when designing a UI around a 0..1:1 relationship?", "text": "I'm designing the database schema for a new product feature. In my current design I have some related optional data. Rather than have nullable fields I have a separate table with a 0..1:1 relationship to the main table. I chose this design because the queries are simpler* if null data doesn't have to be taken into consideration. The team lead pointed out to me that it will complicate data binding in the UI and suggested that I just use nullable fields. I am wondering what complications the optional table approach will introduce? The obvious thing that comes to mind is the data aware controls can't bind to a closed data set so I'll need to either create a record on the fly when the user attempts to fill in the optional data or create the record at the same time as the main record, negating the purpose of have a separate table. Is there anything else I should be aware of? **Clarification** *Simpler, by which I refer to the dizzying amount of rules and ambiguities concerning null's behavior under different query scenarios in the SQL standard and the fact that no two vendors agree on which of these rules to implement."}
{"_id": "170923", "title": "What to do when there are no logical user stories but separate development tasks?", "text": "We need to generate a release in 3 weeks, and for the planning we are doing today we don't have coherent logical user stories from the backlog tasks. Is valid to match say each development task is equivalent to an user story? Methodologically what is the correct way of handling this?, because anyway we are going to have standup meetings and we are going to control the progress of the project against those development tasks. For example, we have things like: . Adapt ETL to process numeric lists . Adjust licensing component . Remove DTC and so on. So, for the planning poker and iteration planning is valid to use those tasks? if not, what is the alternative?"}
{"_id": "208542", "title": "Choosing the simplest platform version of a source when porting to another platform", "text": "The question will sound weird as I'm not very experienced in C, C++ and ASM. Let's say I have a hard time finding a C# managed, safe-code-only solution to solve a problem. Then I find that in 1998, some codes for (e.g.) a codec have been written in C for PPC, x86, arm, etc. This code can have 20000+ lines, and I need to port it. Then I try one platform, and notice a lot of API call, CUDA stuff, inline assembler in most of the code. Etc. Is there a preference, concerning portability, between PPC, PS2, x86, arm, sparc, etc, when porting to another platform that helps reducing the number of platform-specific code occurrence? I know that all these builds exist especially because there are specific features on each processors, but I wonder if some processors have less antennas, third eye, and four legs, and are less simpler (or \"limited\") than others. I spent the last week porting codes, and had the intuition that focusing on certain aspects helps finding more cross-platform code. I may be wrong, and I - know - that it highly depends on skill. But that doesn't change anything to the fact that, e.g., a 20000 lines Java code may be easier to port to .Net for Windows Phone than a x86 asm code. More specifically, my question is about a good approach when porting Orange to Peach, and avoiding going through several platform specific implementations."}
{"_id": "170925", "title": "Does Liskov Substitution Principle also apply to classes implementing an interface?", "text": "LSP states that classes should be substitutable for their base classes, meaning that derived and base classes should be semantically equivalent. But does LSP also apply to classes implementing an interface? In other words, if an _interface method_ implemented by a class is semantically different from what user expects it to be, would this be considered as a violation of LSP?"}
{"_id": "249513", "title": "What is the \"1620's multiplication operation\"?", "text": "I was stumbling through Wikipedia when I came across the entry for FLOPS, specifically the table in this section. The first entry is for a computer from 1961, the comment on the right reads > The 1620's multiplication operation takes 17.7 ms.[46] What is this operation? I assume it means it can do multiplication in 17.7ms?"}
{"_id": "164404", "title": "Should Developers Perform All Tasks or Should They Specialize?", "text": "Disclaimer: The intent of this question isn't to discern what is better for the individual developer, but for the system as a whole. I've worked in environments where small teams managed certain areas. For example, there would be a small team for every one of these functions:   1. UI   2. Framework code   3. Business/application logic   4. Database I've also worked on teams where the developers were responsible for all of these areas and more (QA, analsyt, etc...). My current environment promotes agile development (specifically scrum) and everyone has their hands in every area mentioned above. While there are pros and cons to each approach, I'd be curious to know if there are more pros and cons than I list below, and also what the generally feeling is about which approach is better. **Devs Do It All** **Pros**   1\\. Developers may be more well-rounded   2\\. Developers know more of the system   **Cons**   1\\. Everyone has their hands in all areas, increasing the probability of creating less-than-optimal results in that area   2\\. It can take longer to do something with which you are unfamiliar (jack of all trades, master of none) **Devs Specialize** **Pros**   1\\. Developers can create policies and procedures for their area of expertise and more easily enforce them   2\\. Developers have more of a chance to become deeply knowledgeable about their specific area and make it the best it can be   3\\. Other developers don't cross boundaries and degrade another area   **Cons**   1\\. As one colleague put it: \"Why would you want to pigeon-hole yourself like that?\" (Meaning some developers won't get a chance to work in certain areas.) It's easy to say how wonderful agile is, and that we should do it all, but I'm somewhat of a fan of having areas of expertise. Without that expertise, I've seen code degrade, database schemas become difficult to manage, hack UI code, etc... Let's face it, some people make careers out of doing just UI work, or just database work. It's not that easy to just fill in and do as good of a job as an expert in that area."}
{"_id": "204478", "title": "How do you get into the habit of using a repository (e.g. GitHub)?", "text": "Are there some best practices on the repository front, or some common newcomer-traps that I should avoid? I have recently been reading about the benefits of repositories even for single-developer projects and, in addition, I am likely to start working with multiple other engineers in a short while but, how do I go from never having used a repository to setting one up - for multiple people, even! **Background:** I am an electronics engineer before anything else, and while application programming has been part of that, it's never been something I've done a lot of - it has mainly been snippets of C for embedded systems where I was the only person working on it."}
{"_id": "204475", "title": "Trying to understand the 2N lnN compares for quicksort", "text": "I was going through the analysis of quicksort in Sedgewick's Algorithms book. He creates the following recurrence relation for number of compares in quicksort while sorting an array of N distinct items. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6g8bm.jpg) I am having a tough time understanding this... I know it takes 1/N probability for any element to become the pivot and that if k becomes the pivot, then the left sub-array will have k-1 elements and right sub-array will have N-k elements. 1.How does the cost of partitioning become N+1 ? Does it take N+1 compares to do the partitioning? 2.Sedgewick says, for each value of k, if you add those up, the probability that the partitioning element is k + the cost for the two sub-arrays you get the above equation.   * Can someone explain this so that those with less math knowledge (me) can understand?   * Specifically how do you get the second term in the equation?    * What exactly does that term stand for?"}
{"_id": "204476", "title": "How to design a composite pattern in Python?", "text": "# The concept I'm programming an interface over pygame as a personal project, to make the creation of games easier for me. So far I managed to design an architecture that behaves like this :   * Objects are displayable components that can appear and move on the screen   * Objects can have children objects   * When an object displays itself, it ask all his children to display themselves on the parent's surface.   * Objects have three important elements : a callback system, a graphics system and a physics system to respectively act, display and move. Then, when I want to create a game \"scene\", I create a \"root\" object that contains other objects like the player, the mouse, the ground, monsters... Then I just have to ask the root to display itself, and every object appears recursively. I designed this without knowing about the composite pattern at first, only the basics of OOP. My main issue was to make the substitutability property of objects that comes from inheritance to work well with the recursive composition I made. I mean that I have an \"abstract\" class called \"Object\" (I put abstract into quotes because Python doesn't really have such concept) that is inherited by classes like \"Image\" (to be able to display) or \"MovingObject\" (to be able to move). Here, inheritance is meant to extend my object abilities. But my composite pattern requires that \"groups of objects must be considered the same as single objects\". So when I call recursively a method from an object, it calls that method from every child of the object, regardless of the fact that some of them may not have that method. # Example For instance, let's use this root element :   * root (Image)      * player (MovingObject)     * cloud (MovingObject)     * background (Image)     * sun (Image) Now let's suppose we want to call the method `move()` on the root element, to make every child move : First, we cannot because root is an Image instance, so it doesn't know the `move()` method. But even if it was the case, the children \"background\" and \"sun\" would not know it. So I decided to put an empty method `move()` inside my \"abstract\" Object class, so every object knows it, even if it doesn't do anything. The issue is that my Object class is now containing empty methods that it doesn't understand nor needs, only to permit the recursive behavior. # Possible solution Then I heard about all the \"inheritance vs composition\" fuss and one of the solutions that came to my mind was to stop using inheritance for Object abilities and use composition instead. That means I would create, for example, a \"Body\" class, an \"Image\" class and a \"Callback\" class that would represent different actions, and then plug these into an Object instance to \"equip\" it and give it more power. But then I thought that this will barely change something because I will have to call `move()`, and then the object will check if it has the Body plug-in, and use it. But it still requires the `move()` method to be present inside the Object class. # Questions So I'm turning to you guys to gave me advices about my pattern :   * Did I understand well how the composite pattern works ?   * Is my approach correct ?   * Does the use of \"plug-in\" classes will help me ?   * Is the recursive behavior a good idea ?   * Is there other patterns that are more fitting to my needs ? I hope you can give me some hints!"}
{"_id": "212436", "title": "Making a business case for a future proof Silverlight application", "text": "I have recently started working for a pretty big bank writing internal apps. I am being subcontracted out by the company I work for (who I have also recently started working for). This bank **has recently** upgraded to Windows XP, they previously used Windows 2000. I have been tasked with re-writing a report viewing application, which I am currently doing in MVC4 (Windows XP == Visual Studio 2010). The original app was written in .net 2 with webfoms, and is a bit of a mess. The whole application seems to rely on state, where MVC is all about embracing the stateless nature of the web, as in the data you input to form A, affects the options you see in form B, options you select in form B affect form C etc etc (I love MVC and think that it is an awesome thing in the right context). The whole maintaining models between states thing is starting to get pretty messy, and I can't help but thinking that I am either doing it wrong, or not using the right tool for the job. My thoughts are that WPF would be perfect for this but the Computers are controlled by an external agency and are pretty locked down. We have slightly more control over the servers hosting the applications. The obvious next option is Silverlight(I think, maybe I'm horribly wrong!) A couple of questions. First: Is MVC ASP actually the best option here, or am I doing it wrong? Second: What argument would you present to management if you agreed with me and thought a Silverlight based application was the way to go? Using non MS based technologies is a no go. MVC4 is controversial."}
{"_id": "71292", "title": "Can I turn off Visual Studio white space at bottom of code files?", "text": "In any open file within Visual Studio, there is the ability to scroll all of the code out of sight\". In other words, there is heaps of white space below the code lines that one can scroll to. This to me is of no use, and when I pull my mouse wheel down with aggression, my code disappears off the screen. Is there a way to turn this annoyance off? Also, can someone explain to me any logical reason as to why it's even there? ps: I tagged this question as visual-studio since I'm pretty sure it's been in every version of VS that I've ever used... though I'm currently using visual- studio-2010 ![This space is completely useless](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HKsUI.png) ![Now it's even worse because I scrolled to the bottom \\(note the line #46\\)](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QPfVf.png) ## EDIT Jon Galloway pointed me to another thread stating that it was added by popular request. Still makes no sense why they wouldn't make it a switchable feature on/off"}
{"_id": "236938", "title": "Is database version control practical?", "text": "The topic of database version control seems to come up at my work and in social discussion more and more often. But the truth is, I haven't met anyone actually DOING it. The only thing Googling the topic has ever yielded are expensive products/services. Is this really all there is? Does an open source (or at least a _standard_ , and not just \"Version control from company x\") solution exist for ANY type of database (transactional or otherwise)? I'm in love with the idea, but I don't know where to start looking."}
{"_id": "236931", "title": "What is (or where can i find) the algorithm to decode FLAC to PCM?", "text": "I'm trying to program a very basic FLAC player using 100% C# completely from scratch. My understanding of this type of thing is very limited, so I'm using this project as a way to learn about compression and decompression. I'm a computer science and math major currently in university, so I'm not adverse to learning whatever math may be involved. I've looked up the format specifications on xiph.org and I understand how the headers and all are structured, but I can't seem to find a concise explanation of how the audio compression works. How do I go about converting the frames to pcm? Sadly, my knowledge of C/C++ is extremely limited, as I only have experience with Java and C#. As such, trying to navigate the c++ code already out there is not a great starting point. I looked at FlacBox and learned quite a bit from it, but it's barely commented at all and I am lost trying to figure out how the conversion from flac to pcm works. So what should I read as far as math goes so I can get started with this? Where can I find a basic algorithm for converting the audio frames to wav? Thanks."}
{"_id": "233608", "title": "How is 'bolt-on' the same or different from add-on, extension, or module?", "text": "I hear the term 'bolt-on' used in many contexts, specifically in my organization where PeopleSoft is used extensively. I don't know exactly how it differs from an 'extension' of an existing product, a new module within an application, or an 'add-on' like you would purchase for a product you own. Is there a more formal definition of 'bolt-on' that I'm not familiar with?"}
{"_id": "236937", "title": "How to design this better?", "text": "I'm developing a system using .NET which will be used by multiple users. Because of that, I need to identify on the database which data belongs to each user. Explaining with an example, imagine I have the entity `Product`. Then each user has its own products, and so in the database on the table of products we must be able to distinguish between products of each user. Saying that, my solution was to add on the database an extra column for each table for the user id. Now, on my code this was the same as adding on my repositories a parameter to receive the id of the user so that the repository would be able to locate the correct data. The concrete implementation of the repository to deal with relational databases just check those columns. The problem is that to be able to get those columns available on my repository, and on my ORM (in the case EF) I needed to add on each entity one property `UserID`. The problem is that if I think for a while this doesn't seem like a good solution. I'm coupling domain entities with details of how to persist data. More than that, I'm coupling each entity with the way I manage the access to the data and this seems a bad approach. So, concearning this, is there a better way to plan this? A way to make sure we can relate data to users and in the same time avoid those properties on the domain entities?"}
{"_id": "236936", "title": "what is the best solution for this problem", "text": "I need help. We have website(PHP site) and it has different software(like shopping cart, chat software, ticketing software, blog,.... )."}
{"_id": "237042", "title": "Using Django to Create Child Sites", "text": "I am creating a series of small sites, I'm using the django framework. The theory goes a user comes to a master site, signs up, then he gets his own child site. Example:   * navigate to example.com   * user creates an account \"mysite\"   * user then gets his own site: mysite.example.com and he can configure this all he wants My question: * would it be better to have a \"gold\" version of the site that gets created for each site? for instance: cp ~/goldsite ~/mysite and change the database pointers appropriately ** the downside is if I ever have to do maintenance on a file, I would have to change all subsites. ...or * have one host and configure the database to support multiple sites. The DB might get messy. Any feedback would be great."}
{"_id": "246238", "title": "Is it ok to start with templates in MVC development?", "text": "I'm new to web development and I've started working on a project in my company that uses DJANGO. I feel it flexible to start my development straight first from the templates. I think it will be easier if I visualize things first. So my question: Is it okay to start with a template rather than starting with models first? Will I stumble on to any sort of confusions if I go by this method of development?"}
{"_id": "232036", "title": "Testing a very specific function in a large, complex application", "text": "I'm new to testing but wholeheartedly realize how important it is. The main issue is that my company has no top-down support for testing at all. That is we don't have any unit testing and just a bit of human testing (I hope I'm using the right terminologies). I have been trying to get testing started here and have to do it subtly because I'm often asked \"when will feature X be done\" and therefore can't start the week(s) long project of writing tests for all of our legacy code. Which would need to get rewritten just to provide seams for testing (if I have the concept of 'seams' right). I can, however, sneak a bit of time to test one function. Or at least I think I can. I'm writing code that basically processes quite a bit of data and then renders it using D3. I would like to write a test for one of the most important functions, `binData`. It takes one optional argument (the date to start binning from) and accesses a few properties like `this.rows` and `this.timestamps`. How would I go about doing that? I think I'll need to create a mock object to hold `this.data` and `this.timestamps` (and the other accessed properties). In fact, I imagine several different mock objects which would allow testing of several different datasets. But other than that I'm kinda stuck. In terms of frameworks I've heard of Mocha and Jasmine and Vows but don't know which would be best. I also don't know how to tie into the massive (and complex) class and module hierarchy and to meet each object's dependencies. That is, the function `binData` is in a file called, say, `dataBinner.js` which requires all sort of other functions in other files but doesn't explicitly include anything on it's own. Instead, it itself is included in a \"manager\" file which includes everything that dataBinner.js and the other modules will need. I suppose I'll need to find a way to instantiate everything necessary to test `binData`. I'm not afraid to do a bit (or a lot) of reading to better understand things. Any help regarding this specific task of writing a test for `binData` or the larger question of how to slowly implement testing in a non-test-friendly place would be much appreciated. CLARIFICATION I'm 100% on board, testing-wise. I know it's important and I know that my company is incorrect by not having testing. You'd expect emails that say \"fixed regression caused by fixing bug 1413\" would trigger something. Or that things that shouldn't take that long take waaaaaay too long ('cause it's spaghetti legacy code). What I'm asking is _given that_ how do I test my one function which relies on the legacy spaghetti code. That is, how does someone inject a bit of testing into a place without it? I'm guessing that I'll have to write my own testing framework because I'll have to create mocks for the spaghetti legacy code. So that I can instantiate my object and call my function outside of the scope of the application."}
{"_id": "237041", "title": "To which level Haskell's HDBC is lazy?", "text": "The HDBC documentation states: > fetchAllRows :: Statement -> IO [[SqlValue]]Source > > Lazily fetch all rows from an executed Statement. > > You can think of this as hGetContents applied to a database result set. > > The result of this is a lazy list, and each new row will be read, lazily, > from the database as the list is processed. > > When you have exhausted the list, the Statement will be finished. > > Please note that the careless use of this function can lead to some > unpleasant behavior. In particular, if you have not consumed the entire > list, then attempt to finish or re-execute the statement, and then attempt > to consume more elements from the list, the result will almost certainly not > be what you want. > > But then, similar caveats apply with hGetContents. > > Bottom line: this is a very convenient abstraction; use it wisely. > > Use fetchAllRows' if you need something that is strict, without all these > caveats. Then, I wonder, to which level does the laziness extend? Say, I can have                 conn <- connectSqlite3 databaseFilePath       rows <- quickQuery conn (\"SELECT * FROM foo\") []       mapM_ bar $ take n rows       disconnect conn      Will it actually only fetch `n` rows? Like, from the database point of view, will it be equivalent of `SELECT * FROM foo LIMIT (n)`? Because fetching all rows at the level of database driver and then `take`ing `n` of them seems to be silly and kind of defeats the purpose. If it's lazy up to the database itself, how's it implemented? Is it using cursors? I know there're several drivers for HDBC alone. I'm asking only about principle of implementation."}
{"_id": "175258", "title": "Using 'new' in a projection?", "text": "I wish to project a collection from one type (`Something`) to another type (`SomethingElse`). Yes, this is a very open-eneded question, but which of the two options below do you prefer? **Creating a new instance using`new`:**               var result = query.Select(something => new SomethingElse(something));      **Using a factory:**               var result = query.Select(something => SomethingElse.FromSomething(something));      When I think of a projection, I generally think of it as a _conversion_. Using `new` gives me this idea that I'm creating new objects during a conversion, which doesn't feel right. Semantically, `SomethingElse.FromSomething()` most definitely fits better. Although, the second option does require addition code to setup a factory, which could become unnecessarily compulsive."}
{"_id": "232032", "title": "Decoupling Server and Client using REST API", "text": "I was thinking about how I can decouple a web-application completely into a server-side and a client-side component. I want to decouple the app to the extent that I can host both components on seperate servers. So, for example, I would have:   1. Server 1 (API Server): A server-side component running on `Django` on something like Heroku or EC2.   2. Server 2 (Static Server): A client-side component running on `AngularJS` on a static server like S3 or CloudFront. The communication between these components will take place using a JSON REST API. **Questions:**   1. Is this approach common? advisable? > Does a company like Facebook or Twitter _mostly_ utilise the same API for > the webapp as it does for its mobile apps or its open API?   2. Is it a good idea to use oAuth2 for the login process? > So the user is redirected to a login page on **Server 1** (this is the only > page on Server 1) and then redirected back to **Server 2** with a token if > authentication succeeds. Is this the best approach? It seems like I am kinda > \"breaking the flow\" if I do this. Is this normal? The motivation for this is for me to be able to use the same API for my web, iOS and Android clients. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "237045", "title": "Managing client-side and server-side validations in one place", "text": "I'm 100% on board with the case that one should definitely use both client- side and server-side data validations. However, in the frameworks and environments I've worked in, the approaches I've seen have never been DRY. Most of the time there's no plan or pattern - validations are written in the model spec, and validations are written in the form on the view. (Note: Most of my first-hand experience is with Rails, Sinatra, and PHP w/ jQuery) Mulling it over, it seems like it would not be difficult to create a generator which, given a set of validations (e.g. model name, field(s), condition), could produce both the necessary client-side and server-side material. Alternately, such a tool could take the server-side validations (such as the `validates` code in an ActiveRecord model) and generate client-side validations (such as jQuery plugins, which would then be applied to the form. Obviously, the above is just a \"hey I had this idea\" musing, and not a formal proposal. This sort of thing is surely more difficult than it seemed when the idea hit me. That brings me to the question: **How would you approach designing a \"write once, run on server and client\" technique for data validation?** Related subtopics: Do tools like that exist for any particular frameworks or client-server technologies? What are major gotchas or challenges with trying to maintain only one set of validations?"}
{"_id": "10581", "title": "Should my multi-server RDBMS or my Application handle database Referential Integrity?", "text": "Should items like Foreign Keys, Constraints, Default Values, and so on be handled by the database management system (in this case, MS SQL 2005) or the application? I have heard opinions from both sides and I'm honestly not sure which way to go. There is a chance we will be spanning multiple servers/databases and I don't think Foreign Keys can be used across linked servers. In addition to that, there are some circular references in the database design which prevents me from using `ON UPDATE CASCADE` on everything. The database is MS SQL 2005 (possibly 2008) and all interactions with it should go through the application."}
{"_id": "175250", "title": "How to model a system to help my team grasp the project's bigger picture?", "text": "According to the software engineering point of view, I should model the system to make it easier for other people to understand well what they work on. To do so, I have used the Dia drawing program. But, after having used Dia for some time, I find that it falls short in helping me to correctly and efficiently model my project. How do you usually tackle this problem (modelling a project in the large) and what tools would you recommend for the job, and why?"}
{"_id": "175252", "title": "Why some consider static analysis a testing and some do not?", "text": "Preparing myself also to ISTQB certification, I found they call static analysis actually as a static testing, while some engineering book distinct between static analysis and testing, which is the dynamic activity. I tent to think that static analysis is not a testing in the true sense as it does not test, it checks/verifies. But sure I would love to hear opinion of the true experts here. Thank you"}
{"_id": "175253", "title": "Why does an unsigned int compared with a signed character turn out with an unexpected result?", "text": "Why does the following code output **y>x** when clearly 1>-1?               unsigned x=1;     signed char y=-1;          if(x>y){         printf(\"x>y\");     }     else {         printf(\"y>x\");     }      Please explain this result."}
{"_id": "145701", "title": "Is there a semi-scientific term for this filtering behavior?", "text": "I'm looking for the term that applies to a certain kind of filtering behavior. It's often used in webshop-like interfaces, where large amounts of data are filtered based on a selection of filter criteria. The most distinguishing feature is that _it's impossible to pick a filter criterium that leads to no results_ , as the filters that would do so are hidden with real-time updates. To see an example look at this boot finder section on the blue-tomato.com webshop. Is there a term for this kind of filtering?"}
{"_id": "146460", "title": "How to verify the client's view is consistent with the remote model?", "text": "i'm designing a client-server system via web broswser and i have this problem: I send the data to the client via JSON, then the javascript view shows the stuff. Then the user takes actions and commands are sent back to the server. Usual stuff, the problem is what if the view's data is corrupted or old? One solution i thought is making a hash via SHA1 or some other algorithm of the full objects in the client's model, but JSON data is not ordered, also this adds delays to the system. How do google docs manages this kind of thing? Also, sending ALL THE DATA, every time the model is updated doesn't make sense, but how do i keep consistency by only sending changes? I think the whole problem is just one."}
{"_id": "146463", "title": "Paid open-source app", "text": "The question that bothers me is whether it is possible/feasible/reasonable to expect for an open-source app to sell well on the mobile market? Should I believe that my users will use my app, rather than build the checked- out version, and, more important, how can I deal with the competition if I make my app available under an OSS license? So far the only link on the subject I've found is http://blog.zachwaugh.com/post/17554643060/selling-open-source-apps however it deals with a Mac OS X app. I should mention my question does not focus on iOS, Android or another OS, it's about mobile applications in general. EDIT: The very reasonable question of whether my users are programmers has been asked.   I do not expect most of my users to be even remotely familiar with programming."}
{"_id": "244980", "title": "Minima of a convex list using binary search", "text": "A list is strictly convex if its elements first decrease then increase. How can I write a function in python that accepts a convex list and returns its minima in time complexity O(log(n)), n being the size of the list. (NO USE OF ANY BUILT IN FUNCTIONS OVER LISTS)"}
{"_id": "254799", "title": "\"Ever change the value of 4?\" - how did this come into Hayes-Thomas quiz?", "text": "In 1989 Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas wrote a Hacker's test taking the form of a quiz with many insider jokes, as \u201cDo you eat slime-molds?\u201d I am considering the following series:               0015 Ever change the value of 4?     0016 ... Unintentionally?     0017 ... In a language other than Fortran?      Is there a particular anecdote making the number \u201c4\u201d particular in the series? Did some Fortran implementation allow to modify the value of constants? Was this possible in other languages in common use at that time?"}
{"_id": "123956", "title": "Why should I use reflection?", "text": "I am new to Java; through my studies, I read that reflection is used to invoke classes and methods, and to know which methods are implemented or not. When should I use reflection, and what is the difference between using reflection and instantiating objects and calling methods the traditional way?"}
{"_id": "36168", "title": "Telecommuting from Australia - tax arrangements", "text": "I live in Australia, and I am currently looking at some of the remote job offerings in countries like US/UK. However I have very little understanding of what needs to be done to report that kind of income - i.e. do I need to get an ABN, pay payroll tax myself etc. If you had any experience in this area I would like you to share that."}
{"_id": "33533", "title": "Release an upgraded iOS app with a different revenue model", "text": "I am starting a new iOS project and initially plan release a simple free version to gather feedback. I don't intend to monetize or market this initial version. However, I believe \"Version 2\" of this app will be good enough to pay for. I would prefer to release Version 2 as an upgrade from Version 1 rather than release it as a separate app. This way I can reserve a name for the app. It will also be easier to keep everything in a single repository. Are there any downsides of this approach? It's my understanding that I can change the price of an app at any point in time, so it shouldn't be an issue transitioning to a paid app, should it?"}
{"_id": "33532", "title": "Naming conventions for variables", "text": "When programming, what naming conventions do you use for your variables? I don't mean when the name of the variable should be obvious; ie. sum, total, first, last. But when you name variables that don't really fit into a category/obvious structure, what sort of names do you use? Is it, myVar1 or test1 or variable1, etc...?"}
{"_id": "108858", "title": "How exactly do Patchers work?", "text": "Did a search for Patchers and didn't find anything. But seriously Patchers: How do they work? I've done some googling, and i've gotten mixed results. I mean it seems they probably have some way of going in and changing the files (maybe comparing what is different between the files) but it seems like there is probably more going on than that. Or is it really as simple as running a diff. vs another file....and then applying the changes?"}
{"_id": "18719", "title": "XQuery & XML databases", "text": "I decided to learn XML from a professional book instead of reading tutorials online, after some research i decided to read \"Beginning XML, 4th Ed\" book and it was very interesting book and i recommend it to anyone want to learn XML, my question is: does reading & learning these chapters:   1. XQuery, the XML Query Language   2. XML and Databases really required for someone who is doing mainly: Hibernate/JPA for object/relational persistence? or in other words does learning XQuery & XML databases really required by the current industry standards skills ? Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "251328", "title": "Java and rest OOP languages - when to use super or this keywords", "text": "I have been programming java for like a year or more, and i have always used the `this` and `super` keywords. And yesterday my mate read one source of mine, and told me not to over use it unless you are overriding the method.               class A extends JPanel {          public A {              super.setSize(400, 400);// instead of not using super keyword          }     }      But what he meant on how to use it, is this:               class A extends JPanel {         public A {             super.setSize(4,4);         }              public void setSize(int a, int b) {}     }      So the language will know that your constructor calls the parent method and not local. Should i only use the the keywords in this situation only or use the keywords everywhere for better readibly? I know that `this` keyword is returning the whole local instance including the parent and all of its parents and interfaces. And the `super` keyword returns the instance of the parent class and all of its instances (parents and interfaces). But my question is, should you always use these keywords?"}
{"_id": "71746", "title": "Which websites to use for presenting free open source applications?", "text": "After releasing a new free open source application, I would like to present it to as many people as possible. What are web sites (directories) which one should use to present free open source applications? Looking for a list of sites like Freshmeat, Sourceforge, ..."}
{"_id": "223236", "title": "Android: Considering an ORM tool", "text": "I am developing an Android app in which I have to add chat functionality. Also, I have to save the chat history. I will accomplish this task using SQlite. But, I am not sure whether should I consider using an ORM like GreenDAO or ORMLite or I should use traditional way of persisting data in SQLite. Actually, I am not clear when should go for using an ORM and how do I get benefit from it."}
{"_id": "41577", "title": "Best Practices and Etiquette for Setting up Email Notifications", "text": "If you were going to set up a Email Alerts for the customers of your website to subscribe to, what rules of etiquette ought to be followed? I can think of a few off the top of my head:   * Users can Opt-Out   * Text Only (Or tasteful Remote Images)   * Not sent out more than once a week   * Clients have fine-grained control over what they receive emails about (Only receive what they are interested in) What other points should I consider? From a programming standpoint, what is the best method for setting up and running email notifications?   * Should I use an ASP.NET Service? A Windows Service? What are the pitfalls to either?   * How should I log emails that are sent? I don't care if they're received, but I do need to be able to prove that I did or did not send an email."}
{"_id": "63103", "title": "Is HDTV good as a programmer's monitor?", "text": "I'm wondering if someone has any experience with programming on an HDTV. I'm trying to decide between dual pc monitor vs one big HDTV, like 32\" (or maybe even dual hdtv). The nice thing about hdtv is that they cost alot less than an equivalent sized pc monitor. I will specifically be using this for programming and graphics (photoshop, etc). I'm just wondering if HDTV is bad if I use it as a workstation b/c maybe it's worse for the eyes or not really good for programming (b/c maybe the fonts won't be crisp enough), etc. Any thoughts? Thanks"}
{"_id": "17830", "title": "Is Extreme Programming (XP) the best way of learning from experts?", "text": "I have been involved in many development models, and have found XP to be the best for a new programmer from the aspect of learning, as the collaboration between the team members is very high and the opportunities to share knowledge are great. What are the expert opinions on this?"}
{"_id": "122394", "title": "Who can change the View in MVC?", "text": "I'm working on a thick client graph displaying and manipulation application. I'm trying to apply the MVC pattern to our 3D visualization component. Here is what I have for the Model, View, and Controller: Model - The graph and it's metadata. This includes vertices, edges, and the attributes of each. It does not contain position information, icons, colors, or anything display related. View - This would commonly be called a scene graph. It includes the 3D display information, texture information, color information, and anything else that is related specifically to the visualization of the model. Controller - The controller takes the view and displays it in a Window using OpenGL (but it could potentially be any 3D graphics package). The application has various \"layouts\" that change the position of the vertices in the display. For instance, one layout may arrange the vertices in a circle. Is it common for these layouts to access and change the view directly? Should they go through the Controller to access the View? If they go through the Controller, should they just ask for direct access to the View or should each change go through the controller? I realize this is a bit different from the standard MVC example where there a finite number of Views. In this case, the View can change in an infinite number of ways. Perhaps I'm shattering some basic principle of MVC here. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "129424", "title": "Object oriented programming concepts", "text": "> Specifically, programming without inheritance is distinctly not object- > oriented; we call it programming with abstract data types. I found this great line from Grady Booch's \"Object-Oriented Analysis and Design With Applications\" book. So in order for a program to be an OO one, are inheritance, abstraction, encapsulation, and polymorphism(?) must-to-be things? Could anybody please explain me?"}
{"_id": "87112", "title": "Which EXPLAIN SELECT is better -- the one in PostgreSQL or the one in MySQL?", "text": "Or are the two basically the same when it comes to figuring out how to build the right indexes?"}
{"_id": "202734", "title": "Putting semicolons after while and if statements in C++", "text": "How come in C++ when you put:               while (expression);      the while loop doesn't run no matter if the expression is true or not. However if you put:               if (expression);      the statement runs no matter if the expression is true or not. It seems like they should both behave the same way."}
{"_id": "218529", "title": "How does this normalized example work?", "text": "I had the following DB schema:               Customer   Car     Rental     -------   ----     ------     Name      Name     Car_ID     ID        ID       Customer_ID                        Date      This is said to be non normalized as the date can repeat (multiple customers can rent a car at the same day). So the teacher said it should be like:               Customer  Car Date     ------    --- ----      and linked with foreign keys. Well I do not get that - how can I then simply enter that \"John rented a BMW on 2/3/2013\"?"}
{"_id": "133536", "title": "How do I efficiently store all OpenStreetMap data in an indexed way?", "text": "I have a PBF file that contains the following information about a country:   * Nodes, each with their own longitude, latitude and properties; used to store points in a 2D space.   * Ways, each with their properties, they are connected through nodes; used to store roads, boundaries. While this file is only 80 MB in its compressed form, it's 592 MB when uncompressed and stored in a DB. Yeah, and that's only for one country, Belgium. Imagine storing France, Germany and Italy alongside. * * * Let's take a single highway for example, from Antwerp through Brussels to Charleroi. This would consist of a ton of nodes to store all the turns in the highway, but do I need all these turns? I doubt it. Let me tell you what I want to be able to do:   * I want to view the map at different zooming levels; major cities, minor cities and street level at least.   * I want to be able to get routing information between two points.   * I want to be able to compute the nearest road to my GPS location.   * Search for a location, by means of an index in the database. But most importantly, **the database shouldn't be too big as it will be stored on a mobile device**. * * * So, I thought about a combination of two techniques:   * Image tiles for viewing purposes, to working around storing/processing all the individual nodes.   * Storing the endpoints of roads for routing information, alongside information about the road. The problem with this is that I can't compute the nearest road to my GPS location with only this information; imagine that a bend in a highway, I can't determine that I'm on the highway with just the two endpoints. I was thinking about storing intermediate nodes between endpoints but that would be very costly to generate, I think. Also, determining the endpoints of roads (that are like a T-split) is most likely not even that easy as I need to figure out whether I need to store the midpoint at the top of that T-split or not. So, viewing is easy using image tiles; but I can't find an easy way to do routing and GPS location finding, what kind of storage technique should I be looking into? I find it a bit inconvenient that a `80 MB` file turns into a database of `592 MB`, I want to reduce that size a much as possible... What can I do to do this as efficiently as possible? In terms of disk and CPU. I'm targeting a WP7..."}
{"_id": "83602", "title": "Splitting up a single project into libraries", "text": "I am working on a project/application that I feel is not very well organized, and parts of it intertwine in different ways. Everything works, but I can see things are not very modular. _Is it reasonable to split up an application into various libraries, even if they might not be reused by another application?_ Just the mere thought of splitting it up into libraries reveals many problems with the current system. I feel it will encourage better design, and future reuse (There are talks of a new project that seems it could benefit from at least some of these libraries). My concerns are   * How will it affect perfomance?   * How far should I go in splitting things up?   * If three libraries all depend on each other, is there a point in making them libraries? (perhaps it suggests a re-architecture of the modules) My question seems to go against the wisdom of this answer, in that _Dynamic libraries should never be created for a single app_. Then the question becomes- how to ensure modularity in a large application? Thanks! **EDIT:** It seems I have used the term \"shared library\" too much, so I removed it to imply any kind of library (either static or dynamic). The essence of the question is whether to split stuff up into any type of libraries."}
{"_id": "137859", "title": "Oracle Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Developer Certification", "text": "I would like to gain the \"Oracle Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) Developer\" certification. According to this page I have to take a number of classes each of which costs up to a couple of thousand GB\u00a3. Is this really the only way to obtain the certification? Can I not just buy a certification guide book from amazon and just sit the requisite tests? At the moment I have no Java EE experience and I'm finding it impossible to get interviews for the jobs I'm interested in. I'm hoping this will at least help me get my foot through the door."}
{"_id": "218520", "title": "SQL-99 specification, is it specified to first order the result and limit it afterwards?", "text": "If I wrote this in MySQL               SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY bar LIMIT 1      it would first order the result and limit it afterwards. I always get the lowest bar. I wonder if this is specified like this in SQL-standards and how to check that? All I found are some BNF's which do not explain how something should work, but only what syntax is valid."}
{"_id": "133538", "title": "Need to make my code more readable to the other programers in my team", "text": "I am working a project in **delphi 7** and I am creating a installer for the application, there are Three main parts.   1. **PostgreSQL** installation/uninstallation   2. **myapplication** ( setup of myapplication is created using nsi) installation/uninstallation.   3. **Creating tables** in Postgres through script(batch files). Every thing runs fine and smoothly, but if something fails I have created a logger which will log every step of the process,   like this               LogBook.Log('[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION]  :  [ACTION]:Postgres installation started');      The function `LogBook.Log()` This will write the contents to a file. This is working nicely, but the problem is this has messed up the code as in it has become difficult to **read** the code as one ca only see the `LogBook.Log()` function call everywhere in the code an example                if Not FileExists(sOSdrive+'\\Mapannotation.txt') then      begin         if CopyFile(PChar(sTxtpath+'Mapannotation.txt'), PChar(sOSdrive+'\\Mapannotation.txt'), False) then            LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mapannotation.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ sucessful')            else            LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mapannotation.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ Failed');      end;      if Not FileExists(sOSdrive+'\\Mappoint.txt')      then        begin          if CopyFile(PChar(sTxtpath+'Mappoint.txt'), PChar('c:\\Mappoint.txt'), False) then            LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mappoint.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ sucessful')        else            LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mappoint.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ Failed');      end;      as you can see there are lots of `LogBook.Log()` calls,   before it was                if Not FileExists(sOSdrive+'\\Mapannotation.txt') then         CopyFile(PChar(sTxtpath+'Mapannotation.txt'), PChar(sOSdrive+'\\Mapannotation.txt'), False)       if Not FileExists(sOSdrive+'\\Mappoint.txt')      then        CopyFile(PChar(sTxtpath+'Mappoint.txt'), PChar('c:\\Mappoint.txt'), False)      this is the case in my whole code now.   its difficult to read. can any one suggest me a nice way to unclutter the calls to log? like   1. Indenting the ' LogBook.Log()` call   like this                 if Not FileExists(sOSdrive+'\\Mapannotation.txt') then          begin              if CopyFile(PChar(sTxtpath+'Mapannotation.txt'), PChar(sOSdrive+'\\Mapannotation.txt'), False) then             {Far away--->>}                   LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mapannotation.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ sucessful')        else             {Far away--->>}                   LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mapannotation.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ Failed');        end;        2. Separate **unit** like `logger`   This unit will have all the log messages in a `switch case` like this               Function LoggingMyMessage(loggMessage : integer)           begin     case  loggMessage of          1         :  LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mapannotation.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ sucessful');     2         :  LogBook.Log(2,'[POSTGRESQL INSTALLATION] :  [ACTION]:copying Mapannotation.txt to '+sOSdrive+'\\ Failed');        150        :  LogBook.Log(2,'[somthing] :  [ACTION]: somthing important);          end;      so I can just call the LoggingMyMessage(1) where ever required. Can anyone tell me which is a better and cleaner approach to logging this way?"}
{"_id": "218524", "title": "Managing codebase for basic and pro edition of a project", "text": "I have a project which will have basic and professional edition. The professional edition will have all the features of the basic edition. I am using git to manage the project's codebase. I consider that I will fork repo of the basic edition after I completed it. Then, I will start to code the professional edition on the forked repo. My problem is that if there would be a bug in the basic edition in the future, I don't want to fix the bug in the basic edition and professional edition twice. How to handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "80751", "title": "How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish", "text": "We\u2019re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we\u2019ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn\u2019t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross- functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we\u2019ve seen a few people that don\u2019t like change, but in the cases I\u2019m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It\u2019s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don\u2019t find joy in work like they used to. I\u2019m sure we can\u2019t be the only place that hasn\u2019t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you\u2019re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you\u2019ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?"}
{"_id": "85321", "title": "How to get into web coding?", "text": "I don't know how to get into this area, or more specifically, become a website maker. Here's what I now   * html   * some java script   * C#   * and a little of everything else (php, css, xhtml, ect.) I've been on w3schools.com for a while reading and doing the tutorials and I've become much more knowledgeable about websites since I started. But when I compair what I've learned from w3schools to a website template I downloaded I notice things in this template that w3schools never even mentioned. What I'm wondering is whats the best way to go about becoming a web coder on your own, would it continuing w3schools be good? Or just download template read through them and figure out how the code works? One more question, I noticed these all use SQL, how do I go about learning SQL? and sorry, I lied, one more question, whats the best step process when learning web code? like what order, html then css then php? or html then xhtml then css? that kinda thing. thanks, Robert Edit: A website like this is my goal in this area: geforce.com Do you think making a website like this is difficult from a expert's view?"}
{"_id": "72699", "title": "Should I invest time learning Coffeescript?", "text": "I am a freelancer and I earn my bread and butter by helping others write better java-script code. I have good experience with most of the JavaScript frameworks around. I am wondering if it is worth for me to invest time in learning coffeescript. Who should learn it and who need not ?"}
{"_id": "72698", "title": "Implications of crediting a book source in a code file available under an open license", "text": "I'm writing some OS software just for funsies, and it's licensed using MS-PL (ie, do pretty much anything you want with it). It's a project from which I'm using many different sources (lots of personal reading/research going into it) and I'm crediting the original book/writer in the comment header(s) of the files as applicable. I'm doing it so that if anyone actually decides to read or use the code, they can refer to the original sources that inspired the work. Of note:   * I own a copy of each source   * All of the sources are able to be purchased by the general public (amazon)   * As far as I can tell, none of the books explicitly state that the code is licensed   * None of the code is copied verbatim. I've translated it all from various languages (mostly C++) to C#, and when appropriate I've added exception handling etc.  I'm just wondering if there are any implications of sourcing these books in a freely open source application/library."}
{"_id": "40439", "title": "Best practices for retrofitting legacy code with automated tests", "text": "I'm about to take on the task of reimplementing an already defined interface (a set of C++ header files) in a relatively large and old code base. Before doing this, I would like to have as complete test coverage as possible, so I can detect reimplementation errors as early and easily as possible. The problem is that the already existing code base was not designed to be easily testable, with (very) large classes and functions, a high degree of coupling, functions with (many) side effects, etc. It would be nice to hear of any previous experience with similar tasks, and some good and concrete tips on how you went about retrofitting automated tests (unit, integrations, regression, etc.) to your legacy code."}
{"_id": "166530", "title": "Introduce unit testing when codebase is already available", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best practices for retrofitting legacy code with automated tests I've been working on a project in Flex for three years now without unit testing. The simple reason for that is the fact that I just didn't realize the importance of unit testing when being at the beginning of studies at university. Now my attitude towards testing changed completely and therefore I want to introduce it to the existing project (about 20000LOC). In order to do it, there are two approaches to choose from: 1) Discard the existing codebase and start from scratch with TDD   2) Write the tests and try to make them pass by changing the existing code Well, I would appreciate not having to write everything from scratch but I think by doing this, the design would be much better. What would be your approach?"}
{"_id": "149782", "title": "How to unit test large legacy systems?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best practices for retrofitting legacy code with automated tests When working in large legacy systems (large systems with no unit testing ever) I often come across people saying use unit testing as a tool against possible bugs. I wonder if somebody have tried it on large systems with no unit testing at all. Of course it is easy to say unit testing helps ,but in large systems it can hugely time consuming process. It can take months if not years to fully unit test each part of the application . When you are asked to make a functionality which is modification of existing functionality or adding new functionality to the application, how would you go about it? Of course there will be lots of instances where code in different classes will look similar and you would want to re-factor those classes which without proper unit testing can and most likely will open a can of worms. So how would you go about unit testing large applications? And what other measures would you use to reduce possible bugs from your coding (of course some bugs will probably remain anyway)?"}
{"_id": "76215", "title": "Is Scrum based on 'daily reporting'?", "text": "Google translates '\u65e9\u8bf7\u793a\u665a\u6c47\u62a5' as 'Consult early and late reporting' or 'Ask for instructions to report back later'. Bing translates as 'Early and late reporting'. Some translated content: > The politics invaded all aspects of daily life during the **Cultural > Revolution** , as **\u65e9\u8bf7\u793a\u665a\u6c47\u62a5**. Every day at a political activity or ceremony, > everyone, after getting up or reported to work/study, had to \" _consult the > great leader Chairman Mao_ ,\" about that day's work, study. At the end of > the day/before going to bed, everyone had to _confess_ to the \"Great Leader > Chairman Mao,\" that day's work/learning. **Late reporting** is called \" > _confessing his/her sin_ ,\" because a day's work or study certainly would > contain errors, which delayed revolutionary work; hence, the person would > confess, \" _I am sorry, great leader_ \", akin to \" **confessing his/her > sin**.\" However, as \"confessing one's sin,\" has a serious religious > undertone to it, so it was not considered appropriate and was renamed to \" > **late reporting.** \" Anywhere people gathered--schools, army, cadre > schools, community centers that provided three meals per day--everyone > involved had to appear for the **collective report**. Here is another excerpt that sounds beautiful even after machine translation: > Anyway, several times a day for several years removed from the > \"instructions\", \"reporting\" so that \"life\" of this short period of time is > finally free of political control winding all the time, everyone has a sense > of relief. Ref: Lin Zhao, a blog entry, a news paper article I feel compelled to be certain that this practice is definitely the source of 'Scrum' process. Some of these similarities cannot simply be ruled out as coincidences. My question is,   \"Is there really a relation? If so, should we read some mission statements before we begin work, and we have stand-ups at the end of the day, before we leave?\""}
{"_id": "76214", "title": "Webserver / DB / Application - Best way to setup the system for performance", "text": "I have a turbogears app that I am bringing live that uses a postgresql DB on the back end. From a performance issue am I better off having the DB and app on separate server or on the same server? If on the same server and I better off having the DB on a separate physical drive?"}
{"_id": "76212", "title": "What is one correct architecture when using a DB with multiple clients?", "text": "We have a legacy system with data stored in a SQL database. Several clients connects to this database using a web service. The web service expose a lot of \"commands\" to query the database and to \"do\" operations. So far, so good. However, new operations need to be added and the web service cannot be extended. We can add a new service that would implement the operations from the old one (somewhat easy) and add our own operations. At the same time we want to enhance the performance of the web service by having multiple requests bundled as one request (the responses would come out as a bundle too). One desirable outcome would be to isolate the application from the web service using programming interfaces and a somewhat generic messaging (or whatever) mechanism. We are contemplating several ways to effectively support multiple clients: enterprise service bus, a request/response service layer, ORM with client/server architecture... Has anyone been confronted to such issues and what did you end up with?"}
{"_id": "213521", "title": "What happens if I do not explicitly state \"This program comes with absolutely no warranty\"?", "text": "And lets say, my application is a simple feed reader. Does my app really have to include the no warranty notice?"}
{"_id": "163993", "title": "Do I need to know servlets and JSP to learn spring or hibernate or any other java web frameworks?", "text": "I've been asking a lot of people where to start learning java web development, I already know core java (Threading,Generics,Collections, a little experience with (JDBC)) but I do not know JSPs and servlets. I did my fair share of development with several web based applications using PHP for server-side and HTML,CSS,Javascript,HTML5 for client side. Most people that I asked told me to jump right ahead to Hibernate while some told me that I do not need to learn servlets and jsps and I should immediately study the Spring framework. Is this true? do I not need to learn servlets and JSPs to learn hibernate or Spring? All of their answers confused me and now I am completely lost what to learn or study. I feel that if I skipped learning JSP and servlets I would missed a lot of important concepts that will surely help me in the future. So the question, do I need to have foundation/know servlets and JSP to learn spring or hibernate or any other java web frameworks.?"}
{"_id": "105975", "title": "Project management tool built into visual studio", "text": "My friend and I are working on a project together in visual studio, and we are using subversion for source control. We have used php based project management tools before for task and bug tracking, but we find it inconvenient to go to work in visual studio for hours then have to go find the website and log in and report on what we already made commit notes for, especially since sometimes we are working off line and then have to remember to go back and update the trackers. We are wondering if there is a project management tool (or set of tools) that is built into (slash an add-on) Visual Studio that will work with AnkhSvn allowing multiple people to maintain and track tasks."}
{"_id": "8020", "title": "Which format is best for the first prototype not on paper?", "text": "Console app (my favorite), quick & sloppy form, MS Paint (for GUI); what works best most of the time for your standard application? why?"}
{"_id": "193207", "title": "Generating stats from large data set", "text": "I would like to do a following: I have a fairly large data set, say billions of rows, each row having multiple binary columns. I would like to generate estimated stats with some certainty about those rows. Stats would have a simple form: how many rows are there with columns 1, 7 and 10 set. Obviously going through entries is not a viable solution. To be honest, I would prefer not touch the data set at all when I have to provide an estimation. I would like to precompute everything and then used precomputed data to answer questions about the data set. Do you know of any algorithms/techniques of solving such problem?"}
{"_id": "95976", "title": "Is it good to keep the bugfix comments within the code?", "text": "My team is using clear-case as the version control. The project which I am working is not started 7-8 years back. During the entire life time of the project we had several releases bug-fixes service packs etc. The issues are tracked using the bug tracking system and most of the people who work on the bug-fixes follows a routine of enclosing the comment in START/END block with the date, author, bug-id etc. I feel this is quite irrelevant and making the code cluttered and uneasy to maintain and these are the things which must be part of check-in comments/labels etc, where we can keep additional life cycle information of the work product. What's the best practice to be followed? Some of the reviewers of the code insist to out the comments about the bug and fixes to ease out their life. In my understanding they must review the files by mapping it to a view and get the change log of the branch and review it. It would be helpful if I can get some best practices on submitting the updated code for review."}
{"_id": "95975", "title": "Importance of algorithms in a telephonic interview", "text": "I had taken a telephonic interview and the interviewer has given some problem for which I was supposed to give him the algorithm. Since its was a telephonic interview and I had no paper or pen, so I could not give him the correct solutions. So I got bit demotivated that my problem solving skills are very low (I have a decent exp on developing software). How do you overcome these kind of situations and suggestions to improve algorithm skills especially while facing these kind of tactical interviews."}
{"_id": "123046", "title": "Protecting an Application with Logins", "text": "I am a beginner Java programmer, and have tried searching for a way to set up a login system with my Java application. The application is a game and I do not want people to just upload it to a website so others can down load and play. I want to use something like MySQL to make the user authenticate in order to use the application. Does anyone have a suggestion?"}
{"_id": "44929", "title": "Color schemes generation - theory and algorithms", "text": "I will be generating charts and diagrams and I am looking for some theory on color schemes and algorithm examples. Example questions:   * How to generate complementary or analogous colors?   * How to generate pastel, cold and warm colors?   * How to generate any number of random but distinct colors?   * How to translate all that to the hex triplet (web color)? My implementation will be in AS3 but any examples in pseudocode are welcome."}
{"_id": "226517", "title": "How can Lisp produce an iterative process from a recursive procedure?", "text": "I am starting to learn Lisp, using the SICP book. The authors mention that a procedure (i.e. function) can be recursive or iterative. Additionally, the process those procedures will generate will also be recursive or iterative, and that, surprisingly, a recursive procedure can sometimes generate an iterative process. The example given is the factorial procedure, which is a recursive procedure, but which generates an iterative process:               (define factorial n)         (iter 1 1 n))          (define (iter product counter max-count)         (if (> counter max-count)             product             (iter (* counter product)                   (+ counter 1)                   max-count)))      And here's a quotation from the book: > One reason that the distinction between process and procedure may be > confusing is that most implementations of common languages (including Ada, > Pascal, and C) are designed in such a way that the interpretation of any > recursive procedure consumes an amount of memory that grows with the number > of procedure calls, even when the process described is, in principle, > iterative. The implementation of Scheme we shall consider does not share > this defect. It will execute an iterative process in constant space, even if > the iterative process is described by a recursive procedure. **Question** : I understood the principles involved (i.e. the what) but I still don't understand how the Lisp interpreter/compiler will generate an iterative process from a recursive function, being able to calculate it using constant space, and why most other languages are not able to do it."}
{"_id": "126671", "title": "Is it considered bad practice to have PHP in your JavaScript", "text": "So many times on this site I see people trying to do things like this :               <script type=\"text/javascript\">       $(document).ready(function(){               $('<?php echo $divID ?>').click(funtion(){            alert('do something');          });            });     </script>      I don't think that this is some sort of pattern that people naturally fall into. There must be some sort of tutorial or learning material out there that is showing this, otherwise we wouldn't see it so much. What I'm asking is, am I making too big a deal of this or is this a really bad practice? **EDIT :** Was speaking to a friend of mine about this who often puts ruby in his JavaScript and he brought up this point. Is it ok to dynamically place application wide constants in your JavaScript so you don't have to edit two files. for example...               MYAPP.constants = <php echo json_encode($constants) ?>;      also is it OK to directly encode data you plan to use in a library               ChartLibrary.datapoints = <php echo json_encode($chartData) ?>;         or should we make an AJAX call every time?"}
{"_id": "226510", "title": "DDD: Domain Model Factory Design", "text": "I am trying to understand how and where to implement domain model factories. I have included my `Company` aggregate as a demo of how I have done it. I have included my design decisions at the end - I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, critique on those points. **The`Company` domain model:**               public class Company : DomainEntity, IAggregateRoot     {         private string name;         public string Name         {             get             {                 return name;             }             private set             {                 if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value))                 {                     throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(\"Company name cannot be an empty value\");                 }                      name = value;             }         }              internal Company(int id, string name)         {             Name = name;         }     }      **The`CompanyFactory` domain factory:** This class is used to ensure that business rules and invariants are not violated when creating new instances of domain models. It would reside in the domain layer.               public class CompanyFactory     {         protected IIdentityFactory<int> IdentityFactory { get; set; }              public CompanyFactory(IIdentityFactory<int> identityFactory)         {             IdentityFactory = identityFactory;         }              public Company CreateNew(string name)         {             var id = IdentityFactory.GenerateIdentity();                  return new Company(id, name);         }              public Company CreateExisting(int id, string name)         {             return new Company(id, name);         }     }      **The`CompanyMapper` entity mapper:** This class is used to map between rich domain models and Entity Framework data entities. It would reside in infrastructure layers.               public class CompanyMapper : IEntityMapper<Company, CompanyTable>     {         private CompanyFactory factory;              public CompanyMapper(CompanyFactory companyFactory)         {             factory = companyFactory;         }              public Company MapFrom(CompanyTable dataEntity)         {             return DomainEntityFactory.CreateExisting(dataEntity.Id, dataEntity.Name);         }              public CompanyTable MapFrom(Company domainEntity)         {             return new CompanyTable()             {                 Id = domainEntity.Id,                 Name = domainEntity.Name             };         }     }        1. The `Company` constructor is declared as `internal`.   **Reason:** Only the factory should call this constructor. `internal` ensures that no other layers can instantiate it (layers are separated by VS projects).   2. The `CompanyFactory.CreateNew(string name)` method would be used when creating a new company in the system.   **Reason:** Since it would not have been persisted yet, an new unique identity will need to be generated for it (using the `IIdentityFactory`).   3. The `CompanyFactory.CreateExisting(int id, string name)` method will be used by the `CompanyRepository` when retrieving items from the database.   **Reason:** The model would already have identity, so this would need to be supplied to the factory.   4. The `CompanyMapper.MapFrom(CompanyTable dataEntity)` will be used by the `CompanyRepository` when retrieving data from persistence.   **Reason:** Here Entity Framework data entities need to be mapped into domain models. The `CompanyFactory` will be used to create the domain model to ensure that business rules are satisfied.   5. The `CompanyMapper.MapFrom(Company domainEntity)` will be used by the `CompanyRepository` when adding or updating models to persistence.   **Reason:** Domain models need to be mapped straight onto data entity properties so that Entity Framework can recognise what changes to make in the database. Thanks"}
{"_id": "213529", "title": "How to solve this problem- Neural Net? Fuzzy? Other?", "text": "Hi I have a programming problem that I would like to solve using some artificial intelligence technique. I really dont know where to start. I would like some guidance as to what methodology to pursue. Lets say I have 10,000 images of random people, and I need to detect elderly people in images. I might have algorithms like wrinkle detector, glasses detector, walking cane detector, missing teeth detector, skateboard detector, Playstation detector, etc. Each algorithm does a scan independently and outputs a number from 0 to 10 on the likelihood it thinks the image contains that item. Lets assume that works. There might be 100 different algorithms. My set of 10,000 images would be divided by a human into two groups, those that contain an elderly person, and those that do not. Now I need to develop a system that takes the series of values from the algorithm modules, when given an image to analyze, and calculates a single value that represents the likelihood that an image has elderly people in it or not. During training I would like it to be able to automatically build rules by analyzing all the algorithms' outputs. For example:   * If wrinkle detector, glasses detector, walking cane detector and missing teeth detector all output a high number, then output a high number.   * If wrinkle, glasses, cane and teeth detectors are high, but playstation and skateboard detectors are also high, then output is neither low nor high.   * hands detector and clothes detector should be essentially ignored as old and young people both have those (hopefully) What type of technology should I be implementing for the automated rule building system? Is this better solved by a neural network system? A fuzzy logic system? Something else? Thanks for any advice."}
{"_id": "226518", "title": "Scrum: Writing the time it took to complete a task", "text": "In my organization when we move a task to the \"Done\" column we write the number of hours it took to complete the task. It can be useful when during retrospective the team tries to understand why certain stories took longer to implement than anticipated. However it is also burdensome and developers feel somewhat micromanaged or stressed when they have to do this. What do you do in your teams? What do you recommend?"}
{"_id": "88735", "title": "When practicing collective code ownership, can there be experts of each component?", "text": "Consider a complex and extensive software component; for example a multi- language text rendering engine, an IPC framework, a scheduler that can handle multiple time zones, a module full of complexities caused by the need to stay backwards compatible, etc... It requires a lot of knowledge of the details to maintain and extend such a component without introducing bugs with every code change. It is also often helpful to know the bug history when receiving a new bug report. Moreover, it requires thorough knowledge about the component's design to be able to maintain its consistency after future extensions, and it is good to know the rationale behind past design decisions. You might try to document this kind of knowledge, but it would require a lot of time and effort, it would rapidly become outdated and hence untrustworthy. Worse, everybody would still need to keep that written documentation in his/her mind. It seems to me that for such components, it is best to have someone that has in-depth knowledge, as one cannot thoroughly know and keep up with the code produced by a whole group of people without an excessive communication and learning overhead. I wonder whether the practice of collective code ownership allows for such experts, as it seems to me that it would require some kind of \"weak code ownership\". And if not: how can it succeed without a massive amount of duplicate work?"}
{"_id": "245589", "title": "Pattern to use to relate multiple data sources to different user data widgets", "text": "I have an client x server intranet application the basically gets data from the server, format it and send that data to the client for display. At the server we are using ASP.NET C# running on IIS and at the client we have Javascript widgets. The client x server requests are done through ajax calls. I have lots (100+) of server objects, that can be shown into 10 different formats in the browser though different graphical widgets. So, basically we have the following structure: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JJLxc.png) So, for every server object I need, at nnnWidgetDataGetter objects, to do some data transformation to widget data format to be sent to the client. Every widget can request data from all objects of the server. Using a normal approach, I would have to write tons of methods, one for each server basic class times each datagetter class. To avoid writing hundred of methods with similar behaviour, we decided to use a dynamic approach at the DataGetter classes (static classes), where the business object is evaluated at runtime, data is gathered from this object, formatted and sent to the client. The problem is that using dynamic object creation and invokation we loose the Intellisense, so the code is turning very big and difficult to understand and maintain. After a while we found out that we\u00b4re not using the correct approach and started thinking about sw patters that would help us solve this. So we are looking for the correct pattern to solve this issue that would keep a typed structure where Intellisense could work and that avoid us to write hundred of different methods. We appreciate very much any kind of help."}
{"_id": "252791", "title": "How to route messages between clients using a central server in Python", "text": "I've got three Raspberry Pis sitting around. I want 2 of them to be able to chat while the 3rd routes the messages (acts as a server between them). The general flow of events should be something like this:   * Server starts running on Pi #1   * Pi #2 starts running and connects to the server (who's IP will be static I guess) with a name he chooses. Pi #3 does the same as #2.   * Pi #3 can then, knowing the name of Pi #2, send a message to Pi #2 using ... something. This is the general outline of what I want to achieve. I'm not sure what the server that runs on Pi #1 should be (I've heard of webserver frameworks like Flask but I don't have enough knowledge to determine if they fit my needs). I'm also not sure on what I should be using for the client side (Pi #2,3). I could probably use sockets but I assume there is a better / easier way."}
{"_id": "213198", "title": "Do software licenses (ie, MIT) need to be included with the executable?", "text": "Whenever a software license reads: `... The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.` Does this mean you have to include it with the executable (the version customers get) or just the source code (for the programmers)? Sorry if this is a silly question, but it doesn't clearly state what \"the Software\" is referring to, and I can see people maybe wanting credit for it. If you don't have to include the license with the executable, do you need to give credit in your executable release some other way, like some other kind of copyright notice that just says \"Copyright \"? Is there a specific format to that?"}
{"_id": "244860", "title": "Range searching with WebGL", "text": "Is it possible to use somehow WebGL to fasten up 1d range searching? I need to find overlapping date intervals, and I thought that 3d games usually have a very similar problem by rendering frames... _I read ofinterval trees as an alternative if this idea does not work, but I am open for suggestions...   Btw. if stackoverflow would be a better place for this question, pls let me know!_"}
{"_id": "178886", "title": "Liskov substitution and abstract classes / strategy pattern", "text": "I'm trying to follow LSP in practical programming. And I wonder if different constructors of subclasses violate it. It would be great to hear an explanation instead of just yes/no. Thanks much! P.S. If the answer is `no`, how do I make different strategies with different input without violating LSP?               class IStrategy     {         public:             virtual void use() = 0;     };          class FooStrategy : public IStrategy     {         public:             FooStrategy(A a, B b) { c = /* some operations with a, b */ }             virtual void use() { std::cout << c; }         private:             C c;     };          class BarStrategy : public IStrategy     {         public:             BarStrategy(D d, E e) { f = /* some operations with d, e */ }             virtual void use() { std::cout << f; }         private:             F f;     };"}
{"_id": "244867", "title": "How to store Role Based Access rights in web application?", "text": "Currently working on a web based CRM type system that deals with various Modules such as Companies, Contacts, Projects, Sub Projects, etc. A typical CRM type system (asp.net web form, C#, SQL Server backend). We plan to implement role based security so that basically a user can have one or more roles. Roles would be broken down by first the module type such as: -Company -Contact And then by the actions for that module for instance each module would end up with a table such as this:               Role1 Example:              Module   Create  Edit        Delete   View         Company   Yes    Owner Only    No     Yes         Contact   Yes    Yes           Yes    Yes      In the above case `Role1` has two module types (Company, and Contact). For company, the person assigned to this role can create companies, can view companies, can only edit records he/she created and cannot delete. For this same role for the module contact this user can create contacts, edit contacts, delete contacts, and view contacts (full rights basically). I am wondering is it best upon coming into the system to session the user's role with something like a: `List<Role> roles;` Where the `Role` class would have some sort of `List<Module> modules;` (can contain Company, Contact, etc.).? Something to the effect of:               class Role{     string name;     string desc;     List<Module> modules;     }      And the module action class would have a set of actions (Create, Edit, Delete, etc.) for each module:               class ModuleActions{     List<Action> actions;     }      And the action has a value of whether the user can perform the right:               class Action{     string right;     }      Just a rough idea, I know the action could be an enum and the ModuleAction can probably be eliminated with a `List<x, y>`. My main question is what would be the best way to store this information in this type of application: Should I store it in the User Session state (I have a session class where I manage things related to the user). I generally load this during the initial loading of the application (global.asax). I can simply tack onto this session. Or should this be loaded at the page load event of each module (page load of company etc..). I eventually need to be able to hide / unhide various buttons / divs based on the user's role and that is what got me thinking to load this via session. Any examples or points would be great."}
{"_id": "244868", "title": "Android From Local DB (DAO) to Server sync (JSON) - Design issue", "text": "I sync data between my local DB and a Server. I'm looking for the cleanest way to modelise all of this. I have a com.something.db package That contains a Data Helper and couple of DAO classes that represents objects stored in the db (I didn't write that part)               com.something.db     --public DataHelper     --public Employee              @DatabaseField e.g. \"name\" will be an actual column name in the DB              -name              @DatabaseField              -salary              etc... (all in all 50 fields)      I have a com.something.sync package That contains all the implementation detail on how to send data to the server. It boils down to a ConnectionManager that is fed by different classes that implements a 'Request' interface               com.something.sync     --public interface ConnectionManager     --package ConnectionManagerImpl     --public interface Request     --package LoginRequest     --package GetEmployeesRequest      My issue is, at some point in the sync process, I have to JSONise and de- JSONise my data (E.g. the Employee class). But I really don't feel like having the same Employee class be responsible for both his JSONisation and his actual representation inside the local database. It really doesn't feel right, because I carefully decoupled the rest, I am only stuck on this JSON thing. What should I do ? Should I write 3 Employee classes ?               EmployeeDB        @DatabaseField e.g. \"name\" will be an actual column name in the DB        -name        @DatabaseField        -salary        -etc... 50 fields               EmployeeInterface        -getName        -getSalary        -etc... 50 fields               EmployeeJSON        -JSON_KEY_NAME = \"name\"   The JSON key happens to be the same as the table name, but it isn't requirement        -name        -JSON_KEY_SALARY = \"salary\"        -salary        -etc... 50 fields      It feels like a lot of duplicates. Is there a common pattern I can use there ?"}
{"_id": "154873", "title": "Reasonable Number of Directed Graph Nodes and Edges", "text": "How many directed graph nodes are typically represented in the browser? I'm working with some large data-sets with nodes and edges more then 400,000. I'm wondering if I am going down a fruitless path trying to represent them in the browser via arbor.js or similar JS libraries. What's the most effective way to allow a large number(large relative to my domain of real estate transactions, maybe 1-10,000) of users to visualize and browse a large directed graph of up to 500,000 records?"}
{"_id": "163240", "title": "I don't understand why algorithms are so special", "text": "I'm a student of computer science trying to soak up as much information on the topic as I can during my free time. I keep returning to algorithms time and again in various formats (online course, book, web tutorial), but the concept fails to sustain my attention. I just don't understand: why are algorithms so special? I can tell you why fractals are awesome, why the golden ratio is awesome, why origami is awesome and scientific applications of all the above. Heck I even love Newton's laws and conical sections. But when it comes to algorithms, I'm just not astounded. They are not insightful in new ways about human cognition at all. I was expecting algorithms to be shattering preconceptions and mind- altering, but time and time again they fail miserably. Perhaps I am doing something wrong in my approach. Can someone tell me why algorithms are so important to programming?"}
{"_id": "160876", "title": "Should you make private properties?", "text": "private string mWhatever;          private string Whatever     {         get         {             return this.mWhatever;         }         set         {             this.mWhatever = value;         }     }      I've seen some people who make properties for every single member, private or not... does this make any sense? I could see it making sense in 1% of the cases at times when you want to control access to the member inside the class containing it because if you didn't use properties for every member it would lead to inconsistencies and checking to see if the member has an access or not (since you have access to both in the scope of the class)."}
{"_id": "59642", "title": "Best practices for constants", "text": "How do you guys handle constants, especially in Java (static final) and C++ (define)?   * Do you use dedicated headers (C++) or classes (Java) for all constants?   * Do you turn all literal values into constants or just those you want to use in multiple places? This is probably a bit subjective, so I'm especially interested in the reasons for your approach."}
{"_id": "213220", "title": "Modeling a Student Application/Committee Relationship", "text": "I'm developing an ERD for a graduate student manager program (it's for a university class, so it's a fairly trivial implementation). In this snippet of the model, I'm trying to work out the 'application' and 'committee' entities/relationships. Basically, a committee - comprised of staff members - can be formed and assigned to review an application. Here are the entities I've come up with:   * **application:** Comprised of a student's application data submitted through a form (student id, date submitted, degree, etc.).   * **committee:** Self-explanatory. Group of staff members that can review applications.   * **staff_member:** Any faculty member.   * **committee_membership:** An associative entity I've created to resolve the many-to-many relationship between committee and staff member since a committee can have many staff members, and a staff member can belong to many committees.  Is this an effective implementation of what I'm trying to do? I'm still trying to wrap my head around associative entities and when they are needed. It seems strange to have the 'committee' table with a single column. Also - and I know I've given you limited information - do my relationships look generally correct? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6fo25.png)"}
{"_id": "213226", "title": "How does datomic handle \"corrections\"?", "text": "**tl;dr**   * Rich Hickey describes datomic as a system which implicitly deals with timestamps associated with data storage   * from my experience, data is often imperfectly stored in systems, and on many occasions needs to retroactively be corrected (ie, often the question of \"was a True on Tuesday at 12:00pm?\" will have an incorrect answer stored in the database) This seems like a spot where the abstractions behind datomic might break - do they? If they don't, how does the system handle such corrections? * * * Rich Hickey, in several of his talks, justifies the creation of datomic, and explains its benefits. His work, if I understand correctly, is motivated by core the insight that humans, when speaking about data and facts, implicitly associate some of the related context into their work(a date-time). By pushing the work required to manage the implicit date-time component of context into the database, he's created a system which is both much easier to understand, and much easier to program. This turns out to be relevant to most database programmers in practice - his work saves everyone a lot of time managing complex, hard to produce/debug/fix, time queries. However, especially in large databases, data is often damaged/incorrect (maybe it was not input correctly, maybe it eroded over time, etc...). While most database updates are insertions of new facts, and should indeed be treated that way, a non-trivial subset of the work required to manage time-queries has to do with retroactive updates. I have yet to see any documentation which explains how such corrections, or retroactive updates, are handled by datomic; from my experience, they are a non-trivial (and incredibly difficult to deal with) subset of time-related data manipulation that database programmers are faced with. Does datomic gracefully handle such updates? If so, how?"}
{"_id": "241307", "title": "Password reset process", "text": "So I'm working on my first password reset mechanism. I'm going with what I understand to be a fairly common procedure:   1. User clicks \"Forgot Password\"   2. User is prompted for email address   3. If the entered email address is valid, send an email with a reset link to it   4. Reset link uses a token of some kind to identify the user account and keep its details secure   5. When password is reset, generate a new token and save it to the user account I feel like this should be pretty secure, but I was wondering if anyone could provide any insights that I may not be considering at this point."}
{"_id": "213228", "title": "A good name for ValueObject that contains database update/create column values", "text": "We all know these fields, database admins so like to add:   * UserCreated & DateCreated   * UserUpdated & DateUpdated They need to be displayed in the UI so I want to put them in some `ValueObject` but I can't come up with a good name to call the class..."}
{"_id": "241309", "title": "Builder Pattern: When to fail?", "text": "When implementing the Builder Pattern, I often find myself confused with when to let building fail and I even manage to take different stands on the matter every few days. First some explanation:   * With _failing early_ I mean that building an object should fail as soon as an invalid parameter is passed in. So inside the `SomeObjectBuilder`.   * With _failing late_ I mean that building an object only can fail on the `build()` call that implicitely calls a constructor of the object to be built. Then some arguments:   * In favor of failing late: A builder class should be no more than a class that simply holds values. Moreover, it leads to less code duplication.   * In favor of failing early: A general approach in software programming is that you want to detect issues as early as possible and therefore the most logical place to check would be in the builder class' constructor, 'setters' and ultimately in the build method. What is the general concensus about this?"}
{"_id": "155477", "title": "Best way to reuse common functions between ASPX pages ?", "text": "I have a bunch of functions that are used across multiple ASPX files. I want to condense these down to one file to be used for all the ASPX files. I have a few ideas but I want to know what the accepted method to doing this would be. I have an idea to just create a class to put them in. However, I was wondering if i could put them in a ascx page, but that does not look like the solution I'm looking for. Is there a accepted method for this type of situation?"}
{"_id": "119447", "title": "Sports Programming", "text": "Other than programming, I'm addicted to sports. I'd like to integrate the two together. What are different programming languages that companies like ESPN use to work with stats? What techniques are used to do this, and how can I get going with it myself?"}
{"_id": "201417", "title": "Does the ray tracing algorithm involves rasterization of image?", "text": "I am constructing a ray tracing algorithm , i know that the first step is to develop camera and view plane specifications. Now is the next step performing rasterization algorithm on image before a BVH tree is constructed so that intersection tests can be performed? Kindly Guide"}
{"_id": "43328", "title": "How to structure a project that supports multiple versions of a service?", "text": "I'm hoping for some tips on creating a project (ASP.NET MVC, but I guess it doesn't really matter) against multiples versions of a service (in this case, actually multiple sets of WCF services). Right now, the web app uses only some of the services, but the eventual goal would be to use the features of all of the services. The code used to implement a service feature would likely be very similar between versions in most cases (but, of course, everything varies). So, how would you structure a project like this? Separate source control branches for each different version? Kind of shying away from this because I don't feel like branch merging should be something that we're going to be doing really often. Different project/solution files in the same branch? Could link the same shared projects easily Build some type of abstraction layer on top of the services, so that no matter what service is being used, it is the same to the web application?"}
{"_id": "43321", "title": "What are the so-called \"levels\" of understanding multithreading?", "text": "I seem to remember reading somewhere some list of 4 \"levels\" of understanding multithreading. This _may_ have been in a formal publication, or it _may_ have been in an extremely informal context (even like in a Stack Overflow question, for example). Unfortunately I don't remember who referred to them or precisely what they were. I seem to recall that they were roughly like:   1. Total ignorance   2. Awareness mixed with incompetence   3. Relative competence mixed with fear   4. True understanding My intention is to refer to these levels in a blog post I'm writing, with a reference; but I can't for the life of me remember where I first encountered this list. Brief Google searches have proved unfruitful."}
{"_id": "231208", "title": "Using \u03c0, \u03c6, \u03bb etc. as variable names while programming?", "text": "This is a function in the d3.v3.js file (the graph library D3.js):                 function d3_geo_areaRingStart() {         var \u03bb00, \u03c600, \u03bb0, cos\u03c60, sin\u03c60;         d3_geo_area.point = function(\u03bb, \u03c6) {           d3_geo_area.point = nextPoint;           \u03bb0 = (\u03bb00 = \u03bb) * d3_radians, cos\u03c60 = Math.cos(\u03c6 = (\u03c600 = \u03c6) * d3_radians / 2 + \u03c0 / 4),            sin\u03c60 = Math.sin(\u03c6);         };         function nextPoint(\u03bb, \u03c6) {           \u03bb *= d3_radians;           \u03c6 = \u03c6 * d3_radians / 2 + \u03c0 / 4;           var d\u03bb = \u03bb - \u03bb0, cos\u03c6 = Math.cos(\u03c6), sin\u03c6 = Math.sin(\u03c6), k = sin\u03c60 * sin\u03c6, u = cos\u03c60 * cos\u03c6 + k * Math.cos(d\u03bb), v = k * Math.sin(d\u03bb);           d3_geo_areaRingSum.add(Math.atan2(v, u));           \u03bb0 = \u03bb, cos\u03c60 = cos\u03c6, sin\u03c60 = sin\u03c6;         }         d3_geo_area.lineEnd = function() {           nextPoint(\u03bb00, \u03c600);         };       }      I was completely taken aback that the programmers used \u03c0, \u03c6 and \u03bb as variable names. Surprisingly, these variables were accepted even by Notepad (ie: it didn't turn into junk/unrecognized characters).   Is it good practice to use such variables? I can see that they're very intuitive and searchable too, but a bit unnerving."}
{"_id": "96408", "title": "1-click software release", "text": "I am rewriting a vb6 installer into NSIS. One of my priorities is to compile- to-release in the least number of steps possible; ideally, a one click process, in which all needed files are included, registered, and put in the right folders. At the moment, I am creating several folders. One for app_path files, one for system_files, etc. So, every time that a file is modified or a new file added, I just drop it in the right folder and recompile. However, if a completely new file is included, steps like registering a DLL still need to be implemented in code. Any suggestion on how to improve this approach?, or on how to design a one- click compile-to-release process? EDIT: The original installer was created using the Package and Deployment wizard from Visual Basic 6.0. Every time that I need to release my software, I found my self updating and adding files, updating the respective lst file, and repackaging everything (CAB files, dlls, etc) into one exe in order to release it from our website. It is a cumbersome process. Additionally, due to pure design. The original software has been copy pasted in several projects, creating several application and its respective VB6 installers (repeating a lot of common files). Ideally, there would be one single installer, which allows the installation of the different executable and manages all the shared files among them."}
{"_id": "16016", "title": "What is the difference between `update` and `upgrade`", "text": "What is the difference between `update` and `upgrade` in the context of application software?"}
{"_id": "11296", "title": "Freedom of Speech vs. Computer Security", "text": "Over the Summer I found a cookie put on my computer by the school's network that seemed like it could be a problem. It stored authentication information and (long story short) I found if you put in other people's easily attainable information, you become signed in as them. Slow but sure, I discovered 3 security exploits that, when working together, compromised ALL security on the website. In theory I could sign in as teachers, access any student's email (with capabilities to send), adjust all grades, anything I wanted to do, I could do. They have since fixed this error, not only is the cookie gone, but the site is replaced with a Microsoft Sharepoint foundation instead of their \"roll your own\" system. I didn't research this to take advantage of the exploit. I did it because these exploits would allow MY information to be viewed by ANYBODY, a student of the school or not. So I went to my School's IT so that they would fix it. They did, and almost a month after they fixed, I decided to write a 2 page-ish article on my blog. I'd link to that page now except that the head of IT has asked that I take the page down. He claims we agreed that I'd never talk about the exploit to anybody outside of IT. I know I never agreed to that because since square one I wanted to take credit for my 3 or 4 weeks of hard investigation and work, I fully intended on telling people about the problem. I wrote my article with discretion. I never mentioned the school's name and it had very little subjective content, it was primarily how I found the exploits, what they were, and how they could be used. The idea was that if I talked about it from the point of view of the discoverer, it'd show insight into how to develop against it. The school was very appreciative that I did not use these exploits and that I came straight to them with the intention of fixing it. I only blog about Software Development concepts. Finding security holes in the wild like this is a perfect subject for my blog. Also, I want to make a name for myself in the cyber security world, Bruce Schneier linked me to an article in his blog talking about how if you want to make a name for yourself in the cyber security, you need to break ciphers, find security holes and fix them, and such. In short, I feel I deserve credit for the hard work I did, they feel that the school's image is more important even though the security hole is more than fixed. What's the best way to go about getting my credit here? I have posted a pseudo censored version in the mean time. UPDATE: no more pseudo censored version, I just put up a new article that's a little more ambiguous about it even being a school. New article can be found here."}
{"_id": "116323", "title": "What algorithm browsers follow to remember values for form controls?", "text": "You can have different HTML `input` elements on a single HTML `form` and all of them, have their associated remembered values (values that you've entered in those fields); Is it related to the `id` or `name` attribute of the `input` element? No. Proof? Your email address appears on many `input` elements across different websites, and all those fields have different `id` and `name` attributes. So, there is a mystery here I don't understand. How browsers remember values for HTML form controls? What is the algorithm? How they know that they should show your email on _this_ control and not on _that_ control, while controls are both HTML `input type=text` elements?"}
{"_id": "253094", "title": "Difference between reverse lookup tables and rainbow tables", "text": "Using Reverse Lookup Tables, you create a lookup table consisting of the password hash of user accounts. Then you use another table which consists of hashes with guessed passwords. Then you compare the two to see if the hashed password of compromised user account matches hashed password in lookup table. Using Rainbow Tables, it appears to be the same technique except the lookup table is smaller so you can search through them quicker. What is the real difference between reverse lookup tables and rainbow tables?"}
{"_id": "56857", "title": "What is the term that means \"keeping the arguments for different API calls as similar as possible\"?", "text": "There is a word which I can never remember... it expresses a design goal that API calls (or functions or methods or whatever) should be as similar as reasonably possible in their argument patterns. It may also extend to naming as well. In other words, all other things being equal, it is probably bad to have these three functions:               deleteUser(email)     petRemove(petId,species)     destroyPlanet(planetName,starName)      if instead you could have               deleteUser(userId)     deletePet(petId)     deletePlanet(planetId)      What is the word for this concept? I keep thinking it's \"orthogonal\" but it definitely isn't. Its a very important concept, and to me it's one of the biggest things that makes some APIs a joy to work with (because once you learn a few things you can pretty much use everything without looking at doco), and others a pain (because every function is done inconsistently)."}
{"_id": "161835", "title": "Are all programming problems algorithm problems?", "text": "I like how \"Introduction to Algorithms\" by Cormen et al. conveys knowledge. One reason is that everything has to do with programming problems and the book is not implemented in any particular programming language. This language independency provides focus on the ideas in general. So my question is, as it says in the title. Is every solveable programming problem solveable by thinking in this algorithmic fashion. No matter which language, field, etc ? If yes, give arguments, else, give arguments! I have not implemeted many complex programs with GUI, AI, Graphics, etc ... But are these types of problems also a matter of thinking out good algorithms?"}
{"_id": "161834", "title": "Use of versioned objects/data to handle program version compatibility?", "text": "Is there a common name for the practice of keeping a version number on your data, so that different versions of your program can identify, for example, \"current\", \"legacy\", and \"too-old-to-deal-with\" versions of the same type of object? As discussed here: Strategy for backwards compatibility of persistent storage."}
{"_id": "116328", "title": "Is there canonical jUnit reference documentation?", "text": "I can't seem to find any kind of complete reference for jUnit. The only way I've managed to find to know about all the features in jUnit is to check out all the release notes for it. For example there is no mention of @Rules in the official page unless you count the blog posts. But for that you first need to know a feature exists to search for it. Is there a canonical reference for jUnit? What's the best method for learning about jUnit features? What I've tried:   * jUnit Cookbook \\- Really basic, very few features covered   * The official FAQ \\- Covers more but it doesn't have @Rules or anything covered there. Updated last time in 2006"}
{"_id": "120090", "title": "Who should control navigation in an MVVM application?", "text": "Example #1: I have a view displayed in my MVVM application (let's use Silverlight for the purposes of the discussion) and I click on a button that should take me to a new page. Example #2: That same view has another button that, when clicked, should open up a details view in a child window (dialog). We know that there will be Command objects exposed by our ViewModel bound to the buttons with methods that respond to the user's click. But, what then? How do we complete the action? Even if we use a so-called NavigationService, what are we telling it? To be more specific, in a traditional View-first model (like URL-based navigation schemes such as on the web or the SL built-in navigation framework) the Command objects would have to know what View to display next. That seems to cross the line when it comes to the separation of concerns promoted by the pattern. On the other hand, if the button wasn't wired to a Command object and behaved like a hyperlink, the navigation rules could be defined in the markup. But do we want the Views to control application flow and isn't navigation just another type of business logic? (I can say yes in some cases and no in others.) To me, the utopian implementation of the MVVM pattern (and I've heard others profess this) would be to have the ViewModel wired in such a way that the application can run headless (i.e. no Views). This provides the most surface area for code-based testing and makes the Views a true skin on the application. And my ViewModel shouldn't care if it displayed in the main window, a floating panel or a child window, should it? According to this apprach, it is up to some other mechanism at runtime to 'bind' what View should be displayed for each ViewModel. But what if we want to share a View with multiple ViewModels or vice versa? So given the need to manage the View-ViewModel relationship so we know what to display when along with the need to navigate between views, including displaying child windows / dialogs, how do we truly accomplish this in the MVVM pattern?"}
{"_id": "216162", "title": "Semantic coupling vs. large class", "text": "I have hardware I communicate with via TCP. This hardware accepts ~40 different commands/requests with about 20 different responses. I've created a HardwareProxy class which _has a_ TcpClient to send and receive data. I didn't like the idea of having 40 different methods to send the commands/requests, so I started down the path of having a single SendCommand method which takes an ICommand and returns an IResponse, this results in 40 different SpecificCommand classes. The problem is this requires semantic coupling, i.e. the method that invokes SendCommand receives an IResponse which it has to downcast to SpecificResponse, I use a future map which I believe ensures the appropriate SpecificResponse, but I get the impression this code smells. Besides the semantic coupling, ICommand and IResponse are essentially empty abstract classes (Marker Interfaces) and this seems suspicious to me. If I go with the 40 methods I don't think I have broken the single responisbility principle as the responsibility of the HardwareProxy class is to act as the hardware, which has all of these commands. This route is just ugly, plus I'd like to have Asynchronous versions, so there'd be about 80 methods. Is it better to bite the bullet and have a large class, accept the coupling and MarkerInterfaces for a smaller soultuion, or am I missing a better way? Thanks. ## Possible Solution Based on DXM's response this is what I came up with:               struct Proxy     {        template<class C, class R>        ICommand<C, R>* CreateCommand()        {           return new C(this);        }             void Send(std::string s)        {           //tcp send here for now print command name           cout << s << endl;        }     };          template<class Derived>     struct IResponse     {};          struct DerivedResponse1 : IResponse<DerivedResponse1>     {        std::string GetValue()        {           return \"DerivedResponse1\";        }     };          template<class Derived, class Response>     struct ICommand     {     protected:        Proxy* pProxy;     public:        Response* Send()        {           std::string msg = \"Sent: \" + static_cast<Derived*> (this)->GetName();           pProxy->Send(msg);           //wait for future here           Response* pResponse = new Response; //replace with future value           return pResponse;        }     };          struct DerivedCommand1 : public ICommand<DerivedCommand1, DerivedResponse1>     {        DerivedCommand1(Proxy* pProxy)        {           this->pProxy = pProxy;        }             std::string GetName()        {            return \"DerivedCommand1\";        }     };          int main()     {        Proxy proxy;             ICommand<DerivedCommand1, DerivedResponse1>* pDerivedCommand =                 proxy.CreateCommand<DerivedCommand1, DerivedResponse1>();        DerivedResponse1* pDerivedResponse = pDerivedCommand->Send();        cout << \"Received :\" << pDerivedResponse->GetValue() << endl;             return 0;     }      How does that look? It seems like I may not even need the IResponse interface, we'll have to see when I implment it. I realize there is a lot of important stuff missing, like the futures, but I wanted to get the template stuff down first. What do you think of passing in the proxy to the command? Also what about having the send in the ICommand as opposed to writting it for every command? Am I violating any other OO principles? Thanks."}
{"_id": "90803", "title": "Coding user rights", "text": "Imagine a system which has a number of functions and a number of users. A user must have rights to a specific function. Users may belong to a group. A group may belong to a group. So as a simple illustration, user A has rights to function 1 and 2. User b has rights to function 2 and 3. User A is in group1 which has rights to function 3, but negative, i.e. explicit denied access to function 1. For extra complexity, perhaps the function has default rights. So you can say, but default everyone has access to function a, or no one has access to function a. I guess it's the same as having an Everybody group. So the question is how are you managing user rights? Do you make all rights additive? Do you allow the explicit denied I mention at the end? Do you have a system where the most access possible is granted or the least? Do you make user rights trump group rights, or vice versa? I've seen a number of variations for applying rights. I'm now defining my own and I'm really looking for any experience you have in that area where you wish you'd done something different, or were delighted you chose a particular way of doing things. Thanks"}
{"_id": "120099", "title": "How to become a professional web developer from a C/C++ programmer?", "text": "I am currently a high school student and know how to use Pascal and C/C++ to take part in competitions such as the Informatics Olympiad. I have learned data structures and many algorithms to solve various kinds of problems. Now, I want to move on to become a web developer. However, I know web development is quite different from competitive programming. To make a web application, I have to master HTML, databases, back-end programming etc. But these all look like separate pieces of information. I don't know where to start and what order should I follow. Anybody who can give a comprehensive list of learning points? I know there are HTML, Ruby on Rails, CSS and Javascript. What else? More importantly, can someone give a brief outline of their relationship?"}
{"_id": "90808", "title": "Are Django forms violating MVC?", "text": "I just started working with Django coming from years of Spring MVC and the forms implementation strikes as being slightly crazy. If you're not familiar, Django forms starts with a form model class that defines your fields. Spring similarly starts with a form-backing object. But where Spring provides a taglib for binding form elements to the backing object within your JSP, Django has form widgets tied directly to the model. There are default widgets where you can add style attributes to your fields to apply CSS or define completely custom widgets as new classes. It all goes in your python code. That seems nuts to me. First, you are putting information about your view directly in your model and secondly you are binding your model to a specific view. Am I missing something? EDIT: Some example code as requested. Django:               # Class defines the data associated with this form     class CommentForm(forms.Form):         # name is CharField and the argument tells Django to use a <input type=\"text\">         # and add the CSS class \"special\" as an attribute. The kind of thing that should         # go in a template         name = forms.CharField(                     widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'class':'special'}))         url = forms.URLField()         # Again, comment is <input type=\"text\" size=\"40\" /> even though input box size         # is a visual design constraint and not tied to the data model         comment = forms.CharField(                    widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={'size':'40'}))      Spring MVC:               public class User {         // Form class in this case is a POJO, passed to the template in the controller         private String firstName;         private String lastName;         get/setWhatever() {}     }          <!-- JSP code references an instance of type User with custom tags -->     <%@ taglib prefix=\"form\" uri=\"http://www.springframework.org/tags/form\" %>     <!-- \"user\" is the name assigned to a User instance -->     <form:form commandName=\"user\">           <table>               <tr>                   <td>First Name:</td>                   <!-- \"path\" attribute sets the name field and binds to object on backend -->                   <td><form:input path=\"firstName\" class=\"special\" /></td>               </tr>               <tr>                   <td>Last Name:</td>                   <td><form:input path=\"lastName\" size=\"40\" /></td>               </tr>               <tr>                   <td colspan=\"2\">                       <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Save Changes\" />                   </td>               </tr>           </table>       </form:form>"}
{"_id": "185460", "title": "Delphi Build Server - Do I need to check in .dres files?", "text": "We're using final builder to build a Delphi project and the person managing the build server noticed that projects with no .dres files were not building because they're not in SVN and because they're not in SVN they're not on the build machine. So he put them in SVN. I'm a little skeptical about the necessity of putting them in SVN though. For one thing, if they're needed by the build server then they're not being built by the build server and we're not really creating the build in one step since we're using pre-compiled code (I might as well just check in my DCU's, tear off my beard and return my Delphi-4-Ever allegiance card). I see in Delphi after compiling a project: ` c:\\program files (x86)\\embarcadero\\rad studio\\9.0\\bin\\cgrc.exe -c65001 \"PROJResource.rc\" -foPROJ.dres ` Those files are produced by brcc32 compiling an RC file. I'd say, well just add that line to the build server, but `PROJResource.rc` isn't in SVN either! `PROJResource.rc` is automatically generated by Delphi from adding things using the project manager and I never noticed it so I never added it to SVN and no one else complained (I think the .dproj file is behind this). The RC files that I wrote myself are in SVN though. So... what's the best way to fix this, just check in the PROJResource.rc or is there something else we can be doing to streamline this?"}
{"_id": "63918", "title": "Transactional database and Datawarehouse on the same Postgresql cluster?", "text": "Is it conceptually feasible to have on a Postgresql Cluster a transactional database and at the same time a datawarehouse that would get feeded by the transactional database ?"}
{"_id": "121945", "title": "How to be up to date with the LAMP platform?", "text": "Most of times I get to know about the new features too late. It is okay at least I know about them does not matter from where I know But I feel it is too late to know about those features. I am working on LAMP platform and I want to keep myself up to date with the new things, anything happening new with LAMP. Can you please let me know what resources should I use? What groups should I follow? From where I can get the latest updates about any activity, event and feature about LAMP?"}
{"_id": "63912", "title": "Looking for an open source project in Python", "text": "I am looking for practical tasks to get experience with Python. Just reading the books and not doing any tasks in the language is not effective. I solved some problems on the Project Euler and TopCoder and it helped me to learn the syntax of the language better. But those tasks are hard algorithmically, but as a rule is quite simple from the point of view of programming. Now I'm looking for an interesting open source project in Python, participation in which will help me to better understand the OO-model of language. Although, this is my first step with Python, in general, I am an experienced programmer and I can be useful for a project. May be someone can suggest something?"}
{"_id": "19592", "title": "What is detailed design? what are the advantage disadvantages using it?", "text": "Im really not getting the idea:   1. What is Detailed Design.   2. Why use Detailed Design.   3. Advantages/Disadvantage of using Detailed Design.   4. Any alternative methods other than using Detailed Design. Could some one please guide/explain me ?"}
{"_id": "20896", "title": "What do I call people who extend my class in base class documentation?", "text": "Been calling them \"implementers\", but it seems weird to me.               /// <summary>     /// Implementers should implement this.  Derp     /// </summary>     protected abstract void InternalExecute();      A point of clarification, I'm interested in what to call the **people** who create child classes, not the child classes themselves. \"Hey, you there\" not \"that thing there.\""}
{"_id": "153131", "title": "How to store multiple requirements with OR and AND?", "text": "Well I'm working on a personal project that needs to check if a user has met certain requirements, and they come in a form of Requirement: [c1 OR c2] AND [d1 OR d2] Requirement: [c1 AND c2] OR [d1 AND d2] Requirement: c1 AND any dn(n can be any integer) I'm just not sure how to store these sorts of requirements, I'm thinking of using another object to hold c1,c2,d1,d2....dn and OR, but that seems like a roundabout way of doing things. Is there a better method?"}
{"_id": "60791", "title": "What is the best way to implement different views of one resource in RESTful manner?", "text": "Imagine, there is a resource, for example event. User is able to get list of events in HTML format. He should be able to view that list in two ways: as a list and as a calendar. How the API should respond to this options? The simplest approach, I think, is to pass some parameter to index action to determine which type of presentation to use, but I don't like it. Don't know why, it is not RESTful for me. What do you think, do I misunderstood something and should keep things simple or there is a better approach?"}
{"_id": "153134", "title": "Where does Microsoft currently stand on dynamic languages?", "text": "With languages Python and Ruby still having a good foothold in the market what is Microsoft's current stance on dynamic languages? Does Microsoft have any plans to incorporate or invent it's own dynamic language?"}
{"_id": "153136", "title": "Using a back-end mechanism to copy files to DB and notify the application", "text": "This Scenario: User copies large files to a local folder. I want to watch that folder and when a new file is dropped then go and copy it to Database, so later when coping is done I can actually use it in my application. ( A C# WinForms App). It would be awesome to also find a way to somehow get notified in the Application that hey copying the file to DB is finished and ready for use... I am using C#.net, Windows... What solutions/architecture do you suggest for this? For example having a windows service running all the time watching that folder, when something copied goes and write it to DB ... then how about getting notified? MSMQ is something I can use? don't know much about it yet. Thanks."}
{"_id": "152848", "title": "How do you manage projects left over by other employees?", "text": "It happens that some one just leaves the company all of sudden. Now his work needs to be completed and you are being assigned it. Having no idea what was he up to (was it 90% done or 9%), how do you manage the leftover?   1. Shall I start from scratch? What if it was 90% done?    2. Shall I try and understand whatever he has done? What if it was just nonsense?"}
{"_id": "235586", "title": "Is my application secure enough", "text": "first of all, I don't have any code to display in my question here, because I'm still designing the application structure, so i only got design developed. I'm building a phone application that I'm trying to make as secure as possible, i know it's not that necessary on application that is the size of mine, but still, good practice. My app is on Angular with phonegap, server side is accessible through https and is nodejs with mongoDB, is a stateless server, restful api. Once the user is logged in (using user and password or facebook), a session id is stored on the client side (angular cookies) and is required with each access to the server (checking if there is a user logged in with that session id). I also heard about form tokens so i implanted that - On each form that in the end will send a request to the server (for example, changing user information and hitting save) it will also require a form token, random value that is generated for the session on building the form - onLoad function that calls the server to generate a specific form token. Seems pretty cool, but still not sure if it any good. By thinking of it, someone can call my restful method to generate any form token he wants using session id he found (by brute forcing or whatever), and then call any other restful method to change anything for that user.. also, my server should be limited to be accessed only from the application...can't restrict origin because the IP changes from phone to phone...what are the restriction my server should have? I am a starter at security for web apps and any advice, explaining and help would really help! is my application secure enough?"}
{"_id": "148434", "title": "Why do Git/Mercurial repositories use less space?", "text": "I've read on several discussions here and on SO that DVCS repositories use about the same or less space than their centralised counter-parts. I may have missed it, but I haven't found a good explanation of why that is. Anyone know?"}
{"_id": "235583", "title": "How to design a domain entity that uses a dependency to manage a state field?", "text": "I'm new to DDD and IOC/DI and I'm having some trouble figuring out how to design an entity that needs to use a state pattern to manage its status. As the transitions are somewhat complicated, I'm using a finite state machine (FSM) to handle the states (I'm using Stateless). To further complicate the situation, the FSM needs to be loosely coupled to an entity. I.e. while I know that the state of the entity must be handled by a FSM, I don't necessarily know exactly what the FSM is (i.e. the entity doesn't know what states/triggers/transitions it might go through). The users use the term workflow to define the FSM (state, triggers, transitions, rules etc). The workflow changes independently of the entity. They might want to add new states, change rules, triggers etc. independent of any changes to the entity. I'm handling this by dynamically loading an assembly that contains a definition of the FSM (which implements a known interface), then using a service that is injected into the entity, the entity calls the service and gets the FSM it is using. This involves potentially loading assemblies, caching the factory that creates the FSM and then assigning the FSM that is in the appropriate state to the entity. Finally, the FSM can return the set of valid triggers that can be provided to the UI so one of the those triggers can be selected and fired. The actual workflow in completely encapsulated externally to the entity. So, currently I'm my entity looks something like this:               public class EntityUsingWorkflow     {       private readonly workflowService;            public Order(IWorkflowService service, string workflowKey, string status)       {         this.workflowService = service;         this.WorkflowKey = workflowKey;         this.Status = status;              // Note that the two lambdas are used to retrieve         // and set the state on the entity.         this.Workflow = service.GetStateMachine(workflowKey, () => this.Status, stateValue => this.Status = statValue );       }             public string WorkflowKey { get; set; }       public IStateMachine Workflow { get; private set; }       public string Status { get; private set; }          }      I'm concerned with this design. My basic understanding is that domain entities should not have dependencies injected into them, yet here I am injecting one. I also understand that the entity needs to handle its own state, so I'm hesitant to move the workflow completely out of the entity. Other ideas I've had, like an init method, would just move the injection to method injection. What would be a clean way to design an entity with these requirements? Is it OK to inject a dependency in this situation?"}
{"_id": "148437", "title": "Is it legal / moral to republish oss project of an author that does not respond?", "text": "I have found a small oss project (one file) in someone's blog a few months ago. The license is \"Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic\". I sent a mail to the author if I can put this in github but got no response back. Meanwhile his blog has been shut down. I am not a lawyer, but this seems legal to republish the code (with appropriate attribution) in github. Am I right? Is this moral? Maybe the guy just wants to disappear for a while..."}
{"_id": "166820", "title": "How can I distribute a unique database already in production?", "text": "Let's assume a successful web Spring application running on a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. The traffic is becoming so high and the amount of data is becoming so big that a distributed database solution needs to be implemented to address scalability issue. Let's also assume this application is using Hibernate and the data access layer is cleanly separated with DAOs. Ideally, one should be able to add or remove databases easily. A failback solution is welcome too. What would be the best strategy to scale this database? Is it possible to minimize sharding code (Shard) in the application?"}
{"_id": "49141", "title": "I read Pro ASP .NET MVC 2 Framework - anything else for AJAX in MVC 2?", "text": "I read Pro ASP .NET MVC 2 Framework to try and learn the ASP .NET MVC Framework, but I'm really struggling with Ajax in MVC even after going over that chapter again and again. I seem to have a decent grasp on MVC 2 without Ajax. I used the Ajax controls from ASP .NET (non-MVC) and am used to user controls in update panels. I have somewhat complicated objects with nested sets of objects on my website, and trying to update them from the client side and keep their nested array indexes ordered is killing my brain. Having little familiarity with web scripting in general and Javascript / jQuery / JSON in specific isn't helping. Is there anything else I could read that might help me get a better grasp of Ajax in MVC? Is Ajax poorly supported in MVC 2, or am I just struggling because I have huge holes in my understanding of the web due to the WebForms- ish style of the old ASP .NET? Hoping for the latter . . . my own ignorance can be fixed."}
{"_id": "187326", "title": "Is it possible to modify Lamport's mutual exclusion algorithm to work without a FIFO guarantee?", "text": "I'm trying to implement a modified version of the Lamport Mutual Exclusion algorithm. The original algorithm assumes FIFO message ordering between connected systems, but I would like to use ~~UDP~~ a protocol which does not guarantee FIFO. Is it possible to modify this algorithm to work without FIFO? EDIT: Forget UDP. Just assume it is some protocol where the only problem is that FIFO is not guaranteed. That is the only problem I'm concerned with right now."}
{"_id": "162565", "title": "Should a programmer take writing lessons to enhance code expressiveness?", "text": "Given that programmers are authors and write code to express abstract thoughts and concepts, and good code should be read by other programmers without difficulties and misunderstandings, should a programmer take writing lessons to write better code? Abstracting concepts and real world problems/entities is an important part of writing good code, and a good mastery of the language used for coding should allow the programmer to express his thoughts more easily, or in a better way. Besides, when trying to write or rewrite some code to make it better, much time can be spent in deciding the names for functions, variables or data structures. I think this could also help to avoid writing code with more than one meaning, often cause of misunderstanding between different programmers. Code should always express clearly its function unambiguously."}
{"_id": "162562", "title": "Where does Java get its SOA reputation from?", "text": "I see lots of SOA books surrounding Java and have always had the subliminal notion that Java is the \"right\" language for robust/enterprisey SOA, even though I know what SOA involves and that it is perfectly possible using other languages & frameworks. What _exclusive_ traits Java has that other languages/platforms don't, that makes it so popular for SOAs?"}
{"_id": "48238", "title": "How well do free-to-open-source-projects policies work in practice?", "text": "In comparison with an open source license and requesting donations, is a free- for-open-source-projects (or free for non-commercial developers) closed source and otherwise commercial project likely to get more license fees? Or just to alienate potential users? Assume the project has value to programmers - I'm looking for generalizations here, though specific examples comparing existing projects will be very interesting. What I have in mind involves code generating programming utilities. And one issue I can think of, either way, is a near total inability to enforce any license restrictions. After all, I can't go around the internet demanding that everyone show me their source code just in case!"}
{"_id": "162561", "title": "Is it possible to migrate struts/spring based application to GWT?", "text": "I am using the combination of spring, spring-security, struts and iBatis in my application. Now I am looking to migrate the struts UI to GWT. The new combination must be spring, spring-security, GWT and iBatis. I applied a layered approach to develop my application. In Controller/UI layer i am using Struts. I want to replace struts and use GWT in Controller/UI layer. Is is possible to use GWT without affecting another layers DAO/BL/SL?"}
{"_id": "48237", "title": "What is an integration test exactly?", "text": "My friends and I have been struggling to classify exactly what is an integration test. Now, on my way home, I just realised, that every time I try to give a real world example of an integration test, it turns out to be an acceptance test, ie. something that a business person would say out loud that specs out what the system should be delivering. I checked the Ruby on Rails documentation for their classification of these testing types, and it's now completely thrown me. Can you give me a short academic description of an integration test with a real world example?"}
{"_id": "45643", "title": "How to suggest changes as a recently-hired employee?", "text": "I was recently hired in a big company (thousands of people, to give an idea of the size). They said they hired me because of my rigor and because I was, despite my youngness (i'm 25), experienced as a C/C++ programer. Now that I'm in, I can see that the whole system is old and often uses obsolete technologies. There is no naming convention (files, functions, variables, ...), they don't use Version Control, don't use exceptions or polymorphism and it seems like almost everybody lost his passion (some of them are only 30 years old). I'd like to suggest somes changes but i don't want to be \"the new guy that wants to change everything just because he doesn't want to fit in\". I tried to \"fit in\", but actually, It takes me one week to do what I would do in one afternoon, just because of the poor tools we're forced to use. A lot my collegues never look at the new \"things\" and techniques that people use nowadays. It's like they just given up. The situation is really frustrating. Have you ever been in a similar situation and, if so, what advices would you give me ? Is there a subtle way of changing things without becoming the _black sheep_ here ? Or should I just give up my passion and energy as well ? Thank you. ## Updates Just in case (if anyone cares): following your precious advices I was able to suggest changes and am now in charge of the team that must create and deploy Subversion :D Thanks to all of you !"}
{"_id": "9180", "title": "Should I be a good programmer immediately after college?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I've graduated with a Computer Science degree but I don't feel like I'm > even close to being an expert programmer I recently graduated from university, and I have since then joined a development team where I am by far the least experienced developer with maybe with a couple work terms under my belt. Meanwhile, the rest of the team is rocking 5-10 years experience. I was a very good student and a pretty good programmer when it came to bottled assignments and tests. I have worked on some projects with success, but now I'm working with a much bigger code-base, and the learning curve is much higher. I was wondering how many other developers started out their careers in teams and left like they sucked. When does this change? How can I speed up the process? My seniors are helping me but I want to be great and show my value now."}
{"_id": "198141", "title": "How much inconsistency arises from Javascript's high flexibility?", "text": "I'll admit it, I haven't yet mastered the language, but my experience with it tells me that Javascript is a highly flexible language, allowing prototypal inheritance, dynamic typing, functions as first class citizens and so many more cool stuff. I think such features bring some inconsistencies, but that's nothing new, most people would agree with me. I wanted to discuss specific examples that have been annoying me, like \"for in\" loops:               for(var role in rolesToAdd){                     if(rolesToAdd.hasOwnProperty(role)){                         // for body                     }     }      Why should I need to do this? Doesn't this break the concept of classes and inheritance? I might not want to loop through the whole prototype, but what if I still need some of the attributes/methods from an object's direct parent, for example? Also, I would be most grateful if someone could explain me why the interpreter doesn't allow synonymous global/local variables to share the same scope, when there is certainly a way it could distinguish one from the other. Like in:               var foo = function() {             var wth = bar();             var bar = wth;             // body...     }();          function bar(){         return 'bar mitzvah';     }      You can see that, even though our local bar has been declared after the call to our global bar, bar's value in foo's scope will always reflect the local bar, which will hold 'undefined'. Isn't that a strange behavior? I would love if senior Js programmers enlightened me on this and showed me what is gained from these seemingly strange features and if the disadvantages I mentioned here are valid."}
{"_id": "51997", "title": "Best Practices for Renaming, Refactoring, and Breaking Changes with Teams", "text": "What are some Best Practices for refactoring and renaming in team environments? I bring this up with a few scenarios in mind:   1. If a library that is commonly referenced is refactored to introduce a breaking change to any library or project that references it. E.g. arbitrarily changing the name of a method.   2. If projects are renamed and solutions must be rebuilt with updated references to them.   3. If project structure is changed to be \"more organized\" by introducing folders and moving existing projects or solutions to new locations. Some additional thoughts/questions:   1. Should changes like this matter or is resulting pain an indication of structure gone awry?    2. Who should take responsibility for fixing errors related to a breaking change? If a developer makes a breaking change should they be responsible for going into affected projects and updating them or should they alert other developers and prompt them to change things?    3. Is this something that can be done on a scheduled basis or is it something that should be done as frequently as possible? If a refactoring is put off for too long it is increasingly difficult to reconcile but at the same time in a day spending 1 hour increments fixing a build because of changes happening elsewhere.   4. Is this a matter of a formal communication process or can it be organic?"}
{"_id": "210882", "title": "Refactoring jQuery spaghetti code to use DDD", "text": "Most of my client side code ends up as a long script in one file the mostly looks like this:               <script>     function someFunction1(){/*...*/}     function someFunction2(){/*...*/}     ...     var globalVariable1;     var globalVariable2;     ...     $(function(){          $('selector1').click(function(){         //get relevant data from various DOM elements              //some business logic rules and validation              //open dialog box              //more business logic rules and more validation              //post an ajax request              //update the DOM         });          //many other events          //many jQuery dialogs         });     </script>      It's a maintenance nightmare. Although I use a well designed server-side structure using DDD (application services, domain sevices, value objects,...etc.) I have had little luck structuring my client code to a better separation of concerns. I'm not building a client-side application. I just use jQuery intensively for the client side. How should I approach the code structure to apply DDD client-side wide?"}
{"_id": "198145", "title": "What programming related tasks can you do with a \"dead\" brain?", "text": "Here is my problem: programming (learning about programming, coding, etc) is my hobby. I do it in my freetime.   I have a full time job, which literally drains my brain (no kidding!) by the end of the day so much I can't even add three-digit numbers, but I still want to do some programming-related things. Learning in this state is stupid, finding bugs is impossible. Writing unit test worked sort-of :D   I understand that programming is a very conscious activity, but I need to get my job done every day and I still want to deal with some programming-related stuff, as it's very fun to me. What do you suggest ?   I tought about watching videos, but what topic should I looking for with this state of my mind (which are easy to understand but I can still learn a lot from them) ?   (I can't do it before work, as it is far more important to be fresh there than during my hobby...) Edit: The question need a bit of addition, which I left off intentionally at first, because I tought my question is clear.   I have no problem at all with my brain activity or anything like that, the \"brain drain\" cause is that I do 9-10 hours _very intense_ mental job a day (much more intense than for example programming or thinking about solving problems), with only less than 5 minutes pause every hour. It is not possible to change it or pause more or think less (huh?!) between those working hours."}
{"_id": "16905", "title": "Sprint Meetings - What to talk about", "text": "In work we have just started using the Scrum methodology, it is working well but I have a question on the daily sprint meetings. We set aside 15 minutes for the meeting (between the three devs and the scrum master if we think he is needed) but I have found that we have normally finished by 5 minutes. This might be because we have said all that needs to be said but I was wondering what people tend to talk about in them, in case we are missing something. For the record we normally update each other on current objective, troublesome previous objectives and plans for the rest of the day (including if we will not be available on that project)."}
{"_id": "210889", "title": "What techniques are there for debugging remote client side errors?", "text": "What techniques are there for debugging remote client side errors in a web application, especially when they only affect a small subset of users? In my case we have an app that is working well for hundreds of users, internally and externally, but a handful (12) have a specific problem with a JavaScript that prevents them from using the site. We have screenshots of the error, have confirmed they have no server side errors, confirmed that everything is getting rendered to the browser correctly, have seen the specific error in the IE console, but still have no idea why it isn't working for these specific users. The issue is exhibiting on different versions of IE. We have never been able to replicate the problem here. I'm not looking for a solution to my problem here, but rather what are the steps you would take to solve this kind of problem, and what tools there may be that might help?"}
{"_id": "210888", "title": "Apply filter in Kafka Queue", "text": "Is it possible to apply a filter on the Kafka stream of topic? What I want to do is filter out messages while consuming and then run some custom logic on top of it. It is a sort of thing that Storm trident allows us to do ( apply filter on the stream ). What I've found so far is I can create a trident topology and do the filtering but would be of great benefit if I can filter out the stream itself, as it will reduce the amount of traffic at my consumer's end. I know this is crazy but could this be a valid approach? Please correct me if I am wrong."}
{"_id": "80397", "title": "C++ Interview question", "text": "This problem was given to me on previous job interview test. It is over now, but I would like to go through my mistakes and hopefully be more prepared next time!               // Identify as many bugs and assumptions as you can in the following code.     // NOTE that there is/are (at least):     // 1 major algorithmic assumption     // 2 portability issues     // 1 syntax error          // Function to copy 'nBytes' of data from src to dst.     void myMemcpy(char* dst, const char* src, int nBytes)     {          // Try to be fast and copy a word at a time instead of byte by byte              int* wordDst = (int*)dst;         int* wordSrc = (int*)src;         int numWords = nBytes >> 2;         for (int i=0; i < numWords; i++)         {             *wordDst++ = *wordSrc++;         }              int numRemaining = nBytes - (numWords << 2);         dst = (char*)wordDst;         src = (char*)wordSrc;         for (int i=0 ; i <= numRemaining; i++);         {             *dst++ = *src++;         }     }      All I found was a syntax error on line                   for (int i=0 ; i <= numRemaining; i++);      Also the first for loop looks fishy. Can you guys find any other mistakes?"}
{"_id": "80396", "title": "Programming languages with these features", "text": "I've got a small project coming up where I can choose any language I want. My team prefers the feeling of safety we get from static typing. In our experience, dynamically typed languages can be more difficult to maintain (we feel they are too \"magic\"). The usual choice would be Java, but our team is expressing interest in the conciseness and flexibility provided by features of some of the other languages such as Python and Ruby. Based on my team's interests, I need some help evaluating which language to use. Ideally, the language would support these features:   * Statically typed,   * Properties or some form of the Uniform Access Principle,   * First-class functions,   * Anonymous functions (less important). Bonus points for languages that:   * Aren't dependent on Microsoft or any specific operating system.   * Have a non-JVM implementation.   * Have an ORM.   * Have a web development framework. Apart from these criteria, I'd still love to know more reasons why to choose the language(s) in your answer, and any experience you've had with them. Hopefully the answers here will be useful to anyone else that wants to evaluate some alternatives to Java without blindly switching another popular language such as C#. _*Edit: My question was closed due to how poorly I communicated my question before. I hope that I have cleared things up since I got the question re- opened. By the way, I've put my own research into a community wiki answer below, so don't think I haven't done any homework. ;-)_"}
{"_id": "80390", "title": "Where are all the DBAs?", "text": "For some reason I got thinking the other day about DBAs and what they do. This thread goes some way to answer this question, but then I looked up the leading jobs site in my area out of curiosity, and it seems like there are more Oracle DBA jobs around than many other technology specialties. Even relatively common-sounding ones, such as \"Java Developer\" or \"Network Administrator\". Here's the thing: I've been in this industry for ten years, worked in several jobs (a couple in fairly large corporate shops too), and I've never actually seen a real live DBA. There was usually a self-taught \"database guru\" around who was the goto guy for database issues (otherwise employed as a developer like the rest of us), but I've never seen anyone in an official DBA role, anywhere, ever. So, where are all the DBAs? I'm guessing that since all the places I've worked so far were relatively application-oriented, I've just never experienced a very hardcore DB-heavy environment. At the same time, at least one of the jobs I've had seemed like a pretty extreme data-centred operation (real time market/trading systems, huge databases), and even here the only \"database people\" were these \"developers who were database gurus on the side\". No official DBA roles. Is it really just a case of me never having been in the kind of environment where DBAs are needed? If so, what kind of environment is that? Is this phenomenon perhaps to do with data centres being separate/outsourced operations these days, so most application level programmers just don't see them anymore? **Note:** I am basically trying to understand where the separation between \"developers who know databases well\" and actual DBAs is. It seems like a lot of dev roles require some pretty hardcore database knowledge these days (and that most development teams - even in quite DB-heavy environments - get by without an official DBA on staff). ie Please don't close or move to dba.SE."}
{"_id": "236582", "title": "Javascript: Anonymous functions", "text": "How do I turn this definition of an anonymous function, An anonymous function is a function that is assigned to a variable. Anonymous functions are also used when you want to perform a short and straight forward task, into an analogy?"}
{"_id": "236586", "title": "Natural Language to Search Criteria - Date Ranges", "text": "Consider an application that stores a set of records that contain:   * Description   * Cost   * Purchase Date I'd like to be able to allow users to utilize natural language to search the dataset. For example, the search expression: > blue from last month less than $20 would translate into (Linq as an example only - correctness of the query is not in question):               _db.Widgets.Where(w => w.Description.Contains('blue') && w.PurchaseDate >= DateTime.Now.AddMonths(-1) && w.Cost < 20)      I'm struggling to find a starting point. Any resources to get me in the right direction would be appreciated (I am working in .NET)."}
{"_id": "97460", "title": "Which contract work type provides the most stability while offering flexibility?", "text": "I tried my best to frame this question in such a way that it will help others out there who are curious about the same thing as I am. I am currently a full time C++ programmer. I also do a little bit of C#/.NET programming as well. I have over 4 years of experience total. I have looked into the possibility of doing contract programming. I am looking to avoid having to be stuck on one team/project forever. I am single, have no kids, and have enough money saved up to last over a year without an income. I live in one of the biggest cities in the U.S. I know there are different types of contract work, such as W2, independent, contract-to-hire, etc. I'm looking to work on contracts that last 6 months to a year. I would like to avoid having to do most of the marketing/overhead work myself and just want to do the programming work. I thought about getting contract work through different agencies and they would get a cut of the pay for doing the searching/overhead work for me. I just feel so stuck in my current job and want the freedom of working on a variety of projects and have some flexibility in hours and location (whether it's working at home or at another office). I have no desire to move up to management or navigate through office politics every day. What would be the best option for someone in my situation? W2 contracts through an agency? I wouldn't mind getting a little less pay as long as someone would take care of most of the marketing/overhead work involved."}
{"_id": "236589", "title": "Java Communcation API not available for Windows", "text": "I want to write a program in Java using RS-232. But I am unable to find the java.comm Package for the windows. Which library should I use for this purpose? http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javasebusiness/downloads/java-archive- downloads-misc-419423.html The only package avaiable here are not for Windows. Can you please guide me as I am new to this kind of development. Using rxtx + java I got this code from the internet               import java.util.Enumeration;     import gnu.io.CommPortIdentifier;     public class SimpleWrite      {     public static void main (String args[])     {              Enumeration port_list = CommPortIdentifier.getPortIdentifiers();         System.out.println(port_list);              while (port_list.hasMoreElements())         {             CommPortIdentifier port_id = (CommPortIdentifier)port_list.nextElement();                  if (port_id.getPortType() == CommPortIdentifier.PORT_SERIAL)             {                 System.out.println (\"Serial port:\" + port_id.getName());             }             else if (port_id.getPortType() == CommPortIdentifier.PORT_PARALLEL)             {                 System.out.println (\"Parallel port:\" + port_id.getName());             }             else                 System.out.println (\"Other port:\" + port_id.getName());         }     }      }      But this code gives me error of gnu.io.rxtx.properties has not been detected."}
{"_id": "190797", "title": "Do frameworks put too much abstraction?", "text": "I've been programming for a little under a year and have some experience writing systems applications, web apps, and scripts for businesses/organizations. However, one thing I've never really done is working with a framework like Django, Rails or Zend. Looking over the Django framework, I'm a little frustrated with how much is abstracted away in frameworks. I understand the core goals of DRY and minimal code, but some of this over-reliance on different modules and heavy abstraction of core functions feels like it:   1. Makes programs get dated really fast because of the ever-changing nature of modules/frameworks,   2. Makes code hard to understand because of the plethora of frameworks and modules available and all of their idiosyncrasies,   3. Makes code less logical unless you've read all of the documentation; i.e., I can read through some list comprehensions and conditional logic and figure out what a program is doing, but when you see functions that require passing in arbitrary strings and dictionaries, things get a little hard to understand unless you're already a guru in a given module; and:   4. Makes it difficult and tedious to switch between frameworks. Switching between languages is already a challenge, but it's manageable if you have a strong enough understanding of their core functionality/philosophy. Switching between frameworks seems to be more a matter of rote memorization, which in some ways seems to encourage the very inefficiency these frameworks were designed to eliminate.  Do we really need to put like 50 layers of abstraction on top of something as simple as a MySQL query? Why not use something like PHP's PDO interface, where prepared statements/input testing is handled but the universally understandable SQL query is still a part of the function? Are those abstractions really useful? Isn't feature bloat making them useless, making applications more difficult compared to similar applications written without using a framework?"}
{"_id": "176196", "title": "Static analysis, dynamic analysis and testing", "text": "Based on answers I have received here and then confirmed in some authoritative sources (not ISTQB which seems to be too vague), there are 3 activities:   * Static analysis    * Dynamic analysis    * Testing But is there any reason why we cannot combine all of that as \"testing\"? I mean, even a dynamic analysis review of a program to look for memory leaks is a kind of testing, right?"}
{"_id": "176197", "title": "A little code to allow word substitution depending on user", "text": "I'm creating a demo web app in html in order for people to physically see and comment on the app prior to committing to a proper build. Whilst the proper app will be database driven, my demo is just standard html with some JavaScript effects. What I do want to demonstrate is that different user group will see different words. For example, imagine I have an html sentence that says: > This will cost \u00a3100 to begin. What I need to some way of identifying that if the user has deemed themselves to be from the US, the sentence says: > This will cost $100 to begin. This requirement is peppered throughout the pages but I'm happy to add each one manually. So I envisage some code along the lines of 'first, remove the [boot US] trunk' where the UK version is 'first remove the boot' but the code is saying that the visitor needs the US version. It then looks up boot (in an Access database perhaps) and sees that the table says for boot for US, display 'trunk'. I'm not a programmer but I can normally cobble together scripts so I'm hoping someone may have a relatively easy solution in JavaScript, CSS or ASP. To recap: I have a number of words or short sentences that need to appear differently and I'm happy to manually insert each one if necessary (but would be even better if the words were automatically changed). And I need a device which allows me to tell the pages to choose the US version, or for example, the New Zealand version."}
{"_id": "190792", "title": "Streamlining ASP.Net MVC deployment?", "text": "I own a VPS with Windows Server 2012 on it. I can install whatever I want on it. In the past when deploying an ASP.Net MVC project, I would right click the project in the solution and `Publish` it. I would then copy over the files to the IIS folder and that would be a `deployment` for me. But this is no longer something I want to do. There has to be an easier way right? How can I streamline the deployment process? I'm 100% in the dark on this subject with .NET. Can I set something up on my server so I can `Web Deploy` to my VPS? Or is there a better alternative? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "97468", "title": "solve TOR edge node problem by using .onion proxy?", "text": "I would like to improve the TOR network, where the exit nodes are a vulnerability to concealing traffic. From my understanding, traffic to .onion sites are not decrypted by exit nodes, so therefore - in theory - a .onion site web proxy could be used to further anonymize traffic. Yes/no? perhaps you have insight into the coding and routing behind these concepts to elaborate on why this is a good/not good idea."}
{"_id": "196659", "title": "ACID compliant Database that isn't NoSQL?", "text": "I'm not necessarily asking if a NoSQL database can be ACID compliant, which has been asked here: Is there any NoSQL that is ACID compliant? I'm wondering if we have a database either now or in the future that is wanting or is another option to a traditional RDBMS? I know NoSQL was supposed to be the big thing and RDBMS were supposed to go by the wayside and so forth (I've read I dunno how many articles on it). But that never really solved the issue of data that was very strict and had to be kept consistent (like bank transactions... stuff like that). So when RDBMS was \"supposedly\" supposed to go to the wayside... what was supposed to replace this Data that had to be strict?"}
{"_id": "227651", "title": "Flat organizations vs hierarchical for software development", "text": "My organization was flat two years ago, and people felt that the general manager had disproportionate almost dictatorial powers. Also the general manager didn't have time to coach employees, so some employees were dysfunctional and nothing was done about them. However on the plus side everyone was involved in the decision making, thus motivation was very high. So what do you think about flat vs hierarchical organizational structures in software development?"}
{"_id": "167882", "title": "Understanding clojure keywords", "text": "I'm taking my first steps with Clojure. Otherwise, I'm somewhat competent with JavaScript, Python, Java, and a little C. I was reading this artical that describes destructuring vectors and maps. E.g.               => (def point [0 0])     => (let [[x y] point]     =>   (println \"the coordinates are:\" x y))     the coordinates are: 0 0      but I'm having a difficult time understanding keywords. At first glance, they seem really simple, as they just evaluate to themselves:               => :test     :test      But they seem to be used is so many different ways and I don't understand how to think about them. E.g., you can also do stuff like this:               => (defn full-name [& {first :first last :last}]     =>   (println first last))     => (full-name :first \"Tom\" :last \"Brennan\")     Tom Brennan     nil      This doesn't seem intuitive to me. I would have guessed the arguments should have been something more like:               (full-name {:first \"Tom\" :last \"Brennan\"})      because it looks like in the function definition that you're saying \"no required arguments, but a variable number of arguments comes in the form of a single map\". But it seems more like you're saying \"no required arguments, but a variable number of arguments comes which should be a list of alternating keywords and values... ?\" I'm not really sure how to wrap my brain around this. Also, things like this confuse me too:               => (def population {:humans 5 :zombies 1000})     => (:zombies population)     1000     => (population :zombies)     1000      How do maps and keywords suddenly become functions? If I could get some clarification on the use of keywords in these two examples, that would be really helpful. **Update** I've also seen http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3337888/clojure- named-arguments and while the accepted answer is a great demonstration of how to use keywords with destructuring and named arguments, I'm really looking more for understanding how to think about them--why the language is designed this way and how I can best internalize their use."}
{"_id": "90119", "title": "Am I overusing trees as a model or are they just very common?", "text": "I'm working on a project and I've found that I've modeled the two largest components as trees. My main uses so far are:   1. Generically model physical containers (and sub containers, sub sub containers etc)   2. Model liquid samples (and sub samples, and sample derivatives - and subs of those, etc) I now need to model some events based on the shipment of samples e.g. collected at location X, when arrive at processing centre do Y It now seems natural to model the events as a tree to denote which events follow on from others. I'm starting to wonder if I am just seeing trees everywhere because I want to, or if its a legit approach? **Edit To Answer Some Points Raised** Everyone seems to agree with trees for the containers. For the liquid samples, although there are various types - what I really need to track is parentage so that given any sample, I can quickly find all things that derived from it in some way. I have been told I can assume that samples will not be combined so all sub samples (or derivatives) will have only 1 parent. As to the events, yeah I think I was just going for a tree for ease. It doesn't make much sense to me after reading comments and further thought. Thanks all for the input."}
{"_id": "152266", "title": "Are symbolic programming and metaprogramming the same thing?", "text": "Are symbolic programming and metaprogramming the same thing? I've always read about symbolic programming while using Mathematica, but I've never searched about it's meaning, I've searched about it today and I found that both concepts are similar, are there any differences?"}
{"_id": "57894", "title": "Ever taught yourself drawing/art skills?", "text": "I often see programmers advise non-tech people that they should 'just learn to code' if they want to execute their big idea, saying it's not that hard to get the ball rolling. However, while as programmers we can be adept at writing websites including backends and CMSs etc., there's still a great need for the thing **to look nice.** Usually we can leverage clipart and templates etc. and do some image editing to get by. But being able to draw original art yourself would be a big advantage I'm guessing. So my question is has anyone here tried to brush up on their art skills to help with the design aspects of their projects? I know some people have 'always' been good at art, or at least been good at drawing since their highschool days, but I'm curious about anyone who went from being bad at drawing, to regularly completing original art work that went into production on a site or application front-end."}
{"_id": "29344", "title": "JIT compiler for C, C++, and the likes", "text": "Is there any just-in-time compiler out there for compiled languages, such as C and C++? (The first names that come to mind are Clang and LLVM! But I don't think they currently support it.) Explanation: I think the software could benefit from runtime profiling feedback and aggressively optimized recompilation of hotspots at runtime, even for compiled-to-machine languages like C and C++. Profile-guided optimization does a similar job, but with the difference a JIT would be more flexible in different environments. In PGO you run your binary prior to releasing it. After you released it, it would use no environment/input feedbacks collected at runtime. So if the input pattern is changed, it is probe to performance penalty. But JIT works well even in that conditions. However I think it is controversial wether the JIT compiling performance benefit outweights its own overhead."}
{"_id": "142177", "title": "How is JavaScript insecure, and what are the main methods used to deal with that?", "text": "I just read about Caja, which is a \"sanitized\" version of JavaScript. But I'm wondering - what is the big problem with JavaScript(it seems so widely used )? Just how dangerous is it?"}
{"_id": "21412", "title": "Why I'm not selected in an interview?", "text": "I'm working in development for 4 years, and 3.5 in PHP - why I don't seem to be able to be selected in an interview. I want to know what special things the interviewer wants to see in candidates - for senior PHP developer roles. Interviewer asks me 10 questions and I'm able to answer only 5. Does selection depend on these things? It doesn't mean that I can't solve the problem, I can google the question, I can ask on forums. Why don't they understand that a man can't remember all the answers for each and every question? Especially programming ones. Please advise."}
{"_id": "142175", "title": "Introducing functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages", "text": "This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only **some** FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do **some** FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just **some basic** FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with **some** functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in understanding and using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain **FP-idioms** in their non-FP language? **IMPORTANT NOTE** Just in case (because I have seen several _language wars_ on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP."}
{"_id": "63269", "title": "Why would I choose Unity over Autofac", "text": "I'm looking to start a new application and I want to use Dependency Injection. I have a lot of \"Microsoft is the only way to go guys\" in our shop so of course Unity is the way they wanted to go. However I am leaning more towards Autfac because of its speed and its Module feature. I found the speed results on this page. If you use Autofac or Unity can you give me some solid reasons not to use Unity and to use Autofac over Unity? If not, can you point me into a good direction to do some research on bringing back to our next meeting?"}
{"_id": "142173", "title": "Why do computer architecture textbooks prefer MIPS architecture?", "text": "I have read a lot of computer architecture textbooks, and I wonder why most of them (if not all) used MIPS as the architecture to teach. Why MIPS and not Intel or AMD or something else? What makes the architecture suitable for teaching?"}
{"_id": "176222", "title": "Is adding in the header the license type enough to say: \"my code is licensed\"?", "text": "I read on various sites about licenses. I did just put the license type in the header file (in my case a javascript file, open-source):               /*      * \"codeName\" \"version\"      * http://officialsite.com/      *      * Copyright 2012 \"codeName\"      * Released under the \"LICENSE NAME\" license      * http://officialsite.com/LICENSE NAME      */           javascript code      ...      In the same folder I leave a copy of the license. The listing of the folder looks like this:               * codeName.js     * LICENSE      In the file `LICENSE` is the full text of the license my code uses. What I cannot find anywhere that says is this is enough to say _my code is licensed_ (the case of open-source). Is something more required?"}
{"_id": "223826", "title": "Are for loops supposed to be read inward or outward?", "text": "for (i = 0; i < 3; i++)      {         for (j = 0; j < 4; j++)         {             cout << arr2d[i][j] << \"\\t\";         }             cout << endl;         .....      Like that for example. Do you read the for loop inward-out (starting from `for (j = 0; j < 4; j++)`) or outward-in (starting from `for (i = 0; i < 3; i++)`) Just wondering. :D"}
{"_id": "211680", "title": "A question about password storage concept", "text": "My previous question is here - A question about storing passwords This question is somewhat related to my previous one but with some new doubts. Take for example Windows. I've heard that Windows stores passwords in NTLM hashes somewhere inside the registry (if I'm not wrong). There are programs that crack the NTLM hashes to recover the passwords (brute-force method) in- case you've forgotten them or just want to hack someone's PC. Why don't they just replace the NTLM hashes in the registry with something common like - NTLM hash of 'password'? This was just an example for your understanding. I'm trying to learn, how large programs store, change or verify passwords without any hacker/attacker being able to read them?"}
{"_id": "211682", "title": "Is a large increase in velocity realistic in a Scrum environment?", "text": "My manager has recently really been pushing to use velocity as a target and measure of productivity. We are currently working at an average velocity of 50 story points. My manager wants us to increase it by 40% to 70 story points (with no increase in team members). If we don't achieve this increase he wants us to deliver a full break down explaining why. The whole idea of measuring team performance by velocity and using it as a target seems wrong to me, but I am finding it difficult to explain why. Any help? Why isn't this the right way to measure and incentivize productivity?"}
{"_id": "211683", "title": "Implementing User Authentication on an N-Tier Web Application", "text": "_I appreciate all help and feedback. Parts bolded are critical parts if this is too verbose. Perhaps it will help to mention I am a green developer. I have found some useful info from related questions posted here and on Stack Overflow but nothing that felt 100%._ ## Background Currently at work we are developing a web application with strict constraints set forth by the client. Normally we are a Rails shop, but the client really wanted to work with us. Thus to fit into their architecture we will be using ASP.NET. We are not very experienced with ASP.NET but some of the team including myself have used .NET for desktop applications. This application is three tiered and includes:   * Public facing server(s)   * Web services server(s)   * Data server(s) The client is expecting high demand and they may have multiple servers in any one of the tiers. There is a firewall between every tier. From my understanding this is a very common set up. **A core goal is to minimize trips over the wire from the public facing server to the database.** ## The Problem **How do we handle user authentication without hampering performance on an N-Tier application with potentially many servers at each layer?** ## What We've Done so Far We toyed with the idea of using view state but ultimately felt like this would be a poor idea. Of course we are not opposed to re-visiting view state, but feel that view state offers no benefits over cookies and simply makes it harder for a user to have multiple tabs of our application open. I have been exploring the path of using the default session state with a custom implemented session store. **The default session state tends to generate multiple requests going over the wire. Logging in and out this is okay, but when the user is using the app we do not want this.** The custom session store helps minimize impact, but not by enough. ## Conclusion & Possible Idea Since trips to the database will be inevitable on almost all requests once inside the application, perhaps giving the user a key on successful login is the best way to go. Then when the user requests a new page, or posts a new page we could send that key with the related SQL transaction for the request and validate the key. I believe this will simplify the code base immensely. So to re-iterate the problem: **How do we handle user authentication without hampering performance on an N-Tier application with potentially many servers at each layer?** Does the idea above sound like a solid implementation? Thanks,   Jonathon"}
{"_id": "62798", "title": "How to lock items when we do check out in commerce applications", "text": "I have a specific requirement. Lets say we have 3 items and a user has selected all 3 items to buy. I need to lock the 3 items (meaning the other people who want to buy the same items cannot view it) for around 10 minutes. How do I implement this? I am developing a Java web app using Hibernate and struts."}
{"_id": "211688", "title": "Use a service layer with MVC", "text": "If a controller gets to fat and model instantation starts to add up a service layer could be used.   * If I just wrap the logic inside a service class I will get a bunch of Services with one/two methods. This feels like a code smell. Any best practice regarding this?   * Can a service instantiate models?   * If a service instantiates models the services can't be unit tested. They can only be covered by integration tests?"}
{"_id": "193432", "title": "The best way to store dictionary from file", "text": "I'm working on a translator in C++. Basically I want to parse the file with translations and store it in my program, so I can **perform search through the words and simply access the corresponding word**. My file will look like that:               word|translation     second word|second translation      etc. It doesn't have to be `|` as delimiter and the word can contain spaces. So after I store it in my program I want to search for a word and get the corresponding word easily. The question is, what is 'the best' way to store this dictionary? Should I use dynamic structures and link them? Maybe vectors? Or should I use two- dimensional array to store the 2 strings? Could you please propose to me how the structure will look like?"}
{"_id": "67568", "title": "How can one use git-flow effectively on a project in which more than one major version is being maintained?", "text": "I've migrated several of my projects over to the git flow work flow, and I'm loving it. However, I haven't found a best practice that keeps things flowing as smoothly when working with a project in which more than one major version is maintained at a time. _Specifically, I'm not maintaining a \"free version\" and a \"paid version\" or any other parallel model, I'm talking about a project in which Version 1 gets released, and remains supported with minor versions (1.1, 1.2, etc.) until Version 3 has been released, at which point 2 and 3 would be maintained, until 4 is released...you get the idea._ How have you, or would you, maintain two or more supported versions of a project at once in a gitflow workflow?"}
{"_id": "67561", "title": "Dealing with resistance to testing code", "text": "I've recently switched jobs. At my previous job, everyone wrote tests and we were all in a happy place. In my new role, I've been asked to setup CI and testing. I'm experiencing some resistance to testing from some developers and wondered if anyone had experienced this and had strategies for dealing with resistance?"}
{"_id": "255866", "title": "What is meant by \"code rot\"?", "text": "Please say that 'code rots' if you don't clean it. What does that mean? Obviously code is text, not an organism that can change itself. So why does code 'rot' if you don't touch it? What makes it 'rot' and what does it actually mean? Please explain, examples would be welcome."}
{"_id": "187723", "title": "code review with git-flow and github", "text": "With regular git and github I can do a code review by simply creating a pull request of the feature branch I'm working on to the master branch. How would I do code reviews with git-flow? With workflow like \"git flow feature finish` I'm confused as to where the code review actually happens and how git-flow or git can facilitate that review."}
{"_id": "187722", "title": "Are there any empirical studies about the effects of commenting source code on software quality, maintainability and developer productivity?", "text": "I am an advocate of commenting on source code and documenting software products. It is my personal experience and observation that working on source code that is rigorously commented has helped me in different ways when I have had to grow software or maintain it. However there's another camp that says commenting is ultimately worthless or its value is questionable. Numerous proponents of coding without commenting argue that:   * If a piece of code is well-written, it is self explanatory and hence does not need commenting   * If a piece of code is not self-explanatory, then refactor it and make it self-explanatory so that it does not need any comments   * Your test suite is your live documentation   * Over time code and comments get out of sync and it becomes another source of headaches   * Agile says working code is more important than piles of documentation, so we can safely ignore writing comments To me this is just dogma. Again, my personal observation has been that software written by teams of smart and experienced developers ultimately end up with a considerable amount of code that is not self-explanatory. Again, the Java API, Cocoa API, Android API, etc. show that if you want to write and maintain quality documentation, it is possible. Having said all these, conversations about pros and cons of documentation and commenting on source code that are based on personal beliefs usually do not end well and lead to no satisfying conclusions. As such I am looking for academic papers and empirical studies about the effects of software documentation, especially commenting source code, on its quality and maintainability as well as its effects on team productivity. Have you stumbled upon such articles and what's been the outcome of them, if any?"}
{"_id": "193381", "title": "How does the ETVDX model fit in with project management?", "text": "In a lecture, the lecturer described the following model : E - entry (the preconditions to a task).   T - task - doing the task   V - verifying the tasks quality   D - Delivering the tasks   X - Exit.   or ETVDX If anyone is familiar with this 'generic compliance model', how does it fit into software development exactly? I presume it's equivalent to the waterfall model of negotiating requirements > defining/decompose stage > estimating effort > estimating resources > developing schedule."}
{"_id": "251842", "title": "Frog crossing N lane road problem", "text": "Problem says that: > There are `N` lanes, and the speed of each lane is given. There are many > cars in all the lanes and the start position and the length of each car and > its corresponding lane is given. There is a frog which can do 2 functions: > `wait()` or `jump()`. Find if there is a path for the frog to go from lane > `1` to lane `N` without getting hit by any of the moving cars. I am not able to solve it. I took the data structures `speed[1..n]` to denote speed of cars at `i`th lane, `length[1..n]` denoting length of cars, `start[1..n]` denoting starting position of cars. Then I took starting lane and on the basis of time calculations I decided whether to jump or wait. **My algorithm** : for each lane   1. I will assume that it is safe to jump to the next lane.   2. Then I will calculate the time period within which frog can be hit (time when I will add car length in total distance and time when i will not add car length.)   3. Now if frog will reach to the next lane within that time period then it is good to wait on the current lane.   4. While waiting I will also check whether it will be hit by the car in current lane or not. But in some cases my algorithm will not work. How should I structure my code to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "168688", "title": "How to start competitive programming?", "text": "I have been practicing coding for a while, but the problem is that it takes me a lot of time to write a solution for the problems. I want to ask if competitive programming can help me in improving this. If yes, then how should I start and from which web sites could I use (like TopCoder)? I obviously won't be able to solve very hard problems for now. What should I do? If no, what else should I do? I also have another problem that I want to learn coding but the thing is that I feel that I am not very good at it. What should I do? It's like bugging me from inside. I know some people may not find this question informative but please at least allow me to get an answer."}
{"_id": "149478", "title": "Why is Invariance, Covariance and Contravariance necessary in typed languages", "text": "Ok not really sure if I'm right. I only recently learned that I needed to have contravariant interface to be able to pass that interface as a parameter in C# and this feature was only added in .NET 4.0. So obviously there is some reason you can't do this Covariant or Invariant interfaces and it probably has something to do with passing in, getting out the generic class. I'm not really sure what the limitation here is, and know that I've seen where Contravariant interface can be used where the others can't where can I use Covariant (when is that neccesary?). This is all out of curiosity (I'm very interested in programming concepts surrounding some languages). I would love to see (link would be fine) some examples of why it is necessary to use these features, what would break if you would allow covariant/invariant into contravariant scene and vice versa and where each one shines."}
{"_id": "157729", "title": "Is it better to use multiple html pages or just change content on the same page using JavaScript?", "text": "Is it better to use multiple html pages and link them together with `href` or just change content on the same page using JavaScript? I am thinking of how to layout a page and I don't have a lot of content. It would probably be about three of for pages if I just used all html. If I toggled and swapped bits of html around using JavaScript, I could probably fit it all on one page, and it would be a bit \"cooler\", in that it's more of an application, dynamic, etc. But I'm just wondering what the best way to go here? Is it horrible to have to much JavaScript \"squashed\" to one document? How do you know where to draw the line when thinking about this?"}
{"_id": "158919", "title": "Are these steps enough to put my bash script under GPL 3?", "text": "I have written a bash script I would like to put under GPL v3. I've read the GNU documentation on How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs and How to use GNU licenses for your own software. Still, I'm not quite sure what to put there and which artifacts are needed. So far, I did the following:   1. Put a file called `COPYING` (which contains the license) into the project folder   2. At the beginning of my script, I attached the following to my script: > up is a bash function to simplify vertical file system navigation. > > Copyright (C) 2012 Oliver Weiler > > This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it > under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free > Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) > any later version. > > This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT > ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for > more details. > > You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with > this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/. Is this all I have to do? Is putting the licence into a separate file actually needed, if the notice in the script file links to it?"}
{"_id": "162743", "title": "Applying for job: how to showcase work done for (private) past clients?", "text": "I want to apply for my first \"real\" (read: non-freelance) Ruby on Rails job. I've built several apps already. My best work (also the most logically complicated app) was for a freelance client, and I'd like to show it to potential employers. Only problem is: it isn't online anymore. And I've lost touch with the client. How can I include this work in my portfolio? * * * **About the app:** It's a Facebook game. The client's business idea for this app was not the best. It was never going to make any money. I think it was kind of a vanity side project for him. The logo and graphics are nice-looking, though, and were designed by the client. I've actually spent a lot of time recently recoding most of the app, and adding a full test suite. I want to showcase the BDD / TDD skills I've acquired. * * * I'm not very familiar with the etiquette (/law?) concerning this situation. Can I just put my new version of the app up at a free Heroku URL (perhaps with a \"credits\" section, where I credit the ideas and graphic designs to my former client)? **NOTE:** Again, this is just to show potential employers. I am **not** trying to market the app as my idea, or attract any users. Can I put some or all of the code on GitHub? What if I don't put the code up publicly, but merely send a tarball to potential employers? Do I need to ask permission from my former client (and what if he says no)? The last thing I want to do is get in any legal trouble, or offend people I'm trying get a job from. But I believe that my work and experience on _this app_ are my highest recommendation for getting a job."}
{"_id": "157720", "title": "What are the disadvantages of starting an opensource project if one is not an experienced programmer?", "text": "I have lots of ideas for products to be built. The problem is that I have less than a year of professional work experience and I am afraid of getting **judged negatively in the future** based on what I produce now. I have no clue if my code is any good. I am not familiar with any of the coding patterns. All I know is to build products that work. I want to have a public profile in github for my future projects and I will try hard to make sure that it is well commented, is optimized and clean. These are the things that I fear getting exposed publicly:   1. My code may not be highly optimized.   2. Wrong usage of certain libraries or functions which coincidentally get the job done.   3. Not knowing or following any coding pattern.   4. Lots of bugs/ not considering corner, edge cases   5. Fundamental lack of understanding and application of certain concepts such as thread safety, concurrency issues in multi-threaded programming, etc. Should I go ahead and get started or continue to stick to building stuff locally and privately till I get more experience. I don't want the mistakes made here to haunt my career prospects in the long run."}
{"_id": "157722", "title": "What sorts of software patent issues should one be aware of when writing software?", "text": "**The scope of this question is intended to be global in nature:** techniques (approaches to solving a problem, such as the use of a layer palette), operations (actions that the software or its user can take, such as using a paint bucket tool to fill in a selection or otherwise bounded area), etc. If the development process comes into play, such as Person A saying \"We need to implement this one cool feature in Software X\" and perhaps any study of that functionality via decompilation, hex-editing, etc. (vs. a more genuine, independent process of imagining functionality or writing up the spec), then that would be appropriate to mention. I am in the process of creating a substantial application, and I don't know how much of a problem software patents will be. I'm of the impression that no one can patent a \"paint bucket\" tool (though I wouldn't know the legal justification behind why that can't be patented), but perhaps if you stray much further from that, you'll get hit with a lawsuit? I really have no idea! In my case, I'm not even looking at competitor's software for this very reason. I did sit down with someone who uses software that is currently on the market long enough to know that I can easily demolish it, but I would just consider that market research. The only things that excited me during that little demo session were instances where I would dream up some functionality and his response would be \"Yeah, that would be really useful, and no, this software can't do that.\" There was no \"I really need to copy that feature!\" because, well, the application was garbage for the most part, despite it price tag."}
{"_id": "158917", "title": "Add complex customization to form or create two forms?", "text": "I'm working in a WPF application that both imports and exports delimited text files. At both ends, there is a UserControl which encapsulates some logic about delimiter configuration. It has some controls for individually selecting delimiters, and a 'Presets' dropdown for quickly selecting certain common combinations such as CSV. I've been tasked with modifying the export configuration dialog. They want the presets feature modified to also cover some text formatting options that aren't related to delimiters. The changes should only appear in the export configuration dialog, because the settings in question aren't applicable to importing. They will involve both adding some new controls, which isn't too bad. But there will also need to be some additional presets which aren't available on the import dialog, and their presence may impact the behavior of the dialog overall. I'm unsure of the best way to do this. Three options come to mind, but of course I might be missing one:   1. Clone the UserControl and make the requisite changes to it. Each dialog now has a separate control. However, both controls will have a lot of logic in common, so I'm uncomfortable with this from a DRY perspective.   2. Keep the single UserControl but throw in a 'mode' property. Based on its setting, show or hide certain controls, swap out the ItemsSource for the 'Presets' dropdown, etc. This is attractive since it involves less copy-and-paste, but at the cost of the single control being more complicated overall, and perhaps more difficult to maintain on down the road.   3. Redo the whole thing's architecture so that the behavior-related aspects are properly managed in a separate ViewModel. This new ViewModel should be programmatically configurable to represent the different working modes (basically by just swapping out the list of available Presets, each represented as an instance of a Preset class). Create two different sets of UI to represent the different layouts, with one simply not having the controls for options it doesn't care about.  My gut instinct is that #3 is the best option. I'm concerned that it's an excessive effort, though, and that I'm just being too picky about one of the first two options. Or that there's some other pitfall with it I haven't thought of. I have a bit of a history with this UserControl and my personal feeling is that it's kind of a PITA to maintain, so I want to be cautious in case I'm overeager for the rewrite for emotional reasons."}
{"_id": "209943", "title": "Switching between Azure Mobile Services vs my own implementation. Will UIDs change?", "text": "I'm looking at Azure Mobile Services, particularly the Authentication part (which I believe relies exclusively on OAUTH 1 or 2). I want to make sure that my application isn't tightly coupled to the service and I can bring authentication back in-house using either of the following methods:   1. I use a version of Azure Mobile Services built for 2012 R2 (which may include support for AMS + OAUTH)   2. I use a local DLL such as .NET Open OAuth to handle the authentication. My theory is that UIDs are portable between all three scenarios (the third being Azure Mobile Services itself), because I manually would be typing in the same secret into each provider. My second gut reaction is that any Windows Live IDs will not have the same URL and aren't portable in these scenarios (based on my Azure ACS and LiveID experience). However since I've noticed OAuth support in .NET OpenID I think I could be mistaken. **Question** Could someone more well versed in authentication, and Microsoft products let me know if authentication can be \"moved\" to and from Azure Mobile Services if needed? The main contention point I believe will be differing user IDs after the switch which would mean that after migration, users will loose their previous history, etc. in my application."}
{"_id": "209944", "title": "What arguments can I use to justify the use of either XML or JSON to store and transmit object data?", "text": "My project lead considers both of these approaches to be unnecessary overhead. I have been involved in and have witnessed a lot of talk around XML vs JSON, but this is the first time that I have heard an argument against BOTH. We are using c# in .Net 4. We'll be storing data in a sql server database on the server and also on mobile devices. I've heard all the arguments between the two but now I need to understand the arguments for and against the use of any object notation to store data - my project lead prefers csv format."}
{"_id": "114885", "title": "Which functional language is good for a beginner?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Choosing a functional programming language I am a C++ programmer looking to learn a functional language as a hobby and out of sheer curiosity. I am not looking to be an expert, but just to get a grasp on functional programming. This language should be simple to learn and have good tutorials and resources for beginners. Are there any such languages?"}
{"_id": "151761", "title": "Using visitor pattern with large object hierarchy", "text": "**Context** I've been using with a hierarchy of objects (an expression tree) a \"pseudo\" visitor pattern (pseudo, as in it does not use double dispatch) :                public interface MyInterface      {           void Accept(SomeClass operationClass);      }           public class MyImpl : MyInterface       {           public void Accept(SomeClass operationClass)           {                   operationClass.DoSomething();                operationClass.DoSomethingElse();                // ... and so on ...           }      }      This design was, however questionnable, pretty comfortable since the number of implementations of MyInterface is significant (~50 or more) and I didn't need to add extra operations. Each implementation is unique (it's a different expression or operator), and some are composites (ie, operator nodes that will contain other operator/leaf nodes). Traversal is currently performed by calling the Accept operation on the root node of the tree, which in turns calls Accept on each of its child nodes, which in turn... and so on... But the time has come where I need to **add a new operation** , such as pretty printing :                public class MyImpl : MyInterface       {           // Property does not come from MyInterface           public string SomeProperty { get; set; }                public void Accept(SomeClass operationClass)           {                   operationClass.DoSomething();                operationClass.DoSomethingElse();                // ... and so on ...           }                public void Accept(SomePrettyPrinter printer)           {                printer.PrettyPrint(this.SomeProperty);           }      }          I basically see two options :   * Keep the same design, adding a new method for my operation to each derived class, at the expense of maintainibility (not an option, IMHO)   * Use the \"true\" Visitor pattern, at the expense of extensibility (not an option, as I expect to have more implementations coming along the way...), with about 50+ overloads of the Visit method, each one matching a specific implementation ? **Question** Would you recommand using the Visitor pattern ? Is there any other pattern that could help solve this issue ?"}
{"_id": "151765", "title": "How do \"custom software companies\" deal with technical debt?", "text": "**What are \"custom software companies\"?** By \"custom software companies\" I mean companies that make their money primarily from building custom, one off, bits of software. Example are agencies or middle-ware companies, or contractors/consultants like Redify. **What's the opposite of \"custom software companies\"?** The opposite of the above business model are companies that focus on long term products, whether they be deployable desktop/mobile apps, or SaaS software. **A sure fire way to build up technical debt:** I work for a company that attempts to focus on a suite of SaaS products. However, due to certain constraints we sometimes end up bending to the will of certain clients and we end building bits of custom software that can only be used for that client. This is a sure fire way to incur technical debt. Now we have a bit of software to maintain that adds nothing to our core product. **If custom work is a sure fire way to build technical debt, how do agencies handle it?** So that got me thinking. Companies who don't have a core product as the center of their business model, well they're always doing custom software work. How do they cope with the notion of technical debt? How does it not drive them into _technical bankruptcy_?"}
{"_id": "187091", "title": "Avoiding ubiquitous language clashes", "text": "I have been reading DDD Quickly and wondered about how to avoid naming clashes with technical terms and domain terms. For example, if I commonly used the repository pattern (with classes such as AddressRepository), but a customer also has something called a repository in their domain. How would I best avoid confusing the two?"}
{"_id": "168534", "title": "How to implement isValid correctly?", "text": "I'm trying to provide a mechanism for validating my object like this:               class SomeObject {         private $_inputString;         private $_errors=array();              public function __construct($inputString) {             $this->_inputString = $inputString;               }              public function getErrors() {             return $this->_errors;         }              public function isValid() {             $isValid = preg_match(\"/Some regular expression here/\", $this->_inputString);             if($isValid==0){                 $this->_errors[]=  'Error was found in the input';             }             return $isValid==1;         }          }      Then when I'm testing my code I'm doing it like this:                   $obj = new SomeObject('an INVALID input string');              $isValid = $obj->isValid();         $errors=$obj->getErrors();              $this->assertFalse($isValid);         $this->assertNotEmpty($errors);      Now the test passes correctly, but I noticed a design problem here. What if the user called `$obj->getErrors()` before calling `$obj->isValid()`? The test will fail because the user has to validate the object first before checking the error resulting from validation. I think this way the user depends on a sequence of action to work properly which I think is a bad thing because it exposes the internal behaviour of the class. How do I solve this problem?   Should I tell the user explicitly to validate first? Where do I mention that?   Should I change the way I validate? Is there a better solution for this? UPDATE:   I'm still developing the class so changes are easy and renaming functions and refactoring them is possible."}
{"_id": "168532", "title": "How can I compute the Big-O notation for a given piece of code?", "text": "So I just took a data structure midterm today and I was asked to determine the run time, in Big O notation, of the following nested loop:               for (int i = 0; i < n-1; i++) {         for(int j = 0; j < i; j++2) {             //1 Statement         }     }      I'm having trouble understanding the formula behind determining the run time. I thought that since the inner loop has 1 statement, and using the series equation of: (n * (n - 1)) / 2, I figured it to be: 1n * (n-1) / 2. Thus equaling (n^2 - 1) / 2. And so I generalized the runtime to be O(n^2 / 2). I'm not sure this is right though haha, was I supposed to divide my answer again by 2 since j is being upped in intervals of 2? Or is my answer completely off?"}
{"_id": "187094", "title": "Should programmers talk with customers / users according to MSF / agile methods?", "text": "I've just read two statements that seem to be very different: > Des Weiteren ist mangelnde Kommunikation zwischen Programmierern und Nutzern > eine nicht zu vernachl\u00e4ssigende Quelle von unzureichenden Produkten. > > Translated: > > A lack of communication between programmers and users is a source of poor > [software] products. Source: de.wikipedia.org I think I have read something similar in CHAOS report of Standish Group. And > Insbesondere bei der Rolle Development ist Kontakt zum Kunden oder zu den > Benutzern nach Meinung des MSF geradezu zu unterbinden. > > Translated: > > According to MSF, especially the role \"Development\" should not have contact > to the customer or to the user. Source: msdn.microsoft.com This also makes sense, because as a programmer I want to have happy end users. So the user likes to have a new feature, I'll try to implement it. This could lead to feature creep. If I understand it correctly, MSF (Microsoft Solution Framework) tries to avoid this problem by a role that has contact to the customer (this is the product manager, the user experience role and maybe the testing role, isn't it?) and only one role that has contact to the development role (the program manager). **Question 1:** How do agile methods deal with the problem of feature creep? I read that the developers should have very strong contact with customers in agile methods and that one of the main problems in using scrum is to persuade the customer to get involved in the process. Does in SCRUM only the Product Owner have contact with the user / customer? Isn't this a problem, as the programmer might see different problems than the Product Owner? **Question 2:** Who does the requirements engineering in agile methods and MSF? **Question 3:** Do you validate in MSF / agile methods if your product does what the customer wants and the user needs before shipping it? How do you do it?"}
{"_id": "58541", "title": "mind map for programmers", "text": "How are mind maps useful for programmers in organizing the way they work?"}
{"_id": "28434", "title": "Spartan programming... What is it good for?", "text": "We are being forced to use Spartan programming on a project, to everybody's dismay. So I get it, it makes the methods really short and it handles the simple cases first. But is it really worth the price of the code looking like something out of the Obfuscated C Code contest? Can you see it being useful for something?"}
{"_id": "62139", "title": "best practice: setting up several IDE / frameworks (at file/dir level)", "text": "I don't know how to exactly search for this topic, so if there are a lot of answers to that, please just provide a link :) I'm getting a new laptop in a few weeks and am thinking about setting up a logical, easy-to-use and clean folder structure for coding from the beginning.(mixing everything coding related now)   My question is: Does your folder structure look like:   C:\\grails   C:\\Java\\jre-...   C:\\JAVA\\jdk-...   C:\\eclipse   ... etc   or do you always use the default directory?   or do you sort them, like: C:\\ide\\, C:\\framewor and C:\\CMS\\   Do you put the frameworks and ide on a separate partition? Do you map your projects accordingly? How do you name your projects and how is the saving file structure? Is there a really good way that I've missed? I mean I just have a handful of projects to take care of and I mostly just do some light coding or minor changes, and still I'm confused every time I try to find anything or am often surprised to find several older versions still active... A few information:     * Dual boot to a second partition is out of the question, I do like convenience (#1 reason for me to try programming: make things easier for me.)   * I'll be getting a SSD, so the space is limited.   * Running Windows 7 Prof- 64bit   * I'll need: Eclipse, NetBeans, Grails, Groovy, VisualStudio, Ruby, Perl.  Hopefully anyone has a good idea about that. It really annoys me and since I do have the opportunity to change that it's a good time to think about it."}
{"_id": "59494", "title": "Result class dependency", "text": "I have an object containing the results of a computation. This computation is performed in a function which accepts an input object and returns the result object. The result object has a print method. This print method must print out the results, but in order to perform this operation I need the original input object. I cannot pass the input object at printing because it would violate the signature of the print function. One solution I am using right now is to have the result object hold a pointer to the original input object, but I don't like this dependency between the two, because the input object is mutable. How would you design for such case ?"}
{"_id": "179475", "title": "In developing a soap client proxy, which return structure is easier to use and more sensible?", "text": "I'm writing (in PHP) a client/proxy for a SOAP web service. The return types are consistently wrapped in response objects that contain the return values. In many cases this make a lot of sense - for instance when multiple values are being returned:               GetDetailsResponse Object      (         Results Object         (             [TotalResults] => 10             [NextPage]     => 2         )              [Details] => Array         (             [0] => Detail Object             (                 [Id] => 1             )         )     )      But some of the methods return a single scalar value or a single object or array wrapped in a response object:               GetThingummyIdResponse Object     (         [ThingummyId] => 42     )      In some cases these objects might be pretty deep, so getting at properties within requires drilling down several layers:               $response->Details->Detail[0]->Contents->Item[5]->Id      And if I unwrap them before passing them back I can strip out a layer from consumers' code. I know I'm probably being a little bit of an Architecture Astronaut here, but the latter style really bug me, so I've been working through my code to have my proxy methods just return the scalar value to the client code where there's no absolute need for a wrapper object. My question is, am I actually making things more difficult for the consumers of my code? Would I be better off just leaving the return values wrapped in response objects so that everything is consistent, or is removing unneccessary layers of indirection/abstraction worthwhile?"}
{"_id": "73667", "title": "Mobile games: paid vs. ad-supported?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Which has more benefits when selling through mobile app stores: free or > paid? I'm working on a game, and I'm hoping to distribute it through the Android and/or Apple stores. The big decision that I have to make: do I charge money for the game? Or do I put ads in it? I really hate advertising, so I'd prefer not to subject my users to it, but I'll do it if that's the only way to make money. I'd like to hear from anyone who has experience distributing mobile apps. Also, from regular users of the Apple and Android stores; how easy do they make it for you to drop $0.99 on something?"}
{"_id": "144631", "title": "Is there any reason in a Java program for a special naming for a function arguments?", "text": "I'd like to know, why would I want to have a special prefixes for a function arguments, like \"p_name\", \"p_age\", \"p_sex\"? On the one hand it helps to distinguish parameter from local variable or field further in the function body, but would it help? On the other hand, I didn't saw such naming recommendations anywhere including official Java language conventions. Please advise any reasons for using such naming policy"}
{"_id": "175751", "title": "Print all values in a value object", "text": "I have to debug an issue which requires me to print all the values of a Value Object that is returned by a web service call. The Value object is a complex object in the sense, it has another object as its member which in turn has another object. Printing all the values by using get methods is cumbersome. So I was wondering if there is a way to break down the value object by any way to get to a primitive level like String or int or Date and print them all using one API? I had a look at the below question but my prob is that I don't have access to the source code of the value object. The sources are in obfuscated jar. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2413001/how-to-print-values-of-an-object- in-java"}
{"_id": "175750", "title": "Keeping up with upstream changes while adding small fixes or even major changes", "text": "Often I need to apply some small fixes (to make them run on my environment) or even change some parts of the software (to tailor it to my needs) to software from outside. However this obviously creates problem with updating said software, even when it changes nothing related to my fix. It would be easier when the software provided integration for some kind of plugins but more often than not it doesn't. What would be an ideal workflow regarding that? Most of the projects are git repos I pulled from outside. How should I apply my changes so that I can update painlessly? You can assume that external changes are much more often and larger than my own ones, so reviewing each one of them won't be a solution."}
{"_id": "175753", "title": "looking for a short explanation of fuzzy logic", "text": "I got the idea that basics of fuzzy logic are not that hard to grasp. And I got the feeling that someone might explain it to me in like 30 minutes. Just like I understand neural networks and am able to re-create the famous Xor problem. And go just beyond it and create 3 layer networks of x nodes. I'd like to understand fuzzy till a similar usefully level, in C# language. However the problem is face, I'd like to get concept right however I see many websites who include lots of errors in their basic explaining. Like for example showing pictures and use different numbers as shown in pictures to calculate, as if lots of people just copied stuff without noticing what they write down. While others for me go to deep in their math notation). To me that's very annoying to learn from. For me there is no need to re-invent wheel; Aforge already got a fuzzy logic framework. So what I am looking for are some good examples, good examples like how the neural XOR problem is solved. Is there anyone such a instructional resource out there; do you know a web page, or YouTube where it is shortly explained, what would you recommend me? Note this article comes close; but it just doesn't nail it for me. After that I downloaded a bunch of free PDF's but most are academic and hard to read for me (I'm not English and don't have a special math degree). (I've been looking around a lot for this, good starter material about it is hard to find)."}
{"_id": "179473", "title": "Asking potential developers to draw UML diagrams during the interview", "text": "Our interview process currently consists of several coding questions, technical questions and experiences at their current and previous jobs. Coding questions are typically a single method that does something (Think of it as fizzbuzz or reverse a string kind of question) We are planning on introducing an additional step where we give them a business problem and ask them to draw a flowchart, activity, class or a sequence diagram. We feel that our current interview process does not let us evaluate the candidate's thinking at a higher level (which is relevant for architect/senior level positions). To give you some context, we are a mid size software company with around 30 developers in the team. If you have this step in your interview process, how has it improved your interviewing veracity? If not, what else has helped you evaluate the candidates better from a technical perspective."}
{"_id": "79730", "title": "What should a self-taught/no experience programmer's resume look like?", "text": "I asked a question a while back about knowing when you're ready to look for a job and got positive replies. Now I'm working on writing up a resume to begin my job search. The title pretty much sums up the question, what should a self-taught programmer who has nothing but personal project experience put in a resume? PS. What I really want to ask is for someone to take a quick look at my resume(draft) but I know that's too specific here. Is there a place where I can ask this type of question? **EDIT:** Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I've finished a RC version and will hopefully be entering the job market soon."}
{"_id": "79737", "title": "Why are Oracle directories named /u01 /u02 etc...?", "text": "I've been working with the Oracle RDBMS for a few years and today, after installing one for the n-th time, I was left wondering, why do we install it in /u01, /u02, etc.? Of course you could install it somewhere else, but for some unknown reason, this convention is used everywhere and I haven't seen any serious Oracle installation in, for example, /opt Any history lesson I missed?"}
{"_id": "179479", "title": "Returning status code where one of many errors could have occured", "text": "I'm developing a PHP login component which includes functions to manipulate the User object, such as `$User->changePassword(string $old, string $new)` What I need some advice with is how to return a status, as the function can either succeed (no further information needs to be given) or fail (and the calling code needs to know why, for example incorrect password, database problem etc.) I've come up with the following ideas:   * Unix-style: return 0 on success, another code on failure. This doesn't seem particularly common in PHP and the language's type-coercion messes with this (a function returning FALSE on success?) This seems to be the best I can think of.   * Throw an exception on error. PHP's exception support is limited, and this will make life harder for anybody trying to use the functions.   * Return an array, containing a boolean for \"success\" or not, and a string or an int for \"failure status\" if applicable. None of these seem particularly appealing, does anyone have any advice or better ideas?"}
{"_id": "145582", "title": "Extend the API or use the same name as a class in the API?", "text": "I have been running into this problem more and more: I am not happy with the current API, and end up making my own class that does what I wish the API did; however, I don't extend the 'super class' as I don't feel it fully fits. I can't imagine that this is good practice, so should I just extend the 'super class' or should I name the class slightly different than what I feel the original class should have done? For example, in Java you end up writing ten lines of code just to read a file into a List, with each entry being one of the file. So again, in cases like this, should the class be renamed to something similar, or should it go ahead and just extend the class the include the behavior you wanted? It almost seems wrong to me to extend the API classes, but at the same time, by not doing so, you are defeating the point of inheritance in OOP."}
{"_id": "178707", "title": "Storing lots of large strings with frequent \"appends\" and few reads", "text": "In my current project, I need to store a very long ASCII string to each instance of a given object. This string will receive an 2 appends per minute and will not be retrieved so frequently. The worst case scenario is a 5-10MB string. I'll have thousands of instances of my object and I'm worried that storing all those strings in the filesystem would not be optimal, but I can't think of a better solution. Can anyone suggest an alternative? Maybe a key-value store? In this case, which one? Any other thoughts?"}
{"_id": "178700", "title": "If you have the full spec done, what is left for the developer to do?", "text": "I'm working in a small company, started as a developer and coded pieces of a big system being provided with detailed specs. Over five years I moved towards analyst position. I know how existing parts of the system are build, so when we need a new subsystem I know how to connect it to the existing things. So I analyse requirements for a new subsystem to be done, design a new module, then code main parts of it. After that me with my colleagues who are proper analysts write detailed specs for junior developers to finish the module. The problem is that I don't see a new job for myself. I realise that jack-of- all-trades isn't considered to be good, and I don't see getting myself a job exactly like this in a big company. But if I look for a developer job, then I would be somewhat like junior again? Because if I will be provided with detailed description of what software has to do, all that seems to be left for me is merely translating spec to the code, which is plain boring. But developer is considered to solve problems, so which problems are those supposed to be? Only pure technical problems I can imagine is performance optimization. So basically my question is - what problems developers are supposed to face and solve, if all decisions of how application should work to meet customers needs are considered to be an analyst job? What problems do you solve at work?"}
{"_id": "228910", "title": "Is This A Good Example Of Open Recursion?", "text": "I understand _open recursion_ as the process of a method on a class calling another method on a class using a keyword such as `this`, but whereby the method call may actually be bound to a sub class at run time. Is this a fair demonstration of open recursion?               class Sup {         go() {             alert('sup');         }              callGo() {             this.go();         }     }          class Sub extends Sup {         go() {             alert('sub');         }     }          var sub = new Sub();     sub.callGo();"}
{"_id": "228911", "title": "Guessing a phone number's country code", "text": "This is the problem I'm working with: given a phone number from anywhere in the world and some location information (state, province, possibly country name if I'm lucky, etc.), return the ISO country code for that number. For the purposes of this question, I will not focus on the location information, as that provides an alternative solution to determining the country code which doesn't even need to use the phone number anymore (though, it would be useful for validation purposes) When I first started working on the problem, I was hoping there was a deterministic way to figure this out because there was some sort of international standard out there. It became immediately apparent that one does not exist for phone numbers. There are standards within countries, between countries (NANP for example), but no unified international standard. Playing around with libphonenumbers for a few days, it seems to be able to provide accurate validation of a phone number if I'm given a country code (eg: CA for Canada, GB for United Kingdom, etc). The library provides two methods: `isPossibleNumber`, and `isValidNumberForRegion`. This is the code I'm using               boolean isValid;     PhoneNumber number;     PhoneNumberUtil util = PhoneNumberUtil.getInstance();          String numStr = \"(123) 456-7890\";     for (String r : util.getSupportedRegions())     {         try {             // check if it's a possible number             isValid = util.isPossibleNumber(numStr, r);             if (isValid)             {                 number = util.parse(numStr, r);                      // check if it's a valid number for the given region                 isValid = util.isValidNumberForRegion(number, r);                 if (isValid)                     System.out.println(r + \": \" + number.getCountryCode() + \", \" + number.getNationalNumber());             }         } catch (NumberParseException e)         {             e.printStackTrace();         }     }      So for example, if I took an arbitrary phone number like `+44 20 7930 4832` and ran it through the method, I would get the following output               GB: 44, 2079304832      Now, that's assuming I'm given the dialing code (sometimes it's there). If I weren't given the dialing code, I might just get something like `20 7930 4832`, and the results are not as pretty               DE: 49, 2079304832     US: 1, 2079304832     GB: 44, 2079304832     FI: 358, 2079304832     AX: 358, 2079304832     RS: 381, 2079304832     CN: 86, 2079304832     NZ: 64, 2079304832     IN: 91, 2079304832     IR: 98, 2079304832     JP: 81, 2079304832      Given a phone number, I can run it through all of the different rules for every country and filter the list down from 244 to around 20 or less if I'm lucky, but I'm not sure if there's anything else I could do to try and guess the country."}
{"_id": "148983", "title": "What are the advantages of Ceylon over Java?", "text": "Looking for the recent and powerful upcoming programming languages over net, I came across Ceylon. I dropped in at ceylon-lang.org and it says: > Ceylon is deeply influenced by Java. You see, we're fans of Java, but we > know its limitations inside out. Ceylon keeps the best bits of Java but > improves things that in our experience are annoying, tedious, frustrating, > difficult to understand, or bugprone. What are the advantages of Ceylon over Java?"}
{"_id": "197269", "title": "A weakness of the TDD method?", "text": "This is in summary the TDD method:   1. Write a test   2. check if thes test fails   3. write production code   4. run test I think that TDD as presented works only in ideal circumstances. I'll take a simple example: **Specification** : Write a program that calculates the square root of a number, the user must enter a number. If the number is negative, the program should display an error, and if the number is positive or zero the program should display the number whose square is the number entered, or for decimal number whose square is closest to the number entered. **Writing test**               class SquareRootTest {             private SquareRoot squareRoot;             public void testNegativeNumber() {               assertException(squareRoot.execute(-5);           }             public void testIntegerSquareRoot() {           assertEqual(squareRoot.execute(9),3);        }             public void testDecimalSquareRoot() {          assertEqual(squareRoot.execute(3),1.732);        }     }      **run failed test** **writing production code:**               class SquareRoot {           public double execute(Number number) {          if(number < 0)               throw exception;          if(number < 1)              return squareRootLessThanOne(number);           else              return squareRootGreaterThanOne(numner);        }          //private methods....          }      this is when writing production code, I find that I have to deal with the numbers lower than one differently from those numbers greater than 1. So I need to update my tests to reflect this. **Updating test**               class SquareRootTest {             public void testNegativeNumber() {                assertException(squareRoot.execute(-5));           }             public void testIntegerSquareRoot() {            assertEqual(squareRoot.execute(9),3);        }             public void testDecimalSquareRoot() {           assertEqual(squareRoot.execute(3),1.732);        }             public void testNumberLowerThanOne() {           assertEqual(squareRoot.execute(0.04),0.200);        }     }      If I had found a single algorithm to calculate the square root, I would not change my tests. The TDD method focuses solely on tests from specifications, yet there are tests that are derived from the implementation, particularly all conditional instructions and all instructions controlled by loops should normally be tested. These tests case can not be detected at the time of specification. My question: How does TDD will deal with this situation? or is effectivelly a weakness of the TDD?"}
{"_id": "188162", "title": "Repeatability of CPU-intensive benchmarks on NUMA hardware", "text": "Consider a benchmark of a C++ application. It does little or no I/O in proportion to its overall runtime -- it is compute-intensive. It is a single- threaded program. It pages/reads in all of its data at the outset, and then runs many iterations of the core task at hand, so as to average out cache or other ephemeral variations. We run it on a large, multi-core, Linux system with far more memory than it uses, which has a NUMA memory hierarchy. We run it on the machine when it is 'idle'. Of course, it has some number of the usual daemons floating around, but there should be plenty of cores and memory to spare to keep them happy. We observe a surprising (to us) range of variation in the wall-clock time that results. Can anyone suggest where to look for an explanation, or what to do to reduce the variation? uname:               Linux perf2.basistech.net 2.6.32-71.29.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Jun 27 19:49:27 BST 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux      numactl --show:               ~/ numactl --show     policy: default     preferred node: current     physcpubind: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15      cpubind: 0 1      nodebind: 0 1      membind: 0 1           ~/ numactl --hardware     available: 2 nodes (0-1)     node 0 cpus: 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14     node 0 size: 6144 MB     node 0 free: 2030 MB     node 1 cpus: 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15     node 1 size: 6134 MB     node 1 free: 144 MB     node distances:     node   0   1        0:  10  20        1:  20  10"}
{"_id": "91993", "title": "Are there tangible benefits to being a Microsoft MVP?", "text": "I have several certifications, MCPD, MCTS, MCAD, etc and I've learned that MVP is an award (just a title), not a certification. So if I wanted to get one of these, I'd have to spend valuable time on communities, sharing knowledge and providing answers to others for free, consistently, for _years_ , until finally someone special notices and rewards me. I imagine there'd be some personal benefits along the way, but supposing I achieved this goal and became an MVP, would this pay off financially in any way (career opportunities, higher pay scale, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "218912", "title": "How much difference does experience make?", "text": "I see many job adds which require at least x years experience. The question is how do you know when a candidate has the required years of experience? What do you expect from a person with x years experience (edit: effectively how do you check if the CV isn't lying without relying to skill checking)? What can a person with x years experience can do that one with y years (with y < x) cannot do (edit: assuming they have similar skills)? There can be cases with some passionate programmer with y years experience that has vast knowledge and worked on multiple projects and other programmer with x years experience (x > y) that has worked on few projects and doesn't have that much experience. Why can not it be reduced to something like this \"if you know this technology and you know how to do that stuff (be it design, communication, estimates etc.) then you are suitable for our job\"? I know you cannot hire a fresh graduate with 1 year experience for the post of an enterprise architect but I also see a problem with the facts that almost all ads ask experience. IMHO firstly passion should be taken into account. Firstly I did not know if the question is suitable for this site but since there is a tag for recruiting and experience I believe it has a place here."}
{"_id": "144188", "title": "Is it just me or is this a baffling tech interview question?", "text": "## Background I was just asked in a tech interview to write an algorithm to traverse an \"object\" (notice the quotes) where A is equal to B and B is equal to C and A is equal to C. That's it. That is all the information I was given. I asked the interviewer what the goal was but apparently there wasn't one, just \"traverse\" the \"object\". I don't know about anyone else, but this seems like a silly question to me. I asked again, \"am I searching for a value?\". Nope. Just \"traverse\" it. Why would I ever want to endlessly loop through this \"object\"?? To melt my processor maybe?? The _answer_ according to the interviewer was that I should have written a recursive function. OK, so why not simply ask me to write a recursive function? And who would write a recursive function that never ends? ## My question: Is this a valid question to the rest of you and, if so, can you provide a hint as to what I might be missing? Perhaps I am thinking too hard about solving real world problems. I have been successfully coding for a long time but this tech interview process makes me feel like I don't know anything."}
{"_id": "144187", "title": "How do we provide valid time estimates during Sprint Planning without doing \"too much\" design?", "text": "My team is getting up to speed with Scrum, but most of us are more familiar with non-agile or \"pseudo-\"agile methodologies. The part that is the biggest hurdle for us is running an efficient Sprint Planning meeting where we break our backlog items into tasks, and estimate hours. (I'm using the terminology from the VS2010 Scrum Template; apologies if I use the wrong word somewhere.) When we try to figure out how long a task is going to take, we often fall into the trap of designing the feature at the code level -- table layout, interfaces, etc -- in order to figure out how long that's going to take. I'm pretty sure this is not the appropriate place to be doing that kind of design. We should be scheduling tasks for these design meetings during the sprint. However, we are having trouble figuring out how else to come up with meaningful estimates for the tasks. Are there any practical habits/techniques/etc. for making a judgement call about how long a feature is going to take, without knowing how you plan to implement it? If our time estimates are going to change significantly once the design has been completed, how can we properly budget our Sprint backlog ahead of time? EDIT: Just to clarify, since some of the comments/answers are very valid but I think addressing the wrong question. We **_know_** that what we're doing is not right, and that we should be building time into the sprint for this design. Conceptually all of the developers understand that. We also also bringing in a team member with Scrum experience to keep us on track if we start going off into the weeds. The problem is that, _without_ going through this design process, we are finding it difficult to provide concrete time estimates for anything. We are constantly saying things like \"well if we design it this way it might take 8 hours but if we end up having to do this other way instead that will take about 32 but it might not be as bad once we start trying to write it...\". I also assume that this process will get better once we have some historical velocity to work from, but many of the technologies and architectural patterns we are using are new to us. But if potentially-wildly-wrong estimates are just a natural part of adapting this process then we will just need to recondition ourselves to accept that :)"}
{"_id": "144183", "title": "What makes Instagram so valuable?", "text": "If as in the FAQ, that topics about business (computer industry) is allowed here, I'd like to find out why Instagram can be so valuable, that it is acquired for $1 billion dollars (USD). To put it simply, isn't it just a photo enhancement app (such as making a photo vintage look), plus sharing those photos on Facebook? That's because in contrast, PlayFish had superb Facebook games, and many of them, and are so much more sophisticated (such as Restaurant City and Pet Society). And PlayFish was merely acquired for $400 million. Some companies such as RockYou, had the number one app on Facebook, but wasn't even acquired for a low price like $200 million. And now just a photo filter app and sharing photos, and it is a business considered to be worth a billion dollars. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "221539", "title": "Algorithm for fast tag search", "text": "The problem is the following.   * There's a set of simple entities E, each one having a set of tags T attached. Each entity might have an arbitrary number of tags. Total number of entities is near 100 million, and the total number of tags is about 5000. So the initial data is something like this:               E1 - T1, T2, T3, ... Tn     E2 - T1, T5, T100, ... Tk     ..     Ez - T10, T12, ... Tl      This initial data is quite rarely updated.   * Somehow my app generates a logical expression on tags like this: T1&T2&T3 | (T5&!T6)   * What I need to is to calculate a number of entities matching given expression (note - not the entities, but just the number). This one might be not totally accurate, of course.  What I've got now is a simple in-memory table lookup, giving me a 5-10 seconds execution time on a single thread. I'm curious, is there any efficient way to handle this stuff? What approach would you recommend? Is there some common algorithms or data structures for this? **Update** A bit of clarification as requested.   1. `T` objects are actually relatively short constant strings. But it doesn't actually matter - we can always assign some IDs and operate on integers.   2. We definitely can sort them."}
{"_id": "212955", "title": "What factors should be considered before deciding to build a message bus with SOAP services?", "text": "It would seem to me that the cost of having a team of developers build and maintain all the components necessary to provide routing, workflow orchestration, durability, security and the other features provided by a commercial ESB would be equivalent to, or even more than, licensing a commercial ESB. Other than up front licensing costs and perhaps architectural preference, what are important factors to consider when designing an integration architecture around building a message bus using SOAP services over licensing message bus software from a commercial vendor and integrating your business components with it?"}
{"_id": "151182", "title": "is it a bad practice to call a View from another View in MVC?", "text": "I have some plain Views, they don't have any logic behind them (there is no action or controller behind them), their only propouse is to alert the user about something like \"We have sent you an email to confirm your account\", \"You have no access to this resource\", etc... These views are really simple, and calling them through a Controller/Action seems to be too much overhead, but somehow I feel like it is not quite correct. What do you think? How do you handle this kind of situations?? I guess this question will apply to any MVC Framework, but in my case I'm using the ASP.NET MVC 3 framework."}
{"_id": "130414", "title": "What is the best way to structure workshops for starting programmers?", "text": "We are planning to organize programming workshops for Java web developers with basic coding but no design experience. The goal of the workshops is to introduce these programmers to clean code. Focus Areas:   * TDD   * Four Rules of Simple Design      * runs all the tests     * contains no duplications     * expresses the intent of the programmers     * minimizes the number of classes and methods Structure:   * 6 full day coached workshops spread over 3 months using pair programming and pair-switching   * Each workshop contains      * four 15 minute presentations/demos     * four 90 minute problem solving exercises     * 4 minute pecha kucha's by every programmer Planned Katas for first workshop:   * prime numbers   * bowling game   * tennis scoring   * Arabic to Roman numerals conversion   * prime factors Do you think this is a good way to structure a programming workshop? Are there any elements that I could introduce to the workshops to make them more interactive and create more interest among developers? Edit 1: Summary of the feedback   * Create an interest in reading books.   * Have real project examples.   * Have contact with the group during off days."}
{"_id": "130416", "title": "Version Control based on portable storage?", "text": "I develop personal projects on two machines without use of a shared server or a network connection between the two. Do any common version control systems reliably support use of portable storage (such as a USB flash device) as the shared repository?"}
{"_id": "130419", "title": "Why do organizations limit source code access to engineers?", "text": "Most organizations restrict access to the source code to engineers, and even at places like Google, the Android source code is kept off-limits to most engineers within the company. Why? Note: I am not talking about write access for everyone in the company, I'm talking about read access."}
{"_id": "221534", "title": "Plain old struct vs class in this case?", "text": "Stroustrup says that you should use structs unless you can specify an invariant for the data structure. I have to represent a physical object which holds things such as position, velocity, mass and inertia (and so on). I also want to render the object, for which I will need setup in the constructor and unloading stuff in the destructor. So I guess that's an invariant, but it feels wrong to put all this physics stuff into it that doesn't really have invariants. The drawing parts are pretty trivial, so it doesn't feel worth it to separate them from the rigid body in this case. Any advice? edit: I suppose I just realized the answer to my own question. Rigid bodies **do** have invariants, namely that it has to follow the physical laws."}
{"_id": "35595", "title": "How does SSL relate to the Public Key Infrastructure?", "text": "This is possibly a stupid question but, how does SSL relate to the Public Key Infrastructure? Cheers, J"}
{"_id": "93594", "title": "Do i need to know how Ajax works since Asp.net provides me UpdatePanel", "text": "I am working on Asp.net webform and it already provides me ready to user Ajax solution by using an update panel, so should I invest my time learning how Ajax really work ?"}
{"_id": "231031", "title": "Self-organization during Sprint Planning", "text": "During Sprint Planning there are a lot of decisions to be made:   1. How many PBIs should the team commit to?   2. Which tasks should constitute each PBI?   3. How much time should each task take? With no team leader it is not always easy to make all these decisions, since there will be some decision points (sometimes more than a few) in which the team members will disagree. I thought about a few options to deal with such disagreements when a consensus cannot be reached in a short period of time (we don't want endless arguments).   1. Let ScrumMaster decide    2. Let the person who will most likely work on the story decide.   3. Majority vote   4. Let the person who actually writes the tasks in Excel decide (in such case have a different person write the tasks for each story). I have two questions:   1. How to measure consensus? Should the Scrum Master ask each person whether they agree with every decision proposed?   2. When no consensus can be reached shortly, which option from the list that I proposed do you think we should choose, if any? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "253147", "title": "Log within try-catch or after?", "text": "Should one log success of an operation within a try-catch-block, or after it? Example:               try         do x         log('successful')     catch         log('fail')     end      or is this better:               try         do x     catch         log('fail')     end     log('successful')      I would say that a logger should never fail, but what if, for some reason, it does anyway? In this specific case, I had a logfile on a network drive which disconnected due to actions of do(x), which however did not fail -- obviously my try failed, but my operation worked. However, I find the latter example harder to read, and I try to keep my code as tight as possible for readability."}
{"_id": "253141", "title": "Ideal & idomatic javascript interface for RESTful API", "text": "I am trying to write an angular service to interface with a RESTful API. For sake of simplicity, lets assume the API is               + Company     |___+ Department     |   |____ Person     |     |____ Person      > Notice how person can be under `Company > Department` or directly > under`Company`. Each of the entities (Company, Department and Person) > support add, edit, list and get_by_id. Which of the following interfaces is more idiomatic? ## Option 1:               // In all cases, get(), put() return $http promise          companyApi().get() // List all companies     companyApi(1).get() // Get company with ID 1     companyApi(1).departments().get() // List all departments     companyApi(1).departments(2).get() // Get department with ID 2     companyApi(1).departments(2).persons().get() // List all persons     companyApi(1).departments(2).persons().put(p) //Add a new person in department 2     companyApi(1).persons().put(p) //Add a new person in company 1     companyApi(1).persons(3).put(p) //Edit person with ID=3 in company 1     companyApi(1).persons(1).remove(p) // Delete a person      ## Option 2:               // In all cases, get(), put() return $http promise          // List all companies     companyApi({         type: 'company'     }).get();          // Get company with ID=1     companyApi({         type: 'company',         companyId: 1     }).get();          // Get department with ID=2 under company 1     companyApi({         type: 'department',         companyId: 1,         departmentId: 2     }).get();          // List persons under department with ID=2 under company 1     companyApi({         type: 'person',         companyId: 1,         departmentId: 2     }).get();          // Get person with ID=3 under department with ID=2 under company 1     companyApi({         type: 'person',         companyId: 1,         departmentId: 2,         personId: 3     }).get();          // Get person with ID=3 under department with ID=2 under company 1     companyApi({         type: 'person',         companyId: 1,         departmentId: 2,         personId: 3     }).get();          // Add person under department with ID=2 under company 1     companyApi({         type: 'person',         companyId: 1,         departmentId: 2,     }).put(personObj);          //Edit person with ID=3 in company 1     companyApi({         type: 'person',         companyId: 1,         departmentId: 2,         personId: 3     }).put(personObj);          // Add person under directly under company 1     companyApi({         type: 'person',         companyId: 1     }).put(personObj);"}
{"_id": "214177", "title": "How do you formulate the Domain Model in Domain Driven Design properly (Bounded Contexts, Domains)?", "text": "Say you have a few applications which deal with a few different Core Domains. _The examples are made up and it's hard to put a real example with meaningful data together (concisely)._ In Domain Driven Design (DDD) when you start looking at Bounded Contexts and Domains/Sub Domains, it says that a Bounded Context is a \"phase\" in a lifecycle. An example of Context here would be within an ecommerce system. Although you could model this as a single system, it would also warrant splitting into separate Contexts. Each of these areas within the application have their own Ubiquitous Language, their own Model, and a way to talk to other Bounded Contexts to obtain the information they need. The Core, Sub, and Generic Domains are the area of expertise and can be numerous in complex applications.   1. Say there is a long process dealing with an Entity for example a Book in a core domain. Now looking at the Bounded Contexts there can be a number of phases in the books life-cycle. Say outline, creation, correction, publish, sale phases.    2. Now imagine a second core domain, perhaps a store domain. The publisher has its own branch of stores to sell books. The store can have a number of Bounded Contexts (life-cycle phases) for example a \"Stock\" or \"Inventory\" context.  In the first domain there is probably a Book database table with basically just an ID to track the different book Entities in the different life-cycles. Now suppose you have 10+ supporting domains e.g. Users, Catalogs, Inventory, .. (hard to think of relevant examples). For example a DomainModel for the Book Outline phase, the Creation phase, Correction phase, Publish phase, Sale phase. Then for the Store core domain it probably has a number of life-cycle phases.               public class BookId : Entity     {         public long Id { get; set; }     }      In the creation phase (Bounded Context) the book could be a simple class.               public class Book : BookId     {         public string Title { get; set; }         public List<string> Chapters { get; set; }         //...     }      Whereas in the publish phase (Bounded Context) it would have all the text, release date etc.               public class Book : BookId     {         public DateTime ReleaseDate { get; set; }         //...     }      The immediate benefit I can see in separating by \"life-cycle phase\" is that it's a great way to separate business logic so there aren't mammoth all- encompassing Entities nor Domain Services. A problem I have is figuring out how to concretely define the rules to the physical layout of the Domain Model. A. Does the Domain Model get \"modeled\" so there are as many bounded contexts (separate projects etc.) as there are life-cycle phases across the core domains in a complex application? **Edit: Answer to A.** Yes, according to the answer by Alexey Zimarev there should be an entire \"Domain\" for each bounded context. B. Is the Domain Model typically arranged by Bounded Contexts (or Domains, or both)? **Edit: Answer to B.** Each Bounded Context should have its own complete \"Domain\" (Service/Entities/VO's/Repositories) C. Does it mean there can easily be 10's of \"segregated\" Domain Models and multiple projects can use it (the Entities/Value Objects)? **Edit: Answer to C.** There is a complete \"Domain\" for each Bounded Context and the Domain Model (Entity/VO layer/project) isn't \"used\" by the other Bounded Contexts directly, only via chosen paths (i.e. via Domain Events). The part that I am trying to figure out is how the Domain Model is actually implemented once you start to figure out your Bounded Contexts and Core/Sub Domains, particularly in complex applications. The goal is to establish the definitions which can help to separate Entities between the Bounded Contexts and Domains."}
{"_id": "142328", "title": "What kinds of low level knowledge matter?", "text": "I realize that this question is similar to Low level programming - what's in it for me, but the answers didn't really address my question well. Part from just an understanding, how exactly does your low level knowledge translate into faster and better programs? There's the obvious lack of stop-the-world from garbage collection, but what else is an advantage? Do you really outperform your optimizing compiler? Do you pack your data structures in as tight as possible and be concerned about alignment? There's extra freedom naturally, but does that really translate into a faster program?"}
{"_id": "73673", "title": "How can I manage a central repository of documentation?", "text": "Our team works with a large number of different APIs and services, and we also have our own internal tooling and services we maintain as well. Right now, we do not have a good centrally managed system to list which projects we used a certain API on, or to attach documentation for all of our utilities/apis. I believe what I am looking for is some type of team wiki, but we weren't impressed with the search capability of the the solution we tried (Sharepoint). Are wikis the right way to approach centralize documentation? What types of things should I be looking out for when creating a centralized documentation system?"}
{"_id": "73678", "title": "Visual Studio Express vs. SharpDevelop", "text": "I need a bit of input from people who have used both of these programs. I am using Visual Studio Express 2010 right now for creating a project in VB.net and WPF 4. I just discovered a freeware IDE called IC#Develop, which apparently supports both of those formats. Has anyone used both, and if so, what are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Which would you recommend? Is IC#Develop a good alternative to the very expensive Visual Studio Ultimate?"}
{"_id": "22255", "title": "What's the right way to fork/re-use code from an open source project?", "text": "Let's say I am working on an open source project and want to re-use a trivial utility function from another open source project (for example, a file search/replace function). Is it legal to copy the function and simply write a small copyright notice in top of the file? Should I include their name as copyright holders of the entire project in the license? Similarly, let's say I fork an open source project. Where and how do I specify that the copyright is shared between both the original copyright holder and myself? I guess the answer must somewhat vary according to the open source license but I'd like a general answer as much as possible. PS: I'm mostly concerned about the legal aspect, but feel free to include your ethical point of view."}
{"_id": "189453", "title": "Java vs PHP Memory / CPU Consumption", "text": "I work in a PHP based company. There is a project where we want to create a backend service. Senior members here are going for PHP, even though it is slower than Java. Their only point of contention, that Java is heavier than PHP in both memory and cpu load standpoint. Jvm is more like a container environment, if u bring in more baggage it will consume that much, but service we are talking here will be of medium complexity. So chances are that it won't be much demanding (or will it?) I understand this question leans heavily towards vagueness, however my point of ponder is, that is it always the same case? That java is more hardware demanding? I would just like to know opinions of all you experienced folks about how the actual scenario looks like."}
{"_id": "74022", "title": "What kind of bug is this?", "text": "My application has 3 shipping methods, the cheapest of which is free. The free shipping option is only available for orders totaling over $100. As soon as I built it, I thought of a way a user could easily circumvent this. Add items to the cart totaling over $100, then select your free shipping, then edit your cart to be less then $100 and maintain the free shipping. I fixed my application to not allow this. I started wondering though, what do you call this sort of design flaw? I know you can call it a bug, but is there a better description that I can use so that someone will understand what I am talking about?"}
{"_id": "197882", "title": "Security through obscurity and storing unencrypted passwords", "text": "What exactly does \"Security through obscurity\" means in the context of stroing unencrypted passwords? I'm using a small program (I won't name it, to not enlarge enough large shame on its author) that uses my Google account for some tasks. I've noticed, that it stores my password in plain-text unencrypted file. Just a string, clearly seen to everyone, that can drag&drop it to Notepad or use `F3` in Total Commander. I have risen a ticket asking program author to fix this ASAP. I haven't got any reply yet, but my issue got one comment, that includes only above mentioned link to Wikipedia's \" _Security through obscurity_ \" page. How should I understand this comment? Is it pro or con my issue? At first I thought, that it supports my statement of fixing this ASAP. But then I found a Eric Raymond's Fetchmail example (in \" _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_ \"), who refused to implement config file encryption (passwords are stored in config file for Fetchmail), claiming that it is up to the user to assure security by not letting anyone \"from the outside\" access that configuration file. This statement (or refusal) is often brought as example of _Security through obscurity_. And looking from this point of view, I'm completely wrong and that program author is right. He do not have to implement encryption of file with my password, it can remain there, stored unencrypted and it is I, who is responsible for assuring security by not giving anyone access to this file or by deleting it each time I stop using that soft. (another question is, how can I achieve this on system as unsecure as Windows itself?) These seems to be in a complete opposition, to what I've been told and learnt for years, so I would like to ask more experienced developers, who is right here and how exactly I should understand \"StO\"?"}
{"_id": "37550", "title": "C++: calling non-member functions with the same syntax of member ones", "text": "One thing I'd like to do in C++ is to call non-member functions with the same syntax you call member functions:               class A { };     void f( A & this ) { /* ... */ }     // ...     A a;     a.f(); // this is the same as f(a);      Of course this could only work as long as   * `f` is not virtual (since it cannot appear in `A`'s virtual table.   * `f` doesn't need to access `A`'s non-public members.   * `f` doesn't conflict with a function declared in `A` (`A::f`). I'd like such a syntax because in my opinion it would be quite comfortable and would push good habits:   1. calling `str.strip()` on a `std::string` (where `strip` is a function defined by the user) would sound a lot better than calling `strip( str );`.   2. most of the times (always?) classes provide some member functions which don't require to be member (ie: are not virtual and don't use non-public members). This breaks encapsulation, but is the most practical thing to do (due to point 1). My question here is: what do you think of such feature? Do you think it would be something nice, or something that would introduce more issues than the ones it aims to solve? Could it make sense to propose such a feature to the next standard (the one after C++0x)? * * * Of course this is just a brief description of this idea; it is not complete; we'd probably need to explicitly mark a function with a special keyword to let it work like this and many other stuff."}
{"_id": "55797", "title": "How far to go with unit tests", "text": "A question asked many times before but with a specific slant twds mvc development. I've been a very good boy and have been coding all my controller actions with corresponding unit tests which has been great (if a little [read a LOT] repetitive at times). To be honest, I've actually created a little T4 template to write most of the bare bones of the intial unit tests and then tweaked as appropriate as per usage. I will admit to not being quite sure how to handle tests in views that contain partialviews - but that's a story for another question. Now, the difficult part for me to decide upon is just how deep the coverage should be in my service layer. The reason being that some of my service methods (for better or worse) actually perform a variety of linq queries which then supply discreet information to subsequent logic within the method. I know i could (should??) break these methods down to only call the required logic for each linq statement and then apply them within the method. However, in many instances, there is never any reuse of the linq 'functions' and therefore it feels that this would refactor the code out a level too far. What I'm asking is, with complex logic occurring within a method, is it 'good enough' to have a test method that simply asserts the required result and/or expected error, or should every logic line be simulted and tested too. the way I'm seeing it, to do the testing correctly, then the method logic (line by line) should be getting some sort of coverage too. That however (in my naive opinion) could lead to a never ending cycle of trying to keep the test and the implemented method so closely aligned (which i know they should be) as to create a cottage industry in the tests themselves. I know my question may offend a few of the TDD devotees who will see this as a no brainer. Not being in the TDD camp, this is a 'yes brainer' for me, hence the question. btw - had checked this out for ideas: http://dotnetslackers.com/articles/aspnet/Built-in-Unit-Test-for-ASP-NET- MVC-3-in-Visual-Studio-2010-Part-1.aspx looking fwd to the steady downvotes now :) **[edit]** \\- for the benefit of the single (well at the moment single!!) 'close' voter. this question is **not** subjective. I'm looking for concensus on a very focussed subject. I'm not attempting to stir up negative passions, I'm not looking to expose flaws in the technology - i'm a HUGE fan. So please, drop a polite comment for my benefit if voting to close as it may help me to restructure the question if there's ambiguity or misinformation. this question could benefit a large chunk of the mvc population. thank you!! jim"}
{"_id": "195146", "title": "caching on multiple servers", "text": "Because we need to keep response times low, we get tons of requests, and we need to basically process ALMOST the same data (which I'll refer to as X) each request (the inputs are different though, so we can't cache responses), we are using a technique where we grab a new copy of X every 90 seconds from the database and store it locally in memory as a python list of dictionaries, on our application servers (we are using uwsgi). The kink in the machine: There are temporary analytics that we need to keep track of in those 90 seconds to adjust our data each iteration, and each iteration is dependent on what we calculate from the last iteration. The trouble with this is, we have multiple application servers that are storing the same data, X, in memory and each of those servers need to refresh X at the same time to keep calculations consistent for the next interval. I've tried some techniques, like broadcasting a message after each calculation to reload each server's X, but it hasn't been as effective as I would hope, and it just makes things more complicated. I should say, the reason we haven't used memcached or something similar is because we don't want to sacrifice any speed if we can. Maybe I am ignorant on how fast we can retrieve and load the list into python objects from memcached. I understand my explanation isn't the greatest, and will answer any questions to give a better picture of the situation. Edit: we are at about 5000 request/second, the size of the data we process is about 2MB at the moment but will continue to grow, so we'd like to avoid sending it over the wire for each request."}
{"_id": "115917", "title": "Team member missing? Glue between data producers and data consumers", "text": "We're in the business of automated trading and our team consists of two bigger groups, I call them data producers and data consumers. The producers' primary task is to maintain a chain of smaller tools that push some real-time data through an indicator system and out comes an order. All the data that was needed or produced is logged into files, one file per tool per run. The data consumers on the other hand, used to backtests and captured in their backoffice world, want to fragments of the data produced in the different runs, polished to their needs, more specifically one big post-processed chunk of data per day. **Now the problem** that has split our team into two well-distinguishable sides is that the data producers consider it their responsibility to provide comprehensive data without any loss of information and want the consumers to cherry-pick whatever they need in a _pre_ -processing step. The consumers on the other hand want to see live trading as a black-box, to them it shouldn't be different to the backtest which means the data producers in their eyes lack a crucial _post_ -processing step without which they can't start their task. Now clearly there has to be some glue between the two teams, my question is whose task is it? Or is there to be a third group in the middle that provides the glue? What does the theory say about this (can we apply the producer/consumer pattern to `real life')? And just to make the problem a real one: The data producers consider it ugly to boil down the data into consumable chunks, mainly because the consumers' side keeps changing their requirements. The consumers on the other hand are not skilled enough to do the proposed cherry-picking."}
{"_id": "232391", "title": "Adding unit tests to brownfield applications", "text": "I'm working for a company that has been developing a series of products for years with little to no unit testing in place. They want to move to TDD and unit test new code going forward. However, I'm concerned about the lack of testability of the old code and where to draw the line between old and new. Has anyone had experience with layering unit testing onto brownfield software like this? If so, could you recommend some effective approaches?"}
{"_id": "166458", "title": "High resolution graphical representation of the Earth's surface", "text": "I've got a library, which I inherited, which presents a zoomable representation of the Earth. It's a Mercator projection and is constructed from triangles, the properties of which are stored in binary files. The surface is built up, for any given view port, by drawing these triangles in an overlapping fashion to produce the image. The definition of each triangle is the lat/long of the vertices. It looks OK at low values of zoom but looks progressively more ragged as the user zooms in. The view ports are primarily referenced though a rectangle of lat/long co-ordinates. I'd like to replace it with a better quality approach. The problem is, I don't know where to begin researching the options as I am not familiar either with the projections needed nor the graphics techniques used to render them. For example, I imagine that I could acquire high resolution images, say Mercator projections although I'm open to anything, break them into tiles and somehow wrap them onto a graphical representation of a sphere. I'm not asking for \"how do I\", more where should I begin to understand what might be involved and the techniques I will need to learn. I am most grateful for any \"Earth rendering 101\" pointers folks might have."}
{"_id": "200936", "title": "How Do You Organize Your Methods in OO Progamming", "text": "Whenever I am programming in an object-oriented language, I am always faced with what order and how to group the methods for an object. Are there any standards for this, or any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "98619", "title": "Submit code during interview", "text": "I'm interviewing for a position at an internet startup. The position relates to doing data mining on their very large database of user information. As part of the (long-distance) interview procedure which involves examining a subset of their database, they requested that I submit the code I used for analysis. My main concern is that this code is \"proprietary\", for lack of a better word. I have no problems giving them all my code if I end up working for them, but considering that they could potentially take the code, not hire me, and use it on their larger database to generate revenue, I'm hesitant. Am I being just being paranoid? Is this a legitimate concern?"}
{"_id": "166454", "title": "Can the csv format be defined by a regex?", "text": "A colleague and I have recently argued over whether a pure regex is capable of fully encapsulating the csv format, such that it is capable of parsing all files with any given escape char, quote char, and separator char. The regex need not be capable of changing these chars after creation, but it must not fail on any other edge case. I have argued that this is impossible for just a tokenizer. The only regex that might be able to do this is a very complex PCRE style that moves beyond just tokenizing. I am looking for something along the lines of: > ... the csv format is a context free grammar and as such, it is impossible > to parse with regex alone ... Or am I wrong? Is it possible to parse csv with just a POSIX regex? For example, if both the escape char and the quote char are `\"`, then these two lines are valid csv:               \"\"\"this is a test.\"\"\",\"\"     \"and he said,\"\"What will be, will be.\"\", to which I replied, \"\"Surely not!\"\"\",\"moving on to the next field here...\""}
{"_id": "56447", "title": "good books about Scrum and XP", "text": "I want to know what would you recommend to read for Scrum and XP. I've got Scrum and xp from the Trenches, but I would like to see around some more references that are worthwhile."}
{"_id": "220660", "title": "Base class should have no knowledge of its subtypes?", "text": "What's the OO principle that states (in sum): > A base object should have no knowledge of its subtypes. I _thought_ it was Liskov Substitution but after reading that wikipedia article I don't believe I'm correct. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "220661", "title": "Separate the renderer from the business model", "text": "I have a small responsibility separation issue that I hope someone can clarify. I have a small model composed by 2 classes: GameBoard and GamePiece, and the obvious relationship is that a GameBoard can have several GamePieces. In the application I'm implementing, GameBoard and GamePiece contain data related to rendering in the screen (Update/Draw methods, Textures, etc) as well as their logic (gameboard number of squares, pieceType, etc). Updating/Drawing the GameBoard causes to update/draw the pieces as well. However, in order to keep the single responsibility principle, I decided to separate the logic from the rendering. But I have some troubles to implement it adequately. I came up to a couple of solutions and I'm not sure which one is the best: 1- Create GameBoardRenderer and GamePieceRenderer classes (who would store Textures, updating and drawing), and every instance these Renderer classes would be related to one GameBoard or GamePiece respectively. The problem I see is that it forces me to keep a dual relationship between GameBoard and GamePiece, and GameBoardRenderer and GamePieceRenderer, and ensure that it is always consistent. 2- Create GameBoardRenderer and GamePieceRenderer, but make them inherit from GameBoard and GamePiece respectively, bringing all the rendering stuff to those classes, while keeping the association at the GameBoard and GamePiece classes. The problem is that when I call the Update/Draw method of GameBoard, I won't be able to call the GamePieceRenderer Update and Draw method (as no relationship will be available). What should I do? Is there any better solution? Thank you very much."}
{"_id": "165816", "title": "Why are invariants important in Computer Science", "text": "I understand 'invariant' in its literal sense. I also recognize them when I type code. But I don't think I understand the importance of this term in the context of computer science. Whenever I read conversations\\white papers about language design from famous programmers\\computer scientists, the term 'invariant' keeps popping up as a jargon; and that is the part I don't understand. What is so special about it?"}
{"_id": "57792", "title": "Resources on how to relate structured and semi- / un-structured information", "text": "I don't have a great background in information organisation / retrieval, but I know of a few ways of dealing with the problem. For structured information, it's possible to go OOish - everything \"has-a\" or \"has-many\" something else, and you navigate the graph to find relationships between things. For unstructured information, you have techniques like text search and tagging. I know about basic CS data structures and algorithms for structured data, but what I'm interested in goes beyond that. I want to know about how unstructured data can be related to structured data \"intelligently\", i.e. without users having to explicitly understand the object hierarchy. What resources - articles or books - are there that summarise the CS theory behind these techniques or could introduce me to others? Since so far it's been difficult to communicate exactly what kind of problem I'm dealing with, here's an example scenario. It is my own wording and the domain has been (radically) obfuscated to protect the client. > A wine enthusiast wants to build a website for her wine society. Wine farms > could capture many wine prices and enter their locations. Users would search > for wine tasting venues in their area. Or all wines which cost below X per > bottle. Nothing difficult about that so far, because we're dealing with > structured information in a straightforward graph of objects or database > tables. > > However, they also have advice articles (unstructured info), such as \"10 > things to look out for in a good Red\" (sorry, we're stretching the limits of > my knowledge about wine :). As a user, you'd want the website to display a > link to the article when you're viewing wine farms. If the enthusiast > decides to have a section where people can list \"recipes for meals which go > well with wine\" on her website, she might also want the article to appear > next to those recipes which go well with red wine. Now, you don't want the > enthusiast who captures the data to have to link every new article to every > meal (because it won't just be this one article that is relevant to recipes > or wines); and you don't want meal authors to be bogged down by exactly > which one, two or three articles are most relevant out of a library of 50. > You certainly don't want to introduce a \"red wine advice\" field on every > wine or meal. So that's where you might use tagging. Wines, recipes and the > red wine advice article could all be tagged, \"red\". Great solution that > really works for blogspot.com, right? Well yes, as long as the data > capturers know that the \"red\" tag exists. Maybe they decide to use \"Claret\" > instead. Doh! If there are only 5 tags, they probably get it right, but if > there are 50 tags, or even just 20 they might not. Worse still you get the > spam scenario where the author of a new article just applies every tag - > \"red\", \"white\", \"shiraz\", \"chenin blanc\" etc. > > At this point we need to consider other techniques, like text search. The > wine is marked as a red, the article is chock full of the word \"red wine\". > Done. Well, you might want to apply some of the data clustering techniques > that can help you to better identify what a piece of text's main topics is. > Or create an indexing process that drops out common words and punctuation. > No point matching two items because they both use the word \"but\" a lot. > Actually, the best results of all would probably be to use a combination of > everything I've mentioned. You may notice that in this example my tone moves from, \"I know exactly what I'm doing\" to \"try do some stuff like...\". So, I'm looking for resources that will teach me about dealing with the combination of structured and unstructured info - tagging, text search with smart indexing and clustering as well as any other techniques which I don't know about yet. Some discussion of strengths and weaknesses of each would also be appropriate."}
{"_id": "88422", "title": "How do you know if you've split your domain correctly", "text": "In DDD i struggle to understand whether or not my domain is split correctly into aggregate roots and then those aggregate roots are grouped correctly into bounded contexts. is there a way - like a set of rules/guidance i can use to decide whether or not i am placing things in the right AR/BC"}
{"_id": "223006", "title": "Communication between nested directives", "text": "There seem to be quite a few ways of communicating between directives. Say you have nested directives, where the inner directives must communicate something to the outer (e.g. it's been chosen by the user).               <outer>       <inner></inner>       <inner></inner>     </outer>      So far I have 5 ways of doing this ## `require:` parent directive The `inner` directive can require the `outer` directive, which can expose some method on its controller. So in the `inner` definition               require: '^outer',     link: function(scope, iElement, iAttrs, outerController) {        // This can be passed to ng-click in the template        $scope.chosen = function() {          outerController.chosen(something);        }     }      And in the `outer` directive's controller:               controller: function($scope) {        this.chosen = function(something) {        }     }      ## `$emit` event The `inner` directive can `$emit` an event, which the `outer` directive can respond to, via `$on`. So in the `inner` directive's controller:               controller: function($scope) {       $scope.chosen = function() {         $scope.$emit('inner::chosen', something);       }     }      and in the `outer` directives controller:               controller: function($scope) {       $scope.$on('inner::chosen, function(e, data) {       }     }      ## Execute expression in parent scope, via `&` The item can bind to an expression in the parent scope, and execute it at an appropriate point. The HTML would be like:               <outer>       <inner inner-choose=\"functionOnOuter(item)\"></inner>       <inner inner-choose=\"functionOnOuter(item)\"></inner>     </outer>      So the `inner` controller has an 'innerChoose' function it can call               scope: {       'innerChoose': '&'     },     controller: function() {       $scope.click = function() {         $scope.innerChoose({item:something});       }     }      which would call (in this case) the 'functionOnOuter' function on the `outer` directive's scope:               controller: function($scope) {       $scope.functionOnOuter = function(item) {       }     }      ## Scope inheritance on non-isolated scope Given that these are nested controllers, scope inheritance can be at work, and the inner directive can just call any functions in the scope chain, as long as it doesn't have an isolated scope). So in the `inner` directive:               // scope: anything but a hash {}     controller: function() {       $scope.click = function() {         $scope.functionOnOuter(something);       }     }      And in the `outer` directive:               controller: function($scope) {       $scope.functionOnOuter = function(item) {       }     }      ## By service injected into both inner and outer A service can be injected into both directives, so they can have direct access to the same object, or call functions to notify the service, and maybe even register themselves to be notified, in a pub/sub system. This doesn't require the directives to be nested. **Question** : What are any potential drawbacks and advantages of each over the others?"}
{"_id": "223004", "title": "What does the Apache licensing mean by \"Permitted: Commercial Use\"", "text": "At choosealicense.com/licenses I am reading the Apache licensing, and see that under `Permitted` there stands `Commercial Use`: > This software and derivatives may be used for commercial purposes. Meaning, they can use (and modify) my app, in a commercial environment (e.g. Microsoft, Apple). Or, they can commercialize my app? English is not my native language and I am wondering if I am misinterpreting something."}
{"_id": "117513", "title": "What is the advantage of using map datastructure?", "text": "I am a member of some online coding website and today when I submitted a solution in C++, I saw there were much better answers in C++ itself which took considerably less time. The solutions were open so I went on through some of them and found all of them using map datastructure. I could not figure out where exactly it takes an edge. I made some googling but it was not convincing. Please help."}
{"_id": "117512", "title": "Should I HTML encode all output from my API?", "text": "I am creating a RESTful JSON API to access data from our website where the content is in German. A handful of the fields will return formatted HTML while most are single lines of text although they are highly like to include special characters. To make it easy to use I wanted consistency throughout. As the text in the HTML fields would not be easy to encode after they have the data my first thought was to encode all fields (they can always be un-encoded later int he other fields). Is this the best approach or should I suffix all the HTML fields e.g. description_html to imply they are already encoded or try something else? The plan is let people use the API however they want although initially to let our partners use our data on their website."}
{"_id": "142911", "title": "Difference between Javabean and Java Beans", "text": "I'm confused. I've seen two different terms: `Javabean` and `Java Beans`. Is there a significant difference between them?"}
{"_id": "142912", "title": "Should I use a seperate class per test?", "text": "Taking the following simple method, how would you suggest I write a unit test for it (I am using MSTest however concepts are similar in other tools).               public void MyMethod(MyObject myObj, bool validInput)     {          if(!validInput)      {       // Do nothing      }      else      {       // Update the object       myObj.CurrentDateTime = DateTime.Now;       myObj.Name = \"Hello World\";      }     }      If I try and follow the rule of one assert per test, my logic would be that I should have a Class Initialise method which executes the method and then individual tests which check each property on myobj.               public class void MyTest     {         MyObj myObj;              [TestInitialize]         public void MyTestInitialize()         {             this.myObj = new MyObj();             MyMethod(myObj, true);         }              [TestMethod]         public void IsValidName()         {             Assert.AreEqual(\"Hello World\", this.myObj.Name);         }              [TestMethod]         public void IsDateNotNull()         {             Assert.IsNotNull(this.myObj.CurrentDateTime);         }     }      Where I am confused is around the TestInitialize. If I execute the method under TestInitialize, I would need seperate classes per variation of parameter inputs. Is this correct? This would leave me with a huge number of files in my project (unless I have multiple classes per file). Thanks"}
{"_id": "142915", "title": "What is a good way to comment if-else-clauses?", "text": "Whenever I'm writing a typical if-else-construct in any language I wonder what would be the best way (in terms of readability and overview) to add comments to it. Especially when commenting the else clause the comments always feel out-of-place for me. Say we have a construct like this (examples are written down in PHP):               if ($big == true) {         bigMagic();     } else {         smallMagic()     }      I could comment it like this:               // check, what kind of magic should happen     if ($big == true) {         // do some big magic stuff         bigMagic();     } else {         // small magic is enough         smallMagic()     }      or               // check, what kind of magic should happen     // do some big magic stuff     if ($big == true) {         bigMagic();     }     // small magic is enough     else {        smallMagic()     }      or               // check, what kind of magic should happen     // if:   do some big magic stuff     // else: small magic is enough     if ($big == true) {         bigMagic();     } else {         smallMagic()     }      What are your best-practice examples for commenting this?"}
{"_id": "142916", "title": "Strategy for backwards compatibility of persistent storage", "text": "In my experience, trying to ensure that new versions of an application retain compatibility with data storage from previous versions can often be a painful process. What I currently do is to save a version number for each 'unit' of data (be it a file, database row/table, or whatever) and ensure that the version number gets updated each time the data changes in some way. I also create methods to convert from v1 to v2, v2 to v3, and so on. That way, if I'm at v7 and I encounter a v3 file, I can do v3->v4->v5->v6->v7. So far this approach seems to be working out well, but I haven't had to make use of it extensively yet so there may be unforseen problems. I'm also concerned that if the objects I'm loading change significantly, I'll either have to keep around old versions of the classes or face updating all my conversion methods to handle the new class definition. Is my approach sound? Are there other/better approaches I could be using? Are there any design patterns applicable to this problem?"}
{"_id": "105294", "title": "What is the reason to put prefixes in new CSS features?", "text": "Is there a valid reason for the browsers to prefix new CSS features, instead of letting the webmasters use the non-prefixed version? For example, a sample code for the background gradient looks like:               #arbitrary-stops {       /* fallback DIY*/            /* Safari 4-5, Chrome 1-9 */       background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right top, from(#2F2727), color-stop(0.05, #1a82f7), color-stop(0.5, #2F2727), color-stop(0.95, #1a82f7), to(#2F2727));            /* Safari 5.1+, Chrome 10+ */       background: -webkit-linear-gradient(left, #2F2727, #1a82f7 5%, #2F2727, #1a82f7 95%, #2F2727);            /* Firefox 3.6+ */       background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, #2F2727, #1a82f7 5%, #2F2727, #1a82f7 95%, #2F2727);            /* IE 10 */       background: -ms-linear-gradient(left, #2F2727, #1a82f7 5%, #2F2727, #1a82f7 95%, #2F2727);            /* Opera 11.10+ */       background: -o-linear-gradient(left, #2F2727, #1a82f7 5%, #2F2727, #1a82f7 95%, #2F2727);     }      What's the point in forcing webmasters to copy-paste the same code four times to have the same result? * * * Note: one of the reasons often quoted is that **prefixed styles are intended to be temporary while either the browser does not implement the spec correctly, or the spec is not definitive**. IMO, this reason is a nonsense:   * If the browser engine does not implement the spec correctly, the browser will not be compliant, no matter if it does not implement it in a non-prefixed form or it does not implement it in a prefixed form.   * If the spec is not definitive, it may matter when there were previous implementations with the same name. For example if CSS2 had `linear-gradient`, but CSS3 was intended to extend `linear-gradient` with additional features, it would be clever to temporary prefix the new, draft, implementation by `-css3-<style>` differentiate between the working CSS2 one, and the experimental CSS3 one. In practice, CSS2 doesn't have `linear-gradient` or other CSS3 novelties. I would also understand if **different browsers had different implementation formats** : for example let's say Firefox required, for text shadow, `<weight- of-shadow distance-x distance-y color>`, while Chrome required `<distance-x distance-y weight-of-shadow color>`. But actually, this is not the case; at least all new features of CSS3 I've used so far had the same format."}
{"_id": "105291", "title": "Is there a name for this design pattern, using hooks/callbacks?", "text": "I've seen/used some objects that have a structure like so, designed to let children extend the functionality of functions without having to override them. Is there a name for this pattern? code example:               class CrudModel {       public function create($data) {         $data = $this->pre_create($data);         //create logic       }            public function delete($data) {         $data = $this->pre_delete($data);         //delete logic       }            protected function pre_create($data) { //empty }       protected function pre_delete($data) { //empty }           }          class SpecificCrudModel extends Model {         protected function pre_create($data) {           //custom logic for this object.         }          }"}
{"_id": "250724", "title": "How can I estimate hosting costs on Heroku into the hundreds of thousands of users?", "text": "Heroku's pricing page is clear when looking at what I'm paying and what I'm getting, but it is not helpful for predicting future costs of an app. If I have an app that is still being developed, how can I get even a ballpark estimate on what my app will cost at 10, 100, 1000, al the way to 100,000 users?"}
{"_id": "204676", "title": "GIT Permissions", "text": "There is something not clear for me and this is how to prevent other people read my code. The thing is that I want people create their own branches but not to view the other's branches. If someone is responsible for networking, I don't want this guy to view graphics codes. S/He must be forced to work on his branch only."}
{"_id": "204674", "title": "Overloading to support multiple related types (especially pointers)", "text": "# Problem I was just trying to debug a set of file-manipulation routines I wrote for a program I am working on. One of them kept returning an `INVALID_HANDLE` error. # Explanation I figured out what the problem was. It turns out that because I provided several overloads so that I could call the function with either a file handle or filename, I ended up creating ambiguous overloads. For example (not variadic functions; the ellipses are just for simplification purposes):               INT CopyFileSection ( HANDLE fIn, HANDLE fOut, \u2026 );     INT CopyFileSection ( HANDLE fIn, TCHAR* fOut, \u2026 );     INT CopyFileSection ( TCHAR* fIn, HANDLE fOut, \u2026 );     INT CopyFileSection ( TCHAR* fIn, TCHAR* fOut, \u2026 );      The first one (`HANDLE, HANDLE`) does the main work while the others just open the file pointed to by the filename and call the first function. The problem is that a `HANDLE` is just a pointer, so the compile can\u2019t figure out which one I am calling (even though to me it was obvious), and ends up calling `HANDLE, HANDLE` even when I pass a pointer to a string, so naturally it fails since the pointer is not a file handle. # Question I want to provide maximum flexibility, so short of re-writing to use `std::string` _instead of_ `TCHAR*` for the filenames (which I actually did include as well), what suggestions are there to deal with this sort of scenario?    # Related As a related side note\u2014a separate question?\u2014I was wondering about the ease, safety, and feasibility of providing overloads for all (or at least a set of) possible permutations. For example, with a function that takes two files, you could use `HANDLE`, `TCHAR*`, and `string` (probably others, but in this case we\u2019ll stick with these three). This means there are up to nine overloads just for the files: `HH, HT, HS, TH, TT, TS, SH, ST, SS`. Let alone if there are other arguments that could provide more overloads. Surely there must be a better way to both provide flexibility in calling the function and clean, understandable, and maintainable code."}
{"_id": "141468", "title": "What arguments can I use to \"sell\" the BDD concept to a team reluctant to adopt it?", "text": "I am a bit of a vocal proponent of the Behaviour Driven Development methodology (aka BDD). I've been applying BDD for a couple of years now, and have adopted StoryQ as my framework of choice when developing DotNet applications. Even though I have been unit testing for many years, and had previously shifted to a test-first approach, I've found that I get much more value out of using a BDD framework, because my tests capture the intent of the requirements in relatively clear English within my code, and because my tests can execute multiple assertions without ending the test halfway through - meaning I can see which specific assertions pass/fail at a glance without debugging to prove it. This has really been the tip of the iceberg for me, as I've also noticed that I am able to debug both test and implementation code in a more targeted manner, with the result that my productivity has grown significantly, and that I can more easily determine where a failure occurs if a problem happens to make it all the way to the integration build due to the output that makes its way into the build logs. Further, the StoryQ api has a lovely fluent syntax that is easy to learn and which can be applied in an extraordinary number of ways, requiring no external dependencies in order to use it. So with all of these benefits, you would think it an easy to introduce the concept to the rest of the team. Unfortunately, the other team members are reluctant to even look at StoryQ to evaluate it properly (let alone entertain the idea of applying BDD), and have convinced each other to try and remove a number of StoryQ elements from our own core testing framework, even though they originally supported the use of StoryQ, and even though the code they wish to remove doesn't impact on any other part of our testing system. Doing so would end up increasing my workload significantly overall and really goes against the grain, as I am convinced through practical experience that it is a better way to work in a test-first manner in our particular working environment, and can only lead to greater improvements in the quality of our software, given I've found it easier to stick with test first using BDD. To further clarify, the majority of the unit tests we have tend to be quite brittle and difficult to maintain, a holdover from years of poorly applied testing where a reluctance to stick with a test-driven process has seen developers fall back on old habits and do all of their testing at the end of the project (these same people claim to be Agile!). So the question really comes down to the following:   1. What arguments can I use to really drive the point home that it would be better for this team to use StoryQ, or at the very least to adopt the BDD methodology?   2. Can you point me to any anecdotal evidence that I can use to support my argument to adopt BDD as our standard method of choice?   3. What counter arguments can you think of that could suggest that my wish to encourage the team to adopt BDD might be in error? Yes, I'm happy to be proven wrong provided the argument is a sound one. **NOTE** : I am not advocating that we rewrite our tests in their entirety, but rather to simply start working in a different manner for all future testing work, and preferably in the manner in which we engage our customers. And for those of you wishing to learn more about BDD, the following links may be useful:   * http://dannorth.net/introducing-bdd/   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviour_driven_development   * http://behaviour-driven.org/Introduction * * * For those interested in more details, we're a small team of 4 working on about 5 large projects. The \"pilot trial\" for BDD ran for about 2 months initially, with another approximately 4 month period following. Team accepted that I should continue to work this way and were to do their own trials. I've been BDD-ing for about 2 years now since the trial ended, while the others have become very good at ducking the issue. Rather than forcing a \"confrontation\" over the issue, I'm looking for ways to gently persuade the team to get off their collective behinds and make the time to do their bit."}
{"_id": "141469", "title": "Algorithm for determining grid based on variably sized \"blocks\"?", "text": "I'm trying to convert a set of \"blocks\" in to a grid-like layout. The blocks have a width of either 25%, 33%, 50%, 66%, or 75% of their container and each row of the grid should try to fit as many blocks as possible, up to a total width of 100%. I've discovered that trying to do this while leaving no remaining blocks in the original set is very hard. Eventually, I think my solution will be to upgrade/downgrade various block sizes (based on their priority or something) so they all fit in to a row. Either case, before I do that, I thought I'd check if someone has some code (or a paper) demonstrating a solution to this problem already? And bonus points if the solution incorporates varying block heights in to its calculations :)"}
{"_id": "204671", "title": "Set of specific values implementation vs. using some sort of generic set with advanced checks", "text": "I am working on a set implementation in JavaScript currently. This should kind of simulate generics as known from Java or C#. I need a mutable version of that (allows for adding/removing set values) and an immutable one. My constructor signature looks like this:               new GenericSet( 'number', [ 10, 20, 30 ] );      ,                // mutable set of mixed values (allows to add further values via \"add\")      new MutableGenericSet( '*', [ 'foo', 42, {}, /./ ] );      or               // DataValues.prototype.equals will be used by the set for determining equality.     new GenericSet( { type: DataValue, valueComparison: 'equals' }, [ dv1, dv2, dv3 ] );      ## Just GenericSet or one set implementation per type? Initially, my main purpose for this was to have sets of values of one type. E.g. a _DataValuesSet_ which would only accept data Values. I could then define interfaces with functions that require a _DataValuesSet_ instance. I could not use inheritance (and guess that would be bad anyhow), so I would use composition and have a _GenericSet_ / _MutableGenericSet_ instance internally. An alternative approach would be to always take _GenericSet_ and implement and use `GenericSet.requireSetOfType( type )` which would throw an error if the set's type was not the required one. My concern with doing it this way is that my interface definitions would look less explicit. Take               /**      * @param DataValuesSet dataValues      */     function printDataValues( dataValues ) {         if( !( dataValues instanceof DataValuesSet ) ) {             throw Error( '...' );         }         // ...     }      vs.               /**      * @param GenericSet dataValues Has to be a set of DataValue instances.      */     function printDataValues( dataValues ) {         // Throws error if dataValues is not a set or it it is a set with values of wrong type.         GenericSet.requireSetOfType( dataValues, DataValue );         // ...     }      perhaps using `@param GenericSet(DataValues) dataValues` for documenting the second choice would be alright? Does anyone see any further implications with the second approach or are there any alternative suggestions? To me the, second one looks more intuitive and my concern with the first one is that I would just create more overhead with constructors while I can not see any clear advantage right now."}
{"_id": "204670", "title": "How do you come up with algorithms?", "text": "I picked up some Project Euler questions today and decided to find more effective ways to Answer the questions l had already answered. So on the question about finding the sum of the even Fibonacci terms up to 4 million; I noticed that if we had a separate sequence for the even Fibonacci terms (starting with 0 & 2 as the first & second terms respectively), the progression would be `[0,2,8,34,144,610,...]` If two values from two successive terms are known, then the next term could be gotten with this expression:               [ T(n) = (4 * T(n-1)) + T(n-2) ]     ...     Where;     T(n) : is the nth term,     T(n-1) : is the (n-1)th term,     T(n-2) : is the (n-2)th term,     and '4' is a constant.      However, so far I've been unable to derive an adequate expression to find the value in an arbitrary position without knowing the values of the two preceding terms. My question:   1. Is this how equations (/algorithms) are derived?   2. Is this an efficient algorithm? Footnote: The other less efficient method (in my opinion), is to:   1. Create a function to generate all the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence under 4 million,   2. Get the even numbers among them,   3. Find their sum."}
{"_id": "141467", "title": "Is it better to use a Database or a data structure for network stack?", "text": "I've built a multi threaded messaging application in C and I'm currently using a MySQL Memory table to save the session ID, but I'm not sure whether this was a good decision or not. It works like this, the application sends a message and saves the source session ID in the MySQL table. When the application gets the success response it will remove the session's ID from the MySQL table, or if it received an error response then it will keep the ID to be retried later. I've built it this way so that I don't need to care about building a data structure by myself, and the Database provides flexibility when it comes to querying it. Do you think this is appropriate or do I need to use something else? Please note that the application is expecting to handle a large number of transactions/sec."}
{"_id": "141460", "title": "What are some potential pitfalls to using URL rewriting with SSL?", "text": "Using URL rewriting for session management for plain HTTP communication is a recipe for disaster, however, does some of that risk go away if you're using SSL (https)?"}
{"_id": "26058", "title": "Peer review for tests just like code reviews", "text": "Does anyone practice the \"code review\" process for functional tests? Do you find it useful? The way that my current employer practices SCRUM we include functional testing as part of our \"must have done\" stuff in any given sprint."}
{"_id": "153850", "title": "Do I need a license before selling software?", "text": "I have a small time software firm. Recently we got a major project that the other company wants to sell. We will be making a website and multi-platform mobile apps We are coding in PHP, JAVA, HTML. Do I need any sort of license to use these languages? Seeing that we need to sell this... We will also be using google maps. What sort of permissions will we need from google?"}
{"_id": "75084", "title": "Managed Coders vs Native Coders", "text": "I'm a coder and have experience with both native and managed code. I started out with Pascal and C, then moved into C++ and eventually into C#. Over the last year or so, I've been coding almost exclusively in C# and have lost a lot of what used to come naturally when I was a C++ coder. A few weeks ago when I sat down to write some native C++ code, I found myself fumbling around as I slowly got re-acquainted with the complexities, quirks, and idiosyncrasies of it all. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I had completely forgotten that passing a dynamically allocated array to a function without also passing its size would mean that the receiving function would have no way of knowing how long the array is. There are countless articles and documents which compare and contrast managed vs unmanaged code. We all know that native code, if well optimised, can run significantly faster and lighter than managed code. On the other hand, managed code has garbage collectors and run-time CPU-specific and OS-specific optimisation which can give native code a run for its money. Purely from a technical perspective, there is no clear winner. There is no doubt that managed code is orders of magnitude simpler to code and understand. Just look at difference in the number of lines necessary to construct a simple GUI in Win32 C++ vs C#. Back in my native-coding days, I mostly wrote mathematical simulations that ran on supercomputers. They had ugly CLIs and were mostly algorithm-focussed. Nowadays I write in C# and produce beautiful GUI applications, but would be lost if I had to make something of a similar calibre on a native language. Even with a framework such as QT, it would still take twice as long to produce something in C++/QT than it would in C#. Whenever I see someone who has written a large-scale, full-featured GUI application in C/C++, I can't help but feel a sense of awe and a hint of jealousy. I'm curious how other experienced coders see managed and unmanaged languages. Do you see managed code as _amateur-ish_? Do you see native coders as more _hardcore_?"}
{"_id": "186256", "title": "OCR API (in Java) with Word (NOT MS-WORD) extraction", "text": "![word extraction illustration](http://i.stack.imgur.com/eDsJK.png) ## My Situation I need to develop an application which does crowd-sourced Image-To-Text service (just like google's reCaptcha). So I need an OCR API which can find words in an image with some text. ## My Research   * I have gone through JavaOCR Library.    * Also Tessaract (which is not implemented in Java & Tess4J Wrapper doesn't have anything I'm looking for). So basically I have nowhere to go, so I need help. ## What I want   * Is there any API (preferably in Java) that does exactly as I have shown in the image above?   * If no such API exists, is there any EXACT algorithms suitable for this process?   * If not, what's your suggestion to achieve this? Note: I don't want another just image-to-text APIs. I need an API which finds WORD LOCATIONS in the input image."}
{"_id": "209172", "title": "Instantiating Null Objects with Null-Coalescing Operator", "text": "Consider the following typical scenario:               if(myObject == null) {         myObject = new myClass();     }      I'm wondering what is thought of the following replacement using the null- coalescing operator:               myObject = myObject ?? new myClass();      I'm not sure whether I should be using the second form. It seems like a nice shorthand, but the `myObject = myObject` construct at the beginning seems like it could be a bit of a code-smell. Is this a reasonable thing to do, or is there a better shorthand that I am missing? Or maybe, \"It's three lines, get over it!\"? Edit: As has been mentioned, perhaps calling this a typical scenario is something of an overstatement. I usually find that I encounter this situation when I'm retrieving an entity from a database that has a child reference type property that may or may not be populated yet:               myClass myObject = myClassService.getById(id);     myObject.myChildObject = myObject.myChildObject ?? new myChildClass();"}
{"_id": "209170", "title": "Design Pattern for data import of various source types and to various destination types", "text": "I have to design and build an import script (in C#) that can handle the following:   * read data from various sources (XML, XSLX, CSV)   * verify data   * write the data to various object types (customer, address) The data will come from a number of sources but a source will always have one import format (either csv, xml, xslx). Import formats can vary from source to source. New import formats may be added in the future. The destination object types are always the same (customer, addres and some more). I've been thinking about using generics and I read something about the factory pattern but I'm a pretty big noob in this area so any advice is more than welcome. What is an appropriate design pattern to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "232236", "title": "How to introduce testing in the development cycle", "text": "In our company, we are only two IT staffs, and I'm the only developper. I'm developping rich intranet applications using plain php and extjs as javascript framework. Our development cycle is usually very fast, such that often people are using tomorrow what I develop today. This is possible through an automated build script. ### Now the problem: It happens, that despite all the care, things break. And myself or the end users will notice it once the application update is published. Of course a testing framework (or mabe two, one for php and one for js) would be the solution. But this looks to me just as an unsurmountable barrier, because of these points:   * I never used a testing framework, and lack necessary knowledge   * A testing framework puts constraints on the way code is written (and I cannot judge for now, if my code fits any particular framework). I therefore fear that I had to refactor my code to be able to use a testing framework.   * I fear that writing the tests is likely to take more time than to write the code.   * Much of the code depends on the data present in different databases. How to make up mock data that can be used for testing. Can someone give me advice on how to introduce a testing framework in a setting where proficiency and time are scarce ? I know this question is really broad, but I hope I will get nonetheless some precious advices."}
{"_id": "222756", "title": "Inheritance with Entity Framework Code First", "text": "I'm starting work on a new personal project and I'm looking to get advice in regards to setting up my classes. My base class is a User. The User class will have the following general properties   * User ID   * User Name   * Password   * Address (this will be a complex/value type) I will then have a Subscriber class which is a User who has chosen to subscribe to a plan that I offer. The Subscriber class will have its own properties in addition to that of the User including:   * Subscriber ID   * Plan ID   * Date Subscribed   * etc Is inheritance the way to go here with User being the base class or is a foreign key from the Subscriber to User class the better way? If inheritance is preferred then which method? TPH or TPT? The plan is to have other classes with the User class acting as the base including Participants and Volunteers. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "53964", "title": "Customer won't decide, how to deal?", "text": "I write software that involves the use of measured quantities, many input by the user, most displayed, that are fed into calculation models to simulate various physical thing-a-majigs. We have created a data type that allows us to associate a numeric value with a unit, we call these \"quantities\" (big duh). Quantities and units are unique to dimension. You can't attach kilogram to a length for example. Math on quantities does automatic unit conversion to SI and the type is dimension safe (you can't assign a weight to a pressure for example). Custom UI components have been developed that display the value and its unit and/or allow the user to edit them. Dimensionless quantities, having no units, are a single, custom case implemented within the system. There's a set of related quantities such that our target audience apparently uses them interchangeably. The quantities are used in special units that embed the conversion factors for the related quantity dimensions...in other words, when using these units converting from one to another simply involves multiplying the value by 1 to the dimensional difference. However, conversion to/from the calculation system (SI) still involves these factors. One of these related quantities is a dimensionless one that represents a ratio. I simply can't get the \"customer\" to recognize the necessity of distinguishing these values and their use. They've picked one and want to use it everywhere, customizing the way we deal with it in special places. In this case they've picked one of the dimensions that has a unit...BUT, they don't want there to be a unit (GRR!!!). This of course is causing us to implement these special overrides for our UI elements and such. That of course is often times forgotten and worse...after a couple months everyone forgets why it was necessary and why we're using this dimensional value, calling it the wrong thing, and disabling the unit. I could just ignore the \"customer\" and implement the type as the dimensionless quantity, which makes most sense. However, that leaves the team responsible for figuring it out when they've given us a formula using one of the other quantities. We have to not only figure out that it's happening, we have to decide what to do. This isn't a trivial deal. The other option is just to say to hell with it, do it the customer's way, and let it waste continued time and effort because it's just downright confusing as hell. However, I can't count the amount of times someone has said, \"Why is this being done this way, it makes no sense at all,\" and the team goes off the deep end trying to figure it out. What would you do? Currently I'm still attempting to convince them that even if they use terms interchangeably, we at the least can't do that within the product discussion. Don't have high hopes though."}
{"_id": "53963", "title": "How do you unit test your javascript", "text": "I spend a lot of time working in javascript of late. I have not found a way that seems to work well for testing javascript. This in the past hasn't been a problem for me since most of the websites I worked on had very little javascript in them. I now have a new website that makes extensive use of jQuery I would like to build unit tests for most of the system. My problems are this.   * Most of the functions make changes to the DOM in some way.   * Most of the functions request data from the web server as well and require a session on the service to get results back. I would like to run the test from either a command line or a test running harness rather then in a browser. Any help or articles I should be reading would be helpful."}
{"_id": "167410", "title": "tail-like view on HTML logfiles", "text": "I'm working on an application that creates HTML log files. I'm tired of having to manually reload and scroll to the bottom in the browser to see the latest entries. A solution that does not really satisfy me is using the Firefox plugins ReloadEvery and ScrollyFox. In many situations reloading frequency and scrolling speed are just to slow. Of course I could actually use tail, but I would prefer a rendered HTML page. Do you have any suggestions? Firefox extensions are preferred, but any other tip is appreciated, too."}
{"_id": "53968", "title": "Trying to learn ASP.NET", "text": "I have a background in computers and have programmed for about 7 years. I switched careers, and became a Technical Writer, and now think I should jump ship again, back to being a programmer. Of course the natural course of action, in which I can spend, say two whole years, learning to code, might not be available any more. I am keen on ASP.NET as its the language that most products at my company are written in. I am sure this has been asked before, but here I go: where do I begin? I would really appreciate some practical advise."}
{"_id": "228180", "title": "What to do when the marketing department attempts to drive the development process?", "text": "I'm a fairly experienced web-developer working in a small startup, as the developer of an e-commerce website. The other three people involved are the Director, the Designer and the Marketing guy. The plan as I understood it, was for the Designer to make the logos and page mockups, me to turn them into a functional website, the marketer to oversee any messaging/blurbs/social-media, the Director to manage the business and oversee everything else. Recently, the Marketing guy asked about our plans for a RWD (responsive web design). I told him that due to our tight schedule and that I'm writing both the front-end and back-end code, I'd only be targeting the most popular mobile devices until we had a functional website, after which I'd focus on a more comprehensive responsive design to target everything. He didn't want to accept this and asked me why we couldn't just buy a WordPress template to handle the responsive aspect. Because the template requires WordPress, some e-commerce plugin for WP and modification of the template itself to match our design anyway, I replied that it wasn't a good idea and would probably only add extra development overhead at this point. His last response seemed to only reiterate his points without addressing mine. Rather than having some back and forth pissing match, I'm looking for a solution that will work best for the project as a whole, while avoiding any animosity if possible. Any ideas (technical, management or otherwise)?"}
{"_id": "58950", "title": "Defect statuses: \"WON'T FIX\" vs \"Cancelled\"", "text": "I've been involved in several projects either as tester or developer. In many of projects there were following statuses for defects:   1. WON'T FIX   2. Cancelled Do you use such statuses and how do you differ them? I ask, because most people can't explain the difference. My understanding is: **WON'T FIX** \\- developer will not fix the defect, due to it's not a defect;   **Cancelled** \\- defect should not be fixed, because of lowest priority"}
{"_id": "18551", "title": "How can a Right-Brainer Deal with Massive Left-Brainer Code?", "text": "I'm an artist, mostly, though I describe myself as a artist/physicist. While I can do math, deal with words, and the \"logical\" stuff considered left-brain, it's an effort and I make mistakes, whereas I do well with and most of the time think in terms of those things associated with right-brain thinking - spatial relations, holistic big-picture context, etc. Of course all that is fuzzy, as the right-left brain theory is oversimplified and no mental activity is so simple. Yet I do sense that I fit in fine with artists, video directors, chefs, and other non-verbal thinking, creative types, while most people in \"IT\" or hardcore software engineers have minds that work differently, with attention to detail, holding many details in mind at one time, and strong rational and verbal capabilities. So here I am in a job being paid to fix fussy and obscure bugs in a massive swarm of C++ software, very heavy on OO, and any one line of code makes no sense unless I hold in mind about twenty other class and method names, relations between them, the flow of execution (very spaghetti-like) and other detail. Besides that, I'm also rather strongly against much of contemporary C++ and OO styles. Those who wrote this code really drank the deep OO and Modern C++ kool-ade. I find it actually makes code much harder to follow, much harder to decide where to fix or change something. I don't know if this is part of the left/right differnce (or whatever you want to call it) or not. But work on the C++ I must - people depend on me for my income. What are tips and techniques to deal with this situation, to be as effective as possible for my employer?"}
{"_id": "106675", "title": "What can you do about the quality of existing integration and unit tests while being the new guy in a team ?", "text": "A recurring theme that I came across in my career is being the new developer to arrive in a team, and quickly having an inherent distrust of the existing unit and integration test suites. During the interview you are told by the management that they \"strongly support unit testing\" and that they openly encourage it. They do, but everything about the tests themselves is just plain wrong. Like the fact that they are claiming 100% coverage when there is 100% integration test coverage but less than 10% repeatable unit test coverage. Some other problems I have found:   1. No clear indication between what is a unit test and what is an integration test. Unit and integration tests are mixed together in the same class.   2. Integration tests that have undeclared explicit dependencies on very specific dynamic data on a specific environment's database.   3. Non-transactional integration tests, basically tests that may or may not bother to clean up after themselves, sometimes requiring manual database \"scrubbing\" to make the test repeatable.   4. No mocking whatsoever, and application code requires a major overhaul just for mocking to be possible. In other words, design without testing in mind.   5. No clear naming conventions to quickly look at a test name and determine roughly what tests are being done. This is all not to say that ALL of the tests are useless or bad, a good deal of them are pretty good and worth keeping, but it feels like panning for gold sometimes. I would purposely avoid running tests just because I was afraid of screwing up the database for my black-box test cases. This has essentially given me an inherent **mistrust** of unit and integration tests that I have not personally written or reviewed in some way. At some level if you don't have faith in the quality of your test suite then it really brings no value to the team or the project whatsoever. What do you do when you find yourself in this situation? What do you feel the best plan of attack would be to tackle something like this? Should all of the tests be refactored in a monumental effort spanning across releases? Should you just abandon the idea that this legacy project may have one day solid unit test coverage?"}
{"_id": "38617", "title": "Is it still relevant to learn C these days?", "text": "Back in the uni days, I had the opportunity to study C for one semester but I didn't take it any further because I can not see many job opportunities for C hence I learnt Java. These days I see more things are made with C, mainly programming language and database server. Is it still relevant to learn C? Will learning C land me a job these days?"}
{"_id": "102741", "title": "Is this agile? Scrum? How to improve agility?", "text": "Is this **agile**? **Scrum**? Any suggestions on how this can be made more agile under the circumstances? Which points are positives and which can be improved?   * The product is developed for a customer who will re-sell it while paying us royalty.   * The team does not get to talk directly to the end user. Only to the reseller.   * A product requirements document was created before starting development.    * The requirements are rigid and do not change.   * A delivery schedule was agreed on with milestones such as \"alpha\", \"beta\" etc. and features/times attached to those milestones.   * All developers on the Scrum team report to the product owner, a software manager.   * Testers on the team report to a QA manager.   * The product owner has directed the team towards certain high risk technical tasks. The output of those tasks is not usable by the end user but rather some technology/code that will eventually be used in the product.   * The product owner has created a backlog based on the requirements.   * The product owner is unable to answer some questions regarding the product. He refers to others or to the documented requirements.   * The team goes through the motions of Scrum. Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, Retrospective etc. There is a ScrumMaster.   * Every sprint the product owner and management decide what backlog items the team works on.   * There is a burndown chart. Scrum board with stories and tasks. The estimates on those come from the team.   * The team sits in an open floor \"bull pen\" shared with other teams, all visible and audible. There is cross-team noise and there is foot traffic around the team area.   * The team may be required to attend various meetings not directly related to the goals of the sprint.   * There are pressures to select certain technical solutions. Some tools and processes are mandated."}
{"_id": "83442", "title": "Microsoft exam 70-536: How to memorize all of this?", "text": "After 6+ years of .NET development, I decided to take the exams and get my certifications to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I'm taking exam 70-536 (.NET Framework Development Application Fundamentals) in 18 days. Taking the practice exams, I notice that these questions are about minute details of dealing with the BCL libraries the exam focuses on. They aren't so much about \"Here's your scenario. Which classes or approach is appropriate\". It's more like \"One of these (4) choices executes correctly. Which one?\" Fine and all, but this is stuff that I could look up on MSDN in two seconds, but the exam is requiring you to memorize them! These questions could come from any of the thousands of classes that are covered in this exam. This is hard-core memorization. Are there any suggestions for memorizing so much information? Any patterns in the way the classes are developed that I could leverage in educated guesses in case I can't remember the exact syntax? For what it's worth, I have spent a lot of time preparing for this exam, so I'm not just trying to pass and get through it, I have learned a ton. But to pass, I need to have a LOT memorized, not just an understanding of the BCLs."}
{"_id": "232586", "title": "What is the real difference between a minified and uncompressed file? What are the benefits of each?", "text": "I often see something like \"uncompressed for development / minified for production\" when reading blogs or downloading frameworks. What is the real difference between the two, and if minified is \"good for production\" why is it not recommended for development?"}
{"_id": "232580", "title": "Role of Quality Assurance (Not testing!) in Agile", "text": "From Wikipedia: > Quality Assurance refers to administrative and procedural activities > implemented in a quality system so that requirements and goals for a > product, service or activity will be fulfilled.[1] It is the systematic > measurement, comparison with a standard, monitoring of processes and an > associated feedback loop that confers error prevention.[2] This can be > contrasted with quality control, which is focused on process output. You can read the following article to understand the difference between QA and testing (quality control): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alanpa/archive/2006/02/26/539527.aspx What I'd like to understand is whether there is a place for QA engineer who is not a tester in Agile/Scrum. Agile is deliberately short on processes and documentation (its even in the manifesto), and that's what QA specialize in. So should there even be a QA engineer in Agile? I myself am not a QA engineer (I am a test lead), but I have a friend who is, so that's why I am asking."}
{"_id": "83449", "title": "I have free time for Android development. I'd like suggestions on how to tackle this effectively", "text": "I'm finishing college for good tomorrow, then leaving my current programming job the next day. I'll be looking for opportunities, but I may end up with a month or two without a job, so with lots of free time to work on my Android development skills and improve my value for those jobs. I started thinking about what I'll be doing to make the most out of all this time, and figured I'd need a good plan. I haven't coded too much in Java, but feel like I can grasp the syntax quite quickly. I have already played with ADT and the whole Android setup a bit, but never completed an app due to lack of time. I'm looking for tips in order to finish the next month with the best skillset I can get in that time. Where to start with, tutorials, what to learn first, and so on. By the way, I do have an android device, so the emulator slowness or learning curve won't be an issue. Thank you"}
{"_id": "68058", "title": "At what point do immutable classes become a burden?", "text": "When designing classes to hold your data model I've read it can be useful to create immutable objects but at what point does the burden of constructor parameter lists and deep copies become too much and you have to abandon the immutable restriction? For example, here is an immutable class to represent a named thing (I'm using C# syntax but the principle applies to all OO languages)               class NamedThing     {         private string _name;             public NamedThing(string name)         {             _name = name;         }             public NamedThing(NamedThing other)         {              this._name = other._name;         }         public string Name         {             get { return _name; }         }     }      Named things can be constructed, queried and copied to new named things but the name cannot be changed. This is all good but what happens when I want to add another attribute? I have to add a parameter to the constructor and update the copy constructor; which isn't too much work but the problems start, as far as I can see, when I want to make a _complex_ object immutable. If the class contains may attributes and collections, containing other complex classes, it seems to me the constructor parameter list would become a nightmare. So at what point does a class become _too complex_ to be immutable?"}
{"_id": "202530", "title": "Question regarding Readability vs Processing Time", "text": "I am creating a flowchart for a program with multiple sequential steps. Every step should be performed if the previous step is succesful. I use a c-based programming language so the lay-out would be something like this: **METHOD 1:**               if(step_one_succeeded())     {         if(step_two_succeeded())         {             if(step_three_succeeded())             {                 //etc. etc.             }            }     }      If my program would have 15+ steps, the resulting code would be terribly unfriendly to read. So I changed my design and implemented a global errorcode that I keep passing by reference, make everything more readable. The resulting code would be something like this: **METHOD 2:**               int _no_error = 0;          step_one(_no_error);     if(_no_error == 0) step_two(_no_error);     if(_no_error == 0) step_three(_no_error);     if(_no_error == 0) step_two(_no_error);      The cyclomatic complexibility stays the same. Now let's say there are N number of steps. And let's assume that checking a condition is 1 clock long and performing a step doesn't take up time. The processing speed of Method1 can be anywhere between 1 and N. The processing speed of Method2 however is always equal to N-1. So Method1 will be faster most of the time. Which brings me to my question, is it bad practice to sacrifice time in order to make the code more readable? And why (not)?"}
{"_id": "133335", "title": "Handling Errors In PHP When Using MVC", "text": "I've been using Codeigniter a lot recently, but one thing that gets on my nerves is handling errors and displaying them to the user. I've never been good at handling errors without it getting messy. My main concern is when returning errors to the user. Is it good practice to use exceptions and throw/catch exceptions rather than returning 0 or 1 from functions and then using if/else to handle the errors. Thus, making it easier to inform the user about the issue. I tend to go away from exceptions. My Java tutor at university some years ago told me \"exceptions shouldn't be used in production code it's more for debugging\". I get the feeling he was lying. But, an example, I have code that adds a user to a database. During the process more than 1 thing could go wrong, such as a database issue, a duplicate entry, a server issue, etc. When an issue happens during registration the user needs to know about it. What's the best way to handle errors in PHP, keeping in mind that I'm using an MVC framework."}
{"_id": "146118", "title": "Open source custom work", "text": "Many of the custom projects I take include things that could be useful to the open source community. I'd like them to open Github repos with them :) Most of them are jQuery plugins. I'm almost always ending up creating my own jQuery plugins for features I need to implement in the project, for example autocomplete, edit-in-place functionality etc. Would it be a good idea to offer a \"discount\" for people that accept to let me open-source part of the project? Like -15%, -25% etc? Do you think it would be unprofessional to ask them this?"}
{"_id": "188959", "title": "Is there a marketplace for crowdfunding OSS work?", "text": "Currently there are a few OSS projects that I would like to create and then use, but I just don't have the time to put into the creation of them, or in the case of some projects (e.g. Emacs packages), don't have the experience with the language. I would be happy to pay someone else to do the development, but probably not to the tune of the whole development (assuming the minimum someone would work for is ~$5000). However, whilst discussing one of these projects with another programmer they expressed interest in using it, leading me to believe that there would be others similarly interested in the successful creation of one of these projects (or possibly not, but for arguments sake assume that the project would be useful to more than just me). It seems like the kind of thing that something like a cross between gun.io and Kickstarter would be suited to, in that it would both attract developers and allow others interested in seeing the development occur to suggest projects and put money towards the effort. Is there a platform that exists for this sort of crowdfunding to occur? NB. Kickstarter and its ilk seem more suited towards discrete products (like CMS systems and various applications), but maybe that is the best marketplace for it."}
{"_id": "188954", "title": "No programmer will build my semi-adult website. Why?", "text": "I've been looking for get this website done for a long time. I thought with a well organized write-up of what I wanted, as well as having clear examples done in photoshop of faux pages to give an idea of the vision, and no hidden surprises, I would be a programmer's dream job. Unfortunately, no company will touch the website. There is nothing illegal about it or even remotely offensive. It's an adult listing for professional Dominatrices. I don't see what the big deal is, when there are way worse and more hard-core sites out there, and this is just a listing. Pro Domination is a legal occupation in the USA and most of the world. People just don't want to touch the site. It's really strange. I have all of the information and details of the site laid out perfectly and clearly. I just either get no response or people who tell me they won't touch anything remotely adult. Is there a reason for this?"}
{"_id": "146111", "title": "Should I ask for advance payment on custom work?", "text": "...for project-based work. So far I didn't, and always got paid when work was complete and didn't ran into any problems. Does this make me look unprofessional? :) Should I ask like 25% - 50% advance before I start working? The work I usually do also includes graphic design to some extent (user inteface for my app)"}
{"_id": "219158", "title": "Improving the Java development workflow", "text": "I will like to assist my group standardize to a reproducable Java tooling environment that aligns with some good practices to improve on our workflow. We are predominantly a .NET shop that has been doing quite a bit of Java development recently and have been burned too many times with our current Java development process. The process is ad-hoc, since we are kind of new to all things Java. Each developer decides on their tool of choice (somewhat a good thing) and due to the lack of any kind of procedure in terms of 3rd party dependency management, we more often than not run into build or deployment problems and hit serious setbacks when developer machines have to be rebuilt for one reason or another. Our Java development environments are simply neither consistent nor repeatable from one machine to another. We do not have a similar problem with our .NET projects. Everyone runs the same version of Visual Studio, Resharper, and all 3rd party and open source libraries. Possibly because we pay for most of the stuff but there is also a consistent pattern across our C# projects where everything one needs is encapsulated into the solution file and all 3rd party dlls required for this solution are checked into sub a directory relative to the parent solution in source control. Visual Studio helps here too with its version check but this process is working well and I feel it could be replicated for our Java development efforts. To help achieve this goal, I have compiled the following list of questions to gauge what the experts are using out there.   1. What Java development IDE do you use? Eclipse, NetBeans or **IntelliJ** ?    2. Do you use a dependency management tool such as **Apache Maven** , Gradle, a standardize home grown solution, or does each developer determine what works best for them? What we have    3. If the answer to 2, is yes, how do you integrate such tools with your build system?   4. Do you standardize on a specific version of the IDE, related tools and runtime? For example, are all devs running Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers 3.7, IntelliJ 12.1.6, JDK1.7 or 1.8 and are there any policies to enforce that all devs are using the same version?   5. How do you ensure that projects settings are consistent and repeatable across dev machines? Do you mandate checking in all of a project settings into source control or just the respective source files?    6. For each tool, including IDE, dependency management and build, what selection process did you use? Items highlighted in bold is what we are learning towards based on past experiences. But it will be good to learn from what others are doing. I will start by answering some of the questions, listing some of the problems we are facing:   1. Every developer uses Eclipse. However Eclipse and JDK versions could differ from one machine to another. Dev A could be running Eclipse Juno with JDK 1.6 while Dev B is running Eclipse Galileo with JDK 1.7. The build machine could be running something different and we will only know there is a problem next morning when build is broken. WIth resources also distributed across continents, this causes serious headaches. For IDE standardization, I am leaning towards IntelliJ for usability and consistency, just to name a few.   2. We do not use any such tool. Instead all 3rd party libs are stored in a 3rdParty central folder outside of the solution tree. Then we have an Eclipse project setup to reference these JARs. This works well but this 3rdparty folder is very large. So if you do not want to selectively checkout the JARs you need just to get this project compile, you are in for a long morning waiting to check out the entire 3rdParty folder from SVN. For dependency management, I am leaning towards Maven.   3. We use raw ANT scripts. Each developer needs to ensure that all the stuff required to build the project is checked into source control. But because these resources are all over the place, remember, the 3rd party folder is not part of the project tree, it is very easy to forget checking in that new dependent JAR downloaded from somewhere. And if you use Maven, like I do, I need to copy the JAR from my local Maven repo to the relevant centrll 3rdParty folder so that the build machine does not complain. However, there is still a good chance that this build will fail since the build environment could also be different. For build and packaging, I am also leaning towards Maven to ensure that the build environment is similar to the dev environment. I want to relieve the pain of having to remember where to put dependencies.   4. No. See answer 1.   5. We do not, possibly because we are not saving the entire Eclipse workspace into source control. So if I receive a new machine and check out an Eclipse project, I will have to spend a good portion of my day configuring project settings that should have been saved in source control. TIA for all comments. **EDIT:** Just to add that we do have a CI server and use Jenkins/ANT scripts for building. Klaus"}
{"_id": "112077", "title": "Should we attempt to review all our code?", "text": "We're currently modifying out development process and I'm wandering if we should try to keep a 100% of our commits peer reviewed. What is your experience regarding code reviews?   * Do you tend to spend \"a lot\" of time on them (say 1/2 hours per day), or just skim over for 5/10 minutes max?   * Do you have a fixed amount of time to spend per day/week/sprint/project ?   * Most importantly do you think that the target should be for 100% of the code to be peer reviewed or that 100% is not necessary?"}
{"_id": "112072", "title": "What is the technique called in which you return a never ending http response to keep returning lines of javascript for dynamic update effect?", "text": "There is a technique in which you don't end the response and this allows you to send content to the client in chunks like pieces of javascript or maybe xml document that can be parsed on the client side and give an effect of updating something in real time instead of polling the server again and again. Was there such a technique or am I dreaming? Do you have reference to an online article explaining this?"}
{"_id": "72889", "title": "Paying for training when resigning?", "text": "Hi Programmers Community. I came across the following predicament during the past month when an employee at my company resigned. It is the company policy that when you resign, all training that you have undergone during the year prior to your resignation, you have to pay back. This is all good, as this is practice in a lot of companies. What happened was, a few months ago, a certain course was presented by an external company. We offered a room in our office as venue for free, and then we were allowed to send some employees on the training for free. He was one of them. Should he pay back the training costs (which was quite expensive)? Has anyone come across a similar situation? Or does someone have policy regarding this? Thanks! * * * **UPDATE** Just to clarify a few things. The training was _kind of_ optional (the senior developer chose who to send, but I'm sure he could have said no). It **was** however very much work related. It was training regarding a technology that we use every day. Also, it was not internal training, it was done by an external company. It was however done on our premises. That was the deal, they use our venue for free, and we send people on the training for free."}
{"_id": "225402", "title": "How do I explain a ruby method with a real-world analogy?", "text": "I am looking for a good analogy to help the concept of a method in ruby stick in my head. When I truly understand a concept, an image flashes in my mind that relates something physical to the abstract concepts I am trying to learn. For example, someone explained the concept of a variable to me in the following way: > A variable is like a box you can put things in. The name of the variable is > like taking a sharpie and writing a word, like \"forks\" on the side of the > box. Picking a good name is important. You can stick anything in the box, > but if you write 'forks' on the side of the box, you would expect forks to > be in the box. You can put anything in the box, then carry it around to > various people, and tell them \"there are forks in this box.\" When they need > a fork, they go to the fork box and get out a fork. That's the sort of physical, image-based, concrete analogy I am looking for for a ruby method. Right now most definitions I have found are useless to me. For example, at turtorialspoint, the first result for the google search 'what is a ruby method,' has the folowing definition. > Ruby methods are very similar to functions in any other programming > language. Ruby methods are used to bundle one or more repeatable statements > into a single unit. Let me give you an example of why this definitions is useless to me. I'm going to replace every word and concept in this definition that I don't understand with the word 'blah.' > Ruby blah are very similar to blah in any other programming language. Ruby > blah are used to blah one or more blah blah into a single blah. In summary, can I get a good, physical analogy for the concept of a method in ruby?"}
{"_id": "225404", "title": "Match buyers and sellers based on date ranges and quantity of shares", "text": "_NOTE: This is in reference to the question Iasked on Stack Overflow but was told to post this here_ I'm building a trading application that matches buyers/sellers that own subscription. Subscriptions have a certain quantity amount for a certain duration of time. There are 8 order types which are:   * Buy/sell subscription (can either be partially filled in regards to quantity or time)   * Buy/sell all quantity subscription (can only be partially filled in regards to time)   * Buy/sell all time subscription (can only be partially filled in regards to quantity)   * Buy/sell all quantity and time subscription (cannot be partially filled, all or nothing) Each user that fills the * * * # Example 1 Assuming all orders in this example can be partially filled in regards to quantity and time lets say User A places a buy order asking for 100 shares between 1/2/2014 - 1/3/2014 (dd/mm/yyyy). There are 4 sell orders currently in the order book   * User B is selling 25 shares between 1/1/2014 - 5/1/2014    * User C is selling 50 shares between 1/1/2014 - 15/2/2014    * User D is selling 70 shares between 10/2/2014 - 1/7/2014    * User E is selling 5 shares between 15/2/2014 - 25/2/2014 Which would look like               User A                 |--------------100-----------|     User B    |----------------------------25-----------------------|     User C    |-------------------50---|     User D                       |--------------70------------------|     User E                             |--5--|      After the matching is done each users orders in the order book would look like               User A                 |-25--|           |----5-----|     User B    |------25----|                            |----25-----|     User C    |------50----|     User D                                              |----70-----|     User E has no open orders      After all said and done the order book would look like:   * User A is buying 25 shares between 1/2/2014 - 10/2/2014   * User A is buying 5 shares between 15/2/2014 - 1/3/2014   * User B is selling 25 shares between 1/1/2014 - 1/2/2014   * User B is selling 25 shares between 1/3/2014 - 5/1/2014   * User C is selling 50 shares between 1/1/2014 - 1/2/2014   * User D is selling 70 shares between 1/3/2014 - 1/7/2014   * User E isn't selling anything # Example 2 This example is exactly the same except User B is of sell all quantity and time subscription type. In other words User B wants to sell his/her's entire position. After the matching is done each users orders in the order book would look like               User A                 |-50--|     |--25-|----30----|     User B    |----------------------------25-----------------------|     User C    |------50----|     User D                       |-20--|                |----70-----|     User E has no open orders      After all said and done the order book would look like:   * User A is buying 50 shares between 1/2/2014 - 10/2/2014   * User A is buying 25 shares between 15/2/2014 - 25/3/2014   * User A is buying 30 shares between 25/2/2014 - 1/3/2014   * User B is selling 25 shares between 1/1/2014 - 5/1/2014 (doesn't even match because this order doesn't allow partial filling)   * User C is selling 50 shares between 1/1/2014 - 1/2/2014   * User D is selling 70 shares between 15/2/2014 - 25/2/2014   * User D is selling 70 shares between 1/3/2014 - 1/7/2014   * User E isn't selling anything * * * # Process Another requirement is I need to be able to keep track of how the orders are filled in the database. When User A's buy order comes in it will first match to User B's which would result in:               User A                 |--------------75------------|     User B    |------25----|                            |----25-----|      Both of those states would need to be saved to the database. Once that is complete then User C's order is matched up, which would look like:               User A                 |-----25----|------75--------|     User B    |------25----|                            |----25-----|     User C    |------50----|      Keep going:               User A                 |--25-|     |-------5--------|     User B    |------25----|                            |----25-----|     User C    |------50----|     User D                                              |----70-----|      * * * # Question Is there any existing algorithm to do what I'm asking? **EDIT** : After some searching it sort of seems like I'm after an interval tree or a segment tree where I can sum up what's in the tree for a given time range. However I need to be able to store the modifications to the tree in a database with the start and dates. Are there any implementations out there of this done with LINQ or SQL? **EDIT 2:** In my first edit I thought it was an interval tree but now it looks more like bin packing algorithm"}
{"_id": "225406", "title": "Hoes dows the productivity incidence of Lisp and OCaml compare?", "text": "I am about to start a new project and I cannot decide if I should pick OCaml or Lisp for the project. My main concern is about the difference of productivity \u2014 if any. I program OCaml since 1998 and, while I neither tried to measure this precisely nor to even define precisely what the productivity I would like to measure is, I am pretty confident that I am more productive with OCaml than I am with more classical languages I know, as C or Python. I think so, because the compiler is so good at catching my errors, that only the smart bugs make it to the final program\u2014but these are usually easy to find, like some logic piece being semi-obviously wrong or system resources inappropriately manipulated. I never invested in learning the debugger of OCaml \u2014 which by the way can go backwards in the time\u2014because I had never felt I needed using it. The language has a module system allowing generalisation of structures by means of _functors_ and a preprocessor `camlp4` which can be used to extend the language, like implementing automatic serialisation of values. This is of course something that Lisp has not\u2014but I tried Slime in Emacs, and it looks to include an all-mighty debugger and code explorer. But Lisp has macros. Unfortunately, my knowledge in Lisp is almost zero\u2014I toyed around with it about one afternoon\u2014and I am therefore unable to compare macros with `camlp4`. To me, it seems that:   * Lisp macros are much easier to write than `camlp4` extensions.   * Lisp macros are much easier to use as modules or `camlp4` extensions. Functors, when used to implement a functionality similar to _traits_ are quite clumsy, verbose, and require odd-looking idiosyncratic invocations: on the other side, Lisp macros just look like anything else in Lisp (S-expressions).   * Lisp macros do not raise an engineering problem, they belong to a package, dot. Functors do raise engineering problems because type names receive aliases, which is puzzling. (As a side note, it looks to me that Lisp is easier to get started with than OCaml is, at least for the bunch of quantum physicists wanting to join the project.) Can anyone compare the incidence on productivity of OCaml and Lisp (pick the one you want)?"}
{"_id": "72882", "title": "Brainstorming software", "text": "Does anyone have any experience with brain storming software for early stage design work? If so, do you have any recommendations for particular software to use? Or to avoid? To pre-empt certain possible answers: I'm aware a blank bit of paper serves well but I'm interested in using software in this instance.   1. So I can refine the results easier than copying it out into paper.   2. Easily move the results between locations/store in dropbox. Some further information: Brainstorming is perhaps a misnomer in this case, more of a brain shower. The software would be used by 1 person only (me) for my personal projects. Of course anything that can also deal with a more corporate setting would also be good as if I use it and like it I may try to introduce it to my team. Further further info: After asking this question I found Xmind, and I've been playing with it for half an hour or so. My first impressions are that it is pretty good."}
{"_id": "247183", "title": "Why is software OS specific?", "text": "I'm trying to determine the technical details of why software produced using programming languages for certain operating systems only work with them. It is my understanding that binaries are specific to certain processors due to the processor specific machine language they understand and the differing instruction sets between different processors. But where does the operating system specificity come from? I used to assume it was APIs provided by the OS but then I saw this diagram in a book: ![Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BmED2.png) _Operating Systems - Internals and Design Principles 7th ed - W. Stallings (Pearson, 2012)_ As you can see, APIs are not indicated as a part of the operating system. If for example I build a simple program in C using the following code:               #include<stdio.h>          main()     {         printf(\"Hello World\");          }      Is the compiler doing anything OS specific when compiling this?"}
{"_id": "189967", "title": "What is an Activation object in Javascript?", "text": "In a given execution context, the Variable object is the Activation object of that execution context. From my research online, I am able to find the previous sentence rephrased in different ways but no one is able to tell what it is. What is an Activation object?"}
{"_id": "194513", "title": "Notify players every x seconds in a multiplayer game", "text": "I'm working on a realtime multiplayer game using Django and gevent-socketio, I'm facing some issues: I need to send an update of the game state to connected players every X seconds (~4 seconds), so basically I need to execute a function every x seconds which does some calculations and sends the connected players the new game state. What is the easiest way to achieve this? is using cron a good choice here or should I look for other tools like celery or ...? Also, the function needs to operate on some data. querying the database every time the function is executed does not seems to be a good idea, where can I store the game data (which is updated frequently during the game)?"}
{"_id": "194511", "title": "Acceptable placement of the composition root using dependency injection and inversion of control containers", "text": "I've read in several sources including Mark Seemann's 'Ploeh' blog about how the appropriate placement of the composition root of an IoC container is as close as possible to the entry point of an application. In the .NET world, these applications seem to be commonly thought of as Web projects, WPF projects, console applications, things with a typical UI (read: not library projects). Is it really going against this sage advice to place the composition root at the entry point of a library project, when it represents the logical entry point of a group of library projects, and the client of a project group such as this is someone else's work, whose author can't or won't add the composition root to their project (a UI project or yet another library project, even)? I'm familiar with Ninject as an IoC container implementation, but I imagine many others work the same way in that they can scan for a module containing all the necessary binding configurations. This means I could put a binding module in its own library project to compile with my main library project's output, and if the client wanted to change the configuration (an unlikely scenario in my case), they could drop in a replacement dll to replace the library with the binding module. This seems to avoid the most common clients having to deal with dependency injection and composition roots at all, and would make for the cleanest API for the library project group. Yet this seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom on the issue. Is it just that most of the advice out there makes the assumption that the developer has some coordination with the development of the UI project(s) as well, rather than my case, in which I'm just developing libraries for others to use?"}
{"_id": "212262", "title": "Distributing a data access solution across multiple solutions", "text": "I have 3 solutions, one of them is a dataccess solution with all the repositories etc. At the moment when a change is made to it, the others have to go get the latest nuget version locally, we have a nuget server on the LAN. Its a pain to debug though. Would a git submodule work here to enable debugging and not worry about updating nuget packages?"}
{"_id": "233182", "title": "Examples of designing a database that handles point tracking?", "text": "I'm attempting to expand my knowledge of how database designs and concepts work. I'm working on a hobby web/mobile app for practice that will challenge me. However, I am running into an issue. What my novel concept is that there are two buttons 'yes' and 'no'. The buttons can only be clicked once a day. If 'yes' is clicked then a counter keeps tracks of how many clicks (days) it has been pushed. Example \"You've tied your shoes 95 days in a row!\" If 'no' is clicked then the counter \"resets\" for example \"It has been 0 days since you've tied your shoe.\" I've done some reading but I haven't been able to find too many examples that are like this. I've read several posts here (a sample of them below) ( implementing dynamic query handler on historical data Storing stop/start points in a database In an online questionnaire, what is a best way to design a database for keeping track of users all attempts? ) but I'm still pretty confused on how to move forward. My initial idea was to have a user table (id | user | password) points table (id | point | date) If a person clicks on yes then it adds an entry into the points table. If they don't click anything then no entry occurs. If they click no it's a -1. However, I'm not certain this is a solid way to build out the database especially if I want to track it. My questions are:   1. Given the few tasks above, how to setup the database?   2. How would I be able to display a counter that once someone hits no it 'resets'? For example the database tracks that the individual has tied their shoes for the last 9 days in a row but once they say no they didn't tie their shoes the counter resets to 0.    3. How to proceed with analytics side, to show how many times they've clicked no, yes, so on but that's down the road."}
{"_id": "198425", "title": "REST API internal directory structure and RewriteEngine", "text": "I'm building a REST API. I don't want to have _real_ folders in my directory structure, but I'm not quite sure what to use else. My REST API uses paths like this:               api.server.com/<object>/<action>[/]      Here, `<object>` is the object the action `<action>` should be performed on. For example, a URL `api.server.com/user/create` would create a new user. For now, I've come up with this:   * The objects all have their own file, like `user.php` for the object `/user/`. In the GET variable `action` a string determining the action is stored.   * I'm using a .htaccess rewrite script to rewrite the fake directories to these internal paths:              RewriteEngine On     RewriteRule ^(.*?)/(.*?)/?$ $1.php?action=$2 [NC,L]      However, I'm not sure if this is the best way of setting up a REST API. Would there be any obvious problems I'm missing here? How does the internal file tree of a REST API usually look, or can't that be reasonably said? What are the pros and cons of different approaches?"}
{"_id": "202288", "title": "Is it possible to get a programming job with a bad credit history", "text": "I'm studying/practicing to be a software developer but I'm worried that my bad credit history will prevent me from getting a job as a developer. I was laid off a few years ago and went through a period where everything went wrong. I was able to bounce back with a couple part time jobs and now I have a dead-end 40k a year job. Currently my credit history shows 2 foreclosures and credit card debt. I'm gradually paying off the credit card debt but my credit history will look horrible for a few years. BTW, an adviser told me to file for bankruptcy but that sounds like it will only makes things worse. I already feel as if I'm too old (34 years old) to enter this competitive career but I don't have much of a choice because software development is my only interest. I currently code .NET desktop apps for personal use and I've been getting into web development lately. I believe I can convince a potential employer to look past my age but I just feel as if no software development company would hire me over a 23 year with a clean slate. From what I've read, \"job hopping\" seems to be normal for software developers so even if I get my first programming job, when that job ends, I would have to go through the same process of fear again. Does anybody have any advice for someone in my situation?"}
{"_id": "198420", "title": "Suggestions on how can I implement a generic matching system for users?", "text": "I need help with coding something. I'm trying to design a system that will allow users to setup rules for the system to process (similar to email processing rules, in a way). When I receive a chunk of data (in this case, it is a object that has properties with values related to the client system's hostname, OS version, etc.) I want the user to be able to create a criteria like \"when the hostname equals 'somehost' or the OS version is greater than 6, etc. The table I have so far has a record ID, a column for holding the name of the value I'm checking (like the property name, e.g. object.Hostname stores as \"Hostname\"), a two character code for the operator (EQ, NE, GT, etc), the value to compare against and a foreign key value. I don't have a warm fuzzy about it, though. Am I going down the right path? I wanted the matching to be flexible. I'm visualizing putting the class properties in a dropdown so that the user can select the property, type in a search value and select the criteria. Thoughts? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "204854", "title": "Parallel Programing in C#", "text": "I have a code where I have to read some Binary files in database. I wrote a For loop that iterate over my file path array, then it call a READ function that read that file into database. I run this code with traditional for loop everything goes smooth, but then I change the for to Parallel.For and it doesn't go smooth, I adjust my code as I found lot of gray area and shared resource are creating problem in loop logic. So, I make everything Isolated to 1 Loop iteration. Now the parallel method make my code run fast with twice the speed with one exception. The Exception is   1. We have 600 files to read, out of 600 we have only 5-6 core big files.   2. Out of these core big files, one or two file didn't get into the database, and no exception is generated. When I simply change Parallel.For to For they all get read, so code within it's scope is fine. Can you suggest a method or alternative to Parallel.For, as I feel like one of core thread just die for no reason, seems impossible stuff, but this is what is happening as I am creating log at each step and different iteration shows thread stop at some other point. Also, though I have 4Core processor it execute as many as 30 -40 files at time. I was expecting it to be like 3-4 thread at most per documentations. Any idea."}
{"_id": "255258", "title": "Converting a huge decision tree into a decision list for fuzzy matching", "text": "I'm trying to build an intelligent action bar _similar_ to the command palette of Sublime Text: ![Sublime Text Command Palette](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yuWSi.png) The Sublime Text command palette allows fuzzy matching of commands in the list (e.g. \"ancd vin\" will match \"Anaconda: Vagrant Init\"). That way, it is very easy and very quick to find the wanted action. I'm trying to achieve something similar for the web, the difference is that I have a nested tree of actions available (and some other options), like so (yaml):               new:       name: \"New\"       choices:         document:           name: \"Document\"           show_editing_menu: True         template:           name: \"Template\"           choices:             letter:               name: \"Letter\"               schema: \"template-letter\"             spreadsheet:               name: \"Spreadsheet\"     open:       name: \"Open\"       choices:         explore:           name: \"Explore\"         recent:           name: \"Recent\"      As you can see, I have nested actions available but the final list should look like this for the intelligent-action-bar form to work (this is what I am doing for the moment):               item001:       name: \"New\"       path: \"new\"     item002:       name: \"New - Document\"       show_editing_menu: True       path: \"new/document\"     item003:       name: \"New - Template\"       path: \"new/template\"     item004:       name: \"New - Template - Letter\"       schema: \"template-letter\"       path: \"new/template/letter\"     item005:       name: \"New - Template - Spreadsheet\"       path: \"new/template/spreadsheet\"     item006:       name: \"Open\"       path: \"open\"     item007:       name: \"Open - Explore\"       path: \"open/explore\"     item008       name: \"Open - Recent\"       path: \"open/recent\"      For the moment, I'm able to generate a flat list from the original tree but the names are not concatenated:               item001:       name: \"New\"       path: \"new\"     item002:       name: \"Document\"       show_editing_menu: True       path: \"new/document\"     item003:       name: \"Template\"       path: \"new/template\"     item004:       name: \"Letter\"       schema: \"template-letter\"       path: \"new/template/letter\"     item005:       name: \"Spreadsheet\"       path: \"new/template/spreadsheet\"     item006:       name: \"Open\"       path: \"open\"     item007:       name: \"Explore\"       path: \"open/explore\"     item008       name: \"Recent\"       path: \"open/recent\"      I will probably manage to concatenate the names into the wanted format in a few more hours. But before fixing this design, I would like to have some external opinions. Having the actions in a tree-like format is very useful for further programming decision making (suggestions depending on parent node, different interface depending on which action/node is selected, settings available inside the decision tree etc.). But is this design maintainable/practical for what I want to achieve ? Do you have other suggestions to have the advantages of the \"decision tree\" structure and have an easy way to flatten it ? It's my first try at something like this so design suggestions are very welcome. I'm not asking for a library or off-site resource but for design advice. If you have any additional questions, I'll be happy to provide. Thank you very much ! **UPDATE-1** : I've read about action tables but I find it harder to extract the \"decision tree\" and to maintain. Then, maybe it's best for what I want to achieve but I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "219156", "title": "How do I bootstrap a P2P service so that users can locate each other?", "text": "My P2P app needs to locate peers, but I don't want to hard-code a DNS address... One example I've seen is bootstrapping via IRC, but I'd like to do this over HTTP/s if possible. What are my options and techniques for bootstrapping a P2P app?"}
{"_id": "219157", "title": "Disadvantages to using \"associative arrays\" in JavaScript", "text": "I'm working with some people are are used to making \"associative arrays\" in JavaScript like this:               var arr = new Array();     arr.prop_1 = \"asdf\";      or               arr['prop 2'] = \"1234\";      It works just like an object because it is. `for...in` loops can be used and accessing the properties is fine using a dot or a square brace. the lack of native array methods seems not to be lamented. I find it sort of semantically irritating however. Maybe I'm being picky, but I want a good argument for arresting the use of this syntax, but I can't understand how to start. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "245579", "title": "best practice to inter widget communication in javascript", "text": "I have quit a lot of javascript widget and I would like to have a good decoupled way to communicate between them. Something like signals and slots in QT probably? Most of my widgets are written in JQuery using widget factory. What is the correct way to achieve that, without ending with a spaghetti code?"}
{"_id": "77904", "title": "C# Linq to <blank> which type is most used and which are most hated/unneeded", "text": "I have read and used many good Linq to . I have also read that some of the Linq to ___ _ are not worth learning as there are better techniques. I was just wondering which of the bunch should I concentrate on and which have more suitable alternatives. Thanks"}
{"_id": "18086", "title": "shadow simulation from buildings", "text": "is it possible to calculate shadow areas of buildings or simulate shadows of buildings in a city, using the heights of these buildings and the sun angle and azimuth? the basic light tracing concept using trigonometry is known. But the Problem is how to find away to come up with simulated shadow of group of buildings in one place."}
{"_id": "78100", "title": "How do I tell a senior programmer that I disagree with him", "text": "I am a new programmer at my office. I just entered this workplace for about 2 months. I've been working with another senior programmer which is essentially my \"mentor\" during the introductory period. I've been studying a lot for the past 2 months and I believe I have a good grasp of the system already. And I feel that one of the design decision that this senior programmer made is not very good and I have a better solution. So how do I go about telling him this? I'm not a junior programmer by any means I've been programming for some time. But they are using a custom 4thGL. So I can't say that \"I have 5 years experience in .net and this is bad in my experience\" or something like that. And we are working on different parts of the system and his part doesn't actually falls under my \"jurisdiction\" really... But I will eventually end up diving some parts of it sooner or later, and it is a major part of the system and I feel that a lot can be improved by doing things my way. But I don't want to be the snobbish little kid that just joined the company, and I do want an ongoing good relationship with my colleague especially since he helped me so much during the first week or 2 when i was there. But i feel strongly about this. So what is your opinion?"}
{"_id": "223580", "title": "How to do inference in a card game?", "text": "In the game there are 5 players, each with 8 cards in hand. No other card is present. Using Monte Carlo (MCTS) I run many simulations of the game from the current state to the end of the match. In those simulations adversaries play with very simple dumb rules. When generating a new simulation I assign to them _unknown_ cards with a uniform random distribution. I say a card is _unknown_ if it is not in my hand, it is not on the table and it has not been discarded before, then it must be in someone other's hand. However, uniform random distribution it's not the best way to distribute cards. In fact, sometimes it's straightforward to a human player a reasoning like this: _If he had 3\u2665 he **probably** would have discarded it the previous turn as it was a **very good** move. Then, it's **very unlikely** that he'll discard 3\u2665 in hand hereinafter._ Well, before discarding, before generating the Monte Carlo simulations, I would assign to each adversary the set of _unknown_ cards with their probability distribution: { (3\u2665, 0.20) , (4\u2665, 0.12) , (5\u2665, 0.03) ...}. How can I calculate those probabilities? Is there some paper or some ideas where to start from? EDIT: An idea: Computationally talking, would it be a good idea to run a simple Monte Carlo simulation when chosing adversaries' strategy? With _simple_ I mean a rough, fast, simulation which ends in a small time like a second. In this way, the next turn I would have a _measure_ of the goodness of adversaries moves and I can start doing inference from there."}
{"_id": "238666", "title": "Build a map with city blocks and road", "text": "Is there a design pattern or well known algorithm to build a simple map with roads and city blocks? To have an idea of what's my target i describe some of the constraints and the context:   * a matrix which represents a (rectangular) map   * few possible city blocks represented as rectangles (eg, 4x3, 5x2, 1x6)   * few possible road sizes (eg, 1, 2)   * block are never connected, meaning that there is always a road between them the result would be an array like this:               111101111100110     111101111100110     111100000000110     000001110000110     000001110000000     ...      where as for example, \"1\" are the blocks and \"0\" are the roads. What I intend to do is to place a block where it is possible, then circumscribe with roads, and go on. This would be ok, but could lead to some place where blocks don't fit. I would like to know if there is something in the state of the art of such algorithms."}
{"_id": "109653", "title": "Should there be separate database schemas for each developer or should there be just one that all developers share?", "text": "During development, should developers each have their own copy of the database to work on ? Or should there be a common shared development database ? The former will give developers more flexibility. For ex., they can run their own regression tests during development and unit testing without worrying about corrupting the data for other developers. However, it is difficult to maintain for database adminstrators. The latter is easier to maintain (less integration overheads as everyone's working on the same schema) but requires more effort to ensure data sanctity (developers should be careful and not make changes that will impact others)."}
{"_id": "109652", "title": "API Development - Sinatra?", "text": "I've been tasked to create a mobile application as well as an accompanying website. Both the application and website will interact with the same database. To make things easy, I figure creating an API would be best that way I can separate it out from the mobile application and website. Would this be the preferable method? I'm thinking Sinatra would be best for this situation. I'm using Ruby on Rails for the website but feel it would be overkill for the API. I just want to validate my thoughts regarding this issue. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "88532", "title": "Whether to use -pedantic flag in g++ or not?", "text": "I'm learning C++ and I'm using g++ on Linux for practicing. 1) I want to know if people working as programmers use g++ -pedantic flag and also it's importance in real world. 2) What about other compilers, do they also allow this? Has this become some de-facto standard? I'm interested because I'm reading C++ Primer where the author points that its illegal to use non-const expression as dimension in array definition and g++ by default allows it. And there might be other things I'm unaware of."}
{"_id": "173377", "title": "Java performance of StringBuilder append chains", "text": "In Java, if I am building a significant number of strings, is there _any_ difference in performance in the following two examples?               StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();          for (int i = 0; i < largeNumber; i++) {         sb.append(var[i]);         sb.append('=');         sb.append(value[i]);         sb.append(',');     }      or               StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();          for (int i = 0; i < largeNumber; i++) {         sb.append(var[i]).append('=').append(value[i]).append(',');     }      Thanks!"}
{"_id": "234323", "title": "Algorithm / working approach to get a random list of data", "text": "I am working on a android schedule app but that isn't matter , the problem is a algorithm / methodology so you are welcome to just write the pusedo code to answer. The data is like this               Place      =============     Name     lat      lng     duration     isBookMark     type      Note: There are **only** two type: Shop, Park, duration is the time base on hour e.g. 1 => 1hour, 0.5 hour etc.... lat lng are the location unit So, I would like to generate a random place list based on the following criteria:   1. There are 2 duration limit     * if short limit, then I need to get exactly 1 Park and some Shop, based on the hour 3-5 is given     * if medium limit, I need to get exactly 2 Park and some Shop, based on the hour 6-8 is given     * if long limit, then I need to get exactly 3 Park and some Shop, based on the hour 9-11 is given   2. The user can select whether the bookmarked item is higher priority, so it may need to handle bookmark higher priority when select the item.    3. Also, the next place chosen must be the nearest place. You can assume there is already a `calcuateDistanceDiff()` function available  So, how to generate a list in the above case? I have tried to simply like \"hardcode\" to handle the duration limit one by one e.g. get one Park first and get the next by checking the priority / distance one by one , but there should be some more wise way to create a more generic \"methodology\" to handle this, in terms of better performance and elegant."}
{"_id": "72266", "title": "Will taking a year out reduce my employability", "text": "I'm just coming to the end of my BSc Computer Science degree, and I'm faced with a choice. My dream has always been to do independent game development, and I'm considering taking the next year to try at indie game dev. If it works, that's cool and I can carry on, if it fails I'll try looking for another job. However, one of my friends suggested that doing this would massively hurt my employability, which would not be good! Will it?"}
{"_id": "239134", "title": "Android proprietary app including Apache-2.0 licensed code from Google", "text": "My Android app contains some Apache-2.0 licensed code from Google (in-app billing example) and links to `com.android.vending.billing` library in the form of a `InAppBillingFile.aidl` file (same license?). I would like to know what I have to do for my app to be license compliant, i.e. what to show in the About section, what files to include and so on?"}
{"_id": "239135", "title": "Organizing an image processing pipeline for on-the-fly video analysis", "text": "I'm trying to design a system that performs image analysis on video streams from the internet. I have a few rudimentary ideas for how to organize such a system, and I was hoping you guys could critique them and offer suggestions of your own. For clarity, I'm going to present my ideas in the following manner:   1. High-level description of the problem   2. Assumptions and constraints   3. My suggested approach I think this conversation can, for the most part, remain language-agnostic, but FWIW, we're planning on doing this in Go. **I'm looking for a general critique, and advice about how to structure my code.** # 1\\. High-Level Description The problem can be generally described as follows: our system is an image processing pipeline that will extract features from video frames with one important caveat: **the remote client will request that a certain subset of proposed analyses be conducted.** In other words, we will offer a variety of analyses, and the client will choose which subset of these analyses he would like us to perform. This is important for two reasons:   1. Image processing is expensive, so we don't want to perform unnecessary computations.   2. Certain high-level features (e.g. facial expression analysis) depend on lower-level features (e.g. face segmentation, person detection, ...) **The goal is therefore to create a pipeline that performs all prerequisite analyses exactly once, but does not perform any superfluous analyses.** # 2\\. Assumptions and Constraints A few assumptions and constraints, in no particular order:   1. Frames will enter the pipeline via `stdin`, as base64-encoded byte strings.   2. One process per video stream.   3. Some features can be extracted independently for each frame.   4. Some features require several consecutive frames in order to be computed.   5. We're striving for soft real-time, or at least low-latency. The client is informed of results on-the-fly rather than retrieving them from storage at a later time   6. This service is running on Amazon EC2 (but I think most of the discussion can remain environment-agnostic) # 3\\. A Potential(ly stupid) Approach My main concern is in optimizing the pipeline such that all necessary prerequisite computations are performed exactly once and no unnecessary computations are performed. A simple approach would be as follows:   1. Frames are stored in structures with a `feature` hashmap where results of previous computations can be stored.   2. Each possible stage of the pipeline (i.e. \"unit of work\" that extracts a feature) exists as a structure with methods. Said structure contains metadata information about prerequisite features.   3. At each stage of the pipeline, the frame struct is checked to see if all prerequisites are met. If not, the necessary function is applied and the result is stored in the aforementioned hashmap.   4. The pipeline stage is applied. This solves the problem of not repeating a given computation, but doesn't really define any general pipeline architecture. It's trivial, for instance, to use this method when operating on frames individually, but what about operating on groups of consecutive frames (i.e. a sliding/tiling window over the last _n_ frames)? I eagerly await critiques and suggestions! Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "234324", "title": "Is there a Pattern or a Refactoring Method to pull data-loading out of existing Class", "text": "I am refactoring legacy codebase. Part of it is a `loadProduct()` function inside a larger \"everything\" class. `loadProduct()` loads data from a database. I want to move this loading-data part out of the larger class, because I do not think it belongs there. I am not sure exactly where I want to move it yet, but I think that just moving it out into a separate class will do great to start. How do I do this? i.e. Imagine this:               class Big     {         function x() {}         function y() {}         function z() {}         function w() {}              ...              function loadProduct()         {             $sql = \"select * from X where Y = $this->p1 and w = $this->p2\";             $result = db_call($sql);             ...             $this->a = $result->field_a;          }     }      What I think of so far is:   1. I can create a `Product` class that instantiates and returns the product data. Call it i.e. `$data = new Product($p1, $p2, $p3)`.   2. create a `ProductProvider` class, which has function `loadFromDB()`. Call it:               $pp = new ProductProvider();     $data = $pp->loadFromDB($p1, $p2, $p3);     ...     include 'db.php';     class ProductProvider()     {         function loadFromDB($p1, $p2, $p3)         {              $product = null;              //code to load Product              return $product;         }     }      I think way 2 is a bit more flexible and allows me to add more functions later on, such as loading different sets of data from different sets of parameters. This flexibility may come in useful in case legacy codebase gives me surprises later on. (i.e. say as I refactor I may realize I need to move or group this data-loading piece into or with some other piece of code and code encapsulation Provider will give me should be easy to move elsewhere). Will my 2nd example pattern be a proper* fit for my refactoring example?   * By _proper fit_ I mean industry-accepted best practice, recommended for cases similar to mine."}
{"_id": "239137", "title": "Core Data: is performing NSFetches in transient property code bad? Why?", "text": "In Core Data, we can put transient properties in our entity objects (or categories on our entities). These transient properties can calculate transient data based on actual entity properties. Is putting code that does NSFetchRequests in transient properties over the top and to be avoided? I feel this use is beyond the remit of a transient property, but I'm trying to express why this isn't a good idea. What are the downsides?"}
{"_id": "177862", "title": "How properly perform passing operation result to View", "text": "I'm developing web site on self made MVC engine. I have _actionController_ that handles operations like _register_ , _login_ , _post submit_ and etc. _actionController_ receives operation name and parameters. Of course it mast handle errors such _user with same nick already exists_ or _password is to short_ about which action handler have to notify user. The question is which is the best way to organize errors, such that View could easily get localized user notification message. I see two ways First one: define error constants like               ERR_NICK_BUSY = '1'     ERR_NICK_INVALID = '2'     ...      and localization map               local[ERR_NICK_BUSY] = 'User with the same nick already registered'     local[ERR_NICK_INVALID ] = 'Nick, you entered is invalid'     ...      And second one: define abstract constants like               ERR_FIELD_BUSY = '1'     ERR_FIELD_INVALID = '2'     ...      and pass them with field name. In this case localization looks like               local['nick_'+ERR_FIELD_BUSY] = 'User with the same nick already registered'     ...      I don't like both this methods. Can you advise something else?"}
{"_id": "246686", "title": "Let applications share a database or keep them in sync with web services?", "text": "We have decided to build separate applications for user authentication and user management. The reason is that the the former is a \"this just needs to always work, and do so instantly\" style service, and the latter includes a much-larger user-interface component with many requirements and features. Unfortunately, while white-boarding, prototyping, and getting more information about required features, we discovered that they need to share several types of information. For example, both apps need to know whether a user is locked out or needs to reset their password. We are considering connecting the applications to the same database. We considered using web services for communication, but that has a higher up- front cost, is more complex, and will have worse performance (assuming the same query will be made in either case). We'd have to keep some pieces of information in sync across two database instances, which is obviously not an optimal setup. On the other hand, sharing the database instance would require the ORM's entity schemas to stay in sync somewhat (even if we weren't using one, we'd still need to make sure our queries still worked in both apps whenever the database schema changed). It creates a shared dependency. In addition, the database becomes a single-point of failure/poor performance. In addition, I'm not sure it would be possible to hide irrelevant data from either app, so encapsulation is reduced. Has anyone here worked this dilemma before and gained any insights? I'm sure there are other considerations here that I haven't thought of yet. It's not exactly unusual to have different applications connect to a central database."}
{"_id": "35900", "title": "Git, auto updating, security and tampering?", "text": "I was thinking about hosting my private project on my server (i may use 'gitolite') and have a copy on my local machine as backup (git clone then automated git fetch every few minute). I want to know what happens if there is a bug gitolite or somewhere else on my server and the source code and git repository has been tampered with? Will my backup also be corrupted? will i easily be able to revert the source using the history?"}
{"_id": "35904", "title": "Pointers to implementing a taxonomy system?", "text": "I am taking part in the development of a PHP CMS (yeah I know you are like, meeh). It is currently using simple tags for tagging content. What I want to do is push the whole thing to using Taxonomy but I am not sure on what to pay attention to, or how to go about structuring the whole vocabularies/terms. I'd love to be able to keep the user interaction close to that of the current simple tags and at the same time allow for more advanced usage by power users. The Drupal and the Wordpress taxonomy systems are being reviewed at the moment and they provide valuable resources. Nevertheless, it could be that someone has some simpler and more appropriate thoughts on this matter."}
{"_id": "133809", "title": "What is the origin of sessions, by whom and when were they created?", "text": "I know sessions are in PHP, ASP, ASP.NET and probably in many other languages. In most cases session solve a problem which the language itself fails to solve. I am wondering   1. Who created sessions and when were they first introduced?   2. Was it a feature of a particular language first?   3. Is the use of sessions limited to web browsers only? Or are they used in desktop applications as well?"}
{"_id": "224757", "title": "Solving geometric constraints with Minion", "text": "I am doing research on squares, and I thought of using constraint- satisfaction-problems solvers for proving or disproving some conjectures. As a simple example problem, consider the following task:               Draw two green squares and two red squares, such that:      - All squares of the same color are interior-disjoint;      - All squares of different colors are interior-intersecting.      To solve this problem, I wrote the following script in the Minion language. To make the program shorter, I used C-style macros:               MINION 3          **VARIABLES**     // There are 2 red squares and 2 green squares.     // for every square, x and y are the south-west corner, and s is the side-length:     DISCRETE xred[2] {1..100}     DISCRETE yred[2] {1..100}     DISCRETE sred[2] {1..100}          DISCRETE xgrn[2] {1..100}     DISCRETE ygrn[2] {1..100}     DISCRETE sgrn[2] {1..100}          **CONSTRAINTS**     // The following macros handle intersection relations between squares.      // Let a and b be names of squares.      // intersect(a,b) defines constraints meaning \"rectangle a intersects rectangle b\".     // disjoint(a,b) defines constraints meaning \"rectangle a does not intersect rectangle b\".          // a and b interior-intersect, if ALL the following equalities hold:     //  a.x + a.s > b.x     //  b.x + b.s > a.x     //  a.y + a.s > b.y     //  b.y + b.s > a.y     #define intersect(a,b) \\     watched-and({\\         sumgeq([x##a,s##a,-1], x##b), \\         sumgeq([x##b,s##b,-1], x##a), \\         sumgeq([y##a,s##a,-1], y##b), \\         sumgeq([y##b,s##b,-1], y##a)})          // a and b are interior-disjoint if they do not interior-intersect.     // We need a special macro for this because Minion does not support negation of constraints.     #define disjoint(a,b) \\     watched-or({\\         sumleq([x##a,s##a], x##b), \\         sumleq([x##b,s##b], x##a), \\         sumleq([y##a,s##a], y##b), \\         sumleq([y##b,s##b], y##a)\\         })          // Squares of the same color must be disjoint:     disjoint(red[0],red[1])     disjoint(grn[0],grn[1])          // Squares of the different colors must intersect:     intersect(red[0],grn[0])     intersect(red[0],grn[1])     intersect(red[1],grn[0])     intersect(red[1],grn[1])          **EOF**      I ran the solver using the following shell command:               cpp myfile > myfile.tmp     minion myfile.tmp      Minion returned the following result               Sol: 1 1      Sol: 1 4      Sol: 3 3           Sol: 1 3      Sol: 3 1      Sol: 2 4       read:   * red #0 starts at (1,1) with side 3;   * red #1 starts at (1,4) with side 3;   * grn #0 starts at (1,3) with side 2;   * grn #1 starts at (3,1) with side 4; This is what it looks like on the plane: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GYIgN.png) Indeed, squares of the same color are interior-disjoint while squares of different colors intersect! (Of course there are many other solutions. Minion returns the first solution it finds, which is OK for my needs). Now, my questions are:   * First, do I use the right tool for the task? Is there a way to do what I just did without the need to explicitly define what \"intersect\" means?   * Second, do I use the Minion language correctly?"}
{"_id": "19649", "title": "Copyright notices/disclaimers in source files", "text": "It's a common practice to place copyright notices, various legal disclaimers and sometimes even full license agreements in each source file of an open- source project. Is this really necessary for a (1) open-source project and (2) closed-source project? What are you trying to achieve or prevent by putting these notices in source files? I understand it's a legal question and I doubt we can get a fully competent answer here at programmers.SO (it's for programmers, isn't it?) What would also be interesting to hear is, when you put legal stuff in your source files, is it because \"everyone does it\" or you got legal advice? What was the reasoning?"}
{"_id": "133800", "title": "What is the best way to allow a client to contribute to a project?", "text": "We've been building a CRM for a client. Now that the first major phase has been finished, and a second one agreed upon, the client would like to pick up some of the work, making minor amendments to the database schema and business processes the first phase _while we build the second_. I'm undecided whether this is at all practical, but assuming it is, I'd like some pointers on which measures can be taken to make this at all workable. Here's what I've got so far:   * Until now, the client has _mostly_ seen the project from a user's point of view; clearly, a two-part seminar ought to take place where we introduce him to the inner workings:     * first, showing the existing database schema and, by way of example, extending it,     * then, showing some sample code, and writing a new business process for the schema enhancement.   * The code currently resides in an internal Subversion repository. While we could set up a public one or one on _his_ network (which we can VPN to), I feel a distributed system would work better. I appear to be the only one who feels that way, however, so I could use some good convincing arguments.   * I'm not sure how to mandate/ensure that code that runs in production is committed. Seems like \"x made a critical, undocumented change right before going on vacation; now y's trying to figure out this bug that's been occurring ever since\" disasters are inevitable. Ideally, all changes, before deployment, would:     * be documented in an issue tracking system,     * occur on a separate testing environment first, and     * have to pass automated tests. Alas, I doubt the discipline for _any_ of those will prevail. Assume that a plug-in architecture or separate project aren't viable options, because 1) the former doesn't exist, and 2) the latter would prohibit the client from looking at and possibly modifying existing code, an ability I believe he would insist on."}
{"_id": "232064", "title": "How do you mitigate proprietary vendor API issues", "text": "Over the past year or so the financial firm I work at has been moving towards converting our COBOL banking core, which is really tailored and custom fit to our business model, to a standardized big box vendor software package (written.. in.. RPG /facepalm). My opinion of the software, along with the IT staff and other programmers was that it really wasn't anything better and wouldn't fit our customers needs (that is the point after all..). Long story short, the project has not been going smoothly and data mapping has been like pulling teeth. I have been rewriting a lot of internal systems to use the new core, and I've run into a big show stopper with their API. I have been going back and forth with the \"analyst\" who goes back and forth with the programmer (I think, who knows in reality) and I'm getting nowhere fixing this issue. In fact I did get a response that it might be a few weeks to check the scope of the fix, and then months after in order to even fix it. I simply can't find a workaround, and I really would never edit banking database tables directly (ever). **So what do you find most effective at getting the ball moving with vendors fixing their bugs?** Should I fix the RPG code? I am _really_ negligent to go in and try and fix the RPG code because I don't know RPG, and none of my colleagues do either. Really my only other technical fall back is to screen scrape the application at a terminal level, and automate that with some scripting - but that seems extremely hackish. I've already brought this up with the COO, and now the VP, but I don't think they have enough clout with this vendor to get this fast tracked. Should I bring this up as another reason to delay the conversion? It would be a huge shift from an automatic process into a tedious manual entry procedure which would require a lot more man power and I doubt that would go over well."}
{"_id": "183617", "title": "Simplest token-system for authenticating and authorizating", "text": "I want to make Python script that will accept input from Vim and send it to my web-site. So basically I want to make Vim my text-editor for blog articles. Of course, I need to authenticate and authorizate. I wanted to simply ask username and password. My college asked me why not to take login data from file. I answered that I don't want to save password in plain-text. He told me to use tokens! So how to do it? I understand that I need to generate random token for user and knowing it will allow anyone to login. It should be really strong and random so nobody can guess it. Is there something else? Will it be safe to save it in text file? I would like to hear how would you implement it in the simplest possible yet secure way. Some links to literature would be good too!"}
{"_id": "127838", "title": "Why do people suggest not to use instance variable for views in Ruby on Rails", "text": "Why do I hear that it is not good to share instance variables between controllers and views. I kind of like it because I can see immediately via the @ that something is coming from the controller. I see a nice way to use helpers in controllers here: http://www.stephencelis.com/2008/09/06/rails- controllers-views-and-variables.html. But I am using cancan for that portion."}
{"_id": "241149", "title": "What technique to use when trying to drag elements around on a canvas", "text": "I want to achieve two things in my java swing application: First, i need a canvas zone where i can drag elements (a rectangle or a circle) from the outside of a pane inside the canvas and place it at the position where they where dropped. also it should be possible to select an element on the canvas and move it around and drop it on another location on the canvas. what techniques would fit best to do such a job? Please leave a comment if something is unclear."}
{"_id": "94295", "title": "Making the logical jump from complete noob to developer?", "text": "I've been programming very lightly for a few years, and not making much progress. It's something that definitely interests me, but I just haven't gotten motivated. Then, I think I figured out what's killing me. All the books I've read, all screencasts I've watched, seem to have missed out on one important thing: How do I go from print statements, variables, etc., to doing more complicated stuff? For example, let's take a site like Posterous. For those who don't know, it's a blogging platform that accepts blog posts via e-mail. The author of the blog has a special @posterous.com e-mail that they send blog posts to, and they are automatically formatted and posted. How would a developer use their toolbox of functions and statements to accomplish something like this on the back end? I'm sorry if this question seems really broad, it's just been frustrating me. I feel like I have a decent grasp of basic concepts, but have no idea how to actually _do_ anything."}
{"_id": "103903", "title": "Reestimation (ideal hours + elapsed time)", "text": "At the beginning of every iteration our whiteboard is covered with \"not started\" stories estimated in IDEAL HOURS. On a daily basis we update these estimates to keep track of each task's progress. I think we are doing it wrong. The original estimates are in ideal hours and our daily \"re-assessment\" in ELAPSED TIME. This seems inconsistent, right?! How would you measure your progress towards the end of the sprint?"}
{"_id": "127837", "title": "Adding more responsibilities to Activities in a flexible way", "text": "I am considering how I can add tasks to Android Activities in a flexible way. I can only use implementation inheritance for one thing in Java and I would like to use it, if I use it at all, for something else. I think I need to draw the _domain_ first a bit: _Activities_ are UI windows basically, with intrinsic lifecycle responsibilities enforced by the API. The _tasks_ I speak of are UI-visible popovers that do some offline stuff and then disappear. They stem from AsyncTasks. The code of all of this is not a problem, I have this already, even pretty generalized with interfaces. I'm looking at further design improvements I can make. There are many type of activities and they could all work with some types of tasks. _For instance_ a search window would have a task that adds one of the search results, let's say it's a book, to the collection of books in the main application. It allows you to add multiple, hence the popover. A window that displays the collection has a task that lets you export a book to an external file format. It won't stop you from browsing through your collection, yet it needs to display a progress bar as it may take a while to export. A specific Task _exists_ as a nested class in a specific Activity. It needs to be saved away and restored along with lifecycle events: there's a `onSaveInstanceState(Bundle)` and `onRestoreInstanceState(Bundle)` for that, among others. The Activity has a list of active tasks (or just a member for one task). Some UI event will create a new task and add it to the list, a la `onClick(): ATask task = new ATask(); task.execute(something);`. Here's what I have _considered_ so far:   * **Implementation inheritance** Just move this task business to an abstract super class of all specific activities.   * **Decorator pattern** Create a TaskedActivityDecorator that would add this responsibility on any activity. The decorator would have to mimic the entire Activity interface as provided by the API, mostly passthroughs though. So this may already be a bit too heavyweight. It would also need to add the UI events/buttons that launch the task, which may not always be possible if the action is more consequential. But the biggest problem I could come up with here is that Android uses a **manifest** to loosely couple all activities together. Therein you need to declare every specific activity or it can not be used. This is a problem because the decorator would work at runtime, with composition. I can't declare the decorator and add in the information that it needs to wrap a specific activity. With _Android_ I seem to end up with implementation inheritance a lot more than I'd like to. Hence I have too much coupling or code duplication. The activities always easily grow out to big fat classes. Am I correct to say that that is partly because of existing design choices in the Android framework, such as the manifest taking away composition solutions, or the Context object? Am I correct to say that from the get-go it cuts away a significant amount of established design patterns in key areas, including the MVC pattern.   * **Decorator with wrappers** : That I can't specify the decorator and the specific activity it applies to together in the manifest, doesn't mean I can't create classes that represent and arrange this composition. I could of course create many SpecificDecoratorActivity classes, that also implement the Activity interface and act like the decorator, and then wrap in the real specific activity. I'm not sure if it solves my problem though. It seems like a lot of work, a lot of rubbish classes, and takes me far from my original goal.   * **Strategy pattern** : If I can't skin the activity, then I'd better outsource part of its guts. This will give me yet more connections though as the activities will need to know about the Strategy. The Strategy itself however will be more lightweight as a Decorator. Yet it feels not so much like Strategy where there is a choice of which one, but rather just moving part of the class to another class. I would call it TaskManager. And would I still pull up the strategies knowledge into an activity super class?   * **Any other pattern?** : _Which pattern is the best choice? Don't shun your opinion on the specific Android case. No need to talk about tasks specifically._"}
{"_id": "103906", "title": "Compute costs of bad code", "text": "I am looking for arguments to convince management to invest effort into refactoring. We log work using Jira and relate every svn-commit to a jira call. My idea is to do the following:   * manually spot an area of code which is extremely bad implemented, but often used: both from User-POV and of Developer-POV (bugfixes)   * get the svn-commits which contain the JIRA-Issues   * filter the issues according to some criteria (issue type, version, prio. etc...)   * compute the time/effort spent on these bugs   * estimate efforts and risks of refactoring   * present the numbers and ask for effort to fix it. What do you think of this? Would such a measurement be useful and/or convincing? What are the Pros and Cons?"}
{"_id": "52534", "title": "Can we use Java for commercial use?", "text": "The Java is GPL license (reference from wikipedia). I am not sure I can use it in in commercial projects. I already have a website written in Java and I plan to use this for commercial use. Is that illegal?"}
{"_id": "199116", "title": "Should I obtain a licence from Oracle before developing Java software?", "text": "Should I obtain a licence from Oracle before developing Java software? I'm in the preliminary planning stages of developing a server on top of the the Hadoop/Java platforms. I'm not much at all worried about the Hadoop side, but the \"process\" for developing on top of the Java VM is somewhat ambiguous. I was in the process of setting up the JVM on FreeBSD, when I saw that we are only licensed to use it for \"personal use\". So I thought hmm, what's the situation over in Linux Land? It was even more ambiguous there, and I wasted about an hour on Usenet looking for the answer. Let me clarify my question. I don't care about OpenJDK and much less so interested in fighting Oracle in court (no relation), I'm interested more in Oracle's **policy** towards \"Indie\" Java developers and by \"Indie\" I mean a small house of developers under a sole-proprietorship/llc. with no legal team. To be even extra clear, I want to stay on Oracle's good side so if/when my product becomes a success that I don't have to give up the majority of my revenue, or worse, incorporate for quick cash or worse, file bankruptcy and throw away 10 years of work/maintenance. I'm sorry but their legal license is full of double-talk and ambiguous \"legal\" terms that could mean pretty much anything. I apologize again if this is common knowledge, I come from a C/C++ background and have only been considering Java recently now that the it's becoming the definitive language for distributed computing."}
{"_id": "159572", "title": "As a professional developer, is it acceptable to not write unit tests?", "text": "Just wondering on the pros and cons on TDD/automated unit testing and looking for the community's view on whether it's acceptable for professional developers to write applications without supporting unit tests?"}
{"_id": "184498", "title": "How to improve database schema with different n:m and 1:n associations between users/tasks/comments/attachments", "text": "I'm trying to build a database for an upcoming Ruby on Rails webproject. There will be 4 tables minium: tasks, users, attachments and comments. And 1 table to join the n:m relations (tasks <-> users). One task has many users, many comments and many attachments. One comment has many attachments and was created by one user. One attachment was created by one user. Users can have many tasks, many comments and many attachments. A little sketch to illustrate my thougts: ![database scheme](http://i.stack.imgur.com/o0gVu.jpg) The tables with 1:n relations contains the ID from the related table (e.g.: one comment contains the user id) Do you think this scheme follows the normalization rules? Does this make sense or are there any redundancies? I think there is a little problem with the attachment table, cause this must contain a type field and a id field to differentiate between task and comment. And all content types (tasks, comments, attachments) are assigned by many users (tasks) or created by (comments, attachments) one user. Comments are **not** recursive. I've considered the following pseudocode:               tasks = getTasks     each tasks as task              # get task content              users = getUsersByTaskID         each users as user             #get user content              attachments = getAttachmentsByTypeAndTaskID         each attachments as attachment             # get attachment content             user = getUserByID              comments = getCommentsByTaskID         each comments as comment             # get comment content             user = getUserByID             attachments = getAttachmentsByTypeAndCommentID               each attachments as attachment                 # get attachment content                 user = getUserByID      I think it's still a little bit too complicated. Did i overlooked something? Are there better ways to implement my ideas?"}
{"_id": "184499", "title": "How to structure our Javascript so that it is easily editable, testable, and can make calls to render a view without knowing specifics about the view", "text": "I am working on a web app that displays some data and uses javascript. Right now, we are serving up parts of our js (to display certain types of information, ie \"Render a View\") via our server which dynamically writes the java script with the needed data embedded in it using JSPs. Three main points/ requirements we need to consider are:   * We need to be able to easily edit our javascript. (spread through multiple files right now with global variables. can't edit anything with out mabey(no testing framework) breaking everything.   * We want to be able to make calls on the client side to render a view without knowing specifics about the View (in case we add/ change a View).   * We need to test our javascript (for obvious reasons) Currently we have our js very spread around and in large files which makes it hard to make edits. I've been looking into the module pattern to address this concern, but many of the posts I've been reading have been: (a) Older (most recent from 2010) (b) Had some disagreement about how to make modules that are also testable Any ideas about ways we should change/ restructure our application to accomplish all three goals? do these goals have too much inherent conflict, or is there hope? Also, any helpful blog posts are appreciated."}
{"_id": "184496", "title": "LGPLv3 in closed embedded environment", "text": "I'm thinking of using a LGPLv3 library in a closed source commercial program running in a closed embedded environment. According to what I know from LGPLv3 licensing, I can use it as long as the closed source software dynamically links with the LGPLv3 library and leaves the freedom to the user to change or update the LGPLv3 library by changing the library binaries. Since my software runs in a closed, controlled, validated environment, it would be really odd to respect the part of allowing the user to change the LGPLv3 library. I could add a functionality to my environment allowing to update the library binaries, but it would be odd to present this functionality to our customers since they would have no interest into changing that library and would see that as a security hole, so they'll want us to remove it (or restrict the access to no one). Is adding an update binary functionality the only way to respect LGPLv3 ? If by using it, I require to call my company to give access to it (by a password), Will I still respect the license ?"}
{"_id": "131403", "title": "What is the name of ** in python?", "text": "When programming Python I sometimes do a `**` to make a conversion. I understand what it does but what data structures am I manipulating? A `dict` and what is the other? An `array`? Is there a name for the `**` operator?"}
{"_id": "81728", "title": "How do you make money from html 5 games (i.e sponsorships)?", "text": "I make games with Flash and I am interested in making games in html but I haven't seen any companies or websites which are willing to buy these games (i.e game sponsorships). I was hoping somebody could tell me about a company who would do this or why people don't buy html games?"}
{"_id": "184490", "title": "Client-side oriented website approach name (less server-side code, more client-side code)", "text": "I have a terminology question. I was searching about tips to design a website that is using less server-side code and more client-side code, and realized I don't really know which exact term to search if there is one. Example: Maximizing CDNs usage for library, using widgets when possible, integration of client-side social-media SDKs. So my question is not about tips themselves, but about the existence of such a term. Edit: I already know about SPAs and Client-Side Javascript Frameworks. This is what brings me to wonder if there's a name to an approach where you focus on client-side code at a point that you maximize external resources."}
{"_id": "131406", "title": "design pattern for describing a variable subpart of a config file", "text": "Suppose I have an XML _config_ file like the following:                 <myapp>         <settings/>              <output>                  <mailto>mail service configuration parameters</mailto>                                OR                         <smsto>sms service configuration parameters</smsto>                      <output>      While the settings node will have always the same structure, the output node may have different structures, depending on whether it is a mail or an SMS output. The Java classes will be:               class MyAppConfig {              String settingXXX;              {what type?} output;          }      Obviously I will have a `class MailTo {}` and a `class SmsTo {}`. Since output may either be a `MailTo` or a `SmsTo` object, it can be:   * an Object type, since `MailTo` and `SmsTo` don't have any superclass in common.    * an `Output` interface, that in turn is implemented by MailTo and SmsTo. Since `MailTo` and `SmsTo` don't have anything in common, `Output` interface will be empty and will \"collapse\" to a marker interface.  I think that, given this situation, this is the only implementation possible.   The client code will typecast `Object` or `Output` to `MailTo` or `SmsTo`, that must be handled differently.   Nevertheless, I'm puzzled because design patterns (GoF book) seem not consider this kind of situations.   What is the \"real world\" pattern that you would apply in this case?"}
{"_id": "108308", "title": "Is there a freelance website dedicated to high-end work, like writing compilers?", "text": "I've read through the previous posts on freelance websites and used most of them. I'm looking for a website dedicated to high-end professionals and high- end work. Such as writing software compilers, designing database engines, etc. Probably no such website exists (there would have to be some kind of moderation), but I'm really hoping there is one, both as an employer and as a developer."}
{"_id": "143629", "title": "New website - best practice for requirements specs?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Extracting user requirements from a person who does not know how to express > himself As a hobby freelancer I'm new to this. I've never had a non-technical client before explain to me what his future website is supposed to do. A person wants me to make a website for him and he basically explained to me what's it about. However, he's not a technical person and he just doesn't understand what I need to know and how to properly describe/explain it to me. When I ask him how a user is supposed to submit an entry to the website he told me _\"He fills out a form.\"_ , which is not really helping me. This was just an example, it goes on for other sections of the website as well which are a lot harder to explain. The website will be aimed at a specific professional user demographic and I have no clue about their profession and how their industry works. I tried to find some good **Product Requirements Document templates** on Google but none of them really seemed like they could help him understand **how to write it so I can understand what he wants/needs**. Can somebody please give me **a hint on how to deal with such non-technical clients**?"}
{"_id": "202149", "title": "Connected components of a graph using Prolog", "text": "Given a corner `x` of an undirected Graph `G` I would like to ask for the connected component of `x`, but my first try does not work as desired. Here it is:               edge( a,b ).     edge( b,a ).          edge( b,c ).     edge( c,b ).          edge( c,d ).     edge( d,c ).          connected( X,X ).     connected( X,Y ) :- edge(X,Y).     connected( X,Y ) :- \\+ edge(X,Y), edge( X,Z ), connected( Z,Y ).      And here are my queries and the results:               | ?- connected(b,What).          What = b ? ;          What = a ? ;          What = c ? ;          no          | ?- connected(b,b).             true ? ;          true ? ;          true ? ;          no      Why is corner `b` not connected to corner `d`? Why is corner `b` connected to itself three times? I am afraid of other problems I will get with more complex graphs. Are there any?"}
{"_id": "177289", "title": "Does automatic returning affect performance?", "text": "There's a bunch of languages that automatically return the last value in a function (mostly functional) like Ruby, Haskell, Lisp, etc. Does this feature (or what do you call it) affect the performance of these languages?"}
{"_id": "241496", "title": "Why elseif instead of else if?", "text": "Few days ago I stopped on some PHP's developers quide (for contributors to particular project) and it stated, that `elseif` must be strictly used instead of `else if` \\-- without giving any reason, why? Can someone clarify this? I don't see neither much difference nor any argument supporting this. Info: _I believe, there are more languages, than just PHP, that this problem strikes, that's why I asked here, not on Stack Overflow. Feel free to migrate, if necessary._"}
{"_id": "86253", "title": "How to start and maintain an after-work project", "text": "I work as a full time developer. My workplace, however, is very limiting in the technologies and programming languages I can use. All of the work is done in C++. It is clear that C++ is rapidly losing (or maybe already lost) its leading position. (please don't flame me, I have years and years of C++ experience, and I love this language, I am merely stating a fact). I have a few ideas for Java/Android projects as well as a project I would like to implement in C#. I see this as a way for me to stay current with the job market's trends and I hope that it will help me find my next job in a more up to date area. So here's the problem: My normal workday is 10-11 hours, after finishing with the kids and house chores I get about 1-2.5 hours before I am too tired to think, much less code. At that point I am going to bed frustrated, disappointed with myself for not being able to stick with my plans, and then I wake up the next morning to do it all again. I have a few hours more during the weekends but clearly I would need to do something different if I want to reach any of my goals. Is there any way for me to make better use of the time I have? Did any of you guys have a similar problem, and had successfully resolved it?"}
{"_id": "86254", "title": "What are the consequences of immutable classes with references to mutable classes?", "text": "I've recently begun adopting the best practice of designing my classes to be immutable per Effective Java [Bloch2008]. I have a series of interrelated questions about degrees of mutability and their consequences. I have run into situations where a (Java) class I implemented is only \"internally immutable\" because it is immutable except that it uses (immutable) references to other mutable classes. To clarify, if the object were constructed with its references set to immutable classes, the class would be immutable.   1. Do any of the benefits (see below) of immutable classes hold true even by only \"internally immutable\" classes?   2. Is there an accepted term for the aforementioned \"internal mutability\"? Wikipedia's immutable object page uses the unsourced term \"deep immutability\" to describe an object whose references are also immutable.   3. Is the distinction between mutability and side-effect-ness/state important? * * * The \"Java Practices\" site lists the following benefits of immutable classes:   * are simple to construct, test, and use   * are automatically thread-safe and have no synchronization issues   * do not need a copy constructor   * do not need an implementation of clone   * allow hashCode to use lazy initialization, and to cache its return value   * do not need to be copied defensively when used as a field   * make good Map keys and Set elements (these objects must not change state while in the collection)   * have their class invariant established once upon construction, and it never needs to be checked again   * always have \"failure atomicity\" (a term used by Joshua Bloch) : if an immutable object throws an exception, it's never left in an undesirable or indeterminate state"}
{"_id": "77014", "title": "Doing a passive job search while employed, dealing with the barrage of messages from untargeted Recruiters, HR people?", "text": "I'm currently employed with what is basically a startup company, I took the job to gain more experience on the platform I want to work on. I want to entertain options for possibly moving into a new position with a more stable company but have had some issues when posting my resume (I seem to get a large volume of contact from recruiters, etc) including   * lots of messages from people recruiting for jobs out of my area which I have no interest in   * people recruiting for jobs that are not what I am looking for (for a different language, etc than I currently work on, which I have no interest in)   * within my metro area, people recruiting for jobs that are still far away (its a very spread out, suburbanized area) to where the commute is simply too far for my preference. I've made a few attempts to \"put myself out there\" to open some lines of communication but then I start getting a lot of calls to where I can't reasonably even answer the phone during the day or I wouldn't get much work done. What I am asking is what steps I should take to narrow down the amount of people contacting me, I figure I could try taking out any keywords for other languages form my resume (even though I had them in there originally to show a diversity in previous experience) and specifically stating my preference on location, commute, etc but I am not sure they will actually read this to heed my expectations. I've taken the stance that I'd like to be able to talk to them via email first just to narrow down whether this is even a position that makes sense for me to pursue. They always seem to just want to get me on the phone without providing any info upfront, sometimes they will leave a phone message then email me later (after I don't call them back). Should I just email them back basically with a few initial questions and say that I'm not able to talk on the phone until I know if its even a possible fit? I'm rambling a bit here but I guess I am wondering how not to turn off the people who may have good opportunities but also be protective of my time because there seem to be a lot of recruiters who are just taking the \"contact as many people as I can\" approach"}
{"_id": "77015", "title": "How do people know the C++ Standard so well?", "text": "First of all, this is not a formal C++ question. I have been working with C++ for many years. Most of time, I improve my skill by working on different projects, reading good books, and learning from teammates. My posted questions are frequently answered by some experts here with quotes from the C++ Standard. I am really amazed how people can know the C++ Standard so well that they can immediately find the corresponding guidelines. Here is the question for those C++ experts: Do you guys really read the C++ Standard page by page or you are the persons who had reviewed the standard in the past?"}
{"_id": "201169", "title": "Checking for minimum number of command-line arguments, but allowing help switch", "text": "I just ran into an odd scenario. I\u2019m sure that I must have run into the same situation in the past and yet somehow not noticed it until now. I am writing a program that requires at least two command-line arguments. Dealing with this is simple enough, just check that there are sufficient arguments. For example:               A:  if (argc < 3) PrintHelpAndQuit();      However, I also want to allow the user to specifically request the help- screen(s) using a single command-line argument. For example:               B:  if (args[1] == \"/?\")  PrintHelpAndQuit();     C:  if (args[1] == \"/?1\") PrintHelp1AndQuit();     D:  if (args[1] == \"/?2\") PrintHelp2AndQuit();         The problem is that if I put line _A_ first, it ensures that at least two arguments were specified, which prevents then lines _B_ , _C_ , and _D_ from being called, and so the user cannot access those screens. If I put line _A_ after the others, then the program will crash if no arguments are specified (accessing the first member of the argument array is undefined).    There seems to be (only?) two ways to approach this:   * Put the help-screen lines in a conditional block that checks that there is at least one argument (which duplicates the work of line _A_ ):              if (argc > 1) {       if (args[1] == \"/?...     }          if (argc < 3) PrintHelpAndQuit();           * Put an extra line at the top that checks if there are no arguments and prints help and quits if so:              if (argc < 2) PrintHelpAndQuit(); // now almost entirely duplicates line A     if (args[1] == \"/?...     if (argc < 3) PrintHelpAndQuit();         Both of these approaches are redundant to varying degrees.    How do others deal with this situation? Is there a more elegant (and less redundant) way to require a minimum number of arguments without precluding a single argument?"}
{"_id": "201166", "title": "Looking for a popular, well known example of closed-source software which uses LGPL code, and says so", "text": "For advocacy purposes, I'm looking for a good example of some popular/widely- known closed-source and generally paid-for software application/package which uses dynamically linked **LGPL** -licensed libraries, and isn't shy of saying so in its installer dialogs or preferably in its \"About\" info and/or online documentation once the application is installed. Basically I'm looking for evidence which will back up an argument \" _If ...big vendor... doesn't have a problem shipping ...hugely popular SW... with an LGPL dependency, neither should you._ \" (Links to any screenshots or online copies of documentation which demonstrate the usage without me needing to actually acquire the software would be most appreciated)."}
{"_id": "54372", "title": "Where is a good starting point for planning Information Architecture for a website?", "text": "I am planning a project to develop and enhance an information architecture for a website. This will include navigation structures, content classification, metadata etc.   * Where is the best place to start planning this?   * What software can be used to create this (apart from MS Word?)   * Any tips on how to go about designing a structure?   * What should/should not be included? Hoping you can help."}
{"_id": "19754", "title": "what should I do?", "text": "I am a configuration manager. I did my internship for 6 month before and they hired me for just 3 months now. They hire a new person for CM team today, I am worried they'd kick me out. Right now I maintain their CM software, because they develop it by themself in Oracle. My question is when you're working in a place where they don't pay so much, do you put yuor code free for them? Or as much as they hire you they can use your own code & package? (I mean special package such as get export data in excel). I write program in Oracle forms..."}
{"_id": "234889", "title": "How to get back into software development when you took a 10yr break?", "text": "I graduated 2004 CECS and the only experienced I had was at intern for 2 years. At that time I had c and c++ knowledge. I took a 10yrs break and now want to go back into it. I am interested in c#. I have been reading books about c# and some basic programming doodles. Currently trying digest PRO c# 5.0 and the 4.5 .net. What recommendation I need to do to get back into the software field? Should getting a certification Programming in c# Exam 70-483 help me or should I just try to write something to show my current skill and post it on internet?"}
{"_id": "54370", "title": "Overlapping Version Control Repositories", "text": "So, I'm working with an open source project, and I'm making some significant changes to a small module of the project. The project uses SVN as its version control, and I need access to this repository, since there is a lot of active development, and I need to be able to get the updates. At the same time, I don't want to commit my changes to the repository until I've finished and tested it, as well as passing the patch file around for comments. I would also like to have my own repository, so that I can have access to version control capabilities, but I don't want to use the SVN repository, since I'd like to keep my changes out of the main branch until it's done. To make things slightly easier, I will not be modifying anything that is currently in the SVN repository, only adding new files. The only way I've thought of doing this so far is to use SVN to track the existing files, and use Mercurial, CVS, Git, or some other version control to track my new files, so in the directory I'm working in, I'd have both a .svn and .hg folder. This is kind of a hassle, though. Does anyone have any other suggestions for how to do this?"}
{"_id": "177139", "title": "Free Typescript editor with definition based code completion feature", "text": "I know that a plugin for Visual Studio exists. However i can't afford VS so i'm looking for a free alternative which can be used to code TypeScript and aware of the .d.ts definition files and can do code completion based on them. I know that Sublime Text and VIM can do syntax highlighting with the correct language definition file. However the biggest advantage of Typescript for me is that ability to give code assistance while coding. Are you aware of any editor which can do this? I'm interested even if it's in an experimental state."}
{"_id": "177134", "title": "Can a flow diagram have more than one start?", "text": "I'm drawing a flow diagram which should visualize the communication between 4 services I created. Now I've got a question I'm not quite sure about. There are two ways the services could be started. Is it allowed to have multiple starting-points in a flow chart? And: do I have to visualize error handling, like a service not being available? I think this doesn't belong in a flow chart, perhaps?"}
{"_id": "177133", "title": "What should be allowed inside getters and setters?", "text": "I got into an interesting internet argument about getter and setter methods and encapsulation. Someone said that all they should do is an assignment (setters) or a variable access (getters) to keep them \"pure\" and ensure encapsulation.   * Am I right that this would completely defeat the purpose of having getters and setters in the first place and validation and other logic (without strange side-effects of course) should be allowed?   * When should validation happen?      * When setting the value, inside the setter (to protect the object from ever entering an invalid state - my opinion)     * Before setting the value, outside the setter     * Inside the object, before each time the value is used   * Is a setter allowed to change the value (maybe convert a valid value to some canonical internal representation)?"}
{"_id": "177131", "title": "Is the UX affected negatively by fully cacheable pages?", "text": "I want to have fully cacheable pages in my websites, but one cannot do that if they contain user-specific data, like the userbar or things in the UI that can change depending on the permissions the user has. So I was thinking whether it was possible to pull everything that is user- specific via ajax, and update the UI accordingly. But I'm worried that this might be annoying for the user, and also it might be difficult to develop. What do you think? Is there a pattern or something I can follow to deal with this?"}
{"_id": "130756", "title": "Architecting an organization's web strategy. What is the preferred method here?", "text": "I'm working on a solution for an organization that needs to last them long term (as subjective as that is). They currently have a Joomla installation whereby the CMS talks directly to the database, from there I have started \"bolting on\" the additions that they need for their environment (mobile app, kiosk, and lobby display). I've also started writing a RESTful service to talk to Joomla (not the joomla database) and the apps. Here's a diagram of how it's currently going. ![current architecture direction](http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/3221299/L.png)   **_note:** they already have the \"public & admin\" as well as the central db, google cal, email, and vimeo_ Since I'm just getting started with this, I'm thinking that I should probably push for an appropriate design from the ground up. I'm suggesting this so that they have a good foundation moving forward. Here's my suggestion to them ![proposed architecture](http://www.gliffy.com/pubdoc/3221292/L.png) Being that they already have some pieces in place, is it worth pushing for a new architecture? Also, am I on the right track with regards to the new architecture? Lastly, it's worth noting that they're not totally satisfied with Joomla and are looking for a possible rebuild for that portion of their project anyways."}
{"_id": "185729", "title": "Is it fair to require copyright assignments from contributors of an OS project?", "text": "As a follow up to Does a BSD-licensed project need a signed statement from each contributor?: There are several reasons why an open source project might want to get copyright assignments from its contributors. For example:   * To allow the project author to sue for infringement (as only the copyright holder can do so). This is also why FSF requires such an assignment.   * To prevent future problems with the contributors, such as they claiming later that they didn't release their contribution under the same OS license. Another reason is if a company releases its software under (L)GPL and also sells it under a commercial license. Then a copyright assignment is necessary so that the company can include contributions under the commercial license. If the contributors are informed beforehand, this is fair. But if the company has the copyright to everything, it can do basically anything with the sources, something that the contributors wouldn't agree on. It can switch to another license, like from (L)GPL to a non-copyleft license, or even stop releasing the project as open-source and switch to proprietary licensing only. This has reportedly happened with SourceForge. So what is a fair way to handle the problem? If the project owner doesn't get copyright assignments, (s)he can get into problems in the future. If (s)he does, the work of the contributors can lose its license or open-source status. Is there a solution to this dilemma that is fair to both sides? As I'm not a native speaker, I might used wrong legal terms. Please feel free to correct the question. Related:   * How to get contributors assign copyright for copyright holder?.   * Copyright assignment on open source projects"}
{"_id": "230515", "title": "Why is Encapsulation considered a primary principle in OOP?", "text": "I am currently trying to understand more deeply the 4 principles of OOP: Abstraction, Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorphism. After studying the four principles, I don't fully understand why Encapsulation is considered one of the four primary principles of OOP. Encapsulation is extremely common and useful in OOP, but it seems to me as more of a technique or strategy to use as part of Abstraction. A good definition for Abstraction: _'Abstraction is the concept of **moving the focus from the details** and concrete implementation of things, **to the types (i.e. classes), the operations available (i.e. methods)** , etc, thus making the programming simpler, more general, and more abstract.'_ Encapsulation, on the other hand, is this: _' **Hiding the internal implementation details of a class** from the outside software world, and prividing an interface for other software entities to communicate and manipulate that class.`_ If so, it seems to me that Encapsulation is mostly a technique to make things more abstract in the software system. Thus, it acts more of a strategy that implements the concept of Abstraction, rather than a primary principle by itself. It could be considered a 'principle' and not only a technique, but it still would be a part of the more general Abstraction principle, and not a major principle by itself. Does anybody agree? If I'm wrong, please explain why."}
{"_id": "235741", "title": "What conclusion to be drawn from no difference in generated assembly from 2 rather different programs?", "text": "I might not have had a counterexample when I got the reply \"A pointer is just an address, what's the difficulty?\" but I didn't really buy such a simple explanation and at assembly code it's not obvious what's a pointer for 2 different C programs that generate the same assembly.                cat pelle.s valle.s          .file   \"pelle.c\"         .text         .globl  main         .type   main, @function     main:     .LFB0:         .cfi_startproc         pushl   %ebp         .cfi_def_cfa_offset 8         .cfi_offset 5, -8         movl    %esp, %ebp         .cfi_def_cfa_register 5         movl    $0, %eax         popl    %ebp         .cfi_def_cfa 4, 4         .cfi_restore 5         ret         .cfi_endproc     .LFE0:         .size   main, .-main         .ident  \"GCC: (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5) 4.6.3\"         .section    .note.GNU-stack,\"\",@progbits         .file   \"valle.c\"         .text         .globl  main         .type   main, @function     main:     .LFB0:         .cfi_startproc         pushl   %ebp         .cfi_def_cfa_offset 8         .cfi_offset 5, -8         movl    %esp, %ebp         .cfi_def_cfa_register 5         movl    $0, %eax         popl    %ebp         .cfi_def_cfa 4, 4         .cfi_restore 5         ret         .cfi_endproc     .LFE0:         .size   main, .-main         .ident  \"GCC: (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5) 4.6.3\"         .section    .note.GNU-stack,\"\",@progbits      1) An address to a variable is `&var1` and the pointer is `int* var1` written differently than the address. 2) When I compile 2 C programs where the only difference is pointing then there is no difference in the assembly:               $ diff pelle.c valle.c ;cat pelle.c valle.c;diff pelle.s valle.s      3c3     < int * pelle;     ---     >  int valle;     #include <stdio.h>     int main(void) {     int * pelle;         return 0;     }     #include <stdio.h>     int main(void) {      int valle;         return 0;     }     1c1     <   .file   \"pelle.c\"     ---     >   .file   \"valle.c\"      But what conclusions can be drawn from no difference in generated assembly to investigate the \"simple and obvious difference\" between a pointer declaration and other type? Is the simplistic answer right all along, a pointer is just a variable and there's no point in more analysis? Or that the difference between a pointer and a variable is a case of \"sugar\" since the types are removed at assembly level where there is no difference? Will a difference in the generated assembly show a diff if I use pointers as arguments to a function and there will indeed be a difference for some pointer usage and this example is too trivial and can't be generalized? So when types are removed in the generated assembly, can I conclude that type difference indeed will result in a difference i nthe generated assembly for a non-trivial example e.g. pointers as arguments and this example is not very good since it looks like the generated assembly disregards typing, while type difference such as this will make a difference in generated assembly for another example?               int valle;     int * pelle;           Assembler          .data     .align 2     .global valle     valle: .word 0          .data     .align 2     .global pelle     pelle: .word 0"}
{"_id": "185724", "title": "Rules for doctypes", "text": "After going through a lot of articles and this post, i know Why doctypes are used for and also about the different modes triggered by the browser like standards, quirks etc. I downloaded the a strict doctype from this url - http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd but couldn't understand a thing of what is written inside it. My question is, if i want to write a page with html and css which is going to have a doctype that will trigger standards mode, where can i get a clear and simple to understand list of all the rules(for instance, elements and attributes that i should avoid) that my html and css code should adhere to?"}
{"_id": "185723", "title": "Taking an audio file, automatically transcribing it, taking the output, and matching it to a transcript", "text": "We have transcripts of around 8000 videos. However, these transcripts do not have any timed text (ie: they are not time coded to the video) We are trying to ascertain whether software exists, or what approach to take to automatically time code the transcript to its associated video. Does software exist to do this? If not, what software approach would you use to accomplish this feat?"}
{"_id": "185722", "title": "Is there an established software taxonomy that's based on the type of software?", "text": "I'm researching engineering approaches to software development based on the type of software, for example:   * Custom one-off software (e.g. space shuttle software)   * Whitebox application requiring customised (e.g. Apache Ofbiz ERP - source code is usually downloaded and customized for each implementation)   * Blackbox application without extension points    * Blackbox application with extension points for customisation (e.g. MS Word, SAP)   * ... Is there an established taxonomy of different types of software based on how the software is implemented?"}
{"_id": "235745", "title": "Using JavaScript to find the correct offset in bundled files", "text": "I am currently making multiple parsers using PEGjs and have implemented my own partial preprocessor which using a RegExp finds and replaces '#include' directives with the desired files, resulting in a bundled file. Now I can easily find a problem in my PEGjs syntax if I save this bundled file and then try building the parser, but since I'm working now with multiple parsers, I don't want to take this method, so was making a new preprocessor that saves the start/end offsets into an array that is checked when an error occurs while building the parser and looks for the correct file and calculates the real offset. Iv'e gotten to the part where I can find the correct file, but can't seem to figure out how to calculate the correct offset. Here's a gist link that shows 'the fruits of my labour': https://gist.github.com/futagoza/10520299   The part where I'm calculating the correct offset is the function 'buildPosDetails' on line 47 (it's easy to tell I'm bad at maths :D)"}
{"_id": "185720", "title": "Is it a good idea to register views and view models as singletons in an IOC container?", "text": "I understand the benefits of injecting dependencies into objects, but have not found much guidance on the types of objects to inject and when to make them singletons. If we take as as example an application with the following types of objects:   * Services (including repositories and business services such as calculateprice)   * Views    * ViewModels **Services** Injecting services is the typical example given and it is clear these are not registered as singletons in the container as they are statelesss. Was it the original intention that only services should be injected by containers? **Views/ViewModels & other stateful long lasting objects** The general way to access a long lasting object in several places has been to use a registry (or similar), assuming we cannot pass it around as a parameter. Now we have the option to register the object as a singleton in a container and inject it where needed. I can't see any problem using the singleton in a container approach beyond the issue of removing the object from the container when its lifecycle ends (not sure how easy that is going to be - I use Unity). Would be interested to hear of any problems others can forsee. As an interesting aside, the MVVM Light framework uses a ViewModelLocator rather than injecting viewmodels."}
{"_id": "124713", "title": "What's a good way to prepare for this course titled \"Programming Language Security\"?", "text": "I have a course with the following description: > The purpose of this course is the study of programming language security > features and languages designed to support it explicitly. Static and dynamic > constructs for security in languages and systems, as well as software > engineering security principles/patterns. > > Topics: > >   * Basic Programming Language security framework. >   * Designing secure programming languages >   * Access control in programming languages >   * Information flow languages >   * Capability Languages >   * Mobile programming languages >   * Software Engineering and Security >   * Basic software vulnerabilities in systems >   * Secure Software Engineering life-cycle >   * Patterns, and Practices for software security > I'm confused - How is PL security different from regular security? I'm looking for possible textbooks/books to study, or websites that are good in this topic, or any advice/tips. The professor told me to know C and Java well, that's all I know so far. I appreciate any tips or advice."}
{"_id": "124710", "title": "I need help designing a long running job processing server", "text": "I'm about to propose a new architecture for several pieces of the system I'm working on; it's going to entail getting a lot of number crunching and data translation jobs off of tomcat, and on a more fitting platform and I need a little advice. First, the way this system is currently setup: There is an AS400 and a PostgreSQL database; some of those tables need to be synchronized at various points in the year. An administration application running on Tomcat6 would have a button, \"Synchronize\" and the struts action class will spawn a new thread to run the job. The job can take anywhere from 15 seconds to 4 days (this is the maximum time we have experienced so far). I do not like this design. Tomcat is a web server, not a job processing server. So, the solution I have in mind is to take one of our unused servers and put Jboss 7 on it. then have a simple interface on that job processing server (e.g. web, JMS) that would listen for triggers. when someone clicks on the \"synchronize\" button on the web page, the job server is sent the signal telling it what job to fire, what parameters are included and to start processing the job. Years ago I designed a similar concept in job processing where I had a JMS queue that would listen for jobs to come in. when a certain task was added to the queue the system would fire off and run that task. But on that system the jobs would never take more than 5 or 6 seconds, not several days so I'm not sure that JMS Queues would be the best fit here. I looked at Quartz but thats more of a recurring task scheduling system. Although I know I can code around that and make it work, I'm still wondering if thats the best tech for the problem. Do you have any suggestion?"}
{"_id": "240362", "title": "MVC 5 - Best practice for handling dates inside and outside the USA", "text": "I have an MVC 5 application that will be used world wide. A number of the pages in the app will require users to enter dates. I'll be using the jQuery datetimepicker plug-in to allow the user to select dates. Or they can enter them manually. I'm curious what the best practice is for cultures where dates are entered in the dd/mm/yyyy format instead of mm/dd/yyyy? I could require all dates to be entered in mm/dd/yyyy format, which is the format my app is expecting, but I also don't want to cause too much angst with my users in other parts of the world."}
{"_id": "233961", "title": "Tight Coupling Between Javascript, HTML, and CSS: A More Modern Approach?", "text": "It's very common to see Javascript bound to certain selectors to find elements, store data, and listen for events. It's also common to see these same selectors used for styling. jQuery (and its selector engine Sizzle) support and promote this by referencing elements with CSS-type syntax. As such, this technique is particularly difficult to 'unlearn' (or refactor) when building out projects. I've come to understand that this is a result of the history of HTML and Javascript development, and that browsers have been built to efficiently consume / parse / and render this sort of coupling. But as websites become increasingly complex, this reality can introduce difficulties in organizing and maintaining these separate layers. **My question is: can and should this be avoided in modern websites?** If I'm new to front-end development, and I wish to learn things 'the right way,' is it worth learning to decouple and avoid such dependencies from the start? Does this mean avoiding jQuery in favor of a library that promotes a more decoupled structure?"}
{"_id": "126205", "title": "Should I Specialize for my Career? Specialist vs Jack-of-all-Trades?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do Diversified Skills Foster or Hinder Specialization? I am 27 years old and I've been working professionally as a developer for about 4 or 5 years now. I've worked mostly on Web based projects using either PHP or ASP.NET. Recently, I've been doing mobile development at work developing apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. I've been bouncing back and forth between languages and technologies, but I feel like it would be hard to present myself to an employer as an expert or demigod in a particular thing. I'm sort of a jack-of-all trades kind of guy. Lately, I've been thinking about specializing in LAMP (CodeIgniter as a framework) for the Web side of things and Android and BlackBerry on the Mobile side. My question is should I be specializing at all? Or should I try to adopt which ever technology the company I'm working with takes on?"}
{"_id": "157029", "title": "Any articles/research/data comparing pre-checkin validation vs post-checkin validation?", "text": "I'm currently on a team that uses post-checkin validation in our developers' workflow:   1. Developer checks in code (and hopefully runs tests first)   2. CI machine syncs, builds, run tests   3. If tests fail, code is already checked in but dev (and related people) are made aware (e.g. mail) I've seen or read of several teams who instead use pre-checkin validation (aka \"gated checkins\"):   1. Dev submits changes (and hopefully runs tests first)   2. Checkin system builds changes and runs test   3. If tests fail, changes are not checked in, and dev is informed of test failures.   4. If tests pass, changes are checked in, and dev is informed. It seems like there's a couple of tradeoffs between these options, such as the turnaround for developers to know if their code is submitted (post-checkin is immediate, pre-checkin waits for the validation to finish), and the known state of code that is checked in (pre-checkin flushes out all issues found by the validation tests, but post-checkin could allow for easily buggy code to get checked in on the Friday afternoon before the dev goes on vacation). Is there any reference material on the tradeoffs/benefits between these two approaches? Or any measured research on whether developers are affected by either one? (E.g. developer productivity is interruptions from pre-checkin validation distracting, since their code is not checked in; or, developers with pre-checkin validation tend to find bugs quicker and can turn around high quality features faster)."}
{"_id": "80150", "title": "Legality of taking ideas from an in-house tool for use in an open source project?", "text": "I recently worked for a (UK) medium sized company on an in-house IDE plugin tool. I thought it looked generally useful, but probably needed a different direction to be relevant for people with my interests. I no longer work for that company and I was thinking of making a similar tool for myself using the experience I gained on the project as well as some of the ideas covered. My understanding of things is that they had looked to commercialise it and had discussions with an Intellectual Property lawyer to check if anything was patentable, which didn't apparently result in any patents. I don't think the project will be comercialised as the company specialises in consulting contracts for other companies and has no history of making products. I know I am being vague, but I would like to know if there is anything I should consider (in terms of legality) before I continue. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "205262", "title": "OOP way to design a manager of groups of users", "text": "Alright. I have this pattern to model that comes in two variations that are very much the same. I have a class which can be considered an \"entry point\" which will call a few manager classes depending on the user interaction. We can probably liken it to a controller class. This class should allow the user to manage either groups of users or users themselves. In both cases the operations are quite similar, you can add, modify, remove, view groups and users. Groups have one more operation which is to add users inside them. That's where I am stuck on: My original idea was to model it this way:   1. `class User`,    2. `class Group`,    3. `class GroupManager`,    4. `class UserManager`,    5. `class IManager` However this has the problem of not being able to model the fact that groups need to be able to add users to them. If I put it inside IManager then it is available to UserManager which makes no sense and I put it as a specific method of GroupManager then I am cannot have a single \"interface\" which is less clean. That led me to skipping entirely the IManager class altogether and only have both managers but then it seems clunky and repetitive. Is there a proper design pattern to apply here ? **TLDR** : What is the proper design pattern where all methods to manage a group or user should have the feel of a \"common interface\" but still be able to model the fact that groups should be able to add users to themselves."}
{"_id": "211274", "title": "How to audit an Android application (not rooted) without having access to its source?", "text": "How can I check if an Android application running on a not rooted device is \"secure\" without knowing its source? I would look for:   1. Plain text in Web-Requests (wireshark and emulator)   2. SQL-injection (in EditTexts...)   3. Doing stuff, that isn't always expected (i.e. fast clicking to check for race conditions) Question: What else could be interesting for auditing Android apps?"}
{"_id": "249556", "title": "Decomposing a system in to sub systems, modules and components", "text": "This question is about how should a large system be decomposed to sub systems, modules , components etc. For example lets say in a Payroll solution there may be core areas like Attendance, Salary processing, Registries ( for the maintenance of information like employee details, client details, recovery details etc) , Reports and administration. If we take Attendance, its primary objective would be, to give an interface to users to enter/ view/ edit/ delete attendance and monitoring progress of attendance entry. If we are using Model View Presenter architecture in the implementation the entire attendance part could be represented using a single MVP Triad. My question is, should we consider the attendance part of the system as a sub system or a module or a component? To qualify as a sub system should it have more than one modules / components? **EDIT:** I feel that I should have mentioned more about the context of this question. Actually when implementing a system you may not bother about parts whether it's a sub or a module. Also it might depend on personal preferences when calling it. But when you documenting things / preparing manuals etc. I believe we should follow a standard."}
{"_id": "121298", "title": "When does the \"Do One Thing\" paradigm become harmful?", "text": "For the sake of argument here's a sample function that prints contents of a given file line-by-line. Version 1:               void printFile(const string & filePath) {       fstream file(filePath, ios::in);       string line;       while (std::getline(file, line)) {         cout << line << endl;       }     }      I know it is recommended that functions do one thing at one level of abstraction. To me, though code above does pretty much one thing and is fairly atomic. Some books (such as Robert C. Martin's Clean Code) seem to suggest breaking the above code into separate functions. Version 2:               void printFile(const string & filePath) {       fstream file(filePath, ios::in);       printLines(file);     }          void printLines(fstream & file) {       string line;       while (std::getline(file, line)) {         printLine(line);       }     }          void printLine(const string & line) {       cout << line << endl;     }      I understand what they want to achieve (open file / read lines / print line), but isn't it a bit of overkill? The original version is simple and in some sense already does one thing - prints a file. The second version will lead to a large number of really small functions which may be far less legible than the first version. Wouldn't it be, in this case, better to have the code at one place? At which point does the \"Do One Thing\" paradigm become harmful?"}
{"_id": "176421", "title": "Standard -server to server- and -browser to server- authentication method", "text": "I have server with some resources; until now all these resources were requested through a browser by a human user, and the authentication was made with an username/password method, that generates a cookie with a token (to have the session open for some time). Right now the system requires that other servers make GET requests to this resource server but they have to authenticate to get them. We have been using a list of authorized IPs but having two authentication methods makes the code more complex. My questions are:   * Is there any standard method or pattern to authenticate human users and servers using the same code?   * If there is not, are the methods I'm using now the right ones or is there a better / more standard way to accomplish what I need? Thanks in advance for any suggestion."}
{"_id": "176427", "title": "how to programtically build a grid of interlocking but random sized squares", "text": "I want to create a two dimensional layout of rectangular shapes, a grid made up of random sized cubes. The cubed should fit together and have equal padding or margin (space between). Kind of like a comic book layout, or more like the image attached. How could I do this procedurally? Practically, I would probably be using Python and some graphic software to render an image, but I don't know the type of algorithm (or whatnot) I would need to use to generate the randomized grid. ![random cubes](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XDzF3.jpg)"}
{"_id": "163761", "title": "Estimating time for planning and technical design using Evidence Based Scheduling", "text": "I'm at the beginning of a development project in a large organization. The Functional Requirements are currently being worked out and documented with our business stakeholders by our Enterprise Design department. I'm required to produce Technical Design Documents and manage the team to actually build the solution. I'm wanting to try Evidence Based Scheduling, but as I understand, part of that is breaking the job down into small tasks that are less than 14 hours in duration, which requires me to have already done the Technical Design. **Therefore, can Evidence Based Scheduling only be used after the Technical Design has been done?** How do you then plan and estimate the time it may take to come up with the Technical Design?"}
{"_id": "176429", "title": "Designing extensible, interactive systems", "text": "Steve Yegge's The Pinoccio Problem describes a very special type of program: one that not only fulfills the original purpose of its creators, but also is capable of performing arbitrary, user-defined computations. They typically also host a console, by which one can reprogram the software on runtime, maybe persisting the modifications. I find this problem very hard to reason about - there seems to be a conflict between implementing the 'core modules' of a program, and making the system really implementation-agnostic (i.e. no functionality is hard-coded). **So, how to architecture such a program - what techniques can help? Is it a well-studied topic?**"}
{"_id": "163766", "title": "Software Management Tools for Agile Process Development", "text": "We would like to implement the Agile/ Scrum process in our daily software management, so as to provide better progress visibility and feature managements, here are some of the activities that we want to do:   1. Daily stand-up    2. Release cycles of 6 weeks with 3 2-week iterations.   3. Having a product back-log of tasks ( _integrate with bugzilla_ ) and bugs estimated out.   4. Printing a daily burn down to make velocity visible. When used as motivator, it's great.   5. Easy feature development tracking and full blown visibility, especially for the sales and stake holders ( this means that it must be a web based tool).   6. **My team is distributed, so physical whiteboards aren't feasible.** Is there such a web based tool that meets our needs? I heard icescrum may be one, but I've never used it so I don't know. There are a few more suggestions as here, but I've never heard of them, anyone cares to elaborate or suggest new tools?"}
{"_id": "236210", "title": "Running multiple versions on the same .NET website", "text": "I have a website (which is actually mainly a Web API site) and I'd like to be able to simultaneously access multiple versions of it. What I'm currently doing is creating a new website for each version under IIS and referring to sync2.site.com, sync3.site.com etc. This solution is not very scale able nor maintainable. How to quickly add more \"versions\" of this app and access them using something like `sync.site.com?version=3`?"}
{"_id": "236214", "title": "Worried about memory leak in DLL that creates a dynamic sized array", "text": "I have a wrapper DLL that interfaces to another DLL that contains the following function:               char * Foobar(void)     {              // BLAH is the function from the DLL this wrapper interfaces too         char *array = 0; // Set up an array pointer for dynamic memory allocation.         int NumOfChar = 0;              // Build array         for (int n=0; (*(BLAH+n) != '\\0'); n++)         {                 NumOfChar++; // keep track of how big BLAH is.         }              NumOfChar++;    // +1 so I can re-add the NULL              // Try to allocate an array based on the size of BLAH This is dynamic...         if (!(array = new char[NumOfChar]))         {                // If there's a problem allocating the memory, pop up a message.             MessageBox (0, \"Error: out of memory.\", \"Crap\", MB_OK);          }         else         {             memcpy(array, BLAH,(NumOfChar)); // copy the contents of BLAH to array.         }              array[NumOfChar+1]='\\0'; // ensure the last character is a NULL              FreeLibrary(hGetProcIDDLL); // release the DLL              return array;        }      I am calling this DLL from LabVIEW which is don't think is specific to this question, as the DLL can be called by any program. My question is once Foobar returns the pointer to the array, how can I make sure that the array is deallocated afterwards? This seems to be a memory leak, because next time this routine is called, the next array won't necessarily overwrite the old array. It will just use up more and more memory, am I correct in this logic? Thank you"}
{"_id": "6246", "title": "What are the arguments against or for putting application logic in the database layer?", "text": "Most software developers want to keep application logic in the application layer, and it probably feels natural for us to keep it here. Database developers seem to want to put application logic in the database layer, as triggers and stored procedures. Personally I would prefer to keep as much as possible in the application layer to make it easier to debug and keep the responsibilities of the layers separate. What are your thoughts on this, and what should or should not be ok to implement in the database layer? **Edit** This question is also covered on dba.se, from the DBAs perspective. As programmers.se & dba.se have different audiences and biases, future readers might want to review both sets of answers before deciding what works best for them."}
{"_id": "70377", "title": "Is it possible/likely to be paid fairly without a college degree?", "text": "Some back story, and then my question: I took a \"break\" from getting a university education last year to work full time as back end developer on a GIS application at $10.50 an hour. Later that year I was hired on by a fairly prestigious organization on their GIS application for a meager salary + rockin' benefits (not that I need them). I agreed to work on this project through Summer 2012. I don't feel like I'm being fairly compensated for my time. Other team members make between 3-5 times as much as I do, and their work isn't 3-5 times as good as mine, nor do they have 3-5 times as much output. I don't think this is a rectifiable situation within this institution. They've got a set of personnel charts and the way it gets computed, I make less money than any of the janitors (who are very good, and very nice people to boot, and I'm glad they get paid so well. I wish everyone got livable wages). I'm pretty bright, but school's a drag. I don't want mega bucks, I just want $40k/yr (localized to the southeast united states) so I can save enough money to travel, or maybe \"finish [my] education\". My question is this: Are people without degrees ever compensated commensurate with other people who have degrees? As a someone who never \"finished their education\", how badly do you think this as hurt you? How do you navigate the job seeking and hiring process? As someone who hires programmers, do you pay more for diplomas? Is that an institutional necessity, or based on your own value judgement?"}
{"_id": "193188", "title": "License for free but restricted software sharing", "text": "I have built a JavaScript library that I'd like to release for free within my user community. However I want to keep it under control, and not allow my users to pass it on to others without my permission. As far as I can tell, a MIT or GPL license won't work for that scenario. What licensing options do I have? Background: I've had some bad experience in the past where my solutions were used in situations other than the intended purpose, and this triggered maintenance and security issues. I am more careful this time."}
{"_id": "125040", "title": "Caching strategies - LRU, MRU, Clock-Pro", "text": "I am going to write a bachelor's science work on caching strategies and really, can't find any links to specifications or full descriptions of some of them. Only something like summaries from wikipedia. Please, help with some links on LRU, MRU caching and new-one - Clock Pro. * * * Thanks a lot. All links are very useful for me. The purpose of work - is to compare different cache strategies to get more effiency. It based on WebApplication with ejb 2.0, so algorithm's will be implemented there, espesially in ejbLoad() and ejbFindByPrimarKey(). Also, one of aspects of this application - it will use not common scheme of tables in database - it based on metamodel. So, if you had any experience on this topic, i would be grateful to take some of your knowledge)"}
{"_id": "125044", "title": "Are questions on graphs common in programming interviews?", "text": "Despite saying that graphs are very important, none of my friends have got any graph related questions in interviews in Google and Amazon. I am preparing for these companies right now. Should I worry about graph related questions?   What are the must-know things in Graph theory before going to interviews?"}
{"_id": "113406", "title": "Loading XML File", "text": "I'm using xml to store cross-program information. This information is used in some webpages and in C# programs. When the information is altered, these alterations are not displayed right away in the webpages, they keep on displaying the information saved in cache, it takes a few refreshes for the webpage to show these alterations. Is there any way I can force the webpages to show the actual file and not the cached one?"}
{"_id": "255726", "title": "Domain model associations that do not required the behaviour of the associated object. How to model?", "text": "I've been struggling with this question for a while. I'm specifically thinking within the object orientated domain model. Let's say I have two entities. A `supplier` and a `customer`. There is a relationship that a `supplier` can have many customers, and a `customer` (in this case) can only have one `supplier`. The issue I have is that neither object needs any behaviour of the other object i.e. the supplier object does not need to use any behaviour of the customer object and visa versa. There is however still an association between them. The reason is that the problem domain requires that all a suppliers customers are destroyed if the supplier is destroyed. We also need to be able to retrieve a collection of all customers associated with a supplier. **How is this managed in the OO domain model?** **Who is responsible for the association?** Some may say that there should be a `getCustomers()` method on the `supplier` object and this is where the association lies. I don't really like this as it makes it difficult to close the `supplier` class (violation of Open Closed Principle). Every time we create a new type of class which has an association to a `supplier`, we have to add a get method to the `supplier`. One thing I think could be used to model the association are repositories (from Eric Evens Domain Driven Design book). I guess it would be the Repository that then cares about this relationship? We could call `selectCustomersFor(supplier_id)` etc **Edit** The only reason I can see for having the association is for object retrieval criteria or object destruction (i.e. if user is destroyed, all customers will be destroyed). To me, it is not the responsibility of either object to retrieve or destroy itself. You could argue that the supplier should retrieve/destroy a customer, but this surely violates the Single Responsibility rule, and could also lead to Open Closed violation. Why would we then bother to add the responsibility of association to an object thats doesn't use it? Its useless to the object. The association isn't useless though, I just feel something else should be responsible for it."}
{"_id": "255725", "title": "String encoding in string instances from different languages", "text": "I recently got a requirement to develop a chat-like application, or rather, a foundation of classes and methods that would allow certain applications to have chat-like features. The framework must be usable in at least two languages: Visual Basic 6 and C#. If `VB6-Application A` were to transmit string data to `CSharp-Application B`, when the data is received by `CSharp-Application B` and placed into a `string`, can I assume the string will contain the same information it contained when `VB6-Application A` sent it? (i.e. it will contain the same sequence of bytes that was sent from the original string instance in the VB6 app.)"}
{"_id": "143775", "title": "Open Source sponsored feature development", "text": "I am considering to sponsor a development of some particular features in some Open Source tools. I would like the results of the work to be available publicly, and if possible, to be included in the main product line. The features are usually something which is of general use, but not very critical, and no one has currently a plan to develop it. For illustration, imagine I would like to use MinGW for Win32 development, but I miss a post mortem debugging option, I would like this feature to be implemented and I am willing to pay $1000 for it. Is there some common way how to proceed, or is this wildly per-project dependent? Are there some general guidelines how to contact the product developers, or are there some common meeting places where smart open source people who might interested to participate in such sponsored development meet, which I should visit to advertise the sponsoring option? Are there some specific ways how to talk about the job to be more attractive to people participating in open source (e.g. it might be more interesting for them to participate in a contest than just to take a payed job, which might have a bit of mundane feel)? Or perhaps is this something which you think has little chance to succeed, because perhaps money has very little value for open source developers? Any tips and experiences from someone who has some experience of open source sponsorhip from any side (sponsor or the developer) are welcome."}
{"_id": "255723", "title": "\"Resource center\": should the resources be exposed as public constants, or through getters?", "text": "I'm working on an application that has to do with music. Since the beginning of the work on the app, I had a public class named `MusicalResources`. The class had `public static final` `Note`s and `Chord`s. Any object that needed a note or a chord accessed it through this class, like so: `MusicalResources.C3` (`C3` being a `Note`). I had some problems with this class later in the project, and decided to gradually replace it with a new class, `NoteFactory`. It is also a static class, but instead of featuring lots of public constants, it features a public method `getNote` that takes the name of a note (e.g. `\"C2\"`) and returns the matching `Note` object. This allows me, hypothetically, to control the way I get the notes I return to the caller. I can keep them all in a Hashtable and always return the same ones, or I can instantiate a new one on each call, whatever. However, I'm actually not sure what's wrong with the original `MusicalResources`. It _feels_ like it causes me problems, but I'm still not sure _how_. So my question is: when there's a \"central resource\" place in your app, should you expose the resources through getters, or through `public static final` fields?"}
{"_id": "255720", "title": "MATLAB - error using struct for mmreader", "text": "I am trying to use mmreader to upload a video into MATLAB. I am trying to follow the example in the documentation, however at the line               move(1:nFrames) = struct('cdata',zeros(vidHeight,vidWidth,3,'uint8'),'colormap',[]);      I get the following error:               ??? The following error occurred converting from struct to mmreader: Error using ==> which Argument must contain a string.          Error in ==> VIDEO2 at 16 mov(1:nFrames) = struct('cdata', zeros(vidHeight, vidWidth, 3, 'uint8'),'colormap',[]);      Any ideas what may be wrong?"}
{"_id": "242685", "title": "Creating an object that is ready to be used & unset properties - with IoC", "text": "I have a question regarding the specifics of object creation and the usage of properties. A best practice is to put all the properties into a state such that the object is useful when its created. Object constructors help ensure that required dependencies are created. I've found myself following a pattern lately, and then questioning its appropriateness.   The pattern looks like this...                public class ThingProcesser       {         public List<Thing> CalculatedThings { get; set; }              public ThingProcesser()         {             CalculatedThings = new List<Thing>();         }              public double FindCertainThing()         {             CheckForException();             foreach (var thing in CalculatedThings)             {                 //do some stuff with things...             }         }              public double FindOtherThing()         {             CheckForException();             foreach (var thing in CalculatedThings)             {                 //do some stuff with things...             }         }              private void CheckForException()         {             if (CalculatedThings.Count < 2) throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Calculated things must have more than 2 items\");         }       }      The list of items is not being changed, just looked through by the methods. There are several methods on the class, and to avoid having to pass the list of things to each function as a method parameter, I set it once on the class. While this works, does it violate the principle of least astonishment? Since starting to use IoC I find myself not sticking things into the constructor, to avoid having to use a factory pattern. For example, I can argue with myself and say well the ThingProcessor really needs a List to work, so the object should be constructed like this.                public class ThingProcesser         {             public List<Thing> CalculatedThings { get; set; }                  public ThingProcesser(List<Thing> calculatedThings)             {                 CalculatedThings = calculatedThings;             }         }      However, if I did this, it would complicate things for IoC, and this scenario hardly seems appropriate for something like the factory pattern. So in summary, are there some good guidelines for when something should be part of the object state, vs. passed as a method parameter? When using IoC, is the factory pattern the best way to deal with objects that need created with state? If something has to be passed to multiple methods in a class, does that render it a good candidate to be part of the objects state?"}
{"_id": "247350", "title": "Designing database related methods, which is better to return: true/false or row affected?", "text": "I have some methods that perform some data changing in a database (insert, update, and delete). The ORM I'm using return row-affected int values for those type of method. What should I return for \"my method\", in order to indicate the success/failure state of the operation? Consider the code that is returning an `int`: A.1               public int myLowerLevelMethod(int id) {         ...         int affectedRows = myOrm.deleteById(id)         ...              return affectedRows;     }      Then usage: A.2               public void myOtherMethod() {         ...         int affectedRows = myLowerLevelMethod(id)              if(affectedRows > 0) {             // Success         } else {             // Fail         }     }      Compare to using boolean: B.1               public boolean myLowerLevelMethod(int id) {         ...         int affectedRows = myOrm.deleteById(id)         ...              return affectedRows > 0;     }      Then usage: B.2               public void myOtherMethod() {         ...         boolean isSuccess = myLowerLevelMethod(id)              if(isSuccess) {             // Success         } else {             // Fail         }     }      Which one (A or B) is better? Or pros/cons of each?"}
{"_id": "255728", "title": "Architecture to handle service concurrency on resources exposed via REST API", "text": "REST API frameworks like Python Eve handle concurrency control via an entity tag. This ensures that several clients which loaded the same resource will not overwrite the changes of each other, because they will find a modified entity tag upon write and be able to update their copy before writing. This is critical for web applications where a page or resource can remain for a lot of time in the browser before being sent back with some changes. My question is about one or several backend services integrating in this scenario. If a service is modifying some resources, it should take concurrency with clients into account. The possible ways that i see are:   1. Just update resources through the REST API   2. Reuse the concurrency logic from the REST framework in order to coherently modify the resources The first solution seems to be quite inefficient especially in the case of bulk updates, while the second builds a strong constraint among different components, which would have to be written in the same language, use the same version of the framework, etcetera. Albeit this seems to be a quite common use case, I could not find documentation about the recommended way to do it, even in other frameworks like Django or Rails. I see this as a common architectural question: how should services and REST APIs integrate in an ideal way, with respect to concurrency? I hope that it is fine to ask a cross technology question, since we may benefit from learning how the problem is handled in several frameworks."}
{"_id": "184936", "title": "Round Robin - how to determine the optimal quantum of time?", "text": "I have to calculate the proper quantum of time for Round Robin process scheduling algorithm. As I read in Tanenbaum's book, the quantum of time should cover like 80% of the running time of all processes. Is there a formula how to find the optimal quantum of time?"}
{"_id": "249496", "title": "How to model a one-mandatory-of-many relationship", "text": "**I have following class model that I'm quite happy with:** ![Class Model](http://i.stack.imgur.com/M7knB.png) A `Whole` has a special mandatory `Part`. Furthermore it has a collection of parts, that contains at least the mandatory part, but may contain many more. In the OO model parts don't need to know where they belong. **So now I came up with this RDB model:**               Whole:        id - primary key        special_part_id - non-nullable, unique, foreign key to Part          Part:        id - primary key        whole_id - non-nullable, foreign key to Whole      The only constraint that is not checked here is `Whole = Whole.special_mandatory_part.whole`. However, with this table layout I'm not even able to insert rows. Might be worth mentioning that I'm using an ORM, but even with plain SQL I would not know how to do it. So my questions are:   * Is this DB design bad, and if so why?   * ~~If not, how would you insert rows?~~   * What design would you recommend and why? I'm aware of this very similar question. However, because of the `not null` constraint my problem is slightly different (worse I'd say) and I'm not satisfied with the given answers. **UPDATE** Just found an answer on how to insert rows with a table layout like this."}
{"_id": "184932", "title": "Pushing a new version of a live web application in a Git based workflow", "text": "I have a question regarding workflow in web development. I'm building my project in Symfony, and it's in Git. Right now, I have three environments, dev (local), staging and prod. The project itself is hosted on GitHub in a private repo. I'm wondering what a good way is to update the staging & production environments. Should I somehow setup a push based system so I can push the prod/staging branch directly to my server, and use Git hooks to regenerate cache files and run database migrations? Right now on similar projects I use a manual pull system, where I SSH to the server, pull down changes from the prod Git branch and manually run cache/migrations. This obviously is not ideal."}
{"_id": "827", "title": "Should Software Engineering and Computer Science be separate majors?", "text": "For decades, the accepted degree to get to become a software developer was \"Compter Science.\"   We've had a few questions already about whether that degree really prepares students to develop software. Some schools have, in the last 8 years or so, started offering multiple distinct majors in programming. Using the curriculum from my school:   * **Computer Science** , which starts out with some intro programming courses in the first year, and then focuses on theoretical computer science, algorithms, and a bit of OS stuff. Most classes involve several smaller projects and homeworks, done solo or in pairs.   * **Software Engineering** , which starts out with the same intro programming courses, does a few classes of theory, and then goes into software development practices (testing, process methodologies, sofware metrics, requirements gathering) and software design (distributed system design, info system design, real-time/embedded design, subsystem design, etc) Different schools do it differently, so the above is just a real-world example I'm familiar with. What I ask is: Is there a need for distinct majors in programming?"}
{"_id": "184938", "title": "Service layer design", "text": "I am developing an MVC website in PHP, and for the first time, I would like to implement a service layer. I have some design considerations I would like to get some advice on. The backend will by no means be a large enterprise system, so I am looking to keep things relatively simple while still leveraging the benefits of a service layer. The idea is that my controllers will interact with services, which in turn will interact with DAOs. My main question is how granular my services should be. I am familiar with the concept of service granularity in SOA, but have never implemented this in practice. For instance, to handle user registration, should I have a `RegistrationService` class, or should I have a `UserService` which contains a `register` method along with other user-related services? The former approach means that I will have a service layer full of small or fine- grained services, but I guess that is a good thing. The latter seems to hinder service reuse and result in large classes with many methods. Instead, perhaps I should combine the two approaches to ensure that my services can be reused? For instance, have a `RegistrationService` which interacts with a DAO class. Then, I could have a `UserService` class with a `register` method. This method interacts with the fine-grained `RegistrationService`. This way, the `RegistrationService` can easily be reused to compose more coarse-grained services. Surely there are examples where the reuse would be more likely; for instance, placing an order would need to use/orchestrate many different services. I guess you could call this a \"layered\" approach, which I have seen discussed before. Could I structure this in a way such that my service layer will not become a mess? I would love to hear your thoughts on this, whether you have other suggestions, recommendations and experiences or comments on the ideas I presented above. Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "211912", "title": "Does setting a function public affect the C# compiler's ability to inline the function as an optimization?", "text": "This could be either for the .NET or Mono compilers. I know that under certain conditions the compiler can inline functions (e.g. small, single call site, etc.) as an optimization. However, if the function is public, then it needs to have an external entry point. In these cases, is duplicated code generated (public entry point which isn't used by the internal code since the internal code uses the inlined version), or does marking it as public prevent the compiler from doing such an optimization?"}
{"_id": "211913", "title": "Writing my problem solving approach on paper?", "text": "I'm a freshman Computer Science student and we just started doing some actual projects in Python. I have found I'm very efficient when I use the pen and paper method that my professor suggested in class. But when I can't write my problem down and work my algorithms out on paper I am really slow. During labs, I always seem to have to take the assignment back to my dorm. When I get there and write it out I solve the problem that took me the whole class in like 5 minutes. Maybe it's because I get stressed seeing people solving labs before me. Or maybe it's the pen and paper method. I was browsing through forums and someone wrote that if you have to write your programs on paper then you shouldn't be a programmer. I'm really worried because I'm so much better when I can see what the program is doing and track my way through it before typing actual code. Am I doing something wrong? Edit: Sorry for being unclear, but when I said writing on paper I meant my problem solving approach (e.g writing examples, making tables with values, etc.) not my actual code. I just use the paper to get my ideas out."}
{"_id": "133476", "title": "How to do locking and not use a database?", "text": "I have a project which involves re-writing pretty much all the back end of a legacy application. It uses XML for persistence and was originally written as a single user system. With one large XML file that could be accessed by multiple users and hence get corrupted, I was thinking about introducing a SQL database where a user could work on his resource and let the database worry about concurrency. With the short deadlines, I was wondering if we could keep the xml persistence (as well as all the business logic) and introduce locking in some other way. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "133470", "title": "In the context of semantic versioning, does a change in the default configuration warrant a new major version?", "text": "My module is enabled by default (i.e. when you add the module). There's also a configuration you can _optionally_ use, which supports an `enabled=\"true|false\"` setting. This way the module can be disabled after it's been added, without the need to remove the module. But I realized the module doesn't play nicely with another module that is also enabled by default. I am considering changing my module so it's not be enabled by default. This would break for anyone that has not explicitly enabled it with the `enabled=\"true\"` configuration setting. Should I wait for v2.0 for this? semver.org mentions the public API and breaking changes, not configuration. Is it generally accepted that configuration is part of the public API?"}
{"_id": "133471", "title": "Writing Testable Code vs Avoiding Speculative Generality", "text": "I was reading some blog posts this morning, and stumbled across this one: > If the only class that ever implements the Customer interface is > CustomerImpl, you don't really have polymorphism and substitutability > because there is nothing in practice to substitute at runtime. It's fake > generality. That makes sense to me, as implementing an interface adds complexity and, if there is only ever one implementation, one might argue that it adds needless complexity. Writing code that is more abstract than it needs to be is often considered to be code smell called \"speculative generality\" (also mentioned in the post). But, if I'm following TDD, I can't (easily) create test doubles without that speculative generality, whether in the form of interface implementation or our other polymorphic option, making the class inheritable and its methods virtual. So, how do we reconcile this tradeoff? Is it worth it to be speculatively general to facilitate testing/TDD? If you're using test doubles, do these count as second implementations and thus make the generality no longer speculative? Should you consider a more heavyweight mocking framework that allows mocking of concrete collaborators (e.g. Moles versus Moq in the C# world)? Or, should you test with the concrete classes and write what could be considered \"integration\" tests until such time as your design naturally requires polymorphism? I'm curious to read other people's takes on this matter -- thanks in advance for your opinions."}
{"_id": "133479", "title": "How to prevent corrupting an hierarchical XML tree?", "text": "We have an XML tree which stores the relationship between folders and video files. So each folder could be the artists name and below it we have the videos of the artist. Also each folder can have other sub folders. This tree structure can be accessed by multiple users where some users could be deleting videos, others moving videos between folders and others possibly renaming folders. What I need is a mechanism where I lock parts of the tree when one user is working on it and when multiple users all work on their parts of the tree, when they make their changes, the tree is not corrupted. Is this possible to implement when using XML?"}
{"_id": "80846", "title": "Learning a new concept - write from scratch or use frameworks?", "text": "I have recently been trying to learn about MVVM and all of the associated concepts such as repositories, mediators, data access. I made a decision that I would not use any frameworks for this so that I could gain a better understanding of how everything worked. I\u2019m beginning to wonder if that was the best idea because I have hit some problems which I am not able to solve, even with the help of Stack Overflow! **Writing from scratch**   I still feel that you have a much better understanding of something when you have been in the guts of it than if you were at a higher level. The other side of that coin is that you are in the guts of something that you don't fully understand which will lead to bad design decisions. This then makes it hard to get help because you will create unusual scenarios which are less likely to occur when you working within the confines of a framework. I have found that there are plenty of tutorials on the basics of a concept but very few that take you all the way from novice to expert. Maybe I should be looking at a book for this? **Using frameworks**   The biggest motivation for me to use frameworks is that they are much more likely to be used in the workplace than a custom rolled solution. This can be quite a benefit when starting a new job if it's one less thing you have to learn. I feel that there is much better support for a framework than a custom solution which makes sense; many more people are using the framework than the solution that you created. The level of help is much wider as well, from basic questions to really specific, detailed questions. I would be interested to hear other people's views on this. When you are learning something new, should you/do you use frameworks or not? Why? If it's a combination of both, when do you stop one and move on to the other?"}
{"_id": "1717", "title": "Why Does Microsoft Frequently Use Generic Product Names?", "text": "Microsoft seems to use such generic names for their core products that it seems like it must be or have been part of a deliberate strategy. It is so common that I think it may have originated as a way to overawe some business customer or junior college striver -- who vaguely knows that SQL servers exist -- that SQL servers are Microsoft-specific products. Same with mail exchange server. Namely: SQL Server (most general term possible, despite which they claim a trademark) Exchange Server (see rfc's from the 1980's onward describing mail exchanges and calling them precisely that) Windows (the generic term used with windowing applications since their invention) Office (if you are inclined to protest that it's really Microsoft Office, go to the product splash page and look for the word 'microsoft') Has anyone ever come across a discussion of this from someone involved in the early naming decisions or marketing, or have any knowledge if this is in fact a pattern intended to associate in the public's mind core general technologies with Microsoft products (while stretching the outermost limits of trademarkability)?"}
{"_id": "1719", "title": "If one is to learn a new programming language each year, what should the list be?", "text": "In chapter one of \"The Pragmatic Programmer\" the first learning goal is: > **Learn at least one new language every year.** Different languages solve > the same problems in different ways. By learning several different > approaches, you can help broaden your thinking and avoid getter struck in a > rut. [...] To achieve this over a career, the list of languages is likely to get quite long (particularly if you do not want to \"progress\" into management). Clearly the education of a programmer (or whatever form) is going to get you started with a core of commercially useful languages (the usual list from job posting: C, C++, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, C#, Java, VB, ...). Additionally a formal or informal learning programme is likely to have covered functional approaches (via something like Haskell, LISP or an ML derived language) But once a reasonable subset of that list is learned- what's next, _and why_?"}
{"_id": "5259", "title": "How to teach programming a person who completed CS studies but for 5 years was working in other profession?", "text": "I have a colleague who want to go back to programming after 5 years of doing something else. Five year ago he was working with C++ / linux, delphi, and a lot with mSQL . He asked me to help him to go back to programming. I started to support him (in C# and Java) but I see that he is less and less motivated to practice. Probably he is getting frustrated about slow progress or overwhelm by things he had forgotten. I am looking currently for a way how to encourage him. Currently I think about two possible approaches:   1. find an opensource project that he can start to work    2. set up a project together (e.g., on assembla.com) and try to develop together something that is interesting for him.  Maybe I should advice him to start with script languages (e.g., groovy, jython) that let to program faster and to not write so much boiler code?"}
{"_id": "137884", "title": "Best way to bring an idea to a corporation", "text": "I have this idea that will change education and hopefully generate a lot of money, but there is absolutely no way I can develop it without the help of a certain company. Is there a way to bring it to them, and protect my IP at the same time? I don't want them to steal it. I suppose I could apply for a patent..."}
{"_id": "233518", "title": "How to design my code so that it can use alternative information to help create an object", "text": "I have a class named `Product`, which takes a product model number and number of wheels for that product as part of its creation information, and then it instantiates the product by doing a computation on the number of wheels and on various base parameters For example, `Product(5, 22)` creates a model 5 product with 22 wheels on it, where that particular product's weight and dimensions are _computed_ from the number of wheels and from the base specifications for that model number. Right now base specifications are part of the class itself and are hardcoded into the class, along with the computation formulas. My Issue: in the (legacy) code I am working with, I cannot always use the model number directly. It may not be available. Instead, an unrelated `product_id` is given, where the link between `product_id` and `model_number` is in the database. I want to keep my class as simple as possible. As such I do not want to introduce another constructor that allows `product_id` as an input parameter, in addition to the existing `model_number`, as it will be duplication of code. Also, I am not too keen on putting database logic inside the class, but maybe I can, as thinking about it now, this may be a good candidate for a database- wrapper class, i.e. active record (where my base specifications can be moved off from the code and into the database). Question: How do I create and return the object while following good object oriented principles when the `model_number` I typically use for its creation is not available, but another parameter is available instead (`product_id` in this case), which links 1:1 to `model_number`? Sample solutions that I don't quite like:   * Do not involve the database -- since I am working with just a few Products at this time, and Products do not change often, I can create a \"conversion function\" that serves as a map between `product_id` and `model_number` and not touch the database. Similarly, create a `Convert` object that has same functionality and use it before creating the object. Problem: duplicating DB functionality in the code.   * Put DB functionality inside code and add alternate constructor. Problem: multiple entry-points of Product creation for the class create code duplication.  **Update:** There basically are 3 aspects here:   * base data (whether hardcoded or part of the database)   * finding base data by various parameters be it model number or other identifying information   * doing computation using base data as per model number"}
{"_id": "179671", "title": "brackets in php templates", "text": "I have a script, and now it's the perfect time to have an option to change `theme` templates. I was looking forward to store these files in `php` files, or html files. with `CSS` file. I looked over some codes and I found that they use brackets to refer to the variable. Here's an example of a template block:               <div class='block_div'>     <center>{title}</center>     {content}     </div>      I know that I can use `PHP` vars usering `<?=$var;?>`. However, I think the one above is better, and I looked over the web to find anything about it but I couldn't. My Question is how I can use these brackets in my php or html code. to let the user changing the template only not the code!"}
{"_id": "179676", "title": "Can AfferoGPLv3 code be used in GPLv3 code?", "text": "Can software with AGPLv3 license be used with GPLv3 project? Can the resulting project be GPLv3, or must it have the special requirements of AGPLv3? I am not very smart from clause 13 of GLPv3 that mentions AGPLv3. > Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to > link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the > GNU Affero General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey > the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the > part which is the covered work, but the special requirements of the GNU > Affero General Public License, section 13, concerning interaction through a > network will apply to the combination as such. Must the resulting, combined work be AGPLv3 or not?"}
{"_id": "175196", "title": "What are the methods to estimate source code value?", "text": "I've been working on some project on my free time for the past few months. Recently I've been approached by friends to build a startup, and this source code would be very valuable to us. As a co-founder, this code could count for something in the company's capital, and be exchanged for shares. But how can you estimate its value? Do you just multiply industry-standard wages by the time I spent on it, or are there other methods?"}
{"_id": "175195", "title": "Why should most logic be in the monitor objects and not in the thread objects when writing concurrent software in Java?", "text": "When I took the Realtime and Concurrent programming course our lecturer told us that when writing concurrent programs in Java and using monitors, most of the logic should be in the monitor and as little as possible in the threads that access it. I never really understood why and I really would like to. Let me clarify. In this particular case we had several classes.               Lift extends Thread     Person extends Thread     LiftView     Monitor, all methods synchronized.      This is nothing we came up with, our task was to implement a lift simulation with persons waiting on different floors, and theses were the class skeletons that were given. Then our lecturer said to implement most of the logic in the monitor (he was talking about class Monitor as THE monitor) and as little as possible in the threads. Why would he make a statement like that?"}
{"_id": "164233", "title": "Performing client-side OAuth authorized Twitter API calls versus server side, how much of a difference is there in terms of performance?", "text": "I'm working on a Twitter application in Ruby on Rails. One of the biggest arguments that I have with other people on the project is the method of calling the Twitter API. Before, everything was done on the server: OAuth login, updating the user's Twitter data, and retrieving tweets. Retrieving tweets was the heaviest thing to do since we don't store the tweets in our database, so viewing the tweets means that we have to call the API every time. One of the people in the project suggested that we call the tweets through Javascript instead to lessen the load on the server. We used GET search, which, correct me if I'm wrong, will be removed when v1.0 becomes completely deprecated, but that really isn't a concern now. When the Twitter API has migrated completely to v1.1 (again, correct me if I'm wrong), every calls to the API must be authenticated, so we have to authenticate our Javascript requests to the API. As said here: > We don't support or recommend performing OAuth directly through Javascript > -- it's insecure and puts your application at risk. The only acceptable way > to perform it is if you kept all keys and secrets server-side, computed the > OAuth signatures and parameters server side, then issued the request client- > side from the server-generated OAuth values. If we do exactly what Twitter suggests, the only difference between this and doing everything server-side is that our server won't have to contact the Twitter API anymore every time the user wants to view tweets. Here's how I would picture what's happening every time the user makes a request: ![setup](http://i.imgur.com/qH2yB.png) If we do it through Javascript, it would be harder on my part because I would have to create the signatures manually for every request, but I will gladly do it if the boost in performance is worth all the trouble. Doing it through Ruby on Rails would be very easy since the Twitter gem does most of the grunt work already, so I'm really encouraging the other people in the project to agree with me. Is the difference in performance trivial or is it significant enough to switch to Javascript?"}
{"_id": "178075", "title": "How to avoid jumping to a solution when under pressure?", "text": "When under a particularly strict programming deadline (like an hour), if I panic at all, my tendency is to jump into coding without a real plan and hope I figure it out as I go along. Given enough time, this can work, but in an interview it's been pretty unsuccessful, if not downright counter-productive. I'm not always comfortable sitting there thinking while the clock ticks away. Is there a checklist or are there techniques to recognize when you understand the problem well enough to start coding? When is it most productive to think and design more vs. code some experiments and figure out the over-all design later? Here is a list of techniques for taking a math test and another for taking an oral exam. Is there is a similar list of techniques for handling a programming problem under pressure? **ANSWERS:** I think this is a valid answer: How To Solve It. I found that link as an answer to Steps to solve or approach towards a solution. There were also some really good tips at Is thinking out loud during an interview really the best strategy?. A great and concise argument for TDD is the first answer to TDD Writing code vs Figuring out the answer to a problem?."}
{"_id": "40219", "title": "C# or .Net features to cut off assuming no backward compatibility needed?", "text": "Any product or framework evolves. Mainly it's done to catch up the needs of it's users, leverage new computing powers and simply make it better. Sometimes the primary design goal also changes with the product. C# or .net framework is no exception. As we see, the present day 4th version is very much different comparing with the first one. But thing comes as a barricade to this evolution- backward compatibility. In most of frameworks/products there are features would have been cut off if there was no need to support backward compatibility. According to you, what are these features in C#/.net? **Please mention one feature per answer.**"}
{"_id": "93053", "title": "Best software for licence and user management?", "text": "I am currently working on implementing a web shop on my site to sell some software products. This web shop needs a customer and a product database so it can give licenses to users. It would be time consuming for me to implement this user, product and license management system from the scratch so I am asking, for those who have experience with this kind of stuff, what are considered to be the best out of the box products? EDIT Here are some additional details. All of the software is developed in house, so source code integration is possible but this part is already present. Software will check for a valid licence etc. I already have a code that will generate licenses. I am asking about the \"server side\" of the problem. Let mi clear that up. There are two kinds of software being sold:   1. Desktop applications - User goes to the web shop, enters credit card data and buys an licence for one of these applications. Then user enters the license and application works.   2. Web based applications - User goes to the web shop also enters credit card data and then user gets an username and password so he can login to the web application and use it. I need a central database of all the buyers and all the licenses that they bought. So is there any system (in form of a web application) that can manage buyers in that way and provide a API for a web shop (or any other application) to query the database, add new buyers, add new licenses ..."}
{"_id": "40216", "title": "What do you look for when debugging deadlocks?", "text": "Recently I've been working on projects that heavily use threading. I think that I'm OK at designing them; use stateless design as much as possible, lock access to all resources that more than one thread needs, etc. My experience in functional programming has helped that immensely. However, when reading other people's thread code, I get confused. I am debugging a deadlock right now, and since the coding style and design are different from my personal style, I am having a difficult time seeing potential deadlock conditions. What do you look for when debugging deadlocks?"}
{"_id": "93050", "title": "Group messaging of computers over internet", "text": "I want to be able to send messages between computers on the internet network but with minimal functionality requirement are- 1)computers can join/leave the group (I expect the group size to be a maximum of 5-10) 2)any message generated by any computer will be sent to every other node (this is the main requirement and I have short messages which need to be sent in shortest possible time: suggest network layer protocol to be used here), message wont be resent or ack (except leave)..but I still want to maintain high reliability, can I maintain it without receiving acks? one problem would be to communicate on the internet I will need some sort of NAT support? how can this be managed without a stun server? Should I use a p2p library? as I think most of the features they offer wont be needed by me could anyone suggest some here? I'm working in C++."}
{"_id": "11120", "title": "Quit my job (for a new job). Old job wants me to be available for contracting. Steps to take?", "text": "The company I am leaving has asked that I make myself available to answer questions and/or debug programs occasionally should the need arise. I'm not opposed to this. After searching google for some kind of standard contract for this sort of thing, I didn't see any. Is there a standard contract for this sort of thing that you use? Are there any other steps I should take to ensure this kind of arrangement works smoothly?"}
{"_id": "11121", "title": "Best way to delimit variable elements of a path in code documentation?", "text": "Often some element of a path is variable, but the path as a whole needs to be documented in some manner for later programmers. Especially when using *nix systems, almost any character is a valid symbol for the path. Given that, I would like to delimit the variable portions of my path to prevent misunderstanding, but in a way that also survives best across different display environments (especially the browser). Methods I have seen include (example path in users home directory):   * /home/<username>/foo - needs special escape for web browser context   * /home/your_username/foo - unfortunately the variable element tends to be overlooked   * /home/{username}/foo   * /home/:username/foo Which have you seen most often or had the most success with and why? If a double delimiter method (which seems to be the most common/successful), what lead your choice of delimiters?"}
{"_id": "14335", "title": "Biggest mistake you've ever made", "text": "Similar to the question I read on Server Fault, what is the biggest mistake you've ever made in an IT related position. Some examples from friends: > I needed to do some work on a production site so I decided to copy over the > live database to the beta site. Pretty standard, but when I went to the beta > site it was still pulling out-of-date info. OOPS! I had copied the beta > database over to the live site! Thank god for backups. And for me, I created a form for an event that was to be held during a specific time range. Participants would fill out the form for a chance to win, and we would send the event organizers a CSV from the database. I went into the database, and found ONLY 1 ENTRY, MINE. Upon investigating, it appears as though I forgot an auto increment key, and because of the server setup there was no way to recover the lost data. I am aware this question is similar to ones on Stack Overflow but the ones I found seemed to receive generic answers instead of actual stories :) What is the biggest coding error/mistake ever\u2026"}
{"_id": "212298", "title": "Why normalization improves numerical precision?", "text": "I was reading the following article: Polynomial interpolation of GPS satellite coordinates, Milan Horemuz and Johan Vium Andersson 2006 and it states the following: \"The estimation procedure of the ai coefficients is done with the Matlab function polyfit, which estimates the coefficients in a least squares sense. **To improve the numerical precision, the dataset p is normalized** by centering it at a zero mean; by subtracting its mean value p; and scaling it to a unit standard deviation by dividing each observation with the standard deviation \u03c3p as follows...\" My question is how does the value normalization improves the numerical precision of computational operations?"}
{"_id": "181567", "title": "Should the methods of a class call its own getters and setters?", "text": "Where I work I see lots of classes that do things like this:               public class ClassThatCallsItsOwnGettersAndSetters {              private String field;              public String getField() {             return field;         }              public void setField(String field) {             this.field = field;         }              public void methodWithLogic() {             setField(\"value\");             //do stuff             String localField = getField();             //do stuff with \"localField\"         }     }      If I wrote this from scratch, I would have written the `methodWithLogic()` like this instead:               public class ClassThatUsesItsOwnFields {              private String field;              public String getField() {             return field;         }              public void setField(String field) {             this.field = field;         }              public void methodWithLogic() {             field = \"value\";             //do stuff                         //do stuff with \"field\"         }     }      I feel that when the class calls its own getters and setters, it makes the code harder to read. To me it almost _implies_ that complex logic is happening in that method call even though in our case it almost never is. When I'm debugging some unfamiliar code, who's to say that the bug isn't some side effect in that method? In other words, it makes me take lots of side trips on the journey of understanding the code. Are there benefits to the first method? Is the first method actually better?"}
{"_id": "78334", "title": "What to do with private fields with getters and setters in Java", "text": "When are Getters and Setters Justified is an excellent question which focuses on using getters and setters as part of the external interface. What I am struggling with is ... by having getters and setters there is now multiple ways to update the state of the object since private fields can updated directly bypassing the setter or can be updated by the setter. Take the example below ... _size is the private field and it has two methods `getSize()` and `setSize(int size)`. If incrementing _size is coded up like the `increment` method, all is good. On the other hand, using `increment2` can put Order into an illegal state. Is there a way to prevent developers from accidentally bypassing the getter / setter and use the private fields directly!? If not, what convention should be used to ensure that the object is never put into an invalid state?               public class Order {              private int _size = 0;              public int getSize() {             return _size;         }              public void setSize(int size) {              if (_size < 0)                  throw IllegalArgumentException(\"...\")                  _size = size;          }              public void increment(int increment) {             setSize(getSize() + increment);         }              public void increment2(int increment) {             _size = _size + increment;         }                     }"}
{"_id": "122213", "title": "How faster is an 'if' construct compared to an immediate 'if' statement (IIF) and when should I use it?", "text": "How does the traditional `if` statement compare with that of the _immediate if statement_ (IIF, the one usually written as `condition ? value_if_true : value_if_false`) in terms of speed of execution? Also, in what scenarios should we be ideally using the IIF?"}
{"_id": "17979", "title": "Best way to store revision information for quick access to view or revert changes", "text": "What I am looking for is the most optimal solution for storing content revisions in an MSSQL database. We have an application that allows users to make changes to small HTML content blocks similar to a wiki, but we need to have tight audit control over the changes. At any point in time, the manager might want to look at previously submitted contents or revert the entire HTML block back to the previous state. I had it setup in the past where we had a primary table that stored the HTML information (along with various other meta tags) and then an audit table that kept a copy of the entire data row everytime a change was made. What I am wondering is if this is the best way to go, or should I just keep 1 table with all the current records and the changes in it and just have a flag that lets me know which one is the current one?"}
{"_id": "207138", "title": "Are \"Clean Code\" practices really that clean and useful?", "text": "I am currently doing an internship in a large corporation and they are undergoing many changes in software delivery structure (moving to Agile). In the past couple of months I have noticed this religious attachment to `Clean Code` practices and the book being like a bible for the developers. Now, one of the most important features of the clean code is self-explanatory code which is based on understandable naming and rigorous re-factoring. This is followed by `no commenting` rule. I understand that this clean code is a long term investment which will ease following code maintenance and improvement, but... is this really worth all this fuss? Would anyone share their experience on Clean Code and any opinion whether I am just too conservative or it is just a temporary trend."}
{"_id": "208896", "title": "In freelance software development, what kind of penalties should firms have when they miss deadlines?", "text": "I was talking with a co-developer. He has a client that wanted to make sure that he delivers on time. The client wants repercussions for missed deadlines. While I do not do freelance work, I couldn't give an answer. So, my question is: What repercussions do you (freelancers) agree upon with your client if you miss deadlines on your deliverables (aside from being fired)?"}
{"_id": "17976", "title": "How many types of programming languages are there?", "text": "Basically, I want to learn lots of programming languages to become a great programmer. I know only a handful to depth and **I was hoping someone could elaborate on how many _classes_ or _types_ of programming languages there are**. Like how you would lump them together if you had to learn them in groups. Coming from a Java background, I'm familiar with static typing, but I know that in addition to dynamic typing there has to be such variety in available languages that I would love to see a categorical breakdown if possible."}
{"_id": "17971", "title": "Just how bad is it not to Dispose() SqlConnections?", "text": "Personally, I break out in hives if I don't put ADO objects that implement IDisposable in using statements. But at my current contract, I've found that their homegrown enterprise framework \"data access provider\" code does not 1) implement IDisposable and 2) call Dispose() on anything it uses, at any point, ever. Users have been complaining a great deal about performance issues in the Winforms applications that heavily use this framework for data access, and though there are a LOT of other problems in the code that could be hitting performance, this one just screams at me and is more low-hanging-fruit than the others. So, beyond saying something like \"Dispose is there for a reason, use it,\" what can I tell these people to convince them that this is really, really bad?"}
{"_id": "246008", "title": "When to stop reviewing code?", "text": "I am working in a team of 4 members. we have started reviewing code 2 months ago. we are using Gerrit as code review tool. while reviewing code initially we have found lot's of problem in the code i.e. no proper code comments. method are too big. no null pointer checking. no proper exception handling etc. but now a days it looks code has improved. so when i am reviewing code i am not getting that much problem in the code. so my question is should we continue code review even there is not that much flaws in the code? or will we stop?"}
{"_id": "111018", "title": "How should someone used to FP thinking read imperative code?", "text": "I graduated from university about five months ago, and have been working in a local startup for past four months. While at university, I studied Haskell, F# etc on my own. We were taught Java at the university, but I was exposed to functional programming very soon, and have spent far more time with it than I did with imperative programming. As a result, my brain is wired for a functional thinking. The company I have joined uses Python, and the code is heavily imperative. I am having a very hard time reading imperative code. I cannot keep a track of mutations. When an for-if-else-for-... nesting goes more than four levels deep, I completely lose the track of what's happening in the code. To add to it, Python is a dynamic language, so there are no types in the code. It's been weeks since I have been trying to understand a part of our codebase (which is supposedly 'moderately complex'), but I haven't made any appreciable progress so far in understanding it. Please offer me some practical techniques on how I should go about understanding that code. Thanks in advance! **Edit:**   Maybe I should also mention that there aren't really many comments in the code, and the names are also not very intuitive."}
{"_id": "238301", "title": "How should a JEE application store credentials for logging in to an external system?", "text": "I am in a situation where I have a Web Application (WAR) that is accessing a REST service provided by another application. The REST service uses Basic HTTP Authentication. So that means the application calling the REST service needs to store user credentials somehow. To further complicate things, this is an enterprise, so there are different 'regions' the application moves through which will have different credentials for the same service (think local development, development region, integration region, user test region, production, etc...) My first instinct is that the credentials should be stored by the JEE container and the application should ask the container for the credentials (probably via JNDI?). I'm beginning to read about Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) but I'm not sure if that is the appropriate solution to this problem. How should a JEE application store credentials for logging in to an external system? * * * A few more details about my WAR. It is a Spring-Integration project that has no front-end. The container I am working with is Websphere. I am using JEE 5 and Spring 4.0.1. To this point I have not needed to consider spring-security... does this situation mean I should re-evaluate that decision?"}
{"_id": "238303", "title": "MVC: my controller seems useless half of the time. Is this a problem?", "text": "Often when I design a program with MVC, the controller is useless half of the time. What I mean is this: something happens on the view (e.g. a button click). The view then notifies the controller. The controller then directly delegates to the model and does nothing else because it has nothing to do. For example: User presses button 'Color Blue' > view tells controller `controller.colorBlue()` > controller tells model `model.colorBlue()` > model colors something blue. In this example, the controller seems useless. It adds nothing. The view might as well have talked straight to the model. The other half of the time, however, the controller _does_ do some kind of mediation between the view and model. My question is this: how common is this in MVC structures? **Is it reasonable that half the time my controller seems unnecessary? Or is this a problem?** Is this common? How should I approach this? If my question isn't clear enough, please say so."}
{"_id": "238306", "title": "Shouldn't Android's TextView.getText() return String instead of possibly mutable CharSequence?", "text": "I've just spent hours debugging some code because I forgot (actually never considered it) that `TextView.getText()` returns `CharSequence` that may be in fact a mutable class... Shouldn't it return (immutable) `String` instead? I mean I can't imagine a situation when you want to share a state with a text field, at least not by default. Isn't that something that can be objectively called a design mistake in a library?"}
{"_id": "238308", "title": "How do we isolate dependencies for a .Net app deploy in a way which is safe for a strongly-named assemblies?", "text": "To design in such that it is easy to deploy dependencies with your app, and so that development environments are easy to set up, it is advantageous to isolate an app's dependencies from it's environment. That means the app can get its dependencies from a package manager, and it will not be affected by it's deployment environment (such as the GAC). This principle comes from the Dependencies section of the very interesting \"Twelve-Factor App\" standards. In .Net, I guess this would mean explicitly specifying to use dependencies from the bin folder of an app? I am concerned that this might cause problems for shared, strongly-named assemblies. In this Microsoft article, Ferrandez says locking conflicts can occur if apps do not share strongly-named assemblies via the GAC, since the assembly is loaded into a shared domain. The 12-factor app describes the pieces needed to satisfy this principle as a _dependency declaration manifest_ and a _dependency isolation tool_. Does anyone have an established setup for isolating dependencies which is working for you, and is safe for strongly-named assemblies? Are we in the .Net world stuck with separating all our apps into VM's to achieve isolation? * * * > Personal context: I maintain a SAAS app where each server instance runs a > few services/apps which engage in some inter-process communication. They > have some strongly-named dependencies in common. Having the dependencies in > the GAC makes deployment complex, setting up dev environments a pain, and > restricts freedom to choose deployment environments. Even without the strong > naming or shared dependency issue, I am interested to know how people do > dependency declaration and/or isolation. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "110764", "title": "Is agile more than just small waterfalls?", "text": "I've mostly used the waterfall methodology on my projects, but now I'm expanding my horizons into agile methodologies. From what I've read so far, and maybe I've read the wrong things, agile means small waterfalls. Instead of a big waterfall spread over one or two years, you have small waterfalls that last weeks or maybe a few months at most. Is my understanding correct or is there more to it than that? What are the agile philosophies?"}
{"_id": "66948", "title": "Understanding the Open Game License", "text": "I'm thinking about using the basic mechanics behind the D20 system royalty- free, however, I'm unsure if the OGL allows that. Any thoughts appreciated. And if I can't use the D20 system royalty-free, then any suggestions on other well tested systems appreciated as well."}
{"_id": "66949", "title": "Do you use project management on your personal projects?", "text": "I got some projects at home, and I want to get them done already.   I was wondering, is it common to use project management for this?   Even though it would only be for me, do you use some kind of project management   for personal projects?"}
{"_id": "190963", "title": "How are operating systems compiled and booted the very first time?", "text": "I'm interested in how operating systems work. I've been reading some articles about Linux and seem to understand how it all generally comes together, but I feel like there's a chicken and egg dilemma when it comes to constructing an operating system. Since Linux is written in C (and Assembly), which needs a compiler to be compiled, how does one actually compile an operating system for the first time? Do you first write a boot loader out of your existing OS? Or do you do something else? Do you have to dual-boot for the first time? Or you need two machines? What did Linus first end up with when he started his project? What did his very first result look like? What's the very first thing you need to design and write when you're programming an Operating System?"}
{"_id": "190962", "title": "Is it a good idea to schedule regular time to clean up code?", "text": "I'm managing a small team of developers. Every so often we decide we're going to spend a day or two to clean up our code. Would it be a good idea to schedule regular time, say 1 week every 2 months, to just cleaning up our codebase?"}
{"_id": "190961", "title": "Writing an API that is syntactically valid in multiple programming languages", "text": "I'm planning to write a single API that is syntactically valid in most major programming languages (to the greatest extent possible, so that only minimal amounts of code will need to be re-written when moving from one language to another). I think the simplest way to do this would be to write a group of functions that consisted entirely of function calls and variable assignments, since the syntax for function calls is almost exactly the same in all major programming languages. Of course, I'd need to write \"wrapper\" functions for if-statements and while- loops, since the syntax of each of these is different in each programming language. Here's a proof-of-concept for one \"polyglot\" function that should work in most programming languages:               //JavaScript syntax     function proofOfConcept(){         printSomething(\"This is just a proof of concept.\"); //the function printSomething will         //                      need to be implemented separately in each programming language.     }          //Java syntax     public static void proofOfConcept(){         printSomething(\"This is just a proof of concept.\"); //the function printSomething will         //                      need to be implemented separately in each programming language.     }          //Python syntax     def proofOfConcept():         printSomething(\"This is just a proof of concept.\"); //the function printSomething will         //                      need to be implemented separately in each programming language.          //C syntax     void proofOfConcept(){         printSomething(\"This is just a proof of concept.\"); //the function printSomething will         //                      need to be implemented separately in each programming language.     }      Would this be a useful design strategy, or is there a better way to do this? I think this would be a useful strategy for developing libraries in multiple programming languages, althogh it would require a small number of \"language- specific\" functions to be written for each target language."}
{"_id": "160440", "title": "Why would more CPU cores on virtual machine slow compile times?", "text": "[edit#2] If anyone from VMWare can hit me up with a copy of VMWare Fusion, I'd be more than happy to do the same as a VirtualBox vs VMWare comparison. Somehow I suspect the VMWare hypervisor will be better tuned for hyperthreading (see my answer too) I'm seeing something curious. As I increase the number of cores on my Windows 7 x64 virtual machine, the overall compile time **_increases_** instead of decreasing. Compiling is usually very well suited for parallel processing as in the middle part (post dependency mapping) you can simply call a compiler instance on each of your .c/.cpp/.cs/whatever file to build partial objects for the linker to take over. So I would have imagined that compiling would actually scale very well with # of cores. But what I'm seeing is:   * 8 cores: 1.89 sec   * 4 cores: 1.33 sec   * 2 cores: 1.24 sec   * 1 core: 1.15 sec Is this simply a design artifact due to a particular vendor's hypervisor implementation (type2:virtualbox in my case) or something more pervasive across more VMs to make hypervisor implementations more simpler? With so many factors, I seem to be able to make arguments both for and against this behavior - so if someone knows more about this than me, I'd be curious to read your answer. Thanks Sid [ _edit:addressing comments_ ] @MartinBeckett: Cold compiles were discarded. @MonsterTruck: Couldn't find an opensource project to compile directly. Would be great but can't screwup my dev env right now. @Mr Lister, @philosodad: Have 8 hw threads, using VirtualBox, so should be 1:1 mapping without emulation @Thorbjorn: I have 6.5GB for the VM and a smallish VS2012 project - it's quite unlikely that I'm swapping in/out trashing the page file. @All: If someone can point to an open source VS2010/VS2012 project, that might be a better community reference than my (proprietary) VS2012 project. Orchard and DNN seem to need environment tweaking to compile in VS2012. I really would like to see if someone with VMWare Fusion also sees this (for VMWare vs VirtualBox compartmentalization) **Test details:**   * Hardware: Macbook Pro Retina      * CPU : Core i7 @ 2.3Ghz (quad core, hyper threaded = 8 cores in windows task manager)     * Memory : 16 GB      * Disk : 256GB SSD   * Host OS: Mac OS X 10.8   * VM type: VirtualBox 4.1.18 (type 2 hypervisor)   * Guest OS: Windows 7 x64 SP1   * Compiler: VS2012 compiling a solution with 3 C# Azure projects      * Compile times measure by VS2012 plugin called 'VSCommands'     * All tests run 5 times, first 2 runs discarded, last 3 averaged"}
{"_id": "118574", "title": "Does Java promote a separation between class definitions and implementations, as is  C++?", "text": "I have a homework assignment and I need to evaluate which approach is better according to GRASP \"Protected Variation\". I found a question on Stack Overflow about the separation of header and code files in C++. However, what I want to know why Java does not follow C++ in promoting the separation between class definitions and class implementations. Are there any advantages with the Java method, over the C++ method?"}
{"_id": "118575", "title": "What was the earliest use of cryptographic tokens in URLs?", "text": "I was wondering: it now seems to be more and more common to see people/framework putting cryptographic tokens in the URLs their webapps are generating (to prevent quite effectively against quite some attacks). It is advised by OWASP etc. However I was wondering: what was the earliest known usage of this technique (specifically inside Web URLs)? I've found a message on Usenet dating from 2003 (for a Java webapp) describing the technique by someone who, obviously, independently discovered it (he's asking for know \"prior art\"):               Every single link in any of the jsp page transmitted to the client is      generated with a checksum that act as a signature for the URL      The description clearly shows it's a cryptographic checksum being used (and the way it works seems very close to the modern \"tokens\" OWASP advocates etc.). Interestingly enough the person describing it says that \"it cannot hurt\" but that it may not be that useful since that Java is relatively immune to buffer overflow. The author couldn't have imagined that this technique would has stopped most XSS and CSRF exploits dead in their track way before these techniques were even invented... So my question is simple: what are the oldest know usage of this technique you know of? **EDIT** Upon re-reading the old description, I think in that message from 2003 the technique is even more advanced than the \"per-session tokens\" that OWASP advocates in that every single parameters are checked against forgery (but I'm not sure)"}
{"_id": "160445", "title": "Which version of Java should I use for learning?", "text": "I am a QA engineer interested in mobile development and automation.I have basic programming experience (intermediate level Python, C++ programmer) and as most companies choose Java for writing frameworks I need to pickup Java. I use Ubutnu 12.04 LTS and I will be using Head First Java as learning material. When I searched for JDK options I found Oracle Java 6 and 7 and Open JDK. I read somewhere in Ubuntu forums that Java 6 is not recommended on Ubuntu systems and I am a little bit confused about which version should I use, that would be compatible with the book and the OS."}
{"_id": "245678", "title": "All programming functions always return to the If or If/Else statement?", "text": "After learning, coding, and coding even more than ever now, I have noticed a trend in a lot of programming which I do. The trend is that the _majority_ of my functions are `if{}` or `if{} else{}` statements when it comes to performing the functions in my code. I narrowed out the option of it just being the project which I am working on. The project is building a PHP Framework or Application (whichever you want to call it). The vast majority of my code for the `autoloader.php`, `application.php`, and all of the _heavy-lifting_ files are performing their functions of making sure everything loads correctly and builds the environment. After working with very complex functions within my code to do this and that, they are all wrapped within an `if{}` or `if{} else{}` statement. Is this a common trend for the majority of programming? Or am I over reacting to something which I am seeing a lot of? Does the most complex functions in coding always go back to the basics of the legendary `if{}` or `if{} else{}` statement?"}
{"_id": "252188", "title": "Decoupling when constructors have non-contractual parameters", "text": "By non-contractual parameters, I mean parameters that are not interfaces or service dependencies, something like `class Person(string name)`. I am writing a webpage scraping application, and so far I've written it in the wrong order (hence the creation of this question). I made a class to parse HTML documents (from string format) and give me all the urls and images in it. That class has the following description:               public class PageParser     {         private readonly string _html;              public PageParser(string html) {             _html = html;         }              public IEnumerable<string> GetImages() {             /* not important */         }              public IEnumerable<string> GetLinks() {             /* not important */         }        }      This code works great, unit-tested, 100% coverage, etc... The problem is now how do I write unit-tests for code that uses this class without worry about the constructor of this class. I only need this new class to work with the behavior of the `PageParser`. The pseudo code for this new functionality is as follows:               public Report CreateReport(string url)     {         var html = _webClient.DownloadString(url);               var parser = new PageParser(html);                var images = parser.GetImages();         var links = parser.GetLinks();              var relevantLinks = links.Where(l => l.Contains('something'));              return _reportBuilder.Create(images, relevantLinks);     }      The problem that I have is I don't want to have a bunch of unit-tests that have epically sized HTML documents for all my various test cases the `CreateReport` method can have. The options I have come up with are: **1) Leave everything as is** Leave the class structure as is, just live with having tests with large setup variables **2) Expose the page parser (+interface) from a Factory** Create an interface for `PageParser`, and create a factory with corresponding interface.               interface IPageParserFactory     {         IPageParser Create(string html);     }          class PageParserFactory : IPageParserFactory     {         IPageParser Create(string html)         {             return new PageParser(html);         }     }      Then the resulting pseudo code would look something as follows.               // ... download string          var pageParser = _pageParserFactory.Create(html);          // ... create report      **3) Move the parameter html to each method and create an interface** (so now the class has no construction dependencies)               interface IPageParser     {         IEnumerable<string> GetImages(string html);         IEnumerable<string> GetLinks(string html);     }      **4) Something else entirely** If there's another pattern that solves this problem I would like to know it."}
{"_id": "190184", "title": "Should I make package private my DAO interfaces?", "text": "I have several DAO classes that implement an interface. In the other hand, I have Service classes that use those DAO implementations. So far all the DAO interfaces are public and I was thinking if would it be better to make them package private and to put the service classes in the same package so they are the only ones being able to use them. The reason is because I wouldn't like that programmers could use DAO implementations in a Controller or a web service without using the service layer. A programmer could think for example that adding a new order is as simple as calling the addOrder dao method, ignoring that indeed there is a service method that does more than that. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "245670", "title": "Algorithmic approach for text analysis of ingredients and instructions", "text": "# Background Looking to separate lists of ingredients from instructions. Users scan recipes from 3x5 cards, magazines, cookbooks, etc. OCR software converts scanned images into plain text--typically a single text paragraph without line breaks (see below for an example). # Problem Users must manually separate the list of ingredients from the instruction text. I would like to automate this step as much as possible (perfection not required; reducing manual effort by 80% is a win). # Assets System assets include:   * 350 culinary verbs (e.g., cook, boil, mash)   * 400 equipment nouns (e.g., bowl, thermos, toothpick)   * 8300 normalized ingredient nouns (i.e., no plurals, no duplicates)   * Natural Language Processor that parses ingredients into quantity, measure, noun, and adjectives. # Ideas   * Use a neural network and unsupervised training   * Use Bayesian statistics to separate the ingredients from instructions   * Use word clustering with text mining techniques? # Question What algorithm(s) would provide the greatest accuracy to identify the most likely boundary between ingredient and instruction text? # Input Example input text produced by the OCR:               Maple-Roasted Parsnips with Pecans and Cranberries Earthy parsnips roasted until tender with cranberries, pecans and spices would make a nice side dish for roast pork, Cornish hen, turkey or chicken, baked ham, or baked salmon fillets. Preparation time: 15 minutes, plus soaking time Cooking time: 40 minutes Makes: Six servings 1/3 cup dried cranberries 1 1/2 lbs parsnips 1/4 cup maple syrup 1/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock 2 Tbsp lemon juice 1 Tbsp melted butter 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg I salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste 1/2 cup pecans halves 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley or mint LYLE STAFFORD, TlMES COLONIST Maple-Roasted Parsnips with Pecans and Cranberries make a nice side dish to complement pork, Cornish hen, baked ham or salmon fillets. Place the cranberries in a bowl. Cover with one cup of warm water and let stand at room temperature one hour. Drain cranberries and reserve. Preheat oven to 375 F. Peel parsnips and cut lengthwise in half. Slice the parsnips, widthwise, into 1/2-inch pieces. Place the parsnips in a 9x13-inch baking dish. Add the maple syrup, stock, lemon juice, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper, and mix to combine. Roast the parsnips, uncovered, 20 minutes. Mix in the pecans and cranberries and roast 10 minutes more. Give the parsnips a stir and then roast another 10 minutes, until nicely glazed and tender. Spoon into a serving dish, sprinkle with parsley or mint, and serve. Curried Parsnip and Apple Soup with Almonds, Yogurt and Mint Mild, curry-spiced, Indian-style parsnip soup accented with sweet apple, fresh mint, rich almonds SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2013 B3 cooking with parsnips and tangy yogurt. Preparation time: 20 minutes Cooking time: 25 minutes Makes: Six servings 3 Tbsp vegetable oil 1 lb parsnips, peeled, halved lengthwise and sliced 1/2 medium onion, chopped 1 Tbsp coarsely chopped fresh ginger 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour 1 Tbsp mild curry powder 4 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock 1 Tbsp lime juice 1 large or 2 small red apples, peeled, cored and cubed I salt to taste I plain yogurt to taste 1/4 cup toasted, sliced almonds (see note) 2 Tbsp chopped fresh mint Place the oil in a medium to large pot set over medium heat. Add the parsnips, onion and ginger and cook until softened, about five minutes. Mix in the flour and curry powder and cook and stir two minutes more. While stirring, slowly pour in the stock. Mix in the lime juice and apples. Bring the soup to a gentle simmer. Simmer soup until the parsnips and apples are very tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Pur\u00e9e the soup in a blender or food processor, or in the pot with an immersion blender. Return the soup to a simmer; season with salt. Ladle the soup into bowls. Top each bowl with a dollop of yogurt, and a sprinkling of almonds and mint, then serve. Note: To toast the almonds, , place in a non-stick skillet set over medium heat. Cook the almonds a few minutes, swirling the pan from time to time, until lightly toasted. Q) 1] 3 ~\u00a7 lp to . CS \u2018 I V \u00ae ?aii\u00a7\u2018;?\u2019\u00a7\u20187e-SF E E d fragrant, \u2018DO \u2018YOU \u2018V C LIAC -\u00b0DI EASE\u2018? \\\\ , , : V'' N \u2018\\ ''\u00bb / 5 i \\ \\"}
{"_id": "245671", "title": "Defining a random \"safe\" path for a game character", "text": "I am writing a game in Java and it can be likened to the recently popular game \"Flappy Bird\" in the sense that the character moves up and down and the users touch and must avoid the obstacles. The obstacles are going to be asteroids of varying sizes. I want to spawn these in at a random y co-odinate and with a random size, and then have them move across the screen. The character must then avoid these. It cant be completely random however as that may result in an non-traversable path. Thus I thought it would be best to define a random safe path first and then fill in the surrounding area with these obstacles. Is this the best approach to solving this problem, and if so is there correct and efficient way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "252182", "title": "On implementing a dynamic proxy in PHP", "text": "I'm trying to implement dynamic proxies in PHP and I'm running into a problem of implementing interfaces. My current approach to building a dynamic proxy is by having a class which uses the __call magic method. The issue is that this class implements no interface and/or extends no other class. So if I have a method which accepts only objects of a certain type through PHP type hints, I cannot pass an object of my dynamic proxy type. One case I'm currently dealing with is a LazyLoader class, which checks the method being called to see if it should perform the loading procedure. My data source method for loading a user, instead of returning a User object, returns a LazyLoader object, which will load the user's friend list lazily. Many other data source methods will do similar things. The issue is that, there, I return a LazyLoader object and not a User object. So whenever I use a data source object to load a User object, I'll get back a LazyLoader object, which I can't pass to methods/functions which take a type hinted User parameter. Any way to dynamically make a LazyLoader object \"be a\" User? **Edit:** I could make several kinds of lazy loaders which extend the right class. For example, I could have a UserLazyLoader, a FinanceSheetLazyLoader and so forth. This is a possibility, but I'd like to see if I could solve this issue in a more generic way first."}
{"_id": "126823", "title": "Is hiring a junior developer as a technical trainer a good idea?", "text": "So my friend's boss brought in four junior candidates with some work experience, she is one of them. Her manager wants them to be experts on the subject matter of tomcat in a matter of two months in order to justify them as billable to other clients as a technical trainer. My biggest concern is this, they only have a year to no experience in development but no production support experience. Is it possible to turn these greenhorns into gurus in a short amount of time with the use of text and forums? Also they don't have a proper sandbox to play with, i.e. any servers. I am helping in my spare time but I don't feel she has enough time to become a SME. What can I do to help her become an expert or what can I say to her that the position may not be a good fit?"}
{"_id": "118681", "title": "Looking for an information system for collaborating on files metadata", "text": "I am looking for an information system which has the following features:   * upload files and add custom properties depending on file type (e.g., author, composer, painter, singer);   * support for sructured properties (e.g., `painter` is not just a string, it is an object with own properties: firstName, lastName, dateOfBirth, placeOfBirth, etc.);   * describe third-party files (given their URLs);   * version control of descriptions;   * search for files and other objects by their properties;   * edit descriptions of files created by others (ability to edit depends on one's reputation, as on StackExchange);   * voting on files (influences reputation), flagging them. I was thinking about implementing it myself using Semantic Web technologies, but still can't believe that there is no very similar system. If there is no such a system, are there any components that I could reuse? If it does matter, I prefer Python, but most software in Semantic Web world is written in Java, so I resigned to the fact that I will have to write some code in Java."}
{"_id": "118684", "title": "Why did javascript libraries like knockoutjs, backbonejs, and angularjs only come out in 2010?", "text": "Being a relatively new web-developer I am surprised that these libraries didn't exist before. Is there a particular technical or historical reason that at around Sep 2010, a sudden development and interest in client-side javascript RIA applications and libraries? http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=backbonejs%2Cangularjs%2Cknockoutjs%2Cjquery%20tmpl&cmpt=q"}
{"_id": "244981", "title": "How to submit a part of project based when other parts are not completely implemented yet", "text": "I have been given an online task in which I am supposed to develop a service which is based on some other class/service which has not been implemented yet but I have a rough API for that and the results return by my class would be used by some other class/service I am not sure what would be the best way to return this. I mean shall I have some dummy/mock implementation for the service I am expecting or using in my class and also for the service that would use the result returned by my class or is it Ok to just develop my part and assume things based on the rough API spec. For example : I am in Team C and have to implement CService service. My class will call Team A's AService service (this is not implemented yet but I have a rough spec for this) and the results returned by my class would be used by Team B's service."}
{"_id": "244985", "title": "Using Statement lambda in exception handling", "text": "Following is a code snippet from MVP Win Forms application and this explanation would be helpful when answering the questions. My DAL doesn't handle exceptions and it will be propagated up to the calling method in the presenter classes where the exception will be handled. I'm using a single handler called `ExecutAction(Action action)` so I'm catching exceptions in one place rather than repeating code in every method. At the moment, I'm not logging errors. Just alert the user for an action and try to keep the system alive if possible. When showing messages to users, Presenters will use a static class called `MessagingService`. (`ShowErrorMessage()`). So that I can customize all massage boxes in one place.                       private void Search()             {                 ExecutAction(() =>                 {                     var info = _DataService.GetByACNo(_model.AccountNumber);                              if (info != null)                         {                             _Model = info ;                             this.SetViewPropertiesFromModel(_Model, _View);                         }                         else                         {                             MessageBox.Show (\"Bank account not found\");                         }                     });                 }                           private void ExecutAction(Action action)                 {                     try                     {                         action();                     }                          catch (NullReferenceException e) { MessagingService.ShowErrorMessage(e.Message); }                     catch (System.Data.SqlTypes.SqlTypeException e) { MessagingService.ShowErrorMessage(e.Message); }                     catch (System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException e) { MessagingService.ShowErrorMessage(e.Message); }                 }             }      Should I include general exception handler to this, to be able to handle any unforeseen exceptions? Also could you show me a better way to handle showing messages than using a static? Does use of lambda statements in every method call (`ExecutAction(() =>`) degrade code readability? When showing user messages how to show a custom message like \"Check the server connection\" etc. first and then if the user wants more information (like StackTrace / technical details) he /she could press a button like `More Info` which is in the MessageBox dialog?"}
{"_id": "244987", "title": "putting methods in base class that doesnt make sense/belong there", "text": "I've been lately thinking over design principles and patterns and a question did strike me. Let us say, I want to design a racing game. I want to design the classes for a variety of cars.   * each car may have different feature   * the most common features can be put in the base class - 'Car' Now, I learned that you should always strive to work with abstractions. All the code that tries to manipulate the car will try to call the abstract methods on `Car` like `Car.Accelerate()`, `Car.TurnLeft()`, etc... But what about the specific features? Like some cars might have rocket thrusters or a parachute and you might want to use them (I know this sounds ridiculous, but my point here is 'There might be special features in derived classes that might not justify the actual type(or base type) of that specific class')? So, what about them? Would you rather raise few more abstract methods in base class making it less cohesive, or would you put some if blocks and type casts (to get the actual class object and use that method) making it more coupled?"}
{"_id": "11523", "title": "Explaining technical things to non-technical people", "text": "I often have to explain technical things and technical decisions to my _extremely_ non technical manager and I'm pretty awful at it. What are good ways to essential dumb things down for the rest of the world who don't have a passion for programming? Example questions I've been asked:   * Why are you using Django instead of Java (Didn't accept that it was cheaper either)   * Asking me to rephrase things in non technical words, my sentence was \"Certain HTML tags are not allowed\". How can I possibly dumb that down?   * Other stuff that makes perfect sense to me, but is just _so_ basic I don't know how to explain it   * Why this, why that, why everything! Also, how do I tell my manager to look the basic stuff up on Google, like \"What is Pylons?\" I'm ready to rip my hair out, these questions are driving me insane!!"}
{"_id": "48869", "title": "Resources for up-to-date Delphi programming", "text": "I'm a developer in a small department and have been using Delphi for the last 10 years. Whilst I've tried to keep up-to-date with movements there are a lot of changes that have occurred between Delphi 7 and (current for us) 2010. Stack Exchange and here have been great for answering the \"how do you\" questions, but what I'd like is a resource that shows great examples of larger scale programming. For example is there anywhere that hosts examples of well written, multi form applications? Something that can be looked at as a whole to illustrate why things should be done a certain way?"}
{"_id": "213526", "title": "Is it okay to call functions when event occurs, or after that?", "text": "So I was not sure how to structure this title, feel free to edit it. My question is: When I have a Game Loop, I have 3 main blocks. Handle Events, Update game state, and draw. Let's say for example I check for keyboard/mouse events, and I want to move my character when buttons are pressed. Whenever `KEYDOWN` event occurs, should I immediately call `Player.move`? Or should I toggle `move_left/move_right bools`, and then call `Player.move` when I'm in the Update game state block. I was wondering this becouse, for example a function performs a long algorithm and I call it when an event occur's, calling the function will take some time, and meanwhile I might press more button's/events. I think I will lose some of those events becouse in that time the algirthm function was runing. Or, I can toggle a bool when the event occurs, and after checking for ALL events, I perform functions based on the bools. PS: Feel free to edit this post in a more constructive question."}
{"_id": "12475", "title": "Why aren't there automated translators from one programming language to another?", "text": "Most programming languages are Turing complete, which means that any task that can be solved in one language can be solved in another one, or even on Turing machine. Then why aren't there automatic translators that can convert programs from any given language to any other language? I've seen couple attempts for two languages, but they always work only on a limited subset of a language and can hardly be used for converting real projects. Is it possible, at least in theory, to write 100% correct translator between all languages? What are the challenges in practice? Are there any existing translators that work?"}
{"_id": "127195", "title": "What is (was) an update channel?", "text": "I was checking out what version of Firefox I'm using and it was telling me that I'm on the 'release update channel'. So I googles \"Update Channel\" and I finds this seemingly antiquated MSDN article which has a confusing bit of ASP.NET pre-processed into the article to give you the sense that you both should not use this technology and should never have used this technology. > Microsoft Active Channel technology is obsolete as of Windows Internet > Explorer 7 and should not be used. Users want an easy and convenient way to > download and install new versions of software. Software Update Channels are > specialized channels that you can use to notify users of software updates > and also deliver and install the updates on their computers. Users who have > downloaded your software and subscribed to your Software Update Channel are > notified when new versions of your software become available. When notified > of an update, users can click a gleaming icon representing your channel, > which returns them to your download site so they can obtain the new version. > Users can also choose to have software updates delivered and installed on > their computers automatically. > > Active Channel technology is obsolete as of Internet Explorer 7 and should > not be used. This article introduces you to the terminology, benefits, and > implementation of Software Update Channels. After reading this article, you > will understand how easy it is for users to discover and interact with this > technology, and you will know how to create your own Software Update > Channels. Links to relevant overviews, references, and tutorials are > provided at the end of the article. So, I ask you. Is this still some sort of metaphor for getting software easily to your clients. If I store the info for my programs updates in a database, is there existing non-obsolete Microsofty technology that could take a generated XML file and tell people using my software that there are updates available and you should probably download them?"}
{"_id": "8187", "title": "Should a primary key be immutable?", "text": "A recent question on stackoverflow provoked a discussion about the immutability of primary keys. I had thought that it was a kind of rule that primary keys should be immutable. If there is a chance that some day a primary key would be updated, I thought you should use a surrogate key. However it is not in the SQL standard and some RDBMS' \"cascade update\" feature allows a primary key to change. So my question is: is it still a bad practice to have a primary key that may change ? What are the cons, if any, of having a mutable primary key ?"}
{"_id": "213528", "title": "When should I copy a pointer inside a function?", "text": "I'm trying to teach myself programming and I'd really appreciate some help with this issue. I've just read a tutorial on pointers but I have a problem with the example. The function copies one string to another. In the original function a copy is being made with ptr. What is the meaning of this? because as far as I can see it's unnecessary. Is there anything wrong with my revised function or am I missing something? //Tutorial example               char *my_strcpy(char *destination, const char *source){         char *ptr = destination;         while(*source != '\\0'){             *ptr++ = *source++;         }         *ptr = '\\0';         return destination;     }      My revision               void my_strcpy2(char *destination, const char *source){              while(*source != '\\0'){             *destination++ = *source++;         }         *destination = '\\0';     }      Thanks."}
{"_id": "82140", "title": "Is there a 'boilerplate' lightweight NDA I can use to cover sharing proprietary code with a third party?", "text": "I want to engage a freelancer to work on some software that was developed internally. We're agreed that it'll be difficult for them to quote/estimate the work without access to the existing source code, and I'm happy to give them access to that code but would like something on paper before I do so. There is nothing in the code that's hugely confidential or sensitive, but it would be negligent of me to share our code without getting them to acknowledge in writing the terms under which we're sharing it. Does anyone have, or know of, a one-side, \"lightweight\" NDA that they've used to cover sharing of code at the pitch/estimate phase of a job before? I'm in the UK, so ideally UK law but I'm happy adapting something. Yes, we have lawyers. Getting them to write something is hugely expensive. Getting them to read something is much cheaper."}
{"_id": "127193", "title": "What's the best way to design a data and php model for a multi-account system?", "text": "I'm doing some high-level sketching of a system that will require users to register, when they do they get an account and can invite others to that account. To be clear, an account would be similar to a private workspace, and the users will belong to that account and cannot exist outside of that account. The users will be identified by a unique username (likely their email) and this will give them access to the account on a one (account) to many (emails / users) basis. Each record generated in that account is visible only to those users who belong to that account. Is there a good pattern for modeling this type of system? Being extremely new to programming, I'm imagining a field in each table that references the account #, but this makes virtually every entity a one to many. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "117758", "title": "How should I handle the publishing of an iPhone app under someone else's name?", "text": "I've agreed to build an iPhone app for a client that was referred to me. I'm a full-time software engineer by day, but this is only my 2nd iPhone app and I agreed to do it without upfront funding as it would give me a project to further learn the API as well as increase my portfolio of iPhone apps. The client suggested as payment, that we split the profits 50/50. Normally I would not think this was fair but in a situation like this, I was ok with it since my family's life does not depend on it. As we are nearing the end of development on the app, I asked the client if they would prefer their personal name be put on the project, or if they minded that it was my name (since I have the developer license). Naturally, they requested their name. I've not told them all that that entails because I would relinquish management of the app and profit divisions to them. My question to this community, and pardon if this is not the proper place, is **am I going about this the right way?** **Should I request a partnership be setup?** **Should I insist my developer name goes on it? What would you do?** Additionally, I'm going off of his word that this is a niche product with high demand (its in the medical field) so we will be able to charge a bit more for it."}
{"_id": "117755", "title": "Where is sympy library used?", "text": "I'd admire the functions of sympy library, what it does is really awesome. The integration functions are really few guys intellectual work. But where exactly we use them practically on computers? If not sympy, do we really need such libraries? If we need them, what languages would satisfy our needs?"}
{"_id": "117751", "title": "In .net, why can't values of intrinsic data types (such as DateTime) be null?", "text": "First the history: I found out DateTime data types cannot be null (Yes they can be nullable using the ? nullable declaration). I was told this is because they are value types and placed on the stack (not on the heap). I can understand why the stack is quicker and why value types need to (mostly) be placed on the stack, what I do not know is.   1. Is it true the real limitation of why a value type cannot be null is because the stack cannot handle null values?   2. If yes - Why? If No what is the real limitation.  I understand in .net we often don't care about exact memory allocation, yet it is important in performance applications to take the stack and heap into consideration, so I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Thanks in advance for your expertise on a difficult question. EDIT: Another thing to add are nullable types hence placed on the heap or stack?"}
{"_id": "193438", "title": "Implement a file system for ios devices", "text": "I've read that ios apps can communicate via unique urls. An online tutorial on tutsplus says > Communication between apps provides your application with an opportunity to > take advantage of other application\u2019s functionality, send and receive data > between apps, and provide a rich user experience that \u201cjust works\u201d. I have to admit that since I have no experience with objective c and cocoa I only scanned the article. But as far as I've understood the url based communication, your app can register a unique url that serves as a socket for communication. Is this not the perfect basis for a crude file system ? I know that all ios apps run in a sandbox and can only access their own data. I do recognose the merits of this design decision but still it seems cure and curse at the same time. This is not meant to be a discussion about apple's ecosystem and the concept of ios apps. **My question is simply:** Can url communication be used to create a file storage that works like a simple \"desk\" ? I would love an app that could store and host my files to allow a simpler workflow between different apps. Is this technically possible or did I misunderstand the url system ? Would apple allow an app like this in the app store ?"}
{"_id": "252701", "title": "Teaching software concepts: formal definition is a necessary evil?", "text": "Recently I had to teach what my PM declared a \"Best Practices Course\" on programming. I decided to have them read a chapter per week of Uncle Bob's Clean Coder book while I followed a somewhat related syllabus during that week e.g. if a chapter of the book is about object orientation then I teach the S.O.L.I.D. principles; if a chapter covers testing then I teach BDD. Anyhow, when I asked for feedback I drew a lot of criticism because I always gave the \"formal\" definition of the concept e.g. > Let q(x) be a property provable about objects x of type T. Then q(y) should > be provable for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T. And then tried to explained somewhat but a little less formally: > If we have a type B being a subtype of A, then we should be capable of doing > anything with B that we can do with A. And in the test I scored some answers like these: > if you give me the formal definition of the concept, you get a 0.7 points; > if you give me a non-formal definition of a concept you may get 0.7 points > based on the completeness. The rest of the point is by giving an example of > the concept. Thus everyone thought this was somewhat unfair as I somewhat pushed for memorizing definitions. Of course this was not my intention but I believe that completeness was a requisite as in previous tests they answers in form of wandering examples e.g.: > Having a lot of code in the function indicates that it is doing a lot of > things and also have a lot of concerns; making difficult to apply changes in > the code to have a better function very difficult. And this somewhat could have been better understood by citing the separation of concerns and single responsibility principles along with refactoring. Thus, I tend to believe that knowing the concepts formally and have a clear relation of the concept and the meaning is indicative of good communication skills and professionalism. Which is somewhat a goal of the course: that they communicate the ideas better by using established concepts. So, are formal concepts a necesary evil or I just screwed and should have managed the score differently?"}
{"_id": "193430", "title": "What stage of development do activity network diagrams belong to?", "text": "Activity network diagrams are used to determine the forward and backward paths for a project, and consequently to determine the critical path or maximum time to development.      I'm already familiar with using work breakdown structures which break down functional requirements into necessary and sufficient deliverables, but I'm unsure of what stage of project planning activity network diagrams fit into.   for clarity my interpretation of the planning cycle.: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6m1-u6HxISZeGNCQ2JudXNyZ1U/edit?usp=sharing Please could someone help me clarify this matter?"}
{"_id": "161312", "title": "In what language should I name my business classes?", "text": "I'm requesting best practice with this question. This is only an issue if the customer company is strictly national has a native language other than English, I think. If the customer has a lot of mainly very domain specific (say, German) expressions, mixed with some lesser domain specific namings. The language of our code comments, class/method/variable names is English. Would you translate all domain specific names?"}
{"_id": "193436", "title": "Best practice for handling asynchronous inter communication?", "text": "Recently completed a project for handling credit card processing. One of the difficulties I faced was handling the delay / possible failure of notification messages. The most complex example was:   * an external system sending the request for payment   * my system turning that request into a request to the payment gateway   * sending the user to the gateway   * waiting for the user to perform payment   * the user returning back to my system but being held until the system receives notification of success/failure   * Sending the user back to the external system depending on failure Even more difficult was the fact that upon failure to send the notification the gateway attempts to send the notification every 15 minutes for a number of hours. I solved it using a database record of pending transactions and then detecting success and failure from the return plus a timed delay listener for the notification and transaction handling... Reasonably difficult! But this must have been solved a gazillion times before so what is the best practice? I can see my future is going to be writing the handling between all of these systems and managing the time delays and possible network failures so I want to be following the best practices. Book / article recommendations would be great. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "117281", "title": "How best to prevent having to revisit a change after check in", "text": "Normally what happens is that I work on something for a while and then when I am done I check it in(After the test/review process of course). Sometimes I have to go back and fix something that I got wrong the first time due to me not understanding the problem enough, lack of testing, etc.. What is an acceptable rate for this? Ideally you would hope that you never have to go back but sometimes you do. What rate does the average programmer have and what is the expert programmers rate? Do people track this? Lastly what kind of checks are best at preventing this? PS: I am not counting the cases where the requirements have changed and you have to go back in. I know that there is no real answer to this so let me change the actual question to: \"What general checks could be implemented, before code is sent for review or checked in, that would help prevent the need to revisit the change later?\""}
{"_id": "96673", "title": "Does being a general programmer naturally lead to failure?", "text": "In business they say that to succeed > \"Pick one or two things and do them very well\". This is the antithesis of the modern programmer. We are exposed to a constant stream of changes in business, technology, tools and everything else. There are a handful of guys lucky enough to concentrate on one core technology, say C#...then blog about it, be an expert at it. But all in all, knowing C# well (but no other technology) + 50 cents will buy you a Coke. So, are we all doomed to miserable customers and generally miserable careers? Or, is there some way to succeed despite the \"law of business\"?"}
{"_id": "117289", "title": "Are Session implicit objects examples of Models in MVC?", "text": "I have read that the Model is responsible for maintaining state among HTTP requests, for example in this article: > The Model is responsible for maintaining state between HTTP requests. > > Basically any data whether on a database, in a file, stored in the Session, > or cached inside APC must be preserved between requests and thus forms part > of the state of the application at the time the last request was completed. > So always remember that the Model is not just the database. Even the data > you get from web services can be expressed as a Model! Yes, even Atom feeds! > Frameworks which rattle off introductions to the Model, almost never explain > this upfront which only exacerbates misunderstandings. When we use some implicit Session objects (say in PHP, JSP etc.,) does it mean that this Session is a Model object?"}
{"_id": "149251", "title": "How do asserts and other error avoidance checks fit into TDD?", "text": "http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.TheThreeRulesOfTdd > You are not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a > failing unit test pass. So where do asserts fit into this? If you followed this rule you'd never write an assert without a unit test. But how would you test for the existence of an assert? The very nature of `assert` seems to make this idea impossible as the test would explode. And what about code meant to handle absurd conditions that are difficult or impossible to replicate? Some sort of FUBAR from a system call for example... You need to handle the error but the condition that causes the error is pretty rare and comes from the OS. How do you write a unit test to make that fail? Or say you're writing a template library and want to do some concept checks before going too deep into template vomit land? I don't know of any framework that supports compile time failure as a test PASS. I've tried to live by some of these TDD edicts, but at some point I've always run into walls I can't get around. These are some. I guess I should say that I'm talking about assert in the C/C++ sense in which a program, built without NDEBUG, will fault out if the assertion fails. Not some exception throwing mechanism that's _called_ assert. Didn't even realize someone would use that name for throwing exceptions."}
{"_id": "149250", "title": "Can neural network discover rng patterns", "text": "Can neural network find connections beetween numbers generated by random number generator without knowing about it's seed and predict this rng's next numbers with more sucess then randomly guessing? I really couldn't find any data about this. Thanks"}
{"_id": "214172", "title": "Should there be a formal role (internal or external) assigned to dev environments to control wasteful complexity?", "text": "A few years ago, I worked for a small company that went so far into developing in-house frameworks that they dedicated their most senior developer, and their architect to developing a custom MVC framework and ORM from scratch. These two things were orthogonal to their core product. Unfortunately the support for this framework-driven approach came from the top, and it delayed delivery of revenue-generating software - and the frameworks produced were notably inferior to off-the-shelf alternatives, which compounded the delays. The company burned through cash quickly, and, eventually, everyone was laid off. A later employer made a similar mistake - they got a highly technically skilled developer - a perfectionist, with a strong grounding in enterprise design patterns to grossly over-engineer a consulting solution for one of their clients, knowingly taking a loss, in the hope that the solution could be adapted and extended for other customers. The project overran significantly. But no other potential customers bit. A gold-plated strategic blunder that cost a small fortune. In both cases there was a significant degree of overengineering. In both cases the company and project management were people with domain or analysis backgrounds, rather than a programming background. In both cases the software architects built overly-complex solutions to scratch their itches, and enhance their r\u00e9sum\u00e9s, with some complicity from non-technical management. In both cases the architects had no stake in keeping costs down (apart from the risk of losing their jobs if the companies went bankrupt- which wasn't much of a risk, considering their high employability). My experience suggests that it isn't an uncommon trap for dev shops to fall into. Is there place in software projects for a formal internal or external technical adversarial role - a \"Quantity Surveyor\" - to use a building analogy- that can call out, or prevent wasteful over-engineering? Who is best suited to fill this role?"}
{"_id": "250122", "title": "Is there a specific reason that dingbat fonts are supported or ever even created?", "text": "I have known about the weird dingbat fonts since the first time I tried to change the font on MS word and stumbled upon them. Since then I never questioned them, I just thought hey cool. Now I have some questions. What is the purpose behind creating dingbat fonts? Is there anyone/entity that actually uses/needs these types of fonts?"}
{"_id": "250126", "title": "Static vs. non-static? (with non-OOP functions)", "text": "Although this question has come up before, mine _is_ different because it is not supposed to cover anything OOP but only **plain (ANSI) C**. Especially in open-source software, I usually encounter a plethora of functions (please don't call them methods since we're _not_ in OOP) with the `static` keyword preceding the data type. But what effect does this actually have with plain C? In my own projects, I've never had an occasion where the `static` keyword was actually needed. (Although a so-called expert programmer would probably have given me the advice, \"This function should be declared static\" and I would probably have replied in my own sarcastic way: \"Uh-huh. Well, it works as-is, after all\". :)). From reading the OSS code, I assumed it might just generate less overhead when compiling the project. However, CPU have advanced in performance so much that I've wondered many times why there is such an ongoing interest to declare functions static even though it might need some benchmark tool to measure the differences in execution speed."}
{"_id": "250124", "title": "Nested maps vs. combined keys", "text": "in the project I am currently working on we had three different types of prices depending on the age of the user (adult, child, etc...). So we had on the DB a table looking like this: > >     PRICES >     type     Amount >     A         20 >     B         15 >     C         .. >     D         .. >   At first we only had 4 different types of prices, so in the code, we had something like this:               Map<String, BigDecimal> prices = new HashMap<String, BigDecimal>();      Where the keys were the price type. Recently, they added a new business rule that adds 3 subtypes to every price type, so now we have something like this: > >     PRICES >     type   subtype  Amount >     A          1      20 >     A          2      15 >     A          3      .. >     B          1      .. >     B          2      .. >     ...        ..     .. >   **Which of the following two options do you think is better and why?** # Nested Maps               Map<String, Map<String, BigDecimal>> prices;      where the keys are the price type and subtype:               prices.get(type).get(subtype);      # Combined Keys The same map than originally:               Map<String, BigDecimal> prices;      And concatenate the keys to index the different prices:               prices.get(type+\"_\"+subtype);"}
{"_id": "119767", "title": "Producer-consumer pattern with consumer restrictions", "text": "I have a processing problem that I am thinking is a classic producer-consumer problem with the two added wrinkles that there may be a variable number of producers and there is the restriction that no more than one item per producer may be consumed at any one time. I will generally have 50-100 producers and as many consumers as CPU cores on the server. I want to maximize the throughput of the consumers while ensuring that there are never more than one work item in process from any single producer. This is more complicated than the classic producer-consumer problem which I think assumes a single producer and no restriction on which work items may be in progress at any one time. I think the problem of multiple producers is relatively easily solved by enqueuing all work items on a single work queue protected by a critical section. I think the restriction on simultaneously processing work items from any single producer is harder because I cannot think of any solution that does not require each consumer to notify some kind of work dispatcher that a particular work item has been completed so as to lift the restriction on work items from that producer. In other words, if Consumer2 has just completed WorkItem42 from Producer53, there needs to be some kind of callback or notification from Consumer2 to a work dispatcher to allow the work dispatcher to release the next work item from Producer53 to the next available consumer (whether Consumer2 or otherwise). Am I overlooking something simple here? Is there a known pattern for this problem? I would appreciate any pointers."}
{"_id": "250128", "title": "Designing module interfaces", "text": "I'm studying software engineering and one thing I'm really trying to improve is my skill in software architecture. My question is quite broad, so I'll try to explain it with an example. Suppose you have a model layer and a service layer. The model manages various entities (such as users, products, orders, campains etc.). The services provide features, such as _evaluating the efficency of a campaign_ , and use several modules of the model layer to access the required data. _How_ and _when_ do you specify those dependencies? I see the following possibilities:   * Allow general access to all models. This is the approach taken in many MVC frameworks, where the controllers can access any model classes. **Pro:** You don't have to specify the dependencies, the developer writing the controller is very flexible.   **Contra:** If you want to test a service, you don't really know which model you have to mock because the service could use everything. These implicit dependencies can also make maintainance a pain.   * The services specify the required models explicitly. Dependency management systems like requirejs or CommonJS require work this way. **Pro:** No implicit dependencies simplifies maintanance   **Contra:** Mocking is impossible. When designing the module, you have to know exactly what the module will need. If you later notice that you need another interface, you have to change the architecture.   * Specify explicit interfaces that will be provided to the service. Anyone instancing the service will have to provide implementations of the interfaces. I think dependency injection works this way, although the injection is automated there. **Pro:** No implicit dependencies simplifies maintanance, Testing is simplified, because you know exactly what to mock.   **Contra:** When designing the module, you have to know exactly what the module will need. If you later notice that you need another interface, you have to change the architecture. In theory, dependency injection seems like the best way. But is it practical to specify each requirement? How fine-grained should it be? Per entity? Group them? Or one dependency per \"thing you can do with an entity\"? There are simply too many possibilities, and I'd like to get some real-world advice."}
{"_id": "158335", "title": "Reusing Mocks/Stubs as Test Specification", "text": "We use mock to ensure that a unit test only runs against the code that should be tested. This prevents that a bug in a module A causes tests of a dependent module B to fail. However, now we also have to test the interaction explicitly. It is not enough that A and B are green on their own, A has to work as B expects it, and B has to have the right expectations. Now, B's expectations are already formally defined: in the mocks and stubs. If I have a stub where A returns certain output for certain input, this means I expect it must be possible to have A in a state where it shows this behavior. So instead of writing long integration tests, I just have to set-up an A and test it against the stubs and mocks that are already there. Or, to turn it around, I can use an actual instance of A to test the correctness of my mocks. Does this work in practice? Are there best practices (e.g., where do these pseudo-integration tests belong to, should A's test suite already provide some likely-to-be-used mocks)? Is this even possible with the popular mocking frameworks?"}
{"_id": "81499", "title": "When should you use a private/inner class?", "text": "To clarify, what I'm asking about is               public class A{         private/*or public*/ B b;     }      vs.               public class A{         private/*or public*/ class B{             ....         }     }      I can definitely think of some reasons to use one or the other, but what I would really like to see are convincing examples that show that the pros and cons are not just academic."}
{"_id": "215807", "title": "Why is Internet Explorer the only browser to be referred to by version when talking about compatibility?", "text": "Whenever I read something or hear someone talking about HTML5, CSS and JavaScript support, they always refer to Internet Explorer with the version number such as Internet Explorer 6, and Internet Explorer 9. But they only refer to Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and others without version numbers. Shouldn't they also specify the version number in which certain web technologies are incompatible for other browsers instead of just Internet Explorer?"}
{"_id": "81494", "title": "What makes the difference between \"Hire\" and an honest \"almost\" for final on-site interviews?", "text": "So, I have recently had on-site interviews with Google and Amazon and received polite rejection letters letting me know I was close, but not quite right for the skills they were looking for. I've made it to the final round for all the interviews I've done (except for some offers from small uninteresting positions that I interviewed with for practice), but so far having 5-8 interviews in a day gives me enough time to have my mistakes add up just enough to put me out of the running. I know I did well there at least on the coding questions and other general technical questions, apparently I'm bad at designing OOP things like card games or parking garages though (I dove too deep into one object and used up all my time, instead of being broader) and my coding answers although they work overall didn't quite had a few bugs/edge cases I missed (like a case where an input node could actually could be the answer rather than needing to be distinct). And I have no problem saying \"I don't know\", but maybe I'm rambling a bit and need to say it for questions I think I can answer, but can't give a crisp answer to... So, what are the things that push you over the top from being good, but not quite to \"Hire\"? Any advise on what you look for or something you know that gave you that little extra boost?"}
{"_id": "252406", "title": "How to implement \"email invitation\" feature using Asp.Net Identity Framework 2.0 and OAuth?", "text": "My engineers are implementing authentication and authorization using Asp.Net Identity Framework 2.0. The requirements state that we need to support the following scenario:   1. Global admin user signs in.   2. Global admin user views an organization.   3. Global admin user invites organization user or admin to system.   4. Email is sent to invited user containing special link.   5. Invited user clicks on link, signs into their \"Microsoft Account\" (@hotmail.com) and is then signed into our website and associated to the organization and with the correct role assignment. In my opinion, we should be able to do all of this using out-of-the-box features of Asp.Net Identity Framework. For example: In step 3, we can call the CreateUser() method and it should provision a user account that has not yet been confirmed. We can use the ConfirmationToken it generates to email the user. Is this not the correct way to proceed? My engineers think that they need to implement custom user, role and organization tables and implement all custom authorization and roles for this because they believe that the user account within the identity framework can only be created when the user comes back from signing in (via OAuth) the first time."}
{"_id": "65558", "title": "Why does Java's String class not implement a more efficient indexOf()?", "text": "Following the below question on Stack Overflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5564610/fast-alernative-for- stringindexofstring-str I got to wondering why it is that java (6 at least) not use a more efficient implementation? Following is the code: java.lang.String#indexOf(String str)               1762    static int indexOf(char[] source, int sourceOffset, int sourceCount,     1763                       char[] target, int targetOffset, int targetCount,     1764                       int fromIndex) {     1765        if (fromIndex >= sourceCount) {     1766            return (targetCount == 0 ? sourceCount : -1);     1767        }     1768        if (fromIndex < 0) {     1769            fromIndex = 0;     1770        }     1771        if (targetCount == 0) {     1772            return fromIndex;     1773        }     1774     1775        char first  = target[targetOffset];     1776        int max = sourceOffset + (sourceCount - targetCount);     1777     1778        for (int i = sourceOffset + fromIndex; i <= max; i++) {     1779            /* Look for first character. */     1780            if (source[i] != first) {     1781                while (++i <= max && source[i] != first);     1782            }     1783     1784            /* Found first character, now look at the rest of v2 */     1785            if (i <= max) {     1786                int j = i + 1;     1787                int end = j + targetCount - 1;     1788                for (int k = targetOffset + 1; j < end && source[j] ==     1789                         target[k]; j++, k++);     1790     1791                if (j == end) {     1792                    /* Found whole string. */     1793                    return i - sourceOffset;     1794                }     1795            }     1796        }     1797        return -1;     1798    }"}
{"_id": "228405", "title": "Some team members don't actively participate in Sprint planning", "text": "Some team members just wait until the stories they are most likely to work on will be discussed and only then they participate. Otherwise they just play with their phone and don't listen. In some way I understand this position. Why listen to a discussion about a feature you are unlikely to help develop in the Sprint or ever? What do you think we should do?"}
{"_id": "150654", "title": "Asynchronous Designing and Programming", "text": "Me and a friend are looking to team up for some freelance web designing. We both are very strong PHP coders and website designers, but I am better at design and he is better at PHP. So, I'll be controlling the stuff the user sees, he'll be controlling the stuff the user does. In order to speed up development, I'm wondering if anyone has experience or recommendations for asynchronous web designing and coding. So far my best idea is to create a doctrine of which tags and classes every element should be wrapped in (if any), then have us developing via FTP. He would create the code that spits out snippets of HTML, and I would simply style those snippets and wrap it in the page. Does anyone know of a better way? So, any ideas?"}
{"_id": "199177", "title": "svndumpfilter Multiple Versions", "text": "I have a few questions about the Subversion open source project. I know that there are multiple versions of svndumpfilter (2,3). What are the tradeoffs and benefits of each version? In other words, what problems does each version seek to address? There are known bugs in the original svndumpfilter that have not been resolved for years. Out of curiosity, why is this the case? Is it because svndumpfilter is of lower priority than the other working components of svn?"}
{"_id": "199173", "title": "Is there something which can write the function for me given the pattern?", "text": "For example I have the following. The inputs are on the left. The outputs are on the right. The second term in the input which is the number 3 is the number of output numbers I want. It would be really useful if there was a program which given this pattern could just give me the code written to produce it. Is there such a thing?               0 3 -> 0 1 2     1 3 -> 3 1 2     2 3 -> 3 4 2     3 3 -> 3 4 5     4 3 -> 6 4 5     5 3 -> 6 7 5     ..."}
{"_id": "199171", "title": "Third party libraries in an open-source C# project", "text": "I'm going to start an open source project from scratch, using git (via github) to manage the source. The project will be written in C# and will depend on at least two external libraries (more are likely to come). I wonder how I should reference the libraries, and the following ideas came to my mind:   * A folder within the project that contains all external libraries as dll   This would mean I have the dll files in my repo, which I think is bad, because it isn't source. Also, I don't know how Visual Studio (or other IDEs) store the path the libraries, if they use absolute paths, that would be impossible.   * Get the external libraries via nuget   This would be a clean and nice way to have the libraries organized, but what what if a library I need doesn't have a nuget-package? I can't just create one, can I?   * Storing the source of the external library as part of my repo   Sounds like a stupid idea, it would make updating the libraries a pain.   * Reference the repositories of the other projects via git somehow.   Sounds good, I could make my own fork of it to keep a state or just point to a commit. But is that even possible? Is that a good way? **tl;dr:** How should I handle external libraries in an open-source C# project?"}
{"_id": "167250", "title": "Am I wrong in thinking that needing something like AutoMapper is an indication of poor design?", "text": "Automapper is an \"object-object mapper\" for .Net, which means copying objects from a class into another class that represents the same thing. Why is this ever useful? Is the duplication of classes ever useful/good design?"}
{"_id": "116481", "title": "What is the/Is there a right way to tell management that our code sucks?", "text": "Our code is bad. It might not have always been considered bad, but it is bad and is only going downhill. I started fresh out of college less than a year ago, and many of the things in our code puzzle me beyond belief. At first I figured that as the new guy I should keep my mouth shut until I learned a little more about our code base, but I've seen plenty to know that it's bad. Some of the highlights:   * We still use frames (try getting something out of a querystring, almost impossible)   * VBScript   * Source Safe   * We 'use' .NET - by that I mean we have .net wrappers that call COM DLLs making it almost impossible to debug easily   * Everything is basically one giant function   * Code is not maintainable. Each page has multiple files that are created every time a new page is made. The main page basically does Response.Write() a bunch of times to render the HTML (runat=\"server\"? no way). After that there can be a lot of logic on the client side (VBScript), and finally the page submits to itself (often time storing many things in hidden fields) where it then posts to a processing page which can do things such as save the data to the database.   * The specifications we get are laughable. Often times they call for things like \"auto-populate field X with either field Y or field Z\" with no indication of when to choose field Y or field Z. I'm sure some of this is a result of not being employed at a software company, but I feel as if people writing software should at least care about the quality of their code. I can't even imagine that if I were to bring something up that anything would be done soon, as there is a large deadline looming, but we are continuing to write bad code and use bad practices. What can I do? How do I even bring these issues up? 75% of my team agree with me and have brought up these issues in the past, yet nothing gets changed."}
{"_id": "116486", "title": "What are some useful resources for learning tuple calculus?", "text": "I've been trying to go over my tuple calculus over and over again. What's worse is that my professor and tutors are not much help during their hours. Does anyone know a good place to learn about tuple calculus? I'm having a hard time understanding how to \"speak\" the language in terms of what I want to get from a database."}
{"_id": "167258", "title": "Algorithm to use for shop floor layout?", "text": "I ran into a classroom problem yesterday (business oriented class, not computer science) and I found it interesting from an algorithmic perspective. The problem goes something like this:   _Assume there is a shop floor with N different rooms, and you have N different departments that need to go in those rooms. The departments and the rooms are all the same size, so any department could go in any room. There is a known travel distance from each room to each other room. There is also a known amount of trips necessary from one department to another (trips are counted the same regardless which room they originate from, so a trip from A to B is equivalent to a trip from B to A). Given those inputs, determine a layout of departments into rooms which minimizes travel time._ What is the best way to approach this problem algorithmically? Is there already a particular algorithm or class of algorithms designed to solve this type of problem? Does this type of problem have a name in computer science? I am not looking for you to _design_ an algorithm to solve this, although feel free to do so if you would like. I'm wondering if this is a problem space that has already been well defined and studied algorithmically and if so get some links to research further. I can see a lot of different data structures and algorithms that might apply to this and I'm curious which approach would be \"best\". And don't worry, you are not doing my homework for me. This is not a homework problem per se, as this is a business course and we were simply discussing the concepts and not trying to solve the problem algorithmically."}
{"_id": "191363", "title": "Fluent interface implementation and reflection. Case study", "text": "I hope I picked the right group for this question... I have this little framework I want to implement and I would like to have an opinion on it. In particular I am more concerned about the succinctness and style of the solution. My class sketch looks like this:               public interface Builder<T> {              T build();     }          public interface RootObject {                   public static abstract class MutableBuilder<T> implements Builder<T> {                  protected MutableBuilder() { }                  protected abstract void setA(A a);                  protected abstract void setB(B b);                  protected abstract void setC(C c);                  protected abstract void setD(D d);         }     }      The goal is to have a Builder which returns an instance of (hopefully) immutable objects. The whole implementation is left to the client code, but I still want to give the imprinting of the Effective Java's fluent interface. If it was just for this, I would not be that puzzled. The problem comes into lay when I add the requirements:   * the framework needs to reflectively search through a generic `RootObject` implementation in order to find if the `MutableBuilder` static inner class has been implemented.   * if found, the framework instantiates one or more `MutableBuilder` dynamically (that is the reason why I have an abstract class with a constructor and return it or them to the client code. The mere talking about reflection makes me wonder if I am doing the right thing. It looks a reasonable solution to me (of course)."}
{"_id": "191360", "title": "Can I continue to sell a tool/library I wrote in the past now that I got a full-time job or company will not like it?", "text": "I was selling a library/framework/tool to companies. Licensing the binaries. Now I got a full-time-job. Haven't started yet, but will start soon. And I just got a request for quote from a company in the same industry as my new employer. Not direct competitors, but same industry. Is it ok for me to license my software to them? Or this will put me in trouble with my soon-to-be employer? I don't think asking the company is even appropriate at this time. They are giving me a job to work for them, not to ask if I can sell my software on the side. No idea what to do. Any recommendations?"}
{"_id": "43179", "title": "DLL Hierarchy issues", "text": "I want to preface this by saying \"I love my job and I want to stay here\" But I've got a serious problem,   1. Circularly linked DLL's (DLL's linked back to the EXE)   2. Special builds with conditional defines to get rid of the links when the EXE doesn't exist for using the DLL's in special utilities.    3. Inability to reference our own DLL's as external functions because they throw errors when linked (have to use Windows LoadLibrary functions instead) So... My question is, referencing the executable seems like a bad idea, but a necessary evil to get session information (this is a client/server application with multiple users). Is the best way around referencing the executable in it's called DLL's is to initialize the DLL's called by the executable with all the information it could ever possibly need to do its job?"}
{"_id": "191364", "title": "How do you find the first common element in two arrays", "text": "The way I did it was to loop through each at the same time and add the current value to a separate set for each of the lists. Also, check if the current element is already in the other list's set. I have no idea if this works though and if so, why? I know it finds a common element but does it find the first common element? I can't think of counter examples but I'm having trouble convincing myself it's definitely correct. Also, even if it is correct, is there a better way of finding the first common element?"}
{"_id": "197401", "title": "Is Entity Framework only for Asp .NET / Asp. NET MVC?", "text": "I never coded on VS and I'm a junior programmer in C# and I would like to know if the entity framework is available only for ASP .NET applications ?"}
{"_id": "197407", "title": "serving up future-proof kinfolk - extensible contract interfaces", "text": "Ok, **I have this human here, but what can it do** , how would you discover its special abilities? And when you find out what kind of expert you've got then how would you actually make use of its unique responsibilities? An example for this architectural pattern question: ### Base Interface with Characteristics Common to All               interface IHuman {         DateTime GetDoB();     }      ### Extended Interface 1               interface ICivilian : IHuman {         string GetEmail();         void SendEmail();     }      ### Extended Interface 2               interface IAccountant : IHuman {                 double CalculateProfits();     }      ### Extended Interface n+               interface IAnotherSpecializedHuman : IHuman {         void DoSomethingExpert();     }      ### Specialized API Discovery and Usage How would you design   * a highly pluggable and loosely-coupled system   * with which you can carry out all the common human operations (e.g. get age),   * but also carry out any specialized operations that are available,   * depending on which modules are incorporated      * e.g. you can send email, because ICivilian module is provided     * but you cannot calculate profits, because IAccountant plug-in is not provided   * and the question is **not so much aboutproviding different implementations but about providing different specialized APIs** (and APIs that have a common parent with shared functionality)"}
{"_id": "197409", "title": "For a socket based application : how must I handle dynamic ip adress?", "text": "I plan to write an network application whose use steps is the following :   1. Connect to the server and choose a name (and enter your email \"id\")   2. The list of others \"free\" (not playing a game) players is shown to you : so you have to select one.   3. The server use the two players ip adress in order to connect them But I think I will be facing a great issue :   * how to handle dynamic ip adress carefully : can a dynamic ip adress change while the established connection is not yet finished ?   * if yes, how must I handle that, let's with Java 7 for example ? Regards"}
{"_id": "211271", "title": "Hiding query strings logically?", "text": "I feel uncomfortable when using query string parameters as: `http://xyz.com/default.aspx?carId=1129&country=uk&uniqueId=98745DVF4563VVf1259` I would rather use something that should not make sense to anyone who is trying to make some sense from the URL: `?a=1129&b=uk&c=98745DVF4563VVf1259` (after all this query sting info is for my use only) Firstly is this a good thing to do? (I mean to hide logic of you query string) If it is, then is there a way, that internally developers can use `carId`, `country` and `uniqueId` in code, but externally the url uses `a`, `b` and `c` respectively? So if someone goes to   `?a=1129&b=uk&c=98745DVF4563VVf1259` when I do `Request.QueryString[\"carId\"]` I should get 1129. Can this be done?"}
{"_id": "94126", "title": "\"Kill switch\" in customer hosted environments, to protect payment?", "text": "I have a difficult client. Every bill is argued and debated over, and each email is parsed with a lawyers eye (because he's a lawyer), looking for a way to avoid paying for something. No amount of generosity on my part is ever reciprocated. The client currently has 60% of his bills unpaid (these are invoices he signed off on), and it is a substantial amount of money. How it got to this stage, admittedly is a product of my own na\u00efvet\u00e9. Since the client hosts his own code, I can't shut off the hosting and demand payment. **Is it legal to install a remote \"Kill Switch\" to shut down the customers code unless bills are paid?**"}
{"_id": "17151", "title": "What is the best objective way to measure language popularity trends? (What's better than TIOBE?)", "text": "The best way to get data on computer language popularity that I know is the TIOBE index. But _everyone knows_ that TIOBE is hopelessly flawed. (If someone provides a link to support this, I'll add it here.) So is there any data on programming language popularity that is generally considered meaningful? The only other option I know is to look at the trends at indeed.com, which is inherently flawed, being based on job postings. It isn't like I would make a future language decision solely based on an index, but it might provide a useful balance to the skewed perspective one obtains by talking to ones friends and colleagues. To illustrate that bias, I'll point out that based on the experience of those I personally know, the only languages used professionally today (in order of popularity) are Java, C#, Groovy, JavaScript, Ruby, Objective C, and Perl. (Though it is evident that C, C++ and PHP were used in the past.) So my question is, everyone bashes TIOBE, but is there anything else? If so, can anyone explain how we know the alternative has better methodology? Thanks."}
{"_id": "94124", "title": "Wrapping simple statement in a function in java?", "text": "I was working on neo4j graph database in java. To get the reference node of this db:                   GraphDatabaseService graphDb=new EmbeddedGraphDatabase(DB_PATH);              Node Root=graphDb.getReferenceNode()      I always forget to prefix graphDb when calling getReferenceNode(). So what I did :                  public Node getRootNode(){        return graphDb.getReferenceNode(); }      Now after doing this , I thought this to be overkill as I am replacing a simple statement with a function call which surely has overhead but using getRootNode seems more intuitive to me. So my question is am I right in thinking that doing the above mentioned thing is inefficient? Or does it not affect performance that much?"}
{"_id": "211275", "title": "Should an Http API always return a body?", "text": "Is there some sort of standard regarding http api responses? After reading this discourse thread I started to wonder. We are developing our public http json api at my work, and we do not return anything when it's not strictly needed (for example a PUT to /resource/{id} only returns 200 when ok or the corresponding 4XX or 5XX code, but no json body) Should we return a generic `{\"success\":true}` like they discuss on that link above, or is it ok to return a \"void\" body and handle everything with http response codes?"}
{"_id": "116151", "title": "What language should be used to teach object-oriented design and development in university?", "text": "My understanding is that C++ is usually offered as the 1st OOP language, and as the 2nd programming language (after C) in my country (Bangladesh). I've taught it several times, and the problem I've run into is that students often tend to think C++ as an extension of C, i.e. C with `cin` and `cout`! This has lead me to think about teaching Java as the first OOP language in the upcoming semester. What is your opinion? I would like some suggestions from professional programmers as well as academics."}
{"_id": "53037", "title": "Real world use of C# Delegates", "text": "I think that I conceptually understand C# delegates, however, I am struggling to find a real world example where they would be useful. Can you provide some answers detailing how C# delegates were used in real applications and what problems they enabled you to get around."}
{"_id": "68120", "title": "Tricky logic puzzles - Are they really useful in assessing programming skills?", "text": "In the last interview I attended, I was asked to solve a puzzle where I was expected to measure exactly blah liters of water given two buckets with capacities - blah and blah liters respectively. I was unable to solve the puzzle in given time (~5 minutes). The interviewer was a bit disappointed and said a programmer has got to have \"these\" skills. I didn't get what skills he was talking about. I have always felt strange about these kind of puzzles that are normally asked at programming job interviews. I do not understand what, if at all, is the connection between such puzzles and programming. Exactly what skills do interviewers intend to assess with such puzzles?"}
{"_id": "157022", "title": "Coding for good or charity", "text": "I'm looking for an open source projects, code-a-thons, or organizations which create software used for charity purposes or to help out charities. There must be a demand, but it is hard to locate them due to the wide variety of terms used to describe what they do. My preference is for sites with some degree of a positive reputation or some proof of effectiveness, such as through the number of charities helped. I understand that many of these may be localized, but my hope is to build a list of possible organizations to consider contributing time towards. I think this is on-topic because of \"freelancing or business concerns\" and it's only a moderately subjective question. GiveCamp is a good example (thanks, ElYusubov!) but We Are Microsoft is not so good since it's stale from 2010."}
{"_id": "52549", "title": "What's the least intrusive method for creating a backup of a couchdb database?", "text": "We're looking to create regular backups of a couchdb database, to ship offsite. What's the least intrusive way to obtain these - ideally without interrupting or significantly slowing down performance on the existing database server?"}
{"_id": "52548", "title": "What is the difference between the BSD and the BCL licenses?", "text": "What differences are there, if any, between BSD and BCL licences?"}
{"_id": "48602", "title": "what's best language to mate with Adobe Flex-based GUI for math crunching?", "text": "I'm not a software expert but need to outsource a web-based scientific GUI application, and I'm considering Adobe Flex. My math routines are currently in Javascript and C/C+. Having no experience with Flex, was hoping someone could help me understand what options are available for performing (preferably fast and efficient) CLIENT-side calculations. That is, can Flex interact with Javascript and/or C easily? If not, is actionscript or other language preferred? Downsides/tradeoffs? Need functions like LOG10, LN, SQRT, and would be nice to also have the error function (ERF) and complementary error function (ERFC), although I may be able to derive these last two from more basic functions if necessary. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "157024", "title": "God Files versus Ravioli Code", "text": "Recently I asked a question about whether or not I should refactor my code. the responses I received were most definitely in the camp of going through with the refactoring due to the presence of a God File. However, now I'm pushing towards what I fear is Ravioli code. I will have around 6-7 \".c\" modules (which I find perfectly manageable), but I'm pushing in to having probably around 10~ \".h\" headers. I also still have about 8000 lines of code I need to parse through and refactor into their own parts and I'm not even sure how many more headers I'm going to need. I will probably be condensing and combining a few headers, but my question is: What is worse from a software maintainability point of view, having potentially too many modules (making it difficult to find and change definitions) or averting previous problem by potentially having fewer files but have them be bloated with excessive functions? Is my problem inevitable due to the 12k+ lines of code? Or am I simply blowing the size of the system out of proportion?"}
{"_id": "90637", "title": "PHP: brackets or no brackets with if/for/while/...?", "text": "Both these syntaxes are correct and equivalent: With brackets:               foreach ($listOfThings as $thing) {       echo $thing;     }      Without brackets:               foreach ($listOfThings as $thing):       echo $thing;     endforeach;      Two questions come up in mind:   * Is there any real difference between them or are they totally identical (performence, for example)?   * Is it better always to use the same one or to use both, depending of some context (for example: to recognize easely the code concerning the framework). I suspect all that to be a matter of taste and company standards, but I'm not sure of that."}
{"_id": "128178", "title": "Creating a web application to concatenate strings to unify naming conventions", "text": "I've been tasked with creating a small web application, where users have a series of forms (I can't currently think of a better way of doing this) which will contain, either a)text input fields or b)drop down lists. The form will look as follows: `form1` `input box input box drop down box` `form2` `input box input box drop down box input box` `form3` `input box dropdown box input box drop down box` Now for each form, I would need to concatenate the resulting string stored within each box (drop down or input). Seems fairly simple and I already have a working prototype. Problem is for each form there can be multiple rows. What would be the easiest way to approach this? My skills are limited to HTML, CSS, JavaScript and some (light) JQuery. The working prototype I currently have the user fills out all the fields and then presses a \"generate\" button which generates all the conctenated strings. Is this approach that you would take?"}
{"_id": "162155", "title": "What are the various branches of the C++ language out there?", "text": "Last time I tried to use C++ several years ago I remember having to include different libraries between different IDEs even though I was using the same operating system, which left me somewhat confused about the C++ language. Are there different standardizations of the C++ language? And if so, what branches of the language exist out there? Is the syntax and/or library names for each standardization different between operating systems? Also, What is primary standardization used nowadays?"}
{"_id": "90630", "title": "Is XML required for this?", "text": "I am writing a desktop application in Java, which has all of the Airband radio frequencies for the UK in it. I would like to make this frequency database downloadable so people can print it. Would it be best to create the database in XML or use PDF for the download to print? Or perhaps there is another, better option?"}
{"_id": "60457", "title": "Holding a presentation about what you've done", "text": "I have to give a presentation next week to my supervisor and my teacher about the activities I have performed during my internship. I've never been good at presentations and become nervous really quick. When I get nervous I start to talk really fast and skip valuable information I should've told. I feel like I need to master giving presentations if I want to become a serious software engineer later on. Do software engineers give presentations on a regular basis? How can I prepare myself for a presenation? Would I get less nervous if I gave more presentations? Any hints & or tips are greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "9572", "title": "What features are vital for good bug tracking software?", "text": "What features are vital for good bug tracking software and why are they important? What in particular is necessary for you to consider these features done right?"}
{"_id": "9576", "title": "How long do programmers generally stay in industry?", "text": "One thing that I've heard a lot over the years is that those working in the IT world generally don't make life time careers out of it, but tend to \"burn out\" and start a new career doing something else unrelated (e.g. going from software development to being an accountant). Have you found this to be generally true in your experience and if so, what is the general impression on how long people work as developers before starting a new career?"}
{"_id": "251295", "title": "Scrum vs. Agile vs. CMMI", "text": "I am pushing my project over to Visual Studio Online in order to have some source control. I am developing this project by myself. I have never used Scrum, Agile, nor CMMI before, and the detailed description I read at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/vstudio/ms400752.aspx is assuming a lot of knowledge. (It makes no sense to someone who doesn't already know what they are talking about.) The best way for me to really learn Scrim or Agile or CMMI is by using them. But where to start? The above link does not help me there. As a solo developer who is just looking for source control, should I start off with Scrum, Agile, or CMMI? To take the opinion-basedness out of this question, I will make my official question: **What is the difference between Scrum, Agile, and CMMI in Layman's terms?** (But really, I just am trying to figure out where to start!)"}
{"_id": "235268", "title": "Design MVC site such that UI developer can work without access to data tier?", "text": "I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC site (using Team Foundation Service for source control) that I've divided into a few separate projects under one solution:               Project.WebAPI (Main entrypoint, contains \"Views\",\"Scripts\" folders     Project.Data (abstract interfaces for backend data access)     Project.Data.SqlServer (concrete implementations for data access)      For my UI designer to work, he shouldn't need access to much. Pretty much the only thing that he's working on is the \"Views\" and \"Scripts\" folders of the main project. But \"Project.WebAPI\" takes parameters that live in Project.Data, so there's a dependency there. The app is SPA-style, so I could easily store a fake JSON payload which would entirely remove the need for logging in and pulling real data. My ultimate goal would be to be able to share a subset of the source with the UI designer allowing him to check changes directly into the overall project rather than create a separate instance just for his work which I would have to manually merge in. Does anyone have any experience with this type of thing? Edit: for clarity: The purpose is to protect the intellectual property of the solution so that the front-end developers don't have access to the entire solution. I hope that helps..."}
{"_id": "235269", "title": "How to break these long C++ lines in a neat way?", "text": "I'm on my first bigger C++ project and find that I have some really long lines. My goal is to break them to 79 columns, but I do not really know how to do this in a neat way. Are there some guidelines to break lines like these:               VectorHistogram::VectorHistogram(size_t bins, size_t cache) : bins(std::vector<double>(bins)), cache(std::min(cache, MAX_CACHE_ENTRIES)) {      or               VectorHistogram position_histogram {settings.position_hist_bins, settings.time_sites * settings.iterations};      or               MetropolisDriver::MetropolisDriver(Settings settings) : settings(settings), system(HarmonicOscillator {settings.time_step, settings.mass, settings.mu_squared}), trajectory(ListQuantity {settings.time_sites}), ma(MetropolisAlgorithm {trajectory, system, settings.position_seed, settings.accept_seed}) {"}
{"_id": "113500", "title": "Is it worth registering software with the U.S. Copyright Office?", "text": "nolo.com says: \"If you want to stop someone from using or otherwise infringing on your work, you must sue the infringer in federal court. However, in order to do so, you must first have registered the copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office.\" Is it true that the only way to take legal action against software copyright infringers in the U.S. is to first register with the U.S. Copyright Office? And is it true that that's the only way to recover statutory damages? Are there other benefits of registering software with the U.S. Copyright Office? What are the costs, besides the fee and the hassle of re-registering new versions of the software?"}
{"_id": "190189", "title": "What's is the actual reason that JavaScript is not enough to draw?", "text": "I'm looking for a pure JS library that allows to draw the mouse trail, but I cannot find anything pure but using canvas. Is there is a reason for that it could not be achieved? I'm on the wrong thoughts?"}
{"_id": "190188", "title": "How to turn a website into an offline usable directed graph for searching shortest ways between pages", "text": "I am an advanced-intermediate level student focused on the .NET and C#. I know all the basics as well as classes, methods, objects, inheritance, OOP principles and all that. Problem is we haven't covered data structures like trees and graphs yet. Basically what I need my program to be able to do is this: Part 1 Console application:   1. Go online to a specific website and following the net of links on it, starting with the main page, create a directed graph with weightless edges and store it locally, so that it can be used without internet connection.   2. Be able to recreate the graph from the locally saved data and then by given 2 links as parameters to find and print the shortest path between them. Part 2 Some sort of UI:   1. By given webpage address and depth - visually represent in the browser a tree structure with the given website as root and the level of depth of the possible pages accessible by following the links from it. I would really appreciate it if you can direct me in the choices I have to make to accomplish this task. Mainly I am puzzled by these:   1. How to represent a graph in C#.   2. How to save it locally (program must finish within 5 seconds, so I cannot go online and do everything from scratch).   3. What should I use for the UI part with the tree visualization. I don't seek for complete answers rather than good directives. I need to learn these fast and not to waste precious time wandering."}
{"_id": "112674", "title": "Is the ADO.net Entity Framework appropriate when all you do is insert records in bulk?", "text": "My department develops software to migrate databases for our customers from their old CRM software to ours. In this process we could be inserting up do millions of rows, processed one at a time as we need to do mapping and formatting to go from their old system (which could be anything from a Relational Database to a set of flat binary files) to our MS-SQL database. Currently we use a producer consumer model that reads in from their old system to our mapper, then use another producer/consumer model to go from that in to thread local DataTables which get batched out every 15,000 rows in a SQLBulkCopy operation to keep the number of objects held in ram down (larger tables can easy exhaust the 2 GB limit for a 32bit application if we try to hold the entire table in memory before inserting it.) The issue is this is kind of a kludge setup to be able to generate the new rows and insert them in to the database. Recently we have had the opportunity to re-write the database to fit our needs and I have been working away at my manager at the idea to using some form of ORM. I have been starting to look around at various ORM solutions, and I know we want to stay with a pure Microsoft stack (it was hard enough to get my manager to consider using an ORM, and I don't have a snowballs chance of convincing him of using a 3rd party library, since the main CRM app uses a 3rd party image processing library that is not very good and he has hated 3rd party libraries ever since). Comparing Linq-to-Sql and ADO.net Entity Framework I think the EF fits our needs better. However I am concerned about performance. Most CRUD apps are Read->Update at a slow rate (only displaying one record or a set of records with a common variable at one time). **However we will just be doing Create, Create, Create. Is an ORM like EF designed to do that?** My manager is obsessed with performance. When this process was done in VB6 (which is how it was done up to two years ago) it could take up to several hours to run a conversion. With our current kludge the longest ones take at most half an hour to process several Gigs of records (the slowest part is dealing with that 3rd party image library I mentioned earlier, ones that are pure text take at most 10 min). **Could I potentially see a slowdown in EF versus using SqlBulkCopy, and what can I do to mitigate the running cost if it does?** * * * Also I had a really hard time deciding if this should go here or SO, if you think it should be SO please let me know. * * * **UPDATE:** In response to Wyatt Barnett answer: if using an ORM is the totally wrong way to go, is there any other solution that will perform well other than generating generic DataTables on the fly based off of the schema of the destination database? The thing I liked most about EF was the fact that I had strongly typed data types, and that I could update both our database and our objects mapping the database with the tools built into Visual Studio in one location."}
{"_id": "104830", "title": "Are there languages that make it easier to understand secure coding principles?", "text": "I'm interested in expanding my knowledge of security issues: things like buffer overflows, format string vulnerabilities, etc. I'd like to be able to go through a language and understand its security implications and pitfalls to get a better understanding of secure coding practices in general. Are there certain languages that are more conducive to a learning experiment like this? Are there languages, due to abstractions or complexity, I should avoid? Where should I start?"}
{"_id": "153307", "title": "Dynamic Post-build event in Visual Studio", "text": "I am building a video server application that has multiple projects in Visual Studio. One project, the video server project, needs to call a shell script to generate documentation. This works fine when you build the video server project, because the script is simply               cd \"$(SolutionDir)\"     start documentationgenerator      However, there is also an SDK project that, when built, also builds the video server project. However, when it does this, it does not know where the shell script is, since it tries to use the _SDK Project's Solution Directory_.   * SDK Project   * Video Server Project      * shell script So the question is: how do I make the SDK Project find the Video Server Project? I checked the MSBuild properties and there are no properties that seem to deal with 'nested' projects."}
{"_id": "153303", "title": "Cairo Rotate Text : Transformation Matrix", "text": "http://www.cairographics.org/manual/cairo-Transformations.html I have been using Cairo Vector Graphics Library for some work, and I can't quite understand some parts: What is the default value of the transformation matrix? When do I need the transformation matrix anyway? Suppose I don't want to rotate text, will I still need to set it, will it still be set?"}
{"_id": "153301", "title": "Securing Back End API for Mobile Applications", "text": "I have an application that I am writing for both iOS and Android; this application will be served by a ReSTFUL API running on a cluster of servers on \"the internets\". I am curious how the rest of the world is going about securing their APIs so only specific applications running on iOS or Android can use these APIs. I could go the same route as other OAuth providers by providing a key/secret combination (2-legged OAuth), however, what do I do if I ever have to change these keys??? Do I create a new key/secret for every person that downloads the app??? The application is a social-based game that will allow the user to interact with other \"participants\" in the game based on location, achievements, etc. The API will provide the following functions: -Questions, Quests, etc -Profile Management -User Interaction -Possible Social Interaction Once the app gains traction I plan on opening up the API ala Facebook, Twitter, etc. Which is easy enough, I plan on implementing an OAuth Server and whatnot. However, I want to make sure, during this phase, that only people who are using the application can access and use the API."}
{"_id": "64208", "title": "What should I know or learn to get up to speed on being a software QA engineer?", "text": "I've been a software engineer in .NET for the past 3.5 years, and did my own integration and unit testing, but nothing too extensive. Now I'm being interviewed for an entry level QA job, and I wanted to know what concepts I should become familiar with."}
{"_id": "153309", "title": "When writing tests for a Wordpress plugin, should i run them inside wordpress or in a normal browser?", "text": "I have started using BDD for a wordpress plugin i'm working on and i'm rewriting the js codebase to do tests. I've encountered a few problems but i'm going steady now, i was wondering if i had the right approach, because i'm writing test that should pass in a normal browser environment and not inside wordpress.   I choose to do this because i want my plugin to be totally indipendent from the wordpress environment, i'm using requirejs in a way that i don't expose any globals and i'm loading my version of jQuery that doesn't override the one that ships with Wordpress. In this way my plugin would work the same on every wordpress version and my code would not break if they cheange the jQuery version or someone use my plugin on an old wordpress version. I wonder if this is the right approach or if i should always test inside the environment i'm working in. Since wordpress implies some globals i had to write some function purely for testing purpose, like               \"get_ajax_url\": function() {         if( typeof window.ajaxurl === \"undefined\" ) {             return \"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php\";         } else {             return window.ajaxurl;         }     },       but apart from that i got everything working right. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "191588", "title": "Refactoring expansive message architecture", "text": "I am currently working with a system that acts like a message bus. A message comes in to the service (WCF Windows Service hosted). The system then uses a service locator pattern to look up which dynamically loaded assembly will be assigned to the message. The assembly is found and then a method is executed which handles the message. The response is then sent back to the client. The problem is that the message base is growing enormous, as well as their associated plugins. And there is a lot of code duplication. Let me give a few examples: >   1. GetOrderMessage >   2. GetExpiredOrderMessage >   3. GetOrderMessageByCustomerId >   4. Get_something_related_to_order_Message etc, etc... > As you can see, the messages are very specific. The messages themselves are simple data contracts and they contain zero business logic. On top of this problem, there is a plug-in for some of these messages that just handles one message. Therefore, there is almost a plugin for every message type!! The system appears to support a one-to-many relationship for a message/plugin, but it appears that all the implementations are one-to-one. How could I refactor these to reduce code duplication and make the system smarter? I would like the code to be more easily digested to developers because there is a lot of duplication happening. (Due to some constraints, I cannot use an ORM for data access/entity creation) In response to Robert Harvey's comment below, I would like to clarify the following: In 99% of the use cases, the plug-in layer is just simply wrapping a data access call. Here's how it might look.               Request of GetOrderMessage ->         Order Plug-in ->              Order Data Access (ADO.NET, hand-rolled stored procedure of usp_GetOrder) ->                  value returned from Order Plug-in ->                      Response of GetOrderMessage returned to client"}
{"_id": "195297", "title": "Most MVC-strict php framework", "text": "I have been trying to wrap my head around MVC pattern for about 6 months.I've read tons of articles, Q&A, and blog posts about MVC and HMVC patterns, but I just simply don't get it 100%. I tried learning MVC by exercising one of widely used PHP MVC framework, CodeIgniter. I've implemented few internal websites for my company with it. And STILL, I don't 100% get it. I believe one of the best ways to learn something is to follow strictly defined rules. **So my question is:** What is the most strict PHP framework in terms of how MVC pattern is implemented? One that defines how I use models, controllers, and views so that I can completely get what MVC is?"}
{"_id": "125903", "title": "Can I apply for \"Software Engineer\" jobs without being an engineer?", "text": "I am from a country in which the use of the word \"Engineer\" or \"Engineering\" is strictly regulated by legislation. This means that you must hold a degree in Engineering AND passed an exam to join the Engineers' professional association to use the title. I am a bit confused about the term \"Software Engineer\" as used in the industry, globally. I read the wikipedia page on Software Engineer and the linked section of the page about the term usage, which offer an in-depth discussion. However my question is somehow more concrete. Knowing that I don't hold a degree in engineering (yet, I like to think I produce funcional, well designed software!), when I see an opening for a software engineer from an international company, would it be appropriate for me to apply? Should I somehow emphasise that I don't hold a degree in engineering?"}
{"_id": "125908", "title": "How can I efficiently handle input data without a framework?", "text": "I am working on a very small project and my design would be using technologies such as JSP, servlets, and POJOs. I'm considering a workflow where a JSP page will receive input data, then submit it to a servlet. The servlet would then have a lot of helper POJOs in it that would do all the real work. One thing I've noticed with this approach very early on is that it grew into a huge number of if-then-else statements. Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do without having to resort to a framework?"}
{"_id": "195298", "title": "Possible solutions for sharing working copy of project between multiple computers?", "text": "So there are 3 computers that I use to work on this project with, my home PC, work PC, and work Mac (for building to devices). The project has an SVN repository that two other programmers use so I can't commit broken code to it. The lead doesn't know how to use version control so the trunk contains art assets and everything else in addition to the project itself, making branching impractical (and I wouldn't want to use svn for branching anyway). I would use GIT if I could but it is not an option. My question is, how can I go to work, update my working copy, work on it a bit, send it to my mac for building, then go home and work on it some more later- keeping in mind that I may go 1-2 days without being able to commit working code to the repository?"}
{"_id": "84518", "title": "Can I say that ASP.NET is compiled?", "text": "You know that C# is a compiled language. But when we develop web applications we use ASP.NET + C#, in this case can we say that ASP.NET is compiled? If ASP.NET is not compiled does it affect the performance of C# when ASP.NET and C# works beside each other to develop web applications?"}
{"_id": "211491", "title": "How do I create a simple yet complex business layer?", "text": "I'm working with a fairly complex web application. It's split up into the following layers:   * Presentation - HTML   * Service layer - A REST and SOAP API communicating with the business layer   * Business layer - Contains the business logic.   * Data access - Provides access to the storage (SQL etc) The business layers contains classes encapsulating specific areas, such as customer registration, user management and more. The problem we are seeing is that the business layer is starting to get a bit messy. We have a single class handling customer management but as this area of the application grows more and more complex, the class grows and grows and become messy. For example, we may have the following classes   * class CustomerManager     * void CreateCustomer(...)     * void DeleteCustomer(...)   * class UserManager     * void CreateUser(..)     * void DeleteUser(...)      * void ActivateUser(...)     * void InactivateUser(...)     * void ResetPassword(...)  Creating a customer involves creating users as well. So CustomerManager calls misc methods in the UserManager class. As the application has evolved, creating a new customer means roughly 10 different things needs to be done except for registring the customer in the database, such as informing sales, audit logging, configuring default user accounts, creating a default configuration for the customer, notifying end-users of their auto-generated passwords and more. So CustomerManager.CreateCustomer grows to ~100 lines of fairly hairy code. I'm trying to think of a good way to handle this but am assuming that there's some common good way to do this which I'm simply not aware of. I've considered creating \"Task\"/\"Command\" classes implementing small sub- processes and then let the CustomerCreation.CreateCustomer simply execute a set of tasks. I would have more classes but they would each do less things. I've also considering implementing some kind of global application-level event/plug-in systems where CustomerManager.CreateCustomer just creates the customer in the database and then publishes an event that the customer is created. Plug-ins/something can then subscribe to these events and do stuff such as informing sales and logging the fact. Using this method, I wouldn't have to actually update CustomerManager.CreateCustomer when I want to do more stuff which is something which feels attractive to me. What obvious design pattern am I missing?"}
{"_id": "211493", "title": "How to edit the HTML of an ASP.net site?", "text": "Assume that I'm a front-end developer (HTML, CSS) And some one who got their website built using ASP.NET came to me and asked for a new design and I don't know about ASP.NET. Then, how can I change the design of their website without affecting their code? Do I have to learn a little bit of server side languages to be able to change to the look of sites without affecting the original server code?"}
{"_id": "157687", "title": "what will be the Output of the following code written in \" C\"?", "text": "#include<stdio.h>     void main()     {     char ***p=\"hello\";     printf(\"%c\",++*p++);     }      I haven't understand the concept of (*) indirection uses here **three times**.               When i compiled this program then the output was \"j\".     But actually hear the p is a pointer to pointer to pointer to Array of character.      Then why i getting the output as j.      I didn't understand what's the logic behind this.      please help me to understand the actual logic behind this. and the confusion increase more when I only use one indirection and get complied the program .then the output is i.means               void main()     {       char *p=\"hello\";       printf(\"%c\",++*p++);     }      **this gives output as i.** What is the difference between these two program?"}
{"_id": "68785", "title": "What is the best way to have security auditing done?", "text": "I have an authentication system(ASP.Net library) that I want to make sure is secure. What companies/resources can I use to make sure of this? Also, what should I make sure to do before sending it off to be \"broken\"? A bit more background: Basically, I'm wanting to make a little bit of money by selling this system, but I don't have a whole lot to invest in it(USD $100-$200). I'm wanting to make sure I'm selling something secure, and that buyers know it's secure. I personally have looked over the code multiple times just staring trying to find a security flaw and cannot find one. This is of course not to say there isn't one. This is where I want to pay someone to come in and look at my code and how it all works and basically tell me if it's secure or not"}
{"_id": "157684", "title": "What limitations does the JVM impose on tail-call optimization", "text": "Clojure does not perform tail call optimization on its own: when you have a tail recursive function and you want to have it optimized, you have to use the special form `recur`. Similarly, if you have two mutually recursive functions, you can optimize them only by using `trampoline`. The Scala compiler is able to perform TCO for a recursive function, but not for two mutually recursive functions. Whenever I have read about these limitations, they were always ascribed to some limitation intrinsic to the JVM model. I know pretty much nothing about compilers, but this puzzles me a bit. Let me take the example from `Programming Scala`. Here the function               def approximate(guess: Double): Double =       if (isGoodEnough(guess)) guess       else approximate(improve(guess))      is translated into               0: aload_0     1: astore_3     2: aload_0     3: dload_1     4: invokevirtual #24; //Method isGoodEnough:(D)Z     7: ifeq     10: dload_1     11: dreturn     12: aload_0     13: dload_1     14: invokevirtual #27; //Method improve:(D)D     17: dstore_1     18: goto 2      So, at the bytecode level, one just needs `goto`. In this case, in fact, the hard work is done by the compiler. > What facility of the underlying virtual machine would allow the compiler to > handle TCO more easily? As a side note, I would not expect actual machines to be much smarter than the JVM. Still, many languages that compile to native code, such as Haskell, do not seem to have issues with optimizing tail calls (well, Haskell can have sometimes due to laziness, but that is another issue)."}
{"_id": "68780", "title": "What should a programmer know about IIS and various protocols (tcp, http, etc.) when developing web apps and services, etc.?", "text": "Often one of the biggest problem areas for me when developing software (win and web) is some of the more (seemingly) abstract areas like tcp/ip, deploying to IIS and the various configurations, etc. This especially pops up when I am deploying a web app to IIS. What should I know about this so that I can troubleshoot problems, and develop services and apps that leverage an actual understanding of these areas? Also, WHERE can I learn this??"}
{"_id": "186641", "title": "In Agile development, who owns the software \"features\" and how to you manage the development?", "text": "Some development teams in my company are switching to Agile development practices and their developers' work seem to be diminishing to discuss and program minutia about trivial software features because of two week iteration cycles. And also because of \"any developer can fix any bug\" mentality. I have recently joined one of those team, transferring from another team in the same company... I feel strongly that developers should own their software features from start (design) to finish (implementation and unit testing). Agile seems to be going counter to this thinking. Is there any truth to my perception or am I just living a bad implementation of Agile? During our two week iterations, people somewhat arbitrarily get assigned new little features and bug fixes, depending on their workload during that cycle. Nobody seems to be owning responsibility of major features of the software. We spend stupid amount of times on trivial things, like adding a _single_ button to a dialog during a two week iteration, complete with a story, daily scrums, code review, etc. So in Agile projects, how does one manage larger features? Who own the responsibility: individual developers or the whole team? How does one extract him/herself from minutia and focus on longer term goals? Any feedback would be valuable."}
{"_id": "193981", "title": "Tool helping with estimations", "text": "I am looking for a tool supporting me with estimations. What I would like to do is to specify a higher level task and break it into several smaller tasks. When a task is small enough, I could assign the time it takes to finish it. The sum of these quantifiers should show up in the parent tasks. One could use Project for this, but IMHO this is some kind of overkill ... Also nice would be if you could do this like mindmapping so that a parant node sums up all of its childs estimations. Is something like this out there?"}
{"_id": "186644", "title": "Which Open Source License is right for my project?", "text": "I'm developing a suite of software tools that I need help with which is why I want to release my software open-source. People should be able to use and modify my code as they please while contributing to my project. Ultimately, the tools that I develop will require a paid commercial license, but may be free to those for non-commercial purposes. This software suite will consist mostly of website plug-ins. Other tools I develop open source be used for consulting. What would you suggest as a license?"}
{"_id": "167922", "title": "How do people maintain their test suite?", "text": "In particular, I'm curious about the following aspects:   1. How do you know that your test cases are wrong (or out-of-date) and needed to be repaired (or discarded)? I mean, even if a test case became invalid, it might still pass and remain silent, which could let you falsely believe that your software works okay. So how do you realize such problems of your test suite?   2. How do you know that your test suite is no longer sufficient and that new test cases should be added? I guess this has something to do with the requirement changes, but is there any systematic approach to check the adequacy of test suite?"}
{"_id": "186649", "title": "Entity Framework as a type checking/verification system for database code", "text": "When I read pro and con lists of using Entity Framework (or any modern ORM really), I'm surprised that the following point doesn't arise (self quote): > Using strongly-typed domain entities allows for type checking at compile- > time which essentially performs a verification of all your database > operations. This is something that is not possible with ADO.NET (whether > using inline SQL or stored procedures). For me, this is one of the biggest advantages of using an ORM. An issue that I come across regularly when dealing with ADO.NET based applications are the run-time errors from SQL. Static checking completely eliminates this. Could anyone elaborate as to why this isn't hugely relevant to many developers? It appears that some don't even agree with the above statement. **Example of some pro & con resources:**   * Entity Framework VS LINQ to SQL VS ADO.NET with stored procedures? (stackoverflow)   * Five Reasons for using an ORM Tool   * Why use the Entity Framework? Yeah, why exactly?"}
{"_id": "196757", "title": "What's a good way for a program to process an email mailbox?", "text": "Let's have a program that checks an email mailbox and then \"processes\" the messages contained there. (For this question it doesn't really matter what it actually does with the message). The program will run once per hour and can easily handle the volume of new messages and there is no penalty for processing a message twice. Let's say it will be using the IMAP protocol and can perform any of the standard functions that an email application can do. What mechanism would you recommend for processing the email?   * **Mark as read** \\- the program marks a message as read after processing it.   * **Unmodified mailbox** \\- the program doesn't modify the mailbox at all.   * **Something else** \\- some other method I haven't thought of yet. Suggestions welcome."}
{"_id": "27587", "title": "Can we provide a login functionality in multiple language?", "text": "My username is krunal. And If i type my name in any language like Gujarati(\u0a95\u0ac3\u0aa3\u0abe\u0ab2), Hindi(\u0915\u0943\u0928\u0932) or English(krunal) in username textbox than it should allowed me to login without any specific language selection. I just want to know the views of other people regarding this functionality. Is it a good to provide a login functionality like this ?"}
{"_id": "196750", "title": "Pairwise testing, not possible to say which combinations is faulty?", "text": "Let's say I have 4 (A,B,C,D) parameters with 3 possible values, also 81 unique combinations. With e.g. orthogonal array, I will end up with 9 test cases, each combining 3 pairs. But that means that if one test case fails, I do not know which combination in the test case is faulty, right? Whether values of A,B or A,C or BC. Just wanted to be sure I understood it well. edit: Corrected (thanks GlenH7)."}
{"_id": "167925", "title": "To refund or not to refund this client?", "text": "I'd really appreciate your advice on an ongoing project. I presented my client with a proposal and design samples which he approved, and he paid in full instead of the 50% upfront deposit as I'd given him a generous discount. He was then slow in furnishing me with some of the content, but once we did, he expected the website to be finished immediately which was not possible. Because he needed it done urgently, we agreed to try to get it done about 10 working days after the content was provided, but the developer who was helping me let me down. The next week, I completed the website myself and uploaded it to the server on a Friday afternoon. He then calls and texts me on following Sunday while I'm at church to say it's not online (there was probably a problem with his browser). The next morning, I received an email from him demanding a full refund within two days because he couldn't see the website (even though it was live, and I tested it on multiple browsers, a different computer and my phone), and he called me shouting at me because he couldn't access it. Finally when he was able to access it, he was unhappy with a certain detail regarding the slideshow which I began fixing and which was done the next day. He then referred me to another website and said he wanted it to look similar but not identical to it in terms of the layout. He also now wanted to add more features which were not in the original design. I got a designer to work on a new design which I sent to him for review, which if approved would be completed by 15 October, and he approved it last Thursday. He then called me yesterday to say that he wanted to change the design - he only approved it out of impatience. He now wants the website to be more similar to the other website he referred me to and he wants it done before the 15th! Then, he says to me that other people have done websites for him in three days - website's he's complained to me about for lacking dimension because they were just premium themes, whereas we'd designed and coded from scratch. I'm thinking of finishing the website but refunding him in full (or at least the refundable 50%) less domain registration and other non-refundable amounts, just to avoid further escalation of this matter and having him call me next week and say he wants to change it again. These are the applicable terms and conditions as laid out in the agreement: >   1. Total amount due for this project is Amount A. >   2. Client shall pay Consultant a deposit of Amount B (50% of total amount > due for project) in advance before any work commences on the Project. >   3. The balance is due within 7 working days of completion of project. >   4. Deposit is non-refundable. >   5. Should client opt to host elsewhere, applicable transferral fee of > Amount C will apply. >   6. Estimated project completion time frame is 14 to 30 days from the date > Client furnishes Consultant with Brief and all other required media and > data, provided that Client has made payment to secure the project. >   7. Consultant will make every effort to meet agreed upon due dates. The > Client should be aware that failure to submit required information or > materials, or last minute changes and excessive changes may cause subsequent > delays. Client delays could result in significant delays in delivery of > finished work. >   8. Major changes in client input or direction or brief will be charged at > normal rates. >   9. Any work the Client wishes Consultant to create, which is not specified > in the attached Proposal will be considered an additional service. >   10. Client agrees to pay Consultant for any additional expenses or > additional services not included in the attached quotation and proposal if > requested by the Client. >   11. Web design credit in the name of the Consultant, and link to > Consultant\u2019s website shall be placed on the footer of the final Website. >   12. Either party may terminate this Agreement by giving 7 days written > notice to the other of such termination. >   13. In the event that Work is postponed or terminated at the request of > the Client, Consultant shall have the right to bill pro rata at full rates > for work completed through the date of that request, while reserving all > rights under this Agreement. >   14. If additional payment is due, this shall be payable within seven days > of the Client's written notification to stop work. In the event of > termination, the Client shall also pay any expenses incurred by Consultant > and the Consultant shall own all rights to the Work. > Advice please?"}
{"_id": "95655", "title": "Can any GPLv2 licensed library be used in a company's internal intranet application?", "text": "I am creating an internal application for the company I am contracted to. We wish to use a GPLv2 licensed library in this application. Some points   1. The application is to be used within the confines of the company and never be available for public use. It is for internal company use only.   2. **It will never be sold, ever!!**. So no money will be made directly from selling the code. It's not a product.   3. There are two forms of usage of the application      * Its native form which is console based exe (which uses the GPL library); and      * Usage via a web interface which calls the executable.   4. The source code will remain closed source (company use only), and be propriety  I have gone through numerous questions on SO about this (one closed as off- topic and another unmarked from Programmers ), but I have had a hard time in understanding whether my interpretation of the licence is correct. Based on my understanding thus far, I am permitted to use this library without any concern. I am not modifying the source code nor am I distributing the application or making the application publicly available. **The application will not be sold nor will it be distributed to anyone outside the company** (It will however be available at our company's offsite DR facility). I am very likely to use the released versions binaries and not re-compile from source. The following question from the GNU FAQ seems to support my thoughts. **Does the GPL require that source code of modified versions be posted to the public?** > The GPL does not require you to release your modified version, or any part > of it. You are free to make modifications and use them privately, without > ever releasing them. **_This applies to organizations (including companies), > too; an organization can make a modified version and use it internally > without ever releasing it outside the organization._** > > But if you release the modified version to the public in some way, the GPL > requires you to make the modified source code available to the program's > users, under the GPL. > > Thus, the GPL gives permission to release the modified program in certain > ways, and not in other ways; but the decision of whether to release it is up > to you. Can any GPLv2 licensed library be used in a company's internal intranet application?"}
{"_id": "216727", "title": "What are the signs that a ten days debugging session will not resolve an issue?", "text": "Ten days ago, we fixed a bug on a large application and the hot fix has created a disappearing of some data from the user point of view ( _side effect_ ). Data are not deleted, but have been set to _hidden_ status. It could be possible to get the data back, but the thing seems to be hard: we've already spent 10 days to understand and reproduce the problem (mostly with SQL queries but sometimes it is necessary to _update_ the database to test the application logic). My questions are :   * is 10 days a normal amount of time for these kind of problems?   * should we keep on and retrieve the data or should we give up this work (so the customer-relationship person will tell these users _sorry for the loss, but your data have disappeared_ or maybe tell nothing at all)?   * what can be the signs that shows that **we should stop to search for how to solve this issue**? Edit about the context : we are a small team(3), users are not the customers, and lost data are not about the users money, bank or vital data. This is a question from a confused developer about _development methodologies_ and _business concerns_ , not about how we should deal with the customers."}
{"_id": "156372", "title": "Is working on a large project a good or a bad thing in the long run?", "text": "In a large project you only get to use the technology necessary for that project; smaller projects come and go, and you need to learn more technologies. On the other hand large projects are usually complex and thus hard; if you are used to hard projects then you should manage to perform well on smaller projects. So, in the long term is it better to work on small or on large projects?"}
{"_id": "216722", "title": "Desktop GUI Client - Remote RDBMS communication", "text": "Sorry if I am asking a trivial question but I have been searching for a while without any luck. I need to design a system and I am looking for advice on the technology that should be used. The layout is very simple: it is a sales application with a centralized database and multiple clients. Each salesperson has GUI app installed on his/her laptop that should be able to connect to the database to retrieve data and upload data (i.e. register new orders). My question is the following: how should the communication between the client and the server be implemented? I doubt that connecting directly to the RDBMS is a good idea... Should I use web-services? XML-RPC? How to implement authentication and encode the data? Thanks for your advice!"}
{"_id": "67156", "title": "Cerification Guidance", "text": "I am a fresher working in a MNC. I just want to do one .net Certification either in .net 3.5 or .net 4.0 which one'd be good for me to start certification. Please anybody suggest me with exam code and please tell me the good resourses for preparation."}
{"_id": "216721", "title": "Haskell: Best tools to validate textual input?", "text": "In Haskell, there are a few different options to \"parsing text\". I know of Alex & Happy, Parsec and Attoparsec. Probably some others. I'd like to put together a library where the user can input pieces of a URL (scheme e.g. HTTP, hostname, username, port, path, query, etc.) I'd like to validate the pieces according to the ABNF specified in RFC 3986. In other words, I'd like to put together a set of functions such as:               validateScheme    :: String -> Bool     validateUsername  :: String -> Bool     validatePassword  :: String -> Bool     validateAuthority :: String -> Bool     validatePath      :: String -> Bool     validateQuery     :: String -> Bool      What is the most appropriate tool to use to write these functions? Alex's regexps is very concise, but it's a tokenizer and doesn't straightforwardly allow you to parse using specific rules, so it's not quite what I'm looking for, but perhaps it can be wrangled into doing this easily. I've written Parsec code that does some of the above, but it looks very different from the original ABNF and unnecessarily long. So, there must be an easier and/or more appropriate way. Recommendations?"}
{"_id": "163204", "title": "Is there such thing like a \"refactoring/maintainability group\" role in software companies?", "text": "So, I work in a company that does embedded software development, other groups focus in the core development of different products' software and my department (which is in another geographical location) which is located at the factory has to deal with software development as well, but across all products, so that we can also fix things quicker when the lines go down due to software problems with the product. In other words, we are generalists while other groups specialize on each product. Thing is, it is kind of hard to get involved in core development when you are distributed geographically (well, I know it really isn't that hard, but there might be unintended cultural/political barriers when it comes to the discipline of collaborating remotely). So I figured that, since we are currently just putting fires out and somewhat being idle/sub-utilized (even though we are a new department, or maybe that is the reason), I thought that a good role for us could be detecting areas of opportunity of refactoring and rearchitecting code and all other implementations that might have to do with stewarding maintainability and modularity. Other groups aren't focused on this because they don't have the time and they have aggressive deadlines, which damage the quality of the code (eternal story of software projects) The thing is that I want my group/department to be recognized by management and other groups with this role officially, and I'm having trouble to come up with a good definition/identity of our group for this matter. So my question is: is this role something that already exists?, or am I the first one to make something like this up? **Edit** : What I mean is a group driving refactoring initiatives, not doing all the refactoring work themselves. Much like an open source community to an open source product, now that I think of it."}
{"_id": "195126", "title": "What is it called when you're developing a web application where every url has its own php file", "text": "What is it called when you aren't using an MVC framework and each URL has it's own file associated with it. I want to say it's model 0 or class 0 but I haven't been able to find anything useful via Google. :-)"}
{"_id": "195128", "title": "Who is responsible for fixing failed SQL code reviews?", "text": "As a DBA, most SQL is submitted to my team for review. We do not have a SQL developer, so the code is frequently very, very inefficient. Our current process is:   1. SQL is submitted for review right before it goes to beta   2. Issues are pointed out but frequently not resolved because the application has already been written around it, and is scheduled to be deployed to beta the same week   3. If the DBA team identifies an issue, the developer response is \"show me how to fix it, then\" It should be noted that the DBA team has no requirements around any code, no context and no idea what 1000s of lines of a stored procedure is supposed to be doing. Is this a typical scenario? Who is responsible for fixing the code? Does your DBA typically re-write the stored procdedure for you?"}
{"_id": "150947", "title": "Can a class be inside another class?", "text": "Here's an excerpt from \"The C++ Programming Language\"               template<classT> class List { // optimal     public:     class Link { /* ... */ };     List (); // initially empty     void put(T *); // put before current element     T* get(); // get current element     / / ...     };      Can we make a class inside another class ? How about other languages? For PHP see this question"}
{"_id": "109415", "title": "Randomly Accessing Data Packets in a Compressed File", "text": "In my line of work I deal with very large files, hundreds of Gigabytes in size. The nature of the data in these files is such that compression would greatly reduce their size. The problem is, the records/data packets within the file must be individually accessible. Is there a way to apply some home-grown techniques to these records to individually compress them and, once compressed, place them in a data stream such that the byte offset locations of each compressed packet is still known? Would this kind of fragmentation of the packet data substantially affect the efficiency of the compression/decompression cycle? Are zip algorithms suitable for this, or are there better methods of compression that are designed specifically for this?"}
{"_id": "68876", "title": "A combined if/switch statement syntax with exception handling for a C#-inspired language", "text": "It is sometimes necessary to try/catch exceptions inside the \"if\" condition, but not the body that follows. In C#, this is really rather cumbersome, requiring locals and code that isn't entirely obvious, at a glance, as to its operation. It is also sometimes necessary to write \"switch\" statements, which, unlike \"if\", have more than two possible outcomes, although in C# this requires the use of a fairly unpopular syntax. Here's an idea for combining these. ## Merging `switch` with `try/catch` First, we change the fundamental syntax of \"switch\" to be close to that fairly popular replacement, but without the extra curlies:               switch (condition)         case 1 { }         case 2 { }         default { }      Next, we make it possible to catch exceptions in the condition. Under the hood, this inserts an appropriate try/catch block only when at least one `catch` is present:               switch (condition)         catch FileNotFoundException e { } // use \"e\"         catch ArgumentException { }         catch { }         case 1 { }         case 2 { }         default { }      Now we make it easier to chain several such statements akin to if/else chaining, by moving \"default\" one level up, and renaming it to \"else\":               switch (condition1)         catch FileNotFoundException { }         case 1 { }         case 2 { }     else switch (condition2)         case \"abc\" { }         case \"def\" { }     else         { }      And so we have a `switch` merged with `try/catch`! ## Combining with 'if' Both `switch` and `if` now have `else` clauses, so why not allow you to mix them as you please:               if (bool-condition1)         { }     else if (bool-condition2)         { }     else switch (string-expr)         catch FileNotFoundException { }         case \"thing\" { }     else         { }      (thanks ach_l!) ## Further improvements Switching on a list or range of values has been proposed and can be easily incorporated:               switch (int-expression)         case 1 { }         case 2, 5 { }         case 10..50 { }     else switch (string-expression)         case \"abc\" { }         case \"def\" { }     else if (boolean-condition3)         { }     else         { }      In this case it could be really convenient to be able to reference the value in the condition clause. This can be easily incorporated by allowing one to declare a single variable in this clause the same way C#'s `using` allows:               switch (var z = int-expression)         case 2, 5 { return z == 2 ? \"two\" : \"five\"; }         case 10..50 { return (z * 10).ToString(); }      ## Benefits Among other benefits, one can now express a common error-handling scenario concisely, and yet not WTFy:               switch (bool-condition)         catch FileNotFoundException e { }         case true { }         case false { }      * * * Would this solve any real-life coding difficulties you have encountered? Are there any tweaks you would apply to this?"}
{"_id": "156082", "title": "What is an effective git process for managing our central code library?", "text": "Quick background: we're a small web agency (3-6 developers at any one time) developing small to medium sized Symfony 1.4 sites. We've used git for a year now, but have previously used Subversion. For the past 6 months we've put a lot of development time into a central Symfony plugin that powers our custom CMS. This plugin includes a number of features, helpers, base classes etc. that we use to build custom functionality. This plugin is stored in git, but branches wildly as the plugin is used in various products and is pulled from/pushed to constantly. The repository is usually used as a submodule within a major project. The problems we're starting to see now are a large number of Merge conflicts and backwards incompatible changes brought into the repository by developers adding custom functionality in the context of their own project. I've read Vincent Driessen's excellent git branching model and successfully used it for projects in the past, but it doesn't seem to quite apply well to our particular situation; we have a number of projects concurrently using the same core plugin while developing new features for it. What we need is a strategy that provides the following:   * A methodology for developing major features within the code repository.   * A way of migrating those features into other projects.   * A way of versioning the core repository, and of tracking which version each major project uses.   * A plan for migrating bug fixes back to older versions.   * A cleaner history that's easier to see where changes have come from. Any suggestions or discussion would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "222342", "title": "Is there any use for layout managers beyond Java?", "text": "I am a beginning programmer and I was recently working on some primitive GUI apps in Java. That's where I encountered different layout managers. I browsed the web and it says that for advanced GUI creation there are NetBeans and Qt and a lot of other stuff. My question is: Do I really need to learn all ins and outs of layout managers and try to program without advanced layout engines to understand how they work or should I start learning NetBeans right away and skipping the whole manual layout complications? Is there any use for manual layouting beyond Java in other languages? In other words, will my road be less bumpy in the future if I go learn it in detail, or should I just forget about doing manual layouts?"}
{"_id": "156088", "title": "Should I make my project free software?", "text": "**The story** Over the last couple month I have been working on a pretty big project. It's an enterprise-level software, I designed to be used at a local gym, but I believe it can be used in other places, where things like keeping track of clients, attendances, purchases and payments are required. **The problem** Well recently, I started to think on how to mature this project from being home-made. Not just because I want my project to grow but also because I would like to have some gain from it. **The solutions?** And here I saw 2 paths:   * License the software under some restricted license and try to sell the software to other business around. This way I can get some money for college (I am a high school junior right now)   * License the software under some free license, publish it on GitHub or something, and try to engage other developers to participate in the project. This way I get experience of working in a team and a better chance that the project will keep growing. The latter would be a good + for my resume, when I'll trying to find a job. So far both ways seem pretty exciting and beneficial to me. The first one offers a good college career, while the second one offers some additional experience and the project's growth. **The questions** Can anyone point to some other +/- of these 2 options? What would the better option in my situation and why? Or are there other options?"}
{"_id": "59515", "title": "Comparing multiple revisions of the same C File", "text": "I just wondered if anyone had any tricks or programs they used when comparing two of the same file but different versions? I appear to have foolishly made a modification at some point today (Went a few hours without running any tests) and it has stopped the whole project working - without throwing up any errors so it must be subtle whatever I have done. I just thought that there must be a program out there that might highlight differences etc. Otherwise, a step by step search might be in order!"}
{"_id": "222345", "title": "When to use functions vs methods?", "text": "So I know that methods are more OOP than functions. I was wondering if someone could show me an example of a function and a method and explain the differences between methods and functions to me? I have taken 3 quarters of Java programming and functions have never been mentioned, I want to know the differences, strengths and weaknesses."}
{"_id": "142702", "title": "Letting go of a project", "text": "I've been the sole developer of a niche product for my company for nearly 6 years. I've grown quite attached to the project and I enjoy working on it. However, it was the decision of management to take the project out of my hands and move it under the wings of another team. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time letting go of the project. I'm sad to see it leave my hands since I've put so much time into it and enjoyed working on it, but it also allows me to work on new things. I've even caught myself being a bit hostile to the other team, which is poor on my part. How can I convince myself to just let it go?"}
{"_id": "78692", "title": "Is it legal/ethical to collect and release some types of anonymous usage data without consent?", "text": "The type of data I'm hoping to collect is a little specific, and unfortunately I'm under NDA and the data is a core part of the business plan so I'm not at liberty to post it online. I've come up with a similar example, so please bare with me and pay no attention to the flaws of this hypothetical service. Say I make an online \"school finder\" service, where the user enters their address and the service finds and scrapes the tuition cost of all schools within say a 100km distance from that address. The service would display the list of schools sorted by price, and the user would select the school they are going to attend based on that information. They would also specify any other contributing factors, such as the aesthetics of the campus and the reputation of the school (things like this would be selected from a drop-down menu or something, a small set of non-personally-identifiable options). The school finder would passively collect this data (as opposed to actively seeking out every school everywhere and scraping the qualities of it from their public web page) and use it to both provide better search results, and also display a map centered on the user's region, representing that data somehow. It would point out, based on past usage, the most desired schools based on a number of factors (say, cheapest and most desired would be green, most desired for other reasons would be yellow, and seldom selected schools would be red). Most of the data is just passively collected and is otherwise publicly available, but some of it (the reason the school was picked) is somewhat personal, as well as the user's home address being personal information. The only publicly visible data would be the \"rating\" of each school, based on a selected region. The only saved data would be the rating and cost of each school, as well as the postal code (or city, whatever) associated with that rating. The service has no user accounts, so it's not feasible to ask every user to agree to a privacy policy for every request. Is it legal/ethical to collect and release this set of information without explicit consent?"}
{"_id": "131645", "title": "I am trying to figure out how difficult or expensive it would be to add this feature", "text": "I am trying to figure out how difficult/time consuming it would be to add the following feature: We have a database with our subscribers and we want to send updates to paying subscribers. The catch is that we want these updates to be date dependent. Let me clarify. Joe signed up in June last year. He has been receiving monthly newsletters since June. Now Fred signed up in April, cancelled in May and resubscribed in August. We want to send an update to Joe regarding his June newsletter. Fred was no longer a subscriber in June and we **don't** want him to receive the same update for various reasons. Is this a feature that you would expect to cost 100's, 1000's, 10,000's dollars to implement? **Edit: I should've been more clear, I was looking for a magnitude not an exact cost. It's evident, I know very little about programming which is why I came here. If someone asked me what it would cost abandon a well, I could easily give them an order of magnitude. I appreciate all of the responses; this is an incredible resource."}
{"_id": "143076", "title": "Paper on Linux memory access techniques sought", "text": "Over on stackoverflow someone posted a link to a paper written by a Linux kernel engineer about how to use computers and RAM. He started off by explaining how RAM works (right down to the flip-flops) and then went on to discuss performance problems associated with operations on matrices (column vs row accesses), offered solutions and then dealt with some stuff MMX instructions can do. Sorry it's a bit vague but I can't find it anywhere. I _think_ the guy had a Scandinavian name, possibly Anders"}
{"_id": "92560", "title": "Markup languages syntax", "text": "If computers are able to parse data organised in curly braces, why are we using `<foo></foo>` syntax in certain languages? Only because of legacy etc or are there further reasons behind this? I think I speak for many people if I say that that looks just redundant and it's awkward to work with. In adition it doesn't \"enforce\" indentation like brace-based languages do. **Update** \\- I made the mistake of treating curly braces and key-value pairs (which I didn't mention until now) as the same concept. Taking into account this, I'd like to ask my question again: Is tag syntax really more convenient than a JSON-like language?"}
{"_id": "92564", "title": "Sql Server: Compact and LocalDB Denali", "text": "Does anyone knows the differences between these ones?   1. http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/express.aspx (Look for CTP3 LocalDB in the page)   2. http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/compact.aspx I wonder why microsoft started Denali project (now in CTP)."}
{"_id": "92569", "title": "Meaning of phrase: \"Not your father's Visual Basic\"", "text": "I have ran into the above phrase many times (especially during classic VB days) and I have been wondering what it really mean and where it originated from. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "92568", "title": "JIRA: Issue classification, clarification needed", "text": "In JIRA, when creating a new issue, i am presented with a number of choices, some of which look like they don't belong. For example: \"New Feature\". This should be a part of a story right? How can one chose when to use \"New Feature\" and when to use a \"Story\"? \"New Feature\" looks like a type to me or a \"Story\" to me. Or, take for instance \"Improvement\". We can start a whole project with it's own \"Epic\" for the sole purpose to improve a bunch of things. Should such work be filed under an \"Epic\" or under something else? Please clarify"}
{"_id": "145958", "title": "How to create the architecture/design of an application in Agile?", "text": "If I am about to develop an Enterprise application, but as far as I understand from agile process, I break features into small chunks and develop them iteratively. I used to create the database and the core of the application first, then I extend these iteratively. The question is: Do I have to keep what I used to do previously (develop the core first) or I have to distribute core development over stories' development? In the later, I am not sure the code will be flexible enough for future extensions! Any idea?"}
{"_id": "50336", "title": "Can scrum master allocate tasks?", "text": "We are following scrum in our project. I see most of the times the scrum master allocates the tasks for us. However, I read from many scrum books that scrum works the other way around (the 'pull' approach) and team members pick up tasks or features. Is scrum master assigning tasks the correct approach or does it go against the agile ideology?"}
{"_id": "26673", "title": "How to get out of the support rut and start repaying the technical debt!", "text": "I have a \"friend\". Yes good start I know but honestly this isn't me! Basically he's been working on a successful project for about 4 years now, the difficulty is the technical debt has caught up and he's finding it almost impossible to stop supporting the product (tweaking this and that) and actually move on with _real_ development. I've made various suggestions, log all of your time, create tickets, don't answer emails etc etc. The problem with this is that it seems to only serve as a reminder that he's not getting anything \"useful\" done. The technical debt has largely occurred because in the first instance it was a big benefit to the product, to take requests and phone calls from users and just quickly implement them. What I would like to know is does anybody have any suggestions for how he might get out of this rut, a large part of which would be changing the perceptions of the users so that they don't think they can just ring and expect something to be done then and there. It's all very well saying plan better, though I understand it's very difficult to plan actual development given the requirement for support and the relative pressures from users (see above)."}
{"_id": "145956", "title": "Effective programming of data layer management/access", "text": "**Short Version** : What is the term/concept which describes the efficient design of programming the data layer for efficient data access and what are some sources/books/articles/website which discuss this concept? **Long Version** : So I had a recent conversation with the senior developer at my small company about how and why we access data the way we do. He told me that it was the single most important aspect of the program and explained how it is the largest bottleneck in efficiency if done incorrectly. He also said he had never learned about it from the courses he took and he never read about it in any books, despite the fact that he thinks it's the first thing he chooses to teach others. I should explain that this is my first year at a job programming, that I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, but not in CS, so I wouldn't know if it was covered in school. Also, the language I work in is Java, but this question was meant to ask about any language's access to data in a general sense. So what am I talking about? I'll explain through an example. We work with a lot of data, so the data layer is a bit complicated. It uses a combination of singleton pattern and factory design pattern to achieve different access. For example, an Object, let's say Customer would be most often instantiated as follows:               Customer customer = Customer.getDefaultInstance(CustomerAccessType.LIST)       OR               Customer customer = Customer.getDefaultInstance(CustomerAccessType.ONE_RECORD)      OR               Customer customer = Customer.getDefaultInstance(CustomerAccessType.LIST_BY_ACCOUNT)      As you may have already guessed, each access type accesses the database in a different manner. The LIST access type most of the time has very few columns, so even though it's grabbing many rows of data, in some cases up to tens of thousands of records (maybe not with customers, but maybe something like orders from a website you can imagine that becoming very large), it might only contain the primary keys on the table and some other very specific information. But when you edit specific data you access using type \"ONE_RECORD\" and with only a single row you have all the columns of the table (and most probably joins to a lot of other tables). This is more apparent than ever when you're looking at a screen that is painting information in front of tellers and the information is changing constantly. The information shown may be from a table that has as previously mentioned, tens of thousands of records currently being worked on. A LIST type object will grab only the primary keys from the table, then only the records that require painting are accessed, one row at a time, and the information is painted to the screen. So I have two questions as a result of all this:   1. What is the term/concept which describes the efficient design of programming the data layer for efficient data access? Most large programs that have to deal with a lot of data access must have to deal with these same issues. Surely others have coined a term for it?   2. What are some good resources to learn more about what else is out there on this subject? Again, surely others have dealt with these same issues/bottlenecks we are dealing with. Surely other brilliant minds have tackled the problem and written extensively on it, no?   3. What are other ways that perhaps your personal experience has shown you in dealing with this problem, even if you've never read it anywhere else? Your help and knowledge is much appreciated, -Asaf"}
{"_id": "145952", "title": "How do I stay compliant with GPL when forking on Github?", "text": "I've recently forked a project on Github and made some modifications to it, pushed them back to the forked repository and asked the original developer to pull the changes. (I gather this is the preferred way of contributing on Github.) The project is licensed under GPLv3. I am the author and the copyright holder of the changes I've made to the code. I am also allowed to publish the modified code (i.e. the combination of the original code and my changes -- which I've done by pushing the changes into my fork) as long as I comply with the license the original author set up. Now, I came across the following requirement in GPL. > The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and > giving a relevant date. It seems that some work beyond actual coding is required before I'm legally allowed to push my changes to Github. What does this work entail? How do I comply with the above requirement? (Do I add additional copyright notices to the modified source files? Do I create Contributors file and add myself to it? Or is the fact that the commits indicate my ownership sufficient?) Are there any additional pitfalls when forking a project protected by GPL?"}
{"_id": "180723", "title": "How to get hardware specific ID", "text": "We have an application that we need to ensure that our APPLICATION DATA should not be used (or opened) in different computers with same users. For that we thought about getting harddisk GUID as a part of data encryption private key. In this case raid disks, virtual PCs would fail and wouldn't be able to open the data. We need some advice about how to get a proper id to strict user-per computer but not user-harddisk. Note: Both Mac and Windows supported Edit: it was about application data, but not the application itself. Sorry for wrong asking"}
{"_id": "136148", "title": "Choosing right technology for messaging system", "text": "I'm working on a messaging system for two years now, the system was written by a long ago gone team and involves emails and document processing. The basic process is:   1. Receive an email, parse it, save attachments to samba share. Notify message processor. We have a robust Java application doing this very well.   2. Process the message, this involves getting user data from LDAP, calling file processing web-services on different platforms. The system has a sort of re-delivery service that polls database for failed or timed out messages in different states and resends them. The file processing parts are EJB web-services that basically run command line utilities. The problem lies in our orchestration solution which is based on OpenESB (almost dead now), it has a bunch of BPELs calling each other and calling remote EJBs (EJB3.0 on glassfish v2). The biggest problem is that too much logic is done in BPELs (say, all database updates are done in BPELs, there's no persistance layer), they look like the most horrifying spaghetti I've ever seen. Not to mention they make NetBeans which we're using to edit them run really slow, to the point that some files are only editable in a simple text editor as XML. Moreover the system has a number of nasty bugs that would require major refactoring to fix and I'm dreaded to even think about it. These messages are handled manually by our support stuff so there's almost no client-impact but I would like to have a real transactional system anyway. Now, for the question itself. I'm willing to spend a lot of my own free time trying to reach two goals: build a replacement for ESB and BPELs, learn new and preferably trendy technologies. I would like to keep the code in file processing EJBs since they run just fine, although I'm thinking of getting rid of SOAP as their remote interface. So I'm asking for any insight of which technology(-ies) would let me create a robust messaging solution that would:   1. Have a friendly persistence layer, there won't be anything really complex in dbs, just message meta-data.   2. Take care of balancing and polling calls to file processing web-services.   3. Wouldn't require dealing with tons of XML in different places in order to add a new interface method.   4. Would be scalable - run on a number of machines.   5. Would allow realtime monitoring, like viewing message queues, current load, statuses etc.   6. Hopefully will let me learn something new, meaning not J2EE stack. Basically I'm open to anything except BPEL and OpenESB."}
{"_id": "151682", "title": "Can I develop OpenGL ES iPhone simple physics app with Xcode 3 in C++ without a GUI?", "text": "Can I develop OpenGL ES iPhone simple physics app with Xcode 3 in C++ without a GUI and Objective-C? So I don't need Cocoa and I don't need Objective-C?"}
{"_id": "188555", "title": "How to selectively update properties of an object on the server", "text": "I have a `GWT` website that displays some data onto the client in a tabular form. Some of the fields are editable, when any change is made the save button becomes active. There are multiple properties that may have changed, how would I go about updating them on the server? Additionally I'd like to provide an undo button so that the changes are reverted. What I'm thinking of right now is to use the setters and check if the current value is the same as the changed value if there is a change then a request to a process in the background will be fired. But I'm not sure this is the best approach and maybe setters with extra logic aren't the best practice. I think this is a problem that many web applications have to deal with and maybe there is a pattern that makes all of this more elegant. It would be nice if someone could explain how they would solve this."}
{"_id": "22352", "title": "Do immutable objects and DDD go together?", "text": "Consider a system that uses DDD (as well: any system that uses an ORM). The point of any system realistically, in nearly every use case, will be to manipulate those domain objects. Otherwise there's no real effect or purpose. Modifying an immutable object will cause it to generate a new record after the object is persisted which creates massive bloat in the datasource (unless you delete previous records after modifications). I can see the benefit of using immutable objects, but in this sense, I can't ever see a useful case for using immutable objects. Is this wrong?"}
{"_id": "209752", "title": "A way to include SQlite into an application where the drivers aren't already installed on the system?", "text": "I'm an open source web application for use in my university. Currently professors usually have a website, but do to the fact that they're teaching multiple classes in a given term, they don't care to spend time and make an extensible, functional website. The purpose of this project is to create an OSS website that can be dropped in place and enabled by simply running an init.php file. I'm curious though as how to handle information storage for such a task. A full server database is a bit outside of the scope I'm looking for, but something like SQlite would fit very well. The problem I'm running into is that not all departments have SQlite installed on their servers, and getting them all to do so won't happen. Can anyone think of a way to include SQlite into an application where the drivers aren't already installed on the system, or a more common alternative that would provide a similar level of power/flexibility?"}
{"_id": "209750", "title": "Should I put the datatype of a class attribute in its name?", "text": "Most of my system's class attributes are just text, but in this case it makes more sense to place this particular class's attributes into one single hash (from a \"keep the source code pretty\" aspect). Basically, a list of attributes is returned, and instead of writing a bunch of static attributes for each one, I just loop over them and collect them into a hash. Is it a good idea to name this particular attribute `@contents_hash`, as opposed to `@contents`? I assume that users may figure out pretty quickly that `@contents.split ' '` will return a `NoMethodError: undefined method 'split' for Hash`, but on first glance of the code, is it useful to know right away that this is a hash? Do you think it will make the implementation redundant to say `@contents_hash.keys`?"}
{"_id": "77256", "title": "Giving presentation on git", "text": "I'm going to be giving a presentation to a group of neuroscientists on the use of git to manage their matlab/r/xppaut/etc files. Some of these folks have an extensive software engineering background, some don't know what CVS is. The main goals of the talk are as follows:   * Inform how git can increase collaboration and save everyone time (5-10 min)   * Introduce git as a concept in graph theory, a familiar topic to the crowd (5-10 min)   * Introduce the practicals of git: (rest of time)      * Download & install     * Set up new project (`add`, `difftool`, `commit`, `checkout` & `branch`, `merge`, remotes (maybe), generate & commit patches, `stash`, rollback to previous head, ...?)     * If have time, show them github, specifically how to use it to fork and submit pull requests (I hope to have them set up github accounts to share scripts in the future) I hope to have everyone bring their laptops to follow along on the tutorial. This talk is supposed to be about an hour long, max is about 1.5 hours. My question to you guys is two-fold:   1. In general, what do you think about the proposed outline?   2. Is anyone familiar with slides that I can use for this sort of talk? I want to model the intro part around Joel Spolsky's mercurial tutorial, tone-wise, but I can work with other material if necessary."}
{"_id": "67470", "title": "How to best organize multiple WebProjects that use similar business logic", "text": "We have the following setup > **Current Solution** : > >   * Business Logic (Class Library) > >   * Data Layer (Class Library containing EF,Web Services wrappers etc) > >   * WebProject1 > > BUT we now want to write another Web Project (Web Project2) which would be almost identical to WebProject1 except for the fact that it would alter properties and input variables to functions/voids inside the Business Logic class to provide a different set of data for another completely different user. (Needs rewording). Think of Facebook as WebProject1 and Myspace as WebProject2. Same concept, same business layer almost but different products altogether. > **Future Soltion** > >   * Business Logic (Class Library) > >   * Data Layer (Class Library containing EF,Web Services wrappers etc) > >   * WebProject1 > >   * WebProject2 (similar to WebProject1 but different authentication, > different UI, different pages etc) > >   * WebProject3 (possible) > > Without completely destroying the Business Logic (as the class would now have to allow for 2 paths per set of input variables) how can we structure this to aviod doubling up on any code? **Edit:** Explain the business logic WebProject1 provides data based on a database filter called \"ByCompany\" WebProject2 will provide the data based on a filter called \"BySite Both projects will be consumed by different audiences which will not know that the other website exists. Eg possible future logic could include something like this:               BusinessLogic.EmployeeList employeeList = new BusinessLogic.EmployeeList();          employeeList.LoadBySite(\"ConstructionSiteC\");          employeeList.LoadByCompany(\"JohnDoesTractors\");      The dilemma is: Should we maintain two Business Logic class libraries? Should we add preffixes to the class names to denote their corresponding WebProject parent? Should we create base classes and inherit if there are overrides we need to make? Should we create more interface based business logic? Should we just have two separate solutions that draw from the same DAL? The projects will likely get quite large (over business logic 300 classes) and we want to minimize double ups as much as possible. What is the your method or suggestion? Thankyou!"}
{"_id": "77253", "title": "how do you deal with a vague software proposal?", "text": "We all get them. What do you do when you are supposed to write a functional spec from a woolly proposal? You can write a ton of questions about the proposal but answers are not always forthcoming. Sometimes for political reasons you cannot make someone firm them up. How do you deal with a vague software proposal, when experience and intuition only go so far?"}
{"_id": "199918", "title": "Phonetic programming language?", "text": "Many of us coders, programmers and developers struggle with repetitive stress injuries, carpal tunnel, etc. I've been curious about introducing voice control into my workflow in order to save myself some stress. This has led me to my current question: Would it be possible or practical to implement a programming language (or superset of an existing language) which was primarily phonetic, and hence well suited to programming by voice?"}
{"_id": "197186", "title": "create function of object prototype", "text": "I am reading \"Javascript : The good Parts\" to improve my Javascript bases and knowledge. I was reading stuff about `prototype` and I encountered in this function :               var stooge = { ... }      if(typeof Object.create !== 'function'){        Object.create = function(o) {        var F = function () {};        F.prototype = o;        return new F();        };     }     var another_stooge = Object.create(stooge);      I didn't really get the meaning and the benefit of creating this function."}
{"_id": "151536", "title": "Can modifications to open source project be considered trade secret?", "text": "While working for an employer if one modifies, rewrites, contributes or alters open source software in what cases can it ever be considered a trade secret? A trade secret, FWIW, is defined by wikipedia as: > A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, > or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably > ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over > competitors or customers. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred > to as \"confidential information\", but should not be referred to as > \"classified information\", due to the nature of the word in the USA."}
{"_id": "28601", "title": "What are the steps to learn AJAX based web application development?", "text": "I am a complete starter in web development, as I know only basics of HTML and CSS, although I have a history of desktop development. What is the usual roadmap to get started in web apps, based on AJAX? We decided to use Dojo toolkit as our javascript library. Is the following a feasible map? 1-Learn basic javascript(already on it) 2-Learn what DOM is 3-Start with Dojo documentation and examples 4-Get into AJAX with Dojo Addendum: My goal is not to become a professional web developer who builds public web pages, it is not my specialty. I am trying to build an interface to an embedded product my company develops. We chose dojo mostly because it provides widgets for easy interface development. I am just trying to find out the easiest way to get this done. I got several satisfactory answers and have difficulty choosing the best."}
{"_id": "195124", "title": "Is Haskell/Clojure actually unsuited for dynamic systems such as particle simulation?", "text": "I've been told in previous questions that functional programming languages are unsuited for dynamic systems such as a physics engine, mainly because it's costly to mutate objects. How realistic is this statement, and why?"}
{"_id": "28603", "title": "Why are regular expressions so morbidly attractive?", "text": "Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2, I guess you won't find it hard to recall other examples. Thing is: if there is more than one way to solve a problem, the PHP programmer (I usually browse the PHP tag on StackOverflow) will ask for help on the solution involving regular expressions. _Even when_ it will be less economic, _even when_ the php manual suggests (link) to use `str_replace` instead of any `preg_*` or `ereg_*` function when no fancy substitution rules are required. Does somebody have a clue about why this happens? Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are regular expressions and I don't despise Perl. What I don't get is why there is no looking for alternatives whatsoever, even when the overkill is obvious (regex to switch strings) or the code complexity rises exponentially (regex for getting data from html _in PHP_ )"}
{"_id": "236770", "title": "Own Exception or Delegation design pattern to exit a program?", "text": "I am writing an application in Java which use MVC pattern design. I have 4 major classes: Main, Controller, Model, View. Main initialize the other three and run launchMenu() in a infinite loop, a method included in Controller. This launchMenu from Controller runs a launchMenu method of another class: MenuHandler, which set up the Actions (using my own Command design pattern) and assign them to each option from my enum UserOperationsMenu.   I have several doubts on how to handle UserOperationsMenu.EXIT. My question is about what would be better and more logic:   1. Using an exception I catch up in the body of Main's loop and throw it in my ExitAction class assigned to UserOperationsMenu.EXIT?    2. Creating an object Delegate in Controller which I pass to MenuHandler and ExitAction so that I can command from ExitAction to exit the program? I've thought about using a boolean variable in my while in Main, and returning false when I want to finish the program. But I don't like the idea, though. **NOTE** : I don't want to use System.exit(0) directly because first I have to do several tasks outside my ExitAction."}
{"_id": "77784", "title": "How do you handle \"support\" on your products (inhouse)", "text": "Do you have any kind of update process? Let's assume you are an \"in-house\" development shop for php inside your company. You are creating an bunch of applications for other units. Do you have something like \"Support ends in 2 years\" ? What happens if you develop an app for php 5.3, and this app can't run with php \"6\", or another framework you use will no longer be maintained? Would love to hear some ideas :-)"}
{"_id": "135382", "title": "Opensource showcase for MVC in Java Swing", "text": "I've allready created small desktop CRUD applications using Java/Swing. In hindsight I'm not quite sure if the overall design of these applications is good. I've also done some reading on MVC and looked at different Swing- tutorials. My problem is, that I've got a very theroatical knowledge of MVC and on the other hand, most Swing-resources don't implement the MVC-pattern.      Now I would like to get my hands dirty and see how MVC is implemented in Swing in a real-world-application. Are there any opensource project you could recommend? It would be also interesting to have more than one project, to see different approaches.      Best fit would be a software, that uses a relational database in the backend, to see an overall design, that I can compare to my former applications."}
{"_id": "92387", "title": "How to save a young and dying project?", "text": "I am posting this anonymously because I don't want to get into potential trouble.   I have a big problem.   I recently joined a team that is less than a year old. I have been here since a month in to the project started. The company structure looks like this:   * Owner (non-technical)      * Project Manager (non-technical)        * Lead Developer (Technical, but bad at it) This project is a website using ASP.Net that the Lead Developer designed a horrible architecture for. You will have to take my word at it, but basically, the way we are required to build web pages is giving us 3+ minute load times on a single web page over VPN in Debug mode. It has spiraled to the point where other coworkers agree that they spend more of their day waiting for pages to load than actual development. Now the big problem is this. Project Manager does not know technology and admits it. He has specifically stated that he trusts the Lead Developer to make the correct choices on application architecture. No one on the team knows what the Owners opinion would be, but everyone is afraid to make waves in this economy (myself especially). What would you do?"}
{"_id": "92380", "title": "Why shouldn't classes be designed to be \"open\"?", "text": "When reading various Stack Overflow questions and others' code the general consensus of how to design classes is closed. This means that by default in Java and C# everything is private, fields are final, some methods are final, and sometimes classes are even final. The idea behind this is to hide implementation details, which is a very good reason. However with the existence of `protected` in most OOP languages and polymorphism, this doesn't work. Every time I wish to add or change functionality to a class I'm usually hindered by private and final placed everywhere. Here implementation details matter: you're taking the implementation and extending it, knowing full well what the consequences are. However because I can't get access to private and final fields and methods, I have three options:   * Don't extend the class, just work around the problem leading to code that's more complex   * Copy and paste the whole class, killing code reusability   * Fork the project Those aren't good options. Why isn't `protected` used in projects written in languages that support it? Why do some projects explicitly prohibit inheriting from their classes?"}
{"_id": "73001", "title": "Approach to learning .NET?", "text": "After a few years writing good ol' straight, archaic, homely C/C++, I'm finally going to give in and learn .NET. I'm looking for the best way to become .NET-competent quickly. I use VS2005 C/C++ Express and I see there's a CLR choice in the \"new project\" wizard. I _think_ that must be a way into the world of managed code. Is that a reasonable entry to .NET? Do I have to learn C# or some crazy stuff instead? Or maybe [shudder] CLR is just the first baby step into .NET?"}
{"_id": "73000", "title": "Dive into Field of Information Security?", "text": "For a fresh graduate with quite a bit of development (mainly web) background - what is the easiest way to break into the security field? Are certifications a necessity? Is it possible to get intern jobs doing this kind of stuff? Thanks"}
{"_id": "135380", "title": "Where can I obtain the specification for Distributed Relational Database Architecture?", "text": "I'm developing a DBMS that should be able to connect to IBM DB2 via the DRDA protocol. I found a DRDA reference manual that mentions \"DRDA Implementation Programmer's Guide, SC21-9529\" as a publication about DRDA, and seems that this manual is exactly what I was looking for. The problem is, I am unable to find it on the net. Where can I obtain this document or another comparable document that explains implementing DRDA?"}
{"_id": "73009", "title": "Are Subject specific programming books a good idea", "text": "I have a friend who is starting graduate studies in a psychology. Part of what he is learning is building testing apps for trials. He purchased a book that was supposed to be vb for psychologists after reading though it I found that it was not a very good programming book and espoused what I think of as bad practices. I instructed him to buy a standard learning vb.net book from a known publisher. So the question is there any good reason why standard methodologies of programming shouldn't be applied to certain disciplines."}
{"_id": "205851", "title": "How Client Side Programming Works", "text": "I'm not coming from web-development at all, but am looking to build a web application. So far, I've looked into all the server-side stuff (for example, I think my stack will be Linux + node.js + ExpressJS + MongoDB), and have learnt a lot! At this point, I'm comfortable setting up an HTTP server, routing requests, using RESTfull interaction with a database, and serving dynamic HTML using an HTML template engine like ejs or Jade. I even looked into Websockets as a means for establishing a TCP connection to add fast user interaction without page refreshing. Now I'm looking to do pretty stuff; add graphs, tabs, ect to my web- applications! I've looked into things like Dojo, JQuery, CanvasJS, AngularJS ect, and all them seem cool. Problem is, now that I think of it, I have no idea how client-side programming works. For example, in AngularJS I may find something like:                  <head>         <script src=\"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.0.7/angular.min.js\"></script>         <script src=\"components.js\"></script>       </head>      What is this saying? Does my server actually replace `\"components.js\"` with the actual `\"componennts.js\"` code before transmitting the response? What's going on with the `https://ajax...` source? Does the browser, (or the server?) actually have to go to this url, and retrieve code? As I said, as far as I'm concerned, the server responds with an HTML document composed of ASCII characters. What then, is actually running on the client side, and how does it get this code? (i.e. on V8 or whatever)."}
{"_id": "130593", "title": "Why do technical/programming phone screens focus on inheritance?", "text": "I've noticed that in most technical phone screens, programming questions tend to focus on inheritance. For instance:   * If a class is intended to be inherited, what should you do with the destructor? (Answer: make it virtual)   * What's the deal with public/private access?   * What's \"protected\" for?   * Etc. etc. It strikes me that there are more meaningful questions to ask these days. And, IMHO, reliance on inheritance as the primary design solution to an OO problem is a bit problematic. Am I wrong? Is knowledge of inheritance quirks the best way to assess technical skill? EDIT Commenters have asked me to explain in more detail why I think reliance on OO- based questions is problematic. Let's see... Basically, my thinking is that there are plenty of cool, non-OO questions you could ask. For instance:   * (C++) What's the difference between a map and a multimap?   * (C++) What are the two different kinds of things you can use as template arguments?   * (C#) What's an extension method?   * (Perl) What restrictions, if any, exist on the number of arguments a function can take?   * (Python) What are the different ways you can use import, and what are the consequences of those tactics? I submit that the above questions are also pretty decent weed-out questions. So my question for this forum is: Why don't phone screeners ask questions like those above?"}
{"_id": "194889", "title": "Should I create a use case diagram for each screen?", "text": "In projects with many use cases, it's valid to create different use case diagrams, one for each screen? Or I shouldn't guide myself on the GUI of the software to make this, why? As a clarification, the software does already exist, and I'm just documenting it for my undergraduation final project."}
{"_id": "181459", "title": "Is it necessary to add the default case while using switch cases?", "text": "During a recent code review I was asked to put `default` cases in all the files wherever `switch` block is used, even if there is nothing to do in `default`. That means I have to put the `default` case and write nothing in it. Is this the right thing to do? What purpose would it serve?"}
{"_id": "181454", "title": "josephus revisited - to get execution sequence", "text": "I was reading this Mathworld page on the Josephus problem: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/JosephusProblem.html from what I understood, once we get the _place in execution sequence_ we can apply _inverse permutation_ (which seems simple) to get the order of execution. But I could not make out how to compute the _place in execution sequence_ , given `n, k` i.e, for `n = 4, k = 2`, how to arrive at `{4, 1, 3, 2}` I am mostly interested in _implementing_ the solution (I've done the usual circular-list based etc), but if there are better ways, I want to try/understand."}
{"_id": "181457", "title": "Is the meaning and usage of the term \"ROM\" different in different devices?", "text": "**ROM - Read Only Memory**   Does this term mean _the memory which **should only be read** and not written to_ , **or** _the memory which **can only be read_** ?   \"ROM in PC's and laptops are usually seperate chips in the motherboard where BIOS is present (Please correct me if I am wrong) . Can they be overwritten (I guess we can) ?   When we consider an android phone , it gets really confusing . What is the difference between ROM and \"internal memory\" in an Android phone ? It seems the same ."}
{"_id": "229520", "title": "Advantage of monitoring file change using Windows API rather than manually", "text": "I developed a Windows software about an year ago. Part of it was to monitor few configuration files for manual changes by user and if any of these change restart a particular service. So, I used the simplest approach. I load them as a string in memory and after few seconds, I read the latest file and compare it with the one in memory. Since, the files are very small (less than 500KB), the program doesn't consume much memory. I am using that application since it is developed and have not experienced any performance problem due to that. But, few days ago I noticed that the program ranks at highest for `I/O Read Bytes` in task manager. After few hours of uptime of PC, the `I/O Read Bytes` by this program become significant higher than the rest of processes. So, My question is should I worry about high value of `I/O Read Bytes`. Is this have some downside effect (maybe on Hard Disk) that I am missing. Is implementing the functionality of monitoring file changes using Windows API have some benefits that are worth the effort required to implement it?"}
{"_id": "128786", "title": "How to get the most out of an annoying project", "text": "I was recently assigned a task of managing a small project. The project has some technological aspects but the job is mainly doing managerial things: scheduling, making sure people do what they are suppose to, going to a lot of meetings, etc. Basically, it's not how the average programmer or even a team leader would like to spend his time. Since I am not going to sneak out of this, I have found myself wishing I could teleport myself to some point of time after the project has ended. After pondering about it some more, I reached the conclusion that **I hate working like that** and I can't allow myself to work on a project that makes me think this way. **I have to make the most out of this project.** So my goal is to make the most out of this unwanted project. How do I do that? I thought about writing every day a \"What I have learned today\" list, that will help me see clearly that I am learning from this and not wasting my skills. Do you have any recommendations on what can I do?"}
{"_id": "145043", "title": "How to introduce your team to functional style of coding?", "text": "I have a situation where most people in my group come from an object oriented programming background with little to no understanding of functional programming. Not even basics like closures. Any suggestions about what might be a good way to introduce them to functional coding style? A lot of coding that we do can be shortened if we do the functional way for our specific cases. I have already given couple of presentations about functional and coding paradigms. Unfortunately we don't use a proper functional programming language like Haskell (basically legacy code is in C, C++, Java) so we have to do whatever is there with these."}
{"_id": "145041", "title": "<<access>> and <<use>> in UML Component diagrams", "text": "How to decide if have to take the `<<access>>` or `<<use>>` notation for \"-->\" arrows in Component diagrams written in UML?"}
{"_id": "51175", "title": "New grad with my first programming job lined up: What is the advice you wish you had at this stage?", "text": "I am a new grad with what appears to be my first job lined up (1 solid offer, another place still courting me, so not sure exactly what I will be doing yet). What advice do you wish you had when you started out? In terms of making the best impression? In terms of making sure to get the best reviews? In terms of setting oneself up for the best career growth?"}
{"_id": "181184", "title": "Constructing a Deterministic Finite State Automaton for a given Regex", "text": "I have a couple of exam questions for my compilers class and wanted to check if my solutions are correct. The first question is: > Consider a language in which numbers start with an optional minus sign, > followed by one or more decimal digits, followed by an optional decimal > point. If the number contains a decimal point it is followed by one or more > further decimal digits. Express the syntax of numbers in this language as a > regular expression. And for my answer: > (\"-\")? [\"0\"-\"9\"]+ (\".\"[\"0\"-\"9\"]+)? The second question is: > Construct a deterministic \ufb01nite state automaton for recognising the numbers > as described in Question 1 And my answer is: ![Diagram of finite automaton](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vfFf8.png) Where state 2,4,5 and 6 are terminals. Are these solutions correct? I am unsure of what the DFA should look like and it's differences to an NFA. Thanks !"}
{"_id": "220255", "title": "Can IndexedDB be used in offline hybrid android apps?", "text": "Can IndexedDB be used in offline hybrid android apps? I have tried the [example presented in this post,1 while it is working in my laptopn on Google Chrome, it is not working inside the WebView in my android app. The HTML part of the app is loading fine inside the webview but the javaScript part containing all Indexeddb stuff is not getting executed at all. What's wrong?"}
{"_id": "140675", "title": "Storing data offline with javascript", "text": "My question is about storing data offline and potentially whether I will need to bring in an outside programmer or could this be learned within a few weeks? The website I am working on will have an interface where users will login and go through a series of quizzes in the form of checkbox, drop down menus, and others. Each page/quiz area could have 20-100 total checkboxes in a series of 3-5 rows because of the comprehensive nature of course. This I can do - I know how to code the quiz and return a correct or incorrect answer based on each individual checkbox and present a cumulative score (ie: you got 57% correct). The issue lies in the fact that I would like to save the users results and keep them informed of their progress. When they complete all of the quizzes, I would like to have a visual output of their performance in each area. Storing the output from their results offline is where I think I may run into a problem with my lack of coding experience. I would also like to have a sidebar with their progress of each section (10-15) with a green percentage completion bar or a % correct which would draw from this. I have never had to code something that stores information like this offline - so back to my question - would it be better to learn the language needed or bring in a coder/developer for the back end stuff."}
{"_id": "74781", "title": "Fostering a time period where everyone can try any ideas to make software run faster?", "text": "Sometimes software performance tricks are found from a methodological and thorough search. Sometimes it requires divergent thinking and courage to try crazy ideas. Sometimes an idea is just the beginning that needs to be followed with a lot of hard work. How to foster a time period where everyone can try different ideas to improve the performance of the software we're working on? Everyone on the team has at least several months of experience with the software and are very good at it. Do you agree that divergent thinking will help find ways to improve software performance? Why? Why not? What techniques will enable us to quickly try out an optimization idea? Is fast coding speed necessary for getting good results from the try-out? Finally, how much \"time\" should be allocated to ensure good results without creating the possibility of slacking off? Is experimentation necessary to prove that \"a faster way to do something\" exists? (Added 2011-06-07) Related:   * What are your strategies to improve the level of your team in a clever way ?   * When do code hacks become bad? ( **For bounty purpose only** -2011/06/07 the team size is 2-4 developers, no dedicated QA. All code, unit test and performance test done by developers. Because of the nature of the project, profiler result is useful in showing proportional execution time even if it does not reveal a single bottleneck.)"}
{"_id": "23915", "title": "Feasibility Study Format on SDLC", "text": "Is there a specific format for a feasibility study in SDLC? If so, do you know any sources where I can find more information about this? or can you show me at least an outline of what it should contain?"}
{"_id": "140679", "title": "Why is there no facility to overload static properties in PHP?", "text": "## Intro PHP allows you to overload method calls and property accesses by declaring magic methods in classes. This enables code such as:               class Foo {         public function __get($name) { return 42; }     }          $foo = new Foo;     echo $foo->missingProperty; // prints \"42\"      Apart from overloading instance properties and methods, since PHP 5.3.0 we can also overload `static` methods calls by overriding the magic method `__callStatic`. ## Something missing What is conspicuously missing from the available functionality is the ability to overload _static properties_ , for example:               echo Foo::$missingProperty; // fatal error: access to undeclared static property      This limitation is clearly documented: > Property overloading only works in object context. These magic methods will > not be triggered in static context. Therefore these methods should not be > declared `static`. As of PHP 5.3.0, a warning is issued if one of the magic > overloading methods is declared `static`. ## But why? My questions are:   1. Is there a technical reason that this functionality is not currently supported? Or perhaps a (shudder) political reason?   2. Have there been any aborted attempts to add this functionality in the past? Most importantly, the question **is not** \"how can I have dynamic static properties in userland PHP?\". That said, if you know of an especially cute implementation based on `__callStatic` that you want to share then by all means do so."}
{"_id": "101077", "title": "SQL Query helper/builder?", "text": "We have a flex based front end, that talks via JDBC to some databases.   Part of the GUI has some forms that let the users construct Queries in SQL to pull back records from the database.   However, we get a lot of support tickets that relate to incorrect SQL being tapped in, and a general lack of SQL knowledge so that they struggle with creating queries. It would make more sense if we could have some sort of validation like a SQL Query builder.   Currently we do have a 'Test SQL' command that validates if it returns a valid result from the db, but I would like to take this further and have something that lets you build queries. Has anyone seen any good examples on how to achieve this within a Flex based front-end? (or even non-flex, just to give us some design ideas). Let me know if you need more details via comments. \\--Edit--   Just for some background, here is a link to what the GUI currently looks like.   Its a wizard based forms approach, of which entering SQL is a part of: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ruHTO.jpg) Id prefer to see more options here for building the SQL with perhaps some sort of 'SQL calculator'? Or open to other suggestions - this also ties in with UX."}
{"_id": "74784", "title": "What Special characters should one allow for a Phone Number?", "text": "So I am designing a webpage which will be used for global users, includes users from Canada, US, India, UK etc. I need to apply validations for this phone number field, but I'm not sure the best way to go about this. Some of the valid formats I can think of are:   1. 1800123456 (India)   2. use of \"-\" in US phone numbers I am a bit confused about what special characters I should allow a user to enter (eg.`- / ()`). How have others solved this in the past?"}
{"_id": "74786", "title": "Best place to learn Component Object Model", "text": "I need to learn COM for my current project. I am a noob and I haven't been able to find good starting points for COM. I have been looking into MSDN and googling... I did find some interesting articles on codeproject.com, but I am not satisfied. Why do we use COM ? Why does it exist ? In what places does it exist ? ..... and so on .. So, will you please tell me where can I find answers to these questions ?"}
{"_id": "214817", "title": "Deferred Open Source licensing", "text": "Are there established models for releasing an initially proprietary piece of software under FLOSS conditions after a defined period or a certain point of time? The main problem here is that all parties involved must be able to trust that the Open Source licensing will actually take place at the defined time and no party can further defer or cancel this process. Clearly such a model has its problems, for example it's problematic to deal with contributions from \"outside\", legally and technically. Ghostscript is a prominent example where a deferred model has been used and abandoned. However, if certain parties involved will insist on keeping the software proprietary, at least for a certain period of time, then the only options are a deferred Open Source licensing model or no Open Source licensing at all. I think I read about services that serve as trusted parties who take care of Open Sourcing the software. However, I was not successful in spotting any of those."}
{"_id": "61262", "title": "What are some concepts people should understand before programming \"big\" projects?", "text": "A person new to programming may be able to make a good small program. However, when starting to work on anything bigger than a small (think 1 C source file or Python module) program, there are some general concepts which become much more important when working on \"big\" (think many Python modules or C files) programs; one example is modularity, another is having a set aim. Some of these may be obvious to people who went to school to learn programming; however, people like me who did not go to programming classes sometimes have to learn these things from experience, possibly creating failed projects in the meantime. ================================================== Please explain what the concept is, and why the concept becomes more important for big programs than by small programs. Please give only 1 concept per answer."}
{"_id": "61263", "title": "Is it a good idea to implement OpenID services in internal and/or customer applications?", "text": "I've been discussing with my colleges about logging in by using your OpenID account, Google account etc. in our customers CMS and/or the internal systems we use, as we've had a few requests regarding this from both existing customers and new. What are your approaches on this? Is this a bad idea? Especially for our customers, in their customized content management systems? I really think it can be a major security issue, but would a normal login, provided by us, in the reality, be as much of a security risk?"}
{"_id": "4", "title": "Getting non-programmers to understand the development process", "text": "When starting a project for a company that's not primarily a programming company, one of the expectations is that there's a finished product at the end free of all bugs and does everything needed right away. However, that's rarely the case. What are some ways to manage expectations and explain to non-programmers how software development differs from other types of product development?"}
{"_id": "61267", "title": "Programmer student-tutor program", "text": "I know \"hi's\" and such are not wanted on questions, but in this case an exception may be made (IMHO). Hi! I am a 16 years old and in my 4/6th year of pre-university education. Programming, math and algorithmics is my hobby and I enjoy it so much I have no doubt I will make it my job. In fact, I enjoy it so much that I spend pretty much all my free time one it, learning fast. However, I stumble upon one big problem: I have no teacher. On my school we have what we call \"Informatica\" (dutch), computer science in english. The level of this class is very low though, to the point I know more than the teacher. I occasionally buy books on programming, but english is not my mother tongue and sometimes I just waste hours or a day because I'm not familiar with a word (I wasted weeks before I understood the verb \"to iterate over\", something we don't have in dutch). Another thing is I have to learn everything myself. I had to teach myself what compiling, linking, libraries, including, etc, etc is. That took me **a lot** of time. Thank god there is stackoverflow. When I was completely stuck on something I could ask there and it would usually be solved within an hour. But I get stuck like every hour on something small every proffesional would sigh and shake it's head and explain it within 5 seconds. Now I would love it if there exists some free student-tutor program that assigns you with a _mentor_ or someone that you occasionally can chat/email with (on IRC, MSN, I don't care) asking your questions. So my question, do you know such program? (Or perhaps if you'd like to do it, who knows?) I'm sorry for my english if you spot any mistakes, I learned it all by myself too :) (once again the level of the english class at school is really basic)"}
{"_id": "253332", "title": "Google Apps Script pulling user information", "text": "I am trying to create a spreadsheet that pulls the following information for each of the users in our domain:   * Name   * Email Address   * Mobile Phone Number (Saved in \"Mobile\")   * Department   * Title   * Extension Number (saved in \"Work\")   * Google+ Profile Image URL I'm pretty new at scripting and JavaScript so I'm having some trouble with the special, specific fields. I'm using this Google Reference page for help, but I need help with the phone numbers and organizations information. I can pull `user.phones` and `user.organizations`, but all the data that comes together is messy. I also know that I can get the Google+ Profile Image URL by using `profile.image.url` if I define a variable for `PlusDomains`.               function listAllUsers() {         // set spreadsheet       var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();            // set sheet       var sheet = ss.getSheets()[0];            // set range       var range = sheet.getRange(3, 1);            // clear range       range.clear();               var pageToken, page;       do {            page = AdminDirectory.Users.list({       domain: 'test.org',       orderBy: 'givenName',       maxResults: 500,       pageToken: pageToken       });      var users = page.users, auserInfo = new Array();           if (users) {       for (var i=0, len=users.length; i<len; i++) {         var user = users[i];         Logger.log('%s (%s)', user.name.fullName, user.primaryEmail);         auserInfo.push([user.name.fullName, user.primaryEmail, user.phones, user.organizations]);       }       } else {       Logger.log('No users found.');       }      pageToken = page.nextPageToken;      } while (pageToken);            // set values to sheet       sheet.getRange(3,1,len,4).setValues(auserInfo);            }"}
{"_id": "27207", "title": "Why was Python's popularity so sudden?", "text": "Python first appeared in 1991, but it was somewhat unknown until 2004, if the TIOBE rankings quantify anything meaningful. What happened? What caused the interest in this 13 year old language to go through the roof? Is there a reason that Python wasn't considered a real competitor to Perl in its first decade of existence? Is there a reason that Python didn't continue in relative obscurity for another ten years? I personally think that Python is a very nice language, and I'm glad that I'm not the only one. But it doesn't have corporate backing or a killer feature that would explain a sudden rise to relevance. Does anyone know the story?"}
{"_id": "205061", "title": "What is the general format of a Software Design Specification?", "text": "I'm trying to document a piece of software I wrote in detail. An SAS is too high level and doesn't cover the API. I found several examples of an SDS online, but I don't see a trend in their format. I'm wondering if there are some general guidelines to writing a Software Design Specification or what the best approach is?"}
{"_id": "253334", "title": "Open Source Service Discovery", "text": "I'm trying to wrap my head around this article on OSS service discovery and I'm having a tough time seeing the forest through the trees. In that article, the author poses the main problem for service discovery: > The problem seems simple at first: How do clients determine the IP and port > for a service that exist on multiple hosts? But I'm not even sure what this means/implies. When talking about service discovery, what exactly are we talking about here? Is this like, if we want to connect to a database, we might need a host and port number defined somewhere, like:               host=mydatabase01.example.com     port=9300      ??? Is this what the author is talking about, and is what is implied by \"service discovery\"? If so, wouldn't the (obvious) solution be to just put a web service in front of everything? That way, clients don't care about what specific host/port they're connecting to, they just make RESTful calls to, say, `http://my-data- service.example.com`. It can't be this simple, as that article goes on to talk about things like ZooKeeper and Eureka, which seem to be very complex beasts. I'm clearly missing something; if so, can someone provide a specific, **concrete** use case of what is meant when we talk about \"service discovery\"?"}
{"_id": "181203", "title": "Evaluate math expressions without a stack", "text": "How do you evaluate arbitrary math expressions using temporary variables instead of a stack? What I'm talking about is translating an expression into an array of simple operations- each that change one variable based on the second argument. An example list of operations might be:               =     +=     -=     *=     /=      Notice how each operation changes the first argument. (none of them \"return\" anything) Here's a simple expression: (I have postfix with depth written under it as well)               x=2+a*(b+c)     x 2 a b c + * + =     0 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 0               x=c     x+=b     x*=a     x+=2      Notice how you don't need temporary variables. Here's an expression that requires a temporary variable:               x=a*(b+c)+d*(e+f)     x a b c + * d e f + * + =     0 1 2 3 2 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 0          x=b     x+=c     x*=a     tmp=e     tmp+=f     tmp*=d     x+=tmp       I can't seem to figure out an algorithmic solution for obtaining these sets of operations. Needing temporary variables seems to have something to do with lower-precedence operators that have the result of higher-precedence operators as arguments, but I can't tell. I feel stupid... The way seems right in front of me but I can't see it. Obviously you could do it the \"easy\" way; AKA, make a temporary variable to store the result of each operation so no operations are destructive to anything but what you put before the `=`, but that's bad and I don't like it. How can you get the \"algorithm\" for an expression in simplest form? EDIT: Due to my own ambiguity, I must clarify that a stack is allowed in _translation_ , but not in the end psuedo-language I'm producing."}
{"_id": "74256", "title": "How do you break down a new project with an existing mega PHP site?", "text": "I've got to dive into a very large PHP site and have my first client meeting today. All they gave me so far was the URL. How do you guys go about gathering/structuring/documenting and preparing for a new project in a PHP environment? What things do you ask for up front? PS - I know there are other general questions about this but I want a PHP- flavored one, including tools (even if universal) and approaches. Thanks!! I'm excited but also scared."}
{"_id": "74253", "title": "How do you manage passwords in your team for db with multiple env and security constraints?", "text": "I don't want any tools, but more methods to help us manage our passwords. I know this question has been closed, but I think this one, even if it's related, is more a programmers problem than a super user problem. We are using some database schema, each with a password. These schemas exist in our 4 different environments (DEV, TEST, INTEGRATION, UAT) There are corporate rules about passwords, so we need to change them often. Wrong passwords result in locked accounts. This happens quite often and takes countless hours to be solved by dbas... The rules are also quite drastic about how to change a password. No re-use, some word forbidden... The result of this setting is a very often unusable database for our dev. And lots of frustration too. Do you know any 'deterministic' way of creating passwords that can help us to avoid total mess?"}
{"_id": "146639", "title": "Where can I learn about how programs handle file systems like NTFS?", "text": "I'm writing a program to handle the xbox 360's STFS files. I'm encountering all sorts of problems about how to keep track of used vs unused blocks, reading non-sequential files, etc. These aren't so much problems with the structure of STFS - it's just another file structure - but I don't know how I should do certain things. I thought I would find a plethora of information on how file systems like NTFS and Fat32 are read by programs, but I'm only finding resources on how to work with the file systems using pre-made software and not so much how to make such software. Here is a reference for STFS: http://free60.org/STFS"}
{"_id": "74251", "title": "On access scans and Visual Studio", "text": "Where I work McAfee On Access scan is enforced to be on for all our machines. Visual Studio 2010 isn't exactly the speediest program at times but combining a large website, several build configurations and mercurial repository files in a project folder results in a very large number of small files, many of which get scanned when being read or written. I'd like to try and ask our IT department to add some exceptions to help speed VS up but that will likely not be an easy task. What recommendations do you have for the minimum list of exclusions I could give that would give the most noticable improvements?"}
{"_id": "36350", "title": "Can you make a build in one step?", "text": "From the joel test: > Can you make a build in one step? I've got to say I can't. I'm currently working on a web app that has a spreadsheet list of items that must be carried out in order to deploy. So my question is **how can I automate this**? Does it have to be organisation wide? Tips/techniques?"}
{"_id": "36354", "title": "How do you KISS?", "text": "The KISS principle is a highly quoted design mantra. The aim of this principle is to stamp out unnecessary complexity on a project. This is a good thing, saving time, energy and money. It can lead to a relatively stress free implementation and a simple, elegant, maintainable end product. A lot of discussion on KISS provides mechanisms to simplify requirements, design and implementation. Things that spring to mind include: avoid scope creep; simple obvious design and code; minimal run-time dependencies; refactoring to maintain simplicity; etc. However there are a lot of implicit things that we do to KISS. Examples: small team sizes; minimal management layers; tidy desk; mastery of a single IDE; clear concise error messages; scripts to automate/encapsulate tasks; etc What KISS practices do you apply? How have they benefited you? I'm especially interested in non-obvious practices."}
{"_id": "185602", "title": "How is C/C++ more difficult to decompile than C#?", "text": "See top answer here: _Obfuscation at source-code level more effective than obfuscators?_, specifically \"Code it in a language so not easy to decompile such as C/C++\" I'm looking to write a new application that will be sold for $500 per license, so I'd like to prevent decompilers. Should C# be avoided, or is using an obfuscator sufficient to prevent this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "98402", "title": "What pitfalls and gotchas commonly occur when beginning with Parallel and Concurrent Programming with C?", "text": "It roughly three weeks I will be taking a Parallel programming class that is taught using C for the assignments. I have a fairly strong interest in the subject at present and my C skills aren't terrible but I feel like I need to brush up on C as the last class I had that actively required programming in it was 8 months ago. I took an Embedded Systems course in the spring so I understand the concept of deadlock, semaphores and the \"shared data\" problem. It was primarily iOS programming code wise so my C skills haven't seen loads of use from that context either. If I had to guess as to an area of especially stringent re-study I would select pointers and memory allocation as that seems to be the primary challenge. I believe the class covers MPI and OpenMP so I may take a look at those in advance. Am I on the right track or am I missing something entirely?"}
{"_id": "75784", "title": "Introducing new topics to co-workers", "text": "I've been trying to introduce topics such as unit testing, dependency injection, inversion of control, etc... to co-workers. I've given mini lectures, demonstrations, and have suggested these topics during lunch and learns. Reception has generally been positive and people do see value in such topics. Even though they seem attracted to these topics, adoption has been very low. When I talk to them about it, the answer is generally along the lines of: > I'll try it next time. I just want to get this project out the door. I have a feeling it's because most of what they have seen are just lecture type demonstrations and they do not have any hands-on experience. What can I do to help nudge them along? I don't want to \"force\" them into writing code if they don't want to, because it may seem like \"homework\" and it may leave them with a bad impression. Our projects generally do not leave time for experimentation, so people tend to shy away from new technologies. This doesn't leave room for developers to try and incorporate new things during the development phase. Are there any fun or interesting exercises (solo or team) that allows them to have more hands-on experience with these topics? I'm hoping to find something that would peak enough interest so that they are willing to schedule an hour of their day to work on something neat, or peak enough interest so that they'll investigate on their own time."}
{"_id": "166646", "title": "When do you use a class instead of a record when you do not want to use mutable fields?", "text": "I'm imagining a situation where you are creating an F# module in a purely functional style. This means objects do not have mutable fields and are not modified in place. I'm assuming for simplicity that there is no need to use .NET objects or other kinds of objects. There are two possible ways of implementing an object-oriented kind of solution: the first is to use classes and the second to use records which have fields of functional type, to implement methods. I imagine you'd use classes when you want to use inheritance but that otherwise records would be adequate, if perhaps clumsier to express. Or do you find classes more convenient than records in any case?"}
{"_id": "75788", "title": "Chromebook - is it interesting for Programmers?", "text": "Google announced the chromebook yesterday (11 May 2011). While this is surely a nice thing, I have no clue whether it was interesting to buy one for a (non- javascript)-programmer. What do you think? Will there be, for instance, a Java IDE in the cloud? A command line, even?"}
{"_id": "166644", "title": "What is the relationship between the command line, the OS and the microprocessor?", "text": "I'm not totally clear on how using the command line differs from working through the OS' interface using an editor for example. Obviously the UI is different but I want to understand how the command line interacts with the kernel and microprocessor, and how this compares to how kernel interfaces with the OS' GUI. I know I'm missing several layers of abstraction but would be grateful for someone to explain this."}
{"_id": "39835", "title": "What's the best way to do a Proof of Concept shootout?", "text": "In preparation for a new release of software our company maintains, I've been working on what I believe to be a really good approach to solving our scalability issues. I have every intention of putting together a proof of concept to validate the design on paper will actually do what I want. When I briefed it to the team, the boss had a counter proposal, inspired in part by the way I described the problem areas. The boss also accepted my proposal to do two proofs of concept to evaluate the alternatives. So, what's the best way to work through the proof of concept shoot out? We have both objective and subjective criteria that we are using to evaluate the solutions. I'd like to make sure we are comparing apples to apples with these fairly different approaches.   * We have requirements for throughput and size. In short, we know we need to process a certain number of objects per second and maintain that rate for an hour.   * We need to evaluate scalability (both by adding more cores and by increasing the number of objects)   * We need to evaluate ease of development (subjective)   * We need to evaluate how easy it is to understand the algorithm (subjective) I have my theory about which way things will lean, but I don't want that to influence my results. Any input on how to maintain objectivity in this process, and things I might need to consider would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "70577", "title": "How do I get people to contribute ideas for my .NET library?", "text": "I maintain a LGPL library for rapid development of large scale .NET applications, It's a general purpose class library containing functionalities that are used at the DAL and BLL level. So, in practice, it's a library focused towards server-side/middle-tier developers - it doesn't have any shiny or trendy stuff and as such I don't expect it to ever become majorly popular. However, I would really like to expand the library and get more ideas for possibly useful functionalities to add. Larger, more user oriented libraries have a ton of users and a ton of ideas. How do I get more people to contribute ideas for my more _niche_ library?"}
{"_id": "70574", "title": "Using CSS classes as decorators - a good pattern?", "text": "I've been building a web-app with a fairly complex GUI - many small elements alongside eachother and within other elements that need various behaviours (dragging, clicking, but context-sensitive). My code tends to work like this: _controls start out as html tags_               <li>      _then I add classes to the tag_               <li class = 'static passive included'>      _some classes might be for css styling to affect appearance_               .static {background: blue; float: left;}      _while others are acted upon by jQuery to give behaviour for the associated DOM events_               $(\"#container\").delegate(\".passive\", function {onclick : //do-stuff})      and others might be picked up by normal javascript when scanning the document, eg. collect the text values of all nodes with the 'included' class. So certain DOM elements are GUI objects which implement classes definted through a combination of css and jQuery. My question is, is this a good way to work? And also are these really 'decorators' - they certainly 'add additional responsibilities to an object dynamcially' but I'm not sure about that term. Finally, do you use this pattern in your own sites?"}
{"_id": "70572", "title": "Why isn't anyone talking about parallel compilation for .Net?", "text": "Builds are slow and take time. We can get MSBuild to parallelize them, but only on a single machine, not across a cluster. Why hasn't anyone come up with clustered build solutions in the .Net space? I know such solutions exist in the C++ space (e.g., IncrediBuild, Electric Cloud, etc.) but we .Net developers are forced to build huge solutions on individual machines. Anyone know if there's some unsolvable technical difficulty in this? Just curious."}
{"_id": "214880", "title": "Handling changes to data types and entries in a database migration", "text": "I'm fully redesigning a site that indexes a number of articles with basic search functionality. The previous site was written about a decade ago, and I'm salvaging about 30,000 entries with data stored in less-than-ideal formats. While I'm moving from MSSQL to MySQL, I don't need to make any \"live\" changes, so this is not a production-level migration issue so much as a redesign. For instance, dates are stored the same as tags/subjects about the articles, but in strings as \"YYYYMMDDd\" (the lowercase d stands for \"date\" in the string). Essentially, before or after I move from the previous database format to a new one, I'm going to need to do a lot of replacement of individual entries. While I understand how to do operations with regular expressions in non-database issues, my database experience isn't robust enough to know the best way to handle this. What is the best (or standard) way to handle major changes like this? Is there an SQL operation I should be looking into? Please let me know if the problem isn't clear--I'm not entirely sure what kind of answer I'm looking for."}
{"_id": "231951", "title": "Which relationship is more natural?", "text": "Have a quick question on how to best structure something for my Java project: I'm a user. I can work at one or more places. At those workplaces, I have one or more roles. For each of these roles, I work a shift. I either came up with: My workplaces have shifts, my shifts have exactly 1 position (what position did I work when I worked my shift? It varies day to day..) or Workplaces have positions, each position has shifts I think the 2nd is more natural but keep going back and forth / unsure of what has more of an advantage both now and for the future. It's hard for me as I can argue both I guess? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "223637", "title": "Best way of validating Class properties", "text": "## Background: I have a CSV file, which I need to ready and validate each element in each row and create a collection of a class, having valid data. i.e CSV File looks like:                  EmpID,FirstName,LastName,Salary         1,James,Help,100000         2,Jane,Scott,1000         3,Mary,Fraze,10000      Class looks like:               public class Employees     {         public int EmpID { get; set; }         public string FirstName { get; set; }         public string LastName { get; set; }         public string Salary { get; set; }         public string ErrorReason { get; set; }     }      Here are the validations required for each field:   * EmpID:     * Its a mandatory field, hence cannot be null or empty     * It should be only an integer     * It should be not more than 2 digits     * It should be present in database (query that database and check if an employee exits with this empid.   * FirstName (same validation for LastName):     * Its a mandatory field, hence cannot be null or empty     * It should be only alphabets.     * Not more than 30 characters are allowed    * Salary:     * Its a mandatory field, hence cannot be null or empty     * It should be a decimal.  To achieve this, here is my approach:   1. Read CSV file row by row   2. For each element i.e EmpId, FirstName... etc **do the required validations by calling individual methods having validation logic.** eg: public bool ValidateIsDecimal(string value) { } public bool ValidateIsEmpIdExists(string value) { } etc   3. If valid, fill corresponding property of \"Employees\" class.   4. If NOT VALID, fill \"ErrorReason\" property, with appropriate reason as to what caused the validation to fail.(eg: Required filed was missing or datatype is not decimal etc)   5. Add this Class to Employees collection (eg: List) So, my question is, is this the right approach, or is there any other better/cleaner way of validating class properties."}
{"_id": "227701", "title": "Front-end structure of large scale Django project", "text": "Few days ago, I started to work in new company. Before me, all front-end and backend code was written by one man (oh my...). As you know, Django app contains two main directories for front-end: /static - for static(public) files and /templates - for django templates Now, we have large application with more than 10 different modules like: home, admin, spanel, mobile etc. This is current structure of files and directories: FIRST - /static directory. As u can see, it is mixed directories with some named like modules, some contains global libs. ![static dir](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CPwzo.png) one more: ![static dir second](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LMEED.png) SECOND - /templates directory. Some directories named like module with mixed templates, some depends on new version =), some used only in module, but placed globally. ![templates dir](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pztlm.png) and more: ![templates dir 2](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XNEO6.png) I think, that this is ugly, non-maintable, put-in-stress structure! After some time spend, i suggest to use this scheme, that based on module- structure. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tSjPa.png) At first, we have version directories, used for save full project backup, includes: /DEPRECATED directory - for old, unused files and /CURRENT (Active) directory, that contains   production version of project. I think it's right, because we can access to older or newer version files fast and easy. Also, we are saved from broken or wrong dependencies between different versions. Second, in every version we have standalone modules and global module. Every module contains own /static and /templates directories. This structure used to avoid broken or wrong dependencies between different modules, because every module has own js app, css tables and local images. Global module contains all libraries, main stylesheets and images like logos or favicon. I think, this structure is much better to maintain, update, refactoring etc. My question is: How do you think, is this scheme better than current? Can this scheme live, or it is not possible to implement this in Django app?"}
{"_id": "227702", "title": "What to do when your company doesn't encrypt passwords", "text": "**Background** I'm been contracted to help a company maintain their server. I work on some minor PHP projects but also look over performance issues and recently, scan logs for hackers. These guys have been running their server for some time and have what I would call a legacy application on its last legs. It uses magic quotes, global variables (which allows `$id` to be overwritten by `$_GET['id']`), use .htaccess as their only security in some instances, you name it. A security and programming nightmare. We have been hacked in the past, mostly with SQL injections, which would run `SLEEP(99999999)` commands and act as a DOS-attack. Luckily they didn't run \"little bobby tables\", ![http://xkcd.com/327/](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OSBpv.png) XKCD: http://xkcd.com/327/ So I re-wrote their vulnerable SQL statements from `mysql_query()` (not mysqli) to PDO transactions. I'm also analyzing the queries for `SLEEP` and `UNION`, which we don't use but the injections have. So far, so good. **Latest Issue** Recently we've been told records are changing in the DB for users, such as their e-mail addresses to ones presumably made by spammers. I noticed their columns didn't have a `last_modified` column, so we weren't able to even know when they were being changed, let alone by who. I added that column, but that's barely a first step. When I was looking in to this table, I noticed the passwords weren't salted nor even hashed, just saved as plaintext. **Client Communication** How can I approach them about the entire situation, as a contractor, without flailing my arms like a madman? Any advice? I was thinking a calm approach of,                   ISSUE #1             Synopsis             Why this is an issue             What can happen if this is not fixed             Suggested fix              ISSUE #2             Synopsis             Why this is an issue             What can happen if this is not fixed             Suggested fix"}
{"_id": "227704", "title": "Webservics: Rationale behind portType and binding in wsdl", "text": "In a wsdl we define the operation name, input and output in the portType element; later on in binding we define operation, input and output again. What is the rationale behind this? why define them twice? I understand in binding we define the encodingStyle and other attributes, so what is the need of portType?"}
{"_id": "227706", "title": "Is learning different programming languages from different categories good?", "text": "I have read some posts regarding learning different programming languages or not. Most of the answers indicate that learning more than one programming language increase our horizon as a programmer and we can learn different ways of solving similar problems. However, some also suggest that learning more than one languages of same type doesn't help much. My question is that does it then mean that we should learn different languages but of different categories as well? Should we learn one or all great languages of each category to increase our programming knowhow?"}
{"_id": "227708", "title": "Should a method in a class be aware that the class has \"loaded\" a variable?", "text": "So I have the following code, which connects and then binds to an LDAP server. The question is in the first method.                 public function getUsers() // This is the method in question       {         if( $this->connect()->bind() ) {           ldap_query(self::$connection) // Here, should it be aware that class succesfully loaded              // the connection, or should the bind() method return the resource?         }       }            public function connect()       {         self::$connection = ldap_connect($this->host);         if( ! self::$connection ) {           throw new \\CHttpException(503, 'No se puede establecer una conexi\u00f3n con el servidor '.$this->host);         }         foreach( $this->options as $option => $value ) {           ldap_set_option(self::$connection, constant($option), $value);         }         return $this;       }            public function bind()       {         $ldapbind = ldap_bind(self::$connection, $this->username.'@'.$this->domain, $this->password);         if( ! $ldapbind ) {           throw new \\CHttpException(503, 'No se puede enlazar con el servidor: '.ldap_error(self::$connection));         }         return true;       }"}
{"_id": "146090", "title": "Is there any way of getting attributes of an audio file?", "text": "Let's say you have an .mp3 file. A few of the attributes I would like to find out is like the bass, when the bass is loud, quiet, strong, soft and when it is all those things. Is there any way of doing this or is there anything similar to this? EDIT: also I'm not bothered about which code, I'm just interested in what is the easiest way to do this"}
{"_id": "123509", "title": "How is C++ in QT different from the standard C++ libraries?", "text": "I want my app to be able to manipulate images and create watermarks and also needs to run on both windows and mac. Hence I've been investigating QT. Does QT ship with all the libraries I will need to achieve that? or will I have to get other standard C++ libraries? If so is it worth doing the project in QT?"}
{"_id": "113262", "title": "Why declare variables close to where they are used?", "text": "I have heard people say that variables should be declared as close to their usage as possible. I don't understand this. For example, this policy would suggest I should do this:               foreach (var item in veryLongList) {       int whereShouldIBeDeclared = item.Id;       //...     }      But surely this means the overheads of creating a new `int` are incurred on every iteration. Wouldn't it be better to use:               int whereShouldIBeDeclared;     foreach (var item in veryLongList) {       whereShouldIBeDeclared = item.Id;       //...     }      Please could somebody explain?"}
{"_id": "146098", "title": "How to talk about anonymous methods/lambdas", "text": "I realised the other day that I don't know how to talk about anonymous methods. It's easy enough to talk about named methods (`The X method takes a Y1, Y2 and Y3`) and classes (`The X class has A, B and C methods`), but it's harder with anonymous methods. **How does one go about talking (and writing) about them**? From the number of parameters they take, to the types of those parameters to the method signature? * * * For this anonymous method signature, how would you read it aloud?               int -> int -> bool -> double      I would say `\"int, int, bool to double\"`. What about calling it? How would you read this?               (A ,B) => A*B;      I would say `\"A B goes/is to A times B\"`."}
{"_id": "123502", "title": "Is Dijkstra's algorithm an appropriate solution to this signal routing problem?", "text": "I'm in the process of developing a signal management and routing module for an integrated audiovisual system and am designing it with the intent of being as flexible as possible across different signal distribution networks. The intent of the module is to handle routing across a number of stacked matrix switchers1 and handle necessary format conversion. The best solution I've explored at this point is to map out the network to a graph with discrete vertices for each signal type supported by the switchers and which are then joined via nodes representing the video processors that handle format conversion. ![Example graph](http://i.stack.imgur.com/TDXC9.jpg) _Colours represent signal formats._ _Round nodes are either switchers, sources or sinks._ _Square nodes are video processors which perform format conversion._ From there I can use an implementation of Dijkstra's algorithm to identify the path that has to be formed in order to get input X to output Y. This should allow the data about the input / output configuration of all the switchers and processors to be passed in and the module adapt accordingly. Is this an appropriate solution or is there an alternative approach that may be worth investigating? 1 aka 'crossbar switch', a video router with M input x N outputs that supports one-to-many connections. Each phsyical device may handle multiple signal formats and may or may not be capable of performing any format conversion. **edit:** As mentioned by P\u00e9ter T\u00f6r\u00f6k, the graph will not necessarily be a tree, the diagram is a simple example to illustrate the idea. When implemented in the 'real world' multiple paths may exist which offer varying levels of definition (DVI > VGA > component > composite) which I was planning to represent with edge weighting. **edit 2:** Here's an slightly more comprehensive example with directivity indicated and showing a network consisting of two signal types. The initial example has been modified slightly so that each input and output on a device is defined as a discrete node as this will provide the data required to control matrix routing / input selection. ![Example 2 - two signal types, stacked switchers](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zcgcs.jpg)"}
{"_id": "187936", "title": "Fixing a push to the wrong branch", "text": "I committed and pushed some changes to the wrong branch. I found a way to fix it, but it seems overly complicated. Is this really the easiest way?   1. on the branch that you made your changes, type `hg parent`   2. run `hg diff -r <parent> -r <with_changes> > patch.diff`   3. `hg up <proper_branch>`   4. `hg import --no-commit patch.diff`   5. `hg ci -m 'committing changes to proper branch'`   6. `hg up <bad_branch>`   7. `hg parent` to find previous changeset on this branch that is good   8. `hg ci --close-branch -m 'closing bad branch'`   9. `hg up <last_good_changeset>`   10. add a space or other minor change   11. `hg ci -m 'making tip'`   12. `hg push` Something to that effect anyway. I did it in a slightly different order; I made the good changeset the tip again, and had to do a force commit because it creates a new head, then had to run               hg heads `hg branch`      To find the bad branch again, then close it. Now it still shows the bad changeset as the \"tip\" because I closed it _after_ I \"re-tipped\" the good branch, but when updating to that branch, I guess it takes the most recent non-closed head? Seems like quite a ridiculous process to fix such a simple mistake. Is there any easier way to do this? Why not?"}
{"_id": "189904", "title": "Continuous Integration Feedback Cycle", "text": "How long should the Continuous Integration process take (i.e. compiling classes and running unit tests + integration test)? On my current project it takes about 30 minutes, is that OK? What's the ideal length of build time? Integration tests take most of that time, if the 30 min is too long what can be done here? What's the impact of having the build complete in 30 min?"}
{"_id": "139889", "title": "Subscript binding and array categories", "text": "I am learning \"Programming languages principles\" and there is a lot of information about stuff which make up a programming language . Unfortunately every material I came across until now has a lot of technical jargon involved and is very difficult to understand (Atleast for a beginner sincerely trying to understand the topic on his own by reading the material) . Can anyone explain me the \"Subscript binding and array categories\" in general .. The classification says there are five kinds of arrays -   1.Static array   2.Fixed stack-dynamic array   3.Stack dynamic array   4.Fixed heap dynamic array   5.Heap dynamic array This is what I could understand from the definitions (almost on every article on this topic I came across) . **Static array -** subscript ranges are _statically bound_ and storage allocation is static.   I understood that the space for the array is allocated in memory at compile time (before run time) . **Fixed stack-dynamic array -** subscript ranges are _statically bound_ , but the allocation is done at _elaboration time during execution_.   Now I didn't understand anything . What is meaning of the _italicized phrases_ **Stack-dynamic array -** the subscript ranges are _dynamically bound_ , and the storage allocation is dynamic \u201cduring execution.\u201d Once bound they remain fixed during the lifetime of the variable.   I dont understand what is meant by being 'bound' ? I should be able to understand the remaining two definitions if I understand these three . I know I am asking a lot .   Thanks :) Here's a link I recently came across which I find useful for this topic . Anyone interested in this topic , check it out . :)"}
{"_id": "84725", "title": "Why is accessibility important?", "text": "It seems to be quite a big thing right now and experience with converting web sites to be more accessible seems to be a common criteria for jobs. My question is, why is it important? Is it a legal issue? Can I get sued if my web site does not comply with some accessibility standard? If so, what law would I be breaking? Is it a moral / ethical issue? Should all people whether they're semi blind or they're using pentium 2's to browse the internet should be entitled to access the right information? Is it a user ability issue? Are there enough users in these minority categories that it's worth investing the time to cater for these users. Is it a maintainability issue? Are applications that are more accessible generally easier to maintain? Or is it something altogether different?"}
{"_id": "84722", "title": "Passive ways to learn new technology?", "text": "Recently, having purchased a smart phone, I discovered podcasts. It's great, cause I spend time commuting and usually that time would be a waste. Admittedly, it's fairly light stuff, mostly news and opinions. I don't think I could concentrate probably if they tried to explain through code samples etc. But I find even just knowing the existence of some new tech or maybe even just recognizing some new jargon is of benefit, at least it gives me a start if I decide to look further into it. What's more, it's enjoyable and easy. So I'm wondering, can anyone think of any other passive ways to learn or know about new technologies that doesn't take much effort and preferably can be done in your \"dead\" time?"}
{"_id": "182375", "title": "Unit of work/repository pattern with dependency injection advice", "text": "I'm developing a series of repository classes and a UnitOfWork class (plus its IUnitOfWork interface of course). I'm using Castle Windsor, which injects dependencies via constructors. My business tier has classes such as \"CustomerBusinessLogic\", with methods like RetrieveCustomer, SaveCustomer, etc. These in turn use the UOW to perform the database operations. I'm struggling to find how/where the BLL class should get an instance of the UOW. It doesn't feel right injecting it into the ctr, as a unit of work is exactly that - a unit of work! I think an individual method (LoadCustomer, SaveCustomer) should be responsible for instantiating the UOW for the lifetime of its operation. However doing this means resorting to a service locator, which is an anti-pattern. Suggestions welcome!"}
{"_id": "33382", "title": "A new name for unit tests", "text": "I never used to like unit testing. I always thought it increased the amount of work I had to do.   Turns out, that's only true in terms of the actual number of lines of code you write and furthermore, this is completely offset by the increase in the number of lines of useful code that you can write in an hour with tests and test driven development. Now I love unit tests as they allow me to write useful code, that quite often works first time! (knock on wood) I have found that people are reluctant to do unit tests or start a project with test driven development if they are under strict time-lines or in an environment where others don't do it, so they don't. Kinda like, a cultural refusal to even try. I think one of the most powerful things about unit testing is the confidence that it gives you to undertake refactoring. It also gives new found hope, that I can give my code to someone else to refactor/improve, and if my unit tests still work, I can use the new version of the library that they modified, pretty much, without fear. It's this last aspect of unit testing that I think needs a new name. The unit test is more like a contract of what this code should do now, and in the future.   When I hear the word testing, I think of mice in cages, with multiple experiments done on them to see the effectiveness of a compound. This is not what unit testing is, we're not trying out different code to see what is the most affective approach, we're defining what outputs we expect with what inputs. In the mice example, unit tests are more like the definitions of how the universe will work as opposed to the experiments done on the mice. Am I on crack or does anyone else see this refusal to do testing and do they think it's a similar reason they don't want to do it?   What reasons do you / others give for not testing?   What do you think their motivations are in not unit testing? And as a new name for unit testing that might get over some of the objections, how about jContract? (A bit Java centric I know :), or Unit Contracts?"}
{"_id": "147940", "title": "Working machines of developers - in what ways are they usually standardized or restricted?", "text": "My boss wants to introduce new guidelines for the computers in our company. This means that the software environments will be completely standardized with a predefined set of tools. The goal is that all machines are completely reproducable and exchangable. I'm wondering what the guidelines for developer's computers are in large companies, such as Google or Microsoft, especially companies which are certified according to some standard (e.g. ISO 9001). Do they allow developers to install software from the internet if they need it for some small task? (e.g. a code compare tool, CygWin, Windows Service Packs) or do they really want all needed tools in a fixed, predefined environment where all proposed changes must be discussed with a system administrator first?"}
{"_id": "147942", "title": "Managing a website with version control?", "text": "The small website I built a long time ago is starting to pick up a little and I'm starting to run into problems with making changes. Originally, all the pages were .html and I would edit and test them offline to make sure everything worked. Then I realized how helpful php includes were, so I changed everything to .php and used includes. Without apache, I could no longer test offline, so with Filezilla, I would choose the \"view/edit\" option on files that were already on the server, edit them, and then have them uploaded again. This is what I've been doing so far and it's worked pretty well for the most part. I just save the temp file that filezilla creates, and let it upload it back to the server. Yesterday, I realized that one of the javascript files I had worked on the day before had been replaced by an empty file. This was something to do with sublime text keeping the non-existent temp file open/filezilla uploading an empty file - I'm not really sure what happened, but it shouldn't have been able to happen. And now, I need to change the design of the site, and doing that one page at a time would be noticeable, so I need to do it offline first. I would like to use version control and install apache so that I can completely test my site offline, but there are a couple problems I have with this. The first is that I have a Forum on the site. I could install mysql and export the tables, then import them offline, but then, while people are making posts on the website, the offline copy becomes out of date and I can no longer upload that back to the server. I also have some Python scripts on the site using WSGI. My webhost's settings are very specific, so if I wrote python scripts offline and ensured they were working, I wouldn't know if they were going to work online. Should I edit everything offline and upload it all back to the server when it works? What happens if a php or python script executes one way on my local machine than on the server?"}
{"_id": "209036", "title": "Does an Open Source license exist that allows me to retain rights to revoke usage of software/source at any time, for any reason, and without warning?", "text": "Does an Open Source license exist that allows me to retain rights to revoke usage of software/source at any time, for any reason, and without warning? I want to allow others to use my software and source code for free but at the same time, I want the ability to revoke rights to usage if I don't agree with the ways that the software and/or source is being used."}
{"_id": "209035", "title": "How I could update a DB table using a POCO class bound in a DataGridView", "text": "I try to explain better using an example:   * I create the class Product with attibutes like that:              private string _ProductCode = \"\";     [DisplayName(\"ProductCode\")]     public String ProductCode     {        get { return _ProductCode; }        set { _ProductCode = value; OnPropertyChanged(\"ProductCode\"); }     }        * the class Product implements the interfaces: INotifyPropertyChanged, IEditableObject   * I create the class ProductList that has the following property:              public List<Product> Products { get; set; }        * I bind the class Product in a DataGridView control using the DataSource property              MyGridView.DataSource = ProductList.Products;        * I have the table **ProductListTable** on db SqlServer that has more column than the class **Product**   * When I push the button \"Save\" on my form I'd would like to save the ProductList on ProductListTable I'm really confusing about the way to follow ... I have to use Link 2 Sql, Entity Framework? I'm searching for something simple for a small project, but using POCO classes for rapresenting the data layer. Now how I should proceed for linking class to DB table?"}
{"_id": "203056", "title": "Should I write an integration test that verifies rate limits?", "text": "This test would call a web service over and over for about a minute to confirm that a particular response code is returned, notifying us of our rate limit being reached. Not only is it a very slow test, it doesn't confirm much of anything, and wastes resources. I feel that this is like confirming that chugging a bottle of vodka will kill a human. Do we really need a test for it?"}
{"_id": "209030", "title": "What's a good approach for updating millions of rows independently?", "text": "I have a MongoDB database with millions of users in collection. An aggregation function returns millions of results with the following format:               Array ( [_id] => Array ( [user] =>       MongoId Object ( [$id] => 52050d48e654f6342c002d42 )         [send] => 1         [open] => 1         [click] => 2 )      Now I need to update corresponding user with the new values (open/send/click) and for each of them add a flag, based on how the values compare with variable X. How would be a good approach to it without looping through results (this means loading GB of data in memory and doing millions of updates/finds) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "41328", "title": "Best way of learning Python + GUI when coming from .NET", "text": "I've been developing applications in **C#** / **VB.NET** for about 3-4 years ( **.NET Framework** v2.0, 3.5, 4). I have also developed some command-line applications or scripts in C, and Python under Linux. Sometimes I need to develop my applications in another languages, like **Python** , but the ~~problem~~ thing is that lots of those applications require a GUI. Maybe not a too complex one, but it does require some windows with _buttons_ , _text boxes_ , _list boxes_ ,... What books/tips/tutorials do you suggest me to start working with that language and be able to deploy my deliverables not only in **.NET**? **Note:**   Learning python is not the big deal here, because I already know the basic of it. I just want to focus on the GUI. _Maybe this question should be onUI instead of here? If so, please, migrate it :)_"}
{"_id": "203059", "title": "Why is Quicksort called \"Quicksort\"?", "text": "The point of this question is not to debate the merits of this over any other sorting algorithm - certainly there are many other questions that do this. This question is about the name. Why is Quicksort called \"Quicksort\"? Sure, it's \"quick\", most of the time, but not always. The possibility of degenerating to O(N^2) is well known. There are various modifications to Quicksort that mitigate this problem, but the ones which bring the worst case down to a guaranteed O(n log n) aren't generally called Quicksort anymore. (e.g. Introsort). I just wonder why of all the well-known sorting algorithms, this is the only one deserving of the name \"quick\", which describes not how the algorithm works, but how fast it (usually) is. Mergesort is called that because it merges the data. Heapsort is called that because it uses a heap. Introsort gets its name from \"Introspective\", since it monitors its own performance to decide when to switch from Quicksort to Heapsort. Similarly for all the slower ones - Bubblesort, Insertion sort, Selection sort, etc. They're all named for how they work. The only other exception I can think of is \"Bogosort\", which is really just a joke that nobody ever actually uses in practice. Why isn't Quicksort called something more descriptive, like \"Partition sort\" or \"Pivot sort\", which describe what it actually does? It's not even a case of \"got here first\". Mergesort was developed 15 years before Quicksort. (1945 and 1960 respectively according to Wikipedia) I guess this is really more of a history question than a programming one. I'm just curious how it got the name - was it just good marketing?"}
{"_id": "204008", "title": "Sum of divisors of numbers of the range ~ 10^6", "text": "I was trying to find the sum of divisors of numbers upto 106. The test cases are like of the order of 105. I have done some pre processing like               int divisors(int num)     {         int sum=0;         for(int i=1; i*i<=num; i++)             sum += (num%i)? 0 : ((i*i==num)? i : i+num/i);         return sum;     }      Is there any better method to do the same. Should I also make an array of prime numbers or something like that?"}
{"_id": "249965", "title": "What diagram would be the best to describe the situation", "text": "I am working on a software integrated with the hardware component. I need to create a simple diagram to express that:   1. Certain activity runs in a cycle (the device continously monitor a temperature)    2. When the temperature deviates from the baseline and remains so for 10 seconds, a function is called I am writing a high level document and I am not sure how to capture this - UML diagrams do not seem to be suitable..but maybe an activity diagram?"}
{"_id": "159681", "title": "strategies to keep tabs of memory leaks in non memory-managed languages", "text": "When it comes to non memory managed languages such as C, C++ or Fortran (my case), it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of memory allocation/deallocation, especially when ownership must be shared. I implemented refcounting for my objects, but this makes it even more complicated as there's no place where an object gets deallocated. Every reference decrement is a potential deallocation point. So it's now more and more difficult for me to track down memory leaks. I was wondering about some established techniques to deal with memory management in non-memory managed languages, apart from valgrinding your way around. **Edit:** I am more interested in active programming strategies (which are general)."}
{"_id": "86477", "title": "Logistics of code reuse (OOP)", "text": "One of the driving points behind OOP is code reuse. I am curious about the actual logistics of this and how others both in team or solo handle it. For example lets say you have 5 projects you have worked on and between them you have a ton of classes that you think would be useful in other projects. How do you store them? Are they just in the normal project repository or do you break out the relevant classes and have them (as now copies) in another unique source repository that only houses code pieces that are intended to be reused? How do you go about finding or even knowing that there is a good piece of code out there that you should reuse? It's easier if your solo because you remember that you have coded something similar but even then it becomes kind of a stretch. If there is some way that you are storing these pieces of code do you then also have them indexed and searchable by tag or something. I fear that it just boils down to some tribal knowledge that you just know that for situation A i need solution B and we have a good piece of code that already can help here. A bit verbose but I hope you get what I am aiming at. If you think of a better way to make the question clearer please have at it :) TIA!"}
{"_id": "40059", "title": "What should I do when my code smells?", "text": "I'm a novice programmer and often when I'm working on my own projects, I always get the feeling that the design of my code is not the best it could be, and I hate this feeling. I end up spending time looking things up, but then I become overwhelmed easily with many details, such as design patterns to choose from and when to use an abstract class or an interface. Am I supposed to try and learn a little bit of everything at once?"}
{"_id": "189699", "title": "What non-theoretical, practical programming language has no reserved keywords?", "text": "I have been searching for a _practical_ programming language that has no reserved keywords but I haven't had any luck finding one. I am working on a programming language for my own edification and entertainment and I haven't needed to include any keywords yet, that is what led me to my search and the question: I don't see convenience to the compiler writer as being important to the end user of the language. Computers are powerful enough now days to be able to infer meanings from context. No more than a writer needs to label nouns, verbs and such when writing a novel, why should a programmer have to label functions and variables with `function x() {}` or `set x = 1` or `var x = 1` etc; when I can infer from the context of the statements that it is a function declaration or an invocation or that a label is an assignment to a value or a reference to that labels value? Here is a concrete example of what my current parser is doing, no need for reserved keywords to support common things that would normally have a bunch of _noise_ like `func` or `function` or `dec` or what not. _Function Declaration_               sum3(a,b,c) -> a + b + c.      _Function Invocation_               x = sum3(1,2,3).      _Anonymous Function Named x_               x = (a,b,c) -> a + b + c.     y = x(1,2,3).      **I would like to know why are keywords that important to a successful programming language?**"}
{"_id": "40054", "title": "Have you worked at a place which did not mandate annual employee evaluations or like?", "text": "Samuel Culbert thinks that they are evil. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122426318874844933.html I tend to agree - there is nothing worse than for someone creative (let's assume I am) to be judge on a 5-point system and to be stored away in HR department. However, I am not sure how many companies actually followed his advice. Have you ever worked at a place which never required one?"}
{"_id": "219000", "title": "Software license for a publicly funded institution", "text": "This is probably something that should go to the legal department -- presuming they have any inklings about software licensing -- but what software license should I use against code developed for use at a publicly funded institution (in the UK)? Specifically, it's internal-use code for various university systems. I believe it should be open source -- and feel that the MIT license would be most appropriate -- but I have a feeling that certain proprietary procedures and policies, that might be revealed by the code, _may_ be restricted. (\"May\" in italics, because I'm not 100% sure: As a publicly funded body, I am under the impression that anything that doesn't conflict with the Data Protection Act 1998 should be made available under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.) This is largely moot, because the source won't be published publicly. (Although, presumably, if anyone requests it, then that's allowed; providing sensitive information is redacted.) However, I'm interested to hear others' thoughts on the matter."}
{"_id": "219009", "title": "Moving business logic from services to classes?", "text": "I have a Grails application with a number of services that are starting to get very large. The flow in the majority of my service methods is   1. Database read (Returns DBCursor from MongoDB)   2. Iterate through the cursor and perform some operations.   3. Return results from operation. I'm beginning to consider moving the logic in Step 2 out to Groovy classes in order to clean up my code base and allow for unit testing. However reading some guidelines they state that the majority of the logic should go in services. Is moving this logic out to Groovy classes going aghainst best practices?"}
{"_id": "221924", "title": "Does Implementing a New Function Imply A New Major Version?", "text": "I am currently developing a new library for RESTful web requests in Puredata, and am about to release version 1.0.0. This version will not implement all HTTP verbs, only GET, PUT, POST and DELETE. In the next version, this library will most likely include the other HTTP verbs for RESTful requests, PATCH, HEAD, OPTIONS, CONNECT, TRACE. I am using Semantic Versioning for the version numbers. In the specs it says: > Minor version Y (x.Y.z | x > 0) MUST be incremented if new, backwards > compatible functionality is introduced to the public API. It MUST be > incremented if any public API functionality is marked as deprecated. It MAY > be incremented if substantial new functionality or improvements are > introduced within the private code. It MAY include patch level changes. > Patch version MUST be reset to 0 when minor version is incremented. > > Major version X (X.y.z | X > 0) MUST be incremented if any backwards > incompatible changes are introduced to the public API. It MAY include minor > and patch level changes. Patch and minor version MUST be reset to 0 when > major version is incremented. Now, I am unsure what to after implementing the remaining verbs: On the one hand, the functionality is backwards compatible, as the already implemented functionality does not change. On the other hand, the functionality is changing, as issuing a HEAD request will not result in an error message on the console, but in an output. In the first case, only an increase to the minor version is needed, in the second case, the major version must be increased. What is the correct interpretation in this case?"}
{"_id": "132852", "title": "Dealing with management that does not see value in improvements that are not immediately visible to the user", "text": "I can understand schedule pressure. You want to please your users, as they are the lifeblood of the company. However, it is also true that certain changes will make everything easier down the road. Unfortunately, management in my organization has an instinctive resistance to such changes and this resistance is so strong that it gets in the way of long-term improvements. For example, Apple recently introduced Automatic Reference Counting for iOS programs. This is a major improvement over the manual retain/release calls one previously had to use. The code is easier to write and easier to maintain. The changeover itself is likely to produce some crashes. But once those are worked out, the number of random weird crashes is likely to go down. I recently mentioned to my boss that I wanted to switch to automatic reference counting. His response was that he wanted to concentrate on visible improvements. It is likely that this response was in turn driven by pressure he is getting from above him - and probably right from the CEO. There are a lot of similar examples. The common thread is that something needs to be fixed but the short-term costs of the fix outweigh the short-term benefits, where \"short term\" is defined as \"within the next few weeks.\" How should I handle the situation? EDIT: Thanks for the responses. Keep 'em coming. Because it is relevant to my situation, I should make it clear that my manager and the CEO are both programmers -- though the CEO may by now have forgotten what this is like. Apparently their programmer sides have been overwhelmed by other pressures."}
{"_id": "55930", "title": "Licensing OS code, is it possible to protect certain blocks of code?", "text": "I'm working on a piece of code which is free to use, but when a license code (or serial key or any other term like that) has been bought will remove some advertising. The code will be freely available as open source, probably under a GPL license, but of course I would rather not have people messing around with the code that verifies the license code with an external provider. Is there any way to legally protect this piece of code from being modified, or at least from being distributed after being modified, keeping the rest of the code \"open\"?"}
{"_id": "132856", "title": "Which commit should close a Github issue when multiple commits are responsible?", "text": "I want to close issues in Github via my commit messages, but I'm not sure which commit should contain the magic \"Closes #XXX\" string when multiple commits are responsible for closing the issue. Specifically, I'm wondering if the last commit on my feature branch (always merged with `--no-ff`) should close the issue, or if I should close it via the merge commit that sort of \"summarizes\" the entire feature branch? Is there a standard way of doing this, something endorsed by the Git community?"}
{"_id": "226083", "title": "Using a variable in a Global context in webapps", "text": "In a webapp, I have a scenario where I need some kind of global context (Static like) for few variables, _for the current thread only_. If there are 3 different concurrent users, then I expect three corresponding global context variable for the 3 separate threads/sessions. Using a Static variable makes its scope global for all the threads. Is there a way in which I can achieve this?"}
{"_id": "15804", "title": "Adding new features to an old application", "text": "I wrote a .NET Windows application using framework 3.5. At that time, 3.5 was very new and I had knowledge of framework 2.0 only. Due to deadline, I didn't use any new features of version 3.5 and delivered the application. There was no time. It is now two years and the app. is running fine, but my clients have requested new features. There is a major scaling needed. The new code that I wrote so far uses many new features of .NET 3.5 and I am concentrating on reducing the new code size. The problem is that the new classes that I want to write are sometimes creating redundant methods for doing the same thing. I am not disturbing the old code. How to manage? If I replace old classes with new ones, it risks functionality and need thorough testing again. If I don't, the project size is increasing."}
{"_id": "247139", "title": "Are \"skip deltas\" unique to svn?", "text": "The good folks who created the SVN version control system use a structure they refer to as \"skip deltas\" to store the revision history of files internally. A revision is stored as a delta against an earlier revision. However, revision N is not necessarily stored as a delta against revision N-1, like this:               0 <- 1 <- 2 <- 3 <- 4 <- 5 <- 6 <- 7 <- 8 <- 9      Instead, revision N is stored as a delta against N-f(N), where f(N) is the greatest power of two that divides N:               0 <- 1    2 <- 3    4 <- 5    6 <- 7     0 <------ 2         4 <------ 6     0 <---------------- 4     0 <------------------------------------ 8 <- 9      (Superficially it looks like a skip list but really it's not that similar - for instance, skip deltas are not interested in supporting insertion in the middle of the list.) You can read more about it here. My question is: Do other systems use skip deltas? Were skip deltas known/used/published before SVN, or did the creators of SVN invent it themselves?"}
{"_id": "178839", "title": "Multiple parameters vs single parameter(object with multiple properties)", "text": "I have an Entity `Student` with following properties - (`name`, `joinedOn`, `birthday`, `age`, `batch`, etc.) and a function `fetchStudents(<params>)`. I want to fetch students based on multiple filters. In my method I have two ways to pass filters.   1. Pass all filters as params to the method   2. Make a class StudentCriteria with filters as fields and then pass the object of this class While working in java I always go with the second option but recently I'm working in php and I was advised to go with the first way. I am unable to figure out which way is better in maintaining the code, reusability and performance wise. Thanks."}
{"_id": "202098", "title": "how to integration dynamic web fields and forms", "text": "I'm trying to find a way to design backend that will be handling customized web forms creation on the fly. Once created those forms will be injected to part of the existing web pages. I've created dynamic forms successfully but I'm unable to figure out how I can integrate these newly created forms or custom fields into my web pages to handle like posting data to some restful api most probably, or some unified interface that can handle all of the custom forms/fields? I'm using backbonejs for my client side and for dynamic forms I'm using backbone.form plugin to create custom forms and fields on the fly. I'm persisting this on server. I've figured this part after a lot of RnD. I can show these forms and newly added fields to my already built forms on front end using backbone and presisted schema and data. But problem is, there can be multiple forms and many fields; think of it as multi tabs. I need to device a workaround in a way that all of my forms can post data to some unified/common/generalized server route where I can manipulate it."}
{"_id": "255146", "title": "How to store pdf files to MySQL and then list, open them using C#", "text": "I'm creating a c# employee management system app, I've created a form for Employee files and I don't have any idea how to store pdf files to mysql and then list and open them with c#."}
{"_id": "238146", "title": "Continuous Integration / Deployment: Test on commit, pull request, or what?", "text": "I read about CI/CD, loved it, but I'm having trouble with the details as everything I read was high level. Some authors seemed to suggest that there couldn't be any failing commits on the repository (or master branch?), so a programmer that is delivering bad code would be stopped and he wouldn't be able to create a big mess. He would be forced into fixing his code so that the tests pass. Others mentioned that the trigger would be the pull requests, not the commits. I haven't used pull requests a lot to be honest, and besides aren't they something external to git? They aren't part of git AFAIK, but part of services like github, bitbucket, etc., so I wasn't sure if I should bind my workflow to something like that. Any thoughts on this will help me greatly. Please also mention which tools you are using, eg: Jenkins, Buildbot, etc. None of the tools I have tried were very friendly IMO. The docs and examples were lacking or tied to certain technologies like java, or services like github. I even considered building my own, it shouldn't be too hard to get the basic functionality. Right?"}
{"_id": "178832", "title": "How to create contracts in python", "text": "I am currently learning Python (from Java) and have a question on contracts. _Example: an application defines an interface that all plugins must implement and then the main application can call it._ In Java:               public interface IPlugin {        public Image modify(Image img);      }           public class MainApp {        public main_app_logic() {           String pluginName = \"com.example.myplugin\";           IPlugin x = (IPlugin) Class.forName(pluginName);          x.modify(someimg);          }     }      The plugin implements the interface and we use reflection in main app to call it. That way, there's a contract between the main app and the plugin that both can refer to. How does one go about doing something similar in Python? And also, which approach is better? _P.S. I'm not posting this on SO because I'm much more concerned with the philosophy behind the two approaches._"}
{"_id": "178831", "title": "Using PDO with MVC", "text": "I asked this question at stackoverflow and received no response (closed as duplicate with no answer). I'm experimenting with OOP and I have the following basic MVC layout:               class Model {         // do database stuff     }          class View {         public function load($filename, $data = array()) {             if(!empty($data)) {                 extract($data);             }                  require_once('views/header.php');             require_once(\"views/$filename\");             require_once('views/footer.php');         }     }          class Controller {         public $model;         public $view;              function __construct() {             $this->model = new Model();             $this->view = new View();                  // determine what page we're on             $page = isset($_GET['view']) ? $_GET['view'] : 'home';             $this->display($page);         }              public function display($page) {             switch($page) {                 case 'home':                     $this->view->load('home.php');                 break;             }         }     }      These classes are brought together in my setup file:               // start session     session_start();          require_once('Model.php');     require_once('View.php');     require_once('Controller.php');          new Controller();      Now where do I place my database connection code and how do I pass the connection onto the model?               try {         $db = new PDO('mysql:host='.DB_HOST.';dbname='.DB_DATABASE.'', DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD);         $db->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);     } catch(PDOException $err) {         die($err->getMessage());     }      I've read about Dependency Injection, factories and miscellaneous other design patterns talking about keeping SQL out of the model, but it's all over my head using abstract examples. Can someone please just show me a straight-forward practical example?"}
{"_id": "137372", "title": "Is Object Oriented stuff really that important?", "text": "For years, I have been doing Algorithmic stuff, writing scalable data structures for internet search, for example Randomized Binary Search Trees for Auto Recommendation, BitMaps, Wisdom of Crowd based Algorithms using Graphs, writing some interesting Machine Learning Algorithms like Clustering, Anomaly Detection, working on Information Retrieval stuff and so on There is a common thing in the things that I have mentioned above. All the above stuff;each if coded in a language like C++ requires handful of classes. I mean they are interesting problems but they are not complex in terms of heavily loaded Object Oriented stuff. I have never used Inheritance, virtual stuff etc. Though I have heavily used Generic Programming, Templates and so on. I love C++ (- Bulky OO stuff, As I like what Joe Armstrong's, creator of Erlang says, In OO World if you ask for a banana you get a big jungle alongwith gorilla holding the banana). I enjoy coding in other languages like Java, Python too. Now my question is since I am enjoying the kind of projects/Algorithms I am working on do I need to really learn OO stuff, will I be a better coder/designer just by using the stuff like Inheritance, Dynamic Polymorphism (virtuals)? OR can I move to the world of Functional Programming (I have not done it till now) which attracts me more as I can just focus on tasks/algorithms and not let Kingdom Of Noun based OO stuff, has-a, is-a rule me? In short will/can OO stuff help me at all for the kind of projects/Algorithms that I have mentioned above? EDIT: One extremely interesting link to add here: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.in/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html"}
{"_id": "178835", "title": "How can a programmer refine their skills in non-visual ways?", "text": "I feel like when I am not writing, I am reading. When I come home from my programming job I write and read software and about software. The problem is though, both reading and writing requires my eyes to be focused. That doesn't work when I'm biking, cooking shopping for groceries. Sometime I use text-to-speech programs to listen to blogs, but I feel like there could be more. What ways can a software developer learn more without requiring eye focus? How to blind coders learn the craft?"}
{"_id": "178834", "title": "What steps should be taken to make sure your software is usable by disabled people?", "text": "I want to make sure a piece of software I am writing is usable by people with various disabilities such as blindness and an inability to use a mouse and / or keyboard. Unfortunately I have no experience with things such as screen readers or other methods that disabled people use to make using a computer easier / possible. I've never really had much experience with disabilities at all and unfortunately I don't know any disabled people who I can ask. I was wondering what other people do to make sure that their software is available to a wide range of people with varying abilities? This seems to be a subject matter that is often ignored by developers and I think it is a real shame. Edit: If anyone has any specific information related to desktop development in addition to the information already provided in the answers below I would be grateful. Particularly methods that apply to cross platform development on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux."}
{"_id": "208635", "title": "Web Development on Windows but on Linux Environment", "text": "I do PHP Development on WAMP but sometime it don't work properly when I upload the files to a Linux server, its involve a lot of testing and annoying. I am looking for a solution to do PHP Development on Windows but the files will be sync with Linux Server. I do not want to use SFTP/SSH clients like WinSCP to view or edit files. I was told to look at vagrant, is there any other solution?"}
{"_id": "33968", "title": "How to review code that you do not understand?", "text": "I have been given the role to improve development in our company. The first thing I wanted to start was code reviews since that has never been done here before. There are 3 programmers in our company. I am a web programmer, my known languages are mainly PHP, ActionScript and JavaScript. The other 2 developers write internal applications in VB.net We have been doing code reviews for a couple weeks now. I find it hard to understand VB code. So when they say what its doing, for the most part I just have to take their word for it. If I do see something that looks wrong, I explain my opinion and I explain how I would address it in one of the languages I know. Sometimes my suggestions are welcomed but many times I am told things like \"this is the best way of doing it in _this_ language\" or \"that doesn't apply to _this_ language\" or similar things of that nature. This may be true, but without knowing the language I am not sure how to confirm or refute these claims. I know one possible solution would be to learn vb so I can do better code reviews. I really have no interest in learning vb (especially since I have a list of other technologies I am trying to learn for my own projects) and would like to keep this as a last resort but it is an option. Another idea that came to me is, they both have interest in C# and so do I. Its relative to them because its .net and relative to me because its more similar to the languages I know. Yet it is new to all of us. I thought about the benefits of us all collaborating on a pet C#.net project and reviewing each others code from that. I guess theres also the possibility hiring a consultant to come in and give us some code reviews. What would you recommend I do in this situation."}
{"_id": "108403", "title": "Is there a correlation between code complexity and developer productivity?", "text": "Is the time spent refactoring a code base worth it in the long run, in terms of developer productivity? It seems pretty clear to me that modifying a clean, well designed system is much simpler and faster than working on a poorly designed one, but I'm after some solid evidence. Are there any studies around this topic?"}
{"_id": "230331", "title": "is it considered plagiarism to comment out code I copied from elsewhere?", "text": "If the plagiarized code is commented out because I found another way to solve the problem, but I forgot to remove the comments, is that considered plagiarism? I used the copied code to help me debug and compare the output between my own code and the copied code. In the final code, I commented out the copied code. Since comments don't affect how the code runs, can comments be considered plagiarism?"}
{"_id": "108406", "title": "N queens, X by Y board decision problem interview question", "text": "I was asked the following question in an interview today and I've been thinking about it ever since. I was not able to answer it and haven't been able to find a solution online. Given a chess board with dimensions X by Y and N queens, determine whether it is possible to arrange these queens on the board such that they cannot attack each other. A 2 x 3 board with 2 queens does have a solution so the algorithm would return true:               Q . .     . . Q      I'm looking for a programming approach to this puzzle, not just ways to solve it on paper, for example."}
{"_id": "219343", "title": "db design: circular references for the-one-of-many case", "text": "There are many questions about circular references around (if they are bad or not) but this one will be concrete. Consider the following case. There are two models Image and User. Users have associated images and they can pick one of them as their profile image. There are essentially two ways of modelling this (forgive me my pseudo-syntax): 1)               User:        id - primary key        profile_image - nullable foreign key to Image          Image:        id - primary key        user - foreign key to User      2)               User:        id - primary key          Image:        id - primary key        user - foreign key to User        profile - boolean true/false         Both of these approaches have some problems.   **In the first case:**   * well-known chicken-egg problem (e.g. foreign keys must be off when recovering from backup)   * It can happen that profile image points outside of domain of images associated with user   * There is a redundant dependency link (i.e. one more relation when compared to the first solution). That will have some impact on an application code   * What if we later decide to have an ordering on images where the first one is the profile one? **The second case:**   * There is slight data redundancy (many times **false** )   * **true** can occur more than once   * slightly less intuitive (at least for me) So my question is, which of these two solutions is better/cleaner? What do you prefer and how to tackle problems they bring."}
{"_id": "229061", "title": "Are these programming \"classics\" still relevant today and should I read them?", "text": "I have come across numerous older posts that highly recommend the following language agnostic programming books:   1. **Code Complete** by Steve McConnel   2. **The Pragmatic Programmer** \\- Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas   3. **Programming Pearls** \\- Jon Bentley   4. **Refactoring** \\- Fowler, Beck, Brant, Opdyke, Roberts   5. **Design Patterns** \\- Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides   6. **Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability** \\- Steve Frug I found these recommendations on Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror and Scott Hanselman's Blog and mostly the same recommendations on other sites as well. If I read these book today, are they still relevant and will they improve my code, expand my mind, thinking abilities and generally make me a better programmer? Are some timeless, while others are not? Are there other brilliant books, I have missed, that will be useful today?"}
{"_id": "229060", "title": "Does DDD make sense for apps which mostly present data?", "text": "I'm responsible for designing a dashboard and data manipulation front-end for a sale transaction database and am not quite sure what type of architecture to use. The database is populated by an external ETL system. The required functionality for my app is very simple; it must display a few alerts of exception conditions it detects in the database, present a few charts and tables, and some basic CRUD operations on a few tables. There is very little _behaviour_ required; the business will use the app to find out about things, rather than do things. Given this lack of behaviour, does a DDD approach make sense? My current thinking is to create database views to encapsulate the queries my app will need, wrap these views up with an ORM, and have the web controller query the repository layer to get an ORM object with the data it needs. This ORM object would then be passed into the presentation layer. This does of course create strong coupling between the database, the ORM framework, the presentation layer, and my logic. A reasonable amount of what logic there is would wind up in the database views. Can I make a DDD approach work for this kind of app, or is there a more suitable way of doing it?"}
{"_id": "234824", "title": "Identity matrix using Fortran 95", "text": "The following code give the identity matrix of any size the user wish it to be:               program identitymatrix            real, dimension(:, :), allocatable :: I       character:: fmt*8       integer :: ms, j           print*,'the size of the matrix is?'      read*,ms            allocate(I(ms,ms))       I = 0                           ! Initialize the array.       forall(j = 1:ms) I(j,j) = 1     ! Set the diagonal.            ! I is the identity matrix, let's show it:            write (fmt, '(A,I2,A)') '(', ms, 'F6.2)'       ! if you consider to have used the (row, col) convention,        ! the following will print the transposed matrix (col, row)       ! but I' = I, so it's not important here         write (*, fmt) I(:,:)            deallocate(I)          end program identitymatrix     (the end of the code )      I am a bit confused about these two code pieces ?               write (fmt, '(A,I2,A)') '(', ms, 'F6.2)'          write (*, fmt) I(:,:)      What does `(A,I2,A)` do exactly?"}
{"_id": "38002", "title": "What arguments are there in favor of weak typing?", "text": "This came up in a discussion with a friend, and I found myself hard-pressed to think up an any good arguments. What benefits do weak typing confer?"}
{"_id": "38003", "title": "The distributed office, is it viable?", "text": "I've played with the thought of how I would construct my dream company and how one could make it highly attractive to great programmers. If one could employ a few \"superstar\" programmers instead of many \"good\" ones. One thing I personally would enjoy is the freedom to work from whenever I wanted. So I could travel around different cities if I felt like it and work remotely, or I could simply sit at home when there was crunch mode. In my experience however you do want some kind of office with peers where you can discuss things and have company \"culture\" So say you wanted to hire a bunch of top talent programmers, possibly from different countries and cities. How would one set it up to compete with campuses? Having a completely office-less company seems a bit sub-optimal, you probably want some office space where people can meet and chose to work from. I guess what one could do is have small offices in different countries and let people work from the ones they chose. Programmer's could take off for \"crunch- modes\" when warranted but also work from location when teamwork and face to face was needed Another model would be to instead of having offices of your own hire seats in offices where other programmers work. That way even if there's only one or two employees in your city you could still get some company if you felt \"lonely\" from working remotely. Another idea is that like one week every other month you take the whole team to the same location. Which might not be an office but could be just some interesting city or attractice resort and work together from there. People with spouses might have a problem with things like that though. You might also have a network of company apartments in different cities (for 2-3 people) , both where you have offices and also in some other locations so programmers or teams or programmers could roam around and \"clump\" together as they wish. If it was legal (I'm not sure how it differs from country to country) you could even swat two flies in one go and have combined office/apartments in different cities. \"Hack Pad: London\" \"Hack Pad:Berlin\" etc a) So I guess my questions are, would a setup like this be viable? How could one improve the concept? b) Would you find a company which gives you this kind of freedom attractive or would you prefer one with a big office you go into every day? So basically, what would make a \"superstar\" programmer chose working with a company setup like this instead at the google, facebook or microsoft campus where you get the fun and company of lots of talented individuals."}
{"_id": "229069", "title": "Code ownership with multiple Scrum teams", "text": "If two Scrum teams use the same software component, who is responsible for providing a clear architectural vision of that component and maintain/develop this vision as the code base evolves? In Scrum you are supposed to have a collective code ownership, so how to make sure that development done by Team A doesn't interfere with development done by Team B?"}
{"_id": "229068", "title": "AngularJS: directives and controllers: resolve, loading, reloading", "text": "I have a philosophy question about AngularJS and directives but correct implementation of the next problem solves it. So,   1. I need an AngularJS directive,   2. It loads some data via _several_ (not one!) `$http` requests,   3. It shows it,   4. It updates data (and re-shows it) every second,   5. The view has to be unchanged while data is loading/reloading. How should I do it in a correct way? And what about if I need a controller but not directive? (Difference is that controllers have `resolve` options but directives don't.) P.S.: I need a concrete scheme or a code! I know which components (`$http`, `$q`, etc.) I have to use. I don't know how to do it in a **right way**!"}
{"_id": "247131", "title": "How to best implement K-nearest neighbours in C# for large number of dimensions?", "text": "I'm implementing the K-nearest neighbours classification algorithm in C# for a training and testing set of about 20,000 samples and 25 dimensions. There are only two classes, represented by '0' and '1' in my implementation. For now, I have the following simple implementation :               // testSamples and trainSamples consists of about 20k vectors each with 25 dimensions     // trainClasses contains 0 or 1 signifying the corresponding class for each sample in trainSamples     static int[] TestKnnCase(IList<double[]> trainSamples, IList<double[]> testSamples, IList<int[]> trainClasses, int K)     {         Console.WriteLine(\"Performing KNN with K = \"+K);              var testResults = new int[testSamples.Count()];               var testNumber = testSamples.Count();         var trainNumber = trainSamples.Count();         // Declaring these here so that I don't have to 'new' them over and over again in the main loop,          // just to save some overhead         var distances = new double[trainNumber][];          for (var i = 0; i < trainNumber; i++)         {            distances[i] = new double[2]; // Will store both distance and index in here         }              // Performing KNN ...         for (var tst = 0; tst < testNumber; tst++)         {             // For every test sample, calculate distance from every training sample             Parallel.For(0, trainNumber, trn =>             {                 var dist = GetDistance(testSamples[tst], trainSamples[trn]);                 // Storing distance as well as index                  distances[trn][0] = dist;                 distances[trn][1] = trn;             });                  // Sort distances and take top K (?What happens in case of multiple points at the same distance?)             var votingDistances = distances.AsParallel().OrderBy(t => t[0]).Take(K);                  // Do a 'majority vote' to classify test sample             var yea = 0.0;             var nay = 0.0;                  foreach (var voter in votingDistances)             {                 if (trainClasses[(int)voter[1]] == 1)                      yea++;                 else                    nay++;             }             if (yea > nay)                 testResults[tst] = 1;             else                 testResults[tst] = 0;              }              return testResults;     }          // Calculates and returns square of Euclidean distance between two vectors     static double GetDistance(IList<double> sample1, IList<double> sample2)     {         var distance = 0.0;         // assume sample1 and sample2 are valid i.e. same length               for (var i = 0; i < sample1.Count; i++)         {                var temp = sample1[i] - sample2[i];             distance += temp * temp;         }         return distance;     }      This takes quite a bit of time to execute. On my system it takes about 80 seconds to complete. How can I optimize this, while ensuring that it would also scale to larger number of data samples? As you can see, I've tried using PLINQ and parallel for loops, which did help (without these, it was taking about 120 seconds). What else can I do? I've read about KD-trees being efficient for KNN in general, but every source I read stated that they're not efficient for higher dimensions. I also found this stackoverflow discussion about this, but it seems like this is 3 years old, and I was hoping that someone would know about better solutions to this problem by now. I've looked at machine learning libraries in C#, but for various reasons I don't want to call R or C code from my C# program, and some other libraries I saw were no more efficient than the code I've written. Now I'm just trying to figure out how I could write the most optimized code for this myself. I cannot reduce the number of dimensions using PCA or something. For this particular model, 25 dimensions are required."}
{"_id": "37659", "title": "Meet the deadline or less bugs?", "text": "In an ideal world it is preferrable to meet the deadline with less bugs. But from your experience which is more preferrable/acceptable:   1. Meet the deadline but has a number of bugs because developer rush into things   2. Less bugs but not quite meet the deadline because the developer is very rigorous in writing the code"}
{"_id": "232791", "title": "Slight extension for SQL prepared statements syntax. Need advice", "text": "In my database abstraction library I am extending SQL prepared statements syntax to hint a parser with expected literal type. I take it as a very essential improvement, my reasoning you can read here. If you want to question the idea itself, please let me know in the comments - I'd like to start another question instead of mixing it here. The advice I want is on the syntax. I am quite ignorant of all the languages and dialects beside php and mysql, and may be there already a general purpose solution I am unaware of. If not - then I want to know your personal opinion or suggestion. At the moment, only positional placeholders supported. Yet I was asked many times to add support for the named ones. However, I cannot decide which syntax to choose for that. At the moment I mark a conventional question mark with single letter, i.e. `?s` \\- string, `?i` \\- int, `?n` \\- name (identifier) and so forth. Yet for the named placeholder (`:name` style) the only sane option to me is               i:name      or, if I decide to add more verbose modifiers, even               int:name      so, the query would look like               SELECT * FROM ident:table WHERE id IN (int:id)      The question is: do you see any drawbacks for such a syntax? Do you have a suggestion for any other style? Do you think it's readable at all? Another question is on repeating things. At the moment I have two placeholders for the arrays - `?a` for the comma separated string list and `?u` for the `?n=?s` pairs. It bugs me a long time already, that such a syntax is superfluous, yet insufficient. What if I need a set of comma-separated identifiers? Or even a complex statement like whole VALUES clause? With some sort of repetition operator I can make SQL query building dramatically better. Here are examples of what I am thinking of:               SELECT * FROM table WHERE id IN([?i])     SELECT [?n] FROM table     INSERT INTO table VALUES [(?i,?s,?s,?s)]     UPDATE table SET [?n=?s]      As you can see, I use square brackets to designate a repetition. However, I am still not sure if I should use them. First objection is that they will collide with SQL server identifier syntax. Next is rather philosophical one - it is another syntax element and I want to introduce as less changes to the syntax as possible. Also, this syntax will require much more complicated parsing logic, which I am trying to avoid too. So - another option is just to extend the set of types, either with distinct placeholders like `?k` for the list of numbers, `?o` for the list of identifiers, of with adding a single=letter modifier to the existing type like `?as` (or `?astr` or `astr:name`) is an array of strings, `?an` and the like. There is another option - to detect repetitions automatically. If we have a scalar - format it as a single value. If it's array coming - format as a comma-separated list. However, many people find this approach unacceptable, as it can lead to unpredictable results and erroneous (however still safe) query. I am still in doubts if I may choose this way."}
{"_id": "236348", "title": "Accessing a private array when I have an extension method", "text": "I'm trying to make a number of data classes for my C#/XNA game, which would essentially be a wrapper around `T[,]`:               public interface IGrid<T>         where T : struct     {         Point Size { get; }         T this[int x, int y] { get; set; }     }      For example, I might have a Heightmap object which is essentially an `IGrid<float>`, or I might have a Level.TileData object which is an `IGrid<byte>` or `IGrid<int>`. These could be entirely separate classes with specific helper methods, etc. I also made a small extension library that operates specifically on any 2-dimensional array:               public static class Transformations     {         static T[,] Transpose(this T[,] value);         static T[,] FlipHorizontal(this T[,] value);         static T[,] FlipVertical(this T[,] value);         static T[,] RotateClockwise(this T[,] value);         static T[,] RotateCounterClockwise(this T[,] value);     }      However, when I actually implement `IGrid<T>`, I encounter a small design issue. Because the backing array would be private/protected, any client code that actually uses `IGrid<T>` would be unable to use my extension library. According to CA1819 and Eric's blog, publicly exposing an array (even via properties!) is a bad idea, as it would be fully mutable. The suggested workaround is to clone the array, then expose it as an immutable type (which means I still don't have an array to use the library on). Am I overthinking things, or is there an elegant solution here? I really like the idea of using indexers to read/write data on the object, but in some situations I _might_ want to work with the entire array at once."}
{"_id": "89059", "title": "ACM membership vs ACM online free articles (Association of Computer Machinery)", "text": "I am a software developer. I consider joining ACM. However, I find that there are free articles on ACM Ditial Library, e.g. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1953122.1953141 In addition to that, there are free RSS feeds I can subscribe to, e.g. http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/109710-new-sql-an-alternative-to-nosql- and-old-sql-for-new-oltp-apps/fulltext The memberhsip type I consider joining is ACM Professional Membership PLUS ACM Digital Library $198 USD https://campus.acm.org/public/qj/ProfQJ/qjprof_control.cfm?form_type=Professional&promo=QJPUB **What are things available for ACM paid members ONLY**?, below is the list I know **1)** free safari, 24x7 ebook library Please contribute your opinions? Should I join ACM or use its free online document? My interest is in advanced topics in web app, database app."}
{"_id": "79568", "title": "Software/Tool used in some presentations (TechEd, PluralSight, etc)", "text": "Does anybody know what application is used in some presentations in TechEd, PluralSight, etc? It looks like the following: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qGtHe.jpg) but it also allows drawing arrows to emphasize on something, rectangles, etc?"}
{"_id": "238497", "title": "Finding out which version of a file a line was added/changed", "text": "Is it generally possible while using source code management to figure out in what version of a file a specific line was added? If so, what SCM systems support this?"}
{"_id": "170381", "title": "Better way to read XML", "text": "We are storing config files as XML. With that being said, when reading the XML file, is it better to use LINQ to query the XML file or would using the `XMLDocument` and/or `XMLNode` classes better to use? To me, it would seem that in this instance, LINQ is not necessary. But then I tried to think of any value of one over the other down the road if the structure of the XML were to change. So my question is, is one method of reading XML better or more accepted way of doing it over the other?"}
{"_id": "234796", "title": "What are arguments against using articles in method name?", "text": "I want to use articles in method names sometimes. Like some service method 'getStudentsOfATeacher()'. What are arguments against that?"}
{"_id": "234795", "title": "How can one guarantee unique identifiers, even in the case of system collapse and restoration from backup", "text": "In the manufacturing of a device each one has to get a unique identifier. So far so good, one can have a file containing the last used ID on a shared drive, or a network-based service managing and assigning IDs so that the uploading of the ID into the device will not be limited to a single workstation. However, in the case of a total system crash and restoration from backup, one can have a few devices with the same ID, if some devices were manufactured after the backup was made. One could have each workstation save the biggest used ID, and check whether it's not larger than the one they got from the network, but it might happen that the workstation with the last produced device is not turned on after the crash. One might require workers to write down the last used ID after their shifts, but this doesn't sound to be fool- proof either. Is there a best practice besides having multiple services managing the IDs, with at least one of them off-site? The IDs are large enough (32 bits) compared to the number of devices to be produced to allow for small gaps, but not large enough to go the true RNG way. This way, one can increase the largest ID by a number significantly larger than the amount being produced per day, but how can one keep this \"company practice\" enforced for possibly decades?"}
{"_id": "234794", "title": "Domain driven design and WCF services architecture", "text": "I am trying to figure out how to architecture my project in the DDD paradigm (a complete beginner in DDD) and stumbled upon a problem about the implementation of the web services... These are some options that I see: **Fat client, Fat server (option 1):**   * Server:      * Repository layer: talks to database and can return domain objects.     * Domain layer: contains domain objects with business logic and validations.     * Service layer: acts like a fa\u00e7ade to the domain layer.     * WCF layer: exposes the service layer to web methods. It maps domain objects to appropriate DTO objects.   * Client:      * Infrastructure layer: talks to server through WCF services. It maps DTO objects back to domain objects.     * Domain layer: contains domain objects with business logic and validations.     * Service layer: acts like a fa\u00e7ade to the domain layer.     * UI layer (WinForms): uses service layer to communicate with domain objects. Good: because the domain layer is both on client and on server, the validations happens on both (good for clients - reduces number of calls to the server, good for server - because of 'never trust the user data'). Bad: validation happens twice, a lot of mapping needed (for example a simple query to the database: domain (returned by repository) -> DTO (needed for WCF) -> domain (needed by domain layer on client) -> DTO (for WinForms). Any change in the domain should be deployed to server and client at the same time. Complicated? **Fat client, thin server (option 2):**   * Server:     * Repository: talks to database and returns DTO objects.     * WCF layer: exposes the database calls to web methods.   * Client: Exactly the same as in option 1. Good: on the client I can treat WCF services as a regular repository which returns DTO objects. Simpler as option nr. 1. Bad: is it OK that the repository works on DTO-s instead of domain objects? Also - server doesn't perform any validation so it has to trust clients about the data. **Thin client, fat server (option 3):**   * Server: Exactly the same as in option 1.   * Client:     * Infrastructure layer: talks to server through WCF services.     * UI layer (WinForms): uses presenters to communicate with the server via WCF calls in infrastructure layer. Good: all domain logic is on the server. Bad: the client doesn't contain any validation, so it can make a lot of unnecessary calls to the server. * * * I am leaning toward my first option, but it looks like I am overcomplicating things... Any advice or other options?"}
{"_id": "234793", "title": "Why does Python use hash table to implement dict, but not Red-Black Tree?", "text": "Why does Python use hash table to implement dict, but not Red-Black Tree? What is the key? Performance?"}
{"_id": "85924", "title": "Asking my employer if I can open source a project I'm working on for the company", "text": "I'm an intern working for a company for the summer. I've been warmly received and I manage to impress my manager a lot (I guess I'm more experienced than the other people he interviewed). Recently I've been developing a kiosk type application which will generate a simple GUI menu from a text config file a 4 year old could write. I love the project and it has become my baby. However, in the corporate world, whatever you develop for your employer...becomes theirs (or so I've heard). I would really love to be able to keep on working on the project after the summer and I would also want to open source it. How would I go about asking for this? The code doesn't have any company secrets and most of the people here advocate open sourced software."}
{"_id": "255148", "title": "Should I throw guard exceptions that will be thrown by internal methods anyway?", "text": "I have some fairly simple code (C#):                   /// <summary>         /// Truncates a string to a maximum length.          /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"value\">     The string to truncate. </param>         /// <param name=\"maxLength\"> The maximum length of the string. </param>         /// <returns>         /// The original string if its length is less than or equal to max length, else a truncated         /// string of length maxLength.         /// </returns>         public static string Truncate(string value, int maxLength)         {             if(maxLength <= 0) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(\"maxLength\");                  if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) return value;                  return value.Length <= maxLength ? value : value.Substring(0, maxLength);         }      It's clear that if `maxLength` is less than 0, I can't use it as a string length, and so I am currently using a guard statement to prevent invalid `maxLength` values. My question is: is it good or bad practice to use this guard statement, when `value.Substring` will throw the same exception anyway? Is it just wasted code?"}
{"_id": "103009", "title": "Is there a canonical book on general abstractions and modeling?", "text": "I've been trying to understand the fundamentals of general abstractions and modeling: there are quite a lot of books when you search for abstractions, but most of those seem to be about learning object-oriented programming in a given language. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about general abstractions and modeling? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "213722", "title": "Database is performing slow, even all the tables are having normalization", "text": "One of the interviewers asked me this question: > Tables are created with appropriate normalization rules, However the > database is performing slow. [Ie.: The select, insert statements are taking > time to do his operation.] What are areas we need to look to improve the > database performance. I understood this will be a vague question. Please provide some suggestions. And also what are the areas we need to look in Query Execution plan?"}
{"_id": "45155", "title": "experience: coding on netbooks", "text": "HI, i want to buy a netbook for doing some stuff in the train. Can someone report how it is to code simple stuff on a netbook? 10/12\". I wanted to buy a very cheap one. like 1gb ram 1,6ghz blabla. and run linux on it with apache. i will code with JS/PHP. and as IDE i'll be using notepad++. so nothing big like eclispe or something else. maybe later on eclipse for java, but that doesn't really matter. so first, would this setup work fine on such a netbook and, is it okay for coding? I don't style any homepages on the netbook, I just want to code. would be nice if someone can share his experience in that. thanks :)"}
{"_id": "205846", "title": "Difference between trigger, handler and callback", "text": "It's current to see the terms `callback`, `trigger` and `handler` in some API documentations. It is just synonymous or each term correspond to a specific concept? I used to think that this terms are just synonymous, but I must be wrong ... Thanks !"}
{"_id": "205845", "title": "Should I encrypt files saved by my program", "text": "I'm trying to decide on what format I should save data in, and hopefully this question will help me come to a decision. The program I'm writing uses 'databases' in which `word=meaning` (not a dictionary, that was just an example). I don't really want people to be able to manually edit these 'databases' without my program easily, but at the same time I'm looking for interoperability between programming langauges (namely C#, PHP, Java and Objective C) At the minute, the main contenders are SQLite, XML and SQL Server CE (although PHP doesn't have support for Server CE, but that doesn't have to be too much of an issue). Really, my question is, should I use encryption because I have read that it is often just as easy to decrypt? And if you support encryption, how do you deal with the encryption key - do I just generate a long, complicated string? Or is binary enough? Nothing in the database is too critical, however I would like to have an `isEditable` 'key' so my program knows whether to allow edits or not. And I'd also like to use my own file extension."}
{"_id": "103004", "title": "What is the typical Pythonic view on re-using python modules outside of their initial intent?", "text": "**Short Question**   Does it fly in the face of the Pythonic view to reuse / repurpose python modules for projects out side of their intent? **Background**   Over the past several months I have been working on a project that uses the Python unittest module to run manual system tests. Please see questions 1 2 and 3 for greater detail on my project and some of the hurdles I have had to overcome. I would like to know, in general, if it acceptable to reuse modules for other purposes? Most of the comments I have received have been along the lines of \"this is not a unittest\", or \"you should write your own testrunner\". My push back on that, is if a module does 90% of what you need it to do with litte to no modification and contains additional (knowingly unneeded) functionality why on earth would you write your own module?"}
{"_id": "103007", "title": "What programming magazines pay for articles from guest writers?", "text": "Do any programming magazines accept contributions and pay the authors for them? If so, what magazines are these, or how can I go about finding them?"}
{"_id": "141161", "title": "Do I have to write a lot of boilerplate code if I keep working using Java?", "text": "I'm working for a company writing ERP applications. My problem is that I have to write tons of boilerplate code. I came up with ideas to automatize/prevent the drudgery but only some of them were accepted. I have been told by the lead developer that my ideas tend to be go far afield and I should write code everyone can understand. I had a discussion about this lately and it seems to me that this kind of code ramp is within java's philosophy. I have to write lots of code to achiveve simple things not because it is necessary but because this is the way most of the people at the company think. Is this universally applicable to most of the companies out there using java or this is just my company's view? Do I have to get used to the drudgery if I keep working for java-based firms?"}
{"_id": "218849", "title": "How do you avoid looping mistakes? Mistakes that are not detected by systems", "text": "I had this crazy initialisation -- `documentList = new ArrayList<Map<String,Integer>>();` which I intended to store a new map everytime in a loop but unfortunately put itself inside the loop. And you know the havoc. How do you detect such mistakes? I might be looking for suggestions on 'recommended debugging techniques' but am also looking for more expert advice"}
{"_id": "47059", "title": "Why isn't there a culture of paying for frameworks?", "text": "One of the side effects of the recent trend of \"Lean\" startups, and the app store era, is that consumers are more acclimatised to paying small prices for small games / products. Eg.:   * Online SAAS that charges ~$5 / month (the basecamp style of product)   * Games which are short, fun, and cheap ($0.99 from the app store This market has been defined by \"doing one thing well, and charging people for it.\" DHH of Rails / 37 Signals fame argues that if your website isn't going to make money, don't bother making it. Why doesn't the same rule apply to frameworks? There are lots of software framework projects out there - many which are mature and feature-rich, which offer developers significant value, yet there doesn't seem to be a market or culture of paying for these. It seems that the projects which do charge money are often things like UI component toolsets, and are often marginalized in favour of free alternatives. Why is this? Surely programmers / businesses see the value in contributing back to projects such as Ruby, Rails, Hibernate, Spring, Ant, Groovy, Gradle, (the list goes on). I'm not suggesting that these frameworks should start charging for anyone who wants to use them, but that there must be a meaningful business model that would allow the developers to earn money from the time they invest developing the framework. Any thoughts as to why this model hasn't emerged / succeeded? **Edit** To be clear: This isn't a post about down playing the importance of free, open source software. This is a post about asking why a culture of paying for frameworks doesn't exist."}
{"_id": "15379", "title": "What sort of Design Patterns do you use in Android Development?", "text": "I have been developing on Android for a couple months now, and building upon one in house program I found the scalability to be lacking. I have that gut feeling that if I applied some OO Design Patterns I would get an overall better program in speed, scalability, and readability. Do any of you SOdians have some ways you applied a/many design pattern(s) that just seem to fit extremely well with the way Android works?"}
{"_id": "213099", "title": "How to cross-reference many character encodings with ASCII OR UTFx?", "text": "I'm working with a binary structure, the goal of which is to index the significance of specific bits for any character encoding so that we may trigger events while doing specific checks against the profile. Each character encoding scheme has an associated system record. This record's leading value will be a C++ `unsigned long long` binary value and signifies the length, in bits, of encoded characters. Following the length are three values, each is a bit field of that length.   * offset_mask - defines the occurrence of non-printable characters within the min,max of print_mask   * range_mask - defines the occurrence of the most popular 50% of printable characters   * print_mask - defines the occurrence value of printable characters The structure of profiles has changed from the op of this question. Most likely I will try to factorize or compress these values in the long-term instead of starting out with ranges after reading more. I have to write some of the core functionality for these main reasons.   * It has to fit into a particular event architecture we are using,    * Better understanding of character encoding. I'm about to need it.   * Integrating into non-linear design is excluding many libraries without special hooks. I'm unsure if there is a standard, cross-encoding mechanism for communicating such data already. I'm just starting to look into how chardet might do profiling as suggested by @amon. The Unicode BOM would be easily enough (for my current project) if all encodings were Unicode. Of course ideally, one would like to support all encodings, but I'm not asking about implementation - only the general case. How can these profiles be efficiently populated, to produce a set of bitmasks which we can use to match strings with common characters in multiple languages? If you have any editing suggestions please feel free, I am a lightweight when it comes to localization, which is why I'm trying to reach out to the more experienced. Any caveats you may be able to help with will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "194980", "title": "Hosting long-running worker inside IIS", "text": "Is it possible to host a long-running worker inside ASP.NET application? The worker (for it's a windows service) is reading from a queue sending messages to a WCF service. Would it be possible to run this \"light long-running worker\" inside an ASP.NET application? I read about setting pool start mode to \"always running\" and then using an AppStart class, which starts the worker. I would like to get rid of the windows service (deployments and debugging problems) and embed this work inside IIS. Any suggestion?"}
{"_id": "171650", "title": "Is there any difference between return n and exit(n) in C?", "text": "Is there any difference between `return n` (in the `main` function) and `exit(n)` in C? Is it defined by C or POSIX standards or it depends on OS or compiler?"}
{"_id": "170522", "title": "Logging in JSON Effect on Performance", "text": "I see more and more articles about logging in JSON. You can also find one on NodeJS blog. Why does everyone like it so much? I can only see more operations getting involved:   * A couple new objects being created.   * Stringifying objects, which either involves calculating string length or multiple string allocations.   * GCing all the crap that was created. Is there any test on performance when using JSON logging and regular string logging? Do people use JSON (for logging) in enterprise projects?"}
{"_id": "231174", "title": "How to mark unit/integration tests when they do not apply for the current test configuration - Inconclusive or Passed?", "text": "In my test environment we are running the same set of integration (and sometimes unit) tests against different systems that have different capabilities.   Some of the tests cannot be executed against some of the systems because a feature that enables this scenario is missing or we need completely different behavior.   Currently we are using MSTest and have tests with this pattern:               [TestMethod]     public void TestMethod1()     {         if(targetSystem.SupportsFeatureX == false)             Assert.Inconclusive(\"Not supported by underlying system\");         // the code for the actual test follows     }      Should we mark the test as `Inconclusive` or just let it `Pass` if the feature check is not satisfied?   Please note that `targetSystem` is a third party system that we have no control over so we just live with features that are present."}
{"_id": "231175", "title": "Sharing classes or interfaces between different projects", "text": "I was looking for some answers in SO or here, but without any results, that's why I would ask you. Let's assume I have a two different projects - for example server part and client part of an app. I'm developing my own part, while my friend is making the second one. But both of us should use some common interfaces like `User` or `AccountInfo` or `ChangableAccount`... whatever in order to ensure a compatibility. For example if a clients send a User data to server, then the server should operate on the same class. The same with interfaces etc. Moreover, if there are any changes in a common interface, both projects should adjust its code to the new situation. The only solution I can see now is, to create a one extra project in which all common things are defined. We, me and my friend, should add this project as a dependency to a main project (client or server). Shared project can be managed by some version control system, so we have always the most up-to-date state. What other solution would you suggest? How such problems are solved in professional apps?"}
{"_id": "200935", "title": "Freelancing and GPL?", "text": "Is it possible for a freelance programmer to use Open Source products under GNU Public License and make money given that he cannot stop his customers from freely distributing his products?"}
{"_id": "127974", "title": "Undefined behaviours in C", "text": "Recently I came across a number of undefined features in C, one of them being the following: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8698048/behaviour-of-non-const-int-pointer- on-a-const-int Could someone tell me what should I answer when such a question is asked during online exams ( and **_None of These_** / **_Undefined_** option is not available ) ? Also, could you point me to a document specifying the most commonly encountered undefined behaviours in C ? Thanks."}
{"_id": "127975", "title": "Unit testing methods with indeterminate output", "text": "I have a class that is meant to generate a random password of a length that's also random, but limited to be between a defined min and max length. I'm constructing unit tests, and ran into an interesting little snag with this class. The whole idea behind a unit test is that it should be repeatable. If you run the test a hundred times, it should give the same results a hundred times. If you're depending on some resource that may or may not be there or may or may not be in the initial state you expect then you're meant to mock the resource in question to ensure that your test really is always repeatable. But what about in cases where the SUT is supposed to generate indeterminate output? If I fix the min and max length to the same value then I can easily check that the generated password is of the expected length. But if I specify a range of acceptable lengths (say 15 - 20 chars), then you now have the problem that you could run the test a hundred times and get 100 passes but on the 101st run you might get a 9 character string back. In the case of the password class, which is fairly simple at its core, it shouldn't prove a huge problem. But it got me thinking about the general case. What is the strategy that's usually accepted as the best one to take when dealing with SUTs that are generating indeterminate output by design?"}
{"_id": "127973", "title": "How does a script download a Youtube Video?", "text": "Knowing that Youtube uses Adobe Flash which is compiled server side to deliver its video content, I am wondering how its possible to find a video's file name & location on the server? This is a general question about the security of Adobe Flash and swf files on a server. If google can't protect the video files from offsite download using Flash, why is it so widely used?"}
{"_id": "39063", "title": "C# Classes instance members vs. enum", "text": "What is the difference between private variables in a clsClass type and using enumeration enum to instantiate the variable. This question arose when I was looking at some C# Class code for serial ports. example: private int SomeClassMember; and private enum TransmissionType{TEXT,HEX} ? Where do the enum statements appear in a Class definition?"}
{"_id": "39062", "title": "Do-It-Yourself project suggestions to sharpen programming skills or learn a new language", "text": "Since the best way to learn is to work on projects, what are some good software to try making yourself with a purpose of sharpening certain programming skills or learning a new language?"}
{"_id": "224547", "title": "Can one become good programmer by self learning or a mentor is needed?", "text": "I am a self taught programmer. I have only 1+ year of experience in development. Majority of my knowledge is gained by reading books and from little bit from the engineering degree. Currently I have no go to guy or person to discuss ideas / solution. I am their go to guy and they are not interested in the idea of the solution they just want it to work. So can people who are already there have they done it on there on i.e using internet and books or they have been cultured into the role?"}
{"_id": "180449", "title": "Writing proprietary and possibly closed source software while avoiding license infractions", "text": "I am starting a software project that I want to have the option to keep it proprietary. However, since I generally use a Linux environment, I want to know: How do people write proprietary software in Linux and not violate the GPL/LGPL/etc licenses that seem to restrict uses of libraries needed to build the project? Also, does using an unmodified LGPL library in my code require releasing it as open-source (I understand that open-source and proprietary are different beasts)? And I know I'm going to be branded a heathen for asking, but can I use unmodified open-source libraries in my project but still keep the code that is mine closed-source?"}
{"_id": "73947", "title": "What to do if the interviewer does not give you enough time to answer?", "text": "I had an interview with a well known company. After completing the first round of interview, I was confident that I would be short-listed for the second round. But little did I know that my second round would be a disaster. The second round started and the interviewer asked me to tell him about my profile. Once this was done he told me that he was going to get a pen and a paper (unfortunately I only had a pen) and he returned only after 15 minutes. Once he came back he started shooting questions at me without giving me a chance to think about the question and answer. I really mean it, 5 seconds after the first question he would shoot me another question, irrespective of whether I was answering the first question or not. I also told him politely in between to give me a chance to answer, but no luck. After the interview was over, I felt like, he took a 15 minute break to memorise these questions and was emitting it in front of me before he forgot and ran out of questions. What can be done in such a case?"}
{"_id": "84914", "title": "Is there a good way to team develop using different MySQL Instances?", "text": "This may be a noob question but a colleague and I are working on a project. Some background about our situation is:   * We control versions using a centralized git server inside our office.   * We code in PHP, so we try our code offline in a local apache instance.   * We use local MySQL instances at work. Our client is a bit of a demanding person, and has changed the requirements more than twice. The main problem is that if we need to change something in the database, we have to make clean dumps on other servers (the other teammate's computer, the central server..., and the client's server of course) to make other instances work, too. **My question is, is there a way to synchronize our local databases** (I don't care about the client's one at this moment) **with git or another utility to make my colleague, the git server and my database be up to date when we push changes?** If that is not possible, do you know of any better way to work with MySQL databases stored locally? Thanks in advance. PS: Using only one central database is not a valid solution for us, as we test different features and have different elements stored there."}
{"_id": "16779", "title": "Why SQL is not so widespread in large desktop applications?", "text": "As a software developer, I've worked on projects ranging from tiny home-made apps to medium-size enterprise applications. **In nearly every project I used a database** or regretted choosing not to use it from the beginning. Now, I am wondering a few things about the databases and their usage in general applications:   * Why Windows itself doesn't use any \"central\" SQL database? For example:      * Errors Reporting data is stored in a bunch of files,     * Windows Update stores everything in flat files,     * Icons cache is stored in a very strange single file which doesn't seem to be accessed through SQL, etc.   * Why so many large applications avoid using databases? For example, wouldn't Microsoft Outlook gain by using a real database instead of reinventing the wheel by having its own format for .pst files and storing some data in registry? If database adds an additional layer of an overall complexity and a tiny performance loss, it is a price of a huge advantage of making the code simpler in most circumstances, especially when it comes to the storage of small organized chunks of data instead of large binary streams. So why so few products are actually using databases? Probably the only application I know which actually uses Sqlite database is Firefox, and maybe Microsoft Exchange (but the last one is not a desktop application)? Also, wouldn't _a set_ of applications, like Microsoft Office or Microsoft Expression, benefit from having an _unified SQL database_ , making it easier to deploy the applications, to update/upgrade the data, to share data between those applications, to make backups, etc.?"}
{"_id": "215424", "title": "Sub routing in a SPA site", "text": "I have a SPA site that I'm working on, I have a requirement that you can have subroutes for a page view model. Im currently using this 'pattern' for the site               MyApp.FooViewModel = MyApp.define({         meta: {             query: MyApp.Core.Contracts.Queries.FooQuery,             title: \"Foo\"         },         init: function (queryResult) {              },         prototype: {                        }     });      In the master view model I have a route table               this.navigation(new MyApp.RoutesViewModel({         Home: {             model: MyApp.HomeViewModel,             route: String.empty         },         Foo: {             model: MyApp.FooViewModel         }     }));      The meta object defines which query should populate the top level view model when its invoked through sammyjs, this is all fine but it does not support sub routing My plan is to change the meta object so that it can (optional offcourse) look like this               meta: {         query: MyApp.Core.Contracts.Queries.FooQuery,         title: \"Foo\",         route: {             barId: MyApp.BarViewModel         }     }      When sammyjs detects a barId in the query string the Barmodel will be executed and populated through its own meta object. Is this a good design? **edit:** Hmm, just noticed that above design is not always enough, the parent view model might need to do some processing when the subRoute triggers, so I added a object to the definition sent into MyApp.define like               meta: {         query: MyApp.Core.Contracts.Queries.FooQuery,         title: \"Foo\",         route: {             barId: MyApp.BarViewModel         }     },     onRoute: {        barId: function(barViewModel) {           //act on bar route        }     }"}
{"_id": "88099", "title": "github team workflow - to fork or not?", "text": "We're a small team of web developers currently using subversion but soon we're making a switch to github. I'm looking at different types of github workflows, and we're not sure if the whole forking concept in github for each developer is such a good idea for us. If we use forks, I understand each developer will have his own private remote & local repositories. I'm worried it will make pushing changesets hard and too complex. Also, my biggest concern is that it will force each developer to have 2 remotes: origin (which is the remote fork) and an upstream (which is used to \"sync\" changes from the main repository). Not sure if it's such a easy way to do things. This is similar to the workflow explained here: https://github.com/usm-data- analysis/usm-data-analysis.github.com/wiki/Git-workflow If we don't use forks, we can probably get by fine by using a central repo creating a branch for each task we're working on, and merge them into the development branch on the same repository. It means we won't be able to restrict merging of branches and might be a little messy to have many branches on the central repository. Any suggestions from teams who tried both workflow?"}
{"_id": "88097", "title": "Buy vs. Build - FTP Service", "text": "We have a need to FTP files that are generated by our system, so we're trying to decide whether we should spend the time to build something that meets our criteria (relatively easy, .NET has FTP functionality built in, among other more advanced libs from 3rd parties). Or if we should buy something off the shelf. Our requirements are roughly:   * Must be able to trigger a file send programmatically   * Needs to retry _N_ number of times (configurable)   * Queryable status of FTP requests   * Callback on completion or fail of an FTP request I don't need to be sold on the relative simplicity of building something like that for myself. However I do want to do the due diligence of seeing what products are available ... because if something does exist that matches the requirements above, I wouldn't mind paying for it :-) Any thoughts or links would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "100062", "title": "Should I create a new database for a public website when the data already exists?", "text": "I am looking for advice on how to create my data schema for a public web site. Currently, we have an Intranet website where our agents create the data needed for reservations. The data includes tables like Establishments, products, prices per periods, and a typical Users table. This intranet is already in production. I've been tasked to create a public web site, where anonymous Joe and Jane will be able to book a reservation without calling one of our agent. The site will offer registration and will display the data available from the Intranet, albeit as read-only. The public site itself will have some data of its own. I am a bit reluctant to combine the data from the public site into the same database than our intranet, but most of the information that will be displayed on the public site will come from the pre-entered data from the intranet. Are there any best practices concerning the separation and sharing of information between a public and a private website?"}
{"_id": "218487", "title": "How should we develop the project with different members with different skill level?", "text": "We are developing a project with three members. I am the permanent member, we hired a contractor from a company to be a team lead and one very junior coder. Now the contractor is doing the server side coding with classes and modules while the junior member and I are doing front client. The problem we face is that the junior member and I are finding it very hard to understand the contractor's code. Our skills are not at his level and he is using all sorts of advanced function and write very concise code with very little documentation. When we ask for help, he gets angry and says that we don't know that. I have raised this issue, but it comes out every now and then. I can understand only 50% of his code and the junior understands only 10% of it. What should be done int his scenario? We can't force him because we need him, but its difficult for us to proceed. What should we do? And also every time we do our part of coding he can always pick errors and tell how to do it better. It is good, but it also means that do we have to check every line of code with him. I was confused that if we have genius coder in team of 5 then that genius will always write better code. So does it mean that   1. he needs to check code for every junior member and change it   2. he leave some loopholes and ignore them because the senior member will always have better way to do the job?"}
{"_id": "201156", "title": "In general, is it ethical to make a copy of work source code and take it home as reference?", "text": "Is it ethical to make a copy of my work's source code, for the sole purpose of my own reference? By reference, I mean as reference where I can refer to it about how I (and my teammates) implemented various design patterns, architecture, etc. It does not contain any trade secret, product, secret algorithm or anything like that. Note that I wrote many parts of the source code, and also the added value from me studying the code will also indirectly benefit the company I am working on."}
{"_id": "154664", "title": "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C ( in Python? )", "text": "I am attending a Computer graphics course after the summer. I have read lots of good things about the book \"Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C\" for people who are willing to put in some work. My school does not focus on C/C++ until next year, so I have decided to learn Python this summer and get good at Python this following year. How language dependent is this book? Can I work through it in Python?"}
{"_id": "100068", "title": "Software Patents: can I license the use of an existing patent?", "text": "I know the software patent is a hot topic and is very frustrating. But as I live in the US I don't think I have any choice but to deal with it. What I'm wondering is if there are actually companies or a site where I can look up what patents might apply to my idea. Then, be able to license the appropriate use of the idea even if the patent is vague and ambiguous. Then, if a troll comes after me I can argue that I'm protected under the use of patent#XYX."}
{"_id": "154667", "title": "How to manage and improve web application with 50 customers?", "text": "First of all, sorry for my English. We've developed a Web Application using ASP.NET and Sql Server. We've started selling it and of course are still continually improving and developing it. The question is, how do we go about updating each client's version of the site? We have, maybe, 50 customers. 50 different folders and 50 different db's sounds like a bad idea. Is there any known method for solving this kind of scenario? `For Explain:` We are developing a Crm, for 50 companies. They will have 10 users maybe. It makes 500 users and their customers and products."}
{"_id": "21663", "title": "Do you think F# and Python might rule the future market?", "text": "I am seeing that Microsoft is concentrating too much on F#. What type of language it is going to be and will it replace the C# user base? In the last few months I am noticing Ruby posts in some forums going down whereas Python forums are going up. If Microsoft had not stepped back from IronPython, do you think Python would have ruled C#?"}
{"_id": "49515", "title": "How to provide value?", "text": "Before I became a consultant all I cared about was becoming a highly skilled programmer. Now I believe that what my clients need is not a great hacker, coder, architect... or whatever. I am more and more convinced every day that there is something of greater value. Everywhere I go I discover practices where I used to roll my eyes in despair. I saw the software industry with pink glasses and laughed or cried at them depending on my mood. I was so convinced everything could be done better. Now I believe that what my clients desperately need is finding a balance between good engineering practices and desperate project execution. Although a great design can make a project cheap to maintain thought many years, usually it is more important to produce quick fast and cheap, just to see if the project can succeed. Before that, it does not really matters that much if the design is cheap to maintain, after that, it might be too late to improve things. They need people who get involved, who do some clandestine improvements into the project without their manager approval/consent/knowledge... because they are never given time for some tasks we all know are important. Not all good things can be done, some of them must come out of freewill, and some of them must be discussed in order to educate colleagues, managers, clients and ourselves. Now my big question is. What exactly are the skills and practices aside from great coding that can provide real value to the economical success of software projects? (and not the software architecture alone)"}
{"_id": "222029", "title": "Programming beginner: Options for small program interfaces?", "text": "I have been a Rails developer for a year now, and I really want to start diving in to Ruby and pure programming without using a framework. However I am having trouble conceptualizing little programs I can build on my own. I guess it's because I'm so used to having a GUI (the web browser) to interact with the classes that I write that I don't really get how I would interact with classes without clicking, going to different pages, etc. In terms of pure Ruby (without Rails), I've only built a blackjack game you play through the console through typing Y/N for hitting and staying. I would like to know what types of interfaces you guys use for your small programs? Are they all just ran once from your console using something like `ruby myclass.rb`? I have the motivation but I don't know what I would do after writing a few classes. All I do is have a separate file that requires all my other classes, instantiate my classes like so:               myclass = MyClass.new     myclass.part = ClassPart.new(1,2,3)     myclass.do_something # puts \"value of instance_variable = #{@instance_variable}\"      And then what? The program finishes. It's not interactive. It doesn't do much. I don't see myself building anything cool/powerful like that. Can anyone enlighten me?"}
{"_id": "162311", "title": "How important is it to learn makefiles?", "text": "I work in c++ mostly as a hobby (I'm still in school and therefor don't have a real job). The IDEs generate the makefile for me and so I'm wondering if it's worth learning how to make them myself. By \"worth learning\" I mean, should I drop everything and learn how to write them before continuing to learn c++? Is learning them going to be really necessary? If so, should I learn about them (general syntax and understanding how they work etc.) or really learn how to write them?"}
{"_id": "255255", "title": "Can we use `a <= x <= b` to check if `x` is between `a` and `b`?", "text": "How to give conditions for geographical directions based on degrees? for COMPASS API Reference... I have tried this...but not working                if((0 <= a <= 22.4) || (337.6 <= a <= 360)){                  alert(\"YOU ARE IN NORTH DIRECTION\");             }             else if((22.5 <= a <= 44.9) || (45 <= a <= 67.4)){                 alert(\"NORTH-NORTHEAST\");             }             else if((67.5 <= a <= 89.9) || (90 <= a <= 112.4)){                 alert(\"East\");             }             else if((112.5 <= a <= 134.9) || (135 <= a <= 157.4)){             alert(\"SouthEast\");             }             else if((157.5 <=a <= 179.9) || (180 <= a <= 202.4)){             alert(\"South\");             }             else if((202.5 <= a <= 224.9) || (225 <= a <= 247.4)){             alert(\"SouthWest\");             }             else if((247.5 <= a <= 269.9) || (270 <= a <= 292.4)){             alert(\"West\");             }             else if((292.5 <= a <= 314.9) || (315 <= a <= 337.4)){             alert(\"NorthEast\");             }             else if(337.5 <= a <= 360){             alert(\"North\");             }             else{}      Is this Correct?"}
{"_id": "162315", "title": "Inventory management system design problem", "text": "What are the conventions for item batch identifiers in inventory management systems? For example: A retail supermarket can order '`Item X`' from either 'Supplier A' or 'Supplier B'. When it completes an order for the item from either supplier, it needs to store the record of the receipt. Inventory quantity for the item is increased upon receipt of the order. However it is also required to store some record of the supplier. Thus some sort of batch identifier is required. This batch identifier will uniquely identify the item received and the supplier from whom it is received. A new batch is created each time items are received in stock (for example, after an order). Hence, for purposes of accounting / auditing, information available to identify an item after it was sold comprises of `ITEM_CODE`, `ITEM_NAME`, `BATCH_CODE`. The `BATCH_CODE` is unique and is associated with `DATE_RECEIVED`, `SUPPLIER_CODE`, `QTY_RECEIVED`. Is this a complete system specification for the above scenario or has anything significant been left out?"}
{"_id": "105137", "title": "The role of monitor screen size for a software engineer / developer / programmer", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Monitor screen size and programming ease Is the screen size of a laptop/desktop is directly proportional to the productivity of a developer? How? Is it the real estate of the screen (less scrolling, multiple apps side by side, or something else). Similar Question"}
{"_id": "112402", "title": "What are some patterns and anti-patterns of application logging?", "text": "I recently had to investigate a field issue for our large enterprise application. **I was horrified by the logs** that I had to comb through in an attempt to find the problem and at the end of the day the logs did not help at all identifying/isolating the bug. _Note: I understand not all bugs are discoverable through logs. This does not change the fact that the logs are horrible._ There are some obvious problems with our logging that we can already attempt to fix. I do not want to list those here and I cannot simply show you our log files so you can give advice on what to do. Instead, in order to assess how bad we are doing on the logging front, I would like to know:   1. **What are some guidelines** , if any, **when it comes to logging** for an application, especially large application.    2. **Are there any patterns** we should follow **or anti-patterns** we should be aware of?    3. **Is this an important thing to fix** or **can it even be fixed** or all log files are simply huge and you need supplemental scripts to analyze them?  _Side note: we use log4j._"}
{"_id": "230498", "title": "See remote repository differences with a graphical tool", "text": "My GIT repo is stored on a remote Linux server that I'm accessing from my Windows PC through Netbeans. Once my changes are done I would like to review them quickly before committing. The server has no graphical components so I can't launch \"gitk\" from there. I'm not very comfortable with a text diff on the server with \"git diff\" command. It is not readable enough for me. msysgit is installed on my Windows PC. I would like to launch a kind of remote \"gitk\" command from my PC but couldn't find a way to do it. Didn't find anything on the web related to this. Any other \"graphical\" way to do this would be convenient. Any idea how to do this? Thanks in advance **EDIT** To clarify my workflow (since my question seems to lack clarity):   1. I work on my code with Netbeans IDE on a local copy of my remote working repository. This copy has no versioning. The synchronization is done through SFTP. Meaning, at project creation Netbeans makes a SFTP GET of the entire repo localy. Then, when I save my changes (on local copy) Netbeans automatically makes a SFTP PUT to the remote repo through SFTP to keep in sync.   2. The working repository on the web server (Linux based) has git versioning. Hence keeping track of the same changes that I made on the Windows copy.   3. For simplicity reasons (I'm working alone on this project so far) I don't want to clone the working repo or create a different branch than master. Hence I'm working on this unique repository and directly with the master branch.   4. Once a development is done and tested ( **my changes are not yet staged for commit** ) I want to have a last look at them **before committing**. To achieve this I would like to use a graphical tool. I have msysgit installed on the windows PC but I didn't find a way to load a remote repository to my local gitk through SSH (I don't think it is possible). Finaly: I'm looking for a way to do this with gitk or any other tool. I didn't find one so far. git-cola for instance doesn't propose anything but loading local repos. I found a solution proposed here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6810820/git-gui-when-on-a-remote-server But I'm wondering if a simpler solution exists. **EDIT2** The idea of this question was not to start a debate on which tool is better for my concern. It was: how to do it the best way WHATEVER the tool is. Anyway, here is the workflow I'm finally using for those interested:   1. The working repo is on the Linux server.   2. Netbeans (or whatever the tool is) is editing a local copy of this remote working repo on windows. The \"download from\" and \"upload to\" the remote repo are made through a ssh connection. So remote repo and local repo are always synchronized. The simplest way to look at what was done since last commit on the repo is to make the windows local repo a git working repo and launch gitk from there. Only inconvenience is not to forget to commit the local repo when I commit the remote one to get same diffs between last commit and current. Hopefully it will help other persons with same concern."}
{"_id": "235462", "title": "streaming data in memory aggregation", "text": "We have a stream of data we're aggregating stats over and putting into a python dictionary (sent from kafka). Every X time interval, We update our database with these aggregated metrics. This process works fine, but is not completely fail-safe. What if the python process dies and we lose that time interval's data, for example?   What are recommended methods/tools/etc.. to aggregate streaming data in memory while still having a fallback if the process dies mid time interval?"}
{"_id": "235463", "title": "Does the recent open sourcing of MSFT's C# compiler mean it can be made cross-platform?", "text": "I really enjoy working with C# however one of its biggest drawbacks is that it is kind of split-brained between MSFT .NET and Mono. In practice its not a big deal most of the time but it is one of those things that makes the language 'stink' a little. It would get a lot more uptake, I suspect, if one could answer \" _If I compile it, will it work on every [desktop] platform?_ \" with \" _Yes._ \". Right now its \" _Yes. But you have to compile it under Mono first. And some areas of code may need to be rewritten a little._ \". My question is \" **Does the recent open sourcing of MSFT's C# compiler mean it can be made cross-platform?** \". That is to say, could C# .NET be made to work cross platform without Mono with the newly release open source components? Or is there more to this I am not seeing? Further exposition on what the future may hold for C# in light of the open sourced components is not required to answer this question however it is encouraged."}
{"_id": "200068", "title": "Applying commits into another branch without merging", "text": "I have two git branches with almost the same code, but some minor changes in order to support different platforms. I need to maintain these changes because I need them to run the software on different computers. So there is no master and development branch, both are equally important. Nevertheless, I need to \"synchronize\" the core code base of the branches. So I would like to somehow apply the commits from one branch in a sort of patch fashion to the other branch and vice versa, without merging them, in order to maintain the different setups. Is this possible with git? If yes, how can I accomplish this? Edit: can I merge only some files and leaves others out, but maintain the two branches?"}
{"_id": "200069", "title": "Somewhere to put miscellaneous files", "text": "We want to be able to offer users of our software the facility of having a miscellaneous folder for each of their clients. All these client folders would be stored together in another folder called 'miscellaneous data' for example It would be accessible via an icon in the client record window in our software and would be a place to just drop files that aren't catered for by us. A really simple solution is just to do a Shell call to explorer.exe with the folder address. All the files would have the correct icons and look familiar and the user would be able to open them with their default programs The problem with this is that this then allows the user to use file explorer to navigate up to the 'miscellaneous data' folder and possibly do something unintentional like delete a bunch of client folders. I'd be very grateful for suggestions for a simple but more secure design"}
{"_id": "200061", "title": "Is it bad practice to have FooObject and FooObjectSummary?", "text": "I have a service where users can upload/download/replace/delete files. These files have about a dozen attributes that are saved to a SQL Database. Periodicaly throughout their session they will have to download a summary (FileName, size0in-KB, and ID) of a subset of files. When working in the service it creates an object of these attributes (FooObject) in the DB. But, when the info is sent to the User, a summary object (FooObjectSummary) is created. FooObjectSummary has 3 attributes, FooObject has 12 or so (none of the attributes are anything but strings or primitive types). I originaliy did this so that as little extra info would be transferred across. None of this extra data in FooObject would be dangerous for the user to have, but it wouldn't be exposed to them anyways? Am I just writing extra code? Or is it good practice to only expose the user to as much info as they need and not a bit more?"}
{"_id": "135444", "title": "Best method of communication between your app and your website? PHP, Web service, etc", "text": "I am creating an application which I would like to have communicate with my website. The app will have to get data for a particular app user from the website's database. I am unclear as to the best way to do this. I have seen one way of doing this for example is creating a login page on the app which then hits a login.php logic on my website. This is convenient because I can use one code base to handle sign in for both the website and the app. Another solution I've seen is using JSON requests to handle the communication between app and website. This is convenient because JSON objects are easy to create and parse. I would basically like to know the best/common way to have this communication occur, what are the pros and cons to having one over the other, and any other security issues to consider. For example, is there a risk of exposing sensitive user data when using one method over the other? If so how can this be prevented? How and where does encryption and user validations come into play here?"}
{"_id": "58006", "title": "I'm doing hobby programming; what programming methodologies (e.g. XP, Agile...) do you recommend me to read up on?", "text": "Most of you would probably just call me a kid (I'm 15). I'm doing hobby programming (I started fiddling around with ActionScript 2.0 in Flash 8 when I was 11, now I do mostly C, Python and Java). As I'm 15, I won't get a job for a long period of time (I'm going to spend years in academia before that) and thus this question is _not_ about which programming methodologies you recommend me to read up on for a software engineering _job_ , but instead **which methodologies should a _hobby_ programmer read about?** What will a hobby developer learn from reading about your recommendation(s)?"}
{"_id": "190344", "title": "How do I handle having so many SQL queries?", "text": "I have an MVC3 project that uses SQL Server. I use data from the SQL database all the time and I often find that I'm reusing/duplicating some SQL queries. I thought I'd solve this problem by creating a few static \"helper\" classes that just contain a bunch of static methods for retrieving common things.               GetAllUsers(database As MyEntity)     GetAllNonActivatedUsers(database As MyEntity)     GetUser(database As MyEntity, userId As Integer)      The problem is that this made things slightly worse. Now instead of having SQL queries all over my controller actions, there are large numbers of them in these helper classes. The names of these methods are becoming silly.               GetPendingUserApplicationByApplicationId(database as MyEntity,         applicationId As Integer, userId As Integer)      At this stage I'm thinking of scrapping the helper classes and going back to just random SQL queries throughout my controller actions. Where have I gone wrong and how do people manage their SQL queries? Is it ok to duplicate SQL queries?"}
{"_id": "124697", "title": "Min cost concatenation alignment", "text": "I am doing a project on data mining. I have a very large string of size, say `n` and many small strings, `l_1,l_2..` each of size at most `m`. I want to find the sequence of small strings such that their concatenation has the minimum alignment cost (costs can include insertion, deletion and substitution) with my large string of size `n`. I can use one string more than once and it is not mandatory to use all the strings. Note that `m << n` My greedy implementation gives very bad results even for small strings. I can't find an efficient solution to this problem. Can anyone help? It looks like dynamic programming might be able to help but I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "17428", "title": "Beautiful Erlang Code", "text": "I'm trying to learn more about Erlang than the toy projects I've been playing with. To this end, I'm reading through Programming Erlang and some of the archives from Armstrong on Software. I would also like to read over some example (preferably production) code that showcases the sorts of things you can build with Erlang that would be disproportionately difficult in other languages. Aside from (I assume) Yaws, are there any publicly available examples of beautiful Erlang code that I could read through to gain a better understanding of the language and/or see the idiomatic uses for various language constructs? I'm specifically **not** looking for code that \"gets the job done\" but uses questionable practices, or examples along the lines of \"here's how you write `factorial` in Erlang\". In the same vein, can anyone recommend any good literature for learning this language (other than the mentioned \"Programming Erlang\")? For preference, something you yourself used to learn it, but if there's some community standard books for it, throw those in too."}
{"_id": "188552", "title": "How to avoid giant glue methods?", "text": "In my current job, I've been tasked with cleaning up old code a few times. Often the code is a labyrinth and the data behind it is even more tangled. I find myself combing out things into nice, neat, modular methods. Each method does one thing and does it well. That's when things start to go south... Invariably, I end up with a clean API and no real way to tie it all together. The solution has been to write a big ugly \"glue\" method (generally full of conditional statements) that eventually calls all of my \"clean\" methods. The glue method usually ends up being a terse version of the tangle of code/data that I was attempting to clean up. It's generally more readable, but it's still annoying. How can I avoid such methods? Is this a symptom of the tangled data or a reflection of something that I'm doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "17427", "title": "What keymap do you prefer in ReSharper?", "text": "I am using ReSharper since version 3 and I always used InteliJ Idea/Resharper 2.x keymap schema. Recently I have learned Ilya's Visual Studio keymap. They each have advantages. **What keymap do you use/prefer with ReSharper?**"}
{"_id": "38822", "title": "What parts of my computer should I upgrade first to speed up development?", "text": "I use Eclipse, and the two most noticeable slowdowns caused by my computer are waiting for compiling and waiting for intellisense. I already have a fast SSD drive and 3GB of ram. I'm guessing that upgrading my processor would be the next best thing to do. Would that make a significant impact? Any recommendations for what kind of processor to get? My current processor is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 1.91 GHz."}
{"_id": "66480", "title": "When is it appropriate to not unit test?", "text": "I work in a small company as a solo developer. I'm the only developer at the company in fact. I have several (relatively) large projects I've written and maintain regularly, and none of them have tests to support them. As I begin new projects I often wonder if I should try a TDD approach. It sounds like a good idea, but I honestly can never justify the extra work involved. I work hard to be forward-thinking in my design. I realize that certainly one day another developer will have to maintain my code, or at least troubleshoot it. I keep things as simple as possible and I comment and document things that would be difficult to grasp. And the fact is these projects aren't so big or complicated that a decent developer would struggle to comprehend them. A lot of the examples I've seen of tests get down to the minutiae, covering all facets of the code. Since I'm the only developer and I'm very close to the code in the entire project, it is much more efficient to follow a write-then- manually-test pattern. I also find requirements and features change frequently enough that maintaining tests would add a considerable amount of drag on a project. Time that could otherwise be spent solving the business needs. So I end up with the same conclusion each time. The return on investment is too low. I have occasionally setup a few tests to ensure I've written an algorithm correctly, like calculating the number of years someone has been at the company based on their hire date. But from a code-coverage standpoint I've covered about 1% of my code. In my situation, would you still find a way to make unit testing a regular practice, or am I justified in avoiding that overhead? **UPDATE:** A few things about my situation that I left out: My projects are all web applications. To cover all my code, I'd have to use automated UI tests, and that is an area where I still don't see a great benefit over manual testing."}
{"_id": "147055", "title": "When is unit testing inappropriate or unnecessary?", "text": "It seems to be generally assumed (on Stack Overflow at least) that there should always be unit tests, and they should be kept up to date. But I suspect the programmers making these assertions work on different kinds of projects from me - they work on high quality, long-lasting, shipped software where bugs are A Really Bad Thing. If that's the end of the spectrum where unit testing is most valuable, then what's the other end? Where are unit tests least valuable? In what situations would you not bother? Where would the effort of maintaining tests not be worth the cost?"}
{"_id": "5560", "title": "What are the disadvantages of test-first programming?", "text": "It's all the rage nowadays. \"Everyone\" recommends it. That in and of itself makes me suspicious. What are some disadvantages you have found when doing test-first (test-driven) development? I'm looking for personal experiences from knowledgeable practitioners--I can read the hypothetical musings of a hundred wannabes elsewhere on the internet. I ask not because I am looking to hate TDD, but because it is my job to improve software development process, and the more we can learn about the problems people encounter, the better chance we have of improving the process."}
{"_id": "157155", "title": "When, Where, and How to Unit Test", "text": "I'm very familiar with xUnit frameworks and I try to implement unit tests on every project I start. Somewhere along the way, I realize that I'm writing the same tests over and over again, and then I run into a really difficult to test method or a test involving remote resources, and then I give up for a while. I end up coming back eagerly whenever I can to test simple things, but as soon as I run into harder things to test, I run for the hills with my tail between my legs. Let's throw in some examples.   1. Long flow of things to do in a method. (How do I test this? Do I just make sure that the code's being called by stubbing things out? How should I rewrite the code to facilitate easier testing?)               public void doSomething() {         Object1 value1 = doSomething1(this.getName());         if (value1.isError()) {             sendError(new Object1Error(value1.getError().getMessage()));             return;         }              Object2 value2 = doSomething2(value1, this.getName());         if (value2.isError()) {             sendError(new Object2Error(value2.getError().getMessage()));             return;         }              /* ad infinitum... */     }        2. Overloaded methods and constructors.              public String toJSON() {         return toJSON(true);     }          public String toJSON(boolean prettyPrint) {         /* do work */         return result;     }           /* test */     @Test public void testToJSON() { ... };          @Test public void testToJSONBoolean() { /* redundant similar test code... */ }        3. Remote resources. How do I test that my upload API is working (ie: right request method, host, request content type, payload, etc.) without actually doing an upload? These uploads go to servers outside of my control.              public void doUpload() throws IOException {         HttpClient client = new HttpClient();         PutMethod putMethod = new PutMethod(...);         putMethod.setRequestHeader(...);         putMethod.setRequestEntity(new FileInputStreamRequestEntity(...));              /* etc. */              final int responseCode = client.executeMethod(putMethod);     }        4. Testing server interactions with clients.              /* before we even get here, other interactions need to take place */     public void updateClientProfile(UserProfile profile) {         // 1. validate the input         // 2. update the user in the db         // 3. generate an email in HTML         // 4. send the email         // 5. serve out a view     }      Testing at first glance seems easy, until I get to these kind of situations. How do I keep my motivation for testing and write my code to be more testable? It seems that the more things that a method needs to do, the exponentially more difficult and frustrating unit tests are to write. Do I test simply that the code is calling the right services and methods? Do I write unit tests simply to prove to myself that my code calls the methods I told it to call, or to determine that the logic is right? Help!"}
{"_id": "221536", "title": "When NOT to unit test?", "text": "I am hitting a stumbling block with TDD flow. We are using PHPUnit+FuelPHP and I am stuck on how to write a unit test for our image upload/cropping feature. FuelPHP is notoriously hard to unit test (see my forum post here and it's difficult (but not impossible) to mock/stub controllers that deal with the FILESYSTEM. I've decided to not write a unit test our this particular feature because I feel that it would not be worth the effort to fake binary files. I'd be writing too much testing code (and not enough application code) to get around FuelPHP. But I am bothered that we won't have 100% code coverage. So I was wondering if I was approaching TDD incorrectly (or not trying hard enough) or if this was a legitimate case of when NOT to write a unit test?"}
{"_id": "234753", "title": "Are there any cases when one should not use Test Driven Development?", "text": "Is it recommended that TDD be always practiced in a project, or are there cases when it should be avoided? Should we all adopt TDD? Is it standard practice in major software companies?"}
{"_id": "244704", "title": "Ad-hoc reporting similar to Microstrategy/Pentaho - is OLAP really the only choice (is OLAP even sufficient)?", "text": "So I'm getting ready to develop an API in Java that will provide all dimensions, metrics, hierarchies, etc to a user such that they can pick and choose what they want (say, e.g., dimensions of Location (a store) and Weekly, and the metric Product Sales $), provide their choices to the api, and have it spit out an object that contains the answer to their question (the object would probably be a set of cells). I don't even believe there will be much drill up/down. The data warehouse the APIwill interface with is in a standard form (FACT tables, dimensions, star schema format). My question is, is an OLAP framework such as Mondrian the only way to achieve something akin to ad-hoc reporting? I can envisage a really large Cube (or VirtualCube) that contains most of the dimensions and metrics the user could ever want, which would give the illusion of ad-hoc reporting. The problem is that there is a ton of setup to do (so much XML) to get the framework to work with the data. Further it requires specific knowledge, such as MDX, and even moreso learning the framework peculiars (Mondrian API). Finally, I am not positive it will scale much better than simply making queries against a SQL database. OLAP to me feels like very old technology. Is performance really an issue anymore? The alternative I can think of would be dynamic SQL. If the existing tables in the data warehouse conform to a naming scheme (FACT_, DIM_, etc), or if a very simple config file/ database table containing config information existed that stored which tables are fact tables, which are dimensions, and what metrics are available, then couldn't the api read from that and assembly the appropriate sql query? Would this necessarily be harder than learning MDX, Mondrian (or another OLAP framework), and creating all the cubes? In general, I feel that OLAP is at the same time too powerful (supports drill up/down, complex functions) and outdated and am reluctant to base my architecture on it. However, I am unsure if the alternative(s), such as rolling my own ad-hoc reporting framework using dynamic SQL would remove any complexity while still fulfilling requirements, both functional and non- functional (e.g., scalability; some FACT tables have many millions of rows). I also wonder about other techniques (e.g., hive). Has anyone here tried to do ad-hoc reporting? Any advice? I expect this project to take a pretty long time (3 months min, but probably longer), so I just do not want to commit to an architecture without being absolutely sure of its pros and cons. Thanks so much."}
{"_id": "244701", "title": "In C++ Good reasons for NOT using symmetrical memory management (i.e. new and delete)", "text": "_I try to learn C++ and programming in general. Currently I am studying open source with help of UML. Learning is my hobby and great one too._ My understanding of memory allocation in C++ is that it should be symmetrical. A class is responsible for its resources. If memory is allocated using new it should be returned using delete in the same class. It is like in a library you, the class, are responsibility for the books you have borrowed and you return them then you are done. This, in my mind, makes sense. It makes memory management more manageable so to speak. So far so good. The problem is that this is not how it works in the real world. In Qt for instance, you create QtObjects with new and then hand over the ownership of the object to Qt. In other words you create QtObjects and Qt destroys them for you. Thus unsymmetrical memory management. Obviously the people behind Qt must have a good reason for doing this. It must be beneficial in some kind of way, ### My questions is:   * What is the problem with Bjarne Stroustrups idea about a symmetrical memory management contained within a class?    * What do you gain by splitting new and delete so you create an object and destroy it in different classes like you do in Qt.    * Is it common to split new and delete and why in such case, in other projects not involving Qt? **Thanks for any help shedding light on this mystery!**"}
{"_id": "128995", "title": "C vs C++ for a Java (and possibly python) Programmer", "text": "I am a Hobbyist Java programmer and I would like to further my programming skills by learning C or C++ and Python. I have read many C vs C++ articles but none of them contain the information I'm looking for. I would like to know if it is better to learn C or C++. In most articles I read most people recommend C++ saying that it is better because it is OO and is easier to write GUIs in or they don't recommend C saying that you will learn bad FO habits. But I can program in Java which is OO so the FO habits won't stick. As for the GUI, I think python might be better suited at handling that. I would also like to know which is better for python. i.e. which works more well with python or which runs faster with python etc. So do you recommend C and python and java or C++ and Python and Java P.S I do most of my programming on linux."}
{"_id": "80296", "title": "A developer as IT Manager: advice?", "text": "A week after my boss, the IT Manager of a highly automated manufacturing plant, and I had a conversation about the future plans for the Software Development Unit (me) regarding training, junior dev hiring, etc., he announced his resignation out of the blue, with a 4-day notice, and Management unexpectedly appointed me to take his place at a near-manager level, instead of offering the position to the Infrastructure Engineer (the only other employee in Plant IT). Three months into this role, I have mixed feelings about the position. Being a developer, I feel overwhelmed by the amount of non-programming related technical issues I must oversee, such as network, server and telecommunications infrastructure. Needless to say, the 4-day knowledge transfer was nothing compared to the amount of knowledge required to keep everything running. Add to this that this \"manager/quasi-manager\" position's responsibilities include about 60% hands-on, high level 7x24x365 application support (i.e. guess which one of the 3000+ corporate-developed applications is not working properly), which I despise to do, and the outlook is not very bright. I've never heard of a Developer being promoted to IT Manager before. Has anyone had a similar experience? Did you ever went back to development, was it difficult to go back? What did you do to ease this transition? Notes, blogs, books you recommend?"}
{"_id": "101337", "title": "What's the difference between stateful and stateless?", "text": "The books and documentation on the MVC just heap on using the Stateful and Stateless terms. To be honest, i am just unable to grab the idea of it, what the books are talking about. They don't give an example to understand any of the either state, rather than just telling that HTTP is stateless and with ASP.NET MVC microsoft is going along with it. Am I missing some fundamental knowledge, as i can't understand what is stateful and why is stateful and same goes for stateless. A simple and short example that talks about a control like button or textbox can be simplify the understanding i suppose."}
{"_id": "254355", "title": "Developing configuration syntax - best practise/rules/methods?", "text": "I am currently developing a small application, which checks if provided data meets certain requirements. The requirements are actually a long list, and might be changing, so I defined a syntax which allows me to state all of the requirements briefly and in a seperate file. Now the overall requirements for the application have changed, and I need to change my configuration syntax. Which leeds me to wonder if there is methodoloy or best practise for developing such syntaxes. Currently what I do is   * I think about the requirements and come up with an initial syntax,    * start configuring the first few items and see how it works.   * If I come upon something that does not work well or not at all with the current syntax, I change the syntax, if possible in a backward compatible way. This somehow works for me, but it feels a bit like fishing in troubled water. Also I feel it does not nessessarly lead to the most concise and easy to understand/use syntax. So I was wondering what other people do, especially if there is a better approach to this."}
{"_id": "128998", "title": "Employer appeal; OOP use in mainstream; solutions that blossom with OOP", "text": "I'm currently in the process of what I hope to be a career change into the programming field. Despite my wide range of knowledge in the field and additional exposure to concepts in college (which in the end left a lot to be desired), I feel I might be missing out on what really matters when appealing to employers. I found this post http://stackoverflow.com/a/1991453 to be specific to my predicament. Importantly: > _I've seen a lot of terrible C++ code and it's not just from people who > don't understand the concepts. I've seen a lot of coders who know exactly > what an object is and can explain polymorphism and all those technical OOP > terms perfectly. But if they don't know when to use it, they'll never be > able to take full advantage of it. I know because I was like this myself. I > had read a book on OOP in high school which explained all the concepts, but > I went years before I actually used them because I didn't see when they'd > actually benefit my code._ I am comfortable with OOP concepts but a little rusty with supporting languages like Java, C# (my favorite for OO), and even C++. The reason I can't claim to be at least proficient in this area is because I'm not really sold on OO design; everytime I set out to solve a problem that can be done in OOP, I find myself forcing its use and end up making a procedural solution in C which I believe to be a much more elegant program. I guess this involves three questions: Can I still (honestly) sell myself as being valuable to an employer given my skill-set strengths and weaknesses as explained above? Is there any projects or problems I can tackle solo (for practice) that is just smarter to do with OOP? And given an object strong project, what language should I concentrate on?"}
{"_id": "227792", "title": "Object-Oriented design and proper Java architecture for my program", "text": "This is the very first time that I think I want to create a program which really uses OOP principles and I want to do it in the most effective and efficient way. First of all we are given this (great) riddle : > 100 prisoners are imprisoned in solitary cells. Each cell is windowless and > soundproof. There's a central living room with one light bulb; the bulb is > initially off. No prisoner can see the light bulb from his or her own cell. > Each day, the warden picks a prisoner equally at random, and that prisoner > visits the central living room; at the end of the day the prisoner is > returned to his cell. While in the living room, the prisoner can toggle the > bulb if he or she wishes. Also, the prisoner has the option of asserting the > claim that all 100 prisoners have been to the living room. If this assertion > is false (that is, some prisoners still haven't been to the living room), > all 100 prisoners will be shot for their stupidity. However, if it is indeed > true, all prisoners are set free and inducted into MENSA, since the world > can always use more smart people. Thus, the assertion should only be made if > the prisoner is 100% certain of its validity. > > Before this whole procedure begins, the prisoners are allowed to get > together in the courtyard to discuss a plan. What is the optimal plan they > can agree on, so that eventually, someone will make a correct assertion? So I've got a solution and I want to create a program to run it. I want my program to be as modular as possible, meaning that if I find a better solution, I don't to have to rewrite all of my code. I think OOP is really suited for this. Here's what I've done so far:   * A **Main** class : where I just run several games to test solutions   * A **Game** class : which just runs one 'attempt'. It has a 'jail' (which is just an array of prisoners), a day counter and other useful stuffs.   * And a **Prisoner** class : which just represent one single prisoner. After thinking this through, the only things that one prisoner can do are _changing the light where they're picked_ and _stating (or not) that everyone has come in the room_. In the solution I've come up with, I have two types on Prisoner. What I've done is that I just implemented my Prisoner class with the most classic type of Prisoner and created a subclass which simply overrides methods from the Prisoner class. Right now, I see two possible improvements if I want to reuse my code :   * make the **Prisoner** class a Java interface, so that when I want to create a new type, I'd just have to implement a Prisoner. But the main issue is that I mostly have 'typical prisoners', a lot of people having the same pattern. Do I just create a implementation 'Classic_Prisoner' ?   * creating a **Behaviour** class which handles what behaviour one Prisoner have given a single situation. But isn't just the same problem ? I mean I would also have to create one Behaviour subclass for each type of Prisoner I'm considering. What to do to have the cleanest code there and be able to reuse it when the time comes?"}
{"_id": "246709", "title": "Which algorithms do I need to look into?", "text": "First things first: I need to apologize in advance about the bad choice of title for this question, but I really couldn't come up with something meaningful. I'm actually looking for suggestions as to what this kind of problem in called, so that I can do some research on my own. I will gladly change the title once the suggestions will start to come in. It's not even a real problem, it's just an exercise I made up in order to explore algorithms I have never had the chance to deal with. Let's say we want to write a program that will help us to optimize the logistics of an arbitrary number of music bands that have to perform one after the other on the same stage during the same night. Here's the problem: the bands share players, meaning that any given player can play in more than one band. Were the bands all made of different players, we wouldn't need a program at all, but since all the musicians know each other, they will form many bands with different combinations of them. What we want to do is to arrange all the bands in such a way that groups that share the greatest number of members will \"cluster\" together and play one after the other, so that we can minimize the number of musicians involved with each change of band. In other words, the largest number possible of musicians should be already on stage each time a band finishes its set and the next one comes on stage. Is this just another form of the famous staff rostering / scheduling problem? Or is it simpler? I admittedly haven't yet though hard about how one might solve it, it's just a problem that I thought of today. If I had to take a stab at it, it looks like the problem boils down to figuring out which bands have the most members in common, and sort them accordingly. But how is this called in CS parlance? And, is that all there is to it? Arranging bands by the number of musicians is the only requirement we have. I sense that, if we had to take into account other kinds of constraints like, say, one particular band would really prefer playing at the beginning and another right in the middle, this might turn into a full-fledged scheduling problem. In its simplest form, though, this appears to be a simple problem but, like I said, I don't know the name of the family of algorithms that would enable me determine which bands have the most musicians in common."}
{"_id": "124521", "title": "What open source licenses allow for combining code that compiles into a single assembly?", "text": "I'm trying to make a library that will be used by other developers. I want to obey the \"don't re-invent the wheel\" principle and and I also want to make the deployment a matter of dropping a single .dll into the bin folder. So far, I've chosen an dual MIT/MS-PL license. Is there anything stopping me from compiling other MSPL/MIT licensed code directly into the same assembly as my own? Am I worried about nothing? If this is a legit concern, should I go add a licence/copyright header to each file before I add other code to my code base, since there won't be a nice tidy assembly to delineate where the code came from? Also, I will add the header for you so you can get to writing the answer faster: \"You are not a lawyer, you are not giving legal advice, I should fork over my hard earned money to a profession I detest to resolve questions like this instead of asking for free advice\""}
{"_id": "48648", "title": "Logical progressions through the job market", "text": "I'm 5 years out of a unrecognised university where I did Software Engineering. First job was VB.NET, one job was Python, Linux and Web development. I feel cast as a web developer. I'd love a role doing C but no one is interested in juniors if the applicant hasn't got 3 years of C development experience already. I've done some C and a drop of open source coding but I'll never have the confidence to convince someone I know absolutely what I'm doing. Do I just spend more and more time letting life pass me by as I sit in my room on a friday night writing a C problem \"for the sake of learning more C\" Basically I'm just not sure I want to continue my career if it's going to involve nothing but high level, machine abstracted, business logic and as interested as I am in low level development and enjoy reading books by Taunembaum I struggle to see how I can make the jump and I just feel life would be easier if I got a job in a cafe in Amsterdam rolling spliffs for customers. My ideal job, being a paid member of the Fedora development team seems so far away, without anyone to pay me to learn the skills to get there, and the only way would be to literally spend weeks and weeks of my life contributing code without recognition for free and without any guarentees at the end. Not that I've contributed anything at all so far. Are there any career paths that are logically set out so that jumping between roles is \"correctly\" incremental and where hard work and learning does eventually lead to the kind of places I might want to go? [ and also getting paid at the same time? ]"}
{"_id": "175549", "title": "Android Application(Client) and Server(C#.Net) Communication", "text": "I am confused which approach to choose - Poll (which waste battery), GCM or any other approach which suits best? **Scenario is:** my client is **Android** and server is **C#.Net**. Server sends Invitation to client. Server can choose whom to send (Regionwise, Particular, To All). Client can accept or reject the invitation.which sends result back to server"}
{"_id": "241536", "title": "Efficient algorithm for Virtual Machine(VM) Consolidation in Cloud", "text": "**_PROBLEM:_**   We have **N** physical machines(PMs) each with ram **R** i, cpu **C** i and a set of currently scheduled VMs each with ram requirement **r** i and **c** i respectively   Moving(Migrating) any VM from one PM to other has a cost associated which depends on its ram **r** i. A PM with no VMs is shut down to save power.   Our target is to minimize the weighted sum of (N,migration cost) by migrating some VMs i.e. minimize the number of working PMs as well as not to degrade the service level due to excessive migrations.   **_My Approach:_**   Brute Force approach is choosing the minimum loaded PM and try to fit its VMs to other PMs by First Fit Decreasing algorithm or we can select the victim PMs and target PMs based on their loading level and shut down victims if possible by moving their VMs to targets.   I tried this Greedy approach on the Data of _Baadal_ (IIT-D cloud) but It isn't giving promising results.   I have also tried to study the Ant colony optimization for dynamic VM consolidating but was unable to understand very much. I used the links.   http://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/72/52/15/PDF/Esnault.pdf http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/72/38/56/PDF/RR-8032.pdf Would anyone please clarify the solution or suggest any new approach/resources for better performance.   I am basically searching for the algorithms not the physical optimizations and I also know that many commercial organizations have provided these solution but I just wanted to know more the underlying algorithms.   Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "175540", "title": "Splitting big request in multiple small ajax requests", "text": "I am unsure regarding the scalability of the following model. I have little experience with large systems, big number of requests and so on but I'm trying to build some features considering scalability first. In my scenario there is a **user** page which contains data for:   1. User's details (name, location, workplace ...)   2. User's activity (blog posts, comments...)   3. User statistics (rating, number of friends...) In order to show all this on the same page, for a request there will be at least 3 different database queries on the back-end. In some cases, I imagine that those queries will be running quite a wile, therefore the user experience may suffer while waiting between requests. This is why I decided to run only step 1 (User's details) as a normal request. After the response is received, two ajax requests are sent for steps 2 and 3. When those responses are received, I only place the data in the destined wrappers. For me at least this makes more sense. However there are 3 requests instead of one for every user page view. Will this affect the system on the long term? I'm assuming that this kind of approach requires more resources but is this trade of UX for resources a good dial or should I stick to one plain big request?"}
{"_id": "175542", "title": "What will be correct answer to \"why is NoSQL faster than SQL\" on interview?", "text": "It's just nonsense for me personally. I can't see any performance boost by using NoSQL instead of SQL. Maybe SQL over NoSQL, yes but not in that way. I think that if I answer \"I have no idea\" or something like that it will be bad answer because this doesn't really look like a fake-question, it's a serious question on interview but how should be looking correct answer on this question? Or am I missing something about NoSQL?"}
{"_id": "44764", "title": "What is the best way to work with mailing lists?", "text": "Many open source project have mailing lists a preferred way of communication. If i just sign to the mailing list via my g-mail account i will see ~100 messages per day that are not threaded but just a plain list. What is the preferred way to work with mailing lists so i can see a tree-view of threads and replys?"}
{"_id": "254683", "title": "Version Control Options for Shared Network Folder", "text": "The company I work for has no version control. It will never have version control, so a server-based solution is out of the question. Also, our network is extremely slow. Often, it takes a few seconds to save a small file. I work with a small team. Are there any version control options for a shared network folder? I'm looking for something where I can go to work, do a pull, work off my C: drive all day, then push at the end of the day. Basically the same thing as GitHub, except with a network drive, I guess."}
{"_id": "254681", "title": "Emulate enviroment locally or accept use of a dev enviroment", "text": "I'm at a new job and I _really_ want to set up my VM to be able to emulate some or all of the enviroment locally. I'm told it's not possible, but I hate to accept that. To give some context, I'm very new to a poject that is many years old, but semi-recently (about a year) inherrited by an entirely new team that still doesn't fully understand the codebase the inherrited. The code is huge with dozens of maven projects, and is written with the intent that parts will run on different servers, including logic to sync DB's of versions on either side of a firewall. Currently the team copy their code to a dev enviroment, runs it, and looks at log files for integration testing. Everyone shares the same dev enviroment and communicate to avoid collisions, on a dozen large team. This just feels like an inefficent pain. I've been told the enviroment is too complex to emulate. When I ask about just emulating the GUI/frontend half I'm told that it's too hard to get to integrate with tomcat and others have tried and failed. No one can quite explain 'why' they failed though, and it sounds like they didn't try alternate approches to make it happen. So...should I rock the boat? It seems insanly inefficent the way they are doing things, especially with so huge a team. If I _could_ create an easy way of emulating on local machines and show others to do it I think it would be a major gain. However, if others are right and I fail I've wasted my time by thinking I was smarter then others, not to mention looked pretty incompetent on my first month on the job by getting nothing done except prooving what others told me. Is the gain of being able to run in debuggers and test locally worth the fighting for?"}
{"_id": "241533", "title": "High-level strategy for distinguishing a regular string from invalid JSON (ie. JSON-like string detection)", "text": "**Disclaimer On Absence of Code:** I have no code to post because I haven't started writing; was looking for more theoretical guidance as I doubt I'll have trouble coding it but am pretty befuddled on what approach(es) would yield best results. I'm not _seeking_ any code, either, though; just direction. **Dilemma** I'm toying with adding a \"magic method\"-style feature to a UI I'm building for a client, and it would require intelligently detecting whether or not a string was meant to be JSON as against a simple string. I had considered these general ideas:   1. Look for a sort of arbitrarily-determined acceptable ratio of the frequency of JSON-like syntax (ie. regex to find strings separated by colons; look for colons between curly-braces, etc.) to the number of quote-encapsulated strings + `null`s, `bool`s and `int`s/`float`s. But the smaller the data set, the more fickle this would get   2. look for key identifiers like opening and closing curly braces... not sure if there even _are_ more easy identifiers, and this doesn't appeal anyway because it's so prescriptive about the kinds of mistakes it could find   3. try incrementally parsing chunks, as those between curly braces, and seeing what proportion of these fractional statements turn out to be valid JSON; this seems like it would suffer less than (1) from smaller datasets, but would probably be much more processing-intensive, and very susceptible to a missing or inverted brace Just curious if the computational folks or algorithm pros out there had any approaches in mind that my semantics-oriented brain might have missed. PS: It occurs to me that natural language processing, about which I am totally ignorant, might be a cool approach; but, _if_ NLP is a good strategy here, it sort of doesn't matter because I have zero experience with it and don't have time to learn & then implement/ this feature isn't worth it to the client."}
{"_id": "204424", "title": "License change of original source from Apache 2.0 to LGPL", "text": "About a year or so ago, I forked a project licensed under Apache 2.0 and made extensive changes and additions to the code, a good portion of which I contributed back freely to the community. Recently, the code moderator changed the licensing to LGPLv3, and I wanted to find out if I was correct in my belief that this licensing change does not apply to the code I checked out more than a year ago, specifically not forcing me to comply to LGPL and leaving me free to do as I wish under Apache 2.0 as long as I do not \"taint\" my fork with new code from the original project that was written under the new licensing scheme. Or am I mistaken?"}
{"_id": "254688", "title": "Why don't compilers inline everything?", "text": "Sometimes compilers inline function calls. That means that they move the code of the called function into the calling function. This makes things slightly faster because there's no need to push and pop stuff on and off the call stack. So my question is, why don't compilers inline everything? I assume it would make the executable notably faster. The only reason I can think of is a significantly larger executable, but does it really matter these days with hundreds of GB of memory? Isn't the improved performance worth it? Is there any other reason why compilers don't just inline all function calls?"}
{"_id": "46894", "title": "Are short abbreviated method/function names that don't use full words bad practice or a matter of style?", "text": "Is there nowadays any case for brevity over clarity with method names? Tonight I came across the Python method `repr()` which seems like a bad name for a method to me. It's not an English word. It apparently is an abbreviation of 'representation' and even if you can deduce that, it still doesn't tell you what the method does. A good method name is subjective to a certain degree, but I had assumed that modern best practices agreed that names should be at least full words and descriptive enough to reveal enough about the method that you would easily find one when looking for it. Method names made from words help let your code read like English. `repr()` seems to have no advantages as a name other than being short and IDE auto-complete makes this a non-issue. An additional reason given in an answer is that python names are brief so that you can do many things on one line. Surely the better way is to just extract the many things to their own function, and repeat until lines are not too long. Are these just a hangover from the unix way of doing things? Commands with names like `ls`, `rm`, `ps` and `du` (if you could call those names) were hard to find and hard to remember. I know that the everyday usage of commands such as these is different than methods in code so the matter of whether those are bad names is a different matter."}
{"_id": "139747", "title": "What is meant by a primitive data type?", "text": "My understanding of a primitive datatype is that > It is a datatype provided by a language implicitly (Others are user defined > classes) So different languages have different sets of datatypes which are considered primitive for that particular language. Is that right? And what is the difference between a \"basic datatype\" and \"built-in datatype\". Wikipedia says a primitive datatype is either of the two. **PS - Why is \"string\" type considered as a primitive type in SNOBOL4 and not in Java ?**"}
{"_id": "139743", "title": "Is the popularity of Objective-C challenging C++?", "text": "According to TIOBE programming language popularity index for March 2012, Objective-C is now almost as popular as C++. I'm a bit astonished by this fact. I would have expected C++ to be still head and shoulders above Objective-C in popularity, or am I mistaken and the TIOBE popularity index seems correct? Or do the companies like Apple pay them to create hype around their products?"}
{"_id": "255995", "title": "Question about a package in R", "text": "So I have this command ran to set up the exercise:               require('ggplot2')          load(url('http://www.stolaf.edu/people/olaf/cs125/hw8.RData'))       And it gives a new operator `draw()`, so when I run `draw(p0x,p0y)`, it gives me a sketch as a graph. My question is when I run `draw(p2x,p2y)`, it gives me 4 same sketches as a graph, only that the one on the upper right corner is shifted to the left. My job is to move that part of the drawing to the right, so that the four sketches are symmetrically placed. But the problem is I don't quite understand `p0x,p0y,p2x,p2y` and I don't know how to do it. I was told a single line can solve the problem."}
{"_id": "204422", "title": "Drawing controls and sub controls unaware of their location in parent", "text": "Applications and operating systems have a ton of windows and controls, sub windows and sub controls. I've noticed its common to have sub controls have their coordinate systems reset to start at 0 making drawing much easier. However I'm not sure how that is done and how I'd be able to do that. I'm going to be creating an application that does a lot of 2d drawing and includes things like my own implemented scrollbars and lots of controls that have sub controls. I want the coordinate system of sub controls to reset to 0 and I want the controls to have minimal knowledge of their location within parent controls, and parent parent controls, ect. The only thing I can think of is to pass in transform coordinates and have each sub control when drawing add the x and y transform coordinates to their objects being drawn so it gets transformed to the correct location. That quickly gets very tiring when I know there are better ways. I'm not sure what I'll be using, weather it will be GDI+, OpenGL, or Direct2D. I'm just looking for general information on how this done so sub controls can draw at x and y 0 and it pops up at whatever location the actual control is located at."}
{"_id": "227798", "title": "Names for generic classes - how to avoid naming them just \"object\"? Use synonyms?", "text": "When programming, I often end up naming some generic class (think of an abstract base class for stuff you manage in your project) something like `FooObject`, `FooComponent` or `FooItem` (where `Foo` is an abreviation of project name). The problem is, that these names are used so often, they become meaningless - I mean, when I'm talking about an \"object\", no-one knows whether I mean \"a subclass of `FooObject`\", or an ordinary object. I think that a good list of synonyms for \"object\", \"component\", \"callback\", \"handler\", \"action\" and so on would help, because we could just redefine these world on a per-project basis. You could even make up some totally nonsense word and define your meaning in documentation. I think it would be clearer than naming stuff \"objects\". Here's what I mean by \"nonsense\" (taken from Alice in Wonderland): > Twas brillig, and the slithy toves > > Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: > > All mimsy were the borogoves, > > And the mome raths outgrabe. Maybe you can have some nice words you use in such cases? How do you deal with similar situations in your projects? [ Related: How to avoid general names for abstract classes? ]"}
{"_id": "163043", "title": "Do story points have a direct relation with task estimates?", "text": "In my current team, where we run multiple scrums, the Story points are usually based on the effort required to complete the User Story. For example if an User Story has 2 tasks, both needing 5 days each, they the Story is assigned 10 points. So 1 day of effort is considered to be one Story point. Is this practice a good one?"}
{"_id": "163040", "title": "Is it a good practice to have Epics under User Stories?", "text": "In my current team there is a practice of putting Epics under User Stories and sometimes even User Stories or Epics under Tasks! When questioned, the usual reply is: **\"if it is not a good practice then the project management tool would not have allowed doing so!\"** (IBM Rational Team Concert, for one does not prevent such practice.) What do the experts here think about this?"}
{"_id": "168013", "title": "Should you promise to deliver a feature that you aren't sure if its implementable?", "text": "In an article from HN, I came across the following advice: > Always tell your customer/user \"yes\", even if you're not sure. 90% of the > time, you'll find a way to do it. 10% of the time, you'll go back and > apologize. Small price to pay for major personal growth But I've always thought that one should do a feasibility analysis _before_ making any kind of promises to a customer/user, so that they aren't misled at any point. At what circumstances, then, should the above advice applicable?"}
{"_id": "134716", "title": "Writing functional tests for a legacy project", "text": "I am trying to add a couple of tests to a legacy C project. The project basically consists of a command line tool that prints something to stdout every time an event happens. Now, since writing unit tests would be pretty hard given the fact that the modules are pretty tight coupled, I am trying to write some functional tests in order to validate the current behaviour and then I'll go on splitting the modules so I can unit test them. Does it make sense to have the testing framework something like a few Python scripts (keep in mind that the project is pure C) that handles all the functional tests? Basically, Python should call my command line tool, fake its input and expect a valid output."}
{"_id": "41045", "title": "Scheme vs Common Lisp: Which characteristics made a difference in your project?", "text": "There are no shortage of vague \"Scheme vs Common Lisp\" questions on both StackOverflow and on this site, so I want to make this one more focused. The question is for people who have coded in both languages: ### While coding in Scheme, what specific elements of your Common Lisp coding experience did you miss most? Or, inversely, while coding in Common Lisp, what did you miss from coding in Scheme? I don't necessarily mean just language features. The following are all valid things to miss, as far as the question is concerned:   * Specific libraries.    * Specific features of development environments like SLIME, DrRacket, etc.    * Features of particular implementations, like Gambit's ability to write blocks of C code directly into your Scheme source.    * And of course, language features.  Examples of the sort of answers I'm hoping for:   * \"I was trying to implement X in Common Lisp, and if I had Scheme's first-class continuations, I totally would've just done Y, but instead I had to do Z, which was more of a pain.\"    * \"Scripting the build process in my Scheme project got increasingly painful as my source tree grew and I linked in more and more C libraries. For my next project, I moved back to Common Lisp.\"    * \"I have a large existing C++ codebase, and for me, being able to embed C++ calls directly in my Gambit Scheme code was totally worth any shortcomings that Scheme may have vs Common Lisp, even including lack of SWIG support.\"  So, I'm hoping for war stories, rather than general sentiments like \"Scheme is a simpler language\" etc."}
{"_id": "256194", "title": "share button in custom listview doesn't work", "text": "I'm following share a text with button in custom listview but it doesn't work . this is code for `OnClick` in `ListViewAdapter.java` :               OnClickListener clickListener = new OnClickListener() {                      @Override                 public void onClick(View v) {                     try{                         Context context = v.getContext();                         String ab = (String) holder.tvComment.getText();                         holder.tvComment.setText(ab);                              Toast.makeText(context, ab, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();                         Intent sendIntent = new Intent();                         sendIntent.setAction(Intent.ACTION_SEND);                              sendIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, ab);                         sendIntent.setType(\"text/plain\");                                   context.startActivity(sendIntent);                          }                     catch (Exception e){                     Log.w(\"Share Data\", \"Error!\");                     }                      }             };                       holder.sharebtn.setOnClickListener(clickListener);"}
{"_id": "256197", "title": "What is more efficient, a single square root or multiple divisions?", "text": "Say I make a program that calculates all possible (integral) factors of a certain number that has been input.   Is it theoretically more efficient to check with all integers up to the square root of the number or till half of the number.   Calculating the square root will take more time and power but will result in fewer divisions and vice-versa for the other option."}
{"_id": "134711", "title": "Is it important for a solution to be an efficient one?", "text": "I solve many problems, mostly from Top Coder. I will get answers for many, but most times I end up with an inefficient solution. In real-world implementations - does it really matter that a solution to the problem is efficient? If so how I can improve it?"}
{"_id": "252687", "title": "Should an IT consultant charge for time spent on planning?", "text": "If you do consulting/freelancing as a software developer, should you charge your client on time spent on planning? By planning I mean long phone calls, on-site meetings, etc."}
{"_id": "129115", "title": "How to sync calendars events programmatically?", "text": "I'd like to hear some ideas how to sync calendar events. Say I have two calendars having fields (id, title, start, end, updated, location and description). I'm struggling with starting point. Its easy if all events are new and not overlapping with each other. But say I already have events on calendars, some are supposedly same events, some are separate events, some maybe same events, but their attributes have changed, like location, title, start and end time. How would you actually make sync between calendars with reasonable smart functionality?"}
{"_id": "161570", "title": "What's the best way to inject science into everyday programming?", "text": "I work better when I have some firm foundations. This helps me to solve everyday problems better, because I can generalize them. The thing I find in programming is so many things are black boxes. Logic is scientific, but commands are not. A command in a language is just \"something that does something\". It is very hard to work out what its logic is, without understanding the underlying hardware. I learned brainfuck for a little bit, and enjoyed it very much, but it still has commands. These commands are packages of functionality that cannot really be understood without understanding all the lower levels of logic, unfortunately. What I would like to know is if there are any mathematical or logic principles that help with being able to generalise programming problems?"}
{"_id": "59756", "title": "\"Mentor\" a senior programmer or colleague without insulting", "text": "I don't have great social skills. Like many programmers I know, social skills are something that is worked on and developed over time because it's not a natural and 'inborn' trait. When a computer is doing something wrong, you can tell it so and 'fix' it so it'll work correctly the next time. It won't complain. It won't feel insulted. In fact, I tend to think it's 'happier' because it's not grinding away in a dead end. * * * I find it much trickier to work with other programmers at or above my level in a way that enables them to do better work faster without appearing condescending, insulting, or the group's \"know-it-all.\" I know some programmer's look at this objectively and simply say, \"Since it's for the good of the group I will inform them, and if they are insulted that's their problem.\" This isn't a bad method - all the programmers I have ever worked with take and act on criticism appropriately. It's when they're having a bad day/week/month/year/life that I find it difficult to approach them without a reactive emotional response. I genuinely enjoy working with those around me, though, and don't want to develop bad blood.   * **What skills, techniques, and even outside of work activities do you engage in that enable you to be a support and resource without the tension that can be created in these situations?**   * Or, in other words, how do you mentor someone without appearing to mentor them? I suppose the question could/should be reversed as well - how do you keep yourself 'open' and learning such that you don't scare off people that have useful information for you? How do you keep on top of skills so that the latest college grad isn't necessarily better than you in terms of design patterns, technology, workflow, etc?"}
{"_id": "162242", "title": "Data Quality in Relational Database Regression Tests", "text": "I have been working on an open source Museum Collections Management web application that is to be used to keep track of a museum's accessioned, donated, loaned or otherwise acquired artefacts. This involved designing and creating a rather large database (in relation to my previous experiences), which stores all kinds of varying information (artefact information, changing location information, personal contact information, pictures, etc), that needs to be flexible and easily extendible. I am just finishing my university degree and I am not a professional when it comes to database design and so I am really wanting to create a thorough test suite to ensure that what I have in place \"works\". I have read up on database testing and have come across a few articles that mention Regression Testing in regards to databases but I do not fully understand what this all involves. From reading this article at Dr.Dobbs I understand that one sort of testing that I will need to do is validate that the logic in the database is correct. So I would create tests that insert certain data into the database and then follow it up with a query to ensure that I get the correct data back from the database (ensuring that all the appropriate triggers or views are working). The confusion comes in with the mention of testing for \"Data Quality\". In the article above the author makes mention that you want to validate the following with tests:   * Column domain value rules   * Column default value rules   * Value existence rules   * Row value rules   * Size rules What types of tests would this involve and how would they be implemented? Also this is my first time writing a test suite for a database, are there any good guidelines on how/where to begin or any processes that I could follow to guide my test development?"}
{"_id": "121465", "title": "Why are part-time jobs in programming an anomaly?", "text": "I've recently quit my full time developing job at mega-corp, and I decided that I'll look for a part time job. Since then I've talked to half a dozen potential employers, and every one of them had the same reaction when I said the magic words \"part-time\" - they all closed up and became suspicious. Now, I understand that it might just be me, so as control I asked every one of them what if I were willing to work full time, and they all said I would probably get an offer. My question is two fold:   1. Why, as an employer, would you give up a competent, even great, developer, simply because he wants to work 3 days a week and not 5?   2. How do I sell the story of part time job better? I usually just list my reasons which are that I prefer that balance currently in my life and that I want to work on my own projects, but it leaves them even more suspicious - am I going to start something myself and quit? Am I just lazy?"}
{"_id": "243282", "title": "Doubts about several best practices for rest api + service layer", "text": "I'm going to be starting a project soon that exposes a restful api for business intelligence. It may not be limited to a restful api, so I plan to delegate requests to a service layer that then coordinates multiple domain objects (each of which have business logic local to the object). The api will likely have many calls as it is a long-term project. While thinking about the design, I recalled a few best practices. 1) Use command objects at the controller layer (I'm using Spring MVC). 2) Use DTOs at the service layer. 3) Validate in both the controller and service layer, though for different reasons. I have my doubts about these recommendations. 1) Using command objects adds a lot of extra single-purpose classes (potentially one per request). What exactly is the benefit? Annotation based validation can be done using this approach, sure. What if I have two requests that take the same parameters, but have different validation requirements? I would have to have two different classes with exactly the same members but different annotations? Bleh. 2) I have heard that using DTOs is preferable to parameters because it makes for more maintainable code down the road (say, e.g., requirements change and the service parameters need to be altered). I don't quite understand this. Shouldn't an api be more-or-less set in stone? I would understand that in the early phases of a project (or, especially, an entire company) the domain itself will not be well understood, and thus core domain objects may change along with the apis that manipulate these objects. At this point however the number of api methods should be small and their dependents few, so changes to the methods could easily be tolerated from a maintainability standpoint. In a large api with many methods and a substantial domain model, I would think having a DTO for potentially each domain object would become unwieldy. Am I misunderstanding something here? 3) I see validation in the controller and service layer as redundant in most cases. Why would I validate that parameters are not null and are in general well formed in the controller if the service is going to do exactly the same (and more). Couldn't I just do all the validation in the service and throw a runtime exception with a list of bad parameters then catch that in the controller to make the error messages more presentable? Better yet, couldn't I just make the error messages user-friendly in the service and let the exception trickle up to a global handler (ControllerAdvice in spring, for example)? Is there something wrong with either of these approaches? (I do see a use case for controller validation if the input does not map one-to-one with the service input, but since the controllers are for a rest api and not forms, the api parameters will probably map directly to service parameters.) I do also have a question about unchecked vs checked exceptions. Namely, I'm not really sure why I'd ever want to use a checked exception. Every time I have seen them used they just get wrapped into general exceptions (DomainException, SystemException, ApplicationException, w/e) to reduce the signature length of methods, or devs catch Exception rather than dealing with the App1Exception, App2Exception, Sys1Exception, Sys2Exception. I don't see how either of these practices is very useful. Why not just use unchecked exceptions always and catch the ones you actually do care about? You could just document what unchecked exceptions the method throws."}
{"_id": "243280", "title": "In which object should I implement wait()/notify()?", "text": "I'm working in an Android project with multithreading. Basically I have to wait to the server to respond before sending more data. The data sending task is delimited by the flag `boolean hasServerResponded` so the `Thread` will loop infinitely without doing anything until the flag becomes `true`. Since this `boolean` isn't declared as `volatile` (yet), and also looping without doing anything wastes resources, I thought maybe I should use `AtomicBoolean` and also implement `wait() / notify()` mechanism. Should I use the `AtomicBoolean` object `notify()` and `wait()` methods or should I create a lock `Object`?"}
{"_id": "121468", "title": "Unit testing statically typed functional code", "text": "I wanted to ask you people, in which cases it makes sense to unit test statically typed functional code, as written in haskell, scala, ocaml, nemerle, f# or haXe (the last is what I am really interested in, but I wanted to tap into the knowledge of the bigger communities). I ask this because from my understanding:   * One aspect of unit tests is to have the specs in runnable form. However when employing a declarative style, that directly maps the formalized specs to language semantics, is it even actually _possible_ to express the specs in runnable form in a separate way, that adds value?   * The more obvious aspect of unit tests is to track down errors that cannot be revealed through static analysis. Given that type safe functional code is a good tool to code extremely close to what your static analyzer understands, it would seem that you can shift a lot of safety towards static analysis. However a simple mistake like using `x` instead of `y` (both being coordinates) in your code cannot be covered. OTOH such a mistake could also arise while writing the test code, so I am not sure whether it is worth the effort.   * Unit tests do introduce redundancy, which means that when requirements change, the code implementing them and the tests covering this code must both be changed. This overhead of course is about constant, so one could argue, that it doesn't really matter. In fact, in languages like Ruby it really doesn't compared to the benefits, but given how statically typed functional programming covers a lot of the ground unit tests are intended for, it feels like it's a constant overhead one can simply reduce without penalty. From this I'd deduce that unit tests are somewhat obsolete in this programming style. Of course such a claim can only lead to religious wars, so let me boil this down to a simple question: When you use such a programming style, to which extents do you use unit tests and why (what quality is it you hope to gain for your code)? Or the other way round: do you have criteria by which you can qualify a unit of statically typed functional code as _covered_ by the static analyzer and hence without need for unit test coverage?"}
{"_id": "163593", "title": "What does it mean by atomic commit for a versioning system?", "text": "One of the reasons why programmers prefer SVN over CVS is the former allows atomic commits ? What does this mean ?"}
{"_id": "163597", "title": "Plug-in based software design", "text": "I'm a software developer who is willing to improve his software design skills. I think software should not only work but have a solid and elegant design too to be reusable and extensive to later purposes. Now I'm in search of some help figuring out good practices for specific problems. Actually, I'm trying to find out how to design a piece of software that would be extensible via plug-ins. The questions I have are the following:   * Should plug-ins be able to access each others functionality? This would bring dependencies I guess.   * What should the main application offer to the plug-ins if I want to let's say develop a multimedia software which would play videos and music but which could later on get functionality added over plug-ins that would let's say be able to read video status (time, bps, ...) and display it. Would this mean that the player itself would have to be part of the main program and offer services to plug-ins to get such information or would there be a way to develop the player as a plug-in also but offer in some way the possibility to other plug-ins to interact with it? As you see, my questions are mainly for learning purposes as I strive to improve my software development skills. I hope to find help here and apologize if something is wrong with my question."}
{"_id": "202745", "title": "Fork dead SVN based project on GitHub", "text": "I previously asked this at stack overflow but it was closed, I believe because 'programmers' is a more appropriate venue for this question. I have done some work on the SVN Importer project (Apache license), which appears to be effectively dead (no published changes in 5 years). I have a login to their svn server but do not have commit rights. At any rate, I'd like to convert this project to Git and push my own changes to GitHub. The GitHub site suggests the svn2git tool for converting svn projects to Git, so I was planning to convert the SVN repository to Git, add my changes, and then push this Git repository to GitHub. I'm wondering, what are the legal requirements and common conventions of this process? Is it acceptable to clone the entire history of the project and move it to GitHub? Also, even though this is essentially a dead project, once I've translated the repository to Git should I put all of my commits onto a non master branch or is it acceptable to use master in this case?"}
{"_id": "179820", "title": "How common is it to submit papers to journals or conferences outside of academia?", "text": "I worked in academia a few years, but more on the D-side of R&D. The race for papers never appealed to me and I'm a practical not theoretical type, but I do like reading papers on certain topics (e.g. Google Papers, NLP, FB papers, ...) a lot. How common is it that normally working developers submit papers to conferences or even journals? It seems to be somewhat common in certain companies (it's not common or encouraged in mine). Do journals or conferences even take papers by an academic nobody (BSc) under consideration? I ask, because I have a few rough ideas and I would just like to bring them into _form_ , one way or the other. Bonus question: Is there a list of CS (in the widest sense) conferences/journals with short descriptions? * * * PS (Four out of five researchers I met published quite some fluffy stuff for my taste. I am no expert, but those people told me sometimes themselves, that the implementation does not matter, just the idea and the presentation. I always wondered about that. I probably could write about ideas all day long (not instantly but with a bit of preparation), but the implementation and the practical part is the _really hard part_ , that academia just does not like to be concerned with. Also many papers actually scream: _I was written so the publication list of my author gets longer_ \\- which is a waste of time for _everyone_ , and often a waste of tax money, too. When I think of CS-ish papers, I think of running implementations or actual data, like e.g. Google's Map Reduce, Serving Large-scale Batch Computed Data with Project Voldemort or the like.)"}
{"_id": "179826", "title": "Support for non-english characters?", "text": "Is support for non-english characters common in programming languages? I mean, technically, I would think it is feasable, but I don't have any experience in anything other than english, so I don't know how common it is. I know that there are non-english based programming languages, but can something like C#, C++, C, Java, or Python support non-english classes/methods/variables? Example in go (url, http://play.golang.org/p/wRYCNVdbjC)               package main          import \"fmt\"          type \u4e16\u754c struct {         \u4e16\u754c string     }          func main() {         fmt.Println(\"Hello, \u4e16\u754c\")         \u4e16\u754c := new(\u4e16\u754c)         \u4e16\u754c.\u4e16\u754c = \"hello world\"         fmt.Println(\u4e16\u754c.\u4e16\u754c)     }"}
{"_id": "161689", "title": "Relevance of Metro to ASP.Net developer?", "text": "I am a web developer, working mostly with ASP.Net(webforms + MVC), C#, javascript and so on. As you know, continuous learning is very important for us, but time is not infinite. I do dabble with the odd technology every now and then that has nothing to do with web but mostly I try to learn more about my field in order to became better at my job. I have the opportunity to attend either a ASP.Net MVC short course or a Metro app short course and not sure which to pick. On the one hand I feel like I would already know 75% of the MVC course material so would not get as much out of it as with the Metro course. but on the other hand I ask myself how useful is a metro course going to be in my future of being a web developer. I could always dabble in it again when I have the time? So my real question is, is there any real benefit to a web developer using his time to learn Metro specifically, instead of something else like knockout.js or some other tec that could actually be of use to me in my daily work life? Thanks"}
{"_id": "191911", "title": "Why is using named routes for generating outbound URLs a violation of Separation of Concerns?", "text": "What is separation of concerns? > In computer science, separation of concerns (SoC) is the process of breaking > a computer program into distinct features that overlap in functionality as > little as possible. A concern is any piece of interest or focus in a > program. Typically, concerns are synonymous with features or behaviors. > Progress towards SoC is traditionally achieved through modularity and > encapsulation, with the help of information hiding. From _Pro Asp.Net MVC 4_ book ( page 375 ): > The problem with relying on route names to generate outgoing URLs ( > @Html.RouteLink(\"Click me\", \"MyOtherRoute\",\"Index\", \"Customer\") is that > doing so breaks through the separation of concerns that is so central to the > MVC design pattern. When generating a link or a URL in a view or action > method, we want to focus on the action and controller that the user will be > directed to, not the format of the URL that will be used. By bringing > knowledge of the different routes into the views or controllers, we are > creating dependencies that we would prefer to avoid. a) I understand that we create a _dependency_ ( between _action method/view_ and a _routing configuration module_ ) by having `Html.RouteLink` ( called within _action method_ or _view_ ) specifying the name of the _route_ we want to use. But is introducing such a _dependency_ already considered a _violation of SoC_? Namely, even though we created a _dependency_ between the _two modules_ , we haven't actually introduced any additional _functionality/concern_ into either of the modules ( the definition of **SoC** implies that _violation of SoC_ occurs when _new functionality/concern_ is introduced into a _module_ ) b) Anyhow, I don't understand how will simply generating an URL ( within _action method/view_ ) by specifying a _named route_ bring focus to the _format of the URL_? Thank you"}
{"_id": "191910", "title": "Creating an account to receive sensitive information on a mobile device", "text": "I am developing an Android application for my final year project which allows the holder of a mobile device to receive a text notification containing potentially sensitive information from a server. My question is this, if a User downloads the application, what is a suitable way for them to create an account / log in on my server to receive notifications from it? I was thinking: **Application**   * Open application   * Click Register   * Fill out fields (Name / Address / ID / Phone no.)   * Send to server   * Display \"Account Pending\"   * If approved, send positive message, begin receiving notifications from server.   * If denied, send negative message, if User tries to log in with that account, the App will inform them that it was rejected. **Server**   * Add received information to a \"Pending Account\"   * When an Admin comes online, they can review the information (How can they be sure the person is who they say they are?)   * If the account is approved, the details are moved to a normal User account, otherwise moved to rejected accounts. I can't think of another solution which would fit this problem. If anybody knows of a patterns or design I appropriate to hear from you."}
{"_id": "191913", "title": "What is a Developer in Test?", "text": "I was recently talking with a recruiter who wants to put me at a company for a position of Developer in Test. He essentially made it sound like a position where you get to fiddle with new programming techniques and test bugs and improvements in software but where you don't need to worry about standard deadlines. You get to be very creative in your work. But that description was still kinda vague to me. I have been a Web Developer for a number of years now, mostly working in PHP. So I wanted to know if others in the community know more about what these positions typically entail. I know that this might not be a subject appropriate for this forum, but it was the best fit I could find among Stack Exchange and I would really appreciate it if this wasn't closed since there is really no where else here to ask about it. I have tried Googling it, but there isn't a lot of information out there. So what exactly is a Developer in Test?"}
{"_id": "191914", "title": "How do I create a web service with high amounts of traffic that works effectively with lots of different users?", "text": "I have created web services before that are used by a small number of users but have a new project that would have lots of users. For each user that uses the services, this is what they would do: 1) Call a method on the web service that calculates a \"price\" based on parameters passed by the user. 2) The actual method and algorithm for calculating and returning a \"price\" is not very complicated and runtime would be very quick, although a look up in a database table would be necessary for each call. 3) The problem is that this method could be called over and over again for each item that needs a price, and if lots of users are using the web service (I don't know an exact number, lets say 1,000 users, 10,000 users, whatever), I don't know what different things I need to think about in terms of how to manage high traffic, many different users trying to use the method at the same time over and over again, pulling data from a table over and over again. So pretty much I would like some advice from someone who has experience with web services with high amounts of traffic and many different users, with the method pulling from a data base table over and over again, to explain to me steps/thing I need to think about when designing the service to avoid traffic congestion, at what point a certain number of users would start slowing the service down,or just things to think/worry about, etc. Appreciate any help, thanks!"}
{"_id": "238801", "title": "Licensing: Derivative work and copyright notice", "text": "I am currently creating something that has been inspired by another library. It is a complete rewrite on another platform - yet, has the same purpose and functionality and is written in the same language. As far as I understand it, this is still considered a derivative work. The original piece is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. Which steps do I need to take now when publishing my source under the Apache 2.0 license? Do I have to maintain copyright notices? If so, it can't obviously be in the source files (which are all new and cannot be mapped to the original piece). What do I have to do to be on the safe side? What do I have to include when I distribute the sources?"}
{"_id": "56726", "title": "Diff annotation tool", "text": "Among the 11 proven practices for more effective, efficient peer code review, diff annotation seems to be the one particularly well suited to tool assistance. The article is written by the architect of SmartBear's CodeCollaborator, so he of course recommends using that. Does anyone know of any alternatives? I can't think of anything that would be even close to paper+pen+marker in pure developer efficiency when it comes to explaining a piece of code."}
{"_id": "178196", "title": "Am I allowed to rename a package for a library under Apache V2?", "text": "I have developed a library at my former employer. After my employment ended, I got to take the library with me. Does the Apache v2 prohibit renaming packages as long as I keep the license header intact?"}
{"_id": "255555", "title": "listview malfunctioning with v1 of Mobile framework odoo for Android", "text": "In the list view there is textview, button and edittext in the single list item. And all the items are getting generated dynamically sometimes 3 sometimes 7 sometimes 14 ... If I put values in those edittext ... I am able to et values of 6 or less edittext ... In the device Genymotion with 4.7\" with visible item on screen are 6 and 7th partial... While in the 10\" genymotin, the visible items are 9 How to get values from the all the edittext from this dynamic listview? .....               public class DeliveryDetailFinal extends BaseFragment {              Integer mPickingId = null;         Integer mLineSize = null;         LinkedHashMap<String, String> productData = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();         List<Object> moveLinesfinalData;         View mDOViewFinal = null;         ListView mMoveLinesFinalListDo = null;         Context mDBContextDDF = null;         List<OEDataRow> moveLinesData;              @Override         public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container,                                  Bundle savedInstanceState) {             setHasOptionsMenu(true);             mDOViewFinal = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_delivery_order_detail_final_view,                     container, false);             Bundle bundle = getArguments();             if (bundle != null) {                 mLineSize = bundle.getInt(\"lineSize\");             }             init();             mDODHelper = db().getOEInstance();             mDBContextDDF = (Context) getActivity();             return mDOViewFinal;         }              private void init(){                 initControls();         }              private void initControls(){             moveLinesData = mDeliveryOrderData.getO2MRecord(\"move_lines\").browseEach();             mMoveLinesFinalListDo = (ListView) mDOViewFinal.findViewById(R.id.DOMoveLinesFinal);             moveLinesfinalData = new ArrayList<Object>();             moveLinesfinalData.addAll(moveLinesData);             OEListAdapter listAdapter = new OEListAdapter(mDBContextDDF, R.layout.fragment_final_details_view, moveLinesfinalData){                 @Override                   public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) {                       View mView = convertView;                       if (mView == null)                           mView = getActivity().getLayoutInflater().inflate(                                   getResource(), parent, false);                       mView = createListViewRow(mView, position, moveLinesfinalData);                        mView.setVisibility(1);                       return mView;                   }             };             mMoveLinesAdapterfinal = listAdapter;             Log.d(\"final\", \"final  mMoveLinesAdapterfinal \"+mMoveLinesAdapterfinal);             mMoveLinesFinalListDo.setAdapter(mMoveLinesAdapterfinal);         }              public View createListViewRow(View mView, int position,                 List<Object> moveLinesObjectData) {                 final OEDataRow row = (OEDataRow) moveLinesObjectData.get(position);             TextView eProductName = (TextView) mView.findViewById(R.id.textViewProductNameFinal);             eProductName.setText(row.getString(\"name\").toString());             LinearLayout innerLinearLayout = (LinearLayout) mView.findViewById(R.id.innerLinearLayout);             EditText editTextProductId = (EditText) innerLinearLayout.findViewById(R.id.editTextProductId);             if(row != null)                 editTextProductId.setText(row.getInt(\"id\").toString());                  EditText eProductSerial = (EditText) innerLinearLayout.findViewById(R.id.editTextProductSerialFinal);                  String id = editTextProductId.getText().toString();             String serialNumber = ((EditText) eProductSerial).getText().toString();             productData.put(id,serialNumber);                  Log.d(\"final\", \"final productData before \"+productData);             eProductSerial.setOnFocusChangeListener(new View.OnFocusChangeListener() {                 public void onFocusChange(View v, boolean hasFocus) {                    if (!hasFocus)                     {                         LinearLayout parentLayout = (LinearLayout) v.getParent();                         if(parentLayout != null) {                             EditText editTextProductIdFocus = (EditText) parentLayout.findViewById(R.id.editTextProductId);                             String id = editTextProductIdFocus.getText().toString();                             String serialNumber = ((EditText) v).getText().toString();                             productData.put(id,serialNumber);                         }                     }                 }             });                 final Button BarCode = (Button) innerLinearLayout.findViewById(R.id.buttonBarcode);                 BarCode.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {                     @Override                     public void onClick(View v) {                         v.getId();                     }                 });             return mView;         }              @Override         public Object databaseHelper(Context context) {             return new StockPickingDB(context);         }          }      ..... > fragment_delivery_order_detail_final_view.xml               <LinearLayout xmlns:android=\"http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android\"         android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_height=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_marginTop=\"55dp\"         android:orientation=\"vertical\" >              <ListView             android:id=\"@+id/DOMoveLinesFinal\"             android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"             android:layout_height=\"match_parent\" >         </ListView>     </LinearLayout>      > fragment_final_details_view.xml               <LinearLayout xmlns:android=\"http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android\"         android:id=\"@+id/topLayoutID\"         android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_height=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_margin=\"3dp\"         android:orientation=\"vertical\"         android:padding=\"2dp\"         android:visibility=\"visible\" >                      <TextView                     android:id=\"@+id/textViewProductNameFinal\"                     android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"                     android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"                     android:layout_marginEnd=\"3dp\"                     android:layout_marginRight=\"3dp\"                     android:layout_marginLeft=\"3dp\"                     android:layout_marginStart=\"3dp\"                     android:text=\"@string/product\"                     android:textAppearance=\"?android:attr/textAppearanceSmall\"                     android:visibility=\"visible\">                     <requestFocus />                 </TextView>                  <LinearLayout                 android:id=\"@+id/innerLinearLayout\"                 android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"                 android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"                 android:padding=\"1dp\"                 android:layout_margin=\"1dp\"                 android:orientation=\"horizontal\"                 android:visibility=\"visible\">                      <Button                     android:id=\"@+id/buttonBarcode\"                     style=\"?android:attr/buttonStyleSmall\"                     android:layout_width=\"wrap_content\"                     android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"                     android:background=\"@drawable/barcode\"                     android:visibility=\"visible\" />                      <EditText                         android:id=\"@+id/editTextProductId\"                         android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"                         android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"                         android:hint=\"@string/serial_no\"                         android:visibility=\"gone\">                 </EditText>                      <EditText                     android:id=\"@+id/editTextProductSerialFinal\"                     android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"                     android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"                     android:hint=\"@string/serial_no\"                     android:visibility=\"visible\">                 </EditText>         </LinearLayout>          </LinearLayout>      please help me ... Thanks in advance ..."}
{"_id": "255556", "title": "What does this function do?", "text": "Does this function means its calculating x=(x-1) + x^2?               Function unknown(x)       if ( x == 1 )         return 1       else         return unknown(x\u20101) + x*x"}
{"_id": "255550", "title": "SQL Dev and Prod Environments", "text": "I have been tasked with setting up a SQL Development environment, and i was wondering if anyone has any advice on getting this right? So far, I have restored the prod DB onto another box, and changed all our SSIS packages to use XML configuration files so we can deploy them to either environment without changing the DB connection setting. My plan was to restore the prod DB over the dev DB every 2 weeks (assuming its agreed by all the other developers). Also, i was thinking i would have a UAT DB restored every 1 or 2 weeks to test deploying the changes to prod. The UAT DB would only exist for a day or 2 to test things, and then the actual deployment would happen into the prod environment. Can anyone thnk of anything else that would be good to do, or has any advice on other considerations etc?"}
{"_id": "252021", "title": "Notation/Meta Language To Express An Algorithm", "text": "I need to learn a notational language, so I can express and possibly prove the correctness of what I believe to be a complicated algorithm that distributes a credit adjustment across multiple water bills in issue date descending order. But I cannot tell what that notational language should be. Each bill has three consumption tiers, 1-30, 31-60, and over 60. Each tier is associated with a different water and sewer rate. The higher the tier, the higher is the rate. Two water bills each have 100ccf consumption, which means each bill is billed like this. That is it's distribution across tiers 1, 2, and 3 is tier1 = -30, tier2 = -30, and tier3 = -40. In case it is not obvious, billing takes place from lowest to highest tier, so crediting takes place from highest to lowest tier. If I apply a -170 consumption credit, the first bill consumes -100ccfs. It is the remaining -70 ccf credit to be applied to the second bill that gets crazy. -40 of it has to be credited at tier3 and the remaining -30 at tier2. Nothing is left over for tier1 (second bill). I know this is absolutely correct distribution, because I've consulted the oracles in our municipality. They know what they're talking about. With -70 left (held in one variable) and the second bill's original consumption (held in a separate variable), I subtract the value of the sum of tier1's and tier2's cutoffs (60ccf) from 100ccf (the consumption when the bill was issued). I want to prove why that is right. I'm not content to say \"Hey, I fooled around until I got a nice answer.\" Any ideas or help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "252023", "title": "Why does C use the asterisk for pointers?", "text": "I'm just now learning about C. I find it odd that the creators chose the asterisk (`*`) as the symbol for pointers rather than a symbol that actually _looks_ like a pointer (`->`). Considering how confusing dereferencing and function pointers can be, is there a historical --or even practical-- reason for using the asterisk?"}
{"_id": "252028", "title": "Best practices for implementing MVVM and MVC in delphi Pascal", "text": "I'm a Delphi pascal programmer, I use the latest Embarcadero delphi XE, and I would like to take advantage of design patterns such as Model view controller and model view view-model. However, there doesn't seem to be much on the web about the best practices for doing this in pascal. Most of the examples that I can find are in C# and some of the language features are not present in pascal, which means I may have to find ways to implement those features. I'm trying to adapt code from this article here I'll list the issues that I'm facing   * **Nullable types** Pascal does not have nullable types as C# does so I have created my own.               TNullable<T> = record         strict private           fHasValue : boolean;           fValue : T;           function GetValue:T;           procedure SetValue(newValue : T);         public           property HasValue : boolean read fHasValue;           property Value : T read GetValue write SetValue;           procedure SetToNull;         end;      in the implementation section               function TNullable<T>.GetValue:T;     begin         if fHasValue then         begin             Result := fValue;         end         else raise Exception.Create('Value Not Set');     end;          procedure TNullable<T>.SetValue(newValue : T);     begin         fValue := newValue;         fHasValue := true;     end;          procedure TNullable<T>.SetToNull;     begin         fHasValue := false;     end;        * **Get/Set for properties** Now that I have a nullable type I can create nullable properties However it comes with some code smells for example if i create                   TFoo = class           private             function GetBar:TNullable<Integer>;             procedure SetBar(x:TNullable<Integer>);           public              property Bar : TNullable<Integer> read GetBar write SetBar;      in the implementation section               function TFoo.GetBar:TNullable<Integer>;     begin         if **valueExists** then         begin             Result.Value := **the value**         end else         begin             Result.SetToNull;         end;     end;          procedure TFoo.SetBar(x:TNullable<Integer>);     begin         if X.hasValue then         begin             //Store/show value here         end else         begin             //handle null assignment here         end;     end;      This is fine but when it comes to use these properties I can't just use myFoo.Bar.Value := 1; I have to use               var          myBar : TNullable<Integer>;     begin         myBar.Value := 1;         myFoo.Bar := myBar;     end;      Which is a bit messier. I suppose there may be nothing I can do about this.   * **Circular References** I like to separate classes into different units. ie: ![structure](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XD75V.png) keeping the user interface separate from the control logic and the model and data logic layer. I can have a situation where 2 classes can reference each other. While this is a situation that for the most part I would like to avoid, there are occasions where this is needed. for example               unit u_A;          interface          uses       u_B       ;          type        TA = class         public            Foo : TB;       end;          implementation          end;      and another unit               unit u_B;          interface          uses       u_A       ;          type        TB = class         public            Foo : TA;       end;          implementation          end;      This code is broken because the two classes include each other and this can not be done in pascal. This is not such a problem in C#. Solutions that I can think of: 1. include both classes in the same unit, although this is a problem if I do not think this suits the design. 2. Create another parent interface for B and inherit B from that, then this gets around it. Although this is messy for such a simple task.   * **Static classes** There aren't any static classes in Delphi, these are useful for control classes.   * **Best Container classes to use in Delphi** I'm currently using TList and TObjectList in Generics.Collections They were introduced in Delphi XE I hope these are the best to use since delphi 7 didn't seem to have any good options. I'm still thinking about event handlers and any issues that may arise there. Perhaps there are some other issues that I have not thought of yet. Thanks for any advice."}
{"_id": "154974", "title": "Is this a decent use-case for goto in C?", "text": "I really hesitate to ask this, because I don't want to \"solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion\" but I'm new to C and want to gain more insight into common patterns used in the language. I recently heard some distaste for the `goto` command, but I've also recently found a decent use-case for it. Code like this:               error = function_that_could_fail_1();     if (!error) {         error = function_that_could_fail_2();         if (!error) {             error = function_that_could_fail_3();             ...to the n-th tab level!         } else {             // deal with error, clean up, and return error code         }     } else {         // deal with error, clean up, and return error code     }      If the clean-up part is all very similar, could be written a little prettier (my opinion?) like this:               error = function_that_could_fail_1();     if(error) {         goto cleanup;     }     error = function_that_could_fail_2();     if(error) {         goto cleanup;     }     error = function_that_could_fail_3();     if(error) {         goto cleanup;     }     ...     cleanup:     // deal with error if it exists, clean up     // return error code      Is this a common or acceptable use-case of `goto` in C? Is there a different/better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "95267", "title": "Were you able to implement design patterns in tight deadlines?", "text": "I am wondering, in tight deadlines, who has time to implement design patterns? It is a lot more work and programming overhead to get it right the first time and within time frame. I know that it has long term advantages, but were you able to implement any design pattern correctly when the client is sitting on your head and pressure is growing. I think once your first version is released and you have plenty of time for the next release, than you can think of improving code quality and manageability with design patterns."}
{"_id": "126167", "title": "Why disallow int-to-short assignment but allow multiplication and other math?", "text": "In Java, the following code does not compile:               int val = 1;     short shortVal = val;  // Incompatible types      Anyone know why Java chooses to complain about this assignment, instead of simply truncating, when an integer \u00d7 integer is also likely to overflow? To illustrate:               int val = 46340;     int result = val * val;                    // 2147395600     System.out.println(result);     int overflowVal = 46341;     int result2 = overflowVal * overflowVal;   // -2147479015     System.out.println(\"Quietly overflowed: \" + result2);"}
{"_id": "151338", "title": "Win32 and Win64 programming in C sources?", "text": "I'm learning OpenGL with C and that makes me include the `windows.h` file in my project. I'd like to look at some more specific windows functions and I wonder if you can cite some good sources for learning the basics of Win32 and Win64 programming in C (or C++). I use MS Visual C++ and I prefer to stick with C even though much of the Windows API seems to be C++. I'd like my program to be portable and using some platform-indepedent graphics library like OpenGL I could make my program portable with some slight changes for window management. Could you direct me with some pointers to books or www links where I can find more info? I've already studied the OpenGL red book and the C programming language, what I'm looking for is the platform-dependent stuff and how to handle that since I run both Linux and Windows where I find the development environment Visual Studio is pretty good but the debugger gdb is not available on windows so it's a trade off which environment i'll choose in the end - Linux with gcc or Windows with MSVC. Here is the program that draws a graphics primitive with some use of windows.h This program is also runnable on Linux without changing the code that actually draws the graphics primitive:               #include <windows.h>     #include <gl/gl.h>          LRESULT CALLBACK WindowProc(HWND, UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM);     void EnableOpenGL(HWND hwnd, HDC*, HGLRC*);     void DisableOpenGL(HWND, HDC, HGLRC);               int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,                        HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,                        LPSTR lpCmdLine,                        int nCmdShow)     {         WNDCLASSEX wcex;         HWND hwnd;         HDC hDC;         HGLRC hRC;         MSG msg;         BOOL bQuit = FALSE;         float theta = 0.0f;              /* register window class */         wcex.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);         wcex.style = CS_OWNDC;         wcex.lpfnWndProc = WindowProc;         wcex.cbClsExtra = 0;         wcex.cbWndExtra = 0;         wcex.hInstance = hInstance;         wcex.hIcon = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION);         wcex.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW);         wcex.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(BLACK_BRUSH);         wcex.lpszMenuName = NULL;         wcex.lpszClassName = \"GLSample\";         wcex.hIconSm = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION);;                   if (!RegisterClassEx(&wcex))             return 0;              /* create main window */         hwnd = CreateWindowEx(0,                               \"GLSample\",                               \"OpenGL Sample\",                               WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW,                               CW_USEDEFAULT,                               CW_USEDEFAULT,                               256,                               256,                               NULL,                               NULL,                               hInstance,                               NULL);              ShowWindow(hwnd, nCmdShow);              /* enable OpenGL for the window */         EnableOpenGL(hwnd, &hDC, &hRC);              /* program main loop */         while (!bQuit)         {             /* check for messages */             if (PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE))             {                 /* handle or dispatch messages */                 if (msg.message == WM_QUIT)                 {                     bQuit = TRUE;                 }                 else                 {                     TranslateMessage(&msg);                     DispatchMessage(&msg);                 }             }             else             {                 /* OpenGL animation code goes here */                      glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);                 glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);                      glPushMatrix();                 glRotatef(theta, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);                      glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);                          glColor3f(1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f);   glVertex2f(0.0f,   1.0f);                     glColor3f(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f);   glVertex2f(0.87f,  -0.5f);                     glColor3f(0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f);   glVertex2f(-0.87f, -0.5f);                      glEnd();                      glPopMatrix();                      SwapBuffers(hDC);                      theta += 1.0f;                 Sleep (1);             }         }              /* shutdown OpenGL */         DisableOpenGL(hwnd, hDC, hRC);              /* destroy the window explicitly */         DestroyWindow(hwnd);              return msg.wParam;     }          LRESULT CALLBACK WindowProc(HWND hwnd, UINT uMsg, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)     {         switch (uMsg)         {             case WM_CLOSE:                 PostQuitMessage(0);             break;                  case WM_DESTROY:                 return 0;                  case WM_KEYDOWN:             {                 switch (wParam)                 {                     case VK_ESCAPE:                         PostQuitMessage(0);                     break;                 }             }             break;                  default:                 return DefWindowProc(hwnd, uMsg, wParam, lParam);         }              return 0;     }          void EnableOpenGL(HWND hwnd, HDC* hDC, HGLRC* hRC)     {         PIXELFORMATDESCRIPTOR pfd;              int iFormat;              /* get the device context (DC) */         *hDC = GetDC(hwnd);              /* set the pixel format for the DC */         ZeroMemory(&pfd, sizeof(pfd));              pfd.nSize = sizeof(pfd);         pfd.nVersion = 1;         pfd.dwFlags = PFD_DRAW_TO_WINDOW |                       PFD_SUPPORT_OPENGL | PFD_DOUBLEBUFFER;         pfd.iPixelType = PFD_TYPE_RGBA;         pfd.cColorBits = 24;         pfd.cDepthBits = 16;         pfd.iLayerType = PFD_MAIN_PLANE;              iFormat = ChoosePixelFormat(*hDC, &pfd);              SetPixelFormat(*hDC, iFormat, &pfd);              /* create and enable the render context (RC) */         *hRC = wglCreateContext(*hDC);              wglMakeCurrent(*hDC, *hRC);     }          void DisableOpenGL (HWND hwnd, HDC hDC, HGLRC hRC)     {         wglMakeCurrent(NULL, NULL);         wglDeleteContext(hRC);         ReleaseDC(hwnd, hDC);     }"}
{"_id": "162886", "title": "Case Class naming convention", "text": "In my recent adventures in **Scala** , I've found **case classes** to be a really nice alternative to enums when I need to include a bit of logic or several values with them. I often find myself writing structures that look like this, however:               object Foo{       case class Foo(name: String, value: Int, other: Double)            val BAR = Foo(\"bar\", 1, 1.0)       val BAZ = Foo(\"baz\", 2, 1.5)       val QUUX = Foo(\"quux\", 3, 1.75)     }      I'm primarily worried here about the naming of the object and the case class. Since they're the same thing, I end up with `Foo.Foo` to get to the inner class. Would it be wise to name the case class something along the lines of `FooCase` instead? I'm not sure if the potential ambiguity might mess with the type system if I have to do anything with subtypes or inheritance."}
{"_id": "28042", "title": "What are solutions and tradeoffs to maintain search result consistency in a web application", "text": "Consider a web application with a custom search function that must display the results in a paged manner (twenty per page with up to hundreds of thousands of total results) and the ability to drill down to individual results that maintain next/previous links to navigate through the results. Re-executing the search on each page request to get the appropriate results for that page of data can be too expensive (up to 15s per search). Also, since the underlying data can change frequently (e.g. addition of new results), re- executing could cause the next/previous functionality to result in inconsistent behavior (e.g. the same results reappearing on a later page after having been viewed on an earlier page). What options exist to ensure the search results can be viewed across multiple pages in a consistent manner, and what tradeoffs does each option have in terms of network, CPU, memory, and storage requirements? EDIT: I thought caching the query search results was an obvious necessity. The question is really asking about where to cache the result set and what tradeoffs might exist to each. For example, storing the ids of the entities in the result set on the client, or storing the IDs of the entities themselves in the users session on the web server, or in a temporary table in the database. I'm not looking specifically for a single solution as different scenarios may result in different approaches (and such a question would be more suited for stackoverflow.com rather than here), but more of a design comparison between the possible approaches."}
{"_id": "28047", "title": "Contract / Freelance Programming, The initial communication process / sending documents to them (terms, etc)", "text": "I've been searching around for info on contract / freelance programming as far as steps to take in the initial communication with a client (someone who has contacted me regarding a project). I am wondering if anyone has links to good resources as far as what I should send them (should I send them a document outlining \"my process\", etc?). Often the initial requirements that they send are vague and I want to immediately \"take charge\" of the process and starting asking them questions, talking about price, etc but I don't want to be too overbearing so I'm just curious if there is much out there written about this, my google searches aren't turning up much that is good about this sort of thing."}
{"_id": "245429", "title": "What approach to use to query multiple XML files?", "text": "I'll be receiving tens of thousands of XML files, which will continue to grow with new files over time. I need to be able to query these files as a whole (like SQL querying all the records in a database). What technologies and/or approaches should I be looking at for this problem? I feel like I should be looking into XQuery. I'm not that familiar with it, though. **UPDATE 1:** Example queries I might run:   * Return all the product code, product name, product description from all XML files in /folder 1/ where the supplier id = x and store id = y   * Return all the product code and product price from all XML files in /folder 2/ where the supplier id = x and store id = y   * Maybe join the results of the two queries above, joining on product code   * As there may be multiple results per product code for the two queries above, only get the most recent values based on some tag / attribute in the XML **UPDATE 2:** It seems like this article suggests that XQuery can be used: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-xquerymaven/index.html?ca=. As I am implementing a LAMP solution, I think there might be XQuery libraries available to PHP. Does this mean that I don't need an XML database to query loads of XML files?"}
{"_id": "216960", "title": "Safe project development - free repositories", "text": "Some time ago we started a private hobby project. We made a project on javaforge.com, created an svn repository and started developing our app. Right now we are really far with our project, but somehow we never worried if our project is really safe on such free development tool like javaforge ? I mean, what if our project would earn some money and the source code become valuable ? Could it be stolen or could somebody take it over ? We want to be sure that we are not wasting our time and want to be really sure about our project safety. Is it possible to safely develop a project in such free repository ? We would like also to start using redmine, so if you know any safe place for moving our project, please take this under consideration. Thanks a lot."}
{"_id": "129806", "title": "Is it a really required skill to program without API documentation?", "text": "I barely passed my Java programming exam today. I had to answer some general questions about threading which I did well and to write a little threaded program which was worse. I had to connect my laptop to the projector screen and write the program right away. My first attempt was to use anonymous classes but I forgot the exact syntax. Maybe because of some excitement or maybe because last two weeks I was coding mostly in php. Then I asked is it allowed to use the API documentation. The answer was \"NO\". So I decided to go another way around and I implemented Runnable. The program was doing what was requested at the end. Of course the examiners noticed my first fail and that affected my score greatly. I was amazed that it was not allowed to use the API documentation. So, my question is: Is it really important to be able to code flawlessly without API documentation? Should I develop this skill? Is it really important in the real world and in the work environment? While on programming courses I focused on learning patterns, developing skills to write good design applications, skills to use API and find the necessary information fast. I was not trying to learn how to program without API documentation. Is it must-have during job interviews (coding without API documentation)?"}
{"_id": "245423", "title": "How to catch DllNotFoundException in C#?", "text": "this question in my opinion straightforward. How can I catch an DllNotFoundException in C# as it is just an attribute to some methods use like this:               [DllImport(\"NativeLib.dll\")]         private static extern void print_line(string str);      When are these functions being invoked ? As I instance the class containing the methods ( sounds odd to me as it's being \"static\" )? Or as I want to use the methods?"}
{"_id": "245425", "title": "Building simulation architectures : Which one to choose?", "text": "I am writing a simulation which unites discrete event and continuous system simulation. For example, you can use State Charts, System Dynamics and Queues side by side. Theese will then reduced to DEVS, a mathematically defined and executable modelling formalism. Now I became stuck on how to organize the systems architecture. I'd like to use some kind of MVC pattern, so I thought lets make a state machine model, controller and state diagram, lets make a system dynamics model, controller and a stock and flow visualization, and so on. But these are also expressible via the DEVS model but it would be a bit complicated doing the translation to DEVS on the fly inside the controller ... So, should i have multiple models and representations which are then reduced to DEVS (base model) OR should I work directly with the DEVS base, so that e.g. the state machine is visualized as a state diagram, but internally it is automatically converted to the base model. Which architecture would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "160763", "title": "Multiple Same Object Instantiation", "text": "What exactly happens in Java when you instantiate the same object multiple times? For example:               Test test = new Test();      then later on I will call it again, `Test test = new Test();` again or inside a loop. Will the previous instantiation be disposed?"}
{"_id": "207308", "title": "Java - Why do we call an array a \"vector\"?", "text": "I am reading a book on Java Programming, and want to confirm I understand the definition of the word \"vector\". Wikipedia says vector is \"A one-dimensional array\", source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector. Wouldnt it be simpler to call the array simply an array? Is there any reason we need to use such fancy language as \"vector\"? Is there a difference between an array and a vector?    ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/daFEx.png) Source: Cracking the Coding Interview, 4th Edition, by Gayle McDowell, page 47. FAQ   Q - Why didnt you post this on english.stackexchange.com?   A - Because I think only computer science oriented people will have a good answer."}
{"_id": "200179", "title": "Examples of UNIX Domain Socket Usage", "text": "Can anyone give an example of instances in which the AF_UNIX i.e unix domain sockets are used for process communication in a unix-based system"}
{"_id": "207301", "title": "C++11 Header-only Library: in-class body vs. out-class body code?", "text": "## BACKGROUND:optional **Since 2002** I've been slowly building my own **Windows Native C++ library**. And let's just say that I have jumped **150KLOC** _(reusable code)_ having everything I need and the kitchen sink in it _(from most of the Windows API objectualized to a decent IMAP4 client implementation and the WordPress XMLRPC client for mass publishing... I do Affiliate Marketing and SEO Tools)_. It's not yet `.NET` but it ain't that far :) The only **3rd party libraries** used in it are `ZLib`, `MySQL` and `SQLite`. Everything else is built from scratch using the `STL` and/or `Windows API`. _(I still have a PDF writer/reader to implement, IOCP all network things, and there's always room for more work...)_ **For the past 1.5 years I've been in a sustained effort of updating it for C++11.** Move semantics where due, _(explicit)_ bool operators, chained constructs and much more of what _(MSVC's modest)_ C++11 brought us. Plus CRTP for chained parent/child calls, minimal use of virtuals, strict const- correctness. **And succeeded.** **Recently I've been really considering publishing it.** It's a huge amount of work that I've only done for my own benefit and I assume there's still `Windows C++` devs out there that could use such a thing. And to do that, went on to read **C++ code practices and API/Library design guidelines**. It was great! I nailed 80-85% of best coding practices myself. With a few things I'll address soon and **one major question**. ## QUESTION **Currently the entire library is quite-templated and header only.** That means all code is in the body of the classes. It's not very easy to manage but it's OK. I collapse code, use `#pragma region`s and nicely structure things. **BUT I'm VERY tempted, after reading several C++ library coding guidelines, to break it into`.hpp` \\+ `.inl` files.** Experimentally done so for a few classes and it does increase readability and makes it easier for others to deal with _(even if it's a bit harder to write)_. I know where everything _(line of code, functionality)_ is at any given time. But other users might want to a quick overview of a classes declaration... and the definition ONLY if/when necessary _(debugging)_.   1. **What are the accepted and/or preferred practices regarding splitting declarations from definitions.** Would you rather have header only classes with in-body code or code separated from the function declaration?   2. **What are the current practices of other libraries?** I've always written everything myself. Not that up to speed with how others do it. Except the 3 libraries mentioned above, I've yet to use other 3rd party code. > **This is an important question for me because it's a one way road.** I > can't refactor it the other way later on so **any feedback matters and is > appreciated**... _Thanks_."}
{"_id": "95846", "title": "Are there any good reasons to use, learn, or recommend XSLT?", "text": "I am a developer for the last 8 years. We used XSLT primarily to transform XML into HTML. We also used it for XML to XML transformation. But we have replacement for everything now. HTML can be comfortably created through programming languages such as ASP.Net. XML can be read and manupulated in any standard highlevel languages. As programming in XSLT is a little complex, any one would prefer working on latest programming languages. Now my question: Will XSLT be a significant choice in future, not considering the fact of maintaining already developed XSLT? Can I recommend new programmers to study XSLT?"}
{"_id": "92811", "title": "How would one go about building pluggable software?", "text": "If you have an application of some sort and you want your users to be able to write plugins for it, how should the application be designed? What do you have to take into account, what design patterns are for this etc?"}
{"_id": "126784", "title": "Who usually does the use case analysis in the team?", "text": "I've just started my first IT job in a team with two developers (junior and senior), a project leader and an architect. My role is not yet completely defined and I said I'd be ok with both programming or testing. For now they put me on use case analysis since the PL says that it would leverage my analytical skills (I'm a science phd). Now the question is who's usually responsible for use case analysis? How usual is it to put a newbie on it? The hidden fear I have is: are they trying to keep me away from programming (after two weeks I still haven't SEEN a line of code...)?"}
{"_id": "148009", "title": "Dynamic typing across the whole technology stack - where to enforce data validity?", "text": "Over the past year or two, I've been playing with newer technologies in my side projects. As a web developer, I've gone from the following (and still the following, at work): ## The 'classic' technology stack   1. Web browser POSTs forms to...   2. a C#-coded web application server-side, communicating to...   3. external services via XML, then ultimately...   4. writing the application state to a SQL database. To using a very different arrangement: ## The fully-dynamic technology stack   1. Web browser submitting XmlHttpRequests to...   2. a JavaScript-coded Node.js server-side, communicating to...   3. other external services via RESTful services in JSON, ultimately...   4. writing the application state to a no-SQL database It's gotten to the point where my whole stack has absolutely **no enforcement of type or schema, anywhere**. Now, this has been just fine before, when consuming others' web services. It might have even been fine up until the SQL databases were ditched (along with their DB schemas). But now I'm stuck at: ## Where do I _declaratively_ define what is the valid structure of my business-domain data? I want to enforce data validity before making any of my projects publically available - after all, what's to stop someone from just submitting invalid data to my services, and using it all as just a hacky free database provider? At some point, it has to be enforced that \"this web service will only accept a collection of at least one X. X must contain A, B, and optionally C\". The first solution I thought of was to do validation inside my node.js, through a big block of imperative code/if-elses/etc. This felt wrong. I have been using CouchDB, and for a while I thought that it might be best to put that validation code in the `_update` handlers. At least we're performing validation as part of persistence, but it's still an ugly imperative block. Next, I looked into JSON schema languages. There is no standard as far as I can see, and I wasn't confident in the multiple solutions offered. I could roll my own, but then I'd only be expanding the body of non-standard JSON schema languages. XML? I could put the **X** back into AJAX, and have them all schema-validated on the server side. That doesn't seem to follow the trends in software development, however. Neither would using an XML data store instead of a JSON CouchDB/BSON MongoDB persistence layer. So, I'm stuck. Ideas? **TL;DR** Where do I declaratively define the valid structure of my business- domain data when I am using no static Object Oriented language, and no schema- bound SQL database, in my technology stack? Is it possible that there must be some static typing (or DB schema, or validated XML) _somewhere_ for a technology stack to make any sense? If so, where?"}
{"_id": "220013", "title": "What is a cross-platform way to expose an Array[][] over a webservice? Any JSON nuances to be aware of?", "text": "I need to expose an Array[][] to many different clients (iPhone, Android, PC, Unix, etc), and need to make it available over HTTP/s This brings me to JSON, and makes me wonder how do all the other *endian machines work with JSON and will I need to worry about how the array will be reconstructed on other platforms. Initially this will be an array of UTF8 strings, but I want to support other types, for example, Array[0][] will be a image, while Array[1][] will be a audio file. ...etc. If JSON is the right way to send Array[][] data across HTTP, what \"gotchas\" should I be concerned about?"}
{"_id": "220012", "title": "How do I cache data that rarely changes?", "text": "In my ASP.NET application there is some data that doesn't change often and so there is no point in querying the database to re-check it every time. In my current situation I am checking user credentials on every request to see if they have access for what they are attempting to do (i.e. view a particular page). The security information is stored in the database and I'm noticing a performance hit on every page load. The load time goes from 20ms to 200ms because of the database queries. It seems to me that I should cache the security-related information so that pages are rendered faster (the data can be refreshed when the application restarts), but I don't know how to go about this. I've searched around for caching methods but no solutions I've seen are about what I'm trying to do. One way is to store the security information as read-only in a static class or persistent repository that is created and loaded on application startup. Another way is to use the Tracing and Caching Provider Wrappers for Entity Framework, but according to an answer on StackOVerflow called How to make Entity Framework cache some objects user Alex James says > sometimes this approach is overkill Is there any disadvantage to storing the data in a few read-only variables (memory concerns?) and any clear advantage to using the caching provider?"}
{"_id": "104202", "title": "Would it be ethical to create an open source alternative to the software you've been hired to create?", "text": "Say you were hired to create education software that will be sold to students of a particular academic institution. You are the only developer working on this project and have written all of the code. An open source alternative to the project has the potential of benefiting underprivileged students from around the world. In short, a free alternative would contribute to the greater good of humanity. Would it be \"OK\" to create an open source alternative to the software that you are being paid to develop? P.S. The software will only be used by the students of the institution. There are no plans to distribute it commercially. The application does not make use of other people's intellectual property."}
{"_id": "148003", "title": "Pulling in changes from a forked repo without a request on GitHub?", "text": "I'm new to the social coding community and don't know how to proceed properly in this situation: I've created a GitHub Repository a couple weeks ago. Someone forked the project and has made some small changes that have been on my to-do. I'm thrilled someone forked my project and took the time to add to it. I'd like to pull the changes into my own code, but have a couple of concerns. 1) **I don't know how to pull in the changes via git from a forked repo.** My understanding is that there is an easy way to merge the changes via a pull request, but it appears as though the forker has to issue that request? 2) **Is it acceptable to pull in changes without a pull request?** This relates to the first one. I'd put the code aside for a couple of weeks and come back to find that what I was going to work on next was done by someone else, and don't want to just copy their code without giving them credit in some way. Shouldn't there be a to pull the changes in even if they don't explicitly ask you to? What's the etiquette here I may be over thinking this, but thanks for your input in advance. I'm pretty new to the hacker community, but I want to do what I can to contribute!"}
{"_id": "104207", "title": "Is the potential performance hit from LINQ worth it for improved readability?", "text": "We are considering using LINQ (to Objects) in our (commercial grade) projects where performance may be an issue. I have heard it may impact performance, but then the code is so much more readable and maintainable. Is this trade-off really worth it?"}
{"_id": "104206", "title": "Programming your own linux distribution?", "text": "So, during the couple of days I've been thinking what it takes to make your own linux distribution. Where should I actually start? I'd like to have some very basic tips for this. I consider myself a decent programmer, mainly in c++ and objective c. And what limits there are in making a distro?"}
{"_id": "61062", "title": "Why should large financial/insurance companies use git and/or github", "text": "I work for a large enterprise (30K employees) in the financial/insurance industry. While \"IT\" isn't our main focus, let's be honest, these are information driven industries and the companies with the better technological advantage seem to get ahead faster. There are many software development teams at my company. They are all over the map with version control, let alone languages/frameworks used. Some don't use any (I know), some use PVCS, some use VSS, and the most enlightened use SVN. I want to bring git to my enterprise. More specifically, I want to bring GitHub (private repositories). I know the right people to talk to about this, but let's be honest again, drastic moves like this usually get shot down in the large enterprise setting because of vague security concerns or the fact that none of our competitors are using it (and I can only cite jQuery, Ruby on Rails, Facebook, etc as references). So my question is this. What are the most compelling reasons of why a large enterprise should slowly and deliberately make the switch from PVCS/VSS/SVN to a hosted git solution like GitHub (private repo). Of course, part of my plan involves a POC for a non-essential development project."}
{"_id": "110266", "title": "Does F# offer anything particularly useful for database-driven web development?", "text": "My organization finally upgraded to MS Visual Studio 2010 this year. One of the big new features that Visual Studio 2010 offers is the F# programming language. I understand that F# offers a functional programming paradigm, similar to Lisp. Unlike Lisp though, F# is compiled into managed code for the .net framework. Right now, I work in database-driven web application development. Right now, I'm working with an n-tier application with SQL code on the back end and a C#.net AJAX web application on the front-end. I would like to know if F# offers anything that would be particularly useful for this type of development."}
{"_id": "222528", "title": "Should angularjs directive directly interact with services or is it considered an anti-pattern?", "text": "Which one is considered better:   * having a directive that interacts with services directly or   * having a directive that exposes certain hooks to which controller may bind behaviour (involving services)?"}
{"_id": "25353", "title": "Would you still use Java in your next project, despite the whole mess in JCP", "text": "It seems that there is a whole mess around current JCP. Quite of number of highly respected guys like Doug Lea, Tim Peierls had quit JCP. Reference : Is JCP dead? and Final results of the JSR Review Ballot for JSR #336 This put Java in an unfavorable future. As a Java developer, will you still consider using Java in your next project?"}
{"_id": "151806", "title": "Indenting labels in C", "text": "I noticed that in the Vim automatically indents labels in a rather unintuitive way (IMHO).               int main(void) {          goto end;          end:         return 0     }      Are there any style guidelines for labels? For the faint-hearted, the goto's I am using are for error handling in a controlled and structured manner."}
{"_id": "151804", "title": "Open source projects and MDD?", "text": "Model-driven development seems to have a lot of buzz in certain software engineering circles, but I've never encountered an open source MDD projects \"in the wild\". Are any open source projects using model-driven development? (I don't just mean that there's some UML documentation, but that the primary artifacts that the developers manipulate are the models, rather than the code)."}
{"_id": "163861", "title": "Approach on Software Development Architecture", "text": "I am planning to standardize our way of creating project for our new projects. Currently we are using 3tier architecture where we have our ClassLibrary Project where it includes our Data Access Layer and Business Layer Something like:                  Solution ClassLibrary           >ClassLibrary Project :               >DAL(folder)                    > DAL Classes               >BAL(folder)                    > BAL Classes      And this Class Library dll was reference on our presentation Layer Project which are the Application(web/desktop) Something like:                    Solution WebUniversitySystem           >Libraries(folder)               > ClassLibrary.dll          >WebUniversitySystem(Project):               >Reference ClassLibrary.dll                >Pages etc...      Now i am planning to do is something like:                Solution WebUniversitySystem           >DataAccess(Project)          >BusinesLayer(Project)               >Reference DAL          >WebUniversitySystem(Project):               >Reference BAL               >Pages etc...      Is this OK? Or there is a good approach that we can follow?"}
{"_id": "253646", "title": "How to handle \"circular dependency\" in dependency injection", "text": "The title says \"Circular Dependency\", but it is not the correct wording, because to me the design seems solid.   However, consider the following scenario, where the blue parts are given from external partner, and orange is my own implementation. Also assume there is more then one `ConcreteMain`, but I want to use a specific one. (In reality, each class has some more dependencies, but I tried to simplify it here) ![Scenario](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GplrD.png) I would like to instanciate all of this with Depency Injection (Unity), but I obviously get a `StackOverflowException` on the following code, because Runner tries to instantiate ConcreteMain, and ConcreteMain needs a Runner.               IUnityContainer ioc = new UnityContainer();     ioc.RegisterType<IMain, ConcreteMain>()        .RegisterType<IMainCallback, Runner>();     var runner = ioc.Resolve<Runner>();      How can I avouid this? Is there any way to structure this so that I can use it with DI? The scenario I'm doing now is setting everything up manually, but that puts a hard dependency on `ConcreteMain` in the class which instantiates it. This is what i'm trying to avoid (with Unity registrations in configuration). All source code below (very simplified example!);               public class Program     {         public static void Main(string[] args)         {             IUnityContainer ioc = new UnityContainer();             ioc.RegisterType<IMain, ConcreteMain>()                .RegisterType<IMainCallback, Runner>();             var runner = ioc.Resolve<Runner>();                  Console.WriteLine(\"invoking runner...\");             runner.DoSomethingAwesome();                  Console.ReadLine();         }     }          public class Runner : IMainCallback     {         private readonly IMain mainServer;              public Runner(IMain mainServer)         {             this.mainServer = mainServer;         }              public void DoSomethingAwesome()         {             Console.WriteLine(\"trying to do something awesome\");             mainServer.DoSomething();         }              public void SomethingIsDone(object something)         {             Console.WriteLine(\"hey look, something is finally done.\");         }     }          public interface IMain     {         void DoSomething();     }          public interface IMainCallback     {         void SomethingIsDone(object something);     }          public abstract class AbstractMain : IMain     {         protected readonly IMainCallback callback;              protected AbstractMain(IMainCallback callback)         {             this.callback = callback;         }              public abstract void DoSomething();     }          public class ConcreteMain : AbstractMain     {         public ConcreteMain(IMainCallback callback) : base(callback){}              public override void DoSomething()         {             Console.WriteLine(\"starting to do something...\");             var task = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>{ Thread.Sleep(5000);/*very long running task*/ });             task.ContinueWith(t => callback.SomethingIsDone(true));         }     }"}
{"_id": "195706", "title": "What common apporaches exist for database versioning for a feature driven development?", "text": "It's not clear how data consistency is provided for different branches. We have a large knowledgebase which is filled by the experts and delivered as updates to our clients. This data is also used for testing the product.   But if we have quite a few feature branches (being developed in parallel) and each feature requires its own slightly different db schema won't it be a hell? Definitely some way of populating all DBs from one centralized store must exist. And here comes the question? What are these methods? Now the only solution I see is to create some mapping mechanism and to save mappings in the corresponding DB, yet I believe more elegant approaches exist. **Update:** To clarify the problem.   We have one (let's call it master db). And N databases with slightly 'narrower' schemas comparing to the chema of master. I.e. master is has the richest schema: other dbs have fewer tables/columns."}
{"_id": "163868", "title": "Are CK Metrics still considered useful?  Is there an open source tool to help?", "text": "Chidamber & Kemerer proposed several metrics for object oriented code. Among them, depth of inheritance tree, weighted number of methods, number of member functions, number of children, and coupling between objects. Using a base of code, they tried to correlated these metrics to the defect density and maintenance effort using covariant analysis. Are these metrics actionable in projects? Perhaps they can guide refactoring. For example weighted number of methods might show which God classes needed to be broken into more cohesive classes that address a single concern. Is there approach superseded by a better method, and is there a tool that can identify problem code, particularly in moderately large project being handed off to a new developer or team?"}
{"_id": "253648", "title": "Breadcrumbs in a modern web application, make sense?", "text": "I'm currently beginning with the development of a new web application. The whole web application is going to be bookmarkable and all the pages accesible via _GET_ requests and url parameters. Having said that, let's suppose I've got three entities in my application, `Customer`, `Team` and `City`. Each `Customer` and `Team` belong to a city and I've got a `city-detail` page which displays the detail for a concrete city. So next navigation cases are possible: _Customers -> Customer detail (id=2) -> City detail (id=3)_ _Football teams -> Team detail (id=5) -> City detail (id=3)_ _Cities -> City detail (id=3)_ There are three possible ways of ending up in a city detail view. My question is, does it make sense to implement a breadcrumb to show such a history, having it available in the browser itself? Would it be more appropiate to show a breadcrumb with the last case, no matter where we're coming from (hierarchical breadcrumb)? That's what Jakob Nielsen points out here: > Offering users a Hansel-and-Gretel-style history trail is basically useless, > because it simply duplicates functionality offered by the Back button, which > is the Web\u2019s second-most-used feature. > > A history trail can also be confusing: users often wander in circles or go > to the wrong site sections. Having each point in a confused progression at > the top of the current page doesn\u2019t offer much help. > > Finally, a history trail is useless for users who arrive directly at a page > deep within the site. Also, even if the history trail seems the most natural way to implement it, it requires an extra effort to keep the whole track being HTTP a stateless mean."}
{"_id": "253649", "title": "Is it a good idea to create shared UI library that would render natively on different platforms?", "text": "I am designing an application that has following flow:   1. User designs a form using web application ( **J2EE** backend application)   2. The form is sent to mobile device ( **Android** )   3. Mobile device User fills out the form designed in 1.   4. Results are synced with backend. One of my ideas is to create a common java UI library for creating the type of forms that I need. This library would also have a native renderers for different platforms (Web and Android would be implemented first). The whole point of it is to have a native experience on web and android side. Are there any existing solutions to meet the requirements that I have? Is it a good approach to achieve them?"}
{"_id": "155369", "title": "Is a Metro application installation restricted through Windows Store only?", "text": "I found that Windows 8 allows packaging and deploying of Metro applications and it can be installed by clicking on a \".bat\" file. How will it technically be ensured that the applications can be installed through Windows Store only? Can't the developers just host the package at a different location from where users can install it?"}
{"_id": "82332", "title": "books/articles about project managment/guiding of other programmers", "text": "I'll soon be assigned a few other programmers to guide through the development process and will be in the role of the _git_ (\"Integration Manager\") and generally become a project manager. Telling the truth, I've never done anything like that. I understand that such experience comes through practice, but it wouldn't harm to read about others' experience. Perhaps you know some book or set of articles or something of that kind about the project management? I'm interested not only in how to separate tasks and control their execution, but also in the psychological part. Say, how to inspire the developers, keep a good atmosphere in the group and \"reward\" / \"punish\" when necessary, and how to do that correctly; how to point out that some solution is not good enough without offending the team member, etc, etc."}
{"_id": "155366", "title": "\"Guiding\" a Domain Expert to Retire from Programming", "text": "I've got a friend who does IT at a local non-profit where they're using a custom web application which is no longer supported by the company who built it. (out of business, support was too expensive, I'm not sure...) Development on this app started around 10+ years ago so the technologies being harnessed are pretty out of date now - classic asp using vbscript and SQL Server 2000. The application domain is in the realm of government bookkeeping - so even though the development team is long gone, there are often new requirements of this software. Enter the... The domain expert. This is an middle aged accounting whiz without much (or any?) prior development experience. He studied the pages, code and queries and learned how to ape the style of the original team which, believe me, is mediocre at best. He's very clever and very tenacious but has no experience in software beyond what he's picked up from this app. Otherwise, he's a pleasant guy to talk to and definitely knows his domain. My friend in IT, and probably his superiors in the company, want him out of the code. They view him as wasting his expertise on coding tasks he shouldn't be doing. My friend got me involved with a few small contracts which I handled without much problem - other than somewhat of a communication barrier with the domain expert. He explained the requirements very quickly, assuming prior knowledge of the domain which I do not have. This is partially his normal style, and I think maybe a bit of resentment from my involvement. So, I think he feels like the owner of the code and has entrenched himself in a development position. So... his coding technique. One of his latest endeavors was to make a page that only he could reach (theoretically - the security model for the system is wretched) where he can enter a raw SQL query, run it, and save the query to run again later. A report that I worked on had been originally implemented by him using 6 distinct queries, 3 or 4 temp tables to coordinate the data between the queries, and the final result obtained by importing the data from the final query into Access and doing a pivot and some formatting. It worked - well, some of the results were incorrect - but at what a cost! (I implemented the report in a single query with at least 1/10th the amount of code.) He edits code in notepad. He doesn't seem to know about online reference material for the languages. I recently read an article on Dr. Dobbs titled \"What Makes Bad Programmers Different\" \\- and instantly thought of our domain expert. From the article: >   * Their code is large, messy, and bug laden. >   * They have very superficial knowledge of their ~~problem domain and~~ > their tools. >   * Their code has a lot of copy/paste and they have very little interest in > techniques that reduce it. >   * The fail to account for edge cases, while inefficiently dealing with the > general case. >   * They never have time to comment their code or break it into smaller > pieces. >   * Empirical evidence plays ~~no~~ little role in their decisions. > 5.5 out of 6. My friend is wanting me to argue the case to their management - specifically, I got this email from their manager to respond to: > ...Also, I need to talk to you about what effect there is from _Domain > Expert_ continuing to make edits to the live environment. If that is a > problem for you I need to know so I can have his access blocked. Some > examples would help. In my opinion, from a technical standpoint, it's dangerous to have him making changes without any oversight. On the other hand, I'm just doing one-off contracts at this point and don't have much desire to get involved deeply enough that I'm essentially arguing as one of the Bobs from Office Space. I'd like to help my friend out - but I feel like I'm getting in the middle of a political battle. More importantly - if I do get involved and suggest that his editing privileges be removed, it needs to be handled carefully so that doesn't feel belittled. He is beyond a doubt the foremost expert on this system. I'm hoping this is familiar territory for some other stackechangers, because I'm feeling a little bewildered. How should I respond? Should I argue that he shouldn't be allowed to touch the code? Should I phrase it as \"no single developer, no matter how experienced, should be working on production code unchecked\"? Should I argue to keep him involved with the code, but with a review process? Should I say \"glad I could help, but uh, I'm busy now!\" Other options? Thanks a bunch!"}
{"_id": "127783", "title": "Comma as a separator vs. comma as a delimiter", "text": "In this video, the speaker says: > \"Some people get confused about how commas work. They think they should be > delimiters rather than separators. Now you can think about them either way.\" I don't understand the difference between a delimiter and a separator (if there is one). The implication in the video is that now (that trailing commas are valid), one can think of them as delimiters, rather than separators... Btw the language in question is JavaScript. From my understanding, the comma token has two meanings:   * as an operator (rarely used)   * as a separator (in argument and parameter lists, array and object literals, etc.) I'm not sure how a comma delimiter fits into this..."}
{"_id": "232040", "title": "avoiding hard coding of knowledge of algorithm in tests?", "text": "I have a package of code which is suppose to tell me where to allocate elements. When I add a new element it may require repositioning of existing elements to keep my 'tree' in a format that promises a log-n search. Ultimately when I hand it a current system and new elements to add I should get a list of where to add new elements, and when/where old elements were moved to. I want to test that the set returned is valid, but I'm not certain how to. I can easily test if the elements are placed in valid locations, ie locations that won't break assumptions about my 'tree', but this doesn't ensure that I did the minimal and most efficent movement of elements. However, I can't think of how to check the moves are efficent without essentially rewriting a large part of the package just to test it's results. Since I wrote the package I know some implementation specific details. I know that A will be moved to B because I know exactly what logic was used to decide the move, but this is implementation specific. There are cases where I hae multuple equally valid choices and I pick one way when I could pick another. Is it 'right' to do this sort of functional testing by utilizing my understanding of the algorithm to specify specifially what should have moved where? if not how else would I write the test to have any idea that i'm not making the most inefficent, but valid, moves possible?"}
{"_id": "167503", "title": "Compiling vs using pre-built binaries performance?", "text": "Will performance be better (quicker) if I manually compile the source for a software component for the actual machine that it will be used on, compared to if the source was compiled on another platform perhaps for many different architectures? I got some good results compiling source that I downloaded and I wonder whether this was due to compiling it instead of downloading a pre- compiled binary which is often the case with software updates."}
{"_id": "64502", "title": "Branching and versioning strategy for shared libraries", "text": "These posts seem related, but my brain is starting to melt, trying to think this through :P My employer has just started using source control, primarily because before they hired more developers, the \"repository\" was the hard drive of the lone dev, who works mainly from home. All of the .NET code he'd written was checked in _en masse_ , and there is a lot of duplicated (read: copy-pasted) functionality. Right now, our SCM system is glorified backup. I'd like to pull some of the duplicated code into shared libraries. I'm leaving the original repo alone so that we don't break anything\u2014we can move and/or refactor existing code as and when needed. So I've set up a repo just for new code, including libraries. My problem revolves around versioning the libraries without miring us in excessive process: having acknowledged that we need a more coherent approach, with more devs all writing very similar code, management and the other devs are open to reorganising things, but it probably won't go down well if the solution starts to affect productivity. The ideal solution in my obsessive mind is to build the libraries separately, with each dependent project built against deliberately chosen, compatible versions of them. That way, we know exactly which clients have which versions of which libraries, can more reliably reproduce bugs, maintain independent release branches for products and libraries, and not break each other's projects when changing shared code. This makes updating the libraries cumbersome though, particularly for the dev who works from home. I expect the libraries to change quickly, at least initially as we (finally) pull the common bits together. It's quite possible that I'm completely overthinking this and we'd be fine just building everything against the most recent library commits, but I'd like to at least be _prepared_ for the day we decide that some components have to be independently versioned and distributed. The fact that some of the libraries will have to be installed in the GAC makes versioning particularly important. So my question is: what am I missing? I feel like I've fixated on one solution and am now trying to find variations on it that will make changes smoother. What kinds of strategies have you used to solve this kind of problem before? I realise this question is all over the place; I'll do my best to clean up and clarify any points of uncertainty. And as much as I'd love to use Mercurial, we've already spent money on a centralised commercial SCM (Vault) and switching isn't an option. Besides, I think the issue here goes deeper than choice of version control tool."}
{"_id": "60082", "title": "Keeping remote files synced with local files?", "text": "When developing web applications, how does one keep local files and remote files synced together? There is the obvious way, whenever you edit a file on your local machine, just upload that file to the remote machine. Is there a more efficient way? I ask because I have been using subversion control, and it is so easy to keep files synced on a remote server. All I have to do is \"commit\" and it will find the files which need to be replaced."}
{"_id": "60080", "title": "To maximize chances of functional programming employment", "text": "Given that the future of programming is functional, at some point in the nearish future I want to be paid to code in a functional language, preferably Haskell. Assuming I have a firm grasp of the language, plus all the basic programmer attributes (good communication skills/sense of humour/hygiene etc), what should I concentrate on learning to maximize my chances? Are there any particularly sought after libraries I should know? Alternatively, would another language be a better bet, say F#? (I'm not too fussed about the kind of programming work, so long as it's reasonably interesting and reasonably well paid, and with nice people)"}
{"_id": "215613", "title": "Database model for keeping track of likes/shares/comments on blog posts over time", "text": "My goal is to keep track of the popular posts on different blog sites based on social network activity at any given time. The goal is not to simply get the most popular now, but instead find posts that are popular compared to other posts on the same blog. For example, I follow a tech blog, a sports blog, and a gossip blog. The tech blog gets waaay more readership than the other two blogs, so in raw numbers every post on the tech blog will always out number views on the other two. So lets say the average tech blog post gets 500 facebook likes and the other two get an average of 50 likes per post. Then when there is a sports blog post that has 200 fb likes and a gossip blog post with 300 while the tech blog posts today have 500 likes I want to highlight the sports and gossip blog posts (more likes than average vs tech blog with more # of likes but just average for the blog) The approach I am thinking of taking is to make an entry in a database for each blog post. Every x minutes (say every 15 minutes) I will check how many likes/shares/comments an entry has received on all the social networks (facebook, twitter, google+, linkeIn). So over time there will be a history of likes for each blog post, i.e                  post 1234                   after 15 min: 10 fb likes, 4 tweets, 6 g+             after 30 min: 15 fb likes, 15 tweets, 10 g+             ...             ...             after 48 hours: 200 fb likes, 25 tweets, 15 g+      By keeping a history like this for each blog post I can know the average number of likes/shares/tweets at any give time interval. So for example the average number of fb likes for all blog posts 48hrs after posting is 50, and a particular post has 200 I can mark that as a popular post and feature/highlight it. A consideration in the design is to be able to easily query the values (likes/shares) for a specific time-frame, i.e. fb likes after 30min or tweets after 24 hrs in-order to compute averages with which to compare against (or should averages be stored in it's own table?) If this approach is flawed or could use improvement please let me know, but it is not my main question. My main question is what should a database scheme for storing this info look like? Assuming that the above approach is taken I am trying to figure out what a database schema for storing the likes over time would look like. I am brand new to databases, in doing some basic reading I see that it is advisable to make a 3NF database. I have come up with the following possible schema. Schema 1               DB Popular Posts            Table: Post         post_id ( primary key(pk) )         url         title             Table: Social Activity         activity_id (pk)         url (fk)         type (i.e. facebook,twitter,g+)         value         timestamp      This was my initial instinct (base on my very limited db knowledge). As far as I under stand this schema would be 3NF? I searched for designs of similar database model, and found this question on stackoverflow, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11216080/data-structure-for-storing-height- and-weight-etc-over-time-for-multiple-users . The scenario in that question is similar (recording weight/height of users overtime). Taking the accepted answer for that question and applying it to my model results in something like: Schema 2 (same as above, but break down the social activity into 2 tables)               DB Popular Posts            Table: Post         post_id (pk)         url         title             Table: Social Measurement         measurement_id (pk)         post_id (fk)         timestamp            Table: Social stat         stat_id (pk)         measurement_id (fk)         type (i.e. facebook,twitter,g+)         value      The advantage I see in schema 2 is that I will likely want to access all the values for a given time, i.e. when making a measurement at 30min after a post is published I will simultaneous check number of fb likes, fb shares, fb comments, tweets, g+, linkedIn. So with this schema it may be easier get get all stats for a measurement_id corresponding to a certain time, i.e. all social stats for post 1234 at time x. Another thought I had is since it doesn't make sense to compare number of fb likes with number of tweets or g+ shares, maybe it makes sense to separate each social measurement into it's own table? Schema 3               DB Popular Posts            Table: Post         post_id (pk)         url         title             Table: fb_likes         fb_like_id (pk)         post_id (fk)         timestamp         value            Table: fb_shares         fb_shares_id (pk)         post_id (fk)         timestamp         value            Table: tweets         tweets__id (pk)         post_id (fk)         timestamp         value            Table: google_plus         google_plus_id (pk)         post_id (fk)         timestamp         value      As you can see I am generally lost/unsure of what approach to take. I'm sure this typical type of database problem (storing measurements overtime, i.e temperature statistic) that must have a common solution. Is there a design pattern/model for this, does it have a name? I tried searching for \"database periodic data collection\" or \"database measurements over time\" but didn't find anything specific. What would be an appropriate model to solve the needs of this problem?"}
{"_id": "210061", "title": "How to create own programming language based on JVM?", "text": "I am curious about how to create a programming language based on JVM so I have tried to get some info online, but the information I got are quite fragmented. What I found are mostly information related to single technologies like ASM, Eclipse JDT, JFlex, etc, but what I would like to know are the main steps that need to be implemented and suggested technologies for these steps. Any idea? Well this question sounds quite broad but I started to think that is not like that. I kept looking up information online and you can get (relative easily) a basic customized language just using ANTLR (or alternative like JavaCC) used by Groovy mixing it with ASM (alternative BCEL or same Javac compiler). The first helps you to build the necessary grammar/parsing/AST and the second to generate the final bytecode once you got a successful parsing. BTW from the same author of ANTLR I found this book that more and less is what I was looking for: http://pragprog.com/book/tpdsl/language-implementation-patterns"}
{"_id": "251644", "title": "Who are the 1st and 2nd parties?", "text": "So, this is pure curiosity. I've heard the term 3rd party, as in, \"3rd party library\" for quite a while. I wonder why we say 3rd and not 2nd (or 4th)? Who are the first and second parties and where did the term come from?"}
{"_id": "191287", "title": "Strategies for using a code metric evaluation tool", "text": "Should code quality metric evaluation tools like Sonar be integrated with IDE for running local analysis or should they be a part of the build process (like integrated with maven) for continuous inspection or should it be a combination of both? How can we leverage the power of such tools to the maximum extent possible?"}
{"_id": "233492", "title": "What are the origins of the Public/Private function declarations?", "text": "## The Question What are the origins of the Public/Private function paradigm? ## Background A question came up in chat about Header files in C, and their usage being mainly to help the compiler, _not_ the programmer. It's my understanding though, that this is the first usage of the concept of \"Private\" functions, or functions which aren't prototyped in the header file. Had C not used header files to declare functions, would we still have the current concept of Public and Private functions as seen in C# or Java? Or was this concept initially developed elsewhere and simply implemented in the C Header/Source scheme"}
{"_id": "149357", "title": "Mac Developer Library Download", "text": "I'm not sure which SE site this belonged on, so I figured I'd try this one. Whenever I browser the Mac Developer Library at developer.apple.com, on the top right of the window, there's a link for a PDF version. Has anyone ever downloaded them all and combined them into one file? I want to download the Mac Developer Library for my Kindle, and I figure there's no .mobi versions, so I'm trying to look for a PDF version. Thanks in advance and sorry if its not the correct site."}
{"_id": "149355", "title": "How to deal with over-complication?", "text": "I often catch myself doing code unnecessarily complicated (sad but true). Is there any set of rules, discipline, etc to help avoid that? (excluding the KISS principle, because I know it but often forget when it comes to the real code :)"}
{"_id": "149352", "title": "Voting System like Stack Exchange", "text": "I am trying to create a voting system like Stack Exchange. Should I create a table and insert values like following and then sum up the \"vote\" or there are some better ways to do this? Table name: vote               id  userid   article_id  vote      1    1001      12       1      2    1002      12      -1      3    1003      12       1      4    1002      10      -1       Table name: articles                article_id     article_title   article_content  article_author        12              something       something       something             10              something       something       something            From the example above the total vote for the article `12` is `1+(-1)+1 = 1`"}
{"_id": "149353", "title": "Wildcard user in select statement on indexed varcharcolumn", "text": "This question is based on some testing I've done recently in order to better understand SQL indexing system. **Table with 500k entries, InnoDB engine** This is a simple select query on a `varchar` field. The `name` column is **not** indexed. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/0IhSU.jpg) After indexing these are the results: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LjlvL.jpg) All good until this point. When I'm trying to place a wildcard at the beginning of the search key, even though the column is indexed, the result time is the one from the non-index case: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/lEMxk.jpg) I'm wondering why is this happening? Is it because the index cannot be used any more? Is this solvable in any way? can I achieve a better search time even though I'm using `%` both at the beginning and at the end of the search string? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "149350", "title": "how to nicely use constant std::string in c++", "text": "In my current code project, there is an awful lot of constant strings I use to print out error messages. Hardcoding such strings is generally considered to be bad practice. Now I'm searching for a \"clean way\" to include these strings in my program. Therefore I've written a \"constants.h\" and \"constants.cpp\" which looks something like               #ifndef CONSTANTS_H_     #define CONSTANTS_H_          extern std::string error_message_1;          #endif      and the constants.cpp:               #include \"constants.h\"          std::string error_message_1 = \"this is just a sample, not my actual naming convention. move on the the question ;-)\"      So you might see the problem I have with this: due to a lot of error messages, the variable name itself is fairly long. The error message is even longer, so it crashes the standard 80 characters in one line of code. Obviously I want my code nice and clean. I don't like going far beyond the 80 charactes per line of code. I don't like somthing like the following either:               std::string error_message_1 = \"this is just a sample about how to\"                                   \" have one string across many lines\"                                   \" in the source code. this is not \"                                   \"very pretty too..\";     std::string msg = \"and suddenly there's one line which is good..\";     std::string error_message_with_longer_name = \"and it's even \"                                                  \"uglier with not \"                                                  \"equally long \"                                                  \"variable names\";      Storing the strings in an external file which one would read in at the start of the program does not seem to be optimal too since the compiler cannot warn about missing strings. Basically this would be a mess to maintain. So what do you do about it? Is there such a nice thing as \"Resources\", which I know of Android (or is it Java in general?) development? Note: Please do NOT tell me that my naming convention is bad. The above is just an example. It's not what it looks like ;-)"}
{"_id": "117123", "title": "How to spend less time on debugging?", "text": "Following the Pareto rule, a programmer spends only 20% of his time for really useful things. I spend 80% of my time debugging, fixing small things to get everything working. Is there a way to spend less time debugging?"}
{"_id": "105158", "title": "Does Microsoft have a free version of Visual Studio?", "text": "Not a trial, but a truly free version that they offer users to download.... I was wondering in case I somehow missed the option on their website. Any version of Visual Studio will do. If not, are there any open-source alternatives (that have similar functionality, or possibly degraded equivalent) of Visual Studio? I am running on Windows 7 if that makes any difference..."}
{"_id": "56342", "title": "Ideas to maximize learning in a gap year taken for learning programming?", "text": "I am a high school student due to graduate in one month. After which I want to take a gap year to give myself completely to computer programming. I would appreciate your ideas for things to do in this one year, so as to gain maximum from this gap year."}
{"_id": "116833", "title": "What are the development procedures on large web applications?", "text": "I am interested in learning of the different procedures and environments it takes to maintain a large application. For example, in my case I use a CentOS local server, where I develop my applications and I use a version control system on some applications, then I upload it to my host-gator account and launch it live. It is a very simple procedure and at the moment that is the only one I know. I have only worked as a freelancer, so I would be interested in the procedures and environments of large tech companies. What are the general do's and don'ts of development for large app? Best practices?"}
{"_id": "98173", "title": "Is there a software methodology newer than Agile?", "text": "Is there a software development process out there newer than agile? I mean, waterfall, then agile, then what?"}
{"_id": "193665", "title": "What to do when a client asks for something unreasonable (from my point of view)", "text": "I'm a freelance programmer and recently I finished a website, it all works fine but there was one user that complained to my client that he couldn't log in. This problem was clearly a cookie-restriction/old browser one (I couldn't create the problem myself and hunderds of users are working with the website just fine) Now my client said: I've paid you to make something and somebody complains; so you didn't do your work correctly. What can I do in this situation and how do you guys handle this?"}
{"_id": "191132", "title": "How much attention should be paid to patents when developing software?", "text": "Let's say I want to develop an image editing program similar to Photoshop. Is it likely that certain interface patterns and approaches are patented and I can get sued if I use them in my program as well? Do I need to take active care to avoid doing things the same way as competing software? How will I manage to make features still seem familiar to people switching from existing programs? And how much of a difference does it make if it's non profit?"}
{"_id": "199228", "title": "Responsive Web Design vs. User-Agent Sniffing", "text": "The CSS3 `media` query feature has led to many interesting possibilities in terms of developing websites which adjust to many different screen sizes and devices. However, in practice, I'm starting to get the sense that the CSS3 `media` query feature, and the whole \"Responsive Web Design\" movement, may not live up to its promise. The problem I see is that, at the end of the day, web developers care mostly about whether their users are viewing content via a Desktop, Tablet, or Mobile device. But CSS3 only provides a means to detect _screen resolution_. In theory, detecting screen resolution seems like a great way to adjust for various different devices. But in practice... Suppose we have a simple Javascript function that just outputs the screen width:               function foo()     {        alert(screen.width);     }      On my Blackberry Touch, this outputs:               768      On my Samsung Galaxy, this outputs:               800      So...um, at this point, the resolution of mainstream smart phones is getting pretty close to Desktop-level resolutions. The ability to detect whether a user is viewing your website via a smartphone, tablet, or desktop, seems to be increasingly difficult if all you're going by is screen resolution. This makes me call into question the entire wisdom behind the whole CSS3 \"Responsive Web Design\" movement based on media queries. It almost seems like the `media` query feature is better suited towards adapting to a resizing browser window on a Desktop screen, rather than various mobile devices. Another possible technique for detecting mobile or tablet devices is to use feature detection, by checking if the `ontouchstart` event is supported. But even this is becoming increasing unreliable as many Desktop screens start to support touch. **Question:** So... as a web developer, if I can't rely on RWD or feature detection, is **user-agent sniffing** (as notoriously unreliable as always) really the best option to detect mobile devices?"}
{"_id": "191135", "title": "How to manage automated emails sent from a web application", "text": "I am designing a web application and I am wondering how to design the architecture to manage sending automated emails. Currently I have this feature build into my web app and the emails are sent based on user input / interactions (like creating a new user). The problem is that connecting directly to a mail server takes a couple of seconds. Scaling my application up, this will be a significant bottle neck in the future. What is the best way to manage sending a large amount of automated emails within my system architecture? There won't be a huge amount of emails sent (2000 a day max). Emails don't need to be send immediately, up to 10 mins lag is fine. Update: Message queuing has been given as an answer, but how would this be designed? Would this be handled in the app and processed during a quiet period, or do i need to create a new 'mail app' or web service to just manage the queue?"}
{"_id": "191134", "title": ".Net application on Android OS", "text": "I am Database Administrator, but now I need to know something about android applications. I need to run an existing .Net application in Android Operating System, while surfing on the internet I came to know that, I can use MonoDroid to build and run my application on Androids Operating System. I am new to this Android and MonoDroid applications, so **My questions:**   * Is it possible to run an existing .Net application on Android without modification?   * If not, is there a known set of changes necessary to make a .NET application run on Android? Thank you."}
{"_id": "78624", "title": "How to bootstrap managerial experience?", "text": "Most engineering manager positions require X years of managerial experience in the job description. That means as an individual contributor I can never qualify. But this experience has to come from somewhere. How can I bootstrap the managerial experience? Is internal promotion to some lead position the only possible way if I don't start my own business?"}
{"_id": "16436", "title": "\"Do you have any questions for us?\" In an interview", "text": "You know the prospective company fairly well but are asked \"Do you have any questions for us?\". To show interest, what are some of your favorite questions to reply?"}
{"_id": "124882", "title": "What is the best way to approach reading other people's code?", "text": "I'm a junior developer and am trying to learn by reading open source code (AutoMapper). My approach would be to first understand the requirements of the software/feature. Then look for specifics on how each requirements were implemented and dive deeper into the code until I've reached the end. I would reiterate until I've covered each requirement. I understand my question does not have a \"best\" answer. Please give me some input on what works for you guys. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "210399", "title": "Why is there a \"new\" in Go?", "text": "I'm still puzzled as why we have `new` in Go. When you want to instantiate a struct, you do               t := Thing{}      and, obviously, you can get a pointer to a new instance by doing               t := &Thing{}      But there's also this possibility :               t := new(Thing)      This last one seems a little alien to me. `&Thing{}` is as clear and concise as `new(Thing)` and it uses only constructs you often use elsewhere. It's also more extensible as you might change it to `&Thing{3}` or `&Thing{Feets:7}`. In my opinion, having a supplementary keyword1 is costly, it makes the language more complex and adds to what you must know. And it might mask to newcomers what's behind instantiating a struct. It also makes one more reserved word. So what's the reasoning behind `new` ? Is it something useful ? Should we use it ? * * * 1 : Yes, I know it's not a keyword at the grammar level, you can shadow it, but that doesn't change the fact it's, for the reasonable developer, a reserved word."}
{"_id": "174835", "title": "Specify that a spawned process returns to a parent", "text": "I am using yED to build an application flow-chart, and I can't figure out a 'nice' looking way of representing that a GUI's call to spawn a process loops back to the GUI process once it terminates, other than drawing another arrow to the GUI process. Is there a better way of presenting a process looping back to its parent on return/exit other than drawing another arrow back to the parent?"}
{"_id": "61936", "title": "Do software engineers really need to know low level stuff anymore?", "text": "As high level programming languages such as C#, Java, etc. are developing, many people claim that they will be an alternative to languages such as assembly language and C/C++, which gives you access and control to computer hardware, because programmers should focus on creating the program and solve problem, not wasting time dealing with the computer to make it work. As the hardware keeps improving, the performance difference between C/C++ and Java will not be significant, and big games might be able to be programmed in a language such as Java. That's the general idea I briefly summarise after looking at this topic on the Internet. Do you think it will become real in the near future? Does that mean everything we learn about low level stuff is not practical for the software industry anymore? Does that mean, assembly language and C/C++ will become relevant to electrical engineers only, since they would be the only ones who needs to program for their electrical components? * * * Edit: And, how much learning is enough? If we learn too much low level stuffs, we would eventually become more oriented in electrical engineering or if we learn too much math, we could be learning to become mathematicians, not programmers. I just want to know if the Math stuffs I learned (I took a Math course which covers the material similar to this book (they used different text book): Discrete Mathematics and its application) is actually as useful as our programming skill set. Many math exercises can took most of us hours to do it, and if you're serious with it, you will have less time to study programming. In our gamedev forum, even Math and Physics only have one section for it compares to programming ones. Right now I have just started reading \"The Art of Computer Programming\". Math is only covered in about quarter of the book, but the exercise is hard for us non-mathematicians. Even such \"elementary\" math, did we use it as much in our career? Some people would probably tell me reading the book TACOP is a waste of time and should probably spend time on something else more practical, even though the book is all about programming (a bit more academic compare to book explain similar things). But I think the author put in great time and effort to produce it. He can even write the full set of 5 books, while we - the audience - only have the mission to read it. Why not?"}
{"_id": "53262", "title": "Do you use both Client-side and Server-side validation techniques?", "text": "Do you use both Client-side and Server-side validation techniques side by side when validating input from a user, e.g. via a contact form? If so, is it really necessary? Are you over engineering? Regards TDG"}
{"_id": "113711", "title": "Specifically for JS, CSS, HTML: what is the difference between optimization, compression, minification, tidying, concatenation?", "text": "When we talk about source code and the file which contains the code like CSS, HTML, JavaScript and we also talk about performance of a web site or application, what is the differences between these terms?   * Optimization   * Compression   * Minification   * Tidying   * Concatenation"}
{"_id": "152758", "title": "Incorporating GoF design patterns in Objective-C without Abstract/Virtual classes", "text": "As someone who is becoming more comfortable working in Objective-C I would like to be able to incorporate more design patterns and OOP features in my projects but struggle to implement them as required by GoF because you cannot create an abstract class. I want to 1) avoid lots of subclassing, 2) minimize use of `respondsToSelector`, `conformsToProtocol`, etc, 3) avoid techniques like `swizzling` as much as possible, 4) maximize encapsulation, and 5) avoid long conditionals or lots of `typedef enum`. For example, in a recent project I wanted to separate `RestKit` (a library for accessing RESTful services) from my `UIViewController` subclasses. I did so by incorporating an `Adapter` between the two with a base class of `ModelController`, which could access models. I also created the `ModelControllerDelegate` protocol for my VC's to wire up. But I experienced great difficulty in creating a `ModelControllerDecorator` without the use of an abstract base class. I wanted to be able to decorate my `ModelController` with different aspects, like `PaginationDecorator`, `CompressionDecorator`, `QueryableDecorator`, and so forth. I've heard that using Objective-C++ is one way to incorporate more OOP features, but how about using standard Objective-C language features? How have you been able to incorporate GoF design patterns that use C++ style features (like `virtual` classes) in your projects?"}
{"_id": "53266", "title": "Why maven so slow compared to automake?", "text": "I have a Maven project consists of around 100 modules. I have reason to decompose the project to so many modules, and I don't think I should merge them in order to speed up the build process. I have read a lot of projects by other people, e.g., the Maven project itself, and Apache Archiva, and Hudson project, they all consists of a lot of modules, nearly 100 maybe, more or less. The problem is, to build them all need so much time, 3 hours for the first time build (this is acceptable because a lot of artifacts to download), and 15 minutes for the second build (this is not acceptable). For automake, things are similarly, the first time you need to _configure_ the project, to prepare the magical config.h file, it's far more complex then what maven does. But it's still fast, maybe 10 seconds on my Debian box. After then, `make install` requires maybe 10 minutes for the first time build. However, when everything get prepared, the `.o` object files are generated, they don't have to be rebuild at all for the second time build. (In Maven, everything rebuild at everytime.) I'm very wondering, how guys working for Maven projects can bare this long time for each build, I'm just can't sit down calmly during each time Maven build, it took too long time, really."}
{"_id": "21300", "title": "What imperative programming languages do not support recursion?", "text": "To my knowledge, all modern imperative programming languages support recursion in the sense that a procedure can call itself. This was not always the case, but I cannot find any hard facts with a quick Google search. So my question is: Which languages did not support recursion right from the start and when was that support added?"}
{"_id": "49257", "title": "Front End Application Development", "text": "I want to start a side project at the company i work for. Right now we are a 100% web based company. I have an idea for a fun project that would install an application on your computer. Anyways, i am not here to discuss the product. I am here to ask about the front end application development. I am a good C++ programmer but only algorithms (I have over 10 years in web development). I have never made a UI application before (minus the old school VB days). I would like to know my options for the front end application for windows, osx and linux. What are the popular choices these days for the UI of applications in windows, osx and linux?"}
{"_id": "223734", "title": "How to test a website?", "text": "I found it's really hard to divide the task of developing a website to a team of people. The problem is a website should have consistent looking and be integrated in users' view. The style and page template need to be shared by all parts. Most of the website is access restricted, the access control system is dependent of all modules. Some modules need data from other modules (you can never ask user the same question again). Although these modules may run independently. The test data have to be generated by other ones. With the increase of code, the website becomes harder and harder to test. Although we are maintaining a script to automate the deployment. But if anything goes wrong, a developer cannot solve the problem by himself, for he is not familiar with others' work. What makes things worse is the configuration. Server settings are highly machine dependent. Some functions need to schedule tasks, so there are some crontab configurations. Some modules need other daemons running in the backend. Some applications require URL rewriting. To test the website, we need to configure all dependencies of all modules on all machines. Is there any suggestion about how to test a website?"}
{"_id": "21304", "title": "The Agile process: how and what should be documented?", "text": "A while ago the company I work for had outsourced a development project to a third party. They employed agile practices in developing the solution. However when asked for documentation they would just say it was required as it was incorporated in a wiki or as part of their sprints. They did leave at the completion of the project, with all but one of the project team. The project wiki site has now been closed down once the yearly subscription was due. When they left they took most of the knowledge and understanding of what was developed with them. So I do have 2 main questions;   1. Is this normal for agile or just an excuse for not wanting to write it?   2. What are the industry norm for documentation in agile projects to record development requirements, designs, key decisions and context?"}
{"_id": "223738", "title": "Access Control List with many roles", "text": "I normally have 2 roles in most of my websites, i.e. `Admin` and `Member` and create one folder for each Role like                /Root        /admin        /member      but now I have come up with `10 Roles` besides `Admin` and each role represents a department in a Company. And each role has only access to their `Department's tables` e.g Users with `accounts` roles have access to table related to accounts info and so on... Now I am not sure if it will be a better way to create as many folders as the number of roles. And under that folder I will have almost same templates and same Queries where templates may contain different `links` and `Queries` maybe different `Tablename` Which will lead to a maintenance nightmare. What will be the best way to handle this?"}
{"_id": "63576", "title": "What will be enablers of cloud based integration (\"Cloud Service Bus\")", "text": "Both cloud computing (specifically SaaS) and SOA promote the idea of services for transforming software to a commodity. However, most SaaS providers focus mainly on providing the service to the end user, but the products aren't well suited for back-end integration. Most providers provide only an API access to their service. Some provide also integration with other _specific_ SaaS services But if one wants to aggregate data and functionality from different services which weren't planned to work together, he needs to use traditional tools to access and consolidate them - loosing many of the benefits of SaaS **A concrete example** Consider an organization that uses a SaaS solution for CRM, and another one for HR management. both of them will probably include an API (REST or WS) that allow to interact with them. However, most chances, that they won't allow you to directly synchronize user profiles between them. To do so you need to pull data from the HR system, and send it to the CRM system. this mechanism isn't currently available as a cloud service. and you will need to use \"standard\" integration technologies - either dedicated tools (ESB, EAI) or custom code, that will run on a server that you need to maintain. What do you think will be enablers of cloud based integration (\"Cloud Service Bus\") Some ideas   * Development of common Web Services API's for SaaS providers (like all e-mail providers support SMTP and POP3, there will be a common CRM protocol and HR protocol)   * Development of cloud based broker services with capabilities such as message queuing, transformation engines, workflow engines, etc."}
{"_id": "187487", "title": "Should object oriented programming be the first thing students learn?", "text": "My high school is starting a program where, instead of following the 'traditional' method of teaching programming (learning variables, then operations, loops, methods, and finally OOP), students are immediately introduced to object oriented programming without any other programming knowledge. Is this a good idea? My personal view is that teaching OOP first is misguided - when I was introduced to OOP, I was able to appreciate the power it gave me when designing complex programs, as I was already familiar with procedural programming. Introducing students to OOP at such an early stage might make them ignorant as to the power and flexibility that OOP gives programmers. There are also the practical problems - students might have a difficult time designing classes when they have not been introduced to methods properly (how they work, when they should be used, etc.). I don't have many details about the course curriculum, but by my understanding, students are to be introduced to OOP by their third lesson, after having been taught variables and operations (as well as standard input/output). In case it's relevant, the language my school teaches in is C#."}
{"_id": "56965", "title": "When is it okay to ship a product with a known bug?", "text": "When is it okay to ship a product with a known bug?"}
{"_id": "56964", "title": "How to Make Sure Your Company Doesn't Go Underwater If Your Programmers Win the Lottery", "text": "I have a few programmers under me, they are all doing very great and very smart obviously. Thank you very much. But the problem is that each and every one of them is responsible for one core area, which no one else on the team have foggiest idea on what it is. This means that if anyone of them is taken out, my company as a business is dead because they aren't replaceable. I'm thinking about bringing in new programmers to cover them, just in case they are hit by a bus, or resign or whatever. But I afraid that   1. The old programmers might actively resist the idea of knowledge transfer, fearing that a backup might reduce their value.   2. I don't have a system to facilitate technology transfer between different developers, so even if I ask them to do it, I've no assurance that they will do it properly. My question is,   1. How to put it to the old programmers in such they would agree   2. What are systems that you use, in order to facilitate this kind of \"backup\"? I can understand that you can do code review, but is there a simple way to conduct this? I think we are not ready for a full blown, check-in by check-in code review."}
{"_id": "2756", "title": "How important are code formatting guidelines?", "text": "Coding standards are common in any software development organization, but how important are they to follow? I can understand the need for some consistency, but when dealing with simple things like the position of braces, line length, etc., I'm not sure excessively strict standards contribute much to software development. Isn't it more important that your code is readable, not that it conforms to a predefined standard? It seems they're more like... guidelines anyway."}
{"_id": "104346", "title": "What is the ideal number of displays needed for high productivity", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How many monitors do you use? Why? How they are used? Ive seen people mostly freelancers work with three or four monitors around them and it looks so cool. I personally have two screens in my office and i think it suits my needs well except certain situations where i feel that another display would have made it easier for me. So as a programmer/developer what is the ideal number of screens and display setup that would increase productivity. Will going to three or four screens decrease productivity as opposed to increasing it?"}
{"_id": "9403", "title": "Horizontally positioned or vertically positioned monitor(s)?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How many monitors do you use? Why? How they are used? With inspiration from this question, I thought I'd ask my own concerning monitors. Some monitors you can turn 90 degrees so that it stands vertically positioned. I've also seen this setup be used in some offices. But which is better for programming? The way I see it, horizontally you can fit more documents side by side, but vertically you can view more code of the same document. Which setup do you prefer? How does this scale with multiple monitors?"}
{"_id": "50545", "title": "Have programmers at your work not taken up or been averse to an offer of a second monitor?", "text": "I'm putting together a business case for the developers in my company to get a second monitor. After my own experiences and research, this seems a no-brainer to me in terms of increasing productivity and morale/happiness. One question which has niggled me is if I should be pushing to get all developers onto a second monitor or let folk opt-in (i.e. they get one if they want one). Thoughts on this are welcome, but my specific question relates to a snippet on this site: > But when the IT manager at Thibeault's company asked other employees if they > wanted dual monitors last year, few jumped at the offer. Blinded by my own pre-judgement, this surprised me. Has anyone else experienced this? I fully appreciate that some people prefer a single larger monitor, but my general experience of researching the web suggests that most programmers prefer a dual (or more) setup. I'm guessing this should be tempered with the thought that those developers who contribute to such discussions might not be considered your average developer who might not care one way or the other. Anyway, if you have experienced the above have you tried to sell the concept of dual monitors to the masses? If everyone just got 2 monitors regardless if they wanted it or not, were there adverse reactions or negative effects? UPDATE: The developers are on a mixture of 17\", 22\", or 24\" single monitors. The desks should be able to accommodate dual 22\" monitors as I am proposing, though this will take some getting used to I imagine."}
{"_id": "199707", "title": "Simple task framework - building software from reusable pieces", "text": "I'm writing a web service with several APIs, and they will be sharing some of the implementation code. In order not to copy-paste, I would like to ideally implement each API call as a series of tasks, which are executed in a sequence determined by the business logic. One obvious question is whether that's the best strategy for code reuse, or whether I can look at it in a different way. But assuming I want to go with tasks, several issues arise:   1. What's a good task interface to use?   2. How do I pass data computed in one task to another task in the sequence that might need it? In the past, I've worked with task interfaces like:               interface Task<T, U> {         U execute(T input);     }      Then I also had sort of a \"task context\" object which had getters and setters for any kind of data my tasks needed to produce or consume, and it gets passed to all tasks. I'm aware that this suffers from a host of problems. So I wanted to figure out a better way to implement it this time around. My current idea is to have a TaskContext object which is a type-safe heterogeneous container (as described in Effective Java). Each task can ask for an item from this container (task input), or add an item to the container (task output). That way, tasks don't need to know about each other directly, and I don't have to write a class with dozens of methods for each data item. There are, however, several drawbacks:   1. Each item in this TaskContext container should be a complex type that wraps around the actual item data. If task A uses a String for some purpose, and task B uses a String for something entirely different, then just storing a mapping between String.class and some object doesn't work for both tasks. The other reason is that I can't use that kind of container for generic collections directly, so they need to be wrapped in another object.   2. This means that, based on how many tasks I define, I would need to also define a number of classes for the task items that may be consumed or produced, which may lead to code bloat and duplication. For instance, if a task takes some Long value as input and produces another Long value as output, I would have to have two classes that simply wrap around a Long, which IMO can spiral out of control pretty quickly as the codebase evolves. I briefly looked at workflow engine libraries, but they kind of seem like a heavy hammer for this particular nail. How would you go about writing a simple task framework with the following requirements:   * Tasks should be as self-contained as possible, so they can be composed in different ways to create different workflows.   * That being said, some tasks may perform expensive computations that are prerequisites for other tasks. We want to have a way of storing the results of intermediate computations done by tasks so that other tasks can use those results for free.   * The task framework should be light, i.e. growing the code doesn't involve introducing many new types just to plug into the framework."}
{"_id": "162050", "title": "Heredoc or an external template file in my bash script - how it affects readibility/maintanance?", "text": "I realise that this question may be down to personal preference but I'm pretty new to bash/shell scripting so thought it'd be worth some research to see if there's some sort of standard/best practise or agreeable consensus. \\-- I'm working on a few scripts that I'd eventually like to release open source (probably MIT license) so I'd like the scripts to be \"done right\", if there is such a thing -- The script in question has to produce an output text file from a template using variable substitution/expansion to 'fill in the blanks' as it were. At present I am using the `heredoc` method but I'd like to preserve TAB indents, both in my script and in the output (for readability). Whilst I have achieved this to a certain extent using `cat <<-EOF` to strip the leading tabs (from my script) and by using a variable to store the TAB space (e.g. `T=\"$(printf '\\t')\"`) which I then reference with `$T` which is then interpreted correctly within the heredoc back in to a TAB character, I can't help but think if an external file would just be simpler? What do any of you more experienced bash scripters can say about it? Which of those practices is better when it comes to the code readibility/maintanance? * * * Here's a quick example of what I mean...               my_function() {         T=\"$(printf '\\t')\"         cat <<- EOF             This is my template for $something             $T  I'm indented with the TAB space variable...             $T  ...but actually I'm indented twice because the \"<<-\" only strips the 'leading' tabs             There's something else that I need, but it might be \\${printed_literally}/$or_expanded which is cool!         EOF     }      It's nothing _special_ really, I'm not looking for a 'solution' as such, more just some guidance on which solution to use -- i.e. _heredoc_ in the script or an external template file?"}
{"_id": "199708", "title": "Is there a compliance test for C++ compilers?", "text": "**Is there, somewhere, a freely usable/accessible script, source file, or whatever, that is able to measure the compliance of a given C++ compiler?** For example, the Acid3 test for browsers: http://acid3.acidtests.org/ The results I dream of would be a global percentage note (or multiple notes, one for each standard, e.g. , c++98, c++11, c++14, etc.), and then detailed tests with \"success\" or \"failure\" for each of them. _Background: I had a discussion at work about boost and some challenged compilers. My interlocutor spoke about boost being an academic project, because it won't work in major C++ compilers, and me answering that mentally challenged compilers should not count. Being able to measure with code the actual conformance of a compiler would help both in evaluating the compiler, and discovering the \"corner cases\" that should be avoided in cross-platform code compiled with them._ ### Edit: 2013-06-22 Not an answer, but apparently, the C++ committee is working on the subject: > _**SG10, Feature Test:** Clark Nelson (Intel). Investigation into whether > and how to standardize a way for portable code to check whether a particular > C++ product implements a feature yet, as we continue to extend the > standard._ Source: http://isocpp.org/std/the-committee"}
{"_id": "210934", "title": "What are the advantages of using LISP and Haskell? Will they make me a better programmer?", "text": "I know Lisp and Haskell are functional and logic programming languages respectively, but what exactly does this mean? How do they differ from other languages? I've heard that learning these will make you a better programmer and improve your logic. Is this true, and if I go learning Lisp or Haskell to a competent level will my programming improve and will I be better at handling any problem in any language? I just wanted to know to see if they are worth the effort of learning. Also are these languages useful in areas such as GUI and graphics or are they just useful for console applications?"}
{"_id": "198073", "title": "Languages with graph data structures and algorithms in standard library", "text": "I am trying to improve my knowledge and ability with graphs and graph algorithms and have noticed something curious: as far as I can tell no \"mainstream\" language contains support for graphs in its standard library. Trees yes, graphs no. The only language that comes even remotely close is C++ with Boost (which isn't technically a \"standard library\") I'm not sure exactly why this is, but it's got me wondering: are there any programming languages out there that come with solid support for graphs as part of their standard library? Edit: To clarify: by \"graph\" I mean a network of nodes and edges; the sort of thing you'd run Dijkstra's algorithm on, not a \"graph\" in the sense of \"graphical display of data\"."}
{"_id": "108640", "title": "Is there any value in knowing the execution time for a unit test?", "text": "Is the execution time of a unit test useful for anything? Is a unit test an appropriate place for any sort of code profiling? Why or why not? **Sample Use Case** :   * Every unit test lists name, pass/fail, and execution time.   * Time is also calculated per unit test class and total test suite execution time. How could I use this info?"}
{"_id": "71939", "title": "PocoCapsule project status", "text": "Does anybody know the status of this C++ Inversion of Control Container? Any alternative?"}
{"_id": "198078", "title": "Where should authentication be handled, in the server's code, or in the application's server-side code?", "text": "I'm developing a simple web application in node.js. Users can log in from any page in the application, so I handle authentication in the server's code and logic, and the application's server-side code checks to see if a couple session variables are set. If they are, the application continues with user- specific information. I'm unsure if this is the best way to handle the authentication logic. Should I move all authentication completely over to the application's code and only have the server listen and pass requests along, or, since the server is setting the session anyway, should I have it control back-end authentication logic as I'm handling it now? In the end, what I'm really asking is: Conceptually, where should authentication be handled? In the server's code, or in the application's server-side code? * * * **Edit:** To be more specific, it's a public application on the internet. The logic that I'm questioning is entirely the _server-side_ logic. Thank you for pointing that out to me. I edited my title to make it a little more accurate."}
{"_id": "190660", "title": "What is a key event Dispatcher in keyboard-interactive apps?", "text": "What is a : > **Key-Event Dispatcher ?** in keyboard-interactive apps. What does it really do ?"}
{"_id": "62477", "title": "Any ideas on a new input modality?", "text": "Don't get me wrong. I love typing. I'm good at it, and the harmonious clicking of my Das Keyboard brings me pure joy. But for some reason, I just fingertips all over my monitor and started swirling them around. It's all dirty now, but man, this wooshing around really got me thinking. I know this is blasphemous, but do you believe that it could be possible (or definite) that there is a more effective way of coding than our current line by line, 1/3 english, 1/3 strange symbols, 1/3 numbers keyboard inputting? Honestly, I'm not really sure what I have in mind here, but punch cards got knocked down. What's next?"}
{"_id": "102313", "title": "How to keep up your motivation all day long", "text": "This might be a bit subjective and maybe that's a problem here, but I'm asking my question anyway :) Also, I found similiar questions (but none, answered my question), so you don't need to remind me to that, thanks. About my question: I have problems to keep my motivation/concentration the whole day up. I mean, in the morning until after the lunch it's all good. The problem usually starts round about 3pm-4pm, where I have (on hard days) massive problems. I get some sort of writer's block and can't think straight about problems anymore. I often just stare at the code and nothing... I know I need to solve problem X or achive something Y with my code. But it feels like my brain can't (or can hardly) make the connection between an idea and the actual code, I'd need to do this, anymore. Usually relax methods don't really work anymore, when this point is arrived. When I have some extra hours on my account, then I usually call it a day and go home. But obviously I can't do this anytime, sometimes something just needs to get done soon or I need the extra hours. I know, this is a sign of my body that I can't keep this up anymore without a longer rest. And I know (and you guys, too) that this job can be mentally really exhausting. (I work with sharepoint...) Don't get me wrong, I like my job, but I really do feel bad when I can't do with all the passion I'd want to and slack off in the later hours of the day. It just feels like my power is drained for the rest of the day for mental work. And now my actual question. Do you guys experienced similiar? What did helped you? How can you sustain your power for the whole day? (I just don't want to ask myself at the end of the day \"why was I so \"lazy\" the last 1-2 hours\" anymore) This is really important for me, I hope someone can help."}
{"_id": "103253", "title": "Best design for data entry UI", "text": "I am working on a software project that is intended to replace the data entry done in Excel spreadsheets. We have a grid control that displays the data but it is edited in a form with tabs for different sections (over 60 columns in the spreadsheet). The users are complaining that it takes them longer with the tabbed form to enter the data that simply typing in a spreadsheet and moving to the next cell. So now I am wondering if there was an error in our UI design. Are there any good books or other resources which describe the most efficient UI for data entry?"}
{"_id": "78555", "title": "Best practices to follow with database indexes", "text": "What are some DOs and DONTs for improving database performance using index? A DO would be a case in which an index should be created, or another indexes related tip that will improve performance. A DONT will be a case when an index shouldn't be created, or another index related action that can hurt the performance."}
{"_id": "220834", "title": "Are verb-like classes a code smell?", "text": "I do a lot of flat-file processing to extract data. The file \"formats\" are very unique and each file format requires a lot of format-specific code. Sometimes, the parsing code needs to maintain a lot of state while the file is being read. I've used something like this \"pattern\" at times:               parser = New FileTypeAParser(filename)     parser.ParseEnterFile     data = parser.ParsedData      Or, consider a class that factors large numbers. For efficiency reason, upon being instantiated, the class would internally generate and cache list a primes. It would then be called many times with different numbers like this:               factors = factorizer.Factor(veryLargeNumber)      **Original Question** The adage is _Class names should be nouns; method names should be verbs._ Is it a code smell to name and use classes in the way shown in the examples? If so, how do I refactor the examples to deodorize them and remove the code smell? **Revised Question** Based on the comments, I now realize that I _am_ using nouns. After putting more thought into it, I realized that my concern is that these classes very verb-like in substance and in name. Is this something to be concerned about?"}
{"_id": "147290", "title": "Why would I write a DSL instead of a form based RIA?", "text": "I've been reading some papers recently on domain specific languages (DSL), but none of them appear to address the advantages of a DSL over a rich internet application (RIA). In an RIA, instead of learning the domain language, the user is provided with domain objects as form fields, which abstracts the lexical definitions for the domain language. This seems more usable. What I am missing?"}
{"_id": "147294", "title": "Bad idea to display mail server info in public github project?", "text": "I have the project for work that requires me to send e-mails to people using our work mail server. The server doesn't require authentication. Part of my project is using a Java-Helper I'm developing on GitHub. I don't know if I completely understand how it all works, but I'm guessing it would be a bad idea to have the server information available on GitHub for the world to see. Is this correct? **After thought:** I'm not going to put it in the Java-Helper because that wouldn't be helpful for anyone but me. but I'm still curious to know the answer to this question :) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "147296", "title": "How to TDD that the correct results are returned", "text": "I'm starting a new project, and trying very very hard to use TDD to drive the design. I've been pushing for years, and finally got approval to spend the extra time on this project to use it while I learn how to do it properly. This is a new module, to tie into an existing system. Currently, all data access happens through webservices, which for the most part are just a thin wrapper over database stored procedures. One requirement is that for a given store, I return all Purchase Orders that are considered valid for this application. A PO is considered valid if it's ship date falls withing a given range from the stores opening date (this is for new stores). Now, I can't put this logic in the application code, as I'm not going to bring back a million POs just to get the dozen that apply to could apply to this store given the constraint above. I was thinking, I could pass the date range to a GetValidPOs proc, and have it use those values to return the valid POs. But, what if we add another requirement to what is considered a valid PO? And how do I test this and verify it keeps working? We are not using an ORM, and it's unlikely to happen. And I can't call the DB in my test. I'm stuck. My other thought, is have some mocks that return valid data, others that return some bad data, and have the local repository throw an exception if bad data occurs, and test that the exception gets thrown if invalid data is returned by GetValidPOs proc (or the mock used in testing). Does this make sense? Or is there a better way? **UPDATE:** I am able to use EF it would seem. Now I just need to figure out how to use it, and make it testable, while still being able to rely on stored procedures, and the difficulty of having data scattered across several databases."}
{"_id": "144922", "title": "How meaningful is the concept of \"software craftsmanship\"?", "text": "There seems to be a lot of buzz around _software craftsmanship_ lately. Is it a well-defined concept? What does imply? To what extent is programming effectively a craft activity?"}
{"_id": "175412", "title": "Why do node packages put a comma on a newline?", "text": "I'm learning node.js and am trying out Express. My first app had this code:               var express = require('express')       , routes = require('./routes')       , user = require('./routes/user')       , http = require('http')       , path = require('path');      Reading through the mongoose tutorial gives me this:               var mongoose = require('mongoose')       , db = mongoose.createConnection('localhost', 'test');      On strict mode, JSHint gives me > app.js: line 6, col 32, Bad line breaking before ','. Which shows that I'm not the only one out there who's bugged by this syntax. Is there any reason to declare `var`s this way instead of adding the comma at the end of the line?"}
{"_id": "144926", "title": "How to be productive as an infrequent programmer?", "text": "My current day job is mostly project management and client liaison work, but I sometimes get involved in actual coding. I do this either because I have a clear vision of what I want the result to look like (and it's easier to implement than to explain it), because I have relevant expertise, or simply to add resources. But I'm finding a couple of recurrent issues:   1. The startup time to being productive can be prohibitive. Installing development tools, getting access to relevant systems, source code etc, and simply getting to the point of a first complete build.   2. The overhead of working on a fast-moving codebase can be prohibitive. It's not unusual on one of my projects to have to completely rebuild the environment (that is, check out and build all the code again, including creating a new local database, populating it etc) every month or so.   3. Worst of all, if I stop doing any coding for more than about 2 weeks, I completely lose all my mental \"state\": I don't remember where things are installed, I don't remember which of several working directories is \"the right one\", I don't remember how to resolve an error message I've seen several times in the past. (I suspect my mental state attrition is much faster than average.) I would really appreciate tips from anyone else in this situation. So far, I've worked out this much:   1. Only code in solid blocks of time - minimum 2 days. I can't get anything done at all in a few hours at a time.   2. Document, document, document. Keep spreadsheets that store state as much as possible. If there are several systems where code is deployed, record all key directories, port numbers, user names, database names etc etc. What else?"}
{"_id": "115710", "title": "Alternativates to HTML Help", "text": "We currently use a system called AsciiDoc which allows us to create documentation in a simple text markup. From that we can generate multiple output formats. We only make use of the pdf output and chm output formats. I was wondering if there was an alternative to chm? What I am looking for is something that can be used off-line (this is important because quite a few of our users are in very remote places) with our software. It should have an index (it can be as simple as an html page with hyperlinked terms), it should be searchable and it should have a mechanism that allows specific entries to be called up from the code (similar to context sensitive help). The two things that are against PDF in this case is:   1. Context sensitive help isn't an option   2. Generally the document is rather large    3. PDF is more suitable to printed documentation than context sensitive help What I would like is to use html. The only problem with html is that I can't seem to figure out how to automatically provide a keyword search (other than the browsers ctrl+f functionality - I would like something more apparent). I also can't seem to find a method to automatically generate a hyperlinked index of key words. Context sensitive help would be simple because of the section tags - I could simply pass the url of the page and section that I am interested into the default browser and that page should load up to the correct section. My requirements sound an awful lot like chm - they do. I modeled my requirements off chm. The only reason I don't like chm is because of the way the code interacts with it using mapids and such. I would much rather use store a plain text list (that is automatically generated for me) that my code can use to access the context sensitive portion of the documentation. I am envisioning a script that would go through the html output files and generate an index page that simply contains a list of keywords that it found. obviously there should be word exclusion mechanism to ignore words like: the, it, is, etc.. This part would be relatively easy to write. The second part would need a script of some sort to put together a database of keywords and their location within the html text. I think this would be the tricky part along with providing the search mechanism within the browser. Any ideas on alternatives would be appreciated. I would love to use a wiki or set of static html pages hosted on a webserver somewhere, but we have a critical offline usage requirement. Simply placing the html on the local drive doesn't provide us with the search requirements that we need. **EDIT:** I design software that is used by the mining industry. A lot of mines are very remote and do not have access to the internet in any meaningful way. There is nothing wrong with pdf or html or chm (except that it is getting old). If I could display a pdf file at the correct location (i.e. context sensitive help) I would use it. I am almost tempted to write my own - basically it would be a portable wiki. Speaking of that, if you suggest portable wiki - you have to think of the end user which may have no experience in using such tools. It has to be dead simple. That was the beauty of chm, it is a pain to work with but the end users like it."}
{"_id": "91177", "title": "Profanity Filter Performance in Java", "text": "I have a requirement to filter profanity out of users' submissions in a Java- based web application. The client is aware of both the Scunthorpe Problem and the Clbuttic Problem and have accepted the consequences. Please, I don't desire a debate on the merits of lack thereof of censorship. There are two bits of data:   1. The user's submission, which can potentially contain 500 words or so;   2. A single-column database table containing words that are disallowed. There may be many thousands of records in this table. The present solution seems wrong to me:   1. The entire table is loaded into a static String[] on startup into a Singleton (thus residing in memory).   2. For each user submission we loop through the array and do a .indexOf() to see if any given word in the String[] appears in the submission.   3. If it appears, we replace with %$#@%-style characters. This is done by tokenizing the user submission, looping through the entire user submission as tokens (again), and replacing each instance of the found word. There may be brilliance in this solution, but I'm skeptical. And having looked at it for a while I can't find my way past it. Questions is, what is a solution that will give good performance and hopefully be reasonably sane for future developers to maintain after I get fired for failing to filter out some obscure word I've never heard of?"}
{"_id": "137172", "title": "Why are Python strings allocated on the stack?", "text": "According to this Python code visualizer, Python strings are allocated on the stack and not on the heap. Why is this? I thought they would be similar to Java where Strings are allocated on the heap."}
{"_id": "68740", "title": "What's the canonical retort to \"it's open source, submit a patch\"?", "text": "The danger of ever suggesting some feature on a product, especially open source, is that you'll get the response, \"why don't you do it?\". That's valid, and it's cool that you can make the change yourself. But we know practically that products do often improve as programmers listen to the voice of users \u2014 even if those users are other programmers. And, the efficient way to make those changes can include someone who's already working on the project taking up the idea and implementing it. There are some common terms used to refer to software development problems. e.g. Bikeshedding. Is there a common term used that essentially replies, \"Yes, I know that I can change just about anything in the world \u2014 even closed source. I could get hired, and go write that code. But in this case I'm just making an observation that may in fact be useful for another coder already well suited to easily make that change \u2014 or just generally discussing possibilities.\" [p.s. (a few days in) - I should have pointed out that \"submit a patch\" is often said with wry humor, and I'm seeking an appropriate witty response. ;)]"}
{"_id": "67054", "title": "What are the different methods of dividing and organizing work among project team members?", "text": "In my team, everyone would like to do everything, including backend, frontend, middle layer. I told them that we should divide the work according to roles and area of expertise. What are the pros and cons of dividing the work vertically (each user story is done by the same person from the back end to the front end) versus dividing the work horizontally (each abstraction layer is done by the same person)?"}
{"_id": "67052", "title": "Contract for App Development and Service Maintainence", "text": "I am going to develop iPhone application for clients, for fixed project cost. After that I will help maintain the application by charging a service/support fee. Questions:   1. What should I put into the contract? Any samples I can use for reference?    2. Do developers normally give their source code to the client? And what should be the price differences for each?    3. How are service/support normally charged? Monthly or by the hour? Any other advice welcome!"}
{"_id": "147746", "title": "CSV file generation using Java", "text": "We have a requirement in our project to generate a big CSV file every 2 hours using a Java program. This file will have around 60,000 lines (around 120 characters per line). I am not sure about the size yet. I would like to know if I would run into any memory issues because I will open the file using FileWriter and then keep writing and then finally close the file. Should I worry about the size of the file? If yes, are there any other good techniques to write into a big file in Java other than using FileWriter? We are using Java 5."}
{"_id": "84866", "title": "30 minutes to explain programming to a 15 year old", "text": "I've been volunteered to sit down and talk about the life and work of a Developer with a 15 year old work experience student next week. The catches are that   * I've got just half an hour, and   * I'll be just one of the people talking to her - other people in different roles in the business will also be running through the elements of their jobs with her throughout the day. What should I cover, and what on earth can I hope to teach her in just half an hour? I assume that she probably has no experience with development or programming."}
{"_id": "188455", "title": "Why do programming languages, especially C, use curly braces and not square ones?", "text": "The definition of \"C-Style language\" can practically be simplified down to \"uses curly braces (`{}`).\" Why do we use that particular character (and why not something more reasonable, like `[]`, which doesn't require the shift key at least on US keyboards)? Is there any actual benefit to programmer productivity that comes from these braces, or should new language designers look for alternatives (i.e. the guys behind Python)? Wikipedia tells us that C _uses_ said braces, but not why. A statement in Wikipedia article on the List of C-based programming languages suggests that this syntax element is somewhat special: > Broadly speaking, _C-family languages_ are those that use C-like block > syntax (including _curly braces_ to begin and end the block)..."}
{"_id": "188452", "title": "Store and trigger cron-'like' actions with PHP and (My)SQL", "text": "I'm crashing my head over a design decision, and I'm trying to get some more inspiration/hints/tips/.. from other programmers. **What is the goal:** I want to run **one cron** task (php script) every minute. In this script I should check a **database full of schedules** (same syntax as cron jobs) to see if an action should run right now. (An action can be sending out an email, sending out text-message, ..) I don't think it's possible with sql only, so the best is to retrieve all schedules, and check in PHP which one of them should be executed at the given moment. I'll also store the \"startFrom\" date, to say when this schedule should be triggered first. Any suggestions on this one?"}
{"_id": "188453", "title": "What is a general solution to allow the client to choose the concrete instance of a method output?", "text": "What is the general solutions to allow the client to choose the concrete instance of a method output? For example, in the Lucene API the search method receives and modifies the collector input parameter, but this is generally regarded as a bad practice:               IndexReader reader = DirectoryReader.open(index);     IndexSearcher searcher = new IndexSearcher(reader);     TopScoreDocCollector collector = TopScoreDocCollector.create(10, true);     searcher.search(q, collector);     ScoreDoc[] hits = collector.topDocs().scoreDocs;      An alternative would be to provide a Factory as input and have the search method return the instance created. What else?"}
{"_id": "106541", "title": "Developing a simple web-application?", "text": "I decided to do a mini-project by myself to help me understand a bit more about developing web applications before starting the new university semester. Using the Java SE and JEE/J2EE platforms. I will be creating a simple web application that will retrieve data from a database and display the data. I decided to use a Model-View-Controller type pattern and so far decided that the: Models: Will be Java objects which are persisted in the database using a framework. View: will only be the front end, probably written in HTML with some CSS. I have not (at a high level) decided how the controller should be implemented, I initially went along with the idea that I will use JDBC to query results from the database and display it to the front end but the use of frameworks should ease the process. I was told that there are some open source frame-works that help in making web application and a few I looked up were Spring and Hibernate. My question then is there a way of incorporating these frameworks to what I proposed and if so how can I learn about these frameworks in order to create a web application? Would appreciate advice and experiences about developing web-applications. This is something I have not done before so it\u2019s all a new and a learning process for me. In essence I want to create is a web-application using Java as the primary programming language in which database querying functionalities help in displaying outputs to the front end. **Edit:** Edited question to make it clearer for those who want to start similar type projects."}
{"_id": "124146", "title": "Manufacturing vs Software Development", "text": "It's often said that the software industry is immature compared to manufacturing. Specifically with regard to being process driven. **Question** : Can we as developers learn from the processes of the manufacturing industry? Can adopting their processes increase the success rate of software development? **My take** : In manufacturing the creation of a product is heavily process driven. You may have a factory where each person has a specific set of tasks they follow. A worker (or robot) may tighten a screw all day long. Then the next task in the process is performed by the next specialist. The workers (and robots) do not deter from the process or make something up \"on the fly\". The parts churn through the through the process, and the output is a finished product. It works well and companies achieve 99.99966% defect free products. Companies iron out inefficiencies over time. This is impressive and very well may be the sign of a mature industry. In manufacturing a defined process can literally create the finished product. I don't think this is the case in software. We may have processes for source control, code review, check in sheets, requirements gathering, the SDLC, etc. But executing those processes does not in and of itself create a finished product. These processes may be beneficial, but are orthogonal to the actual creation. Suppose your company is contracted to create software that will search millions of images to find the faces of a criminals. Despite the heavy process driven environment, the developer must engage in creating things \"on the fly\". Doing things on the fly is against the spirit of manufacturing. A good manufacturing process can be executed without thought by a robot. For the creation of complex algorithms which have yet to be fathomed in the mind of a human, it is a necessity to create things on the fly. Software development is not the following of a process, but the creation of a processes to be exucuted by a computer. That is a fundamental difference. No matter how many orthogonal processes we put up around development, we will always resort to doing it \"on the fly\" when it comes to creation. Everyone I talk to seems to agree with the manufacturing mindset. Am I alone in my thoughts? **Edit** : I have accepted an answer. And my mind is made up. [start lecture] I declare the field of Software Engineering has grossly misunderstood the nature of processes. A process is a set of steps. If something can be expressed as a set of steps, it can be automated (or at least the high level aspects can be applied by rote). Automation cannot perform original creation, therefore all processes are orthogonal to creation. I think our best bet is to come to terms that the processes that we adopt are orthogonal. We can never grow out of our \"immaturity\". It is the physics of creation that will keep us perceived as immature forever. [/end lecture]"}
{"_id": "216577", "title": "Code structure for multiple applications with a common core", "text": "I want to create two applications that will have a lot of common functionality. Basically, one system is a more advanced version of the other system. Let's call them `Simple` and `Advanced`. The `Advanced` system will add to, extend, alter and sometimes replace the functionality of the `Simple` system. For instance, the `Advanced` system will add new classes, add properties and methods to existing `Simple` classes, change the behavior of classes, etc. Initially I was thinking that the `Advanced` classes simply inherited from the `Simple` classes but I can see the functionality diverging quite significantly as development progresses, even while maintaining a core base functionality. For instance, the `Simple` system might have a Project class with a Sponsor property whereas the `Advanced` system has a list of Project.Sponsors. It seems poor practice to inherit from a class and then hide, alter or throw away significant parts of its features. An alternative is just to run two separate code bases and copy the common code between them but that seems inefficient, archaic and fraught with peril. Surely we have moved beyond the days of \"copy-and-paste inheritance\". Another way to structure it would be to use partial classes and have three projects: `Core` which has the common functionality, `Simple` which extends the `Core` partial classes for the simple system, and `Advanced` which also extends the `Core` partial classes for the advanced system. Plus having three test projects as well for each system. This seems like a cleaner approach. What would be the best way to structure the solution/projects/code to create two versions of a similar system? Let's say I later want to create a third system called `Extreme`, largely based on the `Advanced` system. Do I then create an `AdvancedCore` project which both `Advanced` and `Extreme` extend using partial classes? Is there a better way to do this? If it matters, this is likely to be a C#/MVC system but I'd be happy to do this in any language/framework that is suitable."}
{"_id": "156120", "title": "Do I lose anything by coding in c# and using free online vb.net code convertors?", "text": "The company I work for uses vb.net since there are many programmers who moved up from vb6 to vb.net. Basically more vb.net resources in the company for support/maintenance vs c#. I am a c# coder and was wondering if I could just continue coding in c# and just use the many online free c# to vb.net code convertors. That way, I will be more productive and also be more marketable since there are more c# jobs compared to vb.net jobs. I have done vb6 many years ago and I am comfortable debugging vb.net code. It's just the primary coding language. I am more comfortable in c#. Will I lose anything if I use this approach. (code conversion). Based on what i read online the future of vb.net is really \"Dim\". Please advise. thank you"}
{"_id": "156123", "title": "Why Browsers do not resolve simple known issues?", "text": "Why Browsers do not resolve simple known issues such as: (in the context of CSS) Do NOT start a class name with a number! This is only supported in Internet Explorer and Do NOT start an ID name with a number! It will not work in Mozilla/Firefox."}
{"_id": "29058", "title": "Is it necessary to discuss database changes", "text": "I am working on a project with a team of 4-5 people. Is it necessary to discuss the database changes with the team before implementing? I am working on the database api's. Is it better to discuss this or not? In my team are senior people. So can't I make changes myself and implement the change and explain the changes."}
{"_id": "156124", "title": "Is it normal for a software developer to have lots of issues after product went live?", "text": "In recent months, our product (which went live probably 9 months ago) experience an increase in the number of users using it. We faced lots of queries, problems, and complaints from users. Sadly, it seems that a lot of the issues seem to be coming from a module that I have been working on. At times, I wonder if I am incompetent, or is this pretty normal in software development, that bugs are found especially during the initial stages of a software development livecycle after it goes live? I wonder why some issues we faced now are not foreseen by me or the team during development phase. I have been working as a software developer for close to 2 years now. Hope to get your opinions, feedback, advices! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "216571", "title": "Managing Personal Projects As Solo Developer - Getting out of depth and failing projects", "text": "I need some advice on project management. I start a project, and often times it will a large project for a solo developer. Usually its a web project. I handle everything from the UI, to the JS, PHP, server management etc. Half way in I feel out of my depth. I lose where I am, so I spend a couple of days away from the project to avoid the stress and before you know it, it becomes another unfinished project. I try to use frameworks and code libraries to make my developments easier on myself. Sometimes I will complete a project so it \"works\" and then go back and handle errors, design the UI properly and stuff. But without fail I will always end up out of my depth. I've though about outsourcing tasks such as the UI, and the behaviour, and focusing just on the PHP - which I feel is my strong point. But then pride kicks in, and I don't feel at one with a project I haven't completed myself. Does this make sense? I am sure there are many others who have felt like this either at home, or at work, and I would love some advice on managing my projects better."}
{"_id": "141147", "title": "Static class vs Singleton class in C#", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is the difference between all-static-methods and applying a singleton > pattern? I need to make a decision for a project I'm working of whether to use static or singleton. After reading an article like this I am inclined to use singleton. What is better to use static class or singleton? Edit 1 : Client Server Desktop Application. Please provide code oriented solutions."}
{"_id": "56674", "title": "Could a singleton type replace static methods and classes?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is the difference between all-static-methods and applying a singleton > pattern? In C# Static methods has long served a purpose allowing us to call them without instantiating classes. Only in later year have we became more aware of the problems of using static methods and classes.   * They can\u2019t use interfaces   * They can\u2019t use inheritance    * They are hard to test because you can\u2019t make mocks and stubs Is there a better way ? Obviously we need to be able to access library methods without instantiated classes all the time otherwise our code would become pretty cluttered One possibly solution is to use a new keyword for an old concept: _the singleton_. Singleton\u2019s are global instances of a class, since they are instances we can use them as we would normal classes. In order to make their use nice and practical we'd need some syntactic sugar however Say that the Math class would be of type singleton instead of an actual class. The actual class containing all the default methods for the Math singleton is DefaultMath, which implements the interface IMath. The singleton would be declared as               singleton Math : IMath     {        public Math        {           this = new DefaultMath();        }     }      If we wanted to substitute our own class for all math operations we could make a new class _MyMath_ that inherits _DefaultMath_ , or we could just inherit from the interface IMath and create a whole new Class. To make our class the active Math class, you'd do a simple assignment               Math =  new MyMath();      and voil\u00e1! the next time we call Math.Floor it will call your method. Note that for a normal singleton we'd have to write something like Math.Instance.Floor but the compiler eliminates the need for the Instance property Another idea would be to be able to define a singletons as Lazy so they get instantiated only when they're first called, like               lazy singleton Math : IMath      What do you think, would it have been a better solution that static methods and classes? Is there any problems with this approach? **Addendum** Some points have been raised, that one of the main benefits of static methods is having methods that are \"stateless\" and thus side-effect free to some extent from a concurrency point of view. I wholeheartedly agree that that's a valid point. However we're mixing two different issues and problems here: One is making some methods invokable and globally accessible without having to explicitly create an instance. The other is having methods that are stateless. The second problem could be solved by method having something like a stateless keyword that similarily to static prevented them from calling this or perhaps do even more to enforce no side-effecs. With singletons rather than static classes and something like stateless classes and methods I think you'd have the following pro's and con's **Pro's**   * \"Static\" methods in other classes and framework classes could easily be designed to be overridable   * Classes would be easier to test   * Using instances instead of static classes means design patterns work better (things like factories)   * No limitation on inheritance and polymorphism in contrast to static  **Cons**   * Perhaps slightly worse performance?   * Bad programmers will but everything in singletons to have them globally accessible instead of using dependency injection, perhaps you should only be able to access singleton methods and not properties/fields to avoid global variables :)   * ? Perhaps Math was a bad example, but imagine if the .Net string methods were inefficient, you could easily replace them with your own using this method. Or some third-party class has has a singleton method that you wanted to alter slightly, you could inherit and alter that method"}
{"_id": "98508", "title": "Patterns to avoid long switch block in UI?", "text": "Sometimes you have many entities which have common parts, but also should be addressed uniquely in UI. For example, in a CMS, you have many content types (like news, images, articles, pages, etc.) which have title, URL, SEO settings, etc. in common, but which also have specific fields. For example, image have a path field, while news doesn't have that. Now when you want to work with these items per page, you encounter long `switch` and `if` blocks. For example:               switch(currentLoadedContentType)     {        case ContentType.Gallery:            // Show gallery specific fields;            break;        case ContentType.News:            // Show news specific fields;            break;        case ContentType.Artiel:            // Show artiels specific fields;            break;        case ContentType.Page:            // Show pages specific fields;            break;     }      As you increase the number of content types, this lists gets longer and longer. What patterns are available to reduce the length or eliminate this long switch, but at the same time don't result in repetition. (I'm a big fan of DRY)."}
{"_id": "30908", "title": "Difference between hash and dictionary", "text": "What is the difference between Hash and Dictionary. Coming from a scripting background, I feel that they are similar , but wanted to find out the exact differences, Googling did not help me much."}
{"_id": "177416", "title": "Programming a trading strategy", "text": "Excuse me if I'm not descriptive enough, as I do not have much of a background when it comes to these things: How would I go about coding a primitive trading strategy and link it to some sort of artificial trading environment? Where do I start, and what are some other essential questions I should be asking? I am interested more in doing this because it interests me than making returns. Ideally it utilizes random/historical market data and doesn't actually execute any real trades. My background: I'm almost done my undergrad degree in computer science, and have had intro finance and economic courses. Familiar mostly with C and Java."}
{"_id": "105936", "title": "Is anyone doing \"real\" TDD with Visual-C++, and if yes, how do they do it?", "text": "Test Driven Development implies _writing the test before the code_ and following a certain cycle:   * Write Test   * Check Test (run)   * Write Production Code   * Check Test (run)   * Clean up Production Code   * Check test (run) As far as I'm concerned, this is only possible if your development solution allows you to very quickly switch between the production and test code, and to execute the test for a certain production code part extremely quickly. Now, while there exist lots of Unit Testing Frameworks for C++ (I'm using Bost.Test atm.) it does seem that there _doesn't_ really exist any decent (for _native C++_ ) Visual Studio (Plugin) solution that makes the TDD cycle bearable regardless of framework used. \"Bearable\" means that it's a one-click action to run a test for a certain cpp file without having to manually set up a separate testing project etc. \"Bearable\" also means that a simple test starts (linking!) and runs very quickly. So, what tools (plugins) and techniques are out there that make the TDD cycle possible for native C++ development with Visual Studio? Note: I'm fine with free or \"commercial\" tools. **Please** : **No** framework recommendations. (Unless the framework has a dedicated Visual Studio plugin and you want to recommend the plugin.) * * * Edit **Note** : The answers so far have provided links on how to integrate a Unit Testing framework into Visual Studio. The resources more or less describe how to get the UT framework to compile and get your first Tests running. _This is **not** what this question is about._ I'm of the opinion that to really work productively, having the Unit Tests in a manually maintained(!), separate vcproj from your production classes will add so much overhead that TDD \"isn't possible\". As far as I am aware, you do _not_ add extra \"projects\" to a Java or C# thing to enable Unit Tests and TDD, and for a good reason. This _should_ be possible with C++ given the right tools, but it seems (this question is about) that there are very little tools for TDD/C++/VS. * * * Googling around, I've found one tool, VisualAssert, that seems to aim in the right direction. However, afaiks, it doesn't seem to be in widespread use (compared to CppUnit, Boost.Test etc.). * * * Edit: I would like to add a comment to the context for this question. I think it does a good summary of outlining (part of) the problem: (comment by Billy ONeal) > Visual Studio does not use \"build scripts\" that are reasonably editable by > the user. One project produces one binary. Moreover, Java has the property > that Java never builds a complete binary -- the binary you build is just a > ZIP of the class files. Therefore it's possible to compile separately then > JAR together manually (using e.g. 7z). C++ and C# both actually link their > binaries, so generally speaking you can't write a script like that. The > closest you can get is to compile everything separately and then do two > linkings (one for production, one for testing)."}
{"_id": "177411", "title": "Is this an acceptable approach to undo/redo in Python?", "text": "I'm making an application (wxPython) to process some data from Excel documents. I want the user to be able to undo and redo actions, even gigantic actions like processing the contents of 10 000 cells simultaneously. I Googled the topic, and all the solutions I could find involves a lot of black magic or is overly complicated. Here is how I imagine my simple undo/redo scheme. I write two classes - one called `ActionStack` and an abstract one called `Action`. Every \"undoable\" operation must be a subclass of `Action` and define the methods `do` and `undo`. The `Action` subclass is passed the instance of the \"document\", or data model, and is responsible for committing the operation and remembering how to undo the change. Now, every document is associated with an instance of the `ActionStack`. The `ActionStack` maintains a stack of actions (surprise!). Every time actions are undone and new actions are performed, all undone actions are removed for ever. The `ActionStack` will also automatically remove the oldest `Action` when the stack reaches the configurable maximum amount. I imagine the workflow would produce code looking something like this:               class TableDocument(object):         def __init__(self, table):             self.table = table             self.action_stack = ActionStack(history_limit=50)              # ...              def delete_cells(self, cells):             self.action_stack.push(                 DeleteAction(self, cells)             )              def add_column(self, index, name=''):             self.action_stack.push(                 AddColumnAction(self, index, name)             )              # ...              def undo(self, count=1):             self.action_stack.undo(count)              def redo(self, count=1):             self.action_stack.redo(count)      Given that none of the methods I've found are this simple, I thought I'd get the experts' opinion before I go ahead with this plan. More specifically, what I'm wondering about is - are there any glaring holes in this plan that I'm not seeing?"}
{"_id": "180683", "title": "Application Logic \u2013 which of the two definitions is correct?", "text": "This is my understanding of the _Application Layer_ : \u2022 It implements _Application logic_ \u2022 this layer contains _Application Services_ , which are used by external consumers to talk to your application \u2022 _Application Services_ are coarse-grained and orchestrate operations which map directly to _use cases_ ( hence also the term _Workflow Services_ ) 1)   From: > Application Logic is mostly workflow logic. It is the application specific > coordination of domain and infrastructure components according to the > requirements of that particular application. From: > Let's start a company, shall we? Sapient Grey will be primarily a think > tank, but with an in-house development group with the capabilities to make > the visions of the core committee a reality. Our corporate motto, \"Sapient > Grey is People...\" will be burnished in giant brazen letters alongside a > customized version of Rodin's famous sculpture \"The Thinker\", all of which > will adorn the east-facing side of our brand new ten story red granite > office building.... Oh, wait. We don't have an office building yet. Okay > then, so we'll hire an architect to design our office building, being sure > to include a private elevator and an elaborate zen-style atrium or courtyard > in the center. In the meantime, while the building is being designed and > constructed, you and I and our other elite colleagues will fly ourselves to > Tahiti to brainstorm Sapient Grey's visions, goals, agenda, and lay out a > detailed business plan. > > Our architect is creating detailed blueprints for the office building, > figuring out how the plumbing will need to be laid out, how the electrical > systems will be segregated and tied together, how the interoffice > communication system will be organized, and how we will implement security > at all levels. The systems and designs that our building architect is > handling is a precise analogy to what \"Application Logic\" is within a web > application. How security is implemented, how we will manage and access > state and persistence, how we will handle storage and retrieval of > data....this is application logic. Like our office building, which when > complete could house and accommodate anything from an elite night club to an > investment firm, the application logic is independent of the actual business > logic that executes within it. a) The above quotes are two different definitions of the term _Application Logic_ and as such it appears they just happen to use the same term (ie _Application logic_ ) to describe two different concepts. Thus, does only the the first definition describe the logic contained in _Application layer_ , while the latter definition is describing a different kind of logic? b) If indeed both definitions describe the logic in _Application layer_ , then wouldn't this mean that _Application layer_ performs two tasks: orchestrating operations that map directly to _use cases_ and executing non-business related logic (such as security, caching etc)?"}
{"_id": "92488", "title": "Modelling Betting Markets", "text": "I've got some general questions about modelling a series of betting markets and bets within them. I'm writing in Ruby but it's ultimately agnostic towards which language I want to use. I have a concept of \"games\", for example, a soccer league. While the league is running, people can place various types of bets. A bet might be the winner of the league, or it might be the top three winners in any order. Or the top three winners in order. This is called a \"market\". Within a game I also have participants. These are the teams that make up the league. A bet consists of one or multiple participants, the order of these participants is important plus an amount. It is stored against the market. My question is how should I got about organising this? At the moment I have market types (say Win) inheriting off a base market class. The base class I'm using looks like this:               class Base         def self.make(game, market_name)             puts Kernel.const_get(\"MatchMaker::Markets::#{market_name}\")         end     end      The make function is a factory method for generating win classes based on a string passed in with the name off the bet type. This generation seems a bit clunky at the moment, and I'm somewhat concerned that it might cause me further problems down the track. I realise this question is somewhat rambling and doesn't have a clear answer. I'm interested more in other peoples ideas in how they would go about putting something like this together."}
{"_id": "180687", "title": "Designing a Web Application with Two Different Backend Databases", "text": "I'm working on a pretty standard LAMP based web application. The server itself has a standard MySQL database and the application is written in PHP. The kicker is, we also use SQL Server databases with this application. ## The current data setup is this:   * MySQL stores the user account information (Username, password, privileges, etc.) and a \"connection identifier\".   * The connection identifier links to another table that stores connection credentials for a SQL server database.   * When a user logs in, a connection is made to a remote SQL Server database (these are hosted independently of the web application and not in my control).   * Using that connection, the web application processes and outputs the data (only reads, no writes). The application has evolved greatly and, while the organization and practices have improved, the design is still pretty messy and confusing. I struggle to implement any kind of framework or ORM because most are designed with one database in mind. I have stitched together a framework that works very well for reports (where only the SQL Server connection is needed) but it doesn't go well with things like account interaction (where SQL server is used for validation of data that goes into MySQL). The setup doesn't look like it will change so I was wondering if there was any advice on designing and maintaining a web application with two different database backends at the same time. On a side note, storing the credentials for remote SQL Server databases on our MySQL database makes me nervous. I can only encrypt the passwords as I need them for connections and, as it currently stands, all the accounts used are admin accounts with full privileges. Not something you want getting out especially when these databases are opened up for internet connections. So any advice for that would be nice as well."}
{"_id": "228604", "title": "Choosing value in SQL query vs (Java) code", "text": "I need to choose one of three values of an integer using the value of a column on a nullable column of a table. There are at least two approaches: 1) use SQL to do all the work: test null values, and choose between the other values, or 2) read the value and use code -in this case Java- to choose. Which one is \"better\", ie. easier to understand & more maintainable? Do you have any other metric use to decide? As an example, I have the following code:               // If id is equal to:     //   -1, then make v = 1     //   null, then make v = 2     //   in any other case, make v = 3          // Option 1:     int v;     String query = \"SELECT CASE min(Id) WHEN NULL THEN 2 WHEN -1 THEN 1 ELSE 3 END AS Id\"             + \"FROM TableA WHERE SomeField IN (SELECT ...blah blah...)\";     ResultSet rs = // execute query     if (rs.next()) {         v = rs.getInt(\"Id\");     } else {         // TODO something went *very* wrong...     }          // Option 2:     int v;     String query = \"SELECT CASE min(Id) Id\"             + \"FROM TableA WHERE SomeField IN (SELECT ...blah blah...)\";     ResultSet rs = // execute query     if (rs.next()) {         final int id = rs.getInt(\"Id\");         if (rs.wasNull()) {             v = 2;         } else if (id == -1) {             v = 1;         } else {             v = 3;         }     } else {         // TODO something went *very* wrong...     }"}
{"_id": "228600", "title": "How to provide a custom ID to a downloadable application?", "text": "I've noticed that with remote support services, a technician usually sends you a download link to an executable. When you click on that link, it installs a software which automatically connects with the remote technician and allows him/her to access your computer. Basically, what's happening is that somehow the installed application has a session ID which it's using to identify and connect with the technician. How is that session ID passed onto the downloaded application? Is a custom executable compiled/generated for each session and the executable has that session ID embedded within it's resources? any other method of achieving the same?"}
{"_id": "228603", "title": "GPLv3 code in non-GPL software -- linking vs. CLI", "text": "Suppose there's a GPLv3 app that has a GUI and a CLI. Can I legally expand its CLI (to give me access to functionality hitherto only available via the app's API), release the result under GPL and then create a non-GPL (perhaps proprietary) app that depends on this modified GPL app (via the expanded CLI)?"}
{"_id": "55081", "title": "Deprecate a web API: Best Practices?", "text": "Eventually you need to depreciate parts of your public web API. However I'm confused on what would be the best way to do it. If you have a large 3rd party app base just yanking old versions of the API seems like the wrong way to do it as almost all apps would fail overnight. However you can't keep ancient web api's available forever as it might be outdated or there are significant changes that make working with it impossible. What are some best practices for deprecating old web api's?"}
{"_id": "212697", "title": "Task Consumer/Processor architecture", "text": "**PROBLEM** We have various tasks in our system which can take up to 20 minutes. These tasks are generally started from the web interface and run on a new thread. This is obviously a terrible solution because the task could be recycled by IIS and it hogs up precious resources on the web server. **POSSIBLE SOLUTION** Hosting a `TaskConsumer` class in a windows service (or Azure Worker Role, in our case), which picks up tasks and processes them. This would handle the queuing and running of tasks. New tasks are added to a database table (say `Tasks`) in the client code via some `TaskManager` class (`TaskManager.Enqueue(ITaskable)`), which are then picked up by the `TaskConsumer` (perhaps it is polling this table for additions?). This table would also be updated by the `TaskConsumer` while the task is executing (perhaps a state field - `RUNNING`, `QUEUED`, `FAILED`, `COMPLETE`). To create a new type of task, one would implement an `ITaskable` interface. This would demand implementations for a `Process()` method, which would contains the logic to run that task. A UI interface could show all active tasks and perhaps provide some management capabilities (e.g. cancel a task, restart a task, etc). This info can be retrieved from the `TaskManager` class (`TaskManager.ActiveTasks`), which essentially is reading from the `Task` database table. The `ITaskable` concrete implementations would need to have serializable properties so to be stored in the database. This is neede because there would be specific parameters/data needed to run the task. For example, an `ImportEmployees` task would need to have the name of the file which was originally uploaded. This would need to be known at the time the consumer needs to execute the task (on desialization). ![Architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HSTYi.png) **Is this a good approach to tackle this problem?** I am sure there must be many patterns out there for this kind of problem."}
{"_id": "32881", "title": "Attributes of an Ethical Programmer?", "text": "Software that we write has ramifications in the real world. If not, it wouldn't be very useful. Thus, it has the potential to sweep across the world faster than a deadly manmade virus or to affect society every bit as much as genetic manipulation. Maybe we can't see how right now, but in the future our code will have ever-greater potential for harm or good. Of course, there's the issue of hacking. That's clearly a crime. Or is it that clear? Isn't hacking acceptable for our government in the event of national security? What about for other governments? Cases of life-and-death emergency? Tracking down deadbeat parents? Screening the genetic profile of job candidates? Where is the line drawn? Who decides? Do programmers have responsibility for how their code is used? What if a programmer writes code to pry into confidential information or copy-protected material? Does he bear responsibility along with the person who used the program? What about a programmer who knowingly or unknowingly writes code to \"fix the books?\" Should he be liable?"}
{"_id": "72569", "title": "What are the pros and cons of Coffeescript?", "text": "Of course one big pro is the amount of syntactic sugar leading to shorter code in a lot of cases. On http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/ there are impressive examples. On the other hand I have doubts that these examples represent code of complex real world applications. In my code for instance I never add functions to bare objects but rather to their prototypes. Moreover the prototype feature is hidden from the user, suggesting classical OOP rather than idiomatic Javascript. The array comprehension example would look in my code probably like this:               cubes = $.map(list, math.cube); // which is 8 characters less using jQuery..."}
{"_id": "144210", "title": "How to gain Professional Experience in Java/Java EE Development", "text": "I have been seeing opportunities go past me for just 1 reason: not having professional industry experience. I say to many employers that I'm capable of doing the job and show them the work I've done during the academics and also several personal projects which I took extra time and effort to teach myself the new industry standard technologies. But still, all they want is some 2-3 years experience in an industry. I'm a recent graduate with a Master's Degree in Computer science. I've been applying for quite a few jobs and most of these jobs require 2 years minimum experience. So, I thought somebody here might give me some realistic ideas about getting some experience which can be considered professional. Any kind of constructive comments are welcome."}
{"_id": "144217", "title": "Application that provides unique keys to multiple processes", "text": "Any idea on how to build an application that provides unique keys each time it get called by another process.   Calling process isn't my problem here, my problem is how to sync between two(or more) processes and preventing it from providing the same key to both of them. I'd really appreciate your help in this issue, please only outline the solution and I'll try to implement it."}
{"_id": "34734", "title": "Do we need to adopt a black-box asset our project is inheriting from its predecessor?", "text": "Our client has an eCommerce site which was developed by an in-house team, and is now showing its age. I work for a firm brought in as external contractors to build a replacement. Part of the current site is a Flash viewer applet which displays media about the product - zoom-able images, 360-degree views, movies, and so on. We need to show the same media the current site does, so we are simply reusing the viewer. The viewer is embedded on a page in the usual way, and told what media to show by means of an XML file it loads from our server, which is pretty simple for us to generate. We've got this working; it was pretty straightforward. But what else do we need to do? The thing is, as far as we're concerned, the viewer is a binary blob which is served from the client's content-distribution network. We embed it, feed it some XML, and it does its job, but we have no power over its internals. It's completely opaque to us - a black box. We can use it to do what it does, but we can't change it, so if we ever need to do something different, we're stuffed. We're building this site for the client, and when we're done, we'll hand it over for them to maintain. We won't be doing the maintenance ourselves. There's a small team within the client who are working as part of our team, and who will be the ones doing the maintenance. That team only includes one person from the team that built the old site, and it's not someone who knows the image viewer. The people who do know the image viewer are not slated to join our team when our system replaces theirs - they'll be moved to other projects. The documentation on the viewer is extremely thin, and as far as i know doesn't cover the internals at all. My worry is that if someone doesn't take some positive action, all knowledge of the internal workings of the viewer - even down to where the source code for it is - will be lost. It's possible it already has been. Is this something to worry about? If so, whose job is it to worry about it? What should they do about it once they've got worried?"}
{"_id": "34737", "title": "The most mind-bending programming language?", "text": "From a _reasonably_ common programming language, which do you find to be the most mind-bending? I have been listening to a lot of programming podcasts and taking some time to learn some new languages that are being considered upcoming, and important. I'm not necessarily talking about BrainFuck, but which language would you consider to be one that challenges the common programming paradigms? For me, I did some functional and logic (for example, Prolog) programming in the 1990s, so I can't say that I find anything special there. I am _far_ from being an expert in it, but even today the most mind-bending programming language for me is Perl. Not because _\"Hello World\"_ is hard to implement, but rather there is so much lexical flexibility that some of the hardest solutions can be decomposed so poetically that I have to walk outside away from my terminal to clear my head. I'm not saying I'd likely sell a commercial software implementation, just that there is a distinct reason Perl is so (in)famous. Just look at the basic list of books on it. So, **what is your mind-bending language that promotes your better programming and practices**?"}
{"_id": "225926", "title": "Pattern for costly precondition check before acting", "text": "Let's say I have a method `DoTheThing()` which requires the precondition-check `CanTheThingBeDone()` to return true. The latter method is time consuming as it accesses the database. I'm finding it hard to find a perfect way to perform the precondition check effectively (i.e. _once_ ) while maintaining both readability and API integrity. Observe these examples: **Example 1:**               class System() {         public void DoTheThing() {             if (!CanTheThingBeDone()) throw new Exception(...);             // Do it         }              public bool CanTheThingBeDone() {             // Some time consuming code         }     }          class Consumer() {         public void SomeLargerOperation() {             try {                   system.DoTheThing();             }              catch (Exception) {                  // Error handling             }         }     }      **Example 2:**               class System() {         public void DoTheThing() {             // Do it         }              public bool CanTheThingBeDone() {             // Some time consuming code         }     }          class Consumer() {         public void SomeLargerOperation() {             if (system.CanTheThingBeDone()) {                  system.DoIt();             }         }     }      Both approaches are ok, but both have drawbacks. In _Example 1_ , I'm forcing the consumer to wrap the code in a try-catch for faulty states. These states can be user-triggered so some graceful handling is required. I'm unsure if try-catch for handling user-errors is a good approach. In _Example 2_ I'm handing the responsibility of state-checking over to the consumer, opening up for non-descriptive runtime errors. In _this_ example, CanTheThingBeDone() is checked, but when Jimmy enters the team 1 year from now to develop module 2, that might change. **Example 3:**               class System() {         public bool DoTheThing() {             if (!CanTheThingBeDone()) return false;             // Do it              return true;         }              public bool CanTheThingBeDone() {             // Some time consuming code         }     }          class Consumer() {         public void SomeLargerOperation() {             if (!system.DoTheThing()) ProduceSomeErrorMessage();         }     }      Now in this example, I avoid try-catch for user errors and prevent the actual Do-code to be executed if invalid state, while ensuring the check-code is run only once. But I feel I'm breaking some naming/coding principle when the method is both performing check and modifying class state (I'm pretty sure it even has a name). As a fourth example, I could envision a combination of #1 & #2 where both the consumer and `DoTheThing` calls `CanTheThingBeDone`, but then we're doing the work twice. To sum up - I can't seem to find a best approach. Anyone have a better idea than mine, or suggestions on how to tweak one of these approaches for a better result?"}
{"_id": "225924", "title": "Fail-fast paradigm overheads", "text": "Fail-fast seems like a right way since it simplifies bug detection. But it's a harm for performance cause of multiple checking the same thing at several levels of the system. Simple example. There is a function that input parameters must be not null. And there is function wrapping it, that also await the same parameters also not null. After some activities function-wrapper passes input parameters into first one. So that the same items checked two times: at the beginning of function wrapper and inside wrapped function. So I would like to know how much widespread this style is. Should I write fail-fast code or check everything just once?"}
{"_id": "224037", "title": "Commit projects individually or whole solution?", "text": "I am working (alone) on an application that is a music portal where you can search for artists, songs etc ... The C# solution consists of:   * a class library that contains all the stuff to access the web service   * the application itself I've recently started using Git and figured out the benefits it does provide to a project but there's something I couldn't figure out, on Visual Studio there is the option to commit a solution which leads me to the following question : Should I commit each project individually or the whole solution ?"}
{"_id": "184464", "title": "What is an Anti-Corruption layer, and how is it used?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out what the Anti-Corruption layer really means. I know that it's a way to transition/work around legacy code or bad APIs. What I don't understand is how it works and what makes it a clean separation from the undesirable layer. I've done some searching, but I can't find any simple examples or explanations, so I'm looking for someone who understands it and can explain it with simple examples. An answer that would satisfy my question should be simple (not necessarily short), and provide understandable examples of implementation and use. See this question, for my use case."}
{"_id": "209655", "title": "C# Logic - gaps & Islands", "text": "I am looking for help designing the display of available times for appointments (for example a hairdresser's appointment book). Currently I have a query that returns a collection of periods that are unavailable for appointments (whether there is an existing appointment or if the service provider is closed). So lets say Feb 3rd, from 12 to 5 is unavailable, i want to output the following string: Jan 1st 12 am - Feb 3rd 12pm Feb 3rd, 5pm - Dec 31 12 am. My entire range is 1 year from Jan 1st to December 31st and there can be as many unavailable dates."}
{"_id": "209652", "title": "Multiple Dispatch and CLOS", "text": "I have never written software in Common Lisp, but in Scheme and Clojure as well as C++ and Python. Yet I have had a look at the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) in Common Lisp and Dylan. Now when comparing it to OOP in the Simula tradition, CLOS and lets say C++ and Python class system have polymorphism as a common trait. They seem to differ in the way how data and methods are organized, in the Simula family, methods are an integral part of classes, sub-items if you will while with CLOS they are defined outside of classes and are rather generalized procedures. Common Lisp proponents typically argue that virtual methods in Simula-family programming languages are quite limited since they are invoked only according to the first-argument object (`this` or `self`). CLOS generic functions are selected for several arguments, thus something like (pseudo code)               method draw(c : Device, d : Drawable) ...       can be implemented for arbitrary `Canvas` and `Drawable` combinations.               method draw(c : Printer, t : Triangle)....     method draw(c : Printer, t : Image)....     method draw(c : Screen, t : Image) ....      In Simula-family languages, this would be more difficult, since `draw` would have to be associated with either the `Device` or the `Drawable` family of objects. The canonical solution seems to be the Visitor Pattern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitor_Pattern . Upon learning CLOS, I was quite amazed that most OO programming languages do not offer multiple dispatch - and - wondered if there are specific reasons, why one might associate methods so closely with one specific class. **Are there specific advantages for single dispatch?**   * ambiguity of multiple dispatch: i.e. lets say I have `a` subclassing `A` and `b` subclassing `B`. The method `foo(A,B)` implemented as `foo(a,B)` and `foo(A,b)`, which implementation would a call of `foo(a,b)` invoke? Is this the only reason?   * \"Modularizing\", methods in the class are near. Is there more to it? Have language designers and creators taken a stance on this matter?"}
{"_id": "209658", "title": "How best to look up objects by label?", "text": "I am writing the server backed by a pre-written API. I'm going to get a number of strings representing ports, signals, paths, etc etc etc. I need to look up the object associated with a given label, these objects are all in memory (no sql magic to do this for me). My question is, how best do I associate a given unique label with the mutable object it represents? I have enough objects that looking through every signal or every port to find the one that matches is possible, but may be slightly too slow. To be honest the direct 'look at every object' method is probably good enough for so small a body of objects and anything else is premature optimization, but I still am curious what the proper solution would be if I thought my signals were going to grow a bit larger. As I see it there are two options available. First would be to to create a 'store' that is a simple map between object and label. I could have it so that every time I call `addObject` the object is automatically saved into a hashmap or the like. This works, but relies on my properly adding _and deleting_ each object so the map doesn't grow indefinitely. The biggest issue to me is that this involves having some hidden static map in my ModelObject class that just feels...wrong somehow. The other option is to have some method that can interpret the labels. All of these labels are derived from the underlying objects. So I can look at the signal label, for instance, and say \"these 20 characters are the port\" to figure out what port I need. This would allow me to quickly figure out what I need. However, if the label method is changed the `translateLabelToObject` method needs to be updated as well or everything breaks. Which solution is cleaner, or possibly a cleaner solution than either of above? For the record I'm working with sufficient number of variables to make direct comparison a little slow, but not enough to be concerned about memory overhead, written in java. All objects that have labels I need to look up extend the same parent class."}
{"_id": "50109", "title": "How can I find contract Android work?", "text": "Two years ago, following 15+ years in Win32 and SymbianOS, I decided to intensively focus on Android. I took the best part of 2009 off work to learn the new platform thoroughly, and that seems to have been a good strategic decision: Android is everywhere now. But it seems strangely hard to find Android development work. I have this nagging feeling that there must be some website, some secret society or labour exchange, that has somehow eluded me. What's going on? If you're an Android contractor, how did you find your current work?"}
{"_id": "151472", "title": "Is it possible to know what programming language a web-site uses?", "text": "For example, `stackexchange.com`, without asking the site owner or Google their information about developing the website, is this possible to know what language is used in the back end? Seems, the website don't have `.extension` bar, for example `.php` that can indicated which is developed in `PHP`, but without the extension, how can I know that?"}
{"_id": "130964", "title": "Are super methods in JavaScript limited to functional inheritance, as per Crockford's book?", "text": "In Douglas Crockford's \"JavaScript: The Good Parts\", he walks through three types of inheritance: classical, prototypal, and functional. In the part on functional inheritance he writes: > \"The functional pattern also gives us a way to deal with super methods.\" He then goes on to implement a method named \"superior\" on all Objects. However, in the way he uses the superior method, it just looks like he is copying the method on the super object for later use:               // crockford's code:     var coolcat = function(spec) {         var that = cat(spec),             super_get_name = that.superior('get_name');         that.get_name = function (n) {             return 'like ' + super_get_name() + ' baby';         };         return that;     };      The original `get_name` method is copied to `super_get_name`. I don't get what's so special about functional inheritance that makes this possible. Can't you do this with classical or prototypal inheritance? What's the difference between the code above and the code below:               var CoolCat = function(name) {         this.name = name;     }          CoolCat.prototype = new Cat();          CoolCat.prototype.super_get_name = CoolCat.prototype.get_name;     CoolCat.prototype.get_name = function (n) {         return 'like ' + this.super_get_name() + ' baby';     };      Doesn't this second example provide access to \"super methods\" too?"}
{"_id": "130969", "title": "Load testing : how to generate per second requests?", "text": "I have a server component which runs over Zeroc-ICE. When I wanted to load test it, I thought that using parallel library to create multiple requests would do it. But it dint end up that way. **Using Parallel(Parallel.For)** library from C# apparently was easier but it doesn't seem to be exactly generating everything parallel in the same instant. So it cannot be the definition for creating N requests per second. How should I do it ? I guess anyone who wants to do load testing first would actually think about this .   1. What's the efficient way to actually create N requests in really per second ?    2. Another myth is about the parallel programming. Please enlighten us , if you have used parallel programming patterns in C# or .Net in general . Imagine I have 5 processes. How will start all the five processes at the same time. What does it mean to my consumption of resources ? I have tried reading into many of the material available over the net but I get more and more questions than them being the answer to my questions.   3. I used Parallel.For and created N threads and measured time. Then I tried the same thing using Task.Factory.start for enumeration of tasks. The time measured was different. So What exactly is the different between using these ? When I should use the corresponding classes and for what purposes exactly ? we often have lots of riches but its just we exactly don't know how to differentiate one from the another. This is one such case for me, not being able to find why I should not use one from the another.   4. I used the stopwatch class to measure these times which claims to be the best. In the scenario of me load testing a component, what would be the way to measure the time of response. Stopwatch seems to be the best solution for me . Any opinions are welcome. ps: There are many load testing tools for web applications. Mine is a customised case of server components. And my question is more pertaining to creating N threads per second. **All opinions are welcome. Just don't think its so much not a programming question. It ofcourse is. It should ring bells for any programmer who wants to QE stuff by himself to know the performance of his product , first hand by himself.I have tried many options and then had to fall back on how should I actually do it ?**"}
{"_id": "187303", "title": "What is 'code skew'?", "text": "In the O'Reilly book on Scala, I read that copy-pasting of code creates: > ... creates issues of code-bloat, maintainability and _skew_ , I can't see any obvious definitions of the word skew in context. I am aware of the problems of copy-pasting, but I can't make them fit with the word 'skew'. Since this is used in an O'Reilly book I'm guessing it's a real programming term in circulation. Any pointers?"}
{"_id": "187302", "title": "Developed a web site - How to explain in an interview", "text": "I developed a e-commerce site for a major company. I did not create some kind of a document to show how the data flows between pages. I used: PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ExpressionEngine, plugins Modules and some other web technologies When I go to an interview I want to show my site and explain how it works and how I developed the site. Usually I go page by page and explain how the site works. Is there a nice creative way to explain how the site works?"}
{"_id": "187301", "title": "Handle invalid text on server or fix on client in Client-Server application", "text": "I have developed a protocol for a Client-Server application and developed it in conjunction with another developer. The client application at this moment is written for the mobile phone. The protocol uses comma separated fields with start and end deliminators. Because some of our fields are free form ASCII text we are byte stuffing the fields so that special characters can be handled within and not mess up our data parsing. The problem is that one field has been byte stuffed when it shouldn't have been. The field in question was to represent coordinates i.e.                   <rest of data packet>, <lat>,<lng>,....          where      <lat>:   Latitude coordiantes i.e. -37.6543     <lng>:   Longtitude i.e. 90.8993      However what we I recieved on the server was the byte stuffed character for a comma appearing in the **dot** field i.e. **-37^-6543.** This in turn caused the server to ignore the packet and not record the details. **Reason** : When I mentioned this to the phone developer he said it was because the character settings on the phone meant that the user had changed the dot to a comma. It was his belief that we should handle this on the server. However I'm not sure. I have a thought that clients should follow the protocol as in theory there could be different clients connecting and the server doesn't want to have special cases littered in it's code base? **Question** : So some options I see are (and I'm not sure how to approach this):   1. Get all clients to send the data as per for the protocol spec and keep the data format black and white so to speak   2. Have the server handle a variety of options in this case   3. In conjunction with 2 adjust the protocol document so that data is more flexible in some cases and the server is responsible for handling the different cases"}
{"_id": "50106", "title": "During software development, which development phase matters most to the programmer?", "text": "What does a programmer need to pay attention to during the development of software? For example, some software can not be finished within the time constraints, others cannot meet the requirements of clients."}
{"_id": "61544", "title": "Software license for commercial/free software", "text": "I am building software in PHP right now which will be released with a free version and several premium versions. I'd like a license which allows people to freely modify the code, but not to redistribute it, or include it in proprietary software or any other software without a license. Would the MIT license be best?"}
{"_id": "181228", "title": "Use Queue<T> or stick to native f# lists", "text": "I need something that represents a queue in F#. The queue will be filled with items once, and (as the application progresses) items will be taken from this queue and moved to other lists. Should I use the Queue class in .NET, or should I avoid it, and use the native lists in F# instead? Is there a better solution? Why should I use one, or the other, in a functional language such as F#?"}
{"_id": "181229", "title": "How to test the same software on all products in a product line?", "text": "In my team we have been working on a firmware for a product. The product was released some years ago but we still implement new features in the firmware and regularly provide a new firmware for our customers. Recently we have developed a new product which use the same firmware as the first one. Of course, we had to change the firmware to allow for some new capabilities (while still keeping functionality for existing product intact). We have a release test specification which contans mostly manual tests which we carry out before we release any new software. We have adapted this for the new product since it has additional capabilities. But most of it is common. I know that new products are in the pipeline and in my simplistic reasoning we need to repeat our release test for each product every time we release a firmware. So i am looking for a new approach which is less time consuming. One of the things we are already working on is automation, but due to the nature of the product many tests _have_ to be manual."}
{"_id": "61542", "title": "Optimizing web applications", "text": "What are the things we need to take care for a web application to handle large number of requests(say 10000 simultaneous requests). Increasing the number of servers and distributing the load is one way , but are there other ways or configurations that can be done on application server ?"}
{"_id": "109409", "title": "What are the differences between throwaway and evolutionary prototypes?", "text": "I have notes about various methods of prototyping, and I found several definitions on the Internet, but I would like to confirm what I learned. I understand that **throwaway prototyping** is developed from an outline of a specification, an various prototypes are delivered and modified until the client is satisfied with its functionality. On the other and, **evolutionary prototypes** are built from basic requirements gathered from end-users. An initial prototype is presented to the users and evaluated. The prototype is modified based on the feedback until the client is satisfied. Is this correct? Are there better definitions of throwaway and evolutionary prototyping?"}
{"_id": "220233", "title": "Should experimental code be preserved?", "text": "Am am working on a small project for a USB device firmware. I started from a working example, and am gradually adding new functionality and testing things. However, the new functionality is not all intended to be used in the final project. I am writing it to learn how to do things on this concrete platform, and fixing unexpected problems in the process (for example, on of my test PCs had non-functional USB ports). What should I do with the old code? The code is version controlled, of course. I see two possibilities:   * Change old code into new one. An example here would be, when moving from having a Loopback over the UART (for testing purposes), and moving to more sensible use of the UART, change the DMA code to read not from the input of the UART, but from the CPU buffer, that is to be sent out.   * Use a bunch of `#if` statements to make the source code configurable, so that any version of the code can be compiled by only providing the correct `#define`. If the latter approach is recommended, where is the dividing line? I can't keep _every_ line of code that I write, hiding it behind an `#if`."}
{"_id": "181224", "title": "Constants in C#", "text": "Why does the compiler store constant values in the assembly metadata? Are they directly embedded to Intermediate Language code from the assembly metadata?"}
{"_id": "189410", "title": "Should I Use an ORM only when dealing with Data Model objects?", "text": "I am new to ORM, and we started developing a new system using NHibernate as the ORM. I think this question may refer to any ORM and any language/platform. The Team Leader has said we should use NHibernate only when retrieving our domain data model objects, ie, not to use any of the built in NHibernate selection or aggregations that will retrieve single primitives or a list of primitives. The reason behind it was that we need to make a distinction between classic ORM and other abilities, so that usual select and select max will use a \"classic\" DAL project. I think this is not so good, because we break the data access to two, and what's wrong using NHibernate abilities which gets checked compile time? **Are there any reasons to making this distinction?**"}
{"_id": "143390", "title": "Recommended reading for (Object Oriented) application design architecture?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best books on the theory and practice of software architecture? In life it doesnt matter if you do one thing for 15 years. You **will** end up waking one day and asking stuff that are equal to \"how do i walk?\" :) My specific question is that as a new entrant to C# and OOP i am stepping into many little \"details\" that need to be addressed. Written a lot of code in VB.NET / cobol / simple php e.t.c surely does not help much into the OOP world... So , even after reading entry level books for C# and watching some videos i recently found out about the \"factory model design\" for applications. I would appreciate if any of you guys recomment some reading on application design architecture for further reading..."}
{"_id": "189412", "title": "How to approach the creation of a \"Unit Outline\" generator?", "text": "I am the Studies Coordinator at a College and we currently have somewhere in the order of 100-200 unit outlines that are created at the beginning of each semester. Those outlines need to have information like:   1. Unit Name   2. Unit Code   3. Course Type   4. Assessment Item 1 Name   5. Assessment Item 1 Distribution date... And the list goes on and on. All up there are anywhere between 50-150 pieces of data that teachers enter into their outlines depending on the 10-20 different types of outline they might be creating. Currently we have staff entering data into one of many different Word documents with editable fields. This works okay, but every time the outlines need to have a change made, you can imagine the work involved. The outlines also look poor because different table rows move across different pages...it's just messy. We have tried using InfoPath files...maintaining those was a nightmare and the school won't go back to that. I am contemplating a solution where teachers enter the unformatted/raw data into some kind of front-end (I was thinking an Excel file) and then I write a program that sweeps through the data and generates outlines for me. I've been experimenting with simply using Mail Merge but this doesn't give me the flexibility to tailor the end result based on the data coming in (different numbers of Assessment Items for instance) I know how to work with quite a lot of languages and technologies and am willing to use this as a project into something I might be unfamiliar with but I was looking for advice on ways to approach this so that I can streamline the whole Unit Outline process. Any ideas would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "7157", "title": "How do you normally layout a class's regions?", "text": "I was wondering if there was a standard for laying out a class's regions. I currently use               Fields     Constructor     Properties     Public Methods     Private Methods      `Fields` being Private Properties and `Properties` being the public ones. I'll normally use subregions within that if needed, or will occasionally add other regions below (such as interface or baseClass members)."}
{"_id": "220254", "title": "Why is Web SQL database deprecated?", "text": "I am making a hybrid Android app. At first I decided to use localStorage, after spending 2 days, I realized that it is very strange and so dropped it. Then, I picked up indexedDB, after spending today's whole day and actually getting the output in Google Chrome, it is not running inside a WebView of the android app. And I never used Web SQL database at all because it was deprecated. Anyhow, it has come to my notice that PhoneGap still uses Web SQL and android's browsers support it. Why was Web SQL deprecated in the first place? And will it be a good idea for me to go with Web SQL now?"}
{"_id": "77427", "title": "Why aren't extension methods being used more extensively in .NET BCL?", "text": "I found the \"Extension method\" concept of C# just wonderful. It enables us to do things like:   * More flexible alternative to Abstract Classes.   * Provide missing Java-like functionalities to C# `enum`. And The coolest thing about it IMHO is that **adding a method doesn't break backward compatibility**. However, I found almost no extension methods in the .NET BCL. And it's very common that, I see a static method and extension methods come in mind. When the BCL was designed, extension methods were not there. But why are they not converted to extension methods now? Specially when it does break backward compatibility? Any reasons?"}
{"_id": "197395", "title": "Scrum: Short VS long sprint", "text": "We were trying to figure out the optimal sprint length for our project. After working on a 3-weeks basis we thought that cutting the sprint to 2-weeks would provide better velocity. The advantages were clear - shorter feedback loop, small stories (with user value) and so on. On the other hand, there are a lot of disadvantages such as ceremonies (planning, retrospective) and so on in which we don't produce and now happen more often. I was wondering how, for a new team, can we decide on optimal sprint length?"}
{"_id": "197396", "title": "Heap overflow vs stack overflow", "text": "So as a general rule to avoid a stack overflow, big objects should be allocated to the heap (correct me if I am wrong). But, since the heap and the stack expand towards each other, wouldn't this cause heap overflow or alternatively limit the space for the stack and higher the chances of stack overflow?"}
{"_id": "197390", "title": "The best approach to building a mobile service that's also available when the connection drops?", "text": "Hopefully this question will be a good suit for P.SE since it is a whiteboard- level 'how can this be done' conceptual question. I'm trying to build a product that needs to be available to someone on the move with a mobile device when their connection may be quite poor (due to travelling between cities where 3G coverage is stronger). For simplicity, let's say the application is an address book. The user must be able to add/remove/edit all contacts in the address regardless of connection state, then those changes iterated to a central server DB whenever the connection next becomes available (and any changes made on the server since the connection dropped also downloaded). I was originally building the application with PHP/Symfony working with static pages but this new 'mobile' requirement has made me re-think my front-end technology. I'm now looking at using EmberJS for my frontend (download all the necessary frontend templates with the initial request, then only update the dynamic parts seems like it would suit my application better than serving an entire static page (and resources) for every request). I've been implementing Ember-Data with the standard REST Adapter which is working great with my already-existent Symfony2 API, so I've greatly reduced the amount of data being sent/received and the responsive 'feel' of the app but still need to tackle my 'no-connection-available' scenario. Instinctively, I'm drawn to HTML5's LocalStorage functionality but can see synchronizing data between the localstorage and central DB server being a gigantic headache. Let's say I add \"Bob Smith\" to the address book from my mobile when the connection is up. The connection drops. I change the name to \"Bob Jones\" and then change the name to \"Fred Smith\" using a desktop with a stable connection. When the mobile re-connects, which update takes precedence? I saw this question regarding using multiple data adapters (REST and LocalStorage) with Ember and it looks like I'm in for a world of hurt. Should I just build a nice-responsive version of the app/service with Ember/REST Adapter, then roll native mobile apps for the on-the-move version? Will handling data persistence be easier to handle as a native app?"}
{"_id": "227867", "title": "How to split up ASP MVC Project using Code-First Entity Framework", "text": "For an academic exercise, we have been tasked with creating a small website. We have already gathered the requirements and fleshed out the business domain to see the classes we are supposed to support. It is to be on Microsoft stack, so I decided to use _ASP MVC_ with _code first Entity Framework_. I am now looking for the best way to split up a 6 man team in order to best tackle the project. **TLDR:** What are some effective ways of splitting up an ASP MVC project so that multiple developers can work on it concurrently? I have researched where projects have been split across the tiers, i.e. _database, business, views_ , and such, but I don't exactly know how to instruct them to go about designing a view for which there is no controller. Is splitting it up between the different business models used a decent strategy? I have read that this has led to an application that didn't mesh well, due to the different aesthetics."}
{"_id": "251540", "title": "When is a number a magic number?", "text": "Over the last couple of months I have been diving into coding standard IfSQ. As a part of this IfSQ standard, a rule is to not use `Magic Numbers`. While I don't have a problem with building this rule into checks as FxCop or StyleCop, I am confused as to what actually IS a Magic Number. According to Wikipedia there are 3 explanations of magic numbers:   1. A constant numerical or text value used to identify a file format or protocol;   2. Distinctive unique values that are unlikely to be mistaken for other meanings (e.g., Globally Unique Identifiers);   3. **Unique values with unexplained meaning or multiple occurrences which could (preferably) be replaced with named constants.** I am focussing on the third meaning. But this is also where I am stuck. Seeing as I am trying to build this in a FxCop rule; the check has to be automated. But what am I supposed flag as magic number? The IfSQ standard explains the following as magic numbers: `Numeric literals (other than 0 or 1) have been embedded directly into the source code. For example \"34\" or \"86400\".` But this doesn't sound good to me at all. This would mean I'd have to flag every single occurence of a number other than 0 and 1. Numbers like 24 (hours), 60 (minutes) and 100 (percentage) are, in their correct context, no magic numbers; in my eyes that is. Because this is will be an automated check, looking from things in a contextual way isn't really possible. Based on this I have the following questions:   1. How should I define a magic number?   2. Is it possible to define magic numbers without context?   3. Should I skip certain statements when checking for magic numbers?"}
{"_id": "208015", "title": "Why Java doesn't make use of encapsulation with some classes?", "text": "My question is related with `System.in` and `System.out` classes (there might be others like those in the Standard library). Why is that? Isn't that a bad practice in OOP? Shouldn't it be used like: `System.getIn()` and `System.getOut()`? I've always had this question and I hope I can find a good answer here."}
{"_id": "208012", "title": "Backlog item with preparation for future sprint Scrum", "text": "I'm currently at the beginning of a build. We are requiring a lot of back end functionality around Clients/Users/Groups/Roles. However, these aren't required for Sprint 1 which is acting as a MVP release. But I want to ensure we are preparing for this enhanced back-end in the future. This is easiest by defining an interface to the User Management system without actually building all of it yet. How would you organise this in a Scrum project environment? Obviously, in order to decide how the interface needs to look. We need to decide on it's functionality. But in doing so, we'll be getting very close to speccing the entire thing out. Which isn't required for several months! (This is a Team Foundation Scrum 3.0 workflow for those interested)"}
{"_id": "208011", "title": "MVVM ViewModel and Commands", "text": "I need a bit of help to understand the relationship between a viewmodel and a command, and the responsibility of the viewmodel. I'll try to give an example (using Caliburn Micro). I have a viewmodel class, a command class and a view with a Save button.               public class EditViewModel : Screen     {         public bool CanSave         {             get { return IsDirty; }         }              public void Save()         {             var command = new SaveCommand(this); // command gets reference to VM             command.Execute();         }     }          public class SaveCommand     {         private readonly EditViewModel _viewModel;              public SaveCommand(EditViewModel viewModel)         {             _viewModel = viewModel;         }              public void Execute()         {            var work = _viewModel.Work;            ..            _viewModel.IsDirty = false;         }     }      When the user click Save. Save() method is called and spins up a command that saves the work. Now my question is, should the command have a reference to the viewmodel? No) The viewmodel will have to pass the work to the command, which will have to pass the save result back to the viewmodel, which will update itself. Yes) The command needs a reference to the viewmodel and properties needs to be public set-able. _No_ seems like the cleanest way, but also requires extra work, when the work or result aren't a simple bool or similar. I guess the root it all is. What is the relationship between a viewmodel and it's command and the responsibility of the viewmodel ? Is there a strong 1:1 \"friend\" relationship between the view-model and it's command, where code has just been moved to another class. So there is nothing wrong with the command having direct access to the viewmodel. Another understanding, the viewmodel is a very simple class, almost only with properties and contains little logic. So the logic should be in the command. Or the viewmodel is pretty smart and should contain application-logic. Commands are really only needed when there are either too many in one viewmodel or they are a bit complicated otherwise the command code can stay in the viewmodel. I'm just rambling I guess, please help me out to understand the viewmodel and what it's responsibility is?"}
{"_id": "208010", "title": "bad practice to have actions in web api controllers", "text": "I was creating a new action for a `WebApi` controller and tried to create a url using the following:               @Url.RouteUrl(\"DefaultApi\", new { httproute = \"\", controller = \"ClientApi\"})      and noticed that the default route did not have an action attribute, it looks like this:               config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(         name: \"DefaultApi\",         routeTemplate: \"api/{controller}/{id}\",         defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional }     );      how come the default route doesn't have the action in the route configuration by default? is it bad practice to have it? that is to say is it bad practice to have so many actions in a web api controller that it requires to change the route."}
{"_id": "128413", "title": "I've unit tested my class, now how do I get started with an integration test?", "text": "I've written a class that manages recipients on a MailChimp list, called MailChimpRecipient. It uses the MCAPI class, which is an third-party API wrapper. http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/1.3/ http://apidocs.mailchimp.com/api/downloads/ I pass the MCAPI object into the constructor of the MailChimpRecipient object, so I have written unit tests using PHPUnit that test all of the logic in my own class (I am not testing the MCAPI class). I have 100% code coverage and all tests pass. This is done by mocking and stubbing the MCAPI object. My next step was to write an integration test, also using PHPUnit, where I would construct the MailChimpRecipient fixture using a real MCAPI object, set up to use a real MailChimp list. I have written what I think is an intergration test, which basically runs tests agains the public interface of the object, like:               public function testAddedRecipientCanBeFound()     {         $emailAddress = 'fred@fredsdomain.com';         $forename = 'Fred';         $surname = 'Smith';              // First, delete the email address if it is already on the list         $oldRecipient = $this->createRecipient();         if($oldRecipient->find($emailAddress))         {             $oldRecipient->delete();         }         unset($oldRecipient);              // Add the recipient using the test data         $newRecipient = $this->createRecipient();         $newRecipient->setForename($forename);         $newRecipient->setSurname($surname);         $newRecipient->setEmailAddress($emailAddress);         $newRecipient->add();         unset($newRecipient);              // Assert that the recipient can be found using the same email address         $this->assertTrue($this->_recipient->find($emailAddress));     }      The \"integration\" test doesn't test any of the internals of the class - it just makes sure that given a real MCAPI object, it behaves as advertised. Is this correct? Is this the best way to run an intergation test? After all, the internals have been tested with a unit test. Am I right in thinking that the integration test is there to test that it really works, according the way its behaviour is advertised? To take it a step further, the MailChimpRecipient class implements an interface, which will also be implemented by other classes. The idea is to use a factory to pass different types of mailing list recipient objects to my code, which all do the same thing, albeit using different mailing list providers. Since my integration tests test the that interface, how about using it for all of the classes that implement the interface? Then, in the future, if I design a new class to be used interchangably, I can run the same integration test before inserting it into a project. Does this sound reasonable? The unit tests test the internals of an object, intergration tests make sure that it behaves as advertised?"}
{"_id": "184762", "title": "Using the STL to solve interview questions?", "text": "If I'm undergoing a technical interview that's based on my C++ skills, would most companies allow or expect me to use STL containers to solve problems? I think it's clear that if a question is pertaining specifically to a linked- list and my knowledge of linked-lists that I probably won't be able to or shouldn't use the STL list containers. On the other hand, I could get a question where using std::vector might be really useful and the question itself doesn't concern std::vector directly. In this latter case I would think using the vector STL container would be acceptable. Of course, the answer to this question is at least somewhat company dependent. I'm curious as to how bigger tech companies approach this situation."}
{"_id": "130383", "title": "thick client migration to web based application", "text": "This query is related to application design the technology that I should consider during migration. The Scenario: I have a C#.net Winform application which communicates with a device. One of the main feature of this application is monitoring cyclic data(rate 200ms) sent from the device to the application. The request to start the cyclic data is sent only once in the beginning and then the application starts receiving data from the device until it sends a stop request. Now this same application needs to be deployed over the web in a intranet. The application is composed of a business logic layer and a communication layer which communicates with the device through UDP ports. I am trying to look at a solution which will allow me to have a single instance of the application on the server so that the device thinks that it is connected as usual and then from the business logic layer I can manage the clients. I want to reuse the code of the business layer and the communication layer as much as possible. Please let me know if webserives/WCF/ etc what i should consider to design the migration. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "253338", "title": "How do I / what is the best way to interact with a desktop application from a browser web application?", "text": "Situation: We have a desktop application. We also have a web application. We need the two to interact with each other. So when a button is pushed in the web application, the desktop application needs to start running a process (pulling data from the cloud using an API we've created). With two local applications, this can be done with ports/listening, editing a flag somewhere locally, and the other application reading this flag, etc. Can this be done from web -> desktop? Ideally the web application would have direct communication with the desktop application and notify it to begin pulling data down from the cloud using our API. But if this is not possible, having the desktop app run a process that loops and checks for a flag in a file or something would be a good start. After minimal research, I've found some stuff like HTML5 File Api which interacts with \"Sandbox\" directory on the local machine. I've also read that it is impossible to access any thing on the local machine for security reasons. Also, I dont want the user to be prompted to request a download file everytime, we need things to happen behind the scenes. (Even if the user has to initally set up some lower security / permissions just for this situation) Any input is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "5780", "title": "Why are there so few female programmers?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Career Prospects: Women at Management positions in Software Why are there so few female programmers? My wife asked me and I didn't know."}
{"_id": "227869", "title": "I know what I want to do, but I have a hard time coding it?", "text": "After doing some interviews, I've realized that I usually know what I want to do to solve a problem, but I often get my logic complicated (and introduce a lot of bugs) when I'm actually coding. For example, when I tried to code up insertion into a sorted singly linked list, this is what I knew I had to do:   1. I had to check for the case where the list is currently null   2. I had to check if the element I want to insert is less than the current head   3. To insert between nodes, we had to link one node to the new node, and the new node's next to the one that is supposed to be after. I had trouble inserting between nodes because I was actually supposed to check the NEXT node's data and not the node which I had my pointer pointing to (so I could set current's next to the new node). I also struggled on this problem (note that this was coded on white board) because I was pressured under time and I think I made it more complicated in my mind that I should have. When I went back to this problem after the interview, it turns out the solution isn't complicated at all (as it shouldn't be). However, I just tend to complicate things and confuse myself. Would anyone have any suggestions on how I could improve this vulnerability of mine?"}
{"_id": "214815", "title": "Building a database class in PHP", "text": "I wonder if I should write a database class for my application, and if so, how to accomplish it? Over there on SO, a guy mentioned it should be written as an abstract class. However, I can't understand why this would be a benefit. Do I understand correctly, that if I would write an abstract class, every other class that methods will need a database connection, could simply extend this abstract class and have its own database object? If so, how is this different from a \"normal\" class where I could instantiate an database object? Another method would be to completely forget about my own class and to instantiate a mysqli object on demand. What do you recommend?"}
{"_id": "220353", "title": "Emulation of MMU accessing the contents of the registers", "text": "I'm having a play around with emulating a simple old CPU. I've set the structure up, so far anyway, as follows: The device is the main and creates an instance of the CPU. The CPU then creates instances of the registers, clocks and MMU. I'm in the position where the MMU needs to access the contents of the registers, how to do this? I figure I could probably bodge something together by passing the entire register object to the MMU when it's called but that seems unwieldy. The other thing I thought to do would be to initialise the MMU with the register object in the constructor. If I'm not mistaken that will still reference the same object? Meaning any changes I do to the registers in the MMU will affect the whole system?"}
{"_id": "165529", "title": "Why is iOS \"jailbreaking\" CPU specific?", "text": "Recently, iOS 6 was \"jailbroken\" but only on the Apple A4 CPU. Why is the \"jailbreaking\" process specific to a CPU? From Wikipedia: > ... \"iOS jailbreaking is the process of removing the limitations imposed by > Apple on devices running the iOS operating system through the use of > hardware/software exploits \u2013 such devices include the iPhone, iPod touch, > iPad, and second generation Apple TV. Jailbreaking allows iOS users to gain > root access to the operating system\"\"\" ..."}
{"_id": "213260", "title": "Making Code Changes While PHP Script Is Running", "text": "I have a PHP program running right now that is processing database rows of over 6 million. Considering the speed at which number of records have been processed so far, it looks like the whole process might take few days to complete (due to hardware limitations). I was thinking if I could make changes in the program to remove unnecessary logging and other things that may be consuming time. Can I do this with the current program still running so that further processing would speed up, or will this cause the PHP script to break ?"}
{"_id": "165524", "title": "Linking application build number to svn revision", "text": "I am looking for a strategy to version an application with the following requirements. My requirements are given an exe with version number (major.minor.build- number) 1) I want to map the version to a svn source revision that made the exe 2) With the source and exe I should be able to attach and debug in vs2010 with no issue. 3) Once I check-out the source code for the exe I should be able to build the exe again with the version number without having to make any changes to a file."}
{"_id": "101133", "title": "Company wants thoughts about their site during interview", "text": "I have an initial phone interview coming up with a company for a Senior Web Developer position and in the email they asked to prepare by signing up on their site because they'd like to hear my thoughts about it and suggestions for improvement. I've heard stories before of companies that do this. They interview 10 people and then if everyone gives advice, then they've got a lot of free consultation. I believe this is the first time I've ever been asked to do something like this so I wanted to hear other people's thoughts of whether it is free consulting or if I'm just being paranoid."}
{"_id": "165520", "title": "How should I get my code ready for OpenSourcing it and putting it on GitHub?", "text": "In a few weeks, my project is going to be finished and I want to start getting my code ready for other people to use it. I am going to be posting everything to GitHub so people can tweak it and hopefully make it better. I guess what I'm asking is, what would be the best way to make sure my code is sufficiently documented and worded right for other people to use? I know you should always comment everything and I'm going to be putting in the @params feature for every method, but are there any other tips in general?"}
{"_id": "38595", "title": "What are the most important concepts to understand for \"fluency in developer English\"?", "text": "In April, I'm going to be giving a talk called **English 2.0 - Understanding the Language of Developers\" to a group of English teachers. The purpose is in two hours to give them a quick background in key concepts so that they can better understand developer blogs and podcasts and are able to ask better questions when talking to developers. What do you think are the most important concepts to understand, concepts that developers take for granted but the general public is not familiar with? Here are a few ideas:   * version control   * abstractions   * pub/sub   * push vs. pull   * debugging   * modularity   * three-tier architecture   * class/object   * \"spaghetti code\" vs. OOP   * exception throwing   * crowd sourcing   * refactoring   * the cloud   * DRY - don't repeat yourself   * client/server   * unit testing   * designer/developer"}
{"_id": "38590", "title": "From non programmer to \"professional\" freelance programmer", "text": "I am 15 year old student looking to buy his first car and thought I could earn some extra money by learning to program since I like messing around with the computer all the time. I have been reading a lot of the posts here and have come up with a list of books I think would be beneficial to me, however, I do not know which information is most important to know first or if I have everything I will need. Here is what I was thinking: 1: Learn a programming language in depth. I am about 1/2 way done with the Step-by-Step book 2\\. Learn about object oriented design and design patterns 3\\. Learn about software testing 4\\. Go practice these skills on websites like projecteuler, topcoder, and try and do simple projects on freelance websites like rent-a-coder. Is there anything else you think I may need or should look into? Thank you. Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Step by Step Professional C# 4.0 and .NET 4 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) C# in Depth CLR via C# Applying UML AND Patterns Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software Test Driven Development: By Example Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests"}
{"_id": "98235", "title": "Participating in Webinars and Seminars about Developing and Programming", "text": "Does participating in Webinars and Seminars about software development and programming improve a developer's programming level? Please note that I'm asking this question about developers, not managers. Because in many webinars and seminars, there are highly general views about future technologies which can be useful for manager to decide ahead about future tools their team should use."}
{"_id": "98239", "title": "Avoid losing time making budget", "text": "I often receive some potential client who wants me to make his web site. Some of them end up as real clients and give the project. Some others (the most) have no idea about prices and times. For those, if they are close to me, I can hear what they want, tell them it is going to be about X money and Y time and it can go higher or lower. If they had that idea in mind then I use the time I need to make the right budget. Now, for the cases that they are not so close to me, I have to lose the time to make the right budget from the beginning. If the budget is accepted I would get paid for that time because I included it, but if it is not accepted, I'd have lost lot of time without being paid. How can I avoid losing that time?"}
{"_id": "196457", "title": "What kind of algorithm could be used to produce an ordering which maximizes # of satisfied 'less than' constraints?", "text": "Let's say I have a set of items {e1, e2, ..., en}, and I also have a set of constraints {c1, c2, ..., cm}, with ci := ej appears before ek, for some j and k. I want to produce an ordering of my items which maximizes the number of satisfied constraints, with the possibility that some of the constraints are contradictory. I'm not sure how to search for this, but I hope there is some known efficient algorithm for this. It might also be helpful if, given weights for the constraints, I could instead maximize the total weight of the satisfied constraints, rather than just the number."}
{"_id": "246549", "title": "Why And is needed when there is AndAlso", "text": "I have referred What is the difference between And and AndAlso in VB.net? to understand the difference between `And` and `AndAlso`. I am from C# background - and C# has `AndAlso` only - no `And`.. And I don't see any practical use/advnatage of `And`. Is there any practical use of `And` in VB.Net? **Reference**   1. Or versus OrElse   2. What is the difference between And and AndAlso in VB.net?"}
{"_id": "186946", "title": "Unable to convince on data hiding", "text": "I am working on a Selenium + java project where all Web Element in a class are declared as -               public class CheckoutPaymentConfirmpage extends WebPage{          public final Button btnPrintorder = new Button(\"//input[@id='but_Print']\");     public final TextField txtpassword = new TextField(\"password\", \"//input[@id='pass']\");              // Some more elements here         // Some page object methods here     }      Now when ever test need to access these elements they are directly invoked over the object of `CheckoutPaymentConfirmpage` class What ever little java (or OOPS) I know, has taught me that members should be as hidden as possible. Hence I would have had `btnPrintorder` and `txtpassword` declared private and would access them using getters or would have created methods in page object class to be used by tests. But when I convey this to others they don't see much value in it as state of instance variable (i.e. `btnPrintorder` etc) would not be changed from one object to another for page object class (i.e. `CheckoutPaymentConfirmpage` etc) Hence in this situation, is it ok to leave instance variable as public?"}
{"_id": "186947", "title": "How to manage single software product to multiple customers?", "text": "We have developed one product for payroll processing. We have 10+ customers who are using this software product. Our existing and new customers are giving us customization changes w.r.t. their needs, and now we are facing the problem of product management. Please give some guidelines to us. How to manage single software product to multiple customers? Software developement details :   Front End Tools : Visual Studio 2008 (ASP.net web application)   Source Code Mangement : Visual Source Safe (VSS)   Back End : Sql Server 2005   Team Size: 12"}
{"_id": "4442", "title": "Are asp.net web parts good enough for exclusive development?", "text": "I have had the question posed at my work that, since we are planning to eventually move to Sharepoint 2010 for most of our Development, and since Sharepoint 2010 supports asp.net web parts, should we start moving all of our new development to be exclusively asp.net web parts? It was also asked how prism factors into all of this. (not sure what that is) We are now a mostly client/server based location but are moving to an SOA framework (slowly though). Is this a good idea? Is it better to have some apps in WPF and Winforms hitting the services or should we just go to web parts solely? What are we going to miss out on if we make this move?"}
{"_id": "186942", "title": "How to organize integration tests and test data for different environments when using Maven Failsafe", "text": "I have started to separate my unit tests from my integration tests by using Maven Surefire and Failsafe. Now I'm wondering what good ways there are to deal with separate environments. Take for example these two integration tests scenarios:   * Given a customer id, can I get a list of orders belonging to that customer.   * Given a customer id and a product id, can I create an order for that customer. I want to be able to run these tests against both TEST and PRODUCTION environments, but they will need different data and in some cases slightly different code as well. In some cases there are also tests I might not want to run in PRODUCTION, but only in TEST. For example my test customer won't have the same id in both TEST and PRODUCTION. And when I need to create the product for the order I might need to instantiate a different product (with different properties, etc). What are some good ways of tackling this without too much of a mess or duplicated code?"}
{"_id": "138580", "title": "Strategy for maintaining assembly references in TFS", "text": "I have a 3 branch setup: Dev, QA, Prod. There is a references folder where we store common 3rd party and internal assemblies. Change mgmnt has been challenging. Sometimes Devs forget to go into the References folder and check in the new version. We tried referencing Projects, which results in a reference to the bin folder. This works out fine as long as you keep the build order correct and always contain all the projects in the same solution file. This isn't always a good idea or feasible, so we went to a references folder. Continuous Integration may help alleviate some of these issues, but we don't have a CI server yet. Is there a good process for for managing the References folder that doesn't require so much manuel dev intervention? I thought about copying the files out on post-build. That doesn't solve the issue of checking the new version in so other devs can access it. We have TFS. This is for internal corporate development. Anything that requires open-source of our product is not possible. **UPDATE**   I own FinalBuilder. I am new to using it and do not know if it can benefit this process."}
{"_id": "138585", "title": "Rails - How to use modal form to add object in one model, then reflect that change on main page?", "text": "I'm working on a Rails app and I've come across a situation where I'm unsure of the cleanest way to proceed. I posted a question on SO with code samples and such - it has received no answers, and the more I think about the problem, the more I think I might be approaching this the wrong way. (See the SO question at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9521319/how-to-reference-form-when- rendering-partial-from-js-erb-file) So, in more of a generic architecture type question: Right now I have a form where a user can add a new recipe. The form also allows the user to select ingredients (it uses a collection_select which contains Ingredient.all). The catch is - I'd like the user to be able to add a new ingredient on the fly, without leaving the recipe form. Using a hidden div and some jQuery/AJAX, I have a link the user can click to popup a modal form containing ingredients/new.html.erb which is a simple form. When that form is submitted, I call ingredients/create.js.erb to validate the ingredient was saved and hide the modal div. Now I am back to my recipe form, but my collection_select hasn't updated. It seems I have a few choices here:   1. try and re-render the collection_select portion of the form so it grabs a new list of ingredients. This was the method I was attempting when I wrote the SO question. The problem I run into is the partial I use for the collection_select needs the parent form passed in, and when I try and render from the JS file I don't know how to pass it the form object.   2. Reload the recipe form. This works (the collection_select now contains the new ingredient), but the user loses any progress they made on the recipe form. I would need a way to persist the form data - I thought about manually passing the values back and forth, but that is sloppy and there has to be a better way...   3. Try and manually insert the tags using jQuery - this would be simple, but because I'm allowing for multiple ingredients to be added, I can't be certain what ID to target. Now, I can't be the only person to have this issue - so is there an easier way I'm missing? I like option 2 above, but I don't know if there's an easy way to grab the entire params hash as if I had submitted the main recipes form. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction so I can find an answer to this... If this doesn't make any sense at all, let me know - I can post code samples if you want, but most of the pertinent code is up on the SO question. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "213268", "title": "How to bypass Oauth2 authentication when the client and resource owner is the same entity?", "text": "We are currently working on using an API provided by Mercado Libre which is a maket place for selling various goods. Their APIs use OAuth 2.0 for authentication. The problem is that OAuth 2.0 as implemented by Mercado deals with the case that the Client application and the Resource owner are different entities. So if the client application wants to view all orders made by a seller for example it will require the user to authenticate himself first on Mercado before allowing the client application to get his data. This is a convenient flow if the client application and resource owner are different entities and the resource owner is using a browser to access the client app. However, in my case there will be now UI. The client app my are building will collect orders and other info from Mercado automatically with no user intervention as we own the data ourselves. **TL;DR** So in short I need a way to bypass the user authentication when using OAuth 2.0 without a UI."}
{"_id": "130032", "title": "How is Java used in the financial sector?", "text": "I am an student with good knowledge of Java, and I'd like to get into the financial sector. How is Java used there? How can a Java developer expect to break into the financial sector and find success? What types of systems should I be looking into?"}
{"_id": "139187", "title": "Web development: no local server workflow", "text": "I'm considering the reengineering of my web development ecosystem. We use Git very successfully to deploy new changes to our Production, Staging, and Development servers. Traditionally, I've always had a copy of Apache on my local machine - in the interest of keeping my local machine as lean as possible, I'm considering running Apache in a non-local VM and syncing changes somehow. My initial thought was to run something like `rsync` and `cron` (Mac development system) to monitor the directory for file changes and then sync them up. I have been tempted to use a separate branch in Git and writing a hook to have the Apache server pull in the changes, but versioning all of my changes may be unproductive, particularly on very experimental additions. My question is, is there something I'm not considering in this workflow? This particular project requires ColdFusion, so am I going to realize significant benefits over not having Apache/CFIDE locally?"}
{"_id": "139181", "title": "Is switching from a CVCS to a DVCS a considerable bandwidth save?", "text": "So, I'm in a big geographically-distributed company, we use perforce and I'm starting to make the case for a DVCS with a whitepaper I was requested to write. I was thinking that one of the arguments I could use is the bandwidth saved using a DVCS, and technically if there were binaries to download (there are, but they're not sync'ed every day) and enough developers downloading them one could see a substantial difference. Unfortunately that's an edge case and its all that I can think of (other than individual developers being able to work faster when diffing, committing locally, and all those other DVCS perks). So, **would there be an actual noticeable bandwidth save?, in what other cases?**. Free cookie to anyone with actual empirical evidence (confirming or refuting). **Edit:** It is just one of the arguments I'm trying to support and it's not at all the main one, I got at least 10 others... this is one of the \"side- benefits\" but I want to find out how real it is. Plus, I want to win over the IT guys =)"}
{"_id": "125630", "title": "Ext JS code review check list", "text": "Can any one share a code review check list for Ext JS in common and specially for Ext JS 3.4 ?"}
{"_id": "135608", "title": "Are High Level Design and Low Level Design documents needed to follow Agile development process?", "text": "Our team is developing a project using an Agile development process. All of our requirements are converted into product backlog items and task are broken down based on that. One of my team member suggested to maintain the High Level Document (HLD) and Low Level Document (LLD) for the requirement. Do we need to have these documents to follow the Agile process?"}
{"_id": "240435", "title": "Why does my C++ (OpenMP) matrix operations code start incurring more cache misses running in parallel compared to Scala?", "text": "I have written code using C++ (OpenMP for parallelizing loops) which does lots of matrix operations. A single instance of the code runs very fast and completes in 0.2 seconds. For the same processing, code written in Scala (using Actors) takes around 3 seconds. The problem that I am facing is that when I run multiple instances of the C++ code in parallel, the running time increases very rapidly. The Scala code does not exhibit such behavior. Running parallel instances of the Scala code increases the time linearly. Using the Zoom profiler, I found that my C++ code starts incurring cache misses. A single instance of the code uses around 2 MB of memory. And the L3 cache in my machine is 3 MB. So it makes sense that multiple instances running in parallel will lead to cache misses. I don't understand why the running time of the Scala code does not get affected when multiple instances are running in parallel. All the matrices are dense matrices in both the C++ and Scala code."}
{"_id": "41283", "title": "Is it true that a stricter coding style is always better?", "text": "I am currently studying computer science and was wondering how strict coding styles are in industry, how much it differs between industries and if it is true that a stricter coding style is always better?"}
{"_id": "84080", "title": "Advice on making sure e-commerce site is secure using PHP and MySQL", "text": "Like the title says, I would like some advice from knowledgable web developers on figuring out security issues for my e-commerce site. I am designing the database as well as the code that communicates with the database to make changes, etc. I have a few questions, but in general a good checklist on what to do to make the security pretty tight, seeing as I will be dealing with credit cards. I will not be storing credit card numbers. Links to good places would be helpful. My main concern is keeping the database secure. I am pretty new to web development, and I am just concerned about thst. I do have a question about the design of a database used for online transactions. Is there a better way to make the schema than to just put all the user info into one table: ex.               customer(customerid, firstname, lastname, username, password,              address, city, country, zipcode)      Would it be better to store user credentials in another table and link them with the customerid? Sorry if I am not getting too specific, but I am new to web development and mainly have experience in offline programming. Again my main concern is security issues. If anyone has a great article on security, that would do just fine as well. Thanks for your time!"}
{"_id": "87268", "title": "Programmers will be designers in the future?", "text": "Is everything going to tend to powerful interface in the nearest future(I'm talking about desktop applications)? Console or simple GUI applications will not be popular? And does it mean that all programmers will have to become designers?"}
{"_id": "203798", "title": "DB table with column for each datatype", "text": "I need to design a DB for storing key-value data. List of Key names isn't fixed and should expand at later point. I don't want to create a table with a column for each key, because I'll need to add columns frequently and it might grow too big, and I understood that the Entity-Attribute-Value design isn't efficient. I thought of the following type of table design, and I'm asking if it makes any sense and does anyone can come up with any drawbacks related to efficiency, table size or any other issue - Each column in the table is of a different data type; irrelevant columns for a key are NULL:               ID |DataType |KeyName |ValInt |ValSmallInt|ValBool |ValStr  |ValText  |ValDate     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------     1  |1 (int)  |Width   |100    |NULL       |NULL    | NULL   | NULL    | NULL     2  |1 (int)  |Height  |200    |NULL       |NULL    | NULL   | NULL    | NULL     3  |2 (bool) |IsActive|NULL   |NULL       |false   | NULL   | NULL    | NULL     4  |3 (text) |URL     |NULL   |NULL       |NULL    | NULL   | w.com   | NULL     5  |1 (int)  |Size    |4      |NULL       |NULL    | NULL   | NULL    | NULL     6  |4 (date) |Created |NULL   |NULL       |NULL    | NULL   | NULL    | 2/2/2012      Number of columns will be as the number of all datatypes (about 30?). The DataType column is a flag of type int which is used for the caller - it tells him what column to take the value from. Each row is actually a property of some object in other table. A set of rows makes a set of properties for that object and usually a SELECT will get the whole set."}
{"_id": "203790", "title": "Is it good practice on server/client systems to automatically install updates?", "text": "I'm working on an automated update system for a legacy server/client software package written in Delphi. The way I'm designing it is so the client's (customer's) server machine runs a service which...   1. periodically checks online for new versions   2. automatically downloads files   3. hosts latest version information for all client machines   4. hosts files for client machines to update Once this service has downloaded update files, it raises a flag in the database alerting all client machines that updates are available. BUT, the thing is, the server must be installed first. So, an administrator would see this message and approve the update. However, the administrator must schedule a time for it to install. At that scheduled time, the server will update its self. If everything was successful, it will raise another flag in the database for all client machines to also update. If anything happened, it will restore the backup which was made before the install. My question is... Is this good practice? Of course automated updates is a very good thing... **if done right**. This software is used in real-time in retail and wholesale environments, so if anything goes wrong during this scheduled installation, people could come to work the next morning to a broken system. The point is, no matter how automated I make this, an administrator still needs to ensure everything went smooth. Further issues...   1. client machines must know not only the database server info, but also their update server info.   2. server machine might be at another location which might require firewall configuration   3. database changes may give unforeseen results, which aren't known until something bad happens   4. client machines may be shut down and need to update once it starts   5. a list full of possible scenarios which may go wrong So in this situation, would you feel comfortable making a 100% automated updating system for a sensitive software? Because some of our clients have up to 50 client computers which need to be updated to match their server's database."}
{"_id": "218258", "title": "Get entities ids from two similar collections using one method", "text": "I've got two lists:               List<Integer, ZooEntity> zoos;     List<Integer, List<ZooEntity>> groupOfZoos;      These operations will return collections of values:               Collection<ZooEntity> cz = zoos.values();     Collection<List<ZooEntity>> czList = groupOfZoos.values();      What I want to achieve is to get list of all zoo ids.               List<Integer> zooIds = cz ids + czList ids;      Of course I can create two methods to do what I want:               public List<Integer> getIdsFromFlatList(Collection<ZooEntity> list) {         List<Integer> ids = new ArrayList<Integer>();         for (ZooEntity z : list) {             ids.add(z.getId());         }         return ids;     }          public List<Integer> getIdsFromNestedList(Collection<List<ZooEntity>> list) {         List<Integer> ids = new ArrayList<Integer>();         for (List<ZooEntity> zList : list) {             for (ZooEntity z : zList) {                 ids.add(z.getId());             }         }         return ids;     }      As you can see those two methods are very similar and here is my question: Is it good to create one method (for example using generics) which will get ids from those two lists (`zoos` and `groupOfZoos`). If yes how it should look like? If no what is the best solution? BTW. This is only the example. I've got very similar problem at job and I want to do it in preety way (I can't change enities, I can change only `getIds...()` methods)."}
{"_id": "133600", "title": "Should I store False as Null in a boolean database field?", "text": "Let's say you have an application that has a boolean field in its `User` table called `Inactive`. Is there anything inherently wrong with just storing false as null? If so can you please explain what the down side should be? I have discussed this with someone a few months ago and we both agreed it shouldn't matter as long as you do it consistently throughout the app/database. Recently, someone I know was emphatic that \"true\" `true` or `false` should be used, but they didn't really give an explanation as to why."}
{"_id": "133605", "title": "Syntactic sugar regarding function parameters", "text": "Are there any modern programming languages where you don't have to specify types for each parameter in a function's definition? Ex:               procedure P(a, b, c, d: integer)      vs               void P(int a, int b, int c, int d)      Is there a good reason why the latter form is so popular? Why don't more languages allow you to specify the type of all your parameters at once, like the first form?"}
{"_id": "185418", "title": "Error checking in actor-based paradigm", "text": "I have an existing Scala application that I am trying to refactor in order to use Akka. One of the problems I have is how to manage error-checking in actor- based applications. Usually error-checking is done through one of two mechanisms:   * either one returns a value indicating an error condition, such as `Option[A]` or `Failure[A]`, or   * by the use of exceptions. Neither of these style seems particulary useful here. On the one hand, actor messages are usually \"fire and forget\", hence there are no return values. [One can have a return value using Futures, but it certainly not customary to ask for futures on every message.] On the other hand, processing of the message usually happens on another thread, so that one cannot catch an exception arising from the processing of a message. One could simulate the first mechanism by sending back error or confirmation messages, such as               class FooActor extends Actor {       def receive = {         case Foo => ...           if (errorCondition) sender ! ErrorMessage       }     }      But if one has to do this for every actor, it becomes a lot of boilerplate and it seems a poor man's simulation of stack unwinding. > What is a good strategy to recover from errors in actor-based applications?"}
{"_id": "185411", "title": "What's the difference in content between Chris Okasaki's 1996 thesis and 1999 book, Purely Functional Data Structures?", "text": "I want to read Purely Functional Data Structures. I've easily found the thesis (which is freely available as a PDF), but see that there's a book available also. So I'd like to know what the differences are, if any, between these two publications."}
{"_id": "218255", "title": "Shuffling algorithm with no \"self-mapping\"?", "text": "To randomly shuffle an array, with no bias towards any particular permutation, there is the Knuth Fischer-Yeats algorithm. In Python:               #!/usr/bin/env python     import sys     from random import randrange          def KFYShuffle(items):         i = len(items) - 1         while i > 0:             j = randrange(i+1)  # 0 <= j <= i             items[j], items[i] = items[i], items[j]             i = i - 1         return items          print KFYShuffle(range(int(sys.argv[1])))      There is also Sattolo's algorithm, which produces random cycles. In Python:               #!/usr/bin/env python     import sys     from random import randrange          def SattoloShuffle(items):         i = len(items)         while i > 1:             i = i - 1             j = randrange(i)  # 0 <= j <= i-1             items[j], items[i] = items[i], items[j]         return items          print SattoloShuffle(range(int(sys.argv[1])))      I'm currently writing a simulation with the following specifications for a shuffling algorithm:   1. The algorithm is unbiased. If a true random number generator was used, no permutation would be more likely than any other.   2. No number ends up at its original index. The input to the shuffle will always be A[i] = i for i from 0 to N-1   3. Permutations are produced that are not cycles, but still meet specification 2. The cycles produced by Sattolo's algorithm meet specification 2, but not specification 1 or 3. I've been working at creating an algorithm that meets these specifications, what I came up with was equivalent to Sattolo's algorithm. Does anyone have an algorithm for this problem?"}
{"_id": "218257", "title": "it is a good approach to implement dependency injection in a desktop app?", "text": "Well, the thing is that I am just about to create a Desktop App (with .NET windows forms) And now I just wonder if it would be really a wise choise to use any IoC (StructureMap,Ninject,Spring .Net), I have used them before for Asp.Net web applications but what makes me doubt now is the fact that working with windows forms my business entities will persist when I navigate through tabs and unlike than web forms or mvc apps where it would be necesary to inject my business entity for every new request that is performed, I mean this because of the Asp.Net page life cycle where is performed the initialization and controls instantiation. Maybe I am misunderstanding the point of using an IoC, so please tell me what do you think would be a better choise?"}
{"_id": "205565", "title": "Can I WTFPL/CC0 parts of a GPL code?", "text": "I know I should not expect a lawyer's notice here, but programmers advices would suit me well enough. I want to publish a program which is derivated from a GPL-licensed program. I understand from the GPL legal notice that the whole work is to be licensed under GPL as well. Now, I'd rather publish my work under a more permissive license \u2014 namely, I don't care about attribution. It seems to me that CC0 or WTFPL licenses, for instance, don't need the work to be considered as a whole, right ? So as they are compatible with the GPL, in principle I could just say something like (in addition to the GPL notice) the following : > This work is GPL as a derivative work of foobar. In addition, modifications > with regards to the original foobar are WTFPL/CC0. Would this be valid licensing ?"}
{"_id": "176078", "title": "What is the correct way to handle debug output in Java?", "text": "As my current Java projects grow bigger and bigger, I feel a likewise growing need to insert debug output in several points of my code. To enable or disable this feature appropriately, depending on the opening or closure of the test sessions, I usually put a `private static final boolean DEBUG = false` at the beginning of the classes my tests are inspecting, and trivially use it this way (for example):               public MyClass {       private static final boolean DEBUG = false;            ... some code ...            public void myMethod(String s) {         if (DEBUG) {           System.out.println(s);         }       }     }      and the like. But that doesn't bliss me out, because of course it works but there could be too many classes in which to set DEBUG to true, if you are not staring at just a couple of them. Conversely, I (like - I think - many others) wouldn't love to put the whole application in debug mode, as the amount of text being output could be overwhelming. So, is there a correct way to architecturally handle such situation or the most correct way is to use the DEBUG class member?"}
{"_id": "203243", "title": "Better solution then simple factory method when concrete implementations have different attributes", "text": "abstract class Animal {       function eat() {..}       function sleep() {..}       function isSmart()     }          class Dog extends Animal {       public $blnCanBark;       function isSmart() {         return $this->blnCanBark;       }     }          class Cat extends Animal {       public $blnCanJumpHigh;       function isSmart() {         return $this->blnCanJumpHigh;       }     }          .. and so on up to 10-20 animals.      Now I created a factory using simple factory method and try to create instances like this:               class AnimalFactory {       public static function create($strName) {            switch($strName) {               case 'Dog':                 return new Dog();               case 'Cat':                 return new Cat();               default:                 break;            }       }     }      The problem is I can't set the specific attributes like blnCanBark, blnCanJumpHigh in an efficient way. I can send all of them as extra params to create but this will not scale to more then a few classes. Also I can't break the inheritance because a lot of the basic functionality is the same. Is there a better pattern to solve this?"}
{"_id": "87193", "title": "Web-programming vs Hardcore-programming", "text": "Why questions about HTML/CSS/JS/etc(Web-programming et al) collect more views and answers than those about, for instance, automata theory? Does this mean that the huge part of programmers are just \"intermediate\" programmers? (This is not sarcasm, I really interested!)"}
{"_id": "33478", "title": "\"Build your own website\" - Developing a CMS with Vague Requirements on a Tight Deadline", "text": "I'm a Java developer in charge of making a product which allows clients to \"build their own site\". I've spent a lot of time looking into Liferay, as I don't have any experience in building CMSs, and want to either use it, or get ideas of how to build a decent system. The time line is short, requirements are vague, yada yada Is Liferay a good technology to work with when showing the client (who may be very low on computer expertise) a user interface to build a site? The thing is, I want the power and flexibility to avoid the learning curve in building a CMS like product, but I don't want to waste time learning a new technology only to find its over-kill, or can't do the simple - but uncommon and unimplemented - things that we are asked to add as features Ideally I'd like to provide multiple web interfaces to the core API to build the sites - one that is very powerful, and another that is watered down and easy to use."}
{"_id": "203240", "title": "Are C or C++ The Only Viable Languages for a GC", "text": "### Background I have just finished writing a compiler for a functional language compiling to the JVM as a learning project. However, since I'm just doing this to learn, I thought it might be interesting to write a native backend and a RTS for it. As I've been planning out what this new backend will look like, the one point I'm stumbling on is the garbage collector. I've implemented the compiler in Haskell. But I have no desire to write the GC in Haskell since, while it may be possible, it'd suck. ### Question I've looked at several FOSS garbage collectors prior to posting and most of them were implemented in good old ANSI C. Is this still the most accepted choice for writing a GC nowadays? I've seen that this site tends to frown upon questions with multiple answers so I hope this will make it more specific: If some startup was writing a professional grade gc today, are the only viable choice for them C or C++? It's my first question here so please comment and let me know if this question is ill-suited for for programmers."}
{"_id": "203245", "title": "Code Reuse and Abstraction in FP vs OOP", "text": "I've been told that code reuse and abstraction in OOP is far more difficult to do than it is in FP, and that all the claims that have been made about Object Orientedness (for lack of a better term) being great at reusing code have been flat out lies So I was wondering if anyone here could tell me why that is, and perhaps show me some code to back up these claims, I'm not saying I don't believe you Functional programmers, it's just that I've been \"indoctrinated\" to think Object Orientedly, and thus can't (yet) think Functionally enough to see it myself To quote Jimmy Hoffa (from an answer to one of my previous questions): > The cake is a lie, code reuse in OO is far more difficult than in FP. For > all that OO has claimed code reuse over the years, I have seen it follow > through a minimum of times. (feel free to just say I must be doing it wrong, > I'm comfortable with how well I write OO code having had to design and > maintain OO systems for years, I know the quality of my own results) That quote is the basis of my question, I want to see if there's anything to the claim or not"}
{"_id": "243170", "title": "Software development based on a reference implementation", "text": "Lets say I have library \"A2\" as a dependency in a project. Library \"A2\" is derived from library \"A1\"(A2 is a fork of A1 with some modifications to the original source code) where someone has done few changes to the library \"A1\" 's source code. Lets say there is a new version of \"A1\" I want to use the new version but no modification to its sourcecode at all. I am planning to identify what are the changes done to the original library when deriving library \"A2\" out of it and decorate the latest version of the library with those changes. Is it a good approach to solve this? if not can someone suggest the best approach to solve this kind of problems?"}
{"_id": "39647", "title": "Evolution of the Win32 API", "text": "Has the Windows 32 API changed much over time? Does the Charles Petzold book \"Programming Windows, 5th Edition\" from 1998 still contain relevant information, or is most of it obsolete/outdated? What are some prominent examples of recent additions to the Windows 32 API (if there are any)?"}
{"_id": "71211", "title": "Do you use i-->0 for backward loops?", "text": "Some people write               for (int i=N; i-->0; ) doSomething(i);      instead of               for (int i=N-1; i>=0; --i) doSomething(i);      for backward loops. The `--> \"operator\"`1 looks very confusing at the first glance, but it's trivial:   `i-->0` simply parses as `(i--)>0`, and once you get it, you see it immediately. The main disadvantage is the strange look. The advantage is that you'll get it always right (unlike the more verbose version offering the possibility to forget something, which really happened to me a couple of times). _What do you think about using the`--> \"operator\"`?_ * * * 1First time I saw the funny term in a comment to this question today."}
{"_id": "216304", "title": "Where do we put \"asking the world\" code when we separate computation from side effects?", "text": "According to Command-Query Separation principle, as well as Thinking in Data and DDD with Clojure presentations one should separate side effects (modifying the world) from computations and decisions, so that it would be easier to understand and test both parts. This leaves an unanswered question: where relatively to the boundary should we put \"asking the world\"? On the one hand, requesting data from external systems (like database, extental services' APIs etc) is not referentially transparent and thus should not sit together with pure computational and decision making code. On the other hand, it's problematic, or maybe impossible to tease them apart from computational part and pass it as an argument as because we may not know in advance which data we may need to request."}
{"_id": "33028", "title": "Where do I publish a program?", "text": "I have finished designing a little application for Pandora and I am not sure how I can get it out and share it with everyone. What should I do to help advertise it to the public and let other people use it? As of right now it is free, and I hope to keep it that way, so I don't want to spend any money to give it out. I had actually designed this application just for personal use, but hey, why should I be the only one to use it?"}
{"_id": "175838", "title": "About insertion sort and especially why it's said that copy is much faster than swap?", "text": "From Lafore's \"Data Structures and Algorithms in Java\": (about insertion sort (which uses copy + shift instead of swap (used in bubble and selection sort))) > However, a copy isn\u2019t as time-consuming as a swap, so for random data this > algo- rithm runs twice as fast as the bubble sort and faster than the > selectionsort. Also author doesn't mention how time consuming shift is. From my POV copy is the simplest pointer assignment operation. While swap is 3x pointer assignment operations. Which doesn't take much time. Also shift of N elemtns is Nx pointer assignment operations. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Please explain, why what author says is true? I don't understand."}
{"_id": "185604", "title": "Undergrad internship career path", "text": "I am a CS student currently searching internship positions that are important to my future career. I am passionate about web design and development and it is really what I think my niche is in the programming world. I recently got offers between two companies - the first one, in an offshore company as a web developer where I am expected to study C# and AJAX (along with the basics: HTML, CSS, JS/JQuery, PHP, MySQL) and the second one specializes in Java and Agile software dev't. I am better in PHP than Java. It is obvious that I would pick the first one but I'm still on the fence because the second one is known to give solid training and foundation to both interns and employees while the first will expose me further to what I want to do. Which should I pick - **solid software development training and application** or an **real life application of a web developer's job** for my internship? **[UPDATE]** As of 25 May 2012 To everyone, next week will be the last of my internship. I went with the Java/Agile company and that decision changed my career path and life in general a lot. My fear of Java is now gone, instead it made me love the language better and everything during the internship training just solidified my passion to be a web developer. Thank you all!"}
{"_id": "123335", "title": "Does EF mean you might never have to use SQL or design database tables again?", "text": "Does Entity Framework mean you might never have to use SQL or design database tables again? Is this what \"persistence ignorance\" means? I am new to EF and ORMs in general, and I would like to understand how much of it is hype and how much is reality."}
{"_id": "198570", "title": "How can I mirror an SVN trunk repository into a regular network folder?", "text": "Me and a small team of engineers are considering using SVN to store our electrical schematics and parts libraries; currently we just have a network folder where we put all of our files. Our company also has a separate SVN server that we have access to. I was wondering if there was some way that we could use the SVN repository to store our files and schematics, but then somehow have the trunk SVN repository be automatically mirrored into a non-SVN network folder like we currently have. The reason I am asking for this is because sometimes non-technical people need to access our schematic data, and we don't have enough resources to teach everyone how to use SVN. This way we could have everything under revision control, as well as allowing other people to continue accessing the data in the same way that they are used to."}
{"_id": "84554", "title": "How do you define a project for a web developer?", "text": "I am primarily a web designer, and a very rookie web developer. Say I have a comprehensive web app I want developed through a freelancer on Odesk.com What is the best way to effectively communicate the entire project, goals and requirements? Wireframes, spec sheets? Any examples/templates on this would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "132956", "title": "Does it make sense to avoid a framework when building a large webapp with PHP?", "text": "Being a PHP web application developer for several years now, I've had my share of MVCs and frameworks. At first I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread; everything seemed to be very easy to implement. Now however, it seems that the more complex the application gets, the more hassle the framework introduces, so I have to develop workarounds to overcome them. Such workarounds are usually pretty daunting and complex since I have to delve down into the framework core code and make changes so that it behaves the way I want. For example, in one of my projects where I use Slim(C)+Idiorm(M)+Twig(V) (which I believe is very flexible), I have to create a custom function just to display dynamic data in parent templates; without a framework I could have simply executed mysql_query() in the included file. Okay, frameworks are cool if I'm creating a simple company profile website; I can just whip some code in one night and they're usually ready by the morning, and the amount of good coding practice and design patterns I've learned from them is very valuable. But really, for a complex web application like an all-in-one web based school management system, frameworks usually get in the way of my business process like in the example above. So my question is: is it okay to just go back to basics, and use standard PHP code and libaries for doing my next project where there might be a gazillion frameworks and libraries, provided I can sufficiently use good coding practices and follow sensible design patterns like MVC? My development team is pretty small: only 2 programmers and 1 designer. The other programmer agrees with my thoughts above."}
{"_id": "185603", "title": "How can I avoid using my own name in the identifiers, packages, or namespaces of open sources projects I create?", "text": "I do a lot of development in my own time. These projects I work on are all just for fun and learning (so far). I commonly do Java development with Maven but I have also been known to dabble in .NET and Python. All of the projects I work on use open source licenses, although most of them are not on any public code repositories. Java/Maven development requires me to use a unique `groupId` (e.g. \"com.mydomain\") and a unique `package` (directory) structure, usually containing the `groupId` while .NET development encourages unique `namespaces` in which I use similar conventions to the Java `package` concept. To ensure uniqueness, I usually just use one of my domain names with the parts reversed (e.g. \"ca.jessewebb\"); I believe this is a very common practice. I am in the initial stages of creating a new, open source, Java/Maven project (let's call it \"newproj\") and I would like to put it on GitHub. My username on GitHub is \"jessewebb\" so this will give it a URL like: `https://github.com/jessewebb/newproj`. I don't want to bother registering the \"newproj.com\" domain name so I decided to use \"ca.jessewebb\" and \"ca.jessewebb.newproj\" as the `groupId` and `package`, respectively. It occurred to me that the presence of my personal identity in the code and as part of the project's home (in the GitHub URL) will likely cause a potential contributor to think twice about getting involved with my project. This is a problem, I don't want it to be _my_ project. I would prefer if I could, instead, convey the message that I do not own the project. Now, in all honesty, it really isn't that big of a deal because I doubt my projects will garner much community involvement but I also see this as even **more** of a reason to avoid any possibility of deterring would-be contributors. For another example, I created a Google Code project a few years ago (let's call it \"oldproj\"). When I created the project, I knew I was going to host it on Google Code so I used the `groupId` and package name of \"com.googlecode.oldproj\", which is the reverse of the default domain name Google Code provides every new project. This turned out to be a not-so-great idea; a year or so later, I moved the code to a different repo and I had to rename these identifiers (well I didn't _have_ to but...). At the time, I didn't own any domain names and I ended up buying the domain name \"oldproj.com\" and I used it. I liked this because it gave the project its own identity and I wasn't stamping my name on the code everywhere. I could have just as easily registered the \"jessewebb.ca\" domain name and used \"ca.jessewebb.oldproj\" as the package name but I didn't because I had the same concerns back then too. So my question is... How can I avoid using my own (domain) names when creating open source projects while still maintaining uniqueness of packages/namespaces? As projects gain more momentum, it makes sense to register the domain names but it seems silly and a waste of money to do this earlier on. I realize that I don't actually have to **own** the domain name to use it in the code but that feels wrong and can lead to a squatter snatching it from under you in the meantime. What do other people do about this dilemma? Are there examples of popular (widely used, large community, etc.) open source projects that contain the original developer's identity as part of its own identifier(s)?"}
{"_id": "30048", "title": "Learning frameworks without learning languages", "text": "I've been reading up on GUI frameworks including WPF, GTK and Cocoa (UIKit). I don't really do anything related to Windows (I'm a Mac and Linux guy) or .NET, but I'd like to be able to throw together GUIs for various operating systems. We are in the enviable position now of having high level scripting languages that work with all of the major GUI toolkits. If you are doing Linux GUI programming, you could use GTK in C, but why not just use PyGTK (or PyQt). Similarly, for Java, one can use JRuby. For Mac, there's MacRuby. And on .NET, there's IronRuby. This is all fine and good, and if you are building a serious project, there are tradeoffs that you might encounter when deciding whether to, say, build a WPF app in C# or in IronRuby, or whether you are going to use PyGTK or not. The subjective question I have is: what about learning those frameworks? Are there strong reasons why one should or should not learn something like WPF or Cocoa in a language one is familiar with rather than having to learn a new language as well? I'm not saying you should never learn the language. If you are building Windows applications and you don't know C#, that might be a bit of a problem. But do you think it is okay to learn the framework first? This is both a general question and a specific question. I've used some Cocoa classes from Ruby and Python using things like PyObjC and there always seems to be an impedance mismatch because of the way Objective C libraries get built. Experiences and strong opinions welcome!"}
{"_id": "237948", "title": "How to determine what throws an exception", "text": "Whenever I encounter crashes, the exact type of the exception usually already gives enough info to easily find the culprit. **FileNotFoundException** will hardly occur while using sockets. Now recently I encounterd a **SystemNotSupportedException** and had no idea where it could come from, still don't. Also I cannot reproduce it, so I am designed to find it by detective work, rather than just running the debugger and crashing that thing. I checked through MSDN's article on this exception, hoping to maybe find something like \"this type of exception is usually thrown in connection with file operations / integer-math / riding dinosaurs to Taco Bell / you-get-it\", to no avail as MSDN only associates the other way around which is commonly more useful indeed. So here's my question:   Is there a lookup-table or something that allows me to determine what operations could cause a specific exception?"}
{"_id": "83029", "title": "Difference between a Quality Engineer and a Tester", "text": "In a software firm there are three kinds of jobs   1. Software Developer   2. Software Quality Engineer   3. Software Tester The role of a software developer is quite clear but what's the difference between the jobs done by a Software Quality Engineer and a Software Tester? It's very strange for me why there is so much of a difference in the salary levels of a Software Quality Engineer and a Software Tester."}
{"_id": "202111", "title": "How to store / not to store passwords", "text": "I am building an web site which will allow users to aggregate the information stored in their online profiles (\"data feeds\") in one place. I am wondering - what is the accepted (from a secureness point of view) way to store user name / password information in a my database? Normally I would derive a salted-hash value from a password and would store this, but that obviously would not work in this case, as \"data feeds\" websites would need an actual password. Storing the credentials it in a clear text is not an option, as it would be a huge security risk. Not storing passwords in a database, asking users to type them in at the beginning of each session and then keeping them in a in-session memory does not seem like a viable option either, as it would be too much trouble for users to enter the same passwords many times again and again. So far it seems that the only option is to encrypt passwords somehow, but I don't know what are the best design patters for such option. Or perhaps there is way to deal with that problem, I haven't even considered ... What would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "202113", "title": "What's the computational complexity of the Groovy unique() method?", "text": "**Question 1** What's the computational complexity of the Groovy `unique()` method? **Question 2** How could I have figured it out by myself? The `unique()` method is defined in the class `DefaultGroovyMethods`. The source code can be found here: org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.DefaultGroovyMethods. Can you point me to the piece of code which illustrates the answer to question 1?"}
{"_id": "219613", "title": "Refactoring from Python to Ruby with a BSD v3 license?", "text": "There is a project that is written in python which works great and is under the BSDv3 license. I wanted to use it as a base template for a ruby project instead of starting from scratch. I'd be refactoring (converting) the code from python to ruby, as if the author wrote a ruby gem along with his python library. My question is what proper credit should be given to the python lib author?   Just mention that the gem is based off the python lib or more extensive?"}
{"_id": "14745", "title": "Are Java applets worth learning?", "text": "I'm on the way of learning Java myself. I find most of texts giving emphasis to Java applets. I got confused about the importance. Is it something widely used? Do I need to spend more time on it?"}
{"_id": "226596", "title": "Checking equality of a request parameter", "text": "I have a codes table that stores name value pairs and a group name. So for this example let me demonstrate with two rows, each row would represent one value in the same drop down. Group Name = 'Drop_Down_1' Name = 'Value 1' Value = 'This is my value' Group Name = 'Drop_Down_1' Name = 'Value 2' Value = 'This is my value 2' This value would be apart of a drop down on a webpage. When selected and submitted the backend code would get the value 'This is my value', if that value in the drop down was selected. Now depending on the drop down selection I want to do something. So now i need to compare the string in the request command to something. What I do NOT want to do is something like this:                   if(requestParam.equals('This is my value') {             do something         }         else if(requestParam.equals('This is my value 2') {             do something else         }      Now I can query the database and get the appropriate codes back and check against those for equality. But How would i know what action to perform?"}
{"_id": "47939", "title": "What would it take to get developers to pay for something that is already freely available as open source?", "text": "For example, I know that open-source versions of IL readers/writers exist such as Cecil, and Microsoft's (closed source) CCI. What would it take to get developers to pay for something that is already freely available? I have always wanted to start my own ISV by writing my own tools and selling them in the open market, but it's hard to gauge the demand, given that free alternatives already exist. Does anyone else have any successful experiences selling a commercial version of an open-source product?"}
{"_id": "138877", "title": "How would you represent an object that can be of multiple types, when storing it as a document in MongoDB?", "text": "Somewhat related to this question, say that I have an object category which, depending on which type of object I have, has different restrictions on what it contains. (if you can reword the previous sentence to make more sense I'd appreciate it) For example               var SomeSchema = new Schema({       _id: ObjectID,       [... large number of common fields ...]       type: //Restricted somehow to members of a fixed array       data: //depending on type, this might be restricted - sometimes an integer, sometimes array, etc...     });      What's the idiosyncratic method for defining this type of schema? Is it appropriate to define a single schema, and handle the types inside of it's members, or am I better off with separate schema for each type?"}
{"_id": "238755", "title": "How to simulate an ATM terminal in a POS", "text": "Recently I started same projects to improve my programming skills, so I tried to develop a point of sale software. I started to bay the required hardware (ticket printer, Barcode Scanner\u2026.) to make my personal lab, but I\u2019m unable to find how to implement the payment process using an ATM terminal. Is there any possibility to simulate the payment process whiteout having the equipment?"}
{"_id": "238754", "title": "On naming conventions: would you recommend short names or longer, more descriptive names?", "text": "I'm consistently being asked by a colleague to shorten my identifiers (class names, mostly). We use CamelCase and rarely if ever use 4 words in a name, but I often get requests to shorten from 3 to 2 or even from 2 to 1. I favor the most descriptive name and am able to find one of acceptable length, 95% of the time that is 3 words or less. **Would you try to go shorter?** Recently it occurred to me that he may not have auto-completion, but would not ask him this because I wouldn't like to offend him. He's a vi/vim guy which made me thinking...."}
{"_id": "238753", "title": "Should event listeners be held in weak references?", "text": "Usually event listeners shouldn't outlive object that registered them. Does it mean that event listeners should be held by weak references by default (stored in weak collections by the object listeners are registered on)? Are there valid cases when listener should outlive its creator? Or maybe situation like that is a mistake and it shouldn't be allowed?"}
{"_id": "238752", "title": "Dealing with technical debt and nearing release", "text": "Say you have a project that is a tangled mess. No code structure and breaking one area breaks the entire thing. Fixing one area breaks another area. The closest you can fix things is writing the code that's almost like redoing the entire thing. But then, **the release is in the next week**. Here's some facts that actually worsen the situation:   * There's very minimal testing. Makes breaking hard to find.   * The code has no structure. Imagine one app has everything _in one file_.   * No documentation. Very hard to replicate server requests when there's no documentation about the parameters to send, and what to expect. What should one do to address this situation? The best thing to do is extend the project release, but I'm not the one who calls the shots. I did comment on the issue though."}
{"_id": "207892", "title": "How to track features in a big project ?", "text": "I am currently working on a project of my own for a little over 2 months (not much time on my hands). The purpose of this project is to be able to remotely update all of my Linux systems from one graphical application. The problem I am having is I am building two applications: the client and the server. As the size of both the programs increases, I am finding it harder to manage what needs to be done. While coding I am trying to think of things that need to be done and with the addition of another program it's starting to make my head spin. **Is there any technique by which I can track the features: yet to be implemented and currently under development features in a big project?**"}
{"_id": "207893", "title": "Add javascript to all pages (for caching), or only to the pages that require the scripts (for a smaller page size)?", "text": "I'm using bits of javascript on my website for an image gallery, smooth scrolling, etc. These scripts are not used on every page (not every page has an image gallery for example). However, the scripts aren't very big and most users will have to download them eventually (the image gallery is very central to the website). Now what would be the pros and cons of these two (mutually exclusive) ways of including the scripts:   * add them to every page (so that they'll all be cached after one page view)   * add them only on the pages on which they are used (so they're cached only when they're needed, but some pages will take a little longer)? I'm not asking for opinions, I'd just like to know if there are any pros and cons I've overlooked."}
{"_id": "208846", "title": "Why one would commit changes to version control every three minutes?", "text": "The frequency of commits depend on two factors:   * the developer himself: some developers tend to commit often, others may spend hours without committing,   * the current work: the same developer may have to commit very frequently when effectuating risky refactoring operations or similar tasks, and quite rarely when working on other parts of the codebase. From what I observed, beginners tend to commit one or two times per day on average. Developers with a few years experience are probably committing once per hour on average. Committing every fifteen minutes is probably the best thing to do, but I've rarely seen this commit frequency. **Question:** I've spotted in Google Closure Library logs that it has commits nearly every three minutes from the same developer. What are the benefits of such high frequency? Are there consequences on the way the code is written? Is it related to the fact that at Google, codebase is compiled and tested on servers and so one should commit the code to see if it compiles and passes all the unit and integration tests?"}
{"_id": "230109", "title": "Migrating old Asp.net 1.1 project to mvc 3 or 4", "text": "we have to migrate a very old project that are having more than 500 web forms and 400 tables and it is hugely depends on stored procedures, the current specification is:   1. Asp.Net : .NET version 1.1   2. language: VB   3. uses 2 Tier architecture (UI and business(includes DataAccess also))   4. xml is used to pass the data between UI and Biz layer   5. For data access sql queries and stored procedures are used that fetch data as dataset.   6. Finance related domain.   7. a lot of javascript for validation Planned specification:   1. Asp.net 4.0 with c#   2. MVC 3 or 4 Now my questions are   1. Is it possible to implement mvc only for UI layer, if possible then how to use current business layer? Also we don't have class and properties because it uses xml to pass data, also we have to use same legacy database.   2. We don't want to use Entity framework, because of performance, legacy database(not properly designed), uses more than 700 stored procedure.   3. how to create model i.e Domain level or project level because my solution contains 14 projects?   4. Is it possible to implement Repository pattern in separate layer?"}
{"_id": "5564", "title": "What is the best toolset for developing an enterprise application for SMBs?", "text": "Need a Free, Fast(development and runtime) and Reliable(transactions and locking) tool set for creating an enterprise application for SMBs. I'm thinking of an application framework + UI framework + DB which will help me in developing the software faster. As it is known, business softwares need lot of similar UIs to be created. My idea is ...to create a new form with N number of fields and connecting it to the database for basic CRUD operations within 30min to 1hr. I got the taste of Intersystems Cache technology stack with an app framework on top of it. To be frank...it is amazing... I'm looking out for something similar to this in opensource. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "207899", "title": "Better design for a generic doubly linked list around which I plan to make different wrappers?", "text": "I am currently writing a C code for a doubly linked list(dll) around which I want to write wrapers for implementing stack, queues etc. instead of writing separate codes for all of them. I'll be using `void *` for making it possible for the doubly linked list to work with any data type. The idea is basically the same as this implementation of stack using pointers in my github. I am thinking of 2 different designs   * Placing the size of elements alongwith the maintenance data. That would make coding easier but any instance of dll would be able to use only a particular data type.   * Placing the size of element in the nodes. That would make it more general but I have concerns whether this approach would be easier to use? This is the confusion that I wanted to clear before implementing any particular one. If there is any confusion regarding what I am trying to implement then please ask and I'll clarify."}
{"_id": "72978", "title": "Realistic time to learn new framework/API", "text": "I have my ideas, but I always feel that I'm overly pessimistic. So I'd like to hear more opinions. How much time do you need to start coding using a new framework so that your code is production ready and not become a support nightmare later on for: Say large scale frameworks:               ATL/MFC/STL/WTL/.NET/COM/BOOST      And small scale frameworks/APIs:               MSXML/Silverlight/ADO/LIBXML/WIN32/OpenGL/DirectX/CUDA      What are your estimates for both types, [from;to] for both senior/junior developers. Any ideas on what can decrease the learning time say: `Book>API doc`, or `Tutorials>Book`"}
{"_id": "229213", "title": "What kind of a test is a \"consistency check\"?", "text": "Some or all of the tests I write and run are checks for consistency e.g. assert that if I create a new user account, that the account that was created actually has the same name as the name that was submitted in the registration. And now for checking that I implemented a pagination correctly, I suppose I can check that for any given large resultset, getting the \"next page\", sometimes repeated times and not only once, will eventually lead to the same last page as getting the last page directly (which is done another way than stepping through one page at a time, going directly to the last page in done by using the reversed order and getting the first page from the reversed order. In our projects we try to follow test-driven development but sometimes I think it is not exact whether a test is a unit test or an integration test when in fact both the integration tests and the unit tests are mostly or only \"constistency checks\". I didn't see any other type of test than for consistency (both the unit tests and the integration tests do assertions), but it seems that mocking is used more in integration tests than in unit tests and than a unit test is smaller and for a single component or method while an integration test is \"larger\", but that is still not an exact difference. So what kind of a test is a consistency check? Is it a unit test or an integration test?"}
{"_id": "76295", "title": "What do I need to know before approaching a web developer/ developing team?", "text": "I have little experience in website programming. However, I have an idea for a website that I would like to make real. It would have many of the same features that a site such as TripAdvisor uses, but obviously on a smaller scale, and its main feature being a user rating system. Whilst it would be ideal for me to learn how to do it myself, I feel it would be unrealistic given the complexity and time consuming nature of it. Therefore, my question is what will I need to know and understand before I approach a web developing team?, i.e., what are the questions that they will ask me when I sit down to talk with them about my idea? On a slightly separate note, what are the legal restrictions on creating a website that has already been done? There are a small number (2 or 3) of websites that I would be essentially doing the same as, but in my opinion, I would be providing the users with far more useful features in a more user friendly manner."}
{"_id": "234613", "title": "Design Pattern for Data Validation", "text": "What would be the best design pattern for this problem: I have an Object A. Object A can either be registered or deleted from the database depending on the user request. Data validation is performed before registration or deletion of the object. There are a set of rules to be checked before the object can be registered and another set of rules for deletion. Some of these rules are common for both operations. So far, I think the Chain of Responsibility design pattern fits the most but I'm having trouble implementing it."}
{"_id": "72971", "title": "My Programming Challenges", "text": "I love programming and I can't imagine living without it. The problem is when I am developing my own unique algorithms I find it difficult to properly co- ordinate my thinking and I spend more than the reasonable time trying to visualize the solution, although I usually find the solution. I think spending that much time on sometimes \"not that hard\" algorithm show's that my thinking strategy might be wrong. Have you experienced similar issues? How do you solve it? Or am I wrong? Please advise me."}
{"_id": "234615", "title": "Compatibility between Class Diagram and Sequence Diagram", "text": "Do the `message` being passed between `objects` in `Sequence Diagram` match with the `methods` in `Class Diagram`?"}
{"_id": "228165", "title": "How do crackers determine number of iterations of a Hashing algorithm?", "text": "Does a cracker need to know the number of iterations a hashing algorithm uses to compute a hash? If they don't know it, how do they figure it out? How much longer does it take to figure it out, than if they didn't know? I can only guess that they try a number of the most common passwords, and try it with different iterations, and see what amount of iterations returns the most correct passwords. Would this even work though?"}
{"_id": "228161", "title": "Problem combining SlidingMenu and ExpandableListView", "text": "As said i'm trying to combine SlidingMenu (https://github.com/jfeinstein10/SlidingMenu) with an ExpandableListView, but i'm having an issue that i don't know how to fix, so i'm hoping some one here can. I'm currently setting the layout for the menu by 'setMenu(resId)' function, which sets the correct layout for the slide menu, but the problem is that it only sets the XML file layout, which simply includes a and nothing else (So all i get is a white screen).   All other data and settings for the ExpandableListView are set in my SlideMainMenu.java file, but this is never called when setting the XML layout for the slide menu. So how can i make sure my .java file is called when my XML file is inflated?   It's most likely very easy, but at the moment i just can't seem to figure it out. I should mention that i'm fairly new to Android/Java, and i'm learning as i go.. setMenu function:               menu.setMenu(R.layout.expand_listview_main);      Start of SlideMainMenu.java               public class SlideMainMenu extends Activity {              ExpandableListAdapter listAdapter;         ExpandableListView expandableListView;         List<String> listDataHeader;         HashMap<String, List<String>> listDataChild;              @Override         protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {             super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);             setContentView(R.layout.slide_left_main_menu);                  Toast.makeText(getParent(), \"SlideMenuInit success\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); // TEST                  expandableListView = (ExpandableListView) findViewById(R.id.ExpandableListView_Main);             prepareListData();             listAdapter = new ExpandableListAdapter(this, listDataHeader, listDataChild);             expandableListView.setAdapter(listAdapter);"}
{"_id": "98406", "title": "Why does the assignment operator assign to the left-hand side?", "text": "I began teaching a friend programming just recently (we're using Python), and when we began discussing variable creation and the assignment operator, she asked why the value on the right is assigned to the name on the left, and not vice-versa. I had not thought about it too much before, because it seemed natural to me, but she said that left-to-right seemed more natural to her, since that's how most of us read natural languages. I thought about it, and concluded that it makes code much easier to read, since the names that are assigned to (which the programmer will need to reuse) are easily visible, aligned on the left.               aligned = 2     on = 'foo' + 'bar' + 'foobar'     the = 5.0 / 2     left = 2 + 5      As opposed to:               2 = aligned      'foo' + 'bar' + 'foobar' = on     5.0 / 2 = the      2 + 5 = right           # What were the names again...?      Now I wonder if there are other reasons as well for this standard. Is there a history behind it? Or is there some technical reason why this is a good option (I don't know much about compilers)? And are there any programming languages that assign to the right side?"}
{"_id": "174879", "title": "How do professional application developers use version control systems, like GIT and Subversion?", "text": "I am a beginner developer and I have been wondering from the start, how do professional use tools like GIT and Subversion (I don't have a very good understanding about these tools), to fulfill their project's needs. If they do use it, how would I set up something like that? My applications are not so large and I am not working in a team yet, would they be of huge help to me? There are questions on this site about how to use the tools, but I need beginner support."}
{"_id": "228168", "title": "Why creativity is consider a bad practice by architects?", "text": "If you do something creative (for example I did a new approach to logging) is consider a bad practice. the good practice in Java is to put static field logger in every class. My approach creates static 5 static field in a single class (less code) and just calls methods that have access to it. I don't care about my logging framework, its just an example. I feel that any best-practice that is forced for no good performance or clean code reasons is bad-practice. I understand for example that all data that can change should be in xml or properties files, because later if you need to manually change WAR is easier to change .xml than .class. You could regenerate WAR, but than it would make putting constans in xml and properties look pointless."}
{"_id": "89249", "title": "How much does a web developer need to know about Linux?", "text": "I was just wondering if a typical PHP developers needs to be very familiar with Linux. I am studying Linux right now and I believe some of linux knowledge is not required for a PHP developer job (not sure if I am right about that). For example, vi or shell programming. In sum: what should I learn about Linux if I only want to land a PHP developer job."}
{"_id": "201497", "title": "When did the first \"REST\"-model and friendly URL web technology come to be?", "text": "Everyone knows that the \"current\" way to do things is to have user-readable URLs. Like: http://example.com/blog/edit/1234 Rather than: http://example.com/blog.php?action=edit&id=1234 When exactly did people start making web technologies handling this though? I remember in the dark ages of the early 2000s, I don't remember ever seeing a friendly URL. In fact, I think Stackoverflow (in 2008/9) may have been the first time I noticed them. When exactly did this become so popular, and what were the first servers/frameworks built with friendly URLs in mind? I'm interested as well in when rewriting to friendly URLs became common, and when serving friendly URLs natively became common"}
{"_id": "166645", "title": "How to handle this unfortunately non hypothetical situation with end-users?", "text": "I work in a medium sized company but with a very small IT force. Last year (2011), I wrote an application that is very popular with a large group of end-users. We hit a deadline at the end of last year and some functionality (I will call funcA from now on) was not added into the application that was wanted at the very end. So, this application has been running in live/production since the end of 2011, I might add without issue. Yesterday, a whole group of end-users started complaining that funcA that was never in the application is no longer working. Our priority at this company is that if an application is broken it must be fixed first prior to prioritized projects. I have compared code and queries and there is no difference since 2011, which is proofA. I then was able to get one of the end-users to admit that it never worked proofB, but since then that end-user has went back and said that it was working previously......I believe the horde of end-users has assimilated her. I have also reviewed my notes for this project which has requirements and daily updates regarding the project which specifically states, \"funcA not achieved due to time constraints\", proofC. I have spoken with many of them and I can see where they could be confused as they are very far from a programming background, but I also know they are intelligent enough to act in a group in order to bypass project prioritization orders in order to get functionality that they want to make their job easier. The worst part is is that now group think is setting in and my boss and the head of IT is actually starting to believe them, even though there is no code or query changes. As far as reviewing the state of the logic it is very cut and dry to the point of if 1 = 1, funcA will not work. So, this is the end of the description of my scenario, but I am trying not to get severally dinged on my performance metrics due to this which would essentially have me moved to fixing a production problem that doesn't exist that will probably take over 1 month. I am looking for direct answers to this question. This question is not for rants, polling, or discussions as this is not the format for StackExchange. Please don't downvote me too terribly it is pretty common on this specific site of stack, I am looking for honest answers to this situation and I couldn't find a forum more appropriate."}
{"_id": "155168", "title": "Research topics for starting and optimizing a high-traffic website", "text": "I bury a good deal of my ideas for fear that I don't know enough about scaling web applications and high-traffic websites. That said, I'd like to know of any general topics to research in order to ensure that your web app doesn't break / slow down when you start getting to Twitter-level traffic. I'm looking for research topics with, preferably, additional resources. For example: **Make sure you optimize SQL queries (seeHigh Performance MySQL Optimization)**"}
{"_id": "245153", "title": "invoking methods within a conditional expression", "text": "In an oft-cited (if dated) reference for C# coding standards (pdf; from Lance Hunt), the statement is made, > 33\\. Avoid invoking methods within a conditional expression. I've not seen this recommendation elsewhere, including in the .NET guidelines (here or here). Unlike the other very reasonable guidelines in Hunt's document, this suggestion seems unintuitive to me. Can someone provide a justification for it?"}
{"_id": "245152", "title": "Easily moving both direction of time during a rebase", "text": "After I have written some commits, I very often `git rebase -i` over them, in order to test them, if necessary split them, take parts form one commit and `squash` them to another, more appropriate one. But there is a problem. Say, today I am hunting for a bug, that 5 recent commits are causing. I rebase interactively on the last known to work (bear with me, not using `git bisect` for a reason). The next commit introduces the bug, but is a big mess some unrelated code. So I `git reset HEAD~` and then form several internally logical commits. Here is the problem. I do not know which is the first problematic commit. So I select `edit` for all commits when rebasing. After I am done with the problematic commit, I have a couple of commits in the past, that I would like to test further. Currently, I do `git rebase --continue` many times, until the rebase is complete, and then rebase interactively again. This has a few problems:   * It is tedious. At the very least, I would like a command that rebases to the top of the branch, skipping all `edit` declared commits.   * Neverending merges. I need to merge often, and would prefer to first do the meaningful job of splitting the original commit, and only after that `git commit --ammend` the latter commits in order to be compatible with the edited hystory. * * * **TL;DR;** How can I achieve this bi-directional traversal on a branch, while at the same time, creating, removing and amending commits? Or is this workflow conceptually wrong?"}
{"_id": "214729", "title": "Is ZeroMQ a good choice to make a Python app and a C# managed assembly work together?", "text": "I have a task that involves talking to a .NET-based API (namely AutoCAD) to retrieve data, send commands, and react to events. I want to separate the API operations and the proper program logic (largely already implemented in Python) by using natural tools for both: a C# DLL for the former and a Python app for the latter. To connect these two pieces, I began exchanging JSON in ZeroMQ messages. I'm at early development stages but having recently discovered that ZeroMQ does not guarantee message delivery/order, I have reservations about whether this is a feasible way to go. Right now my app is a very basic REQ/REP pair and I plan to handle reacting to events and executing different commands by adding some sort of 'recipient-function' field to my message format. The reason that I want to use ZMQ is that I might be able to scale the software into a larger, multi-user, distributed solution sometime. I am a lay programmer so I would ask for your advice about this architecture. Should I just go ahead with it and plan to deal with message reliability/ordering when problems appear? Should I consider developing some kind of a REST wrapper around ZMQ?"}
{"_id": "213118", "title": "Can I use open source libraries in my project which is released into the public domain?", "text": "I am writing a Windows Phone application which I intend to release into the public domain (the source code and releated resources, that is). My application does, however, use a few third party open source libraries (statically linking to them). Does releasing my code into the public domain make any difference regarding the licenses of the open source libraries I use or would I have to make sure my (un)license is compatible with the open source licenses, the same way I would have to if I released the source code using an open source license (or kept the code closed source, for that matter)? I releasing my code into the public domain doesn't make any difference, how do I know if an open source license is usable with code released into the public domain?"}
{"_id": "245156", "title": "Is it safe to convert Windows file paths to Unix file paths with a simple replace?", "text": "So for example say I had it so that all of my files will be transferred from a windows machine to a unix machine as such: `C:\\test\\myFile.txt` to `{somewhere}/test/myFile.txt` (drive letter is irrelevant at this point). Currently, our utility library that we wrote ourselves provides a method that does a simple replace of all back slashes with forward slashes:               public String normalizePath(String path) {        return path.replaceAll(\"\\\\\", \"/\");     }      Slashes are reserved and cannot be part of a file name, so the directory structure should be preserved. However, I'm not sure if there are other complications between windows and unix paths that I may need to worry about (eg: non-ascii names, etc)"}
{"_id": "127543", "title": "Is there any point in distributing separate .NET 3.5 and 4.0 assemblies?", "text": "I want to distribute a .NET library that is .NET 3.5 compliant. The library holds references only to external managed libraries that are targeted against .NET 3.5 client profile or lower. Is there any point in distributing my library as separate .NET 3.5 and 4.0 targeted assembly?"}
{"_id": "225026", "title": "Exception handling in a program that needs to run 24/7", "text": "I have read that we should only catch exceptions that can be handled, which makes catching the base exception class (C# in this case) a bad idea (on top of other reasons). I am currently part of a project in which I so far have yet to see anything but the base exception being caught. I mentioned that it is considered bad practice to do so, but the response was \"This service needs to run 24/7, so that is the way it is.\". Since I did not have a good response for how to properly handle exceptions in a program that needs to run 24/7, I am now here. I have not managed to find any information / suggestions on how to deal with exception handling in \"critical\" programs / services that needs to run around the clock (and in this case I believe it may be ok if the service is down for a minute or two, so not even critical). I understand it depends on the exact nature of the program. The requirements for a program that can cause life threatening issues are quite different compared to a log scanner for an online game. Two examples: 1: A type-ahead service for customers of the Brittish railways, used when they searching online for railway stations. 2: A program that automatically controls the railway switches for the above railways based on realtime information provided from various sensors in the tracks, trains etc. The first program would probably not cause a major issue if it went down for a minute or two, wheras the latter could cause human casualties. Suggestions on how to deal with each? Pointer to where I can find more information and thoughts on this issue?"}
{"_id": "213114", "title": "how to write safe code if you are the only developer", "text": "I have been working in a hedge fund firm for two years and I am the only person who writes almost all the codes. So far, luckily there is no software glitch or bug causing money lost. However, it is not guaranteed that it never occur. I am just wondering if there is a way to write safe code. Of course, unit test is one of the ways. But some of the tests cases are not easy to test and some situations may only occurs in a specific day e.g. busy trading day and the program cannot handle it. FYI my company will hire a less senior develop in the coming months. EDIT: Regarding the safety, the program is not allow to send numerous erroneous orders to the market like Knight Capital . To an extreme extend, program crash is far more better than it. Since I am the developer and also the tester, the software is ready to release that is based on my decision. I agree that tester is required. However, I have a concern that is the tester need to know the whole logic of the trading system which is confidential stuff."}
{"_id": "213113", "title": "SAP / ABAP training issues as a junior programmer", "text": "I recently got my Computer Science degree and was recruited by an SAP Partner as a \"SAP NetWeaver Consultant\" (at least that's what the boss calls me). The job placement stated that no previous experience in SAP nor ABAP was essential, and it also stated that the employee would be trained accordingly. I have zero background in SAP and ABAP (nor do I have any worth mentioning working experience as I'm 21 years old), I'm working with this company for one month (the only employee of the company is the boss actually). The first task I had to do was to create a new development package, including domains, data elements, structures, tables, table-types, classes, interfaces, function groups, reports, the customization of a number of BADi implementations, etc., of a system that was optimized and redesigned (by the boss). How I accomplished the above (still trying actually), was by having one or two examples by the boss of how to create each of the aforementioned things. Most of the above were no problem at all, but now that I have moved into coding, I have some huge issues. First of all, as mentioned above, I have no previous experience with SAP nor ABAP, that means that I'm ignorant when it comes to the capabilities of the language, the syntax, statements, etc., and everything around SAP NetWeaver and the ABAP Development Workbench. I have to create some simple nested loops for fetching some specific components of each of the objects contained in a structure, which structure is contained in another structure and is included in a table type. For instance... I have a function that derives all the rental objects included in a contract, and for each of the rental objects, I have to derive some specific components of all their architectural objects. While this would be easy to accomplish in a language that I already have some expertise. I have some pretty hard time trying to do it with my current skills in ABAP. I mean, even the difference in the LOOP functions messes with my ability to code, even the fact that I'm trying to comply with the naming conventions addressed by the client makes me look at everything twice for understanding what I'm actually writing. I can't even handle the debugger properly. I am sorry for all the information provided above, but I had to introduce you to the situation before asking my question. All the boss has given me is an ABAP Objects book and the access to the system of course. Is that what I should expect by training? While the boss was rather amazed at how fast I could re-create all the development objects to the new package, and make all the appropriate changes in the documentation, translation, naming etc..., he now thinks that I don't know what a structure, table or loop is. And the fact is, that I do know all the above, but not in ABAP... I do not know how to proceed or how should I approach my issue, the boss can't waste much time with me, as he is all the time running to clients and also designing and implementing add-ons by himself. Should I expect something more from his part?"}
{"_id": "155167", "title": "A deque based on binary trees", "text": "This is a simple immutable deque based on binary trees. What do you think about it? Does this kind of data structure, or possibly an improvement thereof, seem useful? How could I improve it, preferably without getting rid of its strengths? (Not in the sense of more operations, in the sense of different design) Does this sort of thing have a name? Red nodes are newly instantiated; blue ones are reused. Nodes aren't actually red or anything, it's just for emphasis. ![http://goo.gl/KzOFR](http://i.stack.imgur.com/76kzH.png) Note that right deques do _not_ take O(n). Any access to an element in the deque depends on how long ago it was inserted. You can perform any enqueue or concat operation at O(1). You can also use the 'weight' of each non-leaf node to change the orientation of the tree, such as to make all right access costly and left access cheap, or to provide O(logn) access to either end. This process takes O(n) worst case, depending on the initial orientation of the tree. Alternatively, I could 'search' for the lightest node into which to insert a given node, turning all operations into O(logn) operations."}
{"_id": "120012", "title": "Closest location - Heapify or Build-heap", "text": "So lets say we have a set of gps data points and your current location. If asked to give the closest point to your current location we can utilize a heap with the distance being the key. Now if we update the current location, I suspect that only a few of the keys will change enough to violate the heap property. Would it be more efficient to rebuild the heap after recalculating the keys or to run heapify (assuming that only a few of the keys have changed enough). It is assumed that we don't jump around with the new location (new current location is close to the last current location)."}
{"_id": "154692", "title": "Entity and pattern validation vs DB constraint", "text": "When it comes to performance: What is the better way to validate the user input? If you think about a phone number and you only want numbers in the database, but it could begin with a 0, so you will use varchar: Is it better to check it via the entity model like this:                @Size(min = 10, max = 12)      @Digits(fraction = 0, integer = 12)      @Column(name = \"phone_number\")      private String phoneNumber;      Or is it better to use on the database side a CHECK (and no checking in the entity model) for the same feature?"}
{"_id": "69596", "title": "C++ and the use of old Visual Studio versions", "text": "Based on the behavior of some of our customers, I have come to wonder if many c++ development shops decided to just stop at vs2005. Is this just a quirk of the dozen or so large organizations that we deliver DLL+IMPLIB to, or is there a general groundswell of disinterest in the industry at large in upgrading? Note that there's no MFC at work here, just a Windows compile of C++ code that is also delivered on linux and whatnot. And the question is, \"Is it my imagination, or is it that big companies that build things like search engines in C++ have just stopped upgrading?\" **NOTE** None of the answers so far appear to report actual personal experience with making a decision to upgrade or not, but rather either offer general principles or report very vague hearsay."}
{"_id": "215450", "title": "Are trivial protected getters blatant overkill?", "text": "Something I really have not thought about before (AS3 syntax):               private var m_obj:Object;     protected function get obj():Object     {         return m_obj;     }          private var m_str:String;     protected function get str():String     {         return m_str;     }      At least subclasses won't be able to set m_obj or m_str (though they could still modify m_obj). **My question:** Is this just blatant overkill? * * * This Programmer's question: When or why should one use getters/setters for class properties instead of simply making them public properties? has been suggested as a duplicate. That question is different because it only addresses public vs. private properties and whether a property should be wrapped with getters & setters. For my question, I'm focusing on _protected_ variables and how inheriting classes would interact with those variables. So the alternative implementation would be:               protected var m_obj:Object; //more accessible than a private variable with a protected getter     protected var m_str:String; //more accessible than a private variable with a protected getter      My question is similar because I am talking about using _trivial_ protected getters to block _subclasses_ from writing to the variables, but to allow them all other access.   In languages like AS3, this will even allow them to make any changes to mutable object variables, as long as the references themselves are not modified."}
{"_id": "154696", "title": "Variable names for Contact Information bits", "text": "I am in the middle of refactoring code and would like to get some ideas on variable naming so that my new names clearly represent the data they hold. I have a class called `ContactMethod` which makes sense to me; each instance is a different way to contact someone. My problem comes when naming the properties of `ContactMethod`. For example, one instance might be a Fax number of 555-555-5555 while another could be an Email address of bob@email.com; I've got a property called `contactMethodType` to hold the values \"fax\" or \"email\", but I don't know what to call the \"555-555-5555\" or \"bob@email.com\" part. Has anyone here created a good generic name for this piece of contact information? _(PS - the old convention was to call it a \"Phone\" with fields \"phoneType\" holding the \"fax\"/\"email\" value and \"phoneId\" holding the number/address. Yuck.)_"}
{"_id": "235050", "title": "Implementing objects with several equivalent representations", "text": "I am wondering if there are patterns, references or useful resources about how to implement objects that may have several equivalent representations. For example: Suppose I want to implement a `Rectangle`, and I will instantiate it using its `length` and `width`:               class Rectangle:         def __init__(self, length, width):             self.length = length             self.width = width      and suppose now I also want to have the possibility to instantiate the `Rectangle` using its `diagonal` and `area`. My main concern is that I don't want to store redundant information in the object (in this case, these four properties), only the bare minimum possible to define it. Suppose too I might want to retrieve one set of properties having created the `Rectangle` using another:               r = Rectangle(length=3, width=4)     assert r.diagonal == 5      This is what I've tried so far:               class Rectangle:         def __init__(self, **kwargs):             params = set(kwargs.keys())             if params == set(['length', 'width']):                 self._length = kwargs['length']                 self._width = kwargs['width']             elif params == set(['area', 'diagonal']):                 self._area = kwargs['area']                 self._diagonal = kwargs['diagonal']             else:                 raise ValueError('Invalid input arguments')              @property         def length(self):             if hasattr(self, '_length'):                 return self._length             elif hasattr(self, '_area') and hasattr(self, '_diagonal'):                 length, width = ad2lw(self._area, self._diagonal)                 #r = Rectangle(length=length, width=width)                 #return r._length                 return length             else:                 raise NotImplementedError('No converter available')              # Same with other three properties               def ad2lw(area, diagonal):         # Obscure math         return l, w      Is this any known pattern or is there a standard way to do it?"}
{"_id": "235055", "title": "MVC in a desktop application - can the View ever hold a reference to the Model?", "text": "(I'm specifying this is a desktop application so people wouldn't refer specifically to web implementations of MVC). The title says it all pretty much. In an MVC structure - **can the View _ever_ hold a reference to the Model?** Or should the Controller be used as a 'middleman' for communication between the View and Model - always - and in both directions? If the answer is \"no, it can't\" - **why?**"}
{"_id": "82644", "title": "Fine Line: Readability Vs Speed", "text": "Is there a line between readability vs compile or processing speed? Aside from the extreme cases, I wouldn't think it would be even worth saving that little bit extra in favor of legibility... For example; a bad idea, in my opinion would be removing all the comments on a 'finished' product to gain a little extra speed."}
{"_id": "82648", "title": "Have you dealt with space hardening?", "text": "I am very eager to study best practices when it comes to space hardening. For instance, I've read (though I can't find the article any longer) that some core parts of the Mars rovers did not use dynamic memory allocation, in fact it was forbidden. I've also read that old fashioned core memory may be preferable in space. I was looking at some of the projects associated with the Google Lunar Challenge and wondering what it would feel like to get code on the moon, or even just into space. I know that space hardened boards offer some sanity in such a harsh environment, however I'm wondering (as a C programmer) how I would need to adjust my thinking and code if I was writing something that would run in space? I think the next few years might show more growth in private space companies, I'd really like to at least be somewhat knowledgeable regarding best practices. What happens to a program if radiation, cold or heat bombards a board that sustained damage to its insulation? I think the goal is keeping humans inside of a space craft (as far as fixing or swapping stuff) and avoiding missions to fix things. Furthermore, if the board maintains some critical system, early warnings seem paramount. How does one gain experience in this through testing and trial & error (barring the launch of your own personal satellite?)"}
{"_id": "173069", "title": "How does recording video and playing it back in realtime work?", "text": "I am looking to understand how recording video (and audio) and playing it back in realtime work (on the same pc or over a network)? I understand for a file stored on the disk. You read it and play it back but in recoding, you don't know how long the file is, when it will end etc. Can someone explain it, preferably using some code (or psudocode)? Thanks"}
{"_id": "241388", "title": "Android -> Ruby Server Interface -> Mongodb", "text": "I've been wrecking my brain about this for a few days. I'll run my scenario by you and hopefully you can help me. In my head this is how it goes: I have an Android App. I want my Android App to make (function) calls to a MongoDB database via a Ruby Interface on the Server. e.g. Android app sends a HTTP GET ? with the function name, let's say getFriends for this user Ruby Interface receives this request from the app, grabs a thread from a thread pool and calls the appropriate function call implemented in Ruby, to the Mongodb. Ruby Interface gets results from Mongodb and sends a HTML POST to the Android app. So that's how I think it works. I know about the ruby driver for mongo db, and interacting with the mongodb from ruby but, how do I make a ruby back end listen for incoming messages and should these messages be done through sockets or a http interface ala Net::http in ruby?"}
{"_id": "214340", "title": "Should we create classes just to group properties", "text": "I am designing a bit of software that will integrate with our enterprise system using web services. We are dealing with work orders that are needed to maintain equipment. We have a bit of a disagreement in regards to the structure of the contract. There are two methods on my side, I would like a single work order class with all properties related to the work order in it. example (simplified)               WO - class       Number - property       Description - property       WarrantyStatus - property       WarrantySettlementDate - property       LabourSteps<LabourStep>[] - list property       Children<WO>[] - list property      On their side, they want to create a work order class, but for each logical group of data, they want to create another class to wrap the properties. example (simplified)               WO - class       WOHeader - class         Number - property         Description - property       Warranty - class         WarrantyStatus - property         WarrantySettlementDate - property       LabourSteps<LabourStep>[] - list property       Children<WO>[] - list property      Now they will have approx 8 classes in the full definition that they want to create all with a few properties in each. This seems a bit over the top to me and has a bit of a code smell or anti pattern feel to it. For my example, I have two classes, WO and LabourStep. They have 4 classes for the same thing WO,WOHeader,Warranty,LabourStep. There will only ever be one WOHeader per WO and the same for Warranty. My one seems far simpler to manage changes (add a new property to WO and thats it), but is less human readable. On their side, The structure is a little more easier to read by a human, but it feel like its pushing a logical view onto the contract the doesn't really belong. And to add a new property potentially requires a modification to the WO and the creation of a new class if a new logical group was added. These extra classes are only there to group properties. What is the right way to go? ======EDIT========== Frank - I completely agree with your thoughts and it is the way I approach my development. Except in this case, the third party monolithic enterprise system we are integrating with has been written in a very generic way to try and cater for as many businesses as possible. The data is spread across three tables in a one to one mapping with the majority in one table. There is barely any validation. There is no concept of a \"Warranty\" object/thing in that system. Its just 3 properties against a WO. All the web service will do is act like a data store, with the WO persisted as a whole. e.g. getWO() updateWO() createWO(). There will never be get/updateWarranty() methods. It's all just one blob of data to read/persist. On our side, we never use the result directly from web services even if they are our own. We convert them into proper models and then use those. To us a data contract is very different to a model. There is no business logic in the data contract, its purely a container to get data from one part of the system to another without closely coupling them. That means we can easily change to persist to a database instead of a web service and all its needs to do is match the interface of the web service. This also allows us to modify our own models which may even include results from multiple web services without having to worry about being restricted to or changing the format of the data contracts. So when I think in those terms, Having the data contracts split into WOHeader or WOWarranty classes just doesn't make any sense. It will never used in that way, not even by them. Its just there for a nice logical group of properties that mean nothing by themselves. A region block around those properties would have the same net effect. Labour steps and equipment details however, make a lot of sense to be in separate classes as they are separate entities and not just properties of work orders."}
{"_id": "224290", "title": "Does boostrapping limit the achievable speed of the new compiler?", "text": "I have a good grasp on how the C compiler was boostrapped from itself and how that must have been very efficient, since the first pre-bootstrapping version was written in assembler, which is as low level as you can get. BUT today we have a very different situation, with languages first written on other relatively high-level languages (e.g. Clojure). Question 1: I have a hard time imagining that the **bootstrapped compiler could be _faster_ in anything than its non-bootstrapped counterpart. Is this possible?** Question 2: Especially once you take the step in which you write then new version of your compiler in your new language: **Can any inefficiencies that existed in the non-bootstrapped code be fixed or is the code generation of the new compiler haunted by those forever?** That matters even more since you can\u2019t easily go back and fix those afterwards!"}
{"_id": "177990", "title": "How to keep background requests in sequence", "text": "I'm faced with implementing interfaces for some rather archaic systems, for handling online deposits to stored value accounts (think campus card accounts for students). Here's my dilemma: stage 1 of the process involves passing the user off to a thrid-party site for the credit card transaction, like old-school PayPal. Step two involves using a proprietary protocol for communicating with a legacy system for conducting the actual deposit. Step two requires that each transaction have a unique sequence number, and that the requests' seqnums are in order. Since we're logging each transaction in Postgres, my first thought was to take a number from a sequence in the DB, guaranteeing uniqueness. But since we're dealing with web requests that might come in near-simultaneously, and since latency with the return from the off- ste payment processor is beyond our control, there's always the chance for a race condition in the order of requests passed back to the proprietary system, and if the seqnums are out of order, the request fails silently (brilliant, right?). I thought about enqueuing the requests in Redis and using Resque workers to process them (single worker, single process, so they are processed in order), but we need to be able to give the user feedback as to whether the transaction was processed successfully, so this seems less feasible to me. I've tried to make this application handle concurrency well (as much as possible for a Ruby on Rails app), but now we're in a situation where we have to interact with a system that is designed to be single process, single threaded, and sequential. If it at least gave an \"out of order\" error, I could just increment (or take the next value off the sequence), but it's designed to fail silently in the event of ANY error. We are handling timeouts in a way that blocks on I/O, but since the application uses multiple workers (Unicorn), that's no guarantee. Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "177993", "title": "Class Design and Structure Online Web Store", "text": "I hope I have asked this in the right forum. Basically, we're designing an Online Store and I am designing the class structure for ordering a product and want some clarification on what I have so far: So a customer comes, selects their product, chooses the quantity and selects 'Purchase' (I am using the Facade Pattern - So subsystems execute when this action is performed). My class structure:                  < Order >                 < Product >                    <Customer >      There is no inheritance, more Association < Order > has < Product >, < Customer > has < Order > . Does this structure look ok? I've noticed that I don't handle the \"Quantity\" separately, I was just going to add this into the \"Product\" class, but, do you think it should be a class of it's own? Hope someone can help."}
{"_id": "240478", "title": "How to design the relation between a Game and a Player in a game?", "text": "I am currently attempting to make a Trading Card Game and I have got a whole array of features working already, yet I am stuck now at the portion where one player can attacker another player (more strictly: the monster cards of another player on the field). The game is designed primarely to be played with two players in mind, though having it open for future extensions is never a bad idea. This is the design I have so far, shown as a minimalistic example in pseudo- code:               class Game         private final Player self         private final Player opponent          class Player         private final String name         ...      The game loops over all players and lets them do their turn, which may involve attacking another player. That method has the following structure:               class AttackMonsterAction         private final int monsterIndex         private final int targetMonsterIndex         private final Player targetPlayer              public void performAction(final Player player)      If it is of any relevance, I am coding this in Java. My concrete question is the following: How do I create my class design such that `AttackMonsterAction` called from a certain `Player` object, can reference \"the other player\"?"}
{"_id": "191738", "title": "Why did Alan Kay say, \"The Internet was so well done, but the web was by amateurs\"?", "text": "OK, so I paraphrased. The full quote: > The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural > resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. > When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error- > free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs. -- > Alan Kay. I am trying to understand the history of the Internet and the web, and this statement is hard to understand. I have read elsewhere that the Internet is now used for very different things than it was designed for, and so perhaps that factors in. What makes the Internet so well done, and what makes the web so amateurish? _(Of course,Alan Kay is fallible, and no one here is Alan Kay, so we can't know precisely why he said that, but what are some possible explanations?)_ *See also _the original interview_ *."}
{"_id": "240475", "title": "Applying DDD to a simple app with a configuration twist", "text": "I\u2019m using the light-weight PHP Fat-Free Framework as a base to form a simple MVC based app with DDD philosophy for the Model layer. I\u2019m aware that DDD is most suitable or enterprise solutions and that applying DDD to simple, mostly data-driven apps is kind of an overkill, but there are some concepts in DDD that I find appealing (like the Repository pattern, business logic in Entities, etc.) which I\u2019d like to apply to my app. Fat-Free Faramework has a Base class that represents the application (a Singleton) and the instance of Base holds a lot of useful tool methods and a registry of global framework variables (the hive) which is used, among other things, for configuration data. As I\u2019m writing my app, I find myself using a lot of Base class tools inside classes in the Model layer, and I\u2019m a bit confused by how to reference the Base instance in those classes. Do I simply call Base:instance() inside model classes or do I inject it through the constructor as a dependency? Dependency injection seems like the proper way to do it, but since most of the app will depend on it, the whole reference passing through the constructor seems unnecessary. Also, how to pass for an example database config data to data persistance classes which is stored in the hive? Should it be passed by the Controllers when instantiating Repositories or called directly from the Repository (or Data Mapper)? I\u2019m looking for a way which won\u2019t fire back on me, so I\u2019m looking for any insight or advice on this. The second part of my problem is that I\u2019m trying to write my app so that each Entity and business logic related to it is configurable from the Entity class. This is an idea inspired by Sails.js I\u2019m still testing out, but for an example, I have a method getProperties() which returns an array of user- defined configuration data for each Entity property, e.g.:               'title' => array(         'type' => 'text',         'minLength' => 30,         ...     )      or for associations:               'children' => array(         'entity' => 'ChildClass',         'relation' => 'oneToMany'     )      It might look a bit controversial, but I\u2019ve tested business logic functionality and so far it works OK for me, and client code communicates with entities via usual get/set/other methods. The idea behind such configuration is to be able to automatically generate scaffolding/administration interface for each Entity, and configure Data Mappers and Repositories based on the related Entity\u2019s getProperties() method. What\u2019s bugging me now is that if I want to have _one_ place where this configuration data exists, I\u2019d have to place some non-business-domain logic into the Entity, such as an exceptional database table name, whether a field requires a rich-text editor or not, whether a checkbox is checked by default, a certain field used as an Entity\u2019s print identity in the admin web interface, etc. I realise that the problem I have is a tradeoff between a clean model and the single-place configuration idea and that I\u2019ll probably have to pollute the Entities by storing such non-business-domain data into the Entites, but I thought perhaps someone here might have an idea about how to approach this in a different, or better way? Thanks for reading."}
{"_id": "195423", "title": "Why does Java use so many middlemen?", "text": "For example to read data from a website we do:               HttpResponse httpResponse = httpClient.execute(httpPost);             HttpEntity httpEntity = httpResponse.getEntity();             is = httpEntity.getContent();      The method that executes the HTTP request, returns a response, then we turn the response into an entity, then we turn the entity into a input stream, then you got to use two more objects, a buffer reader and a string builder,to turn that is into a string. It just seems like a lot of repetitive code. Why can't HttpResponse have a method that returns an InputStream, or better yet a String? P.S. I'm not necessarily saying that Java is wrong, I want to find out what the reason behind it is, if any."}
{"_id": "16638", "title": "What are the solutions to the Distributed Queue problem?", "text": "I am trying to learn more about the various ways that the problem of a Distributed Queue may be solved. So I would like know what products, services, implementations and research papers that are already out there. An implementation will face many challenges and will be forced to make tradeoffs:   * Does it have strong or loose ordering?   * Does it have idempotent put?   * Can we have more queues than what can fit on a single machine?   * Can we have more data in a queue than what can fit on a single machine?   * How many machines can crash before we potentially lose data?   * Can it tolerate net-splits?   * Can it automatically reconcile data when a net-split is fixed?   * Can it guarantee delivery when clients can crash?   * Can it guarantee that the same message is not delivered more than once?   * Can a node crash at any given point, come back up, and not send out junk?   * Can you add nodes to, or remove nodes from, a running cluster without down time?   * Can you upgrade nodes in a running cluster without down time?   * Can it run without problems on heterogeneous servers?   * Can you \u201cstick\u201d queues to a group of servers? (example: \u201cthese queues are only allowed in the european datacenter\u201d)   * Can it make sure to put data replicas in at least two datacenters, if so available? I have no illusion that any implementation will be able to say \u201cyes\u201d to all of that. I am merely interested in hearing about the various implementations; how they work, what tradeoffs they have made and perhaps why they decided on their particular set of tradeoffs. Also if there are any challenges that I may have missed in the above list."}
{"_id": "80648", "title": "Making Separate Assemblies For Different Types Of Tests For The Same Component?", "text": "I was told by a few members here that splitting up my unit tests into different assemblies for different components is the best way to structure unit tests. Now, I have a few questions about that idea.   1. What are the advantages of this? Organization, and isolation of errors?   2. Let's say I have a component named \"calculator\", and I create an assembly for the unit tests on \"calculator\". Would I create a separate assembly for the integration tests I want to run on \"calculator\"? Or is the definition of an integration test a test across multiple components, like \"calculator\" and whatever else, which would require a separate assembly to test both of them together? In that case, would I have one assembly to do all of the integration testing for every component combination?"}
{"_id": "16634", "title": "What's the proper way to exit program in C?", "text": "There are many ways how to exit program in C. Some of them are returning zero or error code, using exit function with EXIT_SUCCESS, EXIT_FAILURE, exit(0), exit(1) or some other error code, abort and probably few more I can't think of now. My question is which option is the best and why. I'm asking here because every time I asked more experienced programmers this question, it ended up as a holy war."}
{"_id": "16637", "title": "MSFT released \"ASP.NET Developer Guidance\" PDF... What's missing in your opinion?", "text": "Microsoft created this ASP.NET documentation map that aggregates a ton of great links into a single PDF. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/26/asp-net-developer-guidance- map.aspx?CommentPosted=true I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about this doc, and if they think other resources should be added. Perhaps MSFT will read this thread and incorporate your tips in this all-encompassing ASP.NET learning guide as well."}
{"_id": "224298", "title": "Does cherry-pick just pull changes into the current working tree as uncommitted changes?", "text": "My team uses Mercurial for version control. Our development / version control routine is:   1. all been committing to the same branch   2. pulling for changes and rebasing our commits locally before pushing back to the hosted repository This keeps everyone in sync. And the latest code (even unfinished code) is than grabbed from the tip of this branch and put into our test environment. I've been tasked with creating a management process where we can more cleanly extract \"completed features\" into the test environment. I've advocated that we begin to `branch->pull-request->merge->close branch` process, but I've been told that `branching` is not an option, and that the project director would prefer too be able to _manually select commits representing completed features/bug fixes_ and only include those commits in a deployment to testing. I am not sure what terminology besides `cherry-pick` in GIT / HG that would represent this process, and if it would even be advisable as the commits would no-longer have a proper revision history as it's my understanding that `cherry-pick` just pulls changes into the current working tree as uncommitted changes _correct_?"}
{"_id": "88116", "title": "As a programmer, should I know low and high-level programming languages?", "text": "I been contacted to do some work remote controlling LEDs displays over TCP/IP, but my experience and preparation is mostly about high-level programming language. I said that to the person who contact me about the work and he told me that: > \"if you call yourself a programmer you should know all these things\" Should a programmer really know the details of low-level programming? Or can I treat it as a black box concept, as theoretical knowledge but not necessarily doing it or implementing low level language solutions, having in mind that low-level programming is not my expertise?"}
{"_id": "233720", "title": "How to design a scriptable communication emulator?", "text": "Requirement: We need a tool that simulates a hardware device that communicates via RS232 or TCP/IP to allow us to test our main application which will communicate with the device. Current flow:   * User loads script    * Parse script into commands    * User runs script    * Execute commands Script / commands (simplified for discussion):   * Connect RS232 => RS232ConnectCommand   * Connect TCP/IP => TcpIpConnectCommand   * Send data => SendCommand   * Receive data => ReceiveCommand   * Disconnect => DisconnectCommand All commands implement the ICommand interface. The command runner simply executes a sequence of ICommand implementations sequentially thus ICommand must have an Execute exposure, pseudo code:   * void Execute(ICommunicator context) The Execute method takes a context argument which allows the command implementations to execute what they need to do. For instance SendCommand will call context.Send, etc. **The problem** RS232ConnectCommand and TcpIpConnectCommand needs to instantiate the context to be used by subsequent commands. How do you handle this elegantly? **Solution 1:** Change ICommand Execute method to:   * ICommunicator Execute(ICommunicator context) While it will work it seems like a code smell. All commands now need to return the context which for all commands except the connection ones will be the same context that is passed in. **Solution 2:** Create an ICommunicatorWrapper (ICommunicationBroker?) which follows the decorator pattern and decorates ICommunicator. It introduces a new exposure:   * void SetCommunicator(ICommunicator communicator) And ICommand is changed to use the wrapper:   * void Execute(ICommunicationWrapper context) Seems like a cleaner solution. **Question** Is this a good design? Am I on the right track?"}
{"_id": "52339", "title": "Where to find Hg/Git technical support?", "text": "I would like to out who provides technical support (commercial) for two major DVCS's of today: Git and Mercurial. This is for a place where they've been using Subversion for some time and now they're renewing their software licences. Although they will be keeping Subversion as well, they would like to justify beginning of DVCS as an alternative system. Most people root for Mercurial since it seems simpler; mostly engineers and physicians there who are not that interested in checking Git repos for corruption and the finer workings of Git, but I believe any one of the two could \"pass\". The system has to have a price (can be zero; no problem there) and some sort of official technical support. It is a _pro forma_ matter, but it has to be specified. _**So, I'm asking you: do you know where could one go for commercial Git or Mercurial technical support?_** Technical forums and the like are out of the question. It has to work on the principle:   * _I have a problem._   * _I post a question with the details._   * _I get an answer in specified time. It can be \"we cannot do that.\" but it has to be an official answer and given in agreed time._ I'm sure by now most of you understand what I'm asking, but if not \u2014 post a comment or similar. Also, if you think of any reasons which could decide justification of introducing Git/Hg from an technical and administrative viewpoint, feel free to write them down also."}
{"_id": "100744", "title": "iPhone development options for the [from-my-cold-dead-hands] C developer", "text": "Please forgive the humor of the title but it certainly gets my point across. I am quite familiar with C code, I can write it in my sleep and after reading through a few tutorials on iPhone development and Objective-C, I'm beginning to feel like I'd rather avoid Obj-C at all costs. It's not that it's unlearnable or \"hard\". I just don't like it and after reading through many of the Pros and Cons of Objective-C vs. straight C, I've determined that if I need to write an iPhone App, I want to write as much of it as C as is possible. With that said, what is the minimum amount of Objective-C that I need to be aware of or potentially write to be able to create an iPhone app? If I can't write an app 100% in C, then is there a good reference that discusses writing iPhone Apps in C and only discusses the minimal amount of Objective-C logic that needs to be written to get an application to compile and run? Also, is there any good reason why I should learn Objective-C if I don't have to use it for a C project? Specifically, are there times when Objective-C may provide a more optimal coding solution to a problem because of the way the compiler compiles and link the code? I may be a C advocate but more important than that I want to be sure that my application runs as smooth and optimally as possible. **Disclaimer** I am at an early learning stage of a project I may have to work on in the near future. If this process comes to fruition, I'll be getting a Mac as well as a developer license so I'm completely in ignorance. Even worse, _if_ this project is determined to be feasible, I will then be getting the necessary equipment to develop for the iPhone. For now, I'm trying to learn as much information as I can and explore my options. I'd appreciate any (constructive) thoughts, tips and suggestions."}
{"_id": "153643", "title": "When decomposing a large function, how can I avoid the complexity from the extra subfunctions?", "text": "Say I have a large function like the following:               function do_lots_of_stuff(){              { //subpart 1           ...         }              ...              { //subpart N           ...         }     }      a common pattern is to decompose it into subfunctions               function do_lots_of_stuff(){         subpart_1(...)         subpart_2(...)         ...         subpart_N(...)     }      I usually find that decomposition has two main advantages:   1. The decomposed function becomes much smaller. This can help people read it without getting lost in the details.   2. Parameters have to be explicitly passed to the underlying subfunctions, instead of being implicitly available by just being in scope. This can help readability and modularity in some situations. However, I also find that decomposition has some disadvantages:   1. There are no guarantees that the subfunctions \"belong\" to do_lots_of_stuff so there is nothing stopping someone from accidentally calling them from a wrong place.   2. A module's complexity grows quadratically with the number of functions we add to it. (There are more possible ways for things to call each other) **Therefore:** Are there useful convention or coding styles that help me balance the pros and cons of function decomposition or should I just use an editor with code folding and call it a day? * * * EDIT: This problem also applies to functional code (although in a less pressing manner). For example, in a functional setting we would have the subparts be returning values that are combined in the end and the decomposition problem of having lots of subfunctions being able to use each other is still present. We can't always assume that the problem domain will be able to be modeled on just some small simple types with just a few highly orthogonal functions. There will always be complicated algorithms or long lists of business rules that we still want to correctly be able to deal with.               function do_lots_of_stuff(){        p1 = subpart_1()        p2 = subpart_2()        pN = subpart_N()        return assembleStuff(p1, p2, ..., pN)     }"}
{"_id": "153640", "title": "Looking for an example of how a software project can be managed/deployed", "text": "My company is evaluating adopting off-the-shelf ALM products to aid in our development lifecycle; we currently use our own homegrown solutions to manage requirements gathering, specification documentation, testing, etc. One of the issues I am having is understanding how to move code between stages of development. We have what we call a pipeline, which consists of particular stops: [Source] -> [QC] -> [Production] At the first stop, the developer works out a solution to some requested change and performs individual testing. When that process is complete (and peer review has been performed), our ALM system physically moves the affected programs from the [Source] runtime environment to the [QC] runtime environment. This movement of code is triggered by advancing the status of the change request to match the stage of the pipeline. I have been searching the internet for a few days trying to find how the process is accomplished elsewhere -- I have read a bit about builds, automated testing, various ALM products, etc. but nowhere does any of this state how builds interact with initial change requests, what the triggers are, how dependencies are managed, how the various forms of testing are accommodated (e.g. unit testing, integration testing, regression testing), etc. Can anyone point me to any resources detailing specific workflows or attempt to explain (generically) how a change could/should be tracked and moved though the development lifecycle? I'd be very appreciative. Note: I've cleaned up the question to hopefully make it easier to understand. Also, I found another question (which I can't find now) that referenced this book, which sounds like it might be exactly what I am looking for -- not sure if I want to shell out the cash for it, though. Additional details per @GlenH7's suggestion: Our products are built with a proprietary language and set of translation tools -- the ultimately runtime environment is similar to a web site architecture, in that we have a bunch of 'code' files sitting out on a server, which our client app accesses on-demand (not unlike a GET request) and then interprets to provide the user experience. We sell an integrated product which is made up of a set of modules (most of which are optional), each module has a team of ~4 programmers and 2 QC testers devoted to the development/bug maintenance. There are around 30 modules per product line (and 3 product lines) -- some teams maintain multiple products lines for their given module. In total, we have 700 employees devoted to development and ~200 programmers. Certainly adopting any new processes or systems is going to involve buy-in, etc. but I'm tasked with simply understanding how the code will be managed so that we can speak intelligently about things. My first task was to learn how to adopt version control into our process (we do not yet use formal version control for most of our product lines, we rely instead of keeping around multiple copies of the entire codebase). We follow the waterfall method pretty closely (which sucks, but the company has been producing software since 1969, so it was probably the natural fit back then and until now, there has been no need to change anything). Some folks are intrigued by the various offerings of the agile methodologies, but as has been noted by @Chad below, we're likely going to need to take incremental steps towards any such end goals (though if we adopt an ALM system, it might be the time to just force a whole new way to do things on everyone). Now for a specific example of our current process, let's say we have a product called HIS, which has an MIS and ITS module (what these are/could be is not important -- think of them as just a collection of files) -- in our current process, if someone requests a change to ITS, a coder will modify some files (effectively) on the development server. When that change needs to be tested, transitioning the status of the change request from 'development needed' to 'qc needed' will trigger our tools to copy the affected files from the development server to the QC server. Now when QC testers signon to the QC testing environment, they will be able to see the effect of the changes. Once they signoff on the change, advancing the status of the request to 'production ready', our tools again copy the code files to the next stage. Once signed off there, a final copy is done to the holding location used for deliveries to customers. We manage delivery of our releases by a major release number (e.g. 6.0) followed by a service release designation (e.g. 5) and a 'priority pack' number (e.g. 1) -- customers take delivery of priority packs, e.g. 6.0.5.1. As stated above, we simply push code from place to place on multiple servers, so we end up with a project folder for each major release and service release throughout the pipeline and end up with a final resting place for each of the ppacks, e.g.:               dev6.0     qc6.0     production6.0          dev6.0.5     qc6.0.5     production6.0.5          ship6.0.5.1      I was thinking that under version control, we could simulate this kind of scheme as:               trunk     branches     --6.0.5     tags     --6.0.5.1      but that seems to cover only half of the locations, i.e. where do the qc and production sources live? Would I create a separate trunk for each major and minor release of the product? Or would I rely on something outside of version control (e.g. the ALM system) to track the revision(s) interesting for testing done at the QC and production stops? We'd need a runtime environment for each, still, but that could be 'built' on-demand as bug fixes and features are made available -- which reinforces the idea that I need not keep any special 'copy' of these stages under version control (they are simply references to revision history of the trunk or branch). Another thing that has thrown me for a loop as that a colleague is pretty adamant that you should not persist anything in branches, i.e. the branch folders should be ephemeral and used only during large changes that can't be committed directly to the trunk (with the expectation that the branch will eventually be merged into the trunk). In his scheme, the minor releases would necessitate a separate top-level with it's own set of trunk, branches and tags, e.g.:               product6.0     trunk     branches     --silly_new_feature     tags     --6.0.5          product6.0.5     trunk     branches     --crazy_bug_fix     tags     --6.0.5.1      (sorry for the delay on adding these details -- got pulled away to meetings all day)"}
{"_id": "52337", "title": "How far back do you use your version control and for what reason?", "text": "Typically when i work on a project i only go back a few days or the last major change when i decide to do something drastic. I sometimes notice i broke a test or a feature and overlooked it for a few weeks so i may go back a month or two and see if the feature or test is broken and trace down the week i broke it. Then find what change did it. On a long term project over the span of a year. Do you actually go back 6+ months and if so why?"}
{"_id": "152596", "title": "Design pattern for an automated mechanical test bench", "text": "**Background** I have a test fixture with a number of communication/data acquisition devices on it that is used as an end of line test for a product. Because of all the various sensors used in the bench and the need to run the test procedure in near real-time, I'm having a hard time structuring the program to be more friendly to modify later on. For example, a National Instruments USB data acquisition device is used to control an analog output (load) and monitor an analog input (current), a digital scale with a serial data interface measures position, an air pressure gauge with a different serial data interface, and the product is interfaced through a proprietary DLL that handles its own serial communication. **The hard part** The \"real-time\" aspect of the program is my biggest tripping point. For example, I need to time how long the product needs to go from position 0 to position 10,000 to the tenth of a second. While it's traveling, I need to ramp up an output of the NI DAQ when it reaches position 6,000 and ramp it down when it reaches position 8,000. This sort of control looks easy from browsing NI's LabVIEW docs but I'm stuck with C# for now. All external communication is done by polling which makes for lots of annoying loops. I've slapped together a loose Producer Consumer model where the Producer thread loops through reading the sensors and sets the outputs. The Consumer thread executes functions containing timed loops that poll the Producer for current data and execute movement commands as required. The UI thread polls both threads for updating some gauges indicating current test progress. **Unsure where to start** Is there a more appropriate pattern for this type of application? Are there any good resources for writing control loops in software (non- LabVIEW) that interface with external sensors and whatnot?"}
{"_id": "152590", "title": "Bringing in New Architecture During Maintenance on Legacy Systems", "text": "I have been tasked with adding some new features to a legacy ASP.NET MVC2 project. The codebase is a disaster and I want to write these new features with some thought behind the implementation and not just throw these new features into the mess. I would like to introduce things like dependency injection and the orchestrator pattern; just to the code that I am going to write. I don't have enough time to try to refactor the entire system. Is it OK to not be consistent with the rest of the codebase and add new features following different design principles? Should I not introduce new patterns and just get the features implemented? I feel like it might be confusing to the next person to see parts of the system using a design that other parts are not following."}
{"_id": "63771", "title": "What are the arguments for/against Code Generation?", "text": "I'm in a position where we've got some brittle code that constructs SQL-like queries via text concatenation with parameters for inputs. The data source that it queries is fast and scalable but lacking tool support. Over time, addition entities and properties have been added to the data source that need changing or have obsoleted others, so the queries need changing. I can see that this will happen again in a few months and then again. In order to reduce errors introduced into the text queries, I suggested writing the queries into a separate e.g. .SQL file and then running some kind of code generator tool that could get the schema from the data source and generate a code wrapper around the SQL-like query which was easy to re- generate at any time and would give compile errors for any out-of-date client code. This idea was met with some skepticism and resistance, even when I offered to fund the development myself. What are the reasons against doing this? and, for balance, the reasons to go ahead and do it? (I already saw this post with a couple of answers, but its' not comprehensive)"}
{"_id": "63773", "title": "Name for the process of prototype evolution", "text": "I'm looking for a commonly used name for the process of developing a child object from a parent object, either through clone-and-modify techniques or through the prototypal inheritance mechanisms available in a language like JavaScript. In _JavaScript: The Good Parts_ , Douglas Crockford uses the method name _beget_ for this procedure. That seems a bit too graphic for my tastes, and I've not seen it used elsewhere. ECMAScript 5 and some frameworks just use the method name _create_. E.G. _Take care when_ **\u2014\u2014\u2014** _prototype X not to override this attribute._ My ideas are _evolving_ , which feels sort of pretentious, and _adapting_ , which just seems vague. _Deriving_ might work, but might also be confusing since it is commonly used when discussing classical inheritance. The term _extending_ might be applicable, but seems to imply that the original object is being modified, which is not the case here. Underscore.js seems to make this available via e.g. `_(o).chain().clone().extend(o2)`. Is there a succinct and widely used term for this procedure?"}
{"_id": "10672", "title": "Why are strings so slow?", "text": "Ever since my very first programming class in high school, I've been hearing that string operations are slower -- i.e. more costly -- than the mythical \"average operation.\" Why makes them so slow? (This question left intentionally broad.)"}
{"_id": "95444", "title": "Scala: From concept to working", "text": "Second attempt to ask my question more concisely. I want to say I am a Scala fan, or at least I want to be. I've resigned myself to learning one of these functional languages [Scala, Haskell, Erlang]. I've dabbled in all of them, far and away I have spent the most time trying to understand Scala. I've honestly used the tutorials for Haskell and Erlang more as a tool for greater understanding in Scala. I do believe that I have on some level an understanding of the basics. But, the reason why I thought I wanted to go with Scala is proving to be the most fustrating ... The verboseness of most Java libraries are ... umm yeah, SNMP4j makes me want to rip my hair out. So here we go, does anyone know of a site or tutorial similar to \"Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 hours.\" Something that really shows how you go from concept to working project including interpreting some third party libraries. Or is Scala truthfully just a better Java? Meaning that it's best to learn Java before attempting Scala. * * * I didn't mean to infer that Scala wasn't a language in it's own right. On the contrary, I feel that it is a very good language; however, the bill of sale for Scala _IS_ that it is better at Java than Java. So I am really trying to answer for myself how viable it is to learn Scala, while I really don't have much of an interest in learning a lot of Java. I want to use the libraries since there is the biggest advantage, as perceived by some, in using Scala. If some of these library implementations are so 'complex' that they require, not just are best benefited by, having a good grasp of Java programming idioms, then I would like to know that I've been approaching this problem from the wrong direction. I realize there are some good examples of some libraries that have been 'scalifed' or what have you."}
{"_id": "53067", "title": "Is it a good idea to dynamically position and size controls on a form or statically set them?", "text": "I've worked mostly with interface building tools such as xCode's Interface Builder and Visual Studio's environment to place forms and position them on screens. But I'm finding that with my latest project, placing controls on the form through a graphical interface is not going to work. This more has to do with the number of custom controls I have to create that I can't visually see before hand. When I first tackled this, I began to position all of my controls relative to the last ones that I created. Doing this had its own pros and cons. On the one hand, this gave me the opportunity to set one number (a margin for example) and when I changed the margin, the controls all sized correctly to one another (such as shortening controls in the center while keeping controls next to the margin the same). But this started to become a spiders-web of code that I knew wouldn't go very far before getting dangerous. Change one number and everything re sizes, but remove one control and you've created many more errors and size problems for all the other controls. It became more surgery then small changes to controls and layout. Is there a good way or maybe a preferred way to determine when I should be using relative or absolute positioning in forms?"}
{"_id": "176113", "title": "Does having a higher paid technical job mean you do not get to code any more?", "text": "I work at a large company where technical people fall roughly in one of these categories:   1. A **developer** on a scrum team who develops for a single product and maybe works with other teams that are closely related to the product.    2. An **architect** who is more of a consultant on multiple teams (5-6) and tries to recognize commonalities between team efforts that could be abstracted into libraries (architects do not write the library code, however). This architect also attends many meetings with management and attempts to set technical direction. In my company the architect role is where most technical people move into as the next step in their career. My questions are: Do most companies work such a way that their highest paid technical people are far removed from writing code? Is this a natural tendency for a developer's career? Can a developer have it all (code AND set direction?)"}
{"_id": "176110", "title": "How can I test database access methods in Java?", "text": "I want to write a test for a method that accesses a database such as following.               public class MyClass{         public String getAddress(Int id){             String query = \"Select * from Address where id=\"+id;             //some additional statements                        resultSet = statement.executeQuery();             return result.getString(ADDRESS);                 }     }      How can I test this method? I am using Java."}
{"_id": "195398", "title": "What problems can happen if an XML file is not backed by a schema?", "text": "What is a XML schema in plain simple terms? What will be the problem if an XML doesn't have a schema defined? An example can be very helpful."}
{"_id": "176116", "title": "Where to draw the line between front end and back end", "text": "I was recently contracted to develop a smarty theme for an automated SOHO phone answering service. The team who had built the backend wouldn't allow me access to any of the back end nor tell me anything about it, their smarty set up, smarty plugins, data base interface api, server set-up, nothing. Nor could I have access to the server nor a beta domain, basically zero co-operation. So I set up a local server with Smarty and built the template based on what I guessed would be their best practice, commented my code like crazy, wrote all the needed javascript, css, and template files. Then I sent them packaged to the backend team and hoped for the best. With half of a project team failing to cooperate or even communicate I am now concerned that they may reply saying that everything is wrong and they may refuse to implement the new front end. I'm curious to know if others encounter this type of situation and what you may have done to protect yourselves."}
{"_id": "195397", "title": "Send stdout or stderr to a new thread", "text": "For performance issue I want the logging send to a new thread. While the main program can work, the new thread can write the error or other messages to a file without effect to the main program. How could I send all stdout to the new thread? Work to be done:   * create a new thread, ok   * open a file, ok   * create a pipe inside the thread, ok   * send stdout to the new thread, with freopen or dup? Every time the buffer gets full, or every 5 seconds the log file gets new data. Because it is an MPI program, I can't fork the whole program. It has to be a Posix thread."}
{"_id": "21142", "title": "What are the responsibilities of a Manager and of the Dao Layers", "text": "In several projects we have been using the following layers:   1. Action (has 1 or more managers)   2. Manager(has 1 or more Daos)   3. Dao But most of the time the manager only calls the dao. We do use the manager class to prepare the date to be sent to the db or to prepare the data to be sent to the action(is this a good practice?).   1. What are the responsibilities of a Manager and of the Dao classes?   2. Do we have to have a manager for every dao or can we just use the dao directly?   3. How do I handle situations where I need to use the functionality implemented in several Managers? PS: I know that there is no golden hammer so I'll narrow it to the types of apps we do, generally webapps for banks. Thank you"}
{"_id": "223490", "title": "Best method for async initialization of view model in MVVM pattern (WPF)", "text": "I'm working on a business application (C#, WPF, EF, MVVM). I need to load a bunch of items from database, create view models for them and put them in a window. Is there a way to create the view model in another thread or do something similar to speed up UI?   1. The approximate average time needed to fetch all items from database = 1s    2. The approximate average time needed to instantiate all view models = 3s I'm doing the first part through Loaded event of each item. but the second part is the bottleneck. any insight would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "12292", "title": "What is the best practice for refactoring a static method in order to make it more testable?", "text": "Let's say you have a static method that looks something like this:               public static bool Foo()     {          var bar = new Bar();         //do some stuff here     }      This method as it stands can be a real headache to unit test. What is the best practice to refactor this so that it can be testable, without turning it into an instance method or changing the method signature?"}
{"_id": "236505", "title": "When to build User Controls in ASP.NET", "text": "I am inheriting a legacy code. The legacy code has lot of web forms and each web form does not have much of functionality other than hosting a user control. My question is -   * Should we create a user control even if that control is not used in any other web form ?   * Are there any hard benefits in creating user controls over web forms? P.S - Web forms are .aspx files and User Controls are .ascx files."}
{"_id": "236507", "title": "At ping, why do we have to do array copying instead of passing on the source array that the client sent to us?", "text": "So I have been googling about this OpenSSL heart-bleed thing and somehow sees that it is caused by the heartbeat extension which requires client to ping the server to show its aliveness and it all comes to this memcpy function in C which is meant to copy from the source array to the destination array with the user specified size. If the size was a lie (which means the source contains lesser byte than the size claims) then memcpy will grab the arbitrary memory around and allocated to the destination and in this case send back to the client\u2026 Reference: Anatomy of OpenSSL's Heartbleed: Just four bytes trigger horror bug > `payload` is controlled by the attacker, and it's quite large at 64KB. If > the actual `HeartbeatMessage` sent by the attacker only has a payload of, > say, one byte, and its payload_length is a lie, then the above `memcpy()` > will read beyond the end of the received `HeartbeatMessage` and start > reading from the victim process's memory... If my understanding above is correct, then I have a question here maybe naive one, why do we have to do array (char array here) copying here? Can't we just pass on the source char array that the client sent to us? i.e. If you send me               function(char[] array)      Then I would just need to send back that very array               send(array)"}
{"_id": "159115", "title": "Should Agile teams deliver new features daily?", "text": "My company is in the midst of a transition from waterfall-style development to Agile/Scrum. Among other things, we're told that the expectation is for us to have **new** working, **testable** (by QA) features at the end of each day. Most of our devs lose around 2 hours a day to meetings and other enterprisey overhead. This means that in any given 6-hour (at best) period, we have to design, write, unit-test, build, and deploy (with release notes) enough code to produce a complete feature for QA to play with. I understand that the build/deploy/release notes could be automated with a proper CI setup but we're not there yet. We also have a large offshore contingent writing our server-side code, and the 12-hour time difference makes this even more difficult. We attempt to task out stories into narrow, deep vertical slices in order to complete features end-to-end as fast as possible, but most days feel rather frantic and I often catch people taking stupid, fragile shortcuts to ensure QA has their build. This problem is compounded after a sprint has been in progress for a couple of days, when the inevitable defects start rolling in and have to fit into the same 6-hour window. Is this a normal pace for Agile teams? Even if we manage to implement a CI setup, I can't see how we'll be able to sustain this pace and still create quality software. **Edit:** There are several good answers here. It made me realize that what I was really asking is, should Agile teams deliver **new features** daily. I updated the title accordingly."}
{"_id": "162296", "title": "Teaching myself, as a physicist, to become a better programmer", "text": "I've always liked physics, and I've always liked coding, so when I got the offer for a PhD position doing numerical physics (details are not relevant, it's mostly parallel programming for a cluster) at a university, it was a no- brainer for me. However, as most physicists, I'm self taught. I don't have broad background knowledge about how to code in an object oriented way, or the name of that specific algorithm that optimizes the search in some kD tree. Since all my work so far has been more concerned about the _physics_ and the scientific results, I undoubtedly have some bad habits - more so because my coding is my own, and not really teamwork. I have mostly used C since it is very straightforward and \"what you write is what you get\" - no need for fancy abstractions. However, I have recently switched to C++ since I'd like to learn more about the power that comes with abstraction, and it's pretty C-like (syntax-wise at least). How do I teach myself to code in a good, abstract way like a graduate in computer science? I know my code is efficient, but I want it to be _elegant_ as well, and readable. Keep in mind that I don't have time to read several 1000-page tomes about abstract programming. I need to spend time on actual, physics related research (my supervisor would laugh at me if he knew I spent time thinking about how to program elegantly). How do I assess if my work is also good from a programmer's perspective?"}
{"_id": "69043", "title": "Android development & hardware testing - Which handsets & tests? What are the best options/deals?", "text": "I'm quite new to Android development. I spent a few weeks, doing tutorials and developping simple apps. Now, I'm focusing on all the test aspects. I have done Junit tests before so I thought it would be OK but now I'm slightly worried about the test coverage required. First, how to test with hardware with that many different devices?? I though I would just buy one but now I'm not so sure. There are so many handsets and they are so different! hardware feature missing, different resolutions, different lib version, etc Have you guys got statistics about which handset sell the best per country? So that we can just buy the 2,3 most representative phones? Is there any developer deals where you buy 3 phones + 1 contract for a reasonable price (I'm in the UK btw). Also, to go back to emulator tests, is there a way to kind of convert a famous handset into the corresponding AVD? Is there some nice free test infrastructure available that make multi-AVDs, multi-config, multi-projects test easier? Now I know most of the programs such as adb,android,emulator, etc... Still will probably need to write some python scripts which integrate them all.. Anyway, I'm slightly puzzled here so any pointer, any comment about your own android test strategy would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance Mikael"}
{"_id": "159111", "title": "How should a website validate a users mailing address?", "text": "This is for a site that relies on shipping items via UPS or FedEx. I know there is software out there that does it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coding_Accuracy_Support_System), but if you are trying to build your own solution for a simple website."}
{"_id": "154345", "title": "Business Analyst role in development process", "text": "I work as a business analyst and I currently oversee much of the development efforts of an internal project. I'm responsible for the requirements, specs, and overall testing. I work closely with the developers (onshore and offshore). The offshore team produces all of the reports. Version 1.0 had a 9 month development cycle and I had about 4-5 months to test all the reports. There was the usual back and forth to get the implementation right. Version 2.0 had a much shorter development cycle (3 months). I received the first version of the reports about 3 weeks ago and noticed a lot of things wrong with it. Many of the requirements were wrong and the performance of the queries was horrendous at 5x - 6x longer than it should have been. The onshore lead developer was out and did not supervise the offshore development team in generating the reports. Management knew about the performance issues and I also told them I was trying to find a way to improve performance; they did not explicitly approve of sending test queries, but they were also not concerned with the fact I was doing that. I took a look at the SQL in the reports and was able to improve performance greatly (by a factor of 6x) which is acceptable for this version. I sent the updated queries as guidelines to the offshore team and told them they should look at doing X instead of Y to improve performance and also to fix some specific logic issues. I then spoke to my managers about this because it doesn't feel right that I was developing SQL queries, but given our time crunch I saw no other way. We were able to fix the issue quite fast which I'm happy with. Current situation: the onshore managers aren't too pleased that the offshore team did not code for performance. I know there are some things I could have done better throughout this process and I do not in any way consider myself a programmer. **My question is, if an offshore team that works apart from the onshore project resources fails to deliver an acceptable release, is it appropriate to clean up their work to meet a deadline? What kind of problems could this create in the future?** Update: So far management is upset with the offshore team, but have not \"reprimanded\" me in any way, so I'm not sure in their eyes if what I did was wrong, but I think their main source of frustration was the offshore team was not able to come up with a solution and I was, especially since this sort of performance issue had come up in the past. I am not defending my actions, but I want to give context so that the picture is a little clearer. I accepted the answer that most criticizes my actions I agree it's not something that should be done by someone in my position."}
{"_id": "162293", "title": "How is the build for a msdeployment project different than a regular web application project?", "text": "In our CI environment we build all the cs projects and then build the deployment projects. The deployment projects do an extra step of compiling the aspx & ascx files and often catch errors that would normally be caught at run time. 1) Is there a name for this step or process?   2) Can I get it in the regular project builds?   3) Where can I learn about the various steps of building specifically to msbuild?      Reading the logs in verbose I'd like to have a better understanding of what is actually happening. Thank you."}
{"_id": "250863", "title": "Declaring variables in Python and PHP", "text": "The question is how to cope with absence of variable declaration in Python, PHP, and the like. In most languages there is a way to let the compiler know whether I introduce a new variable or refer to an existing one: `my` in Perl (`use strict`) or `\\newcommand` vs. `\\revewcommand` in LaTeX. This prevents from two major sources of errors and headache: (1) accidentally using the same name of a variable for two different purposes, such as in (PHP)               $v = $square * $height;     <...lots of code...>     foreach ($options as $k => $v)         echo \"For key $k the value is $v\\n\";     <...lots of code...>     echo \"The volume is $v\";      or a lot nastier (PHP)               $a = [1, 2, 3];     foreach ($a as $k => &$v)         $v++;     foreach ($a as $k => $v)         echo \"$k => $v\\n\";      (can you see a bug here? try it!); and (2) prevent from typos (PHP):               $option = 1;     $numberofelements = 1;     if ($option)     {         $numberofelenents = 2;     }     echo $numberofelements;      (can you see a bug here? PHP will execute silently). Using something like `my` (Perl)               use strict;      my $option = 1;     my $numberofelements = 1;     if ($option)     {         $numberofelenents = 2;     }     say $numberofelements;      (Perl will immediately report the bug) is a tiny effort and HUGE benefit both in debug time and (much more importantly) in losses (potentially huge) from incorrect programs. However, some languages, notably Python, PHP, and JavaScript, do not give any protection from these types of bugs. My question is how can we effectively cope with this? The only way I can foresee is to create two functions (PHP):               function a ($x)     {         if (isset ($x))             die();         else             return &$x;     }      and               function the ($x)     {         if (isset ($x))             return &$x;         else             die();     }      and use them always:               a($numberofelements) = 1;     the($numberofelenents)++;     say the($numberofelements);      but of course this is extremely cumbersome. Any better way of effectively protecting from such errors? No, \"use another language\", \"be careful and don't make errors\", and \"split your code in tiny functions\" are not good answers (the latter may protect from the errors of type 1 but not type 2)."}
{"_id": "154348", "title": "How do you balance the speed of Sprints with the customer's conservative adoption schedule?", "text": "I'd prefer to have sprints that last 3-4 weeks, but customers don't want to adopt new feature/function every 3-4 weeks. Existing customers are conservative and, once we meet their minimum bar for features and capabilities, they like to remain on a stable release for much longer than 4 weeks. Even a 3-month cycle would be pushing it for them. On the other hand, newer customers tend to have more feature requests, and are willing to follow sprints. But this willingness dissipates after we've met their bar. How do you balance the need for rapid sprints with the customer's conservative view of application change? I'm particularly interested in SaaS scenarios."}
{"_id": "159119", "title": "OAuth2 flow - does the server validate with the Auth server?", "text": "I've been reading a lot on OAuth2 trying to get my head around it, but I'm still confused about something. I understand that the client authorises with the OAuth provider (google for example) and allows the resource server to have access to the user's profile data. Then the client can send the access token to the resource server and be given back the resource. But what does not seem to be covered in any of the documentation is what happens when the client app asks the resource server for a resource and passes it the access token. Everything I have read so far states that the resource server just responds with the requested resource. But that seems like a huge hole, surely the resource server must somehow validate the access token, otherwise I could just fake up any old request and pass an old, stoken, fake, or randomly generated token and it would just accept it. Can anyone point me at a simple to follow explanation of OAuth2 because so far the ones I have read feel imcomplete. Thanks"}
{"_id": "254529", "title": "Is it better to put an event on the top object or closer to where it's local?", "text": "Take the following basic structured code for example:               class Player     {        public QuestLog QuestLog { get; set; }     }      Let us consider that \"QuestLog\" has the ability to fire off some events when things are added or removed from it. Normally, I would subscribe directly to the QuestLog, such as doing something like:               player.QuestLog.AcceptedQuest += SomeHandler      However, I want to pass in some extra context (the player object). I saw a couple options.   1. Creating a lambda handler function which can resolve an extra parameter to the handler. This works but has some quirks I don't like. I'm currently using this approach.   2. I could couple the QuestLog to a Player, passing a reference of the player it belongs to in and fire events off accordingly with it. Feels like needless coupling.   3. Expose the event on the Player object itself as well as the QuestLog and 'bubble' the event up into where the context is available, thus allowing subscriptions directly onto player. Keep in mind a player may have a few collections and a few events, so moving them all up might cause a couple dozen events to be held on one class. How is this usually handled?"}
{"_id": "125576", "title": "Why is C++ predominant in programming contests and competitions?", "text": "I understand that C++ is a very fast language, but ain't C just as fast, or faster in some cases? Then you might say that C++ has OOP, but the amount of OOP you need for most programming puzzles is not that big, and in my opinion C would be able handle that. **Here's why I am asking this** : I am very interested in programming contests and competitions, and I am used to coding in C on those. However, I noticed that the vast majority of people use C++ (e.g., 17 out of 25 finalists on Google Code Jam 2011 used it, while no one used C), so I am wondering if I am at a disadvantage going with C. Apart from the Object Orientation, what makes C++ a more suitable language for programming competitions? What are the features of the language I should learn and use to perform better on the competitions? For background, I consider myself pretty proficient in C, but I am just starting to learn C++."}
{"_id": "121058", "title": "Significance and role of Node.js in Web development", "text": "I have read that Node.js is a server-side javascript enviroment. This has put few thought and tinkers in my mind. Can we develop a complete data-drivent web application utilizing just JavaScript (along with node.js), HTML5 and CSS? Do we still need to use some server-side scripting language (e.g. C#, PHP)? In case we still need to use other scripting languages, what is node.js worth for, or useful? **NOTE:** _Pardon with my knowledge about node.js._"}
{"_id": "254524", "title": "Problem with C code. Raspberry PI, HD44780 LCD", "text": "I have been writing a program for interfacing a raspberry pi with a HD44780 LCD. The code I have wrote does not seem to initialise the display, from the datasheet as far as I can tell I am doing the correct process. I know the code is not great but I am just focusing on getting it working then tidying it up and such. This is to help me learn C. I am using the bcm2835 library from mikem. The code is as follows:               #include <stdio.h>     #include <bcm2835.h>          #define RS RPI_GPIO_P1_26 //GPIO 7     #define En RPI_GPIO_P1_24 //GPIO 8     #define D4 RPI_GPIO_P1_11 //GPIO 17     #define D5 RPI_GPIO_P1_12 //GPIO 18     #define D6 RPI_GPIO_P1_13 //GPIO 27     #define D7 RPI_GPIO_P1_15 //GPIO 22          #define FUNC_4b_2L_5X8 0x28     #define DISP_ON_CURS_ON_BLINK_OFF 0x0E     #define INC_ON_SHIFT_OFF 0x06     #define CNTRL_LINES_LOW 0xFFF8     #define CURS_LEFT 0x10     #define CURS_RIGHT 0x14     #define CLR_DISP 0x01     #define SHIFT_LEFT 0x18     #define SHIFT_RIGHT 0x1C     #define ROW_0_START 0x80     #define ROW_1_START 0xC0     #define RETURN_HOME 0x2                    void lcd_gpio_low(void)     {         bcm2835_gpio_write(RS, LOW);         bcm2835_gpio_write(En, LOW);         bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);         bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);         bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);         bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);     }          void assign_bits(uint8_t data)     {         switch(data)         {             case 0:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 1:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 2:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 3:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 4:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 5:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 6:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 7:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, LOW);                 break;                  case 8:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 9:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 10:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 11:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 12:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 13:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 14:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, LOW);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;                  case 15:                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D4, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D5, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D6, HIGH);                 bcm2835_gpio_write(D7, HIGH);                 break;         }     }          void pulse_enable_line(void)     {         bcm2835_gpio_write(En, HIGH);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(1);              bcm2835_gpio_write(En, LOW);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(1);     }          void send_nyble(uint8_t data)     {         assign_bits(data);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(10);              pulse_enable_line();     }          void send_byte(uint8_t data)     {         send_nyble(data >> 4);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(10);              send_nyble(data & 0x0F);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(10);     }          void write_inst(uint8_t data)     {         lcd_gpio_low();         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(1);         send_byte(data);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(10);     }          void clear_disp(void)     {         // Clear display         write_inst(CLR_DISP);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);     }          void write_data(uint8_t data)     {         bcm2835_gpio_write(RS, HIGH);         send_byte(data);         bcm2835_delay(5);         bcm2835_gpio_write(RS, LOW);     }          // Displays character, pass in a character      void disp_char(char *text)     {         // Set all outputs to 0         lcd_gpio_low();         // Set RS to 1         bcm2835_gpio_write(RS, HIGH);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(1);         // Set the passed in value          send_byte(*text);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);         // Set all outputs to 0         lcd_gpio_low();         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);      }                    void lcd_init(void)     {         //Set lines as outputs         bcm2835_gpio_fsel(RS, BCM2835_GPIO_FSEL_OUTP);         bcm2835_gpio_fsel(En, BCM2835_GPIO_FSEL_OUTP);         bcm2835_gpio_fsel(D4, BCM2835_GPIO_FSEL_OUTP);         bcm2835_gpio_fsel(D5, BCM2835_GPIO_FSEL_OUTP);         bcm2835_gpio_fsel(D6, BCM2835_GPIO_FSEL_OUTP);         bcm2835_gpio_fsel(D7, BCM2835_GPIO_FSEL_OUTP);              lcd_gpio_low();              bcm2835_delay(42);                   // Send function set data as 8 bits, 2 lines and 5x8         write_inst(FUNC_4b_2L_5X8);              bcm2835_delay(5);              // Send function set data as 8 bits, 2 lines and 5x8         write_inst(FUNC_4b_2L_5X8);              bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(110);              // Send function set data as 8 bits, 2 lines and 5x8         write_inst(FUNC_4b_2L_5X8);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);              // Send function set data as 8 bits, 2 lines and 5x8         write_inst(FUNC_4b_2L_5X8);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);              // Send Display control. Disp on, cursor on and blinking off         write_inst(DISP_ON_CURS_ON_BLINK_OFF);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);              // Send Entry mode set. Increment on, shift off         write_inst(INC_ON_SHIFT_OFF);         bcm2835_delayMicroseconds(40);              // Clear Display         clear_disp();     }          int main()     {         //bcm2835_set_debug(1);              if (!bcm2835_init())             return 1;              lcd_init();              write_data(0x48);              printf(\"%d\",'F');              bcm2835_delay(10000);              return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "149740", "title": "Slow if use object cross referecing", "text": "In OOP, it seems that if an object cross-references another object in its property, ultimately, if such objects are used a lot, the software at the end will be slow because of this. Is this true? If yes, can we intentionally not do this by getting things done?"}
{"_id": "190068", "title": "When to pay for C++ compilers", "text": "Recently I have began to wonder when developers should pay for compilers. Compilers come for free with most platforms or there is a free version easily obtainable. Example: OS X - GCC and Clang/LLVM come with the developer tools. No limitations here for how and what you can turn out with them. Linux - GCC and I am sure more. I dont know the current state of linux compilers. No limitations here for how and what you can turn out with them. Windows - MinGW and Microsoft does offer a free version of Visual Studio. No limitations with MinGW but I think with the free Visual Studio there are severe limitations. However, as an example, Intel produces C/C++ compilers. They are hefty in price. Educationally I think that one can get the OS X version for $49 and Windows/Linux for $129 each. They then offer a complete \"Studio\" product too. Obviously using the educational pricing there are imposed limitations. But what I am wondering is when should one really considering paying for compilers. One example I can think of is a video game. If you are using a compiler that works on the major platforms there would be no more switching tools for the platform. It seems there would be a level of ease in switching among platforms if the tools were the same. Can anyone shed some light on paying for compilers like the Intel compilers and the true cross-platform benefits one might get from using them? Does one's code become less portable even trying very hard to not do platform specific techniques?"}
{"_id": "190066", "title": "What are general best practices for plugin/extension development?", "text": "I need to correlate requirements for a plugin/extension of an application with development best practices. I thought there might be best practice advice that applies to plugins and extensions available but cannot find any literature. Of course best practices are often common sense, but my task involves applying a framework to describe design choices. If any resources specific to plugins/extensions are known that would be great. Otherwise, I would like, to at least find a well respected language agnostic list of software development principles."}
{"_id": "231956", "title": "Global request context - anti-pattern?", "text": "I was talking today to a colleague of mine about Python web frameworks and our impressions about them. I told him I think Flask having a global request smells badly and is an anti-pattern. The docs say about request context: > In contrast, during request handling, a couple of other rules exist: > >   * while a request is active, the context local objects (flask.request and > others) point to the current request. >   * any code can get hold of these objects at any time. > I think I understand the idea behind this design decision -- to make the application simpler. It's just a compromise, like in the case of Thread Locals: > Yes it is usually not such a bright idea to use thread locals. They cause > troubles for servers that are not based on the concept of threads and make > large applications harder to maintain. However Flask is just not designed > for large applications or asynchronous servers. Flask wants to make it quick > and easy to write a traditional web application. Is patching a global object with the current request information an anti- pattern? I believe it is, because it is in the view of static code analyzer a global state, though it's not. And I as a programmer will not understand how it works without reading the docs carefully. And this has consequences on tests. Isn't it a good practice to pass the request as an argument to views? I think it's more readable, explicit and easier to debug. And avoids global state."}
{"_id": "46913", "title": "Writing Acceptance test cases", "text": "We are integrating a testing process in our SCRUM process. My new role is to write acceptance tests of our web applications in order to automate them later. I have read a lot about how tests cases should be written, but none gave me practical advices to write test cases for complex web applications, and instead they threw conflicting principles that I found hard to apply:   * **Test cases should be short:** Take the example of a CMS. Short test cases are easy to maintain and to identify the inputs and outputs. But what if I want to test a long series of operations (eg. adding a document, sending a notification to another user, the other user replies, the document changes state, the user gets a notice). It rather seems to me that test cases should represent complete scenarios. But I can see how this will produce overtly complex test documents.   * **Tests should identify inputs and outputs:** : What if I have a long form with many interacting fields, with different behaviors. Do I write one test for everything, or one for each?   * **Test cases should be independent:** But how can I apply that if testing the upload operation requires that the connect operation is successful? And how does it apply to writing test cases? Should I write a test for each operation, but each test declares its dependencies, or should I rewrite the whole scenario for each test?   * **Test cases should be lightly-documented:** This principles is specific to Agile projects. So do you have any advice on how to implement this principle? Although I thought that writing acceptance test cases was going to be simple, I found myself overwhelmed by every decision I had to make (FYI: I am a developer and not a professional tester). So my main question is: What steps or advices do you have in order to write maintainable acceptance test cases for complex applications. Thank you. **Edit** : To clarify my question: I am aware that Acceptance testing should start from the requirement and regard the whole application as a black box. My question relates to the practical steps to write the testing document, identify the test cases, deal with dependencies between tests...for complex web applications"}
{"_id": "46912", "title": "Continuous integration never results in build errors", "text": "I'm working with a variety of Java EE websites which use internal libraries we've developed. For each website, we only upgrade to new versions of our internal libraries as needed, and before committing we make sure that the site compiles fine. What this means is that when TeamCity does a build of one of our sites, the site compiles fine, but later when the site is updated to the latest version of internal libraries, there might be a compile error. Is there a good way to handle this? We're not using Maven yet; would using Maven mean that our websites could automatically use the latest version of internal libraries? Thanks. **Clarification:** What we sometimes run into is this:   1. Project A depends on a library, and is currently using library version 1.0   2. Project B also depends on that library. I make changes to the library so that it is now version 1.5. Project B now uses 1.5.   3. Project A and project B have both been built just fine by the CI server (TeamCity)   4. Working on project A again, I update to 1.5 and discover that 1.5 has breaking changes in it. Is there a way for the CI server to discover these kinds of breaking changes?"}
{"_id": "21496", "title": "How to keep your third party libraries up to date?", "text": "Let's say that I have a project that depends on 10 libraries, and within my project's trunk I'm free to use any versions of those libraries. So I start with the most recent versions. Then, each of those libraries gets an update once a month (on average). Now, keeping my trunk completely up to date would require updating a library reference every three days. This is obviously too much. Even though usually version 1.2.3 is a drop-in replacement for version 1.2.2, you never _know_ without testing. Unit tests aren't enough; if it's a DB / file engine, you have to ensure that it works properly with files that were created with older versions, and maybe vice versa. If it has something to do with GUI, you have to visually inspect everything. And so on. How do you handle this? Some possible approaches:   * **If it ain't broke, don't fix it**. Stay with your current version of the library as long as _you_ don't notice anything wrong with it when used in your application, no matter how often the library vendor publishes updates. Small incremental changes are just waste.   * **Update frequently in order to keep change small.** Since you'll have to update some day in any case, it's better to update often so that you notice any problems early when they're easy to fix, instead of jumping over several versions and letting potential problems to accumulate.   * **Something in between.** Is there a sweet spot?"}
{"_id": "211608", "title": "Is it ever OK to commit non-working code?", "text": "> Is it good idea to require to commit only working code? This commit doesn't need to leave the repository in a working state as:   * ... we are in early design stages, the code is not yet stable.   * ... you are the sole developer on the project. You know why things aren't working. Furthermore, you are not stopping anyone's work by committing broken code.   * ... the code currently doesn't work. We are going to make a big change to it. Let's commit, in order to have a point to revert to if things get ugly.   * ... the chain is long, no trouble if broken code exists in the local branch. I.e.     1. local files     2. staging area     3. commits in local branch     4. commits in remote personal feature branch     5. merge with remote `develop` branch     6. merge with remote `master` branch     7. merge with remote `release` branch   * ... commit early,commit often. So in the above-linked question, the majority of answers say that committing not-compilable code is no problem in local and feature branches. **Why?** What is the value of a broken commit? * * * Added: There are a couple of highly-voted comments, saying that on a local brach one can do whatever one wants. However, I am not interested in the technical side of the question. Rather, I would like to learn the best practices - the habits, that people who have worked many years in the industry, have hound most productive. * * * I am amazed at the vast amount of great answers! They lead me to the conclusion that I am not adept enough at using **branches** to organize my code."}
{"_id": "211607", "title": "Using Autoincrement Primary keys as Foreign Keys", "text": "When creating a table, there is an option for us to set the numeric primary key as autoincrement where it's value increases whenever a new data in inserted. This primary number can be used for setting the relationship of a table where it is assigned as a foreign key to that table. So my question is it a good practice for us to use the autoincrement numeric primary as foreign key or should we use the programmatically generated code. **e.g.** for a table 'products' we have the fields 'id' (autoincrement primary key), 'productCode' (program generated unique item code. field property also set to unique), 'Description'. and we are going to create a relationship to a transactions table. What field should be used as foreign key, the 'autoid' or the product code?"}
{"_id": "158444", "title": "Is blogging a good platform to get into freelancing from a completely unrelated job?", "text": "**Quick background** \\- I work in a bank doing financial modelling where I need to do some domain specific programming, but otherwise it's only statistics and presentations. **Situation** \\- Software has always been my first \"love\", but due to various circumstances I did not take up a career in the software industry. I have a very good graduate degree in Theoretical Computer Science - so I understand what it means when people talk about traveling salesmen, lambda calculus or whether P=NP (examples). I intend to get into programming full time in the next couple of years. **Chosen path**   1. Get really good at something - I have chosen the HTML5 \"ecosystem\" comprising HTML, Javascript and CSS. Over the years I have programmed in C, Haskell, Erlang, C++, Javascript, Common Lisp, Basic and Logo but not sufficiently proficient in any of them.   2. Establish myself as an expert in the community primarily through blogging and participating in projects / forums / events related to the same. Then I can try and establish some freelancing business or convince a startup to hire me. **Questions** \\- Are there any well known examples of people who have taken a similar path after working in a completely unrelated field for years (7, in my case)? Am I completely delusional and two years is too short a time?"}
{"_id": "17582", "title": "What's the web framework to use on a front-end web application?", "text": "What do you consider a good client web framework to use on interface business application? jQuery? YUI!? Another? Some plugins useful? The application will be use mostly internally replacing a desktop application for data entry and lots of queries/views."}
{"_id": "158447", "title": "why control + alt + delete couldn't be intercepted by any application", "text": "The secure attention key is designed to make login spoofing impossible, as the kernel will suspend any program, including those masquerading as the computer's login process, before starting a trustable login operation. Why other programs cannot simulate `control + alt + del`? What is stay behind this?"}
{"_id": "163658", "title": "What's the next level of abstraction?", "text": "Since programming languages initially only used lines of code executed sequentially, and it evolved into including functions which were one of the first levels of abstraction, and then classes and objects were created to abstract it even further; what is the next level of abstraction? What's even more abstract than classes or is there any yet?"}
{"_id": "168607", "title": "Develop open-source library and get donations for it?", "text": "I have a nice open-source library in mind to write. It would take a few months to develop properly and I would need to stop supporting myself though other projects. Could anybody share experiences and best-known-methods to get some sort of financial support through the Internet whilst developing free, open- source code? Or, phrased more directly: which systems apart from \"PayPal\" are in use by programmers to get donations for open-source code? Provide a list. Optionally, sort the list as if it were a recommendation in descending order of positive experiences made with each system. Optionally, share a tidbit of your success story getting this kind of financial support. Optionally: give an indication as to how much money can be made that way? (I heard Vim's author could support himself just with donations at some point?)"}
{"_id": "168606", "title": "Why am I seeing so many instantiable classes without state?", "text": "I'm seeing a lot of instantiable classes in the C++ and Java world that don't have any state. I really can't figure out why people do that, they could just use a namespace with free functions in C++, or a class with a private constructor and only static methods in Java. The only benefit I can think of is that you don't have to change most of your code if you later decide that you want a different implementation in certain situations. But isn't that a case of premature design? It could be turned into a class later, when/if it becomes appropriate. Am I getting this wrong? Is it not OOP if I don't put everything into objects (i.e. instantiated classes)? Then why are there so many utility namespaces and classes in the standard libraries of C++ and Java? **Update:** I've certainly seen a lot examples of this in my previous jobs, but I'm struggling to find open source examples, so maybe it's not that common after all. Still, I'm wondering why people do it, and how common it is."}
{"_id": "163651", "title": "LGPL License in commercial application", "text": "I have searched around but I don't seem to be able to get a clear answer on my questions that I understand. I want to use the Xuggler library in my application, which is licensed either GPL or LGPL depending on whether I compile it myself. I don't intend to edit the library If I compile it myself and thus get a LGPL version of the library, can I use it in a commercial application without having to distribute the source code of my application? Furthermore, do I have to give my application the LGPL license as well? What other problems might using this library give me?"}
{"_id": "158994", "title": "How often should we launch SONAR analysis?", "text": "I successfully installed Jenkins and then Sonar to go with continuous integration. The firsts reports are not that good in term of rules violations ,comments, code duplication ... I set Jenkins to get java classes, run tests with cobertura and then launch SONAR once every night during week days. I then asked the developers to put some time and effort in correcting rules violations, and try to re-factor the code using SONAR data. However it seems they would like to see their corrections in SONAR almost as they commit them. So I got different choices :   * Let the SONAR launch to once a day   * Allow developers to launch sonar task themselves   * Decrease Jenkins time between builds (like every 1h) 2nd solution : I'm afraid of the number of snapshot that will appear in the SONAR history and the fact that it'll make the \"compare since last build\" a lot less useful. 3rd solution : A bit of the 2nd solutions problems adding that Jenkins will have a lot of builds, most of them irrelevant. What are your experiences on these problems? Thanks"}
{"_id": "96935", "title": "What is a Munger", "text": "I am reading the source code of ObjectListView and there is a Munger class. What is Munger? Does Munger mean anything general in programming jargon? Afaik, the Munger in the source code wraps the methods to do map string to object properties through Reflection (C#). Thanks."}
{"_id": "96933", "title": "Why did Git get so much hype? ...while others don't?", "text": "In the recent years, the hype around Git raised greatly. Everybody knows about Git, nobody knows about alternatives. Other ones like Mercurial seem to be unnoticed. Both have been released in 2005, and provide similar functionalities. Moreover, Mercurial is generally considered to be easier to use, more intuitive and had for a long time better UIs. Therefore, it could be assumed that this would be a popular alternative, especially for those new to distributed version-control. Yet, it seems unknown to most people, unlike Git which succeeded pretty well. The point of this post is to try to understand this phenomenon better. How comes Git gets all part of the cake? Did they somehow use better marketing? Is it because its community is more ...ahem ...\"verbose\"? Is it because of the \"Linus\" name? Is it because of its geeky image? What's your opinion?"}
{"_id": "236362", "title": "How to secure a Django application's source code?", "text": "I have developed a Django application for a company. Now I am about to ship it to my customer. After reading through online articles and books, I understood that securing the source code of any web application is a challenge. Is there anything that I can think to secure my Django applications's source code? This will be my last chance to try. My customer has servers that runs on Windows and Linux. Please help. Efforts made till date:   I tried different techniques like variable mapping in the code, url designs and even folder protection in the server. Now the latest attempt is that I created a VM of my application with username and password being private. This VM will be maintained by me. This approach has its own pros and cons. Any suggestions? Saas is not a solution to my problem as my application should be deployed at the customer's server and served through intranet."}
{"_id": "234851", "title": "Securing PHP source code from illegal copy", "text": "my IT boss asks what is the best way to secure the PHP source code against illegal copy of the code once it is deployed to clients. Is there a PHP compiler that will make the final codes unreadable? By the way, i work for a software development company using PHP."}
{"_id": "164929", "title": "Is the singleton pattern prone to thread safety problems?", "text": "Is the singleton pattern prone to thread safety problems? If so, what are the best methods to work around them?"}
{"_id": "120902", "title": "Career change: from programming into more human-oriented area", "text": "I have been a software developer for approximately 9 years, starting with part-time work during my graduation year at uni. During these years I worked for number of companies, sometimes changing places twice or three times a year. They say it takes 10 years to reach 'expert' level, and while I don't think I am an expert by any measure and I have certainly met lots of people who are more knowledgeable, smarter and more focused than I am, I think I can safely say that I had my fair share of the whole programming trade and would like to move on to something else. I still enjoy programming, discovering new techniques and learning new technologies, although it got kind of repetitive - I can already see patterns in this process. It was fun to crack open things like say python, node.js, HTML5 etc. but after some time it lost its appeal. Psychology and behaviour was always something I was interested in, especially the practical, applicable bits of it. Recently I've been to some communication skills training and I realised that I have been missing out on the great deal of fun stuff - how people work and communicate, especially in subconscious, non-verbal area. Currently I am thinking of making a career change - ideally to move somewhere my technical skill would still be beneficial in some shape or form, or at least could serve as a bridge while I am transitioning there, you know, the whole gradual, bit-by-bit approach versus swim-or-drown one. I would like to hear your thoughts on this matter and to learn from you what are the possible transitions I can take."}
{"_id": "179164", "title": "Where to put custom validation while using Entity Framework", "text": "I am using MVC3 and Enitty Framework 4 with the Database first approach. It created the context template with its own validation for the fields based on the database. My question is where should I put the other validation based on the buisness logic. Should I put it in the Context.tt file, should it go in the controller or should it go in a seperate model?"}
{"_id": "179165", "title": "Best way to throw exception and avoid code duplication", "text": "I am currently writing code and want to make sure all the params that get passed to a function/method are valid. Since I am writing in PHP I don't have access to all the facilities of other languages like C, C++ or Java to check for parameters values and types               public function inscriptionExists($sectionId, $userId) // PHP      vs.               public boolean inscriptionExists(int sectionId, int userId) // Java      So I have to rely on exceptions if I want to make sure that my params are both integers. Since I have a lot of places where I need to check for param validity, what would be the best way to create a validation/exception machine and avoid code duplication? I was thinking on a static factory (since I don't want to pass it to all of my classes) with a signature like:               public static function factory ($value, $valueType, $exceptionType = 'InvalidArgumentException');      Which would then call the right sub process to validate based on the type. Am I on the right way, or am I going completely off the road and overthinking my problem?"}
{"_id": "90194", "title": "What to do about team member who threatens to leave all the time and is difficult to work with?", "text": "I work in a small development group with 3 developers. We are loosely managed and have no structure to the team. There is no designated team leader and the manager is fairly hands off. The Senior developer has been with the company for 4 years, in that time he has had a huge hand in setting up systems and keeping them running. He is not a very good developer but is a great cowboy coder and understands the network in a way I never could. He has taken the role of \"lead developer\" and \"systems architect\" because he has seniority and feels he is better at his job than the rest of us. My problem is that he threatens to quit all the time. Yesterday he informed me that in 6 weeks he will move up another level in the 401k vesting program and is planning to leave after that. When I asked him why, he said that it is because our manager (a man) and the team (the team being me) are \u201cdemasculating\u201d him. He feels that he \"deserves\" to have been made the development manager based on his seniority. He doesn't like me because I keep pushing for things like bug/issue tracking software and because I am good at my job. Last time he threatened to quit I took him seriously and started to plan my work around him leaving. Then he changed his mind and told me that the work I was doing was his responsibility. He lost his temper with me and tensions ran really high for a while. Here are some of the different ways I have approached the situation:   1. Just do what he asks: This lowers tensions but then nothing gets done and the users get upset.   2. Take control and get stuff done: This keeps the users happy but then he gets angry at me and shuts down, he won't talk to me or work with me to get the things done that only he knows about. He won't give me access to the systems I need to get into to do it myself.   3. Work more closely with higher management: He has no respect for higher management and they don't want him to leave the company so they coddle him. One option I haven\u2019t moved forward with yet is to leave the company: I haven't been there a year yet and don't like the idea of leaving. Overall the job meets most of my requirements in a position. Ideas? Suggestions? Conversations? Options I haven\u2019t considered? **Update 5/11/2012:**   I finally decided to leave. It was a good decision. Between the original post and now he got better but still was not what I consider to be a good developer, much less good management material. I respect him for his knowledge but am glad I don't need to work with him any more."}
{"_id": "176803", "title": "How to organize my site's file system properly?", "text": "Doing some reading on Stack Overflow, I've found a lot of information suggesting that proper organization of a file system is crucial to a well- written web app. One of the key pieces of evidence is high-frequency references to \"separation of concerns\" in questions related to keeping programs organized. Now, I've found some information on organizing file systems (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) from 2004. It raises only two concerns: first, the standard's a bit dated, so I believe it may be possible to do better given the changes in technology over the past 8 years; second, and most important, my application is very small compared to an entire Linux distro. I think that the file system should be organized very differently because of that. Here's what I'm looking at, currently:               /backup     /databases     /scripts     /www        /www/dev         /www/dev/login.php         /www/dev/router.php         /www/dev/admin pages (php files)         /www/dev/sites           /www/dev/sites/content types (php/html files)           /www/dev/sites/static pages (php/html files)           /www/dev/sites/modules             /www/dev/sites/modules/module-specific-media           /www/dev/sites/includes           /www/dev/sites/css           /www/dev/sites/media       /www/production         /www/production/login.php         /www/production/router.php         /www/production/admin pages (php files)         /www/production/sites            /www/production/sites/content types (php/html files; not a directory)           /www/production/sites/static pages (php/html files; not a directory)           /www/production/sites/modules             /www/production/sites/modules/module-specific-media           /www/production/sites/includes           /www/production/sites/css           /www/production/sites/media"}
{"_id": "176804", "title": "How can QA prevent defects?", "text": "Also according to **Software Testing By Srinisvasan Desikan, Gopalaswamy Ramesh** or ISTQB text books. Quality assurance is e.g. reviewing products, inspections, walkthroughs to see if all standards are being followed. This is preventive activity. I cannot see how this can be preventive? * * * For the references: > defect prevention (Quality Assurance) **Software Testing By Srinisvasan Desikan, Gopalaswamy Ramesh** > Quality Assurance (QA) tries to go one step further. Instead of > concentrating on post- facto defect detection and correction, it focusses on > the prevention of defects from the very start. Managing Global Software Projects - Page 110 > QA deals with prevention of defects in the product being developed. Software Testing and Quality Assurance"}
{"_id": "54045", "title": "Do I need to go back and learn HTML 5 and CSS 3?", "text": "I have been working on learning as much as I can before starting college to change my career, and I noticed on the w3schools site that there is now html and html 5, css and css 3. Do I need to go back and learn those newer languages before moving onto PHP and MySQL?"}
{"_id": "229632", "title": "How do I document roles and responsiblites", "text": "When working on a requirements document, how do I capture system roles and responsibilities? E.g. \"I'm a manager and I will only use the system to generate reports on xyz\". I was looking for an example online but couldn't find one."}
{"_id": "256014", "title": "How to plan development", "text": "I am a self-taught 17 year old who knows Java and C# as well as I can, be learning them for over a year but I have never coded anything so therefor no experience.Me and my friend are working together on a program, I am coding the server and he is coding the client but my mind just goes blank, I have no idea where to start apart from maybe outlining some of the class structures, for example a package of packets that will be sent back and forth. How do I start to get my head around this? My mind just goes blank, I don't know what to do? I am desperate now as I want to get on in developing this but have no idea where to start, any tips will be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "256016", "title": "Capturing window the GDI way, question about SaveCapturedBitmap();", "text": "I want to make a program that takes a screenshot of the desktop window including overlapping windows and then scans the bitmap for certain pixels at specific locations to identify. I read this is how you do it from: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5051/Various-methods-for-capturing-the- screen               Void CaptureScreen()     {         int nScreenWidth = GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN);         int nScreenHeight = GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN);         HWND hDesktopWnd = GetDesktopWindow();         HDC hDesktopDC = GetDC(hDesktopWnd);         HDC hCaptureDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hDesktopDC);         HBITMAP hCaptureBitmap =CreateCompatibleBitmap(hDesktopDC,                                  nScreenWidth, nScreenHeight);         SelectObject(hCaptureDC,hCaptureBitmap);          BitBlt(hCaptureDC,0,0,nScreenWidth,nScreenHeight,                hDesktopDC,0,0,SRCCOPY|CAPTUREBLT);          SaveCapturedBitmap(hCaptureBitmap); //Place holder - Put your code                                     //here to save the captured image to disk         ReleaseDC(hDesktopWnd,hDesktopDC);         DeleteDC(hCaptureDC);         DeleteObject(hCaptureBitmap);     }      I dont understand what it means by placeholder at SaveCapturedBitmap and I don't know what SaveCapturedBitmap does, can't find anything searching for it at msdn.."}
{"_id": "256017", "title": "Need help identifying a league scheduling algorithm", "text": "I am trying to create a sports league scheduler. I am having trouble identifying an algorithm to help me efficiently fill in each slot. Sample data to build the schedule would be:   1. 10 teams   2. Each team plays each other 1 time (45 total games required)   3. Each team plays no more than 1 time per day   4. In my testing I am using 9 days with 5 slots per day. **Combo Table (contains 45 combos)** ID Team1ID Team2ID bitAssigned **Schedule Table (contains 45 time slots)** scheduleID homeTeamID awayTeamID GameDate GameTime Right now my existing procedures fill about 90% of the slots leaving 10% of my slots empty to a scheduling conflict based off the rules above. I loop over my schedule table in ascending date/time order. My first slot could be Saturday at 8am. I query a list of teams that haven't been scheduled yet. I then make an array of possible combinations of those teams. I then use that array to pull 1 random record from my combinations table from of combinations that haven't been scheduled yet and I place those teams on the schedule. I then set that combination as used. I repeat the loop over and over again and each time my list of available teams gets smaller and my array as a result is smaller too. I'm finding that some days go fine, and on other days my final last 2 remaining teams have already played in a previous week so they are not added to the schedule again. The only thing I havent tried yet is to \"reset\" the conflict days and try them over again to see if I get better placements. Does anyone have any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "256010", "title": "Converting VB6 app to ... what?", "text": "I've been tasked with getting rid of a VB6 application. It's heavy with data input forms, tabs, modal dialogs etc. I see my options for the UI as:   1. rewrite as-is in Winforms    2. rewrite as-is in WPF    3. redesign UI completely and write in WinRT XAML    4. redesign as web app using ASP.Net MVC    5. redesign as web app using Angular All of these except Winforms will require much of a learning curve for me and my team, but I assume Wnforms is dead. What are others doing and why?"}
{"_id": "256011", "title": "Function pointers to object instance returned by function pointer", "text": "Im new to c++. I want to make a std::map with strings of get-method names mapped their respective get-method. These are to be looped over and present the value obtained by the get-methodtogether with the method name. I will loop over several instances of the type A. I have found that boost/function is very useful for storing the get-methods in A. However, A also has an instance of type B, with its own get-methods. How do I access the get-method in B? Here is my current code (The line `mapping[\"B_Nine\"] = &B::(&A::getB)::nine` is wrong, but my best guess so far)...               #include <boost/function.hpp>     #include <boost/bind.hpp>     #include <boost/ref.hpp>     #include <iostream>     #include <map>     #include <string>     #include <functional>          class B     {     public:         B();         ~B();         int nine() {return 9;}     };          B::B()     {          }          B::~B()     {          }          class A      {     public:         A();         ~A();        int one () {return 1;}        int two () {return 2;}        B getB() {return b;}        B b;     };          A::A()     {           b = B();     }          A::~A()     {          }               typedef std::map<std::string,boost::function<int (A*)>> str_func_map;          int main()     {              str_func_map mapping;              mapping[\"One\"] = &A::one;         mapping[\"Two\"] = &A::two;          mapping[\"B_Nine\"] = &B::(&A::getB)::nine //This line is wrong - how should                                                    //it be done correctly??              A* a = new A();              for (str_func_map::iterator i = mapping.begin(); i != mapping.end(); i++)         {             std::cout<< i->first << std::endl;             std::cout<< (i->second)(a) << std::endl;         }              system(\"pause\");     }"}
{"_id": "256012", "title": "Using the same keyboard shortcuts in every editor", "text": "I want to configure each IDEs/editor I use to have exactly the same key shortcuts. By default each IDE/editor has slightly different set of key bindings - even simple \"close current tab\" is bound either to CTRL+W or CTRL+F4. Is there already a set of config files (one for each IDE, editor, etc) with the same key binding configured?"}
{"_id": "122507", "title": "Where does jQuery fit-in with frameworks like JavaScriptMVC, BackboneJS, SproutCore and Knockout?", "text": "I have been happily using **JQuery** for the last 2 years and have been quite sucessful creating some really cool functionality with it...so I am very comfortable with it. I also beleive the future of the web will continue on the current client-side path. **However...** The next challenge seems to be coming in the form of various controller frameworks: **KnockoutJS**, **BackboneJS**, **SproutCore**, **JavaScriptMVC** (the list goes on). Additonally, there are some great **AMD Loader** tools for use like **RequireJS** or **LabJS** etc. However, jQuery now has `define` and `then` capabilities baked-in. **It's getting harder-and-harder to keep track of it all...**   And now, my task seems to be to evaluate/decide-on a strategic-direction for using some form of either an MVC or MVVM framework client-side...but I have so many questions.   * Where does **JQuery** **fit-in** with the various controller-frameworks mentioned above?   * Is **JQuery** **used alongside** each or do some of them have their own ' **JQuery**-styled version' baked-in?   * Are tools like **RequireJS** **still needed** if you implement one of the various controller-frameworks mentioned above?   * Does the `define` and `then` capabilities baked-into **JQuery** **now supercede** the AMD Loader mentioned above?   * Which one seems most modular? (see notes below) **NOTES:**   One thing I don't want in any future-framework is the requirement of having to take-in vast amounts of functionality that I don't use. Meaning, I would rather use a framework that is truly modular. For example, to use jQuery UI you have to take-in a lot other core libraries that you might not actually use. I will be experimenting with each one, but some REAL feedback would be great. I've seen some 'similar' questions, but none have really answered the above skew. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "256018", "title": "Workflow for obfuscated PHP code with PHP protect", "text": "Let's say I have a database-driven web application written in PHP. After obfuscating the code with PHP protect it will be copied to a web hosting server. And here is the question. What is the workflow of a programmer when there is a bug in an application and he needs to edit the PHP code to repair it? It's clear, that he can't debug (and edit) directly the obfuscated code."}
{"_id": "155908", "title": "Mobile cross-platform SDK for computationally intensive apps", "text": "I am aware of the PhoneGap toolkit for creating mobile applications for virtually all mobile platforms with a significant market share. However, the code in PhoneGap that is shared between the different platforms is written in JavaScript. While I like JS, I think it's hardly appropriate for computationally intensive tasks. The situation with Titanium is pretty much the same. **So, is there any way that I can create a cross-platform mobile app that has the computationally intensive code shared between the platforms?** Some context: Obviously, I don't want to implement the time consuming algorithm in many different languages, since this violates DRY, increases the chance for bugs slipping in at least one version and require boilerplate code to work. I've looked at Xamarin's MonoTouch and Mono for Android tools, but while they cover iOS and Android, they're not nearly as versatile for deployment as PhoneGap. On the other hand, (IMO) the statically typed nature of C# is more suited for intense computation than JS. Are there any other SDK/tools appropriate for the task that I don't know about or a point about the mentioned above that I've missed? Also, uploading data to a web service for processing is not an option, because of the traffic required."}
{"_id": "155909", "title": "memory and time intensive php task", "text": "Sorry if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find anything usable. I'm working on a project for a client and currently I have to loop through the users table which is about 3000 records and still growing. I have to do some calculations on a nightly basis which I am going to be using cron/php. The calculations script uses about 3.5mb of memory and takes about 1 second to run. When loading individual users my current php setup handles this fine, but if I try and loop through the user list my php script execution time runs out. I've read after doing some searching that I can make the page reload itself after each user calculation and just keep my previous place in the loop and this sounds like a good idea, but I wanted to hear some opinions from others that have handled similar situations and how you handled these types of tasks. Thanks."}
{"_id": "237365", "title": "Why some Javascript code needs to be written in different tags and not embedded within the same", "text": "When I was using the modernizr file, I came across this problem where in I need to source a file and call the script.               <script src=\"js/modernizr-min.js\"></script>     <script>     if (!Modernizr.input.placeholder){           $('input[placeholder], textarea[placeholder]').placeholder();     }     </script>        Why is that the script does not work when embedded within the same script tag. I have across this situation many time, but failed to understand what causes this problem. Is that the scripts have to be written in two different script tags to make it work or else what fails it."}
{"_id": "20363", "title": "What is the most inspiring speech from a developer you ever watched?", "text": "_Please put a direct link to it._ **Required** :   * Still available online (please put a direct link to it)   * Must be a speech from a current or former developer   * Speaker's popularity doesn't matter   * Target audience should be other developers   * It is not required that the topic is programming (the task). I'm more looking for subject generally developing here within P.SE rather than SO.   * Explain why it was inspiring _(please, native english speaker, edit my question)_"}
{"_id": "155906", "title": "Can Windows Phone development be done remotely?", "text": "Can Window Phone 7 or 8 development be done remotely, such as on an Amazon EC2 instance or a rented VPS running Windows, via using an RDP or VNC client from a PC running Linux (or OS X, or maybe even an iPad)?"}
{"_id": "143622", "title": "What are the best practices for phasing out obsolete code?", "text": "I have the need to phase out an obsolete method. I am aware of the `[Obsolete]` attribute. Does Microsoft have a recommended best practice guide for doing this? Here's my current plan: A. I do not want to create a new assembly because developers would have to add a new reference to their projects and I expect to get a lot of grief from my boss and co-workers if they must do this. We also do not maintain multiple assembly versions. We only use the latest version. Changing this practice would require changing our deployment process which is a big issue (have to teach people how to do things with TFS instead of FinalBuilder and get them to give up FinalBuilder) B. Mark the old method obsolete. C. Because the implementation is changing (not the method signature), I need to rename the method rather than create an overload. So, to make users aware of the proper method I plan to add a message to the `[Obsolete]` attribute. This part bothers me, because the only change I'm making is decoupling the method from the connection string. But, because I'm not adding a new assembly, I see no way around this. Result:               [Obsolete(\"Please don't use this anymore because it does not implement IMyDbProvider.  Use XXX instead.\")];             /// <summary>             ///              /// </summary>             /// <param name=\"settingName\"></param>             /// <returns></returns>             public static Dictionary<string, Setting> ReadSettings(string settingName)             {                 return ReadSettings(settingName, SomeGeneralClass.ConnectionString);             }                  public Dictionary<string, Setting> ReadSettings2(string settingName)             {                 return ReadSettings(settingName);// IMyDbProvider.ConnectionString private member added to class.  Probably have to make this an instance method.             }"}
{"_id": "155905", "title": "WWDC 2012 announced features on iOS 5?", "text": "I am relatively new to iOS development, so after watching a bunch of WWDC videos announcing new awesome features for the iPhone SDK, I still got a few questions regarding their support for older devices. Specifically:   * Do the new compiler features (such as literals support, auto-synthesize, etc) require iOS 6 on the target device, or can the new style code be deployed to iOS 5 devices?   * Auto-layout for iOS, same question. Will it only be supported on iOS 6, or 5 as well? If it's 6 only, what kind of fallback are we expected to implement? Would really appreciate if someone could clarify this for me, as I'm thinking about rewriting my older unfinished project and I would love to use some of that improved SDK functionality."}
{"_id": "216379", "title": "Turning a problem into a data", "text": "OK, I have an app that I'm creating but I'm just really not sure about how to approach the problem. The idea is fairly simple. I'm just not sure how to wrap it in a data model (or even if I should). TBH I feel like I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be. How it works. The app will have circles along the top in a row that need to be connected to circles along the bottom in a row. 10 circles at the top. 10 at the bottom. One connection per pair of dots. Anyway, I can get the dots to connect I'm just not sure how to wrap it in a data model so that I can analyse what has been connected and see if it is right or not. The circles will be questions and answers. I can make an array of `question` objects with a `question` and `answer` properties. I can then display these as the dot pairs. I'm just not sure how to record which questions have been connected to which answers. It is valid for a user to connect a wrong answer as they all get checked at the end. I was thinking of using SpriteKit but this isn't a restriction. I could use UIKit or something else. TBH, this question is fairly language free as I'm just after a way of modelling it."}
{"_id": "243129", "title": "How to present a stable data model in a public API that allows internal data structures to be changed without breaking the public view of the data?", "text": "I am in the process of developing an application that allows users to write C# scripts. These scripts allow users to call selected methods and to access and manipulate data in a document. This works well, however, in the development version, scripts access the document's (internal) data structures directly. This means that if we were to change the internal data model/structure, there is a good chance that someone's script will no longer compile. We obviously want to prevent this breaking change from happening, but still want to allow the user to write sensible C# code (whilst not restricting how we develop our internal data model as a result). We therefore need to decouple our scripting API and its data structures from our internal methods and data structures. We've a few ideas as to how we might allow the user to access a what is effectively a stable public version of the document's internal data*, but I wanted to throw the question out there to someone who might have some real experience of this problem. NB our internal document's data structure is quite complex and it could be quite difficult to wrap. We know we want to expose as little as possible in our public API, especially as once it's out there, it's out there for good. Can anyone help?   * How do scripting languages / APIs decouple their public API and data structures from their internal data structures?    * Is there no real alternative to having to write a complex interaction layer?  If we need to do this, what's a good approach or pattern for wrapping complex data structures that include nested objects, including collections? I've looked at the API facade pattern, which looks like it's trying to address these kinds of issues, but are there alternatives? *One idea is to build a data facade that is kept stable across versions of our application. The facade exposes a set of facade data objects that are used in the script code. These maintain backwards compatibility and wrap access to our internal document's data model."}
{"_id": "216371", "title": "Should you always pass the bare minimum data needed into a function in cases like this", "text": "Let's say I have a function `IsAdmin` that checks whether a user is an admin. Let's also say that the admin checking is done by matching user id, name and password against some sort of rule (not important). In my head there are then two possible function signatures for this:               public bool IsAdmin(User user);     public bool IsAdmin(int id, string name, string password);      I most often go for the second type of signature, thinking that:   * The function signature gives the reader a lot more info   * The logic contained inside the function doesn't have to know about the `User` class   * It usually results in slightly less code inside the function However I sometimes question this approach, and also realize that at some point it would become unwieldy. If for example a function would map between ten different object fields into a resulting bool I would obviously send in the entire object. But apart from a stark example like that I can't see a reason to pass in the actual object. I would appreciate any arguments for either style, as well as any general observations you might offer. I program in both object oriented and functional styles, so the question should be seen as regarding any and all idioms."}
{"_id": "216370", "title": "What are some Java patterns well-suited for fast, algorithmic coding?", "text": "I'm in college, and I've recently started competing in programming competitions with my friends. These competitions involve solving algorithmic problems quickly. It's a lot of fun, but there's one problem: I'm forced to use Java. (My teammates use Java.) **Background:** I'm a self-taught JavaScript programmer, and it hurts to write Java code. I find it very verbose and inflexible, and I feel slowed down when having to declare types and decide which of the eighty list data structure to use. I'm also frustrated about the lack of functional programming features and how verbose using regular expressions, arrays, and dictionaries are. As an example, consider the problem of finding the length of the longest string of consecutive characters in a given string. So the string `XX22BBBBccXX222` would give `4`, for the string of four `B`s. In Java, I'd have to loop through and manually count characters and manually keep track of the maximum. (That's at least as far as I'm aware -- I'm not as familiar with Java as I am with JavaScript.) In JavaScript, I'd find it like this:               var max = Math.max.apply(Math, str.match(/(.)\\1*/g).map(function (s) { return s.length; }));      Much quicker and simpler, in my book. **The question:** what are some Java features, techniques, or patterns well- suited for fast, algorithmic coding?"}
{"_id": "243121", "title": "Is there a Design Pattern for preventing dangling references?", "text": "I was thinking about a design for custom handles. The thought is to prevent clients from copying around large objects. Now a regular handle class would probably suffice for that, but it doesn't solve the \"dangling reference problem\"; If a client has multiple handles of the same object and deletes the object via one of them, all the others would be invalid, but not know it, so the client could write or read parts of the memory he shouldn't have access to. _Is there a design pattern to prevent this from happening?_ * * * Two ideas:   1. An observer-like pattern where the destructor of an object would notify all handles.   2. \"Handle handles\" (does such a thing even exist?). All the handles don't really point to the object, but to another handle. When the object gets destroyed, this \"master-handle\" invalidates itself and therefore all that point to it."}
{"_id": "126088", "title": "Storing documents in Database vs CMS in JSF, Seam, Hibernate application on cloud", "text": "I am about to start with an application using JSF 2, Seam 3, Hibernate and Hibernate search with the following characteristics:   * Users will be uploading documents (pdf, doc).   * There can be millions of documents.   * The application will be deployed in the cloud. Here are my questions:   1. What will be the best place to store the documents: a database or a content management system (CMS)?   2. If choosing a database, should I go with document oriented db?   3. Is there any integration between Hibernate and document oriented databases or CMS to fetch the documents and index it in Lucene? Basically I am looking for an approach that will be good for storing documents in the cloud, easy accessibility of documents for indexing and keeping performance in mind. Any suggestions / experience or link on this will be good."}
{"_id": "148900", "title": "Should I follow an open source project's documentation patterns even if they are bad?", "text": "I've considered making modules and the like for various languages and other open source things. Where documentation is not specified but rather is communal de facto standard or entirely ad hoc; should I try to improve from that standard in my code if it is not in-line with what I've learned to be good documentation from reputable sources ( _Code Complete_ et al)? Or should I maintain consistency over all, regardless of quality?"}
{"_id": "126080", "title": "How to write a command interpreter/parser?", "text": "Problem: Run commands in the form of a string.   * command example: `/user/files/ list all;` equivalent to: `/user/files/ ls -la;`   * another one: `post tw fb \"HOW DO YOU STOP THE TICKLE MONSTER?;\"` equivalent to: `post -tf \"HOW DO YOU STOP THE TICKLE MONSTER?;\"` Current solution:               tokenize string(string, array);          switch(first item in array) {         case \"command\":             if ( argument1 > stuff) {                // do the actual work;             }     }      The problems I see in this solution are:   * No error checking other than nested ifs-else inside each case. The script becomes very big and hard to mantain.   * Commands and responses are hardcoded.   * No way of knowing if flags are correct or missing parameters.   * Lack of intelligence to suggest \"you might wanted to run $command\". And the last thing I can't address is synonyms in different encodings, example:               case command:     case command_in_hebrew:         do stuff;     break;      The last one might be trivial, but well, what I want to see is the solid fundations of this kind of program. I'm currently programming this in PHP but might do it in PERL."}
{"_id": "126085", "title": "Forward and backward fourier transform image in java", "text": "Can anyone suggest a java library to perform forward and backward Fourier transform on images? Either RGB or gray-scale or binary , that doesn't matter since I've converted the image to all these ;) I do searched but most of the image processing libraries like marvin, JAI etc don't have Fourier transform. So I thought anyone who have done this earlier could suggest me one"}
{"_id": "126084", "title": "How to : Nextag and such other dynamic data pulling website", "text": "Yesterday, I came across Nextag which is a website for comparing prices of various products from different retailers. **Is this site automated?** Can the process of data pulling from various sites can be automated for comparison with each other. I tried understanding a hell lot, but could not realize this fact and now think that they ought to be manually managed because on every other retailer site, the product name was different and it was very hard to recognize a similarity for a specific product. I have made such a system in which one can add a product and then add the respective retailers and their pricess. Every thing is manual in here. Today, I will be entering the data into the system, but thought it would be better to know if there is a way to automate this thing. Or I am going the right way as there can't be an automation for such system, because the data has no similarities."}
{"_id": "255924", "title": "Design RESTful API to update a resource that belong to another resource", "text": "I'm developing an ASP.NET MVC Web Api with C#. I have the following two resources. Group:               public class Group     {         public int GroupId { get; set; }         public string GroupName { get; set; }              public User Owner { get; set; }              public List<User> Members { get; set; }              public List<Message> Messages { get; set; }     }      Message:               public class Message     {         public int MessageId { get; set; }         public string Body { get; set; }         public DateTime DateSent { get; set; }         public Group ToGroup { get; set; }              public User Sender { get; set; }         public User Recipient { get; set; }              public List<Link> Links { get; set; }     }      And I also have these two URIs. This one to expose `Message` resource:               \"api/messages/{id}\"      And this one to expose Group's Messages:               \"api/groups/{groupId}/messages/{messageId}\"      I use the second one to access directly to a group's message (I don't know if it is a good design). Now, I'm thinking which URI do I have to use to add a new message for a group. I think that I have to use the second URI to get a group's messages. And the first URI to add new messages. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "179788", "title": "Confusion of the \"stack\" in Assembly-level programming", "text": "What is the \"stack\" exactly? I've read articles, tried comprehending it through my understanding, experience, and educated guessing of programming and computers, but I'm a bit perplexed here. The \"stack\" is a region in RAM? Or is it some other space I'm uncertain of here? The processor pushes bits through registers on to the stack in RAM, or do I have it wrong here? Also, the processor moves the bits from the RAM to the register to \"process\" it, such as maybe a compare, arithmetic, etc. But what actually can help understand, in some visual or verbal description or both, of how to implement the idea of a \"stack\" here? Is the stack actually the same in terminology with a \"machine stack\" meaning it's in RAM? * * * I know what a software stack is. I know about LIFO, FIFO, etc. I just want to gain a better understanding of the assembly level stack, what it is, where it is, how exactly it works, etc..."}
{"_id": "156452", "title": "Storing IEnumerable as instance variable - is it a code smell to expect it to change?", "text": "I have something that works like a fixed size list - it's actually called `FixedSizeStack<T>` in my program. I will use it to represent the X last occured events. This event list will then be examined by different observers, and if they detect patterns they will trigger some action. Naturally, I see no reason for them to know of `FixedSizeStack<T>` \\- to me it makes sense to present it to the actions as IEnumerable. I am considering giving them this event list in their constructors, then calling something like `PreviewEvent(Event e);` and `EventOccured();` and they will iterate over this IEnumerable. I feel a little queasy enumerating this IEnumerable multiple times, and making it part of the contract that the enumeration changes - do you think this is a reasonable method?"}
{"_id": "129305", "title": "Should I put calculation logic in an Entity or in the Business Layer?", "text": "Recently I was faced a question about whether a simple calculation should be put in the Entity layer, or should the Entity be pure for just storing the raw data and leave the calculation logics in the business layer. So my question is whether it is sensible to encapsulate simple calculations in the properties in an entity class?"}
{"_id": "161721", "title": "What is the difference (if any) between (null != $object) and ($object != null) when using PHP?", "text": "I am used to Java and therefore always think conditions are interpreted from left to right, i.e. there is a vital difference in `null != $obj` and `$obj != null` Now this seems not to be the case with PHP. Can I do something wrong in PHP when I always start with `null` on the left- hand side? Can I keep my behaviour from Java or do I need to train myself to do something else when dealing with PHP conditions?"}
{"_id": "129309", "title": "What languages are the kids of today actually programming in? Does anyone have real data?", "text": "Back in the 80s colleges were teaching Pascal because it is easy to learn, while myself and many others like me were learning BASIC because it was not only easy to learn but accessible and also fashionable (for an extremely liberal definition of fashion) It has just occurred to me that empirical data on the actual programming languages kids are choosing to use should be a good indicator of which language would be the ideal first choice for educators. Please note that this question is not \"what do you think is a good programming language for kids?\""}
{"_id": "50631", "title": "Where do you optimize?", "text": "There are two areas to possibly optimize for speed in:   * Where the most time is spent   * The code that is called the most Which is the best place to start optimizing? Often code that is called the most often has low execution times already. Do you optimize the slower, less called areas or spend time optimizing the faster, heavily used areas?"}
{"_id": "1338", "title": "Worst coding standard you've ever had to follow?", "text": "Have you ever had to work to coding standards that:   * Greatly decreased your productivity?   * Were originally included for good reasons but were kept long after the original concern became irrelevant?   * Were in a list so long that it was impossible to remember them all?   * Made you think the author was just trying to leave their mark rather than encouraging good coding practice?   * You had no idea why they were included? If so, what is your least favorite rule and why? * * * Some examples here"}
{"_id": "242744", "title": "Is it good to review programs with seniors and boss even if it is working fine?", "text": "In my company, before delivery of any project, my boss asks my seniors to review programs written by me or other team members or sometimes boss also sits with us for review. I think it is a good way of getting knowledge, but sometimes when programs are working fine, they don't work same after review and I need to look again into my program. They says that review helps to optimize program and query execution, but can we prefer optimization over actual functioning of program?"}
{"_id": "59270", "title": "Are \"customizable\" programming languages more widely used than not as \"customizable\" ones?", "text": "Are languages which are very customizable, like Python (see for example goto in Python, lightweight Python type-checking) and Javascript (see jQuery for one example of this) more widely used than languages which cannot be customized very much?"}
{"_id": "150859", "title": "What is a widely accepted term for a string variable that would probably contain a file path and file name?", "text": "For functions that need to index files in a directory and rename them FileName0001, FileName0002, etc... I often need to write a function that splits the file name from the file path and rename the file. When I put the file name and file path back together, I don't have a very good name for the variable that contains both of them and I usually just wind up concatenating them every time I want to use them (usually using them as parameters for functions labeled either filename or filepath) so I never really know what I'm doing until I notice a lot of files being written in the same directory as my binaries. Anyway, what do I call a file name and a file path? I don't want to call it File, because that usually means the binary information behind the file. I don't want to call it URI because that usually means I've got some sort of protocol, which I don't. I just want a good way to denote \"c:\\somedir\\somedir\\somedir\\somefile.txt\" so as to deconfuse this mess I've just realized I'm in. * * * Please don't just list your personal preference. I think an excellent answer should \"'site its sources\". (as in, provide a link to a repository with a good example of the code being used as I described)"}
{"_id": "150858", "title": "Approach on working with many programmers on one module/feature", "text": "How can 2 or more developers code a certain feature/module of a software? Let's assume that the module is big and feature rich. How would they prevent each other from overlapping their code? Say, we have the same method but is implemented in a different way. Do you think it might be better to have one focused at a specific feature only? Is a version control system like Git would help solve the problem? Is it correct that it allows developers to have these \"branches\" and then merge it later on? What's your take on this?"}
{"_id": "50639", "title": "What applications for self-adaptive programs can you think of?", "text": "Hey everyone! By self-adaptive programs, I mean the programs which are able to adapt to specific situations. For example they are able to repair them selves or are able to change their behavior according to user's needs. Obviously they need some sort of A.I modules like Intelligent Agents or so on. My question is, what applications for these programs can you think of/exist? An obvious destructive (!) application could be a malicious program/virus which can change its strategy in attacking its victim based on some factors. The reason for this question is that I want to do some research on this topic as a university project and I want to know about different stuff and uses that could come into mind! Any response is greatly appreciated! :-)"}
{"_id": "221245", "title": "Which is better: for valid buffer length?", "text": "This is a basic question. But, I think understanding this would be helpful to play with buffers in 'C'. Thanks. ## Scenario Just a sample snippet               char *test_buff = (char *) malloc(512); //allocate 512 bytes in heap memory.     bzero(test_buff, 512); //Reset buffer instead of Junk/garbage.     /* random code here to fill-in the buffer called \"test_buff\"...*/     ...     /* Send data to another host/system [this doesn't matter though]      * using buffer \"test_buff\".      */      sendto(sock_descriptor, test_buff /*buffer to send data*/, sizeof(*test_buff) ,...,...);  // option-1     /* OR */      sendto(sock_descriptor, test_buff /*buffer to send data*/, 512 /* actual malloced size*/ ,...,...); // option-2      ## Question   1. Which one of the two is better [between option-1/option-2] way of using buffer? I hope option-1 makes sense, as it has length/size of valid data bytes of send buffer or \"test_buff\" in this case. Thanks for your time and input."}
{"_id": "119397", "title": "What and all the areas of Linux a PHP developer should know about? (Like just commands of it or something advanced)", "text": "I've developed a website using PHP but I implemented it on Windows OS and hosted it on Windows server. I just searched the PHP job market to know the on-going technology requirement and to keep my knowledge up-to-date accordingly with the job market. I see more are asking for LAMP stack. I understand the sort of skills required for a developer in PHP and MySQL. But coming to the Linux and Apache what kind of the skills exactly companies expect from a developer? On what should I be focusing in case of Linux, Apache whilst developing my website using these LAMP stack? I am going to develop a new website and want it to be using LAMP. But I want to know what difference it makes? Why LAMP stack got more demand in the job market compared to WAMP ? Edit: Sorry I thought my question is creating confusion ... so I put my question in different words as What and all the areas of a Linux a PHP developer should know about? (Like just commands of it or something advanced) Note: I am Linux newbie"}
{"_id": "119394", "title": "Is it wise to ask about design decisions made on a product during an interview?", "text": "I've been thinking about interview questions lately and I've been reflecting on bad interview experiences I've had in the past. One of particular note is where I had asked the interviewer why the team chose to use EJB 3 over Spring in their product. The interviewer pretty much tore my face off, yelling \"Because Spring is not the be all and end all of Java software development, do you want this job or not?\". In response to this, I told him that this probably wasn't the job for me and I promptly walked out of the interview. I was informed at the beginning of the interview that the company had high staff turnover, the product they were working was initially created in Modula-3 then ported to Perl and finally to Java. I was handed a 10 page booklet of technical questions covering Java, EJB, SQL and JDBC and I was asked questions about the technology stacks I've worked with. When prompted to ask questions, I felt it was reasonable to ask them about their technology stack and and get reasonable answers back, not to send the interviewer into flames. **Question:** Is it a good idea to probe on architectural choices taken in an interview? If not, why? From my own point of view, an interview is a two-way process. If the interviewers are testing me on my technical skills, I've got every right to ask them the same questions to: 1) Figure out what their mindset and attitudes towards developing software are. 2) Determine if their approach is in line with how I would approach problems of that kind. It's possible that the interviewer who got angry had poor interviewing skills and forgot that an interview is a two-way exchange. If I was asked this, I would have given a reasonable answer, but I certainly wouldn't have tried to put an interviewee in a state of meek capitulation where the head just bobs up and down with no conversation."}
{"_id": "50749", "title": "anyone familiar with these analytic questions?", "text": "So...my recruiter just called me to confirm my interview on Thurs. He also mentioned that I am going to be asked to answer for two analytic questions. He gave me a little bit about those questions.   1. There are eight balls. One of them is defective.    2. There are three incandescent light bulbs inside a room, but switches are placed outside. These are all he said. I think that these are not completed question. Anyone knows what questions these are?? Does my question belong to programmer.stackexchange.com? I thought it would because it is related to interview questions."}
{"_id": "66657", "title": "Syntax extension in weakly typed lanuages?", "text": "I like languages that give me the ability to extend the syntax of the language. At the same time, all the languages that I know will let me extend the syntax have relatively heavy type systems. Are there lighter-weight languages that allow the same sort of syntax extensibility? Or does flexible syntax require that you would be able to define new data types (and operations on those types)? Basically, I want the syntactic flexibility of Haskell without Haskell's type system. Is there a way to get this, or does that syntactic flexibility require the assistance of a type system? Examples of languages where I know the type system can be used to create new syntax are Haskell, C++, and Python. Possible examples of where syntax could be modified without a strong type system maybe Scheme, Forth, and Common Lisp. However, while I can see how to overload operators in the first list to generate new syntactic constructs, I don't know enough to know how to do it in the second list. Maybe the answer is for me to go read up on macros in Common Lisp. What I would like is a language with the conceptual simplicity of C, Lua or Erlang, but with the ability to create additional syntactic operators as desired. TLDR - basic summary of question: Is it possible for weakly typed language to support syntax extension, or does the ability to extend the syntax of a language (from within the language itself) require a type system to implement?"}
{"_id": "66652", "title": "Working as a contractor--questions part II", "text": "This is a follow-up to this discussion: Working as a contractor--questions I still would like to get more info on the following points, when working as a contractor as opposed to direct employee:   * Housing: for short-term contracts (let's say 6 months or less) that are not in your home area, where and how do you search for short-term, flexible housing? Especially since an employer would typically want you to start immediately, so you don't have the time to go out and explore. Also, would you typically look for furnished apartments because the cost transporting your own furniture for a few months is not justified?   * Work hours and pay: are contractors more strictly supervised (as far as getting specified work done) because they get paid by the hour? There are also supposed to get overtime pay (at a higher rate) if they work more than 40 hours per week, does this really happen? Or do they work unpaid extra hours just like many regular employees?   * Some potential employers have mentioned paying the \"per diem\", which is essentially a non-taxable daily allowance, which is supposed to be used for living expenses. This money gets subtracted from you per-hour rate, but the advantage is that you pay less tax. However, from the information I have seen, the per diem can only be paid if you maintain a \"permanent\" residence you intend to return to. Is this checked in practice, and if yes, how?"}
{"_id": "145502", "title": "Will adopting a DVCS mean there will be a positive impact on development speed?", "text": "I was wondering how safe is to say that \u2014because developers are free to version and have better and more organic workflows\u2014 code will be delivered faster. A big factor here is team size of course, and I'd say the team is big enough to see this benefit (10-15 core devs, and maybe 5 to 15 more contributors to the common codebase). **Edit** : How development speed can be affected:   * Merging hell could be one of the cases that slow down people (DVCSs are much better at merging).    * Better workflows that ~~can pretty much only work~~ work more naturally on a DVCS **Integration Manager** ![Integration Manager](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IxVc7.png) **Dictator & Lieutenants** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/63H5O.png)   * Ability to use version control (i.e. committing) without inflicting potentially unstable changes to everybody  I just want to know if anyone has seen such things help the overall speed of teams/projects as a whole."}
{"_id": "178787", "title": "Can I (reasonably) refuse to sign an NDA for pro bono work?", "text": "A friend of mine (let's call him _Joe_ ) is working on a promising project, and has asked me for help. As a matter of friendship I agreed (orally) not to discuss the details, but now he has a potential investor who wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Since thus far all my work has been pro bono I told Joe I am not comfortable putting myself under documented legal obligation without some kind of compensation for the risk. (It needn't be strictly financial. I would accept a small ownership stake or possibly even just guaranteed credits in the code and documentation.) Is my request reasonable, or am I just introducing unnecessary complexity?"}
{"_id": "145500", "title": "My colleague doesn't understand things he works with. What to do?", "text": "I've spent 3 days debugging one very obscure bug in a library made by my colleague, this bug happens very infrequently. After all I found that this bug happens due to cross-thread access to an object without any lock. Actually this is not a first bug of this kind, there were similar bugs before. He just runs his unit tests, and if something fails puts somewhere a lock. And if nothing fails, ughm, then his code is perfect. It seems he has no idea about threading safety. I'm 100% sure there are many similar bugs that just haven't surfaced yet. It seems PM doesn't understand threading stuff too.   The problem is, he works much more time in the company than I do. Anyway, I can't just say \"this guy is incompetent in this area\", because this always shows you as a \"bad team player\", etc.   Any ideas, what I can do?"}
{"_id": "145505", "title": "Don't structure data all the way down", "text": "In the blog post Don't structure data all the way down, the author discusses different ways to structure a circle datatype and how to implement the parameters to a Radius function.               area({circle, {point,0,0}, 17.4})      Kind of messy. What about a function to build a circle for us? Then we could do this:               area(make_circle(0, 0, 17.4))      We could also have a shorter version of make_circle that only takes a radius, defaulting the center point to 0,0. Okay, stop, we're engineering ourselves to death. All we need is a simple function to compute the area of a circle:               area(R) -> math:pi() * R * R.      He is talking about the functions in the Erlang language, which is functional and not object oriented (OO). My question is, does this argument hold for OO languages, and does it hold for functional languages?"}
{"_id": "110872", "title": "Release Planning in Agile/Extreme Programming", "text": "I've been studying couple of books of how to exactly implement agile. I am confused about release planning. Our application is a Insurance System consisting of different modules (Quoting, Policy Management, Claims management etc). During the first phase we are just planning to release Quoting and we are estimating approximately 4 months for it. Now my question is, do we have to identify user stories for overall system (including all the other modules) first before start working on our first release (i.e quoting)? Or is release planning is an iterative process too?"}
{"_id": "189250", "title": "Flow Chart - While Loops process", "text": "I'm having difficulties understanding whether or not this is the right process to use for a flow chart which illustrates the processes involved in an algorithm. For this, assume the following: A 1D `X = [0, 1, 2, 3,........]` data block is split into 2D blocks:               x = {[0 1]}          {[2 3]}      For each of these blocks, the total energy is counted, if the total energy is less than the threshold value the block is removed. If the energy is higher, then it is kept and the algorithm moves onto the next block. Here's my flow-chart: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/B2mcq.jpg) Now the way I look at this is that, I start the algorithm split the signal into frames, calculate the energy for each signal (2D) if the energy < theshold remove the frame AND THEN end the algorithm. If the energy is higher than the threshold, then, it looks that the signal block (2D) is passed back into the algorithm, the energy for the signal is re- calculated. My questions:- 1) Should there be a while loop that says \"If at the end of the block\"? 2) Should I specify that blocks of `x[n][n]` could be passed into the calculate energy? Alternatively, does this look fine and I should apply some description of how the process works in written text? Any help would be greatly appreciated :)"}
{"_id": "78952", "title": "Scanning a billion rows in an ultra-fast database", "text": "## Background A local database contains nearly 1.3 billion unique rows. Each row is indirectly associated with a specific latitude and longitude (location). Each row has a date stamp. ## Use Case The problem is as follows:   1. The user sets a starting/ending date, and a range of values (e.g., 100 to 105).   2. The system gathers all the rows that match the given date, grouped by location.   3. The system performs determines the locations that, during those dates, have a statistical likelihood of falling into the given range of values.   4. The system displays all matching locations to the user. This is a problem of speed and scale. ## Question What is the least expensive solution architecture you can imagine that would allow such a system to retrieve results for users in under five seconds? ## Current System The environment is currently:   * PostgreSQL 8.4 (upgrade is possible; switching databases is not an option)   * R and PL/R   * XFS   * WD VelociRaptor   * 8 GB RAM (Corsair G.Skill; 1.3 GHz)   * Quad core GenuineIntel 7 (2.8 GHz)   * Ubuntu 10.10 Hardware upgrades are acceptable. ## Update - Database Structure The billions of rows are in a table resembling:               id | taken | location_id | category | value1 | value2 | value3        * id - Primary key   * taken - Date assigned to the row   * location_id - Reference to the latitude/longitude   * category - A description of the data   * value1 .. 3 - The other values the user can query The `taken` column is typically consecutive dates per `location_id`, sometimes each location has data from 1800 to 2010 (about 77,000 dates, many of them duplicated as each location has data in the same date range). There are seven categories and the tables are already split by category (using child tables). Each category contains ~190 million rows. In the near future, the number of rows per category will exceed a billion. There are approximately 20,000 locations and 70,000 cities. The locations are correlated to city by latitude and longitude. Assigning each location to a particular city means finding the city's boundaries, which is not a trivial task. ## Ideas Some ideas I have include:   * Find a cloud service to host the database.   * Create an SSD raid stripe (great video).   * Create a table that amalgamates all the locations by city (pre-calculation). Thank you!"}
{"_id": "115257", "title": "After 15 years of programming, how does one get out of it?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  I no longer want to be a developer This might seem like an odd question, but I think I've just about had it with programming. I used to enjoy back when I was 11 years old (I'm 31 now), and I actually got to be really great at it at an early age. In high school, I had already knew c++, design patterns and all sorts of things and was building fairly sophisticated stuff. Then web development became all the rage, and like a lot of people, I sort of got sucked into that - to the point where that's all anyone really wanted. To be honest, I've never liked it. After learning so many technologies and languages year after year, I'm a little sick of relearning the same sorts of things that I knew how to do before but differently. I am sick of learning the new bugs, design errors and idiosyncrasies of the new technologies over and over again. Sometimes it seems like we are regressing rather than progressing. The amount of languages you need to know just to get a web application up and running now is just disgusting. It's way more bloated then it should be. Things have just gotten a lot more complex now too. While I appreciate a lot of the frameworks out today that _try_ to make your life easier, it seems that debugging and knowing what's going on has become a lot harder. I've never come across more bugs in other people's code than I have in the last 1.5 years in my entire 15 years of programming. It is annoying, it sucks out a ton of my energy. I am just not passionate about this anymore. Learning and working with the technologies for their own sake is just a means to an end - it's not fun. I actually don't care about any of it anymore. Despite how simple things some things have gotten, it is amazing how trivial problems blow up into solutions that require 4 or 8 hours to fix... and these things have nothing to do with your actual application requirements - it's just fixing crap that other people got wrong. We're also in a era where frameworks and libraries need to hype their tools and they need to prove to you how easy they are compared to things that have come before... but they almost always make you jump through a billion hoops to doing something complicated. By the time you figure out how to achieve the complex requirements in the new tool, you've lost a lot of time that was more- or-less equivalent to the time it would have taken in the old technology. So what was the point of learning the new technology in the first place? While the old technology required more code, it was more generic and flexible. You could argue that learning the new quirks for these complex requirements build intellectual capital that can be used later, but by the time you need to utilize this knowledge a second time, there comes yet another new technology that makes this knowledge obsolete. With websites basically needing to be super rich client applications now, these beasts have become extremely hard to test. No longer can you just write the bulk of your code in a single language, and getting amazingly good at Javascript seems like a monumental task all on its own. We are in the era of mass specialization now, and that doesn't interest me because any projects I want to work on, I have to do by myself. How do I get out? I have decided that I'm just done with it all. I really want out. I have just invested so much time and energy into being a great software developer for most of my life, it seems sad that I'm basically going to throw it all away. **EDIT** After reading some of the comments, I think these are also problems. 1) Burnout. Regardless of how long I take a break, I have no interest in working on programming stuff when I need to start back again. 2) Not caring about writing \"good\" software anymore like I used to. You don't get rewarded for doing a job better than 99% of the programmers out there. Nobody cares if you do it well either. It's actually kind of amazing that skill and craftsmanship and care is not a value to most people in this industry. 3) Boredom. Writing mindless queries, business logic and pumping data to a view for so many years is just not interesting. After working on 1500-2000 database tables and the application logic that worked on them, I don't find any of this kind of stuff interesting or challenging. 4) Producing value. Nothing I work on really matters. Sure, it matters for the clients, but it doesn't really matter to me."}
{"_id": "8340", "title": "Need advice on making the transition from a .NET development shop to a Java shop", "text": "For almost all of my professional development career (15+ years) I have been working on or managing development teams that primarily use Microsoft technologies (VB6, ASP, ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server, etc.) I've recently been approached by a company that seems very interested in me for a job managing their development team, which happens to be a Java shop. Although I did recently take some college level Java courses, it was the typical programming academic environment, that is, lots of theory,excessive focus on syntax, and mostly console type apps, with only a trivial app at the end of the course with anything remotely resembling a modern Windowed UI. I'm not worried at all about the syntax elements, picking up new programming languages isn't all that difficult and C# is so similar to Java that I think it should be fairly seamless in that respect. However, thinking back over all the tools, frameworks and platform specific knowledge, lingo that I have amassed for MS development, I worry about how quickly I can get up to speed enough to be productive in that environment and earn the respect I will need to manage effectively a team of veteran programmers, who potentially may have biases against MS developers. Have any of you made the transition from a .NET shop to a Java shop? If so what were the toughest aspects of making the shift? Also, did you find it harder to get street cred on the team based on your experience in another platform? For those of you who already work on a Java team, how would you feel if a veteran .NET programmer/manager took over the reins of the team? What could that person do or say to make you feel more comfortable trusting them?"}
{"_id": "115992", "title": "How do you keep track of your past projects?", "text": "After having hard time trying to remember details of my past projects several years ago I was wondering how programmers usually keep track of that? This kind of information comes handy with job interviews etc. Do you write down technologies used, challenges faced etc to some kind of \"jumbo CV\"? Or do you just trust your memory?"}
{"_id": "119641", "title": "Objective-C As A First OOP Language?", "text": "I am just finishing the second semester of my CS degree. So far I learned C, all the fundamental algorithms and data structures (e.g., searching, sorting, linked lists, heaps, hash tables, trees, graphs, etc). Next year we'll start with OOP, using either Java or C++. Recently I got some ideas for some iPhone apps and got itchy to start working on them. However I heard some bad things about Objectice-C in the past, so I am wondering if learning it as my first OOP language could be a problem. Not to mention that I think it will be hard to find books/online courses that teach basic OOP concepts using Objective-C to illustrate the concepts (as opposed to books using Java or C++, which are plenty), so this could be another problem. **In summary** : should I start learning Objective-C and OOP concepts right now by my own, or wait one more semester until I learn Java/C++ at university and then jump into Objective-C? **Update** : For those interested in getting started with OOP via Objective-C I just found some nice tutorials inside Apple's Developer Library -> http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/OOP_ObjC/Introduction/Introduction.html"}
{"_id": "119642", "title": "How to appear very professional on my first freelance project?", "text": "I need some help on appearing very professional on my first freelance project. How / What should you do to achieve this? * * * **Background** : I started as a full time web developer 18 months ago, two promotions later I am now a senior software engineer. I've never had any problems with designing / developing / coding a complicated system. I thought I could use some help for Christmas and I started bidding for a project and now I have one - from a very reputable lawyers association in London. _I have no problem dealing with the actual implementation of the system, but I have no idea how to appear professional throughout the whole process._ **About the project** : This lawyers association are starting a distant training courses and in addition to having a website to show off all their clients etc, they want a students area where their students would log in, download course materials allocated to them etc.. and an admin section where they assign courses to students / create new ones / upload materials etc.. * * * ## Questions breakdown: 1) How should I start with the requirement gathering? Is using scrum a good idea, or should I use something like Volere Template - and what should I do with it? should I submit a copy to the client etc.. 2) How often should I meet the client? Would once a fortnight would be good? 3) What are the processes / protocols that I need to follow so that they would be satisfied with me and think that I am very professional 4) How much should I charge for the product? 5) How should I get a quote / contract / receipt for the whole project? **6) What are the steps that professional freelancers go through, during the life cycle of a project?** * * * **My Research so far** Looking at How much should I charge doesn't help.. I live in London, zone 1, though I have no idea how much a project of this size would cost. Help on this would be appreciated. How to be professional articles talks about the work / time management etc and not the actual process, what would real people do etc.. it's like academia theory, but not practical. * * * If this needs revising, please let me know, do not close it because of whatever reason, I will edit the question or details to fit the needs. Thanks for reading a lengthy question."}
{"_id": "119647", "title": "What modern alternatives to Numerical Recipes exist?", "text": "In the past, the Numerical Recipes book was considered the gold standard reference for numerical algorithms. The earliest Fortran Edition was followed by editions in C and C++ and others, bringing it then more up-to-date. Through these, it provided reference code for the state-of-the-art algorithms of the day. Older editions are available online for free nowadays. Unfortunately, I think it is now mostly useful only as a historic tome. The \"software engineering\" practices seem to me to be outdated, and the actual content hasn't kept pace with the literature. What similarly comprehensive yet approachable references should the modern programmer look at instead?"}
{"_id": "212326", "title": "Why does HashMap allow only one null key?", "text": "A `HashMap` allows only one `null` key. Is it because it allows only unique keys? Or is there another reason?"}
{"_id": "157096", "title": "What is the rationale behind entering email twice for registration?", "text": "Many web sites ask users to enter their email address twice, sometimes taking the trouble to disable copy-pasting. What is the logic behind this? Is this e.g. a security measure?"}
{"_id": "142995", "title": "Is there a resource that explains the benefits of layered programming?", "text": "Let's say we have a winform application with a buttonclick event. The buttonclick handles everything from the UI configuration to the database call and data manipulation. So you end up with a method that is 100's of lines of code long. Outside the fact that this code can't be considered test-able for various reasons, this style of programming is fragile to change. I can talk bout OO, Anti-patterns, etc. The problem is that any distinct topic I can dream up requires a great deal of explanation to understand the potential benefits. Outside of finding a new job ( **lots** of businesses program this way), how can I teach these kinds of developers how to write better code? Obviously we can't sit around a round table and discuss pro's and con's all day due to time constraints and real work that has to be done. Although, training and intense training is the only thing I can think of to fix these problems. Not to say I write perfect code, I most certainly do not. I do believe there are certain best practices that should be followed as a rule E.G. OO in the context of .NET. The most common excuse I hear is \"we can't write code fast enough if we do it like that\"."}
{"_id": "127065", "title": "Looking for a distributed locking pattern", "text": "I need to come up with a custom recursive object locking mechanism\\pattern for a distributed system in C#. Essentially, I have a multi-node system. Each node has **exclusive write** permissions over _n_ -number pieces of state. The same state is also available in **read-only** form on _at least one_ other node. Some writes/updates must be atomic across all nodes, while other updates will eventually become consistent thru background replication processes, queues, etc... For the atomic updates I'm looking for a pattern or samples that efficiently allow me to mark an object as locked for **writes** which I can then distribute, commit, rollback, etc... Since the system has high-levels of concurrency, I'm assuming I'll need to be able to stack-up locks which will either timeout or be unrolled once the locks are released. The transaction or messaging pieces are not the focus of this question, but I've provided them for some extra context. With that said, feel free to articulate what messages you think would be needed if you like. Here is a vague sample of what I was envisioning although I'm open to any new ideas aside from implementing whole new products               thing.AquireLock(LockLevel.Write);          //Do work          thing.ReleaseLock();      I was thinking of using extension methods, which might look something like this               public static void AquireLock(this IThing instance, TupleLockLevel lockLevel)     {          //TODO: Add aquisition wait, retry, recursion count, timeout support, etc...           //TODO: Disallow read lock requests if the 'thing' is already write locked         //TODO: Throw exception when aquisition fails         instance.Lock = lockLevel;     }          public static void ReleaseLock(this IThing instance)     {         instance.Lock = TupleLockLevel.None;     }      To clarify a couple details...   * All communications are TCP/IP using a binary request/response protocol   * There are no intermediary technologies such as queues or databases   * There is no central master node. In this case, the locking arrangement is defined by the initiator of the lock and the partner which will honour the request with some form of timeout to govern its behaviour Anyone have any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "214443", "title": "How to implement gestures to a toolbar made from custom view in Android or is it recommended approach?", "text": "I would like to develop a re-usable component of horizontal Slidable tool bar. I would like to try to develop a custom view instead of ActionBar.   My Custom-View extends VieGroup contains and custom image button class as child views. The custom-view contains multiple tool buttons. Is it recommended approach please? or do we have any better approach without using ActionBar. Minimum android version should be 4.0 and target is 4.x and one of the screen resolution is 480X640 in 4.7 inches screen. The re-usable toolbar would be used in different screens/views with in same and multiple apps. I understand that Action bar comes with many standard features of a tool bar including various gesture features."}
{"_id": "223081", "title": "Algorithm for pinning joints for use with inverse kinematics", "text": "I'm part of the development team for a 2D animation program. One of the key features of the program is the ability to pose figures using Inverse Kinematics. Although we have that part down, we need to be able to pin joints in their place so moving another joint won't move the pinned one, or any past it. This is currently working for single joint pinning with the current algorithm we're using. However it's a necessity for us to be able to pin multiple joints at once and the algorithm we're using just isn't designed to work with it, and everyone on the team is stumped as to a solution. Are there any algorithms out there for joint pinning for use with inverse kinematics, while keeping in mind that it will have to work for any kind of non-closed figure?"}
{"_id": "214449", "title": "Strategy for code review before merge to master from feature branches", "text": "Me and my team use feature branches (with git). I'm wondering which is the best strategy for code review before merge to master.   1. I checkout a new branch from master, lets call it fb_#1   2. I commit a few times and than want to merge it back to master   3. Before I merge someone is supposed to make a code review Now there are 2 possibilities: 1st   1. I merge **master to fb_#1** ( **not** fb_#1 to master) to make it as up-to-date as possible   2. A teammate reviews changes between master head and fb_#1 head   3. If fb_#1 is ok we merge fb_#1 to master   4. Pros: no obsolete code in review   5. Cons: if someone else merges something between \"1.\" and \"2.\" his changes appear in the review, though they belong to another review. 2nd   1. A teammate reviews changes between the point of checkout (git merge-base master fb_#1) and fb_#1 head   2. Pros: we see exactly what was changed during working on the feature branch   3. Cons: some obsolete code may appear in the review. Which way do you think is better and **why**? Maybe there is another more suitable approach?"}
{"_id": "223086", "title": "Should if/else statements be arranged by rareness of cases or difficulty of dealing with them?", "text": "In some code I'm writing right now, I have something like this:               if (uncommon_condition) {         do_something_simple();     } else {         do();         something();         long();         and();         complicated();     }      Part of me thinks \"It's fine the way it's written. Simple cases should go first and more complicated cases should go next.\" But another part says: \"No! The `else` code should go under the `if`, because `if` is for dealing with unusual cases and `else` is for dealing with all other cases.\" Which is correct or preferable?"}
{"_id": "223085", "title": "Should I Aggregate Web API Errors?", "text": "### The Situation We are writing a REST API that performs validation up-front. The code is written such that it tries to find as many errors as possible. However, each error might correspond to a different HTTP status code. Additionally, the client (the HTML) doesn't have a convenient way to parse/display the errors. ### The Question Is it better to just throw as soon as the first error occurs? Or should we do our best to aggregate the errors somehow? By the way, there is no requirement to try to handle as many as possible at once. I am not looking for an opinion. I was curious if there was a standard practice in REST. ### Why It Matters The current code is really complex. Some validation can only be run if other pieces are valid. So there is this explicit dependency between tests. It is complex enough that it warrants using a 3rd-party library. But I would rather just eliminate the cause of the complexity if I am going to spend time on it."}
{"_id": "245219", "title": "Why do so many hashed and encrypted strings end in an equals sign?", "text": "I work in C# and MSSQL and as you'd expect I store my passwords salted and hashed. When I look at the hash stored in an nvarchar column (for example the out the box aspnet membership provider). I've always been curious why the generated Salt and Hash values always seem to end in either one or two equals signs. I've seen similar things while working with encryption algorithms, is this coincidence or is there a reason for it?"}
{"_id": "227979", "title": "Is there a name for the 'break n' construct?", "text": "In a conversation earlier this week I was discussing certain language features, and I realized I don't have a good word / phrase to describe a particular feature. Some languages, such as PHP, have a language construct which allows `break` and `continue` statements to accept a numeric parameter indicating which block should be affected. For example:               for ($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++)         for ($j = 10; $j > 0; $j--)             if ($j == $i)                  break 2;     echo $i;      Because `break 2;` causes the outer loop to break, the output is `1`. If this were `break 1;` or just `break;` the output would be `10`. C# does not have any such construct. The equivalent would something like this:               for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {         bool broken = false;         for (j = 10; j > 0; j--) {             if (j == i) {                 broken = true;                 break;             }         }         if (broken)             break;     }     Console.WriteLine(i);      But of course, this could also be accomplished using a `goto`. So my question is, what do you call this? Is there a specific name for this \"break _n_ \" construct? I'd like to be able to say \" _Language X has parametric break and continue statements_ \", or something like that."}
{"_id": "26322", "title": "What is your favourite/ideal development environment?", "text": "If you could describe your ideal development environment, what would it be? There are numerous things to take into consideration, including but not limited to:   1. Hardware   2. Software ( _Operating System of Choice_ , Paid vs. Free Software, ...)   3. Physical Environment (lighting, open-plan, location, ...)   4. An endless supply of coffee...   5. ... In other words, if you could tell your company what they could do to make your development experience there better, what would it be?"}
{"_id": "220194", "title": "When interviewing programmers, are algorithm problem solving skills relevant for a job were solving such algoritm problems isn't normally needed?", "text": "Software created for some business domains don't require heavy use of algorithm problem solving skills on the job from the programmers working there. For example, a JEE developer might most of the time only need to move data from system to system, doing data transformations, then crunch that data for various reports, designing systems with well defined boundaries etc. As a programmer you are a problem solver and you should know how to solve algorithm problems. But some programmers haven't really been doing that since school if their domain of expertise hasn't required that skill, so the skill isn't up to date. For such domains, does it still make sense to have an interview selection that requires candidates to solve algorithm problems (like math problems, string manipulations, sorting arrays etc) or should the interview be focusing only on the skills needed for the particular domain?"}
{"_id": "32577", "title": "How would you want to see software intellectual property protected?", "text": "Reading answers to this question \\- and many other discussions of software patents - it seems that most of us as programmers feel that software patents are a bad idea. At the same time we are in the group most likely to lose out if our work is copied or stolen. So what level of Intellectual Property Protection does code and software need? Is copyright sufficient? Are patents necessary? As software is neither a physical object nor simple text, should we be thinking of a third path that falls somewhere between the two? Do we need any protection at all? If you had the facility to set up the law for this, what would you choose?"}
{"_id": "63970", "title": "Unit testing best practices for a unit testing newbie", "text": "In recent years, I have only written small components for people in larger projects or small tools. I have never written a unit test and it always seems like learning how to write them and actually making one takes a lot longer than simply firing up the program and testing for real. I am just about to start a fairly large scale project that could take a few months to complete and whilst I will try to test elements as I write them (like always), I am wondering if unit testing could save me time. I was just wondering if anyone could give good advice:   1. Should I be looking at unit testing at the start of the project and possibly adopt a TDD approach.   2. Should I just write tests as I go along, after each section is complete.   3. Should I complete the project and then write unit tests at the end."}
{"_id": "190859", "title": "Algorithm Correctness and Complexity Analysis", "text": "If given an algorithm to traverse a graph (say with a breadth first traversal algorithm). And say you code it in the same manner described in this video tutorial shows (starting at 04:30 for breadth first). Then you were asked to do an Analysis of the correctness and complexity of the code. What things will you set your mind to think about in analysing the algorithm? I mean let us start with Correctness Analysis .. is it simply a matter of setting my algorithm to work on 100s and 1000s of different graphs and if the traversal of all of them is a success I say \"Yep, I have analysed this and it is correct!\" Or is there more to it? **How would you analyse the correctness of a piece of code?** Also complexity .. there are so many parameters to complexity, but I'm guessing with it being an Algorithm, it'll be useful to talk about that n metrics stuff, n to the power of 2 and so on .. that is complexity is it not? The higher the power of n, the more complex the algorithm. How can I figure out the power of n for some code? **How do you determine the complexity of an algorithm?**"}
{"_id": "199345", "title": "Looking for good practices on managing branches and developers in Git", "text": "I a little while ago I joined a new development team and recently we had our first major release. We've used Git since the beginning of the project and by now are somewhat comfortable with it. However, now that the product is in the field, we are discovering new issues/processes that need to be established. Up to this point, everything we've done was by referencing the very popular successful branching model post, which indeed has been very helpful Currently we have the following branches, all live and all being updated:   * master - only released, stable code (tagged every time release is cut)   * develop - wide open. used for long term development   * hotfix-1.0.1 - branched off master's 1.0.0 tag for small, very targetted fixes which are already lining up   * release-1.1 - This is a small incremental release that we want to push relatively soon so we wanted to manage it separately from develop and to limit scope of changes. These are the merging rules we are establishing:   1. If a code change is made in release-1.1, it must be merged up to develop.   2. If a code change is made in hotfix-1.0.1, it must be merged up to release-1.1.    3. Nobody except for one team member should merge anything into master and that merge only happens when a product version is about to be shipped. My questions are:   1. When should the merges take place? As soon as the fix is applied in lower-level branch? Or periodically in chunks of changes? If periodically, how do you typically determine merge period?   2. Who should do the merges? Person making the original code change? Or one individual who would be designated as \"Director of Git Services\"? Reason I'm asking all this is because it seems that while Git is very flexible (and I do love that part about it), it also allows you to easily shoot yourself in the foot. With just few commands, someone could easily, and hopefully not on purpose, merge new development right into hotfix that should ship out in 2 days. Many of us are new to Git and we are still feeling our way around the tool. I was thinking how my other companies/teams handled such concepts in the past and I think the biggest difference is that most other source control products that I've used, work with individual commits, so each developer could be responsible for making sure his fixes are applied to the correct places. But with Git, when one developer runs:               git checkout release-1.1     git merge hotfix-1.0.1      ... after his commit, those commands will end up merging an entire branch including code that he has never seen before and may not be the best person to resolve, if there are any conflicts."}
{"_id": "197804", "title": "Shared context: good or bad?", "text": "RSpec allows users to share context across tests / examples, which would reduce the number of code lines in my app by a significant amount. On the other hand, somehow related to the question of sharing codebase between tests, one of the reasons why I'm using Factories and not Fixtures is because I don't want tests to be dependent on code stored outside the tests. Ryan Bates explains it better: > There\u2019s a heavy dependency between the tests and the fixtures and we can > cause the tests to fail just by changing the fixtures. External dependencies > that are this strong aren\u2019t a good idea and make the tests brittle. What's best practice here, to share context across tests or to have an independent context for each test?"}
{"_id": "197806", "title": "Using node.js, how to serve content without using a framework like express?", "text": "I'm trying to learn node.js and create a web application, and although I'm doing my best to just use only node.js to create it, I'm having a very difficult time finding resources and examples that describe the process without using other frameworks or libraries. Specifically, how can I serve HTML and CSS content without using hard-coded string variables, but serving up HTML and CSS files dynamically using just node.js?"}
{"_id": "58237", "title": "Are `break` and `continue` bad programming practices?", "text": "My boss keeps mentioning nonchalantly that bad programmers use `break` and `continue` in loops. I use them all the time because they make sense; let me show you the inspiration:               function verify(object) {         if (object->value < 0) return false;         if (object->value > object->max_value) return false;         if (object->name == \"\") return false;         ...     }      The point here is that first the function checks that the conditions are correct, then executes the actual functionality. IMO same applies with loops:               while (primary_condition) {         if (loop_count > 1000) break;         if (time_exect > 3600) break;         if (this->data == \"undefined\") continue;         if (this->skip == true) continue;         ...     }      I think this makes it easier to read & debug; but I also don't see a downside. Please comment."}
{"_id": "250706", "title": "Is \"continue\" and \"break\" in loops antipattern/bad practice in Java?", "text": "I see the main purpose of `continue` in programming, it can get you out from the rest of loop steps like:               while(condition1){       ... code ...       if(!condition2){         continue;       }       ... code ...       if(condition3){         break;       }       ... code ...     }      I understand that condition2 and condition3 might depend on the inner code so it makes handy to make a separate escape route from loop step. But does it mean the code should be refactored instead building escape routes, like rethinking the original condition1? I would say if I need several `continue` and `break` parts, I feel bad about my code, usually I am working without `continue` and I don't really miss it. An another use of `continue` and `break` which I can accept is optimalization, but I still have the same feeling about it like I told above. For some reasons I have feeling \"using GOTO\". **Am I right, if I am not, why?**"}
{"_id": "165720", "title": "what are the advantages and disadvantages of putting code for an unfinished project on github", "text": "I'm stating to work on a project that I intend to release as open source via the githubs. What are the advantages of putting the code on github from the outset, as opposed to waiting until the project is in a working state before publishing. If it matters, this particular project is a C# app/service, and I have only a free github account (so I can't make it private and then pull back the covers later)"}
{"_id": "190850", "title": "Better OOP in Javascript - multiple methods or methods with options?", "text": "Let's say I have an object like this:               function Foo() {       this.parser = new DataParser();     };      Within Foo I have a method that does something like this:               Foo.prototype.getResponse = function(message, callback) {       var payload = {data: message, type: 'normal'};       var response = this.parser.parse(payload, function(data){         callback(data);       });     }      Now, let's say that somewhere else I need to call `foo.getResponse()`. Most of the time I want it to run just like this, but on occasion I need the format of the `payload` to be slightly different - let's say I need to specify a different type. Would it be better to make a different method for this slightly different kind of request, like so...               Foo.prototype.getSimilarResponse = function(message, callback) {       var payload = {data: message, type: 'other'};       var response = this.parser.parse(payload, function(data){         callback(data);       });     }      ... or to take an option on `getReponse`, like so...               Foo.prototype.getSimilarResponse = function(message, type, callback) {       var payload = {data: message, type: type};       var response = this.parser.parse(payload, function(data){         callback(data);       });     }      ... or to do something else entirely? Using a `type` option in the example above is a lot more DRY, but I don't like the way it requires the caller to know about payload type, which is really the concern of `Foo` and doesn't need to be exposed anywhere else. How would you recommend approaching a situation like the above?"}
{"_id": "98038", "title": "Training materials - books vs webcasts", "text": "I'm in process of selecting some training materials for our team. We mainly focus on C# (Silverlight and ASP.NET) I thought it would be a good idea to get some books (to keep us up to date) but also I ran into some websites that offer webcasts/workshops with annual subscriptions fees. I much prefer following some video and actually trying out some code rather than reading C# bible, hence I liked the idea. **Has anyone had any experience with those video/webcasts/workshop learning? Are there any good ones out there?**"}
{"_id": "98034", "title": "How do you assign error codes?", "text": "How, when developing a medium sized project, do you identify, create and maintain error codes? I for the life of me can't think of a simple and clean method of doing so. Some of my ideas convert class names and method name into an integer string, but that is way to long to display to the user on top of the fact that method names and class names may change (hopefully not!). Others are just using an incrementing log system (ie. when ever I create a new error message, just add 1 to the last error message id). But that is just completely unorganized. **Edit 1:** To be more specific I am talking about error code such as: `Error 401 Unauthorized.`"}
{"_id": "167765", "title": "How to get to level where one can charge $300/hr?", "text": "I've been a developer for financials/hedgefunds in the Northeast for about 9 years now. I'm a consultant and would like to stay that way. What do I need to do to get to around $300/hr? I've been a pure dev my entire career so it seems like doing more management would be required. Is this goal even possible?"}
{"_id": "209249", "title": "What is the size of a reference variable in java. Can it be calculated?", "text": "As pointers in C require 2 bytes of memory size irrespective of the size of the data type they are pointing. So does the same thing applies to java references also ?"}
{"_id": "249968", "title": "Wrapping constructor arguments", "text": "Given a base class with around 25 or so subclasses, I have found that adding an argument to the base constructor is painful.               protected AbstractController(Service1 s1, Service2 s2, Service3 s3){ ... }     public Concrete1Controller(Service1 s1, Service2 s2, Service3 s3) : base(s1, s2, s3)     public Concrete2Controller(Service1 s1, Service2 s2, Service3 s3) : base(s1, s2, s3)      Now that I need yet another object passed to my base controller, I am debating introducing a wrapper class and refactoring so that only a single parameter is required in the constructors of (most) concrete instances.               public class ServiceLayer     {         public Service1 S1 {get; private set; }         public Service2 S2 {get; private set; }         public Service3 S3 {get; private set; }              public ScheduledReportServices(Service1 s1, Service2 s2, Service3 s3)         {             S1 = s1;             S2 = s2;             S3 = s3;         }     }      Which will allow me to clean up quite a bit.               protected AbstractController(ServiceLayer sl){ ... }     public Concrete1Controller(ServiceLayer sl) : base(sl)     public Concrete2Controller(ServiceLayer sl) : base(sl)      Given the amount that this reduces clutter, I'm either a dope for not doing this to begin with or there's a valid argument against this kind of approach. I'd be interested in a) knowing what this \"pattern\" is called and b) if I'm going to regret it and if so, why?"}
{"_id": "118114", "title": "The most important advice to a non-professional programmer", "text": "As an adjunct to my regular job (teaching) I have taken on the task of developing an appointment booking system to be deployed on the school's server (SQL Server 2008 R2 / IIS 7.5). I have been writing and programming web pages since the very beginning, so I have a good knowledge of the client-side (including jQuery). I also have some knowledge and experience in database programming (Access and mySQL). For the last several months I have been been teaching myself server-side programming (mainly via the Apress books on MVC3, ASP.Net and C#, as well as through the tutorials on Pluralsight.) I shall be developing the system in Visual Studio 2010, and have written one or two basic practice solutions in MVC3 that work fine on my local development system. My question: What is the single most important thing I should know or do as I embark on this project? (PS. I am committed to using MVC3, Entity Framework 4.1, C# and Visual Studio.)"}
{"_id": "214204", "title": "How are the forwarding of requests normally managed in the Chain of Responsibilty pattern?", "text": "I was just experimenting with the **Chain of responsibility** pattern, implementing my own version. I'm currently reading Design Patterns, but I'm not really sure whether DP tells to stop your forwarding of requests when a single action is accomplished, or just continuing to the end of the chain. What I'm interested in is how this feature of the COR pattern is managed in most of cases. In my example below, I let the forwarding continuing to the end of my chain. I don't think you need any source, but you can anyway find it here. If **I missed some DP paragraphs** telling about this, please provide its location!"}
{"_id": "165899", "title": "Has Little Endian won?", "text": "When teaching recently about the Big vs. Little Endian battle, a student asked whether it had been settled, and I realized I didn't know. Looking at the Wikipedia article, it seems that the most popular current OS/architecture pairs use Little Endian but that Internet Protocol specifies Big Endian for transferring numeric values in packet headers. Would that be a good summary of the current status? Do current network cards or CPUs provide hardware support for switching byte order?"}
{"_id": "114645", "title": "What qualities does an \"average\" programmer have?", "text": "There's a lot of talk around this site and elsewhere about comparing the productivity of excellent programmers to \"average\" programmers. Likewise, there's talk of how to become a great programmer instead of an \"average\" one. Everyone can agree there are definitely some amazing coders out there, and lots more (very) subpar programmers. These are easy to define (designed and wrote a text editor in Assembly on a Nintendo DS over a weekend vs checks in copy-and-paste code that doesn't compile on a daily basis). But what qualities does an average coder have? This I think is important beyond just an academic discussion, such as making hiring decisions and sizing up where you are on the crappy-amazing scale. So what qualities does an \"average\" programmer have or should have?"}
{"_id": "96168", "title": "What is the benefit of multiple return values", "text": "I feel as if a return statement should only return one value. When it returns multiple, things get confusing. I know since the return type in Java has to be declared, this is difficult to do, but in languages like Python it is a snap. Are multiple return values a sign of bad design or coding style? Python example                    def get_name():        # you code        return first_name, last_name"}
{"_id": "117595", "title": "Should I structure my DBs based on the data's true form, or how I plan to use that data?", "text": "This is mostly a hypothetical question, but it's something I've been tossing around and I wondered what other people though. Here's a contrived example to illustrate: Let's say I'm building an app that lets users pick a few keywords and then shows them photos that are tagged with those keywords. On one hand, I could create `user`, `keyword` and `photo` tables which store the data entities as they exist. This would let allow me to easily change the function of the app without needing to change the underlying data structures, but it also requires several queries to fetch the data I need for the app. Or, I could just have a single `user-photos` table, and somehow stuff all the data in there. This would make it easier to pull the data I need for the app, but it would be harder to perform any other type of querying on that data. After all, a `user-photo` isn't really a _thing_ \\-- it's just a convenient data structure for this one purpose. This might be a bad example, but the main thrust of my question is: should your database structure be based on the actual underlying entities they're storing, or can you use shortcuts to make it easier to use the data for your purposes?"}
{"_id": "241052", "title": "Time complexity implications when designing shell scripts for large data/high number of files?", "text": "There are many questions about the performance of commands or scripts on the _U+L_ SE asset. As time is of the essence, this is often evaluated using the `bash` time _reserved word_ or the external `time` command and a subset of the target data, under average or no load. Yet there are scenarios which are either about a large number of files or just operations on very big files. In some instances a careful examination of what happens in the shell, intricate knowledge of command behavior, even hardware considerations, provide insight into efficiency. But benchmarking remains no simple affair. In one instance recently a community member made a comment about the _time complexity_ of a command, implying that since there was no _sorting operation_ \\- and not merely no `sort` command - it would ultimately scale better with more data. The solution involved `awk`, whereas another solution involved for instance a combination of the `grep`, `sort` and `head` commands.   * Is this just an instance of \"the simpler the better\" - what are main implications of _time complexity_ when designing shell scripts which operate on huge data sets(number or size)?    * Beyond common sense and _sorting_ (an operation for which there is a seemingly high level of intuition about performance costs, even for a non expert), is there a well known _common time complexity_ example which would showcase how the concepts apply in practice to shell scripting?"}
{"_id": "106362", "title": "Is Java instanceof operator considered reflection, and what defines reflection?", "text": "I had a discussion with a coworker today, whether usage of using the Java operator `instanceof` is a kind of reflection. And the discussion quickly evolved into what actually defines reflection. **So, what is the definition of reflection?** **And is the usage of`instanceof` considered \"using reflection\" ?** And in addition, if `instanceof` is considered reflection, then is polymorphism not also \"using reflection\"? If not, what is the difference?"}
{"_id": "52071", "title": "How do you write unit test cases?", "text": "Sometimes I end up writing unit test cases for the code other developers have written .There are occasions when I really didn't know what the developer was trying to do (the business part) and just manipulated the test case to get the green line . Are these things normal in the industry ? What is the normal trend ? Are the developers who wrote the code supposed to write the unit test cases ?"}
{"_id": "116640", "title": "Is there a name for a testing method where you compare a set of very different designs?", "text": "\"A/B testing\" is defined as \"a method of marketing testing by which a baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response rates\". The point here, of course, is to know which small single-variable changes are more optimal, with the goal of finding the local optimum. However, one can also envision a somewhat related but different scenario for testing the response rate of major re-designs: take a baseline control design, take one or more completely different designs, and run test samples on those redesigns to compare response rates. As a practical but contrived example, imagine testing a set of designs for the same website, one being minimalist \"googly\" design, one being cluttered \"Amazony\" design, and one being an artsy \"designy\" design (e.g. maximum use of design elements unlike Google but minimal simultaneously presented information, like Google but unlike Amazon) **Is there an official name for such testing?** It's definitely not A/B testing, since the main component of it (finding local optimum by testing single-variable small changes that can be attributed to response shift) is not present. This is more about trying to compare a set of local optimums, and compare to see which one works better as a global optimum. It's not a multivriable, A/B/N or any other such testing since you don't really have specific variables that can be attributed, just different designs."}
{"_id": "116642", "title": "vim (or other text editor) ability as a metric for potential tech job candidates", "text": "Not sure if this is a \"subjective\" question or not. I'm thinking about hiring a mid level java programmer and came to the realisation that all the competent programmers that I've worked with had a very strong knowledge of their chosen editor. My chosen editor is vim (sometimes I use it as a plugin in IntelliJ IDEA). So in the case that someone puts that they use vim to program with I was considering giving them a couple of quick tasks to see how they go about it. Something that you could do in varying different ways. For example today I had a xml file with placeholder strings of the form               <?xml version=\"1.0\"?>     <root-element>        ....xml....        ${placeholder.here} some text ${placeholder.there}         and some more text ${placeholder.everywhere}        ....xml....     </root-element>      and wanted to convert it into a string that I could then paste as a java string array literal, sorted alphabetically. e.g.               [\"placeholder.everywhere\", \"placeholder.here\", \"placeholder.there\"]      Has anyone used this kind or metric in their interview process and if so what were the results? If you did use editor ability as a metric, what editing tasks did you set? Any problems with using this as a indicator (obviously amongst other criteria) of ability?"}
{"_id": "116643", "title": "Why has the rate of programming language popularization slowed down in recent decades?", "text": "If I understand correctly, there was a huge birth of programming languages during the early decades of computing, but then things have stabilized. Basically, why are many universities and industries still using languages such as C and C++ (which were created decades ago), when there have been plenty of decades since then to improve upon and create more effective (and human- friendly) languages?"}
{"_id": "203055", "title": "Restrictive routing best practices for Google App Engine with python?", "text": "Say I have a simple structure:               app = webapp2.WSGIApplication([         (r'/', 'pages.login'),         (r'/profile', 'pages.profile'),         (r'/dashboard', 'pages.dash'),     ], debug=True)      Basically all pages require authentication except for the login. If visitor tries to reach a restrictive page and he isn't authorized (or lacks privileges) then he gets redirected to the login view. The question is about the routing design. Should I check the auth and ACL privs in each of the modules (`pages.profile` and `pages.dash` from example above), or just pass all requests through the single routing mechanism:               app = webapp2.WSGIApplication([         (r'/', 'pages.login'),         (r'/.+', 'router')     ], debug=True)      I'm still quite new to the GAE, but my app requires authentication as well as ACL. I'm aware that there's `login` directive on the server config level, but I don't know how it works and how I can tight it with my ACL logic and what's worse I cannot estimate time needed to get it running. Besides, it looks only to provide only 2 user groups: `admin` and `user`. In any case, that's the configuration I use:               handlers:     - url: /favicon.ico       static_files: static/favicon.ico       upload: static/favicon.ico     - url: /static/*       static_dir: static     - url: .*       script: main.app       secure: always      Or I miss something here and ACL can be set in the config file? Thanks."}
{"_id": "152486", "title": "Useful versioning scheme for a git project?", "text": "I have a small github project, which I need to add an option to to output some version number on the commandline. The problem is I have no idea how to \"compute\" the version number. Is this some random process? Should I just start at 1.0 (probably creating a tag or something), and put a number after `.` for fixes? I know this question is a bit vague... I just had never to deal with this, and want to use some sane versioning scheme. **EDIT** Im also interested into how to update this version number automatically, maybe using something like a git hook."}
{"_id": "167490", "title": "Best advice for game programmer who wants to go indie?", "text": "So. I'm working right now as an intern in a mobile game development company. I've used Unity quite a lot for 1 year now but, that's about all the experience I have with game design/development. Here's the things. I wanna go indie, the main reason is for fun, I really enjoy games and by making indie games I believe I can let my imagination fly and make personal personal stuff. Unfortunately I...I just don't know where to start! I'm interestes in making mobile and web games so what...should I download Stencyl? Construct 2?...XCODE for iOS, maybe a great plugin for Unity would be fine? What whould be your single best advice for someone like me? (programmer and interestes in design) :)"}
{"_id": "167493", "title": "Efficient Data Structure for holding a graph", "text": "Problem Link - http://opc.iarcs.org.in/index.php/problems/NUMTRIPLE In my opinion, the problem can be solved by a data structure, that shows how each number is connected to another, and via recursion find the smallest possible value. But my question is, what data structure (most efficient) can hold/represent such data? Also, is there a better (faster) way of solving this problem. Thanks"}
{"_id": "102874", "title": "What makes for \"good style\" in Java?", "text": "I had asked this question on Stackoverflow, and before it got booed off, I received the helpful suggestion from P\u00e9ter T\u00f6r\u00f6k that this might be a better place to post it. I've been programming in Java for a few years. I've often discussed design decisions with colleagues on the basis of what constitutes 'good style'. Indeed, there are a number of StackOverflow questions/answers that discuss a design on the basis of whether something is 'good style'. But what makes 'good style'? Like many things, I know it when I see it... but I wanted to have better idea than just my conscience saying that this design doesn't feel right. What are the things you think about in order to produce good, well designed code? (I acknowledge that this is somewhat subjective, as what is 'good style' will depend on the task at hand). (Also, I should add that I'm not interested in team styles - e.g. \"we use indents of 2 spaces rather than 4\"..., and I'm not interested in the Java code conventions.) Edit: thanks for all the good answers/comments so far. I'm especially keen for answers that would help codify those things that make a programmer's conscience (and possibly stomach) wrench?"}
{"_id": "102875", "title": "Is there a GPL-compatible software license for libraries which allows static linking, but requires redistribution of library source code?", "text": "I'm looking for an existing library license which satisfies the following conditions:   * GPL-compatible   * Can be statically linked with closed-source programs   * Binary modifications of the library, including cases where the library is statically linked with another project, must be accompanied by the library source code Licenses which are close but not quite what I need:   * LPGL \\- does not allow static linking with non-free software*   * Eclipse Public License \\- not GPL-compatible due to a patent clause   * GPL linking exception \\- does not require source code redistribution *: The LGPL allows static linking with some specific technical conditions - specifically, it must be possible to make modifications or use newer versions of the library, and to do that one would need to make available the object files and build scripts for the non-free components. Generally speaking, this is technically difficult and sometimes impossible (in the case of e.g. templates or inlined functions), and very often (as is my case) the underlying reasons for which static linking is required conflict with these LGPL requirements. For this reason, LGPL is unsuitable for my use case, and frankly I've yet to see a project which used static linking with an LGPL library in this manner, considering all the associated technical and legal (templates/macros/inlining) problems."}
{"_id": "60166", "title": "How to get started in coding for JBoss", "text": "I have an idea on how to revamp our internal application, after having accessed the needs of the users, addressing thier current issues, and the like. But I am not a coder. My last application I wrote was in college, in C, (java wasn't invented-ish!) and it was a booking system, with the option to add on other modules, blah blah. I got an A, but I became a system administrator instead, more intrested in designing and maintainend networks and infrastructure, but with the advent of virtualisation, and linux management tools such as puppet I can now manage infrastructure in my sleep! Now I want to write code - to put on my infastructure, and I want to build .... a booking system! This is just to get experience, but I am at a loss as to where to start. Setting up the environment, will take me about a day. Writing the spec, even how I want it to work, I already know, but as for actually coding in a decent manner, I can only guess. If anyone can recommend a book, website, blog, twitter person to follow, or just advice on how to build a kick butt basic jboss app, then please, \"I AM READY TO LEARN\" :)"}
{"_id": "102879", "title": "How to avoid being sued for your software?", "text": "I have a written a small app as a research project that uses open source libraries. It can do packet sniffing, network scanning and man in the middle attacks on wifi and lan. This software is intended to be used for security auditing. But users can also use it to circumvent the MAC filtering of their ISP and get free internet. The case seems similar to that of uTorrent. uTorrent can be used legally, but almost everyone uses it for illegal downloading. If users download my software and use it like that, can the ISP sue me as the author of the software? What should I put into the Terms and Conditions to avoid being sued for misuse of my software? **EDIT**   I'm from Eastern Europe, but live in the UK. In which country should I ask a lawyer? People can download my software globally."}
{"_id": "113030", "title": "What are the most important points of interface between a web developer and IT?", "text": "Some background: My current job has be as the sole web developer for our company. I have been given responsibility for a number of external websites, as well as our internal intranet site. The external sites are currently hosted externally, and either created/maintained with a CMS, or custom designed by the external host. I will be migrating the websites to our own internal server, and redesigning them using whatever tools I deem necessary (php, jquery, MySQL, etc.). The intranet is hosted internally, but also needs a complete redesign. Our IT is currently going through some reorganization, and historically has little experience with web technology. I want to plan coordination with them, help develop proper infrastructure, and identify the primary channels of communication between us. My question is: what are the main points of coordination that normally exist between development and IT, focusing on web-based development? Given a (relatively) blank slate, what would be the ideal division of responsibilities, and primary points of direct collaboration? I know some aspects of my particular situation may be atypical (i.e. I'll be responsible for setting up the PHP environments, source control repositories, database administration, etc.), but I'd like answers to focus more on the typical configurations, as that will be more useful to others."}
{"_id": "24873", "title": "What are good approaches to cleaning up old projects?", "text": "I've got some software that I wrote around 2 years ago and needs some features added to it. I've realised that it's in an awful mess, and I have the urge to move everything around, tidy up, etc. I've read the Joel on Software article about not starting again, so whats the best way forward?"}
{"_id": "253854", "title": "C++ Without Source Files", "text": "Bjarne Stroustrup mentions in his book \"The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition\" that not all C++ implementations use files to store and compile code: > There are systems that do not store, compile, and present C++ programs to > the programmer as sets of files. (Chapter 15, page 419) Later in the chapter, he reiterates that certain implementations do not use files but he does not give any examples. How would such an environment function compared to a more common file-based environment?"}
{"_id": "241322", "title": "Why do we need a format for binary executable files", "text": "When binary files (i.e. executables) are saved they usually have a format (e.g. ELF or .out) where we have a header containing pointers to where data or code is stored inside the file. But why don't we store the binary files directly in the form of sequence of machine instructions.   Why do we need to store data separately from the code?   Secondly when the assembler creates a binary file is the file is among the above formats?"}
{"_id": "134828", "title": "Right design pattern to use StopWatch class", "text": "I have to measure execution time for a blocks of code. I had implemented simple `StopWatch` class like http://www.goldb.org/stopwatchjava.html. If I will invoke methods of `StopWatch` class directly between business logic then my source code became unreadable and unclean. What design pattern can be useful in my situation to keep code readable and clean?"}
{"_id": "134826", "title": "Why should I use JAX-RS REST instead of normal servlets?", "text": "I'm teaching myself J2EE technologies using Glassfish as my webserver and EJB container. I'm very interested in learning REST as well, and developing an application that is adherent to the rules of REST. My first project is to write a chat client. The user will go to a webpage, download a webpage with the javascript to run the chat client (which posts the data to the server and fetches it as well). The calls to post data, and to fetch data, from the webserver will be through a RESTful interface. Right now I've done this through servlets that listen on the /chatroom/getMessages and /chatroom/postMessage URI's. The wrinkle that I run into when I try to convert this to a RESTful service using JAX-RS that doesn't use servlets is that I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel. With the servlet specification I had this HTTPSession object that made it very easy to keep track of where someone is in the chat buffer (and therefore which messages should be sent to them when they visit /chatroom/getMessages). But now when I make it completely RESTful, and just use POJOs with JAX-RS (which I actually like better from a style standpoint) I now have to reinvent session state if I want it by handing the person a token, and having them hand it back to me every time we talk just like the automagically generated session cookie would have done for me if I was using servlets. WHY should I implement this with JAX-RS and abandon the servlets? I haven't seen any JAX-RS tutorials that mix servlets and JAX-RS (probably for good reason), so this doesn't seem to be an option. What I really want to know is what compelling reasons there are for going with REST. What does it buy me to not just use the servlets in a RESTful way?"}
{"_id": "134820", "title": "In an MVC system, where should the database persistence code sit?", "text": "I've seen multiple configurations for persisting information to the database. Generally, three types of designs seem common in my corner of the world:   * Controller manages the persistence    * Model manages the persistence   * Third party library manages the persistence, usually requiring some sort of annotations on the model. I'm wondering which configuration (if any) is, conceptually, the easiest to use/most compatible with an MVC architecture? (If it's not one I listed, please give a quick outline/overview as part of the answer)"}
{"_id": "134822", "title": "Find feature in NetBeans (or even Eclipse, or others) excluding comments", "text": "Is it possible to use the find feauture in NetBeans or other Java IDE excluding commented code from the results? How?? Given a project I'd like to find all the occurrences of a word without getting back possible matches that come from code that is commented. Am I the only one that needs something like this?"}
{"_id": "191076", "title": "Should MVVM ViewModel inject an HTML template for default view?", "text": "I'm working on web application design that includes Knockout.js and have an overall MVVM question: Does it make sense for the ViewModel to automatically inject a default HTML template (pulled from separate file)? More detail: suppose I have a site like this...               header...         widget 1         widget 2         widget 3     footer      ...and widgets 1/2/3 are going to be Knockout.js ViewModels **determined at runtime** from an overall list of available widgets, each with associated HTML template file. I understand that in MVVM you want the view (HTML template in this case) to be separate from the ViewModel (Javascript file in this case) so that people can edit it separately and possibly provide multiple templates for different \"skins\". However, it seems like it would also make sense for the ViewModel to point to a **default** html template that gets automatically used unless the controlling code provides a different one. Am I looking at this correctly? As an example, see this answer on StackOverflow where he recommends injecting the HTML and then the ViewModel. Seems like a one-liner would make more sense in that case, with the possibility of overriding a default template value."}
{"_id": "210965", "title": "Is CType() ever the preferred option?", "text": "Is there any time `CType()` is the proper option over other methods? I did plenty of thinking on this myself, but wanted to put the question in hopes there would be answer to my question so I can put the question to rest in my workplace. My idea is that `CType()` should never be used. But others seem to think it's still around for something other than backward-compatibility. So is there still a use for it? A big problem is that many people don't seem to understand the difference between Casting and Converting. ## Converting Vs Casting This was one such line of code:               With objZipFile.GetEnumerator()         While .MoveNext             objZipEntry = CType(.Current, ZipEntry)             \u2026 all this work is done with the objZipEntry         End While     End With      If my buddy ever reads this, he'll be like, \"MY CODE!!!!\" lol. Yes, this is your code. And as I discussed with him, .Current is an enumeration of objZipFile, but its type is ZipEntry. So why is he \"Converting\" with `CType()`, when what he's really doing here is Casting. He should be using `DirectCast(.Current, ZipEntry)`. So the proper way to Cast something is to use `DirectCast()`. But this isn't a discussion about `DirectCast()`. The point here is that `CType()` Should certainly not be used to Cast, it's a Conversion tool, so let's talk more about Converting. ## To CType() or Not To CType(), I don't think so In the simplistic example, I have a string `\"123\"`, and I want the string to be converted to an Integer. So many times, you see something like this:               Dim result as Integer = 0     result = CType(\"123\", Integer)      Great! It Works! Then what is the difference between that and this:               Dim result as Integer = 0     result = Integer.Parse(\"123\")      Well, with that exact example, the difference is that `CType()` took more resources to run. If I gave you two clear drinks and told you one had a health rating of 10, and the other of 9. You don't choose the 9 on principle that it isn't that much less healthy, you choose the dam 10. Also, the `Integer.Parse` line is a couple characters of less typing. Okay, but what if your input isn't \"123\"? What if the input is \"UrMom\"? I hear `CType()` won't break... but as far as I know, that isn't true. `CType()` breaks just as much as `Type.Parse()`. I'd like some arguments on that. Though an argument supporting `CType()`'s resilience alone isn't reason enough to use `CType()`. On the other hand, we have this option in the `Type`-Class:               Dim MyInt As Integer = 0     Dim TryInt As Integer = 0     If Integer.TryParse(\"54\", TryInt) Then         MyInt = TryInt      Else         'Handle it appropriately      End If      Not only are we parsing the data, but if it doesn't parse, we are handling it correctly. Which is a much better option that throwing a `Try/Catch` around bad code and letting it break before handling its failure in the `Catch/Finally`. Keep in mind, there may be multiple different ways to cast and convert, but the main purpose of this question is to prove or disprove that `CType()` simply shouldn't be used. My main argument is this... The only arguments I've seen that support the use of `CType()` are those that say `CType()` won't break if passed bad data, or that `CType()` is better if you are unsure of the data going in. In response to that I say Pish-Posh. Rethink your code, place conditionals, and know what you're wanting to use the item for. If something happens that you weren't expecting, handle it correctly. So is there any time `CType()` is the proper option over other methods? Please provide examples."}
{"_id": "191078", "title": "Partial GPL 2 legacy code into a GPL 3 project", "text": "I plan to import works from a Java GPL2 project into a GPL3 one.   1. How must I \"head\" all my project derivating sources files : must I put the GPL2 license of the original project (saying that \"This file is part of PROJECT_NAME ...\") above my project one ?   2. How should be the LICENSING file of the whole projet : must I put both licenses in it ?   3. I don't know yet if I will import nearly complete classes or just some pieces of codes from the original project. Anyway, how should I inform the user (saying, in a about dialog) : is saying \"Work derivated from PROJECT_NAME project\" enough ? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "191079", "title": "Fun resources for learning Java", "text": "Is there a fun way to learn Java? Instead of what's the \"best\" way to learn it, I'm wondering the funnest way to learn it. I'm taking an introductory course on programming right now to see what it's all about, but quite frankly it's not very enjoyable. I certainly love programming in an applicable sense (for accomplishing layout and analytics tasks), I find that it takes a while to get to the point (it took me a year with JavaScript) to feel like you can just dream things up and try them out. I realize the subjectivity of the questions avails it to flames, etc., so I'll restate the spirity of the question. I want to know what resources/methods people have employed to make learning a programming language more enjoyable."}
{"_id": "210217", "title": "Entity Framework designer not effective anymore", "text": "At my current workplace, **Entity Framework 5** is used for all data access/manipulation. It is a database-first approach using the model designer to add/edit/delete/update entities. **Problem** We now have tons of tables and this is becoming a nightmare to update. The model is very convoluted and it can sometimes crash the IDE. I'm not super clued up on the Entity Framework side of things, but surely this isn't the recommended approach. I have never liked the designer from the beginning. WYSIWYG-like designers spell trouble in my eyes. **Solution?** Structural changes to the database are essentially done by DBAdmins so we can't do code-first (anyway, I prefer not to have database tables generated). Is there a better approach to this? Shouldn't we be using an XML-based mapper instead of using the designer. What about code-first to the existing database?"}
{"_id": "196861", "title": "Is there a de facto standard documentor for Javascript?", "text": "I'm trying to document my code using JSDOC3, that has a similar syntax to PHPDocumentator / Apigen. But is there a de-facto standard for Javascript inline documentation? I think Google Closure is the most complete (or so it seems), but what is widely adopted by IDEs and what most people expect to the docs to be?"}
{"_id": "251887", "title": "Passing configuration to a handler", "text": "I'm building my own JET Parser and one of the things I am trying to do as per the JET specifications is to allow changing of the start and end tags from the default `<%` and `%>`. Right now I have a parser handler modeled after `javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser` and `org.xml.sax.ext.DefaultHandler2`. The handler can take handle a directive that will change the parser configuration. So I am thinking of the following options:   * have a `setParser(Parser)` method that gets called by the handler and have that as part of the interface. The method is called by the Parser when starting the parse process.   * have a `directive(..., Parser )` method that gets called by the handler and have that as part of the interface. This limits the parser updates to directives only.   * store the startTag and endTag in the handler and have the get methods.   * have a new configuration class that gets passed around using the set or directive method. My current thinking is to have a `directive(..., ParserConfiguration )` method that gets called by the handler and have that as part of the interface. This limits the parser updates to directives only and only let it deal with configuration. Is the approach I have chosen is a good option for an API, or is there a better alternative that I didn't think of yet?"}
{"_id": "102297", "title": "Is the \"Objects First\" approach a good idea?", "text": "Do you think programming novices should learn objects from day 1, as seen in the book \"Objects First With Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ\" by David Barnes? Or do you think this is a bad idea? For those unfamiliar with the book, here is a list of the topics discussed in the chapters: > Chapter 1 deals with the most fundamental concepts of object-orientation: > objects, classes and methods. It gives a solid, hands-on introduction to > these concepts without going into the details of Java syntax. It also gives > a first look at some source code. We do this by using an example of > graphical shapes which can be interactively drawn, and a second example of a > simple laboratory class enrolment system. > > Chapter 2 opens up class definitions and investigates how Java source code > is written to create behavior of objects. We discuss how to define fields > and implement methods. Here, we also introduce the first types of > statements. The main example is an implementation of a ticket machine. We > also look back to the laboratory class example from chapter 1 to investigate > that a bit further. > > Chapter 3 then enlarges the picture to discuss interaction of multiple > objects. We see how objects can collaborate by invoking each other's methods > to perform a common task. We also discuss how one object can create other > objects. A digital alarm clock display is discussed that uses two number > display objects to show hours and minutes. As a second major example, we > examine a simulation of an email system in which messages can be sent > between mail clients. > > In Chapter 4, we continue by building more extensive structures of objects. > Most importantly, we start using collections of objects. We implement an > electronic notebook and an auction system to introduce collections. At the > same time, we discuss iterations over collection and have a first look at > loops. The first collection being used is an ArrayList. In the second half > of the chapter we introduce arrays as a special form of a collection, and > the for loop as another form of a loop. We discuss an implementation of a > web log analyzer as an example for array use. > > Chapter 5 deals with libraries and interfaces. We introduce the Java > standard library and discuss some important library classes. More > importantly, we explain how to read and understand the library > documentation. The importance of writing documentation in software > development projects is discussed, and we end by practicing how to write > suitable documentation for our own classes. Random, Set and Map are examples > of classes that we encounter in this chapter. We implement an Eliza-like > dialogue system and a graphical simulation of a bouncing ball to apply these > classes. > > Chapter 6, titled Well-behaved objects, deals with a whole group of issues > connected to producing correct, understandable, and maintainable classes. It > covers issues ranging from writing clear, understandable code - including > style and commenting - to testing and debugging. Test strategies are > introduced and a number of debugging methods are discussed in detail. We use > an example of a diary for appointment scheduling and an implementation of an > electronic calculator to discuss these topics. > > In Chapter 7, we discuss more formally the issues of dividing a problem > domain into classes for implementation. We introduce issues of designing > classes well, including concepts such as responsibility-driven design, > coupling, cohesion, and refactoring. An interactive, text-based, adventure > game (World of Zuul) is used for this discussion. We go through several > iterations of improving the internal class structure of the game and > extending its functionality, and end with a long list of proposals for > extensions that may be done as student projects. > > Chapters 8 and 9 introduce inheritance and polymorphism with many of the > related detailed issues. We discuss a simple database of CDs and videos to > illustrate the concepts. Issues of code inheritance, subtyping, polymorphic > method calls and overriding are discussed in detail. > > In Chapter 10 we implement a predator/prey simulation. This serves to > discuss additional abstraction mechanisms based on inheritance, namely > interfaces and abstract classes. > > Chapter 11 introduces two new examples: an image viewer and a sound player. > Both examples serve to discuss how to build graphical user interfaces > (GUIs). > > Chapter 12 then picks up the difficult issue of how to deal with errors. > Several possible problems and solutions are discussed, and Java's exception > handling mechanism is discussed in detail. We extend and improve an address > book application to illustrate the concepts. > > Chapter 13 steps back to discuss in more detail the next level of > abstraction: how to structure a vaguely described problem into classes and > methods. In previous chapters we have assumed that large parts of the > application structure already exist, and we have made improvements. Now it > is time to discuss how we can get started from a clean slate. This involves > detailed discussion of what the classes should be that implement our > application, how they interact, and how responsibilities should be > distributed. We use class-responsibilities-collaborators (CRC) cards to > approach this problem, while designing a cinema booking system. > > In Chapter 14, we try to bring everything together and integrate many topics > from the previous chapters of the book. It is a complete case study, > starting with the application design, through design of the class > interfaces, down to discussing many important functional and non-functional > characteristics and implementation details. Topics discussed in earlier > chapters (such as reliability, data structures, class design, testing, > extendibility, etc.) are applied again in a new context."}
{"_id": "102294", "title": "File shredder algorithm", "text": "As a part of learning system programming, I am looking to implement a file shredder. The simplest way (and probably seen as naive) would be to replace the data bytes with zeroes (I know OS splits the files and I'll replace bytes in all those chunks). But when I google on this topic, I am surprised to find multiple pass algorithms, some going as high as 35! Could someone elucidate the benefit of multiple pass please? I couldn't find any explanation. Thanks"}
{"_id": "102290", "title": "Is there an equivalent of mod_rewrite for Twisted web?", "text": "I've been programming in PHP for a long time, and I've just recently decided to make the switch to Python. Of all the Python web frameworks, I settled on Twisted Web to build the framework of my startup. However (and I know it sounds nitpicky), mod_rewrite was something that I really appreciated about Apache. I want the entire system written in Python, and not just bits and pieces written in PHP and Python: while a PHP frontend could work, I'd avoid it if it was at all possible. Is it possible to build such an application without resorting to ugly urls? Note: I am aware of the fact that Django allows URL rewriting, but it kinda defeats the purpose of using Twisted by itself."}
{"_id": "113693", "title": "Any recommendations for setup/teardown of browser automation testing?", "text": "I have been doing some browser automation testing recently using Selenium (and Watin a bit too) and have reached a point where I am looking for recommendations on controlling the environment I'm testing. For example, if I have a test that registers a new user on site (or similar database dependent task); how do people ensure that the test does not persist or at least is able to be repeated without always changing the test itself? I'm seeking recommendations for ensuring my integration/acceptance tests using Selenium can be ran without having to worry about changing them or the environment manually."}
{"_id": "113697", "title": "Am I using Factory and Impl classes properly?", "text": "In my 2d destruction derby simulator I have a CargoTruck class and CargoTruckImpl that implement an interface called Truck. CargoTruck has a reference to CargoTruckImpl which is returned through the CargoTruckImplFactory. But then I decided to add to this chain by having CargoTruckImpl and CargoTruckMovementImpl use the interface called Movement. CargoTruckImpl has a reference to CargoTruckMovementImpl which is returned back to CargoTruck through the MovementImplFactory. CargoTruck->CargoTruckImpl->CargoTruckMovmentImpl FuelTruck->FuelTruckImpl->FuelTruckMovmentImpl Is adding to the chain like this bad? Am I violating the Separation Principle or the Open-Closed Principle by using Factory classes this way? Is there a better way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "36985", "title": "What kind of users stories should be written in the initial stages of a project?", "text": "When just starting a project, you have nothing---no UI, no data layer, nothing in between. Thus, a single story like \"users should be able to view their foos\" will entail a lot of work. Once you have that story, one like \"users should be able to edit their foos\" is more realistic, but that first story will involve setting up a UI layer, a presentation logic layer, a domain logic layer, and a data access layer. This doesn't fit with my concept of \"tasks\": to me, I'd rather have something like the following \"tasks\":   * Show dummy data for a user's foos in HTML, derived from JavaScript objects.   * Set up a presentation logic layer, and connect the JavaScript objects to it.   * Set up a domain logic layer, and connect the presentation logic layer to it.   * Set up a data access layer, and connection the domain logic layer to it. Do all of these fall under the single \"story\" above? If so, I feel like stories are not a terribly useful framework in the early stages of a project. If so, that's fine---I just want to make sure I'm not missing something, since I'm really trying to learn this agile methodology as best I can."}
{"_id": "99074", "title": "Switch form paragraph mode to line break mode in WYSIWYG editor because of client request?", "text": "I'm building a website fro a client which uses TinyMCE as the main WYSIWYG editor. Now my client asked if it is possible to write a line and make a line break and then continue without leaving a space between the text before and after the line break (e.g. just like in word). I told him that the web uses paragraph for formatting and not line breaks. Still he'd like to use line breaks for formatting. Should I convince him not to use line breaks for formatting or should I just switch TinyMCE to line break mode (which the is not recommended in the TinyMCE documentation)."}
{"_id": "36986", "title": "Is OpenGL after C++ job oriented?", "text": "First, my regards to all programmers out there who have put their endless efforts in learning and becoming expert, wise, efficient and best. Let me describe my situation. I have just graduated from Electronics and Communication Stream. Though I have more interest in software development and hence I have opted to become a software developer rather than Electronics engg.   1. I have learned C++ and wish to wish to go more deep.   2. I have started to learn OpenGL. Guide me in the following:   1. Is OpenGL good to learn and is it job oriented?   2. Should I learn some other language rather then OpenGL after C++?"}
{"_id": "37055", "title": "How to ask the boss to pay for qualifications?", "text": "I'm working as a junior developer for a startup company, and have been working here around 7 months now. After 4 months, we had a late quarterly review, and just before the boss mentioned there was a training budget, and we should let them know what training we needed and they'd get it for us. I asked for some training at the time, but 3 months have passed without mention of it, and I have since learnt what I needed in my own time (I just can't stop learning new things!) I took on a new role recently, so have been given some cheap ($60) training for that however. Now the next review is approaching, and I would like to get Adobe Qualified Expert qualifications for ActionScript 3 / Flex. I was told by a contracted co-worker who had left that I should try to get the company to pay for this, as it's something they can tell potential investors as a selling point. My question is though; how do I approach this with my boss? I don't want it to sound like I'm looking for another job and want the qualifications to look elsewhere! Edit: I should mention the company I work for is very qualification-light at the moment, and all the flex developers are junior level at the moment. I'm looking to progress which is why I want the qualifications. Even if I can't get them through the company then I'll be learning it myself, but would rather not stump my own cash when it's to help the company in the long run!"}
{"_id": "37051", "title": "Looking for jobs after a project ending badly", "text": "My company just canceled the project I was working on because they were dissatisfied with how it was going. I was quite disappointed with it because I thought the project was going well and I had already explained the limitations that the software would have due to the time constraints. I have decided that I will now look for a new job, but I am worried the project ending badly may give me some difficulties. Any advice on how I can minimise the difficulties this causes me without being dishonest?"}
{"_id": "187564", "title": "Is it fair to ask a team to start using CoffeeScript?", "text": "I started my new job as a JS developer in November and starting implementing Backbone pretty soon after. This was a big enough learning curve for the team (me included), however I'm thinking about looking at CoffeeScript, which I'm guessing would require everyone on the team to know it? Is that too big of an ask, just to make me slightly more productive?"}
{"_id": "187560", "title": "Is this Observer variant an improvement?", "text": "In a C++ code base I've been working on, they have a bunch of instances of the observer pattern, but it's a little different from the classical pattern. In the classic, the Observer is a specific interface with specific method(s) that are called when the Observable changes or has new data.               Observable                       Observer     register( Observer* )            update( data1, data2 ... )      In our code base, we use a template class that takes the number and type of arguments to the update() method as parameters, and allows you to specify any pointer-to-method as the recipient of the data.               Observable                               register( Functor<data1, data2> )         Is this an improvement over the original pattern? Here's what I think are the pros of each approach: Classic:   * clarity - the interface marks which classes are recipients of observable data    * less code - the boiler plate and ugly template syntax to create the functor are somewhat onerous Variant:   * flexibility - I can make any object in my system receive the update (if it has the right method signature) without having to change the original object As a another option, do I have it all wrong that this is the Observer pattern in practice?"}
{"_id": "112349", "title": "Should a developer argue against unnecessary or harmful features?", "text": "What is a good attitude from developers when discussing new features, and namely, non critical/questionable features? Say you are developing some sort of Java like language, and the boss says: \"We need pointers so that developers could fiddle with object memory directly!\" Should the developer shoot down the idea because it adds unimaginable complexity and security vulnerabilities, or should he do what's asked? This may not be a good example, but what about things that are more in a gray area, like adding buttons that break workflow, or goes against internal structure of the program, etc.? What is the optimal \"can do\" vs. \"can't do\" distribution for a regular programmer? EDIT: The question is not about a bad boss :D I was more interested how do people approach new problems that add a noticeable amount of problems while maybe being marginally useful. Should the general attitude be:   1. yes we'll do it, screw the complexity   2. maybe   3. no, the general rework, and implications don't justify the change What should be the reaction of a good developer?"}
{"_id": "112343", "title": "How should we implement Scrum with two projects for one team?", "text": "I'm starting at this new company as a scrum master, and they want to dive into Scrum, which is nice and all, but they only have enough people (4) for one team. The road map includes delivering a new product and maintaining the old one, so what should we do?   * 2 products backlogs for 1 team? How should we do planning in this case?   * 1 product backlog for 2 products? How will sprint review work in this case?"}
{"_id": "113960", "title": "Is there any merit to using `union` to create an alias?", "text": "I've inherited a bit of code and saw something new. They have a data structure definition out in a .h file, and in various local files they'll declare:               union globalStructOstuff localVar;      **Is there any merit to this?** I could see some if the global was some placeholder and the local versions were going to be different eventually. But that's not the case here. So I think all it's doing is causing new guys a couple of extra minutes searching for definitions. I'd axe it once I got the chance, but I wanted to see if I'm missing some greater purpose. **Edit, resolution**   With your fine help, I managed to open my eyes and realize globalStructOstuff isn't a struct at all, it's a union which holds the struct of a similar name. And they didn't use typedef. So all that's happening here is declaring a local variable. It has a type of union. No alias to anything global. Sorry for the confusion, thanks for all your help."}
{"_id": "107186", "title": "How do you determine a 'release' date when a team uses Scrum", "text": "I'm new to scrum and using it on a project. We do 3 week iterations, estimate at the beginning and then collect the points at the end. We have a product back log (probably not complete). If you do estimates of the entire back log at the beginning aren't those estimate just 'wild ass guesses' So when do you estimate the back log and how do you determine a release date? ep"}
{"_id": "120424", "title": "Why aren't postfix and primary expressions symmetrical?", "text": "Every primary expression is a postfix expression but a postfix expression is not primary expression. But in mathematics, equality seems to be symmetrical. That is: > If _A_ is _B_ , then _B_ is _A_ Why isn't this the case for postfix and primary expressions?"}
{"_id": "142235", "title": "Is my concept in open source license correct?", "text": "I would like to justify whether my concept in the open source license is correct, as you know that, misunderstanding the terms may lead to a serious law sue. > The main difference among the open source license is whether the license is > copyleft. Copyleft license means allow the others to reproduce, modify and > distribute the products but the released product is bound by the same > licensing restriction. That means they have to use the same license for the > modified version. Also, the copyleft license require all the released > modified version to be free software. > > On the other hand, if any others create derived work incorporating non- > copyleft licensed code, they can choose any license for the code. The several kinds of license and comparison > GPL is a restrictive license. Software requires to released as GPL license > if that integrate or is modified from the other GPL license software . The > library used in developing GPL license software are also restricted to GPL > and LGPL , proprietary software are not allowed to employ (or complied with) > in any part of the GPL application. > > LGPL is similar to GPL , but was more permissive with regarding allow the > using of other non-GPL software. > > BSD is relatively simple license, it allow developer to do anything on the > original source code . The license holder do not hold any legal > responsibilities for their released product. > > Apache license is evolved from the BSD license. The legal terms are improved > and are written by legal professionals in a more modern way. It covers > comprehensive intellectual property ownership and liability issues. Also, are there any popular license beside these?"}
{"_id": "142230", "title": "choosing Database and Its Design for Rails", "text": "I am having a difficulty in deciding the database & its structure. Let us say the problem is like this. For my product I have various customers( each is an educational institute) Each customer have their own sub-clients ( Institution have students) Each student record will have some basic information like \"name\" & \"Number\" . There are also additional information that a customer(institution) might want to ask sub-client(student) like \"email\" or \"semester\" I have come up with two solutions : 1\\. Mysql _**__insititution_ ___** id-|- Description| * * * _**___Student__** id-|-instituition_id-|-Name-|-Number| * * * _ **_student_additional_details_ ___** student_id -|- field_name -|- Value * * * Student_additional_details will have multiple records for each student depending upon number of questions asked from institution. 2.MongoDb _**__insititution___** id-|- Description| * * * _**__Student_ ___** id-|-instituition_id-|-Name-|-Number|-otherfield1 -|- otherfield2 * * * with mongo the structure itself can be dynamic so student table seems really good in mongo . But the problem comes when I have to relate student with institution . So which one is a better design ? Or some other idea ?"}
{"_id": "78183", "title": "What is the best method for releasing free \"extension\" or example code based on a closed source proprietary project?", "text": "I have a proprietary project. It's a simple authentication library. I want to write open source(BSD) extension/examples for it. These examples interface code, connecting my authentication library to a database containing users. I'm providing examples which people hardly ever use out of the box, but are excellent starting points for tying it into their own database. I want to be able to release these extensions separately from the library. What is the best way of to this? My idea is to use a free github project and put the extensions there as well as the demo version of my authentication library(ie, just the assembly). How would I manage different versions of the authentication library though? At the moment, I use SVN for managing the source code of the authentication library, though I like git as well, so would switch if that'd be better. Does anyone know of a good way of managing this kind of thing?"}
{"_id": "223507", "title": "Variables initialization and for loops in a flowchart", "text": "I have to create a flowchart to a C# programm and I am not very familiar with it. My problem is that I do not know if one should represent variables initialization in a flowchart and if so how should I do it. Second problem is that I am not sure about the correctness of my for loop. Here is the flowchart I created tot a part of the programm. It would be very nice if you can tell me if that is correct and if not what should I correct. Thank you! ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Hey0G.png)"}
{"_id": "142238", "title": "Do I have to remove my app from app store? (Copyright infringement)", "text": "I just got an copyright infringement notice that says my app infringes on the usage policies of the services my app uses. However, this mail does not come directly from the company that runs the website I pull information from. The mail comes from a company that has some paid apps in the same category on the app store (mine is free), so they obviously want me gone. My question is, can I just ignore this mail until I hear directly from the company that runs the website? Judging from their (the company that contacted me) website, they have no connection what so ever to the company that I fetch information from."}
{"_id": "142239", "title": "Java API Deprecations", "text": "Who decides the API deprecations the JEE specification or the vendor of JDK like Sun, IBM?"}
{"_id": "211167", "title": "Should I put utility methods inside a class?", "text": "I have been working on a library which contains a large set of functions. For the sake of simplicity, I am going to use just one set as an example. I am not sure which is the better way, in terms of ease of use and performance, whether I should put those methods provided as individual methods, prepended with the function category, or whether it is better to create a Class containing all the method as static methods. For Example: Individual methods: (p.s. this could also be writen without `request_` in the function name and using Namespaces instead)               function request_method() { ... }     function request_url() { ... }     function request_useragent() { ... }     ....      Classed method:               class Request {         public static function method() { ... }         public static function url() { ... }         public static function useragent() { ... }         ...     }"}
{"_id": "133887", "title": "Implementing Scheduling Within an Application", "text": "I'm building an app and the end user will be using an Admin screen to schedule content on the front page. They will be choosing two dates, a start date and an end date. Obviously I don't want to cycle through the entire collection to see if todays date is between any of the start or end dates every time the front page loads. Also, don't want the user to be able to schedule two things that overlap each other. There should be a better way than checking for conflicts with each record before saving. Using Node/Socketio/Express/Mongoose I could index the collection in Mongo then sort accordingly to test for today's date and make sure there aren't conflicting schedules. Also, I could have a flag that is set once the day changes that signifies current content. I thought there might be a better way. Does anyone have any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "184144", "title": "Frustration with Java Swing layout managers", "text": "I have been trying for years to master Swing layout managers with no success. Every time I need to do something with Swing, it is like pulling nails to get the visual components to line up the way I want them to. I am familiar with frameworks like Matisse but that's not the point. My question is: Why does Swing even need layout managers? It seems like an overcomlicated paradigm. What I would like to be able to do is jave a simple JFrame and then for each component (like JLabel) simply specify X and Y coordinates where I want it to be situated -- done deal. Can anybody explain what is wrong with this simple approach that would work predictably 100% of times? Or is there an actual layout manager that does things exactly like this?"}
{"_id": "184140", "title": "In JSF where do objects like PhaseListeners fit in the MVC pattern?", "text": "When it comes to JSF, I've had trouble distinguishing where certain objects I create fit into the overall MVC pattern. The View is simple enough since that's handled by the .xhtml template but when it comes to objects like:   * Action/Change Listeners   * PhaseListeners   * Validators   * Navigation Beans   * Converters   * Filters At first I'd assume some of these belong to the Controller but I've seen a number of statements here and elsewhere on the web stating that for most developers using an MVC framework, specifically JSF, the majority/entirety of the Controller is already implemented by the framework. The following Q&A: Understanding JSF as a MVC framework , while very informative still leaves me feeling pretty vague on the matter. The accepted answer states that consumers of JSF do not implement Controllers while the thesis linked to at the bottom of the answer clearly states that Listeners are a part of the Controller pattern."}
{"_id": "137709", "title": "Should I use Legitimate Email spoofing?", "text": "Recently I receive a request: users' emails are stored in the database, and as request of a user, the system will send an email on their behalves. To add more context, it's like sending an email from the vendor, to their customers' email addresses. But it's not a fixed email (it depends on which vendor ask the system). Using JavaMail, I can simply set the `from` field. But something doesn't seem right. When searching for this kind of work, I come across \"Email spoofing\" - which looks like what I'm going to do. There are some drawbacks for this approach, such as it may make the emails attractive to the spam filters, and so on... Ofcourse I can just do as the client want, but I just wonder, is there any better alternative?"}
{"_id": "249731", "title": "Sequence diagrams and the Implementation", "text": "In the design phase we create UML Sequence diagrams (in OOD). My understanding is that after creating an Use Case diagram if we need to show further information in terms of time sequence of events of that Use Case, we can go for sequence diagrams. My question is, should a sequence diagram represent exact implementation details? If I ask in another way, should all method calls and object interactions in the implementation be shown in the Sequence Diagram? Or else it should present a high level picture of the implementation? Normally in the implementation, things could be implemented with slight differences than specified in design diagrams. So that if a sequence diagram should show exact implementation details, we might have to revise them after the implementation. Another related question would be, who are the audiences of these sequence diagrams other than the author? An answer for this question might answer the original question as well."}
{"_id": "104982", "title": "What's the best way for me to get started using version control in an opensource project?", "text": "It was suggested that I take my project open source due to its size and my lack of skills, so I checked out Google Code, and started making a project and now it's asking me if I want the project to have Git, Mercurial, or Subversion code hosting. I don't even know what code hosting is, and a search just confused me more with the debates between all these things, and this is made even worse as Google Code is asking me which type of license I want. I think I'm not quite understanding what open source really means, can someone pretty much make a quick layman's cheat sheet on what all this is? Much appreciated. **Edit** There have been a lot of great responses on these three versions of code hosting, but I think I failed to communicate the real question: Basically I've no idea how this open source stuff works, why would I host the code somewhere like this? And would that mean I have to take the site off of my current hosting, or is this an entirely different type of hosting? What happens when I make my site open source, what rights do I have, what rights do I give away. How does it work, do people just come and throw code at me for free? Perhaps these are stupid questions, and if that's the case then I guess I need stupid answers, I seriously have no idea what open source is, except for the concept of sharing code..."}
{"_id": "220975", "title": "Is short-circuit evaluation a consequence of call-by-name?", "text": "If the boolean operators &&, || are implemented as infix methods, then isn't short-circuit evaluation just a consequence of being implemented using call- by-name semantics, since, for example, the && method wouldn't then evaluate the second arg in any case if the first is false. I'm just wondering because they are generally treated as separate topics (e.g in the Scala intro course I'm taking - https://class.coursera.org/progfun-003/lecture/5 ) but short-circuit evaluation seems to just be a consequence of call-by-name."}
{"_id": "220973", "title": "Use MAC address for license", "text": "One of my company product need to implement a license mechanism. I'm planing to generate a key base on users PC MAC address. But I'm bit scared is this method confuse with some advance hardware. configurations such as.   * Multiple network cards.   * Virtualization.   * Mac address change possibilities(?)   * Working with VPNs. Is it a good idea to generate license key with MAC address? Some ideas?"}
{"_id": "220970", "title": "Unit (regression) testing scientific algorithms given floating point behavior", "text": "I have been working on a project and running into a very difficult problem. The problem can be stated simply as how to unit-test numerical algorithms. However if you just took this simple statement you would get the standard set of answer isolation of input, random processes, mocking, tolerancing, etc.   The answer (if there is one) does not reside with these. Also, as a note, I am not concerned with testing the correctness of the algorithm. That is done with very different methods and it is assumed that the algorithm is correct. What I am using unit-testing for is to make sure that changes in other parts of the system/support algorithms do not change the output of the algorithm under test. So, for a description of the problem: We have an algorithm which takes Gigabits of data, processing it, and generates an image with a corresponding map of which pixels are good and which ones are not. It is this map which I need to verify does not change and pixels which are not valid are not to be used in any way other than the fact that they invalid. If this was all that was given I would have many possible solutions and in fact the method have been using for years is to look at the number of valid pixels, the average, standard deviation, peak and valley of the image. This has proven very sensitive detector for changes. But, this year has added complications which is causing issues with this approach.   * The number of threads being used has increased causing changes in the floating point behavior. In the past the smaller number of thread was accounted for in the tolerances used.   * We have been using floating point (as compared to double) to increase throughput. This has caused the rounding behavior to change even more and combined with the number of threads makes it worse. This has also been made worse as we move to using SIMD processing like GPU and/or AVX instructions sets.   * We have been enhancing the algorithms used to recover more of the pixels which would have been marked as invalid in the past are not valid. This combined with 1 and 2 above is resulting in some pixels being included on some machine and not on others. Since these are on the edge of useability these difference are handled by the algorithms with use this image and are not of concern for the system as a whole, but are causing problems with unit testing the algorithms.   * We have also recently ran into the problem that two numbers (internal to the calculation) are the same and because of the rounding behavior one or the other is picked resulting in different outputs. . Again this is not a problem of the system as a whole, only with unit testing to flag for differences.   * As a minor side example, we also have other non-linear algorithms with due to rounding behavior can give different outputs. Since these algorithms are self correcting the final solution is good, but has a higher variability than easily accounted for unless the tolerances are opened larger than desired. So, my questions is how to account for these issue in unit testing.   I strongly need unit testing because we have a team of programmers working on the system and we need the ability to detect when someone makes a change which unknowingly impacts other algorithms. Yes this has happened in the past and the method being used at the time caught the change before it reached the final product. As the primary algorithm developer I can use your help. I have had many ideas, but they don\u2019t work for all cases and it\u2019s not clear when to use one of the different methods. **Edit:** I now that this is frequently called regression testing but I also know that many time it is also generically called unit testing by many people, even if it's not completely correct. I am not necessarily looking for a magic bullet (that would be nice) but I do need a way of handling these issues in a way which can be handled by others in the group which may not be as knowledgeable on the details. If that is a \u201cpick\u201d one of these methods that is fine if it the rule are clear. We do adjust the parameters when we change the algorithms, but once it is fixed the floating point behavior is still causing differences. When we see differences we always investigate why and in general we try to adjust the algorithm to reduce the difference, but there are times where these is not possible because of the additional computation time. If we stayed away from the limits this would not be an issue (as in the past) but to advance the technology we need to push the limits giving rise to the issues described. You can see this in a simple example. Calculating an average of many numbers. If you stay with number which are close to each other, there are simple methods to make sure the results are accurate. Now when you allow for numbers which have large (orders of mag) difference, with threading, float compared to double, etc you can get very different results. Yes I know there are algorithms which can be used to fix these issue but they can be very computation expensive. While averaging is not my problem you could imagine that the difference don\u2019t impact downstream processing but you still want to write a test to monitor the calculation."}
{"_id": "75718", "title": "What is the best and most cost affordable solution for storing user uploaded videos and pictures?", "text": "I'm in the process of building an iOS application that will allow users to upload short videos (low res. and < 5 seconds) as well as full-size images as taken by their iOS device. Not being certain of how successful this endeavor will be I'm looking for something solid, cost affordable and can scale as (if) needed. Here are my requirements in a nutshell:   1. Users will be able to upload low res. vides < 5 sec. in length or full-sized images captured from their iOS device.   2. I need the ability to monitor the amount of storage used on a user-by-user basis for billing and even restricting further uploads if, for example, they have reached a certain threshold   3. I need something robust but cost effective (I'm a one man operation at this point). Something that can grow and scale with me would be ideal. Any help in reaching this goal is definitely appreciated. Thanks -wg"}
{"_id": "157449", "title": "Need some advice on CLI design, I need to provide simple but powerful command line options", "text": "I am writing a utility that runs on RHEL5 command line. I need my command line options to be simple but powerful. I looked at the various UNIX utilities to get an idea of how simple command line utilities have to be. Do you guys suggest any documents/links that talk about command line etiquette? I am modelling my utility on top of LVM (that's all the info I can give for now). I know it's a software engineering question, but I thought it would be appropriate to post here. Please advise.... PS: I am not asking for details about getopt or command line utility parsers....."}
{"_id": "234459", "title": "Backing up messages in S3 within a Storm topology", "text": "In my project we are trying to build up a KIND-of-a-lambda storm based architecture. The component would be responsible for indexing the site usage events so we expect a quite massive random load. The solution for real-time processing of the messages seems fine, but in parallel to the \"speed layer\" we want to back up the messages in a raw form (just as they are coming down from the queue) in Amazon S3. Since writing a file per message is obviously out of the question, we need to somehow buffer/aggregate the messages before posting to S3 - and here is where the problems begin. We have two concurrent approaches and none seems perfect:   1. We used Redis as a buffer. Basically messages coming down from a queue (RabbitMQ) are buffered in Redis and once some preconfigured batch size (say 1000) is reached the buffer is flushed and stored to S3. The whole message proccesing cycle is not transactional. Once message is stored to Redis it is acknowledged in the queue. This means that if Redis dies the whole batch gets lost and this is not acceptable. We can think of Redis cluster to make the thing more bullet proof but... doesn't it seem like going in a wrong direction?   2. The second approach would be to use Trident Topology. Changing the input queue to Kafka makes things looking more or less straightforward. The message processing cycle can be transactional. HOWEVER, there is this one annoying keyword that keeps beeing repeated in the Trident documentation - **small batches** \\- that Trident assumes small batches. For example the TransactionalTridentKafkaSpout batches the messages into 2 seconds chunks. This is much too little for us. I'm not sure why the batches should be small, but if it's really required maybe the first approach is better? Which one from above is better? Maybe somoeone would come up with a \"third\" idea?"}
{"_id": "109962", "title": "How would I develop an avatar based 3D conference environment?", "text": "I want to develop a 3d environment to be used for meetings and other such functions. Each attendee could log in with a customized avatar and could collaborate and discuss via voice and text chat. I would like to add in multimedia content features as well into the environment. I need help regarding platform selection preferably I want to implement it as a web application with no local installation. I'd like to avoid a browser plug-in unless absolutely necessary. I don't know graphics programming so I'd prefer an approach that uses existing platforms and off the shelf software. I have considered the following options thus far:   * WebGL   * Google O3d   * web 3d's X3D    * VRML   * X3doom   * Sirikata Platform    * yogurt3d   * Unity3d   * Jibe   * OpenSim   * Papervision3d   * Flash   * 3dmlw   * Java3d   * Infinity3d   * Cube3   * CloudMach Are there other possibilities?"}
{"_id": "30201", "title": "Programming concepts taken from the arts and humanities", "text": "After reading Paul Graham's essay Hackers and Painters and Joel Spolsky's Advice for Computer Science College Students, I think I've finally gotten it through my thick skull that I should not be loath to work hard in academic courses that aren't \"programming\" or \"computer science\" courses. To quote the former: > I've found that the best sources of ideas are not the other fields that have > the word \"computer\" in their names, but the other fields inhabited by > makers. Painting has been a much richer source of ideas than the theory of > computation. > > -- Paul Graham, \"Hackers and Painters\" There are certainly other, much stronger reasons to work hard in the \"boring\" classes. However, it'd also be neat to know that these classes may someday inspire me in programming. My question is: what are some specific examples where ideas from literature, art, humanities, philosophy, and other fields made their way into programming? In particular, ideas that weren't obviously applied the way they were meant to (like most math and domain-specific knowledge), but instead gave utterance or inspiration to a program's design and choice of names. **Good examples:**   * The term **endian** comes from _Gulliver's  Travels_ by Jonathan Swift (see here), where it refers to the trivial matter of which side people crack open their eggs.   * The terms **journal** and **transaction** refer to nearly identical concepts in both filesystem design and double-entry bookkeeping (financial accounting). `mkfs.ext2` even says:              Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done      **Off-topic:**   * Learning to write English well is important, as it enables a programmer to document and evangelize his/her software, as well as appear competent to other programmers online.   * Trigonometry is used in 2D and 3D games to implement rotation and direction aspects.   * Knowing finance will come in handy if you want to write an accounting package.   * Knowing XYZ will come in handy if you want to write an XYZ package. **Arguably on-topic:**   * The Monad class in Haskell is based on a concept by the same name from category theory. Actually, Monads in Haskell are monads in the category of Haskell types and functions. Whatever that means..."}
{"_id": "109966", "title": "How do I optimize a web application for high-latency users?", "text": "Basically, I have an application that does searches and requests results from a backend via long polling. It connects to the backend which collects results for 500 ms then sends them back to the client (I'm simplifying things here a bit of course). As we've optimized this, we've noticed a growing divide between users who search at night vs users that search during the day. Namely, users who search at night are _much_ slower than users that search during the day due to the fact that these users are mostly international and have higher latency. What are good high-level approaches to speeding things up for these users?"}
{"_id": "109969", "title": "Hate repetition to the extreme", "text": "I program in a style that everything it's expensive or I really do hate repeating anything, mostly because I develop for embedded systems. So I get very annoyed when I **have** to do something that causes repetition. An example would be that in my current project, I am creating a Layout Manager. I had this huge function that did all the work of placing everything, which I don't mind as long as I comment well. Some point down the line I realise that something I do in that long function I need to do again somewhere else, like adjusting for something that is bigger than the current. But what got me really annoyed ( and why I'm posting ) is that the needed function requires three variables. To me those three variables are expensive and should only be computed once per call. But to refactor the code the way I need to I have to put the variables in the needed function. Now the variables gets evaluated three times. This is just an example, and things like this crop up a lot else where, so besides telling me those evaluations aren't expensive, at which point I'll say, \"I'm still repeating it though\", what can be done about this sort of thing, or, to my huge annoyance, is it unavoidable? _**Update:_** One of the main suggestions given is store the value. Using the example above again, storing the value does not seem viable. Mostly because the needed function takes two needed values which are used to compute the three variables. It would mean I would have to create an object, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, store the values and variables into the object and then test them if they had changed. In short, unless there are other ideas out there, it looks to be unavoidable. The only real thing you can do is minimise up to a limit. How deep do I create objects at the cost of property look ups? How many times to I repeatedly have to create those three variables? I hope you get the idea. There is also the fact maybe I could better refactor my code. I tend to write in huge functions and only pull out what I need, which is probably KISS's fault. I think need another acronym to balance things out :P ."}
{"_id": "157440", "title": "Why isn't the arrow operator in C++ just an alias of *.?", "text": "In c++, the * operator can be overloaded, such as with an iterator, but the arrow (->) (.*) operator does not work with classes that overload the * operator. I imagine that the preprocessor could easily replace all instances of -> with (*left).right, and that would make iterators nicer to implement. is there a practical reason for -> to be different, or is that just a peculiarity of the language/designers?"}
{"_id": "76052", "title": "Constraints in a relational databases - Why not remove them completely?", "text": "Is there any reason to build constraints between tables (inside SQLserver) nowadays? If so, when? Most applications in my area are built on object principles and tables are joined on demand. Demand are based on the need from the application. I won't load a bunch of constrained tables for a simple look- up, which in turn (after action) require one another simple lookup. ORM tools such EntityContext, Linq2Data, NHibernate are also handle the constraints by themselves, at least you know what tables that need each other. Doing constraints inside the server is just about making (forcing) same changes twice? This is usually not a question up for decision, but this database is designed quite different. The design looks regular good, mostly mirrored the objects used by the applications. What disturbing me is all constraints configured inside SQLserver with \"not cascade\". Which means that you have to play \"seek and find\" when coding new database queries. Some cases requires up to 10 levels of an exact order to make a single delete. This surprises me and I'm not sure how to handle it. In my simple world, that setting makes the constraints losing most of the purpose. OK if the database were accessed from hosts without knowledge of the design. How would you act in this scenario?   Why not just remove all constrains from db and keep them at application level?"}
{"_id": "4267", "title": "What top companies look for in an Interview?", "text": "1. Basically I am looking for what is it that you goof up and you are out from the remaining process ?   2. Are elimination rounds a fair way to judge a person ? Anyone can have a bad hour :-(    3. Should you code the best possible or should you get the Algorithm right ? I generally first code a workable solution and then work on it till a level I think it looks beautiful to me. Is this a wrong approach ? Recently I had a telephonic interview in which I was asked to write a variation of Level Order traversal in 20 minutes. I could get the Algorithm and working code in 20 minutes but couldn't get the Exception handling and the coding convention right, after which I didn't hear back from them :-( All the other questions in the interview went very well this was the only thing which was 'not upto the mark'. Needless to say I like the company and will apply again but want to get it right the next time :-) Please share your experiences and valuable suggestions."}
{"_id": "147463", "title": "What open source POSIX compliance test suites are available?", "text": "I'm working on a small open source project, ELLCC, that uses clang/LLVM as a cross compiler for various target processors. For the runtime environment, I'm using the NetBSD libraries and porting them to target Linux and standalone systems. I want to run a POSIX compliance test suite on the code. I've found the Open POSIX Test Suite, which looks like a good start, but it hasn't been updated since 2005. I've done some preliminary testing (with gcc and ecc under Linux), and it looks like it needs a few updates for modern compilers. My questions are:   1. Does the Open POSIX Test Suite live on somewhere in a more up to date form?   2. Are there other open source alternatives?"}
{"_id": "108380", "title": "Examples of composition in software engineering?", "text": "In programming, various terms like abstraction are mentioned quite heavily. What, however, is composition? What is a basic but effective example of composition at play to result in good quality code (good quality meaning easy to understand, short and concise, etc)."}
{"_id": "103456", "title": "How do I grok NHibernate's QueryOver API?", "text": "I've run into the limits of what NHibernate 3.0's LINQ provider is capable of and decided it's time to learn about one of the more powerful (or at least feature-complete) options: the `QueryOver` API. The problem is, I have zero experience with `ICriteria`, and all of the tutorials I've been able to find online either:   1. Assume I'm an `ICriteria` expert and simply show me how to convert ICriteria code to the new fluent interface, or   2. Are trivial \"here's how you do an inner join\" examples that don't really help me _understand_ more complex concepts like projections, subqueries, requirements, or whatever other magic the API is capable of. What should I read to really **learn** about QueryOver, and how to make full use of it?"}
{"_id": "132288", "title": "How do I Integrate Production Database Hot Fixes into Shared Database Development model?", "text": "We are using SQL Source Control 3, SQL Compare, SQL Data Compare from RedGate, Mercurial repositories, TeamCity and a set of 4 environments including production. I am working on getting us to a dedicated environment per developer, but for at least the next 6 months we are stuck with a shared model. To summarize our current system, we have a DEV SQL server where developers first make changes/additions. They commit their changes through SQL Source Control to a local hgdev repository. When they execute an hg push to the main repository, TeamCity listens for that and then (among other things) pushes hgdev repository to hgrc. Another TeamCity process listens for that and does a pull from hgrc and deploys the latest to a QA SQL Server where regression and integration tests are run. When those are passed a push from hgrc to hgprod occurs. We do a compare of hgprod to our PREPROD SQL Server and generate deployment/rollback scripts for our production release. Separate from the above we have database Hot Fixes that will need to be applied in between releases. The process there is for our Operations team make changes on the PreProd database, and then after testing, to use SQL Source Control to commit their hot fix changes to hgprod from the PREPROD database, and then do a compare from hgprod to PRODUCTION, create deployment scripts and run them on PRODUCTION. If we were in a dedicated database per developer model, we could simply automatically push hgprod back to hgdev and merge in the hot fix change (through TeamCity monitoring for hgprod checkins) and then developers would pick it up and merge it to their local repository and database periodically. However, given that with a shared model the DEV database itself is the source of all changes, this won't work. Pushing hotfixes back to hgdev will show up in SQL Source Control as being different than DEV SQL Server and therefore we need to overwrite the reposistory with the \"change\" from the DEV SQL Server. My only workaround so far is to just have OPS assign a developer the hotfix ticket with a script attached and then we run their hotfixes against DEV ourselves to merge them back in. I'm not happy with that solution. Other than working faster to get to dedicated environment, are they other ways to keep this loop going automatically?"}
{"_id": "103454", "title": "Any suggestions for pair programming with external resource?", "text": "I am a software engineer engaged in some extracurricular projects outside of my main gig. I was considering hiring a developer on Elance to assist me. Ideally, we would be a collaborative team where I can review their code and our \"days\" would overlap by a few hours. Ideally, when that persons day is over, I could do code review and then take off where they left off. Has anyone attempted this? Would it be practical to use a Rackspace Cloud Server for this effort where when one developer was done they just saved a VM image that would be accessible by another developer? Our development environment will be ASP.NET 4.0 MVC 3."}
{"_id": "170779", "title": "PyQt application architecture", "text": "I'm trying to give a sound structure to a PyQt application that implements a card game. So far I have the following classes:   * Ui_Game: this describes the ui of course and is responsible of reacting to the events emitted by my CardWidget instances   * MainController: this is responsible for managing the whole application: setup and all the subsequent states of the application (like starting a new hand, displaying the notification of state changes on the ui or ending the game)   * GameEngine: this is a set of classes that implement the whole game logic Now, the way I concretely coded this in Python is the following:               class CardWidget(QtGui.QLabel):         def __init__(self, filename, *args, **kwargs):             QtGui.QLabel.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)             self.setPixmap(QtGui.QPixmap(':/res/res/' + filename))              def mouseReleaseEvent(self, ev):             self.emit(QtCore.SIGNAL('card_clicked'), self)          class Ui_Game(QtGui.QWidget):         def __init__(self, window, *args, **kwargs):             QtGui.QWidget.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)             self.setupUi(window)             self.controller = None              def place_card(self, card):             cards_on_table = self.played_cards.count() + 1             print cards_on_table                  if cards_on_table <= 2:                 self.played_cards.addWidget(card)                 if cards_on_table == 2:                     self.controller.play_hand()          class MainController(object):         def __init__(self):             self.app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)             self.window = QtGui.QMainWindow()             self.ui = Ui_Game(self.window)             self.ui.controller = self             self.game_setup()      Is there a better way other than injecting the controller into the Ui_Game class in the Ui_Game.controller? Or am I totally off-road?"}
{"_id": "132283", "title": "Is it OK to include another person's open-source module in a project that you are uploading to GitHub?", "text": "This seems like it would be an obvious \"yes\". However, I just want to be sure and I've tried googling around to no avail. I am learning Python/Django and uploading all of the projects I'm creating to GitHub. I'm starting to add in existing modules from other open-source projects that do not belong to me. Is it still okay to upload MY projects to GitHub, even though they include other people's open source modules as well? Should I give them credit in the README, or by commenting where their code is included? Thanks."}
{"_id": "132280", "title": "How do I evaluate a .NET job?", "text": "I have been a programmer for a few years and until now I worked exclusively with PHP, although I did create a few small side projects in other languages. I'm currently interviewing with a non-IT that relies mainly on .NET and they seem to be willing to hire me. I probably should have thought of this sooner, but without commercial experience in .NET what questions should I ask to ensure that that job will help me advance my knowledge of the .NET platform or if they are doing .NET the right way (libraries, frameworks, third-party tools, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "53624", "title": "Can C++ be used as a server-side web development language?", "text": "I'd like to get into web development using C++ as the \"scripting language\" on the server-side. My server infrastructure is *nix based, so doing web development in C++ on Azure is not applicable and C++/CLI ASP.NET is also not applicable. Separate from legacy CGI applications, can web development be done using C++ ? Thanks, Scott"}
{"_id": "213391", "title": "Is it possible to combine C/C++ with web languages?", "text": "I would like to create a web application (meaning that will run from browser). The point is that I want to write just the UI in HTML5 + CSS + JS (or maybe even some PHP). On the other hand, I want to write the functionality of the application in C or C++. Then, I want to combine the code about the UI and functionality. Therefore, I would like to ask, whether it is possible to combine C/C++ code with web markup/programming languages?"}
{"_id": "229925", "title": "Member functions vs. Non-member functions for math operators", "text": "I'm writing a linear algebra library (long story short, it's a school assignment) that involves matrices, vectors, etc. In the process of creating this library, I'm going to be creating functions that perform mathematical operations on objects. For example, transpose matrix, invert matrix, normalize vector, etc. I was curious as to what is the \"best practice\" for this sort of function... That is, should I make the function a member function, or non-member? (For clarity/library use sake) Example:               //Member function way:     B = A.transpose();     C = A.inverse();          //Non-member function way:     B = linalg::transpose(A); //Non-member transpose function in linear algebra namespace     C = linalg::inverse(A);      Is there some standard regarding these sorts of operations? Or, at least, is there a common way people do this? I'm leaning towards the first option, but I'd like to know if this is recommended."}
{"_id": "103458", "title": "Drawing the line between models & libraries?", "text": "As my webapps increase in size, so does the complexity. In order to keep my classes & files structured and easy-to-access, I am starting to get more and more confused: I have some very clearly defined data objects in my application - `orders`, `invoices`, `products` for example. All of those have their own entity object that handles enforcement of values and pure business logic along with a model that handles storage of each object to my persistent storage of choice (database). Ok - everything clear and separated that far. But what about a logic-heavy object like `users`? Users log in and out, change password (with everything that means - hashing, encrypting and so forth) and do a whole lot of interaction both in the database and with Sessions. Right now, I use an `Authentication`-class, a library, which carries all of these mentioned actions and a lot more. It does it's job, but It's kind of unclear to me **what I should put into a model and what should be a Library**?"}
{"_id": "170348", "title": "Should I organize my folders by business domain or by technical domain?", "text": "For example, if I'm using some MVC-like architecture, which folder structure should I use:               domain1/         controller         model         view     domain2/         controller         model         view      Or:               controllers/         domain1         domain2     models/         domain1         domain2     views/         domain1         domain2      I deliberately left out file extensions to keep this question language- agnostic. Personally, I'd prefer to separate by business domain (gut feeling), but I see that most/many frameworks separate by technical domain. Why whould I choose one over the other?"}
{"_id": "91328", "title": "Ways to describe or measure the learning curve for a new technology?", "text": "As I begin to learn some major new things beginning from zero, I wonder: is there any way to describe, perhaps even quantify, the height of a learning curve? Having worked at many places on many projects, and half the times not being a good fit, I see we all need better ways to describe skill levels and skills needed for a project. I'm interested, for the purposes of this question, in describing the amount of increase in skills/knowledge/savvy for someone to be effective on a given project, staying with the same employer or in the same situation generally. Example: The owner comes to me and says \"Hey, this new thing, it's vital technology for our next major project. No one here knows much about it. How long will it take you to get up to speed on it?\" (BTW, I want to consider only competent people. No PHBs or fanboys of glitzy new things. Those confounding factors are important in real life, but secondary to the main point here.) Loose relative words like \"steep\", \"easy\" etc don't mean much. The person learning the new thing, and their manager, may have different expectations. I'd like to find something more objective, even if not perfect. In some magically ideal world, we might say \"it takes (n) hours to learn C++, to skill level (x), including all of OO, STL and (blah-blah) set of design patterns\". Hours could be used to mark calendars, assign team members and generally plan well. But of course, we all come with different thinking styles, different past experience, different IQs, different levels of passion to know or use the new thing. And then, do you want to design it, fix it, or just use it? Hours might not be useful, even if there was some formula to account for all those factors. Personally, I learn new ideas in electronics or photography about 3 to 10 times faster than new ideas in software, but don't know if I'm comparing new ideas of the same \"size\". (And I'm not sure in what sense I mean \"faster\"; not necessarily hours or days.) In part, I'm wondering about the \"size\" of knowledge it takes to become competent at, or to master, a new technology. There is the rough rule that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Maybe for becoming a superb flute player in the symphony, or to be a top-notch helicopter pilot, but obviously one can master tying their shows in far less time. Shoe-tying is a \"small\" skill, the others are worthy of full time careers. Maybe someday, with future discoveries in psychology, neuroscience and education theory, one could say something like: \"it takes (n) million mental thought quanta to learn (new thing) given you already know x, y and z and have a natural talent for grokking (subject).\" Then there's be a rule of thumb that a million thought quanta on average correspond to so many minutes or hours, with some of us faster or slower, affected by stress, health and other work. Yeah. Nice science fiction, but not useful today for deciding whether or not to accept a project, which candidate to hire, or making career changes. What can we do today to describe the steepness of the learning curve, or rather, the height of the hill we're climbing, metaphorically speaking? What's better than vague subjective generalizations?"}
{"_id": "186771", "title": "Is it possible to get a job in corporate software houses without a degree", "text": "I have been developing web applications in PHP from two years and have worked with three organizations. I started with no programming knowledge at all, I had interest in web development so I read some books, followed tutorials and hang out with web developers to learn how to develop websites which took me to PHP and than eventually towards programming and I really enjoyed it. Learning OOP, studying servers behaviours, doing amazing things with JS, working and understanding with frameworks like Zend and Yii was quite an experience for me. My ideals also changed from movie stars to persons like Dennis Ritchie and Matt Mullenweg. It took a while to get a job when I got my first things became pretty easy but one thing that I came across while working in the small software houses is that they really don't worry about the code all they want is to get the thing done by any means so that can deliver the project on time to their clients. This is actually really disturbing I have switched two organizations just to excel in programming and contribute in the field of IT as much as I can but it doesn't seems possible if I continue working in the organizations which are much focused on client and don't bother to compromise on the quality of code. My dream companies are wordpress and the organizations which have developed open source PHP frameworks like zend, yii etc. Why? because they are AMAZING and just because of their contributions web has become so amazing and rapid development is in reach of every developer but I am not sure whether I will be able to get a chance in such companies or not because I don't have a degree not because I never wanted but because I really never had a choice. I was on my own from the teenage and it was not possible for me to afford the education and now when I have the resources I am lacking in time and focus. I have a full time job, blog and some responsibilities. Will it be ever possible to work in my dream companies or which are similar to my dream companies"}
{"_id": "111863", "title": "Does test-driven development force me to follow SOLID?", "text": "I hear a lot from TDD practitioners that one of TDD's advantages is that it forces developers to follow SOLID principles (Single responsibility, Open- closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation and Dependency inversion). But as for me it is enough to just write some tests (unit test primarily) to understand it is important to follow SOLID (and thus create testable architecture). Does TDD force developers to follow SOLID more actively than just writing unit tests?"}
{"_id": "79271", "title": "Is blocking java applets a necessary security measure?", "text": "Chrome 11 is now asking user permission to run both signed and unsigned Applets (yes, for signed applets the user is asked twice). Chromium team decided that this measure is needed even when the user is using an up-to-date JRE. Here's my bug report (which reflects solely my opinion: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84001). My question is, how do you guys see it? Is Java Sandbox dated and unsafe? Do browsers need to impose a second layer of protection by default? **Update:** I'm also curious about how many of you guys have a clean record experience with Java against how many every hit a piece of malicious software? As a Java Power User for more than 10 years, the only time my antivirus ever complained about something related to Java was a false positive (I was downloading some libraries from Maven Central repository)."}
{"_id": "229761", "title": "Why can't native machine code be easily decompiled?", "text": "With bytecode-based virtual machine languages like Java, VB.NET, C#, ActionScript 3.0, etc., you hear sometimes about how easy it is to just go download some decompiler off the Internet, run the bytecode through it one good time, and oftentimes, come up with something not too far from the original source code in a matter of seconds. Supposedly this sort of language is particularly vulnerable to that. I've recently started wondering why you don't hear more about this concerning native binary code, when you at least know which language it was written in originally (and thus, which language to try to decompile into). For a long time, I figured it was just because native machine language is so much crazier and more complex than typical bytecode. But what does bytecode look like? It looks like this:               1000: 2A 40 F0 14     1001: 2A 50 F1 27     1002: 4F 00 F0 F1     1003: C9 00 00 F2      And what does native machine code look like (in hex)? It, of course, looks like this:               1000: 2A 40 F0 14     1001: 2A 50 F1 27     1002: 4F 00 F0 F1     1003: C9 00 00 F2      And the instructions come from a somewhat similar frame of mind:               1000: mov EAX, 20     1001: mov EBX, loc1     1002: mul EAX, EBX     1003: push ECX      So, given the language to try to decompile some native binary into, say C++, what's so hard about it? The only two ideas that immediately come to mind are 1) it really is that much more intricate than bytecode, or 2) something about the fact that operating systems tend to paginate programs and scatter their pieces causes too many problems. If one of those possibilities is correct, please explain. But either way, why do you never hear of this basically? **NOTE** I'm about to accept one of the answers, but I want to kind of mention something first. Almost everybody is referring back to the fact that different pieces of original source code might map to the same machine code; local variable names are lost, you don't know what type of loop was originally used, etc. However examples like the two that were just mentioned are kind of trivial in my eyes. Some of the answers though tend to state that the difference between machine code and the original source is drastically much more than something this trivial. But for example, when it comes down to things like local variable names and loop types, bytecode loses this information as well (at least for ActionScript 3.0). I've pulled that stuff back through a decompiler before, and I didn't really care whether a variable was called `strMyLocalString:String` or `loc1`. I could still look in that small, local scope and see how it's being used without much trouble. And a `for` loop is pretty much the same exact thing as a `while` loop, if you think about it. Also even when I would run the source through irrFuscator (which, unlike secureSWF, doesn't do much more than just randomize member variable and function names), it still looked like you could just start isolating certain variables and functions in smaller classes, figure out how they're used, assign your own names to them, and work from there. In order for this to be a big deal, the machine code would need to lose a lot more information than that, and some of the answers do go into this."}
{"_id": "79274", "title": "How should a programmer plan his life for future", "text": "I have been doing web developmwnt for 3 years in php/joomla/jquery/mysql. I am now learning python/django/sysadmin/j2ee just to expand my knowledge. I am 28 and I can find jobs, but I was thinking if I go beyond 40 or 45 then there is every chance that companies will look for younger people, because you can always find young people with similar skills if not experience. So I was thinking, do I need to keep the same role as a web developer or do I need to seek a career path where age does not matter and experience is the key. I have a relative who worked for 15 years as a programmer, and is now 38. He became the recruiter for an agency which provides IT candidates to other companies. I think that sort of position is not linked to age. I may be wrong. The other option I was thinking of is to keep in mind that by the time I get to 40 or above, I should have enough links with clients so that I can get enough freelance work to make my living. Because then I don't have to be at the mercy of jobs, and age won't matter. So I just want to know: as programmer what is the future after 40 or 50? Because if we have that kind of goal, we need at least 10-15 years to get to that point."}
{"_id": "228418", "title": "Is just using an email address for login a good idea?", "text": "Many a times I need to log into a website that I used months ago and have forgotten my password. So clicking the reset password link and the site sends me an email with a single use link which allows me to enter a new password and logs me in. Happy days. This got me thinking; how about we skip the whole password thing and just send a single use link in an email that I click which logs me into a month long session. So, tell me. Why wouldn't this work?"}
{"_id": "228414", "title": "What are the shortcomings of using AuthorizeAttribute in this way in MVC?", "text": "I have ASP.Net MVC project code with custom authorization as below:               public class UpdateAccrualAuthorize : AuthorizeAttribute     {         public override void OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext authContext)         {             AccessPermissions securityObject = AppContext.CurrentUser.Permissions;             if (!securityObject.HasCostPageAccrualChangesAccess)             {                 authContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(                                         new RouteValueDictionary(new { controller = Constants.HeaderPage.ErrorController, action = Constants.HeaderPage.AccessDeniedAction }));             }         }     }      Here the redirect route logic is inside the authorization logic Then I referred Changing my Action filter class to be a Custom authorization attribute. Here it says a different approach               if (!authorized)              base.HandleUnauthorizedRequest(filterContext);      and to make configuration entry               <system.webServer>         <httpErrors errorMode=\"Custom\" existingResponse=\"Replace\">             <remove statusCode=\"403\" subStatusCode=\"-1\" />             <error statusCode=\"403\" path=\"/error/403\" responseMode=\"ExecuteURL\" />         </httpErrors>     </system.webServer>      and register a route               routes.Add(\"Error\",                  new Route(\"error/{statusCode}\", new { controller = \"Error\", action = \"Details\" })                            );      Update I also read Asp.net Mvc custom mechanism to handle unauthorized request about handling ajax requests in the AuthorizeAttribute **QUESTION** What are the advantages of this new approach over my approach?"}
{"_id": "228410", "title": "debugging web applications using debug parameter", "text": "A suggestion has been made by a team member to leave all debug code intact in our web pages... and then to create a variable that can be turned on / off to enable / disable debugging. This is a technique we use in some of our low level, non web code. Just wondering if anyone had any comments on how they've implemented something similar for web applications? Some of our web applications are written in lua, and others in PHP. I like the idea and I've seen it used in different types of solutions. However, my knee-jerk reaction is that for web apps, it might not be such a great idea. I don't want to have a tonn of logs generated on the web server. At the same time, it'd be nice to simply enable a variable and then start collecting information. The alternative could be to always have a test page that calls the same methods that the production page does, but the test page dumps a bunch of data to the screen. Just wondering if anyone has any experience / comments on doing this for the web as far as how to build it in, how difficult it is to maintain etc. Thanks."}
{"_id": "132755", "title": "What's the best way to set up the distance and height of a triple monitor system", "text": "I am fortunate that my employer provides a triple monitor setup. However, I'm wondering if the greater degree of head turning and the closeness of the monitors is leading to some postural pain. Is there any advice or guidelines, specifically for _triple_ monitors which might be of use?"}
{"_id": "132756", "title": "Current best practice/methods to code a VB.NET DAL in SQL Server", "text": "What are the current best practice/methods to code a VB.NET DAL in SQL Server? I have been trying to search but can't seem to find the right words to look for."}
{"_id": "185238", "title": "How does C++ handle multiple inheritance with a shared common ancestor?", "text": "I'm not a C++ guy, but I'm forced to think about this. Why is multiple inheritance possible in C++, but not in C#? (I know of the diamond problem, but that's not what I'm asking here). How does C++ resolve the ambiguity of identical method signatures inherited from multiple base classes? And why is the same design not incorporated into C#?"}
{"_id": "188647", "title": "Is every page a new view?", "text": "I just started building an iOS app and wanted to get some feedback regarding views. I've got specs for               Activity Page     Activity Recording     Activity Create     Activity Save      Each of the specs show a different function, but would each of these be a brand new view in my iOS app?"}
{"_id": "188644", "title": "Dependency Injection - Dependency Chain Pattern", "text": "On my last large project, I used dependency injection really heavily. I started out using constructor injection but even two or three dependencies resulted in really ugly code.               public MyClass(         IDependency1 dependency1,          IDependency2 dependency2         IDependency3 dependency3)      I am not a fan of property injection. Some people say it implies an \"optional\" dependency. I think what they mean is that there will be a default dependency (the production class) but it can be replaced with a mock object during test. Many times, my dependencies have dependencies, too, so I can't provide a default value unless I used a singleton or something. My problem with property injection is that I prefer fully initialized objects and don't want to accidentally forget to mock out a dependency during test. So, I found a compromise. I created a \"parameter object\" that had properties for all of my dependencies. I passed these to my constructors. This had the benefit of keeping my code somewhat cleaner _and_ I could ignore some dependencies during test if they weren't touched. Based on feedback I got the impression this was a bad idea. It was constructor injection or parameter injection - no compromise allowed. Later I realized that these parameter objects sometimes became their own classes (or set of classes). That's when I discovered an interesting pattern. Many business objects depended on other business objects, which had their own dependencies. What I ended up with was an interesting data structure, similar to a linked list. ![A Simple Depedency Chain](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zvN6P.png) This data structure could become fairly complex depending on the number of interacting classes. In most cases, the structure was closer to an n-ary tree. Each parameter object could link to any number of other objects (including other business objects). The business objects were the nodes of the tree and the parameter objects were like the edges connecting them. ![A Complex Dependency Tree](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BvnPD.png) I think connecting all these objects together without using a declarative dependency injection framework would be mind-numbing. The dependency injection framework I was using was going 8 levels deep in my code building the dependencies from the bottom up in the worst case. The parameter objects usually just exposed the dependencies. On rare occasions, I would hide them behind friendly function calls and made them their own business objects (usually resulting yet another parameter object). I had to remind myself that the parameter objects only existed because I didn't want to construct dependencies in the constructor (or pass them to the constructor). It only made sense to create new business objects when I started repeating myself. Even then, I ended up with an explosion of parameter objects. I've read plenty of books explaining that this situation should never happen. Classes should have very few dependencies. It was a sign that my classes did \"too much\". But in most of these cases, a business object used data from multiple database tables (repositories), configuration settings, services, etc. in order to calculate something. This occurred most often when implementing a series of steps making up a unit of work. When N things are needed to do a task, the best you can do is push those N things to other classes or on up the call stack. Is one class with 6 dependencies better or worse than 3 classes with two dependencies each? I am hoping to get some feedback on this approach to dependency injection - in how it relates to architecting a business layer."}
{"_id": "188643", "title": "Would porting JPype to Python 3 be useful?", "text": "I have an open source project my company would like me to do with a small team, creating an adapter for the Oracle NoSQL database to be used in Python, but to do that we would need to be able to make calls to the running Java server that Oracle NoSQL runs on. Looking around at our options, we came across JPype which seems like the best option. Unfortunately, JPype hasn't been actively developed for a couple years, which is a downside in and of itself, but more importantly I'm betting it doesn't work with Python 3.x. So now we're thinking that it might be best for us to fork JPype and make an open source version which is compatible with Python 3.x, or do that with the existing project if we can get in contact with the guy who used to maintain it. The only alternative we see would be working with JNI ourselves, which seems more difficult. I'm wondering from \"real\" Python developers (I'm primary a Java developer) whether or not a port of JPype to Python 3.x would be useful in and of itself, or if this would more just be something that would be useful for this specific use case only."}
{"_id": "215062", "title": "Writing and Understanding code", "text": "I can write code. I can read code but I can't implement good code. How to develop deep understanding of any framework or stuff that we are working on? Is it looking into documentation and working on it? I have seen in this form that people that have great understanding of things they are working on. How is this possible? How to not scrape on the surface only? How to manage time vs learning vs productivity?"}
{"_id": "181921", "title": "Is every number in the code considered a \"magic number\"?", "text": "So every number in the code that we are sending to a method as an argument is considered as a Magic Number? To me, it shouldn't. I think if some number is let's say it is for minimum length of user name and we start using \"6\" in the code...then yeah we have a maintenance problem and here \"6\" is a magic number....but if we are calling a method that one of its arguments accept an integer for example as the ith member of a collection and then we pass \"0\" to that method call, in this case I don't see that \"0\" as a magic number. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "181922", "title": "Does the state Pattern violate Liskov Substitution Principle?", "text": "This image is taken from Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UCMr1.png) This is the class diagram for the **State Pattern** where a `SalesOrder` can have different states during its life time. Only certain transitions are allowed between the different states. Now the `OrderState` class is an `abstract` class and all its methods are inherited to its subclasses. If we consider the subclass `Cancelled` which is a final state that doesn't allow any transitions to any other states, we'll have to `override` all its methods in this class to throw exceptions. Now doesn't that violate Liskov's substitution principle since a sublcass shouldn't alter the behavior of the parent? Does changing the abstract class into an interface fixes this?   How can this be fixed?"}
{"_id": "206921", "title": "Why does this article state that graduate education liberate one from concerns like the efficiency of hardware-based integers?", "text": "Quoting The Evolution of Haskell Programmer, > graduate education tends to liberate one from petty concerns about, e.g., > the efficiency of hardware-based integers What exactly does this suggest?   Is it that after graduation, one gets more interested in abstract ideas so much that he does not think hardware is relevant? Or that hardware is also abstracted and one is more interested in algorithms? I am trying to understand on what grounds the sentence is based."}
{"_id": "131480", "title": "What critical iPhone programming (methods/skills/languages/etc) would you teach to new teenage programmers?", "text": "Alaskan high schools are looking to teach iPhone programming skills to their students. Where would you start? More specifically:   * What languages would you teach, first, second, third? Would you teach languages at all?   * What programs would you teach with?   * How would you start someone practicing programming skills?   * Would you teach things like agile, scrum, or any work management system? What critical skills would you start with? Have you been trained by any teachers you really liked? Would you recommend any teachers or trainers?"}
{"_id": "131483", "title": "Using Microsoft Word/Outlook for content publishing to Wordpress", "text": "I am tasked with building an tool to allow users to publish to Wordpress from their PC using MS Word and Outlook. I know, completely defeat the purpose of having Wordpress, but the basic requirement are: 1) Format must be preserved, including images 2) Providing an interface for categorizing and tagging the document After doing some research, I think this could be achieved by creating an VBA macro that saves Word to html format, and sending it via http to Wordpress XMLRPC However, I haven't quite work out how to include the images, and how to keep the category from Wordpress and the macro in sync. I would like to hear from anyone who have experience in this and suggestion on how to implement this."}
{"_id": "165102", "title": "What do you do with coder's block?", "text": "Lately it has been a bit rough. I basically know all the things I need and all the avenues to get there for work. There's been no real issue of a problem with too high complexity, and performance is good. Still, after three major projects this year, my mind is behaving a little strange. **It's like I'm used to working in O(1+log(N-neatTricks)) but for some reason it processes in O(N^2)!** I've experienced a sort of burnout after long deadlines and drudging projects before, but when it turns into a longer experience, I haven't found the usual suspects to be helpful.   * Take more walks   * Work on other code   * Overdesign everything until I feel intensely driven to just make it (sorta works) How can a programmer recoup from the specific hole in your head programming leaves after being mentally ransacked by these bloody corporations and their fancy money? Hopefully some of you have some better ideas, because I could really use another round of being looted and pillaged.I've often wondered if there are special puzzles or some kind of activity that would de-stress the tangled balance of left and right braininess programmers often deal with. Do any special techniques, activities, anything seem to help with the developer's mindset especially? **EDIT:** > While not necessarily my favorite idea presented, I think Francesco first > fix is the _real_ answer to a commonly confronted problem. I can see how > this question could be viewed as rather subjective or common, but I have yet > to see a descript of this very particular occurrence. Perhaps we should find > the standard deviation of different types of moods only programmers report > having and call it the something-or-other syndrome."}
{"_id": "131484", "title": "When should a graduate apply for a programming job at tech companies?", "text": "How early do tech companies expect job applicants to apply, and whats the shortest amount of time it will take from applying to a company to beginning to work there? For example, if I'm graduating in May and wants to start working in July or August, when should I apply for jobs at tech companies? I assume small companies only look at applicants a few weeks before they are ready to work, but what about large companies, like Google or Facebook?"}
{"_id": "206929", "title": "Class instance clustering in object reference graph for multi-entries serialization", "text": "My question is on the best way to cluster a graph of class instances around specifically marked objects ( _objects_ are the graph nodes and the references to each other are the directed edges of the graph). To better explain my question, let me explain my motivation: I currently use a moderately complex system to serialize the data used in my projects:   * \"marked\" objects have a specific attributes which stores a \"saving entry\": the path to an associated file on disc (but it could be done for any storage type providing the suitable interface)   * Those object can then be serialized automatically (eg: `obj.save()`)   * The serialization of a marked object `'a'` contains implicitly all objects `'b'` for which `'a'` has a reference to, directly s.t: `a.b = b`, or indirectly s.t.: `a.c.b = b` for some object `'c'` This basically define specific storage entries to specific objects. I then have \"container\" type objects that:   1. can be serialized similarly (in fact their are or can-be \"marked\")   2. they don't serialize in their storage entries the \"marked\" objects (with direct reference): if `a` and `a.b` are both marked, `a.save()` calls `b.save()` and stores `a.b = storage_entry(b)` So, if I serialize `'a'`, it will serialize automatically all objects that can be reached from `'a'` through the object reference graph, possibly in multiples entries. That is what I want, and it usually provides the functionalities I need. However, there are some structural limitations to this approach:   1. the multi-entry saving can only works through direct connections in \"container\" objects, and   2. there are situations with undefined behavior such as if two \"marked\" objects `'a'`and `'b'` both have a reference to an unmarked object `'c'`. In this case my system will stores `'c'` in both `'a'` and `'b'` making an implicit copy which not only double the storage size, but also change the object reference graph after re-loading. I am thinking of generalizing the process. Apart for the practical questions on implementation (I am coding in python, and use Pickle to serialize my objects), there is a general question on the way to attach (cluster) unmarked objects to marked ones. So, my questions are:   * What are the important issues that should be considered? Basically why not just use any graph parsing algorithm with the \"attach to last marked node\" behavior.   * Is there any work done on this problem, practical or theoretical, that I should be aware of? **Example of a simple object graph to serialize:** ![](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nVpih.jpg) Circles are objects and arrow references. Orange circles are marked objects. When serializing `A`, object `B` to `E` should be serialized but not blue objects because they are not reachable from `A`. Now, `B` is serialized in its own entry (i.e. file) and the question is how to choose where to serialize objects `C` to `E`, to `A` or `B` entry? Some thinking on this example:   * object `C` is only reachable from `A`, so its should be attached to it   * to reach `E`, it is necessary to pass by `B`, so `E` should be attached to `B`   * what about `D`? Because after serialization if `B` is loaded (and not `A`), `D` should also be loaded but not `A`. Thus `D` should be serialized in `B` entry. **Note:** I added the tag `database` because I think the answer might come from that fields, even if the question is not really."}
{"_id": "183694", "title": "call sub function based on variable value", "text": "I have a function containing other functions. These function are called based on value of variable `action`. These sub functions are logically grouped - i.e., they all deal with file manipulation. Each function has 2 to 5 lines. I would like to improve the style. Is there a more concise way of achieving this end than what I have below? I feed there is a log of defining functions that contain not many LOC.               def my_function(action):              return { '1': func_a, '2': func_b, '3': func_c, '4': func_d}.get(action, err)()              def func_a():             ...             ...             return ...         def func_b():             ...             ...             ...             return ...         def func_c():             ...             ...             return ...         def func_d():             ...             ...             return ...         def err():             return      *discaimer: actual functions have logical names. My issue is with the proliferation of functions to define"}
{"_id": "255323", "title": "What mobile specific/iOS unit tests should you write?", "text": "I have read a TDD book by Kent Beck as well as other Unit Testing tutorials. Most of the tutorials explain how to use a tool or give simple/silly examples. Here on stackoverflow there are a bunch of questions on _HOW_ to test for iOS, but I want to know _WHAT_ should be tested on iOS/mobile apps in general. Specifically:   1. What type of tests should you write for network/API calls? (Do you actually hit the endpoint or just mock up JSON? Do you test error handling?)   2. What type of tests should you write for data persistence (esp Core Data)   3. It is easy to write tests for the Model layer (and any model functions), but what should you test on the Controller layer?   4. What other mobile-specific tests might you write? For sake of greater clarity, what Unit Test might you write if you were building a Netflix app which contains features such as streaming video, image caching, local persistence, network calls,etc?"}
{"_id": "180344", "title": "How to plan a client/server app networking architecture to cope with multiple unrelated exchanges of data?", "text": "I'm coding a server/client application pair in Java, as I learn about it. I have basic functionality of sending a message to the server and parsing it but in thinking about the big picture of their communication, I'm stumped about where to go from here. Both the client and the server have to be able to initiate an exchange of data so I need to have one thread reading at each side, at all times. On top of that, when one initiates an exchange, it needs to listen for the reply. If I do that, though, I'd have two threads reading data, which I guess wouldn't end well since, from my understanding, I wouldn't be able to make sure the data gets read in the thread I want. I see a few options but I'm not confident at going too far with each solution since my knowledge doesn't let me think too far ahead.   1. Use only the first thread that was originally waiting for data before the exchange, to also read the reply for the query that was just sent by a different thread, and forward the data where it belongs.  This sounds difficult. If I read the data in the same thread that requested it, it would be very straightforward compared to this.   2. Start reading the InputStream in the same thread that requested data and make the thread that was originally listening, wait. My problem with this is that, if there's other data arriving by the same client that is unrelated with the query that was just made, it would be fetched by this thread instead of the other one, which kinda defeats the purpose of reading the data here.   3. Establish another connection from the client, to another port, after the first is established. Then I could use one socket for exchanges initiated by the other side, and the other to listen for replies of queries made in the meantime. This way I'd know exactly what is going where, but wouldn't I have this same problem further down the road if I have two queries waiting for data at the same time? This sounds like simple functionality, trivial to find in many applications, so I'm guessing there's some tried and true method out there and there's no reason for me to try and reinvent the wheel here. So, to sum it up, what's the recommended way to set up client/server applications that can cope with possibly overlapping dialogs, initiated by either one, at unpredictable times? I started to modify some parts of the question to make it a bit clearer but I ended up almost rewriting it completely. If it's still a bit confusing is because I am confused. I think I'm missing some simple point but I haven't been able to find examples that show this."}
{"_id": "181697", "title": "Python in Big Data?", "text": "Can python be efficiently implemented in big data field? To be precise I am building an web app that analyses really big data in medical health care field consisting of medical history and huge personal information. I need some advice on how to handle very big data in python efficiently and with high performance. Also are their some open source packages in python available which have high performance and efficiency in big data handling? About users and data: Each user has about 3gb of data. Users are grouped based on their family and friend circles and the data is then analysed to predict important information and co-relations out of that. Currently I am talking about 10,000 users and will be rapidly increasing number of users."}
{"_id": "77102", "title": "How does one network at software conferences?", "text": "I'm still at Microsoft TechEd, and the response to my question about how to effectively use my time at software conferences was overwhelmingly \"networking is the most useful part of software conferences\". Problem: I have no idea how to even approach that task. I've always been kind of an introvert. At school and at work I've generally not had issues because there are enough extroverts around that approach me that I've made some awesome friends over the years. However, at conferences, it seems most are introverted like myself, and those who aren't seem to be salespeople. The couple of times I've felt okay approaching people it's been after a session where there's been healthy discussion throughout the whole room, and just when I get the nerve to go up and talk to some people, they leave and go on to other things. Is there a specific books I should read? Advice I can take? Anything as far as approaching people one does not know? 'Cause every time I try I just feel like an awkward mess. :( (Oddly enough, I don't have problems speaking to a group of people -- it's the one-on-one things that trip me up :P) (Oh, and by the way, if anyone from here is also there and would like to meet to talk about things, I'm game :P) **So, how does an introverted programmer like myself network effectively at software conferences?**"}
{"_id": "140160", "title": "Suggestions to manage semi-structured email bounces?", "text": "The company I work for sends a lot of emails, and in return we get a lot of bounces.   We currently don't have a good way of sorting them and help us archive the routine ones while putting the important ones in front of human eyes.   From a format of view these email bounces are not well structured, but there are some sort of patterns.   There is a preliminary system that is being worked on but it is becoming an unmanagable collection of complicated regular expressions.   I convinced my company to let me take home a portion of the bounces, and I am hoping to find a better way to handle them in my free time. It's both an opportunity to learn something interesting and do something valuable.   How would you approach this problem? Is there a class of methods or algorithms that are a good fit for this situation? Thank you."}
{"_id": "140161", "title": "Imitating Exchange Server's \"RBAC AuthZ\" in my own application... (is there something similar?)", "text": "Exchange 2010 has a delegation model where groups of winrm cmdlets are essentally grouped into roles, and the roles assigned to a user. ![Exchange Roles Image](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CYzCU.jpg) (Image source) This is a great & flexible model considering how I can leverage all the benefits of PowerShell, while using the right low level technologies (WCF, SOAP etc), and requiring no additional software on the client side. ![image of how Exchange 2010 remote admin works](http://i.stack.imgur.com/G44ru.jpg) (Image source) **Question(s)**   1. Is there a way for me to leverage Exchange's delegation model in my .NET application?    2. Has anyone attempted to imitate this model?   3. If I must start from scratch, how would I go about imitating this approach?"}
{"_id": "181691", "title": "Should a complex EL expression be replaced by a single javabean getter?", "text": "In JSF if I have a component that conditionally renders based on a number of variables what is the optimal way to handle the render statement... should the logic live in the component declaration or in some form of helper class? The text woof is only displayed when an animal is an elephant or dog and the animal is not mute. Option 1: Implementation in the view:               <h:outputText id=\"text\" value=\"woof\"        rendered=\"#{animal.type == 'elephant'                        or animal.type == 'dog' and not(animal.mute)}\"/>      or Option 2: Encapsulation:               <h:outputText id=\"text\" value=\"woof\" rendered=\"#{animal.barkingAnimal}\"/>      with implementation:               public class Animal {          public boolean isBarkingAnimal() {              return (\"dog\".equals(getType()) || \"elephant\".equals(getType())) && !isMute();          }     ...      So both work... but which is the right way to handle the scenario?"}
{"_id": "181699", "title": "How does the Law of Demeter apply to object-oriented systems regarding coupling and cohesion?", "text": "How does the **Law of Demeter** applied to object-oriented systems with coupling and cohesion? I was reading a book \"Software development and professional practice\" and came across the chapter about LoD, and was curious about how that principle is applied into object oriented systems."}
{"_id": "134287", "title": "Programming judge with versus system", "text": "I'm looking for a programming judge system which supports putting contestants programs against each other in \"matches\". The format could be either for example a tournament style or chess ranking, but this isn't that important. A good example would be Google's AI challenge (http://aichallenge.org/) The only systems I've found so far are \"regular\" programming judges, i.e. those who can check if a program passes or fails a given problem, like DOMJudge. Do you know of any systems like this?"}
{"_id": "76940", "title": "Is \"VS Lightswitch\" the \"Oracle APEX\" from Microsoft?", "text": "What do you think? Is **\"Visual Studio Lightswitch\"** becoming the **\"Oracle APEX\"** for **SQL Server** in the futrure? Are these two technologies comparable?"}
{"_id": "76946", "title": "Getting involved in the Java Community Process (JCP)", "text": "The Java Community Process is meant to be just that. A process where the Java community can have its say on the future of the language. What is the best way to get involved in the JCP? A JSR (Java Specification Request) goes through various stages in its life cycle. Obviously if you are domain expert with deep knowledge of a subject then you would want to get involved in a relevant JSR at a very early stage. However, what stage is the best to get involved at if you are a likely end user (as a developer) of the JSR but are not the above mentioned domain expert?"}
{"_id": "194834", "title": "Manage version control with a central development server (LAMP)", "text": "I'm working in a small team with up to 5 (web)developers. Because our team is growing frequently and we ran into problems with multiple people working on the same code we decided to set up a VCS. **Current Situation** Currently we are working with a central development server (LAMP). So every developer works on the same code base and if the code is tested and ready for our live server we just copy it via ftp. I know this is some sort of an anno 1600 workflow but yeah - it is what it is and also the reason for this question. On the development server our directory structure looks like this:               /var/www            /Project1            /Project2            /Project3            ...      Additionally there are some small non-webapplications - Android/iPhone/Windows 8 etc. apps and some C# tools which also should be included in the VCS. **Goal and problems** Our goal is to get a clean setup for a VCS, which works together with an issue tracking software, enables us to work togheter on the same project at the same time without overwriting our codes and simply gives us the advantage of version-control. I think the first question for us is, which technology should we use. Some of us have allready experienced subversion. But because git is some sort of becoming the \"standard\" and there are a lot of \"pro git\" arguments among the web users we tend to using git. There starts our uncertainty. For using git - a decentralised VCS - it looks like we have to start using seperate development servers on each developer's computer. The problems with that are:   * Some times we work on different computers, so when we forget to push our code we have a problem.   * We would have to work with virtual machines because the dev servers should be the same as our live server (This would simply not be enforceable in our environment, believe me it's not possible).    * The development server usually also served as a \"tryout\" or \"presentation\" server where non-developers had a look at what's going on. **Is there another possible setup with git so that we are able to benefit from the system while still using a single(!) development server?** Maybe with different directories for each developer. Or can we still work on the same code base with maybe locking the files we are working on and then commit them to a repository. It's maybe important to say that while it became a factor for us it is still uncommon that multiple developers work on the same part of an application at the same time."}
{"_id": "73532", "title": "How to manage maintenance", "text": "There are lots of great books and resources out there about managing new software developments, but very little that I've seen about managing ongoing maintenance of software systems. I'm not talking about big enhancements, I'm talking about the little 1 or 2 day bug fixes and updates that quickly accumulate once a system goes into production. Any recommended books or other resources on this subject?"}
{"_id": "73531", "title": "what do database programmers do?", "text": "Every time I read about Oracle programmers etc, I get confused. I don't know what exactly they do. From my understanding, application programmers need to develop the core functionality. The libraries they use might help in GUI development or database connectivity but the functionality that makes that application that application must be programmed and that makes every application different (well some could be tweaked versions of others). In this relation, isn't database programming basically creating table and aren't these tables processed in response to SQL statements which are issued by an application which usually is the front end? So is table creation such a big deal?"}
{"_id": "194832", "title": "Use client to access database or server to access database", "text": "I' creating a client server application in which I need to update a particular database. I'm using python with MySQL. There are two options: I use a client.py and server.py, the client.py can send data packed into JSON to the server, the server.py will handle the database and send query data back in the form of JSON. The second option is that there is no server.py file, instead the client accesses databases and queries directly with the MySQL server. Is there any benefits to using one method to another? **EDIT:** There can be atmost about 100 clients and they will be sending data throught the day with a delay of about about 20 seconds."}
{"_id": "86347", "title": "What was Ruby used for before Rails?", "text": "What type of programming or project would only involve the Ruby language? Rather than using RoR. What was Ruby used for before the Rails framework existed is what I am basically asking."}
{"_id": "238144", "title": "Develop a website using mustache.js and PHP", "text": "I'm thinking of building a website using mustache.js to render the website and having PHP as the backend. The PHP will then mainly contain queries to the database and some SESSION checkings. Previously I've used plain PHP to render the frontend but it gets way too messy. An example of what I'm thinking: **HTML File**               <html>         <head>             <script>                $.ajax{                    url: \"path/to/file.php\",                    ...                    success: function(response){                        var template = $('#template').html();                        var rendered = Mustache.render(template, response)                        $('#template').html(rendered);                    }                }             </script>         </head>         <body>             <p id=\"template\">Your favourite website is {{website}}</p>         </body>     </html>      **PHP File**               <?php         function getWebsite($userid){             $mysqli = (...);             $stmt = $mysqli -> prepare(\"SELECT name FROM websites WHERE userId = ?\");             $stmt -> bind_param(\"i\", $userId);             $stmt -> execute();             ...             ...             echo json_encode($results);         }     ?>      Is this a good structure or will it still get messy? Will it be slower?"}
{"_id": "168578", "title": "Having a generic data type for a database table column, is it \"good\" practice?", "text": "I'm working on a PHP project where some object (class member) may contain different data type. For example :               class Property {         private $_id;     // (PK)         private $_ref_id; // the object reference id (FK)         private $_name;   // the name of the property         private $_type;   // 'string', 'int', 'float(n,m)', 'datetime', etc.         private $_data;   // ...              // ..snip.. public getters/setters     }      Now, I need to perform some persistence on these objects. Some properties may be a text data type, but nothing bigger than what a `varchar` may hold. Also, later on, I need to be able to perform searches and sorting. Is it a good practice to use a single database table for this (ie. is there a non negligible performance impact)? If it's \"acceptable\", then what could be the data type for the `data` column?"}
{"_id": "175664", "title": "Inspection, code review - is it really testing?", "text": "ISTQB, Wikipedia or other sources classify verification acitivities (reviews etc.) as a static testing, yet other do not. If we can say that peer reviews and inspections are actually a kind of a testing, then a lot of standards do not make sense (consider e.g. ISO which say that validation is done by testing, while verification by checking of work products) - it should at least say dynamic testing for validation, shouldn't it? I am completing master thesis dealing with QA and I must admit that I have never seen worse and more ambiguous and contradicting literature than in this field :/ Do you think (and if so, why) that static testing is a good and justifiable term or should we stick to testing and static checks/analysis? Wikipedia: **_Static testing** is a form of software testing where the software isn't actually used. This is in contrast to dynamic testing. It is generally not detailed testing, but checks mainly for the sanity of the code, algorithm, or document. It is primarily syntax checking of the code and/or manually **reviewing the code or document** to find errors. This type of testing can be used by the developer who wrote the code, in isolation. Code reviews, inspections and walkthroughs are also used._ EDIT: One of the many sources that mentiones static testing to employ reviews etc. (look for \"static testing\" in Google books): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/y768h.jpg)"}
{"_id": "202092", "title": "Attributing credit for programming languages used", "text": "I'm working on a website and was hit with the thought of \"do I need to give credit for the languages I'm using to build my website with?\" I wasn't able to find any sort of licenses for HTML, CSS, or JavaScript and I'm a bit confused on the wording of PHP's license. My question is: Do I need to specify somewhere on my website (externally or internally) that I'm using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL (and attribute credit, linking to their licenses if they have one, etc)?"}
{"_id": "131227", "title": "Conflicting Java Styles within a Team", "text": "I am part of a Java development team with a 6 week deadline. This necessitates writing a good deal of code very very quickly. However our development team has different styles of coding. Everything from name conventions to methods of abstraction differ among our team. Does anyone know of any documents that dictate \"standards\" for java? To clarify, I was wondering if there was an organization that would dictate proper naming convention for variables and functions for example. This is paramount as with such a short deadline we can't afford to spend time trying to comprehend each others code."}
{"_id": "6133", "title": "How do you ensure your product meets basic usability guidelines?", "text": "There are some really common usability errors in everyday software we used; errors that result from the ways the particular programmer has learned without learning of all the other ways there are. For example, talking about Windows software in particular, the following common flaws come to mind:   * Failure to support multiple screens. For example, windows centered in the virtual desktop (instead of a specific screen) and hence displayed spanning the monitor boundary in a dual monitor setup.   * Failure to support serious keyboard users. For example, utterly messed up tab order; duplicate or completely missing accelerator keys.   * Alt+Tab order mess-ups. For example, a window that doesn't go to the end of the tab order when minimized.   * Subtle breakage of common controls that were reimplemented for one reason or another. E.g. failure to implement Ctrl+Left/Right on a textbox; failure to add an Alt+Space window menu to a skinnable window, failure to make Ctrl+Insert copy to clipboard, etc, etc. This one is a huge category in its own right. There are a gazillion of things like this. How can we ever make sure we don't break a large proportion of these? After all they aren't all written down anywhere... or are they?"}
{"_id": "124020", "title": "Bill of materials database design in EF codefirst?", "text": "I'm having trouble generating a proper database design for bill of materials in EF Code-first I just need a general structure then ill add additional fields So i need to have a Product that is assembled from other Products which are assemblies of other Products. Example: Product 1:   * Aluminum Box 1x     * Aluminum Sheet 4x      * Foil 1x     * Screws 6x Product 2:   * Wheel Cart 1x     * Aluminum Box 1x     * Wheels 4x     * Screws 4x     * Foil 2x So notice Product 2 (Wheel Cart) is assembled from Product 1 (Aluminum Box) and some additional components, yet same Product Screws and Foil is used in both. So i think its hierarchical many to many. Or maybe someone knows a better solution. Doesn't have to be in EF Code-first, i can re-generate code from T-SQL. Thank you. _**EDIT:_** Ive been messing around and nothing seems to work, i have this currently: **Components** ComponentID Name Price ProductID N | | | 1 **Products** ProductID ParentID Quantity ComponentLookupId First i create a Component, then a Product which can be hierarchical and tie a Component to it, and now i am fetching the Name and Price of the Component via Lookup, which is sort of OK, but having problems with summaries. If i copy Name, Price then when Component is changed Product isn't. Or should i try many-to-many with additional fields in a join table."}
{"_id": "240672", "title": "Why doesn't Ruby have implicit conversion of Fixnum into String?", "text": "Ruby normally makes things easy. However, it doesn't allow implicitely converting a number to a string:               2.0.0p247 :010 > \"a\"+1     TypeError: no implicit conversion of Fixnum into String      Why is this when nearly every other language allows it, including Perl, PHP, Java and VBA?"}
{"_id": "124028", "title": "Is Big Nerd Ranch or AboutObjects iOS training worth it?", "text": "I have a CS undergrad degree and have been programming for several years with my current company, messed around with Objective-C by making a few console apps and a few simple apps that I ran in the simulator: all basic stuff. My company asked me to take on our in-house iOS development and they offered to send me \"away\" for training. Has anyone been to either the Big Nerd Ranch or AboutObjects iOS training? Was it a worthwhile experience? Did you learn anything you couldn't have learned from books or other resources?"}
{"_id": "191093", "title": "What's the next logical TDD move in this learning example?", "text": "I'm inching my way up the TDD ladder and I've got to a point where I'd like to get advice on the \"next move\". I realize there might not be a single answer here, so any logical suggestion would be great. The thing I think I'm stuck on is knowing weather I should force duplication or proceed with primary functionality implemented by minimal (and temporary due to not being general) code. I'm trying to go in a strict green/red/re-factor cycle. Also, this example is so simple it doesn't require any mocked objects, but I think it's still a valid example (please correct me if I'm wrong or I've gone into some kind of trivial case that's not worth working with). **UPDATE** : I continued with this almost to the conclusion so I suppose I'll leave it up and see if anyone has any comments and if not I will delete.. **Tests:**               using NSpec;          namespace TicTacToe     {         public class new_game : nspec         {             protected TicTacToeGame game;                  private void before_each()             {                 game = new TicTacToeGame();             }                  private void when_game_starts()             {                 it[\"board should be clear\"] = () => game.BoardState.should_be(\"---,---,---\");                 it[\"it's x's turn\"] = () => game.PlayerUp.should_be('x');                 it[\"no winner yet\"] = () => game.Winner.should_be('-');             }         }              public class specify_game : new_game         {             private void first_move()             {                 context[\"is x in the center\"] = () =>                     {                         act = () => game.Move('x', 2, 2);                              it[\"board should have x in the center\"] = () => game.BoardState.should_be(\"---,-x-,---\");                         it[\"it's y's turn\"] = () => game.PlayerUp.should_be('y');                              context[\"then y in the center\"] =                             () =>                                 {                                     it[\"should throw OtherPlayerOccupiesSpaceException\"] =                                         expect<OtherPlayerOccupiesSpaceException>(() => game.Move('y', 2, 2));                                     it[\"no winner yet\"] = () => game.Winner.should_be('-');                                 };                              context[\"then y in the upper left\"] = () =>                             {                                 act = () => game.Move('y', 1, 1);                                 const string expectedBoardState = \"y--,-x-,---\";                                 it[\"correct board state is \" + expectedBoardState] = () => game.BoardState.should_be(expectedBoardState);                                 it[\"it's x's turn\"] = () => game.PlayerUp.should_be('x');                                 it[\"no winner yet\"] = () => game.Winner.should_be('-');                                      context[\"then x in the middle top\"] = () =>                                     {                                         act = () => game.Move('x', 1, 2);                                         const string expectedBoardState2 = \"yx-,-x-,---\";                                         it[\"correct board state is \" + expectedBoardState2] = () => game.BoardState.should_be(expectedBoardState2);                                         it[\"no winner yet\"] = () => game.Winner.should_be('-');                                              context[\"then y in the right top\"] = () =>                                         {                                             act = () => game.Move('y', 1, 3);                                             const string expectedBoardState3 = \"yxy,-x-,---\";                                             it[\"correct board state is \" + expectedBoardState3] = () => game.BoardState.should_be(expectedBoardState3);                                             it[\"no winner yet\"] = () => game.Winner.should_be('-');                                                  context[\"then x in the middle bottom\"] = () =>                                                 {                                                     act = () => game.Move('x', 3, 2);                                                     const string expectedBoardState4 = \"yxy,-x-,-x-\";                                                     it[\"correct board state is \" + expectedBoardState4] = () => game.BoardState.should_be(expectedBoardState4);                                                     it[\"x wins\"] = () => game.Winner.should_be('x');                                                 };                                         };                                     };                             };                     };                 context[\"is y int the center\"] =                     () =>                         {                             it[\"should throw NotYourTurnException\"] =                                 expect<NotYourTurnException>(() => game.Move('y', 2, 2));                         };             }         }     }      **Implementation:**               using System.Linq;     using System.Text;     using System.Text.RegularExpressions;          namespace TicTacToe     {         public class TicTacToeGame         {             private readonly char[,] grid = new char[3,3];                  private bool xsTurn = true;                  public TicTacToeGame()             {                 for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)                 {                     for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)                     {                         grid[i, j] = '-';                     }                 }             }                  public string BoardState             {                 get                 {                     var sb = new StringBuilder();                     for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)                     {                         for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)                         {                             sb.Append(grid[i, j]);                         }                         if (i < 2)                             sb.Append(',');                     }                     return sb.ToString();                 }             }                  public char PlayerUp             {                 get { return xsTurn ? 'x' : 'y'; }             }                  public void Move(char player, int down, int over)             {                 over -= 1;                 down -= 1;                 if (player != PlayerUp)                     throw new NotYourTurnException();                 if (grid[down, over] != '-')                     throw new OtherPlayerOccupiesSpaceException();                 this.grid[down, over] = player;                 xsTurn = !xsTurn;             }                  public char Winner             {                 get                 {                     string boardState = BoardState;                          var xWins = new[]                         {                             \"xxx,...,...\",                             \"...,xxx,...\",                             \"...,...,xxx\",                             \"x..,x..,x..\",                             \".x.,.x.,.x.\",                             \"x..,x..,x..\",                             \"..x,..x,..x\",                             \"x..,.x.,..x\",                             \"..x,.x.,x..\",                         };                              var yWins = new[]                         {                             \"yyy,...,...\",                             \"...,yyy,...\",                             \"...,...,yyy\",                             \"y..,y..,y..\",                             \".y.,.y.,.y.\",                             \"y..,y..,y..\",                             \"..y,..y,..y\",                             \"y..,.y.,..y\",                             \"..y,.y.,y..\",                         };                          if (xWins.Any(win => Regex.IsMatch(boardState, win)))                         return 'x';                          if (yWins.Any(win => Regex.IsMatch(boardState, win)))                         return 'y';                          return '-';                 }             }         }     }      **Output:**               PM> NSpecRunner.exe .\\TicTacToe\\bin\\Debug\\TicTacToe.dll          new game       when game starts         board should be clear         it's x's turn         no winner yet       specify game         first move           is x in the center             board should have x in the center             it's y's turn             then y in the center               should throw OtherPlayerOccupiesSpaceException               no winner yet             then y in the upper left               correct board state is y--,-x-,---               it's x's turn               no winner yet               then x in the middle top                 correct board state is yx-,-x-,---                 no winner yet                 then y in the right top                   correct board state is yxy,-x-,---                   no winner yet                   then x in the middle bottom                     correct board state is yxy,-x-,-x-                     x wins           is y int the center             should throw NotYourTurnException          17 Examples, 0 Failed, 0 Pending"}
{"_id": "121210", "title": "At which point is a continuous integration server interesting?", "text": "I've been reading a bit about CI servers like Jenkins and I'm wondering: at which point is it useful? Because surely for a tiny project where you'd have only 5 classes and 10 unit tests, there's no real need. Here we've got about 1500 unit tests and they pass (on old Core 2 Duo workstations) in about 90 seconds (because they're really testing \"units\" and hence are very fast). The rule we have is that we cannot commit code when a test fail. So each developers launches all his tests to prevent regression. Obviously, because all the developers always launch all the test we catch errors due to conflicting changes as soon as one developer pulls the change of another (when any). It's still not very clear to me: should I set up a CI server like Jenkins? What would it bring? Is it just useful for the speed gain? (not an issue in our case) Is it useful because old builds can be recreated? (but we can do this to with Mercurial, by checking out old revs) Basically I understand it can be useful but I fail to see exactly why. Any explanation taking into account the points I raised above would be most welcome."}
{"_id": "121213", "title": "Moving from an IT department to a proper technology company", "text": "I have been working with Java/web applications in an IT department of a retail company. As much as work goes, there is nothing much to say. Fixing couple of if/else loops, writing some simple business logic etc., is all what I have been doing. Having said that, I feel I have a good technical knowledge, and I am willing to move to companies like Microsoft/Google/Amazon etc., [I want to work in these places, because I feel I am a technical guy, and I am working in a place where most people freak out when the words like 'algorithm' are heard] I can of course prepare algorithms/computer science fundamentals etc.,(I hold a 4 year degree in computer science program) but beyond that, will my experience hold against me ? I doubt I'll even get a call from them seeing my work experience. What kind of questions(apart from the algorithm types) can I expect ?"}
{"_id": "247023", "title": "Who invented Haskell's type classes?", "text": "Haskell's type classes are a very powerful tool and give Haskell a great expressive ability, compared to functional languages that don't have them. When were they invented, and who invented them?"}
{"_id": "121217", "title": "Developing workflow for existing silverlight and WCF application", "text": "I have an already existing application in Silverlight 4.0 with WCF services. Now what I want is a workflow to be integrated along with the above application. The workflow will be a simple approval workflow i.e sequential workflow. Can any one suggest some links or a solution?"}
{"_id": "119488", "title": "Which is better : Storing/retrieving images on/from SQL server or in a directory on server", "text": "I am working on a project in Asp.net MVC and need to work with images. There is an SQL database with a Product table. Every product in the table will have it's own image. I have two ways to do this : 1) Save the image in a web directory and store the URL on database. 2) Store the image in SQL itself in binary format and then retrieve it. Which is a better approach ? Mind you, I have no idea how second method works :-P . I will only learn this if there are merits to the second method"}
{"_id": "225744", "title": "Advice on which storage technology for an Image repository", "text": "At this point, I'm not much of a programmer, solid html/css, familiar with JS but not a programmer by any means. I'm looking to pick up whatever is necessary for an upcoming project. I need to build an online image repository that will host around 15k photos. Those photos will need to have user entered data associated with them. They will need to be searchable by tags, and batch downloadable. Would you guys do filesystem or db storage? Basically, what type of storage solution would you use?"}
{"_id": "140788", "title": "MySQL with mutiple threads and processes", "text": "I'm developing a telecom messaging platform in C, and I'm going to need multiple processes to be working with MySQL DB. How can I make two processes read/write to/from a Mysql DB and, if/when one of them goes down, get the other to seamlessly take over the work until the dead process gets back to work? I was thinking/googling some options and am stuck in place where I don't know which one to choose. What I think so far is that table lock is not the best option to go for, as it will stall the other process until the table is unlocked. The other option is to use row-level locks or manual locks, but I can't find the best way to do it."}
{"_id": "165751", "title": "How to set up a personal Apple developer account now with an eye on transferring app ownership to a company later?", "text": "I have two Mac applications that I wrote for my own personal use, but I'm considering polishing them up and giving selling them on the Mac App Store a try. It seemed very premature to consider what would happen if either app would become successful enough to make it possible to set up a business around it, or to sell it to another developer. That is, until I read that Apple doesn't make it easy to transfer app ownership. I'm not sure how to best register with the Apple Developer program now to avoid any possible hassle in this respect later. From what I understand, one can really only transfer ownership of a developer account. I'm not sure about the relationship between an Apple ID and an Apple developer account. Does this mean I should at least not use the Apple ID I'm already using for iTunes, but create a second one to use for registering as an Apple Developer? Is there any disadvantage to using separate Apple IDs like this on the same Mac (one ID for Xcode development, the other ID for iTunes/iCloud/App Store/...)? Should one go as far as having a separate Apple ID & Apple developer account per app one develops? Or is there some other solution to take into account the possibility of transferring app ownership?"}
{"_id": "231243", "title": "Is it bad to have classes as properties of all other classes?", "text": "I've been making MVC programs for work (I'm an intern) and I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job at abstraction, single responsibility, etc. But I have this feeling about how I keep making objects properties of other objects and I'm not sure if it's a bad thing. Example:               User     {          String Username;          Int32 UserID;               .               .               .          BusinessLogicClass Variable;     }          BusinessLogicClass      {         AnotherClass Variable;         AndAnother Variable2;     }          AnotherClass     {          IThinkYoureGetting ThePoint;     }      All my Classes are properties of the others in one massive hierarchy, It's kind of what the business logic calls for but I can't help but wonder if I should be trying to prevent something like this. So I end up effectively with one variable that I control the children of, but the classes are separate. Is this something common? Is it bad? If it is bad, what should I do about it?"}
{"_id": "182270", "title": "Effectiveness of FizzBuzz and Beyond", "text": "As part of the interview process we initially ask the candidates to do 'FizzBuzz' nowadays the percentage of candidates that can correctly answer FizzBuzz has increased dramatically - this may be due to it's popularity on the web. About a year ago, as a second question we began asking a question very similar to the original FizzBuzz. The question was designed to be as simple as the original FizzBuzz, and to also assess a particular ability of the candidate, specifically the ability to order and prioritize in a meaningful and logical manner a set of \"business rules\" that have been provided in some arbitrary order. The wording of the question initially seems slightly ambiguous, which may make it difficult for non-native English speakers, but if thought through can be correctly resolved - Also it gives the candidate the opportunity to ask questions for clarification, which is always a good thing. We find this a very important skill to have as a developer, as software development is typically based on functional requirements that are derived in no particular order over time, that may place constraints and conditions upon other areas of the software without explicitly indicating and it is the job of the astute developer to at the very least investigate potential issues and conflicts with regards to the implementation. What we found was that a little over 65% of the candidates (sample size of 38) that passed FizzBuzz completely failed FizzBuzz v2.0 Normally these candidates would be detected later on in the process, but it seems to be a nice way to detect them early on. My question is not about whether or not FizzBuzz is outdated, but rather what factors could be contributing to such a high number of candidates failing the FizzBuzz v2 question.   * Is the question too ambiguous?   * Does the stress of an interview environment decrease ones ability to think critically to the point of not being able to complete such a trivial task? **Question:** Write a routine in your favourite programming language that will take a list of strings as input, and for each string in the list will do one of the following:   1. Print only Fizz if the string contains the letter A   2. Print only Buzz if the string contains the letter B   3. Print only BuzzBuzz if the string contains both A and B   4. Print only FizzFizz if the string does not contain both A and B   5. Print only FizzBuzz if the string contains only one A and only one B * * * Some typical questions asked by candidates are:   * Should it be case sensitive?   * Does \"contains A and B\" mean A should come before B   * What should be printed if none of the points are met?   * What should happen if more than one condition can be met? We found that the overwhelming majority of candidates that successfully completed the question, didn't ask anything at all they just did it like they did FizzBuzz."}
{"_id": "182271", "title": "How can I understand aggregation and containment?", "text": "I'm confused between aggregation and containment. I'm wondering if the following represent an aggregation or containment?               class Auto      {             private string model;        private int speed;               class AutoCustomer          {             public string LastName;             public string Address;             public DateTime DateOfPurchase;          }     }"}
{"_id": "118490", "title": "Questions on software development contracting", "text": "I am trying to understand a few aspects of applying for jobs such as the following: Android Developer - Front-end Experience Required - 3 month contract - London - \u00a3300 per day - Immediate start I have several questions and am particularly interested in the UK.   1. What is the reason for the high daily rate? Is this because it's short term and thus is less attractive to many people, or because it requires a higher level of skill/higher workload than the average permanent job?   2. How often to these contracts usually pay? Someone told me that they will pay every two weeks.   3. Just how essential are the skills listed in the job listing? For example, I have experience with Android and Java SE, but no experience with Java EE - would this put me out of the running for a Java EE contract?"}
{"_id": "173452", "title": "Can python and php work together?", "text": "I am having a mobile app created for ios. The developers built the app in php. The app requires an algorithm so I found another programmer to develop it. The algorithm programmer built the algorithm in python. The developers refuse to finish the app because they say it won't work with python, while the programmer insist it will. The programmer says put the algorithm in its on server and connect then over http. Will this work and I'd so how risky is it to future problems?"}
{"_id": "208190", "title": "How does Java handle integer overflows and underflows?", "text": "Does Java handle integer **overflows** and **underflows**? If so, how does it handle these?"}
{"_id": "81869", "title": "Should ICT professionals be warranted professionals?", "text": "Should ICT professionals be warranted professionals? Does anyone have any resources/journals that can help me since I have found none."}
{"_id": "124793", "title": "How can I retain knowledge about new technologies I don't use every day?", "text": "At work we mostly do WinForms development and it\u2019s not a secret that it is already very outdated. I have a passion to learn new stuff like WPF, MVVM and want to use full advantages of C# 4.0. There is no way I can push my bosses to change \u201cwell-recommended\u201d and \u201cproven\u201d technologies like WinForms to something else. I have up to two hours a day which I can dedicate to self-learning but I simply don\u2019t know the most efficient way to study. I tried to read couple of books and even wrote a simple WPF application but think that it\u2019s not enough. How can I manage my time learning new things in a way that sticks, even if I don't use it on a daily basis?"}
{"_id": "81862", "title": "How complete and mature is PyWin32?", "text": "I am considering utilizing Python for creating an application. The purpose of this application is solely to interact with the Windows API. My question, therefore, is: Is PyWin32 mature and complete enough to be relied upon, or would I be better off doing this in C++? The reasons why I wanted to use Python are:   1. Easier access to coders   2. Easier to develop and maintain Python code than C++ code I saw that we are currently on Build 242 (or something) of PyWin32, which gives me exactly no idea about the maturity. I can see that there has been releases since 2004, though, but that does not really say a lot either."}
{"_id": "124790", "title": "Worst practices in developing database applications", "text": "In constrast to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/123591/database-design-good- practices I wanted to ask:   What are the top worst practises you encountered when having to work with other people's database application code & databases ? Mine so far are:     * Not putting any foreign key constrains in the database (for ease of web forms development...)    * SQL queries by string concatenation (no escaping of ', no parameters)   * Usage of thread-unsafe code (with static variables) to decrypt the database password..."}
{"_id": "85529", "title": "How do I make my customers not like me too much?", "text": "In 2004 I went to work for a consulting firm because I like variety, challenges, working with new technologies, etc. However, I've been a developer for 25 years - and spent the majority of my career as a direct-hire (12 years) then as an independent consultant for another 3 years (ah the DotCom bubble!) for one firm. So my instincts are more like a good internal developer than a consultant. My problem is what I call the \"catch-22\" of consulting. You go into consulting because you want to work at a lot of different engagements, but if you do a really good job your clients never want to let you go. And of course the salespeople are happy to keep you billing (and don\u2019t want to alienate a good customer) So my question is \u2013 how do I overcome this? I have had some colleagues who had just the right type of \u201carrogance\u201d (for lack of a better term) that made them initially attractive to some clients, but would grate on them over time \u2013 but that just isn\u2019t my style. I want to do good work and be successful for my clients, but be able to \u201cgracefully\u201d move on after a reasonable amount of time."}
{"_id": "139394", "title": "Which license would I use for my library code?", "text": "I have signed a Non-competitive agreement but I would like to be able to reuse some code across all projects that I work on for this company. So, which license can be used for my library code that would basically say the following:   * I (the author) can use my library code in any client project.   * You cannot use my code in part or in whole in any of your projects.   * You may not redistribute or share my code in any way in part or in whole."}
{"_id": "85521", "title": "Is the science of Computer Science dead?", "text": "**Question :** Is the science and art of CS dead? By that I mean, the real requirements to think, plan and efficiently solve problems seems to be falling away from CS these days. The field seems to be lowering the entry-barrier so more people can 'program' without having to learn how to truly program. **Background :** I'm a recent graduate with a BS in Computer Science. I'm working a starting position at a decent sized company in the IT department. I mostly do .NET and other Microsoft technologies at my job, but before this I've done Java stuff through internships and the like. I personally am a C++ programmer for my own for-fun projects. **In Depth :** Through the work I've been doing, it seems to me that the intense disciplines of a real science don't exist in CS anymore. In the past, programmers had to solve problems efficiently in order for systems to be robust and quick. But now, with the prevailing technologies like .NET, Java and scripting languages, it seems like efficiency and robustness have been traded for ease of development. Most of the colleagues that I work with don't even have degrees in Computer Science. Most graduated with Electrical Engineering degrees, a few with Software Engineering, even some who came from tech schools without a 4 year program. Yet they get by just fine without having the technical background of CS, without having studied theories and algorithms, without having any regard for making an elegant solution (they just go for the easiest, cheapest solution). The company pushes us to use Microsoft technologies, which take all the real thought out of the matter and replace it with libraries and tools that can auto-build your project for you half the time. I'm not trying to hate on the languages, I understand that they serve a purpose and do it well, but when your employees don't know how a hash-table works, and use the wrong sorting methods, or run SQL commands that are horribly inefficient (but get the job done in an acceptable time), it feels like more effort is being put into developing technologies that coddle new 'programmers' rather than actually teaching people how to do things right. I am interested in making efficient and, in my opinion, beautiful programs. If there is a better way to do it, I'd rather go back and refactor it than let it slide. But in the corporate world, they push me to complete tasks quickly rather than elegantly. And that really bugs me. Is this what I'm going to be looking forward to the rest of my life? Are there still positions out there for people who love the science and art of CS rather than just the paycheck? And on the same note, here's a good read if you haven't seen it before The Perils Of Java Schools"}
{"_id": "128071", "title": "Is it possible to prune the stacktrace returned for a custom exception in PHP", "text": "I am working on a project in PHP that does a lot of input validation and can throw different custom exception classes in various layers of the application. To make the project code easier to read, I've displaced all the validation code into static methods of a validation class, which performs the check and throws the appropriate exception if necessary. My problem is, the exception stacktrace displays the entire call stack down into the validation class, but I feel like the extra information is not helpful and will only serve to confuse someone trying to debug the location of the real problem. Should I simply rely on informative exception messages or is it possible to trim the trace log in some way."}
{"_id": "208220", "title": "Is it good idea to change complete enterprise level application into ajax web app", "text": "I am working on an application which is completely written using server side method in asp.net web forms with c# . Now my team lead wants to convert whole application to ajax , in that approach we need to do the following tasks one by one . 1- Change all page methods into web methods so all will be static methods 2- Use jquery ajax to call all web methods . 3- bind html using json response. Now i am looking for some framework which can make my json html binding work bit easy but most of the frameworks like (knockout) are much compatible with MVC framework . I have two main concern points:   1. Is it good idea to convert all methods into web methods and use ajax ?    2. If i have to work with this approach what is the best framework i can use ?"}
{"_id": "256054", "title": "Is it bad practice to use Inheritance to associate methods with a basic container?", "text": "Basically, I have code that looks like this. It's a `typedef` and a set of methods that revolve around that `typedef`.               class foo {         // Foo stuff...              // Registration Stuff         private:             typedef std::map<std::string, std::string> MTRegistrationParams;                  void DispatchRegistrationMessage (MTRegistrationParams const &, std::string destination_id);             static std::string BuildRegistrationMessage (MTRegistrationParams const &, std::string message_id); // Only called by DispatchRegistrationMessage              // more Foo stuff...     };      I am thinking it might be clearer to just make a little mini-class, to help logically separate those methods from Foo's structure.               class foo {         // Foo stuff...              // Registration Stuff         private:             struct MTRegistrationParams : public std::map<std::string, std::string> {                 void DispatchRegistrationmessage (foo &, std::string const & destination_id);                 private:                     std::string BuildRegistrationMessage (std::string const & message_id);         };              // more Foo stuff...     };      The thing is... I don't usually make derived classes unless for the sake of virtual methods, and deriving from a standard container seems REALLY weird. Am I being overly concerned, or is deriving from standard containers just to decorate them with methods genuinely bad practice?"}
{"_id": "200432", "title": "Should I include terms of agreement and privacy policy in my iOS application?", "text": "I am developing mobile based social network with backend and I cache some data from facebook. I asssume I should include a kind of Terms of use and privacy policy statement in the application? is it really neccessary? where can I find proper templates for this?"}
{"_id": "200436", "title": "How large should an application be to warrant its own TFS Project?", "text": "Or more to the point, when should applications be consolidated into one Team Project? I'm considering the fact that each TFS Project will include the source code, work items, reporting, a project portal in SharePoint, and Team Web Access. What are the effective resource costs of creating a TFS Project?"}
{"_id": "204532", "title": "How to design a calculator from scratch", "text": "A basic calculator can perform a wide variety of operations. How does the claculator 'get' the concept of adding two numbers in the same way a human does? I dont think people that make claculators store every possible result of every possible addition on the chip before shipping it. Soemhow the chip needs to 'learn' how to add. I mean if I were to start with a blank slate(chip) and 'teach' the chip to perform calculations(additions), how do i go about it? Do i need to learn artificial nural networks first?"}
{"_id": "138629", "title": "Do Databases Optimize Queries with Sum/Average or Other Aggregates?", "text": "Imagine a database that has billions of rows with, say, payments. You need to calculate an average payment sum. That will be               SELECT avg(amount) FROM payments;      Now, if you need to re-calculate this figure every day, running this formula on the whole dataset is an overkill. Bicycles have speedometers that calculate every second the average speed and the average cadence (pedal RPMs), even though they don't keep the speed for each second, and you may ride hours, days and months without resetting the average counter. This is done in a simple way: the speedometer keeps the average value and the number of seconds. So when you add a new item to the sum, it just does this:               new_average = (current_speed + old_average * count) / (count + 1)      If you know maths, it's clear that any sum or product can be calculated incremententially. Even updates can be done the same way: substract the old value from the aggregate, add the new value. I want to know if any database can do this for the programmer? I understand that the query in the DB may be different and have criteria:               SELECT avg(amount) FROM payments WHERE condition_1 AND condition_2;      Yet, it is possible to cache averages with more information (what rows were in the sequence and what was the filtering condition). Is this done anywhere?"}
{"_id": "141785", "title": "Direct Code Support?", "text": "A few times in the past I've hit a major wall and simply couldn't progress with a certain aspect of an app as Im a beginner and still learning the ropes (Objective-C specifically). I was curious if anyone knows of any services which support programmers in real time, paid or free and will over video, audio or text chat sit and work a problem out till its fixed and look through your code? I understand Stackoverflow does a super job at this! However Im in need of something a little more tailored where someone can spend a little time to sit and look and what Im dealing with and delve into my a code if need be. Thanks."}
{"_id": "141787", "title": "What is required for a scope in an injection framework?", "text": "Working with libraries like Seam, Guice and Spring I have become accustomed to dealing with variables within a scope. These libraries give you a handful of scopes and allow you to define your own. This is a very handy pattern for dealing with variable lifecycles and dependency injection. I have been trying to identify where scoping is the proper solution, or where another solution is more appropriate (context variable, singleton, etc). I have found that if the scope lifecycle is not well defined it is very difficult and often failure prone to manage injections in this way. I have searched on this topic but have found little discussion on the pattern. Is there some good articles discussing where to use scoping and what are required/suggested prerequisites for scoping? I interested in both reference discussion or your view on what is required or suggested for a proper scope implementation. Keep in mind that I am referring to scoping as a general idea, this includes things like globally scoped singletons, request or session scoped web variable, conversation scopes, and others. **Edit:** Some simple background on custom scopes: Google Guice custom scope Some definitions relevant to above: _\u201cscoping\u201d_ \\- A set of requirements that define what objects get injected at what time. A simple example of this is Thread scope, based on a ThreadLocal. This scope would inject a variable based on what thread instantiated the class. Here's an example of this: _\u201ccontext variable\u201d_ \\- A repository passed from one object to another holding relevant variables. Much like scoping this is a more brute force way of accessing variables based on the calling code. Example:               methodOne(Context context){         methodTwo(context);     }          methodTwo(Context context){         ...         //same context as method one, if called from method one     }      _\u201cglobally scoped singleton\u201d_ \\- Following the singleton pattern, there is one object per application instance. This applies to scopes because there is a basic lifecycle to this object: there is only one of these objects instantiated. Here's an example of a JSR330 Singleton scoped object:               @Singleton     public void SingletonExample{     ...     }      usage:               public class One {          @Inject          SingeltonExample example1;     }          public class Two {          @Inject          SingeltonExample example2;     }      After instantiation:               one.example1 == two.example2 //true;"}
{"_id": "38415", "title": "What to legitimately charge clients for", "text": "I'm not talking about fixed price jobs, they're _fairly_ straightforward. But i'm on about an hourly rate project, my question specifically relates to what to charge for. If i have an IE/CSS issue that takes me an hour of scouring CSS to fix, is that chargeable? If i decide to use a really cool jQuery animation on their site but i need to get to grips with using it, do i charge them for the experimenting i do with the animation. Do you charge customers for something that they ask for, that you dont know about and therefore need to spend time learning? Its a grey area as far as i'm concerned and not clearly outlined in quotes (probably because not many clients would be happy to pay for your screw- up/learning) Whats the concensus on this?"}
{"_id": "256059", "title": "OS equivalent of cookies", "text": "I am playing a MMORPG where I have to start a game client executable, and login through that game client. Somehow this game client manages to save my Username after I login with one. At first I thought that kind of information was saved in one of the game files, but after reinstalling the game my username was still there after I started the game client, meaning that username information is stored elsewhere. And so that leads to my question. Where does an executable, in this case a game client, store user information? This is analagous to how a browser uses cookies to store user info."}
{"_id": "70046", "title": "What are good reasons to use explicit interface implementation for the sole purpose of hiding members?", "text": "During one of my studies into the intricacies of C#, I came across an interesting passage concerning explicit interface implementation. `While this syntax is quite helpful when you need to resolve name clashes, you can use explicit interface implementation simply to hide more \"advanced\" members from the object level.` The difference between allowing the use of `object.method()` or requiring the casting of `((Interface)object).method()` seems like mean-spirited obfuscation to my inexperienced eyes. The text noted that this will hide the method from Intellisense at the object level, but why would you _want_ to do that if it was not necessary to avoid name conflicts?"}
{"_id": "231867", "title": "Which classes should be autowired by Spring (when to use dependency injection)?", "text": "I have been using Dependency Injection in Spring for some time now, and I understand how it works and what are some pros and cons of using it. However, when I'm creating a new class I often wonder - Should this class be managed by Spring IOC Container? And I don't want to talk about differences between @Autowired annotation, XML configuration, setter injection, constructor injection, etc. My question is a general one. Let's say we have a Service with a Converter:               @Service     public class Service {              @Autowired         private Repository repository;              @Autowired         private Converter converter;              public List<CarDto> getAllCars() {             List<Car> cars = repository.findAll();             return converter.mapToDto(cars);         }     }          @Component     public class Converter {              public CarDto mapToDto(List<Car> cars) {             return new ArrayList<CarDto>(); // do the mapping here         }     }      Clearly, the converter doesn't have any dependencies, so it's not necessary for it to be autowired. But for me it seems better as autowired. Code is cleaner and easy to test. If I write this code without DI, the service will look like that:               @Service     public class Service {              @Autowired         private Repository repository;              public List<CarDto> getAllCars() {             List<Car> cars = repository.findAll();             Converter converter = new Converter();             return converter.mapToDto(cars);         }     }      Now it's much more difficult to test it. Moreover, new converter will be created for every convert operation, even though it's always in the same state, which seems like an overhead. There are some well known patterns in Spring MVC: Controllers using Services and Services using Repositories. Then, if Repository is autowired (which it usually is), then Service has to be autowired too. And this is quite clear. But when do we use @Component annotation? If you have some static util classes (like converters, mappers) - do you autowire them? Do you try to make all classes autowired? Then all the class dependencies are easy to inject (once again, easy to understand and easy to test). Or do you try to autowire only when it's absolutely necessary? I've spent some time looking for some general rules on when to use autowiring, but I couldn't find any specific tips. Usually, people talk about \"do you use DI? (yes/no)\" or \"what type of dependency injection do you prefer\", which doesn't answer my question. I would be grateful for any tips concerning this topic!"}
{"_id": "71391", "title": "Do functional programming languages have more opportunity to do compile time optimization?", "text": "I was reading the book \"Functional Programming for the Real World\". It started with comparison between imperative and functional programming languages. And it stated how 'values' and 'expressions' in functional programming is different from 'variables' and 'functions' of imperative programming. From the discussion I sort of developed an idea that - > Functional programming languages have more opportunity to do compile time > optimization than their imperative counterparts. Is it true?"}
{"_id": "71396", "title": "Is it necessary to have an Android device to learn programming for the Android?", "text": "Is it necessary to have an Android device to learn programming for the Android? Currently, Java is my primary programming language."}
{"_id": "155948", "title": "Single Responsibility Principle: Responsibility unknown", "text": "I store sessions in a `SessionManager`. The session manager has a dependency to `ISessionPersister`. **SessionManager**               private readonly ISessionPersister sessionPersister;     public SessionManager(ISessionPersister sessionPersister)     {         this.sessionPersister = sessionPersister;     }         **ISessionPersister**               public interface ISessionPersister : IDisposable     {         void PersistSessions(Dictionary<string, ISession> sessions);     }      **Q: If my application shuts down how / where do I call`PersistSessions`? Who is responsible?** First Approach: Use Dispose in SessionManager                 protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)     {         if (disposing)         {            if (this.sessionPersister != null && this.sessionMap != null && this.sessionMap.Count > 0)            {                this.sessionPersister.PersistSessions(this.sessionMap);             }         }     }      Is that the way to go or are there any better solutions?"}
{"_id": "122746", "title": "How should I handle logging when I create libraries for others?", "text": "All. I am creating some libraries for other teams in my company. They all have different logging mechanisms. I want to provide trace information of what my libraries are doing. What should I to achieve this? Thanks"}
{"_id": "122740", "title": "What's the idiomatic name for a throwaway variable?", "text": "Velocity Template Language's set directive requires a variable on the left hand side. This doesn't work.               #set ( $entries.add(\"d\") )      Even though I have no use for the return value of `add(\"d\")`, I have to assign it to a variable.               #set ( $x = $entries.add(\"d\") )       I want to communicate that the variable is necessary, but I have no intention of using it later. Is there a convention for naming variables that only exist to appease the compiler?"}
{"_id": "237160", "title": "using flat file vs sqlite db for frequent data grabbing in a cron job", "text": "I have some automated task to be done using certain types of logs generated on the server end of each day. Log files contains specific machine identification \"MAC\" that is to be re-written in to another text file converted into machine's name. **SAMEPE LOG DATA FILES EACH CONTAINING ~2 MILLIONS LINES IN BINARY FORMAT** * * *               -----------|--------|-----------------|----|----------|---------     DATE       |TIME    |MAC_ADDRESS      |PORT|IP_ADDRESS|BLA BLAA     -----------|--------|-----------------|----|----------|----------     19-01-2014 |18:16:42|A3:43:31:11:02:1A|22  |     19-01-2014 |18:16:43|A3:43:31:11:12:1A|22  |     19-01-2014 |18:16:43|A3:43:31:11:12:1A|21  |     19-01-2014 |18:16:44|A3:43:31:11:12:22|80  |     19-01-2014 |18:16:44|A3:43:31:11:12:00|443 |     19-01-2014 |18:16:45|A3:43:31:AA:12:AA|5800|     19-01-2014 |18:16:46|A3:43:31:AA:30:1A|21  |      The above records I need them to be converted to text format, the MAC address replaced with machine name from my machine name database. My current program, read each line from the above file and find the machine name from machine name db matching the MAC_ADDRESS of read data and write each of them to text file. * * * This is my question. My program is written in `C` language. I have two option to manage the machine names DB, first is to have a sqlite db or else second option is to have a flat binary file. I consider the performance. I am afraid, using db for this would be less performance compare to file as it takes times for the connect/disconnect on processing of each line of log. even though, I am not clear on my point still. Please consider the number of records and suggest me whether is it better to use flat file for sqlite db for storing machine names records."}
{"_id": "175118", "title": "DDD: Service or Repository", "text": "I am developing an app in DDD manner. And I have a little problem with it. I have a Fare (airline fare) and FareRepository objects. And at some point I should load additional fare information (from a server, call server api) and setup this information to existing Fare. I guess that I need to create an Application Service (FareAdditionalInformationService) that will deal with obtaining data from the server and than update existing Fare or put the business logic in Fare object. However, some people said me that it is necessary to use FareRepository for this problem. I don't know wich place is better for my problem Service or Repository. **UPDATE:** After researching, I came to the conclusion, that the better place for fetching additional Fare information is a service like (AdditionalFareService). The code would look something like this:               //create service for fetching fare information     AdditionalFareService service = new AdditionalFareService();     //get a fare by Id     Fare fare = fareRepository.GetById(myFareId);     //Obtain information from service     var fareInformation=service.getAdditionalInformation(fare)     //Add it to the fare.     fare.AddInformation(fareInformation);     //save it to the repository.     fareRepository.Save(fare);"}
{"_id": "237166", "title": "Is it considered 'reasonable' to implement a major part of a program largely by subclassing a library class?", "text": "I'm planning to implement a word processor using Java, and Swing for the GUI. I was thinking how I can implement the text area where the user types the text. My idea was to subclass `JTextArea`. It already has a lot of functionality for setting text, changing font size, etc. I will than add all the additional functionality, such as the ability to be affected by button presses on the UI, etc. This seems reasonable to me, however I have a question regarding this: **Is it considered reasonable in a 'serious' program, to implement a major part of the program by subclassing an existing class of a common library?** Is it a 'serious' and 'professional' thing to do? Of course professional developers use and subclass existing code all the time, no point in reinventing the wheel. But here I'm talking about **implementing a major part of the application** , probably the largest part, **largely by subclassing an existing library class.** I am not a professional, and I know I don't have to work 'as professionals do'. But I am interested in how professionals view this. **1-** Is something like this considered reasonable in a 'professional' application? **2-** Have you ever seen this in practice in a 'professional' application?"}
{"_id": "175112", "title": "Does the \"one assertion per test\" rule apply for checking initial conditions?", "text": "I've been thinking about unit testing best practices and have come across the **one assertion per unit test** rule. I can see where this idea would help to isolate pieces of complex operations or verification when you have code like so:               private Place place;          @Test     public void test_whiteHouse(){        place = new place(KnownPlaces.WHITEHOUSE);        assertEquals(\"1600 Pennsylvania Avenue\", place.getAddress());        assertEquals(\"Washington\", place.getCity());        assertEquals(\"DC\", place.getState());     }      I see where you would generally want to break it into smaller tests like this:               private Place place;          @Before     public void setUp(){        place = new place(KnownPlaces.WHITEHOUSE);     }          @Test     public void test_whiteHouse_street(){        assertEquals(\"1600 Pennsylvania Avenue\", place.getAddress());     }          @Test     public void test_whiteHouse_city(){        assertEquals(\"Washington\", place.getCity());     }          @Test     public void test_whiteHouse_state(){        assertEquals(\"DC\", place.getState());     }      However, if I'm testing a setter, the code might look like this:               @Test     public void test_place_setCity(){        String newCity = \"timbuktu\";        Place place = new Place();        place.setCity(newCity);        assertEquals(newCity, place.getCity());     }      The test will run properly, but if there's a shared setup, I'm making assumptions about the initial state. What would be the downside on running a check on the initial state something like:               @Test     public void test_place_setCity(){        String newCity = \"timbuktu\";        Place place = new Place();        assertFalse(place.getCity().equals(newCity));        place.setCity(newCity);        assertEquals(newCity, place.getCity());     }      This check would verify that the setter method actually **_changed_** something by verifying the initial state was different than the final state. Otherwise, a change or malfunction in a constructor or setup method could cause the test to become ineffective. Are there any downsides to violating the one assert per constraint rule in this way?"}
{"_id": "146780", "title": "Writing a company-wide developer's handbook", "text": "I work for a small company. The software development arm of the company before I was hired consisted of one self-taught overworked guy. Now that I've been writing software for the company for a few years, I have been tasked with establishing formal company-wide software development practices. We currently have no guidelines, other than > Write code, test it, put it in a .zip file and send it to the client. Bonus > points for TDD and version control. My boss wants me to write a software developer's handbook which defines the general processes, protocols, tools, and guidelines we use to get things done. In other words, he wants a \"This is what we do here\" book to make it easier to get a new employee familiar with the way we do things, as well as to help my boss understand what his minions are doing and how they do it. The way I see it, I'm laying a foundation and it needs to be done right. **How would you go about choosing topics for such a handbook?** Can you provide some example topics? Side Note: If it matters, we are primarily a Microsoft .NET shop. And we are looking at agile practices such as XP and Scrum, but we may have to heavily modify them to make them work in our company."}
{"_id": "146781", "title": "Economy simulation software", "text": "I am looking for a software that can simulate simple economics behaviour. For example, I would like to create 100 households, with different utility functions, then run the simulation and see how demands, supplies and prices develop over time. This can be an interesting way to see the formulas in action."}
{"_id": "185593", "title": "Need some advice and feedback on my code's design", "text": "I am looking for feedback on the design of my program. I have a shell script call function.sh that defines a lot of helper functions. My intent is to use those bash functions defined in functions.sh in a C program. I am doing this so that I don't have to rewrite the bash functionality (in functions.sh) again in C. I want to use one common library for functions I need (which is functions.sh). Here is my C code and functions.sh   C code:               #include <stdlib.h>     #include <sys/wait.h>     #include <stdio.h>          void shellCall(char * command)     {         int status, commandexitcode=0;         if(command == NULL)         {             printf(\"NULL command string sent\\n\");             exit(1);         }              status = system(command);              if(status == -1)         {             printf(\"Error during call, value %d\\n\", status);             exit(1);            }              if (WIFEXITED(status))          {             commandexitcode =  WEXITSTATUS(status);             if (commandexitcode != 0)             {                 printf(\"non zero exit code: %d\\n\", commandexitcode);                 exit(1);             }         }               else             if (WIFSIGNALED(status))         ...     }               int main(int argc,char **argv)     {         char  command[100]; //command         int i = 0;              for (i = 1 ; i <= 10 ; i++)         {             sprintf( command, \"source $PWD/functions.sh ; i=%d ; myfunc %d\", i,i );             shellCall(command);               }     }      functions.sh:               #!/bin/sh     # functions.sh          myfunc()     {         echo \"I received $1\"     }      Please note that I have only shown a very simple example of the way I am using functions in functions.sh. In reality functions.sh has many functions, some of which implement decent logic. * * * My Questions - I need feedback on the following aspects.   1. Is it a bad programming practice ( something that will make experienced and senior developers mad when they see this) to use system() calls to call functions in functions.sh as I have done?   2. If it is a bad practice, what are the reasons (technical and other) for which it is considered a bad programming practice?   3. What changes should I make to my C code so that experienced and senior developers will find it acceptable?"}
{"_id": "146785", "title": "Can methods in an OOP language be considered as some kind of closure?", "text": "Consider a method _m_ of a class A in an object-oriented language like Java or C++. In the body of the method _m_ it is possible to reference the member variables of the object on which the method is invoked. These variables are not defined in the method itself but are bound in the moment in which the method is invoked. Is this the same mechanism used for closures (binding non-local names using the context) or, if not, what are the differences? In other words, would it be possible to view an object with its methods as a collection of closures (the methods) that are closed over some common data (the object's member variables)?"}
{"_id": "122299", "title": "How are interrupts implemented in practice?", "text": "Consider an USB device that is receiving data over a wireless network and an application running on the PC is reading this data. Now, on many languages (consider C# DataReceived), we have event handling mechanisms to detect if Data has arrived or not. My question is, how is this event detecting mechanism implemented? Is it like, a running timer which periodically checks to inspect arrival of data, or is this something the hardware has to support? In general, how are these changes in hardware state events implemented?"}
{"_id": "246088", "title": "Is there a way to set up a more comfortable, app-store-like install-page for build results from Xcode continuous integration?", "text": "I successfully setup a xcoderserver to do ci builds. On every bot's page there is an installation-link-button, which works well for developers. However, for our qa department, i'd like to provide a more app-store-like webpage showing all bot's build results with app name and icon from where they can install the **very same** archives as provided on the \"normal\" bot page. Is there an easy, or even apple-documented way to do so? Has anyone any ideas how to do that manually? I already found where builds are stored on disk, I also found out that a product-install-link looks like `http://<SERVER_NAME>/xcs/install/<PRODUCT_GUID>` . The productGUID is dynamically generated during the bot's run. The Xcode server webpage retrieves the productGUID via requests to the Xcode webapp which responses with json structures containing a lot of information about the bot run. I hoped for having access to the productGUID on that way too, but it turned out, that these requests need a (also dynamically generated) bot-run-ID..."}
{"_id": "246089", "title": "Binary Tree Address Conflictions", "text": "I wrote a post on a similar topic yesterday about my destructor for my Huffman tree class program. I have since isolated an issue with how my tree is being built that has me pretty baffled at the moment. I'll share the code below, along with what exactly the program is spitting out into memory. It's my current theory concerning my weird memory location issue (which is discussed further below), that there is something funky going on with the list I'm using. Memory locations are being swapped around. For instance, when a parent node is created, this parent node should show up again when it's popped out of the list, but it's coming out with a different memory location. Could this be the source of my issue? But why is it doing that?               Huffman :: Huffman (list <BTree> nodes)     {         nodes.sort(); //Get it into ascending order         BTree *one, *two, *temp;              while (nodes.size() > 1)         {             one = &nodes.front();             nodes.pop_front();             two = &nodes.front();             nodes.pop_front();                  temp = insert(one, two);                  nodes.push_back(*temp);             nodes.sort();                  //reset(temp);             //reset(one);             //reset(two);         }              root = temp;              //createCodes();         nodes.pop_front();     }          BTree* Huffman :: reset(BTree *in)     {         in->setData(0);         in->setLeft(0);         in->setRight(0);              return in;     }          BTree* Huffman :: insert(BTree *lower, BTree *higher)     {         BTree *tree = new BTree;         tree->setLeft(lower);         tree->setRight(higher);              tree->setData(lower->getData() + higher->getData());              return tree;     }      Oh, and here is the main which is putting the nodes onto the list:               int main()      {         ifstream fin(\"assign15.in\");         list <BTree> nodes;         int frequency;         char letter;              if (fin.fail())         {             cout << \"Error opening 'assign15.in'... Terminating...\\n\";             exit(1);         }              for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++)         {             fin >> frequency;             letter = 'a' + i;             BTree *temp = new BTree;             temp->setData(frequency);             temp->setLetter(letter);             nodes.push_front(*temp);         }              fin.close();              Huffman tree(nodes);              return 0;     }      Below is the detailed step by step function. The loop loads two nodes from the linked list onto the temp variables 'one' and 'two'. The addresses to each of these nodes is given. Then, a new temp node is created with 'one' and 'two' as children. The temp node is then pushed onto the list. **Notes:** The address of all the 'temp' nodes are unique. However, it doesn't seem like this address is being saved to the list. Many addresses are recurring within the output, showing the issues, but why is it doing this?               One set to 9(0xdb7650)         Two set to 10(0xdb7a50)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6a40)P: 19 - L: 9 - R: 10          One set to 19(0xdb7a50)         Two set to 20(0xdb76d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6a70)P: 39 - L: 19 - R: 20          One set to 20(0xdb7890)         Two set to 39(0xdb76d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6aa0)P: 59 - L: 20 - R: 39          One set to 52(0xdb7a10)         Two set to 59(0xdb76d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6ad0)P: 111 - L: 52 - R: 59          One set to 93(0xdb7750)         Two set to 111(0xdb76d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6b00)P: 204 - L: 93 - R: 111          One set to 161(0xdb7b10)         Two set to 162(0xdb7c50)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6b30)P: 323 - L: 161 - R: 162          One set to 188(0xdb7690)         Two set to 203(0xdb7710)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6b60)P: 391 - L: 188 - R: 203          One set to 204(0xdb76d0)         Two set to 225(0xdb7990)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6b90)P: 429 - L: 204 - R: 225          One set to 228(0xdb7b50)         Two set to 229(0xdb78d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6bc0)P: 457 - L: 228 - R: 229          One set to 310(0xdb7790)         Two set to 320(0xdb7c10)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6bf0)P: 630 - L: 310 - R: 320          One set to 323(0xdb7c50)         Two set to 365(0xdb7bd0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6c20)P: 688 - L: 323 - R: 365          One set to 391(0xdb7710)         Two set to 403(0xdb79d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6c50)P: 794 - L: 391 - R: 403          One set to 429(0xdb7990)         Two set to 457(0xdb78d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6c80)P: 886 - L: 429 - R: 457          One set to 514(0xdb7ad0)         Two set to 603(0xdb7850)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6cb0)P: 1117 - L: 514 - R: 603          One set to 630(0xdb7c10)         Two set to 659(0xdb7810)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6ce0)P: 1289 - L: 630 - R: 659          One set to 688(0xdb7bd0)         Two set to 718(0xdb7a90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6d10)P: 1406 - L: 688 - R: 718          One set to 719(0xdb7950)         Two set to 794(0xdb79d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6d40)P: 1513 - L: 719 - R: 794          One set to 794(0xdb7910)         Two set to 805(0xdb7c90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6d70)P: 1599 - L: 794 - R: 805          One set to 886(0xdb78d0)         Two set to 959(0xdb77d0)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6da0)P: 1845 - L: 886 - R: 959          One set to 1117(0xdb7850)         Two set to 1231(0xdb7b90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6dd0)P: 2348 - L: 1117 - R: 1231          One set to 1289(0xdb7810)         Two set to 1406(0xdb7a90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6e00)P: 2695 - L: 1289 - R: 1406          One set to 1513(0xdb79d0)         Two set to 1599(0xdb7c90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6e30)P: 3112 - L: 1513 - R: 1599          One set to 1845(0xdb77d0)         Two set to 2348(0xdb7b90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6e60)P: 4193 - L: 1845 - R: 2348          One set to 2695(0xdb7a90)         Two set to 3112(0xdb7c90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6e90)P: 5807 - L: 2695 - R: 3112          One set to 4193(0xdb7b90)         Two set to 5807(0xdb7c90)     pushing parent node with values:     (0xdb6ec0)P: 10000 - L: 4193 - R: 5807"}
{"_id": "246084", "title": "Suggested method for extracting a standalone C library from an existing R package?", "text": "My group has been developing an R package to simulate plant growth (see GitHub repository). The R package uses `.Call` to interface with C. We have decided that it would be worthwhile to create a standalone C library. The two key reasons are 1) to use familiar C debugging tools and 2) a large portion of the developer / user community is familiar with compiled languages (mostly models in the class are written in C or Fortran). However, the R package is accessible to many outside this community, so we want to maintain its functionality. I have reviewed some related questions, e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/q/12328156/199217, that discuss R packages with C library dependencies, but have not found one that deals specifically with decoupling an existing R package. ### A proposed approach (what we have come up with so far ... a strawman)   1. Write tests for existing functionality   2. keep the C library inside the `src/` folder   3. Place R-specific C code (e.g. `SEXP`, loading R libraries, etc) into 'R wrapper' files prepended with `R_*`   4. create separate functions for reading configuration files in C   5. create a 'main' C function to replace functionality in R   6. write a makefile for the C library that ignores R wrapper files   7. Once the C library works independently and equivalently to the R package, we could consider moving the C functions to a separate repository, that would be a dependency for the R package ### Questions:   1. Is this effort misguided?   2. Are we overlooking any potential pitfalls?   3. Is there a better way to develop both the R and C libraries in parallel?   4. Are there any examples of C libraries that have been decoupled from R packages?   5. How might we write tests to compare equivalent functions in R and C?"}
{"_id": "246085", "title": "Use of AGPL software on server with closed-source software", "text": "I need to use some software under the AGPL to populate a database with some data. This software has a web interface, which I shall disable. Then the data will be used \"at arms length\" with closed-source software by reading the database. I may also use some IPC, like datagram sockets to provide a bridge between the AGPL software and the other software. This closed sourced software will provide a web interface to the user. Am I right that it is not breaking the AGPL to have this software as closed source? If I modify the AGPL software, am I able to hide these modifications, so long that the software doesn't provide any network interface to other users?"}
{"_id": "122295", "title": "Add an ID in every table even if it's not needed?", "text": "Is this good or bad design to add, by default, ID field in every table in a database, even when you don't see currently to usage of this ID (For instance in a MxN table) ?"}
{"_id": "252275", "title": "UML Class Diagram: How can I represent \"orthogonal\" generalizations (or multi-inheritence)?", "text": "I try to represent in a UML Class Diagram the following object and features:   * The Object: A System (e.g. an electronic device) that can be of Type A, B or C   * If the System is of type A, it has a specific extra attribute (let say \"sub-type\", which values can be A1 or A2) I created a Class named \"System\" and:   1. Created a class \"System_TypeA\" that holds an extra attribute named \"subSystem\" that can take any value within A1 and A2.    2. Created a generalization relationship beteween the two classes (\"System_TypeA\" _is a_ \"System\") So far, so good. Now, each System can be the backup system of other Systems. If this is the case, the System should hold a collection of references of the systems it is backing-up So for this feature, I also created a Class named \"Backup_System\" and created generalization between the two classes, since a \"Backup_System\" _is a_ \"System\". So how to represent in the Class Diagram the fact that there can be Systems of Type A that are Backup systems (i.e. the problem of multiple inheritance)?? (For info, the implementation should be done in java, so the same problem of multi-inheritance will be faced at implementation.)"}
{"_id": "44066", "title": "Why is implementing copy-paste in a touch screen based smartphone such a big deal?", "text": "When Apple didn't implement copy-pasting on the iPhone since version 1, I had just assumed it was a UI issue (Eg. they were waiting until they figured out a good UI for it). Now however the idea is out there and Microsoft still released Windows Phone 7 without copy-paste functionality, promising it will be ready in a _few months_. My question is: Why does this takes a few months to implement? Are there some technological challenges that are unique to programming for a touch screen that I'm not familiar with? For that matter, what are the unique challenges in doing X in a touch screen app?"}
{"_id": "44062", "title": "What is the relationship between the time it takes to develop N lines of code and 4N lines of code?", "text": "It took me time T to develop program A, which is measured at 1000 lines of code (SLOC), in certain a language and domain and of a certain complexity. Is there a method to determine how much time it will take to develop program B, which is estimated to be 4000 lines, that has the same level of complexity, is in the same domain, and is developed in the same programming language? I expect that the time it takes me will be grater than 4T. Is there a formula to estimate how T grows as SLOC count grows?"}
{"_id": "146255", "title": "Completion time on a company where the supervisors don't know programming", "text": "We are in a small company with around 10 developers. I am the team leader and responsible for the development process. Supervisors and salesmen are close to us since we are a small team, but have no clue on how software is developed. When they ask me how much time I want for a change (bugfixes/features) in a product, my response is 'let me calculate it'. After giving them the schedule, they start by saying OK you can do it in XX time which differs a lot from my plan. We are using a model close to Agile basic principles and have circles per week or per three days. Of course I argue and say that this cannot be done. They seem to have no idea on the effort we are doing. They do not want to see `WHY` my schedule is for that amount of time. I know this behavior is stupid, but how can I make them see the problem?"}
{"_id": "213835", "title": "Branching Strategy for Test Environment", "text": "We will be starting a new project this month. The project will be 1 year and production deployment will only occur towards the end of the project. We will be doing iterative development (1 month per iteration), so this means we will drop features to Test environment at the end of each iteration for QA testing. Our branching strategy is:   1. Trunk - All development will happen on trunk.   2. Feature Branch - Branches off trunk will be created on a per need basis for development of large features which could potentially be breaking if done on trunk   3. QA Release Branches - At the end of each iteration, a branch of trunk will be created. This branch (which includes a version number) will be released to Test environment. All critical and blocking bugs found in this version will be fixed on this branch and fixes will have to be merged to trunk. Non-critical/trivial bugs will not be addressed on the QA release branch and will only be fixed in trunk since the QA release branch will be thrown away after the end of the next iteration where a new release branch will be created off trunk.   4. Production Branch - this will be the latest QA release branch at the end of the project. This will be tagged and all production bug fixes will be on this branch and merged to trunk. Is this a correct branching strategy? Is there anything else that we've missed to consider? We're using SVN."}
{"_id": "60764", "title": "General tips on writing specs for Java programmers", "text": "I found myself in a pickle after writing some specs for freelance programmers that I hire. It seems that I'm missing some basic structure and I'm not placing the points in clear enough view for the programmer to understand. Any advice that would help me convey the specs better to an average Java developer would be very helpful. **For example:** * * * I have spring project that is very complex at this point. And I'm hiring people to integrated all sorts of payment, social and authentication APIs. (it is the site in my profile if you want to have visual example) As far as they are concerned they will be working only with small segment of the project so no need for the big picture. I require first sample application that will perform what I need outside of the spring container. Than I have the developer integrate the logic into existing system. In specs I usually traverse the input from UI to the the database, with little examples here and there. What I found is helpful to just make draft of the specs and have the developer put his input in it and then adjust the specs after. * * *"}
{"_id": "41741", "title": "feature request in language design?", "text": "How do language designers decide when a _`feature`_ should go in a library as an extension or when it needs to have support from the core language?"}
{"_id": "163321", "title": "I don't understand the definition of side effects", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is a \u201cside effect?\u201d I don't understand the wikipedia article on Side Effects: > In computer science, a function or expression is said to have a side effect > if, in addition to returning a value, it also 1.) Modifies some state or 2.) > Has an observable interaction with calling functions or the outside world. I know an example of the first thing that causes a function or expression to have side effects - **modifying a state** Function and Expression **modifying a state** : 1.)               foo(int X)     {     return x = x % x;     }          a = a + 1;      What does 2.) - **Has an observable interaction with calling functions or the outside world,\" mean?** \\- Please give an example. The article continues on to say, \"For example, a function might modify a global or static variable, modify one of its arguments, raise an exception, write data to a display or file, read data, or call other side-effecting functions....\" Are all these examples, examples of 1.) - **Modifiying some state** , or are they also part of 2.) - **Has an observable interaction with calling functions or the outside world?**"}
{"_id": "7093", "title": "MapReduce explained with diagrams?", "text": "I'm searching for an explanation of how MapReduce works with visuals. Specifically, a flow chart of actions and pictures of how it deals with information on the stack/memory in parallel to return. Does anyone have source for this?"}
{"_id": "218774", "title": "The Inglish parser (for The Hobbit 1982)", "text": "Was fascinated to read about the text adventure game The Hobbit which featured an incredibly robust parser called \"Inglish\": > ...Inglish allowed one to type advanced sentences such as \"ask Gandalf about > the curious map then take sword and kill troll with it\". The parser was > complex and intuitive, introducing pronouns, adverbs (\"viciously attack the > goblin\"), punctuation and prepositions and allowing the player to interact > with the game world in ways not previously possible. I'm wondering if anyone knows about the history and/or legacy of the Inglish parser engine and the programmer(s) who developed it."}
{"_id": "129673", "title": "Coded ui to measure performance", "text": "I have been tasked with using coded UI to measure performance on a proprietary windows desktop application. The need is to measure how long it takes for the next page/screen to display after a user clicks on a control. For example - a user enters their ID and PW and clicks sign-in. The need is to measure how long it takes for the next screen to display when the user clicks the sign-in button. I understand the need to define what indicates the screen is loaded and ready for use. One approach is to use control.WaitForControlReady and use BeginTimer/EndTimer. Is coded ui a dependable and accurate way of measuring time?   Is WaitForControlReady the best method to determine when a control is ready for use?"}
{"_id": "218779", "title": "Is there a way to created nested computation expressions?", "text": "In F#, I want to build a hierarchical data structure in a way with a minimum amount of language noise. The actual problem is trying to build an RSpec inspired framework using F#. RSpec allows the construction of tests in a nested way. For example.               describe Order do       context \"with no items\" do         it \"behaves one way\" do           # ...         end       end            context \"with one item\" do         it \"behaves another way\" do           # ...         end       end     end      I have something working here, but there are some potential problems with the current solution. In particular general setup/teardown code can become somewhat ugly. My primary concern is to write an API that allows the user to write tests/specifications in a way, where the language gets as little in the way as possible. I think that using computation expressions could allow my to create a better API, but I am struggling with implementing nested contexts. Currently I do have a builder that allows me to write:               let specs =         describe \"Some feature\" {             it \"has some behavior\" (fun () ->                  // Test code goes here             )         }      But in order to have nested contexts I need to be able to write something like this:               let specs =         describe \"Some feature\" {             describe \"in some context\" {                 it \"has some behavior\" (fun () ->                      // Test code goes here                 )             }             describe \"in some other context\" {                 it \"has some behavior\" (fun () ->                      // Test code goes here                 )             }         }      I have no idea how to implement the nested context. Or even if it is possible to bend F# in a way to allow me to create such a builder. I did make an experiment, that allowed me to write this:               let specs =         desribe \"Some feature\" {             child (describe \"in some other\" {                 it \"has some behavior\" (fun () ->                      // Test code goes here                 )             })             child (describe \"in some context\" {                 it \"has some behavior\" (fun () ->                      // Test code goes here                 )             })         }      But the added parenthesis and explicit builder construction is exactly what I want to avoid in the first place.               type DescribeBuilder(name : string) =         [<CustomOperation(\"it\")>]         member __.It (x, name, test : unit -> unit) =             let t = TestContext.createTest name test             x |> TestContext.addTest t         [<CustomOperation(\"child\")>]         member __.Child(x, child :TestContext.T) =             x |> TestContext.addChildContext child         member __.Yield y =             TestContext.create name         member __.Delay (x) =             x()     let describe name = new DescribeBuilder(name)"}
{"_id": "129674", "title": "How would Functional Programming proponents answer this statement in Code Complete?", "text": "On page 839 of the second edition, Steve McConnell is discussing all the ways that programmers can \"conquer complexity\" in big programs. His tips culminate with this statement: \"Object-oriented programming provides a level of abstraction that applies to **algorithms and data at the same time** , a kind of abstraction that functional decomposition alone didn't provide.\" Coupled with his conclusion that \"reducing complexity is arguably the most important key to being an effective programmer\" (same page), this seems to pretty much a challenge to functional programming. The debate between FP and OO is often framed by FP proponents around the issues of complexity that derives specifically from the challenges of concurrency or parallelization. But concurrency is certainly not the only kind of complexity software programmers need to conquer. Perhaps focusing on reducing one sort of complexity increases it greatly in other dimensions, such that for many cases, the gain is not worth the cost. If we shifted the terms of the comparison between FP and OO from particular issues like concurrency or reusability to the management of global complexity, how would that debate look? **EDIT** The contrast I wanted to highlight is that OO seems to encapsulate and abstract away from the complexity of both data and algorithms, whereas functional programming seems encourage leaving the implementation details of data structures more \"exposed\" throughout the program. See, e.g., Stuart Halloway (a Clojure FP proponent) here saying that \"the over-specification of data types\" is \"negative consequence of idiomatic OO style\" and favoring conceptualizing an AddressBook as a simple vector or map instead of a richer OO object with additional (non-vectorish & non-maplike) properties and methods. (Also, OO and Domain-Driven Design proponents may say that exposing an AddressBook as a vector or map overexposes the encapsulated data to methods that are irrelevant or even dangerous from the standpoint of the domain)."}
{"_id": "71022", "title": "What is good programming practice for structuring java project?", "text": "I have a Java project that is getting to be relatively large (a few thousand lines in all, I'd say). It's definitely a lot larger than what I've dealt with before, being that I am still a relatively new programmer. I have a class structure with my swing components and other classes I have made that, more and more, is becoming confusing. Even as a beginner, I can tell this wouldn't be considered \"good programming practice\". It's somewhat difficult to explain, and I cannot simply copy/paste code, as this is really dealing with the whole program. But I will do my best to explain... As an example, I have a \"Minion\" class, and Minion objects will sometimes do something that needs to update a \"levelGUI\", an extended JPanel. How do they access this levelGUI? I will tell them something like \"Game.getLevelGUI().someMethod()\" and that just looks sloppy. Am I wrong? The problem is that I have gotten ahead of myself in actual programming, relative to my understand of how the structure of said program works. I think what I will end up with, if I continue down this path, is a program that works as I intended, but with poor readability and great difficulty in altering down the road. If this seems a difficult question to answer, links to articles which could explain how a large hierarchy of objects effectively \"interact\" or something to that effect... would be VERY helpful (I'm not being lazy, I have looked and looked, trying to find something)."}
{"_id": "246606", "title": "What is the recommended way to go about porting large code bases?", "text": "I am currently porting a large library (150+ files, 15k+ LOC) from Javascript to Java. Fortunately, the original library is already very object-oriented, so this has largely been a matter of reformulating the existing code into classes. Truth be told, I'm a bit of a novice and this is one of my first large scale projects. In the past, I've written, tested, and debugged projects incrementally - get something running, add a feature, test that it still runs, and repeat. In this case, I can't compile the entire library until it's nearly completed, which makes checking calls between classes difficult and time- consuming. After importing the project into Intellij, I was able to perform some static code analysis to check for straightforward errors in syntax and style, but this is often insufficient and does not catch many of the errors the compiler would, especially those outside of the scope of a single file. What is the best plan of attack here? I've attempted to break it down into smaller, compilable pieces, but the code is tightly coupled for the most part, so this may not reduce the problem much."}
{"_id": "178540", "title": "Scale an image with unscalable parts", "text": "Brief description of problem: imagine having some vector picture(s) and text annotations on the sides outside of the picture(s). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KwO9Z.png) Now the task is to scale the whole composition while preserving the aspect ratio in order to fit some view-port. The tricky part is that the text is not scalable only the picture(s). The distance between text and the image is still relative to the whole image, but the text size is always a constant. Example: let's assume that our total composition is two times larger than a view-port. Then we can just scale it by `1/2`. But because the text parts are a fixed font size, they will become larger than we expect and won't fit in the view-port. One option I can think of is an iterative process where we repeatedly scale our composition until the delta between it and the view-port satisfies some precision. But this algorithm is quite costly as it involves working with the graphics and the image may be composed of a lot of components which will lead to a lot of matrix computations. What's more, this solution seems to be hard to debug, extend, etc. Are there any other approaches to solving this scaling problem?"}
{"_id": "251128", "title": "what is a language specification?", "text": "Either I am being a total n00b or just not with it today but I have been reading a few blogs lately and they talk about language specs. What actually is a language spec? Is php.net a language spec? The best article so far I have read is Grokbase on the PHP Language Specification."}
{"_id": "8104", "title": "How many developers actually have private offices?", "text": "So I know everyone here is all about private offices, how many developers actually have them. I am sort of half skeptical. I can believe that lead developers have them, but thats normally just one person in your average office. If it would not be to much to ask:   * Do you work in a totally awesome office or a nasty old cube? (or somewhere in between)   * What's your relative rank in the office? (junior, programmer II, senior, lead, etc.)   * are you doing internal software, or are you in a software-centric environment? (the general thought seems to be that internal developers get cubes while others live in \"Joel-Spolsky-Programmer-Candyland\")"}
{"_id": "76550", "title": "What factors to consider when choosing runtime/language for Windows desktop applications?", "text": "My users all have Windows. Some of them use Linux or a Mac, but if they do they're generally capable of using something like Mono, Wine, Parallels or dual-boot. My development team (including myself) has extensive experience both in writing Swing applications in Java as well as Windows Forms in C#. \"Extensive\" means we've developed and shipped over three applications on both runtimes. The applications are technical analysis applications, so mild on database interaction, but heavy on custom UI and data set sizes. We're coming to the point where we really want to make a decision as to which platform to focus on from now on, since it's becoming a burden to support both (if you're working in Swing for half a year it's too much hassle to get used to Windows Forms again and the other way around) and we want everyone in our team to be capable of working on all of our applications.   * Windows Forms generally takes less work to make recognizable Windows applications. No amount of skinning and custom controls in Java has solved that over the years. At the same time, we've never had a customer that couldn't use the Swing applications.   * Java used to have a much richer ecosystem in terms of libraries and automated build tools, but that's changing rapidly (Java is not going down, it's more that .NET is catching up).   * For the rare case that multiplatform is preferred, Java beats .NET hands down. Mono is wonderful, but it's still more work than Java. If we choose .NET we can start to focus on WPF, but also start using F#. If we choose Java, we can start to focus on RCP, but also start using Scala. Has anyone had to make a similar decision? If so, what was it and what influenced you the most? Any top concerns I'm missing? (Please note: there are some similar questions on Programmers.SE already, but they're either unconstructive or from a different angle.)"}
{"_id": "31527", "title": "Why don't browsers have the ability to differentiate between events triggered via input devices and scripts ex: element.onEvent()?", "text": "Why don't browsers have the ability to differentiate between events triggered via input devices and scripts ex: element.onEvent()? Wouldn't this be a very simple way counter attack web spam bots? Or am I way off on this?"}
{"_id": "206262", "title": "Is there an explicit word for non-abstract class?", "text": "I got mainly abstract classes in my project and there are a few other class which are using/inheriting them. When I'm writing the documentation I would like to specify that a part of it is just about the behavior of these non- abstract classes, but I found using this word silly. I could just say it's a class, however an abstract class is a class as well. So I was wondering **_is there an explicit word/synonym for non-abstract class?_** SEO update: What is the general name of non-abstract classes?"}
{"_id": "15468", "title": "What are the drawbacks of Python?", "text": "Python seems all the rage these days, and not undeservingly - for it is truly a language with which one almost enjoys being given a new problem to solve. But, as a _wise man_ once said (calling him a _wise man_ only because I've no idea as to who actually said it; not sure whether he was that wise at all), to really know a language one does not only know its syntax, design, etc., advantages but also its drawbacks. No language is perfect, some are just better than others. So, what would be in your opinion, objective drawbacks of Python. _Note: I'm not asking for a language comparison here (i.e. C# is better than Python because ... yadda yadda yadda) - more of an objective (to some level) opinion which language features are badly designed, whether, what are maybe some you're missing in it and so on. If must use another language as a comparison, but only to illustrate a point which would be hard to elaborate on otherwise (i.e. for ease of understanding)_"}
{"_id": "206266", "title": "Are closures sufficient to characterize functional programming?", "text": "All functional programming languages that I know of (e.g. Haskell, Scala, Scheme, Clojure, SML, OCaml, ...) support a notion of closures. Also, I often read that a language X can be considered functional because it supports closures. On the other hand there are programming languages that do have closures but are **not** considered functional. The best example I know of is Smalltalk: Smalltalk has blocks (which in most implementations behave like closures, see e.g. here) but it is considered a pure object-oriented language. So, while closures are a very common (or even essential) construct in functional programming, are they really sufficient to characterize functional programming? If the support of closures is sufficient for considering a language functional, why isn't Smalltalk considered functional too? Or is the notion of a closure orthogonal to both functional and object- oriented programming?"}
{"_id": "206265", "title": "Does anyone make money with turnkey software versions of costly software?", "text": "For example, Say I make a business software product. I sell it for $100. The competitors charge thousands for their version. Does that kind of model work? Do company's ever buy software turnkey like that? No support. No nothing. They just spend $100. Sure there are continuing efforts to improve the product but no guarantees, etc. I do not want it to be open source. I do not want to offer support other than very minor things like support forums. I don't want to make junk. I can't quit my full time job to travel around the country supporting software. edit: They can even see the code, tweak it, etc. They can't sell it though. Close to some CC licenses I've seen, but you get the drift I hope."}
{"_id": "6952", "title": "What to do when all solutions are equally bad?", "text": "Sometimes, after having done a very thorough analysis/research, you can think of a number of solutions to a problem, but they all have considerable downsides. What do you do in such a situation? For example, I can think of a number of options:   * Randomly choose one of the solutions.   * Postpone the issue, do something else in the meanwhile, and revisit the problem a few months later.   * Find someone who is willing to take the decision (and therefore also the responsibility) for you?   * Obstinately keep on looking for alternative solutions.   * Find people to discuss it with, and hope for a moment of clarity.   * Leave the current situation unchanged; that is: don't solve the problem at all."}
{"_id": "15466", "title": "Why is it that MS Data Access story is so fractured ? Is it the nature of Data Access or is just MS?", "text": "This StackOverflow question asks \"where can I get Microsoft.Data.Objects\" It turns out the answer was probably that its in the CTP4 (code first) release of Entity Framework 4 However there where a lot of guesses. Including   * System.Data   * Entity Framework   * Microsoft.ApplicationBlocks.Data    * Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data 10 years ago if someone asked a similar question for they might have gotten DAO, RDO, ADO. Is this just the nature of the beast or is it MS. Does this pattern happen with other vendors? Where the base data access strategy is either wrapped or changed?"}
{"_id": "123168", "title": "A good analogy for computer memory?", "text": "So, I'm a computer science major and I'm also a huge fan of the no-longer-on- TV show, Numb3rs. Now, whenever I talk with my friends they also ask me quite a few questions about programming and computers (and how they work). Now, on Numb3rs, they (Charlie, and occasionally Amita or Larry) often went on short, but well explained and well spoken summaries of the mathematical topic. While they had the benefits of graphics, often their voices alone were plenty to explain. Basically, they took complex concepts and presented them in laymens terms. It was short, concise, easy to understand, and very interesting. Basically, I'm looking for something like that. Just a really great, short, interesting analogy for computer memory. So, thanks to whoever can come up with a brief, interesting, engaging, enjoyable, but educational and correct analogy/summary for computer memory!"}
{"_id": "171148", "title": "Is there an established convention for separating Windows file names in a string?", "text": "I have a function which needs to output a string containing a list of file paths. I can choose the separation character but I cannot change the data type (e.g. I cannot return a `List<string>` or something like that). Wanting to use some well-established convention, my first intuition was to use the semicolon, similar to what Windows's `PATH` and Java's `CLASSPATH` (on Windows) environment variables do:               C:\\somedir\\somefile.txt;C:\\someotherdir\\someotherfile.txt      However, I was surprised to notice that `;` is a _valid character_ in an NTFS file name. So, is the established best practice to   * just ignore this fact (i.e. \"no sane person should use `;` in a file name and if they do, it's their own fault\") or   * is there some other _established_ character for separating Windows paths or files? (The pipe (`|`) might be a good choice, but I have not seen it used anywhere yet for this purpose.)"}
{"_id": "126530", "title": "Entity Framework and \"ViewModel\"", "text": "Earlier I asked a question about \"Entity Framework and layer seperation\" and found out that some people use a ViewModel to show their data in the UI. For example if we got a \"Person\" table and an \"Address\" table and I want to show a combination of the two tables. I would then create a ViewModel, lets call it PersonAddress, and show it on the UI. I have a few questions regarding this:   1. How do you best save the \"PersonAddress\" object to the database since it does not exist in my EF context?   2. If I only wanted to show the \"Person\" object, would I still create an identical \"ViewModel\" object to the one EF creates for me (without the EF specific properties ofcourse)   3. Do people use the \"EntityState\" property and dosent it become useless if you only interact with the \"ViewModel\"?"}
{"_id": "219795", "title": "how does record placement affect sequential reading time, in the following cases", "text": "When I study from lecture slides from the web in (File Structures lesson), I stacked at the below question, I coudn't understand it. In the slide and at the web, I searched about the topic but I cannot find any explanatory solution about the question. Could somebody please explain the answer with the details? > Given a file of 30000 records, 1600 bytes each, and block size 2400 bytes, > how does record placement affect sequential reading time, in the following > cases? Discuss: > >   1. Empty space in blocks-internal fragmentation. >   2. Records overlap block boundaries. > The slide can be accessed from the link : http://tr.scribd.com/doc/14991462/24/Fast-Sequential-Reading"}
{"_id": "226252", "title": "Can a scrum master reprimand his team?", "text": "Scrum master is a facilitator for the delivery team and acts as a bridge between Project Management and the team. In course of time if he realizes that his team is not delivering the deliverables perfectly possible w.r.t competency of his team, can he question his team members why it is not happening? It is more like a show-cause notice to them. He knows why it is not happening eg:- spending time on social sites or wasting time on less important issues. Is it okay for him to say \"reprimand\" the delivery team on their style of working? Or should it be escalated and left for the functional managers to deal with it? Important thing to note is that usually in an Org, the scrum master is a good friend with his team and so it makes all the more awkward to react to such a situation."}
{"_id": "238384", "title": "How to extend Constructor Injection?", "text": "Suppose I have `MyClass` with a very simple dependency. It uses constructor injection.               public class MyClass : IMyClass     {         private IA A;              public MyClass(IA a)         {             A = a;         }     }      This code get shipped and some other developers are using it.   At some point in the future I need to add in a second dependency, on IB. **How should I add this dependency on IB?** Some options, and why I disapprove:   * Just add it to the constructor      * Braking change.   * Inheritance or the decorator pattern.      * Extra classes and code bloat.     * New class will have boilerplate code passing around the IA.     * I have no guarantee that other developers will switch to using the new class.   * Use a service locator to populate the new IB field.      * I'm now using two different types of injection for extra confusion. It seems to me that constructor injection is just not easily extensible."}
{"_id": "187613", "title": "How does strengthening of pre conditions and weakening of post conditions violate Liskov Substitution principle?", "text": "I read that Liskov substitution principle is violated if :   1. Pre conditions are strengthened .   2. Post conditions are eased out. But I don't get fully yet how these two points would violate Liskov Substitution principle . Can some one please explain with an example. Specifically how would any one of the above conditions cause a situation where a subclass object can not be substituted for a superclass object ?"}
{"_id": "214683", "title": "How to handle situation of programmer stealing credit for your project", "text": "There is a coworker who has stolen credit for my work. I created a system that will show live statuses of printing machines throughout the plant. There was one glitch in it so the coworker made an improvement and then re-wrote the entire system (copying 90% of my code, yet he added a new piece of hardware then took over the project). Now he asks me programming questions from time to time. I don't mind teaching coworkers how to program, but since he has stolen my ideas and credit in the past I am reluctant to teach him all I know. Today he asks me for a particularly challenging algorithm for this system. His code now looks exactly like the way I would program! How would you handle the situation? How can I decline helping him without appearing to not being a team player?"}
{"_id": "229404", "title": "How to deal tasks that are probably not user stories but still need to get done?", "text": "We have a number of tasks that need to be completed, but are probably not real user stories, or if they are, they are very developer-centric user stories which will never be visible to the end-users. The problem is that because they do not get estimated as a part of a sprint and very little gets done on them. Eventually, it becomes enough of a problem that someone takes time out of a sprint to deal with them, but that affects progress on \"official\" sprint work, which makes some people a wee bit unhappy. I've been pushing for making these tasks into official user stories, but no one else seems to like this. How else could I request official recognition for these tasks, so I can allocate full days on them without feeling like I'm affecting the rest of the sprint? Some examples of the tasks, just to give you an idea:   * Write small, custom maven plugins to simplify specific (and widely used, within the organization) build configurations.   * Refactor old project(s) to build with Maven and newer tool set.   * Refactor redundant (across multiple projects) code into independent libraries - could potentially be used by _many_ projects."}
{"_id": "127668", "title": "What does the 'R' in x64 register names stand for?", "text": "I know the 32 bit registers were named like the 16 bit registers with an 'E' prefix to mean extended. I've always assumed that meant extended from 16 to 32 bits although I've never seen that explicitly stated. I was trying to find out what the 'R' stands for but my google skills have failed me. Anyone know?"}
{"_id": "127669", "title": "What are some characteristics of Python that makes it unique as its own language?", "text": "What are some characteristics of Python that makes it unique as its own language? I'm looking for any sort of characteristics ranging from good to bad, useful to hindrance, syntax to real-world usage, but non-obscure observations would be the most useful for the average developer. I'm a newb here, so intuitive things may need to be explained....."}
{"_id": "127661", "title": "Python: What is the point of using \"import\"?", "text": "I am not very clear on this aspect. Let's say you have a bunch of .py files that are their own separate modules. Why does each .py file need to import the others when they use that class? Or do they? Because I was pretty sure that other languages (Java, for instance), did not require import when referring to classes/files in the same directory. I might be wrong."}
{"_id": "244901", "title": "DAL Exception handling in a MVP application", "text": "In a MVP win forms application I'm handling exceptions as follows in DAL. Since the user messaging is not a responsibility of DAL, I want to move it in to my Presentation class. Could you show me a standard way to do that?                   public bool InsertAccount(IBankAccount ba)         {             string selectStatement = @\"IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT ac_no FROM BankAccount WHERE ac_no=@ac_no) BEGIN INSERT INTO BankAccount ...\";                  using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(db.ConnectionString))             {                 using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = new SqlCommand(selectStatement, sqlConnection))                 {                     try                     {                         sqlConnection.Open();                         sqlCommand.Parameters.Add(\"@ac_no\", SqlDbType.Char).Value = ba.AccountNumber;                         //                         //                                   sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();                         return true;                     }                     catch (Exception e) { MessageBox.Show((\"Error: \" + e.Message)); }                     if (sqlConnection.State == System.Data.ConnectionState.Open) sqlConnection.Close();                     return false;                 }                  }         }      **EDIT2 :** So based on the answers I re edited the post and now my exception handling code looks like this... **DAL**               public bool InsertAccount(IBankAccount ba)     {         try         {             sqlConnection.Open();             //            }         catch (SqlException)         {             throw new Exception(\"DataBase related Exception occurred\");         }         catch (Exception)         {             throw new Exception(\"Exception occurred\");         }     }      **BankAccountPresenter**                   private void SaveBankAccount()         {             try             {                _DataService.InsertAccount(_model);             }             catch (Exception e) { MessagingService.ShowErrorMessage(e.Message); }         }      Why I've caught exceptions in DAL is that even at the moment I'm not logging errors, I may have to do it in future. And also this way I can differentiate the error massages in DAL, whether it's sql related or general. I've used messaging service in my presenter when showing error messages. Does this meaning full? Can this be simplified?"}
{"_id": "244903", "title": "Flaws in my PHP development setup - sharing sources causing lags", "text": "I have following development setup for my PHP projects:   * Working station running on Windows 7 with PhpStorm IDE.   * GIT for version controlling.   * CentOS on virtual machine (VirtualBox) with Apache and MySQL (copy of production server). So far, I've been sharing project's source folders between host and guest systems and it was working quite well only really slow. The reason behind this is that Apache was reading files from remote folder (mounted locally). After doing some research, I found out that this set up can be improved by using disk mapping (Samba) instead of folder sharing. So I did that change. I configured my PhpStorm to automatically deploy files to mapped drive. Everything works like a charm now, except for one problem - when I change branches I need to synchronize project's local folder with the one on mapped drive and that takes time, a lot of time (like branching in SVN). Is there another way to handle this than just working on files directly on mapped drive?"}
{"_id": "244904", "title": "MVC data binding", "text": "I'm using MVC but I've read that MVVM is sort of about data binding and having pure markup in your views that data bind back to the backend via the data-* attributes. I've looked at knockout but it looks pretty low level and I feel like I can make a library that does this and is much easier to use where basically you only need to call 1 javascript function that will data bind your entire page because of the data-* attributes you assign to html elements. The benefits of this (that I see) is that your view is 100% decoupled from your back-end so that a given view never has to be changed if your back-end changes (ie for asp.net people no more razor in your view that makes your view specific to MS). My question would be, I know there is knockout out there but are there any others that provide this data binding functionality for MVC type applications? I don't want to recreate something that may already exist but I want to make something \"better\" and easier to use than knockout. To give an example of what I mean here is all the code one would need to get data binding in my library. This isn't final but just showing the idea that all you have to do is call 1 javascript function and set some data-* attribute values and everything ties together. Is this worth seeing through?                   <script>             $(function () {                      // this is all you have to call to make databinding for POST or GET to work                 DataBind();             });         </script>               <form id=\"addCustomer\" data-bind=\"Customer\" data-controller=\"Home\" data-action=\"CreateCustomer\">         Name: <input type=\"text\" data-bind=\"Name\" data-bind-type=\"text\" />         Birthday: <input type=\"text\" data-bind=\"Birthday\" data-bind-type=\"text\" />         Address: <input type=\"text\" data-bind=\"Address\" data-bind-type=\"text\" />         <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Save\" id=\"btnSave\" />     </form>          =================================================          // controller action     [HttpPost]             public string CreateCustomer(Customer customer)             {                 if(customer.Name == \"Rick\")                     return \"success\";                      return \"failure\";             }          // model     public class Customer         {             public string Name { get; set; }             public DateTime Birthday { get; set; }             public string Address { get; set; }         }"}
{"_id": "244906", "title": "Public versus private inheritance when some of the parent's methods need to be exposed?", "text": "Public inheritance means that all fields from the base class retain their declared visibility, while private means that they are forced to 'private' within the derived class's scope. _What should be done if some of the parent's members (say, methods) need to be publicly exposed?_ I can think of two solution. Public inheritance somewhat breaks encapsulation. Furthermore, when you need to find out where is the method foo() defined, one needs to look at a chain of base classes. Private inheritance solves these problems, but introduces burden to write wrappers (more text). Which might be a good thing in the line of verbosity, but makes changes of interfaces incredibly cumbersome. What considerations am I missing? What constraints on the type of project are important? How to choose between the two (I am not even mentioning 'protected')? Note that I am targeting non-virtual methods. There isn't such a discussion for virtual methods (or is there)."}
{"_id": "244908", "title": "How do I find the JavaScript that is invoked when I click on a button or a link in a web-page (part of a data mining project)?", "text": "I tried to use the 'inspect element' of the firebug addon for Firefox but it doesn't give me any link to the javascript. For example I got this from the firebug add-on:               <a href=\"javascript:\">         text of the link     </a>      But there is no link to the actual javascript or anything that I can use to directly go to the said link. How do I accomplish this? I need this as part of a personal data mining project that I am doing."}
{"_id": "219421", "title": "How does browsing speed differ in native apps, web apps, and websites?", "text": "I read an article online which I give the reference to below which compare between Native apps and web apps, in addition to standard website. It seems from that article that native apps are faster than web apps and websites. However, that was not clear for me. > ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Pym4H.png) Could a native app be built to be used exactly as a website? meaning could the functions in a social website, for example, be programmed as a native app? In this case isn't that going to use a server-side language? Then what make it faster if even the website and the web app use the same thing? http://www.mobi-cart.com/native-vs-web.jsp"}
{"_id": "28947", "title": "How did JavaScript become popular?", "text": "In ancient history, Brendan Eich had a language design, and in today's world, JavaScript is a popular language implemented and used in many different places. What caused the language to become popular? Was it the C-like syntax familiar to previous programmers? Did Netscape have enough control of the market to force it to be used? Or is there some deeper reason that JavaScript is popular and other languages are not? Particularly, if you had to make a language as popular as JavaScript, what initial conditions would you need to recreate its growth in popularity?"}
{"_id": "219427", "title": "Implementing multiple generic Interfaces in java", "text": "I've need an interface that assures me a certain method, including specific signature, is available. So far his is what I have:               public interface Mappable<M> {         M mapTo(M mappableEntity);     }      The problem arises when a class should be mappable to multiple other entities. The ideal case would be this (not java):               public class Something implements Mappable<A>, Mappable<B> {         public A mapTo(A someObject) {...}         public B mapTo(B someOtherObject) {...}     }      What would be the best way to achieve this remaining as \"generic\" as possible?"}
{"_id": "127037", "title": "Are design patterns independent of programming languages?", "text": "I have been recently working on Objective C and came across use of Delegate pattern. I had seen all the patterns theoretically in Java, thanks to the Head First book. But at times looking at differences in Dynamic and scripting languages I get confused about need of certain design patterns. For example lets take example of Adapter pattern. It already has two implementations : Object adapter[java] and Class Adapter[C++]. depending on whether the language has supports for Multiple inheritance or not. But with dynamic languages like Objective-C, duck-typing is possible and also we have methods like respondsToSelector to check if an object actually supports a method or not. So why do we have protocols here even if we need to use a delegate pattern ? If we can assume anything to be anything.in a dynamic language, do we need concept of abstract class or interface at all to implement few patterns ? they more look like tools for statically typed languages to give dynamic behavior.   specially I dont understand the need for abstract keyword in PHP. Can anyone point out some important details, I am relatively new to this."}
{"_id": "213423", "title": "Why doesn't Python just establish a format for declaring tab widths?", "text": "I've read the flame wars over the use of spaces and tabs. When working with any markup language (when scope isn't very important and _when_ pressing space 4 times is a PITA), I tend to minimize the tab width to just a space or two but I fluidly change to four full tabs for my other programming work. It is a matter of convenience most of the time and it only translates into real errors when sharing or mixing code. So why they don't just declare a format for optional overrides such as `#tab = 2` at the beginning of a file? There would be no scoping issues and it could be handled with 2 lines of code. # Update Whoa, I didn't explain myself very clearly: I only use editors that handle the tab/space conversion automatically. The only **cogent** point I can understand in the criticisms I have read regarding Pythons use of white space is how borked the space/tab convention becomes when sharing code. Perhaps my confusion about using \"4 spaces\" is because of my prior life in the publishing industry and our use of tabs not as a unit of white space but an abstract element used to describe a document's structure, not the display. Substituting it with 4 spaces has more to do with Unix's shitty 8-space convention than it does with elegance. If Python standardized on using tabs by default we would eliminate the layer of abstraction (literal visual _spaces_ -> abstract _tab_ ) that is getting lost when we leave IDE land and go to Usenet/chat/email land. I thought that `#tab=2` would be a nice way to ensure that any differences originating due to convenience formatting wouldn't muck things up elsewhere."}
{"_id": "111292", "title": "Project (that contains reverse engineering) hosting + license", "text": "**I made multiple tools for extracting file formats that are found in (commercial) games. Where should I host the code? (e.g. Google Code, Sourceforge,....)** Normally it would be considered 'illegal' everywhere, but most of the time they are ignored. Where should I host it and what license should I choose for the project to be 'on the safe side'. _[I asked this question on SO and it got closed, meta suggested that it would fit here a bit more, if it doesn't even fit here please help me at least rephrase it]_ Edit: An example: A game has glued together GZip compressed files with binary metadata slaped on them. (let's call them .archive files) I KNOW that I'm not allowed to use that data for anything else then playing the game, but I'm interested in modding said files so I wrote a packer/unpacker for that .archive . Now I want to make it public on a project page, which one should I choose? All the modding tools I saw till now have that 'ONLY FOR NON-PROFIT EDUCATIONAL USE' and they normally don't get taken down. But I want to be sure to choose an actual license for the sourcecode."}
{"_id": "213309", "title": "Is there a data structure for this type of list/map?", "text": "Perhaps there's a name for what I want, but I'm not aware of it. I need something similar to a `LinkedHashMap` in Java, but where it returns the 'previous' value if there's no value at the specified key. That is, I have a list of objects stored by an integer key (which is in units of time in my case):               ; key->value     10->A     15->B     20->C      So, if I were to query for a value for key 0-9, it would return `null`. The special part is if I queried for something 10 <= i <= 14 it would return A. Or, for i >= 20, it would return C. Is there a data structure for this?"}
{"_id": "213308", "title": "Naming convention for array, plural or singular?", "text": "Let's say we have a class that represents a Sudoku grid. In that grid we have a collection of _cells_. Now, if I simply made a collection of these cells accessible through the class the naming it would be pretty straight forward. I would use the plural:               Public List<CellClass> Cells      But what if I wanted to use a square array so that I can easily get a cell at a certain coordinate. Will it be:               Public CellClass[,] Cells      or               Public CellClass[,] Cell      Using a plural _sounds_ intuitive enough since it's a collection, but then you access it like this:               x = myBoard.Cells[2,3]      Which doesn't look nearly as nice (and grammatically correct) as:               x = myBoard.Cell[2,3]      So what do you think would be better? Plural or singular?"}
{"_id": "213307", "title": "Maths needed to understand theory behind Haskell's type system?", "text": "Recently, I've become deeply interested in Haskell. While attempting to learn new concepts (e.g. the forall keyword and ST monad) and Haskell's type system in general, I continually run into concepts from category theory and lambda calculus. So, I wonder:   1. What other branches of mathematics are important to a strong understanding of Haskell's type system?   2. Can I forego a rigorous study of these maths and instead focus on certain pertinent concepts? (e.g. quantifiers in lambda calculus.) If so, which concepts are essential? I'm hoping to pick up Types and Programming Languages soon, however, please suggest any alternative reading resources you feel appropriate."}
{"_id": "155732", "title": "Designing an email system to guarantee delivery", "text": "We are looking to expand our use of email for notification purposes. We understand it will generate more inbox volume, but we are being selective about which events we fire notification on in order to keep the signal-to- noise ratio high. The big question we are struggling with is designing a system that guarantees that the email was delivered. If an email isn't delivered, we will consider that an exception event that needs to be investigated. In reality, I say _almost_ guarantees because there aren't any true guarantees with email. We're just looking for a practical solution to making sure the email got there and experiences others have had with the various approaches to guaranteeing delivery. For the **TL;DR** crowd - how do we go about designing a system to guarantee delivery of emails? What techniques should we consider so we know the emails were delivered? Our biggest area of concern is what techniques to use so that we know when a message is sent out that it either lands in an inbox or it failed and we need to do something else. Additional requirements:   * We're not at the stage of including an escalation response, but we'll want that in the future or so we think.    * Most notifications will be internal to our enterprise, but we will have some notifications being sent to external clients.    * Some of our application is in a hosted environment. We haven't determined if those servers can access our corporate email servers for relaying or if they'll be acting as their own mail servers. Base design / modules (at the moment):   A module to assign tracking identification   A module to send out emails   A module to receive delivery notification (perhaps this is the same as the email module)   A module that checks sent messages against delivery notification and alerts on undelivered email. Some references:   Atwood: Send some email   Email Tracking Some approaches:   * Request a response (aka read-receipt or Message Disposition Notification).   Seems prone to failure since we have cross-compatibility issues due to differing mail servers and software.   * Return receipt (aka Delivery Status Notification).   Not sure if all mail servers honor this request or not   * Require an action and therefore prove reply.   Seems burdensome to force the recipients to perform an additional task not related to resolving the issue. And no, we haven't come up with a way of linking getting the issue fixed to whether or not the email was received.   * Force a click-through / Other site sign-in.   Similar to requiring some sort of action, this seems like an additional burden and will annoy the users. On the other hand, it seems the most likely to guarantee someone received the notification.   * Hidden image tracking.   Not all email providers automatically load the image, and how would we associate the image(s) with the email tracking ID?   * Outsource delivery.   This gets us out of the email business, but goes back to how to guarantee the out-sourcer's receipt and subsequent delivery to the end recipient. As a related concern, there will be an n:n relationship between issue notification and recipients.   The 1 issue : n recipients subset isn't as much of a concern although if we had a delivery failure we would want to investigate and fix the core issue.   Of bigger concern is n issues : 1 recipient, and we're specifically concerned in making sure that all n issues were received by the recipient. How does forum software or issue tracking software handle this requirement? If a tracking identifier is used, Where is it placed in the email? In the Subject, or the Body?"}
{"_id": "213303", "title": "How much logic can be put into an object-pooling factory class before it does more harm than good?", "text": "The main language I'm interested in doing object pooling in is AS3, which is known to need it in many cases. In the past I've always made a brand new factory class for every type I was going to try to pool, the parameters of its \"object-producing\" function being the same as those of that type's constructor. Essentially:               static public function produce(<list of paramaters>):<type>     {         if (m_arryPool.length)         {             var obj:<type> = m_arryPool.pop();             // do something with the arguments passed to produce()             return obj;         }         return new obj(<arguments passed to produce()>);     }      But recently I've been trying to think of a way to avoid re-writing this sort of boiler-plate code for every single type I want to pool, but probably without forfeiting the idea of passing arguments around to the returned objects as in the above example, and definitely without putting so much dynamic functionality and stuff in there that it just winds up slowing stuff down too much. I'm still a little green at object-pooling. I know a one-size-fits-all pooling factory will probably not work out in all cases (AS3's `Function.apply()`, for instance, doesn't support constructors), but when does it get to the point that you're just passing in so many arguments to the `produce()` function, using so many untyped variables, going through so many dictionaries and lists, etc., that it just isn't hardly worth it anymore? I know this question may be slightly subjective, but I do believe there are largely objective answers to it. I'm mainly interested in how this would apply to AS3, but I'm also interested in (and asking for) a general answer. Is the best way to handle it generally just to go ahead and write boilerplate code for every type you plan to pool or something like that? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "155737", "title": "Small assembly language project for practice", "text": "I am learning assembly language for x86 architecture. But, i am unable to find any practice problems so that i can test my skills. Can you suggest me some practice problems or some small assembly language project to improve my skills.?? thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "155736", "title": "Release roadmap with scrum", "text": "I need to prepare an internal product release road-map for product being built via scrum methodology, and have some difficulty correlating sprints to the road-map. The main problem is that as I don't have effort estimations for every story, because these prepared immediately before each sprint, so I don't know what will make into which sprint. I'm fine with changing the road-map as the development goes on, but need it to give at least some indication when things planned to be released. So what would be the best way to do this, other then guestimating the whole backlog? Thanks for any idea."}
{"_id": "81415", "title": "Why was Android's ContentProvider created?", "text": "The title sums up my question, but to elaborate basically what I want to understand is why the Android designers want apps that need to work with shared data to use a Content Provider rather than just accessing the SQLite database directly? The only reason I can think of is security because certain files can by accessed only be certain processes and in that way the Content Provider is the gatekeeper that ensures each app has the proper privileges before allowing read and/or write access to the database file. Is that the primary reason why ContentProvider was created?"}
{"_id": "174930", "title": "How should I implement a command processing application?", "text": "I want to make a simple, proof-of-concept application (REPL) that takes a number and then processes commands on that number. Example: I start with 1. Then I write \"`add 2`\", it gives me 3. Then I write \"`multiply 7`\", it gives me 21. Then I want to know if it is prime, so I write \"`is prime`\" (on the current number - 21), it gives me false. \"`is odd`\" would give me true. And so on. Now, for a simple application with few commands, even a simple `switch` would do for processing the commands. But if I want extensibility, how would I need to implement the functionality? Do I use the command pattern? Do I build a simple parser/interpreter for the language? What if I want more complex commands, like \"`multiply 5 until >200`\" ? What would be an easy way to extend it (add new commands) without recompiling? Edit: to clarify a few things, my end goal would not be to make something similar to WolframAlpha, but rather a list (of numbers) processor. But I want to start slowly at first (on single numbers). I'm having in mind something similar to the way one would use Haskell to process lists, but a very simple version. I'm wondering if something like the command pattern (or equivalent) would suffice, or if I have to make a new mini-language and a parser for it to achieve my goals? Edit2: Thanks for all the responses, all have been very helpful to me, but Emmad Kareem's helped me the most, so I'll chose it as the answer. Thanks again!"}
{"_id": "147356", "title": "What's the utility of encouraging users to learn SQL and possibly the ability to execute it?", "text": "Facing a situation where I can't possibly get all the features that are requested into each version of the LOB I support, I've evolved a number SQL query templates that users have and send to me, which I then execute. This then led to a password protected SQL execution dialog which users with write access can execute for themselves with an understanding that if they make the wrong typo they could do damage. While this makes me nervous, the upside of having the functionality outweighs the risk in this situation. Then there is the change in how people view the functionality. It seems less magical when they understand more about how the database works. On the other side of this, however, new users can potentially walk into a culture where the lingo includes something totally foreign to them. Any advice on weather this direction has relative utility?"}
{"_id": "161761", "title": "SQL Server Management Studio Show last executed query", "text": "I am looking for a way for SQL Server Management studio to show me the last SQL query that was run. For example, when I make modifications to a table in the designer mode, I will eventually want to make the same changes to the production DB without recreating the entire table. I'm looking for functionality similar to PHPMyAdmin for MySQL which tells you the last query ran and the results of the query at the top of the page after the modifications are complete."}
{"_id": "143831", "title": "Composite-like pattern and SRP violation", "text": "Recently I've noticed myself implementing pattern similar to the one described below. Starting with interface:               public interface IUserProvider     {         User GetUser(UserData data);     }      `GetUser` method's pure job is to somehow return user (that would be an _operation_ speaking in composite terms). There might be many implementations of `IUserProvider`, which all do the same thing - return user basing on input data. It doesn't really matter, as they are only _leaves_ in composite terms and that's fairly simple. Now, my _leaves_ are used by one _own them all_ composite class, which at the moment follows this implementation:               public interface IUserProviderComposite : IUserProvider     {         void RegisterProvider(Predicate<UserData> predicate, IUserProvider provider);     }          public class UserProviderComposite : IUserProviderComposite      {         public User GetUser(SomeUserData data) ...         public void RegisterProvider(Predicate<UserData> predicate, IUserProvider provider) ...     }      Idea behind `UserProviderComposite` is simple. You register providers, and this class acts as a reusable entry-point. When calling `GetUser`, it will use whatever registered provider matches predicate for requested user data (if that helps, it stores key-value map of predicates and providers internally). Now, what confuses me is whether `RegisterProvider` method (brings to mind composite's _add_ operation) should be a part of that class. It kind of expands its responsibilities from providing user to also managing providers collection. As far as my understanding goes, this violates Single Responsibility Principle... or am I wrong here? I thought about extracting register part into separate entity and inject it to the composite. As long as it looks decent on paper (in terms of SRP), it feels bit awkward because:   * I would be essentially injecting Dictionary (or other key-value map)   * ...or silly wrapper around it, doing nothing more than adding entires   * This won't be following composite anymore (as _add_ won't be part of composite) What exactly is the presented pattern called? Composite felt natural to compare it with, but I realize it's not exactly the one however nothing else rings any bells. Which approach would you take - stick with SRP or stick with \"composite\"/pattern? Or is the design here flawed and given the problem this can be done in a better way?"}
{"_id": "13700", "title": "What are the most popular revision control systems?", "text": "There are a lot of choices available with respect to revision control (SVN, CVS, GitHub, etc.). What are the major options out there? What are the most popular ones right now (although I'm not sure if new revision control systems would be rolled out in the near future)? Thanks in advance for the feedback, although I'm not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask."}
{"_id": "43242", "title": "Do you leverage the benefits of the open-closed principle?", "text": "The open-closed principle (OCP) states that an object should be open for extension but closed for modification. I believe I understand it and use it in conjunction with SRP to create classes that do only one thing. And, I try to create many small methods that make it possible to extract out all the behavior controls into methods that may be extended or overridden in some subclass. Thus, I end up with classes that have many extension points, be it through: dependency injection and composition, events, delegation, etc. Consider the following a simple, extendable class:               class PaycheckCalculator {         // ...         protected decimal GetOvertimeFactor() { return 2.0M; }     }      Now say, for example, that the `OvertimeFactor` changes to 1.5. Since the above class was designed to be extended, I can easily subclass and return a different `OvertimeFactor`. **But**... despite the class being designed for extension and adhering to OCP, I'll modify the single method in question, rather than subclassing and overridding the method in question and then re-wiring my objects in my IoC container. As a result I've violated part of what OCP attempts to accomplish. It feels like I'm just being lazy because the above is a bit easier. Am I misunderstanding OCP? Should I really be doing something different? Do you leverage the benefits of OCP differently? **Update** : based on the answers it looks like this contrived example is a poor one for a number of different reasons. The main intent of the example was to demonstrate that the class was designed to be extended by providing methods that when overridden would alter the behavior of _public_ methods without the need for changing _internal_ or private code. Still, I definitely misunderstood OCP."}
{"_id": "229398", "title": "Should we create a story for vacation?", "text": "We have had a situation with a scrum sprint where a team member went on vacation for a few days at the beginning of the sprint. This led to us being behind the ideal trend on the burndown chart at the beginning of the sprint, although we caught up later since we knew we had slightly less resource and as a result had committed to deliver slightly less. In our retrospective it was suggested by the Product Owner that we create a vacation story. The time remaining would be reduced down as the vacation was completed. As a result the burndown chart would be corrected for the \"hole\" that would appear in effort when the team resource was lower, which would otherwise falsely indicate a problem. Is this a good idea?"}
{"_id": "170238", "title": "Designing a Database Application with OOP", "text": "I often develop SQL database applications using Linq, and my methodology is to build model classes to represent each table, and each table that needs inserting or updating gets a Save() method (which either does an InsertOnSubmit() or SubmitChanges(), depending on the state of the object). Often, when I need to represent a collection of records, I'll create a class that inherits from a List-like object of the atomic class. ex.               public class CustomerCollection : CoreCollection<Customer>     {          }      Recently, I was working on an application where end-users were experiencing slowness, where each of the objects needed to be saved to the database if they met a certain criteria. My Save() method was slow, presumably because I was making all kinds of round-trips to the server, and calling DataContext.SubmitChanges() after each atomic save. So, the code might have looked something like this               foreach(Customer c in customerCollection)     {        if(c.ShouldSave())        {            c.Save();        }     }      I worked through multiple strategies to optimize, but ultimately settled on passing a big string of data to a SQL stored procedure, where the string has all the data that represents the records I was working with - it might look something like this:               CustomerID:34567;CurrentAddress:23 3rd St;CustomerID:23456;CurrentAddress:123 4th St      So, SQL server parses the string, performs the logic to determine appropriateness of save, and then Inserts, Updates, or Ignores. With C#/Linq doing this work, it saved 5-10 records / s. When SQL does it, I get >100 records / s, so there is no denying the Stored Proc is more efficient; however, I hate the solution because it doesn't seem nearly as clean or safe. My real concern is that I don't have any better solutions that hold a candle to the performance of the stored proc solution. Am I doing something obviously wrong in how I'm thinking about designing database applications? Are there better ways of designing database applications?"}
{"_id": "96364", "title": "Funding Agile Projects", "text": "The company I work within is tentatively moving towards an Agile project management strategy - having experienced the \"joys\" of waterfall one time to many. Key to this is a shift in emphasis towards delivering functionality as opposed to meeting hard deadlines. While the development process and client relationship has certainly improved by the iterative releases fostered through Agile , it is proving somewhat harder to apply the same rationale to the funding strategies for the project. Clients are often unaccustomed to concepts like Agile, and express great concern with **what they percieve** as a case of \"it'll be ready when it's ready\". I would like to hear people's thoughts and experiences in funding Agile projects **edit:** I want to stress that _I am not asking folks to explain the pros and cons of the Agile method_ to me, nor that I believe Agile equates to \"it'll be ready when it's ready\", this is a fear expressed by the clients/businesses I've worked with when advocating Agile development practices. What I am interested in is the experiences people have had resolving the conflicts between \"traditional\" waterfall budgeting methods entrenched in business client/relationships and more progressive development methods - and the budgeting strategies they have adopted to support that evolution."}
{"_id": "215745", "title": "Collaborative work (small team) - Best practices", "text": "I'm currently working in a very small team of programmers (2-3) and I'm looking for advices/best practices on how to organise our work. We're all working on the same application using PHP. Today we're kind of all working on our way. **Today situation:**   * List item that have to be worked on by each dev 1/week. What has to be done is defined at a high functional level (ex: Build the search engine for this product..)   * Commit / merge our individual branches (git) every week before the next meeting   * No real dev rules, no code review    * No test written (aouutch) **Problems faced:**   * Code quality issue: discovering someone else code is sometime tough (inline, variable+function+class names, spaces, comments..)   * Changes in already existing classes (impact on someone else work)   * Responsibility of each dev unclear: after getting someone else code   and discover something messy, should I make the change? Should he   make the change? How to plan those things,... **What I'm looking for:** Basically I'm looking into structuring the way we develop things in order to avoid frustration and improve overall quality.   * How to define coding standards (naming convention, code rules...)? Do you you any validation script to make sure code is valid before committing?   * Do you think that defining an architect role in the team is needed? Someone that would actually define what has to be developed during the next phase. By defining interfaces or class descriptions that have to be written. (Does it make sense in such a small team?) Today we're losing time into understanding what others did or tried to do, we're also losing time in discussion like \"you should have done it that way! Why is this class doing that and not that..? Shouldn't we have a embedded class rather that this set of data...\". I'm looking into a work process, maybe with more defined responsibilities and process in order to improve our performance. If you have experience, advices, best practices or anything to share that we could benefit from it will be much appreciated! Thanks a lot for your time!"}
{"_id": "97098", "title": "Can a fresher from a college write design patterns under \"area of interests \" in resume?", "text": "I have keen interest in design patterns. I have been reading a lot about them. Specially, from HEAD FIRST. Can I write about design patterns in my resume? I am a fresher. Going to sit in on-campus placements. Though I think that would impress the interviewer if i am able to defend his questions but, on the other hand I think there can be three points I am worried about:   1. He might ask too deep questions to show me that I have written a wrong point.   2. He might not know about design patterns.   3. Besides he may ask of design patterns that are not in Head First.   4. he bounces on J2EE design patterns, which I am afraid to study right now. Anyways, what i am asking is. do the people who come to on-campus placements for taking interviews have any knowledge about design patterns? If they do, then how much. I am a bit afraid to put this on my resume."}
{"_id": "94212", "title": "Design principles - data conformance / business logic in the data access layer?", "text": "I'm working on a small webservices project (java, axis2..). There is a lot of existing code, the code is divided into many layers, from the first layer where the request in interpreted to a few layers down to the dao layer. In the dao layer I'm seeing some validation code interspersed in a few places. The project contains tables which have multiple unique columns, so the user may input a single column or a combination of columns. The validation in dao layer is to check if such a combination exists, if not throw an exception. I was told these kind of checks are more related to the schema and hence need to be in the dao layer. The dao interface has methods like 'checkIfThisExists/checkComboExists', Would this be a 'proper' design? I always thought the dao's job should only be to send and receive data, more like get and set."}
{"_id": "116407", "title": "Collaborative coding chat options", "text": "Hi guys : Are there any established online sites for collaborative coding ? I have a github project with 5 developers, in different areas - we need somewhere that we can all \"hangout\" at.   * Right now we use group skype, but skype is designed more for family/social communication , and doesn't work on linux.    * IRC is okay, but its a little difficult to use for novices.   * an interface like yammer, twitter, facebook would be ideal, but also, we would want it to be real time (not requiring page reloads etc...)"}
{"_id": "94216", "title": "How can I get the team that I work with to communicate synchronously?", "text": "Okay, so I work on a team of 4 people. We're spread all around the country, and when we communicate, it's either through email or our issue tracker. That's okay most of the time, but I feel like I spend a lot of time waiting for people to reply to my emails/comments on tickets. That's a real productivity kill for me, since in the 5 or so minutes it takes to get a response, I usually start doing something else. I'd like to start using some kind of synchronous (i.e. instant) form of messaging so that we can communicate faster. I was thinking that I could set up a private IRC channel, but I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of hosting this and I'm not sure I could sell this to some people on the team. I also like the idea of being able to convey _status_ to everyone else -- show that you're available by being in the channel, and then set statuses (e.g. \"working on x issue\" or \"eating lunch\" while in the channel). Are there any no- or low-cost options (some time cost is okay, just not monetary) that will allow us to instantly communicate as a team, much like an IRC channel would allow? Some priorities:   * We all have to be able to chat at the same time or PM each other if needed   * Privacy is, of course, important   * It has to be relatively easy to set up or it won't get adopted   * It has to be low-cost Also, any thoughts on instant communication in general? I'm interested in any support for my theory as well as any criticism."}
{"_id": "60364", "title": "Schema Design : Advice Needed", "text": "I have a distributed data collection system where I have first layer as regional Databases where all collected data is initially stored and master database where all the data is consolidated, what are you thoughts on schema design of this situation, also important thing here is I could have overlapping Ids and dictionary tables are shared by all regional db and also in future there could be need to add new regional Dbs. I am not sure how to start on designing the schema for this situation and would like to discuss with SO Community ?"}
{"_id": "186284", "title": "Declaring functions as final... except when it is me who does the deriving", "text": "I have a class in which I want to disallow other programmers from overriding one of it's methods, since it requires special knowledge of the inner workings of the class. Since I personally know how the class works, I would like to be able to make an exception and actually DO override the function in one derived class. Is this a common problem to which there is a standard solution, or does the fact that I feel like I have to make an exception like this mean I should rethink my approach? Edit: I didn't mention languages, since I was looking for a general answer, but since it was requested, this came up using PHP."}
{"_id": "201289", "title": "Variable type object", "text": "Is there a language with something like the following construct?               var_type(TYPE_1, TYPE_2,..., TYPE_N) obj;      and now its possible to:               TYPE_17 staticTypeVariable17;     obj = staticTypeVariable17;          TYPE_3 staticTypeVariable3;     obj = staticTypeVariable3;      without `obj` being a pointer of some base class and with no need for casting if the types used are from the predefined set. So basically an object that can switch it's type amongst a predefined set of types."}
{"_id": "150527", "title": "How are functions called when passing ++", "text": "I don't understand what is passed to the function f() when I call it like this.               main()     {       void f(int,int);       int i=10;       f(i,i++);     }          void f(int i,int j)     { printf(\"%d %d\",i,j); }      gives me 11 10 .Can somebody explain why its 11?"}
{"_id": "16289", "title": "Career stability or tech skill growth?", "text": "For the last 3 years, I've been working as the lone .NET software developer in a large non-tech, manufacturing company. The work conditions and the pay are great, and it is a very stable position, particularly considering that this is my first full-fledged development job. In my group, there's the IT Manager, an IT-Network Engineer, Help Desk staff, and myself. The problem I'm facing is that, since most of my work is fast application development projects (simple CRUD apps, web charts and database interfaces) I feel like my tech skills are stagnating, as I don't really get to do anything overtly complex. Many times, it's just the rehashing of something I've already done. It is very frustrating to read and research about frameworks and methodologies that, while great for larger projects, would amount to overkill for the stuff that is needed here. And with a family to return to every day after a 80 min commute, putting this to use in personal side projects is very complicated. I'm not sure what path to follow: if I stay, I have great job stability, but will probably move on to something I don't really want (I've been informally anointed, against my wishes, as the next IT Manager, but that's not going to happen for at least 5 more years), and if I leave, I get uncertainty and significant pay cut, as I don't have the skill set needed for dedicated dev teams / projects. I feel like I'm trapped in a big company environment, yearning for the action and dynamics of smaller shops. Anyone else in the same position? How did you manage to overcome the gaps between your skills and those required by the market? Did you stay at Big Corp, or moved to a smaller company?"}
{"_id": "150525", "title": "How do you handle database security from a desktop application?", "text": "For about 10 years I've worked on various in-house desktop client applications with SQL Server data stores. Rarely did I start these projects - most are takeover work. One thing that seemed constant everywhere was that there was a single global SQL Server user account that this application used that granted it permission to the common database, and yes in some naive situations it used the `sa` user account, which I generally tried to fix when possible. You can't really effectively hide this username and password that the application uses to access the database. They're usually stored in an `ini` or `config` file, or possibly baked into the executable itself. In all cases, they're visible to the user if they do a little digging. In one case we actually used a `config` file but encrypted it, but of course the encryption key had to be stored in the executable (we weren't naive to the limitations of this, but it did effectively stop people from poking around who were savvy enough to look in `config` files). All of these systems had a user-authentication system built into the application, but of course they were all managed through the application itself, meaning the user information was stored in the database. The application restricted what things you could do based on your access level, but it's all kind of moot if you can just connect to the database and run ad- hoc queries. I'm interested to know what other systems do to get around this problem. Here are the options I know of:   1. Use SQL Server's security mechanism to maintain a user and roles list, and make the desktop application add and remove users through T-SQL queries.   2. Instead of connecting directly to the database, create some kind of web service that runs on the server and put the authentication logic in there. Make every request do security validation. The first options is a bit ugly because you're separating users from the database so users are no longer first class entities and you can't reference them with foreign key relationships, etc. The second just seems like a major performance problem, and a lot of extra work, plus you can't as easily use ORM mappers like NHibernate (I think). Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? **Edit** Thinking a bit more, can SQL Server Authentication actually solve this problem? For instance, if your user must be able to insert and update timesheet records so you can edit your timesheet, there's no way SQL server can disallow access to other rows in the timesheet details table, meaning you can read and write _other_ people's timesheets too."}
{"_id": "150524", "title": "How fast should a web response be?", "text": "I've heard a few times that every extra [number1] milliseconds it takes to process a web request and return a response will lose you [number2] percent of users. Is this just \"conventional wisdom,\" or have there been actual studies on the subject? And has there been found to be a lower bound to this phenomenon, like \"[number3] milliseconds is fast enough, improving further than that won't hold any more users\"?"}
{"_id": "150522", "title": "User intentions analysis", "text": "I'm going to work on some project that would do a user-action recognition based on what he/she does in the system. As far as I understand there are two main parts here: Intercept the user actions (say http traffic in web/ui interaction in thick- client) analysis of user intentions. While the first part is rather technical and therefor easy to implement, the second one is AI related and can be academic. So I was wondering whether someone knows some third-parties/academic projects that would implement the 'action-recognition' stuff?"}
{"_id": "150521", "title": "How to license a whole package without writing it into every file?", "text": "Is there a way I can make the license I use for an open-source software package be valid for all contents of the package without having to write it into every single file? I often saw a `LICENSE` file, but does this file (with the license in it) makes all contents of the package (i.e. the current directory and all sub- directories) use this license?"}
{"_id": "150520", "title": "Career in Embedded Systems For CS Major", "text": "I'm entering my last few semesters of a CS degree and looking to start a career in Embedded Systems. From talking to a lot of people it seems like I might have been better off with a Computer Engineering degree but it is a bit late now. I am wondering what I can do to make myself employable in an embedded systems job in about a years time. I have taken a good number of computer architecture type courses as part of my degree and am hoping to tailor my electives towards embedded systems but it may not be feasible. What sorts of solo projects could I work on to get my chops up? I have an Arduino Uno but from what people have told me working with that doesn't really count. Can I access it at a lower level somehow? Are there books out there I can self study to learn more about embedded systems and the core knowledge I'll need to know? Is there some other cheap hardware kit I can buy to hack on that will be better than Arduino? Basically, how do I guarantee myself being an employable Jr. Level Embedded Systems Engineer in about a years time so I don't get stuck having to take a boring Java or Web App job?"}
{"_id": "51892", "title": "Hudson or Jenkins", "text": "We have been using Hudson for quite a while and we loved it. Now many Hudson- developers have \"left the building\" to create their own: Jenkins (which means the project has been forked). As Hudson/Jenkins users, we are now worried whether we should opt for the original \"big and stable\" producer Oracle, or the \"small and dynamic\" newcomer Jenkins. **EDIT** : Our worries are mainly due to the fact that we did not really hear about this fork/split through any official ways. It looks like a guerilla action including the hijacking of logos and trademarks (after all, the copyright must be at Oracle, no? I'm not sure). So we're kinda missing professionalism here, as in well-organised course of action involving press relases, etc. Maybe we just missed that... What are good objective reasons to decide for either project in the future? Can we postpone that decision until later, or is that too risky? Here's one opinion about this: http://www.itworld.com/development/136173/more- concerns-surface-hudson-jenkins-split Why did you choose either one?"}
{"_id": "16284", "title": "A little confused about Trac", "text": "I'm learning about the open source web based project management tool Trac and I'm a bit confused about its role in the area of reporting defects vs bug tracking. For those unfamiliar with Trac itself, it has a Ticket system which is the tool used to report issues, and you can choose between reporting a task, an enhancement, or a defect. It's that last option that I'm confused about. I get the impression that Trac is not meant to be a bug tracking tool, but if that's the case then what is the defect field for? I looked at the way the Trac team uses their own system, and it does _look_ like they post some things that appear to be bugs, but for the most part it's other kinds of issues, and that actually blurries the distinction for me even further. Can someone explain to me how the \"defect\" option is to be used? Is defect==bug? Should tickets be opened for bugs?"}
{"_id": "51897", "title": "Fast lookup for organization hierarchy", "text": "I need a way to implement a fast lookup algorithm / system to find users very quickly in a multi-level department and multi-level employee/manager relation organization structure. Departments can have any level of departments and users directly connected to departments. User are connected to departments and other users at the same time. What would be the best approach to implement such a system? There will be approximately 2000 users and 30 departments. Is there a good way to hold all of this information on memory?"}
{"_id": "69364", "title": "Is there an official standard regarding user password storage practices?", "text": "I recently used a government service that I had an account for from years ago. I couldn't remember my password for the service so I used the \"forgot password\" link and was astonished to see that this government website sent my password to my email address in plain text. I'm personally aware of how to handle user passwords, and I sent some comments about my concerns through a feedback form (this is a government website. People use other online gov. services which deal with sensitive information, as well as the fact that most people use the same password or handful of passwords for everything (I know I do) and I suspect the same security practices are used throughout) which I got a prompt response for. They simply reassured me that \"the Ministry has taken the necessary steps to protect password information, including storing them with the proper encryptions in place.\" I'd like to just say \"well obviously you haven't taken the necessary steps if you're able to email my password to me\" but I'm not trying to be rude, and I don't think my message would ever reach somebody who knows what I mean anyway. So I'd like to just state that \"the necessary steps haven't been taken according to [some official security standard]\" which might prompt someone to look into it. I did a quick search on OWASP but only found an article regarding plaintext storage. Is there a security standard regarding user password handling out there which prohibits (as I think it probably would) storage of retrievable password information? Even better: is there such a standard which _must_ be followed by websites dealing with sensitive information such as banks and government web services? I know I probably won't change anything but it's worth a shot IMO."}
{"_id": "69367", "title": "How does thinking on design patterns and OOP practices change in dynamic and weakly-typed languages?", "text": "There is a fairly helpful question already along these lines (\"Non-OOP Design Patterns?\"), but I am more curious about a transitional point of view for someone just getting started with dynamic and weakly-typed languages. That is: let's say I've been programming in C++, C#, or Java for many years, and absorbed lots of wisdom along the lines of the GoF design patterns, Fowler's _Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture_ , SOLID principles, etc. Now I'm dabbling in Ruby, Python, JavaScript, etc., and wondering how my knowledge applies. Presumably I could do direct translations in many cases, but almost certainly that wouldn't be taking full advantage of my new setting. Duck typing alone turns a lot of my interface-based thinking on its head. What stays the same? What changes? Are there guiding principles like SOLID, or canonical patterns (perhaps entirely new ones) that a dynamic language newbie should know?"}
{"_id": "154061", "title": "Should I modify an entity with many parameters or with the entity itself?", "text": "We have a SOA-based system. The service methods are like:   1. `UpdateEntity(Entity entity)` For small entities, it's all fine. However, when entities get bigger and bigger, to update one property we should follow this pattern in UI:   1. Get parameters from UI (user)   2. Create an instance of the Entity, using those parameters   3. Get the entity from service   4. Write code to fill the unchanged properties   5. Give the result entity to the service Another option that I've experienced in previous experiences is to create semantic update methods for each update scenario. In other words instead of having one global all-encompasing update method, we had many ad-hoc parametric methods. For example, for the `User` entity, instead of having `UpdateUser (User user)` method, we had these methods:   1. `ChangeUserPassword(int userId, string newPassword)`   2. `AddEmailToUserAccount(int userId, string email)`   3. `ChangeProfilePicture(int userId, Image image)`   4. ... Now, I don't know which method is truly better, and for each approach, we encounter problems. I mean, I'm going to design the infrastructure for a new system, and I don't have enough reasons to pick any of these approaches. I couldn't find good resources on the Internet, because of the lack of keywords I could provide. What approach is better? What pitfalls each has? What benefits can we get from each one?"}
{"_id": "119987", "title": "Should integer divide by zero halt execution?", "text": "I know that modern languages handle integer divide by zero as an error just like the hardware does, but what if we could design a whole new language? Ignoring existing hardware, what _should_ a programming language does when an integer divide by zero occurs? Should it return a NaN of type integer? Or should it mirror IEEE 754 float and return +/- Infinity? Or is the existing design choice correct, and an error should be thrown? Is there a language that handles integer divide by zero nicely? **EDIT** When I said ignore existing hardware, I mean don't assume integer is represented as 32 bits, it can be represented in anyway you can to imagine."}
{"_id": "148377", "title": "In an MVC architecture, how closely coupled are the Model and View to the Controller?", "text": "I've got an app which uses MVC, but I'm struggling a little as to how the controller should be architected. For example, the View is only viewing some subset of the model's data at once. However, I'm unsure as to exactly how this should be arranged. Is it normal for the View or Model to directly call functions on the Controller, for example? Through some sort of interface? Or are they totally encapsulated and never know about the Controller or each other? Just as an edit; this is a custom app not written in any web framework, so I'm not looking for framework-specific details here and have the freedom to make my own choice."}
{"_id": "118052", "title": "Why don't we use dynamic (server-side generated) CSS?", "text": "As server-side generated HTML is trivial (and it was the only way to make dynamic webpages before AJAX), **server-side generated CSS** is not. Actually, I've never seen it. There are CSS compilers, but they generate CSS files which can be used as static. Technically, it requires no special libraries, the HTML _style_ tag should reference to the PHP(/ASP/whatever) templater script instead of the static CSS file, and the script should send out CSS _content-type_ header - that's all. Does it have cache problems? I don't think so. The script should send out _no- cache_ etc. headers. Is it problem for designers? No, they should edit the CSS template (as they edit the HTML template). Why we don't use dynamic CSS generators? Or if there's any, please let me know."}
{"_id": "152963", "title": "How to talk to management about using integrated project management/bug tracking", "text": "**Background:** I have just started at a new shop, where there is one other developer. This shop was not historically a software shop, and their software development process really shows it. They recently started using subversion (although most of the code is not in a repository), and they do not have a bug tracker. They sell desktop software, and more recently mobile GPS devices with proprietary software. This seems pretty unsustainable. **My problem:** My manager seems amenable to installing Trac and integrating it with subversion. He's asked me to write a proposal for the company owners about it to justify why I might spend my valuable time fiddling with a Trac installation, and why we might change the development process to include formal bug reports and feature requests. I have been trying to come up with reasons that matter to people other than me (e.g., not: \"So I can see the whole story about why someone wrote this now- buggy code.\") and sort of falling flat. I'm not a manager, and I don't know a lot about managing things. I just want to avoid the headaches attendant with coding in the wild west. **My Question:** How do I (politely) tell managers that it's in their best interest to use Trac?"}
{"_id": "251216", "title": "Is too much whitespace a bad thing?", "text": "I'm often told by my friends and colleagues that I use way to much whitespace. I guess I do use a little _too_ much whitespace. I often add a line break almost after every line and large blocks of whitespace, often 3 or 4 lines because it helps me see what I've written and understand what I've written when I look back on it at a later time. I also think it just looks cleaner. Although I can see two issues with this, 1) It can increase the file size of the source files, even just a line break every two or three lines can add up in a long file. I know that a good compiler will optimize all the white space out (I'm not actually sure, I think LLVM/Clang does this) but the source file is still large. And 2) it may cause some people to think I'm embellishing my code to make it look longer and \"bigger\" to make others think I'm doing more work than I actually am (consider 3000 lines vs. 6000 lines, 3000 being newlines). Which I am not doing that by the way. Is using too much whitespace bad from a technical standpoint and/or a professional standpoint?"}
{"_id": "129342", "title": "How do I go about choosing a development lifecycle model model?", "text": "Based on this question about alternatives to the agile philosophy and its answers and comments I thought it might be useful to discuss what goes into the decision of what \"methodology\" to use when at the start of the project. Seems the consensus is that if what you are building requires exact specifications that waterfall is the way to go over agile. That seems to leave a HUGE space for agile development. Beyond \"this is how are shop develops software\" are there questions or \"indicators\" at the early planning stage that might give a better indication of what might work best for the client/project? Like with languages the idea is best tool for the job so as professional developers what do you do to make sure you're using the correct development methodology for a project you're about to start? Is it really as cut and dry as \"if it's a bridge or nuke reactor type project use waterfall else use agile? I am a self taught programmer working for company that gives a lot of flexibility and they put a lot of trust in me so this kind of question is important to me. I want to make sure I am addressing my work/projects in the most efficient cost/time manner as possible."}
{"_id": "200881", "title": "Should I use different projects for building different layers in a 3-layer model?", "text": "I am creating a new project from scratch and have decided to use a 3-layer model. I am using:   * the 1st layer for business entities,   * the 2nd layer for business logic,   * and the 3rd layer for data logic layer. Do I need to create different projects for these different layers or do I need to create different _folders_ in one project? What are the pros and cons of both approaches?"}
{"_id": "200882", "title": "Difference between mutex in windows and linux", "text": "Is that correct that a mutex object in Linux cannot be used for cross process synchronization as opposed to its Windows counterpart? If that is true - what was the idea to limit mutex synchronisation functionality on Linux?"}
{"_id": "46039", "title": "git in non-distributed, independent, lone programming ...best practice(s)?", "text": "I am currently studying the git documentation to get a hang of distributed version control workflow and use of git command line. I want to first start using git with small, personal, pet projects so to gain experience before doing it on large scale (i.e., bigger projects, team dev). What areas of the git system should I, as a lone player, devote most of my study time to... what parts should I leave for the larger scale work later on. In other words what features of the git system will fully be grasped in team work only, and therefore should not be too involved with at an individual level?"}
{"_id": "82858", "title": "Didn't anyone implement formatting codes separate from the text before 1998?", "text": "I heard about the Supreme Court's decision today in the Microsoft vs. i4i case, so I read the relevant patent and was surprised it appears to just keep formatting codes in a separate table with pointers instead of leaving the formatting codes embedded in the text. I'm surprised no one else did that before 1998, thereby invalidating the patent, and that Microsoft couldn't uncover an example of such a system. I recall a micro-based word processor a friend and I were going to build in the 70's (never finished because the hardware never worked), and I definitely considered the tradeoff between keeping format stuff separate vs. embedded, so I would think someone in the subsequent 20 years (if not before) did likewise and actually wrote such a system. Didn't anyone implement formatting codes separate from the text before 1998?"}
{"_id": "162485", "title": "When counting function points, is my website menu an External Input?", "text": "I'm doing a function point count for a large website. Does the main website menu count as an External Input? I'm doing a function point count as described in this article. If so, since you only click on one menu item at a time, I assume the number of DETs == 1?"}
{"_id": "162486", "title": "Linux OpenGL programming, should I use GLX or any other?", "text": "I'm new to OpenGL and found that there are a lot of libraries to do that in C, and I also found that glx is most friendly with Linux X Server, I just want to do basic stuff, and I cannot find any tutorials for GLX. Is GLX a bad thing? I just want to do some small graphical things without installing many libraries and getting confused. Can anyone suggest me something which has tutorials and simple to compile? I found a link with an example with GLX and it worked perfect with no errors: anyone please suggest where I can find nice documentation or any better libraries."}
{"_id": "162481", "title": "CTO has left \u2014 codebase is a huge kludge, any advice on how to manage/handle/damage control?", "text": "I began work at a company 2 months ago as a PHP developer. I stepped in to somewhat of a kludge, but I've yet to find a company that isn't... The development stable is currently two developers (including myself) who will act as the interim CTO while the company seeks out a replacement CTO. The company is a news site that runs on top of an inhouse WordPress theme with enhancements in the form of arbitrary plugins, features built into the actual theme, and plugins some built in-house and some 3rd party ((some whose core code has been modified, which renders upgrading a nightmare). No coding standards have been upheld in the creation of the WordPress code and it appears that it has been a number of developers managing the code and no two components are completed using the same methodology, which is beyond a huge mess when it comes to debugging. I am the \"WordPress\" developer. The other developer is in charge of the latest foray which is developing an e commerce platform to complement the news site, which will be run on top of Magento. As the only WordPress developer I am handling all bugs and feature requests on a prioritized basis - I am interacting with business directly to hammer this out. The biggest issue I foresee is any bug/enhancement/project that is deemed a priority and requires a significant amount of work (read: 1 week+) becomes a bottleneck and essentially nothing can get worked on until I complete the project. They say that they understand that now but I foresee that becoming an issue when they actually see it in practice. I am looking towards the future and fully expect it to become a stressful situation (14+ hour days 7 days a week anyone?) - which is something I need to avoid at all costs. Until we restaff a CTO or I am considering proposing that I write up coding standards for the WordPress development and utilize odesk or another outsourcing solution for handling feature requests - ensuring they conform to the standards set forth. In the proposed environment I will (a) manage the odesk developers (ensure I communicate exactly what is needed, ensure they are coding to proper standards) (b) handle any quick feature requests / bug fixes (c) begin refactoring the WordPress code so that it conforms to the aforementioned in-house coding standards - to get us to a manageable state. The company has used outsourcing solutions in the past, so I am confident that the idea of using one would not be an issue. At this point I am only forumlating the plan to propose to management -- not yet thinking of HOW to do what I accomplish - I just want to get the full OK from them before doing that. What are your thoughts on this plan? Is there anything else that I should think about/consider? Thanks."}
{"_id": "64288", "title": "Storing n-gram data", "text": "(hopefully I landed on the right stack exchange site) I was hoping to brainstorm a little bit on the subject of storing n-gram data. In my project, I am trying to solve linguistic problems where I know all ( _n_ -1) data items and want to statistically guess my _n_ using linear interpolation over all applicable n-grams. (Yes, there is a tagger that assigns tags to known words according to its lexicon and a suffix tree that tries to guess the word kind for unknown words; the n-gram component discussed here will be tasked with resolving ambuguity.) My initial approach would be to simply store all observed n-grams (for _n_ = 1..3, i.e. monogram, bigram, trigram) data in respective SQL databases and call it a day. But the requirements of my project may change to include other vector lengths ( _n_ ), and I would like my application to adapt to 4-gram without a lot of work (updating schema, updating application code, etc.); ideally, I would simply tell my application to work with 4-grams now without having to change code much (or at all) and train its data from a given data source. To sum up all requirements:   * Ability to store _n_ -gram data (initially for _n_ = {1, 2, 3}   * Ability to change what kinds of n-grams should be used (between application runs)   * Ability to (re-)train n-gram data (between application runs)   * Ability to query the data store (e.g. if I have observed A, B, C, I'd like to know the most frequently observed item for what might follow using my trained 4-, 3-, 2-, 1-gram data sets) The application will most likely be read-heavy, data sets most likely won't be retrained that often   * The solution employs the .NET Framework (up to 4.0) Now what design would be better fit for such a task?   * A fixed table managed by a SQL server (MSSQL, MySQL, ...) for each _n_ (eg. dedicated tables for bi-grams, tri-grams, etc.)   * Or a NoSQL document database solution that stores the first _n_ -1 as the key of the document, and the document itself contains the _n_ -th value and observed frequencies?   * Or something different?"}
{"_id": "153386", "title": "Why is x=x++ undefined?", "text": "It's undefined because the it modifies `x` twice between sequence points. The standard says it's undefined, therefore it's undefined.   That much I know. ### But why? My understanding is that forbidding this allows compilers to optimize better. This could have made sense when C was invented, but now seems like a weak argument.   If we were to reinvent C today, would we do it this way, or can it be done better?   Or maybe there's a deeper problem, that makes it hard to define consistent rules for such expressions, so it's best to forbid them? So suppose we were to reinvent C today. I'd like to suggest simple rules for expressions such as `x=x++`, which seem to me to work better than the existing rules.   I'd like to get your opinion on the suggested rules compared to the existing ones, or other suggestions. ### Suggested Rules:   1. Between sequence points, order of evaluation is unspecified.     2. Side effects take place immediately.   There's no undefined behavior involved. Expressions evaluate to this value or that, but surely won't format your hard disk (strangely, I've never seen an implementation where `x=x++` formats the hard disk). ### Example Expressions   1. `x=x++` \\- Well defined, doesn't change `x`.   First, `x` is incremented (immediately when `x++` is evaluated), then it's old value is stored in `x`.   2. `x++ + ++x` \\- Increments `x` twice, evaluates to `2*x+2`.   Though either side may be evaluated first, the result is either `x + (x+2)` (left side first) or `(x+1) + (x+1)` (right side first).   3. `x = x + (x=3)` \\- Unspecified, `x` set to either `x+3` or `6`.   If the right side is evaluated first, it's `x+3`. It's also possible that `x=3` is evaluated first, so it's `3+3`. In either case, the `x=3` assignment happens immediately when `x=3` is evaluated, so the value stored is overwritten by the other assignment.   4. `x+=(x=3)` \\- Well defined, sets `x` to 6.   You could argue that this is just shorthand for the expression above.   But I'd say that `+=` must be executed after `x=3`, and not in two parts (read `x`, evaluate `x=3`, add and store new value). ### What's the Advantage? Some comments raised this good point.   I certainly don't think expressions such as `x=x++` should be used in any normal code.   Actually, I'm much more strict than that - I think the only good usage for `x++` in as `x++;` alone.   However, I think the language rules must be as simple as possible. Otherwise programmers just don't understand them. the rule forbidding changing a variable twice between sequence points is certainly a rule most programmers don't understand.   A very basic rule is this:   If A is valid, and B is valid, and they're combined in a valid way, the result is valid.   `x` is a valid L-value, `x++` is a valid expression, and `=` is a valid way to combine an L-value and an expression, so how come `x=x++` isn't legal?   The C standard makes an exception here, and this exception complicates the rules. You can search stackoverflow.com and see how much this exception confuses people.   So I say - get rid of this confusion. === Summary of Answers ===   1. Why do that?   I tried to explain in the section above - I want C rules to be simple.   2. Potential for optimization:   This does take some freedom from the compiler, but I didn't see anything that convinced me that it might be significant.   Most optimizations can still be done. For example, `a=3;b=5;` can be reordered, even though the standard specifies the order. Expressions such as `a=b[i++]` can still be optimized similarly.     3. You can't change the existing standard.   I admit, I can't. I never thought I can actually go ahead and change standards and compilers. I only wanted to think if things could have been done differently."}
{"_id": "153387", "title": "Any one ever heard of the term collapsed Backbone?", "text": "Any one ever heard of the term collapsed Backbone? Could it be a virtual network that could be referred also to this term."}
{"_id": "48370", "title": "Software bug/defect classification", "text": "We're trying to come up with terms that better describe our bugs/defects. To us, the term 'bug' or 'defect' is too generic and doesn't accurately reflect what is happening. For example, instead of saying that there is a bug (in the general sense), we'd rather say what type of bug (an error, or enhancement, or improvement, etc.). What names do you use for describing 'bugs'? We found http://www.softwaredevelopment.ca/bugs.shtml which has some pretty good classifications. How do you classify them?"}
{"_id": "64283", "title": "Asset licensing and GPL compatibility", "text": "If I want to bundle fonts and images with an application released under the GPL, are there specific requirements for the license of these assets?"}
{"_id": "64282", "title": "Are there any alternatives to Hibernate Envers 3.6.2.Final?", "text": "I'm currently evaluating Hibernate Envers 3.6.2.Final; an auditing module part of Hibernate. As far as I am in my evaluation, I feel a _little_ disappointed by Envers. I would expect much more from it :   1. More _clear_ documentation     * The documentation is sparse or unclear; lack of small drawings in the document   2. More activity from the community     * I have waited two days for having an answer from... the creator on the forum. Is he a busy man or there is nearly no people out there?   3. Much powerful and flexible API     * Querying the historical data is painful. I have to rely on direct SQL to achieve a simple \"select field, count(id) from table_aud group by field\" Do you know any equivalent or do you want to share your thougths with me ?"}
{"_id": "254194", "title": "Is this right in the use case of exec method of child_process? is there away to cody the envirorment along with the require module too?", "text": "I'm learning node. I am using child_process to move data to another script to be executed. But it seem that it does not copy the hold environment or I could be doing something wrong. To copy the hold environment --require modules too-- or is this when I use spawn, I'm not so clear or understanding spawn exec and execfile --although execfile is like what I'm doing at the bottom, but with exec... right?-- And I would just love to have some clarity on this matter. Please anyone? Thank you. **parent.js** -               \"use strict\";          var fs, path, _err;     fs = require(\"fs\"),      path = require(\"path\"),      _err = require(\"./err.js\");               var url;     url= process.argv[1];          var dirname, locate_r;     dirname = path.dirname(url);     locate_r = dirname + \"/\" + \"test.json\";//path.join(dirname,\"/\", \"test.json\");          var flag, str; flag = \"r\", str = \"\";     fs.open(locate_r, flag, function opd(error, fd){         if (error){_err(error, function(){             fs.close(fd,function(){             process.stderr.write(\"\\n\" +              \"In Finally Block: File Closed!\" + \"\\n\");});})}         var readBuff, buffOffset, buffLength, filePos;         readBuff = new Buffer(15),         buffOffset = 0,         buffLength = readBuff.length,         filePos = 0;         fs.read(fd, readBuff, buffOffset, buffLength, filePos,         function rd(error, readBytes){             error&&_err(error, fd);             str = readBuff.toString(\"utf8\");             process.env.str = str;             process.stdout.write(\"str: \"+ str + \"\\n\" + \"readBuff: \" + readBuff + \"\\n\");             fs.close(fd, function(){process.stdout.write(                 \"Read and Closed File.\" + \"\\n\"                 )});             //write(str);             //run test for process.exec**             var env, varName, envCopy, exec;             env = process.env,             varName,             envCopy = {},             exec = require(\"child_process\").exec;             for(varName in env){                 envCopy[varName] = env[varName];             }             process.env.fs = fs,             process.env.path = path,             process.env.dirname = dirname,             process.env.flag = flag,             process.env.str = str,             process.env._err = _err;             process.env.fd = fd;             exec(\"node child.js\", env, function(error, stdout, stderr){                 if(error){throw (new Error(error));}         });         });     });      **child.js** -               \"use strict\";          var fs, path, _err;     fs = require(\"fs\"),      path = require(\"path\"),      _err = require(\"./err.js\");          var fd, fs, flag, path, dirname, str, _err;     fd = process.env.fd,     //fs = process.env.fs,     //path = process.env.path,     dirname = process.env.dirname,     flag = process.env.flag,     str = process.env.str,     _err = process.env._err;               var url;     url= process.argv[1];          var locate_r;     dirname = path.dirname(url);     locate_r = dirname + \"/\" + \"test.json\";//path.join(dirname,\"/\", \"test.json\");          //function write(str){     var locate_a;     locate_a = dirname + \"/\" + \"test.json\"; //path.join(dirname,\"/\", \"test.json\");     flag = \"a\";     fs.open(locate_a, flag, function opd(error, fd){         error&&_err(error, fs, fd);         var writeBuff, buffPos, buffLgh, filePs;         writeBuff = new Buffer(str),         process.stdout.write(             \"writeBuff: \" + writeBuff + \"\\n\" + \"str: \" + str + \"\\n\"),         buffPos = 0,         buffLgh = writeBuff.length,         filePs = buffLgh;//null;         fs.write(fd, writeBuff, buffPos, buffLgh, filePs-3,         function(error, written){             error&&_err(error, function(){             fs.close(fd,function(){             process.stderr.write(\"\\n\" +              \"In Finally Block: File Closed!\" + \"\\n\");                 });             });             fs.close(fd,              function(){process.stdout.write(                 \"Written and Closed File.\" + \"\\n\");});         });     });     //}      **err.js** -                \"use strict\";         var fs;         fs = require(\"fs\");              module.exports = function _err(err, scp, cd){             try{                 throw (new Error(err));              }catch(e){                 process.stderr.write(e + \"\\n\");             }finally{                 cd;             }         }"}
{"_id": "254199", "title": "Dependency Inversion Principle", "text": "I have been studying also S.O.L.I.D. and watched this video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huEEkx5P5Hs 01:45:30 into the video he talks about the Dependency Inversion Principle and I am scratching my head??? I had to simplify it(if possible) to get it through this thick scull of mine and here is what I came up with. Code on the marked My_modified_code my version, code marked Original DIP video version. Can I accomplish the same with the latter code? Thanks in advance. Original:               namespace simple.main     {          class main         {             static void Main()             {                 FirstClass FirstClass = new FirstClass(new OtherClass());                 FirstClass.Method();                 Console.ReadKey();                      //tempClass temp = new OtherClass();                 //temp.Method();             }         }               public class FirstClass          {              private tempClass _LastClass;              public FirstClass(tempClass tempClass)//ctor              {                  _LastClass = tempClass;              }                   public void Method()              {                  _LastClass.Method();              }          }              public abstract class tempClass{public abstract void Method();}              public class LASTCLASS : tempClass         {             public override void Method()             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"\\nHello World!\");             }         }              public class OtherClass : tempClass         {             public override void Method()             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"\\nOther World!\");             }         }     }      My_modified_code:               namespace simple.main     {          class main         {             static void Main()             {                 //FirstClass FirstClass = new FirstClass(new OtherClass());                 //FirstClass.Method();                 //Console.ReadKey();                      tempClass temp = new OtherClass();                 temp.Method();             }         }               //public class FirstClass          //{          //    private tempClass _LastClass;          //    public FirstClass(tempClass tempClass)//ctor          //    {          //        _LastClass = tempClass;          //    }               //    public void Method()          //    {          //        _LastClass.Method();          //    }          //}              public abstract class tempClass{public abstract void Method();}              public class LASTCLASS : tempClass         {             public override void Method()             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"\\nHello World!\");             }         }              public class OtherClass : tempClass         {             public override void Method()             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"\\nOther World!\");             }         }"}
{"_id": "16869", "title": "How to find out if a company has insane policies", "text": "When interviewing for a job, is there a delicate yet accurate way to find out if they have insane policies, like \"no open source\", or \"no installing software without permission\", \"not upgrading software until it's about to lose support\", or \"no visiting blogs\"?"}
{"_id": "42620", "title": "Ruby or Python?", "text": "This question is extremely subjective and open-ended. It might even sound like something I should just research for myself and make my own decision. But I'd like to put it out there and get some thoughts from others. Long story short - I burned out with the rat race and am on a self-funded sabbatical this year. Much of it is to take a break from the corporate grind and travel around, but I also want to play around with new technologies and do some self-learning projects, to stay up to speed on programming, and well - I just love tinkering with programming, when there's no pressure! Here's the thing: I am a lifetime C/C++/Java programmer. I'm a bit of a squiggly bracket snob since I've been working with this family of languages for my entire programming career. So I'd like to learn a language which isn't so closely syntactically related to this group. What I'm basically looking for is a language which is relatively general purpose, fun to learn, has some new concepts that are different from C++/Java, and has a good community. A secondary consideration is that it has good web development frameworks. A tertiary consideration is that it's not totally academic (read: there are real world jobs out there using it). I've narrowed it down to Ruby or Python. My impression of Ruby is that it is extremely web oriented - that the only real application of it is as a server side scripting language for doing web stuff (mainly Ruby on Rails). I don't have much of an impression of Python at all, except that it seems to have a passionate fan base and appears to be a fairly versatile language. **TL;DR** and to put it as succinctly as possible: which of these would be better for a C++/Java guy to learn to get some new perspectives on programming? And which is more open and general purpose and applicable to a wider set of applications? I'm leaning towards Ruby at the moment, but I worry to an extent that it looks like it's used as nothing but a server side web language."}
{"_id": "195216", "title": "Is MVC ever considered/applied system-wide?", "text": "I was having a discussion with a colleague and he bought up the topic of MVC and the use of ViewModels in ASP.NET MVC. The discussion was that, in an n-layer architecture, the UI, Business Layer and Data Access Layer are individual assemblies/projects and ViewModels are the UI's representation of a database/business object. The discussion on whether ViewModel's are useful moved into a discussion about how MVC should be applied. In my version (which is what I am used to/have seen elsewhere) takes into account separation of concerns and waterfall dependencies, where the UI project references the BLL, the BLL references the DAL and possibly all of them reference an \"Entities\" project. \"MVC\" is restricted to the UI. That is, the notion of \"Models\" (in my version, they are technically just ViewModels), \"Views\" and \"Controllers\" are individual files/objects in the UI layer. The BLL talks in terms of database entities and the UI will generally contain helpers that map a ViewModel to an entity. My colleague's version took this to the system/layer level, where the \"Model\" is the DAL, the \"View\" is the entire UI and the \"Controllers\" are the BLL as a whole. Given that in an MVC triad, the Model is unaware of Views or Controllers, the Views know about Models and the Controllers know about both.. does the system- level application of MVC not violate modular programming concepts/code reusability (disregarding the possible circular dependency issues)? Are patterns such as MVC applied at a system level often? My understanding was that MVC and related patterns were more often applied purely to the UI and not spread out across an entire n-layer system. By the way, we had a look at this question: What is MVC, really? ..but we also seem to disagree on whose argument the answers to this question supports! :) I could be just stuck in my little tiny .NET-oriented world and cannot see the bigger picture, so I would like to hear some thoughts on this."}
{"_id": "195217", "title": "We have a large Ruby on Rails application (25 million monthly users), our management decided to rewrite in Node.js, am I crazy?", "text": "Please tell me if:   * Node.js will make our site faster!   * Node.js will consume fewer server resources, we can save money!   * Node.js will make us more productive!   * Node.js means we can share client and server side JavaScript code. To clarify, we're rewriting a frontend server, which will talk to our existing Ruby on Rails application as an API. Meanwhile, we'll refactor our Ruby on Rails application into services. More details on the existing architecture:   * Memcached for HTML partials caching   * Redis for session, and some structured data caching   * MySQL single master, multiple slaves      * There's one large table that accepts a lot of writes (imagine a poll)     * Otherwise mostly reads.   * MongoDB for some metadata   * Ruby on Rails 3.0   * nginx and Unicorn"}
{"_id": "125987", "title": "What should we include in SSAS cube design documentation?", "text": "What should we include in a SSAS cube design documentation? This is the initial phase of the document. I have included:   * data models,   * facts,    * dimensions,   * surrogate keys,   * hierarchies and levels within hierarchies,   * reports that we can pull from the cube,   * proactive caching. What else can we include?"}
{"_id": "16867", "title": "Java or C++ for university CS courses?", "text": "I'm in the throes of getting myself enrolled in school to get a CS degree. The school I am looking at actually offers both Java- and C++-based for the introductory software development courses (object-oriented programming, design patterns, that sort of thing). It is student's choice which track to follow, but there is only time to follow one. _Knowing what you know now, if you had the choice, would you lay down your CS curriculum foundation in Java or C++?_ My current debate currently looks like this: A good friend (who has a PhD in AI) is touting Java as the better choice regardless of what I do, if only to open up more job opportunities later, though he might be biased since all of his work has been in Java (he loves it). I live in the Boston, MA, USA area and I see an equal amount of Java and C work. On the flip side, although I haven't entirely yet settled on what I want to do with the degree when I'm done, my preference would be to develop for the Mac, which I am doing now albeit in a limited capacity. To that end, I'm getting some limited exposure to C++ already, but I've had none with Java, and looking at my projects at my day job I don't see a need to use it anytime soon, \"soon\" measured by at least two years. I probably should note that I'm an adult going back to school after 20 years (I currently have _no_ degree of any kind) so I'm looking to maximize the opportunity and time spent as best I can. I'm kind of leaning towards C++ but I'm still ambivalent, and some outside, objective advice would help here. Or I could just be thinking too hard about it. **UPDATE:** It turns out the language selection wasn't so clear cut as I originally surmised. While a couple of core courses focused on Java, some of the other core courses work in primarily C and Java, but also a few others thrown in for good measure. In fact, my rest of my semester is going to be in Objective-C after spending time in Java and Javascript. Last semester was C, Javascript, and PHP, plus a few others thrown in as assignments required. Since things were pretty much split down the middle overall, and I am still getting answers to this, I am now trying to work my curriculum such that I meet all of the requirements for the degree but to absorb as many languages as I can reasonably handle. So far, my grades have not suffered trying to do this."}
{"_id": "125980", "title": "Can SQL Server and Mongo be used together?", "text": "We have a large news-oriented site that has high web traffic. The architecture is your often seen DB - Repo Layer - Services Layer - Asp.Net MVC. The problem that we've been seeing is around read performance. It turns out that all this DDD domain object stuff is great, in theory, for business rules, but has made life harder when it comes to optimizing read performance. As a solution, I'm considering something entirely new (for us): using noSQL. I'd like to use a noSQL database for data being presented on our website. We can't get rid of our SQL Server (at least not anytime soon), but it seems to me that a practical step would be to use Mongo as a query database for all new development. My question is whether it is possible to use SQL Server as your database of record and Mongo as your query database **together**? So when one of our editors updates a record, the data will be stored in SQL Server. This is necessary, because there is too much legacy code that cannot be re-written overnight. But when a viewer on the web site views an article or a list of articles, I'd like to take advantage of the performance of Mongo versus SQL Server. In order to keep data somewhat current, let's say 15 minutes old or less, SQL Server data would need to refresh Mongo. RDBMS have replication tools for operations like this and I'm wondering if there exists anything to do the same from SQL Server to Mongo. Lync server, maybe?"}
{"_id": "42628", "title": "How do I get started with HTML5?", "text": "What is the recommended workflow to learn HTML5? What tools should I install? What SDK? Where to start? How to test? How to debug? What do I read? I understand that what is often labelled as \"HTML5 development\" is in fact a mixture of HTML, CSS, JS and more, however I don't believe that bigger projects are developed in Notepad. That is why I am asking you to reveal your tips and tricks about your workflow."}
{"_id": "97541", "title": "What are the best practices regarding unsigned ints?", "text": "I use unsigned ints everywhere, and I'm not sure if I should. This can be from database primary key id columns to counters, etc. If a number should never be negative, then I will always used an unsigned int. However I notice from other's code that no one else seems to do this. Is there something crucial that I'm overlooking? Edit: Since this question I've also noticed that in C, returning negative values for errors is commonplace rather than throwing exceptions as in C++."}
{"_id": "190452", "title": "Why can't the PHP engine handle HTTP communication?", "text": "The PHP engine interprets the PHP code and is perfectly capable of working with sockets, forming HTTP packets, etc. Why then do we need a separate Apache server, when the http serving duties could be embedded into the php application along with the page creation code?"}
{"_id": "42110", "title": "Can you recommend a good commit message template / guidelines to enforce in the company?", "text": "In Git it's possible to set and enforce a good commit template. Can you recommend (preferably with argumentation) a good commit template / guidelines to enforce in the company?"}
{"_id": "90012", "title": "c# class naming standards/guidelines", "text": "Over the years I've used various naming conventions for services in my applications for example:               [ClassName]Service       [ClassName]Manager       [ClassName]Factory       [ClassName]Provider       [ClassName]Helper      I generally only use the \"Helper\" suffix for utility classes that have no external dependencies. However I find that there is a bit of a cross-over between the others, and wondered if there was any recommendations/standards/guidelines on what to use and when?"}
{"_id": "59848", "title": "Does Google Code source hosting have an API like Github", "text": "I looked and looked, and perhaps I am dense, but I could not find an API for open source projects on Google Code, similar to that offered by Github. Does it exist?"}
{"_id": "90015", "title": "Automated Testing: Explaining its Business Value", "text": "To start I don't think this is a repeat of other questions on unit testing. What I'm looking for help with is articulating its value to a team of programmers, analysts, managers and testers. By automated tests, I don't think I need to make a distinction between unit tests (e.g. JUnit), BDD (e.g. JBehave, Fitness) and UI (Selenium , Watir) because I think they all provide similar value (but feel free to write an answer that disagrees :)) The following is a list I've identified, I'm looking for answers that help expand or refine:   1. **Time/Cost Savings** : writing automated tests can take more time than written test cases. However, considering tests are run multiple times, the marginal work (i.e. cost/time) to _execute_ automated tests is several orders of magnitude less. That the automated tests are cheap to run facilitates _changing_ the system over time.   2. **Documentation** : there is no truer way to know how a system works than its tests. Any other documentation is usually out of date the moment its written, but tests (at least those that pass) reveal how things actually work. This is true for both end-user AND API documentation.    3. **Code Quality** : test writing forces you to:      * consider clients because tests are a client     * breaks dependencies where making code testable often means figuring out how to make that code not require some other large system be available"}
{"_id": "135160", "title": "Shortcomings of using dynamic types in C#", "text": "I have been recently studying more on the dynamic types in C#. With some examples I understood once the code is compiled, it does not need to be recompiled again but can be executed directly. I feel the flexibility provided by the keyword to actually be able to change data type at will is a great advantage. Question, Are there **any specific shortcomings** apart from wrong dynamic method calls which throw run time exceptions **which developers must know** before starting the implementation."}
{"_id": "179087", "title": "How, when, and why do developers use custom data structures in python?", "text": "Python's lack of pointers makes data-structure construction intuitively more challenging, and has so much built in functionality that, as an amateur, I can't see when, why, or how you would create something beyond what's already there. When have you built your own, and why did you do it? E.g. special types of trees, etc."}
{"_id": "193907", "title": "Non Blocking Sockets vs Blocking sockets - UDP - C&linux", "text": "When to use blocking sockets over non blocking sockets on UDP? Question 1:What's is recommended for the following scenario ? Multiple clients send data over multiple UDP sockets, i.e. say client1 sends data over sockets 100, 101, 102,..,105 . client2 on sockets 110,111,112...115 etc. Port numbers are fixed for clients. Number of clients are fixed(10). So totally 10 * 5 sockets. Data on each sockets(atleast 3 sockets) is sent every few milliseconds. The other 2 sockets are for sending commands and getting data. After receiving the data there is some IO involved where i write to disks. (I cant change any of the above. i.e. number of sockets ,etc ) Question 2:Is it best to use Threads for this scenario (or) Asynchronous IO multiplexing with nonblocking sockets?"}
{"_id": "57998", "title": "Versions of .NET in an Interview", "text": "Interviews are full of an array of different types of questions. What I'm curious about is what people think about asking an interviewee about the differences in .NET versions. For instance, asking what was new in .NET V2.0 to 3.0 and then from 3.0 to 3.5 and so on. Is this a good interview question to find out what a person knows about the .NET world? As V2.0 was released in 2005, I start to wonder how valid it is to ask about what was new in a release done 6 years ago. Is it a good question at guaging a developers knowledge or just his/her memory?"}
{"_id": "121152", "title": "How to credit other authors in an open source project", "text": "I have a pet project that I am planning to release as open source at some point in the not-too-distant future. A couple of the files use or are mostly code that was taken from a project released under the New BSD License. While I have changed it to fit my needs and added some small stuff, the algorithm and the functionality is basically exactly the same. I want to make sure that the author of the code gets credit and that the license is not broken, but I also want to make the reader aware that this is not the code as it was orignally released. How should I approach this? Should I isolate the code as much as possible and just retain the original license? Maybe put all the files that contain foreign code in their own folder and add a readme explaining what has been added/removed? There must have been tons of projects using other open source code. What is the standard approach to this?"}
{"_id": "198117", "title": "Are there any industry standards that define code quality?", "text": "Our specific situation is that we are creating an agreement between ourselves and another team for shared control or use of a PHP based web application that we have been building. We have a set of standards and conventions documented in our technical specs. However, I have been asked to define them in terms of an industry standard. I am aware of different terminology for coding conventions. Hungarian notation, CamelCase, for example. And some defined standards for very specific things, PSR-0 for example covers namespaces in PHP. It seems the point is to try to give us stronger ground in the agreement, by pointing to industry standards rather than an arbitrary standard we set forth. They're looking for things like the PSR-0 or an ISO#### or IEEE#### that we can point to. My personal concern is that I've spent the time working with the team to show them the standards we have and to get buy in on the bigger parts of it. So I'm worried we'll either end up having to conform to some standard that doesn't match how we like to program, or the better case will be picking and choosing pieces of standards if they exist, to fit our current conventions. Anyway, the core of the question is, **Are there any industry standards regarding code quality, coding processes, or other areas that would help us keep their programmers from making disruptive or difficult to maintain code?** I realize we can't prevent it, but if we can point to the agreement, at least we have recourse other than refactoring or recoding it ourselves. Any other thoughts or suggestions would be helpful."}
{"_id": "53631", "title": "How to learn the practical uses of design patterns", "text": "I use OOP programming with inheritance, but I've not yet used interfaces.I want to learn how to use design patterns, but I'm finding them very difficult to learn. Is there is any way to learn design patterns easily? I searched quite a bit, but I was not able to find useful information."}
{"_id": "9313", "title": "Can you decipher this binary", "text": "_Thought I post this to the best community of programmers I know._ > David Johnston, the new Governor General, has the digital world confused. > > Just what is the meaning of that 33 character-long string of ones and zeros > that is emblazoned across the bottom of his fresh new Coat of Arms? > > According to the GG's website, \"The wavy band inscribed with zeros and ones > represents a flow of information, digital communication and modern media.\" The binry is this:               110010111001001010100100111010011      It's not ASCII, is it just random? > Original article: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2010/10/the-new- > ggs-binary-banner-whats-it-mean.html _I'll accept the correct (if it can be solved) answer or failing that, the highest voted answer._"}
{"_id": "10425", "title": "If you had to teach professional development to students that just graduated school, what would be the topics?", "text": "The idea is to give them more chances to be efficient in a professional environment. Most students are good with theory, most of them are smart, but they have to learn how to solve common technical problems. They will be better programmers as they practice, but maybe we can help them with some introduction training. > Which topics you would select for a two weeks full time training? It's an open question, I don't want to suggest things that will reduce the answers to a particular field."}
{"_id": "163288", "title": "Constructor vs setter validations", "text": "I have the following class :               public class Project {              private int id;         private String name;                public Project(int id, String name, Date creationDate, int fps, List<String> frames) {             if(name == null ){                 throw new NullPointerException(\"Name can't be null\");             }                  if(id == 0 ){                 throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"id can't be zero\");             }                      this.name = name;                 this.id = id;              }              private Project(){}              public int getId() {             return id;         }              public void setId(int id) {              this.id = id;         }              public String getName() {             return name;         }              public void setName(String name) {             this.name = name;         }          }      I have three questions:   1. Do I use the class setters instead of setting the fields directly. One of the reason that I set it directly, is that in the code the setters are not final and they could be overridden.    2. If the right way is to set it directly and I want to make sure that the name filed is not null always. Should I provide two checks, one in the constructor and one in the setter.   3. I read in effective java that I should use `NullPointerException` for null parameters. Should I use `IllegalArgumentException` for other checks, like id in the example."}
{"_id": "8955", "title": "How do I keep my projects from dragging on with endless tweaks and changes?", "text": "After working out a project, it might require too much tweaks and changes to get it working right... What can I do to prevent this?"}
{"_id": "142035", "title": "Who uses GnuSTEP?", "text": "This has been a big question lurking at the back of my head. From what I see, GnuSTEP nowadays is primarily a \"hobby\" project of a small but tightly-knit group of people. However I haven't seen a large commercial (off-the-shelf) application that uses it, apart from the small applications that comes with the GnuSTEP distribution. Heck, since even Ubuntu doesn't really use it then is GnuSTEP really more than being a \"hobby\" framework? I know that Sony's SNAP at one brief moment uses GnuSTEP, but they killed the platform before it can do anything meaningful."}
{"_id": "163282", "title": "Why is design by contract considered an alternative to the pseudo programming process?", "text": "Right now I'm reading Code Complete by Steve McConnell and in chapter 9 he talks about the Pseudo Programming Process (PPP). From what I've understood, the PPP is a way of programming in which the programmer first writes the pseudo code for the routine he's working on, then refines it up to the point where pretty much each pseudo code line can be implemented in 1-3 lines of code, then writes the code in the designated programming language and finally the pseudo code is saved as comments for the purpose of documenting the routine. In chapter 9.4 the author mentions alternatives to the PPP, one of which is 'design by contract'. In design by contract you basically assert preconditions and postconditions of each routine. Now why would that be considered an alternative? To me it seems obvious that I should use both techniques at the same time and not chose one over the other."}
{"_id": "49680", "title": "Automated Acceptance tests under specific contraints", "text": "This question is a follow up to my previous question, which was a bit general, so I shall be more specific with this one. I want to automate acceptance testing on a web application. Briefly, this application allows the user to create contracts for subscribers with two constraints:   * You cannot create more than one contract for a subscriber.   * Once a contract is created, it cannot be deleted (from the UI). Let's say TestCreate is a test case with tests for the normal creation of a contract. The constraints have introduced complexities to the testing process, mainly dependencies between test cases and test executions.   * Before we run TestCreate we need to make sure that the application is in a suitable state (the subscriber has no contract)   * If we run TestCreate twice, the second run will fail since the state of the application will have changed.   * So we need to revert back to the initial state (i.e. delete the contract), which is impossible to do from the UI. More generally, after each test case we should guarantee that the state is reverted back. And since, in this case, it is impossible to do it from the UI, how do you handle this? **Possible solution** : I thought about doing a backup of the database in the state that I desire, and after each test case, run a script which deletes the db and restores the backup. However, I find that to be too heavy to do for each single test case. In addition, what if some information are stored in files? or in multiple or unaccessible databases? **My question:** In this situation, what would an experienced tester do to write automated and maintanable tests. Thank you. **More info** : I'm trying to integrate tests into a BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) framework, which I find to be a neat solution for test documentation and communication, but it does not solve this particular problem (it even makes it harder)"}
{"_id": "1371", "title": "What are the warning signs of impending doom to watch out for on a project?", "text": "Having worked on a failed project is one of the few things that most programmers have in common, regardless of language used, industry or experience. These projects can be great learning experiences, soul-crushing disasters (or both!), and can occur for a multitude of reasons:   * upper management change of heart   * under-skilled / under-resourced team   * emergence of superior competitor during dev cycle   * over/under management Once you've worked on a couple of such projects, is it possible to recognise at an early stage exactly when a project is doomed to fail? For me, a big sign is having a hard & fast external **deadline combined with feature creep**. I've seen projects which were well planned out and proceeding right on schedule go horribly off the rails once the late feature requests started to roll in and get added to the final \"deliverable\". The proposers of these requests earned the nickname of Columbo, due to rarely leaving the room without asking for \"just one more thing\". What are the warning signs you look out for that set off the alarm bells of impending doom in your head?"}
{"_id": "212949", "title": "use areFoo or isFoo?", "text": "I have never seen the use of \"are\" for boolean methods, but the use of \"is\" is very common. When I want to use \"are\" is usually because I am passing multiple variables, or a list of objects. I suppose I could rationalize my list of objects or multiple variables as one thing, such as \"isSetupParametersValid\", but that would still be plural. Is the lack of use of \"are\" in boolean methods, simply an arbitrary convention or a side-effect of using best practices. If it's a side-effect of best- practices, which ones? Note: for non-native English speakers \"is\" refers to a singular object, \"are\" refers to plural/multiple objects"}
{"_id": "62852", "title": "PHP Project deployment", "text": "I have a PHP project that I'm currently developing. I'm nearly finished and I was wondering what is the best practice when it comes to beta testing and deploying updates/changes to the production site? For example, in order to test out new features, I thought about creating a sub-domain called beta.mysite.com that uses a duplication of the same project files as the production version and a duplication of the mysql db. Then after I test everything out, I need to export the mysql tables (if I changed the db structure) and copy over the files to the production area. But how do I do all that with keeping all the data that have been produced during my beta testing? I'm the only person that works on this project, I currently don't use any versioning tool, just Dreamweaver. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "62857", "title": "How should you proceed when somebody rejected a good thing you made?", "text": "I made an application in extjs, and it was rejected by my technical architect, project manager, and team leader because it was a big JavaScript file. It feels very bad when you develop an application and it is rejected by your seniors. I don't want to feel bad and I want to concentrate on my work. I would like to restructure the code, as the coding structure in my company is very bad and I want to improve that. I want to work better and grow - how should I proceed?"}
{"_id": "236713", "title": "Session states in ajax callback", "text": "Someone told me `Session` or `HttpContext.Current.User` will return different value when we are working with ajax postback, in case of when the are so many user are live to site. For example, suppose there are 1000 people are online in site, and from them 100 call ajax method/ wenmethod and on this we might get different value of `Session` or `HttpContext.Current.User` as per every user's `Session` or `HttpContext.Current.User` value are different. But my concept says it will return specific person's (who requested) `Session` or `HttpContext.Current.User` value, and server will be clear whose value need to be return. What you all guys says?"}
{"_id": "236717", "title": "Is it possible to implement a native compiler for a 'managed language' such as Java?", "text": "In most cases, it is possible to create both a native compiler and an interpreter for a programming language. The compiler would simply convert the source code to machine code, and the interpreter would simply execute the source code (or some IL produced by a compiler). However, I'm not sure about languages with garbage collection. Let's take Java for example. When Java was designed, it was clear that Java programs were always going to be run on the JVM. And the JVM was supposed to feature a garbage collection mechanism. So while designing the Java language itself, there was no need for destructors and such. If one was going to implement a _native_ Java compiler, that would mean the Java source code would be compiled to machine code to be run on the machine itself, not on a VM. And the machine itself doesn't feature a mechanism for garbage collection. **How would someone implementing a native Java compiler deal with this situation? Is it possible to create a native compiler for Java, since the Java design 'counts' on automatic garbage collection? (And possibly on some additional things the VM does for the program?)**"}
{"_id": "26906", "title": "What is the proper relationship between the software developer and the business customer?", "text": "IT professionals are experts who are trusted with the IT assets of a business or organisation. As trusted professionals we have responsibilities that extend beyond things that a non-IT customer can be expected to understand or be aware of. So I think the proper relationship between an IT professional and his internal/external customers is more like that between a doctor and patient than a servant and master. Am I right? Here's an analogy to think about. A patient insists that his leg needs to be amputated. His doctor disagrees but the patient cannot be persuaded. Should the doctor amputate the leg just to satisfy the patient? Another analogy. A customer wants a civil engineer to build a bridge to an unsafe design. Even when the engineer explains that it is unsafe the customer doesn't believe him. Should the engineer build the bridge anyway? I think the right answer in both these analogies is NO. The medical professional and engineering professional are supposed to be in a position of trust and ought to exercise their own judgement, even in the face of patient/customer disapproval. Shouldn't the same apply to IT professionals when the IT professional is qualified to make the decision but his customer is not?"}
{"_id": "178384", "title": "How can I create a solid business case for upgrading our programmers to 256 GB SSD and 16 GB of RAM?", "text": "We have an environment based on Microsoft stack (VS2010, SQL Server, etc), and I firmly believe that we could improve productivity a little bit, having more RAM and a faster secondary SSD. What data do you advice to gather so I can solidify my request in such a way the advantages can be unbiasedly demonstrated? Currently we have only 6GB of RAM and slower HD drives, and at home I have a 128 GB SSD in my desktop and 16 GB of RAM (I also think is the max amount of memory supported by our workstations, if we could go bigger then better), so I can feel the difference and it's real. The issue actually is how to get a budget approval from management and spend it wisely to increase productivity."}
{"_id": "152037", "title": "How to use database adapters' cursors safely?", "text": "I started to use psycopg2 to connect my little python script to a PostgreSQL database few days ago. After some research I found that a lot of database connector, like psycopg, work using cursors. I know what is a cursor and how to use it. But I still wonder if it's safe to use the same cursor all along the script life. Is it safe? Or would it be preferable to use a different cursor for each query?"}
{"_id": "251963", "title": "Is making a small change, testing it, then \"rinse and repeat\", a bad habit?", "text": "I am a programmer with a number of years of experience. I realized I got a certain habit. I'm not sure whether it's really a bad habit or not. I get a list of tasks to perform for a solution, even small small tasks, for example,   1. Change resources of this user control   2. Change size of another one   3. Add some HTML and coding on another user control All of these tasks are small. I mean they can be done within 10 minutes, **but I got a bad habit of making small changes and then test them again and again in a web browser**. Is this a good practice? Or should I perform them all at once and then test them together? If it is really a bad habit then how do I rectify it, since it feels like wasting time testing small changes over and over?"}
{"_id": "255245", "title": "Writing code with 5 fingers, is more efficient?", "text": "Actually I tend to write with 4 fingers, my actual typing speed is in average 110~120 ( using http://www.typingtest.com/ with an spanish from spain ) I have some time trying to force myself to use 5 fingers, It's kind of weird, but I have noticed that when i'm writing a text like this, fingers tend to be in a really natural position, with time I could handle this... But when i'm programming everything is weir,using alt+tab is weird, using ctrl+b is wird, and all those shorcuts that some terminal related programs use, the \"natural 5 fingers way\" is natural just when i have to write text, but that don't apply when there is a lot of symbols like . -> ( ) [ ] \" \" && || , etc... Is there somebody that actually use 5 fingers to type?, is comfortable to write code using 5 fingers using that kind of \"natural way\" ? worth the effort to learn to use the 5 fingers?"}
{"_id": "142788", "title": "Approached to build app centered around new API and suddenly API is abandoned", "text": "This isn't a huge deal, but I was approached by colleagues/friends to build an app using their new API. There was some potential for pecuniary gain for me depending on app usage. I spent a considerable amount of time polishing the mobile app, based on my assumption that, having been approached in a serious way, that the company would not suddenly shift focus and abandon the API. I wasn't even given so much as a heads up that the API was dead even though I had an app in production that relied on it... For the most part, building the app was a learning experience which I enjoyed, but I don't think I'd have expended all the effort if I knew that the company wasn't as serious about the API as their reaching out to me clearly indicated. How, if at all, would you react?"}
{"_id": "255242", "title": "How can I put multiple hierarchical forms in a single web page and avoid making it a mess?", "text": "We are a group of developers working on a web application that accepts forms filled and sent by our users and present it in an overall view. Our main form view looks like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/cReBC.png) There are multiple forms on this page. The form on the left is the parent form which contains general questions about the project. The right panels are more detailed questions and are about sub-projects. The forms are lengthy and contain different types of properties (form elements) in them. The parent form is static and is opened on page load. We have given no options to close or minimize it. The right panels (child forms) are collapsed by default and open by click and the contents are then rendered. This is done to reduce the page load time. I have annotated the picture so I don't have to explain everything myself. Everything in the picture that has a rectangle around it is a (Backbone) view by itself. To make it even more complex, look at this other picture: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BJs3N.png) Look at the photo slider view. Each slide in that slider is again, a view by itself. The manipulation buttons are rendered along with each slide so moving them somewhere else (like next to the \"move left/right\" buttons) is quite a pain. That is why we have not done it. Now look at the grand child form's fields that I have marked as \"properties with relationships\". If you change them, they become highlighted (with a yellow hollow color around them) and that changes a whole lot other things in the \"child form\" and the \"parent form\". We have managed that kind of relationship when saving the page but this kind of relationship adds to the complexity of the view. I guess you already have figured it out by now but I'm going to say it anyway: the code has grown out of hand. It is truly a can of worms. There are more than 30 functions in the base view file and 15 other views attached to this page. Multiple people have worked on this view and because it is a big file (base file: 2500 LOC), everybody has just tried to do their bit of task and not think about refactoring or simplifying the design of the page. The page is flawed because it is not extensible. For example, the grand-child forms have two more levels of child forms and we cannot add them to the page. We have been discussing for days on how to redesign this page but none of us seems to come up with a good idea. Now the question here is how can we redesign this page so it keeps all the functionality but with much simpler code? We are OK with a total redesign, a total new concept. We want to write the whole thing from scratch. All your ideas are appreciated."}
{"_id": "255243", "title": "show different xibs from inside a xib file", "text": "I'm a newbie in mac programming so here's my questions: I'm developing a mac app that has two xib file MainViewController and SecondViewController in MainViewController there's a button in which it calls Second View Controller. I'm using XCode 5 How to do this? and How to display video in a mac in XCode 5"}
{"_id": "142780", "title": "What is the abstract name for Drive, Directory and file?", "text": "I want to give nice name to my function while returns drive, directory and file. Can you please suggest a good abstract name for this trio? This is the function.                 static IEnumerable<string> GetDriveDirectoriesAndFile(string path)       {          if (path.Contains('/'))          {             path = path.Replace('/', '\\\\');          }          if (path.Contains('\\\\'))          {             return path.Split('\\\\');          }          return null;       }      Thanks, Omkar"}
{"_id": "169875", "title": "Is there a 'design pattern' type listing of common algorithms?", "text": "Is there a 'design pattern' styled listing of common/popular algorithms anywhere? Specifically, something that has a similar format along the lines of: **Algorithm Name:** e.g., Quick Sort, Bubble Sort, etc.   **Problem:** A description of the stereotypical problem the algorithm is supposed to address   **Description:** Description of the solution   **Implementation:** Code examples of the solution   **Big O Rating:** Self-explanatory   **Similar Algorithms:** Algorithms that address the same problem in different ways, or similar problems I really like the GoF design pattern listing style, and I think it would help me learn various algorithms better/easier if I could find a resource that was similar in terms of organization."}
{"_id": "164886", "title": "Simple vs Complex (but performance efficient) solution - which one to choose and when?", "text": "I have been programming for a couple of years and have often found myself at a dilemma. There are two solutions -   * one is simple one i.e. simple approach, easier to understand and maintain. It involves some redundancy, some extra work (extra IO, extra processing) and therefore is not the most optimal solution.    * but other uses a complex approach,difficult to implement, often involving interaction between lot of modules and is a performance efficient solution. Which solution should I strive for when I do not have hard performance SLA to meet and even the simple solution can meet the performance SLA? I have felt disdain among my fellow developers for simple solution. Is it good practice to come up with most optimal complex solution if your performance SLA can be met by a simple solution?"}
{"_id": "164884", "title": "Best practice for packing Java enums?", "text": "What is the best practice for packaging Java enums? is it separate file for each enum?   or   having same file for all the enums? What are the pros and cons ?"}
{"_id": "211410", "title": "How is data integrity maintained in a clustered environment when schema changes?", "text": "## Scenario A clustered environment running N identical application nodes interacting with a single relational database. ## Problem Is it possible to upgrade the nodes to a new application version, which requires a new database schema **and** maintain data integrity in the database **without** any downtime in the application and **without** losing any data or ending up with data in an inconsistent state?"}
{"_id": "169873", "title": "Can I learn touch typing while doing normal typing during coding?", "text": "I'm having a big problem as I don't know touch typing. I look at the keyboard (hunt and peck). However, I really want to learn touch typing. I have tried many times, but I don't have the patience and time to spare an hour everyday for that. So, can I learn typing while I do some practice at my work? I mean, practicing those lessons whilst coding. Anyone know if that will work?"}
{"_id": "164880", "title": "Are costs part of the requirements?", "text": "I am new to requirements analysis and have a simple questions: Would you include the budget in the requirements, if e. g. the departments budget for running costs is 10k a year."}
{"_id": "2815", "title": "What would you change about C# if you could?", "text": "> **With nearly 60 answers to this question it's highly likely that _your_ > answer has already been posted. Please don't post an answer unless you have > something new to say** Assume that your objectives are the same as for C#. I don't want an answer like \"I'd write Python instead\". I'm only interested in changes in the language itself - not in the standard library. Perhaps this would be interesting to discuss, but as it is shared between many languages it would be better to discuss this in another question instead. **Please post a single idea per answer; if you want to post several ideas, post several separate answers. Thanks!**"}
{"_id": "209862", "title": "Is it possible to compile a higher level language to readable C++?", "text": "C++ is a great language in many ways, but some things in particular are cumbersome to write without an IDE. As a VIM user, it would be very interesting if I had access to a higher level language which enabled me to write C++ with S-Expressions and possibly with Lisp-like macros, allowing for the generation of clean code while avoiding rewriting the same patters over and over again. I've asked on freenode and tested several ideas, such as compiling Lisp->C with compilers such as ECL and Bigloo, but none of those generated particularly clean C code. Are there any works on this issue?"}
{"_id": "29485", "title": "Does music increase your productivity?", "text": "I wanted to know whether you think and audio background is just a distraction or could be of some help while programming. For me, it works like this: when I'm writing pseudocode, or implementing procedures that are very clear in my mind in a language I can write without looking up docs, having music playing in the background (very straightforward electronics, mostly) helps me a lot: it kind of gives some rhythm to my coding and, if the procedures are trivial, avoids the distractions that boredom can cause. When I incur in a problem, or I have to try to fix a bug, instead, it just distracts me. Also, if the song is really regular and I know it well enough not to cause me to focus on it, it eliminates unexpected environmental noise that sometimes make me waste precious seconds before I can concentrate on the code again. * * * _Guidelines checklist: 1 ok, 2 I hope; 3 I suppose; 4 Definitely; 5 I would like that to happen; 6 Doch (English should implement a way to disambiguate double negatives in answers)_"}
{"_id": "29483", "title": "Features to generate time expiring", "text": "There are something out of box to generate time expiring in php? For example I need to control the access to the system, I was thinking something to verify every first day of every month, and do this in my code. But it is not 100% safety, since another programmer can remove this line code that verify. Then I thought is it possible, to verify in another server, if the monthly time expire or not? and return the message to the user if the copy expired or not? What is the best to way to create a licensing features for time expiry? or I really need to get inside IonCube (Compiled Code Encoding) for example? What is the best practice?"}
{"_id": "151605", "title": "How can Java be improved so that it no longer needs to perform type erasure?", "text": "The official Java tutorial on generics explains type erasure and why it was added to the compiler: > When a generic type is instantiated, the compiler translates those types by > a technique called type erasure \u2014 a process where the compiler removes all > information related to type parameters and type arguments within a class or > method. Type erasure enables Java applications that use generics to maintain > binary compatibility with Java libraries and applications that were created > before generics. This most likely was a pragmatic approach, or perhaps the least painful one. However, now that generics is widely supported across the industry, what can be done in order for us to not need type erasure? Is it feasible with out needing to break backwards compatibility, or if it is feasible, is it practical? Has the last statement in the quote above become self referential? That is: \"type erasure enables Java applications that use generics to maintain binary compatibility with Java libraries and applications that were created with Java versions that perform type erasure.\""}
{"_id": "151606", "title": "Conditional attribute in XML - most concise solution?", "text": "I am tasked with setting up conditional profiling - a method of tagging chunks of XML with an attribute, which will then be used as a conditional value to extract subset of that XML. Have a look at another definition/example: DITA profiling The XML is documents that are equivalent to printed books - i.e. documents that are often looked at by a human, even if indirectly. Therefore I am looking at a few requirements here:   1. keeping the value list brief - so it doesn't affect the readability of the document   2. be able to process with standard XML tools - a space-separated list inside an attribute is still probably fine, but I'd rather not use too much regexp for this   3. be obvious for various users, including 3rd parties, which content goes where   4. Be easy to maintain going forward Therefore one easy solution is:               <test condition=\"print epub\"/>     <test condition=\"web kf8 app mobi\"/>      The problem with this:   1. As the list grows the value of the attribute can be a bit verbose   2. One needs to explicitly state every value even if it's a scenario of this vs everything else Therefore I am also looking at other approaches such as:   1. Using \"+\" and \"-\" modifiers, Apache htaccess style to override the default cascading of profiling - by default all content goes everywhere and if we want to exclude a bit we just say \"-kindle\". It does require parsing the whole tree, is not supported by editing tools and one needs to regexp the attribute value a bit deeper...   2. Using an intermediate file to define groups of values such as \"other\" or \"non-print\", example of this in DITA. It allows concise XML as well as different grouping and values for each document but it does create a certain level of abstraction which may make it a little less obvious for a 3rd party? Altogether, if you received such XML and were tasked to process it, which option you'd rather receive? If you have any experiences like that, even in an unrelated areas such a builds, don't hesitate to comment!"}
{"_id": "151609", "title": "Is BDD actually writable by non-programmers?", "text": "Behavior-Driven Development with its emblematic \u201cGiven-When-Then\u201d scenarios syntax has lately been quite hyped for its possible uses as a boundary object for software functionality assessment. I definitely agree that Gherkin, or whichever feature definition script you prefer, is a business- **readable** DSL, and already provides value as such. However, I disagree that it is _writable_ by non-programmers (as does Martin Fowler). Does anyone have accounts of scenarios being written by non-programmers, then instrumented by developers? If there is indeed a consensus on the lack of writability, then would you see a problem with a tool that, instead of _starting_ with the scenarios and instrumenting them, would _generate_ business-readable scenarios from the actual tests? **Update:** regarding the \u201cscenario-generator\u201d tool, it would of course not guess business language magically  ;)  But, just like we currently use regexp matchers to create tests in a top-down approach (on the abstraction dimension), we could use string builders to create scenarios in a bottom-up approach. A \u201cto give an idea only\u201d example:               Given I am on page ${test.currentPage.name}     And I click on element ${test.currentAction.element}     \u2026"}
{"_id": "168476", "title": "Black Hat Hackers vs Programmers?", "text": "This came up with another question I had here, I have decided on a programming verification system that requires a hardware verification system, a software key, and a name/password system. Now people are saying that hackers will bypass any new security, which may be true, but I have a few questions. There has to be a balance between programmers programming and hackers stealing software, otherwise programs wouldn\u2019t be made, and we wouldn\u2019t be where we are today. What is that balance? 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%?   1. What is too much security for the end user?    2. What is too little security so the hacker can just push through without issue?    3. If your software becomes popular, what should you expect or accept as acceptable loss?    4. Why should we accept black hat hackers as a way of life?"}
{"_id": "24221", "title": "Does double-shifting as a PM affect your developer-productivity?", "text": "Has it ever happened to you that you are a good developer but suddenly you need to lead a team or are responsible for some PM activities as well? Did you find that it affected your productivity? How did you handle it? I love my job, but I sometimes feel I was much happier as a programmer and the additional burden of being a Project Manager is currently affecting my productivity as a developer. What do you guys suggest as remedies to this? I do not have an alternative currently to quit from my job - basically because Im working for a startup that I co-founded."}
{"_id": "28579", "title": "Help me learn to program with humility?", "text": "I wanted to ask this question so that I can come back to it and have it serve as a **constant reminder** for me. Throughout my life, I've had milestones where I've sat down and really evaluated myself. Every time I've found something negative I've striven to put it right. One of those negatives is pride or arrogance. Sadly the nature of programming leads to plenty of fuel to endlessly fill one's own ego. Can you give me any words of wisdom that can serve as a reminder for me to **\"eat humble pie\"**? I want to keep my arrogance in check, even if that arrogance is the weight of a grain of sand."}
{"_id": "62272", "title": "about build process", "text": "I have programmed in Obj C and C, but until now found that I dont fully understand the steps in taking the software from source code to executable, I found this image kind of explaining it (sorry couldn't upload as I'm new but I still not get when the debugger, make, builder come into action, when it goes to asm and when to binary   * are the steps the same for OOP of for procedural?   * how about different languages? python, php, objc, C, same steps? Thanks a lot!"}
{"_id": "62270", "title": "Increase production by specifying a development computer", "text": "Interesting post by Seth Grodin by increasing productivity by specifying one device for work and one for everything else. Would you be more productive if you only programmed on one machine and forced yourself to surf, chat, email, and play games on another device or would it hinder productivity? If your boss saw you on your phone or tablet for an hour, it would raise a red flag. Could be a problem if you mix work and personal email. Obviously doesn't work if you don't have another device. EDIT: maybe the advantage would be for a developer to have more than one computer instead of just a faster computer and more monitors?"}
{"_id": "28573", "title": "How do you judge if you're paid enough?", "text": "How do you evaluate how much you feel you ought to be paid as a junior programmer?"}
{"_id": "58466", "title": "Business knowledge in a large financial org?", "text": "As a programmer working in the finance industry, I recently got a project that is a hedge fund adminsitrative application(used to calculate NAVs, allocate assets etc.) From a business point of view this is a good thing. When we think of our 'next' project, typically the impulse is to think in terms of technology. e.g: 'I want to work on a project that uses SOA/cloud etc etc.' I am interested to know if anyone while career planning also takes into account the business aspect of a future project. i.e. what the application does. So does anybody ever think like this : 'I wish to work on a trading system so I can understand capital markets better.' instead of 'I want to work on a project that uses SOA/cloud etc etc.' I say this because it appears to me in the finance domain, for senior position, good business knowledge pays well. So maybe a guy that knows more business but maybe not so much latest technologies is at an advantage? The rockstar programmer seems more suited for an aggressive startup. Particularly big old finance orgs rarely invest in tech just for the 'cool factor'. No?"}
{"_id": "62278", "title": "Good Design and how to achieve Low Coupling?", "text": "what do you think about this design? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VmBGO.png) In this image i have reported the dependencies between packages. I would like to reduce the coupling between them, but do you have any idea about how to do this? I think it is impossible to reduce it more than this. The Preferences package is responsible to manage program options, Persistence instead to save them in storage. Applogic and model are in domain layer. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "112896", "title": "Is there an efficient way to align degenerate strings?", "text": "I have a degenerate string `S1=xadcdax`, where `x` can be replaced by any of the four characters `a`, `b`, `c`, or `d`. This `S1` string is match with another non-degerate string `S2=dcbaa`. I can first use brute force to find all possible strings of `S1`, which requires `4^n` (`n` is the number of degenerates in a string), so the complexity is `4^2`. After that, for each string of `S1` matched with `S2` by using dynamic programming which requires `(i x j)` running time (where `i` is the length of `S1` and `j` is the length of `S2`). But the total running time will be `4^n x ij = 4ij^n`, which is quite slow. Is there a more efficient algorithm for this?"}
{"_id": "115322", "title": "How can I learn old school know how", "text": "I recently read this article online and began to question my knowledge. Now I went to uni(ish) and have a honours degree, I program in c++ using pointers but I wonder if i would have made it in Joel's class. We had two programming modules but mostly I am self taught. So I want to know how can I learn the things mentioned in the article but without it feeling like gappy self taught knowledge without having to do another 3 year degree? How can I go back to the real basics and learn it properly so I am confident in my abilities and dont feel I have a dumbed down modern degree knowledge ?"}
{"_id": "237444", "title": "alternatives to nested try-catches for fallbacks", "text": "I have a situation where I am trying to retrieve an object. If the lookup fails I have several fallbacks in place, each of which may fail. So the code looks like:               try {         return repository.getElement(x);     } catch (NotFoundException e) {         try {             return repository.getSimilarElement(x);         } catch (NotFoundException e1) {             try {                 return repository.getParentElement(x);             } catch (NotFoundException e2) {                 //can't recover                 throw new IllegalArgumentException(e);             }         }     }      This looks awfully ugly. I hate to return null, but is that better in this situation?               Element e = return repository.getElement(x);     if (e == null) {         e = repository.getSimilarElement(x);     }     if (e == null) {         e = repository.getParentElement(x);     }     if (e == null) {         throw new IllegalArgumentException();     }     return e;      Are there other alternatives? Is using nested try-catch blocks an anti-pattern? is related, but the answers there are along the lines of \"sometimes, but it's usually avoidable\", without saying when or how to avoid it."}
{"_id": "175655", "title": "Python Forgiveness vs. Permission and Duck Typing", "text": "In Python, I often hear that it is better to \"beg forgiveness\" (exception catching) instead of \"ask permission\" (type/condition checking). In regards to enforcing duck typing in Python, is this               try:         x = foo.bar     except AttributeError:         pass     else:         do(x)      better or worse than               if hasattr(foo, \"bar\"):         do(foo.bar)     else:         pass      in terms of performance, readability, \"pythonic\", or some other important factor?"}
{"_id": "115325", "title": "Which of these is the best strategy for dependency injection?", "text": "I am working on a Java project that uses a dependency injection framework built by the company itself. The framework enforces the following naming convention: suppose you have a class `Foo` that depends on an interface called `org.company.IBar`:               class Foo {        @Injection        private IBar bar;             ...     }      then the framework will search for a class called `org.company.implementation.Bar`, create a new instance of that class and then assign it to the attribute `Foo.bar`. The framework allows for some customization, though. In that `@Injection` annotation, you can declare your own factory, with which you can enforce your own conventions. But every time you want to use a certain factory, you will have to declare it explicitly in the annotation over the attribute to be injected. This strategy, however, will make your classes tightly coupled to each other, because when you declare a dependency on an interface, you are already committing to a given implementation. So, I decided to implement my own factory to manually perform dependency injection. It is basically a class that instantiates all application objects and wires them together. Each object has its scope (singleton or prototype) controlled by the factory. Think of a Spring IoC configuration file (but written in Java, instead of XML). My colleagues did not approve this decision. Their argument is that the factory I created \u201chas too many responsibilities\u201d and the instantiation of each object must be left to the framework. If you need to use another convention, you should create custom factories for each class (as described above). Definitely, according to them, there should not be one single factory where all the objects are instantiated. I strongly disagree with their argument. The factory has _only one_ responsibility: creating the object graph. Should the need arise to modify that graph, there is only one class that will have to change. But I may be missing something here. What are the pros and cons of each strategy?"}
{"_id": "164773", "title": "Methods to Manage/Document \"one-off\" Reports", "text": "I'm a programmer that also does database stuff and I get a lot of so-called one-time report requests and recurring report requests. I work at a company that has a SQL Server database that we integrate third- party data with and we also have some third-party vendors that we have to use their proprietary reporting system to extract data in flat file format from that we don't integrate into SQL Server for security reasons. To generate many of these reports I have to query data from various systems, write small scripts to combine data from the separate systems, cry, pull my hair, curse the last guy's name that made the report before me, etc. **My question is, what are some good methods for documenting the steps taken to generate these reports so the next poor soul that has to do them won't curse my name?** As of now I just have a folder with subfolders per project with the selects and scripts that generated the last report but that seems like a \"poor man's\" solution. :)"}
{"_id": "143788", "title": "How to implement Cache in web apps?", "text": "This is really two questions. Im doing a project for the university for storing baseball players statitics, but from baseball data I have to calculate the score by year for the player who is beign displayed. The background is, lets say 10, 000 users hit the player \"Alex Rodriguez\", the application have to calculate 10, 000 the A-Rod stats by years intead of just read it from some where is temporal saved. Here I go:   1. What is the best method for caching this type of data? Do I have to used the same database, and some temporal values on the same database, or create a Web Service for that?   2. What reading about web caching so you recommend?"}
{"_id": "164776", "title": "Questions about identifying the components in MVC", "text": "I'm currently developing an client-server application in node.js, Express, mustache and MySQL. However, I believe this question should be mostly language and framework agnostic. This is the first time I'm doing a real MVC application and I'm having trouble deciding exactly what means each component. (I've done web applications that could perhaps be called MVC before, but I wouldn't confidently refer to them as such) I have a `server.js` that ties the whole application together. It does initialization of all other components (including the database connection, and what I think are the \"models\" and the \"views\"), receiving HTTP requests and deciding which \"views\" to use. Does this mean that my `server.js` file is the controller? Or am I mixing code that doesn't belong there? What components should I break the `server.js` file into? Some examples of code that's in the server.js file:               var connection = mysql.createConnection({         host : 'localhost',         user : 'root',         password : 'sqlrevenge',         database : 'blog'     });          //...          app.get(\"/login\", function (req, res) { //Function handles a GET request for login forms         if (process.env.NODE_ENV == 'DEVELOPMENT') {             mu.clearCache();         }              session.session_from_request(connection, req, function (err, session) {             if (err) {                 console.log('index.js session error', err);                 session = null;             }                  login_view.html(res, user_model, post_model, session, mu); //I named my view functions \"html\" for the case I might want to add other output types (such as a JSON API), or should I opt for completely separate views then?         });     });      I have another file that belongs named `session.js`. It receives a `cookies` object, reads the stored data to decide if it's a valid user session or not. It also includes a function named `login` that does change the value of cookies.   * First, I thought it would be part of the controller, since it kind of dealt with user input and supplied data to the models.   * Then, I thought that maybe it was a model since it dealt with the application data/database and the data it supplies is used by views.   * Now, I'm even wondering if it could be considered a `View`, since it outputs data (cookies are part of HTTP headers, which are output)"}
{"_id": "199994", "title": "How do you distinguish your public API interfaces from the interfaces you use for testing/mocking?", "text": "Mocking frameworks are useful for creating mock objects that isolate the code under test from its surrounding software environment. Some mocking frameworks cannot mock non-virtual methods, so they require that you create an `Interface` for each class, if you don't want to make the methods `virtual`. How do you distinguish those Interfaces from the \"real\" ones? That is, if you have a public API, do you name the interfaces that you intend your customer to use something else, or do you hide the testing Interfaces in a separate assembly or namespace? As an aside, is it really necessary to create all those Interfaces? I don't like the idea of making all my methods `virtual`, but I _really_ don't like the idea of creating that many interfaces just to make them accessible to a mocking framework."}
{"_id": "199997", "title": "alternative to environment variables", "text": "The amount of servers and the complexity of our application is growing and we now have servers in different regions (hosted on AWS). Certain database operations require low latency so we have stuck a database in each region (which is basically a user cache) to keep the network latency low. The way the application server currently knows which user cache/database to make its call to depends on an environemnt variable set in it. This has been working fine, but it seems hacky and not optimal. Is there any way for this to be done automatically? I was considering using a package like fping and pinging each database when the app server reloads (or caching it the first time) and using the corresponding latencies to decide which database has the lowest latency for each app server. Not sure if this is the best idea though."}
{"_id": "35163", "title": "Reasons for a Java Developer to learn RoR", "text": "Just wondering if there are any reasons why a Java developer should learn **Ruby on Rails** knowing that there are technologies such as _Grails_ or (especially) **Spring Roo** that can be more familiar?"}
{"_id": "197107", "title": "Divide and Conquer algorithms \u2013 Why not split in more parts than two?", "text": "In divide and conquer algorithms such as quicksort and mergesort, the input is usually (at least in introductory texts) split in **two** , and the two smaller data sets are then dealt with recursively. It does make sense to me that this makes it faster to solve a problem if the two halves takes less than half the work of dealing with the whole data set. But why not split the data set in three parts? Four? _n_? I guess the work of splitting the data in many, many sub sets makes it not worth it, but I am lacking the intuition to see that one should stop at two sub sets. I have also seen many references to 3-way quicksort. When is this faster? What is used in practice?"}
{"_id": "66389", "title": "If you develop with ASP.NET, which other technologies do you use?", "text": "I wasn't sure if this was more suited to here or StackOverflow. I've always resisted doing web development because the technology stack just seemed a mess. It seems the web has become quite popular so I'm actually going to embrace web development, at least for a little project I'm thinking about. I'm a Microsoft developer, so I'm going to use ASP.NET. I'm familiar with how the web technologies work at a high level, I sort of understand what Javascript can do, I get AJAX (conceptually). CSS and HTML seem ugly but I get what they're for. As an ASP.NET developer do you find yourself working directly with Javascript or HTML? Does AJAX get abstracted away neatly or do you find yourself doing that stuff \"by hand\"? Are there any other technologies you use? And on a related note, I don't quite see where HTML 5 fits in with ASP.NET, yet. There seems to be a lot of noises from Microsoft that HTML 5 is actually the future of the web as opposed to Silverlight, so do any pro ASP.NET developers understand or use HTML 5 features? I appreciate that's kinda vague, I think a lot of it will become clearer as I get started, but I'd feel more secure if I had some soothing words and pointers from people who have already been through that."}
{"_id": "114303", "title": "how much do I really need to know to become Jr Developer?", "text": "I believe I have a very good understanding of programming logic fundamentals (passing around variables, nested conditional statements, etc). I am currently going through a book on ASP.NET and am pretty much lost on all the Page Rendering Model, Custom Rendered Controls, Composite Controls, etc. I understand how to use the standard controls no problem. Do I really need to understand all those other things to become a junior developer? Any advice is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "58031", "title": "What stands out on a Junior's CV", "text": "I am looking for advice, hopefully from people more experienced that me. I am going to start applying for junior positions for .net development in the summer. At the moment the only thing on my CV is a project I have done for Windows Phone 7 called sprout sms. It allows the user to send webtext as provided by Irish Operators. The app is doing well and is top ten in my local marketplace (Ireland). By trade I am a salesman and that is the extent of most of my employment. I haven't been to college and due to financial commitments I would not be able to go down the road of full time education. I have kept up to date with various .net related tech in a junior capacity and am looking to now change careers. What I am look to see is what stands out on a juniors CV. My lack of education stands against me so I am looking to offset this with practical experience. I am open to all suggestions and from the end of this month I am free to pursue \"notches\" which will make my CV stand out. So in short if you where hiring a Junior, what would you like to see that would make you take a second look or request an interview? NOTE: I do fear this is a subjective subject, rather than debate what is the best items to have on a Juniors CV I would like to concentrate on what info you would give to a junior who is looking to apply for a job this year. Thanks to all that respond. EDIT: Thanks for all the responses, I would give all the answers a green tick if I could. I awarded the tick based on what I felt I got out of the answer but all are tick worthy. I have upvoted all of the responses that have given good info too. If you feel you can add more to this question / answer it would be very much appreciated. EDIT 2: I just wanted to let everyone know that using the advice given here and some persistence I got my first dev role. The take away? Personal projects or help on other projects matter a lot, be able to talk, defend and concede when discussing them."}
{"_id": "111890", "title": "How easy is it to obtain an entry level programming job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What core skills does a new Computer Science Graduate need to be > employable? So, I'm in my next to last semester as a Computer Science major and I am wondering about jobs as a programmer. How easy is it to obtain a job as an entry level programmer? What skills should I possess?"}
{"_id": "26191", "title": "What are the skills you look for when hiring a fresher/newbie for developement?", "text": "I really want to ask this questions to my fellow developers here in Programmers.SE because i am hiring freshers for my company.. Even though i know some basic questions that can be asked to a fresher during interview and i want to know, What are the skills you look for when hiring a fresher/newbie for developement?"}
{"_id": "108258", "title": "What core skills does a new Computer Science Graduate need to be employable?", "text": "A computer science degree (like any undergraduate degree) does not prepare you to be productive immediately. And my sense is that employers are less and less willing to provide that initial training. (Or at least if you DO have those **core skills*** , you have a broader selection of \"first jobs\" to choose from). What skills should a senior focus on to make him/her self more employable? And how might you get those skills? *EDIT: I'm _not talking_ about experience/mastery of _technology_. I'm talking about **core skills** like Source Control (not mastery of a particular SC, but just being able to use _one_ an understanding the concepts) and Unit Testing (having written Unit Tests using at least some famework), etc."}
{"_id": "67735", "title": "Good references on app pricing?", "text": "Can anyone point me to reference materials on what companies may expect to pay for outsourced apps? I had hoped to find something in a trade publication or the like, but have only turned up two or three quotable articles with any sense of credibility. We are talking to a client about their first app (and ours) and, as neither party knows what sort of number to expect at the beginning of the negotiation, I'd like some ammunition to be able to say, \"On the open market, you can expect an app like this to start around...\" Any link or even search term suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you, Mary Kroll Post script: I have ready Joel Spolsky's \"Camels and Rubber Duckies\" and Neil Davidson's \"Don't Just Roll the Dice.\" My focus is more on what is common in the industry, rather than rate x hours, etc."}
{"_id": "252731", "title": "Is the inconvenience about merging in SVN prior to v1.5 obsolete by now when lack of metadata isn't the case anymore?", "text": "I'm getting started with SVN and so many sources say that merging is very difficult in SVN as compared to DVCS tools. The most recent questions I could find here on SE are from 2012. Sometimes there's a mention that the reason is that SVN prior to v1.5 didn't have metadata, but SVN is at version 1.8.9 now. Given that SVN is now much more mature than v1.5, and especially the fact that we didn't use SVN 1.5 so we don't suffer from the mentioned lack of metadata -- **is there still much validity in those arguments against SVN?** I understand that DVCS has a completely different approach which is often more desirable, but for those who \"must\" ues SVN for whatever reason, merging isn't really \"hell\" anymore, is it?"}
{"_id": "252730", "title": "Proper sequence of actions for merging using SVN?", "text": "I'm totally new to CVCS (SVN specifically). I find that most resources focus very strongly on the command-line commands (irrelevant; we use Windows Explorer + TortoiseSVN) and about structure (e.g. projects inside our outside TTB, etc). Here's a thing about merging I'm not sure of: Based on my sandbox testing, I got the understanding that **merging should be done sort-of backwards?** I first thought that merging meant going from the branch into the trunk, but it now seems to me that I should actually merge the trunk into my branch, fix conflicts there, and only _then_ commit my branch into trunk? Let's say I'm responsible for merging a branch into the mainline, and everybody has committed their local changes into that branch. I now switch my working copy to the branch and merge the trunk into my working copy in order to resolve any conflicts locally and tidy things up. When complete, I commit my working copy into the trunk (there should be none or hardly any conflicts in this step).   This is basically also what one needs to do when committing changes from one's working copy into the branch. Right? Wrong? Am I missing some steps? It seems complicated but makes sense. Let's not argue about how merging in SVN is harder than in DVCS's because that's not something I can change.   Also, I'm not asking about the specific command-line actions because we're using TortoiseSVN."}
{"_id": "67733", "title": "planning a full scale web application", "text": "I've been wanting to build a full scale CMS application that will target certain career workflows but the obstacle that has been in my path is that I would need to sit down and fully learn the career in order to map out and build the application that will help or guide employers already in the environment. This isn't so much a programming question but based on some of your experiences what are some of the things I need to think about before starting on the application? For me here are a few questions I have asked myself:   1. what is the demand for this application?   2. who is the target audience?   3. what is it that I need to learn?   4. is it really worth the time spent on learning?   5. will it cost money and how much?   6. how will the service be provided to the client?   7. Does this application already exist? If yes what features does it have and not have   8. what are clients really looking for in this application that they cannot find. I understand that most of this can be common sense but having some of your input from your own experience can help with questions I probably didn't even think about. I will be using php5 and mysql since that is what I already know. My question basically is, if you were to build a web application say a CMS for bookkeeping and you had no idea on the subject and that it was a very hot project, what would you ask yourself? (that is for example)"}
{"_id": "188337", "title": "WYSIWYG Editor - Inline Comments", "text": "I am working on a user driven cms site. Think of it like stack overflow. The users can write posts, and publish them to the web. I am using a WSGI editor to generate the content. One of the features I am implementing is the ability for users to comment on particular section of a user post. I am trying to think of a clean way to implement this feature. My current plan is to customize the WYSIWYG editor to generate a unique id per `<p>` and then store the comments separately, and when the page loads also read the comments and do some jquery magic. All users that are going to be generating content will be admin users, so I am not afraid of someone messing around with ids. This is one approach I have found, but I was hoping to either get some feedback or alternative ways to accomplish what I need. Another thing I am trying to figure out is how I can handle a user editing a post that has been commented on..."}
{"_id": "188336", "title": "Do iterative methods reduce cyclomatic complexity and improve supportability?", "text": "Do iterative methods such as are commonly found in modern languages such as C#, JavaScript, and (hopefully) in Java 8 reduce cyclomatic complexity's impact on understandability and supportability of code? For example in C# we might have the following code:               List<String> filteredList = new List<String>();          foreach (String s in originalList){        if (matches(s)){           filteredList.add(s);        }     }      This has a simple cyclomatic complexity of 2. We could easily re-write this as:               List<String> filteredList = originalList.where(s => matches(s));      Which has a simple cyclomatic complexity of 0. Does this actually result in more supportable code? Is there any actual research on this topic?"}
{"_id": "130519", "title": "How can I convert PPT files to PNG in PHP without COM?", "text": "I need to convert Powerpoint files to PNG in PHP. I can do the conversion with using COM in PHP but COM is only supported on Windows. I need to do this for both Windows and Linux. I am wondering if someone give me hints about that conversion."}
{"_id": "188338", "title": "Name convention for Reader and Writer", "text": "I'm trying to name a component that will be capable of both reading from an `InputStream` (file or otherwise), and writing to an `OutputStream`; thus serving both as a `Reader` and as `Writer`. So far the best I've come up with is:   * `ReaderWriter`   * `IOStreamManager`   * `StreamManager` Any good ideas?"}
{"_id": "199126", "title": "How is one expected to use open sockets with [delimited] continuations?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out how an open socket or file handle should interact with continuations. Searching has revealed that `dynamic-wind` is probably part of the solution, but I'm more interested in the methodology rather than the implementation, and all I could find is how to implement it under various conditions. Do programmers even use sockets within continuations in such a way that it is necessary for `dynamic-wind` to close them? Or is it typically just a way to implement a \"finally\" block if the continuation exits past where the socket is handled? What should happen if a continuation is re-entered after a hypothetical `dynamic-wind` closes the socket?"}
{"_id": "244941", "title": "What does \"trivial\" mean?", "text": "You often see statements like \"all non-trivial software has bugs\" or \"all non- trivial abstractions are leaky\". But what makes a program \"trivial\" instead of non-trivial? Where is the cut-off line at which we can say that a program isn't trivial and \"excuse\" bugs? Even something only a few lines long could have bugs. Say you have a simple command line C program that asks \"What is your name?\", reads a response using scanf or gets, stores it in a buffer and prints back \"Hello \" + name. That program could easily have a buffer overflow if the input is larger than a buffer, so it could have a bug even though it's only a few lines. But if you ensured that you always allocated eblnough memory or bounds checked, etc, you don't have the bug. So is the program \"trivial\" or not? It can be buggy or not, but it's small and simple. Can we give any meaning to the idea of a \"trivial program\" or is it merely an excuse for sloppyness?"}
{"_id": "61773", "title": "user security pattern recommendation/best practice", "text": "I'm looking for good reference on patterns that apply to user security and ACLs for multi-user network applications. I'm re-writing a fairly large application from scratch. Now I'm looking at the user management and security. I'm not so interested in user meta data, but rather ACLs and security. Right now the application has users, groups, and roles. Users and roles have ACLs. Groups do not. A user can belong to none or any number of groups and/or roles. I cannot find a good reason not to combine roles and groups. However, I'd like to hear the various opinions on the subject. It would be nice to be pointed to some design patterns and references on the subject."}
{"_id": "161113", "title": "Technical analysis in software development", "text": "What should a good technical analysis include in software development? Why do we need a technical analysis? why can't we just start coding? I got this question from a customer who won't pay for the analysis."}
{"_id": "61774", "title": "Which should I be learning, HTML or XHTML?", "text": "I'm just learning HTML, but some say XHTML is better. The W3C recommends XHTML, and I know W3C is more credible, right?"}
{"_id": "161111", "title": "Where can I learn about browser-specific quirks?", "text": "I am a professional iOS, Java and C# programmer. Now I want to build a website. The problem is I have already started building it and I am finding IE is not rendering it correctly. It is rendering much better in FF however. Where is the best resource for someone in my position? I am a professional programmer but I need something to get me up to speed quickly with the 'quirkiness' if you will, of css and html."}
{"_id": "27757", "title": "How do you sell the idea of sending developers to user conferences?", "text": "How do you sell to the company management to send developers to user conferences? For now, lets just assume we'd opt for in-country conferences as a start."}
{"_id": "150953", "title": "Historical origins of Scala implicits", "text": "Scala has been called complex with its rich feature set by many of my colleagues and some even blamed all those _new_ features of it. While most programmers are aware of the OO-features, and at least the decent ones also know about functional programming, there is one feature in particular in Scala for which I am not aware of its historical origins. Given that a major mantra of our profession is to not reinvent the wheel, I am rather confident, that Scala does not have _any_ actual unheard-of-before features, but I stand to be corrected on this one if necessary. To get to the actual question, while I am aware of the origins of most of Scala's features I have never seen something like its `implicit` declarations before. Are there other (older!) languages out there which also provide this feature? Does it make sense to distinguish the different cases of implicits (as they may originate from different sources), namely implict conversions and implicit parameters?"}
{"_id": "161119", "title": "How will quantum computing change programming?", "text": "How is programming a quantum algorithm different? What would a C like language look like if it was designed for qubits? Would types change?"}
{"_id": "129530", "title": "What are the complexities of memory-unmanaged programming?", "text": "Or in other words, what specific problems did automated garbage collection solve? I've never done low-level programming, so I don't know how complicated can freeing resources get. **Update** \\- apologies for the unnecessary concision, please let me expand my question: The kind of bugs that GC addresses seem (at least to an external observer) the kind of things that a programmer that knows well his language, libraries, concepts, idioms, etc, wouldn't do. But I could be wrong: is manual memory handling intrinsically complicated?"}
{"_id": "129534", "title": "Better approach for updating live website on Server", "text": "I follow a very raw approach while updating my website on server. The approach I follow doesn't seem right, so I am interested in knowing a recommended way of updating a **LIVE** project, be it on shared host or dedicated server. Right now, for any changes in View, I simply upload and overwrite the view files on server. Similarly for any code changes, I upload and overwrite the .dll and .pdb files. Currently my website doesn't have any traffic so there has been no issue so far. But, Is this a recommended approach for a website with good amount of traffic. And if not, then how should one approach updation on the server."}
{"_id": "129537", "title": "Can manager classes be a sign of bad architecture?", "text": "Lately I've begun to think that having lots of manager classes in your design is a bad thing. The idea hasn't matured enough for me to make a compelling argument, but here's a few general points:   * I found it's a lot harder for me to understand systems that rely heavily on \"managers\". This is because, in addition to the actual program components, you also have to understand how and why the manager is used.   * Managers, a lot of the time, seem to be used to alleviate a problem with the design, like when the programmer couldn't find a way to make the program Just WorkTM and had to rely on manager classes to make everything operate correctly.  Of course, mangers can be good. An obvious example is an `EventManager`, one of my all time favorite constructs. :P My point is that managers seem to be overused a lot of the time, and for no good reason other than mask a problem with the program architecture. Are manager classes really a sign of bad architecture?"}
{"_id": "29334", "title": "Manuals - How Up To Date?", "text": "If you have a product that has been in the market for a long time, but it is still in active development daily - how often should the manuals be updated? If your users are constantly updated to the bleeding edge version due to the fact that your organization sees fit that the latest bug fixes are always in the shipped version. Meaning, you could fix a bug one day and next day it is hitting production."}
{"_id": "196274", "title": "Hardware running gpl code", "text": "Let's say I am selling hardware that uses the linux kernel. Do I have to state somewhere that it is running linux(or other gpl code)? The reason I am asking this is because I bought a television, which I found out is running linux. It doesn't say anywhere it is running linux, which seems to me a violation of gpl. If they don't state anywhere they are using gpl code, how do I know that I have the right to ask for the source? And let's say I want the source code of the kernel, how would I get it? Just go to the company and just demand it?"}
{"_id": "214894", "title": "C programming multiple storage backends", "text": "I am starting a side project in C which requires multiple storage backends to be driven by a particular piece of logic. These storage backends would each be linked with the decision of which one to use specified at runtime. So for example if I invoke my program with one set of parameters it will perform the operations in memory but if I change the program configuration it would write to disk. The underlying idea is that each storage backend should implement the same protocol. In other words the logic for performing operations should need to know which backend it is operating on. Currently the way I have thought to provide this indirection is to have a `struct` of function pointers with the logic calling these function pointers. Essentially the struct would contain all the operations needed to implement the higher level logic E.g.               struct Context {         void (* doPartOfDoOp)(void)         int (* getResult)(void);      }          //logic.h     void doOp(Context * context) {         //bunch of stuff         context->doPartOfDoOp();     }          int getResult(Context * context) {         //bunch of stuff         return context->getResult();     }       My questions is if this way of solving the problem is one a C programmer would understand? I am a Java developer by trade but enjoy using C/++. Essentially the Context struct provides an interface like level of indirection. However I would like to know if there is a more idiomatic way of achieving this."}
{"_id": "149792", "title": "Dependency injection: How to sell it", "text": "Let it be known that I am a big fan of dependency injection (DI) and automated testing. I could talk all day about it. **Background** Recently, our team just got this big project that is to built from scratch. It is a strategic application with complex business requirements. Of course, I wanted it to be nice and clean, which for me meant: maintainable and testable. So I wanted to use DI. **Resistance** The problem was in our team, DI is taboo. It has been brought up a few times, but the gods do not approve. But that did not discourage me. **My Move** This may sound weird but third-party libraries are usually not approved by our architect team (think: \"thou shalt not speak of Unity, Ninject, NHibernate, Moq or NUnit, lest I cut your finger\"). So instead of using an established DI container, I wrote an extremely simple container. It basically wired up all your dependencies on startup, injects any dependencies (constructor/property) and disposed any disposable objects at the end of the web request. It was extremely lightweight and just did what we needed. And then I asked them to review it. **The Response** Well, to make it short. I was met with heavy resistance. The main argument was, \"We don't need to add this layer of complexity to an already complex project\". Also, \"It's not like we will be plugging in different implementations of components\". And \"We want to keep it simple, if possible just stuff everything into one assembly. DI is an uneeded complexity with no benefit\". **Finally, My Question** How would you handle my situation? I am not good in presenting my ideas, and I would like to know how people would present their argument. Of course, I am assuming that like me, you prefer to use DI. If you don't agree, please do say why so I can see the other side of the coin. It would be really interesting to see the point of view of someone who disagrees. **Update** Thank you for everyone's answers. It really puts things into perspective. It's nice enough to have another set of eyes to give you feedback, fifteen is really awesome! This are really great answers and helped me see the issue from different sides, but I can only choose one answer, so I will just pick the top voted one. Thanks everyone for taking the time to answer. I have decided that it is probably not the best time to implement DI, and we are not ready for it. Instead, I will concentrate my efforts on making the design testable and attempt to present automated unit testing. I am aware that writing tests is additional overhead and if ever it is decided that the additional overhead is not worth it, personally I would still see it as a win situation since the design is still testable. And if ever testing or DI is a choice in future, the design can easily handle it."}
{"_id": "92301", "title": "How do I set my environment up for TopCoder?", "text": "I tried out TopCoder today. While I liked the problem, the Java editor didn't work for me. The remote compiling time and the lack of unit tests also made it difficult to complete the task. I ended up coding the solution in Eclipse and the pasting it into the TopCoder window. I tried out EclipseCoder, but it didn't suit my needs either. What tools do you use and how do you hook up your development environment with TopCoder? How does TopCoder handle submissions, and is there any way to speed up the time it takes to process them?"}
{"_id": "73080", "title": "How do you keep your customers informed about the exact time you spent on their projects?", "text": "In my answer of the question about what are the important points to consider when starting your own company, I mentioned the fact that when the customers pay per hour of work, there must be a way for them **to be sure that you don't make them pay for more hours that you actually spent working on a project**. But now that I'm thinking about it, how this can be implemented? In other words, how can you prove that you've worked on a project 32 hours the last week, and not 10 hours? In our company, we use a basic home-made time tracking software which is very helpful but has its limits:   * If the developer is browsing Facebook for the last hour but forgot to notify the application that he's not working on the project any longer, the application will still count the Facebook time as the time spent entirely on the project.   * If an employee of the company has enough permissions on database level, nothing can stop her to modify time records for the last weeks or months (even if it can be more difficult to do with better audit and permissions control). Finally, we don't even give to the customer some of the details about the time we spent.   * In our invoices, there are enough details to know that for a specific part of a project, a developer spent 121 hour working on C#/ASP.NET and 47 hours on CSS/HTML and that a database administrator spent 39 hours designing the database and 11 hours reviewing data access layer and optimizing queries,   * But there are nothing like that on September 24th, 2010, the database administrator was working on database design from 9:34 AM to 11:48 AM, then from 16:01 PM to 16:42 PM, then from 16:50 PM to 17:24 PM, and made two commits to the version control, the first one at 11:47 AM with the number 1234, the second one at 17:24 PM with the number 1239 as a proof. So what is the current practice in other companies? **How do you deal with time management to ensure that customers have enough information to be sure that they pay only for hours/days really spent on their projects?**"}
{"_id": "165918", "title": "Way in over my head! (Dealing with better programmers)", "text": "I've just been hired as a member of a group that is developing in C++. For the last 11 years, I'd been coding on and off at my last job (some C, some Fortran, some C++). The coding I'd done was mostly maintaining and adding new features to one of our systems. The code, being 10 years old, did not contain all the modern C++ stuff. Lo and behold, my new job is filled with programmers with 5-10 years experience of pure coding and they all use the most modern aspects of C++ (C++11, template, lambda, etc, etc). They are expecting someone with that same experience... which I have: I've been working for 15 years total, but when I look at their code, I can't understand half of it! :-| Anyone been in that situation? What would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "51286", "title": "How did programmers work back when a computer was very expensive, rare, as big as a room?", "text": "I assume they weren't able to sit in front of a computer for the whole day like we do today. So how did they write their program? On a piece of paper and type it later when the computer is available? How did they do their testing?"}
{"_id": "220781", "title": "Source code vs source files?", "text": "I'm in a situation with my company where this may be an important distinction. Is there any distinction between \"source code\" and \"source files\" in a technical context? Is there any distinction between \"source code\" and \"source files\" in a legal context? Thanks. Edit: I saw some close votes on this. I want to note that this is a possible issue between two companies - and where necessary, we'll definitely use legal counsel. I'm asking this because I'm attempting to be prepared if I'm asked for any technical definitions (as the developer role in this)."}
{"_id": "220783", "title": "Software without a testable goal", "text": "I hope you bear with me here. It's difficult to explain this problem, especially so without direct reference to the specific domain. I work on a component of a larger system which performs computationally expensive pre-processing in order that the \"real-time\" component can perform it's functions quickly. My product effectively creates a big lookup dataset for the main component to query. My product computes the results of a finite set of \"scenarios\" (a few hundred thousand) any one of which may be performed by a customer. The component uses a k-shortest paths algorithm and a number of rules engines to consider each scenario and build up the lookups, operating on reference data that represents the problem domain. For the scenarios that are very commonly performed by our customers the test cases are easy; the expected outcomes are easy to devise and assert acceptance tests. However, for the scenarios that are not \"popular\", the expected outcomes are difficult to establish and in any case their outcomes may be changed by changes to the reference data which are virtually impossible to predict. In other words, changes to the reference data changes the inputs to the shortest-path algorithm which in turn may change the output. Creating acceptance tests for these unpopular cases is also tricky, because the business \"doesn't know what it doesn't know\", and so has no baseline against which it can be tested. Whenever a tester comes back to me with a defect, 99.9% certainty it's because conditions in the reference data have changed, rather than because of any code changes. I therefore spend a load of time chasing defects that are \"data issues\". I think what confuses the situation is that the reference data is key to the functionality of the system, and the system without a specific set of reference data would produce no results that had any meaning to the business. I could create a set of \"fake\" reference data against which to test, but any assertion against this engineered reference data would be invalid in the real world. I would be very interested to hear any perspectives on this especially from those who have encountered similar problems. I am anxious not to simply shrug my shoulders and reply \"data issue\" but get to the root of the problem and work out how to build and test this thing in a reliable, repeatable and valuable way."}
{"_id": "165913", "title": "What is meant by a \"First Class Protocol\"", "text": "The Node.js about page describes HTTP as being a \"first class protocol\" within node.js. What does this mean? http://nodejs.org/about"}
{"_id": "142815", "title": "Choice of node.js modules to demo flexibility", "text": "I'm putting together a presentation to talk about and demo node.js to client- side JavaScript developers. The language concepts and syntax are not an issue for them, so instead I'd like to get right into things and show off node's abilities that differ from client-side JavaScript. There are numerous modules available in the NPM registry and many people have much more experience with the registry than I do. **I'm looking for a selection of node modules based on recommendations** from your experience that show a variety of uses for node that are practical, broadly useful and can be demonstrated with a small code sample without requiring much domain knowledge on behalf of the audience. Neat and impressive is good too - I can throw in a couple of shock and awe items for cool factor. To be fair, top-voted answers will get most consideration for inclusion. My hope is this will result in a well-rounded demonstration of node technology."}
{"_id": "61195", "title": "In a software engineering view, what are all the steps in a state of the art SDLC that I can do?", "text": "In an hypothetic situation of a company that have infinite resources (time/budget) to develop a product. can someone list me **ALL** possible steps that are required in my system development life cycle to reach the goal, in a **state of the art software engineering view** ? The GOAL of this question is to get a detailed list of all different aspects that i would do in \"a state of the art\" software development life cycle. I'm not interested in the paths (software development methodologies) but in all kind of steps. * * * Example: Focusing on the **\"software test step\"** i can test a products to archive different goals:               * 5.1 Test target           o 5.1.1 Unit testing           o 5.1.2 Integration testing           o 5.1.3 System testing           o 5.1.4 System integration testing     * 5.2 Objectives of testing           o 5.2.1 Regression testing           o 5.2.2 Acceptance testing           o 5.2.3 Alpha testing           o 5.2.4 Beta testing          * 6.1 Software performance testing and load testing     * 6.2 Stability testing     * 6.3 Usability testing     * 6.4 Security testing     * 6.5 Internationalization and localization     * 6.6 Destructive testing      And others .. Trying to enumerate all aspects of software testing, what else aspect i need to test ? Do this kind of reasoning to all aspect of software development life cycle."}
{"_id": "223329", "title": "Side Effects Breaking Referential Transparency", "text": "Functional Programming in Scala explains a side effect\u2019s impact on breaking referential transparency: > side effect, which implies some violation of referential transparency. I\u2019ve read part of SICP, which discusses using the \u201csubstitution model\u201d to evaluate a program. As I _roughly_ understand the substitution model with referential transparency (RT), you can de-compose a function into its simplest parts. If the expression is RT, then you can de-compose the expression and **always** get the same result. However, as the above quote states, using side effects can/will break the substitution model. Example:               val x = foo(50) + bar(10)      If `foo` and `bar` **do not** have side effects, then executing either function will **always** return the same result to `x`. But, if they do have side effects, they will alter a variable that disrupts/throws a wrench into the substitution model. I feel comfortable with this explanation, but I don\u2019t fully grok it. Please correct me and fill in any holes with respect to side effects breaking RT, discussing the effects on the substitution model as well."}
{"_id": "117411", "title": "Haskell GUI: how much can be done with Haskell?", "text": "I've been wanting to try out graphics in Haskell. From what I've seen, the available libraries are either front-ends to C/C++ libraries, or an abstraction of them with minimal features. The high-level libraries do not seem to suit my needs, and so I'm left with lower-level front-ends. **What I need is to render tiles and text** \\- basics for a very simple game. I know how to do this with C, and was thinking I could write the graphics in C and interface it with Haskell. The alternative is to write the graphics using a Haskell library. **My question is, can available Haskell libraries achieve what I want?** I do not want to bend over backwards; if C can do it better than I would like to know."}
{"_id": "117416", "title": "Setting up Eclipse IDE for Python and PHP development", "text": "There are various versions of Eclipse IDE available at Eclipse Download. Since, I am not concerned with Java development, I downloaded the Eclipse Classic 3.7.1. Now, I want my IDE to be setup for Python and PHP development. 1) Have i downloaded the correct version ?? 2) What tools should i download next. NOTE : I haven't installed anything yet, just downloaded the classic version from Eclipse website."}
{"_id": "61198", "title": "If XML is so bad.....why do so many people use it?", "text": "I understand the purpose of XML, but I always hear people complain about how BAD it is? I don't really understand whats so bad about it? I usually hear the terms \"bloated\" and \"slow\" tossed around. But I guess as programmers, what do you mainly use it for? And do you really consider it \"bad\"....because if it is, an awful lot of people use it for transporting of data..."}
{"_id": "227836", "title": "What workflow would be preferable when working with Cloud9 and Git?", "text": "I'm working with a small team developing a web app. We're using Cloud9 to make collaboration and portability as simple as possible, but it's making it a difficult to determine what would be the best way to integrate that with Cloud9. The way we have it set up at the moment is that there is one owner of the Cloud9 workspace who has granted read/write access to all of the collaborators of the project. This works well for collaboration, but if a collaborator pushes his or her work to the git repository, the commit is credited to the owner of the cloud9 workspace, which isn't ideal. People want credit for their work, and it makes it really difficult to keep track of who's doing what. The other option, as far as I can see, is to have each developer create a clone of the repository in their own cloud9 account and work from there. This solves the git issue, but it would mean not taking as much advantage of cloud9's great collaboration features (line by line authorship credit, file revision history, etc.). It would also mean an extra step to update the workspace for people who aren't very familiar with git. What workflow do you think would be best suited to this situation?"}
{"_id": "168384", "title": "ASP.Net MVC 3: multiple versions of the site without changing of URL, is it possible?", "text": "Our website is written in ASP.NET MVC 3 and we want to change a feature in the core functionality of the site. The problem is not every client can be moved to this new version/format (because of some technical inner restrictions) so it means that we need to keep 2 versions of the same functionality (backend and frontend) simultaneously. We don't want our clients to worry about URLs, so the ideal solution would be keep the same URL but redirect clients to the different versions. The information about clients is stored in database. So the moment when user (client) logs in we know which version of site we should show. I'm thinking about routing and areas but I'm not sure if it's possible for example to have 2 areas with the different versions of the same application. Or is it possible to load the assemblies on the fly? After user is logged in we can decide if (s)he should be redirected to the new or old version. As far as all the clients have been moved to the new version we don't need this system more. How can I do this in ASP.NET MVC?"}
{"_id": "98483", "title": "best practice when working with a MySQL database datadir directory", "text": "At the place I currently work they do some thing I consider strange in the way they work with the MySQL datadir. The directory in which the files that actually store the data are kept. > $ grep datadir /etc/mysql/my.cnf   >  datadir = /var/lib/mysql Where all the .frm .myd .myi files are found. When moving data around on the network or doing client installs they copy these files directly out of the this directory and past them into which ever directory they have set up MySQL to use on the client side. They do the same thing at the office. I was taught as a Database Administrator that you should work with the scripts. Export the data and structure of the database as a SQL script and import it as a SQL script when you want to start working with it. This is to protect the data integrity. As those files can be in a state inconstant with a working copy of the data. As caches may not have been written to the database files on the disk. I see that they stop the MySQL server when doing the copying and pasting so that should prevent the data becoming corrupt. I was wandering what industry best practice is around this issue. It seams strange to me. Considering how they view security, concerning passwords and root access I think they have developed a bad practice and are doing it ignorantly. They don't have a strong understanding of some of the fundamentals of how database systems should work. Am I wrong, should I just go with the flow and not get involved with trying to change these practices."}
{"_id": "227832", "title": "single table w/ extra columns vs multiple tables which duplicate schema", "text": "I am working on a project where at some point, I needed to make a decision on whether or not, in the database, I should have a single table with multiple columns that not every record uses, or multiple tables with duplicated schema. I am creating a Sports information application which can handle multiple sports. We can handle NBA,NHL,MLB,NFL for example. Each sport has very similar concepts - Teams, Schedules, Injuries, Player info.. Our data source of course does not give us each piece of data in the same schema. Each sport has a different Schema to which we receive data from our vendor. Because there wasn't enough time (client demands) to do upfront analysis of the data feeds to determine commonalities, I hedged my bet and took the 'safe bet' and made individual separate tables for each sport instead of one set of tables that all sports used. The result is duplicated schema in several of the tables, and so duplicated interfaces to the database (e.g. stored procs) as well. I have something like NBA_Game, NFL_Game, NBA_Team,NFL_Team, etc.. each table might have a few properties that the other one doesn't, and several that are shared. it goes on for say 5-10 tables across 4 or 5 sports. I'm still not sure if this is entirely a bad thing - the alternative, having a single set of tables which had properties on it that not all sports would use, might have on its own been unwieldy as well. Has anyone that has done this run into pitfalls of this kind of design and could share their experience here? Things that might help me to know now instead of learning the hard way down the road? Have you done it the other way, having one big table/set of tables, with columns that not every record would use? What pitfalls did you run into doing that? Is there some alternative such as table inheritance that you have used in the past that worked better? Thanks"}
{"_id": "111434", "title": "Is it legal to recreate/opensource a program that you previously coded for another company", "text": "At my previous job I created a generic dashboard for automating tasks and it that turned out to be quite useful - and of course my previous employer owns all the code I wrote while I worked there. Now that I'm no longer there, is it legal for me to recreate that dashboard from memory and open source the code? If I do recreate it, the code (maybe 2k-3k lines) could be almost identical to the original since I have pretty good memory and tend to follow my usual coding style and naming conventions. Edit: a little more background - this is a pretty generic piece of software that's used only internally by a small team (<10) within a global corporation. \"The company\" is not even aware of this system since it's I create it on my own initiative. It's built on python/django. And by almost identical I mean that for example the django models will have the same name/fields and views will use similar queries to return the same sets of objects."}
{"_id": "98487", "title": "VB for C programmers", "text": "Can anyone recommend a good guide to VB.Net for someone having experience/comfortable with C? I can find Python/Java/Lua for C programmers had have used them earlier, but am unable to find anything for C programmers moving to VB.Net (I'll be moving from using C/C++ with gcc/g++ to VB.Net on VS 2010)"}
{"_id": "25665", "title": "Why does changing from one language to another make a programmer fresher?", "text": "Right now I have been working on language X for the last 2 years. I am very good at it, but language X is not popular so jobs are not readily available for it. Consequently, I am thinking to change from language X to language Y. But that means I'll be a fresher again. Is making the change worth it? Even if it means losing all the experience I have in the other language?"}
{"_id": "54639", "title": "using svn and mercurial in eclipse for same project", "text": "Is it possible to have in eclipse 2 \"team providers\" for same project. E.g. svn and mercurial? So svn will be used to commit to central repository, and mercurial only to work on my PC. E.g. when I get updates from SVN, I commit to mercurial, then I work with mercurial. When everything is ready to go to central place, i commit in SVN. There is no need to integrate change history. Yes, ideally it will be just mercurial, and most probably it will happened later. But for now I want to try some dirty and fast solution if it exist :)"}
{"_id": "221788", "title": "What can go wrong with composing a method name out of a string?", "text": "I have a piece of code that composes method name to call from a string parameter. I don't feel it's a good thing to do but I'm not sure what can go wrong with this. Here is a simplified snippet of that code:               switchToFilter = function(filter){         var filterMethod = 'switchTo' + filter;         myObject[filterMethod]();     }"}
{"_id": "221782", "title": "How to avoid unmaintainable code when using SQL in an MVC setting?", "text": "I want to present a list of products to the user. This list is paginated and can be sorted by the user by product ID or product name in ascending or descending order. I am using an MVC setting, where I would like to query the database in the model. **How would I write functions that query the database?** I can think of several options which all have their drawbacks:   1. Have one function for each possible combination of sort columns and sorting directions, each with a different query inside:              func GetProductsOrderByIdAsc() []*Product { \u2026 }     func GetProductsOrderByIdDesc() []*Product { \u2026 }     func GetProductsOrderByNameAsc() []*Product { \u2026 }     func GetProductsOrderByNameDesc() []*Product { \u2026 }      This is obviously unmaintainable as it leads to lots of almost-identical SQL queries, aka \u201cduplicate code.\u201d   2. Concatenate strings of SQL:              func GetProducts(orderBy string, orderDirection string) []*Product {         return db.query(`               SELECT id, name, description                 FROM products             ORDER BY ` + orderBy + ` ` + orderDirection + `         `)     }      This is inelegant, unreadable and unmaintainable as it quickly becomes a mess\u2014imagine adding pagination and filtering. Parameter binding won\u2019t work here as these are columns and not values.   3. Sort, filter and paginate in Go instead of in SQL. This would solve the code duplication problem but it can be a performance problem when having gazillions of records. What is the usual _concrete_ way of solving this problem? Ideally there would be no duplicate code, no ugly query synthesis and no major inefficiencies."}
{"_id": "253957", "title": "Single database, multiple system dependency", "text": "Consider an environment where we have a single, core database, with many separate systems using this one database. This leads to all of these systems have a common dependency, which ultimately introduces coupling between them. This means that we cannot always evolve systems independently of each other. Structural changes to the database (even if only intended for one, particular system), requires a full sweep test of ALL systems, and may require that other systems be 'patched' and subsequently released. This is especially tricky when you want to have separate teams working on different projects. **What is a good 'pattern' to help in avoiding such coupling?** I would imagine that a database should be exclusively depended on by one system. If other systems require data for whatever reason, they should request such from an API service of some kind. A drawback of this approach which comes to mind is performance: routing data between high-throughput systems through service calls is much slower than through a database connection."}
{"_id": "59446", "title": "How do you answer \"Rate yourself\" questions?", "text": "I have been frequently asked questions like \"Rate yourself in java\" It goes like interviewer : Rate yourself in java on the scale of 10 me: 9 interviewer : Rate yourself in J2EE me : 8 .... But really I just come up with arbitrary numbers. Sure I know Java well , but what does it mean to say \"9 out of 10\" . I think it is a very subjective question, that does not make sense overall. The problem is ,if I say 9 , If I am not able to answer any question , the interviewer might think , \"this guy just said 9\" . On the other hand If I said 6 , there is a good chance the interviewer might think \"He rates himself this low...not good\" How do you respond to such questions ?"}
{"_id": "104661", "title": "What are some good criteria for using Tracer Bullets?", "text": "I was recently reading The Pragmatic Programmer for the first time and I came across the concept of Tracer Bullets. I realized that I had coded according to this model in the past and just kind of filed the way I was working away in my brain as \"agile\". They only give one example of where they had used it in the past. The way the situation was identified to be a good candidate for Tracer Bullets was > There were many unknowns, and many different environments, and no one was > too sure how the GUI should behave. That kind of seems like the way a huge number of projects start, especially when you're working with non-technical people on a typical line of business app for a hedge fund (as an example). I used it because it simply felt right, without really knowing what it was called or having it explained to me. I knew that if I tried to get everyone in a room and got them to spec everything (or at least some things) up front it would be a complete disaster, but again that's a feel kind of thing... Can anyone come up with some more concrete criteria for when this model might be the way to go?"}
{"_id": "104665", "title": "Scrum roles mixed up", "text": "Here at the office our Scrum roles are a bit mixed up, so I would appreciate any advice on how to improve it. We are a small team of 4 developers (one of which is a de facto scrum master) and we also have a line manager and a Product Owner. The line manager simultaneously embraces Scrum and has a hard time \"letting go\"; he has the Product Backlog in his head and also prioritizes it. A previous attempt to take it out of his head only lead to a short lived up-to-date Product Backlog in Pivotaltracker.com \u2013 politically speaking he was de programmer who built the current system 7 years ago. The Product Owner has been in the company for about 2 years and seems to have a clear vision of the product, but he is underpowered by our line manager (who in fact is held responsible for this and other projects). Other than this, our implementation of Scrum is \u201cby the book\u201d. What do you think are disadvantages of this structure we find ourselves into? What could be improved? How would you improve?"}
{"_id": "220430", "title": "Is this a correct implementation of an Immutable class in Java?", "text": "public final class ImmutableClass {              private StringBuffer name;              public ImmutableClass(StringBuffer name) {             this.name=name;         }         public StringBuffer getName() {             return name;         }     }      Points that I have considered:   1. Make the class `final` so that it cannot be extended   2. Do not provide `public` mutator methods   3. Keep the instance variables `private` Are the above mentioned considerations sufficient?"}
{"_id": "105390", "title": "SCRUM technical artifacts", "text": "My company is introducing SCRUM for new software development. I'm currently both Product Owner and a product manager responsible for the technical aspects of the software. The technical manager role is not part of the scrum team. I'm finding there is some desire within the scrum team to treat the software development as a black box ie I should only care about user stories and business benefit. This is an issue as the information needed to inform client discussions about the most appropriate architecture, deployment mechanisms, host system requirements etc isn't available (I'm responsible for this in my manager role). For example, the dev team may develop a system that can only be used with a particular database collation. This isn't something I'd ever anticipate so wouldn't create a user story or discuss with clients but it might be a show-stopper for the product. What documentation and level of transparency is reasonable? The whole team is new to scrum so any advice welcome. PS: I wonder if this dual role is a good idea. I think some team members may think the Product Owner is being a rooster which isn't my intention ;-)."}
{"_id": "105396", "title": "How Should I reply to my Manager about my annual review", "text": "During testing, our software testers reported a NullException error in an application and I was tasked to fix it. I did some investigation, proposed a fix, and sent out a code review to the team. I white box tested my solution by playing around with the application to make sure NullException does not occur any more and possibly something else is not broken either and, to me, it was fine so I sent out the code review. My manager, who is also our lead architect, replied back in an email and told me to avoid sending out code reviews like this and that he will consider this incident in my annual review. I want to reply and apologize for not white box testing it thoroughly before sending the code review and will do my best in future, but I also say something in my defense. I did perform some white box testing on the application, but he has much more knowledge about the application so he can white box it much better than me. Plus, what is the whole point of performing a code review at all?! We perform a code review so other team members can review our code and find out potential issues with our code so we can fix them before shipping the code to the client, so why is he mad? That's why code reviews exist, right? What do you think?"}
{"_id": "250603", "title": "Deferred execution of Dispose for IDisposable objects", "text": "I'm working on an application that does lots of encryption and decryption in- application and this is probably the number-one bottleneck, so I've been spending some time making performance tweaks to it. A lot of this has involved simply caching things in memory (I realize there is something of a security tradeoff in doing that), but I noticed during profiling that Dispose() was a fair amount of the time doing decryption (I believe for .NET cryptography stuff it zeroes over everything so this makes sense). So I came up with this idea: Have a \"dispose pool.\" Instead of using blocks, create objects, use them, return the result, and add them to the dispose pool in the finally block. Internally, the dispose pool uses a queue and a timer and every time the timer fires it dequeues the objects and disposes them. I tried implementing this and it seems to work and improve performance, but then again, profiling it locally is not a really realistic use case. Is this sound? Am I likely to run into runaway performance issues I'm not currently thinking about? I suppose I should add that this is an ASP.NET MVC application so everything revolves around requests."}
{"_id": "250602", "title": "Why doesn't the HTML\\DOM specification allow hyperlinks to set an accept header?", "text": "The purpose of the `Accept` header from the client is to tell the server what kind of data it will accept as a response to its request. We can set this header in asynchronous HTTP calls in Javascript, but not in HTML. For example, consider a link such as `<a href=\"/some/resource\">Get as CSV</a>`. If an attribute like `accept=\"text/csv\"` were allowed, and the browser interpreted that to send an `Accept: text/csv` header with that request, the server could respond to the semantics of the request. Without it, we might create a link such as `<a href=\"/some/resource?format=csv\">Get as CSV</a>`, and the server must respond to the arbitrary query string parameter instead. What are the reasons, both technical and historical, behind the HTML\\DOM specification not allowing the setting of an `Accept` header through markup?"}
{"_id": "141549", "title": "Backbone.js, Rails and code duplication", "text": "I'm building a web app and I need a JS framework like Backbone.js to work with my backend provided by Rails that mostly return JSON objects after DB queries. Searching on the web I've discovered Backbone which seems to be complete, quite popular and actively used in development but I've noticed that a lot of things done by Backbone are simply a duplicate of the work done by Rails: for example, validation and models. My idea of \"perfect\" (for my actual needs) JS mvc (it can't be called mvc but I don't have a better name) is something really simple that has a function for each action in my Rails controller that is triggered by a specific event (user/hash changes, click on a button...) and sends requests to the server that respond with a JSON object then I'll load a template or execute some JS code. **Do you have any concerns about/suggestions for my idea?** **Do you know of some \"micro\" js framework like what I have described?** **If you have worked with backone.js + rails what can you suggest to me?**"}
{"_id": "196179", "title": "I am new to programming and I am interested in jdbc - Tips and Advice needed", "text": "I am currently acquiring my associates degree in software engineering. I have been told in order to be successful in a computer science field you have to specialized in something. After researching several areas I have decided I want to specialize in Java Database Connectivity. It earns a decent income and seems interesting. I would like to know what the field is like. What the job, bosses/managers, pay, etc...   I just want to know as much as I can first hand from the people that currently work in the field. What are some tips you would give a new-comer in college and what do you wish you had known before getting into the industry?"}
{"_id": "26151", "title": "How to introduce Agile to a team that uses rigid non-Agile methods?", "text": "Consider a company that is proudly certified for some non-Agile methodology, uses it as a selling point to its customers to demonstrate accountability. How do you go about **introducing Kanban or Scrum progressively without breaking their whole system** and still making them confident that it **can still be just as accountable / auditable**? * * * I know this is possibly related to \"How would you introduce an agile methodology like Scrum\", but here I am wondering about ways to circumvent/work around the fact that the company imposes a certain way of managing the SDLC under the false pretense that it's the only way to have an audit trail."}
{"_id": "204735", "title": "Create and delay task for 24 hours", "text": "I'm trying to come up with a sane architecture to delay a task for 24 hours. So far I've thought of:   * unix cron job, but this will not be able to take the load we give it, since we will have many thousands of delayed tasks per day   * Use RabbitMQ with dead letter exchange, however, this is a hack and being a hack is riddled with problems - impossible to monitor without mutilating the messages, etc.   * Other solutions I've come up with are poll based, e.g., insert task into MySQL and have a poller responsible   * Amazon SQS only supports up to 15 minute delays. I could write a punt loop for # of delays, btu this is already reinventing the wheel way too much. Plus using SQS this would get expensive as we pay per message.   * Redis possibly...? have not heavily investigated this. I know Memcached is not appropriate as it won't really guarantee persistence that long. What existing technology is good for this? I don't want to reinvent the wheel here, given that I'm pretty sure I'm not working on the first software product that requires performing a task tomorrow. Thus far I've been database driving things."}
{"_id": "204739", "title": "Is it considered a bad practice to add logic in a property setter?", "text": "I jumped in to a project and I see that the other developers are adding a lot of logic in the setters of synthesized properties. I understand how this works, but I think that it makes it hard to understand the flow of the program; while reading the code, whenever I see `self.something = whatever`, I always check if `something`'s setter is overridden. What are your opinions around this topic? Do you think this is a sign of bad architecture or an elaborate solution? I would be glad to read more on this if you have relevant links/sources, it's just too hard to get good google results so I decided to ask here as well. Thanks for any answer and please note that I'm talking about objective C in case you haven't seen the tag (even though this shouldn't be a language specific issue I guess)."}
{"_id": "200931", "title": "Getting over the mental hurdle with Algorithms?", "text": "I am a strange sort of a programmer. I am a software engineer by profession and I have written programs in more than one language in various capacities. I know quite a bit about various programming languages and software development in general (that comes with experience and active skill building). However, I have a problem. I am _bad_ at algorithms. I have made various attempts to teach myself and finally be able to say, I know this algorithm and can implement it well in a programming language. My attempts sometimes began with preparing for an interview where they would ask such questions and ended with them. I just start and get lost I guess. I know the things to learn from (MIT course on algorithms, and so many other resources there). I know, I should just put my head down, be determined and write algorithms/programs on paper and implement it in practice. But, I just seem to be not able to. I run into the mentality of \"I don't need this algorithm in my job, or for some reason in the immediate future, and I am good at few things, so I will learn this when I need to..\". I really want to get over this. What is a good time frame to set myself and any advice to how I should approach this mentally and otherwise?"}
{"_id": "38976", "title": "In what situations would it be technically 'impossible' to release a system as open source?", "text": "While there are certainly many economic, social and practical decisions to be made when deciding whether a system should be open source, are there any situations in which it is impossible, purely from a technical standpoint, to open source your code? Essentially; a feature which when the code is made public, invalidates/reduces the functionality of that feature. Some examples I can think of:   * Cheating in Quake \\- once the game was released as open source, id had to release a closed-source 'wrapper' to validate client code in order to prevent cheating.   * Reddit - while the majority of the source for social news site Reddit is available, their anti-spam mechanisms are not. If the spammers knew how they worked, they'd be easier to work around. Both security related and both as a result of using implementations security experts would probably frown on (Quake: trusting the client, Reddit: security through obscurity). Whether there are feasible alternatives to these implementations is another matter altogether... What other examples are there of this? Are there any that aren't security related? Are they all due to 'workarounds' in order to make our systems work with the technology we have?"}
{"_id": "139807", "title": "PHP common uses for the Command Line", "text": "I started with PHP a little while ago. I've been doing a lot of tutorials, practice sites, etc. and it's going great. One thing I like about PHP is how easy it is to get started (downloading WAMP and voila). However, up until I learned about PEAR and MVC frameworks, I haven't put much thought in using a command line Interface for PHP development... I've not really used the command line that much and it will take me some getting used to, so a couple of questions I have are: What are the most common uses of the Command Line when developing websites and web applications with PHP? Can you run MVC frameworks such as Zend, CakePHP, etc without ever using it? Besides PEAR, are there any other PHP repositories that use the command line to work? (It seems if you want to avoid using PEAR there are countless other PHP Classes/libraries on the internet that one could download and then simply copy and paste files into your site.)"}
{"_id": "56406", "title": "Anemic Domain Model, Business Logic and DataMapper (PHP)", "text": "I've implemented a rudimentary ORM layer based on DataMapper (I don't want to use a full blown ORM like Propel/Doctrine - for anything beyond simple fetch/save ops I prefer to access the data directly layer using a SQL abstraction layer). Following the DataMapper pattern, I've endeavoured to keep all persistence operations in the Mapper - including the location of related entities. My Entities have access to their Mapper, although I try not to call Mapper logic from the Entity interface (although this would be simple enough). The result is:               // get a mapper and produce an entity     $ProductMapper = $di->get('product_mapper');     $Product = $ProductMapper->find('me@email.com','email');          // could easily be this     // $Product = $di->get('product');     // $Product->load('me@email.com','email');          //.. mutate some values.. save     $ProductMapper->save($Product)          // uses __get to trigger relation acquisition     $Manufacturer = $Product->manufacturer;       I've read some articles regarding the concept of an Anemic Domain model, i.e. a Model that does not contain any \"business logic\". When demonstrating the sort of business logic ideally suited to a Domain Model, however, acquiring related data items is a common example. Therefore I wanted to ask this question: Is persistence logic appropriate in Domain Model objects? Or rather - what logic goes into the Entity classes once the persistence and relation handling is pushed into the mapper."}
{"_id": "199235", "title": "How to salvage a business model from a mismatched database?", "text": "There is an application that involves billing enterprise customers for the services their customers utilize. The database schema does not properly reflect the business model. For instance, on a given account, services may become activated and deactivated. There is only a column to represent when the service was deactivated and the code in place just updates that same row if the service is reactivated rather than adding a new row. Ideally, a row would be added when a service activates and updated when deactivated, and there would be a column to represent the activation date. As it stands, there is no solid billing history for these enterprise customers, but there needs to be from here on out. Do we set a \"cutoff\" for the legacy model that was corrupted and wipe the table clean? Do we add the appropriate column and start working with the table properly and just check for rows that have a 'activated date' of null to detect legacy? There must be several ways of handling this, but I have no experience with this kind of situation and would like to hear out some various approaches."}
{"_id": "167516", "title": "Automated deployment/installation of development tools", "text": "My team is looking to automate installation/deployment of all of our development tools. The main driver for this is to ensure that everyone in the team has a consistent development environment setup and to also allow a new recruit to get up and running easily. By development environment I mean tools like SCM, toolchains, IDEs etc. and by consistent I mean everyone using the same version of compiler to build code (this is very important!). Here are a few of our requirements \u2013   * Allow unattended (silent) install of our entire dev setup by running a single script   * Ability to be versioned   * Ability to deploy selective updates (new versions) for specific tools   * Ability to report which tools are installed and their specific version numbers   * Must work on Windows (Linux would be a bonus)   * Must be easy to maintain What are some of the tools that you've used to automate such a task?"}
{"_id": "2042", "title": "Who does test-driven development?", "text": "I've been working in the enterprise space for the past 4\u00bd years and have noticed that generally speaking, enterprises are not conducive environments for the test-first style of development. Projects are usually fixed-cost, fixed-timeline and waterfall style. Any unit testing, if done at all, usually comes after development in the QA phase and done by another team. Prior to working for an enterprise, I consulted for many small to medium sized companies, and none of them were willing to pay for a test-first style of development project. They usually wanted development started immediately, or after a short design stint: i.e., something more akin to Agile, though some clients wanted everything mapped out similar to waterfall. With what types of shops, companies, and clients does test-driven development work best? What types of projects tend to be conducive to TDD?"}
{"_id": "199233", "title": "3D tiled space viewed one plane at a time; general concepts to understand while programming this?", "text": "I am not asking for someone to program this for me, I still would like to do all the programming, however I need some additional mathematical programming background for this kind of stuff because I haven't really dabbled into 3D spaces much and I am thinking lots of potential if-thens and switches could be simplified way down if I think of this concept the right way. I will be using a programming language that supports 2D tiled or text screen output (think Java). I want to know if there are simple ways to program in the viewing, orienting and moving about this virtual space I am about to describe without resorting to lots of switch statements to control i.e. what the screen will be displaying depending on the PC's location, facing direction and rotation. Okay so far I am working out concepts of a way to explore a 3D top-down maze type environment with a procedurally generated voxel landscape and a 1x1x1 player character which can view only the eye level plane and the plane 1 unit below it. the PC can move in the following ways; Please note I intend whichever way the PC considers down to be which direction gravity is acting upon it, (unrealistic):   * Walk forward to another square unobstructed by a wall or cliff   * Turn the face another direction, in which case a different direction becomes the PC's forward face (visually). The PC will always appear to be facing up for the user.   * Start scaling a wall, in which case the previously upward direction (out of the screen, towards the user) becomes forward.   * Climb down and scale the wall of a pit below, in which case the previously down direction become forward.   * Flip upside down and tether off the now ceiling, scaling up or down the tether until the PC hits a floor. in which case it can choose other transportation modes again.   * Each time the PC moves, all other entities get their chance to move in a turn based fashion. This won't be like a Minecraft-esque sandbox, so editing the landscape after generation won't be likely necessary. I will have a screen that views 16x16x2 voxels at a time. I do however like the idea of dynamically allocated chunks. I plan on generating or loading previously generated 16x16x16 chunks of voxels and the adjacent 26 chunks as needed. while unloading out of range chunks and saving them to a file. I want to know the mathematical/conceptual ideas behind generating these chunks and loading already generated chunks. Note I still use the term voxel even though I will only view them as squares on a text screen, because the game space is a 3D grid."}
{"_id": "167976", "title": "Is it bad practice to use the same name for arguments and members?", "text": "Sometimes I write constructor code like               class X     {     public:       X( const int numberOfThingsToDo ) :         numberOfThingsToDo( numberOfThingsToDo )       {       }          private:       int numberOfThingsToDo;     };      or in C#               class X     {       public X( int numberOfThingsToDo )       {          this.numberOfThingsToDo = numberOfThingsToDo;       }            private int numberOfThingsToDo;     }      I think the main reason is that when I come up with a suitable member name, I see no reason to use a different one for the argument initializing it, and since I'm also no fan of using underscores the easiest is just to pick the same name. After all it's suitable. Is this considered bad practice however? Any drawbacks (apart from shooting yourself in the foot when forgetting the `this` in C#)?"}
{"_id": "204087", "title": "substitute for static inheritance", "text": "I currently have a number of classes (~20) that all do the same thing (abstractly), namely, generate an instance of a particular class from an xml file. The way that they use the content of the xml file varies quite a bit, and the data gets stored into different substructures (fields, groups, etc) that are shared across the classes, so I took all of the parsing and field information out of the files, and created a helper class (as is the final constructed type) All of the above classes and methods are static, as they have no need to contain any state. I then wanted to have all the classes derive from one common class so that I am not referencing a seemingly unrelated class constantly, only to discover that inheritance and static do not work together well. What is the appropriate way of setting this up? Its bascially a large set of factory methods for a type that require no state. **Update:** The control flow is currently as follows:   1. Pick one of ~20 factory methods   2. Read in an XML file (all tags, attributes are the same across the files, but the files are distict across the methods).   3. Convert the content in the XML files to a class that has some data structures as members (`List<Field>, List<Group>, Dictionary<string,string>` etc). These data structures use types that are nested in the helper.   4. Add these collections to the uninitialized object.   5. Return the object to caller. Right now, the 20 factory methods are thier own static classes, and all return objects of the same type, as even though there might be some semantic difference between the \"types\" all of the memebers and functions are the same. The code that parses the XML file is in a helper, as this logic is common to all of the factory methods. Step 3 has to be different for all the methods, so that part is found in the static classes."}
{"_id": "167518", "title": "Processing a stream. Must layers be violated?", "text": "Theoretical situation:   One trillion foobars are stored in a text file (no fancy databases). Each foobar must have some business logic executed on it. A set of 1 trillion will not fit in memory so the data layer cannot return a big set to the business layer. Instead they are to be streamed in 1 foobar at a time, and have business logic execute on 1 foobar at a time. The stream must be closed when finished. In order for the stream to be closed the business layer must close the stream (a data operation detail), thus violating the separation of concerns. Is it possible to incrementally process data without violating layers?"}
{"_id": "222491", "title": "An alternative to having fields that might not be used in a class", "text": "I'm writing a card/ board game in Java. Since the game has lots of cards that interact in different ways, my Player class has become sort of bloated with all these different fields used for keeping track of data that specific cards need. However, not every card is used in every game, so many of these fields are not used. Instead of having several fields that probably won't be used a majority of the time, I was thinking of writing sort of a field map class that could dynamically \"create\" fields when they were needed. If one type of card required each player to store some data in a List, it could just create one and store it in that player's field map. It could get a little messy, though: what types of keys should I use? Strings? Just plain Objects? And the type of data won't always be a List, so it would probably have to be `Map<String, Object>`, and I would have to put in casts. Should the keys be their own class whose identity is based on a String name, but also contain a `Class<?>` field, so that it could cast the result for me? I kind of like this idea, since it means I don't have to mess with the Player class every time I make a new card, but it also seems kind of inefficient and inelegant. Is this a terrible idea?"}
{"_id": "57507", "title": "How to become more productive in design and programming", "text": "Usually whenever I see tutorial videos (apart from the main subject) I learn a lot from their working habits, for example; they way they have set up their folders, what shotcuts they use. The best example was (long time a go) I say a jquery video, and half way through the author said something like \u201cby the way you could have a code library\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s the only thing I remember from that video (but the author said it as something he assumed people know about) So I was wondering if someone knows any tip or any website which goes other how other professionals work, how they have set up their programming habits to help them not waste time in repetitive tasks."}
{"_id": "58852", "title": "What are the things you can do to maximize your chances of hitting good programmers in the campus?", "text": "I'm thinking about approaching my lecturers in my university for student recommendation for me to hire. So far the emails I sent are not very encouraging. The lecturers either coming back to me, saying that they couldn't get good students, or just ignore my mail. I tried to be as polite as I could in the email, so I think it's not etiquette issue that turn them off. Still, I plan to visit my campus. What are the things I can do to maximize your chances of hitting good programmers in the campus? Any experience you can share?"}
{"_id": "58850", "title": "Open Source: Is Testing/Bug Reporting A Major Contribution?", "text": "When evaluating contributions to open source projects, does testing the code on various real-world inputs, reducing a large number of complicated bugs to small test cases and filing good bug reports count as a significant contribution? I've done this for several open-source projects (specifically D compilers) where I wanted to help out but the codebase was too complicated to learn my way around in the amount of spare time I have. I'm interested in both the perspective of the main developers (those that write the code and fix the bugs) and from the perspective of employers (in case I want to put it on my resume at some point)."}
{"_id": "58856", "title": "Why Java as a First Language?", "text": "Why is Java so popular as a first language to teach beginners? To me it seems like a terrible choice:   1. It's statically typed. Static typing isn't useful unless you care a lot about either performance or scaling to large projects.   2. It requires tons of boilerplate to get the simplest code up and running. Try explaining \"Hello, world\" to someone who's never programmed before.   3. It only handles the middle levels of abstraction well and is single-paradigm, thus leaving out a lot of important concepts. You can't program at a very low level (pointers, manual memory management) or a very high level, (metaprogramming, macros) in it.   4. In general, Java's biggest strength (i.e. the reason people use it despite the shortcomings of the language per se) is its libraries and tool support, which is probably the least important attribute for a beginner language. In fact, while useful in the real world these may negatives from a pedagogical perspective as they can discourage learning to write code from scratch."}
{"_id": "58855", "title": "Do you think is good to start developing Android Applications even though I'm a beginner?", "text": "Do you think is good to start developing Android Applications even though I'm a beginner? So should I just concentrate on learning java, c++, html, css, javascript, php, msql, c#, c, objective-c, etc?"}
{"_id": "33477", "title": "Best development architecture for a small team of programmers ( WAMP Stack )", "text": "I'm in the first month of work in a new company.. and after I met the two programmer's and asked how things are organized in terms of projects inside the company, they simply shrug their shoulders, and said that nothing is organized.. I think my jaw hit the ground that same time.. ( I know some, of you think I should quit, but I'm on a privileged position, I'm the most experienced there, so there's room for me to grow inside the company, and I'm taking the high road ).. So I talked to the IT guy, and one of the programmers, and maybe this week I'm going to get a server all to myself to start organizing things. I've used various architectures in my previous work experiences, on one I was developing in a server on the network ( no source control of course ).. another experience I had was developing in my local computer, with no server on the network, just source control. And at home, I have a mix of the two, everything I code is on a server on the network, and I have those folders under source control, and I also have a no- ip account configured on that server so I can access it everywhere and I can show the clients anything. For me I think this last solution ( the one I have at home ) is the best:   * Network server with WAMP stack.   * The server as a public IP so we can access it by domain name. And use subdomains for each project.   * Everybody works directly on the network server. I think the problem arises, when two or more people want to work on the same project, in this case the only way to do this is by using source control and local repositories, this is great, but I think this turns development a lot more complicated. In the example I gave, to make a change to the code, I would simply need to open the file in my favorite editor, make the change, alter the database, check in the changes into source control and presto all done. Using local repositories, I would have to get the latest version, run the scripts on the local database to update it, alter the file, alter the database, check in the changes to the network server, update the database on the network server, see if everything is running well on the network server, and presto all done, to me this seems overcomplicated for a change on a simple php page. I could share the database for the local development and for the network server, that sure would help. Maybe the best way to do this is just simply:   * Network server with WAMP stack ( test server so to speak ), public server accessible trough the web.   * WAMP stack on every developer computer ( minus the database )   * We develop locally, test, then check in the changes into the server test and presto. What do you think? Maybe I should start doing this at home.. Thanks and best regards... Edit: I'm sorry I made a mistake and switched WAMP with LAMP, sorry about that.."}
{"_id": "58859", "title": "Where do I go to hire a freelance programmer?", "text": "I want to hire a programmer freelance to develop a small InDesign plugin, but I have no idea how to go about finding one. Most of the freelance bidding sites are garbage, but aside from finding a few companies from a google search I'm not sure where else to go. Are there any good sites for posting jobs or other good ways of finding a programmer to hire?"}
{"_id": "53371", "title": "Using NetBeans and Eclipse together", "text": "I'm working on a collaborative group project at university which involves writing a Swing application, an Android application and some Java data models and a JDBC connection. We've been taught to use NetBeans but will need to use Eclipse to write the Android application. I find NetBeans to have nicer GUI builders than Eclipse's Visual Editor plugin and the other group members want to use NetBeans as they are familiar with it. I can already foresee clashes as JFrame forms created in Eclipse won't open the interface builder in NetBeans. Does anyone have advice on using both of these programs together on a group project? At the moment the issues I'm seeing are:   * Lots of meta-files from each IDE (which I'm currently ignoring via .gitignore, is this a good idea?) cluttering the repository and potentially being out of sync with each other.   * The mentioned GUI problem, what does NetBeans look for when looking to show the Design view?   * Different templates being shown. I'm probably just going to stick with NetBeans until we get to the Android part but if there are ways to make them play friendly I'd love to hear them."}
{"_id": "107461", "title": "Workflow for a plugin assignment", "text": "I'm starting a new project in PHP, a plugin for a website that grabs additional data from it through cURL, getContents etc and re-tabulates it in excel. It's a local project, basic script like with a very limited UI. Iv'e been using Codeigniter and it's a great framework for websites, and even the Twitter application I'm using it for but I don't think I need MVC (necessarily) for this small project but I also don't want to go bare. What would your typical workflow be for this kind of weekend assignment where your creating a local do-something script or like in my case adding functionality to a website? Is there something in between a light weight MVC framework and a blank page?"}
{"_id": "106136", "title": "Which .NET REST approach/technology/tool should I use?", "text": "I am implementing a RESTful web service and several client applications that are mostly in Silverlight. I am finding a litany of options for developing both the server-side and client-side of the API but am not sure which is the best approach. I'm concerned about stability as well as a platform that will continue to exist a few months from now. We started using the REST Starter Kit with .NET 3.5 but moved to the new WCF Web API when updating to .NET 4.0. All of their documentation indicates that WCF Web API is the replacement for the RSK. However, Web API is only in Preview 4 and does not include support for Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 clients (yet). WCF Web API looks like a wrapper on top of the WCF WebHttp Services stuff provided in the `System.ServiceModel.Web` library which makes me think that maybe it would be simpler to just go with the built-in stuff but Web API does offer some nice features. I am specifically tied-up trying to determine the best course for the client- side. My main requirement is that I need to support deserializing into my client-side objects quickly and easily. The Web API offers a nice client library but doesn't have a Silverlight version. I'd like to use the latest approach and the toolset that is being actively developed and supported.   1. Is the REST Starter Kit really obsolete?   2. Has anyone had any success implementing the WCF Web API toolkit?   3. Is there merit to using either of these over the built-in WCF WebHttp Services features found in `System.ServiceModel.Web`?   4. Is there a single solution that works for any client (web, Silverlight, etc.)? What suggestions do you have?"}
{"_id": "36535", "title": "What does your Lisp workflow look like?", "text": "I'm learning Lisp at the moment, coming from a language progression that is Locomotive BASIC -> Z80 Assembler -> Pascal -> C -> Perl -> C# -> Ruby. My approach is to simultaneously:   * write a simple web-scraper using SBCL, QuickLisp, closure-html, and drakma    * watch the SICP lectures I think this is working well; I'm developing good 'Lisp goggles', in that I can now read Lisp reasonably easily. I'm also getting a feel for how the Lisp ecosystem works, e.g. Quicklisp for dependencies. What I'm really missing, though, is a sense of how a seasoned Lisper actually _works_. When I'm coding for .NET, I have Visual Studio set up with ReSharper and VisualSVN. I write tests, I implement, I refactor, I commit. Then when I'm done enough of that to complete a story, I write some AUATs. Then I kick off a Release build on TeamCity to push the new functionality out to the customer for testing & hopefully approval. If it's an app that needs an installer, I use either WiX or InnoSetup, obviously building the installer through the CI system. So, my question is: as an experienced Lisper, what does _your_ workflow look like? Do you work mostly in the REPL, or in the editor? How do you do unit tests? Continuous integration? Packaging & deployment? When you sit down at your desk, steaming mug of coffee to one side and a framed photo of John McCarthy to the other, what is it that you _do_? Currently, I feel like I am getting to grips with Lisp coding, but not Lisp development ..."}
{"_id": "232469", "title": "How deeply programmer should know about internals of database engine?", "text": "I am learning SQL Server 2012 along with C#. In the past, I took database class in college, and have good grasp on SQL language and can write queries. However, looking at SQL Server documentation (or Oracle), it appears that DB engine (along with all the technologies that comes with it) are highly complex and are requiring significant time and effort to learn. Besides writing SQL queries, how deeply should programmer know about internals of database engine ?"}
{"_id": "232462", "title": "What is \"train\" based development?", "text": "I ran across yet another new term in development methodology, and I haven't been able to find a definition for it. Specifically, it's called \"train based development.\" Here are some examples of where I have seen this term. > Earlier this week, I asked our engineering leads and release managers to > take the Windows Metro version of Firefox off the trains. (Johnathan > Nightingale) https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/03/14/metro/ From the Mozilla careers web-site: > Experience working with both agile development methodology, and train-based > development/QA teams. I have heard of \"train\" before and not just in the context of Mozilla. But I haven't managed to find any good information about it on the net. When I googled \"train based software development\", I found very little information in the search results. The closest that I could dig out that separates the train from the wagons is that \"train\" is about making releases at regular intervals according to a schedule. But it also seems that \"train\" is a sort of concrete QA setup. **So, what is \"train based development\"?**"}
{"_id": "107465", "title": "How to teach a script to detect sarcasm?", "text": "I'm currently building a fun script, that basically matches given phrases and gives a predefined response based on the match-points. You can ask it to retrieve some information based on live feeds, run tasks, tell anecdotes or just chat with her. I already have built-in detection for badwords, caps lock or both. The program has a girl name and I tried to make as close to being a girly-girl as possible, on the logic terms (for example: everybody knows that most girly- girls take 700ms to respond to a question, joking of course). So here is a little example: > Client: WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?   >  Kiku: DONT USE THAT TONE WITH ME!   >  Client: #### you   >  Kiku: why are you being so mean to me :/ However, I really would like to add sarcasm-feature to it. So if you write something in sarcasm, then she will detect it and respond accordingly. Now this is a tricky part, **How do you teach a script, what sarcasm is?** To me more specific. What are the most common sarcastic words used today? Or how to get that statistic? How can I make the script understand the context of the given phrase? **UPDATE** As this question is getting alot of hype, I think things should be cleared out a bit more. It is very clear, that making a script fully detect sarcasm is basically impossible. At least in reasonable matter. However, I do believe that some amount of **possible** sarcasm could be detected. I currently have made it so far, that my script can detect a very limited sarcasm. I predefined some common sarcastic-words (however, alone they are useless.) For example: **like, whatever, yeah, right and great.** And then it first matches, the simple things, like uppercase and quoted: `THANKS you are so smart` or `oh you are so \"SMART\"`. Since the scripts main function is to do tasks or retrieve information, and afterwords it will ask if that was what you meant. Then I thought, adding \"thanks\" as a special variable. So `yeah thanks` or `whatever thanks` will trigger the possible sarcasm, and the script will ask you: \"Do I detect sarcasm?\" Your best bet would be to say \"sorry\" then, otherwise it will add a warning-point and if the limit is reached -- it will start ignoring you. As these very very simple algorithms seem to actually work, then this idea has a future, of course after alot of tuning and tweaking. However, is somebody alot smarter would make a open-source software with the same idea in mind. Then this feature could be hooked to alot of functions on the web. Customer care would probably benefit the most, however, this kind of software could also be used detecting \"flaggable\"-content."}
{"_id": "232465", "title": "Editing Copyright line in Apache2 license.txt", "text": "I wish to publish my program under Apache2 license. I have added the \"APPENDIX\" part of the license text to the top portion of my source.txt file and edited the copyright year and name. But when I add the license.txt file in the same archive with sourcecode, should I edit the copyright line wih my name and year? Or should I let the copy of license.txt intact as downloaded from apache site?"}
{"_id": "185868", "title": "Best Practice For Usage of Shall and Must While Writing Requirements", "text": "I sent out an email earlier reminding our developers that, _the use of the word, 'Shall', in your derived requirements should not follow over to your functional requirements. When writing functional requirements the word, 'Must', is used to describe the function a derived requirement must do.   Derived = System Shall be requirement   Functional = System must do requirment_ It was sent back by one of our Seniors that, that was wrong and that shall should be used in every requirement. Am I wrong here and Shall should be used in every requirement. I haven't been able to find anything to back that up."}
{"_id": "185869", "title": "Is path coverage stronger than condition coverage?", "text": "I have encountered (even in literature) two contradicting opinions related to path vs condition coverage (not branch or edge!). Some say Path coverage is stronger than the condition coverage, some say the opposite. Having code like this:               If(X<0 OR X>100)        DoStuff();      _Path coverage_ \\- 1 test case is needed to cover the path. With X=-1, the second expression will not be tested and possible bug will be missed.   _Condition coverage_ \\- test cases X=-1 and X=100 are needed to test both conditions. Am I missing something or condition coverage is really stronger than path coverage? **Condition coverage (ISTQB):** > **Our next level of coverage is called condition coverage. The basic concept > is that, when a decision is made by a complex expression that eventually > evaluates to TRUE or FALSE, we want to make sure that each atomic condition > is tested both ways.** _Practical Insight Into CMMI_ > Condition coverage measures the true and false outcome of each Boolean > subexpression. **References:** _Software Testing: Principles and Practices from Srinivasan Desikan,Gopalaswamy Ramesh:_ page 61 > Condition coverage is a much stronger criteria than path coverage, which in > turns is a much stronger criteria than statement coverage."}
{"_id": "251553", "title": "How to allow multiple plugins to provide data for multiple aggregation processes?", "text": "I'm working on a Java project in which we want to have data collection plugins that collect data to be processed by one or more data aggregation modules. The plugins will all written in-house. Say for example we have data collection plugins A, B and C and data aggegration module X. The modules A, B & C input data into tables that are different but have a few certain fields in common that X cares about. Sometimes the names of the fields are different, but as far as the algorithm is concerned they are \"the same\". What's the best way to get X to operate on these different data sources while still allowing for a new data collection plugin D to be integrated, as well as the possibility of a new aggregation module Y that operates on some or all of the data sources? My main concerns are about dependencies - for example, should the data collection plugins know about the aggregation modules, or the other way round? Or neither? Should the collection plugins implement interfaces that the aggregators can then make use of, and if so then where should be interfaces be defined?"}
{"_id": "70223", "title": "What is the regarded current best practises regarding the \"this\" keyword in front of field and methods in c#?", "text": "Unless it is needed to differentiate between a variable and field with the same name, I never put `this.` in front of a field or any member access in C#. I see this as no different to `m_` prefix that used to be common in C++, and think if you really need to specify that it's a member, your class is too big. However, there are a number of people in my office that strongly disagree. What is considered current best practises regarding `this.`? EDIT: To clarify, I never use `m_` and only use `this.` when absolutely necessary."}
{"_id": "251559", "title": "IS C++ a cross-platform language?", "text": "If I create a game in C++ on a mac using a library which is the same for both windows and osx, will the game be playable on both windows and os x or it will only work in os x because I done it in Xcode? Is SDL a great library to do your first game after learning the basics and syntax of C++ (I found syntax to be close to Java)?"}
{"_id": "146017", "title": "Handling and organizing data from save file?", "text": "I'm working on a webapp (python/javascript) to modify a game's save file. The file has certain bytes representing player information, such as the gun, the equipment, etc. The idea is to show an interface representing the information in the file, allow the user to make changes, send the data back to the server, which modifies the file, and allows the user to download it. My problem is that I don't know which functions should be handled in javascript, and which in Python. I need python for reading the file, but does that mean I should use it to handle the data? If I read the information into relevant variables to send back with JSON, is it redundant because I'm not doing anything with the information in Python other than sending it back? I've currently been indecisive about two possible ways to go about it. One, and this is the way I currently have it set up, is to handle the file with Python; figure where certain things are, read them into dictionaries, turn it into json, send that to javascript, and then parse the json and update the gui. As I said before, this feels like the wrong way to do it. The other thing I was considering was to just read the entire file and send that back to javascript to work with. This also seems really incorrect. Javascript (at least as it's implemented in browsers) isn't meant to handle files, and packing/unpacking functions would have to be custom - one of the things I'm seeing as a red flag about this method. The files are only about 1-2kb, so that wouldn't be a reason not to send it back to the page. In fact, the json I'm sending back is larger than just the contents of the file would be. Still though, I don't much like the idea. So what do I do? I'm also having trouble organizing the actual code. I know it's bad practice to stick a lot of code into a single function, but dividing into many other functions has made it hard to keep track of things. Is there a good language-agnostic book that will help me with this?"}
{"_id": "150334", "title": "Need a file location in Business logic layer from UI layer", "text": "Here's what I'm doing: I am reading a file in BLL, which is sitting in the UI layer. Currently the application is using `HttpContext.Current.Request.PhysicalApplicationPath` to find the absolute path written in BLL. I feel this is not a good design and I am thinking that I should pass this information in some kind of structure to BLL or I could use a helper method to get that. Please let me know which one is better and if there are any better solutions / suggestions. Please ask if you need more details."}
{"_id": "112130", "title": "Should I use chained functions in Java?", "text": "From time to time, I'll have a class in Java that takes a multitude of parameters, however, sometimes when I am creating an object of this class, I don't need to use all the parameters. As of now, I usually set the parameters to null or 0 depending on the type. However, would it be easier if I just created chained methods to set certain fields in the class? So, instead of: `MyClass someInstance = new MyClass(param0, null, null, 0, null, param5);` Have something like this: `MyClass someInstance = (new MyClass()).setParam0(param0).setParam5(param5);` Does this go against OOP or Java's usual paradigm?"}
{"_id": "112137", "title": "Is @staticmethod proliferation a code smell?", "text": "Consider a Python class with a number of `@staticmethod` methods and few instance methods. The static methods don't accept an instance of the defining class as parameters.   * Do you think that all these static methods don't belong to the class and should be factored out?   * If yes, which approach would you take to clean up such code?"}
{"_id": "34970", "title": "If you were to build an app like Craigslist, would use an off-the-shelf framework or write your own?", "text": "Title is the question. And why I am asking is because from what I read about most PHP frameworks (e.g. Code Igniter, Kohana, Cake, Zend) is that they're ether too complex, or are designed mostly for small applications (like blogs)."}
{"_id": "224543", "title": "How should an embedded OS be combined with user code?", "text": "As a side-effect of an embedded project I've been working on, I've developed a small operating system for an ARM processor. While the OS and my user code are in separate directories and have clean boundaries between them, they're built into a single image using a single Makefile. I'd like to release the OS as open source. It consists of an exokernel and userland driver libraries. What I'm trying to decide is how a user of this OS should combine it with their own code at build time so they have a single image to flash. I can think of three possibilities: 1) Have the user include the OS source files as part of their project. They'd be recreating the setup I currently have, and it's how FreeRTOS, for example, appears to do it (although it only has three files). 2) Have the OS build itself into a .a file that the user code can link with. That would allow the user full control over memory placement using their own linker script (and allow the linker to tell them when a combined text, BSS or data section exceeds its space). 3) Have the OS build itself into a raw binary that expects to have the user code concatenated onto the end of it. The user code would begin with a small header (placed by the linker script) that had the address of the main function. The user code would also link with a .a file of just the userland drivers, not the kernel. (1) would make it easiest for me to develop the OS and my user code in parallel with git subtree. (2) seems to have the most useful link process. (3) gives the biggest separation. If you were using it, which would you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "194258", "title": "Applications of heapsort", "text": "Heapsort is a sorting algorithm that has a time complexity of O(nlogn), and performs sorting using O(1) space complexity. However, I know that because it's unstable, it doesn't find many applications (f.e. compared to other sorting algorithms). I know it's used for interval scheduling. **What are some practical applications of heapsort?** **EDIT:** As @AProgrammer pointed out, quick sort isn't stable either."}
{"_id": "71621", "title": "What is the difference between a non-functional requirement and a quality attribute?", "text": "I'm trying to understand the difference between non-functional requirements and quality attributes. Are they the same thing? You can find a set of quality attributes in the ISO9126 standard. I know that each system is defined by a set of functional requirements and every of this requirements has associated one or more quality attributes. For example, suppose that you have the requirement that describes the login functionality of a system. You can associate to that requirement the attributes of security and performance. If i say that the system can not take more than 1 second to respond, I'm talking about a constraint. So, where the concept of non-functional requirements kicks in? Are they defined by the users? How can I identify them?"}
{"_id": "71623", "title": "Are you obliged to provide old employers with access to protected resources?", "text": "Firstly, a disclaimer. This question is not because I'm a disgruntled employee planning to hide some malicious code which I can later blackmail my employer with. I actually quite like the people I work with - just simply curious. So if an old employer needed a password for some resource that only I had. Would I be obliged to give it to them or could I (probably unwisely) stick it to them and either refuse or charge an outrageous \"consulting\" fee for providing that password? Or what if I designed some component for them like some sort of underlying encrypted security layer that required some a hash key that only I had, would I be obliged to give it to them? These two scenarios are generally the fault of the employer, but what if in the third scenario, I built this component in stealth, without them actually knowing? I don't necessarily mean the component was built with the sole intention of locking the employer out in the future, it may have actually served a good purpose - it just never got documented how it functioned because company had poor documentation processes or developers were too busy etc. In that scenario, when they finally need this hash key, would I be obliged to provide it?"}
{"_id": "202368", "title": "terminologies and design/process clarification", "text": "I work at a BPO, actually a call center. My bosses saw the html tool I made to help me document customer concerns and steps I made to help them faster and more easy. With that, they made me the reporting guy. Then they asked me to create a executable file (.exe) which generates the stats or metrics of agents. I used c#, and ms access for the database for it. It took me 6 months to finish it, on my own. But I feel that's kind of a long period for a project like that. And when I look at my codes, I'm not satisfied myself. I really want to pursue programming/software development. Its just that I don't have proper training or education for it. I took computer engineering in college but my school isn't that good (I want to share the reason why but it'll just make this post longer). I've been doing research, reading ebooks about programming but I still can't grasp the essence of it. It's like, I can easily learn a language, IDE, technology etc., but I can't put them together. Can you, experts, tell me how I could see the bigger picture? Can you help me understand the following:   1. How are companies that makes/provides software solutions/programs start a project? Or how do they make them, in terms of process?   2. I've been seeing terms like software tester, unit testing, automation test etc. What are those and why are they being used or incorporated in the process? I have so much questions to ask, but when I try to post them, I tend to forget them, like at the tip of tounge. I hope you experts, can shed some light on those questions. I'm not trying to solicit points, but I really want to use the chat feature here so that when I have a quick question and learn more about programming/software development, I could easily chat with experts."}
{"_id": "108952", "title": "A testing environment for JavaScript other than browser?", "text": "When I want to test something in JavaScript, I open up a new browser window (mostly Firefox) and start writing code in the provided console (mostly Firebug). However, this tends to be really tedious and slow. Is there an environment, like an IDE with self-execution capability for example, in which we can test JavaScript? Guide: I'm looking for something like jsfiddle, but not in the browser, and not online. I'd like to have an execution environment which is both off-line, and is not a browser. All I'm asking is to have something like the Firebug Console as a separate applications (preferably Windows application) which can be opened by double- clicking, and in which, you can write JavaScript code and hit execute. That's all. In simpler terms, all I want is Firebug's console, without Firefox. Do we have such a thing on the market?"}
{"_id": "108951", "title": "How do you call a \"Proxy\" that delegates to *several* implementations?", "text": "In a traditional GoF Proxy, you have an Interface, an Implementation, that implements the Interface, and a Proxy that also implements the Interface, references an instance of Implementation, and delegates the calls on the Interface methods to the same methods in the Implementation instance. Say you would call the Interface/Implementation pair a \"Fragment\", and you would have several different such pairs. Now imagine you create a Whole Interface that implemented all those Fragment interfaces, and a single Whole Proxy that implemented the Whole Interface, and delegated to the appropriate Fragment Implementation instance. A code (Java) example:               // Fragment A:     interface FragmentA { ... }     class FragmentAImpl implements FragmentA { ... }     // Whole A. That is the interface that \"clients use\"     interfaces WholeA extends FragmentA { // EMPTY! }     // *automatically generated* Proxy:     class ProxyA implements WholeA {         private FragmentA implA;         // Implements FragmentA through delegation to implA     }          // Fragment B:     interface FragmentB { ... }     class FragmentBImpl implements FragmentB { ... }     // Whole B. That is the interface that \"clients use\"     interfaces WholeB extends WholeA, FragmentB { // EMPTY! }     // *automatically generated* Proxy:     class ProxyB extends ProxyA implements WholeB {         private FragmentB implB;         // Implements FragmentB through delegation to implB     }          // Fragment C: similar to Fragment B, but with different *added behavior*.      Is this pattern at all (since Patterns must be common solution to common problems)? And if so, as it got a name? Or could it be cleanly defined as a combination of patterns? Being able to clearly describe how this code works in terms of patterns would make it much easier to explain to others how create compatible code, and help to find a framework that already implements this pattern. A _Proxy_ normally delegates to _a single instance_. A _Facade_ normally offers _a different interface_ to that _multiple objects_ it hides. A _Bridge_ also offers _a different interface_ to that the _single instance_ it hides. A _Composite_ expects all components to _share the same base interface_. A _Decorator_ extends the interface of the wrapped object, like here, but normally _implements the additional functionality itself_ , instead of delegating to another objects. A Whole that implements a single Fragment is just a Proxy pattern, but a Whole that extends another Whole is closest to a Decorator pattern. There are several reasons to do it this way. Firstly, client code should see WholeB as extending WholeA, although the implementer of FragmentB cannot extend FragmentA (which was implemented by someone else). Secondly, references to WholeX (ProxyX) stay valid, even if implementation of FragmentX is replaced a runtime. Thirdly, both ProxyB and ProxyC can share _the same instance_ of FragmentAImpl."}
{"_id": "210402", "title": "Class Design for special business rules", "text": "I'm developing an application that allows people to place custom manufacturing orders. However, while most require similar paperwork, some of them have custom paperwork that only they require. My current class design has a Manufacturer class, of which of one of the member variables is an array of RequiredSubmission objects. However, there are two issues that I am somewhat concerned about. First, some manufacturers are willing to accept either a standard form or their own custom form. I'm thinking of storing this in the RequiredSubmission object, with an array of alternate forms that are a valid substitute. I'm not sure that this is ideal, however. The major issue, however, is that some manufacturers have deadline cycles. For example, forms A, B and C have to be delivered by January 1, while payment must be rendered by January 10. If you miss those, you'll have to wait until the next cycle. I'm not exactly sure how I can get this to work with my existing classes\u2014how can I say \"this set of dates all belong to the same cycle, with date A for form A, date B for form B, etc.\" I would greatly appreciate any insights on how to best design these classes."}
{"_id": "202361", "title": "How to convince my teammates that spawning numerous threads is a bad design?", "text": "I've stumbled upon this problem when tried to run our application in bad network conditions; it spawns hundreds of threads (which exist long time before termination), and with time the application crashes. However, other developers answered this is \"not a bug\" and \"as designed\".   I have a strong gut feeling that spawning so much threads instead of using async calls is defective design, in the first place. However, my teammates disagree.   Any ideas how I can convince them? UPD can I say that spawning threads for short running tasks is a bad design? What arguments I can use to support this statement?"}
{"_id": "198539", "title": "Re-architecting a classic inheritance design", "text": "I have the opportunity to rewrite a core piece of a project (C#) that is inheritance-heavy and feels increasingly restrictive in how it is designed. The scenario is pretty simple, imagine an application that is built to handle various small tasks. Every task is unique in it's functionality so it implements an ITask interface with a few simple methods that get implemented by each task class (e.g. Init(), Start(), Stop(), etc). In addition to the ITask interface there is also an abstract BaseTask class that all tasks inherit from. This BaseTask class is sort of an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach that contains useful pieces of functionality that the tasks often require. For example, all tasks record their status and progress the exact same way so this logic is defined in the BaseTask and available to all children through a protected method. Or to give another example, some tasks have to send email notifications out when certain conditions are met, so again, the BaseTask provides access to the core smtp functionality of the app for this purpose. There are many examples of these kind of 'helper' methods/properties The problem of course is that this base class has already grown unwieldy and cluttered with properties and methods that are not universal to all tasks and it's starting to introduce more problems than it is solving. For example, anytime a change is required to the base class you find yourself in a position where you might wind up breaking some (or all) of the tasks. It also just seems like its breaking encapsulation and the single responsibility principal. It's also quite clear how this happened in the first place (and a common occurrence too). Initially this was a very small, specialized application but it blew up in terms of scope and size very quickly and what was initially probably not a bad decision architecturally has proven inflexible and awkward. Where would you start with something like this? How would you approach the problem and what principals or design patters would you choose? Thank you very much"}
{"_id": "76390", "title": "PHP email blasts using a cron job", "text": "My PHP application needs to send product expiry notifications to customers everyday. I am thinking of:   1. A one-time cron job for a php script that identifies the customers from a table of 10000 rows then send an email to each one using the SwiftMailer library. Each email will have unique content so I am not planning to do \"batch send\". * _Con: *_ Too slow and the server may kill it.   2. A recurring five-minute cron job that would send a definite number of emails (eg. 20) for every execution. * _Con: *_ All customers may not receive emails since the the queue may not finish within 24 hours. Please give alternatives and suggestions. TIA."}
{"_id": "138866", "title": "How to rewrite a TCP MMOG server designed to run in a single machine, in a distributed way?", "text": "I have a MMOG server running on C++, using winsockets. My server won't support more than 200 players. I had the idea of redesigning it so it will use multiple servers instead of one, so, maybe, for example, each server could take care of a number of players, and, if it was too laggy, it could transfer the responsability of that player to other server. I'm not sure of how to program a consistent game logic like that, though. Are there techniques for this?"}
{"_id": "76396", "title": "How can you make a cluster run a task only once?", "text": "If you had a task that you wanted to run only once on a cluster of servers, at a regular interval what would be the best way of achieving this? _The definition of cluster in this case is 2 or more identical servers with distributed sessions sitting behind a load balancer._ **Use Case:** You have a task that is expensive to run that should only be run once per X hours. This job could for instance iterates over a bunch of records and updates their status.   * Worst case scenario is that having the job run twice invalidates your data.   * Best case scenario is that the job utilises resources on all your servers. **Requirements Summary:**   1. The job must still run even if one of the nodes are down.    2. The job must only be run once per schedule.   3. If multiple jobs are scheduled at the same time or at overlapping times that the number of running jobs is distributed equally between the servers.   4. The machines must have the same code base and be synchronised via NTP.   5. The configuration may differ between node and node, by environment variables.   6. The job has to start on time or within a given interval of the assigned time. (say 5 minutes for example) **Possible solutions**   * Set one node as the master node, this doesn't work as it violates 1 above.   * Make a request that the load balancer balances to kick off the job. Unfortunatly this has the side effect that if you have multiple jobs running at the same time they may all be run by the same machine. This would have to run in Java, in a servlet container. However it isn't coding the jobs I'm looking for. Surely this is a solved problem with known best solution. * * * **Related question.** Schedule job executes twice on cluster This isn't a duplicate as the solution is insufficient as per those 5 requirements given above. The most upvoted solution suffers from a race problem, and the second solution violates requirement 3"}
{"_id": "76398", "title": "Help us with our git workflow", "text": "We have a web application that gets deployed to multiple regions around our state. An instance of the application for each region. We maintain a staging and production (master) branch in our repository, but we were wondering what is the best way of maintaining each instances codebase. It's similar at the core, but we have to give each region the ability to make specific requests that may not make it into the core of the application. Right now we have branches for each region, like region_one_staging, and region_one_production. At the rate we're growing we'll have hundreds of branches here in the next few years. Is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "171303", "title": "Should I open Source my iOS application?", "text": "I developed an iOS application as a student and I am currently distributing it for free in the app store. I have received a few enquires about adding features to the app including one person who would like the app to be open source so they can add features themselves. What concerns should I have if I open source my iOS application? Which open source license should I use?"}
{"_id": "171300", "title": "DB Object passing between classes singleton, static or other?", "text": "So I'm designing a reporting system at work it's my first project written OOP and I'm stuck on the design choice for the DB class.   Obviously I only want to create one instance of the DB class per-session/user and then pass it to each of the classes that need it. What I don't know it what's best practice for implementing this. Currently I have code like the following:-               class db     {         private $user = 'USER';         private $pass = 'PASS';         private $tables = array( 'user','report', 'etc...');              function __construct(){             //SET UP CONNECTION AND TABLES         }     };          class report{     function __construct ($params = array(), $db, $user)      {                 //Error checking/handling trimed         //$db is the database object we created         $this->db = $db;              //$this->user is the user object for the logged in user         $this->user = $user;              $this->reportCreate();      }          public function setPermission($permissionId = 1)     {         //Note the $this->db is this the best practise solution?        $this->db->permission->find($permissionId)              //Note the $this->user is this the best practise solution?                 $this->user->checkPermission(1)              $data=array();         $this->db->reportpermission->insert($data)     }     };//end report      I've been reading about using static classes and have just come across Singletons (though these appear to be pass\u00e9 already?) so what's current best practice for doing this?"}
{"_id": "108483", "title": "Outsourcing: question about code ownership and copyright", "text": "I want to ask a question from an employer point of view. I know that you are not really lawyers and stuff but I think you might help. I'm into negotiations with a freelancer (from India) to create a specific standalone application to do some file convertions. This is a program that I want to brand and resell. I got a good offer from them because they have already created such software in the past. But I'm having two issues: a) The program was previously made by them for another client of theirs, under unclear terms (or I haven't explicitly asked yet). From what they told me, they created the program for him for his private use. It seems that they still have copyright/ownership of the source code. b) They still want to keep the copyright/ownership of the code. I don't really mind, but in reality, I want to know how this can or can't affect me in the future. For example, what if the sales go well and suddenly they decide they want a piece of profit because the code is theirs? Something like that. Now another question: Is there a difference between the source code of a program and the compiled version of it? For example, I get the final product (as in an executable/installer) that I own and have the rights to, and they keep the rights for the underlying technology. Is this possible? And lastly, what do you think is the best to approach this? I think that I can allow them to keep the copyright of the code but sign a resell rights agreement to me for the final product. Is this valid at all? Can it be done?"}
{"_id": "78068", "title": "Learning C# quickly (given I already know\u2026)", "text": "Ok, I want to learn C# for a job interview (they want C# or Java, I know Java, but figure knowing both would be good). I already know Java, C++, C, F# and to some extent Python and Pascal. What are the big differences between C# and Java or C++? What are some good resources to look into, given I want to get a basic understanding in couple of hours? BTW: I told them that I didn't know C#, saying that I did however know these other languages, and that I could probably pick it up quite quickly."}
{"_id": "108487", "title": "Conversion of a number from Single precision floating point representation to a Half precision floating point", "text": "I have a code where I have to work on Half precision floating point representation numbers. To achieve that I have created my own C++ class fp16 with all operators(arithmetic logical, relational) related to this type overloaded with my custom functions, while using a Single precision floating point number with a Half precision floating point number. Half precision floating point = 1 Sign bit , 5 exponent bits , 10 significand bits = 16 bit Single precision floating point = 1 Sign bit, 8 exponent bits, 23 significand bits = 32 bits So what I do to convert from a Single precision floating point number to a Half precision floating point number:- For significand bits - I use truncation i.e. loose 13 bits from the 32 bits to get 10 bits significand for half precision float. What should I do to handle the exponent bits. How do I go from 8 exponent bits to 5 exponent bits? Any good reading material would help."}
{"_id": "78065", "title": "Software Methodologies", "text": "I'm very new in this area but I spend a long time to read about all this methodologies (SSADM, AGILE, RAD, SPIRAL, WATERFALL, INCREMENTAL, DSDM, XP, Iterative) in detail, how do they work, the advantageous and disadvantageous and ... Now the bad part part is: I understand them all separately but can't understand :   1. Is it like one of them let say **SSADM** ( WITH 5- 7 STAGES ) is what we try to achieve and we should use the rest (RAD, AGILE AND ..) to do so.   2. Or its like some of them are the main Categories like (SSADM, AGILE) and the rest becoming their subcategories?   3. Or no there are all separate things with no connections which in this case i can't understand stuff like this from Wikipedia: > SSADM is a waterfall method for the production of an Information System > design. SSADM can be thought to represent a pinnacle of the rigorous > document-led approach to system design, and contrasts with more contemporary > Rapid Application Development methods such as DSDM."}
{"_id": "233733", "title": "How can I explain this is an anti-pattern?", "text": "I recently started at a new job. The existing system works OK but is poorly designed and hard to maintain, and they are planning to rebuild it in MVC and I fear it will be much worse. (Not because of MVC) I want to discourage the lead dev from using an anti-pattern Existing issues include   * Hard coded strings in the business logic which are also tied to the interface (e.g. `if (x.CustomerType.Contains(\"Shipping Customer\") foobar();` is _everywhere_   * Some classes map to dbTables directly (which is good). But because the software has to be \"easy to add features to \", there is a Sharepoint-esque \"DynamicData\" table for storing new fields that the customer may require. a la `[FieldName] [FieldValue] [FieldType]`   * Refusal to use Linq but chains lamda queries for about 2 page widths.   * Exceptions not explicitly thrown or rethrown, but not handled properly (the client can see the call stack because it is just dumped into a popup dialog)   * Refusal to use `var` but loves the idea of `dynamic` everything.  What is the best way to go about convincing my lead dev to avoid these horrible methods and not put _everything_ in the generic key-value-pair table in version 2.0? (Considering I am new here and the team lead has been here for many years)"}
{"_id": "233735", "title": "Left and Right most Derivation", "text": "So i understand the semantics of derivations as far as Backus Naur Form goes. One thing I cannot find in any text book or the various lecturers' notes that are on-line is this. When would a right most derivation be beneficial over a left most derivation? Would a compiler or generator always use either left, or right, or would it use both? So here's an example: Suppose we had the following language sentence: A = B + C * A Example Language Grammar Permitting the Above:               <assign> \uf0e0 <id> = <expr>      <id> \uf0e0 A | B | C     <expr> \uf0e0 <expr> + <term>             |<term>     <term>\uf0e0 <term> * <factor>             |<factor>     <factor> \uf0e0 ( expr )             | <id>      Left Most Derivation:               <assign>   => <id> = <expr>                   => A = <expr> + <term>                   => A = <term> + <term>                     => A = <factor> + <term>                    => A = <id> + <term>                    => A = B + <term>                    => A = B + <term> * <factor>                   => A = B + <factor> * <factor>                   => A = B + <id> * <factor>                   => A = B + C * < term>                   => A = B + C * <factor>                   => A = B + C * <id>                   => A = B + C * A      Right Most Derivation:               <assign>  => <id> = <expr>           => <id> = <expr> + <term>           => <id> = <expr> + <term>   * <factor>           => <id> = <expr> + <term> * <id>           => <id> = <expr> + <term> * A           => <id> = <expr> + <factor> * A           => <id> = <expr> + <id> * A           => <id> = <expr> + C * A           => <id> = <term> + C * A           => <id> = <id> + C * A           => <id> = B + C * A           =>  A = B + C & C"}
{"_id": "231460", "title": "Don't Repeat Yourself across integration-test code and production code?", "text": "I totally believe in not repeating yourself in production code. I've accepted the idea that you shouldn't repeat yourself within test code. But what happens when you have production services that would simplify test code? Let me pose an example. We have a service that accesses the Doohickey API. The Doohickey API is complex, by necessity, and we have a bunch of code to simplify it for our needs. Now I need to write some automated tests for our service. My tests need to set up data in the service and it would be really handy to reuse that facade. But then I get into an argument with myself, that goes roughly like this: \"If you introduce a bug in the Facade, the test might not show it.\" \"But, if you just take a copy, then when Dohickey Inc upgrade their API, you need to make the change in two places.\" \"True, but maybe that's a good thing. We can upgrade production code first, manage test data using the old, known, still-supported API and test the new version thoroughly.\" And then I think maybe I'm overthinking the problem. Does anyone have experience with this kind of issue? If so, which way did you go, and did you regret it at all later? Edit: Early comments suggest a more specific example is required. Say I have a service that can create a product AND create an order. I have the following test to write ...               Given that product X exists     When customer Y orders product X     Then an order should exist for customer Y, including only product X      For the \"When\" part of this, I contact my service, which uses a facade around the Dohickey Purchasing API to create the order. The \"Given\" and \"Then\" steps should create a product and get an order, but they shouldn't go through the service to do so. Perhaps my service doesn't have that functionality, and if it does then I will test it elsewhere. BUT the facade that lives within the service would make the test code much simpler. So should I reference the production code and use it or copy / rewrite the facade?"}
{"_id": "173238", "title": "Where is it permissible to add logging code in a MVC model?", "text": "Working on a C# WinForms program that is written in a MVC ( actually Model- View-Presenter) style and I want to add a few lines of code that is responsible for logging some events. Where should I write two or three lines of code that I need? Should I write it in the Presenter section? To get an idea, here is some lines of sample code that already exists in the **_Save()_** metohd in **_Company.MyApplication.Presenter.MyPresenter.cs class:_** he has written codes lie the following in this part of presenter:               private void Save(Helper.SaveStatusEnum status)     {         if (notification.CheckLocks(orderIdCollection))         {             using (new HourglassController())             {                 controller.FireActiveCellLeaving();                 ViewDocumentedValues();                      int result = saveController.Save(status);                      if (result == Helper.SAVE_SUCCESSFUL)                 {                     //  IS IT OK TO WRITE MY COUPLE LINES OF CODE IN HERE???????????                     model.Dirty = false;                          if ((model.CurrentStatus == Helper.OrderStatusEnum.Complete) || (model.CurrentStatus == Helper.OrderStatusEnum.Corrected))                     {                         controller.EnableDisableSheet(false);                     }                          CheckApplicationState();                     SheetHelper.ClearUnsavedDataRowImage(view.ActiveSheet);                 }                 else                 {                     MessageBox.Show(\"An unexpected error occuring trying to save.\");                 }             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "173234", "title": "Data structure for pattern matching", "text": "Let's say you have an input file with many entries like these:               date, ticker, open, high, low, close, <and some other values>      And you want to execute a pattern matching routine on the entries(rows) in that file, using a candlestick pattern, for example. (See, Doji) And that pattern can appear on any uniform time interval (let t = 1s, 5s, 10s, 1d, 7d, 2w, 2y, and so on...). Say a pattern matching routine can take an arbitrary number of rows to perform an analysis and contain an arbitrary number of subpatterns. In other words, some patterns may require 4 entries to operate on others may require more or less. Say also that the routine (may) later have to find and classify extrema (local and global maxima and minima as well as inflection points) for the ticker over a closed interval, for example, you could say that a cubic function (x^3) has the extrema on the interval [-1, 1]. (See link) Given that I don't know the size of the input file upon reading? What would be the most natural choice in terms of a data structure? What about an interface that conforms a `Ticker` object containing one row of data to a collection of `Ticker` so that an arbitrary pattern can be applied to the data. For example, let's say I have a pattern that requires `n` elements to form a match, I need to apply the pattern to those elements and then analyze each one of those chunks. What's the first thing that comes to mind? I chose a doubly-linked circular linked list that has the following methods:               push_front()     push_back()     pop_front()     pop_back()     [] //overloaded, can be used with negative parameters      But that data structure seems very clumsy, since so much pushing and popping is going on, I have to make a deep copy of the data structure before running an analysis on it. So, I don't know if I made my question very clear -- but the main points are:   1. What kind of data structures should be considered when analyzing sequential data points to conform to a pattern that does NOT require random access?   2. What kind of data structures should be considered when classifying extrema of a set of data points? * * * **Updated** Here's the main analyzer loop for my program (in some pseudocode that's a polyglot of a few languages)               data = new circular_linkedList()     // in my case, data is a circular linked list of elements.     foreach(element in dataFeed) {         data.push_front(element)     }          step_value = Pattern.numberRequiredElementsForMatch()     buffer = new circular_linkedList()     // at this point, you'll have a circular linked list     // where pop_back() will return the oldest entry and      // entry, and pop_front() will return the newest          // initialize the buffer     for(value in range(step_value()) {         buffer.push_back(data.pop_back())         // fill a buffer with the number of         // values required for a match.          // so now buffer will contain         // [elementk, ... , elementk+n]         // where buffer[0] < ... < buffer[n]     }     do {         last = buffer[len(buffer)]         ...         first = buffer[0]              Pattern.match(first, ... , last)         buffer.pop_front() // remove the first element         buffer.push_back(data.pop_back()) //add another element to the back               } while (!data.isEmpty())          ...      Anyway, that's a basic idea of what I have going on. The problem is that the way I'm doing it now, I have to reiterate through the loop to apply another pattern. (buffer sizes differ) It just seems inefficient to do that. Also, what happens when there's no more data in the buffer and it's not evenly divisible by the number of elements needed by a match?"}
{"_id": "173235", "title": "Why do old programming languages continue to be revised?", "text": "This question _is not,_ \"Why do people still use old programming languages?\" I understand that quite well. In fact the two programming languages I know best are C and Scheme, both of which date back to the 70s. Recently I was reading about the changes in C99 and C11 versus C89 (which seems to still be the most-used version of C in practice and the version I learned from K&R). Looking around, it seems like every programming language in heavy use gets a new specification at least once per decade or so. Even Fortran is still getting new revisions, despite the fact that most people using it are still using FORTRAN 77. Contrast this with the approach of, say, the typesetting system TeX. In 1989, with the release of TeX 3.0, Donald Knuth declared that TeX was feature- complete and future releases would contain only bug fixes. Even beyond this, he has stated that upon his death, \"all remaining bugs will become features\" and absolutely no further updates will be made. Others are free to fork TeX and have done so, but the resulting systems are renamed to indicate that they are different from the official TeX. This is not because Knuth thinks TeX is perfect, but because he understands the value of a stable, predictable system that will do the same thing in fifty years that it does now. Why do most programming language designers not follow the same principle? Of course, when a language is relatively new, it makes sense that it will go through a period of rapid change before settling down. And no one can really object to minor changes that don't do much more than codify existing pseudo- standards or correct unintended readings. But when a language still seems to need improvement after ten or twenty years, why not just fork it or start over, rather than try to change what is already in use? If some people really want to do object-oriented programming in Fortran, why not create \"Objective Fortran\" for that purpose, and leave Fortran itself alone? I suppose one could say that, regardless of future revisions, C89 is already a standard and nothing stops people from continuing to use it. This is sort of true, but connotations do have consequences. GCC will, in pedantic mode, warn about syntax that is either deprecated or has a subtly different meaning in C99, which means C89 programmers can't just totally ignore the new standard. So there must be some benefit in C99 that is sufficient to impose this overhead on everyone who uses the language. This is a real question, not an invitation to argue. Obviously I do have an opinion on this, but at the moment I'm just trying to understand why this isn't just how things are done already. I suppose the question is: > What are the (real or perceived) advantages of updating a language standard, > as opposed to creating a new language based on the old?"}
{"_id": "76031", "title": "Is doctrine 2 fast enough?", "text": "I need to build a social network that is expecting very high traffic, 10k - 50k + registrations in a day, not even including visitors, pageviews, image uploads, etc..., a lot of database activity. We have a solid quad core dedicated server right now with 8GB ddr3 and 2tb hdd sata. Will doctrine be to slow as far as queries and load time to handle such a high traffic website?"}
{"_id": "146909", "title": "How can I apply Six Sigma in a software development environment?", "text": "I am a Java developer, but I was asked to learn about applying Six Sigma with the goal of increasing our organization's profits. I have read that Six Sigma can be applied in all environments, but I'm interested in the nuances of applying it to software development. Which concepts of Six Sigma can be applied to a software development environment and how can I effectively apply them? Are there any resources that discuss Six Sigma being applied specifically within a software development environment?"}
{"_id": "228338", "title": "Practical Use of Depency Injection (IoC) Container", "text": "I am creating a MVC-ish framework in PHP. I am trying to implement a DI Container to allow the creation of controller objects (among others). My MVC framework is pretty typical. Each module (or component if you wish) has a controller responsible for executing requests. These module controllers typically extend a base `Controller` class. All controllers will accept `Request` and `Response` objects as arguments. The confusion occurs because some controllers may need different arguments in order to function. For example: Many controllers will need a `Database` object; Controllers which send mail may need a `Mailer` object; while a controller which logs data may need a `Log` object. The DI Container will contain the recipes for creating all these controllers. My front controller needs to be able create any of these controller objects, as specified by a request. Furthermore, each controller needs to be able to create any other controller. **How do I get my front controller and module controllers to access the DI Container in a way that doesn't result in a dependency on the DI Container by each controller?** I actually don't mind if the front controller is dependent on the container, I am more concerned about the module controllers. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "180996", "title": "How can I hide confidential data in my open source project?", "text": "I have an open source project that uploads files to DropBox among several file hosts. Right now I am screen scraping for DropBox. To use their API, I have to hardcode a SECRET KEY provided by them to me for OAuth authentication. But I'm afraid that the key won't be secret if it is visible plainly for anyone to see. It is 'possible' for someone malicious to use my key to upload a virus to a user's account (who already allowed access to my app) that will spread to their pc (if they had desktop sync enabled) and to others' pc (if they had shared folders) and so on. :O I found this unanswered question that has the same problem as mine. But I would like to know generally how one would hide confidential data in an open source project. I have one idea.   * Have a placeholder in the source code like \"<SECRET KEY HERE>\" and fill it only when building binary for release? (yuck!) Any decent idea?"}
{"_id": "228335", "title": "What is 'Asp.net Handler'?", "text": "I read in a book 'beginning asp.net 4.5 in c#' that when some one type the URL of the asp.net website, the browser send the request to the server and if the server find any ASP.NET markup or controls then it will leave this or map this to something called asp.net handler. So, what is it this handler? Is it the server itself or another thing in the server?"}
{"_id": "189811", "title": "Extreme Programming Daily Commits", "text": "Isn't daily commits (committing all changes before going home) an XP practice? What are the benefits of following this? What are the risks of not following this?"}
{"_id": "147059", "title": "The modern way to perform error handling...", "text": "I've been pondering this problem for a while now and find myself continually finding caveats and contradictions, so I'm hoping someone can produce a conclusion to the following: ### Favour exceptions over error codes As far as I'm aware, from working in the industry for four years, reading books and blogs, etc. the current best practice for handling errors is to throw exceptions, rather than returning error codes (not necessarily an error code, but a type representing an error). But - to me this seems to contradict... ### Coding to interfaces, not implementations We code to interfaces or abstractions to reduce coupling. We don't know, or want to know, the specific type and implementation of an interface. So how can we possibly know what exceptions we should be looking to catch? The implementation could throw 10 different exceptions, or it could throw none. When we catch an exception surely we're making assumptions about the implementation? Unless - the interface has... ### Exception specifications Some languages allow developers to state that certain methods throw certain exceptions (Java for example, uses the `throws` keyword.) From the calling code's point of view this seems fine - we know explicitly which exceptions we might need to catch. But - this seems to suggest a... ### Leaky abstraction Why should an interface specify which exceptions can be thrown? What if the implementation doesn't need to throw an exception, or needs to throw other exceptions? There's no way, at an interface level, to know which exceptions an implementation may want to throw. So... ### To conclude Why are exceptions preferred when they seem (in my eyes) to contradict software best practices? And, if error codes are so bad (and I don't need to be sold on the vices of error codes), is there another alternative? What is the current (or soon to be) state of the art for error handling that meets the requirements of best practices as outlined above, but doesn't rely on calling code checking the return value of error codes?"}
{"_id": "183710", "title": "Cost of setInterval in Javascript", "text": "I've got some code that I want to run when certain HTML elements are added to the page.   To do this, I have a \"runOnRender\" function:               runOnRender: function (func, args, interval) {                 var that = this;                 var guid = hb.getGuid().substr(0,7);                      var checkFunc = function () {                     if (that.$el.height() > 0 && that.$el.width() > 0) {                         clearInterval(that[guid]);                         that[guid] = 0;                         func.call(that, args);                     }                 };                      this[guid] = setInterval(checkFunc, interval || 200);             }      Setting the interval to 200 is about as high as I can go before there is often a noticeable lag in the event firing. The last thing I want is my users wondering why a button just got clicked or seeing a label text change, etc. Here's the catch. It is entirely possible that this \"runOnRender\" will be set up.....but the User never causes the action that makes the HTML element in question hit the DOM....which means that this code would just keep infinitely running as long as the page is open. I'm on a nice, powerful, dev machine....so I'm wondering what the cost of this code is and whether there is a better way."}
{"_id": "222839", "title": "Programming Languages \"Higher Level\" Than Python", "text": "In general, I have been presented with these sorts of heirarchies for programming language abstraction: Assembly < C < C++ < Java < Python where C abstracts less than C++ and so on. You could also consider this on a compiled vs translated vs interpreted language basis (which is usually how this topic is considered, putting C and C++ together), but I'd like to think in terms of levels of abstraction for this question. Lisp dialects, my favourite language, seem to vary on implementation and fit in between these, along with languages like Haskell and Prolog, but languages like Ruby and Python are undoubtedly at the top. Are there languages that abstract even more significantly than Python or Ruby? Are these languages desirable to use? Having started with Lisp/C++, I was not expecting to so thoroughly enjoy Python and Ruby. I was also not expecting them to make my coding so much better, since you can use features like Scipy's Weave to use Python to do high level computation for most things and then low level computation for bottleneck code. So I'm wondering if there are even higher level languages available of which I'm unaware and that I should try out."}
{"_id": "144502", "title": "Would this violate any copyright issues?", "text": "I am currently publishing a paper on skin detection. However, I need to find the appropriate histogram bin size for each colorspace. I recently came upon a paper that published what it found to be the ideal bin size. The paper can be found at: http://www.inf.pucrs.br/~pinho/CG/Trabalhos/DetectaPele/Artigos/OPTIMUM%20COLOR%20SPACES%20FOR%20SKIN%20DETECTION.pdf. I am specifically talking about Table 1. If I cite the source, would it be okay for me to use data from the table? Note that I cannot contact the author of the paper."}
{"_id": "144503", "title": "What is the preferred Internet media type of a RESTful POST request?", "text": "Is there a preferred/recommended Internet Media Type for RESTful POST requests? For example, if I want to add a new user, should I send the data as a URL encoded string like:               name=Foo&otherData=Bar      or does REST recommend I send the data as whatever format the response is going to be sent as (e.g. JSON/XML)?               <user>       <name>Foo</name>       <other-data>Bar</other-data>     </user>"}
{"_id": "241064", "title": "why create mobile applications for web oriented programms, if it's just possible to use websites?", "text": "There are a lot frameworks on the market who wrap actual websites into mobileapps. I found myself thinking about the question - why is it needed to create mobileapps if it's possible to just having mobile version of the site?"}
{"_id": "241061", "title": "Is this considered an implementation of the Template Method design pattern?", "text": "Please consider a `StringBank` class. This class holds a list of Strings and can `return` them to the client. It's code (irrelevant stuff omitted):               abstract class StringBank{              List<String> strings;              public List<String> getStrings(){                  for(String string : strings){                 if(!stringValid(string)){                     strings.remove(string);                 }             }                  return strings;              }              public abstract boolean stringValid(String s);          }      As you can see, `stringValid` is an abstract method, meant to be implemented by the subclasses. This way subclasses serve as 'filters' of the string bank, filtering out invalid strings (e.g. a particular subclass may return `false` for strings that end with an 'a'). My question is: is this considered an implementation of the Template Method design pattern? The purpose of Template Method is to define steps of an algorithm in an abstract superclass, and have the subclasses define the implementation of some of these steps. Usually, the 'template method' - where the algorithm is defined, would look something like this:               void algorithm(){         step1(); // implemented in this class         step2(); // implemented in this class         step3(); // abstract method, implemented in subclasses.         step4(); // implemented in this class     }      However in `StringBank`, the algorithm is very simple, so it only involves one method call: `stringValid()`. The rest of the steps of the algorithm are defined in the method itself (looping through the strings, removing strings and returning them). **`getStrings()` doesn't really 'look like' a 'template method', so I'm not sure if this is considered a Template Method pattern implementation.** The algorithm could be described as:   1. For each string: 1.1. Check if valid. _(implemented by the subclasses)_. 1.2. If invalid, remove from list.   2. Return list of strings. Would you define the implementation I described as an implementation of the Template Method design pattern, even though `getStrings()` doesn't 'feel' like a classic template method?"}
{"_id": "88365", "title": "Do you use unit tests at work? What benefits do you get from them?", "text": "I had planned to study and apply unit testing to my code, but after talking with my colleagues, some of them suggested to me that it's not necessary and it has a very little benefit. They also claim that only a few companies actually do unit testing with production software. I am curious how people have applied unit testing at work and what benefits they are getting from using them, e.g., better code quality, reduced development time in the long term, etc."}
{"_id": "137516", "title": "validating APIs", "text": "We have a series of hardware and we have decided on a common API to be given to the customer for use. The customer will use this API in order to program the hardware. The API includes functions for establishing a connection with the h/w like X_Open,X_Close,X_SetConfig, X_GetConfig, no of hardware connected, error handling with the corresponding structs to be filled by the API or the customer. The hardware will ofcourse be validated independently also. What strategies can I use to validate this API ? We want to test this API i.e it works as expected for instance we are actually able to setConfig in the h/w or get no of devices on the bus or if the API function X_Open is called , the function is able to establish a connection to the hardware as expected or say API function X_GetNoDevices returns no. of present devices on the bus. We want to validate that all API functions work as described to the customer"}
{"_id": "100575", "title": "How to design an algorithm-heavy and object-light application", "text": "Other than vertices, edges, faces and meshes, my geometry processing project/application has only about half a dozen other entities such as curves on surfaces. However the majority of my code is dedicated to geometry processing. Being a naive programmer when I started this project, I implemented the various geometry processing algorithms as methods of the few classes that I had. As a result, some of my classes are now very large because they implement geometry processing algorithms (and therefore span up to 5 *.cpp files) -- very bad. In some cases I also implemented the algorithms as classes in their own rights. As such I now have classes that are not really entities. I now have a problem with this because I now believe that classes should be instantiable entities, and their methods the things that they do. Yet following this rule has led to large files. At the same time deviating from it has led to classes that do not make sense as instantiable entities e.g. a Geodesic class. Anyway I'm planning a redesign of this project and I'd appreciate advise on how to deign my classes. One of the options I've considered is to implement each algorithms as a collection of methods in a namespace. However as namespaces do not have instance variables, there will be lots of argument passing between the methods -- again not very nice."}
{"_id": "137510", "title": "Change my way of thinking in preparation for functional programming", "text": "When switching to a functional style of programming after coming from procedural and OOP, what things do I need to know upfront about \"this new way of thinking\"? How do you prepare yourself for diving in the FP world and get it first time around? What are the basics to learn and set straight first?"}
{"_id": "159435", "title": "What's the best lesson you have learned in your career?", "text": "I think mine is \"there's no such thing as a five minute job\" - that programmers tend to be overly optimistic about development and that we should really think through a the implications before promising a quick solution to a problem and then diving in to code"}
{"_id": "108227", "title": "Is it worth evaluating compiler optimization on trivial cases?", "text": "I'm currently testing Visual C++ 10 on some trivial pieces of code. For example, like this one (taken from here):               int main()     {         int i;         clrscr();         for(i=0,i++,i<=5;i++,i<=2;i=0,i<=5,i+=3){             printf(\"%d \",i);         }         return 0;     }      For the code above the compiler emits machine code that in effect does this:               clrscr();     printf(\"%d \",2);     return 0;      and this makes me happy. Sometimes the compiler emits really dumb code and then I file a Microsoft Connect feedback item. I have the following concern. Is testing a compiler on trivial code worth it? On one hand, we want real code to be compiled as good as possible, not some stupid sample snippets. On the other hand, compiler optimization is recursive in sense that if code B follows code A and the compiler can see that code B does nothing it can eliminate code B and eliminate whatever connected A and B logically and thus optimize (and maybe eliminate) code A better. And if the compiler fails to optimize away code B it will likely not be able to optimize code A either. So every improvement of generated code matters - better code at some point can mean better code elsewhere and this is beneficial. Is it worth testing compilers on trivial samples or are only tests on \"real code\" worthy?"}
{"_id": "108223", "title": "Bogarting the Data Access Layer", "text": "Situation: The dba is an offsite contractor who keeps the entire DAL code checked out in TFS. It would be nice as the front end developer to be able to add columns, and tweak procs and whatnot, without having to rely on waiting for this dude to respond to your emails to do the work. Question: What would be a recommended solution/process that would allow for more rapid/agile development, while maintaining data integrity as well as peace love and happiness among the team?"}
{"_id": "229303", "title": "Dynamic method creation in python", "text": "I have a class that will have a number of external methods that will all call the same smaller set of internal methods. So something like: obj.method_one(a, c) and obj.method_two(a, c) where obj.method_one calls obj._internal_method(a, c, y) and obj.method_two calls obj._internal_method(a, c, z). They're nearly identical but they have one argument at the end that differs on the internal call (which is a constant). I could just copy and paste a few times but I was wondering if theres any way to dynamically create these external methods."}
{"_id": "222834", "title": "I cant get myself to sit down and start coding", "text": "I spent the last 5 months working my regular job (qa) and developing an android application in the evenings. Now we were in two week vacation for Christmas and I spent the whole time developing my application and now I feel exhausted, I just cant get myself to sit down and start writing code again. It just feels like a huge mountain of weight that I have to lift, even thinking about it. Is this normal? Will this get worse with time? Im in the IT industry for 9 months now, 6 of them, like I said were very intensive. 25 year old. Also, I think its important to mention that I learn extremely fast and intensively and I get ahead of myself all the time. Am I going to burn my potential off? PS: Why would someone downvote my question? what wrong or bad have I done? Which rule have I not obeyed?"}
{"_id": "77119", "title": "What is the best way to do offline failover of a desktop based client that uses a web service?", "text": "I have three incoming projects that share a common problem: > they need to have the logic on a web system and they need a local > application (e.g. point of sale) that communicates with such system through > a RESTful web service. ### My Solution The solution I managed to come up with is to implement in the desktop application message queuing to store operations while the service is offline, more precisely, asynchronous message queuing. However, that is the easy part (if such is the best solution). I'm also concerned with data syncing and conflict resolution. The main system needs to be web based since a web app is required for reports and monitoring by the stakeholders, and the web services would handle requests for several establishments. The desktop clients (preferably thin) will be implemented with Java (more specifically Netbeans) and the web system with Symfony2. Two of the projects require hardware integration for the client, so making the desktop application with web technology (e.g. Appcelerator Titanium) could be a major pain. ### My Question   1. What is a better solution that scales, meaning maximum efficiency with minimum effort (and preferably no additional costs, like buying a backup server for local operation) ?   2. Who else has dealt with this before? How did you solve your problem? What lessons can you share?   3. How did you deal with synchronization?  **Edit: Added a missing part to my question in point #3**"}
{"_id": "86358", "title": "What is Mozilla's new release management strategy?", "text": "I saw today that FireFox released a new version (5). I tried reading about what was added and ran into this link: http://arstechnica.com/open- source/news/2011/06/firefox-5-released-arrives-only-three-months-after- firefox-4.ars It states that: > Mozilla has launched Firefox 5, a new version of the popular open source Web > browser. This is the first update that Mozilla has issued since adopting a > **new release management strategy** that has drastically shortened the > Firefox development cycle. I find this very intriguing - any idea what this new strategy is?"}
{"_id": "159385", "title": "Application connecting to database server", "text": "I'm working on an application which requires user credentials and so on. So a database is required on the backend. What is the best practice to connect to a database without hardcoding your password into it? The program could be reverse engineered and one might get the password which is something we obviously don't want."}
{"_id": "159381", "title": "Data service API design", "text": "We're designing a data service that will store a large number of statistics about stocks, including historical data. The client will be a web application, which will need to pull various bits of data to show in different places on the site. Since the different places need to show different sets of statistics, it's not sensible for the service to simply offer one method which retrieves all the data that we have. Since there are so many different types of statistics, the service isn't aware of the type of each one and simply stores them by key. We previously tried to deal with this by having a number of methods which would return data objects with varying levels of detail, for example getBasicStockInfo, getStockInfo, getFeaturedStockInfo, getStockDetails. The trouble I found with this was that it became tedious to add new items of data to the objects (need to change server code), and each one would get bloated over time as fields are added for some specific locations on the front end. On the other hand, it would be impractical to have a method for each location on the front end that returns the specific data that's needed in that location. Does anyone have any ideas of how best to handle this situation? One thing I'm considering is that the client would have to send a list of data keys for the data it wanted, and would get back a map of the statistics. I'm not sure if this is the way to go though, as the weight of parameters would get pretty heavy with the same ones being passed repeatedly from each location in the web app."}
{"_id": "86350", "title": "What's the best practice to do SOA exception handling?", "text": "Here's some interesting debate going on between me and my colleague when coming to handle SOA exceptions: On one side, I support what Juval Lowy said in Programming WCF Services 3rd Edition: > As stated at the beginning of this chapter, it is a common illusion that > clients care about errors or have anything meaningful to do when they occur. > Any attempt to bake such capabilities into the client creates an inordinate > degree of coupling between the client and the object, raising serious design > questions. How could the client possibly know more about the error than the > service, unless it is tightly coupled to it? What if the error originated > several layers below the service\u2014should the client be coupled to those > lowlevel layers? Should the client try the call again? How often and how > frequently? Should the client inform the user of the error? Is there a user? > By having all service exceptions be indistinguishable from one another, WCF > decouples the client from the service. The less the client knows about what > happened on the service side, the more decoupled the interaction will be. On the other side, here's what my colleague suggest: > I believe it\u2019s simply incorrect, as it does not align with best practices in > building a service oriented architecture and it ignores the general idea > that there are problems that users are able to recover from, such as not > keying a value correctly. If we considered only systems exceptions, perhaps > this idea holds, but systems exceptions are only part of the exception > domain. User recoverable exceptions are the other part of the domain and are > likely to happen on a regular basis. I believe the correct way to build a > service oriented architecture is to map user recoverable situations to > checked exceptions, then to marshall each checked exception back to the > client as a unique exception that client application programmers are able to > handle appropriately. Marshall all runtime exceptions back to the client as > a system exception, along with the stack trace so that it is easy to > troubleshoot the root cause. I'd like to know what you think about this."}
{"_id": "201048", "title": "GPL and OpenJDK: Questions regarding source headers", "text": "I have some legal questions regarding OpenJDKs source header:               /*      * Copyright (c) 1997, 2008, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.      * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.      *      * This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it      * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as      * published by the Free Software Foundation.  Oracle designates this      * particular file as subject to the \"Classpath\" exception as provided      * by Oracle in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.     (...)        * Is it GPL-conform to define a comment-part of a source-file (in this case the header) as \"must not be modified\"?    * Do other GPL-licensed open-source projects derived from this sources need to obey this \"statement\"?   * Does Oracle really have a Copyright on these GPL-sources?   * Is it GPL-conform to state that it's **_only_** allowed to `modify [the software] under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2`?   * What does this mean for GPLv3 open-source projects which are using these (possibly modified) sources?   * Do I have to fear editing (and publishing) this file (and maybe adding something to the file header) in my own GPLv3 open-source project?"}
{"_id": "228516", "title": "Use Objective-C protocols like Java interfaces", "text": "I'm a Java developer moving to Objective-C. So far in Objective-C I've seen protocols used extensively to implement the delegate pattern, but I haven't seen then to add a layer of abstraction in the way one would use Java interfaces. My gut instinct is to use protocols to define a contract and add a layer of abstraction, so that I may later substitute a different concrete class. Is this idiomatic in Objective-C, or do people tend to just use `@interface` to define the contract for a concrete class and use it directly?"}
{"_id": "100064", "title": "Do I have the wrong idea about software engineering?", "text": "Hello folks I have a question which's been raised by my latest job (rather intern). Just to put things into context - I'm 21 and I've finished my 2nd year of university before that I've had around 2 years of experience doing sys admin/QA jobs and basically I can say that I've seen how different IT sectors operated. Flash forward to present times and here's me landing an interning job at one of the premier research institution in the UK. What I have to do is create some internal tools using a mix of technologies - mainly AWS/Java/Bash - you get the picture. Everything is OK, I'm doing my job BUT I'm not happy. Why is that - because I'm expected to work in an ad-hoc matter. That is create things quickly, without spending time on designing. My manager explicitly said that it was expected to \"rush\" through problems as they arise and we essentially. As a consequence it turned out that things had to be re-done and re-engineer and they are still not perfect. As far as testing is concerned - keep it to a minimum, as long as it looks working then it is OK. Am I at fault to disagree with this way of conducting work? Is it wrong to want to think over the system as a whole, then focus on different components and see how they might inter-operate, to zero in on different \"key points\" which might turn out to be problematic in the future? Is it a crime to want to do a good job and not a \"quick job\"? Is it a mistake or wrong attitude to want to research the data structures applicable to a problem so that you can choose the best depending on a particular problem set? To the best of my understanding the \"Engineering\" bit in \"Software Engineering\" has got to do exactly with this - research your problem domain and come up with a informed solution then refine as necessary? I've been to an interview at an Arm's office in the UK and they showed me their SCRUM room and it looked they had pretty good idea as to how to manage their project - they had a backlog, they had metrics as to how long each issue might take to resolve - the usual things for SCRUM - completely different than the way things are run \"here\" Have I built a wrong idea about the software industry in general? I'd like to hear your input on that. I mean I \"entered\" software development purely because I want to create things - plain and simple, but I want to create quality things. I want to see my software used in various scenarios, I want to see it bullet proof - isn't that the driving force for all software engineers? I think everyone can be a programmer/coder by just learning the syntax but for me where the real fun begins is when you actually have to come up with a design which is doable in real world. I used to do my university assignments by just looking at them and directly start coding and could easily get marks above 75% and never really appreciated the \"software development lifecycle\" module. But now when I saw in the real world how bad it is to work without any formal process and the frustration that is inherent in situation where you don't know if the requirements are going to change tomorrow (oh, did I say that we don't have clearly defined requirement analysis?) I really like to believe I just landed a position where some people just needed a code monkey to do their dirty work and this is not the case how the software world operates at large."}
{"_id": "201044", "title": "Class Naming Conundrum", "text": "I am working on a personal project that works with databases, and in this project I have a set of classes that are _similar_ , so they inherit from a common base class. The problem I am faced with is that I have this nagging feeling that the names of the classes that derive from the base class do not really reflect what they actually are. Caveat: Please ignore the fact that this looks like a reinvention of the wheel. That's the point of the project. The common base class is called Entity. Its purpose is to serve as the base for:   1. Classes that describe the data returned by a SQL query or stored procedure, or    2. Classes that describe a SQL query or stored procedure and their parameters. Both of these classes are created by consumers of the assembly to describe the stored procedures and queries in their database, and the data they will retrieve from it. For example, these are designed to work against the Northwind database:               public class Employee : DataEntity     {         public int EmployeeId { get; set; }         public string LastName { get; set; }         public string FirstName { get; set; }     }          [Sql(@\"SELECT [EmployeeId], [LastName], [FirstName]             FROM [Employees]             ORDER BY [LastName], [FirstName]\")     public class SelectEmployee : SqlEntity     {         public int EmployeeId { get; set; }     }      As it stands, I am currently calling the first of these Data Entities, and the second SQL Entities. However, I am not entirely sure that these are fitting terms. For instance, are they actually _models_? Is there a better term that I am not considering? The assembly only considers public properties that have both a getter and a setter. The developer can add anything else to it if he or she needs to. So a Data Entity can be extended to include additional functionality. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. **EDIT** It's worth noting that you can also model stored procedures with this stuff (again, using a Northwind database stored procedure):               [Sql()]     public class CustOrderHist     {         [Parameter(\"@CustomerId\", SqlDbType = SqlDbType.NChar, MaxLength = 5)]         public string CustomerId { get; set; }     }      The assembly automatically binds classes to stored procedures, and properties to parameters."}
{"_id": "19419", "title": "Where can I get free public raw data?", "text": "_In web development, a mashup is a web page or application that uses and **combines data** , presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services._ There are many sources for getting data (raw information). Governments are good examples.   However many of those cost and have complicated licensing. For instance SMHI in Sweden sells temperature data meanwhile our neighbor country Norway gives it away for free. One would say what kind of application are you building and what data do you need? I would say give me some interesting data and I will do a good mashup of it. I could just plot it on Google maps for instance. So the question is: **Where can I get free data?** Note: I'm not interested in data mining using a webcrawler! Please share your sources with me."}
{"_id": "19413", "title": "What to look for in someone to provide short-term cover for a lone developer?", "text": "Our intranet is running an in house developed ASP.NET application. In our team I am the only technical person so this means my role is everything from development to server administration to \"the printer isn't working\". In a couple of months once a major rewrite is finished I am taking a couple of weeks holiday and we need to get someone in to cover for this period. I am at a loss of what skill set we should be looking for to cover over a short term. Being a major upgrade there will of course be bugs, though it will be up long enough to deal with any that are particularly worrisome and/or common. From this point of view I'm thinking that given the short timescales getting in a developer would be the wrong choice (small bugs can wait, big bad bugs that area left would likely be the sort that experience and time to learn the system would be needed to fix, I am of course insisting on a laptop and VPN to deal with this if it happens). Looking this way I'm thinking that someone with server administration skills would be the preferable route (able to keep the servers up if they go down, restart services if needed etc), though it still leaves a lot of leeway in the specifics to look for. Also despite the above opinion on getting a developer, being able to look through the code to pinpoint where a bug is interacting with the servers could of course be useful. Half the problem is of course that there's lots to cover with nothing in particular standing out as the big area to focus on. Here's a breakdown of what we have, any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated.   * In house ASP MVC2 application, includes some custom JavaScript on the front end   * Legacy ASP Classic (some areas of the intranet that aren't yet upgraded, running in tandem with the MVC application)   * Mediawiki install running on Apache and MySql on Windows   * Servers are running Windows 2008 and SQL2008   * Powershell backup scripts   * Simple C# reverse proxy (the intranet uses Windows authentication, we allow an external organisation access to the intranet so this proxy acts as their gateway and authenticates as a known generic user)"}
{"_id": "19416", "title": "Is argument or parameter considered more appropriate for a function/method argument/parameter?", "text": "Hopefully the topic is not too confusing, I am curious though as lately I have seen more and more use of the word parameter to denote a function's passed in values, whereas during my studies I feel as if argument was used almost exclusively. Is parameter more appropriate as argument is more specific to a programs arguments specific at runtime whereas when a function is called, the values passed to it are parameters to the function itself? From a curious programmer."}
{"_id": "177078", "title": "Methodology behind fetching large XML data sets in pieces", "text": "I am working on an HTTP Server in Delphi which simply sends back a custom XML dataset. I am not following any type of standard formatting, such as SOAP. I have the system working seamlessly, except one small flaw: When I have a very large dataset to send back to the client, it might take up to 2 minutes for all the data to be transferred. The HTTP Server I'm building is essentially an XML Data based API around a database, implementing the common business rule - therefore, the requests are specific to the data behind the system. When, for example, I fetch a large set of product data, I would like to break this down and send it back piece by piece. However, a single HTTP request calls for a single response. I can't necessarily keep feeding the client with multiple different XML packets unless the client explicitly requests it. I don't have any session management, but rather an API Key. I know if I had sessions, I could keep-alive a dataset temporarily for a client, and they could request bits and pieces of it. However, without session management, I would have to execute the SQL query multiple times (for each chunk of data), and in the mean-time, if that data changes, the \"pages\" might get messed up, therefore causing items to show on the wrong pages, after navigating to a different page. So how is this commonly handled? What's the methodology behind breaking down a large XML dataset into chunks to save the load?"}
{"_id": "177070", "title": "Is th\u0131s code efficient always for finding array[max]?", "text": "I am trying to find max value of an array, firstly i am shorting my array min to max after that i am using array[array.length-1] Is this logic efficient in large arrays?               public static int findMax(int[] array){              Arrays.sort(array);              int max = array[array.length-1];              return max;     }//end method"}
{"_id": "130895", "title": "How should XML subtree manipulation be handled in a public API?", "text": "I'm working on an API whereby a specific call would replace a subtree of an XML document\u2014rooted at some element\u2014with another subtree. The two options I'm considering for a response to this call are:   * Return the DOM   * Return the modified subtree In the interests of developing a standardized, stable API, I'd like to get this right. Is there a best way to handle this type of scenario? What are the benefits and drawbacks of doing it one way over the other? Would it make sense to offer both these options to API consumers?"}
{"_id": "130896", "title": "Sending Data to a Specific Android Device", "text": "I am planning an application that includes a membership card functionality, where the user can place an order, either in the application or by phoning the vendor. Once the order is placed, especially in the case of a phone in order, what would be the best approach to having the vendor side communicate relevant details to a specific device. I have looked Android's C2DM, that doesn't seem to be the best method. I don't want to send messages/data to all devices with the application installed, only the specific device that placed the order."}
{"_id": "133785", "title": "Backquoted symbols, good or bad?", "text": "I'm designing a programming language which has three kinds of quoted entities: strings and characters as in C, and symbols (interned strings intended for use as lookup keys and such) which I consider one of the most endearing features of Lisp. Currently I have the following syntax for these:               \"*\" // String     '*' // Character     `*` // Symbol      which I quite like, but has a couple of potential problems:   1. I'm told that on some keyboard layouts, backquote is a nuisance to type.   2. Backquote and ' are not the most visually distinct of characters, and I have a few times found myself typing ' when I meant backquote. On my setup this is not a problem because I have UltraEdit syntax highlighting set up to show backquoted symbols in green so the mistake is instantly apparent, but of course I can't provide syntax highlighting for most of the editors people use, so at least in the early days most users won't have the benefit of that kind of special coloring. So, given these potential problems, I'd like to get some feedback on which option people consider preferable:   1. Keep the syntax the way I have it now.   2. Swap backquote and ', so that ' is used for symbols and backquote is used for character constants.   3. Use ' for symbols, @\"*\" for character constants (in e.g. the Linux kernel code, character constants are something like thirty times rarer than string constants, so it's arguably okay to give them slightly more verbose syntax) and backquote for something else, perhaps raw (most escape codes not interpreted) strings.   4. Use ' for symbols, @\"*\" for character constants and forswear the use of backquote entirely."}
{"_id": "230410", "title": "Suggest a best practice to create Constants class", "text": "There is a debate in between my team members about declaration of Constants class. We are moving the constant variables into separate class as like below               public class Contants     {           public const string StateId = \"ST\";           public const string CountryId = \"CI\";     }      few of my team members are suggested to declare the class as sealed to avoid overriding option, and few are suggested to mark it as static to avoid instance creation of constant class.   However I preferred to have it as Sealed with static constructor, since it will help us to initialize the read-only variables in future need. Please advice this.."}
{"_id": "185001", "title": "Name for a tree where nodes hold a reference to their parent as well as their children", "text": "I am creating a tree where some nodes have a reference to their parent as well as their children. It feels like a tree version of a doubly linked list. Is there a name for this?"}
{"_id": "101623", "title": "Synonyms for operators", "text": "In the case of a newly designed functional language, consider e.g. the _not equals_ operator, spelled `/=` as is common among functional languages. Of course this operator is also known as `!=` in C family languages, and `<>` in SQL et al. It would be easy to make the parser accept these as synonyms, in the hope of cutting down on the number of things for someone not very familiar with the language to trip over. But on balance is this a useful thing to do, or would it just add more confusion than it's worth? Most mainstream languages don't provide synonyms, probably on the basis that they're designed for programmers who are familiar with the syntax. But what if you're designing a scripting language, for scenarios in which many users will not be very familiar with it, and may be specialists in something other than programming? Does that tip the balance in favor of providing synonyms to make things easier for newbies?"}
{"_id": "185004", "title": "Hacking Python \"Requests\" library.. How to start as an intermediate pythonista?", "text": "My question is conceptual, yet extremely vital for me. I'm an intermediate Python developer. I know fair enough about it, and actually use it on a daily basis. Now, I would like to transform my capabilities from a library/API user to \"designer\" one. I found that \"Python Requests\" library by **Kenneth Reitz** is an extremely good place to explore Python patterns and idioms. I need to learn to split a big problem into its essential `Modules`, define required classes/functions, and use them to work together. I lack such a discipline, and I'm starving to gain this knowledge. How should I dive into this library? It is **big** , with many modules (with logical names, of course), classes, and methods. I started to read the code, but I don't know where I am and what this portion of code is designed for."}
{"_id": "230417", "title": "How to assure client that we will complete our project and won't run away with the money", "text": "I have decided to work as a freelancer. I have developed a software and have successfully given the presentation demo. The client liked it and has agreed to implement the project in his organisation. But the client has asked me make it sure that I wont run away with the money without completing the project. The cost of project is high and it is not possible to complete it without acquiring the advance from the client. What are the practice that is usually followed ? I myself somehow agree with the client query. I know I will be able to complete the project. I do not intend to cheat. But how to prove it to client? What to do in such situation?"}
{"_id": "181716", "title": "Static variable - Usage and Implications on Threading", "text": "I have some confusion regarding the use of static variables/references in a class. It feels like I may not have entirely figured out the implications of keeping something static. When I say a variable is public static, is it one instance of the variable per class or one instance per assembly? For example, I have a user control (say, for a WPF app). This user control has a public static variable that coordinates various things within the control. If there is a form in a client application that uses this user control, with multiple instances of this control per form, how many instances of the public static variable are created? (My guess is only one, and it is modified by every control). Now, I actually need each instance of the control to have one such variable, not one variable across all the instances of the control in that single form. Does using a singleton pattern, with a \"lock\" keyword solve this issue i.e will it create one variable per instance of the user control? If not, what issue does the singleton pattern solve? What are the options in solving this design problem? (Note: I have resorted to creating an internal non static global variable and passing it around carefully, instead of going the static route and its working fine. I am looking to see if there is another option.) (Please bear with me if the question sounds very naive or unresearched, I did read a bit before posting, but seem stuck on finding an answer that explains it very clearly to me.)"}
{"_id": "244786", "title": "CANopen and CAN Driver", "text": "**CAN Driver** means application program that interacts with CAN hardware and helps in initializing setup and communication. **CANopen Stack** provides various APIs to deal with CAN communication. Now this is confusing me so please let me know: **Is CANopen Stack and CAN driver one and the same?**"}
{"_id": "124616", "title": "Is it OK to pass the concrete client to a method on the concrete strategy?", "text": "When using the strategy pattern, is it good practice to pass `this` to a method on `this.strategy`? I have a strategy interface with one call, `TakeAction`. The idea is that TakeAction decides which of the several possible actions the Client should perform and then calls the appropriate method on the client. So in a concrete strategy, the `TakeAction` method might look like:               void TakeAction(IAbstractClient client)     {         if (client.IsBlah()) client.UnBlah(this.BlahValue1, this.BlahValue2);         else if (client.CanFoo()) client.Foo(this.FooValue);         else if (this.ShouldTwiddle()) client.Twiddle();     }      And in the client, the call looks like:               this.strategy.TakeAction(this);      Is this good form? Or is there a better way to do this? (Passing back a class with an enum describing the action and the values to pass to it seemed overkill.)"}
{"_id": "218153", "title": "The keyword const and the linker file", "text": "If I declare in a header file, for example, `extern unsigned long * Ptr;` and the value of this pointer Ptr in the linker file. Will this adrress be 'constant'? Can I change its value ?"}
{"_id": "80219", "title": "Are sessions secure for captcha on failed login?", "text": "I don't like writing open-ended questions but I have a quick security question. I have a PHP login script that shows a CAPTCHA on the third failed login attempts. The way I'm counting failed logins is by using session data. Is this secure? Is there a better way to do this? Maybe store the IP in a database table? I'm not really sure how bots and programs that try to use word list actually work. Thanks"}
{"_id": "140331", "title": "Is it OK to repeat code for unit tests?", "text": "I wrote some sorting algorithms for a class assignment and I also wrote a few tests to make sure the algorithms were implemented correctly. My tests are only like 10 lines long and there are 3 of them but only 1 line changes between the 3 so there is a lot of repeated code. Is it better to refactor this code into another method that is then called from each test? Wouldn't I then need to write another test to test the refactoring? Some of the variables can even be moved up to the class level. Should testing classes and methods follow the same rules as regular classes/methods? Here's an example:                   [TestMethod]         public void MergeSortAssertArrayIsSorted()         {             int[] a = new int[1000];             Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);             for(int i = 0; i < a.Length; i++)             {                 a[i] = rand.Next(Int16.MaxValue);             }             int[] b = new int[1000];             a.CopyTo(b, 0);             List<int> temp = b.ToList();             temp.Sort();             b = temp.ToArray();                  MergeSort merge = new MergeSort();             merge.mergeSort(a, 0, a.Length - 1);             CollectionAssert.AreEqual(a, b);         }         [TestMethod]         public void InsertionSortAssertArrayIsSorted()         {             int[] a = new int[1000];             Random rand = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond);             for (int i = 0; i < a.Length; i++)             {                 a[i] = rand.Next(Int16.MaxValue);             }             int[] b = new int[1000];             a.CopyTo(b, 0);             List<int> temp = b.ToList();             temp.Sort();             b = temp.ToArray();                  InsertionSort merge = new InsertionSort();             merge.insertionSort(a);             CollectionAssert.AreEqual(a, b);          }"}
{"_id": "128919", "title": "Can you give me an example of your Continuous Integration development process", "text": "we are thinking of doing Continuous Integration with Nightly builds here. Some of our sticking points is when to do Code Reviews. Is anyone out there doing Continuous Integration with nightly builds AND doing code reviews? If you can give a brief outline of your process that would be great. For example, here's what we are doing now:   1. Developers attempt to check in code daily or as often as possible. Code does not have to be \"done\", it merely has to compile. They rebase their code with everyone else's changes at this time. Doing this often prevents us from merging nightmares.   2. Builds come out nightly, but QA only looks at the builds but doesn't write up bugs yet, they merely inform us of what they are seeing.    3. Every few days, we have an official release. Code is Reviewed. We write up a description of what is ready for testing, what isn't.    4. QA writes up what they find in the stuff we say is ready for test. The process starts over. So, what are we doing wrong? One thing I dont like, is that Code is checked in that isn't reviewed. I heard before, that code should only be checked in that's been reviewed, however, I'm not sure how to do that and still have programmers checkin code daily. if you guys can give examples of what your process is, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks."}
{"_id": "128914", "title": "Can you call any php model class in an MVC from the controller?", "text": "I'm creating a **simple MVC** at the moment and am wondering if it's 'correct' to be able to call any model class directly from the controller to get the data to send to the view? I have the following folder structure:               .htaccess     index.php     /controller     /model     /templates      I also have the needed model classes within the `/model folder`, at the moment I've tried playing with a `/model/model.class.php` to try and build all parts of the site but it's already starting to become huge and I think it might be better to completely cut it out. I'm thinking the better approach is to use:               elseif($_GET['type'] == \"Profile\") {         $profile = new thread($userId);         $comments =  $profile->getComments();         require \"templates/profile.php\";     }      The above is a brief example but is that how a controller could/should/might look or was the first approach better or am I completely missing the point of the model and controller communication?"}
{"_id": "223555", "title": "Google Docs Scripting", "text": "I have about 10 google docs spreadsheets. I would like to add / process rows from each of them and display the summation of this data in a new tab in each spreadsheet. So if somebody adds a row to one of the spreadsheets, the summation tab should be updated in all of them. 2 questions:   1. Is this possible using google docs scripting?   2. What is the best way to share the same script and run it against all the documents?"}
{"_id": "250811", "title": "\"Undoing\" an integer wraparound", "text": "I ran into an interesting theoretical problem a number of years ago. I never found a solution, and it continues to haunt me when I sleep. Suppose you have a (C#) application that holds some number in an int, called x. (The value of x is not fixed). When the program is run, x is multiplied by 33 and then written to a file. Basic source code looks like this:               int x = getSomeInt();     x = x * 33;     file.WriteLine(x); // Writes x to the file in decimal format      Some years later, you discover that you need the original values of X back. Some calculations are simple: Just divide the number in the file by 33. However, in other cases, X is large enough that the multiplication caused an integer overflow. According to the docs, C# will truncate the high-order bits until the number is less than `int.MaxValue`. Is it possible, in this case, to either:   1. Recover X itself or   2. Recover a list of possible values for X? It seems to me (though my logic could certainly be flawed) that one or both should be possible, since the simpler case of addition works (Essentially if you add 10 to X and it wraps, you can subtract 10 and wind up with X again) and multiplication is simply repeated addition. Also helping (I believe) is the fact that X is multiplied by the same value in all cases - a constant 33. This has been dancing around my skull at odd moments for years. It'll occur to me, I'll spend some time trying to think through it, and then I'll forget about it for a few months. I'm tired of chasing this problem! Can anyone offer insight? (Side note: I really don't know how to tag this one. Suggestions welcome.) **Edit:** Let me clarify that if I can get a list of possible values for X, there are other tests I could do to help me narrow it down to the original value."}
{"_id": "85191", "title": "Is java a good start to learn OOP?", "text": "I have good teacher who understands OOP. However, the language which he is expert in is Java and I don't want to learn Java. My question is, do you think if I learn OOP using Java I will waste my time? And do you think it is good to start to learn OOP?"}
{"_id": "201950", "title": "How to detect achievements in gaming?", "text": "I mistakenly posted this to stackoverflow and now posting here based on a suggestion in on that site ... This is a very high level conceptual question. Say in a software application I have 4 different actions, for example: Upload, Share, Comment, and like And I want to give achievement badges to users like:   * Rookie - Upload your first 5 files    * Upload Junkie - Upload 20 files in 1 day    * Night Crawler - Upload a file after midnight    * Share-a-holic - Share 10 different files    * Likes-everything - Like 20 different files you get the idea. What is he best way to check and see if a user has achieved a particular achievement without having to compile the logic for achievement into my code? And .. - Retain the ability to Add new achievements post compile (xml or db) - Achievements must track specific actions, number of times, and additional criteria (like time of day) - Detection should be near real-time so the user notified almost instantly when an achievement is completed My biggest questions is, how do I detect these achievements being achieved? Do I: 1) Check after every action to see if ... (Most real time) 2) Have another program check the DB at all times against a set of rules? (Easiest) Is there another paradigm that I'm missing? I feel there definitely is because in many games (like jetpack for iOS for example), I'm notified of the achievement I have unlocked in the instant in which I unlock it which I found pretty impressive. Thank you"}
{"_id": "201953", "title": "Draw a checkerboard in Java", "text": "I'm reading through a programming book and am having trouble understanding a few parts of this code. The program draws a checkerboard, and colors the odd squares black.               import acm.graphics.*;     import acm.program.*;          public class CheckerBoard extends GraphicsProgram   {          public void run()   {         double squareSize = (double) getHeight() / numRows;         for(int i = 0; i <= numRows; i++){             for(int j = 0; j <= numColumns; j++)    {                 double x = j * squareSize;                 double y = i * squareSize;                 GRect square = new GRect(x,y,squareSize,squareSize);                 square.setFilled((i + j) % 2 != 0);                 add(square);             }         }     }          private static final int numRows = 8;     private static final int numColumns = 8;      I understand most of the code, but I am still a little confused. My first question is: How exactly does the program go through the for loops? They are nested, so would it create all of the columns (the j for loop) first? Or does it increment both i and j after the block of code finishes? Secondly, why do I set x = j, and y = i? x is horizontal and j is vertical, shouldn't I set x = i and y = j? Both seem to yield the same results. Mostly, I would just like to know how the for loop runs each time around. a basic run or two through the program. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!"}
{"_id": "219569", "title": "Is application written from scratch in programming language has to be license?", "text": "There are so many programming language like PHP, Perl, Python, Java, C, C++ and many other. These programming language has some open source license. If i develop application from scratch which is not related the source modification of these languages. Is my application has to be open source license?? There are billions of applications written in these language? All application has be open source? I don't understand that, is there language issue ever existed? I think there should not programming language licensing issue just like spoken language..either i speak in english, french or any other. I can write a book in any language without my book to be open source, is that right???"}
{"_id": "236155", "title": "How do I implement the OpsDB from Release It! by Michael T Nygard", "text": "I have recently been reading the Release It! book by Michael T Nygard.In the book he talks about Implementing an OpsDB to manage and record performance statistics of applications. Has anyone implemented any of the concepts in OpsDB? I've been trying to find some examples but am struggling and I really would like to implement something like this. This page gives a little background to the the details http://screamingtiger.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/release-it-176-standards-de-jure- and-de.html at the Operations database section Looking at the above I am not really sure what a Feature would be - would a client application count. Also, what would be some of the common things to capture for a web application. Any help would be most appreciated"}
{"_id": "219568", "title": "How to minimize merge conflicts when using non-lock VCS like git?", "text": "I have been using git for about four months now. While I like most of its features, I find it rather inconvenient that multiple developers can make concurrent changes to the same file and then a need for merging ensues. In fact, I would prefer waiting for a file to get unlocked over tedious and brain hurting merges. I was wondering if there was a team etiquette or workflow to circumvent this terrible predicament. In my ideal world of development, there would never be a need to merge. E.g. is there a combination of hooks, commands, and workflows for git in order to have a remote repository notified when a local repository changes a file so that other developers get a git notification if they themselves try to modify the same file concurrently (e.g. when they run `git status` or something like that)?"}
{"_id": "166464", "title": "Using a texture as an integer array (OpenGL 3.3, shader version 3.3)", "text": "I'm trying to have something like an integer array uniform for my fragment shader (I only need read access). Since it's a fairly large chunk of data (not so large that uploading it in every frame would be impossible, but enough to make me want to rather not do it). Essentially I want to just pass it a uniform telling the shader where this \"array\" is. I believe I can use a 1D texture for this, but I don't know how (actually, I don't know how to do many things because I just can't seem to find a reference for GLSL 3.3, I only ever find references for the C API). This sounds like a rather basic question and I'm sure it's been answered already somewhere, but I keep searching and can't quite find what I'm looking for."}
{"_id": "10154", "title": "Has anyone used RemObjects' Hydra to mix a large Delphi project with new C# additions?", "text": "_(Hopefully this is deemed suitable for Programmers, not StackOverflow - I could imagine it getting closed at SO because there's no obvious 'right' answer.)_ We have a large Delphi 2007 VCL project that uses things like DBXpress, Report Builder, DevExpress and TMS components (both visual and non-visual) etc. For reasons I won't bore you with, the company would like to start adding new modules to the program using .Net (via C# in particular). Rewriting from scratch isn't an option and given the heavy use of Report Builder and various other bits of Delphi-specific 3rd party code, I suspect that using something like TurnSharp to regenerate a C# project wouldn't work well either. **Ideally we want to keep our Win32 VCL Delphi code but add new modules (plug- ins, sections of contained functionality like wizards etc) via C#.** So we're considering RemObjects' Hydra, and in the next few weeks will probably have a go at evaluating it on a smaller-but-representative project first. I wondered if anyone had experience of doing this kind of thing with Hydra...?"}
{"_id": "70231", "title": "Is imperative style programming (say with Java/C) more error prone than something more declarative", "text": "I know programmers tend to get defensive with their paradigms and tools that they use. But in your experience, with the most generic, typical pieces of code that you see with Java or C++ or C, is the code more error prone than a similar piece of code in an declarative or functional programming language. For example, with Java there can be a lot of boilerplate and setup code need to call your target routine. Usually developers may need to look at the implementation details to really understand what happens if they do or do not provide the correct dependencies. Normally the developer never does that so you end up with NullPointerException bugs and other logic errors."}
{"_id": "135192", "title": "Porting Software", "text": "I would like to know what would be needed to study and understand in terms of computing platforms and OS (Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) to become a software porting engineer."}
{"_id": "247254", "title": "How to test and optimize when you can't reproduce the environment?", "text": "In the past, I've worked in a variety of environments. Desktop apps, games, embedded stuff, web services, command line jobs, web sites, database reporting, and so on. All of these environments shared the same trait: no matter their complexity, no matter their size, I could always have a subset or slice of the application on my machine or in a dev environment to test. Today I do not. Today I find myself in an environment whose primary focus is on scalability. Reproducing the environment is prohibitively costly. Taking a slice of the environment, while plausible (some of the pieces would need to be simulated, or used in a single-instance mode that they're not made to do), kinda defeats the purpose since it obscures the concurrency and loading that the real system encounters. Even a small \"test\" system has its flaws. Things will behave differently when you've got 2 nodes and when you have 64 nodes. My usual approach to optimization (measure, try something, verify correctness, measure differences, repeat) doesn't really work here since I can't effectively do steps 2 and 3 for the parts of the problem that matter (concurrency robustness and performance under load). This scenario doesn't seem unique though. What is the common approach to doing this sort of task in this sort of environment? There are some related questions:   * this question has to do with hardware (like spectrum analyzers) being unavailable, which can be (relatively) easily emulated.    * this question is about tracking down bugs that only exist in production environments, which is helpful - but a different sort of activity."}
{"_id": "219560", "title": "Are expensive operations for a user bad for other users?", "text": "Let's say user A does something expensive (regarding CPU and/or memory), which takes a few seconds. Concurrently, user B needs a very small amount of computing time. In this case, will the computing for user A significantly slow down that of user B (even block maybe?), or are these situations handled in most systems? (I use ASP.NET MVC, but I wouldn't mind a more general answer either)"}
{"_id": "247258", "title": "MySQL Database design - Opinions", "text": "Im working on a web Application for our bussiness with my brother. Our application its pretty simple, will be develop with php and mysql.   * Clients and providers ABMs   * Articles Inventory (we do not manage stock, because we resell from our providers)   * Purchases   * Account balance for our clients and providers Im stuck on accounting tables... Here is my model: ![database design](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jvRmR.jpg) Im in doubt with account table, im thinking about use a Trigger when purchases change Status (delivered to client) then I update Account balance but i dont know if this model its good for manage Accounts for my Clients. Im looking for opinions about my mistakes!! Thank you."}
{"_id": "255002", "title": "Are there alternatives to using an optional type in a multithreaded environment?", "text": "I'm making an MPMC queue in C++, and I would like to find out what the best interface for a `try_dequeue` method would be (I'm **not** concerned about its implementation). I'd like to provide a method which does not block if the queue is empty (like my `dequeue()` method does), but somehow notifies this to the caller. While I provide a `bool empty() const` method as well, this unfortunately does no good because for a multithreaded queue doing something along the lines of `if(!queue.empty()) queue.dequeue();` provides no guarantees. What I currently have is `T try_dequeue()`, which throws an exception if the queue is empty. This seems to offer the most intuitive interface, but an empty queue is hardly an exceptional situation, and that seems an awful lot like using exceptions for control flow. Another option would be `bool try_dequeue(T* t)`, which would write to `t` only if the queue was not empty and return if `t` was written to. After using the exception method above, this seems probably least intrusive, but it would require that `T` is both default-constructible (or in some manner trivially constructible, so the caller can do `T t; queue.try_dequeue(&t);`) and assignable. I wouldn't want to force those requirements on `T`, though, so perhaps a Java- like approach such as `optional<T> try_dequeue()` is in order. One of the minor issues with this is that I'd have to implement my own (can't use boost). Perhaps more importantly, it makes the interface seem bloated, in the sense that now I'm now dragging another type in where it would (hopefully) be avoidable, and, much like the situation with STL's `set::insert` requires us to copy a pair, then \"unfold\" its arguments, it forces the user into clumsy, long ritual that has to be repeated every time he or she uses the function. Perhaps I'm worrying too much about `optional<T>`'s usability, given that it doesn't have any of the more serious problems that the other two approaches do, but I'm wondering, what would be the best approach here? Is it the `optional` one? _Edit_ : It occurred to me that there's also a bit of an outlandish `bool try_dequeue(std::function<void(T&)>)` option which actually seems pretty nice (in fact this one will actually have the most minimal interface you can have, where there's no need for any external logic setting a local `T` to the returned value). Unfortunately I'd prefer to avoid the overhead incurred by calling an actual `std::function`, and using a template function `template<class F> bool try_deque(const F&)` isn't an option either since this is a derived class (from a generic `queue` interface)."}
{"_id": "176679", "title": "If you should only have one assertion per test; how to test multiple inputs?", "text": "I'm trying to build up some test cases, and have read that you should try and limit the number of assertions per test case. So my question is, what is the best way to go about testing a function w/ multiple inputs. For example, I have a function that parses a string from the user and returns the number of minutes. The string can be in the form `\"5w6h2d1m\"`, where `w, h, d, m` correspond to the number of weeks, hours, days, and minutes. If I wanted to follow the '1 assertion per test rule' I'd have to make multiple tests for each variation of input? That seems silly so instead I just have something like:               self.assertEqual(parse_date('5m'), 5)     self.assertEqual(parse_date('5h'), 300)     self.assertEqual(parse_date('5d') ,7200)     self.assertEqual(parse_date('1d4h20m'), 1700)      In the one test case. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "176678", "title": "Keeping a domain model consistent with actual data", "text": "Recently domain driven design got my attention, and while thinking about how this approach could help us I came across the following problem. In DDD the common approach is to retrieve entities (or better, aggregate roots) from a repository which acts as a in-memory collection of these entities. After these entities have been retrieved, they can be updated or deleted by the user, however after retrieval they are essentially disconnected from the data source and one must actively inform the repository to update the data source and make is consistent again with our in-memory representation. What is the DDD approach to retrieving entities that should remain connected to the data source? For example, in our situation we retrieve a series of sensors that have a specific measurement during retrieval. Over time, these measurement values may change and our business logic in the domain model should respond to these changes properly. E.g., domain events may be raised if a sensor value exceeds a predefined threshold. However, using the repository approach, these sensor values are just snapshots, and are disconnected from the data source. Does any of you have an idea on how to solve this following the DDD approach?"}
{"_id": "219208", "title": "Is there a math theory or a model behind programming languages design", "text": "I'm trying to understand if a programming languages design is built on some a theoretical model.   I came across few links that was describing Programming Language Theory, Lambda Calculus, Formal Languages and Turing machine. I got lost in all that theory, what I understood from all that is that (any ..?) programming language is built on lambda calculus, that boils down to few language constructs.   1. is my understanding correct?   2. are there any models other than lambda calculus?   3. if the languages shares the same model, can we use that to convert a source code from one language to the other?"}
{"_id": "72178", "title": "How do I properly design a many-to-many (charges/payments) accounting system?", "text": "This is just as much a db/programming question as an accounting/math question, so I'm actually posting to all relevant boards. I appreciate your patience in advance. Basically I'm having trouble wrapping my head around a payments ledger. My system has three tables: CHARGES, PAYMENTS and a PAYMENTS_TO_CHARGES. The issue is that part of the system requirement calls for both the ability to directly associate a payment with a CHARGE as well as allow members to post overpayments (or credits) to their account. So there's the need to track credits then apply them as needed to future CHARGES. Perhaps I'm thinking about things from the wrong standpoint, but I'm picturing CHARGES as a DEBIT and PAYMENTS as a CREDIT. However, it would appear that they can both have DEBIT/CREDIT depending on your accounting approach. So, my question -- officially -- is what is the best way to go about tracking/reconciling payments, and charges, while still allowing for overpayments, etc. I'm trying to work out the DB tables and business logic but every time I solve one problem, a reverse (or converse) item presents itself. Do I allow the many-to-many relationship to track positive and negative numbers per transaction? Do I create a fake universal charge that all credits apply to? Do I create a completely separate CREDITS table? As you can tell, I'm likely overthinking this, but I'm certainly befuddled. If all transactions were guaranteed 1-to-1, it would obviously be much simpler. Unfortunately they're not Best."}
{"_id": "194803", "title": "Linear probing hashing collision resolution", "text": "So I have a quick question about the linear probing method of collision resolution in hash tables. So by definition a linear probing method would look like:               while (hashTable[hash] != null)         hash = (hash(key) + step) % tableSize;      But in my case I know exactly what the table size will be, I know all the keys, so I'm wondering if this is a valid alternative implementation:               while (hashTable[hash] != null) {         if (++hash == hashTable.length)             hash = 0;     }      I'm sorry if I made it too confusing, but I'm a little confused myself... If you can't get what I'm asking, a simple explanation of how linear probing would be implemented would be very helpful, and ps: I'm working in java. Thanks alot"}
{"_id": "141061", "title": "What do you use macros in your editor for?", "text": "My editor of choice is Notepad++. It has macro capabilities, but as much as I think, I don't see how can I use it for anything. Do you use macros in your editor that have made your work easier? (for general use I mean)"}
{"_id": "45272", "title": "Programming Language? - To create a application (eLearning course) that will work on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Touch etc?", "text": "Currently at work I'm helping put together and create eLearning courses within Flash. Our senior programmers have knowledge of how to do this, Although - I would like to know how you could go from converting a eLearning course from Flash into a application for Mac and PC, looking similar to Garageband's music lessons?   * What programming language was used to create Garageband on Mac?     * What is the best way to create a application that will work on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Touch etc, Rather then using flash and Actionscript to create online based applications, that will only work in a browser on Mac and PC?   * Any further tips? Thanks Josh"}
{"_id": "194746", "title": "What is the Ken Thompson Hack?", "text": "I read some stuff like cm bell labs but i couldn't get it all. How does it work really? What is the logic in that?"}
{"_id": "141068", "title": "How should I describe the process of learning someone else's code? (In an invoicing situation.)", "text": "**Edit:** Justin Cave made a good point that this sort of communication should be up front in my quoting / estimations. Is this case, I'm still interested to know what sort of language people use to describe the 'existing code learning' activities. Especially to a company who haven't dealt with software contractors before. **End edit** I have a contract to upgrade some in-house software for a large company. The company has requested multiple feature additions and a few bug fixes. This is my first freelance style job. First, I needed to become familiar with how the application worked - I learnt it as if I was a user. Next, I had to learn how the software worked. I started with broad concepts, and then narrowed down into necessary detail before working on each bug fix and feature. At least at the start of the project, it took me a lot longer to learn the existing code than it did to write the additional features. How can I describe the process of learning the existing code on the invoice? (This part of the company usually does things in-house, so doesn't have much experience dealing with software contractors like me, and I fear they may not understand the overhead of learning someone else's code). I don't want to just tack the learning time onto the actual feature upgrade, because in some cases this would make a 'simple task' look like it took me way too long. I want break the invoice into relevant steps, and communicate that I'm charging for the large overhead of learning someone else's code before being able to add my own to it. Is there a standard way of describing this sort of activity when billing for a job?"}
{"_id": "184879", "title": "In python, is it considered better to define a module with functions or a module with a class that contains functions?", "text": "In my code either of the above two options would work equally well but I am interested in finding out the pros and cons of both approaches."}
{"_id": "157124", "title": "In a web application, is it ok to group multiple pages in one view class or one class per page?", "text": "If you are building a web application, and you have a user management component, is it recommended to do:               class UserAdminView extends View {          }      or               class UserAdminUpdateView extends View {          }      What about controllers? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "123827", "title": "Programming \"everything\" using HTML5?", "text": "HTML 5 applications in the browser really seem to be taking off. I've been using src:kit within Google Chrome for a few weeks and love it. I'm an ASP.Net (C#/MVC 3) developer by trade, and in the past did several pieces of WebForms programming. With Windows 8 app development moving into the trade of local HTML5 apps, and the major smartphone browsers supporting HTML5 installation, as well as many platforms supporting it (PhoneGap and Titanium, for example), are we already/will we soon be at the point that I could create an app that would be fully \"installable\" to run as a _standalone_ on _every_ platform? I do realise that a database (or instert-your-data-store-here) would also be necessary, so adding another language in there for middleware would be necessary. C# on Mac/Linux with Mono is possible, but Mono generally only creates a GTK+ Application, so I would likely need to create another wrapper to house the application... I think. Any suggestions of a better language to use as middleware? I.e. for ease of transportation - I've got far more experience with C# than anything else so would like something from that family if I'll need to do something different. Basically, how far away are we from this? What still needs to change? Most importantly, if it is possible (which I believe, theoretically it is), what is the big jump between where we are now and when we will be there? This will eventually turn into a program, so it is a completely practical problem that I'm working my way through (I'll start development after Christmas). EDIT: To clarify, by 'every' platform, I include at least the following: Windows XP+/Mac OS X/Linux: any distro pretty much in the last 2 years/iOS/Android/Blackberry 5+/Windows Phone 7+"}
{"_id": "125258", "title": "How to create a donation software", "text": "I have a requirement to create a donation software for a project. Does anyone know how KickStarter designed theirs? What are the security elements involved? How do I create the credit card transactions-processing part? Is there some common library/service used for that? I am still in research phases for this, so any ideas appreciated!! The site I am trying to do this for is http://www.problemio.com"}
{"_id": "80968", "title": "How do i speedily traverse a file system while extracting/extrapolating various data and provide user feedback?", "text": "I'm working on a system file scanner that reveals info about various files (e.g. size, last used, duplicates, etc). Currently I'm traversing the file system once just to get a good measure of the files I'll be processing, I then loop through doing the actual processing (size info, hash info, etc). Obviously that immediately creates an entire layer of \"extra\" processing, but it allows me to use the previously acquired info to provide the user with some \"progress data\". I've been looking for a good mechanism to use in order to speed up the process while still showing progress data for end users. I thought about creating separate threads (one for appending files to a stack, and the other for reading from the stack as they became available), but that might get out of hand programmatically quickly. In the interest of speeding up the initial scan, I currently perform a \"find path\" (or the equivalent depending on what OS is being used) and grab all of the output. This, however, prevents me from negating entire subfolders (if the user desires) as it simply recursively lists everything. Certain OSes do have command line options for negating directories, etc, but I need a cross- platform solution. So, aaaaaaall that said, does anyone have any algorithmic suggestions for being speedy while providing quality progress? I'm not fundamentally tied to any specific language. I'm looking more for a higher level view of what needs to occur. Best."}
{"_id": "200601", "title": "Optimal way to store 18 billion key, value pairs", "text": "I have around 200 million new objects coming in, and a 90 day retention policy, so that leaves me with 18 billion records to be stored in the form of key-value pairs. Key and value both will be a string. It is basically a mapping between a unique identifier for the object in the application to the unique identifier for the object in the actual object storage. There is an application which loads objects into a Web OS. For each object it loads, it creates a 16 character string key, say DataID. The Web OS itself creates a 40 character string key, say ObjectID. So what I'm trying to do is create a mapping between DataID -> ObjectID for 18 billion objects. I'm don't know the mechanism being used to create the IDs. I will have to deal with:               write(key,value)     read(key)     delete(key,value)      I am looking for ideas for an optimal way to implement this. It should be optimized for reads & writes. Space optimization is secondary. I know Hadoop/NoSQL is one way to go, and probably another solution would be distributed Hash tables, but a few more options would help me decide which is the best solution. A relational database is not an option as we don't have an existing RDBMS in the current environment."}
{"_id": "80962", "title": "Should images be stored in a git repository?", "text": "For a distributed team that uses Git and Github as version control, should images also be stored in the git repository? For the most part, the images won't be changed. The folder containing them will only grow in size as images are added. A concern is that the image folder may grow to a large size over time by combination of large images, or just a lot of them. Is this considered a best practice? What other alternatives are there to sharing binary files needed in projects that a distributed team can easily access?"}
{"_id": "247", "title": "Is COBOL still worth learning?", "text": "Does learning COBOL still make sense?"}
{"_id": "170855", "title": "Why JSP over Servlets for view?", "text": "Although servlets does the task of sending the HTML code to the client programmers weight JSP over servlets for that. Even a JSP code is compiled into servlet before giving the response to the browser then why is JSP preferred? If servlet is used then a lot of computation work can be saved."}
{"_id": "84244", "title": "Does iCloud use windows Azure?", "text": "I just read this article on iCloud's use of Azure: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/is-apple-really-using-windows-azure-to- power-icloud/9687 Anyone know if there is any truth in it?"}
{"_id": "170851", "title": "Library Organization in .NET", "text": "I've written a .NET bitwise operations library as part of my projects (stuff ranging from `get MSB set` to some more complicated bitwise transformations) and I mean to release it as free software. I'm a bit confused about a design aspect of the library, though. Many of the methods/transformations in the library come with different endianness. A simple example is a `getBitAt` method that regards index `0` as the least significant bit, or the most significant bit, depending on the version used. In practice, I've found that using separate functions for different endianness results in much more comprehensible and reusable code than assuming all operations are `little-endian` or something. I'm really stumped regarding how best to package the library.   * Should I have methods that have LE and BE versions take an enum parameter in their signature, e.g. `Endianness.Little, Endianness.Big`?   * Should I have different static classes with identically named methods? such as `MSB.GetBit` and `LSB.GetBit` On a much wider note, is there a standard I could use in cases like this? Some guide? Is my design issue trivial? I have a perfectionist bent, and I sometimes get stuck on tricky design issues like this... **Note:** I've sort of realized I'm using `endianness` somewhat colloquially to refer to the order/place value of digital component parts (be they bits, bytes, or words) in a larger whole, in any setting. I'm not talking about machine-level `endianness` or serial transmission endianness. Just about place-value semantics in general. So there isn't a context of targeting different machines/transmission techniques or something."}
{"_id": "164572", "title": "what is difference in section and subreport, where to use multiple sections?", "text": "Please share your knowledge about these Crystal Reports concepts.   1. I want to know what is difference in section and sub report? I know about default sections and we can add new sections into report.   2. What is purpose of a subreport? when should we use a subreport instead of a section?   3. Where should we use multiple detail sections in report?   4. Are sections used to carry a \"Can grow\" field that will be bringing data dynamically?"}
{"_id": "164570", "title": "Formal definition for term \"pure OO language\"?", "text": "I can't think of a better place among SO siblings to pose such a question. Originally I wanted to ask \"Is python a pure OO language?\" but considering troubles and some sort of discomfort people experience while trying to define the term I decided to start with obtaining a clear definition for the term itself. It would be rather fair to start with correspondence by Dr. Alan Kay, who has coined the term (note the inspiration in biological analogy to cells or other living objects). There are following ways to approach the task:   1. Give a comparative analysis by listing programming languages that can exhibit (or fail to do so) certain properties unique and sufficient to define the term (although Smalltalk, Scala, ~~Java~~ , and so on - are possible examples but IMO this way seems neither really complete nor fruitful)   2. Give a formal definition (or close to it, e.g. in more academic or mathematical style).   3. Give a philosophical definition that would totally rely on semantical context of concrete language or a priori programming experience (there must be some chance of successful explanation by the community).  My current version: _\"If a certain programming (formal) language that can (grammatically) differentiate between operations and operands as well as infer about the type of each operand whether this type is an object (in sense of OOP) or not then we call such a language an OO-language as long as there is at least one type in this language which is an object. Finally, if all types of the language are also objects we define such language to be pure (strong) OO- language.\"_ Would appreciate any possible improvement of it. As you can see I just made the definition dependent on the term \"object\" (often fully referenced as class of objects). [EDIT] In addition, I use (luckily well understood) notion of a _type_ as in typed languages. Data type programming or type oriented programing is not only a syntactical interpretation (of the program text, i.e. how to treat certain values of literals and data variables - something that evolves into type safety) but can be attributed to language grammar and studied in formal way (using mathematical logic) as so called type systems. Notice that requiring particular type system to have a so called _universal type_ is one of the ways defining purity of OO language (there are ways to expand this semantically). _NB_ _**how to answer_** :   * it helps if you specify a book or a reference that supports/explains your understanding of terminology and concepts (usually a good definition covers or references all depended concepts except elementary).   * if possible indicate an indented category of your answer/definition if it is not clear otherwise (see above: 1 - by language example, 2 - mathematical logic, 3 - technical description and programming philosophy)   * _classification is important_ (and also because term pure-OO is included into term OO) while answering try to unmix elements of OO paradigm from other well known methodologies (and by no means confuse/overlap them, e.g. typically elements of modular programming can be covered/embodied with OO programming): try to distinguish OOP from (including or being a part of) Functional programming, Logical programming (especially strongly specialized ), Abstarct Data Types (ADT), Modular, Metaprogramming (generics and LISP's macroexpansion-time), Contracts (e.g. Eiffel), Aspect-oriented (AO), (difference between declarative and functional classification as well as _historical_ definitions of Dijkstra's structured are clear) _**on difficulty of giving a formal definition_** : surprisingly enough it is very easy to give a mathematical description of OOP in form of a certain logical (formal) system (most likely type based) and defining one concept after another. One can even try to do something more practical by applying that formalism to type safety checking or new language design aspects than merely abstract entertainment or exercise (also lookup formulation of OOP in Intuitionistic Type Theory, Dependent types, independently, in FOL formalisms as lambda calculus and just by using category theory). A main point here is that _unsurprisingly_ such formulations IMO are strongly biased (flawed) by most likely initially incomplete understanding of OOP (in computer engineering) and end up being almost inaccessible afterwards (thus hardly contributing backwards to programming world - maybe except certain percentage finds applications back from formal world by being integrated into popular languages). So yes, it is difficult to give exactly a \"good\" definition, not just definition. But I am positive of asking this here because of your experience and direct involvement, guys."}
{"_id": "98054", "title": "How can I avoid the engineering mistakes of PDT?", "text": "As a developer with enough experience to evaluate a tool, I may say that PDT is very huge in size and slow in performance for a PHP IDE. It gets bigger by release and exponentially slower by the size of the projects. Add some extra syntax coloring rules and it literally crawls, code completion works randomly and building workspace takes like forever. Java black magic (-Xmx etc) eases the pain a little but that's it. So my questions are:   1. Why is PDT like this? What design or engineering factors led to its poor performance?    2. How can I avoid making these same mistakes in my own products?"}
{"_id": "237284", "title": "How to break up Yocto layers for continuous integration?", "text": "We are building embedded software using a Linux setup based on the Yocto project. We have a couple different configurations that we are building for different purposes (but the same target). I have been struggling with the best way to set up continuous integration for this project. Ideally, I would like to be able to reuse most of the artifacts, so that someone working on a specific layer can get rapid feedback. However, I haven't found any good suggestions on a way to break these builds apart. Is there a way to separate the various layers we are working on into multiple builds with shared artifacts so that it takes a couple hours for developers to get feedback from each build?"}
{"_id": "206587", "title": "Start by Teaching Classes", "text": "In every class, and every book I have seen regarding programming, classes are held off. They are thought to be confusing and strange. I certainly had issues with them. But in object orient programing, classes are so important, looking back at my education, it's almost illogical that I was allowed to go so long without knowing objects. I am helping to develop a course to teach python to people who have never coded before. Is it possible to teach programming by starting first and foremost with classes? Is it not possible to say, \"This is a class. We will fill it with nouns and verbs so that it can serve our particular/specified needs\"?"}
{"_id": "203551", "title": "When to decide to introduce interfaces (pure abstract base classes) in C++?", "text": "Assume that you are developing a functionality and are 90% sure that the implementation class will stay alone. If I was in this position in Java I would probably not use the interface right now to keep the things simple. In Java it is easy to refactor the code and extract the interface later. In C++ the refactoring is not always so easy. It may require replacing values with smart pointers (because of the introduction of polymorphism) and other non-trivial tasks. On the other hand I don't much like the idea of introducing virtual calls when I am 90% sure they won't be needed. After all speed is one of the reasons to prefer C++ over simpler languages."}
{"_id": "203550", "title": "What is the difference between CSDA and CSDP?", "text": "This question is in reference to the IEEE's CSDA and CSDP certifications. I've already taken the CSDA course, which covered all of the knowledge areas in the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). I'm thinking about doing the CSDP certification as well, but I can't find anywhere that tells me how it differs from the CSDA. I know that it's aimed more at professionals rather than recent graduates, and I'd imagine that it covers the same areas as the CSDA, but in greater detail. Unfortunately I can't find much evidence to back that up. This is making it difficult to justify to my boss that he should spend several hundred pounds of the group's training budget on it. So the question is: **What does the CSDP offer that the CSDA doesn't?**"}
{"_id": "138479", "title": "Drawbacks of code kata", "text": "Code kata is a concept that proposes to hone programmer's skill by doing small problems many times trying to improve the code at each iteration. The name comes from an analogy to martial art kata where forms (aka kata) are practices done over and over leading to improvements. From the reaction I got to my last question on the topic, I wish to know what are the draw backs of this approach?"}
{"_id": "203559", "title": "Working with data and meta data that are separated on different servers", "text": "While developing a product, I've come across a situation where my group wants to store meta data for data entry forms (questions, layout, etc) in a different database then the database where the collected data is stored. This is mostly for security because we want to be able to have our meta data public facing, while keeping collected data as secure as possible. I was thinking about writing a web service that provides the meta information that the data collection program could access. The only issue I see with this approach is the front end is going to have to match the meta data with the collected data, which would be more efficient as a join on the back end. Currently, this system is slated to run on .NET and MSSQL. I haven't played around with .NET libraries running in SQL, but I'm considering trying to create logic that would pull from the web service, convert the meta data into a table that SQL can join on, and return the combined data and meta data that way. Is this solution the wrong way to approach the problem? Is there a pattern or \"industry standard\" way of bringing together two datasets that don't live in the same database?"}
{"_id": "202601", "title": "Make a flowchart to demonstrate closure behavior", "text": "I saw below test question the other day in which the authors used a flowchart to represent the logic of loops, and I got to thinking it would be interesting to do this with some more complex logic. For example, the closure in this immediately-invoked function expression (IIFE) sort of boggles me:               while (i <= qty_of_gets) {         // needs an IIFE         (function(i) {             promise = promise.then(function(){                 return $.get(\"queries/html/\" + product_id + i + \".php\");             });         }(i++));                            }      I wonder if seeing a flowchart representation of what happens in it could be more elucidating. Could such a thing be done? Would it be helpful, or just messy? I haven't the foggiest clue where to start, but thought maybe someone would like to take a stab. Probably all the ajax could go and it could just be a simple return within the IIFE. ![logic test](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qicvE.png)"}
{"_id": "40313", "title": "Is a single config object a bad idea?", "text": "In most of my applications, I have a singleton or static \"config\" object, in charge of reading various settings from disk. Almost all classes use it, for various purposes. Essentially it's just a hash table of name/value pairs. It's read-only, so I haven't been too concerned with the fact that I have so much global state. But now that I'm getting started with unit testing, it's starting to become an issue. One problem is that you don't usually want to test with the same configuration that you run with. There are a couple of solutions to this:   * Give the config object a setter that's ONLY used for testing, so you can pass in different settings.   * Continue using a single config object, but change it from a singleton to an instance that you pass around everywhere it's needed. Then you can construct it once in your application, and once in your tests, with different settings. But either way, you're still left with a second problem: almost any class can use the config object. So in a test, you need to set up the configuration for the class being tested, but also ALL of its dependencies. This can make your testing code ugly. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that this kind of config object is a bad idea. What do you think? What are some alternatives? And how do you start refactoring an application that uses configuration everywhere?"}
{"_id": "40315", "title": "What's the name for a bug that suddenly breaks things but has always been present?", "text": "We had a failure in our software today and after investigating discovered that the failure should have been occurring for weeks, but it waited until this morning to rear its ugly head. Is there an accepted name for such a bug that I can use when referring to it with other programmers? The closest I could find was a Schr\u00f6dinbug, but I'm don't think it applies, since nobody was inspecting any code. The bug was just lying in wait."}
{"_id": "178663", "title": "What can be done against language inertia?", "text": "Often, projects use programming language X, but would use programming language Y if they were started from scratch. For example, big numerical models may be written entirely in Fortran. Whereas this might be a reasonable choice for the components that need to run fast (alternative would be C or C++), it might be a poor choice for components that either do not need to run fast (such as things dealing with human input or simple visualisations), or where runtime is not the limiting factor (such as I/O, particularly when from the network). Another example may be when a project is built using a propriety language (such as Matlab; no, FOSS clones are not good enough) and was started at a time when FOSS alternatives were not viable, but ten years later, they are; and it would be beneficial to migrate. However, due to _language inertia_ , a migration does not happen. Code that works should not be touched, porting code is a time-consuming, expensive process, and programmers are familiar in language X but not necessarily in language Y. Still, in the long term, a migration would likely be beneficial. Can anything be done to mitigate the problems associated with language inertia? Are there any notable examples of big projects that have successfully overcome this problem? Or is a project bound to stick forever with the initial choices?"}
{"_id": "178660", "title": "IOC and stateless services. Short-lived or single-instance?", "text": "Given a garbage-collected framework, when using an IOC container to inject purely stateless services, is it generally better to use the container's single-instance lifespan or to recreate the object each time it is used and throw it, and all its dependencies, away as soon as you're done with them?"}
{"_id": "40316", "title": "Writing an application prototype - best practices?", "text": "For a project I am working I want to implement a small prototype to try things out, demonstrate some functionality to the client and learn some frameworks used in the project. Do you have any suggestions or do you know of best practices for implementing such a prototype? Some more details:   * The application will be a complex web app   * I have to implement a mechanism where the server pushes data to subscribed clients (the data will be generated by some events)   * I want to write a prototype which implements exactly this behaviour but nothing more"}
{"_id": "14271", "title": "Lone Programmer vs. Everything Else", "text": "I guess you could call me a \"MicroISV\" because it's basically just me doing the work to create a product to be sold commercially. I'm sure there are many out there like me, so here's my question: Besides the programming/coding aspect to get your code out the door, **_do you DIY or vendor-out everything else_**? For example, web site creation, internet marketing, accounting/taxes, company minutes, customer support, setting up ecommerce/banking, server management, procurement, etc. All of those activities seem to be out of the realm of what I'm good at or have the patience/time for, but I don't know if the alternative is too untrustworthy or too expensive to make it worthwhile to try to farm out these tasks to someone else (like a local company, vendors on oDesk, etc.). I can certainly understand wanting to keep all these tasks \"in-house\" (i.e. me) to protect strategy, plans, code, private things like bank account numbers, but is it really that much of a risk to outsource these tasks? What is your experience?"}
{"_id": "45896", "title": "Executive trying to understand Web 2.0 Development - Which language is best?", "text": "I am writing a business plan for developers in the 2.0 environment; my utmost respect is given to the people doing the work, but my ignorance is preventing me from articulating who I will need to complete it. What is the best way to describe the developer needs of a Web 2.0 Social/Gaming company as an open position for hire?"}
{"_id": "45891", "title": "What are your strategies to improve the level of your team in a clever way?", "text": "I'm looking for innovatives ways to improve the whole team & raise the global level in every aspects, not just technicals ones. My actual solutions :   * **programming challenge** vith votes, notes etc    * **teaching each others** : each month, a member might present a new api,strategy, whatever that help to build better sofwares. It will end up with votes. If it is approved, the team will commit to use it for a month. Then feedback.Then use it or leave it.    * **annual review to reduce you blind spot** of your Johari window. Personnaly, i really find instructive the _farewell feview_ , done each time i leave definitively a group of people.  Because of social conditioning, they need a warming up. So i really tell them to not filter their words & almost badmouth about me. No matter what they would say i will stay quiet. It works great with women, especially if they can answer with an email and you far away (double safety net) _**And what about yours ?_**"}
{"_id": "246120", "title": "Does it make sense to use tag without version numbers?", "text": "In our working group we had a discussion on using git tags in our projects. Some people argumented pro tags and some argumented against using tags. The crux is that we are talking about Magento projects which aren't really using version numbers, hence the tags only consist of `20140624` date references. The pro side was that it is easier to revert to a tag than a normal commit hash and it is part of gitflow, the contra side was that it only creates overhead. What do you think on using git tags only for reverting history?"}
{"_id": "122153", "title": "What's the best way to organize JavaFX 2.0 code?", "text": "In every example I have seen yet almost all of the GUI code is written in the `start(Stage stage)` method of the main class. Is this the best approach, or is it OK to subclass the Stage class and make your own thing? If the latter is OK, wouldn't the performance suffer because of lot of Stages?"}
{"_id": "122151", "title": "Why is Perl's smart-match operator considered broken?", "text": "I've seen a number of comments across the web Perl's smart-match operator is broken. I know it originally was part of Perl 6, then was implemented in Perl 5.10 off of an old version of the spec, and was then corrected in 5.10.1 to match the current Perl 6 spec. Is the problem fixed in 5.10.1+, or are there other problems with the smart- match operator that make it troublesome in practice? What are the problems? Is there a yet-more-updated version (Perl 6, perhaps) that fixes the problems? **Edit:** To clarify, I'm not asking about bugs, but rather the opinion that the intended behavior of `~~` is bad."}
{"_id": "122150", "title": "How can I convince cowboy programmers to use source control?", "text": "**UPDATE**   I work on a small team of devs, 4 guys. They have all used source control. Most of them can't stand source control and instead choose not to use it. I strongly believe source control is a necessary part of professional development. Several issues make it very difficult to convince them to use source control:   * The team is not used to using TFS. I've had 2 training sessions, but was only allotted 1 hour which is insufficient.   * Team members directly modify code on the server. This keeps code out of sync. Requiring comparison just to be sure you are working with the latest code. And complex merge problems arise   * Time estimates offered by developers exclude time required to fix any of these problems. So, if I say nono it will take 10x longer...I have to constantly explain these issues and risk myself because now management may perceive me as \"slow\".   * The physical files on the server differ in unknown ways over ~100 files. Merging requires knowledge of the project at hand and, therefore, developer cooperation which I am not able to obtain.   * Other projects are falling out of sync. Developers continue to have a distrust of source control and therefore compound the issue by not using source control.   * Developers argue that using source control is wasteful because merging is error prone and difficult. This is a difficult point to argue, because when source control is being so badly mis-used and source control continually bypassed, it is error prone indeed. Therefore, the evidence \"speaks for itself\" in their view.   * Developers argue that directly modifying server code, bypassing TFS saves time. This is also difficult to argue. Because the merge required to synchronize the code **to start with** is time consuming. Multiply this by the 10+ projects we manage.    * Permanent files are often stored in the same directory as the web project. So publishing (full publish) erases these files that are not in source control. This also drives distrust for source control. Because \"publishing breaks the project\". Fixing this (moving stored files out of the solution subfolders) takes a great deal of time and debugging as these locations are not set in web.config and often exist across multiple code points. So, the culture persists itself. Bad practice begets more bad practice. Bad solutions drive new hacks to \"fix\" much deeper, much more time consuming problems. Servers, hard drive space are extremely difficult to come by. Yet, user expectations are rising. What can be done in this situation?"}
{"_id": "209205", "title": "Method visibility for testing partial mocks", "text": "I'm currently writing unit tests to test behavior of a method and would like to partially mock the methods calling injected properties. For example:               public void doSomething() {       int complicatedInt = 1 + 1;       if(getProperty().someBooleanReturn()) {         ... etc. ...        }     }      So obviously I want to mock the `getProperty()` method in order to expect the `someBooleanReturn()`. My question is, since I don't want the getter to be visible to other classes, but visible to unit tests, I've currently been making these methods package-private (default scope). Is there a standard for these types of operations? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "232102", "title": "Copyright on own implementation of Standard C Library", "text": "I am busy writing a bare-bones Standard C Library for my hobby OS. I am only including the functions I really need for now but the library is still referenced as 'libc' in my source and I plan to expand it to a fully featured C Library. My OS is going to be released as open-source so I would like to know what kind of copyright notice I should put on the source files for my 'C Library' because the coding is mine but it is still based on the source of other C libraries such as GNU C. I have seen this copyright notice on a C Library implementation for AVR               00001 /* Copyright (c) 2002, Marek Michalkiewicz     00002    Copyright (c) 2004,2007 Joerg Wunsch     00003      00004    Portions of documentation Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994     00005    The Regents of the University of California.     00006      00007    All rights reserved.     00008      00009    Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without     00010    modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:     00011      00012    * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright     00013      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.     00014      00015    * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright     00016      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in     00017      the documentation and/or other materials provided with the     00018      distribution.     00019      00020    * Neither the name of the copyright holders nor the names of     00021      contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived     00022      from this software without specific prior written permission.     00023      00024   THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\"     00025   AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE     00026   IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE     00027   ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE     00028   LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR     00029   CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF     00030   SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS     00031   INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN     00032   CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)     00033   ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE     00034   POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.     00035      00036   $Id: stdlib_8h_source.html,v 1.1.1.4 2012/01/03 16:04:22 joerg_wunsch Exp $     00037 */"}
{"_id": "204632", "title": "Java continuous integration with extras", "text": "I am very new to continuous integration, but I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately I found there to be huge quantities of different tools, and each one is sizable and seems to be difficult (I am new so of course it intimidates me). What I am looking for however is a tool that can   * run my junit tests   * execute my builds   * create the jars   * deploy specific jars to specific remote servers What are the key steps and approaches to filling these requirements?"}
{"_id": "175322", "title": "CSS naming guildlines with elements with multiple classes", "text": "Its seems like there are 2 ways someone can handle naming classes for elements that are designed to have multiple classes. One way would be:               <span class=\"btn btn-success\"></span>      This is something that twitter bootstrap uses. Another possibility I would think would be:               <span class=\"btn success\"></span>      It seems like the zurb foundation uses this method. Now the benefits of the first that I can see is that there less chance of outside css interfering with styling as the class name btn-success would not be as common as the class name success. The benefit of the second as I can see is that there is less typing and potential better style reuse. Are there any other benefits/disadvantages of either option and is one of them more popular than the other?"}
{"_id": "138405", "title": "What is a good alternative to the name variable for a language that only has immutable references or labels?", "text": "For example, in functional languages, **variables** are single assignment and their values are immutable once assigned. So they have two states **unbound** and **bound** , once bound they can't be changed. Is there some mathematical term or other computer science term that is most appropriate for such as thing? Something that **semantically** doesn't imply variance or mutability. If not there doesn't exist such as term and if you were designing a language that had such constructs, what other than the word **variable** would you use to for these? I am **not** really looking to **poll** for ideas, I am trying to figure out if there is already an accepted industry ( any industry ) term for such a thing."}
{"_id": "204631", "title": "Generic params table design", "text": "We have a generic parameter table whose important attributes are :               id number auto increment not null     domain varchar (200) not null     classification varchar (200) not null     param_name varchar (200) not null     value CLOB/text     created_by, created_date, updated etc      Here the id is unique for the table plus at the functional level there is a unique index on domain, classification, param_name The value is text of any length in UTF-8. We want to add BLOB, binary data support. Choices are :   1. add a new column : blob_value BLOB OR    2. add a field 'type' of varchar2 in this table that can be null or 'B', default null. Null or blank means is not - text If B means its a blob. In that case the value will hold an id of a blob table row. The blob table will look like : id number auto increment data BLOB   3. Leave existing table alone and in a new table that references this one: parameter_id number primary key, data blob, with constraint FOREIGN KEY (parameter_id) REFERENCES Parameter(id) (suggestion FrankieTheKneeMan thank you) Advantage of first is that a param can have both a text and a blob or either. Advantage of second - not sure -> do not need to keep null columns? Current table has 30,000 rows and we expect it to grow to 70,000 out of which 10% will need blob data. Question: which of these would you choose and why or do you have an alternate ?"}
{"_id": "114309", "title": "Website for Local Programmers User Group", "text": "Looking for suggestions/requirements for a website for a local programmer user group, and the resulting feedback of other commenting on answers. Examples of an existing site would be nice, but not required."}
{"_id": "153895", "title": "Construct an array from an existing array", "text": "> Given an array of integers A[1...n-1] where 'N' is the length of array A[ ]. > Construct an array B such that B[i] = min(A[i], A[i+1], ..., A[i+K-1]), > where K will be given. Array B will have N-K+1 elements. We can solve the problem using min-heaps Construct min-heap for k elements - O(k) For every next element delete the first element and insert the new element and heapify Hence Worst Case Time - O( (n-k+1)*k ) + O(k) Space - O(k) Can we do it better?"}
{"_id": "194808", "title": "Using oAuth as a complement to an existing authentication system?", "text": "I am hoping this is the correct stack exchange to be asking this, here goes. I am building a new website whereby it implements its own custom login system. You simply register your username, email password etc. Then you're free to log in with the option of clicking \"remember me\" to save the hassle of logging in every time. For simplicity, let's call this the **Custom Login System** and an account a **Custom Account**. However, I am very interested in integrating some 3rd party login systems via oAuth that are offered by the likes of Facebook, Google and Twitter. My question is, is it feasible to have a mechanism whereby:   * you log in via Google, for example   * my script confirms the tokens and all that good stuff to ensure you authorised the login   * I then ask you to either link your Google account to:      * an existing **Custom Account** or     * a new **Custom Account** by asking to register one after logging in with Google   * once you've logged in to your **Custom Account** , I treat you like any other user except I assume the \"remember me\" option was ticked and set a cookie that logs you in from here on as if you were using a normal **Custom Account** the whole time. This could essentially mean that I don't need to constantly query Google's servers, only during login. Then from there on, as long as they have a valid cookie they will stay logged in. Is this possible? Are there any obvious flaws that I am missing out?"}
{"_id": "238266", "title": "Suggested setup for angularJS development in Visual Studio 2013", "text": "I am starting with AngularJS. The back end will be Web API (which is new to me as well) and I'd like to use just one IDE, so I'm trying to figure out how to setup a project in Visual Studio 2013 for AngularJS. I'd like to keep it as a separate project, to keep it loosely coupled to the API (or keep the UI decoupled from the Web API). I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get this setup. So....   * What project type is best for a pure AngularJS (pure HTML 5) project?   * Is is suggested to use Grunt? Or is MS Build better to handle build tasks? I thinking here linting, minify, concatenating files into a single distribution file, maybe copying to a web server.   * How do you run tests? Is there a plugin to run Jasmin tests? Do you just run Karma separately?    * Are there any good templates for AngularJS? Any that use ngBoilerplate? Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "207386", "title": "How are the size of the stack and heap limited by the OS?", "text": "**Note** : if you need to consider a specific OS to be able to answer, please consider Linux. Whenever I run a program, it will be given a virtual memory space to run in, with an area for its stack and one for its heap. **Question 1** : do the stack and the heap have a static size limit (e.g., 2 gigabytes each), or is this limit dynamic, changing according to the memory allocations during the execution of the program (i.e., 4 gigabytes total to be used by both, so if a program only uses the stack, it will be able to have a stack with 4 gigabytes)? **Question 2** : How is the limit defined? Is it the total available RAM memory? **Question 3** : What about the text (code) and data sections, how are they limited?"}
{"_id": "87603", "title": "Is using Singleton correct for Jtree & DefaultTreeModel?", "text": "Basically I have one Tree view which uses a single DefaultTreeModel. Is it okay to use singleton for Tree extending JTree and another singleton for TreeModel extending DefaultTreeModel? If not, what is the reason to avoid using singleton for each object?"}
{"_id": "218634", "title": "Text Adventure language", "text": "I was thinking of creating a text adventure game and after a small google search, I found out that quite a few (simple) text adventure games are created in Prolog. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "156829", "title": "What technology/algorithm should be used to abstract meaning or keywords from a passage of text?", "text": "Hi and thanks for looking! ## Background I have a project wherein I need to abstract meaning from a passage of text to determine what the text is seeking and then match that text to a list of search results. Now, I have some context with this and the following scenario is very close, but doesn't violate my NDA with the client: Let's say I have a software developer job description from a posting on Craig's List. I want to somehow parse that description and make a guess as to whether the posting is seeking a C# developer, a DBA, a SDET, a C++ dev, etc. Even better, it would be good to distill certain parameters such as years/level of experience and experience with any particular stacks (.NET, Java, etc). Once I have abstracted the requisition, I then need to reference a database of resumes (CVs) to find a ranked set of matches, probably using the same algorithm or at least a system of tags. ## Question How best do I attain this goal? Should I be looking into building an index of keywords? Natural Language Processing? Evolutionary Algorithms? We have to assume that human interaction will be very minimal. ## Example Job Posting Here is an example Job Posting that I have pulled at random from Craig's List: > We invite you to bring your career to an environment where talent is > rewarded and new ideas are encouraged. At Seattle Children's, the Pacific > Northwest\u2019s premier pediatric care center, we offer more than just state-of- > the-art facilities and open career growth potential. You will also find a > true commitment to our patients and families that reach far beyond the > bounds of clinical expertise. The Applications Development Senior position > in the Center for Developmental Therapeutics will develop, test, standardize > and implement software for high throughput data analysis. This includes > system analysis, design, application support, research into standards, and > customer/vendor relations management in support of production operations. > For example, supporting the integration of different computational > approaches into an end-to-end workflow for high throughput data analysis, > including applications for proteomics and metabolomics. Participate in all > phases of the project lifecycle, including architecture, design, > development, alpha, beta, release and production support. The ideal > candidate will have a Bachelor's degree in the field and a minimum of three > years of experience with software development; working knowledge of JAVA, > Spring, AJAX, JSF, Hibernate, JQuery, and JUnit; and solid experience with > SQL tuning and understanding the execution plan will be key to this role. > Please ensure to complete the job assessment questions right after you > submit your application for this opening. Required: \\- Bachelor's Degree in > Computer Science, Math, Business, or related field \\- Three (3) years > software development experience \\- Working knowledge of JAVA, Spring, AJAX, > JSF, Hibernate, JQuery, and JUnit \\- Solid experience with SQL tuning and > understanding the execution plans \\- Strong understanding of multi-tiered > web applications and scalability challenges Preferred: \\- Five (5) or more > years software development experience \\- Experience developing large > software systems \\- Experience with web services (HTTP, JSON, SOAP, XML), > Unix/Linux environments, and distributed systems (HADOOP) \\- Experience in > software and algorithmic development for molecular biology, biotechnology, > microarrays or proteomics. We offer competitive pay, generous paid time off, > transportation discounts, and employee reward and recognition programs. Thanks! Matt"}
{"_id": "156824", "title": "Use verbs with functions, nouns with classes - what about interfaces?", "text": "Ok, I understand the normal conventions of using verbs with functions and nouns with classes. What about interfaces? Is there any methodology when coming up with interface names that may not be that obvious? Just to make it clear, I'm not talking about whether to put an \"I\" in front of the name or if to use camelCase or PascalCase. I'm wondering about the method of figuring out a clear, semantic name for an interface. **EDIT** I'm obsessing on how to name an interface in the clearest way. I guess it just needs to be a noun too because when I think of naming classes I think of the closest \"real\" world object it can relate to. I suppose real world interfaces are things like a keyboard, mouse, remote control, ATM screen. Those are all nouns. Anyhow, any additional insight on a good way to formulate interface names would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "129730", "title": "What issues do I need to consider when setting up a User Support group for a large enterprise system?", "text": "I have been tasked with becoming the Administrator for a large enterprise software system that consists of several shrink wrapped applications and some home grown 'glue' and has a couple of hundered users across three continents. What do you think are the aspects / points I need to address? At the moment the best I can come up with is a quote from Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users blog post: > How does this help the users kick ass? which seems helpful as a mantra, but not very concrete."}
{"_id": "129731", "title": "Which part of the source base should users be testing?", "text": "I'm using SVN and I'm wondering about which part of the code base the users should test. The trunk (after the new feature branch has been merged in) or the branch? If using the branch, how do you deal with the scenario where two developers are working on two different feature sets (so two branches), and need to release for testing to the users? We've had a scenario where users are testing the wrong version (branch) and obviously cannot see their fixes. I'd appreciate some experience / advice about dealing with this. Update: Branches are used for new features / bug fixing and eventually merged back into the trunk. Testing involves testing the entire application (for site- effects) but will realistically users will have only tested their feature."}
{"_id": "148081", "title": "Should we always unit test bugs when correcting them?", "text": "When correcting bugs, it is encouraged where I work to first write a test that fails with the given bug, and then to fix the code until the test passes. This follows TDD practices, and is supposed to be good practice, but I noticed it tends to produce cryptic tests that come really close to the implementation. For instance, we had a problem when a job was sent, reached a certain state, was aborted, and retried. To reproduce this bug, a massive test was written with thread synchronization in it, lots of mocking and stuff... It did the job, but now that I am refactoring the code, I find it very tempting to just remove this mammoth, since it would really require a lot of work (again) to fit the new design. And it's just testing one small feature in a single specific case. Hence my question : how do you test for bugs that are tricky to reproduce ? How do you avoid creating things that test the implementation, and hurt refactoring and readability ?"}
{"_id": "89552", "title": "Javascript, Text Annotations and Ideas", "text": "I am very curious to hear input from others on a problem I've been contemplating for some time now. Essentially I would like to present a user with a text document and allow him/her to make selections of text and annotate it. Specific to the annotations i aim to achieve the following:   1. Allow users to make a text selection, annotate it, then save the selection and annotation for reference later   2. (UI) Support representing overlapped annotations. For example if the string where: \"This is the test sentence for my example test sentence\", user1 might have an annotation on \"is the test sentence for my example\" and user2 might have an annotation on \"for my example\".   3. Account for a situations where the document's text changes. The annotations would to be updated, if possible. How would you tackle this from a technical perspective? Some ideas I've had are:   * Use javascript ranges and store an annotation as a pair of integers something like: (document_start_char, document_end_char). Save this pair in the db.   * Alternatively, using JS get the text selected and actually save the full text in the db. (not sure how i would then do overlapping annotations)   * Represent overlapped annotations by applying a css style to highlight the text then darken the \"stack\" of annotations where they overlap. Smallest annotation would always have to be on the top of the \"stack\". What are your thoughts or areas of improvement? How the _heck_ could I support a document's text being updated without breaking all the annotations?"}
{"_id": "89553", "title": "Closing tag (?>) on PHP files?", "text": "Some people swear by closing their PHP files with `?>`, some say it's more optimized to leave it off. I know that it's not essential to have it on there, I'm just wondering what the pros and cons are of doing this, and what best practice is."}
{"_id": "96524", "title": "Why do people use programming books?", "text": "I find that when someone asks what is the best way to learn how to program, people usually provide them with references to a bunch texts written by various authors. However I don't believe many people at all learn to program from books. I find that they are usually faced with a challenge and then use programming as a tool to overcome it. For example I 'got into' programming because I wanted to start a server for a game I was playing, so I googled and read through the support for that particular server and now I am a employed software engineer, using only the skills I developed (and then further developed) by coding C# scripts for a not very popular server package. So my question is, do people generally find it easier to learn from these books? I know I have looked at a few of them and found them far too 'dry' to encourage me to finish it."}
{"_id": "178671", "title": "Creating a remote management interface", "text": "I'm looking for info on creating a remote management interface for our software. This is not anything illicit. Our software is for live TV production and once they go on-air we can't access the PC (usually through LogMeIn). I would like to be able to upload/download files and issue commands to our software. The commands would be software specific like \"load this file\" or \"run this script\" or \"return this value\" etc. A socket connection is preferred but the problem is most of our PCs are behind firewalls and NAT servers. I'm not sure where to start. I think HTTP tunneling is the way to go but am wondering if there are other options or recommendations. Also, assume our clients are not willing to open up ports for security reasons. Thanks."}
{"_id": "126700", "title": "Development of a bot/web crawler detection system", "text": "I am trying to build a system for my company which wants to check for unusual/abusive pattern of users (mainly web scrapers). Currently the logic I have implemented parses the http access logs and takes into account the following parameters to calculate the potential of a user being a scraper or bot:   1. It checks v/s HTTP 'POST/GET' requests ratio for each IP   2. It calculates the ratio of unique URLs and total number of hits (sparsity) by each IP Based on the above two parameters, we try to block any IP showing unusual behaviour, but these two parameters alone have not been sufficient for bot detection. Thus I would like to know:   1. Are there any other parameters which can be included to improve the detection?   2. I found a paper published in ACM library which follows the Bayesian approach to detect a crawler. Has anyone used this? How effective is this?   3. Stack Overflow and other high traffic sites have such kind of systems deployed, what logic do they follow to keep unwanted spammers/crawlers away in real time?"}
{"_id": "127251", "title": "Implications of handles between forms", "text": "I was developing a WindowsForm application in C#, with 2 forms. Regardless of what they both did specifically I needed to access values in `form2` and send them to `form1` and vice versa. For this to happen I found someone talking about constructor overload and it worked for me as I explain in the code. Form1:               namespace miniDldMngr     {         public partial class Main : Form         {             miniDldMngr.SettingsForm settingsForm; //Instantiate settingsForm                  private void settingsToolStripButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)             {                 settingsForm = new miniDldMngr.SettingsForm(this); //Create handle for Form1                 settingsForm.ShowDialog(); //Form properties were changed to act like a dialog             }      Form2:               namespace miniDldMngr     {         public partial class SettingsForm : Form         {             private Main HandleToForm1; //local variable to store handle to Form1                  public SettingsForm()             {                 InitializeComponent();             }                  public SettingsForm(Main frm1Handle) //overloaded constructor with handle to Form1             {                 InitializeComponent();                 HandleToForm1 = frm1Handle;                 txtIni.Text = HandleToForm1.comboLoad.Text; //here's how i access controls on form1 for example, as long as modifiers are public             }      I came across this answer on Stack Overflow and user codesparkle commented: > It's neither scalable nor OOP-like. Which lead me to believe that it might not have been the best choice to solve my initial issue. (S)He further added: > One approach is to create an event in the class that knows the information > which needs to be shown. The form can then register one of its methods as an > event handler. Once the information becomes available, the class notifies > the Form by calling that handler with an argument containing the displayable > information. The beauty of this approach is that the class is decoupled (not > dependent on) the implementation of Form. The MVC and MVVM design patterns > are other robust ways of doing it. Now I'm left with some questions:   1. What are the implications of the procedure I used?   2. Why isn't it an object-oriented approach?   3. What would be the best practice to send information back and forth between classes/forms?   4. How would you go about creating the event mentioned by codesparkle?   5. I don't know anything about MVC or MVVM design patterns, so some links to a structured explanation would be appreciated. Please consider that I'm very new to programming and I won't understand you if you talk like I know what I am doing. Code examples work wonders with me, since I can test them."}
{"_id": "251223", "title": "How to handle a vendor who asks for the solution of an issue they could not solve", "text": "Being a small department of developers, it's not uncommon for us to outsource projects. We have a set of companies that we really like to work with, very reliable and good local people who appreciate the work. This has happened a couple times, most recently today: **We receive a project, set it up in our environment, and notice an issue. Due to them not being able to provide a solution in time, we're forced to find a solve internally. Then the vendor, who we pay very well, will sometimes ask how we solved the problem.** Again, this is a rarity, and we have a great relationship with these guys, but I do have some inkling that I should not be handing out the answers to a resource which we're paying. How should I handle this? Do I set aside my ego and just say \"Thanks for doing a great job, here's your $30k and we finished the project for you by doing this one thing your company was unable to do but now can charge us more to do next time\"? Is it appropriate to tell them I can't give them \"company\" code/etc? Would this tarnish our relationship?"}
{"_id": "206381", "title": "Does SCRUM lend itself to multi-project environments?", "text": "I will be moving workplace in the near future and I believe they will be very interested in my experience of Scrum and how it may relate to their business. I am trying to understand if it will work in their environment. My current place of work we have a 2 products/2 backlogs/2 separate teams. These backlogs are obviously prioritised based on what the business thinks it most needs for a platform that we develop. The place I will be moving to however has many projects on the go all at the same time with (2/3 individuals working on each), small bits of work come in and are fixed on a daily basis and I imagine all the customer deliverables are roughly equally as important. So I'm wondering if anyone has experience of Scrum in a similar environment, what real examples have you got of things that worked? What didn't work? What considerations need to there for Scrum to work in this situation? There are a few aspects that I'm not sure how would work out well:   1. I believe people in teams will work across projects, and therefore potentially across scrum teams if broken down.   2. How do you go about handling priority on so many moving parts which are probably changing frequently and have their own timescales?   3. If you have a scrum team that works on several projects (some many only require 1 Dev) then how do you understand the context of the stand-up?"}
{"_id": "207926", "title": "Writing my own voice recognition code", "text": "**Problem Description** I am wanting to use voice recognition as part of a hardware project, which I would like to be completely self containing (I'm using small low power, low speed devices such as Arduino's and Raspberry Pi's, Kinects etc, no running traditional computer with an OS is involved. So a closed / self containing project). Voice recognition can be very complicated depending on the level of sophistication you desire. I have what I believe a comparatively simple set of requirements. I only want to recognise my own voice, and I have a small dictionary of 20 or so words I'd like to recognise. Thus I don't require complex speech-to-text and voice recognition libraries or any of the excellent 3rd party software I find via Internet search engines (there is no shortage of these!). I believe my requirements are \"simple enough\" (within reason) that I can code my own solution. **I am wondering if anyone has written their own process like this, and is my method is massively flawed? Is there a better way to do this without requiring a high level of mathematics or having to write a complex algorithm?** That is the solution I have tried to think up below. **Solution Description** I will be writing this in C but I wish to discuss a language agnostic process, focussing on the process its self. So lets ignore that if we can. **1 .** I will pre-record my dictionary of words to match those being spoken. We can imagine I have 20 recordings of my 20 different words, or perhaps short phrases or sentences of two or three words. I believe this makes the process of comparing two recording files easier than actually converting the audio to text and comparing two strings. **2 .** A microphone is connected to my hardware device running my code. [1]. The code is continuously taking fixed length samples, say 10msec in length for example, and storing 10 consecutive samples for example, in a circular logging style. [2]. (I'm inventing these figures off the top of my head so they are only examples to describe the process). _[1] This would likely be connected through a band-pass filter and op-amp, as would the dictionary recordings be made, to keep the stored and collected audio samples smaller._ _[2] I'm not sure exactly how I will take a sample, I need to work out a method though were I produce a numerical figure (integer/float/double) that represents the audio of a 10msec sample (perhaps a CRC value or MD5 sum etc of the audio sample), or a stream of figures (a stream of audio readings of frequencies perhaps). Ultimately a \"sample\" will be a numerical figure or figures. This part is going to be much more hardware involved so not really for discussion here._ **3 .** The code looks at it's stored 10 consecutive samples and looks for a volume increase to indicate a word or phrase is being said (a break from silence) and then increases is consecutive sample collecting to say 500 samples for example. That would mean it captures 5 seconds of audio in 10 msec samples. It is these samples or \"slices\" that are compared between the stored sound and captured sound. If a high enough percentage of samples captured matched the equivalent stored ones, the code assumes its the same word.               The start of a store recording of the world \"hello\" for example,     stored words are split into 10 msec samples also          Stored Sample No           | 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7|  8|     Stored Sample Value        |27|38|41|16|59|77|200|78|          Incoming audio (me saying \"hello\") with some \"blank\" samples     at the start to symbolise silence          Incoming Sample No         | 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7| 8| 9|10| 11|12|     Incoming Sample Value      |  |  |  |20|27|38|46|16|59|77|200|78|      **4 .** Once the code has collected a full sample stream, it then chops off the blanks samples at the start to produce the following audio recording. It could also move the sample set backwards and forwards a few places to better align with the stored sample. This produces a sample set like the below:               Stored Sample No           | 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6|  7| 8|     Stored Sample Value        |27|38|41|16|59|77|200|78|          Incoming Sample No      |-1| 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6|  7| 8|     Incoming Sample Value   |20|27|38|46|16|59|81|201|78|      **5 .** I believe that by having a percentage value for how close each sample must be, so sample 7 differs by a value of 1 which is less than %1, and a percentage value for the total number of samples which must be within their sample matching percentage, the code has an easily tunable level of accuracy. I have never done anything like this with audio before, it could be a lot of work. This is why I am asking this question, if you perhaps already know the answer to this question to be obvious (what ever that answer may be). I am hoping this won't be a computationally massive tasks as some of the hardware I will be using will be low sec stuff. In the hundreds of Megahertz (Maybe 1Ghz using an over-clocked Rasp Pi). So this is a rather crude way to match audio samples using lower computational power. I'm not aiming for instant results, but less than 30 seconds for a decent proof of concept. **PS** I don't have the rep to tag this with a new tag like \"audio\", \"audio recognition\", \"voice\", \"voice recognition\" etc."}
{"_id": "207922", "title": "Handling or preventing conflicts in a multi-user system", "text": "I have a web application that is accessed by multiple users from different locations worldwide. Let's say I have an \"edit\" form for a specific document and two (or more) users are editing the document at the same time. I know that both of the users can edit the document and submit it, but user1 will not see that user2 made changes to the document and might submit an older version of it. I was thinking about adding some kind of a lock, but then, if user1 only opened the document for edit, but never changed anything (and kept it open) user2 will never be able to edit it. Therefore, I was thinking to add a Timeout for the editor, but then user1 might time out before he finished doing his changes to the document (let's say, went out for launch). The question is, how would one prevent the document from being edited from one user while the other changes it? Note: if this question does not belong here, please explain why and where could I ask such a question."}
{"_id": "207920", "title": "Status update & news feed database design / architecture", "text": "Imagine a application similar to Facebook, where you have status updates and a news feed. The names and profile pictures can be changed. There are also several different types of updates requiring a different layout template for each type. I hate my implementation and would like some feedback on how to improve it. When I store the status update in the database, I basically store the HTML template in the database with some of the update specific information in it as well. Since the profile pic and poster name can change, I'm keeping placeholders in the HTML stored in the database like '{USER_PROFILE_PIC}' and replacing that with the most current value when the record is pulled & displayed. I hate doing it this way because if we want to do a design change down the road, we are stuck with this HTML in the database. I'm doing this all in SQL Server. I'm open to other databases if needed, I just am looking for a good way to pull dynamic status updates from a database and display them with up to the moment info. TIA"}
{"_id": "196821", "title": "Feature boundaries in functional programming", "text": "I very much enjoy the functional programming paradigm, but I am still not sure how to go about designing a small/medium project with it. When using OO, I have a set of labelled entities (classes) with clearly defined boundaries. I can reason about stuff like:   * what is this class doing?   * should I put this code _inside_ or _outside_ a class?   * should I split this class in two?   * how would a client like to use this class? So one big benefit of classes is that they provide **boundaries** for a piece of functionality. I find that this helps a lot when designing an application. In functional programming, everything seems to be about composing and abstracting functions and data structures. Type classes in haskell are mainly there to offer polymorphism. Same for prototypes in clojure. When designing an application written in a functional style, what is a good \"unit of feature\" one can define, label, and reason about?"}
{"_id": "160986", "title": "Is There Any Benefit To Participating On Sites Like TopCoder And Or GoogleCode?", "text": "Apart from the obvious reasons, like financial, employment and recognition, what are the practical/real benefits to using programming competition sites? It seems quite algorithmic and maths heavy, but how does that map to something practical, in your everyday programming?"}
{"_id": "207928", "title": "Is it possible to represent mutation of object-graph efficiently with immutable states?", "text": "I am practicing using of immutable object in C++. My personal goal is representing generic object graph (in heap) with sequence of immutable graphs. Building the multi-version graph itself isn't that much hard. The problem is performance. Brute-force versioning needs full copy of graph, and this was not acceptable. I tried to share unchanged nodes. But in this case, I got a new problem; references. Reference to other object must be updated in whole graph. This needs visiting all nodes for each time I derive a new graph version. And this mutates the nodes with references, so they also should be derived (by copying). Performance won't be better much than brute-force copying. As far as I can imagine, there's no real efficient way to represent mutation of object graph with immutable states. So I am asking for some idea on this. Is it possible to represent mutation of object graph efficiently with immutable state?"}
{"_id": "160985", "title": "Reverse engineering: what is it really good for?", "text": "I have some innocent/beginner questions:   * What is reverse engineering good for?   * As a programmer, should I learn the art of reverse engineering?   * What are the benefits to a programmer who is experienced with it?"}
{"_id": "195789", "title": "DAO Design with Child Objects", "text": "If I have objects that represent a hierarchy of relationships. For example: Person     Spouse       Spouse Contact       Spouse Address     Person Contact     Person Address Each of the items listed has a database table related to an object. Each object/table has an ID, Parent ID (Spouse ID for Spouse Address records) and Base ID (Person in the example). Given that hierarchies can be arbitrarily deep and wide, how would you design the objects and data access layer?"}
{"_id": "196823", "title": "Solution with multiple projects and (GitHub) single issue tracker and repository", "text": "I have a Visual Studio solution with multiple projects:   * `Acme.Core`   * `Acme.Core.Tests`   * `Acme.UI.MvcSite1`   * `Acme.UI.MvcSite2`   * `Acme.UI.WinformsApp1`   * `Acme.UI.WinformsApp2`   * ... The entire solution is checked-in in a single GitHub (private) repo. `Acme.Core` contains our business logic and all `UI` projects are deployables. UI projects have different requirements and features, but some of them are implemented in more than one project. All issues are opened in a single issue tracker and classified using labels (`[MvcSite1]`, `[WinformsApp1]`, etc) but I'm thinking it's starting to get messy. Is it ok to use a single repository and issue tracker to track multiple projects in one solution?"}
{"_id": "193373", "title": "How are effort estimations and duration estimations distinct?", "text": "How are effort estimations and duration estimations distinct? At present my understanding is that effort is related to the amount of work required for one person to complete a task, and duration is the total amount of time required to complete the task, irrespective of resources. Is this the commonly accepted definition?"}
{"_id": "193370", "title": "How do the Application and Database Interface Layers interact at their boundary?", "text": "I was watching one of Uncle Bob's videos and he brought up the Database Interface Layer. He had this diagram showing it: ![High level view](http://i.stack.imgur.com/TKb0b.png) These arrows show that the DB Interface Layer is aware of and calls the Application and Database layer, but not vice versa. The DB Interface Layer has \"data records\" in it. These are \"classes\" that have the name of the table and the fields of the columns. These are what I usually call DTOs. But these data records have all public fields and no/few methods. The DB Interface layer is responsible for grabbing the data from the database, populating the \"data records\" and implementing an interface in the Application Layer like so: ![Picture of the boundry](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PxFzN.png) I'm a little confused because I've never heard about this separation before. Every project I've worked on uses the DTOs in the view which is apparently wrong (at least according to Uncle Bob's video). Also, I've never worked on a project where the DB Interface Layer calls the Application Layer. It's always the Application layer asking the DB Interface Layer for information. For example, by using a DAO. But this is starting to make sense. Whenever I use hibernate I'm always pulling my hair out because I try to make the DTOs more OO and the library always fights me. So, I guess what I'm trying to ask is, what does the code look like on/at the boundary between the Application and the Database Interface Layer? For example, how does the Application get the implementation of the Order Gateway Implementation? Is the Order Gateway Implementation a DAO? I don't have a clear picture of how the POS can use the Order Gateway vs how/when the Order Gateway gets populated with data."}
{"_id": "117651", "title": "whole project of consuming web services with php", "text": "We are in the middle of a strange situation. We and a partner firm have to put up a web portal. They have a lot of functionality already done on their other portal and we are the managing firm on the project. But there are also some new development needed on their side which is designed by us. Strange thing is, we are going to do the GUI on the project and they will provide us some web services to gather data. They are using .NET and we will be using PHP for the frontend project. So what do you think that the best approach is to avoid communication and integration problems? For example   1. We provide them with just the view files and they do the rest all by themselves?   2. We develop a PHP project where we gather the required data using SOAP/REST web services?  Thanks in advance guys."}
{"_id": "117655", "title": "Is this a correct way to use nested classes to keep track of data?", "text": "I have some instruments. Each instrument should have a name (string) and description (string). Each instrument can have some setups, which these setups are each a series of commands(string[] or List). I want this class to be flexible so I can easily add or remove a whole instrument, or add or remove setups for any instrument that is existing in the class. At the end, I want to save this class in properties of my assembly so each time the program starts it can be loaded. I am also thinking about serializing it and save it on disk for moving to another copy of the software. So please let me know what you think about this approach and if you think this can be improved or even I should consider going with another way please let me know!               namespace MeasurementSuite     {         /// <summary>         /// Setups for all instruments         /// </summary>         public class Setups         {             /// <summary>             /// An instrument             /// </summary>             public class Instrument             {                 /// <summary>                 /// Name of the instrument                 /// </summary>                 public string Name { get; set; }                 /// <summary>                 /// Info about the instrument                 /// </summary>                 public string Info { get; set; }                 /// <summary>                 /// List of existing setups                 /// </summary>                 public List<Setup> SetupList { get; set; }                      /// <summary>                 /// Adds a setup to the instrument                 /// </summary>                 /// <param name=\"name\"></param>                 /// <param name=\"commands\"></param>                 private void AddSetup(string name, string[] commands)                 {                     this.SetupList.Add(new Setup(name, commands));                 }                      /// <summary>                 /// Removes a setup from the instrument                 /// </summary>                 /// <param name=\"name\">Name of the setup</param>                 public void RemoveSetup(string name)                 {                     foreach (Setup setup in SetupList)                     {                         if (setup.Name == name)                         {                             SetupList.Remove(setup);                         }                     }                 }                     }                  /// <summary>             /// Setup for a instrument             /// </summary>             public class Setup             {                 /// <summary>                 /// Name of the setup                 /// </summary>                 public string Name { get; set; }                 /// <summary>                 /// Command sets for setup                 /// </summary>                 public string[] CommandSet { get; set; }                      /// <summary>                 /// Constructor                 /// </summary>                 /// <param name=\"name\">Setup Name</param>                 /// <param name=\"commands\">Setup Command sets</param>                 public Setup(string name, string[] commands)                 {                     this.Name = name;                     this.CommandSet = commands;                 }             }          }     }"}
{"_id": "161059", "title": "Is it practical to abandon STL in C++ development?", "text": "I know in some areas (game industry, for example), STL is not recommended. So my question is: is it really a good practice not to use STL in some cases? If so, what's the biggest reasons of not using the modern C++'s STL?"}
{"_id": "161058", "title": "Are there deprecated practices for multithread and multiprocessor programming that I should no longer use?", "text": "In the early days of FORTRAN and BASIC, essentially all programs were written with GOTO statements. The result was spaghetti code and the solution was structured programming. Similarly, pointers can have difficult to control characteristics in our programs. C++ started with plenty of pointers, but use of references are recommended. Libraries like STL can reduce some of our dependency. There are also idioms to create smart pointers that have better characteristics, and some version of C++ permit references and managed code. Programming practices like inheritance and polymorphism use a lot of pointers behind the scenes (just as for, while, do structured programming generates code filled with branch instructions). Languages like Java eliminate pointers and use garbage collection to manage dynamically allocated data instead of depending on programmers to match all their new and delete statements. In my reading, I have seen examples of multi-process and multi-thread programming that don't seem to use semaphores. Do they use the same thing with different names or do they have new ways of structuring protection of resources from concurrent use? For example, a specific example of a system for multithread programming with multicore processors is OpenMP. It represents a critical region as follows, without the use of semaphores, which seem not to be included in the environment.               th_id = omp_get_thread_num();     #pragma omp critical     {       cout << \"Hello World from thread \" << th_id << '\\n';     }      This example is an excerpt from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMP Alternatively, similar protection of threads from each other using semaphores with functions wait() and signal() might look like this:               wait(sem);     th_id = get_thread_num();     cout << \"Hello World from thread \" << th_id << '\\n';     signal(sem);      In this example, things are pretty simple, and just a simple review is enough to show the wait() and signal() calls are matched and even with a lot of concurrency, thread safety is provided. But other algorithms are more complicated and use multiple semaphores (both binary and counting) spread across multiple functions with complex conditions that can be called by many threads. The consequences of creating deadlock or failing to make things thread safe can be hard to manage. Do these systems like OpenMP eliminate the problems with semaphores?   Do they move the problem somewhere else?   How do I transform my favorite semaphore using algorithm to not use semaphores anymore?"}
{"_id": "206032", "title": "What methods are available to show colleagues the advantages of a database+application solution over Excel?", "text": "I work in a company where there are Excel spreadsheets everywhere. As my colleagues are non-programmers, I'm sure they haven't contemplated that there might be a better/easier/more productive way of managing their data. Naturally, I advocate an application of sorts that can leverage the features you find in relational databases and interactive front ends, tailored to the needs of the various workflows currently distributed over disparate spreadsheets. The problem I have is that I have tried to explain the merits of such systems to various parties, but short of actually writing them from scratch I'm having a hard time convincing them, or even just exposing them to the greener grass. People in general understand Excel (even if they aren't power users) but perhaps go all fuzzy when the word 'database' pops up or you start talking about 'code'. Can anyone suggest a method, with evidence of how a workflow was improved by switching from spreadsheets to an actual application? **UPDATE** Thanks to everyone for their replies. It seems that there are no textbook methods as such, more a range of philosophical approaches to the problem i.e. the problem isn't that Excel is profligate, the problem is in how to communicate the fact that there are sometimes better tools for the job."}
{"_id": "206031", "title": "Use TFS to track bugs from Production Support", "text": "I have just moved to a new company and they are using TFS 2010 (2012 in a couple of months) as their version control system and recently started to use it as a work tracking system for the developers. However, there doesn't seem to be a bug tracking system for use by people outside development & test. Production support are getting reports of issues, fixing them on the fly and reporting back to their users at the moment. This needs to be changed but I don't really want to have a sperate system for tracking bugs and tracking dev work. Is there a way that I can create a very light weight way of entering bugs into TFS similar to the way that FogBugz does? Logging into TFS to fill out a bug report seems to be a lot heavier and you have to associate it with a particular application. Support may be able to do this but I want to be able to triage the item and potentially change the association to something other than an application. I have used FogBugz in the past and when adding a bug, you can add a much/little as you want to the item so it is at least recorded and later you can bounce it back to get more information when you come to triage the ticket."}
{"_id": "230938", "title": "Binary Tree/Knowledge Base design C++", "text": "Currently I have a binary tree template setup where my main is using it with strings to make a question/answer game. I'm using a knowledge base that works as an interface to the binary tree that main uses (main has no access to node or binary tree classes). My code seems to work fine inserting/rearranging nodes as necessary but I think my design is pretty bad. Is it usually best to just put the Node and BinaryTree classes in the same file since neither is independently useful? Or is it even standard when using binary trees to just make node a nested class inside the tree class? Not sure how to not use class friending (assuming this is bad design) unless I just do away with the knowledge base. Without knowledge base being able to see private node members it wouldn't be able to move it's \"current\" node pointer around the tree through questions/guesses unless it passed its current pointer by reference to a binary tree function that moved it each time. Also with this setup binary tree doesn't really do anything except provide a root node as k base is handling the inserting/rearranging/differentiating between questions and guesses, so I'm not sure how to move some traversal, etc. functionality from kbase to btree without just making a bunch of kbase functions that call their btree counterparts. Is there a way to use std::swap in each file (node/tree/base) also without polluting with the utility header? This design looks to be bad OO-wise, any help is appreciated."}
{"_id": "206035", "title": "JOIN vs. INNER JOIN and FULL OUTER JOIN", "text": "I know there is a difference between `INNER JOIN` and `FULL OUTER JOIN`, I can see it, but, what is the difference between the two following: `JOIN ... ON...` and `INNER JOIN...ON...` and still yet `JOIN...ON...` vs `FULL OUTER JOIN...ON...` Reason being is I think maybe just using `JOIN` is messing up a query I am working on that is posted on SO, link to question HERE. So basically what is the syntactical difference between the actual set operations themselves? Thank You,"}
{"_id": "223012", "title": "Motivate developers to keep up with admin tasks", "text": "We started off using Scrum, but recently changed to Kanban because fixed iterations didn't work in our situation. Kanban isn't working either, because team members are not updating the Kanban board. **Everyone understands what it is for** and why we have it. **Everyone agrees we should keep it up to date** , but somehow it never actually happens. The reason given is that it takes too long to write out a new card and pin it to the board. One developer said they wanted an all-electronic board to avoid this overhead, but I don't believe that this would solve the problem. (The board is right next to the cubicle where the developers sit.) I'm not the team leader (in fact I'm not even on the team). I cannot impose sanctions or offer rewards - nor would I want to anyway because I think it's bad for team morale. In any case, the team needs to completely self-administer whatever solution is found. I've run out of ideas. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "7539", "title": "How much logging should I do at production for SQLExcpetions?", "text": "I'm writing a small database-centric application in Java Swing that will be used internally in a small company. I haven't much experience with developing production-level applications. I don't use an ORM, just a few simple methods that run SQL queries with Java JDBC. On every method that access the database I use a `try-catch` statement for `SQLException` and `IOException`. Should I do any logging here? In case I should, how much should I log? Please give me examples of good practice in this case."}
{"_id": "368", "title": "Why do people still say Java is slow?", "text": "For a long time in SO and in other places Java has the reputation of being slow. From jokes to many comments in questions and answers, people still believe Java is slow based solely on experience with it in the 90s. This is my issue: we have disproved (most) of the reasons that people believe Java is slow. Outside of small things, Java is pretty fast. So why is it that people still refuse to believe Java is fast now? Is it part of their mindset that anything thats not C/C++ is slow? Is it because people don't check over time? Is it because people are just biased?"}
{"_id": "7305", "title": "int* i; or int *i; or int * i;", "text": "What is your favorite method to declare a pointer?               int* i;      or               int *i;      or               int * i;      or               int*i;      Please explain why. see also: http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq2.html#whitespace"}
{"_id": "7530", "title": "How do you deal with intentionally bad code?", "text": "There are many stories about intentionally bad code, not only on TheDailyWTF but also on SO. Typical cases include:   * Having a useless time-wasting construct (e.g. an empty loop counting to some huge value) so programmers can easily \"speed up\" the application by removing it when they are tasked to.   * Providing intentionally misleading, wrong or no documentation to generate expensive support requests.   * Readily generating errors, or worse, generating even though everything worked fine, locking up the application so an expensive support call is required to unlock. These points display a more or less malicious attitude (even though sometimes by accident), especially the first point occurs rather often. How should one deal with such constructs? Ignore the issue, or just remove the offending code? Notify their manager, or speak to the person who introduced the \"feature\"?"}
{"_id": "360", "title": "For Windows developers who would like to get into the Mac OS X software development industry, what's a great way to get started?", "text": "For a developer that wants to start developing software for Mac OS X, what is the best way to get started?"}
{"_id": "51919", "title": "Constant Interface antipattern - PHP", "text": "I came across this Wikiepedia article which says that using interfaces for defining constants is not a good thing. Solution suggested there is to define constants in a final class and use static import. That works for Java. I come from the PHP world which does not have the \"import\" thing. So, what is the acceptable solution for PHP?"}
{"_id": "96532", "title": "Web development for an otherwise widely experienced programmer?", "text": "I have been [hobby] programming for years now and know several languages including Objective-C, Java, C#, Python, C, and C++ well. I understand many programming patterns and have used several different frameworks. However, I know almost nothing about web development. I'm looking for a resource that, instead of diving right into code, kind of gives me a bird's eye view of how all the technologies work together. Oftentimes, I'll see several things studied in depth like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ActionScript, AJAX, etc., but no explanation of where they all fit in the big picture. I'd also like to avoid all-encompassing IDE's starting out, as that tends to make it harder to actually understand whats going in the learning phase. Any links, resources, preferably free and online, advice, etc. much appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "19359", "title": "How to learn/become capable of thinking out of the box?", "text": "In every problem solving there's always people who think differently, who come with a 6th option when only 5 were suggested by others, who think \"out of the box\". Please tell how one can achieve such ability? And what it takes to achieve it?"}
{"_id": "234707", "title": "Python - Is this a bad strategy pattern?", "text": "I've got a Python project wherein a basic object is created and various different attributes are modified/given to it via what I _thought_ was a good example of a strategy pattern. In this silly game there are enemies with multiple different potential patterns of movement. The Enemy class has a basic pattern of movement it defaults to; otherwise, a strategy pattern is implemented to randomly choose different ones as the game progresses. The Enemy's `obj.update()` is something like this:               def update(self):         self.unique_action()         self.check_if_shooting()         self.find_new_rect()      So I'd been replacing `self.unique_action` on the fly with a strategy pattern using what I think are called 'higher-order functions'.               def new_pattern_of_movement(obj, func):         def inner(*args, **kwargs):             ##code for doing different stuff             ##intentionally NOT returning the function -              ##the idea is to replace the default unique_action         return inner          \u2026     ##eventually when generating bad guys for the level\u2026     newEnemy = Enemy()     new_AI = random.choice([new_pattern_of_movement, other_pattern, some_other_pattern]) #etc etc     newEnemy.unique_action = new_AI(newEnemy, newEnemy.unique_action)      After a while, I thought, \"self, why not change their attributes as part of the wrapper as well? you change their methods, just set their point_value and graphics and all that dumb stuff too\" and I was like \"welp I can do that\"               def alt_action(obj):         def inner(*args, **kwargs):             ##code for their unique_action             ##again, not returning obj.unique_action         obj.point_value += 100         obj.color = colors.YELLOW         obj.speed -= 1         return inner      Evidently, this is regarded as \"very JavaScript-y\". I find it terribly simple though, and preferable to stringing along a bunch of objects that inherit from a long chain of ancestors. My job isn't on the line or anything here, but in such a situation is it really that critical to split these up into separate classes? The first example, at the least, seems fine because it really is just replacing one method with another, but in the second example, I'm definitely redefining object attributes, and I go a bit further than depicted here (replacing the object's `self.draw()` methods and that if it's necessary). It might be bad, but it's _so stupidly easy_. Is this a good example of how _not_ to implement a strategy pattern?"}
{"_id": "96537", "title": "if else empty curly braces", "text": "for(int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++)      {         if(i != str.length() - 1 && Character.toString(str.charAt(i)).equals(\"*\"))      {           if(i != 0 && Character.toString(str.charAt(i - 1)).equals(Character.toString(str.charAt(i + 1)))) {           } else if(i == 0) {           } else {             return false;           }         }       }       return true      what does the empty braces after if/else statement mean or which value is returned"}
{"_id": "51913", "title": "Friday afternoon, nothing to do - try and learn something?", "text": "Its Friday afternoon and I've literally done everything expected of me. I'm thinking I should spend this productively, and fancy running through the asp.net mvc tutorial (since we've got nothing MVC here) - is this a bad thing? I don't want to feel like I'm wasting company time."}
{"_id": "200067", "title": "How do I make an estimate for my first website?", "text": "Technically not my first, but my new client wants to enter into negotiations regarding the cost of a website. It's fairly straight-forward, it's a little bit more than a portfolio page, and I should be able to finish it without much complications. However, I don't know how to make an estimate to enter negotiations. One that will not scare the client away, and will ensure that I'm making the best out of it as well."}
{"_id": "88602", "title": "How detailed should public release notes be?", "text": "When releasing a software update, how detailed should the notes be? Specifically, how detailed should bug fixes be?"}
{"_id": "150289", "title": "random generator not good enough?", "text": "During an interview I was asked to implement a random generator in java without using any existing random number libraries that takes as an argument int n, and returns a random number between 0 and n. This was the implementation I provided:               public static int random(int n) {         int r = 0;         for (int i =0; i <n;i++) {             r+=helper();         }         return r;     }          // helper that returns 0 or 1     private static int helper() {         long t = System.nanoTime();         if (t%2 == 0) {             return 1;         } else {             return 0;         }     }      He said it's not right but he wouldn't tell me what he was expecting. Why did he say it's wrong? How would you have done it differently?"}
{"_id": "147689", "title": "Standardized code documentation format, where is it?", "text": "I'm currently looking into API documentation generation tools and I noticed that apparently there are no efforts going on in standardization. Javadoc style is kind of an ubiquitous convention... it is used for Java (duh), PHP (PHPDocumentor, Doxygen, Stubbles), C/C++ (Doxygen again)... and there is even IDE support for it even in other languages that are not java. Even NaturalDocs which has a completely different syntax for documentation has some compatibility for it. So my question is: **are there any efforts going on in standardizing in-code documentation syntax?** , which can in turn be used for documentation generators or language metadata across different languages?."}
{"_id": "65181", "title": "Why fork a library for your own application?", "text": "Why should a programmer ever fork a library for inclusion in a widely used application? I ask this question because I was reading an article about why Chromium isn't packaged for many Linux distros like Fedora. Apparently its largely due to the fact that Google has forked a number of libraries, modified them, and included them in Chromium. This has driven up the complexity of packaging releases. There are a number of reasons why this can be a bad thing, but how strong a case can you actually make for doing so in a large widely used application such as Chromium? The original article: http://ostatic.com/blog/making-projects-easier-to- package-why-chromium-isnt-in-fedora Isn't it usually worth the effort to make slight modifications to your own program in order to use a popular and well developed library?"}
{"_id": "135446", "title": "Parser combinator that looks like BNF", "text": "Is it possible to construct a parser combinator library that reads like a BNF grammar? I don't know of any, so I started wondering if there are reasons it's impossible or undesirable to do so. It seems to me it would be the best of both worlds. Functional languages such as F# allow operator overloading. Is it just a matter of providing the right syntax, or is there more to it?"}
{"_id": "255828", "title": "What is the benefit of passing a delegate to the constructor instead of just having the client code create and pass the ParserSettings?", "text": "When answering a question on Stack Overflow, the library appeared to have a weird way to specify configuration, through an `Action` passed to the constructor:               public Parser(Action<ParserSettings> configuration)     {         if (configuration == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"configuration\");         this.settings = new ParserSettings();         configuration(this.settings);         this.settings.Consumed = true;     }          internal Parser(ParserSettings settings)     {         this.settings = settings;         this.settings.Consumed = true;     }      So to specify the settings you provide a `Action<ParserSettings>` that modifies the settings:               var parser = new Parser( s => { s.CaseSensitive = false; } );      I don't understand what this pattern accomplishes. What is the benefit of passing a delegate to the constructor instead of just having the client code create and pass the `ParserSettings` to the constructor?"}
{"_id": "65184", "title": "Is it fair to charge again for checking why my code not working on client's server?", "text": "So, I was tasked by client to help him convert his wp menu to javascript dropdown. I did on my development server. He did see the change and I was paid. I deliver the code he deploy it. But, no change on his server. So, I have to spent hours debugging it on his server. It turns out, his other plugin is not compatible with my change. That plugin is really custom. I have to change my code to make sure it's compatible with that plugin. My question is, **is it fair for me to charge him for the hours I spent on debugging it AND actually fixing it?** or **is it still my responsibility, to make sure my code deployed properly?**"}
{"_id": "65187", "title": "Is it better to be specialized in a few areas or have general abilities in many?", "text": "My situation is this. I will be graduating soon with a degree in Computer Science. I did have a job for a while working as a Web Developer for a small graphic design company. During this time, we did work on a few large scale projects for the local university. I eventually had to leave that job after the economy crashed due to a lack of available work. Since then I haven't had any jobs related to my field as there aren't usually many available in the area I live in. I have been actively searching for jobs for the last 4 months and have had very little if any positive feedback. This has left me wondering if perhaps my qualifications are what they should be. I would say in general I have a basic to intermediate understanding of many languages and systems. I'm not sure I could say I'm specialized in anything, though web development using PHP/MySQL would be the closest thing I have to a specialty. That being said I'm not sure at this point that I want to pursue only web development as I would prefer to get more into desktop application development. Do employers look more for people with specialties than they do those that have broad general abilities?"}
{"_id": "150285", "title": "When should I start the server side coding?", "text": "I am creating a website, where users can upload their own videos. So far I am just building the main structure with HTML and CSS. Is it a better practice to write server-side code _before_ the site layout is finished? Does it not make a difference?"}
{"_id": "10989", "title": "What did Linus Torvalds mean by his quotation about portability?", "text": "In a debate with Andrew Tanenbaum over microkernel vs. monolithic operating system architecture, Linus Torvalds said, > Portability is for people who cannot write new programs. What did he mean by that?"}
{"_id": "153951", "title": "GPS accuracy with software", "text": "I spoke with a guy who claimed that he's working (programming) on a GPS-system that is going to be accurate to the centimeter.   * Is this even possible?    * What is the limiting factor, the big distance between the satellite and the GPS, or is it the software?    * Can the software be improved to make a GPS accurate to centimeters?"}
{"_id": "246119", "title": "Open source license that requires visible attribution in derivative works?", "text": "My company has a client-side web application that we would like to open- source. We don't want to impose any restrictions on usage, except that any modifications and derivative works should contain a **visible** attribution, e.g. show our name and/or logo - we want it to be visible that our code is being used in the application. As I understand, while licenses like BSD 3-clause contain an attribution requirement, it can be satisfied with something like a HTML comment only. How to license to ensure that derivative works are visibly labeled?"}
{"_id": "215920", "title": "What is the best way to handle dynamic content?", "text": "So we run a site where there are elements of the interface that could potentially be changed at any moment in the backend. Specifically we run a web service where certain functions are loaded dynamically. However, there are times where we remove certian functions and we want the experience to be as seamless for the user as possible. Now we've considered a few methods of solving this   1. Ping the server every few seconds. If the functions are outdated/no longer available refresh the users page. While this would work the best, I feel like having that much IO can't be too good   2. When the user clicks a function, if it's outdated/no longer available, alert them in the response and refresh the page. This would also work fairly well. I guess I'm more wondering how web apps like Google Docs work where you have content that has to be synced up across multiple users and that isn't more than a few seconds outdated Sorry if this isn't the best place to ask this. I figured this was more of a site architecture question and that this might be the place to ask it over SO."}
{"_id": "151889", "title": "Advice for learning Javascript with prior knowledge of C++?", "text": "Recently I have become interested in learning Javascript for web development. I currently know HTML, CSS, and beginner/intermediate C++. I understand polymorphism, inheritance, and all of that fun stuff. Would any of these skills carry over to Javascript? In what key ways does Javascript differ from C++?"}
{"_id": "120707", "title": "How can I gather client's data on Google App Engine without using Datastore/Backend Instances too much?", "text": "One of the projects I'm working on is online survey engine. It's my first big commercial project on Google App Engine. I need your advice on how to collect stats and efficiently record them in DataStore without bankrupting me. Initial requirements are:   * After user finishes survey client sends list of pairs [ID (int) + PercentHit (double)]. This list shows how close answers of this user match predefined answers of reference answerers (which identified by IDs). I call them \"target IDs\".   * Creator of the survey wants to see aggregated % for given IDs for last hour, particular timeframe or from the beginning of the survey.   * Some surveys may have thousands of target/reference answerers. So I created entity               public class HitsStatsDO implements Serializable     {         @Id         transient private Long id;         transient private Long version = (long) 0;              transient private Long startDate;              @Parent transient private Key parent;   // fake parent which contains target id         @Transient int targetId;              private double avgPercent;         private long hitCount;     }      But writing HitsStatsDO for each target from each user would give a lot of data. For instance I had a survey with 3000 targets which was answered by ~4 million people within one week with 300K people taking survey in first day. Even if we assume they were answering it evenly for 24 hours it would give us ~1040 writes/second. Obviously it hits concurrent writes limit of Datastore. I decided I'll collect data for one hour and save that, that's why there are `avgPercent` and `hitCount` in `HitsStatsDO`. GAE instances are stateless so I had to use dynamic backend instance. There I have something like this:               // Contains stats for one hour     private class Shard     {         ReadWriteLock lock = new ReentrantReadWriteLock();         Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO> map = new HashMap<Integer, HitsStatsDO>(); // Key is target ID              public void saveToDatastore();         public void updateStats(Long startDate, Map<Integer, Double> hits);     }      and map with shard for current hour and previous hour (which doesn't stay here for long)               private HashMap<Long, Shard> shards = new HashMap<Long, Shard>();   // Key is HitsStatsDO.startDate      So once per hour I dump Shard for previous hour to Datastore. Plus I have `class LifetimeStats` which keeps `Map<Integer, HitsStatsDO>` in memcached where map-key is target ID. Also in my backend shutdown hook method I dump stats for unfinished hour to Datastore. There is only one major issue here - **I have only ONE backend instance** :) It raises following questions on which I'd like to hear your opinion:   * Can I do this without using backend instance ?   * What if one instance is not enough ?   * How can I split data between multiple _dynamic_ backend instances? It hard because I don't know how many I have because Google creates new one as load increases.   * I know I can launch exact number of _resident_ backend instances. But how many ? 2, 5, 10 ? What if I have no load at all for a week. Constantly running 10 backend instances is too expensive.   * What do I do with data from clients while backend instance is dead/restarting? One thing to note is that I can't change client much. Currently it's JavaScript embedded into web-pages of customers. I can change RPC in some way but architecturally I cannot replace client with Google Docs forms for example."}
{"_id": "155507", "title": "How to get experience in large scale databases?", "text": "I have written applications that are very small scale and the code I write works fine for them. But I have often wondered how the server side code I write would scale up from 100s of queries per day to millions. Also when looking at possible jobs/projects, people are often looking for developers with experience in this sort of high traffic database design so I would at least like to be able to say, I havent gotten to work on a project that was this popular, but I at least have tried to simulate it. Are there tools or frameworks that can generate a lot of traffic or at least simulate what would happen with traffic on different orders of magnitude so I could get some practice writing optimized code for higher traffic applicaitons?"}
{"_id": "155504", "title": "What is wrong with my logic for the divide and conquer algorithm for Closest pair problem?", "text": "I have been following Coursera's course on Algorithms and came up with a thought about the divide/conquer algorithm for the closest pair problem, that I want clarified. As per Prof Roughgarden's algorithm (which you can see here if you're interested): For a given set of points P, of which we have two copies - sorted in X and Y direction - Px and Py, the algorithm can be given as closestPair(Px,Py):   1. Divide points into left half - Q, and right half - R, and form sorted copies of both halves along x and y directions - Qx,Qy,Rx,Ry   2. Let closestPair(Qx,Qy) be points p1 and q1   3. Let closestPair(Rx,Ry) be p2,q2   4. Let delta be minimum of dist(p1,q1) and dist(p2,q2)   5. This is the unfortunate case, let p3,q3 be the closestSplitPair(Px,Py,delta)   6. Return the best result Now, the clarification that I want is related to step 5. I should say this beforehand, that what I'm suggesting, is barely any improvement at all, but if you're still interested, read ahead. Prof R says that since the points are already sorted in X and Y directions, to find the best pair in step 5, we need to iterate over points in the strip of width 2*delta, starting from bottom to up, and in the inner loop we need only 7 comparisions. Can this be bettered to just one? How I think is possible seemed a little difficult to explain in plain text, so I drew a diagram and wrote it on paper and uploaded it here: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XhqWc.jpg) Since no one else came up with is, I'm pretty sure there's some error in my line of thought. But I have literally been thinking about this for HOURS now, and I just HAD to post this. It's all that is in my head. Can someone point out where I'm going wrong?"}
{"_id": "150750", "title": "Why is MaybeChannelBound callable?", "text": "The Queue class in the python kombu library inherits from MaybeChannelBound, which in turn implements the **call** method (making it callable). The **call** () method itself is a thin wrapper around the bind() method. It is not clear why this was done, as calling the bind() method seems (to my simple mind, at least) to be clearer and more descriptive of the intent of the function. Why would somebody use the **call** () method in a situation like this?"}
{"_id": "82952", "title": "How do I implement the MPL? What's this \"Exhibit A\" thingy?", "text": "I'm about to start an open-source project which shall be licensed under Mozilla Public License (MPL). The problem is, I'm not sure what's this \"Exhibit A\" thing... Am I supposed to put that wordy \"Exhibit A\" in each and every source file contained in the project? And what about the MPL text proper; must I provide a complete text of the MPL in the root directory of the project? I'd really appreciate it if someone can point me to a guide on how to _release_ software under MPL (as opposed to _using_ software with MPL). TIA."}
{"_id": "155508", "title": "FIFO lock with mutiple threads/processes", "text": "I need to use FIFO in my application in linux+C, I have multiple threads and processes, I read some where that writing to a FIFO is atomic below some value (I believe 4k) especially I'm writing max of 300 bytes, Am I safe here?"}
{"_id": "119537", "title": "Dependency Injection: Only for single-instance objects?", "text": "What if I want to also decouple my application, from classes like Product or User? (which usually have more than one instance) Take a look at this example:               class Controller {         public function someAction() {             $product_1 = new Product();             $product_2 = new Product();             // do something with the products         }     }      Is it right to say that Controller now depends on Product? I was thinking that we could decouple them too (as we would with single- instance objects like Database) In this example, however ugly, they are decoupled:               class Controller {         public function someAction(ProductInterface $new_product) {             $product_1 = clone $new_product;             $product_2 = clone $new_product;             // do something with the products         }     }      Has anyone done something like this before? Is it excessive?"}
{"_id": "214348", "title": "Can *any* program task be expressed without state?", "text": "This is a theoretical question, but after many years of programming in what I now realize is \"normal\" imperative technique, using C++ mainly, I've discovered this other world of functional programming, which I stumbled upon accidentally while casually learning JavaScript. This has led me to wonder if you could technically replace any complete state- oriented program with a different implementation that is purely functional and without state? It's an intriguing idea and I must admit that there is a clarity and elegance in functional programming that has really blown my mind."}
{"_id": "158567", "title": "Do some best practices depend on skill?", "text": "Is there evidence that some software development best practices depend on programming skill level? I mean, these methods are good, but maybe the way the are used or the extent might vary? This question arose after I read Paul Graham's commentary about OOP, and the last bullet point of this accepted answer. It proposes that where, how, and how much to use unit tests might depend on your programming skill. So do top programmers use different approaches than average programmers?"}
{"_id": "214342", "title": "Is QA or testing a lot of overhead or not utilized properly?", "text": "From my experiences in software development (Eg. Waterfall ) I see it that most of the times it is the development team that sweats it out with the BA folk to get requirement clarity. The development folks then slog it out to meet deliverable deadlines. Where is the QA - they might be free - but will only hitch onto the bandwagon after the code is delivered. Then starts a slew of communication regarding what is a defect and what is a requirement change / clarity needed. From QA perspective - log a defect / bug / issue - and then its the development team responsibility to go figure it out. Clearly this is problematic and affects my opinion of the role and value that QA brings to the table in the Waterfall model. The question is if Agile is actually geared towards reducing this 'waste' by getting testing involved early in the development so that issues get eliminated at the start? If so then what aspects of Agile help solve some of the above problems I have experienced?"}
{"_id": "158569", "title": "Please explain the statement that the function an+b belongs to O(n^2) and and \u0398(n)?", "text": "Let's say I have a linear function `f(n)= an+b`, what is the best way to prove that this function belongs to O(n2) and `\u0398(n)`? I do not need mathematical rigor here. I need a programmers answer. Some logical way of explaining. This is precisely why I didn't post the question in mathematics Q&A and instead in the Programmers Q&A."}
{"_id": "234404", "title": "Has there been any formal proof that documentation in general is incomplete and obsolete to a certain grade?", "text": "I'm a web developer and I'm currently once again in a situation where a partly clueless ops department requires a \"complete\" documentation required for technical support of our application by a third-party, including \"every possible error situation\". Since there is no common ground on what this third- party should be capable of (ops constantly talk about \"a person from the street should be able to do it\"), I consider such documentation impossible and my experience tells me that every documentation is obsolete and incomplete, even if just a bit. I can't help to wonder: has there been any study or maybe even a proof that this is actually the case? Maybe even G\u00f6del's incompletness theorems could be applied here?"}
{"_id": "215697", "title": "RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes() and accessing HTTP Session", "text": "Need to access `HTTP` session for fetching as well storing some information.I am using `Spring-MVC` for my application and i have 2 options here.   1. User `Request/ Session` in my Controller method and do my work   2. Use `RequestContextHolde` to access Session information. I am separating some calculation logic from Controller and want to access Session information in this new layer and for that i have 2 options   1. Pass session or Request object to other method in other layer and perform my work.   2. use `RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes()` to access `request/ session` and perform my work. I am not sure which is right way to go? with second approach, i can see that method calling will be more clean and i need not to pass `request/ session` each time."}
{"_id": "199033", "title": "How do I distinguish between things belonging to the standard library, specific gems, and those that are user-generated in Ruby?", "text": "I'm a beginning programmer, that for various reasons is using an existing Ruby codebase to learn to program. My goal is to be able to understand and eventually extend this codebase. However, I find it hard to understand what is a _standard library function_ , a _gem function_ , or a _user-created_ function. Distinguishing between functions may not be the only thing that I need to do, there might be other \"thingies\" moving around too. The reason for the question is that I want to be able to read the code, and as I go through identify what documentation I need to read in order to understand the code. Hence, my question is: in Ruby code, how do I distinguish between things belonging to the standard library, specific gems, and those that are user- generated, so that I may look in the right place to understand what identified functions (and other things) does?"}
{"_id": "153483", "title": "The Apache License, v2.0: Copyright License vs Patent License", "text": "> # The Apache License, v2.0 > > [..] > > **2\\. Grant of Copyright License** > > Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby > grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty- > free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works > of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense and distribute the Work > and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form. > > [..] > > **3\\. Grant of Patent License** > > Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby > grants to you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty- > free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, > have made, use offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, > where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such > Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or > by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such > Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against > any entity (including cross-claim or counterclaim in lawsuit) alleging that > the Work or a Contribution incorporated within theWork constitutes direct or > contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You > under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such > litigation is filed. While the meaning of the **Copyright License** provision is rather clear, I did not get the meaning of the **Patent License** provision.   * Which advantages does the \"Grant of Patent License\" provision further give to Contributors? Why are they useful?   * Is the \"Grant of Patent License\" provision useful only in case of patent litigation?"}
{"_id": "124930", "title": "How useful are Lisp macros?", "text": "Common Lisp allows you to write macros that do whatever source transformation you want. Scheme gives you a hygienic pattern-matching system that lets you perform transformations as well. How useful are macros in practice? Paul Graham said in Beating the Averages that: > The source code of the Viaweb editor was probably about 20-25% macros. What sorts of things do people actually end up doing with macros?"}
{"_id": "2204", "title": "How to prevent deep indentations?", "text": "What steps and measures can I take to prevent deep indentations in my code?"}
{"_id": "124936", "title": "Do I really need a disclaimer for free software?", "text": "If I publish some software on my website which can be downloaded and used free of charge, do I still need a disclaimer? I mean, I am not even selling anything, there is no contract, so why should there be an _implied warranty_? (Which also makes me wonder why there are disclaimers on things like the MIT license.) **Edit:** I am not a US citizen, I am kind of looking for answers as general as possible and as specific as necessary."}
{"_id": "124934", "title": "What's the current best practice for C multithreading?", "text": "I've been a Java (and PHP) developer for most of my life, but will need to use C for my next project. I remember some basic stuff we did back in school with fork, pthread, semaphores, etc. but I'm not sure if that's still the \"way to go\" here, or if there have been any recent developments/improvements etc. Google's results seem to be fairly dated. Or does that just mean that this is still the current \"state of the art\"? Or will I have to use a (system-independent) libary like glib if I want higher-level abstractions, like synchronized queues? What other libraries are there? (The programm will only have to run on Linux though)"}
{"_id": "199039", "title": "Rails + Heroku Architecture", "text": "I'm in the process of developing a Rails app that I plan on subsequently deploying to Heroku. I've never run apps on Heroku (outside of the free simple app) so I have some questions on a few things on how I should architect some aspects of my app to run. I want a service to run on a schedule to check for inactive users to send a 'we haven't seen you in a while' type of email. Would this just be it's own worker dyno in Heroku? Or would that be integrated into the web app as a background job of sorts? In relation to that, I will have a worker dyno that will handle sending account confirmation emails, among other random emails, would it make sense to have that operation be coupled with the process above? Or would it have to be a completely separate dyno? I've done plenty of this type of work in .Net hence some of my confusion on this switch to Rails."}
{"_id": "215698", "title": "Testing on different operating systems", "text": "I am a developer who has windows 7 installed as the host operating system with vmware. I have linux installed using vmware. Therefore I am able to test java and c++ apps on windows 7 and Linux. I also want to test them on windows 8 and I want to familiarise myself with windows 8. I am debating whether to upgrade my host operating system to windows 8 or install it on vmware?"}
{"_id": "43039", "title": "Growing mobile developers inside a web development org", "text": "I work for a \"mature web startup\" as a web developer (mainly using PHP). Our main site has about 8 million registered members at the moment. However, the site is basically impossible to use on anything that's not a real computer. One of our most-requested features, if not _the_ most requested, is a mobile app or mobile version of the site. I think we need to do it. Management thinks we need to do it. In fact, everyone in the company thinks we need to do it. But it's nigh impossible to hire someone with iPhone/Android skills in the present market. I'm the only person at the company with any level of mobile development experience currently, and I'm not that good (yet), so I'm seeking comments on how to bootstrap a capacity for mobile development. Anything from general tips (should I focus on developing my personal skills first or try to pick up a more experienced mobile dev?) to specific recommendations on training, etc., may be helpful, as long as it doesn't reduce to \"sucks to be you.\" :-)"}
{"_id": "201565", "title": "Should all classes have a default constructor as part of good coding convention", "text": "From the texts I have read so far, the conventions talk about organizing `constructors`, starting with the `default`, if any. I am wondering, should all classes have a `default constructor` anyway. This will at least help to create a simple instance of the `class` on the fly, without having to use a `parameterized constructor`, which itself may require additional `imports` for specific parameter type."}
{"_id": "191207", "title": "Designing an API for service operations with closely related parameters", "text": "I'm having trouble deciding how to design this service API.               public class GetCurrentValuesRequest     {         public int ReferenceID { get; set; }         public int[] FilterIDs { get; set; }     }          public class GetDefaultValuesRequest     {         public int[] FilterIDs { get; set; }     }          public class GetValuesAsOfDateRequest     {         public int ReferenceID { get; set; }         public int[] FilterIDs { get; set; }         public DateTime AsOf { get; set; }     }          public class GetValuesAsOfChangeSetRequest     {         public int ReferenceID { get; set; }         public int[] FilterIDs { get; set; }         public long ChangeSetIDs { get; set; }     }          public class GetProposedValuesRequest     {         public int ReferenceID { get; set; }         public int[] FilterIDs { get; set; }         public long ApprovalKey { get; set; }     }          public class GetValuesIfModifiedRequest     {         public int ReferenceID { get; set; }         public int[] FilterIDs { get; set; }         public DateTime Since { get; set; }     }          public class GetValuesResponse     {         public string[] Results { get; set; }     }          public class GetValuesIfModifiedResponse     {         public string[] Results { get; set; }         public bool IsModified { get; set; }     }          public interface IService     {         GetValuesResponse GetValues(GetCurrentValuesRequest request);              GetValuesResponse GetValues(GetDefaultValuesRequest request);              GetValuesResponse GetValues(GetValuesAsOfDateRequest request);              GetValuesResponse GetValues(GetValuesAsOfChangeSetRequest request);              GetValuesResponse GetValues(GetProposedValuesRequest request);              GetValuesIfModifiedResponse GetValuesIfModified(GetValuesIfModifiedRequest request);     }      I've thought about changing it to have make the `IfModified` request / response subclasses of the simple `GetValues` request response and only including one `GetValues` call. The server would return a different response depending on the input request, but that requires user to call `IService` this:               var response = (GetValuesIfModifiedResponse)serviceClient.GetValues(new GetValuesIfModifiedRequest() { ... });      I've also thought about placing `IsModified` in the simple `GetValuesResponse`, and only populating it if a `GetValuesIfModifiedRequest` is passed into it. But that seems a bit strange to include it in a result from a method which does not actually do anything with it. Also, it might throw of a user if they see it and expect to be able to use it in their code. `bool? IsModified` is better, but I'm not entirely sold on it just yet. Any suggestions for how to best design this API?"}
{"_id": "240944", "title": "Client auto-detect required server", "text": "I have a project that requires a client app to communicate with a server. I was wondering if there is a way for the client app to detect available servers and \"know\" by some method or another which server is the one it needs. The client is built with .net and c#, the server is a simple SQL database.They are on the same network. Is there a built in mechanism to do this or is the task more complex then it seems at first? I don't have more details ATM, it's still just an idea. The reason behind it is that when a user uses the client app, we don't want him to enter connection strings manually if he doesn't have to."}
{"_id": "240946", "title": "Image Processing in browser is too slow on Android compared to that with desktop browser", "text": "## Situation I've written a simple black and white image filter application with JavaScript using html5 canvas. Here is an example of the app . (I don't know why it does not work in jsfiddle, so I gave the link to the source code). On my desktop browser and Firefox OS, for images of dimensions less than 1024X768 px, the application worked fine and so I posted it on the marketplace. But when I downloaded it on my Android with the Firefox browser, the application was running very very slow even for images 500x500 having size of 100kbs. ## Implementation Basically what I did was, I set the canvas `display: hidden`, get the image buffer data, take the individual pixel values and modify them (typical point operations), and then generate a .png image from the resulting operation and use an `img` tag to display it, because I could not control the canvas to fit the user screen without overflowing (for images with dimensions greater than screen dimensions). Below are fragments of code from the original code                   function $(tagname, classname){         if(!classname)             return document.getElementsByTagName(tagname);         if(!tagname || tagname == '')             return document.getElementsByClassName(classname);              return document.querySelectorAll(tagname + '.' + classname);          }          function init(imageObj){         var ctx, i, data,image,             len = $('canvas').length;         parentCanvas = $('canvas')[0];         parentContext = parentCanvas.getContext('2d');         if(!parentContext) alert(\"err\");         w = (imageObj.naturalWidth);         h = (imageObj.naturalHeight);         parentCanvas.width = w;         parentCanvas.height = h;         parentContext.drawImage(imageObj, 0, 0, w, h);         parentBuffer = parentContext.getImageData(0, 0, w, h);         image = document.getElementById(\"canvas\");         if(!image){             image = document.createElement('img');             image.id = \"canvas\";         }            image.src = parentCanvas.toDataURL(\"image/png\");         $('','container')[0].appendChild(image);         //fit();     }     var Effects = {         '1' : function redfilterbw (brgba) {             var utils = new Utils();             var res = utils.monochrome(brgba, 1, 0, 0);             rgba = {                 r : res,                 g : res,                 b : res,                 a : brgba.a             };         },         '11' : function subcontrast(brgba) {         var utils = new Utils();         var res = utils.adjustContrast(brgba,5,-1);         rgba = {             r : res.r,             g : res.g,             b : res.b,             a : brgba.a         };     }, ...     '12' : function addcontrast(brgba) {         var utils = new Utils();         var res = utils.adjustContrast(brgba,5,1);         rgba = {             r : res.r,             g : res.g,             b : res.b,             a : brgba.a         };         };     function Utils () {}          Utils.prototype.monochrome = function (brgba, rwt, gwt, bwt) {         var opr, scale;             scale = 1 / (rwt + gwt + bwt);         rwt *= scale;         gwt *= scale;         bwt *= scale;              opr = parseInt(brgba.r) * rwt + parseInt(brgba.g) * gwt + parseInt(brgba.b) * bwt ;              return opr;     };     Utils.prototype.adjustContrast = function (brgba, mag, charge) {         var opr, adjust = mag * charge, //charge is whether image contrast will increase or decrease and mag is magniute, so its like +5 or -5             factor = (259 * (adjust + 255)) / (255 * (259 - adjust));         opr = {             r : (factor * (brgba.r   - 128) + 128),             g : (factor * (brgba.g   - 128) + 128),             b : (factor * (brgba.b   - 128) + 128),             a : brgba.a         };         return opr;     };     function fit(){              document.getElementById(\"canvas\").src = parentCanvas.toDataURL(\"image/png\");     }          function process (index) {         var i, j, len, data, layer, ctxn, buffer, utils;         utils = new Utils();             //the indexes 9 to 12 are for brightness adjustment hence i need the current context whereas rest are independent operations requiring parentContext.         if (index != 9 && index != 10 && index != 11 && index !=12) {             ctxn = utils.getParentContext();         } else {             ctxn = utils.getthisContext();         }              buffer = ctxn.getImageData(0, 0, w, h);         data = buffer.data;              for(i = 0; i < data.length; i += 4){             rgba = {                 r : data[i],                 g : data[i+1],                 b : data[i+2],                 a : data[i+3]             };             window['Effects'][index](rgba);             data[i] = parseInt(rgba.r);             data[i+1] = parseInt(rgba.g);             data[i+2] = parseInt(rgba.b);         }              ctxn.putImageData(buffer, 0, 0);         fit();     }      ## Explanation of attempts Firstly I don't think, what I have done here is the best way to get the job done, nor maybe the standard way to write a good application. For the time being I thought I had solution which was to first have preview of the image displayed upon which the users would apply the filter and when they save it the effect would be applied to the original image. But the algorithms I found http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18922880/ were slow, I mean the topmost rated algorithm takes nearly a minute on my pc. I do not think that approach will work. ## Request I am looking for a review of my code and implementation, I am particularly interested in how it could be improved and sped up. I am also open to new implementation suggestions and conventions on how to handle images in web- applications."}
{"_id": "166913", "title": "Is mocking for unit testing appropriate in this scenario?", "text": "I have written around 20 methods in Java and all of them call some web services. None of these web services are available yet. To carry on with the server side coding, I hard-coded the results that the web-service is expected to give. Can we unit test these methods? As far as I know, unit testing is mocking the input values and see how the program responds. Are mocking both input and ouput values meaningful? **Edit :** The answers here suggest I should be writing unit test cases. Now, **how can I write it without modifying the existing code ?** Consider the following sample code (hypothetical code) :                   public int getAge()         {                 Service s = locate(\"ageservice\"); // line 1                 int age = s.execute(empId); // line 2                  return age; // line 3           }      Now How do we mock the output ? Right now , I am commenting out _'line 1'_ and replacing _line 2_ with `int age= 50`. Is this right ? Can anyone point me to the right way of doing it ?"}
{"_id": "9161", "title": "Advice/guidelines for managing a distributed development team", "text": "What are some strategies, methodologies and best-practices for managing a distributed team?   * What can be done to encourage and enforce communication between the various team members?    * Is it possible to adapt/implement existing agile development methodologies over a distributed team? Related but not identical:   * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/7942/what-tools-are-available-for-remote-communication-when-working-from-home-or-with   * http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/18/which-programming-specialities-are-needed-in-a-good-web-development-team"}
{"_id": "103418", "title": "Any best practices for a distributed agile team?", "text": "Our scrum teams are split geographically (not ideal I know!) due to specific knowledge only being available in certain countries. So one team of say 7 members, has the business person in one city, 2 devs in another, 2 other devs in another and 2 qa's in another. Any suggestions for how to manage this type of graphically dispersed team? Any best practices? How do you do standups? via skype video? do we ensure that people travel every 6 weeks (the half time of trust apparently)? how do we do the task board? Virtually or via video? would kanban work better in this setup?"}
{"_id": "209017", "title": "how to reduce communication time in distributed teams", "text": "We have 10 distributed teams in our company and we are developing 3 huge web applications. A lot of time of our developers is spent with writing emails. We are using scrum and for that we had a daily stand-up meeting, but other questions regarding product features, design issues are always communicated via email? Is there a method or techniques available to reduce the time which is used to communicate!"}
{"_id": "190557", "title": "How to choose a proper parser generator for PHP", "text": "Some programmers avoid regexes in some situations (see this popular @nickf comment), perhaps using a parsing framework such as Lex/Yacc. Others prefer to stay within PHP, perhaps using regular expressions, as it avoids the need for another framework. When must we use a \"real\" parser generator instead of coding a parser directly in PHP? What is the best PHP tool-kit for parsing complex things and what factors can help me determine which is the best? As I mentioned earlier, perhaps there is no best solution, but simply good practices to help select a solution. * * * ## NOTE **Read below only if you is a answer writer** My question was edited: now have good english and objectivity (!), thanks a lot for @FrustratedWithFormsDesigner, @gnat and @Matt. But, perhaps with @Matt editins, losted my point of view.   * My point is not a \"Regular expressions vs. framework\" dichotomy (!).   * I think (and see examples) that programming PHP, we have a good \"tool kit\", not only with _regular expresions_ (see the power of preg_replace_callback), strings functions, etc., for simple or very specific parsing tasks; but also with XML Manipulation, for complex tasks! See de \"parsing power\" of process with DOM and/or XSLT...   * I see also cases where I have a dilema about use this \"PHP native tool kit\", or install and learn about some external _paser generator_ (plugged as a library, or a class, etc.)."}
{"_id": "46202", "title": "How do you make your applications looking more sexy?", "text": "The other title of this question could also be: How to improve my creativeness? During the past years I noticed that a loot of my small applications that I write in my free time to ease my life could also be useful for some of my friends. They asked me to get them a copy. Even if the applications are working as they should I feel a little bit embarrassed because they GUIs are all looking really ugly. The problem is, I always used standard and default-looking Buttons, TextBoxes etc. Now I thought about how to improve this. And yes I know it is possible to use themes, ImageButtons, ColorBrushes and so on. And now the real problem is: I can't really see which colors fit together and make a good design. Are there any techniques, books, other resources that help to improve to get a feeling for good designs, color combinations, UI element choose?"}
{"_id": "21387", "title": "How to read thousands lines of code without any documentation?", "text": "Previously I was searching for a good TimeLine control for a WPF project. I found an answer in Here which direct me to this CodePlex project. Now I want to change code to feed my culture needs. But there are some mismatches! My question is: **How you interact with such thousands lines of code?** EDIT: Any shortcut will be great!"}
{"_id": "190553", "title": "How to start a new major version of my application, but still keep the old version 'alive'", "text": "I have two applications, called A and B. The current version of these applciations are 7.x (some customers run 7.1, others run 7.2, ...). Both applications use a same common framework (let's call this C), like this:               +---+ +---+     | A | | B |     +---------+     |    C    |     +---------+      Because of some important new customers, I want to have the functionality of A and B in one big application. Merging A and B into one application is not possible, so I am now trying to integrate the functionality of A into B. So far so good, but I starting to encounter some problems. First of all, customers that only use the base functionality of B are not interested in all the new functionality of A that is added (and which causes additional overhead for them). They just want to upgrade their version B with support for new Windows versions, ... and maybe also want all the nice functionality that is added to C (the common framework) as well. Second, customers that are currently using application A, don't want to directly move to application B, although the combined functionality of A+B would help them in the long term. For easy upgrades, they want to stick with A, and even see some improvements in C. Third, all of the developments I'm doing in B might have an impact on the common layer C. E.g. in order to improve performance of a module in B, I have to refactor a module in C, but since C is also used in A, I need to do much more work. Additionally, A is an older, less-structured application, and every change in C might make A more unstable. Question is how to proceed? I am currently thinking on splitting B in a 7.x release (I could still do some minor developments here and release 7.3, 7.4 in the coming years if needed), and an 8.x release (which would contain all the new functionality). To solve the problem of the common layer, I could also split C into an old C (7.x) and a new C (8.x). This gives the following result:               +-------+ +-------+  +-------+     | A 7.x | | B 7.x |  | B 8.x |     +-----------------+  +-------+     |      C 7.x      |  | C 8.x |     +-----------------+  +-------+      Application A would not evolve anymore and would stick to the 7.x version of the common layer C. Splitting C means that all developments in C will either not be seen in the old A and B (which would still be release 7.x), or if they must be done in release 7.x of A and B, would require doing the developments in both releases. An alternative could be to split B into B 7.x and B 8.x, but this would limit the refactoring possibilities in C, and actually only solves the first two problems. Does anybody have any experience with such a kind of major release change? Any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "94007", "title": "When is code \"legacy\"?", "text": "We've all done it, we've labelled some code (often stuff we've inherited) as \"legacy\"? But it's still used in the production systems - so is it really legacy? And what makes it legacy? Should we shy away from this unwarranted labelling of perfectly functioning code; where the labelling is a pure convinience which allows us to push through new stuff and keep upper management nice and happy? * * * ### Summary of answers Looking through the answers I see four general themes. Here is as I see the breakdown:   1. Any code that has been delivered: 6   2. Dead systems: 2.5   3. No unit tests: 2   4. Developers are not around: 1.5"}
{"_id": "116219", "title": "What's the best way to learn code if you are just starting out?", "text": "I'm just starting out with some articles and tutorials. I am looking for some guidance on which languages to start with and what is the best way to go about learning code, books, tutorials, classes. Which tutorials or books are best? Is it possible to learn this stuff online? If so how? Thanks for any help!"}
{"_id": "211337", "title": "Why would I use code contracts", "text": "I recently stumbled upon Microsoft's framework for code contracts. I read a bit of documentation and found myself constantly asking: \"Why would I ever want to do this, as it does not and often cannot perform a static analysis.\" Now, I have a kind of defensive programming style already, with guarding exceptions like this:               if(var == null) { throw new NullArgumentException(); }      I'm also using NullObject Pattern alot and have rarely any problems. Add Unit Tests to it and you're all set up. I have never used asserts and never missed them. Quite the contrary. I really hate code that has lots of meaningless asserts in it, which is just noise to me and distracts me from what I really want to see. Code contracts, at least the Microsoft way are much the same - and even worse. They add lots of noise and complexity to the code. In 99% an exception will be thrown anyway - so I don't care whether it's from the assert/contract or the actual problem. Just very, very few cases remain in which the program states really becomes corrupted. So frankly, what is the benefit of using code contracts? Is there any at all? If you already use unit tests and code defensively I feel that introducing contracts is just not worth the cost and puts noise in your code that a maintainer will curse when he's updating that method, much like I do when I cannot see what the code is doing due to useless asserts. I have yet to see a good reason to pay that price."}
{"_id": "102422", "title": "When should development stop and QA begin?", "text": "We write a complete functional specification for our development team of two. We do not have professional testers however we have drafted in the help of our available helpdesk personnel to perform 'QA testing'. We have had problems in the past where complete chunks of functionality do not work, or the code is delivered is simply not according to the spec. My questions are: at what stage should developers stop coding at hand over to the QA team? Is it too much to ask the developers to review their code against the spec before handing over to the QA team?"}
{"_id": "167069", "title": "Licensing code under GPL: are revisions prior to adding GPL license still GPLed?", "text": "Suppose I have an already existing codebase which does not have any license headers in any of the source files, nor does it have `COPYING` file. So when I add all the neccessary GPL \"cruft\" to, say, revision 1000, will all previous revisions be GPLed as well or do I need to rewrite my repository history to include GPL license from the revision 0?"}
{"_id": "199785", "title": "Clever way to license/obfuscate web applications until the client has paid for it", "text": "I am doing contract work for various clients and I was wondering how best to go about safeguarding myself against non-payment. The projects will be ASP.NET web applications, most likely intranet-based. I don't have any more details than that. I imagine that the client will want to run and test the applications from their side before making any payment. Is there any way I can \"package\" the application so that they can't access the source code? Is there an easy way I can make the application break after a certain number of days unless it is \"unlocked\" by me?"}
{"_id": "199780", "title": "How far do you trust automerge?", "text": "Suppose you're getting the latest version of a file from source control and a conflict occurs. There are four possible types of changes in the conflict:   1. Yours   2. Theirs   3. Both   4. Conflicting Naturally, in cases 3 and 4 you'd want to review the changes manually (in the latter case you even have to resolve it). Regarding cases 1 and 2 I'm not sure, but I'm thinking only changes of type 2 (Theirs) should prompt manual inspection. The reason being, you know what you changed, as opposed to \"their\" changes which may break your changes. So I'm thinking one could skip reviewing his own changes (case 1), and manually review / resolve the other changes (cases 2-4). Other developers suggested more extreme approaches - such as only reviewing conflicting (or \"both\") changes and trusting automerge for the rest. The other extreme is reviewing all the changes every time. Of course, other parameters may factor in. For example, if you only made a single correction to a file, and there are 200 changes made by others, then provided you can be reasonably sure that your change is unrelated (say it's an SQL file and you wrote a new separate stored procedure), perhaps you can skip reviewing the other changes. I am torn between the dangers of not inspecting changes and the time and energy that could be saved by trusting the automatic merge. Supposedly, you have compilation and unit/component/e2e tests that will expose bad merges."}
{"_id": "199783", "title": "Java: How to make local fields & parameters final without having a 'final' keyword on each declaration", "text": "By default, I want all my local variables and method parameters to be final. Unfortunately, the Java language designers chose a different default: variables&parameters are by default non-final, and final variables&parameters need to be declared with the `final` keyword. So I need to add lots of finals. (And obviously I don't do this manually, but have my IDE add them for me.) So I end up with source code where every default case is marked, whereas exceptions to my preferred default are barely visible. For readability, I would like it to be the other way round, i.e. only non-final local variables and parameters should be marked/highlighted/annotated/... Is this possible? I'm open to solutions that integrate at different levels, e.g. folding within the editor, style checkers, build steps, etc..."}
{"_id": "11637", "title": "How to make security usable in a web application?", "text": "I'm in the planning stages of developing a web application that I want to make as secure as possible. I'm pretty clear about how to do that from a technical point of view, but there is one massive potential security hole: I want the site to have users. As anyone who has ever been a user knows, users forget usernames, forget passwords, sometimes forget that they even had an account with your site. Users respond to phishing emails and give away their credentials. If you do anything that they find too complicated they won't use your site, it has to be simple and all happen in as few clicks as possible, but we have to balance that out by making it as hard as possible for users to accidentally give away their credentials and to keep access to the service as secure as possible. What I'm particularly interested in are strategies that go beyond the standard username and password combination and ways of recovering or resetting passwords that make things easy for users but hard for anyone trying to steal their account. I know a lot of sites provide an extra user-set security question, but because I don't trust users not to create a stupid question like \"what is 1+1\" I don't see how this can guarantee security. Are there strategies that could be useable to the most clueless user but challenging to a determined and targetted attack aiming to break into their account? If not what are the closest things we could get? As a user what are the best/worst sites for this you have encountered and why?"}
{"_id": "9432", "title": "Shortest distance between two points (to solve a problem)", "text": "I have recently started work at a company using their proprietary CMS. Unfortunately, there is virtually no documentation for the application, and the source comments are also quite sparse. Normally, given a particular task - I work down through the choices below, going to the next step if I can't find a solution 1: Consult the documentation (n/a) on how to do task X (i.e. create a page) 2: Read the source code - output variables - generally halt search after digging 4 or 5 steps into class/method chain 3: Ask the existing development team how they might achieve X in their application 4: Read the (uncommented) source again - go \"rabbit hunting\" - pursue each chain to completion 5: Make tea On the one hand, my employer is looking for technical capability. On the other, they are looking for speed of execution. They are averse to me asking the other developer for assistance (despite the lack of documentation), yet seem surprised when I've then had to spend an hour (or two) rabbit hunting through their application for the origin of variable or method X. Bear in mind that I've been employed as an intermediate developer. So, I wanted to get an outside perspective, is my process of elimination unreasonable? I can't imagine anyone writing a Zend Framework app without the documentation (and sometimes they struggle despite that...) - so working on some proprietary app with none is proving somewhat tricky."}
{"_id": "235342", "title": "How to restrict user submitted CSS within <div>", "text": "We are having rich text editor in which we can insert html. if any input contains `<style>` tag then the css is applied to entire window. is it possible to restrict that CSS to be applied within `<div>` not entire window?"}
{"_id": "64324", "title": "What is the etymology of the phrase \"Source Code\"?", "text": "With the movie \"Source Code\" just coming out today, I have had to explain the meaning of the phrase to non-techies. Then I was asked _why_ source code is called source code and couldn't really answer. I know some of my coworkers seem to prefer referring to source code as \"program text\", or \"program files\" instead. \"Program Text\" makes much more sense to me than \"source code\", but most people seem to use the phrase \"source code\". Does anyone know the origins and etymology of the phrase \"source code\"?"}
{"_id": "153220", "title": "Sorting Algorithm : output", "text": "I faced this problem on a website and I quite can't understand the output, please help me understand it :- Bogosort, is a dumb algorithm which shuffles the sequence randomly until it is sorted. But here we have tweaked it a little, so that if after the last shuffle several first elements end up in the right places we will fix them and don't shuffle those elements furthermore. We will do the same for the last elements if they are in the right places. For example, if the initial sequence is (3, 5, 1, 6, 4, 2) and after one shuffle we get (1, 2, 5, 4, 3, 6) we will keep 1, 2 and 6 and proceed with sorting (5, 4, 3) using the same algorithm. Calculate the expected amount of shuffles for the improved algorithm to sort the sequence of the first n natural numbers given that no elements are in the right places initially. Input:               2     6     10      Output:               2     1826/189     877318/35343      For each test case output the expected amount of shuffles needed for the improved algorithm to sort the sequence of first n natural numbers in the form of irreducible fractions. I just can't understand the output."}
{"_id": "250958", "title": "Which is the more testable C function implementation?", "text": "I write code in C. I have been striving to write more testable code but I am a little confused on deciding between writing pure functions that are really good for testing but require smaller functions and hurt readability in my opinion and writing functions that do modify some internal state. For example (all state variables are declared static and hence are \"private\" to my module): Which of this is more testable in your opinion:               int outer_API_bar()     {        // Modify internal state        internal_foo()     }          int internal_foo()     {       // Do stuff            if (internal_state_variable)       {          // Do some more stuff          internal_state_variable = false;       }     }      OR               int outer_API_bar()     {        // Modify internal state             internal_foo(internal_state_variable)             // This could be another function if repeated many        // times in the module        if (internal_state_variable)        {           internal_state_variable = false;        }     }          int internal_foo(bool arg)     {       // Do stuff            if (arg)       {          // Do some more stuff       }     }      Although second implementation is more testable wrt to internal_foo as it has no sideeffects but it makes bar uglier and requires smaller functions that make it hard for the reader to even follow small snippets as he has to constantly shift attention to different functions. Which one do you think is better ? Compare this to writing OOPS code, the private functions most of the time use internal state and are not pure. Testing is done by setting up internal state on a mock object instance and testing the private function. I am getting a little confused on whether to use or whether to pass in internal state to private functions for the sake of \"testability\""}
{"_id": "233401", "title": "Is it a bad practice to cite URLs as references in comments?", "text": "Sometimes I think it's useful to cite a webpage ( _e.g._ Stack Overflow questions) to justify and explain a piece of code. Is this considered bad practice?"}
{"_id": "148506", "title": "Rule of thumb for field sizes", "text": "What VARCHAR sizes should be used for first and last names, phone numbers (preferably international), email adresses, urls, dictionary words and file names? Edit: Zapped the introductory phrase to form a concrete question."}
{"_id": "148502", "title": "How to gain personal practice at heavyweight development methodologies?", "text": "I'm in a new job where the project needs to meet strict quality standards, be heavily documented, managed in great detail, UML diagrams, and all those things that are opposite of \"cowboy coding\" where most of my past work experience has been. Think of the way large-scale aerospace or medical device software is developed. I'm glad to leave the chaos of cowboy coding and am curious to see how well heavyweight engineering methods go. But how can one rapidly gain experience with the heavy methods? Besides simply being in the job for some number of months/years, that is. With a mere language, or new API, one can hack up a toy test program, read, deliberately make mistakes to see what happens, etc. Like becoming good at bicycle riding or playing a musical instrument, practice is essential. It is easy to pick up a flute and spend half an hour every day; no need to join an orchestra or be a full-time flute consultant. But how to practice software engineering activities that are large, complex, involve teams, and much of which is all about communicating and planning, and avoiding miscommunications and exceeding schedule and budget limits? This doesn't seem possible to do solo. Is there a way a small number of people could simulate engineering a whole big project on a small scale in a short time (one day)?"}
{"_id": "102396", "title": "Are software developers who ignore quality/standards better for the company? ", "text": "Do software developers who choose not to put code optimization, standards and best practices as top priority, create more useful code than those developers who choose to worry about optimization, implementation of coding standards and practices above completing tasks on time? How do these differing methologies compare when it comes to individual performance reviews? How do these styles compare in peer reviews? What is the best way to influence your team to implement more best practices during the SDLC?"}
{"_id": "102394", "title": "How to automate a tasks system in a CMS software", "text": "I'm currently developing v2.0 of my personal cms. However, I'm stuck. I strongly feel that my old solution for \"tasks\" is not very dynamic and must be revisited. Currently I'm looking the whole concept of how to dynamically add tasks and run them. **What I mean by task system**   Like always in cms software, there are a lot of content, such as images, dynamic files, database entries, etc. I created my own task system aka. The Parser (sounds evil right?) It is made of two files, one parser-classes and other the triggers with the `$parser = new ParserClasses();` (I hope you understand what I mean.) Some of the features the parser does:   * First turn off the site (after the parser is done, turn it back on)   * Checks for active files (files that don't have parent mysql entry, will be deleted)   * Clears out old cache   * Generates new static cache   * Deals with languages and translation related cache   * and other tasks related to cms management and maintenance **Why do I want to make it more automatic**   Basically all plugins and some themes (add-ons in general,) use this task system. But the problem is that it's not very dynamical, because all functions sit in one huge class. This means that the add-on cannot be installed without opening your php editor. **How I was planning to do it**   First I would create my own _task language_ , with preset functions to handle files, cache, etc. (very broad example: `GenerateFreshCache('pages')`). Now, storing it is the issue.. My ideas are:   1. To create tasks-table in mysql database. Then add tasks there, with my _task language_. Later `while()` them from the database and `eval()`. _(This is a good way, because I can add scheduled times and similar in function, for CRON jobs. Or even categorize the tasks.)_   2. Add .php files to some folder, where they get loaded. They will probably use the same _task language_ , but don't need to be `eval()`'ed. _(I'm scared that this would slow down the parser, because so many files are getting included.)_ However, I'm not sure about those ideas and I'm hoping someone has already come across this functionality and can give me pointers. All crazy ideas and concepts are welcome, thanks in advance. **Conclusion**   Thanks to everyone who replied. I picked the answer, that helped me the most and not \"ohh, too much work, use framework\". My task systems core is done and working. Took 2-3 days and currently ~600 lines of code and two classes (outer and inner core.) I finally ended up with two mysql tables, one with tasks (task db) and another with combos (multiple tasks combined together for easier run.) Also, added some features so it would be safe to run via ajax (cant really talk about that, top secret^^). There are might be too many loops, handling the tasks parsing, however this makes adding new tasks very very simple.. Just add it to tasks DB and add the task to cron-list-automatic-run- list or run it straight up via the admin panel."}
{"_id": "198781", "title": "What are the benefits of having a remote database for your command line utility", "text": "I'm current working on a command line app that will grab resources online for you when you're setting up a new project locally. Right now all the urls for the resources I need are hardcoded into the application and adding new targets require updating the software. What are the benefits of hosting a database remotely that the application would query to get new packages. Sort of like `npm` and any other generic package manager out there. Are there any best practises in setting something like this up?"}
{"_id": "254019", "title": "Can regexp be used to check for palindromes?", "text": "Can regexp pattern matching be used to check for palindromes within a given text in Java? My intuition is that in order to check for palindromes, we may need to remember the character that was parsed, which cannot be done using regexp. Is that correct?"}
{"_id": "80554", "title": "using / linking to MS-PL licensed code from (A)GPLv3", "text": "I have some trouble understanding MSPL (Microsoft Permissive License) conditions regarding linking to / using a library under MSPL from a project of mine which I want to license on either AGPLv3 or pure GPLv3 (the Affero-part should not play a major role in my question as far as i can see - but please correct me if I am wrong). What I know for sure is that MSPL is incompatible with all versions of the GPL. But is there some kind of linking exception that allows using it from within GPL covered code? Background: I want to use ASP.NET MVC 2 as well as Managed Extensibility Framework (both licensed under MSPL) in my web application project as frameworks. Thus, I will be referencing to them. But I want my web application to be licensed under GPLv3. I DO NOT want to modify or distribute ASP.NET MVC2 or MEF neither in source nor binary form along with my web application. I really guess this is possible, but I can't find any passage in the MSPL which explicitly allows me to do so. If anybody has a link with more information on that, greatly appreciated! What I am also pretty sure about: if ASP.NET MVC2 or MEF would be licensed under GPLv2 (and v2 only) I could definitely NOT use GPLv3 as my projects license. Even though I would not ship source or binary of ASP.NET or MEF then, my project would still be considered a derived work. EDIT: I should mention that I do not want to use original .NET4 from Microsoft but Mono. Mono ships with ASP.NET MVC2 and MEF, both licensed under MSPL."}
{"_id": "251021", "title": "Should temporary code be put under version control and how?", "text": "Here are some examples of temporary/local code. It is needed in order to work with the codebase, but would be harmful to be part of it:   1. Project files. Paths may need to be edited in order to reflect the layout on the current PC.   2. Makefiles. For example optimization may need to be turned off during debugging, but not for the CI server.   3. Dirty ugly hacks. For example `return 7` in the middle of a function, in order to test something, depending on the function, and suspected to break at value of 7. Or 7 is the code of the not yet implemented button, that I am implementing and need to test throughout the life of my branch.  I have tried keeping those in a git commit that I always rebase to the top before pushing to the repo and then push `HEAD~`. This is quite inconvenient and doesn't work with svn. Stashing scares me even more - \"did I remember to pop after pushing??\". Keeping the code out of version control introduces unpleasant noise everytime a commit is being assembled plus it might accidentally get introduced into a commit some friday evening. What would be a sane solution for such throw-away code?"}
{"_id": "80559", "title": "Why does Aptana need Git installed on Windows?", "text": "Why does Aptana Studio need Git installed on Windows?"}
{"_id": "254011", "title": "Augmenting functionality of subclasses without code duplication in C++", "text": "I have to add common functionality to some classes that share the same superclass, preferably without bloating the superclass. The simplified inheritance chain looks like this:               Element -> HTMLElement -> HTMLAnchorElement     Element -> SVGElement -> SVGAlement      The default `doSomething()` method on `Element` is no-op by default, but there are some subclasses that need an actual implementation that requires some extra overridden methods and instance members. I cannot put a full implementation of `doSomething()` in `Element` because 1) it is only relevant for some of the subclasses, 2) its implementation has a performance impact and 3) it depends on a method that could be overridden by a class in the inheritance chain between the superclass and a subclass, e.g. `SVGElement` in my example. Especially because of the third point, I wanted to solve the problem using a template class, as follows (it is a kind of decorator for classes):               struct Element {         virtual void doSomething() {}     };          // T should be an instance of Element     template<class T>     struct AugmentedElement : public T {         // doSomething is expensive and uses T         virtual void doSomething() override {}         // Used by doSomething         virtual bool shouldDoSomething() = 0;     };          class SVGElement : public Element { /* ... */ };     class SVGAElement : public AugmentedElement<SVGElement> {         // some non-trivial check         bool shouldDoSomething() { /* ... */ return true; }     };     // Similarly for HTMLAElement and others      I looked around (in the existing (huge) codebase and on the internet), but didn't find any similar code snippets, let alone an evaluation of the effectiveness and pitfalls of this approach. Is my design the right way to go, or is there a better way to add common functionality to some subclasses of a given superclass?"}
{"_id": "254016", "title": "How can I make sense of the word \"Functor\" from a semantic standpoint?", "text": "When facing new programming jargon words, I first try to reason about them from an semantic and etymological standpoint when possible (that is, when they aren't obscure acronyms). For instance, you can get the beginning of a hint of what things like Polymorphism or even Monad are about with the help of a little Greek/Latin. At the very least, once you've learned the concept, the word itself appears to go along with it well. I guess that's part of why we name things names, to make mental representations and associations more fluent. I found Functor to be a tougher nut to crack. Not so much the C++ meaning -- an object that acts ( _-or_ ) as a function ( _funct-_ ), but the various functional meanings (in ML, Haskell) definitely left me puzzled. From the (mathematics) Functor Wikipedia article, it seems the word was borrowed from linguistics. I think I get what a \"function word\" or \"functor\" means in that context - a word that \"makes function\" as opposed to a word that \"makes sense\". But I can't really relate that to the notion of Functor in category theory, let alone functional programming. I imagined a _Functor_ to be something that creates functions, or behaves like a function, or short for \"functional constructor\", but none of those seems to fit... How do experienced functional programmers reason about this ? Do they just need any label to put in front of a concept and be fine with it ? Generally speaking, isn't it partly why advanced functional programming is hard to grasp for mere mortals compared to, say, OO -- very abstract in that you can't relate it to anything familiar ? Note that I don't need a definition of Functor, only an explanation that would allow me to relate it to something more tangible, if there is any."}
{"_id": "251025", "title": "Is there a way to use RAII techniques in COM?", "text": "I am caught between two conceptual models of how to construct objects, and am having trouble working out what standard I want to adopt. I prefer to program in .NET and often try to use RAII and read-only properties to make immutable objects with their data passed in through constructor parameters. This has been a major advance compared to the VB6 days when we had to simulate constructors and by convention call \"Init\" or \"Factory.Create\" to get objects into a good state. However, I am often making COM-callable wrappers to let me call functions via Automation from other applications. As you probably know, COM wants objects to have a constructor without any parameters. This is a dissonance with the RAII/immutable scheme that I have been using with such success in the .NET world. I remember older object models like ADO where you would usually instantiate an object, set properties like ConnectionString, then call Open. The object could be immutable not via a ReadOnly declaration, but via throwing an \"Can't change while open\" exception on the property setter. Is this the best pattern to use for COM? Am I missing a better way to skin this cat? Since RAII came out of the C++ community, how do they handle COM being based on a different initialization scheme?"}
{"_id": "122834", "title": "Estimation of Effort and Schedule for a project with almost no familiar elements", "text": "To the best of my understanding the schedule for the project is derived using the effort estimates for the individual tasks (in person hours), and the number of relevant resources used for the particular task. As discussed in this question, we are starting a project using a new platform, featuring a brand new API and feature-set. How do we estimate the schedule of the tasks involved in the project, knowing only the top level task breakdown? Also, if some efforts are allocated to the tasks, the estimations would have a wide probability distribution. What is the best way to communicate the same to management?"}
{"_id": "211595", "title": "Factory method vs Factory design pattern", "text": "I know about Simple Factory Idiom, Factory Method and Abstract Factory Design patterns. But I have two situations that I'm not sure how to call (PHP code example) :               class User {       public static function LoadUserById($id) {         $objUser = new User();         //load details from DB         return $objUser;       }     }          class UserFactory {        public function Create($id) {         $objUser = new User();         //load details from DB         return $objUser;        }     }      What are these two situations? Simple Factories (programming idiom) or are they called something else? Is a good practice to name the class UserFactory? Isn't this something that might get confused with the A factory design pattern? Should I use different name for it like UserFinder? When I think of the Factory Design Pattern I always think of examples where there are families of components derived from a parent class but it is clearly not the case here."}
{"_id": "122836", "title": "When would one give up backward compatibility in favor of new and improved interface implementation?", "text": "I have been working at the same software company for more than ten years. As a result, I have implemented a large code base using various object-oriented programming languages. I was a beginner programmer when I first started my career and I didn't know much about good interface and class design principles. I would like to think that my design skills have improved over time, but I now face more and more difficulties in improving my earlier code because of backward compatibility concerns. My code is used by a large number of customers as part of the products that my company sells. My question is: when should one stop trying to keep backward compatibility of old interfaces and bite the bullet in favor of implementing a brand new design? I think there comes a point where keeping backward compatibility becomes such a big burden that useful changes to interfaces become impossible. Has anyone experienced similar concerns, who can provide some feedback?"}
{"_id": "99403", "title": "Incremental and partial drawing of the large graphs", "text": "I have the following problem: I'm developing a software for data visualization where I get a graph structure and represent it in 3D space. So far, I've been using force-based algorithms to draw graphs and it worked well, until I got requirement that my software should represent very big number of vertices and edges (few millions). It would be very impractical to hold all those in memory, so I'm looking for an algorithm that will enable me to stream small portions of graph as I \"walk\" through the space. However, the main problem is in showing and dynamically repositioning of vertices, since I don't have already predefined positions, and I must calculate them. Can you point me to some algorithms for incremental drawing and streaming of graph? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "186124", "title": "programming PID loops in C", "text": "I'm an electrical engineer that was kind of thrust into the digital world and learning as I go. I'm programming a TI processor to do a PID (proportional- integral-derivative) loop, illustrated by this diagram: ![PID loop image from Wikipedia](http://i.stack.imgur.com/g7Rsk.png) I'll also describe it: Negative feedback op-amp, with non-inverting terminal grounded. Input through negative terminal. The feedback loop is an RE series circuit in parallel with a resistor and all that in parallel with a cap. Anyone have any idea how to convert this circuit to C code? I'm a bit out of my element on this and could use the help."}
{"_id": "186127", "title": "Anonymous software license", "text": "I am aware of some of the problems of the concept of \"releasing a work to the public domain\" (as mentioned here and here; I haven't listened to this specific discussion yet). IANAL, but the main problems seem to be as follows:   1. Releasing to the public domain doesn't exist in many jurisdictions; rather, a work becomes public domain after copyright _expires_.   2. Some moral rights are inalienable due to (certain ratifications of) article 6bis of the Berne Convention. However, aren't you still allowed to publish a work anonymously? If you anonymously publish a work, in such a way that authorship can't be proven or even distinguished, wouldn't that effectively \"unlicense\" your code? I would think so: since then any claim of authorship can't be validated, the rights implied by authorship can't be enforced, not even by the original author. If so, I'd really like to know which permissive license (ISC/MIT/BSD-style) would be fit for such publications. (Especially when they've managed to get rid of the lengthy `THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED IN \"SCREAMING CAPS\"`-style liability waiver.) If no such license exists yet, how would one modify an existing license to be suitable for an anonymous publication?"}
{"_id": "20476", "title": "Why is it so hard to get people to pay for software?", "text": "Where I come from software is considered something you can get for free (same goes for movies, etc.) The willingness not to pay for software is quite strong. It is putting me off, that people would rather go through hoops and risk legal issues than to pay a small amount of money for a piece of software. This attitude is somehow embedded in the society. I'm just trying to understand the situation. What do you think is causing this? Why won't some people pay for software even if it's cheap and they use it every day?"}
{"_id": "9290", "title": "How to write less code", "text": "A quality what I would like to develop is to write more concise code. With writing more concise, at least in my opinion, the opportunity to add bugs to the code is smaller. It is easier to read the code for other. My question is if it is something that just comes with experience or is it something you can do explicitly for developing that quality?"}
{"_id": "216645", "title": "How to package static content outside of web application?", "text": "Our web application has static content packaged as part of WAR. We have been planning to move it out of the project and host it directly on Apache to achieve the following objectives.   * It's getting too big and bloating the EAR size resulting in slower deployment across nodes. Faster deployment times.   * Take the load of Application Server   * Host the static content on a sub domain allowing some browsers (IE) to load resources simultaneously   * Give us an option to use further caching such as Apache mod_cache apart from the cache headers we send out to browsers. We use yuicompressor-maven-plugin to aggregate and minimize JS file. _My question is how do package and manage this static content out side of the web application?_ My current options are.   * New maven war project. Still use the same plugin for aggregation and compression.   * Just a plain directory in SVN and use YUI/Google compressor directly. Or is there a better technology out there to manage static content as a project?"}
{"_id": "216647", "title": "model association or controller?", "text": "I'm trying to create a rails app that allows users to submit information about their pets. I've come to a point where my knowledge is limited and I don't know enough about what/how this could be done so I'm hoping this will be relatively easy to answer. At the moment I have a model called Pet, this model currently stores basic information like name, picture etc but it also holds more specific data like type, breed, date of birth etc. What I would like to be able to do is create a page that can match various records without having to be manually categorized if that makes sense so a users pet could be matched to other pets with the same breed, age etc. I've read about nested models as I understand this information could be submitted to 2 models in one form but I am not sure whether this could be done directly in a separate controller which would only be visible to users with pets in these matched \"groups\" if that makes sense. So in essence is it best practice to use 1 table to store all the information and just use a controller to match pets based on rows having the same values or would it be far simpler to have a form with a nested model and link 2 tables together? The main feature needs to be matching without a user having to create a group or categorize pets so the second model would need to add id's to an array instead of just creating more and more rows."}
{"_id": "216641", "title": "Languages supporting unicode logic operators", "text": "Are there any programming languages that support the use of unicode logic operators? For example, many programming languages use \" **!=** \" as the _\"does not equal\"_ operator, but in mathematics the symbol is \" **\u2260** \". Since unicode is now more standardized, why don't programming languages support their use as logical operators? Many of the symbols are on my keyboard, I just hit the `alt` button."}
{"_id": "163366", "title": "Where (if there is) is the IEEE glossary newer than 1990?", "text": "I have been looking for some formal definitons but could not find any IEEE newer than 610, which is from 1990. Could you help me please?"}
{"_id": "78264", "title": "What free bug tracking systems integrate very well with git?", "text": "What bug tracking system works with git and has these requirements? Requirements:   * Shows git commit log    * Hides git source code For the system you're suggesting, what are its strengths and weaknesses?"}
{"_id": "78263", "title": "How do you explain to an \"agile\" team that they still need to plan the software they write?", "text": "This week at work I got **_agiled_** yet again. Having gone through the standard agile, TDD, shared ownership, ad hoc development methodology of never planning anything beyond a few user stories on a piece of card, verbally chewing the cud over the technicallities of a 3rd party integration ad nauseam without ever doing any real thinking or due dilligence and architecturally coupling all production code to the first test that comes into anyone's head for the past few months we reach the end of a release cycle and lo and behold the main externally visible feature that we have been developing is too slow to use, buggy, becoming labyrinthinly complex and completely inflexible. During this process \"spikes\" were done but never documented and not a single architectural design was ever produced (there was no FS, so what the hell eh, if you don't know what you are developing, how can you plan or research it?) - the project passed from pair to pair, each of whom only ever focused on a single user story at a time and well the result was inevitable. To resolve this I went off the radar, went (the dreaded) waterfall, planned, coded and basically didn't swap off the pair and tried as much as I could to work alone - focusing on solid architecture and specifications rather than unit tests which will come later once everything is pinned down. The code is now much better and is actually totally usable, flexible and fast. Certain people seem to have really resented me doing this and have gone out of their way to sabotage my efforts (possibly unconsciously) because it goes against the holy process of agile. So how do you, as a developer, explain to the team that it is not \"un-agile\" to plan their work, and how do you fit planning into the agile process? (I'm not talking about the IPM; I'm talking about sitting down with a problem and sketching out an end-to-end design that says how a problem should be solved in sufficient detail that anyone who works on the problem knows what architecture and patterns they should be using and where the new code should integrate into existing code)"}
{"_id": "138212", "title": "What are my choices for server side sandboxed scripting?", "text": "I'm building a public website where users share data and scripts to run over some data. The scripts are run serverside in some sort of sandbox without other interaction this cycle: my Perl program reads from a database a User made script, adds the data to be processed into the script ( ie: a JSON document) then calls the interpreter, it returns the response( a JSON document or plain text), i save it to the database with my perl script. The script should be able to have some access to built in functions added to the scripting language by myself, but nothing more. So i've stumbled upon node.js as a javascript interpreter, and and hour or so ago with Google's V8(does v8 makes sense for this kind of thing?). CoffeeScript also came to my mind, since it looks nice and it's still Javascript. I think javascript is widespread enough and more \"sandboxeable\" since it doesn't have OS calls or anything remotely insecure ( i think ). by the way, i'm writing the system on Perl and Php for the front end. To improve the question: I'm choosing Javascript because i think is secure and simple enough to implement with node.js, but what other alternatives are for achieving this kind of task? Lua? Python? I just can't find information on how to run a sandboxed interpreter in a proper way."}
{"_id": "179275", "title": "As a software architect, am I supposed to focus that much on analysing the logs and fixing other's bugs?", "text": "Since my graduation (late 2005) I was working for the same company as a c++ software engineer. A year ago I was promoted as a software architect but I have found myself involved more and more in qualification and fixing bugs, level 2 support. 50% of my time spent in Notepad++ analysing the software logs and trying to figure out what went wrong. 30% fixing other's bugs and the remaining (if any) reviewing developers spaghetti code. I started hating this product and thinking about an exit strategy out of this company. What do you think I can do in this situation? do you other software architect still fixing bugs in the code?"}
{"_id": "109514", "title": "Are ASP.NET MVC automated code good enough to be used in real live applications", "text": "I have been trying to get my hands dirty with ASP.NET MVC which looks pretty good (I am not certain, but some users say that even StackOverflow and other StackExchange websites made use of it). The tutorial I am following is from asp.net, named MVC Music Store. It's a pretty fast paced tutorial and a good one too. The question that bother's me while going through the various tutorials available on this site including the MVC Music Store is the automated code used for developing them. Like, this tutorial makes use of Entity Framework 4, which supports a development paradigm called code-first. You add an Entity class inheriting from Entity Framework database context , add two lines of code and it will handle our create, read, update, and delete operations for us.               public class MusicStoreEntities : DbContext     {         public DbSet<Album> Albums { get; set; }         public DbSet<Genre> Genres { get; set; }     }      Similarly, when I used the Scaffolding feature while adding a controller, like following : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RVt1x.jpg) It does a hell amount of work on its own :   * It creates the new StoreManagerController with a local Entity Framework variable   * It adds a StoreManager folder to the project\u2019s Views folder   * It adds Create.cshtml, Delete.cshtml, Details.cshtml, Edit.cshtml, and Index.cshtml view, strongly typed to the Album class. As you can see, the developer's life made a hell lot easier with this automation but the question remains is whether or not this automatic code is good enough for production development ? Does anybody use(Does SO) use them. Is there any downside associated with these codes or one should be encouraged to use them ?"}
{"_id": "109517", "title": "How is IETF different from W3C?", "text": "I've been following these organizations (institutes, entities, whatever) for near 3 months now, and both of them claim that they're trying to make the Internet a better place. They're creating documents under the name of RFC (for IETF) and Recommendation (for W3C) to guide others. Yet another organization called WHATWG has started another path to develop web, and another community is in action under the title of Internet Society. I don't know, why many organizations? I mean, can't they simply get merged? Are they really different? How?"}
{"_id": "10210", "title": "Languages to complement C++", "text": "I primarily work in C++. My question is, for a C++ developer, what languages are beneficial to learn, from a job-profile point of view. For example, I see a lot of work combining C++ and Php these days. Conversely, I don't see a lot of work combining Ruby and C++ (unfortunately). Of course, learning another language is beneficial regardless of whether it compliments a language."}
{"_id": "63316", "title": "What's a good, concise way to explain the dangers of copy-paste programming to non-programmers?", "text": "I'm looking for a good analogy or metaphor that could illustrate the problems of copy-paste programming to non-programmers. I occasionally do code/system reviews for potential clients, and one of the common problems I see are vast amounts of copy-paste code all over their code bases. It's something I routinely call out in the reviews, and each time I have to explain why this is a problem (this is especially difficult with clients who know just enough about programming to understand that reuse is a good thing, but not enough to understand why copy-paste isn't a good form of reuse). Obviously, I can (and do) explain the problem in terms of code maintenance, but it would be nice to have a good, concise analogy for this problem that would hit home with non- programmers. Bonus if the analogy illustrates why search-and-replace is not an effective solution for this problem. Any suggestions? Just to clarify (based on Jaroslav's answer below) - I'm not talking about using code snippets here; what I see (disturbingly often) is copying-and- pasting of vast swaths of code, or a ten-line piece of code to get some user data (complete with inline SQL query) pasted into dozens of PHP or ASP.NET pages. So, duplicate code from elsewhere in the same project. Update: There are several really good answers here; I've explained in the comments why I chose Scott Whitlock's answer, but I would also highly, highly recommend whatsisname's answer if you're dealing with customers who are familiar with manufacturing at all."}
{"_id": "63319", "title": "How do I handle this intense client situation?", "text": "I have worked with a client for two weeks who knows nothing about the complexity of programming a CMS. After two weeks, our relationship has gone from mildly discomforting to the point where I have said \"forget this, I quit if you are going to act like this\". Problem is we have two week's worth of code developed (on my server luckily). I emailed him and said that I should keep the downpayment and he can get the code. I think he can find someone overseas to finish up my tasks within a few days as the project is about 80% done. He seems to think that is unfair and wants the code AND the downpayment back. What rights or what avenues should I take to resolve this? What would you do? I would not like to give the code back as I do not feel that he should receive something I have spent two weeks developing for free. I feel that if he gets the downpayment back I have every right to keep the code and destroy it. Seeking honest answers from fellow programmers. Any help is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "147212", "title": "AJAX IRCX Client and Server", "text": "I am currently developing an IRCX AJAX Chat Based system and have a few questions regarding the Server and Client implementation. Any suggestions are welcome: **Server:** Should this be implemented as a Web Service or a Windows Form application? I have experience in developing Windows forms based servers however I am wondering if this would be better implemented as a Web Service, if so why? **Client:** How are Web Based Clients implemented today and what is the preferred way to implement a web based client? My solution so far are:   * ASP.NET Web Forms with an AJAX Update Panel (This seems the most viable)   * Using jQuery connecting to the web service with a JavaScript timeout **Polling:** How frequently should the server be polled for new messages? 0.5 seconds seems a bit excessive and anything between 2 or 3 seconds seems sluggish? Thanks for your input"}
{"_id": "176534", "title": "Software and/(x)or Hardware Projects for Pre-School Kids", "text": "I offered to participate at my kid's pre-school for various activities (yes, I'm crazy like that), and one of them is to help them discover extra- curricular (big word for a pre-school, but by lack of a better one... :)) hobbies, which may or may not relate to a professional activity. At first I thought that it wouldn't be really easy to have pre-schoolers relate to programming or the internal workings of a computer system in general (and I'm more used to teaching middle-school to university-level students), but then I thought there must be a way. So I'm trying to figure out ways to introduce very young kids (3yo) to computer systems in a fun and preferably educational way. Of course, I don't expect them to start smashing the stack for fun and profit right away (or at least not voluntarily, though I could use the occasion for some toddler tests...), but I'm confident there must be ways to get them interested in both:   * using the systems,   * becoming curious about understanding what they do,   * interacting with the systems to modify them. I guess this setting is not really relevant after all, it's pretty much the same as if you were aiming to achieve the same for your own kids at home. ## Ideas Considering we're talking 3yo pre-schoolers here, and that at this age some kids are already quite confident using a mouse (some even a keyboard, if not for typing, at least to press some buttons they've come to associate with actions) while others have not yet had any interaction with computers of any kind, it needs to be:   * rather basic,    * demonstrated and played with in less then 5 or 10 minutes,   * doable in in groups or alone,   * scalable and extendable in complexity to accommodate their varying abilities. The obvious options are:   * basic smallish games to play with,   * interactive systems like LOGO, Kojo, Squeak and clones (possibly even simpler than that), or thngs like Lego Systems. I guess it can be a thing to reflect on both at the software and the hardware levels: it could be done with a desktop or laptop machine, a tablet, a smartphone (or a crap-phone, for that matter, as long as you can modify it), or even get down to building something from scratch (Raspberry Pi and Arduino being popular options at the moment). I can probably be in the form of games, funny visualizations (which are pretty much games) w/ Prototype, virtual worlds to explore. I also thought on the moment (and I hope this won't offend anyone) that some approaches to teaching pets could work (reward systems, haptic feedback and such things could quickly point a kid in the right direction to understanding how things work, in a similar fashion - I'm not suggesting to shock the kids!). ## Hmm, Is There an Actual Question in There?   * What type of systems do you think might be a good fit, both in terms of hardware and software?   * Do you have seen such systems, or have anything in mind to work on?   * Are you aware of some research in this domain, with tangible results? Any input is welcome. It's not that I don't see options: there are tons, but I have a harder time pinpointing a more concrete and definite type of project/activity, so I figure some have valuable ideas or existing ones. * * * **Note:** I am not advocating that every kid should learn to program, be interested in computer systems, or that all of them in a class would even care enough to follow such an introduction with more than a blank stare. I don't buy into the \"everybody would benefit from learning to program\" thing. Wouldn't hurt, but not necessary in any way. But if I can walk out of there with a few of them having smiled using the thing (or heck, cried because others took them away from them), that'd be good enough. * * * ### Related Questions I've seen and that seem to complement what I'm looking for, but not exactly for the same age groups or with the same goals:   * Teaching Programming to Kids   * Recommendations for teaching kids math concepts & skills for programming?"}
{"_id": "176536", "title": "Asynchronously returning a hierarchal data using .NET TPL... what should my return object \"look\" like?", "text": "I want to use the .NET TPL to asynchronously do a `DIR /S` and search each subdirectory on a hard drive, and want to search for a word in each file... what should my API look like? In this scenario I know that each sub directory will have 0..10000 files or 0...10000 directories. I know the tree is unbalanced and want to return data (in relation to its position in the hierarchy) as soon as it's available. I am interested in getting data as quickly as possible, but also want to update that result if \"better\" data is found (better means closer to the root of c:) I may also be interested in finding all matches in relation to its position in the hierarchy. (akin to a report) > **Question:** > > How should I return data to my caller? My first guess is that I think I need a **shared object** that will maintain the current \"status\" of the traversal (started | notstarted | complete ) , and might base it on the `System.Collections.Concurrent`. Another idea that I'm considering is the **consumer/producer pattern** (which ConcurrentCollections can handle) however I'm not sure what the objects \"look\" like. Optional Logical Constraint: The API doesn't have to address this, but in my \"real world\" design, if a directory has files, then only one file will ever contain the word I'm looking for. If someone were to literally do a `DIR /S` as described above then they would need to account for more than one matching file per subdirectory. * * * **More information** : I'm using Azure Tables to store a hierarchy of data using these TPL extension methods. A \"node\" is a table. Not only does each node in the hierarchy have a relation to any number of nodes, but it's possible for each node to have a reciprocal link back to any other node. This may have issues with recursion but I'm addressing that with a shared object in my recursion loop. Note that each \"node\" also has the ability to store local data unique to that node. It is this information that I'm searching for. In other words, I'm searching for a specific fixed RowKey in a hierarchy of nodes. When I search for the fixed RowKey in the hierarchy I'm interested in getting the results FAST (first node found) but prefer data that is \"closer\" to the starting point of the hierarchy. Since many nodes may have the particular RowKey I'm interested in, sometimes I may want to get a report of ALL the nodes that contain this RowKey."}
{"_id": "112445", "title": "Where to start learning to use the Boost libraries?", "text": "Boost has recently become available on the project on which I'm working, and I don't have much experience with it. The library has so many parts and features that it's hard to know where to get started in learning it - especially since I'll be trying to learn it while making production code (so it can't slow me down too much). I would greatly appreciate it if someone could list around 3 to 5 features which are very useful in general, every-day programming and state why they're useful. Then I can start to learn those and use them - it'll at least give me a foothold in the library and a friendly place to start learning it/applying it :) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "147218", "title": "Can two developers form an agile team?", "text": "I am working on a company's project alone at the moment, but the company is getting soon a junior developer whom I will be mentoring. Considering he will be learning a lot in first few days I am planning on using pair programming for first couple of weeks. I believe that doing pair programming would make daily standup a redundant practice. I definitely will keep the retrospective as well as tdd. I wanted to ask if you would suggest any other agile practices that would benefit our small team of two developers? What have worked for you?"}
{"_id": "37975", "title": "Professionalism of online username / handle", "text": "I have in the past, and continue currently, used the handle \"thanatos\" on a lot of Internet sites, and if that isn't available (which happens ~50% of the time), \"deathanatos\". \"Thanatos\" is the name of the Greek god or personification of death (not to be confused with Hades, the Greek god of the underworld). \"Dea\" is a natural play-on-words to make the handle work in situations where the preferred handle has already been taken, without having to resort to numbers and remaining pronounceable. I adopted the handle many years ago \u2014 at the time, I was reading Edith Hamilton's _Mythology_ , and Piers Anthony's _On a Pale Horse_ , both still favorites of mine, and the name was born out of that. When I created the handle, I was fairly young, and valued privacy while online, not giving out my name. As I've become a more competent programmer, I'm starting to want to release some of my private works under FOSS licenses and such, and sometimes under my own name. This has started to tie this handle with my real name. I've become increasingly aware of my \"web image\" in the last few years, as I've been job hunting. As a programmer, I have a larger- than-average web presence, and I've started to wonder: Is this handle name professional? Does a handle name matter in a professional sense? Should I \"rebrand\"? (While one obviously wants to avoid hateful or otherwise distasteful names, is a topic such as \"death\" (to which my name is tied) proper? What could be frowned upon?) * * * To try to make this a bit more programmer specific: Programmers are online \u2014 a lot \u2014 and some of us (and some who are not us) tend to put emphasis on a \"web presence\". I would argue that a prudent programmer (or anyone in an occupation that interacts online a lot) would be aware of their web presence. While not strictly limited to just programmers, for better or worse, it is a part of our world."}
{"_id": "112449", "title": "How would you design a generic layer for OpenGL windowing that does not care how the program underneath actually looks like?", "text": "The kind of OpenGL windowing that I refer to is like GLFW, GLUT, SDL, etc. Imagine three C++ programs: (ignore syntax) Game A:               class Game         resize()         keyEvent()      Game B:               resize()     keyEvent()      Game C:               class Key         event()     class Display         resize()      In A, everything is in one class, in B nothing is in a class, and in C the two events have their own classes. Another that is not shown is subclassing a provided 'Game' class that has predefined functions overloaded. I would like any reasonable means that can allow the main library to delegate out to each of these three cases. The solution should not require separate storage of a 'this' parameter. I have thought of a couple of ideas, one is a way of mapping the function in a functor. Another was lambdas. Lambdas are not okay, because they are not widely implemented yet. (Compilers of choice are VC 2010, gcc (latest stable), and Apple's clang). Any new C++ 2011 features that are widely implemented are reasonable thoughts. A gentleman at the local university suggested something similar to the functor, but I cannot remember the function he was talking about."}
{"_id": "37973", "title": "What do you call a customer's customer in a specification document, use case, or scenario?", "text": "My team and I develop software that our customers will use to interact with their customers. Additionally, we also eat our own dogfood and use the software ourselves to interact with our customers. Therefore, it can sometimes be difficult to explain use cases and scenarios, as our employees can be operators, our customers can be operators, and our customers' customers can be visitors. However, our customers can also be visitors interacting with our operator employees, our customers' customers can be visitors interacting with our customer or our employee. Here is a model where:               A is an employee     B is a customer     C is our customers' customer          X  interacts with  Y     Operator --> Visitor           A  -->  B           A  -->  C           B  -->  C      Because sometimes our customers can play different roles, it's sometimes necessary to refer to the specific role, Operator or Visitor, instead of Employee and Customer. It's also a mouthful to say \"customer's customer\" all the time. I was wondering how other development shops handle these semantic details when writing their use cases and scenarios.   * Are there any one-word, generic terms that can apply to any product that involves a third-level actor?   * Other than using the specific roles, Operator and Visitor, what words could be used to identify a customer of a customer?  The word would need to be short enough as to be adopted within an organization. If longer than a couple syllables, it's shortened form must still differentiate it from the other actors."}
{"_id": "144746", "title": "Algorithm for creating cluster groups on two criteria", "text": "I would like to group a population based on two criteria. I will use an analogy to simplify my question. Let's say I want _n_ number of groups. I want to populate those groups based on person's age and weight, so that all groups contain about the same total age and are evenly distributed by weight (so that there are about same number of heavy and light people in each group). What kind of algorithm could I use to automate this process? Is there a simple Excel formula or some other method? **UPDATE** Here is the motivation for this statistical analysis. I would like to set up partitioning in a database which will have the best performance. I need to store a lot of data which is grouped by county. I do not know ahead of time, what would be the best number of partitions. Partitions should be uniform, so that they contain about the same number of rows. A partition should hold data rows for one or more counties. Each county will be ranked on the frequency and possibly quantity of updates. Partitions should be built so that frequently updated county data is uniformly distributed. It does not seem as if there is a simple way to do this. So what kind of algorithm would work for this? I probably would not use VBA for coding, instead most likely I would use perl to write the program for doing the analysis. Are there any ready-made statistical tools that do these type of analysis? Let me clarify what I mean when I say _n_ number of groups. I will basically pick a number of groups (partitions), plug it into the formula or analysis tool, or custom program. Then I will repeat the process for a different number of groups (partitions) until I find by trial and error, the number of partitions that yields best performance. Maybe there is a name for this type of analysis? Something that I could try to research via a search engine?"}
{"_id": "30985", "title": "How to persuade programmers to follow the basic rules", "text": "There are several rules I must keep asking programmers to follow very often. They write code and, if it works, job is just done, for them. Most basic rules might be:   * Commiting changes   * Not writing Model issues in View or Controllers   * Avoid hardcoding Can you tell me about your experience? How do you manage this?"}
{"_id": "144740", "title": "C++ - Best way to have a central data repository", "text": "I'm coding in C++. I have a server that will have clients connect to it, and each client gets spun off into its own thread for communication. This server is hosting a game, so there is information that must be shared between all client threads, as well as any other threads I choose to spawn off. This data is like level data, players online, etc, so all threads might possible have to access any of the data at any time. When I was doing this in C#, I just had a static static with all static fields. Is there a superior way to do this? I really don't want to have to deal with passing a reference to a specific object everywhere, but I figure my current implementation goes against OOP etc. Would this be a good case for using a singleton design pattern? Any other ideas are welcomed!"}
{"_id": "92403", "title": "What is Business Process Management software?", "text": "I'm in a position to write something along the lines of business process management (BPM) software for a small to mid-sized company, but I have no clue about the design goals, and patterns I can adapt for typical BPM. What defines BPM and are there any typical approaches to it? How do I learn more about it?"}
{"_id": "82464", "title": "Best practices for replacing licensed software with an in-house solution", "text": "My company has been licensing a commercial application to fulfill our need for the past few years. The programmers (myself included) have been modifying (with permission) the software to better suit our needs. Now we're talking about replacing the licensed software with an in-house solution we create ourselves. We want to be fair (and legal) in our dealings, but we've all been influenced by the ideas we've had while hacking. I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened, and I wondered if there are common practices or development patterns which are followed in such situations?"}
{"_id": "186700", "title": "Print fixed width list sorted by column", "text": "I have a list of varying length where items is strings of varying length. I want to print them by (a mirrored N)/order by column. Major points being:   * Columns shall have fixed width == widest data in that column.   * It shall be as compact as possible.   * Number of columns is varying/induced by available width of canvas.   * Order of items should **not** be rearranged.   * _(Item lists printed column wise on a horizontal order disgusts me.)_ Optionally:   * Distribution should optionally favour either lower left or upper right. I currently use this in terminal by bash, C etc. but other uses is not hard to imagine. Result of calculations should be:   * columns   * lines   * width of each column As, by this, one can fairly easy print the data in a fixed with column table. **Main question** : Is there is some nifty way to do this. _(I'm inspired byKnuth's Computer musings.)_ My current approach is rather straight forward. Hard to specify the question without some gory details so here we go: * * * ## Data Examples E.g. (by index of string array):               0  4  8 12   or    0  4  8 12     or   0  3  6  9 12 15     1  5  9 13         1  5  9 13          1  4  7 10 13     2  6 10 14         2  6 10             2  5  8 11 14     3  7 11 15         3  7 11                       favouring lower left     favouring upper right     0  4  8 12               0  4  8 11     1  5  9 13               1  5  9 12     2  6 10                  2  6 10 13     3  7 11                  3  7      E.g. (by data - actual output):               0) Item number 00000 4) Item Number 04        8) Item Number 008   12) Item Number 00012     1) Item Number 00001 5) Item Number 5         9) Item Number 00009 13) Item Number 0013      2) Item Number 02    6) Item Number 00000006 10) Item Number 10        3) Item Number 003   7) Item Number 7        11) Item Number 11      * * * ## Current implementation As of now I do this by (approximately) e.g. in bash:   1. Adding the length of each item to array `lens` and track `longest` item.   2. Add width for number + 1 for `)` \\+ 1 for `space` to `longest` item.   3. Calculate maximum columns given that width.   4. Re-calculating width of item number (The one before `')'` in the print.) for each column.   5. Calculating actual longest width for items in each column.   6. Re-calculating:               while `lines` > 1 ; do                * Available width = Canvas width - total print width           * Test:                 Find longest item in last column as if columns was increased by 1.           * If longest_in_last_column_test < available width                  increase columns by 1.                  recalculate all column widths.             Else                  break             End If      done        7. Print list. * * * ## Thoughts Cant' help but wonder if there is some way to calculate this by other means. E.g. by using matrix mathematics, - or perhaps some nice algorithm out there. Perhaps hard in bash, but in C by pointers to structs or object related languages. Exempli gratia:               struct item {         int len;         char *val;     }          struct item items = {{5, \"Hello\"}, {3, \"You\"}, ...}      Which would give a matrix of typically               # index:length     0:5 1:2 2:1 3:3 4:5      5:2 6:6 7:9 8:1 9:6      Then by having the restraint of sum of each row being <= available width, e.g. 25, rearrange matrix.               longest: 5 5 9 6 => sum 25     --------------------------              5 3 6 1 => sum 15              5 5 9 6 => sum 25              1 2 1   => sum  4"}
{"_id": "82467", "title": "Setting Up A Study Group", "text": "Has anyone had experiences before in setting up a study group to empower individuals (employees) work towards a certification while still working. There are plenty of google hits out there on this subject, but I would be particularly interested in the anecdotal experiences of people in this forum. In particular:   1. What was the format?   2. What sort of commitment is required, both individual and employer   3. Optimal group sizes   4. Length and frequency of meetings   5. Absolutely anything else of relevance."}
{"_id": "225259", "title": "I have URL and ID pairings, and I send the URLs to an API which it returns in no specific order. How should I pair them back up?", "text": "This is a programming problem that I haven't came across yet and I want to make sure I'm tackling it in an efficient manner. I have an array of dictionaries, with each dictionary consisting of a \"url\" key and a \"id\" key with their corresponding values. I then iterate over this array and throw each URL value into a request object that I then send to an API to be processed. The API sends them all back at once, not necessarily in the order I sent them with other attributes that I use the API for gathering. **My question is:** Now that I have all these URLs and their data, how do I match them back with the IDs that they corresponded to in order to add all these attributes (the ID + the new attributes the API returned) into a database? **My solution:** Create _one_ dictionary with the URL of each item as the _key_ and the ID as the _value_ of the key, and then when I get the URLs back just find the value that responds to that URL key. Is there a better solution to this problem? Maybe architecturally I should be doing this all differently in a way that better facilitates an answer?"}
{"_id": "187658", "title": "Connecting with OAuth, dealing with logout and browser sessions", "text": "I work on a open-source web application (Moodle) which connects to a number of external services such as Google Drive, Dropbox etc. to allow users to exchange files with these services. Primarily we are using OAuth based APIs to connect with these services. One of the _user interaction_ problems we are facing is that our users do not expect that after they login to an external service that they stay logged into it. That sounds silly, but the scenario is this:   1. User wants to get a file from their Google Drive account   2. Moodle requests an oauth2 token from Google to browse google drive   3. User is not logged into Google, so needs to login to Google   4. Moodle gets token and user carries on their business in Moodle   5. User logs out of Moodle and does not expect they are still logged into Google My _programmer viewpoint_ is that the browser session is completely the responsibility of user and that our application should not get involved. But we hear from our users about this misconception all the time. Its particularly a problem because our application is often used in shared environments. Is there a good pattern for dealing with this problem which other applications use?"}
{"_id": "50273", "title": "Arguments for Functional Programming", "text": "I've recently been learning F# for fun (I'm a VB.NET/C# dev), and I really like some of what it has to offer. Theoretically that is. But I'm having trouble thinking up of scenarios where I would choose to code in F# rather than in C#. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "180600", "title": "Free app licensing - Could it be creative commons?", "text": "I am creating a free nokia application for which I am about to use images from a creative common website. Now my question is if a free application come under creative commons as it is not a paid one? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "190973", "title": "What changes are too big to be made easy by proper design?", "text": "This is a rather vague question, but it's something I've never felt has been answered in a satisfactory way when reading about proper design. Generally, when learning about Object Oriented programming, abstraction, factoring out, etc, the holy grail of design - and the reason they always claim you're using the development techniques in question - is that it will make your program \"easy to change\", \"maintainable\", \"flexible\", or any of the synonyms used to express such a productive-sounding concept. By marking ivars private, splitting code up into many small, self-contained methods, keeping interfaces general, you supposedly gain the ability to modify your program with total ease and grace. For relatively small changes, this has worked well for me. Changes to internal data structures used by a class to increase performance has never been a major difficulty, and neither have changes to the user-interface end, independent of the API, such as redesigning a text entry system or overhauling the graphics for a gameplay element. All of these changes seem inherently self-contained. None of them involve any changes to the behavior or design of the component of your program being modified, as far as outside code it concerned. Whether or not you're writing procedurally or in an OO style, with large functions or small, these are easy changes to make even if you have only a moderately good design. However, whenever the changes become big and hairy - that is, changes to the API - none of my precious \"patterns\" ever come to the rescue. The big change remains big, the affected code remains affected, and many hours of bug- spawning work lie ahead of me. So, my question is this. How big a change does proper design claim to be able to facilitate? Is there some further design technique, either unknown to me or that I have failed to implement, that truly does make sticky-sounding modification simple, or is that promise (which I have heard made by so many different paradigms) merely a nice idea, completely disconnected from the immutable truths of software development? Is there a \"change tool\" I can add to my toolbelt? Specifically, the problem I am facing that's led me to the forums is this: I've been working on implementing an interpreted programming language (implemented in D, but that's not relevant), and I've decided that my closures' arguments should be keyword-based, rather than positional as they currently are. This requires modifying all existing code that calls anonymous functions, which, luckily, is rather small because I am early on in the development of my language (< 2000 lines), but would be enormous if I had made this decision at a later stage. In such a situation, is there any way that by proper foresight in design I could have made this modification easier, or are certain (most) changes intrinsically far-reaching? I'm curious if this is in any way a failure of my own design skills - if it is, I'd be very eager to improve them with the necessary reading material if there is a way to ameliorate the severity of the problem. To be clear, I am in no way skeptical of OOP or any of the other patterns commonly in use. For me, however, their virtues are in the original writing, rather than the maintaining, of code bases. Inheritance allows you to abstract repetitive patterns out well, polymorphism allows you to separate code by human-understood function (which class) rather than by machine-understood effect (which branch of the `switch` statement), and small, self-contained functions allow you to write in a very pleasant \"bottom-up\" style. However, I'm skeptical of their claims of flexibility."}
{"_id": "187652", "title": "How to best distribute client specific configuration settings", "text": "I'm writing a WinForms desktop application which will be shipped out to several different clients and am wondering what the best way to implement a user configuration file is. Normally I would use the built in `Settings.settings` or `app.config` to store user settings but in this case what I want to store is unique for every client, I want it to be configured before sending it out and I want to avoid recompiling every time we ship to a new client. What I want my config file to do is to store some information about the client specific graphics used in the program and some (hashed) passwords. We don't suspect that the users would be hacking into anything in the program; we're just trying to avoid regular 'tech' level users from making changes or accessing certain modules that a manager should change. Up until now the password has been hardcoded and over a few years of use everyone has gotten to know what it is. We'd like to be in more control of what passwords go where but not necessarily give the clients control of the password changes. I wrote a separate program that (de)serializes a configuration class to an XML file that would be put in the appropriate directory upon installation so that all people need to do (after I'm out of the picture) is have the `.msi` of the program, create an xml config file using this separate program, include the graphics they want in a sub folder and zip it all up. Then when the user unzips and installs, everything is put in the right place. When my program loads it looks for my config file to finish loading. If it can't find it it gives the user a change to locate it otherwise the program doesn't open. I've been reading about the `ConfigurationManager` class but can't figure out how I could best use it. I haven't found much on people using outside configuration files and am not sure if my situation truly is unique or I'm not thinking inside the box enough. Is this a good design? Should I be doing this differently? If you have had a similar situation how have you solved it?"}
{"_id": "157835", "title": "Can programmer certifications substitute for degree requirements", "text": "I am a Computer Technician without a computer science background and planning to become a Java programmer. My question is, if I pass a Java certification, would that be enough to for me to get a job since I don't have Bachelor's degree in computer science? More generally, can programmer certifications substitute for a specific degree requirement in a job posting?"}
{"_id": "217999", "title": "PHP composer question", "text": "just getting started with composer and I have a couple of questions. When I use composer to add a dependency, the dependency gets added to my folder's Vendor directory. The newly added package not only comes with the source code for that package, but all packagist required files for the developer to test and add that package to packagist repo (composer.json, .travis.yaml, license, readme.md, etc). For my project, do I need to keep the vendor's required packagist files in my project? Can I clean the package folder structure up a little? I added the package, Slim micro framework, which nests the source files three directories deep upon installation, `../vendor/slim/slim/Slim/(source Files)`. Is it worth moving these files to the top Slim directory like: `../vendor/Slim/(source files)`? Or will this ruin the integrity of the package?"}
{"_id": "157831", "title": "Does mobile based (Android) development, benefit from Object Oriented Programming?", "text": "My development on Android is based on scientific programs and while I'm building these most of the code is in one or two long classes. When I come to deploy these programs I try to decouple everything and use classes and objects like I would on a Java desktop application. However reading guide Designing for Performance | Android Developers about Internal Getters/Setters it seems OO is not a good approach. My question is what is best approach when designed Android applications, should I still use lots of classes with getters/setters and lots of object passing around. This seems counter intuitive thinking about the architecture of Android, but it also does not seem right to have lots of code in long classes. I have looked at source codes from other projects and these seem to follow the OO approach. My applications involve heavy image processing and time and performance is important. I am more of a science researcher than a programmer so thanks in advance for any help."}
{"_id": "222207", "title": "Should I get a patent before asking for help in development", "text": "Should I get a patent before asking for help in development? I think I have a great idea but don't have the technical know-how to proceed. Simply don't wish to give away my idea"}
{"_id": "136624", "title": "Proper terminology for a small set of tightly coupled classes?", "text": "What is the proper terminology for a small (2-4) set of tightly coupled classes? These classes can't work independently. I was thinking _system_ , but after googling for a bit, I've determined that the word is typically used to describe the software as a whole. Then, I thought of _subsystem_ , but I don't know if the term applies if the number of classes in the subsystem is small. What do you guys think? This is for a presentation for a professor who wants me to provide definitions for everything. **Edit:** Essentially, I am describing various ways to architect game object _systems_ , found in game engines. I'm using the term _system_ as a way to include all the classes involved in the game object apparatus. Calling it a _game object system_ feels right to me, but I'm not sure if it is the right terminology. I don't view game objects as a _layer_ , since it doesn't really work as a layer in a game engine. A _module_ or _package_ , to me, seem more suitable for a bunch of purely functional or stateless classes. If I am not making sense, please let me know!"}
{"_id": "142596", "title": "Where should SQL/DB Queries be encapsulated in a software system?", "text": "I frequently write small applications (either web based or otherwise) that require heavy database usage. i've attempted various ways of handling where to put the actual sql queries (sort of ad-hoc ORM systems). These include:   * Models that build themselves up - and only allowing SQL to be inside of a model.   * A sort of factory style method where the models are built by a factory class that is allowed to know about SQL.   * A third entity that maps models based on their fields/keys into the database and generates SQL code on the fly based on this. Is there a common knowledge of which method is best? Or another way I have missed? Clearly a lot of it will be based on the context of the system itself, which for me is usually to produce lightweight tools or utility frameworks. In experimenting, I've never found any of them that feel intuitively \"right\" and not clunky, but I also do not want to go for a full framework such as Django or Ruby - both because the tools I create are in a variety of languages and because they usually do not warrant that level of surrounding footprint."}
{"_id": "143248", "title": "Strategies for avoiding SQL in your Controllers... or how many methods should I have in my Models?", "text": "So a situation I run into reasonably often is one where my models start to either:   * Grow into monsters with tons and tons of methods OR   * Allow you to pass pieces of SQL to them, so that they are flexible enough to not require a million different methods For example, say we have a \"widget\" model. We start with some basic methods:   * get($id)   * insert($record)   * update($id, $record)   * delete($id)   * getList() // get a list of Widgets That's all fine and dandy, but then we need some reporting:   * listCreatedBetween($start_date, $end_date)   * listPurchasedBetween($start_date, $end_date)   * listOfPending()  And then the reporting starts to get complex:   * listPendingCreatedBetween($start_date, $end_date)   * listForCustomer($customer_id)   * listPendingCreatedBetweenForCustomer($customer_id, $start_date, $end_date) You can see where this is growing... eventually we have so many specific query requirements that I either need to implement tons and tons of methods, or some sort of \"query\" object that I can pass to a single ->query(query $query) method... ... or just bite the bullet, and start doing something like this:   * list = MyModel->query(\" start_date > X AND end_date < Y AND pending = 1 AND customer_id = Z \") There's a certain appeal to just having one method like that instead of 50 million other more specific methods... but it feels \"wrong\" sometimes to stuff a pile of what's basically SQL into the controller. Is there a \"right\" way to handle situations like this? Does it seem acceptable to be stuffing queries like that into a generic ->query() method? Are there better strategies?"}
{"_id": "131074", "title": "What should be the \"depth of design\"?", "text": "We all know that the process of creating a design and the whole architecture of the software is very important before writing the code. But how deep should be dive into the design stuff - should we start from the general architecture and go down til the names of the classes or should be just designate common parts and start coding?"}
{"_id": "144293", "title": "How would you explain that software engineering is more specialized than other engineering fields?", "text": "I work with someone who insists that any good software engineer can develop in any software technology, and experience in a particular technology doesn't matter to building good software. His analogy was that you don't have to have knowledge of the product being built to know how to build an assembly line that manufactures said product. In a way it's a compliment to be viewed with an eye such that \"if you're good, you're good at everything\", but in a way it also trivializes the profession, as in \"Codemonkey, go sling code\". Without experience in certain software frameworks, you can get in trouble fast, and that's important. I tried explaining this, but he didn't buy it. Any different views or thoughts on this to help explain that my experience in one thing, doesn't translate to all things?"}
{"_id": "143246", "title": "\"Integratable\" but not \"integrated\" GPL", "text": "There has been much debate over whether or not merely linking to a piece of code makes it a derivative work. I know FSF says \"yes\", so according to them I can't dynamically link a non-GPL compatible program to a GPL library and distribute the whole. But I could do that for private use, as long as no code is released to the public. That made me wonder: what if I don't redistribute the GPL code at all? If my program can work alone (reinforcing my claim that it's **not** a derivative work), but can do more if the GPL library is also installed to the system, couldn't I just release my application under my own licensing terms - without including any GPL code - and post instructions for anyone interested to separately download the GPL code and do the integration \"for their private use\"? I know it's against the \"spirit\" of the GPL, so I'm not suggesting it's a good idea to do that. However, this question is bugging me for some time, specially because of the implications of each answer: If I **can not** do that:   * can I write another library with a similar API? (before answering \"of course you can\", remember that having the same API would allow both libraries to be swapped at will by my customers - so I don't need to work too hard on my library or even make it \"working\". How to determine if a similar program is just similar or is a circumvention attempt?)      * (Edit: as @Karl Bielefeldt pointed out, that library would be a derivative work, so this point is moot) If I **can** do that:   * can I also be paid to perform the **service** of installing the GPL library for a customer? (I sell them my program, install it in their machines, download and install the GPL library too)      * (Edit: this practice would be evidence of my **intent** to combine both programs, reinforcing the claim that mine was conceived witht the goal of being combined - and thus is a derivative work)   * can I put the two programs in the same website? In two different CDs? (I know I said the idea was **not** to redistribute the GPL code, I'm just thinking in excuses people could use to claim they're not redistributing even though they are)      * (Edit: that would be an \"aggregate\", so no problem with it) * * * **Update:** having analyzed @Eli Rosencruft's and @Karl Bielefeldt's answers and links, and read some external resources, I'm getting closer to a conclusion. I made some edits to the question according to the feedback, and below I'll post a few of my findings so far:   * The intrinsic qualities of both programs is a more determining factor when deciding whether or not one derives from another than the technological means to achive their integration. The intent of the authors of achieving some goal is also as relevant as the means they used to reach it (in this scenario). Quoting a blog post that - though not authoritative on the subject - I believe is relevant to the question (emphasis mine): > Since under the GPL the end-user can do whatever they want with the code > (short of redistribution constraints), the end-user can always PULL various > software on the Net and choose to combine and use them in any way they wish > (assuming all parts are legits and legitimately obtained of course). (...) > It does NOT mean that I can offer (PUSH) to the user a proprietary software > **that has been conceived with the goal/intent of being combined** with a > GPL software ( **whether it is deemed to be combined before or after > distribution** ).   * Whether legally significant or not, I now comprehend the motivation behind FSF's insistence on static vs dynamic linking: a non-free program that interfaces with a free one in complicated ways is _de facto_ restricting the users' freedom over the latter, since they can't modify it substantially without breaking the integration (this also enables EEE, in case the free part is also modified to fit the non-free one). So, if one cares for the free software movement, s/he should comply to their terms or, at the very least, take the necessary measures to safeguard the receiver's freedoms."}
{"_id": "131073", "title": "Why should I not always pass a Django request context in a view?", "text": "According to the relevant Django documentation, a request context offers more than a normal context in that it merges request data into the context. It is hence necessary for views that perform form submission in Django. However, I am wondering why one cannot just always pass a request context for every view. After all, a request context offers more than a normal context. Why not create a helper function called, say, `render()` that automatically passes a request context? Is there a performance disadvantage?"}
{"_id": "50181", "title": "What are the standard practices for database access in .net?", "text": "I have seen weird database access practices in .net. I have seen stored procedures for every database tasks. I have seen every database property name is preceded by it's table name. I have seen fully separate layer/.dll for very few or no business logic. I have seen along with ORMs, there are separate data access layer playing the same role. And with them, I have always heard- \"These are the standards you have to maintain\". So, what are the real standards for data access in .net? What are the rules you follow?"}
{"_id": "77359", "title": "Better to use one large plist or many small plists when developing for iOS?", "text": "I'm creating a simple \"find one of our locations\" app for iOS 4, for which I have a list of >70 places, complete with addresses, business hours, etc. Is it better to put all of this data in one large plist or many small ones?"}
{"_id": "187383", "title": "Polling and control devices", "text": "I am in the early stages of planning for an input device which will consist of some as-yet-to-be determined number pf physical controls. From previous experience with such devices I have found that it would be extremely advantageous to have the device return data about the state of all controls in response to a query from the system, as opposed to reporting changes as they occur. Assuming an acceptable poll frequency of 1000 queries per second or higher, is the embedded hardware sufficiently advanced to support this? Would a driver for such a device be excessively resource-intensive? What would a good ballpark estimate for the ram/cpu required on both the \"server\" and \"client\"?"}
{"_id": "252768", "title": "Querying the NuGet official source asynchronously?", "text": "I've been playing around with the NuGet.Core package to see if I can search the NuGet repository for specific packages. I started with the sample code:               //ID of the package to be looked up     string packageID = \"EntityFramework\";          //Connect to the official package repository     IPackageRepository repo = PackageRepositoryFactory.Default.CreateRepository(\"https://packages.nuget.org/api/v2\");          //Get the list of all NuGet packages with ID 'EntityFramework'     List<IPackage> packages = repo.FindPackagesById(packageID).ToList();          //Filter the list of packages that are not Release (Stable) versions     packages = packages.Where (item => (item.IsReleaseVersion() == false)).ToList();          //Iterate through the list and print the full name of the pre-release packages to console     foreach (IPackage p in packages)     {         Console.WriteLine(p.GetFullName());     }      The problem is that this is all done synchronously, instead of asynchronously. I could not find any async methods in NuGet.Core, so I was thinking about rolling out my own way of querying NuGet's official feed. The problem is that I have no idea how to even query the official feed at all, so I have no idea what classes or methods I have to use. Or, is there a way to use parts of the NuGet.Core interfaces but just perform a query async?"}
{"_id": "187380", "title": "Algorithm Identification [ String & Dictionary ]", "text": "I recently heard of an interview question:                Given a string and a dictionary. Break the string into meaningful words      and I remember solving this before with dynamic programming fairly quickly (maybe O(n) time? ) in one of my old algorithm classes but I can not remember the name of the algorithm. Could someone point me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "107272", "title": "When to release a lite version of an iOS app?", "text": "I have created an iPhone application and I have submitted it to Apple and it is currently waiting for review and I have been debating with myself for the past half an hour if I should release a lite version of an app. I was wondering when one should release a lite version of an app once the full app is in the App Store?"}
{"_id": "107277", "title": "Comparison of operator overloading abuse in different languages", "text": "A common argument against operator overloading is that it can be and is abused, e.g. `A+B` doing something completely different to addition. Examples are often quoted in C++ snippets, where the functions overloading the operators don't name the operators (e.g. `operator+()`). Compare this to Python, where the operators _are_ named (e.g. `__add__`). Does this help to deter programmers from abusing overloading in the aforementioned manner? Anyone have any experiences of Python operator overloading being abused?"}
{"_id": "66096", "title": "code cowboy on the team", "text": "How do you deal with a team member who is senior to you and always jumps on other people's projects and completes them over night or over the weekend? She seems to work 80 hour weeks whether there is an emergency or not and it is somewhat difficult to predict which part of your todo list she is going to strike next. Sometimes days of your work are wasted because on Monday morning you find a checkin completing the project you've spent most of the previous week working on. To people asking of the quality: Usually it is quite good but: there is also a lot of refactoring of code involved, including code 'owned' by other team members, w/o regard for the test coverage, with the obvious results."}
{"_id": "252604", "title": "Distribute load evenly across many cycles", "text": "I am looking for a solution that is fast and still readable. I have to do this in C but the code will be static in the end, which mean I could use any tool to generate it. I have a task which runs cyclically and calls different functions also cyclically > Main functions cycle is 1. > > Function a has also cycle 1. So the main function calls it every time > > Function b has cycle 2. Main function calls it every second cycle. > > Function c has cycle 2. > > Function d has cycle 4. > > Function e has cycle 4. > > Function f has cycle 4. > > Function g has cycle 4. > > ... many more .... > > Function X has cycle 500. If we have many functions that run in the same cycle we try to distribute them.   So for function b we would call it in one cycle and c in the other. Distributing the load evenly.   Similar for d to g. Each one gets called in a different cycle. My current implementation is very bad.   Every developer who had to add their task to main function calculates their on modulo and calls when needed. This leads to a very unreadable code. I was thinking of doing something like:               uint32 mod4 = timer % 4;     bool fourth_1 = mod4 == 0;     bool fourth_2 = mod4 == 1;     bool fourth_3 = mod4 == 2;     bool fourth_4 = mod4 == 3;     bool second_1 = fourth_1 || fourth_3;     bool second_2 = fourth_2 || fourth_4;     /* and so on*/      But this seems cumbersome and too error prone specially as the highest cycle time is too high. How to approach this kind of problem? -Edit- As asked i have compiled some information about the number of functions that i have:   * 32 functions cycle 1   * 9 functions cycle 2   * 14 functions cycle 4   * 3 functions cycle 8   * 3 functions cycle 32   * 3 functions cycle 40   * 2 functions cycle 200   * 2 functions cycle 400"}
{"_id": "106890", "title": "Should I enter an employment agreement before finishing school?", "text": "I am a year away from finishing graduate school, and the campus drives in my college are about to start. It's mostly big names that come to campus, but I am really interested in a specific small company. I applied, and then after a series of telephone interviews and online tests, they seem to be interested in me. But, I don't want to start work until after I graduate. However in the meantime, if I make a commitment to join them, they plan on providing training assistance and some small assignments, in exchange for staying away from future recruitment drives. They want a written assurance from me that I'll join their company, but how can _I_ be assured that after graduating, there will still be a job for me? For example, if they decide they don't need my expertise anymore or if they shut down. Is it reasonable to enter into such an agreement with a company prior to the actual hire?"}
{"_id": "94582", "title": "Low Level Exercises", "text": "I'm pretty comfortable with high-level languages and application development. However, although I have learned about low level topics such as the ones listed below, I have never done anything with that knowledge outside of school. Some examples:   * bit twiddling   * dealing with little vs big endian   * memory management (stuff relating to the stack/heap/malloc, etc)   * multi-threading with mutexes and semaphores What are some ways that I can practice these in my spare time, while working at a company that writes managed code?"}
{"_id": "79608", "title": "What would be a good first functional programming project?", "text": "What would be a good first functional programming project? I am looking to finish with a bang on my bachelor project and I want to finish it with a functional programming project. We didn't study it in school but we are encouraged to try to learn new things ourselves, and I thought learning a new paradigm not only a new language would be a great exercise for me, and probably something interesting for the teachers to see too. The problem is I want to start a bit ahead of time on my project to take advantage of the summer holiday and get a better understanding on functional programming, and get familiar with one language. What would you say would be a good practice project that is a bit challenging, but also lets me learn the language, paradigm etc. And then what would you think would be a good project (a more advanced one) for my bachelor project? Suggestions for the best language to start with when going into functional programming would be appreciated too."}
{"_id": "194083", "title": "Why should I use List<T> over IEnumerable<T>?", "text": "In my ASP.net MVC4 web application I use IEnumerables, trying to follow the mantra to program to the interface, not the implementation.               Return IEnumerable(Of Student)      vs               Return New List(Of Student)      People are telling me to use List and not IEnumerable, because lists force the query to be executed and IEumerable does not. Is this really best practice? Is there any alternative? I feel strange using concrete objects where an interface could be used. Is my strange feeling justified?"}
{"_id": "228866", "title": "What is this design pattern called?", "text": "I have some code:               /// <summary>     /// Represents Record Locator class     /// </summary>     public class RecordLocator : IRecordLocator     {         /// <summary>         /// The Record Locator string, for example: ZT8C4O         /// </summary>         public string Name { get; private set; }              /// <summary>         /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref=\"RecordLocator\"/> class.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"recordLocator\">The record locator string.</param>         private RecordLocator(string recordLocator)         {             Name = recordLocator;         }              /// <summary>         /// Parses the specified record locator.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"recordLocator\">The record locator string.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static IRecordLocator Parse(string recordLocator)         {             if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(recordLocator))             throw new ArgumentNullException(\"recordLocator\");                  if (recordLocator.Length != 6)             throw new ArgumentException(\"recordLocator.Length != 6\");                  return new RecordLocator(recordLocator);         }     }          /// <summary>     /// Represents Record Locator interface     /// </summary>     public interface IRecordLocator : IHideObjectMembers     {         /// <summary>         /// The Record Locator string, for example: ZT8C4O         /// </summary>         string Name { get; }     }        1. What is this design-pattern called? When you have a class, which instantiating itself (and probably have a private constructor)? Another example of this is `System.DateTime` class of .NET framework.   2. Is it OK to do it like that?"}
{"_id": "194085", "title": "Separation of Concerns While Creating a Generic Concept of a \"Cart Item\"", "text": "Pretty simple setup: I've got a `Cart` and the cart has `Items`. I've got many varying types of \"products\" that can't really be boiled down into one thing or even a common ancestor, so I've instead decided to simply create a representation of the product as a `CartItem`, which contains all the information from the product needed to make the sale. That's where the question comes in. I could handle this in three ways that I see. For these examples we'll just say I have two types of \"products\": `Widget`s and `Gizmo`s. Again, these two things are so vastly different that it doesn't make sense for them to inherit from any base class. 1) Both a `Widget` and a `Gizmo` have the ability to create a `Cart Item` to represent themselves, but this requires both to have knowledge of `CartItem` and any change to `CartItem` will require me to touch both `Widget` and `Gizmo` (not ideal, obviously) 2) A `CartItem` can create itself from either a `Widget` or a `Gizmo`. This would essentially be a factory pattern and would require `CartItem` to have knowledge of both `Widget` and `Gizmo`. This is better than #1 in that I don't have to make changes to every kind of \"product\" if I change `CartItem`, but I _do_ have to remember that if I change a particular \"product\" then I must change the factory method of `CartItem` for that. (still not ideal, because Murphy says I will forget). 3) Use something like the controller as the \"glue\". `WidgetController` and `GizmoController` will have `AddToCart` actions that translate a `Widget` or `Gizmo`, respectively, into a `CartItem`. This really sort of presents the same problems as #1, in that if `CartItem` changes, I need to update all the \"product\" controllers, and in fact mixes in the problems of #2, in that I must remember to always maintain this mapping if something on either side changes. However, it _feels_ more like a job for the controller: it's oriented for dealing with multiple types, whereas it just feels wrong to mix in types at the model level. 4) Three that I can see; #4 would be something I have yet to consider that one of you kind individuals may happen to suggest. I'm open to any comments here. If I'm missing something completely obvious, feel free to call me a moron and point how just how big a moron I am. I like feeling stupid; that's when I'm learning ;)."}
{"_id": "165035", "title": "How to deal with a valuable person going in all directions?", "text": "I am working with someone producing user content to be included in a software application. He is not a coder, but rather an expert in his field, sharing the knowledge. His contribution, taken piece by piece is great, but he goes in all directions and has issues producing work sequentially. He works on 25 pieces of content at the same time, and as soon as he reads something 'interesting', he wants to rewrite some of his stuff to improve the quality of it. He does not converge naturally. He collects tons of informations, produces some valuable stuff, but in a completely unstructured way. We addressed this issue with him some time ago and in order to try to solve it, we created a document with the 100 items he had to fill. Problem is, it does not seem to work very well. How to deal with those people and collect information? I was thinking about a new technique: ask him to send his bits, out of order, little by little, as soon as they are ready, and keep a list of what remains to be done, and show him that list to give him direction. This situation is stressing the hell out of me. If his production was not good, I would not be trying so hard to make this work. If you have experience to share, it is welcome."}
{"_id": "197314", "title": "What mindset should an ASP.NET developer have in terms of client-side vs server-side code?", "text": "I'm jumping back into ASP.NET development after spending the past 7 years playing manager, dba, and winforms developer. I've dabbled with a few things web related, primarily maintenance of existing webforms apps, but I haven't done anything with newer technologies. My, how things have changed! After watching a lot of videos, reading a lot of articles, and messing around with some of the new tools, I think I must be looking at things the wrong way. I tend to think in terms of writing web apps using C# and server-side processing rather than client-side processing. I never used much JavaScript and depended on things like Infragistics NetAdvantage controls and their asynchronous refresh panel. Is it reasonable to assume that \"modern\" web developers think in terms of JavaScript and client-side coding, only hitting the server via a service for data processing, retrieveal, and storage?"}
{"_id": "197317", "title": "Decimal to 17-bit 2's Complement Signed Number", "text": "I am trying to convert decimals, (0.05, -0.28, 25.00, etc), to a 17-bit 2's complement Signed Number. The parameter data I am sending is SysEX Midi Data (to some external Synthesizer). The data parameters are composed of 3 bytes. For example, the example given is as follows:   * The parameter data to set the value to -0.02 is (07 7F 70) (Data2,Data1,Data0) I was wondering if anyone could give me guidance for doing this in Java, here are the specifications I am going off of:   * The parameter data is a 17-bit number 2\u2019s complement signed number.   * data2= Mix channel number and most significant bits (bits 14-16) of parameter\u2019s data (with the format 0xxx xyyy, where xxxx is the mix channel number (0-15) and yyy are the uppermost bits (bits 14-16) of the parameter data.)   * data1= Bits 7-13 of parameter\u2019s data   * data0= Least significant bits (bits 0-6) of parameter\u2019s data  So, here is what I am able to assume so far:   * The 3 bytes is composed of 17 bits, + the 4 bits for sending #'s 0-15 (The Mix Channel)   * The 17th bit is the signing bit?   * The signing bit only needs to be set if It's a negative number, and in which that case needs to be formatted w/ 2's complement   * The highest bit for each parameters data byte is set to 0 With all this in mind, can someone help me understand, post, or help me write a function to format this 17-bit number from a signed decimal value? Binary Bit Adding / Subtracting In Java, Two's Complements, etc...It would be greatly appreciated it anyone has any example functions, or explanations! Cheers"}
{"_id": "93750", "title": "How do I help a team member be more confident?", "text": "I have two team members who come from backgrounds that differ from what they're currently being asked to do: how can we encourage them to step up, develop their skills, and learn the new ways?"}
{"_id": "197313", "title": "How to unit test method that returns a collection while avoiding logic in the test", "text": "I am test-driving a method that is to generate a collection of data objects. I want to verify that the properties of the objects are being set correctly. Some of the properties will be set to the same thing; others will be set to a value which is dependent on their position in the collection. The natural way to do this seems to be with a loop. However, Roy Osherove strongly recommends against using logic in unit tests ( _Art of Unit Testing_ , 178). He says: > A test that contains logic is usually testing more than one thing at a time, > whicfh isn't recommended, because the test is less readable and more > fragile. But test logic also adds complexity that may contain a hidden bug. > > Tests should, as a general rule, be a series of method calls with no control > flows, not even `try-catch`, and with assert calls. However, I can't see anything wrong with my design (how else do you generate a list of data objects, some of whose values are depended on where in the sequence they are?--can't exactly generate and test them separately). Is there something non-test-friendly with my design? Or am being too rigidly devoted to Osherove's teaching? Or is there some secret unit test magic I don't know about that circumvents this problem? (I'm writing in C#/VS2010/NUnit, but looking for language-agnostic answers if possible.)"}
{"_id": "252095", "title": "Who gives out the awards to \"Award-Winning Software\"?", "text": "Time and time again, I've seen companies advertise their software by saying things like \"Award Winning Software\" or \"Download our Award-Winning Android App\", etc. Who is giving out these \"awards\"? I've been in the software industry for a few years now and I've never heard of anyone getting an award for their software. Is there actually a body that gives awards to companies or is it just the case that some obscure magazine gave the software a good rating and they then proceed to label their product as \"Award-Winning\"?"}
{"_id": "189765", "title": "Pros and cons of sending data from android to php in string and/or json", "text": "I have seen some tutorials and some stackoverflow discussions on how to send data from android to php page. most of the cases i have seen people sending data in string format but returning in json format. My question is that is it better to send data from android to php in json format. or in what cases i should use json over string. Regards"}
{"_id": "181550", "title": "is this javascript property defaulting pattern a code smell?", "text": "In some javascript code I'm working on refactoring I've handled cases where I wanted to default an object property to true without having to go through the code-base and add the property to every instance of the object by doing something like this:               if(typeof(thisBool) === 'undefined' || thisBool) {         //do cool stuff here;     }      so for existing instances I only had to fix up the model in cases where I wanted to set `thisBool` to some value calculated somewhere else, or to set it to false; if it was unset then this code treated it as true. The objects are built dynamically when used - they're not defined classes, but are \"instantiated\" something like this:               var thing1 = {         Name: 'thing No 1',         HasCat: false,         [thisBool: true]     };      and `thing1` is passed into the function Is this a terrible idea? I'm updating that code (and all of the instances) so now is the time to fix this, if it's a code smell. For my own part I would rather be more explicit, but I also see the value in not having to supply a `thisBool: true` in hundreds of places, where by default `thisBool` should be true. Is there a better way to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "164238", "title": "GPU Data Flow Architecture", "text": "I am currently working on CUDA, DirectX. I want to know the data flow architecture of GPUs. The one presented for CUDA and DirectX are parallel programming model and graphics pipelines respectively. But, I want to know the data flow architecture (like, the data flow architecture of 8086 processors)."}
{"_id": "181554", "title": "Should a database table(s) structure match its intended data structure(s) in the logic?", "text": "This question branches out of this question, What are the differences between algorithms using data structures and algorithms using databases?. # The General Question Should a database table(s) structure match its intended data structure(s) in the logic? # Some Context The simplest example (and it may be oversimplified) of what I am thinking about is a database table whose columns match the properties of a linked list data structure. So the properties I think of for a linked list are the following: ## Linked List   * Node identity.   * Item/Content in node.   * Next node. In regards to the general question, the database table columns that I think of getting mapped are the following: ## Linked List > Database Table   * Node Identity **>** Primary Key Column(s).   * Item/Content in node **>** Column(s) containing data that is to be persisted.   * Next node **>** Column containing a reference to the record that is to follow it in the same table. An application I can think of that represents the above is to say, keep track of a trail of points you have been to on a map. So I can imagine saving the coordinates of point A then putting in the mapped Next node column, the coordinates of point B. Letting my imagination run a little further, then retrieve this data and load it into a linked list, use its properties to do the traversal, and draw these points on a map again at a later point in time. # Questions   1. I can see how creating a mapping like this simplifies thinking about the data, but I also feel it restricts you to thinking about the data in only this way. How conforming do you make your database tables to data structure(s), if at all?   2. Should databases be viewed as realms of raw data that are to be shaped and molded (translated) to data structures selected dependent on the program's purpose? I restate what I said in the last post. I know answers without a specific context are difficult. Food-for-thought, advice, or discussion points are mainly what I'm looking for and would be most appreciated! I did try to give a more specific context in this post."}
{"_id": "181557", "title": "Advice: Developing two projects where one is an extension of the other", "text": "### The Two Projects I work at a pretty small software company, and I'm currently in a situation where I'm at the end of development for \"Project A\", about to start development for \"Project B\". Project B is supposed to be an \"extension\" of Project A (both are primarily web apps). In Project B, the plan is to not only add brand new features, but modify some of the existing things from Project A; for example, some of the web pages. The difficulty is that we still want to be able to distribute Project A, without any of the features from Project B, but _with_ any \"A\"-related bug fixes that we end up doing while we work on \"B\". ### Method 1: Branching The way I'm thinking about it is that Project A is like the \"stable\" branch and Project B is like the \"dev\" branch, but \"dev\" never gets merged back into \"stable\". We have concerns with this approach because it seems like it will require a lot of discipline to make sure that bug-fix changes are always committed to the Project A branch and then merged up to the Project B branch (as opposed to fixes being implemented on the Project B branch and needing to manually copy them back into the Project A branch). ### Method 2: Plugin Architecture Alternatively, we could start turning things into sort of \"plugins\" wherever there needs to be a \"difference\" between Project A and B. This way also seems like it could turn into a tangled mess, since we don't yet know exactly what changes will be needed. ### The Choice Right now, I see it as a choice between the lesser of two evils (read 'difficulties'). Based on your experience, do you have any advice that will help with my choice? Are there any other ways to manage the split between the two projects that I might have overlooked?"}
{"_id": "221622", "title": "Managing false positives in TDD or BDD", "text": "I'm relatively new to TDD and have been thinking a lot about how to manage the perpetually growing pool of tests that comes with it. One of my biggest concerns is about false positives. In my experience, it's not uncommon at all for a feature to undergo fairly massive changes over time. To implement a change we would first write a test (or many tests) for the new behaviour and then code the change. Ideally, all the tests would pass once the feature change has been correctly implemented. But what about the tests that covered the first incarnation of the feature? There is no guarantee that:   1. they are still relevant;   2. they still pass;   3. their pass/fail status is even correct. Reviewing/updating/deleting these tests in a relatively small pool of tests may be manageable, but what about when you have thousands or tens of thousands of tests? It seems to me that there is a big risk that your collection of tests will eventually contain many false positives. And, considering that these tests are a form of system documentation, this is pretty bad! **Question:** How do you mitigate the risk of accumulating False Positive tests when applying TDD or BDD (or anything that eventually leads to having a massive collection of tests)?"}
{"_id": "107857", "title": "Using Visual Foxpro DBF with ASP.NET as opposed to SQL Server", "text": "I work in a small software company where my boss is a great fan of Visual Foxpro. We are working on an ASP.NET project but my boss is insisting to use Visual Foxpro DBF instead of SQL Server. I want to know what may be the advantages and disadvantages of using a Foxpro database file with ASP.NET 3.5."}
{"_id": "100804", "title": "What is an algorithmic programming language?", "text": "\"... You need to understand the core language: is it algorithmic, functional, object-oriented? ...\" - Effective Java, Joshua Bloch, 2ndEd. 2008. Foreword, p xiii Functional: Lisp, OO: Java, but what is ( would Bloch mean by ) an algorithmic programming language?"}
{"_id": "197998", "title": "Why do people tend to gravitate to older versions of visual studio?", "text": "I'm starting to pick up all of the perks of C++11, and being a 2010 user i'm considering installing 2012 instead for better c++11 support. But why is it that 2012 doesn't seem as popular as 2010? Am i going to be losing anything when I switch from 2010 to 2012? Or is it a more ease of use concern, and a different GUI that pushes people away? I dont want to install 2012 to learn of some big limitations that 2010 did not present to me, thanks for any input!"}
{"_id": "132785", "title": "Question about the use of the word 'porting' in programming", "text": "I'm currently in the process of modifying a C++ code that was written for UNIX system so that it works by compiling from Visual Studio. I had to change some built-in functions' names and I had to change the way dynamic arrays are defined. My question is, can I say that I'm 'porting' this code from UNIX to Windows/Visual Studio or is 'porting' used only when changing from one programming language to another (porting from C++ to Java)?"}
{"_id": "107851", "title": "What can you do to decrease the number of deployment bugs of a live website?", "text": "I'm sure lots of you have experienced this problem. A website or web application is running and is live. You want to upload the next version, but you haven't figured out everything, like setting a value to false in configuration file, inserting another record into the database, and doing lots of minor stuff which can sometimes count to 20 or more parameters. As soon as you upload the new version, everything breaks. Now, fixing the problem may only take up to 20 minutes, but the overall stress that you tolerate, and the financial and goodwill damage to the company are sometimes not forgettable. What are the ways to reduce these types of bugs which arise from the initial configuration of new version deployment? PS: Please don't mention check-lists, cause we already have them. The problem with check-lists is that, they should always get updated, but they won't."}
{"_id": "145168", "title": "How do we finish all our stories by the end of the sprint and not after and why is this important?", "text": "We are running 2 weeks sprints where the team will just barely finish development by the last day of the sprint but cards are not complete because testing is not finished. The definition of done is really \"when development is complete\" rather than \"when the stories are complete.\" We have a 1 week delay between the last day of the sprint and the release date. The team does finish the sprint by the release date but that seems like that isn't quite meeting the objective of scrum. The team starts the next sprint the day after the previous sprint ends. I see the following problems:   1. team is not using whole team testing   2. team is not too interested in pair programming or piling on one card at a time.    3. Maybe the stories are too large and we should break them down more so that we finish at a more steady pace throughout the sprint? Any suggestions on how we get the team bought in to finishing the sprint by the end date? Or other ideas? Why do we think it is important to finish by the last day? Why does it matter if the team is still finishing by the release date? (I have my own answers but am curious what others think here.)"}
{"_id": "130305", "title": "Is it a good idea to measure the performance of a method by using unit test timeout?", "text": "In a project where there are non-functional requirements which specify the maximum execution time for a specific action, QA must check the performance of this action on a dedicated machine using precise hardware under precise load, both hardware and load being specified in the requirements. On the other hand, some erroneous changes to the source code may severely impact the performance. **Noticing this negative impact early** , _before_ the source code reaches source control and is verified by QA department, could be beneficial in terms of time lost by QA department reporting the issue, and by the developer fixing it several commits later. To do this, is it a good idea:   * To use unit tests to have an idea of the time spent executing the same action\u00b2 _n_ times,   * To use per-test timeout through `[TestMethod, Timeout(200)]` attribute in C#? I expect several problems with this approach:   * _Conceptually_ , unit tests are not really for that: they are expected to test a small part of a code, nothing more: neither the check of a functional requirement, nor an integration test, nor a performance test.   * Does unit test timeout in Visual Studio measure really what is expected to be measured, taking in account that initialization and cleanup are nonexistent for those tests or are too short to affect the results?   * Measuring performance this way is ugly. Running a benchmark on any machine\u00b9 independently of the hardware, load, etc. is like doing a benchmark that shows that one database product is always faster than another. On the other hand, **I don't expect those unit tests to be a definitive result, nor something which is used by the QA department**. Those unit tests will be used just **to give a general idea** about the expected performance, and essentially **to alert the developer that his last modification broke something, severely affecting performance**.   * TDD is impossible for those tests. How would it fail, in the first place, before starting to implement code?   * Too many performance tests will affect the time required to run the tests, so this approach is limited to short actions only. Taking in account those problems, I still find it interesting to use such unit tests if combined with the real performance metrics by QA department. Am I wrong? Are there other problems which makes it totally unacceptable to use unit tests for this? If I'm wrong, **what is the correct way** to alert the developer that a change in source code severely affected performance, before the source code reaches source control and is verified by QA department? * * * \u00b9 Actually, the unit tests are expected to run only on developer PCs having comparable hardware performance, which reduces the gap between the fastest machines which will never be able to fail the performance test, and the slowest machines which will never succeed at passing it. \u00b2 By action, I mean a rather short piece of code which spends a few milliseconds to run."}
{"_id": "130304", "title": "How should I implement my chosen software license?", "text": "I have always kind of wondered, but never took my time to actually ask these questions regarding licensing. Most of these questions are presumably pretty basic, but I have no idea what I'm dealing with here. The thing that baffles me the most is how exactly you \"implement\" the license for your OSS. Is just saying in the post you're publishing the code on, \"by the way, this is licensed under GPL\" enough? Or should something more delicate take place, like registering the software somewhere? Also,   * If I just say I use a particular license, is that enough?    * Do I add a copy of the license to the distributed code?    * Am I required to add a header on every file detailing the licensing information? Do I manage this with my version control system (e.g. Subversion)?   * Is the above not enough?   * What are the most commonly used software licenses?   * Are there any gotchas/licenses that are better left alone?"}
{"_id": "145166", "title": "Use of pdb file in release build executables", "text": "This question is appropriate only for programs created on the windows platform. If I build a release of my program with the /Zi option (create pdb file and store path to file in exe) then I don\u2019t have to ship pdb file with release but we could retain for internal use. The pdb file would be retained for our internal Quality Assurance use. Then if a crash occurred, we have a system of printing the stack trace at the point of crash and this 'system' would have access to the exe symbols and we would get a nicely populated stack track in this file. But there is a slight complication in that the final executable is created by a separate build dept in our company. We developers can of course create a release build. My query is that one of my colleagues is saying that the exe built by build team would be different from a release build created by us in development. But I don\u2019t understand why? Is my colleague correct? If so why? And if so does this mean my plan for using pdb files with release builds is not possible?"}
{"_id": "51635", "title": "Building a Live Auction component", "text": "I am looking to integrate a live auction component (similar to BigDeal.com) to a website. I generally program using PHP. What is the best plan of action with this type of project (Timer, live bids..)?"}
{"_id": "249994", "title": "What are the bytes between the MSB and LSB named?", "text": "I've searched around and can't find anything on what the middle bytes of a >16-bit integer are called, if anything. **Are there standard names for these bytes?** E.g. the number `0x0D0C0B0A` would have:               MSB ??? ??? LSB      0D  0C  0B  0A"}
{"_id": "140536", "title": "Why use string.Empty over \"\" when assigning to a string object", "text": "I've been running StyleCop over my code and one of the recommendations SA1122 is to use string.Empty rather than \"\" when assigning an empty string to a value. My question is why is this considered best practice. Or, is this considered best practice? I assume there is no compiler difference between the two statements so I can only think that it's a readability thing? UPDATE: Thanks for the answers but it's been kindly pointed out this question has been asked many times already on SO, which in hind-sight I should have considered and searched first before asking here. Some of these especially forward links makes for interesting reading. SO question and answer Jon Skeet answer to question"}
{"_id": "23810", "title": "Upcoming Google interview, looking for some preparation advice", "text": "Well I've been hitting the books wherever I can. I have an interview coming up, first one via phone, for a software engineer position. I've read all the blog posts, I've read all the accounts of interviews (some pretty old), and Google itself even suggested a reading list of books, none of which would surprise anyone here. Still, after some time preparing, I can't shake that feeling that there is such a large ground to cover, and I'm never sure whether to go with depth or breadth. I've found myself re-learning a whole area of compsci, only to forget most of the nitty details as I move on to another. So, I don't know that there's a good answer to this question, but I'm looking for any practical advice on how to tackle the remaining weeks in advance of the interview. Part of my brain is tired from cramming, and of course the rest of it has to be utilized for some tough problems at my current place of employment."}
{"_id": "23816", "title": "Fiction that includes BASIC programs", "text": "Back in what must've been the mid-80s, when every microcomputer included BASIC and Choose Your Own Adventure Books were really popular, there were some novels that had BASIC programs listed in the text, for you to type in and further enjoy. For example, as I recall, in one of these books, the adventurers were infiltrating an undersea base (and eventually wiped the bad guy's data storage [I do believe it was a hard drive, even though they were uncommon then]). One of the programs involved a game were you piloted a submarine and had to avoid or shoot sharks. The code was in BASIC; minor changes (such as 'CLS' -> 'HOME') had to be made for your specific computer, and it used good old 40-column text-mode to display the action. IIRC, the plot never depended upon the programs. My question is, does anyone else recall these sorts of books? Do you know any titles that I could look for, or of any online? I am toying with the idea of writing a story like this (no, not in BASIC!), and would really like to see how it was done, back in the day."}
{"_id": "27129", "title": "What is \"egoless programming\"?", "text": "I first heard this term about fifteen years ago. My understanding is similar to that described in the Wikipedia article and a TechRepublic article: you work with your colleagues in a \"friendly, collegiate way in which personal feelings are put aside\". It includes things like doing peer reviews with mutual respect and a desire to learn, and not feeling like you \"own\" code, so if somebody has a suggestion or says there's a bug or needs to change it, you don't get defensive about it. I've also thought it was largely about having an attitude that makes for good relations with other programmers with the goal of improving the code. So I haven't seen it as being incompatible with taking pride in the quality of your work or feeling regret if something you did caused your customer a problem. However, an answer to a recent question makes me think some other programmers have different understandings about \"egoless programming\". So what is the correct definition? And what are its implications?"}
{"_id": "210253", "title": "What is the job of a language virtual machine, and creating one", "text": "Recently I have become incredibly interested in language development. The past few weeks I have written many language front ends (lexer, parser) including a calculator language/expression parser and much more. After creating so many things I have realized there MUST be more abstraction between parsing and code execution than what I currently have, which leads to my main question(s). My first question is, this. What exactly is the job of a language virtual machine, like for example the JVM (of course my envisioned system would be much, much much more smaller scale). What does it do? Does it actually sort of emulate hardware and execute low level instructions on the emulated hardware? Or does it simply provide an abstraction and execute lower level managed instructions on the system? (I have read this question but it hasn't really helped me understand) Second question. What exactly is byte code? Is it some sort of machine code for the virtual machine? Or is it the human readable possibly assembly like instructions, and are these instructions directly executed or somehow compiled to native code? Third question. How would I go about implementing this? I consider myself a competent programmer and don't need step by step instructions by no means, just an overview of what exactly I need to be doing, and how low level this is exactly. Thanks so much for any help/suggestions/explanations. Please ask questions if something I stated was confusing or you need more detail on it. Thanks again!"}
{"_id": "189494", "title": "What is Development Environment? e.g. Vagrant", "text": "By luck i landed on this website http://www.vagrantup.com/ It is says, that software is for development environment. My question is what exactly definition for development environment (in this case is vagrant)? I wondering what vagrant can give benefit to me as PHP web developer, my current thoughts for development environment is Web Server. Is that right?"}
{"_id": "189499", "title": "Using a public username as a login username", "text": "It has just dawned on me, that a system I am developing exposes a users username in the URI. This is a problem, since some of the users pages are public. Therefore people will know their username. I thought that this would be a security issue, but then realised that big names like twitter do the same thing. Pretty much every single twitter user has their username on full display. If a big name like twitter see it as safe, should I also assume the same?"}
{"_id": "189498", "title": "Prevent developers from using constants", "text": "I have one one software system which allows developers to specify an ID or name to create `NodeReferences`. Both work fine, but ID's are not guaranteed to be the same across different environments. I've tried in documentation and in conversations to stress that ID's should not be hard coded (since they will break when deployed to a different environments), but some developers are still using them. This works only in dev environment:               var level = LevelReference.ById(20);     var node = NodeReference.ByName(level, _patientGuid.ToString());      This works in all environments:               var app = ApplicationReference.ByName(\"Reporting\");     var area = AreaReference.ByName(app, \"Default\");     var level = LevelReference.ByName(area, \"Patient\");     var node = NodeReference.ByName(level, _patientGuid.ToString());      I think the appeal is just that it produces fewer lines of code. The use of ID's is not by itself bad (since there are valid use cases like caching the ID returned from the server and using it later for faster look-up), but hard- coded ID's are bad. Most of the time the first code will throw an exception, but it's possible that it could be a valid ID for a different object than the developer intended, and this could result in very bad problems. What's the best way to discourage the use of such constants in code? Ideally I'd like throw some kind of compiler error when I see code like the first example, or at least throw an exception before the call gets down to the database."}
{"_id": "27123", "title": "Which languages are used today for low-level programming?", "text": "When I hear low-level programming, such as for drivers, embedded systems, operating systems, etc., I immediately think about C and perhaps C++. But mainly C. But what other languages are also used for these kind of tasks? Today, I mean, not what _has been_ used."}
{"_id": "25416", "title": "Should QA file 5 separate bugs or one bug with multiple parts in it?", "text": "The question might not be as simple as it sounds, as we have struggled with this a bit. If there are 5 separate bugs, which can be taken care of with a single fix, then it is wasteful to take this approach. One bug might slip through the cracks, and would take away from a complete picture, or just be hidden for some time (we have several years worth of outstanding bugs, and our bug tracker sucks at searching :( ). Now, if you file a bug of 100+ parts (such as help tooltips are missing from all 234 dialogs), then it should be treated as a project and be broken down. However, if it is a bug of 3-4 parts, then the developer would attempt to fix all 3 or 4 at once. This is where it gets interesting. What if the coder only fixes 3 or 3.5 out of 4? Should after testing a new bug be filed and old one closed? If yes, then this invites sloppy programming practices, where close enough is good enough. If the bug is to fail, then all of it has to be re-done and re-tested. Now ... what if part 1 is the size of a breadbox in terms of size and risk, part 2 is more like a car, part 3 is like a house, and so on :) When sizing and prioritizing this bug (I must mention that we use Scrum), the house part was not noticed - who reads anything but a bug title anyway? So, it was deemed a low hanging fruit - low effort, low risk, happy user = high reward. But, we got bitten with one of them recently. What seemed to be logically the same area, was actually code in transitional state, where we are trying to deprecate one method of doing things, or one library for creating widgets with another, new and better. The problem is that we had to release mid-conversion, so we made two very different beasts look alike. Our QA folks did not know that, are not expected to know that, and so in their mind these are all the same issues. We need to be QA-friendly - not to push back too hard or too often, but also try to give a set of heuristics which would help to decide whether to file one bug or many. I suppose the problem might lie with weak tools, where splitting and merging bugs is hard to do. However, how do you deal with this stuff in general? P.S. In Scrum - once you committed to fixing something, it probably should be fixed. Break this rule too many times and discipline will degrade."}
{"_id": "74110", "title": "Tool to manage requirements throughout a software development lifecycle", "text": "I am looking for a tool to manage requirements or features for a software development project. It will be used by a small geographically diverse team of 5-10 people to raise, discuss and track requirements. Consequently it will need:   * Support for multiple users   * Web-based   * Support a hierarchy between requirements, e.g. parent / child relationship   * Provide a means for discussing individual requirements   * Support file uploads   * Cost effective. Ideally free or  Some of the project management tools available are overkill or focus on tasks or resource scheduling rather than features / requirements. Does anyone have a solution?"}
{"_id": "253227", "title": "Is this a poltergeist or is it justified?", "text": "I've come to a point in re-design of my code where I face an imminent Poltergeist Anti-Pattern threat. A master application object has two \"eye\" objects. Eye objects have a \"RenderHUD\" function, which is supposed to use (a) the state of the eye object, and (b) the state of the application object to render the HUD at each frame. I have a function right now that derives the HUD info from the application object, and then passes these as arguments to the \"RenderHUD\" function of each eye. The problem is that these argument lists are reeaaaaly loooooong. Obvious solution is to put them all into a struct, e.g. HUD_Info. But that would be a new poltergeist that would be created and destroyed with each frame, right? Any easy way to avoid that?"}
{"_id": "205653", "title": "Learning YACC nowadays, does it make sense?", "text": "I have a huge project that is using YACC and I would need to fix a bug in it. I might ask someone else who wrote that to fix it but I'm interested in how compilers work. Does it make sense to learn YACC nowadays? It was told me that it's old and obsolete. I would love to understand how compilers/llvm and other stuff like those work... what about YACC?"}
{"_id": "202533", "title": "programming algorithm - bulls and cows game", "text": "I am working on a Bulls and cows game. And I have the following code that calculated the number of bulls and cows: let User and comp be the lists that have the 3 digits that the user entered and the number randomly generated by the comp               cows = 0          bulls = 0          for x in User:              if x in comp:                  if comp.index(x) == User.index(x):                      bulls += 1                  else:                      cows += 1      This works completely fine, unless the number generated by the computer has repeated digit(like 277) and I enter 447. then what happens is that I get 1 cow and zero bulls. Whereas I should get 1 bull and 0 cows. **Note that there is no issue with the game when there are no repeated digits.** I am unable to get what the problem is and why it is occurring. I would greatly appreciate any kind of help in understanding the root of this problem. **more importantly** I want to get this done with. So I want a clarification on this approach or I want a new way to think about this. I am using Python Tkinter to program this game. **please** help me with this issue."}
{"_id": "251412", "title": "will having an event with subscribers prevent an object from being GC'ed?", "text": "I have an object, which has an event which in turn has subscribers. I know that the subscribing objects won't get GC'ed since the delegate they stored for the event is connected to them, thus keeping them connected with the object graph, until one explicitly unsubscribes them. This is only logical since otherwise nothing good will happen when the event is fired. **Does this apply to the Event-owner as well?**   I would _think_ it does not, since the subscribing objects do not have a connection to it, to my knowledge. And again using common sense (which I know does not neccessarily relate to IT-reality): Nothing bad can happen if the event-owner is GC'ed, only the event will never fire (again). **Is this assumption correct?**"}
{"_id": "139108", "title": "Is MongoDB the right choice in my case?", "text": "I'm going to build my first real project in Rails that consist in a web app made of 3 main parts:   * The static part where no database is used   * The User registration part which will require a database and I can use MySQL since each user's row will have the same fields   * The \"App\" where users will be able to create, organize, edit... items in collections and share them with other users There will be several item types and each one will have different options for example I may have \"video\" items with the following options:   * id   * user_id   * collection_id   * title   * platform (if embedded)   * url (if embedded)   * file name (if hosted on my app)   * file size (id hosted on my app) and \"map\" items:   * id   * user_id   * collection_id   * title   * platform (google maps, bing maps...)   * location   * url   * map size As you can while for users I may use MySQL for items the flexibility of MongoDB may be useful since each item may need different options then another item Up to now I've always used PHP and MySQL (always on shared hosting for small projects) and scalability is a totally new word for me. I have time to learn but I would like to be able to do something concrete in something like 1 month. I've read a lot about MongoDB and NoSQL vs RDMS and MySQL and after trying it I have to say that I like how MongoDB works: no tables, no rows and its documents JSON like so:   * In my situation what would you raccomend? why?   * About scalability there may be problems with MongoDB? if yes when (in term of DB size) and may these problems slow down my app considerably? **Edit: how the app will work** Since many asked this is how I'd like the app to work:   1. A user sign up   2. He's logged in   3. He create his first collection iside which he can create infinite items   4. Items are of various type and each type need different data to be saved in the database and type of items may be added or modified  Users may create other collections and items inside it. So we have CRUD for collections and items inside of them and each collection/item is referred to a specific user The main problem with MySQL is that it hasn't a flexible schema, there is way to solve this (a workaround?)? Thinking about NoSQL the only doubt I have is about join, for example given a certain colection I want to retrieve datas related to the User with id = user_id field in the collection **EDIT: Idea to keep using MySQL** Create a field in the \"items\" table with optional settings, each setting divided by a | or another symbol. Then I will save somewhere a structure of each item optional settings, for example the \"notes\" item type need two optional settings \"colour\" and \"strange_setting\", when I get the data from MySQL i will split the field for optional settings into an array knowing that the first item in the array is for \"colour\" and so on. What do you think? there are problem with that solution? do you have other ideas?"}
{"_id": "205657", "title": "which is better of these two architectures and why", "text": "PhpServer will handle gSoap requests and http requests from clients.   PushServer will push notifications to clients and act a file server. There are many server machines. Every PhpServer will communicate with a specific PushServer when needed. Every PhpServer needs to register itself to a PushServer letting the PushServer to help push notifications to clients. Here are two architectures:   1) Architecure A   This architure will run each PushServer with a PhpServer on the same machine. Each client will register itself to a PhpServer and the PushServer which is running on the same machine with the PhpServer                                     |Database|                           _____|_____                          |           |                          |           |                   (|PhpServer| + |PushServer|)   //a same server machine                           \\            /                             |Client|      2) Architecture B   This architure will run each PushServer on a single machine. Each client will register itself to a PhpServer and the PushServer which the PhpServer registers.                                     |Database|                           _____|_____                          |           |                   (|PhpServer|)  \uff08|PushServer|\uff09 //two server machines                               \\            /                             |Client|      Which architecture is better and why? **[update]**   We are worried about performance, extensibility, and flexbility. Actually the first achitecture is what we currently have and if we choose the second one, we need to modify our software: PhpServer, PushServer and Client. Thus, unless the second network architecture is much better (from load-balancing or network application design perspective), we won't choose the second one."}
{"_id": "139103", "title": "Verification & Validation books", "text": "So I need some help with Verification & Validation of software. So I know the definitions of both but ... I can't really find any real entry level books about the process from setting up the requirements of a customer, to making the finished product. And of course, making sure you tested it to what you think it should do, and what the customer actually wants. Can anyone recommend me any good entry level books, blogs, pretty much anything that just gives an overview of V&V? I'm pretty much just looking for concrete methods/examples on how to deal with all. I have looked, and found some good (advanced, if you ask me) texts scratching the surface of V&V, but nothing entry level :( Any help is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "98726", "title": "Should I support IE compatibility mode?", "text": "So I have a client that is running multiple versions of multiple browsers. I currently support IE7, IE8, IE9, Firefox4/5, Safari 5 and Chrome. The site works in all the named browsers. IE has a feature called 'compatibility mode', the current bane of my existence. The problem is that in compatibility mode, form buttons work differently. I won't get into the details but it would be a major effort to make the site support 'compatibility mode'. Is this something that there are frequent requests for? Am I off my rocker to push back on the client and tell them this just isn't an option?"}
{"_id": "98723", "title": "Should I rely on Visual Studio in adding HTML and CSS?", "text": "I am wondering if I should rely on Visual Studio in adding HTML and CSS elments by using the viusal toolbars or should I write them by myself? Is it considered bad practice if I relied on Visual Studio to do that?"}
{"_id": "39976", "title": "Would you contribute to open-core software?", "text": "I recently considered contributing to an open-core software (a product which core is released with an open-source license by the company that developed it, but it retained a paid license for more advanced functionality). But some questions occurred about the nature of working with an open-core project, and I would like the input of the community. My question is would you still be motivated to contribute if:   * most if not all the software was contributed by paid developers.   * you'd be benefiting the finances of one company (opposed to benefiting the community)   * the direction of the software would be determined by the company and not by you (or the community). I would like also for someone to confirm if those are myths or not   * implementing the same features that are sold by the company won't be allowed.   * forking the project won't be allowed (it might depend on the open-source license). Thank you. ps: Could someone create an \"open-core\" tag?"}
{"_id": "99894", "title": "Why doesn't HTTP have POST redirect?", "text": "HTTP redirects are done via HTTP codes 301, and 302 (maybe other codes also) and a header field known as \"Location\" which has the address of the new place to go. However, browsers always send a \"GET\" request to that URL. However, many times you need to redirect your user to another domain via POST (bank payments for example). This is a common scenario, and really a requirement. Does anybody know why such a common requirement has been neglected in HTTP specification? The workaround is to send a form (with parameters in hidden fields) with action set to the target location (the value of the **Location** header field) and use `setTimeout` to submit the form to the target location."}
{"_id": "99897", "title": "distribution of programming languages in embedded systems", "text": "I am looking for statistics concerning the distribution of programming languages in the embedded sector. Do you know any good websites, articles or books? I found this as a first reference but am still looking for further information: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/industrial-control-designline- blog/4027479/Real-men-program-in-C?pageNumber=0 I need this for my bachelor thesis which is about programming the HAL of microcontrollers using OOP."}
{"_id": "99893", "title": "How important is it for programmers to look and behave smart?", "text": "I know that looking and dressing good is of vast importance in fields like sales, marketing, and human resources. But is it really important for developers, even when they aren't directly contacting clients or third parties? Can a developer get away with dressing shabbily, and still get the raises he deserves on the sole basis of his coding skills?"}
{"_id": "256192", "title": "Loading next level after complw=etion of previous", "text": "i am creating a hangman game in visual studio using C#. how can i load 2nd level after 1st one is completed."}
{"_id": "166072", "title": "Style bits vs. Separate bool's", "text": "My main platform (WinAPI) still heavily uses bits for control styles etc. (example). When introducing custom controls, I'm permanently wondering whether to follow that style or rather use individual bool's. Let's pit them against each other:               enum EMyCtrlStyles     {        mcsUseFileIcon = 1,        mcsTruncateFileName = 2,        mcsUseShellContextMenu = 4,     };          void SetStyle(DWORD mcsStyle);     void ModifyStyle(DWORD mcsRemove, DWORD mcsAdd);     DWORD GetStyle() const;          ...     ctrl.SetStyle(mcsUseFileIcon | mcsUseShellContextMenu);      vs.               CMyCtrl & SetUseFileIcon(bool enable = true);     bool GetUseFileIcon() const;          CMyCtrl & SetTruncteFileName(bool enable = true);     bool GetTruncteFileName() const;          CMyCtrl & SetUseShellContextMenu(bool enable = true);     bool GetUseShellContextMenu() const;          ctrl.SetUseFileIcon().SetUseShellContextMenu();      As I see it, **Pro Style Bits**   * Consistent with platform   * less library code (without gaining complexity), less places to modify for adding a new style   * less caller code (without losing notable readability)   * easier to use in some scenarios (e.g. remembering / transferring settings)   * Binary API remains stable if new style bits are introduced Now, the first and the last are minor in most cases. **Pro Individual booleans**   * Intellisense and refactoring tools reduce the \"less typing\" effort   * Single Purpose Entities   * more literate code (as in \"flows more like a sentence\")   * No change of paradim for non-bool properties  These sound more modern, but also \"soft\" advantages. I must admit the \"platform consistency\" is much more enticing than I could justify, the less code without losing much quality is a nice bonus. **1\\. What do you prefer? Subjectively, for writing the library, or for writing client code?**   **2\\. Any (semi-) objective statements, studies, etc.?**"}
{"_id": "166073", "title": "What is some key aspect of C/C++ I need to know?", "text": "I had some C background back in the university, however, I have been programming in java for 2 years and most of the C stuff were left behind. Now I need to prepare for a test about C/C++, I doubt that I can go right into it with only some remnant of C knowledge. What could they possible cover in the test?"}
{"_id": "223177", "title": "Moving a multi-GB SVN repo to Git", "text": "Currently my company has a Visual Studio solition in an SVN repo that's organized as follows:               SolutionFolder (~3.5 GB)     |-> SolutionName.sln     |-> .. Some source code folders... (~250 MB)     |-> ThirdParty (~3 GB)     |-> Tools         | -> Tool1         | -> Tool2      Tool1 and Tool2 are build independently (have their own solutions), but produce executables that are used in the main build. ThirdParty folder contains all dependencies for the project, including some pre-compiled 100+ MB .lib files and large libraries like boost. It's convenient to have it all in one SVN repo so that (1) developer has to do only one check-out, and (2) we don't need to keep track which versions of dependencies we need for each version of the build. On the flip side, it takes a while to check out this repo. What would be the best way to move this project structure to git? Presumably it's best to exclude ThirdParty and possibly Tools from the main repo, but we'd like to keep ThirdParty easily downloadable in one step, and we like it versioned (and version mismatches between main repo and ThirdParty/Tools would be bad). At this point I'm not interested in preserving history, just in figuring out how to organize such project."}
{"_id": "256196", "title": "Preventing a Javascript object function called twice", "text": "I am trying to reuse an object but my function is getting called twice. Here is what I have:               var KEYBOARD = {       template: 'keyboard';       getkeyboard: function(){         console.log(this.template);       }     }      now in one file I do this:               $.extend(KEYBOARD, {         template: 'keyboard',      }).getKeyboard();      then in a different file I do:                $.extend(KEYBOARD, {         template: 'keypad',      }).getKeyboard();      Now in the second file the getKeyboard function prints out:               keyboard     keypad      Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I thought I could change the properties and run them through the function, but for some reason it holds the values of the first object."}
{"_id": "56066", "title": "A new CAPTCHA using sentences?", "text": "I was just thinking about how recaptcha is getting harder when I thought about another posible solution. Images won't last forever so we will need something else some day - like human logic or emotion. Google and others are trying grouping images by category (find the image that doesn't belong) but that requires a large amount of images and doesn't work for the blind. Anyway, what if a massive collection of text was gathered (public-domain books from each language) and a sentence was shown to the user with 1 (or 2) words that were a select box of choices? Only computers that knew correct English/Spanish/German grammar would be able to tell which of the words belonged in the sentence. Would there be any problems with this approach? I would assume that it would be easy enough for anyone that knew the language that the sentense was displayed in to figure out the answer easier than trying to read the reCAPTCHA text. Plus, storing an insane number of sentences would only take a couple gigabytes of space and wouldn't take anywhere near the CPU time creating images/audio takes. In other words, anyone could host their own captcha system with minimal impact on system performance. **Is there a problem with this approach?** More specifically I'm looking for the main problem with this approach. migrated from stackoverflow"}
{"_id": "227668", "title": "Django web app with websockets", "text": "I want to make a web service using Django, but that also has websocket functionality. Having done a bit of reading, this is the tech stack that I'm looking at:                  ---------------------------------       | Django (handling sync requests) |        ---------------------------------                       |                       | (wsgi)                       |      -------------------------------------     | Tornado (handling websockets, wsgi) |      -------------------------------------                       |                       |                       |      -------------------------------------     | Gunicorn (spawning tornado workers) |      -------------------------------------                       |                       |                       |      --------------------------------------     | nginx (reverse proxying to gunicorn) |      --------------------------------------      So the sync requests (website, most API calls) would go all the way through the stack to Django, but the websocket requests would be serviced by Tornado directly (websocket calls would be distinguishable by the URL). Am I overcomplicating this? I've added the Gunicorn layer because a single tornado worker would block while servicing a WSGI request, but perhaps there's a way around this? I only ask the question because it seems like a lot of layers to me. Does this look like a reasonable way to do Django with websockets?"}
{"_id": "227666", "title": "Numerous Sync/Async calls to webservice from hybrid app", "text": "I have a requirement where I have to make numerous calls to webservice to update the local database. Since I have to support lower-end Android phones also, I'm not yet sure as to how this would be possible without actually exhausting the device memory and eventually crashing the app? Possible issue: Consider I have to sync 100 records to webservice and each of them have particular set of results returned and local database operations linked with it. The problem I am facing right now is, if I use synchronous calls the memory issue become major one and app crashes and if I use asynchronous calls, the app takes too much time and also recognising data returned will be a huge difficulty. **Platform** : iOS + Android **Technology** : AngularJS + Phonegap **Webservice** : RESTful **Note** : Please note that I am using purely front-end technologies and this would be a hybrid app."}
{"_id": "141665", "title": "How do you deal with the details when reading code?", "text": "After reading some projects, I find that it is not the architecture of the software that is really hard to know. It is not hard to figure out the architecture immediately if the project is clearly designed and implemented, if it's hard and never seen before, some day later I can find out some pattern similar to the one I read in the same domain. The difficulty is that the concepts and mechanism defined by the author are really hard to guess, and these concepts may spread in the whole project which makes it hard to grasp. The situation is normal and universal and you can ask questions to your colleague when in a company. However, it gets worse if nobody around you knows these details. How do you handle these details which block your reading?"}
{"_id": "227663", "title": "Share data layer for outsourcing project", "text": "We are a small team of programmers, and we are now facing a situation where we have to outsource some of the work in order to complete it in time. Project is about website that was previously build with asp.net webforms, EF and SQL server. We have previously build a data layer and optimized SQL, but we need to complete front end of the project. Clients wants asp.net MVC and HTML5. The problem for us is how to open data layer to outsourcing team without compromising or disclosing any data?"}
{"_id": "113180", "title": "Should one define an interface and code an adapter for it whenever a dependency is found?", "text": "Given a particular third-party class/library you want to make use of, the simplest thing to do would be to just hardcode API calls to it through your application. On the other hand you have the possibility of defining a interface that generically dictates what you want -not _how_ -, and then follow the Adapter pattern to bind your interface to the third-party class. I currently feel inclined to the second option because:   * It creates a single point of change if you ever want to replace the functionality provider   * In a similar way, it allows you to add more providers without changing your application code   * It permits following your own naming conventions, simpler method signatures, etc The thing is, I'm not experienced with this approach and I don't know how complicated or inconvenient it can get. I'd also like to know if are there any common errors when following this pattern. In my particular case I don't want to wrap either a giantic library -e.g. a GUI- or a small function. Also there are actual possiblities I'll change my provider in the future, so this is not a YAGNI. Thank you"}
{"_id": "113182", "title": "Could it be more efficient for systems in general to do away with Stacks and just use Heap for memory management?", "text": "It seems to me that everything that can be done with a stack can be done with the heap, but not everything that can be done with the heap can be done with the stack. Is that correct? Then for simplicity's sake, and even if we do lose a little amount of performance with certain workloads, couldn't it be better to just go with one standard (ie, the heap)? Think of the trade-off between modularity and performance. I know that isn't the best way to describe this scenario, but in general it seems that simplicity of understanding and design could be a better option even if there is a potential for better performance."}
{"_id": "113185", "title": "What Java client+server stack to allow async client info popups and responses?", "text": "Being new to Java I'd like to use the following scenario to steer my learning and could use some advice! First I want to build a Java server app that handles login and client settings, and based on client info pulls up random database entries and sends these random entries to the client on a timer. This must work for many clients, each on their own private timers against the main database, and just keeps looping on timers so it's not a one-shot lookup. Second I want the client to stay logged in all day, and to notify and maybe popup locally with the info from the server. This popup will be a small input form which is then sent back to the server. I can't do this as a web page because I want it to run any time the client wants to start the local app. This could possibly be used as a calendar, meeting planner or schedule notifier for clients which are my user stories. Suggestions on appropriate design patterns and techniques appreciated!"}
{"_id": "57335", "title": "Is there value in having new developers (graduates) start as testers / bug-fixers?", "text": "Hi **Programmers** Community. What are your thoughts on the following:   _Is there value in having new developers (graduates) start as testers / bug- fixers?_ There are two schools of thought here that I have come across.   1. Having new developers (graduates) start as testers / bug-fixers / doing SLA (Service Level Agreement) work, get's them familiar with the code base. It also allows them the opportunity to learn how to read [other people's] code. Further more, by fixing bugs, they will learn certain bad and good practices, which could hopefully help them in the future.   2. The other way of thinking though, is that if you immediately start new developers on something like testing / bug-fixing / SLA work, their appetite for the development world might go away, and/or they might leave the company and you potentially loose out on a great future resource. Is there a balance that should be kept between these two? Currently where I work there is no clear-cut definition of what new starters do. Some go directly on to client work, while some fall in to the SLA world. Should companies have such a policy? Or should it be handled on a case-by-case or opportunity-based basis? Hope to hear from some of you that have experience in this field. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "37564", "title": "What is the best way to do development with git?", "text": "I have been searching the web for best practices, but don't see anything that is consistent. If you have an excellent development process that includes successful releases of your product as well as hotfixes/patches and maintenance releases and you use git. I would love to hear how you use git to accomplish this. Do you use branches, tags, etc? How do you use them? I am looking for details, please."}
{"_id": "37565", "title": "Question about API and Web application code sharing", "text": "This is a design question. I have a multi part application with several user types. There is a user client for the patient that interacts with a web service. There is an API evolving behind the web service that will be exposed to institutional \"users\" and an interface for clinicians, researchers and admin types. The patient UI is Flex. The clinician/admin portion of the application is RoR. The API is RoR/rack based. The web service component is Java WS. All components access the same data source. These components are deployed as separate components to their own subdomains. This decision was made to allow for scaling the components individually as needed. Initially, the decision was made to split the code for the RoR Web application from the RoR API. This decision was made in the interests of security and keeping the components focused on specific tasks. Over the course of time, there is necessarily going to be overlap and I am second guessing my decision to keep the code totally separate. I am noticing code being lifted from the admin side being lifted, modified and used in the API. This being the case, I have been considering merging the Ruby based repositories. I am interested in ideas and insight on this situation along with the reasoning behind your thoughts. Thanks."}
{"_id": "196185", "title": "General thought process for \"How would you build this website/app\" interview questions", "text": "I've collected a bunch of interview questions like \"Describe how you would design a photo album application\", \"Describe how you would design this particular feature of this particular website\" (e.g. likes on Facebook, recommendation on Amazon, shopping cart, game of black jack). Then, what if there are millions of this thing? What would you change? It looks like this is either expecting a database schema or a bunch of class definitions (or both?). I have learned about databases in school but I've never actually architected an application before and am having trouble knowing where to start, whether the designs I come up with are \"good\" and what I can change to make it scalable. Is there a general approach or thought process when designing these systems? And general issues/problems that seem to come up a lot in the design that I should try to avoid? Could someone maybe walk me through one (or preferably all, while comparing the needs of each) of these and explain: 1) How do you come up with what entities are needed? 2) How do you decide on what relationships everything will have? 3) How do you incorporate performance optimization into your design? 4) Do I do this using classes or databases? Does it make a difference (i.e. would I have a class that can't really be translated to a database table, for example?) The main reason I'm asking is because I was going through \"Cracking the Coding Interview\" and my answers were completely different from the author's - I had very different ideas of what classes were important. **MY ATTEMPT:** With the photo sharing app, I would have the classes/tables: Photo and User for sure. Then, I think if we're trying to create a schema, there would be a table linking photo and user if we assume each person in the photo is linked to the photo (is this table necessary? If not, is it still common practice to have a separate table for many-to-many relationships or not?). But if we're trying to take an object oriented approach, maybe instead we'd have a class called album which does all the work and has all the info from the two other tables/classes. This is one thing I noticed in the book- there are a bunch of classes and then one class which basically has all the info and connects the other classes- is this common? For example, in my examples above, does this seem like it would apply? I'm just hoping for some general rules/guidelines to follow because right now I have no idea how to tell what a good architecture for a large system looks like."}
{"_id": "245499", "title": "Are functional languages a kind of program derivation?", "text": "Program derivation is defined as the derivation of a program from it's specifications. Usually this specification language is some form of propositional logic, but from what I understand, it need not be. For the sake of specificity, I'm only dealing with purely functional languages like Haskell here. When you write a program in Haskell, you aren't describing _how_ the computation is done, but what things _are_. For example, in this function that produces Fibonacci numbers, all this is given is a specification for Fibonacci numbers, not how the function should be implemented.               fib :: int -> int     fib n = (fib n-1) + (fib n-2)     fib 1 = 1     fib 0 = 1      To make this code run, the Haskell compiler must convert this declarative specification of the function to imperative machine code. Isn't this by definition a kind program derivation?"}
{"_id": "18303", "title": "What is the importance of XML in the world of JSON?", "text": "How important is it to learn XML when JSON is able to do almost all that I need? Having said that, I use JSON mainly for AJAX requests and obtaining data from various APIs. I am a total newbie to web development and the reason I am asking this is that I want to know whether I should go ahead and buy a book on XML or whether I can just give it a pass."}
{"_id": "84000", "title": "Will official 'Mango' release allow sideloading of apps on WP7 devices?", "text": "Any news whether the official Mango release will allow sideloading of apps? I mean ability to deploy apps without going through the MarketPlace? I would like to see the ability to deploy my own apps on my own device without using third party services and paying extra fees. I don't plan to publish apps publicly. (I tried ChevronWP7 and it couldn't work as intended. Probably obsoleted by MS.)"}
{"_id": "249840", "title": "Builder pattern inside interface. Bad design decision?", "text": "I am having trouble evaluating an implementation of the builder pattern I just came up with. The context is an API library, so I am trying not to expose any implementations in order to have a stable interface while being able to change implementations later. My thinking is that even though there is a reference to the implementation in the interface's _file_ , the interface and the implementation are not actually coupled because > In effect, a static nested class is behaviorally a top-level class... The benefit of this design is that clients can call `Person person = new Person.Builder().age(20).firstName(\"John\") .lastName(\"Doe\").build();` without the need for a dedicated Factory type class. Am I missing something or is this a valid design decision? **Person.java**               package net.mhi.rd;          public interface Person {              int getAge();         String getFirstName();         String getLastName();              public static class Builder {             int age;             String firstName;             String lastName;                  public Builder age(int age) {                 this.age = age;                 return this;             }                  public Builder firstName(String firstName) {                 this.firstName = firstName;                 return this;             }                  public Builder lastName(String lastName) {                 this.lastName = lastName;                 return this;             }                  public Person build() {                 return new PersonImpl(this);             }         }         }      **PersonImpl.java**               package net.mhi.rd;          class PersonImpl implements Person {              private final int age;         private final String firstName;         private final String lastName;              PersonImpl(Person.Builder builder) {             this.age = builder.age;             this.firstName = builder.firstName;             this.lastName = builder.lastName;         }              @Override         public int getAge() {             return age;         }              @Override         public String getFirstName() {             return firstName;         }              @Override         public String getLastName() {             return lastName;         }     }"}
{"_id": "209374", "title": "Is Perl outdated for CGI and FCGI?", "text": "When we did web development in 1996 it was CGI, FCGI and Perl on the backend. Now why is Perl not that popular anymore and instead we use Java, Python, Go, PHP, C# and everything but Perl? To me it seems that Perl should be good since it has had long time to mature. What happened that causes Perl to lose its applicability as server language?"}
{"_id": "203712", "title": "In MVC software, who should load the models?", "text": "I'm working in a REST JavaScript client, and I'm trying to follow the MVC pattern, but a very basic question came to my mind: who should make the http request and load the data into the model? My intuition tells me that the controller should do it, but in lots of examples (the ember.js documentation, by example) it's done by the model, with a find() method. But other frameworks, like Django, do it in the controller. What do you think it's the better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "203715", "title": "Subversion permissions and Visual Studio projects", "text": "I have a quite specific question regarding Subversion structure, different permission levels and Visual Studio projects and solutions: We develop a framework with external partners with functionality the partner is not allowed to see. Consider following structure of a VS solution: example.sln   |_ /unit1/unit1.csproj (incl. cs files)   |_ /unit2/unit2.csproj (incl. cs files)   |_ /unit3/unit3.csproj (incl. cs files) unit1 and unit2 belongs to the framework, unit3 is specific (secret) functionality. Framework is functionally without unit3 (which will be shipped as dll). My question now is: How can this project be structured if the two parties should have a functional development environment, example.sln references unit3, but our external partner won't have this part because of the SVN permission. We, of course, have full access to the repository. I hope my request has become clear... Am I one a wrong track with my question? **EDIT:** Thanks to this answer I see clearer. Last question: How to implement different solutions for different groups so that each group can only check out their solution:   * two sln files in one directory with different permissions   * two directory trees for each solution with links to the shared projects?"}
{"_id": "134559", "title": "Ways to present testing results", "text": "I'm doing a school project which requires us to create a computer application and then write documentation; therefore I have to write testing documentation, I already have a of test plan (Validate all input and test all features) but how do I present the testing results in my project (e.g. table etc.)?"}
{"_id": "203717", "title": "TFS merging - how to track what changes go into MAIN?", "text": "I'm new to TFS branches, and have opted to set up a \\Dev and \\Main branch (ultimately there will be release branches too). I'm using TFS2012. My understanding is that I will work on the \\Dev branch on a day to day basis. When a bug is fixed or a user story is completed, I will merge \\Dev to \\Main, build, and give that to the tester. In \\Dev I have a policy to ensure that check-ins are associated with a work item. However when I merge from \\Dev to \\Main, and check-in that merge, what would I associate that check-in with, if anything? The reason I ask is because I'm wondering how someone could find out what changes went into a particular \\Main build? It's obvious in \\Dev, as you'll see the associated work items in the build output. But there will be no such history in \\Main, unless I associate the merge check-in with some sort of work item. The tester needs to know what's gone into a particular \\Main build, but how? Is it a manual process, where the developer simply gives him a list of changes that have been merged into \\Main? I've read the MS branching/merging guidance, but it doesn't really shed light on this kind of thing."}
{"_id": "41200", "title": "How are undocumented functions discovered?", "text": "I've always wondered how do you find **undocumented / private** API ? Example the _Apple_ undocumented / private API, _Play Station_ , _Windows Phone 7_ , _Win32 Kernel_ , _Windows API_ , _hidden callback_ , etc... What tools do hackers use to find out about private and undocumented functions? Where can I read about peoples' experiences delving into private APIs and reverse engineering techniques which reveal the secrets which are normally explained in API documentation? thanks,   A"}
{"_id": "134556", "title": "How do Data Scientists Use Python?", "text": "Do you know how Data Scientists use Python and if it requires data, where I can get sample data to practice with? I'm currently learning the language and plan on applying for Data Scientists jobs, so it would be helpful if I knew if there were specific types of tasks where I'd use python. If it's relevant, I use C# regularly."}
{"_id": "134551", "title": "What are the most known arbitrary precision arithmetic implementation approaches?", "text": "I'm going to write a class library for .NET which provide an implementation of arbitrary precision arithmetic for integer, rational and maybe complex numbers. What best known approaches should I become familiar with? I tried to start with Knuth's TAOCP Vol.2 (Seminumerical Algorithms, Chapter 4 \u2013 Arithmetic) but it's too complicated. At least I couldn't get the ideas in a relatively short period of time."}
{"_id": "191406", "title": "Why is Java boolean primitive type name not 'bool'?", "text": "Java has   * `int` and `Integer`   * `boolean` and `Boolean` This seems a bit inconsistent, why not either   * `bool` vs `Boolean` to use an established shorter name for primitive type? or   * `integer` vs `Integer` to keep type names consistent? I _think_ C++ had decided to use `bool` quite a bit earlier than Java decided to use `boolean`, and maybe also some (non-standard at the time?) C extensions too, so there would have been historical precedence for `bool`. I've noticed I often instinctively try to use `bool` at first (good thing modern editors immediately spot this without extra compilation round), so it'd be nice to know the rationale behind current state of affairs. If someone remembers (a part of) the story, or can even find and link to relevant historical discussion in the net, that would be great."}
{"_id": "86534", "title": "Objected oriented application exit", "text": "We are writing a program that does a standard \"auto update software on startup\". If the software finds an update ready, it will start the update process and then exit (and not run the program). We have two different designs on how to write the logic of the update. Design 1: Let our AutoUpdate class handle everything, including exiting the program if required. Design 2: AutoUpdate does most of the logic, and if it wants the program to exit, it returns a value indicating this, and the Main() takes care of exiting. code wise, the main function would look like: Design 1 (AutoUpdate exits internally if required)               Main()     {         AutoUpdate.DoAutoUpdate();         RunMainProgram();     }      Design 2 (AutoUpdate returns true if it needs to exit, Main handles the exit)               Main()     {         if (AutoUpdate.DoAutoUpdate() == false)         {             RunMainProgram();         }     }"}
{"_id": "133020", "title": "Cost of design based on the cost of programming", "text": "What is your methodology when you need to determine the cost of UI design if you know the cost (work hours) of programming in some project? Let's say, programming of logic in some project cost X dollars. Is there some general percentage (like 30% of programming costs) which can help determine the cost of design? The area of interest is mobile phones development (mainly business tools and 2D games, not 3D at all). There is less design work here comparing to a web design or a PC game design."}
{"_id": "40154", "title": "What are the IEEE and ACM good for?", "text": "Membership in the IEEE and ACM is sometimes portrayed as a sign of professionalism. But all that is involved, as far as I can tell, is sending them your money. In return, besides the potential resume line, these organizations sponsor conferences and journals. I can always attend a conference or subscribe to or submit a paper to a journal, whether I am a member or not. If being a member makes some of that cheaper, or is a prerequisite for admission then OK, but I still don't see the purpose of these organizations. * * * The answer, as far as I can gather, is that their most important value is to provide some reading material. I'd suggest that this is not worth the money given the wide availability of other valuable reading materials."}
{"_id": "219123", "title": "OOP, domain models, and the user", "text": "When developing domain models, I can see two major ways of thinking about the user:   * The first one assumes that a program is a kind of \"simulation\" of what happens in the real world, and the user is an spectator. With that approach you would have a Customer class -for example- with perhaps methods that correspond to the actions a Customer can perform. Whenever the customer wants to do something, the corresponding method is called.    * The other approach would be to design the classes as if they were exposed to the user and s/he then has the ability to create and play with the objects \u201cdirectly\u201d, thinking of the program as a kind of extension of the user\u2019s reality. With this approach, a Customer class would probably make no sense as the customer is already \u201cinvolved\u201d.  I've read some articles talking about adding security at the method level, which seems to be consistent with the second approach, but I believe the first approach is far more popular. What's the best way to deal with this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "37691", "title": "what is the concept behind sstatic.net?", "text": "Question is pretty simple. whenever i login to stackoverflow or some sites i get lots of http://sstatic.net/ type like request. What is the whole concept of this? How does it help to speed up a website?"}
{"_id": "226049", "title": "How to limit time period to another period?", "text": "For a project planning I have an initial period, lets call it `PPStart-PPEnd`.   The planning is associated with a project. This also has a period `PrjStart- PrjEnd`. PrjStart and PrjEnd are fixed, and can be unbound, i.e. the project start time or end time are not defined. `PPStart-PPEnd` should be adjusted so that people can only plan tasks in the valid project period. If that changes the duration, fine.   How do I efficiently limit `PPStart-PPEnd` to `PrjStart-PrjEnd` without having to go over all the possible combinations?   Maybe first detecting overlapping periods is a good start? 4 examples on a time axis ([-- = bound, <\\-- = unbound):               Project planning period:                                   [---PPStart-PPEnd---]     Project periods relative to ppp:                                                                       [---PrjStart-PrjEnd---]   PPStart should be set to PrjStart, PPEnd unchanged                          [---PrjStart-PrjEnd---]                  PPEnd should be set to PrjEnd, PPStart unchanged                          [---PrjStart-PrjEnd------------------->  No adjustments         [---PrjStart-PrjEnd---]                                   PPStart should be set to PrjStart and PPEnd to PrjEnd.      Cases like that last one make it complex."}
{"_id": "37694", "title": "What is the main job of a team leader?", "text": "* In a project following agile programming model what is the main job of a team leader?   * What are the job differences between team leader and project manager?"}
{"_id": "37695", "title": "When is Java a good choice for web development?", "text": "When is Java a good choice for web development? Please do not say \"When you have a development team that knows only Java.\""}
{"_id": "219128", "title": "JavaScript Class Module: How to avoid an antipattern", "text": "I've seen a number of different methodologies when it comes to applying class- based inheritance to JS/ECMA-based projects. Over the past several months, I've been applying IIFE Namespaces to my class models when I need classes. This results in a little extra boilerplate code that is easily abstracted for highly dynamic classes. _(Make note that I only employ classes when they indeed fit the task.)_ In general, I see classes employed in one of the following 4 ways: **Constructor:**               function MyClass(arglist) {         this.property = value;         this.method = function(){};     }      **Prototype:**               function MyClass(arglist) {         this.property = value;     }     MyClass.prototype.method = function(){};      **Object.create**               Object.create(MyClassPrototype, {prop-list});      **IIFE Class**               MyClass = (function(){         function MyClass(arglist) {             this.property = value;         }         MyClass.prototype.method = function(){};              return MyClass;     }());      Obviously, there tend to be some support functions to reduce keystrokes, such as `extend()` and/or `inherit()` helpers. Let me be upfront that I don't generally like the most accepted class libraries _(for various reasons)_ , so I've been experimenting with my own methodology. What I've come up with is the following: **Class Module**               (function(Class){         //Private Static Property         var staticProperty = value;              //Public Static Function         Class.staticMethod = function(){}              //Potentially allows for static construction         Class.create = function(config){             //Public Object Member             this.property = value;         }              //So the constructor actually works.         Class.prototype.class = Class;         //Public Object Method         Class.prototype.method = function(){};              //Allows it to be assigned to a var or Namespace.         return MyClass;     }(function MyClass(){this.class.create.apply(this, arguments)}));      What I'd like to know is, what are some potential pitfalls to this pattern? Here are some of the advantages that I think this pattern has:   * The use of private statically scoped functions. In my own experience, this can dramatically improve performance by taking functions out of the constructor that don't need to either a) be there, or b) don't make sense as closures.   * The ability to use new(), static create(), Object.create() as desired.    * Doesn't break any standards-required functionality for classes (i.e. `new`, `instanceof`, `typeof`, prototype chain, `constructor`, etc.)   * Give every object a reference to their current \"class\". Not necessary for many things, but I always seem to want it when it doesn't exist.   * Can utilize the class as a facade for multiple classes without breaking logic or flow. While I haven't used this a lot, it's extremely useful when I do.   * Hoisting different methods at different times can adjust the benchmarks according to the need for the specific class. For instance, if I need it to construct objects faster, I can hoist a constructor method to the private static level. In contrast, if I need a particular method to perform faster, I can hoist a prototype method to the private static level.    * Nesting classes is simple   * Since scoping is so important to JS security, usability and performance metrics, I find this to be the most flexible.   * I personally find it to be very readable (in general). At a glance, I know whether a method is public or private, static or object.   * Finally, though very rare, sometimes I need the \"class\" to have different behaviors when not actually interacting with an object. This pattern allows me to do this with one simple check. My question here is, since I am quite biased toward this pattern when implementing Class-like behavior, what pitfalls should I be aware of to avoid this becoming an antipattern? Are there any clear reasons to avoid this pattern entirely, aside from bias or convention?"}
{"_id": "102986", "title": "Should I learn Javascript before Coffeescript?", "text": "I'm a reasonably experienced programmer trying to learn web developement. I'm trying to develop a client-side web application which uses svg or canvas for graphics. I've decided I'd like to write the application code in Coffeescript. I don't know either Javascript or Coffeescript. How necessary knowing Javascript to Coffeescript web development? Am I likely to hit some gnarly problem which requires me to understand Javascript? Can I work happily with Javascript APIs from Coffeescript? **Edit** : I could easily learn the basics of Javascript in a week. I'm more concerned that Javascript seems to have a lot of hidden sharp edges. In the strangest language feature question on StackOverflow Javascript is one of the most common languages. It has an unusual object and class model. It has non- obvious name scoping rules. I find it takes more than a week for me to really know a language. I'm going to work on a small simple project to learn web development. Would I be better off to use Javascript or Coffeescript? I think in the long run I'll prefer Coffeescript but I'm willing to start with Javascript if that I'm going to need a thorough understanding of Javascript to use Coffeescript."}
{"_id": "167304", "title": "ASP.NET Webforms developers and web designers: how to interact?", "text": "I'm an ASP.NET Webforms developer, and I face some problems when I deal with designers. Designers always complain about the `asp.net server controls`. They'd rather just have an html file and create `css` files along with the required images to go with those. Sometimes, if the design phase is done in advance, I get html files with related css files, but then we face many problems integrating the design with the `aspx` files (sever controls an telerik controls ... etc). What I want to ask about is:   * How do I overcome these problems? The designers prefer php- and mvc developers because of the problems with .net server controls. I need to know how to interact with the designers in the correct way.   * Are there any tools or applications to provide the designers with the rendered (html page) of the .aspx pages? By that I mean the page in runtime rather than the aspx in Visual Studio. They do use Web Expression but they want the rendered page in html as well."}
{"_id": "70743", "title": "What does \"flatten\" mean?", "text": "If I had a tree, would \"flatten\" intuitively imply > get a list of all items in the tree, traversing from left to right? If i have a linked list, would \"flatten\" intuitively imply > get a list of all items, starting with this one For example, a linked list would be made up of an exception that aggregates its inner exception. Would it be fair to name a method on exception \"flattenInnerExceptions\" with expectation that it would return a sequence of exceptions, outermost exception first, and inner-most exception -- last?"}
{"_id": "70744", "title": "Importance of having technical architecture knowledge as a developer", "text": "I am a junior developer (half a year out of university) currently working in a small project. The project team size about 30. I am wondering how important it is for us developers to know about the technical architecture (hardware, network, etc.) of solutions. I don't think that I can do side-projects for small firms without a strong TA background. Are there books where I could learn more on software TA and the like?"}
{"_id": "70746", "title": "Looking for web languages performance comparison", "text": "Not to long ago I was here on stack overflow and saw this great diagram of programming languages performance comparison, and now I can't find it...   Does anyone have a similar comparison? The two I'm most interested in are PHP vs Python."}
{"_id": "232347", "title": "What could be used to get data from server to android as fast as it reaches server?", "text": "What is the best way to get data from server as fast as it gets to it? (Like instant message, or simple broadcast for example). I first thought about using miniature web server in android and get post requests to it with data. However with this approach I soon understood that I will get many problems with NAT and similar issues. Later I thought about manually pooling the server from android, but it seems somewhat flaky approach to problem, because data is got in irregular intervals (like image with some text). I was thinking about using something like webrtc or rtp to have connection between server, but these approaches are somewhat complex and half baked. I found very little info on those about data operation. Thought I managed to get in my \u201eexperiments\u201c video and sound transfer, I found very little info how to get data transfers. What should I do? Now I am thinking about having some connection to server and getting some events in android, which when I got update in server could download everything from server. Update: My data is encode64 processed html5 canvas png image. Probably I will add to it some text data to blob. It is generated on webpage it should reach phone as fast as it can through server. The problem is part where image data goes from server to phone. Data size per request is ~50KB."}
{"_id": "167308", "title": "Are programming languages pretty much \"stable\" for now?", "text": "Recently i have looked at the \" **timeline** \" of Programming Languages and while a lot has changed in the past 5-10 years, there are a lot of languages that have pretty much \"stayed\" the same in their niche/use. For example, let's take C language. We don't really ever see much languages being developed (correct me if i'm wrong) to try to Unseat C. However, there are a lot of languages that try to do similar things (look at all the SQL/No- SQL languages) Scripting Languages, etc... Is there a reason for this trend? Or is it just because C was designed very well ? and there isn't really any need for new once?"}
{"_id": "232340", "title": "How often should a Scrum team meet its Sprint commitment?", "text": "Commitment is a promise, and we all have been taught that you need to keep your promises. But is it realistic to keep the commitment for each Sprint? Sometimes people get sick, sometimes the technical approach is proven wrong and you have to rethink everything, sometimes during further discussions with the product owner or the users you understand that the feature should be very different from what was originally thought. I know that the official Scrum Guide now uses the word \"forecast\" rather than commitment, probably to address these problems. So my question is how often do teams in your organizations keep their commitment and whether you like this approach or you want to change it. Thank you."}
{"_id": "202198", "title": "Representation of data in application versus database", "text": "I'm going to make an application that will be given data to put in a database. The data will for the most part be the same, but the way it is formatted will vary a lot (could be in anything from text files to .xls to .doc).   I'm not a very experienced developer, but I can see some potential issues and I want to minimize them.   First off I have decided to use the DAO pattern, so that I can easily support new file formats or file suddenly formatted in different ways.   What I really wonder about though, is how I should manage the data itself within my application. I'm thinking that the database DAO should have models representing each table of the database with the same relations between them, to make the uploading process easy. But should the filesystem DAO's have to use the same models? I can imaging that when the database changes, the change will suddenly propagate throughout the entire system, all DAOs and models alike. And that is obviously a bad thing. I'm a little bit tired and out of time. Will update with what ever questions you have. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "238060", "title": "Does a vm implemented in garbage collected language need a garbage collector?", "text": "This is more of a theoretical question. If jvm is implemented in go which itself is a garbage collected language, then does that jvm need a separate garbage collector to be implemented for its own operation?"}
{"_id": "124374", "title": "in doubt of using code generators", "text": "I am now entering the world of java ee 6. And I am supposed to used different technologies like jsf, jpa, different kinds of beans and all that stuff. I am learning using the netbeans IDE, which is, I should say, very efficient when it comes to getting the work done. It is just that, I came from the old school servlet programming environment using scriptlets on them jsp pages where you get to write every line and every request parameter/attribute you have to set manually. which is somehow good because you get to understand you program THAT WELL. but with this java ee 6, with the code generators from NETBEANS, I get to create controllers, jsf pages and entities without writing any code (taken aside the DB part though). I do understand the flow of the application but not to the degree that I can understand what the line does, how does it reached, what are the use of the variables and what does it do after. all the nitty gritty stuff. to make it short, I am using generators without REALLY understanding the code that well (mostly on the new tags by jsf). I just want to ask if this is a bad path/practice or is it ok because we want PRODUCTIVITY?"}
{"_id": "208770", "title": "Could I GPL this code?", "text": "I'm working on reviving a C++ codebase that hasn't been touched since '97. It's academic software for text analysis, and originally it was non- functional, it wouldn't even compile. I fixed the code so that it works, and added some new functionality of my own. I'm doing this privately for someone else, and they will pay me over a student contract. I signed nothing with them, so ultimately, my work belongs to me. Given that they agree (I don't want to be rude), would I be able to relicense this code under GPL, and post it on a site like GitHub? The current license is as follows: > Copyright (C) 1997, Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved. This > software is made available for research purposes only. It may be > redistributed freely for this purpose, in full or in part, provided that > this entire copyright notice is included on any copies of this software and > applications and derivations thereof. > > This software is provided on an \"as is\" basis, without warranty of any kind, > either expressed or implied, as to any matter including, but not limited to > warranty of fitness of purpose, or merchantability, or results obtained from > use of this software. Seems like I would have to include that notice as well."}
{"_id": "208776", "title": "Would copyrights drop if I re-write open source project into another language?", "text": "I have re-written an open source project from java to haxe, then from haxe compiled to javascript, with totally different UI So, the question is, is the code considered to be mine after rewriting it to another language in a closed source project? can I use it freely with no worries about original copyrights?"}
{"_id": "230271", "title": "Is procedural programming the root of all object oriented evil?", "text": "If you read Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Clean Code, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code and Design Patterns you will get what I mean. Many of the examples and topics discussed in these books aim at improved the quality and design of the code. It is my observation that most of the problems mentioned in these books revolve around turning a procedural or semi procedural code to a well structured object oriented code. Think God objects, long switch cases, hard coded dependencies,..etc. What actually drove me to ask such question is that I often hear people talking about functional programming and that it good to learn such languages even if you are doing object oriented programming as it affects your mindset and perspective of the code. So to keep the topic constructive, focused and objective as much as possible:   1. Is there any studies or evidence that learning procedural programming before object oriented programming leads to the infamous object oriented anti patterns?   2. Does the same problem occur when learning OOP after FP?   3. Is there a proper/proven way to approach OOP in general to avoid most of its pitfalls?"}
{"_id": "232691", "title": "Architectural problem for Activity communication in an Android app", "text": "I maintain an open source Flickr app Glimmr for Android. There is currently an architectural issue around pagination that I've been trying to solve for quite a while, and would appreciate ideas. Here are the components involved:   1. Tasks - various subclasses of AsyncTask that fetch photos from sources such as a users photostream (LoadPhotoStreamTask), photoset (LoadPhotoSetTask), etc.   2. PhotoGridFragment - a fragment that displays photos fetched by the Tasks in a grid. Subclasses of this exist matching each task, e.g. PhotoStreamGridFragment, PhotoSetGridFragment, etc. The grid is paginated, so that when the user scrolls to the end of the photos, the task is triggered to go and fetch the next page of photos.   3. PhotoViewerActivity - responsible for displaying a list of photos from the grid in fullscreen. This is started from the PhotoGridFragments with two pieces of info, a) the list of photos currently in the grid, and b) an index at which to start viewing at. The issue arises when the user reaches the end of the list _from within the PhotoViewerActivity_. This activity does not have the info required to start the correct task and update the list of photo's it has been passed. I want to figure out a way of doing this while keeping the coupling between the PhotoGridFragment and PhotoViewerActivity as low as possible. People who are familiar with Android will know that because we're dealing with two separate Activities, all communication between them must take place via Intents with data having to be persisted or serialised. Afaik the PhotoViewerActivity can not easily call back to the Grid and ask for more photos. Things are complicated by the fact that each task requires different pieces of state and info to do it's work. e.g. a LoadPhotosetTask requires the set id, LoadPhotoStreamTask requires a specific user but doesn't care about sets, etc. So just passing the task name required to fetch more photos to the viewer activity isn't enough. Another solution could be to abstract the common pieces of functionality from the PhotoViewer into an abstract class, and then create specific photo viewers for each source, similar to the way we have specific PhotoGridFragments for each source. This feels overkill, but is probably the solution at the front of my mind right now. How would you solve this?"}
{"_id": "232697", "title": "How do login systems work?", "text": "I assume that when a user registers at a site, the password and username are stored inside of a database. I've read that the password is often encrypted using a salt. So, is it safe to encrypt the passwords with a salt and to save it in the same schema with the username? Secondly, how does authentication work? Companies like Google have giant databases of username/password pairs. How does validation work so quickly, and how is it implemented?"}
{"_id": "230183", "title": "PHP OOP - Getters / setters vs. database storing", "text": "### Problem I am trying to optimize the architecture of my web-application developed in PHP using the Symfony framework. I have an object \"pool\" that contains \"swimmers\". I need to display the number of swimmers in my pool, but only those with a pink bath-suit. In order to do this, I see many possible approaches : ### Approaches   1. Create a custom getter method in my Pool class, and filters the swimmers by bath suits color :              public function getSwimmersInPinkSuit() {         for each($this->getSwimmers() as $swimmer) {             if($swimmer->getBathSuitColor() == \"pink\") {                  $pinkSwimmers[] += $swimmer;             }         return $pinkSwimmers;     }      > {{ pool.getSwimmersInPinkSuit | length }}   2. Create a custom SQL query in my controller, define the number there before sending it to my template.   3. Add a \"$pinkSwimmers\" property to my Pool class, and increment/decrement it with an eventListener every time I persist in database the event \"a pinkSwimmer joins/leaves the pool\". I then can access the value where i want : > {{ pool.pinkSuits }}   4. Use a denser twig request to filter out the pink swimmers directly in my template > {{ pool.swimmers.suitColor(\"pink\") | lenght }} // If that's even possible o0 ### Question In the four propositions above, I see pros and cons to each of them, so :   * What is the best practice in this situation ? Am I overseeing a better logic in addition to the ones mentioned above ? I try to find an implementation that would be lightweight in term of performance (memory, bandwidth), but also easy to reconfigure (change from pink to green suits, or from suit color to swimming style)."}
{"_id": "230180", "title": "Event Driven Programming?", "text": "I have been looking into event driven programming in C and the language doesn't seem to have support for it. This has led me to wonder about the nature of event driven programming. Is it correct to say that an event handler basically spawns a thread that waits for a response from I/O and sets a variable? Or is there something more complicated to the process."}
{"_id": "18176", "title": "A startup as a web-application then later extended as mobile application. How to do it properly?", "text": "I have this idea that I want to build. I want to start the idea as a web-app, then move into mobile-app and possible desktop application. The project should have databases (mostly strings). Also users would have accounts and access to these databases. So the project provides access to the user-resources through the Internet. I want the database easily accessible through different platforms. The project is also to sharpen my IT, so I don't want the easy road, but the better one.   * What are my best options of frameworks/skills?   * Good tools to manage the project?   * Is starting as a web-app a good choice, or should I build it as a mobile-app first? I have some knowledge (but not a lot of experience) in: C, C++, Java, PHP, Javascript, MySQL, HTML/CSS. Edit: I know that my question is too general, all I wanted is some ideas and guiding to have a good start. @Nathan Taylor, regarding the web-app, I don't mind any option (should I learn Python, or stick with php in this regard)? I'll probably implement the project in Android, and possibly iPhone."}
{"_id": "230185", "title": "What is the appropriate Data URI to use for 0-byte content?", "text": "I have a method that generates a data URI from a byte array. In the event the input byte array is empty, what is the appropriate thing for the method to do? Here are the options I see:   1. return `data:,`   2. return an empty String   3. throw an Exception By my read, RFC 2397 doesn't explicitly address the notion of empty data."}
{"_id": "242938", "title": "Tail-recursive implementation of take-while", "text": "I am trying to write a tail-recursive implementation of the function `take- while` in Scheme (but this exercise can be done in another language as well). My first attempt was               (define (take-while p xs)       (if (or (null? xs)               (not (p (car xs))))           '()           (cons (car xs) (take-while p (cdr xs)))))      which works correctly but is not tail-recursive. My next attempt was               (define (take-while-tr p xs)       (let loop ((acc '())                  (ys xs))         (if (or (null? ys)                 (not (p (car ys))))             (reverse acc)             (loop (cons (car ys) acc) (cdr ys)))))      which is tail recursive but needs a call to `reverse` as a last step in order to return the result list in the proper order. I cannot come up with a solution that   1. is tail-recursive,   2. does not use `reverse`,   3. only uses lists as data structure (using a functional data structure like a Haskell's sequence which allows to append elements is not an option),   4. has complexity linear in the size of the prefix, or at least does not have quadratic complexity (thanks to delnan for pointing this out).  Is there an alternative solution satisfying all the properties above? My intuition tells me that it is impossible to accumulate the prefix of a list in a tail-recursive fashion while maintaining the original order between the elements (i.e. without the need of using reverse to adjust the result) but I am not able to prove this. **Note** The solution using `reverse` satisfies conditions 1, 3, 4."}
{"_id": "103164", "title": "When would dynamic scoping be useful?", "text": "With dynamic scoping, a callee can access the variables of its caller. Pseudo C code:               void foo()     {         print(x);     }          void bar()     {         int x = 42;         foo();     }      Since I have never programmed in a language that supports dynamic scoping, I wonder what some real world use cases for dynamic scoping would be."}
{"_id": "234696", "title": "Abstraction concept in OOP", "text": "I hear that Abstraction is a technique that helps us identify which specific information should be visible, and which information should be hidden. Encapsulation is then the technique for packaging the information in such a way as to hide what should be hidden, and make visible what is intended to be visible. I understand Encapsulation well... A simple example would be a Method that calculates calories based on the parameters we provide. CalculateCalories(x,y,z) Here I don't know how this method calculates calories but I can call it to calculate the calories. Abstraction is what I am confused about. What are those techniques that Abstraction uses to help identify which specific information should be visible, and which information should be hidden? Or am I misunderstanding the concept? Could anyone give an intuitive example?"}
{"_id": "234697", "title": "PHP coding practice", "text": "I'm a self taught PHP programmer. Because I have no formal training in PHP, I often find my coding style to be considerably different than example code I find on the Internet. I've slowly started adapting some of the more common practices I find. However, before changing my habits, I try to find a good reason to use the new style. I just don't see much reason to change my habit if it isn't actually advantageous. I see a lot of people write PHP code such as :               <h1><?php echo $cTitle; ?></h1>     <div><?php print $cContent; ?></div>      Whereas I generally write :               <?php         echo \"<h1>\", $cTitle, \"</h1>\";         print(\"<div>\" . $cContent . \"</div>\");      What I'm seeing is that people are commonly going in-and-out of PHP, while I'll just use PHP to print/echo the html content along with the PHP variables. Is there a measurable difference between these two methods? Is there a good reason for me to change my ways?"}
{"_id": "195793", "title": "How is Nothing a subtype of every other type in Scala", "text": "I am taking Martin Odersky's coursera course on functional programming with scala, and for now I have learned two things that together don't make sense:   1. Scala doesn't support multiple inheritance   2. `Nothing` is a subtype of every other type These two statements cannot live together, so how exactly is this done? and what exactly is the meaning of \"subtype of every other type\" **Edit 1** In the Scala API, `Nothing` is defined as `abstract final class Nothing extends Any`... so how can it extend other classes?"}
{"_id": "85845", "title": "Why big companies use Perforce?", "text": "I heard about some big companies e.g. Google, Facebook use Perforce Are there any reason why SVN/Git cannot replace Perforce?"}
{"_id": "103169", "title": "Promoting scalability in small business applications", "text": "I am part of a small software company that specializes in small to medium- sized business applications and my experience with distributed architectures/SOA is limited. Please let me know if I'm going about this all wrong. We often start development on small business applications, where a distributed architecture seems like overkill and will not be implemented as such. However, in some cases, the project expands way beyond the original scope, and the preferred solution may later become a distributed one. How do we ensure from the very beginning that this transition becomes as smooth as possible, with a minimum cost of performance and (primarily) time? Specifically, I'm looking for advice in regard to the architecture of the solution in order to achieve this. Take this simple example:   * At first a windows application is running on several computers, invoking all business logic locally in an assembly that is distributed along with the application.   * Later, the business logic is moved to a central server, and the windows application must now communicate with the business layer through a WCF service. The obvious answer here would be to just create the WCF service from the very beginning and have it run locally on each machine, but my initial thought was that this could cause undesirable time consumption on projects with strict deadlines, due to increased overhead in development (having to maintain the intermediate layer(s) etc.). One of the concrete problems with the initial architecture is that instances of objects are passed from the windows application to the business layer, thereby creating a dependency that could break code when moving to a distributed solution. By 'simulating' a distributed solution, we could ensure that our developers aren't unintentionally introducing these sorts of issues.   * What is the best way to achieve this scalability?   * Am I wrong in my assumptions regarding time consumption and performance?"}
{"_id": "85841", "title": "How do you go about checking your open source libraries for keystroke loggers?", "text": "A random person on the internet told me that a technology was secure(1), safe to use and didn't contain keyloggers because it is open source. While I can trivially detect the key stroke logger in this open source application, what can _developers_ (2) do to protect themselves against rouge committers to open source projects? Doing a back of the envelope threat analysis, if I were a rogue developer, I'd fork a branch on git and promote it's download since it would have twitter support (and a secret key stroke logger). If it was an SVN repo, I'd create just create a new project. Even better would be to put the malicious code in the automatic update routines. (1) I won't mention which because I can only deal with one kind of zealot at a time. (2) Ordinary users are at the mercy of their virus and malware detection software-- it's absurd to expect grandma to read the source of code of their open source word processor's source code to find the keystroke logger."}
{"_id": "245665", "title": "Understanding how variable assignment works", "text": "When I started learning C programming a few years ago, my tutor taught me similar to most of the tutors around the world. She said me the very basic things like any int datatype is of 2 bytes memory. If the following is my code,               #include\"stdio.h\"     #include\"conio.h\"     void main()     {         clrscr();         int i,n;         n = 0;         for(i=0;i<3;i++)             n = n + i;         printf(\"%d\",n); //obviously it prints 3         getch();     }      she will explain like what I have written below. Here my teacher starts off her class yet again. . . > Listen students. Here we have two integer values. So let us draw two boxes > each of 2 bytes memory.The first box be the memory space of **i** and the > second box be that of **n**. At `n = 0;` 0 gets stored into the box n. As > the control gets into the loop, 0 gets stored into the box i intially. > > `0` `0` > > Now the condition is checked. i < 3\\. Condition gets true. So now the value > of n changes from 0 to n+i i.e., 0+0=0. The first iteration then ends after > the increment statement. Now i gets incremented to 1. So our picture becomes > like this. > > `1` `0` > > And now i < 3 again. Condtion gets true. n changes from 0 to n + i i.e., > 0+1=1. Don't forget the increment my dears. Only then our iteration gets > completed. i++ makes our i to 2 now. And the picture will now look like > > `2` `1` She will go on similarly step by step and will complete when both the boxes get 3, 3 values. > So thats it kids. After we get our boxes like this > > `3` `3` > > the value of n gets printed on the screen. > > **3** By that time, I was merely like a kid nodding its head when a teacher claims earth as a circular mass. I never asked her any questions. I felt logically she was perfect. But now I am plentiful of queries. If there is a statement like `n = n + i;`, won't there be a conflict as both the destination space and the operation space is the same n box? Will the operations be done with the help of any default temporary space for calculations? What will happen if I use a recursive code like the following snippet.               int factorial(int n)     {         if(n < 2)         {             return n;         }         else         {             n = n * factorial(n - 1);             return n;         }     }      How could it be possible to use a single n box as my tutor taught? Won't a new n box be created whenever `factorial(n - 1)` is called? If I am right, how could the computer know which n box value to be returned? Somebody help me please. I am pulling of hairs from ma head!"}
{"_id": "225534", "title": "Where does the term 'serialization' come from?", "text": "In order to convert e.g. a python object to json you would use a serializer. As far as I understand it, serialization leaves the possibility to change the converted object back to the original. Where does the term `serialization` come from/why is the process called `serialization`?"}
{"_id": "229296", "title": "Using configuration to determine whether to handle exception or bubble it up", "text": "On a side project I'm working on I came up with a way of handling exceptions that's adjustable by configuration. So a try/catch block might look like this:               try     {         fileHelper.MoveFile(file, destFolder);     }     catch (IOException ex)     {         if (exceptionHandler.HandleException(ex))         {             return ResultCode.Fail;         }         throw;     }      The granularity of exception handling is controlled through an `enum` that's set in the app.config file:               public enum SystemFailureMode     {         AlwaysThrow = -1,         Aggressive = 0,         Standard = 1,         Lenient = 2     }      This determines whether an exception is \"handled\" and returned as an error, or if it bubbles up and crashes the system. At first I thought I'd uncovered a new design pattern but now it seems like it's probably an anti-pattern. What do you guys think? * * * After reviewing the comments and thinking about it myself, I've decided this is definitely an anti-pattern. The fact that this has the potential to turn writing unit tests into a nightmare is enough to turn me off of it."}
{"_id": "229292", "title": "Is there a way to find out what API's to use for developing a third party app", "text": "My company uses an application called TotalHRWorks for time keeping and what not. They have an Android and iOS application; however, there is no Windows Phone application. Since there is an Android and iOS app, I figure that I should be able to create a Windows Phone app; but I don't know where to start with trying to discover maybe their web service or whatever APIs that I could use to make it. I don't know whether this can be done or if it's \"legal\" to do such things - but it would be really handy to have."}
{"_id": "132045", "title": "Is Test Driven Development in Javascript helpful for front-end developers?", "text": "I really need your advice. I'm reading a few articles about TDD in JavaScript but I'm really struggling to understand how to use it in my daily work. For instance I'm currently working on a page that has an accordion and each item of the accordion has dynamic contents populated through a JSON object. The JSON object is provided by a third party. I'm using jQuery. My way of testing so far is called console.log :)   * What kind of tests should I write?    * Does TDD make sense for this kind of application of is meant for something else?  Sorry for the noob question but I'd really appreciate your opinion"}
{"_id": "136540", "title": "Web application to a multiplatform phone app", "text": "I'm really lost here so I hope some can help me. I have to develop a phone application on every platform so i tough of using phonegap. Seems pretty nice. I have a web application coded in classic Asp and it's this webApplication that i need to strip down to be a phone app. At first at thought it will be simple, my classic Asp render some html so phonegap is able to put it as an app. But it's not that simple, because in my asp I have some code that is rendered server side, I've talked to some who tell me that some html could call the asp pages and this html could be used in phonegap. Don't think it's possible ... Well if someone could help me here, maybe i've said wrong thing in my little text dont hesitate to correct me :) My solution (i think) : code some webServices in asp.net that will use the same database as my asp classic web application. And some html and jquery will call the webservices and those html and jquery will go trough phoneGap Well thanks for the help and saying what you think about it ! :) **Simple question : What is the best way to transfer an asp classic web app to a multiplatform phone app ?**"}
{"_id": "87723", "title": "maintaining a growing, diverse codebase with continuous integration", "text": "I am in need of some help with philosophy and design of a continuous integration setup. Our current CI setup uses buildbot. When I started out designing it, I inherited (well, not strictly, as I was involved in its design a year earlier) a bespoke CI builder that was tailored to run the entire build at once, overnight. After a while, we decided that this was insufficient, and started exploring different CI frameworks, eventually choosing buildbot. One of my goals in transitioning to buildbot (besides getting to enjoy all the whiz-bang extras) was to overcome some of the inadequacies of our bespoke nightly builder. Humor me for a moment, and let me explain what I have inherited. The codebase for my company is almost 150 unique c++ Windows applications, each of which has dependencies on one or more of a dozen internal libraries (and many on 3rd party libraries as well). Some of these libraries are interdependent, and have depending applications that (while they have nothing to do with each other) have to be built with the same build of that library. Half of these applications and libraries are considered \"legacy\" and unportable, and must be built with several distinct configurations of the IBM compiler (for which I have written unique subclasses of `Compile`), and the other half are built with visual studio. The code for each compiler is stored in two separate Visual SourceSafe repositories (which I am simply handling using a bunch of `ShellCommand`s, as there is no support for VSS). Our original nightly builder simply took down the source for everything, and built stuff in a certain order. There was no way to build only a single application, or pick a revision, or to group things. It would launched virtual machines to build a number of the applications. It wasn't very robust, it wasn't distributable. It wasn't terribly extensible. I wanted to be able to overcame all of these limitations in buildbot. The way I did this originally was to create entries for each of the applications we wanted to build (all 150ish of them), then create triggered schedulers that could build various applications as groups, and then subsume those groups under an overall nightly build scheduler. These could run on dedicated slaves (no more virtual machine chicanery), and if I wanted I could simply add new slaves. Now, if we want to do a full build out of schedule, it's one click, but we can also build just one application should we so desire. There are four weaknesses of this approach, however. One is our source tree's complex web of dependencies. In order to simplify config maintenace, all builders are generated from a large dictionary. The dependencies are retrieved and built in a not-terribly robust fashion (namely, keying off of certain things in my build-target dictionary). The second is that each build has between 15 and 21 build steps, which is hard to browse and look at in the web interface, and since there are around 150 columns, takes forever to load (think from 30 seconds to multiple minutes). Thirdly, we no longer have autodiscovery of build targets (although, as much as one of my coworkers harps on me about this, I don't see what it got us in the first place). Finally, aformentioned coworker likes to constantly bring up the fact that we can no longer perform a full build on our local machine (though I never saw what that got us, either, considering that it took three times as long as the distributed build; I think he is just paranoically phobic of ever breaking the build). Now, moving to new development, we are starting to use g++ and subversion (not porting the old repository, mind you - just for the new stuff). Also, we are starting to do more unit testing (\"more\" might give the wrong picture... it's more like **any** ), and integration testing (using python). I'm having a hard time figuring out how to fit these into my existing configuration. So, where have I gone wrong philosophically here? How can I best proceed forward (with buildbot - it's the only piece of the puzzle I have license to work on) so that my configuration is actually maintainable? How do I address some of my design's weaknesses? What really works in terms of CI strategies for large, (possibly over-)complex codebases? **EDIT:** I thought I explained my problem, but obviously I wasn't clear enough. I am _not_ looking for suggestions for changing CI platforms. It is **not** going to happen, and answers suggesting that will not get accepted. What I _want_ to know is how other people manage complicated codebases using CI. I have a **dozen squared** different products, and I have dependencies scattered to the wind, and they're all different. THIS is what I want to know how to deal with."}
{"_id": "103294", "title": "Which tool to use for creating application releases?", "text": "I'm wondering what others use as a tool for creating the final package to hand over to the customer. For now, these are the tasks it should perform for our company:   * build a set of VS projects (C#,C++); which set depends on configuration on commandline of preferrably in a file   * copy some of the outputs (dll,exe) and header files; should again be configurable: not all customers get the same functionality)   * make a zip file for each configuration Additional features that are not yet needed now, but might be in the future:   * upload it to a website of some kind (we're still not sure what we're going to use.. might be ftp or vesrionsing system). Well, actually, it would be awesome if the tool could create an entry on a Confluence page.   * instead of zip files we might switch to installers, though that shouldn't change too much I guess Right now I have the first steps covered in a batch file that takes some arguments, and a master batch file that calls it for each configuration. It works, but I can't get used to the batch syntax and I'm now building by invoking devenv.exe which seems slow and is error-prone as it takes the .suo file into account. I was thinking about doing everything again in msbuild, but first I'd like to hear more opinions on this. I'd also want to know what kind of tools big companies use for large products."}
{"_id": "103298", "title": "Books on custom iPhone interface development?", "text": "I have been looking around for a book on designing and developing custom interfaces for iOS but I don't seem to be able to find any books on this topic and I was wondering if anyone here knew of any books on the design and development of custom iOS interfaces and applications. Also, I am not aware of any other questions asked on this site, so if there is, please do let me know and I'll vote to delete :) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "231581", "title": "Where to keep track of batch editing scripts?", "text": "It is sometime useful to write a script to perform a batch editing on several files in a source tree. Such a script is usually very specific and used only once. Such scripts can be used to rework some identifiers in code, modify file header comments, edit the path of a resource or the like. I want to stress that I am concerned by the case where the script addresses an exceptional problem, so that it does not fit in the usual workflow of the project. I think it is important to keep record of these scripts and reference the usage of the script in the RCS logbook. Where is the appropriate place to keep this record? Should they be added to the commit description in the RCS logbook? Should they be added to the ticket description of the item being processed when they are used? Should they be saved as regular files in the project and added to the RCS, despite the fact their usage is deemed to be unique? Is there another way?"}
{"_id": "231586", "title": "Regarding interpreters", "text": "I understand that an interpreter could do one of the following things (and probably more):   1. Execute programming-language source code directly.   2. First translate the source code to some intermediate code (which is less human-readable and more efficient or easier for the interpreter to execute), and then execute this code. My questions are:   1. Is this assumption true? Am I understanding correctly the general function of an interpreter? Or is something I wrote wrong?   2. If my assumptions are true, which one of these two possible functions are more common? Please show examples."}
{"_id": "171511", "title": "Where should I define constants in scripts?", "text": "When writing scripts using a modern scripting language, e.g. Powershell or JavaScript, where should I define constants? Should I make all constants global for readability and ease of use, or does it make sense to define constants as close to their scopes as possible (in a function, for instance, if it's not needed elsewhere)? I'm thinking mostly of error messages, error IDs, paths to resources or configuration options."}
{"_id": "171519", "title": "What is the best practice for when to check if something needs to be done?", "text": "Let's say I have a function that does `x`. I pass it a variable, and if the variable is not null, it does some action. And I have an array of variables and I'm going to run this function on each one. Inside the function, it seems like a good practice is to check if the argument is null before proceeding. A null argument is not an error, it just causes an early return. I could loop through the array and pass each value to the function, and the function will work great. Is there any value to checking if the var is null and only calling the function if it is not null during the loop? This doubles up on the checking for null, but:   * Is there any gained value?    * Is there any gain on not calling a function?    * Any readability gain on the loop in the parent code? For the sake of my question, let's assume that checking for null will _always_ be the case. I can see how checking for some object property might change over time, which makes the first check a bad idea. Pseudo code example:               for(thing in array) {         x(thing)     }      Versus:               for(thing in array) {         if(thing not null) x(thing)     }      If there are language-specific concerns, I'm a web developer working in PHP and JavaScript."}
{"_id": "198465", "title": "Is VB.NET a viable migration path for an application currently scripted in VBScript?", "text": "Our C++ MFC application gives the user the ability to define custom scripts in vbscript (via the VBScript engine). Since (parts of) the application are moving to .NET anyway, and since vbscript seems to be a legacy technology, we are thinking about adding a new scripting component where the user can add his scripts as VB.NET. Arguments for VB.NET are:   * Users already are \"used to\" the syntax   * Automatic conversion from vscript scripts to VB.NET scripts will be easier due to syntactic similarities What other arguments pro (or con) VB.NET as a in-application scripting language are there? Note that the users writing these scripts are _not_ programmers by trade, so any alternative has to take that into consideration."}
{"_id": "170647", "title": "Classless tables possible with Datamapper?", "text": "I have an Item class with the following attributes: `itemId,name,weight,volume,price,required_skills,required_items`. Since the last two attributes are going to be multivalued, I removed them and create new schemes like: `itemID,required_skill` (`itemID` is foreign key, `itemID and required_skill` is primary key.) Now, I'm confused how to create/use this new table. Here are the options that came to my mind: 1) The relationship between Items and Required_skills is one-to-many, so I may create a RequiredSkill class, which belongs_to Item, which in turn has n RequiredSkills. Then I can do `Item.get(1).requiredskills`. This sounds most logical to me and provides me methods and queries like:               sugar.components.create :raw_material => water.name     sugar.components.create :raw_material => sugarcane.name     sugar.components     sugar.components.count      2) Since required_skills may well be thought of as constants (since they resemble rules), I may put them into a hash or gdbm database or another sql table and query from there, which I don't prefer. My question is: is there something like a modelless table in datamapper, where datamapper is responsible from the creation and integrity of the table and allows me to query it in datamapper way, but does not require a class, like I may do it in sql? I solved my problem by using the first way: I created a new class for each normalization process (which appears as one-to-many association above). However, I am new to object oriented programming and I don't know if creating a new class for each such normalization is the usual way to do it in datamapper, or rather a hack? This, and whether there is a better way to do this, is what I would like to know. # @JustinC **Rereading thedatamapper.org Associations several times, now I see that datamapper certainly requires separate classes for joins. So you answered my question. However, since Robert Harvey placed the bounty, I feel the responsibility to wait a little more for a response about a dynamic way.** Your code complained with `Cannot find the child_model Container for Item in containers`. I managed to get it work with the second example of self referential association like below (putting here as a reference to others):               class Item       class Link         include DataMapper::Resource         storage_names[:default] = \"requirement_links\"              belongs_to :require, \"Item\", :key => true         belongs_to :required, \"Item\", :key => true       end            include DataMapper::Resource            property :id, Serial       property :name, String, :required => true            has n, :links_to_required_items, \"Item::Link\", :child_key => [:require_id]       has n, :links_to_requiring_items, \"Item::Link\", :child_key => [:required_id]            has n, :required_items, self,         :through => :links_to_required_items,         :via => :required       has n, :requiring_items, self,         :through => :links_to_requiring_items,         :via => :require           def require(others)         required_items.concat(Array(others))         save         self       end            def unrequire(others)         links_to_required_items.all(:required => Array(others)).destroy!         reload         self       end     end      So I can do:               jelly = Item.get :name => \"Jelly\"     sugar = Item.get :name => \"Sugar\"     jelly.require sugar      to require items and:               jelly.required_items.each { |i|; puts i.name }      to list requirements, which are really great. After reading your answer, I see that I am yet to normalize my database schema further. To be honest, I don't see the point of defining the relationship between rawmaterials and products as self referential. I mean, if that would be a small program, I certainly would use a hash like `{:jelly => \":sugar => 3, :water => 5\"}` to reflect required items and amounts, according to YAGNI principle. Doing it as in the 1st option already provides me queries and methods as simple as the ones provided by the self referential association. **(However, I must admit that it looks more like a stored procedure rather than a method call to an object.)** So, could you very mind to explain the benefits of using a self referential association, which is difficult to understand/implement for me, compared to my simpler approach? I am new to OOP and wonder if I'm sort of undermodelling."}
{"_id": "231633", "title": "Empty virtual method on base class VS abstract methods", "text": "I couldn't find a question that was not too specific to some case, so I'll try to make this very generic. We need an extractor base class to a set of documents, for example. Each document has its specific properties, but they're ultimately documents. So we want to provide common extraction operations for all of them. Even though they're all documents, as I said, they're somewhat different. Some may have some properties, but some may not. Let's imagine that we have the `Document` base abstract class, and the `FancyDocument` and `NotSoFancyDocument` classes that inherit from it. The `FancyDocument` has a `SectionA`, the `NotSoFancyDocument` doesn't. That said, what would you defend as the best way of implementing this? Here's the two options:   * **Empty virtual methods on the base class** Empty virtual methods on the base class would allow the programmer to only override the methods that make sense for the different types of documents. We would then have a default behavior on the abstract base class, which would be returning the `default` for the methods, like this:               public abstract class Document     {         public virtual SectionA GetDocumentSectionA()         {             return default(SectionA);         }     }          public class FancyDocument : Document     {         public override SectionA GetDocumentSectionA()         {             // Specific implementation                     }     }          public class NotSoFancyDocument : Document     {         // Does not implement method GetDocumentSectionA because it doesn't have a SectionA     }        * **Concrete empty methods or concrete methods throwing a`NotImplementedException`** Since the `NotSoFancyDocument` **does not** have a `SectionA`, but the others do, we could either just return the _default_ for the method in it, or we could throw a `NotImplementedException`. That would depend on how the program was written and some other things. We could come up with something like this:               //// Return the default value          public abstract class Document     {         public abstract SectionA GetDocumentSectionA();     }          public class FancyDocument : Document     {         public override SectionA GetDocumentSectionA()         {             // Specific implementation         }     }          public class NotSoFancyDocument : Document     {         public override SectionA GetDocumentSectionA()         {             return default(SectionA);         }     }      **OR**               //// Throw an exception          public abstract class Document     {         public abstract SectionA GetDocumentSectionA();     }          public class FancyDocument : Document     {         public override SectionA GetDocumentSectionA()         {             // Specific implementation         }     }          public class NotSoFancyDocument : Document     {         public override SectionA GetDocumentSectionA()         {             throw new NotImplementedException(\"NotSoFancyDocument does not have a section A\");         }     }      Personally, I do think that the abstract method approach is better, since it means \"Hey, I need you to be able to get a SectionA to be a document. I don't care how.\" while the virtual method means \"Hey, I do have this SectionA here. If it's not good enough for you, feel free to change the way I get it.\". I do think the first one is a sign of object oriented programming smell. What are your opinions on this?"}
{"_id": "231637", "title": "Can a system be 100% Data Driven?", "text": "My new boss has been working on this project for many years. I've only been here a few weeks, but I am not sure it's possible. He would like to design a system that is \"100% data driven\". So if we put in enough data, we can define and generate any application. I've managed to at least get him to concede some things like users, or apps should have predefined values, but he likes the concept of the structure of the system, the user interface and the logic all being stored as data. There are some demos of simple things and he's basically rediscovered some simple ideas of object oriented programming and your basic template systems, but I think overall that this goal might be actually impossible. I don't know how you can define logic using data without the system becoming so complex that you are doing actual programming anyway. I think theoretically it isn't because the thing that interprets the data ends up needing to become turing complete to describe the application so you've just shifted the problem one level higher to no net benefit. Is such a 100% Data Driven Application possible?"}
{"_id": "229876", "title": "Language that embraces mutable state?", "text": "There seems to be a trend towards immutable objects, and pure functional programming. While I recognize the benefits, I find it hard to apply these principles to GUI programming, for example. But I also find classical imperative languages with mutable objects lacking. I was wondering whether there is a language or system that _embraces_ mutable state, and makes it especially easy to work with. Below are some features I would consider to be \"designed around mutability\":   * The ability to hook up events and get a change notification for any variable. It would make it very easy to write GUIs and MVC applications. And you could just make a `List<MyObject>`, and stuff it into a list widget, and with a bit of configuration it would manage your list for you, no manual listview.insert() etc..   * A type system that considers state. For example, If I pass a `Car` into a function that requires a working one, the compiler should try to proove that `car.broken == False`. If it can't proove it, it won't compile, and I have to ensure it (by putting the code in an `if` block, or setting it manually to False).   * A take on concurrency that makes sense for mutable objects. For example an `atomic` statement, that guarantees that certain statements are run together, using transactions or locks. The goal is not performance, but ease of use and GUI responsiveness. I should be able to manipulate data and the GUI from any thread, using `atomic {step1; step2}` to ensure invariants. I'm not looking for a system with these _exact_ features, but one written in a similar spirit. The closest I've seen to this is C#/.NET with its data binding features. Gtk+ has custom ListModels that keep a GtkTreeView in like with your data without manual inserts/updates. Android has ListAdapters which are similar. I haven't found a thread-safe GUI, but you can get pretty close with a liberal use of `Invoke()` in C#/WinForms, or `gobject_idle_add` in Gtk+. Are there any systems like what I describe? Or research material, references, etc.?"}
{"_id": "229879", "title": "How can Scrum be adapted to a Volunteer setting?", "text": "I have recently joined a young hackerspace still in the process of setting itself up. We're fortunate because the space has a few internal projects that need working on and no shortage of volunteers to work on them. There have been some discussions on how to organize these projects. My most recent professional experience has been with Scrum so I'm considering pitching a Scrum approach for our software projects, but I'm not sure it will be a good fit. Although I've seen Scrum work well for small full-time teams, the nature of this organisation is different:   * The members are **volunteers**. Some are full time students. Others work jobs full time. We can't expect a constant level of contribution from anyone as their real lives take priority.    * While pretty much everyone has years of experience writing software, not many members have done so professionally or in teams.   * There is **no Product Owner**. The requirements for these projects are determined by a committee. The members of this committee will also be working on the implementation. This means we will have no single, dedicated, Product Owner.   * We have **no deadlines** (soft or hard). The projects will get done when they get done. These are pretty significant differences, but I'm not convinced they will be blockers to applying Scrum. I think some minor tweaking could get us over this hurdle:   * If we change Sprints to have a fixed story-point size, but **fluid duration** (time), we can still benefit from iterative releases without putting unrealistic delivery pressure on volunteer devs.   * We can ditch **burndown charts** and **velocity** calculation. If I understand correctly, these are tools and metrics that work as a bridge between the dev team and the Management. They serve to report progress in a form that is meaningful to both the developers and the stakeholders. Considering we have no one to report to (no Project Manager, no Product Owner, and no outside stakeholders) I believe we can drop this altogether. Things I think we could benefit from which won't require tweaking:   * The **Requirements Gathering** meeting(s). Where everyone sits around a table and discusses User Stories, sketches up UI mocks, and builds up a Product Backlog.   * Sprint **Retrospectives**. This will be an interesting way for us to converge on a development process that works for us as a team of volunteers. Things I'm not sure about:   * How should daily **Stand-ups** be treated? I wonder if they would have much value at all in our setting. My understanding of the stand-up ritual is that it helps communication by naturally disseminating information throughout the team. Considering the fact that our Sprints will likely be delivering much less complexity than an average Sprint there might be less need to be abreast of all the other team members' progress/developments.   * Should I push for **XP** things like Continuous Integration, Code Reviews, and TDD? I'm concerned this will be asking for a lot. I'd be more tempted to bring these concepts in on future projects once people are more familiar with Scrum and working as a team. ### My Questions: Can Scrum be adapted to a volunteer-based environment?   And, is my planned approach so far going in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "88443", "title": "Should I redo an abandoned Dynamic Data project with Lightswitch?", "text": "I had a small project that I was doing on the side. It was basically a couple of forms linked to a DB. Access was out, because it was a specifically meant to be a web application. Being a small project I used ASP.NET Dynamic Data, but, for various reasons, the project ended before deployment. I met the client recently, and he said there was a need for it still. I'm considering restarting the project with Dynamic Data, but I've seen some Lightswitch demos, and was suitably impressed with the BETA. I will wait for RTM if I use it, but is it a good idea to use Lightswitch to replace the Dynamic Data? The amount of work I put into the Dynamic Data site isn't really an issue. Additional information: It's a system that tracks production in a small factory, broken down by line, machine, section and will generate reports. I would guess that the data structure will remain fairly constant over time, but that the reporting requirements will grow. The other thing is that the factory is part of a larger group, and I'm hopeful that, if this system succeeds, similar work with be forthcoming for other factories."}
{"_id": "184250", "title": "Mostly produce output at programming job but don't learn anything", "text": "When I started working a programmer, I learned lots at first, on the job. Although Ive been given more responsibility, which is good in a way, it is mostly in the form of increased workload. I havent had much time or energy left to learn anything much new day to day. Sometimes I have 1 hr of time and energy left at the end of the day to keep up, but I mostly just produce a lot of the same type of code. It does make sense to spend working hrs producing, since it's the reason why a programmer is trained and hired. However, I am concerned about if Im falling behind as a programmer, by doing what I was hired for, even if not learning much new. Is this standard for most programmers?"}
{"_id": "243165", "title": "Most efficient way to rebuild a tree structure from data", "text": "Have a question on recursively populating JsTree using the .NET wrapper available via NuGet. Any help would be greatly appreciated. the .NET class JsTree3Node has a property named Children which holds a list of JsTree3Nodes, and the pre-existing table which contains the node structure looks like this > >     NodeId    ParentNodeId     Data            AbsolutePath >     1         NULL             News            /News >     2         1                Financial       /News/Financial >     3         2                StockMarket     /News/Financial/StockMarket >   I have a EF data context from the the database, so my code currently looks like this.               var parentNode = new JsTree3Node(Guid.NewGuid().ToString());          foreach(var nodeItem in context.Nodes)     {        parentNode.Children.Add(nodeItem.Data);        // What is the most efficient logic to do this recursively?     }      as the inline comment says in the above code, what would be the most efficient way to load the JStree data on to the `parentNode` object. I can change the existing node table to suite the logic so feel free to suggest any changes to improve performance."}
{"_id": "39146", "title": "Tips for / pitfalls of working on an outsourced project", "text": "My company has retained an outside firm to develop an iPhone app for us. As the only internal developer with any knowledge of Objective-C, I've been assigned to develop the relevant APIs on our site, but also to do anything I can to make sure the whole thing comes together on time. Any suggestions for things I should do or things I should watch out for, particularly from those who've been down this road before?"}
{"_id": "184257", "title": "Common Lisp Implementations - threading and multiplatform?", "text": "I'm learning Common Lisp, mostly as a \"mind gym\" hobby thing, but I want to end up with a set of skills that would also be usable \"in real life\", because when you learn a language you also accumulate knowledge about module and package management, deployment and stuff, whether you like it or not, so I want to learn with a CL implementation that is also usable in production. So my question is: **What CL implementation is most usable \"in production\", having attributes like these? :**   * it's **multi-platform** \\- one should be able to use the same language implementation and languages on a Linux server, a Windows dev machine and a MacOS one (the coolest thing would be being able to also compile for Android, Windows Phone and RT and maybe even iOS)   * it has good **concurrency** , **parallelism** , **multi-threading** features - and these features work _cross-platform_ , otherwise it doesn't count   * it's easy to **interface with other languages** \\- working with C libraries is a must, but anything else, like an easy CL-Python interface would be nice I insist on the multi-platform part because I know that one of the serious arguments for Reddit ditching CL (CMUCL - btw, I know SBCL is fork of CMUCL, but how do they compare?) was that developers couldn't just use their Macs to develop without being ssh'd into a dev server environment (quote: _\"On my Mac, my choices of threaded Lisp implementations was limited to OpenMCL, and in FreeBSD it's CMUCL.\"_ ). Yeah, one can use a dev VM, but still... * * * _**Note #1:** I was close to settling on **CLISP** but I don't know about its concurrency features, and I also came across this: \"it all-but-forces your code to be released as GPL\" (I can't understand what this means or how can a languages's license become forced on your code, but I'm not fluent in legalese...)._ _**Note #2:** I'm not really fond of the JVM, and if I were to use a Lisp on it it would be Clojure and nothing else, so no JVM Lisps suggestions, please :)_"}
{"_id": "177915", "title": "Is there a quick and practical (hands on) way to learn another programming language?", "text": "Due to rather strange circumstances, I only have until Monday to learn (at least) the basics of PHP and .NET programming. I'm already fairly competent (though there is a lot of room for improvement) in C++ so I feel I have some of the concepts nailed already, but I need to get into the two languages in a bit more depth in a very short time frame. Unfortunately I won't have time to get any books so will need to exclusively use online resources, I'm more of a 'do-er' so any way to test my skills in a practical way would be a huge bonus :-)"}
{"_id": "184259", "title": "CLISP Common Lisp license - can it force my code to be released under GPL?", "text": "I came across this about CLISP: *\"it all-but-forces your code to be released as GPL\" here, when looking for a good Common Lisp implementation. **How can a language force a license on your code?** Is this just FUD? I'm asking because I really don't speak \"legalese\" so maybe there's something I don't understand here... I get it that the language is GPL and it compiles to a form of bytecode, but can't I have my program with whatever licences I want? * * * EDITED: CMUCL -> CLISP (had my head in the wrong place when I wrote the question first time, sorry...)"}
{"_id": "177916", "title": "Does a mobile app need more access than the public API of a site?", "text": "I have a site with a public API, and some mobile app developers have been brought in to produce an iPhone app for the site. They insist they need to see the database schema, but as I understand it, they should only need access to the documented public API. Am I right? Is there something I've missed? I've told them that if there's a feature missing or data they require I can extend the API so that they can access it. I thought a web service API held to much the same principles as OOP object API's, in that the implementation details should be hidden as much as possible. I'm not a mobile app developer so if there is something I don't quite see then please let me know. Any insight or help will be much appreciated. * * * Update: The mobile team are part of a government funded advisory service for start ups. I've since found out that the project manager, who was the one pushing so hard to see the database and other internals, also works for a web development agency. I can't say for sure what his reasons were for wanting to see this stuff, but considering he didn't once give a _valid_ technical reason I find this even more concerning than I did at the time."}
{"_id": "177913", "title": "Why do we sign a .JAR ? or a tag on github?", "text": "I have a question :   * Why do I need to sign a `.JAR` using `jarsigner`?    * is there a specific reason or use of that ?    * Same question when I tag a version on github ?"}
{"_id": "19622", "title": "As a student, what techniques used by faculty helped you learn the most?", "text": "I'm getting into the more advanced programming classes at my university, and feel like I am running into some obvious shortcomings with producing quality code. For example, my data structures class has us reading in a list of songs, creating Song objects, then using various structures to implement searches for artists, titles, lyric words and lyric phrases. The professor gives us a list of test examples to prove the code produces the expected results, and the grades are based on functionality, completeness, and bug awareness. Currently I am holding a 90 average in that class, but am not really satisfied that my code is of good quality. So, what techniques did your college professors use to get you to write better code?"}
{"_id": "19627", "title": "Clarify the Open/Close Principle", "text": "As I have had it explained, the open/close principle states that once written code should not be modified (aside from bug fixes). But if my business rules change shouldn't I modify the code implementing those changes? I suspect I'm not understanding something about how the principle because it doesn't make sense to me."}
{"_id": "131536", "title": "Why doesn't the DART language use a special character to identify variables?", "text": "I come from a PHP background and I have been considering looking at DART in more detail. DART is an, open source, front-end/back-end, language for web development. PHP has a special $ (dollar) character to indicate variables:               $variable     CONSTANT     'string'     \"etc\"      I find that dollar sign to be really useful for speeding up the proces of refactoring, especially if PHP code is mixed with HTML or content. It reduces the number of false positives when, say, doing a _find and replace_. As DART is a completely fresh language (with no legacy) that can be embedded in HTML, it surprised me to see that it does not have any special identifier to indicate variables. What's the reasoning behind that design decision?"}
{"_id": "131533", "title": "How to get OOAD and Design Patterns hands-on experience in C#?", "text": "I have read the concepts and practiced some examples on OOAD and Design Patterns. But when I was asked to implement the singleton pattern in a little bit different manner, I was unable to do it and failed to reach my goal. I think I need some more in-depth understanding of the basics and some real experience with the concepts. Please suggest me some good books and mini projects for me to get hands on experience on OOAD and Design Patterns in C#. I have almost 9 months of time frame to retake the test. I have done this for singleton. It's valid code. But i was asked to implement in such a way that, i should be able to create instance of DBConnection class only once. use that instance to get the Connection object. This is where, i have failed to implement singleton :(               class DBConnection      {         private Connection _conn = null;         static Connection GetConnection()         {              if(_conn ==null)                   _conn = new Connection(...);              return _conn;          }     }"}
{"_id": "194840", "title": "algorithm to create all possible column vectors of size N containing only ones and zeroes", "text": "I am a mathematics student and am just starting to learn about programming. I am stuck on a particular program I am trying to write for fun. I want to find an algorithm to create all possible column vectors of size N containing only ones and zeroes and combine them in one large matrix by putting all the columns after each other. The order of the columns is of no importance. For instance if N=3 I want to get the matrix: 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0   0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0   0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 which vertically contains all possible combinations of ones and zeroes of length 3. Does anyone have any idea how to do this? I am not necessarily looking for a very efficient or clever way to do this because the value I will be using for N is 14, so my matrix will be 14 x 2^14 which is 14 x 16384 which is not too big. Also, sorry for the formatting of my question, I am used to the math stackexchange where you can use LaTeX text to make your matrices and equations look nice. Thanks to anyone who can help me along!"}
{"_id": "84829", "title": "Steps to solve or approach towards a solution", "text": "Please share your experience about how do you approach towards a solution or solve a problem. Include description about what ever tools you use,sources you follow,algorithms you choose etc. It would be great help in moving further and works as a guidance too."}
{"_id": "154610", "title": "Am I getting Scheme wrong?", "text": "Inspired by the numerous posts about the importance of learning Lisp/Scheme I started to learn Scheme two days back, I am using the book \"The little Schemer\" and have completed half of it. But I still haven't learned anything new, the book teaches about recursion which I already understand and uses lambda (which I can think of a way to define a function in C). I still haven't got the concept of functional programming (please point to some example of functional compared to normal programming methods in C/C++ so I can get it). Am I learning in the wrong way? or is \"The little Schemer\" for a newbie in programming and I should look for some other books?"}
{"_id": "69510", "title": "How much freeware is downloaded by an average user?", "text": "I am interested in the amount of usage of freeware (closed source) running under Windows, which is not preinstalled on PCs. The closest I expect to get to such statistics is the amount of freeware downloaded by an average user. A good answer refers to a source, which says something like: \"The average Windows user downloads 2.3 freewares per year\". An even better answer is: \"An average Windows user spends 0.04 hours per day using freeware\". Edit: I see this as the equivalent of: \"How many kilos of chocolate does an average russian eat per year\", which is the sort of statistic widely used for initial market analysis. I agree that you still do not know whether a mint chocolate with a slight taste of banana will sell, but you have a better idea."}
{"_id": "154615", "title": "Are unit tests really used as documentation?", "text": "I cannot count the number of times I read statements in the vein of 'unit tests are a very important source of documentation of the code under test'. I do not deny they are true. But personally I haven't found myself using them as documentation, ever. For the typical frameworks I use, the method declarations document their behaviour and that's all I need. And I assume the unit tests backup everything stated in that documentation, plus likely some more internal stuff, so on one side it duplicates the ducumentation while on the other it might add some more that is irrelevant. So the question is: when are unit tests used as documentation? When the comments do not cover everything? By developpers extending the source? And what do they expose that can be useful and relevant that the documentation itself cannot expose?"}
{"_id": "224371", "title": "Help with complex MVVM (multiple views)", "text": "I need help creating view models for the following scenario:   1. Deep, hierarchical data    2. Multiple views for the same set of data   3. Each view is a single, dynamically-changing view, based on the active selection   4. Depending on the value of a property, display different types of tabs in a tab control ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dIvrO.png) My questions: **Should I create a view-model representation for each view (VM1, VM2, etc)?**               1. Yes:         a. Should I model the entire hierarchical relationship? (ie, SubVM1, HouseVM1, RoomVM1)         b. How do I keep all hierarchies in sync? (e.g, adding/removing nodes)          2. No:         a. Do I use a huge, single view model that caters for all views?      Here's an example of a single view Figure 1: Multiple views updated based on active room. Notice Tab control ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YQ0qj.png) Figure 2: Different active room. Multiple views updated. Tab control items changed based on object's property. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bfZIC.png) Figure 3: Different selection type. Entire view changes ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ta17v.png)"}
{"_id": "86096", "title": "Are web application usability issues equal to website usability issues?", "text": "I've been reading two books about web usability issues and tests (Rocket Surgery Made Easy\u00b9 and Prioritizing Web Usability\u00b2) and they claim some strategies and typical problems about website usability and how to lead them. However, I want to do a web application, and I think I lost track of what I am trying to solve. These two books claim to work with raw websites (e-commerce, business sites, even intranet), but I'm not sure if everything about web usability is applicable to web application usability. They sure talk about always having available (and usable) the Back button, to focus on short information rather than big amounts of text, etc., but they could be inaccurate in deeper problems that may be easier (or just skippable) in regular websites. Has anybody some experience in this field and could tell me if **both web applications and websites share their usability issues?** Thanks in advance **Edit:** Quoting Wikipedia, a website _is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets_ , and a web application _is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet_. To sum up, both shows/lets you search/produce information but websites are \"simple\" in interaction and keep the classics of websites (one- click actions) and the other one is closer to desktop applications in the meaning of their uses and ways of interaction (double click, modal windows, asynchronous calls [to keep you in the same \"environment\" instead of reloading it] etc.). I don't know if this clarifies the difference. **Edit 2:** Quoting @Victor and myself, a website is anything running in your browser, but a web application is somewhat running in your browser that could be running in your desktop, with similar behaviors and features. Gmail is a web application that could replace Outlook. GDocs could replace Office. Grooveshark could replace your music player, etc."}
{"_id": "224373", "title": "Creating REST-ful web-services without adhering to the REST principles", "text": "I have built an application which acts as an interface between an EAI layer and third party vendor applications. I am using REST-ful web services for this, making use of JAX-RS API and Jersey framework. Although the web services can do different operations like Cancel, View, Create, Reschedule orders, I have implemented all of them as POST methods. But for the web-services to be REST-ful, we need to use the HTTP methods GET, POST, PUT and DELETE appropriately. Here there are no users who can view the url to be used and hence no 'User Experience' involved. It is just a url configured at the EAI layer, which gets the request from the UI\\Order Management screens. In this scenario, do we really need to make the web-services REST-ful? Whatever I have created, can they be called REST-ful web-services?"}
{"_id": "86098", "title": "What is the best way to discuss/plan/negotiate about code architecture remotely?", "text": "Our team is distributed in space and time, so we have no ability to discuss the architecture of the code in real time. How can we discuss it via documentation: write code interfaces/ comment/ modify, track history of the code architecture? Are there some specific tools for this? What are the best way: class diagrams, code interfaces, something different? We are using c# and VS2010"}
{"_id": "86099", "title": "Do you write unit tests for all the time in TDD?", "text": "I have been designing and developing code with TDD style for a long time. What disturbs me about TDD is writing tests for code that does not contain any business logic or interesting behaviour. I know TDD is a design activity more than testing but sometimes I feel it's useless to write tests in these scenarios. For example I have a simple scenario like **\"When user clicks check button, it should check file's validity\"**. For this scenario I usually start writing tests for presenter/controller class like the one below.               @Test     public void when_user_clicks_check_it_should_check_selected_file_validity(){         MediaService service =mock(MediaService);         View view =mock(View);              when(view.getSelectedFile).thenReturns(\"c:\\\\Dir\\\\file.avi\");              MediaController controller =new MediaController(service,view);         controller.check();              verify(service).check(\"c:\\\\Dir\\\\file.avi\");     }      As you can see there is no design decision or interesting code to verify behaviour. I am testing values from view passed to MediaService. I usually write but don't like these kind of tests. What do yo do about these situations ? Do you write tests for all the time ? **UPDATE :** I have changed the test name and code after complaints. Some users said that you should write tests for the trivial cases like this so in the future someone might add interesting behaviour. But what about \u201cCode for today, design for tomorrow.\u201d ? If someone, including myself, adds more interesting code in the future the test can be created for it then. Why should I do it now for the trivial cases ?"}
{"_id": "69519", "title": "When to go Fluent in C#?", "text": "In many respects I really like the idea of Fluent interfaces, but with all of the modern features of C# (initializers, lambdas, named parameters) I find myself thinking, \"is it worth it?\", and \"Is this the right pattern to use?\". Could anyone give me, if not an accepted practice, at least their own experience or decision matrix for when to use the Fluent pattern? **Conclusion:** Some good rules of thumb from the answers so far:   * Fluent interfaces help greatly when you have more actions than setters, since calls benefit more from the context pass-through.   * Fluent interfaces should be thought of as a layer over top of an api, not the sole means of use.   * The modern features such as lambdas, initializers, and named parameters, can work hand-in-hand to make a fluent interface even more friendly. * * * Here is an example of what I mean by the modern features making it feel less needed. Take for example a (perhaps poor example) Fluent interface that allows me to create an Employee like:               Employees.CreateNew().WithFirstName(\"Peter\")                          .WithLastName(\"Gibbons\")                          .WithManager()                               .WithFirstName(\"Bill\")                               .WithLastName(\"Lumbergh\")                               .WithTitle(\"Manager\")                               .WithDepartment(\"Y2K\");      Could easily be written with initializers like:               Employees.Add(new Employee()                   {                       FirstName = \"Peter\",                       LastName = \"Gibbons\",                       Manager = new Employee()                                 {                                      FirstName = \"Bill\",                                      LastName = \"Lumbergh\",                                      Title = \"Manager\",                                      Department = \"Y2K\"                                 }                   });      I could also have used named parameters in the constructors in this example."}
{"_id": "204909", "title": "Signing redistributed files", "text": "In order to submit a desktop application for the Windows 8 app store, you need to digitally sign any driver or .exe associated with the application. However, the application I was trying to submit contains several files that are redistributions of other companies' software, and some of these are not signed. My application was rejected on these grounds. Is it legal (or ethical) to sign other companies' work so that we can submit our application? I think it might be considered some form of false representation but I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "201368", "title": "Coding to SOA, External Dependency", "text": "This has happend to me more than once, thought someone can give some insight. I have worked on multiple projects where my project depends on external service. When I have to run the application locally, i would need that service to be up. But sometimes I would be coding to the next version of their service which may not be ready. So the question is, is there already a way that can have a mock service up and running that i could configure with some request and responses? For example, lets say that I have a local application that needs to make a rest call to some other service outside to obtain some data. E.g, say, for given a user, i need to find all pending shipments which would come from other service. But I dont have access to that service. In order to run my application, i need a working external service but I dont have access to it in my environment. Is there a better way rather than having to create a fake service?"}
{"_id": "201366", "title": "articles in variable names and hard-coding strings", "text": "re-edited by author: no this is not 2 questions. This is one question about code review questions containing two separate points. Please do not edit my question. For naming variables, the two sides are regarding using articles (a, an, the) in the variable name (e.g. theBook vs. book -or- parseTheString vs. parseString). For hard-coding strings, the three sides are whether to put all strings into constants (public static final) in a separate file (class or interface), put them all in the same file (private static final), or don't use constants for strings at all. (e.g. new Button(\"Click Me\") vs. new Button(BUTTON_LABEL_CLICK)). We also discuss the Hungarian notation issue quite a bit but I've seen that discussed here in other questions. For a very long time it has been the defacto standard to not use articles in variable names (adds visual clutter without adding value) and to not have hard-coded strings sprinkled through the source code (a potential maintenance nightmare and very poor for internationalization). Now we are starting to see violations of these and the developers seem truly surprised when someone marks these as defects or at least needing attention. The manager has said they don't care one way or the other and these points are not in our company coding standards."}
{"_id": "143429", "title": "Rpc transferring data or Replication", "text": "I have services on 10 machines that stores data in database on these machines. And I have main server that needs to pull that data from these ten machines. What is better for this. Implement some rpc or use replication?"}
{"_id": "241564", "title": "What is the evidence that an API has exceeded its orthogonality in the context of types?", "text": "Wikipedia defines software orthogonality as: > orthogonality in a programming language means that a relatively small set of > primitive constructs can be combined in a relatively small number of ways to > build the control and data structures of the language. The term is most- > frequently used regarding assembly instruction sets, as orthogonal > instruction set. Jason Coffin has defined software orthogonality as > Highly cohesive components that are loosely coupled to each other produce an > orthogonal system. C.Ross has defined software orthogonality as: > the property that means \"Changing A does not change B\". An example of an > orthogonal system would be a radio, where changing the station does not > change the volume and vice-versa. Now there is a hypothesis published in the the ACM Queue by Tim Bray \\- that some have called the _B\u00e1nffy Bray Type System Criteria_ \\- which he summarises as: >   1. Static typings attractiveness is a direct function (and dynamic typings > an inverse function) of API surface size. >   2. Dynamic typings attractiveness is a direct function (and static typings > an inverse function) of unit testing workability. > Now Stuart Halloway has reformulated Banfy Bray as: > the more your APIs exceed orthogonality, the better you will like static > typing My question is: **What is the evidence that an API has exceeded its orthogonality in the context of types?** * * * **Clarification** Tim Bray introduces the idea of orthogonality and APIs. Where you have one API and it is mainly dealing with Strings (ie a web server serving requests and responses), then a uni-typed language (python, ruby) is 'aligned' to that API - because the the type system of these languages isn't sophisticated, but it doesn't matter since you're dealing with Strings anyway. He then moves on to Android programming, which has a whole bunch of sensor APIs, which are all 'different' to the web server API that he was working on previously. Because you're not just dealing with Strings, but with different types, the API is non-orthogonal. Tim's point is that there is a empirical relationship between your 'liking' of types and the API you're programming against. (ie a subjective point is actually objective depending on your context)."}
{"_id": "135098", "title": "Documenting and enforcing programming standards and guidelines for shared library", "text": "Myself and another developer with the go ahead from our IT director have started a general purpose library in .NET with the intention that it will provide many common purpose classes that we use in our day to day development. During discussions and design of the library we have come up with a set of standards that we want the library to follow to ensure it is maintained and expanded on in a consistent manner. What is the best way to ensure these decisions we made for the library get feed to the other developers who might be using and adding to this library in the future. One of our decisions was to ensure we review all checked in code so we expect initially there to be some differences in coding styles of individuals not fitting in with the project standards. Some ideas I had were:   1. Add a Read-me.txt to the project that outline the guidelines and standards   2. Send an email out to everyone in the team to let them know about the project etc   3. Call a team meeting to go through this new project and our expectations and standards we were aiming to follow   4. Try and enforce the standards via Visual Studio (not sure if this would be possible or how just an idea) At the moment there is no general company programming standards so this would be a first really insofar as we are creating a standard that different project teams would need to adhere to."}
{"_id": "135099", "title": "Best way to handle class relationship", "text": "Take a User class and the idea that a User is to be profiled. I see four ways to handle this:   1. Write the code for the profile into the User class. I am dismissing this right away.   2. Create a Profile class and make it a property of the User class.   3. Write a User class (with the boiler-plate name, address stuff), write a Profile class, and write a UserProfile class - UserProfile is the union of User and Profile.   4. Write a User class and a Profile class that each have an ID property and let the ID act as the intersection. This way the User and Profile are independent and another class, possibly an abstract class with nothing but static methods handles the logic that describes the connection. Choices 3 and 4 each require at least three classes. For this case, which is the best choice? If possible to generalize this, would it generally be better to use one of these possibilities?"}
{"_id": "135094", "title": "Is there a way you'd implement a fast tree traversal method that would support dated versioning?", "text": "I've got a catalog at work and I want to juke it up a bit because I'm tired of it being extremely slow. I'd like to support the modified preorder tree traversal storage method for the category tree of the catalog but i'd have to support dated versionning. I've thought about creating versions of trees based on dates, so as soon as something changes I create a copy of the tree at hand at current date and then create my modifications. But the problem with that is that an import of a catalog that occurs every night would create, at long range, an extremely heavy table of tree traversal elements. Combined with the fact that a user could go and change a date anytime in the admin, it could then again generate another tree version. Most of our catalogs are comprised of 100-250 categories, so a few versions would not create more than a few thousand elements, but mix that to a year of operation, that would easily go up to 90000 entries just to store the tree that can change. So my question is this: Is there a way you'd implement a fast tree traversal method (preferably modified preorder with left and right columns) that would support dated versioning?"}
{"_id": "81379", "title": "Dijkstra's example of an ambiguous program", "text": "Salutations. Dijkstra wrote that even a few lines of seemingly simple code could be hopelessly ambiguous. In at least one work, which I can't find now to save my life, he gave a little example program to demonstrate this ambiguity. Can anybody point me to a paper of his where he includes one of these examples?"}
{"_id": "81370", "title": "What responses disqualify a candidate from hiring during the interview?", "text": "You are in the process of looking for candidates for a software development position, all the resumes are reviewed, and you made a couple of interview invites. Now, the folks show up in the conference room onsite, and you begin the back-and-forth talking about past experience, reviewing the resume, the personal development interests, etc. In your experiences of hiring, what were the responses (and questions) that you wished you had processed better initially that may have stopped you from hiring a poor candidate? I am looking for some _red flags_ to watch out for, and hoping to be discerning enough to not fall into any of this: Is there a correlation between buzz words and ability?"}
{"_id": "159196", "title": "Writing Unit Tests for a Class That Starts External EXE", "text": "I wrote a C# class that is used to start a list of EXEs (not one of mine - third party EXEs I have to run) and keep them running (will check occasionally to make sure it is still running, and start them if not). I am able to test the basic logic of adding, removing, etc fine. How do I Unit Test that the actual work of keeping EXEs will work? My initial thought is to start some dummy EXE that closes itself after 1 second, then use that to test. Is that out of the realm of Unit Testing?"}
{"_id": "159193", "title": "Is there ever a reason to do all an object's work in a constructor?", "text": "Let me preface this by saying this is not my code nor my coworkers' code. Years ago when our company was smaller, we had some projects we needed done that we did not have the capacity for, so they were outsourced. Now, I have nothing against outsourcing or contractors in general, but the codebase they produced is a mass of WTFs. That being said, it does (mostly) work, so I suppose it's in the top 10% of outsourced projects I've seen. As our company has grown, we've tried to take more of our development in house. This particular project landed in my lap so I've been going over it, cleaning it up, adding tests, etc etc. There's one pattern I see repeated a lot and it seems so mindblowingly awful that I wondered if maybe there is a reason and I just don't see it. The pattern is an object with no public methods or members, just a public constructor that does all the work of the object. For example, (the code is in Java, if that matters, but I hope this to be a more general question):               public class Foo {       private int bar;       private String baz;            public Foo(File f) {         execute(f);       }            private void execute(File f) {          // FTP the file to some hardcoded location,           // or parse the file and commit to the database, or whatever       }     }      If you're wondering, this type of code is often called in the following manner:               for(File f : someListOfFiles) {        new Foo(f);     }      Now, I was taught long ago that instantiated objects in a loop is generally a bad idea, and that constructors should do a minimum of work. Looking at this code it looks like it would be better to drop the constructor and make `execute` a public static method. I did ask the contractor why it was done this way, and the response I got was \"We can change it if you want\". Which was not really helpful. Anyway, is there ever a reason to do something like this, in any programming language, or is this just another submission to the Daily WTF?"}
{"_id": "159192", "title": "How best to enable a web service consumer to integration test a transactional web service?", "text": "I want to allow consumers of a web services layer (web services are written in Java) to create automated integration tests to validate that the version of the web services layer that the consumers will use will still work for the consumer (i.e. the web services are on a different release lifecycle than the consumers and their APIs or behavior might change-- they shouldn't change wihtout notifying the consumer, but the point of this automated test is to validate that they haven't changed) What would I do if the web service actually executes a transaction (updates database tables). Is there a common practice for how to handle this without having to put logic into the web service itself to know its in a unit test and rollback the transaction once finished? (basically baking in the capability to deal with testing of the web service). Or is that the recommended way to do it?"}
{"_id": "74877", "title": "Status \"Open\" and \"Reopened\"", "text": "Why issue tracker systems usually have distinct \"Opened\" and \"Reopened\" statuses?"}
{"_id": "200109", "title": "Is it legal to implement methodologies published in literature by others?", "text": "Many developers have read Getting Things Done and turned it into an app in one way or another. Some have have even dared to write programs based on other books despite the overwhelming popularity of GTD. Thinking Rock was the first one that I tried out. When you look at all of them out there on various platforms, both desktop and mobile, there have probably been far too many to list by now. Is this legal or are they just getting away with it? I would like to produce a mega-app, an integrated productivity environment, that minimalistically implements not only GTD, but as many books on my bookshelf as possible. This covers a broad range of topics: productivity, time-management, motivation, procrastination, brain/mind improvement, etc. I would also like to throw in ideas I get at random from articles, interviews, and other media. Finally, my personal favorite, I would like to implement the major categories of a game I've been addicted to for about twenty years now as a time-management methodology. Very briefly: **_Growth_** \\- exercise, diet, meditation and other related tasks; **_Science_** \\- math (Project Euler, Khan Academy), reading fiction and nonfiction, and other brain improving tasks; **_Gold_** \\- working a job, selling plasma, balancing your checkbook, and other finance-related tasks; **_Culture_** \\- writing, drawing, playing an instrument and other artistic tasks; **_Production_** \\- housework, yardwork, routine work, honey-do's and other high-urgency low-priority tasks; **_Wonders_** \\- projects of high importance: writing a book, writing a program, writing an album, starting a business, building a sculpture, re- building an engine, etc. I call all of this CivLife. If it makes a difference, I don't intend to profit from it. I would like it to be free/libre/open-source software. Is using the ideas of others like this legal? Would I get away with it? Is it dead in the water? I'm asking because it's an idea that's been stewing in my head for years. I got my BS-IT, but I don't have any experience, so I'm unemployed. I would like to make this program my experience and my life's work, but I don't want it to come back and bite me in the behind. p.s. If this is the kind of open-ended, debate-stirring, not-beneficial-to- everyone question that gets closed, I apologize and would be happy to refactor it."}
{"_id": "17507", "title": "problem in building my portfolio", "text": "i was working for a company as a php developer since last two years and worked on many websites and now the company is closed along with all of its websites and so i have to look for another company to hire me. But since the websites are down i can't write them on my resume. Actually i have tried that out telling them i worked on these sites but since the company is closed the websites are closed too and they did thought that i am lying and did not hire me. i am really stuck i will have to apply as a beginner and hence won't get much salary and will very hardly get a job (if at all) since some experienced programmers will be competing me. Anyone got a solution? **Edit:** actually you guys are right, i shouldn't work for a company who doesn't trust me. And i like the Josh K's solutions the most, thanks guys :)"}
{"_id": "200101", "title": "Google Datastore and deep records", "text": "I'm in the beginning of creating a website that uses Google Datastore to store information related to clients and I'm curious if the record is too deep for NoSQL or if I'm fine. Essentially I'll be storing details about clients at a fitness business that get's fairly detailed. A completely made up record example could be               {       firstName : \"Jon\",       lastName : \"Doe\",       assessment : [         {           date: \"2013-01-31\",           flexibility:             {               leftShoulder: \"12 whatevers\",               rightShoulder: \"15 somethings\",               ...etc...             }           strength:             {               legPress: \"100lb\",               shoulderPress: \"22lb\",               ...etc...             }           ...etc...         },         {           date: \"2013-02-28\",           flexibility:             {               leftShoulder: \"13 whatevers\",               rightShoulder: \"14 somethings\",               ...etc...             }           strength:             {               legPress: \"110lb\",               shoulderPress: \"25lb\",               ...etc...             }           ...etc...         }       ],       appearance: [         {           date: \"2013-04-12\",           image: \"http://blah\"         }         ...etc...       ]       ...lots of other sub items...     }      This record would exist long term for clients and could become a very large record over time. I've seen on MongoDB, which is also NoSQL, has a 16MB limit on a record. While this is is a large amount of space for text and is plenty for big records, I want to make sure this just doesn't indicate that I should be separating these out in regards to NoSQL. Instead, should I be separating out `assessment` and `appearance` records into their own separate records, linked by a _foreign key_ of some sort or does that defeat the purpose of NoSQL? What is the best practice for designing potentially long term, deep NoSQL records."}
{"_id": "200104", "title": "Is user story the best form of requirement in agile project?", "text": "Statistically speaking, user story maybe the most popular requirement technique in Agile but I am curious to know the alternatives and why."}
{"_id": "200106", "title": "Formal definition of \"concepts / type system\" for parametric types - Where to start?", "text": "I would be interested in formally defining (and consequently demonstrating) a \"type system\" for, well, a type system. More specifically, I would like to explore the idea of what C++ calls concepts for my bachelor's thesis. **How would one go about defining such system (formally) ?** It's basically a meta- language for generic programming I suppose, but all the material I've found so far is basically bound to syntax of a specific programming language. The basic idea is to provide an interface for parametric types. For example:   An argument for the function `foo(T)` is some (unfortunately any) T. (This type is known **statically**.) And, I would like to define an interface for such type, so that this T is actually not any T, but some type that complies to an interface, such as: \" _In order for this type to be legal for the function foo, it needs to comply to: This and that concept / interface to statically check against_.\" Concepts would define related, meaningful \"interfaces\" that would constrain the type T. Currently, the language C++ doesn't do any such checks, it simply tries to do whatever it is that `foo(T)` does on **any** type and hopes it works. If it doesn't the error message is of length of a decent novel, as the error is detected too late and the compiler needs to \"spit out\" the entire process of how it got to an error. I would eventually like to show the concept (errm, idea, sorry for the ambiguity) on the C++ specifically, if that's any relevant. Thanks, ~Scarlet"}
{"_id": "13470", "title": "How do programmers quit a job?", "text": "I'm thinking about leaving my current employer and wondering how one goes about that process in the programming world. We have a lot of projects on the go at the moment and I'm the only developer. We have 4-5 projects that are fairly big and need to be done in the next few months and even a few longer than that. I'm leaving because I'm the only employee and that's doing me no good. I'm young and want to learn, so a team would be nice. It's also too much work and the company is managed horribly. I have no contract to worry about so I could theoretically quit and just not come back without notice. Just wondering how this is _normally_ handled.   * Should I write a resignation letter   * How much notice should I give   * Should I give a reason for leaving   * Should I go to my boss who is the main reason I'm leaving or go to his boss? **Overview of replies** From the feedback here, it looks as though it's best to give 2-4 weeks of notice, and present a written resignation. Don't go into detail explaining why you're leaving in most cases. Don't burn bridges. Be professional."}
{"_id": "41949", "title": "More code = more bugs", "text": "Back in college I remember a professor teaching the class one of the laws of computer science. He said something like \"More code equals more bugs\" and gave it a name (The Law Of Whatchamacallit) and attributed it to someone. Does anyone know where this \"law\" comes from, who said it or what it's original verbiage is?"}
{"_id": "41947", "title": "Ruby on Rails and DRY", "text": "I've started to learn a little ROR and everthing I read says that ROR espouses the DRY principle and they seem to imply that this is a big thing that makes ROR different from other languages/frameworks. What language _does_ encourage duplicate code?"}
{"_id": "41945", "title": "Should I forward the a call to .Equals onto .Equals<T>?", "text": "So, I've got you bog standard c# object, overriding Equalsand implementing IEquatable                   public override int GetHashCode()         {             return _name.GetHashCode();         }              public override bool Equals(object obj)         {             return Equals(obj as Tag)         }              #region IEquatable<Tag> Members              public bool Equals(Tag other)         {             if (other == null)                 return false;             else                 return _name == other._name;         }              #endregion      Now, for some reason, I used to think that forwarding the calls from Equals into Equals was bad, no idea why, perhaps I read it a long time ago, anyway I'd write separate (but logically same) code for each method. Now I think forwarding Equals to Equals is okay, for obvious reasons, but for the life me I can't remember why I thought it wasn't before. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "41941", "title": "TDD/Tests too much an overhead/maintenance burden?", "text": "So you've heard it many times from those who do not truly understand the values of testing. Just to start things out, I'm a follower of Agile and Testing... I recently had a discussion about performing TDD on a product re-write where the current team does not practice unit testing on any level, and probably have never heard of the dependency injection technique or test patterns/design etc (we won't even get on to clean code). Now, I am fully responsible for the rewrite of this product and I'm told that attempting it in the fashion of TDD, will merely make it a maintenance nightmare and impossible for the team maintain. Furthermore, as it's a front- end application (not web-based), adding tests is pointless, as the business drive changes (by changes they mean improvements of course), the tests will become out of date, other developers who come on to the project in the future will not maintain them and become more of a burden for them to fix etc. I can understand that TDD in a team that does not currently hold any testing experience doesn't sound good, but my argument in this case is that I can teach my practice to those around me, but further more, I know that TDD makes BETTER software. Even if I was to produce the software using TDD, and throw all the tests away on handing it over to a maintenance team, it surely would be a better approach than not using TDD at all from the start? I've been shot down as I've mentioned doing TDD on most projects for a team that have never heard of it. The thought of \"interfaces\" and strange looking DI constructors scares them off... Can anyone please help me in what is normally a very short conversation of trying to sell TDD and my approach to people? I usually have a very short window of argument before falling at the knees to the company/team."}
{"_id": "218054", "title": "Is throwing an error in unpredictable subclass-specific circumstances a violation of LSP?", "text": "Let's say I wanted to create a Java `List<String>` (see spec) implementation that uses a complex subsystem, such as a database or file system, for its store so that it acts as a persistent collection rather than an in-memory one. So here's a skeleton implementation:               class DbBackedList implements List<String> {       private DbBackedList() {}       /** Returns a list, possibly non-empty */       public static getList() { return new DbBackedList(); }       public String get(int index) {         return Db.getTable().getRow(i).asString();  // may throw DbExceptions!       }       // add(String), add(int, String), etc. ...     }      My problem lies with the fact that the underlying DB API may encounter connection errors that are not specified in the List interface that it should throw. My problem is whether this violates Liskov's Substitution Principle (LSP). In his paper on LSP, Bob Martin actually gives an example of a PersistentSet that violates LSP. The difference is that his newly-specified `Exception` there is determined by the inserted value and so is strengthening the precondition. In my case the connection/read error is unpredictable and due to external factors and so is not technically a new precondition, merely an error of circumstance, perhaps like OutOfMemoryError which can occur even when unspecified. In normal circumstances, the new Error/Exception might never be thrown. (The caller could catch if it is aware of the possibility, just as a memory- restricted Java program might specifically catch OOME.) Is this therefore a valid argument for throwing an extra error and can I still claim to be a valid `java.util.List` (or pick your SDK/language/collection in general) and not in violation of LSP? _**Edit:** This argument might be more palatable if you consider a `FileBackedList` (more reliable \"connection\") rather than a `DbBackedList`._ If this does indeed violate LSP and thus not practically usable, I have provided two less-palatable alternative solutions as answers that you can comment on, see below. * * * **Footnote: Use Cases** In the simplest case, the goal is to provide a familiar interface for cases when (say) a database is just being used as a persistent list, and allow regular List operations such as search, subList and iteration. Another, more adventurous, use-case is as a slot-in replacement for libraries that work with basic Lists, e.g if we have a third-party task queue that usually works with a plain List:   `new TaskWorkQueue(new ArrayList<String>()).start()` which is susceptible to losing all it's queue in event of a crash, if we just replace this with:   `new TaskWorkQueue(new DbBackedList()).start()` we get a instant persistence and the ability to share the tasks amongst more than one machine. In either case, we could either handle connection/read exceptions that are thrown, perhaps retrying the connection/read first, or allow them to throw and crash the program (e.g. if we can't change the TaskWorkQueue code)."}
{"_id": "218051", "title": "Does facebook store multiple password hashes for each user?", "text": "I noticed that Facebook allows multiple variants of my own password :   * My password as it is.   * My password with first letter capitalized.   * My password with all letters capitalized. It is commonly known that passwords are stored as hashes. So my question is, does facebook store multiple hashes for each user? Since the hash of each variant should be completely different... Or am I missing something, here? And there may be more combinations, besides the one I observed as well. This is obviously done to provide a better user experience & they probably have a statistical explanation of people repeating these mistakes. But I could not help but wonder, is it worth to increase so many lookups (in their database) just to help the user type a wrong password? On top of this, they warn about the caps lock (even though they don't seem to care) : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KEtG4.png) * * * I found these two relevant links in this regard:   * How much security is compromised if we accept other characters as login.   * Facebook passwords are not case sensitive (update)"}
{"_id": "244421", "title": "Can decoupling hurt maintainability in certain situations?", "text": "Can the fact that the business logic is mapped to interfaces instead of implementations actually hinder the maintenance of the application in certain situations? A naive example with the Java's Hibernate framework would be, that for example (provided I don't have the whole code-base in my head, the project structure is a mess and classes are named with arbitrary names) if I wish to see what's going on in a certain DAO, to see if it actually is doing what it's supposed to do, then instead of traversing backwards up the tree from the point where the data service is invoked (where the tree will end in an interface with no implementation details whatsoever apart from the signature) I have to for example go and look for a configuration XML file to see which class is mapped to said interface as the implementation before being able to access the actual implementation details. Are there any situations where having loose coupling can actually hurt maintainability?"}
{"_id": "235638", "title": "According to software engineering which method are too long?", "text": "I was just working with a method of about 70 lines of code developed by others. It uses a very nice pattern structure, stuff like IOC container, but I wonder.. The method is too long? Is it a so long method still easily readable? The question could be finished, but now starts the premise from which my question has originated. * * * Before realizing its length (excessive for me) I was getting bored while trying to understand what it was doing. It's full of instruction of this kind:               if (success == null)     {         //Log response error         logger.LogProviderActionResponse(userId, \"actionName\", transactionRequestId,             _configuration.ResponseLogErrorTryAgainId, xmlResponse.InnerXml.ToXml(true));         return new CheckActionResult(ActionStatus.Failed);     }      What is it doing and why? It deals with logging of course, because the `success` variable is null, but what does it imply? And also there are many parameters, what is their meaning? I would need to read it carefully, to study it. The problem is that this method implements an interface and an abstract class, it has many siblings. Copy and pasted siblings which share the same structural behavior. But it's not immediate to distinguish structural information from domain specific information. In developing a new action or a new provider I should only need to copy, paste and modify **domain specific** stuff. But it's hard.. since they are deeply mixed together with structural behavior... ## Refactoring I would do to raise the readability   * ### 1st step surround all this logging with a #region that can be collapsed   * ### 2nd step could be to use Extract Method to trasnsform the previous log call to a single instruction. Something like: Log.LogWithReason(Success.IsEmpty); But the usage of return conflicts with this purpose requiring extra effort.   * ### 3rd step would be to completely separate the Logging responsability (using AOP? Implementing it in the base class? using events?). If one method has 5 / 8 calls to the log for different reasons. It's too much aware of logging. In my opinion the Single responsibility principle is violated since the methods has gained the secondary responsability of being strongly aware about logging. * * * The question remains the one specified in the title but I hope to read a very mature comparison here based on the seeds idea I've wrote! Thanks for your contribute"}
{"_id": "128891", "title": "Should a code review be different for front-end web developers?", "text": "Web developers code in a minimum of four languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a server-side language), must produce a working result in several different browser implementations, and may work on the top of a custom software stack that they don't control.   * How should a code review take these things into account?   * Should a code review include all parts of a front-end project (HTML and CSS as well), or just focus on the logic?   * How should a code review handle workarounds for browser- or stack-specific problems?"}
{"_id": "140270", "title": "Protecting your interests as a freelance web designer", "text": "What is the best way to protect your interests as a freelance web designer when:   1. The client is unresponsive and takes a long time to make decisions    2. The client makes constant changes   3. Feature creep"}
{"_id": "128897", "title": "Getting involved in an open-source Python-Java project", "text": "I'm a first-year PhD student in Ireland. My background is in mathematics, though I'm going to stream my career into programming with Python, Java and C++ languages. I have some good experience with C++ what allowed me to have a presentation in Europe quite recently - I participated in an open-source cloud computing project. I used Python a little bit in this project, though mainly it was in C++. I was reading a beautiful \"Thinking in Java\" book this summer while looking for a PhD. I have no experience in Java. I learned some Python while writing a website based on Django. I love programming languages since my childhood - I started with Pascal and C. Since then I have not been programming all the time of course. I know some other auxiliary tools like Git, SVN, SQL, XML and javascript. I want to take my concentration in hands and remember design patterns by the way. Now... I have earned some money to have food for 2 years. I really want to find a job, but there is no interesting job on the market or my skills are not enough to get one. So I really want to learn Python and Java in parallel by reading books (have already chosen proper ones), searching google (got used to it) and most important writing code and thus I think to participate in an open-source project again. Could you please list me 2 or 3 projects in Python and/or Java which are currently active (vivid) and useful?"}
{"_id": "125867", "title": "Did I understand the website \"autologin\" feature right?", "text": "I'm developing an authentication library (*) for a website and I realized that maybe I'm not completely understanding what an \"autologin\" feature is, and how to develop it. While gathering infos and studying other code I came across a couple of libraries which implement the option to login the user without having to sign in (these libraries are Tank Auth and Ion Auth, built for the PHP framework CodeIgniter); basically they work on creating a cookie which, in case the user is not logged (session datas are not set) but this cookie is found, it allows them to login nonetheless. Ok, so far it's clear. What I don't understand, though, is why both library _delete_ the autologin cookie when the user logs out. I mean: I log in, I check the \"remember me\" option (**), I do what I need to do in my admin panel, then I log out; if the autologin cookie is deleted, next time I'll have to log in again by filling the form, ignoring the option I flagged. What's its purpose then? I thought this \"autologin\" would be an extendend login which allowed me to _avoid_ having to fill in the sign in form again. So I went on and developed my autologin feature, but of course I bumped into the problem of not being able to logout _at all_ , as I'm not deleting it. So I log out, redirect to the home page, then go to the admin panel and the system logs me in...well, it works as expected, but I'm not sure if this is how it's meant to be...How should this be done correctly? Can someone explain to me how this actually should work? I'm getting a bit confused P.S. Don't know if this is the right place to ask it, or if SO is a better fit; I'm sorry if I posted on the wrong SE site. (*) Please don't tell me _\"don't reinvent the wheel\"_ or any variant of it; I'm doing this to learn and I'm planning to make it an open source project for the public amusement, so I volutarily _do_ want to reinvent the wheel, at the cost of making it oval. (**) I think I guessed the difference between the \"remember me\" option and the \"autologin\" feature; so far, I didn't consider the first one ( 1-because many browsers ask you to do that nonetheless; 2-because I don't know how to do it right, i.e. how to have the login fields automatically filled without this posing the security threat of having the password stored in clear text inside a cookie), but please tell me if I misunderstood this also.."}
{"_id": "152517", "title": "How should I host our scalable worker processes?", "text": "We are designing a new architecture for an enterprise business. The principles we've followed so far is not to develop what you can (possible buy and) deploy, ie, don't reinvent any wheels. In this way we've decided on CQRS, RabbitMQ, Riak and a bunch of other things. We still need to write /some/ business code though and these will be in the form of worker processes, which will consume commands from a message queue and after any side-effects, produce events onto another message queue. The idea behind this is that via the competing-consumers design we will have a scalable design right out of the box. One option is of writing a management infrastructure that will know how to:   * deploy code   * instantiate processes   * kill processes   * update configuration   * etc IE provide fault tolerance and scalability. Also, this is exactly what something like GAE and Heroku does for you, but in a public setting and in our organization, public is bad. My question is, is there an out-of-the-box solution that we can use to host our consumers in? Like a private cloud or private platform-as-a-service. Private Heroku or GAE. Is there some kind of software or software product with which we can do all of these things and thereby get scalability and fault tolerance over our consumers?"}
{"_id": "238809", "title": "How to adhere to the open-closed principle in practice", "text": "I understand the intent of the open-closed principle. It's meant to reduce the risk of breaking something that already works while modifying it, by telling you to try to extend without modifying. However, I had some trouble understanding how this principle is applied in practice. To my understanding, there are two ways to apply it. Beofore and after a possible change:   1. Before: program to abstractions and 'predict the future' as much as you can. For example, a method `drive(Car car)` will have to change if `Motorcycle`s are added to the system in the future, so it probably violates OCP. But the method `drive(MotorVehicle vehicle)` is less likely to have to change in the future, so it adheres to OCP. However, it's quite difficult to predict the future and know in advance what changes are going to be made to the system.   2. After: when a change is needed, extend a class instead of modifying it's current code. Practice #1 isn't hard to understand. However it's practice #2 that I'm having trouble understanding how to apply. For example (I took it from a video on YouTube): let's say we have a method in a class that accepts `CreditCard` objects: `makePayment(CraditCard card)`. One day `Voucher`s are added to the system. This method doesn't support them so it has to be modified. When implementing the method in the first place we failed to predict the future and program in more abstract terms (e.g. `makePayment(Payment pay)`, so now we have to change the existing code. Practice #2 says we should add the functionality by extending instead of modifying. **What does that mean? Should I subclass the existing class instead of simply changing it's existing code?** Should I make some kind of wrapper around it just to avoid rewriting code? **Or does the principle not even refer to 'how to correctly modify/add functionality', but rather refers to 'how to avoid having to make changes in the first place (i.e. program to abstractions)?**"}
{"_id": "125860", "title": "PHP, Python, C# for web and desktop applications", "text": "I am a 10 year PHP developer. Just recently I have taken a little bit of an interests in C# after seeing that you can build native Windows desktop programs as well as build sites like Stackoverflow. It's like the best of both worlds. Now recently I started using a text editor many know of called SublimeText which is coded with C++ and has Python embedded so that the users can create almost anything in Python and use it as a plugin for this text editor, I never seen anything like that. This got me looking into Python, as I had always thought Python was just like another language similar to PHP ( a scripting language mainly for the web) but now I am seeing that you can create Desktop programs that work on any OS, make web apps like you can in PHP so it's almost like what you can do with C# but with the added benefit of being multi- platform Now this is no way a One Language vs Another Language debate, I am simply trying to find out more about how these foreign languages to me compare:   * PHP is scripting    * Python I think is scripting    * C# has to be compiled?  Python can be used to build anything C# can? Including fast desktop applicaions, can Python application be compiled into an EXE file or how does that work to use Python program on Windows? Please help me understand I have been stuck in the PHP world for a long time I have never ventured out past Javascript, PHP web stuff Also I am aware that PHP can be used to make GUIs but from what I have read, they are not that good or it is not that good for doing them, something like that."}
{"_id": "62428", "title": "Hotswap and alternatives?", "text": "Since the early days of my college life I have been using Java and biggest problem that we have is absolutely being less productive than other interpreted languages. All people are sure that java is one of the best compiled language. However, neither Sun nor Oracle has put enough effort in to solve this problem. One of the problem is, of course, class reloading. Latest attempts from community to solve this problem are DaVinci Hotswap project, JRebel, PlayFramework. However, at the time of this writing they were still not mature (imo) and native. Some of them are not enterprise ready, some of them are not compatible with all IDEs, some of them are immature universtiy projects. The road map and even developer ready Java is ready, but the Java community still does not have a solution for on the fly class reloading. Is it so difficult for Oracle to put effort forth to solve this problem? Why has class reloading not been implemented natively yet?"}
{"_id": "63009", "title": "What are the legal requirements for verifying a user's age? (United States)", "text": "I'm working on a website where we expect many of our users to be under 18. Our lawyer told us that anyone under 18 will need their parents to agree to the Terms of Service, since they aren't legally able to do it themselves. So my question is, how thoroughly do we need to verify a user's age? Is it enough to just ask them?"}
{"_id": "175428", "title": "What are good resources for preparing to answer web development interview questions?", "text": "The standard programmer interview books and websites go over simple algorithm and coding questions. But how does one prepare for high-level questions on building websites? For example, \"How would you build website X? What data structures would you use? etc.\" Is there a good site or book to read that reviews such material?"}
{"_id": "237678", "title": "variable overwriting in PHP", "text": "For example I have this code:               $route = 'product/category';          //variable overload     $type  = explode('/',$route);     $type  = $type[1];      My thinking behind this is that I actually don't need unique variable name for exploded variable, so why not to overwrite? Is this really bad concept? Or is there some more elegant way to write this?"}
{"_id": "175427", "title": "May I make an installer bundle GPL and payware together?", "text": "I have an affiliate marketing client who needs to know if I can program this. Can I do one or both of the following scenarios without violating the GPL license? Scenario A: Make a software installer for a GPL licensed product which includes source, binaries, and license info. The installer also has a checkbox for installing optional software that's payware. (In this case, the payware is free crippleware, but has a registration upsell to provide more features.) The two products will not share libraries or anything else. Scenario B: Same as A, but reversed. So, the installer installs the payware, but there's a checkbox to also install the GPL software. And, again, when you install the GPL software, it comes with binaries, source, and license info."}
{"_id": "81951", "title": "Can you reference one data value by a name throughout a stylesheet?", "text": "For example, I'm changing color pallettes throughout a site i'm coding and would love it if i could reference that color somehow instead of replacing the hex value for every item. I know the following doesn't work but i'd like something similar.               color1 = red;     color2 = blue;     color3 = green;          h1 {     color: color1;     background-color: color2;     }          h2 {     color: color2;     background-color: color3;     }"}
{"_id": "118977", "title": "Why would you create a deployment script in PowerShell when you have TFS?", "text": "I'm experimenting with automatic deployment / continuous integration and had a talk with my team lead. I told him I'm investigating creating build/deployment scripts in PowerShell and he said automatic deployment is very easy to set up in TFS using a GUI and I should research that instead. I have zero experience with TFS except for commiting to source control from VS. In which situations would TFS fail and would you be better off with PowerShell for automatic deployment? What other reasons and advantages are there to choose PowerShell instead of TFS? And another thing: Could I run a third party tool that, for example, minifies JS files from TFS? Some advantages of PowerShell I could think of:   * PowerShell offers maximum flexibility   * You can easily switch to another source control system such as Mercurial   * The scripts will be easier to maintain than what TFS generates   * PowerShell is light weight: you can run the script on any PC"}
{"_id": "118971", "title": "Is cloud computing just a way of renting resources?", "text": "The company I work at recently hosted a web service in Windows Azure and announced that. Now trade online magazines say lots of meaningless stuff like \"company X moves to the cloud\", \"company X drops desktops for the cloud\", etc. Looks like there're lots of materials out there (starting with Wikipedia) that are very lengthy and talk a lot about \"services\" and \"low entry price\" and other stuff but I've read all that and don't see how they could be helpful for a layman in drawing a line between a service in a cloud and Stack Exchange that is also a service but is run on brick-and-mortar servers in a colocation. Now from my experience with Windows Azure the real difference is the following. With a cloud the service owner rents hardware, network bandwidth and right to use the middleware (Windows 2008 that is used in Azure roles for example) on demand and also there's some maintenance assistance (like if the computer where a role is running crashes another computer is automatically found and the role is redeployed). Without a cloud the service owner will have to deal with all that on his own. Will that be the right distinction?"}
{"_id": "84939", "title": "How does one manage an intern effectively?", "text": "An intern will be starting with us soon for a couple months before going off to university. The intern is straight-out of high school and has some programming experience, but has never taken a university level computer science course or held a programming job. In addition, the intern has never used 99 percent of the technologies at our shop. As team lead/manager, I know there are a hundred different programming tasks that the team needs to get done. I don't want to overload the intern, but I still want the intern to be useful. From someone that has had a similar experience how did you manage the intern in regard to:   1. Did you micro-manage the intern or were you easygoing?   2. Did you explain parts of the code-base or leave it up to the intern to figure out?   3. Did you give the intern access to source-control or did you manually commit their changes after checking them?   4. Did you enforce coding standards/rules? Please answer the questions and mention what you thought worked best for 1-4. Did I forget anything?"}
{"_id": "119249", "title": "Effective Mentoring Criteria", "text": "What should be the basic things that should a mentor or team lead or anyone (experienced) in the team do to groom up or mentor a newly joined developer?? -"}
{"_id": "139666", "title": "Programming IDEs feature to add a forgotten open parentheses?", "text": "I very often find myself in situations where I should have opened a parentheses, but forgot and end up furiously tapping the left arrow key to get to the spot I should have put it, and doing the same to get back to where I was - that, or removing one hand from the keyboard to do it with the mouse. Either way, it's a stupid mistake on my part and a poor use of time going back to fix it. For example, if typing something like               var x = 100 - var1 + var2;      I might get to the end of the statement and realize I wanted to subtract the sum of var1 and var2 from 100 and not add var2 to the difference of 100 and var1. I can't really expect an IDE to prevent my mistakes, but I was thinking there could be a simple enough feature that would save time when they're made. Specifically, some kind of function that, after a closing parenthesis is added where there isn't an opening one, would start ghosting in an opening parenthesis at different statements and allow the user to switch between them. For example: Say you have the following statement:               var x = oldY * oldX + newY / newX - left - right;      If you put a closing parenthesis after `right` and pressed the shortcut, the IDE would do: `var x = oldY * oldX + newY / newX - **(** left - right);` press left, and then: `var x = oldY * oldX + newY / **(** newX - left - right);` ...then: `var x = oldY * oldX + **(** newY / newX - left - right);` Anyway... Does this feature exist? If not, should it exist? What do senior programmers do when this happens?"}
{"_id": "135320", "title": "How should I add functionality to an object that already exists?", "text": "I have an interface that has a certain amount of well-defined functionality. Let's say:               interface BakeryInterface {       public function createCookies();       public function createIceCream();     }      This works well for most implementations of the interface, but in a few instances, I need to add some new functionality (like perhaps rolled into a new method, `createBrownies()`). The obvious/naive approach to doing this would be to extend the interface:               interface BrownieBakeryInterface extends BakeryInterface {       public function createBrownies();     }      But has a pretty big downside in that I can't add the new functionality without modifying the existing API (like changing the class to use the new interface). I was thinking about using an adapter to add the functionality after instantiation:               class BrownieAdapter {       private brownieBakery;            public function construct(BakeryInterface bakery) {         this->brownieBakery = bakery;       }            public function createBrownies() {         /* ... */       }     }      Which would net me something like:               bakery = new Bakery();     bakery = new BrownieBakery(bakery);     bakery->createBrownies();      This seems like a good solution to the problem, but I'm wondering if I'm awakening the old gods by doing it. Is the adapter the way to go? Is there a better pattern to follow? Or should I really just be biting the bullet and just extending the original interface?"}
{"_id": "163168", "title": "How important is Discrete Mathematics for a Computer Scientist?", "text": "As the title says, **How important is Discrete Mathematics for a Computer Scientist?** Background: I'm pursuing a Master's degree with a focus on fundamentals such as Algorithms, Complexity and Computability Theory and Programming Languages to get a good foundation for working in the field of Parallel Computing. Some more background: My university grants a lot of freedom in the choices of courses for my Master's degree. It's officially called \"Software Engineering\", but due to a the broad range of electives, a different focus is possible. Interestingly, none of the electives is a lecture in Math! I'm thinking about doing a course about Discrete Mathematics that would take half a semester to complete successfully, even if I can't use it for my degree. So with this question I'm trying to find out if the effort is justifiable."}
{"_id": "208805", "title": "Can I use a dual license in my commercial Website", "text": "I have set up a web application which is of commercial use. This application had to make use of the plugin(which is not downloaded from http://plugins.jquery.com) I downloaded this plugin from http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle2 Kindly, let me know if I could use this plugin in my commercial website. If I do, would it cause any consequences in future? Though, I could see few answers here, I would like to Insist upon itself on this as of critical importance. Licensing Terms"}
{"_id": "80023", "title": "Boring but important niches that would be a best-practices-consulting gold mine", "text": "I am absolutely convinced that you one make a very good living as a consultant that helps customers with deep understanding of and practical knowledge in one of the following topics   * Time zones, daylight saving time and leap days/seconds in software processing any kind of events   * Character encodings  Both are small niches hard to get right if you are lacking knowledge and profound experience but come up in many projects. Hence, there would be customers who want to avoid mistakes, and those who have messed things up and need help urgently. However, those topics are unsexy and probably full of many details that most would find boring, but I know that there are people out there who thrive on solving hard problems of any kind. So my questions are:   * What are similarly bland but important and highly specific niches in the kind of software you develop?   * Do you know people that actually do consulting on one of these topics? Edit: I'm talking about a skill level that goes beyond being able to build a decent implementation on your own -- to be able to quickly bring a system towards best practices after other people have really messed it up. The latter is not something you can quickly pick up. Oh, and btw: I'm not thinking about moving into these areas, and wouldn't do it for a lot of money. That's exactly why I think that this boring kind of stuff could earn somebody a good living."}
{"_id": "128760", "title": "Should programmers be fluent users of office suites?", "text": "As a .NET/web developer, my daily works mainly involve with Visual Studio, FireBug, SQL Server,..., and I'm quite fluent at them. The problem is, my Office (Microsoft Office in particular, and office software in general) skills are bad. I _can_ use them, of course, but at basic level. I can write documents, create presentations, but I can just type/edit/delete in Excel, but any _advanced_ features. My question is: is it tolerance for a programmer, like me, to be bad at office software?"}
{"_id": "85012", "title": "Looking for the fastest way to collect form data", "text": "I am developing an application in Flex. There are 20+ 'pages', each with its own form. I need to collect all the entered data and pass it to an API method. What I am wondering is when I should begin to pass the data and what the best way to collect it might be. I was thinking of instantiating a class               public class myCollectorClass      The API method has 10 parameters, 4 of which are not determined by the forms. Of the 6 remaining parameters, 5 are simple strings with few options. Those are not the difficult part. It is the last parameter that is the most difficult to work with:               public var myDataSet:DataSet[]; //DataSet is a data type from the API      The forms fall into two categories: Geographical Data which controls the geographical area of the API return values. And Search Data which controls the type of data returned within the geographical parameters. For instance, if you are looking for an IT company in the US Zip code 93003. As you can see, the geo and search parameters are arrays not simple strings and a typical collection will contain multiple zip coes, area codes SCBA codes etc., as well as hundreds of search parameters. Would it be better for me to pass each selected value to the array each time a value is entered?               btnAddParameter.addEventListener(Event.CLICK, dataHandler)      Or pass all of the values at the end right before an order is placed?               for each dataContainer in myClass     {         var dataObj:Object;         dataContainer.value = dataObj;         myParamArray.addItem(dataObject)     }"}
{"_id": "163163", "title": "Name for this antipattern? Fields as local variables", "text": "In some code I'm reviewing, I'm seeing stuff that's the moral equivalent of the following:               public class Foo     {         private Bar bar;              public MethodA()         {             bar = new Bar();             bar.A();             bar = null;         }              public MethodB()         {             bar = new Bar();             bar.B();             bar = null;         }     }      The field `bar` here is _logically_ a local variable, as its value is never intended to persist across method calls. However, since many of the methods in `Foo` need an object of type `Bar`, the original code author has just made a field of type `Bar`.   1. This is obviously bad, right?   2. Is there a name for this antipattern?"}
{"_id": "80024", "title": "Importance of certifications for Java programmer without BS degree?", "text": "I've read some posts here and other places about how a lot of people don't put much value in certifications but I am beginning to think it may be necessary for me at this point to be able to move to a bigger company, etc. I currently work as a Java programmer with a startup and worked with a small company before that. Now that I'm applying with larger companies the hr people / recruiters have been asking a lot about certifications and some have directly suggested that someone in my position should probably get a few (they were trying to be helpful) since I haven't completed a BS degree yet (I bounced around a bit in college and ended up not finishing but have enough units to finish eventually, just its not something I can do nearly as easily as getting certifications). Anyways, just curious about what people think for someone in my situation where I do have an interested in working for large companies and do not currently have a BS degree (but do have experience already in the field). Any advice on which certifications beyond the SCJP would be appreciated as well"}
{"_id": "134055", "title": "What are some good small-scale refactoring tests?", "text": "I'm looking to test potential candidates on their ability to develop concise, reusable code. I feel like a good test of that skill would be to give them a very small scale application or class hierarchy with problems ranging from obvious to complex, and have them take a shot at re-factoring it (or at least verbally explaining some things they would change). I would be looking for things like application of object-oriented design principles, use of design patterns, re-usability, showing clear intent, etc. Before I try making this myself, I'm wondering if anyone could suggest some existing template programs that people have created for the same purpose. I don't care too much about the language, but C# or Java would be preferred because of their wide use. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "155980", "title": "Performance of concurrent software on multicore processors", "text": "Recently I have often read that, since the trend is to build processors with multiple cores, it will be increasingly important to have programming languages that support concurrent and parallel programming in order to better exploit the parallelism offered by these processors (see e.g. this video for some background.). In this respect, certain programming paradigms or models are considered well- suited for writing robust concurrent software:   * Functional programming languages, e.g. Haskell, Scala, etc.   * The actor model: Erlang, but also available for Scala / Java (Akka), C++ (Theron, Casablanca, ...), and other programming languages. My questions:   * What is the state of the art regarding the development of concurrent applications (e.g. using multi-threading) using the above languages / models? Is this area still being explored or are there well-established practices already?   * Will it be more complex to program applications with a higher level of concurrency, or is it just a matter of learning new paradigms and practices?   * How does the performance of highly concurrent software compare to the performance of more traditional software when executed on multiple core processors?   * For example, has anyone implemented a desktop application using C++ / Theron, or Java / Akka? Was there a boost in performance on a multiple core processor due to higher parallelism? **EDIT** NOTE that I am not asking for your opinions or for debate but for concrete experiences or information. For example, has anyone written a Scala or Haskell program, compiled it with existing state-of-the-art compilers, and   1. Run it on an Intel Core i3 and measured a certain performance (e.g. 10 seconds on certain input data).   2. Run **the same** bytecode or binary on an Intel Core i5 and observed a performance boost (e.g. 6 seconds running time) due to the parallel computation of sub-expressions which is possible in functional code? **EDIT 2** SUMMARIZING. Up to now making faster processors meant increasing the clock speed, and no changes in programming paradigm were needed. In the last few years making faster processor has meant adding more cores but this requires we write software differently. My question is whether software developers are starting to switch to new programming paradigms and whether this is bringing the expected performance boost on multiple-core processors."}
{"_id": "48451", "title": "What is the best unit test framework for .NET and why?", "text": "It seems to me that everyone uses **NUnit** without even considering the other options. I think this is because:   * Everyone is familiar with it already so they won't have to learn a new API.   * It is already set up with their continuous integration server to work with NUnit. Am I wrong about this? I decided to use **xUnit** on one of my own projects recently and I love it! It makes so much more sense to me and conceptually it seems like a definite step forward from NUnit. I'd like to hear opinions on which framework is actually the best - not taking into consideration having to learn it or reconfigure your automated testing."}
{"_id": "155987", "title": "Oracle has some very helpful and free code...I think", "text": "I found that some of the code that Oracle uses is very useful so I don't have to re-invent the wheel. Given this is at the top of the file where the code in question is:               /*     * Copyright (c) 1997, 2006, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.     * DO NOT ALTER OR REMOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICES OR THIS FILE HEADER.     *     * This code is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it     * under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 only, as     * published by the Free Software Foundation.  Oracle designates this     * particular file as subject to the \"Classpath\" exception as provided     * by Oracle in the LICENSE file that accompanied this code.     *     * This code is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT     * ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or     * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License     * version 2 for more details (a copy is included in the LICENSE file that     * accompanied this code).     *     * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License version     * 2 along with this work; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,     * Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.     *     * Please contact Oracle, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA     * or visit www.oracle.com if you need additional information or have any     * questions.     */      If I leave the text intact, put it in my C++ header, and credit oracle for each method, and package the source into a static library...is it still a no- no?"}
{"_id": "48454", "title": "How to improve testing your own code", "text": "Today I checked in a change on some code which turned out to be not working at all due to something rather stupid yet very crucial. I feel really bad about it and I hope I finally learn something from it. The stupid thing is, I've done these things before and I always tell myself, next time I won't be so stupid... Then it happens again and I feel even worse about it. I know you should keep your chin up and learn from your mistakes but here's the thing: I try to improve myself, I just don't see how I can prevent these things from happening. So, now I'm asking you guys: Do you have certain groundrules when testing your code?"}
{"_id": "203451", "title": "Assessing Relative Maintainability", "text": "We (a contractor, actually) are implementing an off the shelf system to replace a legacy homegrown system for the core domain of the company (designing widgets). Unfortunately both systems will have to run concurrently for some time, as the product just isn't ready yet. Also, the decision was made to only migrate some of the widgets from the legacy system, based on date of last sale activity. Later on a new requirement came down: certain people in the company, most of them outside of the widget development context, want to search _all_ widgets. The search results screen has 3 pieces of data: a GUID, a human readable id that is searchable, and a brief description (may need to be searchable in the future). In the widget details, there will be multiple screens. These screens align very well along SOA / bounded context lines - a screen for marketing data, a screen for sales history, etc. UML ahead! I am probably using the wrong kind of arrows here so please forgive me. The current solution - which is not in production yet - is something like the following: ![Current Solution](http://yuml.me/9c61dafe) Both systems will be queried and the controller will merge the results. The new system has its own proprietary query language (we've alleviated this a bit with a LINQ provider). It also puts a _lot_ of data on the wire. 15 search results typically run about 60k of unintelligible SOAP-wrapped xml. So I would prefer to avoid querying this system directly. These two systems publish events to help us integrate with other systems, mainly an ERP system. One of these events contains all the data necessary for the search screen. I proposed the following alternative: ![Proposed Solution](http://yuml.me/e3678913) However I am being told that 'adding another database' will create more maintenance down the road. However, I believe this to be false, as I had to add a relatively simple feature that took several hours longer than anticipated because of this merging code. I want to get a feel for which system is more maintainable in the long run. I personally have not had the burden of maintaining any large system. I want something more than my gut. Specifically I'd like to know if having more, specialized physical databases is more or less maintainable than having less larger physical databases."}
{"_id": "256095", "title": "Design pattern for modifying state and notifying the other modifiers without a loop", "text": "The idea is that I have a set of properties that represent possible options in the app. These options can be modified through a variety of different ways, such as from the UI, remotely, third party, etc... Each time one of these modifiers alters the state, the other modifiers need to be notified. E.g.: If the user marks a checkbox in the UI, the remote modifier and the third party need to be notified, so that they update their internal state. There is no priority involved, and the state changes cannot be rejected. The only concern is to prevent the third party from receiving a notification when itself modifies the state. Is there a good design pattern to solve these requirments?"}
{"_id": "211862", "title": "Designing and refactoring of payment logic", "text": "Im currently working on an application that helps users to coordinate dinner clubs and all related accounting. (A dinner club is where people in a group, take turns to cook for the rest and then you pay a small amount to participate. This is pretty normal in dorms and colleges where im from). However there is some different models that all have a price and the accounting aspect is therefore a little spread. We both have DinnerClub, ShoppingItem and are about to implement the third Payment when users pay their debts (or get refunded for expenses). Each of these have a \"price\" attribute and a users expense (that he or she needs refunded) is calculated by the total of these \"prices\" minus what other users have bought and he or she have used/participated in. My question is then if someone have some hints to refactor this bring all this behavior together in one place? For now have i thought about a Transaction class that are responsible for this behaviour, but I'm a little worried about the performance impact on having to query for another polymorphic record each time i want to show the price on dinner clubs and shopping items (i have a standard index page with a list for both so it's a lot of extra records being queried)..."}
{"_id": "134059", "title": "To use, or not to use, commons-io in a Java applet", "text": "I am building a Java applet for a client. Yes, we have gone over all the options, and for the client's requirements and environment, this is the Right Choice. I am a big believer in using Apache Commons whenever possible to simplify my code and avoid reinventing the wheel. One part of the functionality I need for this applet is implemented in the Commons IO library, which is 160kb in size. Or I could create a custom build of Commons IO with just the classes I want. Less easily maintained, but minimizes the overhead of the applet. I could also write the needed functions; they would be far smaller than 160kb. I've probably spent more time pondering the Right Thing To Do than it would take me to write the code by hand. As an additional consideration, I will be doing a code review with the client, and would like to take any opportunities I have to teach them best practices like using Apache Commons. Any strong opinions, and justifications, for which option I should choose?"}
{"_id": "203458", "title": "C# Minimal SQL Database", "text": "I'm working on a small project (not production) where I'm needing to store enough data that something like a CSV would be inefficient to process and an SQL/MySQL server would be too much. Does .Net have any way to efficiently store several entries of data with the ability to query without having to manage and connect to a server rather loading and processing a single file."}
{"_id": "252962", "title": "Just jumped into database testing in PHPUnit - not really sure what the purpose of it is", "text": "I've been reading about database testing in PHPUnit. I'm not exactly sure what it's purpose is. Should I use this to test schema? E.g. if I have a UNIQUE email column then ensure that I'm not allow duplicate email addresses? (I shouldn't put this in my class tests then?) Is there anything else? I've been reading through documentation, blog posts etc trying to get my head round it .. it's also 2am, perhaps I need to sleep on it too :) Would appreciate if someone could explain in simple terms what this type of testing sets out to do."}
{"_id": "255112", "title": "How to save appointments in database?", "text": "There are 2 entities. One is **admin**. The task of admin is to define slots for appointments which will be taken by **applicants**. The admin will choose a default time for the appointments like 10am to 2pm and then 3pm to 5pm. Now the confusion how to save this information in database.   1. In a single row which contains start date and time and end date and time and number of applicants allowed for that time slot.    2. Create multiple rows with each date and time slot. Like if there are 2 slots for 15 days then  day 1 10a - 2p day 1 3p - 5p day 2 10a - 2p day 2 3p - 5p ..... Which will be a better way to save the appointments? The second way offers flexibility to edit the appointments but will take multiple rows. The first way saves rows but is complicated when editing and adding or deleting special slots."}
{"_id": "121584", "title": "Is reference to bug/issue in commit message considered good practice?", "text": "I'm working on a project where we have the source control set up to automatically write notes in the bug tracker. We simply write the bug issue ID in the commit message and the commit message is added as a note to the bug tracker. I can see only a few downsides for this practice. If sometime in the future the source code gets separated from the bug tracking software (or the reported bugs/issues are somehow lost). Or when someone is looking in the history of commits but doesn't have access to our bug tracker. My question is if having a bug/issue reference in the commit message is considered good practice? Are there some other downsides?"}
{"_id": "121587", "title": "How many tiers should my models have in a DB driven web app?", "text": "In my experience, the \"Model\" in MVC is often not really a single layer. I would regularly have \"backend\" models and \"frontend\" models, where the backend ones would have properties that I want to hide from the UI code, and the frontend ones have derived or composite properties which are more meaningful in the context of the UI. Recently, I have started to introduce a third layer in between when database normalization created tables that did not really match the conceptual domain objects anymore. In those projects I have model classes that are equivalent with the DB structure, these become components of objects that represent the domain model, and finally these are filtered and amended for displaying information to the user. Are there patterns or guidelines for how, when and why to organize the data model across application layers?"}
{"_id": "84142", "title": "looking for a User Guide to write a JIRA Issue", "text": "I'm looking for a User Guide how to write a JIRA Issue. I'm aware of http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Creating+an+Issue The problem I have is that this documentation is targeted at people having no problem creating Issues and does not explain how to write good Issues and how to decide for example which Priority to use? I'm looking for something like a common sense approach what belongs in an Issue (or any kind of Ticket) in general. I don't need a \"definitive\" Guide, just something to get the ball rolling and there are common circumstances that apply to (mostly) all development environments \"provide context\" \"provide all necessary Information / don't refer to Information that might not be available / accessible later\" that kind of stuff."}
{"_id": "121582", "title": "Is it correct to refer to OSGi as a Dependency Injection mechanism?", "text": "I read the Wikipedia articles on both, and both are not mentioned together. Also, the purpose of OSGi is not Dependency Injection. Yet, what an OSGi container like Felix does matches the description for DI."}
{"_id": "176736", "title": "Can I distribute a software with the following permission notice", "text": "I've recently written a piece of software (without any other contributors) for a company which I part own. I was wondering if I could distribute it with the following permission notice, which is a modified version of the MIT License. Are there any obvious risks if I do distribute with this licence and does it give me the right to reuse the code in other projects? > Permission is hereby granted, to any person within **CompanyName** (the > \"Company\") obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation > files, excluding any third party libraries (the \"Software\"), to deal with > the Software, with limitations restricted to use, copy, modify and merge, > the Software may not be published, distributed, sublicensed and/or sold > without the explicit permission from **AuthorName** (the \"Author\"). This > notice doesn't apply to sections of the Software where copyright is held by > any persons other than the Author. > > The Author remains the owner of the Software and may deal in the Software > without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, > modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the > Software. > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING > FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS > IN THE SOFTWARE."}
{"_id": "176732", "title": "Is there a way communicate or measure levels of abstraction?", "text": "I'll be the first to say that this question is a bit... out there. But here are a couple questions I bear in mind : **Is abstraction continuous or discrete?** **Is there a single unit of abstraction?** But I'm not sure those questions are truly answerable or even really makes sence. My naive answer would be something along the lines of _abitrarily discrete_ but not necescarily having a single unit measure. Here's what I mean... Take a Black Labrador; an abstraction that could be made is that a Black Lab is a type of animal. `[Animal]<--[Black Lab]` A Black Lab is also a type of Dog. `[Dog]<--[Black Lab]` One way to establish a degree of abstraction is by comparing the two the abstractions. We could say that `[Animal]` is more abstract than `[Dog]` in respect to a Black Lab. It just so happens `[Animal]` can also be used as an abstraction of `[Dog]` So, we might end up with something like `[Animal]<--[Dog]<--[Black Lab]` With the model above, one might be inclined to say that there's two hops of abstraction to get from `[Black Lab]` to `[Animal]`. But you can't exactly tell somebody they need one level abstraction and reasonalby expect they will come up with `[Dog]` given they aren't explicity given the options above. **If I needed to tell someobody in a single email that they needed an abstract class with out knowing what that abstract class is, is there a way to communaticate a degree of abstraction such that they _might_ end up on Dog instead of Animal?** As a side note, what area of study might this type of analysis fall under?"}
{"_id": "212845", "title": "How should Object Model wrapper classes behave when underlying objects are deleted?", "text": "I'm currently building an object model library for use in a project. It wraps our internal concepts - Servers, Folders, Items - in an object hierarchy (IFolder, IItem, etc), and we have several implementations of these abstract objects, using a database or an Exchange server as a back-end, so that an `IFolder` object in our code maps (for instance) to a physical public folder on Exchange. Now I've been wondering how these wrapper/proxy objects should react when their underlying storage is modified. The main usecase is when a folder is deleted, either through my API or directly in the storage layer. Naturally, the object is now orphaned and shouldn't be used, but I still might have instances of it being held in the system. How should it now behave?   * Right now most of its properties are cached in the object itself to avoid repeated calls to the storage layer. Should these property accessors ping the underlying object to ensure it's still alive?   * Should I look into a polling mechanism to update the properties, or even see if my physical layer supplied OnChanged events?    * If my wrapper object finds out that its unerlying storage has been deleted (e.g. because of access to an uncached property returned an error), should it now mark itself as Deleted (so that all access to properties and methods return some sort of ObjectDeletedException) or should it just clear all caches and allow future calls to fail naturally. In short, I'm looking for good tips and best practices for developing an object model wrapper layer. I'll be looking at other similar implementations (Sharepoint Object Model, Managed Exchange Web Services), but any solid guidelines would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "237090", "title": "Design for reusable java module which uses DB connections", "text": "I'm tasked with changing some procedural Java code into Object Oriented re- usable module. It's an XML generator utility which uses velocity for XML generation. There are also business rule enrichments, all of which is configurable in Database tables. I have already removed huge if-else statements for rules and made them into Rule Objects with Abstract classes and interfaces which other Applications can extend and implement. However I'm facing difficulty with re-designing the overall class - XMLGeneratorUtil, which takes a JDBC connection , Logger and Properties in its constructor and does a hell lot of things in the constructor like building different Data structures(containing static data) from database. Now, I know its not good to connect to Database from Constructor, but if I change to some thing like below:               XMlGeneratorUtil xmlUtil = new XMLGeneratorUtil();     xmlUtil.initialize(Conenriches conn, Properties prop , Logger logger) // Do DB Connections and all initializations here     xmlUtil.generateXML(data); // Data is a HashMap containing busines data that goes into the XML        1. How can I be sure that the users of my utility call initialize before they call generateXML? Should I create some Wrapper that internally creates a lightweight object and then initializes it without the user knowing it?   2. Also , is it good for my re-usable library to accept Connection as a parameter? Idea is that the calling Application of my utility may choose to manage their own Connection , so they just pass it to my API   3. Against the SRP (Single Responsibility principle) the XMLGeneratorUtil manipulates business data(which ultimately goes into XML data) as well as generates XML. Should the data enrichment be exposed as different API? (And then the user calls XMLGeneratorUtil)"}
{"_id": "237093", "title": "Optimization ended up in casting an object at each method call", "text": "I've been doing some optimization for the following piece of code :               public void DrawLine(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color)     {         _bitmap.DrawLineBresenham(x1, y1, x2, y2, color);     }      After profiling it about 70% of the time spent was in getting a _context_ for drawing and disposing it. I ended up sketching the following overload :               public void DrawLine(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color, BitmapContext bitmapContext)     {         _bitmap.DrawLineBresenham(x1, y1, x2, y2, color, bitmapContext);     }      Until here no problems, all the user has to do is to pass a _context_ and performance is really great as a _context_ is created/disposed one time only (previously it was a thousand times per second). The next step was to make it _generic_ in the sense it doesn't depend on a particular framework for rendering (besides .NET obvisouly). So I wrote this method :               public void DrawLine(int x1, int y1, int x2, int y2, int color, IDisposable bitmapContext)     {         _bitmap.DrawLineBresenham(x1, y1, x2, y2, color, (BitmapContext)bitmapContext);     }      Now every time a line is drawn the _generic_ context is casted, this was unexpected for me. Are there any approaches for fixing this design issue ? Note :   * `_bitmap` is a WriteableBitmap from WPF   * `BitmapContext` is from WriteableBitmapEx library   * `DrawLineBresenham` is an extension method from WriteableBitmapEx"}
{"_id": "175284", "title": "Windows Phone 8 development on Windows 7 - is it or will be possible?", "text": "I was trying to install Windows Phone 8 SDK on my Windows 7 machine and it hit me with the 'supported only on Windows 8' message. I actually wanted to develop Phone 7.5 apps on Visual Studio 2012, impossible thing with the 7.1 SDK, so I thought 8 SDK will do the job. As if it was not enough that the 8 SDK was controversial upon release, now that it's generally available, to me it seems like a horrible decision to make it available only for Windows 8, because in my humble opinion, no serious and sane developer will install Windows 8 ever, or at least in the near future, just because of the Metro UI. So, anyone knows any workarounds for developing Windows Phone 8 on Windows 7, or at least develop for 7.5 but using Visual Studio 2012?"}
{"_id": "179702", "title": "How about a development job with no code to write?", "text": "I am curious about my work, where I have to work with configurations of servers, linux, databases, some SQLs but there is no line of code for my favorite programming language: Java. Is it normal that developers should have such roles to work so that they can better comprehend? My question is related to career perspective. I was hired for programming but moved to different project where there is NO CODE at all. I am missing to code."}
{"_id": "191819", "title": "How to create a dynamic online Windows Installer with a key?", "text": "I'm creating an application which needs to have a key file based product activation. If a user purchases the application, the key file may have to be attached to the application EXE file dynamically (may be online) and package it to an MSI installer. The user downloads the application from a server or repository. How can I do this?"}
{"_id": "191816", "title": "Search on multiple values", "text": "I have a database having around 15 tables.Currently I am working on a report generation page, which is having 16 criteria.The values are distributed among multiple tables.User can select any number of search criteria. The problem is, if the user is entering 2-3 values, it is better to filter first by certain value and then apply the next level of filtration on remaining values and this order of filtration depends on the user input always. That means, I have to check all the possible ways of input permutation and give execution path for each, which will be horrible.Is there any way by which I can reduce the execution paths. I am not able to come up with an efficient algorithm. Suppose I have 3 parameters: `name`, `skill`, `programExp` If `name` is given, then I should filter based on `name` first. If `skill` is given, then I should filter using `skill`, `programExp` and then `name`."}
{"_id": "191817", "title": "NoSQL and BIG DATA", "text": "I am doing an internship on Big Data technologies so I am new to this area. My question is about the use of NoSQL in the Big Data architecture. Do we need always to use a distributed storage (like HDFS in the case of Hadoop) then to put on top a NoSQL databases (like Hbase )? I find it difficult to understand the typical BIG Data architecture specially for unstructured data . If you can help me to see better I will be so thankful."}
{"_id": "191810", "title": "Referring to freelance marketplaces as evidence of the experience for a potential full-time employer", "text": "I am currently a freelancer (JavaScript) developer, and now I am striving to work more on freelance marketplaces. Some time I want to move from Russia to Canada and find full-time work there. So: How I might provide evidence of expertise in this case? I can not just say in my resume/CV \"I was super JavaScript Developer in the MacroHard from 2011 to 2017\". Are my accounts (and 4,5/5 star rating) on these marketplaces will be relevant and adequate to show to the potential new employer (urls in the CV, for example)? Or maybe I should just add description of most interesting projects? I have found this article: http://gettingtozen.com/2010/10/how-to-list-your- freelancing-and-self-employment-experience-on-your-resume/ Author gives advice to not include many references to the freelance projects, but his field is not an IT (freelance corporate trainer). In my point of view, it is not very applicable for a Software Developer, since as Software Developer you can explicitly point to the application you worked with. Also, an option here is to refer yourself as \"individual entrepreneur\" instead of \"freelance contractor\". My experience in North American employment traditions is zero, so I hope to get advice from colleagues and HRs."}
{"_id": "255839", "title": "Could the creation of many methods in Java affect performance?", "text": "I was told by a colleague that in Java, the performance may be worse if we create more methods, stacking many methods calling over them in JVM, specially in a Java EE environment. This seems to somewhat defeat the concept of object oriented programming. Like if we write long methods - what isn't good for code readability - we can achieve more performance due to less methods in JVM stack. This is a correct affirmation?"}
{"_id": "191812", "title": "ASP.NET MVC Web Site & WCF Web Service - Sharing functionalities", "text": "I have the following situation: I have to create a website and a web service that will _`share a part of the functionalities`_. This is why I do not want to write code twice. I have thought of the following architecture: **MyApp.BusinessLogic** \\--> here we save the DataModels to the database **MyApp.DataAccess** -> DataModels & Entity & mapping * * * **MyApp.UI.Models** -> ViewModels **MyApp.UI.ServiceLayer** -> Acceses the Business Logic, creates the UI ViewModels for the website, and transforms the ViewModels back into DataModels for saving with the help of the BusinessLogic Layer **MyApp.WebSite** * * * **MyApp.WS.Models** \\- >Ws Models, these will be the objects passed between the client and the WS **MyApp.WS.ServiceLayer** -> Accesses the business Logic, creates the WS Models for the web service, and transfoms the WS.Models back into DataModels for saving with the help of the BusinessLogic Layer **MyApp.WebService** * * *   * Is the architecture overkill ?    * What problems will I encounter ?    * Will I have problems with the controllers in the ASP.NET MVC website ?"}
{"_id": "178259", "title": "Statistics for and Details About Open Source Swing Projects", "text": "I'm looking for process-relative information on open-source Swing projects:   * how the task was described   * how many developers were involved   * how much time the solution was taken   * etc. Are there any open source (online) chronicles in that direction? I strongly prefer projects that include the authors' names. I watched this project and it seems fine but still I couldn't find any information concerning some current project task(s), its developers group, some chronicles (tips, milestones, feedbacks etc) For example if I see this swing component I'd like to know the above information."}
{"_id": "131995", "title": "string.format with variables vs inline variables", "text": "What are the pros/cons (if any) to using               string output;      int i = 10;     output = string.Format(\"the int is {0}\", i);      versus               string output;      int i = 10;     output = \"the int is \" + i;      I have always used the latter example, but it seems as though a good majority of online tutorials use the string.format example. I don't think that there are any real differences in terms of efficiency, my initial thought is so a coder doesn't have to keep breaking the string to insert variables."}
{"_id": "121638", "title": "How can I share my python scripts with my less python-savvy business person partner?", "text": "I'm taking financial mathematics as an elective, and I'm working with real life finance industry worker type people. It's actually kind of fun. When I pulled out a macbook at one of our meetings, I had four lifelong windows users look at me like I had three heads. Anyway, I'm helping with design and simulation of our trading strategy, and I wrote a little thing using matplotlib to visualize historical stock data. However, these guys don't know how to use git, or install python, or deal with path-related package management things. I need to be able to send my scripts to them to use, and I need to do it with absolutely minimal effort on their part. I was thinking something on the lines of py2exe, but I'd like to hear some advice before I go ahead."}
{"_id": "174773", "title": "Does studying other people's programs help in self growth?", "text": "_Should_ I be _studying_ big softwares written by other people in our company? My work may be a small sub module on the top of that software, and I may not be required to know what goes beneath the hood, _but_ **Does understanding other people's code grow my knowledge about programming methods or anything else?**"}
{"_id": "255612", "title": "how to combine logs coming from multiple virtual machines for processing?", "text": "Scenario: Two virtual machines produce logs. I want these logs to be sent to a central server for processing (as soon as a line of these logs is generated-->streaming ). The condition here is that I want the server to know from which virtual machine the log line came from. In the server, we should observe a file containing something like: action 1 happended in VM1 action 2 happended in VM1 action 1 happended in VM2 action 3 happended in VM1 action 2 happended in VM2 Question: How can such a thing be implemented in an efficient way? How can streaming to a central server be done? I hope the question is clear.."}
{"_id": "255616", "title": "What's the list of how to precisely talk about problems in C++ code within the spec?", "text": "The C++ specification leaves a lot of leeway such that when you write bad code, compiler authors are not responsible for defining a specific mode of failure. We know of course that is Undefined Behavior. _(For those unaware, once there was a cutesy stunt to launch Tetris if you used a #pragma in GCC, which is actuallyimplementation-defined behavior, but it ties into the whole shebang.)_ This made me wonder about what the full coverage list of \"erroring\" conditions are: (1) That code will not compile. (2) That code has undefined behavior. (3) That code will throw an exception. **CAUTION: [JOKE]** (4) That code will not terminate. I'm working on a compiler, and I'm almost finished with the part that checks #4 _(the solution is too long to post in this forum)_. But in the meantime... **END CAUTION [/JOKE]** My question is: what can you and can't you say? The motivation is from someone declaring that you cannot use the phrase _\"that code should crash\"_. I said \"will crash\" and \"should crash\" are different; but that aside, I started wondering if the only thing the specifications have defined are 1, 2, 3."}
{"_id": "255615", "title": "Why does \"charset\" really mean \"encoding\" in common usage?", "text": "Something that has long confused me is that so much software uses the terms \"charset\" and \"encoding\" as synonyms. When people refer to a unicode \"encoding\", they always mean a ruleset for representing unicode characters as a sequence of bytes - like ASCII, or UTF-8. This seems reasonable and intuitive; the idea is that you are \"encoding\" those characters as bytes using the specified ruleset. Since those rulesets sometimes only provide the ability to \"encode\" some subset of all unicode characters, you _might imagine_ that a \"charset\" - short for 'set of characters' - would simply mean a set of unicode characters - without any regard for how those characters are encoded. An encoding would thus imply a charset (an encoding like ASCII, which only has rules for encoding 128 characters, would be associated with the charset of those 128 characters) but a charset need not imply an encoding (for example, UTF-8, UTF-16 and UTF-32 are all different encodings but can encode the same set of characters). Yet - and here is the crux of my question - real-world usage of the word \"charset\" does not match what the construction of the word would imply. It is almost always used to mean \"encoding\". For example:   * The `charset` attribute in HTML is used to specify an encoding   * `Charset`s in Java are encodings   * `charset`s and `character sets` in MySQL are, once again, encodings How old is this curious (ab)use of language, and how did this counter- intuitive definition of 'charset' come to exist? Does it perhaps originate from a time when there truly _was_ , in practice, a one-to-one mapping between encodings in use and sets of characters they supported? Or was there some particularly influential standard or specification that dictated this definition of the word?"}
{"_id": "176880", "title": "Which part of the Memory is used for the Garbage Collector?", "text": "I understand the Heap memory divisions such as Young, tenured and Perm Gen. But I'm just curious from where is the memory used for performing the Garbage Collector itself? Is it from any of these memory spaces or in the thread stacks ?"}
{"_id": "176881", "title": "Branding/Restricting a Software by License/Serial", "text": "I have made a POS System for a client of mine using MS Access Server-Client approach. He asked me to brand his software to allow only a certain \"number\" of users (cashiers) to access the POS System, and must be determined to the license his client will buy. EX: 10 User License = 10 Cashiers ( not necessarily 10 users, it can be 30 users, shifting) = it means 10 PCs will be installed with the client software I made. How and where do I put the logic that will determine if it is licensed or not. What I have done: I have created a serial key generator using Name. Problem is it can be duplicated once you give than name+serial combination, it would still work. I am counting the number of users logged at a time. This could be problematic as I am using MSAccess and not MSSQL. I have scrapped this idea, He also asked me if I could just put serial+mac address combination. That I could do but he will have a hard time implementing it and selling it if he needs the mac address of every computers to be installed with my POS. I am at lost on what can I do. Would like to ask for tips and suggestions. Thank you."}
{"_id": "255619", "title": "Dealing with code that has been written but isn't yet needed", "text": "I wrote a class to do something, but then realised that it wasn't needed, as I could optimize existing code to get the speed of execution I needed, rather than integrating the new class in with existing code (which would have been more complicated). However, I'm unsure if my current solution will be fast enough when I've written the rest of the program, so I'd like to keep the unused class around somewhere. I don't want to just keep it in the main version of the source code, as it would just be unnecessary clutter, but I think there must be a neater solution than putting it in its own file away from the rest of the project and coming back to it if I later need it. I'm new to using source control, so I'm not sure what to do there. Could I create a side branch with the class, and merge it into the main branch without later?"}
{"_id": "255618", "title": "What kind of language is better for beginners: static or dynamic?", "text": "Once again, I'm not certain this question fits this site but I can't think of a place online that fits it better. What do you think is a better starting point for an absolute beginner to programming: a statically typed, or a dynamically typed language? On one hand, it's easier and \"more forgiving\" for beginners to use a dynamic language. On the other hand, I feel starting with a static language will grant the beginner much better habits, forcing him/her to think more strictly about types, and which type goes where (as opposed to the duck-typed approach of \"send here something that has a `do()`\" method). My main concern is what's better _as a starting point_ : i.e. what kind of language would allow the beginner to gain better habits in the beginning and be able to later move on to other languages more easily."}
{"_id": "176885", "title": "Identifier for the \u201ccompleted\u201d stage of a process: 0, 99, something else?", "text": "Say, that you are handling a multi-step process (like a complex registration form, with a number of steps the user has go through in order). You need to be able to save the current state of the process (e.g. so the user can come back to that registration form later and continue form the step where they were left off). Obviously, you\u2019ll probably want to give each \u201cstep\u201d an identifier you can refer to: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Your logic will check for this `step_id` (or whatever you call it) to render the appropriate data. The question: how would you identify the stage after the final step, like the completed registration state (say, that you **have** to give that last \u201cstep\u201d its own id, that\u2019s how your logic is structured). Would it be a `0`, `999`, a non-integer value, something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "119317", "title": "How do I do TDD on embedded devices?", "text": "I'm not new to programming and I've even worked with some low level C and ASM on AVR, but I really can't get my head around a larger-scale embedded C project. Being degenerated by the Ruby's philosophy of TDD/BDD, I'm unable to understand how people write and test code like this. I'm not saying it's a bad code, I just don't understand how this can work. I wanted to get more into some low level programming, but I really have no idea how to approach this, since it looks like a completely different mindset that I'm used to. I don't have trouble understanding pointer arithmetics, or how allocating memory works, but when I see how complex C/C++ code looks compared to Ruby, it just seems impossibly hard. Since I already ordered myself an Arduino board, I'd love to get more into some low level C and really understand how to do things properly, but it seems like none of the rules of high level languages apply. Is it even possible to do TDD on embedded devices or when developing drivers or things like custom bootloader, etc.?"}
{"_id": "252341", "title": "Are bloom filters actually faster than hashes, even taking in account cache?", "text": "Bloom filters look really great when you consider you can determine if an Int is in a set with 99% certainty in constant time. But so can hashes, with the only difference that, in a hash, most of the time you are accessing the memory only once. With bloom filters, you need to access them ~7 times per request in **completely distant places** , so you'd have several cache misses per request. Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "26003", "title": "Career Advice: Should I relearn XHTML and CSS for my career?", "text": "Currently, I am a Ruby/Rails developers. Before I was .NET developer and got MCTS in Windows Client Development. But of the time I don't touch any HTML or CSS and I don't have any experience in doing layout at all. And I feel boring doing those tasks, but for sure every web apps has to have them. To be a professional do I need to learn them again?"}
{"_id": "64820", "title": "Ideas to talk about during \"expectation setting talk\" with my new software team lead?", "text": "I'm moving to a new company, with a new team lead. I find that this is a great time to set our mutual expectations from each other, to help us both start the role on the right foot. Do you have ideas what expectations I should set from him? In what areas should I determine his expectations from me?"}
{"_id": "252348", "title": "Is it common for developer to not have an administrator account?", "text": "Not having it means using only those tools that everybody uses (that comes with the same image for every PC). I can see the benefit of this - less worries that somebody's machine may get infected after downloading a corrupted file. But isn't this a bit of an overkill? What if I need a tool that could make my daily work much more efficient and there is no alternative? I know that it depends A LOT on the exact company and it's policies but having worked only in two companies so far (healthcare - no restrictions; finance - lots of restrictions), I'm wondering how common is it and if there are any other reasons besides security."}
{"_id": "156989", "title": "Dummy float values to force floating-point operations", "text": "It is common to use idioms such as:               x/60.0      to force a floating-point division when `x` is an integer in languages which do not have distinct operators for integer and decimal division. Is this an accepted idiom or is it preferrable to cast `x` to a floating-point type? I believe it is a concise and clear idiom- it might be show intent less clearly than an explicit cast, but it is more concise and easier to read. I think that it's less hack-ish than `x + \"\"` to convert to string or `x+0.0` to convert to floating point (as there's no unnecessary \"NOOP\"). Thoughts? \u00c1lex"}
{"_id": "156988", "title": "A phone that supports any mobile OS", "text": "What is preventing hardware manufacturers from creating a device that will allow the user to select their OS? A phone similar to a PC or a mac that can have linux, windows or mac OS installed. Are there any regulations preventing this?"}
{"_id": "111166", "title": "Need help with directory structure in porting codebase to SVN", "text": "Currently we've got a directory structure that looks like this               +Inhouse App A     +Inhouse App B     +Core files for inhouse app B     +Inhouse App C     +Something that never came to fruition     +Forgotten Server Project A     +Forgotten Common Files A     +Authentication Server     +Update Server     +Main product Version 5.5     --+[DLL1]     --+[DLL2]       ...     --+[DLLN-1]     --+[Controls]     -----+[Our Awesome Controls]     -----+[3rd party control 1]     -----+[3rd party control 2]     -----+[3rd party control 3]     --+[DLLN]     --+[Utils]     -----+[Util 1]     -----+[Util 2]        ...     -----+[Util N-1]     -----+[Util N]     +Main product Version 6.1     +Main product Version 6.2     +Fingerprint SDK           Obviously, I am covering up some ugliness of this beauty. I've got an install of VisualSVN to replace Visual 'shall not be named' and I get to the point where it says, trunk, branch and something else. and from some other posts here and on SO, I know vaguely what those are for. My question is what do I do to translate my existing file structure to the source control structure. We've give up hope of doing any meaningful import. I've tried just going head first into this already, but I feel I'm missing some key concept. For instance, should all these things be in the same repo? If they're not in the same repository, how are they going to find the files shared between the projects?"}
{"_id": "15956", "title": "Have you ever found yourself using a specific tool in favor of another just because it looks better?", "text": "I found that this was the case with Eclipse. When I first started learning Java a lot of people told me to start with NetBeans because it's easier, comes with a lot of predefined functionality and most of the configuration is done by default. Indeed it seemed like an easy IDE but I just hated the way it looked. The UI to me was horrible. Then I downloaded Eclipse. I was pretty impressed with it. Everything looked shiny, fonts looked awesome and the UI in general was amazing compared to NetBeans'. So I stayed with Eclipse. Has something like this ever happen to you? Should the UI be of such a relevance to a programmer, is this bad ? The problem of the UI extends to everything for me, not only IDE's (e.g. even on linux I have to customize the WM the way I want before starting working with it)."}
{"_id": "95344", "title": "How much should I worry about the edge cases?", "text": "How much should one worry about the \"edge cases\" in an application, especially when creating the UI?"}
{"_id": "123676", "title": "Beginning with smartphone app development", "text": "I have a job from a client that needs a iPhone/iPad app. I'm new to the smartphone development so where do I begin with? Do you have some nice in depth beginning tutorials of some kind? JS libraries I need to look into? Is there a startup boilerplate for iPhone/Android out there with a beneficial starting setup kit or something like that? In general, is there something I really need to know before I start? My coding background is:   * HTML/CSS   * jQuery/Javascript (rookie)   * C#    * AS 3.0"}
{"_id": "126000", "title": "In-house versus Software-development Environment", "text": "In the industry, there is a distinction made between an 'in-house development' environment where the software developers are writing code which will be used by the company itself and a proper 'software development' environment where software is built to be sold/distributed to the public. Among others, one obvious difference between the two is that a software- development-oriented company will typically adhere to some sort of software development life cycle such as spec-writing, testing, building etc. whereas the in-house-oriented shop will usually do things in a more casual way since they themselves are the end-users and can always fix something that wasn't done right. As a student (like most other students), I kind of expected myself to wind up working in a software development environment, but I ended up getting my first position at a firm which operates in more of an in-house fashion. At times, I wonder whether I am missing out on the full-fledged software development experience. Is there a basis for this feeling? Should I seek to join a proper software development environment?"}
{"_id": "64827", "title": "Do most companies not know how to write software?", "text": "If you're an active reader here, try to think about how many times you've heard (and even agreed) when someone here has told someone else to start looking for a new job. Personally, I've seen it a lot more than I expected: it's almost starting to sound cliche. I get that there are bound to be a number of companies that are bad at developing software or managing a software project, but it almost seems like it's getting worse and more frequent, maybe we're just hearing from them and not all of the places that have decent work atmospheres/conditions. So I ask: In your experience, and through your developer friends do you find that it is common that companies have bad development environments and if so:   * Why do you think it's common?   * What do you think could be done to fix it as a developer, as a manager, as an industry?   * Do you think it's improving?"}
{"_id": "126009", "title": "How should I introduce a coding standard to my team?", "text": "First a bit of background: My current development manager is taking another opportunity the end of this week, leaving our team with four fulltime developers, a part-time intern and a web designer (who is technically part of Marketing, not AppDev). At this time we aren't promoting or hiring a new manager. The previous manager never would take the time to come up with a set of coding standards to adhere to (to put this in perspective: My one-year anniversary at this job is in two weeks and I've been talking to him about standards since I started). Due to this, all of us four developers write code our own way: Some of us follow the Microsoft naming conventions for .NET, some use Hungarian notation, some use a mix (e.g. mixing `PascalCase` and `camelCase` for parameter names), and it's entirely random when you open a code file what standard it will follow - about the only thing consistent is that braces are on separate lines. Two out of my three co-workers have approached me to create a standard coding document that we can use and enforce moving forward (although I am technically not the most senior developer, the fourth developer having been here for several years, two co-workers and the intern look to me for advice/guidance but we do not have a team lead). I have been meaning to do this for a while but the now-departing manager would always put it on the backburner; his departure now gives us a chance to take some time and configure things correctly to facilitate a proper software environment and not the rushed hodgepodge we currently have. How should I go about doing this and introducing this standard to my team without causing friction? I don't want to make it look like I'm \"taking over\", although were I offered the manager position I would accept it. As I said two out of three other developers are on board with me creating one, but the fourth (the true \"senior\" in length of time) may or may not accept it. I plan to start with the .Net conventions from Microsoft (e.g. do not use Hungarian Notation), add some personal preference (e.g. `_camelcase` for fields) and specifically call out certain strange practices we use here as not to be used (e.g. naming a class with an underscore at the start), but what else should I include? I don't want to get into architectural guidelines as that _will_ cause friction and we have a very large, and smelly, existing codebase that wouldn't adhere to it, and we're nowhere near at the point of coming up with a refactoring strategy. To summarize: Beyond basic naming conventions what, if anything, should I include in a coding standards document (examples would be great - I haven't managed to find any concrete examples of what such a document should look like), and how should I present it to my team without sounding like the new dictator."}
{"_id": "254123", "title": "Macro guard in Objective-C", "text": "I have noticed that many famous libraries written in Objective-C (eg. AFNetworking) use the macro guard inside their header files. Im aware that the #import directive, which works exactly like #include, includes each file only once, obviating the need for #include guards. For what reason are still used?"}
{"_id": "221216", "title": "Should test fixtures be added to code repositories?", "text": "I'm unit testing some code that processes data from an external API. That external API serves up a large pile of JSON data. The right thing to do here, of course, is to use fixtures in the unit tests, so that I don't do a real API call every time the test runs. Those fixtures can be quite large though - many thousands of lines, even. I'm not sure whether I should put them into git. It seems like a bad idea, since they seem like static files. On the other hand, writing the unit tests really requires specific fixtures, so I do want them shared with anybody working on the project (and shared with our build machinery). Should large fixtures be committed into a repo?"}
{"_id": "1009", "title": "How do I sell my software on the Internet?", "text": "I'd like to sell my software on the 'net but am not sure how to do the whole Merchant setup. I have access to Commerce Server 2009, and I want to seem professional so a plain old PayPal account is out. What do I need to know/do to sell a few things using ASP.NET, accept credit cards, and what not?"}
{"_id": "1007", "title": "What traits do the best testers you've worked with have in common?", "text": "Tester and blogger Lanette Creamer recently posted this question on Twitter: > If you are a professional software developer who works with testers, think > of the best testers you know. What traits do they have in common? I thought it would make an excellent question for here. My thoughts are:   * They want to remove ambiguity from requirements even if it means asking awkward questions.   * They create new features by seeing the way software \"should\" work, rather than just how it's documented.   * They demonstrate honesty and integrity and encourage but not demand it from those around them. In other words, they model behavior. What are the traits of the best testers you've worked with?"}
{"_id": "164308", "title": "What's the equivalent name of \"procedure\" in OOP?", "text": "In several of my programming courses in the University, my teachers always told me the following: > A function and a procedure are basically the same thing: the only difference > is that a function returns a value, and the procedure doesn't. That means that this:               function sum($a, $b) {         return $a + $b;     }      ... is a **function** , and this:               function sum($a, $b) {         echo $a + $b;     }      ... is a **procedure**. In the same train of thought, I've seen that a **method** is the equivalent of a **function** in the OOP world. That means that this:               class Example {         function sum($a, $b) {             return $a + $b;         }     }      Is a **method** -- but how do you call this?               class Example {         function sum($a, $b) {             echo $a + $b;         }     }      What's the equivalent name, or how do you call a method that **doesn't returns anything**?"}
{"_id": "216843", "title": "Styling the HTML tag in a web document", "text": "is it good Coding Practice to add style to the `<html>` tag of a web document? why should you not style the `<html>` tag of a web document? I ask this because of this answer on a StackOverflow question.   Personally I don't think this is good coding practice. is there a WC3 standard that says this is good/bad?"}
{"_id": "216842", "title": "What are `Developmental Milestones` for programming skills?", "text": "I studied in the field of Computer Science for 6 years, bachelor's degree and master's degree. I have studied all the basic programming like C, Java, VB, C#, Python, and etc. When I have free times, I will learn new programming languages and follow new programming trends by myself , such as PHP, HTML5, CSS5, LESS, Bootstrap, Symfony2, and GitHub. So, if someone wants me to write some instructions using these languages, I'm certain that I can do it, not so good but I can get a job done. However, I don't have any favorite programming language. Moreover, I also have studied about algorithms, database, and etc. Everything I just wrote so far seems that I know a lot in this field. In fact, I feel I am very stupid. I cannot answer 80% of the questions on SO. In spite of those languages\u200b\u200b, I have studied. Perhaps it is because I have never worked before. * * * As there is the `Developmental Milestones` for children, which refers to how a child becomes able to do more complex things as they get older, I would like to evaluate the same thing but for programming skills. What are the set of functional skills or age-specific tasks that most programmers can do at a certain age range? In order to evaluate myself, I would like to ask your opinions that all of the skills I mentioned above, are they enough for programmers to know when they are 25 years old? What are your suggestions in order to improve the skills in this field?"}
{"_id": "216840", "title": "When there's no TCO, when to worry about blowing the stack?", "text": "Every single time there's a discussion about a new programming language targetting the JVM, there are inevitably people saying things like: _\"The JVM doesn't support tail-call optimization, so I predict lots of exploding stacks\"_ There are thousands of variations on that theme. Now I know that some language, like Clojure for example, have a special _recur_ construct that you can use. What I don't understand is: how serious is the lack of tail-call optimization? When should I worry about it? My main source of confusion probably comes from the fact that Java is one of the most succesful languages ever and quite a few of the JVM languages seems to be doing fairly well. How is that possible if the lack of TCO is really of _any_ concern?"}
{"_id": "216849", "title": "Randomly and uniquely iterating over a range", "text": "Say you have a range of values (or anything else) and you want to iterate over the range and stop at some indeterminate point. Because the stopping value could be anywhere in the range, iterating sequentially is no good because it causes the early values to be accessed more often than later values (which is bad for things that wear out), and also because it reduces performance since it must traverse extra values. Randomly iterating is better because it will (on average) increase the hit- rate so that fewer values have to be accessed before finding the right one, and also distribute the accesses more evenly (again, on average). The problem is that the standard method of randomly jumping around will result in values being accessed multiple times, and has no automatic way of determining when each value has been checked and thus the whole range has been exhausted. One simplified and contrived solution could be to make a list of each value, pick one at random, then remove it. Each time through the loop, you pick one fromt he set of remaining items. Unfortunately this only works for small lists. As a (forced) example, say you are creating a game where the program tries to guess what number you picked and shows how many guess it took. The range is between 0-255 and instead of asking _Is it 0? Is it 1? Is it 2?\u2026_ , you have it guess randomly. You could create a list of 255 numbers, pick randomly and remove it. But what if the range was between 0-232? You can\u2019t really create a 4-billion item list. I\u2019ve seen a couple of implementations RNGs that are supposed to provide a uniform distribution, but none that area also supposed to be unique, i.e., no repeated values. So is there a practical way to randomly, and uniquely iterate over a range?"}
{"_id": "129961", "title": "Are there good techniques or tests for naming types?", "text": "An awkward, open question, but it's a problem I'm always bumping against: Software that's easy to maintain and work with is software designed well. Trying to make a design intuitive means naming your components in such a way that the next developer should be able to infer the function of the component. This is why we don't name our classes \"Type1\", \"Type2\", etc. When you're modelling a real-world concept (e.g. customer) this is generally as simple as naming your type after the real-world concept being modelled. But when you're building abstract things, which are more system-oriented, it's very easy to run out of names which are both easy to read and simple to digest. It gets worse (for me) when trying to name families of types, with a base-type or interface which describes what the components have to do, but not how they work. This naturally leads to each derived type trying to describe the flavour of the implementation (e.g. `IDataConnection` and `SqlConnection` in the .NET Framework), but how do you express something complicated like \"works by reflection and looking for a specific set of attributes\"? Then, when you've finally picked a name for the type you think describes what it's trying to do, your colleague asks \"WTF does this `DomainSecurityMetadataProvider` actually _do?_ \" Are there any good techniques for choosing a well-meaning name for a component, or how to build a family of components without getting muddled names? Are there any simple tests that I can apply to a name to get a better feel for whether the name is \"good\", and should be more intuitive to others?"}
{"_id": "152152", "title": "Generalise variable usage inside code", "text": "I would like to know if it is a good practice to generalize variables (use single variable to store all the values).   Consider simple example                Strings querycre,queryins,queryup,querydel;          querycre = 'Create table XYZ ...';         execute querycre ;         queryins = 'Insert into XYZ ...';         execute queryins ;         queryup  = 'Update  XYZ set ...';         execute queryup;         querydel = 'Delete from XYZ ...';         execute querydel ;      and                Strings query;          query= 'Create table XYZ ... ';         execute query ;         query= 'Insert into XYZ ...';         execute query ;         query= 'Update  XYZ set ...';         execute query ;         query= 'Delete from XYZ ...';         execute query ;      In first case I use 4 strings each storing data to perform the actions mentioned in their suffixes.   In second case just 1 variable to store all kinds the data.   Having different variables makes it easier for someone else to read and understand it better. But having too many of them makes it difficult to manage. Also does having too many variables hamper my performance? P.S: please don't answer w.r.t the code in example it was just to convey what I really mean."}
{"_id": "11012", "title": "Why isn't TDD part of programming lessons at school", "text": "My daughter and my son are learning Java with BlueJ. I really don't understand why the first thing they learn isn't to write code to bring a testcase to green light."}
{"_id": "151215", "title": "Is dependency injection by hand a better alternative to composition and polymorphism?", "text": "First, I'm an entry level programmer; In fact, I'm finishing an A.S. degree with a final capstone project over the summer. In my new job, when there isn't some project for me to do (they're waiting to fill the team with more new hires), I've been given books to read and learn from while I wait - some textbooks, others not so much (like Code Complete). After going through these books, I've turned to the internet to learn as much as possible, and started learning about SOLID and DI (we talked some about Liskov's substitution principle, but not much else SOLID ideas). So as I've learned, I sat down to do to learn better, and began writing some code to utilize DI by hand (there are no DI frameworks on the development computers). Thing is, as I do it, I notice it feels familiar... and it seems like it is very much like work I've done in the past using composition of abstract classes using polymorphism. Am I missing a bigger picture here? Is there something about DI (at least by hand) that goes beyond that? I understand the possibility of having configurations not in code of some DI frameworks having some great benefits as far as changing things without having to recompile, but when doing it by hand, I'm not sure if it's any different than stated above... Some insight into this would be very helpful!"}
{"_id": "207224", "title": "Does MVC pattern negate other design patterns?", "text": "So usually when working with the MVC you have a controller that controls the input a model that process it and makes it ready for the user and a view that display the \"result\" to the user. Now when creating this pattern you seperate the code into their relevant place. for instance the controller code goes into the controller, the gui code goes into the view and so on. Now my question is if we look at all of the design patterns out there for instance the observer pattern. How would you apply such pattern to a code structure that already implements the MVC pattern? for that case many of the other patterns aswell such as composite, factory and command pattern? Doesnt the structure of the MVC pattern make it harder to implement other good pratice design patterns?"}
{"_id": "17887", "title": "What is the difference between a Program Manager and a Project Manager?", "text": "Is a Program Manager a person who manages mutiple projects (under a single program) which are in turn managed by Project Managers? Or is a Program Manager a person as defined by Joel Spolsky here. **NOTE:** I am not referring to this."}
{"_id": "89455", "title": "NetBeans IDE and various alternatives?", "text": "I mainly like to use NetBeans as my IDE for Java,which i really enjoy using. Currently just learning Java and was advised this would be a great program, which it is. I would just like to ask the experienced guys here what software you mainly use for Java / Python etc. As said, I am just in the process of getting my degree in SE so never been exposed to the business world of software and what is mostly used."}
{"_id": "89454", "title": "Dataflow Diagrams - are they used in the real world?", "text": "So, last semester I had an Information Systems course where we were supposed to create a typical CRUD site. We were given a couple of Use Cases and from then on we created Dataflow Diagrams that were used to design our database. I've been looking around on the net, but I'm having the impression that people nowadays rarely use DFD's - at least so it seems. Is it just an impression of mine, or are they actually used?"}
{"_id": "114530", "title": "What were the reasons why Windows never had a decent shell?", "text": "I was reading a topic on SO: Why are scripting languages (e.g. ...) not suitable as shell languages?. Especially I liked the answer by J\u00f6rg W Mittag, from which I learned interesting things about `Windows PowerShell`. So after more than 20 years Windows finally has a well designed shell (Windows 1.0 - 1985, PowerShell stable release - 2009). On other hand Unix systems has a bunch of various shells since 1978 Bourne Shell. I've read some articles about MS job interviewing and I have an impression of very \"geekish\" company. I am wondering why didn't they had a need for command-line tools compared to Unix people who do all their work with those tools."}
{"_id": "118825", "title": "Security vulnerability and nda's", "text": "I want to propose a situation and gain insight from the communities thoughts. A customer, call them Customer X has a contract with a vendor, Vendor Y to provide an application and services. Customer X discovers a serious authentication vulnerability in Vendor Y's software. Vendor Y and Customer X has a discussion.   * Vendor Y acknowledges/confirms flaw.   * Vendor Y confirms they will put effort to fix.    * Customer X requests Vendor Y to inform all customers impacted by this. Vendor agrees.  Fast forward 2 months, and the flaw has not been fixed. Patches were applied to mitigate but the flaw still exists. However, no customers were informed of issue. At this point customer X contacts Vendor Y to determine the status and understand why customer's were not informed. The vendor nicely reminds the customer they are under an NDA and are still working on the issue. A few questions/discussion pieces out of this.   * **By discussing a software flaw with a vendor, does this imply you have agreed to any type of NDA disclosure? Additionally, what rights as does Customer X have to inform other customers of this vulnerability if vendor does not appear willing to comply?**   * _I (the op) am under the impression that when this situation occurs, you are supposed to notify vendor of issue, provide them with ample time to respond and if no response you are able to do what you wish with the information._   * _I am thinking back to the MIT/subway incident where they contacted transit authorities, transit authorities didn't respond in a timely fashion so the students disclosed the information publicly on their own._   * _Few things to note about this: I am not the customer in above situation, also lets assume for purposes of keeping discussion inline that customer X has no intentions of disclosing information, they are merely concerned and interested in making sure other customers are aware until it is fixed so they do not expierence a major security breach._ (More information can be supplied if needed to add context to question. )"}
{"_id": "89459", "title": "Reading a character from a file stream in c++ (AKA: Why no C++ standard equivalent of old conio.h)?", "text": "I don't have an actual problem I'm working on, this is more a question of design decisions. I find that there are so many different things I work on where reading a `_kbhit()` is amazingly useful but I can't find (read: there isn't) any functionality like that in the C++ standard.   * Example: Have a camera continuously running (and updating an on-screen window) until you hit the \"escape\" character.   * Example: Pressing F11 in firefox to maximize the window.   * Example: Pressing the W key in any FPS game to move forwards All of these read the keyboard without pressing [enter] between each read. How the devil is that accomplished? Under windows I use `getch()` in a continuous loop running in its own thread. I'm not sure if that's a good idea performance-wise, but most of the software I write that runs in an OS isn't very time critical (It's mostly command-line UIs that interface with the embedded systems that I develop). The reason I'm asking is because a friend has asked me to help him write a UI for a system - and the UI has to run under Linux. I have no idea where to start and rather than turn him down, I thought I'd instead ask you guys: How do you read a keyboard hit without calling a conio.h function?"}
{"_id": "114536", "title": "WCF/SOA - Why should I create parameter objects for simple requests", "text": "Our company is starting a fairly large SOA initiative. We're doing a lot of stuff right: there's good communication; money for tools where appropriate; and we have brought on some good expertise to help us with the transition. We're trying to develop standards that we can follow as a group, and one of the proposed standards is bothering me quite a bit: We have standardized on the pattern where every operation takes a request object and returns a response object. I realize that this is more or less a standard approach for a lot of folks, but I am asking _why should I bother?_ (I'm not so good with received wisdom, I need some why). Most of the services that I will be providing are simple organizational metadata retrieval. For example, find the security policy for a particular user. This needs a user id and nothing else. The standard tells me that I should wrap this request in an object and wrap the returned policy in a response object. My unease is amplified by a look at the WSDL that is generated from our contracts. WCF generates request and response messages automatically and wraps even the request/response object. I fully understand that if you're making a complex request then a complex input object is warranted. That's what you would do even if services wren't involved. My question is why should I automatically wrap requests and responses when:   * It makes simple services less expressive    * You would do it anyway for a complex service   * WCF creates a request/response message anyway I have found the following arguments in favor of this approach: **It supports versioning by allowing optional parameters to be slipped into the request object.** Back in the day, I did a fair bit of COM, and I would consider this almost an anti-pattern for versioning. For some things, I suppose it would help, but I expect that where it would help, you already have a parameter object anyway. **It allows common data and behavior to be isolated to a base class** This one carries some weight with me. **It steers people away from an RPC style behavior and towards a messaging behavior** I've read this on Microsoft's site and heard it from our guru, but I still don't have a clear idea what they mean or why it's valuable. Is it that natural looking interfaces make people tend to forget that they are calling a remote service? I am looking at refactoring the signatures of perhaps 300 methods, so this is a non-trivial amount of pain. I'm a huge fan of consistency in implementations, so I'm willing to take on the pain, it will just help to know that it will all be worth it in the end."}
{"_id": "51038", "title": "Recomendations for Front-End to Programming Transition", "text": "I am a front-end developer seeking to add programming to my skillset. As with all things, I'm sure that practice and practical application will aid me most, but I am currently having trouble wrapping my head around the transition from a very linear type of development (HMTL/CSS) to the more \"3-dimensional\" or non-linear concepts of programming, e.g., object-oriented programming. I'm just feeling overwhelmed that there's so much to know! Where to start, where to start. I'm especially interested in learning Javascript, PHP, and RoR. But I'd prefer to really get intimate with PHP as I like tinkering with WordPress. Does anyone have any suggestions for resources relevant to my study, or hands- on example projects that would yield the most practical experience for me? I've tinkered for years, but am just anxious for that ah-ha moment for things to start clicking. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "220111", "title": "Locating playback position of audio track", "text": "I want to find the playback position of a known audio track by listening with another device. Ideally the listening device wouldn't need a full copy of the audio, but some kind of hash of it, as the target audio might be long (this is for displaying the position while watching a film). I've had a small look into acoustic fingerprinting tools - though I'm searching for the position rather than from a set of songs and I'd like the recognition to be active so would rather not be polling a service. My initial thoughts are to sample a few frequencies (so that the entire audio track isn't required), and use Dynamic Time Warping to search for a matching region of the track. I've not got huge experience with audio processing, so I was wondering if there was a more efficient/robust approach to this."}
{"_id": "214993", "title": "What would be the market life of a JVM based software framework?", "text": "I saw how Struts 1 lasted from 2000 to 2013. I hear that people are moving from Struts 2 to Spring. But for a project that may need to be maintained for a decade or two, would it be advisable to opt for a framework or directly code with `servlets` and `jquery`? Can a system architecture really be designed keeping in mind a particular framework? **What really is the market life of a framework? Do the creators of the framework create it with the assumption that it would become obsolete in a decade?**"}
{"_id": "214997", "title": "Reference vs dereference pointers in arguments C++/C", "text": "OK, I'm facing this all the time in many functions I write, which should I use?               void sth(int* a)     void sth(int& a)      Which one is faster, regarding two separate occasions: a is a small variable or a is a large data struct. I would like a deep answers with pertinence to the actual hardware and stack process."}
{"_id": "127359", "title": "What's the best place for a high school programmer to get his work noticed?", "text": "I'm a 16 year old high school student, with a passion for computer programming. I'm in grade 11, and I've been learning it as part of the school syllabus for about 8 months. I've gone beyond what's being taught at school, and witten a few (reasonably good) applications. The language that I program in is C++, on the windows platform. Eventually I'd like to major in CS at a good college and then work as a programmer. The specific questions that I have are:   * What is a good place for me to get my work noticed ?    * Are there any journals, or publications specifically for young programmers ?   * If not publications, then are there any good blogs, or is it just better to start your own ?   * Is there anything else, that would help me get noticed as a programmer ? I've tried to be as objective as possible. If all this was tl;dr: What's the best way to get noticed as a young programmer ? Edit: I am not looking to get hired straight out of high school The aim is not to impress the community as a professional programmer. This is with intent towards college applications where having your work seen and critiqued by other people will improve your application. I am not looking to earn money from what I've written (so far)."}
{"_id": "61303", "title": "How can you be certain that a controversial change made to your software really is best for users?", "text": "**Background:** we have recently made a significant change to the UI of our software. All previous versions used a MDI interface (windows floating around inside a parent window.) The new version uses a docked interface (windows snap next to each other, fill all available space, and can be tabbed on top of each other, and can be dragged out to another screen.) We thought - and still think - this is a great improvement. However, feedback from our alpha testers is wildly varying. Some love it, some say they find it hard to use and want to use the old system. Many of our users have been using the software for well over a decade and are very used to its old UI behaviour. **Generic situation:** I'm sure other software houses have encountered similar problems, ie I think this is a widely applicable problem we will probably all encounter at some point: you make a change (especially a significant change) that you think will be greatly beneficial for the users of your software, and you don't receive universal acclaim.   * How can you be certain that your change really is better _for the user_ , instead of just a change you happen to like?   * In my experience, change is usually liked more when it's voluntary or sought out, not forced. How do you enthuse your users so that it is voluntary? Should you even try? How do you handle this situation? _I have tagged this question 'delphi' because there is an interesting specific parallel: a decade or so ago the Delphi & C++Builder IDE (which we use!) changed from floating windows to a docked UI - exactly the same as us. A small, very vocal group of people complained loudly and some still do to this day. As far as I know, the majority think it was a great change. If there happen to be any Borland / Embarcadero staff reading who feel like chiming in with a historical tale, I'd love to hear your input!_"}
{"_id": "226104", "title": "When is type coercion a good idea?", "text": "When do you want (on purpose) to coerce type in JavaScript? I mean, beyond comparing strings and numbers, when does it benefit something you're building? Examples of type coercion:               \"The answer is \" + 42      //=> \"The answer is 42\"          \"37\" - 7      //=> 30          \"37\" + 7      //=> \"377\"          var foo = [0];     console.log(foo == foo);     //=> true          console.log(foo == !foo);     //=> true"}
{"_id": "110340", "title": "When is applications a preferred context over web?", "text": "My experience has been that we now see more of a discussion about apps than just a discussion about websites that was before. Do you agree? When is it more appriopriate to speak about apps as compared to web and websites? In general I'm much in favor of leaning towards to perspective of apps rather than web/sites/domains since the latter depends so much on name and you couldn't make a thing such as a whitelabel project as a website - it has to be an app. So I seem to arrive at the conclusion that apps is the wider context and therefore is preferred, especially if the project is a whitelabel software development that a client should be able to take and \"brand\" for instance such as taking the stackoverflow project and banding it to a new forum which is the way I supposse things work when we get a new forum."}
{"_id": "226107", "title": "Handling \"unspecified\" values in software", "text": "So I'm working on a software product where we have a number of fields that the customer can leave blank, some of which are numeric. To persist these in the database we use nullable columns. Easy peasy. I'm considering the utility of an object oriented domain model and one thing that bugs me is the issue of nullable fields. The reason is, in the world of Java and C# one often finds advice against having null values and indeed writing code with null checks all over the place sucks. And then you get null reference exceptions when you forget to check for null. And it's a mess. So a \"good\" approach is to initialize everything when you declare it. Now, the idea of null actually makes sense for these fields... the customer did not enter a value thus it has \"no\" value (not 0, not -1, etc). But application programmers and programming languages seem to be configured for binary rather than ternary logic, and also for variables just darn well having a value rather than maybe having a value but also maybe not. With object oriented design I presume one could come up with some clever system of representing cases where there is \"no\" value but I personally haven't done the analysis yet and the reason is I find incremental change more successfully sells to people than radical change does, so proposing an object oriented domain model that's \"too object oriented\" might kill the idea and thus my hopes of improving the structure of our software. I'd rather propose a \"version 0\" domain model that works and is easy to sell internally... and so this whole thing about null values weighs heavy on my mind. Since we are using C# I could just define nullable numbers, its very easy one just adds a question mark. But I'm not convinced that just because it's possible it's also the best approach. So, with all this background junk out of the way my question is: how have you/your company handled \"nonexistent\" values in an object oriented domain model, in what ways did you find it effective and in what ways did you find it ineffective? My selection criteria for the \"answer\" will be the one that seems most \"sellable\" as defined in the background junk. But really I'd like to see what people come up with and learn some new things so any answer with some thought behind it will receive an upvote from me. Note: I've seen other discussions about null values in other threads but nothing that quite lines up with what I want to talk about, hence a new question. EDIT: My question's scope includes value typed properties like numbers. So in C# one way to allow for representation of a null purchase price would be to declare \"PurchasePrice\" as \"decimal?\" which is the nullable decimal type. I just see a number of disadvantages to numbers (for example) that can also be null, so I'm looking for an alternative. EDIT 2: The Null Object Pattern makes sense for references, and using a nullable type for values appears as if it may be tractable with coalescing. What bothers me about coalescing null types is \"what if someone forgets to coalesce and we're exposed to a null reference exception?\"... and I suppose I could maybe use a static analysis tool which ensures that coalescing is used where expected to allay that worry. EDIT 2': In a sense, if someone has made a conscious decision to make a field nullable they are adding the ability to represent an extra piece of information that would otherwise need another field to represent it such as a boolean HasValue. Does that mean the \"anti-null\" zealots I've met in the past were perhaps incorrect, and measured use of nullity can in fact improve a design?"}
{"_id": "110345", "title": "How can a self-taught programmer learn more about Computer Science?", "text": "I'm a self taught iOS (iPhone/iPad) programmer but didn't study CS in school. Are there any books or site I can study that will teach more about CS, in general. For example some common practices and how different languages work together etc. I don't need full details but simply just an overview of common CS stuff. I know this is a broad question but any info would be good."}
{"_id": "110348", "title": "Open Source Friendly IP Contracts for Freelancers", "text": "I am about to enter the world of consulting for the first time and am having to write my first contract. One problem I have is regarding open source work and intellectual property. I love working on open source projects, whether it's an existing project or a project that I start on my own. The question is: how can I write my contract to accommodate the following situations:   1. In the course of working on the client's project, I want to open source part of the code to the community under my own name.   2. In the course of working on the client's project, I am making use of some of my existing open source projects, and am making improvements to them.   3. In the course of working on the client's projects, I make improvements to third party open source projects and contribute them back.   4. In the course of working on the client's project, we decide to open source part of the code under the client's name. What are the precedents to this if any? _Update: I added a item in the list above(item #3)._"}
{"_id": "28877", "title": "using GNU GPL v2 software as pointers to solution to problem", "text": "I am coding a PHP serial access class and have been taking pointers from the PHP-serial class on Google Code (here). That class is based on PHP 4 and I'm creating a PHP 5 class that allows more functionality and is specific to some business demands I have. There is no code copied and I have done all the coding. Does the class I'm writing fall under the Google Code's GPL or am I free to select a license that I feel is appropriate? I'm not sure of the standard that applies to licensing when you are only looking to another work for pointers."}
{"_id": "28878", "title": "How would somebody uphold a license on \"illegal\" code?", "text": "First off, I want to say that this is **purely hypothetical** ; it's just a scenario that came to mind. I am not looking for personal legal advice, but rather, I'm trying to gain a better understanding of software licensing in general. Suppose somebody open-sources code relating to a botnet (either the code to infect a zombie, control the zombies, or both) under some license, let's say GPL. A few questions.   * First off, are botnets illegal? I don't know if it differs from country to country. I ask because if it isn't, then my question would make no sense whatsoever.   * Can a software license be applied to \"illegal\" software?   * If a person decides to take that code and violates the license terms, could the original creator take action against said person?   * Even if they could, _should they_? What happens if somebody openly admits they are the creator of code that does illegal things?"}
{"_id": "150746", "title": "Improving performance for grepping over a huge file", "text": "I have FILE_A which has over 300,000 lines and FILE_B which has over 30 million lines. I created a Bash script that greps each line in FILE_A over in FILE_B and writes the result of the grep to a new file. This whole process is taking over 5 hours. How can I improve the performance of my script? I'm using `grep -F -m 1` as the grep command. FILE_A looks like this:               123456789      123455321      and FILE_B is like this:               123456789,123456789,730025400149993,     123455321,123455321,730025400126097,      So with Bash I have a `while` loop that picks the next line in FILE_A and greps it over in FILE_B. When the pattern is found in FILE_B, I write it to file result.txt.               while read -r line; do        grep -F -m1 $line 30MFile     done < 300KFile"}
{"_id": "253765", "title": "Generic Repositories with DI & Data Intensive Controllers", "text": "Usually, I consider a large number of parameters as an alarm bell that there may be a design problem somewhere. I am using a Generic Repository for an ASP.NET application and have a Controller with a growing number of parameters.               public class GenericRepository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class     {         protected DbContext Context { get; set; }         protected DbSet<T> DbSet { get; set; }              public GenericRepository(DbContext context)         {             Context = context;             DbSet = context.Set<T>();         }         ...//methods excluded to keep the question readable          }      I am using a DI container to pass in the DbContext to the generic repository. So far, this has met my needs and there are no other concrete implmentations of `IRepository<T>`. However, I had to create a dashboard which uses data from many Entities. There was also a form containing a couple of dropdown lists. Now using the generic repository this makes the parameter requirments grow quickly. The Controller will end up being something like               public HomeController(IRepository<EntityOne> entityOneRepository,                           IRepository<EntityTwo> entityTwoRepository,                           IRepository<EntityThree> entityThreeRepository,                           IRepository<EntityFour> entityFourRepository,                           ILogError logError,                           ICurrentUser currentUser)     {     }      It has about 6 IRepositories plus a few others to include the required data and the dropdown list options. In my mind this is too many parameters. From a performance point of view, there is only 1 DBContext per request and the DI container will serve the same DbContext to all of the Repositories. From a code standards/readability point of view it's ugly. Is there a better way to handle this situation? Its a real world project with real world time constraints so I will not dwell on it too long, but from a learning perspective it would be good to see how such situations are handled by others."}
{"_id": "82940", "title": "types of encoding in xml", "text": "How the encodings work? Which encodings can be used in XML?               To avoid errors      XML encoding while using PHP I heard about               Character Encodings:     Source Encodings:     Target Encodings:      May i know what is the Difference between them?"}
{"_id": "195668", "title": "How can a beginning programmer begin to learn and apply testing best practices when developing software?", "text": "While learning to develop in PHP it has been easy enough that my short, one page, 20 line little scripts I could add \"testing code\" directly to my functions to figure out where I am or get close to the area in the code where the issue is found (for example, \"print_r($var),\" \"var_dump($var),\" \"print 'you are here') type stuff. Now that my code bases are growing lines and lines deep and accross multiple files, it's becoming a pain to go through and uncomment out all of my test code, and then go back and recomment it out again once an issue is resolved. Recently I have discovered git in managing my larger applications. I've latched onto branches, and I have a testing branch and production branch I jump between when debugging. The testing branch of course has all my 'print this or that' testing code. However, this still doesn't feel right. As code grows, what are ways I can test and debug it? What are best practices for testing and debugging code as applications get larger and more complex? The phrase \"Unit testing\" catches my eye now and then, but it's still unfamiliar to me. Is this something I should be paying attention more to? Do large projects have different testing and production code bases and is a version control system the correct way to approach managing it?"}
{"_id": "163946", "title": "Code Design question, circular reference across classes?", "text": "I have no code here, as this is more of a design question (I assume this is still the best place to ask it). I have a very simple server in java which stores a mapping between certain values and UUID which are to be used by many systems across multiple platforms. It accepts a connection from a client and creates a clientSocket which stores the socket and all the other relevant data unique to that connection. Each clientSocket will run in their own thread and will block on the socket waiting for a read. I expect very little strain on this system, it will rarely get called, but when it does get a call it will need to respond quickly and due to the risk of it having a peak time with multiple calls coming in at once threaded is still better. Each thread has a reference to a Mapper class which stores the mapping of UUID which it's reporting to others (with proper synchronization of course). This all works until I have to add a new UUID to the list. When this happens I want to report to all clients that care about that particular UUID that a new one was added. I can't multicast (limitation of the system I'm running on) so I'm having each socket send the message to the client through the established socket. However, since each thread only knows about the socket it's waiting on I didn't have a clear method of looking up every thread/socket that cares about the data to inform them of the new UUID. Polling is out mostly because it seems a little too convoluted to try to maintain a list of newly added UUID. My solution as of now is to have the 'parent' class which creates the mapper class and spawns all the threads pass itself as an argument to the mapper. Then when the mapper creates a new UUID it can make a call to the parent class telling it to send out updates to all the other sockets that care about the change. I'm concerned that this may be a bad design due to the use of a circular reference; parent has a reference to mapper (to pass it to new ClientSocket threads) and mapper points to parent. It doesn't really feel like a bad design to me but I wanted to check since circular references are suppose to be bad. Note: I realize this means that the thread associated with whatever socket originally received the request that spawned the creation of a UUID is going to pay the 'cost' of outputting to all the other clients that care about the new UUID. I don't care about this; as I said I suspect the client to receive only intermittent messages. It's unlikely for one socket to receive multiple messages at one time, and there won't be that many sockets so it shouldn't take too long to send messages to each of them. Perhaps later I'll fix the fact that I'm saddling higher work load on whatever unfortunate thread gets the first request; but for now I think it's fine."}
{"_id": "195660", "title": "Logging failed login attempts exposes passwords", "text": "I started logging failed logins attempts on my website with a message like `Failed login attempt by qntmfred` I've noticed some of these logs look like `Failed login attempt by qntmfredmypassword` I'm guessing some people had a failed login because they typed their username and their password in the username field. Passwords are hashed in the database, but if somehow the db got compromised, these log messages could be a way for an attacker to figure out passwords for whatever small percentage of people end up having a failed login such as this. Is there a better way to handle this? Should I even worry about this possibility?"}
{"_id": "155209", "title": "Do your managers prefer to create proof of concept (POC) before working prototype?", "text": "At last team meeting I heard from managers that we need to create proof of concept (POC) before main prototype and integrate this concept with the main system for proving a new feature.   1. Could you explain me the main features or this method?   2. Do you use the POC in your projects before implementation?   3. What is the main advantages and disadvantages of this method?"}
{"_id": "206172", "title": "Flowgraph Aptitude question", "text": "I recently looked a Flow-Graph question. Consider 8 boxes with following values               Box 1 = 2     Box 2 = 7     Box 3 = 2     Box 4 = 1     Box 5 = 5     Box 6 = 7     Box 7 = 1     Box 8 = 4      Now follow the instructions:   1. Put the number from Box 7 into Box 1   2. Add the numbers from Box 1 and Box 2 , and put the result in Box 1   3. Change Instruction 2, Increase the number in Box 2 by 1   4. If the second box number mentioned in instruction 2 is greater than the number in box 8, stop. If not, go to step 2. What number is in Box 1 now? Note: When you are told to put a number into a box, it is understood that whatever number was previously in that box has just been erased. When I tried to solve:   1. b[1] = 1   2. b[1] = 1+7 = 8   3. b[b[2]] = b[7]+1 =b[7]=2   4. b[2] > b[8] 7 > 4 : true result: 8 But the solution is 11! how? I got stuck.Am I misinterpreting something?"}
{"_id": "206170", "title": "Sharing dlls in a software deployment", "text": "We are moving our software project from the practically auto-creating Visual Studio Installer in Visual Studio 2010 to a WiX installer. I'd like to use this change to make sure things are right. The application is a subsidiary to our company's main app that will already be installed in its own folder. The main app has a lot of dlls, some of which the subsidiary app needs to load to work. With the previous installer, the required dlls are pulled into the project and included in the subsidiary app's installation folder. However, this seems to create possible problems:   * Multiple versions of the same dll creates confusion, especially if we produce another app in the future.   * If the version of the main app changes, the updates are missed by the subsidiary app. I'm not comfortable with adding our app to the same folder, because they are developed and maintained by different groups. Instead of this, perhaps I could add the path of the main app to the PATH environment variable. Would this work, and are there concerns with doing this? Is there some other way to approach this issue?"}
{"_id": "245294", "title": "Are Parameters Needed?", "text": "I am wondering if my parameters are need for the methods? Here is the psuedo-code I currently have:               class Transaction is        Must contain Date, Payee, Balance      Can have Deposit, Withdrawal, Check Number, Memo, Cleared          class TransactionBuilder is         method getTransaction() is         output: A transaction with all the correct features and values        Construct and return the transaction          method setDate(date) is         input:  the date that the transaction took place       Tell the builder the transaction date               method setPayee(payee) is         input:  the person receiving the funds from the transaction       Tell the builder who the payee is          method setDeposit(depositAmt) is         input:  the amount of the deposit       Tell the builder the amount of the deposit          method setWithdrawal(withdrawalAmt) is         input:  the amount of the withdrawal       Tell the builder the amount of the withdrawal          method setBalance(balanceAmt) is         input:  the amount of the balance       Tell the builder the amount of the balance          method setClear() is         Make the builder remember that the transaction has cleared the bank          method setCheckNum(checkNum) is          input:  the number of the check wrote       Tell the builder the check number for this transaction          method  setMemo(memo) is         input:  the memo about the transaction       Tell the builder the memo of the transaction"}
{"_id": "200374", "title": "How to make a license to prohibit redistribution?", "text": "I have a script I want to sell. It's written in PHP, but that's not relevant here I guess. I want to secure my script with a license, so the buyer is forbidden from redistributing it. This is the first time I am selling my own script, so I have no idea how to start with this. Please let me know how I can protect my script with a license and what kind of license."}
{"_id": "120511", "title": "Referring to hardware/software in first-person?", "text": "At my company, there is a habit for the engineers to refer to their respective hardware/firmware/software in the first-person as if the device they are responsible for is a manifestation of themselves. I'll give you an example: > **Hardware Engineer:** \"I don't receive the first byte, so I stay off.\" > > **Software Engineer:** \"I'm sending you the first byte after the ack flag, > so I thought you were getting it.\" > > **Hardware Engineer:** \"No, you're not turning me on.\" It was this very example I overheard today that nearly had me giggling in fits. _\"You're not turning me on.\"_ Well, I should hope not! So, is it common practice for engineers to do this, or simply unprofessional? Any suggestions for changing this apparently bad habit?"}
{"_id": "25163", "title": "How did you learn about security in your web development?", "text": "I've been developing intranet web sites and public web sites with no big issues concerning security. There were nothing to steal and nothing to gain. Nothing to attract people to try to reach the website behind the scene. I don't talk about login & password but more about the security against user attacks. So, what's the best way to learn to secure the access to a site, to learn about common mistakes or weakness to think about ? Do I have to find a framework related to the language I use and rely on it or is there a source (book, website, ...) where I can find information about general design and tricks ?"}
{"_id": "120516", "title": "Why should I use Zend_Application?", "text": "I've been working on a Zend Framework application which currently does a bunch of things through Zend Application and a few resource plugins written for it. However, looking at this codebase now, it seems to me that using Zend_Application just makes things more complicated; and a plain, more \"traditional\" bootstrap file would do a better job of being transparent. This is even more the case because the individual components of Zend -- Zend_Controller, Zend_Navigation, etc. -- don't reference Zend_Application at all. Therefore they do things like \"Well just call setRoute and be on your way,\" and the user is left scratching their head as to how to implement that in terms of the application.ini configuration file. This is not to say that one can't figure out what's going on by doing spelunking through the ZF source code. My problem with that approach is that it's to easy to depend on something that's an implementation detail, rather than a contract, and that all it seems to do is add an extra layer of indirection that one must wade through to understand an application. I look at pre ZF 1.8 example code, before Zend_Application existed, and everywhere I see plain bootstrap files that setup the MVC framework and get on their way. The code is clear and easy to understand, even if it is a bit repetitive. I like the DRY concept that Application gets you, but particularly when I'm assuming first people looking at the app's code aren't really familiar with Zend at all, I'm considering blowing away any dependence I have on Zend_Application and returning to a traditional bootstrap file. Now, my concern here is that I don't have much experience doing this, and I don't want to get rid of Zend_Application if it does something particularly important of which I am unaware, or something of that nature. Is there a really good reason I should keep it around?"}
{"_id": "251729", "title": "SOAP message testing", "text": "I am working in Scala/Java. I'm testing the messaging infrastructure of a part of my system that I did several years ago with CXF and Java. More specifically, I'm re-writing the specification of the message exchange. This is because i'm changing few part of it. At the time, I was not using TDD/BDD. Now I'm driving out everything with BDD. Actually, the owner of the system specifically wants to have the BDD style Specification before i'm done with the project. I also find it actually useful anyway. > I'm particularly interested in writing an end-to-end test, where I would > check that the server read the message properly. > > Optionally I would like to send a message and in the middle check that what > is sent is conform and forward the message to the server. (Actually i think > that unit testing the sending on one side and the receiving on the other > side should be enough here) The end to end test should be something like: ->Client one prepare a message ->Client one send a message to the Server ->On reception of the message on the server verify, that the message received correspond to is expected to have been sent. In particular, check that resulting composite object constructed out of the raw message is right.  This, on its own, should drive out several unit test in the middle. The other nonfunctional constraint will also help for the matter. The problem here is that the end-to-end test describe here actually involve writing a Test with asynchronous code. I saw things like awaitlity or scala future to handle that. However, the part is bogging me down, is the observation of an the new message received inside the server. I read things about polling the system through a probe, but i still can't figure out the probe part. In any case, in all and all, the problem is that the message received is an internal variable of the server, well encapsulated. I'm wondering how to deal with that ? What techniques could be recommended here ??? There must be some existing hooks for that? Any one has any idea? Serializing the object in a log file :), making the variable publicly accessible trough some getter? Creating some trace object for the matter. etc.... I would appreciate if someone could suggest something."}
{"_id": "135573", "title": "JSON-based Ajax Checkout experience - is it safe?", "text": "For a mobile, e-commerce site, that follows the client-server model, where all the views are json-ajax calls to return data from a secure service, is it safe to also pass the \"checkout\" process through an ajax call? The entire site is presented by making json-formatted ajax-calls to the service (which is controlled). If the service will return responses ONLY from the client-server (i.e. lockdown on the IP-range) would that make it secure? Are there other considerations? **EDIT:** JSON-based ajax is to give context to the mobile-site setup. Client-server model is more accurate, where the business logic / authorization is handled via another server. But because it's using JSON-Ajax, the calls are easily read in javascript (or through a http proxy for the transaction). SSL Certificate will be installed. I'm just trying to find out if there are specific security holes to protect against in this setup."}
{"_id": "251723", "title": "Chasing DirectX versions", "text": "We're a small-medium size enterprise (~50 devs), working on several DirectX 9 applications. ( _not_ games) DirectX 10 and 11 both were deep interface overhauls, as DX12 will probably be. We didn't upgrade to any of them, and since VS2013 (now migrating) working with DX9 is getting very inconvenient to say the least - while DX9 is not technically deprecated, MS is very actively pushing devs away from it. I wonder, how are other dev shops handling the DX interface instability? Are you actually re-writing your graphics engine every ~2-3 years? Are you using 3rd party middleware? Both OGRE and Unity seem like tons of code, have design goals I don't care about (cross platform), and I'm not even sure their interface is more stable. Are there other ways I'm missing? Important note: _We're not developing AAA games, and we've not much use for fancy shaders or a need to squeeze every bit of performance from modern hardware_. Our products just display data mostly in 3D. * * * it seems some clarifications are in order. The current state of graphics development is that MS issues a completely overhauled DX interface roughly every ~2-3 years. It seems - whether deliberately or not - they are targeting major game shops (or even: game-engine shops), which would happily devote the needed HR to rewrite the 3D graphics engine to conform to the latest and greatest. Our shop (and I suspect many others) is nothing like that. We present a lot of data in 3D, but do not use exotic shaders and don't care about the latest consoles or GPUs. It makes no business sense for us to rewrite our rendering engine for new features we don't care about - and yet the old engines are becoming deprecated fast. A DX dev from MS writes: > the ability to support a Direct3D 9 application at all is diminished on the > latest versions of Windows, and that's likely to continue And regarding D3DX - while not technically deprecated, is very hard to work with on VS2013. MSDN diplomatic Quote: > Investigate alternate solutions for working with the Direct3D API. I'm curious: how are other shops with similar 3D needs handling this? e.g., how are you guys in the CAD business doing?"}
{"_id": "166273", "title": "Advantages of using pure JavaScript over JQuery", "text": "What are the advantages of using Javascript-only versus using JQuery-only? I have limited experience with JavaScript and JQuery coding. I've added bits and snippets of each to HTML pages but I've mostly coded server-side stuff in other languages. I've noticed that while you can theoretically do the same things using either of the two approaches (and of course you can even mix 'em up in the same project) there seems to be a tendency to always start using JQuery from the very beginning no-matter what the project demands are. So I'm simply wondering, are there any punctual benefits to not use JQuery- only but instead to just use plain old JavaScript? I know this looks like a non-question because it can be said about it that \"there's no definite answer\" or \"it can be debated for ever\", but I'm actually hoping for punctual answers such as \"You can do this in one approach and you cannot do it with the other\". * * * As per scrwtp's comment, I'm not referring just to the DOM Handling part. My question is rather: JQuery is a library. For Javascript. What I find strange about this library as opposed to other libraries for other languages is that in JQyery's case it seems to be designed to be able to use it exclusively and not need to touch Javascript directly. This is as opposed to let's say Hibernate and SQL, where even though the library (or rather framework in this case, but I think the analogy still applies) takes the handle on A LOT of aspects, you still get to use SQL when using it, at least for some fringe cases. However in JQuery & Javascript case, you could do anything you do with Javascript using only JQuery (or at least that's how it seems to me). * * * As per Stargazer712's comment: yes, I agree with you, the question here is, as you put it \"just a matter of how you will be using JavaScript\". That's what I was actually thriving to ask, but I've made some bad formulations. Here's another analogy: Spring Expression Language. It's a Java library. You can't use it without Java, it's based on Java, and down through it all you still get to use Java. But in practice what you can do is add this library to a Java project, and then write all your code using Spring EL's expression language which effectively makes your code not resemble Java at all, and it's even paradigm shifting (for example you no longer have strong type enforcement when using this). While I do understand that JQuery is just a JS library, to me it seems that in practice it has the same effect as Spring EL has with Java, i.e you can only use it's APIs through out a project and avoid JavaScript's APIs. And I was wondering if that's a good thing to do, what might be the pitfalls etc. (and yes, after reading everyone's answers I do understand that : a. my question is somewhat non-sensical up to a point b. even if the question were completly accurate, the answer to it would be pretty much \"no you can't just use JQuery-only all the time)"}
{"_id": "193506", "title": "Design patterns: Extract instance types into different buckets", "text": "I have the following type hierarchy:               interface I:         ----+class B implements I         ----+class C implements I         ----+class D implements I      I have another class `Consumer1` that supports types `C` and `D` but not `B` (in its various methods) and a class `Consumer2` that supports type `B`. I have total control over `Consumer1` and `Consumer2` so I can choose how to implement them. Now, at runtime I expect my callers to give me a collection of `I`s and I will decide internally whether to route them to `Consumer1` or `Consumer2`. Now, a very bad non-OOP way is to do an `if instanceof` check all over the place and mess things up. One alternative is to register a supporting class `Map<Class<?>, Class<?>>` that shall contain `{{B,Consumer2}, {C,Consumer1}, {D,Consumer1}}`. This is as bad as the previous one because I shall have to cast objects after figuring out whether to send them to `Consumer1` or `Consumer2`. A second alternative is to apply a `Visitor` pattern which would solve this rather neatly but prevent my interface from being extended further (unless I modify the visitor). Is there a neater alternative?"}
{"_id": "193507", "title": "Is (1/(1/x)) always a perfect round trip?", "text": "Is the following guaranteed to return true for all numerical and non-zero values of `x`?               bool IsRoundTrip(double x)     {         double y = 1 / (1 / x);         return x == y;     }      What conditions would cause a discrepency?"}
{"_id": "82567", "title": "How do you program effectively when it takes a long time to simply test your code?", "text": "My workflow has always been to write one logical step and then run the program and inspect the output. This process have served me incredibly well for assignments in university. However, as I do more development, there are often times when simply compiling and running your code takes 1 to 2 minutes. Examples include uploading a program to a microcontroller, requiring interaction with an external server, and unable to implement automation due to authentication, software architecture, or complexity. These types of tasks are very unsuitable to how I usually program, and I'm having difficulties coding effectively. I usually make a lot of syntax errors and logic errors, most of which I easily catch by testing. However, with such a long wait time, this method is too time consuming."}
{"_id": "116970", "title": "Using stock images in open source project", "text": "I have started an open source project and would very much like to have a cute and catchy icon to label the project with. My dilemma is that I have little to no experience designing vector graphics for use in such a project. To compensate I thought I might purchase a graphic from one of the stock photo service (shutterstock, etc.). My project produces HTML documentation from Gherkin language files and my intention was to use this icon on the footer of each page for an \"output produced by ...\" kinda thing. My question is what implications would it have on my licensed software if I were to use this graphic in it. I am releasing the software under the Apache v2 license."}
{"_id": "96704", "title": "Changed The Customer's World - how do we handle this?", "text": "Some time ago, we were tasked with a project to come in and replace a customer's old Mainframe system with a new intranet ASP.NET solution using SQL Server as the back end. Part of this was a re-engineering of the business as well - essentially, as we change the system, we were to be thinking of how we can better do business. So, the first task was to come in and do the logical and then physical data models. The customer was in on these dicussions and had complete sign off. The next phase was to actually do the design and building of each module. Well, to make a long story short, the programming has been done and we are now into parallel testing of the system. Things are going wonderful for most of the modules so far - Except One. We have one system where - if you would only let the business users see the application and reports, all would be well. It works with the new integrated workflow and automates previously manual processes and performs great per the specifications. Parallel testing has uncovered a few issues though with the migrated legacy data. The builders of the legacy system are having a very hard time understanding the new schema and business process, therefore, they are having a very hard time understanding how to take the legacy data and put it into the new schema. Because of this, they are calling meetings of the business users and stakeholders and telling them that the new system doesn't provide data that the old system did (when it really does) - this does make the new system look bad. This is frustrating, to say the least. The new system works great, and provides everything they need and wanted, and if not for the inability of the IT staff to fill in the new tables with the old data, the business users would be happy with the new features and functionality. I'm asking for suggestions for how to handle this. Because of some political moves, the new \"architect\" has no idea of how the system works, and cannot fully understand the ramifications of the changes the IT staff is requesting. The IT staff wants some fundamental changes to the system, which are essentially un-necessary and actually are a bad design - but they ARE the customer. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "93953", "title": "Company Size and Career development", "text": "I am currently working as a software engineer for a large company (around 1000 employees). I recently got a job offer for a smaller company but with more pay (enough that I am really considering the move). The smaller company has about 17 employees and only about 4 developers. It also has a different title, I would be an application developer. Say in five years or so when I am looking to move to another job, will going from a larger company to a smaller company be viewed as negative on my resume? Will the change in title have any effect? The big question here is: How does the size of a company and title of the position affect your career?"}
{"_id": "194049", "title": "Comparing Academic Curriculum Specificity: Generalist vs Specialist", "text": "For someone that is relatively new to web development, would you recommend pursing an academic curriculum that is more diverse (introducing several languages and frameworks with other classes on analysis, networks, databases, etc.) or a curriculum that is very focused and rigorous (i.e. mostly classes on Java-related technologies)? **Background** : I am trying to transition into the web development field. I currently have a Bachelor's in Biology and have almost two years of \"webmaster\" experience for my current employer along with a little bit of freelance web design work on the side. I've applied to several jobs over the past year and the resounding feedback that I get is that I need a degree in Computer Science or related field. I have decided to pursue a Master's degree and have been accepted into two programs. **Boston University** \\- Master's in Computer Information Science with Concentration in Web Application Development **Brandeis University** \\- Master's Degree in Software Engineering BU's program is very eclectic and provides classes on a variety of different topics like HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, JQuery, JavaSE, Oracle database, networks, etc. Brandeis' program goes really deep into Java technologies (basic Java SE, J2EE, Struts, Hibernate, Spring, JDBC, etc.). I currently have a pretty good understanding of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Java SE through about 2 years of self-study. I'm just not certain if it's a good idea to try and broaden my general understanding of website design or if it's better to try and develop a niche (i.e. Java) before I try and get my first developer position. Thanks and have a great day."}
{"_id": "57135", "title": "Is taking a semester or year off from college a good idea?", "text": "I am currently a Junior majoring in Computer Science at a top university (in the USA). As I'm really getting tired of taking classes, I was wondering if taking a semester or year off to do an internship(s) is a reasonable idea? It seems like it would give me more experience programming (making classes a bit easier), and give me a chance to recover from the burnout that comes from taking 18 credits a semester. A friend suggested that I just take a lighter course load, but I only have 2 more semesters of financial aid, so I need to take 18 credits in each of them in order to finish. Taking time off from school is not a normal thing to do, at least at this school. Since more internships are advertised for the summer (that I've seen), I was wondering if there are internships available in times other than the summer? If I took off for a whole year, would it be more valuable to try to stay at the same company for the whole time or to try to get a series of internships at different ones? Valuable in both the sense of resume value and personal value. Would it be easier or harder to get multiple shorter internships?"}
{"_id": "194045", "title": "Securely storing secret data in a client-side web application", "text": "I have this web application that is going to be all client-side technology (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/AngularJS, etc...). This web application is going to be interacting with REST API in order to access and modify data. Right now it is undecided on what type of authentication system the REST API is going to use. From my understanding, any type of API authentication system (API Keys, OAuth 1/2, etc...) is going to have certain data that needs to be kept secret otherwise access can be compromised. For API Keys, they keys themselves need to be secret, for OAuth 2 the client secret/access tokens/refresh tokens need to be kept secret, I am sure a few of the 4 keys involved in OAuth 1 needs to be kept secret (not too much experience with OAuth 1). I have been trying to think if there is a way to store this secret stuff in a pure client-side web application without a middle layer of sorts on the server side. I have been trying to think about this and I can't think of any place to do that. I mean I can't store it in javascript because anyone can just view the source or open up the console and get the data. I am not 100% sure how secure localStorage is and if users can access/modify that data. Even if local storage was secure, the two ways I can think of getting data into it are not. One way is to just store the data in the javascript source code which is the most insecure thing I can think of. Now if I was using something like OAuth 2 in which the rest api itself would give me the tokens, that would still not be that secure (better than the first option) because those tokens would be returned as plain text that anyone who can see the requests the computer is making could see. Is there any way to have an application that is completely running client side be able to store secret pieces of data securely without some sort of middle layer on the server side?"}
{"_id": "93959", "title": "Views, View Controllers, Properties and Object-Oriented Programming", "text": "I'm new to OOP, having been a procedural programmer for many years. I'm learning iOS development in Objective-C and could use some clarity on when and how objects and properties are used. Say I have a view controller, MyViewController. Within that is a UIView, MyView, with a property, viewProperty. How do I reference viewProperty from within MyViewController? My hunch is that I need to instantiate an instance of MyView, say:               MyView *instanceView;      and then reference instanceView.viewProperty. But without having instantiated a MyView at all, a MyView view shows up in MyViewController when I run the iPhone Simulator. Is that because my XIB file implicitly instantiates an instance of MyView? If so, how do I reference that instance in code? If I have to instantiate a MyView instance within MyViewController, which method(s) should contain the declaration, and why? I hope I explained my foggy perceptions adequately for someone to clear things up for me. Apologies if I'm not making sense, but I feel like if someone just connects the dots for me I'm almost there."}
{"_id": "117377", "title": "Google best practices for software developers", "text": "It seems to me that googling has become an integral part of software development. I spend about as much time googling for an answer and copying code from blogs and examples, as writing new code myself. Are there any best practices for google? Examples off the top of my head:   * use trusted sites for answers, i.e stackoverflow, API project page   * read the comments for blogs listing code snippets   * understand and test code copied from blogs   * when in doubt, google for a solution first before coming up with a new one anymore?"}
{"_id": "17498", "title": "What GUI tools are available for which DVCS?", "text": "When I worked at Sun, we used a DVC system called Forte SCCS/Teamware, which used the old SCCS file format, but was a true distributed source code revision control system. One nice feature is that it had strong GUI support:   * You could bringover and putback changes by simply clicking and dragging.   * It would draw trees/graphs showing how workspaces relate to each other.   * You also could have a graph view to display a single file's complete history, which might have had several branches and merges. Allowing you to compare any two points.   * It also had a strong visual merge tool, to let you accept changes from one of two conflicting files. Naturally, many of the current DVCSs have command line support for these operations, but I'm looking for GUI support in order to use this in a **lower- level undergraduate course** I'll be teaching. I'm not saying the Forte Teamware solution was perfect, but it did seem to be ahead of the curve. Unfortunately, it's not a viable option to use for my class. **Question:** What support do the current DVCSs have with regards to GUIs? Do any of them work on Windows, and not just Linux? Are they \"ready for prime- time\" or still works in progress? Are these standalone or built as plug-ins, e.g., for Eclipse? **Note:** To help keep this discussion focused I'm _only_ interested in GUI tools. And not a meta-discussion if GUI tools should be used in teaching."}
{"_id": "117375", "title": "Using Mercurial repository inside a Git one: Feasible? Sane?", "text": "I am thinking on creating a Mercurial repository under a Git repository. e.g.               ..../git-repository/directory/hg-repo/      The 2 repositories Is it possible to manage (keeping your sanity)? How similiar is it to this? * * * I am a computer science student at University. I manage my work in Git, mainly as a distribution mechanism (after realizing that rsync fails when you have changes in more than one place) between my desktop and usb drive. I try use of Git as a VCS as I do work. I have finished a semester where I did a small group project to prepare for a larger group project next year. We had to use Subversion, and experienced the joys of a centralised VCS (including downtime). I tried to keep the subversion repository separate to my Git repository for the subject**, however it was annoying that it was seperate (not in the place where I store assignments). I therefore moved to using an Subversion repository inside my Git repository. As I think ahead (maybe I am thinking too far ahead) I realise that I will have to try and convince people to use a DVCS and Mercurial will probably be the one that is preferred (Windows and Mac GUI support, closer to Subversion). Having done some research into the whole Git vs Mercurial debate (however not used Mercurial at all) I still prefer Git. Can I have a Mercurial repository inside a Git one without going mad (or it ruining something)? Or is it something that I should not consider at all? (Or is it a bad question that should be deleted?) ** I think outside of Australia it is called a course"}
{"_id": "117378", "title": "How do I validate the html/css and JS code outsourced to an external company.", "text": "We have outsourced the html and css design to an external company. We want to make sure the quality of code is good. What benchmarks can we set to achieve this."}
{"_id": "187872", "title": "Template method within one class without subclasses or inheritance", "text": "I have an algorithm with mostly invariant parts that needs to be reused within one class so as to stay DRY. ### Code duplication with repeating method structure               public void save(String key, int value) {         try {             if (isValidWrite()) {                 // Only variable part                 editor.putInt(key, value);                 if (!writeOnDisable){                     write(editor);                                         Log.v(TAG, \"Saved \" + key + \" | \"+ value);                 }             }         } catch (Exception e) {             Log.e(TAG, \"save\", e);         }     }          public void save(String key, String value) {         try {             if (isValidWrite()) {                 // Only variable part                 editor.putString(key, value);                 if (!writeOnDisable){                     write(editor);                     Log.v(TAG, \"Saved \" + key + \" | \"+ value);                 }             }         } catch (Exception e) {             Log.e(TAG, \"save\", e);         }     }      ### Solution?   * The template method pattern is not applicable, because it requires sub-classing.    * Strategy - do I really need to create an interface and provide different implementations to pass into a generalized method as a delegate? Maybe I'm just complaining about proper support for delegates in Java.. (in C# could just use a generic Action<>)"}
{"_id": "158247", "title": "binary representation in Python and keeping leading zeros", "text": "I wanted to use the base64 Python library to encode a sequence of binary digits into base 64. Would it be possible to do it without converting to a string? If not, what is the best way to do it, assuming that my string of 1/0 digits may not be an integer multiple of 8, it may even be an odd number. In addition, I have the following question: is it possible to assign a specific binary string to a variable? For example,               x = 0b00010101010     y = 0b1110000        I want x to hold the three initial zeros, and I would like to be able to concatenate these to to obtain               z = 0b000101010101110000"}
{"_id": "158245", "title": "How do CDNs protect failover sites from DDoS attacks?", "text": "I'm in the design process for a Java web app that I will probably end up deploying to Google App Engine (GAE). The nice thing about GAE is that I really don't have to worry about fortifying my app from the dreaded DDoS attack - I just specify a \"billing ceiling\", and if my traffic peaks up to this ceiling (DDoS or otherwise), GAE will just shut my app down. In other words, GAE will essentially scale to any amount until you simply can't afford to keep the app running any longer. So I'm trying to plan a contingency whereby, if I do hit this billing ceiling and GAE shuts my app down, my web app domain DNS settings \"fail over\" to another, non-GAE IP address. Some initial research has shown that certain CDNs like CloudFlare offer services for this exact situation. Basically, I just keep my DNS settings with them, and they provide an API I can hit to automate a failover procedure. Thus, if I detect that I'm at 99% my billing ceiling for my GAE app, I can hit this CloudFlare API, and CloudFlare will dynamically change my DNS settings to point away from the GAE servers to some other IP address. My initial contingency would be to failover to a \"read-only\" (static content only) version of my web app hosted somewhere else, maybe by GoDaddy or Rackspace. But then it suddenly dawned on me: **if DDoS attacks target the domain name, what difference does it make if I rollover from my GAE IP address to my (say) GoDaddy IP address?** In essence, the failover wouldn't do anything other than allows the DDoS attackers to bring down my backup/GoDaddy site! In other words, DDoS attackers coordinate an attack on my web app, hosted by GAE, at `www.blah-whatever.com`, which is really an IP address of _100.2.3.4_. They cause my traffic to spike to 98% my billing ceiling, and my custom monitor triggers a CloudFlare failover from _100.2.3.4_ to _105.2.3.4_. The DDoS attackers don't care! They're still launching an attack against `www.blah-whatever.com`! The DDoS attack continues! So I ask: what protection do CDNs like CloudFlare offer so that - when you need to fail over to another DNS - you aren't at risk for the same, continued DDoS attack? If such protection exists, are there any technical restrictions (e.g. read-only, etc.) that are placed on the failover site? If not, what good are they?! Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "97254", "title": "Is a .com domain name worth it for a mobile app?", "text": "I'm starting to develop a mobile app, and have a first choice name I'd like to use. However the .com domain of the name has already been taken. Is it actually worth it buying it, or would you tempted to go with CoolNameApp.com or CoolName.net instead? If you couldn't afford the .com domain name, would you use a different name for the actual app?    Also just to let you know I'm a student with not much money.    Am fascinated to hear your ideas and opinions on the importance of .com domains for mobile apps :-)"}
{"_id": "158243", "title": "How to get developers to do code reviews in a timely manner", "text": "The company I work for requires all code to be reviewed by other developers before it is committed. The members of my team are often frustrated because the other developers are too busy coding to do a review, especially if it is very long. How do you incentivize other developers to do timely code reviews? (We use git-svn so we are able to continue coding while waiting for a review. However, I still find it frustrating when I have to wait a long time before I can commit my code.)"}
{"_id": "97257", "title": "Technical IPhone, iPad or general iOS programming article sites", "text": "i just want to know what are the good websites to read technical articles on the iPhone, iPad or in generally iOS. Any subscription based services can also be named. i am talking about sites like http://drdobbs.com, which have articles on mobility but indeed very generic. so can you name some good sites with technical articles on IPhone, iPad or general iOS programming."}
{"_id": "97259", "title": "Is rewriting project a good way to practice the skills?", "text": "I find nothing to do in my spare time. And I want to practice my c++ skills on project. The idea is to rewrite a project in c++, such project like Minix. Is this a good way to improve my programming and architecting skills or it's a waste of time?"}
{"_id": "13384", "title": "Considering consistent change, how short of a planning period is too short?", "text": "Change is not uncommon, change in requirements, change in specs change in workflow. I've accepted that there will be change, but I wonder: knowing that change is going to happen, how short of a planning period is too short? (Justifications are encouraged)   * An iteration (2-4 weeks)?   * A week?   * A 2-3 day period?   * A day?   * 1/2 a day? Assume that the company 'plans' 1 [time interval (from above)] in advance from the current so that any plan sounds like: \"[this morning/today/this week/etc.] you'll work on _this_ and [this afternoon/tomorrow/next week/etc.] you'll be working on _that_. Also assume that the changes in focus/direction will consistently occur every second to third time interval."}
{"_id": "154556", "title": "How compilers know about other classes and their properties?", "text": "I'm writing my first programming language that is object orientated and so far so good with create a single 'class'. But, let's say I want to have to classes, say `ClassA` and `ClassB`. Provided these two have nothing to do with each other then all is good. However, say `ClassA` creates a `ClassB`\\--this poses 2 related questions: -How would the compiler know when compiling `ClassA` that `ClassB` even exists, and, if it does, how does it know it's properties? My thoughts thus far had been: instead of compiling each class at a time (i.e scan, parse and generate code) each \"file (not really file, per se, but a \"class\") do I need to scan + parse each first, then generate code for all?"}
{"_id": "193802", "title": "How do I take responsibility for my code when colleague makes unnecessary improvements without notice?", "text": "One of my teammates is a jack of all trades in our IT shop and I respect his insight. However, sometimes he reviews my code (he's second in command to our team leader, so that's expected) without a heads up. So sometimes he reviews my changes before they complete the end goal and makes changes right away... and has even broken my work once. Other times, he has made unnecessary improvements to some of my code that is 3+ months old. This annoys me for a few reasons:   1. I am not always given a chance to fix my mistakes   2. He has not taken the time to ask me what I was trying to accomplish when he is confused, which could affect his testing or changes   3. I don't always think his code is readable   4. Deadlines are not an issue and his current workload doesn't require any work in my projects other than reviewing my code changes. Anyways, I have told him in the past to please keep me posted if he sees something in my work that he wants to change so that I could take ownership of my code (maybe I should have said \"shortcomings\") and he's not been responsive. I fear that I may come off as aggressive when I ask him to explain his changes to me. He's just a quiet person who keeps to himself, but his actions continue. I don't want to banish him from making code changes (not like I could), because we are a team--but I want to do my part to help our team. Added clarifications:   * We share 1 development branch. I do not wait until all my changes complete a single task because I risk losing some significant work--so I make sure my changes build and do not break anything.   * My concern is that my teammate doesn't explain the reason or purpose behind his changes. I don't think he should need my blessing, but if we disagree on an approach I thought it would be best to discuss the pros and cons and make a decision once we both understand what is going on.   * I have not discussed this with our team lead yet as I would prefer to resolve personal disagreements without getting management involved unless it is necessary. Since my concern seemed more of personal issue than a threat to our work, I chose to not bother the team lead. I am working on code review process ideas--to help promote the benefits of more organized code reviews without making it all about my pet peeves."}
{"_id": "69650", "title": "What specific branches of Mathematics are useful for a programmer to learn?", "text": "I have less than 6 months to learn mathematics for my Master course in CS. (With no prior formal education in any computer/mathematics related area.) So I need to prepare my self to be tested on math as it relates to computer science. As I found in Wikipedia, mathematics has many branches. Which ones are the most important for a programmer?   * Arithmetic   * Algebra (elementary, linear, multilinear, abstract)   * Geometry (discrete, algebraic, differential)   * Calculus/Analysis   * Set theory   * Logic   * Category theory   * Number theory   * Combinatorics   * Graph theory   * Topology   * Lie theory   * Differential equations/Dynamical systems   * Mathematical physics   * Numerical analysis   * Computation   * Information theory   * Probability   * Statistics   * Optimization   * Control theory   * Game theory"}
{"_id": "250238", "title": "Separation of concerns between objects", "text": "I have two objects which work together to provide interaction with HIDs on a machine. One object is responsible for the communication (read/write) to the HID and the other object is responsible for modelling the HID. Information is read and written to the HID as byte arrays. As a contrived example:               class Hid     {       private HidComms comms;            public DateTime? GetPropertyB()       {         return comms.GetPropertyB();       }     }          class HidComms     {          public DateTime? GetPropertyB()       {         // request property B from HID         // get 1 or more byte[] in response         return new DateTime();       }     }      Which of these two objects should be responsible for encoding/decoding the byte arrays, or should a third object be responsible for this? Meaning the `Hid` object only knows about state and the `HidComms` object only knows how to read/write with a third object responsible for the conversion?"}
{"_id": "250237", "title": "TryUpdateModel vs Parameter and ModelState.IsValid", "text": "As I was originally learning about MVC, the book I was using taught the following technique for Controller actions:               public ActionResult MethodName(Model model) {         if (ModelState.IsValid) { }         else { }     }      However, I quickly ran across an unrelated issue, and someone on Stack Overflow pointed me to a new function in MVC3 that was like this:               public ActionResult MethodName() {         var model = new Model();              if (TryUpdateModel(model)) { }         else { }     }      That new `TryUpdateModel()` technique did help with a separate issue that I was encountering (aside from the one my question was about), so I was using that for a while. However, I've recently run into a couple of minor issues which caused me to go back to the original with `ModelState.IsValid`. Neither bugs have ever been that major, so it just seems to me that this is more of a \"best practice\" scenario. Those minor bugs might have been from other issues in the code that I've written. What is everyone's experience been between the two of these methodologies? (For the record, this is with MVC3 and MVC4 in C# 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.)"}
{"_id": "250235", "title": "What's the shortest generating one-way hash algorithm?", "text": "I have a 24 character long id which is guaranteed to be unique. I would like to shorten that to 7-10 (or even shorter) characters long. If I generate an short id randomly then I would have to check every time if that shortid is available. Is there an one-way hash algorithm that could return back 7-10 character hash from passing in the 24 character id. Are there any other ways to guarantee that the generated short id is unique without checking?"}
{"_id": "69658", "title": "Why does the Java collections APIs not have a last method?", "text": "This is for ordered collections e.g. java.util.List. Why did the language designers not include a last method? The only reasons I can think of are:   * ambiguity when the collection is empty (return null or throw exception)   * API bloat Any other reasons?"}
{"_id": "124879", "title": "In agile environment, how is bug tracking and iteration tracking consolidated.", "text": "This topic stemmed from my other question about management-imposed waterfall- like schedule. From the responses in the other thread, I gathered this much about what is generally advised:   * Each story should be completed with no bugs. Story is not closed until all bugs have been addressed. No news there and I think we can all agree with this.   * If at a later date QA (or worse yet a customer) finds a bug, the report goes into a bug tracking database and also becomes a story which should be prioritized just like all other work. Does this sum up general handling of bugs in agile environment? If yes, the part I'm curious about is how do teams handle tracking in two different systems? (unless most teams don't have different systems). I've read a lot of advice (including Joel's blog) on software development in general and specifically on importance of a good bug tracking tool. At the same time when you read books on agile methodology, none of them seem to cover this topic because in \"pure\" agile, you finish iteration with no bugs. Feels like there's a hole there somewhere. So how do real teams operate? To track iterations you'd use (whiteboard, Rally...), to track bugs you'd use something from another set of products (if you are lucky enough, you might even get stuck with HP Quality Center). Should there be 2 separate systems? If they are separate, do teams spend time creating import/sync functionality between them? What have you done in your company? Is bug tracking software even used? Or do you just go straight to creating a story?"}
{"_id": "107458", "title": "How to remove duplicate code (in general)?", "text": "In an OO language (e.g. but not limited to Java) how do you fix duplicate code depending on the scope of it's occurrence? I would start with (for example)   * in the same class (scope) perform the Extract Method refactoring (fix)   * in classes of the same hierarchy (scope) perform Extract Method and Pull Up (fix)   * ..."}
{"_id": "152893", "title": "C# foreach improvements?", "text": "I run into this often during programming where I want to have a loop count index inside of a foreach and have to create an integer, use it, increment, etc. Wouldn't it be a good idea if there was a keyword introduced that was the loop count inside of a foreach? It could also be used in other loops as well. Does this go against the use of keywords seeing as how the compiler would not allow this keyword used anywhere but in a loop construct?"}
{"_id": "113612", "title": "What kinds of development jobs require knowledge of advanced concepts?", "text": "When I was in university, I participated in a programming contest; the problems turned out to be extremely difficult and boring, and they required previous knowledge about a particular set of problem, e.g. graph theory, algebra. Our team failed completely at that competition, without solving any problems at all. After I graduated and got my first job as programmer, my daily tasks have revolved around business logic and have nothing to do with the difficult problems I encountered in university. Most of the calculations involve mathematics and nothing more; besides that we only need some general database and good database design knowledge. What kinds of job require knowledge about those advanced problems that I encountered in university?"}
{"_id": "107450", "title": "What programming problems are best solved by using pointers?", "text": "Well, I basically understand how to use pointers, but not how best to use them in order to do better programming. What are good projects or problems to resolve involving the use of pointers so I can understand them better?"}
{"_id": "107457", "title": "Are there any academic papers on the merits of imperative over functional programming?", "text": "There are lots of academic papers on the merits of functional programming floating around. There's also a lot of debate that I see (on the internet) going on about the relative merits of imperative vs. functional programming. I'm interested to know if that debate extends in academia with actual published papers (the more recent the better I think) discussing the advantages of imperative programming over functional programming."}
{"_id": "152898", "title": "What is a good design pattern / lib for iOS 5 to synchronize with a web service?", "text": "We are developing an iOS application that needs to synchronize with a remote server using web services. The existing web services have an \"operations\" style rather than REST (implemented in WCF but exposing JSON HTTP endpoints). We are unsure of how to structure the web services to best fit with iOS and would love some advice. We are also interested in how to manage the synchronization process within iOS. Without going into detailed specifics, the application allows the user to estimate repair costs at a remote site. These costs are broken down by room and item. If the user has an internet connection this data can be sent back to the server. Multiple photographs can be taken of each item, but they will be held in a separate queue, which sends when the connection is optimal (ideally wifi). Our backend application controls the unique ids for each room and item. Thus, each time we send these costs to the server, the server echoes the central database ids back, thus, that they can be synchronized in the mobile app. I have simplified this a little, since the operations contract is actually much larger, but I just want to illustrate the basic requirements without complicating matters. Firstly, the web service architecture: We currently have two operations: GetCosts and UpdateCosts. My assumption is that if we used a strict REST architecture we would need to break our single web service operations into multiple smaller services. This would make the services much more chatty and we would also have to guarantee a delivery order from the app. For example, we need to make sure that containing rooms are added before the item. Although this seems much more RESTful, our perception is that these extra calls are expensive connections (security checks, database calls, etc). Does the type of web api (operation over service focus) determine chunky vs chatty? Since this is mobile (3G), are we better handling lots of smaller messages, or a few large ones? Secondly, the iOS side. What is the current advice on how to manage data synchronization within the iOS (5) app itself. We need multiple queues and we need to guarantee delivery order in each queue (and technically, ordering between queues). The server needs to control unique ids and other properties and echo them back to the application. The application then needs to update an internal database and when re-updating, make sure the correct ids are available in the update message (essentially multiple inserts and updates in one call). Our backend has a ton of business logic operating on these cost estimates. We don't want any of this in the app itself. Currently the iOS app sends the cost data, and then the server echoes that data back with populated ids (and other data). The existing cost data is deleted and the echoed response data is added to the client database on the device. This is causing us problems, because any photos might not have been sent, but the original entity tree has been removed and replaced. Obviously updating the costs tree rather than replacing it would remove this problem, but I'm not sure if there are any nice xcode libraries out there to do such things. I welcome any advice you might have."}
{"_id": "220479", "title": "What was the need of introducing Python 3 when we already had Python 2", "text": "I am still learning python and I started with Python 3. This question not Python 2 vs 3 or difference between them like print() is a function and not language construct and 3/2 = 1.5 My question is even if it is still python, what was the need of introduce something new which is not backward compatible, when -   1. Syntax is the same   2. Language philosophy is the same (import this) Uh .. To confuse millions developers out there, no definitely not. I know switching between two will not be that difficult, but as I don't understand internals, Python 3 is definitely have to do with Python's future. **Edit** \\- Lets say all the popular packages are ported to Python 3, does that mean we no longer need Python 2"}
{"_id": "166893", "title": "Should I add parameters to instance methods that use those instance fields as parameters?", "text": "I have an instance method that uses instance fields in its work. I can leave the method without that parameters as they're available to me, or I can add them to the parameter list, thus making my method more \"generic\" and not reliable on the class. On the other hand, additional parameters will be in parameters list. Which approach is preferable and why? Edit: at the moment I don't know if my method will be public or private. Edit2: clarification: both method and fields are instance level."}
{"_id": "166891", "title": "Evaluating mean and std as simulations are added", "text": "I have simulations that evaluate a certain value X. I run the simulations several times and save the value of X in a vector V. When all the runs have finished I evaluate the mean and standard deviation for the vector V. This approach works, but implies saving all the values for X. As my computer is quite old and with limited ram, I was wondering if there is a way to update the mean value M and the standard deviation S, knowing the value of X at the (n+1)-th run, and the values of M and S after n runs. How can I update the mean value and the standard deviation as simulations are added to the set? Please note that this is just a conceptual example, I don't save only one number X but thousands at each simulations, so I really have problems running a big number of runs if I have to keep all the past values into the memory."}
{"_id": "21265", "title": "5 years of university education vs. 5 years of work experience - Which would you pick if hiring?", "text": "Say you need to hire a programmer. You have two candidates at your table: one has studied 5 years at uni (and holds a Master's degree, of course), but has no work experience; and the other holds no university degree but has worked for 5 years. Also assume that they both know the same programming languages, have about the same personality and spend equal amount of time programming on their spare time. If you only had this information to go on, which would you pick?"}
{"_id": "21267", "title": "How to answer the question whether I'm a front-end, middle-tier or back-end developer", "text": "This was an interview question I got asked. As a software developer I work on whatever task is assigned to me, sometimes it's a GUI component requiring me to add a new dialog box, or change the existing GUI, other times it's a business logic that I need to add/modify, or a new interface required to expose some 3rd party library's functionality - so when I asked this question in an interview, how should I answer it? What exactly are they looking for?"}
{"_id": "21260", "title": "Is it ok to learn from C# 2002 materials?", "text": "I've found some videos that explain C# but it back to C#.NET when it is first appeared, if I learn from these videos will I learn something that has been removed from the language? will I miss alot?"}
{"_id": "116395", "title": "What is the good explanation of Tennent's Correspondence Principle?", "text": "I found myself struggling to see what is this principle about and why is it so important for language design. Basically, it states, that for every expression `expr` in language should be exactly the same as this construct:               (function () { return expr; })()      Also, I have heard that Ruby obeys this principle, while Python doesn't. I don't understand why this is true, or if it is true at all."}
{"_id": "2410", "title": "What's a good Programming Metaphor?", "text": "I am referring to explaining to the non-programmer what programming is. I made sure to search for similar questions before creating this one, but the few ones I did find seemed to dodge the question, and I specifically would like to see some metaphors or analogies. I personally find it easier to explain something technical to someone through the use of metaphors or analogies. The reason I'm interested in this is because many people encounter the work of a programmer on a daily basis, but if you ask the average person what a programmer is or does, they don't really know. This leads to certain situations of misunderstanding (ex. \"[...] but I thought you were good with computers!\") I really would like to find the best one out there. I would like to be able to easily explain to someone what my career choice is about. Of course, at least the general idea. I personally don't have a solid one, but I have long thought about it and I have usually gravitated towards the 'language' metaphor, where we happen to know a language that computers understand, and therefore we are able to tell computers what to do, or \"teach\" them, to solve our problems. For example: > Imagine that in an alternate reality, humanoid robots with artificial > intelligence exist, and some people are able to communicate with them > through a common language, which is a variation of English. These people who > can communicate with the robots are able to teach them how to solve certain > problems or do certain tasks, like doing our chores. > > Well, although robots like that don't exist yet, programmers of our time are > like those people, but instead of communicating with the robots, they > communicate with computers. Programmers \"teach\" the computers how to perform > certain tasks or solve certain problems by means of _software_ which they > create by using this \"common language\". > > Programmers and this \"common language\" are what give us things like email, > websites, video games, word processors, smart phones ( _to put it simply_ ), > and many other things which we use on a daily basis. I don't mean to put programming on the throne or anything, it's just the best metaphor I could come up with. I'm sure someone will find some issue with this one, it's probably a bit contrived, but then again that's why I'm asking this question."}
{"_id": "81031", "title": "Newbie question about Decorator design pattern", "text": "I was reading a programming article and it mentioned the Decorator pattern. I've been programming for awhile but without any kind of formal education or training, but I'm trying to learn about the standard patterns and such. So I looked up the Decorator, and found a Wikipedia article on it. I now understand the concept of the Decorator pattern, but I was a bit confused by this passage: > As an example, consider a window in a windowing system. To allow scrolling > of the window's contents, we may wish to add horizontal or vertical > scrollbars to it, as appropriate. Assume windows are represented by > instances of the Window class, and assume this class has no functionality > for adding scrollbars. We could create a subclass ScrollingWindow that > provides them, or we could create a ScrollingWindowDecorator that adds this > functionality to existing Window objects. At this point, either solution > would be fine. > > Now let's assume we also desire the ability to add borders to our windows. > Again, our original Window class has no support. The ScrollingWindow > subclass now poses a problem, because it has effectively created a new kind > of window. If we wish to add border support to all windows, we must create > subclasses WindowWithBorder and ScrollingWindowWithBorder. Obviously, this > problem gets worse with every new feature to be added. For the decorator > solution, we simply create a new BorderedWindowDecorator\u2014at runtime, we can > decorate existing windows with the ScrollingWindowDecorator or the > BorderedWindowDecorator or both, as we see fit. OK, when they say to add borders to all windows, why not just add functionality into the original Window class to allow for the option? The way I see it is, subclassing is just for adding specific functionality to a class, or overriding a class method. If I needed to add functionality to all existing objects, why wouldn't I just modify the superclass to do so? There was another line in the article: > The decorator pattern is an alternative to subclassing. Subclassing adds > behavior at compile time, and the change affects all instances of the > original class; decorating can provide new behavior at run-time for > individual objects. I don't get where they say \"...the change affects all instances of the original class\" -- how does subclassing change the parent class? Isn't that the whole point of subclassing? I'm going to assume that the article, like many Wiki's, is just not written clearly. I can see the usefulness of the Decorator in that last line - \"...provide new behavior at run-time for individual objects.\" Without having read about this pattern, if I needed to change behavior at run- time for individual objects, I would have probably built some methods into the super- or subclass to enable/disable said behavior. Please help me really understand the usefulness of the Decorator, and why my newbie thinking is flawed?"}
{"_id": "81030", "title": "How to get hold of the existing code base/projects in squeaksource.com?", "text": "I am very new to smalltalk. And I am currently trying to wrap my head around GNU smalltalk (pharo environment). Upon browsing through the introductory session of pharo by example, I came to know that there is a lot of code base in the squeaksource repository submitted by the programmers. The pharo site very well says that anyone can refer this huge code base available. I would like to know how I can actually browse, load and peek into the source code of the projects within my IDE so that I can get a basic understanding about smalltalk syntax and how to code in pharo? Please help me with this."}
{"_id": "81036", "title": "Terms of Service responsibility when developing a library service that wraps a 3d party API", "text": "For my own amusement and instruction I've been developing a C# / .NET library that is basically a wrapper around the Google Geocoding API. It simplifies the entire process and enables users to perform geocoding entirely within .NET code. At some point I was thinking of making the library freely available and, possibly, open-sourcing the entire project by uploading it to somewhere like GitHub or CodePlex. However, Google have a whole host of restrictions on using their service in their Terms of Service. One of these restrictions is: > Note: the Geocoding API may only be used in conjunction with a Google map; > geocoding results without displaying them on a map is prohibited. So my questions are:   1. If I do release my library for other people to use (for free) then do I need to include a license of some sort and does that need to reference the Google Terms of Service?   2. If people use my library in a way that violates Google's terms then who is responsible? I don't want to in anyway to open myself up for liability for other peoples' actions when using my code. **Edit:** I appreciate people here are not lawyers and I don't expect legal advice. I'm just more interested in what people have done in similar situations or would do in this situation. I'll won't hold anyone to account, honest!"}
{"_id": "81034", "title": "How do you decide site availability requirements?", "text": "I work on a web application to file a specific kind of county taxes. Our company wants our state to mandate that counties must accept electronic filings (as opposed to paper) from any system that meets some sensible requirements for uptime, security, data validation, etc. (Yes, this would help us as a business, but it would also force county governments to be more efficient.) We're creating a draft of those requirements to be reviewed and tweaked with the state. One of the sections is \"availability.\" We want to specify something reasonably high, but not so high that any unexpected problem will get us (or a competitor) penalized. How do we decide what's reasonable for availability requirements?"}
{"_id": "98966", "title": "Responding to interview questions involving unknown algorithms", "text": "Is there any acceptable/effective way to deal with interviewers who ask you to implement an algorithm that you aren't familiar with? I've been interviewing a lot lately and encountering this a lot. Interviewers asking me to implement data structures or algorithms that I have never implemented, and will never implement, throw me completely off guard. In my case, specifically, I'm primarily a system developer, so I spend most of my time dealing with parallelism issues and related, rather than reinventing algorithms, so these questions are very irrelevant to me. As an example, I was asked to implement a function that takes a string and returns a container with all the permutations of that string (C++). I suggested that there were functions dealing with permutations in the standard library that may be usable, but I wasn't sure exactly what the standard library offered, because I had never used these functions before. I can easily solve the problem by nesting multiple loops for a fixed length string, but in this case, the length of the string is dynamic. I couldn't give a solution. After the interview, I looked up the implementation of `next_permutation` in my standard library, and now I'm not surprised that I couldn't come up with this when put on the spot. I doubt many could have answered without knowing the algorithm before hand. What are some ways to deal with questions like this? Is there any acceptable response or way around these questions?"}
{"_id": "68010", "title": "What's good practice for holding a very short, predefined set of data?", "text": "When I was working on a programming project. I came across a problem where I had to store data in two different variables. The first one was a piece of data, and the second one was, well, another piece of data, and the order in which the information arrived really didn't matter. So I had to make a choice: I could have either named them `city1` and `city2`, or I could've named them `firstCity` and `secondCity`. With the issue of time in mind, I simply decided to stick to `city1` and `city2`. But, what would've been a ~~better~~ good choice, or at least what could I have done instead?"}
{"_id": "157110", "title": "New license similar to AGPL, but only for Javascript and CSS", "text": "I'm developing a piece of software (a WordPress plugin) in PHP and Javascript and CSS. The PHP code must be licensed under GPL, but CSS and Javascript can be under another license (as far as I've understood). I'm thinking about writing a more permissive version of the AGPL license, and use it, for Javascript and CSS. It would be like the AGPL, but it would **only concern files accessible over the network** (e.g. Javascript and CSS). Motivation:   1. I want users of my software, and small companies that use and produce open source software, to be able to use my plugin for free, without having to publish any GPL licensed server side code (PHP code).   2. At the same time, I might not want \"big companies\" to copy all code I've written, without paying me something. \u2014 Most \"big companies\" would probably be unable to use the AGPL-like license discussed here, and instead I would offer them to buy a commercial license. **Question 1:** Is this a bad / impossible idea, for some reason? **Question 2:** Are there any obvious problems with the below license text? (Is this okay to ask here? If not, please consider editing this question to remove this part of it \u2014 or add a comment to me, that I should remove it)               ...The AGPL v3 license text..., see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html          Additional permission under the GNU Affero GPL version 3 section 7:          If you modify or combine this Program, or any covered work,     by linking or combining it with other code, then any such     other code not accessible remotely through a computer     network, is not, for that reason alone (i.e. linking or combining     it) subject to any of the requirements of the GNU Affero GPL     version 3 or later.      Related link: Lesser Affero GPLv3"}
{"_id": "197535", "title": "Programming task organization", "text": "My friend and I decided to create a large programming project together. Before that, I have never worked in a pair (I had quite many projects on my own and at work the boss defined the task for me). But now we have an idea of what kind of app we are going to do, how to plan it...but how can we divide the responsibility for the code in the project so that we don't do each other's work and it is not so closely related that we have to overlap each other's code? How would you divide the tasks, what is the original way to do that? How would you divide the tasks in modules if they represent one application and are very closely related?"}
{"_id": "190746", "title": "\"I\", \"We\", or Neither in code documentation", "text": "I find myself writing (hopefully) helpful comments in code (C++) documentation of the type:               The reason we are doing this is...      The reason I use \"we\" instead of \"I\" is because I do a lot of academic writing where \"we\" is often preferred. So here's the question. Is there a good reason to prefer one over the other in documenting code:   1. **Use \"We\":** The reason we are doing this is...   2. **Use \"I\":** The reason I am doing this is...   3. **Use my name:** The reason `[my name]` did this is...   4. **Passive voice:** The reason this was done is...   5. **Neither:** Do this because... I choose #1 because I'm used to writing that way, but documentation is not for the writer, it's for the reader, so I'm wondering if adding the developer name is helpful or if that just adds yet another thing that needs to be changed when maintaining the code."}
{"_id": "190745", "title": "I need some help with defining a shell syntax", "text": "I'm trying to understand more about shells. I'm looking to implement one and want to look at what's been done in the past. In a regular shell, you have features like aliases and relative paths, and strong syntactic conventions, like `--flag` and so on. The IPython community have added loads of nice features to their shells with only a tiny bit of new syntax. Are there other projects that demonstrate innovative features, or novel use of syntax, that could be useful when designing a shell language? _As examples, the answers given below, onBoo and on Forth and Rebol, are perfect._"}
{"_id": "49446", "title": "Why does F. Wagner consider \"NOT (AI_LARGER_THAN_8.1)\" to be ambiguous?", "text": "In his article on Virtual Environments (a part of his VFSM specification method) Ferdinand Wagner describes some new ways of thinking about Boolean Algebra as a software design tool. On page 4 of this PDF article, when describing operators in his system he says this: > Control statements need Boolean values. Hence, the names must be used to > produce Boolean results. To achieve this we want to combine them together > using Boolean operators. There is nothing wrong with usage of AND and OR > operators with their Boolean meaning. For instance, we may write: > > DI_ON OR AI_LARGER_THAN_8.1 AND TIMER_OVER > > to express the control situation: digital input is on or analog input is > larger than 8.1 and timer is over. > > We cannot use the NOT operator, because the result of the Boolean negation > makes sense only for true Boolean values. The result of, for instance, > > NOT (AI_LARGER_THAN_8.1) > > would be ambiguous. If \"AI_LARGER_THAN_8.1\" is acceptable, why would he consider \"NOT (AI_LARGER_THAN_8.1)\" to be ambiguous?"}
{"_id": "197533", "title": "How is referential transparency enforced?", "text": "In FP languages, calling a function with the same parameters over and over again returns the same result over and over again (i.e. referential transparency). But a function like this (pseudo-code):               function f(a, b) {         return a + b + currentDateTime.seconds;     }      is not going to return the same result for the same parameters. How are these cases handled in FP? How is referential transparency enforced? Or is it not and it depends on the programmers to behave themselves?"}
{"_id": "98968", "title": "Store build server configuration in same repository as source code?", "text": "Some co-workers and myself are tasked with a \"rewrite\" of an ancient, unmaintainable application and to shape it into something workable. I am setting up a continuous integration server, and since we are developing for .NET, I think I will use CruiseControl.net The software being built will have a large amount of build targets (language, features, etc), so changes to the build server config might be more on the frequent side. Since they'll also include drivers and will run a suite of QA tests, they might get pretty complicated too. So one question I have, is should I put the configuration files and settings for the build server in the same source repository as the code base. Then it's easy to know what version of build configuration was used with a revision of the code base. But something about that seems kind of \"icky\" to me but I don't know why. Or, I can have a separate repository or location for the build server configuration, and maintain the lineage of the config relative to the main code base with the commit messages. Does anyone have any familiarity with either situation and did you run into problems doing one or the other? I believe CC.NET can automatically check out its config info, so both options should work."}
{"_id": "116020", "title": "Question about new buzzwords about old concepts", "text": "What is the fascination with taking old concepts coming up with a buzzword for them and pitching it as new technology complete with 800 page tome with nerd on the cover? A long long time ago, lets say the 80's, I wrote software. It was designed reasonably well and it worked and was maintainable. It separated out different high level functions into different libraries of code and so on. Sometime in the past 10 years, I lose track of the exact time, \"Patterns\" became popular. Whole encyclopedias were written about design patterns and this patterns and that patterns. We've been doing it for decades (and I'm sure long before I started programming) yet it is suddenly new and novel. Is this just a gimmick to sell books and educational classes? Why add so much noise to the already overcomplicated world of programming when getting things done well is really what matters."}
{"_id": "94634", "title": "synchronization web service methodologies or papers", "text": "I am building a web service (PHP+JSON) to sync with my iphone app. The main goals are:   1. Backup   2. Provide a web view for printing / sorting, manipulating.   3. allow a group sync up and down. I am aware of the logic problems with all of these items, Ie. if one person deletes something, do you persist this change to other users, collisions, etc. I am looking for just any book or scholarly work, or even words of wisdom to address common issues.   * when to detect changes of data with hashes, vs modified dates, or combination.   * how do address consolidation of sequential ID's originating on different client nodes (can be sidestepped in my context, but it would be interesting.)   * dealing with collisions (is there a universally safe way to do so?).    * general best practices.   * how to structure the actual data transaction (ask for whole list then detect changes...)"}
{"_id": "90706", "title": "Easy way to serve mercurial?", "text": "I am currently using TortoiseHg on windows. I want my server to be available automatically as it is switched on. But I need to do these:   1. when I set up a new project, I need to enter the localdir=URL pairs under the [web] each time I set up a project.   2. I need to run the hg serve or the Tortoise frontend each time to get it 'up'. I saw many tutorials for setting up Apache as the server. I want something that can be deployed faster. I also saw some web frontends of questionable stability. Is there **mature and easy-to-use software** with push and pull capability, which serves all repos in a given folder? Something that starts/stops without user intervention and can be **easily set up**? Or should I stick with setting up Apache to do it?"}
{"_id": "199592", "title": "What does 'enumerable' mean?", "text": "My background in mathematics is very poor (i.e. last relevant math class taken was high school Trigonometry two years ago - another story for another time). I'm reading 'Javascript: The Definitive Guide' and it's a term that is being repetitively used and I've sort of just ran with it. But I've come to a chapter (Chapter 6 - Objects) where my lack of understanding of the term and its application in programming/OOP is starting to become detrimental to the learning process. The online dictionaries aren't helping out, so does somebody have a more explainable definition and/or example to show?"}
{"_id": "147394", "title": "Best way to reliably recognize open source licenses?", "text": "In many projects these days most of the novel code consists of glue code that helps combine dozens of different libraries, plugins and helpers that are licensed under a variety of open source licenses. In many cases the licenses are fairly obvious as they carry the name of the license in the license file or comment. In others this is a bit harder and requires memorizing certain wordings to tell the more common licenses apart. I am wondering: Is there an easy way to recognize particularly the very similar licenses (say, MIT/BSD-2/BSD-3) without having to memorize complete license texts or check out the OSI copies as reference?"}
{"_id": "54654", "title": "Best practices for managing deployment of code from dev to production servers?", "text": "I am hoping to find an easy tool or method, that allow's managing our code deployment. Here are the features I hope this solution has:   1. Either web-based or batch file, that given a list of files, will communicate to our production server, to backup those files in different folders, and zip them and put them in a backup code folder.   2. Then it records the name, date/time, and purpose of the deployment.   3. Then it sends the files to their proper spot on the production server. I don't want too complex an interface to doing the deployment's because then they might never use it. Or is what I am asking for too unrealistic? I just know that my self-discipline isn't perfect, and I'd rather have a tool I can rely on to do what needs to be done, then my own memory of what exact steps I have to take every time. How do you guys, make sure everything get's deployed correctly, and have easy rollback in case of any mistakes?"}
{"_id": "168369", "title": "Versioning APIs", "text": "Suppose that you have a large project supported by an API base. The project also ships a public API that end(ish) users can use. Sometimes you need to make changes to the API base that supports your project. For example, you need to add a feature that needs an API change, a new method, or requires altering of one of the objects, or the format of one of those objects, passed to or from the API. Assuming that you are also using these objects in your public API, the public objects will also change any time you do this, which is undesirable as your clients may rely on the API objects remaining identical for their parsing code to work. (cough C++ WSDL clients...) So one potential solution is to version the API. But when we say \"version\" the API, it sounds like this also must mean to version the API objects as well as well as providing duplicate method calls for each changed method signature. So I would then have a plain old clr object for each version of my api, which again seems undesirable. And even if I do this, I surely won't be building each object from scratch as that would end up with vast amounts of duplicated code. Rather, the API is likely to extend the private objects we are using for our base API, but then we run into the same problem because added properties would also be available in the public API when they are not supposed to be. So what is some sanity that is usually applied to this situation? I know many public services such as Git for Windows maintains a versioned API, but I'm having trouble imagining an architecture that supports this without vast amounts of duplicate code covering the various versioned methods and input/output objects. I'm aware that processes such as semantic versioning attempt to put some sanity on _when_ public API breaks should occur. The problem is more that it seems like many or most changes require breaking the public API if the objects aren't more separated, but I don't see a good way to do that without duplicating code."}
{"_id": "54651", "title": "How to make an app more intuitive?", "text": "In the industry, there are few standard checklists on how to make a web application more :   1. Scalable   2. Easy to understand/maintain   3. Perform better   4. Robust etc. etc. Are there any standard checklists for how to make an app more 'intuitive'? This of course will differ from app to app...but I am sure there will be some generic ones that apply to all."}
{"_id": "230878", "title": "Scrum: relaxing \"done\" or using spikes?", "text": "Consider what it takes to completely finish a story in our organization.   * Demo requirements were met   * UI design finalized (layout, styles, fonts, controls, colors, etc...)   * User text finalized and mistake-proofed   * All text translated to Spanish, Germal, Italian and French.   * User manual updated   * All bugs deemed by PO as need fixing for release were fixed   * Documents for FDA updated (SRS,STD,STP,STM,UFMEA, DFMEA, SDD, installation)   * Requirements were written and approved by PO   * UI spec was written and approved by PO   * All tests (final acceptance and integration) written/updated and executed - synced and agreed with test manager   * All FAT tests were approved by QPE   * Regression testing was done   * Code was reviewed and documented   * Unit tests were written and executed - synced and agreed with software manager.   * Refactoring, if needed, was done - synced and agreed with software architect.   * Design was documented   * Installer was updated (If needed) With so much work needed to fully complete a story, the team stops being nimble and it becomes more difficult to try out new features quickly. As far as I see there are 3 ways to solve this problem:   1. Do more \"Spike\" stories which don't meet the \"Done\" definition but serve as quick prototypes to gather feedback from users.   2. Get feedback from users all the time during the Sprint rather than at the end of it. So half-way through the story you could already gauge what users think of the story and quickly adapt before doing all the heavy stuff (translations, user manual and such).   3. Relaxing the \"Done\" definition to require just basic testing and bug fixing. This way the team won't have a potentially shippable product at the end of the Sprint, but it will be very quick to try new features and technical innovations without suffering from the burden of documenting everything, writing user manual, doing design polishes, etc... Which option would you pick and why? Thank you."}
{"_id": "198242", "title": "Good practice -apply paradigm to a language that is not fit for it", "text": "For example, what happens if a coder tries to code in purely functional-style paradigm in OO-paradigm language(Java)? Will it work? Or the OO nature of Java will not let it happen? Also, is applying wrong paradigm to language unfitting to it a bad practice or not? Is it like trying to drive a jet on road instead of flying it?"}
{"_id": "101273", "title": "Databases and Unit/Integration Testing", "text": "I have had a discussion with someone about unit/integration testing with web applications and I have a disagreement about 1 core idea. The issues is that the person I am talking to think that the database the unit test work off of should have pre-populated data in it and I think it should be completely empty before and after the tests are executed. My concern with pre-populated data in the database is that there is no way to make sure that data is maintained in a good state. The tests themselves are going to be creating, deleting, and modifying data in the database so I really don't see how having data in the database before you start the tests is a good thing. Is seems the the best way of testing database functionality would be having the following setups:   1. In a \"setup\" phase before the test actually run, you first truncate all the tables in the database   2. Then you insert all the data needed for the test cases you are about to run   3. Then you run and validate the test cases   4. Then in a \"teardown\" phase you once again truncates all the tables in the database I don't see any other better way to ensuring that the data you are testing against in is a good testable test. Am I missing something here? Is this not the best way to test database related functionality? Is there some benefit to have pre-populated database that always exists in the database (even before you start the tests or after the tests are done)? Any help in ideas to explain my process differently to better get my point across would also be great (that is if my point has merits)."}
{"_id": "108077", "title": "Login with Twitter or Facebook - How to link accounts", "text": "I've been developing a site and I've been trying to come up with a method to make sure all Social Network accounts of a certain user are linked together. I've had one snag from the start, and maybe someone here has an idea of what to do. This is the problem. Let's say someone comes to my site and they click login with twitter. My site   * creates an account (adds user to member database)   * adds twitter credentials to database for that user   * logs the user in Now let's say this person logs out, and the next time they come to my site they login with Facebook. My site   * checks member database for a user with the same email as the one sent from Facebook on authentication   * If there is no match, I create a user   * add Facebook credentials for that user Here is where my problem comes in. Twitter does not send an email of the user on authentication. So my database and script, when someone logs in with Facebook after they've already logged in with Twitter previously, does not recognize the accounts should be linked and creates a whole new user. Is the only possible way to keep track with cookies? Or am I mjust missing something in the logic of it? Any ideas would be great. By the way this is for a website, using php + mysql * * * Question update * * * Hey Demian,I took a look at edit logins and noticed they don't have a twitter option. My issue isn't when the user is already logged in, everything works great and connects the accounts. It's more like this. Lets say a user logs in to my site for the first time with twitter. I give them a unique user ID in my \"members\" database table, then add their oauth credentials for twitter in my oauth table, linking it to their member ID. \\Now let's say a month goes by and a user comes back. This time, though, they login with Facebook. There is no way for me to tell which user they are in my database from their previous login with Twitter because I don't have that unique member ID to link it to. That's why I'm thinking storing the unique member ID in a cookie is a good idea, but what if they delete the cookie?"}
{"_id": "147398", "title": "Web Services as a Back end", "text": "I am contemplating a direction to take an application. The application is written in PHP which implements a MVC framework. Some of my clients will require web services. I was thinking even building the basic PHP web interface on top of these web services (SOAP) and stopping the PHP application from accessing the database. I want to do this so that I will only have to maintain one set of code for the main PHP apllication to access data and also any other applications developed on top of this web service. Is this a common setup? Will it slow the application a lot? I looked at using Django framework to setup the SOAP web service but then realized it will have trouble dealing with multiple identical databases based on which client is using it. I looked at Symfony, but worry that PHP as a backend might be seen as insecure or unprofessional by some larger future clients and not enterprise usable. I am thinking Axis2 right now. Java might be faster as the backend and it will be marketable to potential clients. What other Web Service framework should I consider? Is this Web Services Backend / PHP/HTML front end a usable solution?"}
{"_id": "108071", "title": "Other things to learn for becoming a Database Admin/Developer?", "text": "Obviously i'll have to make some sort of choice at what DB i choose to go with (MS-SQL/MYSQL/etc) but this question isn't about that. The question mainly is what other languages/tools would be helpful for someone wanting to get into Database Programming/Administration. I assume PHP would be helpful with MySQL along with XML Probably (or not?) however Im not sure of what else. Im pretty fluent in C/C++ but if I wanted to get more in depth with the NoSQL databases out there I probably need to brush up on my Java skills. Also Side question.....is 25 too young to be getting into this stuff? I took a few Database classes in College (Which I just recently graduated from), but I don't want it to be too late to learn something new."}
{"_id": "108073", "title": "If the purpose of a single complicated LOC is clear, would you bother to split it on to multiple lines to make its method clear as well?", "text": "Given some (relatively) complicated line of code, I would often be inclined to split it onto multiple lines to make its function/purpose clear to others. However, **if it is quite clear from context what a line does** , would you still do the same thing merely to make clearer **how it does it**? Or would you take the attitude that future developers probably don't know/care how it works, only that it works? For some context, the particular line that's prompted this question is Python code that takes a string like \"1.title\" and uses it to modify `self.data[1].title`:               #IRL, these 2 values are already set somehow     id = \"1.title\"     val = \"foo\"          setattr(self.data[int(id[:id.index(\".\")])], id[id.index(\".\")+1:], val)      That last line is not the nicest thing in the world to read, so I was thinking of splitting it into:               index = int(id[:id.index(\".\")])     attrib = id[id.index(\".\")+1:]     setattr(self.data[index], attrib, val)      If you wanted to go crazy, you could even do `dotLocation = id.index(\".\")` first, and use that in the setting of `index` and `attrib`. This is probably a bit clearer to someone else reading it for the first time, but I prefer it nice and concise on one line, and it's highly unlikely that anyone is going to need to modify this one-line utility function. Is there really much point to splitting it up like that? (Note: I'm fully aware that this is not exactly life-or-death stuff. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, I'm just wondering what others would do in this kind of situation.) (Last thing: someone might want to add better tags to this, it's my first Programmers question :) )"}
{"_id": "104909", "title": "Limitations of copy/cut paste functions in System.IO", "text": "I'm developing a desktop application (a File Manager) in C#.   For copy/cut and paste operations I will use the default methods in .NET like               System.IO.File.Copy()       System.IO.File.Move()      Are there any limitations of these methods that I should know about ? and if there are, what are the alternatives of these methods ? (win32 API maybe)"}
{"_id": "104900", "title": "\"It was working yesterday, I swear!\" What can you do?", "text": "When you arrive in the morning, you find that your software does not work anymore, even though it did when you left yesterday evening. What do you do? What do you check first? What do you do to stop being angry and start working on your problem? Do you blame your colleagues and go directly to them? What can be done to avoid being in such a situation?"}
{"_id": "58370", "title": "Have any of you used MEF to configure Castle Windsor", "text": "I am thinking of using MEF to manage the fluent interface on Castle Windsor. Allowing for me to swap out different sections of the system for test and production. Has anyone done this if so how well did it work for you?"}
{"_id": "104904", "title": "Videos on Unit Testing", "text": "I've been searching for good presentations (slides+audio or video preferred) on Unit Testing but all I seem to find are books and blog posts. The presentation should not be longer than 50 minutes since it will be shown at a brown-bag lunch. General concepts or how to do it on the .NET-platform is what I'm looking for. Can you recommend a presentation that fits that description?"}
{"_id": "104905", "title": "Composition of a dev team", "text": "I'm in a team of fifteen people and the team is in transition after a few changes of management. The current line of management is pushing for an agile approach to developing software but without providing any lead. The team suffers from a big communication problem both inside and with other departments in the company who are our customers. Management has recently created a sub-team composed by the technical specialists. They have great knowledge of the code base but have been in the company for up to ten years and are not so open to change. There goal is to provide technical direction. I've joined the team in the last six months. I have a good six years experience developing different software but don't have the same knowledge of the code base as others. I have good communication and organisation skills and can relate to the customers easily. The company's focus is to deliver innovative new products, but based on my observations we break down in project organisation (we seem to lose focus of the customer, get buried in the code base and misinterpret requirements). I think I can provide direction in delivering projects with a good focus on the customer, however I don't hold the same technical expertise as the technical specialist team. I also think I'm the only one with previous agile experience in the team. I've got two questions:   1. Is there room in a dev team for technical specialists and those that are good at delivering and making the customer happy, i.e the two working in tandem with each other?   2. Do you need to be a technical specialist to lead a dev project team?"}
{"_id": "115613", "title": "How to apply good Object Oriented Design principles in Embedded Systems", "text": "I am a firmware engineer moved from Electrical background to Embedded Systems. I was till now programming in C and never bothered to apply OO principles in my design. Recently I was forced to implement design in C++. I started liking the OO principles like SOLID, design patterns, etc. I wanted to know more about applying OO design in my firmware design. All the resources on OO, that I found were too much into application programming rather than firmware. I found this book relevant (ordered it). I was curious if there are any other resource that can help me learn OO principles with a focus on embedded systems. I am still new to OO world, so please suggest me if I should learn OO principles first and then learn about applying them for embedded systems or start learning only stuff relevant to embedded system."}
{"_id": "115617", "title": "Is there a canonical book for learning C# from scratch?", "text": "I was looking for a good C# book for beginners to learn the language fundamentals and OOP fundamentals, however, every book I have looked at seems to start quickly and does not touch the fundamentals in a professional learning way or maybe the authors are good at programming but not so good at how to teach the subject to others. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about C#? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "115614", "title": "Thread safe graph libraries", "text": "I am looking for a good Java Graph Library which is thread safe for concurrent access. JGraphT, JUNG, JTS are very good but again for concurrent access I will have to synchronize it externally which is becoming a pain. It is a pain because say If thread A have to access 50 vertices, Thread B for another 50 with the intersection of vertices being 20 vertices. Now while writing code I need to know this 20 before so that I can synchronize it accordingly. Pl suggest if there exists some framework for graphs which has inbuilt support for concurrency"}
{"_id": "201572", "title": "Why doesn't Swing look native out of the box?", "text": "Java Swing GUI's don't look native by default (Except on Mac OS X for some reason). Swing uses it's own look and feel. You can get Swing to use the system look and feel by putting:               javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(javax.swing.UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());      in the beginning of your `main` method, but: Why isn't this done by default?"}
{"_id": "137032", "title": "Most common website scalability pitfalls", "text": "We are designing a website/web application where we hope to to achieve high user counts and, in general, lots of use. More specifically, we intend to be using PHP as the programming/scripting language and MySQL for the relational DB needs as a start. We have not yet figured out whether to use a NoSQL database or not. Related to that, we want to design with scalability in mind. What are the most common scalability pitfalls for websites? What are the key areas that we need to take into consideration, so that the system can be easily scalable?"}
{"_id": "137034", "title": "What are good strategies in C for dealing with pointer errors of this type?", "text": "In C, I often come across errors with code like this               prio_queue->head[index] = newEntry;        Yields a \" \"Cannot assign Entry** to Entry* \" How do you prevent/debug errors of this type, in general?"}
{"_id": "142411", "title": "Tool to identify potential reviewers for a proposed change", "text": "Is there a tool that takes as input a proposed patch and a git repository, and identifies the developers are the best candidates for reviewing the patch? It would use the git history to identify the authors that have the most experience with the files / sections of code that are being changed. _Edit:_ The use case is a large open source project (OpenStack Compute), where merge proposals come in, and I see a merge proposal on a chunk of code I'm not familiar with, and I want to add somebody else's name to the list of suggested reviewers so that person gets a notification to look at the merge proposal."}
{"_id": "132204", "title": "Finding and/or becoming an open source product owner", "text": "Are there any open source projects that have roles that would be equivalent to a Scrum product owner role? If so, how did you go about finding these examples, and how do you believe those product owner roles came to be? (Just to be clear, it's not a requirement the project is Scrum based, just that it's open source and roles stated are equivalent to a Scrum product owner role. Also, I'm talking about a volunteer role, not a paid position at a non- profit.)"}
{"_id": "132205", "title": "What is the proper way to suggest features to be added to the C# language?", "text": "What is the proper way to suggest features to be added to the C# language? For example, I would like to have an operator similar to `??` but for selecting the min or max values. I'd like `a <? b` to expand to `a < b ? a : b` likewise for `>?`"}
{"_id": "222236", "title": "Why does IEEE 754 Single Float have 8 bits for exponent but only allow 38 base ten Max Value", "text": "Why is it that the IEEE 754 standard provide 8 bits for the exponent but puts a range maximum of 38 on the largest acceptable exponent? Seems kind of ridiculous to have the data storage there but not allow it to actually be used. I wanted to pack data into this exponent for some encoding I'm doing, but I can't use all the bits because I can't pack an exponent larger than 38! I was hoping to pack values up to 256 using all bits (2 ^ 8)."}
{"_id": "99614", "title": "What is a good example of a software development idea or technique that was a failure?", "text": "Specifically what are some examples of where ideas of the masses where just wrong. Why did people latch onto the ideas in the first place? And why were the ideas dismissed? Or perhaps the ideas are still alive and well and if so why? For example I might describe CORBA (and other similar technologies) as something that attempted solve the problem of communication between components of software. Many felt it was necessary to define contracts between various components. Ultimately, HTTP + JSON solved the problem for the masses and other various RPC mechanisms such as Thrift and Proto-bufs have popped up."}
{"_id": "79234", "title": "Visual Studio 2010 - Local File History", "text": "I have been using netbeans for many years now and recently I have moved from PHP/Git/Netbeans to C#/TFS/VS10. It has been very good so far, yet I miss this one little feature I enjoyed so much in Netbeans is... **local file history**. Whenever I was working on something I could test different ideas and then simply reverting or even comparing changes at different time of the day or even different days. I was wondering if there is any VS10 extension or some sort of plugin that would let me achieve similar functionality (internal version control sort of thing). _I would use TFS but we are only allow to check in our changes when they are actually read for production. Also I can't find revert changes button in TFS. I wouldn't want to create a branch either._ I'm so desperate I was going to put hg or git over my TFS folder just so I can achieve this I'm just hoping there is some better solution for this."}
{"_id": "216437", "title": "Implementing separation of concerns via MVC", "text": "I'm creating a question to see if my understanding of MVC separation is correct, I haven't been able to find a clear answer anywhere online. So is this the right way to implement it (in Java): I would have 3 .java files, one each for Model, Controller, View. I would put all the classes related to Model in the Model.java like so:               //Model.java {         public class Model              //class fields              public Model();              public ModelClassA();              public ModelClassB();              public ModelClassC();         }      With the ModelClasses being any class that I consider belonging to the Model. Is it correct to have the classes within the Model Class, as I have read that nested classes should be avoided where possible."}
{"_id": "72198", "title": "Are There Any Programming Focused Notebooks?", "text": "I know that engineering paper exists, but are there any companies that make programmer-specific notebooks for notes/pseudo-code/designs? Paper is my preferred way of outlining things, so the addition of a specialized pad to my list of tools would be greatly beneficial."}
{"_id": "59423", "title": "Effective Ways to Introduce Agile into the Workplace?", "text": "In your experience (anecdotal or otherwise), what are some effective ways to introduce Agile into a non-Agile organization or company? UPDATED: Can anyone speak to cases where you tried to introduce Agile but you were \"shot down\"? Also, do you now have a retrospective understanding why you were \"shot down\"?"}
{"_id": "196379", "title": "How the hidden features being find?", "text": "Today I read about this news: http://www.karthikk.net/2013/04/google-glass-has-an-easter-egg-has-pictures- of-the-glass-team/ People found a hidden easter egg in the Google Glass... But how can they find that? If there are not Google employee or know this hidden feature or have the source code, how they can `active` this feature?"}
{"_id": "73823", "title": "What are the pros and cons of outsourcing development and testing to two different companies?", "text": "What are the pros and cons of outsourcing development and testing to two different companies? **EDIT:** Why do you prefer outsourcing development and testing to different companies or to the same company?"}
{"_id": "239170", "title": "How to parse multipart field/file data separately?", "text": "I want to parse a multipart form twice: Once to grab the incoming fields, and later to process the file upload. I am trying to maintain a proper separation of concerns within my Node app:   * Controller is responsible for handling the incoming fields   * Model is responsible for the upload file logic. I need to pass the fields data into the model to create a new instance, so the fields data needs to be available _before_ the file upload starts. Currently every form.parse() or equivalent function parses both fields and files _together_. Example: req.pipe(busboy) handles both file and fields together. I have checked modules like node-multiparty, formidable, busboy, multer. Nobody seems to have a solution for this. An example of what I would like to achieve is here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22336177/node-js-busboy-parse-fields-and- files-seperatly Is this even possible?"}
{"_id": "156795", "title": "How to run thread if multiple data is insert in the multiple table", "text": "I'm facing problem in gsoap , if two user go to register at a same time then database is   locked, i think its threading problem , how to handle it, please insist me. I am running multiple threads in background. every 5 seconds sending data to server."}
{"_id": "78761", "title": "How often should you change pairs?", "text": "In the company I'm currently working on, we've been doing pair programming for a while now. In the current project, for the last couple of days, we've been trying to make our pair programming a little better, so we even have a timer now to ensure that the swap between driver and navigator happens often enough. For changing pairs, we tried to do it in several ways. We tried changing at the _end of the week_ , but found it too long. We tried in the _middle of the week_ but we tended to forget, so we decided to do it _daily_. Problem is that there are some stories that take a couple of days, so it's a little cumbersome to do it this way. Then we changed to a \" _per story_ \" pair changing. But this is just a little uneven because the stories themselves most of the time are uneven as well. So, simple question: How often should you change pairs?"}
{"_id": "197131", "title": "Web Programming Cross Browser Frustrations Normal?", "text": "So I'm a relatively junior programmer, been doing it for a couple years now and have been recently working on a redo of the company's website, and have ran into some frustrations and was just wondering if that's the way it goes or if I'm missing something. I am by no means a designer, I focus on the code and don't pay much attention to how pretty it looks, that's someone else's job as far as I'm concerned. That being said, I have been working on getting some things to work and the cross Browser problems have made me hate Web Development. I try to get html5 videos and no go, put in a flash backup and only works on half. Throw a Google api in and it looks like crap in ie and opera. The actual code behind doesn't work in ie7. It just seems like one thing after another. As I said I'm new to Web Development. Is this just the way it is? Throw some basic code in, then take all day/week to make it work everywhere? I've cooled off since my initial frustration but I'm just wondering if this is normal practice or how typical web programming goes, because it seems pretty lousy to be right about now. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "72446", "title": "Can Java be considered a managed programming language?", "text": "I am curious; can Java be referred to as a managed language? I am mainly thinking about the Microsoft model when it comes to unmanaged versus managed code (say native vc++ to C#). With the similarities between C# and Java as high-level languages, is it correct to call Java a managed language as well?"}
{"_id": "91941", "title": "Should I mix python and .NET?", "text": "So I have a good handle on how to rapidly develop a GUI controlled application in .NET (not so much in Python, I've only used Tkinter). I want my code to be easily deployed with very few dependencies. It does however have to interface with a particular 3rd party software package that exposes a very difficult COM API or a much simpler Python API. I'm thinking about writing a few python scripts to do the processing I need. These scripts will be called as a subprocess from the .NET application. I would complete the project much faster this way instead of spending days working through the COM API. I feel that the resulting code would also be much simpler and shorter avoiding the COM API, but I will be mixing two languages if I code the application this way. Also I'm not shipping my own python interpreter with it, it will use the one provided with the vendor software. Is this a terrible idea? I looked up IronPython, but this 3rd party software apparently requires cpython to leverage it's API, so I'm not sure that will work unless I go the COM route."}
{"_id": "79419", "title": "Why aren't browser extensions monetized?", "text": "With the monetization of mobile apps being so popular, I'm surprised that extension developers are still mostly relying on donations as their primary form of compensation for their software. While this is, of course, not a problem, I find myself wondering why browser extensions and plugins are generally exempt from monetization unlike plugins designed for software like Visual Studio and Photoshop are very often available only with purchase. What makes broswer extensions different, and has anyone had any success charging for a browser extension? Relevant: http://www.quora.com/Monetization/How-do-browser-extensions-monetize"}
{"_id": "144158", "title": "Any enlightenment for understanding Object Oriented Programming?", "text": "I studied computer science near the end of 1980s, and wasn't taught OOP that formally. With Pascal or C, when I understand the top-down design of functions, and the idea of black box, then everything just seem to make sense, as if there is a \"oh I get it!\" -- some kind of totally getting it and enlightenment feeling. But with OOP, all I know was the mechanics: the class, instance, method, inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation. It was like, I knew all the \"this is how it is\", but never had the feeling of \"I totally get it\", the enlightened feeling. Would somebody be able to describe it, or point to a chapter in some book or paper which talks about OOP so that the reader can feel: \"I totally get it!\" on OOP?"}
{"_id": "144152", "title": "How can I get job in company when I unfamiliar with technology", "text": "_Sorry if I have chosen wrong stackexchange site for this question. Point me in correct place if any..._ How can I get job in company that have some unfamiliar technology for me in they Job Requirements list? In other words. How can I get job on **Lucene** if I have not any experience on **Lucene** , but for getting experience in **Lucene** I need to be involved in company that needs developers with **Lucene** technology experience? It is closed disk!"}
{"_id": "209995", "title": "Are there any flaws in this Programming Language / Virtual Machine design?", "text": "I am building a Virtual Machine and I think I have a perfect program design but I am worried as I don't have too much experience on this field there might be flaws. Before I'll tell you how it'll work, I'm first going to list some stuff this programming language and virtual machine is all about.   * Being Loaded as an extension (Like JNI)   * Dynamically Loading Extensions / Plugins   * Better Performance than common scripts like Javascript / PHP   * Object Oriented   * Easy to setup all requirements   * Machine Security (You cannot use any native machine functions, security manager for extended permissions like managing files, connecting to network)   * Code Security (People'll have a hard time to recover the code) The total package will consist out of different parts:   * Compiler to Bytecode   * Virtual Machine (Read & Execute Bytecode)    * Program using the scripts (Contains VM to run them)   * Bytecode Program (Compiled program to be ran by the VM) A program will be stored inside a basic .zip archive. The .zip archive will contain all bytecode files as well the file containing an interface. When source code is compiled, all variable and function names will be gone. They will be replaced / obfuscated with regular integers. While compiling, an interface, as mentioned before, will be added to the .zip archive. The interface will basically be a library of function that can be called from outside the program, by the VM. This interface could for example include the main method. When the VM is being used as a plugin loader, it could for example also contain a `getName()` or a `getIcon` function. When loading in the VM it'll ask for an interface to use. When later on loading in a .zip to this VM it'll check if the interfaces match. If they don't the VM will refuse to load the program. When it's loaded in the main program will be able to ask the VM to run a certain function defined in the interface. Also the program being executed will be able to run functions of the VM. Also these functions will be a part of the interface. A program being executed can request to load in new programs. They will also be loaded with an interface and the program will be able to use it's method. (A plugin loading plugins basically) The idea seems flawless to me but just to be sure I wanted to ask everyone here if any problems or blockers might occur while developing it. Just to be clear, I'm not aiming to compete with Java/CLR or anything."}
{"_id": "224177", "title": "Custom Role Provider in ASP.NET MVC and specifically a User having multiple Roles", "text": "I have searched around and I can't find any particular answer that addresses what I am asking but no doubt it will have been mentioned already somewhere. I know that when you inherit from an abstract `System.Web.Security.RoleProvider` you override this method `public abstract string[] GetRolesForUser(string username);` and as the name of the method ( **GetRoles** ) and it's return value ( **string[]** ) implies, more than 1 role can be returned for a single user, but it could also be restricted to a single item array through a custom role provider. In my situation I am implementing this in a .NET MVC web app and using a custom .NET role provider, and I have a decision to make as to whether I should allow a user to be in more than 1 role at a time. I am looking for any general reasons for/against doing this (most specifically implementation reasons). Most of the points I can think are app domain specific, here are a couple...   * Deciding which role permissions take priority i.e. what to do when 1 role authorizes a particular action and another is supposed to deny it but both roles are assigned to the same user.   * Whether to allow users to switch in and out of their roles or to only ever assign 1 role to them and have an administrator change this. but is there any particularly bad reason why you should avoid giving a user multiple roles at a time? Is it better to give a user only 1 role?"}
{"_id": "107338", "title": "Using third-party libraries - always use a wrapper?", "text": "Most projects I am involved with use several open-source components. As a general principle, is it a good idea always to avoid binding all components of the code to the third-party libraries and instead go via an encapsulating wrapper to avoid the pain of change? As an example, most of our PHP projects directly use log4php as a logging framework, i.e. they instantiate via \\Logger::getLogger(), they use ->info() or ->warn() methods, etc. In the future, however, a hypothetical logging framework may appear which is better in some way. As it stands, all the projects which closely couple to the log4php method signatures would have to change, in dozens of places, in order to fit the new signatures. This would obviously have a wide impact on the codebase and any change is a potential problem. To future-proof new codebases from this kind of scenario, I often consider (and sometimes implement) a wrapper class to encapsulate the logging functionality and make it easier, though not foolproof, to alter the way in which logging works in future with minimal change; the code calls the wrapper, the wrapper passes the call to the logging framework _du jour_. Bearing in mind that there are more complicated examples with other libraries, am I over-engineering or is this a wise precaution in most cases? EDIT: More considerations - using dependency injection and test doubles practically requires that we abstract out most APIs anyway (\"I want to check my code executes and updates its state, but not write a log comment/access a real database\"). Isn't this a decider?"}
{"_id": "107339", "title": "Dictionary of language concept terms?", "text": "Is there somewhere some kind of dictionary or book which explains all those modern terms of language concepts like (but not limited to)   * currying    * closure    * lambda function   * type deduction    * dynamic meta-programming    * multiple dispatch    * etc. ? I know that books on programming languages like groovy explain some of these concepts, but I am looking for something more comprehensive and language independent... Update: Yes, I know, I will find explanations for each of those single concepts through google and wikipedia, but I am looking for an overview of all those terms... a dictionary :-) Background: As long as I don't know the term to search for, I can't find it on wikipedia or google... **Bounty:** Since I am still looking for a good overview or list of programming concepts together with an explanation, I now offer a bounty for the best answer. If you don't have a link to an overview, but you know some programming concepts which are not mentioned yet - please feel free to create an answer and name them together with a link to wikipedia or another explaining text. I will collect all these answer and the best one will receive the bounty. **Update:** thanx for all answers. It was hard to decide on the right answer and bounty. Since it seems that there is no such dictionary I was looking for, I decided to collect references by myself in a blog: http://plconcepts.blogspot.com/"}
{"_id": "209999", "title": "When is a code considered tight and how does it increase efficiency of the code?", "text": "I have read many times that insertion sort has tight code and hence the hidden constant factor in its asymptotic complexity is smaller. I just read yesterday that quick sort has tight code just like insertion sort so it also has smaller hidden constant factor. It is one of the reasons it is considered best among the `O(n lg n)` sorting algorithms. I don't understand what does it mean when someone says that this algorithm's code is tight. What does that mean exactly and how does it lead to improvement in the efficiency of the algorithm (the smaller hidden constant factor in asymptotic complexity)? PS: I am not sure which tags can be added to this question. So please add tags, if necessary."}
{"_id": "107333", "title": "Web Developers not learning \"traditional\" techniques?", "text": "I ran across this question on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7373066/webpage-source-code-incomplete- hidden-code Without trying to infer too much or start a side-discussion of the sort that SO discourages, I think it's fair to conclude that the OP is someone who is familiar with HTML, Javascript, CSS and the basic architecture of the Web. Yet this question suggests that they have never worked with code that used a traditional `form` post. Is it really the case that people starting to work in the Web nowadays don't learn about that crufty old stuff any more? I don't even mean this question to be as crotchety as it probably sounds. I'm not suggesting people learn about `<marquee>`, implement all UI layout in tables, dynamic content with `document.write` etc. But form posts seem like one of those critical pieces a person should understand, specifically before getting into Ajax. Did I stumble on an anomaly or a trend here? Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "145828", "title": "How to import an image using openGL", "text": "I am new to openGL C++ and what I wanted to know is if there was a pre- existing function in the OpenGL library that would allow me to import a 3d or 2d model? For example, if I make a 3d image using photoshop, or a 3d model using 3ds max could I use a library in openGL example (not real function): glUse3dimage(3dmodel); ? Or would importing images be more difficult and I would have to make my own function? I am not really a good programmer so I wanted to see how difficult this would be. Another question I had was if this was difficult would this be easier using openGL with another language? For example openTK with C#?"}
{"_id": "66115", "title": "Static is bad, but what about the Factory pattern?", "text": "I'm on a TDD project, so I try to stick as much as possible to the good pratices involved with that kind of development. One of them is avoiding as much as possible static and global. I'm facing this problem: I've an object \"article\" that can have \"options\" (additionnal \"micro-articles\") linked to it. I can't figure out how to have a good approach that will not be counter productive or generate too much queries because I would be in a situation where everything is so decoupled that I'll basically need to make 1 query per object. From my actual perspective, I see 3 options: 1) Build inside article:               class Article     {         //[...]         public function getArrOption(){             //Build an array of Options instance.             //return an array of Options.         }     }      **Pro:** Straight forward **Const:** Maintenability: The article object now contain the building logic for the Option object. This will probably lead to code duplication. 2) Using an optionFactory               class Article     {         //[...]         public function getArrOption(){             return OptionFactory::buildFromArticleId($this->getId());         }     }      **Pro:** Building logic is not out of the Article class **Const:** I'm breaking the \"static is hard to mock\" rule, making my Article class hard to test. 3) Separate all logics.               //Build the array of Option instance in a controller somewhere, using a Factory:     $arrOption = OptionFactory::buildFromArticleId($article->getId());      **Pro:** Article only handle his own responsability, and doesn't care about his \"father\" link to the options. Things are really decoupled **Const:** Will require more code inside the Controller everytime I'll need to access the Options. That mean that I should _never_ use a Factory inside an object, and that sound kind of utopic to me... What's the best way to go ? ( Did I've miss something ? ) thanks. Edit: Not to mention that if I can't call factory inside class, I can basicaly never use the lazy initialization pattern too..."}
{"_id": "143236", "title": "How were some language communities (eg, Ruby and Python) able to prevent fragmentation while others (eg, Lisp or ML) were not?", "text": "The term \"Lisp\" (or \"Lisp-like\") is an umbrella for lots of different languages, such as Common Lisp, Scheme, and Arc. There is similar fragmentation in other language communities, like in ML. However, Ruby and Python have both managed to avoid this fate, where innovation occurred more on the implementation (like PyPy or YARV) instead of making changes to the language itself. Did the Ruby and Python communities do something special to prevent language fragmentation?"}
{"_id": "187022", "title": "Implementing chat in 2013", "text": "I played a bit with WebSockets and started to implement a tiny chat. Last time I did something like this was when there was no such thing as threads and computers had single core. I started to think how to implement it with todays programming patterns but I didn't come to any final conclusion. How you implement chat's main functionality in today's technics in higher level? I now have context Server, Socket and User. User has states Undefined, Connected, InChat, ToBeDisconnected, Disconnected, My main problem is the user maintenance:   * If user hasn't said \"hello\" in 5 seconds after connection was opened -> disconnect   * User is not replied to \"ping\" with \"pong\" at all or at least 2 minutes -> disconnect   * User has been connected over 12 hours -> disconnect   * User haven't been assigned profile (nickname and/or other details) after 5 minutes of connect -> disconnect   * Some other program specific flag that kicks out user is triggered -> disconnect  My current implementation is like how it was done in olden days. ie. I have               while(serverRunning)      {        foreach(socket in allSockets)       {         user = allUsers.findUserBySocket(socket);          doMaintenance(user);       }     }      Now this runs far too many times and locks and blocks allUsers and allSockets way too much. How this is implemented today? Like this for example?   * Socket connects    * Add to allSockets    * Add to allUsers    * Start per-user thread that runs every x seconds and runs **user.doMaintenance()**?   * Or there's per-user queue that gets injected with actions like **doPongCheckAction** , **doProfileTimeoutCheckAction** , etc every x seconds (also needs per-user thread which constantly empties user's queue)?   * Or there's Maintenance thread that runs every x second after last run and iterates through allUsers (a bit like current implementation)?   * Or there's thread that injects actions to all users queues when there's been too long when same kind of action were ran and other thread that iterates through all users and empties user's queue?   * Or something else or which is not even based on queues? :)"}
{"_id": "11726", "title": "How to improve your ability to debug existing code", "text": "A common task in the working world is dealing with existing, but buggy code. What are some tips to improve your skills as a debugger?"}
{"_id": "50024", "title": "Is it possible to use C++ code in an objective-c iPhone app", "text": "I'm thinking about writing an application that will have a web-version and an iPhone version (and perhaps later also an android version). Since there is some algorithms that are the same on the iPhone and the web versions, I was wondering if it is possible to write that part in c++, while keeping the rest of the application in objective-c?"}
{"_id": "189514", "title": "Does doxygen support templates for the HTML output?", "text": "I've documented my code for `doxygen`, but I don't want the default HTML it gives. I know I can customize it by providing custom CSS, headers, footers, etc. (like GNOME does), and how I can add common PHP code to the files and tell it to save as `.php`, but that isn't really what I want. What I want is output like MSDN. I can't describe it really. My question is, Is this possible using doxygen with something like templates, or do I have to output XML and parse it with another program (that I wouldn't mind writing)?"}
{"_id": "189515", "title": "How cache works in ServiceStack web services", "text": "I am new to caching and trying to understand how it works in general. Below is code snippet from ServiceStack website.               public object Get(CachedCustomers request)     {         //Manually create the Unified Resource Name \"urn:customers\".         return base.RequestContext.ToOptimizedResultUsingCache(base.Cache, \"urn:customers\", () =>         {              //Resolve the service in order to get the customers.              using (var service = this.ResolveService<CustomersService>())                     return service.Get(new Customers());          });     }          public object Get(CachedCustomerDetails request)     {         //Create the Unified Resource Name \"urn:customerdetails:{id}\".         var cacheKey = UrnId.Create<CustomerDetails>(request.Id);         return base.RequestContext.ToOptimizedResultUsingCache(base.Cache, cacheKey, () =>         {             using (var service = this.ResolveService<CustomerDetailsService>())             {                  return service.Get(new CustomerDetails { Id = request.Id });             }         });     }      My doubts:   1. I've read that cached data is stored on same/distributed server RAM. So, how much data can it handle, suppose in first method if customers count is more than 1 million, doesn't it occupy too much memory.   2. Ingeneral, do we apply caching only for GET operations and invalidate if it gets UPDATE'd.   3. Please suggest any tool to check memory consumption of caching."}
{"_id": "189510", "title": "Why do we program each file separately and place them in separate folders and how do all these file come together?", "text": "I was wondering how the cover flow effect is coded. I used this link which gave me the code on how it all worked out : http://luwes.co/labs/js-cover- flow/. I am completely new to complex programs so I had a hard time in understanding how it all works out. Why do we program each file separately and place them in separate folders and how do all these file come together? Why is there build files, what do they do?"}
{"_id": "61461", "title": "Using Microsoft Contoso company for own examples in microsoft based products?", "text": "We are currently planning to create a 'preview' version for one of our asp.net mvc apps. Is it allowed to use a company like Microsoft's contoso for such a case (Branding etc.)?"}
{"_id": "61468", "title": "Problems in coordination between software and database teams", "text": "This is pretty much a \"software process\" question: When your organization is split into two teams: software team and database engineering team (the organization is in ETL/BI/Data mining delivering terabyte sized reports and database dumps for research organization), What are the most common issues in coordination between such two teams? and how do you work around them? Precisely how much authority does a DBA have in dictating design versus a Software Engineer?"}
{"_id": "197290", "title": "balancing old cases with agile practices", "text": "My team is just getting started integrating agile practices (we've chosen kanban) into our dev, test and design teams, but we have a lot of bug cases and feature cases not written in user stories left over from the old system and we're trying to find a good way to take care of the bugs but still keep the devs that need to stay heads down focused. for now we have a newer dev assigned to bug fixes so the rest can work on new features but we are looking for the right way to structure the team. We have 7 devs, 2 testers and 2 designers. Thanks in advance for the help :)"}
{"_id": "197291", "title": "How do I split out a service layer", "text": "I currently have four projects in my website's solution: **Project.Data**   This holds the EntityFramework DbContext object and also the Repositories that interact with it. It references _Project.Models_. **Project.Models**   This holds the business objects and doesn't reference any other project **Project.Web**   This holds all ViewModels, Views, Controllers and static website content. It references _Project.Data_ (for the Repositories), _Project.Models_ and _Project.Service_ And now I get to the problem project... **Project.Service**   I want this to be the project that _Project.Web_ uses to make its controllers thin, as I understand this is desirable. Each of the classes in this project will probably have a repository injected into it so they can access any data they need to. One of their responsibilities will be to create a ViewModel for the controllers in _Project.Web_ to use. This means that it will reference _Project.Data_ for a reference to those repositories, _Project.Models_ for the models and _Project.Web_ for access to the ViewModels. * * * So just as I'm getting the feeling I'm doing something really wrong by all this, I go to add my last reference to _Project.Web_ from _Project.Service_ and it errors out telling me that I now have a circular dependency... What exactly am I doing wrong here? Are there patterns I can use that will clean up some dependencies on other projects or am I trying to do something that isn't useful anyway?"}
{"_id": "28110", "title": "Is outsourcing code more expensive in the long term? Does it harm code quality?", "text": "I am aware of a company that owns the intellectual property of a decent software product and makes an excellent income from licensing per annum. However, the director (non technical) complains about the cost of maintaining the development team, as it eats significantly into the profit margins, and is considering outsourcing development of specific modules to other countries that charge at a lower rate. Personally, I don't think this will be a more cost effective solution in the long term. This can lead to communication breakdowns when there are problems, additionally the specifications will need to be water tight which can end up taking taking more time anyway. In my opinion, when working in teams communication is key - or is there an effective way of making this work? What are other peoples thoughts AND experiences on this matter?"}
{"_id": "197298", "title": "Where should I parse data obtain with a DAO", "text": "I have a DAO that brings data from a web service, that data comes in a string, in the likes of:               *NAME|John Doe *DATEOFBIRTH|1978-23-01*ID|anID123 (...)      I have a DTO that I wanna fill up with the parsed data (the DTO has fields in the like of name, birthdate, id...) So, my question is, what is the best practice:   * Parsing the string in the DAO to fill up the DTO   * Passing the data string to the DTO and the DTO itself parse the string and fill itself up   * Do the parsing in an utility class that would receive the string and return the fill up DTO > DAO: Data Access Object > > DTO: Data Transfer Object Note: I kept this language agnostic so it could be useful to anyone using object oriented languages, but, in my particular case, I'm using Java."}
{"_id": "24643", "title": "Coding style - define fields separate or not", "text": "Some use this convention:               private String event;     public getEvent() { return this.event; }      public setEvent(String value) { this.event = value; }          private int id;      ... same as above ...      In some projects they define all the fields first, all static fields after (or before), all public/private variables, then the setters, getters, other methods. Which do you use and why?"}
{"_id": "208110", "title": "Refactored to a fancy global variable?", "text": "I am currently refactoring an application that i built in JavaScript.   The application uses a **starting hour** and a **total working hour count** in order to construct a timetable for daily, weekly and monthly views. The starting hour and total working hour count are the same for all timetables I considered using a pattern to initialise the Timetable and started reading up on how to proceed in doing so in Javascript as I am not too familiar with the language. My orginal initialisation function for the Timetable had the following signature:               FillTimeTable( startingTimeWeekDay, workinghourCountWeekDay );        Problem with this method is that for a different view of the timetable I have to call the other views with the same signature again.               FillWeeklyTimeTable( startingTimeWeekDay, workinghourCountWeekDay );     FillMonthlyTimeTable( startingTimeWeekDay, workinghourCountWeekDay );      If the working hours change I or the poor bugger maintaining my code would have to alter them at different locations within the code and due to the way I organised my code they are not placed as neatly as here. So during refactoring I considered alternatives like a global variable, Singleton or an Object. I read about objects, private members and constructors and decided that this might be the solution after reading up on Singleton Implementations and binning the global variables. So currently I have the following code:               function Timetable( startingTimeWeekDay, workinghourCountWeekday) {           this.startWeekday = startingTimeWeekDay;           this.hoursWeekday = workinghourCountWeekday;     }          Timetable.prototype.startWeekday = function() {           return this.startWeekday;     }          Timetable.prototype.hoursWeekday = function() {         return this.hoursWeekday;     }          var myTimetable = new Timetable( 6, 8 );         Everything is working fine so far, but myTimetable just seems like a really fancy way of declaring a global variable to me. Is this the case? Did I just decide on the wrong strategy or is this the way to go or have I missed something essential to working with JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "208114", "title": "MVC Architecture -- How many Controllers do I need?", "text": "I have been coding for a while, but mostly scripts and simple applications. I've moved into a new role where it is all about developing Web Apps and using a proper MVC architecture, so I am desperately trying to learn about all that very quickly. I hope this question is not too similar to \"Best Practices for MVC Architecture\" but as I am going through a few different tutorials, I noticed that some have multiple controllers for different things. **How many controllers does a single web app need?** I realize this would be difficult to answer without an example so I'll provide one: Application:   1. User logs in.   2. User can do one of three things:   **a)** Upload a file (stored in a mongodb database with meta data).   **b)** Search for a file.   **c)** Log out. My question is a general one, but I gave the example to help out anyone trying to answer."}
{"_id": "205190", "title": "Preventing Web Site Users From Using Their Back Button To Get To Cached Screens After Logging Out?", "text": "I have a legacy Java webapp ( Spring 3.1 MVC, legacy servlest and JSPs ) I have modified to log the user out after s/he clicks an external link to leave the web site. The last screen(s) s/he was on are getting cached in the browser, enabling them to see some data by hitting their back button. I could put no-cache headers into those screens, and it works, but the site was poorly designed with multipage forms, some with one result screen doing post requests to get to another screen. If those screens aren't cached, a user hitting his/her back button will find themselves on a blank page going backwards and forwards leaving him/her nowhere with no other choice except to login again. A bigger mess. Short of redesigning a site is there anything else I can do to prevent the user from using his/her back button, after logging out to get to cached screens? I tried having the user go to a static redirect screen after logging out in the hope that s/he would just get bounced back to the external URL when using their back button, but at least two browsers don't appear to cache or navigate to such pages. Any ideas would be welcome. I am able to use javascript as well as server side code. Even if I can't solve this problem, I may learn something for the future Thanks Steve"}
{"_id": "208119", "title": "Am I doing events right?", "text": "My problem is with JavaScript in the browser but I guess it could apply to any event-driven environment. I have coded up a widget in my app. The widget allows a user to select an item using 3 different sub-widgets (table, map & gallery). The sub-widgets display the same items and a selection can be made from whichever sub-widget the user prefers to use. Whenever a selection is made by the user or set in code a \"selection-changed\" event is fired by the sub-widget. The main widget listens for these \"selection-changed\" events. This worked fine until I started getting further on with the project and realized that I needed to adjust the selection in the other 2 widgets when the selection changes (If the user selects an item on the map, it should highlight that same item in the table and gallery). The problem is that when I set the selection in the other 2 sub-widgets they in-turn fire the \"selection-changed\" event and that ends up getting pretty recursive. This also happens when I need to clear the selection in all of the sub-widgets (I get 3 \"selection-changed\" events with the same empty data). This leads to several redundant calls being made for external resources and gives me the feeling it will lead to further problems in future. So my question is am I doing events right? The answer is obviously 'no' because I've got myself in to a pickle so early on but I wonder how other people use events without getting in to these problems - what kind of architecture would be better in this situation? Maybe I could have a way of setting and clearing selections in the sub-widgets that doesn't go on to fire the event but this feels like a hack and may end up conflicting with the framework I'm using to handle my views/models."}
{"_id": "205196", "title": "Good Practice : Storing variables and classes names in database for direct call", "text": "I would like to know if this is a good practice to store variables and classes names in database to use let users accessing them. For instance users may create entries in database's table in which they can insert a program's function name that would executed when the program will read it. I find it is a dangerous practice since users may execute or access any data of the program, but I've been told it's a quite common practice in languages with introspection like Python. Moreover, i was also suggested to have field in a table that would store another table field's name, to create somehow a dynamic foreign key. I personally find both practices very bad since in first case there is no more separation between user data and program data, and for the second case there is no separation between structure and data in the database. Can you please confirm me these practices are discouraged or tell me I'm wrong and suggest me a way to approach them in a safer way. Thank you."}
{"_id": "73316", "title": "Desktop GUI Design/Prototype/Mockup/Wireframe", "text": "I'm working on a project at the moment and I'm currently looking for some sources regarding creating GUI mockups. In my case, I'm creating basic diagrams with the intended layout of the design to ensure it will work correctly and consistently. What is this called? I've seen various names for it, including:   1. GUI Prototyping   2. GUI Mockups   3. GUI Wireframes Which applies to my situation and are there any good resources to reaffirm my decision to create these diagrams?"}
{"_id": "77676", "title": "Resource to start with JavaScript quickly?", "text": "Previously, I wanted to learn Python quickly: Resource to start with Python quickly? and I was quite successful (enough to write a simplified LISP interpreter). Now I need to learn JavaScript for some web programming using Prototype and Scriptaculous with Ruby on Rails. Are there any resources to learn JavaScript quickly in reasonable depth? I am not a beginner programmer, but I have no experience with JavaScript. Are there any good quick tutorials?"}
{"_id": "184642", "title": "Splitting documentation between docstrings and sphinx", "text": "I'm using a combination of docstrings and Sphinx to document my Python programs. With Sphinx's autodoc, I can write a lot of documentation into the source as docstrings. Is there any standard for how much documentation to put in each? For example, **case 1** is index.rst               .. automodule:: foo        :members:      and foo.py               \"\"\"documentation\"\"\"          class Foo:     \"\"\"documentation\"\"\"\"              def bar(self, baz):             \"\"\"more documentation\"\"\"      **case 2** index.rst               .. automodule:: foo      and foo.py               \"\"\"documentation          .. autoclass:: Foo          \"\"\"          class Foo:     \"\"\"documentation          .. automethod:: bar          \"\"\"\"              def bar(self, baz):             \"\"\"more documentation\"\"\"      **case 3** index.rst               .. automodule:: foo        .. autoclass:: Foo           .. automethod:: bar      and foo.py               \"\"\"documentation          Classes:         Foo          \"\"\"          class Foo:     \"\"\"documentation          Methods:         bar          \"\"\"\"              def bar(self, baz):             \"\"\"more documentation\"\"\"      The **1** is easy to maintain, but the docstrings in the source lacks information. The **2** puts that information into the source docstrings, but it's a bit harder to maintain and is a bit harder to read. The **3** is easy to read and has complete documentation in the source code, but is very hard to maintain, and when you use sphinx to generate the documentation, some information is repeated. (It'll look something like:               foo:         documentation         classes:             Foo              Foo:             documentation             methods:                 baz             baz"}
{"_id": "141251", "title": "Functions that only call other functions. Is this a good practice?", "text": "I'm currently working on a set of reports that have many different sections (all requiring different formatting), and I'm trying to figure out the best way to structure my code. Similar reports we've done in the past end up having very large (200+ line) functions that do all of the data manipulation and formatting for the report, such that the workflow looks something like this:               DataTable reportTable = new DataTable();     void RunReport()     {         reportTable = DataClass.getReportData();         largeReportProcessingFunction();         outputReportToUser();     }      I would like to be able to break these large functions up into smaller chunks, but I'm afraid that I'll just end up having dozens of non-reusable functions, and a similar \"do everything here\" function whose only job is to call all these smaller functions, like so:               void largeReportProcessingFunction()     {         processSection1HeaderData();         calculateSection1HeaderAverages();         formatSection1HeaderDisplay();         processSection1SummaryTableData();         calculateSection1SummaryTableTotalRow();         formatSection1SummaryTableDisplay();         processSection1FooterData();         getSection1FooterSummaryTotals();         formatSection1FooterDisplay();              processSection2HeaderData();         calculateSection1HeaderAverages();         formatSection1HeaderDisplay();         calculateSection1HeaderAverages();         ...     }      Or, if we go one step further:               void largeReportProcessingFunction()     {         callAllSection1Functions();              callAllSection2Functions();              callAllSection3Functions();         ...             }      Is this really a better solution? From an organizational point of view I suppose it is (i.e. everything is much more organized than it might otherwise be), but as far as code readability I'm not sure (potentially large chains of functions that only call other functions). Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "102413", "title": "How can my multinational transition from one development platform to another?", "text": "I am working in IT department of a big, international company. We are developing different Intranet applications for the business (Complaints, Rebates, Service Desk etc). Now we decided to migrate from PHP platform to .NET (integration with MS CRM Dynamics, Exchange and MS Office be among many reasons). As there are about 20 different applications the business is using on current, PHP platform, we will have to come up with the best way to move them all to the new platform. I don't want to go into details how to convert the code etc, as while we do migrate we want to improve all of these applications. So we came up with 2 main ways of moving these apps:   1. Support just one platform. What would it mean? Create homepage and literally migrate all apps as they are to .NET (without improving them while we do that). After New intranet is running we would start rebuilding migrated applications and improving them. That would save us developing intranet in .NET while having to support PHP platform.   2. Support both platforms for some time. That would mean building just a homepage and 1 or 2 new applications (which do not exist on our PHP platform). Making these available to the users but not taking off the PHP platform (we would incorporate menus and links to make it easier for users to move between apps on PHP page and the new one). Then we would start rewriting the PHP applications while improving them. Now I am not sure what would be better, on one hand (option 1) we will potentially make everything easier for users by not forcing them to use two different platforms at the same time. Although they won't see any improvement of having the new platform, apart from everything looking nicer, the functionality of applications on the new platform will be the same for some time. Also I think we would add ourselves (IT dep) more work as esentially we would write every app twice.   On the other hand in option two (2) users would have worse experience as two platforms look different, but they would realise the benefits of the new platform as new applications are beeing moved. Has any of you came across something like that? What would you choose? Or maybe there is even different, better way to those I have presented? I would like to know what do you think and how would you approach that."}
{"_id": "38947", "title": "Is practicing meditation a good or bad thing for programmers?", "text": "I'm practicing mindfulness since a few weeks, a popular form of secular meditation which concept is to focus yourself on the **present moment**. It works so great I don't understand why not more people are rushing into that practice. It's useful for me because I've important responsibilities in several companies, and I have to manage a high level of pressure. Programming is still a large part of my daily occupation, but most of what I do and will do in the future is working with programmers, not programming itself. `That's what I'm questioning`. As a programmer we use the past and plan for the future all the time very actively. Being in peace will certainly help with interpersonal interactions and communication, but the so specific intellectual task programming is? Is meditation decrease our **ability** to do that, in profit of more peaceful and happy life? **Is meditation a good or bad thing for our programming abilities?** I will be very interested in the way to do meditation too. For example, I use breathing. **UPDATE APRIL 8 2011** : just finished the 8 weeks Jon Kabat Zinn training (MBSR). While it's too early to measure benefits on my programming abilities, I can tell you it reduced overall anxiety significantly. I strongly recommend the program."}
{"_id": "230849", "title": "How is MVC different from Layered", "text": "Based on this book , refering to pages 156 to 159 , it talks about the two different types of software architecture model : MVC & Layered . There are distributed system architecture patterns such as : Master-Slave , 2 tier client-server , multi-tier client server , P2P These are my questions : 1) In MVC , there is the Model , View , Controller which is in essence a three layer architecture with View on top , Controller in the middle , Model on the bottom and all three layers are only able to communicate with the layers above and beneath them only which is exactly the same as layered architecture . What is the actual difference between them ?? 2) Isnt MVC a form of client server architecture ?? 3) Master-Slave seems exactly like 2 tier client-server where the server is the Master and the client is the slave , I dont understand how Master-Slave differs from Client-Server"}
{"_id": "32630", "title": "can an object in a sequence diagram send a message call to the user?", "text": "I need to make a sequence diagram and I'm not sure how to represent user input. Is it correct to have a message be sent from an object to the user asking for user input or should all objects be passive and only be operated by the user?"}
{"_id": "165203", "title": "A good interpreted language for a small embedded project", "text": "I have an mbed microcontroller which has a small ARM Cortex M3 on it. Basically, my effective resources for the project are ~25 KB of RAM and ~400 KB of Flash. For I/O I'll have a PS/2 keyboard, a VGA framebuffer (with character output), and an SD card for saving/loading programs (up to a couple of MB maybe). I ask because I'm trying to figure out what programming language to implement on the thing. I'm looking for an interpreted language that's easy for me to implement and won't break the bank on my resources. I also intend for this to be at least possible to write on the device itself, though the editor can be interpreted (yay, bootstrapping). Anyway, I've looked at a few simple languages. Some nice candidates:   * Forth   * BASIC   * Scheme?  Has anyone done something like this or know of any languages that can fit this bill or have comments about my three candidates so far?"}
{"_id": "101277", "title": "Understanding the Macro Aspects of Data Structures", "text": "I am studying data structures right now, but I still need to find a teacher/site/book with a clear explanation of the macro aspects of this topic. What I mean is: most lessons/text books mix everything together, with no logical structure. They start with linked lists, then talk about stacks, queues, heap priorities and so on. But as far as I can tell, a linked list and a stack are not really in the same category. After all you can use the linked list to implement different types of data strcutures (e.g., a stack, a queue, etc). So would it be right to say that the types of data structures are: the stack, the queue, the hash-table, the heap, and the tree; while arrays (static) and linked lists (dynamic) are tools you are going to use to implement those data structures? If the above statement is not completely correct, maybe a linked list is indeed a data structure in itself, and therefore we would be using one data structure (e.g., the linked list) to build other data structures on top of it (e.g., a stack)?"}
{"_id": "165201", "title": "Fast programmatic compare of \"timetable\" data", "text": "Consider train timetable data, where each service (or \"run\") has a data structure as such:               public class TimeTable     {         public int Id {get;set;}         public List<Run> Runs {get;set;}     }          public class Run      {         public List<Stop> Stops {get;set;}         public int RunId {get;set;}     }          public class Stop      {         public int StationId {get;set;}         public TimeSpan? StopTime {get;set;}         public bool IsStop {get;set;}     }      We have a list of runs that operate against a particular line (the `TimeTable` class). Further, whilst we have a set collection of stations that are on a line, not all runs stop at all stations (that is, `IsStop` would be `false`, and `StopTime` would be `null`). Now, imagine that we have received the initial timetable, processed it, and loaded it into the above data structure. Once the initial load is complete, it is persisted into a database - the data structure is used only to load the timetable from its source and to persist it to the database. **We are now receiving an updated timetable.** The updated timetable may or may not have any changes to it - we don't know and are not told whether any changes are present. What I would like to do is perform a compare for each run in an efficient manner. I don't want to simply replace each run. Instead, I want to have a background task that runs periodically that downloads the updated timetable dataset, and then compares it to the current timetable. If differences are found, some action (not relevant to the question) will take place. I was initially thinking of some sort of checksum process, where I could, for example, load both runs (that is, the one from the new timetable received and the one that has been persisted to the database) into the data structure and then add up all the hour components of the `StopTime`, and all the minute components of the `StopTime` and compare the results (i.e. both the sum of Hours and sum of Minutes would be the same, and differences introduced if a stop time is changed, a stop deleted or a new stop added). Would that be a valid way to check for differences, or is there a better way to approach this problem? I can see a problem that, for example, one stop is changed to be 2 minutes earlier, and another changed to be 2 minutes later would have a net zero change. Or am I over thinking this, and would it just be simpler to brute check all stops to ensure that   1. The updated run stops at the same stations; and   2. Each stop is at the same time"}
{"_id": "165207", "title": "Is there a standard for machine-readable descriptions of RESTful services?", "text": "I've interacted with a few RESTful APIs that provided excellent documentation for humans and descriptive URIs, but none of them seem to return machine- readable descriptions of themselves. It's not too tough to write methods of my own that assemble the right paths, and many language-specific API libraries are already just wrappers around RESTful requests. But the next level of abstraction seems really useful: a library that could read in an API's own machine readable documentation and generate the wrappers automatically, perhaps with a call to some standard URI like `base_url + '/documentation'` Are there any standards for machine-readable API documentation? Am I doing REST wrong? I am a relatively new programmer, but this seems like a good idea."}
{"_id": "38492", "title": "What should I do with this installer, using tools like Wise, InstallShield, and InstallAnywhere?", "text": "I need to find an installer tool that can do the following on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit editions):   1. Install IIS 7 if not installed    2. Install .NET 4.0 if not installed   3. Register ASP.NET 4.0 if necessary   4. Install SQL Server 2008 Express Edition if not installed   5. Install my webapp to IIS c:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\ by unpacking a ZIP file   6. Create database, login and run scripts   7. Update the web application's _web.config_ file with database information    8. Run two other MSI installs in silent mode (this one should be easy) I have used InstallShield in the past with a Delphi application I have written, but this is a lot more complicated. I have never \"deployed\" a web application to client machines, and we need this install to be bulletproof since most clients who install will not have much IT knowledge. What is the experience using these tools? We will buy the tool we decide is the best - but once we do, there won't be any going back - so I really want to make an informed decision."}
{"_id": "98578", "title": "What should go in atom:author for autogenerated content in an Atom feed?", "text": "I've recently started digging into Atom syndication feeds and are planning to migrate some web services we're running into an more standardized model using Atom Syndication and the Atom Publishing Protocol. The content of most of the syndication feeds are not created by a concrete user though, but rather auto-generated using data from various databases. I'm probably just a little stuck my head right now, but I simply can't decide what should go in the mandatory `atom:author` fields. The spec states:               A Person construct is an element that describes a person,     corporation, or similar entity(...)      So should the author field contain the name of our company, the developer(s) who wrote/maintain the generator, or something completely else? What would be the most semantically correct?"}
{"_id": "98577", "title": "Design choices when doing multithreading in C++", "text": "OK, so, **background** : I have a little \"server\" app/module that is written in C++. This is kindof a tunnel application that provides a standardized API via TCP/IP[a] and on the other hand talks to the \"real\" server via TCP/IP[a] via it's own interface. It doesn't even officially support multiple clients, but due to the inherently multithreaded nature of the processing that is done by the server and by the client (plus asynchronous callbacks) the tunneling app itself is multithreaded and runs pretty well during normal operations. The application uses a number of simple mutexes (Win32 CRITICAL_SECTIONS) to lock down the code paths that would create problems when executed concurrently and this does work pretty well in practice. A little picture:               [proprietary server]        [tunneling app]        [client]                          <--1-                  <--1-                                   (upcalls)    |<--2-                          <--3-                  <--3-                                                | -2-->                           --1->    (returns)     -1-->                           --3->                  -3-->                           -a-->    (callbacks)   -a1->                           -b--> |                -a2->      So pretty much everything goes with regards to call chains. * * * We have now identified a number of problems in fringe cases like calls during initialization or shutdown of the server and/or tunneling app and I'm struggling to properly fix these as they are mostly related to multithreaded object and thread lifetimes and just throwing more mutexes or more locks at the problem really doesn't cut it. * * * As for the **Question** : _What I am looking for_ is advice and guideline on _how to write multithreaded (C++) code that would work in all corner cases from the start_ and doesn't involve just locking everything down. Possibly with a specific focus on the context of heavy multithreading in a network communication scenario. Any insights welcome. * * * Notes: [a] : It's a CORBA communication interface. But The problems I see are really not related to the actual messaging mechanism used, as the messaging part on the wire works very well."}
{"_id": "98571", "title": "Wrapping my mind around prefix notation?", "text": "I'm reading about LISP. I understand how prefix notation works at a certain level, but I was wondering if there are any tricks to making it intuitive."}
{"_id": "98572", "title": "Good introduction to metaprogramming in Prolog?", "text": "I would like to make for example imperative programs as output of Prolog (shaders of graphic card) and also event-driven programs (game logic) ... also I would like to learn how to metaprogram in Prolog in general. I believe there might be some insights or advices how to do it; I don't want to jump into it not prepared and hack until I make working programs. I wonder what is good introduction to metaprogramming in Prolog? Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "224820", "title": "Need an OOP pattern or strategy for \"pluggable\" property", "text": "I'm using OOP and MVVM in a WPF c# application. The goal is for the resulting object (data-bound to user interface) to accurately represent a product. One specific area of the product is highly configurable. For conceptual purposes, imagine a boat which can have various means of propulsion. A submerged prop motor or above water fan motor may be attached at the stern, and they would have very different properties. At the model level, I could have an interface typed property for this `PropulsionDevice`, with the interface defining all the required information I need for pricing and weighting the finished product. How to assign this property based on user input is where I am unsure what to do. Creating an enumeration with an item for each class implementing my interface, and presenting it in a `ComboBox` seems clunky and naive (the disconnect between the enum item and the class seems wrong). But, I'm not sure if meta- programming with Custom Attributes or using Reflection would be a better option. Maybe there is another option? Any suggestions on how to allow for flexibility in my c# classes, as well as how to present this in the UI?"}
{"_id": "186863", "title": "Justify moving beyond IE7", "text": "I work within a closed environment that defines supported browsers organization-wide. Put another way: you can't use it unless it's an approved install. Given that (soon-to-be-formerly) Twitter Bootstrap and jQuery plan to drop\u2021 IE7 support, and IE itself has been on version 9 for a while, I'd like to put together a thoughtful case for nudging my organization past IE7. Our environment does have Chrome, but it's adoption hasn't yet caught fire, and in any case everything we need to build will have the IE expectation, for better and for worse, forever. What are some other resources (particularly security-related) that can help me make the case for moving beyond IE7? \u2021-perhaps \"deprecate IE7 support\" would be a better term"}
{"_id": "224828", "title": "Why should I use Bower?", "text": "I can fully appreciate the benefits of a package manager like Python PIP, Node npm, or Ruby Gems since they're doing much more than adding files to your applications path. Maybe I'm missing the point, or I'm being obtuse, but here are the **negatives** I can see:   * Separate step when building a project   * Separate dependency to install via another package manager (yo dawg)   * More clutter in the projects root with `bower.json` and / or `.bowerrc`   * Reliance on the registry being up to date, correct, and available   * Some imports / references to things like images won't work The **positives** I can see are these:   * I don't have to download the dependencies manually   * Optionally install packages as part of scaffolding based on user prompts or the like I'd really like to know of any benefits I'm unaware of, and I should say I'm not trying to be provocative I genuinely want to know."}
{"_id": "186868", "title": "Functional Requirements / Specification and relationship to DEV and QA", "text": "Functional Requirements state \"WHAT\" needs to be done from a user's perspective Functional Specification state \"HOW\" it needs to be done from technical standpoint. Do QA teams focus and Functional Requirements whereas development team focus primarily on functional specification though they need to have an understanding of functional requirements? I assume QA would sign off the product as long as the functional requirements are met irrespective of whether the functional specification is followed or not. Is my assumption correct?"}
{"_id": "130178", "title": "Does an unexperienced programmer need an IDE?", "text": "Reading this other question makes me wonder if I (as an absolute beginner PHP programmer) should stick with WAMP and Notepad++ or to switch to some IDE like Eclipse. It's understandable that skilled developers will benefit from a big shiny IDE. But **why should an absolute beginner use an IDE?** Do the benefits outweigh the extra challenge of learning the IDE on top of learning to develop? **Update for clarification:** My goal is to get some basic programming experience. By choosing PHP and WAMP (and FogBugz and Kiln) I hope to avoid having to navigate the tricky / messy OS specifics and compiling etc. and just focus on basic functionality like an online user registration form. I've got lots of theoretical understanding from university a decade ago but no practical experience. I want to remedy that with a hobby project that would be similar to a real-world sellable web app. There are so many questions to ask. So many pitfalls I probably _have_ to blunder into. This question is just one piece (my first!) of that puzzle."}
{"_id": "200346", "title": "Object oriented vs vector based programming", "text": "I am torn between object oriented and vector based design. I love the abilities, structure and safety that objects give to the whole architecture. But at the same time, speed is very important to me, and having simple float variables in an array really helps in vector based languages/ libraries like Matlab or numpy in Python. Here is a piece of code I wrote to illustrate my point Problem: Adding Tow volatility numbers. If x and y are two volatility numbers, the sum of the volatility is (x^2 + y^2)^0.5 (assuming certain mathematical condition but that's not important here). I want to perform this operation very fast, and at the same time I need to ensure that people don't just add the volatility in the wrong way (x+y). Both of these are important. The OO based design would be something like this:               from datetime import datetime      from pandas import *          class Volatility:         def __init__(self,value):            self.value = value              def __str__(self):            return \"Volatility: \"+ str(self.value)              def __add__(self,other):             return Volatility(pow(self.value*self.value + other.value*other.value, 0.5))      (Aside: For those who are new to Python, **add** is just a function that overrides the '+' operator) Let's say I add tow lists of volatility values               n = 1000000     vs1 = Series(map(lambda x: Volatility(2*x-1.0), range(0,n)))     vs2 = Series(map(lambda x: Volatility(2*x+1.0), range(0,n)))       (Aside: Again, a Series in Python is sort of a list with an index) Now I want to add the two:               t1 = datetime.now()     vs3 = vs1 + vs2     t2 = datetime.now()     print t2-t1      Just the addition runs in 3.8 seconds on my machine, the results I have given doesn't include the object initializaion time at all, its only the addition code that has been timed. If I run the same thing using numpy arrays:               nv1 = Series(map(lambda x: 2.0*x-1.0, range(0,n)))     nv2 = Series(map(lambda x: 2.0*x+1.0, range(0,n)))          t3 = datetime.now()     nv3 = numpy.sqrt((nv1*nv1+nv2*nv2))     t4 = datetime.now()     print t4-t3      It runs in 0.03 seconds. That's more than 100 times faster! As you can see, the OOP way gives me a lot of security that people won't be adding Volatility the wrong way, but the vector method is just so crazy fast! Is there a design in which I can get both? I am sure a lot of you have run into similar design choices, how did you work it out? The choice of language here is immaterial. I know a lot of you would advise that use C++ or Java, and the code may run faster than vector based languages anyway. But that's not the point. I need to use Python, because I have a host of libraries not available in other languages. That's my constraint. I need to optimize within it. And I know, that a lot of people would suggest parallelization, gpgpu etc. But I want to maximize single core performance first, and then I can parallelize both the versions of code. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "253244", "title": "Have enterprises adopted pure FP to create desktop user interfaces? Examples?", "text": "~~I see some evidence (F#) online that functional programming is penetrating enterprise.~~ Where I work we primarily develop VB.NET WinForms applications. The .NET infrastructure for developing WinForms apps is built on OO concepts (classes owning methods) -- think of how a combo box is defined. As a result, it does not appear that even when using F# one is able to embrace the functional paradigm. The examples I find have F# falling back to OO style. Is anyone aware of examples where an enterprise has adopted pure functional style for the development of GUIs? This speaker talks about immediate-mode GUIs which would seem a good fit for the functional paradigm. React.js and Elm language are good fits, but not adopted by \"enterprise.\" I am not aware of an enterprise that is doing truly functional GUIs. I am wondering if pure FP is suited to the task and if someone could direct me to source code examples. I have a hunch that enterprise has long ago taken the OO road and so OO is what the GUI platforms were built on. If FP had been as widely used we'd have the FP GUI libs too."}
{"_id": "135524", "title": "Interface and Inheritance: Best of both worlds?", "text": "I 'discovered' interfaces and I started to love them. The beauty of an interface is that it is a contract, and any object that fulfills that contract can be used wherever that interface is required. The problem with an interface is that it can't have a default implementation, which is a pain for mundane properties and defeats DRY. This is also good, because it keeps the implementation and the the system decoupled. Inheritance, on the hand, maintains a tighter coupling, and has the potential of breaking encapsulation. **Case 1** ( Inheritance with private members, good encapsulation, tightly coupled)               class Employee     {     int money_earned;     string name;          public:      void do_work(){money_earned++;};      string get_name(return name;);     };               class Nurse : public Employee:      {        public:        void do_work(/*do work. Oops, can't update money_earned. Unaware I have to call superclass' do_work()*/);          };          void HireNurse(Nurse *n)     {        nurse->do_work();     )      **Case 2** (just an interface)               class IEmployee     {          virtual void do_work()=0;          virtual string get_name()=0;     };          //class Nurse implements IEmployee.     //But now, for each employee, must repeat the get_name() implementation,     //and add a name member string, which breaks DRY.      **Case 3:** (best of both worlds?) Similar to **Case 1**. However, **imagine that (hypothetically) C++** did not allow overriding methods **except** those methods that are **pure virtual**. So, in **Case 1** , overriding do_work() would cause a compile-time error. To fix this, we set do_work() as pure virtual, and add a separate method increment_money_earned(). As an example:               class Employee     {     int money_earned;     string name;          public:      virtual void do_work()=0;      void increment_money_earned(money_earned++;);      string get_name(return name;);     };               class Nurse : public Employee:      {        public:        void do_work(/*do work*/ increment_money_earned(); ); .     };      But even this has problems. What if 3 months from now, Joe Coder creates a Doctor Employee, but he forgets to call increment_money_earned() in do_work()? * * * **The question:**   * Is **Case 3** superior to **Case 1**? Is it because it of 'better encapsulation' or 'more loosely coupled', or some other reason?   * Is **Case 3** superior to **Case 2** because it conforms with DRY?"}
{"_id": "118720", "title": "Mastering technology like LINQ, WCF really necessary or is OOPS enough?", "text": "I am a C# developer. My observation of the IT industry as a C# developer is that the technology keeps changing or being updated by Microsoft like LINQ, WCF, and WPF etc. OOP has been the fundamental for all kinds of developments that we see today in any language. My question is,   1. Is it good if I am a decent programmer in OOPS but not mastering any specific technology?   2. As a WinForms developer, is it necessary to know C++ with C# for better job perspective?"}
{"_id": "234933", "title": "Rich console UI", "text": "There are bunch of console programs and especially games using full redraw (not sure ho this correctly named) of console window. For example, look at output of linux `top` program -> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Top_program.jpg it doesn't just write text line by line all the time making the whole output oh thousands lines, but every second clears the screen and prints updated information. Or another example of `Apache Geronimo`: during startup, it prints to console progressbar -> http://i.imgur.com/BYWf1Sq.jpg My question is, how to reach the same result using Java?"}
{"_id": "85251", "title": "Which is the best method for storing data for a Language Dictionary?", "text": "I have been working on making a completely offline dictionary using the Wiktionary XML dumps. The dumps themselves are about 10 MB, but when converted into a index using a search engine indexer (I use Whoosh Search Engine in Python), the complete index comes to about 250 MB. Which I think would be difficult to distribute, it might be zipped, still it won't come anywhere near 10 MB. And indexing takes about 1 hour in my system, so indexing while installing the software in a PC is tedious. So I am looking for an alternate way of storing the words and meanings to make the dictionary. Which is a better searchable solution? May be some sort of Data Base that produces light weight DBs. Or the search engine indexes are better than DBs?"}
{"_id": "140705", "title": "What does it mean to say an algorithm is Sound and Complete?", "text": "I heard different interpretations of _sound and complete_. I understand that _completeness_ means finding a solution if there is one. What does it mean to say an algorithm is _sound_. What does it mean to say an algorithm is Sound and Complete?"}
{"_id": "200349", "title": "Java: How to manage UDP client-server state", "text": "I am trying to write a Java application that works similar to MapReduce. There is a server and several workers. Workers may come and go as they please and the membership to the group has a soft-state. To become a part of the group, the worker must send a UDP datagram to the server, but to continue to be part of the group, the worker must send the UDP datagram to the server every 5 minutes. In order to accommodate temporary errors, a worker is allowed to miss as many as two consecutive periodic UDP datagrams. So, the server must keep track of the current set of workers as well as the last time each worker had sent a UDP datagram. I've implemented a class called WorkerListener that implements Runnable and listens to UDP datagrams on a particular UDP port. Now, to keep track of active workers, this class may maintain a HashSet (or HashMap). When a datagram is received, the server may query the HashSet to check if it is a new member. If so, it can add the new worker to the group by adding an entry into the HashSet. If not, it must reset a \"timer\" for the worker, noting that it has just heard from the corresponding worker. I'm using the word timer in a generic sense. It doesn't have to be a clock of sorts. Perhaps this could also be implemented using int or long variables. Also, the server must run a thread that continuously monitors the timers for the workers to see that a client that times out on two consecutive datagram intervals, it is removed from the HashSet. I don't want to do this in the WorkerListener thread because it would be blocking on the UDP datagram receive() function. If I create a separate thread to monitor the worker HashSet, it would need to be a different class, perhaps WorkerRegistrar. I must share the HashSet with that thread. Mutual exclusion must also be implemented, then. My question is, what is the best way to do this? Pointers to some sample implementation would be great. I want to use the barebones JDK implementation, and not some fancy state maintenance API that takes care of everything, because I want this to be a useful demonstration for a class that I am teaching. Thanks"}
{"_id": "128567", "title": "Code review approaches", "text": "Just going out on a limb here. Is doing a code review by sampling a few classes and units of code by a developer good enough to judge what he has done wrong to provide inputs? This is just in case you are pressed for time and can't review every single line written by them. I am working on the assumption that the developers might duplicate the same type of mistakes everywhere. Is this an effective approach? or partially effective, or not at all effective? What other approaches are better? Sitting with each developer who has written the lines of code and asking them why they did that a particular way? or doing it by yourself and then sending a synopsis of your findings via email? How do you approach reviewing code written by junior developers/peers when you have to review all the code base in a typical 15 day sprint?"}
{"_id": "155437", "title": "Drawing out a document with strategies for coping with \"disasters\"", "text": "Does anyone happen to know of some guidelines for writing up a document for coping with possible disaster scenarios ? By disaster I mean anything that could lead to loss of work, time or eventually a client. I seem to remember reading an article along these lines but, unfortunately, I can't find it anymore. So I'd appreciate some feedback in this direction. I think such an approach would be useful in the company I'm in right now as we've had the occasional scare which might have been avoided with some preventative thinking."}
{"_id": "234931", "title": "Order of parameters in localization code", "text": "In localization code (like `T('English phrase with %s and %s parameters', param1, param2)` the order of parameters in different languages is different. How to handle this? Our localization engine seems not to support named or numbered parameters, so the parameters need to go in the same order as they are in code."}
{"_id": "246326", "title": "confusion on using nodejs within an actual web application or ide", "text": "I am new to using `nodejs` completely, and it seems to be pretty much the go to thing for **everything** right now. But I program in Visual Studio, and I'm a bit confused about how this works. I will cite an example; One task I want to do is to get a list of all the files in a directory and all of its sub-directories, and return them as a `string[]` for a javascript `.config` file. I started searching for that and found a lot of answers, but they all kept going back to `nodejs`, for instance, this one, and this one, and this one. I really wasn't looking for anything having to do with `nodejs`, it just seems to be part of every solution out there. I've installed it, and gotten it to where I can do some simple things like create a very basic server that listens to a port - thanks to simple tutorials written for a moron like me - but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to use these kinds of things in my real programs - specifically `ASP.NET MVC`. I've searched pretty hard on this topic too, and discovered things like `iisnode` and the like that do some partial integration. But even with all of this, this wealth of information, I am **extremely** confused. I understand that I can use it from a command line, like `PowerShell`, I can run commands from a terminal, and install packages into projects, but I'm having a hard time seeing and finding how this actually translates into literal, real usage in an existing application. I have scoured around for days and days for examples, I've read at least 3 books on nodejs, The Node Beginner Book, What is Node, and Professional Node.js and to be very honest I am still as lost as ever. Everything I read keeps assuming I am doing things from the command line or a terminal, but all of the applications I see for node assume you're writing a web application. I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around **how** you use it **within** an application. Can anyone assist me with this? Perhaps a working example of an actual program that uses node? I'll take almost anything at this point, though `ASP.NET MVC` is my core system of choice. I was originally going to post this on `StackOverflow`, but someone suggested that this community was more appropriate for this question. # Update I want to make a more clear example of what is confusing me, I'm already learning because of the 1 proposed answer, but let me give more examples. I program in `Visual Studio`, it has no real concept of `node.js` \\- in fact, if I try to do things that will run against node, it gives me problems. I often have to code anything related to node in `WebStorm` from `JetBrains`. I understand that I can _'compile'_ things with node, what I don't understand is how I can **invoke** it within my program, not inside of a command line. For example let's say there is a node module that takes an array and does something to it - for sake of example let's say that it sorts everything in the array alphabetically, and it is a _module_ called _supersort_. So if I were at the console, I would just type in ... > node supersort.js Okay, but now I'm **not** at the command line. I have published my web application. My user is at a page, let's say `/account/history` and they are seeing a list of every product they have bought. For the sake of argument, say I've got that list as a `object[]` or `string[]` \\- I realize that is completely absurd and it would be far more complex, but just jive with me. I want to run _`supersort`_ on this page. But it's live! How do I do it? How do I run this _module_ on their live, active data without manually being there at the console? Is there a set of javascript files I'm supposed to download and call http requests a certain way? Do I wire up a special `IHttpHandler` in `IIS`? I think you can start to see where I am lost. # Update 2 Attempting to further emphasize my question, I'll try and cite a more specific example. I want to use the library `Q.js` in my `ASP.NET MVC` application. Now, there is a version 1 that I can seem to run out of the box, but I want to try out version 2 - you can find it linked **Q.js v2 (beta)** So I am using Visual Studio, and I'll download the `q.js` file and load it up, but immediately we already have trouble now - if you look at the file's source code right away I see this.               require(\"collections/shim\");     var WeakMap = require(\"collections/weak-map\");     var Iterator = require(\"collections/iterator\");     var asap = require(\"asap\");      Now I certainly don't have folders with those names in my application - and even though I have `node.js` installed, putting this file in a `<script>` tag does not work, as it says it cannot find the specific libraries. If I go to a console explicitly and type in `npm install -g q@~2`, it will create a folder called `node_modules/q` in my `AppData/Roaming/npm` folder, and this one **does** have folders for those other libraries. So what is the right way to do this? It's clear that just having node installed doesn't make node commands work when I try to run the page in ASP.NET MVC - but I also don't understand how to get to the final version of the library that I can include on my application like a normal javascript file and use across the program."}
{"_id": "246374", "title": "CAN Protocol Understanding", "text": "I have a task to convert CAN protocol Driver from Basic CAN to Full CAN. The project contains CANopen stack used in it. I have initiated the study of CANopen stack. **I want to know is it necessary to study CANopen Stack and to how much depth should I study CANopen stack?** Please note- Major task is to improve the drive code by converting it into Full CAN implementation"}
{"_id": "246324", "title": "Choosing a file format to storage a simple text data", "text": "My .NET application makes its work and then creating a report (an Excel worksheet). The report holds thousands of short text strings [KEY - VALUE], so excel worksheets suites very well, one column holds keys and another holds values. It's easy to examine this reports. But because of performance issues now i'm trying to find another file format to create reports in .NET in a way that's easy to manually examine, like a table or plain text. So what kind of file can I choose? Sorry my bad english."}
{"_id": "25202", "title": "what is the reason for using xslt?", "text": "Why is XSLT used by many web applications?"}
{"_id": "74323", "title": "When designing data models for JPA, what's the best way to make use of polymorphism?", "text": "I've been asked to support a Java EE application. The data model was poorly- designed and will not support several necessary use cases; so I'm developing a new data model using EclipseLink (the old one was built on iBATIS). Mind you, I'm no EclipseLink guru, and still have many questions about the best ways to utilize it. For example, the current application has different entities for different types of requests-- let's say, CakeRequest, PieRequest, DonutRequest, etc. My first thought was to create a base Request type, then extend that with PieRequest, which can have fields specific to it, such as crustType and hasCoolWhip. Certainly, EclipseLink can do that. However, I also need the ability to list all Requests, starting with the most recent. I'm not sure what the best way to handle this would be. In order to sort requests together, I need to be able to put all request types in a single collection, which defeats the purpose of polymorphism. It could be that there are EclipseLink features which would help me out here, features that I'm unaware of; or perhaps Java itself could provide the answer. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks very much!"}
{"_id": "185519", "title": "Perforce workflow", "text": "So, we have just migrated from SVN to Perforce. I'm having a little trouble trying to figure out the best workflow. For Subversion, I did the following (via TortoiseSVN):   1. Check out repo   2. Do work   3. Update repo   4. Resolve conflicts, if any.   5. Commit my code.   6. Do work.. What is the best approach for P4? I know that you must open files for edit before actually editing them. With this in mind I am currently doing the following (via P4V):   1. Sync to head   2. Open entire project for editing   3. Do work   4. Revert unchanged files   5. Submit i.e. commit pending changes.   6. Open entire project for edit, again.   7. Do work.. Is this a practical approach? or is there one that is more in tune with Perforce best practices?"}
{"_id": "74324", "title": "Embedded systems learning: next step", "text": "I am a newbie trying to learn embedded systems programming on ubuntu. I've tried the below link: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Articles/Tutorial-A- simple-embedded-Linux-system/ But after doing this, I don't know, I felt as though I just created a USB boot disk. I don't know what other people knowledgeable in this field might think...nonetheless I'd like to take the next step. What should I look for next?"}
{"_id": "74329", "title": "Where do you store your builds?", "text": "We currently use Team Foundation Server to do our builds. I know we can tell TFS to keep our builds for a certain amount of time or keep them indefinitely. What if we want to keep some or all of our builds indefinitely in case we need to go back to them for some reason? Do any of you use source control to store your builds or use some type of file server to keep your builds on a file server for future retrieval? Storing the builds within the Team Build directory would cause that directory to get very messy quickly. Of course we can always branch out an old changeset and create a build definition for that branch, but that's more time consuming than retrieving a build from source control or from a file server. Maybe what we're trying to do is just a bad idea."}
{"_id": "185515", "title": "Avoid DD anomalies", "text": "I have this problem called out by PMD (static code analyzer) more often that I would like, and would like to know how someone with more experience than me would write it. My code is functional but I find it inelegant, so I want to know how other programmers would write this piece. The case is, in a network/IO petition I may or may not get a result from, but my parent method is not null-proof so I always have to return something. I also don't like several returns on a method.               public String getBingLocation(Coordinate... data)     {         String response = \"Not Retrieved\";         final Coordinate location = data[0];         JSONObject locationData;         try {             locationData = NetworkManager.getJSONResult(ApiFormatter                     .generateBingMapsReverseGeocodingURL(location.Latitude, location.Longitude));             if (null != locationData) {                 final String address = this.getAddressFromJSONObject(locationData);                 response = address;             }         } catch (final ClientProtocolException e) {             LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(e);             return response;         } catch (final JSONException e) {             LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(e);             return response;         } catch (final IOException e) {             LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(e);             return response;         } finally {             location.Street = response;         }         return response;     }      Other example:               public static Object loadObject(final String fileName, final Context context) {         Object object = null;         try {             ObjectInputStream objectInputStream = null;             try {                 final FileInputStream fileStream = context.openFileInput(fileName);                 objectInputStream = new ObjectInputStream(fileStream);                 object = objectInputStream.readObject();             } catch (final ClassNotFoundException catchException) {                 LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(catchException);             } catch (final ClassCastException catchException) {                 LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(catchException);             } catch (final Exception catchException) {                 LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(catchException);             } finally {                 if (objectInputStream != null) {                     objectInputStream.close();                 }             }         } catch (final IOException catchException) {             LoggerFactory.consoleLogger().printStackTrace(catchException);         }         return object;     }"}
{"_id": "241101", "title": "Implement SSO login with or without Membership", "text": "I need to implement SSO for four different domains, say               abc.com     pqr.com     sql.com     xyz.com      Now, I have already login system for two of my applications using Membership. But now requirement is changed, challenge is to make Single Sign On.               Me: Can we have subdomains?     client: no !!!          Me: Can we have single database and separate session management server?     client: NO !!!      After that I create a POC in which I am able to share a cookie across the multiple domains but issue is it need to ping and bounce back to all domains on user browser which led the larger login time. Can I have suggestion how to get it done?"}
{"_id": "139319", "title": "When not to use ORM and prefer stored procedures?", "text": "I am using PetaPoco micro-ORM. It is indeed very easy and secure to work with databases using ORM tools, but the only thing I hate is extra code. I used to put most of the code in the database itself and use all the RDBMS features like Stored Procedures, Triggers etc., which it is built to handle better. I want to know when not to use ORM over Stored Procedures/Triggers and vice- versa."}
{"_id": "205445", "title": "Where does paypal's 92233720368547800 number come from?", "text": "There has been a story in the news about a man whose Paypal account was accidentally credited with $92,233,720,368,547,800. Where does this number come from? What sort of programming bug is likely to give rise to this number?"}
{"_id": "42965", "title": "Please help me give this principle a name", "text": "As a designer, I like providing interfaces that cater to a power/simplicity balance. For example, I think the LINQ designers followed that principle because they offered both dot-notation and query-notation. The first is more powerful, but the second is easier to read and follow. If you disagree with my assessment of LINQ, please try to see my point anyway; LINQ was just an example, my post is not about LINQ. I call this principle \"dial-able power\". But I'd like to know what other people call it. Certainly some will say \"KISS\" is the common term. But I see KISS as a superset, or a \"consumerism\" practice. Using LINQ as my example again, in my view, a team of programmers who always try to use query notation over dot-notation are practicing KISS. Thus the LINQ designers practiced \"dial-able power\", whereas the LINQ consumers practice KISS. The two make beautiful music together. I'll give another example. Imagine a C# logging tool that has two signatures allowing two uses:               void Write(string message);     void Write(Func<string> messageCallback);      The purpose of the two signatures is to fulfill these needs:               //Every-day \"simple\" usage, nothing special.     myLogger.Write(\"Something Happened\" + error.ToString() );          //This is performance critical, do not call ToString() if logging is     //disabled.     myLogger.Write( () => { \"Something Happened\" + error.ToString() });      Having these overloads represents \"dial-able power,\" because the consumer has the choice of a simple interface or a powerful interface. A KISS-loving consumer will use the simpler signature most of the time, and will allow the \"busy\" looking signature when the power is needed. This also helps self- documentation, because usage of the powerful signature tells the reader that the code is performance critical. If the logger had only the powerful signature, then there would be no \"dial-able power.\" So this comes full-circle. I'm happy to keep my own \"dial-able power\" coinage if none yet exists, but I can't help think I'm missing an obvious industry- standard designation for this practice. What is that name? And if there is none, does \"dial-able power\" work? p.s. Another example that is related, **but is not the same** as \"dial-able power\", is Scott Meyer's principle \"make interfaces easy to use correctly, and hard to use incorrectly.\""}
{"_id": "143152", "title": "Resources for bidding on projects successfully?", "text": "What are successful guidelines for bidding on programming projects on sites like guru.com? How do you write a bid that is likely to be accepted? Are there any examples of great bids? How do you compete with other programmers around the world who will underbid you? Please provide information and/or links to resources."}
{"_id": "204313", "title": "Protect Images in a Webpage", "text": "I want to build a website that will contain a lot of images. I don't want users who visit the website to be able to save the images. I have blocked the right click option, but is there any other way to keep users from saving the images?"}
{"_id": "87098", "title": "How to quantify product work in Resume?", "text": "One of things I do in my Resume is try to quantify the impact my work has had in the particular company I was with at the time. The reason is it shows the value my work had added to the business. Is this what you guys do as well or am I the only one? In my previous job this was easy as I worked on short/medium internal applications and it was fairly easy to measure end result. For example, external consulting company quoted $50,000 for an application Business Services department wanted I completed it in 3 days so I say I saved the company $48,000. I have been in my current job for 3 years but all of it has been on 1 single well established product. About 30% work is maintenance and 70% work is on new modules. I have worked on various modules like API (WCF), Security (2 factor authentication), etc. How should I quantify work on modules?"}
{"_id": "87097", "title": "How to include serious personal project in Resume?", "text": "My brother has come up with an interesting business idea that could be commercialised. For over a month I have been creating the foundation for SaaS. I have been treating this as commercial project so designing using patterns and best practices. One of the reasons I want to include this in my Resume is my full time job doesn't involve current trendy ASP.Net technologies (e.g Linq/Entity Relationships, jQuery, ASP.Net MVC 3, Silverlight, etc) so the resume lacks impact. In my full time job I work on a 7 year old well designed product and since our data and web layers work well it would be stupid to re-engineer them only because recruiters think Linq, ASP.Net MVC and jQuery are cool. How can I include my personal project in Resume so that it doesn't sound like experiment or quick'n'dirty pet project?"}
{"_id": "87093", "title": "Should we hire one consultant for website design and another for development or find someone who will do both?", "text": "We've outsourced our app development, and they've created a DB hosted on Amazon-EC2. For the UI we're in talks with a web designer, but they don't do any of the coding to integrate the website with the DB created by the app developers. Is it a good idea to have one person do the website design, and another to do the DB integration coding? What issues or complications could come up? Should we instead go with a designer who provides the complete package?"}
{"_id": "41435", "title": "What is Google's repository like?", "text": "I heard Google has a giant private (internal) repository of all of their code and their employees have access to it so that when they are developing things they don't have to reinvent the wheel. I'd like to know more about it! Is there anyone here from Google that can describe it in a bit more detail, or do you know a bit more about it? I'm interested in knowing mainly about how it's organized and how they can make it easy for an employee to find something in such a giant codebase as it must be."}
{"_id": "39720", "title": "How do you answer the question, \"where do you see yourself in 5 years?\"", "text": "What do recruiters expect you to answer when they ask, \"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?\" Something like: > I want to improve my technical skills ... blah-blah-blah ... architect? Is it just to check your ambitions and if you are not going to leave in a month?"}
{"_id": "213768", "title": "Using algorithms in papers in my code", "text": "For example a new research paper comes out and it describes some algorithm, say this is a cutting edge algorithm and came out last week, is there anything stopping me from using that algorithm in my codebase that is for commercial purposes? What if the paper includes some code and I use that code? There does not seem to be any information about code licensing on the paper so I am not sure how this is meant to work."}
{"_id": "39727", "title": "Requirement Traceability matrix", "text": "What is a requirement traceability matrix? What are the differences between different requirement types and what are the advantages/disadvantages of using these matrices?"}
{"_id": "39728", "title": "crash course in c++", "text": "I may have to give a crash course in c++ for a data structures class. Any suggestions on what would be essential for me to go over other than classes? thanks in advance * * * I forgot to mention I am not a teacher but a tutor and I need to help some fellow students get up to speed quickly so that they don't fall behind then I can hopefully fill in the gaps."}
{"_id": "83965", "title": "How to use the APIs for different platforms?", "text": "From what I know, learning a programming language consists of : 1- Learning the syntax 2- Learning how does the language handle\\use\\implement its \"abilities\" (Classes, delegates, structs, polymorphism.... etc) And What from what I found while researching a couple of programming languages, is that the \"major\" languages share almost all of these capabilities (OOP,delegation,polymorphism, and so on) I am learning C# at the moment, and as a \"major\" language , it offers all of the said capabilities and more. after learning C#, I should be able to learn other languages relatively easier, for example Objective-C ( for iOS development ) and java (for android development) the problem here, the Framework. for windows there is (.net), for Mac (Cocoa) for iOS (Cocoa Touch) how does one go about USING these frameworks, I am not looking for tutorials for a specific api, I can use google for that ;) I am talking about \"understanding\" the general idea of how one would easily use a framework ( even if its previously unknown to the programmer) to build an application. For example, we all heard of the Playstation Vita, the new handheld device of Playstation... now this device offers alot of new features not found in the PSP ... so the game developers for this device will need to get the API from sony and work their way through it to build a game for the PS Vita . How does that work? is there something you need to know besides the programming language used for the API (eg. C# for .NET and Objective-C for Cocoa) ? I know that there are books covering each major API out there, But again I am trying to get a general understanding not a tutorial. On a forum for game developers, someone said (once you know programming, the language is just a tool) That's what I want to achieve... Sorry for such a long post, And I would be grateful for your experience on the subject."}
{"_id": "83963", "title": "What are the steps required to ensure you've covered technical due diligence when purchasing a software product (and IP) created by another company?", "text": "If you were tasked with performing due diligence for a software product/IP you/your company was considering buying. What would be your steps to make sure the purchase was acceptable from a technical risk level? The scenario is one company has a product you or your company is interested in buying in it's entirety (IP and code) so that your company can now sell that product or it's services. The upfront assumption is the product has some value, but you want to assess the technical foundation of the product to ensure it's not a complete hack and nightmare to support. Examples of this might include   * Compile/Build and install the software on a clean computer to verify the build and deploy cycle.   * Run a code profiling tool against the code base to get an idea of overall code quality. What else? Are there any resources/checklists on the web which might help?"}
{"_id": "20239", "title": "How do you deal with over-the-head APIs/technology", "text": "I guess most people have been in this situation. The initial project planning begins. The requirements are outlined. After architectural review and sorting through APIs/Frameworks the fitting technology is picked. The development starts. And then it starts. As soon as you need to do some supposedly simple supporting things, framework/API start to backfire, and instead of doing any work you end up fighting against the technology. The research time skyrockets, forums are silent, nothing seems to be done, and even when you get something to work, you're not really sure it's done right. How do you manage in these situations? Do you go for hacks, do you research further, what do you say to management?"}
{"_id": "71317", "title": "Feature Driven Development in the work place?", "text": "**Question**   Please explain Feature Driven Development in a nutshell? **Situation**   My Business Analyst calls their documentation FDD, but it just seems overwhelmed by details. **In a Nutshell**   An 'in a nutshell' example would be good, since I'm trying to reduce unnecessary detail and confusion. I want to add clarity, and an Occam's' razor approach to the documentation. Thanks for your help, Here's what I found"}
{"_id": "202870", "title": "Clustering Strings on the basis of Common Substrings", "text": "I have around 10000+ strings and have to identify and group all the strings which looks similar(I base the similarity on the number of common words between any two give strings). The more number of common words, more similar the strings would be. For instance:   1. How to make another layer from an existing layer   2. Unable to edit data on the network drive   3. Existing layers in the desktop   4. Assistance with network drive In this case, the strings 1 and 3 are similar with common words Existing, Layer and 2 and 4 are similar with common words Network Drive(eliminating stop word) The steps I'm following are:   1. Iterate through the data set   2. Do a row by row comparison   3. Find the common words between the strings   4. Form a cluster where number of common words is greater than or equal to 2(eliminating stop words)   5. If number of common words<2, put the string in a new cluster.   6. Assign the rows either to the existing clusters or form a new one depending upon the common words   7. Continue until all the strings are processed I am implementing the project in C#, and have got till step 3. However, I'm not sure how to proceed with the clustering. I have researched a lot about string clustering but could not find any solution that fits my problem. Your inputs would be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "105226", "title": "Why can't I edit an SVN commit message?", "text": "I'm using SVN. Sometimes I miss something when I write a commit message. But once it's been committed, it cannot be reverted, and even I can't edit the message. Why they didn't put the edit function in it?"}
{"_id": "105221", "title": "Learning potentially unrelated materials on company's dime, is it acceptable?", "text": "I am facing a similar problem as the OP of this question where my environment is good, but I feel like my learning is stagnating and I don't have the ability/resources to change positions/quit my job at this time nor am I sure I would want to if I did have the ability to. The day before yesterday, I was assigned to help fix a problem with an ASP.NET website (which I normally don't work with) that the customer was having and I needed to look up how to implement something. It only took me a couple of minutes to fix the problem and after that I ended up spending about four hours reading more about ASP.NET and implementing some of the exercises from the book. Then I spent another hour reading about networking and configuring routers which may be used when we need to change something in our lab, however, it is highly unlikely I would be the one to do it since we have a person dedicated to that task. Today I took off work just so I could learn more about configuring networks and to practice on my home network. Should I be billing the company for the time learning more about ASP.NET even though it is not a common part of my job or should I be charging like 1/2 rate? Is there a certain number of hours that you feel is acceptable to charge the company for time learning something or self-improvement?"}
{"_id": "236875", "title": "Error Handling when no access to Visual Studio or application start point", "text": "I've recently joined a project where we are extending the functionality of an external application that our company has bought. It is an Office Add-In with an admin console that allows you to create Windows Forms style forms with code-behind files, and gives you a single place to store common code. This can be quite challenging when implementing code that would be simple in a 'normal' Windows Forms application. How do I implement global error handling so we can log all errors? We aren't using Visual Studio and have no access to csproj files so we can't use IL weaving / AOP. We don't have access to the starting point of the application so we can't subscribe to thread or application unhandled exception events. I suspect this is already being subscribed to in the external code, as unhandled exceptions are exposed in a custom error message box by default. I'm currently looking to see if we can extend the external dlls; however I don't see where I'm going to call our extended code. The alternative is to go through every method and add a try/catch block in just to log errors, which makes my skin crawl! This project has been running for a year without dealing with error handling yet so it will also take a long time to implement this approach too. Pseudo-Example class:               namespace Scriptlets     {       using System;       using System.Windows.Forms;            public partial class NewClient : FormScriptType       {         protected override void PageChanged(object sender, PageChangedEventArgs e)         {             ChangeAddressLabels();         }              ...       }     }"}
{"_id": "33145", "title": "Is it possible to write an anti-virus like thing using C# or Python?", "text": "C# and Python can't compete with C and Assembly when writing such tools is the need. I left C many years back and I don't think I will be able to cope up so fast. Is it possible to write Anti-Virus and Intrusion-Detection tools using C# or Python? If yes, what things to learn along side and where I can find good resources on this?"}
{"_id": "236873", "title": "Unified Team Dev Enviroment", "text": "Where I work we have a number of teams that are converting over to having a team dev environment. Basically a couple members of the team are putting together an image that is then installed on everyones computer. It includes an OS, an IDE (with source control managed from it), a couple of server systems they need for testing and a test server image. Ostensibly the imagine is being compiled based on everyones input, so everyone is, again, ostensibly, happy with the environment in question. The team leaders claim that this will be more efficient because whenever anyone has a problem everyone else on the team can help fix it (as opposed to, say, the other 2 who are still using `vim`.) But, at the same time, it seems like this approach would have a negative effect on people who don't excel at working in the majorities paradigm. So my question is this: is the trade off worthwhile? Are the \"team support\" gains likely to overcome the \"individual efficiency\" loses? Tangentially, is there a halfway point? Perhaps if everyone had the same OS and the same server image but were allowed different IDEs, that might be better?"}
{"_id": "123477", "title": "What is richochet frames based hotspot jvm?", "text": "In order to implement JSR 292, a.k.a. invoke dynamic, something called richochet frames is introduced into the hotspot vm. I'd like to know more about it, such as invoke dynamic itself, how richochet frames implements it, where the name richochet comes from, etc. Google seems to be not very helpful here. Any pointers would be appreciated. Or better, someone please writes blogs about it :)"}
{"_id": "70951", "title": "Applied Mathematics Degree For a Software Engineer (and Software Internships For Math Majors)", "text": "Here's the skinny: I love math. I think math is fun and exciting and that it teaches you to think analytically. I also love programming. The ability to create systems and apps that no one before me has been able to do is also a very exciting and empowering feelings. Here's the problem: I think that teaching myself higher order mathematics would be a whole lot harder than teaching myself anything that I could learn in a Computer Science program. From this I reason that I should major in Applied Math (with some Pure Math courses) and teach myself all the programming and development I care to learn. However, I plan on engineering software for a living. Here's the question(s): I believe that once I get an interview I will be prepared to blow minds, but of course the problem would be getting the interview. Will companies throw my resume in the NO pile because I don't have a Computer Science degree? Also, would I be at a disadvantage when it comes to getting an internship? I strongly believe that a good internship prior to graduation is something that all undergrads should take on and I would not be very happy if I couldn't get one myself."}
{"_id": "123475", "title": "Who first created or popularized the original XMLHTTPRequest / MSXML?", "text": "I'm trying to understand the origins of AJAX, and think MSXML and XMLHTTPRequest were the objects that started it all. Which came first, and/or became the defacto way to create dynamic pages?"}
{"_id": "123472", "title": "Programming Language for Learning Several Programming Paradigms", "text": "Is there a programming language that can be used as a bridge for learning several programming paradigms? I am introduced to the Oz programming language but I think there are several more languages that could also be used in learning several paradigms and this thread can be a good survey of those. I think it is better to learn those paradigms first in order to learn several programming languages, especially if you are jumping from one paradigm to another every time you study a new language."}
{"_id": "70956", "title": "What repercussions a developer might expect after informing current employer that he is active in the job market?", "text": "A lot of developers, especially those that stay with the same company for many years and especially those working for large corporations with very healthy HR presence probably end up in this situation at one time or another. As the time progresses, you learn more, acquire new skills and end up with many more responsibilities, maybe even start leading development teams, and you start asking your self, how come I'm holding the same title and receiving the same pay (adjusted for inflation) that I was getting when I got hired? You ask your supervisor how much more you'd need to do to get promoted to next title level and your supervisor agrees that the time is long past. But after you are promoted, your pay increased is still \"HR-capped\" and you realize that you are making good 10-15k below what you think the market value is for your skills. You have two cards you can still play: 1) Look for a new job. Interview in a bunch of places and then either leave your current company, or see if they can match the pay (personally, if a company requires you to find a different job before they give you your fair value, I wouldn't stay with that company at that point) or 2) tell your current employer that your resume is posted and you are actively looking for offers. You may be happy with management, your work, people you work with, but 10k difference in salary is important and the only way to get your true market value is to put yourself on the market. So this is their chance to match your salary before you find something and leave. What are the likely repercussions of playing card #2? Is it ever advisable to openly tell your current company that you are looking to leave your current position?"}
{"_id": "120781", "title": "Design For Asynchronous User Interface", "text": "I have been working on a integration that has posed an interesting user interface conundrum that I would like suggestions for. The user interface is displayed within a third party product. The state of the interface is supplied by calls to a service I have written. There can be small delays between the actual state changing the the user interface changing due to the polling for state by the third party. When a user interacts with the user interface, requests are sent back to my application. This then affects the state and the next state poll request will update the user interface. The problem is that the delay between pressing a button and seeing the user interface update is perhaps 1 or 2 seconds and in usability testing I can see that people are clicking again before the user interface updates, thinking that they haven't properly clicked the first time. Given the constraints (we can only update the user interface via the polling mechanism - if we updated it when they clicked, the polling might return and overwrite the change causing unpredictable / undesirable results)... what can we do to make the user experience better. My current idea is to show a message for a couple of seconds so people know their click was accepted, the message would not be affected by the state polling, so wouldn't be prematurely removed / overwritten etc. I'm sure there are other ideas out there and I'm also confident someone has a better idea that I have!"}
{"_id": "232556", "title": "how should I change the representation (not mimetype) of a resource?", "text": "I'm looking at how I can change the representation of a payload at runtime for varied potential advantages, but I'm not sure how to do it. Specifically collections. Array of Pairs               [{ <resource_uri> : { <entity> }, ...}]      Array of Objects               [<entity>,...]      Array of Resources               [<resource_uri>]      Map of entities               { <resource_uri> : { <entity> }, ... }      My problem is, I'm not sure if I should put these different representations of the sets at different URI's, give them slightly varied mime types, e.g. `application/foomap+json` or perhaps use an optional query parameter `?format=map`, or resource `/entities/map`. The UI is going to hide this, this is for programmatic web service access only (which the \"UI's JS will have to call)."}
{"_id": "222529", "title": "Which interface allows you to use a design pattern that is characteristically changed with the instantiation of objects?", "text": "I am doing a research on this and can't find my answer to this question: > Which interface allows you to use a design pattern that is > characteristically changed with the instantiation of objects? \\- in PHP I am studying for an exam on php programming and from the theoretic I can't find an exact answer. I found something related to `Creational Design Interface` and `Factory Interface`, but don't know which one."}
{"_id": "232550", "title": "Why are Python's package names not creative?", "text": "First, I LOVE Python, and Python is my first programming language. I'm just wondering why Python's packages got kinda ~~ugly~~ unmemorable and sometimes very long names? I find other languages (e.g. Node.js and Ruby) more creative and descriptive. I feel python package creators just try to throw the 'py' letters anywhere in the name (e.g. autopy, Boupy, IMDbPY, Pybooru, etc.). Not to mention abbreviating or even using all the words describing what the package can do (e.g. Matplotlib, virtualenvwrapper). **Is there any naming convention that had unintentionally constrained creativity?** _P.S. I by no means try to offend creators of the packages mentioned above. Nor is this question meant to be a this vs that._"}
{"_id": "7017", "title": "Best way to relearn C++?", "text": "I've done Java for ten years, and stopped doing any C++ sometime in the mid-90's. What's the best way to quickly relearn C++? Near as I can figure, the language has changed significantly in 15 years; or, writing good 1995 C++ _isn't_ the same as writing modern good C++. RAII is one thing that keeps coming up, and I still don't quite know what it is."}
{"_id": "20233", "title": "user's requirements verification, howto?", "text": "My question is: How can you verify the users' requirements early in the software creation process? I show the user specifications, prototypes, demos... but still users forget to share some \"insignificant details\" about the process or business rules and data. Which pops up after the final test as some \"really small and rare exceptions\" - which are turned into change request and accumulate a lot of work. So how do you prototype (or verify) users requirements early in the project?"}
{"_id": "37711", "title": "is This easy to learn Objective C in 1 month for beginner?", "text": "Hai Discuss about that we are all know about that Objective C iPhone application is very hard to learn quickly or in 1 month for beginner. I asked to know about that how they can train themselves within 1 month?"}
{"_id": "250926", "title": "How to use Messagequeing in a distributed web application", "text": "I am curious for solutions to this problem: Assume we are going to build an online-store. To better scale parts of the architecture, it is broken into independend subsystems. The typical scenario would involve an application server (or something similar), where the requests from clients come in. The flow for a login would be something like this: Request comes in ->Authenticate user ->Get last products a user bought ->calculate appropriate ads ->deliver generated Page to client.  This is less efficient, because the queries of the subsystems happen in a serial/synchronous way. It would be better, to make calls in parallel. For example one could use a Node.JS server and call the subsystems asynchronously. On callback there is something like a \"reduce function\" called, which aggregates all data and, when all data is collected, it sends the generated page back to the client. So this system seems more efficient. Another step would include further decoupling and introduces message queues. So there is on the one side the application server, which gets the requests and serves the replys; and on the other hand, the independend components communicating over message queues. The flow would be the following: Incoming Request ->Message: \"User with session key 1234567890 wants authentication\" So with the session key, the user and according messages are identifyable. This message is taken by the user-service and produces the answer \"User with session key 1234567890 is John Doe from New York\". This message is published to all the other services in the application. So they can react and publish their results. My Problem is, how do I route the result back to the application server which has to wait an unknown amount of time? How does it know, when to collect all the results for its request? One solution could be, using an in memory database (e.g. Redis). All services could write their results into Redis, which is constantly polled by the application server while waiting for a result to deliver. But, is that the solution? Are there other solutions?"}
{"_id": "180851", "title": "Why shouldn't I use the repository pattern with Entity Framework?", "text": "During a job interview, I was asked to explain why the repository pattern isn't a good pattern to work with ORMs like Entity Framework. Why is this the case?"}
{"_id": "180854", "title": "How to maintain nearly identical internal/external programs without having separate codebase for each?", "text": "I have a program I'm working on that my company uses internally, but is also sent to vendors. The vendor version will be identical, except that it will be missing some features, and use an installer. I only have to remove 2 lines from an XML file, and it's good for external use. Is there some \"typical\" method to create a project like this without having to maintain separate codebases for each project? If it makes any difference, program is written in C#, developed using Visual Studio 2010, compiled as a dll, runs on Windows 7."}
{"_id": "155431", "title": "Can't understand example using continuations", "text": "I'm reading the r6rs Scheme report and am confused by the explanation of continuations (I find it to be too dense and lacking of examples for a beginner). What is this code doing and how does it evaluate to 4? Why does `call/cc` want an argument that's a function of one argument? How is `call/cc`'s argument used?               (+ 1 (call-with-current-continuation            (lambda (escape)              (+ 2 (escape 3)))))               =\u21d2 4      This example is from section 1.11 - Continuations."}
{"_id": "215009", "title": "deciphering columnar transposition cipher", "text": "I am looking for an idea on how to decipher a columnar transposition cipher without knowing the key or the length of the key. When I take the cipher text as input to my algorithm I will guess the length of the key to be the factors of the length of the cipher text. I will take the first factor suppose the length was 20 letters so I will take 2*10 (2 rows and 10 columns). Now I want to arrange the cipher text in the columns and read it row wise to see if there is any word forming and match it with a dictionary if it is something sensible. If it matches the dictionary then it means it is in correct order or else I want to know how to make other combinations of the columns and read the string again row wise. Please suggest another approach that is more efficient."}
{"_id": "29782", "title": "How to Solve an Error?", "text": "I am novice developer. While development is going on, we come across different error issues. However for the novice of programming, it is always hard to directly understand them & solve them. I believe, errors are generally related to typing error OR data structure error OR run-time memory error - which is related to hardware OR else. How to elaborate and solve those errors very fast ?"}
{"_id": "83341", "title": "Are writing research papers only for academics?", "text": "I have been noticing certain trends about writing research papers in India. They are written either by students or by academics. Do people working in day jobs (like me) in the software industry write research papers? I ask this question because, we are more likely to get interview calls from companies like Google and Facebook if the paper is worthwhile. Even if I decide to write one, how/where do I present it? Are there any places online where I can submit it and get reviewed?"}
{"_id": "246058", "title": "Approach to cover all the cases in Unit Tests", "text": "I am new to Unit Testing and i am able to write them but my problem is I am not sure that I have covered everything in Unit Tests. What could be the approach for testing some functionality in a code?"}
{"_id": "252613", "title": "Optimizing code by using registers, but what if they are not enough in number?", "text": "One way to optimize code is to minimize the access to arrays and use variables instead, because that way we use registers instead of loading data to cache memory. For example, if in a loop I'm going to use 3 times a data from an array, say radius[i], I'd better declare a variable tmp, and give it the value of radius[i]. Every time I need to call radius[i] I'll use tmp instead. The problem is, the number of registers is limited (to 8 in some cases, it depends on the architecture). What if I have more variables than the number of registers? Will the usage of variables in this case slow down my program more than having access to cache memory? I am coding in c language."}
{"_id": "202255", "title": "Does understanding history of a programming language help in understanding the language?", "text": "Sometimes, the syntax of a language seems weird, I often think, why would someone make something like that, but definitely there is a reason and a history behind every aspect of a programming language. Apart from being fascinating, It helps me remember the syntax and also the purpose that language solves. Does knowing the background of languages like HTML & CSS ( _Okay, these are not programming-languages but still_ ) JavaScript, C++, Objective C and even Java help in understanding the aspects of these languages?"}
{"_id": "202253", "title": "Object schemas shared between web services", "text": "My question is about how to create a definition for an object that is handled by different web services. A brief description of my current scenario and why I think it's a problem: A PHP web application provides AJAX endpoints for populating various parts of my web app. The endpoint provides access to User and Project entities. A node.js application uses sockjs to deliver User and Project events in real time to my web app. Here's the problem: The schema of the JSON objects delivered by the node.js service is slightly different to the same objects provided by the PHP endpoints. This is bad because it makes much my client size code hard to re- use, and there's lots of \"if it came from node, access this property; if it came from AJAX, access this other property\" type logic. Ugh! The code base is too big to do a one time refactor and make sure all devs adhere to the new design. I want a way to share information between my node.js app and my php app so they both know how they should define certain objects. What is the most common way of solving this kind of problem?"}
{"_id": "212128", "title": "What is a\" feature envy\" code and why is it considered a code smell?", "text": "This question on SO talks about correcting what the OP thought is _feature envy_ code. Another example where I saw this nifty phrase being quoted is in a recently given answer here in programmers.SE. Although I did drop in a comment to that answer asking for the information I thought it would of general help to programmers following Q&A to understand what is meant by the term _feature- envy_. Please feel free to edit additional tags if you think appropriate."}
{"_id": "212124", "title": "Good Procedure or Function Design", "text": "This is in reference to the question posted here. As I would judge it, the question there should be closed simply because it seems to ask why the Borland developers made one thing a function and another a procedure (function that returns a void result). Now the example was given there of some string manipulation functions that exist in Borland Pascal or Delphi: > >     S2 := Copy(S1,3,2); >   > > Copies into S2 from S1 the 2 characters starting from the 3rd position. >   >   >     Delete(S,3,2); >   > > Deletes from S the 2 characters starting from the 3rd position. Now I thought it might be a good discussion on what would be good design decisions regarding devising these things. I picked up a few rules of good design on what a function prototype should look like beyond the obvious (name reflects function, function result should be atomic, no extraneous variables), but are there any others that should govern a situation such as this one or others? I really didn't see a good case in Atwood's code book where it was discussed. Anyway, are there some good rules on how functions should be designed to work? Barring the specious naming, would it be better to have               S2 := Delete(S1,3,2);      as opposed to               Delete(S,3,2);      ? Are there any other useful considerations or examples to discuss of good and bad function design?"}
{"_id": "179773", "title": "Is true multithreading really necessary?", "text": "So yeah, I'm creating a programming language. And the language allows multiple threads. But, all threads are synchronized with a global interpreter lock, which means only one thread is allowed to execute at a time. The only way to get the threads to switch off is to explicitly tell the current thread to wait, which allows another thread to execute. Parallel processing is of course possible by spawning multiple processes, but the variables and objects in one process cannot be accessed from another. However the language does have a fairly efficient IPC interface for communicating between processes. My question is: Would there ever be a reason to have multiple, unsynchronized threads within a single process (thus circumventing the GIL)? Why not just put thread.wait() statements in key positions in the program logic (presuming thread.wait() isn't a CPU hog, of course)? I understand that certain other languages that use a GIL have processor scheduling issues ( _cough_ Python), but they have all been resolved."}
{"_id": "219713", "title": "Optimal group room division algorithm with weights", "text": "I hope someone can help me with this, as I'm thoroughly stuck. I'm working with a group at my university, on a first semester research report that should end up as a finished program, solving the problem described below. We've been mulling over this issue for a few days now, and I promised I'd find a good place to ask for some help with the underlying algorithm. Any help received will naturally be credited in the report. I thought I could handle this as a linear assignment problem, but either I'm missing something, or (most likely) I have too many dimensions to work with it in this way. I'm not necessarily looking for a finished solution to the issue, as even hints that points me in the right direction would be very welcome. # Description of the problem   * There are group rooms, group clusters, and groups.      * A group room can hold a varying number of groups, between 1 and 12. They're placed on different wings, floors and even in different buildings, which brings a distance element into it.     * A group cluster holds a varying number of groups too. More details to follow.   * Groups need to be assigned to a group room with the following priorities that I've thought about implementing as weights:      1. Groups inside clusters should stay as close together as possible. This means that if possible, they should be in the same 'area', such as the same wing or floor.     2. For group rooms that supports more than one group; they should never contain groups from two different clusters.     3. Clusters can have bonds to other clusters, which means that the algorithm should favour them being near one another. Again, I'm thinking this has to be doable with weights.     4. If clusters need to be split up, then ideally they'd be split into as few parts as possible -and- be placed as close to the other part of the cluster (or parts), as possible.     5. Splitting up a cluster onto more than one building should incur a pretty large penalty.     6. Finally; in the event that there aren't enough group rooms for all the groups, it should incur a pretty high cost, so as to ensure that as few groups as possible are without a group room. # Need more information? Please do not hesitate to ask for clarifications, if need be. I'd love to get this solved in the best way possible."}
{"_id": "219711", "title": "adding array pointer in c", "text": "I am having problems understanding how this equation works in c:               char *sum(char *a, int b) {         return &a[b];     }          printf(\"%d\", sum(5, 4));      I understand how arrays work, and I understand how to reference and de- reference a variable to a memory location, but I don't understand where the addition comes in to play here. It makes sense to me that `return &a[4]` for example would just return a de- referenced non-existent memory location and cause an error. Can someone explain this to me in easy terminology?"}
{"_id": "40474", "title": "How can I gracefully handle a contractor who's trying to bypass a previous client?", "text": "I've been freelancing for a local game development shop. Most of the projects we worked on were brought in by an external contractor. This guy now wants to do business directly with me for some new projects which have nothing to do with games, and thus _wouldn't require the skills of my previous clients_. They heard about it though, and they are now pissed at the contractor for not going through them, but I suspect he doesn't really care and will pursue anyway. As an independent worker, should I even care ? If so can I make everyone happy ?"}
{"_id": "228240", "title": "\"Clean Code\": How to organize named queries?", "text": "Few days ago I started to read Robert C. Martin \"Clean Code\" book and it encouraged me to look more detailed at my code. After I opened eclipse I saw this:               entityManager.createNamedQuery(\"CarriageRouteEntity.listCarriageDirections\");      and I decided to move string `CarriageRouteEntity.listCarriageDirections` to constant string. After quick fix I created something like this:               @NamedQueries({             @NamedQuery(name = CarriageRouteEntity.LIST_CARRIAGE_DIRECTIONS, query = \"just query ...\") })     public class CarriageRouteEntity {         public static final String LIST_CARRIAGE_DIRECTIONS = \"CarriageRouteEntity.listDirections\";         // ...     }      so now I call it like this:               entityManager.createNamedQuery(CarriageRouteEntity.LIST_CARRIAGE_DIRECTIONS);      And here I started to wondering where should I put named queries constants. Is entity class good place for this? Maybe I should create new class with these constants like               public class CarriageRouteEntityNamedQuery {             public static final String LIST_CARRIAGE_DIRECTIONS = \"CarriageRouteEntity.listDirections\";     }      but if another programmer will try to create named query will he knew where to look at it? What are your opinions? How to organize these constants? Maybe instead of creating `CarriageRouteEntityNamedQuery` class I should create enum and add method to entity `CarriageRouteEntity` called `getNamedQuery()` which will tell another programmer in which enum he/she should look for constants?"}
{"_id": "108534", "title": "Tips for planning a rewrite of a large PHP project?", "text": "I've decided to completely rewrite a PHP framework (Using MVC) that I've been working on, on and off, for years. My problem up until now was that I would just come up with ideas, throw them into Trac as tickets, and add them later - without worrying about the design of the framework itself. Over time this has caused some problems and I think a rewrite would be helpful, however I'm not sure where to begin with the planning of it - I know I don't want to use Trac, and I know I need more than just tickets and milestones - but what else would I need? I really want to thoroughly plan this rewrite out, I want to detail every feature I want, where it will go, and how it will connect to every other part - but I have no experience with this level of planning. Any advice? Any programs that will help? I'm getting tired of Trac, I've never really liked it. I know I'll need a design document, but is there any certain layout I should follow? I'll also need bug tracking, tickets, milestones, etc., but beyond Trac I don't know what's good for that either. I'm sure there's more I'll need but I have no idea what, so any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "89694", "title": "MD5 implementation notes", "text": "While going through RFC1321, I came across the following paragraph:                  This step uses a 64-element table T[1 ... 64] constructed from the        sine function. Let T[i] denote the i-th element of the table, which        is equal to the integer part of 4294967296 times abs(sin(i)), where i        is in radians. The elements of the table are given in the appendix.      From what I understood from paragraph, it means               T[i] = Integer_part(4294967296 times abs(sin(i)))      We know the following is true for all `x`:               0 <= sin(x) <= 1      Since `i` is an integer, `abs(sin(i))` may very well be `0` for all values of `i`. That means table will contain all zero values ( `4294967296` times `0` is `0`). In the implementation, this is not true. Why is this so?   Appendix contains just the raw values after calculation. It does not show how it is derived from the sine function."}
{"_id": "108531", "title": "STDOUT and its impurity", "text": "I've read a lot of books and articles about functional programming and still ashamed of not being able to understand for sure some very basic concepts. One of the main ideas of functional programming is that same input always should produce same output. Therefore, say, querying database or writing file could not be done in a pure functional style by definition. That's for example, is one of reasons we need monads. The question is - why we consider STDOUT output as something impure? Yes, any filehandler is risky - we never can be sure that data always will be written. But what about STDOUT? Why should we think of it as of something unreliable? Is it more unreliable that evaluation itself? I mean, we always can pull the trigger and thus, interrupt calculation."}
{"_id": "89692", "title": "Articles and Works by Developers", "text": "When I'm coming to home after the work, there left about 2-3 hours to work on my own projects. Some good programmers/developers also write books/articles/etc. I'm getting angry of to little time and interested how others can do so much - work in their main job, work on own projects and write articles/books? Do you know some formula or some technique to be able do all the mentioned?"}
{"_id": "208923", "title": "Any languages use the '=>' and '=<' operators?", "text": "I'm just curious if there are any programming languages that use the '=>' and '=<' operators for something. I wonder why these are not commonly used when their variant '<=' and '>=' are so widely used by most languages. Is there a reason why? EDIT: I'm not asking why they aren't used for the same task as '<=', but why the operators go unused for anything."}
{"_id": "208922", "title": "common infrastructure for web apps using asp.net mvc", "text": "How to build a common infrastructure for my web apps using asp.net mvc, and efficiently manage it? The goal is to increase developer productivity. The common infrastructure stuff includes visual & interactive components like customizable menus, consistent web page layout, consistent navigation experience, breadcrumbs, etc. It will also have some api's for user & role management. So this platform/infrastructure will have its own database & tables (which can be deployed using entity framework). But there are other things which I don't have an answer to:   * The database will also have user defined types, stored procs, etc. How should these get \"deployed\" (or adopted) in the target application?   * There would be a set of controllers and views intended for user and role management. They need to be a part of the target project. What is the best way this can be included? Just to outline the kind of experience a developer should get:   1. He'd start an MVC project.   2. Run some command (suitably in the IDE itself - I am thinking powershell or NuGet)   3. And he should get working...   4. At some point later, there would have been some updates in the platform...how should they be updated...the problems he might face here...how to resolve them...etc...? How to design such a infrastructure project?"}
{"_id": "207752", "title": "Why is the Scala Option type not called Maybe, just as in Haskell?", "text": "Why is the Scala Option type not called Maybe, just as in Haskell? Maybe makes a lot more \"semantic sense\" to me, but maybe Option has different behaviour I am not aware of. Is there any particular reason why Option in Scala was not called Maybe?"}
{"_id": "208927", "title": "How do you keep track of what stage you are at in a program?", "text": "Like many, I'm developing a couple of applications on my own (not at the same time) to eventually sell. But I also have websites to run, college work and a social life etc., so often I can forgot what stage I am in programming, especially after holidays abroad. Are there any techniques that I can use to help me keep track of everything?"}
{"_id": "136999", "title": "Where is the best place to store code on a Mac?", "text": "I've started toying with some Mac development and wonder where the best place to store the code is? Generally on my windows box, I'd store all my code in c:\\Code\\ On the Mac it's in /Users/Liam/Code/ Will this cause me any issue with permissions when running web code?"}
{"_id": "207758", "title": "Do SAS coding \"best practices\" exist?", "text": "At work, we develop a lot of our applications in SAS, from start to finish. One of the problems with this approach is that SAS is a very verbose language with very few language constructs; there is limited support for variables, very limited support for basic functions, and no such thing as classes. They have a concept called \"macros\" which essentially text substitution; you define a macro, and on invocation, it simply drops in the content of the macro. My question is, is anyone familiar with \"best coding practices\" for use in developing SAS applications? Are there software design patterns for SAS? I've gone through Code Complete, and some of what he writes is applicable to SAS, but much of it is not, as the concepts don't exist in SAS. Can anyone give recommendations for writing maintainable, well-designed SAS code?"}
{"_id": "14551", "title": "How do I transition to an area of development where I don't have experience?", "text": "I've been a Classic ASP web developer for the last 10 years and for the second time in two years I'm facing the possibility of being laid off. The biggest difference now is that the job market for someone with my limited skill set is actually worse than it was in 2008-2009. Years ago I took a diploma course in ASP.NET web development but was unable to translate that into a job; since then, I've kept up my .NET skills on my own but have never been able to break through the 'no work experience' barrier, and I haven't been given the opportunity to work with .NET at any of the jobs I've held (including my current position, where they broke the promise they made at my hiring to send me out for training). So, I'm wondering if it's even possible to self-teach and turn that knowledge into a paying position? Is the 'no work experience' catch-22 worse with Microsoft technologies than it is for others, or is it basically the same for all programming languages? I had considered joining open-source projects or doing volunteer work as a way to bootstrap myself in a new language, but the project listings I read all wanted experience with references. Is there any way to reboot my career at this point? **Edit:** I'm curious about the job market for open-source languages vs. MS languages. Is it easier to get a job as, say, a self-taught Ruby programmer than a self-taught C# programmer? The last time I scanned through Craigslist it seemed like all of the grassroots/startup opportunities were all PHP, Ruby, etc."}
{"_id": "157236", "title": "Whats the difference between an interpreted language and one compiled to a VM?", "text": "It occurs to me that there's not a heck of a lot of difference between `$>python module.py` And: `$>javac module.java`   `$>java module.class` The former compiles to an intermediate language (python bytecode) and executes the program. The latter breaks the steps up, first compiling to the intermediate language (jvm bytecode) and then executing on another line. In fact I can rewrite the python to break out the two steps, as in this SO question. It seems people make a big deal about the stark difference between compiled and interpreted languages. It seems the lines are entirely blured. Other popular interpreted languages havi similar features. Php \"compiles\" to its own opcodes which can be cached or stored for later use. Perl also is compiled to something. So... is there really any difference between these popular interpreted languages and popular compiled languages that compile to VMs? Perhaps in one case the VMs are typically more memory resident whereas with the \"interpreted\" languages they typically have their runtimes spun up? Yet this seems like it could be easily changed. Yet there still seems to be something of a difference. If they are more-or- less the same, then why is it that the performance of Java/C# seems to approach C++ while the \"interpreted\" languages are still an order of magnitude off? If its all truly bytecodes running in a VM, and all really the same, why the big difference in performance?"}
{"_id": "208559", "title": "Is there an API I can use to get access to map data?", "text": "A customer would like me to build them an intranet web site with mapping information. For example, maps such as the ones on Google Maps. I looked at the Google Maps API, but their \"free use\" license agreement specifically prohibits use on intranets or web sites that charge a fee to obtain a username/password. [Source: https://developers.google.com/maps/terms#section_9_1_1 ] The other solution is to use Google's Enterprise/Business licensing for their map API, but the lowest base cost for that group of licenses starts at $10,000US **per year** , and the price goes up quickly from there! My question:   * Is there another similar programming API/service (HTTP, Javascript, JSON, ...?) to a different mapping company that works better for small single-person web developers without having to commit $10K/year per web site for a license?"}
{"_id": "38131", "title": "Emacs and \"self-reinforcing performance\"", "text": "In short, my question for you hardcore Emacs users is this: have you achieved this \"self-reinforcing performance\" Steve Yegge talks about? > Emacs is self-hosting: writing things in it makes the environment itself > more powerful. It's a feedback loop: a recursive, self-reinforcing, > multiplicative effect that happens because you're enhancing the environment > you're using to create enhancements. Do you **really feel** that enhancing your Emacs eventually made you **10X times more productive** , and your productivity continues increasing exponentially, and so on and so forth?   Do you have some examples / experience to share? As for me, I was using both Emacs and Vim for development (currently stick with Vim), my `.emacs` and `.vimrc` are both quite configured to suite my needs and I appreciate power of both of these editors. But I didn't experience this Emacs' \"self-reinforcing loop\", neither met someone who did (of course, this could be because I'm not truly hardcore Emacser, and haven't met that many Emacsers yet). For example, at Facebook, the guy next to me was using Vim, and the guy next to him was using Emacs. Both of them were quick and productive as hell, and I attribute this not to the editor they were using, but to their own intelligence and attitude. But anyway, I'd be glad to see astounding examples from Emacs proponents that would turn me back to the Church of Emacs."}
{"_id": "171720", "title": "\"Best fit\" to avoid reuse of object instances in a collection", "text": "Imagine I have a collection of object instances which represent activities for a user to undertake. Dependent on user attributes, I have to randomly select instances to present activities to the user. For some users, I need to present more activities to them than there are available activities in which case, I want to use the following algorithm. If all available activities have already been presented to the user, then re- select a \"used\" activity, selecting the earliest presented activity ordered by frequency of use. In other words, try to reduce repetition and where repetition is unavoidable, use the instances which have been repeated less often and were presented furthest back in time. Before I go on to code that algorithm, I wondered if there is some existing pattern I can re-use? [EDIT] \"Furthest back in time\" is not relevant as I will pass the algorithm an ordered collection of used instances where the first entry is the first presented."}
{"_id": "228282", "title": "Can someone explain the V Model process? Why is it different than the Waterfall model?", "text": "It seems the V Model is just the Waterfall Model with the bottom half of the Waterfall bent upwards to form a V. I don't see how it adds anything new. From the diagrams, I also don't understand the flow. There are arrows pointing in all directions and I can't understand what comes first. Do we follow the V from the upper left, down to the bottom center then back up to the upper right? Or do we progress down the V doing everything higher before the item lower? The internet is lacking a sufficient explanation of this model. It would be awesome if someone can explain it in true StackExchange form :) ![V Model](http://i.stack.imgur.com/N9Hm4.jpg)"}
{"_id": "171723", "title": "What technical details should be included in a presentation of software project to senior management?", "text": "We have created a web application. We need to demo this application to our senior management. They don't understand the technology. We are creating a power point presentation for this. How much technical details should we include in the presentation? What should be those details (for example, what the front end is used, which db is used, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "195012", "title": "How do you write scalable Java?", "text": "I like to think I write good maintainable Java code, using best practices, design patterns and try and get good test coverage with unit tests. Recently whilst looking for a job, I came across a couple of job adverts that have references to \"scalable\" code. So, my question is, what is considered to be \"scalable\" code?"}
{"_id": "65080", "title": "What makes an application scalable?", "text": "I keep seeing in job postings that the applicant must have experience writing \"scalable\" applications. What makes an application scalable, and how do I know that my code can scale to millions of users? * * * I guess a better way of phrasing this question is: How can I write my code with scalability in mind? So that the code is scalable from the get-go as opposed to an afterthought. Are there certain design methodologies? Or is it simply a matter of picking the correct algorithms for the job?"}
{"_id": "171725", "title": "Quickly compute added and removed lines", "text": "I'm trying to compare two text files. I want to compute how many lines were added and removed. Basically what `git diff --stat` is doing. Bonus points for not having to store the entire file contents in memory. The approach I'm currently having in mind is:   1. read each line of the old file   2. compute a hash (probably MD5 or SHA-1) for each line   3. store the hashes in a set   4. do the same for each line in the new file   5. every hash from the old file set that's missing in the new file set was removed   6. every hash from the new file set that's missing in the old file set was added I'll probably want to exclude empty and all white space lines. There is a small issue with duplicated lines. This can either be solved by additionally storing how often a hash appears or comparing the number of lines in the old and new file and adjust either the added or removed lines so that the numbers add up. Do you see room for improvements or a better approach? **Edit** I'm currently using Java and the SVNKit library."}
{"_id": "181651", "title": "Are these SQL concepts for beginners, intermediate, or advanced developers?", "text": "I've been learning SQL recently and practicing with MySQL/Postgres and soon Oracle DB. I've also search the web for a 'road map' study of databases but couldn't find one, unfortunately. I want to understand where and why particular database concepts fall on the scale from beginner to intermediate and advanced. I'm thinking about relational databases for the most part. Please explain how to lay out skills listed below in a progression of Beginner -> Intermediate -> Advanced for what level of developer should know them:   * Where clauses   * Update syntax   * Joins   * Alter and Create statements   * Temp tables   * Cursors   * Indexes   * Foreign keys   * Constraints   * Transactions   * Subqueries   * Pivots   * Aggregate functions   * Profiling   * OLAP and OLTP   * Triggers   * Execution plans   * Execution hints   * Performance counters   * Normalization"}
{"_id": "201759", "title": "Algorithm in undirected BFS graph", "text": "I'm trying to put together an algorithm that will display the node degree for every node in a breadth first tree graph (assume BFS was called). Assume it's an undirected graph. I'm not sure how to get the node degree of a node when going through the graph. I was thinking about adding up every occurrence of the node in every list, then adding up all the occurrences within that node's list (all of them since it's undirected), but I'm not sure not how to implement. Just answer with pseudocode. I just need the algorithm, then I'll implement later in a language.               BFS-get-all-degrees         occurr[v] = 0         for each v in G.v             for each u in adj[v] //loop through each adjacency list                 if v==u                     occurr[v]++             print occurr[v]++      I think that's on the right track. It's definitely not right, but not sure where to go from there. EDIT: I came up with some better code. I think it runs in O(V+E) but not sure.               BFS_Node_Degree         for each vertex v in V             count = 0             for each vertex u in adj[v]                 count++             print \"the node \",v,\" has degree \", count"}
{"_id": "11312", "title": "Stuff every programmer needs while working", "text": "I've been tasked with creating a fun and relaxing environment, one thing I know that I want is ergonomic mice and keyboards, others have suggested exercise balls and bands. What is it that every programmer needs while working? What might not be necessary but would be nice to have anyway? Note: this question was asked previously, but has been recommended to be posted here. See this link for the previous responses: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3911911/stuff-every-programmer-needs-while- working-closed"}
{"_id": "254002", "title": "Checking negative of a condition", "text": "What is the (slightly pejorative) term for checking the negative of a condition (rather than the positive which is often more readable): e.g.               if(!someVar) {       return null;     } else {       return doSomethingInteresting();     }      instead of doing this (which is arguably more readable)               if(someVar) {       return doSomethingInteresting();     } else {       return null;     }      I vaguely remember there being a term for this; something in the same spirit as the term Yoda conditions."}
{"_id": "253644", "title": "Changelog Management", "text": "I'm currently developing a WinForm application. In order to inform the client about the improvements and corrections made during the last version, I would like to manage and display a changelog. I mostly found existing changelog on website (the term `changelog` is pretty used) or explanation on how to manage the release numbers, which I don't care. So, these are my questions:   1. How do I manage a changelog (using XML, pure text in the app, etc.) in a desktop application?   2. How do I present it to the user (external website, inside the winform application)?"}
{"_id": "88878", "title": "CMS and Databases vs. DIY", "text": "I have been programming for many years now, primarily in PHP and the like and would consider myself an intermediate programmer. Some of my online projects have now gone global and very widely used, i am now in deep thought about scalability etc. All of my systems so far are written in PHP, no known database structure such as MySQL etc. Instead our databases use an 'operating system style' method of storing information, files and folders if you will. We also do not use any outside/third-party software or CMS, so far this has work out extremely well. Most people, when they hear about the way we do things, criticize and say that is an idiotic idea but normally after seeing our systems in more dept are converted to our way of doing things. Is it really that bad to not use a standard databasing systems and only using the one (slightly heavier than others) language of PHP? How well on the face of it will this kind of setup scale? N.B. Our systems include things such as account and user management, documentation development and task/project managing."}
{"_id": "195708", "title": "Why does Haskell have built-in \"if/then/else\" instead of defining it as a simple library function?", "text": "Why does Haskell have a built-in `if/then/else`, which is dependent on the `Bool` type, instead of having a simple library function? Such as               if :: Bool -> a -> a -> a     if True  x _ = x     if False _ y = y"}
{"_id": "221868", "title": "Should methods that return boolean be named after a question or an assertion?", "text": "Many naming conventions recommend that methods returning a boolean (also called _predicate methods_ ) should be named after **a question**. My question is: don't they really mean the methods should be named after **an assertion**? The difference may be subtle, but you end up with different names in some cases:   * _question_ : is_pixel_transparent(...)   * _assertion_ : pixel_is_transparent(...) Sometimes, this makes no difference and the phrasing is the same:   * _question_ : end_of_file(...)    * _assertion_ : end_of_file(...) Besides, it seems like most of the time, what people call \"questions\" are actually _assertions_.   * key_exists(...) --> this is not a question, this is an assertion.    Example usage: if (key_exists(...)) ...   * array_contains_element(...) --> this is not a question, this is an assertion.    Example usage: if (array_contains_element(...)) ... So, to restate the question, is everyone meaning _assertion_ when they say _question_?"}
{"_id": "144833", "title": "Development Patterns for dealing with Data Import / Export", "text": "I have a ASP.NET web based application that allows the end user to export data to a flat file format. (essentially taking a point-in-time backup of their work) At a later date they can re-upload (import) that data back into the web application. The actual format of the backup is pretty trivial. An object graph is serialized using the WCF DataContractSerializer to xml, and then the resultant xml document is compressed. Importing, unzips it and deserializes the data. There's one small problem I see with this approach. versioning... as time moves on and the data structures change (properties / child-collections are added/removed or renamed) then previously exported versions of a users data will no longer map to the object graph in the application. Are there any specifici patterns or practices that address this issue? or any other reading material you could recommend."}
{"_id": "144834", "title": "Structuring database for multi-object \"activity\" and \"following\" functionalities", "text": "I am working on a web application which operate with different types of objects such as user, profiles, pages etc. All objects have unique `object_id`. When objects interact it may produce \"activity\", such as user posting on the page or profile. Activity may be related to multiple objects through their `object_id`. Users may also follow \"objects\" and they need to be able to see stream of relevant activity. **Could you provide me with some data structure suggestions which would be efficient and scalable? My goal is to show activity limited to the objects which user is following** I am not limited by relational databases. ## Update As I'm getting advices on ORM and how index things, I'd like to again, stress my question. According to my current design model the database structure looks like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/kumN8.png) As you can see - it's quite easy to implement database like that. Activity and Follower tables do contain much larger amount of records than the upper level but it's tolerable. But when it comes for me to create a \"timeline\" table, it becomes a nightmare. For every user I need to reference all the object activities which he follows. In terms of records it easily gets out of control. Please suggest me how to change this structure to avoid timeline creation and also be abel to quickly retrieve activity for any given user. Thanks."}
{"_id": "213658", "title": "Two or one git repo for Android app + web service backend?", "text": "I'm wondering what the best practice is for my git repository structure where I have an Android application + a web service backend. In general, I'd like to release these two independently (e.g., perf fixes to the backend with no changes to the front-end), but I am worried that if I keep these in two separate repos I'll lose the ability to see combined app + web service changes (e.g., there's a change in the APIs on the server). What are other Android developers doing to manage their source code + release process? Should I use one git repo with separate folders or two git repos? I should note that I'd like to set this up as push-to-deploy -- any changes to my master branch will trigger a tag and deploy."}
{"_id": "144839", "title": "Whose responsibility is a bug fix patch?", "text": "A situation that has arisen several times in open source projects goes like this:   1. I notice a bug in our deployment, and figure out a quick hack patch. (For example, simply commenting out code that we don't actually need.)   2. I spend a little bit of extra effort to figure out the real bug, come up with a patch, and submit it via a Git pull request, or similar.   3. My pull request is rejected. Perhaps the patch was imperfect (eg, included lines it shouldn't have), perhaps it violated coding style, perhaps it had other ramifications. Or maybe I did something wrong in Git - the pull request should have been rebased or something. A maintainer provides feedback about how to improve the patch, and requests that I resubmit it. At this point I'm confused about how far I should proceed. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have a problem: I fixed it back in step 1. I've reported the issue, I've even taken steps to fix it for others. But I don't feel that it's \"my\" pull request, so I don't feel that responsibility for improving the patch should come to me. One particular situation that irks me is after discussion about the failings of my patch, we reach agreement on a mailing list about what the correct patch would be (ie, how it should behave, sometimes including every line of code spelt out). Then, it is still presumed to be my responsibility to actually generate and submit the patch. Is there a standard etiquette in these situations? How are they resolved? Is my reaction unusual? How far are you expected to go to get your bug fix accepted? (Note when I say \"open source project\", some of these are very small, but may not be hobbies - simply small software projects which are of use to several organisations, who commit developer resources to working on them. In case the obvious answer is \"fix the patch and resubmit\", understand that I have responsibilities to my employer to work on stuff that is of benefit to them. Spending time fixing a bug that doesn't affect us would be wrong...)"}
{"_id": "213657", "title": "How concerned should a new programmer be with the various licenses (GPL, Apache, etc)", "text": "I'm pretty new to programming, and I've just started using GitHub to store and hold my source code (I keep losing stuff stored locally). As it stands all that's in there right now are source code files, nothing more, but I expect that to change as time goes on and I get better at this. Given that all the repositories in the free accounts are public, how much do I need to worry about licensing? Would I be fine with just downloading a copy of the GPL, placing a copyright notice in the Readme and calling it a day? I'm fully aware that people can download and modify my stuff, and I'm OK with that, but I at least want to ensure that I get credit for my work should they decide to do so."}
{"_id": "88874", "title": "Improving the speed of writing code in C#", "text": "Laugh if you want, but I used to develop substantial line-of-business applications in VB6, long before the .NET framework came along. Why, when I was your age, we used to walk two miles in the snow, uphill. Both ways... Love it or hate it, VB6 had a REPL-like feel, and a very rapid development cycle. I would like to know how to come closer to that process in C#. In VB6, I could write a function, execute it, debug it and have it fully functional in a few minutes. I am told this is how the Lisp crowd works. It's a very rapid- fire style of programming. In C# I write a function, then I write a unit test for that function (which is OK, I understand the value of that), then I right-click, run test, wait for the project to compile (takes about 10 seconds right now, which would be an eternity for a REPL loop), and get an exception. Honestly, this feels more like my junior college days, when I used to feed punch cards into a hopper and wait for a printout (exaggerating only slightly for effect). Additionally, my tendency nowadays is to make everything `public` while I'm testing it. Unit testing with private accessors works fine, but you can't trace through the code (unless, of course, I'm doing something wrong) while you're using them. So what I'd like to know is, what adjustments have you made to your development process in C# to streamline it, and make it possible to write and verify your code very rapidly?"}
{"_id": "88875", "title": "Web development for people who mainly do client side", "text": "Okay, I'm sure there are a lot of us that has plenty of experience developing c++/opengl/objective C on the iPhone, java development on android, python games, etc (any client side stuff) while having little to no experience on web-based development. So what skillset should one learn in order to be able to work on web projects, say, to make a facebook clone (I kid), or maybe a startup that specializes on connecting random fashionistas with pics etc. I actualy do have some experience with C#/VB.net back-end development a while back, but as part of a team, I had a lot of support from the senior devs. Is C# considered a decent web development language?"}
{"_id": "213653", "title": "Coding convention question about AS3 duplicate variable definition", "text": "AS3's got some awkward rules about variable scope, due to its use of hoisting. I don't like pointlessly leaving a bunch of compiler warnings lying around, but it's more important to me for my code to readable and properly written, regardless. This produces a couple of duplicate variable definition warnings:                   private function arrangeElementsLine(pElementSize:Dimensions):void         {             if (m_eOrientation == HORIZONTAL)             {                 for (var i:uint = 0; i < target.numElements; i++)                 {                     var layoutElement:ILayoutElement = target.getElementAt(i);                     layoutElement.setLayoutBoundsSize(pElementSize.x, pElementSize.y);                     layoutElement.setLayoutBoundsPosition(pElementSize.x * i, 0);                 }             }             else             {                 for (var i:uint = 0; i < target.numElements; i++)                 {                     var layoutElement:ILayoutElement = target.getElementAt(i);                     layoutElement.setLayoutBoundsSize(pElementSize.x, pElementSize.y);                     layoutElement.setLayoutBoundsPosition(0, pElementSize.y * i);                 }             }         }      Is it generally considered to be better and more conventional to remove the redundant `var` and `:<type>` syntax for i and layoutElement in the second for loop, or is it more proper to just leave them in there (due to the way their usage is isolated to those two for loops)? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "213652", "title": "Java UDP Multithread Server", "text": "I have multiple threads. Each thread receives data and sends to client an acknowledge packet. Each thread takes aprox. 531ms from start to finish. While capturing packets with wireshark. I was expecting to see a lesser than 1 sec interval between receiving packet and sending packet. The problem is that I see packets from other communications between other devices that are communicating with the same socket but with a different virtual socket number. Because of this in-between communications the interval between receive and sending packet is aprox 15 seconds. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SfqCj.png) [16:44:18]No.1073 - when device connects to server on port 7300 and sends data [16:44:27]No.7535 - when acknowledge is sent to device elapsed time = 9 seconds. In those 9 seconds I see in wireshark other communications with other devices. I have timed the thread code that reads and sends ack and it takes less that one second. Why does it take 9 seconds and not only the time of thread code(milliseconds)? The other threads have impact in this time?"}
{"_id": "228758", "title": "Extension method naming convention", "text": "We are using some utility methods in our company to simplify programming. So we have following string extension:               public static bool IsNoE(this string s)     {         return string.IsNullOrEmpty(s);     }      This is just for convenience and the intention of this question is not to discuss the sense or senseless of such methods (maintaining, ...) The question is about the naming. Some people think the method should be named in this way:               public static bool IsNullOrEmpty(this string s)     {         return string.IsNullOrEmpty(s);     }      The argument for the first naming is:   * It would not make sense to make extensions if they are not shorter to write. The argument for the second naming is:   * The only reason to add such extensions is just to support programming flow. (Writing a variable and then set the cursor back to the start to surround the variable with `string.IsNull`) So why should I prefer one version over the other? Are there any naming conventions we can refer to?"}
{"_id": "215552", "title": "Android Design - Service vs Thread for Networking", "text": "I am writing an Android app, finally (yay me) and for this app I need persistant, but user closeable, network sockets (yes, more than one). I decided to try my hand at writing my own version of an IRC Client. My design issue however, is I'm not sure how to run the Socket connectivity itself. If I put the sockets at the Activity level, they keeps getting closed shortly after the Activity becomes non-visible (also a problem that needs solving...but I think i figured that one out)...but if I run a \"connectivity service\", I need to find out if I can have multiple instances of it running (the service, that is...one per server/socket). Either that or a I need a way to Thread the sockets themselves and have multiple threads running that I can still communicate with directly (ID system of some sort). Thus the question: Is it a 'better', or at least more \"proper\" design pattern, to put the Socket and networking in a service, and have the Activities consume said service...or should I tie the sockets directly to some Threaded Process owned by the UI Activity and not bother with the service implementation at all? I do know better than to put the networking directly on the UI thread, but that's as far as I've managed to get."}
{"_id": "215556", "title": "Law of Demeter in MVC regarding Controller-View communication", "text": "The scenario: Having a Controller that controls a view composed of complex subviews. Each one of those subviews is a separated class in a separate file. For example, one of those subviews is called ButtonsView, and has a bunch of buttons. The Controller has to access those buttons. Would accessing those buttons like this:               controllerMainView.buttonsView.firstButton.state();      be a violation of the LOD? On one hand, it could be yes because the controller is accessing the inner hierarchy of the view. On the other, a Controller should be aware of what happens inside the view and how is composed. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "47125", "title": "When is it ever ok to write your own development tools? (editor into IDE)", "text": "So I'm foremost using a text editor for coding. It's a very bare bones editor; provides mostly just syntax highlighting. But on rare occasions I also need to debug something. And that's when I have to resort to an IDE (mostly Netbeans, but got fiddly Eclipse/Aptana working as second fallback). For general use however IDEs _feel_ not workable to me. It's a visual thing, being used to console UIs etc. And switching back and forth between a text editor and an IDE is slightly cumbersome too. That's why I'm considering extending the editor, not really into a full-fledged IDE - but at the very least integrate a debug feature. Since I'm working on PHP, it seems not that much effort. The DBGp allows to externalize a debug handler from the editor, so it's just minor integration work and figuring out how to shoehorn a breakpoint feature into the editor (`joe` btw).   And while I've also got time to do that, I'm wondering if this is really worthwhile.   * In this case it's not a needed development tool. It's just for convenience.   * And the cause for doing it is basically just _not liking_ the existing solution.   * While over time I might extend and adapt this debugger thing, it initially will be as circumstantial as Eclipse. It inevitably starts out as poor development tool.   * Furthermore there is likely not much reuse. (Okay, this is not an important point. Most such software exists sans much of a use case. And also obviously, similar extensions already exist for emacs and vim, so it cannot be completely pointless.) But what's a general guideline on attempting to conoct custom development tools, particularily if they are not really needed but satisfy personal preferences? (Usability enhancement not certain.)"}
{"_id": "82763", "title": "Why bother differentiating between functional and nonfunctional requirements?", "text": "I understand the difference between the two, but I get questioned by my colleagues of the benefit of labeling requirements as functional or nonfunctional (or transitional). Why bother to do so? He spent what he said was two days going through a list of requirements for one project, and saw no benefit to it, because the end result was to submit the document to another business entity with the edict, \"Do it all.\" What I fear is requirements lumped together in one document. I tried to explain the benefit in practical terms, but couldn't sell it. How do I sell the benefit of documenting which requirements are functional and which are nonfunctional."}
{"_id": "173382", "title": "Best/ most efficient way to learn a programming language as a beginner", "text": "I am a student and have obtained a one year placement at a business that develops an e-commerce system using C#, HTML, WPF, javascript, ASP and more. Although I do have a little bit of knowledge, I find myself being assigned a lot of tasks that are beyond me and even when I ask for help, the response I get is often cryptic to me. I stare at as much code as possible to just try and _\"throw myself into it\"_ but I often just get lost in the code I like to consider myself a fast learner and I am damn determined to be a good programmer. I would just like to ask if there are some tips for me to catch up as quick as possible? I don't want to be a nuisance and sit here and ask for help 24/7. I just want to crack on!"}
{"_id": "82761", "title": "Calculating last Sprint's Focus Factor", "text": "We have finished our Sprint in half the expected time and now we want to compute our focus factor to use in the next Sprint. Though, by doing the math by the book, we get an awful number. How are we calculating it wrong? Please take a look bellow:   * Team composition: 3    * Sprint length: 2 weeks   * Team availability: 28 days (discounting team members shared with other teams)   * Estimated focus factor: 70%   * Estimated velocity: 19 ideal days (derived from: 28 days * 0.7 focus factor)   * Actual velocity: 9.8 days (we finished the whole Sprint in half the expected time, clearly overestimated) which gives us a focus factor of...   * Actual focus factor (to be used in the next Sprint): 35% (9.8 actual velocity / 28 available man-days) Acording to Scrum And Xp From The Trenches we calculate Focus Factor as \"(actual velocity) / (available man-days)\". Though, by finishing the Sprint in half time and doing the math, we get a focus factor of 35%! What are we doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "231772", "title": "Test Doubles, Mocks and Stubs - when not to use & why, for Ruby, Rspec", "text": "I've learned about mocking and stubbing and I've seen how they can help me create great test suites that run blindingly fast and thus speed up my development process hugely. However I've also seen the downside when there is an issue that is database centred and wasn't tested for (test doubles or not). So should I have a subset of tests that do test such connectivity at least and some simple operations, for example creating a record in the primary transaction detail table, even if most of the foreign keys are stubbed out? What experience have people found with this issue and what balance has worked in various situations? I normally post on Stack Overflow but this seemed much more conceptual. It might still be a bit subjective so maybe the question can be improved. The closest similar question I could find was When should I use mock objects? but it didn't feel like it was really the same question and the answers felt further off. Perhaps my question is more about when NOT to mock. ...yeah, so I've updated my title. I also found this helpful: TDD: Mocking out tightly coupled objects"}
{"_id": "173385", "title": "WCF an Entity Framework connection", "text": "I have a 100+ users on a Silverlight application that uses WCF and entity framework. Everyone has their own database and here comes my problem. How do I make sure that only the user gets access to his database via WCF. Do I have to send the connectionstring every time I make a call to the service, or?"}
{"_id": "231770", "title": "Difference between incremental and iterative approach", "text": "The Incremental approach is a method of software development where the model is designed, implemented and tested incrementally (a little more is added each time) until the product is finished. It involves both development and maintenance. The product is defined as finished when it satisfies all of its requirements The Iterative Design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a product or process. Based on the results of testing the most recent iteration of a design, changes and refinements are made. This process is intended to ultimately improve the quality and functionality of a design. In iterative design, interaction with the designed system is used as a form of research for informing and evolving a project, as successive versions, or iterations of a design are implemented. It seems both methods are about creating a part of the system , refining it to pass all the test cases , adding another component of the system and refining it again , these gets repeated untill the system is finished. What is the actual difference between these two ways of designing software How is it possible to combine these two methods to form iterative and incremental design approach"}
{"_id": "231771", "title": "Size of objects during Multilevel inheritance", "text": "Below is a pseudo declaration for a multilevel inheritance.               Base class ( protected int data)          derived1 : virtual public base ( protected int data1 )          derived2 : virtual public base ( protected int data2)          derived3 : derived1,derived2 ( private int data3 )          Main(){ base b;    derived1 d1;   derived2 d2;   derived3 d3; }              sizeof(b) // 4 which is correct as only int (4bytes)         sizeof(d1) // 12 why not 8 -> 4(base) + 4(derived)         sizeof(d2) // ??? whatever applies above should apply here         sizeof(d3) // 24 why not 12 -> 4(base) + 4(derived1/derived2) + 4(d3).      Does size also include virtual tables also. Again here there cannot be virtual table as no virtual function defined. Please help in clarifying my doubt. PS: What I have understood till now: > Unless the function is declared virtual in base class, >   >   >     base *bptr; >      derived d; >      bptr = &d; >      bptr->fun();  // will call the base class function. >   > > But if the fun() is declared virtual then the above code will call derived > class fun()."}
{"_id": "15209", "title": "<!-- open --> Why do so many developers do this in their HTML? <!-- /close -->", "text": "<body>         <!-- wrapper -->         <div id=\"wrapper\">         <!-- title -->        <div id=\"title\"><img src=\"title.png\" alt=\"\" /></div>             <!-- form wrapper -->        <div id=\"form_wrapper\">              <!-- form -->         <form action=\"thankyou.php\" method=\"POST\">          <!-- ... ... -->         </form>         <!-- /form -->        </div>        <!-- /form wrapper -->       </div>       <!-- /wrapper -->      </body>      I can almost understand the `<!-- /wrapper -->` at the end, because it's so far from the start of the tag/pair... but seriously, what's the point of the opening comment lines? I wouldn't ask the question if I didn't see this _all the time_. I feel as if I'm missing something. Maybe there's some unwritten best-practice involved, though I fail to comprehend what it could possibly be. More than likely it's just obsessive-compulsive behavior. How do you guys normally comment your markup, if at all?"}
{"_id": "15208", "title": "I need help deciding between silverlight/silverlight out-of-browser/wpf", "text": "I'm in the initial planning phase of a re-write project and I'm deciding between silverlight/silverlight oob/wpf. TL;DR at the end. It's a LOB app that handles leads/customers/appointment calendars. Not too complicated. I'm independently researching these options elsewhere, but I thought I'd ask around. Some rough initial requirements/foreseeable problems are: I have to be able to call an exe on the system with commandline args (sip phone). > Makes SL a problem The userbase is distributed and I want to limit the traffic that goes over the wire as much as possible and avoid some nasty concurrency issues > I can see this being a problem using WPF Software deployment/updating has to be _dead simple_. Some users are highly non-technical (see: 70 years old, on a computer for the first time) > This isn't a huge problem now with the ClickOnce app we are replacing, and I > have control over the machines that it gets used on. However, it's simpler > for users if they don't even have to click the clickonce \"Install\" button. I > don't know how this is handled with Silverlight OOB. The company is planning a hard expansion in 12 months so hardware deployment should be fast/easy. The idea is to get an internet connection at a new location, plug in some computers and be able to work without the need for dedicated IT people or server setup. > Makes SL appealing Integration with other services (financial software, asterix server) isn't an immediate goal, but it is an eventual goal to be part of the system. This is made much simpler/more efficient if a single service is setup to integrate with those secondary services and doesn't have to transfer all of that data over the wire > Makes SL appealing Making multiple 'versions' is out the window. I don't know what it's like maintaining a silverlight + silverlight oob version (if there's even any problems) > Might make WPF a better option. TL;DR: From my vantage point, a silverlight app makes the best sense for 90% of the users - the other 10% can't use it because they need to run an exe. Silverlight OOB might be a happy middleground but I don't know at the moment what the execution model for it is like (is there still a concept of server- side code? If so, that would possibly be ideal) and I don't know how deployment/updating works for it."}
{"_id": "213389", "title": "PHP high traffic default page", "text": "I have a php website that will be experiencing high levels of traffic in a few weeks. We scaled the servers to accept the traffic, but want some sort of fallback page in the event that something happens. Does anyone know of an easy way to implement this? My initial thought is to check for the headers when the page is requested, but don't quite understand if that will even matter. Does the user even receive the initial http headers, if they get a `504 Gateway Timeout` error? Would something like checking the result of: `var_dump(http_response_code());` in a conditional even reach the client?"}
{"_id": "206409", "title": "Graph theory problem (name unknown)", "text": "I am trying to solve the following kind of problem. I do not know if there is already a name for this, or a solution; however, I'm willing to bet there is. I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of implementing a solution for it, or at least tell me the name of the problem? Suppose a traveler has a certain amount of Gold coins, and some Bronze coins. He must start a city A, and go to city B, then city C, and finally city D. There are two (or more) roads that pass from A to B, labeled AB1, and AB2 (etc.). Road AB1 has a toll of 5 gold coins, and AB2 has a toll of 5 bronze coins. Roads from city B to C: BC1 has a toll of 10 coins, which can be either currency. BC2 requires 8 gold coins. Roads from C to D have some sort of similar setup. Assuming that we know how much money the traveler has, and that there is no possible exchange between bronze and gold coins: is there a method to determine if the traveler has enough money to pass through from A to B, to C, and finally to D? This is the kind of problem I need a solution to... Is there a name for this problem? Is there a solution to this problem (other than brute force)? I'm assuming this is a similar problem to flow problems, but I don't know quite how to approach it."}
{"_id": "242768", "title": "How can I be certain that my code is flawless?", "text": "I have just completed an exercise from my textbook which wanted me to write a program to check if a number is prime or not. I have tested it and seems to work fine, but how can I be certain that it will work for every prime number?               public boolean isPrime(int n)         {            int divisor = 2;            int limit = n-1 ;                       if (n == 2)                 {                                       return true;                 }                 else                 {                     int mod = 0;                     while (divisor <= limit)                     {                           mod = n % divisor;                           if (mod == 0)                           {                               return false;                           }                         divisor++;                     }                          if (mod > 0)                     {                         return true;                     }                 }                return false;     }      Note that this question is not a duplicate of Theoretically Bug Free Programs because that question asks about _whether_ one can write bug free programs in the face of the the limitative results such as Turing's proof of the incomputability of halting, Rice's theorem and Godel's incompleteness theorems. This question asks _how_ a program can be shown to be bug free."}
{"_id": "239212", "title": "How to recognize people with potential to become a coder", "text": "I work in finance and we have the habit to hire young people out of college, most of them with little-to-non coding experience. We are not looking for future quants, just business analysts with an analytical bias. Its happens that we have lots of spreadsheets with quite some VBA + some SQL. So if you want to be really good at your job you have to eventually learn to like to code. It is true that everyone can learn how to code. And it is true that in some circumstances people with potential can end up 'blocked' for whatever reason. Still, it's just my experience that some people seem to naturally get into stuff, while others not. And contrary to the general idea, its not that simple that if someone loves math, it should love to code. I worked with more then one quite smart quant that I just could feel coding was not the part they enjoyed. In my view some people just feel that attraction to 'build stuff' and very soon they are coming with their own ideas on what they want to build, others will end up always somewhat afraid of all those line of code in the back of the files they are using. I don't relate it people's overall professional qualities, its just the computer code part that scares them. Am I alone in this view? Does anyone has some ideas on how to identify people 'with the virus' when it is still in its latency stage?"}
{"_id": "19782", "title": "Is this a good idea to use humour during a job interview?", "text": "I wonder if it's a good idea to be slightly funny during a job interview. I don't mean to try to tell a joke, but just to insert a humourous thought, related to the question or the theme we talk about. I often use humour when I feel that there is too much stress or when people are not \"connected\" and the ambiance is frozen. I don't know if I can use this trick to have the thing going smoothly. Is this something to avoid at all cost ? _PS / This is more a question asked to \"heavy-duty\" interviewers than to job seekers._"}
{"_id": "16571", "title": "Why do .Net books talk about stack vs heap memory allocation?", "text": "It seems like every .net book talks about value types vs reference types and makes it a point to (often incorrectly) state where each type is stored - the heap or the stack. Usually it's in the first few chapters and presented as some all-important fact. I think it's even covered on certification exams. Why does stack vs heap even matter to (beginner) .Net developers? You allocate stuff and it just works, right?"}
{"_id": "127889", "title": "Writing a lexer in C++", "text": "What are good resources on how to write a lexer in C++ (books, tutorials, documents), what are some good techniques and practices? I have looked on the internet and everyone says to use a lexer generator like lex. I don't want to do that, I want to write a lexer by hand."}
{"_id": "97017", "title": "Selenium and non technical team members", "text": "I work on a team developing a web site with a large number of pages. The QA guy on the team currently runs all of the tests manually. I am thinking of having him create a bunch of Selenium scripts. I don't think he can automate all of the tests, but he could automate many of them. Because he doesn't have a programming background, how hard will it be for him to create and manage a batch of Selenium scripts? What issues will he need help with?"}
{"_id": "173652", "title": "Will an app made for windows store support WindowsRT, windows8 and windows 8 mobile?", "text": "I am very much confused about these. I would like to develop app for windows 8 , Windows RT , and windows mobile. I have windows 8 OS installed in my laptop. As far as I know, Windows RT is for ARM based devices. HERE ARE MY QUESTIONS:   1. I develop an app, and put in windows store. Will that can be downloaded from a ARM based device ,which runs on Windows RT, AND from a windows 8 laptop , and same from a Windows 8 mobile? OR should it be different apps ?"}
{"_id": "173650", "title": "How to access / query Team Foundation Server 2012 with Odata?", "text": "I've tried to find a solution for this for hours now, and I'm getting the same results in the end, asking me to install a lot of Azure and other stuff, plus running some example project .sln that I can't open with my 2012 version of Visual Studio. So, I'm pretty much stuck, and have some pretty straight forward questions regarding this:   1. Does TFS 2012 include the Odata service in any way, so that I don't have to install it?   2. If not, how can I install a NATIVE 2012 version of the Odata service for TFS 2012?   3. Is it possible that I'm aiming for the wrong target here? I'm looking for a solution to the following: I have a TFS 2012 Server that I need to be able to create Work Items on programatically, based on data from our Help Desk system. Then I need to query these Work Items for changed status since its creation, and update the Help Desk Database. Am I better off using the \"regular\" TFS API? I was kinda thinking that the Odata way was more \"future proof\", but I'm not sure..."}
{"_id": "173651", "title": "NUnit SetUp and TearDown", "text": "I have some experience in MS Test but new to NUnit.   1. Whether NUnit [Setup] is corresponding to [ClassInitialize] or [TestInitialize] in MS Test?   2. What is the NUnit attribute corresponding to [TestInitialize]? REFERENCE:   1. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1873191/testinitialize-gets-fired-for-every-test-in-my-visual-studio-unit-tests   2. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4602288/nunit-testcontext-currentcontext-test-not-working"}
{"_id": "88250", "title": "How do I (quickly) let people know that software I am providing for free is not abandon-ware?", "text": "As an independent, individual programmer: **How do I let people very quickly know that I have not abandoned the software I've written and given away for free?** That I am putting in the effort required to maintain and support my software to a professional level? When software written by one or two developers is available for free, or marked as open-source, usually the default assumption is that it's abandon- ware. This is usually a safe assumption - check out the answers to this question if you doubt it: Why do programmers write applications and then make them free?. There are lots of programmers who provide free and/or open-source tools which are not abandon-ware, though. If we're talking about large companies, ie Google, there's no real problem telling the difference between supported, live tools and software, and those which are abandoned or discontinued. A lively git repository isn't quick - users will have to be savvy enough to understand the repository and know where to look for it. Consistent marketing and community management take more time and effort than I can put in on my own. Also, if my software becomes popular/successful, I assume those will grow on their own, and be supported by power users in the community."}
{"_id": "100665", "title": "function pointers are so complex to me", "text": "I found this code sample in this answer by Armen Tsirunyan.               class MyClass     {        public:        typedef void (*funcPtr)(int, int);        MyClass(funcPtr whatToCall)        {           callme = whatToCall;        }        void myClass::callMain()        {              callSomeApi(callme, <some arguments>);  //callme function pointer is passed as argument        }     private:        funcPtr callme;     };          void f(int a, int b) {blah blah blah};               int main()     {        MyClass myObject(f);        myObject.callMain(); //will call the api function with f passed as argument     }      I would like to know the advantages to use such a function pointer as a class member. If there are more, I should be overwhelmed to their uses and calls. Do you have some tips to help me memorise its usage?"}
{"_id": "120351", "title": "What are the differences between the Unified Process and the Rational Unified Process?", "text": "Are there any differences between the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and the Unified Process (UP)? What does \"Rational\" mean, in this context?"}
{"_id": "177762", "title": "Caching by in-memory dictionaries. Are we doing it all wrong?", "text": "This approach is pretty much the accepted way to do anything in our company. A simple example : when a piece of data for a customer is requested from a service, we fetch all the data for that customer(relevant part to the service) and save it in a in-memory dictionary then serve it from there on following requests(we run singleton services). Any update goes to DB, then updates the in memory dictionary. It seems all simple and harmless but as we implement more complicated business rules the cache gets out of sync and we have to deal with hard to find bugs. Sometimes we defer writing to database, keeping new data in cache till then. There are cases when we store millions of rows in memory because the table has many relations to other tables and we need to show aggregate data quickly. All this cache handling is a big part of our codebase and I sense this is not the right way to do it. All of this juggling adds too much noise to the code and it makes it hard to understand the actual business logic. However I don't think we can serve data in a reasonable amount of time if we have to hit the database every time. I am unhappy about the current situation but I don't have a better alternative. My only solution would be to use NHibernate 2nd level cache but I have nearly no experience with it. I know many campanies use Redis or MemCached heavily to gain performance but I have no idea how I would integrate them into our system. I also don't know if they can perform better than in- memory data structures and queries. Are there any alternative approaches that I should look into?"}
{"_id": "177760", "title": "How to read reduce/shift conflicts in LR(1) DFA?", "text": "I am reading an explanation (awesome \"Parsing Techniques\" by D.Grune and C.J.H.Jacobs; p.293 in the 2nd edition) and I moved forward from my last question: How to get lookahead symbol when constructing LR(1) NFA for parser? Now I have such \"problem\" (maybe not a problem, but rather need of confirmation from some more knowledgeable people). The authors present state in LR(0) which has reduce/shift conflict. Then they build DFA for LR(1) for the same grammar. And now they say it does **not** have a conflict (lookaheads at the end):               S -> E .        eof     E -> E . - T    eof     E -> E . - T    -      and there is an edge from this state labeled `-` but no labeled `eof`. Authors says, that on `eof` there will be reduce, on `-` there will be shift. However `eof` is for shift as well (as lookahead). So my personal understanding of LR(1) DFA is this -- you can drop lookaheads for shifts, because they serve no purpose now -- shifts rely on input, not on lookaheads -- and after that, remove duplicates.               S -> E .        eof     E -> E . - T          So the lookahead for reduce serves as input really, because at this stage (all required input is read) it is really incoming symbol right now. For shifts, the input symbols are on the edges. So my question is this -- am I actually right about dropping lookaheads for shifts (after fully constructing DFA)?"}
{"_id": "154798", "title": "Design suggestions needed to create a MathBuilder framework", "text": "Let explain what I'm trying to create. I'm creating a framework, the idea is to provide base classes to generate a math problem. Why do I need this framework? Because at first time, I realized when I create a new math problem I always do the same steps.   * **Configuration settings such range numbers**. For example if I'm developing multiplications, in beginner level only generate the first number between 2-5 or in advanced level, the first number will be between 6- 9, for example.   * **Generate problem method**. All the time I need to invoke a method like this to generate the problem. This one receives the configuration settings and generate the number according to them. And generate the object with the respective data.   * **Validate the problem**. Sometimes the problem generated is not valid. For example, supposed I'm creating fractions in most simplified, if I receive 2/4, the program should detect that this is not valid and must generate another like this one, 1/4.   * **Load the view**. All of them, have a custom view (please watch below the images).   * **All of the problems must know how to CHECK if the user result is correct**.   * **All of this problems has answers**. Some of them just require one answer, anothers may require more than one, so I guess a way to maintain flexibility to the developer has all the answers he wanna used.   * **At the beginning I started using PRISM**. Generate modules for each math problem was the idea and load it in the main system. I guess are the most important things of this idea. Let me showing some problems which I create in a WPF standalone program. Here I have a math problem about areas. When I generate the problem a set to the view the object and it draw it. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/H46YA.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SNwLq.png) In beginner level, I set in the configuration settings that just load square types. But in advance level, can load triangles and squares randomly. In this another, generate a binary problem like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/AQUzo.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YGJgE.png) Above just generate a single problem. The idea of this is to show a test o quiz, I mean get a worksheet (this I call as a collection of problems) where the user can answer it. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wMiqy.png) I hope gets the idea with my ugly drawing. How to load this math problems? As I said above, I started using PRISM, and each module contains a math problem kind. This is a snapshot of my first demo. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/toywO.png) Below show the modules loaded, and center the respective configurations or levels. Until momment, I have no idea to start creating this software. I just know that I need a question | problem class, response class, user class. But I get lost about what properties should have to contain in it. Please give a little hand of this framework. I put much effort on this question, so if any isn't clear, let me know to clarify it."}
{"_id": "69499", "title": "Looking for suggestions for starting and managing a programmer user group", "text": "I am thinking about starting an area user group to discuss and share information on a variety of technology topics surrounding programming practices. Any suggestions for finding attendees, space, sponsors, speakers, etc. - and managing all of this?"}
{"_id": "200572", "title": "Refactoring c++", "text": "I know that there are some other questions about c++ refactoring, but none satisfies my needs. I have a background in java and python programming, but now I'm approaching C++. I've read (and absolutely love) books about agile coding, tdd, refactoring, etc. The first that comes in my mind is \"Clean Code\". From this I have learned a lot of things: keep my functions short, keep my classes short, keep names of variables/classes consistent etc.. I like very much this way of working: first resolve the problem, then refactor in small functions (and one function does only one thing), adding subclasses, etc. I strongly believe that this way of working is made easy from modern IDE: add file, rename function, rename classes, etc.. I'm now coding in c++ with cmake inside QtCreator. All of those things are more difficult. Even adding a file is \"more difficult\" (I have to generate one header file, one source file, add them to cmakelist.txt, run again cmake, etc). Thinking about renaming files (I have to manually change all includes) or some strong refactoring methods that in Java with Eclipse has no cost now gives me a headache. I mean.. it is not \"difficult\" in the meaning that are \"hard task\", but the human mind is kind of lazy: if I can do other easiest way.. In Java with some modern IDE like Eclipse.. refactor is the fun parts, some clicks and voil\u00e0, it is done, I do it every time I pass a test. It is easy, fun, and I like reading my clean code with small functions and nice names. Now everything is more difficult mainly because there is no tools that can do it without cost. I bare myself in bad attitudes driven by lazyness: write several classes in a single super-long .h file because I don't want to create new files, spent hours in modify classes/functions/variables with more appropriate names and change manually all includes, write long functions because when I automatically change a function attributes that concerns the std lib QTCreator is deleting the templates so I avoid it, and many others.. This is quite frustrating.. what can you advice me? Do I have to get more relaxed in the \"rules\" of writing clean code? Do I have to does not think about those stuffs and thinking only in getting things works? Or (maybe this is the more importart question) do I have to thinking about some other way of working? No more incremental/iterative/agile way but more waterfall and spend more time in design stuffs before coding in the hope of minimize the refactor when test are passed? Anyway, any comment are welcome because I am very far to be a good programmer : )"}
{"_id": "95520", "title": "is Python PHP polyglot a good design?", "text": "We have Python middle-tier for our Web App . Now we need to render 3 different HTMLs...   * for older browsers (simple read-only interface)   * for HTML5 browsers (LOT more complex than older browsers)   * for mobile website (simple XHTML-MP) Now, we need to keep the Python middle-tier completely independent of any HTML -- just pure business logic. So, we think we should use a PHP layer on top of Python to generate these HTMLs. PHP would talk to Python via SOA. First -- is this a good idea? And if not, can you suggest a better design? Second, if this is a feasible design -- do you think PHP+Python is good (maintainable) mix. If not, how about replacing the PHP layer by yet another Python layer. Just remember that our middle-tier needs to be COMPLETELY isolated from any HTML thingy :) \\-- **_UPDATE_** \\-- The reason we're inclined to using PHP is...   * PHP itself is just a template engine embedded into HTML -- and it is SO easy to generate complex HTML with it. On the other hand, Python is more of a general purpose language and generating HTML with it will require us to use a third party library which will entail maintenance/upgrade/security hassles. Generating HTML is a sort of raison d'\u00eatre for PHP.   * Secondly, Python support for Nginx is NOT as good as PHP."}
{"_id": "211434", "title": "Design document for project in C", "text": "I have had some experience in documenting the design for project developed in OOP languages. I made classes and used class diagrams to showcase the overall design structure of the implementation when I used OOP languages. **Problem :** I am about to begin a project in C language. How am I supposed to go about writing the design document now ? **Q.** Shouldn't the design document be independent of language of implementation ? But I am not able to figure out, with no classes involved in my implementation, how and between what will I show relations ? **Q.** Is there any standard way to document C projects ? I am totally confused as to what exactly am I supposed to show in the design document ? Functions ? How will I related them ? Will appreciate link to any open source C project which might have such a documentation for reference ? P.S. : Project is minimal kernel development in C language."}
{"_id": "236465", "title": "Spring bean injection into a hibernate validator constraint", "text": "I have a controller method like listed below whose argument is annotated with `@Valid` to validate `PasswordChange` object using a Hibernate validator `@Constraint`. Both `PasswordChange` and a sample constraint are listed below. As you can see, I am injecting up `loginDao` inside the constraint. Is this an anti-pattern ? The other alternative I can think of is injecting the daos into the `PasswordChange` object so that the loginDao's are available inside the implementations of `ConstraintValidator<A, V>`. Somebody said that mixing data with business logic is an anti-pattern in spring. Any suggestions are welcome. **Controller Method** * * *               @RequestMapping(value = \"/passwordChange\", method = RequestMethod.POST)     public @ResponseBody PasswordInfo passwordInfo(@RequestBody @Valid PasswordChange passwordChange)             throws PasswordChangeException {         return passwordService.changePassword(passwordChange.getLoginKey(), passwordChange.getOldPassword(), passwordChange.getNewPassword());     }      **PasswordChange Bean** * * *               public class PasswordChange {              @LoginAttemptsExceeded         private String loginKey;              private String oldPassword;              private String newPassword;              @Autowired         private LoginDao loginDao;              private LoginEntity login;         private Person person;                   public PasswordChange() {                }              public PasswordChange(String loginKey, String oldPassword, String newPassword) {             this.loginKey = loginKey;             this.oldPassword = oldPassword;             this.newPassword = newPassword;             }              @PostConstruct         public void postInit() {                 login = loginDao.findByLogin(loginKey);             person = login.getCorePerson();         }          }      **Sample Constraint** * * *               @Target({ FIELD, ANNOTATION_TYPE })     @Retention(RUNTIME)     @Constraint(validatedBy = LoginAttemptsExceededValidatorLoginId.class)     @Documented     public @interface LoginAttemptsExceeded {              String message() default \"{com.mrll.global.core.constraint.loginAttemptsExceeded}\";              Class<?>[] groups() default {};              Class<? extends Payload>[] payload() default {};          }      **Sample Constraint Validator** * * *               public final class LoginAttemptsExceededValidatorLoginId implements ConstraintValidator<LoginAttemptsExceeded, String> {              @Resource         private LoginDao loginDao;              private LoginAttemptsExceeded loginAttemptsExceeded;              @Override         public void initialize(final LoginAttemptsExceeded loginAttemptsExceeded) {             this.loginAttemptsExceeded = loginAttemptsExceeded;         }              /**          * Validation fails if the login attempts have exceeded the preset number.          * @param loginId          * @param constraintValidatorContext          * @return          */         @Override         public boolean isValid(final String loginId, final ConstraintValidatorContext constraintValidatorContext) {             if(StringUtility.IsEmpty(loginId)) return false;                  return !loginDao.findByLogin(loginId).isLoginAttemptsExceeded();         }     }"}
{"_id": "193893", "title": "Does open sourcing your work help you?", "text": "Are developers actually likely to receive significant _help_ by open sourcing a work in its unfinished stages, or are open source consumers more likely to want something ready to use? This is frequently cited as a benefit of open source, but I haven't been able to find evidence of it outside of already established products."}
{"_id": "236468", "title": "what is the javascript internal data structure?", "text": "Consider a basic js object:               var obj={x:1,y:'2'};      Is this stored internally as a hashtable or does js use a different mechanism for key value pairs? If they are hash tables does anyone know how they handle collisions?"}
{"_id": "119903", "title": "Are there any companies using BDD in a .NET environment? ", "text": "I've seen BDD in action (in this case using SpecFlow and Selenium in a .NET environment) for a small test project. I was very impressed - mainly due to the fact that the language used to specify the acceptance tests meant they engaged with the product owner much more easily. I'm now keen to bring this into my current organisation. However I'm asked 'who else uses this?' and 'show me some case-studies'. Unfortunately I cannot find any 'big names' (or even 'small names' for that matter!) of companies who are actively using BDD. I have two questions really:   * Is BDD adopted by companies out there? Who are they?   * How can BDD be implemented in an agile .NET environment and are there any significant drawbacks to doing it?"}
{"_id": "249612", "title": "Traverse a matrix using a linear index to get an evenly distributed values sample", "text": "I'm looking for an algorithm idea on how to traverse a matrix using a linear index while avoiding row/column based traversals to get a more diverse distribution of values. To understand this better, think of an image that's split in blocks, with `N` rows & `M` columns. I need to process each image block sequentially (from `1` to `NxM`) but I don't know in advance what the processing time will be for each block ( blocks that are close together tend to have a similar processing time, with small variations). During processing, I need to be able to estimate as best as possible the remaining processing time based on the number of blocks that have already been processed & their associated processing time. For this reason, traversing the blocks by columns or by rows will not give an accurate estimation so I need to find another way of traversing the matrix that would pick values from different zones of the image. It's also important to be able to determine the blocks processing order based on a **linear index** (from 1 to NxM), without calculating them in advance. The algorithm that returns the `row` & `column` corresponding to the linear index should be as fast as possible. **Shorter version of the question** For a liner index named `idx`, I need to get a corresponding `row` & `column` pair from a matrix with `N` rows & `M` columns while avoiding a row/column based traversal. For each `idx` between `1` and `NxM`, the algorithm would return a `[row, column]` pair so that all the rows & columns combinations are returned exactly once. **Example** (the values in the matrix represent the linear index's value that's associated with that row&column position) ` 1 17 13 9 5 6 2 18 14 10 11 7 3 19 15 16 12 8 4 20 ` The above example is for a diagonal traversal that would produce a better distribution of values that a row/column based traversal. Another possible solution would be to split the matrix into smaller blocks & traverse those blocks in rows/columns. For example a `4x5` matrix could be virtually split into `2x2` blocks and those smaller blocks could be traversed by rows or columns (e.g. `idx(1) = block1[1, 1]`, `idx(2) = block2[1, 1]`, etc.). The traversal would look something like this: ` 1 13 | 3 15 | 5 7 17 | 9 18 | 11 ------+-------+--- 2 14 | 4 16 | 6 8 19 | 10 20 | 12 ` Any other traversal ideas are welcomed. Ideally, this algorithm would translate to a math formula to calculate the row & column based on the linear index, possibly with a few conditions (`IF` statements) to compensate for missing values, etc."}
{"_id": "249611", "title": "Is there a better way to load objects?", "text": "I have always kept the code to load an object within the object itself. That way no matter what method is creating the object, it always has access to the method to load the object. However this does mean that if I'm loading a lot of objects I have to create a blank copy of an object to retrieve an array of objects, and it doesn't seem to be the most logical way of loading an array of objects. Take this code as an example, a page is loading a bunch of products.               class Product() {              // product variables...              public function LoadProducts($dbConn, $where) {             $products = array();             $query = \"SELECT * FROM products $where\";             $results = $dbConn->query($query);             while($row = $results->fetch_assoc()) {                 $products[$row['pId']] = new Product();                 $products[$row['pId']]->StoreVars($row);             }             return $products;         }              public function StoreVars($row) {             foreach($row as $key => $val) {                 $this->$key = $val;             }         }          }               class Page() {              // page variables...              public function DrawPage($dbConn) {             $product = new Product();             $where = \"Some where clause\";             $products = $product->LoadProducts($dbConn, $where);             // Do something with products to output HTML to the page...         }          }      Most of my objects like `product` follow a similar pattern. Is this good practice? Is there different / a standard way of doing this? Am I doing this correctly? It just seems a bit pointless to me to have to call a blank instance of product to load all the products, but I don't know where else to put that function so I don't have to have many copies of the same query."}
{"_id": "149713", "title": "Proper & Efficient Structure for an entity layer?", "text": "## Context Web application based on the .NET Framework written in C# and following the MVC design pattern. ## Question What is the most efficient way to structure an entity layer consisting on various data inputs? ## Background I am developing an application for a client that requires my reading and writing data from various sources and I would like to build a single entity layer/model to abstract the various data sources so that I only need to query the unified model from code. Here is an example of the disparate sources:   * MS SQL Data Warehouse (about 200 tables of enterprise-wide data   * MS Dynamics AX web services   * A new MS SQL database that is specific to the application being developed   * MS Active Directory for authenticating users and for getting user profile and group information.   * In some cases, SharePoint web services. I have used ADO.NET a good bit (.edmx files and so forth) and fundamentally, I know how to do this but I am struggling a bit with a solid, clean approach. Do I create two separate .edmx files for the two SQL DBs and then write object classes for the Active Directory, SharePoint and AX stuff? Do I simply write one big model file? A whole separarate project just to make the abstraction? Many thanks!"}
{"_id": "240532", "title": "When should you use Local Classes in Java?", "text": "I learned about local classes on the Oracle Java Tutorial page. Not nested classes. I don't see myself using local classes. It makes the code look messy and you can easily do what local classes do with having a class declared separately. But maybe I'm missing some use cases for it. Are there situations where you would prefer using local classes over other approaches or are local classes just an antiquated feature no one really uses?"}
{"_id": "81236", "title": "How to become a technical architect from a developer", "text": "I have been programming in .NET for the last 5 years. I have used design patterns a lot in our projects. I do have some domain knowledge in financial jargon. My ultimate goal is to become a technical architect. But the problem is that I am not getting the opportunity to do so in our organization. My question is in such a case how should I develop myself for becoming a successful technical architect? Also I have read somewhere that domain knowledge does matter for becoming a architect. Can some one please clarify this statement?"}
{"_id": "81231", "title": "Testing web applications written in java", "text": "How do you test the web applications (both server side and client side code)? The testing method has to work irrespective of the framework used (struts, spring web mvc) etc. I am using Java for the server side code, Javascript and HTML for the client side code. This is the sample test case of what I am talking about:                1. When you click on a link, the pop up opens.      2. Change some value in the pop up (say a drop down value) and it gets saved          in the DB.      3. Click the popup again, you get the changed values.      Can we simulate this kind of thing using unit test cases? Is JUnit enough for this?"}
{"_id": "81233", "title": "How important is a good coding style for the decision to hire a programmer?", "text": "Even as a student I am asked to review the code of programmers who have (not) passed a test (create a list of Fibonacci numbers on android). While I am very strict on coding style I just read about the \"block\" style someone used (read the comments!). In my position I would recommend to not hire a guy using this kind of style. The code is completely the opposite of the coding style used in my firm. While searching for coding style and how to deal with a lack of it I am curious about one thing: Should I hire a guy that will have ~~serious trouble~~ adapting the coding style used in the firm? Please: This should _not_ be a discussion about coding style in general and which is better. Its about the importance of coding style for the decision to hire someone! **More information:** I am not the guy that makes the decision, I just give my opinion based on code. The guy has to pass an interview where our head of whatever checks the soft skills. If he passed this, he have to pass our little skill test and thats where sometimes I was asked to review the written code. I am not in the position to say yes or no. I just want to know how important coding style should be for my review..."}
{"_id": "49606", "title": "Need ideas for an innovation week", "text": "So 4 times a year we have an innovation week (to even out the odd sprint releases). This whole week is dedicated to experimenting with new technology/ideas that could potentially help progress the software department or the company as a whole, and serve as sort of a starting point for new ideas and brainstorming. For example, the last one contained a lot of projects. One was the re-design of our web app into more of a Web 2.0 look and feel using JQuery and a lot of cool CSS tricks. Another was a proposal for a new bug tracking software as opposed to the clearly outdated one we use, and another was a very cool JQuery/Js design that could show the same page to multiple users on different computers and allow each of them to take \"charge\" of the page, disabling the other one from doing anything, and vice versa, seeing all updates in real time -- sort of like Netmeeting through Js. Well, this is my first one as a new employee so I wanted to think of something cool. We get one week (anywhere from 40-60 hours or so), and we usually pair up or do this in groups of 3-4, depending on how many projects there are. Projects have to get approved but usually that doesn't prove to be too difficult. We are in the financial analysis software industry if the domain was leading you guys to think of anything helpful. I am primarily working on a web app in MVC 2 at the moment using a lot of JQuery and a C# backend. Do you guys have any idea of something that would be cool/beneficial/worth it?"}
{"_id": "49607", "title": "Long term planning and agile?", "text": "My team recently went through the process of laying out a nearly one year plan for our work. We separated the plan into three phases. Each phase will include a couple of launches. I wonder, from an agile point of you, is this wrong? I think it's not a bad idea, because we haven't spent too much time on designing anything but the first few steps. It's possible for us to change direction. At the same time it's nice that we don't act with only the near term in sight."}
{"_id": "49601", "title": "New vs Clone Git in Eclipse with EGit", "text": "I'm not sure I have either my new repo or clone repo workflow, or both, setup correctly. When I create a new project I create a repo on github, can't clone from it as it's empty so I create a new project which goes into my workspace and then the git init runs on the workspace copy. So I end up with everything in workspace\\project-name. However, when I clone from github first I need to clone the repo and this goes into my default git directory (C:\\git) as git\\cloned-project-name, I then need to import this Git repo as a project into my workspace and I end up with workspace\\cloned-project-name effectively duplicating the project folder in the git area. I've tried to clone to workspace\\cloned-project-name but then it asks to import the git project and if I try to use workspace\\cloned-project-name again, it errs. What am I doing wrong? Thanks, Matt."}
{"_id": "49602", "title": "Low Level Software and Devices", "text": "I'm looking at a new chapter in my career. I'm a web developer, but now I'm starting to play around with C, compilers, and things I didn't have to work with before. It's all very intriguing! As I'm getting more and more into the \"lower level\" arena, I'm wondering how devices (mice, printers, webcams, microphones, etc...) are controlled, managed, detected, or used in general with software. I ask because I'm really having a hard time finding straightforward documentation online describing or giving examples of how hardware interacts with software. Does someone know of decent sites that can get me started learning this?"}
{"_id": "152305", "title": "what is the difference between the below two syntaxes?", "text": "1.                $(function () {            function foo() { return true; }            log(bar());                        // getting error            var bar = function() { return true; };          });      2.               $(function () {             function foo() { return true; }             log(bar());                        // working              function bar() { return true; };       });      in above snippets **log** is my custom function to log the result."}
{"_id": "80185", "title": "Is it ok to not fully understand RB Trees?", "text": "So I just learned red black trees at Cormen and wow! Typically I like to understand all algorithms and data structures to the point I can rebuild them from scratch without having to cheat looking at the pseudo code. I really like algorithms so I enjoy learning how they work and I usually go line by line and try some cases by looking at the code and checking if what's happening is what I understood that should happen. Just understanding what's happening took me A LOT of time for RB trees. Even with the explanations of the book, I still found it hard to grasp the code. Not to mention that I couldn't understand how/why rotations work. I don't find it intuitive at all. I mean, the three (six actually) different cases for insertion and then the 4 cases for deletion? Is it possible to understand this thing? It's impossible for me to rebuild this code without cheating. Until binary tree I could implement the stuff out of my head, with some tweaking it would always work, but RB trees I'm not even going to try. I mean, even the teacher got confused sometimes so I suppose it's really not that easy, but at the same time, shouldn't we have to understand everything that's happening or at least why? The book didn't really explain how someone came up with the idea of rotations. How did someone notice that with 2 rotations you could solve any insertion problem? That's amazing! My question is, do I really have to 100% understand RB trees? I feel kind of bad skipping stuff without fully understanding it. Thanks in advance guys! (PS: there's no tag for RB-tree, actually not even for tree, just binary-tree, so I only put algorithms)"}
{"_id": "152301", "title": "What is the order of diagram drawing in a design?", "text": "I'm new with OOP and UML and I have some confusion here. I'd like to know where to start, I mean, somebody comes to you and ask you to do something (involves software design of course), once you have determined what has to be done, what is the order in which you have to start the software architecture? I mean, is it first the use case diagram or the class diagram? or should I draw some diagrams in parallel? But basically, where should I start? and what UML diagram goes first? Thanks for helping!!"}
{"_id": "152302", "title": "How to calculate checksum?", "text": "I am developing instrument driver and I want to know how to calculate checksum of frame. Explanation: > Expressed by characters [0-9] and [A-F]. > > Characters beginning from the character after [STX] and until [ETB] or [ETX] > (including [ETB] or [ETX]) are added in binary. > > The 2-digit numbers, which represent the least significant 8 bits in > hexadecimal code, are converted to ASCII characters [0-9] and [A-F]. > > The most significant digit is stored in CHK1 and the least significant digit > in CHK2. This is sample frame :               <STX>2Q|1|2^1||||20011001153000<CR><ETX><CHK1><CHK2><CR><LF>      and I want to know what is value of chk1 and chk2 and I am new in this so I am totally blank about how to calculate checksum I am not getting above 3rd and 4th point. Can anyone provide sample code for c#?"}
{"_id": "191982", "title": "Choosing between words with different spellings for function names", "text": "A question has been bothering me for a while: when developing international projects, it is common sense to use English as the reference language since it is the language that the most people understand. However, how can one choose to name a function when it could have different valid English spellings. For example, would one name a function `get_center` or `get_centre`? Are there some rules of thumb to choose, do we choose both or just choose one arbitrarily and try to keep consistency afterwise? **NOTE:** Most answers recommend using American English, which makes sense. However, I had no idea that one of the spellings was American English and the other one was Great-Britain English. Therefore, my example is not a good one. Of course I would have used `center` if I had known that difference. But my question is still valid even though my example is a poor one. **NOTE\u00b2:** Concerning `center` vs `centre`, I see that wxWidgets uses both."}
{"_id": "236792", "title": "Easiest way to use objects as filters for queries", "text": "I'm just starting on a new little pet project of mine. I started the project using a familiar pattern for using objects as \"filters\" in SQL Queries. I've never been much happy about its easy of use, but eventually more or less accepted it after having it drilled into my head by colleagues. The example below hopefully highlights my concern. Especially in regards of sheer size. However that being said, I also see the strengths of this pattern which may put it in favor of continued use. I'm looking for some opinions if I should continue as I always have or if there indeed is an easier way to do this. Either by using a different pattern or somehow \"automate\" the process. _Please note that the below is only an example and isn't in use._               public static User getUser(User filter) throws UserControllerException {         String sql, sqlFilter = \"\";         User user = null;              try {             Connection con = DataSource.getInstance().getConnection();                  if (filter.getCorp() != null) sqlFilter += \" AND corp_id = ?\";             if (!filter.isNew()) sqlFilter += \" AND user_id = ?\";             if (filter.getUsername() != null) sqlFilter += \" AND username = ?\";             if (filter.getPasswordHash() != null) sqlFilter += \" AND password_hash = ?\";             if (filter.getFirstName() != null) sqlFilter += \" AND first_name = ?\";             if (filter.getLastName() != null) sqlFilter += \" AND last_name = ?\";             if (filter.getPhoneNumber() > 0) sqlFilter += \" AND phone_number = ?\";                  sql = \"SELECT * FROM users WHERE 1 = 1 \" + sqlFilter;                  PreparedStatement ps = con.prepareStatement(sql);             int psPos = 0;                  if (filter.getCorp() != null) ps.setLong(++psPos, filter.getCorp().getCorpId());;             if (!filter.isNew()) ps.setLong(++psPos, filter.getUserId());             if (filter.getUsername() != null) ps.setString(++psPos, filter.getUsername());             if (filter.getPasswordHash() != null) ps.setString(++psPos, filter.getPasswordHash());             if (filter.getFirstName() != null) ps.setString(++psPos, filter.getFirstName());             if (filter.getLastName() != null) ps.setString(++psPos, filter.getLastName());             if (filter.getPhoneNumber() > 0) ps.setLong(++psPos, filter.getPhoneNumber());                  ResultSet rs = ps.executeQuery();                  if (rs.next()) {                 user = new User(                         rs.getLong(\"user_id\"),                         new Corporation(rs.getLong(\"corp_id\"), null),                         rs.getString(\"username\"),                         rs.getString(\"password_hash\"),                         rs.getString(\"first_name\"),                         rs.getString(\"last_name\"),                         rs.getLong(\"phone_number\")                 );             }              } catch (IOException e) {             throw new UserControllerException(e.getMessage(), e);         } catch (SQLException e) {             throw new UserControllerException(e.getMessage(), e);         }         return user;     }"}
{"_id": "236795", "title": "Reducing code complexity for an interface between angular and d3", "text": "I'm playing around with different ways of integrating d3 and angular, in the context of learning both of these frameworks, and am hoping for some input: My client application receives a JSON array of nodes and an array of edges from my server. The central component of the client is a graph visualization implemented as a d3 force-directed layout: For each node in the nodes array, a (SVG) circle element is added to this visualization, and lines between these circles are added for each edge in the edges array. Of course, d3's `selection.data( )` makes it trivial to add these elements and bind each to the data it represents, but the graph visualization is only part of a much larger application: I need to create different types of elements representing these same nodes and edges in different parts of the application (which d3 has nothing to do with), and I'd like to keep all of these elements bound to a single dataset. My primary goal is minimizing code complexity, and - although I've fallen in love with the simplicity and elegance of d3's data-binding functionality - I've arrived at the tentative conclusion that using it in one part of the application while using Angular to do the same in other parts is creating unnecessary complexity, and that the simplest approach would be to use Angular to handle the data-binding/element-creation In other words, instead of using `selection.data( ).enter( ).append( )` to create SVG elements, I'm thinking I should do so using a `ng-repeat=\"node in nodes\"`, perhaps creating creating each as a custom directive to allow for custom functionality. Having done so, I would then need to get these elements \"into\" d3, so that they can be laid out on the screen and animated by its force- **Is my reasoning here sound?** In particular, I'm worried that I'm overlooking complications this will create with regard to object constancy, which is an important requirement as nodes will be entering, exiting and moving about the screen constantly and I need these transitions to be smooth. How would you recommend I go about integrating my angular-created elements into d3 (more precisely, getting them into my `force.nodes{ }` and `force.links( )` arrays) to avoid any such complications? Finally, I'm also considering a strategy that I'm hoping might give me the best of both worlds: I could use d3 to create my SVG elements and bind them to their respective datum, but rather than executing that code in the `link` function of visualization directive (as I've been doing, and as all the ng/d3 tutorials I've found do), I could run it in the `compile` function, and do something like this:               d3.select('SVG').selectAll('.node').data('nodeDataArray')         .enter( ).append('circle').attr(\"class\", \"node-icon\"); //...other attributes/styles etc        where `node-icon` is the normalized name of a directive with a `restrict` property that includes `C`. If this runs in the compile method, angular should then compile all of these directives as normal, adding any additional functionality / interfaces with other directives (etc.), the same way it does with any other type of element . **_Right?_** This is the option I'm most attracted to intuitively - are there any pitfalls of it I might be overlooking, which might make the former strategy preferable? **NOTE:** this question is cross-posted on SO. I know that cross-posting is discouraged in general, but in this case I'm not sure which forum is the most appropriate venue for this question: It does reference concrete implementations, but the core of the question is about general design patterns. Interpreted in the context of SO, I think its a question about implementation. Interpreted in this context, I think its a different question entirely, which is how I've justified cross-posting. Please feel free to comment if you disagree with this justification and I'll consider deleting the question."}
{"_id": "236798", "title": "Checking for the presence of optional properties of an object", "text": "I'm designing a class that holds several types of data. Some of the properties are optional. For example, let's say I have a class that represents a person, and one of the properties is occupation. I have another property, military rank, but this property is can only be retrieved if the person's occupation is military. What's the best way to handle this?   1. Have `getMilitaryRank()` throw `IllegalStateException` if the occupation isn't military   2. Have `getMilitaryRank()` return an `Optional<Rank>`   3. Return null if the occupation is invalid (I don't like nulls)   4. Something else? Idea 1 works because the user can check the occupation prior to calling this method, making sure they don't call it on an invalid person. Idea 2 seems unnecessary, because you can infer whether the Optional is present by calling `getOccupation()`. However, let's say my Person class has another optional property, but its presence can't be inferred from the value of another property; for example, a middle name. Obviously it's best for `getMiddleName()` to return an empty `Optional` or null if the person has no middle name, as the presence of a middle name can't really be inferred some other way. Since I should probably be consistent in how I'm handling optional properties, it seems like I could do one of the following:   1. Use `Optional` for any property that may be absent, even if it can be inferred from another property.   2. Add methods like `hasMiddleName()` to resolve the discrepancies (this seems like a bad idea)   3. Not be consistent and let the properties whose presence can be determined externally throw an exception, while the ones that are independent be wrapped in an `Optional`.   4. Something else? While nulls could simplify things, it causes a problem if an optional property is an `int`, which can't be nullable in Java. I could use an `Integer`, but that seems like a bad idea. What is the best way to handle these different types of optional properties?"}
{"_id": "176380", "title": "License for library developed with commercial program", "text": "I'm developing a commercial application that largely depends on the functionality of a library that will be developed with it. I'd like to open- source this library, because it offers functionality that is not found elsewhere and can be useful in other applications. However, I will also use it in my own commercial application. I don't want to publish the source of the main application, but it is definitely not a derived work (think of calculator app using GPL licensed library to calculate sine). And if someone else commercially uses the library, I want to require them to publish any changes made. Is the GPL license suitable for this or is LGPL perhaps what I need?"}
{"_id": "149020", "title": "Good workflow for software development with scrum and continuous integration", "text": "I'm studying an approach to understand better how the continuous integration workflow fits better in a software development company with the scrum method. I'm thinking something like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vBqTq.jpg) Would that be a nice workflow?"}
{"_id": "149021", "title": "Should I still make my site work in non-javascript capable browsers?", "text": "Apparently less than 1% had javascript off in 2010: http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/10/how-many-users-have- javascript-disabled/ So is it worth it to still support browsing without javascript? For example: **Form submissions.** Normally I would set up click or change events on form elements and just update the current page HTML from the response. But if the user has js disabled, the form cannot be submitted, and it won't work. If I have to take into consideration that the user has JS off, then I need to wrap my input elements within `<FORM>`, add a submit button and add additional mark-up on the current page to handle the form submission results... Anyway there's a lot of extra work to do in this case. Another example - replacing generic form elements with DIVS that you style to look like cooler input elements, and make them behave like generic inputs trough JS. Again, users without js won't be able to do anything with them. Or a different example, the UI created by JS on page load. Besides the fact that non-js browser won't display the UI, there's also a small problem with JS-capable browsers which will show a ugly UI until the page is full loaded and the JS gets to be executed. Are these drawbacks important enough to take into consideration, when less than 1% of your visitors are affected by them?"}
{"_id": "45564", "title": "Programmer performance : based on location, timings", "text": "Do programmers perform better when working from office or from a location of their choice? Also do they work better with fixed timings compared to flexible hours?"}
{"_id": "129215", "title": "Does Quebec require all output, including internal logs, to be in French?", "text": "I've once heard a Microsoft architect say that, in Quebec, program output must be in French, including the custom log output that would be used by service technicians in other countries who don't speak French or are Quebecois. Apparently, it's in Bill 101 Article 5. If you read the document _correctly_ (thanks Matthieu), Article 5 says > **5\\. Consumers of goods and services have a right to be informed and served > in French.** 1977, c. 5, s. 5. Is what the Microsoft technician saying correct? Does this affect all output from a program, or just the output intended for a French-speaking audience (e.g., the logs in this case wouldn't apply)? Is it only intended for government agencies (including contract work done for them), or does it affect private use and sale, as well?"}
{"_id": "210065", "title": "Python dynamic attributes creation, a blessing or a curse?", "text": "Consider this code:               >>> class Foo():             pass     ...     >>> foo = Foo()     >>> foo.a = 'test'     >>> foo.a     'test'      One can just override `__setattr__` to make attributes read only and prevent their creation at runtime, however:   * Why is this the _default_ Python behavior (any good reasons)?   * Is there any practice to prevent this without altering each class?   * Would you worry about this behavior in serious projects? don't you consider it error prone? or you can just ignore it (relying on new IDEs code completion)"}
{"_id": "53146", "title": "Teaching computer programming?", "text": "I've kicked around the idea of teaching computer programming formally(at a college-level). What kind of degree would be required at most colleges for teaching and also any general advice for if someone would be a good fit for such a field?"}
{"_id": "162408", "title": "Can a compiled C++11 library (lib,dll,etc.) be linked in older C++ compilers?", "text": "Could older C++ compilers (e.g. VS2008 and gcc3.4) link with external libraries written in C++11? My thought is that the C++11 .lib files are just byte code at this stage, and it shouldn't bother the older compilers how it was generated, as long as it is somehow resolvable and callable. I'm developing a small library whose API should still support C++03 users. So, looking forward, I'm wondering whether it's ok to implement my library using helpful features like `std::unique_ptr` and such, or do I have to just stick with `boost::`?"}
{"_id": "53149", "title": "Is there an (open-source) ReST-based blogging/forum package out there?", "text": "The site I work on is almost entirely in Javascript, it just goes back (via Ajax) to the server for authentication, database access, things like that. My boss would like me to add blogging, forum, and commenting capabilities. I don't want to implement it from scratch and I certainly don't want to integrate some HTML-generating PHP atrocity. Ideal, I'm looking for a package that does all the backend work and offers ReST interface so I can write a Javascript-based UI that integrates nicely with the existing site. Does such a thing exist?"}
{"_id": "162403", "title": "How much more should I charge for freelance project source code?", "text": "Currently I'm working as a freelancer, and for the first time a faced a client who wants the source code too. This client owns a software development company, and wants to have rights over the source code, but that I keep my rights too. That means that they can use my code to make similar applications using my code for different customers and the same applies for me. How much more should I charge my client?"}
{"_id": "162402", "title": "Who should initialize dependencies in a TDD application?", "text": "I'm trying to learn implementing TDD with mocking/fake objects. One of the questions I have is how to initialize a dependency in an application which implements TDD? An example from this article  Beginning Mocking With Moq 3 shows:               public class OrderWriter     {         private readonly IFileWriter fileWriter;              public OrderWriter(IFileWriter fileWriter)         {             this.fileWriter = fileWriter;         }              public void WriteOrder(Order order)         {             fileWriter.WriteLine(String.Format(\"{0},{1}\", order.OrderId, order.OrderTotal));         }     }      In this example, the constructor takes an `IFileWriter` parameter, I suppose because you want to supply the real file writer in case of the actual application, and the fake one for unit test. My question is, in the real application, who will supply this parameter? I suppose it will be the caller of this application. What if it has dependency as well in the constructor? Will the caller code be responsible for that too? Maybe the better way is to use factory. How would this factory work? And how will the factory be distributed? Will it be in the constructor parameter like in the above manner?"}
{"_id": "58174", "title": "Visual Studio Setup - why is solution explorer on the right?", "text": "Every time I install VS (whichever version going back years) it installs with the Solution Explorer on the right. Now as most UIs have the navigation in a left hand column (and at the top of the viewport) and the content to the right of this navigation this always seems wrong to me. So I drag the solution explorer to the left of the screen and dock it there. But I've never seen another developer do this. Considering how most programmers usually like to customize their environment, adding their favourite text editor, browser, plug-ins, greasemonkey scripts etc **why do Visual Studio developers never seem to make this simple UI change?** Does anyone else do this or am I just screaming in the dark?"}
{"_id": "190234", "title": "Should i shift from Testing to Development?", "text": "i have 1.2 yrs of experience in Testing in big MNC company, I have good Programming knowledge in Java (Core,Servlets). I have completed ISTQB certification(Testing) and trying for HP QTP certification. I am not at all satisfied with the manual testing. Can i shift from testing to development? if yes which development should i shift Java or Ruby on Rails ?(i dont have any idea about web development but my friends are suggesting Ruby On Rails) ? What are all the skills should i develop to move in to development? what will be the right time to shift? if ROR can i get good job opportunitites? Please suggest me ."}
{"_id": "44145", "title": "At what point would you drop some of your principles of software development for the sake of more money?", "text": "I'd like to throw this question out there to interestingly see where the medium is. I'm going to admit that in my last 12 months, I picked up TDD and a lot of the Agile values in software development. I was so overwhelmed with how much better my development of software became that I would never drop them out of principle. Until...I was offered a contracting role that doubled my take home pay for the year. The company I joined didn't follow any specific methodology, the team hadn't heard of anything like code smells, SOLID, etc., and I certainly wasn't going to get away with spending time doing TDD if the team had never even seen unit testing in practice. Am I a sell out? No, not completely... Code will always been written \"cleanly\" (as per Uncle Bob's teachings) and the principles of SOLID will always be applied to the code that I write as they are needed. Testing was dropped for me though, the company couldn't afford to have such a unknown handed to the team who quite frankly, even I did create test frameworks, they would never use/maintain the test framework correctly. Using that as an example, what point would you say a developer should never drop his craftsmanship principles for the sake of money/other benefits to them personally? I understand that this can be a very personal opinion on how concerned one is to their own needs, business needs, and the sake of craftsmanship etc. But one can consider that for example testing can be dropped if the company decided they would rather have a test team, than rather understand unit testing in programming, would that be something you could forgive yourself for like I did? So given that there is something you would drop, there usually should be an equal cost in the business that makes up for what you drop - hopefully, unless of course you are pretty much out for lining your own pockets and not community/social collaborating ;). Double your money, go back to RAD? Or walk on, and look for someone doing Agile, and never look back..."}
{"_id": "168161", "title": "How/where to run the algorithm on large dataset?", "text": "I would like to run the PageRank algorithm on graph with 4 000 000 nodes and around 45 000 000 edges. Currently I use neo4j graph databse and classic relational database (postgres) and for software projects I mostly use C# and Java. Does anyone know what would be the best way to perform a PageRank computation on such graph? Is there any way to modify the PageRank algorithm in order to run it at home computer or server (48GB RAM) or is there any useful cloud service to push the data along the algorithm and retrieve the results? At this stage the project is at the research stage so in case of using cloud service if possible, would like to use such provider that doesn't require much administration and service setup, but instead focus just on running the algorith once and get the results without much overhead administration work."}
{"_id": "160318", "title": "Should I use events in this case?", "text": "I'm creating a video player, like a custom YouTube player. All of the GUI elements (progress bar, video player, play button, ...) are different classes, but I obviously need them to communicate. When the progress bar is clicked, or the slider is moved, it needs to send a \"seek(x)\" command to the video player. Similarly, the video player needs to update the progressbar every frame. Currently I'm doing this by having almost all elements have a link to each other. So when I create the progress bar, I'm telling it where the video player is. But after a while this becomes more and more complicated, and I'm wondering if events would be a better way to do this. Or a main controller class that has all the connections. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "62580", "title": "What hardware do newly hired programmers get at various companies?", "text": "Looking at various pictures/office tours of software companies (Facebook for instance), I see a lot of the same hardware in terms of monitors (Dell monitors). I was wondering when companies hire new programmers, is the programmer given a choice between say a large monitor + laptop, a desktop + 24\"(2?) monitor, or some other combination? PS. If you know for sure, it would be helpful to list the options at various companies.. e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Google; unless the information is confidential."}
{"_id": "158650", "title": "UML Actions with object and control flows", "text": "Consider a UML Action contained in a UML Activity defining the behavior of a classifier. Such Action has three input pins connected to other output pins of different action by means of object flow edges. It also has an incoming control flow. My question is: does the action start when all the tokens _ those coming from all the input pins and that coming from the control flow _ are available? What if I have more than one control flows?"}
{"_id": "164803", "title": "Is it common to purchase an insurance policy for contract development work?", "text": "I am not sure if this is the best place for the question, but I am not sure where else to ask. ## Background I am a contract developer and have just been asked to provide a general liability policy for my next gig. In 6-7 years this has never been asked of me. ## Question Is this common? If so, can anyone recommend a good underwriter that focuses on what we do as contract software developers? I realize that Google could help me find underwriters but it won't give me unbiased public opinion about which companies actually understand what we do and factor that into the price of the policy."}
{"_id": "180216", "title": "Does auto make C++ code harder to understand?", "text": "I saw a conference by Herb Sutter where he encourages every C++ programmer to use `auto`. I had to read C# code some time ago where `var` was extensively used and the code was very hard to understand\u2014every time `var` was used I had to check the return type of the right side. Sometimes more than once, because I forgot the type of the variable after a while! I know the compiler knows the type and I don\u2019t have to write it, but it is widely accepted that we should write code for programmers, not for compilers. I also know that is more easy to write:               auto x = GetX();      Than:               someWeirdTemplate<someOtherVeryLongNameType, ...>::someOtherLongType x = GetX();      But this is written only once and the `GetX()` return type is checked many times to understand what type `x` has. This made me wonder\u2014does `auto` make C++ code harder to understand?"}
{"_id": "164801", "title": "Combine auto-syncing cloud and VCS", "text": "This question brought me to another question: **is there any VCS/tool for a VCS which automatically backups your source code between the last checkout and current changes**? I had the problem of loosing uncommited source code changes just one week ago.   I did not want to commit yet because the changes were incomplete. But then, an error when moving the data to an USB stick caused the data loss. That's the opposite what a cloud service (like Google Drive, SkyDrive, DropBox, ...) does: it tracks **each** change you made!   Have you lost your data? That's no problem because you have the latest version online. So what would a combined solution look like?   It would offer full functionality of a VCS including auto-syncing of any **intermediate changes** between two commits/checkouts to a temporary online location."}
{"_id": "96871", "title": "My manager hates documentation in our large project.  What should I do?", "text": "I am working in a small team on a large complex software project. I want to document all requirements, but I've been told by my manager that it is waste of time. I have tried the same with design and functionality, and I encountered the same discouragement. I am responsible for anything that goes wrong, and obviously, I don't remember everything. Still, I've been told not to create documentation. How should I approach this problem?"}
{"_id": "13207", "title": "String class based on graphemes?", "text": "I'm wondering why we don't have some string classes that represent a string of Unicode grapheme clusters instead of code points or characters. It seems to me that in most applications it would be easier for programmers to access components of a grapheme when necessary than to have to organize them from code points, which appears necessary even if only to avoid casually breaking a string in \"mid-grapheme\" (at least in theory). Internally a string class might use a variable length encoding such as UTF-8, UTF-16, or in this context even UTF-32 is variable length; or implement subclasses for all of them (and optionally configure the choice at run-time so that different languages could use their optimal encodings). But if programmers could \"see\" grapheme units when inspecting a string, wouldn't string handling code in general be closer to achieving correctness, and without much extra complexity?"}
{"_id": "179000", "title": "Is this how dynamic language copes with dynamic requirement?", "text": "The question is in the title. I want to have my thinking verified by experienced people. You can add more or disregard my opinion, but give me a reason. Here is an example requirement: Suppose you are required to implement a fighting game. Initially, the game only includes fighters, who can attack each other. Each fighter can punch, kick or block incoming attacks. Fighters can have various fighting styles: Karate, Judo, Kung Fu... That's it for the simple universe of the game. In an OO like Java, it can be implemented similar to this way:               abstract class Fighter {         int hp, attack;              void punch(Fighter otherFighter);         void kick(Fighter otherFighter);         void block(Figther otherFighter);      };          class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...};     class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... };     class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... };      This is fine if the game stays like this forever. But, somehow the game designers decide to change the theme of the game: instead of a simple fighting game, the game evolves to become a RPG, in which characters can not only fight but perform other activities, i.e. the character can be a priest, an accountant, a scientist etc... At this point, to make it more generic, we have to change the structure of our original design: `Fighter` is not used to refer to a person anymore; it refers to a profession. The specialized classes of Fighter (KaraterFighter, JudoFighter, KungFuFighter) . Now we have to create a generic class named `Person`. However, to adapt this change, I have to change the method signatures of the original operations:               class Person {         int hp, attack;         List<Profession> skillSet;     };          abstract class Profession {};          class Fighter extends Profession {                  void punch(Person otherFighter);         void kick(Person otherFighter);         void block(Person otherFighter);      };          class KarateFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation...};     class JudoFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation... };     class KungFuFighter extends Fighter { //...implementation ... };          class Accountant extends Profession {          void calculateTax(Person p) { //...implementation...};          void calculateTax(Company c) { //...implementation...};     };     //... more professions...      Here are the problems:   1. To adapt to the method changes, I have to fix the places where the changed methods are called (refactoring).   2. Every time a new requirement is introduced, the current structural design has to be broken to adapt the changes. This leads to the first problem.   3. Rigid structure makes it hard for code reuse. A function can only accept the predefined types, but it cannot accept future unknown types. A written function is bound to its current universe and has no way to accommodate to the new types, without modifications or rewrite from scratch. I see Java has a lot of deprecated methods. OO is an extreme case because it has inheritance to add up the complexity, but in general for statically typed language, types are very strict. In contrast, a dynamic language can handle the above case as follow:               ;;fighter1 punch fighter2     (defun perform-punch (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... )          ;;fighter1 kick fighter2     (defun perform-kick (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... )          ;;fighter1 blocks attacks from fighter2     (defun perform-block (fighter1 fighter2) ...implementation... )      `fighter1` and `fighter2` can be anything as long as it has the required data for calculation; or methods (duck typing). You don't have to change from the type `Fighter` to `Person`. In the case of Lisp, because Lisp only has a single data structure: list, it's even easier to adapt to changes. However, other dynamic languages can have similar behaviors as well. I work primarily with static languages (mainly C and Java, but working with Java was a long time ago). I started learning Lisp and some other dynamic languages this year. I can see how it helps improving my productivity."}
{"_id": "66035", "title": "Better to inject IoC container or use a Service Locator pattern?", "text": "I have an IoC container (If you want a specific one to look at, it's very similar to Unity) and I'm working on how I want to integrate it into my application. My overall goal for this exercise is to transform this horrendous code I wrote into something much more testable. I can create the IoC container and register types and I understand the fundamentals of how it is supposed to accomplish it's goal. My question is should I be injecting the container down into objects that need it, or should the objects that need it look it up using a Service Locator pattern? Realistically I see myself having to reference the container in two or three layers of my application."}
{"_id": "203867", "title": "Python/Database Website development", "text": "I want to create my own website that would allow me to acess a database in the server and do inserts and lookups in a user friendly way. I am a seasoned user of linux and C/C++, and also have experience with Python and sqlite3, but i don't have any experience in Web development, so i have no idea where to start. I have researched online and the best i came up with was an Apache/Nginx server together with an fcig or wscgi and Django, so that i would have database and python integration through a Django App. Can someone tell me if this is the way to go or if there is some easier (or better) way to accomplish what i want?"}
{"_id": "179006", "title": "share code between check and process methods", "text": "My job is to refactor an old library for GIS vector data processing. The main class encapsulates a collection of building outlines, and offers different methods for checking data consistency. Those checking functions have an optional parameter that allows to perform some process. For instance:               std::vector<Point> checkIntersections(int process_mode = 0);      This method tests if some building outlines are intersecting, and return the intersection points. But if you pass a non null argument, the method will modify the outlines to remove the intersection. I think it's pretty bad (at call site, a reader not familiar with the code base will assume that a method called `checkSomething` only performs a check and doesn't modifiy data) and I want to change this. I also want to avoid code duplication as check and process methods are mostly similar. So I was thinking to something like this:               // a private worker     std::vector<Point> workerIntersections(int process_mode = 0)     {         // it's the equivalent of the current checkIntersections, it may perform         // a process depending on process_mode     }               // public interfaces for check and process     std::vector<Point> checkIntersections()  /* const */     {         workerIntersections(0);     }               std::vector<Point> processIntersections(int process_mode /*I have different process modes*/)     {         workerIntersections(process_mode);     }      But that forces me to break const correctness as workerIntersections is a non- const method. How can I separate check and process, avoiding code duplication and keeping const-correctness?"}
{"_id": "170782", "title": "\"Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#\": Is this just a .NET-translation of the popular Uncle Bob book?", "text": "I found this book sold on Amazon Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, written by Robert C Martin and Micah Martin. Is it merely a .NET port of the older, more popular Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices? Or is it just a new book trying to take advantage of the other book's popularity? If I am a .NET developer who hasn't read either book, which one would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "195079", "title": "How to 'convert' a Static Access style project to IoC/DI style?", "text": "Are there any best approaches for refactoring a programming project that has previously been written with the static reference anti-pattern (the majority of classes refer at some point to a static bean, where all of it's variables are public. Half-way through a class, for instance you'll see something like: `EvilClass.Variable = returnsABoolean()`. Then in a different class, you'll see something like:               if(EvilClass.Variable == foo){         doSomething();     }else{         doSomethingDifferent();     }      Up until recently, I've been working with this pattern as I don't want to mix the styles and get things confused between the styles. But I want to slowly but surely 'fix' this project. I'm the only dev on this, and I don't have the time to just sit down and refactor it (otherwise, I'd push for a full rewrite!). Are there any best practices to be aware of when working with/fixing this kind of project/problem?"}
{"_id": "235841", "title": "Evaluation order of expressions in Clojure?", "text": "I'm currently learning Clojure (my first functional programming language), and I'm curious as to its order of evaluation. Here is an example: `(take 10 (cycle [1 2 3]))` If the `cycle` expression was not wrapped in a `take` expression, this would cause a memory error, as it would iterate infinitely through the vector. So, how does Clojure _know_ that it has been wrapped with a `take` expression? (If I'm using any incorrect terminology here, I'd appreciate a nudge too!)"}
{"_id": "90094", "title": "Choosing a process modeling notation", "text": "It is questionable whether this question really belongs here, but, in any case, it does not fit in Stack Overflow or any other Stack Exchange site. So here I go. ## The purpose My current pet project consists in developing a software tool to generate code from business process specifications. The program's inputs are...   * Process diagrams (very detailed ones, of course!)   * User interfaces, if necessary, for those activities to be automated   * Identification of interfaces with third-party programs, either already existing or to be constructed later And the program's outputs are...   * Table, view and stored procedure creation scripts   * Application code (CRUD, information flow between processes/activities/users, etc.) ## The problem Well, I still do not know which process modeling _notation_ I should use. ## The alternatives Personally, I like EPC (event-process chain) diagrams very much because of the simplicity of their structure:   * The process flow must start with an event and must end with an event. If there are several alternative branches, this rule applies to all branches and possible flows.   * Events may trigger zero or more activities. If they trigger zero activities, they are final events. If they trigger two or more activities, a branch opening must be used.   * When completed, an activity must trigger exactly one event.   * Activities may be triggered by one or more events. If they are triggered by two or more events, a branch closing must be used.   * Everything else (i.e., anything that is not an event or an activity; e.g. personnel, resources, physical materials, information) can be added after completing the description of the process flow. However, at least judging from other software developers I know, EPC diagrams are unpopular. Everyone else seems to be using BPMN, which are of course excellent for describing functional / responsibility aspects (i.e., who performs each activity), but are horrible for everything else, because the lanes get in the way. ## The constraints Other notations I know but have explicitly rejected are...   * **UML sequence diagrams:** Because a diagram must be created for each alternative flow, the cost of which would be prohibitive for users of my tool.   * **IDEF:** IDEF0 is great for mapping information flows, but IDEF3 is a horrible process flow notation: gotos should not be allowed at this level. ## The questions Which process notations have you used? Which one would you recommend me for my project?"}
{"_id": "112811", "title": "The cost of running a Windows App Server", "text": "I want to know what is the cost of running a Windows Application Server. I know the cost of running a Linux server with Java based Application Server is probably zero. What is the cost of running a windows based server on which all Apps are written in C#? I assume is is just the license cost of a copy of Windows Server. Is this true? Are there any other hidden cost for hosting with WIndows? I think with Cloud based hosting, these license costs can be avoided then."}
{"_id": "255794", "title": "How to design RESTful Web Api to represent Resources", "text": "I'm developing an ASP.NET Web Api 2 RESTful web api with .NET Framework 4.5.1 and C# and I'm trying to understand how to expose resources through a Web Api: Imagine that I'm a group owner and I am the only one that can add new users to that group (I'm trying to simulate a WhatsApp group). This is my C# class for user:               public class User     {         public int UserId { get; set; }         public string UserName { get; set; }              public List<Group> Groups { get; set; }         public List<Group> GroupsOwned { get; set; }     }      And Group class:               public class Group     {         public int GroupId { get; set; }         public string GroupName { get; set; }              public User Owner { get; set; }              public List<User> Members { get; set; }     }      How do I have to expose user's groups owned members in a RESTful Web Api? I think I have to expose it this way:               \"api/users/{ownerId}/groupsOwned/{groupId}/members/\"      I will allow `PUT` to modify the Group to add a new member, and probably `GET` to get all members. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "112812", "title": "How to learn about graph algorithms and some real world applications?", "text": "I've read Franco Moretti's work, but I'm looking for something more technical and perhaps broad in scope, if possible. Specifically, I want to learn about techniques programmers are using to glean information from complex networks, eg clustering. I'd also like to know what are some interesting questions/problems when it comes to graphs. So far I've just skimmed academic papers with very specific applications. I would appreciate any advice. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "255793", "title": "Select data from a table that is not in another table", "text": "I've two tables and I want to select only the rows of the first table which it's 'id' field is not in a second table. I'm completely new to SQL. Any hint? For example, suppose I have a table of users with the following fields: id, password, location, description, among other fields. I have another table that holds the banned users, with two fields, id_user and id_blocked. My guess is SELECT u.id, u.pasword, u.location, u.description FROM `table_users` u WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT bl.id_blocked FROM `table_block` bl WHERE u.id = bl.id_blocked) is that correct?"}
{"_id": "112817", "title": "Practical way to store a \"reasonably large\" amount of data that hardly ever changes?", "text": "Think in terms of pre-computed lookup tables or something. At what point does it make more sense to use a database instead of hardcoding values in my application? The values are not going to change, and they're nicely segregated away from maintenance developers. 100 values, 1k, 10k, 100k? I'm wanting to store about 40k values. Right now it's a machine-generated `switch` statement (which VS2010 is unhappy about). edit: If anyone is curious, here's how I approached this: My data was storable in two 100k-element float arrays, so that's what I did. It took about 20 seconds to generate the data, so I did that once, and serialized it to an embedded resource with a BinaryFormatter. Unpacking the data takes about 5 milliseconds at application startup, and outperforms the database implementation I was replacing (these hard-coded values were stored there prior) by almost 45,000x."}
{"_id": "166336", "title": "Using T[1] instead of T for functions overloaded for T(&)[N]", "text": "The asio::buffer function has `(void*, size_t)` and `(PodType(&)[N])` overloads.   I didn't want to write ugly C-style `(&x, sizeof(x))` code, so I wrote this:               SomePacket packet[1]; // SomePacket is POD     read(socket, asio::buffer(packet));     foo = packet->foo;      But that `packet->` looks kinda weird - the `packet` is an array after all.   (And `packet[0].` doesn't look better.) Now, I think if it was a good idea to write such code. Maybe I should stick to unsafe C-style code with `void*` and `sizeof`? * * * **Upd:** here is another example, for writing a packet:               SomePacket packet[1]; // SomePacket is POD     packet->id = SomePacket::ID;     packet->foo = foo;     write(socket, asio::buffer(packet));"}
{"_id": "176967", "title": "Develop web site from existing software or cherry pick and use a web framework?", "text": "A small team and I are tasked with developing a web site. The client has referenced a particular open source project (we'll call it X) when describing some of the features. Because of this, the team wants to start with X and adapt it to satisfy the client. I have looked at X and its code and, in my opinion, it would be unwise. However, my experience is limited, and could really benefit from the insights of others so that I can figure out what I should be asserting as the right direction for the team. My red flags are going up and this is why. X was developed in the earlier days of PHP; 500 line blocks of code are the norm; global variables are abundant; giant switch cases are the norm for switching between which page is shown. There is no clear mapping between URL and where the code for that page sits. From a feature-set standpoint, X is actually software specialized for a different task and has dozens of features we don't need or have use for that come as core assumptions. We will be unable to adapt X through its plugin system. That said, there are a few features which can be mapped, with some modification, to suit our purposes. I believe this is the attraction the team feels. I would feel comfortable if, instead of using X directly, we lifted what is salvageable and useful to us. We can then use that code, and the same 3rd party libraries X is using, in a new code base built on top of a PHP web framework (particularly Agavi, so you understand what I mean by 'web framework'). The web framework gives us a strong MVC structure and provides the common facilities for web development, or adapters to work with 3rd party libraries that do so. We will also have a clean slate feature-wise to work from, which means we can work additively instead of subtractively. Because the code base is better structured, and contains none of what we don't need, it will be easier to document, which is a critical requirement of our client. So to summarize, the team wants to use X, whereas I want to take the bits we can from X and use a web framework instead. I want to bounce this opinion off of other's experiences so that I can be more informed."}
{"_id": "112818", "title": "Are there any non-blocking web servers for Java?", "text": "I was studying about the infrastructure being used by Facebook, as I was developing a website based on social interaction for a university project. Facebook is using Tornado Web Server as its scalable, non-blocking web server, but it's written for Python. I'm trying to find something similar for Java: what should I be looking at? What are your experiences in non-blocking web servers for Java?"}
{"_id": "255798", "title": "How to track dependencies when a reported bug affects multiple products containing shared components?", "text": "If you have multiple products that contain some shared components, how do you track dependencies to work out which other products a bug affects? For example, product A, B and C use a CRC library module. A bug is found and filed in the module in product A. How can we assess that B and C are affected and need a bug fix release. Of course we already have version control and issue tracking software, but it's not clear whether or how they can help in doing this, or whether we need to look for better tools. Practically, is it worth modeling a subsystem breakdown to detect that an issue/defect affects also other products?"}
{"_id": "94732", "title": "How to fail an interview?", "text": "Imagine a situation where several people are sent to an interview and only one has to pass. His knowledge is enough for the project. However, the customer asked for the several candidates so he can choose the best one. And the other people from your company are already engaged in other projects and should not get the job. The question is: How to show that the other candidates are worse and at the same time not make them look stupid? **UPD** I've got the point but I need to clarify the primary idea. **I wanted to know how another candidate [that should not pass the interview] has to behave at it?** I've left the modified question [1st one] because several answers correspond to it."}
{"_id": "246627", "title": "Select design pattern - user stage", "text": "I'm struggling to point a finger into the right design pattern. I have a web site which user can register and interact with the system. I want to add the following abilities to a user:   1. Each user will be in a stage. Let's say that we have 5 stages. when user is register, he will be in the 1-st stage.   2. User will be able to climb to the next stage. To do so, he will need to complete X tasks. (There will be 20 tasks in the system).   3. In each stage, the user will be able to buy benefits with the points that he gain in each task that he completed.  What's the appropriate design pattern to use here? Thanks."}
{"_id": "45386", "title": "What's your advice for getting Oracle Certified Professional Java Programmer certificate?", "text": "I intend to get the certification but am not completely sure how to effectively prepare myself. So I'm wondering if you have any advice on the matter; in particular I would like to know:   * What should the basic learning/practicing plan look like?   * Which book (set of books) should be considered?   * Which practical exercises should be performed? **NOTE:** I've got several years of corporate experience (mostly web apps, though), but I want to be 100% sure I'll pass the test (that's the reason the issue is raised)."}
{"_id": "20002", "title": "Should a software company have a dedicated team for research and/or utility libraries?", "text": "I work in a company that does web applications for various banks and some smaller e-shops We employ about 20 developers and have 4-5 projects in development at any one time. Our development teams don't interact much and a lot of the same problems are done in varied ways(good to bad). I was wondering if it would be a good idea for a company to have a team of programmers that do research on current frameworks and continually improve a common library of functions and a common framework to build current and future projects much faster and more efficiently. How large should a team like this be? Also should it have permanent members that train others or should it rotate people? **Update:** I was thinking about a common project that people can work on for fun that might spark some interest. It seems that when people have job pressures the solutions they come up with are not the best."}
{"_id": "246633", "title": "Why is a private member accessible in a static method?", "text": "The following is pseudo code, I tried it in Java and PHP and both worked:               class Test {               private int a = 5;              public static function do_test(){             var t = new Test();             t.a = 1;             print t.a // 1         }          }          Test::do_test();      Why can you do this in OOP paradigm and what's the use of it?"}
{"_id": "246639", "title": "What does \" (int) value & 0x1, (int) value & 0x2, (int) value & 0x4, (int) value & 0x8 means\"", "text": "> ![code](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KSwRO.jpg) The \"value\" ranges from 0 to 15 (it's possible values). When will those 4 \"if\"condition be met? If my (int)value = 2 does this mean 0010?                           if  ((int)value & 0x1)                  {                     //statement here                 }                 if  ((int)value & 0x2)                  {                     //statement here                 }                 if  ((int)value & 0x4)                  {                     //statement here                 }                 if  ((int)value & 0x8)                  {                     //statement here                 }"}
{"_id": "254770", "title": "Consistent header HTML across multiple sites", "text": "We've got several sites. Some are HTML/Angular, some are built on a CMS, some are built on other code. What we'd like to do is have a consistent header experience for each site. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. I've got a couple of options -   1. Have it served on one site - then put it in an iFrame on each of the sites.      * Advantages here are that we only need to deploy to one place, it'll be always consistent     * Downsides I can see are that it may not work that well when we have to resize the header responsively, and that I'm not sure if using iframes are considered bad practice now. Also I'm not sure how the links would work with angular routing.   2. Have the HTML/CSS stored in my source control, then have each application pull it in.     * Advantage/Disadvantage - headers aren't automatically updated across all sites. They have to be deployed individually.     * Disadvantage - Possible CSS conflicts since its written in isolation?     * Advantage - Pretty simple solution   3. Some other way?"}
{"_id": "254777", "title": "Uniqueness of for loop", "text": "How does the for loop function is implemented so that it can accept `;` as parameter separator rather than `,` which is trivial in normal functions."}
{"_id": "254776", "title": "How do I add link-time optimization capabilities to my LLVM-based compiler?", "text": "I am designing and implementing a programming language, and I am using LLVM for native code generation. Among others, performance is a key feature of the language, and as such, I am looking to implementing link-time optimization. On the official LLVM site, I've read that > LLVM features powerful intermodular optimizations which can be used at link > time. However, the page in question does not mention how a user can request link- time optimization. In particular, it only explains the theory (and some big- picture decisions of implementation) of LTO, but it does not reference any API documentation nor a tutorial. I have performed a quick search on Clang's code base, but the results aren't too informative or relevant either \u2013 I haven't even found what settings the `-flto` switch turns on in Clang, let alone the changes in code generation that make it possible for the linker to optimize across object files. Now, I suppose doing LTO should go along the lines of:   1. Generating some sort of metadata in the object/bitcode file so that the linker knows it can employ LTO. Maybe this needs to contain concrete information about the module, the functions to be optimized, etc. (I really have no idea what exactly should go in there...)   2. Then adjusting my code generation procedure (i. e. the way I am using the LLVM API) in a manner that it \"supports\" LTO. After some researching on the internet, I've found this related LLVM source file, so I assume it's possible to automatize at least part of this task, but \u2013 as always \u2013 the autogen'd LLVM documentation is scarce at best. So, my question is: is my description of the process of incorporating the LTO features of LLVM in my compiler correct, and if so, can you suggest me any sort of documentation or tutorial which I could base my project on?"}
{"_id": "243044", "title": "Single python file distribution: module or package?", "text": "Suppose I have a useful python function or class (or whatever) called `useful_thing` which exists in a single file. There are essentialy two ways to organize the source tree. The first way uses a single module:               - setup.py     - README.rst     - ...etc...     - foo.py      where `useful_thing` is defined in `foo.py`. The second strategy is to make a package:               - setup.py     - README.rst     - ...etc...     - foo     |-module.py     |-__init__.py      where `useful_thing` is defined in `module.py`. In the package case `__init__.py` would look like this               from foo.module import useful_thing      so that in both cases you can do `from foo import useful_thing`. **Question:** Which way is preferred, and why? EDIT: Since user gnat says this question is poorly formed, I'll add that the official python packaging tutorial does not seem to comment on which of the methods described above is the preferred one. I am explicitly _not_ giving my personal list of pros and cons because I'm interested in whether there is a community preferred method, not generating a discussion of pros/cons :)"}
{"_id": "254779", "title": "How achieve a page-change proof player?", "text": "I am interested in develloping a web music player similar to the soundcloud one However, I can't figure out one thing: How player like soundclou one (and some other one) can \"resist\" a page change, continue playing without any latency, even if the page in the background is loading, the player is here and continue his job without any lag at the momment we click links. The only way to stop it is to reload the page with the browser How can this be achieved? Does this used using a particular language and site architecture that center the player? If not, does any language / framework offers possibility to do thing like that? EDIT: So I made a Few search, and I get the following Idea:   * Pjax : That allow you to reload only certain content.   * HTML5 History API : The API Behind PJax   * One-page APP : Much harder. But using Ajax it could work. Are these solution good? Wich one would be easier/ Better? Are there other alternative?"}
{"_id": "243042", "title": "Quite confused about what constitutes Current state of a resource", "text": "From REST in Practice: Hypermedia and Systems Architecture: > The current state of a resource is a combination of: > >   * The values of information items belonging to that resource >   * Links to related resources >   * Links that represent a transition to a possible future state of the > current resource >   * The results of evaluating any business rules that relate the resource to > other local resources > a) why would \" _links to related resources_ \" also represent the current state of a resource? b) I also don't quite understand why \" _Links that represent a transition to a possible future state of the current resource_ \" also represent the the current state. Namely, those links represent the possibility, not the current state. Analogy would be an int variable set to value 10. It's possible that in the future this variable will get processed and set to value 100, but we don't claim its current state also includes possible future state of 100?! **REPLY:** **1)** > links to related resources: imagine a \"chat_room\" resource. The links to > people in that room will change as they come and go. In other words, a > resource's relationships to other resources may change. **a)** I also began learning domain driven design and there an entity **E** may have _child entities_ ( thus **E** is a parent in a relationship ) and **E's** relationship with its _child entities_ may change ( ie some _child entities_ may be assigned to different parent or may get deleted). But even though **E** has _one-to-many relationship_ with its _child entities_ , we don't consider that relationship as also representing _the current state of E_. That's is why I'm puzzled as to why in REST the **links to related resources** also represent the _current state_?! **b)** > imagine a university has a \"student\" resource. There might be a link to > \"register\" in a class, a link to \"apply for housing\", and links to \"tune > in\", \"turn on\" and \"drop out\". Each link may change the state of the object, > or may yield appropriate information for the resource state. For example, > the correct Student Housing application for that student. It sort of makes sense that the _state of current resource_ also constitute **those links to related resources** , which may state change _the state of the current resource_. But it doesn't make sense that **the state of the current resource** also constitute **links to those related resources** which don't change the _state of the current resource_?! **2)** > But the resource may be a sort of state machine. So a \"car\" resource might > have links to \"start_engine\" if it's stopped. It might links to \"speed_up\", > \"slow_down\", and if the speed is slow enough, \"stop_engine\". In other words, > links to transition to other valid states based on the current state. **a)** > links to transition to other valid states based on the current state. I assume you've made a typo and what you meant to write is \" _links to transition to other valid states **is** based on the current state_\"? **b)** So could we say the reason why **links that represent transitions to other states** also represent _current state of a resource_ is because _every resource with such links_ could be considered a _state machine_ , and with _state machine_ , _links to other valid states_ do represent _current state_ ( I hope my ramblings make some sense )?! **2\\. REPLY:** **1)** > But it seems more natural in handling structured data to just bundle the > \"chat_room\" and \"chat_room_person\" information together. I assume technically, _related resources themselves_ don't represent the _current state of a resource_. Instead, only _links to these related resources_ represent _the current state of a resource_?! **2)** > In REST, the goal is to eliminate all out-of-band communication. So we > supplement the state (ON) with links that represent all the valid > transitions for that state. So we want to avoid more documentation. The > resource representation can tell us, \"This is where I am, and this is where > I can go next.\" In REST the **links that represent transitions to other states** also represent _the current state of a resource_ , but could we argue that logically ( thus not in the context of REST ) these links don't really _represent the current state of a resource_ , and thus only reason why in REST they do represent _the current state of a resource_ is because REST is build around that assumption ( or is at least more efficient that way )? thank you"}
{"_id": "255420", "title": "What properties does an object oriented language have?", "text": "I'm currently working on a game and wanted to add some scripting support. Due to trying to keep the entire codebase in managed c# (Excluding Monogame), I am using a custom language for the scripting (No managed only implementations of Lua exist...except AluminumLua which is incomplete). In such a language, basic provisions would need to exist. These would include:   * Objects / Properties / Variables   * floats and strings   * Functions   * Conditionals   * Loops Am I missing any major parts of a basic object oriented language? **EDIT:** As comments have pointed out, I would be far better finishing the incomplete implementation of Lua for C# rather than designing my own language...which is what I am going to do. However, I am still curious what the properties of an object oriented language are. **So, what properties does an OO language have?** Some definitions of object orientation (again, decided in the comments): Combining the state of an object with it's behavior. An object oriented language is is a method of combining the state of an object (it's properties) with behavior (functions). Object orientation is defining data (like a C struct) and providing specific methods to interact with it (the function ChangeValue), rather than give the person using that code the ability to change any part, including 'internal' components. Object orientation is just a way to sort the data (that will be represented in binary) more clearly to a programmer and protecting against incorrect use (e.g. setting a char instead of a byte into a function)."}
{"_id": "255422", "title": "Apache Wicket, updating data without using a form, is it safe?", "text": "I have a ListUser.java class with a datatable, displaying UserData information, displays 4 columns, the last column is an AbstractColumn that has on it's populateItm method has added a inner class LinkedPanel that fills the column with buttons, one of these buttons is an Link,Model... this link has a @Override onClick() method, that calls a Injected userDataDAO, using the Model, I obtain the UserData object, I update this object and pass it directly to the userDataDAO and merge the object into database, without using any form, is updating directlly safe? (or a good practice) * * *               ListUsers.java is a List that has a LinkPanel that displays buttons on the last column of the          List<IColumn<UserData, String>> cols = new ArrayList<>(4);         cols.add(new PropertyColumn<UserData, String>(new Model<>(\"Usuario\"),\"username\"));         cols.add(new PropertyColumn<UserData, String>(new Model<>(\"Creacion\"),\"dateCreation\"));         cols.add(new PropertyColumn<UserData, String>(new Model<>(\"Ultimo Ingreso\"),\"lastLogin\"));     cols.add(new AbstractColumn<UserData, String>(new Model<>(\"Operaci\u00f3n\"), \"Desactivar\") {                  @Override             public void populateItem(final Item<ICellPopulator<UserData>> item, String string, final IModel<UserData> imodel) {     item.add( new LinkPanel(string, imodel, \"deshabilitar\")                 );             }         });      * * *               ListUsers.html     ...       <table class=\"table table-hover table-condensed table-responsive\" wicket:id=\"users\"></table>     ...      * * *               public class LinkPanel extends Panel {              public LinkPanel(String id, final IModel<UserData> imodel, String label) {             super(id, imodel);             add(                     //Boton habilitar/deshabilitar                     new Link<UserData>(\"deshabilitar\", imodel) {                         @Override                         public void onClick() {                                  usData.setEnabled(!usData.isEnabled());                             userDAO.edit(usData);                             imodel.setObject(usData);                             getSession().info(Msg.OPERATION_SUCCESSFUL);                         }     ..."}
{"_id": "139536", "title": "How to minimize typos when you code?", "text": "I make a lot of typing mistakes when I program. I have a good keyboard writing speed but I try to write faster and in the process end up making typos. I want to type faster, but make less errors. Can I do something to improve the situation?"}
{"_id": "255425", "title": "Any OOP design pattern that is somewhat representative of all of the SOLID OOP design principles at play?", "text": "I'm trying to teach an object oriented design principles course (on SOLID) at a training institute. I also want to teach the students a few OOP design patterns such as factory, singleton and one other. I know there is no 1 to 1 match between SOLID principles and OOP Design patterns, but I want to introduce the students a pattern that is sort of inclusive of all the SOLID design principles at play. Any ideas? I'm really trying to fit in the observer pattern but want to keep it conforming with all the SOLID principles."}
{"_id": "255426", "title": "Should I store x,y coordinates as an array, a class object, or two variables?", "text": "I have a `MyObject` which has an x and y coordinate. as far as I can see, I can store it in three ways:               class MyObject:         def __init__(self, x, y):             self.x = x             self.y = y          class MyObject:         def __init__(self, x, y):             self.position = [x, y]          class MyObject:         def __init__(self, x, y):             self.position = Coord(x,y) #Coord class created elsewhere      Is there a best practise either way for this ? Where I'm thinking this is relevant, is when passing these coordinates into other methods: eg.               myObj = MyObject(0,0)     searchLocation(myObj.x, myObj.y)     searchLocation2(myObj.position)"}
{"_id": "255427", "title": "What are the benefits of using entity framework code-first instead of designing my database using SQL?", "text": "I'm currently working on designing a small web application (MVC5) and I'm to the point of designing my database. I have the schema I want worked out and I am quite proficient in SQL Server. (I have my SQL 2012 MCSA.) I'm going to be using entity framework 6 as my ORM. I've been quite interested in the code- first approach because I'm not a big fan of designers and I like to be able to see and work with the code myself. Because my SQL skills are quite strong I am inclined to create the schema myself and write my own `CREATE TABLE` queries, etc. I feel like that gives me a lot more control over constraint and index creation. But I haven't really worked much with entity framework in the past so there may be some benefits to this that I'm missing. I know you can do code-first against an existing database in EF6 anyway, so that would be another option. I've tried googling around a bit and reading MSDN but most of the benefits seems to be that you don't need to worry about the SQL. Since that isn't a concern of mine I'm failing to see the benefit of allowing entity framework to create my schema. Are there any benefits to allowing entity framework to create my database that I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "255428", "title": "Should an object query its owner?", "text": "I have a `World`               class World:         def __init__(self):             self.size = 10             self.n_busStops = 10                  self.busStopMatrix = SpatialGraph(self.size, self.n_busStops, 1.0)             self.buses = [Bus([0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9])]      Now each of the buses are going to move around the world, dropping off and picking up passengers. The bus contains information about its route. When it gets to its next stop, it needs to query the `busStopMatrix` to find out how many passengers there are there, and how far away the next stop on its route is. Is it a good idea for an object to query its parent like this? If so, what is this design pattern called? Something like:               class World:         def __init__(self):             self.size = 10             self.n_busStops = 10                  self.busStopMatrix = SpatialGraph(self.size, self.n_busStops, 1.0)             self.buses = [Bus([0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], owner =self)]          class Bus:         def __init__(self, route, parent):             self.route = route             self.currentStop = route[0]             self.parent = parent         def move(self):              ifAtDestination():                 pickUpPassengers(self.parent.getPassengersAtStop(currentStop))      I otherwise can't think how the `Bus` can get information about the world it is in. The alternative I can think of is that the route is made up of references directly to the BusStops, so it can directly query them. eg.               class World:         def __init__(self):             self.size = 10             self.n_busStops = 10                  self.busStopMatrix = SpatialGraph(self.size, self.n_busStops, 1.0)             self.buses = [Bus([busStopmatrix.getAllStops()])]          class Bus:         def __init__(self, route):             self.route = route             self.currentStop = route[0]              def move(self):              ifAtDestination():                 pickUpPassengers(currentBusStop)"}
{"_id": "255429", "title": "In layman's terms, what is left recursion?", "text": "According to one page on code.google.com, \"left recursion\" is defined as follows: > Left recursion just refers to any recursive nonterminal that, when it > produces a sentential form containing itself, that new copy of itself > appears on the left of the production rule. Wikipedia offers two different definitions: >   1. In terms of context-free grammar, a non-terminal r is left-recursive if > the left-most symbol in any of r\u2019s productions (\u2018alternatives\u2019) either > immediately (direct/immediate left-recursive) or through some other non- > terminal definitions (indirect/hidden left-recursive) rewrites to r again. > >   2. \"A grammar is left-recursive if we can find some non-terminal A which > will eventually derive a sentential form with itself as the left-symbol.\" > > I'm just barely starting out with language creation here, and I'm doing it in my spare time. However when it comes down to selecting a language parser, whether left recursion is supported by this parser or that parser is an issue that _immediately_ comes up front and center. Looking up terms like \"sentential form\" only leads to further lists of jargon, but the distinction of \"left\" recursion almost has to be something very simple. Translation please?"}
{"_id": "8560", "title": "How should I create lo-fi (non-interactive) UI prototypes?", "text": "I'm currently working on throwing together some basic prototypes, partly to gather requirements and partly to design the final UI. At the moment I'm trying building up the screen using Post-it notes, with yellow notes for information and pink for actions (buttons or menus). The idea being that you can easily move, remove and add information. But I'm sure there are more efficient methods out there. What is the recommended way for developers to efficiently create non- interactive UI prototypes? And why? * * * I tried some pen, paper and Post-it note versions and they went down like a lead balloon (likely my drawing skills). In the end I used Balsamiq, which thus far is liked by most users and they get it is prototype. Alas, some people are still having problems with the idea that first one should get an idea of what the application should do via some lo-fi prototypes and really want to \"see something on the screen\" before committing to anything."}
{"_id": "193909", "title": "Is it acceptable for child classes to \"break\" parent class functionality?", "text": "One of the devs that works with me is following the Open/Closed Principle to add functionality to a Model by extending from our framework ORM.               class BaseModel extends ORM {        ...     }      All our models are now inheriting `BaseModel`, and this model works well in the context of our application.               class Product extends BaseModel {       ...     }      The problem comes when we tried to use the models as if they where extending directly from the ORM, use some of the most basic functionality:               $product = Product::factory();     $product->name = 'foo';     $product->price = 9.99;     $product->save();      This code should have worked well but it failed because now the factory method requires a list of parameters. I think that as long as the models works well within the context of our product we are good; but I also have mixed feelings about not supporting some of the basic core functionality of the parent class. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "216140", "title": "Java Desktop Application For Network users", "text": "I'm developing a desktop application using Java. My application will run in a network environment where multiple users will access the same database through the application. There will be basic CRUD opreations (Insert, Update, Delete, & select), which means there will be chances of deadlock, or two users trying to update the same record at same time. I'm using the following   * Java Swing for Clients (MVC).   * MySQL Server for database (InnODB).   * Java Web start. Now, MySQL is centralized on the network, and all of the clients connect to it. The Application for ERP Purpose. I searched the internet to find a very good solution to ensure data integrity & to make sure that when updating one record from one client, other clients are aware of it. I read about Socket-server-client & RESTful web services. I don't want to go web application & don't want to use any extra libraries. So how can I handle this scenario: If User A updates a record:   1. Is there a way to update User B's screen with the new value?   2. If user A starts updating a record, how can I prevent other users from attempting to update the same record?"}
{"_id": "216148", "title": "Dependency injection: At what point am I allowed to create a new object?", "text": "I am refactoring a PHP application, and I am trying to do has much dependency injection (DI) as possible. I feel like I've got a good grasp of how it works, and I can certainly see my classes becoming a lot leaner and more robust. I'm refactoring so that I can inject a dependency rather than create a new object within the class, but at some point I am going to have to create some objects, that is, use the dreaded `new` keyword. The problem I have now run into is at what point can I actually create new objects? It's looking like I'll end up at a top level class, creating loads of new objects as there is no where else to go. This feels wrong. I've read some blogs that use factory classes to create all the objects, and then you inject the factory into other classes. You can then call the factory methods, and the factory creates the new object for you. My concern with doing this is now my factory classes are going to be a `new` free-for-all! I guess this may be OK as they are factory classes, but are there some rules to stick to when using a factory pattern and DI, or am I going way off the mark here?"}
{"_id": "236543", "title": "Cascading deletes from an aggregate root through out the entire aggregate doesn't make sense", "text": "Based on the same example for this question. Within the Pro ASP.Net MVC 4 by Adam Freeman, there is a discussion on aggregates and aggregate roots with a simple auction system. There are members who bid, items that are bidded upon, and bids. The author says that there would be an aggregate of Item and Bid with Item being the aggregate root. The author then mentions that aggregates roots can be used to do a cascading delete, which for this example means that if an item is deleted, all bids on the items are deleted. This makes sense. The problem is, bids only belong to the item/bid aggregate, and not to a member/bid aggregate. If I delete a member of the system who places bids, it would seem reasonable that all their bids are deleted as well. Yet, I can't do that without 'break' the aggregate. I also can't simply get a members list of bids. My level of confusion, given how simple the example is, makes me a bit worried. Is this just a bad example, could member/bid be a valid aggregate instead and there is some level of arbitrariness in making the choice of your aggregates that is acceptable as long as you make a choice, is there some way to have models belong to multiple aggregates, or am I just missing something? P.S. The answer in the question I linked says that domain driven development is just very tricky, but it doesn't go into enough details as to how it is tricky and why the trickiness induces confusion and as such my questions about it still remains."}
{"_id": "163466", "title": "Code testing practice", "text": "So now I have come to the conclusion like many others that having some way of constantly testing your code is good practice since it enables fewer people to be involved (colleges and customers alike) by simply knowing what's wrong before someone else finds out the hard way. I've heard and read some about Unit Testing and understand what it's supposed to do and all. The there are so many different types of bugs. It can be everything from web browser not being able not being able to send correct values, javascript failing, a global function messing up a piece of code somewhere to a change that looked good when testing it out but fails in some special case which was hard to anticipate. My simply finding these errors I learn to rarely repeat them again, but there seems to always be new bugs to be found and learnt from. * * * I would guess maybe the best practice would be to run _every_ page and it's functions a couple of times, witness the result and repeat this in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer (and all smartphones apparently) to make sure it works as intended. However this would take quite some time to do consider I don't work with patches/versions and do little fixes here and there a couple of times per week. What I prefer would be some kind of page I can just load that tests as much things as possible to make sure the site works as intended. Basicly just run a lot of cURL's with POST-values and see if I get expected result. But how would I preferably not increase the IDs of every mysql rows if I delete these testing rows? It feels silly to be on ID 1000 with maybe 50 rows in total. If I could build a new project from scratch I would probably implement some kind of smooth way to return a \"TRUE\" on testing instead of the actual page. But this solution would for the moment being have to be passed on existing projects. * * * **My question**   What would you recommend to be the best way to test my site to make sure that existing functions does their job upon editing the code? Should I consider to implement a lot of edits first, then test manually the entire code to make sure it still works? Is there any nice way of testing codes without \"hurting\" the ID columns? **Extra thoughs**   Would it be a good idea to associate all of my files to the different parts of my site which they affect? For instance if I edit `home.php` I will through documentation test if my homepage's start works as intended since it's the only part of my site it should affect."}
{"_id": "15269", "title": "Why are side-effects considered evil in functional programming?", "text": "I feel that side effects are a natural phenomenon. But it is something like taboo in functional languages. What are the reasons? Edit: My question is specific to functional programming style. Not all programming languages/paradigms."}
{"_id": "196997", "title": "Helper Methods Placement", "text": "Here's a question that's always bugged me. I'm going to use java as an example because I've almost never run into a problem in java where I didn't need to use helper methods in its class structure. Let's say I have a method that does a thing or two and then calls a helper method:               public void doStuff() {         int x = 4;         int y = 5;         doStuffHelper(x, y);     }      Now I need to create a private method, `doStuffHelper`, that doStuff calls with x and y. For readability I always put the helper directly above or below the function, but I can never quite decide which one is better. What are your thoughts/experiences with it? I know the question seems trivial, but since I don't have any guiding principles on it, I find that it always kills coding time deciding what to do and re-organizing my code if it doesn't work out. If there is no consensus, I think it's time to finally commit to one over the other for me."}
{"_id": "178356", "title": "How to reduce errors in dynamic language such as python, and improve my code quality", "text": "I post the origin question in stackoverflow, some people suggest me to post here I've always have trouble with dynamic language like Python. Several problems:   1. Typo error, I can use pylint to reduce some of these errors. But there's still some errors that pylint can not figure out.   2. Object type error, I often forgot what type of the parameter is, int? str? some object? Also, forgot the type of some object in my code. Unit test might help me sometimes, but I'm not always have enough time to do UT. When I need a script to do a small job, the line of code are 100 - 200 lines, not big, but I don't have time to do the unit test, because I need to use the script as soon as possible. So, many errors appear. So, any idea on how to reduce the number of these problems?"}
{"_id": "178355", "title": "Commenting regular expressions", "text": "Are there any common practises for commenting the regular expressions: inline comments referring different part of RegEx or general comment for all expression?"}
{"_id": "97830", "title": "C# Dynamic types", "text": "I just read a chapter in a programming book about Dynamic types. Although they are quite neat I cant think of a single real world example where I would use them. Does anyone here actually use them and for what?"}
{"_id": "13006", "title": "How can I motivate myself to start learning more?", "text": "I've been interested in programming for a while now, and have been slowly, slowly, slowly working on things over the years. However, I don't feel like I've learned much. I've only really stuck with familiar languages (Java, C# and I've tried a little bit of PHP). The problem is that in those languages, I've only brushed upon the surface of them and have restricted myself to doing fairly simple things. For example, as a Java project, I've downloaded the source code for some game and changed a few things to my liking, but nothing terribly difficult. In C#, I've made a few WinForm and console projects to do some repetitious or routine tasks for me, which is nice, but again nothing too complicated. I've just barely begun to grasp the concept of classes, multithreading and some basic but essential tools that are required in modern object-oriented programming. (\"Why can't I just shove everything into one monster-sized class?\" \"Why can't I just run everything in one thread?\" are questions I used to wonder about) I've never made a large project by myself. Ultimately, my kind of \"dream\" hobby project is that I would like to create a game using DirectX technology. I say that because I've used XNA but it requires the user to install a framework to get it running, and I also feel that if I use the framework, that a lot of the back-end work is being obscured from me. (DirectX or OpenGL seem to be about as close to the machine as I can get without going overboard in complexity. DirectX is also installed on most [if not all] Windows machines that plan on running games.) But I haven't even begun to even think about starting that. The amount of things I need to know to undertake a task is absolutely overwhelming. I wouldn't know where to begin. Likewise, I also feel inadequate because I've restricted myself to [what I see as] easy languages. I feel like I should start learning some scripting language or learn this or learn that, which is quite daunting. \\-- **tl;dr** : I've been slowly teaching myself to program for a while now, but have been restricting my knowledge to limited languages and only scratching the surface of what I can do. I want to learn more and possibly start a decent-sized project (I can only make so many text-based RPGs and calculators), but the massive amount of knowledge I'll need is very intimidating. One of my concerns is that I know so little about programming languages in general. Is it better to learn several languages or to be able to delve deep into one single language? How can I motivate myself to learn more? Am I thinking about this the wrong way?"}
{"_id": "161194", "title": "Why is using System.out.println() so bad?", "text": "Of course, it is very good use to use a logging framework for the error messages or warnings. But sometimes I use System.out.println() if I want to try something new in a short time. Is it really so bad using System.out.println() for some quick test?"}
{"_id": "105153", "title": "Should I list a website I created as experience on my resume?", "text": "I'm a recent graduate with a degree in computer science and I was wondering if I should list a website I created as experience on my resume. The website wasn't technical in nature, mainly just demotivational posters and comedic lists of things. It did, however, garner 2,000 - 4,000 page views a day on average. _**Positives_**   * I personally wrote HTML/CSS/JavaScript for parts of the site   * I acquired some skills involving analytics and advertising, as well as how to reach an audience via social media _**Negatives_**   * General quality and type of content on the site I should probably mention that the site no longer exists. The Wayback Machine is the only way an employer could actually see the site. As far as content goes, I was a bit vague. The best comparison I can come up with is that it had content that would be along the same lines as what Cracked.com has now."}
{"_id": "196602", "title": "Why is Flags Enumeration considered an intermediate skill?", "text": "I was reading this article: Designing Flags Enumerations @ msdn and it says > Combining flags enumeration values is an intermediate skill that should not > be required for developers implementing common scenarios. I think flags enumeration is awesome - something I learned about during my experience with C. Why does it seem like this article is cautioning developers away from what I consider to be a useful (and not complex) skill?"}
{"_id": "95065", "title": "When to confront a good project leader or boss", "text": "Our project head is a genius software architect, a gentle and considerate person in general, a geek by nature and delicate by voice. But, at times, we (my teammates and I) differ in opinions -- especially of software architecture issues, system design issues, UI issues, etc., with our leader. When and how (if ever) should we express the difference in opinions?"}
{"_id": "95066", "title": "Business rules, business logic, input validation", "text": "This might be asked a thousand times but couldn't find the answer. I just wonder how you people handle the business logic errors? Im trying to do a nice api for my business model. Some methods have quite a lot of validation and I just wonder how should I report them if something goes wrong? Returning true or false or null sometimes won't say what was the actual cause. Sometimes it works sometimes it is not enough. I read that some people use exceptions. I've thought that I could return error messages and when everything goes fine then it would be null. Somehow error codes just don't add up for me.."}
{"_id": "148867", "title": "Using a DSN database connection is a bad practice?", "text": "During all my professional lifetime that I have been programming in Windows enviroments, I advised my friends and coworkers to not use a DSN database connection in their applications, based on my own personal conclusions, but I really haven't seen any evidence of them. I know that using a DSN connection via ODBC data source, implies that this connection will use an ODBC driver. I know by some documentation that ODBC is an language-agnostic, OS-agnotic API to connect to databases, everything that carries this level of flexibility comes with some downpoints (could be possible that some specific functionability can't be used with ODBC) or could be that the performance could be lower than using a more direct API (OLEDB or other). I know that using a DSN-less connection has some problems by itself like securely storing the access information to the database server/file ( can be solved with some kind of encrypter on the data), or unexpected changes in the name of provider used in the connection drivers (Specific case of old informix drivers). Is this correct, or I'm missunderstanding something?"}
{"_id": "148861", "title": "Fastest way to open a file in Visual Studio knowing only its name", "text": "What is the best/fastest way to open a file in Visual Studio knowing only its name? In Eclipse there is \"Open Resource\" which allows you to interactively search for all files in the workspace, but I cannot find a similar good function in Visual Studio. The normal \"open file\" function in Visual Studio opens the Windows file dialog, which is pretty useless since I have to know exactly where the file is."}
{"_id": "238976", "title": "What does it mean that file IO binary flag is only relevant on Windows", "text": "I was reading a question and one of the comments mentioned that \"The binary flag is only relevant on Windows\". Given the context of the question and answer, I interpret this statement as `on non-windows machines, we don't need to specify text or binary mode when doing file IO` The context of the question is to read all bytes of a file into a string (presumably preserving bytes). It seems very relevant to me whether I'm reading the data as text or bytes, since reading text involves dealing with encoding. If I'm reading a UTF-16 file, for example, what I get in text mode is much different from what I get in binary mode. Assuming my interpretation of the statement is correct, is it unnecessary to specify whether a file should be opened in text or binary mode on non-windows machines? That is, all files are read in binary mode by default. Otherwise, what could the statement be referring to? (the comment received a number of upvotes so presumably this is not just one person's opinion)"}
{"_id": "238971", "title": "What is a good method of storing test data for development and unit testing with angular and jasmine?", "text": "What is a good method of storing JSON data/objects for development and unit testing with angular and jasmine? I have seen some ways of accomplishing this. However, since I am new to unit testing with JavaScript, I fear going in a bad direction. Here are some examples of what I'd like to accomplish:   * Let's say I want to develop my site off a set of test data and and then later on plug it into a database. I figure it would be easier if I am developing and testing off of the same data to start. Maybe all I have to do is reference a js file which has a method in it for returning an array of that data. I don't know what setbacks that might have.    * Another example would be that my initial reaction when trying to make a test that uses data was to simply make a $http call to my .json file. I quickly learned I can't do that and would have to mock the data. It seems a pain to have my data both in a unit-test mock as well as a .json file when the current purpose of the data is just for test/dev. I'll have to manage it in two places."}
{"_id": "8424", "title": "How should a director conduct an interview for a programmer / software engineer position?", "text": "I always wonder when conducting an interview why a director or VP of Engineering is involved? If a team of engineers and hiring manager want to hire a person, I don't ever see a director or VP would veto, unless the candidate said something egregious. Is this just to make the candidate feel they are valued? What's the rationale?"}
{"_id": "170359", "title": "How to turn on/off code modules?", "text": "I am trying to run multiple sites using single code base and code base consist of the following module (i.e. classes)   * User module    * Q & A module    * Faq module and each class works on MVC pattern i.e. it consist of   * Entity class    * Helper class (i.e. static class)    * View (i.e. pages and controls) and let's say I have 2 sites site1.com and site2.com. And I am trying to achieve following functionality   * site1.com can have User, Q & A and Faq module up and running   * site2.com can have User and Q & A module live while Faq module is switched off but it can be turned-on if needed, so my query here is what is the best way to achieve such functionality Do I introduce a flag bit that I check on every page and control belonging to that module? It's more like CMS where you can turn on/off different features. I am trying to get my head around it, please provide me with an example or point out if I am taking the wrong approach."}
{"_id": "117943", "title": "Why is $ in identifier names for so many languages?", "text": "A lot of scripting languages like Perl, Awk, Bash, PHP, etc. use a $ sign before identifier names. I've tried to look up why but never had a satisfactory answer."}
{"_id": "117945", "title": "Dev vs Stage environment vs Prod Environment", "text": "I work for a company where we build enterprise applications, and we maintain three environments: dev, stage and prod. The meaning of dev is intuitive: it's the environment used during development of the application. What's the difference between stage and production environments?"}
{"_id": "8429", "title": "Should one learn new languages or only should concentrate on languages you already know and increase your knowledge of it?", "text": "Which way is more beneficial and productive?"}
{"_id": "115891", "title": "Database of words and related words for search engine", "text": "I need to be able to search for a word in the English language and have a list of related words be displayed. Let's say I have a list of 100 words that the user should be able to search through. For each term I'd have to list keywords in the database describing the object and it's very likely I could forget a common keyword or include a bad one. Are there pre-created databases that I can use? To specify, let's say I searched the word soccer. Now my result should be words/phrases relating to soccer: soccer players, soccer ball, shot, goal, etc. So I need a search engine for related words or a database containing the relations. It seems like something that could have been done by now so it would much more convenient to use that than to reinvent the wheel. My actual project deals returning activities relating to the word, so having access to the database so that I could modify it would be helpful."}
{"_id": "50552", "title": "How to effectively do manual debugging?", "text": "Say you don't have a debugger available, what would be an effective approach to debug code which doesn't work (as expected)?"}
{"_id": "50554", "title": "Why it is not recommended to have set-only property?", "text": "Today at work one of my colleague reviewed my code, and suggested me to remove set-only property and use method insted. As we both were busy with other stuffs, he told me to look at `Property Design` section from \"Framework Design Guidelines\" book. In the book writer just asked to avoid > Properties with the setter having broder accessibility than the getter And now I'm wondering why it is not recommended to have set-only property? Can anyone clarify me, please?"}
{"_id": "212243", "title": "MPL 2.0. dynamically linking to GPL", "text": "Let say that library \"A\" is published under GPL. Library \"A\" exposes some API functions for dynamic linking. I wrote a wrapper library \"B\" for usage of \"A\" in another language. Library \"B\" dynamically links to the library \"A\" (calls are made to the exposed API functions) . I would like to publish my \"B\" wrapper library under MPL v.2.0. The main question is... is this legal?"}
{"_id": "66466", "title": "Should I keep writing my own code, or get in the habit of RE-USING", "text": "this is a general question about programming, I hate using other people's code and I find myself coding things in my own way, even the simplest things like a web template, a PHP calendar, or a news module. Is there anything wrong with that ? Should I change and get in the habit of re-using other people's free code."}
{"_id": "151021", "title": "What is your strategy for converting RC builds into retail?", "text": "We're trying to implement a strategy for how we transition our builds from RC to released retail code. When we label a build as a release candidate, we send it to QA for regression. If they approve it, that RC then becomes our released retail code. I liked the idea of \"obvious\" labeling of versions so that a user knows whether they have a beta or an RC or retail code... where you would have some obvious watermark in non-retail code (think Windows 7 where the RC or non- genuine builds watermark in the bottom right). ... but it seemed strange to us to manipulate the project (to remove the watermark) once it passed regression. If QA certified version a.b.c.d then our retail code should be that same version, not a.b.c.d+1 what strategies have you employed to clearly label non-release software versions without incrementing your build to disable the watermarks in your retail code? One idea I've considered is writing your build to look for a signed file in the installer archive... non-release code wouldn't include this file and so the app would know to display a watermark. But even this seems like QA is then working with non-release code.   Ideas? **EDIT:** What about a process that QA themselves can run to remove the \"RC\" indicator? That might be an interesting way to handle it."}
{"_id": "66460", "title": "Time frame to pass the MCPD Web Developer .NET 4", "text": "I have 24 months experience develping .NET C# client/server apps in my profession as Soft developer. Now starting in a new company I have a probation time of 6 months. My new employeer wants to give me 6 month of time to get the MCPD Web Developer 4. If I understood the Microsoft website correctly I have to pass FOUR exams those are:               Web Developer 4 on Visual Studio 2010               Exam number          MCTS prerequisite: TS: Web Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4          Exam 70-515          MCTS prerequisite: TS: Windows Communication Foundation Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4          Exam 70-513          MCTS prerequisite: TS: Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework 4          Exam 70-516          MCPD requirement: PRO: Designing and Developing Web Applications Using Microsoft .NET Framework 4          Exam 70-519      Can this be achieved at all within 6 months? I think thats ridiculous. What do you think what is the best way to achieve this? Even more I would like to hear your experience how you have done the \"MCPD Web Developer 4\""}
{"_id": "245557", "title": "How to develop a product compare page", "text": "I want to develop a product comparison page, where a user can compare 2 or 3 products. I was thinking about a 3 column list displaying every specification. But I want to highlight the differences. I could use a list and sort them alphabetically. And then if element _x_ of list 1 is not equal to element _x_ of list 2 then highlight it. But I 'm not sure every product has the same elements. Maybe element _x_ is missing in list 2. What could be a good method to develop this? Should I mark some elements on every product that can be compared (like a sort of element classes) ? So that I can check if elements from elements class _x_ differ on 2 products. Any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "245556", "title": "Coded UI test Automation Technique", "text": "How is coded UI testing technique more favorable than any other testing technique? What is the main advantage of using a coded UI test?"}
{"_id": "189066", "title": "Should a method's parameter list contain objects or object identifiers?", "text": "Our teams is having the following discussion: Let's say we have the following two methods:               public Response Withdraw(int clubId, int terminalId,int cardId, string invoice, decimal amount);          public Response Withdraw(Club club, Terminal terminal,Card card, string invoice, decimal amount);      whats sent over-the-wire are just the ids. one side says that the first method is correct, because we only have the ids of terminal and club, and it should be clear that we have nothing else, this is my approach. the other side says that the second method is correct because it's more flexible. We are familiar with object parameter idea, the other side also thinks that the object parameter should have the objects as properties. Which is the correct approach? Maybe there is a third even better approach?"}
{"_id": "142897", "title": "Why Is it better to use unreadable bytes for client server communication?", "text": "I'm composing communication lyrics for client-server and what am I thinking about:   * \"authme username passord\" (maybe encrytped)   * \"accept\"   * \"get archive of H2O from 03.02.2005 to 20.12.2064\"   * transferring binary structure or \"error descrtiption\" why I always need to do something like   * 0x0FA52FD + CRC   * 0x0D34423 + CRC   * ... I can see some secure reasons but I think it's not the real reason so why I can't use strings in client-server communication?"}
{"_id": "61110", "title": "Recommend a technical book explaining how the browser and server communicate", "text": "Although I've been developing web applications for close on 6 years now I still do not know what happens when a request reaches the server. I am looking for book that works through what happens when a request reaches the server and how the server knows which code to call. I'm assuming that there is a old book from the early eighties/nineties, when the internet was still relatively new to developers, that would be able to explain this; but my google-fu is failing me in my search for this book. Whether the book deals with IIS or Apache, I think it would be quite interesting to read and may be useful to know so any recommendations are welcome. Thank you"}
{"_id": "221354", "title": "Faster reads, on an infinite grid plane, than using a hash table?", "text": "In the past, I've had alot of success just using a .NET `Dictionary`, with a `TKey` consisting of the X,Y coordinates merged together. However its read performance, despite being amortized constant time, is a bottleneck in a design of mine. My application needs to perform _alot_ of reads, and would benefit greatly if the performance of the read was similar to that of an array. My data has a very high degree of spatial locality; attached is an image showing two graphs of the distribution of some sample data on a 2D plane _(sorry for the lack of labels)_ ; on the left is data with low spatial locality, and on the right is how my data looks (it's always a single connected mass, and blocky in form). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/AQhJM.png) I could use an array (by computing a bounding rectangle (`bRect`) around the data and then doing `data=array[(y-bRect.Top)*bRect.Height+x-bRect.Left]`) but then I'd have to rebuild the entire array each time `bRect.Height` changed, or `bRect.Width` increased. And so my question is, given the high degree of spatial locality, is `Dictionary` really the best choice here? Is there another approach I could take where I could get near array like read performance, yet not have to rebuild the array when data is added? (I don't need to ever remove data)"}
{"_id": "52951", "title": "How do you deal with Knowledge based questions in interviews?", "text": "In technical interviews which interviews experienced programmers , the interviewers ask a lot of knowledge based questions . [eg. Like how to configure this and that in the xml] . These questions have exactly one answer and it is very likely that a good programmer may not know the answer to it (and hence get rejected) . Is there a good way to respond to these questions ? [Like politely telling the interviewer that the answer is just a google search away]."}
{"_id": "207416", "title": "Which is better for small bug fixes and small features - naming branches by ticket number or naming them by feature description?", "text": "I am in the middle of a disagreement (cordial, of course) with my lead about proper branch naming. This applies to bug-fix and small feature branches, not long-running feature branches. For long-running feature branches, we agree that human-readable names are better. Here are the two points of view: Mine: Naming branches according to their team and ticket number is better. It makes it easier to find them in our ticketing system, and shorter to type. It also makes it easier to look up relevant branches in GIT when looking for historical information about a ticket. Example:               team-name/12345     team-name/53719      His: Naming branches according to their feature/functionality. It makes it easier to autocomplete, and is easier to remember than individual numbers. Example:               team-name/fix-that-sql-bug     team-name/expand-http-parser      One compromise I offered is this:               team-name/12345-fix-that-sql-bug      But he does not like this, as it messes with GIT autocomplete. If this is primarily opinion-based, please feel free to give me guidance on how this can be a better fit for SO - but I think that the reasons I gave can be amended/added to to give an empirical answer."}
{"_id": "165449", "title": "Which VCS is efficient for storing small changes to big text files?", "text": "A government agency publishes a text file with thousands of records. The entire file is about 60MB. Every day the file has about 60 new or changed records. We need to validate some info against that file, and for auditing purposes, we may need to recover the file as it was in certain date. I thought I could use a VCS to store the file using git, but I understand git stores the entire text file gzipped, so the 60BM file will still need about 30MB to store everyday version. I wonder if one of the free VCS stores only diff/patch files."}
{"_id": "207414", "title": "User story and Web Service", "text": "I am writing a user story and have a simple questions. Consider, I am writing it for login module which calls internally a web service to authenticate the user and returns the data. How this can be converted into a user story. Should this be written as: > As a user, > > I would like to login to the system and see the resultset. and leave it or should I write validations/web service call as well as well. As I understand, as a user I am not concerned with web service. So how should I write about this?"}
{"_id": "207412", "title": "Seeking xinetd alternative for forking concurrent servers in Linux", "text": "I recently posted here asking about the drawbacks of having a server process bind to a dynamically assigned port. That approach came about because xinetd, which launched the server process, allocates STDIN and STDOUT as the server's communication channel to the client, and we wanted the server to use a bidirectional socket. The responses (and our operations team) convinced me to abandon that approach. I need a daemon process to monitor a designated port and fork concurrent servers. The server process is written using an I/O infrastructure that is socket-based. We have developed a server process that can be launched by xinetd. The first thing it does is to bind to a dynamically-assigned port number, send the port number to the client over STDOUT, and then listen on the socket for the client's connect() - at which point it is good to go with the socket-based I/O infrastructure. Our operations team has nixed the use of dynamic ports on security grounds (see link). I'm looking for an alternate **way for a client to connect to a dynamically-spawned server and communicate using sockets.** The simplest solution would be something identical in most respects to **xinetd** , but which, instead of allocating STDIN/STDOUT as the server's connection to the client, would pass the socket that was allocated when the daemon accept()ed the connection, to the server. Presumably, since the socket number wouldn't be predictable, the daemon would also need to pass the number as a command line arg. I have written such a daemon in Perl, but I hesitate to roll my own because I'm certain that (x)inetd is far better \"hardened\" than what I could easily come up with. So that's the problem, and what I conceive to be the simplest solution. I'd appreciate hearing alternate solutions, or even whether in fact xinetd _can_ be configured to pass a socket as I described."}
{"_id": "236783", "title": "Aren't decorators easily breaking the ISP?", "text": "\"The Interface-Segregation Principle (ISP) states that no client should be forced to depend on methods it does not use.\" The decorator pattern is a design pattern to decorate a method of a class. For this, the decorator implements the same interface as the decorated object, so it can take its place. But doesn't this mean that it has to implement all of the methods in the interface, when it uses only one of them, the one it decorates? So I guess it violates the ISP. The only case it doesn't it is when the decorated interface only contains the method that needs to be decorated, but I see it as a rather rare case. An example would be that there are pages in a book. Some pages have footnotes, other pages have titles at the top. So we implement these extras as decorators of a method, let's say draw(). But a page has other methods as well, let's say: fold() and tear() and other methods can come in later. But if we want to use decorated versions of pages inserted in a book, and working the same way, we end up implementing in every decorator every method of a page, where the only thing happening is that the decorator passes the call to the page it's containing.               interface IPage {         public ITearResult tear();         public void draw();     }          class FooterDecorator implements IPage {         private IPage page;              public FooterDecorator(IPage page) {             this.page = page; //the object it decorates         }              //violates the ISP, because it has to implement it, but it's not using it,         //just passes the operation         public ITearResult tear() {             return page.tear();         }              //decorated method         public void draw() {             page.draw();             ... draw footer - the decoration         }     }      Am I not understanding the decorator pattern or the ISP correctly? Is it an acceptable violation or do these two really contradict each other?"}
{"_id": "50432", "title": "Is slower performance of programming languages, really, a bad thing?", "text": "Here's how I see it. There's machine code and it's all that computers needs in order to run something. Computers don't care about programming languages. It doesn't matter to them whether the machine code comes from Perl, Python or PHP. Programming languages don't serve computers. They serve programmers. Some programming languages run slower than others but that's not necessarily because there is something wrong with them. In many cases, it's because they do more things that programmers would otherwise have to do (i.e. memory management) and by doing these things, they are better in what they are supposed to do - serve programmers. So, is slower performance, of programming languages, really, a bad thing?"}
{"_id": "165444", "title": "Where to put business logic in MVC design?", "text": "I have created a simple MVC Java application that adds records through data forms to a database. My app collects data, it also validates it and stores it. This is because the data is being sourced online from different users. the data is mostly numeric in nature. Now on the numeric data being stored into database (SQL server), I want my app to perform computations and display the results. The user is not interested in how computations are done so they must be encapsulated. The user must only be able to view the simple computed data (for example, A column data minus B Column data divided by C column data). I know how to write stored procedures for same but I want a three-tier app. I want the data that I put into the database as a record, worked upon by performing calculations on it. The original data should remain unaffected, while the new data, post-calculations, must be stored as a new entity record into the database. Where should I write the code for this background calculation? As it is the rules and business logic, should I put it in new JavaBeans files?"}
{"_id": "55459", "title": "How could this diagram for \"making a career move into software development\" be improved?", "text": "I'm giving a talk in April 2011 on \"Developer English\" and showing my **non- developer audience** , mostly English teachers, various diagrams to explain how developers see their industry etc. One of these diagrams is \" **Hot Technologies** \", basically, if you want to become a developer, what technologies should you learn to have the highest chance of (1) getting a **job** (2) making a good **salary** , and (3) work with the most **exciting technology**. This is a draft I made just to get some ideas out, basically C#, PHP, Java are where the bulk of the jobs are. Mobile development has a big future. JavaScript is becoming more and more important, and I want to list \"minor technologies\" such a Python, Ruby on Rails to the side, I assume e.g. that in general, there are a much smaller percentage of jobs in these technologies as in C#, PHP, Java. **How could this diagram be improved?** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iMiOn.png) # UPDATE Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I included most of them in my updated graphic. Does anyone know of more **Java technologies** that would be appropriate here and could anything be added to the **gaming technologies**? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ddW6n.png)"}
{"_id": "207418", "title": "Tracking unpaid voluntary effort in open source projects", "text": "I am curious if any open source project actually tracked effort by a measure like self-reported hours put by unpaid voluntary coders. Do they? How? Why? I don't care for cost estimations functions of SLOC or any other nonsense variable. I suggest as answer an example with multiple contributors with a explanation of how and why they do that."}
{"_id": "75439", "title": "How is a .net developer related to customer relationship management (CRM)?", "text": "I wonder how can an ASP.NET developer's skills be helpful in customer relationship management? I was going through a job portal searching for jobs in ASP.NET and found that ASP.NET developer skills such as MS SQL, Web services etc were required for CRM Development (could be SAP, Seibel or MS Dynamics). How can an ASP.NET developer be helpful in CRM?"}
{"_id": "56185", "title": "Programmers that need a lot of \"Outside Help\" - Is this bad?", "text": "Is it kind of tacky or poor practice when programmers use an unusual amount of libraries/frameworks to accomplish certain tasks? I'm working with someone on a relatively simple programming project involving geolocation queries. The guy seems like an amateur to me. For the server software, this guy used Python, Django, and a bunch of other crazy libraries (\"PostGIS + gdal, geoip, and a few other spatial libraries\" he writes) to create it. He wrote the entire program in one method (in views.py, nonetheless _facepalm_ ), and it's almost unreadable. Is this bad? Is this really tacky and amateurish? Am I the only minimalist out there these days?"}
{"_id": "56183", "title": "What's the best way to recruit talented female developers?", "text": "I work on a team with a dozen men. They're great. I like them and all, but can't help wonder why it's so hard to find other technical women. I know they exist because I've met them at conferences, read their blogs, and see them on campus. My guess is there's something about our team that keeps them away. How can we recruit talented women without resorting to gimmicks? I'm not looking for complete gender parity, but why is it that some teams have a 50/50 gender split and ours is completely lopsided?"}
{"_id": "75430", "title": "multi-language system and security with php", "text": "Firstly sorry for my English. I'm coding new site. \u0130t's like StackExchange, a social site and a blog. Whatever, I try to create multilanguage, however I can't decide how to do it. I have to use modules, so, I must use OOP, while having multilanguage interface. How can I do that? There are two language options (Turkish and English), used continuously (example: home page etc.) or not (some errors; example : \"please enter your mail\" etc.)   1. I can use a class and I use array (for used continuously),   2. I can use a class and an XML page (for errors), or I can have a class and three language pages: Turkish, English and errors. Which one gives the best performance? * * * Other problem is php-mysql security. I'm using mysqli. Of course I block html characters and I use mysqli_real_escape_string. But they are not enough. So, I use stored procedures. What else can I do? what is your advice?"}
{"_id": "250688", "title": "Should I use the repository in the Domain Object or push the Domain Object back to the Service Layer?", "text": "I have come from a transaction script world and I am just starting to take a look at DDD. I am unsure of the correct way to integrate a DDD design with database persistence. This is what I have: A service class called OrganisationService whose interface contains methods for retrieving and saving away instances of Organisation domain objects. Organisation is an aggregate root and has other data related to it: Members and Licenses. EF6 database first DBContext is used within the OrganisationService to retrieve OrganisationDB entities and the related MemberDB and LicenseDB entities. These all get transformed into their domain object class equivalents when retrieved by the OrganisationService and loaded into the Organisation domain object. This object looks like so:               public class Organisation     {         public IList<Member> Members { get; set; }         public IList<License> Licenses { get; set; }     }      I am not using the Repository pattern in the OrganisationService...I am using EF itself as the Repository as it seems that EF6 has largely made repository redundant now. At this point in the design the Organisation domain object is anaemic: it looks like the EF POCO Organisation class. The OrganisationService class looks a lot like a Repository! Now I need to start adding logic. This logic includes managing an Organisations Licenses and Members. Now in the transaction script days I would add methods into the OrganisationService for handling these operations and call into a Repository to interact with the DB, but with DDD I believe this logic should be encapsulated within the Organisation domain object itself... This is where I am unsure of what I should be doing: I will need to persist this data back to the database as part of the logic. Does this mean I should use DbContext within the Organisation domain object to do this? Is using the repository/EF within the domain object bad practice? If so, where does this persistence belong?               public class Organisation     {         public IList<Member> Members { get; set; }         public IList<License> Licenses { get; set; }              public void AddLicensesToOrganisation(IList<License> licensesToAdd)         {             // Do validation/other stuff/                  // And now Save to the DB???             using(var context = new EFContext())             {                 context.Licenses.Add(...             }                  // Add to the Licenses collection in Memory             Licenses.AddRange(licensesToAdd);         }     }      Should I instead just be mutating the Organisation domain object in memory and then pushing it back to the OrganisationService for persistence? Then I have to track what actually changed on the object (which is what EF does to its own POCOs! I am kind of coming to feel that EF isn't just a repository replacement, but also could be the domain layer!) Any guidance here is appreciated."}
{"_id": "209524", "title": "Documentation in OOP should avoid specifying whether or not a \"getter\" performs any computation?", "text": "My school's CS program avoids any mention of object oriented programming, so I've been doing some reading on my own to supplement it -- specifically, _Object Oriented Software Construction_ by Bertrand Meyer. Meyer makes the point repeatedly that classes should hide as much information about their implementation as possible, which makes sense. In particular, he argues repeatedly that attributes (i.e., static, non-computed properties of classes) and routines (properties of classes that correspond to function/procedure calls) should be indistinguishable from each other. For example, if a class `Person` has the attribute `age`, he asserts that it should be impossible to tell, from the notation, whether `Person.age` corresponds internally to something like `return current_year - self.birth_date` or simply `return self.age`, where `self.age` has been defined as a constant attribute. This makes sense to me. However, he goes on to claim the following: > The standard client documentation for a class, known as the short form of > the class, will be devised so as not to reveal whether a given feature is an > attribute or a function (in cases for which it could be either). i.e., he claims that even the **documentation** for the class should avoid specifying whether or not a \"getter\" performs any computation. This, I don't follow. Isn't the documentation the one place where it would be important to inform users of this distinction? If I were to design a database filled with `Person` objects, wouldn't it be important to know whether or not `Person.age` is an expensive call, so I could decide whether or not to implement some sort of cache for it? Have I misunderstood what he's saying, or is he just a particularly extreme example of OOP design philosophy?"}
{"_id": "209520", "title": "How to model an arbitrary number of types", "text": "I'm currently in the process of modelling a generic form of RNA and RNA transcription and I'm having difficulty finding a proper OO modeling of this area. Human RNA has 4 types of **Nucleotides** (A, G, U, and C). An RNA strand is just a string of these 4 types. eg, AAGACAUUCUA... What I'm trying to model is more generic in the sense that I want to be able to decide the number of **Nucleotide** types at runtime. So, my object model needs to be able to represent an arbitrary number **Nucleotide** types. Initially, I thought I'd just have a **Nucleotide** class which had a **int TypeId** member. This way, I could have a sequence of **Nucleotide** instances of arbitrary types... but this doesn't feel right. I'm not a huge fan of storing type in a variable. I'm also not comfortable with what is essentially _definition_ information being set on every instance (instead of being defined in the a class). So, how do I get around this? Here's what I've come up with so far:   * On a previous project, we would have Singleton objects which represented another object's type. The other object would simply reference the singleton and that was it. It prevented us from having multiple instantiations of the \"definition\" of our types. Not too great IMO.   * I remember Entity Framework generating Dynamic Proxies at runtime. I could so something similar. I could have a **NucleotideBase** base class and, at runtime, define derived classes. I believe this is possible through reflection. I'm not sure what the performance impact is with this approach, but I would assume it's all just one-time overhead when defining the classes. Are there better, more OO, approaches?"}
{"_id": "209521", "title": "Is it considered bad practice to compile into Javascript as a matter of language preference?", "text": "I understand that compiling into Javascript is sometimes necessary and even in some cases results in a faster application. However I'm wondering if compiling into Javascript, for building web applications, from a language like ruby, is considered bad practice. Specifically for the purpose of language preference and for the task of doing typical front-end functions."}
{"_id": "223262", "title": "UI requires data of certain types. Can it go in a SPROC?", "text": "I'm actually arguing against this, but want to see if I'm out of line. We have a PaymentQueue table and a simple UI. This table is, at the moment, primarily used by the UI and no other business logic. The UI requires data that is only in a subset of possible statuses. One developer put this status restriction in the SPROC itself. I'm arguing to put it into the website UI layer, since it's view dependent. The benefit if his approach is it returns less data over the wire, but messes up other processes that may, in the future, utilize this SP, since it now always restricts to certain types. The benefit of my approach is it keeps view logic out of the database, but pulls across more data on the wire (I plan to narrow by date range to minimize this). My thought was to introduce a flag in the SPROC that, if enabled, would filter by these types, thus allowing the SPROC to be more flexible for either case. What is the best approach? Thanks."}
{"_id": "93034", "title": "Accessible book on functional programming", "text": "I'm looking for a book that explains functional programming in an accessible manner. Also I would prefer one that isn't too dull, and doesn't use an esoteric language. Ideally it will use examples that demonstrate situations where functional programming leads to more elegant or simpler solutions than imperative approaches. I have a reasonable amount of programming experience, but no knowledge of functional programming. Thanks for any suggestions"}
{"_id": "104374", "title": "What are the most common algorithms in the field of computational geometry?", "text": "So far I've touched on various aspects of computational geometry including constructive planar geometry (locus intersections), algorithms for planar graph topologies, 3D DDA, and most recently a 2D convex hull implementation using Graham's Scan and k-means clustering represented as Voronoi diagrams. It's a fascinating field. I'm interested to know more. I would like to know which algorithms are most common in this field, and what they do."}
{"_id": "148130", "title": "What does this software do when it says \"white labeled routing\"?", "text": "I am reading about a start-up company that works with online surveys: > Fulcrum is the world\u2019s first complete project management suite to give > clients the power to seamlessly integrate multiple suppliers, increase > productivity and reduce costs. Ranging from vertically integrated research > firms to sample suppliers, clients who license Fulcrum enjoy increased > efficiency and with minimal technology development costs. This simplified > survey management platform boasts white-labeled routing and improved > respondent experience all while giving clients exceptional control and > sample quality. I am a little confused about what's going on. What is \" white-labeled routing\" ? OK, I found out a \"panel\" company is a surveying company."}
{"_id": "104379", "title": "Ruby on Rails downsides and caveats", "text": "This is not an opening gambit for RoR bashing - honest! I'm learning Ruby and the Rails framework. Prima facie it appears to be pretty cool, and a wonderful experience compared to PHP. (In fact, it's reminding me of happier days with C# and .NET.) However, going into this, I have no experience with this framework or language, and I'm curious - what are the current downsides or things you'd wish you'd known when you were beginning? (Maybe this should be made a community wiki?)"}
{"_id": "221875", "title": "C# gadgets overloading the form (can't see the woods for the trees)", "text": "I have the task of taking over a C# program that is very badly written, however I am new to C#. The form has many objects including labels, buttons, panels, etc, which overlap each other. The form is overloaded with these objects when viewed in Visual Studio while writing the code. I have at least 5 panels overlapping each other, not to mention the rest of the objects. Obviously when the program runs some are invisible when not in the correct mode. How can we separate these panels and other objects in the design phase (say on to a child form) so that they can be viewed only when needed?"}
{"_id": "55981", "title": "Ideal Document Management System", "text": "What do you think the features of your ideal DMS would be? I mean list all the features that come to your mind that can be offered under Document Management System."}
{"_id": "117496", "title": "Is \"Mapper\" a valid design pattern or is it a variation of the \"Factory\" pattern?", "text": "A common pattern I see is what's known as the `Mapper` pattern (not to be confused with `DataMapper` which is something else entirely), which takes as an argument some kind of \"raw\" data source (e.g. an ADO.NET `DataReader` or `DataSet`) and maps the fields to properties on a business/domain object. Example:               class PersonMapper     {         public Person Map(DataSet ds)         {             Person p = new Person();             p.FirstName = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][\"FirstName\"].ToString();             // other properties...             return p;         }     }      The idea being your Gateway/DAO/Repository/etc. will call into the Mapper before it returns, so you get a rich business object versus the underlying data container. However, this seems to be related, if not identical, to the Factory pattern (in the DDD parlance, anyways), which constructs and returns a domain object. Wikipedia says this re: the DDD Factory: > **Factory:** methods for creating domain objects should delegate to a > specialized Factory object such that alternative implementations may be > easily interchanged. From that quote the only difference I could think of is that the DDD-style Factory could be parameterized so it could return a specialized type of object if the need arose (e.g. BusinessCustomer versus ResidentialCustomer) while the \"Mapper\" is keyed to a specific class and _only_ does translation. So is there a difference between these two patterns or are they essentially the same thing with different names?"}
{"_id": "32385", "title": "Switch from C# to Java, which \"gotchas\" I should care?", "text": "I may have to switch to Java for new project. I have very little knowledge about Java, because I've mainly studied and used C#, and I'm afraid of the differences between these two language/platform should likely to cause me many problems. Which are the pitfalls/gotchas I should care about?"}
{"_id": "220706", "title": "Handling large amounts of sockets", "text": "I am working on a project in which we have a desktop application that should be able to receive commands from a web application. To solve this issue, using sockets seems like a good approach (instead of long polling and various other techniques). The desktop application also uses a web API, and this is secured with mutual authentication in SSL. The sockets should also be secured with SSL. The question is: what is the best way to handle large amounts of sockets? I have thought of a solution which involves using a \"relay socket\". Basically the desktop application creates a socket to [The Relay Station]. Whenever an action should be sent from the web application, the web app also creates a socket to the relay station. The web app sends a command saying \"relay [this] to [socket]\". This approach requires that:   * All the desktop-to-relay sockets must be persistent   * The desktop application must identify himself, so that the webapp can reference him in his commands   * The relay station needs to keep track of all the desktop application sockets, and map those to a unique identifier. This gives me a good structure, but it also arises some questions:   * What should the identifier be?   * Is there a better way of sending commands from [WebApp] to the correct desktop application, without using such approach?"}
{"_id": "96005", "title": "Scalability and Programming languages", "text": "What makes a language scalable ? I believe scalability is more about system design. It sounds really odd to me, to say that one language is more scalable than the another."}
{"_id": "106202", "title": "My boss wants a narrated line-by-line English explanation of our code", "text": "I have been specifically asked to give line by line (or as appropriate - for example, image by image, etc.) explanation or commentary which my boss wants to be able to read and follow. Since he is not a programmer, he can not follow the code so wants it all translated into English. Has anyone been asked to do this before? I have commented on all of the source code and used JSDoc to generate full documentation of all functions, variables, etc... and included an implementation example, and full working demos with comments throughout. Is there anything else I can do to comment the code for non-programmers? This isn't a reasonable request, is it? * * * ### UPDATE In the end, I managed to explain why it was not a good use of time to do what he was asking. He is a reasonable guy, and just did not have an understanding of what my job involves. Once he saw this post, I think he quickly understood that it was not a normal request. I did provide documentation that is suitable for another programmer to follow (JSDoc and inline comments - as well as some extra notes on technical issues), and a very broad flow chart diagram of the main logic of the program for my boss to follow. In the end, all parties were satisfied and we have moved on."}
{"_id": "106205", "title": "What are good questions to ask a sales engineer candidate?", "text": "What are good interview questions to ask a candidate for a sales engineer position? We're an enterprise software company and the candidate we hire needs to be able to (and I think this holds for any company hiring to this position). I write \"customer (programmer)\" because the customer is almost always a programmer.   1. Give clear answers to customer (programmer) questions.   2. Focus on how we address the customer (programmer) needs, not list out features.   3. Sound enthusiastic when talking/demonstrating to the customer (programmer).   4. When demonstrating a feature, explain why it is of value to the customer (programmer).   5. Care a great deal about providing quality support to customers (programmers). So, any suggested questions, things to watch for, etc? (Even though a sales engineer is a programmer, what we need is quite different because programming skills can be average but communication skills are very important.)"}
{"_id": "176529", "title": "Progressbar patterns (Eclipse)", "text": "I've struggled quite a bit with Eclipse and progress-monitors to try to have good progressbars which report useful progress information to the user. Inevitably the code gets cluttered with lots of things like               if (monitor.isCancelled())         return;          ...          lengthyMethodCall(monitor.newChild(10));      and all over the place I need to pass a `IProgressMonitor` as an argument to my methods. This is bad, for several reasons:   1. The code gets cluttered with lots of code which is not relevant to what the function actually does.   2. I need to manually guesstimate which parts of the code takes time, and which parts do not.   3. It interacts badly with automated tests; where much of the information which goes into a progressbar instead should be logged for later inspection. Is there a way out of this? Are there tools which can help me out with one or more of these problems? Should I be looking at Aspect-Oriented Programming tools, or are there other alternatives?"}
{"_id": "79895", "title": "Is Bubble Sort the slowest sorting algorithm?", "text": "Is Bubble Sort the slowest sorting algorithm? If the answer is no, then what is the slowest one?"}
{"_id": "57588", "title": "Open source projects, how to choose?", "text": "I would like to join an open source project since I think I am good enough at programming to progress onto reading others code and to modify it. But the problem is, how would I choose an open source project to work on? I know many languages and chief ones that I am good are python, C++ (not really very good at C, the lack of object orientation is difficult for me) and Java. For C++, I am proficient with Qt. I would like to start with something that isn't huge, and hasn't reached a phase where the bugs are so complicated it would take me a month to understand what affects the bug. Any suggestions? At the current time, I don't use any libraries in either of the mentioned libraries that I would need to modify (AFAIK)."}
{"_id": "176523", "title": "Is Google Closure a true compiler?", "text": "This question is inspired by the debate in the comments on this Stack Overflow question. The Google Closure Compiler documentation states the following (emphasis added): > The Closure Compiler is a tool for making JavaScript download and run > faster. **It is a true compiler for JavaScript.** Instead of compiling from > a source language to machine code, it compiles from JavaScript to better > JavaScript. However, Wikipedia gives the following definition of a \"compiler\": > A compiler is a computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source > code written in a programming language (the source language) **into another > computer language**... A language rewriter is usually a program that > translates the form of expressions without a change of language. Based on that, I would say that Google Closure is not a compiler. But the fact that Google explicitly state that it is in fact a \"true compiler\" makes me wonder if there's more to it. Is Google Closure really a JavaScript compiler?"}
{"_id": "57587", "title": "How do early version numbers work for new products?", "text": "I'm currently writing a small desktop application for a friend, but I'm doing it primarily as a learning experience for myself. In the spirit of getting educated and doing things The Right Way, I want to have version numbers for this app. My research brought up these related results   * What \"version naming convention\" do you use?   * How do you version your files (Version Numbers)   * Forked a project, where do my version numbers start? but none of them address numbering of alphas, betas, release candidates, &c. **What are the conventions for version numbers below 1.0?** I know they can go on for some time; for example, PuTTY has been around for at least a decade and is still only at version beta 0.60."}
{"_id": "150047", "title": "Ways to version user generated documents", "text": "I have an online document which essentially gets stored to the database as XML string. I'm thinking about a way to implement versioning of the document for the user. So that user can go back to previous versions of the document. **update** In my case it's a web application with hundreds of thousands of users. A user can store unlimited amount of documents. The XML for document is stored in MySQL blob field so it's not small. Eventually I need to cap the limits somehow but that is a different topic all together. Is there a standard way to approach this? Should I store only the differences between versions? What are other things that I need to consider?"}
{"_id": "255358", "title": "Static Test-Data in Helper Class: Getter vs Public Constant", "text": "Currently I am in process of writing large batches of Unit-Tests in the Project I am working on. Additionally we recently Introduced GUI-Testing. This project is a relatively simple webapp, on basis of Java EE 6. Now my colleage did write quite some GuiTests, and I did write quite some Unit-Tests. For both tests we need data to run them. Now we both took different approaches on how we \"store\" the data we use. **Solution 1:**               public class UnitTestData {          public static final String DATA_PIECE = \"some data\";          public static final String MORE_DATA = \"and more data\";          //... and so on     }      **Solution 2:**               public class GuiTestData {         public String getDataPiece() {             return \"some data\";         }              public String getMoreData() {             return \"and more data\";         }         //... and so on.     }      My question now is: Which of these approaches is the _objectively_ better one?"}
{"_id": "150042", "title": "Is this the best way to approach this design? Is this an example of MVC?", "text": "I am designing a WinForms application in C# and wanted to get a design check by you guys. I am fairly new to programming and have been reading some material, so please excuse my mis-usage of words or 'computer science' terminology if need be. **The Design** I have a MDI application with MAIN as my parent form and various other CHILD forms. Now whenever an exception occurs, whether in MAIN or a CHILD form, it needs to be logged into a LOG window, which itself is a child form of MAIN. Reading material over the web, a lot is said to have loosely coupled classes. Now my thinking is that I will have a non-form class, called **Log Collector Class** which will basically be the \"middle man\" between all non-log window forms and the window form. Any exception, or update in general to the log window, will need to go through this middle man class. In turn, there will be a custom event in which if this Log Collector Class is updated, the _listener_ , aka the Log Window, will update whatever control it needs to update to display the exception. An image for visual people: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FJYgI.png) Any comments on this would be great, especially if I am doing things correctly (or in-correctly)."}
{"_id": "24936", "title": "Concurrency: How do you approach the design and debug the implementation?", "text": "I've been developing concurrent systems for several years now, and I have a pretty good grasp on the subject despite my lack of formal training (i.e. no degree). There's a few new languages that have become popular to at least talk about lately that are designed to make concurrency easier such as Erlang and Go. It appears that their approach to concurrency echoes my own experience as to how to make systems scalable and take advantage of multiple cores/processors/machines. However, I find that there are very few tools to help visualize what you intend to do, and verify that you are at least close to your original vision. Debugging concurrent code can be a nightmare with languages that are not designed for concurrency (like C/C++, C#, Java, etc.). In particular, it can be near impossible to recreate conditions that happen readily on one system in your development environment. So, what are your approaches to designing a system to deal with concurrency and parallel processing? Examples:   * How do you figure out what can be made concurrent vs. what has to be sequential?   * How do you reproduce error conditions and view what is happening as the application executes?   * How do you visualize the interactions between the different concurrent parts of the application? I have my own answers for some of these, but I'd also like to learn a bit more. **Edit** So far we have a lot of good input. Many of the articles linked to are very good, and I've already read some of them. My personal experience with concurrent programming leads me to believe you need a different mindset than you do with sequential programming. The mental divide is probably as wide as the difference between object oriented programming and procedural programming. I'd like this set of questions to focus more on the thought processes necessary (i.e. theory) to systematically approach the answers. When providing more concrete answers, it helps to provide an example--something you went through personally. **Goal for the Bounty** Don't tell me what I should do. I already have that under control. Tell me what you do. Tell me how _you_ solve these problems."}
{"_id": "111525", "title": "Unicode clarification", "text": "Why is the length of the some characters e.g. the following '\u1a12' 3 when it should be 2 \u1a12 U+1a12 1a12 means 6674 2^16 is 65536 so 6674 should take only 2 bytes and not three"}
{"_id": "193905", "title": "Performance of single-assignment ADT oriented code on modern CPUs", "text": "Working in immutable data with single assignments has the obvious effect of requiring more memory, one would presume, because you're constantly creating _new_ values (though compilers under the covers do pointer tricks to make this less of an issue). But I've heard a few times now that the losses there in performance are outweighed by the gains in the way that the CPU (its memory controller specifically) can take advantage of the fact that the memory is not mutated (as much). I was hoping someone could shed some light on _how_ this is true (or if it's not?). In a comment on another post it was mentioned that Abstract Data Types (ADT's) have to do with this which made me further curious, how do ADTs specifically effect the way the CPU deals with memory? This is however an aside, mostly I'm just interested in how purity of language necessarily affects the performance of the CPU and its caches etc."}
{"_id": "64432", "title": "Arguments in support of organizational transition to Scala development", "text": "I work in an organization that does extensive Java development. Our group is small with a short-lived project, agile development charter. We will leverage existing QA resources of other groups, and potentially contribute code to customers and partners. The primary arguments against Scala development have been:   * QA will need Scala experience   * Customers will need Scala experience My experience has been that Scala is generally easier to read than Java with minimal exposure to the language, and that the ability to use existing Java tools such as Junit would minimize negative impact to existing testing strategies. I've estimated that development in Scala could be 25%+ faster than equivalent Java development depending on the problem. This is just a finger in the wind based on my personal experience. If anyone has evidence of efficiency increase, please share. I would also like to compile a list of major benefits to using Scala over Java. Please share your favorites. Thanks, John"}
{"_id": "111526", "title": "How much time should I devote to my toolchain?", "text": "I'm a bit of a tool nut and I'll often spend as many as 6-8 hours a week finding new tools, improving my existing tools by writing plugins or adapters or playing around with new tools to see if I like them any better than the ones I have. That's not counting that my official day job is basically tool-chain development for a large company. Should I be spending this much time trying to improve my tool-chain? What should I be focusing on when improving it to maximize my time?"}
{"_id": "131324", "title": "What is the difference between DI and IoC?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Difference between Dependency Injection (DI) & Inversion of Control (IOC) I'm new to Inversion of Control, Dependency Injection and everything related to these stuff, so excuse me if I'm not specific in my question: Is there any magical piece of code, a good explanation or a link, so I can finally distinguish the concepts? I really think that using Dependency Injection already means using Inversion of Control, but is there any way of using Inversion of Control without using Dependency Injection? I've already read Martin Fowler's articles but I still find the concepts very confusing."}
{"_id": "134906", "title": "Putting it all together", "text": "I've been reading a few books on c# development over the last few months (clr via c#, architecting applications for the enterprise, c# 4 in nutshell just to give you an idea). I really feel it's been a worthwhile exercise however, at the moment, it feels like I've slightly scatterbombed my head with theory (although I have been trying to put it into practice where possible). I have worked on c# projects since .net 2.0 here and there so I have got a few years programming experience, I'm just really making an effort now to try and get to the next level. What I find hard to do sometimes is putting it altogether. What I was hoping to find was some sample project or maybe an open source project or something similar that tries to tie all these aspects of development together in a large project that deals with a fairly complex problem (100s of classes preferably although i know this is not a good yardstick for complexity), in a true object oriented sense, that includes generics, delegates, web services, some different design patterns, linq or nhibernate etc etc, mvc 3/4, with documentation and unit testing... one can dream So is that possible? (edit: without writing it myself)"}
{"_id": "188853", "title": "How much usage of \"likely\" and \"unlikely\" macros is too much?", "text": "The often known as `likely` and `unlikely` macros help the compiler know whether an `if` is usually going to be entered or skipped. Using it results in some (rather minor) performance improvements. I started using them recently, and I'm not sure how often should such hints be used. I currently use it with error checking `if`s, which are usually marked as `unlikely`. For example:               mem = malloc(size);     if (unlikely(mem == NULL))       goto exit_no_mem;      It seems ok, but error-checking `if`s happen quite often and consequently the use of the said macros. My question is, is it too much to have `likely` and `unlikely` macros on every error-checking `if`? While we're at it, what other places are they often used? * * * Edit: Even though my question is more general, but in my current usage it's in a library that makes an abstraction from the real-time subsystem, so programs would become portable between RTAI, QNX and others. That said, most of the functions are rather small and directly call one or two other functions. Many are even `static inline` functions. So, first of all, it's not an application I could profile. It doesn't make sense to \"identify bottle-necks\" since it's a library, not a standalone application. Second, it's kind of like \"I know this is unlikely, I might as well tell it to the compiler\". I don't actively try to optimize the `if`."}
{"_id": "188855", "title": "Why would each widget need a reference to its parent in a simple widget system?", "text": "I'm working on a simple widget system (single window, fixed size). Each widget gets its parent (i.e. the widget containing it) passed into its constructor - except for the root widget, which I called _Screen_. I have some doubts if that approach makes sense. I did it because most of the widget systems I used before do it (Qt, GTK, ...), but I realised that these are quite a bit more complex than mine:   * I have no window resizing   * I don't plan to size containers based on their children's sizes   * I don't think I need it for memory management (I'm using C++), I can use shared pointers instead (basically how it would work in Java) **Is there any reason why a widget would need a reference to its parent?** It's a major refactoring to change this. So before I go ahead and implement containers and layouts, I want to have a good idea of whether or not I'm going to need that parent. **Edit:** Please note that the parent does know all its children anyway, I'm just wondering if the children need to know the parent as well."}
{"_id": "188858", "title": "Throwing an exception inside finally", "text": "Static code analyzers like Fortify \"complain\" when an exception might be thrown inside a `finally` block, saying that `Using a throw statement inside a finally block breaks the logical progression through the try-catch-finally`. Normally I agree with this. But recently I've come across this code:               SomeFileWriter writer = null;      try {           //init the writer          //write into the file     } catch (...) {          //exception handling     } finally {          if (writer!= null) writer.close();       }      Now if the `writer` cannot be closed properly the `writer.close()` method will throw an exception. An exception should be thrown because (most probably) the file wasn't saved after writing. I could declare an extra variable, set it if there was an error closing the `writer` and throw an exception after the finally block. But this code works fine and I'm not sure whether to change it or not. What are the drawbacks of throwing an exception inside the `finally` block?"}
{"_id": "198894", "title": "Organizing related projects and dependencies for nuget publishing", "text": "I've been working on writing .NET bindings for Rollbar, an error and message reporting service, like Airbrake. My library is working nicely and is published in the NuGet gallery. So now I want to take it to the next level of usability and implement an NLog Extension for this. This entails writing one screen's-worth of code and referencing the NLog library. It's a wrapper. I may also implement one for Log4Net. At this point it's already getting blurry as to how I should organize this and manage it with source control and nuget. One thing for sure is that there will be separate nuget packages so people don't have to install dependencies they don't want. My questions are:   1. Should I create separate git repositories for the base library and NLog extension and Log4Net extension? Seems like it would be easier to track changes have clearly separated build processes and such. It may make contributing to the project(s) easier...but I'm not sure.   2. Should I reference my Rollbar base library as a dependency of the extension libraries, or ILMerge it? The upside to ILMerge is the user only needs one reference and DLL. The odd part is with versioning. Like how to have version numbers that make sense when only the base library changed, or only the extension changed. Also, it seems like nuget doesn't list updates to dependencies of installed packages, only to the packages itself. I'd want updates to the base library to bubble-up as an update the user should install! I suppose one way to do that would be version-bumping the extension _and_ setting the version of the dependency library. This is my first foray into writing an open source library and publishing it and managing it. I'd love some feedback from people who have dealt with this so I can get it right! I'm using Albacore for my build process, for what it's worth. (Current code: https://github.com/mroach/RollbarSharp)"}
{"_id": "198899", "title": "Disagreement Concerning Data Integration (I may not understand enterprise ETL tools)", "text": "I have been in an ongoing conversation concerning a project we are about to undertake at my place at work. The project concerns data integration. Our customers want to be able to integrate our data with theirs, either by sending data from their systems into ours, or by getting data from our system into theirs. I don't believe we are talking about 'big data.' Our entire database is less than 20 gigs. The individual transfers from our customers will be very small as well - on the order of 10s of MBs, if not smaller. A major goal for this project is to minimize the amount of work needed to be done by the customer, who tends to not be very technical. In the past, this problem has been \"solved\" by having our customers send us an xml file that is transformed by xlst before being saved to the database, or through a WCF application for exporting data. These are not seen as good solutions. My first thought was to create a REST interface with very good monitoring tools and libraries for our clients. Another option that is being considered are big tools like IBM datastage or Pentaho (or similar). My personal problem is that when I look at these tools, I don't see how they can help. It looks like they are aimed at setting up large scale data transfers that happen on a regular schedule with a given format. Adding a new import/export using those tools requires a lot of setup both for us and the customer, which we are trying to avoid. They are also not really useful for real-time data updates. Finally, they seem like they are trying to kill an ant with a flamethrower - they are heavyweights for a light weight problem. In contrast, with a REST setup, data can be transferred whenever required, and Setup only needs to happen in a very small area. Am I missing something when it comes to these ETL solutions? Am I not being fair to them?"}
{"_id": "193715", "title": "Is there genetic relationship between ARM and PDP-11 architectures?", "text": "Reading about ARM architecture I found many similarities to PDP-11 architecture which did not exist between ARM and x86. For example,   * General-purpose registers named Rx compared to AX, BX,... for x86   * Uniform registry file (all registers permit all kinds of operations)   * Similar names for program counter (PC both on ARM and PDP), compared to IP in x86.    * Inclusion of Program Counter into general registry file (in PDP it also can be refereed to as R7, in ARM - as R15, both the last registers in the file).   * Inclusion of I/O ports into general address space (i.e. addressing them as memory) compared to a separated I/O address space in x85 (and special I/O instructions).   * Using 3-letter basic assembler mnemonics (TST compared to \"test\" in x86) with suffixes specifying data type (such as \"B\" for byte, compared to constructions like \"byte ptr\" in x86)   * Using BNE, BEQ and other B _condition_ instructions for branches.   * Use of \"#\" symbol before a number to specify an immediate value (compared to \".\" in x86) etc. So is there any historical relationship between ARM and PDP that makes them closer to each other than to x86?"}
{"_id": "196942", "title": "Why is new product development always rushed?", "text": "If you are working on something **new** you have less than the required time to do it, and sometimes you are expected to work late, weekends etc (even when you are waiting on people who are not working those hours). I even had a boss once who came by and told me to make sure I had something to do on Saturday. This seems to be true even when no competitors are putting something similar on the market. If you are working on **feature enhancements** or **maintenance** you are encouraged to take your time, review your options, study up on things, etc. Sometimes I even get the feel that you are expected by leadership to catch up on your fantasy football and analyze topics like Game of Thrones, Call of Duty, etc. My question is: why not just take the extra time from the existing software development and spend it on the new projects that are starving for time?"}
{"_id": "4325", "title": "Pros and Cons of working Remotely/from Home", "text": "I have never had the opportunity to work from home on certain days, but I would definitely like to try it if I can. What are the pros and cons? I'll list a few that I can think of. Pros:   * You don't need to do any work. (That's a JOKE)   * You can be a lot more productive. No commute, relaxed, no meetings, no interruptions Cons:   * Less of a team effort.   * Other team members can get held up due to having to wait for information for an off-site member Apologies if this has been asked before - I did a search but couldn't find a pros and cons discussion. Edit: It appears The Oatmeal has already covered this! :-)"}
{"_id": "196940", "title": "Extending Composite Structure model generally/in Enterprise Architect", "text": "I'm currently on a project, which integrates domain specific techniques in the modelling tool Enterprise Architect through UML Profiles. The domain specfic model almost matches the structure of the composite structure model, with a couple of restrictions though, so I'm trying to use the model as a foundation for my restrictions. The questions: 1) How can I generally extend models (like composite structure models) which themselves lie in the M1-layer of Meta-Object Facility? 2) Is the element \"Part\" of composite structure diagrams a metaclass itself, which can be extended by stereotypes in UML profiles? Since the literature on these topics is not very exhaustive, I'm also looking for suggestions, too."}
{"_id": "97351", "title": "Charge client for SaaS development?", "text": "Situation: For many years, ACME corp has outsourced `Task B` to me. Over the years I've learned the ins and outs of `Task A` (manual labor). Together `Task A` \\+ `Task B` = finished ACME corp product. So now I discovered an opportunity to optimize their `Task A` process. But to develop a system to help ACME corp to work more efficiently, I need to put in a lot of programming work hours up front. Maybe 1-2 years to prototype, test and finally deploy, then I'll be ready to confront them with my solution. It'll take another 1 year to successfully have them switch from the old way of doing things to my new method. So in this situation, what is the proper to way to charge? Should I just suck in everything in the beginning? Or charge them for initial development? Ultimately they will be required to pay each time they use my SaaS to complete their `Task A`. Note that my SaaS is only useful for ACME corp, I don't see much use for my SaaS product to the mass market."}
{"_id": "97353", "title": "How to manage source code customizations for many users?", "text": "When I wrote original code, I was using TortoiseSVN to manage versions, but later a new problem evolved. Customers desired customization on few things and now the list of customers is growing. I want to keep version control depending upon customers. I want to keep a root source code and than add version changes depending upon customers. Is there any simple way?"}
{"_id": "196949", "title": "What is the best way to load balance javascript applications?", "text": "I write a lot of javascript applications and in many different circumstances the browser will become unresponsive or give a \"slow script\" error. Even when following best practices, initializing large data sets, complex animation, or when too many event handlers fire at once, I have to include extra setTimeouts or requestAnimationFrames around script blocks to load balance them. Seems like there should be some standard way of managing the browser load for large javascript applications. Any ideas? It seems like there must be JS application designers thinking about this, but I can find nothing on the web or on stack. _**edit_** I appreciate all the response. My question is _not_ \"How can I write efficient Javascript?\" which seems to be the question the current responses are answering. My question is: How can I balance the load of multiple sequential threads of javascripts running in the same browser? I am well aware of all the information posted in the responses so far and appreciate the posters, but I am looking for a framework or a design pattern that balances script execution in a browser. This question is common in many other languages and for devops, I am simply asking the same question for javascript."}
{"_id": "97358", "title": "Do you need Hardware skills to be a Robotic Programmer?", "text": "I want to know: _Do you need hardware skills to be a robotic programmer?_"}
{"_id": "199414", "title": "Help me understand how to index a pixel in an image", "text": "I had a look at the code for the implementation of this paper  Graph-Based segmentation by Pedro F. Felzenszwalb But I didn't understand how in the below code that `y * width + x` is used to build a graph from an image.               // build graph     edge *edges = new edge[width*height*4];     int num = 0;     for (y = 0; y < height; y++) {         for ( x = 0; x < width; x++) {             if (x < width-1) {                  edges[num].a = y * width + x;                  edges[num].b = y * width + (x+1);                  edges[num].w = diff(smooth_r, smooth_g, smooth_b, x, y, x+1, y);                  num++;              }                   if (y < height-1) {                 edges[num].a = y * width + x;                 edges[num].b = (y+1) * width + x;                 edges[num].w = diff(smooth_r, smooth_g, smooth_b, x, y, x, y+1);                 num++;              }                   if ((x < width-1) && (y < height-1)) {                 edges[num].a = y * width + x;                 edges[num].b = (y+1) * width + (x+1);                 edges[num].w = diff(smooth_r, smooth_g, smooth_b, x, y, x+1, y+1);                 num++;              }                   if ((x < width-1) && (y > 0)) {                 edges[num].a = y * width + x;                 edges[num].b = (y-1) * width + (x+1);                 edges[num].w = diff(smooth_r, smooth_g, smooth_b, x, y, x+1, y-1);                 num++;              }          }     }"}
{"_id": "199417", "title": "Algorithm to find last allocated job for each worker", "text": "Let's say we have n jobs numbered from 1 upto n and k workers numbered from 1 upto k. All the jobs are equally difficult, but some workers are more efficient than others, so we are given the time it takes for each worker to perform his job. In fact no two workers are able to finish their jobs in the same time. At first all the workers take care of the job numbered the same as them (first takes the first, second takes the second job etc.). If someone finishes his job, he starts doing the job with the lowest number that no one has started doing. In case of a draw (two or more workers finish at the same time) the worker with lower identifier starts doing the lower numbered job, the other the higher numbered. Workers work until all the jobs have been done. For each worker, we would like to return the number of the last job he completed. Example:   n = 10   k = 3   workers efficiency: 1->3, 2->5, 3->6 At first workers one, two, three start doing jobs: 1,2,3.   At time 3 one finishes his job and starts doing 4.   At time 5 two starts doing 5.   At time 6 both one and three finish their jobs - they start doing 6 and 7 respectively.   At time 9 one start doing 8.   At time 10 two start doing 9.   And finally at time 12 one start doing 10, the last job.   Therefore the answer is: 1->10, 2->9, 3->7. It is easy to solve this problem by simulating this procedure maintaining a priority queue of workers. The running time of this algorithm would be O(nlogn). I am wondering, how would one solve this problem faster, without simulating, for large values of n."}
{"_id": "199418", "title": "Languages & Their Licensing?", "text": "Firstly, apologizes for any bad terminology, lack of research, or poor delivery of my question. I should note that originally I had one big question, but I figured the first half is sort of independent, so I've posted it individually, link. My understanding of \"commercial purposes\" is so far based on the OP of that question. So basically my next piece of work will be the first to be involved in a commercial purpose, so I want to learn how to make appropriate technology choices that puts me on the safe side of legal concerns, **let's take Java for a case example** :   1. I will assume that the only thing I need to worry about is the licensing of JDK.   2. It seems that the license for JDK is this one, which seems to not put any commercial concerns except for contents of table 1-1 from this link, which are stuff I never heard about, and probably won't cross.   3. From #2, and from various implications that JDK mainly adheres to GPL, and from what I understood from GPL, it seems Java is in the green when it comes to commercial purposes, provided the owner of the executable has also ownership of the corresponding source code. **Q1:** So, are my previous conclusions correct? **Q2:** The research process was really exhausting from my end, are there some key elements to pursue when checking these stuff? or are there online resources/communities that already did most of this verification research? Forward thanks."}
{"_id": "20940", "title": "Is there too much abstraction in the Ruby on Rails community?", "text": "Rails, to me, seems like a perfect level of abstraction for most types of web development. However, having watched some seasoned Rails consultants build an application, I'm finding that they use Gems to an extent that it's often pretty difficult to figure out what's going on in the code. As an intermediate-level Rails developer, I've had a pretty hard time digging through their code to figure out how things work, and I'm really struggling to see the payoff of this approach. So is it me, or does Rails, by dint of the fact that it has such a vibrant community of contributors, kind of encourage over-abstraction?"}
{"_id": "69433", "title": "Naming your software and uniqueness", "text": "When it comes to naming your software _product_ (whether an application or a library), what do you do? It seems impossible to choose a name which isn't already taken by some other piece of software, whether it's someone's small hobby project or a company selling it. We all know about Phoenix becoming Firebird becoming Firefox because it clashed with other software product names. How unique does a name have to be? Phoenix was the name of a computer BIOS - hardly similar to a web browser, wasn't it? And to take a counter-example, there's Fedora the operating system and Fedora the repository software, happily co-existing. Another counter-example is midori the Javascript framework and midori the web browser. What steps would you take to ensure the name of your application or library isn't taken by someone else, and how far would you look - in terms of the type of product - when looking for other things with the same name?"}
{"_id": "9584", "title": "PHP, HTML, Javascript and writing good practices", "text": "I realized I have to write down a convention specification about HTML, JavaScript and PHP coding for me and my team. In web development, just like in C++, I'm definitely a fan of indentation and comments. Nonetheless, often in my work I encounter HTML+JavaScript+PHP code which suddenly brings up the headache. I'm trying to make my code readable, but what seems to be better to me (to indent & comment) seems not to fascinate my teammates, so I was wondering if there is a best or at least shared good practice when writing \"hybrid\" documents just like today's web pages, which day by day become more and more complex. I'm aware of the fact that probably it is in the nature of today's web pages' code to be a little bit intricated, but I wonder if a good convention concerning these aspects already exists."}
{"_id": "191623", "title": "Best practices for execution of untrusted code", "text": "I have a project where I need to allow users to run arbitrary, untrusted python code (a bit like this) against my server. I'm fairly new to python and I'd like to avoid making any mistakes that introduce security holes or other vulnerabilities into the system. Are there any best-practices available, recommended reading, or other pointers you can give me make my service usable but not abusable? Here's what I've considered so far:   * Remove `__builtins__` from the `exec` context to prohibit use of potentially dangerous packages like `os`. Users will only be able to use packages I provide to them.   * Use threads to enforce a reasonable timeout.   * I'd like to limit the total amount of memory that can be allocated within the `exec` context, but I'm not sure if it's even possible. There are some alternatives to a straight `exec`, but I'm not sure which of these would be helpful here:   * Using an `ast.NodeVisitor` to catch any attempt to access unsafe objects. But what objects should I prohibit?   * Searching for any double-underscores in the input. (less graceful than the above option).   * Using `PyPy` or something similar to sandbox the code. _NOTE:_ I'm aware that there is at least one JavaScript-based interpreter. That will not work in my scenario."}
{"_id": "191621", "title": "High-Availability Vs. Cloud Scaling", "text": "I work for a company that develops a web server that runs in a customer datacenter. The customer wants the server to have hot failover and I'm currently investigating HA approaches such as Pacemaker and LVM (might as well have the backup doing something so I'm using load balancing as well). It occurs to me that some of these features are also provided by cloud computing (e.g. private cloud) technologies. Specifically auto-scaling which is provided by EC2 and cloud foundry addresses load balancing and failover support to some degree. As a new application would I be better off spending my time trying to setup the application as a private cloud or by utilizing the tried and true HA architectures?"}
{"_id": "202267", "title": "Compile and run submissions of online judge in the same or separate server?", "text": "I am going to make an online judge platform. I have looked for some online judge platforms on the Internet for reference (I mean the platforms which have the source code available, and can be hosted my others, not something like Codeforces). Most of them have a web interface written in PHP (or something else). When users submit the solutions of the problems, the submissions are sent to another programs (a server side program written in C++, Java or something else), which is hosted on or not on the same server, through socket. What is the benefit of this design? Why not doing so through PHP, with functions like `exec()`? Which design will you appreciate more?"}
{"_id": "210480", "title": "Best way to choose random element from weighted list", "text": "I want to create a simple game. Every so often, a power up should appear. Right now the different kinds of power ups are stored in an array. However, not every power up should appear equally often: For instance, a score multiplier should appear much more often than an extra life. What is the best/fastest way to pick an element at random from a list where some of the elements should be picked more often than others?"}
{"_id": "210482", "title": "Is a NoSQL database suitable for me?", "text": "I'm developing a WPF application whose core functionality involves creating a large object graph (often tens of thousands of entities) which the user can modify certain parts of, then save to a database. A graph can also be subsequently retrieved, modified and saved again. It's feasible that a user can create dozens of these graphs per day. The app also provides the user with different ways to search the entities in the database (predominantly text searches on various fields), presenting the search results to the user and allowing the user to select one, which will result in the relevant entity graph being retrieved in full and presented for the user to view and modify as above. Currently I'm using Entity Framework and SQL Express, but I'm uneasy about certain aspects of the architecture and design, and the client isn't keen on having to install SS. I've only recently come across the concept of NoSql databases, and sounds like they might be a good fit for what I'm doing, but I have a couple of questions. First, I'm assuming performance wouldn't be any worse than EF when reading or writing one of these object graphs? What about my app's search functionality? Will a NoSql db support this sort of thing, and what would the performance be like, bearing in mind the size and quantity of \"documents\" that I'm likely to have. What about lookup (reference) data? Would I duplicate such data in each NoSQL document, or would I keep it all in a single NoSql document and store their IDs in the main documents? Finally, any recommendations for a product? MongoDb and RavenDb seem to be the main OSS contenders for Windows."}
{"_id": "171192", "title": "A better JavaDoc?", "text": "The standard JavaDoc template(Doclet) didn't change much until the recent JDK7. In my opinion, JDK7 template only made it even more difficult to browse. I looked at several third-party doclets, but none is what I want. So I started to design a new open source JavaDoc template from scratch to improve the usability. Here's something I thought about,   * Searching. It should be done at client side to make it working on your local file system.   * IDE-like interactive navigation. The standard JavaDoc uses two frames to show packages and classes separately, which is far less usable than an Eclipse-like navigator. What made it even worse is that if you clicked inside the right side frame, the package index and class index will not refresh accordingly. You have no idea where you are.   * URLs. One drawback of the frames is that the URL do not change according to the frames. It's very frustrating that you can't send a JavaDoc URL to someone unless you explicitly check the URL of the individual frame.   * Look and feel. You don't need to be a designer to see JavaDoc is ugly. I want to make JavaDoc better and I want to make sure I do it right. The question for you to answer is, What you expect a better JavaDoc should be?"}
{"_id": "177783", "title": "Strategy for versioning on a public repo", "text": "Suppose I'm developing a (javascript) library which is hosted on a public repo (e.g. github). My aim in terms of how version numbers are assigned and incremented is to follow the guidelines of semantic versioning. Now, there's a number of files in my project which compose the actual lib and a number of files that 'support it', the latter being docs, a test suite, etc. My perspective this far has been that version numbers should only apply to the actual lib - not the project as a whole - since the lib alone is 'the unit' that defines the public API. However I'm not satisfied with this approach as, for example, a fix in the test suite constitutes an 'improvement' in my project, which will not be reflected in the version number (or the docs which contain a reference to it). On a more practical level, various tools, such as package managers, may (understandably) not play along with this strategy. For example, when trying to publish a change which is not reflected in the version number, `npm publish` fails with the suggestion \"Bump the 'version' field set the --force flag, or npm unpublish\". Am I doing it wrong?"}
{"_id": "102009", "title": "Can I take a year off without hurting my career?", "text": "I've been working since I graduated for the past year at a bank as a developer, first starting out maintaining a legacy application, then transitioning into developing new workflows. The work's okay, but my employer doesn't really understand how development works. I am considering taking an opportunity to teach English in a foreign country for a year. By the time I leave I will have been working for two years as a developer. Could taking a year off negatively effect my career in the long run when I come back to try and find employment?"}
{"_id": "109436", "title": "Why do programmers use one-based indexing for line numbers in source code?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why isn't the line count in Visual Studio zero-based? Why isn't the top line in a source code file labelled line number 0? i.e. in a source file which was 10 lines long, I would expect line numbers would be 0-9, but they're not! Now `grep`, `awk`, `sed` etc all seem to number from 1, so I'm assuming it's an established convention for a good reason. It occurred to me recently that, for almost every other structure a programmer has to deal with in their day to day work, the convention is to count from 0 - and a source file is as much like a list of lines as a line is like a list of chars (afaik list of chars is invariably 0-indexed). I had to actually open up my text editor and sanity check that the top line of a file was labelled line number 1! I was just wondering if there _is_ a good reason for this or if it's just an unfortunate historical convention."}
{"_id": "52877", "title": "What simple game is good to learn OO principles?", "text": "I have to come up with a project propsal for my students, here are some details:   1. The design should be gove over OO concepts: encapsulation, interfaces, inheritance, abstract classes   2. Idealy a game, to keep interest high   3. No GUI, just the console   4. Effective time to finish this: ~ 6 days (1 person per proj) I have found one nice example of a game with carnivore and herbivore cells in a drop of water (array), it's a game of life twist. It is a bit too simple. Any ideeas? Aditional info: \\- language is C# \\- no AI and no complex rules"}
{"_id": "113800", "title": "What's the difference between syntax and semantics?", "text": "I've always thought that referring to the syntax of a language was the same as referring to the semantics of a language. But I've been informed that apparently that's not the case. What's the difference?"}
{"_id": "113805", "title": "Are the goals of Startup Weekend realistic?", "text": "I'm planning to attend Startup Weekend and I'm trying to see if what they're pitching is actually viable. On their front page, they say: > No talk. All action. Launch a startup in 54 hours. Is that realistic? Do these types of events provide the level of networking and information required to pull something like this off?"}
{"_id": "224419", "title": "Should content be distributed with applications using Open Source license?", "text": "I have been developing a database-driven web application with extensive contents. The application is set to release using a GNU GPL v3 license. Whereas the content would be licensed using a Creative Commons license. To provide a brief context, this is an e-learning site, where I provide some kind of learning materials. Additionally, I am planning to provide a database dump along with the source code. The reason being, one would be able to setup and actually use the application given the contents. I have two questions in this regard:   1. Should I actually include the database dump along with the source code? If I don't, a user would require to create everything by his own, which is not desirable.   2. If the above answer is \"yes\", what license is applicable to the physical file containing the database contents? Please note that it is not possible to use any other type of licenses for the code and content, and both are to be licensed. P.S.: In case this question seems off-topic, could you please point to a more relevant site?"}
{"_id": "240849", "title": "Why XML is meant to be Software and Hardware independent?", "text": "While studying the features of XML, I got to know that XML is software and hardware independent. Can anyone explain me why it is meant like that?"}
{"_id": "223426", "title": "A good design pattern for a Web API where models/enities are searchable by foreign keys", "text": "I was hoping someone might have some ideas on how to create a RESTful web API where models/entities are searchable by a foreign key. I see a a lot of tutorials where the functionality consist of listing all records in the entire model or retrieving a single record from the model by a primary key, but not by an arbitrary/foreign key. It my be as simple as checking for extra conditions in the request but I thought I would get some advice all the same."}
{"_id": "37263", "title": "How do you deal with web designers who are too afraid to read and touch PHP code?", "text": "I've been hired to make a website and am working with a designer (who happens to be the guy who is in contact with the client and hired me, so no, I can't kick his ass out =) ) who's too afraid to touch into the php code, and is too newbie in html and css to give me good enough models, so the work of today will be going through his new html model of a half-programmed page and removing `<div>`s and changing classes and the such. Is there some kind of tool, or some better workflow in order to make this easier for both of us? Maybe I'm dealing with this the wrong way altogether, I'm new to web development, and I don't know enough HTML/CSS (and he supposedly does) to have him just give me a graphic mock-up and do the whole thing, so what we're doing is he gives me a static HTML page that looks like he wants, and I put `<?php ?>` around it =) Can anyone give me some advice on this?"}
{"_id": "226416", "title": "In Scrum, who verifies \"Done\"?", "text": "I am a QA/Test manager in my organization and until today I verified the quality of the software (tests written and executed and bugs fixed). Who will verify this in Scrum? How do I know that the team wrote and executed all the right tests? On the other hand I'm afraid that if I continue to do the verification the team will not feel empowered enough. But I need some verification process that \"Done\" is indeed \"Done\". What do you suggest?"}
{"_id": "37260", "title": "Is there an OSS license that works for this:", "text": "Say you started as SaaS service with freemium business model such 37Signals - Basecamp or Dropbox etc.. Is there an OSS license that says that you can use the source code etc.. but you cant release a SaaS based on it, esssentially released in good faith with non-compete expectations. e.g. if 37Signals released the source for highrise, basecamp etc.. someone could start 37signals4lesss.com (albeit once they built the same bit of provisioning logic) and damage the core business model."}
{"_id": "68191", "title": "Mimic the functionality of Urban Airship", "text": "My boss wants a feature that \"mimics\" the functionality of Urban Airship... in two weeks. What can I say to him?"}
{"_id": "194674", "title": "Should we use a Maven Multi-Module Project in our Scenario?", "text": "**The Situation** I'm currently working in project that develops several RESTful services that partly interact with each other. As an example:   * Service A uses Service B   * Service C uses nothing   * Service D uses Service C   * most of the Services use a common Utillities project. There is NO actual code sharing between the services, they strictly rely on the defined RESTful API. Util contains helpers for test, helpers for the security lib, .... Currently every project is stand alone in their own git repository. During development there were some moments when this was slightly anoying:   * multiple places to do dependency management (services share dependencies to third-party libs)   * every project has to be (maven) released seperately (personaly i like that)   * when working \"between\" projects (working on a service and working on util because of that) lead to 2 review requests, because of 2 project (pull-requests) **The Question** One in the Team proposed as a solution to above problems to merge all git repositories and projects into one git repository and one maven multi module projects. Beside my own misgivings about the idea (no code sharing, only util as a common dependency, reliance on APIs between some (not all) services,...) i would like to know: **Are there known Advantages/Disadvantages of this Plan?** I don't like it makes a bad argument."}
{"_id": "157097", "title": "Separation of concerns and security", "text": "The system I am developing is designed to have multiple organizations, with users and roles for each organization. Some organizations can interact, some can not, and generally organizations are not allowed to see or modify each others data with some exceptions. I have a model class A that manipulates the data storage in a permanent storage container of some kind. I have a controller class B that validates input (including access rights verification) to objects of class A. The controller classes are in a separate library from the model classes. All user interaction is performed from view classes which are again in a separated library (in this case exposed as web services). However, it seems that there is a possible security risk in keeping access control logic separate from the model, since no security checks will be performed if the model is not accessed by its associated controller and is accessed instead by some other code due to some malicious attacker or programmer error. Should I place the security logic in the same model classes weaving these concerns together or should I keep the separation as I have now?"}
{"_id": "157095", "title": "Multi cores/CPUs with locks", "text": "I'm not sure how the locks will work with multi processors/cores, I'm going to use shared memory in my application or FIFO, what worries me is the locks, I have a server with 2-CPU, how the lock will be able to lock a variable on one CPU while the another operation went to the 2nd CPU for the same variable? I'm in Linux environment using C, I've searched the web for some useful info, appreciate your help"}
{"_id": "113716", "title": "Are there some good algorithms for implementing a Heap that minimizes fragmentation?", "text": "Right now I'm trying to create a Heap that requires 8-byte alignment, and was looking around online for some good methods that would minimize the amount of fragmentation. Less fragmentation is ideal, and even the ones that will slow down a lot are a consideration (but speed is also a sub-goal here) Has anyone had any experience with Heaps who could let me know what to watch out for when going about this? Any input is appreciated"}
{"_id": "146989", "title": "Parallel Testing options in Agile Development?", "text": "I've read through some very good resources on the internet trying to find out if my initial proposed testing process is a valid option. So please any advice or recommendations are appreciated. Currently we have a `Dev` and `Test` environment which has served our needs fairly well so far. We are having QA and UAT test off the same `Test` environment, however our QA testers are complaining that having both teams test in the same environment is causing problems with verifying test scripts and I can see how this could be a problem. However, I don't want to have to wait for `QA` to be done testing before `UAT` even takes a look at it, this seems to be against the ideal's in agile development. I suggested the following new process/architecture to allow parallel QA and UAT testing: Have separate `QA` and `UAT` environments that allow different modules/versions to be tested in parallel. So we can have `QA` testing `ModuleA` while `UAT` is testing `ModuleB`. We basically need/want them to test different modules (or the same) in parallel without interfering with each other. I presented this to our Systems Engineers (so they can build the environment) and they said that `UAT` should never happen until `QA` is done. From my understanding of the agile process at this time, I would like to push my proposed process further, but maybe I'm overlooking something? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "184020", "title": "Is it necessary to learn Makefiles when you have an IDE?", "text": "I have recently began studying Makefiles in Linux. I have ample experience developing applications with advanced IDEs, such as Visual Studio. My first impression and query after reading a few tutorials: is there any need to study Makefiles? Perhaps the IDEs are using it internally, but is this something everyone should learn eventually?"}
{"_id": "180919", "title": "Is a day really 24 hours long?", "text": "I asked this question on Stack Overflow and it was closed as off-topic. I'll ask it here hoping it will do better. This might sound silly, but bear with me. I've been working a lot with intervals and dates lately. One question that bothers me: is a day really 24 hours long? I'm interested by the answer both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. Let's take today for example, the day started on 13 Dec 2012 00:00:00 and according to (all) date-time implementations it will end on 14 Dec 2012 00:00:00. This is correct and the difference between the two dates is a complete 24 hours. The problem with this is that the end date is perceived as \"tomorrow\". Most people thinking that a day starts on 00:00:00 and ends on 23:59:59. So the question is: is today a closed interval at the start, and opened at the end, like [start..end), with the end being very very close to 14 Dec 2012 00:00:00 (so not really a complete 24 hours)? Or is it actually closed at both ends with a full 24 hours between them?"}
{"_id": "71848", "title": "Contrary method subjects for identical method names", "text": "I've got method naming paralysis! Say I've got one class - \"System\", and another class \"User\". Now, if I want to notify user(s), I can call:               // this method can notify individuals and collections of users     System.notify(User,message)      but if I want to simply notify the specific user               // this notifies the user     User.notify(message)      My dilemma is that in the case of \"System\" - the subject of the **notify** method is the User(s) argument. In the case of the \"User\" implementation, the User itself is the subject. So, the classes have the same method, arguably performing very similar jobs - but the \"direction\" of the methods are contrary. Do you suffer from naming paralysis? How do you deal with it? What naming pattern would you use here?"}
{"_id": "71847", "title": "With all of these services, how can I not be anemic?", "text": "Where do we draw the line between delegation and encapsulation of business logic? It seems to me that the more we delegate, the more anemic we become. However, delegation also promotes reuse and the DRY principal. So what is appropriate to delegate and what should remain in our domain models? Take the following concerns as examples: **Authorization**. Should the domain object be responsible for maintaining its access control rules (such as a CanEdit property) or should that be delegated to another component/service solely responsible for managing access, e.g. IAuthorizationService.CanEdit(object)? Or should it be a combination of the two? Perhaps the domain object has a CanEdit property which delegates to an internal IAuthorizationService to perform the actual work? **Validation**. The same discussion as above relates to validation. Who maintains the rules and who is responsible for evaluating them? On the one hand, the state of the object should belong to that object and validity is a state but we don't want to rewrite the code used to evaluate rules for every domain object. We _could_ use inheritance in this case... **Object Creation**. Factory class versus factory methods versus 'newing' up an instance. If we use a separate factory class, we are able to isolate and encapsulate creation logic but at the expense of opening our object's state to the factory. This can be managed if our domain layer is in a separate assembly by exposing an internal constructor used by the factory but this becomes a problem if there are multiple creation patterns. And, if all the factory is doing is calling the right constructor, what's the point of having the factory? Factory methods on the class eliminate the issue with opening up the object's internal state but since they are static, we aren't able to break dependencies through injection of a factory interface like we can with a separate factory class. **Persistence**. One could argue that if our domain object is going to expose CanEdit while delegating the responsibility to perform the authorization check to another party (IAuthorizationService) why not have a Save method on our domain object that does the same thing? This would allow us to evaluate the internal state of the object to determine if the operation can be performed without breaking encapsulation. Of course it requires that that we inject the repository instance into our domain object, which smells a bit to me, so do we raise a domain event instead and allow a handler to perform the persistance operation? See where I'm going with this? Rockford Lhotka has a great discussion about his reasons for going the Class- in-Charge route for his CSLA framework and I have a bit of history with that framework and can see his idea of business objects paralleling domain objects in many ways. But trying to become more adherent to good DDD ideals, I'm wondering when collaboration becomes too much. If I end up with an IAuthorizationService, IValidator, IFactory and IRepository for my aggregate root, what's left? Is having a Publish method that changes the state of the object from Draft to Published enough to consider the class a non-anemic domain object? Your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "152759", "title": "Should I add an \"Abstract\" prefix to my abstract classes?", "text": "Suppose I have an abstract class named `Task`. Is there a standard or convention that would suggest I should name it `AbstractTask` instead?"}
{"_id": "180917", "title": "what tools should I use for quality assurance and testing for front end javascript?", "text": "I am using jquery and HTML 5 techniques (like File API, HistoryAPI) extensively in a project I am working on. I was wondering what tools I can use for   1. quality assurance my javascript and front end code   2. unit testing my javascript and front end code Let me share some background info. If somebody asked me about this for PHP, I would say, use PHPUnit for writing unit tests, use PHP CodeSniffer and then with the help of Phing and Jenkins, put this all into a single build process. I basically want to know if something similar can be pulled off with javascript using Jenkins. Do share your actual experiences. Please advise me on the most beginner- friendly ones. Disclosure: I cross-posted in G+ community for javascript and HTML5."}
{"_id": "180915", "title": "Software licensing: free [as in gratis] and copyleft", "text": "I've been reading about software licensing as I feel that I'm at a stage now, where I should probably have some sort of a license associated with my code. What I am looking for is a copyleft (weak or strong) license that basically is very liberal. So I'd like the license to allow anybody to do anything with the code/program with the exception that nobody can ever make money from the code. I don't want anybody to be able to get my code and sell it, or to get my code and sell it or get my code, modify it in any way and sell it. I don't want anybody to be able to make money from any code I write. Aside from that, I don't care how it is used as long as the original author of the code (in this case, me) is associated with the code that I wrote. I've looked at the GPL license, the MIT license and a few others and I can't find what I want. Does anybody have any suggestions? If it matters, the license will be associated with C/C++, assembler and Ruby programs."}
{"_id": "71842", "title": "What are the security risks/vulnerabilities every C programmer must be aware of?", "text": "There are many security risks coming from having close contact to the hardware as opposed to using well-tested and proved APIs from high level programming languages. It is much easier to cause a buffer overflow in C than in a language such as Java. What are the risks or vulnerabilities (e.g. buffer overflows) that every C programmer should be aware of (I.E. vulnerabilities relevant to C programmers)? What problems could these lead to? How to avoid them, and what are common mistakes causing these to occur in programs?"}
{"_id": "157324", "title": "Decision trees vs. Neural Networks", "text": "I'm implementing a machine learning structure to try and predict fraud on financial systems like banks, etc... This means that there is a lot of different data that can be used to train the model eg. card number, card holder name, amount, country, etc... I'm having trouble deciding which structure is the best for this problem. I have some experience with decision trees but currently I have started to question if a neural network would be better for this kind of problem. Also if any other method would be best please feel free to enlighten me. Which are the pros and cons of each structure and which structure would be the best for this problem? Also I'm not sure about this fact but I think decision trees have a great advantage over neural networks in terms of execution speed. This is important because speed is also a key factor in this project."}
{"_id": "189899", "title": "How can I get git to clone untracked files", "text": "I'm new to git. I'm using a development platform called automation studio. This development tool creates all sorts of files and directories which it needs to maintain runtime and IO information for the target processor. These informations are specific for each project. Therefore these file should not be under version control because they are provided and maintainded by the platform. Otherwise one cannot run the automation studio without these files. I put the names of these files and directories in an .gitignore file. Then I cloned myrepository to a bare repository on a server. Then I cloned back to mynewrepository on my local machine. Unfortunatedly in mynewrepository all files and directories listed in .gitignore were missing. Therefore the automation studio platform failed to work. How can I exclude these files and the content of these directories from versioning but keep the them all in the repository in order to clone back a fully working project for automation studio?"}
{"_id": "157323", "title": "DDD, Saga & Event-sourcing: Can a Compensate Action simply be a delete on the event store?", "text": "I realize the above question probably raises a few 'what??'s, but let me try to explain : I'm trying to wrap my head on a couple of related concepts, basically the Saga-pattern ( http://www.rgoarchitects.com/Files/SOAPatterns/Saga.pdf) in combination with Event-sourcing (A DDD-concept: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design) A good post that wraps it together: http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/2010/09/cqrs-sagas-with-event-sourcing-part-ii- of-ii/ I'm getting to the question in a minute, but I think I have to try to summarize what I understand of it first (which might well be wrong, so please correct if that's the case) since this might well impact why I'm asking the question to begin with:   1. The Saga pattern is a sort of broker that given an action (end-user, automated, etc. essentially anything that is going to change data) divides that action up in business activities and sends each of these activities as messages to a Message Bus which in turn sends it to the respective aggregate roots to be taken care of.    2. These aggregate roots can operate completely autonomously (nice separation of concerns, great scalability, etc. )    3. A Saga-instance itself doesn't contain any business logic, that is contained in the aggregate roots it sends activities to. The only 'logic' contained in the Saga is 'process'-logic, (often implemented as a Statemachine), which determines based on actions received (as well as follow-up events) what to do (i.e: what activities to send)    4. The Saga-patterns implements a kind of distributed transaction pattern. I.e: when one of the aggregate roots (which again work autonomously, without knowing of eachothers existense) fails, the entire action might have to be rolled back.    5. This is implemented by having all aggregate roots, upon completion of their activity report back to the Saga. (In case of success as well as error)    6. In case all aggregate roots return a success, the internal statemachine if the Saga determines what to do next (or decides it's done)    7. In case of failure, the Saga issues to all aggregate roots that took part in the last action a so called Compensation Action, i.e: an action to undo the last action each of the aggregate roots did.    8. This might be simply doing a 'Minus 1 vote' if the action was \"plus 1 vote' but it could be more complicated like restoring a blogpost to it's previous version.   9. Event-sourcing (see the blogpost combining the two) aims to externalize saving the results of each of the activities that each of the aggregate roots undertake to a centralized Event Store (the changes are called 'events' in this context)    10. This Event store is the 'single version of the truth' and can be use to replay the state of all entities simply by iterating the events stored (essentially like an event log)   11. Combining the two (i.e: letting aggregate roots use Event-sourcing to outsource saving their changes before reporting back to the Saga) enables lots of nice possibilities, one of which concerns my question... I felt I needed to get this off of my shoulder, since it's a lot to grasp in one go. Given this context/mindset (again, please correct if wrong) **the question:** When an aggregate root receives a Compensate Action and if that aggregate root has outsourced it's state-changes using Event-sourcing, wouldn't the Compensate Action in all situations just be a delete of the last event in the Event Store for that given Aggregate Root? (Assuming the persist- implementation allows deletes) That would make sense to me a lot (and would be another great benefit of this combination) but as I said I might be making these assumptions based on a incorrect/incomplete understanding of these concepts. I hope this didn't get too long-winded. Thanks."}
{"_id": "189895", "title": "How to handle User Story at end of sprint if users want changes?", "text": "We just adopted Scrum and completed our first sprint (yeah!) At the Sprint Review, we demoed a User Story for feature X. This feature X worked exactly how described in the User Story from initial business analysis and details we worked out during product backlog grooming and sprint planning. However, after the user saw feature X in action they wanted some tweaks (not shocking, purpose of the demo and feedback loop). My question is: **(a)** Do we consider the original user story done and create a new user story to handle the new requirements in a future sprint? **(b)** Do we consider the original user story unfinished, roll into backlog with more detailed requirements that will turn into more tasks in the next sprint? If **(b)** , in sprint planning do we re-estimate the story point weight of the story now knowing that 90% of the work is complete? So if it was originally 5 pts it might now be 2 pts?"}
{"_id": "197703", "title": "Log defects for failures of other systems?", "text": "We build products which often integrate with third party systems. Sometimes these systems error, which in turn causes our system to error. For example, we call a web service when a user updates their data after we've saved to our own database. While testing, the service on the other end is not functioning correctly. I can see both sides; on one hand the software won't work until the service is fixed, and so we need to track that somehow. On the other, there's nothing we are going to do that will resolve the defect and having a critical defect in our system sitting there seems to be a waste (and may concern others looking at the tracking system wondering why we have defects we're not acting on). My question is, should these be tracked as defects in our tracking system, or should our QA people not be logging defects if they know this is the reason (typically they do as they'll ask me if unsure)? Edit: A few people are making assumptions. The web service were calling is developed by another shop, and we are both being paid by the same client to integrate our systems. Our UI handles the error correctly it doesn't show a ysod. It tells the user they cannot change their account at this time. The defect being reported by our qa team is of course that the user ought to be able to change their account, but they don't know if the issue is something we need to fix or the other company. According to our requirements, we cannot save the users changes if the service call fails. Its been decided that these failures should be uncommon enough that this design is ok. Were also working with the other company to iron out some details that have come up during our testing."}
{"_id": "189891", "title": "What's the max age you can still be employed as a programmer?", "text": "I know some a few programmers at my work around 40 years old. I don't remember seeing a programmer at work who is 50+. We have 600 people, of which probably 100 are programmers. Is it uncommon to still be working as a programmer at 50+? One can argue, you would be better off managing people, but not everyone is good at that, and some people just want to do the actual work because of passion, etc. Would it be weird if you are still trying to work at 50, or even 60? I imagine it could create all sorts of social issues, i.e. working in games where most people are very young, straight out of college, etc. I feel it would make it hard to form friendships, due to age difference. Or how would your expertise be considered compared to others, etc. Anyone has experience or opinions about these?"}
{"_id": "197707", "title": "MVC View Question", "text": "In my PHP web page (index.php), I have a simple script that calls a \"page\" class, and then builds the page from it. Index.php executes methods within an instance of the 'page' class, such as \"add_to_body(\"bla bla bla\")\". It can then call a \"build()\" method, where the page class will return a string with the user input and some other HTML elements pre-added in, that index.php can echo. Essentially the page class is a template of sorts. I'm trying to have some kind of MVC hierarchy here (I'm a student learning about programming 'best practices' in my own time), my question is: would 'index.php' be a view? Or, would the instance of the page class be the view (as it constructs the page, but it doesn't actually show it, it returns a string), or: would the 'page' class be a controller? Also, is a view 'allowed' to talk to (eg: get data from) a controller (for example: by calling a method that controller owns)? Many thanks for your help!"}
{"_id": "211754", "title": "What is the preferred strategy for editing data from a database?", "text": "We are redesigning an old VB6 application in Net. The application makes extensive use of a database and includes management of club members and their results in the competitions that they partake in. So, if we are editing a club member's name, address, etc. it is obvious not to send the data back to the database until the entire edit or add operation has been completed by the user. But how to do this when registering and editing scores of matches? The advantage of sending each added or edited score directly to the database is that it enables live updates of the rankings. The disadvantage is that undoing changes may be more difficult and that there may arise performance problems when the connection to the database has a high latency. The latter problem might come up at some stage, but for the unforseeable future we will work with desktop versions of the database. I would be interested in descriptions of best practices and live experiences. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "127716", "title": "How Find operation works in a Binary Tree?", "text": "I am having a confusion in this Binary Tree Coding. I know the concept of binary tree and I know how those work and all, but in this source code i am confused with \"Find\" operation. I cannot understand how it works and all. Please help me, I am so interested in this area.               package binarytree_task4;                 class Node          {              private static class Equivalent {                  public Equivalent() {             }         }                  public Equivalent data;              public Node right;              public Node left;                   public Node(Equivalent data)              {                      this(data, null, null);             }                  public Node(Equivalent data, Node left, Node right)              {                      this.data = data;                 this.left = left;                 this.right = right;             }            }                class binarytree {                   public static void main(String[] args) {              }              private static class Equivalent {                  public Equivalent() {             }         }              private static class present {                  public present() {             }         }         private Node root;          private int size;              public binarytree()          {             size = 0;             root = null;         }                   public void printTree()          {             if(size == 0)                 System.out.println(\"Empty\");             else {                 System.out.println(\"Tree contents:\");                    inorder(root);             }         }                   public void inorder(Node present)         {             if(present != null)              {                 inorder(present.left);                 System.out.println(present.data);                 inorder(present.right);             }         }                public void Insert(Equivalent data)          {             root = Insert(data, root);         }                   private Node Insert(Equivalent data, Node present)          {             if( present == null)              {                 size++;                  present = new Node(data, null, null);              }                  else if(data.compareTo(present.data)<0)             {                 present.left = Insert(data,present.left);                     }                  else if(data.compareTo(present.data)>0)                     {                       present.right = Insert(data, present.right);             }                  return present;         }                          public boolean Find(Equivalent data)          {             return Find(data, root);             }                   private boolean Find(Equivalent data, Node present)          {                  if(present == null )              {                 return false;             }             else if(present.data == data)             {                 return true;                 }             else if(data.compareTo(present.data)<0)               {                 return Find(data, present.left);              }             else              {                 return Find(data, present.right);              }         }                        public boolean Delete(Equivalent key){                  if (Find(key)){                 Delete(key);                 return true;             }             else{                 return false;             }         }              public void delete(Equivalent key)          {              Node present = root;             Node parent = root;                  boolean isLeftChild = true;                       while(present.data.compareTo(key) != 0)                     {                      parent = present;                 if(present.data.compareTo(key) > 0)                       {                     isLeftChild = true;                      present = present.left;                  }                 else                                             {                     isLeftChild = false;                      present = present.right;                  }                 if(present == null)                                 return ;                         }                     if(present.left == null && present.right == null)              {                 if(present == root)                      root = null;                                 else if(isLeftChild)                           parent.left = null;                     else                                                  parent.right = null;             }                  else if(present.right == null)                    if(present == root)                           root = present.left;                  else if(isLeftChild)                      parent.left = present.left;                   else                      parent.right = present.left;                    else if(present.left == null)                     if(present == root)                                   root = present.right;                     else if(isLeftChild)                      parent.left = present.right;                  else                       parent.right = present.right;                     else              {                      Node successor = getSuccessor(present);                       if(present == root)                       root = successor;                 else if(isLeftChild)                          parent.left= successor;                  else                     parent.right = successor;                      successor.left = present.left;               }            }                  private Node getSuccessor(Node delNode)        {             Node successorParent = delNode;               Node successor = delNode;                 Node present = delNode.right;                   while(present != null)              {                            successorParent = successor;                  successor = present;                              present = present.left;                       }             if(successor != delNode.right)              {                       successorParent.left = successor.right;                   successor.right = delNode.right;                      }             return successor;         }               }"}
{"_id": "137599", "title": "Is continuous creation and deletion of tables a sign of an architectural flaw?", "text": "Recently I had a discussion with a developer who mentioned that during program development, they routinely create and delete tables and columns on a regular basis while working on new features and justified things by saying that this is normal when using an agile development process. As most of my background is in a waterfall development environment, I wonder if this is actually considered proper under agile development, or if this might be a sign of an underlying problem, either with the program architecture or with their following of the agile process."}
{"_id": "147587", "title": "The Box Model: Internet Explorer vs. W3C", "text": "Today, the Internet Explorer Box Model problem is mostly a non-issue. Most web developers place a `<!DOCTYPE>` tag to enforce standards compliance, and nobody really cares about supporting Internet Explorer 5.5 anymore. However, some developers have come up with subjective, conceptual arguments in defense of the IE box model. They've claimed that the IE box model is more \"intuitive\" than the W3C model, because the W3C model measures the _content_ of the box, whereas the IE model measures the box itself: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/y0Tkz.png) I can see their point of view, but it's basically a subjective argument, and the most important thing is _standards_ compliance. However, recently I've come to prefer the IE box model for serious **practical** reasons. The W3C box model makes it difficult to dynamically resize an element to the exact onscreen pixel width of another element. The reason is that the `style.width` property of an element doesn't account for the total onscreen size of the element: you also need to take into account any additional border and padding. This isn't a problem if both elements use the same CSS class - but if they have _different_ CSS classes, this can become incredibly challenging. Suppose we have two divs: A and B. A is hard-coded in the html as a 400px div, whereas B is dynamically created using Javascript. Visually, we want B to be the exact width of A. Under the old IE Box model, this is trivial. We simply say: `B.style.width = A.style.width`, or even `B.style.width = A.offsetWidth + \"px\"`. But with the W3C box model, this isn't so simple. Now we also have to worry about style sheets. If B has the same CSS class as A, we can just say `B.style.width = A.style.width`. But if it doesn't - and we might not _want_ it to for aesthetic reasons - we're in trouble. Now we have to take into account the total pixels in the border and padding of both A and B. This can be particularly difficult if the border and padding are specified in inconsistent units (a common occurrence since border is often a 1px line, whereas padding might be specified in ems). Then we're faced with the quasi- impossible task of converting to a common unit (em to px or px to em). All of this just to get two divs to line up exactly on screen. So basically, the W3C box model forces us to take into account CSS border and padding issues when we set the size of an element, whereas the IE box model doesn't, since the width measures the _entire size_ of the box (end-to-end), rather than the _content_ of the box. This makes it a lot easier to dynamically size elements in relation to each other. All of this seems like a pretty powerful reason to favor the IE box-model over the W3C model (at least conceptually - of course in practice the IE box-model is dead). **Question** : Why did the W3C choose this box model? Are there some _advantages_ of the W3C box model that I'm simply not seeing? Or am I simply exaggerating the problem here?"}
{"_id": "147583", "title": "Best way to parse a file", "text": "I'm trying to find a better solution for making a parser to some of the famous file formats out there such as: EDIFACT and TRADACOMS. If you aren't familiar with these standards then check out this example from Wikipedia: > See below for an example of an EDIFACT message used to answer to a product > availability request:-               UNA:+.? '     UNB+IATB:1+6XPPC+LHPPC+940101:0950+1'     UNH+1+PAORES:93:1:IA'     MSG+1:45'     IFT+3+XYZCOMPANY AVAILABILITY'     ERC+A7V:1:AMD'     IFT+3+NO MORE FLIGHTS'     ODI'     TVL+240493:1000::1220+FRA+JFK+DL+400+C'     PDI++C:3+Y::3+F::1'     APD+714C:0:::6++++++6X'     TVL+240493:1740::2030+JFK+MIA+DL+081+C'     PDI++C:4'     APD+EM2:0:130::6+++++++DA'     UNT+13+1'     UNZ+1+1'      The UNA segment is optional. If present, it specifies the special characters that are to be used to interpret the remainder of the message. There are six characters following UNA in this order:   * component data element separator (: in this sample)   * data element separator (+ in this sample)   * decimal notification (. in this sample)   * release character (? in this sample)   * reserved, must be a space   * segment terminator (' in this sample) * * * As you can see it's just some data formatted in a special way waiting to be parsed (much like **XML** files). Now my system is built on PHP and I was able to create parser using regular expressions for each segment, but the problem is not everybody implements the standard perfectly. Some suppliers tend to ignore optional segments and fields entirely. Others may choose to send more data than others. That's why I was forced to create validators for segments and fields to test if the file was correct or not. You can imagine the nightmare of regular expressions I'm having right now. In addition each supplier needs many modifications to the regular expressions that I tend to build a parser for each supplier. * * * **Questions:** 1- Is this the best practice for parsing files (using regular expressions)? 2- Is there a better solution for parsing files (maybe there are ready made solution out there)? Will it be able to show what segment is missing or if the file is corrupted? 3- If I have to build my parser anyway what design pattern or methodology should I use? **Notes:** I read somewhere about yacc and ANTLR, but I don't know if they match my needs or not!"}
{"_id": "247394", "title": "Developing pages in MVC website that will be specifically used as an iframe by another website", "text": "I have a website where I'm going to be partnering with another website. They want to view one specific page of mine, in their [WordPress] website. They aren't developers, so I looked into how to do this. At first glance, it appears as though the WordPress iFrame plugin is the easiest route. My next thought is, they'll probably still want to show their own header and footer in their page, while showing the content of my page in the iFrame. No big deal. I'm thinking of developing a View on my [MVC 4] website that will be used ONLY for their iFrame purposes. Since they'll probably want their own headers, I'll probably design a page that uses no layout, and just a custom header and/or footer that shows that the information is coming from MY website. Here are my questions: 1) The page that will be displayed contains MANY anchor tags, if that's embedded in an iFrame, what happens if the user on THEIR website clicks the link in the iFrame? Does the iFrame page change, or does their ENTIRE page change? 2) Depending on the answer to #1, should I just disable all hyperlinks/anchor tags in the iFrame page on my site so it doesn't cause any funkyness on their site? 3) What if I WANT some hyperlinks on the iFrame page so they come visit my website? Is that a matter of telling them to put a real link on their site to my own? 4) What security concerns do I have with allowing a page of my own to be accessible via iFrame from another site? Should I only allow traffic to my iFrame page when it's from their site? If it's not from their site, then re- direct to my \"real\" page? Thanks all!"}
{"_id": "37849", "title": "Modelling work-flow plus interaction with a database - quick and accessible options", "text": "I'm wanting to model a (proposed) manufacturing line, with specific emphasis on interaction with a traceability database. That is, various process engineers have already mapped the manufacturing process - I'm only interested in the various stations along the line that have to talk to the DB. The intended audience is a mixture of project managers, engineers and IT people - the purpose is to identify:   * points at which the line interacts with the DB (perhaps going so far as indicating the Store Procs called at each point, perhaps even which parameters are passed.)   * the communication source (PC/Handheld device/PLC)   * the communication medium (wireless/fibre/copper)   * control flow (if leak test fails, unit is diverted to repair station) Basically, the model will be used as a focus different groups on outstanding tasks; for example, I'm interested in the DB and any front-end app needed, process engineers need to be thinking about the workflow and liaising with the PLC suppliers, the other IT guys need to make sure we have the hardware and comms in place. Obviously I could just improvise in Visio, but I was wondering if there was a particular modelling technique that might particularly suit my needs or my audience. I'm thinking of a visual model with supporting documentation (as little as possible, as much as is necessary). Clearly, I don't want something that will take me ages to (effectively) learn, nor one that will alienate non-technical members of the project team. So far I've had brief looks at BPMN, EPC Diagrams, standard Flow Diagrams... and I've forgotten most of what I used to know about UML... And I'm not against picking and mixing... as long as it is quick, clear and effective. Conclusion:   In the end, I opted for a quasi-workflow/dataflow diagram. I mapped out the parts of the manufacturing process that interact with the traceability DB, and indicated in a significantly-simplified form, the data flows and DB activity. Alongside which, I have a supporting document which outlines each process, the data being transacted for each process (a 'data dictionary' of sorts) and details of hardware and connectivity required. I can't decide whether is a product of genius or a crime against established software development practices, but I _do_ think that is will hit the mark for this particular audience."}
{"_id": "3129", "title": "Is there a canonical book on F#?", "text": "I'm planning to learn F#. I'm not a very beginner since I know Standard ML, C# and Erlang. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on F# (preferably with examples using WPF since I would like to use it for GUI- programming) ? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "187484", "title": "When to use nested resources in a RESTful API", "text": "I have two resources: users and links. Users can have several links associated with them. I have designed my RESTful API so that you can reach the links associated with a user at the following URI: `/users/:id/links` However, I always need to have a URI for just links \u2013 sometimes I might want all links, regardless of user. For this I have: `/links` Does this sound okay? Having two URIs for links? I wonder if I should instead reach the links for a user with a URI such as: `/links/user/:id` or `/links/?user=:id` This way, I only have one resource for links."}
{"_id": "170031", "title": "How much is modern programming still tied to underyling digital logic?", "text": "First of all: I've got no academic background. I'm working primarily with Java and Spring and I'm also fond of web programming and relational databases. I hope I'm using the right terms and I hope that this vague question makes some sense. Today the following question came to my mind: How much is modern programming still tied to the underlying digital logic? With modern programming I mean concepts like OOP, AOP, Java 7, AJAX, \u2026 I hope you get the idea. Do they no longer need the digital logic with which computers are working internally? Or is binary logic still ubiquitous when programming this way? If I'd change the inner workings of a computer overnight, would it matter, because my programming techniques are already that abstract? * * * P. S.: With digital logic I mean the physical representation of everything \"inside\" the computer as zeroes and ones. * * * Changed \"binary\" to \"digital\"."}
{"_id": "115406", "title": "Is it more secure to hash a password multiple times?", "text": "I've read a few times that when storing passwords, it's good practice to 'double hash' the strings (eg. with md5 then sha1, both with salts, obviously). I guess the first question is, \"is this actually correct?\" If not, then please, dismiss the rest of this question :) The reason I ask is that on the face of it, I would say that this makes sense. However, when I think about it, every time a hash is rehashed (possibly with something added to it) all I can see is that there is a reduction in the upper bound on the final 'uniqueness'... that bound being related to the initial input. Let me put it another way: we have x number of strings that, when hashed, are reduced to y possible strings. That is to say, there are collisions in the first set. Now coming from the second set to the third, is it not possible for the same thing to occur (ie. collisions in the set of all possible 'y' strings that result in the same hash in the third set)? In my head, all I see is a 'funnel' for each hash function call, 'funneling' an infinite set of possibilities into a finite set and so on, but obviously each call is working on the finite set before it, giving us a set no larger than the input. Maybe an example will explain my ramblings? Take 'hash_function_a' that will give 'a' and 'b' the hash '1', and will give 'c' and 'd' the hash '2'. Using this function to store passwords, even if the password is 'a', I could use the password 'b'. Take 'hash_function_b' that will give '1' and '2' the hash '3'. If I were to use _it_ as a 'secondary hash' after 'hash_function_a' then even if the password is 'a' I could use 'b', 'c' or 'd'. On top of all of that, I get that salts should be used, but they don't really change the fact that each time we are mapping 'x' inputs to 'less than x' outputs. I don't think. Can someone please explain to me what it is that I am missing here? Thanks! EDIT: for what it's worth, I don't do this myself, I use bcrypt. And I'm not really concerned about whether or not it's useful for 'using up cycles' for a 'hacker'. I genuinely am just wondering whether or not the process reduces 'security' from a hash collision stand point."}
{"_id": "229643", "title": "What is special about JDBC that makes it unlikeable for JavaScript", "text": "Quoting from Selenium Architecture > A natural implementation would have been to provide a database connection to > the underlying data store, using something like JDBC. Eventually, we settled > on an API that closely models the underlying Javascript implementation > because something that modeled typical database access APIs wasn't > sympathetic to a Javascript implementation I have used both Java+JDBC and JavaScript. And I know that JDBC uses a (connection, query, disconnect) model, but could not understand what is special about JDBC that makes it unlikeable for JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "229642", "title": "Javascript Implementation Patterns for Server-side MVC Websites", "text": "I'm looking for information on common patterns for initializing and executing Javascript page by page in a \"traditional\" server-side MVC website architecture. A few months ago, my development team began, but abandoned, a major re- architecture of our company's primary web app, including a full front-end redesign. In the process, there was some debate about the architecture of the Javascript in the current version of the site, and whether it fit into a clear, modern design pattern. Now I've returned to the process of overhauling the front end of this and several other MVC websites (Ruby on Rails and MVC.net) to implement a responsive framework (Bootstrap), and in the process will again need to review then revamp and update a lot of Javascript. These web applications are NOT single-page Javascript applications (in fact, we are ripping out a lot of Ajax) or designed to require a Javascript MVC pattern; these apps are basically brochure, catalog and administrative sites that follow a server-side MVC pattern. The vast majority of the Javascript required is behavioral, pre-built plugins (JQuery and Bootstrap, et al) that execute on specific DOM nodes. _I'm going to give a very brief (as brief as I can be) run-down of the current architecture only in order to illustrate the scope and type of paradigm I'm talking about. Hopefully, it will help you understand the nature of the patterns I'm looking for, but I'm not looking for commentary on the specifics of this code._ What I've done in the past is relatively straight-forward and easy to maintain, but, as mentioned above, some of the other developers don't like the current architecture. Currently, on document ready, I execute whatever global Javascript needs to occur on every page, and then call a page-specific init function to initialize node-specific functionality, retrieving the init method from a JS object. On each page load, something like this will happen:               $(document).ready(function(){       $('header').menuAction();       App.pages.executePage('home','show'); //dynamic from framework request object     });      And the main App javascript is like               App = {       usefulGlobalVar: 0,       pages:       {         executePage: function(action, controller)         {             // if exists, App.pages[action][controller].init()         },         home:         {           show:           {              init: function()              {                 $('#tabs').tabs(); //et. al              },              normalizeName: function()              {                 // dom-specific utility function that                 // doesn't require a full-blown component/class/module              }           },           edit:               ...         },         user_profile:           ...       }     }      Any common features and functionality requiring modularization or compotentizing is done as needed with prototyping. For common implementation of plugins, I often extend JQuery, so I can easily initialize a plugin with the same options throughout the site. For example,               $('[data-tabs]').myTabs()      with this code in a utility javascript file:                (function($) {           $.fn.myTabs = function() {             this.tabs( {               //...common options             });           };         })      Pointers to articles, books or other discussions would be most welcome. Again, I am looking for a site-wide implementation pattern, NOT a JS MVC framework or general how-tos on creating JS classes or components. Thanks for your help!"}
{"_id": "229647", "title": "How to convey lifetime requirements?", "text": "Usually I use std::unique_ptr to convey ownership and pass in raw pointers as parameters when no ownership is implied. However, I almost never consider a nullptr to be acceptable as an argument, so it would be nice to use references to avoid this, but I'm not sure most people would expect that the object the parameter references needs to exist for the lifetime of the struct A without looking at the source code.               struct A {         A(B& b)         :  bPtr(&b) {;}              void method() {             // use bPtr         }              B* bPtr;     };      The questions are: 1) Is the only option here to stick with pointers and always check for nullptr? 3) Does the fact that A needs bPtr to be valid mean it should take a shared_ptr? If so I feel like I would use shared pointers practically everywhere. 2) Are there conventions that can help convey lifetime requirements for parameters to users besides comments and documentation?"}
{"_id": "229644", "title": "How to annotate method signature changes?", "text": "I'm developing a mini framework and I want to perform changes to existing methods. I know in order to deprecate a method I can use the `@deprecated` annotation. However, what annotation should I use to let the users know that I'm going to change the amount of parameters a method will receive or maybe the returned result? I'd like to know what annotations to use in PHP."}
{"_id": "154193", "title": "Should I continue my self-taught coding practice or learn how to do coding professionally?", "text": "Lately I've been getting professional work, hanging out with other programmers, and making friends in the industry. The only thing is I'm 100% self-taught. It's caused my style to extremely deviate from the style of those that are properly trained. It's the techniques and organization of my code that's different. It's a mixture of several things I do. I tend to blend several programming paradigms together. Like Functional and OO. I lean to the Functional side more than OO, but I see the use of OO when something would make more sense as an abstract entity. Like a game object. Next I also go the simple route when doing something. When in contrast, it seems like sometimes the code I see from professional programmers is complicated for the sake of it! I use lots of closures. And lastly, I'm not the best commenter. I find it easier just to read through my code than reading the comment. And most cases I just end up reading the code even if there are comments. Plus I've been told that, because of how simply I write my code, it's very easy to read it. I hear professionally trained programmers go on and on about things like unit tests. Something I've never used before so I haven't even the faintest idea of what they are or how they work. Lots and lots of underscores \"_\", which aren't really my taste. Most of the techniques I use are straight from me, or a few books I've read. Don't know anything about MVC, I've heard a lot about it though with things like backbone.js. I think it's a way to organize an application. It just confuses me though because by now I've made my own organizational structures. It's a bit of a pain. I can't use template applications at all when learning something new like with Ubuntu's Quickly. I have trouble understanding code that I can tell is from someone trained. Complete OO programming really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, yet that seems to be what EVERYONE else is strictly using. It's left me not that confident in the look of my code, or wondering whether I'll cause sparks when joining a company or maybe contributing to open source projects. In fact I'm rather scared of the fact that people will eventually be checking out my code. **Is this just something normal any programmer goes through or should I really look to change up my techniques?**"}
{"_id": "232951", "title": "how should I handle server error during ajax logout?", "text": "I need to write a handler for server error during user logout. What is a common practice?               ajax.post({         url: '/auth/logout'     }).done(function (response) {         switch (response.statusCode) {             case 200:             {                 //update UI related to userinformation             }             case 500:             {                 //what should I do here?             }         }     })      Note: The ajax function is reimplementation of $.ajax() with the exception that it always calls done callback (custom promise object is always resolved and never rejected) **UPDATE:** On server I destroy session and delete auto login cookie if it's present. Is it a sensible approach (if server error is received) to delete cookies related to session name and auto login on client using javascript (presuming that I know their names)?"}
{"_id": "228514", "title": "Inventory Management project Unit of measurement conversion issue", "text": "We are currently working on an inventory module. We have purchase requisition, purchase order, goods receipt modules etc. There is obviously the need for UOM or Unit of measurement conversion needed. User places purchase request in terms of **Sales UOM** , the metric in which they want to sell. The system places order in terms of **Purchase UOM** , in the metric they put an order to the supplier. However we are in a dilemma UOM conversion, we want to avoid fractions during conversion. > Eg. If one Purchase UOM = 7 Sales UOM, conversion will be 1/7 , this will > obviously create fraction quantities for both cases How can I convert the UOM's properly without suggesting the user to over purchase some goods (Rounding to nearest integer will do as long as there is no wastage)?"}
{"_id": "145982", "title": "How can I be an agent of change amongst old coders?", "text": "I have been developing software for over 12 years now. I keep high standards when designing code from database normalization, to OOP, to learning and implementing the model view model pattern. Through my career, I have found that proper design always wins and allows an application to be extensible and thus flexible--it's an easy equation. Likewise, I have been very productive prior to starting my current job about three years ago. For example, my first year out of college I re-engineered a call logging application, created a product ordering application that used SOAP, including the application's install, and worked on many new features within that company's major application. I had no roadblocks per se. However, I have worked at my current position for three years and I do not have a finished application to show for it. The reasons for the slow development process are:   1. we are under-staffed    2. our database is poorly designed and was patched together due to time constraints and    3. there is no project management process in place.  When I interviewed for this position, I was told that they value proper design and that they want to implement a project management process yet I have found they really don't desire either scenario. I have tried to be an instrument of change and recommend a path and my manager agrees but doesn't approve the change. What do I do? Is the only change that I can do is to change jobs? How do I become an agent of change? I have spoken to an upper level manager and I get the same response: I understand and see the problem but it settles there. Now what?"}
{"_id": "228517", "title": "Does limiting commitment in Scrum lead to complacency?", "text": "In my organization Scrum teams almost never finish all of their stories 100%. I suggested that we commit to fewer stories each Sprint, but the R&D manager says if we do that people will still not complete the work, but will just do less of it thus slowing down development. He says there is a Student Syndrome at work here. What is your take on that?"}
{"_id": "132413", "title": "What should the main content area be called?", "text": "I'm working on a CMS that will be used by others and I'm trying to figure out what the main body of the site page should be called. Originally, I was going to call it \"content\" - but perhaps \"body\" or \"page\" would be better.               <html>     <body>         ....         print $content;         ....     </body>     </html>      This isn't just a question about markup class/id names. It's also about what the name means to people when they first hear it. I want people to know that ____ is the main area of the page."}
{"_id": "185379", "title": "Why should we use externalized property files for an application?", "text": "I am currently working on a rails project and have a requirement where I want to be able to map a country name's initial letters to its ISD code. eg: IND => 91, USA => 1, etc. The broader question here being (notwithstanding which framework you work on), what should be the best practice to store these things. Should you be using a property file (yaml, in this case)? OR Should you just make a table in the database and read it from there? OR Should you just have a hash_map like structure in your ruby (or any other language) code?"}
{"_id": "147639", "title": "Older PHP v/s newer PHP version", "text": "My company is building a website with database. Programmer's used PHP 5.0. My Service Provider (shared) in the meantime upgraded to PHP 5.3.0. Fixes have been on going and seem endless... Do I move to VPS and install older PHP or should we rebuild with newer PHP? When working remotely with programers what is the protocol regarding delivery of all code? Please what is the industry standard? I need an independent to review their work. How should this be approached?"}
{"_id": "185370", "title": "Best development model for novice game developers", "text": "A small group of friends (including myself) decided to develop a simple 2D game. We are all fairly new to software development, so I wanted to ask which software development model would likely work best for such a group. From the list on Wikipedia, the Waterfall and Spiral models seem to be the two best options. Our plan is to use C# with XNA for development."}
{"_id": "249675", "title": "How do sockets work over wireless connections?", "text": "I've only worked on client side(specifically, mobile) applications using Android, where all networking is handled at the HTTP layer using framework provided components like HttpUrlConnection. But push messaging systems like Websockets/XMPP etc, all maintain a persistent connection to the server. Even Google's GCM, which is baked into Google Play supported devices, maintain a persistent connection to the servers. My question is, how does this work without draining battery? If we make continuous HTTP requests sequentially, the battery drain is significant. How are these persistent connections maintained without encountering the same problem?"}
{"_id": "103664", "title": "Is there a canonical book on C++/CLI ?", "text": "I know quite a lot about C++ but I know very little about .NET. I would like to broaden my horizons. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on C++/CLI (preferably with information about .NET in general as well)? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "103665", "title": "Where does \"isolating complexities\" lie in the realm of design principles?", "text": "I was just curious, it's something I think most people are aware of as a technique: You have some abominable data that simply must be parsed and you can do nothing to simplify the algorithm for doing it, so the best you can do is isolate the complexity of that algorithm to one place rather than having parts of the algorithm strewn all over. Then after isolating it, cementing the boundaries of it with some interface or contract to ensure the complexity in it does not leak out. Where does this drive to isolate complexities live in the library of design principles? I don't think it is word for word one of the formally documented design principles, though I'm guessing there are one or two that overlap with this very closely."}
{"_id": "25812", "title": "What's wrong with Erlang?", "text": "(if anything!) I picked up Erlang last night again because I ran into a problem in Project Euler that I thought would be a perfect fit. After about a short time of coding, I had a solution that was extremely simple and elegant (for something I created) -- the main function being only a few lines. My question is what is keeping people from adopting Erlang more?   * For current developers, what do you feel is missing to increase adoption (libraries, language features, IDE/toolsets)?   * For people who tried but were turned off by the language -- what aspects were difficult to understand or missing, or did you find a functional language that was better suited for your tasks?"}
{"_id": "25811", "title": "What list of database features/elements are necessary for a programmer to understand?", "text": "What database features/elements are necessary for a programmer to understand in order to create non-trivial applications? I was once asked in a job interview (by a DBA) to rate my understanding of database concepts -- I thought it would be interesting to get opinions. I'm looking for basic and advanced skills, also any opinions on where developers are typically the weakest (what lack of skills or knowledge creates the most problems). Also, is it better that developers are need-to-know, and pass more advanced work onto a DBA -- where does that \"line in the sand\" exist?"}
{"_id": "156052", "title": "How can I check myself when I'm the only one working on a project?", "text": "I'm in between jobs in my field (unrelated to software development), and I recently picked up a temporary side contract writing a few applications for a firm. I'm the only person working on these specific applications. Are there ways I should be checking myself to make sure my applications are sound? I test my code, try to think of edge cases, generate sample data, use source control, etc. but since I'm the _only_ person working on these applications, I'm worried I'll miss bugs that would easily be found in a team environment. Once I finish the application, either when I'm happy with it or when my deadline expires, the firm plans to use it in production. Any advice? Not to use a cliche, but as of now, I simply work \"to the best of my ability\" and hope that it's enough. Incidentally, I'm under both strict NDA's and laws about classified material, so I don't discuss the applications with friends who have actually worked in software development. (In case it's not obvious, I am not a software developer by trade, and even my experience with other aspects of information technology/computer science are limited and restrained to dabbling for the most part)."}
{"_id": "183790", "title": "Google Maps - Geofence a route", "text": "I'm looking at implementing a PHP based application, where by you have a certain route for example London to Edinburgh. Along this route, I want to calculate say a 10mi Radius or Polygon around the whole route/driving directions, check whether certain defined points/lat-lon's are within this radius. If so - Add them to the waypoint list, re-calculate the route and re- generate the driving directions. I know there's various different API's for Google Maps, but I'm basically looking for some advice on which API's I should be looking through. I believe the phrase I'm looking for is 'Geofencing', and for that I've seen the Google Tracks API has methods incorporating that (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tracks/geofences) - But I can't seem to work out how that would help me, or how I'd be able to use it. Is it possible to do the lookup in an alternative method? For example, producing driving directions using 1 API call, storing all of the waypoints of this route in a MySQL DB and then using something along the lines of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1078386/see-if-lat-long-falls-within-a- polygon-using-mysql? to see if each point is within the polygon/geofenced route?"}
{"_id": "183796", "title": "Can an EULA restrict what you can use an application for?", "text": "I realise this might be offtopic here - but I couldn't find a better place in the stackexchange family. And this question has simply been bugging me for years.. What I wonder is: can an eula define WHAT you use an application for? IE: if I write a text editor, can I say \"You can't write fantasy novels with it\". I'm wondering this because many applications have clauses like \"you can't use XY to make something illegal\". And actually wondering if this has any use? It is like saying that when you buy a car you lose the rights to drive it once you drive through a red light, or go speeding. I see it as \"non of the car designer's business\"."}
{"_id": "183797", "title": "Should I spend time prettifying unit tests?", "text": "The company I used to work for before we had automated unit tests to test our work. However the coding standards and architecture was not very important for tests. Of course you had to indent code correctly and put your braces where you are supposed to put your braces, but no one would go nit picking through your tests code. This seemed reasonable to me as the tests were usually changed frequently and the idea was to quickly write a test and then start seriously writing the code. The new company has just got the hang of unit testing our work, but they expect you to spend time making sure the test code looks as pretty and well thought out as the code it is testing. I personally think it a waste of time since tests are internal and while test code should be neat, it does not have to be as perfectly engineered as the code that goes out the door to the customer. Am I wrong in my belief? What is the right thing to do here fellow programmers? Frequency of how often our programmers have to modify / extend / reuse existing unit tests varies, some more often and others less often. We are using Python Django and most of the test architecture is built-in and most tests are just simple functions. Very less setup/teardown needed."}
{"_id": "66706", "title": "Why binding is not a native feature in most of the languages?", "text": "IMHO binding a variable to another variable or an expression is a very common scenario in mathematics. In fact, in the beginning, many students think the assignment operator(=) is some kind of binding. But in most of the languages, binding is not supported as a native feature. In some languages like C#, binding is supported in some cases with some conditions fulfilled. But IMHO implementing this as a native feature was as simple as changing the following code-               int a,b,sum;     sum := a + b;     a = 10;     b = 20;     a++;      to this-               int a,b,sum;     a = 10;     sum = a + b;     b = 20;     sum = a + b;     a++;     sum = a + b;      Meaning placing the binding instruction as assignments after every instruction changing values of any of the variable contained in the expression at right side. After this, trimming redundant instructions (or optimization in assembly after compilation) will do. So, why it is not supported natively in most of the languages. Specially in the C-family of languages? Update: From different opinions, I think I should define this proposed \"binding\" more precisely-   * This is one way binding. Only sum is bound to a+b, not the vice versa.   * The scope of the binding is local.   * Once the binding is established, it cannot be changed. Meaning, once sum is bound to a+b, sum will always be a+b. Hope the idea is clearer now. Update 2: I just wanted this P# feature. Hope it will be there in future."}
{"_id": "67950", "title": "Developer \"Foreign Exchange Program\" Across Teams", "text": "Where I work, we currently have three teams all working on one product. We've had some talks and agreed that there could be a lot of benefits to doing an 'exchange' program where a member of one team would work with the members of another team, for a period of time (min: 1 day, max: 1 week). Considering we already pair program (almost) 100% of the time, the 'exchanged' programmer won't be completely lost and there wouldn't be a large drop in productivity. Goals of the program would be:   * Exposure to new tools/libraries   * Getting to know your coworkers   * Making all developers more versatile between teams Everyone is pretty excited about the idea, but we're having trouble with how to organize the logistics of such a program. Has anyone instituted something like this and if so what helped you organize it? _Edit_ Specifically looking for examples of:   * How often do you exchange   * Tips on keeping track of exchanges/scheduling   * If you've done such a program, how has it worked out for you? Would you have liked more 'process' or keep it ad hoc?"}
{"_id": "185080", "title": "Can we create a GPL application that has a payware advertisement on it?", "text": "We've been thinking of using GPL components to make a GPL application, and freely give it away. We then want to use that as a loss-leader. In that free application, where even the source code is available, we plan to have an advertisement for some payware. The payware would be for functionality that is completely different than the free application. For instance, the freeware would be like a checkbook application, let's say, but the payware would be a virus remover utility that people try out and then can pay for, and is closed- source, binary. Does the GPL permit one to build an application that has a payware advertisement on it?"}
{"_id": "185081", "title": "Online compilers and repls - not one big security hole?", "text": "There are plenty of compilers and REPL services on the web. For example: Fay ide. I find that implementing some similar technology would be very interesting. But it seems like a major security hole. Am I wrong in thinking that exposing a compiler would be risky? An interpreter seems even worse. **update:** I can be a bit more specific. The kind service I'm thinking about hosting myself (a thought experiment at this stage) would be kind of close to the case of the Fay ide above. You take input from the user, process it and return it, potentially as runable javascript to the same or other users. Let's look at that example in particular. The most obvious security concern that I see for this case, as I don't actually evaluate the code server side, would be for the users, as they would run code made by an 'unknown' author. The fact that they are allowed to read the code before running it should be a significant safeguard in this regard. Although I also wonder if and when translation of code constitute a threat to the server? What kind of exploit vectors could be thought of in this context? **Summary:**   1. Beyond what you can expect from any web server set up, and beyond the most obvious concerns (or perhaps some of those obvious concerns as well), how could one user compromise another? -. How can the server application be hardened to ensure not being compromised?   2. What important questions have I neglected? ;)   3. I would like to try some experiments, and I have nearlyfreespeech in mind as a host. I could imagine that such use might be prohibited by their terms of use? Or perhaps I can trust them to be sure enough that they have sandboxed my account well enough. What should be my \"minimum\" safeguards, for trying stuff out and what safeguards would be possible with such limited hosting environment? **update2:** I believe that compiling to javascript for client side evaluation or evaluating limited edsls would cover for most/all use cases I have in mind. I take it that this means that I really don't put the server side to a more prominent risk than _usual_. And I don't see how the user is being put into more risk than compared to going to a random link on jsFiddle."}
{"_id": "66701", "title": "How does one choose a suitable software/technology conference to attend?", "text": "I've been programming for a while now, and have been thinking that I really should go to a conference. I think I will be able to get a lot out of the networking opportunities, but also would love to see new ideas/technologies and other things that might fuel ideas for my work. Since conferences cost a lot, I really want to make sure I find one that can provide value to me personally and to my employer. I know there have been questions on identifying conference listing sites even ones to identify good conferences. But the crux of my question comes to what makes a particular conference \"good\"? How would you take the list of all available conferences and filter it down to those that would be a good fit for you personally? What factors do you consider about yourself and your personal situation and how does that drive what features do you look for in a conference? In the other direction as well, if you've stumbled across a conference that may be interesting, what do you look for to know if it would be a good fit? Conversely what red flags do you look out for to make sure you don't attend an unsuitable conference?"}
{"_id": "185089", "title": "Should heavy binary files not be stored in database?", "text": "I was asked an interesting question: Should a database contains all data? Or heavy binary files should be stored in file system? Example of heavy binary files : videos or heavy pdf files (+200 MB) With an old aspx web app (1.1) I tried to open a 200MB pdf file stored as a blob in an Oracle 11g database, and it just run out of memory. However, same asp.net web application had no problem to open same pdf file stored in file system of a server. It could be that maybe there is some proper way to open heavy blobs fields with asp.net. For integrity reasons, I say that all data should be stored in database, but my described case showed me that maybe it's not the way. I read once that if your web application goes to cloud, then it would be very difficult to keep references of files stored in file system (file paths like: ../MyFolder001/MyFile.mpg), since you don't know where those files will be distributed. Should heavy binary files not be stored in database?"}
{"_id": "188078", "title": "Policy and practice on code maintenance", "text": "I just came out of University and have been working at this company for roughly 8 months, while I was given the title of developer, most of the time I have spent on is fixing and debugging other people's codes. I always wonder why isn't the original developer's responsibility for fixing his/her code. I understand that if the original developer is no longer present, then the other developers have to take over the work, but what if the developer is still working as an employee in the company? One may argue that it is beneficial to the new developers as they see it as an opportunity to learn, and I agree with that, but what if the complexity of the problem/issue of the code is very steep? In my case, most of the codes they assigned me to fix are non trivial problems, and it always ends up myself asking the original developer questions regarding the code. Why can't the developers who created it fix the existing problem if they understand it so much better since they coded it? And the problem I am referring to is not some trivial problem where you can fix it in a day or two,but problem that requires a deep understanding of the code in order to come up with a solution. What is the reasoning behind this and is it common in the software industry?"}
{"_id": "180264", "title": "How come project managers stand above even team leaders?", "text": "As I have started working for bigger companies, project managers started creeping into the organizational structure. I'm having a hard time understanding why these people are ranked higher even than the technical leads. What really annoys me is that the PMs have very little technical knowledge. The analyst usually, the tech lead, breaks down the whole project down to the smaller units of work. Even the scheduling of these items needs to be done by someone that truly understands dependencies. So, you may imagine my confusion to why these PMs, that are less technically capable people are ranked higher in org charts. I'm going on a stretch here but I feel like a PM being over a tech lead is like an accountant being over the COO, because the former does the book keeping. So, why is it that PMs are ranked higher than teach leads?"}
{"_id": "145677", "title": "What is the minumum code/operations to have in a separate thread?", "text": "I understand that threading is needed to get the maximum performance out of today's multicore processors but starting a thread is rather costly so you can't put every single calculation that can be done in parallel in an own thread. For example               answer = new thread(plus(1,2)) + new thread(plus(3,4))      will run much slower than the simple single-threaded               answer = 1+2+3+4      but if plus was some really complicated calculation the threaded variant might be faster. Now to the questions   * Are there any convention or standards about what the minimum length of code, operations or execution time that are defendable to put in its own thread?   * Do I even have to worry about this or are the compiler/processor so smart that they do all the work for me?  The reason I ask this question is that I saw an implementation of quicksort that started a new thread for every recursive call ending up with (n\u00b2) threads and there many of this threads just returned some value."}
{"_id": "180266", "title": "How to do external API testing (blackbox)", "text": "Assume you are using APIs from a vendor, how to make sure their API is working as expected? My main concern is sometimes the vendor pushed the changes to their code and break the API, we want to have some sort of automatic software to test them continually. How to deal with this?"}
{"_id": "181792", "title": "How can I determine how to charge for supporting SharePoint sites and SharePoint development?", "text": "I recently created a site in SharePoint and I need to setup a maintenance/support agreement for the site. In addition to the site, there are some custom modules that were developed that we monitor. What considerations should I be making when determining how much to charge for supporting the SharePoint site and any custom applications developed for the site?"}
{"_id": "181793", "title": "What are your techniques for storing numpy structures in django database fields and how do you serialize them for http?", "text": "I want to publish a small web project that is supposed to contain some of my research results to present it to the scientific community. All my analysis I ran so far have been written in python already, thus I considered to use django web framework to provide the results. This is, because I plan to show some visualization on up-to-date data, so I can run my analysis on new data by a cron directly in django. there are actually two questions on my mind so far, how I am going to start developing:   1. How can I easily store `numpy arrays` in sqlite to keep the structure of the array and which type of django database field suits best?   2. What is the best way to `json.dump` the `numpy 2d-arrays` to be able handle them in d3.js? As you can see it is quite about putting numpy + django + d3.js together. My first hacking was to store the numpy results as strings, but I think this is not quite the best, since I need to parse them again after pulling them from database. Concerning the second question I already found `simplejson.dumps` but unfortunately it does not really work on `numpy arrays` and thus, sometimes I needed to hack something like this               return  HttpResponse('{\"array1\" : '+simplejson.dumps(list(array1))+'}')      which I actually don't really like. So to put it together again: **What are your techniques for storing`numpy` structures in django database fields and how do you serialize them for `http`?**"}
{"_id": "136248", "title": "Which is the purpose of using a workspace in Aptana?", "text": "I almost always do web development with a simple editor like Geany or Notepad++. Recently I'm starting with Aptana, and I'm a bit confused about the purpose/benefits of the workspace, my point is that I don't get it. Honestly is something that I really want to understand, why is it useful?, how to use it?"}
{"_id": "72761", "title": "How do you identify \"edge\" cases on algorithms?", "text": "Basically how do you find out which could be your worst or best case and any other \"edge\" cases you might have BEFORE having them and so, how do you prepare your code for them?"}
{"_id": "198714", "title": "Advice needed - CMS vs. framework", "text": "I am going to make a website for a client that wants to be able to alter the site about every week (changing pictures and textual information mostly). It is for a restaurant and so the client wants to alter the menu and images on an almost weekly basis. I've always made my websites and web apps from a framework or from scratch and have never worked with a CMS, but would a situation like this warrant the use of a CMS? What are some other options? Edit: I would really like a CMS to be a last resort option, but if it is most likely the best option I will use it."}
{"_id": "136242", "title": "Optimization as a branch: is that a thing?", "text": "My company has highly optimized scientific application which has become so big and complicated that new versions are literally taking t = infinity to produce. (E.G. I have an email which pre-announces a late 2007 release for something that has not been released yet.) New feature requests from the scientific team to the development team leads to a lot of arguing. This got me to thinking.. The application should be clearly written with good design, clear names and lots of automated tests. New features are added to this application. Run and pass the tests. Then this application is branched for optimization a.k.a. a release or production version. Again, run and pass the tests. Am I missing something? Is this a 'thing'? I guess my question is, if I bludgeon the VP of Product Development with this, would I be right (about the idea, not the bludgeoning)?"}
{"_id": "23303", "title": "Why aren't databases integrated as a language feature?", "text": "Are there any programming languages that have a built-in database as a first- class language feature rather than connecting to an external SQL (or other) database? What would be the drawbacks and benefits to such a feature? What would such a feature look like and how would it change the way we program?"}
{"_id": "184202", "title": "How to program object-oriented with a DI framework?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Does \u201cInversion of Control\u201d promote \u201cAnemic Domain Model\u201d? My impression is that projects using a DI framework like Spring or Guice tend to lose their object orientation and degenerate to a purely procedural design:   1. DI not only centralizes the question of which implementation of an object to use but also manages the life-cycle of these objects. Many OO **design patterns** , however, rely on the ability of business logic to wire objects. I wouldn't know, for example, how to implement a Strategy Pattern in Spring because the decision which of the concrete strategies to use, is statically determined by the configuration of the application instead of a piece of code. Same goes for decorator, composite, observer, ...   2. The reason above leads to a design where functionality and data are separated. Because you don't want to let the DI container decide when data is created, you split any code off the data in order to have only this part managed by the DI container. This is contrary to the idea of OO where **code and data should reside together** in one unit. This breaks the **encapsulation of data** because all fields of the data \"beans\" are exposed by public getters and setters.   3. You can't use **polymorphism** anymore because code is not linked to its data anymore and the \"virtual functions\" can't work. This leads to those instanceof cascades that we all know we shouldn't use. Also, we lose all those designs that rely on polymorphism.   4. The DI container will inject managed beans only in objects which are also managed by it. So you can't **mix managed beans and normal objects** because there can't be any \"non-managed gaps\" in the reference chain of managed beans. So once you started with DI, you need to put all other code under the control of the DI container and you can't use normal objects anymore. I suppose that this is the reason why the separation of code and data is done so rigorously in DI projects. I see that there are reasons why to use DI but is it really worth giving up so much? Don't people care about OO? Apart from this **article** , I can't find any discussions on this topic. Or is it just me who doesn't understand how to do this properly? Any ideas how the four points above can be tackled with? **Appendix 1: Explanation of strategy pattern** I refer to the example here. Let's assume there's a DI version of it where all implementations of `Strategy` and the `Context` are injected to `StrategyExample`. Then `StrategyExample` doesn't decide anymore which `Strategy` to inject into `Context` but the configuration would have already decided which implementation to inject into `Context`. So yes, DI heavily applies the Strategy Pattern. But it always does so statically."}
{"_id": "105846", "title": "What is better for prototyping: a statically-typed language, or a dynamically-typed one?", "text": "When working out the design for a new system, is it better to start with a statically-typed language (like Haskell), or a dynamically-typed language (like Ruby)? Arguments I can think of:   * With a static language, you can quickly create a specification and scope for what the program will do. With a dynamic language, you can quickly create a working demo to present to the customer for review.   * With a dynamic language, you often avoid having to rearrange data structures and refactor code when you change your design. With a static language, you can define types before implementation, keeping the code to maintain very small.   * With a static language, you have to figure out in advance what your program will do. With a dynamic language, you can start writing code, and let the design grow organically. As Paul Graham says in Hackers and Painters: > A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing > programs you've already thought of.   * With a static language, the compiler can help identify many types of bugs. With a dynamic language, you can begin testing and finding bugs sooner. Static and dynamic typing both have advantages and disadvantages as far as prototyping is concerned. However, they both seem to me like equally valid approaches. Based on your experiences, which one is ultimately better? * * * ## Notes ### Prototyping in natural language A third type of language to consider: natural language. Instead of prototyping in code, one can prototype in writing. The customer can then read your documentation and critique your design early on, but cannot toy around with a working demo. If well-written, the documentation can make implementation in any language straightforward. Caveats:   * The documentation may be tedious to read through, and difficult to digest without being able to see it. I speculate that a customer would rather experiment with something that works rather than read a wall of text (and images).   * Prototyping an application in English rather than in type definitions is more verbose and less concrete. ### Haskell types are descriptive Note that types are particularly descriptive in Haskell, more so than in many static languages like C++ and Java. For example, suppose I have a function with this type signature in Haskell:               foo :: forall a. [a] -> a      _A function that, for any type`a`, takes a list of items of type `a` and returns a value of type `a`._ Even without knowing the function's name, I know for a fact that:   * It does not perform input/output or modify any values (well, unless it uses unsafePerformIO incorrectly), because Haskell is purely functional.   * It cannot treat the items as, say, integers, because it has to support _any_ type.   * It _has_ to use the input list (that, or throw an exception or go into an infinite loop). Otherwise, where would it get a value of type `a` from? Therefore, the only thing this function could possibly do (other than fail) is extract an item out of the input list and return it. Although I still do not know which item it will use, `[a] -> a` tells me just about everything else."}
{"_id": "184979", "title": "Unit Testing Open Source projects that require keys for api calls", "text": "What's the recommended method for setting up tests on code that requires a private key to make calls to external web services? Full on mock objects or is there a way of distributing open source unit tests with a neat method to add in a tester's own private key at test time? I'm using python but any general best practice"}
{"_id": "109179", "title": "Long parameter list versus long state variable list", "text": "In a C++ book, the author says we no longer need a function with a long parameter list because most of the parameters can be refactored into state variables in a class. On the other hand, a functional programming book says state variables are evil because it causes side-effects which cause bug-prone and hard to parallelize code. I'm getting puzzled. Should the code avoid relying on state variables as much as possible by moving its state variable into the function parameter list?"}
{"_id": "105840", "title": "Why prefer a wildcard to a type discriminator in a Java API (Re: Effective Java)", "text": "In the generics section of Bloch's Effective Java (which handily is the \"free\" chapter available to all: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/generics.pdf), he says: > If a type parameter appears only once in a method declaration, replace it > with a wildcard. (See page 31-33 of that pdf) The signature in question is:               public static void swap(List<?> list, int i, int j)      vs               public static void swap(List<E> list, int i, int j)      And then proceeds to use a static private \"helper\" function with an actual type parameter to perform the work. The helper function signature is _EXACTLY_ that of the second option. Why is the wildcard preferable, since you need to NOT use a wildcard to get the work done anyway? I understand that in this case since he's modifying the List and you can't add to a collection with an unbounded wildcard, so why use it at all?"}
{"_id": "199705", "title": "Asp.Net MVC Windows authentication - vulnerabilities of http vs https?", "text": "I am developing an ASP.Net MVC 3 intranet site that will use Integrated Windows Authentication exclusively. What are the vulnerabilities of the challenge/response authentication traffic being sent in plain text? Will someone sniffing the network traffic be able to hijack an authenticated session?"}
{"_id": "109172", "title": "Is the upgrade path from Win32 to .NET to WinRT feasible?", "text": "I support a VB6 application. It's currently being replaced, module by module, with .NET (including a lot of new features as we go). The GUI is in WPF, but with almost zero coupling to the business logic, so that's not as important. I'm hoping the migration will be done by mid-2012. I'm reading some of the news out of the MS build conference, and it looks like WinRT with Metro will be the API and GUI of choice for future development, especially if you want your application to run on mobile devices (which we will, certainly). What kind of speed bump are we looking at when we (eventually) migrate from .NET to WinRT and Metro? It looks like C# and Xaml will be around, but WinRT is not .NET. Are the API's compatible (just a matter of changing an option in the VS build menu)? If they're not, will there be a one-way conversion tool? Will it be possible to easily maintain one application that runs under .NET/WPF on Windows XP/7 systems and simultaneously builds to a WinRT/Metro target during the time when we have all those systems in-house?"}
{"_id": "75905", "title": "A better way of doing Regex?", "text": "I really dislike regular expressions, each time I come back to it I seem to have to relearn it. It's also incredibly hard to maintain, modify and at a glance understand what it is doing. Has anyone ever tried writing another layer on top of it that turns more semantic 'sql like' statements into regex? I imagine it working along the lines of:               AnotherString = \"coffee hello beep 15\"          FindString.StartsWith string longer than 5     FindString.Contains \"beep\" after \"hello\"     FindString.EndsWidth int < 20     FindString.DoesntContain \"no!!\" and DoesntContain \"what!\"     Foreach FindString match in AnotherString         ...     Next      This is probably not the greatest example ever, but the idea is that the pattern is built with some sort of semantic meaningful language that can break down into traditional regular expressions. The above would be a lot easier for a developer to modify. I sort of invision it being like SQL/Linq to some degree. It would make regex a lot more semantic and maintainable. Has this been tried before, and is it a bad/good idea to try this? Could it work? **Edit** Perhaps this is a better example (I know URL's are notoriously difficult to parse and this is over simplified):               string UserInputtedURL = \"http://www.google.com/page.html?ID=5\"          Protocols = {\"http\", \"https\"};     Domains = {\"com\", \"net\", \"org\"}     Rule.CaseSensitive = false;     Rule starts with Protocols OR starts with \"www\";     Rule followedby string endson \".\"     Rule followedby Domains     Rule if stringend or endswidth \" \" end else continuewith Ruleset2          RuleSet2.startswith \"/\"     etc...          if(UserInputtedURL.Matches(Rule)){         // URL is valid!     }"}
{"_id": "111370", "title": "How to tell if an employer has been banned from Apple's App Store?", "text": "I have a potential employer who desperately wants to produce an app, but for some reason they are refusing to get a $99 company dev account, saying the application process would be too difficult and tedious. And yet they want me to create a single-person account. I think they've been banned from the Apple's app store but how can I verify it? Thanks."}
{"_id": "77199", "title": "C++ and the suitable libraries to develop Autocad/Autodesk/CAD applications?", "text": "I saw a job opening where the requirement was for a developer to develop CAD tools using C++ and OpenGl libraries. I am a civil engineer and want to be part of such a projects so I thought to learn C++ and some libraries which could help me to move forward for such job opportunities. I know a bit of C++ but I am quite unfamiliar with these libraries(qt, openGL). Can somebody tell me/guide me which is the most suitable library and most required library to develop such applications?"}
{"_id": "177563", "title": "How to make a table structure for products to be available for both wholesale and retail?", "text": "Ignoring the different column details like colors, shapes, and sizes, I already have an idea of dealing with that, I'm more interested in dealing with retail pricing, whole pricing (with or without a table), and possibly discount. If anything, I want to know what I should also take account for. Will it just be adding a quantity column, two pricing cols, and two discount columns, and a quantity limit? If I were to add a pricing table it would be inserted as a json file, would this be a bad idea? Please give any insight about this."}
{"_id": "171813", "title": "In choosing a service-oriented architecture framework that needs to work with .NET and with Java, what to look for?", "text": "I planning to write an application in which there will be a service (call it A) listening for particular commands. This service will then relay those commands to other services (call them B and C) which are written, respectively, in .NET and Java (service A chooses which of service B or C to which to relay depending on the contents of the request to service A). I am looking for a framework that will allow for interoperability with both .NET and with Java, for example WCF or JAX-WS, or writing a custom framework (e.g., JSON REST commands over HTTP, similar to http://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/JsonWireProtocol). What questions/aspects should I consider in deciding?"}
{"_id": "74422", "title": "A Crash Course in ASP.NET", "text": "I'm a .NET developer who's eying up new jobs for a change of pace. My career so far has led me to become quite proficient with C#, WPF, WinForms, MSSQL, and all kinds of goodies in the .NET framework including Entities, Parallel Tasks, etc. However one thing that I'm obviously lacking is ASP skills. Nearly every job in my area (Minneapolis/St.Paul) requires strong, 3+ years experience with ASP.NET. I feel confident in my ability to pick up new technologies, especially in the .NET world, however with ASP I'm not sure where to start. As with most things in .NET, there's probably the hard, old way to do things, and the new, elegant way to things. Just firing up the templates in VS2008, there are several ASP templates that implement various technologies such as Entities. I have no idea where to start. So, alluding to the title of this post, I'm looking for a crash course in ASP. Given that it's a web technology, I'm having trouble thinking of a side project as an excuse to learn it as I would with otherwise. Can anyone give me a landmark as to what I should focus on learning? Is there a good amount of ASP stuff I can ignore? Related, is there a more recent starting point that I could begin with that would give me an edge over the tired ASP guys stuck doing things the old ways? :P Just looking for a little guidance. Thank you much!"}
{"_id": "199702", "title": "What does it mean for an architectural style to be document-centric?", "text": "I heard it said that REST is \"document-centric\". Unclear what this meant, I began poking around and found the term **document-oriented** being used of databases, particularly NoSQL databases, and in contrast to a barebones key- value store. Thus it seems that documented-orientation of databases has to do with their internal representations being JSON or XML; I saw on the Wikipedia page that many document-oriented databases claim to support a RESTful API, but not having experience with any NoSQL databases and also being new to REST, I'm unsure what that means (the database itself is directly accessible through a service?); and anyway, as far as I know, REST does not constrain the underlying data model of an application, but only its service contract. So what does it mean to say that REST is document-centric/oriented? Does it mean that REST constrains a service to use JSON or XML in its contract? Does it mean that REST is more friendly towards NoSQL databases than conventional relational databases?"}
{"_id": "171814", "title": "Who determines what is best practice?", "text": "I've often searched for answers relating to \" **best practice** \" when writing code. And I see many questions regarding what is best practice. However, I was thinking the other day. Who actually determines what this best practice is? Is it the owners or creators of the programming language. Is it the general developer community that is writing in the language and it's just a gut feeling consensus. Is it whoever seems to have the highest prestige in the developer world and shouts the loudest? Is best practice really just another term for personal opinion? I hope this is a constructive question. If I could word it better to ensure it doesn't get closed please feel free to edit, or inform me otherwise."}
{"_id": "171815", "title": "AND is better or using Internal \"IF\"", "text": "In a situation like this:\"               if ((metadata != null) && (metadata.TypeEnum != VariantInfoMetadata.CellTypeEnum.Status))      do you recommend to keep the code as it is above? Or is it better to make a nested \"if\" statement and breaks the condition into two sections where \"outer if\" makes sure metadata is not null and inner if does the rest of the checking. I think a nested if takes care of possible null reference exception if value of metadata gets null."}
{"_id": "143255", "title": "Using Domain name in EULA of a software rather than my name in the Licensor field", "text": "I intend to sell a software solution.I have already registered a domain but i dont have a registered company.Can i use my website/domain name eg:myproduct.com for the licensor field in the EULA rather than using myname.I will renew my domain yearly is there a problem with this.Do you know any software companies that work like this.Im confused about the users point of view will they find it a bit different. Please help me out."}
{"_id": "6677", "title": "Should you Create Class Diagrams before or after implementation?", "text": "The way I see it if you create one before you get the advantage of:   * Planning ahead   * Overview of the project but you lose:   * Time (doing work you'll probably end up repeating when writing code) On the other hand, I could just create them all after writing my code just to keep it as a reference for future developers. Which one serves the purpose of class diagrams and which is more advantageous?"}
{"_id": "139438", "title": "Models per database table?", "text": "I am using codeigniter, and have found myself in a similar situation where I have repeated Model methods. I am creating a Model per Controller. But I would creating a Model per database table be considered good practice? That way methods aren't written twice. Instead of Model per Controller or Several small Models that are shared. Example if I have a model method get_user($user_id) I could write it on users_models.php ... One of the downsides I see of this is that I might have to call several models, rather than just controllername_models.php . Could loading several models where several methods might not be used from a controller affect performance and speed? What could be the best way to tackle this down? Note: There are similar question, but they do not cover the ground of Model per database table."}
{"_id": "120355", "title": "Is it better to return NULL or empty values from functions/methods where the return value is not present?", "text": "I am looking for a recommendation here. I am struggling with whether it is better to return NULL or an empty value from a method when the return value is not present or cannot be determined. Take the following two methods as an examples:               string ReverseString(string stringToReverse) // takes a string and reverses it.     Person FindPerson(int personID)    // finds a Person with a matching personID.      In `ReverseString()`, I would say return an empty string because the return type is string, so the caller is expecting that. Also, this way, the caller would not have to check to see if a NULL was returned. In `FindPerson()`, returning NULL seems like a better fit. Regardless of whether or not NULL or an empty Person Object (`new Person()`) is returned the caller is going to have to check to see if the Person Object is NULL or empty before doing anything to it (like calling `UpdateName()`). So why not just return NULL here and then the caller only has to check for NULL. Does anyone else struggle with this? Any help or insight is appreciated."}
{"_id": "221134", "title": "How to store collections of linked Text objects in database", "text": "I'm writing a Java program that works as a presentation of a written document, which needs to be stored in a database (I'm using MySQL, but am open to suggestions of other DB types). The Essay class is a collection of objects of the Paragraph class (more specifically `Essay extends LinkedList<Paragraph>`, which consists primarily of an `int ID` and a `String content`. The Essay object is stored as its own table in the DB, which is fairly straightforward (with columns `int paragraphId` and `Blob text`), and I do a simple query that creates a new Paragraph object for each row in the table when the program gets initialized. Within each paragraph, certain hyperlinked words link to other Essay objects, which also need to be stored in the database. My question is how best to save them - the options I'm considering are:   * Creating a single additional DB table where each essay is stored on a row, with paragraphs being stored in a single text object separated by a delimiter, and the program separates them into separate Paragraph object as it pulls them from the DB. (this is fairly manageable because these linked essays are much shorter than the main essay).    * Create a single additional table, with a large number of content columns, storing each paragraph in a separate column. Then, when the data is pulled from the database, it creates a new essay for each row and a new paragraph for each column in that row, until it comes upon one that is null.   * Dynamically create a separate DB table for each linked essay, setting it up identically to the primary one. This doesn't seem ideal because it would end up being a very large number of tables, and many of them would only have two or three paragraphs, making a new table seem wasteful.    * Do a different arrangement altogether: Have one Paragraphs table, where all paragraphs from all essays are stored, and another table called Essays, which uses a `SET` datatype to store the IDs (foreign keys) of the paragraphs included in each essay.  I've modified my actual use case here to make it more simple to explain. I'm new to database programming, and am doing this largely as an exercise, so I'm looking for general tips about the pros/cons of these approaches, as well as any additional suggestions."}
{"_id": "50616", "title": "Leading a  not-so-good team", "text": "How would you manage if you are allocated a team of 5 with, say, 4 incompetent programmers and you are asked to lead? Obviously you can't code for the 4 guys (you can, but that is not a good idea. At least I burned out doing that). Have you come across these kind of situations? Edit: I think I sounded rude by choosing a wrong word (incompetent) to address my problem. To rephrase the question, how do you deal with people who do not complete assigned tasks (for whatever reasons [ranging from incompetence to 'I don't care' stuff])?"}
{"_id": "92028", "title": "Thinking in C++", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is there a good book to grok C++? I've been looking for a good book to understand the C++ (and the OOP) as well as I can do, and during my searches I found **Thinking in C++** (wrote by Bruce Eckel) and many excited opinions about it. So, my question is: Is this book really good, or there are something better to understand C++ in detail?"}
{"_id": "222403", "title": "Why not embed styles/scripts in HTML instead of linking?", "text": "We concatenate CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the number of HTTP requests, which improves performance. The result is HTML like this:               <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"all-my-css-0fn392nf.min.css\">     <!-- later... -->     <script src=\"all-my-js-0fn392nf.min.js\"></script>      If we've got server-side/build logic to do all this for us, why not take it one step further and embed those concatenated styles and scripts in the HTML?               <style>.all{width:100%;}.my{display:none;}.css{color:white;}</style>     <!-- later... -->     <script>var all, my, js;</script>      That's two fewer HTTP requests, yet I've not seen this technique in practice. Why not?"}
{"_id": "100316", "title": "Programming late at night problem", "text": "I recently found out that programming late at night causes sleeping problems, so what are the best hours for 'after-job' programming? Maybe there is some time interval that should be set after finishing programming and going to bed, or some activity involved?"}
{"_id": "240598", "title": "Is it possible for business logic not to creep into the view?", "text": "I've developed for several web application projects for the last 3 years, both personal and at work, and I can't seem to figure out whether it's possible for at least _some_ business logic not ending up in the view layer of the application. In most cases there will be problems like \"If the user has selected option x then the application must enable him to supply info for y, if not then s/he should supply info z\". Or do some AJAX operation which should apply some changes to the model but NOT commit them until the user has explicitly requested so. These are some of the simplest problems I've encountered and I can't figure out how it's possible to avoid complex logic in the view. Most of the books I've read describing MVC usually showcase some very trivial examples, like CRUD operations that just update data on the server and display them, but CRUD is not the case on most rich applications. Is it possible to achieve having a view with no business logic at all?"}
{"_id": "121313", "title": "Getting solutions off the internet. Bad or Good?", "text": "I was looking on the internet for common interview questions. I came upon one that was about finding the occurrences of certain characters in an array. The solution written right below it was in my opinion very elegant. But then another thought came to my mind that, this solution is way better than what came to my mind. So even though I know the solution (that most probably someone with a better IQ had provided) my IQ was still the same. So that means that even though i may know the answer, it still wasn't mine. hence if that question was asked and i was hired upon my answer to that question i couldn't reproduce that same elegance in my other ventures within the organization My question is what do you guys think about such \"borrowed intelligence\"? Is it good? Do you feel that if solutions are found off the internet, it makes you think in that same more elegant way?"}
{"_id": "231364", "title": "Is there a best practice for populating a dropdown in ASP.Net MVC?", "text": "I'm coming into a project where the overlying method is to open the page, then use jquery AJAX calls to populate all of the dropdowns dynamically in the page. To me, this seems like an extra burden on the server and it looks terrible, plus the functionality seems to be limited as the user can start using the dropdowns even though they aren't loaded yet. To me, it seems to make much more sense to create a SelectList in the model and populate the dropdown in the View before the page is ever sent over to the browser. Am I missing something in my thinking here? Is there a good reason to dynamically bind the dropdown via AJAX initially?"}
{"_id": "231366", "title": "Global vs Individual object event handlers", "text": "Lately I've been studying a lot of javascript samples, both with/without libraries, jQuery to mention one. As an old JavaScript developer, I learned early to make use of unobtrusive javascript where one were adding mouse click events to a global handler using `document.onclick = mylib.document_onclick;` Then, by tagging any element with a custom attribute/property/expando, I been able to deal with all kinds of functions in a very simple way.               //  HTML          <div class='menulink logout' data-mc='logout'> Logout </div>     <a class='menulink' data-mc='ajax' data-target='main-content-div' href='page/'>Start page 1</a>     <a class='menulink' data-mc='ajax' data-target='main-content-div' href='page/'>Start page 2</a>               // JS          document_onclick: function (e) {         e = getEvObj(e);                             // custom method to get event object         var evSrcTag = getSrcObj(e);                 // custom method to get source element              //mouseclick         if (evSrcTag.getAttribute('data-mc') != undefined) {             switch (evSrcTag.getAttribute('data-mc')) {                      case 'logout':                     if (!confirm(myconfig.msg['asklogout'])) {                         return cancelEv(e);          // custom method to cancel the event                     }                     break;                      case 'ajax':                     //process ajax request as javascript is available, cancel default event (href)                      //case ......             }         }     },      Today I see a lot solutions where the event is bound/attached straight to a specific element. It appears to quikly become a long list of handlers to be added, together with individual functions and class names tied/added.               //  HTML     <a id=\"anchor1\" href=\"#\">create link dynamically</a>     <a id=\"anchor2\" href=\"#\">create link dynamically</a>     <a id=\"anchor3\" href=\"#\">create link dynamically</a>               //  JS     $(function(){              $(\"#anchor1\").click( function() {             $(\"#anchor1\").append('<a class=\"myclass\" href=\"page/test1\">test1</a>');         });              $(\"#anchor2\").click( function() {             $(\"#anchor2\").append('<a class=\"myclass\" href=\"page/test2\">test2</a>');         });              $(\"#anchor3\").click( function() {             $(\"#anchor3\").append('<a class=\"myclass\" href=\"page/test3\">test3</a>');         });          });      Referring to the way setting up handlers, is one approach better than the other, and if so, which one is and why?"}
{"_id": "173711", "title": "how to model this relationship ? in ERD", "text": "I have three entities :               Technician     Vehicle     Repair      The question is how to model this in ERD? Knowing that a technician can repair multiple cars, and the same car can be repaired by one and only one technician? How should the repair entity tied to all this?"}
{"_id": "14706", "title": "\"Overtime is part of the job\" true but a bad attitude?", "text": "My manager told me that working overtime is just part of the job and that I'm expected to work overtime. We're not paid overtime like most companies. I'm aware that most programmers put in 50-60+ hour work weeks, but is that the attitude a manager should take? It seems like they're taking it for granted. Or maybe I'm totally wrong and it's completely normal :P"}
{"_id": "184568", "title": "Turning n-dim points into m-dim where m<n and where point-to-point distance deviation is minimized", "text": "I want to apply k-means clustering to a (sparse) adjacency graph. For this I need to assign the nodes to a position in an euclidean space. Trivially I can do this by having a space with as many dimensions as there are nodes where each component corresponds to another node. Now, in order to make the clustering a bit more understandable, or maybe just different, I'm thinking about whether there are ways of \"folding\" the n-dimensional space of points into a more manageable space, perhaps 3-dim or maybe just m-dim where m < n. While doing this I want to maintain distance relations between nodes - so I want to minimize the deviation between the straight line distance between any two points before the fold compared to after the fold, or in other words, the sum of all deviations. So I can't seem to find any to-the-point info on this when looking. Perhaps I'm missing terminology. What good/efficient methods are there for this? Algorithms? It seems like a somewhat archetypical optimization/mean square minimization problem. A simple base case:               P1 = (1,1,1)     P2 = (1,1,0)     p3 = (1,0,1)     newPoints = spacefold(2,[P1,P2,P3])          // example output:     // newPoints = [(1,1),     //              (1,0),     //              (0,1)]      For this example they happened to be conveniently placed in a plane - removing the x component gives an optimal solution."}
{"_id": "141356", "title": "What was the first programming language written for computers?", "text": "Looking at so many programming languages we have today, each one being unique in it's own way, I've tried to figure out what the first programming language written for computers is. Looking at the release date for the popular ones I got somewhat close but I didn't look at less obvious ones, programming languages which are either dead or very little use nowadays. Fortran is the closest thing I got but I don't know if it's real. In a nutshell: What was the first programming language written for computers? Are there any languages that derived from that language?"}
{"_id": "184562", "title": "Layered architecture using Entity Framework with different class libraries", "text": "Our business requirements required to create a layered and modular architecture. So I designed an architecture to make it as decoupled and as modular as possible. I will list my layers below   * ASP .NET MVC Application (UI)   * Business Logic Layer (BLL)    * Data Access Layer (DAL) I have further used IOC where each BLL module defines its Data Access requirements in terms of interfaces. So DAL has now to implement these interfaces. It is important to note that   * Both UI and DAL are dependent on the BLL   * BLL is not dependent on any other solution. Using Interfaces I have done IOC so now DAL is dependent on BLL and not the other way round.   * BLL is not just one project but a set of class library projects - one class library each for each business module.   * DAL is a single class library project \"shared\" by all the BLL projects (since Database is same and it did not make sense dividing DAL into separate projects). I will not go into details here but let us say there was a decision to use EDMX. However now I do not see how EDMX will fit into this mix. I believe I am not the only person ever to divide the BLL into different class libraries but have a single DAL project. But can EDMX or for that matter any ORM support such \"distributed\" architecture ?"}
{"_id": "86934", "title": "Better background or more hands on experience", "text": "Recently, I just finished Michael Hartl's rails tutorial. Throughout the book he recommended The Rails 3 Way after you finished his book. From your experience do you think it would be better to read another book or start building an app and figuring out things on my own?"}
{"_id": "205762", "title": "Why do we not prefix Enums, Abstract classes and Structs?", "text": "The C# community has so ubiquitously used the \"I\" prefix to denote an interface that even the most inexperienced programmers know to use it. Why is it then that we do not prefix enums, abstract classes or structs (possibly with \"E\", \"A\" and \"S\" respectively)? For example, if we did mark all abstract classes with an \"A\", it would provide valuable information about that type which, while it could be inferred, is not immediately obvious. Please note that I am not advocating for this change, I am merely trying to understand why we do not do things this way. This thread answers why we do use the \"I\" prefix but doesn't answer why we _don't_ use other prefixes."}
{"_id": "205763", "title": "The best possible way to implement Business Rules in PHP", "text": "I'm planning to write an e-commerce app using PHP & MySQL with lots & lots of custom rules. Say for example, I want to have a rule like \" _Give Customer X, a 10% a discount for Product Y if he bundles it with Product Z_ \" I've heard about Business rules engine(in Java and others). I intend to implement a flexible business rules functionality **without hard-coding** anything into PHP and with a good, solid architecture with the goal of maintainability and re-usability with the help of PHP OOPS. Please advice me on the following aspects: Does decision table fit my intended purpose? How can I change rule/business logic of the PHP application without redeploying/re-writing?"}
{"_id": "139298", "title": "Are there any free tools to measure web project's performance, security and other standards?", "text": "Are there any open-source tools to measure the standard of a web application project? I want to verify my project for:   * Possible security leaks (SQL Injection etc.)   * Performance    * Stability (in high concurrent environment) and other quality metrics."}
{"_id": "139299", "title": "Is the 'Law of Demeter' applicable to public/API method signatures?", "text": "Given that changes to the API/public method signature should be minimal to prevent breaking those client codes that use these methods, I was wondering if the Law of Demeter is less applicable to these. A simple example:               class Account() {        double balance;        public void debit(Transaction t) {           balance -= t.getAmount();        }     }      Notice that the debit method passes the Transaction object rather than just double amount (the 'Law of Demeter', as I understand it, would say to just pass the required info, in this case just the amount, not the Transaction object...). The reason behind this, is because the method in the future might require some other Transaction properties aside from amount. From what I understand, this will prevent breaking the method signature by adding a new parameter in the future. Does this make it a sensible choice then? Or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "140913", "title": "Best solution for getting referral information in PHP", "text": "I am currently redoing some link structuring on a website. In the past we have used specific php files on the last step to direct the user to the proper place. Example:               www.example.com/action/go-to-blue.php      or               www.example.com/action/short/go-to-red.php          www.example.com/action/tall/go-to-red.php      We are now restructuring to eliminate the `/short/` or `/tall/` directory. What this means is now `go-to-blue.php` will be doing some extra processing to make sure it sends the visitor to the proper place. The static method of the past was quite effective, because, well, if they left from that page we knew we had it right. Now since we are 301 redirecting `action/short/go-to-red.php` to just `action/go-to-red.php` it is quite important on `go-to-red.php` that we realize a user may have been redirected from `/short/` or `/tall/`. So right now I am using HTTP_REFERRER and of course in my testing that works fine, but after a lot of reading it is clear that this is not a solid solution, so I was starting to brainstorm on other ways to check and make sure we get the proper referral information. If we could check HTTP_REFERRER plus some other test, I would feel confident we have a pretty good system in place to send the visitor to the right place. Some questions/comments:   1. Could I use a session variable or a cookie to accomplish this goal?   2. If so, would that be maintained through the 301 redirect? I don't see why it wouldn't be..   3. Passing the url in the url is not an option in this case."}
{"_id": "44026", "title": "How would you design an application with many target platforms and devices?", "text": "I'm in a very beginning of the design phase of an application that will have to run in the following platforms/devices:   * Desktop: Windows, Linux & Mac   * Mobile: Android, iPhone/iPad & Windows Phone 7   * Web: Silverlight I will use C# on Mono and I want to maximize code re-usability. Except for the desktop (I'll use WinForms/GTK#), **my concern is related to many different GUI that I will face**. What would be your approach? Obviously, the views will be different, but what about the controllers, data access, utility classes, etc. Is it really acceptable to share everything but the views?"}
{"_id": "75773", "title": "Thinking of switching from mac to windows, need a little guidance", "text": "Looking to switch to Win7 as machines are cheaper, easier to repair and as a web developer, I wouldn't have to emulate IE anymore. I want as smooth a transition as possible, so what would be the closest match to my current stack of apps. MAMP TextMate Transmit Filemerge (for use with GIT DIFF's)"}
{"_id": "230053", "title": "Colour curves tool for \"value\" channel", "text": "I'm trying to write a program to read GIMP curves files and apply them to an image. I have successfully implemented the curves for the red, green and blue channels, but I can't get it working for the value pseudochannel. For the colour channels I just create a lookup table from the curves, and iterate through the pixels doing something like:               red = redlookup[red]     green = greenlookup[green]     blue = bluelookup[blue]      Good so far, I get exactly the same results in my program and GIMP. In the GIMP page linked above, it is claimed that the value channel is defined as `v = max(r, g, b)` but I don't understand how to adjust each colour channel from looking up this value. I'm currently knee deep in GIMP source code but it is quite convoluted. **In summary:** if I have an array `valuelookup` representing the curve for the value pseudochannel, how can I use it to adjust the RGB values for each pixel in an image? * * * GIMP defines the channels as follows: **Value** > The curve represents the Value, i.e. the brightness of pixels as you can see > them in the composite image. **Red; Green; Blue** > The curve represents the quantity of color in each of the three RGB > channels. Here, dark means little of the color. Light means a lot of the > color. The values range from 0 to 255."}
{"_id": "75777", "title": "Benefits of integration platform", "text": "We are looking at introducing an integration platform. In the begining it is an extra layer and an extra cost. But after a while the service that a new system needs will be available on the integration platform, therefore saving development effort. Question is does anyone know of any studies that look at how long the above \"a while\" is? Or are there any ROI studies on the use of integration platforms?"}
{"_id": "249751", "title": "Applications of Artificial Intelligence on regular business applications", "text": "This is a doubt I had for a really long time. I'm currently learning the basics of AI, mostly from Peter Norvig's book. I already know that you can use several AI techniques in Data Mining and Business Intelligence, but I wonder if there aren't more \"normal\" scenarios where you can apply AI. Could a scenario where an application can be improved by using AI? Books really don't specify more than a few select business cases. Thanks in advance **EDIT** Based on comments i'll be more specific. How can an application be improved by usig AI thechniques? And I don't mean adding search capabilities (when there are tools for that already) or BI stuff (I already know that to be AI based). What I want to know, is if it is possible to take a regular application (take a shipment scheduling application) and apply some AI techniques to improve its results, or to make recommendations to the user."}
{"_id": "208309", "title": "How to migrate my thinking from C++ to C#", "text": "I am an experienced C++ developer, I know the language in great details and have used some of its specific features intensively. Also, I know principles of OOD and design patterns. I am now learning C# but I cannot stop the feeling not being able to get rid of C++ mindset. I tied myself so hard to the strengths of C++ that I cannot live without some of the features. And I cannot find any good workarounds or replacements for them in C#. What **good practices** , **design patterns** , **idioms** that are different in C# from C++ perspective can you suggest? How to get a perfect C++ design not looking dumb in C#? Specifically, I cannot find a good C#-ish way to deal with (recent examples):   * Controlling the lifetime of resources that require deterministic cleanup (like files). This is easy having `using` in hand but how to use it properly when ownership of the resource is being transfered [... betwen threads]? In C++ I would simply use shared pointers and let it take care of 'garbage collection' just at the right time.   * Constant struggling with overriding functions for specific generics (I love things like partial template specialization in C++). Should I just abandon any attempts to do any generic programming in C#? Maybe generics are limited on purpose and it is not C#-ish to use them except for a specific domain of problems?   * Macro-like functionality. While generally a bad idea, for some domain of problems there is no other workaround (e.g. conditional evaluation of a statement, like with logs that should only go to Debug releases). Not having them means that I need to put more `if (condition) {...}` boilerplate and it is still not equal in terms of triggering side effects."}
{"_id": "219286", "title": "What to consider when designing a web application that will be deployed under a load balancer?", "text": "I am currently maintaining a Java web application that is initially designed to work only as a single instance (not in a cluster/farm). Now, the client is planning to upgrade their infrastructure and part of their plan is to place our web application behind a load balancer.      I have already identified several serious design problems:   1. Users can upload files and our application store those files in the local filesystem.   2. There are scheduled jobs that might cause problems when executed concurrently (i.e. generating files).   3. Session variables are heavily used in most modules.    I need opinion on my proposed solutions below.     1. I can solve item 1 by storing all files in an external/shared storage (SAN, etc..)    2. With item 2, I can create a locking mechanism in the database so when the scheduled jobs run, the web apps will first check the table and only the first one to update will run the said job.    3. Actually, I'm still not sure if item 3 can cause problems. If a user logs in to our application and the load balancer directs him to Server 1, is it possible that the load balancer will point him to Server 2 the next time he click a link? I have no idea yet how the load balancer works in this level.  Also, what are the other things that I should consider when designing a horizontal-scalable web application [from scratch]?"}
{"_id": "155943", "title": "Is it practical to have perfect validation score on HTML?", "text": "I was in a heated discussion the other day, about whether or not it's practical to have a perfect validation score on any HTML document. By practical I mean:   * Does not take a ridiculous amount of time compared to it's almost-perfect counterpart.   * Can be made to **look good on _older browsers_** and to **be usable on _very old browsers_**.   * Justifies the effort it may take to do so (does it come with some kind of reward on SEO/Usability/Accessibility that cannot be achieved in a simpler way with almost-perfect validation) So basically, **is perfect validation score practical on any HTML document?**"}
{"_id": "138746", "title": "Modularity vs Single class simplicity", "text": "I have been part of the organization I work in for the past year and a half or so. The company basically writes Perl code and they have large amounts of legacy code which originally prevented the company from moving forward with any code changes. My first observation with the existing code was non existence of Modularity. Over the time I worked here I, with the help of a few (who left the company), did a lot of hardwork Modularizing all the core sections of the application. I believe that we now have about 70% of the core systems modularized, coherent and layered. At this point in time I am accused of complicating the system design and everything I try to do is sort of looked at with suspicion. To design these systems I applied all the best design approaches(patterns) and methodologies(SOLID) available or known to me. When I wrote it, it was all appreciated but now the developers want to revert back to what they believe as simpler methodologies(which basically involves having large single classes, doing 100's of things). I still do not believe that those approaches are actually going to lead to simpler design but no one is actually ready to listen. To give an example, our code basically loads a bunch of files during its lifetime. Traditionally the class handled a lot of things like loading the file, repeatedly checking if the file has changed, is the right version of the file loaded etc. We also load a different set of files for test cases to ensure that it is working fine. All this was done very un organized fashion earlier. Every one created their own version of the file. There were lots of versions of these files and they were un manageable. I introduced a subsystem that will load you the right file(do the version verifications) given a name and a configuration that will tell all the versions of the file available. It eventually ensured that only two to three versions of the files are used across all the test cases. It basically follows a facade and factory pattern where the loader will create the right file object, which will have interface to load, save and should_reload. It was eventually even used to load contents from CouchDB as they only represent a document. This is now too complicated for the developers and no one really reads the code or the documentation I wrote. I do agree that going back to our old system will remove one sub system but will bring back the problem of un manageable number of files. At this juncture I find myself quite unsure of all the things I have learnt. I find myself not really interested in suggesting any improvements as my solution will only be accused of being too complicated. What do you think I can do at this point in time?"}
{"_id": "231984", "title": "How to develop an algorithm for brute-forcing / backtracking?", "text": "As a beginner programmer, I don't know how to conceptually think about brute- forcing. My mind can't really fathom how to write code that will try every possibility. I have a problem that I want to solve. Here is a code snippet (there are other functions, but no reason to include them here, they just do background work):               main():         step_segment = []           # contains current segment             STATS = [250,0,0,0,13,0]        # contains 1 step (current step stats)             # STATS = [step_id, danger, danger_limit, rnd, b_loop, enc]              # Temporary Interface         choice = None         while choice != \"0\":             print \\             \"\\n1 - Benchmark Run\"             choice = raw_input(\"Choice: \")             if choice == \"0\":                 print \"\\nGoodbye.\"                  elif choice == \"1\":                 while (len(step_segment)) < 128:                     step_segment, STATS = take_step(step_segment, STATS)                     if STATS[5] == \"B\":                         \"Dont know what to do here. Try every possibility!?\"      **The goal:** I want to produce a list of every possible 'route' through a segment, along with how long it takes. **Description:**   1. I will take a step in the route (There's only one direction: forward). Every time I take a step, my stats are updated. This takes a step and updates the stats: `step_segment, STATS = take_step(step_segment, STATS)`   2. A list of steps taken, along with the stats, are kept in `step_segment`. This is so I can 'undo' an arbitrary amount of steps, if I want. To undo a step call the function: `step_segment, STATS = undo_step(step_segment, STATS)`   3. I can see how long my current route has taken by doing: `time = frames(step_segment)`.   4. At some point, I will get into a Battle. I get into a Battle when `STATS[5] == \"B\"`   5. When there is a battle, I simply have two choices: **i.** Fight the battle, or, **ii.** Run away.   6. If I want to Fight, I do: `step_segment = do_fight(step_segment, STATS)`. This also records that I chose to fight, along with the stats, in `step_segment`. (So I can undo it, if i want).   7. If I want to Run Away, I do: `step_segment = run_away(step_segment,STATS)`. Can someone advise me, how I can code a brute forcer for this problem? **Specifically** , I would like to know how I can tell the computer to try every possibility; I simply cannot think how to... >.<' I want to see every possible combination of Run & Fight (the only two choices, when I reach a battle). There are only around 200 possibilities. I only need to take 128 steps, so there are a finite amount of possibilities, hence: `while (len(step_segment)) < 128`. I just don't know how to accomplish such a thing in Python. My whole reason for learning how to program is to solve this problem.. I think I can explain the solution in English, as I have done above, but I don't know how to code it. I would be **very** appreciative if someone could advise me on this!! Thank you."}
{"_id": "231981", "title": "OO design for client-server/RPC/n-tier data transfer (specifically SignalR)", "text": "I'm using SignalR to implement a client/server system, but I guess this question could apply to other tiered/client-server/RPC systems. If you aren't familiar with SignalR, you basically create a server-side class (called a \"hub\") that contains methods you want to expose to clients. On the client- side, SignalR exposes a \"hub proxy\" class via which you can invoke the server- side hub methods. Let's say I want to remotely control cars from my client application. My first thought was to create an abstract `CarBase` base class with methods such as Start(), Stop(), Steer(), etc. On the client-side I would implement a concrete `Car` class whose methods would invoke (via the SignalR hub proxy) the relevant methods on the server hub. Similarly, on the server-side I would implement a concrete `Car` class, but this time its methods would carry out the relevant actions on the \"physical\" car. Let's say the client wants to start a car:-               var car = new Car();     car.Id = 123;     car.Start();      The Car's `Start` method would basically invoke the relevant server method via the hub proxy, e.g.:-               public override void Start()     {         _hubProxy.Invoke(\"StartCar\", this);     }      _Here is my first question_ \\- is it acceptable for the Car class to have a dependency on the hub proxy, and pass itself to the remote method like this? I've read that functionality such as persistence is a separate concern and should therefore live in a separate class, and I'm in two minds about whether that guideline applies to what I'm doing here. If so, it would result in client code such as `_hubProxy.StartCar(car);` rather than the more OO- friendly and intuitive \"car.Start();\". Moving on, on the server-side, the \"hub\" class's StartCar() method might look something like this:-               public void StartCar(CarBase clientCar)     {         // Instantiate a server-side Car         // (this implementation interacts with the \"physical\" car).         var serverCar = new Car();              // Map properties from received client car         serverCar.Id = clientCar.Id;         .. etc..              serverCar.Start();     }      Is this an acceptable approach, i.e. having the client-side pass in its Car object? Or should I be passing around something else, e.g. just the car's ID and other pertient properties? I guess I can't avoid instantiating the server- side Car (and mapping its properties) - after all, this is where the functionality to interact with the physical car lives. I've gone round in circles trying to think of a better solution, and have reached the point where I can't see the wood for the trees."}
{"_id": "200684", "title": "What is a good rule-of-thumb for naming link-tables?", "text": "In the same way that a `publication` table might relate to a `person` table via `subscriptions`, or a `company` table might relate to a `person` table via `employee`, I'm wondering if there is a descriptive way to relate a `company` table to a `company_type` table. Here are some rough (and simplified) examples of the relevant tables.   **company:**   \\- |id|name|   **company_type:**   \\- |type|description|   **{name needed}:**   \\- |id|company_id|type| Also, I realize that not all relationships can be as succinctly named as `subscriptions` or `employee`, so if that's the case here, what would be a good rule of thumb to avoid a near name-collision with something like `company_types`? _Additional Details:_   Company types, in our current case, are _somewhat_ convoluted. This industry has multiple supply channels and multiple customer channels, so while \"vendor\" is a valid company_type, a vendor can also be \"independent\", \"authorized\", or \"franchised\" ... or any mix of the three.   Customer types are very similarly multi-faceted, and to further compound the issue, a single company can simultaneously be of some vendor and customer types."}
{"_id": "5119", "title": "How to bypass middlemen?", "text": "I'm freelancing on a project where I'm the only programmer, and find myself at the end of a line of four middlemen, who stand between me and the actual customer, each passing my work as internal to their own company. Communication is terrible and the requirements, made by an advertising company, are flimsy. I've managed to communicate with people upper the ladder by keeping asking questions that made people face their ignorance, but they won't let me contact the end client since, from his end, it's pretty much a done deal. The project will soon be over though, and I've decided it's the last time I'll be working under these conditions. The middlemen, are pretty much useless from the perspective of shipping a product, but still necessary to me since they are the ones bringing the contracts in. Hence I'm not thinking about crossing them altogether, which would probably end badly. Rather I'm looking for a way to make them understand I need to be part of the requirements and design process, meet the clients, and shouldn't have to go through a whole channel of clueless people each time I require some information. Sorry for the venting :) Any ideas ?"}
{"_id": "205247", "title": "What logic is used to control Lock and Update actions in P2P networks? (similar to Bitcoin)", "text": "Bitcoin relies on Proof of Work (hashing) to control the writing to a central repository (the blockchain). It also relies on a set of rules for these updates, and defines what happens if a conflict is found (longest chain wins) Using that as an example for my question:   * What are some architectural examples of different distributed lock and/or update mechanisms suitable for P2P networks? (I'm looking for descriptions of software design suitable to this project, not software products)   * What key logic or rules are fundamental to that decentralized \"database\"?"}
{"_id": "200681", "title": "What to do when a company request permission to use open source code without attribution?", "text": "I have an opensource project currently under MIT license. I have received a request from a company to use my code for their commercial project without having to give any attribution or credit. To be honest, when I released the code, my sole intention was only to help a fellow programmer, and I didn't really think about if I was credited. Choosing the license was just one of the step I had to do to set up the project on codeplex. On one hand, I feel honored and appreciate that they actually bothered to ask, on the other hand, I felt if I just allowed them to do so without any cost may just destroy the spirit of open source. **What are the typical things I or other code owners can do or request from the company to make it a fair trade? Should I even allow it?** I am thinking of asking the company to write a official letter of intent and I will sign against it just to make it more formal; and also to request a donation to project/charity of my choice or buy something on my wishlist as compensation (not very expensive). Will that be too much?"}
{"_id": "122668", "title": "Django as Python extension?", "text": "I come from **php** community and just started learning **Python**. I have to create server-side scripts that manipulate databases, files, and send emails. Some of it I found hard to do in python, comparing to php, like sending emails and querying databases. Where in **php** you have functions like **mysql_query()** , or **email()** , in python you have to write whole bunch of code. Recently I found Django, and my question is: is it a good framework for network-oriented scripts, instead of using it as a web-framework?"}
{"_id": "122667", "title": "Can I use jQuery Mobile if I am developing a native app?", "text": "I am new to jQuery and mobile apps development. I know the features of jQuery Mobile. I want to know where and why to use it. Can I use jQuery Mobile if I am developing a native app?"}
{"_id": "136948", "title": "Entry level software developer technical interview... I need preparation advice", "text": "I'm pretty fresh out of college. So I don't have a lot of experience with job interviews. I'm interviewing for an entry level software developer job. I've already made it past the first phone screen and a coding challenge. Now I'm going in for a face to face technical interview. If I pass this then I probably get the job. The job description that I'm interviewing for now says I will be working mainly with C++, some C#, databases, and web development. It's a smaller comopany and my responsibilities will be a little of everything (design, documentation, coding, and QA). I bombed my last technical interview (with a different company) because I prepared by studying the crap out of all the technologies mentioned in the job description (c#, html, sql, ajax, javascript, etc) but the interview was all questions about hash maps vs binary trees, abstract classes vs interfaces, and recursion and absolutely nothing about the technologies mentioned in the job description. Which I would have done amazing on it if I prepared by going over everything I learned in college... but the last time I worked with most of the stuff he asked about was my sophomore year in college so i was very rusty. Anyway, I'm just looking for some advice on my situation. Should I focus on the computer science stuff that I learned in college like data structures, algorithms, recursion, etc. or should I focus on the technologies they mention in the job description? Any advice from someone with experience would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "237204", "title": "Maintaining sorted Array speed", "text": "I have a for loop running over a list of objects like:               [{a: 2001, b: \"hello\"}, {a: 54, b: \"hi\"}....]      In this loop, I filter out objects based on certain field values (like, b == hello?) and create a new list of filtered objects. Once the for loop is complete, I sort the remaining objects by the value of a. This is an oversimplified example, so presorting by field a isn't possible. My question is, is it faster to do the sort after the loop is complete vs doing something like a binary search at the end of each iteration and then insert the object then? That would avoid sorting at the end, but I don't really know if that ends up costing more."}
{"_id": "237200", "title": "Traversing an AST using Visitors", "text": "I'm writing a compiler for a C-like language, and I'm looking for an elegant way to traverse my abstract syntax tree. I'm trying to implement the Visitor pattern, although I'm not convinced that I'm doing it correctly.               struct Visitor {            // Expressions         virtual void visit(AsgnExpression&);         virtual void visit(ConstantExpression&);         ...         virtual void visit(Statement&);         ...              virtual void finished(ASTNode&);          protected:         virtual void visit(ASTNode&) = 0;     };      `visit` is overloaded for each type, and by default each overload will call `visit(ASTNode&)` which subclasses are forced to implement. This makes it easier to do quick and dirty things, although defining a `visit` for each type is tedious. Each subclass of `ASTNode` must implement an `accept` method which is used to traverse the tree structure.               class ASTNode {     public:         virtual ~ASTNode();         virtual void accept(Visitor& visitor) = 0;     };      However, this design is quickly becoming tedious because the `accept` methods are often very similar. **Who should be responsible for traversing the structure, the nodes or the visitor?** I'm leaning towards having `ASTNode` provide an iterator for accessing its children, and then having the visitor traverse the structure. If you have any experience designing Abstract Syntax Trees, please share your wisdom with me!"}
{"_id": "237201", "title": "Objective-C style: Do I implement factory methods or init methods?", "text": "I'm new to Objective-C programming, and creating various classes for an iOS application I'm working on. When creating objects, it seems like many classes in the built-in frameworks use the \"static factory method\" pattern, like this:               MyObject* m = [MyObject objectWithName:@\"foo\" id:@7 description:@\"bar\"];      however, many classes also simply have overrides on `init`, like this:               MyObject* m = [[MyObject alloc] initWithName:@\"foo\" id:@7 description:@\"bar\"];      I can see that if I want to cover all my bases, I'd implement both, and have the `objectWithName...` method call `initWithName...`, however this seems quite tedious. I was wondering - is there any style or guidance from around when I should implement the factory method pattern vs an `init` overload? I've googled for this, but have been unable to find anything (most likely because the terms are quite generic and google doesn't search well for them) Any advice or opinions would be much appreciated"}
{"_id": "72865", "title": "How much is Google investing in the Go language?", "text": "I have read quite a bit about the Go language, and it seems promising. The last important bit of information I am missing before I decide on spending more effort on the language is: How much money/man power does Google or other companies invest in the development effort? If this information cannot be provided, do you have any other information showing the commitment of Google to the project. Is it being used as the primary language for a new investment or similar (my guess is that it is too early for this, but I do not know)?"}
{"_id": "125123", "title": "Is there another meaning to prototype?", "text": "I am reading Pro C#. It says > do be aware that the value 0 is automatically returned, even if you > construct a Main() method prototyped to return void. What does prototyped mean in this context? The only C# related definition of a prototype I'm aware of has to do with a model or test program tossed together without the intention to go to production."}
{"_id": "125128", "title": "Is it sensible to teach programming with a language I don't know myself (yet)?", "text": "I have a friend who has asked me to teach him how to program. I was thinking that using a language that I do not know could be beneficial because:   * I will learn something new too.   * That will make me slow down, as I've been told that I usually explain things too fast. So now I need to find some balance between what is didactic for a _newbie_ and is useful to me. My draft of requirements:   * Not C, Java or Python (because I already know).   * My personal interests now are on Erlang, Scala and C++ (but they might be too hardcore)... I could refresh Scheme or Prolog too.   * Need a good IDE or REPL to play with.   * Clean and simple language.   * Good (and free!) documentation.   * Some practical for the real world (i.e. making a web application, image processing, statistical analysis...) About the methodology, I was thinking about this sequence:   * Introduction to logic.   * Basic maths and algorithms.   * Software design principles.   * Some foundations on computer technology.   * Make some large project. So, any suggestions about the language or methodology? **edit** : My \"student\" is a 28 years old MD, his goal is to make a web site for medicine students. As he is also into research, so I think he could find immediate use to his new programming skills for data analysis and plotting. Ultimately I might help him directly with the project."}
{"_id": "84790", "title": "How to increase the speed of the page loading in ASP.NET?", "text": "I am .net programmer using Asp.net ,C# and Sql server 2005 to display set of information. My project is to create tools for Call Center Systems in my office. Now i am have created the project. but its too slow and takes much time in the time of page loading and post back. I need Suggestions to improve page performances and wat technologies can be used to make the tool efficient..."}
{"_id": "94591", "title": "Interviewing by providing an application to work on?", "text": "While thinking about better ways to design technical interviews (meaning not based on social skills but purely technical ones) I started to think about this possible way of doing (without having the possibility to test it):   1. Determine the kind of problems, high or low level of abstraction, from architecture to bitwise manipulations if that's your shop's business, that you are solving every day in the applications you work for. For this example I'll suppose we are in a PC game development company that produce a game based on extensions via modules.   2. Write a simple application that solve those problems. Lets say a simple game that have not the same scale than the one we're working on but that would be    3. Add bugs. Architecture bugs and more language-knowledge related bugs if it's critical (for example it's important to know about virtual destructors in C++). Make it obviously buggy, maybe make it crash first and buggy after that. Make sure it works with the tools that most people use in the domain (like cross-platform C++ for a simple game, providing the libraries code with the rest).   4. Provide the full source code of the application to the candidate and tell him to a) fix the code, b) add a functionality (related to the position if necessary). The candidate would have a limited time to send something back. For example, one week or two. That time would be several times the time needed to do the work in full time, it have to be fair. 4'. Maybe a different way to do that would be to provide the application source code publicly online and start to meet only the candidates who sent you the working application with the additional feature...but that would work very differently so I'm not sure if it's really interesting too. For 4.b., I'm assuming that the functionality to add is simple but requires basic understanding of the overall organisation of the code. That would not be adding content. 5) Make the candidate explain what he did. All that process would be a kind of interview screening, there would be a meeting after that if the candidate did provide something. It feels like parallel screening : you screen several people at the same time without spending time sequentially on each. A meeting with discussions about the code is obviously really necessary. The questions : a) Do you think that it would be pertinent? What do you think? (I'm not very experienced in interviewing so I'm relying on your experiences) b) Would it be considered as paid work? Even if it's not work done on your product but just a interview-specific application? c) I'm assuming that the candidate will use whatever he have available to solve the problems, even friends helping because I think that reflect better an real development environmental. Is there something wrong with assuming that? (Yes I'm questioning my own way of thinking, they say that's sane. Are they wrong?) d) Is there a variant that would be more interesting?"}
{"_id": "252538", "title": "Stable, Hash Based Symmetrical Difference", "text": "A lot of thought went into the implementation of the set algorithms in LINQ: `Distinct`, `Except`, `Intersect` and `Union`. They guarantee that the items are returned in the same order that they appear in before calling the method. So, these two expressions return the items in the same order:               var authors1 = books.Select(b => b.Author).OrderBy(a => a).Distinct();     var authors2 = books.Select(b => b.Author).Distinct().OrderBy(a => a);      The implementation of `Distinct` would look something like this:               public IEnumerable<T> Distinct<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source)     {         HashSet<T> set = new HashSet<T>();         foreach (T item in source)         {             if (set.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }     }      The implementation of `Except` would look like this:               public static IEnumerable<T> Except<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source1, IEnumerable<T> source2)     {         HashSet<T> set = new HashSet<T>(source2);         foreach (T item in source1)         {             if (set.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }     }      The implementation of `Intersect` would look something like this:               public static IEnumerable<T> Intersect<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source1, IEnumerable<T> source2)     {         HashSet<T> set = new HashSet<T>(source2);         HashSet<T> found = new HashSet<T>();         foreach (T item in source1)         {             if (set.Contains(item) && found.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }     }      I added a second set to remove duplicates from the list. Finally, `Union` is a little more complex, but basically the same thing:               public static IEnumerable<T> Union<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source1, IEnumerable<T> source2)     {         HashSet<T> set = new HashSet<T>();         foreach (T item in source1)         {             if (set.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }         foreach (T item in source2)         {             if (set.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }     }      So, the only operation not supported by LINQ is symmetrical difference or `SymmetricExcept`. I have been playing around with creating a \"stable\" version of this algorithm and out of pure curiosity am wondering if there is a better implementation. The most straight-forward implementation is to just call `Except` twice:               public static IEnumerable<T> SymmetricExcept<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source1, IEnumerable<T> source2)     {         var except1 = source1.Except(source2);         var except2 = source2.Except(source1);         return except1.Concat(except2);     }      Although, this requires going through both lists twice. So I wrote a version that only requires going through the second list twice:               public static IEnumerable<T> SymmetricExcept<T>(this IEnumerable<T> source1, IEnumerable<T> source2)     {         HashSet<T> set = new HashSet<T>(source2);         HashSet<T> found = new HashSet<T>();         foreach (T item in source1)         {             if (!set.Contains(item) && found.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }         foreach (T item in source2)         {             if (found.Add(item))             {                 yield return item;             }         }     }      I haven't verified the correctness of these algorithms. There is some ambiguity about how LINQ handles duplicates. I am curious if there is a more efficient way to do `SymmetricExcept`, something better than `O(m + 2n)`."}
{"_id": "252938", "title": "Is splitting up a function into several inner functions an anti-pattern?", "text": "Imagine a long and complicated process, which is started by calling function `foo()`. There are several consecutive steps in this process, each of them depending on result of the previous step. The function itself is, say, about 250 lines. It is highly unlikely that these steps would be useful on their own, not as a part of this whole process. Languages such as Javascript allow creating inner functions inside a parent function, which are inaccessible to outer functions (unless they are passed as a parameter). A colleague of mine suggest that we can **split up the content of`foo()` into 5 inner functions**, each function being a step. These functions are inaccessible to outer functions (signifying their uselessness outside of the parent function). The main body of `foo()` simply calls these inner function one by one:               foo(stuff) {         var barred = bar(stuff);         var bazzed = baz(barred);         var confabulated = confabulate(bazzed);         var reticulated = reticulate(confabulated);         var spliced = splice(reticulated);              return spliced;              // function definitions follow ...     }      **Is this an anti-pattern of some sort? Or is this a reasonable way to split up long functions?** Another question is: is this acceptable when using OOP paradigm in Javascript? **Is it OK to split an object's method this way** , or does this warrant another object, which contains all these inner functions as private methods? **See also:**   * Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else? \\- a previous question of mine, which leads into this one.   * @KilianFoth's answer to a very similar question which provides a different perspective compared to the answers given here."}
{"_id": "232183", "title": "Best practice for security checks, in surface or deep layer?", "text": "Let's take a server-side WebServices app, we need to make sure that all function applies every security rules, and keep the code clean. In such a case, I usually prefer to place my security checks on the upper layers. As soon as the user call a function, I check if he has the rights to access it or not. But this strategy doesn't always works, if we need to retrieve infos from the database before performing all the checks, for instance. Is this a bad idea? Should it be better to place security checks in deep layers, just before/after accessing database? I'm trying to figure out the best approach for a system that have a lot of security checks, and avoiding creating a big spaguetti. The question could be like \"What are the best practice to make sure an app is secure and the code is easy to maintain?\"."}
{"_id": "39888", "title": "Job title inflation and fluffing", "text": "When you work on the same project for a relative long time you get more experienced. You may also master many new technologies. Besides the coding you may also do what would classify other roles. There is however one part of your career that may not get updated. That is your job title. It seems beside all technological hypes there is also job title hype. It all depends on which company you work for. Many companies give employer better job titles because they want to keep them. The employee doesn\u2019t change their job because the current title is much better, even if they would get better working condition and benefits if they changed their job. When you consider changing you job you notice that your job title is kind of \u201coutdated\u201d. People with less skill have a much better title for their job than you. You may very well explain what you did on your project but the fact is that many employers go by the title. So here are the questions:   * Do you change your current title in your CV?   * What are other options? Here are some good readings regarding these phenomena:   * Job title inflation   * Job title fluffing"}
{"_id": "146519", "title": "What companies hire data scientists?", "text": "What kind of data jobs are there in the software industry for someone with a B.S. in pure mathematics and a minor in statistics but with little experience in programming? I want to work on the data research side rather than on the software developement side. What companies hire data scientists?"}
{"_id": "253471", "title": "Single complex or multiple simple autoload functions", "text": "Using the **spl_autoload_register()** , should I use a single autoload function that contains all the logic to determine where the include files are or should I break each include grouping into it's own function with it's own logic to include the files for the called function? As the places where include files may reside expands so too will the logic of a single function. If I break it into multiple functions I can add functions as new groupings are added, but the functions will be copy/pastes of each other with minor alterations. Currently I have a tool with a single registered autoload function that picks apart the class name and tries to predict where it is and then includes it. Due to naming conventions for the project this has been pretty simple.               if has namespace        if in template namespace look in Root\\Templates       else look in Root\\Modules\\Namespace     else       look in Root\\System     if file exists include      But we are starting to include Interfaces and Traits into our codebase and it hurts me to include the type of a thing in it's name. So we are looking at instead of a single autoload function that digs through the class name and looks for the file and has increasingly complex logic to it, we are looking at having multiple autoload functions registered. But each one follows the same pattern and any time I see that I get paranoid about code copying.               function systemAutoloadFunc       logic to create probable filename       if filename exists in system include it and return true       else return false          function moduleAutoloadFunc       logic to create probable filename       if filename exists in modules include it and return true       else return false      Every autoload function will follow that pattern and the last of each function _if filename exists, include return true else return false_ is going to be identical code. This makes me paranoid about having to update it later across the board if the file_exists include pattern we are using ever changes. Or is it just that, paranoia and the multiple functions with some identical code is the best option?"}
{"_id": "133738", "title": "How can I properly compare double values for equality in a unit test?", "text": "I recently designed a time series module where my time series is essentially a `SortedDictionnary<DateTime, double>`. Now I would like to create unit tests to make sure that this module is always working and producing the expected result. A common operation is to compute the performance between the points in the time series. So what I do is create a time series with, say, {1.0, 2.0, 4.0} (at some dates), and I expect the result to be {100%, 100%}. The thing is, if I manually create a time series with the values {1.0, 1.0} and I check for equality (by comparing each point), the test would not pass, as there will always be inaccuracies when working with binary representations of real numbers. Hence, I decided to create the following function:               private static bool isCloseEnough(double expected, double actual, double tolerance=0.002)     {         return squaredDifference(expected, actual) < Math.Pow(tolerance,2);     }      Is there another common way of dealing with such a case?"}
{"_id": "202938", "title": "Secure an Application/Software by expiration with Date?", "text": "I have been working on some software application and I update them every 6 months. Currently, the way I track the date is by extracting the date from the system when the user installs the application, encrypt it and store it in a file locally. Whenever the application is started, it checks if 6 months have passed, then it works or it doesn't, in which case it shows an error message telling the user to update. If the user finds the encrypted date in the file they can simply replace it with one from a more recent install. I am wondering if there's a more secure way to do this?"}
{"_id": "207727", "title": "Why there is no markdown for underline?", "text": "I am wondering why there is no markdown syntax for underline? I know that basic html tags can be embedded to achieve this but I am trying to understand why `underline` got omitted when **bold** and _italics_ exists"}
{"_id": "202932", "title": "Named output parameters vs return values", "text": "Which code is better:               // C++     void handle_message(...some input parameters..., bool& wasHandled)     void set_some_value(int newValue, int* oldValue = nullptr)           // C#     void handle_message(...some input parameters..., out bool wasHandled)     void set_some_value(int newValue, out int oldValue)      or               bool handle_message(...some input parameters...) ///< Returns -1 if message was handled                                                     //(sorry, this documentation was broken a year ago and we're too busy to fix it)     int set_some_value(T newValue) // (well, it's obvious what this function returns, so I didn't write any documentation for it)      The first one doesn't have and need any documentation. It's a self-documenting code. Output value clearly says what it means, and it's really hard to make a change like this:               - void handle_message(Message msg, bool& wasHandled) {     -    wasHandled = false;     -    if (...) { wasHandled = true; ...     + void handle_message(Message msg, int& wasHandled) {     +    wasHandled = -1;     +    if (...) { wasHandled = ...;      With return values such change could be done easily                 /// Return true if message was handled     - bool handle_message(Message msg) {     + int handle_message(Message msg) {     ...     -     return true;     +     return -1;      Most of compilers don't (and can't) check documentation written in comments. Programmers also tend to ignore comments while editing code. So, again, the question is: if _subroutine_ has single output value, should it be a _procedure_ with well-named self-documenting output parameter, or should it be a _function_ which returns an unnamed value and have a comment describing it?"}
{"_id": "133730", "title": "How should I handle exposing Java beans to end users? ", "text": "I need to create some Java interfaces to query some database tables and some web services for new framework I'm building. In a previous Java Spring web application, I used Java Beans to handle the results of the query. In this case, I need to write some interfaces to publish the methods that will be available to end users. I'm a little bit of a newbie in this particular aspect of Java and I was wondering: is it better to allow the end user to see and use the Java beans in JSP, or to hide them using some generic type?"}
{"_id": "133733", "title": "How to optimize methodology to collect Market Data?", "text": "I am working on Application which goes and get's market data from different sources, I am using polling mechanism where vendor/broker put his data file and my application would go and hit that ftp location multiple times during the day to get data. Right now, we hit location every 5 mins and if data is not there then again after 5 mins. In it's current software architecture system using lot of resources between time window of 3 hrs where we do this polling mechanism. I want to improve performance of application and so what would best practices to solve this kind of software problem? **Note:** Some might say that this problem is engineering and should not be post here but my target audience is software guys working in finance and so i have posted this question here, if you feel that this is not right location for this then please feel free to migrate it to stackoverflow or programmers.stackexchange.com"}
{"_id": "41668", "title": "Would be good to include your freelancer account in your Resume / CV when applying for a job?", "text": "I've been working as a **freelancer** for about two years in vWorker. Any person can visit a coder's profile, and see in how many projects the coder has worked on, (if the coders allows) see how much the coder obtained in each project, ratings, feedbacks, etc. Would be good to include a freelancer account in your Resume / CV when applying for a job?   Is it something you would do if you have finished several projects there?"}
{"_id": "87688", "title": "Why do people put '\\n' at the beginning of strings?", "text": "Very often I get into C code where `printf` format strings start with `\\n`: printf( \"\\nHello\" ); This in my opinion is an annoying thing that offers no advantages (rather many disadvantages!) with respect to printing `\"Hello\\n\"`:   * If the first printed line begins with `'\\n'`, program output will begin with a (useless) empty line   * If the last printed line doesn't end with `'\\n'`, program output won't end with a new line (useful when reading the output on a terminal)   * On most terminals (on line buffered streams in general), output gets flushed when a `'\\n'` is encountered, so a line not ending with `'\\n'` could be shown on screen much time after it's been actually `printf`'d (or maybe never, if the stream never gets flushed, for instance if the program crashes) So, why do people does like this?"}
{"_id": "70852", "title": "Scheme and Functional programming is to \"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs\" as Prolog and Logic programming is to what book?", "text": "I'm looking for some advice how to get started with Logic programming, and I am really enjoying working through the Scheme book \"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.\" Is there a similar book that is geared toward Prolog? Or, if there is a better language to study than Prolog for Logic programming I am interested in hearing your opinions on that as well."}
{"_id": "87686", "title": "Nested languages code smell", "text": "Many projects combine languages, for example on the web with the ubiquitous SQL + server-side language + markup du jour + JavaScript + CSS mix (often in a single function). Bash and other shell code is mixed with Perl and Python on the server side, `eval`ed and sometimes even passed through `sed` before execution. Many languages support runtime execution of arbitrary code strings, and in some it seems to be fairly common practice. In addition to advice about **security** and **separation of concerns** ,   1. what **other issues** are there with this type of programming,   2. what can be done to **minimize it** , and   3. is it ever **defensible** (except in the \"PHB on the shoulder\" situation)? **Edit:** To clarify, this is _not_ about using more than one language for the job - That's a _good thing_ for any but the simplest projects. The issue is mixing languages _in the same file_ , such as magic strings for SQL, Bash & Perl `eval`, and the like."}
{"_id": "87685", "title": "Learning C# quickly", "text": "I just got a position at a big, well-known C#/.NET company. The thing is that I don't know any C# or .NET at all (they know that) and I want to learn as much as I can before I start, to not waste time (and money). How do I learn C#/.NET quickly and efficiently? Resources? Great tutorials? Videos? EDIT: I forgot to mention that I have a couple of years experience with Java. So I am not new to programming - just new to .NET. UPDATE: Thank you for all your replies. I have ordered \"Essential C# 4.0\" and until then, I will go through some of the guides / tutorials and the general documentation at MSDN."}
{"_id": "203333", "title": "Should testers approve releases, or just report on tests?", "text": "Does it make sense to give signoff authority to testers? Should a test team   1. Just test features, issues, etc, and simply report on a pass/fail basis, leaving it up to others to act on those results, or   2. Have authority to hold up releases themselves based on those results? In other words, should testers be required to actually sign off on releases? The testing team I'm working with feels that they do, and we're having an issue with this because of \"testing scope creep\" -- the refusal to approve releases is sometimes based on issues explicitly not addressed by the release in question."}
{"_id": "203330", "title": "Continuous integration testing server: hosted, own desktop, or own server", "text": "For testing, I am planning to run a continuous integration testing. There are mainly two options: hosted, or own desktop/server. I will break it into 3 options I have:   1. Hosted:     * Economical, $10-20/month for a small app     * Less setup, the CI company manage all hardware and software   2. Desktop:     * I could just buy a simple, cheap desktop as a test server (about $500).   3. Used server:     * My current office is offloading some old Dell rack server (Probably dual core Xeon, which I can purchase for $50 or less Please advise me which best serves me for a small team of 2-3 developers. Thanks."}
{"_id": "137924", "title": "How are open source repositories managed for popular languages?", "text": "I'm a developer that creates Open Source code for a small language (LabVIEW), and am currently sharing this in several places. The vendor of LabVIEW has a certification process for Open Source libraries (mixed with commercial/closed libraries), but it's rather lengthy. I was wondering how more popular languages manage large repositories of libraries (for instance Debian, or python-works) of Open Source libraries, are those strictly controlled and monitored for quality or can anyone contribute?   * How would one set up the process for a centralized repository and accept incoming code?   * Are there different levels of quality/trustworthy?    * Is it allowed to rely on libraries outside the repository?"}
{"_id": "40394", "title": "How do you organize your projects?", "text": "Do you have any particular style of organizing projects? For example, currently I'm creating a project for a couple of schools here in Bolivia, this is how I organized it:               TutoMentor (Solution)     TutoMentor.UI   (Winforms project)     TutoMentor.Data (Class library project)      How exactly do you organize your project? Do you have an example of something you organized and are proud of? Can you share a screenshot of the Solution pane? In the UI area of my application, I'm having trouble deciding on a good schema to organize different forms and where they belong. * * * **Edit:** What about organizing different forms in the .UI project? Where/how should I group different form? Putting them all in root level of the project is a bad idea."}
{"_id": "202681", "title": "How to Implement Complex Form Data?", "text": "I'm supposed to implement a relatively complex form that looks like follows, but has at least four more pages requiring the user to fill in all necessary information for the tracks: ![](http://www.mediafire.com/convkey/b441/1hnp8lxbu49ar2ufg.jpg) This data will need to be sent to the server, which is implemented using Dropwizard. I'm looking for best practices on how to upload and send such a complex form with potentially dozens of songs to the server. The simplest available solution I have seen is a simple _multipart/form-data_ request with the following form schema (Source): Client               <html>     <body>     <h1>File Upload with Jersey</h1>          <form action=\"rest/file/upload\" method=\"post\" enctype=\"multipart/form-data\">             <p>         Select a file : <input type=\"file\" name=\"file\" size=\"45\" />        </p>             <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Upload It\" />     </form>          </body>     </html>      Server               @POST     @Path(\"/upload\")     @Consumes(MediaType.MULTIPART_FORM_DATA)     public Response uploadTrack(final FormDataMultiPart multiPart) {         List<FormDataBodyPart> artists = multiPart.getFields(\"artist\");              StringBuffer output = new StringBuffer();         for (FormDataBodyPart artist : artists)             output.append(artist.getValueAs(String.class));              List<FormDataBodyPart> tracks = multiPart.getFields(\"track\");         for (FormDataBodyPart track : tracks)             writeToFile(track.getValueAs(InputStream.class), \"Foo\");              return Response.status(200).entity(output.toString()).build();     }      Then I have also read about file uploads via Ajax or Formdata (Mozilla HttpRequest) which allows for Posts in the formats _application/x-www-form- urlencoded_ , _multipart/form-data_ , or _text/plain_. I don't know which approach, if any, is best. An ideal solution would be to utilize Jackson to convert a json string into my data objects, but I don't get the impression that this is possible with binary data."}
{"_id": "202682", "title": "Dev Server vs Local Development", "text": "On the past 2 projects I've worked, teams prefer a local development environment over a development server. The one project lead stated that local was better since it didn't require an internet connection. But, this seems assumed when developing. Which is usually better?"}
{"_id": "76451", "title": "Department organization of \"source code\", \"projects\", and \"processes/work-instructions\"?", "text": "How do you organize your software assets (source code and resources), your \"active\" and \"past\" projects, and your Software Department processes/work- instructions (including source code conventions, rules, and reviews process)? For example, one approach would be to use \"Trac\" with databases for \"Software Assets\" and \"Software Process\". Another would be to have databases for \"Project A\", \"Project B\", and \"Software Process\". Is your source code \"by-project\", or \"by-all-in-department\", or \"by-product\"?"}
{"_id": "175902", "title": "How to design software when using BDD?", "text": "I'm working on a project right now and it's my first project using BDD. Up till now, the user stories have proven themselves a very valuable weapon to understand requirements and to specify the solution in a comprehensive, easy to understand language. My question is this: now that my user stories are complete, how do I design my solution? I understand that I derive behavior tests from my user stories, and I have to do UI design, but am I supposed to use good ol' UML? I'm under the impression that when using user stories, UML is left out; is this correct?"}
{"_id": "8228", "title": "What is the first published reference to test-first programming?", "text": "I am rereading Refactoring by Martin Fowler. In Chapter 4, Building Tests, I came across the following passage. > In fact, one of the most usefull times to write tests is before you start > programming. When you need to add a feature, begin by writing the test. This > isn't as backward as it sounds. By writing the test you are asking yourself > what needs to be done to add the function. Writing the test also > concentrates on the interface rather than the implementation (always a good > thing). It also means you have a clear point at which you are done coding-- > when the test works. While I am an advocate of test-driven development now, I did not remember having been introduced to the concept when I originally read this book nearly 5 years ago. According to Amazon.com, this book was originally published on July 8, 1999. Is this the first published reference to test-first programming or is there something even earlier?"}
{"_id": "206303", "title": "Preventing password hashing algorithm from overloading CPU", "text": "These days password hashing algorithms are designed to be slow. While it prevents black hats from guessing the password (at least partially), it also gives additional work for the server. I can imagine that, if someone wanted to make server run extremely slowly, they could simply send many log-in requests which would lead to many password hash calculations therefore dramatically increasing CPU usage. What is the common practice for preventing such attacks? And how is it called?"}
{"_id": "123200", "title": "Sharing buffer between multiple threads", "text": "I had a job process that was executing a lot of IO to read and write temporary files.   Now I want to (need to) reduce the quantity of IO executions. So I want to create a sort of circular buffer that is going to be filled up with a data from a text file within first thread. The consumer (reading) thread will fetch data from this buffer. The problem is that there could be multiple consumers that need to read from same one buffer. For buffer implementation I prefer not to use any existing wrappers (simple array, where i just \"play\" with indices is enough). I also don't want to create a separate buffer for every reader. And ofcourse I want to avoid any deadlocks and unnecessary blockings. **UPDATE**   Right now I am using circular buffer (an array and 2 indices) The question is how to implement such buffer that can be accessed by multiple consumers where each consumer can read from it interdependently from other consumers (one costumer may read faster than the other one). **IMPORTANT UPDATE**   The first thread don't know (and should not know) about it's consumers!!! It should write data to a buffer, when data ends it should raise a flag."}
{"_id": "15502", "title": "When to start writing Exception Handling, Logging", "text": "When do you start writing your Exception Handling Code? When do you start writing Logging Statements. For the purpose of elaborating this question, let us assume that we are on .NET platform with log4net logging but feel free to answer in a generic way. Solution: A Windows Forms Project. Projects: UI, BusinessRules, DataHandlers So, do you go about writing your DataHandlers which does your Data Manipulations such as Create, Read, Update, Delete first. Then follow it up with your Business Rules And then your UI or any other permutation of the above. Test your Application for Functionality. And _then_ start writing your Exception Handling Code and _finally_ your Logging code? When is a right time to start writing your Exception Handling code? PS: In the book Clean Code, they say Write your **try-catch-finally** block first. That, prompted me to ask this question."}
{"_id": "86483", "title": "Services or Shared Libraries?", "text": "I work in an environment where we have several different web applications, where each of them have different features but still need to do similar things: authentication, read from common data sources, store common data, etc. Is it better to build the shared functionality into a set of services, to be called by the web apps, or is it better to make a shared library, which the webapps include? The services or libraries would need to access various databases, and it seems like keeping that access in a single place (service) is a good idea. It would also reduce the number of database connections needed. A service would also keep the logic in a single place, but then it could be argued that a shared library can do the same thing. Are there other benefits to be gained from using services over shared libraries?"}
{"_id": "226355", "title": "Why Perl is appropriate language for CGI?", "text": "I heard many people around still saying Perl is great language for CGI. But i think it is not as much as popular as now growing languages such as Python, Ruby. Is there any solid reason for Perl still being the appropriate language for CGI."}
{"_id": "212084", "title": "Objects of different programming languages", "text": "Apparently, there are some resemblance between objects in JavaScript and dictionaries in Python. Each language defines an object a little different (and there is some logic that all definitions to be the same as in physics). How are objects alike and how do they differ between JavaSscript, Python and PHP?"}
{"_id": "233272", "title": "How do you call one program from another?", "text": "What I'm wondering is how running programs communicate with each other, and if someone could post some sample code for how to do this, so I can try it out myself, just for educational purposes. For example, I've worked with databases before, and in my code I always have to \"establish a connection to the database.\" The database service has to be running before I start my program, or else it will fail. What exactly is going on with that connection and how does it work?"}
{"_id": "245393", "title": "Why was C# made with \"new\" and \"virtual+override\" keywords unlike Java?", "text": "In Java there are no `virtual`, `new`, `override` keywords for method definition. So the working of a method is easy to understand. Cause if _DerivedClass_ extends _BaseClass_ and has a method with same name and same signature of _BaseClass_ then the overriding will take place at run-time polymorphism (provided the method is not `static`).               BaseClass bcdc = new DerivedClass();      bcdc.doSomething() // will invoke DerivedClass's doSomething method.      * * * Now come to C# there can be so much confusion and hard to understand how the `new` or `virtual+derive` or new + virtual override is working. I'm not able to understand why in the world I'm going to add a method in my `DerivedClass` with same name and same signature as `BaseClass` and define a new behaviour but at the run-time polymorphism, the `BaseClass` method will be invoked! (which is not overriding but logically it should be). In case of `virtual + override` though the logical implementation is correct, but the programmer has to think which method he should give permission to user to override at the time of coding. Which has some _pro-con_ (let's not go there now). So why in C# there are so much space for _un_ -logical reasoning and confusion. So may I reframe my question as in which real world context should I think of use `virtual + override` instead of `new` and also use of `new` instead of `virtual + override`? * * * **EDIT** After some very good answers especially from Omar, I get that C# designers gave stress more about programmers should think before they make a method, which is good and handles some rookie mistakes from Java. Now I've a question in mind. As in Java if I had a code like               Vehicle vehicle = new Car();     vehicle.accelerate();      and later I make new class `SpaceShip` derived from `Vehicle`. Then I want to change all `car` to a `SpaceShip` object I just have to change single line of code               Vehicle vehicle = new SpaceShip();     vehicle.accelerate();      This will not break any of my logic at any point of code. But in case of C# if `SpaceShip` does not override the `Vehicle` class' `accelerate` and use `new` then the logic of my code will be broken. Isn't that a disadvantage?"}
{"_id": "245392", "title": "Do Rails Join Models Get Controllers?", "text": "I have a rails app where my users can buddy up with other users. Since that relationship can have a status (approved/rejected/pending), I decided to go with a join model (`UserRelationship`) so now I have the attribute. To handle state for that join model, I have a controller (`UserRelationshipsController`) with actions/RESTful endpoints for changing the state of the relationship. Is this bad practice? If so, where should I handle state-changes for the relationship? In the User model?"}
{"_id": "229362", "title": "Storing user uploaded images / files in multi server env", "text": "In a multi server system, e.g. a load balancer, multiple web servers and a database server, where do you store the files / images users upload when each web server will need access? Before now I've just used a single web server, or maybe one web server and a MySQL database server. But if you have multiple web servers I guess you have a range of options for making sure resources like images and other user files are shared, such as:   * Storing them on the database server   * Or a server specifically for them   * Maybe mounting the same directory   * Or using a tool like rsync to synchronize the user uploads directories on each web server Or maybe you have a different solution? or there's a de-facto way of doing this that I'm not aware of?"}
{"_id": "238539", "title": "Find second largest element in a array?", "text": "The problem is to solve it in **n+logn\u22122** (base 2) no of comparisons. My algorithm is taking some extra space less then (O(n*n)). How can i reduce this extra space without increasing the complexity.                   comparisionarray=[][] (2D array )              //a function to find the largest.         findlargest(a,b)            if(len(a)==1 and  len(b)==1)               append b to array at ath index in comparisonarray.               append b to array at bth index comparisionarray.               return max(a,b)            else               return max(findlargest(1stHalfof(a),2ndHalfof(a)),findlargest(1stHalfof(b),2ndHalfof(b))              input= input_array()         largest=findlargest(1stHalfof(input),2ndHalfof(input))         subarray=[array at index largest in comparisionarray]         2ndlargest=findlargest(1stHalfof(subarray),2ndHalfof(subarray))         print(2ndlargest)      **Edit:** It can be done in minimum **n+logn\u22122** comparisons. That is the only condition . This answer on math.stackexchange.com proves it. It has been generalized for nth largest element Seems that there is a solution at this link stackoverflow. But i am not sure about the extra space and time complexity."}
{"_id": "88934", "title": "Using OpenID to log into multiple domains: Is this plan feasable?", "text": "For example:   * We're running a two community sites on two domains (call them `example.com` and `example.net`).   * We want to be able to expand that to more domains later.   * We want to allow multiple types of login (OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, standard username/password).   * We want someone who's logged into one site to automatically be logged into the other(s). In other words, it's a bit similar to the StackExchange network. In this case, would this plan work?   * Set up `example.com` and `example.net` (and any later additions) as OpenID relying parties, which accept OpenID login from `id.example.org` only.   * Set up `example.com` and `example.net` to do an OpenID reply-immediate request the first time you visit them, so that if you're logged into `id.example.org` you're immediately and automatically logged into the site you're visiting. They should set a cookie if you're not logged in, to save them doing this on every page request.   * Set up `id.example.org` as an OpenID provider and consumer. It should also consume Facebook and other identity providers, and allow standard username/password access. (Multiple login methods could be attached to one account.)   * On logout, simply change the authentication tokens in the database. The user will still have cookies, but they'll be meaningless. Thus can the user be signed out of all sites simultaneously. Multiple authentication tokens can be stored against one user at one time (and should be different for each site), so that the user can sign out in one browser but still be signed in in another. Signing out always signs out for all sites. The only problem I can see with the above is this:   * Someone visits `example.com`. A \"not-logged-in\" cookie is set.   * Zie then goes onto `example.net`. Ditto.   * Zie then signs in, and continues browsing on `example.net`.   * Zie then goes back to `example.com` and, because of the \"not-logged-in\" cookie, is not checked against `id.example.org` and is therefore not logged in.   * However, as soon as zie clicks the \"log in\" button, zie is logged in. I don't think this is a major problem. On the whole, I think it's a pretty good system. I'd just like to see it reviewed. Are there any problems I haven't foreseen? Would it be buggy or slow? StackExchange uses a very different method. I assume they have a good reason for that?"}
{"_id": "250896", "title": "Passing data between hundreds of objects in java", "text": "Currently, I'm working with a group on building a model. This model simulates interactions between many \"agents\" in a region. Agents can be any entity such as a city, a farmer, a business etc. Each agent is represented by its own object within java. Each agent will need to be able to interact with all of the other agents, and therefore, needs to have access to information about the other agents. So, for example, lets say we have 1 city object interacting with 99 farmer objects. The city needs to know for instance, the total land that each of the 99 farmers owns in order to perform some sort of calculations. So, my question is, what is the most performance efficient way of completing something like this? There may even be 500-1000 or more agents in the future, and each agent may need to access many variables from the other agents. Would you potentially set up a table within mysql for each agent and have them access eachother's information that way? Or can something be set up directly within java that allows the agents to access each other's information. I'm looking to possibly multithread this model in the future too. In any case, I want the most performance efficient way of completing this."}
{"_id": "40536", "title": "Spec Writing Management", "text": "I simply cannot imagine writing software without a spec. No matter how sketchy or high level it is, spec is important to explain to the clueless programmers on what are the functionalities of the program. But the problem with spec is that it is somewhat a second class citizen in the whole software development cycle; when the development picks up the steam, it is neglected. But when dispute arises, the developers and testers and sales will scramble to find the spec to justify their grounds. Either one or more scenarios will happen:   1. The spec cannot be recovered, no one knows where is the spec    2. Different versions of the spec emerge from different sources; it takes great difficulties to find out which version is the latest version, or whether there _is_ a latest version available.   3. The spec is incomplete, some parts of the documents it refers to are missing. So spec management is important, and it's equally important that everyone has only One Single Source of Spec. How do you manage your specs? I tried to get everyone to use Google Docs but everyone objected. Everyone is just too attached and enamored with Microsoft Word, which is-- in their opinion-- very easy to use, very easy to insert image, very easy to type equation and whatnot. How to convince them that MS Word is just terrible for sharing?"}
{"_id": "238535", "title": "How do I simplify a compiler/interpreter?", "text": "Recently I wrote an interpreter for operations on sparse matrices (a \"sparse matrix calculator\") in lex/yacc. The language is still very bare bones and doesn't even include control structures or parameterized subroutines, yet it is already at several thousand lines of code, and that's not including the matrix classes. In particular, the yacc file is close to two thousand lines in length. Because of this I'm finding it quite difficult to work on. Is this normal or is there a way I can simplify things? If you want to review my code, it can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/msci/files/libpetey/"}
{"_id": "178882", "title": "Where did the estimation rule of thumb originate that time spent will be one-third in each of the following: design, implementation, and testing?", "text": "I'm looking for a reference to the following. I commonly hear that one-third of a projects time will be spent in design, one-third in implementation, and one-third in testing. The three phases of development seems to be derived from the waterfall model. But, where did the time division originate (1/3, 1/3, 1/3)? Is there a paper or book that this is from?"}
{"_id": "249692", "title": "Memory management scheme for custom memory allocator", "text": "I am in the process of implementing a small memory manager. The users of this memory pool will always access the memory bytes via handles. So a memory allocation/deallocation is done with two APIs:               Handle Allocate(size_t numBytes);     void Free(Handle handle);      The allocation/deallocation deals with opaque handles. To actually access the bytes, the user must then map/unmap the memory:               void * Map(Handle handle, int mappingFlags);     void Unmap(Handle handle, void ** ptr);      Mapping flags: are read-only, write-only and read-write. The average size of the memory blocks should be between 1KB to 1MB, with some eventual very big block in the neighbourhood of 10MB. The memory pool starts of as one big pre-allocate block. The manager must then handle variable size allocations. When the pool is depleted, the manager can try to ask the system for another big block. My questions: 1) I'm not sure which memory management scheme would be best employed in the scenario. 2) I think it would be possible to implement a memory defragmentation scheme, thanks to the handles. Am I right?"}
{"_id": "208687", "title": "What is the appropriate approach to study an api when it is not well documented and there are no good tutorials around?", "text": "I am a student and I like to develop applications at my own level. While building an application I am the only one in my team. After analyzing the application I choose a library/api to use for the project. For example,these days I am working on a chat application based on XMPP protocol.For that I am using smack api. These third party api's are usually not very well documented nor they have good tutorials before one can start working with the api. These are unlike java api and other popular api's which are very well documented and there are very good tutorials to polish the concepts before one can actually start writing the code for the application. My point is, it takes me a lot of time to implement a simple concept when I am using api of the like of smack. For example it has been quite a time and I have been unable to make one user read another user's status ! There are still many problems. What kind of approach should I follow so that I could maximize my output ? The point is even not maximizing the output but understanding that how the api works."}
{"_id": "219505", "title": "Using a function's return value as an if condition, good practice?", "text": "Do you think it is a good practice to use function return values as if conditions? I'm coding in PHP atm but it holds for many other languages.               if(isTheConditionMet($maybeSomeParams))     {     }      or               $res = isTheConditionMet($maybeSomeParams);     if($res)     {     }      I can't think of a situation where the first one creates a problem, can it? EDIT: Assume return value is not going to be used after condition is evaluated."}
{"_id": "219504", "title": "How to present code in academic work?", "text": "Actually, I'm writing my undergrad thesis, that consists in analysing the BitTorrent algorithm and see its application on Transmission client as an example of implementation. Reading through its code, written in C, you can see many layers of functions               static const char*     tr_metainfoParseImpl (const tr_session  * session,                           tr_info           * inf,                           bool              * hasInfoDict,                           int               * infoDictLength,                           const tr_variant     * meta_in)     {       int64_t i;       size_t len;       const char * str;       const uint8_t * raw;       tr_variant * d;       tr_variant * infoDict = NULL;       tr_variant * meta = (tr_variant *) meta_in;       bool b;       bool isMagnet = false;            /* info_hash: urlencoded 20-byte SHA1 hash of the value of the info key        * from the Metainfo file. Note that the value will be a bencoded        * dictionary, given the definition of the info key above. */       b = tr_variantDictFindDict (meta, TR_KEY_info, &infoDict);       if (hasInfoDict != NULL)         *hasInfoDict = b;            if (!b)         {           /* no info dictionary... is this a magnet link? */           if (tr_variantDictFindDict (meta, TR_KEY_magnet_info, &d))             {             (...)      `tr_metainfoParseImpl()` is the function called after we add a .torrent by file or magnet link. It calls `tr_variantDictFindDict()` to find some string \"info\" somewhere in the metadata dictionary, in order to get information about that torrent file. Algoritmically, it has no value to me, since I want to emphasize other aspects of BitTorrent algorithm other than string search, although I want to leave its caller line there just to illustrate it's happenning. The function `tr_variantDictFindDict()` and its child are               bool // func1     tr_variantDictFindDict (tr_variant       * dict,                             const tr_quark     key,                             tr_variant      ** setme)     {       return tr_variantDictFindType (dict, key, TR_VARIANT_TYPE_DICT, setme);     }          static bool // func2     tr_variantDictFindType (tr_variant      * dict,                             const tr_quark    key,                             int               type,                             tr_variant     ** setme)     {       return tr_variantIsType (*setme = tr_variantDictFind (dict, key), type);     }      As we can see, although this may exist for code engineering reasons, algorithmically it has no value. So, I'm looking for reasonable, feasible, practical ways to avoid showing this kind of code in my work. Using the code above as an example, I thought some options:   1. put the relevant part of func1 caller function, showing the line calling func1, and after that showing func2 callee (in which will have the another relevant part of code.   2. putting func1 caller code and func2 callee \"side by side\", as if they were in one big function   3. literate programming from the beginning Please, feel free to share your experiences with this situation. Also, please change the SX site if needed, although I looked for the best SX site to ask this question and this one seemed legit."}
{"_id": "208689", "title": "When is the best time to do self learning in relation with software management?", "text": "It all started from here. I have been following Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (Best Practices (Microsoft)). The third chapter says that in Software Management:   * You cannot give too much time to software developers, if you give it to them, then it is likely that extra time given to them will be filled by some other tasks (in other words, the developers will eat that time :)) Parkinson's Law   * You can also not squeeze the time from their schedule because if you do that, it is likely that they will develop poor quality product, poor design and will hurt you in the long run, there will be a panic situation and total chaos in the project, lots of rework etc. My question is related to the first point. If you don't give enough time then will the typical software engineer learn his/her skills? The market is always coming with new technologies, you need to learn them. Even with the existing familiar technologies there are always best practices and dos and don'ts."}
{"_id": "158073", "title": "Function points measure for a business applications framework. Is that possible?", "text": "So, my boss wants to have a complexity measure for a framework developed internally in our company. Is that possible? As far as I know, functions points do not apply to software that doesn't have persistence per se, and also doesn't have GUI's (it's a framework, built in C#, useful for crafting business applications, and it's used only internally). Also, function points tend to get less useful as the target software being assesed gets more complex. If it is possible to do this, could someone give me some guidance? If not, how do I convince my boss to stop asking this? Is there a better metric for valuing such a complex software?"}
{"_id": "214030", "title": "How to design (just the outline) an enterprise class PHP application", "text": "For the last year or so, I have been working on a very large application. I am currently on version 17 of it, and every time, I start over with some of the code from before. But now, this is starting to become unmanageabley large. When I do the design for the application, I generally start with a Word document, outlining all the classes, with the functions, descriptions for each, their dependencies, default configuration data, and how each component augments the rest of the application. But with that method, within a few hours, I can easily reach 20-30 pages of documentation, and the nice simple outline of the software because so complex in itself, using that as the template to write the code to becomes difficult. So, now, I am trying to describe the application in an XML format, built on an XSD that contains the structure of how the classes will be laid out. But, this is also demonstrating its problems. At this stage, everything ahead of the base application has been designed (the database er diagrams, the functionality, etc), but the main problems lies in the design of the underlying software that runs it all. So, can anyone recommend what path I should go down, either with specific ways to lay out a Word document for easy reading, an XML pattern that would do the same, or some other software package that can do this for me and help guide me through the development? Any help would be greatly appreciated, mainly because once this part has been cracked, my application can finally be built and completed. Thanks"}
{"_id": "131808", "title": "Can I use the concept of 'tags' (derived from StackExchange sites) in a personal project?", "text": "I have a small personal project that I expect will be viewed by, at most, about 5 people. 'Tags', as used on this site and StackOverflow, would be helpful. Can I explicitly use something called a Tag in my personal project where the purpose/function is essentially the same?"}
{"_id": "88685", "title": "Why aren't more desktop apps written with Qt?", "text": "As far as I know and have understood in my experience with Qt, it's a very good and easy to learn library. It has a very well designed API and is cross- platform, and these are just two of the many features that make it attractive. I'm interested to know why more programmers don't use Qt. Is there a deficiency which speaks against it? Which feature makes other libraries better than Qt? Is the issue related to licensing?"}
{"_id": "69862", "title": "Senior Interview LINQ questions", "text": "I'm preparing a LINQ section in interview questions for senior programmers. What are the most interesting questions in LINQ to include? And why?"}
{"_id": "69869", "title": "Proper way to \"say\" Big-O notation?", "text": "What is the proper way to convey an algorithm complexity in Big-O notation in speech? Dose \"the total number of operations is big oh of N log N\" sounds strange? What's generally accepted: \"It have \"order log n\" space complexity\"? \"It is guaranteed to run in n log n time\"?"}
{"_id": "160906", "title": "Recurring Problem - need instruction to run only once inside code which executes multiple times", "text": "Hello I find in programming I come across this problem usually (especially when dealing with certain frameworks) where I would like once piece of code to execute once and only once however the provided method e.g (something like an onComplete function) that I wish to place this instruction in will in reality execute multiple times. I am just wondering does anybody know of the best way that would get around this problem, one programmer friend of mine told me to use a flag (boolean) to check whether or not this code has already run but I feel like this is not a suitable solution and I would not like to introduce global variables for the sake of checking a condition once and only once. Has anybody ever come across a problem like this before, I am wondering is there any good practice out there to keep in mind when dealing with code like this. Thanks"}
{"_id": "89083", "title": "Should this code be rewritten or refactored?", "text": "There is a module in our telecoms equipment which is written in C. I think the code in this module has a bad smell because it has a number of symptoms:   * When new features are added to this module, some original features go wrong. And some weird problems were finally orientated to the buffer overflow of this module.   * It is difficult to add new code to the module. Although the unit tests and integration tests covers new code, errors and flaw concealed in the original code come to the surface.   * By means of code review, we found the quality of the code is extremely bad. But the module was tested for many rounds, the errors concealed in the surface of the code were found by the QA engineers. Other problems hidden deeper were difficult to find. _as well as a virus in the body._ (easy to bring misunderstanding, delete it) We summarize the status quo lay in these reasons:   * The original code has corrupted because of the loose process monitoring, in fact, many self testings are ignored or partial executed.   * The first programmer of this module was lack of the programming ability and the team leader didn't find the problem and risk in time.   * Many improvement approaches stay in the plan phase due to the team leader's suspicion. The project came to a new version. Some team leaders want to change this situation and we discussed the procedure many times. Everyone has agreed to revise the module but we have to decide between:   * rewriting the module. It means throwing all the code of the module to the trash can and rewriting the code without changing its interface.   * refactoring the module. This means one step at a time. we need retain all the code at the beginning and build a solid set of tests for the code. Then we dig into the code and revise a small piece of it, and relying on the tests to tell us whether we introduce a bug. This process is repeated until the refactoring complete. I agree with rewriting because we already have some rewriting experiences in our systems which were proven to be the best choices. The project manager wishes to refactor the module on account of the limited time available required to complete the detailed design, coding, code review, unit tests and integration testing which is three months. He thinks the time scales are too tight to do a full rewrite. Should this code be rewritten or refactored? EDIT: As Joel said in Things You Should Never Do, Part I > The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. I agree with this viewpoint. But I have some puzzles that some rewriting cases in our project proved to be wise choice. Maybe it relies on the new programmer who is more outstanding than the previous programmer or the testing is more sufficient."}
{"_id": "96242", "title": "To Gather Requirements, from those who don't want to give time for interviewing?", "text": "Actually, I'm A Fresh CS graduate,who want to build a System for his Dad's Road Transport business. However,the issue is whenever I go to ask to him about : what are people involved in his business? whats their routine work? or how their business actually works? then he avoids my questions, and says, just give me system by utilizing your knowledge, to ease my transporting business,and rest all you think. So, I had brainstormed about it, but I still feel the need of viewpoint of my dad,as he is actually in that business. Hence, how can I get business requirements form him ?"}
{"_id": "160905", "title": "A place for putting code samples in projects", "text": "Every now and then I get or write some minimal code samples to achieve tasks. What's the usual practice for storing these samples (which could prove useful later on) ? Have a separate source folder or create a separate project ?"}
{"_id": "201652", "title": "Design question on best option to store data on remote computers", "text": "I'm making a windows forms application which I want to install on a few computers that are all connected together on a network. Each of these computers have access to a number of servers on which various tasks are carried out etc. I want each instance of the application in use to be able to store and retrieve data regarding the separate remote servers (this data can be edited by everyone using the application on their computer). The application needs to be able to retrieve data from the servers when the user clicks an update button. The user can then edit and update that data if necessary. I think the main options for storing the data are as follows:   * Store data all in one place in a database   * Have a folder on each of the servers and save XML files to it with the data Which would be the best approach in this scenario and why? Are there any better alternatives? Note: I would usually opt for the database approach but I want to store data in an alternative way because using a database would require selecting one of the servers to host the database, which doesn't make sense as to which one would have that stored on it and not the other servers, albeit only one database would be needed by the application."}
{"_id": "201653", "title": "What does \"extreme\" in \"extreme programming\" (XP) refers to?", "text": "\"Extreme\" suggests that it has very different from normal, very aggressive, exceeding limits, but in my opinion regular releases, pair programming, unit testing, collaboration with customers are quite normal and acceptable. What does extreme mean?"}
{"_id": "234724", "title": "RESTful API Call Method Names, C#", "text": "I am working on some old code that works with a REST api in c#. The method names (what method to invoke on the API side) is being passed in as hard-coded strings. Would a static class be the best solution to force the user to pass in values that I want (so they don't make a mistake and mistype something, etc)?"}
{"_id": "5705", "title": "What are some ways to be more productive with Emacs?", "text": "I've used Emacs quite a bit, and I'm comfortable with the most basic commands/shortcuts, but I know Emacs has a lot more to offer than what I'm using. What are some of the lesser known features of emacs that can help me become a more productive programmer?"}
{"_id": "170378", "title": "Why are Java servers so scarce and costly?", "text": "I think \"why PHP over Java\" has been already discussed in other questions, the question I have is: What makes LAMP/WAMP stacks so cheap and abundant vs a Glassfish one? What are the prime factors behind this trend? Also, Why has no java based light weight stack come up as a competitor?"}
{"_id": "234728", "title": "How should I organize a file with many functions in it?", "text": "I am writing a web app using PHP and JQuery. I have a file full of functions to access the database. I have function names like `createUser`, `createRole`,`getUserByLogin`, `setSOMETHING`... Is there an accepted convention, or a compelling reason to choose how to organize this file? (alpha by name, grouped by creators, getters, setters..., by the table they reference,...)"}
{"_id": "116525", "title": "How to use Blend sample data as real data?", "text": "I am trying to do some design in Blend 4. The sample data function of Blend is nice to have during design time, but it could be much more better to see the design in browser. Can anyone help me to use sample data created by Blend as real data (see same data in browser) also ? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "165004", "title": "Best thing to do about projects supporting multiple versions of Visual Studio?", "text": "I have an open source project that works on .Net 2.0 and up. The thing is though that I prefer to use Visual Studio 2012, which forces the solution and project files to only work with VS2010/2012. What exactly should I do? I don't want for my users to have to create a solution from scratch if they don't have access to VS2010, but yet, I also don't want to attempt to keep 3 different project files in sync(VS2005, VS2008, and VS2010/2012) What is the usual solution for this?"}
{"_id": "192024", "title": "Justifying deficiencies in design", "text": "I would like some input on how to handle clients and third party vendors that ask me about the deficiencies in my design. For example. It turns out I need a data field in a webservices response. This response has been signed off on weeks ago and I get questions like \" _Why haven't you identified this field X weeks ago?_ \". Of course the answer is that all software development is iterative and this requirement wasn't on my radar at that point in time. I'm not prescient. I would like a business-y way of deflecting these questions. Any advice? **Update** : To clarify, this shortcoming is completely on me. How do I then own up to this mistake cleanly, without sounding too apologetic?"}
{"_id": "192027", "title": "Why can't a compiler avoid importing a header file twice by its own?", "text": "New to C++! So I was reading this: http://www.learncpp.com/cpp- tutorial/110-a-first-look-at-the-preprocessor/ > **Header guards** > > Because header files can include other header files, it is possible to end > up in the situation where a header file gets included multiple times. So we make preprocessor directives to avoid this. But I'm not sure - why can't the compiler just... **not** import the same thing twice? Given that header guards are optional (but apparently a good practice), it almost makes me think that there are scenarios when you do want to import something twice. Although I can't think of any such scenario at all. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "254279", "title": "Why doesn't Python have a \"flatten\" function for lists?", "text": "Erlang and Ruby both come with functions for flattening arrays. It seems like such a simple and useful tool to add to a language. One could do this:               >>> mess = [[1, [2]], 3, [[[4, 5]], 6]]     >>> mess.flatten()     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]      Or even:               >>> import itertools     >>> mess = [[1, [2]], 3, [[[4, 5]], 6]]     >>> list(itertools.flatten(mess))     [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]      Instead, in Python, one has to go through the trouble of writing a function for flattening arrays from scratch. This seems silly to me, flattening arrays is such a common thing to do. It's like having to write a custom function for concatenating two arrays. I have Googled this fruitlessly, so I'm asking here; is there a particular reason why a mature language like Python 3, which comes with a hundred thousand various batteries included, doesn't provide a simple method of flattening arrays? Has the idea of including such a function been discussed and rejected at some point?"}
{"_id": "89335", "title": "Which one is more reliable in a large project, COCOMO or FP?", "text": "I have estimated the cost of a product by COCOMO, then I estimated it by FP too. the results were so different from each other! The cost estimated by FP was about two times more than the estimated cost by Cocomo. which one is more reliable as this product belongs to a large project. shoud I skip the FP result?"}
{"_id": "62628", "title": "Good continuous-integration solutions for Haskell projects", "text": "I am looking for a good CI solution for a haskell project. Ideally something that will work with git. Really basic need (so far) build and run tests after each check in. Some basic reporting would be great too, but it does not need to be anything real fancy. It should also support running javascript tests in a browser. (via Selenium or the like) What have people been using for this?"}
{"_id": "82484", "title": "Simplified Interfaces or Object Abstraction", "text": "i've been facing a common situation at work that has happened quite often when handling objects. The situation goes like this: You have to realted classes A and B, class A has an instances of class B. Now, imagine that we want to call methodB of class B, but we only have access to an intance of class A. What's the best approach to this situation and why:               Ainstances->getClassBInstance()->methodB();      or               Ainstances->methodB()      where methodB is implemented as follows:               function methodB()     {       return self.getClassBInstance()->methodB()     }"}
{"_id": "127432", "title": "Struggling as a programmer. Need some advice", "text": "I've been a developer now for a number of years. I'm pretty good at what I do and can \"get the job done\". But, there is a difference between \"getting the job done\" and \"doing the job properly\". Let's use an example. Recently I developed a web site from scratch. The website runs fine and I've had no issues. Looking through the code I thought to myself that I could have done it better. I could have cut down on my MySQL queries. I could have used MVC making it easier to extend (it does need extending now). I decided to rewrite the project using CodeIgniter. I like the framework. But I then got sidetracked because to cut down on my MySQL queries I had to learn advanced joins. And this is the problem. Whenever I do a job properly I'm in a constant learning wheel. And topics such as advanced MySQL joins take time to learn, and then time to implement. I don't work for a company. I do everything alone. So I'd imagine if I was working as a PHP developer for a company there would be separate teams handling the SQL. Being solo it's difficult. And sometimes, although my knowledge is advanced I find myself asking question, after question. I probably have a lot of pride in my work. But if I had to work for a company handling complete projects I could imagine projects taking a while because I'd have to learn more and more to satisfy my pride and to ensure I'm doing things \"correctly\". I do plan on getting a job after the new year. I need the job security. Which is why I'm asking this question. What advice can you give in terms of self development and self improvement? Should I worry less? Or maybe look for a job as a PHP developer when I won't be handling SQL queries directly?"}
{"_id": "245003", "title": "Reference wind directions to texture space?", "text": "I have a 2D array filled with a simple class:               class Tile     {         boolean N,E,S,W;     }      I also have a tilesheet representing all possible outcomes except all false (12 + crossroad). Now i need to reference all these possibilities to texture space on my sheet. Apart from having an if statement for each and every outcome is there a more efficient way i cannot currently think off?"}
{"_id": "103508", "title": "How is dependency inversion related to higher order functions?", "text": "Today I've just seen this article which described the relevance of SOLID principle in F# development- F# and Design principles \u2013 SOLID And while addressing the last one - \"Dependency inversion principle\", the author said: > From a functional point of view, these containers and injection concepts can > be solved with a simple higher order function, or hole-in-the-middle type > pattern which are built right into the language. But he didn't explain it further. So, my question is, how is the dependency inversion related to higher order functions?"}
{"_id": "127438", "title": "How to provide SaaS integration with enterprise systems (from the SaaS provider perspective)?", "text": "I'm doing some general research for a potential SaaS project. The solution we are considering creating will need data integration capabilities with various enterprise systems. I understand that SaaS adds complexity to enterprise integration since it lives in the cloud and outside of the firewall. I've read a few articles that describe approaches for enterprises to integrate data with SaaS solutions. Integration approaches range from the primitive FTP transfers, custom point to point integration, to a vast and growing range of commercial solutions (appliance, cloud-based, and EAI). These articles are focused on the customer perspective. In other words they are intended to help enterprises better understand their options for integrating with SaaS providers. **Can anyone provide some insight and advice from the SaaS provider perspective when it comes to making their solution as easily integratable as possible?** I assume the SaaS provider needs to create and publish web services API's and RESTful interfaces. Any other advice or resources would be most appreciated. PS: I realize saying \"need to integrate with various enterprise systems\" is incredibly vague."}
{"_id": "115717", "title": "Resources for CSQA Exam", "text": "This year I'm basically going to attend for the Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA) examination. I'm attending the classes for it, even though I'm reading the books and notes provided by the teachers, I need to know some good resources for CSQA examination. The resources that will be provided will be good if it contains some tips, the way they ask question, and it will act as a good CSQA examination references. Thanks in advance.."}
{"_id": "231168", "title": "Should an object update itself?", "text": "I'm working on Ruby on Rails. There is a feature in our app where doctors can \"claim\" cases for themselves. I can either have the doctor perform the action and update the plate, or I can have the doctor send itself to the plate and have the plate update itself. Should objects update itself? It just seems cleaner to me, but I'm not sure. Or maybe I'm overthinking? First case, doctor only:               def claim(plate)       plate.claimed = true       plate.doctor_id = id       plate.save     end      This is the second case (doctor sends itself to the plate):                 #doctor       def claim(plate)         plate.claimed_by(self)       end            #plate       def claimed_by(doctor)         self.claimed = true         self.doctor_id = doctor.id         self.save       end"}
{"_id": "154180", "title": "How to create a Semantic Network like wordnet based on Wikipedia?", "text": "I am an undergraduate student and I have to create a Semantic Network based on Wikipedia. This Semantic Network would be similar to Wordnet(except for it is based on Wikipedia and is concerned with \"streams of text/topics\" rather than simple words etc.) and I am thinking of using the Wikipedia XML dumps for the purpose. I guess I need to learn parsing an XML and \" _some other things_ \" related to NLP and probably Machine Learning, but I am no way sure about anything involved herein after the XML parsing.   * Is the starting step: XML dump parsing into text a good idea/step? Any alternatives?   * What would be the steps involved after parsing XML into text to create a functional Semantic Network?   * What are the things/concepts I should learn in order to do them?   * I am not directly asking for book recommendations, but if you have read a book/article that teaches any thing related/helpful, please mention them. This may include a refernce to already existing implementations regarding the subject. Please correct me if I was wrong somewhere. Thanks! EDIT: The final product should be like a complete Semantic Network (like Conceptnet or Cyc etc.), So I can't use things like Semantic Mediawiki. (On a second thought, it seems like I should have asked this question on linguistics and not here... )"}
{"_id": "154183", "title": "How do functional languages handle a mocking situation when using Interface based design?", "text": "Typically in C# I use dependency injection to help with mocking;               public void UserService     {       public UserService(IUserQuery userQuery, IUserCommunicator userCommunicator, IUserValidator userValidator)       {         UserQuery = userQuery;         UserValidator = userValidator;         UserCommunicator = userCommunicator;       }            ...            public UserResponseModel UpdateAUserName(int userId, string userName)       {          var result = UserValidator.ValidateUserName(userName)          if(result.Success)          {            var user = UserQuery.GetUserById(userId);            if(user == null)            {               throw new ArgumentException();               user.UserName = userName;               UserCommunicator.UpdateUser(user);            }          }          ...       }            ...     }          public class WhenGettingAUser     {       public void AndTheUserDoesNotExistThrowAnException()       {          var userQuery = Substitute.For<IUserQuery>();          userQuery.GetUserById(Arg.Any<int>).Returns(null);          var userService = new UserService(userQuery);          AssertionExtensions.ShouldThrow<ArgumentException>(() => userService.GetUserById(-121));       }     }      Now in something like F#: if I don't go down the hybrid path, how would I test workflow situations like above that normally would touch the persistence layer without using Interfaces/Mocks? I realize that every step above would be tested on its own and would be kept as atomic as possible. Problem is that at some point they all have to be called in line, and I'll want to make sure everything is called correctly."}
{"_id": "154182", "title": "Security using jsonp", "text": "I'm writing an app that will make available a set of api functions that require cross site scripting to work. I'll be utilizing jsonp which will allow other developers to consume these services for their web applications.   * What security concerns should I consider to protect my server data?   * What security concerns should other developers take when consuming my services via jsonp?"}
{"_id": "116292", "title": "Are there standard strategies for defining job flow and dependencies?", "text": "I'm working on a project that involves the chaining of separate jobs into a single master job, though there may be parallel paths in the chain leading up to the final output. Job and chain details will be stored in a database. Eventually what I want to end up with is a GUI in which blocks representing the individual jobs can be moved around and chained up, with the system definition stored in the DB for execution. This will be implemented as C# on top of SQL Server. I don't want to reinvent the wheel if I can help it. I'm certain there must be some good patterns out there, particularly for how to represent the flow and dependencies in DB tables, but have been unable to find anything that fits the bill. More than anything, I'm curious if there are any effective schemas people have used to define the jobs, dependencies, etc. Does anyone know of any commonly used strategies?"}
{"_id": "94084", "title": "iOS developer interview question doubts", "text": "How deep should an iOS developer review data structure & algorithm when preparing for iOS job interview position? I know most people would just say there's no harm in reviewing it, but would like to get some insights based on your experience interview what are the percentage of the questions are related to data structure/algorithm and what percentage are iOS related?"}
{"_id": "94085", "title": "Should I learn low-level principles if I plan to develop in high-level languages?", "text": "I am entering university next month and have some exemption exams today. One of which is Computer Organization: things like Boolean Algebra, Gates (AND, OR, NOT etc), Assembly Language are taught. I wonder why learn such low level stuff. Does it benefit me as a programmer, likely developing in much higher level languages like C#, Python, PHP etc?"}
{"_id": "94086", "title": "Decoupling classes from the user interface", "text": "What is the best practice when it comes to writing classes that might have to know about the user interface. Wouldn't a class knowing how to draw itself break some best practices since it depends on what the user interface is (console, GUI, etc)? In many programming books I've come across the \"Shape\" example that shows inheritance. The base class shape has a draw() method that each shape such as a circle and square override. This allows for polymorphism. But isn't the draw() method very much dependent on what the user interface is? If we write this class for say, Win Forms, then we cannot re-use it for a console app or web app. Is this correct? The reason for the question is that I find myself always getting stuck and hung up on how to generalize classes so they are most useful. This is actually working against me and I'm wondering if I'm \"trying too hard\"."}
{"_id": "148230", "title": "Why we don't import a package while we use String functions?", "text": "I asked myself why we didn't import a package while we use String functions such as `toUpperCase()`? How they get in there without importing packages?"}
{"_id": "121871", "title": "What's the difference between a solution and platform architect?", "text": "I'm having trouble finding any information regarding the job title \"platform architect\". What is the difference between it and a solution architect?"}
{"_id": "121873", "title": "Exposing business logic as WCF service", "text": "I'm working on a middle-tier project which encapsulates the business logic (uses a DAL layer, and serves a web application server [ASP.net]) of a product deployed in a LAN. The BL serves as a bunch of services and data objects that are invoked upon user action. At present times, the DAL acts as a separate application whereas the BL uses it, **but is consumed by the web application as a DLL**. Both the DAL and the web application are deployed on different servers inside organization, and since the BL DLL is consumed by the web application, it resides in the same server. The worst thing about exposing the BL as a DLL is that we lost track with what we expose. Deployment is not such a big issue since mostly, product versions are deployed together. Would you recommend migrating from DLL to WCF service? If so, why? Do you know anyone who had a similar experience?"}
{"_id": "225759", "title": "Are big IT companies continuously firing or continuously expanding?", "text": "Today I just received my (almost-daily) mail from a big company career automated job search like the following:               Based on your search criteria the following openings are now available:     * Senior Software Engineer II - based in NY     * Principal Software Architect - based in NJ     * Software Engineer - based in LA      and I wondered: how come I'm receiving these ads so often? It doesn't seem they're always the same so (at least apparently) it doesn't seem they're always sending me the same jobs. Are big IT companies like this one firing people continuously, are they continuously expanding or are people continuously leaving from there (and in that case how come **that** many people are leaving)?"}
{"_id": "222069", "title": "What exactly happens on a LAMP machine when I request a php file?", "text": "I am a .NET developer who has recently started working in a LAMP environment. I know that if I go to `www.somedomain.com/files/test.php`, then (1) DNS resolves the URL to my server (2) my server handles the request on a given port (3) the server looks in /files/test.php and somehow runs test.php and returns the output of the file to the client. But it would be really great to understand this process in much more detail. For instance, does Apache/nginx actually run the php file or does it pass it to the php interpreter? Does every php file run every time or does the server cache its output? It would be really helpful to know the major details/decisions that a LAMP environment makes during this process. Kind of like this answer, which explains in detail how SSL works... http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20803/how-does-ssl- work/20847#20847"}
{"_id": "46178", "title": "How to organize a Coding Dojo?", "text": "Over on stack overflow it was asked how to organize a coding dojo (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4338567/how-to-organize-a-coding-dojo- event). I believe that may have been the wrong forum... I wonder the same thing: how is a Codeing Dojo organized? What is the structure of a meeting? How would one pick Katas? What do you plan ahead of time? I am interested in any ideas on this as well as links to any resource that may be outlining this."}
{"_id": "155588", "title": "How to get a legal advice for a open source project ?", "text": "I have a question about open source software. **Questions:** Where do you get legal advice from? Do you have to find a lawyer specialised in software issues right from the bat, or do you get legal advice from lawyers that may join the community later on? Is there any other way a newly created open source organization may seek advice on legal issues?"}
{"_id": "97190", "title": "When to switch to mobile programming?", "text": "We're a team of developers working on some PC applications. But we have also witnessed a trend in the market towards writing more and more mobile sites and mobile applications. Is it time for developers to shift to mobile programming?"}
{"_id": "215072", "title": "Designing a single look up entity", "text": "In almost every application you have this look up entity that provides a dynamic references. This are things like type, category, etc. These entities will always have               id, name, desc      So at first I designed different entities for each look up. Like               education_type, education_level, degree_type....      But on a second thought I decided to have on entity for each of these kinds of entities. But when I am done with the design and check the relation this entity will be referenced by almost all entities in the system and I don't believe that is appropriate. So What is your take on this? Can you give me some clear pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "215071", "title": "Do activity diagrams always end in one endpoint?", "text": "For example an activity diagram for a simple program:   1. Get User data.   2. If User Exists DO something, ELSE do nothing.   3. End. I often see diagrams with multiple endpoints but also with just one. Should activity diagrams merge both ways to one final state, regardless of the previous paths?"}
{"_id": "100839", "title": "Should we hire someone who writes C in Perl?", "text": "One of my colleagues recently interviewed some candidates for a job and one said they had very good Perl experience. Since my colleague didn't know Perl, he asked me for a critique of some code written (off-site) by that potential hire, so I had a look and told him my concerns (the main one was that it originally had no comments and it's not like we gave them enough time). However, the code works so I'm loathe to say no-go without some more input. Another concern is that this code basically looks exactly how I'd code it in C. It's been a while since I did Perl (and I didn't do a lot, I'm more a Python bod for quick scripts) but I seem to recall that it was a much more expressive language than what this guy used. I'm looking for input from real Perl coders, and suggestions for how it could be improved (and why a Perl coder _should_ know that method of improvement). You can also wax lyrical about whether people who write one language in a totally different language should (or shouldn't be hired). I'm interested in your arguments but this question is primarily for a critique of the code. The spec was to successfully process a CSV file as follows and output the individual fields:               User ID,Name , Level,Numeric ID     pax, Pax Morgan ,admin,0     gt,\"  Turner, George\" rubbish,user,1     ms,\"Mark \\\"X-Men\\\" Spencer\",\"guest user\",2     ab,, \"user\",\"3\"      The output was to be something like this (the potential hire's code actually output this):               User ID,Name , Level,Numeric ID:        [User ID]        [Name]        [Level]        [Numeric ID]     pax, Pax Morgan ,admin,0:        [pax]        [Pax Morgan]        [admin]        [0]     gt,\"  Turner, George  \" rubbish,user,1:        [gt]        [  Turner, George  ]        [user]        [1]     ms,\"Mark \\\"X-Men\\\" Spencer\",\"guest user\",2:        [ms]        [Mark \"X-Men\" Spencer]        [guest user]        [2]     ab,, \"user\",\"3\":        [ab]        []        [user]        [3]      Here is the code they submitted:               #!/usr/bin/perl          # Open file.          open (IN, \"qq.in\") || die \"Cannot open qq.in\";          # Process every line.          while (<IN>) {         chomp;         $line = $_;         print \"$line:\\n\";              # Process every field in line.              while ($line ne \"\") {             # Skip spaces and start with empty field.                  if (substr ($line,0,1) eq \" \") {                 $line = substr ($line,1);                 next;             }                  $field = \"\";             $minlen = 0;                  # Detect quoted field or otherwise.                  if (substr ($line,0,1) eq \"\\\"\") {                 $line = substr ($line,1);                 $pastquote = 0;                 while ($line ne \"\") {                     # Special handling for quotes (\\\\ and \\\").                          if (length ($line) >= 2) {                         if (substr ($line,0,2) eq \"\\\\\\\"\") {                             $field = $field . \"\\\"\";                             $line = substr ($line,2);                             next;                         }                         if (substr ($line,0,2) eq \"\\\\\\\\\") {                             $field = $field . \"\\\\\";                             $line = substr ($line,2);                             next;                         }                     }                          # Detect closing quote.                          if (($pastquote == 0) && (substr ($line,0,1) eq \"\\\"\")) {                         $pastquote = 1;                         $line = substr ($line,1);                         $minlen = length ($field);                         next;                     }                          # Only worry about comma if past closing quote.                          if (($pastquote == 1) && (substr ($line,0,1) eq \",\")) {                         $line = substr ($line,1);                         last;                     }                     $field = $field . substr ($line,0,1);                     $line = substr ($line,1);                 }             } else {                 while ($line ne \"\") {                     if (substr ($line,0,1) eq \",\") {                         $line = substr ($line,1);                         last;                     }                     if ($pastquote == 0) {                         $field = $field . substr ($line,0,1);                     }                     $line = substr ($line,1);                 }             }                  # Strip trailing space.                  while ($field ne \"\") {                 if (length ($field) == $minlen) {                     last;                 }                 if (substr ($field,length ($field)-1,1) eq \" \") {                     $field = substr ($field,0, length ($field)-1);                     next;                 }                 last;             }                  print \"   [$field]\\n\";         }     }     close (IN);"}
{"_id": "69135", "title": "Where can I host my JSP+Java Web application?", "text": "My web application is currently written in JSP/Java, using an Oracle DB. I develop on Windows, and I use JDeveloper (Oracle's eclipse clone) and I use JDev's integrated WebLogic Server. I want to go live using a respectable Web hosting company. LAMP devs get all the girls, I'm stuck using WWOJ (Windows Weblogic Oracle Java). I can't find any hosts that use Oracle, and ones that run Tomcat are few and far between (short of a custom box on RackSpace). I'm switching to MySQL this week. I'm running Tomcat on my Windows box now, and using NetBeans. I can compile a .war now. I'm finally up to WTMJ :) Does anyone have experience with getting a Java project hosted? Or something with an Oracle backend? I feel like I'm lost out here."}
{"_id": "221612", "title": "Why do some compilers generate direct machine code?", "text": "I was taking this course - CMU 18-447, Computer Architecture at Carnegie Mellon to brush my knowledge and concepts. They say that most of the machine level details and implementations is taken care at the Instruction Set Architecture(ISA) level and is abstracted at that level. Some Intel processors even have hardware level translation layers that take the front level ISA that is exposed to the programmer and translate them further closer to the machine. Given such power is provided by the ISA/Processor itself, why do compilers generate direct machine code, or is it just a black box and internally it uses assemblers to convert them into direct machine code? I hear that JVM takes byte code and translate them directly to machine code(exe).Is this true or is my understanding wrong here?"}
{"_id": "254092", "title": "Maximum tcp port number constant in java", "text": "Is there a public constant for the maximum TCP port number (65535) defined in java or a common library such as Apache Commons, that I could refer to from my code (instead of using the integer hardcoded)?"}
{"_id": "254091", "title": "Embedded Tomcat Cluster", "text": "Can someone please explain with an example how an Embedded Tomcat Cluster works. Would a load balancer be necessary? Since we're using embedded tomcat, how would two separate jar files (each a standalone web application with their own embedded tomcat instance) know where eachother are and let eachother know their status, etc? Here is the code I have so far which is just a regular embedded tomcat without any clustering which would formulate one of the jar files mentioned above:               import javax.servlet.ServletException;     import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;     import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;     import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;     import java.io.File;     import java.io.IOException;     import java.io.Writer;          public class Main {            public static void main(String[] args)       throws LifecycleException, InterruptedException, ServletException {         Tomcat tomcat = new Tomcat();         tomcat.setPort(8080);              Context ctx = tomcat.addContext(\"/\", new File(\".\").getAbsolutePath());              Tomcat.addServlet(ctx, \"hello\", new HttpServlet() {           protected void service(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)            throws ServletException, IOException {             Writer w = resp.getWriter();             w.write(\"Hello, World!\");             w.flush();           }         });         ctx.addServletMapping(\"/*\", \"hello\");              tomcat.start();         tomcat.getServer().await();       }          }      Source: java dzone"}
{"_id": "118268", "title": "Do any languages use =/= for the inequality operator?", "text": "Wikipedia says: > **Not equal** > > The symbol used to denote inequation \u2014 when items are not equal \u2014 is a > slashed equals sign \"\u2260\" (Unicode 2260). > > Most programming languages, limiting themselves to the ASCII character set, > use ~=, !=, /=, =/=, or <> to represent their boolean inequality operator. All of these operators can be found in this table, apart from `=/=`. I can find this equals-slash-equals used as a way of formatting \u2260 in plaintext but not in any programming language. Has `=/=` been used as the inequality operator in any programming language?"}
{"_id": "191428", "title": "How to process an endless XML data stream", "text": "There is an **endless data stream of XML messages** (and \"heartbeats\"), that I receive via a telnet connection and through a site-to-site VPN IPsec tunnel. I'm still pondering. **What is the best/most elegant solution to process the XML messages without losing any data, without redundance and with a (nearly) constant processing time?** A never-ending process/script? Writing the stream in file(s) and processing it/them periodically step by step? Or something completely different? The messages usually come every few seconds. Sometimes every second. Sometimes maybe every 10 seconds. It differs but not a lot. One XML message within the stream contains 45 rows. The messages should be stored afterwards. Note: The concrete structure of the XML messages and the infrastructure of the participating systems are negligible in my opinion."}
{"_id": "254095", "title": "What is the value of a let expression", "text": "From what I understand, every code in f# is an expression, including `let` binding. Say we got the following code:               let a = 5     printfn \"%d\" a      I've read that this would be seen by the compiler as               let a = 5 in     (          printfn \"%d\" a     )      And so the value of all this would be value of inner expression, which is value of `printf`. On the other hand, in f# interactive:               > let a = 5;;     val a : int = 5      Which clearly indicates that the value of let expression is the value bound to the identifier. **Q: Can anyone explain what is the value of a let expression? Can it be different in compiled code than in F# interactive?**"}
{"_id": "148584", "title": "Global Texture Container", "text": "For my first large-ish endevor in Open-GL I'm making a simulator of sorts. I've got much of the basic functionality working, but recently ran into a problem. As I've since realized, I originally designed the program so that each object in the simulator had its own class which stored its position, texture, draw code, etc. This became a problem, however, when I began creating lots of objects of the same type, as I quickly realized that I wrote the classes to reload a new instance of the texture data for each instance of an object. To fix this I considered making a simple texture database class of sorts which would contain a pointer to a single instance of each objects texture data that each instance of the object would copy upon its creation. The problem here is that lots of different classes in the simulator create objects and I am hesitant to simply store the texture database class at the top of the program hierarchy and pass it down to every function that creates an object, as I feel that this will get very complex very fast. Instead I feel it would be better to have a global container class that would keep track of the texture pointers, but I'm not sure how I could store the pointers without instantiating an instance of the container which would require passing it all over the place. I'm hoping that there is a more elegant and simple solution that I'm overlooking, otherwise I'll try the way I've described. Alternatively, if it seems some restructuring of the simulator would be best, that isn't out of the question, but I'd appreciate any advice."}
{"_id": "191421", "title": "Mobile-first implementation or desktop-first?", "text": "When working with CSS media queries, I am unsure of whether I should program in a mobile-first style, or a desktop-first style. For example, let's say I'm given a design that consists of a set of blocks that are side-by-side. On desktop, I'll stick to spec, but on mobile, given the reduced screen area, two blocks stacked on top of one another would be better. Which is better, this (desktop-first):               div {         width: 50%;         display: inline-block;     }          @media all and (max-width: 600px) {         width: 100%;         margin: 0 auto;         display: block;     }      or this (mobile first)?               div {         width: 100%;         margin: 0 auto;         display: block;     }          @media all and (min-width: 600px) {         width: 50%;         display: inline-block;     }      Wordpress' latest theme follows the mobile-first method, by using `min-width`, but am I correct in assuming that older browsers without media query support would be unable to parse these directives, and load the \"mobile\" css? What are the advantages/disadvantages of both?"}
{"_id": "118261", "title": "code contracts/asserts: what with duplicate checks?", "text": "I'm a huge fan of writing asserts, contracts or whatever type of checks available in the language I'm using. One thing that bothers me a bit is that I'm not sure what the common practice is for dealing with duplicate checks. Example situation: I first write the following function               void DoSomething( object obj )     {       Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>( obj != null );       //code using obj     }      then a few hours later I write another function that calls the first one. As everything is still fresh in memory, I decide not to duplicate the contract, since I know that `DoSomething` wil check for a null object already:               void DoSomethingElse( object obj )     {       //no Requires here: DoSomething will do that already       DoSomething( obj );       //code using obj     }      The obvious problem: `DoSomethingElse` now depends on `DoSomething` for verifying that obj is not null. So should `DoSomething` ever decide not to check anymore, or if I decide to use another function obj might not be checked anymore. Which leads me to writing this implementation after all:               void DoSomethingElse( object obj )     {       Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>( obj != null );       DoSomething( obj );       //code using obj     }      Always safe, no worries, except that if the situation grows the same object might be checked a number of times and it's a form of duplication and we all know that's not so good. What is the most common practice for situation like these?"}
{"_id": "46284", "title": "How do you manage a complexity jump?", "text": "It seems an infrequent but common experience that sometimes you're working on a project and suddenly something turns up unexpectedly, throws a massive spanner in the works and ramps up the complexity a whole lot. For example, I was working on an application that talked to SOAP services on various other machines. I whipped up a prototype that worked fine, then went on to develop a regular front end and generally get everything up and running in a nice, fairly simple and easy to follow fashion. It worked great until we started testing across a wider network and suddenly pages started timing out as the latency of the connections and the time required to perform calculations on remote machines resulted in timed out requests to the soap services. It turned out that we needed to change the architecture to spin requests out onto their own threads and cache the returned data so it could be updated progressively in the background rather than performing calculations on a request by request basis. The details of that scenario are not too important - indeed it's not a great example as it was quite forseeable and people who have written a lot of apps of this type for this type of environment might have anticipated it - except that it illustrates a way that one can start with a simple premise and model and suddenly have an escalation of complexity well into the development of the project. What strategies do you have for dealing with these types of functional changes whose need arises - often as a result of environmental factors rather than specification change - later on in the development process or as a result of testing? How do you balance between avoiding the premature optimisation/ YAGNI/ overengineering risks of designing a solution that mitigates against possible but not necessarily _probable_ issues as opposed to developing a simpler and easier solution that is likely to be as effective but doesn't incorporate preparedness for every possible eventuality? Edit: Crazy Eddie's answer includes \"you suck it up and find the least expensive way to implement the new complexity.\" That made me think of something that was implicit in the question but I didn't specifically raise. Once you hit that bump, and you incorporate the necessary changes. Do you do the thing that will keep the project as close to schedule as possible but may affect maintainability or do you go back to your architecture and rework it on a more detailed level that may be more maintainable but will push everything back during development?"}
{"_id": "42706", "title": "Software management for 2 programmers", "text": "me and my very good friend do a small bussiness. We have company and we develop web apps using Scala. We have started 3 months ago and we have a lot of work now. We cannot afford to employ another programmer because we can't pay him now. Until now we try to manage entire developing process very simply. We use excel sheets for simple bug tracking and we work on client requests on the fly. We have no plan for next week or something similar. But now I find it very inefficient and useless. I am trying to find some rules or some methodology for small team or for only two guys. For example Scrum is, imo, unadapted for us. There are a lot of roles (ScrumMaster, Product Owner, Team...) and it seems overkill. Can you something advise me? Have you any experiences with software management in small teams? Is any methodology of current agile development fitten for pair of programmers? Is there any software management for simple bug tracking, maybe wiki or time management for two coders? thanks a lot for sharing."}
{"_id": "252239", "title": "Is this a specific pattern and what is its purpose?", "text": "I recently stumbled over the following C++ Code which confused me a bit:               class One {/*definition*/};     template<class Base > class Two : public Base {/*definition*/};     template<class Base > class Three : public Base {/*definition*/};     template<class Base > class Four : public Base {/*definition*/};     class Five : public Four < Three< Two < One > > > {/*definition*/};      I know the purpose of templates and more or less when and how to use them. Is there a name or a common pattern for a cascade of several templates? When would I use this pattern (instead of anything less complex)? P.S.: definition of class Five actually is empty."}
{"_id": "198703", "title": "Maximum flow and minimum cut undirected graph java", "text": "I need to implement an algorithm where I find the maximum flow and the minimum cut of an undirected graph and I cannot really find an algorithm for this. I have looked at the Ford Fulkerson algortihm but for that one it\u00b4s used for an directed graph. Anyone can help me to find an appropriate algorithm?"}
{"_id": "210642", "title": "Slowly realising that I should have asked for a way higher salary", "text": "I've been working in this new company for almost half a year now and I'm beginning to realize that I made a terrible mistake when I proposed my salary. This is my first \"real\" job, previously I've been working freelance, and for a short amount of time for a small local IT company. When I moved here, I wasn't sure how much was I supposed to ask for. I did a lot of research and settled on amount about 20% higher than an average developers' starting salary in my country. Now I'm attending interviews (as a trainee so far) and I got to learn something more about salary capabilities of my employer. I learned that almost twice as much as I make would be \"acceptable\". That's because the company was started by an American fellow, and while we are based in a less wealthy country, more generous pay is acceptable. Additionally, I saw that I'm a better programmer than I thought I was (based on comparing my performance with others and reviews by others). I already did one thing towards this: some time after a new guy came in to work with me (paid the same as me), I realised that I'm clearly a better developer and I boldly asked for a raise (which I got, after being lectured that raises only happen during reviews). What do I do here? I'm at a loss."}
{"_id": "210641", "title": "Good unit-testing story for a unit test training", "text": "I have to advise a training on unit testing in my company. I would like to show a striking, real-life example of an unexpected regression not caught by compilation (of course) but detectable with unit testing. Something more like a seemingly valid change that in fact cause a regression in another part of the program. Would you share your unit testing epic-win stories ? (Target language is C++, networked distributed application, but any good example will do)"}
{"_id": "198707", "title": "Casting from string to integer and the vica versa", "text": "I am trying to cast in Java from string to integer and the other way around but the compiler is complaining about this. My question is: Is this the matter of compiler or Java programming language doesn't support this kind of casting."}
{"_id": "17214", "title": "The Art of Computer Programming - To read or not to read?", "text": "There are lots of books about programming out there, and it seems Code Complete is pretty much at the top of most people's list of \"must-read programming books\", but what about _The Art of Computer Programming_ by Donald Knuth? I'm a busy person, between work and a young family I don't have a ton of free time, so I have to be picky about how I use it. I'm wondering - has anybody here read 'TAOCP'? If so, is it worth making time to read or would some other book or more on-the-side programming like pet projects or contributing to open source be a better use of my time in terms of professional development? DISCLAIMER - For those of you who sport \"Knuth is my homeboy\" t-shirts, don't get me wrong - I want to read it, but I'm just wondering if it should be right at the top of my priority list or if something else should come first."}
{"_id": "166992", "title": "What is a good design model for my new class?", "text": "I am a beginning programmer who, after trying to manage over 2000 lines of procedural php code, now has discovered the value of OOP. I have read a few books to get me up to speed on the beginning theory, but would like some advice on practical application. So,for example, let's say there are two types of content objects - an ad and a calendar event. what my application does is scan different websites (a predefined list), and, when it finds an ad or an event, it extracts the data and saves it to a database. All of my objects will share a $title and $description. However, the Ad object will have a $price and the Event object will have $startDate. Should I have two separate classes, one for each object? Should I have a 'superclass' with the $title and $description with two other Ad and Event classes with their own properties? The latter is at least the direction I am on now. My second question about this design is how to handle the logic that extracts the data for $title, $description, $price, and $date. For each website in my predefined list, there is a specific regex that returns the desired value for each property. Currently, I have an extremely large switch statement in my constructor which determines what website I am own, sets the regex variables accordingly, and continues on. Not only that, but now I have to repeat the logic to determine what site I am on in the constructor of each class. This doesn't feel right. Should I create another class Algorithms and store the logic there for each site? Should the functions of to handle that logic be in this class? or specific to the classes whos properties they set? I want to take into account in my design two things: 1) I will add different content objects in the future that share $title and $description, but will have their own properties, so, I want to be able to easily grow these as needed. 2) I will add more websites constantly (each with their own algorithms for data extraction) so I would like to plan efficienty managing and working with these now. I thought about extending the Ad or Event class with 'websiteX' class and store its functions there. But, this didn't feel right either as now I have to manage 100s of little website specific class files. Note, I didn't know if this was the correct site or stackoverflow was the better choice. If so, let me know and I'll post there."}
{"_id": "162676", "title": "What encryption algorithm/package should I use in a betting game?", "text": "I have a betting type site where I publish a number (between 0-100) that is encrypted. Then after a period of time, I would review what the number is and prove it with a key to decrypt the encrypted number to prove that I'm not cheating. I also want it to be easily verifiable by an average user. What encryption algorithm/technique/package should I use? I'm no expert on cryptography. There seems to be so many options out there and I'm not sure what to use. python friendly is a plus."}
{"_id": "113160", "title": "Should you use C# and F# together", "text": "I know you can use C# and F# together in the same project however i'm not sure if its a good idea to do so. It seems to me that mixing two very different coding styles (functional vs OO) could cause a lack of cohesion in the design. Is that correct?"}
{"_id": "195086", "title": "How can we avoid having to build yet another CRM system from scratch", "text": "We are building an accounting web application. In our database, we store basic data about our customers, like phone number, their login informations, because these things are tied into our web application. Now we need a CRM system to do things like sending marketing mails to users who signed up, but never used the service, we also want a database of potential customers or partners, who we would like to contact some day etc. etc. Such functionality is basic in any CRM system and I would hate to have to implement all these features ourselves. At the same time, I cannot see how we could utilize a CRM solution like SalesForce without having to store some data in two places and with all the complications that that would lead to. What should we do? Is there any CRM system that can be put upon our PostgreSQL database and just utilize the data we have and store what we do not have?"}
{"_id": "9219", "title": "Are design patterns generally a force for good or bad?", "text": "I've heard it argued that design patterns are the best thing since sliced bread. I've also heard it argued that design patterns tend to exacerbate \"Second System Syndrome,\" that they are massively overused, and that they make their users think they're better designers than they really are. I tend to fall closer to the former camp, but recently I've been seeing designs where nearly every single interaction is replaced with an observer relationship, and everything's a singleton. So, considering the benefits and problems, are design patterns generally good or bad, and why?"}
{"_id": "9213", "title": "Is the time spent customizing your dev machine environment worth it?", "text": "There are times when I am working on programming project and I get the itch to change some stuff in my environment (OSX or Linux). Vim might not being doing exactly what I want, so instead of doing it the round about way I've been doing for a couple months (sometimes years) I go and figure out the right way. Or I may be doing something long handed in bash and I say to myself why don't I figure out a better way. The thing is when I go off and do this hours can fly by. Sometimes I get stuck on trying to get what I want. I'll know I'm really close, so I don't give up. I usually always get it eventually, but its after hours of tinkering and googling. I hate the feeling of giving up and having to deal with something I know could work better. When I'm done I have a warm feeling knowing that my environment is a little more smooth and personalized, but I wonder could my time be better spent. Where do I draw the line? It seems with the all the UNIX-style tools there is an endless amount to learn. Always thought the sign of a superior programmer is someone who goes out of their way to make the computer bend to their will. Am I doing it right? I figure the bash shell, unix/linux, and vim will be around forever, so I see it as an investment. But then again I just spend 3 hours trying to get some stupid thing the vimperator firefox plugin to work right. So I wondering what this community think about this."}
{"_id": "195088", "title": "How to embed an article in the source code?", "text": "Sometimes, I notice typos in articles (blog posts) or books in source code that appears in the body of the article. It may be an indication that the code has been manually copied and pasted (e.g. missing braces ), or that something nasty happened to the text. How may I write an article inside the source code of a project ? I'm targetting Wordpress; I'm basically looking for a parser that would recognize two kinds of region: article and source code, and that would format them to whatever I want (stackoverflow question, LaTeX code or Wordpress article)"}
{"_id": "212865", "title": "Deduplication of complex records / Similarity Detection", "text": "I'm working on a project that involves records with fairly large numbers of fields (~15-20) and I'm trying to figure out a good way to implement deduplication. Essentially the records are people along with some additional data. For example, the records are likely to include personal information like first name, last name, postal address, email address, etc. but not all records have the same amount of data. Currently records are stored in a RDBMS (MySQL) and I want to detect duplicates on insertion and still have them inserted but flagged as a duplicate. It needs to be fast as I need to provide feedback as to if it is a duplicate or not in real time. The dataset is large (millions of records). I've considered the following options but I'm not sure which is best/if they are better options available:   * Use MySQL's built in fulltext search and use fuzzy searching. Major issue with this is that is seems slow, only the latest version supports fulltext indexes with InnoDB (alternative engine is MyISAM which is not good and critically does not support transactions) and fuzzy searching alone does not seem the best method for similarity detection.   * Use simhash or similar. Issue with this is that I'd also like to be able to detect synonyms which I don't see how simhash handles this. For example, address might be: \"Some Road\" or \"Some Rd.\" and names might be: \"Mike\" or \"Michael\"   * Index the data using an Apache Lucene derivative (elasticsearch/solr/etc) and perform a query that would likely return numerous results. In terms of using Apache Lucene I've been reading about similarity detection and using cosine similarity to produce a value from 0 to 1 from the term frequency vectors that lucene stores. I could apply this to the results from the lucene query and check to see if any of the results are above a certain threshold. My concern about this is how relevant the cosine similarity would be for the type of data I'm storing, i.e a number of fields with either single or a small number of words compared to calculating the cosine similarity of a comparison of some large text document. Basically, I'm wondering what is the best way to deduplicate this type of data (or put alternatively, detect similarities with this type of data)?"}
{"_id": "149180", "title": "Why is the output of a compiler called object code?", "text": "From the essay _Programming Languages Explained_ by Paul Graham, published in _Hackers & Painters_: > The high-level language that you feed the compiler is also known as _source > code_ , and the machine language translation it generates is called _object > code_. From the Wikipedia article on object code: > Object code, or sometimes object module, is what a computer compiler > produces. From a definition of 'compiler': > Traditionally, the output of the compilation has been called object code or > sometimes an object module. (Note that the term \"object\" here is not related > to object-oriented programming.) So what _is_ the term object related to?"}
{"_id": "212861", "title": "The Lisp in Gnu", "text": "Since the GNU project is celebrating its anniversary, and the initial announcement for GNU is linked to (http://www.gnu.org/gnu/initial- announcement.en.html) all over the place, I reread it and I stumbled upon the plan for a lisp-based window system: > and eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp > programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. It is well known that Stallman had a lisp background and has launched lisp- based projects (Emacs, Guile). As I understand, Stallman's preferred desktop environment for the GNU system is nowadays GNUstep (which seems to be a little dormant). When looking at demonstrations of Symbolics Lisp machines, I am really impressed by the powerful approach and I think that Stallman had something like this in mind during the announcement. So I wonder: **What happened to this plan of a Lisp-based window system? Has it been actually pursued once?**"}
{"_id": "176028", "title": "Real-Time Multi-User Gaming Platform", "text": "I'm considering developing a real-time multi-user game, and I want to gather some information about possibilities before I do some real development. I've thought about how best to ask the question, and for simplicity, the best way that occurred to me was to make an analogy to the field (or playground) game darebase. In the field game of darebase, there are two or more bases. To start, there is one team on each base. The game is a fancy game of tag. When two people meet out in the field, the person who left his base most recently timewise captures the other person. They then return to that person's base. Play continues until everyone is part of the same team. So, analogizing this to an online computer game, let's suppose there are an indefinite number of bases. When a person starts up the game, he has a team that is located at, for example, his current GPS coordinates. It could be a virtual world, but for sake of argument, let's suppose the virtual world corresponds to the player's actual GPS coordinates. The game software then consults the database to see where the closest other base is that is online, and the two teams play their game of virtual tag. Note that the user of the other base could have a different base than the one run by the current user as the closest base to him, in which case, he would be in two simultaneous battles, one with each base. When they go offline, the state of their players is saved on a server somewhere. Game logic calls for the players to have some automaton-logic of some sort, so they can fend for themselves in a limited way using basic rules, until their user goes online again. The user doesn't control the players' movements directly, but issues general directives that influence the players' movement logic. I think this analogy is good enough to frame my question. I've been looking at smartfoxserver, but I'm not convinced yet that it is the best option or even that it will work at all. One possibility, of course, would be to roll out my own web server, but I'd rather not do that if there is an existing service out there already that I could tap into. Note that darebase is not the game I intend to implement, but, upon reflection, that might not be a bad idea either. What I'm looking for, specifically, is an appropriate architecture that can do the following things:   * Act as a repository of saved game states   * Provide a framework that allows multiple players to communicate with each other.   * (optionally) executing some of the gaming logic, for example, in the game of darebase, who determines who tagged whom? Is it one or both clients or is it the server? I've never been involved with such a multi user real-time environment, so I can only guess at the pitfalls of one decision vs. another."}
{"_id": "252234", "title": "What is the verb for \"to make something into a plugin\"?", "text": "What is the verb for \"to make something into a plugin\"? Example use: \"Developer can you make Module Foo into a plugin?\". \"Yes sir, I can `some verb` Module Foo\". Terms I have considered: pluginify, pluginize, make pluggable Criteria for Acceptance: A single verb which means \"to make something into a plugin\" or \"to create something as a plugin\". _I am looking for a term which is already in use_ as opposed to a new one."}
{"_id": "176025", "title": "Java Dynamic Binding", "text": "I am having trouble understanding the OOP Polymorphic principl of Dynamic Binding ( Late Binding ) in Java. I looked for question pertaining to java, and wasn't sure if a overall answer to how dynamic binding works would pertain to Java Dynamic Binding, I wrote this question. Given:               class Person     {          private String name;               Person(intitialName)          {               name = initialName;          }               // irrelevant methods is here.               // Overides Objects method          public void writeOutput()          {               println(name);          }     }          class Student extends Person     {               private int studentNumber;               Student(String intitialName, int initialStudentNumber)          {          super(intitialName);          studentNumber = initialStudentNumber;          }               // irrellevant methods here...               // overides Person, Student and Objects method          public void writeOutput()          {           super.writeOutput();           println(studentNumber);          }          }          class Undergaraduate extends Student     {               private int level;               Undergraduate(String intitialName, int initialStudentNumber,int initialLevel)          {          super(intitialName,initialStudentNumber);          level = initialLevel;          }               // irrelevant methods is here.               // overides Person, Student and Objects method          public void writeOutput()          {           super.writeOutput();           println(level);          }            }      I am wondering. if I had an array called person declared to contain objects of type Person:                 Person[] people = new Person[2];       person[0] = new Undergraduate(\"Cotty, Manny\",4910,1);       person[1] = new Student(\"DeBanque, Robin\", 8812);      Given that person[] is **declared** to be of type **Person,** you would expect, for example, in the third line where person[0] is initialized to a new Undergraduate object,to only gain the instance variable from Person and Persons Methods since doesn't the assignment to a new Undergraduate to it's ancestor denote the Undergraduate object to access Person - it's Ancestors, methods and isntance variables... Thus ...with the following code I would expect                 person[0].writeOutput();  // calls Undergraduate::writeOutput()       person[1].writeOutput();  // calls Student::writeOutput()       person[0] to not have Undergraduate's writeOutput() overidden method, nor have person[1] to have Student's overidden method - writeOutput(). If I had               Person mikeJones = new Student(\"Who?,MikeJones\",44,4);     mikeJones.writeOutput();      The Person::writeOutput() method would be called. Why is this not so? Does it have to do with something I don't understand about relating to arrays? Does the declaration Person[] people = new Person[2] not bind the method like the previous code would?"}
{"_id": "12369", "title": "What's stopping Oracle from supporting identity (auto-numeric) columns?", "text": "EDIT: As gavenkoa's answer points out, Oracle Database 12c (released a couple of years after this question was asked) has support for Identity Columns. * * * As far as I know, Oracle's RDBMS is one of the few (the only?) SQL database products that doesn't support identity/autonumeric columns. The alternative offered by Oracle is database sequences, a feature in many ways much more powerful than auto-numeric columns, but not equivalent. It is not that I don't like sequences. What I hate is having a different programming model for generating row identity values between Oracle and any other database. For example, I often try to setup HSQL or SQLite for java apps that will eventually run over an Oracle database when I'm not working specifically on the data layer (just as a stub or mocking database). I cannot do that easily because I need different set of SQL DDL scripts: one for Oracle, and one for everyone else; I also need two sets of Hibernate mapping files if I'm using Hibernate. What I find intriguing is that Oracle Database, being one of the most complete and robust enterprise software packages of the last decade hasn't put that seemingly basic feature in their product, but almost any other RDBMS, even the smaller ones, has it. Why? Why doesn't oracle support a sequence-based identity column shortcut syntax that dumb and lazy people like me can use? The only reason I can think of is that Oracle does that on purpose as a vendor lock-in strategy so your code is harder to migrate to other RDBMS where your database sequences cannot be used. Or maybe I'm just wrong and confused? Please enlighten me."}
{"_id": "62952", "title": "How does your company manage knowledge and information?", "text": "I am interested in the architecture, methods and software used by your company to capture and store knowledge. Is the information easily searchable (especially by non-techies) ? Is it stored in a central repository or in several places ? Do you find the current implementation adequate ? What could be improved ?"}
{"_id": "254635", "title": "Output an Access Report As PDF on Windows 8 from a VB6 Application", "text": "I am working with VB6 and Microsoft Access 2013 and Windows 8. I am trying to output an access report as a pdf from a VB6 application. I have this code:               Public Sub OpenReport(sReportName As String, frmCallingForm As Form)            Dim objAccess As Access.Application       Dim lResult   As Long              Dim Path As String         Path = Environ$(\"AppData\")                 Set objAccess = New Access.Application            With objAccess         On Error GoTo ErrHndlr         .OpenCurrentDatabase App.Path & \"\\\" & \"OrderBackEnd.mdb\"         .DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport, sReportName, acFormatPDF, Path & \"\\rpt\" & sReportName & \".pdf\", False         .Visible = True         On Error GoTo 0         .Quit acQuitSaveNone       End With            Set objAccess = Nothing            lResult = ShellExecute(frmCallingForm.hWnd, \"Open\", Path & \"\\rpt\" & sReportName & \".pdf\", 0&, 0&, 3)          Exit Sub     ErrHndlr:       objAccess.Visible = True       MsgBox Err.Number & \":\" & Err.Description          End Sub      The problem is the output gets hung and freezes the system. When I terminate the application I notice the below box in the background of my form. The only way to see the below box is to End Task on the VB6 application. It appears to not be associating the acFormatPDF in OutputTo line. Is there any way to resolve this issue or a workaround? If I manually do this process in Access it works fine. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KJCAL.png)"}
{"_id": "254631", "title": "Applying the principles of Clean Code to functional languages", "text": "I'm currently reading Robert Martin's _Clean Code_. I think it's great, and when writing OO code I'm taking his lessons to heart. In particular, I think his advice to use small functions with meaningful names makes my code flow much more smoothly. It's best summed up by this quote: > [W]e want to be able to read the program as though it were a set of TO > paragraphs, each of which is describing the current level of abstraction and > referencing subsequent TO paragraphs at the next level down. ( _Clean Code_ , page 37: a \"TO paragraph\" is a paragraph that begins with a sentence voiced in the infinitive. \"To do X, we perform steps Y and Z.\" \"To do Y, we...\" etc.) For example: > TO RenderPageWithSetupsAndTeardowns, we check to see whether the page is a > test page and if so, we include the setups and teardowns. In either case we > render the page in HTML I also write functional code for my job. Martin's examples in the book definitely do read as if they were a set of paragraphs, and they're very clear -- but I'm not so sure that \"reads like a set of paragraphs\" is a desirable quality for functional code to have. Taking an example out of the Haskell standard library:               maximumBy               :: (a -> a -> Ordering) -> [a] -> a     maximumBy _ []          =  error \"List.maximumBy: empty list\"     maximumBy cmp xs        =  foldl1 maxBy xs                             where                                maxBy x y = case cmp x y of                                            GT -> x                                            _  -> y      That is about as far away as you can possibly get from Martin's advice, but that's concise, idiomatic Haskell. Unlike the Java examples in his book, I can't imagine any way to refactor that in to something that has the sort of cadence he asks for. I suspect that Haskell written to the standard of _Clean Code_ would come off as long-winded and unnatural. Am I wrong to consider (at least some of) _Clean Code_ at odds with functional programming best practices? Is there a sensible way to reinterpret what he says in a different paradigm?"}
{"_id": "10296", "title": "Ethics, Clients, and legal repercussions", "text": "I'm asking this after reading a SO question where the OP asked for help decoding obfuscated code, which looks like it belongs to a closed-source company. The OP's client is saying \" _I don't know the full legal particulars of the contract (if there was one) for the code development. They claim it was fully paid for and released to them. If the code development was completely outside the scope and use of Ioncube, then it's debatable if it is unethical._ \" To me the whole thing stinks of: the client bought the product and hired the OP to decode it, but either doesn't understand he didn't buy a licence to modify, distribute, reverse engineer, or reproduce the software. But it's easy to just accept a job and say \"whatever\" to these sorts of things, but there is room for this to be legit. What considerations should we take to ensure we're doing the right thing, and furthermore protect ourselves?"}
{"_id": "10292", "title": "What's the difference between a \"developer\" and a \"developer-analyst\"?", "text": "At larger companies there seems to be a distinction between the two positions. How exactly do they differ?"}
{"_id": "20262", "title": "What are the pros and cons of having a life partner from the same field?", "text": "Having a life partner definitely affects an individual's career. For e.g. A programmer spends hours on the computer for work. A spouse working in the same field as yours would not mind adjusting with the household chores. On the other hand, a partner from some other field will not understand the significance of your work, and this may create problems in one's married life. Apart from this factor, what do you think are the other factors which are affected with the choice of partner from the same field? And how useful it is for programmers to have a spouse from the same field as you are working?"}
{"_id": "46821", "title": "How does trilicense (mpl,gpl,lgpl) work when you want to use it on public website", "text": "I have tried to search for this answer for quite some time and I have gone through all the various FAQ's and documentation regarding the three licenses; but none of them have been able to answer a question that I have. So I've been working an idea for a website for sometime now and recently I found open source software that has many of components that are similar. It is licensed under the mpl/gpl/lgpl licenses. I think for the most part I understand the ramifications, due to the searches and reading, of what is required if I modify/use and want to distribute the software. But what if I want to modify and not distribute, but use it on a public website that I generate ad revenue from? Is this illegal? It doesn't seem like it is from reading other open source system, say like Drupal, where they allow you to use the software but it's not considered \"distribution\" if people just go to the website. I know this site may not be the best resource and I've tried some other sites, but I haven't received any clear replies back. If you know some other resource that I could contact also, please let me know. Links for those who don't know:   * MPL - Wikipedia, Legalese   * GPL - Wikipedia, Legalese   * LGPL - Wikipedia, Legalese"}
{"_id": "21562", "title": "How to retain familiarity with previously worked on technology/language/feature", "text": "One problem that I have faced over the years is that when I stop using a technology (COM,QT)/language (VBScript)/feature (Templates) for development over the time I lose skill in that. What in your opinion is the \"easiest\" way to retain familiarity so that when I come back to any of them, effort for relearning is minimal."}
{"_id": "152172", "title": "rails fake data, considering switch from faker to forgery, any advantages or pitfalls?", "text": "With Ruby on Rails I've usually used **Forgery** for generating dummy data for testing. I've noticed recently that several clients and tutorials are using **Faker** They both seem fairly similar in use and popularity:   **Faker** 128 forks, 418 watchers.   **Forgery** 59 forks, 399 watchers. They both seem similar in how current they are:   **Faker** Most updates are from 6 and 9 months ago.   **Forgery** Most updates are from 4 and 9 months ago. The one distinguishing factor I've found so far is that **Forgery** seems like it has better instructions. Are there any particular _benefits_ or _disadvantages_ to using one over the other?   Have you ever needed to switch from one to another for a particular reason?"}
{"_id": "152173", "title": "How does one unit test an algorithm", "text": "I was recently working on a JS slideshow which rotates images using a weighted average algorithm. Thankfully, timgilbert has written a weighted list script which implements the exact algorithm I needed. However in his documentation he's noted under todos: \"unit tests!\". I'd like to know is how one goes about unit testing an algorithm. In the case of a weighted average how would you create a proof that the averages are accurate when there is the element of randomness? Code samples of similar would be very helpful to my understanding."}
{"_id": "152177", "title": "Develop for Desktop and mobile use?", "text": "I am in the very beginning of developing an app / desktop program. I want it to be cross-platform and possibly also as a tablet version (preferably Android Icecream sandwich). Note that I need to run it offline. I thought about the following approaches:   * ADOBE Air, since I do not need much performance. Plus I did some web programming in the past which might be of some use. Afaik it would run on OS X and Windows and should run on mobile OSes, too.    * Qt. Found some nice Qt based desktop recently and read it also works on android. Plus I like the SDK.    * HTML5 / JS. Again my web background should help me here. I wont need no sever side scripts, thus it should work without installing anything but a browser. How easy could this be converted into an Android app? There might be a plethora of other (better) ways to do it, but I haven't thought of them yet. Can you help out? How would you create such an application. Would it be better to do some pure desktop client and then create tablet versions? Would you rather start to create a website and worry later on how to turn into an app?"}
{"_id": "157522", "title": "CQRS + Event Sourcing: (is it correct that) Commands are generally communicated point-to-point, while Domain Events are communicated through pub/sub?", "text": "Didn't know how to shorten that title. I'm basically trying to wrap my head around the concept of CQRS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-query_separation) and related concepts. Although CQRS doesn't necessarily incorporate Messaging and Event Sourcing it seems to be a good combination (as can be seen with a lot of examples / blogposts combining these concepts ) Given a use-case for a state change for something (say to update a Question on SO), would you consider the following flow to be correct (as in best practice) ? The system issues an aggregate UpdateQuestionCommand which might be separated into a couple of smaller commands: UpdateQuestion which is targeted at the Question Aggregate Root, and UpdateUserAction(to count points, etc) targeted at the User Aggregate Root. These are send asynchronously using point-to-point messaging. The aggregate roots do their thing and if all goes well fire events QuestionUpdated and UserActionUpdated respectively, which contain state that is outsourced to an Event Store.. to be persisted yadayada, just to be complete, not really the point here. These events are also put on a pub/sub queue for broadcasting. Any subscriber (among which likely one or multiple Projectors which create the Read Views) are free to subscribe to these events. The general question: Is it indeed best practice, that Commands are communicated Point-to-Point (i.e: The receiver is known) whereas events are broadcasted (I.e: the receiver(s) are unknown) ? Assuming the above, what would be the advantage/ disadvantage of allowing Commands to be broadcasted through pub/sub instead of point-to-point? For example: When broadcasting Commands while using Saga's (http://blog.jonathanoliver.com/2010/09/cqrs-sagas-with-event-sourcing-part-i- of-ii/) could be a problem, since the mediation role a Saga needs to play in case of failure of one of the aggregate roots is hindered, because the saga doesn't know which aggregate roots participate to begin with. On the other hand, I see advantages (flexibility) when broadcasting commands would be allowed. Any help in clearing my head is highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "46634", "title": "How to ...set up new Java environment - largely interfaces", "text": "Looks like I need to setup a new Java environment for some interfaces we need to build. Say our system is X and we need to interfaces to systems A, B and C. Then we will be writing interfaces X-A, X-B, X-C. Our system has a bus within it, so the publishing on our side will be to the bus and the interface processes will be taking from the bus and mapping to the destination system. Its for a vendor based system - so most of the core code we can't touch. Currently thinking we will have several processes, one per interface we need to do. The question is how to structure things. Several of the APIs we need to work with are Java based. We could go EJB, but prefer to keep it simple, one process per interface, so that we can restart them individually. Similarly SOA seems overkill, although I am probably mixing my thoughts about implementations of it compared to the concepts behind it... Currently thinking that something Spring based is the way to go. In true, \"leverage a new tech if possible\"-style, I am thinking maybe we can shoe horn some jruby into this, perhaps to make the APIs more readable, perhaps event- machine-like and to make the interface code more business-friendly, perhaps even storing the mapping code in the DB, as ruby snippets that get mixed in... but thats an aside... So, any comments/thoughts on the Spring approach - anything more up-to- date/relevant these days. EDIT: Looking a JRuby further, I am tempted to write it fully in JRuby... in which case do we need any frameworks at all, perhaps some gems to make things clearer... Thanks in advance, Chris"}
{"_id": "157526", "title": "Explanation on how \"Tell, Don't Ask\" is considered good OO", "text": "This blogpost was posted on Hacker News with several upvotes. Coming from C++, most of these examples seem to go against what I've been taught. Such as example #2: Bad:               def check_for_overheating(system_monitor)       if system_monitor.temperature > 100         system_monitor.sound_alarms       end     end      versus good:               system_monitor.check_for_overheating          class SystemMonitor       def check_for_overheating         if temperature > 100           sound_alarms         end       end     end      The advice in C++ is that you should prefer free functions instead of member functions as they increase encapsulation. Both of these are identical semantically, so why prefer the choice that has access to more state? Example 4: Bad:               def street_name(user)       if user.address         user.address.street_name       else         'No street name on file'       end     end      versus good:               def street_name(user)       user.address.street_name     end          class User       def address         @address || NullAddress.new       end     end          class NullAddress       def street_name         'No street name on file'       end     end      Why is it the responsibility of `User` to format an unrelated error string? What if I want to do something besides print `'No street name on file'` if it has no street? What if the street is named the same thing? * * * **Could someone enlighten me on the \"Tell, Don't Ask\" advantages and rationale?** I am not looking for which is better, but instead trying to understand the author's viewpoint."}
{"_id": "157524", "title": "What is the significance of each paragraph of the GPL \"copying permission statement\"?", "text": "Part of the FSF's instructions for placing a program under the GPL is including the following \"copying permission statement\" at the top of your file, under the copyright notice:               This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by     the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or     (at your option) any later version.          This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the     GNU General Public License for more details.          You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License     along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.      I am wondering what is the significance of each paragraph in this statement. In particular, for a program that I am about to release under the GPL, I am considering omitting the second and third paragraphs to reduce the length of the statement, and I'm wondering what would be the negative consequences (if any) of doing so."}
{"_id": "68426", "title": "Convincing a Client to Offer a RESTful Web Service instead of a SOAP Service?", "text": "### BACKGROUND: I develop custom WordPress plugins for my clients that they then distribute via the WordPress plugin repository. I'm increasingly running into clients who want my WordPress plugins to consume SOAP web services developed by their internal development teams _(and as an aside, thus far every one of these SOAP web services have been developed using ASP.NET)._ From my experience, especially within the realm of WordPress plugin development, interacting with RESTful web services is almost always trivial, and they just work. From my admittedly third-hand knowledge of actually consuming SOAP web services via WordPress plugins, especially ones that are widely distributed to mostly non-technical WordPress users, embedding a SOAP client is fraught with peril as there are so many things that can cause a SOAP web service call to fail; wrong local SOAP stack, missing local SOAP stack, malformed service response, etc. etc. What I am finding is that many of the business people in decision-making positions within my _(prospective)_ clients have little-to-no knowledge of the tangible differences between RESTful web services and SOAP-based web services. To these people a web service is a web service; it's 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other. They tend to think _\"What's with all the fuss?\"_ Further the ASP.NET developers at these client, developers who have been immersed in the Visual Studio toolset have been conditioned by Microsoft's excellent developer tools marketing to see SOAP as the easy way; just add Visual Studio and the SOAP web service works like magic! And it does, at least until you try to use some other stack to access the web service and/or until you are trying to get people who are not using Visual Studio or adopt the web service; then the picture is very different. When these developers hear me advocate they implement a RESTful web service instead if I get push back I am getting one of two responses; they say:   1. _\"Why go to all the effort of creating a RESTful web service when I've already created a SOAP web service for you to use? You are just creating more work for me and I have other things to do.\"_   2. _\"There is no benefit to RESTful web services; SOAP is actually much better because I can create an object and then I can program it just like an object. Plus SOAP is used by enterprise developers and we are an enterprise development shop; REST is just not for serious use.\"_ As an aside I think one reason I get these responses is because ASP.NET developers often have little-to-no exposure to REST _(isn't this article really on the fringe for most ASP.NET developers?)_ I think they really don't know how little work it takes to create an HTTP `GET`-only RESTful web service once they already have all the code implemented for a SOAP web service. And I think this happens because Microsoft's approach is to give tools to developers so they don't feel the need to learn the details. Since Visual Studio claims to take care of so many things for developers why should a developer care to learn anything that Visual Studio claims to handle? I know that's what I thought when I used to code web sites for the Microsoft platform. It wasn't until I moved to PHP that I realized what HTTP headers were and that I realized the difference between a 301 and a 302 HTTP status code, and most importantly that I realized these concepts were both easy to understand and vitally important to understand if one wants to create a robust and effective site on the web. * * * ### MY QUESTION: **What I am asking is how do I counter these responses and get my prospective clients to consider creating a RESTful web service?** How can I get them to see the many benefits that using a RESTful web service can offer them? Also how can I get them to see the large potential downside of releasing a WordPress plugin that potentially incurs a large support cost? * * * ### NOTE: If you disagree with my premise that calling RESTful web services are preferable to calling SOAP web services from within a WordPress plugin then please understand that I'm asking for help from people who agree with my premise and _ideally I'm not looking to debate the premise._ However if you feel the need to argue then please do so in a respectful manner recognizing that we each have the right to our own opinions and that you might never be able to sway me to agree with yours. Which of course, should be okay."}
{"_id": "142663", "title": "Queue in facebook games [looking for opponent and such]", "text": "I've seen many games on FB have queue which connects you to an opponent you should be playing against. So my question is: In which language can it be coded? Is it possible to do it in PHP/Javascript? Does anyone have any real/live example or tutorial how is this done? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "160293", "title": "Are there any theories or books about how to debug \"in general\"?", "text": "I read and studied a lot of computer science and engineering and I rarely or never seen a book about debugging or a theory how to debug (though I surely developed some debugging theories of my own). Are there any debugging theories and/or books? Why / why not? I can read how to debug using gdb and some of the most useful info about development I got from reading how to use gdb."}
{"_id": "160290", "title": "How can we handle multiple instances of a method through a single class instance", "text": "How can we handle multiple instances of a method through a single class instance(Single constructor call)? To elaborate, I have a handler class which has two methods lets say `verifyUser(String JSON)` and `getUserInfo(String JSON)`. Assuming that there are many users accessing this methods, there will be multiple instances of these methods. The handler class should be initialized once. I.e. multiple objects of this class are not permitted, rather multiple method instances are allowed. What will be the ideal solution for enabling concurrent method calls without corrupting data while executing?"}
{"_id": "142667", "title": "Refactoring While Programming", "text": "When posed with a problem, particularly when it is complicated in nature, I try to take some time to think about the approach I am going to take to solve the problem. Despite this, what often happens is, as I am programming the solution, I start to think of details of the problem that I missed, and I adjust the code accordingly. What results is a mess of code that needs to be refactored. I want to \"refactor as I go,\" but while it sounds easy enough to do, I have a really hard time doing it. When the detail that I missed is small, it is tempting to make a small update to my design, rather than erase what I've already written and write it the way it is supposed to be. It sounds like a question with an obvious answer, but are there any techniques to use to better \"refactor as you go\"? I know that this is a good principle, but I fail with it time and time again."}
{"_id": "211519", "title": "TFS Branching Advice", "text": "I am new to Branching and Merging but I have been tasked with making future development on an application possible while still allowing bug fixes to production. Usually I am the only developer on the application unless I am on leave. I have watched a Pluralsight video on Branching and done some forum/stack reading. I was hoping someone could take a look at my solution proposal and critique. I am concerned I will cause more problems than solutions if I get this wrong > As of Version 1.1.0.0 I have introduced a branching system for future > development. Version 1.1.0.0 is our production branch. No changes should > appear here except bug fixes. Version 1.2.0.0 is the next version and our > development branch. > > After completing a development, the development branch will merge to the > Application (trunk). The application will be deployed for testing. After > sign off the development branch becomes production, the previous version > branch will be removed. A new branch will be created for the next version. > > For bug fixing, the bugs are fixed against the production branch and merged > to the application so when the development branch merges down it also > obtains those fixes."}
{"_id": "45733", "title": "How do I go about hosting facebook apps that are picking speed?", "text": "My situation is this. I coded in php and built a facebook app. After 3 days it has 13,000 users. I have my own server at hostmonster. It is a regular plan costing me about $70 per year. It has unlimited bandwidth. I did not anticipate hosting apps or that it could pick up so many users. Already 1 Gb of data was transferred in the last few days. I am planning to build a few more apps(around 10 - 20) and reach atleast a million users in total. Should I continue hosting on the same server or move to a VPS? I am a student and I don't have too much of a disposable income. So I want to move only if it is necessary. Right now it shows 1 Gb/infinity in data transfer. Any help/suggestions highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "193861", "title": "Interview for UX/UI Javascript", "text": "I am interviewing for a job where the requirements are for...               UX practice with UI and Javascript expertise      I am expecting questions perhaps about MVC, maybe some specific frameworks, like backbone, yui, or jQuery UI. Are there any good resources to prepare me for the interview? Any obvious things I should look into beforehand?"}
{"_id": "211510", "title": "Rest API and caching data", "text": "I have developed an application where you should be able to browse products catalog( **READ ONLY** ) even network access is down no wifi or 3g/lte etc. Clients(windows,ios,android etc) consume the rest api. So far There is a REST api that grabs parts like categories with products and other api call to get preferences etc. This adds logic at client like joining them together something that developers dont like. Also we need to add multiple pricebooks for each product. Current proposed solution demanded by team was to require network for this operation and get products with price of the pricebook. As the ideal solution would be to ask for what is needed everytime this isnt real solution as it would degrade performance and would make offline usage impossible. So I believe that each client probably should just store at a simple local database the data and resync based on some versioning?Products/catalogs change about 1 time per month."}
{"_id": "211515", "title": "Returning view code in an API response", "text": "I have an API that returns a JSON formatted array of users within a given pair of lat/ long bounds. I'm using this data to plot a number of markers on a map, based on the location of each user. I also want to render a HTML list on each client request so that I can show the list of plotted users alongside the map. What is the best way to get the list HTML to the client? To me it seems like an incorrect solution to return the HTML for the user list _within_ the initial API call (response.html, or something), although this feels like I'm shoe-horning functionality into an otherwise clean API response. I also don't want to make two API calls (one for the initial data and one for the HTML), for obvious reasons (overhead). Finally, I don't want to generate the HTML client-side (in JavaScript), as I already have a class to do this for me server-side. What options does that leave me with? Thanks"}
{"_id": "193869", "title": "Does this version of insertion sort have O(n) complexity for best case?", "text": "for ( i = 1 ; i <= N ; i++ )     {       for ( j = 0 ; j < i ; j++ )       {         if ( arr[j] > arr[i] )         {           temp = arr[j] ;           arr[j] = arr[i] ;                for ( k = i ; k > j ; k-- )             arr[k] = arr[k - 1] ;                arr[k + 1] = temp ;         }       }     }      Source: http://programminggeeks.com/c-code-for-insertion-sort/ If not, can it really be called insertion sort? This version of sort is there in a book from reputed author originally."}
{"_id": "243237", "title": "Declarative Transactions in Node.js", "text": "Back in the day, it was common to manage database transactions in Java by writing code that did it. Something like this:               Transaction tx = session.startTransaction();     ...     try {        tx.commit();     } catch (SomeException e){        tx.rollback();     }      at the beginning and end of every method. This had some obvious problems - it's redundant, hides the intent of what's happening, etc. So, along came annotation-driven transactions:               @Transaction     public SomeResultObj getResult(...){              ...     }      Is there any support for declarative transaction management in node.js?"}
{"_id": "112996", "title": "Finding Speakers for a Conference", "text": "Heroku has offered to sponsor a conference run by my Ruby user group, and wondering if anyone has suggestions for finding, selecting, and managing speakers. Related Question: How do you ask or get asked to speak at a software conference?"}
{"_id": "24302", "title": "Most Active Open Source C# Projects?", "text": "I am looking for open source projects being done in C# that are actively looking for developers and does not mind the person coming in from a C++ background. Any pointers appreciated."}
{"_id": "168732", "title": "How to balance programming projects between feasibility and usefulness", "text": "I've become fairly competent as a programmer, but I would not say I am a master. I work independently, most as a hobby, although I have done some freelance PHP work. I tend to find myself dabbling in a lot of things: Java Android SDK, Arduino, game scripting, Lua, etc. I've reached the point where I want to start a real software project, but cannot think of a small enough project that allows me enough practice, while still being able to publish a decent piece of software in a reasonable amount of time, and build up a portfolio. More specifically, I was looking at Ubuntu development, in Python, using the Quickly toolset, which includes the PyGTK libraries. So the question is, what is the best way to come up with a small project that is still useful, as a starting point to a software development career?"}
{"_id": "160128", "title": "How to inspire an intern with programming?", "text": "The situation is this - we took an intern for a summer with a mind that if he will catch up during summer, we will keep him as a part time junior developer.   We took him after his first year in university, so his knowledge was way too low to be involved into real projects(actually he programmed only in university), so my task was to push as much stuff as I can to have him ready for joining real projects in September. As long as we are remote developing team, we gave him possibility to have its internship remotely, with flexible hours. So two months passed and I'm not impressed with his progress. I gave several tasks to implement, access to learning resources, recommended start paths and so on, agreed that he will report every couple days, we had pair sessions from time to time, reviewed his code together and etc. Anyway, it looks like he spent less time writing code than I expected and before I would say that he didn't performed well enough to join our team, I was thinking may be that is my fault, may be I was pushing too much stuff, that is important in real life projects (like unit testing, structuring code, database stuff, etc.) and not enough fun stuff, that would hook up him on programming and that is the reason he spent less time than I hoped. So I have ~20 days left and I can use them to inspire him with programming, question is with what and how?"}
{"_id": "160129", "title": "Is there a programming language where 1/6 behaves the same as 1.0/6.0?", "text": "While I was programming in C++ some days ago, I made this mistake (that I have history of making it!). In one part of my code, I had 1/6 and I was expecting it be 0.16666666666 which is not the case. As you all know the result is 0 - C, C++, Java, Python, all behave the same. I post it on my Facebook page and now there is debate on if there is a programming language where `1/6` behaves the same as `1.0/6.0`."}
{"_id": "168736", "title": "Test case as a function or test case as a class", "text": "I am having a design problem in test automation:- Requirements - Need to test different servers (using unix console and not GUI) through automation framework. Tests which I'm going to run - Unit, System, Integration Question: While designing a test case, I am thinking that a Test Case should be a part of a test suite (test suite is a class), just as we have in Python's pyunit framework. But, should we keep test cases as functions for a scalable automation framework or should be keep test cases as separate classes(each having their own setup, run and teardown methods) ? From automation perspective, Is the idea of having a test case as a class more scalable, maintainable or as a function?"}
{"_id": "164635", "title": "Does the deprecation of mysql_* functions in PHP carry over to other Databases(MSSQL)?", "text": "### I'm not talking about MySQL, I'm talking about Microsoft SQL Server I've been aware of PDO for quite some time now, standard mysql functions are dangerous and should be avoided. http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-connect.php But what about the MSSQL function in PHP? They are, for most purposes, identical sets of functions, but the PHP page describing mssql_* carries no warning of deprecation. http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.mssql-connect.php There are PDO drivers available for MSSQL, but they aren't quite as readily available or used as the MySQL drivers. Ideally, it looks to me like I should get them working and move from mssql_* to PDO like I have with MySQL, but is it as big of a priority? Is there some hidden safety to MSSQL that means it's exempt from all of the mysql_* hatred as of late? Or is its obscurity as a backend the only reason there hasn't been more PDO encouragement?"}
{"_id": "164636", "title": "What are some general guidelines for setting up an iOS project I will want to personally publish but sell in the future?", "text": "I have an idea for a personal iOS project that I would like to write and release to the iOS store. I'm the type of developer who enjoys developing and publishing. I want to write quality software and take care of my customers. Assuming that I wrote an application that had reasonable success, there is a fair chance that I would want to sell the ownership rights of the app to another party and I'd use the proceeds to develop my next personal project which, in turn, I'd probably want to sell in the future. With that said, what are some general guidelines for creating, making and publishing an iOS project that I will eventually want to transfer to another company/developer? I know this is a bit of a broad question, but I request that the given advice be a general list of tips, suggestions and pitfalls to avoid. If any particular bullet point on your list needs more explanation, I'll either search for the answer or post a new question specific to that requirement. Thank you! **Note Regarding this Question** I am posting this question on Programmers.SO because I think that this is an issue of software architecting, seeking advice for setting a new application project and publishing a project to the Apple iOS store-- all within the requirements for questions on this site. **UPDATE** \\- 2012-09-14 I would further like to request that if anyone is aware of a good article on a case study of such a transition, I would consider that a good answer as well. Such an article may not have all the answers, but it could outline quite a few of the pitfalls which should be avoided. Apps are sold to other holding companies on a semi-frequent basis. Often, it happens when a small app becomes a runaway success and a bigger company wants to purchase the ownership and rights. I've had difficulty finding any information on this topic (probably my poor googling skills.) Most keywords that I tend to search also relate to promoting an app so that people will download it. Thanks for your insight."}
{"_id": "79134", "title": "What are the three most important questions you should ask your team about your performance as their team leader?", "text": "I'm approaching the 1 year mark as a leader of a small development team (4 members, including myself) inside of a small software company. I'd like to give my team the opportunity to evaluate how I am doing as their team leader who is also a developer on the team. I find it's hard to get good feedback with an open ended 'How am I doing?' question, so what specific questions are the most important to ask? Ideally I'd like to be able to provide 3 simple questions that my team would be able to answer. Which are the most important parts that you would like to give your team leader feedback on? My initial thought was to allow my team to answer these questions anonymously? Is this a good idea?"}
{"_id": "164632", "title": "statistics for checking imported data?", "text": "I'm working on a data migration of several hundred nodes from a Drupal 6 to a Drupal 7 site. I've got the data exported to the new site and I want to check it. Harkening back to my statistics classes, I recall that there is some way to figure out a random number of nodes to check to give me some percentage of confidence that the whole process was correct. Can anyone enlighten me as to this practical application of statistics? For any given number of units, how big must the sample be to have a given confidence interval?"}
{"_id": "237565", "title": "Is it legal to reuse code from a \"programming cookbook\"?", "text": "I have just found a perfect fit solution for a problem I was having in O'Reilly's _Perl Cookbook._ The problem is, the book is copyrighted, and I could not find anything that looked like a license to reuse the code. On the other hand, I suppose \"programming cookbooks\" are more or less explicitly made with the intent that the reader will reuse some of the code that is provided. Legally, can I just reuse the code, or do I have to rewrite it? If this is relevant, my intent was to release the project I am working on under the AL/GPL dual license, which is the norm for Perl. I suppose this question could apply equally well to any programming cookbook with no explicit license."}
{"_id": "237561", "title": "Naming test methods in Java", "text": "Over at codereview a comment hinted that using snake_case to name test methods is a good idea. This contradicted my views and I did some research and there seem to be a lot of examples that actually use snake_case for this. Myself, I use classic camelCase names like `testXyz` for unit tests or a BDD approach `givenXyzWhenXyzThenXyz` for integration tests. There also is a third option that combines both ways, e.g. `useCase_WhenSomething_ThenAssertion`. # _My question is_ : What are good arguments for either using snake_case or camelCase to name test methods? I'd like to start this with a few arguments from my experience and work: ## In Favor of camelCase   * It follows the general Java coding conventions of using camelCase.   * It is _consistent_ with production code.   * I _personally_ find camelCase no harder to read than snake_case \u2013 I'm used to descriptive names from production code anyway.   * IDE support suffers when using snake_case (at least Eclipse). ## In Favor of snake_case   * Some frameworks can generate reports from tests and using snake_case allows such frameworks to create correct sentences from the test names. ## In Favor of a combination of both   * ? What are other arguments? How does maybe the pattern in which the test methods are named affect the arguments? Little disclaimer: Of course, ultimatively it comes down to team conventions. However, it might be worth discussing pros and cons for certain conventions."}
{"_id": "13010", "title": "Do you write bad code when under pressure?", "text": "When you are under pressure, the deadline is approaching, and a manager is breathing down your neck do you find yourself starting to write bad code? Do TDD and best practices slip by the wayside in order to get things done? What do you do in situations like that? What were your experiences?"}
{"_id": "66858", "title": "Avoid having an initialization method", "text": "I have this existing code where they have a class and an initialization method in that class. It is expected that once the object of the class is created, they need to call initialize on it. **Reason why the initialize method exist** The object gets created early to have a global scope and then the initialize method gets called later after loading a dll which it depends on. **Issue with having the initialize** The class now has this bool isInitialized which needs to be checked in every method before it proceeds and returns error if it is not initialized. Simply put, it is a big pain. **One possible solution** Initialize in the constructor. Have just a pointer to the object in the global scope. Create the actual object after the dll is loaded. **Issue with the above solution** Anyone who creates an object of this class needs to know that it needs to be created only after the dll is loaded or else it will fail. Is this acceptable?"}
{"_id": "237568", "title": "What does the author of Code Complete mean when talking about hiding global data?", "text": "In section 6.4 of Code Complete 2nd Edition there is a paragraph about hiding global data. What I am particularly interested in, is that McConnell (the author of the book) gives examples of the benefits of hiding global data. There is one example that I cannot understand. I don't have the English version of the book, so I'll try to translate the text. > **Hiding global data.** (...) You can change the structure of the data > without modifying the program. What does McConnell mean by that? Is he talking about changing global data? If so, why wouldn't you have to modify your program when you are using methods to retreive that data? Or maybe he is referring to something else here? I would greatly appreciate if someone could clear up my confusion. If you could also provide an example, it would be great (examples are awesome, you know)."}
{"_id": "48571", "title": "most concise reference for organizing code for sharing?", "text": "My colleagues and I are a bunch of scientists (i.e., untrained in programming) hacking code for data processing. Is there a concise and simple reference that documents idioms, conventions, or guidelines for organizing code? For instance:   1. conventions for using global variables   2. documenting code that is distributed to others (e.g., at least listing all functions contained within a code document at the top of the file) and so on? I'm aware that this is big field and can get into security, unit testing, refactoring, and all these issues, but hopefully there is some primer out there that covers the bare minimum with (extremely) little programming experience? **Edit:** Thanks all -- I aware there are language specific guidelines for (and debates over) use of parentheses, camelcasing (or not) variable names, etc. but I was hoping for basic conventions that apply to most languages. **Edit2:** To narrow it down, these are mostly imperative or procedural languages (e.g., Fortran but one in particular that a lot of my colleagues use is a DSL called IGOR Pro by Wavemetrics if anyone has heard of this one)."}
{"_id": "178149", "title": "When can I publish a software tool written at work?", "text": "I'm working on a software problem at work that is fairly generic, but I can't find a library I like to solve it, so I'm considering writing one myself (at least a bare-bones version). I'll be writing some if not all of the 1.0 version at work, since I need it for the project. If turns out well I might want to bring the work home and polish it up just for fun, and maybe release it as an open-source project. However, I'm concerned that if I wrote the 1.0 version at work I may not be allowed to do this from a legal sense. Obviously I could ask my boss (who probably won't care), but I'm curious how other programmers have dealt with this issue and where the law stands here. My one sentence question is, **When is it okay (legally/ethically) to open-source a software tool originally written by you for work at work? What if you have expanded the original source significantly during off-hours?** **Follow-up:** Suppose I write the whole thing at home on my time then simply use it at work, does that change things drastically? **Follow-up 2** : Note that I'm not trying to rip off my employer (I understand that they're paying me to build products that they own)--I'm just wondering if there's a fair way of doing this for all involved... It would be nice if some nonprofit down the road could use my code and save them some time. Also, there's another issue at stake. If I write the library for a very simple, generic thing (like HTML tables in Javascript), does that mean I can never again do so on my own time without putting myself at legal risk (even if it was a whole new fresh rewrite or a segment of a larger project). Am I surrendering my right to write code for this sort of project for the rest of my life (without this company's permission), since the code at work might still be somewhere in my brain influencing me? This seems related to software patents, as a side-note."}
{"_id": "178147", "title": "Database Schema Usage", "text": "I have a question regarding the appropriate use of SQL Server database schemas and was hoping that some database gurus might be able to offer some guidance around best practice. Just to give a bit of background, my team has recently shrunk to 2 people and we have just been merged with another 6 person team. My team had set up a SQL Server environment running off a desktop backing up to another desktop (and nightly to the network), whilst the new team has a formal SQL Server environment, running on a dedicated server, with backups and maintenance all handled by a dedicated team. So far it's good news for my team. Now to the query. My team designed all our tables to belong to a 3-letter schema name (e.g. User = USR, General = GEN, Account = ACC) which broadly speaking relate to specific applications, although there is a lot of overlap. My new team has come from an Access background and have implemented their tables within dbo with a 3-letter perfix followed by \"_tbl\" so the examples above would be dbo.USR_tblTableName, dbo.GEN_tblTableName and dbo.ACC_tblTableName. Further to this, neither my old team nor my new team has gone live with their SQL Servers yet (we're both coincidentally migrating away from Access environments) and the new team have said they're willing to consider adopting our approach if we can explain how this would be beneficial. We are not anticipating handling table permissions at schema level, as we will be using application-level logins and the 7-character prefixes are not an issue as we're using LINQ so the tables can simply be renamed in the DMBL (although I know that presents some challenges when we update the DBML). So therefore, given that both teams need to be aligned with one another, can anyone offer any convincing arguments either way?"}
{"_id": "178144", "title": "Jenkins Paramerized Trigger + Copy Artifact", "text": "I'm working on setting up Jenkins to handle our release builds. A release build consists of a Windows installer that includes some binaries that must be built on Linux. Here's what I have so far:   * The Windows portion and Linux portion are set up as separate Jenkins projects.   * The Windows project is parameterized, taking the Subversion tag to build and release.   * As part of its build, the Windows project triggers a build of that same Subversion tag for the Linux project (using the Parameterized Trigger plugin) then copies the artifacts from the Linux project (using the Copy Artifact plugin) to the Windows project's workspace so that they can be included in the Windows installer. Where I'm stuck: Right now, Copy Artifact is set up to copy the last successful build. It seems more robust to configure Copy Artifact to copy from the exact build that Parameterized Trigger triggered, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to make that work. There's an option for a \"build selector\" parameter that I think is intended to help with this, but I can't figure out how it's supposed to be set up (and blindly experimenting with different possibilities is somewhat painful when the build takes an hour or two to find success or failure). How should I set this up? How does build selector work?"}
{"_id": "178143", "title": "What is the basic process and tools needed for crawling a source code repository for the purpose of data mining?", "text": "This all is with respect to Microsoft project CodeBook: CodeBook There is huge amount of code in the repository, many classes , a call hierarchy of functions, testcases etc. I am interested in knowing how this crawling process takes place, and how this data is sorted?"}
{"_id": "54132", "title": "Solo vs Team development and the consequences", "text": "I've been programming for a while on different languages. I never really studied programming at school nor worked on a team of more than two people (me included). Still, I've been a professional developer for over three years. Last year, I took over my first C# project and it ended up being fine. I can't help but think that because I learned and worked alone I must be missing some concepts/hints/edge. For those who've been solo developers before being part of a team, can you share your experience? Did you realize you were missing something? Did you find it hard? Did you learn faster after?"}
{"_id": "54133", "title": "Sensitive Data Storage - Best Practices", "text": "I recently started working on a personal project where I was connecting to a database using Java. This got me thinking. I have to provide the login information for a database account on the DB server in order to access the database. But if I hard code it in then it would be possible for someone to decompile the program and extract that login info. If I store it in an external setup file then the same problem exists only it would be even easier for them to get it. I could encrypt the data before storing it in either place but it seems like that's not really a fail safe either and I'm no encryption expert by any means. So what are some best practices for storing sensitive setup data for a program?"}
{"_id": "256160", "title": "How to signal that a method chain should not continue?", "text": "When doing method chaining, you have methods that return the object allowing you to continue the chain. However, you need to get values out of the object somehow. Usually I've added a method that returns a value at the end, but this complicates matters if you add to the chain and that return method may not be valid anymore. The way I view it each time you add a method onto a chain you are refining your result until you get your desired answer in the last method call. Having a final output method creates a restriction in that it needs to know about the last operation to know how to display the result. Maybe you have a method that results in a string and one that results in an array your output method has to deal with both those cases. What if you add a method that stores your string result somewhere new? Now you have to update the output method to handle that case too. Is there a way of letting a method know it's the last in the chain so should output its result?"}
{"_id": "256163", "title": "Are EventHandler<T> and IObservable<T> interchangable?", "text": "I have an object which will periodically raise an event based on an action performed in an application. This will be heard by any listener(s) and acted upon accordingly. I do not wish to use a custom type for this and would like to make use of either `EventHandler<T>` or `IObservable<T>` to manage the pub/sub mechanism I am looking to put in place. I have had a play with both and they both do what I require. I have read through the MSDN Observer Design Pattern and MSDN Events Programming Guide, however, I remain uncertain as to if one mechanism is more appropriate than the other. Is one more suited for my scenario than the other or are both suitable and merely down to personal choice? **Edit 1** My pub/sub requirements are not at the UI layer at this point and are lower down. My publisher is monitoring network activity and raising an event based on certain network events. The subscriber is responsible for listening for raised events and performing an associated action. The UI is not involved at this point."}
{"_id": "91758", "title": "Debugging Facts and Statistics", "text": "I'm trying to find a research answering a question: \"How much time developers spend on development vs debugging?\". I found several interesting links on the Net but they are little too old. This 2002 RTI study states that software bugs cost U.S. economy $59.6 billion annually. And in this book Beizer (1990) reports that of the labor expended to develop a working program, 50% is typically spent on testing and debugging activities. I've seen this number is 80% but can't find the link."}
{"_id": "256168", "title": "Audio editing sdk", "text": "What's the best way to create an audio editing software? (edit, copy, paste audio - somehing like sound forge or audacity) My programming language is Delphi. Are there any good component or controls available so that i can buy it use it in project."}
{"_id": "106815", "title": "Difference between Idiom and Design Pattern?", "text": "What is the difference between idiom and design-pattern? It seems that these terminologies overlap somewhere; where exactly, I don't know. Are they interchangeable? When should I use what? Here is a list of C++ Idioms. Can I call them design patterns? Wikipedia defines, > Programming Idiom as a low-level Design Pattern What does it mean? What does _\"low-level\"_ mean here? This question is inspired from another question : Are the some design patterns language dependent?"}
{"_id": "106810", "title": "Planning to write research paper - Tips or resources?", "text": "I am a junior in high school and I've developed an optimization system for functional languages that could be very powerful. My computer science professors at Boise State University believe I should write a paper and take my idea as far as I can. I've formalized my method, but I haven't had an expert look at it rigorously. I'm also being careful to retain intellectual property safety, so my options are a little limited. Where should I start? I have implemented the optimizer in Haskell (it doesn't actually compile and generate code, but it demonstrates the concept). I'm thinking that I need to finish the research paper focusing on the system itself and see if I can publish it to a journal. The doctor specializing in compiler optimizations at BSU said I might be able to present at Apple because I was planning to generate code with LLVM, which they want to encourage interesting projects for and demonstrate its versatility. This sounds like an exciting prospect, but I'm guessing writing a research paper comes before that. I feel slightly overwhelmed. I'm not sure if I should implement the compiler further to lend my paper credibility, or see if the idea takes off and gather a small community to fully implement it. I'd write the research paper (I have the methods section done), but I'm no expert at research papers, and I might need someone who knows about compiling functional languages that I can trust to look at it. Also, I'm worried that I'll be discriminated for my age (I'm 16 years old). What are some good resources on writing research papers, particularly computer science ones? Where should I start when I have it written? How would I develop interest and a community to implement and expand my idea?"}
{"_id": "91752", "title": "What do you use to organize your team knowledge?", "text": "Last year, me and three good old friends of mine founded a small web/mobile development team. Things are going pretty well. We're learning a lot, and new people are joining the group. Keeping knowledge always updated and in-sync is vital for us. Long emails threads are simply not the way to go for us: too dispersing and confusing, and hard to retrieve after a while. How your team manages and organizes common knowledge? How do you collect and share useful resources (articles, links, libraries, etc) inside your team? **Update:** Thanks for the feedback. More than using a wiki to share team common procedures or informations, I'd like to share external links, articles, code libraries, and be able to comment them easily within my team.   I was particularly interested in knowing if you're aware of any way/webservice to share a reading list with a team. I mean, something like Readitlater/Instapaper, but for teams, maybe with some stats available, like \"# of coworkers who read it\"."}
{"_id": "91750", "title": "Confusion about the first day of a burn down chart", "text": "I built a simple burn down chart with Google Spreadsheet, as shown below. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IfXtt.png) The project consists of 99 tasks. And the user finished 5 tasks on the first day. So the \"Actual Tasks Remaining\" point is below the \"Ideal Tasks Remaining\" point on the first day, which is different from the burn down chart shown in the Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart. I'm wondering whether I should add a date before the first date so that the \"Actual Tasks Remaining\" point will overlap the \"Ideal Tasks Remaining\" point on the first day."}
{"_id": "156696", "title": "is it possible to auto-generate annotated POJO from a table", "text": "I wonder is it possible or is there a tool to generate annotated POJOs from a table.To make it clear,for example,Person table has fields like ,id,name,surname etc and i wanna to generate a POJO named Person with mappings made with annotations."}
{"_id": "156695", "title": "What's a better name for this many-to-many table?", "text": "Part of one of my applications has `contracts` and `contract_types` tables, wherein a type may have many contracts but a contract may only be of one type. Now a new wrinkle has been introduced: a contract may change type over time (although it can, thankfully, still only be of one type at any one time). The simplest solution appears to be to introduce a new table with columns something like this:               contract_id     contract_type_id     from_date     to_date      But what to call the new table? `contract_type_allocations` is the best I can do so far and I can't say I'm impressed with myself. Suggestions gratefully received."}
{"_id": "252679", "title": "Should I parse XML on the server or provide a proxy and let the browser parse it?", "text": "I need to interface with a 3rd party API. With this API I make a GET request from within the end user's browser and receive an XML response. This data is to be used in a browser based application where the user can search through it, use it to make decisions, etc. The main issue is that most browsers have locked down cross-domain XML use, so I can't simply get the XML from the API. The overall data, though, is basically broken into two sets.   1. The first set of data is public and only needs to be updated every so often, so it can be cached for all users on the server side, lightening the traffic considerably.   2. The second set of data is private and individual to each user. This data is also updated in the API more frequently. This leads caching to be much less effective. For scalability reasons I would like to keep the server's load a small as possible. I see two options before me:   1. Provide a proxy that can be used to route XML requests to the 3rd party server and directly back and forth between client and 3rd party API.   2. Have the server do the conversion from XML to JSON and strip out unnecessary information. This essentially means making a new API for our server, which translates into requests from the 3rd party API What would be the best way to provide the data to the user? (Does not have to be one of the two options)"}
{"_id": "143134", "title": "Why is my class worse than the hierarchy of classes in the book (beginner OOP)?", "text": "I am reading _PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice_. The author is trying to model a lesson in a college. The goal is to output the lesson type (lecture or seminar), and the charges for the lesson depending on whether it is an hourly or fixed price lesson. So the output should be               Lesson charge 20. Charge type: hourly rate. Lesson type: seminar.     Lesson charge 30. Charge type: fixed rate. Lesson type: lecture.      when the input is as follows:               $lessons[] = new Lesson('hourly rate', 4, 'seminar');     $lessons[] = new Lesson('fixed rate', null, 'lecture');      I wrote this:               class Lesson {         private $chargeType;         private $duration;         private $lessonType;              public function __construct($chargeType, $duration, $lessonType) {             $this->chargeType = $chargeType;             $this->duration = $duration;             $this->lessonType = $lessonType;         }              public function getChargeType() {             return $this->getChargeType;         }              public function getLessonType() {             return $this->getLessonType;         }              public function cost() {             if($this->chargeType == 'fixed rate') {                 return \"30\";             } else {                 return $this->duration * 5;             }         }     }          $lessons[] = new Lesson('hourly rate', 4, 'seminar');     $lessons[] = new Lesson('fixed rate', null, 'lecture');          foreach($lessons as $lesson) {         print \"Lesson charge {$lesson->cost()}.\";         print \" Charge type: {$lesson->getChargeType()}.\";         print \" Lesson type: {$lesson->getLessonType()}.\";         print \"<br />\";     }      But according to the book, I am wrong (I am pretty sure I am, too). Instead, the author gave a large hierarchy of classes as the solution. In a previous chapter, the author stated the following 'four signposts' as the time when I should consider changing my class structure:   * Code duplication   * The class who knew too much about its context   * The jack of all trades \\- classes that try to do many things   * Conditional statements The only problem I can see is conditional statements, and that too in a vague manner - so why refactor this? What problems do you think might arise in the future that I have not foreseen? **Update** : I forgot to mention - this is the class structure the author has provided as a solution - the strategy pattern: ![The strategy pattern](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RJbQZ.png)"}
{"_id": "188274", "title": "How does a symbol table relate to a namespace?", "text": "The official tutorial uses the term _symbol table_ in a few places where I would expect the term _namespace_. 1\\. Defining functions > The execution of a function introduces a new symbol table used for the local > variables of the function. More precisely, all variable assignments in a > function store the value in the local symbol table; whereas variable > references first look in the local symbol table, then in the local symbol > tables of enclosing functions, then in the global symbol table, and finally > in the table of built-in names. 2\\. More on modules > Each module has its own private symbol table, which is used as the global > symbol table by all functions defined in the module. Thus, the author of a > module can use global variables in the module without worrying about > accidental clashes with a user\u2019s global variables. I found Eli Bendersky's blog where he quotes the symtable module: > Symbol tables are generated by the compiler from AST just before bytecode is > generated. The symbol table is responsible for calculating the scope of > every identifier in the code. So it seems like a symbol table precedes a namespace. Yet another quote, from the first source, leads me to believe they also exist at the same time. > The actual parameters (arguments) to a function call are introduced in the > local symbol table of the called function when it is called; thus, arguments > are passed using call by value (where the value is always an object > reference, not the value of the object).1 Is a symbol table involved with the creation of a namespace? Does a symbol table \"contain\" a namespace or simply information that a namespace contains? In short, how does a symbol table relate to a namespace?"}
{"_id": "23548", "title": "How do I explain to non-programers what .NET is?", "text": "I don't work at a software company, and I'm one of a small handful of people in the company that know anything about programming. I spend a lot of time automating other programs that are used in the office through public APIs, and I've also created a few stand alone applications. I work almost entirely in C#.NET as every application we seem to use in the office seems to have some form of .NET API. I've had a few people here ask me about learning \"how to program\", and where they should start. I think it makes a lot more sense to learn a .NET language as nearly all the programs they would want to automate have a .NET API, and it sounds like VBA is on it's way out and being replaced by VSTA. However, I'm trying to figure out how to explain what .NET is and why they should learn it to a someone that doesn't know anything about programming. It's not really a language, as there are a number of languages that are considered .NET languages. Plus I think there is a distinction between \".NET\" and \"The .NET framework\" as the latter is more about the libraries provided by Microsoft."}
{"_id": "51505", "title": "Is a designer supposed to write CSS code?", "text": "I'm wondering if the CSS creation is supposed to be the job of the designer or the programmer. I'm not talking here about really complex CSS layout, I'm referring more to skinning. So is this supposed to be the responsibility of one or another?"}
{"_id": "23542", "title": "How do I go about writing a programming language specification?", "text": "I really enjoy programming language design. Sometimes I think my language projects and their potential users would benefit from a comprehensive standards document. I've looked at many language standards, ranging from the very formal (C++) to the rather informal (ECMAScript), but I can't really get a handle on how I should break things down and organise such a document, even though I think I'm pretty good at technical writing in general. Should I write it like a long tutorial, or more like a formal math paper? How do I keep it up to date if I'm developing it alongside a reference implementation? Should I just give up and treat the implementation and documentation as the de facto standard? Further, is there really any significant benefit to having a standard? Does _requiring_ a standard mean that the language is needlessly complex?"}
{"_id": "226567", "title": "Finding most Important Node(s) in a Directed Graph", "text": "I have a large (\u2248 20 million nodes) directed Graph with in-edges & out-edges. I want to figure out which parts of of the graph deserve the most attention. Often most of the graph is boring, or at least it is already well understood. The way I am defining \"attention\" is by the concept of \"connectedness\" i.e. How can i find the most connected node(s) in the graph? In what follows, One can assume that nodes by themselves have no score, the edges have no weight & they are either connected or not. This website suggest some pretty complicated procedures like n-dimensional space, Eigen Vectors, graph centrality concepts, pageRank etc. Is this problem that complex? Can I not do a simple Breadth-First Traversal of the entire graph where at each node I figure out a way to find the number of in-edges. The node with most in-edges is the most important node in the graph. Am I missing something here?"}
{"_id": "193135", "title": "Implementing a new coding standard to an existing application", "text": "Recently we have had some turnaround in the shop I work in, because of this comments in our source code were made hastily and explained very little. We have started working on the departments first draft of coding standards and one of the bigger questions is: Should we implement this standard across the existing source code? Since this is only our coding standards first draft (done to promote flexibility and future considerations), should we be implementing on new features and during maintenance? **Update:** I would like to say thank you for all of the answers and comments that were received on this topic. Our shop has started to move forward with developing a draft for our coding standards and we have taken bits and pieces from all of the comments and answers to work with throughout our process. Thank you for your time and experience on this matter."}
{"_id": "193134", "title": "Splitting user stories into smaller stories", "text": "I've been reading various techniques for splitting large user stories in helpful ways, such as by user workflow through the system etc. What I'm struggling with is how to word these smaller stories if all they achieve is facilitating the next step in the process and not delivering the application's main benefit to the user. For example, if my new system is split down into 3 smaller stories along the lines of;   1. Create a new account online   2. Create certain entities against my new online account   3. Have my mobile device query these entities against my account and act on them The system only really provides useful functionality to the end user when all stories are complete. So if following the traditional \"As a [User] I would like [Functionality] so I can [Benefit]\" The benefit of the first and second story is simply facilitating subsequent stories and not really providing the user with the main piece of functionality (the epic). Is this the correct way to do this?"}
{"_id": "161657", "title": "What programming skills does someone in QA need to work effectively in extreme programming projects?", "text": "Well, the title really says it all, but to elaborate a bit, can you take a random, typically effective QA department and have them learn to work in an XP environment (with a learning curve to pick up the XP workflow of course) or would they need more programming skills to be effective? If so, what would they need to know?"}
{"_id": "161651", "title": "How to share methods and properties between custom web controls", "text": "I'm building some custom web controls in .NET using C#. The controls inherit from the standard web controls, and add additional properties and functionality (e.g. I'm creating an 'extendedTextBox' and I'm adding a 'required' property, which if set to 'true' will add a .NET required field validator to the control automatically. I'm doing this for a number of web controls (e.g. radioButtonList, textArea). They share some common properties and methods, for example I have an AddRequiredFieldValidator method that uses some of the extended properties I've added. I'd like to share the common properties and methods. I've tried adding the methods to a separate class as extension methods for a web control. To achieve this I've implemented an interface that defines the additional shared properties, and am using it like this:               public interface IExtendendControl     {         string RequiredMessage { get; set; }         string ValidatorCssClass { get; set; }         bool ClientScript { get; set; }         RequiredFieldValidator rfv { get; set; }     }          public static class ExtendedControlExtensions : IExtendendControl     {         public static void AddRequiredFieldValidator(this IExtendendControl control)         {             control.rfv = new RequiredFieldValidator();             control.rfv.ErrorMessage = control.RequiredMessage;             ConfigureAndAddValidator(control, control.rfv);         }              public static void ConfigureAndAddValidator(this IExtendendControl control, BaseValidator validator)         {             validator.ControlToValidate = control.ID;             validator.Display = ValidatorDisplay.Dynamic;             validator.CssClass = \"validationMessage \";             validator.CssClass += control.ValidatorCssClass;             validator.EnableClientScript = control.ClientScript;             control.Controls.Add(validator);         }     }      Trouble is that the 'ConfigureAndAddValidator' method now doesn't know anything about the 'ID' or 'ClientScript' properties of the control since 'IExtendedControl' only defines the custom properties, not the standard properties of a web control. So I tried adding a base class that inherits from WebControl and implements the interface, like this:               public interface IExtendendControl     {         string RequiredMessage { get; set; }         string ValidatorCssClass { get; set; }         bool ClientScript { get; set; }         RequiredFieldValidator rfv { get; set; }     }          public class BaseExtendedControl : WebControl, IExtendendControl     {         public string RequiredMessage { get; set; }         public string ValidatorCssClass { get; set; }         public bool ClientScript         {             get             { return ClientScript = true; }             set { }         }         public RequiredFieldValidator rfv         {             get             { return rfv = new RequiredFieldValidator(); }             set { }         }     }          public static class ExtendedControlHelper : IExtendendControl     {         public static void AddRequiredFieldValidator(this BaseExtendedControl control)         {             BaseExtendedControl extendedControl = (BaseExtendedControl)control;             extendedControl.rfv = new RequiredFieldValidator();             extendedControl.rfv.ErrorMessage = extendedControl.RequiredMessage;             ConfigureAndAddValidator(control, extendedControl.rfv);         }              public static void ConfigureAndAddValidator(this BaseExtendedControl control, BaseValidator validator)         {             validator.ControlToValidate = control.ID;             validator.Display = ValidatorDisplay.Dynamic;             validator.CssClass = \"validationMessage \";             validator.CssClass += control.ValidatorCssClass;             validator.EnableClientScript = control.ClientScript;             control.Controls.Add(validator);         }     }      The trouble now is that in my extendedTextBox class I can't cast my extendedTextBox as a 'BaseExtendedControl' to use the extension methods, as the extendedTextBox inherits from the standard TextBox class like this:               public class ExtendedTextBox : TextBox, IExtendendControl      so there's no common base to cast ExtendedTextBox as 'BaseExtendedControl' as it doesn't inherit from it. I also can't just pass the extended web control objects as a parameter into the shared methods as the extended controls are of different types (e.g. they inherit from TextBox, RadioButtonList and so on). If I specify the expected type being passed into 'standard' methods as 'WebControl' it doesn't work as the extended controls have the additional properties. As I can't use true multiple inheritance in C#, how would I design this to be able to share the methods and properties?"}
{"_id": "97970", "title": "When not to reuse software?", "text": "I'm working on an application that had basic requirements for authentication in the first version (i.e. think single administrator login), and now I have a requirement to extend this to allow for different users, roles, and permissions. It has been suggested that I attempt to integrate with an existing product we have that does this sort of thing as a separate server for basic authentication, or also extending to second factor authentication. The application I'm working on is a small, downloadable application that is supposed to be easy to set up and have running. The other product is large and 'enterprisy', requiring manual setup, which I could try to do automatically for what I need (maybe). The big problem is that when described as a feature set of what we'd like to do in my product, it maps up perfectly with what the other product does, but it's not in a form that I can use it. Management wants integration with the other product, because it seems intuitive that we could leverage that, but the other product isn't in a form that I could use. i.e. thinking of it in terms of MVC, I don't think there's a way to separate the view from the model. The other thing I'm concerned about, which has happened in the past, is that if I'm asked to integrate with this that I'm going to be the one doing all the integration work, and if something cannot be done from the other product, then I'm just out of luck. Integration with my product is secondary to anything the other team would want, and my team isn't a 'customer', so there's little motivation to get them to fix or add stuff for us. **So, in summary, my question is:** I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but should I attempt to force a square peg into a round hole by trying to use a product that does what I need, but not in a form that's easy to reuse? edit: I'm using Java, so Spring Security is an option."}
{"_id": "161652", "title": "Whats a better way of designing this class", "text": "Currently I have some code like this:               OntologyGenerator generator = new OntologyGenerator();     generator.AddOntologyHeader(\"Testing\");     generator.AddClassDeclaration(owlBuilder);     generator.AddSubClass(owlBuilder);     generator.AddAnnotationAssertions(owlBuilder);      where that OwlBuilder param you see being passed has collections of objects like this:               public class OwlLBuilder: IOwlLBuilder     {            private ICollection<IOwlClass> owlClasses = new Collection<IOwlClass>();            private ICollection<IOwlRelation>  owlRelations = new Collection<IOwlRelation> ();     }      so for example when I say generator.AddClassDeclaration(owlBuilder); it will be looping through owlClasses collection of that owlBuilder param and do some stuff to it... I feel it is an ugly design. Do you have any other better design suggestions, well with some code sample so I can have the big picture of what I should do in my head!"}
{"_id": "61637", "title": "When learning JS, what was your your Aha-moment?", "text": "**Do you remember when you were learning JavaScript? What was the moment that you suddenly \"got it\"?** (For example, my CSS aha-moment was when I learnt about the box model...) The reason I\u00b4m asking is that I\u00b4m learning JS for 6 weeks, but I still find it quite confusing. Here\u00b4s a quote from something I read recently on SO: > \"..functions act similar to values, as method is a property of the object > that has a value of a function (which is also an object).\" I\u00b4m curious if you were confused as well in the beginning and what was it that made you understand it. (I\u00b4m reading the Sitepoints \"Simply JavaScript\", the book \"Eloquent JavaScript\" and following Lynda\u00b4s Essential JavaScript tutorial. I don\u00b4t have any programming expeirence and was terrible at math ;) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "27656", "title": "How to find entry level positions in a new city", "text": "I am just graduating from a computer science degree (tomorrow is my last exam). I have been thinking about job hunting this semester but I wanted to focus on my studies and part time job so I am a bit late on the job hunt. I want to find a job in a city that I have very little professional network in. **How would you go about job hunting in a new city?** I do not live there yet and I cannot easy go there so that makes finding places to apply a bit trickier. Normally I would ask people that I studied and worked with but I have few contacts in the city I want to work in. Where would you look to find jobs? I have been using   * Craigs-list   * My Universities job listings (but they are mostly focused on the east coast)   * This government job listing page Anyone have any great job finding resources?"}
{"_id": "129276", "title": "Give a more formal definition for the term \"pythonic\" than PEP8?", "text": "For me as python programmer having a formal definition for the term \"pythonic\" would be much more important and less subjective compared to asking more rhetoric (non-formal) questions. This may lead to better communication by argumentation being less subjective (as discussed in here). PEP8 by Guido is assumed as a starting point despite of some religious dogmatism (e.g. PEP20 is more axiomatic, shorter and simpler, but has no code). Having identified _minimalism_ , _readability_ (human comprehension) and _unambiguity_ (explicit code) is actually the same as paraphrasing PEP20. But is it possible to rewrite zen of python in python? Obviously print('Beautiful is better than ugly') does not capture python in python ;-) Any thoughts on this? Ultimately I would like to get closer to more logical or mathematical interpretation of the matter. Argument in form of the code answering why family of snippets **A** is _pythonic_ compared to family of snippets **B** is also acceptable. **EDIT** If possible try to reduce your answer to the following outline. Let us consider all possible syntactically correct program texts generated by some procedure (e.g.). Please note that we a considering only programs written in python (which is a formal language with respective grammar). Also being syntactically correct does not mean semantical correctness (programs may be buggy or without any obvious purpose). Further we observe (assume) that ultimate family _POmega_ of all syntactically correct programs in python must contain a subset of programs which are called _Pythonic_. Now in order to argue about what does it mean to be pythonic we will use a formal method - another language called _Reason_ which would be less ambiguous (consistent, complete) than natural language. We will define a mapping from programs in _Omega_ into _Reason_. Such mapping we will call interpretation. We will also produce more mappings in similar manner (e.g. as in) for all individual symbols in _Python_ and their combinations (statements). Now if we would argue about images of such mappings, we would do so in form of proofs in _Reason_ language. The question would be if subset _Pythonic_ indeed exists can we follow that up from aximos in _Reason_ built/reformulated from \"Zen of python\" or other motivating set of concepts? In fact, the whole deductive core of the language _Reason_ would be built from \"Zen\" or PEP8. We will have to proof that each program from _Pythonic_ will consist only from statements for images of which in _Reason_ can be shown to satisfy initial axioms of the model language. Different outcomes are plausible:   1. Subset of _Pythonic_ programs could be empty. We have not found any programs that would satisfy our axioms in _Reason_.   2. It could happen that this set of axioms would turn out to be ambiguous (inconsistent or incomplete). Then our original assumption about existence of _Pythonic_ programs would be wrong.   3. Alternatively axiomatic \"Zen\" could be simple enough and so well-chosen that _Pythonic_ set is non-empty. Now the question is will such (consistent, complete) set be of practical value, i.e. can we say that such set of axioms is indeed a formal definition of \"pythonic\"? This is a draft of how one can try to approach answering the question in formal manner. I would appreciate recommendations on a more elegant approach for solution to the problem (everything except ignoring it). But at the end it matters to me to see how such set of axioms looks like. Hence it will allow in precise (quantitative) way to ask and try to explain questions like why programs have \"pythonic\" qualities once written according to following python \"dogmas\"? BTW One can built a more sophisticated model of _Reason_ by introducing an equivalent of \"human factor\" - a software developer of the programs. Then the question would be - can human formally claim the program he rights belongs to \"Pythonic\" subset?"}
{"_id": "74626", "title": "Is there such a thing as staying in a job too long?", "text": "After reading through a few \"job hopping\" related threads recently, I've been thinking how the opposite of job hopping can also be a problem. I've known many people (especially in large, relatively sluggish companies) who got comfortable in a cushy and unchallenging role and stayed around for a very long time - say 10 or 15 years or even more. They might have moved around internally a little, but it was mostly a case of \" _one year of experience 15 times over_ \" as seasoned hiring managers would say. Or to put it another way, they were \"Special Projects\" cases. Just sitting in a comfortable role where no more learning is going on, but that might look okay on paper (on their CV) if the various stuff they were involved with is embellished a bit. What really got me thinking about this is that the longest role on my CV (almost 6 years) fits into this category somewhat, at least mildly. If I was being completely intellectually honest, I'd say I really only got 3 solid years of learning experience from it. The last 2-3 years were cushy maintenance mode. So I know first hand that it's quite possible than many \"seniors\" with 15 years experience (if they were in a job like that the whole time) might not be as broadly experienced and \"senior\" (in terms of having 15 years of quality experience) as they look on paper. So my question is - does hanging around in the same job for very long raise any red flags? For example: if you see a CV which has only one 15 year job on it after college, as opposed to an equally experienced person who has several 4-5 year stints instead, does the single-job guy look like a possible \"Special Projects\" case for only having had one very long job? My experience suggests that it's quite likely. Or at least that the guy with several 5 year stints is probably more dynamic and adaptable, from having experienced a variety of roles, environments and technologies (and different uses even if using the same technologies across all jobs). **EDIT:** Note that I am not personally worried that _my_ history looks like this. My longest role above just serves as a mini example of what can happen with cushy long term roles, which got me thinking about this in general terms (If anything, my actual employment history (except for that longest role) leans more towards being a bit too job hoppy)."}
{"_id": "126429", "title": "Finding an agile coach", "text": "I'm hoping that this is the right place to ask this question, but my company has recently started a process to look at how we build software, from the tools we use to the methodology. As you can imagine we have the kind of endless meetings where we sit around a table and split hairs. In an effort to actually get something done I've suggested we hire in a professional to take a look at how we do what we do and maybe guide us into a more agile approach to delivering software. My problem is that I'm not sure how to find a consultant we could bring in and get us started? I was thinking of approaching someone like ThoughtWorks, but I think finding someone who isn't going to push an agenda or product on us would be better. In the meantime I've picked up a few books and will do a bit of reading on the beach over the holiday vacation."}
{"_id": "126423", "title": "How/where would I best advertise my open source project, in order to maximize my odds of finding collaborators?", "text": "I'm working on an open source project, and am looking to find collaborators. What's my best bet, in terms of advertising my project, with an eye specifically towards finding other developers interested in contributing?"}
{"_id": "253077", "title": "Is this looping solution possible with recursion?", "text": "Eventually, I would like to generalize this solutions to work with a Tuple of any length. I think recursion is required for that, but I haven't been able to do it.               def combineRanges(maxValues) :         for x in range(0, maxValues[0]) :             for y in range(0, maxValues[1]) :                 for z in range(0, maxValues[2]) :                     print (str(x) + '-' + str(y) + '-' + str(z));          m = (6,9,20);         combineRanges(m);      http://repl.it/WiZ"}
{"_id": "240568", "title": "Should I follow the normal path or fail early?", "text": "From the _Code Complete_ book comes the following quote: > \"Put the normal case after the `if` rather than after the `else`\" Which means that exceptions/deviations from the standard path should be put in the `else` case. But _The Pragmatic Programmer_ teaches us to \"crash early\" (p. 120). Which rule should I follow?"}
{"_id": "35755", "title": "Overused or abused programming techniques", "text": "Are there any techniques in programming that you find to be overused (I.E. used way more excessively than what they should be) or abused, or used a bit for everything, while not being a really good solution to many of the problems which people attempt to solve with it. It could be regular expressions, some kind of design pattern or maybe an algorithm, or something completely different. Maybe you think people abuse multiple inheritance etc."}
{"_id": "145470", "title": "How to get a list of valid addresses?", "text": "I need to get a list of valid addresses in 4 or 5 clusters (cities) in both the UK and US. It's to generate sample data for an application that will do geolocation and searching. At the moment I'm generating the addresses more or less randomly, which means I hit postcodes that don't exist and obviously the street and number never match the postcode. Any recommendations on how to programatically obtain a list of addresses to build test data?"}
{"_id": "92224", "title": "Public vs Private Repositories", "text": "Say I am developing an app for sale. Does it make sense to use a public repository for this project? Doesn't default copyright protect the code from someone else using it? If so, what advantages are there in paying for a private repository?"}
{"_id": "197931", "title": "Is this a Best Practice with Enum in C#", "text": "When Enum is used as below, say if we have               enum Designation     {         Manager = 0,         TeamLead = 1,         Associate = 2     }      then write the below code               if (designation == Designation.TeamLead) //somecode      Now if we decide to change the enum element from \"`TeamLead`\" to \"`Lead`\" then we have to modify the above line of code as well i.e. `designation == Designation.TeamLead` to `designation == Designation.Lead`. So what is the best practice."}
{"_id": "218738", "title": "computing whether service level times are met", "text": "For a ticket reporting tool, I want to compute whether certain service level times (slt) are met. That is (a bit simplified): Was the timespan between opening and closing of the ticket within a certain slt. Now there is also something called a service window (SW), like mo-fr,9:00-17:00. Now to compute whether a slt was met, times not within the SW have to be excluded. Even though not forseen, tickets can be opened or closed outside the SW, since there are other sla wich allow for 24x7 service. An engineer could work on a ticket outside the SW, since it might be easier for him to close a ticket while he is at it. Maybe he was doing work on a related ticket. In order to determine the time a ticket took between opening and closing time, I though of two algorithms: 1) Distinguish all possible combinations of start_date and end_date beeing within or outside the SW, on different days and so on (I see 8 combinations). Then for each combination, set up a seperate formula to compute the time the ticket took. Plus: little computational overhead Minus: Rather complex, lots of code 2) Decide for a smallest possible unit (minutes seem to be apropriate), then for each unit between start_date and end_date, decide whether this unit is inside or outside the SW. If inside, add to the time the ticket took. Plus: very simple Minus: big computational overhead. I am leaning towards 2) since compuation is cheap, simple code is to be preferred, and the rest of the programm contains lots of time consuming db queries, so a little computation will not be noticable. However, both solutions seem not very elegant to me. Does anyone see a third way?"}
{"_id": "111506", "title": "How do you put different versions of your library under version control? Do you use tags? Or branches? Or another method?", "text": "I have recently started putting my code under version control (in the lab I'm working, under SVN, and my own codes in github (obviously with git)). Before using version control, I used to do something like this. I had a folder with the name of the library, inside many folders with the version number. Every time I wanted to start working on a newer version, I would make a copy of the last version, change the name to the new version and start implementing. This however seems way redundant when the folder is put under version control. Apart from redundancy, if someone wants to get the latest version, they would be downloading all versions if he just `import`s/`clone`s. Now I see many ways to doing this with version control but since I'm new to it, I don't know which would be more maintainable. ### Method 1: Using tags If I understood tags correctly, you would have your main branch, you commit whatever change you got and tag them with a version. Then, when you want to get a working copy of it, you get the one with a certain tag. (correct me if I'm wrong) ### Method 2: Branching versions In this method, the main branch would be the development branch. Every now and then that a stable version is is made (let's say `v1.2.0`), you create a branch for that version and never commit to it. That way, if you want to download a certain version, you get the code from that branch. Although I said you never commit to it, it may be possible to do bug fixes and commit to an old version's branch to keep the old version running. For example if the current version is `v2.0`, but there are people who want to use `v1.2`, you can get another branch from `v1.2`, namely `v1.2.1` and commit the bug fixes, or just keep the version the same as `v1.2` and just commit the bug fixes. So the branches would look like this:                                 v1.2.1  v1.2.2                      /       /      v1.0.0   v1.2.0---------     v2.0.0     /        /                   /     -------------------------------------- dev      This way you have branches for every minor version update. (Note that in the graph above, v1.2.1 and v1.2.2 or created after v2.0.0 was released, so they were not part of the development between v1.2.0 and v2.0.0. Think of it as support for older versions) ### Method 3: Branching development This method is the opposite of the previous. The main branch would be the latest stable version. Whenever you are working on a new version, you create a branch (for development), work on your code and when it is stable, merge it with the main branch. In this case, the branches would look like this:                ________  ____  ________________  _____ dev     /        \\/    \\/                \\/     ---------------------------------- latest_version      Probably this one needs to be done in conjunction with tags right? ### The question! Anyway, my question is that based on your experience, which of these methods proves more practical? Is there a known best method out there (that possibly I didn't figure out myself)? How are these things commonly done?"}
{"_id": "111507", "title": "What is a good toy project to teach an introduction to DVCS?", "text": "## Context I will be coaching student's programming projects in my engineering faculty (group of <10 students). At this occasion I wanted to draw the student's attention to the usefulness of version control systems in particular DVCS. There are many convincing DVCS tutorials out there, however all the ones I found use unrealistic or contrived examples (e.g. hginit uses cooking recipes). ## What I am looking for I want the students to collaborate in class on a _simple but realistic_ programming project that makes them discover the benefits of the DVCS through its usage. The class would collaborate as a dev team. I am looking for a toy project simple enough to keep the focus on the DVCS workflow. The goal is for student to face DVCS challenges that arise naturally in a collaborative development: bug fixes, branch management (stable vs development), merge conflict resolution, etc. I would be greateful if you could give me specific project ideas and highlight their DVCS challenges (e.g. a basic signal processing pipe-line, where each steps is written by different student, forcing them to deal with interface conflicts, etc). Thanks !"}
{"_id": "251360", "title": "What's the canonical way to store translations of user data?", "text": "I've developed some software that allows my users to attach a blurb to some non-language specific information: Pseudocode model:               item():       ID       creationdate       byline //Only one byline for the object       description //Only one description for the object          faq:       faqID       question       answer       itemID //ForeignKey      So this is basically a simple model in which an info item has a description and any number of faq questions related to it. If my user now wants to have translations for his description and faq questions, what is the canonical way to extend the model? Some candidates that I thought of:   * Add an alias (FK to self) field on the info as well as a language field. Then have business logic that finds the desired language.      * Upside: required fields are required for any language entry. You create partial translations. You will be reminded when the schema adds another text field.     * Downside: There's now two types of objects in the table: main language objects and alias objects.   * Add a table with all the language specific fields (description), and access the string via the foreign key      * Upside: clean, everything is it's own type     * Downside: more tables. Also the FAQ table needs to somehow make sure there's a full translation for each language. So how would you do it?"}
{"_id": "196046", "title": "Dynamic typing function arguments - how to keep readability high?", "text": "Dynamic typing newbie here, hoping for some wizened words of wisdom. I'm curious if there is a set of best practices out there for dealing with function arguments (and let's be honest, variables in general) in dynamically typed languages such as Javascript. The issue I often run into is with regards to readability of code: I'm looking at a function I wrote a while ago and I have no clue what the structure of the argument variables actually is. It's usually ok at the moment of development of new code: everything's fresh in my head, every variable and parameter makes sense because I just wrote them. A week later? Not so much. For example, say I'm trying to crunch a bunch of data about user sessions on a website and get something useful out of it:               var crunchSomeSessionData = function(sessionsMap, options) {         [...]     }      Disregarding the fact that the function name isn't helpful - that obviously is a huge deal - I actually don't know anything at all about what the structure of sessionsMap or options is. Ok.. I have k/v pairs the sessionsMap object, since it's called Map, but are the value a primitive, an array, another hash of stuff? What is options? An array? A whitespace separated string? I have a few options:   * clarify the structure exactly in the comment header for the function. The problem is that now I have to maintain the code in two places.   * have as useful of a name as possible. e.g. userIdToArrayOfTimestampsMap or even have some kind of pseudo-Hungarian dialect for variable naming that only I speak that explains what the types are and how they're nested. This leads to really verbose code, and I'm a fan of keeping stuff under 80 col.   * break functions down until I'm only ever passing around primitives or collections of primitives. I imagine it might work, but then I'd likely end up with micro-functions that have one or two lines at most, functions that exist only for the purpose of readability. Now I have to jump all over the file and recompose the function in my head, which just made readability worse.   * some languages offer destructuring, which to some extent can almost be thought of as extra documentation for what the argument type is going to contain.   * could create a \"class\" for the specific type of object, even though it'd not make a huge difference in a prototypal language like JS, and would probably add more maintenance overhead than necessary. Alternatively, if available, one can try to use protocols, maybe something along the lines of Clojure's deftype/defrecord etc. In the statically typed world this is not nearly as much of an issue. In C# for example you get a:               public void DoStuff(Dictionary<string, string> foo) {[...]};      Ok, easy peasy, I know exactly what I'm getting, no need to read the function header, or go back to the caller and figure out what it's concocting etc. What's the solution here? Are all people developing in dynamically typed languages continuously boggled by what types their subroutines are getting? Are there mitigation strategies?"}
{"_id": "223248", "title": "Report generator windows service polling database for work", "text": "I'm building a new report generator for our in-house survey system. (No I can not use any off-the-shelf software. These are highly customized reports.) I want to use Topshelf to host the generator as a service. Our current generator is a desktop-app and requires a user to be logged in on the server. I want to try to avoid this. The report-generation itself is very straight forward and procedural in nature. But the server is more than capable of generating several reports at one time. I want the service to spin up a few instances of the generator at the same time, is this something I would use the Task Parallel Library for? A bit of pseudo would look a bit like this:               poller.Poll(order => { // blocking(?) call to listen for new report-orders       var gen = new Generator(order);       gen.process(); // generates report       set gen = null; // or something else to destroy the generator for that report     });      Anyone have any suggestions on how to accomplish this?"}
{"_id": "196048", "title": "So I'm a developing a workflow with vagrant+git...does this make sense?", "text": "**Relevant Background Details**   1. We've got two types of VMs (Utility Boxes & Web Servers) that developers need.    2. We are going to be using git for version control.   3. We have developers who have different preferences for their working environment (e.g. Some Linux, Some Windows).   4. I'm in the Linux camp and I believe Git and Windows doesn't mix as well as Linux & Git. However, this could be personal bias.   5. We using Linux in production. **Building the Vagrant VMs for distribution**   1. Build a base box with the relevant OS for vagrant.    2. Using a configuration manager (e.g. Chef) to build out the Utility & Web images, convert them to new base boxes. It will clone service configurations from a centralized git repository.   3. Distribute the base boxes (really just virtual machine images) for the users to develop locally with vagrant. The distributed box will automatically pull in source code from certain git repos (e.g. libraries).   4. If changes are planned for the production environment, all developers will need to pull down new base boxes for vagrant as they come prepackaged. I think this is the simplest way for a new developer to deal with it. Staging is updated to match the new development VMs in preparation. **Developer Workflow**   1. Get assigned an issue from the issue tracker.   2. Use the vagrant VM to clone the current dev repository into the folder it shares with the host OS (so the Developer can use their favorite IDE).   3. Developer commits changes and tests locally.   4. When satisfied, Developer merges his changes to the dev repository. If conflicts, work with the Developer commited the conflicting code to resolve the issue.    5. When Dev is in a stable state, Dev is merged with the current Staging repository for QA of the new features. Nothing is pushed from Dev to Staging until Step #6 is completed. Hooks generate new copy of documentation for Staging.   6. Staging is cloned into Production once the QA is completed. Hooks generate new copy of documentation for Production. Is there any obvious flaws/pitfalls in the above or steps that are generally considered 'best practices' that should be added?"}
{"_id": "223242", "title": "How to consider the login function collecting requirements of an application? is it a user requirement?", "text": "I am working on an application that expected to the user logs in when the application is started (as for example it is in Skype: the user open the application and appear to him a login mask when he insert the username and password to start work with the application) Now I am preparing some use case diagram and I am collecting the application requirements (I have to write some documentation) Can I consider it as a user requirement? Or what is it?"}
{"_id": "216574", "title": "Could someone help me understand SQL TDE Database encryption?", "text": "I don't quite follow how it works. According to the MSDN Article there is a big hierarchy of keys protecting other keys and passwords. At some point the database is encrypted. You query the database which is encrypted, and it works seamlessly. If you're able to simply connect to the database as normal and not have to worry about any of the encryption from a developer point of view, how exactly is it secure? Surely anyone can simply connect and do `select * from x` and the data is revealed. Sorry my question is a bit scattered, I am just very confused by the article."}
{"_id": "52854", "title": "How would most programmers feel about the bugs they wrote?", "text": "Do they feel frustrated, disappointed, or even don't admit at all?"}
{"_id": "60949", "title": "Am I a code monkey?", "text": "I just tried integrating my website with facebook. I got a lot of copy-paste code from the facebook developers site. I just put the code and it works fine. Do you call this kind of programmers \"code monkeys\"? If you say I am a code monkey, in the same case what would you expect me to do?"}
{"_id": "60947", "title": "Designing tool for C#", "text": "I have seen few developers use a tool for designing their application where they simply dragged needed elements (classes, variables, objects) and just did magic work. Then there was a button to generate a code where the design was generated into a C# code after what developer continued to work on software manually. Anyone can give me an idea about what those are called and where I may grab one?"}
{"_id": "253695", "title": "Billing from card directly", "text": "I, for the life of me, cannot find any literature on this, simply because I have no clue how it is called. I want to learn how to implement a payment option that consists of paying with your credit/debit card directly without the use of a third party like paypal. This is what I am talking about ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9gYOn.png) Can you please give me some information about how this payment method is called and possibly some articles I can read up on. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "253694", "title": "Where did the notion of 'calling' a function come from?", "text": "I've always wondered why one _calls_ a function as opposed to, for example, _executing_ it. A Google search for `function call etymology` and similar terms turns up nothing useful, Wikipedia doesn't mention it, online dictionaries have either no entry at all or no etymology section. Where did the notion of 'calling' a function come from?"}
{"_id": "220578", "title": "How would you create useful tests for Oracle BI Publisher reports?", "text": "I'm curious about how to test reports that seem rather straightforward. I'm supposed to create test cases for an Oracle report(XML Publisher/BI Publisher). So for example, a report is supposed to just return columns(say , 10 columns). Here is what I thought of so far:               Validate that the  report returns accurate output.     Validate that the all column headers and table values are correctly aligned and there are no run-ons/incorrect formatting     Validate that dates are in the MM/DD/YYYY format     Validate that all currencies are accurate, and contain 2 decimal places.      Here's a sample pic(of what the report produces) : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MfxvB.png) What would the edge/boundary cases be? If the report takes in parameters, does that make it more demanding of a report? Thanks"}
{"_id": "253690", "title": "embedding LEFT OUTER JOIN within INNER JOIN", "text": "I am having some problems with one of the question's answered in the book \"SQL FOR MERE MORTALS\". Here is the problem statement ![Problem Statement](http://i.stack.imgur.com/894yN.jpg) Here is the Database Structure ![The Database Structure](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CKsHU.jpg) Here is the answer which I am unable to comprehend ![DoubtFul Answer](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SWxVI.jpg) Here is an answer which looks perfect to me ![Confirmed Answer](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PnJza.jpg) Now the problem with the first answer I am having is: We first use LEFT OUTER JOIN for recipe class and recipes. So it selects all recipe class rows but only matching recipes. Perfecty fine as the question is demanding. Lets call this result set R. Now in the next step when we use INNER JOIN to join RecipieIngridients, it should filter out the rows from R in which Recipie ID doesn't match with the Recipe Id in Recipie Ingredients and hence filtering out the related Recipe class and recipe description also(Since it filters out the entire row of R). So this contradicts with the problem which demands all recipieID and RecipieDescription to be displayed from Recipe_Classes Table in this very step only. How can it be correct. Or Am i Missing some concept."}
{"_id": "220574", "title": "Where should user permission checks take place in and MVC and by who?", "text": "Should user permission checks take place in the model or the controller? And who should handle the permission checks, the User object or some UserManagement helper? ## Where should it happen? ### Checking in the Controller:               class MyController {       void performSomeAction() {         if (user.hasRightPermissions()) {           model.someAction();         }       }       ...      Having the checks in the Controller helps making the Models simple actions, so we can keep all logic to the Controllers. ### Checking in the Model:               class MyModel {       void someAction() {         if (user.hasRightPermissions()) {           ...         }       }       ...      By putting the checks in the Model, we complicate the Model, but also make sure we don't accidentally allow users to do stuff they aren't supposed to in the Controller. ## And by who? Once we've settled on the place, who should do the checks? The user?               Class User {       bool hasPermissions(int permissionMask) {         ...       }       ...      But it's not really the user's responsibility to know what he or she can acccess, so perhaps some helper class?               Class UserManagement {       bool hasPermissions(User user, int permissionMask) {         ...       }       ...      I know it's common to ask just a single question in, well, a question, but I think these can be answered nicely together."}
{"_id": "195934", "title": "Can I demand code quality on a project I've gotten", "text": "I have been given a Drupal project from an external web agency and have been trying to becomer wiser on both Drupal and their approach of making a site. With time I've learnt a bit morer about Drupal, even though I've come to notice it really isn't my cup of tea. Recently, I tried to \"simply\" replace the HTML generation of a part of the site, which seemed to be generated through a custom module (their addons for the site). I changed that code and realised that the effect simply didn't alter anything, or at least I thought. Basicly now I've without exaggerating replaced the same piece of code with very small differences 26 times, and it's _still_ not changing everywhere. So what I'm dealing with is a set of code that have literally never or barely heard of global class nor function and is simply copy & paste'd all over the site. I'm curious on what I'm supposed to do with this. There's one file alone that has over 3000 lines of basicly the _exact_ same code 16 times over. If you order a web agency to develop at site, can you expect it to be common sence that the code should be at least a _little_ maintainable and simply not a big piece of code, more annoying to edit than far more necessary, or does it specifically have to be requested and I should had instead had to validate the code before paying for the handover of the site? This is the first time I have ever came across such a poorly written piece of code in my career and it feels as if we bought a good looking suit that we saw from the outside of the store, and all we got was a poster of that suit for the same price. ## The question What would be the appropriate thing to do in my case? Should I suck it up and convince my employer that the code is poorly written in hope that my given deadline for completing the project gets extended, or can I demand the web agency to do some action? **EDIT:**   Thanks for all your answers! They help me get some more perspective on this. I will discuss this internally a bit more, and try to mark out the best answer, even though most of yours covers the same but also different fields of the question."}
{"_id": "207790", "title": "Does IE have more strict Javascript parsing than Chrome?", "text": "This is not meant to start a religio-technical browser war - I still prefer Chrome, at least for now, but: Because of a perhaps Chrome-related problem with my web page (see https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?can=2&start=0&num=100&q=&colspec=ID%20Pri%20M%20Iteration%20ReleaseBlock%20Cr%20Status%20Owner%20Summary%20OS%20Modified&groupby=&sort=&id=161473), I temporarily switched to IE (10) to see if it would also view the time value as invalid. However, I didn't even get to that point - IE stopped me in my tracks before I could get there; but I found that IE was right - it is more particular/precise in validating my code. For example, I got this from IE:               SCRIPT5007: The value of the property '$' is null or undefined, not a Function object       ...which was referring to this:               <script src=\"/CommonLogin/Scripts/jquery-1.9.1.min.js\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>     <script type=\"text/javascript\">         // body sometimes becomes white???? with jquery 1.6.1         $(\"body\").css(\"background-color\", \"#405DA7\");     <      This line is highlighted as the culprit: $(\"body\").css(\"background-color\", \"#405DA7\"); jQuery is referenced right above it - so why did it consider \"$\" to be undefined, especially when Chrome had no problem with it...ah! I looked at that location (/CommonLogin/Scripts/) and saw that, sure enough, the version of jQuery there was actually jquery-1.6.2.min.js. I added the updated jQuery file (1.9.1) and it got past this. So now the question is: why does Chrome ignore this? Does it download the referenced version from its own CDN if it can't find it in the place you specify? IE did flag other errs after that, too; so I'm thinking perhaps IE is better at catching lurking problems than, at least, Chrome is. Haven't tested Firefox diesbzg yet."}
{"_id": "209483", "title": "Static code analysis application: Where to start?", "text": "I am trying to create a _poc_ for a **_static code analysis_** tool supporting an Object Oriented and a procedural language (C and Java, for example). Even after quite a bit of internet search I am still not sure where to begin.   * Plan to use very few metrics to start with, possibly simple ones.    * Several tools are available but I am looking for a generic approach and not a tool. Few open questions :   * Should the tool work on basic object code or should it work on the raw source code?    * Should I create a domain specific language for defining parsing rules etc.? I am not asking for a complete solution. I am just asking if some one can point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "209489", "title": "Code execution within delimiters", "text": "Is there any way I can execute a block of code in a loop, like so:               [ some code goes here ]      Where the delimiters are \"[\" and \"]\", and also allowing for nested blocks, i.e.:               [the user can create another loop[]]      I am creating a parser for a language that implements such semantics, and it reads the code one byte/character at a time since the commands are all single characters and because the syntax is supposed to be very minimal (which is fairly important), and I am currently stuck in this loop thing. I have tried matching the byte (since I am only reading 1 character at a time) with a \"[\" character and then setting a global variable across the instance, but this seems to break when the statements are nested, and doesn't seem to work. Any help (in Python, possibly) is appreciated! **EDIT:** Conforming to what @mattnz commented, the question & post has been further clarified."}
{"_id": "250522", "title": "Managing unique data correctly in SQL", "text": "Here in Brazil we have a personal identifier called **CPF**. This identifier has a sequence of 11 digits and is unique for each Brazilian citizen. Possibly in other countries there is something like that too. How is a unique identifier, I chose to set it in the database like a **UNIQUE KEY**. And now that things get complicated. A user could be registered by an administrator and be removed by some kind of problem. However, it is not actually removed, but hidden by a deleted flag. And in another moment, he could be recreated again (there is a need to recreate it, and not re-enable it). Because it is an individual identifier, the CPF would be reused on recreated user and would conflict in UNIQUE KEY. In this situation, I thought of some practical solutions to solve the problem as well as its disadvantages. But I like what is the most appropriate way to solve this kind of problem.   1. **Do not use a UNIQUE KEY.** The disadvantage is that it could increase the query time, which could perhaps be solved by a KEY-only column.   2. **Set the column to NULL on pseudo-DELETE.** The disadvantage is that I lose the information, however, could solve just creating a second column to store its value before being annulled.   3. **The UNIQUE KEY could group the column with a date removal column (NULL by default).** The disadvantage is having to use two columns for each group UNIQUE KEY.   4. **Create a second table to store data removed without UNIQUE KEY.** The disadvantages here are almost incalculable!   5. **Remove the row, rather than hide it.** The disadvantage here is that I could lose the references in a user FK. Currently I prefer the first option, and if very necessary, I would opt for the second or third option. But I wonder if there is a more correct way, following the concept more accepted by the community."}
{"_id": "54433", "title": "junior / professional / senior categorization", "text": "Hey guys, is it just me or is the categorization of developer levels highly subjective? I get the feeling that every company tries to hire experienced developers as juniors because they don't know $technology. For example my own career: I switched technologies a couple of times, while sticking to java as a programming language. For example I first worked for 3 years using JavaSE technologies, the next company I worked for hired me as junior because I didn't have JavaEE experience - while still selling me as professional level to customers (I work in consulting). The next company hired me again as junior because I didn't have SAP experience - they mostly work with SAP Java technologies which is definitely a niche. Still, they are selling all their technology consultants for exactly the same rate while paying them significantly different wages. Now when switching jobs again I feel like this whole thing is going to start all over again because I don't have Spring experience or Oracle knowledge. tl;dr = is my observation totally off base that companies are just using these categorizations as means to keep down wages?"}
{"_id": "139034", "title": "Protecting proprietary code linking with LGPL v3 code", "text": "I've been warned that LGPL v3 forbids any kind of modifications that would prevent reverse-engineering, including software protection such as obfuscation. In practice, does this license make it illegal to use something like SecureSWF, or simply a JavaScript minifier, when linking a program with a LGPL-licensed library?"}
{"_id": "166383", "title": "String patterns that can be used to filter and group files", "text": "One of our application filters files in certain directory, extract some data from it and export a document from the extracted data. The algorithm for extracting the data depends on the file, and so far we use regex to select the algorithm to be used, for example `.*\\.txt` will be processed by algorithm A, `foo[0-5]\\.xml` will be processed by algo B, etc. However now we need some files to be processed together. For example, in one case we need two files, `foo.*\\.xml` and `bar.*\\.xml`. Part of the information to be extracted exist in the _foo_ file, and the other part in the _bar_ file. Moreover, we need to make sure the wild card is compatible. For example, if there are 6 files               foo1.xml     foo23.xml     bar1.xml     bar9.xml     bar23.xml     foo4.xml      I would expect foo1 and bar1 to be identified as a group, and foo23 and bar23 as another group. bar9 and foo4 has no pair, so they will not be treated. Now, since the filter is configured by user, we need to have a pattern that can express the above requirement. I don't think you can express meaning like above in standard regex. `(foo|bar).*\\.xml` will match all 6 file above and we can't identify which file is paired for a particular file. Is there any standard pattern that can express it? Or any idea how to modify regex to support this, that can be implemented easily?"}
{"_id": "21977", "title": "What do programmers \"micro-optimize\" for today?", "text": "Back in the \"good ol' days,\" when we would copy shareware onto floppies for friends, we also used a fair bit of assembly. There was a common practice of \"micro-optimization,\" where you would stare and stare at lines of assembly until you figured out a way to express it in one fewer instruction. There was even a saying, which was mathematically impossible, that \" _You can always remove one more instruction._ \" Given that changing runtime performance by small constant factors isn't a major issue for (most) programming today, are programmers transferring these micro-optimization efforts elsewhere? In other words, **Can a best-practice be taken to an extreme state where it's no longer adding anything of value?** And instead is wasting time? For example: Do programmers waste time _generalizing_ private methods that are only called from one place? Is time wasted reducing test case data? Are programmers (still) overly concerned about reducing lines of code? There are two great examples of what I'm looking for below: (1) Spending time finding the right variable names, even renaming everything; and (2) Removing even minor and tenuous code duplication. * * * Note that this is different from the question \"What do you optimize for?\", because I'm asking what other programmers seem to maximize, with the stigma of these being \"micro\" optimizations, and thus not a productive use of time."}
{"_id": "116886", "title": "When I should I use message passing over shared memory?", "text": "I know a little about how to use message passing and shared memory, but I still don't know when to choose one or another. Can you tell me about their traits (not the implementation)?"}
{"_id": "79916", "title": "How to build a career path to be an Architect?", "text": "I'm currently a junior Java developer with 1 year of experience. And I want to know how to become an Architect. what things should I focus on to reach that goal or to be more specific what is the road map to be a great architect?"}
{"_id": "56394", "title": "How to port a J2ME application to Android platform?", "text": "I have heard that there are soft wares for converting an existing J2ME app to Android? But I was doing a manual conversion till now. Am I doing a silly job/is it possible to do convert any J2ME application?"}
{"_id": "79913", "title": "when to use java and when to use c++", "text": "Lets say I am writing a server, which will run continuously and answer the queries of the client. Now what parameters (speed, memory, ease of use, quality etc.) should I consider to decide whether to use JAVA or to use C++ and how? How does system architecture decides this? Or they just choose the one in which they can found expertise?"}
{"_id": "116883", "title": "Is \"truthiness\" a legitimate programming term?", "text": "SO has quite a few questions using the word \"truthiness\" to mean the truth value of an expression, when evaluated as a boolean, regardless of its original type. It's very useful in dynamic languages. So my question is, is this a real term, and if so were we using it before Stephen Colbert made it popular? Or did we just adopt it afterward? In that case, what is the correct term with the definition I gave above?"}
{"_id": "99814", "title": "Using snippets of open source code in my application", "text": "I'm working on an internal company application(not built on Wordpress) that needs to have shortcode functionality similar to Wordpress (http://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode_API). Wordpress has a bunch of functions relating to handling short codes but the ones I was looking at were just the ones that handled the regex portion of the process. Is there something wrong with just using the few functions I need from Wordpress in my application? If it is ok, how do I go about giving credit in those sections. I did a quick check and Wordpress is licensed under GPLv2. I'm using the Kohana Framework in my application which is licensed under BSD. I'm not sure if that changes anything but I thought I'd include it just in case."}
{"_id": "99816", "title": "Moving from academics to workforce", "text": "I have worked for the past 4 years as a programmer and research assistant. It is my second major job out of college(CS degree). It was a good position at the time, but I grew frustrated at the slow pace and decided to enter the private sector. My question: what skills are academic programmers lacking compared to those that have been in the general workforce? I want to minimize any deficiencies while I search for new work."}
{"_id": "230873", "title": "How does persistence fit into a purely functional language?", "text": "How does the pattern of using command handlers to deal with persistence fit into a purely functional language, where we want to make IO-related code as thin as possible? * * * When implementing Domain-Driven Design in an object-oriented language, it's common to use the Command/Handler pattern to execute state changes. In this design, _command handlers_ sit on top of your domain objects, and are responsible for the boring persistence-related logic like using repositories and publishing domain events. The handlers are the public face of your domain model; application code like the UI calls the handlers when it needs to change domain objects' state. A sketch in C#:               public class DiscardDraftDocumentCommandHandler : CommandHandler<DiscardDraftDocument>     {         IDraftDocumentRepository _repo;         IEventPublisher _publisher;              public DiscardDraftCommandHandler(IDraftDocumentRepository repo, IEventPublisher publisher)         {             _repo = repo;             _publisher = publisher;         }              public override void Handle(DiscardDraftDocument command)         {             var document = _repo.Get(command.DocumentId);             document.Discard(command.UserId);             _publisher.Publish(document.NewEvents);         }     }      The `document` domain object is responsible for implementing the business rules (like \"the user should have permission to discard the document\" or \"you can't discard a document that's already been discarded\") and for generating the domain events we need to publish (`document.NewEvents` would be an `IEnumerable<Event>` and would probably contain a `DocumentDiscarded` event). This is a nice design - it's easy to extend (you can add new use cases without changing your domain model, by adding new command handlers) and is agnostic as to how objects are persisted (you can easily swap out an NHibernate repository for a Mongo repository, or swap a RabbitMQ publisher for an EventStore publisher) which makes it easy to test using fakes and mocks. It also obeys model/view separation - the command handler has no idea whether it's being used by a batch job, a GUI, or a REST API. * * * In a purely-functional language like Haskell, you might model the command handler roughly like this:               newtype CommandHandler = CommandHandler {handleCommand :: Command -> IO Result)     data Result a = Success a | Failure Reason     type Reason = String          discardDraftDocumentCommandHandler = CommandHandler handle         where handle (DiscardDraftDocument documentID userID) = do                   document <- loadDocument documentID                   let result = discard document userID :: Result [Event]                   case result of                        Success events -> publishEvents events >> return result                        -- in an event-sourced model, there's no extra step to save the document                        Failure _ -> return result               handle _ = return $ Failure \"I expected a DiscardDraftDocument command\"      Here's the part I'm struggling to understand. Typically, there'll be some sort of 'presentation' code which calls into the command handler, like a GUI or a REST API. So now we have two layers in our program which need to do IO - the command handler and the view - which is a big no-no in Haskell. As far as I can make out, there are two opposing forces here: one is model/view separation and the other is the need to persist the model. There needs to be IO code to persist the model _somewhere_ , but model/view separation says that we can't put it in the presentation layer with all the other IO code. Of course, in a \"normal\" language, IO can (and does) happen anywhere. Good design dictates that the different types of IO be kept separate, but the compiler doesn't enforce it. So: how do we reconcile model/view separation with the desire to push IO code to the very edge of the program, when the model needs to be persisted? _How do we keep the two different types of IO separate_ , but still away from all the pure code? * * * **Update** : The bounty expires in less than 24 hours. I don't feel that either of the current answers has addressed my question at all. @Ptharien's Flame's comment about `acid-state` seems promising, but it's not an answer and it's lacking in detail. I'd hate for these points to go to waste!"}
{"_id": "222592", "title": "Why execution time is different each time in java?", "text": "I am trying to make a program in Java which measure the complexity of a specific program with respect to its run time. Let's take a problem and code that problem in all possible ways with respect to time complexity, let's say we can write code for a specific problem in O(n), O(log(n)), O(n log(n)) and O(n^2). I will record the run time of each case and I will make a scale with these values to measure the time complexity of other's solution. Like   1. O(n) -> 2-3 ms   2. O(log(n)) -> 1-2 ms etc. Now if other code has run time 2.3 ms, then my Java program will say that given solution has time complexity of the order O(n). Now problem is that, as my code is in Java, whenever I run any program using Ubuntu commands through Java code , each time I get the different run time, and the run time has very huge range from 0.364246 to 0.902362. Why it is happening and what can I do to make a efficient scale? Here is my code:               import java.io.*;          class ps_ef     {         public static void main(String args[])     {         String s=null,file_name,extension;         int pos = args[0].lastIndexOf(\".\");              extension = args[0].substring(pos+1);         file_name = args[0].substring(0,pos);              int lang = 0; //  1 -> c,c++ , 2 -> java              try         {                     Process compile = null;                  switch(extension)             {                 case \"c\"    :    compile = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(\"gcc -g \"+ args[0] + \" -o \"+file_name);                             lang = 1;                                        break;                 case \"c++\"  :    compile = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(\"g++ -g \"+ args[0] + \" -o \"+file_name);                             lang = 1;                             break;                 case \"java\" :    compile = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(\"javac \"+ args[0]);                             lang = 2;             }                  BufferedReader stdError = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(compile.getErrorStream()));                  if((s = stdError.readLine()) != null)             {                 System.out.println(\"Compile Time Error OR Warning : \");                      System.out.println(s);                 while((s = stdError.readLine()) != null)                 {                     System.out.println(s);                 }             }                  double startTime, run_time;             Process run;                  if(lang == 1)             {                  startTime = System.nanoTime();                       run = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(\"./\"+file_name);                       run_time = (System.nanoTime()-startTime)/(double)Math.pow(10,6);             }             else             {                      startTime = System.nanoTime();                       run = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(\"java \"+file_name);                       run_time = (System.nanoTime()-startTime)/(double)Math.pow(10,6);             }                  System.out.println(\"RunTime : \"+ run_time+\" ms\");                  BufferedReader run_stdInput = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(run.getInputStream()));                  BufferedReader run_stdError = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(run.getErrorStream()));                  if(( s = run_stdError.readLine()) != null)             {                 System.out.println(\"Runtime Error : \");                      System.out.println(s);                      while((s = run_stdError.readLine()) != null )                 {                     System.out.println(s);                 }             }             else if((s = run_stdInput.readLine()) != null)             {                 String s_string = null;                 int failed = 0;                      File fs = new File(file_name+\".txt\");                      BufferedReader br  = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(fs));                      if((!s.equals(s_string = br.readLine())))                 {                     failed = 1;                 }                      while(((s = run_stdInput.readLine()) != null) & ((s_string = br.readLine()) != null) & (failed == 0))                 {                     if(!s.equals(s_string) )                     {                         failed = 1;                         break;                     }                 }                      if((failed == 1) || s != null || s_string != null)                 {                     System.out.println(\"Submmision Failed : \");                     System.out.println(\"Either Output Is Wrong.\\nOR\\nYour Output Is Not According To The Given Format. \");                     System.exit(0);                      }                 else                 {                     System.out.println(\"Submission Successful.\");                 }                  }         }            catch(IOException e)         {             System.out.println(\"Some Error Has Occured : \");             e.printStackTrace();             System.exit(-1);         }          }      } Here is my output of run time: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tWUwp.png)"}
{"_id": "204160", "title": "What do you call an application that is not specifically tied to a DB structure", "text": "I'm wondering what you call an applications that are not hard coded around any database structure? Let me give a small example: I have one application where the views, the controllers and the model are tailored to the information and fields in the model, and thus the database. I have a second (theoretical) application where the views and controllers are completely generic; I could change the fields in my database and make some minor adjustments to model classes and the application still works for editing/adding information. I wouldn't try to create an application on either of these principles, but I'm wondering what you would label them as."}
{"_id": "157990", "title": "Controllers and re-factoring for maintainability / sensibility", "text": "I have read many posts similar to this on the site: however I still am questioning what is best in my situation (also the answers are contradicting from question to question). I have a website (web-application) with a controller per section of domain logic (i.e. ProductsController, NewsController, ContactsController, etc..) and one very large very ugly admin controller which contains the logic for the Add/Edit/View/Delete functions for each section... now as you can imagine this controller is getting very out of control (whereas each function is not overly large, having dozens of functions in one controller does not sit well with me...). From what I've read the general consensus is to just lump the _admin_ functions in the 'sections' controller; however some also suggest you create a new controller for each admin section as well. so I would then have ProductsController and AdminProductsController - to me this seems a little overkill, however I have no real clue about this: any tips or readings would be appreciated - or if there is a 'industry best practise' that would be nice to know as well."}
{"_id": "104504", "title": "What are advantages and disadvantages of browser rapid release cycles for web developers?", "text": "Chrome and Firefox have now rapid release cycles. Also Opera is starting to get speed and Internet Explorer should take the high road soon. I am a web developer. What does that mean for me? What consequences does it have for me? Will it be an advantage for my work or another burden?"}
{"_id": "104507", "title": "How do you decide where functionality should belong in a large-scale project?", "text": "In my current development situation, we have a lot of DLLs, executables, and static libraries. How do you decide what should go into a DLL? What should go into an executable? Why have separate functionality in different executable files? I'm hoping the answer will be concise, but this is a largely opinionated topic it would seem. How do you decide where functionality resides in a large-scale project (more than one executable file)? I'm expecting answers to range from, \"Good Design\" to \"Modularity\" to \"Whatever management puts in a requirements doc\"."}
{"_id": "104502", "title": "Clever PHP Application Organization Structures?", "text": "There are a million-and-one file-system structures that go into the myriad of Open Source projects available. Things like modules, language files, domains, third-party libraries, migrations, internationalization, backups, and syslinks to other parts of the system have given rise to many approaches to organize the filesystem of a project. As a PHP developer I'm wondering if any type of standardization is starting to emerge among projects. With PSR-0 we finally have a standard for naming and loading files - but it nothing to my knowledge about the rest of the components that make up the system or how they can be handled in a sane way. **We are dealing with a lot more than just MVC, so what examples are there of large projects correctly handling all of these things?**"}
{"_id": "57627", "title": "My very first serious project and I'm concerned about security", "text": "I'm making a small social networking web site for a specific university's students (where I study) and I'm concerned about security (access to the database). What should I do? What I have to check for last time until I went online? (Yeah, Facebook Facebook. Facebook don't have that community sense. You cannot find all your department mates on Facebook. You cannot see all foreign students on Facebook. You cannot hide your identity on Facebook while commenting, etc etc. Just please don't compare it with Facebook, we had a great _local_ social network until it went _public_ . * ))"}
{"_id": "57620", "title": "Do/Should you consider GM releases as final?", "text": "I was wondering that, as a developer, you consider a GM release the final release and if you do it for serious development or if you stick to the stable version. With the iOS SDK, you're able to submit apps to Apple for submission to the App Store using a GM version. Do you recommend using the GM version of an SDK or waiting a couple of weeks and use the stable version?"}
{"_id": "57622", "title": "Intellectual-Property Question", "text": "Like almost everyone here, I have a handfull of scripts and software that I have developed and am enthused about. I will be looking for my first job as a software designer / coder. It seems natural that I will be eager to please my employer and use scripts or similar methods that I have developed and worked for me in the past to please my employer. It seems certain that many things that I code will look very similar to things I have coded in the past. I don't understand how to document and articulate to an employer that this code base was mine before I got here and this will continue to be mine when I leave. Surely, this is a common issue, but none of the various searches I've done on the net have produced an answer to this question. How is this situation commonly dealt with in the industry? I feel like there should be a digital version of sending myself a 'certified letter' with my code/software/scripts contained. I'm not trying to protect my code from others using it; I am trying to protect my right to continue using my code base that I have developed prior to to gaining employment with an employer."}
{"_id": "222626", "title": "Is it better to use an external variable or to pass around a pointer?", "text": "While writing in C, I have always wondered about when is the best time to use an external variable. I generally prefer to pass a pointer into a method. Is there a correct time to use an external variable and a correct time to use pointers?"}
{"_id": "222622", "title": "Database Context and Singleton injection with IoC", "text": "All of the below relates to a ASP.NET c# app. I have a Singleton Settings MemoryCache that reads values from database on first access and caches these, then invalidates them using SQL Service Broker message and re-reads as required. For the purposes of standard controllers, i create my Db Context in a request scope. However, this obviously means that i can't use the same context in the Settings Cache class, since that is a singleton and we have a scope collision. At the moment, i ended up with two db contexts - the Controllers get it via IoC container, whereas a Singleton just creates it's own. However, i am not satisfied with this approach (mostly due to the way i feel about two contexts, the cache doesn't set anything on the db hence concurrency is not an issue as much). What is a better way to do it?"}
{"_id": "222623", "title": "Mobile development project architecture model/pattern", "text": "I would like to hear some improvement suggestions for mobile development (Android/iOS) project architectures. I would like to go for a \"safe\" design, modular and that can be easily maintained in time. As far as I know **Android** and also **iOS** platforms are built on **MVC** , at least have the `Activities` and `UIViewControllers` that are a sort of _controller_ part from **MVC** (as many stated out there on the internet). Also I know two approaches so far for a basic project( **Android** /* _iOS_ *): ##  1\\. My favorite (a sort of MVC) _**Model_** \\- I have here the models, only simple getter/setter classes   shaping the project entities _**View_** \\- the Activities, UIViewController and custom views, only display, get data from the user interface here, usually gets the data from the Controller, never directly from the Acess _**Controller_** \\- some singletons (not necessary but usual) that manage each entity data, usually are doing business jobs, loading data from the Access layer and don't have access to the view layer. _**Access_** \\- Database and Web Service managers, serves data back to Controller layer, can't have contact to any other layers. ## 2\\. Commonly seen (also a sort of MVC) _**Model_** \\- the models, only simple getter/setter classes shaping the project entities, I usually saw also some business jobs here too. _**View-Controller_** -(Activities and UIViewController) that manage entity data, usually are doing business jobs and also take care of displaying data to the user. Also make calls through some web service classes to get the data. So far I am using the first variant as I consider it more decoupled and I can see the difference between who is making business jobs, user interface communication and data providers. This making it more maintainable than the second one. The drawback for the first one is that has 2 more layers than the second one, this means more classes(but less code in each class) and at the start of a project, this can take a bit longer to develop than the second one. What approach do you use or which do you think it is better and why?"}
{"_id": "141882", "title": "Scaling Scrum within a group of 100s of programmers", "text": "Most Scrum teams lean toward 7-15 people ****** , though it's not clear how to scale Scrum among 100s of people, or how the effectiveness of a given team might be compared to another team within the group; meaning beyond just breaking the group into Scrum teams of 7-15 people, it's unclear how efforts between the teams are managed, compared, etc. **Any suggestions related to either of these topics, or additional related topics that might be of more importance to account for in planning a large scale SCRUM grouping?** ****** In reviewing research related to the suggested size of software development teams, which appears to be the basis for the suggested Scrum team size, I found what appears to be an error in the research which oddly appears to show that bigger teams (15+ ppl), not smaller teams (7 ppl) are better. * * * **UPDATE, \"Re: Scrum doesn't scale\":** Made huge amounts of progress personally researching the topic, but thought I'd respond to the general belief of some that Scrum doesn't scale by citing a quote from Succeeding with Agile by Mike Cohn : > **Scrum Does Scale:** You have to admire the intellectual honesty of the > earliest agile authors. They were all very careful to say that agile > methodolgies like Scrum were for small projects. This conservatism wasn\u2019t > because agile or Scrum turned out to be unsuited for large projects but > because they hadn\u2019t used these processes on large projects and so were > reluctant to advise their readers to do so. But, in the years since the > Agile Manifesto and the books that came shortly before and after it, we have > learned that the principles and practices of agile development can be scaled > up and applied on large projects, albeit it with a considerable amount of > overhead. Fortunately, if large organizations use the techniques described > regarding the role of the product owner, working with a shared product > backlog, being mindful of dependencies, coordinating work among teams, and > cultivating communities of practice, they can successfully scale a Scrum > project. > > **SOURCE:** (ran across the book thanks to Ladislav Mrnka answer)"}
{"_id": "141887", "title": "Web Developer interview questions", "text": "I read an article today that listed some basic questions about web development:   1. Describe how POST data was submitted to a server by a browser.   2. Explain a number of HTTP status codes (except maybe 404 and 500).   3. Explain SOLID or name a design pattern.   4. Explain ways to improve a page load speed or user experience. The author says \" **if you can\u2019t answer the questions above there are a lot of people who wouldn\u2019t think of you as a Senior Web Developer.** \" My questions are:   1. How relevant are these questions in respect to real life web programming and scalability?   2. How true is that statement? In other words, do you consider this knowledge a requirement to be considered a Senior Web Developer?   3. I was able to answer all the questions, too easily it seemed, so I'm wondering whether it is effective to use these or similar questions to screen developers rather than asking them to write sample code."}
{"_id": "146356", "title": "MVC, Java Design Pratices, and Flaws of java.util.Observable and java.util.Observer", "text": "I am planning learning Model-View-Controller (MVC) development using Java. While reading I came across a post which mentions **java.util.Observer** and **java.util.Observable** for MVC development. As I never heard of it before, upon more googling I came across this SO post, which discusses some design flaw with the above-mentioned classes. My question now has three parts   1. Are these classes still used in Industry for MVC development (except Eclipse as mentioned in the SO post)?   2. What are the flaws with these classes and why/why not should one use them?   3. Are there some ways MVC projects are developed in industry? (would be nice if you can answer this in general terms, NOT looking for answers like **SPRING** :P ) **[edit: both for desktop and web applications]**"}
{"_id": "186368", "title": "Web application (Spring, JSF) forks, how to reuse existing code for subprojects?", "text": "my question is going to be somewhat philosophical and \"architectural oriented\" so bear with me. Right now we have existing Java web application built on top of Spring and JSF(facelets) with maven. These are basically our tools that limit our scope of possible solutions. Now to the point. We need to implement a fork of this application that will be running on different domain for different \"end consumers\" and implement some change requests for both versions, but **code base of these versions will probably always be ~90% same**. Same change requests can be defined for implementation in both versions simultaneously BUT separate change requests only for chosen version might come as well. We have no control over what change requests there might come in later in project (but we are expecting quite a few). The differences in functionality may occur both on bean and view part of the application. We don't want to create 2 completely separate projects as implementing changes might sometimes mean implementing them twice. THE BIG ISSUE is that we expect to have **even more forks in the future** so the effort might multiply even further. The question is what ways of control or architectural patterns can we introduce to promote better maintainability of our projects. One solution might be for example:   * using Spring profiles to inject proper components based on current fork of application and completely separating view (xhtml) implementation. **In summary we are looking for best way to implement application wide changes that can be isolated and activated only based on some context variable (how to propagate it everywhere?).** Any input, idea or new perspective is appreciated."}
{"_id": "185944", "title": "Java labels. To be or not to be", "text": "Before I start this question I know the java 'goto' is a big no go. So I've been writing a program and I have some indented Loops and statements and I need to `BREAK` multiple on command. Rather than having a load of `boolean` variables and `if(!<booleanName>) BREAK;` statements throughout these loops and statements what is everyone's opinions on using labels to break them using the `BREAK <label>` statement? e.g.                for(...) {                indented_example_loops:     // Label name                for(...) {                     for(...) {                          if(match) break indented_example_loops;                          // ^ Break statement to break the 2 for loops at once                     }                }           }      Perfectly okay? Okay to do occasionally? Completely avoid? or should i go to a corner and call the Devil to take my soul?"}
{"_id": "185941", "title": "Is python lambda \"really formal\" \u03bb-calculus or just share the name?", "text": "Now and then I use the Python lambda. Is it so formal that it is safe to say that you can do formal lambda calculus with it? I just used it but I didn't fully understand whether the python lambda and the lambda calculus like I read was done by Alonzo Church. I also used it in Javascript, I think. Isn't this more common in functional languages (e.g. Haskell, Scheme/Lisp, Clojure...) and I never saw lambda in use with Java or C(++)? Is says on this site \" a function you can pass on to another function as argument.\". What is \"lambda\" code? But how do I get used to it enough so that I can tell where to benefit from it? If I can do it in say SQL, JPQL or GQL instead, shouldn't I prefer to do it in the query language?"}
{"_id": "143953", "title": "Is Tax Localization a good use for Workflow Foundation?", "text": "**Scenario:** We have both Winforms and MVC code that is being used to work on a nation wide multi-user platform that does lots of logistics for lots of users. Tax rules change per state and even per city or county. These tax rules make a huge difference for our industry. The other issue is that rules can change based on legislation. The system will have to handle cases where before a date it works one way and then different after that date. This changeover will need to be entered into the system and tested before that date comes. **Proposed Solution:** Use Workflow Foundation to create a time based system where our users can change and add rules that change the way taxes are calculated. **Question:** I have not used Workflow Foundation and searching has returned books to look at but not a lot of examples of people using this technology successfully. Is my scenario a good use of Workflow Foundation?(I think so.) If you have any experience with Workflow Foundation, any tips on making this work well?"}
{"_id": "186366", "title": "Alternative to \"Passing/Broken build\" indicator?", "text": "When having a continuous integration executing the tests at each commit, a common best practice is to have all the tests passing at all times (aka \"do not break the build\"). I find some problems with that: For example one cannot help an open source project by creating tests corresponding to tickets. I know if I propose a Pull Request to an open source project containing failing test, the build will be marked as failed and the project will not want that merged into its repository because it would \"break the build\". And **I don't believe it is a bad thing to have failing tests in your repo** , it's like having open issues in your tracker. These are just things waiting to be fixed. The same goes in a company. If you work with TDD, you can't write tests, commit and then write the logic code that fulfills the test. That means if I have written 4-5 tests on my laptop, I can't commit them before going on holidays. Nobody can take back my work. I can't even \"share\" them with a colleague except by sending them by email for example. It also prevents working with one person writing the tests, the other one writing the model. All that to say, am I misusing/misunderstanding the build process/continuous integration? It seems to me that \"passing\"/\"not passing\" is a too narrow indicator. Is there a way to make continuous integration and TDD compatible? Maybe there is a standard solution/practice to distinguish \"new tests\" (that can fail) and \"regression tests\" (that should **not** fail because they used to work)?"}
{"_id": "146359", "title": "ASP.NET MVC vs WCF for REST API + Webpage usage", "text": "I think the discussion for programmatic service oriented usage vs human interaction is clear. But if I were to create an application that makes use of both a programmatic API and a website that makes use of the data connected by the same API, does it lean the favour towards using only ASP.NET? How easy is it to integrate ASP.NET and WCF to work on the same application?"}
{"_id": "53819", "title": "Freelancer Organization Solution", "text": "As a freelancer working on both paid and personal projects, I'm always splitting my time between a huge number of small and large projects/tasks/fine details. I've developed a small custom-coded solution to organizing my time and tasks. What is the best solution to organizing and managing your projects, tasks and to-do list as a freelancer? This could include both paid and unpaid services, programs, or other web-based solutions. I know it can be subjective to say 'the best', so I'll rephrase the question to 'what do you find to be the most effective solution for yourself, and why?'"}
{"_id": "113102", "title": "What\u2019s the opposite of abstraction?", "text": "As I understand it, abstraction is the term we use for when more meaning is created out of something simpler without altering it. It is derived from the latin verb abstrahere (to \u2018draw away\u2019). For instance, text is just one abstraction of binary data\u2014as are bitmaps. So, in computers, text and bitmaps exist on top of (are implemented in terms of) binary data. My question is: what is the opposite term? If I want to know the possible more basic things that bitmaps could be implemented in terms of other than binary data\u2014things like tiles for a mosaic or fabric patches for a patchwork quilt\u2014what am I asking for? Is there a word for that? Abstraction has connotations of generalization and the opposite process of that is specialization. IDK whether that helps."}
{"_id": "113104", "title": "Is COBOL lucrative?", "text": "I once had this crazy idea that I might learn COBOL. COBOL developers are getting older and retiring, but there's still a lot of legacy code hanging around that needs maintaining. People have told me that this has lead to an under supply of COBOL developers, resulting in a lot of available work and could be potentially very lucrative! (not my only motivation, honest!) Is there any truth in this or is it a bit of a myth?"}
{"_id": "251692", "title": "Implementation strategies for atomic counter", "text": "I basically have a counter variable that is decremented and frequently polled. There are three options to implement that, that I can think of: Number 1:               private volatile int count;     public void Finished() {         Interlocked.Decrement(ref count);     }          public bool Done() {         return count == 0;     }      Number 2:               private int count;     public void Finished() {         Interlocked.Decrement(ref count);     }          public bool Done() {         return Volatile.Read(ref count) == 0;     }      Number 3:               struct AtomicInteger {         private int value;              public int Get() {             return Volatile.Read(ref value);         }         // other methods     }     // In actual class:     private AtomicInteger count;     public bool Done() {          return count.Get() == 0;     }      The first one gives a compiler warning because of passing a volatile variable by reference. On the other hand it's clear from the variable definition that the variable is accessed concurrently which is clearly a warning sign to anybody looking at the code. If I ever decide that I actually need a long, this method does not work at all any more. The second one doesn't give any warnings, but just from reading `private int count` it's not clear that the variable is used concurrently, so this has to be explicitly stated with a comment (I actually had a bug where I used a normal read in an assertion instead of `Volatile.Read` \\- such an easy thing to overlook.) Changing the variable to a long on the other hand does not introduce any additional work. I do like number 3 and it shouldn't result in any performance overhead compared to the other solutions after inlining. Downside: Code duplication for every primitive. On the other hand the code is simple enough and can be copy- pasted without fear of problems and is unlikely to ever change. Any comments on advantages/disadvantages of each method that I've overlooked or what would be considered idiomatic in C#?"}
{"_id": "251691", "title": "Should all HTTP requests including credentials be made using a POST even if it is actually just a request for data?", "text": "Assume there is a request which is going to look up a list of items from a service which requires authorisation (e.g. it's behind a Basic Authentication domain). If the service didn't require authentication, I would always make this request as a GET (it's idempotent). But because the credentials would end up in the query string, I'm basically required to do this as a POST. Is there any alternative to this method?"}
{"_id": "83538", "title": "Why there is perception that VB.NET is good for small to medium size application and not for enterprise class project?", "text": "I love VB.NET very much. Coding VB.NET with Visual Studio is just like typing messages. Smooth, fast and simple. Any error will be notified instantly. The OO capability of VB.NET is good enough. But often in any .Net languages discussion, there is perception that VB.NET is good for small to medium size application and not for large scale project? Why there is such perception? Or am I missing anything regarding to VB.NET?"}
{"_id": "194358", "title": "Client = Html5 + CSS3 + JS + Jquery. Server =?", "text": "I want to build most of my functionality on the client. However I'm not quite sure which server-side web development framework can provide me with a nice REST endpoint to handle resources, business logic, etc. I come from a JAVA EE world, where JSF is mostly stateful and component based (both have their pros and cons, I'd just rather not keep a component tree, etc).. However... I used to build templates in Facelets, how can I do this now if I don't use JSF/Facelets as my presentation layer? Or how do I create HTML tables iterating over collections, etc? I'm open to using any language/framework. I see a lot of discussion yet not really any valuable input. Perhaps I have yet to look in the right places. There's a lot of people talking about JS + RESTful ws... Is this actually possible for a whole web site? I think that if I drop my component based web framework I'll have to implement so many things by myself, like conditionally rendered portions of the website, iterating over data to build grids, tables, handling multiple-page operations, view scoped data. Maybe someone could also tell me: are you out of your mind? Go hybrid or don't do that. Any directions will help."}
{"_id": "83534", "title": "Basic features for a basic language? DSL suggestions?", "text": "I've finally begun to understand the complexity behind creating an interpreter and a compiler. I've built several versions of TinyBasic, 1964 (Dartmouth) Basic, and my own expansions on those languages before getting to this point. The most recent project is one I call Open Source Basic... because I could think of no other features of the language that would interest people. To be able to open up the source of the language and understand how some complex things are done (how scanning, parsing, interpreting, and compiling are done) Open Source Basic is first interpreted into a stack based language. That stack based language is then interpreted and executed immediately or turned into a CLR executable. My questions all boil down to this:   * **What are the basic features/constructs of a Basic-based language?** I have these basic constructs already: Assignments, Expressions, Variables, some functions (Random, ToUpper, ToLower), Looping (for and do-while/until), If (block and single-line) Else decisions, console based input (Input) and output (Print), and sub-routines (with no parameters, yet).   * When I'm 'done' adding the basic constructs onto my language - how should I branch out? Into what domain(s)? In other words, **what direction(s) should my open source basic language take once I've got all the generic constructs working?** Thank you for your time, Dominick"}
{"_id": "83536", "title": "How To Organize Factories in a .Net Project?", "text": "I'm just beginning to grasp the concept of factories, and want to use them in my next project (I'm using dependency injection, so using factories will make object instantiation easier). Some basic questions I have:   1. Does it make sense to have one factory class per application layer (GUI, BLL, DAL), per class, or just one factory class for everything?   2. What is a typical naming convention for factory classes? Addendum:   1. If I create a factory per class, in a .Net project, should I simply create one class file called Factories.cs to house all of my factory classes? If not, what would be a better approach?"}
{"_id": "244912", "title": "Branching strategy for frequent releases", "text": "We have very frequent releases and we use Git for version control. When i am mentioning about frequency, please assume it to include bug-fixes and feature release too. All releases are eventually merged into \u2018mainline\u2019. When a release is deployed on production and if a bug is identified, people start fixing the bug on the same branch from which the latest release was deployed on production. They do not create a new bug-fix branch for the same. I feel that\u2019s not the right way to go for. There are several components and each component has a different owner, and thus, different perspective. Though I have not initiated talks with them, I am sure there will be a lot of resistance. Main issue that they might cite would be, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of work involved in creating and tracking branches especially when there are so frequent deployments on production. This will consume a lot of dev effort.\u201d Do you think that fixing bug on the same branch from which release was done, a good idea? If yes, how do you manage it? Using tags? I know that best practices may not always be applicable due to several factors but still I would like to know what might be a good approach for branching in a scenario where releases/bug-fixes happen almost on a daily basis. **Edit:** Thanks everyone for sharing your views and for the useful links. I think the main concern i have here is this: _Do you think that fixing bug on the same branch from which release was done, a good idea?_ Is this approach fine in the long run or are we messing up things just to realize it later?"}
{"_id": "251345", "title": "the perils of using eval() for dynamic object creation -- is this a valid argument in a consenting-adults culture?", "text": "I've read on stackoverflow explicit warnings against using eval() to create objects. The reason that seems to be given is that malicious code could be injected and blindly created objects could compromise a system. Isn't this malicious-intent argument invalidated by the consenting-adult argument, though? Some sample code:               class Test(object):         def __init__(self, vala, valb, valc):             self._vala = vala             self._valb = valb             self._valc = valc              def __repr__(self):             return \"<Test(vala={0}, valb={1}, valc={2})>\".format(self._vala, self._valb, self._valc)               testlist = [dict(cls=\"Test\", vala=\"this is vala\", valb=\"this is valb\", valc=\"this is valc\"), dict(cls=\"Test\", vala=\"this is vala II\", valb=\"this is valb II\", valc=\"this is valc II\")]          mytestobjects = []          for test in testlist:         newobj = eval(test['cls'])(**{key: value for key, value in test.items() if key != \"cls\"})         mytestobjects.append(newobj)          print(mytestobjects)"}
{"_id": "138948", "title": "How do you evolve & version an interface?", "text": "Say you have an interface `IFoo`:               public interface IFoo {         void Bar(string s);         int Quux(object o);     }      In version 2 of your API, you need to add a method `Glarg` to this interface. How do you do so without breaking your existing API users and maintaining backwards compatibility? This is mainly aimed at .NET, but can apply to other frameworks & languages as well."}
{"_id": "228765", "title": "Storing web app passwords so that they can be retrieved", "text": "**Short version** My boss wants me to store _user_ passwords for an ASP.NET Web Forms web app we're developing in clear text, so that a user with admin rights can click a button and get back the current passwords for the accounts she controls. _I don't want to do that_ , because I deeply care about the security and privacy of users of a web app I am involved with in whatever way. What would be a good way to store the passwords in an encrypted form, that can still however be decrypted? I can't count on users having an email address, so sending the user a link to reset the password is not an option. Read the following for more context. **Some context** This app was written by individuals who have little clue as to how software should be written. Lots of duplicated code, risks for SQL injection everywhere, no unit tests whatsoever, one new connection gets instantiated and opened for each and every query... name a bad practice, you'll find it in this codebase. The passwords are currently stored as a simple MD5 of the original string, which is weak and horrible and everything, but still a tiny bit better than clear text. I just finished implementing a feature request where the admin I was talking about can click a button and have an account automatically created for each employee she manages, with a random password. I cringe while writing this, but one of the requirements was to _export the credentials in an Excel spreadsheet_. Which I did. This is bad in and of itself, but then my boss said \"What if the user loses the spreadsheet? Users are dumb, you know. There needs to be a way to get the passwords back.\" Bang. Getting him to listen to people who know what they're talking about is not an option, sadly. The obvious suggestion would be \"GTFO\", I know, but rest assured that it's something I'll do as soon as I possibly can. Meanwhile, I need to cheat and pretend I store passwords in clear text, while I do things in the best way possible to protect my users' passwords. **EDIT** For some reason people answering are assuming I'm a girl so, just for the record, I would like to clarify that I'm a guy. Not that it should make any difference, but hey ;)"}
{"_id": "206221", "title": "What are functional languages most used for?", "text": "I wondered what functional languages are mainly used for? I've been reading about them and read about Haskell and others. Some seem to be just \"academic\" languages which makes little sense to me, so hoping to get a better idea of their uses in real world applications."}
{"_id": "171221", "title": "Is it reasonable for REST resources to be singular and plural?", "text": "I have been wondering if, rather than a more traditional layout like this:               api/Products     GET // gets product(s) by id     PUT // updates product(s) by id     DELETE // deletes (product(s) by id     POST // creates product(s)      Would it be more useful to have a singular and a plural, for example:               api/Product     GET // gets a product by id     PUT // updates a product by id     DELETE // deletes a product by id     POST // creates a product          api/Products     GET // gets a collection of products by id     PUT // updates a collection of products by id     DELETE // deletes a collection of products (not the products themselves)     POST // creates a collection of products based on filter parameters passed      So, to create a collection of products you might do:               POST api/Products {data: filters} // returns api/Products/<id>      And then, to reference it, you might do:               GET api/Products/<id> // returns array of products      In my opinion, the main advantage of doing things this way is that it allows for easy caching of collections of products. One might, for example, put a lifetime of an hour on collections of products, thus drastically reducing the calls on a server. Of course, I currently only see the good side of doing things this way, what's the downside?"}
{"_id": "233070", "title": "Most of programmer work deals with mapping?", "text": "During all my work I've been working with ORM, WS, integration services, viewmodel and so on. The common stuff in all these kind of work is that I had to make mappings and not always the available framework are enough to help in this mapping. The question which I'm wondering is: is a consistent part of the development process dealing with mapping? It would be good to develop a tool for solving this kind of problems? i.e.               sqlClient.AddParameterWithValue(\"switch\", SqlDbType.TinyInt, user.IDUser);     sqlClient.AddParameterWithValue(\"IDUtente\", SqlDbType.Int, user.IDUser);      i.e.               GetSQLParameter(\"@switch\", SqlDbType.TinyInt, 1), _     GetSQLParameter(\"@IDUtente\", SqlDbType.Int), _      i.e.               MappingFramework.Mapper.CreateMap<DataRecordWrapper, User>()         .ForMember(dest => dest.IDUser, opt => opt.MapFrom(src => src.GetInt(\"switch\")))         .ForMember(dest => dest.FirstName, opt => opt.MapFrom(src => src.GetString(\"IDUtente\")))"}
{"_id": "171229", "title": "Help identify the pattern for reacting on updates", "text": "There's an entity that gets updated from external sources. Update events are at random intervals. And the entity has to be processed once updated. Multiple updates may be multiplexed. In other words there's a need for the most current state of entity to be processed. There's a point of no-return during processing where the current state (and the state is consistent i.e. no partial update is made) of entity is saved somewhere else and processing goes on independently of any arriving updates. Every consequent set of updates has to trigger processing i.e. system should not forget about updates. And for each entity there should be no more than one running processing (before the point of no-return) i.e. the entity state should not be processed more than once. So what I'm looking for is a pattern to cancel current processing before the point of no return or abandon processing results if an update arrives. The main challenge is to minimize race conditions and maintain integrity. The entity sits mainly in database with some files on disk. And the system is in .NET with web-services and message queues. What comes to my mind is a database queue-like table. An arriving update inserts row in that table and the processing is launched. The processing gathers necessary data before the point of no-return and once it reaches this barrier it looks into the queue table and checks whether there're more recent updates for the entity. If there are new updates the processing simply shuts down and its data is discarded. Otherwise the processing data is persisted and it goes beyond the point of no-return. Though it looks like a solution to me it is not quite elegant and I believe this scenario may be supported by some sort of middleware. If I would use message queues for this then there's a need to access the queue API in the point of no-return to check for the existence of new messages. And this approach also lacks elegance. Is there a name for this pattern and an existing solution?"}
{"_id": "233079", "title": "Adding svn support to our git repo", "text": "We have been using SVN for several years. Recently, we switched over to git, since some members of the organization pointed out that if our SVN server dies our team is toast. So far, we've got something worked out with the git workflow, however some team members really do not like this git process. They want to simply right- click on a file and then hit SVN Commit (we're using tortoiseSVN) without having to worry about all this pushing and pulling. I've been asked to provide SVN support for our repository while keeping the git repo (hosted on github) updated. The workflow I'm imagining is that we'll all just do the normal SVN things as before, and then once in awhile I'll just do a push to github to backup our files. What are some options for using git purely for backup purposes (one person would manage the git repo), while everyone uses the SVN repo? I've read about git-svn, but it seems like a completely different tool. Perhaps someone can clarify this? If I checked out a svn repo using git-svn, would I be able to operate on it using tortoiseSVN? Or can everyone else use a regular SVN checkout, while I maintain a git-svn checkout?"}
{"_id": "18240", "title": "Great Lunch and Learn Topics", "text": "We recently revived the lunch in learns for the programming department in the company I work for. We were all asked if we had any ideas for a session, and if we would be interested in doing a presentation. I've had a few ideas ranging from various topics such as: _How to think like a user when designing UI_ or _Differences in HTML5_ A few coworkers I tossed these ideas around to seem to like them. However, I'd like some more ideas before I dig too far into creating a presentation. **What are some great lunch and learn topics?**"}
{"_id": "33647", "title": "Need to re-build an application - how?", "text": "For our main system, we have a small monitor application that sits outside our network and periodically tries to log in to verify the system still works. We have a problem with the monitor though in that the communications component set (Asta 3 inside Delphi applications) doesn't always connect through. Overall, I'd say it's about 95% reliable, but that other 5% kills the monitor since it will try to log in and hang on the connection attempt (no timeout in the component). This really isn't an issue on the client side of the system since the clients don't disconnect and reconnect repeatedly on the same application instance, but I need a way to make sure the monitor stays up and continues working even when the component fails on a run. I have a few ideas as to which way to have the program run, the main idea being to put the communications inside a threaded data module so that if one thread crashes then another thread can test later and the program keep going. Does this sound like a valid way to go? Any other ideas how to ensure a reliable monitoring application with a less than 100% reliable component? Thanks. P.S. Not sure these tags are the most appropriate. Tried including \"system- reliability\" as one, but not high enough rep to create."}
{"_id": "228608", "title": "What is the industry norm for naming standard for gui object event handlers in C#", "text": "Lets say you have a button objects on a form with a click event (c#/.Net). How is the event handler normally named throughout the industry?   * fooButton_Click   * fooButtonClick (or if you like Hungarian)   * btnFoo_Click   * btnFooClick When visual studio creates the event handler it defaults to underscore + EventName. This seems to violate the norm of using camelCasing and UppderCamelCasing instead of separating words with underscores. Is there any reason to change it, or practically everyone following what Visual Studio does?"}
{"_id": "71476", "title": "Examples of web applications that work entirely offline using HTML5", "text": "I would like to check out some real-world web applications that work offline using HTML5 (application cache and local storage, I believe). I am not able to find any. I can find a lot of experimentations, but not an application with actual users. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "231500", "title": "How do I access databases from a mobile device securely?", "text": "I have been doing some research on accessing a DB from mobile devices. There are so many different ways of doing it. There are also multiple ways to make it secure. What is a good way to access a database from a mobile device securely? Also considering my specific case, where I have an existing WCF service which does everything I would need for the app, I would like to re-use it. I have been working on using jsonp calls to the service and develop apps for iOS, Android and windows phone. The calls are secured by HTTPS and I would be implementing some authentication policy for the calls. But how secure would all this be? I have some really sensitive data to worry about. I am using HTML5 and JS for app development to keep it uniform and less difficult to manage for all platforms. How do I access the database and keep my data secure?"}
{"_id": "6587", "title": "What counts as an IDE?", "text": "Recently reading the question What languages do you use without an IDE? One question asked in a few answers was \"is Notepad++ and IDE?\" One answers to the original question said \"None, I use vim...\", implying that vim is an IDE. But then another answer suggested vim isn't an IDE. So where is the line? What about notepad, ed, or nano? Is the only non-IDE coding technique the butterfly technique?"}
{"_id": "208713", "title": "Is it poor practice to call methods through multiple objects?", "text": "I have code that looks like this:               tr.t.findIndexSmoothed(arg0.getX(), arg0.getY());      \"tr\" and \"t\" are objects. Is it bad practice to reach all the way down the object hierarchy to call methods? The only reason I can think of is that is breaks encapsulation, and if that's the case, can anybody tell me why that poses a problem? Also, does this code structure inhibit performance in any way?"}
{"_id": "59913", "title": "Version Changes: How considerable are the compatibility issues in project?", "text": "For example if we consider ActionScript2.0(based on Objects but programming does not implement much OOP ) vs 3.0(highly OOP) its like a whole new scripting language in the sense of approach, programming style,features you get the idea. In PHP we can see current versions going from 3-5. brief version changes   * Question :Developers who work on PHP is it easy to migrate from version to version?   * Question :Are there any extensive compatibility issues, forward or backward?   * Question :Does your project stick to a particular version till the end ?   * Question :Does the programming style ,approach change from version to version?   * Question :If you had to get started on PHP to contribute to a project built earlier versions, would learning the latest version be counterproductive towards this aim? Some related topics i had come across on SE How should I be keeping track of php script version/changes? What is happening to PHP 6? * * * It would be Really helpful in understanding if you could answer this topic directly to the questions put forth."}
{"_id": "238343", "title": "Etiquette: Our old developer is displaying our project in his portfolio without permission", "text": "I was wondering what the situation is regarding a sub-contracted programmer using our project in his portfolio. He has dragged an 8 week build to over a year, messed us around, disappeared for 3 months in the middle of it and has cost us money. We have had to pay someone else to correct all his mistakes. He is assuming he can, and is kicking up a fuss when we implied we may not let him. I feel we are well within our rights to refuse, based on this guys quality of work and timescales, he has caused the project to stall. In our work agreement we stated that we didn't want him to have an actual text credit on the product itself, but that we would happily write him a reference if he wanted to pitch for work on the back of it. That he signed and agreed to. As the ones who designed the product, and all of the front end, we feel we should have the right to not allow him to display our product on his website. Maybe we don't want the world to know that our expensive high-end product was built by one guy in India. Perhaps we are trying to place ourselves as a company who delivers the whole package, including the programming side. Is it considered good etiquette to ask permission first before displaying software in a portfolio?"}
{"_id": "229562", "title": "Do any package managers provide select-one dependencies", "text": "With jquery very slowly being phased out you get into more and more situations where library X will run with either jquery or zepto.js (but at least one is required). No package managers that I can think of however allow you to express dependencies like this. If I was to propose this feature to - say - bower, is there precedent for how it might look?"}
{"_id": "76124", "title": "Best Way to Express Meta-Info on Missing Data?", "text": "I work in healthcare IT, reviewing data management processes of various observational studies. One problem I have repeatedly faced is the poorly encoded data, especially when some values are missing. * * * **Background Intermezzo, skip if you suffer from TL;DR:** I am currently reviewing a study which collects data on patients suffering from a specific disease. Patients usually join the study once the disease is confirmed (a few months after the outbreak). One of the important parameters is the result of a certain blood test in the acute phase of the disease, i.e. hopefully as close to the outbreak as possible. Sometimes however, that test was not performed because there was no indication for it or the patient forgot to bring a copy of the result, etc. An important aspect here is that all the data in the DB is generated from (tons of unsorted) paper files and often people do not have the time to skim through all of it, so they do not enter the blood test's result just because they _haven't gotten to it yet_. * * * In order to \"somehow\" encode reasons for a value being absent, I have seen various schemes:   1. **Use a TEXT(3) field for booleans** and use `n/a` to express that \"the data really isn't available\" (e.g. because the blood test wasn't performed) and `NULL` to express \"Maybe the data is somewhere, I just haven't looked for it yet\".   2. **Use an additional field in the same table** , e.g. a boolean field \"bloodtest_perf\" where \"perf\" stands for \"actually performed\".  I dislike the first approach because it allows you to enter \"yes\", \"y\", \"ja\", \"YES\", etc. and you end up spending most of the time cleaning instead of analyzing data. The second approach isn't much better either, because you end up with dummy data at best and inconsitent data at worst:               __ TBL_TEST1 __________________________________     | patID | test1_perf | test1_date | test1_res |     +---------------------------------------------+     | 12345 | no         | NULL       | NULL      |     | 12345 | yes        | 2011-05-13 | 20.0      |     +---------------------------------------------+      The most sensible solution in my opinion would be to create a `TBL_TEST1_METADATA` which contains an entry IFF test1 was not performed which specifies why not, but the people (clinicians with rudimentary MS-Access knowledge) aren't educated well enough to & are not willing to invest a serious amount of time to program the logic required to write values to two tables from one Access form. My dilemma is that I see patient-decades of data going lost because of insufficient data quality, while I can't find a pragmatic solutions \"DB- amateurs\" can implement in an acceptable timeframe because I'm (too?) obsessed with doing it the _right way [tm]_. Am I missing the obvious? Or is the only way to improve the situation to send physicians to programming classes or provide them with a \"programming minion\" that does it for them? PS: I'd love to ask this question **onhealthcare IT.SE.com**, but the proposal hasn't received enough attention yet to go beta."}
{"_id": "146820", "title": "Is it an absolute must that we ignore/delete all compiled files before committing?", "text": "I am working on a Drupal theme. I am going to be using \"intermediary\" languages to develop it, ie Stylus for styles, and CoffeeScript for some of the front-end scripts. I am going to be using a git hosting service to be able to share the code among colleges. I am also going to be using it to update the code locally and then push onto hosting service, to be later pulled by the live drupal site. This makes things really elegant. However, I have noticed that a lot of developers tend to .gitignore all compiled code. If it were a good practice, I would've loved to follow it, if and only if there wasn't this one issue: recompiling all the code that is needed in order for the theme to work out correctly. This means that when I do a pull, I will have to recompile all the CSS and JavaScript code. Now, if I were to do a pull on the live site, there's a risk that a user goes to the site right at the moment I do the pull. No styles and scripts will be loaded on the user's end, so long as the code hasn't compiled. Of course, compiling takes about a second, and the user might probably think to him/herself \"meh, it was just my internet connection.\" But there is also the issue that the server doesn't have the compilers installed to begin with. So now, I would do a pull, but there will be no styles, and no scripts. Is it an absolute must that I delete all compiled code, or can I go ahead and include them in the commit?"}
{"_id": "146823", "title": "Is it good practice to comment with issue number?", "text": "I saw many issue numbers from comments of jQuery code(Actually, there were 69 issue numbers in jQuery code). I think it would be good practice, but I've never seen any guidelines of this practice. If this is good practice, what could be guidelines of this practice?"}
{"_id": "146822", "title": "Sharing SCTP connection with multiple threads", "text": "I have an application that needs to run in SCTP environment, I have a question in sharing the connection among multiple threads for packet receiving only, I've tried with the `sctp_sendmsg` and it worked without even locking the threads (is that been taking care of by the OS, in other words, is it thread safe to do that). I've tested many cases with the send and I can't see them out of sync. Anyway, back to the receiving, is it possible to create multiple threads and send each thread the sctp descriptor to start receiving messages? Do I need a lock here or is it ok without lock? I'm using C in linux."}
{"_id": "171591", "title": "Is saying \"if ( $a != null && $a == 5)\" the same as \"if ($a == 5)\"", "text": "First off, sorry if this is answered somewhere else. I did a brief search, but wasn't sure how to ask in search terms. I'm looking at some code and came across lot's of statements like this:               if ( ($a != empty_or_null_or_notDefined && $a == 5 )      Is this the same as just saying:               if ( $a == 5 )      ? (language is PHP.)"}
{"_id": "31641", "title": "In which fields does quality of the software product matter as much as the completion time?", "text": "Someone told me that if the software product meets clients expectations, it is good quality. But I've worked with Interaction Designers (the same kind of people who made Gmail's interface and usability so cool!), and I've loved working with them because even though they came up with hundreds of changes in requirements, and emphasised on many many subtle details, when the software was complete, I could look at the product and say **WOW**! Sometimes, in a company, the only thing that matters is completing the project on time. As long as it works and as long as the client says it's ok, nobody bothers to improve it. I'm not talking about gold-plating, but I believe that for a programmer to enjoy his (well, maybe her too ;) ) job, they should be able to proudly say that \"Hey, I made that software\" and that comes only when the product is of good quality. Apart from your opinions on this, **I'd also like to know which fields** (Eg. Aerospace, Finance etc.) could I find companies (or you could mention the company name) where the quality of a product is as important **(and encouraged by the management)** as completing the project on time?"}
{"_id": "136893", "title": "Forcing aggregate root child access through the aggregate root alone", "text": "**Context** I'm developing an application using a Domain Driven Design approach. I want to use a design pattern wherever appropriate and apply all SOLID principles. **Scenario** I have an order and I want to allow clients to add order lines to it. Consider the following pseudo code:               class Order         OrderLines[] (readonly)         AddOrderLine(orderLine)          class OrderLine         Product         Amount          class OrderLineFactory         OrderLine Create(product, amount)          class OrderLineRepository         Save(orderLine)      Now lets add an OrderLine to the Order:               Order.AddOrderLine(OrderLineFactory.Create(product: \"Chocolate Cake\", amount: 3))      By the way, the OrderLineFactory is there because in my case, there is some relatively complex logic involved with creating order lines. This is one of the main reasons for applying the factory pattern. **Problem** The problem is that I could do this instead...               orderLine = OrderLineFactory.Create(product: \"Chocolate Cake\", amount: 3)     OrderLineRepository.Save(orderLine)      ...and get around the `Order.AddOrderLine` method, effectively short-cutting any checks that are performed in that method (e.g. protecting against duplicates or limiting the order amount). **Working towards a solution** An argument could be that there shouldn't be a `Save` method on `OrderLineRepository`, because an OrderLine isn't an aggregate root. This would (just like I want) render the client incapable of storing the bare OrderLine except from adding it to the Order and saving the Order consequently. However, having a `Save` method on repositories that concern non-root aggregates, allows for saving changes made to them directly, such as:               orderLine = orderLineRepository.Get(31923)     orderLine.Amount = 5     OrderLineRepository.Save(orderLine)      Not being able to save the OrderLine would require me to do something like...               order = OrderRepository.FindByOrderLineId(31923)     order.OrderLines[31923].Amount = 5     OrderRepository.Save(order)      ...which isn't all that efficient or practical. I could add a requirement to provide the (actually redundant) Order ID as well but that would put some unnecessary burden on the client. So lets say I want to stick with my `OrderLineRepository.Save` method and still find a way to stop my client from being able to get around my `Order.AddOrderLine` method. All I can think of now, is dropping the OrderLineFactory and creating a domain service that combines the creation and the assignment.               class OrderService         AddOrderLine(order, product, amount)      So we can:               order = orderRepository.Get(123)     OrderService.AddOrderLine(order: order, product: \"Chocolate Cake\", amount: 3))     orderRepository.Save(order)      I don't really like the service combining multiple concerns here though, those of creation and assignment. That would call for... a factory... again. Okay, let's consider a private factory then, one that's not available to the client but to the domain service alone. In my case I would get stuck with unit testing and Inversion Of Control. I'd be creating an uninjectable dependency, since my client wouldn't be able to register my non-public factory. **Summary**   * I want my client to be able to create order lines through the Order class and in no other way   * I don't want to mangle multiple concerns in a single class   * I want to keep OrderLine creation outside of the Order class   * I'd like to keep using a factory for that So I'm a little stuck here, trying to find the best way to deal with this. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "47421", "title": "A Whiteboard: 'useful!' or 'paper is better'?", "text": "Anyone still use a Whiteboard? If so how do you use it and is it actually that useful? Or do you prefer paper instead?"}
{"_id": "189916", "title": "Connection between programming language and solutions", "text": "This is a rather philosphical / theoretical question. I am interested in the question, how language (in this case programming languages) and thoughts (= solutions of problems) are connected. I want to know, whether the programming language influences the solutions, I can come up with. For example: I program something in Haskell (functional) and in Java (OOP). Do the general solutions differ fundamentally or are they - aside from syntactic sugar - the same? Do I not just use different algorithms and a different software design, but do I fundamentally change my whole point of view, my concept and my view of the software, depending on the paradigm I am starting from? _(Note: \"I\" stands for a generic programmer)_ I know, that this question is pretty hard to answer, but I find it very interesting, so I wanted to know, whether somebody has (and might share) a opinion about this."}
{"_id": "112764", "title": "What is the user-experience best practice for an alternative to popup windows?", "text": "I'm still new to web design/development. I'm working on a data entry form for an internal system at work. On the form, the user can select an office from a list queried from a database. (The backend for this is PHP and MySQL, if you're curious.) I would like to add the functionality to allow the user to add an office to the list, among other things, with minimal invasiveness. I don't want to use a popup window since the default behavior for company browsers is to block popups. I've seen this, which shows you how to create an alert alternative in place of a new window. To me that seems like basically the same thing, and not really an improvement except that it would keep the browser from putting a kibosh on the new form. I think it might also be good just to keep the popup/alert functionality out of the picture altogether and opt for a new undisplayed `<div>` that is triggered by a button or doubleclick, autc. and closed by okay or cancel. Like I said, I'm still new to web design/development, and I'm wondering what the currently accepted best practice is for accomplishing this task with the best possible user experience. Update: the real question is \"Is there a current best practice for accomplishing this task with the best possible user experience?\" The answer may be \"no, there are many options and none are more prevalent.\" What I'm looking for is either that, or \"yes, the currently accepted best practice for user-experience in this case is X.\""}
{"_id": "226621", "title": "Requirement that code changes within release be reverse compatible with DB schema", "text": "I have recently come across a requirement related to our release/SDLC process that seems a little out of the ordinary to me so I am writing this to inquire whether this practice is common and, if not, whether our deployment process should be changed to eliminate a burdensome constraint. I work for a small software shop that makes enterprise software (so not a household name) and we only have a handful yet very large customers. It is a multi-server system management application running on Linux, DB backend, web front end, lots of async I/O and messaging. We roll out upgrades approx. every 2-3 months and our customers deploy them using `deb` or `rpm` (depending on OS) packages we provide them. All the customers deploy the app in a cluster environment with each server instance pointing to multiple database shards. As of late I have been working on some legacy refactoring that significantly changed our DB schema. To make a long story short, I reorganized how we store some data, split some tables into multiple new tables, reduced exposure to race conditions, and made corresponding code changes. Just as I was getting ready to submit my changes, I was informed by our systems architect that, \"due to the way our customers deploy upgrades\" (each server and each database separately, one by one and can take days if not weeks, during which some of the servers must stay up), we cannot have tightly coupled changes and that all code upgrades must be reverse compatible with the database within a one release cycle period. IOW, **we cannot remove fields from database tables because in all customer configs all servers point to all database shards and we must enable a server to simultaneously work with one shard that is upgraded along with another that is not.** Now, I was befuddled and troubled by this requirement to say the least. It seemed indicative of problems that the way our customers like to deploy changes (taking a long time), as well as their configuration, necessitates us to provide cumbersome dual functionality in parallel. In my particular case, I was told that I need to keep the refactored fields in the old tables for legacy reads while writing into the new tables and then amalgamate the retrieved data. This seems unnecessarily complex to me to say the least. My questions are as follows:   1. Is this requirement unusual for the general configuration I described? I have worked here around six months and I never worked for a product company before, always worked on site that made and deployed apps of their own (like a web site etc.). Is this scenario common in software product companies?   2. Is this phenomenon of necessary reverse DB compatibility indicative of problems with the way our customers like to deploy our software? To my knowledge, they apply our upgrades manually server by server, database by database while maintaining the production function. Should they be using something like `Puppet` or `Chef` to deploy our upgrades in a much shorted timeframe?   3. How should I approach presenting a need to change all of this, it presents a developer inconvenience to say the least having to provide for this bifurcated functionality?"}
{"_id": "226622", "title": "Is using external repositories PCI-DSS compliant", "text": "We are considering using BitBucket rather than hosting our Git repositories internally. Does anyone know if this breaks any rules of PCI compliance? I haven't been able to find much information on this."}
{"_id": "115230", "title": "What are the available tools for creating cross-platform, cross-browser multiplayer online commercial games?", "text": "HTML5+Javascript is not viable as the client-side code will be visible and, thus, stealable. Flash is not viable since it's not supported on ipads and thus not cross-platform. Said that, what are the available tools for creating cross-platform, cross-browser multiplayer online commercial games?"}
{"_id": "115231", "title": "From analysis to application", "text": "Which learning path would you recommend to be able to create complete application from requirement analysis, design (with various diagrams) to coding and testing? It's not easy to get this knowledge when man does not work for a software company. Is there on the internet some example of this process from requirements to complete application? It won't need to be very complex, something for a beginner who knows UML, database design and a few programming languages (intermediate level). I prefer the resulting application in Python or C (but in C there aren't classes, so maybe here will be less design). I don't like C++ much. Java is acceptable too. This is rather easier example of what I'm looking for. The emphasis should be more on design, there don't need to be complex algorithms but show rather putting some working system (e.g. information system with 3 layer architecture) together."}
{"_id": "144467", "title": "Commenting Code AS3 - Not being an API", "text": "How should I comment a method? What are the best practices on commenting code? Example:               /* Checks if a color is allowed in a given point     * of the bitmapdata of the current floor     * @param value - color to be checked     * @return boolean - if color is allowed returns true, else, return false     */          private function isAllowed(value:uint):Boolean {             //code...          }      Is that the best way to comment a method? I\u00b4ve heard there\u00b4s the use of the tag @see. What should be on this tag? I wonder if it could be something that has a relation to the method, is that right? Thanks."}
{"_id": "115239", "title": "Translating objects from one type to a another", "text": "I am working on a server-client app in c# and need to send an object from the client to the server via WCF. For simplicity I will call it WorkingClass as it is what does the work.                   public class WorkingClass          {             public WorkingClass (FileInfo uncompressedFile, FileInfo compressedFile)             {                 UncompressedFile = uncompressedFile;                 CompressedFile = compressedFile;             }                         public FileInfo UncompressedFile { get; private set; }             public FileInfo CompressedFile { get; private set; }                  public void ZipFile()             {                 //zip file             }         }      Now I need to send it to the server via WCF. I don't need the whole WorkingClass FileInfo properties serialized and sent, so I have a simple class which I will call MessageClass that has simple strings.               public class MessageClass         {             public MessageClass(string uncompressedFileName, string compressedFileName)             {                 UncompressedFileName = uncompressedFileName;                 CompressedFileName = compressedFileName;             }                  public string UncompressedFileName { get; private set; }             public string CompressedFileName { get; private set; }         }      I can add a ToMessage() instance method and a FromMessage static method to the WorkingClass. Or instead of the static FromMessage method, I could add a constructor to the WorkingClass that accepts a MessageClass as a parameter. To me these options seem to tie both classes tightly together and the WorkingClass should only have to worry about zipping a file, not converting itself for communication via WCF. Do I maybe create a converter class? The Server will then need to convert from the message to its own working class. Am I on the right path to handle this sort of thing? Is there a best practice or design pattern I can follow?"}
{"_id": "91827", "title": "Is it not a good practice to handle runtime exceptions in the code?", "text": "I am working on a Java application, and I see that Run time exceptions are handled in many places. For example,                      try {                            //do something                  }catch(NullPointerException e){                      return null;                 }      My questions is, when is it a good practice to handle Runtime exceptions? When should exceptions be left unhandled?"}
{"_id": "34166", "title": "Becoming a microsoft partner organisation", "text": "Does anyone know the process of becoming a microsoft partner for an organisation. What the requirements and process are?"}
{"_id": "133973", "title": "How safe is it to cache a user ticket in SESSION", "text": "I'm working on a client library to interface with my company's api, and we generate a user ticket when the user logs in using the api. Obviously I don't want to send the user ticket to the client for resubmission on subsequent requests - is it (relatively) safe for me to cache this value in `$_SESSION` for later calls?"}
{"_id": "137413", "title": "What does this point about first normal form mean?", "text": "I'm reading the Wikipedia page on first normal form, and am confused about the last bullet point: > 5) All columns are regular [i.e. rows have no hidden components such as row > IDs, object IDs, or hidden timestamps]. Does this mean \"all information about a row is contained in its values\" (my words)? * * * I understand the rest of the points about 1NF; it's only this one that I'm confused about."}
{"_id": "108148", "title": "What would be the best real example to explain the usefulness of Inheritance ?", "text": "When trying to explain the concept of Inheritance in OOP, the common example is often the mammals example. IMHO, this is really a bad example, because it will lead the newbies to use this concept the wrong way. And moreover, it is not a common design that they will face in their day-to-day design job. So, what will be a nice, simple and concrete problem that is solved using Inheritance ?"}
{"_id": "170175", "title": "Map Library: Client-side or Server-side?", "text": "As I have already asked here, I have to implement a Multi-Platform Map application. Now I have Mapstraction as an option which uses Javascript to implement the desired functionality. My question is, \"Is there any reason/benefit to implement such a library (let say, Adapters) in Server-side (in my case, PHP)?\" As these maps are all based on Javascript, there is a big reason to use Javascript again to make the adapter also, so it would not be dependent to PHP, Java, or .NET for example. But is that all?"}
{"_id": "206859", "title": "Are there security implications to using dynamically-assigned TCP port numbers?", "text": "I'm getting pushback from operations for having a server process listen on a dynamically-assigned port number (i.e. it binds a socket to a port number of 0, triggering a dynamic assignment by the OS, which it retrieves using getsocketname()). The argument was that is \"creates all kinds of issues for firewalling, routing, ACL, and security purposes\". I haven't run across anything about this. This is CentOS, our applications are in-house and restricted to a set of machines on a LAN that's heavily firewalled from the outer world. Can someone knowledgeable weigh in on the subject? **UPDATE 1** : FTP dynamically assigns a port number, too, although I don't know if it's from the same range of numbers that I've seen elsewhere (32768-61000?). How do firewalls etc. deal with this?"}
{"_id": "206855", "title": "Run jQuery search on a URL's content", "text": "I'd like to create a program/application to iterate through all of a Tumblr user's posts and copy the content from each. In essence it'd be like Tumblripper, but download the text and video URLs in addition to the photos. I have the know how to strip the content, pictures, and video URLs from one Tumblr page using jQuery if I have access to it, but how can I have my javascript run using a different page's content that has no `<script>` referencing the js file? For example I have the code               var contentArray = []     var $content = $('.content');     for(var i = 0; i < $content.length; i++)     {         // Code to copy the content and put it in the array     }      But I can't just edit the HTML of the Tumblr page to add in a reference to my javascript page. What I am in need of is something like (in theory)               RUN getTumblrsContent.js ON exampleblog.tumblr.com      and have it make it's way through the HTML and find each div with class `content`. How might I accomplish this? How does Tumblripper and other applications like it get content from web pages? I'm open to using other languages and means to accomplish my goal"}
{"_id": "245720", "title": "When deciding a Primary Key, can I use Date part of a DateTime field", "text": "I'm designing a payroll system I have designed a database with several tables and this question is related to following tables `EMPLOYEE (Employee_ID [pk], Name,... etc)` `LOCATION (Location_ID [pk], Name, Address, ...etc)` These two tables have many to many relationship as one employee can work in several locations and in a location, several employees are working. These two tables are related through `ATTENDANCE` table. `ATTENDANCE (Employee_ID, Location_ID, Shift_Type, In, Out)` Shift type would be either \"Day\" or \"Night\" and \"In\" / \"Out\" fields are `DateTime` fields. The shift type is decided based on the date in the field \"In\" . For example if an employee's `In` field is lets say -`06/22/2014 07:30:00 PM` then the shift type is `Night` and shift is belongs to 22/06/2014. (his `Out` time would be `23/06/2014 07:30AM`; that is on next day) THE CONDITION is that, an Employee can't work same shift on same date twice even in two locations. But an employee can work Day in a location and Night in another location. My initial primary key selection ATTENDANCE table was `(Employee_ID + In)` but that is wrong as an employee can work same shift in same day if the `In` time is slightly different in two occasions. So now I know the primary key should be some thing like `(Employee_ID + Shift_Type + Shift_Date)`. But the problem is I don't have a Date field in the ATTENDANCE table. But I have `In` field which is a `DateTime` field. Hopping that my understanding about the issue is correct..., My question is, with out adding another field to ATTENDANCE table as `Shift_Date`, is there a possibility to get the Date part of the field `In`, when creating a `PRIMARY KEY` for this table ?"}
{"_id": "206851", "title": "Continuous Integration with Bamboo and Maven, Managing Version Numbers?", "text": "I am currently developing a product that is broken up into a few main parts: A Server, an Android client, a Desktop client, and a class library for providing common data structures. Currently my team is using Maven (with a private Nexus repo) and TeamCity to do continuous integration, but we're having a ton of problems with builds failing due to version numbering issues. Our current solution involves using the Auto-Increment Versions Plugin for Maven, but any time we make any changes to our pom files we have to manually update the version of the pom file since the version of the pom in Git is now out of date. My team and I have decided to look at Atlassian Bamboo, and since we are making changes to our workflow we would like to iron out these issues all at once. Here is what we are looking for:   1. We want to specify a major and a minor build number (such as 0.3) and have the resulting artifact deployed to our repository as major.minor.auto-incrementing-build-number (such as 0.3.2, 0.3.3, 0.4.0).   2. We want this to be as automatic as possible, since we have several developers and it only takes one person making a mistake to cause a disruption to everyone's workflow.   3. We would prefer for this functionality to happen in Bamboo if possible, as Bamboo's \"clone project\" feature would allow us to replicate this functionality across multiple applications quickly, as well as keeping all of our pom files from having a ton of additional code for managing versions. Has anyone had any experience doing something like this through Bamboo, or is there another approach that I should consider to make this easier?"}
{"_id": "204989", "title": "Ajax - Responding business errors", "text": "This might sound like another of those questions with \"best way\" or \"best practice\" but I couldn't find anything related that could give me some light. The scenario... I have some ajax calls. Everything works alright. I make the calls, get the results back, change fields, values, colours. Nothing interesting here. But then, yesterday, I was writing another ajax method. Basically, two date fields to return number of days without holiday days. Again, nothing interesting here... until the point where I could pass invalid dates. Now, my question... in an ajax interaction, whenever I have a scenario where the data passed by an ajax call is invalid (understand invalid, the formatting is wrong or the data does not suit some sort of business), **should I respond any ajax call that contains data not suitable for my server side processes with a http status different of 200 or create a model with errors and messages and everything?** I've found people doing like AjaxRespond models and responding that. My point here is that if the data is not good, I could respond a http status 200 and deal with the ajax model to check if there are errors or not but I could also respond a 500 and be sure that there is an error. I can see two perspectives here. 1- the call was successful from javascript/ajax side and therefore 200 is the logical way to respond. This one sounds like \"I have good news and bad news\". 2- the call was successful but the data was busted and therefore 500 (or any other suitable status) was returned. This one is more doing business logic inside try/catches."}
{"_id": "204985", "title": "C++ Web Development: Wanting a minimalist start", "text": "I'm currently working on a Computer Science degree, and I want to build my own Web Server library. The problem? Every search I've done on interacting with web sites points to \"Use this library that was built by someone else\" - instead of explaining the basics of sending and receiving information. I'm not asking for a lot - I just want to enter a single alpha-numeric character on a web page, hit a button, and have that one byte of information sent to a C++ program, without the aid of a non-standard library."}
{"_id": "204987", "title": "Processing every leaf under a node in a tree efficiently", "text": "**Short version:** In a tree (non-binary) with many levels of children, where each node can have multiple leaves, what is the best way to tally leaves that meet a certain condition given a node? **Long, convoluted version:** Say you have Folders, which can contain more Folders. In production, my system has about 15 layers of folders at the deepest. Each folder may have documents. When a user navigates to a folder, they need to know how many documents are in that folder, total. They also need to know how many of those documents have been \"flagged\". Documents can be flagged if, after a certain time period, they have not been updated. This is determined based on history entries - take the last history entry for the folder, if it's bigger than X, then it's flagged. Right now I'm iterating over all folders > subfolders > etc > children to check the history entry and tally recursively. This is getting pretty slow now so I need a new approach. I've come up with two options but want to know if there's a better approach, or which one of these is best. **option 1** : Whenever adding a document or removing a document, iterate up the parent graph and increment / decrement a \"DocumentCount\" property that's stored in the Folder entity. This means that adding / removing take a minimal performance hit. But the problem here is that I actually need to count total number of documents, as well as total number of documents that are flagged (by checking history entries), so that means that I'll need another field and another process to call when this status changes. This introduces even more complexity as checking whether or not something is flagged is a method call, not a property. **option 2:** Have a timer job run through and update the \"documentCount\" and \"unopenedDocumentCount\" properties of each folder in the system, would be lots of CPU cycles and seems wasteful. **option 3** : Just thought of this - maybe iterating over every document and seeing if the document is a direct or distant child of the target node before evaluating would be better than iterating via recursion. I feel like this would be better for nodes high-up in the tree, but iterating over every child for a low-level node would be ridiculous. Hmmm... I'm tempted to implement option 1.. what other options are there?"}
{"_id": "159260", "title": "Public-private key pair handling on a Windows ecosystem", "text": "I've been thinking about how to architect an infrastructure for one of our business applications with the following requirement:   * **Data written by some user can only be read by that user and his superior and a 3rd person yet to be defined** I'm thinking in using some sort of asymmetric algorithm, such as RSA for data encryption. We can generate a public-private key pair for each user and store the public key of each one openly on a database, but how should we handle the private key ? If we just let the users manage their private key one day we will have a big headache if one of them loses his key. If the private key becomes public somehow then the data would become public too, rendering the architecture invalid. Our infrastructure is heavily Microsoft-oriented: All applications are ASP.Net MVC3, our dabatase is SQL Server 2005 and we use Active Directory for user authentication and basic data, such as e-mail/phone number. How would you guys architect a solution to solve this problem ? Bottom-line: This is not a banking or financial application, it's some kind of 360-degree personal feedback system. EDIT: Adding more requirements, hoping to make it more clear:   * This database will be in production environment, where developers don't have access;   * When the database is restored, developers should not be able to recover the data;   * The DBA should not be able to view the data by SELECT'ing the rows on the tables; EDIT 2: Bounty info. Bounty went to the answer with more upvotes, although my personal feel is that none of the answers provided addressed the question correctly. For this reason, I'm granting the bounty but not marking the answer as correct."}
{"_id": "159267", "title": "How much help should I give during technical interviews?", "text": "I'm asked to perform or sit in during many technical interviews. We ask logic questions and simple programming problems that the interviewee is expected to be able to solve on paper. (I would rather they have access to a keyboard, but that is a problem for another time.) Sometimes I sense that people do know how to approach a problem, but they are hung up by nervousness or some second- guessing of the question (they aren't intended to be trick questions). I've never heard my boss give any help or hints. He just thanks the interviewee for the response (no matter how good or bad it is) and moves on to the next question or problem. But I know something about the rabbit hole that defeat and nerves can lead you down, and how it disables your mind, and I can't help wondering if providing a little help now and then would ultimately help us end up with more capable programmers instead of more failed interviews. Should I provide hints and assistance for befuddled interviewees (and if so, how far should I go while still being fair to the more prepared candidates)?"}
{"_id": "204983", "title": "Combining Single Page Application and DDD with a REST API", "text": "I'm creating a web application which on the client side consists of a Single Page Application (with Durandal) and on the server side an ASP.NET MVC site with a Domain Driven Design. The two are connected with a REST Api (Web API). I have a relation between two entities, which on the database level is many- to-many. (Hotels <=> RoomTypes). Since in DDD a best practice is not to have many-to-many relationships I built it so that it can only be navigated from the roomtype to the hotel (since a hotel can exist without roomtypes, but a roomtype should always be associated with a hotel). The relation itself also has attributes (availability for example). My current issue is how to associate a hotel with a roomtype however. Following DDD practices I would add a method `AddHotel` to the RoomType-class. The problem is that in the SPA, you can edit all the attributes of a roomtype (pictures, description, ...) and associated hotels in a single view. After editing these attributes, an update is submitted via the rest api. This means that everything gets submitted in one call to the server. How would you structure the server and the rest based API so that:   * the domain stays in place and there's correct validation inside the RoomType-class   * you can post atomic updates from the single page application through the rest   * there's no code duplication on the server and the single page application"}
{"_id": "86017", "title": "What is the right level of granularity for code commenting?", "text": "Commenting in code I believe is very important but recently I've been reviewing code that has left me wondering particular this one.                //due to lack of confidence with web programming leaving this note in for now      What is the right level of granularity for code commenting? EDIT: Obviously the above comment is shocking hence why I'm asking the question. I've recently noticed the inline comments in the code at my work place annoying. Instead of getting angry I want discovery the acceptable level of granularity for code commenting in the community."}
{"_id": "245091", "title": "What complexity do DI frameworks add?", "text": "The currently most upvoted answer to a very recent question states that > DI containers are an \"enterprise software\" pattern, used when the object > graph is very large and complex. I suspect that 95% of applications do not > require it. which is something I strongly disagree with. Maybe I've got the terminology wrong, but for me DI framework means just \"something wiring my objects together\". Am I missing something? I'm using Guice even for really tiny projects (like 10 classes) in order to _simplify_ them. Sure, it's a 400 kB JAR file, but this isn't what I'd care about. For a small project I hardly ever need any configuration and the only \"overhead\" is adding the `@Inject` annotation. So I really wonder, what added complexity do DI frameworks cause? ### Update addressing the answers In a 82 class project, I have   * 32 `@Inject` annotations   * 15 `@Singleton` and 1 `@ProvidedBy` annotations   * 4 Providers (all of which I'd need also without DI as they're my factories)   * 1 Module containing a single line   * 0 lines XML !!! That's all. Sure, it's small project, but exactly this was my point. The additional work was a few _words_ rather than _lines_. I'm using solely constructor injection in order to get immutable \"easygoing\" objects. Whenever a new dependency appears, I add a final field, let Lombok's RequiredArgsConstructor take care of the declaration, and let Guice take care of calling it properly."}
{"_id": "245912", "title": "REST API Structure", "text": "I have a REST API that looks something like the below where a person can belong to an organisation (but doesn't have to) and a person has many items. The items may also belong to the organisation instead of the person.               /people/:personId     /people/:personId/items     /organisations/:orgId/items     /organisations/:orgId/people/:personId/items      There is a scenario where we want to query the items for multiple people within an organisation, what's the correct URL structure to use? ### Option 1               /organisations/:orgId/people/items?personId=1&personId=2      ### Option 2               /organisations/:orgId/items?personId=1&personId=2      ### Option 3               /items?personId=1&personId=2"}
{"_id": "106597", "title": "Why and for what reasons developers may not like \"daily scrum\"?", "text": "There are advantages in holding daily scrum, like:   1. Team get coordinated with each other   2. Everyone knows what amount of task has been done   3. Burndown chart gets more and more complete   4. Task board is updated    5. It doesn't last that much, 15 minutes won't kill anybody However, recently (after 6 months of implementing and using scrum), I feel like that our developers don't like scrum daily that much anymore. People just update the task board, without explaining enough and it seems that they're bored of it. I see that when for any reason, we don't hold it, they kind'of become extra-happy. I just don't know what could be wrong with this. Are there any reasons mentioned somewhere for disadvantages the \"daily scrum\" can have for a team? What could be the reasons for developers getting tired of daily scrum?"}
{"_id": "72353", "title": "Version control management of large projects", "text": "I'm used to version control, in particular I currently use Mercurial. I have some doubts about how to make it work in large teams, where there is a good probability of having more people working on the same file. Let me make an example with Mercurial (but any decentralized system will be more or less the same). Say we have a central server and three developers Alice, Bob and Carl. The three decide to start working at the same moment and they all pull from the server. By chance it happens that they are working on the same file. Alice finishes first, and push her changes to the server. Then both Bob and Carl finish, more or less at the same time. Before pushing, they check whether there is something new, and find Alice's commit. So they pull it, and each one merges the changes locally. Then Bob pushes it and Carl pushes its changes. What happens here is that on the server there are two heads: one by Bob and one by Carl, and both include merges with Alice's work. Whoever now pulls from the server will find a little mess. Of course one can just merge Bob and Carl heads, but that may not be as simple. Bob and Carl may have had different ideas on how to merge with Alice's work. As soon as more people start working on the project, things can go even worse. So, while in theory I understand how merges are supposed to work, it is not clear to me how to make things manageable in a large project. > How do people manage to resolve conflicts when there are many people working > on the same file, possibly having done different merges in different orders?"}
{"_id": "91251", "title": "Options other than C for embedded projects? I hate the preprocessor", "text": "C is an awesome simple language perfect for close-to-hardware programming, but the preprocessor sucks in comparison to modern languages. Is there an alternative/add-on to the c preprocessor that adds modern features to C pre-processing (eg import vs includes)? In particular, I'm looking for namespaces (or something close to that), a readable macro language, and a more powerful macro language (with reflection). Or do I need to look in to viable alternatives to C for doing embedded programming (my own projects, not contract work where I take on or pass off project) I am aware of D, but haven't really looked into using it for embedded. *edit I can't believe nobody pointed me to this! eLua"}
{"_id": "239084", "title": "Many-to-many in OOP: Class A instantiates Class B, which instantiates Class A, which", "text": "I am mapping Field1 to Field2. The map object instantiates the field object and vice versa, creating an infinite loop. This is in PHP.               class field {       protected $maps; // mapCollection object. all the mappings of this field to others          }          class map {       protected $field1; // field object       protected $field2; // field object     }          class mapCollection {       protected $maps; // array of map objects     }      The mappings and fieldsets are stored in a database where they each have a unique ID. So I decided to allow fetching them using their ids in the constructors.               class field {       protected $maps; // map object       public __construct($id = 0 ) {         if(!empty($id) ) {           $this->maps = // get mapsCollection. data from db         }       }          }          class map {       protected $field1; // field object       protected $field2; // field object       public __construct($id = 0 ) {         if(!empty($id) ) {           $this->field1 = // get field1 data from db           $this->field2 = // get field2 data from db         }       }     }          class mapCollection {       protected $maps; // array of map objects       public __construct($field_id) {         // get maps from db by field id         foreach($dbdata as $map_id) {           $this->maps[] = new map($map_id); // instantiates new map, which instantiates new field, etc         }       }     }      How should I be doing this?"}
{"_id": "239085", "title": "When one thread out of four is executing first line in run() then at the same time what will remaining three threads do?", "text": "I have four thread instances and they are executing `run()` code given below:               public void run (){        System.out.println(\"1st line :\"+Thread.CurrentThread().getName());        System.out.println(\"2nd line :\"+Thread.CurrentThread().getName());        System.out.println(\"3rd line :\"+Thread.CurrentThread().getName());        System.out.println(\"4th line :\"+Thread.CurrentThread().getName());        System.out.println(\"5th line :\"+Thread.CurrentThread().getName());        System.out.println(\"6th line :\"+Thread.CurrentThread().getName());     }      When one thread out of four is executing first line then at the same time what will remaining three threads do? Either they are waiting for executing first line or will they proceed other lines of code?"}
{"_id": "239087", "title": "Using 2 Constructors: one that injects dependencies and one that instantiates them", "text": "I started using TDD for the first time on a project I started recently. I have a few objects with dependencies and structures that look something like this:               public class MyClass     {         private readonly IDependency1 _dependency1;         private readonly IDependency2 _dependency2;              public MyClass(IDependency1 d1, IDependency2 d2)         {             _dependency1 = d1;             _dependency2 = d2;         }              public MyClass()         {             _dependency1 = new Dependency1();             _dependency2 = new Dependency2();         }     }      For tests I use Mock objects for the dependencies but in the implementation I sometimes let the constructor new up a concrete object. It feels like I am cheating by doing this but I'm not sure why it is bad in practice. Is this considered bad practice? If so why?"}
{"_id": "239082", "title": "Why do we must declare a public API when using semantic versionning?", "text": "from semver.org: > **Software using Semantic Versioning MUST declare a public API**. This API > could be declared in the code itself or exist strictly in documentation. > However it is done, it should be precise and comprehensive. Why are we forced to declare a public API? Why can't I use it for my own website that has no API? Perhaps I am wrong with the definition. For me it is a part of the site desigedn for other developers (i.e.: `api.example.com`) that allow them to query my website and get the result into structured data (json, xml...)."}
{"_id": "91259", "title": "User uploaded images: limit file size on front end or reduce on back-end?", "text": "I was wondering what the standard/best practice is with regard to managing user-uploaded images. Obviously there needs to be a way to limit file sizes, but what's the best and most common practice here -- limit the size of the image that can be uploaded by the user, or reduce the size once it's uploaded on the back-end? Thanks for any guidance! Ken"}
{"_id": "224082", "title": "Where should an object in CQRS+ES be fully initialized: in the constructor, or when applying the first event?", "text": "There appears to be widespread agreement in the OOP community that the class constructor should not leave an object partly or even fully uninitialized. > **What do I mean by \"initialization\"?** Roughly speaking, the _atomic_ > process that brings a newly created object into a state where all of its > class invariants hold. It should be the first thing that happens to an > object, (it should only run once per object,) and nothing should be > permitted to get hold of an un-initialized object. (Thus the frequent advice > to perform object initialization right in the class constructor. For the > same reason, `Initialize` methods are often frowned upon, as these break > apart the atomicity and make it possible to get hold of, and use, an object > that is not yet in a well-defined state.) **Problem:** When CQRS is combined with event sourcing (CQRS+ES), where all state changes of an object are caught in an ordered series of events (event stream), I am left wondering when an object actually reaches a fully- initialized state: At the end of the class constructor, or after the very first event has been applied to the object? > **Note:** I'm refraining from using the term \"aggregate root\". If you > prefer, substitute it whenever you read \"object\". **Example for discussion:** Assume that each object is uniquely identified by some opaque `Id` value (think GUID). An event stream representing that object's state changes can be identified in the event store by the same `Id` value: (Let's not worry about correct event order.)               interface IEventStore     {         IEnumerable<IEvent> GetEventsOfObject(Id objectId);      }      Assume further that there are two object types `Customer` and `ShoppingCart`. Let's focus on `ShoppingCart`: When created, shopping carts are empty and must be associated with exactly one customer. That last bit is a class invariant: A `ShoppingCart` object that is not associated to a `Customer` is in an invalid state. In traditional OOP, one might model this in the constructor:               partial class ShoppingCart     {         public Id Id { get; private set; }         public Customer Customer { get; private set; }              public ShoppingCart(Id id, Customer customer)         {             this.Id = id;             this.Customer = customer;         }     }      I am however at a loss how to model this in CQRS+ES without ending up with deferred initialization. Since this simple bit of initialization is effectively a state change, wouldn't it have to be modelled as an event?:               partial class CreatedEmptyShoppingCart     {         public ShoppingCartId { get; private set; }         public CustomerId { get; private set; }     }     // Note: `ShoppingCartId` is not actually required, since that Id must be     // known in advance in order to fetch the event stream from the event store.      This would obviously have to be the very first event in any `ShoppingCart` object's event stream, and that object would only be initialized once the event were applied to it. So if initialization becomes part of the event stream \"playback\" (which is a very generic process that would likely work the same, whether for a `Customer` object or a `ShoppingCart` object or any other object type for that matter)\u2026   * Should the constructor be parameter-less and do nothing, leaving all work to some `void Apply(CreatedEmptyShoppingCart)` method (which is much the same as the frowned-upon `Initialize()`)?   * Or should the constructor receive an event stream and play it back (which makes initialization atomic again, but means that each class' constructor contains the same generic \"play back & apply\" logic, i.e. unwanted code duplication)?   * Or should there be both a traditional OOP constructor (as shown above) that properly initializes the object, and _then_ all events but the first are `void Apply(\u2026)`-ied to it? I do not expect of answer to provide a fully working demo implementation; I'd already be very happy if someone could explain where my reasoning is flawed, or whether object initialization really _is_ a \"pain point\" in most CQRS+ES implementations."}
{"_id": "224080", "title": "Do any object-oriented programming languages support \"collective constructors\"?", "text": "I was recently considering that sometimes several objects depend on each other (e.g. if they contain cyclic references) and therefore it would be useful to create them as part of one atomic operation that makes sure that, after construction, the new objects fulfil some collective constraint. In order to do this one could have constructors that can create more than one object. The programmer would then put in a single constructor all the code ensuring that, once objects o1, ..., on have been created, they satisfy all required constraints (e.g. all links between the new objects are already in place). I have made up the term **collective constructors** myself because I have never heard of such a feature, but there might well exist an accepted name for this concept. So, is there any programming language supporting this kind of constructors? If not, has the idea been tried out already?"}
{"_id": "100297", "title": "Tools and/or methods for regular Code review of Remote development team", "text": "We are outsourcing a development to a small team of offshore developers. Our in house process for code review is manual, paper based, based on a waterfall model requiring \"big bang\" delivery. It cannot be changed. Past experience is these devs are proficient and reliable, however come time to deliver, the overhead of reviews becomes a difficult burden for everyone involved and issues are being found too late. We use CVS for our source repository. They take a copy of the CVS repo, receiving regular updates to the most recent code base, and use GIT locally to manage their changes. When ready to deliver, send us a tarball of an upto date CVS clone with their work merged into it. We then code review and check it in. We are looking for a tool chain to support a code review process where we can do regular, light weight reviews outside our inhouse process, so that when the inhouse process kicks in, we can do it \"go fast\" mode as we have already reviewed most of the code. Limitations are that there systems and ours are disconnected. We use sneaker net to transfer files between us. The best we can do is have one machine in house that VPN's into their system. The source is commercial code and cannot be placed anywhere where it is exposed to the internet. One option they have suggested is Gerrit - which they plan to use on their site. Is there a way to share and synchronise the gerrit database between sites, given the limitation of the sneaker net? Does anyone else have a solution to tis kind of problem?"}
{"_id": "100298", "title": "Naming UI components in web based editor", "text": "I'm developing a web-based source code editor. I'm developing everything(tabs, context menu etc) out of HTML elements. How do I come up with names for UI controls? Is there a book or guide or project from which I can learn how to name things?"}
{"_id": "177330", "title": "How to choose a development method?", "text": "There are many academic/industrial researchs about various development methods (Scrum, XP, waterfall, ect.), telling us how to do it right and stuff. But I never saw something that suggest how to choose a method, what will be better for a given project. I know that what the developers are used to is an very important aspect. But lets say that I am assembling a new group from scratch, and that every programmer in the world is willing to work with me. :) What aspects of the project should I consider to decide between Scrum, XP, TDD, ect.? Or is that an entirely human thing, regardless of what is being developed?   * I said that all programmers are available, but you may comment they're knowledge about the domain, or other characteristics in the answers. E.g. \"If you chose to hire people with no domain knowledge, `MethodX` is better than `MathodY`, beacause ....\" is a completely welcomed answer."}
{"_id": "230757", "title": "How useful is command prompt?", "text": "As a beginner into programming, I wanted to know if there's any use or good in learning how write commands in a command prompt? If yes how useful is a command line interface and where is it used? P.S Also do suggest me some good resources to learn it if applicable."}
{"_id": "230755", "title": "Trouble understanding the COCOMO model", "text": "In the basic COCOMO Model which is used to estimate the development time of software Effort : a * KLOC^b = X person months Development time : c * Effort^d = Y months where a , b , c , d are constants derived from the table below depending on the type of your software project ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jr2lO.png) > Question 1 Assuming X = 10 , Effort will be equal to 10 person months. Does 10 person months mean that the effort required to complete this project will be 1 month if we have 10 people working on it **OR** Does 10 person month mean that the effort required to complete the project will be 10 months if we have 10 people working on it. > Question 2 Do the constants have any SI units like the SI unit of Effort is person months I am confused by the terminology"}
{"_id": "130995", "title": "Enterprise Architecture Certification", "text": "I want to make the step up from developer to enterprise architect. I have 13 years experience in various environments, from SME line of business apps to investment banking enterprise systems. I'm certified in a number of technologies, including Java/.NET/SQL. What should I focus on over the next 12 months that will hold some weight with potential employers and lend credibility to my application for an Enterprise Architecture role, absent experience? I am currently looking at TOGAF 9.1. Are there other competing or supplemental methodologies I should research?"}
{"_id": "252281", "title": "Difference between USP and IEEE rounding", "text": "I am trying to understand the difference between different rounding methods: Our application offers two different types of rounding:   * IEEE    * USP (GMP) rounding. http://www.usp.org/sites/default/files/usp_pdf/EN/USPNF/USP34-NF29General%20Notices.pdf In our unit tests, they seem to do the same thing for the cases being tested. However, I haven't found anyone in the office who can explain what is meant when selecting rounding mode of IEEE"}
{"_id": "244354", "title": "Why do VMs need to be \"stack machines\" or \"register machines\" etc.?", "text": "(This is an extremely newbie-ish question). I've been studying a little about Virtual Machines. Turns out a lot of them are designed very similarly to physical or theoretical computers. I read that the JVM for example, is a 'stack machine'. What that means (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that it stores all of it's 'temporary memory' on a stack, and makes operations on this stack for all of it's opcodes. For example, the source code `2 + 3` will be translated to bytecode similar to:               push 2     push 3     add      My question is this: JVMs are probably written using C/C++ and such. If so, why doesn't the JVM execute the following C code: `2 + 3`..? I mean, why does it need a stack, or in other VMs 'registers' - like in a physical computer? The underlying physical CPU takes care of all of this. Why don't VM writers simply execute the interpreted bytecode with 'usual' instructions in the language the VM is programmed with? Why do VMs need to emulate hardware, when the actual hardware already does this for us? Again, very newbie-ish questions. Thanks for your help"}
{"_id": "91766", "title": "quick prototyping in project design & development", "text": "i'm currently working on a project in my spare time (mostly 3-4 hours from monday to friday, and up to 6 hours on sundays) and i've found redmine very useful to hold a record of development tasks. However, there are some stuff, specially when you are trying to prototype or brainstorm a redesign of a set of related classes, that the best tool that i've found for this still is **a sheet of paper and a pen**. I want to understand if maybe i'm just short of getting to work properly with existing tools. Do you find the use of a notebook or a journal an unavoidable part of software design? are there better alternatives? how do you organize pen-and-paper work and other software management tools like redmine?"}
{"_id": "132622", "title": "What is the best way to divide work among developers", "text": "My team and I are rebuilding a site we developed around ten years ago, and we want to do it in Agile. So after I spent a lot of time reading (probably not enough) I am having trouble with the question how to divide work between developers. I'll be more specific and say that the site is divided to separate modules that doesn't have much integration between one another. What is the best / Most accepted way to divide the work between the developers?   * Giving each person a different module to work on.   * Assign all developers to the same module, and split the work by different parts of the module (UnitTesting, DAL and Mapping, Logics, UI)   * Assign all developers to the same module, and split the work by different logics (For example each developer is in-charge of a specific logic(probably a method in the BL) and It's UnitTesting, DAL and Mapping and UI... Or maybe something entirely different?"}
{"_id": "101747", "title": "Are there still any companies/academic centers that use mainframes from 60s-70s?", "text": "As a young software engineer, I often hear other colleagues talk about the days of punch cards and \"computers as big as the room.\" The earliest memories of computers that I have involve MS DOS and Windows 3.1. My question is, are there still any companies, academic centers, or government agencies that still use mainframes from the 1960s-70s in their daily operations? If so, can you think of a place that would allow visitors to observe such a machine at work? I know that there are several museums out there that possess such pieces, but I cannot think of a functioning one."}
{"_id": "185124", "title": "How to fix bad fundamentals?", "text": "I am a native PHP developer, and have been for about a year or so. I love PHP and it was very easy for me to learn, but I have developed some bad habits along the way due to never having a formal education in programming. It's pretty easy to get the job done in PHP without writing the best code. I am looking to work more with another language; not because I don't like PHP but because I want a clean slate to learn programming fundamentals. I am looking to stay with web development, so Ruby or Python seem to be where I'm leaning, though I am open to other suggestions. The more important question is, how do I approach learning this new language to really become a good programmer rather than a guy that can \"get the job done\"?"}
{"_id": "87948", "title": "How do I let customers run arbitrary code as securely as possible?", "text": "I'd like to offer a service where customers can write arbitrary java code, send it to me, and I'll run it for them on Amazon EC2. My question is: how can I do this without exposing one customer's data to another customer? Right now I'm thinking that each customer can be sandboxed as their own OS- level user with restricted permissions. Is that good enough? I understand that this is a tricky issue, but it seems to be one that many people, such as the designers of multi-user OS's and Amazon themselves are solving, so I am optimistic that there might be a good approach."}
{"_id": "229544", "title": "How do purely functional programming languages deal with fast changing data?", "text": "What data structures can you use so you can get O(1) removal and replacement? Or how can you avoid situations when you need said structures?"}
{"_id": "232921", "title": "Optimistic & Pessimistic Programming - Ensuring multiple tasks are called only once for specific record", "text": "Let's say you have 10 database records which you need to process in the following way:   1. Start   2. Pull 2 records from the database with the 'Processed' flag set to 'false'   3. Call the external web service with the custom data from this 2 records.   4. Update those 2 records in the database and set them as 'Processed' = 'true'   5. Goto 1 **Now, what can happen in this scenario?**   1. -   2. An error can occur while pulling the records from the database      * that's fine, as in the next round we will try to get them again.   3. An error can occur while calling an external web service      * that's also fine, as in the next round we will try to send those 2 records again   4. An error can occur while calling the database for the processed record update      * **what to do now?** Are you optimistic that this will never happen?      * keep in mind that you already sent those 2 records via web service and you must not send them again at any cost     * one option is to call a database update in a loop until it runs successfully !?   5. - **The question is, how (would) you handle this situation?** _**_**UPDATE**** Code illustration:               loop     {         db = database         ws = webservice              trans = db.open_transaction              recs = trans.query_for_two_records_and_update_processed_to_true              ws_response = ws.send_text_messages(recs)              if (ws_response == success)         {             trans.commit() // what would you do if this fails?         }         else         {             trans.rollback()         }     }"}
{"_id": "43899", "title": "Breaking into database administration", "text": "I am brand new on this site and look forward to interacting with each of you. I am graduating in June with my Bachelors Degree in Computer Information Systems with hopes of become a DBA in the future. I am currently taking a Database class now and studying SQL Server/T-SQL on the side. My experience in IT is limited to managing an Access database at my last employer for two years. What are the chances of landing a junior DBA position after I graduate?"}
{"_id": "252288", "title": "AngularJS Directive vs Service vs Controller", "text": "I am about to start implementing a change request on my companies internal website, that will check a bunch of fields and highlight them if they match certain guidelines. For example, if the date of birth is today, that field will be outlined and the tooltip will say \"Wish them a happy birthday!\". The specs ask for this to be loaded after the rest of the page is done rendering, so it won't increase the load time. Since I am new to angularJS, I'm not sure of the 'proper' ways this should be done. Issues: Since this includes adding borders and images and title attributes (DOM manipulation), it seems I should be using a directive. However, this won't be reusable or 'short' like most directives seem to be. Half of the data I need to check will be returned in the original call on page load, so I would like to save that and not waste another call getting it again, which makes me think a service would be nice for storing all that data. I do know how to do this all in the controller, but that is bad bad code :P Any ideas on the best way this could be done? Basically, I will need an http call to check all the data, which will return an object with bool values for each type of 'Call Out' I need to do. Then I'll run through this list and if the value is true, add a border, image, and tooltip text. I'm not sure if this question is clear enough, so if you want me to add some details, please ask. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "130669", "title": "How independent is Clojure from Java?", "text": "I am quite new to the Clojure world. I appreciate the fact that one has easy access to all Java libraries via Clojure interop features, but I was wondering how much Clojure stands on its own legs. Of course there are some platforms, like Android, where interoperability with Java will always be required, because the core libraries are written or exposed in Java. Moreover, since Clojure strings are Java strings, I expect string manipulation libraries to be a wrapper on the Java String methods. But for other tasks I see no reason why native Clojure libraries couldn't be developed. Think of Http, date manipulation, XML parsing, templating, JSON serialization and deserialization, OAuth, math libraries and so on. So my question is: How far has Clojure come to become independent of the Java ecosystem? Does it have its own idiomatic libraries for most of these and other tasks?"}
{"_id": "224033", "title": "Can we live without constructors?", "text": "Let's say in some reason all objects are created this way $obj = CLASS::getInstance(). Then we inject dependencies using setters and perform starting initialization using $obj->initInstance(); Are there any real troubles or situations, which can't be solved, if we won't use constructors at all? P.s. the reason to create object this way, is that we can replace class inside getInstance() according to some rules. I'm working in PHP, if that matter"}
{"_id": "135013", "title": "Is there a specific term for an accessor method that returns a boolean value?", "text": "I seem to recall that there is a specific term for an accessor method that returns a Boolean value but it escapes me. For example: typical methods such as:               class Example {         bool isDirty();         bool hasChildren();         bool isValid(SomeType obj);     };      I will also settle for such a term as applied to a non-member functions."}
{"_id": "135011", "title": "Removing the \"integration test scam\" - Understanding collaboration and contract tests", "text": "I've recently watched Integration Tests are a Scam by J. B. Rainsberger and am now looking for more material on the subject. I have to say, I'm shocked by how much we're doing wrong, (i.e. integration testing when we should unit test), intrigued by the concepts described by Rainsberger but also confused about how to apply them. I would like to have more of the described **collaboration tests and contract tests** but I don't know where to start. The only things that got stuck in my mind are the 4 questions the tests need to ask: **Side A:**               Do I ask the right question?     Can I deal with the answer?      **Side B:**               Can I answer a question?     Do I answer correctly?      But how do I apply this to some random method in my application stack? Is there a book or a tutorial or example out there that takes a real world example and applies these ideas of isolated micro tests? Ideally the example uses **Java, Spring + PowerMock / Mockito / EasyMoock** Any literature that deals with these concepts in general and helps me understand them better would be appreciated. Also if there are forums out there where I can ask more detailed questions about how to go about correctly unit testing and maybe even refactoring existing code and post examples would be nice. Thanks! * * * **Edit - some additional thoughts:** Is there a general rule, when to use a mock and when a stub to isolate a class under test from it's collaborators? Can it be applied to the 4 questions? The best mocking frameworks seems to be PowerMock, allowing me to precicely define for each test what class I want to have mocked and what it should return or is there anything better that you have used to ask the above questions? Are there good tutorials out there that use PowerMock to apply some or all of the given principles to some part of a real world application stack, say a DAO or a GUI? * * * **Edit 2 - an example** Just some example of the kind of methods I want to test and my thoughts.. I have a web service that saves orders. At this stage we're not too worried about the best security, so to have some, the service will also take a username and password to authenticate the save request. Once authenticated, the `OrderManager` is called to save the `Order`. Internally the manager decides if its a new order so it has to be created or an existing one that has to be updated. (That shouldn't matter to the WebSerice, right?)               @WebService     public class OrderService {         @Inject         private AuthenticationManager authenticationManager;              @Inject         private OrderManager orderManager;              public void save(String username, String password, Order order) {             authenticationManager.authenticate(username, password);             try {                 orderManager.save(orde);             } finally {                 authenticationManager.logout();             }         }      Now I am wondering: What exactly am I testing here? I'm thinking there should be tests for authentication success and failure and for order saving success and failure. But how can I split that up into the 4 questions? My class under Test is obviously `OrderService` (OS) and the collaborators are `OrderManager` (OM) and `AuthenticationManager`. (AM) So I have the following tests, please correct me here, I am just thinking aloud: **OS <\\--> OM**   * OS asks OM to save an order (what kind of different parameters do I test here? `null` and `Order`? Does it matter if `Order` is correctly initialized?)   * OM answers a save call by calling some other internal method, I I test if that method gets invoked?!   * OS should not fail if OM does not fail   * OS should fail if OM fails ... What else? And then of course **OS <\\--> AM**:   * OS asks AM to authenticate - I guess I test how the AM reacts to different kinds of username / password?   * ... Now my **first conclusion** : As far as the WebSerice is concerned I can only test 2 out of 4 questions: Side A. Now I have to look at the `OrderManager` and `AuthenticationManager` and see if they can answer the questions of side B. Right? Secondly - database access: Authentication and Order persisting obviously requires some data in the database in a production environment. For my unit tests however I won't need them so I'll just mock the calls to return the desired result, right? But how do I mock this? I need the `AuthenticationManager.authenticate` to pretty much do nothing, as in case of a failed authentication it will throw an `Exception`, else it has the return type `void`. How do I tell my `OrderService.save()` to use my mocked `AuthenticationManager.authenticate()`? And how do I set the `AuthenticationManager` up to either do nothing or throw an exception? Can I tell Spring to **inject** a mocked `AuthenticationManager` that will do nothing / throw an `Exception` into my `OrderService` under test?"}
{"_id": "135017", "title": "How can you effectively use web services in an enterprise environment if you can't use transactions?", "text": "The place I'm working at is trying to establish some ground rules, and the debate we're having now is local libraries vs web services for code reuse. Web services seem to be the popular pick in most companies, and that's what most of the developers here are leaning toward. I just can't see how you can effectively use web services for any serious work. How can I safely execute multiple service calls if I can't use a transaction? Let's say I have a cron job that grabs customers from our database who meet a certain condition that they need to be notified of. They are sent a fax, an email, and a ticket is created to track the issue internally. That is 3 different service calls that would happen for each customer in a for loop. If an error occurs anywhere in there, it's possible that, for example, a fax and email is sent to the customer, but a ticket is not created. Or worse, this cron job could contain a bug on that causes it to fail at the same point every time, and it repeatedly emails the same customer. If the libraries were all local, everything could just be wrapped in a transaction, and none of that would happen. But we're using web services in this example. Note that the email and fax methods actually insert the data into database- backed queue tables, which in turn are handled by a separate cron job process. So the calls to the \"send email\" and \"send fax\" service methods could be aborted side-effect free if needed. An option is to put this entire chunk of code in the web service itself, so the web service itself would call the email, fax, and ticket creating methods in a transaction. But then we're creating a web service method just for the use of a transaction; there is no valid reason we would ever actually need to call this method from anywhere except this one cron script. How would you generally handle this method?"}
{"_id": "135014", "title": "How do I use PowerMock / Mockito / EasyMock to use a mocked object for dependency injection?", "text": "I have an `AuthenticationManager.authenticate(username,password)` method that gets called in someMethod of a SomeService under test. The AuthenticationManager is injected into SomeService:               @Component     public class SomeService {         @Inject         private AuthenticationManager authenticationManager;              public void someMethod() {             authenticationManager.authenticate(username, password);             // do more stuff that I want to test         }     }      Now for the unit test I need the authenticate method to just pretend it worked correctly, in my case do nothing, so I can test if the method itself does the expected work (Authentication is tested elsewhere according to the unit testing principles, however authenticate needs to be called inside that method) So I am thinking, I need `SomeService` to use a mocked `AuthenticationManager` that will just return and do nothing else when `authenticate()` gets called by `someMethod()`. How do I do that with PowerMock (or EasyMock / Mockito, which are part of PowerMock)? Or is there another way to tell Spring to use some Mock instead of the real deal, when injeeting the `AuthenticationManager` into `SomeService`? Or is my design wrong? Thanks! * * * **Edit - found a solution, would like to hear comments** So I found a nice way to inject a mock without having to use a setter or package level:               @RunWith(PowerMockRunner.class)     public class TestOrderService {              @Mock         private AuthenticationManager authenticationManager;              @InjectMocks          private OrderService orderService = new OrderService();              @Before         public void setup() {             MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this);             Mockito.doNothing().when(this.authenticationManager).authenticate(null, null);         }              @Test         public void testOrderService() {             orderService.save(null, null, null);         }     }      with OrderService like this:               public void save(String username, Order order) {         authenticationManager.authenticate(username, password);         // do something with the order...     }      Now the save method will call authenticate on the mock and the mock does nothing leaving me free to test the actual work inside my service method (which actually is calling a manager method but that was not the point ;) )"}
{"_id": "128812", "title": "n-layers architecture design, really worth the effort?", "text": "I was building an application in .Net for almost a year (almost alone), I took the decision to build it with a 3-layer design. Recently when finished the project, I analyzed if the effort of creating this application with layer design in mind really compensate for the \"benefits\" obtained implementing such design. Out of port the desktop application to web without any major code rewrite and to be almost database-agnostic; I don't see any further benefits of this. Any experiences, and thoughts?"}
{"_id": "219988", "title": "Search for object in loop or query? Who has better performance?", "text": "I have a DB that stores some complex objects of my app. When my app starts I load the objects into list and store them on the RAM. But sometimes I would like to search for an objects that fulfills conditions (filtering), even the conditions are complexes. I was always wrote a for loop (sometimes a very complex one) for this thing, that runs on these objects. But I heard recently that DB and SQL queries have a lot optimization mechanisms (dependent the DB company), and its works faster then regular search. If I understand it correctly, it's better to write a SQL query that search these objects and returns objects IDs. And then by them IDs, get the relevant objects. Its look like the ultimate solution for searching objects. But I'm a little bit doubtful about this idea, because all the time we learned that DB is slow, and it's better to load the objects to RAM and work on them... So I have two questions:   1) Are the queries actually more faster then regular search (for complex searches)?   2) Maybe its true for many many objects (thousands), but is it true for few objects (tens)?"}
{"_id": "219983", "title": "What architecture to use for AJAX calls?", "text": "I am working on a website with PHP as backend. There are things from the front-end which I'd like to accomplish using AJAX calls. Which of these methods should I use to design them and why?   * Call to different PHP files for different uses ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3EURr.jpg)   * Call to the same PHP file, with instructions on what to do ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KUIKq.jpg)   * A RESTful API   * Any other better way?"}
{"_id": "219980", "title": "Potential issues with code reviews", "text": "for clarity, **code review** = a team meeting and reviewing/sharing code What are the potentially negative aspects of the code review process in a development environment? What comes to mind for me   * Strong criticism can lead to negative interactions and feelings of animosity between colleagues.    * Laziness to read and understand new code can lead to apathetic and very general feedback.   * Considerable Time investment is required to organize and execute the review process. There must be more than this though, What negative things have you guys noticed or experienced?"}
{"_id": "219986", "title": "I want to sell a simple calculator. What is the simplest way to implement registration keys?", "text": "I want to sell a simple calculator that will help a certain industry. This calculator would be installed on the computer (as opposed to a web service). How is a registration key mechanism implemented?"}
{"_id": "219984", "title": "Is there a design pattern that describes the separation of a Form from a Model", "text": "I am working on a web application implemented in C#, that follows MVC conventions. This application contains a page that allows me to create or update a Wingding. The view passes a complete Wingding Model back to the controller for me to create or update. The problem is that the page also has a checkbox that allows me to create identical Wingdings for _all_ users. The current code adds a variable to the _Winding Model_ to capture that data, so it can be passed back from the view. It seems obvious to me that the page should have a _Wingding Page Form_ object that is passed back from the view to the controller, instead of adding extra variables to the Model that won't get saved to the DB. I know that this counts as separation of concerns, but is there a more specific design pattern that describes the separation of a From from a Model?"}
{"_id": "240299", "title": "Managing resource paths in source code", "text": "I suspect this is something that many of you guys have dealt with, and I'm certain there's articles on how to do it, but I cant seem to find them. My problem is that my various constant classes in Java (read: classes containg lists of static constant values) are too many and too big, and some of them have some annoying complex static initializers. We've got a file paths class, a file name class, a constants class, a strings class, a colors class (for the swing components) and a bunch of css for the JavaFX components... it goes on and on. The CSS is manageable, the rest of it is quickly becoming not-so. having classes like this               public class Constants {         public static final String something = \"Something\";         public static final Path someResourcePath = staticMethodCall(RootString, dirTraversal);         public static final Image spinner = iconFindingStaticMethod(dirTraversal)         //and on and on for hundreds (not yet thousands thankfully) of lines              //and then often we have         static{             //code that determines our environment and fudges some paths as appropriate             //sometimes we ask the class loader to find some things for us             //nothing too scary, but still, static initializers are never friendly.         }     }      is good for one very powerful reason: Every java programmer out there knows exactly what this class does and how it works. The ones with static initializers might be a little confusing, but for the most part, the above is PO-Static-JO. I like that. but it also introduces a number of problems. I'll try to enumerate the ones I know of here:   1. the most obvious code smell of all: these classes are multiplying and they're all annoyingly large. We've got one for file extensions thats got a couple dozen entries, including things like `public static final String XMLFileExtension = \"xml\"`. That might be a bit much, but I'm not really willing to fault the dev who wrote it. It wouldn't be hard to replace references to that with the string value, but I'd like to encourage this kind of code, so I'd feel stupid doing it. But these classes are getting large and annoying.   2. use of static constants is not testable. This in itself isn't too often a problem since the values in those classes are supposed to be simple, but it does turn into a problem when you do something like `Constants.someFilePath.exists() ? a() : b()` (since there's _no way to intercept that exists() call_ , from any environment we're going to ask the actual file system if that path exists, which is a problem for testing.) We're on guice, so I'd really like to inject these values like everything else, so they can be modified by our fixtures with fake/stub/mock values.   3. It also introduces a dependency problem. Right now we have a couple of IntelliJ & Guice Modules (semi-separate code bases) under the same git repo. They all use our original module's constant files, which means all modules have a dependency with that module, but with static constants whats the solution? Copy-paste?  Some solutions I've thought of:   * we could leverage guice and simply inject every single needed constant with an `@Named` parameter. This addresses problems 2 & 3, but compounds problem 1 since the binding logic would have to either be incredibly long and contain a huge swath of duplicate registration, or employ some pretty complex composition.    * we could go the auto-generate-source-java-from-XML-or-JSON route, which I've used with Android and I believe some C# component I worked on briefly. The extra step in the build process adds a level of complexity in an area (that is: devops) that not a lot of developers are familiar with. It was nice to have just a big table in eclipse containing all my values, but the added complexity to the build process is unwanted. Furthermore the static initializer logic couldn't fit into this model.    * stay the course with Java, maybe extract a package near the route called \"Environment\" or \"constants\", and then give that package a number of constant classes that can inherit other classes with shared fields. Regarding testability, we run into java inlining final fields. We could replace each field with a simple getter, but that makes an already overly verbose problem more verbose.  I really don't know how I want to tackle this. I've been telling myself to let it become a problem for a few months now, thinking that some kind of solution would emerge. It hasn't, and know we have a kind've gnarly dependency graph, hacks around testing code with file paths, and large constant classes. What kind of solutions have you guys employed for managing these files? Am I being overly concerned and what we've got now is the best solution? Thanks guys, -Geoff"}
{"_id": "201851", "title": "How can an developer working alone respond to a spike in server demands?", "text": "Imagine this scenario: You've created a multiplayer game app for a mobile platform such as Android. You successfully set it up with one server, you figured out how to do that. It works quite well. To your surprise, the game TAKES OFF. Server demands explode. You need to scale, but you have hardly any experience with running a single server, let alone running multiple servers in tandem. What do you do? Is there a service (Heroku-style) to help with such a thing? Anything? Or do you need to hire someone with a certain skill set and the necessary experience?"}
{"_id": "240292", "title": "C++ returning references", "text": "Looking at making a GUI library for a game engine. I generally avoid pointers if I don't need them and in my below example I find that I don't and it works, but just curious if this design is generally considered good practice or if anyone has comments on it.               int main()     {         // all widgets are positioned and sized according to the window size         Window wndOptions(\"wndOptions\");              Button cmdExit(\"cmdExit\");              // the window doesn't own the widgets nor does it create the widgets so it's not responsible for deleting the widgets         wndOptions.AddWidget(&cmdExit);              // this is how you can find a control and get it casted also. make your variable a reference         Button& test = wndOptions.FindWidget<Button>(\"cmdExit\");              test.SetPosition(50, 25);              return 0;     }      As you can see the idea is that you create your controls (button in this case) and pass a pointer to them to the Window. Then you can find the control by name returning a reference to that control in which you can manipulate the control. It's a bit pointless to use FindWidget() in this example since I have the cmdExit variable, but if I was to pass the window around this would be a way to find and use controls. The biggest issue I have is that FindWidget() might not find a widget. Right now I throw an exception as not finding a control I would deem as a true exception and not something that should happen much if at all. Any comments about the usage being done this way?"}
{"_id": "85099", "title": "What's next after learning the basics of the C programming language?", "text": "After having learning the basics of C programming from several books (variables, arrays, linked lists, etc.), what comes next? Any suggestions of areas to extend my C programming skills to, and any helpful sources? Because I was wondering what experienced programmers did after learning the basics."}
{"_id": "233819", "title": "Injecting dependencies (DI) in c++ applications", "text": "I am playing with dependency injection, but i am not sure I am doing it right. Especially, I am not sure what should be the correct way to build classes with injected dependencies. Say I have a class A that creates class B. Class B depends on class C and class C depends on class D. Who should be responsible for creating class D?   1. It could be class A. However, in a large system, class A might end up creating and assembling a very large number of objects.   2. A separate builder class that will create D, C and B. A will use this builder class.   3. Some other option. In addition, I read a lot about DI containers. However, it seems that there are no major frameworks for C++. Also, if I understand correctly, DI can be performed well even without containers. Am I correct?"}
{"_id": "146070", "title": "Architecture guidelines for a \"single page web-app\"", "text": "I'm going to start a side project to build a \"single page\" web application. The application needs to be real-time, sending updates to the clients as changes happen. Are there any good resources for best-practice approaches wrt the architecture for these kinds of applications. The best resource I've found so far is the trello architecture article here: http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech- stack/ To me, this architecture, although very sexy, is probably over-engineered for my specific needs - although I do have similar requirements. I'm wondering if I need to bother with a sub/pub at the server side, could I not just push updates from the server when something happens (e.g. when the client sends an update to the server, write the update to the db, and then send an update to the clients). Tech-wise, I'm probably looking to build this out in Node.JS or maybe Ruby, although the architecture guidelines should to some extent apply to any underlying server technologies."}
{"_id": "200183", "title": "Radix exchange sort implementation?", "text": "I need a little help understanding the implementation of radix exchange sort algorithm. Radix exchange (I don't know if it's the exact name in english based literature) is a lot similar to quicksort, but uses binary representation of numbers. Firts we look the highest digit in binary representation, and then using two indexes (from the beginning of the array and from the end, we increment the first if the given digit is 0, and decrement the other if the given digit is 1). Then we swap two numbers, and then continue the work until i = j (the indexes are equal). Then we have two separate partitions and sort them using the second most important digit and so on... Mainly, I have a few questions:   1. Is this algorithm really called radix exchange or does it have some other, more commonly used name?   2. What are the advantages of this algorithm? It seems like a lot of work, and not very effective?   3. Where can I see an example of implementation of the algorithm? Maybe it will be a little more clearer on what it really is, because it's really confusing for me at the moment."}
{"_id": "182475", "title": "How much to test in TDD?", "text": "I am newbie to TDD (writing first project following TDD practices). I have fairly basic interface `IProfiler` and an implementation `Profiler`.               interface IProfiler     {       bool IsBusy {get;}       long Elapsed {get;}     }      A Simple Test                   IProfiler profiler = default(Profiler);         [TestInitialize]         public void Initialize()         {             profiler = new Profiler();         }              [TestMethod]         public void ProfilerInitializationTest()         {             Assert.AreEqual(false, profiler.IsBusy);             Assert.AreEqual(true, profiler.ElapsedMilliSeconds == default(long));         }      The question is : As I will have more state, Number of asserts will increase. Should I keep separate Assert to test each field or should i include all here, or should I group into 3-4 similar asserts?"}
{"_id": "182472", "title": "Drawing Flowchart for function calculate a number in the Fibonacci Series", "text": "I'm trying make Flowchart for function calculate a number in the Fibonacci Series. But It looks like not right. I don't how draw the recursive function. Please help me how to fix it. My flowchart: DIA ![PNG](http://ubuntuone.com/7SrSmJWoTpuQekGY43Hcqa) This is my code:               #include <iostream>     using namespace std;          long long Fibonacci(int input);          int main()     {         cout << \"Input Fibonacci Index number: \";         int Index = 0;         cin >> Index;         cout << Fibonacci(i) << endl;         return 0;          }     long long Fibonacci(int input)     {         if (input < 2)             return input;         else         {             return Fibonacci(input - 1) + Fibonacci(input - 2);         }     }"}
{"_id": "231081", "title": "Using streams as method parameters and/or return types", "text": "So let's say I have a 'Transformer' interface that can transform one file-type to another. Let's say I also wish to use streams to provide the data to the Transformer. Which is the approach that is considered 'best practise';               public InputStream transform(InputStream data);      OR               public void transform(InputStream originalData, OutputStream newData);      Although the first method seems to be slightly more concise to me (ie, you get an inputstream that you can consume immediately) it seems to violate the whole 'creator of a stream should be the one who closes it' principle. The second method, whilst needing a bit more work on the part of the client to handle the outputstream, seems like it might be more useful in some cases (ie, passing a ServletOutputStream as the 'newData' argument) and the client code will handle all opening/closing of streams. I am leaning towards the second method but I have seen both used in various APIs I have come across and am wondering if there are situations where one would be preferred over the other?"}
{"_id": "231083", "title": "Are \"Stocks\" a TDD/Unit testing anti pattern?", "text": "From Martin Fowler's Mocks Aren't Stubs he states that **Stubs** provide canned answers to calls made during the test while **Mocks** objects pre- programmed with expectations which form a specification of the calls they are expected to receive.   In addition several sources state that Stubs **shouldn't** fail tests, but Mock **could**. So what about this:               $validator= $this->getMock('ValidatorService');                  // Set up the expectation for the isValid() method             // to be called only once and with the string 'textToBeValidated'             // as its parameter and returns true or false.             $validator->expects($this->once())                      ->method('isValid')                      ->with($this->equalTo('textToBeValidated'))                      ->will($this->returnValue(true));      This came up in a code review in a project I'm working on and we called it a **Stock** ( **St** ub - M **ock** ). Why you ask?!   1. It set an expectation for `isValid()` to be called only once and with certain input like a Mock.   2. It returns a canned answer like a Stub. I get a feeling that this is wrong, but what if we used a pure Stub only:                $validator->expects($this->any())  //<-- can't fail the test now                          ->method('isValid')                          ->will($this->returnValue(true));   //<-- canned answer        * I can't verify that the method `isValid` was called only once with the right parameters.   * If the test passed I'm not sure that it passed for the right reason. Maybe `isValid()` was called twice and that caused it to pass. So let's use a pure Mock instead:               $validator->expects($this->once())                          ->method('isValid')                          ->with($this->equalTo('textToBeValidated'))        * I can't verify that my function works correctly, because I only verified that call to `isValid()` was successful. Maybe there is a bug in the rest of my code using the `ValidatorService`. I know some people will talk about state vs behavior verification, but the way I see it the only way to be sure that the test passes for the correct reason is to to use a Stock (i.e. verify the behavior and final state). Of course the other option is to write 2 test for every test criteria. One using a Mock and an identical test using a Stub. However, that will result in a TestOverflow (a huge number of nearly identical tests). What is the correct way to have a concrete test of a function using a dependency?"}
{"_id": "241506", "title": "Securing web services", "text": "How to approach securing webservices? I can think of using one of the two approaches below   1. sending a user name password in every request for validation   2. Sending a time based token (GUID or some similar long string) In the first approach I have to query a database every time in most cases an RDBMS to authenticate a user. In the second I now make a user name password authentication only once and then return to the user a time based token. All future business requests are authenticated via this token. On expiry this token will need to be recreated by the calling client. Both approaches seem to have their own pros and cons. Which one would you recommend in which circumstances and what would be your reasons for the same? Perhaps a specific condition where one favors the other."}
{"_id": "216874", "title": "MVC + 3 tier; where ViewModels come into play?", "text": "I'm designing a 3-tiered application using ASP.NET MVC 4. I used the following resources as a reference.   * CodeProject: MVC + N-tier + Entity Framework   * Separating data access in ASP.NET MVC I have the following desingn so far. **Presentation Layer (PL)** (main MVC project, where **M** of **MVC** was moved to Data Access Layer):               MyProjectName.Main         Views/         Controllers/         ...      **Business Logic Layer (BLL)** :               MyProjectName.BLL         ViewModels/         ProjectServices/         ...      **Data Access Layer (DAL)** :               MyProjectName.DAL         Models/         Repositories.EF/         Repositories.Dapper/         ...      Now, PL references BLL and BLL references DAL. This way lower layer does not depend on the one above it. In this design PL invokes a service of the BLL. PL can pass a View Model to BLL and BLL can pass a View Model back to PL. Also, BLL invokes DAL layer and DAL layer can return a Model back to BLL. BLL can in turn build a View Model and return it to PL. Up to now this pattern was working for me. However, I've ran into a problem where some of my ViewModels require joins on several entities. In the plain MVC approach, in the controller I used a LINQ query to do `join`s and then `select new MyViewModel(){ ... }`. But now, in the DAL I do not have access to where ViewModels are defined (in the BLL). This means I cannot do joins in DAL and return it to BLL. It seems I have to do separate queries in DAL (instead of joins in one query) and BLL would then use the result of these to build a ViewModel. This is very inconvenient, but I don't think I should be exposing DAL to ViewModels. Any ideas how I can solve this dilemma? Thanks."}
{"_id": "231089", "title": "Web design pattern", "text": "I am building a small website, in PHP and I am using MVC design pattern for the UI.   In the future I will need to add mobile support for my website. It will be in the sub domain \"m\" like everyone. All the web is new for me, and I am new with MVC too. I did for each page View, Model and Controller. The Views and the Models are in some internal directory, and the controller is in the public directory of the server (the servers root directory). **My Questions:**   1. Do I need to create a new MVC design for the mobile pages, or can I use the Model of the regular website?   2. Most of sites have \"m\" sub-domain for mobile web pages. But the only thing that need to change is the View part. If the public page is the Controller, why not to create only Views for the mobile pages, and the Controller will decide which View will present? Like:              if ($isMobile) {           include 'mobiles\\main.php';       } else {           include 'web\\main.php';       }      With the \"m\" sub-domain, you must have different Controller. Not so?"}
{"_id": "182478", "title": "How to protect my php code running on a client server?", "text": "I'd like to ask how to protect my code that is running on a client server from being altered and/or copied.   It's running on Ubuntu Server with the standard Apache Php Mysql stack.   Any software needed would preferably be open-source. I'd also like to terminate the application when there is a license problem.   Doing this using my code is possible but since it's php the client could alter the code to prevent this from happening. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "235816", "title": "Is byte stuffing required when using a packet field length", "text": "I'm involved in a project which involves implementing a binary protocol that will be transmitted over TCP. During our early discussions we have hit a brief snag on deciding whether byte stuffing is required if we decide to include the packet length in the field header. For example. If our packet structure was like so:               [STX] [PACKET LENGTH] [PACKET ID] ..... [ETX]      Do we need to byte stuff? One of my colleagues seems to say that given we know the packet length then even if a special character i.e. STX, ETX appears in the bytes it will not matter as we are reading [Packet length] amount of bytes anyway. Seems to make sense but I'm not 100% sure if that reasoning is quite right. Please note that we are not using existing protocol handler type modules such as proto-buf but designing this protocol ourselves for our own use. To confirm what I think I'm meaning when referring to byte stuffing: > Byte stuffing is a process that transforms a sequence of data bytes that may > contain 'illegal' or 'reserved' values into a potentially longer sequence > that contains no occurrences of those value Taken from Wiki - Consistent Overhead Byte Stuffing"}
{"_id": "244945", "title": "What are \"siblings\" of .json files?", "text": "I was reading through the documentation for Bower here and I read this line: \"The .bowerrc file should be a sibling of your project's bower.json.\" What does that mean exactly? Searching Google returned questions of people asking how to find siblings, but not what they actually are."}
{"_id": "247117", "title": "Doctrine 2 and Concrete table inheritance", "text": "I use Doctrine 2 and I've read some articles on inheritance strategies' mapping with ORM. I've seen three main strategies : \"Class table inheritance\", \"Concrete table inheritance\" and \"Single table inheritance\". With Doctrine 2, I managed an install of \"Class Table Inheritance\" (CTI) and \"Single Table Inheritance\" (STI). In some cases, I think use the \"Concrete Table Inheritance\" is most appropriate, but i didn't find any documentation which show this strategy in Doctrine 2. Why there is no \"Concrete Table Inheritance\" with Doctrine 2 ? Is it for performance ? What is the reason ?"}
{"_id": "247118", "title": "When to use default access modifier?", "text": "I want to understand, from design point of view, in what situations I should use default access modifier, and when I shouldn't. I found this related question, that provides some basic explanations, how ever I am searching for an answer that will target encapsulation and single reason of change principles, and address it in more professional way."}
{"_id": "121500", "title": "Should security restrictions cause a service to return null or throw an exception?", "text": "I'm in a bit of a disagreement with a more experienced developer on this issue, and wondering what others think about it; our environment is Java, EJB 3, services, etc. The code I wrote calls a service to get things and to create things. The problem I ran into was that I got null pointer exceptions that didn't make sense. For example, when I ask the service to create an object, I get null back; when I try to look up an object with a known valid ID, I get null back. I spent some time trying to figure out what was wrong in my code; since I'm less experienced I usually assume I've done something wrong, but it turns out the reason for the null returns was security. If the user principal using my service didn't have the right permissions for the target service, then it simply returns null. Most other services here aren't documented very well either, so apparently this is just something you have to know. This is rather confusing as a developer writing code that interacts with the service. It would make much more sense to me if the service thew an exception that would tell me that the user didn't have the proper permissions to load this thing or to create that thing; I would then immediately know why my service wasn't working as expected. The more experienced developer who wrote the service argued that asking for the data is not an error condition, and that exceptions should only be thrown in an error condition, not when the user doesn't have access to the data. This data is often looked up in a GUI, and for those users without the right permissions, these things simply \"do not exist\". So, in short: asking is not wrong, hence no exception. Get methods return null because to those users those things \"don't exist\". Create methods return null when the user wasn't allowed to create that thing. Is this normal and/or good practice? I prefer using exceptions because I find it much easier to know what's going on. So I would for example also prefer to throw a NotFoundException if you asked for an object with an invalid ID, rather than returning null."}
{"_id": "173528", "title": "Where should I put a method that returns a list of active entries of a table?", "text": "I have a class named `GuestbookEntry` that maps to the properties that are in the database table named \"guestbook\". Very simple! Originally, I had a static method named `getActiveEntries()` that retrieved an array of all `GuestbookEntry` objects. Each row in the guestbook table was an object that was added to that array. Then while learning how to properly design PHP classes, I learned some things:   1. Static methods are not desirable.    2. Separation of Concerns   3. Single Responsibility Principle If the `GuestbookEntry` class should only be responsible for managing single guestbook entries then where should this `getActiveEntries()` method most properly go? ## Update: I am looking for an answer that complies with the SOLID acronym principles and allows for test-ability. That's why I want to stay away from static calls/standard functions. DAO, repository, ...? Please explain as though your explanation will be part of \"Where to Locate FOR DUMMIES\"... :-)"}
{"_id": "2261", "title": "Out of all the projects out there, what is a good example to learn from?", "text": "Sometimes, you can learn a lot from just looking at a project rather than looking around for advice... What are good state-of-the-art projects out there that are very good examples to learn from?"}
{"_id": "255125", "title": "Login from external application in MVC", "text": "We have an ASP.Net MVC application that use Identity provider to authenticate users. A new customer now wants to access owr application pressing a button inside their winform app. I started to modify my login controller adding a new HttpGet method that accepts username and password and follow the standard login path. It works yes, but now a security hole is open! Passing \"password\" as parameter is not a great idea. I'm thinking to implement an hashed-token system; the external app encrypt a token with username, password, timestamp, salt... I recive the token in the login method, compare token with locally generated one and continue with login. The problem here is that password inside identity schema is hashed (passwordHash property) so I cannot generate the token on my server side. **_Update_** I wrote a simple winform client with an HttpWebRequest to get the OAuth token from my web application. Now I've a valid token but how can I use this token to access my application?               var request = WebRequest.Create(\"http://localhost:2409/token\") as HttpWebRequest;             request.Method = \"POST\";             request.ContentType = \"application/x-www-form-urlencoded\";             request.CookieContainer = new CookieContainer();             var authCredentials = \"grant_type=password&userName=...     ...     token = dynamicObj.access_token;          ...          System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(\"http://localhost:2409/??????token=\" + token);      Can someone help me?"}
{"_id": "255127", "title": "Database design with performance issue and use of views", "text": "I am designing database for a school system. I am having to create a lot of tables and a lot of link tables to maintain a structure in the system. I am trying to maintain foreign integrity and trying to create unique data entry as possible. But this will create problem with queries when I start building out the system. I will have to make a lot of joins and I am afraid that this take a toll on optimization and performance. In this instance, I have a student who is taking a course for a subject. While he takes the course he can be borrow a book related to that subject from library. My tables would be a. Subjects with: id, name b. course with: id, name, subject id c. link table to know that the student is taking the course: id, user id, course id d. library item table id name e. a link table to know which library item the student is borrowing: library id, id from c I am trying to user primary key from c because this will make sure that if the user is no longer taking the course he would not be allowed to borrow a book. The link table will cascade if the relation does not exist between the course and the user. The problem with this is that. If i need to know the name of the subject that the student has borrowed book for. I have to join four tables. I can simply just add subject id id e to get the subject name. But that is what I hate. If this is really an issue with performance would using views make the queries faster and is it really feasible to implement views in a project. So I guess my questions in this are,   1. Is it really a big performance issue to make multiple tables with unique columns. I have heard indexing columns help quite a lot?   2. Are views helpful in maintaining the relational database and making the queries faster?   3. And in table c I have not used separate primary key id because I want to make sure that the one student can borrow one item at a time. Is this a good practice?"}
{"_id": "255126", "title": "In PHP how to save directory the php file is in to a variable (centos)", "text": "so say my php file \"example.php\" is in the directory \"/user/example\" I thought that the line \"$dir = getcwd();\" would save \"/user/example\" to $dir but instead it is saving the directory that the user running the script is in, e.g. if I run the script from the root directory, the $dir variable will contain the root directory. Is there a command I can use or a tip you can give me so that I can save the directory that the php file is in?"}
{"_id": "255129", "title": "What is latent parsing in NLP?", "text": "I'm reading a paper describing a NLP work, and I hardly catch the concept of a term, \"latent parsing\". Original paper: http://web.stanford.edu/~angeli/papers/2013-acl-temporal.pdf The figure in the page 6 seems to be helpful (I can't upload the figure because of my reputation)"}
{"_id": "221005", "title": "How can I write complex validation and business logic that can be reused in both direct data model changes and pending dialog changes?", "text": "I was hoping for some advice: I need to design a software solution for a medium-sized java / Swing application. The application will have about 200 use cases requiring complex data validation and business logic. Typically, this is my usual design:   * Create a simple POJO for each use case, with a custom constructor and custom validation and business logic within it's execute method. These Operations implment simple and complex data validation such as required fields, unique names and more complex constraints.   * Create a single controller that has a method for every use case. Each method takes custom parameters, constructs and executes it's related operation.   * For the sake of simplicity, I won't mention details about Data Model notification or Operation queuing mechanism. This solution has worked will in the past because it encourages all developers to reuse existing controller methods and validation, however: The new application will use dialogs extensively for data entry; These dialogs are expected to implement the same complex data validation and business logic that the controller implements, however the dialogs are not expected to update the data model until the OK button is clicked. I hate the idea of writing multiple versions of the same complex validation and business logic, due to the maintenance nightmare it invites. How can I perform complex business logic and validation for both standard data model changes and \"pending\" dialog changes, given that the dialog doesn't commit it's changes until the OK button is clicked? The data model may be quite large, so creating an in-memory clone of it and the controller doesn't seem viable. Does anyone have any suggestions? If so, I'll be forever in your debt."}
{"_id": "236360", "title": "Why do some program after installation need the system to be restarted?", "text": "I was asked this question in an interview. After installation of programs on windows OS,some program need the system to be restarted while others not. What is the reason behind this? I googled but didn't get satisfactory answer. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "219362", "title": "How to test the data access layer?", "text": "I have a DAO method that utilizes Spring for JDBC access. It calculates a seller's success rate of selling an item. Here is the code:               public BigDecimal getSellingSuccessRate(long seller_id) {         String sql = \"SELECT SUM(IF(sold_price IS NOT NULL, 1, 0))/SUM(1)                        FROM transaction WHERE seller_id = ?\";         Object[] args = {seller_id};         return getJdbcTemplate().queryForObject(sql, args, BigDecimal.class);     }      How should I go about testing this method or any DAO method with JUnit? What are some best practices to test the data access logic? I am thinking of testing it against an embeddable database loaded with some data, but shouldn't we do integration tests similar to a production environment in terms of RDBMS and the schema?"}
{"_id": "173527", "title": "combining ruby and C++", "text": "I've been discussing a conceptual project with a friend of mine and the the most effective way we've seen of doing it is writing the engine in C++ while the logic would be done in Ruby.   However, we would need data to be passed around often, for example:   * Engine reports that A happened, that gets triggered in a proc array (event \"A\" is passed but proc doesnt use it)   * Ruby decides that we need to wait for B to happen   * Ruby adds a proc to an array. The array of procs is iterated during each cycle in the C++ engine   * C++ engine reports that B happened and passes \"event B (should be a ruby object)   * Ruby receives event B and decides what to do next I don't work with multiple languages often, and was wondering if it's possible to implement things in this way. I know that there's the ruby VALUE in C++, but would like to know the standard way of combining the two. (of course I know ruby follows the perl \"more than 1 way to do it\", but there's often a standardized way) Edit 1: I've ran a quick test with SWIG and met a problem really fast. From what I can see, ruby (1.9.3p286, though it uses the 1.9.1 gems afaik) can't load the shared object. I've put the code, actions done and more information here. Edit 2: Tried compiling to latest ruby and swig version (god, I love ABS) to see if maybe it was some compile error upstream. I got no errors and problem remains. Seems it might be an incompatibility between this SWIG version and Ruby version... Or a problem with the current Ruby version."}
{"_id": "203984", "title": "What architectures are used commonly in php?", "text": "I want to know what architectures are commonly used in developing PHP web applications. I've used MVC earlier for J2EE, but in J2EE everything is separated as part of the language itself (pojo/servlet/jsp). I don't know how to utilise MVC in PHP as the separation of concerns is code- only. Can we use MVC in PHP as well and if so, how? Are there any other architectures that I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "124483", "title": "Is it legal or ethical for me to use my previous employer's code in a new project?", "text": "I participated and wrote a large amount of code in a project which my current company outsourcing to my former company last year. After that I left my former company and recently join in my current company. Several days ago, my current employer asks me to continue the project on top of the existing code (my current company owns the copyright and they have the code). I think it is neither ethical nor legal to do this. So should I refuse my current employer? Could my former employer take me to court if I undertake the project?"}
{"_id": "124481", "title": "What are the causes that lead to an overbloated software?", "text": "Today I decided to perform a clean install for Creative Sound Blaster drivers, as they always start glitching all by themselves after some time. And that meant I had to go through the whole cleanup procedure. And that took me almost 2 hours.. And honestly, I can't see a reason why?! And although Creative, IMHO, is an absolute 1st place winner for producing poor quality software that never works, the bloat problem is not exclusive to them. PC with Canon digital camera driver will have around 10 Canon entries that are interconnected with all sorts of connections. Visual Studio is also a prime example, there is around 50 or so entries for full install, and repairing that thing is only possible with complete nuking. And once it even managed to ruin the whole OS install when I was upgrading from VS2k8 to VS2k8SP1 or something. As it turns out 5GB of free space was not enough for 300Mb patch... So this really seem to be a widespread problem. Almost every application nowadays usually contains unpackers, multiple spywarish \"friends\" that are installed, drivers are usually around 600Mb for everything including printers and so on. But why? Is it developer fault? Applications like that are nightmare to support, they never work 100% nowadays, and almost all users I know are very negative about all that bloat they get as a mandatory driver install for USB thumb drive/Printer/Camera/Sound Card/Browser. It seems that NSIS from Nullsoft is the only clean setup system that is not bloated, from what I know, for example, Firefox install. Clean, pretty much xcopy based install without any problems. So why people are not using simple setups and applications that are not rooted over 30 layers of interconnection? Is it because developers are lazy? Use of codegen tools? Is it because corporations force heavyweight apps as something users will love? What's the cause, and is there a hope software will return back to basics someday? What are the steps to avoid writing bloat when you start new application from scratch?"}
{"_id": "203983", "title": "Which languages I should learn to develop an android app", "text": "I have some free time. I want to develop some android apps. I know a little bit of html, css and basics in C programing. The problem is I don't know any java or .net. I have to start from scratch and should learn on my own. Is it possible? If possible what should I learn to make some quality apps? I can spend time if I can learn."}
{"_id": "45138", "title": "Worst practices in C++, common mistakes ", "text": "After reading this famous rant by Linus Torvalds, I wondered what actually are all the pitfalls for programmers in C++. I'm explicitly not referring to typos or bad program flow as treated in this question and its answers, but to more high-level errors which are not detected by the compiler and do not result in obvious bugs at first run, complete design errors, things which are improbable in C but are likely to be done in C++ by newcomers who don't understand the full implications of their code. I also welcome answers pointing out a huge performance decrease where it would not usually be expected. An example of what one of my professors once told me about an LR(1) parser generator I wrote: > You have used somewhat too many instances of unneeded inheritance and > virtuality. Inheritance makes a design much more complicated (and > inefficient because of the RTTI (run-time type inference) subsystem), and it > should therefore only be used where it makes sense, e.g. for the actions in > the parse table. Because you make intensive use of templates, you > practically don't need inheritance.\""}
{"_id": "128105", "title": "Developing using a non-official kit on the Android?", "text": "I have been doing some research on developing on the Android platform and found that the only way to develop an app using C++ is using the NDK. I also came to know that the NDK has limited support to C/C++, with C++ having even lesser support than C. Here's the problem. I need to develop using C++ as I'm not very familiar with Java. In fact, not familiar at all. I'm still 18, so I don't have much experience with many programming languages. After doing some more research I have found a non-official NDK, called the NDK-CrystaX that implements more support for C/C++ than the official NDK. Before I start using I have to know if it would be legal to use this custom NDK in an Android app and still be able to sell it on the Android Marketplace. Is it? Or is it not? Another solution would be if the newer releases of the NDK had full support for C/C++. But I'm not sure of that either, so I'm seeking your generosity again and asking you to share your knowledge on this too."}
{"_id": "125358", "title": "Is partial classes modern Subject-Oriented programming?", "text": "Important discussion follows: C# and other language have made partial classes more popular. But isn't this really a tool that have reinvented the subject-orientated programming wheel? What do you guys think? Should subject-orientated programming be taught more and get more focus to help programmers utilize partial classes better? Resources: http://ptsoft.net/tdd/papers/MDSoC_Thesis_MsC_Final.pdf Low important optional side track for discussion follows: I my self use a form of subject-oriented when making a space imperium hobby project in unity3d. In unity3d gameobjects (3d models) that exist in the 3d engine can have \"scripts\" (read classes or any code file) attached to them with some special global functions that can run on each frame. This is a perfect ground to use subject orientated programming. Take for example a fleet gameObject, since i can attach one value class (weight, name, attack, defence), one gameRule class that handles all business logic and if i need a new subject, for example \"Raid\" i only add a raid class to the gameObject and all these are separated. These all implements a a general interface for their subject so they can be checked for and accessed by \" IRaid = gameObject.GetComponent[of IRaid] if IRaid is not null: code \""}
{"_id": "245520", "title": "Should I have different automated Selenium tests for different screen resolutions?", "text": "A website I'm creating is going to have three breakpoints: desktop, tablet landscape, mobile. Should I write a test for each resolution?"}
{"_id": "200721", "title": "How to delete an object when other things reference it (and not making the code full of inter-dependencies)", "text": "**The situation:** In my program, there are a list of cues. To call a cue at a certain time, there are objects called Triggers. Cues have many public methods that allow them, among other things, to be \"fired\" (which causes them to perform an action). Triggers \"fire\" cues when they are activated. They do this by taking a reference to the Cue and then calling Cue.fire(). The triggers are all stored in a class called TriggerManager which keeps them in an array list. Cues are part of a linked list with eachother. So, in summery: Triggers know about Cues, but Cues don't know about triggers; Triggers call cues at certain times. **The problem:** When I remove a Cue from the linked list, it's still \"alive\"/hasn't been garbage collected because there's a Trigger with a reference to it. The natural thing would be to delete the Trigger, but that creates a host of issues that need to be solved: The main one is this: Since, the Cue doesn't know about the Trigger that references it, how do I get it to be deleted. (Especially since its referenced by a TriggerManager class). There has to be a way to do this without making Cues dependent on Triggers and Triggers dependent on their TriggerManagers OR Cues dependent on TriggerManagers, which should have nothing to do with Cues (Giving everything a bidirectional reference to each other will make the code complicated and hard to keep track of) **Question:** Is there a solution that will fix my problem while keeping the code manageable? Is my design inherently flawed? If so, how do I fix it?"}
{"_id": "135905", "title": "Legal ramifications of use of the JavaScript trademark?", "text": "It's widely known that the name \"JavaScript\" is trademarked by Oracle (formerly a trademark of Sun, formerly a trademark of Netscape). However, others seem to have no problem using the JavaScript trademark. Google uses it in reference to V8, Mozilla uses it in reference to SpiderMonkey and in various other places, etc. Mozilla is the only one that seems to try to attribute the trademark to its owner (bottom of this page), although at the time of this writing it's incorrectly attributed to Sun rather than Oracle. For a long time, Microsoft used \"JScript\" as the name of their ECMAScript implementation rather than \"JavaScript,\" presumably to avoid infringing on the trademark. Recently (I'm not sure when), Microsoft appears to have switched from the \"JScript\" name to \"JavaScript.\" My understanding based on the version history is that they've written a new ECMAScript implementation and named it \"JavaScript,\" leaving the old one named \"JScript\" (rather than retroactively renaming \"JScript\" to \"JavaScript\"). My question is this: Since JavaScript is trademarked, isn't it an infringement to use it in connection with the name of a product or technology (such as \"Microsoft JavaScript\") without permission? If so, where can I find records of agreements with Oracle/Sun/Netscape allowing third-party use of the trademark? I assume these documents would be publicly listed somewhere, but I don't know where to find them. And finally, if the trademark changes hands again, would previously-made agreements still be valid, or would they need to be re-forged with the current trademark holder? The reason I ask is because I want to know whether I can use the word \"JavaScript\" in the title of a product, for example a JavaScript library, without explicit permission, and whether I need to provide a disclaimer stating that JavaScript is Oracle's trademark."}
{"_id": "135906", "title": "How does a paid Saas actually work?", "text": "Could anyone explain to me how does a paid Saas work please? I know for free Saas you can just create some kind of registration and authentication process which allows the users to use all features. But how does a paid Saas work? Sites like Shopify, Volusion, and many others offer different features at different prices ranging from free to a few hundred dollars. But how do they manage to do it? Btw, I've only had experience with general purpose e-commerce sites, so this kind of advanced things are confusing to me. Thanks."}
{"_id": "84320", "title": "Options for software licensing for plugins?", "text": "I'm creating a software application where up until now, the majority of code and assets have been produced by me. There are smaller bits of code that I've taken from other places; these have all been licensed as \"do what you want with it\". I've gotten to a point however, where I want to incorporate fairly large parts of another project in mine, and this other project is licensed with GPLv3. I hadn't considered licensing issues with my software up until this point; as of right now it's just sitting on my machine with no official license. Incorporating this other project in mine would require me to adopt the GPLv3 license as well. I decided that while I'm okay with most of what I've written to be licensed under GPL, I want some of what I've written to be available for proprietary derivative works (which is incompatible GPL). So how do I get around this? What I've come up with so far is using \"plugins\" or add-ons for my app. While the base application is GPL, I can license the code I want for derivative works to be LGPL or even closed, and simply have them be plugins for my GPL app. Is this viable? My argument is that a plugin is simply something that adds functionality, and does not make my base application a derivative work of the plugin."}
{"_id": "255699", "title": "Allow entities owned by one user to be referenced by other users' entities", "text": "I am working on an Asp.NET MVC web application. I have the following (simplified) entities:               public class Course     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public string Description { get; set; }         public User CreatedBy { get; set; }         public EventArea EventArea { get; set; }     }          public class EventArea     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public string Description { get; set; }         public User CreatedBy { get; set; }         public CoOrdinate CoOrdinate { get; set; }     }          public class CoOrdinate     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public int Latitude { get; set; }         public int Longitude { get; set; }     }      Users can register and create their own Course entities. Each Course has a geographical location, represented by an EventArea which can also be created by a user. As an EventArea represents a geographical location it should be available for use by other users who want to create a course in the same location. However making EventArea entities available to users other than the creator raises the following questions:   1. What happens if the EventArea is modified or deleted by the creating user?   2. Who should be able to view/edit/modify an EventArea entity? Any alternative suggestions for how to approach a scenario where an entity created by one user can be referenced by a different user?"}
{"_id": "164431", "title": "How to learn what the industry standards/expectations are, particularly with security?", "text": "For instance, I was making my first mobile web-application about a year ago, and half-way through, someone pointed me to jQuery Mobile. Obviously this induced a total revolution in my app. Rewrote everything. Now, if you're in the field long enough, maybe that seems like common knowledge, but I was totally new to it. But this set me wondering: there are _so many_ libraries and extensions and frameworks. This seems particularly crucial in the category of security. I'm afraid I'm going to find myself doing something in a professional setting eventually (I'm still a student) and someone's going to walk over and be like, _My god, you're trying to secure user data **that way?** Don't you know about the Gordon-Wokker crypto-magic-hash-algorithms library? Without it you may as well go plaintext._ How do you know what the best ways are to maximize security? Especially if you're trying to develop something on your own..."}
{"_id": "164434", "title": "Long-term Freelance contract: should it have a salary-day or not?", "text": "I don't like to speak about money. I just like to work. I still believe in a relationship between good work and good compensation. Hence I don't want ask my employer about my compensations, actually they are asking me. So I created a liberal contract with unspecified salary-day -- I did not want to lose my rights to my own projects and I did not pay any attention to the salary-day.   1. Now the firm said that they would have paid me 1 month earlier if I had provided a tax -paper. I provided it before the next payment -day (unspecified).   2. During the next month, the co-employer pretty much blocks my working -- does not allow me to access working repository and the co-employer goes to cruise when we should finalize a project so I cannot do anything.    3. Now the project is not finalized, the co-employer has apparently provided some false statements to the boss about my doings (not getting anything for one month's work and 1 month when the co-employer pretty much wasted just my time) -- I was only allowed to debug the code of my co-employer and not to do anything.   4. I feel that co-employer did not allow me to work by purpose so that they have an excuse not to pay any salary.  The co-employer says that I cannot speak to the boss. The boss say that I need to speak directly to co-employer, not to him. I haven't said anything about the situation. I did not get things done because I was not allowed and now I am not even allowed to speak. Boss is the person who pays salaries. But both boss and co-employer have stages in the firm -- I think co-employer and boss are the same person pretty much, they created a theatre so that they get almost 2 month's work for free. Now I have multiple ideas how to avoid this kind of situations in the future:   1. specify the salary day   2. make sure you can speak directly to the manager and the boss, not through middle-hand   3. other?"}
{"_id": "208537", "title": "many include files vs one large include file", "text": "The company I work for is in the process of completely overhauling our current intranet site by moving it onto a Drupal framework. One area I am questioning is the number of include files we have. As it exists right now, every single .php page has a corresponding .inc page. There are .inc pages that provide certain functionality, but aren't tied to a specific page. However, each .php page includes multiple files - at a minimum, it will load the .inc page corresponding to it, and a few general scripts. This makes trying to find a function definition a nightmare when debugging. My options right now seem to be the following: 1)Keep using this same system, but make it part of our convention to include a commented line stating where the function is defined 2) Consolidate all the include files into one large file. This would include class definitions, function definitions, everything. My concern here is that this file would get monolithic in a real big hurry. However, it would have the advantage of keeping all function definitions in one place. I don't like either option to be honest. My goal is to reduce dependencies and make our code readable and easy to navigate. What is our best method to handle this problem? I should also state that this is very much legacy code - it hasn't been refactored since it was created in 2003-2004. Just to give you an idea what I'm working with, there is a lot of php echoing html:               printf(\"<center>\\n\");     printf(\"<table>\\n\");     printf(\"<tr>\\n\");     printf(\"<td align=left>Select Division:</td>\\n\");     printf(\"<td><select name=\\\"div\\\">\\n\");     printf(\"  <option value=1 \\\"selected\\\">Division1\\n\");     printf(\"  <option value=2>Division2\\n\");     printf(\"</select></td>\\n\");     printf(\"</tr>\\n\");     printf(\"<tr>\\n\");     printf(\"<td align=center colspan=2><input type=\\\"submit\\\" value=\\\"Next->\\\"></td>\\n\");     printf(\"</tr>\\n\");     printf(\"</table>\\n\");     printf(\"</center>\\n\");"}
{"_id": "170958", "title": "Directory structure (file system design)", "text": "I was looking at how file systems are designed and noticed that most places say that the directory hierarchy can be implemented using a hash table. Could someone please explain me how using a hash table to store a directory structure works? For example, what would happen if I add a file/ directory or move a directory, how does that affect the hash table? Also, how are paths involved?"}
{"_id": "255692", "title": "Polymorphic engines in C and/or C++", "text": "I stumbled across polymorphic engines and I don't know anything about them. However, I am curious about how they are written. Every example that I've looked up writes them in assembly, my assembly is not good at all; I know just a few instructions here and there but not that well. On the other hand, I am good in C and C++. I am familiar with the concept of polymorphism in C++ but after reading about polymorphic engines, I am assuming that they are different from the polymorphism in C++. I'm just looking for simple code that shows encryption/decryption and/or obfuscation of code using C and/or C++ How can techniques such as using virtual keyword in C++ be used to obfuscate or encrypt the code in an application? NOTE: I was told to transfer this question from stackoverflow.com to this place."}
{"_id": "164438", "title": "Functional testing in the verification", "text": "Yesterday my question How come verification does not include actual testing? created a lot of controversy, yet did not reveal the answer for related and very important question: does black box functional testing done by testers belong to verification or validation?   * ISO 12207:12208 here mentiones testing explicitly only as a validation activity, however, it speaks about validation of requirements of the intended use. For me its more high level, like UAT test cases written by business users   * ISO mentioned above does not mention any specific verification (7.2.4.3.2)except for Requirement verification, Design verification, Document and Code & Integration verification. The last two can be probably thought as unit and integrated testing. But where is then the regular testing done by testers at the end of the phase? The book I mentioned in the original question mentiones that verification is done by static techniques, yet on the V model graph it describes System testing against high level description as a verification, mentioning it includes all kinds of testing like functional, load etc. In the IEEE standard for V&V, you can read this: _Even though the tests and evaluations are not part of the V &V processes, the techniques described in this standard may be useful in performing them._ So that is different than in ISO, where validation mentiones testing as the activity. Not to mention a lot of contradicting information on the net. I would really appreciate a reference to e.g. a standard in the answer or explanation of what I missed in the ISO. For me, I am unable to tell where the testers work belong."}
{"_id": "255690", "title": "Problem in getting the array value at jsp page!", "text": "**js file:**               function savethechanges(){     for(var i=0;i<count;i++)     {         dropdown1[i]=document.getElementById(\"sel\"+i).value;         kot[i]=document.getElementById(\"kot\"+i).value;         item[i]=document.getElementById(\"itemcode\"+i).value;         if(dropdown1[i] == 0){             document.detailsview.action=\"BillCB.jsp?method=\" + \"11\" + \"&itemcode=\" +item[i]+ \"&kot=\" +kot[i]+ \"&itemStatus1=\" +dropdown1[i]+ \"&billno=\" +billno;         }         else if(dropdown1[i] == 1){             document.detailsview.action=\"BillCB.jsp?method=\"+\"9\"+\"&itemcode=\"+item[i]+\"&kot=\"+kot[i]+\"&itemStatus1=\"+dropdown1[i]+ \"&billno=\"+billno;         }         else{             document.detailsview.action= \"BillCB.jsp?method=\"+\"10\"+\"&itemcode=\"+item[i]+\"&kot=\"+kot[i]+\"&itemStatus1=\"+dropdown1[i]+ \"&billno=\"+billno;         }     }     }      **JSP file:** > while retrieving here the dropdown1 length is 1.but for kot and item length > is 18 please provide your solution!                case 11:      gotMethod = true;      billdetails_be.billno = Integer.valueOf(request.getParameter(\"billno\"));      String[] kotCB2=request.getParameterValues(\"kot\");      String[] itemCB2=request.getParameterValues(\"itemcode\");      String[] statCB2=request.getParameterValues(\"itemStatus1\");      int[] kotarr2=new int[kotCB2.length];      int[] itemarr2=new int[itemCB2.length];      int[] statarr2=new int[statCB2.length];      System.out.println(\"IN AVAILABLE:length of array is:\"+statCB2.length);      System.out.println(\"IN AVAILABLE:length of array is:\"+kotCB2.length);      for(int i=1;i<itemarr2.length;i++)      {             kotarr2[i]=Integer.parseInt(kotCB2[i]);      }      for(int i=1;i<itemarr2.length;i++)      {            itemarr2[i]=Integer.parseInt(itemCB2[i]);      }      for(int i=1;i<itemarr2.length;i++)      {           statarr2[i]=Integer.parseInt(statCB2[i]);        }      for(int i=1;i<itemarr2.length;i++)      {          int kotint2=kotarr2[i];          int itemint2=itemarr2[i];          int statint2=statarr2[i];          System.out.println( i+\"the value of kot in available\"+ kotint2);          int availablebill = websrv.availablebill(billdetails_be.billno, kotint2,   itemint2,statint2);        }      **design page(jsp)**               <%     for(int i=0;i<count;i++){     %>     <TR>     <TD>  <input id=\"itemcode<%=i%>\" type=\"hidden\" name=\"itemcode\" value=\" <%=billdetails_be.get(i).itemcode%>\"></TD>     <TD><%=billdetails_be.get(i).itemdescription%></TD>     <TD>&nbsp;&nbsp;<input id=\"quantity<%=i%>\" type=\"text\" name=\"quantity\"  style=\"width:  30px;\" readOnly=\"readonly\" value=\"<%=billdetails_be.get(i).quantity%>\" >     <input type=\"submit\"  id=\"inc<%=i%>\" onclick= \"doIt1(1,<%=i%>);\"  value=\"+\" style=\"width:20px; height:20px; border-radius:10px; padding:0 0; \" />      <input type=\"submit\"  id=\"dec<%=i%>\" onclick=\"doIt1(-1,<%=i%>);\"   value=\"-\" style=\"width:20px; height:20px; border-radius:10px; padding:0 0; \"/>     </TD>     <TD>&nbsp;&nbsp;<%=billdetails_be.get(i).price%></TD>     <TD>&nbsp;&nbsp;<%=billdetails_be.get(i).itemstatusdescription%></TD>     <td>     <select name=\"statusi\" id=\"sel<%=i%>\">     <option value=\"0\">Available</option>     <option value=\"1\">Unavailable</option>     <option value=\"2\">Delete</option>     </select>      </td>                    <td> <input id =\"kot<%=i%>\" type=\"text\" style=\"border: 0px solid #000000;\" name=\"kot\"   style=\"cursor: text\" readonly=\"readonly\" value=\"<%=billdetails_be.get(i).kotno%>\"></td>              <TD> <input id=\"myquantity<%=i%>\" type=\"hidden\" name=\"quantity1\" value=\"     <%=billdetails_be.get(i).quantity%>\"></TD>     </TR>      <%     }      %>     <td><input style=\"width: 150px; \" class=\"btn btn-green btn-large\" type=\"submit\" name=\"save\" id=\"save\" value=\"save\"  class=\"button\" onclick=\"savetheChanges(<%=count%>);\">    </td>      **PROBLEM** > 1.this is in js file ,from which i am passing the value to BillCB.jsp                document.detailsview.action=\"BillCB.jsp?method=\" + \"11\" + \"&itemcode=\" +itemcode1[i]+ \"&kot=\" +kot1[i]+ \"&itemStatus1=\" +selection[i]+ \"&billno=\" +billno;      > 2.this is in BillCB.jsp file (method :11)                String[] statCB2=request.getParameterValues(\"itemStatus1\");      int[] statarr2=new int[statCB2.length];      System.out.println(\"IN AVAILABLE:length of STATUS array is:\"+statCB2.length);      > In AVAILABLE:length of STATUS array is:1-this is the problem."}
{"_id": "255696", "title": "What is a \"lifted representation\"?", "text": "Just ran across this term here: http://www.codemesh.io/codemesh2014/viktor-klang > \"We'll demonstrate the Flow API\u2014a lifted representation\u2014as well as a > pluggable way of transforming the lifted representation into the execution > representation\u2014Flow Materialization.\" Googling did not help much."}
{"_id": "138538", "title": "Is it a bad practice to use inline styling with generated code?", "text": "If I'm using a technology like Grails. It's really easy to wind up with inline styling. Are there any downsides to auto-generating code with inline styling? Is this considered bad practice? Why?"}
{"_id": "204409", "title": "Why use protocol, not call the method directly?", "text": "I was asked this question in an interview. For eg: `UITableviewDelegate` protocol has `CellForRowAtIndexpath`. Why make it a delegate method in a `protocol` not a method in the `UITableView` class and call it directly?"}
{"_id": "138535", "title": "Syntax tree dump format", "text": "When writing a compiler, it is useful to include the ability to dump the abstract syntax tree in a human readable format, for debugging purposes. This output might also be useful for other tools like IDEs and code analyzers, so I might as well provide it as a documented feature. Given that, what format would be the most useful? It doesn't make much difference to me as long as I can eyeball it, so I might as well provide e.g. whatever other tools would find easiest to read."}
{"_id": "133502", "title": "How does one effectively implement the 80/20 rule for developer time?", "text": "I am a developer at a bank where an 80/20 rule is implemented. 80% of the time you work on your assigned project and 20% you work on something that interests you. However, I'm not really sure how to do that. I'm hoping there are others out there who can provide me with advice on how to. My problem is that when I really get 'in the zone', all I can think about is the task at hand. If this is a 20%'er, the last thing I want to do is stop and go, lose momentum and go back to work on my main project. Am I suppose to work 4 days on something and 1 day on something else? or 4 weeks and 1 week? I know this depends on the company, but I'm hoping to get a feel for how this is done industry wide."}
{"_id": "133500", "title": "Any reference doc /model/ implementation of enforcing events dependency/ordering in distributed computing?", "text": "For example, Process P is listening to events E(A) and E(B), but to process either of the events, P needs the other event available too. Naively, when P receives either of the events, it will check if the other event is already received. If not, it can wait. But 1) this does not sound very efficient, especially when each process has many different types of events to process. 2) Also as the number of distributed processes increases to a large number, events are more tangled between processes, processes dies/restarts, etc. all these make the events handling more complicated. So I would like to know if there are any reference doc / model/ implementations for events handling under such a distributed computing environment?"}
{"_id": "202760", "title": "How to manually detect deadlocks", "text": "I understand the concepts of deadlock well enough, but when I'm given a problem like the one below I'm not sure how to go about solving it. I can draw a resource allocation graph, but I'm not sure how to solve it from there. Is there a better more formal way of solving this?               Consider  a  system  with  five  processes,  P1  through P5,  and  five      resources, R1 through R5. Resource ownership is as follows.           \u2022  P1 holds R1 and wants R3      \u2022  P2 holds R2 and wants R1      \u2022  P3 holds R3 and wants R5      \u2022  P4 holds R5 and wants R2      \u2022  P5 holds R4 and wants R2           Is this system deadlocked? Justify your answer. If  the system is deadlocked, list      the involved processes."}
{"_id": "164387", "title": "If I define a property to prototype appears in the constructor of object, why?", "text": "I took the example from this question modified a bit: What is the point of the prototype method?               function employee(name,jobtitle,born)     {     this.name=name;     this.jobtitle=jobtitle;     this.born=born;     this.status=\"single\"     }     employee.prototype.salary=10000000;     var fred=new employee(\"Fred Flintstone\",\"Caveman\",1970);     console.log(fred.salary);     fred.salary=20000;     console.log(fred.salary)      And the output in console is this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YfGwp.png) What is the difference `salary` is in constructor but I still can access it with `fred.salary`, how can I see if is in constructor from code, status is still employee property how can I tell for example if `name` is the one of employee or has been touch by initialization? Why is salary in constructor, when name,jobtitle,born where \"touched\" by `employee(\"Fred Flintstone\",\"Caveman\",1970);` \u00abconstructor\u00bb?"}
{"_id": "70460", "title": "Preparation for Coursework in Computer Science", "text": "I know some Ruby, but could never make anything great, or even good. I just know that I am interested in programming and that it's what I want to do. What kind of programmer? No idea. I will be going to school for Computer Science and I don't know what I should do in order to feel more comfortable in my classes. What should I learn? There is so much that I don't know. All I know is HTML, CSS, and some Ruby. I don't know ANY Java nor do I know anything about Apache, MySql, or PHP. I would like to learn something that would (hopefully) help me in school. I don't want to start out and drown right away because I don't understand basic concepts in **___ _**. <\\--- Anything CS related can fit in that space. What should I learn next? One problem I face is that I have absolutely NO idea what kind of programmer I want to be. I know that I don't want to program video games and I am not sure I want to do web dev (although I'm sure I don't know enough to really know WHAT to do.) Can anyone offer advice on some things I should be learning now in order to prepare?"}
{"_id": "123905", "title": "Insuring your hands", "text": "I'm a software engineer - this means that I type all day. I was doing some woodworking with a friend and he remarked off hand to be careful, an accident that cut off a finger or more might be catastrophic for my career. I am sure there are workarounds, but they are probably not as convenient. Is there any way to buy insurance against injury to your hands or wrists? If there is, how much does it cost? Would you recommend it?"}
{"_id": "70463", "title": "How do you know what a program needs to do to complete a given task?", "text": "I am a noob when it comes to programming. I just know some Ruby, that's really it when it comes to programming, but it's definitely an interest. In learning to program, I give myself tasks to complete in order to better learn Ruby but I am finding that a lot of my problems in programming deal with how to execute a task. For example: In writing a SERP checker (which is, sadly, half complete because I can't read PHP) I found a PHP script of what I was programming. I used it as sort of a template in order to write my checker. (I'm not actually going to use my checker, just a task for me to learn.) Anyway, when I was investigating the PHP I learned that the script does a lot of things I wouldn't expect it to do. I knew NOTHING about how I was going to get the script to make a Google search, how it was going to collect the data, etc. How do I learn these things? If I were to make this script from this guy's template, all I would learn is how to make a SERP script. But how did this guy learn how to make the script? What elements to put in/use? Something a friend found in my script (a bug) that I never even considered was related to differences in Windows vs Linux (I unfortunately have to program in Windows until I partition my hd and slap a linux distro on there. The only reason I have Windows is because the whole Steam on Linux thing was a hoax.) It had to do with newlines, spaces, or something.. I don't remember off the top of my head. How was I supposed to have the foresight to know about the bug? How would I have caught the bug if my friend who is uber savvy hadn't pointed it out? And really, the most important part of my question is the above part: How do I know what elements* (*if I use the word 'functions' here I worry it would be confused with methods...) I need to put in a program in order to complete a given task?"}
{"_id": "136873", "title": "How do programmer-seeking employers see Bioinformatics degree?", "text": "I love programming, but I also love biology. Basically Bioinformatics sounds fun to me. However, there is a fat chance that I won't get a Bioinformatics job and will be forced to build my career around regular programming. Therefore a question: does it matter (much) for an employer if he is looking for a regular programmer but finds a Bioinformatics diploma? Or is it the same _in the long_ run as a regular Informatics diploma?"}
{"_id": "123901", "title": "How much AJAX is too much?", "text": "My current project is part of a highly linked architecture, with individual systems each owning certain pieces of data, and exposing them RESTfully. Both our web services and our user interface take advantage of this linkage, storing links to the resources in other systems rather than storing a copy of the data, and presenting composite views by fetching the current state of those resources. For example, my system might be responsible for a yearbook of people (I'm not using our real data and relationships here, of course). People are owned by another system, and perhaps have contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, twitter handles, etc). That contact information might be stored in another system that has details about the phone number or email address. In order to present a view in my user interface, I then have to fetch my own data and follow the links in order to present the appropriate details from these other systems. I could cache certain parts of this information but likely want to retrieve the newest details. In some of my pages, I have a reasonably small number of lookups to do this kind of data enrichment. In other pages, I am presenting a lot more information and end up with an explosion of data as I get a list, expand each element, expand each of those, and so on. I have experimented with providing a service which does this aggregation and returns all the data needed by the view in a single response. However, I am not sure whether this is the cleanest way to provide this. Can anyone suggest some strategies for determining when I should directly use AJAX requests to fetch this data? At what point should I switch from individual requests to providing aggregated services to build the data? Or is there some other technique I could apply?"}
{"_id": "70467", "title": "Beginning Perl?", "text": "What is the best book for beginning Perl? Where to learn Perl from the basics? I only know bash/Linux at an intermediate level. I would like to learn Perl because it has the same syntax on every operating system unlike some shell scripting languages."}
{"_id": "237015", "title": "Use model for \u201ceverything\u201d in MVC?", "text": "This question is a result out of the discussion HERE and was moved from HERE. Is it really good practice to supply EVERY value you display in any view via a model?   Especially variables like the current username. Even Microsoft odes the following in their default template for the `_LoginPartial` in ASP.NET MVC 3+:               \"Hello \" + User.Identity.GetUserName() + \"!\"      I think this is OK to not supply this via a model as it is much better in light of maintainability. Or should you obay the \"MVC rules\" and add a model/sub-model to every page/model to supply such stuff and pass it around in your views and partials? **How do you solve such \"problems\" or what do you think is the best way of doing such stuff?** Inheritance would be an option:               public class BaseUserModel     {         public string UserName { get; set; }     }      Require every model to inherit from a base model like above containing such values.   But could that cause problems if you need/want to inherit another class for some model?"}
{"_id": "237014", "title": "Are there numbers that are not representable in base 10 but can be represented in base 2?", "text": "`C#` has the `decimal` type which is used for numbers that needs exact representation in base 10. For instance, `0.1` cannot be represented in base 2 (e.g. `float` and `double`) and will always be an approximation when stored in variables that are of these types. I was wondering if the reversed fact was also possible. Are there numbers that are not representable in base 10 but can be represented in base 2 (in which case I would want to use a `float` instead of a `decimal` to handle them)?"}
{"_id": "112782", "title": "What is the definition of Time on Task?", "text": "Microsoft Guru Eric Brechner discusses measuring \"time on task\" in his book \"Hard Code\". The discussion comes up during a section on Agile - Scrum. My guess is that it means \"time spent to complete task X\", but then he goes on to discuss time on task in terms of percentages by team. So I don't know how to make this logical leap. In the Microsoft context, what exactly is \"time on task\"? * * * First > The daily stand-up meetings in Scrum are highly organized and collect useful > data. The team organizer (Scrum Master) simply asks all the team members > what they accomplished since yesterday (and how long it took) [...] Then > Tracking how long it took is my team's small contribution to Scrum at > Microsoft. By adding this information to the burn-down data (how much is > left to do), you can produce fantastic cumulative flow diagrams, measure > time on task and work in progress, and better estimate team capacity. > Typical time on task is around 42% for production teams; 30% for teams > focused on communication--like mine--and as much as 60% for co-located > feature teams."}
{"_id": "123908", "title": "What are the important factors for database table design and object design?", "text": "When I do database table design, I often wonder if I should try to make the table as simple as possible, or if I should make the object as clear as possible. The requirement is to store all month of the year's salesTon and gross profit. I design from the object.The object has fields year, month, salesTon and gross profit. For this situation when I need save data to the database, it will save 12 rows(one row one month). This object has a relationship with another object (customer). so when save it will save n(customer)*12 rows per one time. It will do a huge insert operation. I'm afraid that tihs will make the db slow. Another design is to just use one object. One object to save the whole year - no need to split the object in to months. But in the object will has 12*2's fields like(month1_sales_ton, month1_gross_profit, month2_sales_ton, month2_gross_profit.......), this situation make save least rows, base on n(customer) per time. But since the second situation doesn't have month, I can't write the common method when I want to search one year's one month gross profit which accept year, month parameters. Maybe I should just write the method to just pass year and get whole a year object? i don't know. So which principle should I follow when I design the table?"}
{"_id": "89984", "title": "In .NET (Visual Studio), when do you create a new assembly?", "text": "I'm working on a Silverlight application. I've split it up in several assemblies:   * Domain   * Repositories (everything with persisting to the Sterling database)   * UI   * ... This is how I've learned it, but I wondered. If you know the DLLs are not going to be reused, is it necessary to split them up? Or could you put everything in one assembly and use folders and namespaces to keep it tidy? I've also seen projects that have too many assemblies. Instead of using namespaces where it would have been appropriate. So: when do you create a new assembly for some new piece of code? Any good resources on this subject? And do you split code up technically (domain, data, ui, etc.) and/or functionally (i.e. patient-administration, patient-medical, hospital-logistics, ... - probably only for bigger, enterprise level applications)?"}
{"_id": "18720", "title": "Should you version web applications?", "text": "I've recently had a discussion with a coworker about versioning web applications. I don't think you need it at all, and if you just want a sanity check to confirm your latest release is live, I think a date (YYMMDD) is probably good enough. Am I off base? Am I missing the point? Should I use web application version numbers"}
{"_id": "89981", "title": "Abstract event queue for GUI/model communication", "text": "I hope this isn't so general a question as to be thought a \"discussion.\" I'm writing a simulation of an old (ca. 1960) computer, and I'm thinking about how to queue events from the GUI to the CPU \"model.\" The GUI consists of momentary-on buttons (pushbuttons and typewriter keys) and toggle switches. Of course, I don't want either the GUI or the CPU thread to block. As I think about the various sorts of events, I realize that **(a)** some should not be replicated in the queue, **(b)** some should be \"expedited\" -- i.e., sent to the head of the queue, and **(c)** some should simply be ignored under certain conditions. Then I realized that I'm probably trying to re-solve an old problem. Undoubtedly others have encountered similar requirements when trying to design a GUI-to-model event queue. So I wondered - has some brilliant person abstracted the requirements of _any_ GUI-to-model event-passing system, perhaps anticipating some functionality I haven't even thought of yet? I'm coding in Java, but I would be implementing the queue, and the queuing, myself - and furthermore, I doubt there's anything Java-specific to this problem."}
{"_id": "11098", "title": "How do you get better working conditions?", "text": "I work at a business who has a software side and manufacturing side. The software we write is sold as a package along with other hardware that our customers purchase. I basically work in a warehouse. There is one door that seperates the engineers from the warehouse noise. I have asked for noise cancelling walls to be put in. I have asked multiple times over 6 months to be moved up front to one of two vacant sales offices, but they seem reluctant to let an Engineer move into a sales office. In fact, sales are the only ones with windows and they get commission though they make mistakes or overpromise to the customer. So, my question is how can I get better working conditions without necessarily having to leave my current job? It is very hard to work and concentrate. **UPDATE** I think I can finally close this chapter in my life. I have moved on to a large corporation which follows CMMI religiously and has even started using Agile in many of its projects. Nevertheless, there is organization, respect, and genuine care for the engineers and scientists that work for them. Pierre was right - quitting was the right answer. My life does not nearly have the amount of stress it used to have because I now work for a place that is organized and knows what it wants its engineers to do along with treating them like they should be treated."}
{"_id": "122363", "title": "OOP private method parameters coding style", "text": "After coding for many years as a solo programmer, I have come to feel that most of the time there are many benefits to write private member functions with all of the used member variables included in the parameter list, especially development stage. This allow me to check at one look what member variables are used and also allow me to supply other values for tests and debugging. Also, a change in code by removing a particular member variable can break many functions. In this case however, the private function remains isolated am I can still call it using other values without fixing the function. Is this a bad idea afterall, especially in a team environment? Is it like redundant or confusing, or are there better ways?"}
{"_id": "29831", "title": "Does Mono have a place in the enterprise world?", "text": "For enterprise windows-based solutions, .NET is the best choice sometimes. How is Mono looked at by the enterprises who have to use Linux (or rather prefer to use Linux) ? Assuming that the developers aren't a problem and they are familiar with .NET/Mono and other possible competitors such as Java. Would a medium/large company run Mono on their servers as opposite to technologies such as Java? Do you know of any such company ?"}
{"_id": "29832", "title": "What is the bug workflow on your agile/Scrum team?", "text": "What is the bug workflow on your agile/Scrum team? Here is ours: \\- If the bug is related to a story in the current sprint, we fix it. \\- If the bug is not related to a story in the current sprint and it is not critical, it is sent to the product owner for prioritization. \\- If the bug is not related to a story in the sprint and it is critical, we fix it."}
{"_id": "29839", "title": "How useful are function points?", "text": "How useful is it to measure function points? We use function points at my new job. I've heard of function points but haven't had any training or experience... but I don't have much confidence in things that cannot be explained succinctly."}
{"_id": "157692", "title": "Is Google's Page Speed not working fine?", "text": "I've been making small improvements to a public ASP.NET site that I have and have ran it through Google's online Page Speed several times. I have a specific problem, but something that really threw me off was that even if I didn't make any changes and just kept running it time after time (5 minutes intervals) I'd keep getting different scores by +-1 or 2 points. That is just weird in itself. Anyways, The only medium priority item that I have left is that PageSpeed says that some of the images do not have an expiration date (or have the expiration date in a very near feature), which I cannot see how it's possible, since they are static resources (images), and I setup the expires to 60 days after the initial request. It's not even a week from now, and they are in the exact same location that the rest of my images are (and about 95% of them are not being marked as not having an expiration date) So, how could it be that for Page SPeed, some of my images have an expiration date and others dont? I also ran HttpWatch against my site, and I analyze the specific request of one of those images, and it does have the max-age=5184000 header. any ideas are greatly appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "156901", "title": "Visual Studio extension to highlight code reuse?", "text": "I was under a tight deadline to finish a project in C#, and as a result I feel I didn't code things in the most efficient way. Now that I have time to go back and optimize the code, I was wondering if there was a Visual Studio extension or other program/service to highlight blocks of code similar to each other. This way I can break them off into functions as I need to."}
{"_id": "66839", "title": "Open source for software, copyrighting, etc?", "text": "This may be more of a legal question: Some guy claims to copyright his source code but he has several publicly exposed source code examples on his website but just puts a copyright notice at the bottom of the site. Is it automatically assumed he can claim copyright on the provided example code he has throughout his 'open source' software directory? According to the US copyright office, he would need to apply for a copyright on each software sample or software program with publicly exposed source code on his site. Am I right on this? Also, his software samples on the site have no declaration of any licensing at the top of each sample. Can he still enforce licensing or copyright protection without the declaration? He claims people can only read it but NOT copy it for their own use or distribution. I thought this defeats the purpose of open source although his site is declared an open source directory. Can I assume his source code is for the taking since he has no licensing declarations anywhere in the code? I thought you can only copyright screens and workflow. Can you legally protect algorithm or programming logic? Thanks for providing this great resource."}
{"_id": "118449", "title": "Is \"PHP and MySQL Web Development, 4th ed.\" an outdated book to learn from?", "text": "I want to get into web stuff, and thought of going with PHP+MySQL. I have experience in C#, C++, desktop graphics, but no web stuff besides HTML, CSS which I started learning 2 months ago. On SO PHP-book question, the highest rated book is \"PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice\". However, I'm not sure if it's a book to start PHP with... or is it? Most of the books mentioned in that SO question seem to be for those who already know PHP. I considered \"PHP & MySQL Web Development, 4th Ed.\", but someone mentioned that \"it uses the mysql_* functions which are almost deprecated.\" Help?"}
{"_id": "126627", "title": "Advantages and disadvantages to making common unit test scaffolding code", "text": "For the project my team and me are working on we often find that we need large pieces of scaffolding code. Creating domain objects with correct values, setting up mocks for repositories, dealing with the cache,... are all things that occur commonly throughout the tests. A lof of times we're working with the same basic objects that are central to our domain (person,...) so lots of tests create instances of these objects for other objects to work on. We have a lot of different solutions using the base domain so this kind of code is often spread across those solutions. I've been thinking about creating common classes that do a lot of this scaffolding. This would allow us to request a fully instantiated person with everything set up (access via repository, caching...). This removes duplicate code from our individual unit tests but would also mean there is a large amount of code that probably does 'too much' per test (as it would set up a full object and not just the parts required). Has anyone ever done this? Are there any insights, remarks, thoughts... you can offer that might validate or invalidate this approach?"}
{"_id": "874", "title": "How do you deal with changing requirements?", "text": "In my current job it feels like we have a lot requirement changes. We are an \"Agile\" shop, so I get that we are supposed to adjust and what not, but sometime the change is large and nothing trivial. My question is, how do you effectively communicate the cost of the change? Because of being agile, if a change is big enough something will get dropped from the current sprint, but it usually just get added next time around. Since our model is SaaS, the end customer is effectively the business itself, and they know they will get the cut feature _n_ weeks later. I guess what I am trying to get at is the removal of a feature really isn't anything to use for communication as it was only delayed by _n_ weeks. What other ways do you have to get the business to understand what a change costs?"}
{"_id": "216915", "title": "How to deal with requirement changes in agile development model?", "text": "I know that in agile requirement changes should not only be planned for but also embraced. But I still don't know agile how to handle these changes."}
{"_id": "41890", "title": "Arguments to homologate Firefox in a Company", "text": "I developed a web project for my company and this project was designed to use Mozilla Firefox (including the javascript (jQuery)). However, now the company wants the project to be transferred to Internet Explorer. I know that in Google, there are several explanations about Mozilla Firefox, which I can demonstrate to the company. But is there any link showing that Internet Explorer runs the W3C standards and has several justifications for why using Mozilla Firefox? I searched on youtube and slideshare, but both have a very weak argument for me to select them and show to the company. The company where I work is still very naive to keep Internet Explorer. 1) The project is intranet. Only 400 internal employees can access the web. 2) The company argues that Mozilla Firefox is not approved by the company. Any suggestions? Any link which shows that the developers of the world hate Internet Explorer? A link explaining why developers do not like Internet Explorer? After the answers, I'm thinking of making a great slide with all the necessary arguments to the company homologue firefox. And yet, published in slideshare. EDIT: Someone here must be wondering why I have not designed, also for Internet Explorer. Welllll... As the deadline for project completion is always short, I developed the project focused only on Mozilla Firefox, because the browser Mozilla Firefox most respects W3C standards (and javascript too) than Internet Explorer."}
{"_id": "234075", "title": "Pull Frequency Parameters in MVC architecture", "text": "Assume a simple SPA (Single-page application), _maybe a dashboard_ and these basic conditions:   * The **Model** contains methods for accessing and displaying data;    * The **View** contains methods to load templates and apply model.data to template;    * The **Controller** manages the user commands;   * The **Router** handles the navigation; In our example, we will make sure that the user can configure the dashboard to update itself every _N_ seconds pulling new data from _back-end_ ( _pullFrequency_ ). In which component is proper set up the _pullFrequency_ parameter:   1. Model?   2. View?   3. Controller?   4. Router?   5. Somewhere else?"}
{"_id": "214912", "title": "Why does a proportional controller have a steady state error?", "text": "I've read about feedback loops, how much this steady state error is for a given gain and what to do to remove this steady state error (add integral and/or derivative gains to the controller), but I don't understand at all _why_ this steady state error occurs in the first place. If I understand how a proportional control works correctly, the output is equal to the current output plus the error, multiplied by the proportional gain (Kp). However, wouldn't the error slowly diminish over time as it is added (reaching 0 at infinite time), not have a steady state error? From my confusion, it seems I'm completely misunderstanding how it works - a proper explanation of how this steady state error eventuates would be fantastic."}
{"_id": "245742", "title": "is JS a gradually typed language?", "text": "I was researching on statically typed and dynamically typed concepts and found out there is another type system called gradually typed. From wikipedia > Gradual typing is a type system in which variables may be typed either at > compile-time (static typing) or at run-time (dynamic typing), allowing > software developers to choose either type paradigm as appropriate, from > within a single language. > > In particular, gradual typing uses a special type named dynamic to represent > statically-unknown types and gradual typing replaces the notion of type > equality with a new relation called consistency (aka. compatibility) that > relates the dynamic type to every other type. The consistency relation is > symmetric but not transitive If I understand those concepts correctly, \"Javascript\" is a gradually typed language. Am I correct?"}
{"_id": "178435", "title": "Is there tool agnostic terminology for source control activities?", "text": "My team is entering into some discussions on source control (process and possibly tools) and we would like a tool agnostic terminology for the various activities. The environment does have multiple (old) VCS's, and multiple desired (new) VCS's. Is there a standard definition of activities, or at least some commonly accepted set? Example activities (in CVS terminology):   * Branch   * Check out   * Update   * Merge"}
{"_id": "178433", "title": "Best way: restructure an existing Team Foundation Server (TFS) solution", "text": "In my department we are developing several smaller AddOns for some unified communication server. For versioning and distributed development we use a Team Foundation Server 2012. But: there is only one large TFS solution for all of our applications and libraries:   * Main Solution      * Applications         * App 1       * App 2       * App 3     * Externals      * Libraries         * Lib 1       * Lib 2     * Tools The \"Application\" path contains all main applications. Those are not depending on each other, but they depend on the Libraries and Externals projects. The \"Externals\" path contains some external DLLs referenced in our Applications and Libraries. The Libraries path contains commonly used libs (UI templates, Helper classes, etc.). They do not depend on each other and they are referenced in the Libraries and the Tools projects. The Tools path contains some helper programs like setup helpers, update web services, etc. Now, there's some major points why I'd like to change this structure:   * We can't use server builds.   * It's uncomfortable to manage TFS scrum management with sprints, impediments, etc. with a solution structure like that.   * Every developer always has access to all projects in the solution.   * A complete build lasts too long if one accidentally hits [F6] in Visual Studio... What would you change in this solution? How would you break those projects into smaller Solutions, how should those solutions be structured. My first approach would be, to create one TFS project for each Application, Library and Tool. But how can I ensure that e.g. App 2 always contains the newest version of Lib 1? Do I have to monitor changes on Lib 1 and update App 2 manually as soon as the Lib changes? Or can I somehow force Visual Studio to always use the newest version of an external project somehow? **Edit:** On the TFS, there's just one TFS Team Project Collection, containing one TFS Team Project. The Team Project contains one large Visual Studio Solution, which contains several folders containing (see the structure above) with each of them containing multiple VS projects. My question is now, how would you re-organize:   1. The TFS Team Projects   2. The VS Projects"}
{"_id": "204298", "title": "Advantage of 2-way merge sort against n-way", "text": "It's known 2-way Merge sort takes N*logN time. I wonder, what would be the running time if we split an array **of the size** N into N subarrays and then do the same thing as we would do for 2-way Merge?"}
{"_id": "198652", "title": "What to do when you are faced with programming task that you have never done?", "text": "I started my career as a .NET developer 3 months ago and after a long training plan on diverse technologies, patterns and concepts the developers who were supervising me have decided that I am ready to join one of the many projects the company handles. I am very excited to finally be able to start coding. The team I have joined is rather small for now because were starting with a new project, which is great because I get to be involved in the entire life cycle of the project. It is a web based SPA project with a backed that uses ASP.NET MVC/ASP.NET Web API and in front-end the Durandal framework and related libraries. My problem is that after having a meeting with my colleagues and establishing the tasks and estimations for the next month I find myself in a position that I do not know if I am capable of taking on any of the tasks. I have never done any of the created tasks and I do not know how should I proceed. For example one of tasks created is creating a generic error handling mechanism for the entire application. How does one usually proceed when faced with tasks that he has never done?"}
{"_id": "207843", "title": "When to fracture a web application design into multiple products", "text": "Have you had this problem? You are building a complex web application for a target market, and after a while you reach a point in complexity where you can't decide if you are building more than one product. A decision has to be made. Do you add features to turn it into a framework for multiple domains or do you resist the urge and focus just on the one product. I'll give you a theoretical example; You are building a web application for reviewing Movies and Television shows. Users can login and write their own reviews. After months of hard work you start to see how useful the application would be for reviewing Automobiles. All the terms/themes are for the Movie/TV industry. So you would have to refactor and take into account a multisite structure to run the web application for two different markets. What do you call this type of problem, and how do you know when you should and should not split the project up into multiple domains."}
{"_id": "207848", "title": "object oriented analysis, missing methodology", "text": "I've studied design pattern and oop principles, still feel that there is something missing in most design theories. Maybe the fact is that there is not a 'theory' as it is in database design.   Let me explain with an example.      Suppose that i want to **model different ways to produce orange juice**.      Let say that i start by a class `Oranges`, that models a lot of oranges that will be of a certain variety, of a certain ripeness, they may have been froozen etc., ant these will by my Oranges class properties.   Then i continue by providing Orange with a squeeze method.      This seems to be correct, because ties togheter the method to the data it applies to, that is the precondition to achieve encapsulation and other valuable oop principles.   _But quickly it comes out that it has not been a good choiche_ because there is not just one way to squeeze an orange. It would be preferrable to have a `Juicer` class whose instances contains details of the juicing method: by hand, with an electric juicer, including the pulp, not to mention mixing different varieties of oranges. Where the latter opens an whole new cathegory of possibilities that were not available (or not achievable with ease) if each Oranges instance would have been processed using its squeeze method. Say that we have performed a 'refactoring' of our oo architecture and move to another similar example that will get us to the point.   It is now a common practise to use an ORM to save class instances to database and get them back later. In what is it similar to the Oranges class example? Well, here i have a class whose instances may be persisted to a database, that is 'allow a particular process'. _But the class itself does not contain the logic for doing so_ , that actually is in the ORM classes. So it seems that the same process of 'externalization' of the Oranges example has taken place in this case too. ### And here is the question Given that it is desireable to reduce the number of attempts-and-refactorings to the minimum, what are the questions that a programmer should put in order to determine precociously if a method should be externalized to another class? Are all the methods of a class exernalizable or is there a set of _core methods_ that are inherently of the class itself and so not externalizable? ### Ideas As i said in the beginning, i'm not completely clueless, i feel more like that a 'comprehensive' theory is missing.   It's easy to put some examples:   if i have a class whose instances represent invoices, i will have a method 'calculateTotalAmount'. This is clearly an inthrinsic, core method of that class, as oppsed to the methods for saving that invoice to the database that will be 'external' of the class itself. But this is not a 'final answer', but a starting point that serves to demonstrate that 'not all methods are equal', but methods may be divided into cathegories. How many (useful) cathegories can we make, and are there methodologies that put these questions?"}
{"_id": "82072", "title": "Can this type of page be made client-side?", "text": "I'm planning on making a website that will have mainly articles and videos. I'm going to post the videos on YouTube and use the YouTube API on my site. What I am wondering, is if I can make a page like this without using any server-side technology, or if I would need server-side programming(PHP, MySQL, etc...) would it be very much? I'm new to web development and as a first webpage, I was hoping to do the whole thing with Client-side technologies(HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Is this feasible?"}
{"_id": "193230", "title": "How to manage intermediate outputs efficiently?", "text": "I am implementing a C preprocessor in C... I have the three functions:   1. trigraph replacing function   2. Line splicing function   3. comment removing function However these functions work separately on files i.e. First function will take a file and replace the trigraphs producing a temp- file1 as output Second function will take temp-file1 as input and splice the lines and produce another temp-file2. Third function will take temp-file2 as input and remove comment and produce yet another temp-file3. And now the main preprocessing tasks will be performed on temp-file3 and a .i file will be produced as final output. Now, I have 3 options :   1. Use temp files   2. use pipes   3. instead of intermediate temp-files or pipes use strings(i.e. whole temp-file1, 2 and 3 will be three big strings!!) I have three doubts...   1. Option 1 seems less efficient than option2   2. option 2 seems to be perfect but will I be limited by size of that unnamed pipe? (since I have **_single process_** i.e. function 1 2 & 3 will be called one after another) What if temp output size > pipe's total capacity?   3. option 3... Is it efficient, easy over previous two? Please tell me, Which option should I choose?"}
{"_id": "140534", "title": "What makes an application memory bandwidth bound?", "text": "This has been something that's been bothering me for a while: What makes an application memory _bandwidth_ bound? For example, take this monstrosity of a computer that calculated the 5 trillionth digit of pi (and later 10 trillionth digit). I was surprised that they choose the lower but faster 98 GB RAM at 1066 MHz instead of the larger but slower 144 GB at 800 MHz. This is especially surprising considering they are using 22 TB HD array to store the results from computation; more RAM means less need for hard drives. Maybe its because I don't write applications for HPC servers, but how would RAM be the bottleneck? Are there any other non-HPC applications that usually run into this problem?"}
{"_id": "12540", "title": "What Tool Do You Use For Reading Technical Ebooks?", "text": "I consider an e-reader a software development tool and would like to hear some opinions on reading technical e-books. Questions that I have are things like:   * What are the usability issues you have experienced with e-books as opposed to physical books, what are the advantages/disadvantages of both?   * What experiences have people had with eye-strain on tablets/PC as compared to an e-ink based reader?   * What are people's specific experiences with the Kindle as a technical e-book reader? Does the screen size impact readability? Have you had any other concerns/issues?   * Any other experiences/issues with reading technical e-books...resolution of text/diagrams; ability to keep a page open while referencing another, etc...?   * Any suggestions as to solutions for any of the issues encountered with reading e-books on the device with the issue? P.S. I would like to hear people's actual experiences, and why/how they believe whatever device is currently a superior tool for reading e-books."}
{"_id": "155289", "title": "Any good references for Learning C++ ?", "text": "I am totally novice in programming. So be very good hand in C++ from where I should start? Could Anyone suggest me some reference books and materials."}
{"_id": "155288", "title": "Minimizing use of paper", "text": "I've recently faced this problem in a dynamic programming curriculum, and I honestly have no idea about how to determine the appropriate state. You're given **N** (1 <= N <= 70) paragraphs and **M** (1 <= M <= N) figures. Each paragraph **i** requires **PL_i** (1 <= PL_i <= 100) lines and references at most one figure. Each figure is referenced exactly once (i.e., no two paragraphs can reference the same figure, and for each figure there's a paragraph that references it.) Each figure requires **PF_i** (1 <= PF_i <= 100) lines. The task is to distribute those figures and paragraphs on paper in the order they're given, where one paper fits for **L** lines at most. No paragraph or figure is too large to fit on one paper. If a paragraph **x** placed on paper **x_p** references a figure **y** then **y** must be placed on either the paper **x_p - 1** or **x_p** or **x_p + 1**. We have to find the minimum number of lines (and thus pages) to allocate in order to distribute all the figures and paragraphs. Any help would be extremely appreciated. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "224646", "title": "Notifying multiple listeners", "text": "I am building an Android guitar application and I need a way for `GuitarString` objects to notify multiple listeners that it has just been played. This includes the current `Activity` and all instances of `GuitarStringView` that have it as their `GuitarString` (the guitar is displayed twice, zoomed in & out). I have so far handled this by having a `ArrayList<OnPlayedListener>` on `GuitarString` and each `GuitarStringView` or `Activity` adds themselves to that list. My `Guitar` class is a Singleton (which I know some may frown upon) so now I have to make sure objects remove themselves from the array of listeners when they're disposed of. So my question is, is this a good approach, or is there a pattern that I should be using to handle this?"}
{"_id": "213499", "title": "Scalability of using environment variables", "text": "I just moved into the Ruby on Rails world and with it I am being introduced to much more liberal use of environment variables than what I have been exposed to in the past. Specifically, it appears like there's an accepted convention to store third party API keys and secret tokens as environment variables. _NOTE: this is not a RoR-specific question. I only mention it to illustrate a point of view._ I certainly see the benefit of this approach; the largest of which is that one codebase can be identically deployed to multiple servers without changing code or fear that the the app will be using the wrong resource. However, I am wary about jumping on the band wagon. First, the approach doesn't seem scalable on my development work station (laptop), or on servers. If I am working on 10 different websites, and each are using Amazon S3 (for instance), I need 10 different EVs. Management will be difficult:   * naming collisions are a distinct possibility (especially if I am working on legacy projects that I dont have complete control over);    * visibility is murky (which EVs exist on the target machine? which have been or can be decommissioned?);    * no version control (who changed the EV? when? why?) Second, one of the main selling-points as I understand it, is that using EVs takes the sensitive data out of the repository where prying eyes could see it. This only seems like it should be an issue for public repositories, which I have none. All my repos are private, often because of contractual issues like NDA or ownership rights. How does all of this play out in real life scenarios? Is this approach better for some situations than others? Are there other pros that outweigh my concerns here?"}
{"_id": "123015", "title": "How valuable and rare is being able to create something from scratch?", "text": "I just found out the other day that the previous web company where I worked for 8 years will pretty much be shut down except for occasional updates and support of existing applications. I was thinking back to my days over there and I came to the realization that I was really the only programmer there who could build stuff from scratch. It got me wondering just how valuable that skill set is and I'd like to hear your input. When I say build stuff from scratch I mean you start with an empty website and take the ideas and concepts a customer has in his head and turn it into a working functional application. How valuable is that skillset? Is this something that all programmers can do or do I just take it for granted that all programmers can build stuff from scratch?"}
{"_id": "224647", "title": "Shallow or deep equal, which one is idiomatic in Java?", "text": "I have a domain model in which I use a few aggregation relations, i.e. an object of class `A` contains zero or more objects of class `B`. I use Java for the implementation and I represent such an aggregation as a field of type `List<B>` in `A`, and a field of type `A` in `B`. In this way, each object can be the root of an aggregation tree. Classes `A` and `B` may also contain other **shallow** fields, i.e. fields of type `int`, `float`, `String`, and so on. Now I need to define different kinds of equality methods on my model:   1. **Shallow equality** : compare two instances of `A` by comparing its shallow fields only, i.e. leaving out references to other domain objects. In this case, I am only interested to know if two nodes have the same contents.   2. **Deep equality** : compare two instances of `A` by comparing its shallow fields **and** by recursively comparing its children. In this case, I want to check if two complete trees are equal. I considered overriding the `hashCode()` and `equals()` methods for class `A` but I do not know if this should be the shallow equality or the deep equality method. Once I decide which of the two equality methods is implemented as `A.equals()`, I will define the other method with another name. This is an important choice because the `equals()` method determines such things as membership in a `Set`. So, is one of the two possibilities (shallow versus deep equality) considered a more idiomatic choice for implementing the `equals` method in Java?"}
{"_id": "123011", "title": "ASP.NET MVC - should the MVC's M, V and C be explicitly aware of domain entities?", "text": "Since this question seems to be pretty subjective, I'm posting it here. Let's say you're writing your own version of Stackoverflow using ASP.NET MVC, so there are classes like `Question`, `Answer`, `User`, etc. Since you're lazy, you decided to use entity framework. So, all the classes mentioned above have navigation properties: `Question` knows its `Answer`s, `Answer` knows the `User` who posted it, etc. You've read a lot of Martin Fowler's books, so for sure you're going to have a service layer to implement all the business logic there. You're going to use ASP.NET MVC only for the UI and application logic related functionality. There are 2 questions:   1. Will you directly expose objects of `Question`, `Answer` and others to the controllers?   2. Will you do the same for views? I'm basically neither going to provide a REST API to my application, nor I'm too conservative to just have any fears like \"hey, MY VIEW is aware of what the `Question` is, I don't know if it's bad or not, I just don't like it!\". I'm especially curious about the case when the `Question` class has a field like `TimePosted` and you bind your `PostNewQuestion` view to that class. I know that in case I'm not binding that field to any control on the page, it won't be posted, so I'll have that field set to `null` when I got the object on my controller side. Is it considered fine or is it bad idea? 2 opposite approaches I'm thinking of are \"using DTOs/ViewModels everywhere\" and \"wtf, less classes is always better!\" What do you think is a _right_ approach? (I know there's no direct answer, so the question in fact is \"what should one consider to decide whether using DTOs/ViewModels/Whatever else is _good_ for its app's architecture?\") Also please note we're considering a very simplified clone of Stackoverflow, so:   1. It's a web-only project (we're not going to expose REST API or whatever else)   2. There are users, questions, answers, tags and search functionality (no outstanding business logic)   3. There are like 100 active users per day (no special performance requirements)   4. The code should be readable and there should be no surprises or places of special interest in case a new member joins the dev team. You may also express your thoughts in case any of first 3 points get changed - \"the customer now wants our service to allow 10000 simultaneous users\" or \"we now need to only allow every single user to post once per 15 minutes\", etc. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "123012", "title": "Passing a dependency to a controller class", "text": "I'm looking for an approach to the following problem: I have a reusable library. It contains a controller class, in the MVC sense. Let's say it's called `UserAdministrationController`, and it's for editing users. This class requires an object implementing `IUserStorage`, for storing its data. The library doesn't need to know the details of how this object works. Now I want to write an application that includes the library. In it, I'll provide an implementation of `IUserStorage`. To instantiate this, I'll need to pass it some dependencies, like a database object, and other things that my application only knows about at runtime. But how would I then pass this object from my application to the library? I'm not instantiating the `UserAdministrationController` directly from my application; it gets created by the library itself. Hope this makes sense. I'm trying to keep my description abstract and not specific to a particular framework or language."}
{"_id": "50928", "title": "Dealing with profanity in source code", "text": "How do people deal with profanity in source code and VCS comments. Keep or delete? What about soft-expletives like WTF or Arrgggh? Is unprofessional, offensive or something to be shrugged off?"}
{"_id": "7472", "title": "Do FOSS version control systems work for enterprises?", "text": "Let's say a large corporation is planning to replace it's existing version control system. Let's say it is only considering systems from major vendors that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have \"support.\" Does version control in an enterprisey environment have to be expensive? Does your medium/large corporation use a FOSS VCS such as SVN/Git/Mercurial? What has the experience been? I have to think it doesn't need to be expensive since there are so many free options, and there are probably companies that provide paid support for FOSS VCS if that is the main concern. I don't intend this question to compare VCS or decide which is best, rather just understand experiences with VCS in a corporate IT environment."}
{"_id": "251993", "title": "how to write unit test for AND logic gate", "text": "I'm learning about unit tests, and have a doubt for a test i want to do, to implement an \"AND\" logic gate               A   B   A^B     0   0   0     0   1   0     1   0   0     1   1   1      how can i test for a method that works like AND gate?, is this what a mock object is? or stub? Thanks, Please provide pseudo code,"}
{"_id": "254746", "title": "What is the logic behind the use of different arrows (-> <-) in Haskell?", "text": "I've been thinking about language design lately, and reading over some of the new things in Haskell (always a nice source of inspiration). I'm struck by the many odd uses of the left `<-` and right `->` arrow operators. I guess the many different usages comes from prior art in math and other languages regarding arrow syntax, but is there some other reason not to try and make the usage more consistent or clear? Maybe I'm just not seeing the big picture? The right arrow gets used as a type constructor for functions, the separator between argument and body of lambda expressions, separator for case statements, and it's used in pattern views, which have the form `(e -> p)`. The left arrow gets used in `do` notation as something similar to variable binding, in list comprehensions for the same (I'm assuming they are the same, as list comprehensions look like condensed `do` blocks), and in pattern guards, which have the form `(p <- e)`. Now the last examples for each arrow are just silly! I understand that guards and views serve different purposes, but they have almost identical form except that one is the mirror of the other! I've also always found it kind of odd that regular functions are defined with `=` but lambdas with `->`. Why not use the arrow for both? Or the equals for both? It also gets pretty odd when you consider that for comparing some calculated value against a constant, there's nearly a half-dozen ways to do it:               test x = x == 4          f     x = if test x then g x else h x          f'    4 = g 4     f'    x = h x          f''   x@(test -> true) = g x     f''   _ = h x          f'''  x | true <- test x = g x             | otherwise = h x          f'''' x = case (x) of                4 -> g x               _ -> h x      Variety is the spice of source code though, right?"}
{"_id": "16040", "title": "Mod lines in Java code", "text": "Often in C code (and some other languages as well) I have seen a section in the top-level comments for mod lines. These include the date a modification to the file was made, the user who made the modification, and a brief description of what was changed. I have not yet seen an equivalent of this in Java. I think this information is useful, especially when trying to track down bugs in code I did not write. Is this because Java code is often under version control, or are there other reasons? Are there any suggestions as to how to include the information in the code file?"}
{"_id": "255907", "title": "How to extract JSON schema, using Java, from data without using available libraries?", "text": "The problem in extracting schema from any given data is that they can have other JSON objects embedded in them which in turn have others. Also the types of the values in the name-value pair have to be recognized. How can it be done effectively in Java?"}
{"_id": "255906", "title": "How to code a function to be used with or without callback on Javascript?", "text": "I'm wondering how (if possible) I can create the same function, with exactly the same functionality, but to be used with a callback or without it. Here is an example with the \"wanted effect\" that is not working:               function getUsers(req, res, onComplete) {         // If the user is not logged in send an error. In other case, send data         if (!req.session.session_id) {             if (typeof onComplete === 'function') {                 onComplete({error: true, msg: 'You are not logged in'});             } else {                 res.json({error: true, msg: 'You are not logged in'});             }           } else {             //Another similar code...         }     }      It's not working because if I call \"getUsers(req, res)\", the typeof onComplete is always function, so I cannot detect when I call with or without the callback. The exact problem is that I can call this function from inside my code, with callback (a normal call, like `getUsers(req, res, function(cb) {//Do something with cb});` OR I can call this function from an AJAX call in my website, like `http://localhost:8080/api/getUsers`, what in that case is when it don't works. In the last case I get `typeof onComplete === 'function'` as true, so I never get the else part executed. I'm supposing that the \"request\" done by the http call have more parameters than req&res, and that's the reason why onComplete is a function, instead of undefined. The usual AJAX call is like this (javascript in the client side):               function getAllUsers() {         $.ajax({             url: '/api/getUsers',             type: 'GET',             success: function(data) {                 // Remove item and set as main topic the assigned on the server                  printUsers(data.users[0]);             },             error: function(XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {                  alert(XMLHttpRequest.responseText);              }          });     }      And the route defined in the config.json of my Node.JS to call the final function is like that:               {\"path\": \"/api/getUsers\", \"method\":\"get\", \"callback\": \"api#getUsers\"},"}
{"_id": "161264", "title": "How related is coding/information theory to computer networking?", "text": "I am taking a networking class(data communication) this coming semester. In many courses in my computer engineering degree, the books lack mathematical content. I am not a math wizard, but I think mathematics has the potential to give a much deeper understanding of different concepts, but it requires more work. Is it a good idea to focus on information theory(found a cool book by a researcher from Bell Labs) and use a more \"high level\" book like Computer networking, A top down approach as supplementary text?"}
{"_id": "161265", "title": "Why it is necessary to to test my iPhone app on actual iPhone device", "text": "I developed one application for iPhone and now I want it on App Store. So many my iOS geek friends told me to test it on actual device i.e. on iPhone. So I wonder that why it is necessary to to test my iPhone app on actual iPhone device though they (Apple) have given \"simulator\" which is near about same as my device?"}
{"_id": "88145", "title": "Is it common to prototype in a higher level language?", "text": "I'm currently toying with the idea of embarking on a project that far exceeds my current programming ability in a language I have very little real world experience in (C). Would it be valuable to prototype in a higher level language that I'm more familiar with (like Perl/Python/Ruby/C#) just so I can get the overall design going? Ultimately, the final product is performance sensitive (it's a database engine), hence the choice of C, but I'm afraid not knowing C well will make me lose the forest for the trees. While searching for similar questions, I noticed one fellow mention that programmers used to prototype in Prolog, then crank it out in assembler."}
{"_id": "161263", "title": "Using replacement to get possible outcomes to then search through HUGE amount of data", "text": "I have a database table holding 40 million records (table A). Each record has a string a user can search for. I also have a table with a list of character replacements (table B) i.e. i = Y, I = 1 etc. I need to be able to take the string a user is searching for, iterate through each letter and create an array of every possible outcome (the users string, then each outcome with alternative letters used). I need to check for alternatives on both lower and uppercase letters in the word A search string can be no longer than 10 characters long. I'm using PHP and a MySQL database. Does anyone have any thoughts / articles / guidance on doing this in an efficient way?"}
{"_id": "176614", "title": "Are there programming languages that allow you to do set arithmetic on types?", "text": "Out of curiosity, are there languages that allow you to do set arithmetic on types to create new types? Something like:               interface A {       void a();       void b();     }          interface B {       void b();       void c();     }          interface C = A & B; // has b()     interface D = A | B; // has a(), b() and c()     interface E = (A & B) ^ B; // has c()      I know that in some languages these ideas can be expressed (i.e., Java has `List<Comparable & Serializable>` for the union of the interfaces) but I've never heard of a language that supports type arithmetic. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "28377", "title": "How do I convince my users not to use a sketch UI?", "text": "I recently worked on a prototype of a new system using Sketchflow, and now some key stakeholders are pushing for a sketched look & feel in the final product. To make matters worse, the people viewing the prototype were asked to provide feedback on the sketched look & feel by way of a fairly leading survey question, to which 80% of the responses were positive. It's for an enterprise application that will mostly be for internal clients, but is also intended to be used by some external clients. The main reasons I have for it thinking it's a bad idea are:   * It doesn't look polished or professional   * The significant effort involved in skinning an actual application in the sketched style   * The sketched style doesn't make efficient use of screen real-estate I've been trying to figure out what the appeal could possibly be, and the only thing I can come up with is that people are attracted to the simplicity of it -- especially when compared with the existing system(s) it will be replacing. Can anyone point me in the direction of evidence of why using a sketch look & feel is a bad idea? Ideally something based on UI research. I'm worried that my voice isn't going to be listened to unless I can point to something concrete. **[Edit]** I should probably add that the difficulty of skinning the application is compounded by the fact that it is intended to be delivered as one or more Silverlight webparts in a Sharepoint site. Getting a consistent sketched look & feel across both technologies could be very difficult. **[Edit]** Just in case anyone's not sure about what a Sketchflow prototype looks like (and therefore what the people in question are asking for) they're essentially asking for a production application to have a pencil-sketch wireframe look & feel."}
{"_id": "120660", "title": "How one could use a live editor", "text": "I was thinking about a live editing environment where code / a source file is synchronized so that changes made by one user would be carried across to all others editing the file. Something like Google Wave, but for code. Could this kind of an environment be better for the code, as changes are shared instantly? (with revision-control, of course) Has anyone tried (or has had a need for) using a shared environment for code? I'd love to hear from someone who has used such an editor."}
{"_id": "154889", "title": "Path of Languages from High School to Career", "text": "I will be a freshman next year who has programmed for about 3 years. I currently know Java pretty well, but I am looking towards the future. In order to be at the top of the job market when I am out of college, what languages should I learn in high school?"}
{"_id": "126996", "title": "What are the consequences of having unnecessary references and usings?", "text": "I'm a bit of a neat freak and tend to keep my projects by cleaning references and using in each class to keep only what's actually used. What other argument could I make (besides calming my OCD nerve) of keeping to the essentials? I'm thinking mostly system references, any reference to custom work will bring its lot of backward compatibility issues. Is the release footprint bigger? Compile time longer?"}
{"_id": "126990", "title": "InterviewStreet (Vertical Sticks) just a tip where to get started", "text": "Having a lot of trouble with this question in interviewstreet.com: Given array of integers Y=y1,...,yn, we have n line segments such that endpoints of segment i are (i, 0) and (i, yi). Imagine that from the top of each segment a horizontal ray is shot to the left, and this ray stops when it touches another segment or it hits the y-axis. We construct an array of n integers, v1, ..., vn, where vi is equal to length of ray shot from the top of segment i. We define V(y1, ..., yn) = v1 + ... + vn. For example, if we have Y=[3,2,5,3,3,4,1,2], then v1, ..., v8 = [1,1,3,1,1,3,1,2], as shown in the picture below: For each permutation p of [1,...,n], we can calculate V(yp1, ..., ypn). If we choose a uniformly random permutation p of [1,...,n], what is the expected value of V(yp1, ..., ypn)? Input Format First line of input contains a single integer T (1 <= T <= 100). T test cases follow. First line of each test-case is a single integer N (1 <= N <= 50). Next line contains positive integer numbers y1, ..., yN separated by a single space (0 < yi <= 1000). Output Format For each test-case output expected value of V(yp1, ..., ypn), rounded to two digits after the decimal point. I serious don't want any code or a pseudo-code algorithm. I just want to know if there is any **specific** computer science theory or it's just something that I have to figure out with a custom method?"}
{"_id": "244835", "title": "Is it customary for software companies to forbid code authors from taking credit for their work? do code authors have a say?", "text": "The company I work for has decided that the source code for a set of tools they make available to customers is also going to be made available to those customers. Since I am the author of that source code, and since many source code files have my name written in them as part of class declaration documentation comments, I've been asked to remove author information from the source code files, even though the license headers at the beginning of each source file make it clear that the company is the owner of the code. Since I'm relatively new to this industry I was wondering whether it's considered typical for companies that decide to make their source code available to third parties to not allow the code authors to take some amount of credit for their work, even when it's clear that the code author is not the owner of the code. Am I right in assuming that I don't have a say on the matter?"}
{"_id": "244834", "title": "Diagram to show code responsibility", "text": "Does anyone know how to visually diagram the ways in which the flow of control in code passes between code produced by different groups and how that affects the amount of code that needs to be carefully written/reviewed/tested for system properties to hold? * * * What I am trying to help people visualize are arguments of the form:   1. For property P to hold, nd developers have to write application code, Ca, without certain kinds of errors, and nm maintainers have to make sure that the code continues to not have these kinds of errors over the project lifetime.   2. We could reduce the error rate by educating nd developers and nm maintainers.   3. For us to be confident that the property holds, ns specialists still need to test or check |Ca| lines of code and continue to test/check the changes by nm maintainers.   4. Alternatively, we could be confident that P holds if all code paths that could violate P went through tool code, Ct, written by our specialists.   5. In our case,      * test suites alone cannot give confidence that P holds     * nd \u226b ns     * nm > ns     * |Ca| \u226b |Ct| so writing and maintaining Ct is economical, frees up our developers to worry about other things, and reduces the ongoing education commitment by our specialists. or those conditions do not hold, so focusing on education and testing is preferable. * * * # Example 1 As a concrete example, suppose we want to ensure that our web-service only produces valid JSON output. Our web-service provides several query and mutation operators that can be composed in interesting ways. We could try to educate everyone who maintains those operations about the JSON syntax, the importance of conformance, and libraries available so that when they write to an output buffer, every possible sequence of appends results in syntactically valid JSON. Alternatively, we don't expose an output stream handle to application code, and instead expose a JSON sink so that every code path that writes a response is channeled through a JSON sink that is written and maintained by a specialist who knows JSON syntax and can use well-written libraries to produce only valid output. # Example 2 We need to make sure that a service that receives a URL from an untrusted source and tries to fetch its content does not end up revealing sensitive files from the file-system, like `file:///etc/passwd`. If there is a single standard way that any developer familiar with the application language's libraries would use to fetch URLs, which has file- system access turned off by default, then simply educating developers about the standard mechanism, and testing that file probing fails for some inputs, will probably be sufficient."}
{"_id": "150411", "title": "Can functional programming be used to develop a full enterprise application?", "text": "I am just beginning to learn Functional programming (FP). I come from a OOP world, where everything are objects, and most of them are mutable. I have a hard time wrapping around the concept that functions don't have side effects. If something is not mutable, how are common things objects like Employee or Person represented in FP. Can FP be used to create a full fledged enterprise application?"}
{"_id": "19549", "title": "How much redundancy/robustness should complex software implement?", "text": "**The focus of this question:** Some software performs \"extra work\" in order to increase the chance of a \"eventually successful/satisfactory\" outcome, despite one or more internal errors in the software, which requires a longer execution time when those errors happen. All these happen without the user's knowledge if the outcome was successful. **Definition of complex software:**   * Contains code written by (contributed from) more than 10 developers over its lifetime, and not written in the same time frame   * Depends on more than 10 external libraries, each with caveats   * A typical software task (for generating a result wanted by the user) requires 10 or more input parameters, where most of them have default values but are configurable if the user needs control.   * Most importantly, software that has the appropriate complexity relative to the task being performed, i.e. _not unnecessarily complicated_. _Edited:_ What is complex? Please see There is a big difference between Complex and Complicated. (direct link) **Definition of Redundancy/Robustness** _within this question_ :    _(Added Robustness based on comments)_   * If a software task failed when the current set of parameters was used, try different parameters.      * Obviously, there must be inside knowledge that those \"different\" parameters use a different code path, possibly resulting in a different (hopefully better) outcome.     * Sometimes these different code path are chosen based on observations of the external libraries.   * At the end, if the actual task performed is slightly different from the user's specification, the user will receive a report detailing the discrepancy.   * Finally, like the 10-plus configurable parameters, the redundancy and reporting are also configurable. Example of such software:   * Database Migration      * Business database     * Source control database, etc.   * Batch converting between a Word document and an OpenOffice document, PowerPoint and OpenOffice Draw, etc.   * Automatic translation of an entire website   * Automatic analysis of software package, such as Doxygen, but where the analysis needs to be more dependable (i.e. not just a documentation tool)   * Network communication, where packets may be lost and a number of retries are expected _This question was originally inspired fromHow do you deal with intentionally bad code?   but is now focused on just one of the causes of software bloat. This question does not address any other causes of software bloat, such as addition of new features._ _Possibly related:_   * _How to deal with complex codes in (huge) projects_   * _How do people manage to write and maintain extremely complex and hard to read code?_"}
{"_id": "150417", "title": "How should I pitch moving to an agile/iterative development cycle with mandated 3-week deployments?", "text": "I'm part of a small team of four, and I'm the unofficial team lead (I'm lead in all but title, basically). We've largely been a \"cowboy\" environment, with no architecture or structure and everyone doing their own thing. Previously, our production deployments would be every few months without being on a set schedule, as things were added/removed to the task list of each developer. Recently, our CIO (semi-technical but not really a programmer) decided we will do deployments every three weeks; because of this I instantly thought that adopting an iterative development process (not necessarily full-blown Agile/XP, which would be a huge thing to convince everyone else to do) would go a long way towards helping manage expectations properly so there isn't this far-fetched idea that any new feature will be done in three weeks. IMO the biggest hurdle is that we don't have ANY kind of development approach in place right now (among other things like no CI or automated tests whatsoever). We don't even use Waterfall, we use \"Tell Developer X to do a task, expect him to do everything and get it done\". Are there any pointers that would help me start to ease us towards an iterative approach and A) Get the other developers on board with it and B) Get management to understand how iterative works? So far my idea involves trying to set up a CI server and get our build process automated (it takes about 10-20 minutes right now to simply build the application to put it on our development server), since pushing tests and/or TDD will be met with a LOT of resistance at this point, and constantly force us to break larger projects into smaller chunks that could be done iteratively in a three-week cycle; my only concern is that, unless I'm misunderstanding, an agile/iterative process may or may not **release** the software (depending on the project scope you might have \"working\" software after three weeks, but there isn't enough of it that works to let users make use of it), while I think the expectation here from management is that there will always be something \"ready to go\" in three weeks, and that disconnect could cause problems. On that note, is there any literature or references that explains the agile/iterative approach _from a business standpoint_? Everything I've seen only focuses on the developers, how to do it, but nothing seems to describe it from the perspective of actually getting the buy-in from the businesspeople."}
{"_id": "19541", "title": "What are the main advantages and disadvantages of LL and LR parsing?", "text": "When building a parser to a programming language what I earn and what I lost choosing one or the other?"}
{"_id": "155429", "title": "A testing feedback/report tool?", "text": "I'm thinking of developing a pluggable test and assessment module. This tool will be used especially for desktop application projects to report and log errors, bugs, missing features and suggestions from testers. The tool will be plugged to the application by putting a small icon to the application itself. When pressed the tool will be visible where user can create entries about the application. Is there already a tool like that? I am not speaking about UI testing btw. For example, this tool might have a form consisting of   * Page name   * Environment information   * Entry type (can be bug, feature request, suggestion)   * Message   * User Info (name, contact etc)   * Date I think such a tool can greatly help testers prepare reports. Developers can understand the issue better and track all the reports."}
{"_id": "155428", "title": "Sorting months with pre-defined order?", "text": "I want to sort the months of the year starting at any month, but January needs to show up after December if January isn't the starting point. Can I do that in an array or do I need a special data structure or algorithm to do that?"}
{"_id": "214269", "title": "OOP language design attribute symbol", "text": "I am designing a language, and wondering which character (or string) to use to represent that something is an attribute of something else. In all languages I have used, this is done with a dot - `my_class_instance.attribute`. However, in this language, I want to have what would usually be methods as syntactic sugar for normal functions, like so:               x.f(y, z).g(a, b).h(p, q)      is the same thing as               x = f(x, y, z)     x = g(x, a, b)     x = h(x, p, q)      However, if I also use `.` to show that an attribute belongs to a class I think that will get confusing, so I'm looking for another symbol for that purpose (or another solution). Currently I am thinking that I should use either the apostrophe - `instance'attribute` \\- which shows ownership in a clear way, but means it can't be used for strings, the backtick - `instance`attribute` \\- kind of looks like an apostrophe, which is good in the sense it shows ownership, but bad in the sense it could be mistaken for one, and is less commonly typed, and therefore likely to be slower to be typed (and missing from some keyboards). Alternatively, are there any symbols I could replace the dot used for the syntatic sugar inplace function calling thing with?"}
{"_id": "182159", "title": "php - auto populate the model member variable from database table", "text": "I am stuck with a very old large website which I need to do some modifications. I can't use or integrate a new MVC framework due to current site is outdated with some custom coding done long time ago. I am writing custom reflection class for the user table in the database, but I find it easy to work on the model creating when the parameter passed or primary key and populated the member variables , then use them in the code. for example               $user= new User($user_id);      and then if I need the age I can use               if($user->age > 18)      To do this you might say it's easy just create a constructor method and do a select and assign them to the member variables .. however tricky part is I want to   1. Even the database table design is changed I want them to be reflected in the coding without altering the code, ie. if we add a new field to the database table I want it to be called using `$user->new_field;` without touching the code. (I know Yii can do this but I can't use Yii as I have to write all functionality of the website if I have to move to a framework)   2. if possible assign them to the member variables with the data type i.e Strings, Int etc reading them from the database  How to build a model base on above (actually constructor method)?"}
{"_id": "151045", "title": "Motivation and use of move constructors in C++", "text": "I recently have been reading about move constructors in C++ (see e.g. here) and I am trying to understand how they work and when I should use them. As far as I understand, a move constructor is used to alleviate the performance problems caused by copying large objects. The wikipedia page says: \"A chronic performance problem with C++03 is the costly and unnecessary deep copies that can happen implicitly when objects are passed by value.\" I normally address such situations   * by passing the objects by reference, or   * by using smart pointers (e.g. boost::shared_ptr) to pass around the object (the smart pointers get copied instead of the object). What are the situations in which the above two techniques are not sufficient and using a move constructor is more convenient?"}
{"_id": "229209", "title": "What is a stream, and how does it work?", "text": "Like a data stream in general, this can be an I/O stream or memory stream or a file stream or what not. I understand that it's some sort of stream of bytes, that you can read to parse very large amounts of data if needed, what I don't understand however, is how it works. Is it possible to 'miss' data from a stream if you start reading it too late? or does it wait for you? A lot of tutorials I find online just tell how to use a stream, but it doesn't actually get out of the way to explain how it works, one tutorial explained it like a river, but that just confuses me more; the water running in the river doesn't wait, which again brings me back to; what if I read it too late? Can someone explain this concept to me?"}
{"_id": "119479", "title": "What advantages do we have when creating a separate mapping table for two relational tables", "text": "In various open source CMS, I have noticed that there is a separate table for mapping two relational tables. Like for categories and products, there is a separate `product_category_mapping` table. This table just has a primary key and two foreign keys from the categories and product tables. My question is what are the benefits of this database design rather than just linking the tables directly by defining a foreign key in either table? Is it just matter of convenience?"}
{"_id": "214264", "title": "Why does assigning a variable to false return false?", "text": "Why does:               something = false      always return false? Since it is an assignment and not a comparison, it seems it would make more sense to return the result (success/failure) of the assignment ( **like pretty much every other assignment you do** ). **EDIT - this is wrong, as the answers below point out. My bad. Slight brain fart. See the original impetus for this question in the comments below.** What happens if `some_boolean_var = false` failed for whatever reason (unlikely, but theoretically possible, especially if you defined a custom method for this action)? That would also return false, so you have no indication as to whether the assignment actually worked. It basically just means you can't combine assignment and comparison in one line like you can do with nearly everything else in Rails. For example, you can't do:               if something = false (note the single =)       do stuff     end      I mean you can do it but not if you wanted to check and make sure the assignment succeeded first. Just really weird to me. I'm sure there is a reason for this so please enlighten me :) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "13632", "title": "Business Knowledge in Tech Courses", "text": "Few months ago, I was invited to a forum in a local university to discuss about programmers\u00b4s job market. The forum joined teachers and companies representants for understand this issue. The final conclusion of debate was that the students are focused on tech part of software but they don't get understand the business concepts because classes has a little bit or none focus at that. The university has commited to insert more business concepts on some tech courses. What do you think about this? More business concepts really would help companies and students or tech courses must focus on tech things? **EDIT:** The event was focused on Business Intelligence. So, companies were interested in programmers who had easy understanding to business rules too. I think that, in this area, is essencial have these knowledgment."}
{"_id": "215795", "title": "Should programmers itemize testing for projects?", "text": "I recently hired a programming team to do a port of my iPad app to the iPhone and Android platforms. Now, in a separate contract, I am asking them to implement a bunch of tips on how to play the app, similar like you would find in Candy Crush or Cut the Rope. They want to charge 12 hours @ $35/hr for the \"Testing all of the Tips\", telling me that normally it would take them more than 25 hours but that they will 'bear the difference'. I am not familiar with this level of itemization, but maybe it's a new practice? I am used to devs doing their own quality control, and then having a testing/acceptance period. They are using Cocos 2D-X, and they say that the tips going to multiple platforms makes all of the hours jack up. I feel like they might be overcharging, and it's difficult for me to know because it's kind of like with a mechanic. \"It took us 5 hours to replace the radiator\". How can you dispute that? It seems to me that most of you would charge for the work but NOT for hours that you are 'testing'. Am I missing something? Thanks for any help and advice you can give!"}
{"_id": "2329", "title": "Are there more efficient ways to search for help/documentation than Google/SO/...?", "text": "Google sometimes come up with irrelevant links, not everything is available on SO, there are cases where the local documentation is also annoying to look through... Are there other efficient ways you use to search?"}
{"_id": "201442", "title": "What to do when somebody forks my open-source project with the same name?", "text": "I have this GPL project, it got stuck for like a year, I really like the idea, then somebody fork it and changed the whole thing but used the same name, I don't mind for the code (it was GPL after all) but I like the name. What's the etiquette for this kind of situation? The project will benefit myself, and I like it, however the name wasn't for sale.. EDIT: I know if I contact the author he'll understand and change the name, but I have no time to work on that project right now, so I don't want to be a \"name troll\" for my folks (small community), so I'll let it be this time, my question is more about the etiquette of forking. If the project is apparently abandoned can they fork and use the same name or they MUST get a new name?"}
{"_id": "161840", "title": "Advise on How To migrate a huge monolithic java application towards something service-oriented", "text": "I am confronted with the problem of migrating a huge monolithic java web application towards a more service oriented approach. The application has grown for years from what it was originally desinged for and is still growing. That means a lot of changed customer requriements where development under time pressure with few concernce about code quality. That led to very very complex code structure (no modular packaging, a lot of complex inheritants, mix of functionality in classes and as good as no documentation). Now step by step funcionality shall be extracted and run as service. Replacement/Redevelopment is currently out of questions. So the code should be extraced and wrapped so it can be replaced later with a new cleaner version. The problem I now have to deal with is that it is really hard to identify the code that represents a functionality and extracting it without breaking other functionalities or even the whole application. Any ideas how I can approach this problem? I am open to everything."}
{"_id": "146160", "title": "How To Explain To My Dad What I have Programmed", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  My Dad is impatient with the pace of my learning to program. What do I do? I am 14 and have been studying programming for 4 months now (3 months Python, 1 Month of Ruby). I haven't been pushed by my parents to do it, I took it up on my own. Whenever I try to show something I made to my dad, he says he finds no value in it. At first, I wrote simple text games, like a text version of rock paper scissors, roulette, blackjack, etc. When that got too easy, I tried to make them as advanced as possible. I made a roulette game in Ruby based off `instance_eval` and `method_missing`. I showed them to him, and he said that was \"childish\" to make games. After games got too easy, I have started extending the features of the languages, I made a module for a \"Changeable Range\" in Python, where one could just write:               j = crange.CRange(5)      then               j.shift(10)      to shift the start and stop up ten and               j.reverse()      to create a reversed range. I showed it to him and he said \"There is no value in that.\" Is there a way to explain to him that there is value in my programs, or am I just moving at a very slow pace in my learning?"}
{"_id": "161844", "title": "What's more restrictive, the RPL or the AGPL?", "text": "What's the difference between the RPL licence and the AGPL licence? Which one is more restrictive?"}
{"_id": "97781", "title": "Moving from developer to programming teacher", "text": "I'm interested in the experience of software developers who have become programming teachers, -- at a junior college, teaching college or high school. I'm wondering if anybody has made the switch and if they've stuck with it or if they've gone back to industry -- and why. I've been thinking for the past 7 years (on and off) that I'd like to try it out and see what it's like. I have friends that are teachers and seem to love their jobs. From what my friends know of me and from what I know of myself, I think I'd like it."}
{"_id": "166816", "title": "AGPL License - does it apply in this scenario?", "text": "There is an AGPLv3 based software (Client) that makes web service calls (using SOAP) to another software (Server - commercial, cloud based). There is no common code or any connection whatsoever between these two except for the web service calls being made. My questions -   1. Does the Server need to be AGPL too? I guess not - but would like to confirm.   2. Let us say the end point URL for the Server can be configured on the Client side (by editing an XML file) to connect it to different Servers (again, there is no connection other than the webservice calls being made) does it require any of these Servers being AGPL?   3. Are there any issues in running the Client as a DLL that is loaded by other commercial applications on users' desktops? Does it require these other applications also to be AGPL?"}
{"_id": "166812", "title": "What are the benefits of using the command line for software development?", "text": "What benefits are gained from using the command line for software development over using an alternative GUI? Is the command line faster for certain tasks? Are certain tools only available via the command line?"}
{"_id": "166811", "title": "How to manage many mobile device users at server side?", "text": "I built a social Android application in which users can see other users around them by GPS location. At the beginning thing went well as I had low number of users, but now that I have increasing number of users (about 1500 +100 every day) it has revealed a major problem in my design. In my Google App Engine servlet I have static HashMap that holds all the users profiles objects, currently 1500 and this number will increase as more users register. **Why I'm doing it?** Every user that requests for the users around him compares his GPS with other users and checks if they are in his 10km radius. This happens every five minutes on average. Consequently, I can't get the users from db every time because GAE read/write operation quota will tear me apart. **The problem with this design is?** As the number of users increases, the Hashmap turns to null every 4-6 hours, I think that this time is getting shorter, but I'm not sure. I'm fixing this by reloading the users from the db every time I detect that it becomes null, but this causes DOS to my users for 30 sec, so I'm looking for better solution.   I'm guessing that it happens because the size of the hashmap. Am I right? I have been advised to use a spatial database, but that means that I can't work with GAE any more and it means that I need to build my big server all over again and lose my existing DB. Is there something I can do with the existing tools? Thanks."}
{"_id": "234546", "title": "Colons in internationalized UI", "text": "When using gettext or a similar framework, should the translation strings include `':'` (like `\"Label:\"`) for generating labels for UI or should I add `':'` in UI code itself?"}
{"_id": "94328", "title": "How do you keep all those languages straight in your head", "text": "I know Java, C#, C++. I have used Perl, and am picking up Python and Actionscript 3. This is certainly a path others have trodden, so I am asking how do you keep all these languages straight in your head?"}
{"_id": "116318", "title": "Pair Programming Using Different Editors", "text": "I really like pair programming for particular projects or features. It can act as an immediate sanity check and increase code coverage across your development team. That said I always seem to run into an issue regarding editors. I primarily code Ruby and I personally like to use VIM whereas other developers on my team use EMACS, TextMate or RubyMine. On top of that, even if two developers are using the same editor, it seems that everyone has a different macro for running tests or executing a certain file. My question is this: how do you continue to pair program when everyone has a different editor preference? Is there some kind of software or development practice that would allow two developers to pair program from different editors? Do you just have to agree on a common editor that you can both use? How do you solve this problem in your company?"}
{"_id": "52380", "title": "How do I improve my code reading skills", "text": "Well the question is in the title - how do I improve my code reading skills. The software/hardware environment I currently do development in is quite slow with respect to compilation times and time it takes the whole system to test. The system is quite old/complex and thus splitting it into a several smaller, more manageable sub-projects is not feasible in a neare future. I have realized is what really hinders the development progress is my code reading skills. How do I improve my code reading skills, so I can spot most of the errors and issues in the code even before I hit the \"do compile\" key, even before I start the debugger?"}
{"_id": "94321", "title": "How can I get paid for reducing technical debt?", "text": "I'm currently working for small company that has few technically complicated products. I'm the one and only developer for one of them. About a year ago, I got the legacy version of the product and started \"supporting\" it. Customer only talks about new feature, business value and others of that kind. The problem is, though the code is in C#, it's quite procedural. There are no abstractions, classes are only used where Visual Studio requires them - Forms, for instance. The implementations of these classes are really awful and the code is really hard to maintain. For all these year I spend my own time for refactoring. In the latest version, there are pretty abstractions and such. I had to reimplement a number of components from scratch and I really feel that adding new feature or changing behavior to these components is MUCH easier than to others. The problem is, I spend my own time. I really like the results, but I don't like working 12 hours per day. Have you ever been to similar situation? What should I try? I've already tried discussing it, but still no success. I'm just scared of the moment when we decide implementing the new feature that requires a lot of changes to the legacy code. That just could be shocking to the customer: why do you need 8 hours for changing these icons? The customer just doesn't care that there are 500 places in the code that I need to change. And I should also find all these 500 places first. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "199661", "title": "When would I require a Macro instead of a function?", "text": "I am new to Clojure, I am new to Macros and I have no prior background in Lisp. I went on to create my own switch case like form and ended up with this:               (defmacro switch-case [v cases default] (if (cases v) (cases v) default ))       and then tried making a function and ended up with this:               (defn fn-switch-case [v cases default] (if (cases v) (cases v) default ))      Both               (switch-case 5 {6 \"six\" 7 \"seven\"} \"not there\")      and               (fn-switch-case 5 {6 \"six\" 7 \"seven\"} \"not there\")      Work fine. What could be the scenario where I would need a macro and a function wont work ? Is there a drawback in my function or macro implementations ?"}
{"_id": "167147", "title": "Why don't computers store decimal numbers as a second whole number?", "text": "Computers have trouble storing fractional numbers where the denominator is something other than a solution to 2^x. This is because the first digit after the decimal is worth 1/2, the second 1/4 (or 1/(2^1) and 1/(2^2)) etc. Why deal with all sorts of rounding errors when the computer could have just stored the decimal part of the number as another whole number (which is therefore accurate?) The only thing I can think of is dealing with repeating decimals (in base 10), but there could have been an edge solution to that (like we currently have with infinity)."}
{"_id": "90833", "title": "What is the best way for an experienced developer to work on a WordPress blog", "text": "I'm beginning to work on my first WordPress blog, however I've noticed most tutorials just have you do modifications (such as theme changes, installing plugins) on the production site. This worries me for a few reasons:   * No backups   * No version control   * If you make a mistake, your production site is affected   * Developing remotely is slower than local development, especially when tweaking css files. I understand why WordPress works like this - it allows people with no development experience to manage their WordPress installation (or the one provided by their service provider). It also allows you to work on the WordPress installation without having ssh access to the server. However as I am confortable working with tools like git and ssh, and am using a virtual server for the blog, this isn't very important to me. So I was wondering what techniques experienced developers use when working on a WordPress blog. For example:   * Do you develop locally, then push the changes to the live site? How do you do this?   * How do you manage database changes and backups?   * What do you store under version control (if anything)?   * If a plugin changes the database, do you somehow track the changes it does in version control, so you can rollback the changes done by the plugin if you need to? Or maybe I'm just overcomplicating everything if working on the production site isn't as risky as I am thinking it would be. I would appreciate any answers either way."}
{"_id": "169908", "title": "How can I bind an interface to a class decided by an xml or database configuration at the launch of the application?", "text": "I'm re-working on the design of an existing application which is build using WebForms. Currently the plan is to work it into a MVP pattern application while using Ninject as the IoC container. The reason for Ninject to be there is that the boss had wanted a certain flexibility within the system so that we can build in different flavor of business logic in the model and let the programmer to choose which to use based on the client request, either via XML configuration or database setting. I know that Ninject have no need for XML configuration, however I'm confused on how it can help to dynamically inject the dependency into the system? Imagine I have a interface `IMember` and I need to bind this interface to the class decided by a xml or database configuration at the launch of the application, how can I achieve that?"}
{"_id": "211464", "title": "What are the pros and cons of running multiple instances of an app per marketplace?", "text": "One app to rule them all, and in the darkness, bind them. I'm speccing out a client app at the moment. The same service is to be delivered to two separate counties and the the content within: users, line items, etc. should NOT cross over between the marketplaces. This leads me to think that having two separate instances of the app, with separate databases is the best approach. However... That sounds like a LOT of extra work, and duplication, for two systems that would be, for the MOST part, identical Has anyone dealt with this architecture conundrum before and can you perhaps share some of the pros and cons of each approach, with an answer on your preference? FWIW it's a rails 4 app being deployed with Capistrano"}
{"_id": "96789", "title": "In what specific ways did Pascal and or Delphi influence Java?", "text": "I was reading in the side bar of the Java language wiki page and it says it was influenced by Pascal and Delphi. this isn't the fact anymore, there are no references to Delphi on the entire referenced wiki page as of this edit, probably should remove all references to Delph from this question as well At first glance Java appears to just be C++ with a garbage collector, and no pointers. Delphi and Java both came out the same year. I am curious if someone who knows Java and Pascal / Delphi really well could look at Java and say **\"Feature X in Java is influenced by feature Y in Pascal (or Delphi).\"** Additionally was the influence in later versions of Java (so the feature from Pascal or Delphi didn't show up until Java version Z), or was it actually in the seeds of the Java language? Delphi and Java both came out the same year, so Delphi's influence in the genesis of Java seems less likely. Alternatively it may be that Delphi or Pascal influenced the Java Platform in some other way, and not the language specifically. _[This was rewritten to be clearer. That may have changed the scope of the question to the point the existing comments and answers don't fit. My intention was to clarify and not change.]_"}
{"_id": "96788", "title": "What was the life span of Quick Pascal?", "text": "Microsoft had a Pascal compiler called Quick Pascal. I've seen some conflicting reports about when it was available. Does anyone know for sure? Did it introduce any new language features over the alternatives, or was it just Microsoft's version?"}
{"_id": "96785", "title": "Was in it Turbo Pascal 4 that Unit were introduced?", "text": "I was surprised when I heard that Pascal didn't originally have units. If I recall correctly they were introduced in Turbo Pascal 4. Did other pascal version have units prior to that? How long before other Pascal's got units?"}
{"_id": "96787", "title": "Is Free Pascal just an open source, multi-platform clone of Turbo Pascal & Delphi?", "text": "Does Free Pascal introduce any significant language features over Turbo Pascal & then Delphi, or does it just introduce the Turbo Pascal & Delphi flavors of Pascal to more platforms?"}
{"_id": "11775", "title": "Does anyone else have a refactoring problem?", "text": "It seems like after I've written a significant amount of code I get this anxious feeling like I haven't done it in the best possible way, and I end up continuously refactoring and spending way too much time on the project, or never getting it done sometimes. Does this ever happen to anyone else, and how do you deal with this?"}
{"_id": "11777", "title": "What useful bookmarks to programmers do you use?", "text": "I want bookmarks specific to aiding in programming tasks, not to every task. If the bookmark is awesome to every user, please don't post it as an answer here. I will down vote it and I suggest to users do the same. To general bookmarks, please post on Webapps.StackExchange Good answer is a bookmark which helps the programmer work. I don't expect get too many answers although it would be a great surprise if it happens. Please, explain what the bookmark does and where it can be used."}
{"_id": "52652", "title": "MVC and individual elements of the model under a common base class", "text": "Admittedly my experience of using the MVC pattern is limited. It might be argued that I don't really separate the V from the C, though I keep the M separate from the VC to the extent I can manage. I'm considering the scenario in which the application's model includes a number of elements that have a common base class. For example, enemy characters in a video game, or shape types in a vector graphics app. The view wants to render these elements. Of course, the different subclasses call for different rendering. The problem is that the elements are part of the model. Rendering them is conceptually part of the view. But how they are to be rendered depends on parameters of both:   * Attributes and state of the element are parameters of the model   * User settings are parameters of the view - and to support multiple platforms and/or view modes, different views may be used What's your preferred way of dealing with this?   * Put the rendering code in the model classes, passing in any view parameters?   * Put the rendering code in the view, using a switch or similar to select the right rendering for the model element type?   * Have some intermediate classes as a model-view interface, of which the model will create objects on demand and the view will then render them?   * Something else?"}
{"_id": "97437", "title": "What would truly happen if java.lang.String weren't final?", "text": "I'm a long time Java developer and finally, after majoring, I have time to study it decently in order to take the certification exam... One thing that has always bothered me is String being \"final\". I do understand it when a read about the security issues and related stuff... But, seriously, does anyone have a true example of that? For instance, what would happen if String weren't final? Like it's not in Ruby. I haven't heard any complaints coming from the Ruby community... And I'm aware of the StringUtils and related classes that you have to either implement yourself or search over the web to just implement that behavior (4 lines of code) you're willing to."}
{"_id": "215134", "title": "Get Info From Database, or Build Inferred Info?", "text": "Does it make more sense to store and retrieve properties or information directly related to an item in a database, or, say in such a case that a product's ID could describe information about it, should the information be gathered from that? Example: Item SKU -- 4HBU12 4 - is the number of motors   H - the voltage   B - the color, blue   U - the model   12 - the length Should I store those individual attributes as well as the SKU, or should I store only the SKU and build the attributes from it?"}
{"_id": "153144", "title": "How to access functions in extended classes efficiently?", "text": "In PHP I have classes as below               class Animal {         //some vars         public function printname(){              echo $this->name;         }     }          class AnimalMySql extends Animal {         static public function getTableFields(){              return array();         }     }          class AnimalPostgreSql extends Animal {         static public function getTableFields(){              return array();         }     }      Now I have an object `$lion = new Animal();` and I want to do               if($store == mysql)         //getTableFields from class AnimalMySql     else         //getTableFields form class AnimalPostgreSql      I am new to OOP and not sure what is the best way to call the method from the specific class P.S. Please leave a note with the answer to explain the efficiency of the approach"}
{"_id": "215130", "title": "Designing a user-defined list to be stored in a relational database - Should I include user index?", "text": "By index, I mean, as the user creates the list, each item receives an integer index for its place in that particular list. Since there will be a table of ListItems, I'd prefer to avoid using the name \"Index\" for the field. Then I was thinking - should I even include the list index in the database? I figured I would because the list would be created in the same fashion every time, then. Or I could order the list for the user based on its actual primary key, since the list items are created in succession anyway... What should I do?"}
{"_id": "251106", "title": "Pattern for data types that are related yet fundamentally different in utility", "text": "# Background I'm currently working on a codebase for what is to become a forthcoming website's content \"engine\", where it will take in different types of standardized data (implemented with XML), parse it, and then generate content dynamically and accordingly. The data itself also includes a list of context clues or helper objects for searching, comparing, analyzing, etc., which is being developed concurrently into a group as a data interaction layer and it is completely separate from the engine. Each generated content will emit some embedded \"signatures\" that can be sniffed by the interaction layer for post-processing (possibly with few generated hidden input values). # The Problem Nonetheless, the immediate problem that I'm facing is that although those list of hidden signatures are related to the content that is generated, it is essentially not needed by the engine to let the browser know how content should be presented initially. Logically speaking, is it usually the engine's job to parse all data no matter what type of data it is given so that the interaction layer can simply manipulate it later? Or, since that data type acts as a helper for data manipulation, should the interaction layer step in and act as the parent for that data type specifically, so that the engine can just focus on content? The root of the problem is that I started separating things to its specialized components for better maintainability in the future but I'm not exactly sure where to stop separating chunks to its essentials. Should I treat data as simply data? That can't possibly be right."}
{"_id": "235576", "title": "Unit testing - External vs Internal dependencies", "text": "Unit tests should be isolated, automated ( ie we don't need to do any prior- configuration for all tests to run at the click of a button ) and consistent in their results. For these reasons we should stub any _external dependencies_ ( ie databases, webservices etc ) used by unit under test **UUT** ( with integration tests **UUTs** do use external dependencies ). But based on what criteria do we decide which _internal dependencies_ called by **UUT** ( by _internal dependencies_ I'm referring to code which is under our control and that doesn't communicate with any external systems ) also need to be stubbed and which don't need to be? Is perhaps the criteria that methods defined in the same class as **UUT** don't need to be stubbed, while methods defined in other classes should be, or ...?"}
{"_id": "251103", "title": "n:m as the only way to store notifications?", "text": "I have a user and a notifications table. I want to make sure that every users sees a new notification once and only once. Not more, not less. The intuitive idea is to have a n:m relation table with userId:notificationId. But isn\u00b4t it a little too much overhead to create a new table just for that? What about NoSQL databases? Would it be a good idea to just add an array of notification ids to the individual user in the user table?"}
{"_id": "53387", "title": "Type of computer for a developer on the road", "text": "I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be \"on transit\" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on \"open\" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector **Update** I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this \"on the road\" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order:   * keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time   * battery life: I think something very important   * weight/size: also very important   * looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance.   * wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!"}
{"_id": "251101", "title": "I know JavaScript really well, but i bomb coding interviews", "text": "So I'm currently on a hunt for a new position as a Front-End Developer. I know JavaScript very well and can wax poetically about Closures, Currying, Prototypal Inheritance, Design Patterns, App performance and overall Front-End Architecture. But yet I still end up bombing job interviews. (FYI most of the jobs I'm interviewing for are for building SPA's with some sort of MVC framework) Usually the coding tests are small code snippets of things I never come across professionally. Like write a function to solve some sort of math problem. Aside from the inherit awkwardness of trying to code while holding the phone in one hand and having a stranger see your screen and watch every character you type, I just don't usually see this kinda stuff in the real world. Is this a serious skill set I'm lacking or are the interviewers asking me irrelevant questions. I guess I should work on my functional programming and algorithm chops but I haven't found many good resources on the web (or in print) any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "235579", "title": "Automating form error handling", "text": "I'm not sure if I'm being clever or making things more difficult. I'm working within a custom MVC framework, and within some of my \"views\" which contain forms I'm preserving input and styling errors as follows:               <form action=\"submit\" method=\"POST\">     <label for=\"name\" class=\"italic\">Name:</label>     <input <?php if (in_array('name', $error)) { echo 'class=\"form-error\"'; } ?> type=\"text\" name=\"name\" value=\"<?php if (isset($name)) { echo $name; } elseif (isset($valid_user)) { echo $valid_user['name']; } ?>\" maxlength=\"20\" required=\"required\" />     <br /><input type=\"submit\" class=\"submit\" value=\"Update\" />      In this example, `$valid_user['name']` would be the default value for existing data (when the form is first loaded), and `$name` would be the posted value being displayed here again in case there was a user error that needs to be fixed. Embedding all of these values is very time consuming when creating new forms, so I'm trying to make things easier on myself. I want to stick with a server- side solution since I believe websites should be complimented by Javascript, not dependent on it. I figure I could probably do all of this dynamically using PHP's DOMDocument:               $dom = new DOMDocument();     $dom->preserveWhiteSpace = false;     $dom->loadHTMLFile($view);     $forms = $dom->getElementsByTagName('form');     $total_forms = $forms->length;          for ($i = 0; $i < $total_forms; $i++) {         $inputs = $forms->item($i)->getElementsByTagName('input');         $total_inputs = $inputs->length;              if ($total_inputs > 0) {             foreach ($inputs as $input) {                 $type = $input->getAttribute('type');                 switch ($type) {                     case 'text':                         // check for errors                         $attr_name = $input->getAttribute('name');                         if (in_array($attr_name, $error)) {                             $input->setAttribute('class', 'form-error');                         }                              // check for default / posted values                         if (isset($$attr_name)) {                             $input->setAttribute('value', $$attr_name);                         } elseif (isset($_POST[$attr_name])) {                             $input->setAttribute('value', $_POST[$attr_name]);                         }                         break;                 }             }         }     }          echo $header;     // remove unwanted tags that are being automatically added     echo preg_replace('~<(?:!DOCTYPE|/?(?:html|body))[^>]*>\\s*~i', '', $dom->saveHTML());     echo $footer;      Going with this approach will obviously require writing a lot of extra code, so before going any further I'm just curious what your opinions are or if there are any potential downfalls I'm maybe not thinking of? Would it be better to stick with my original approach or are there other solutions to make this less tedious?"}
{"_id": "141192", "title": "What are some good tips for a developer trying to design a scalable MySQL database?", "text": "As the question states, I am a developer, not a DBA. I have experience with designing good ER schemas and am fairly knowledgeable about normalization and good schema design. I have also worked with data warehouses that use dimensional modeling with fact tables and dim tables. However, all of the database-driven applications I've developed at previous jobs have been internal applications on the company's intranet, never receiving \"real-world traffic\". Furthermore, at previous jobs, I have always had a DBA or someone who knew much more than me about these things. At this new job I just started, I've been asked to develop a public-facing application with a MySQL backend and the data stored by this application is expected to grow very rapidly. Oh, and we don't have a DBA. Well, I guess I am the DBA. ;) As far as designing a database to be scalable, I don't even know where to start. Does anyone have any good tips or know of any good educational materials for a developer who has been sort of shoved into a DBA/database designer role and has been tasked with designing a scalable database to support an application like this? Have any other developers been through this sort of thing? What did you do to quickly become good at this role? I've found some good slides on the subject here but it's hard to glean details from slides. Wish I could've attended that guy's talk. I also found a good blog entry called 5 Ways to Boost MySQL Scalability which had some good information, though some of it was over my head. ## tl;dr I just want to make sure the database doesn't have to be completely redesigned when it scales up, and I'm looking for tips to get it right the first time. The answer I'm looking for is a \"list of things every developer should know about making a scalable MySQL database so your application doesn't perform like crap when the data gets huge\"."}
{"_id": "106705", "title": "How should I choose the right Android phone for testing my app?", "text": "I am looking to buy an Android phone to test my first Android app on. What things should I pay attention to to make sure I pick the most suitable device?"}
{"_id": "210567", "title": "2 hour interview question for a senior software engineer", "text": "what kind of a question should be asked to test the programming and DB knowledge of a developer ? i am guessing 2 hours practical would be fine. This is for a senior PHP resource and can anybody please suggest me some examples of questions for a technical test? Not sure weather this is the right place to ask this question. if not, can i know where to ask this"}
{"_id": "152811", "title": "What are/would be the characterists and applications of a programming paradigm where functions can't have statements?", "text": "Suppose there is a language where, instead of statements, functions could only be defined in relation to other functions and operators such as partial application and composition. What would be the characteristics of such language? Could everything that is done with statements be done on this design? What would be the limitations? Are there languages like this?"}
{"_id": "214772", "title": "Storing large data in HTTP Session (Java Application)", "text": "I am asking this question in continuation with http-session-or-database- approach. I am planning to follow this approach.   1. When user add product to cart, create a Cart Model, add items to cart and save to DB.   2. Convert Cart model to cart data and save it to HTTP session.   3. Any update/ edit update underlying cart in DB and update data snap shot in Session.   4. When user click on view cart page, just pick cart data from Session and display to customer. I have following queries regarding HTTP Session   * How good is it to store large data (Shopping Cart) in Session?   * How scalable this approach can be ? (With respect to Session)   * Won't my application going to eat and demand a lot of memory?   * Is my approach is fine or do i need to consider other points while designing this? Though, we can control what all cart data should be stored in the Session, but still we need to have certain information in cart data being stored in session?"}
{"_id": "20536", "title": "Static methods or static functions?", "text": "I was just reading http://stackoverflow.com/questions/155609/what-is-the- difference-between-a-method-and-a-function and all of a sudden, the thing came to my mind was the static methods. As static methods are no way associated with an object how can it be called as static methods (almost all developers do)? Is my understanding about the methods/functions is correct?"}
{"_id": "45671", "title": "Advice on starting a new job", "text": "In a week I will start a new job at a manufacturing company managing the development of a new eCommerce site. The company scores about a 3 on the \"Joel\" test. I will inherit 3 programmers who developed the company web site and do general IT programming. I have the grey hair and credentials to have their initial respect but I'm an engineer, not a manager. I'm looking for practical advise - particularly for the first 90 days - on how to establish myself, keep the team together, and move forward."}
{"_id": "162789", "title": "Empirical evidence for choice of programming paradigm to address a problem", "text": "The C2 wiki has a discussion of Empirical Evidence for Object-Oriented Programming that basically concludes there is none beyond appeal to authority. This was last edited in 2008. Discussion here seems to bear this out: questions on whether OO is outdated, when functional programming is a bad choice and the advantages and disadvantages of AOP are all answered with contributors' opinions without reliance on evidence. Of course, opinions of established and reputed practitioners are welcome and valuable things to have, but they're more plausible when they're consistent with experimental data. Does this evidence exist? I know that evidence-based software engineering is a thing, but can I practice it in this context? Specifically, if I have a particular problem `P` that I want to solve by writing software, does there exist a body of knowledge, studies and research that would let me see how the outcome of solving problems like `P` has depended on the choice of programming paradigm? I know that which paradigm comes out as \"the right answer\" can depend on what metrics a particular study pays attention to, on what conditions the study holds constant or varies, and doubtless on other factors too. That doesn't affect my desire to find this information and critically appraise it. It becomes clear that some people think I'm looking for a \"turn the crank\" solution - some sausage machine into which I put information about my problem and out of which comes a word like \"functional\" or \"structured\". This is not my intention. What I'm looking for is research into how - with a lot of caveats and assumptions that I'm not going into here but good literature on the matter would - certain properties of software vary depending on the problem and the choice of paradigm. In other words: some people say \"OO gives better flexibility\" or \"functional programs have fewer bugs\" - (part of) what I'm asking for is the evidence of this. The rest is asking for evidence against this, or the assumptions under which these statements are true, or evidence showing that these considerations aren't important. There are plenty of opinions on why one paradigm is better than another; is there anything objective behind any of these?"}
{"_id": "143812", "title": "What does good command over an API really mean?", "text": "I have seen many organizations looking for developers who have good command over Facebook, Google and other API's. Now I am a bit confused about it. I have developed Facebook fanpages, embedded facebook buttons to websites and used google maps API too but the thing is that these API's are very large to completely master. How much exactly do a good command over an API mean?"}
{"_id": "186001", "title": "Why is NoSQL better for this scenario?", "text": "Hypothetical scenario: Let's say we are downloading JSON from Facebook with details of a user's friend's checkins, posts, etc... These come in as one document per friend per activity, so with 8 activities a user with 300 friends will cause our system to make 2400 requests to Facebook, downloading 2400 JSON documents. Let's say we want to merge these 2400 documents together, sort the activities by date_created descending and then page through them in a sort of pseudo newsfeed. Please do not comment on the wisdom of recreating a facebook newsfeed in this way. Let's also suppose that we want to re-download all of this data whenever we are notified that it has changed by Facebook. (FB has an update service you can subscribe to for users of your app). For argument sake let's assume all of the data has to be refreshed every 5 minutes, and further assume we want to be able to support 1000 simultaneous users, and that the average JSON document size is 25kb. I am curious as to how NoSQL techniques would be better than parsing the JSON on ingestion into a relational database? To me it seems like map/reduce are just synonyms for parse/aggregate and that both approaches will require the same thing to occur. What advantages would I get from using NoSQL?"}
{"_id": "186007", "title": "Internationalization through SQL Database and performance issues", "text": "I'm using .Net technologies and because ASP.Net \"instant translation\" is not really easy to do with ResX, since it has to be compiled after every change, there are a few hacks available (http://www.onpreinit.com/2009/06/updatable- aspnet-resx-resource-provider.html), but as it is, they're hacks... and they seem to have problems. So I decided a while ago (in 2006, before I even saw solutions like the previous link) that I was going to set all the translation into an SQL Database, and cache all the translation needed in memory for performance. The real problem begins when I want to do joins betweens table with multiple fields that are translated. Basically what I do is to store the ID of the translation inside each field, so I can add or edit translations into languages independently. For example (it's not real but should show the concept):               ITEM(ItemID, TranslationReference_Name, TranslationReference_Use, ...)     TRANSLATION(TranslationReference, IDLanguage, Content)      After that as you can guess, when I want a SQL Query to contain I need to do joins And this is where it gets dirty, because I did not find any other way to do it, and for each field of ITEM that needs a translation into a specific IDLanguage, I need to do a join. This is bad for performance, because the TRANSLATION table contains thousands of lines. So each time I do need to do a full join for every column that needs a translation. Plus, the other problem is that I'd like to have the basic english translation if a specific language has not been translated yet, so as you can guess it becomes much more dirty to code... I have no idea how to improve it. Should I simply give up the database joins idea and translate each result of the database on my .Net code, refering to a dictionnary (that I already have) containing the translation, so it will require no actual joins? And this is only a few of the drawbacks of that solution... because in real use, I need users to upload their own dynamically translated content, and manage versions of these translations. `Keep in mind that I do not want to have N rows (N being the number of languages that this record is available) for the \"ITEM\" table, I know I could set 1 row by language, and have its translated content in nvarchar inside it, but that's not what I want because I need the same ID for every record, independant to the language it can be translated into.` I've searched accross the web and I did not find any good article about this. I talked to another developper that had several languages translation for his data-heavy website, if I remember well he was using multiple table for the translation, he would not store IDLanguage inside a global TRANSLATION table, but would split every translation in its own table and do something like injecting the language in the SQL code to change, something like:               SELECT Content FROM Translation_EN ...     SELECT Content FROM Translation_FR ...      It would be sure more effective than doing a join on a full table, but that won't simplify my SQL full of joins... So I probably have to think about alternatives and I need your ideas and comments about this. Thank you very much."}
{"_id": "148799", "title": "What exactly comprises 'Documentation'?", "text": "**When we say 'documentation' for a software product, what does that include and what shouldn't that include?** For example, a recent question asked if comments are considered documentation? But there are many other areas that this is a valid question for as well, some more obvious than others:   * Manuals (obviously)   * Release notes?   * Tutorials   * Comments   * Any others? Where is the line drawn. For example, if 'tutorial' is documentation, is 'video tutorial' documentation, or is it something else? Generally, something in software isn't 'done' until it is implemented, tested and documented. Hence this question, what things should we consider as part of documention to consider something 'done'. * * * Question inspire from recent customer feedback at our conference indicating that our doc needed more 'samples', which we previously hadn't been as good at considering as we should have been. Audience: Software developers using our database(s), programming languages and associated tooling (such as admin clients to said DB)"}
{"_id": "95499", "title": "Object-Oriented Class Design", "text": "I was wondering about good object oriented class design. In particular, I have a hard time deciding between these options:   1. **static** vs **instance method**   2. **method with no parameters or return value** vs **method with parameters and return value**   3. **overlapping** vs **distinct method functionality**   4. **private** vs **public method** * * * _Example 1:_ This implementation uses instance methods, with no return value or parameters, with no overlapping functionality, and all methods public               XmlReader reader = new XmlReader(url);     reader.openUrl();     reader.readXml();     Document result = reader.getDocument();      _Example 2:_ This implementation uses static methods, with return values and parameters, with overlapping functionality and private methods               Document result = XmlReader.readXml(url);       * * * In example one, all methods are public instance, which makes them easy to unit test. Although all methods are distinct, readXml() is dependent on openUrl() in that openUrl() must be called first. All data is declared in instance fields, so there's no return values or parameters in any method, except in the constructor and accessors. In example two, only one method is public, the rest are private static, which makes them hard to unit test. Methods are overlapping in that readXml() calls openUrl(). There's no fields, all data is passed as parameters in methods and the result is returned immediately. What principles should I follow to do proper object oriented programming?"}
{"_id": "148797", "title": "Peter Norvig's paper cited by Brendan Eich", "text": "I'm reading Coders at Work and Brendan Eich cites a paper by Norvig, from when he was at Harlequin, \"about how design patterns are really just flaws in your programming language.\" Can anyone provide the link to this paper?"}
{"_id": "148790", "title": "Is the 14th line of The Zen of Python a reference to Dijkstra?", "text": "Python's Zen states on line 14 that: > Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. Is this a reference to the famous Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra?"}
{"_id": "237937", "title": "How to implement 'use case control' object in (iOS) MVC?", "text": "In an MVC architecture pattern (for e.g., in iOS) there is a controller per view. In UML there is a concept of having Control object per use case to encapsulate an use case, which may span more than one view. Sometimes a same view can support multiple use case, in which case it would be nice to have multiple 'use case control' objects. Should i create a separate 'control' object apart from iOS 'Controller' to encapsulate the use case? Any idea on how to implement 'use case control' object in iOS MVC? I am really interested in the concept of having control object for an use case, rather than per (use case fragment) view."}
{"_id": "195322", "title": "How to implement RGBA in 8-bit microcontroller?", "text": "I have successfully connected my microcontroller to my TV via through VGA adapter i made that convert digital to analog signals with the help of resistors. Currently i am utilizing 8 pins that I am using as 2 Red 2 Green 2 Blue 1 Hsyn and 1 Vsyn. I was thinking if there is a way to add 'A' Alpha in it, it's used for transparency. My another question is that is Alpha software driven or is it in the hardware? Apparently, i did not find any relevant resources on hardware side of RGBA. I did notice Gameduino has used it in their 16-bit microcontroller. Is it possible to use multiplexing/charlieplexing in this problem?"}
{"_id": "195321", "title": "Trying to code the points on a circle", "text": "I am trying to understand this: I wrote a code for points on a circle of radius 1. Note that the first and last point intentionally coincide.               do i=1,imax     X(i,1) = COS(-2*4.0*ATAN(1.0)*(i-1)/(imax-1))     Y(i,1) = SIN(-2*4.0*ATAN(1.0)*(i-1)/(imax-1))     print *, X(i,1)**2 + Y(i,1)**2      end do      The code is supposed to be a circle, but the following figure demonstrates the plot in Mathematica. It looks to me like an ellipse. Am I doing something wrong? Or is this just the way Mathematica plots it? ![http://imgur.com/0XMfZsw](http://i.imgur.com/0XMfZsw.jpg) The command for the plot is               ListPlot[a, PlotLabel -> \"MeshPoints\", AxesLabel -> {\"x\", \"y\"}, PlotRange -> {{-2, 2}, {-2, 2}}]"}
{"_id": "195324", "title": "Converting Java applet to web application", "text": "I would like to convert this Java applet into an equivalent web app. This is my first time creating a web app, but I have some programming experience and time, and am willing to teach myself all of the necessary tools. By \"web app\", I mean an application which would work in browsers without requiring Java or Flash, for example. Therefore, it could work on compatible mobile devices. What tools should I look into for this development project?"}
{"_id": "219595", "title": "Use of raw types in Java XML-RPC", "text": "I have been investigating the implementation of XML-RPC in Java. The major open-source libraries (e.g. Apache XML-RPC) use raw types to represent certain XML-RPC types in Java, e.g. structs are represented as raw Maps. Raw types in new code are discouraged in Java. From the JLS, > The use of raw types is allowed only as a concession to compatibility of > legacy code. The use of raw types in code written after the introduction of > genericity into the Java programming language is strongly discouraged. It is > possible that future versions of the Java programming language will disallow > the use of raw types. But, because of the nature of the XML-RPC protocol, are raw types unavoidable in this case?"}
{"_id": "48795", "title": "How to prepare for an online job interview (maybe through Skype)?", "text": "I'm applying for a company far away and if I get an interview it will probably be done remotely. I have been searching for advices regarding this but all tips seem to be directed at face-to-face meetings (things like \"shake hands firmly\"). What are the differences? How can I make the best out of those differences? Update: This is a software developer position, so there's also something about technical questions (such as, I can Google anything that they ask ;) This question also applies to any freelancers who are dealing with customers, or recruiters who are interviewing remotely. I hope that makes it relevant to this site. It may also help if you keep answers programers-related."}
{"_id": "167859", "title": "What is actually a module in software engineering?", "text": "As the definition \"a module consists a single block of code that can be invoked in the way that a procedure, function, or method is invoked\", the definition seems very vague and broad. So could anyone explain it in other clear words and show some actual example how to break a requirement into module. Thanks"}
{"_id": "29310", "title": "Intro to C for an experienced programmer", "text": "This reply to the question \"I don't know C. And why should I learn it?\" has me interested in learning C. What is a good self-instruction program (textbook/website/OpenCourseWare, etc.) for someone who already has lots of experience in high-level languages?"}
{"_id": "29313", "title": "What's the best way to run a technical book club?", "text": "At work, we've been doing lunchtime book clubs for a while. So far we've done:   * Clean Code   * Working Effectively with Legacy Code   * The Pragmatic Programmer We read a chapter per week, and one person is assigned to present over the content and help facilitate discussion. Of the three, we've probably had the most success with The Pragmatic Programmer. It seems like the more technically complicated the content was, the more people tended to drop out as the book went along. I'd like to do a technically-heavy book like SICP or Java Concurrency in Practice, but I don't know of good ways to make this work with the format we're currently doing. What advice do you have?"}
{"_id": "156240", "title": "In MATLAB, how can 'preallocating' cell arrays improve performance?", "text": "I was reading this article on MathWorks about improving MATLAB performance and you will notice that one of the first suggestions is to preallocate arrays, which makes sense. But it also says that preallocating Cell arrays (that is arrays which may contain different, unknown datatypes) will improve performance. But how will doing so improve performance because the datatypes are unknown so it doesn't know how much contiguous memory it will require even if it knows the shape of the cell array, and therefore it can't preallocate the memory surely? So how does this result in any improvement in performance? I apologise if this question is better suited for StackOverflow than Programmers but it isn't asking about a specific problem so I thought it fit better here, please let me know if I am mistaken though. Any explanation would be greatly appreciated :)"}
{"_id": "167854", "title": "Rule engine in .NET", "text": "I have to import data from Excel to an SQL database. The Excel data contains various parameters and their values, like P1, P1, P4, P5, etc. I have to apply business rules. Like _if (P1 > 100 and P1 < 200) then insert the record in database_. Similarly, in some cases, string values are also validated. Can I have any open source rule engine that contains UI to change, add, and delete the rules? I am using C# to read the Excel data and and inserting the records. One more thing, which of the following is the best approach?   * Read Excel data first and store every record as an object in a collection, iterate through the collection, apply business rules on every object and insert record in the database. Or   * Read one record from Excel, apply business rules and insert the record in the database. Repeat the process for the whole Excel spreadsheet."}
{"_id": "167857", "title": "Do compilers have to be written for each model of CPU?", "text": "Do you need to take account of the different processors and their instructions when writing a compiler? Have instructions been standardised? Or what tools and techniques are available to assist with this? E.g. Ignoring machine instructions that are specific to a certain processor model."}
{"_id": "57868", "title": "Detect frameworks and/or CMS utilized on websites in Firefox", "text": "I'm redesigning the website for my academic library and am examining other sites to determine to identify the technologies used. Things like:   * Web frameworks   * Javascript frameworks   * Server-side technology   * Content management system Now I've had some real success in Firefox using plugins like Wappalyzer, Firebug, and the DOM Inspector. But some sites just don't display any of the info. I'm looking for using these tools, especially it seems it an enterprise- level CMS is being used. Does anyone know of any other tools to detect this kind of data? Also with Firebug & the DOM Inspector, there is a lot of info. displayed and I wondered if there was a way to derive the presence of server-side technologies, CMS's, etc. within certain elements of a web page? Also, if this question is more relevant to another Stack Exchange site, please let me know and I'll post it there instead. Much thanks, Jason"}
{"_id": "78450", "title": "Is this a worthwhile course to take?", "text": "I currently don't have any qualifications in any form of web development (except an A-Level in ICT). I started working for a web development company 4 years ago and have finally been given the chance to go on courses. My manager doesn't have much of a technical knowledge, so has left it to me to decide whether the course he wants to put me on is worthwhile. From your experience, is the following course a worthwhile and credible course to take in helping improve my skills in ASP.NET/SQL? http://www.cvision.co.uk/realcbt/mcpd-asp-dot-net-35-csharp.htm Or, can you recommend similar alternatives?"}
{"_id": "63217", "title": "Unit testing coverage", "text": "How much of your code do you unit test? Do you try to get 100% coverage of everything or do you skip some classes? **Background** We've made a lightweight ORM layer which we have written plenty of tests for. On top of that we use Code Contracts to specify what each method in every interface should accept and return. **Classes to test or not to test** We create repository classes to fetch items or collections. These classes are basically SQL queries and calls to the ORM layer. We also have entity mapping classes similar to those in fluent nhibernate. **Why I ask** The reason I'm asking is that I don't really see the point in writing unit tests for these classes. Well, there is a point if we could use a test database to see that no exceptions are thrown. Our test databases are a bit messy and are never reseted, hence it's impossible to validate any data (and that is out of my control). We could use a fake/mock ORM layer to try the repositories, but I do not see the point in it."}
{"_id": "225726", "title": "Interface Segregation Principle - type hinting multiple interfaces", "text": "The question is about **typehinting of the role interfaces**. The _code example_ has two DataMappers which typehint the interface they need in the constructor, FooDataMapper type hints the Preparable interface. Because it dependens on it and no other method from the dependency. In the other mapper, BarDataMapper i replaced the type hint with ??? as it requires both the Preparable and the Queryable interface. How do i handle this (what should replace ???), typehinting a single of them would not suffice, should i make a new interface (maybe one that extends the previous mentioned) and hint this new interface? The code example is a boiled down example in PHP and the type hint (???) is in the last Class declared.               <?php     // TWO ROLE INTERFACES, SMALL SEGREGATED PART OF A DBAL          Interface Preparable {       public function prepare( .. );     }          Interface Queryable {       public function query( ... );     }               // ADAPTER IMPLEMENTS SEGREGATION          class DbalAdapter implements Preparable, Queryable {       private $dbal;            public function __construct($dbal)        {         private $this->dbal = $dbal;       }            public function prepare( .. )        {         ..         return $this->dbal->prepare( .. );       }            public function query( .. )        {         ..         return $this->dbal->query( .. );       }     }               // DATAMAPPER CTOR HINTS FOR METHODS IT NEEDS TO USE          class FooDataMapper implements DataMapper {       private $dbal;            public function __construct(Preparable $dbal)       {         $this->dbal = $dbal;       }            public function create(Foo $Foo)        {         ..         $this->dbal->prepare( .. )       }     }               // DATAMAPPER CTOR HINTS FOR METHODS IT NEEDS TO USE     // BUT THIS TIME NONE OF THE ROLE INTERFACES MATCH, BUILD A NEW INTERFACE?          class BarDataMapper implements DataMapper {       private $dbal;       public function __construct(??? $dbal)        {         $this->dbal = $dbal;       }            public function SomeMethodThatNeedsBothPrepareNQuery(Bar $Bar)        {         ..         $this->dbal->query( .. )         $this->dbal->prepare( .. )       }     }      The initial solution i come to is making a new interface extending the ones needed. _Beware the naming of classes in the code are only for shown, might as well have been Fooable, BarAble..._"}
{"_id": "63215", "title": "Architecture Review Guidelines for Java/JEE project", "text": "We're going to do a complete review of a Java/JEE based application. This includes an architecture review, code review and platform hardware review. While we're a bit aware of code review techniques, I'm wondering if there is a template or reference model for doing **an architecture review for Java/JEE systems**. Currently we're looking at following the ATAM Model to build a Quality Attribute Tree to cover the elements of Performance, Reliability, Availability, Security, Modifiability, Portability, Variability, Subsetability, Conceptual integrity and Functionality This is a first for us - so the question is whether there are any other standard models you follow or whether anyone has tried ATAM before and has any **tips/recommendations/tools for the Architecture review.**"}
{"_id": "78456", "title": "What work intervals are more productive: short or long?", "text": "Which sessions of work are more productive for programming: short (<= 30 minutes), mid-length or long (>= 2 hours)? In which cases? (Consider coding new functionality, doing small modifications, tweaking UI, refactoring, debugging, learning API, trying to understand other's code). What can you tell from your experiences? Information from studies and best practices are also very welcome. Though it would be nice to see links or references. Reliable information is prefered over complete answer. * * * Valuable takeaways:   * Focused thinking is the ultimate target here   * Generally uninterrupted work > 2-3 hours yields loosing focus and foggy thoughts   * When you are in flow, it's better to let yourself to work for 1-2 hours   * It worth to try practicing Pomodoro Technique, for helping to overcome thinking inertia and procrastination, to get better feeling of time. Especially it can help to start doing things that you don't like doing that much   * When using 'break management' software, you can allow yourself to be more flexible, e.g. to skip 1 break but not more. This allows you to adopt to the situation: be in flow, when there is a flow, stay manageable when are not in flow   * Fresh air, relaxing and excercises during break can help to get involved right hemisphere to get new ideas and solutions Try software tools for 'break management':   * Pomodairo - it additionally tracks list of tasks and has pice UI   * WorkRave - provides more flexibility in configuring. also usable without speakers"}
{"_id": "95140", "title": "Database for storing books by grouping, their pages, and the table of contents", "text": "I'm looking for a better way to deal with the design I have here, I'm not confident it's really suitable. To give this some context, lets say we have a bunch of groups, one group could be \"SQL\", and another could be \"Cooking\". The SQL group would have books such as \"Normalization\" and \"T-SQL\", while cooking could have \"Making pasta\" and \"Pizza is awesome\". The books themselves will have many pages, which may not end up being set in stone, I need to be able to change them around (and this is really a problem with my already devised scheme). A table of contents for _Pizza is Awesome_ might look like this:               1. History         1. The great pizza revolution of 13901AD         1. The first pizza     2. Making pizzas         1. Mental preparation             1. Think like a gazel             1. Hunger like a lion         1. Building the oven             1. Real pizza is made with flamethrower.                 1. How to make a flamethrower                     1. How to get a permit for your flamethrower     3. Enjoying pizza     4. Credit      Then I run off and fill up my SQL tables like so: Groups: pizza, SQL Books: Pizza is awesome Pages: All the 13 pages I listed in the example Table of contents. Here's the snag: Table of contents. Under my existing design, I'd have a table that gives each item it's own position, so \"credits\", \"history\", and other first-level items are assigned their position with an nested value of 0. Items like \"Hunger of a lion\" are in position 7 in the table of contents, with a nested value of 2 (because it's 2 levels deep). This doesn't really provide for a bunch of needs without complex programming:   1. What if I wanted to move making pizzas above history? I have to re-index the entire thing!   2. What if I wanted to nest making pizzas under enjoying pizzas?   3. What if I write a whole new section?   4. How do I ensure nested levels make sense? I basically have to update the entire index, and the \"nested\" level has no way to check if something makes sense (ie, the first item could be nested 6 times). I'm looking for a better answer. As a side note, the actual database includes revision changes of each page, and a place for extra content such as comments. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PfnxU.png)"}
{"_id": "236004", "title": "Testing C# Eventhandler Subscription", "text": "I want my unit tests to be able to verify that some events were subscribed or unsubscribed at specific points. Currently, I see two options. **VerifiableEventHandler** Each client subscribes using the common `+=` and `-=` notation. Each class that has a verifiable eventhandler needs to implement IsSubscribed(), which can query the eventhandler using GetInvocationList().               public interface IVerifiableEventHandler<T>      {         event EventHandler<T> EventHandler;         bool IsSubscribed(Delegate d);     }          // impl     public bool IsSubscribed(Delegate d)     {         return EventHandler.GetInvocationList().Contains(d);     }      **Custom subscription interface** The actual C# event handler would be hidden, and clients can only subscribe using the Subscribe / Unsubscribe function.               public interface IEventSource<T>     {         void Subscribe(EventHandler<T> func);         void Unsubscribe(EventHandler<T> func);         void Raise(object sender, T event_args);     }      **Pros and Contras** To me, the advantage of the first approach is that the principle of least surprise is not violated. A .Net programmer will expect events to be subscribed to using the `+=` notation. The advantage of the second approach is that it's very easy to test, as the functions are nothing special and can be verified easily if the class containing the eventhandler is mocked. Is there a better way to solve this problem? If not, which of the two variants should be preferred, and why?"}
{"_id": "236001", "title": "Implementing a strategy pattern with dependency injection", "text": "Okay, so the goal here is to implement a strategy pattern that can be tested using any sort of automated testing tool. I've been struggling with this problem conceptually for a few weeks now and I want to clarify it. So the current setup is something like this:               <?php     // CreateReportUseCase.php     class CreateReportUseCase     {      protected $factory;      public function __construct(Factory $factory)      {         $this->factory = $factory;       }            public function create($params)       {         // based on something in the params         // ask the factory to give us one of the strategy classes              // for this example, let's assume I'm going to execute         // a different strategy based on the user role.         // e.g. Admin         $strategy = $this->factory->make($params['user_role']);              // execute the strategy using the data out of the params         $strategy->execute($params);       }     }          // Factory.php     class Factory     {       protected $admin_strategy;       protected $user_strategy;       public function __construct(AdminStrategy $admin_strategy, UserStrategy $user_strategy)       {         $this->admin_strategy = $admin_strategy;         $this->user_strategy = $user_strategy;       }            public function make($role)       {         switch($role)         {            case 'Admin':              return $this->admin_strategy;              break;            case 'User':              return $this->user_strategy;              break;         }       }     }          AdminStrategy implements RoleStrategy     {       public function execute($params)       {         // it's not important what we do here.         return json_encode($params);       }     }      Does this look sane to you? How could I improve it? To me, the factory looks like it's a bit awkward since it's just returning some injected dependency instead of instantiating a strategy."}
{"_id": "112567", "title": "is it a reasonable practice to extend a class just to reuse a single function?", "text": "I am developing a range of post filters for a wordpress site, and I have built the first 4 with a single class. The final two are different enough in scope to only share a single function (the function for producing the final links) in their classes. Is it reasonable, either in this instance or in any number of similar hypothetical instances, to extend the original class in order to have that functionality, or is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "163436", "title": "Emailing Service: To or Bcc?", "text": "I'm busy coding a reusable e-mail service for my company. The e-mail service will be doing quite a few things via injection through the strategy pattern (such as handling e-mail send rate throttling, switching between Smtp and AmazonSES or Google AppEngine for e-mail clients when daily quotas are exceeded, send statistics tracking (mostly because it is neccessary in order to stay within quotas) to name a few). Because e-mail sending will need to be throttled and other limitations exist (ex. max recipient quota on AmazonSES limiting recipients to 50 per send), the e-mails typically need to be broken up. From your experience, would it be better to send bulk (multiple recipients per e-mail) or a single e-mail per recipient? The implications of the above would be to send to a 1000 recipients, with a limit of 50 per send, you would send 20 e-mails using BCC in a newsletter scenario. When sending an e-mail per recipient, it would send 1000 e-mails. E-mail sending is asynchronous (due to inherit latency when sending, it's typically only possible to send 5 e-mails per second unless you are using multiple client asynchronously). **Edit** Just for full disclosure, this service won't be used by or sold to spammers and will as far as possible automatically comply with national and international laws. **>Closed <** Thanks for all the valuable feedback. The concerns regarding compliance towards laws, user experience (generic vs. personalized unsubscribe) and spam regulation via ISP blacklisting does make **To** the preferred and possibly the only choice when sending system generated e-mails to recipients."}
{"_id": "176276", "title": "Should extension scripts be run in a sandbox?", "text": "In particular, this is about game extensions written in lua (luajit-2.0). I was contemplating whether I should restrict what these scripts can do, and arrived at the conclusion that I probably shouldn't:   * It's hard to get right. Sounds silly, but chances are my sandbox is gonna end up leaky anyways.   * The only benefit I could think of would be giving users some sense of security when running third party scripts.   * The disadvantages would be that it's just incredibly annoying for extension writers. That is, for now, myself (game content will be mostly scripted). The reason I'm asking this now before I actually have anything presentable is that adding a sandbox early on is easy, but would impose said annoying restrictions on myself too. However if I first go on with it and then later decide I do need a sandbox after all, I'm gonna run into problems (I'd either have to rewrite the scripts that are already there, or introduce some form of trust management system which seems to be more trouble than it's worth)."}
{"_id": "142145", "title": "What common term could be used for Web Services, Windows Services etc", "text": "My question is primarily concerned with making a CV. Normally under the Language section we list the individual programming Languages we've used. For example, C#, C++, PHP. Under the Platform section we can list the various operating systems and devices. Under which category would Web Services/Windows Services fall? My point is these are not platforms by themselves and surely they aren't a language. Is there any common term that can be used to describe these?"}
{"_id": "236009", "title": "OO design choice and single responsibility principle", "text": "I'm currently refactoring an application which periodically downloads content from various sources (http, ftp, sql, etc). There is a schedule which controls the times during which the application can be active. For example, it can download content between 8AM and 16PM. The application has been written in an object oriented language (C#). This is the general design I came up with in my first iteration: ![First iteration design](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aincc.png) The Scheduler class will be responsible for keeping to the general schedule. It starts the downloading at the start of the scheduled period, and stops it at the end. The Scheduler contains a number of ITask implementations, each of which have their own bit of downloading to do. I've created an abstract base class implementation which periodically calls the protected abstract method \"StartDownload\". Subclasses of Task will only implement this method, and won't have to worry about timing and scheduling. So far, so good. But while TDD'ing the Task baseclass, I realised that it was actually difficult to mock the behaviour of StartDownload. When the Task's timer ticks, it should only call StartDownload if it has finished the previous download iteration. But since these are implementation details, it's hard to mock. This made me wonder if the Task class isn't actually violating the Single Responsibility Principle. After all, it's taking care of the periodical invocation of StartDownload. And the StartDownload method is responsible for the actual downloading. So I came up with a more separated design: ![Second iteration design](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VVIA3.png) Here the responsibility of the Task class is limited to just periodically calling the Client. And the Client's only responsibility is downloading content. Testing the Task class will now be easier, because I can just inject an IDownloadClient mock. The Task and Download have a 1 to 1 relationship. So each Task performs one download, so to speak. In practice, all Task instances will be added to a single Scheduler instance and started/stopped from there. I do wonder if this is actually a clearer design though... The Task class now seems a bit odd, being just a single implementation without any subclasses. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "223855", "title": "How can I solve this potential security exploit (concerning the saving of REST resources)?", "text": "I have a File database table with the following columns: `Id (PK), Filename` And a Document database table with the following columns: `Id (PK), Name, Description, FileId (FK)` When a user wants to \"save\" a Document, my client-side JavaScript does it in two quick AJAX calls (in an attempt to be RESTful and save each resource individually):   1. Uploads the file they have selected. This will create a File record in the database, and the client will receive its Id in response.   2. Saves the Document with the given data (Name, FileId, etc.). This will create/update a Document record in the database. I have a service set up that allows a user to download a file, provided they specify its Id. However, there is some security logic in the service that checks whether a user has _permission_ to download the file, by checking whether there is at least one database \"entity\" associated with it that the user has access to. For example, a Document would be one such entity. So if a user can access a particular Document (determined by some business rules - but let's just say multiple users can access the same Document), they can download its file. This all seems fine on the surface, **but there is a problem**. The 2-step save process for a Document is all client-side Javascript, so a hacker could easily modify step 2 so that any arbitrary FileId is sent to the server. This would then associate that file with the Document, meaning afterwards the user will have permission to download it! What are some ways I can solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "179427", "title": "Should I manage authentication on my own if the alternative is very low in usability and I am already managing roles?", "text": "As a small in-house dev department, we only have experience with developing applications for our intranet. We use the **existing Active Directory** for user account management. It contains the accounts of all company employees and many (but not all) of the business partners we have a cooperation with. Now, the top management wants a technology exchange application, and I am the lead dev on the new project. Basically, it is a database containing our know- how, with a web frontend. Our employees, our cooperating business partners, and people who wish to become our cooperating business partners should have access to it and see what technologies we have, so they can trade for them with the department which owns them. The technologies are not patented, but very valuable to competitors, so the department bosses are **paranoid about somebody unauthorized gaining access** to their technology description. This constraint necessitates a nightmarishly complicated multi-dimensional RBAC- hybrid model. As the Active Directory doesn't even contain all the information needed to infer the roles I use, I will have to **manage roles** plus per-technology per-user granted access exceptions **within my system**. The current plan is to use Active Directory for authentication. This will result in a multi-hour registration process for our business partners where the database owner has to manually create logins in our Active Directory and send them credentials. If I **manage the logins in my own system** , we could **improve the usability** a lot, for example by letting people have an active (but unprivileged) account as soon as they register. It seems to me that, after I am having a users table in the DB anyway (and managing ugly details like storing historical user IDs so that recycled user IDs within the Active Directory don't unexpectedly get rights to view someone's technologies), the **additional complexity** from implementing authentication functionality will be minimal. Therefore, I am starting to lean towards doing my own user login management and forgetting the AD altogether. On the other hand, I see some **reasons to stay with Active Directory**. First, the conventional wisdom I have heard from experienced programmers is **to not do your own user management** if you can avoid it. Second, we have **code I can reuse** for connection to the active directory, while I would have to code the authentication if done in-system (and my boss has clearly stated that getting the project delivered on time has much higher priority than delivering a system with high usability). Third, I am not a very experienced developer (this is my first lead position) and have never done user management before, so I am afraid that I am **overlooking** some important reasons to use the AD, or that I am underestimating the amount of work left to do my own authentication. _**I would like to know if there are more reasons to go with the AD_** authentication mechanism. Specifically, if I want to do my own authentication, what would I have to implement besides a secure connection for the login screen (which I would need anyway even if I am only transporting the pw to the AD), lookup of a password hash and a mechanism for password recovery (which will probably include manual identity verification, so no need for complex mTAN-like solutions)? And, if you have experience with such security-critical systems, which one would you use and why? * * * _Update_ When I wrote the question, I had been told by my boss that I will get read-only access to the Active Directory, and that all users of my system would have follow internal procedures for managing accounts (such as showing a picture ID to our secretary to reset a forgotten password). I wouldn't have had the possibility to create my own groups. But after explaining the situation to my boss and to the AD administrator, I got permission to save my users' accounts in a separate OU and manage them as I see fit. So now I can use Active Directory and still offer an acceptable user experience. Still, if you have an answer which addresses my question under the old constraints, please write it down, I would be interested to hear more about it even if my interest is only academic now."}
{"_id": "115034", "title": "What exactly is distributed computing?", "text": "So I'm a senior in college and a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed at Microsoft for an entry-level SDE position. While most of the interviews (out of the total 7) were on the general principles of data structures and algorithms, one of the interviewers asked me if I knew anything about distributed computing. I replied that, while I haven't had a course on 'distributed computing' per se, I'd like to take a stab at the question. He proceeded to ask a question on mutexes and semaphores that was covered in our operating systems course, and I thought was more about parallelism and concurrency than distributed computing. Having gone through this experience, I am led to wonder as to what exactly constitutes distributed computing? Do multiple parallel threads trying to synchronize for access to a resource constitute a problem in the domain of distributed computing?"}
{"_id": "179423", "title": "Basic memcached question", "text": "I have been reading up on distributed hashing. I learnt that consistent hashing is used for distributing the keys among cache machines. I also learnt that, a key is duplicated on mutiple caches to handle failure of cache hosts. But what I have come across on memcached doesn't seem to be in alignment with all this. I read that all cache nodes are independent of each other and that if a cache goes down, requests go to DB. Theres no mention of cache miss on a host resulting in the host directing the request to another host which could either be holding the key or is nearer to the key. Can you please tell me how these two fit together? Is memcached a very preliminary form of distributed hashing which doesnt have much sophistication?"}
{"_id": "144660", "title": "How Should a model and controller be distributed between subviews of the View?", "text": "In many User Interface libraries, we have concept of views and subviews. so according to MVC pattern every view should update the model as soon as it changes. For that view should have a reference of its model. If we have a subview and it does some calculation, then should that model also be passed to the subview or part of that model pertaining to that subview should be passed to that subview. and Say when we take certain actions, should there be a separate controller for the subview or the actions on the subview should be handled by its parent view's controller ?"}
{"_id": "178386", "title": "Good practices when writing a parser for a standard file format (such as ePub)", "text": "I am considering writing an Android reader software that can read ePubs and display them. I checked the ePub standard documents. However, these contain a lot of information. So I am wondering what is the process of implementing a standard for a file format. What are the steps to get a working implementation without passing by parts of the standard? Are there any best practices? Also, is it even possible to program this alone in a reasonable time? From what I have already found out, ePub is basically a zip archive. That means I could probably use zlib to decompress it. The content is in XHTML and CSS, so I believe it should be possible to display it in a WebView. The parts that are missing are writing the code that can read the metadata and manage the non-standard XHTML extensions."}
{"_id": "251819", "title": "Programming by usage", "text": "Iv'e been programming for 15 years now and I often read online that it seems like a lot of people will plan out their objects and how they interact and the data they need and that seems to shape the exposed interface. However, I find my brain works from usage backwards to the structure and data. **I'm wondering if this is common and any pros/cons to this approach that anyone can think of, and what your mindset is when a new task is thrown your way. I want explore other ideas and approaches in mindset but I only know my mindset and I've been doing it so long. Is this what everyone does?** For example if I were to be tasked with making a stapler class I would write the usage that would make sense to me first and how I would want to use it and then fill in that usage. The first thing I do is open up notepad++ and type:               Stapler stapler = new Stapler(200);          stapler.Load(200);     stapler.Staple(papers);     stapler.UnJam();     int stapleCount = stapler.StaplerCount;      By looking at this it tells me that my stapler needs these functions/properties and I can infer what the parameters are by looking at them most of the time. I seem to have an easier time thinking in code usage like this vs thinking about an abstract object and all it's functionality before writing any code. Writing out the usage often makes the abstract object real in my mind and is easier for me to grasp."}
{"_id": "62207", "title": "Windows Permissions for Developers?", "text": "I work at a Fortune 500 company as a Windows software developer in R&D. Corporate IT is currently gearing up for a company-wide Win7 deployment and as a part of it they are looking to completely lock down admin rights on all boxes (including our dev workstations). I've been tasked to work with them to make the transition as smooth as possible. Lucky me. I'd like to know if there are any published or other highly respected resources out there that I can use to:   1. figure out where to draw a line in the sand    2. back up my position.  Personally, my take is that we're R&D and our job is to do things that are 'out of the box'. Thus we need admin rights. However, having started my career as a Windows Admin, I'm aware of their goals and what they need to achieve. What I need to figure out and back up is a way to build the environment in a way that both IT and R&D can live with it and continue to perform their jobs productively. Development VMs with local admin rights will definitely help a lot, but not in all cases since we interface with lots of custom hardware. The CIO pushing these changes is definitely a 'pure IT' kind of guy with limited knowledge of the development process so I need some references that would be appropriate to share with someone like that. I'm not looking to gather a lot of personal opinions (a lot of which have already been shared here), I really need whitepapers, magazine articles, scholarly works, etc to use to make a strong case to upper management."}
{"_id": "193295", "title": "implications of a large partial class", "text": "I'm writing a middle layer between vendor code and company business logic. Part of the exercise is to insulate our business logic from vendor's types to make swapping out vendor code easier. As such, I'm writing a lot of extension methods that do translation to and from. I'm placing these extensions in public static partial classes. For organizational purposes and simply because, for static extension methods, the class it self does not matter(is this a correct assumption btw?) EDIT: To be clear I'm creating a lot of different appropriately named source files, that all implemented one partial class My question is, how much code is too much for a partial class. I could conceive having 100's of methods in a single class(at some point). When does this become a burden for the compiler and CIL layer? Is there really a limit if these partials classes hold no state/memory?"}
{"_id": "114923", "title": "Will B-Trees and Other Data Structures Become Obsolete With The Advent of Solid State Drives?", "text": "Many (perhaps most?) database applications today use B-Trees and variations to store data, because this data structure optimizes the read, write and seek operations on a hard disk (and these operations in turn play an important role in the overall efficiency of the databases). Should Solid State Drives (SSDs) completely outplace traditional hard disks (HDDs), though, could we say that B-Trees and variations will become obsolete, giving room for data structures that are more efficient operating on direct access memory? If so, what will those structures be? (e.g., hash tables, AVL trees)"}
{"_id": "235196", "title": "Why do JavaScript frameworks/libraries have functions which already exist in pure JavaScript?", "text": "I wonder why frameworks/libraries have their own helpers although they exist natively already. Let's take jQuery and AngularJS. They have their own `each` iterator functions:   * jQuery.each()   * angular.forEach() But we have `Array.prototype.forEach`. Similarly,   * jQuery.parseJSON()   * angular.fromJson() But we have the `JSON.parse()` function in vanilla JavaScript."}
{"_id": "187752", "title": "Setting up a simple Ruby\\Rails environment", "text": "I am coming from a .NET background and beginning my journey into the Mac OSX\\Ruby\\Rails environment. A lot of the resources I have found such as this one have between 5-10 steps for setting up a Ruby\\Rails environment. My question is, what are the bare minimum requirements for setting up a working Ruby\\Rails environment? Can I use RailsInstaller and be done? Should I install all of the tools that the above link suggests (XQuartz, Homebrew, RVM, etc) even though I don't really know what they do? Right now I am not being paid to do this, but am also curious what professional Rails developers do when setting up an environment. I am also more concerned about the _why_ as in _why I shouldn't use RailsInstaller_ or _why I should install RVM_."}
{"_id": "122454", "title": "Converting Fortran 77 code to C#", "text": "I'm trying to convert a Fortan77 program to C#. I have a subroutine with about 650 lines of code and horrific GOTO statements all over the place. I'm having a lot of trouble even starting to visualise the flow of the subroutine to figure out what it does. Is there anybody with experience in this sort of thing who could give me any advice on how to get an overview of this subroutine? Are there some tools available to speed up or facilitate this type of conversion?"}
{"_id": "114924", "title": "Config Class/Struct: Pattern or Anti-Pattern? Alternatives?", "text": "If you add new configuration options to a program, it can often have tons of ripple effects in terms of getting the options to where they need to be acted upon. There are three basic ways to deal with this that I'm aware of:   1. Pass all configuration settings to the parts of your program that need them explicitly as primitives. This is the most explicit way and the way that decouples things the most. The downside is that this is both verbose and brittle.   2. Make the most frequently used configuration settings global/static. This is the simplest way but introduces action at a distance, hinders testability and assumes that the configuration truly is global (that you'd only want one configuration at any given time).   3. Make a configuration class/struct that contains all the configuration options for the whole program or for each major concern within the program, and then pass this around explicitly. This is less explicit than (1) but more explicit than (2). If you want to change a setting just for one function call, you can clone the config object and change this one value. This is useful in both testing and in practice. However, you still end up potentially passing tons of info to a function that it doesn't need and changing a value in the config class/struct can still cause action at a distance. Would you consider (3) a pattern or an anti-pattern? If it's an anti-pattern, what do you do instead?"}
{"_id": "142498", "title": "How to learn the math behind the code?", "text": "I have recently gotten into programming. (Although I know that the number of books you have read does not determine your programming competency or ability, just to paint a \"map\" of where I am in terms of the content I know...) I've finished the books:               Python 3 For Absolute Beginners     Pro Python     Python Standard Library by Example     Beautiful Code     Agile Web Development With Rails      and am about halfway into Programming Ruby. I have written many small programs (One that finds which files have been updated and deleted in a directory, one that compares multiple players' fantasy baseball value, and some text based games, and many more). Obviously, as I'm not some sort of child prodigy, I can't take a formal Computer Science course until high school. I really want to learn computer science to increase my knowledge about the code, and the how the code runs. I've really become interested in the math part after reading the source code for Python's random module. Is there a place where I can learn CS, or programming math online for free, at a level that would be at least partially understandable to a person my age?"}
{"_id": "158947", "title": "Legitimate use for IRC bots", "text": "I recently saw a question on SE about how to do such and such when creating an IRC bot. The only use of IRC bots I was familiar with was message flooding and spamming. I did a Google search for the string I used as my title and was led to an **article** that was an eye opener as to what all an evil IRC bot could do, but I did not see any explanation of a benevolent (or neutral) use of an IRC bot. Is there any? If so, what are they used for?"}
{"_id": "136702", "title": "Does the LGPL allow me to do this?", "text": "I am planning to develop a commercial software using a LGPL software. In the LGPL software that I am using some functions in a class are not fully implemented. I want to modify the LGPL code so that the class and not- implemented functions are made visible outside the dll by adding dllexport infront of class and by adding virtual keyword infront of function. Then I plan to implement those functions in my proprietary software. I am ready to distribute the modified LGPL code but not proprietary software that implements functions in the way I want. Does that violate LGPL terms and conditions?"}
{"_id": "136701", "title": "Releasing patches and updates to web service users", "text": "I have written one web services using Java. Its already live (up and running). During development I have SVN (repository) + Jira for task maintenance + Maven for building the web services. Now I have some small update for my web services and I have created that task in Jira and committed the files in svn with respect to Jira-Id after all testing, etc. Say my web services is used by 10 clients, we did not give our source code to them. Is there any steps/procedure available to release patch/updates?   Is there any way to render/create the change log at the build time (maven)?   How do I manage the change log for all version or Patch updates during build time? (Automatically)"}
{"_id": "142493", "title": "Should I go back to college and graduate with a poor GPA or try to jump into an entry-level development position?", "text": "I once attended a top-10 American university but I am currently not in school for several different reasons. Chief among them is that I did very poorly two semesters and even failed one of them (got two F's) which put me in automatic suspension. My major is not CS but math. I am in a pickle at the moment. After I was suspended I got a job at a niche IT company in the area. I am employed as something of an IT generalist; my primary responsibilities are Windows systems administration/networking but I also do some Android, iOS, and .NET development. I have released a few apps to the app store under my name and my company's name, and we have done work for a few big clients. I started working at my job about 1.5 years ago and I am somewhat happily employed but I do not see it as a long-term fit because it is a small company with little opportunity to advance. I would like to move out to California and particularly to the Bay Area to get a job at a more reputable or exciting company, even at a lower rate of pay, but I am not sure if I should do that or try to go back to school. If I went back to school, it would take 1-1.5 years to graduate and some $. Best case scenario I would graduate with a 2.9 or 3.0 GPA. It is a top-10 school, but that's a crappy GPA. If I do not go back to school, I will be a field where most people have degrees, without a degree. If anything goes wrong I could be really screwed as I feel I will get no respect without a degree. On the other hand I really would like to get started in the field and get more serious about developing good development practices, learning new languages/frameworks, and working with people who know a lot more than I so I can learn and grow as a developer and eventually do my own thing. Basically, I am wondering:   1. Should I just go back to school? How much does the bad GPA / good school reputation weigh in? What about the fact that I am a Math major and not a CS major (have never taken a CS course)?   2. Does my skill set as something of a generalist bode well for me finding work at a start up in the Bay Area?   3. If not (2), should I hunker down and focus on producing a really good (or a few mediocre) iOS apps? Android apps? etc.   4. How would _you_ look at someone who did great in HS, kind of goofed off in college and eventually quit, and got into development?"}
{"_id": "136705", "title": "What web frameworks are capable of loading other web apps at runtime?", "text": "I am not sure how to phrase this, but in asp.net there is the notion of a \"web application\" that is fundamentally just a DLL that the web server loads. It has the ability to dynamically discover and load user controls at runtime (e.g. a customized button), using something called MEF (which can discover dlls and load them). What I have not been able to find anything about is if it asp.net is capable of loading other asp.net web applications. E.g. web application A, looks for any dlls in a folder and dynamically loads them one by one (and maybe loads their index.html pages in a iframe). Can this be done in asp.net or other web frameworks?"}
{"_id": "149445", "title": "Implementing Bulk Update feature and its trade offs", "text": "The feature to implement is to allow a user to select items and apply data update in bulk. It is very similar to JIRA's ability to bulk update a list of selected issues. In my case:   * I iterate over the items,    * and for each item, I simply call the existing method used for individually updating an item.  Take note, I cannot do this in sql level (ie. sql batch update) as business logic is in java. Evidently, **for performance** , it will be slower given that a user decides to update multiple items, hence you can expect speed = # of items * rate of transaction. So in effect, updating an item individually should be same speed as bulk updating a list where the list contains a single item. That is fine, as **its a trade-off**. My **other concern** however is this: the method used to update individually, will remain unchanged, and will simply be called by bulk update multiple times according to the number of selected items; this method **acquires locks** to involved tables until it finishes its transaction. This in effect, will cause locking for long time if there where multiple items to be updated hence a user will not be able to use the view and search page that retrieves from the locked tables. It's a **trade-off that may not be as acceptable** as the first point I discussed above. I am conflicted, given that the nature of the existing method for individually updating an item, is really to acquire locks, and I am not suppose to touch that code. I am suppose to only reuse that method, calling it multiple times to implement the bulk update. **Is this 2nd trade-off something we cannot bypass, is it a valid trade-off?** _Please note also, I am not an expert in transactions and locks._"}
{"_id": "67826", "title": "How do you bill your procrastination?", "text": "I've recently switched from being an employee to self-employment. However, on lots of days I spend a lot of time being unproductive and procrastinating. Many of my days look like once described by Joel Spolsky, it takes some time till I can start working. When I was still an employee in a company, this was part of my working hours. Now, I have the problem that I feel bad about billing my customers the time I'm not really working, but waiting to start working. On the other hand, I wouldn't be procrastinating if I would not work for the customers. How do you deal with this issue? Do you charge your customers for that time?"}
{"_id": "67827", "title": "Is it ok to store code and use it later?", "text": "I've been programming for the many months. What I've found is :   * My team leader illustrates to me the project.   * I start up with an empty project.   * For many common tasks (like calling webservice, showing grid etc.), I either open my evernote account or my previous project.   * I copy and paste the code and tweak it to meet my current requirement.   * For just normal things (like alertboxes, storing cookies etc.) I use intellisense.   * For anything else I go to google, I search and copy the code after reading and adjust it to my need. When I complete my project my team leader and client are happy because the task is getting done. But is it OK to google the code, store it and use it later? Remember I understand the code, I can tweak it later but I don't remember even the proper names of classes. I don't really remember the code. Am I doing it right?"}
{"_id": "143361", "title": "Clojure: vars, atoms, and refs (oh my)", "text": "also: defs, java fields, agents The clojure website has documentation for these concepts:   * Vars   * Atoms   * Refs   * Agents I understand the words, but I don't conceptually get the _purpose / meaning_ of these. When should I / how can I know when to use them?"}
{"_id": "131730", "title": "Platform design Issues", "text": "Suppose I design a platform over a platform (say Java or Win32 or .NET), which consists of various layers like Database, User Interface, Cloud etc. Now every team would be working to make their product, say database best and less focused on their relationship with other teams, hence resulting in various issues when doing an integration of it. Now, these are my questions in order to achieve a stable and bug-free platform:   1. How could one ensure that while integrating all the layers, there is less overhead involved and also is there any other way to automate this process ?   2. Also, if one particular team is using the API calls provided by other team and if the other team is still not ready with the API calls, there comes a DEADLOCK . How to step over such situations ?   3. Say, I want to monitor and get feedback from various teams regarding their progress. Is there any automation available for such activities ?"}
{"_id": "111205", "title": "How much of Computer Science is actually focused on programming?", "text": "The reason why I ask this is because, when I read articles such as Wikipedia's HCI or reports on A.I., I find that much of what it talks about is actual design _theory_. Is this what most of Computer Science touches on? They say there's a difference between being a Coder and a Computer Scientist. Is this like the difference between an Architect and a Draftsman?"}
{"_id": "143364", "title": "What are some of the major differences in process management between CGI and newer (better) technologies?", "text": "I know CGI spawns a new process for every HTTP request that it serves, while servlets use one Java process to serve many requests. What do other technologies (rails, WSGI/django, mod_php, asp.net etc.) do so that web servers do not have to spawn a new process new HTTP request?"}
{"_id": "143367", "title": "C++ equivalent to the Sun Java Language Specification and JVM Specification?", "text": "Does C++ have an \"official\" language specification document, similar to the Sun/Oracle: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/#6.6.1"}
{"_id": "209916", "title": "Which if statement requires less computation?", "text": "I have               if (!b && c || a && c)       //do action a     else        //...      Due to some internal relationship between a, b, and c. `!b && c || a && c` **is proved to be equivalent to** `(! a && b) || c`. I just wonder will `(! a && b) || c` be simpler than `!b && c || a && c`? Can you prove it? Assume the chances of a,b,c to be True or False is equal. I'm **not asking which style is better**. **I'm asking which statement has lower computational complexity**. Just like asking quick sort and Bubble Sort, which has lower computational complexity. You will not answer it depends, it is related to compiler and hardware because some hardware have special instruction for Bubble Sort. I hope to hear nlog(n) and n^2."}
{"_id": "24538", "title": "How could your company's learning/development department best serve you?", "text": "I'll preface my question with a disclaimer - I am not an engineer, I'm just someone who works with them full-time, in a learning and development capacity. Given that, one of the comments I get regularly from the engineers I'm tasked with developing is that they feel that they're having solutions (both technical and non-technical) for development \"pushed\" at them vs. anyone from my field consulting with them to determine what they really need. So my question is - if you could give your company a list of the top 3-5 things they could do - in a classroom, or elsewhere - to develop meaningful skills that would help you be a better engineer, a better employee, and one more likely to STAY with the company for the long haul, what would make the cut and why? Thanks in advance for your responses."}
{"_id": "151739", "title": "Getting data from a webpage in a stable and efficient way", "text": "Recently I've learned that using a regex to parse the HTML of a website to get the data you need isn't the best course of action. So my question is simple: What then, is the best / most efficient and a generally stable way to get this data? I should note that:   * There are no API's   * There is no other source where I can get the data from (no databases, feeds and such)   * There is no access to the source files. (Data from public websites)   * Let's say the data is normal text, displayed in a table in a html page I'm currently using python for my project but a language independent solution/tips would be nice. As a side question: How would you go about it when the webpage is constructed by Ajax calls? **EDIT:** In the case of HTML parsing, I know that there is no actual stable way to get the data. As soon as the page changes, your parser is done for. What I mean with stable in this case is: an efficient way to parse the page, that always hands me the same results (for the same set of data obviously) provided that the page does **not** change."}
{"_id": "58513", "title": "How do I impress employers with my resume?", "text": "I built an entire website from scratch in 10 days which looks and feels professional with the site being unique. The site has features like logging in, sending activation emails, tag/content search (lucence.net), syntax highlighting (prettify) and a diff (one of the js diffs), markup for comments all on this site and autocomplete in a textbox (remember, 10 days). I wrote that I have 5+ years of C# experience (I could lie and say more, but smart employers will know it's only 8 years old and 1.1 is very different from what we use now). I had employers REPEATEDLY say they are looking for someone who has more C# experience... wtf. Maybe they don't read my CV, maybe they don't believe it or ignore me because I am not yet a graduate. I laughed when I first read Steve Yegge The Five Essential Phone Screen Questions as I knew all of that (although i still never used graph datastruct nor know much about it). I'm pretty sure, competency-wise, I can do the job. I am also positive that no one noticed I have markup, a diff, auto-complete nor email activation/forget password (I offer a test user account). So maybe my site/example work isn't impressive because you don't realize what is in it. In short, I don't think they read my CV or notice my site. How do I impress employers? PS: The problem is that I don't get to the interview. I had one and ruined it by speaking too technical to the PM because I was nervous. The other 25+ jobs either didn't contact me or were kind enough to send a rejection email."}
{"_id": "151733", "title": "If immutable objects are good, why do people keep creating mutable objects?", "text": "If immutable objects\u00b9 are good, simple and offer benefits in concurrent programming why do programmers keep creating mutable objects\u00b2? I have four years of experience in Java programming and as I see it, the first thing people do after creating a class is generate getters and setters in the IDE (thus making it mutable). Is there a lack of awareness or can we get away with using mutable objects in most scenarios? * * * \u00b9 Immutable object is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created.   \u00b2 Mutable object is an object which can be modified after it is created."}
{"_id": "151732", "title": "finding houses within a radius", "text": "During an interview I was asked given the following: A real estate application that lists all houses that are currently on the market (i.e., for sale) within a given distance (say for example the user wants to find all houses within 20 miles), how would you design your application (both data structure and alogirithm) to build this type of service?      Any ideas? How would you implement it? I told him I didn't know becaue I've never done any geo-related stuff before."}
{"_id": "77545", "title": "Why don't programming languages separate out style from content?", "text": "My ideal programming language would let me define a custom css that would lay out code according to my specifications of columns/space/brackets placement etc. and check in only content. Everybody gets their own layouts - and hence we avoid all the long winded discussions about styles. A language that could do refactoring of variable names / function names as per my style requirements would be better. Another one that could translate to local language would be awesome! Is there one such language variant of C/C++? What are the negatives of this?"}
{"_id": "165178", "title": "Transaction classification. Artificial intelligence", "text": "For a project, I have to classify a list of banking transactions based on their description. Supose I have 2 categories: health and entertainment. Initially, the transactions will have basic information: date and time, ammount and a description given by the user. For example:               Transaction 1: 09/17/2012 12:23:02 pm - 45.32$ - \"medicine payments\"     Transaction 2: 09/18/2012 1:56:54 pm - 8.99$ - \"movie ticket\"     Transaction 3: 09/18/2012 7:46:37 pm - 299.45$ - \"dentist appointment\"     Transaction 4: 09/19/2012 6:50:17 am - 45.32$ - \"videogame shopping\"      The idea is to use that description to classify the transaction. 1 and 3 would go to \"health\" category while 2 and 4 would go to \"entertainment\". I want to use the google prediction API to do this. In reality, I have 7 different categories, and for each one, a lot of key words related to that category. I would use some for training and some for testing. Is this even possible? I mean, to determine the category given a few words? Plus, the number of words is not necesarally the same on every transaction. Thanks for any help or guidance! Very appreciated Possible solution: https://developers.google.com/prediction/docs/hello_world?hl=es#theproblem"}
{"_id": "28199", "title": "is OOP the dominant programming model in real world?", "text": "**Objects Never? Well, Hardly Ever** In the VIEWPOINT section of Communications of The ACM, I found an interesting article entitled \"Objects Never? Well, Hardly Ever\". It\u2019s a radically different perspective than objects-first or objects-late. He suggests \"objects-never\" or maybe \"objects-graduate school\". The author talked about OOP and made a question about how OOP is used in real world programming environments. He thinks that OOP is not the dominant programming model. For example, he claims, 70% of programmings are done for Embedded Systems where OOP is not really suited. When some professors in universities wants to talk about the benefits of OOP, they talk about code-reuse. As another example, again, he claims, this is not the real case in real world. code-reuse is harder than what's claimed in universities. I claim that the use of OOP is not as prevalent as most people believe, that it is not as successful as its proponents claim, and, therefore, that its central place in the CS curriculum is not justified. It's interesting for me to know how people in stack-overflow think about this? Is OOP the dominant programming model from programmers' point of view? PS: I asked this on StackOverflow, but someone suggests it should be asked here. hope to find a good result :-) PS2: If I should choose/learn/use just one approach, is it OOP or not? why?"}
{"_id": "175605", "title": "Licensing Options for a dead project", "text": "I'm currently working on a project where the original author informally told me that he didn't want to publish the source. Since then, the original author has gone leaving me to be the sole developer on the project. I've tried to contact him several times about making the project open source so that I can have other developers assist me but he is not responding to any communications. I'm not planning on trying to make money of the software, I just want a general license that allows me to put the code on GitHub or BitBucket so that other people in the community can assist me with the development. Can I do this since he is gone and not responding to any form of communication? Is there a time period I need to wait? I know what I asking for is legal advice, I just have no idea where to start looking to find the answer so I decided to start here."}
{"_id": "197213", "title": "Professional Mentorships and Study Groups for Seasoned Programmers?", "text": "I am presently an employed software engineer, less than a decade out of college. Given where I would like to be in my career, I am currently looking to sharpen my skills to find my next job. However, I feel that I have certain technical deficits, from my degree and work choices, that make it difficult for me to study on my own or pass muster in the positions I hope to achieve. Because of this, I am trying to find a professional mentorship or continuing study group for practitioners beyond my workplace, as I believe I would benefit from having someone with more experience elucidate areas that I might wish to build competence in. I believe this would also help identify material that I would not otherwise be able to find on my own. This is especially true for the algorithms training that I missed in college. While trying to shore this up, I have participated in Top Coder, Coursera, MIT Open Courseware, and Project Euler. I have also purchased, digested, and worked with many books focused on CS and programming. This is well and good, but having this process be solely self-directed is both isolating and lacking in necessary social feedback on how my studies connect with the real world. As such, I am curious what resources might be beneficial for someone looking for a human component to studying SE/CS outside of the workplace. Would it be valuable if I started a group myself, for people looking to study these areas? * * * _Full disclosure: This is a new account, because I prefer to separate this question from my professional identity. I almost feel embarrassed by it, to the point of not asking, which is precisely why I feel it may be valuable for others here._"}
{"_id": "55168", "title": "What to do when blocked", "text": "I began to code 3 different projects, and it is alright, I have done it for 5 months, some php, some c, some matlab, but for some reason I got stuck... Usually when I pass through this I leave for a while or go to sleep (and while sleeping I'm thinking on a solution to the problem I\u00b4m currently facing, the most important or urgent), and usually when I return (if I slept well) I have the solution and code comes easily. I don not know what you think, but I have been stuck for around 10 consecutive days! I can't get out of the hole, I only see how time is passing... What do you do when you lose the inspiration? Some friends say Go get some air, do sports, well I have tried... I know lot of you have passed this stage but how?"}
{"_id": "197215", "title": "How To Become More Comfortable with the Technical Terms", "text": "I have been working freelance for a few years, and before that I worked as an entry-level coder for a non-technical company. I \"understand\" how delegates, and MVC, and how to make an app and make it work, but I have done a few interviews recently and they are throwing questions at me that I don't know the answers to. These are questions that I think I _should_ know the answers to, but I basically haven't ever had to use the technical language. Needless to say I feel very stupid when this happens but I don't know how to prepare / remedy this problem without going back to Comp Sci 101. It's like I can do the work, but I don't know what they're talking about. Any suggestions would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "197216", "title": "How to organize the quality testing of a large website?", "text": "I developed a pretty big website. I tested it myself to the best of my ability, but I cannot test all scenarios that my users may run in to. I found a testing team in India, but they don't seem to have any systematic approach to testing website functionality. They test each individual page rather than the full process that user takes on website. What processes or tools should I use to thoroughly test my website?"}
{"_id": "234095", "title": "Passing data between classes", "text": "A question similar to this has been asked before, and will be asked again I am sure. I have spent some time googling and trying to work this out for myself, but I am at an impasse. What I am trying to achieve is to implement a database search screen for an application I have been tasked with creating. What I am doing is loading a JFrame with JPanels through a cardlayout. On a few of these JPanels I will have a button that calls another JFrame that will search a DB and load the result set into a table displayed on the frame. The search is only conducted after the user has typed in the search data and pressed search. The screen is to be disposed of, and return the values once the user has selected a row in the table and pressed another button. I have all the GUI components created, and the DB search functionality working. The problem I have is returning the value. At the moment I have the Search JFrame object created by the JPanel that has the button, but any attempts I ave made to get the data from the search frame have resulted in null results. Is there a way to return a value through this way and if so how? I have tried getter/setter methods, but obviously since the initial results of the variables are null it returns as null. I tried linking the result to the table with the same result. (Actually it returned -1, but that's just splitting hairs). I tried changing the search screen to a JDialog as I read that that can halt the running code while waiting for a response. I tried various methods to check if the search screen was enabled/visible and to hold on those. All to no avail. Any help is appreciated."}
{"_id": "225841", "title": "Is there such a thing as e-commerce without a shopping cart?", "text": "Imagine you want to set up a minimalist e-commerce website for a \"lemonade stall\". You only have two products - a large glass of lemonade _OR_ a small glass of lemonade (always either/or; never both). You want people to select, to pay, to enjoy - that fast, that simple, and with no other distracting features/options offered. Because you're a child who can't add, and in any case you make the rules, everyone has to pay for their one glass of lemonade separately. A shopping cart makes no sense, and in fact detracts from the value of the product you are offering. On the other hand, you do want to encourage repeat customers, so a customer database of some kind might be useful (or might not). And somewhere in the future you can imagine introducing a medium glass of lemonade as a third product. But that is as complex as it can possibly get. If that is your brief, what are the options one should consider? Writing the functionality from the ground up? Taking an off-the-shelf package and configuring/stripping it back? Using a shopping cart behind the scenes, but hiding it? I'm interested in knowing what approaches are viable, and which is likely to take the least work to get an acceptable result. Answers that lean towards implementation in PHP/MySQL, or e-commerce frameworks written in them, are preferred."}
{"_id": "225840", "title": "is it a bad programming practice to return a new object in a property", "text": "I've always had this question and I think it is time to settle the answer, is it a heavy load to do this :                   public Rect Bounds         {             get              {                 var Top = (_targetPosition + _translationY) - _size / 2.0f;                 return new Rect(callOutStarMargin, Top, _size, _size);              }         }      as an alternative of this :                   private Rect _boundsRect = new Rect();              public Rect Bounds         {             get              {                 var Top = (_targetPosition + _translationY) - _size / 2.0f;                 _boundsRect.Y = Top;                 return _boundsRect;             }         }      doing this I'm avoiding to create a new Rect everytime the property is invoked, I'm not sure if doing this in the first way would create an extra memory/speed overweight, if lets say this property is accessed 1 or 2 times on a list of 100 items each second. So which one should I choose ? **EDIT:** I think I'm not being clear here, my real question is How heavy is it making this new instructions of simple objects like Rect, How efficient is C# garbage collector for example in this scenario of 100 new rects per second , and the cpu cycle difference between one or the other way"}
{"_id": "222810", "title": "Why we say Lisp are Human oriented and Fortran are Machine oriented\uff1f", "text": "> Lisp and Fortran were the trunks of two separate evolutionary trees, one > rooted in math and one rooted in machine architecture. I see this in _Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age_. And someone said that Lisp are Human oriented and Fortran are Machine oriented. Here human oriented means that the way of problem solving is more likely human do.   And machine oriented means that the way of problem solving is more likely machine do.   I think that Lisp and base on S-expression and symbol. Fortran are base on von Neumann and Variables. Is it right?"}
{"_id": "164781", "title": "How to add a new developer to the team", "text": "I run a small company composed of only 2 developers. We are building a very big application for one of our clients. Development on this project has gone on for 1.5 years. Now this client has secured an important sponsorship, and they are organizing events related to this project. So now we have a deadline in 2 months and we can't miss it. We are thinking of adding a new developer to the team, and I am wondering what we can do to help his integration. This is the situation:   * We are approaching the threshhold of Brooks's law \\-- the point when adding new developers will be counter-productive.   * The application is relatively well-designed, but the implementation is chaotic in some points (especially older code).   * There are unit tests only for more recent code. When this project started, we didn't regularly conduct tests.   * Documentation and comments are incomplete.   * The application is both large and complex.   * The client has written down almost every detail about his project, in a very clear and \"programmer-friendly\" way. Is it a good idea to add a person now? If so, what can we do in order to help the new developer integrate into the team? EDIT: The sponsor is organizing an internet-based sport event for next spring. It must start on a specific day of the year. We can't change it. What we developers (I am one of the two) need to do is:   * Completing the existing application (about 25% of the work to do).   * Creating a new module, essential for the organization of this event (about 75% of the work to do). This new module can't be developed without understanding the main program's API. I can't do an exact time estimation, but we are in a risky situation."}
{"_id": "79490", "title": "Self-referencing anonymous closures: is JavaScript incomplete?", "text": "Does the fact that anonymous self-referencing function closures are so prevelant in JavaScript suggest that JavaScript is an incomplete specification? We see so much of this:               (function () { /* do cool stuff */ })();      and I suppose everything is a matter of taste, but does this not look like a kludge, when all you want is a private namespace? Couldn't JavaScript implement packages and proper classes? Compare to ActionScript 3, also based on ECMAScript, where you get               package com.tomauger {       import bar;       class Foo {          public function Foo(){            // etc...          }               public function show(){            // show stuff          }               public function hide(){            // hide stuff          }          // etc...       }     }      Contrast to the convolutions we perform in JavaScript (this, from the jQuery plugin authoring documentation):               (function( $ ){            var methods = {         init : function( options ) { // THIS },         show : function( ) { // IS   },         hide : function( ) { // GOOD },         update : function( content ) { // !!! }       };            $.fn.tooltip = function( method ) {              // Method calling logic         if ( methods[method] ) {           return methods[ method ].apply( this, Array.prototype.slice.call( arguments, 1 ));         } else if ( typeof method === 'object' || ! method ) {           return methods.init.apply( this, arguments );         } else {           $.error( 'Method ' +  method + ' does not exist on jQuery.tooltip' );         }                };          })( jQuery );      I appreciate that this question could easily degenerate into a rant about preferences and programming styles, but I'm actually very curious to hear how you seasoned programmers feel about this and whether it feels natural, like learning different idiosyncrasies of a new language, or kludgy, like a workaround to some basic programming language components that are just not implemented?"}
{"_id": "35541", "title": "Why a write-enable ring?", "text": "Here's an \"interview question\" that while ostensibly about hardware really does inform a software design principal as well. Computers used to (still do I guess, somewhere) use magnetic tape reels to store data. There was a plastic accessory you could attach to a tape reel called a \"write-enable ring\". If the tape had such a ring, the tape drive allowed writing to the tape... if not, it only allowed read access. Why was the choice to design the system in this way? Why not have a \"write protect ring\" instead, with the opposite effect?"}
{"_id": "221542", "title": "Event-driven vs. 'reference'-driven programming (i.e. in JavaScript)", "text": "I haven't been able to find the appropriate terminology to search for content on the web related to what I'm asking, so I'm hoping someone on here can at least point me in the right direction. I'm a fairly senior JavaScript developer, but I have a secret -- I don't like event-driven programming (aside from user-triggered event binding I mean). Something about it has never sat well with me, it's the feeling of a \"disconnect\" in the logic flow. In the simple example of some module invoking arbitrary numbers of views, an event-driven friend would create event listeners for elements those views could have and keep any reference to the parent module out of the view code. I, on the other hand, would pass reference to the parent module in to the views so that I could directly trigger the module's methods. I go for the second approach because I know exactly what is going to happen and what method I'm triggering at all points in the code. In the event-driven case I'm separating the assignment of an event response from the element that would trigger it, putting things in to the 'listening ether'. I know responsible event-driven programming should avoid any risks like double-binding, etc., but even when that care is taken I still see it all as a bit of a black-box ripe for debugging nightmares. While passing references may be a bit more cumbersome in the code, at least it's clear what things are going to happen and when. Can anyone identify the pros and cons of these two methods, and in particular why JS seems to be pushing in general toward the event-driven stuff?"}
{"_id": "221543", "title": "Is there a standard for encoding recurring patterns of dates?", "text": "I'm trying to re-write a backend interface doohickey for a calendar, a todo list and another sort of calendar and found that they all were programmed to have subtly different formats for patterns of dates that could be used to configure certain properties in them. I have three screens that have different ways of essentially doing the same thing:   1. ![Calendar](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mtAdU.png)   2. ![Scheduler](http://i.stack.imgur.com/63x5L.png)   3. ![Todo](http://i.stack.imgur.com/M3Lw8.png) and they essentially have the same information. I've got objects for all these, but what I'd like to do is serialize the objects, not to bytecode, but to a semi-human readable format that could be transferred between not only these three screens, but stored as one field in a database and XML."}
{"_id": "221548", "title": "How to make the leap from classification to clustering", "text": "I have a clustering problem which I can't seem to solve, although if I treat it as a labeled classification problem, I can solve it with satisfactory precision. Is there an elegant way to make the leap from being able to solve the classification problem, to being able to solve the clustering one? The details: I have a labeled dataset of movements, from which I extract a features vector for each movement. I can then perform classification of the movements with several tools (SVM, decision trees, etc.) and I get satisfactory results (0.85 precision, which in my case is ok). The problem is, that the real world data I am facing, will of course not be labeled, and is not modeled after the labeled data I have (which means I can't train a classifier on the labeled data, and expect it to perform well on other data). The real world data will for sure not be comprised just of these two classes, it will be comprised of K unknown classes, which I would like to be able to cluster with satisfactory precision. So is it logical to assume that if I can solve the classification problem with high precision, I will be able to solve the clustering problem with high precision? Does it mean that my feature extraction, which works well for the classification, will work well for clustering? Because just throwing clustering algorithms at the problem (k-means, meanshift, dbscan, etc.) doesn't give good results. Usually I just get too many clusters, or just 1 cluster (although I know I have 2 classes), with horrible precision. Btw I am using Python's sklearn."}
{"_id": "206878", "title": "how to determine minimum requirements of a software", "text": "Some software (commonly the commercial ones) producers provide minimum requirements, some examples: Skype, Diablo III, Ubuntu-Server and OpenOffice. I wonder how those minimum requirements are determined, especially RAM, CPU frequency in general? Is there a logic behind it or is it just determined by testing the program with different hardware to find out what would be okay for the end user? If there is a logic to determine such parameters, e.g., how could I prepare such requirements for a C or JAVA code (assuming that it has >10k line)?"}
{"_id": "130461", "title": "Why is it optimal to schedule shorter jobs first on a uniprocessor?", "text": "On a uniprocessor, it is apparently optimal to schedule jobs that take less time first assuming non-preemptive scheduling - once a job runs, it must finish. Why? I am confused about how the ordering would change the overall latency. Since a uniprocessor can only take on a single process at a time, wouldn't the latency be the same regardless of order?"}
{"_id": "165288", "title": "Misunderstanding Scope in JavaScript?", "text": "I've seen a few other developers talk about binding scope in JavaScript but it has always seemed to me like this is an inaccurate phrase. The `Function.prototype.call` and `Function.prototype.apply` don't pass scope around between two methods; they change the caller of the function - two very different things. For example:               function outer()     {         var item = { foo: 'foo' };         var bar = 'bar';         inner.apply(item, null);     }          function inner()     {         console.log(this.foo); //foo         console.log(bar);      //ReferenceError: bar is not defined     }      If the scope of `outer` was really passed into `inner`, I would expect that `inner` would be able to access `bar`, but it can't. `bar` was in scope in `outer` and it is out of scope in `inner`. Hence, the scope wasn't passed. Even the Mozilla docs don't mention anything about passing scope: > Calls a function with a given `this` value and `arguments` provided as an > array. Am I misunderstanding scope or specifically scope as it applies to JavaScript? Or is it these other developers that are misunderstanding it?"}
{"_id": "165289", "title": "Is it really free to deploy SharpDevelop apps?", "text": "I'm trying SharpDevelop to develop c# applications. Regardless of the language and the IDE, is it free to deploy applications that use WinForms? I've been developing with MonoDevelop just because it has a designer for Gtk# (client doesn't want to pay more for licences as to use VS...), but it's too buggy and it's making us lose lots of time. SharpDevelop looks great at first sight, but I wouldn't like the user or us to have problems with legal software. Thank you for the data! Warm regards."}
{"_id": "114074", "title": "Why is it so difficult to get a programming job?", "text": "I Have been looking for a job in the past 10 years. Since I believe the subject I know better is programming, I have been trying to find a programming job. I send my curriculum to a lot of companies, and they basically don't even reply. Lately I sent my curriculum to a php job and I got no answer. When I am called to an interview (yes, it happened) the interview doesn't even lasts 5 minutes and I am quickly dispensed. Sometimes they give a test for the position, and they tell me to go away without even bothering to test me. I have applied for jobs to work with Delphi and PHP. Basically the positions I have applied to, are for internships or first jobs. I never applied to a \"senior\" or \"advanced\" position. I am still undergraduate (from university) in compsci. Am I doing something wrong? Do I really need to finish my graduation or get a certification? Is there any tips for having a curriculum that gets you to more interviews? Does this problem happens to everybody or just me?"}
{"_id": "195319", "title": "Client side web development, general question", "text": "I'm a novice web developer, mostly worked with ASP.NET. On the server side, everything is very well documented and whenever there is an error, you get an explanatory error message. But on the client side, I'm at a total loss. I never had to develop a very interactive user interface. For example, tag suggestions on this site while you are asking a question. How such a thing is developed? Writing pure javascript and jquery, onkeypress events then ajax, then manipulating the dom and styling newly created html... This should take days even weeks for a novice developer and it's totally error prone. Something always goes wrong and your best chance is guessing what could have gone wrong. It's not like programming with Java or C# etc. Shortly, what I'm asking is what technologies are used for rapid, robust client side web development, that both looks good and reliable. EDIT: An attempt to remove vagueness about question, writing pure javascript to create a highly interactive and elegant client side app is like programming in Assembly. What major frameworks/libraries/technologies used to overcome this complexity?"}
{"_id": "181342", "title": "R vs Python for data analysis", "text": "I have been programming for about a year and I am really interested in data analysis and machine learning. I am taking part in a couple of online courses and am reading a couple of books. Everything I am doing uses either R or Python and I am looking for suggestions on whether or not I should concentrate on one language (and if so which) or carry on with both; do they complement each other? \\-- I should mention that I use C# in school but am familiar with Python through self-study."}
{"_id": "55296", "title": "Java and what to do with it", "text": "I've been browsing through several websites and several topics on this website. Now I'm just a starting programmer and I want to make a good decision. From what I understand is that Java is used alot for server stuff, and web applets but not really for computer applications running on a client, it's also used for Android programming and several other mobiles. I'm really interested in Android programming, I really love to program for mobile devices, in this case Android because I really think it has a lot of potential and I don't like the iPhone. If I want to program on Android I have to learn Java (aside from Mono). but if my decision changes over the next couple of years I don't think Java is the right language to get a job that programs computer applications. I think I get a job where I have to program server stuff, rather than computer applications. That's why I think C# is a good choice. I can program for Windows Phone 7 (I hope that will get big). and I have the feeling C# is more widely used for computer applications. so I think C# is more versatile looking at Mobile programming and computer programming. Or am I totally wrong thinking this?"}
{"_id": "55297", "title": "Creating Java EE Projects with Maven", "text": "I've been developing Java EE web apps with Eclipse for about a year. My employer doesn't use Maven, but the more I read about it, the more convinced I am that Maven + Hudson will be greatly beneficial for us. First, though, I have to become comfortable with those technologies in my spare time, so that I can create a proof-of-concept. Right now, I'm still a Maven newbie. Is there a set of best practices for creating Java EE web apps with Maven? For example, I could create a project with a basic archetype and then add all of the necessary JARs by putting dependencies in the POM for the servlet container, EJB, EclipseLink, etc... That might work, but it might not be the best way to do it. I'd greatly appreciate any guidance that you could provide on this topic."}
{"_id": "55294", "title": "Consistency vs. Usability?", "text": "When designing an API, consistency often aids usability. However, sometimes they conflict where an extra API feature can be added to streamline a common case. It seems like there's somewhat of a divide over what to do here. Some designs (the Java standard library come to mind) favor consistency even if it makes common cases more verbose. Others (the Python standard library comes to mind) favor usability even if it means treating the common case as \"special\" to make it easier. What is your opinion on how consistency and usability should be balanced?"}
{"_id": "22265", "title": "How bad can it be to lack teamwork when you are a programmer?", "text": "I'm still at school, and I know I have problems dealing with other people. I'm not an angry or shy or different, I just like to work my way and with my opinions while respecting other's, I have a big curiosity and hunger for knowledge, but I lack practice and I guess people don't want to work with me because they might fear I would talk some kind of morale. (For example I started to learn programming using linux instead of windows, even if I use windows a lot. And I have a mac). What happens to programmers who lack teamwork ? Where does the problems begin ? Does being a good programmer compensate at least a little ? Is it normal for a programmer to have a vision about his work instead of just doing what he is told ? (I'm I france)"}
{"_id": "189596", "title": "Development methodologies when hundred of developers are working on one single solution?", "text": "We are an organisation consisting of around 200 developers that are working continuously on one single product (using the revision control Git) which is planned to be released at a certain date. Due to the huge number of developers, we are trying to create \"cross functional\" teams with around 10 developers in each team, resulting in around 20 development teams in the organisation. Since we would like to maintain a continuously \"high standard\" (meaning when developer does a pull, the product should at least be compilable, etc) of the product in the main repository, we would like to use some kind of quality gates. I am a bit unsure how to phrase the question, but I am wondering if I could get some advice of development methodologies for such a large group of developers working on a single product. In our opinion, one end of the spectrum is to allow each developer to commit directly to the main repository, however we fear that due to the high number of developers / commits that the \"main repository\" might constantly be in a broken stage, due to we can't have a demanding \"quality gate\" for each commit. The other end of the spectrum might be like (we think Linus Torvalds / Linux does it) a tree or a pyramid structure, where the \"main repository\" only has three pull sources, these three only has a handful of trusted pull sources, etc. However, we feel that with a structure like that changes have a long chain to climb in order to come into the \"main repository\". Plus that if a merge conflict occurs, the problem lands on another developer than the \"original developer\". With all this background information and opinions stated, how can we learn and read recommended development methodologies for so many developers? How do large organisations (Microsoft, Facebook, Ubuntu, etc?) structure up their development?"}
{"_id": "183856", "title": "Word for the superset of files and folders", "text": "I'm trying to come up with a name for a class that can represent both files and folders. Anyone know a word for this?"}
{"_id": "205117", "title": "DI / IoC Abstract Factory Galore", "text": "Given a project architecture as follows, where each box represents an assembly (all are class libraries), and each arrow stands for a dependency: ![architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IfvWU.png) Might be worth nothing that this project is **massive** (well, it will become!), the complexity incurred by such decoupling is absolutely warranted. **Business Logic Layer** The BLL library defines and organizes various sets of POCO **interfaces** in its `Abstract` namespaces, and implements various functionality _logic_ in its `Concrete` namespaces; the functionality logic refers to and uses the abstract POCO interfaces. **Data Access Layer** The DAL library implements the POCO interfaces from the BLL using `partial` classes that \"extend\" Linq to SQL (dbml) classes, so if there's a `Customer` L2S class, it implements the BLL `ICustomer` interface. Sometimes the L2S class has different types, or the BLL abstraction uses `enum` types, but most often the partial class code looks like this:               public partial class SomeEntity : ISomeEntity { }      This assembly provides the _Model_ , by exposing classes named \"xxxxModel\", which are constructor-injected with _repositories_ regrouped into _services_ , but there's a twist: the \"xxxxxModel\" classes implement an interface called `IUnitOfWork` which encapsulates a database transaction that **must** be able to operate on all repositories at its disposal... possibly with a dynamic (runtime-determined) connection string. To achieve this, I created \"model factories\" which create a single `DataContext` of the appropriate type, and inject the same instance in each repository. **Presentation Logic Layer** Some of the BLL POCO interfaces need a \"ViewModel\" implementation (e.g. to display as items in a list) - the PLL library defines them; however the goal of this library is more focused around, well, the actual presentation logic, **although there is no reference to WPF whatsoever** (other than a single reference to _WindowBase_ but I'll get to that). So this assembly provides the _ViewModel_. One thing to note is that the ViewModel here, completely _controls_ the View - each ViewModel is injected with an implementation of `IViewFactory` that creates an `IView` implementation - technically the ViewModel is blissfully unaware of the implementations, so I'm not sure how deeply it violates MVVM (to be honest I don't really care about that point - especially after reading a blog post like this one), but the thing to point out is that it's the ViewModel that litterally _creates_ the View and assigns the `DataContext`. This makes it very simple to deal with things that _should_ be simple, such as showing and closing a window. So all ViewModel classes inherit `ViewModelBase`, which is an abstract class that takes a `IViewFactory` in its protected constructor, effectively instantiating the View. Here's the offending code:               /// <summary>     /// An interface for a ViewModel.     /// </summary>     public interface IViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged     {         /// <summary>         /// Notifies listener that the value of the specified property has changed.         /// </summary>         void NotifyPropertyChanged<TProperty>(Expression<Func<TProperty>> property);              /// <summary>         /// Notifies listener that the value of the specified property has changed.         /// </summary>         void NotifyPropertyChanged(string propertyName);              /// <summary>         /// Closes the view.         /// </summary>         void Close();              /// <summary>         /// Displays the view.         /// </summary>         void Show();              /// <summary>         /// Displays the view (modal) and returns a <see cref=\"DialogResult\"/> value indicating how the view was closed.         /// </summary>         DialogResult ShowDialog();     }      So a ViewModel essentially _controls_ a View up to the point of _encapsulating_ it, which makes it easy to implement my own `DialogResult` enumeration (much closer to the way WinForms had it). **Views Assembly** Because this library references and consumes ViewModels from the PLL assembly which implement interfaces defined in the BLL assembly, an arrow is missing here - there's also a dependency upon the BLL, but it's only used indirectly. This library provides the _View_ , by defining WPF/XAML windows and controls. Apart from `IValueConverter` and other `MarkupExtension` implementations, there's not much C# code in this library, the hard references to ViewModel implementations are all in XAML `d:DataContext {d:DesignInstance...}` declarations. **So, what's wrong?** I definitely like the direction of the dependencies, including the PLL/Views one. The fact that the BLL has zero dependencies mean I can reuse that library and come up with a WebUI if I ever need one (and that WILL happen... eventually!), and the DAL/BLL decoupling means parts of the data model could be coming from Web services, some cloud, or whatever - business logic couldn't care less and that's good. The main issue I'm having, is that I find myself writing LOTS of abstract factories, and implementing even more of them, and I'm not always reusing these abstractions (hence the smell), but it seems to me like whenever I ask myself how I can inject a \"dynamic\" dependency, the answer is almost automatically - \"an abstract factory will do!\"... which is probably right, it's just that I don't think it's right that pretty much everything is a \"dynamic\" dependency!               public class SomeViewFactory : IViewFactory     {         public IView Create(IViewModel viewModel)         {             return new SomeWindow {DataContext = viewModel};         }     }          public class SomeRepositoryFactory : DataRepositoryFactory<SomeEntity>     {         public IRepository<SomeEntity> Create(DataContext context)         {             return new SomeRepository(context);         }     }      I even have an abstract `IFunctionalityFactory`:               public interface IFunctionalityFactory     {         IFunctionality Create();     }          public class SomeFunctionalityFactory : IFunctionalityFactory     {         private readonly IFunctionalityAuth _auth;         private readonly ISomeBusinessLogic _logic;              public SomeFunctionalityFactory(IFunctionalityAuth auth, ISomeBusinessLogic logic)         {             _auth = auth;             _logic = logic;         }              public IFunctionality Create()         {             var canExecute = auth.IsCurrentUserAuthorised(typeof(SomeFunctionality).FullName);             return new SomeFunctionality(canExecute, _logic);         }     }      Is it normal to have factories for almost everything - from repositories to services and models in the DAL, to Views and ViewModels in the PLL/View library? For now the project is rather small and I'm still the only programmer working on it; I'd like to have an architecture as SOLID and simple as possible when it comes to implementing new functionalities. This is only my 2nd project implementing DI/IoC, needless to say I'm trying to run (and swim, and perhaps even fly) before I can walk... Any tips or issues I'm not seeing? Am I abusing _Abstract Factory_? How else could I instantiate a View? How else could I have a data model that could connect to any of a given set of [almost] identical databases, at the user's discretion? I know I'm breaking MVVM, have I overlooked anything in the pattern that could simplify my existence?"}
{"_id": "205116", "title": "C programming environment", "text": "I'm a retired software tool developer who worked in a Unix environment most of my career. I have a lot of games that I wrote in C that I'd like to get going again. Most use the curses library. These programs are quite old. Does Ubuntu support the compilers, link editors and libraries I would need to get this stuff running? I would prefer, of course, an env just like I had when I wrote these, ksh, vi, etc."}
{"_id": "27379", "title": "Selecting the (right?) technology and environment", "text": "We are two developers on the edge of starting new web product development. We are both fans of lean start-up approach and would like to practice continuous deployment. Here comes the dilemma - we are both coming from a C# / Windows background and we need to decide between: Stick to .NET and Windows, we will not waste time on learning new technologies and put all our effort in the development. Switch to Ruby on Rails and Linux which has a good reputation of fast ramp up and vast open source support. The negative side is that we will need to put a lot of effort in learning Ruby, Rails and Linux... What would you do? What other considerations should we take?"}
{"_id": "198950", "title": "Does the ability to start a GPL add-on GPL-ize a program (Gstreamer)", "text": "This question is asked in regards to gstreamer but it could apply to any add- on based architecture. I have a Gstreamer based application that can ship as proprietary because I use unmodified Gstreamer in it with all LGPL parts. I may, however, also need to issue a version where one Gstreamer plugin is GPL. As far as I can tell that would contaminate the whole program. If instead of including the Gstreamer pipeline specification in the program, I publish it with the ability to read a pipeline spec from an external file (coded per some set of instructions - i.e. as a GstParseLaunch()-able specification) can I release the program as proprietary and the pipe-spec files as GPL? How far apart would I need to publish those items, that is, would the program be in one distribution and the specs separately released in another? What if the program is never truly released but is instead an embedded application sold inside an appliance and the appliance is sold preloaded with both the proprietary part and tghe non-proprietary part?"}
{"_id": "198955", "title": "What can you specifically do with Basic?", "text": "I'm confused on what can specifically be done with Visual Basic programming. I read that you could do anything with it such as create games, so does this mean it could be used to make games that could be uploaded to a website like Kongregate? I'm just wondering what specific things you can do with Visual Basic. Like Objective-C can be used to make apps and Java could be used to make Android apps. What can Visual Basic be specifically used for?"}
{"_id": "166481", "title": "Difference between Windows and Linux development environments?", "text": "I have an interview coming up soon for a Business Analyst position and the recruiter mentioned some feedback from a prior candidate that was interviewed who said the interviewers asked him what the difference between a Windows and Linux development environment was. Are there some high level things I need to be aware of from a business point of view when working with a development team or designing an application on Windows vs Linux?"}
{"_id": "221298", "title": "In DDD are Value Object always at the leaves of a relationship tree?", "text": "If I have a photo album where each **Photo** can be commented on, Should the **Comments** be Entities or Value Object in these cases:   1. Comments can be added only anonymously (i.e. Comments have no relation to anything except the photo).   2. Comments can be added by registered users (i.e. there will be a relation between the Comment and User entity).   3. Comments can have comments (i.e. 1 user replying to another). I think modeling a Comment as Value Object in the first case sounds reasonable as a Comment won't have any relationships with any other entities. However, what about the 2nd and 3rd case? Does the need to identify which user Posted which Comment changes it from a Value Object into Entity?"}
{"_id": "166486", "title": "Git commit messages with nvie branching model", "text": "This Git branching model recommends branching for all development efforts and merging when complete:   1. Branch   2. Develop   3. Merge when complete I'm wondering how this works in practice, given that performing a merge off this model will simply add a commit to the `develop` with whatever commit message happened to be the last one in line. Do people using this model do an interactive rebase on the feature branch before committing? If not, how do you ensure that the commits make sense on the main branch?"}
{"_id": "242921", "title": "Does anyone still use logic analyzers for debugging real time systems?", "text": "Many years ago when debugging real time systems (such as the ones used in telephone switches) we had to use logic analyzers (which read execution straight from the CPU) or emulators (which physically replaced the CPU itself). Is there any situation where this type of instrumenting is still relevant?"}
{"_id": "165821", "title": "I need a decent alternative to c++", "text": "I've learned php and c++, i will list the things i liked and didn't liked on each of them, how i decided to learn them in the first place and why i feel the need to learn a decent alternative to c++, i'm not a professional programmer and only do projects for myself. **PHP -** Decided to learn because i wanted to build a dynamic website, that i did and turned out very good, i even coded a 'not so basic' search engine for it that would display the results 'google style' and really fast, pretty cool stuff. **PROS -** Pretty consistent syntax for all stuff (minor caveats), great functionality, a joy for me to code in it (it seems to 'know' what i want it to do and just does it) **CONS -** Painfully slow for number crunching (which takes me to c++ that i only learned because i wanted to do some number crunching and it had to be screaming fast) **C++ -** Learned because number crunching was so slow in php and manipulating large amounts of data was very difficult, i thought, it's popular programming language and all, and tests show that it's fast, the basic stuff resemble php so it shouldn't be hard to pick up **PROS -** It can be used to virtually anything, very very fast **CONS -** Although fun to code at the start, if i need to do something out of the ordinary, memory allocation routines, pointer stuff, stack sizes etc... will get me tired really quick, syntax is a bit inconsistent some times (more caveats) I guess that from what i wrote you guys will understand what i'm looking for, there are thousands of languages out there, it's likely that one of them will suit my needs, i've been seeing stuff today and a friend of mine that is a professional programmer tried OCaml and Fortran and said that both are fast for numerical stuff, i've been inclined to test Fortran, but i need some more input because i want to have some other good 'candidates' to choose from, for example the python syntax seemed great to me, but then i found out from some tests that it was a lot slower than c++ and i simply don't want to twiddle my thumbs all day."}
{"_id": "25285", "title": "Which Continuous Integration framework do you use and why?", "text": "There are quite a few different Continuous Integration (CI) frameworks out there and I'm wondering which is the most popular. Which frameworks have you used at firms where you work? Is there any reason one CI framework is more popular than another - perhaps this is to do with the features it offers, things that integrate into it or maybe its just marketing? It seems like continuous integration is used more in the Java and .net worlds than say ruby or python. Why is this?"}
{"_id": "99996", "title": "Does defining the stopping point of a genetic algorithm defeat the purpose of the algorithm?", "text": "Wikipedia defines the termination point of a GA to this: > Commonly, the algorithm terminates when either a maximum number of > generations has been produced, or a satisfactory fitness level has been > reached for the population. If the algorithm has terminated due to a maximum > number of generations, a satisfactory solution may or may not have been > reached. Now, if it terminates when a satisfactory fitness level has been reached, and you are the one defining that fitness level, why wouldn't you just be able to create the \"perfect\" genome from the beginning yourself, since you already know the characteristics of this perfect genome? I guess I'm just a little confused here. I thought the purpose of a GA was to constantly evolve and show us possibly an even better solution than what we thought of, and our fitness function was just something that helped it along the way, not something we put on the pedestal as the termination \"perfect\" state. Doesn't that destroy the point?"}
{"_id": "55834", "title": "Technique/visualisation aids to help ourselves to have a clearer picture of the code?", "text": "Sometimes when code is too complex, I break it down into parts. Is there another kind of technique/visualisation to help have a more clear picture of the code?"}
{"_id": "117522", "title": "What are combinators and how are they applied to programming projects? (practical explanation)", "text": "What are combinators? I'm looking for:   * a practical explanation   * examples of how they are used   * examples of how combinators improve the quality/generality of code I'm not looking for:   * explanations of combinators that don't help me get work done (such as the Y-combinator)"}
{"_id": "148159", "title": "Persistent Storage format for (update+read)-intensive data", "text": "I am developing a Java application. While using the application, data would be generated that needs to be stored on disk. I am looking for an embedded database appropriate for a average use-case of the application. Initially I planned to use XML for storing information. But, then after some articles, I found a general opinion that XML is not a very good way for adding information due to I dunno why :P This is roughly the XML format, if I use it. It will give you a brief overview of the data-structure.               <A>       <B>          <C>something</C>       </B>       <B>          <C>some other thing</C>          <C>one more thing</C>       </B>     </A>      The data generated would be mostly elements/objects of type C. The data would seldom be deleted. It would be mostly be added or searched upon. In such a scenario what would be a good choice for storing the data.   1. XML.   2. Embedded Database.   3. Something else. I also looked up some embedded database options. The ones that I found most used are **H2** and **Java DB** (I guess same as Apache Derby?) and SQLite. Which one in your experience has given you better results."}
{"_id": "117528", "title": "Best practice for populating a dynamic popup menu?", "text": "I'm creating a dynamic popup menu whose contents depends on the state of what the user clicked on. Is it considered a better practice to create a template menu in html and modify which options are displayed in javascript, or to create everything in javascript on the fly? I'm using jQuery. code example: HTML:               <div id=\"menuTemplate\" class=\"menu\">       <div class=\"opt1\">Option 1</div>       <div class=\"opt2\">Option 2</div>     </div>     ...      Javascript:               showMenu = function (state) {       var menu = $(\"#menuTemplate\").clone(true).removeAttr(\"id\");       if (state) {         menu.find(\".opt1\").show();         menu.find(\".opt2\").hide();       }       // the rest of the function     }      or Javascript:               showMenu = function (state) {       var menu = $(\"<div class='menu'></div>\");       if (state) {         menu.append($(\"<div class='opt1'>Option 1</div>\"));       } else {         menu.append($(\"<div class='opt2'>Option 2>/div>\"));       }       // the rest of the function     }"}
{"_id": "142960", "title": "How do I share common classes between windows forms and web applications using C#?", "text": "In our environment we have multiple ERP servers plus data that are coming from multiple sources. I need to create a development roadmap for the coming years as it is obvious that side applications will be needed for many things. The choice is that the development will occur with Microsoft technologies. This means that I will be building either web apps (MVC, web forms e.t.c) or standard windows forms applications. The thing here is that I will be creating classes that will encapsulate the business logic that I want to apply to the different projects. What I thought so far: 1) Create class libraries dlls containing the required logic 2) Reuse these libs in my apps. But what about the web apps? Should I use the dlls directly or I should encapsulate them in web services and consume the web services in web apps? In general I would like to find out how should I build my strategy."}
{"_id": "142965", "title": "An XML file or Database?", "text": "I am re-writing a section of my site and am trying to decide how much of a rewrite this will be. At the moment I have a web service feed that generates an xml once per day. I then use this xml file on my website to generate the general structure. I am trying to decide if this information should be located in the database or stay in the xml file.   1. The file can range from 4mb - 12mb.   2. The files depth can go on and on so I have to recurse to find the data I want.   3. I use the .NET serializer classes and store the serialized file in a global variable to avoid re-serializing it each time the page is loaded. My reasons for thinking a database would be better are:   1. I would know exactly where I am in the file by using an internal ID so I wouldn't have to recurse the file to get information.   2. I wouldn't have to load / serialize the XML and could just use my already open database connections.   3. Searching for the data in the file would be quicker(?) as I would just perform an SQL query rather than re-cursing the file. Has anyone got any ideas which is better and which option uses more resources on the server or be quicker? EDIT: The file is read every time the web page is loaded (although only serialized once). It isn't written to by standard users (only by an admin task that runs in the middle of the night). This is my initial investigation before mocking up."}
{"_id": "142966", "title": "How do graphics programmers deal with rendering vertices that don't change the image?", "text": "So, the title is a little awkward. I'll give some background, and then ask my question. **Background** : I work as a web GIS application developer, but in my spare time I've been playing with map rendering and improving data interchange formats. I work only in 2D space. One interesting issue I've encountered is that when you're rendering a polygon at a small scale (zoomed way out), many of the vertices are redundant. An extreme case would be that you have a polygon with 500,000 vertices that only takes up a single pixel. If you're sending this data to the browser, it would make sense to omit ~499,999 of those vertices. One way we achieve that is by rendering an image on a server and and sending it as a PNG: voila, it's a point. Sometimes, though, we want data sent to the browser where it can be rendered with SVG (or canvas, or webgl) so that it can be interactive. **The problem** : It turns out that, using modern geographic data sets, it's very easy to overload SVG's rendering abilities. In an effort to cope with those limitations, I'm trying to figure out **_how to visually losslessly reduce a data set for a given scale and map extent_** (and, if necessary, for a known map pixel width and height). I got a great reduction in data size just using the Douglas-Peucker algorithm, and I believe I was able to get it to keep the polygons true to within one pixel. Unfortunately, Douglas-Peucker doesn't preserve topology, so it changed how borders between polygons got rendered. I couldn't readily find other algorithms to try out and adapt to the purpose, but I don't have much CS/algorithm background and might not recognize them if I saw them."}
{"_id": "166739", "title": "Naming a class that processes orders", "text": "I'm in the midst of refactoring a project. I've recently read Clean Code, and want to heed some of the advice within, with particular interest in Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). Currently, there's a class called OrderProcessor in the context of a manufacturing product order system. This class is currently performs the following routine every n minutes:   * check database for newly submitted + unprocessed orders (via a Data Layer class already, phew!)   * gather all the details of the orders   * mark them as in-process   * iterate through each to:     * perform some integrity checking     * call a web service on a 3rd party system to place the order     * check status return value of the web service for success/fail     * email somebody if web service returns fail   * constantly log to a text file on each operation or possible fail point I've started by breaking out this class into new classes like:   * OrderService - poor name. This is the one that wakes up every n minutes   * OrderGatherer - calls the DL to get the order from the database   * OrderIterator (? seems too forced or poorly named) -    * OrderPlacer - calls web service to place the order   * EmailSender   * Logger I'm **struggling to find good names for each class,** and implementing SRP in a reasonable way. How could this class be separated into new class with discrete responsibilities?"}
{"_id": "242926", "title": "Best practice for managing dynamic HTML modules?", "text": "I've been building web apps that add and remove lots of dynamic content and even structure within the page, and I'm not impressed by the method I'm using to do it. When I want to add a section or module into a position in the interface, I'm storing the html in the code, and I don't like that:               if (rank == \"moderator\") {        $(\"#header\").append('<div class=\"mod_controls\">' +           // content, using + to implement line breaks        '</div>');     }      This seems like such a bad programming practice.. There must be a better way. I thought of building a function to convert a JSON structure to html, but it seems like overkill. For the functionality of the apps I'm using:   * Node.js   * JS   * JQuery   * AJAX **Is there some common way to store HTML modules externally for AJAX importation?**"}
{"_id": "223034", "title": "DAL vs BLL functions' return types", "text": "Here is how I see the main differences between the DAL and the BLL:   * The DAL directly query the database.   * The DAL **doesn't create new information**. It may execute complex sql requests, joining several tables, but the result of such a request never gives any information that wasn't already in the database.   * The BLL applies a business logic on the DAL's informations to create new informations. Now, I wonder what datatypes these layers' functions are supposed to return. For the moment, all my DAL's function return DataTable. But my BLL's functions return some class or list of class that I created. For example:   * dal.getAllPortfolios() returns a DataTable (I'm working with Visual Studio), result of a join on several tables.   * bll.getAllPortfolios() calls dal.getAllPortfolios, but return a List of Portfolio. With my public Portfolio class being in the BLL's namespace. Sometimes, the BLL function doesn't really apply any \"business logic\" but only map the DataTable from de DAL into a BLL's class. I wonder if this is ok. Maybe all the mapping work should be done by the DAL? If this is the case, where to put my personal mapping classes? In the BLL or DAL namespace (those classes being required in layers above the BLL)?"}
{"_id": "140820", "title": "How should I evaluate new browser languages?", "text": "In these days there are many projects whose aim is to bring new languages to the browser by compiling them to JavaScript. Among the others one can mention ClojureScript, CoffeScript, Dart, haXe, Emscripten, Amber Smalltalk. I'd like to try a few of these out, but I am not sure what I should be looking for when evaluating these languages to see if they are suitable for production. How should I evaluate a new browser language, and what are the pitfalls I should be looking for?"}
{"_id": "140826", "title": "Do ORMs enable the creation of rich domain models?", "text": "After using Hibernate on most of my projects for about 8 years, I've landed on a company that discourages its use and wants applications to only interact with the DB through stored procedures. After doing this for a couple of weeks, I haven't been able to create a rich domain model of the application I'm starting to build, and the application just looks like a (horrible) transactional script. Some of the issues I've found are:   * Cannot navigate object graph as the stored procedures just load the minimum amount of data, which means that sometimes we have similar objects with different fields. One example is: we have a stored procedure to retrieve all the data from a customer, and another to retrieve account information plus a few fields from the customer.   * Lots of the logic ends up in helper classes, so the code becomes more structured (with entities used as old C structs).   * More boring scaffolding code, as there's no framework that extracts result sets from a stored procedure and puts it in an entity. My questions are:   * has anyone been in a similar situation and didn't agree with the store procedure approach? what did you do?   * Is there an actual benefit of using stored procedures? apart from the silly point of \"no one can issue a drop table\".   * Is there a way to create a rich domain using stored procedures? I know that there's the possibility of using AOP to inject DAOs/Repositories into entities to be able to navigate the object graph. I don't like this option as it's very close to voodoo. * * * ## Conclusion First, thank you all for your answers. The conclusion that I've arrived is that ORMs don't enable the creation of Rich Domain models (as some people mentioned), but it does simplify the the amount of (often repetitive) work. The following is a more detailed explanation of the conclusion, but is not based on any hard data. Most applications request and send information to other systems. To do this, we create an abstraction in the model terms (e.g. a business event) and the domain model sends or receives the event. The event usually needs a small subset of information from the model, but not the whole model. For example in a online shop, a payment gateway requests some user information and the total to charge a user, but doesn't require the purchase history, available products, and all the customer base. So the event has a small and specific set of data. If we take the database of an application as an external system, then we need to create an abstraction that allows us to map the Domain Model entities to the database (as NimChimpsky mentioned, using a data-mapper). The obvious difference, is that now we need to handcraft a mapping for each model entity to the database (either a legacy schema or stored procedures), with the extra pain that, since the two are not in sync, one domain entity might map partially to a database entity (e.g a UserCredentials class that only contains username and password is mapped to a Users table that has other columns), or one domain model entity might map to more than one database entity (for example if there's a one-to-one mapping on the table, but we want all the data in just one class). In an application with a few entities, the amount of extra work might be small if there's no need to transverse the entities, but it increases when there's a conditional need to transverse the entities (and thus we might want to implement some kind of 'lazy loading'). As an application grows to have more entities, this work just increases (and I have the feeling that it increases non-linearly). My assumption here, is that we don't try to reinvent an ORM. One benefit of treating the DB as an external system, is that we can code around situations in which we want 2 different versions of an application running, in which each application has a different mapping. This becomes more interesting in the scenario of continuous deliveries to production... but I think this is also possible with ORMs to a lesser extent. I'm going to dismiss the security aspect, on the basis that a developer, even if he doesn't have access to the database, can obtain most if not all the information stored in a system, just by injecting malicious code (eg. _I can't believe I forgot to remove the line that logs the credit card details of the customers, dear lord!_ ). * * * ### Small update (6/6/2012) Stored procedures (at least in Oracle) prevent doing anything like continuous delivery with Zero downtime, as any change to the structure of the tables will invalidate the procedures and triggers. So during the time that the DB is being updated, the application will be down too. Oracle provides a _solution_ for this called Edition-Based Redefinition, but the few DBAs I've asked about this feature mentioned that it was poorly implmented and they wouldn't put it in a production DB."}
{"_id": "101941", "title": "Should programmers stay at the internship they had before they graduated?", "text": "I have heard several times from multiple people that \"you shouldn't stay at the job you first arrived at as an intern before you got your BS degree\". The thing I don't remember is: why not? **History:** I have been at my current company for 2.5 years as an intern (got in during the last year of community college), I transferred to a four-year university and am finishing my degree in the next 6 months. I plan to look around for a new job after I graduate (at least to just get my interviewing feet wet), but wonder if I should strongly consider a job where I currently work. **Pros:** I am familiar with the company, really love the people I work with, and am generally familiar with most software products we work on. Additionally, I have completed several projects there that I solely support (slightly better job security). **Cons:** Academically and professionally, I have a strong interest in web development which is something my current company does not do (it focuses mostly on Java/C++ computer applications). Academically, the classes I specialized in were aimed at web development (HTML/SQL/n-tier server side development/PHP/JSP/JavaScript/...). Also, the projects I implemented were developed when I didn't know several of the development patterns that I know now. If I had to re-implement them, I probably would have made some greatly different implementation decisions than I originally threw together 2 years ago. **The Big Question:** Professionally why shouldn't someone stay at their first job, especially since its pretty close to guaranteed job offer."}
{"_id": "104710", "title": "Are compilers used outside of development?", "text": "As far as my understanding goes, compilers are meant for developers compiling their code into executable (machine-code) files. Compilers don't extend to a client's machine or end-user system. Instead, developers just use the compiler to convert their code into machine code, which is then transported to the other machines for use as applications. Do compilers have a function outside of this process? If so, when are they used?"}
{"_id": "101944", "title": "Are there pre-made commercial software licenses to choose from?", "text": "I currently have an open source project that is licensed under GPLv3. I'd like to dual license it, so I can offer it for commercial use. Are there any resources for choosing or creating a commercial software license?"}
{"_id": "18181", "title": "How do you approach database design?", "text": "I am primarily a web developer and I have a couple of personal projects which I want to kick off. One thing that is bugging me is database design. I have gone through in school db normalization and stuff like that but it has been a couple of years ago and I have never had experience with relational database design except for school. So how you do you approach database from a web app perspective? How do you begin and what do you look out for? What are flags for caution?"}
{"_id": "57470", "title": "Machine-Generated Data Sources for Infobright Coding Competition", "text": "I'm looking at entering the Infobright Coding Competition. They ask for public machine-generated data. I don't want to create my own. Anyone know where some exists? Here's what I'm looking at: http://www.infobright.org/contest/2011q1."}
{"_id": "210767", "title": "Breadth-first graph search problem", "text": "I thought I was doing breadth-first graph search correctly, but my instructor's grading script is telling me that my answer is incorrect. From the instructions: > Consider a breadth-first graph search on the graph below, where S is the > start and G is the goal state. Assume that ties are broken alphabetically > (so a partial plan S->X->A would be expanded before S->X->B and S->A->Z > would be expanded before S->B->A). You may find it helpful to execute the > search on scratch paper. > > Please enter the final path returned by breadth-first graph search in the > box below. Your answer should be a string with S as your first character and > G as your last character. Don't include arrows or spaces in your submission. > For example, if you believe the path is S->X->G, please enter SXG in the > box. ![breadth-first search on graph](http://i.imgur.com/gr3GuRr.png) I got and input the answer **SACBG** , which the grading script marked as incorrect. (\"Your input was evaluated as SACBG, which is not correct.\") Here are my steps for the breadth-first graph search on the above graph using the algorithm at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadth-first_search#Pseudocode:   1. Enqueue the root node _S_. **Queue = [S], Path = []**   2. Dequeue _S_ and examine it. **Queue = [], Path = [S]**   3. Enqueue _S_ 's children, _A_ and _C_. **Queue = [A, C], Path = [S]**   4. Dequeue _A_ and examine it. **Queue = [C], Path = [S, A]**   5. _A_ has no children. Dequeue _C_ and examine it. **Queue = [], Path = [S, A, C]**   6. Enqueue _C_ 's children _B_ and _G_. **Queue = [B, G], Path = [S, A, C]**   7. Dequeue _B_ and examine it. **Queue = [G], Path = [S, A, C, B]**   8. _B_ 's only child _G_ is already in the queue. **Queue = [G], Path = [S, A, C, B]**   9. Dequeue the goal node _G_ and examine it. Quit the search and return. **Queue = [], Path = [S, A, C, B, G]** A node is placed in the path when it is dequeued and examined. Ties are broken alphabetically as required in the instructions. What am I doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "24886", "title": "Php: Whats my next step?", "text": "So in college I started learning Php, mostly starting with the Larry Ullman books. I got a job at a company after, where I was able to learn some stuff from the higher up guys. Since then, I've done freelance stuff and sort of learned things as I needed to. I'm trying to figure out where to go next. I definitely want to stick with the web programming arena, and I'm enjoying concentrating on Php. I know MySQL as well, but VERY little Javascript / Ajax. I've also been reading a lot of OOP theory, and have a descent grasp of how it works, but it doesn't feel natural yet. Where should I go from here? Is it worth learning Java fort a while to really get the OOP stuff down? I took introductory Java in college, but it was only 1 semester. Or should I concentrate on some of the open source stuff (Wordpress, Drupal, JQuery, etc). How about E-commerce solutions? I have no experience with that. In terms of my goals, I don't have much plans for big, enterprise types of projects. I would mostly be interested in working freelance on websites of small, to medium size. But, I would like my coding to be as sound, and well structured as can be thanks for the help!"}
{"_id": "24889", "title": "What do you call a developer with automated testing specialty?", "text": "Having been hired as a developer (5-6 years experience), I suggested to my employer that I also take a formal responsibility for our work with automated testing. Basically I find it interesting and stimulating to work in TDD-like ways, and want to drive this culture in the company I work in. **But, what would you call this type of job position?** I would like to specialize more in automated testing and TDD, and improve my chances of getting really interesting such jobs in the long term. So what would be a good title for this? My fear is that I would eventually come off as a QA testing engineer, which I would say is misleading since I work mainly as a developer. Suggestions: Software Engineer in Testing?   Testing Architect and Developer?   Automated Tests Developer? Anything better?"}
{"_id": "84124", "title": "Concerns when designing an iPad video player", "text": "I've recently been asked to design a video player for the iPad. I've never done one before and I'm wondering if I could get some caveats in terms of it's development and design. Are there areas of building a video player that are particularly buggy or troublesome? What part of building one takes the most time? Generally speaking I'm just trying to get a feel of what will be the difficult part and what I'm about to get into. Thanks"}
{"_id": "84128", "title": "Will real world applications ever need a 128-bit flat address space?", "text": "This is a bit \"one megabyte should be enough for anyone\", but... A 64-bit flat address space allows up to 4.3ish billion times more space than a 32-bit address space. That's 17,179,869,184 GiB. Obviously, the transition from 8 bits to 16 bits was pretty quick (I'm viewing things in a teen-during-the-80s way, ignoring all those mainframes and minis because they couldn't run a port of Elite). The transition from 16 bits to 32 bits took a bit longer, and 32 bits actually lasted quite a while. Now we have 64 bits, would it be stupid to say \"17,179,869,184 GiB should be enough for anyone\"? This is a programmers question because I really have the programming viewpoint in mind. Even if a computer some day has a seemingly infinite amount of working memory, that doesn't mean that applications will need to see a seemingly infinite flat address space. Basically, can we programmers breath a sigh of relief and say \"well, whatever integers or floats may do, at least I don't have to worry about my pointers growing any more?\"."}
{"_id": "153806", "title": "Conflict resolution for two-way sync", "text": "**How do you manage two-way synchronization between a 'main' database server and many 'secondary' servers, in particular conflict resolution, assuming a connection is not always available?** For example, I have a mobile app that uses CoreData as the 'database' on the iOS and I'd like to allow users to edit the contents without Internet connection. In the same time, this information is available on a website the devices will connect to. What do I do if/when the data on the two DB servers is in conflict?   (I refer to CoreData as a DB server, though I am aware it is something slightly different.) Are there any general strategies for dealing with this sort of issue? These are the options I can think of:   1\\. Always use the client-side data as higher-priority   2\\. Same for server-side   3\\. Try to resolve conflicts by marking each field's edit timestamp and taking the latest edit Though I'm certain the 3rd option will open room for some devastating data corruption. I'm aware that the CAP theorem concerns this, but I only want eventual consistency, so it doesn't rule it out completely, right? Related question: Best practice patterns for two-way data synchronization. The second answer to this question says it probably can't be done."}
{"_id": "204649", "title": "Is there a proper way to allow access to private list by reference?", "text": "I'm trying to provide a by-reference getter to a list of objects in a class. My setup looks something roughly like this:               class c_Container     {     public:         c_Item* Get(int uid);     private:         c_Item itemList[10];     }          class c_Item     {     public:         int uid;     }          c_Item* c_Container::Get(int uid)     {         for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)         {             if (itemList[i].uid == uid)             {                 return &itemList[i];             }         }              return NULL;     }      This is a simplistic example showing usage, usually a c_Item object would have other methods that would do other things. We'd want to obtain the c_Item object from itemList by reference or by address so that we can directly modify it. When compiling, I get a lint error something like \"Exposing low access member 'itemList'\". If I try to return by reference instead of returning a pointer, I get the same thing. I guess I understand why, but I can't conceive of a better way to obtain an object from a container class like this by reference. I can fix the error by making itemList public, but that seems like unnecessary access. Outside of creating wrapper methods in c_Container for all of c_Item's methods (which seems redundant), is there a better way to handle a situation like this?"}
{"_id": "250777", "title": "Duck typing in statically-typed languages", "text": "Is it a fair assumption to say that an overloaded constructor for a class can be thought of as a 'duck' for duck typing? Let's say that ClassA has an overloaded constructor, it would stand to reason that the different constructors are there for a reason -- the object is being used in a manner that indicates all of its properties do not have to be set for the object to perform correctly. So, I ask, is an overloaded constructor a duck?"}
{"_id": "203615", "title": "What are good reasons to drop Windows XP support?", "text": "Recently the software team in my company decide to use VS2012 (upgrade from VS2008) but we found out that VS2012 does not provide a nice support for Windows XP (e.g. really hard to deploy .Net 3.5 managed C++ project). So we want to convince our manager to drop Windows XP compatible development and and target Windows 7 only. This allows us to use some new technologies such as .Net 4.5 (we are using 3.5 ATM). But we have many existing customers are using Windows XP and they will not able to upgrade to new version of our software (we may still provide bug fixes for XP though). So what are some good reasons to use VS2012 and drop XP compatibility? What in my list currently:   * Able to use .Net 4.5   * Use VS2012 (without compile some project using VS2008 tool chain)   * No need to test on XP machine"}
{"_id": "203610", "title": "Is there a concept of a variable with phases of initialization: uninitialized, initializing, immutable?", "text": "I was looking at this thread on Stack Overflow and thinking about the functional programming I've been learning, and how immutability is so key there, and it occured to me that maybe some language has gotten the idea to have variables start out \"null\", then go to a \"building\" state, and finally become the same as any other immutable when initialization is done. Is this a valid concept and/or has it been tried or experimented with at the language level? It might look something like this:               string s new String(); // empty strings start out mutable     for x = 1 to 10       s = s + \"z\"     s.Freeze() // now it's immutable      It's just a thought.. maybe it's not a good one, but it seems like a hybrid of two things that seem to be opposing one another."}
{"_id": "255113", "title": "Session Management in distributable web-apps", "text": "I am working on a huge web application in which I need to add transparent failover feature. I understand the necessary steps to make a web application distributable, the most difficult thing being: to ensure that the objects stored in the session are serializable. I want to know which type of variables exactly should I store in the session? e.g. just login info or other things too. The web application is actually a gateway to numerous other smaller applications like generating business reports, setting calander etc. So will I have to make those other applications also serializable or just the logon application will suffice ? I am new to web development so excuse me if the question is trivial."}
{"_id": "202568", "title": "Push-Based Events in a Services Oriented Architecture", "text": "I have come to a point, in building a services oriented architecture (on top of Thrift), that I need to expose events and allow listeners. My initial thought was, \"create an EventService\" to handle publishing and subscribing to events. That EventService can use whatever implementation it desires to actually distribute the events. My client automatically round- robins service requests to available service hosts which are determined using Zookeeper-based service discovery. So, I'd probably use JMS inside of EventService mainly for the purpose of persisting messages (in the event that a service host for EventService goes down before it can distribute the message to all of the available listeners). When I started considering this, I began looking into the differences between Queues and Topics. Topics unfortunately won't work for me, because (at least for now), all listeners _must_ receive the message (even if they were down at the time the event was pushed, or hadn't made a subscription yet because they haven't completed startup (during deployment, for example) - messages should be queued until the service is available). However, I don't want EventService to be responsible for handling all of the events. I don't think it should have the code to react to events inside of it. Each of the services should do what it needs with a given event. This would indicate that each service would need a JMS connection, which questions the value of having EventService at all (as the services could individually publish and subscribe to JMS directly). However, it also couples all of the services to JMS (when I'd rather that there be a single service that's responsible for determining _how_ to distribute events). What I had thought was to publish an event to EventService, which pulls a configuration of listeners from some configuration source (database, flat file, irrelevant for now). It replicates the message and pushes each one back into a queue with information specific to that listener (so, if there are 3 listeners, 1 event would become 3 events in JMS). Then, another thread in EventService (which is replicated, running on multiple hots) would be pulling from the queue, attempting to make the service call to the \"listener\", and returning the message to the queue (if the service is down), or discarding the message (if the listener completed successfully). **tl;dr** If I have an EventService that is responsible for receiving events and delegating service calls to \"event listeners,\" (which are really just endpoints on other services), how should it know how to craft the service call? Should I create a generic \"Event\" object that is shared among all services? Then, the EventService can just construct this object and pass it to the service call. Or is there a better answer to this problem entirely?"}
{"_id": "113314", "title": "Is discoverability for developers a problem when using SOLID principles?", "text": "I do line of business apps where the all the other developers are used to doing basic CRUD apps or are focused solely on making pretty/functional interfaces and I am getting the following a lot. \"With the way we use to do it Employee would have all the things you could possibly do with an employee.\" And it was true. That one \"Class\" had thousands of lines of code and anything you could do with an employee was there. Or, even worse, there was a table of employee data and each developer figured out how to do what they wanted to do in the event handler. All the bad things about that approach was true but at least the developer using employee could, without going to other documents, figure out how to enroll the employee in a health plan, give a pay raise, fire, hire, transfer etc. Same goes for Manager and all the other major ideas. Or, if they used the employee other needed data tables, could just do what they wanted. Yes, there was much duplicated code. Yes it was very brittle code. Yes testing it was way more difficult than necessary. Yes changing functionality was fear inducing and Copy Paste was a natural due to the approach. But they could at least discover what was available by creating one class or they could do what they need to get done without having to understand the difference between interfaces, abstract classes, concrete classes etc. And they didn't have to search anything other than the methods returned by intellisense or know the tables where the data resided. I have googled/binged and even yahoo!d but I haven't found any acknowledgement of this problem. So maybe there isn't a problem and I am just missing something. I have racked my brain trying to figure out a solution where the developer(s) that do not work the actual behavior/design can easily discover how to do something without having to reference any external documents or scan the class names in the various components/projects to find the one that sounds like it will work. The only thing I have been able to come up with is have these, for lack of a better name, \"Table of Content Class\" that does nothing more that return the actual classes (and really most of them are interfaces but they don't know the difference or even care) that other developers can use to perform the actual tasks desired. Still end up with really big classes but there is almost no behavior in them. Is there a better way that doesn't require intimate knowledge of the middle tier where the actual implementation of SOLID takes place? Basically what I am asking is there a way to allow CRUD type developers continue to be CRUD developers in a very complex system"}
{"_id": "147871", "title": "C++ compiler structures such as Virtual method Table etc", "text": "I am aware of the C++ Virtual Table which allows dynamic dispatch for doing things at runtime (although if I am honest I am not completely sure of the full list of things it achieves). I am wondering what other \"low level\" aspects of C++ are there, which one doesnt usually come across when learning the C++ language? Things like: -How is multithreading and locking on objects performed? -Overloading/overwriting functions -Generics Are there other \"structures\", similar to the vtable, which assist with these types of things on a lower level? (and if anyone can help with what the VTable actually does it would be most appreciated!)"}
{"_id": "147873", "title": "Master page design (reloads on new page)", "text": "Ive been building a website with 2 pages and 1 master page. The master master page works as a \"Menu\". The two pages inherits from the master page and have some content on them. On Page1 I have a link to Page2. Once I click on the link Page2 (and master page) loads. Pretty straight forward I guess. But my question is now:   The master page ofcourse reloads everytime I go to a new page and thereby the entire site \"flicks\" for short moment to switch to the next page. Is there some \"best practice\" for keeping the master page(the menu) on the page while only loading the content? I still want to split the two pages up in Page1.aspx and Page2.aspx and not having all my content in 1 page with panels showing the content of page1 and another panel showing the content of page2 etc.   Should I use some sort of control that has the pages inside them or is this just a stupid question and I shouldnt be bothered by the entire page flicking as this is just normal \"web behaviour\"? Hope you can help :)"}
{"_id": "122068", "title": "What do neglected O'Reilly book topics tell us about that topic?", "text": "Does anybody know how O'Reilly chooses topics to publish? For some reason, I don't see how it can be based on demand. The reason, I ask, is because they haven't published a Delphi book in almost 12 years and Object Pascal is at least as esoteric as Erlang and as practical as PHP and as robust as C++. So, maybe someone knows what rationale is behind O'Reilly's publishing methodology or what it is supposed to tell us about the relative popularity or usefulness of any given language or programming technique? Oh, I forgot about pig and robotlegs"}
{"_id": "182065", "title": "Compress range of numbers into blocks of used or unused", "text": "Given a numerical range and a list of used numbers that fall within that range I need to compress the range into blocks of used and unused numbers. For example:               range: 0 to 10     used:  3,4,5,9      I need an output like               0-2: free     3-5: used     6-8: free     9:   used     10:  free      Not sure where to start with this, so any guidance appreciated."}
{"_id": "37798", "title": "How to organize repetitive code?", "text": "My team creates a lot of one-off web forms. Most of these forms just send an e-mail, and a few do a simple database write. Right now, each form lives in its own separate solution in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. That means we have close to 100 different form projects, which makes it difficult to maintain consistency. Each form is unique in that the fields are different, but all of them do pretty much the same thing. I'm looking to condense these somehow, and I could really use some guidance.   * Should I try to create one solution file with all of our form projects in it? There isn't a lot of plumbing code, although I could create a few helper classes to help with e-mail formatting and such. It would be very helpful to be able to share CSS, JavaScript, controls and images across projects.   * Given that we're a Microsoft shop, are there any tangible benefits to going with something like MVC over Webforms for this specific scenario? I am sold on the concept of MVC as a whole, but would it help me pull together a 15-field data collection form more efficiently if all that form does is send an e-mail? The form that got me thinking about this had a good bit of logic built in to show and hide fields based on the user's responses and seems like it would have been less efficient to use MVC and jQuery."}
{"_id": "182069", "title": "Pattern for mobile app data synchronisation using HTTP over 3G networks", "text": "I have a mobile app built using jquerymobile, PhoneGap and some custom CSS and JavaScript. The data objects are received in JSON and used to display different forms to the user. For example               { id: 1, type: personal_details, question_1: \"First name\", question_2: \"Last name\" },     { id: 2, type: work_details, question_1: \"Occupation\", question_2: \"Experience\" }      The user fills out these forms and sends the data back to a .NET application. Things work great when there is a good 3G connection but that is not always the case. As each form is sent there is a danger that not all the forms will make it back together. In our example the personal details could be sent first, the connection is lost and the work details are left on the mobile device or lost on the network either of which frustrates my users. What is the best strategy to handle and recover elegantly from network failures? Relying on the HTTP response codes doesn't seem to be working. E.g.               for ( form in forms ) {         $.ajax({             url: 'http://ac.me',             data: form,             success: function (){                 // delete from localStorage             },             error: function (){                 // show error message 'try again later'             }         });     }      The request can fail and the error function is never called. The alternative I see is sending all the forms in one JSON string but I am concerned about the performance implications of SQL server processing many short requests or fewer longer requests."}
{"_id": "139933", "title": "Derived Classes and namespaces", "text": "I am deriving a class, for use in my application, from a class provided by another group. Should the derived class be in the namespace for my application or the namespace of the parent class? While I am extending the class to add features I need, the added features are not specific to my application. The project that contains the parent class is also rarely updated so there is a chance my additions would never be picked up... Maybe none of this matters."}
{"_id": "226125", "title": "Would it make sense to add parameters of an inferred type to inheritance?", "text": "I'll write this in PHP (where this thought originated), but this is generic to any object-orientated language. Basically, this is an addition to abstract classes that defines the implementation of its subclasses. Obviously, this could never go into interfaces because it defines how classes will be implemented, an immediate contradiction. Here are two examples:               class Boat { }     class RowBoat extends Boat { }     class MotorBoat extends RowBoat { }     class Yacht extends MotorBoat { }          class Screwdriver { }     class SoftScrewdriver extends Screwdriver { }     class PhillipsScrewdriver extends Screwdriver { }          abstract class Parent {         public child function useScrewdriver(? extends Screwdriver &$screwdriver);              public child function canOperateSimpleBoat(? super Yacht $yacht);     }     class Child1 extends Parent {         public function useScrewdriver(SoftScrewdriver &$screwdriver) { }              public function canOperateSimpleBoat(RowBoat &$rowBoat) { }     }     class Child2 extends Parent {         public function useScrewdriver(PhillipsScrewdriver &$screwdriver) { }              public function canOperateSimpleBoat(MotorBoat &$motorBoat) { }     }      I used Java bounded type parameter syntax to represent how the abstract methods would work. What do you see as the positives and negatives of this language element? **EDIT:** It turns out that this is actually a solely PHP issue that I tried to make into a larger OOP idea. I've continued it here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21919069/what-version-of-php-allows-type- hints-to-override-typeless-identifiers/"}
{"_id": "84699", "title": "What are some good ways for an intermediate programmer to build skills?", "text": "Preface: I work mostly in Python, and Web Dev languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript and Jquery, PHP) I'm proficient at coding but I want to get better. In larger more advanced projects my programming skills break down. The more code there is the more trouble I have fitting all the pieces together. I understand syntax well, and I can catch and correct errors fairly easier. But the more advanced it gets the more I struggle. I believe I have a good understand of the basic and nuts and bolts of programming and I understand what's going on, but when it comes to larger projects, especially ones with heavy math involved my confidence flags and I start making mistakes. It's not that I can't do it, I'm just not used to doing it. Does anyone have any advice for someone who knows programming, but wants to get better? The only tutorials I can really find are beginner basic type stuff. Basically what I'm saying is I want to be confident when I'm tackling advanced projects, but I can't because I have little experience dealing with difficult situations."}
{"_id": "84696", "title": "PHP framework most similar to ASP.NET MVC3?", "text": "I've done a bit of work with CodeIgniter and a lot with straight PHP... I had the opportunity to use asp.net mvc3 recently and was absolutely blown away with my productivity. Despite not \"knowing\" the framework, the combination of scaffolding + intellisense + code generation through the context menus left me feeling just as productive with asp.net as with PHP. I've evaluated YII, CakePHP, symfony (a long time ago, pre 2.0), and Kohana... and while YII seems most promising none quite matched up to my experience with mvc3."}
{"_id": "204398", "title": "How do I learn modern C?", "text": "I started programming about 20 years ago with the first edition of the book C for Dummies. It was a great introduction to code and I am now a professional software developer. However, these days I work with higher level languages most of the time (e.g. Ruby, PHP, Java, and lots of web stuff). I would like to revisit C but I know that a lot has changed, and two new standards (C99, C11) have come out since then. I would like to learn about the new features but I am mostly interested in writing portable code that I can write higher level language bindings for in some other language. Are there any good books or websites that talk about:   * What standard to target   * The differences between the standards   * Caveats in the standard libraries (like I understand these days one is supposed to look for buffer overflows when dealing with strings, etc.)   * UTF-8 support   * Commonly used libraries, like STL or Boost for C++ And anything else I might be missing."}
{"_id": "70661", "title": "How big is the gap between what you learn in CS curriculums and what you need in real life projects?", "text": "I'm in my last year in a 4 year CS curriculum and I would very much like to contribute to a FOSS project. Unfortunately, I feel that there is no way I can do useful coding, whether it is bug fixing or feature developing. The C/C++/Java projects we undertake at school are trivial compared to coding for serious projects and when I read the source code of a FOSS project I'm completely at loss. Do you agree there is a gap between CS education and actually programming for a real life project? How big do you think that gap is and how does one overcome it?"}
{"_id": "209140", "title": "GitShell, how can I not type the username and passwords?", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zYKdJ.png) Open the CMD, and I should type the password and usename? In the GitShell opened by shortcut, I don't need to type the username and password. Related is here: How can I convert GitShell's commands into an .bat file? Is this useful, I cannot make it take effect now? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6031214/git-how-to-use-netrc-file-on- windows-to-save-user-and-password"}
{"_id": "204394", "title": "Should a surrogate key ever be exposed to a user?", "text": "Often in a table that has no natural key, it is still useful for users to be able to have a uniquely generated identifier. If the table has a surrogate primary key (and in such a case you would certainly expect it to) should that key be exposed to the user or should another field be used for that purpose? One reason not to expose the surrogate key is that now you can't do operations that preserve the relationship between records, but change the key values, such as certain kinds of deletion/re-insertion, many methods of copying data from one database to another, etc. The main advantage of exposing the surrogate key is the simplicity of using a field you have anyway. Under what circumstances is it better to directly expose the surrogate key to users?"}
{"_id": "204395", "title": "When to bail on a proposed solution?", "text": "Here's a *hypothetical* issue. There is a performance issue in the current release. Its difficult to find the cause of this issue because the performance tests haven't been run in roughly 10+ releases (with anywhere from 10 - 100 changes per release). My idea is to automate the process of running the performance tests in each release. However, this automation took a bit longer than expected to get running. My (again *hypothetical*) response to the automation taking too long would be to simply perform the tests manually, and then run through the results with a set of scripts that I'd already written. In the end, this automation would be SOO beneficial to have, but it _could_ take longer than is normal for a task to be completed. Is that the right response to what could feel like a rapidly diminishing ROI on a proposed solution?"}
{"_id": "71535", "title": "How detailed is the estimate you show your customers?", "text": "For custom software, when you are giving your customer an estimate, how much detail do you tend to include? Do you:   * break it down into small tasks that can be done in a few hours and give them the full list?   * give them one big number and work towards that? And if so does that come from a more detailed estimate that you don't need to show them?   * Do you break it up into big \"phases\" and give them a number of hours for each phase? This isn't for fixed bid contracts or anything, just more of a \"We think this will cost you X hours at $Y an hour\" kind of situation."}
{"_id": "71534", "title": "Where do you find motivation when working for someone else?", "text": "This answer to one of my recent questions got me thinking about something that's been (mostly subconsciously until recently) troubling me throughout my programming career. Basically: _where do you find the drive to stay focused and motivated when working for someone else?_ Now to explain how this is specific to programming (or at least to the specific kind of crafty knowledge work that programming is): lots of types of work are relatively straight forward in terms of goals. You either finish a task, or you don't. In programming, it really matters how switched on and motivated you are - but at the same time - a decent programmer can quite easily coast and get enough done not to get fired, while still be relatively unproductive, unhappy, unmotivated, and nowhere near their potential. This is basically what happens to me in any regular programming job (I've had four so far, 10 years into my career): I start out fresh, all excited about working at a new company, getting my hands dirty with a new codebase, learning a new domain, etc. The first few months are great. All excited and motivated, everything is just clicking. Then, once things are more routine and familiar, it's like my subconscious slowly starts to revolt against the \"slavery\" of it - as explained in the answer to my other question. I seem to come to a conclusion (on a deep, mostly subconscious level) that taking ownership of major/complex tasks is just way too much effort and stress. It slowly degenerates to the point where I'm working (more or less) just hard enough not to get fired (and I've never been fired). The underlying thought process (subconscious - but I've identified it now) is something like this: being fully switched on and taking ownership of major projects takes an order of magnitude more effort and stress than coasting along just hard enough not to get fired. On the flipside, the rewards for being one of the company rockstars are in most cases borderline insulting. Maybe a slightly bigger Christmas bonus than an average worker at the company. Maybe stock options worth a couple of months salary after many, many years of extreme effort, voluntary overtime and stress. Basically, the effort and stress feels extremely non-commensurate with the reasonably expected possible rewards and recognition. So I easily go into this kind of unfulfilled, coasting \"salary slave\" mode (think Peter Gibbons from \"Office Space\"). As the answer to my other question said, the answer is in startups (or in general in doing your own thing), but I'm curious to know if there is a secret to maintaining great motivation even in a standard job working for someone else, even on on stuff that you feel no deep personal interest in. I've worked with great rockstars and gurus over the years - who could somehow stay very focused and motivated even on jobs which they said they hated. They somehow bridged the gap and seemed to find motivation for what seemed like no reward to me. And it can't be personal purpose (they said quite directly that the job is \"working on a boring business system\" and they'd be outta there if they won the lottery) and it can't be family responsibilities or purely money (many were single and living with not-very-materialistic values)."}
{"_id": "245534", "title": "How should I unit test a bitmap modifying method?", "text": "My `Sprite` class has a method: `private void updateWithBitmap(Bitmap b, int x, int y)` This will 'lay on top' the bitmap that's passed in, the top left corner of the passed in bitmap being at the x,y position of the parent bitmap. Now I want write unit tests to check that this method is working correctly. For example, we'll need to check that an exception is thrown when the passed in bitmap is larger, or is out of bounds of the parent bitmap.                   [TestMethod]         [ExpectedException(typeof(System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException))]         public void TestUpdateWithBitMap_SmallerParent_ThrowsOutOfRangeException()         {            Sprite parent =  new Sprite(new Bitmap(10,10));            Bitmap child = new Bitmap(20, 20);             parent.updateWithBitmap(child,0,0)                   }              [TestMethod]         [ExpectedException(typeof(System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException))]         public void TestUpdateWithBitMap_PassedBitMapOutOfBounds_ThrowsOutOfRangeException()         {             Sprite parent =  new Sprite(new Bitmap(10,10));             Bitmap child = new Bitmap(3, 3);              parent.updateWithBitmap(child, 9,9)                   }      Good so far. But also we want to test that the method genuinely is updating correctly. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/51ZA6.png) For example, if the left most image is our parent bitmap, and the middle is the child bitmap, and we call our method with: `parent.updateWithBitmap(child, 3,3);` we get the rightmost bitmap as a result. The question is: Is it appropriate to store these bitmaps as resources, and then check the results are equal? eg.                   [TestMethod]                 public void TestUpdateWithBitMap_UpdatesCorrectly()         {             Sprite parent =  new Sprite(Properties.Resources.TestBitmapParent1);             Bitmap child = Properties.Resources.TestBitmapChild1;              parent.updateWithBitmap(child, 3,3)             #something like Assert.Equal(parent.getBitmap(), Properties.Resources.TestBitmapResult1);                         }"}
{"_id": "208431", "title": "What does the static keyword do here?", "text": "**Can anyone explain this piece of code?** **CODE1**               int &fun()     {         static int x = 10;         int &b =x;         return b;     }     int main()     {         fun() = 3;         cout << fun();         return 0;     }      **Output: 3** **CODE 2**               int &fun()     {         int x = 10;         int &b =x;         return x;     }     int main()     {         fun() = 3;         cout << fun();         return 0;     }      **Output: 10**"}
{"_id": "38647", "title": "Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously", "text": "On a current job I have 2 projects to work on. First is very huge system and the second one is smaller but it also big (first project is being developed for 12 years, second for 4 years). At first I was working only on first project and was trying to get used to it. Then I was moved to second project and tried there, so my knowledge about first project became shady. Now I have to work on both projects at the same time. It's very hard for me because despite they both use java, they use different frameworks and the amount of code and business-logic to understand is very big so I really can't hold both that projects in my head. Is it normal and I should get used to it, although my expertise became very squashy, what won't happen if I would work only on a single project? Or should I raise a concern or maybe change employer?"}
{"_id": "208436", "title": "Zero-knowledge code hosting?", "text": "In light of recent revelations about widespread government monitoring of data stored by online service providers, zero-knowledge services are all the rage now. A zero-knowledge service is one where all data is stored encrypted with a key that is not stored on the server. Encryption and decryption happens entirely on the client side, and the server never sees either plaintext data or the key. As a result, the service provider is unable to decrypt and provide the data to a third party, even if it wanted to. To give an example: SpiderOak can be viewed as a zero-knowledge version of Dropbox. As programmers, we rely heavily on, and trust some of our most sensitive data - our code - to a particular class of online service providers: code hosting providers (like Bitbucket, Assembla, and so on). I am of course talking about private repositories here - the concept of zero-knowledge does not make sense for public repositories. My questions are:   1. Are there any technological barriers to creating a zero-knowledge code hosting service? For example, is there something about the network protocols used by popular version control systems like SVN, Mercurial, or Git that would make it difficult (or impossible) to implement a scheme where the data being communicated between the client and the server is encrypted with a key the server does not know?   2. Are there any zero-knowledge code hosting services in existence today?"}
{"_id": "208439", "title": "How to evaluate moving to Team Foundation Server", "text": "My development team presently uses the following software in our workflow:   * JIRA   * Bamboo (Atlassian continuous integration)   * Greenhopper (Atlassian agile project management)   * Confluence   * Git, hosted on BitBucket   * Visual Studio 2012 As you can see we are quite heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. We are considering a move to TFS so we can get the niceties of advanced Visual Studio integrations such as code reviews and more importantly the Microsoft Test Manager. My previous experience with TFS was with 2005 or 2008 (I can't remember) and I have bad memories of it, although not quite as bad as my time with ClearCase. What criteria should we be looking at in order to properly evaluate our move to TFS?"}
{"_id": "208438", "title": "Upgrading an app to support iOS5, 6 and 7", "text": "We are looking at an app that needs an upgrade. Currently it runs on iOS4, 5 & 6\\. The upgrade will move to iOS5, 6 & 7\\. It will also involve some UI changes and new features. I've been reading stuff on iOS7 and looking at things like auto-layout. What we are trying to figure out is the best way to handle the differences between the various iOS versions. Auto-layout seems like a good idea, but it's not available on iOS 5. There are also API changes to consider between all 3 versions and other new features of iOS7. So the questions:   1. How would you handle auto layout given iOS5 does not have it?   2. Are there any significant differences between the SDKs that you think would cause issues?   3. Would we be better off with separate code bases?"}
{"_id": "76627", "title": "What is the history of the C compiler?", "text": "When we say that \"Dennis Ritchie developed C language\", do we mean that he has created a compiler (using an 'already' developed other language) which can compile the source code written in C language? if yes, what was language he used to write first C compiler? I understand a compiler is a program and we can create another compiler for C language using presently available C compiler. Is that correct?"}
{"_id": "188966", "title": "Can I use MIT license to give some of my previous written code to employer so that I protect myself and don't lose my copyright?", "text": "My situation:   * I have written a framework before I started my new job. I own the copyright.   * It has a bunch of boilerplate logic inside of it, like any piece of software. (duh!)   * I don't want to use the whole framework in my new job, but **I do need to re-use some parts of it** in a similar framework that I am building for my new job.   * It is impractical to re-implement / re-think all the logic from scratch. It is a lot of logic and logic is logic, you can't make it much different. For example, how many different versions of a HashMap can you code? I bet they will be very similar and the third version can claim that you violated the copyright of the first version. :(   * It is impractical to try to re-invent the API. Can you re-invent the API of a HashMap? Maybe you can change `put(k,v)` to `add(k,v)`, but not much more than that. My idea to protect myself and my previous code: I will tell my employer that I am building the new framework based on a previous one that I have written under the MIT license. So in the future if I use my previous framework someplace else, **or even another derived version of it** , that has some pieces of code similar with this new framework I am building now for the employer, they won't be able to say I am using their code, the one I wrote for them. My questions:   * I am not distributing my code to anyone. I don't have to distribute my MIT licensed code to anyone, if I own the copyright, correct? I mean, can someone request that I release my code that I now claim it is under MIT license? It would not be the end of the world and I would certainly agree to do that under a legal threat.   * Does this strategy make any sense? My final goal is to be able to use a derived version of my previous coded framework without losing the copyright to it. At the same time, i do not want to distribute this code as an open-source project to anyone. I have other open-source projects, that I freely distribute, but this one I would like to keep it to myself so I can use on my jobs (not contractor jobs). It is like **claiming that you have a framework under the MIT license, without actually distributing and/or showing to anyone**. If it is out there, free and easily available, my employers don't need me anymore. They can just take the code and give it to someone else to use it. Notes:   * I have listed this framework as a previous invention before I started the job.   * I have not released this code anywhere. It is on my private SVN repo I host in my private server. My idea in a nutshel:   * My plan is to keep the previous code to myself, use parts of it in this new framework I am building for the employer and **tell the employer it is work derived from a MIT licensed framework I have coded before and have not distributed to anyone** \". I am not forced to distribute a software I coded under MIT license, am I? If later, some legal claim happens (hopefully not), i can immediately paste the license on all the sources and show/release the code."}
{"_id": "188965", "title": "What's a good format for documenting hundreds of data feeds?", "text": "Several governments are starting to publish **open data** : datasets generated by the goverment, made freely available for citizens to use for value-added app development, analysis, and feedback. For instance, the City of Vancouver (Canada) Open Data Catalogue publishes 130 datasets. The subject matter ranges from tabular files of city councillor contact information to geographical datasets of zoning districts. Formats range from Comma-Separated Value (CSV) to SHP to KML and beyond. It would be nice for each of these open data portals to have a dataset of datasets: their catalogue of datasets in structured data file form. The catalogue dataset should have metadata describing each dataset (name of dataset, URL of download page, the formats the dataset is available in, maybe a description of the dataset format and attributes or URL to same. What is a good data model and a good format for such a catalogue dataset? If this is a solved problem, I'd like to suggest that Vancouver reuse that solution, instead of inventing one. **Update** : in response to the question, why is it desirable to to have a catalogue as a structured dataset, I can think of three classes of use case.   1. Analysis across all the datasets of a data provider. It is convenient to get a list of all datasets, with links to descriptions etc., which I can import into a spreadsheet and annotate. Someone else may want to count total number of records published, or breadth of government activity covered by the data. In my case, I'm working on a _Vancouver Open Data language census_.   2. Analysis of corresponding datasets across multiple data providers. For instance, one might want to aggregate a list of all zoning boundary datasets published by Canadian cities. That is easier if one can sift through dataset lists by machine instead of by hand.   3. Analysis of dataset catalogue change over time. It might be interesting to analyse the growth in Open Data from one year to the next. Structured catalogues make this easier to automate."}
{"_id": "188960", "title": "What are the best algorithms out there to retrieve data from a file system?", "text": "This is my usecase: Traverse a filesystem, gauge its entire size and then upload it to Dropbox. Looks quite easy and is quite easy. Now if I do it using celery and spawn a thread for each folder(With sub files), then it becomes an easier process to gather all the data and gauge the size and then upload it to dropbox. But I feel I'm doing something wrong here. If I implement this on a server, I'm surely overloading it by spawning a thread for each folder that is out there. Hence, what algorithms should I use to make this a faster process? Both as a data retrieval and data uploading. Links/References would help."}
{"_id": "188961", "title": "Setting up a development environment in the cloud?", "text": "I'm interested in transitioning my development environment onto the cloud. I currently use VirtualBox with Vagrant to manage separate virtual machines for each individual project. What would be the optimal setup for hosting these virtual machines in the cloud? Given than I have nearly a dozen VMs, setting up separate EC2 instance for each one is not economical. A cheaper option might be to snag a low-end VPS from one of the many cheap VPS providers out there. The downside, aside from reliability, is that I don't need all my VMs available to me at all times. For example, VMs that I use as my staging environments only need to be on a few times a week at best. As an alternative, I've thought about running VirtualBox and Vagrant on a powerful box with enough memory to support multiple machines running simultaneously. Is this a smart setup, or are there caveats I have not considered? As a side note to the aforementioned option, is there an alternative to VirtualBox that would be a wiser choice?"}
{"_id": "83476", "title": "Assigning a local id to a user", "text": "I am creating a soap service where users will be able to interact with each other. They will have a contact list where people can be added. One of the security measures(others are in place, too) is to have a local ID assigned to a contact. To make the process clear, imagine the following scenario: $UserA prompts $UserB to be added to $UserA's contact list. $UserB accepts and $UserA receives a local ID to use as UserID referring to the contact. The database contains a table called USER_MAP(LocalID,UserID). Two questions: 1) Do you think this is a valid approach when dealing with user ids security? If not, why? 2) If you deem it valid, can you suggest a formula to generate said IDs? At the moment, the idea for the formula is: ($UserA_ID+$UserB_ID)*($UserA_RegDate+$UserB_RegDate) Consider RegDates as being in \"number of days since the 0 date value\". Each user might have 1..N local ids depending on how many users are willing to add. A local ID is local to the user but global in the user space, i.e. for every interaction between users the same local id is used. To make it clearer: if $UserA requests to see $UserB profile, he will be passing the local user id which will be mapped at the server level to the correct id. Just to make it clear: future does not mean \"in a long time from now, maybe, who knows\", rather means : \"it is planned, I want to do it, I want to make sure I have my pieces ready and THEN I will do it\" :) Thus, it's not a \"maybe\" rather just a matter of WHEN. Apparently someone has issues understanding the logic behind the approach of a local id. A couple ideas that can help you understand why it's a good idea(in my opinion):   * If your ID is local instead of global, you have _only_ access to your own resources/contacts. Useful for instance to avoid programmatically getting access to a profile you wouldn't be allowed to see. This with third parties _may_ be a problem, especially in case of unfair uses   * If your ID is local, you can use it as a shortcut for local data instead of having to go to the original account. The contact list could, for instance, hold some of the original data which isn't going to change.   * If you have a local id it's much easier to \"cut the wire\", because all you have to do is deleting one or two records. Say that a user wants to delete a contact. All I will have to do is to remove _at best_ two records, all the other data stays there untouched and simply filtered out by the queries. Better now? Thank you for your time!"}
{"_id": "229287", "title": "What use is a non-zeroing weak reference?", "text": "When reading about the various options for working with things like ARC / GC, I often come across explicit wording about which weak references are zeroing (ie, your reference becomes nil/null/0 when the object is collected) and which non-zeroing (you get a dangling pointer). This leads me to ask: What possible use could there be for a non-zeroing weak pointer? You can't use it for anything if you're not sure whether it's any good, can you? And how would you check its validity without risking a core dump / segfault? Addendum: I understand they're useful in reference-counted environments, and you may want to use them when writing library code that may be used therein, but I can't see a good reason for them with a smart-enough ARC-alike or relocating collector. What good is a reference that can't be relied on?"}
{"_id": "234952", "title": "Why is Java 7's new file API usage still so scarce?", "text": "I don't even know whether this is the correct StackExchange site to ask such a question but here it is... I principally lurk on StackOverflow; and I am frankly flabbergasted by the number of questions on this site with regards to file handling still using the old file API. But I am even more appalled by the number of answers _still_ giving a solution using this API without even asking if the OP uses Java 7+, which has been out since basically the dawn of 2012. Why? Because there is simply no comparison. To give a few examples:   * the new API gives meaningful exceptions: `AccessDeniedException`, `NotDirectoryException`, `FileAlreadyExistsException`, `AtomicMoveNotSupportedException`, etc etc;   * common file operations, such as deletion, creation, renaming, etc throw an exception instead of returning a boolean;   * the new filesystem API allows you to access basically anything over a `FileSystem`; Oracle's JDK provides `FileSystem` access to ZIP files (therefore jars, wars, ears as well), Google provides an in-memory filesystem and I have even cooked up a `FileSystem` over FTP;   * with the new API, you can query and set \"real world\" file attributes, such as mtime, atime, ctime, owner, group, ACLs, etc etc;   * when dealing with text files, `Files` doesn't give you room for error since it requires that you specify a `Charset`, unlike all other `Reader`s accepting `File`s as arguments;   * the new API has support for symlinks and so called \"hard links\" (which are really links to the filesystem);   * filename existence correctly relies on the current character encoding. So, why does this API see so little usage?"}
{"_id": "234959", "title": "How much time do software developers have to spend outside of work learning new material?", "text": "I am considering going back to college to get a computer science degree so that I can become a software developer. (I'm only 23, by the way.) The main reason that I am reluctant to study CS is that I have read that because technology changes so fast software developers have to spend a lot of time learning new material. For example, somebody on this website stated that everything college students learn will be obsolete by the time they graduate. Somebody else stated that half of everything a computer scientist knows will be obsolete in 18-24 months. Anyway, how much time outside of work do software developers have to spend learning new technology? I would appreciate any advice."}
{"_id": "229284", "title": "How do I manage a very large set of rules and magic numbers in my program?", "text": "I'm somewhat new to programming (I'm a mechanical engineer by trade), and I'm developing a small program during my downtime that generates a (solidworks) part based on input from various people from around the plant. Based on only a few inputs (6 to be exact), I need to make hundreds of API calls that can take up to a dozen parameters each; all generated by a set of rules I've gathered after interviewing everyone that handles the part. The rules and parameters section of my code is 250 lines and growing. So, what is the best way to keep my code readable and manageable? How do I compartmentalize all my magic numbers, all the rules, algorithms, and procedural parts of the code? How do I deal with a very verbose and granular API? My main goal is to be able to hand someone my source and have them understand what I was doing, without my input."}
{"_id": "225478", "title": "Why speaks basic http authentication always of a username", "text": "In RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication they speak always of username and password for the authentication. Why should I choose to take a username as identifier for a website? Usernames are often hard to choose a not existing one or one which is unique. But everyone getting an account somewhere has an email which is unique. Why does the RFC not speak of something abstract like a unique string identifier? That would make much more sense to me where everyone logs into his account with his email... When someone starts with security/authentication the first thing he will think reading the RFC 2617 that he can not do basic auth because I want email + password. What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "229157", "title": "What are some important considerations when developing a DBaaS (DataBase as a Service)", "text": "I'm interested in creating a Database as a Service. I want users of the service to be able to do a few seemingly not very simple things. Sign up and be given access to a JSON datastore that they can easily query from a RESTful API. Now I've implemented RESTful account management with Eve in python, so a user can sign up and be granted access to a single global collection, with write access and read access to their own items. Now the beauty / simplicity of Eve seems to be conflicting with my use-case, for `POST` / `PUT` to be enabled on an endpoint there needs to be a schema defined up front. To get around this I've just created a simple item with a string datatype that allows persistence of the entire JSON object. But this means that the user would lose the ability to query for objects they've stored and would have to retrieve all their objects, parse them and then query them application side. Which doesn't seem much like a service users would want to adopt."}
{"_id": "137221", "title": "Developing a dynamic language", "text": "I have created several hand written compilers for very simple languages but now I want to try my hand at developing a dynamic language, similar to a simplified Python or Ruby. However, it was easy for me to wrap my head around how compilers work. Primitive compilers just translate. But I can't do this if the language is dynamic. I have to write an interpreter or VM that keeps track of information at runtime and puts a lot more work on me. In short, are there any resources I should check out considering I know how compilers work but want to migrate to creating an interpreter? There are a few VMs out there for dynamic languages, but I have no problem with rolling my own. This is all just for my personal experience. **EDIT:** I am seeking information on how to go from a compiler to an interpreter. If I have already made a compiler for language X but now what to write an interpreter, what needs to be done and are there any resources that go over the process? I do not want broad or abstract resources that go over how compilers or virtual machines work. I have plenty of textbooks on the subject. All of the resources I found online either assume you have 0 experience and thus start you off with lexical or syntactic analysis or they are extremely abstract. I have a working compiler, but I now want to turn this into an interpreter and add dynamic features to the language. I could not find resources on this process, it may be too limited in scope, or resources on the \"back end\" of an interpreter without being too theoretical which is why I posted here."}
{"_id": "225477", "title": "Community-built, open source best practices", "text": "Are there currently any best practices for community-built open source projects? First, this is not a criticism only an observation: open source code comes with nearly no commenting. There's an open source project that I want to debug, but the lack of commenting intimidates me into setting aside less time since I'll have to spend hours catching up. In my novice opinion, it seems that development times would drop if the new programmer to contribute could easily go back and see how everything works on arrival. I understand that this probably isn't done now because everyone's working for free and have lives & bills, so I would never dare criticize someone working for \"me\" as an open source user for free. I'm just saying it might be simply overlooked in the haste to put out code, and it may be surprisingly more efficient to put out less code but more comments. I am a novice and have no way to confirm this. Please inform me if I am wrong. I've also found this, which seems to be a great outline for when one controls the program oneself, but I wonder if there might be anything missing for an open source project with disparate contributors. Is there a standard for community-built open source projects? If so, where?"}
{"_id": "40742", "title": "Does it make sense to make an Android version of my application?", "text": "I am a teenage hobbyist in high school, and I mostly release my software as open source; therefore I have little experience actually selling software, let alone in a specific area -- Android phones. Now, I have received requests from several users of one of my applications (basically, an advanced calculator) to create an Android version of it. It is written in C, but I saw the Android NDK and it looks like I could port it _relatively_ easily; also, I believe it would make a lot of sense to have such an app on a phone. I do not have an Android phone myself, and so the incentive is simply potential revenue from the app. However, I have several questions that I am not able to answer myself. So, first, do you think it makes sense at all? Would such an app generate enough revenue to compensate for the porting time? More generally, how much revenue can one expect from an Android app (just looking for a rough approximation, I really have no clue about this)? Secondly, is such porting feasible without actually having an Android phone (I might get access to some for final testing, but I won't have it full-time), justing using the emulator? And last, I have read the standard Google words that publishing is super-easy, etc. Is that actually true? For example, is it necessary to put in substantial advertising work to make the project a success? Thanks a lot!"}
{"_id": "244485", "title": "Securely sending data from shared hosted PHP script to local MSSQL", "text": "I'm trying to add data from a webhook (from a web cart) to a local Microsoft SQL Server. It seems like the best route for me is to use a PHP script to listen for new data (POST as json), parse it, then query to add to MSSQL. I'm not familiar with security concerning the connection between the PHP script (which would sit on a shared-host website) and the local MSSQL database. I would just keep the PHP script running on the same localhost (have Apache running on Windows), but the URI for the webhook needs to be publicly accessible. Alternately, I assume that I could just schedule a script from the localhost to check periodically for updates through the web carts API, though the webhooks seem to be more fool-proof for an amateur programmer like myself. What steps can I take to ensure security when using a PHP on a remote, shared- host to connect to MSSQL on my local machine?"}
{"_id": "132122", "title": "Efficient Java Programmer", "text": "There's been a buzz in my local tech community about being an 'Efficient Java Programmer' can someone explain to me what is an Efficient Java Programmer? what is their difference between average java programmers? how can you be an Efficient Java Programmer? (I am still in college, I want to get acustomed to doing the proper practices when it comes to programming) and how can you tell someone is an efficient java programmer?"}
{"_id": "132121", "title": "What can one do when \"lead by example\" doesn't work?", "text": "I have been working for a big company (8000+ employees) for almost 2 years now, and was hired just after I finished my study course. Everyone here has to deal daily with legacy code which is often very badly designed and full of hacks. At first, I kept a low profile, trying not to criticize things too much. But the situation, as it stands, has become very difficult to live with and it seems no one is willing to improve/replace the tools we use. To be more explicit we have:   * An obsolete source control tool (Visual SourceSafe)   * Plain old makefiles which only support full rebuild   * `.def` files which must be maintained manually and separately for all existing architectures   * monolithic headers files and projects with very few different files (but each has around 3000 lines of code, which sometimes takes care of very different tasks)   * no use of the \"new\" languages facilities (well `std::string` is not that new but nobody except me uses it) I decided, a few months ago to do something about it, by designing a new compilation environment. I could get incremental builds to work reliably, faster compilation times, better structured projects, automatic `.def` files generation. I even created a bridge from/to Git to/from Visual SourceSafe. I showed my achievements to several collegues and our boss but it was like nobody cared. They were all like \"Well... people are used to do it that way now. Why would we change things ?\" The changes I suggested were designed so that we could have a soft transition from the old system to the new one. Each improvement could be applied separately and safely. I even tried to get some of my coworkers involved in the changes. But so far, no success. Have you already faced a similar situation ? What can one do when \"lead by example\" doesn't work ?"}
{"_id": "109990", "title": "How baby are your baby-steps in TDD?", "text": "Today we were training TDD and found the following point of misunderstanding. The task is for the input \"1,2\" return sum of numbers which is 3. What I have written (in C#) was:               numbers = input.Split(',');     return int.Parse(numbers[0]) + int.Parse(numbers[1]); //task said we have two numbers and input is correct      But other guys preferred to do it other way. First, for input \"1,2\" they made added the following code:               if (input == \"1,2\")        return 3;      Then they introduced one more test for input \"4,5\" and changed implementation:               if (input == \"1,2\")        return 3;     else if (input == \"4,5\")        return 9;      And after that they said \"Okay, now we see the pattern\" and implemented what I initially did. I think the second approach better fits the TDD definition but... should we be so strict about it? For me it is okay to skip trivial baby steps and combine them into \"twinsteps\" if I am sure enough that I won't skip anything. Am I wrong? **Update.** I have made a mistake by not clarifing it was not the first test. There already were some tests so \"return 3\" actually wasn't the simplest piece of code to satisfy the requirement."}
{"_id": "205937", "title": "What can REST API do that a API using HTTP URL query strings cannot do?", "text": "I'm learning about REST and had the chance to build a basic REST API. After doing so, most of the material I read was internalized and I now have a better understanding of it. However, I do not see any real difference yet as to the **tangible** benefits of using REST over the old way I was doing things, which was simple URL query strings. It seems they both do the exact same things. But with REST, it's cleaner, and standardized. I thought REST had additional technical benefits. If they do, what are they? Or is REST simply that - an agreed way to implement and API?"}
{"_id": "205936", "title": "Can TCP/IP Sequence and Acknowledgement numbers be controlled?", "text": "Normally TCP/IP Sequence and Acknowledge numbers are 32 bit. However, I need a way to shorten them to be 24 bit (it's an experiment in deep inspection firewalls). Question: Is it possible to shorten the bit resolution of the Seq/Ack numbers in windows without the knowledge of the application? (which in this case is IIS) I want to use those top 8 bits to store some session information."}
{"_id": "205939", "title": "Is it best to use \"get\" as a prefix for getters?", "text": "if I had a boolean (property) `shouldAutoLogin` is it better to name the getter `getShouldAutoLogin` or just `shouldAutoLogin` so that it reads more like English? ex :               if(shouldAutoLogin){         ...     }      or               if(getShouldAutoLogin){         ...     }"}
{"_id": "76087", "title": "Customer buys software for function it cannot do and then complains. How to resolve?", "text": "I have come across this several times when selling a prepackaged solution. Customer buys the package, which clearly sets out that it can do XYZ, but the customer wanted it to do ABC. The customer then emails for support. I inform the customer that the product was never designed for the purpose they had in mind (integrating it with another product). The customer asks for a refund as they cannot use the product. This is where I'm in two minds. First, the product is fully functioning and they have now obtained the source code (PHP script). How am I to know they aren't going to use it anyway and still want a refund? Second, I do feel bad for the customer. If they're being honest, and most are, then they cannot use the product and therefore \"wasted\" the money in their eyes. But, that wasn't my fault. Up until now I've refunded the money if requested, but now I'm comparing what I do with how bigger companies deal with this kind of situation. What would they do? Maybe because they're bigger, they don't care about a few refunds every now and then, but to a one man band like me, every sale is needed! What is the best way to deal with this kind of situation?"}
{"_id": "76081", "title": "Enhancing the level of my C/C++ code", "text": "I have been programming for 3-4 years now and feel I can no longer be called a beginner, but I read some questions on this site and think WTF are they talking about? I feel the same way when I pick up programming books nowadays. I have read several beginning programming books, some on C/C++ and others on gaming. I have written some more complex things such as very basic AI, serial and TCP/IP interface. I plan on becoming a game programmer, but I have recently become somewhat interested in embedded systems after having the chance to work on them (the serial interface). I have found it very difficult to find materials to continue my learning after completing the introduction and beginner books as the are no intermediate C++ books I can find. What advice would you give to grow and enhance my knowledge and skills? Specific resources would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "76082", "title": "Is Entity Framework Code First a bit meaningless/useless in production and what is a good EF strategy for production?", "text": "I have been programming recently with Entity Framework 4.1 Code First and am loving it for development, but with only an end plan and a rapidly changing feature list, I am constantly modifying the Class/Database to meet the applications needs. In development, there is no live data and I can easily just delete the entire database so it is recreated with the new schema however, obviously, when live - this is very bad! The only solutions I can see are to either drop the metadata table and manually keep the database in sync or basically drop and reseed. I personally prefer the first method as I think it will be a lot easier to add a column/table than to recreate and migrate data, but, unless I have missed something, this is completely moving away from Code First. So the question really is, is Code First just about the initial development and what is a good strategy for managing EF for a production environment?"}
{"_id": "233604", "title": "Understanding and memorizing git rebase parameters", "text": "So far the most confusing portion of git is rebasing onto another branch. Specifically, it's the command line arguments that are confusing. Each time I want to rebase a small piece of one branch onto the tip of another, I have to review the git rebase documentation and it takes me about 5-10 minutes to understand what each of the 3 main arguments should be. `git rebase <upstream> <branch> --onto <newbase>` What is a good rule of thumb to help me memorize what each of these 3 parameters should be set to, given any kind of rebase onto another branch? Bear in mind I have gone over the git-rebase documentation again, and again, and again, and again (and again), but it's always difficult to understand (like a boring scientific white-paper or something). So at this point I feel I need to involve other people to help me grasp it. My goal is that I should never have to review the documentation for these basic parameters. I haven't been able to memorize them so far, and I've done a ton of rebases already. So it's a bit unusual that I've been able to memorize every other command and its parameters so far, but not rebase with `--onto`."}
{"_id": "77979", "title": "ChunkDB to handle high traffic JSON web service? Alternatives?", "text": "I am designing a high volume web service which will rely on a central database containing objects of a single JSON type. Currently I am considering using ChunkDB to store the objects and retrieve the objects using views (RESTful API). Some of the views may be complex. The amount of data stored in the database will be limited as objects will 'expire'. Is a sensible approach to the problem? What are the other options?"}
{"_id": "171418", "title": "Why make the login page to a single page application a separate page?", "text": "I am wondering why it seems to be popular to have the login page of a SPA be a separate page that is not page of the SPA (as in loaded and send data through ajax requests)? I only thing I can think of is security but I can't think a specific security reason. I mean the only thing that come to mind is that if your login page in part of the SPA, it sends the username/password through ajax which can be seen by such tools like firebug or web inspector however even if you send it as a normal POST request, there are other tools that can easily capture this data (like fiddler, httpscoop, etc...). Is there something I am missing?"}
{"_id": "171415", "title": "Contract / Project / Line-Item hierarchy design considerations", "text": "We currently have an application that allows users to create a `Contract`. A contract can have 1 or more `Project`. A project can have 0 or more sub- projects (which can have their own sub-projects, and so on) as well as 1 or more `Line`. Lines can have any number of sub-lines (which can have their own sub-lines, and so on). Currently, our design contains circular references, and I'd like to get away from that. Currently, it looks a bit like this:               public class Contract     {         public List<Project> Projects { get; set; }             }          public class Project     {         public Contract OwningContract { get; set; }         public Project ParentProject { get; set; }         public List<Project> SubProjects { get; set; }         public List<Line> Lines { get; set; }     }          public class Line     {         public Project OwningProject { get; set; }         public List ParentLine { get; set; }         public List<Line> SubLines { get; set; }     }      We're using the M-V-VM \"pattern\" and use these Models (and their associated view models) to populate a large \"edit\" screen where users can modify their contracts and the properties on all of the objects. Where things start to get confusing for me is when we add, for example, a `Cost` property to the `Line`. The issue is reflecting at the highest level (the contract) changes made to the lowest level. Looking for some thoughts as to how to change this design to remove the circular references. One thought I had was that the contract would have a `Dictionary<Guid, Project>` which would contain ALL projects (regardless of their level in hierarchy). The `Project` would then have a Guid property called \"Parent\" which could be used to search the contract's dictionary for the parent object. THe same logic could be applied at the `Line` level. Thanks! Any help is appreciated."}
{"_id": "171412", "title": "REST API rule about tunneling", "text": "Just read this in the REST API Rulebook: **GET and POST must not be used to tunnel other request methods**. > Tunneling refers to **any abuse** of HTTP that masks or misrepresents a > message\u2019s intent and undermines the protocol\u2019s transparency. A REST API must > not compromise its design by misusing HTTP\u2019s request methods in an effort to > **accommodate clients with limited HTTP vocabulary**. Always make proper use > of the HTTP methods as specified by the rules in this section. [highlights > by me] But then a lot of frameworks use _tunneling_ to expose REST interfaces via HTML forms, since `<form>` knows only about `GET` and `POST`. My most recent example is a `MethodRewriteMiddleware` for flask (submitted by the author of the framework): http://flask.pocoo.org/snippets/38/. Any ways to comply to the \"Rule\" without hacks or add-ons in web frameworks?"}
{"_id": "171410", "title": "MVC or Extract Service Layer", "text": "we have an application that is built with .Net MVC. We are now tasked with exposing API's to third parties. Members on our team want to just continue down our current path and just use more controllers so we can reuse the backend of our current application. Logic tells me we need to create a seperate service layer when more clients are going to be accessing it, but .Net MVC seems to take care of all of this. Is it really acceptable architecture to use controllers in a stand alone application to expose API's and what would be the potential gains of extracting the service layer out?"}
{"_id": "234370", "title": "Good pattern(s) for pointing to mutable state", "text": "I asked this question once here, but believe the question was unclear. However I'm having a hard time extracting the general problem from my specific case. **UPDATE:** I've answered my own question below. Read on if you like reading stuff. Maybe is educational, maybe not :) I'm writing a music sequencer. Some existing components are:   * Sequence -- A collection of SequenceEvents (notes, meter, tempo, etc.)   * Sequencer -- Manages playback timing   * ScoreView -- Renders a sequence    * NeckView -- Shows playback on guitar neck   * GUI -- Manages smaller controls including clock displays of current play position Right now, all these components are very loosely coupled, using pub/sub to send and respond to events. The exception is that the Sequencer holds a reference to a Sequence, and publishes events when the logical \"playhead\" moves or when sequence events are encountered. Sequence queries need to be fast during live playback, so having a single component manage such queries is important. Some planned features require that multiple components show data related to the current playhead position, as well as a \"step region\", which is a time slice larger than a single time position, e.g. a measure. The question that arises for me is how to best represent \"playhead\" and \"step region\". I don't like the idea that each component would maintain duplicate state of these time positions and associated sequence events. Even having each component maintain references to \"playhead\" and \"step region\" objects feels like a DRY violation. However simply consuming transient events doesn't work well. Consider this example:   1. The Sequencer advances to measure 3, beat 1, and dispatches (publishes) an event.   2. ScoreView handles this event, moving its playhead display.   3. Sequencer queries its Sequence for event data at 3:1.0, finds a 3 note chord, dispatches 3 note events.   4. Synth handles these events, playing the notes.   5. NeckView handles these events, animating the notes. So far, all works well. But...   6. The user edits the score, adding a 4th note at 3:1.0   7. Sequence dispatches a sequenceEventAdded event. **How does the NeckView know that the added note is at the \"current\" playhead time?** Or how does it know that the added note was not at the current playhead but within the current step region, also displayed? This is one example illustrating the problem I'm more broadly trying to solve. Having multiple components maintain their own \"playhead\" and \"step region\" data seems like redundant responsibilities and state. But doing this all with transient events starts to feel like too many event types, not a great fit either. My best attempt to genericize this is to ask, what are good ways to represent shared mutable state? The \"playhead\" and \"step region\" both represent slices of time in a Sequence, but within those time slices, sequence events could be added/removed and observing components need to know this. Every way I look at this feels wrong to me. Another thought is to have actual objects for a Playhead and StepRegion. Each comprises time point(s) and a subset of sequence events from the Sequence. Each could listen to the Sequence for added/removed events and re-publish these. However this approach means that multiple components now have references to a Playhead and StepRegion, which feels like a duplication of responsibilities. But if only the Sequencer holds these objects (which manages timing and logically does have a current playback position), then how do other components know to update when notes are added/removed within these time regions (as opposed to other time regions of the Sequence)? The more I try to ask this question the dumber it sounds, but I wouldn't ask if the answer were obvious to me! Here are some multiple choice solutions:   1. **Sequence dispatches _playhead_ and _stepRegion_ events**. If sequence data changes for either of these time slices, it dispatches a new _playhead_ and _stepRegion_ event, each containing the current corresponding sequence data. Observing components like NeckView can treat these events as idempotent and remain stateless regarding timing.   2. **Add _Playhead_ and _StepRegion_ classes. Multiple components can hold references to these and listen to added/removed events from these instances**. This involves a fair amount of new Objects during playback, probably not a big GC concern, but smells bad.   3. **Playhead and StepRegion are singletons**. This is worse version of #2, and requires these objects maintain references to the Sequence as well as observe events from the Sequencer and re-publish events from both. Testing becomes problematic.   4. **Sequence's added/removed events contain a reference to the Sequence object**. While this seems like a sane and a common approach, it invites multiple components to do potentially expensive querying (redundantly) on the sequence as often as every tick during real-time playback. This is one reason only Sequencer directly manages a Sequence.    5. **All observing components maintain their own time points for playhead, stepRegionStart, stepRegionEnd**. Any sequenceEventAdded/Removed events can be handled or ignored accordingly. This means redundant state, but that state can completely be updated via events.  This is a long question. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "128875", "title": "Is Learning C++ Through The Qt Framework Really Learning C++", "text": "The problem I have, is that most of the C++ books I read spend almost forever on syntax and the basics of the language, e.g. `for` and loops `while`, arrays, lists, pointers, etc. But they never seem to build anything that is simple enough to use for learning, yet practical enough to get you to understand the philosophy and power of the language. Then I stumbled upon QT which is an amazing library! But working through the demos they have, it seems like I am now in the reverse dilemma. I feel like the rich man's son driving round in a sports car subsidized by the father. Like I could build fantastic software, but have no clue what's going on under the hood. As an example of my dilemma take the task of building a simple web browser. In pure C++, I wouldn't even know where to start, yet with the Qt library it can be done within a few lines on code. I am not complaining about this. I am just wondering how to fill the knowledge void between the basic structure of the language and the high level interface that the Qt framework provides?"}
{"_id": "173302", "title": "Question about initial interview for job", "text": "So I feel kind of stupid having to ask this but tomorrow I have a phone interview with a good company. Phone interviews themselves not a big deal for me, but having to tell them my salary expectations is. The position that I'm applying for is a mid-level software engineer, I fit all of the requirements (I'm not overly qualified by any means), and I want to be sure I'm not asking for an amount that would be absurd or too little. Now, assuming I get a second interview and have to complete some sort of puzzle/code/work, they may pay me +/- whatever I asked for based upon their evaluation of my work. What I'd like to know, is what is a good amount to ask for? Or am I completely wrong with my assumptions? Either way some advice would be much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "160173", "title": "How to become a web developer from scratch without a degree?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best approach to learning web programming I am extremely interested in web development though I know very little about code. I did not read computer sciences in my college/university. Now I find myself very determined to learn the server side development and want to have a career in the field, where should I start from? I have got almost an year of free time and can work very hard, guide me please, thank you."}
{"_id": "87577", "title": "What's the benefit of having a private repository for personal projects?", "text": "So I just created my first GitHub repository and started to wonder if there would be any reason why somebody shouldn't post their code. I don't mean the obvious, such as code that is IP of somebody else or any other possible legal situation; I'm talking about a newbie posting their own, albeit terrible, code. I've heard several times on this site that one of the things that a some of the hiring managers do is check out the person on Github (or similar site), so what if the code is lacking? Would the position desired\u2014for example, if I'm going after a junior developer position instead of a senior developer position\u2014matter?"}
{"_id": "184198", "title": "documentation of typescript code", "text": "my question is rather short: How do I document typescript code properly? I found out that for projects becoming bigger and bigger, it is important to look at a function and immediately know parameters, what it returns and side-effects etc. It is tiring to have just a bunch of comments before a function, most of the time these 'blocks' even look differently in style. What I am looking for is a documentation tool like javadoc or doxygen for typescript. Is there anything out there? Or is it possible to 'abuse' a documentation tool and get it to work with typescript?"}
{"_id": "177811", "title": "When do I bite the bullet and hire a developer?", "text": "I have an awesome URL, I've had it since the mid 90's, and up until around 2002 I was having an awesome time writing music reviews and features into static pages and adding their URL to static index pages and everything was just great. Then things got complicated really fast, and for one reason or another I handed the site over to a very talented friend who turned it into a db based site run by cf. Now, here I am around twelve years later putting it all back together using mysql, php and css on a need-to-learn basis and even though I'm sooo close to where I want it to be I realize, erm, it should have been written using mysqli etc etc ad infinitum. So I'm wondering at what point do I just give in and hire a developer to take over, how much does it even cost, and how do I know I'm working with someone who is better than I am?"}
{"_id": "177816", "title": "Collaboration using github and testing the code", "text": "The procedure in my team is that we all commit our code to the same development branch. We have a test server that runs updated code from this branch so that we can test our code on the servers. This test server is exposed on the internet so that we can test callbacks from third-party services like sendgrid. (where you specify a url for sendgrid to update you on the status of emails sent out) The problem is that if we want to merge the development branch to the master branch in order to publish new features to our production servers, some features that may not have been ready will be applied to the production servers. So we're considering having each developer work on a feature/topic branch where each of them work on their own features and when it's ready, merge it into the development branch for testing, and then into the master branch. However, because our test server only pulls changes from the development branch, the developers are unable to test their features. While this is not a huge issue as they can test it on their local machine, **the only problem I foresee is if we want to test callbacks from third-party services using our test server during the course of developing a feature**. How can we handle this problem? Note: We're not advanced git users. We use the Github app for MacOSX and Windows to commit our work. Setup: It is a PHP project. We do not have any form of CI setup and do not have the knowledge to do so. Eventually we want to use Jenkins but right now we're just focusing on getting our minimum viable product out."}
{"_id": "184190", "title": "Software has sub-part Apache v2 license and other sub-part GPL v2 license", "text": "Firstly I am sorry I do not fully understand about licensing. Thus I want to ask here for my curiosity about licensing things. Here is the case. I build a WordPress theme that using underscores.me as its starter theme. It has GPL v2 license. And then I build the theme using Twitter Bootstrap. It has Apache v2 license. I have been searching about both licenses. I found that Apache v2 is only compatible with GPL v3, not GPL v2. What license can put to my code? Apache? GPl? Or I just can not release it because of Apache v2 and GPL 2 are incompatible? Finally, does it matter whether or not I modify the code?"}
{"_id": "35939", "title": "How do web APIs work?", "text": "I have heard of many web APIs like that of Facebook, Twitter, etc., which helps third party access data and manipulate it. I would like to know how a web API works. What are the basics of a web API? If I want to create an API for my site, so that people can access or update it, what will I need to start with?"}
{"_id": "35938", "title": "Multithreaded UI desktop application issues", "text": "I am involved into development a rich UI project: desktop windows application. Application uses asynchronous invocations and in its turn it should be ready to process external messages (events). The problem is clear: at first time it was built as a simple prototype and it was not stress tested and all was fine. Then application was grown: the number of calls to server and number of events from server are high and performance is low. What is more users noticed that sometimes performance is extremal low. Asynchronous invocations based on thread pool (BeginInvoke, EndInvoke), external events are going from WCF service (.NET 3.5). My goal is synchronization of all tasks and putting priorities to every executions in **desktop application**. My question is: is there any practice how to reach my goal: _patterns_ , _task priority list_ , others? What should I do at first, second and next times? Thanks"}
{"_id": "228204", "title": "When subclassing is it better to \"Copy Paste, then Refactor\", or \"Refactor, then Implement\"", "text": "I currently have a class `Foo`, i've decided I need a second type of `Foo` where I want to test out a significantly different implementation. It will no doubt share some functionality with `Foo` so I'll need to create a Abstract Class parent for both of them. At the end of the process I want to have:   * `AbstractFoo`: an abstract class   * `FooBoo`: functionaly identical to the original `Foo`   * `FooBar`: the new subclass of AbstractFoo I've created. There are two ways I could go about this: **Copy Paste, then Refactor**   1. Create a copy of `Foo`, and name it `FooBar` and rename `Foo` to `FooBoo`   2. Edit `FooBar` with the new implementation   3. Inspect, `FooBar` and `FooBoo`, move methods that are the same between them into a abstract class `AbstractFoo`, which both inherit from **Refactor, then Implement**   1. Rename `Foo`, `FooBoo`   2. Consider what methods are not related to the part of the implementation that `FooBoo` and `FooBaz` are going to be different in. Move these to `AbstractFoo`   3. Create `FooBaz` and reimplement all the methods that remain within `FooBoo` **Which is to be preferred?** * _Is there another method?_ * Last time I had to do this, it was because the I decided that `Foo` had 2 different modes, that was determined by a boolean passed into the constructor. This time (on a different class), it is because I want to try out using a different engine underneath that might be faster. I want to keep `FooBoo` around because it has a subclass that I think will be much harder to implement for `FooBaz`, and I also want to be able to check that in the end they behave the same."}
{"_id": "35937", "title": "What are the advantages and Disadvantages of Using an Aspect Orientated Programming Paradigm", "text": "Ok so here is the question: What are the advantages and Disadvantages of Using an Aspect Orientated Programming Paradigm. My advantages and disadvantages thus far: ## Advantages:   * Complements object orientation.    * Modularizes cross-cutting concerns improving code maintainability and understandability.  ## Disadvantage:   * Not the easiest of concepts to grasp - not as well documented as O-O   * O-O goes far enough in the separation of concerns...  Would anyone like to challenge any of these/ add their own? Many Thanks, J"}
{"_id": "103972", "title": "When to Use workflow engines?", "text": "I've worked in past on some of the workflow engines as programmer but never had a clarity on why we chose the work-flow engines in first place. And as programmer I know that there are at least 100 ways to do anything when you are writing code but only few of the ways are the best! I still don't understand which use cases are best solved by workflow engines (or rather their concept) than designing a good DI enabled application. I'm looking for any general characteristics of domain-neutral use cases, where work-flow engines are one of the the best options. So my question is: What are general characteristics of a requirement which can be taken as a signal for opting for a good workflow engine and coding around it?"}
{"_id": "127809", "title": "Programmers' concerns about export restrictions from the United States", "text": "Which aspects do I need to consider when designing and publishing software that must meet the US export restrictions for cryptographic software? Wikipedia says that there are various categories which you can assign to cryptographic software. And the export destination (e.g. China, Russia) does play a major role as well. But I didn't really understand those restrictions and their effect on my work. Can anybody explain that to me? I'm asking because if you try to publish your application (e.g. on Apple's App Store or Android's Market) you have to assure that your application meets the US export restrictions. And there are lots of applications who offer secure information storage, e.g. for passwords. Have they all notified the government and asked for a review? Of course, you cannot know if they did. But do they need to do this?"}
{"_id": "84908", "title": "How can I program effectively during an Internet outage?", "text": "So much of development is now done online to take advantage of interconnectivity and shared resources. In a prolonged Internet outage, how can one cope with the lack of that connection? Are there ways to replicate or work around the innumerable benefits the Internet adds to development?"}
{"_id": "138905", "title": "non-programming jobs that making use of programmig skills?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Jobs that use programming which aren't in the technology sector I have programming skills, but i don't want to sit in front of a computer 8 hours a day. Is there other career choices that I can consider, that also utilize my existing skills? And what I should do to get those jobs? I am open to anything that doesn't require extensive use of computer, also something that perform routine rather than going through projects (i don't like keep thinking about a project in my free time, because no one's paying me for that, i believe that's where stress comes from). Also it would be nice if the job doesn't require a CS degree, because I don't have one."}
{"_id": "241193", "title": "Javascript Event in Innerhtml Resulting from PHP Server Script", "text": "I'm (very slowly) making a website, and I'm creating a search engine for the database, which is essential to organize the dependencies during data entry. Anyway, what I would like is to type a few keywords into a box, have a menu pop up with various search results, and have the box fill with the ID number of the selected entry when it's clicked. Currently, I have a document called search.php which fills a div called search-output using xmlhttp.open() and the innerhtml property. Everything is working perfectly except for filling the original search box with the ID number when clicking. My first attempt was to add an onclick event to each entry in the output from search.php. Unfortunately, I found that javascript inserted into innerhtml is not run for security reasons. I've been Googling for hours but haven't been able to find a solution. How can I get the original search text box to fill with the correct ID when I click it? Is what I'm doing a good setup for the results I desire, or is there a better way to integrate search features into data entry?"}
{"_id": "210722", "title": "Should I use mMember and sStatic naming convention in Android?", "text": "Android source code and many Android open-source apps and libs use m prefix for member fields and s prefix for static member fields:               private static boolean sStarted;     private long mTimestamp;      I personally dislike this, because it looks ugly and it's redundant \u2013 my IDE already uses different color and formatting for local, member and static member variables. What's closest to truth?   1. It's a good practice.   2. It's a bad practice but you should use it anyway in order to be consistent with the majority of Android code out there.   3. It's a bad practice and you shouldn't use it."}
{"_id": "184449", "title": "Why does Internet Explorer have so many incompatibilities with other browsers?", "text": "Internet Explorer has a number of proprietary features that aren't found in other browsers as well as a number of incompatibilities with the standards. Does anyone have an idea what is _the cause_ of those incompatibilities? For example: I develop a browser extension using Crossrider framework. The extension works well with all combinations of [Windows | Mac OS | Linux] and [Chrome | Firefox] but it does not work with IE because IE handles `$(window).height()` and `$(window).scrollTop()` a bit differently. Is there a known thorough analysis of that situation, or an interview with an insider that would clarify the cause? Is it the corporate culture, the design process, a QA flaw, or some horrid unknown legacy?"}
{"_id": "224437", "title": "How to organise the different bits and pieces in an agile environment?", "text": "Trying to make our shop an agile environment, we struggle with some bits and pieces of that world. While not making it waterfally, we do have to have some sort of agreement on what a new feature needs to do. We follow the KISS and \"minimally viable product\" principle. Still, after discussing a story, we end up with:   * UI/UX design   * Acceptance criteria   * Constraints   * Use cases   * Some extra specifications (like what fields to show in tables etc) As tools we use JIRA, Greenhopper, Balsamiq, Glyphy and Confluence and they are working very well but we're not quite sure where to store which bits and how to make this work together well. How do you guys approach that. Please include details on how far you go detailing the feature before development starts."}
{"_id": "87457", "title": "Why do you need float/double?", "text": "I was watching http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/06/27.html and laughed at Jon Skeet joke about 0.3 not being 0.3. I personally never had problems with floats/decimals/doubles but then I remember I learned 6502 very early and never needed floats in most of my programs. The only time I used it was for graphics and math where inaccurate numbers were ok and the output was for the screen and not to be stored (in a db, file) or dependent on. My question is, where are places were you typically use floats/decimals/double? So I know to watch out for these gotchas. With money I use longs and store values by the cent, for speed of an object in a game I add ints and divide (or bitshift) the value to know if I need to move a pixel or not. (I made object move in the 6502 days, we had no divide nor floats but had shifts). So I was mostly curious."}
{"_id": "159546", "title": "Redistributing BSD-licensed software?", "text": "Is it acceptable to distribute unmodified BSD-licensed software (pyglet) with GPL-licensed software I created? The BSD allows for sale of modified software, I know, but does it allow re-licensing of unmodified? Seems to defeat the purpose of having a license at all."}
{"_id": "184440", "title": "Running pieces of code distributed through out the system, automatically", "text": "I have pieces of code, written in java, which I can convert in jar and run from the terminal. I also have some node.js script, which I would like to run before running these jar files. So the process of running my project is as follows: > Start mongodb from terminal->Run Node.js script-> Run the java code(jar > file) So I want to know, is there a way I could automate my project by just calling some one single file instead of running so many files separately? if so, how?"}
{"_id": "154710", "title": "Do higher resolution laptop displays matter for programmers?", "text": "I'm buying a new laptop that I'll be using mainly for programming. A couple of options that really intrigue me are the Asus Zenbook UX31A and the new Retina Macbook Pro. It's obvious that the high-resolution displays on these laptops is useful for entertainment, photo-editing, and other things. My question is this: Do these displays provide any benefit for programmers? Do these displays make code any easier to read? Are they any easier on the eyes after a whole day of staring at the screen?"}
{"_id": "210725", "title": "Are there any languages to replace or compete with Javascript?", "text": "Time and time again I am surprised at how difficult Javascript is to maintain or write proper programs in, mostly because it is so weakly typed. I truly find it akin to writing programs in assembly. Sure, there is some intellisense for it and you can get some tools to make it easier. You can even use things like jQuery to make it more platform independent. But does there exist some sort of language (strongly-typed) that I could write in, syntax similar to Java or C#, that could \"compile\" into Javascript? Or perhaps there are tools that would make Javascript strongly-typed, and could detect bugs, that a C# compiler would detect? I'm not trying to just hate on JS here, but I'm wondering if there is some sort of roadblock that prevents this. Or perhaps doing this would make JS difficult to use in the web. Edit: While I may have been pointing directly at javascript, I guess my broader question, is there a reason why Javascript is the only game in town? And is there something inherent about client-side code that makes javascript that way it is?"}
{"_id": "180579", "title": "What is a closure and how is it implemented in Ruby?", "text": "In the context of the Ruby programming language, what is a closure and when do you use one? What are the uses for it in Rails?"}
{"_id": "218974", "title": "Schema table for multi-integration tokens", "text": "I'm designing a schema table that will manage the auth tokens for integrations // app with social networks. At the moment only for Twitter and Facebook. I'm thinking in this mode               id  social   tw_token   tw_token_auth   tw_secret   tw_secret_key   fb_token  fb_secret     1    twitter   aaa         bbbb           cccc        dddd            NULL       NULL     2    facebook   NULL        NULL          NULL         NULL            AAA1      bbb3      I don't like that many NULL, but for a so-simple-schema I would not realize a different table for social networks. How to perform this better than I'm doing now?"}
{"_id": "180573", "title": "How to translate Lisp to Javascript", "text": "I have some legacy code, which uses _Lisp_ as it's scripting language. To broaden, ease and accelerate scripting I'd like to replace _Lisp_ by _Javascript_. In order to be able to built on all present scripting files, I first need to translate all `lsp` to `js`. Now I found _parenscript_ but am not yet sure what it is good for (seems to modify Javascript to be able to run lisp, which is not what I want). Also there are some converters on the web, which seem to work quite well. Has anyone already done this and can share some experiences, best pracises and tools?"}
{"_id": "15002", "title": "Practical Meta Programming System (MPS)", "text": "This is in regards to Meta Programming System or MPS by JetBrains. Thus far, from my efforts to learn how to use MPS, I have only learned its basic purpose and that it is very complex. Is MPS worth learning? Is there anyone who already effectively uses MPS to create their own languages and editors for those languages and uses these created editors as their primary way of programming? If so, what types of programs have they made with this? What are the advantages and disadvantages of working with MPS?"}
{"_id": "241442", "title": "Should REST APIs be context independent or dependent?", "text": "Let's say I have several users and each one has a `user_id` and also `friends` To access their friends, they should be logged in, so a session will be established with the server. Should the REST API for their friends be `user/:user_id/friends` or just `friends`"}
{"_id": "203242", "title": "Is Visual C++ Redistributables backward compatible?", "text": "I am including two programs in my software. One of which requires VC10 and the other requires VC11. My question is that if program developed for VC10 will work on VC11 or I have to include both VC10 and VC11"}
{"_id": "119096", "title": "Using Vim when coding a large-scale application", "text": "I'm starting to learn Vim, and following some of the advices given here in stackexchange. I'm beginning to use it in some toy projects and I'm cool with that.   But I started to wonder how you can be productive without opening other files all the time just to know how's that class' Name, what's that macro included in other file, etc. etc. What are the common advices you can give?"}
{"_id": "241449", "title": "How are the conceptual pairs Abstract/Concrete, Generic/Specific, and Complex/Simple related to one another in software architecture?", "text": "(= 2 (+ 1 1))      take the above. The requirement of the '=' predicate is that its arguments be comparable. Any two structures are comparable in this case, and so the contract/requirement is pretty generic. The '+' predicate requires that its arguments be numbers. That's more specific.               (socket domain type protocol)      the arguments here are much more specific (even though the arguments are still just numbers and the function itself returns a file descriptor, which is itself an int), but the arguments are more abstract, and the implementation is built up from other functions whose abstractions are less abstract, which are themselves built from less and less abstract abstractions. To the point where the requirements are something like move from one location to another, observe whether the switch at that location is on or off, turn the switch on or off, or leave it the same, etc. But are functions also less and less complex the less abstract they are? And is there a relationship between the number and range of arguments of a function and the complexity of its implementation, as you go from more abstract to less abstract, and vice versa?               (= 2 (+ 1 1) 2r10)      the '=' predicate is more generic than the '+' predicate, and thus could be more complex in its implementation. The '+' predicate's contract is less generic, and so could be less complex in its implementation. Is this even a little correct? What about the 'socket' function? Each of those arguments is a number of some kind. What they represent, though, is something more elaborate. It also returns a number (just like the others do), which is also a representation of something conceptually much more elaborate than a number. To boil it down, I'm asking if there is a relationship between the following dimensions, and why:   1. Abstract/Concrete   2. Complex/Simple   3. Generic/Specific And more specifically, do different configurations of these dimensions have a specific, measurable impact on the number and range of the arguments (i.e., the contract) of a function?"}
{"_id": "249699", "title": "Good way to handle the notification counter like Facebook does", "text": "I want to build a similar notification mechanism that Facebook handles. ![enter image description here](http://www.techlicious.com/images/computers/facebook-notification- icon-100px.jpg) I actually store the user's notification in an SQL table (actually it's a graph database but everybody master RDBMS terms). I'm interested in the case where the user clicks on the icon: The counter should get a value of 0 internally and visually disappears. How the clearing of this counter should be made?   * On clicking, call a Rest API that flags each notification as being `read` (table's column `READ`)?   Drawback would be that it would take some time if there was huge amount of notifications to flag in order to get the counter to 0 and making it disappear.   * Having a kind of column for each user called `HAS_NEW_NOTIFICATION` that is valued as `false` each time the icon is clicked (through a REST API call), if the counter was present.   Thus, the counter would be present only if the flag value is `true`. What would be a good practice?"}
{"_id": "249695", "title": "Help with database design with a strict and structured subset of clinical data", "text": "I'm developing an application to keep some of the data in chronic patients, the data came from a very strict subset of data, vital signs, exams, ecc. On a first glance I thought to create a Patient model with has_many encounters, and put every info in a different field like (age, height, weight, ecc), but it will result in a big model. So I wondered about embedding to make it easier to maintain and scale if in a couple of months I need to register a new exam, right now I have been thinking in something like this: ### Patient               name: string,     address: string,     phone: integer,     diagnose: string,     etc...      ### Encounters               patient_id: ObjectID,     age: Integer,     vital_signs: [ { height, weight, bmi, systolic_pressure, diastolic_pressure } ],     exams: [ { creatinine, total cholesterol... } ],     next_encounter: Date      I'm going to still need to access to `bmi` for example if I want to get how many people in the community is obese (hint: an awful lot), so embedding maybe it's not a very good idea. In any case, all the \"analysis\" will only be done only monthly (or less). I picked mongodb, because I'm afraid the requisites for this database will be changing from time to time, so flexibility it's important. Maybe in this case since data is structured, every document will have the same types of fields, a relational database could be better? I don't think it makes sense using a nosql database in a sql way, right? PS.- I read this article from mongodb blog, and I'm more confused about if this really it's the best approach."}
{"_id": "77029", "title": "I created a program based on an LGPL project, and I'm not allowed to publish the source code", "text": "I thought LGPL was a permissive license, just like MIT, BSD or Apache. But today I read, that only _linking_ to LGPL (libraries etc) is allowed from closed-source code - other than that, it's copyleft - so I have to publish code that is based on an LGPL program. I created a program for my employer that is based on an LGPL program, but has considerable modifications to it. Of course, I am not allowed to put that modified source code out there. At the same time, I have to, if I distribute it (right?). So I wonder whether there is a workaround to this, so I can keep this closed- source (I wish I could publish the source) - any suggestions? My idea: can I put most functions of the original LGPL app into an external library, write the core executable from scratch, but refer back to the library for all functions that I haven't modified? Currently, everything is in a .jar file (it's Java/Swing). if you think my idea is legally/technically feasible - how much effort would it be to seperate what I wrote and what the original is? I'm not the most java savvy."}
{"_id": "43460", "title": "Can you be a manager and a programmer at the same time?", "text": "Managing other programmers while you are yourself a part of the programming work force. It's a very common scheme, at least in the companies I worked for. Can you be a good programmer or a good manager if you do both at the same time? I'm questioning the effectiveness of an individual that has to be in two very different roles, requiring very different skills, environment, concentration, organization, etc. **UPDATE** : my question includes management of the company (which is my case), not specifically team management. But I'm interested in both of course."}
{"_id": "201133", "title": "Auto functions in c++", "text": "I'm not so familiar with C++. Can someone please inform me what this lines does (in detail):               auto add_element = [&rows,&cols,&values](size_t row, size_t col, double value)     {         rows.push_back(int(row));         cols.push_back(int(col));         values.push_back(value);     };      Rows, cols, values are obvious vectors. Is this the same as void add_element(vector & rows, size_t row, .....)"}
{"_id": "43464", "title": "Source of (programmer) inefficiency", "text": "I am interested to gain a better insight about the possible reasons of personal inefficiency as programmers (and only in programming) due to \u2013 simply - our own errors (because we are humans \u2013 well, almost all of us). I am not interested in how much we are productive or in how many adjustements the customer asks for when the work is done, but where and how each of us spend that part of its time in tasks that are unproductive and there is no one to blame except ourselves. Excluding ego - feeding and / or self \u2013 gratification, what I am trying to get (for all of us) is: what are the common issues eating our time; insight on reasons for that issues; identify simple way for us, personally (not delegating actions to other or our organizations), to correct our own problems. Please, do not think in academic terms but aim at the opportunity to compare our daily experiences and understand what are and how we try to fix our personal deficiencies. If you are interested to respond to this post, please:   * integrate the list if you see something important (or obvious) missing;   * highlight or name honestly your first issue tellng the way _you_ try to address and solve _your_ issue acting on yourself and yourself only in a sort of \"continuous quality improving\" My criteria for accepting the answer is: choose the best solution (feasibility and utility) to fix one (or more) of the problems of the list. Of course, selecting an error is not a vote on our skills: maybe we are hyper professional programmers and we lose ten minutes only every year or we are terribly inefficient, losing a couple of days a week: reasons for inefficiency could be really the same - but in a different scale. A possible list:   * Plain error in the names (variables, functions).    * Inability to see the obvious in your code. Misreading. Lack of concentration.   * Trying to use a technology you have not mastered.   * Errors with data types.   * Time required to understand your previous code or your documentation.   * Trying to do something more than requested because you enjoy it    * Using solutions more complicated than required because you enjoy it.   * Plain logical errors.   * Errors due to your fault in communications.   * Distraction My first personal issue: \"Trying to use a technology you do not master.\" I have to use daily several technologies and I often need to spend significant time correcting code because my assumptions were plainly wrong. Reasons for this: production needs put high pressure and make difficult to find the time to learn. I try to address this reading technical books - as many as I can - even if this actually consumes a lot of time."}
{"_id": "206610", "title": "Does increasing the number of classes increase code complexity?", "text": "To illustrate the question, let's say we have two programmers of comparable skill that both solve the same problem. The code they turn out has roughly the same lines of code, but one programmer uses 5 classes while another programmer uses 20. Both sets of code get comparable wtfs per minute in code review, implying that the code is not hard to follow and doesn't do anything silly. Is the code with 20 classes more complex than the code that utilizes 5?"}
{"_id": "159092", "title": "Sharing eBooks within large development teams", "text": "We have a few hundred developers, and want to legally share eBooks in the same vein we used to share hard copy books (someone buys it and it ends up on the bookshelf). Has anyone solved this in a novel way? I understand there are subscription options available that license them to you but I want something that is as easy and cheap as our previous method."}
{"_id": "159095", "title": "can gpl code contain more restrictively licensed code? (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)", "text": "There is a wordpress theme I am modifying to create my own derived work. This original wordpress theme has the GPLv2 licence in it's root directory, so I assume that the entire theme is GPL code. There is a particular php file which has the following written in its first few lines:               // This code is protected under Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/      Is that legal for them to make a part of the code under a more restrictive license? The CC license referenced is more restrictive because it prohibits derivative work, but that is exactly what I am doing is making a derivative work. So here are my two questions:   * By having the full GPL (version 2) licence in the root of the theme's directory, is that a legally binding way of saying that the code is licensed under the GPL2?   * Is that legal for them to make that file licensed under that particular CC license? Ultimately, what I care about is this: I want to make sure that what I am doing is technically legal :) EDIT: None of the source files actually _say_ that it is under GPL; except the theme does include jQuery and jQuery plugins (under MIT and GPL2) as well as thumb.php which explicitly says it is under GPL2."}
{"_id": "19701", "title": "Is there a common mathematical symbology for collections?", "text": "I am being asked to define several of my algorithms in mathematical terms to describe my work to a customer. I am trying to determine if anybody knows whether common operators for collections like sequences, lists, tuples, etc have been defined. If so, is there a good reference that I could be pointed to. Thanks. I am interested in the actual symbols used. I am wondering if the following would make sense or be appropiate to anybody. Given two sequences (or strings): S = (A, B, C) and T = (A, D, H) In my mind, the intersection of these sequences would look like S \u2229 T = (A) and the union of these sequences would be S \u222a T = (A, B, C, A, D, H)"}
{"_id": "177107", "title": "Is there a term for \"Use procedures that execute a single task\"?", "text": "I'm having a discussion with a fellow developer, and I'm trying to argument this in something like a short \"term\". SoC (Separation of Concerns) is pretty straight forward design practice, but it dwells deeper. If we want to pick on it's deep corners, we can Google it and there are plenty of articles that pop up, and after taking a glimpse, we know a lot more, and might find some examples. But, what about \"Use procedures that execute a single task\"? That's also a great design principle to use when writing applications and it becomes more and more rewarding, the larger the application gets. Is there a term for _Use procedures that execute a single task_?"}
{"_id": "177105", "title": "Securing credentials passed to web service", "text": "I'm attempting to design a single sign on system for use in a distributed architecture. Specifically, I must provide a way for a client website (that is, a website on a different domain/server/network) to allow users to register accounts on my central system. So, when the user takes an action on a client website, and that action is deemed to require an account, the client will produce a page (on their site/domain) where the user can register for a new account by providing an email and password. The client must then send this information to a web service, which will register the account and return some session token type value. The client will need to hash the password before sending it across the wire, and the webservice will require https, but this doesn't feel like it's safe enough and I need some advice on how I can implement this in the most secure way possible. A few other bits of relevant information:   * Ideally we'd prefer not to share any code with the client   * We've considered just redirecting the user to a secure page on the same server as the webservice, but this is likely to be rejected for non-technical reasons.   * We almost certainaly need to salt the password before hashing and passing it over, but that requires the client to either a) generate the salt and communicate it to us, or b) come and ask us for the salt - both feel dirty. Any help or advice is most appreciated."}
{"_id": "13536", "title": "Would experience in multiple programming languages/frameworks assist one in becoming a software architect?", "text": "Would it be useful to have experience in multiple programming languages/frameworks/stacks when applying for a software architect role? For example, combining experience in C#/.NET with Java/J2EE. How valuable would the above be, in this context?"}
{"_id": "135313", "title": "When is method overloading appropriate?", "text": "Suppose I am working on an existing, reasonably large system. I have an object, `myObject` of class `MyClass` (for the example's sake, suppose I'm working in Java). `myObject` is a composition containing a `Collection`, say, a `List` and other objects which (I think) are irrelevant. It contains delegate methods which just serve to call upon the methods of the `List` it is composed of, in order to ensure the `List` it has is not exposed (sorry if I've got my terminology wrong). Let's say that this `List` is a `List<String>` but, for some reason, the main access method is a mask method for class `SomeOtherClass`. If I wanted to insert a new value pair into my `List`, then I'd have an object of `SomeOtherClass` called `someObject`. I'd call `myObject.insert(someObject)` and inside the `insert` method there would be some magic that would retrieve a `String` to put into the `List<String>`. Supposing now that I've only got a `String` value, and no `SomeOtherClass` object to insert. Assuming I can't modify the `insert` method because it would break everything in this system. Then should I overload the `insert` method? Or should I create a new object of `SomeOtherClass` every time I want to call `insert`? I guess if I did overload it, it would look something like this...               public void insert(String s) {         ...     }          public void insert(SomeOtherObject obj) {         this.insert(obj.magicStringMethod());     }      (This example is a contrived puzzle based upon a similar (slightly more complex) situation regarding overloading that I encountered yesterday. I'll expand it if there's anything that was unclear) Would this be an appropriate place to overload a method? If not, when should I overload a method?"}
{"_id": "164353", "title": "What's the difference between overloading a method and overriding it in Java?", "text": "What's the difference between overloading a method and overriding it in Java? Is there a difference in method signature, access specifier, return type, etc.?"}
{"_id": "235772", "title": "Differences between Dynamic Dispatch and Dynamic Binding", "text": "I've been looking on Google for a clear diffrentiation with examples but couldn't find any. I'm trying to understand the differences between Dynamic Dispatch and Dynamic Binding in Object Oriented languages. As far as I understand, Dynamic Dispatch is what happens when the concrete method invoked is decided at runtime, based on the concrete type. For example:               public void doStuff(SuperType object){         object.act();     }      `SuperType` has several subclasses. The concrete class of the object will only be known at runtime, and so the concrete `act()` implementation invoked will be decided at runtime. However, I'm not sure what Dynamic Binding means, and how it differs from Dynamic Dispatch. Please explain Dynamic Binding and how it's different from Dynamic Dispatch. Java examples would be welcome."}
{"_id": "185714", "title": "Equivalence class for this requirement", "text": "The automated bell system of Stateless University should ring every hour during Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It should ring every 90 minutes during Tuesdays and Thursdays, and does not ring at all during weekends So the equivalence classes for these are: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays Tuesdays and Thursdays Saturdays and Sundays 90 minutes 60 minutes Am i right?? or am i missing something?"}
{"_id": "121326", "title": "Understanding the bridge design pattern", "text": "I do not understand the \"bridge\" design pattern at all. I have gone through various web sites, but they haven't helped. Can anybody help me in understanding this?"}
{"_id": "185718", "title": "How to include licenses for third-party Maven dependencies?", "text": "I'm producing a binary distributable for my Java project. I'm releasing it in two ways:   1. Maven Central   2. Zipped distributable on Google code My project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. I use a small number of third-party parties, one of which is MIT licensed. I believe it's my obligation to make users of my project aware of the license contents, based on the following text from the license: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. How am I best to reference this within my source and my distributables? I'm currently thinking:   1. My source files needn't reference anything. They just include my Apache 2.0 boilerplate notice.   2. I add a LICENSE.txt file at the root of my project including the Apache 2.0 license text.   3. For my zipped distributable, I need to also add _something_ that indicates a component is MIT licensed. Perhaps a NOTICE file?   4. For my Maven Central distribution, I needn't do anything as my artifact just declares its dependencies, but doesn't actually include them. Does this seem like a valid plan? If so, can anyone advise how to accomplish point 3."}
{"_id": "185719", "title": "How should you TDD a Yahtzee game?", "text": "Let's say you're writing a Yahtzee game TDD style. You want to test the part of the code that determines whether or not a set of five die rolls is a full house. As far as I know, when doing TDD, you follow these principles:   * Write tests first   * Write the simplest thing possible that works   * Refine and refactor So an initial test might look something like this:               public void Returns_true_when_roll_is_full_house()     {         FullHouseTester sut = new FullHouseTester();         var actual = sut.IsFullHouse(1, 1, 1, 2, 2);              Assert.IsTrue(actual);     }      When following the \"Write the simplest thing possible that works\", you should now write the `IsFullHouse` method like this:               public bool IsFullHouse(int roll1, int roll2, int roll3, int roll4, int roll5)     {         if (roll1 == 1 && roll2 == 1 && roll3 == 1 && roll4 == 2 && roll5 == 2)         {             return true;         }              return false;     }      This results in a green test but the implementation is incomplete. Should you unit test every possible valid combination (both of values and positions) for a full house? That looks like the only way to be absolutely sure that your `IsFullHouse` code is completely tested and correct, but it also sounds quite insane to do that. How would you unit test something like this? ## Update Erik and Kilian point out that using literals in the initial implementation to get a green test might not be the best idea. I'd like to explain why I did that and that explanation does not fit in a comment. My practical experience with unit testing (especially using a TDD approach) is very limited. I remember watching a recording of Roy Osherove's TDD Masterclass on Tekpub. In one of the episodes he builds a String Calculator TDD style. The full specification of the String Calculator can be found here: http://osherove.com/tdd-kata-1/ He starts with a test like this:               public void Add_with_empty_string_should_return_zero()     {         StringCalculator sut = new StringCalculator();         int result = sut.Add(\"\");              Assert.AreEqual(0, result);     }      This results in this first implementation of the `Add` method:               public int Add(string input)     {         return 0;     }      Then this test is added:               public void Add_with_one_number_string_should_return_number()     {         StringCalculator sut = new StringCalculator();         int result = sut.Add(\"1\");              Assert.AreEqual(1, result);     }      And the `Add` method is refactored:               public int Add(string input)     {         if (input.Length == 0)         {             return 0;         }              return 1;     }      After each step Roy says \"Write the simplest thing that will work\". So I thought I would give this approach a try when trying to do a TDD-style Yahtzee game."}
{"_id": "181626", "title": "Securely changing system configuration from a web application", "text": "I need to write a web application that acts as a configuration interface for some system services. Meaning it will probably change some kind of configuration file and has to restart (linux) system services. I was wondering how to design such a thing in a secure way. It is very similar to router web interfaces and such, so I had a quick look at some of these as well as webmin. Basically, I could run the web service/CGI-Script/etc. with root privileges, filter the input as good as possible and just write to the system and execute whatever program I'd like. This does not seem very secure. I would like to achieve some kind of privilege separation. Maybe having my web app run as unprivileged user and pass the Information to some privileged daemon/service, i.e., having a Python web app writing the infos to a file and notifying the daemon or use unix sockets to communicate with this backend program. Any ideas or experience you could share regarding this issue? Thank you very much in advance."}
{"_id": "101534", "title": "Using A Debugger (An Interview Question)", "text": "During a phone interview I had, the interviewer was asking me questions about my previous job as a web developer. After discussing how I had used Eclipse to write Java Servlets, he asked me the question whether I was familiar with the debugger, \"you know, stepping through code, setting breakpoints, et cetera.\" I responded by saying something along the lines that I use the debugger almost every day at work in order to track down any bugs that may arise. Looking back now, it sounds like saying \"I use the debugger almost every day\" makes it seem like I write poor code that I constantly have to debug. So, my question is: **Is using the debugger frequently a sign of bad programming, or just a natural part of the development process?**"}
{"_id": "125537", "title": "Are Domain Objects in Domain Driven Design only supposed to be write-only?", "text": "I've been reading about Domain Driven Design for almost two years and have been cautiously been introducing some concepts in to my daily work or at least making plans for how things I do regularly could be done within a Domain Driven Design. One conclusion that I've beginning to come to especially in response to reading more about Event Sourcing and Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) that perhaps domain objects are intended to be used only for write purposes. To be more clear, it seems that what people are subtly suggesting in much of the documentation I've read that the domain objects are responsible for doing domain centric operations/calculations, validation, and then are there mainly to provide a road to persistence through the infrastructure provided within a Repository implementation. Although I do like the fact that this may simplifies the domain model greatly as it cuts out the responsibility of exposing state. If it is indeed correct that domain objects are mainly to be used as write- only objects then that raises some questions for me that I'm hoping somebody could answer.   1. How does one perform unit tests on an object that has setters, or methods that modify the state of an object but that provide no outwardly public interface to read the state from such as property getters in C#? Is it okay to expose state solely for the purpose of making that object testable?   2. How does one show to a user the results of calculations or operations done in the domain without having to persist them and then pull the results from persist store outside of the context of the domain? Is it okay to expose state solely for the purpose of showing results. Is the rule of thumb that the only property getters (get accessors) should be ones that are also writable in the domain? Or said differently should readonly properties be the only thing to avoid since they are only there for read purposes and thus do not play a a necessary role in the actual domain model? Related material:   1. TDD, DDD and Encapsulation"}
{"_id": "62502", "title": "Small C Projects", "text": "I am a professional developer who generally uses high level, memory managed languages. However, I am growing more and more ashamed at my incompetence at low level languages like `C`, which I haven't used since my Systems courses in college. I want to relearn some of the more distinct parts of the `C` language, but I don't have a large amount of time to devote to hobby work. What are some small projects that would highlight the low level aspects of the language to help me rekindle my knowledge?"}
{"_id": "244672", "title": "What methods exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?", "text": "I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in- house maintained applications:   * Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production;   * The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next;   * A situation where everyone seems to be in a \"fire-fighting\" mode a lot of the time;   * Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; (\"operational\" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the \"usual suspects\" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do _uncomfortable_ things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures:   * Accounting;   * IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that _that_ mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: How do I go about assessing our organisation's software engineering capability such that I can present the findings in a way that is concrete and references a generally accepted industry standard? **UPDATE:** Doing a little more research, I came across this little oasis \\- a CMMI FAQ worded in laymans terms--just the sort of useful resource that one needs in this area ... and _free_."}
{"_id": "244671", "title": "Embedded Model Designing -- top down or bottom up?", "text": "I am trying to learn RoR and develop a webapp. I have a few models I have thought of for this app, and they are fairly embedded. For example (please excuse my lack of RoR syntax):               Model: textbook         title:string         type:string         has_many: chapters          Model: chapter         content:text         has_one: review_section          Model: review_section         title:string         has_many: questions         has_many: answers , through :questions          Model: questions        ...          Model: answers             ...      **My question is, with the example I gave, should I start at the top model (textbook) or the bottom most (answers)?**"}
{"_id": "124729", "title": "TRS-80 Color BASIC as an inspiration for a new programming language", "text": "For a time now I have been wanting to make my own programming language. I'm 17 and the only language I know is Color BASIC. I know that compared to today's complicated languages, it's pretty weak. But I was wondering if it would be hard to create a language that is kinda like color BASIC/BASIC and how would I start it? What to do or what do I need to do to learn how to make my own programming language?"}
{"_id": "226229", "title": "Should I have unit tests for known defects?", "text": "If my code contains a known defect which should be fixed, but isn't yet, and won't be fixed for the current release, and might not be fixed in the forseeable future, should there be a failing unit test for that bug in the test suite? If I add the unit test, it will (obviously) fail, and getting used to having failing tests seems like a bad idea. On the other hand, if it is a known defect, and there is a known failing case, it seems odd to keep it out of the test suite, as it should at some point be fixed, and the test is already available."}
{"_id": "240317", "title": "Is the version problem a nightmare in programming?", "text": "Let say you are building an app and you are using the latest library verion from a third party (say `ver2.jar`). Then you saw an example written 2 years ago, but that example uses the `ver1.jar` Now in `ver1.jar`, there is `web.method1()`, but in `ver2.jar` there is no such method. Instead, in `ver2.jar` you have `web.getOtherMethod.method1();` You ran your app with `ver2.jar` and found a lot of missing classes, and lots of errors. So what are you going to do to solve the incompatibility? I think the version problem is really a nightmare because it is unstructured and you do not actually understand what is going on. Also, why changed the location of the method in `ver2.jar` so differently like that?"}
{"_id": "237734", "title": ".NET DataSource binding for legacy SQL Server DB with undefined relationships", "text": "I'm designing a utility that will load data into a legacy SQL Server Database. I've been trying to mock up a simple WinForms utility with C# using the DataSource connectors (Tried a straight ORM Entity Framework approach first, but was having problems as the db follows few conventions). I am having particular difficulty in establishing parent/child relationships and displaying them with data grids (ie, click on this row and the child grid gets filtered). Some examples of database challenges:   * No foreign keys with referential constraints. What would normally be a foreign key shows up as part of the Primary composite key in \"child\" table. Sometimes with different data types (ie, double instead of long)   * Sometimes a composite key is used on a parent table to define the entity, but only one of those composite fields shows up in a \"child\" table. `{dbo.Parent Key = [ParentID, ParentGroupID, OtherField], dbo.Child Key = [ChildID, ParentID]}`   * Naming conventions are non existent. Things like this make it difficult to bind data sets to parent/child data grids, and use some of the other out of the box functionality that .NET offers. How to address above challenges? I tried looking at some older ADO.Net tutorials but sometimes methods have changed or are no longer available..."}
{"_id": "244679", "title": "Circular dependency and object creation when attempting DDD", "text": "I have a domain where an `Organization` has `People`. **Organization Entity**               public class Organization {         private readonly List<Person> _people = new List<Person>();              public Person CreatePerson(string name) {             var person = new Person(organization, name);             _people.Add(person);             return person;         }              public IEnumerable<Person> People {             get { return _people; }         }     }      **Person Entity**               public class Person     {         public Person(Organization organization, string name) {             if (organization == null) {                 throw new ArgumentNullException(\"organization\");             }                  Organization = organization;             Name = name;         }              public Organization { get; private set; }            public Name { get; private set; }     }      The rule for this relationship is that a `Person` must belong to exactly one `Organization`. The invariants I want to guarantee are:   1. A person must have an organization     * this is enforced via the Person's constuctor   2. An organization must know of its people     * this is why the Organization has a `CreatePerson` method   3. A person must belong to only one organization     * this is why the organization's people list is not publicly mutable (ignoring the casting to List, maybe `ToEnumerable` can enforce that, not too concerned about it though) What I want out of this is that if a person is created, that the organization knows about its creation. However, the problem with the model currently is that you are able to create a person without ever adding it to the organizations collection. Here's a failing unit-test to describe my problem               [Test]     public void AnOrganizationMustKnowOfItsPeople()     {         var organization = new Organization();         var person = new Person(organization, \"Steve McQueen\");              CollectionAssert.Contains(organization.People, person);     }      What is the most idiomatic way to enforce the invariants and the circular relationship?"}
{"_id": "216768", "title": "VB6 general search form", "text": "I'm working on an old vb6/access2003 app which is used to handle orders, bills of materials and that sort of things. I'm thinking about creating a form that I call every time the users needs to search for something. This should work like these:   * Click on the field to complete, let's say name of a buyer   * Open new form, search for the client and click on it   * Return the name of the buyer to the previous form (probably the header of the order) So, I would need to pass to the new form something that identify the type of search I have to do (so what access table to open) and return some values. Is my idea correct or there something better? I would like to use only one form for all the searches, now the app works with a lot of msflexgrid for every form."}
{"_id": "124725", "title": "Developing a Configurable Pricing Program", "text": "The organization I work at has some interesting requirements when it comes to pricing for online commerce. Currently the developers write different 'pricing rules' and those rules can be applied to our items based on attributes of the items. > For Example:   >  INPUTS: [cost, sug_retail, discontinued, warehouse_qty, orderable_qty, > brand, type, days_available, shipping_rate, weight, map_protected, > map_discount]   >  MATCH: brand=x, warehouse_qty > 1, discontinued=True, map_protected=False   >  SET: retail_price = (sug_retail * 0.95), offer_price1 = (cost * 1.25 + > shipping_rate) I am looking to allow the merchandising team to have more control over the pricing and formulas - they are afterall technical enough to write excel formulas. I've been looking at writing a desktop application that uses something like numexpr http://code.google.com/p/numexpr/ or http://sympy.org/en/index.html to allow non-programmers to integrate their own logic into our pricing backend. We have multiple price-tiers we have to set, for multiple markets, so an elegant solution is needed. It's getting frustrating for the dev team to continually tweak/manage all of the pricing rules (we sell over 200 brands in 3 markets). `My question is`; does this seem like a decent approach? Can you think of a better way to parse string-mathematical-grammer? Can you think of a different way for users to provide formula's to integrate into a automated pricing system? Does anyone know of any examples of existing applications that do this? Excel, and Access are out of the question - the volume of data we manipulate has already proven the need to automate it - now we just need some visibility into that automation."}
{"_id": "254442", "title": "Is MongoDB appropriate for systems that will be likely to change?", "text": "I've been using MongoDb (mainly with Meteor) and for me, it has been a great way to mock up prototypes and proof of concepts quickly. I'm just wondering, after building the initial product, if your product is likely to grow and change, is it a good idea to stick with mongoDb? Cause it seems like with MongoDb, you need to know a lot about how you're going to use the data upfront. From my experience only, I seemed to constantly be trying to decide whether a datatype should be a document in its own right or a sub-document. Making it a document gives it flexibility, but if you have all your datatypes as documents, well then you pretty much just have an SQL database with foreign keys that have no foreign key constaints. Making it a subdocument makes things perform better whilst being convenient - you don't need to join tables (which you seem to have to do manually) - but the problem seems to be if you need to query that datatype outside the context of the parent, it's very hard. So for example, if I'm building a website with chatrooms, I might have two datatypes - chatrooms and textEntries. Chatroom will be its own document. But textEntries can either be a document in its own right or a subdocument within Chatroom. If I make TextEntries a document, then I would need to manually keep track of the relationship between chatroom and textEntries which defeats the purpose of using mongoDB at all. If I make TextEntries a subdocument, this will make things easier but what if later on, I have a new requirement where I want to search across all TextEntries in all chatrooms for a particular word? With a prototype, I know exactly what I'm building so these decisions tend to be based on just getting the product working. But longer term, I wouldn't know how or in what way I'm going to want to query the data so in light of that, would I be better off just moving to an SQL database?"}
{"_id": "139582", "title": "Which style to use for unused return parameters in a Python function call", "text": "Is there any recommended/generally accepted coding style for handling situations where a function returns a tuple of values but only one of those values is used afterwards (note that this is mostly meant for library functions I can't change -- writing a wrapper around the call is probably a bit of overkill\u2026)? Instead of doing               a, b, c = foo()      and then just not using `a` and `b`, which of the following variants should be preferred (or is there another one?): ## Variant 1 (underscore)               a, _, _ = foo()      (which is very clear and simple but might clash with `_ = gettext.gettext` used in many applications that use translation) ## Variant 2 (dummy name)               a, unused, unused = foo()      (not very appealing, I think, same goes for other names like `dummy`) ## Variant 3 (index)               a = foo()[0]      (to me the `()[0]` looks un-pythonic\u2026)"}
{"_id": "42339", "title": "controlling an object through another object?", "text": "Today I've seen the following pattern: you have an object A and an object B. Object B accepts a pointer to A at its constructor. Once B is created, there's a method B.doCalc() that performs a calculation (internally using A's information). The result is obtained with method B.getResult(). In order to perform another calculation, A is modified, and B.doCalc() is called again. What is your opinion on this choice ? I would have designed it differently, but I want to hear your voice. **Edit** : note that my main objection is to modify A to have a different result from B, without touching B. Although similar, I think that just this discipline expresses a much better feeling of what's going on. Instead of               a = new A     a.whatever = 5     b = new B(a)     b.doCalc()     res = b.getResult()     a.whatever = 6     b.doCalc()     res = b.getResult()      You get the a pointer object from b itself.               a = new A     a.whatever = 5     b = new B(a)     b.doCalc()     res = b.getResult()          a = b.getAPointer()     a.whatever = 6     b.doCalc()     res = b.getResult()      because it makes more explicit the fact that a is taken from b and then modified. I still don't like it, though... **Edit 2** : one of the reasons why B accepts A at constructor is because it has to setup internal data for the calculation. These data   * depend on the nature of A   * they must be read from the disk, which may be slow   * B may be run many times on the same A, albeit slightly modified A. The nature of these changes would not invalidate B's internal data. We don't want to re-load the info every time doCalc() is invoked, nor run the risk to run a doCalc(a) with B's internal data being inconsistent with the submitted A."}
{"_id": "140428", "title": "Is there any evidence that graphic interfaces tend to mess with SVN- and Git-repositories?", "text": "In my company I am faced with assertion that graphic interfaces for VCSs like SVN or (especially) Git tend to mess repositories - especially regarding branching. Being a passionate Windows and GUI user, I have a hard time believing this is true. For Git especially, I accept that some moves are too complex for conduction via a GUI. But what is the real background of this accusation?"}
{"_id": "139588", "title": "What are the benefits of using both Scalate and Jade?", "text": "I recently did a little \"tool roundup\": If I were to program a website in Scala and Coffeescript, what frameworks would I go for? I came across this great presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/mraible/html5-with-play-scala-coffeescript-and-jade- devoxx-2011 The only problem is that I couldn't find a complete version with commentary. Thus I'm left wondering: Why would anyone combine Scalate and Jade ? The presentation is very inspiring and refers to a lot of interesting resources. Nevertheless there's little information how they get along. I always thought both Jade and Scalate were essentially a way to dynamically generate HTML5 and in fact shared the same \"territory\". my question: What are the benefits of using both Scalate and Jade ?"}
{"_id": "238942", "title": "Is lack of whitespace a sign of a cargo cult programmer?", "text": "Eric Lippert has written about cargo cult programming, and Steve McConnell has tackled the subject from a Software Engineering point of view. Eric provides a fairly succinct description: > They understood the **form** but not the **content**. There are lots of > cargo cult programmers -- **programmers who understand what the code does, > but not how it does it**. Therefore, they cannot make meaningful changes to > the program. They tend to proceed by making random changes, testing, and > changing again until they manage to come up with something that works. This isn't to say that cargo cult programmers are _bad_ , per se, just that they approach coding differently than others. Their goal is to get things done; not understand why the code is doing something. This Programmers question discusses formatting and \"sloppy programmers\", but it's different in that it doesn't focus on whitespace and it's clear the programmers are considered bad. Much has been written on Programmers about using comments as well as the use of whitespace. The general acceptance is to use comments to explain \" _why_ not _what_ \" and to use whitespace to separate out logical constructs within the code. To borrow from traditional writing, whitespace provides paragraphs of text to read instead of facing a wall of text. It separates out key concepts. * * * I'm in the middle of re-factoring some code originally written by a cargo cult programmer, and one of the challenges I have encountered is consistent lack of whitespace to indicate context or concepts within the program. Looking over the code, it's clear to me the developer didn't understand the why or the context behind the task they were assigned. Ignoring the incorrect copy & paste issues, the code just doesn't read well because of disjointed flow amongst statements. I realize that use of whitespace is biased by the original language that someone first learns, but I can't help but wonder if \"illogical\" use of or lack of use of whitespace is an indicator of a cargo cult programmer. **My question:** \\-- Is there a correlation between not using whitespace correctly and the odds of the person being a cargo cult programmer? * * * _Addendum_ : I realize my question is subjective, but I think it falls into the good subjective category because this question is best answered with a \"why\" type answer rooted in experience and / or potentially some amount of research. Likewise, I believe there is an answer to the question, and I have focused the question on identifying if there is a correlation while avoiding any potential ranting. In my question, I am using the broader definition of cargo cult programming as defined by Eric. Cargo Cult Programmers mix and match forms because the snippet they took appears to solve the problem at hand. Yet they do not understand why the sections they copied resolve the issue. In this context, I don't see Cargo Cult Programming as attempting to imitate another person's style, but rather just trying to \"fix\" whatever the problem at hand is with whatever code they can find."}
{"_id": "42337", "title": "Visual Studio Notepad++ Sync Color Schemes", "text": "Is there an easy way to sync the color scheme/theme between visual studio 2008/2010 and notepad++? I would like to have it so that I could point visual studio and notepad++ to the same document and maintain the styles just through that."}
{"_id": "128602", "title": "How do lines of code get executed by the CPU?", "text": "I'm trying to really understand how exactly a high-level language is converted into machine code and then executed by the cpu. I understand that the code is compiled into machine code, which is the low level code that a CPU can use. If I have an assignment statement say:               x = x + 5;     y = x - 3;      Does the CPU execute each line one at a time? So it will first execute the x = x + 5; instruction and then the next instruction the CPU will execute is the y = x- 3; I'm really trying to understand the execution process and how the code I write is actually execute by the CPU."}
{"_id": "42332", "title": "Studies on code documentation productivity gains/losses", "text": "After much searching, I have failed to answer a basic question pertaining to an assumed known in the software development world: WHAT IS KNOWN: Enforcing a strict policy on adequate code documentation (be it Doxygen tags, Javadoc, or simply an abundance of comments) adds over-head to the time required to develop code. BUT: Having thorough documentation (or even an API) brings with it productivity gains (one assumes) in new and seasoned developers when they are adding features, or fixing bugs down the road. THE QUESTION: **Is the added development time required to guarantee such documentation offset by the gains in productivity down-the-road (in a strictly economical sense)?** I am looking for case studies, or answers that can bring with them objective evidence supporting the conclusions that are drawn. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "20084", "title": "What source control do i want for large project in average company?", "text": "I know git is great for open source projects. But i was wondering. For a company with 20 programmers on a 1 year project which source control is desirable? From what i heard GIT uses pulling, wouldnt it be less then desirable to need to go through someone else to get your changes in the main trunk? especially when everyone is working at the same time? Thats just of an example i wonder. I know how to use svn but even at my last job we didnt use it on our projects since everything was done in php and typically standalone 1 week projects. I just had svn for my local code and didnt need to use it with others. So what are good source controls and specifically why is it good for this?"}
{"_id": "20080", "title": "Why do many PHP Devs hate using isset() and/or any of PHP's similarly defensive functions like empty()?", "text": "Over on stackoverflow, I see this issue crop up all the time:   * E_NOTICE ?== E_DEBUG, avoiding isset() and @ with more sophisticated error_handler   * How to set PHP not to check undefind index for $_GET when E_NOTICE is on?   * How to stop PHP from logging PHP Notice errors   * How do I turn off such PHP 5.3 Notices ? Even Pekka (who offers a lot of solid PHP advice) has bumped against the dreaded `E_NOTICE` monster and hoped for a better solution than using `isset()`: isset() and empty() make code ugly Personally, I use `isset()` and `empty()` in many places to manage the flow of my applications. For example:               public function do_something($optional_parameter = NULL) {         if (!empty($optional_parameter)) {             // do optional stuff with the contents of $optional_parameter         }         // do mandatory stuff     }        Even a simple snippet like this:               if (!isset($_REQUEST['form_var'])) {         // something's missing, do something about it.     }      seems very logical to me. It doesn't look like bloat, it looks like stable code. But a lot of developers fire up their applications with `E_NOTICE`'s enabled, discover a lot of frustrating \"uninitialized array index\" notices, and then grimace at the prospect of checking for defined variables and \"littering\" their code with `isset()`. I assume other languages handle things differently. Speaking from experience, JavaScript isn't as polite as PHP. An undefined variable will typically halt the execution of the script. Also, (speaking from _inexperience_ ) I'm sure languages like C/C++ would simply refuse to compile. So, are PHP devs just lazy? (not talking about you, Pekka, I know you were refactoring an old application.) Or do other languages handle undefined variables more gracefully than requiring the programmer to first check if they are defined? (I know there are other `E_NOTICE` messages besides undefined variables, but those seem to be the ones that cause the most chagrin) **Addendum**   From the answers so far, I'm not the only one who thinks `isset()` is not code bloat. So, I'm wondering now, are there issues with programmers in other languages that echo this one? Or is this solely a PHP culture issue?"}
{"_id": "10394", "title": "Want to learn one of those NoSQL databases, looking for advice on which one to check out", "text": "As someone who first encountered relational databases and SQL at uni in the early 90's, and who has spend a goodly slice of a fifteen year career working with MS SQL Server, I'm probably a textbook example of the people who, according to NoSQL enthusiasts, \"have SQL as my hammer and see everything as a nail.\" So, to broaden my horizons, I'd like to do some sort of mess-around project using one of these NoSQL databases, as a learning experience. Question is, though, which one should I mess around with?   * MongoDB seems to be one of the best known and most respected   * Raven DB? It's getting some buzz and Hibernating Rhinos have made stuff I respect.   * CouchDB, since it's part of the Apache project?   * something else? I don't have a problem to solve, a project to complete, or a client to satisfy, so I'm not asking which might be best suited to any particular purpose. Just recommendations based on quality, potential, and perhaps most importantly, availability of good docs, guides, tutorials, screencasts, etc. Oh, C# / .NET is my field of expertise, so looking for something which fits that well, e.g. has C# examples in its documentation. Any tips?"}
{"_id": "44658", "title": "PHP ORM style of querying", "text": "Ok so I have made an ORM library for PHP. It uses syntax like so: *(assume that $business_locations is an array)*               Business::type(Business:TYPE_AUTOMOTIVE)->               size(Business::SIZE_SMALL)->               left_join(BusinessOwner::table(), BusinessOwner::business_id(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, Business::id())->               left_join(Owner::table(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, Owner::id(), BusinessOwner::owner_id())->               where(Business::location_id(), SQL::in($business_locations))->               group_by(Business::id())->               select(SQL::count(BusinessOwner::id());      Which can also be represented as:               $query = new Business();     $query->set_type(Business:TYPE_AUTOMOTIVE);     $query->set_size(Business::SIZE_SMALL);     $query->left_join(BusinessOwner::table(), BusinessOwner::business_id(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, $query->id());     $query->left_join(Owner::table(), SQL::OP_EQUALS, Owner::id(), BusinessOwner::owner_id());     $query->where(Business::location_id(), SQL::in($business_locations));     $query->group_by(Business::id());     $query->select(SQL::count(BusinessOwner::id());      This would produce a query like:               SELECT COUNT(`business_owners`.`id`)     FROM   `businesses`            LEFT JOIN `business_owners`              ON `business_owners`.`business_id` = `businesses`.`id`            LEFT JOIN `owners`              ON `owners`.`id` = `business_owners`.`owner_id`     WHERE  `businesses`.`type` = 'automotive'            AND `businesses`.`size` = 'small'            AND `businesses`.`location_id` IN ( 1, 2, 3, 4 )     GROUP  BY `businesses`.`id`        _Please keep in mind that the syntax might not be prefectly correct (I only wrote this off the top of my head)_   * Any way, what do you think of this style of querying?    * Is the first method or second better/clearer/cleaner/etc?   * What would you do to improve it?"}
{"_id": "7219", "title": "How to approach people you've found through internet with similar programming interests?", "text": "I've recently really dived into Ruby/Rails and I'm falling in love. I have a gut feeling this might be something that could last for a while. What I've been missing is interaction with people who are as passionate about Ruby, Rails and things closely related to these. I live in a relatively small city, but was able to find five local people through a RoR website. Weekly meetups with Macs, beer and bro-love rushed through my mental theater. Seriously though, I have no clue how I could approach these people. I have their e-mail addresses. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "247093", "title": "game unpublished due to copyright issue", "text": "I have made a simple batman puzzle game using some batman posters from the internet. Now there are apps on google play store and windows phone store that also feature these kind of batman pictures and they have'nt been pulled off , But my app from play store has been pulled off because of this copyright thing . How do I publish my app to play store and windows phone store without any copyright issues ?"}
{"_id": "231295", "title": "Regular Expressions and Language Generators", "text": "I have few CS textbooks with me which discuss languages, well actually 2 plus old course notes supplied a few years ago. I have been searching the web too any only seem to come up with vague responses just like the text books I have. My question is about language recognisers verses generators. I get the overriding principle of a recogniser. That it analyses a language and is able to determine nay or yay if a String belongs to a language. This is at least what I have picked up from the books and notes. However, it's much more complex than that is it not? A tokeniser and syntax analyser (which I assume to be recognisers) do not just say yes or no, they also say where don't they...? However, language generators. No one seems to be very clear about what they are. The typical description I get is For example Sebasta's Concepts of programming languages says 'A language generator is a device that can be used to generate the sentences of a language. We can think of a generator as a push button that produces a sentence of a language every time it is pressed.' Seriously? That's it?? Your kidding right.... I read that Regex is an example of a Generator, then why when people talk of generators to they not talk of the inputs. For example Regex has a target String, and the Regex with defines both the accepted alphabet and it's grammar rules. Can someone provide for me a clearer distinction of what a recogniser is?"}
{"_id": "139058", "title": "Isn't open source bad for developers themselves?", "text": "Why do programmers even like the idea of open source? I am not talking about the creators of those projects, of course they get fame, but I am talking about the industry in general, why are we so fond of the open source concept when it brings so many bad impact to the industry? First, projects like wordpress and other CMS, they take away a lot of freelance jobs where clients want a blog or a simple website. Secondly, projects like Rails and other libraries and API's, they put a lot of programmers out of work, and make the demand for programmers smaller, because now with these open source API's, one programmer can do things that 10 programmers used to do. And finally, with open source software such as Notepad++, now people just feel funny when you ask them to buy software. So, the question is, why do we still like open source if it kind of making us poor? Probably, my life as a programmer would be harder, but at least I can make a living out of it. But now, it's more like machine replacing human, funny thing is, we are creating those \"machines\" that replace ourselves. Let's say, if you invented a tool, you don't have to share it, it will still help you and your company. Even without these open source tools, other programmers will live because they still have a job that makes money."}
{"_id": "231290", "title": "Basic OOP Question for a Report", "text": "I'm in development of a sample project in Android for a friend's phone that keeps track of his sales. At first, one of the requirements was to create yearly reports of this sales data. This would be stuff like most profitable week, total per quarter, total per month, and even yearly total, as well as compares for previous years (about 10 things total). I created a class called YearlyReport that has all of these properties and they get populated from a database class that makes the appropriate SQL calls. This data is displayed on a statistics page, but after seeing this my friend asked me to give the viewer the ability to select different weeks and display weekly data too (3 bits of information: the total for the week, the best day in the week, the worst day in the week). So as they change weeks in the year, he wants to see weekly data appear above the yearly data. So now I need to do specific queries of weekly data, but display yearly data too. I feel really disorganized for some reason! At first I made a WeeklyReport object, and the database will say \"ok for a given week W, I'll fill your WeeklyReport object and return it\". Then I started wondering if I should do something smarter. Maybe combine something? Should there be inheritance? I'm missing something. Is it OK to have a WeeklyReport and YearlyReport object? Should I combine them? If I do, it's still strange because the yearly report doesn't change much unless you move to a new year (not often), but the weekly does (depending upon the date)."}
{"_id": "231292", "title": "What happens if computer crashes after giving commit command", "text": "If we are updating a field in SQL and ALTER the row also. After giving the COMMIT command, the system is crashed. What will happen to the commands given, whether it will UPDATE and ALTER the table or not?"}
{"_id": "139052", "title": "Dictionary vs List", "text": "So I ran into a `Dictionary<int, int>` today at work. This just seemed weird to me because I would have probably just used a `List<int>` instead. Is there a difference and would there be a use case where one structure would be preferred over the other?"}
{"_id": "139050", "title": "Places where I can do some voluntary software development/programming work?", "text": "I asked this question due to my lack of experience which is a major problem for me when applying for a job because all the companies require 2 to 3 years of programming experience. So I am taking this voluntary work path to gain experience and have some number or technologies on my resume to satisfy the HRs requirements. Any suggestions please?"}
{"_id": "176476", "title": "Converting lib from other language to python and Rights issue", "text": "If I take a program, and basically translate its source from some language to python, with some small changes, can I do a entirely my new lib or I have to make a \"version\" of the old one? would this be a copy of the first or a new lib based in the ideas of the first? **OBS: Consider the original lib is using Apache License v2** Not sure if well explained, but I can't see for now how to make it more clear."}
{"_id": "173483", "title": "Why is CSS3 doing animations?", "text": "Like what the title says, why are there animations in CSS3? With basis from the \"rule\" of separation of concerns, HTML is the content, CSS is the **_style_** , and JavaScript is the interactive component. And by interactivity, one can conclude that anything moving due to any interaction, user or non-user triggered should be covered by JavaScript, not CSS. So why did they make CSS3 capable of doing animations? Doesn't it breach the rule, which is separation of concerns? Is there anything I missed that makes animations qualified to be classified as styles rather than interaction?"}
{"_id": "161448", "title": "Is Embedded Engineer and Firmware Engineer the same Job?", "text": "I'm looking to steer my career of Computer Scientist a little more into robotics. I've been analyzing and junior embedded positions might be a good opportunity to start. However, searching through I've seen other similar titles. My questions are:   1. Is Embedded Engineer and Firmware Engineer pretty much the same role? Please give quick examples of each if not.    2. Which other titles/positions would allow me to get started on Robotics as a developer? I could be more specific if I had the knowledge, but for now I want to get closer to the field so anything as a developer would help greatly."}
{"_id": "237195", "title": "What should I use as a random seed in a Brainfuck?", "text": "As I understand it, most pseudo-random algorithms work by taking one or more truly random `long`s, such as the date, time, MAC-Address, serial-number, etc., passing them through a complex series of calculations, and returning the result. However, this isn't possible in Brainf*ck. The language only has 8 valid syntax characters, but I won't bother you with a full description, which can be found here. The gist is that there aren't any functions to access system time or any other number that I can think of as a seed. I can't think of where to get good seeds to put into functions. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance. _Note: feel free to edit this questions so that it applies to more languages; I just can't put my finger on the right word to use._"}
{"_id": "161446", "title": "What is a \"template\" in Perl?", "text": "I can find all sorts of weird information about templates in Perl, but nothing about what they actually are. Are they generic types like in C++? Is it a class-like structure? Or maybe something else?"}
{"_id": "161447", "title": "Are there any programming fonts with oldstyle figures?", "text": "I find that oldstyle (or text) figures are much easier to read in any context outside of simple assignment. Are there any low-ambiguity fonts, monospaced or proportional, that have text figures and other programming-friendly features, such as marked zeroes; aligned braces, operations, and other symbols; and bold and italic forms with identical width to regular? Note. Old-style figures are numerals which are drawn with variable ascent and descent. Typically, for example, a \"0\" will be slightly larger than a lowercase \"o\"; the \"6\" and \"9\" will have have circles that are sized and placed similar to a \"0\", with flags extending up and down from that.   In general, if one is trying to examine numbers as numbers (e.g. parse \"8675309\" as \"eight six seven five three oh ni-y-ine\"), the \"lining\" forms with unified ascent and descent are easier to read. On the other hand, multi- digit numbers written with old-style numerals have different shapes. If one is comparing columns of figures, a number like \"1265\" will look very different from \"1285\", since the former will have a flag on the \"6\" that sticks up far above any feature of the latter. Tabular figures are figures spaced with equal width; they may be lining or oldstyle. So all monospaced fonts have tabular figures, but most proportional fonts do not."}
{"_id": "161441", "title": "How to use the unit of work and repository patterns in a service oriented enviroment", "text": "I've created an application framework using the unit of work and repository patterns for it's data layer. Data consumer layers such as presentation depend on the data layer design. For example a CRUD abstract form has a dependency to a repository (IRepository). This architecture works like a charm in client/server environments (Ex. a WPF application and a SQL Server). But I'm looking for a good pattern to change or reuse this architecture for a service oriented environment. Of course I have some ideas: * * * **Idea 1: The \"Adapter\" design pattern** Keep the current architecture and create a new unit of work and repository implementation which can work with a service instead of the ORM. Data layer consumers are loosely coupled to the data layer so it's possible but the problem is about the unit of work; I have to create a context which tracks the objects state at the client side and sends the changes to the server side on calling the \"Commit\" (Something that I think the RIA has done for Silverlight). Here the diagram:               ----------- CLIENT----------- | ------------------ SERVER ----------------------          [ UI ] -> [ UoW/Repository ] ---> [ Web Services ] -> [ UoW/Repository ] -> [DB]      * * * **Idea 2: Add another layer** Add another layer (let say \"local services\" or \"data provider\"), then put it between the data layer (unit of work and repository) and the data consumer layers (like UI). Then I have to rewrite the consumer classes (CRUD and other classes which are dependent to IRepository) to depend on another interface. And the diagram:               ----------------- CLIENT ------------------ | ------------------- SERVER ---------------------          [ UI ] -> [ Local Services/Data Provider ] ---> [ Web Services ] -> [ UoW/Repository ] -> [DB]      * * * Please note that I have the local services layer on the current architecture but it doesn't expose the data layer functionality. In another word the UI layer can communicate with both of the data and local services layers whereas the local services layer also uses the data layer.               |    |      |                 |      |      |     |    | ---> |  Local Services | ---> |      |     | UI |      |                 |      | Data |     |    |                               |      |     |    | ----------------------------> |      |"}
{"_id": "41174", "title": "Is obtrusive JavaScript ever ok?", "text": "I was thinking that if all the users of a website are required to have JavaScript enabled, Is it ok to use obtrusive JavaScript? I'm all for progressive enhancement, but what's the point when an advanced web application bounces users at the door if they have an old browser or JavaScript disabled? We have a very slim target audience, and we can tell our target audience what browser and plugins/functionality they are required to have. So my question is, is mixing JS and HTML alright in that case? Like using onclick attributes."}
{"_id": "161443", "title": "Different ways to see a monad", "text": "While learning Haskell I have faced a lot of tutorials trying to explain what are monads and why monads are important in Haskell. Each of them used analogies so it would be easier to catch the meaning. At the end of the day, I have end up with 3 differents view of what a monad is: **View 1: Monad as a label** Sometimes I think that a monad as a label to a specific type. For example, a function of type:               myfunction :: IO Int      myfunction is a function that whenever is performed it will yield an Int value. The type of the result is not Int but IO Int. So, IO is a label of the Int value warning the user to know that the Int value is the result of a process where a IO action has been made. Consequently, this Int value has been marked as value that came from a process with IO therefore this value is \"dirty\". Your process is not pure anymore. **View 2: Monad as a private space where nasty things can happen.** In a system where all the process are pure and strict sometimes you need to have side-effects. So, a monad is just a little space that is allow to you for doing nasty side-effects. In this space your are allow to escape the pure world, go the impure, make your process and then come back with a value. **View 3: Monad as in category theory** This is the view that I don't fully understand. A monad is just a functor to the same category or a sub-category. For example, you have the Int values and as a subcategory IO Int, that are the Int values generated after a IO process. **Are these views correct? Which is more accurate?**"}
{"_id": "40884", "title": "Learn Linux System Programming by doing projects", "text": "I have only a very basic idea about linux system programming. I have not done any real projects using linux system programming. In my current company i do system admin type work. but i am more interested in Linux System Programming. I want to do some projects on my own, so that i could put those projects in my resume when i apply for joining another companies. Kindly tell me the whether there is any projects where i could learn more linux system programming by doing some real programming stuff. Please Note that i only have experience in C programming and not in Linux System Programming. But i know very basic things in linux system programming. Thanks"}
{"_id": "121778", "title": "Is duck typing a subset of polymorphism", "text": "From Polymorphism on WIkipedia > In computer science, polymorphism is a programming language feature that > allows values of different data types to be handled using a uniform > interface. From duck typing on Wikipedia > In computer programming with object-oriented programming languages, duck > typing is a style of dynamic typing in which an object's current set of > methods and properties determines the valid semantics, rather than its > inheritance from a particular class or implementation of a specific > interface. My interpretation is that based on duck typing, the objects methods/properties determine the valid semantics. Meaning that the objects current shape determines the interface it upholds. From polymorphism you can say a function is polymorphic if it accepts multiple different data types as long as they uphold an interface. So if a function can duck type, it can accept multiple different data types and operate on them as long as those data types have the correct methods/properties and thus uphold the interface. (Usage of the term interface is meant not as a code construct but more as a descriptive, documenting construct)   * What is the correct relationship between ducktyping and polymorphism ?   * If a language can duck type, does it mean it can do polymorphism ?"}
{"_id": "247323", "title": "Is SQL Server Sevice Broker appropriate for transfering large volumns of records from one database to another", "text": "I have a database that collects and process large volumes of records However due to the legacy nature of the system im working with (and the powers that be) i need to transfer (processed) records to a different database instance (with some small field modifications along the way) The options i have identified are as follows   * I could set up a schedule task with a stored proc to transfer the records with any logic needed   * The company i work for is insisting i dump records to a file and ftp them and the use some existing logic to poll and insert   * SQL Service broker which seems to have built in fault tolerance, and has facilities to do this actual task Im just wondering what some potential pitfalls of sql service broker might be and is it the right technology for the job Anyone have any suggestions"}
{"_id": "247325", "title": "Object pointer with privileged access?", "text": "Let's say you have   * class Car with Car->tune() and Car->drive()   * class CarDriver   * class CarMechanic Each CarDriver and CarMechanic object has a reference/pointer to a Car object. The CarDriver object will call $this->car->drive(), the CarMechanic object will call $this->car->tune(). The question is, how can I prevent a CarDriver from calling $car->tune() ? There are probably two approaches:   1. Language level: Using access modifiers like public/private/protected, and then either abuse inheritance or use more exotic language features like a C++ \"friend class\".   2. Composition: Split the car into a CarFrontend and CarBackend, or create a DriverCarWrapper, which exposes only the drive() method.   This seems like a good idea, but it will likely introduce clutter and code duplication, which might outweigh the benefits of access control. Especially if there are many methods that should be accessible to the car driver. Are there any other solutions that I missed? Background: My real-world use case is in PHP, but I am asking this as a cross- language question."}
{"_id": "211944", "title": "Encapsulate standard C functions?", "text": "While studying the C programming language and learning safe practices, I'm inclined to write a layer of functionality over several parts of the standard library. This would serve two purposes: I could use standard parts of the language in ways that feel more familiar or rational to me, and I could easily replace that functionality with my own, if I needed to. I could benefit from this, but should I do it? As an example, we can consider memory management. If I've written malloc() into the constructors of each of my objects, then decide that I need to handle memory allocation on my own, I have to edit the constructor associated with every object. By referencing my own function, I can change the contents of that function without writing a new constructors. It seems obvious that I should do this, but I'm used to Python. I'm extremely comfortable in that environment and have no problem linking to any part of the standard library from any part of my program because I know I will almost certainly leave that relationship untouched for the life of the project. The situation I'm running into with C feels like I'm trying to hide the language from myself. Will writing a layer of functionality over the C standard library help me in learning the language and developing a codebase, or will it stifle my understanding going forward?"}
{"_id": "211943", "title": "Is there more to being a programmer than what I'm being exposed to?", "text": "I've been working as a programmer for almost 3 years now. Goes without saying that this is the first job that I got as a programmer after graduating from college. Anyways, I went for an interview at another company feeling that I need to move on (2-3 yrs is about the norm for a programmer right?) and in the interview I started wondering... They asked me whether I had any experience in web services, I didn't. And they asked me a whole bunch of other server-side related experience and frankly I didn't know what they were talking about nor do I remember what they went on about. What I do at my current company is this: We have a few databases, I then write the code for the front end program (Vaadin) and the code to then connect to the databases and do all the necessary CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) functionality. And that's pretty much it... So what I'm wondering is, is this what the average developer does? Or is there more to it than what I'm doing? There's no way for me to know since this is my first developer job after all."}
{"_id": "255718", "title": "Java Graphics 2D rotation problem?", "text": "I have been trying to program a game lately, wherein I drew a rectangle onto the screen using ImageIcon. Later I realised, anything drawn on the screen there after rotates along with the image drawn previously along with it in the same axis. Can anyone tell me why? And what am i missing? Thank you."}
{"_id": "255719", "title": "Testing strategy for games", "text": "I've inherited a web-based educational game. Over the past year I've worked towards stabilizing the code and adding new features. Most of the logic is in the front-end, so back-end unit tests, while helpful, cover a small percent of the code. The game has gotten to the point where it's starting to get complex. There are two different modes for each game and the game behaves differently depending on the mode. There are also various flags that affect game play. I've been an application developer for 10+ years now and this perplexes me. In the enterprise world, an algorithm always functions the same way. I'll write a unit test for an algorithm, I'll expect the value 42 and it'll error if I don't get that value. When it comes to games, I'm lost. How do I test them? I have testers available to me. I can spend time writing unit tests. Testers are ... unreliable. They aren't the best at rooting out issues and I haven't given them the best direction. Short of spending a ton of time every release cycle testing every permutation and combination of the game, how should I use them as a resource? Unit tests seem limited. Since most of the logic is javascript (and I inherited spaghetti code), I can use a front-end suite like Cucumber or selenium to ensure certain features are working. Is that the best strategy? How do game companies test games? I have read the question \"Test Driven Development for Complex Games\" (among others on the site), but it doesn't address what I'm looking for. I'm asking for strategies, not specific examples of how to test."}
{"_id": "236751", "title": "How to avoid churn when you are defining a schema while others are trying to program against it", "text": "I'm in charge of defining an XML schema for some data; the plan is to have various systems (all under our control) upload XML files that match this schema to a central server for processing. I don't have much knowledge of the design of these other systems, so I'm working collaboratively with those system experts to make this XML schema reasonable to both consume (on our side) and produce (on their side). The schema is not entirely clear-cut, and I'm defining the data we want to collect at the same time as defining the schema. There are a million ways to do it so there's a definite \"do something, think about it, talk to so-and-so, refactor, repeat\" process in place. All of that said, we have an unfortunate situation where myself and a few others are defining things and a few other developers are implementing it. I'd like to write some code but haven't found the time. This leads to the frustrating cycle whereby the design changes in the ivory tower and then the guys writing the code have to go and change it again and again. Avoiding details for various reasons, the developers writing the implementation aren't in a position to effectively define the requirements of the schema and the data we must collect. Should I be the one writing and playing with this stuff as I figure out how it should be done? This would be ideal to me, but we're under pressure to get things done and it's quicker to have a few people working on it rather than just me. Do we have too many cooks in the kitchen with the XML file providers influencing the schema? Ease of XML file creation should be a consideration of the schema, right? Is there a better way to solve this problem, or is churn a necessary evil when you're trying to fly the plane as you build it? **What is the correct development process to apply here which will minimize wasted time?**"}
{"_id": "255714", "title": "Ambiguous If-else nested block in C without braces", "text": "Consider the following code in C:                   if(34)               if(0)                   printf(\"Stat1\");         else             printf(\"Stat2\");      Here,the first **if** condition is true,while the second **if** condition is false.So I assumed,that control should **NOT** pass over to the _else_ block,as there are no parentheses enclosing both the 2nd **if** and _else_ statements together. But when I compiled it in GCC compiler,the output was : **_Stat2_**   This means that the code compiled in a similar fashion as the following code:                     if(34)           {             if(0)                   printf(\"Stat1\");             else                 printf(\"Stat2\");         }        I am unable to understand why the compiler treats both the above pieces of code in the same way.Please explain.Thanks. PS-Please ignore the indentation,I wrote it that way to show my line of thought about how the code should run."}
{"_id": "255712", "title": "Website that suggests latest browser upgrade from same vendor", "text": "I want the user to upgrade to the latest browser, however, I feel like it's wrong to act as an evangelist (also I love Firefox). I know about browsehappy.com but what I'm looking at is a website that suggests upgrade to the same vendor's latest browser. Poor opera is second-last in that list. Is there a website that suggests only the latest opera version to opera users? PS: I also am not a fan of web-kit monopoly. I think subliminally a browser that appears earlier in the list is likely to be perceived better. But please no flame wars here!"}
{"_id": "119218", "title": "Best design for a memory resident tool", "text": "I apologize if this tends more toward design that programming, but here goes. What design would you recommend for a database that is   1. Memory resident   2. Must run on windows, linux and (at a stretch) the mac   3. Accept multiple queries simultaneously   4. Have minimum overhead, since a search is expected to take <0.25s This program implements a domain-specific search. Think of it as a database, but one that takes advantage of domain specific information to outperform a convential database search (for example, with custom oracle indexing). We have a custom data structure for our data. Our protoype is a simple exe that constructs the database in memory each time it is run. We were thinking that perhaps this program would suffice, but augmented with sockets so it can listen for queries. This database will be static. Its contents will change infrequently. We expect queries, and the solution, to be delivered via a web service."}
{"_id": "119219", "title": "What is the market share of programs written in .NET nowadays?", "text": "We are currently migrating our Visual Basic 6.0 program to .NET. The target audience are just normal desktop users at home. Discussing this, we realized that we cannot come up with mainstream programs that seem to be written in .NET. Are we mistaken? Is there a good reason for this?"}
{"_id": "123739", "title": "How to improve my algorithm for analyzing twitters messages from users?", "text": "Hello I think I have a nice idea to implement for human kind goodness. I call it FixTheUnFixed. The idea goes like this, imagine you are driving or traveling all over the world and when you see some obstacle or damage - broken light, trash covering the street or any other problem you would like the responsible authority to fix it. All you have to do is twit it, maybe add a photo, and of course provide the location using the inherit location service of twitter or Facebook.                    @FixTheUnFixed there is broken fire hydrant here          @FixTheUnFixed my cellular company charged me 18,572$            for using my iPhone aboard.      I thought a lot about how to process the messages. The most frequent issues that will come up are municipality concerns and I would like them to receive that location either by a retwit or an email. My two ideas for getting this address are by googling it (with google API) or just make a regular query mentioned in this pseudo Algorithm:                      1. get the location from the Twitter or Facebook status that was sent from.            2. look for key words such as trash, cats, animals etc.            3. find the relevant authority e-mail, twitter or Facebook account.            4. send the message to the authority account and retwit it to the public               world so they can follow if there is any cahnge.      In the third step, is there any smart way to implement it? I didn't find any good way to do this! I don't want to spam the authorities or publish spam of sneaky people.   * How can I improve the algorithm?   * How can I search for the communication resources of the relevant authorities? Thanks originally asked here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8393424/how-to- improve-my-algorithm-for-analyzing-twitters-messages-from-users"}
{"_id": "80811", "title": "How can I estimate the value of an open-source project?", "text": "I am trying to generate a metric for a company cost savings goal. To do this, I want to estimate the savings we realized by using an open source web application rather than building it from scratch or buying a COTS solution. One step in the process is to estimate how much it would have cost us to develop the application ourselves. Unfortunately, I'm at a loss for a really simple way to do this without going through a full estimation process. Since I have the source code, I would think there should be some heuristic that could give me a very rough estimate of developer hours needed to write it. Unfortunately, my web searches on the topic mostly turn up articles and opinions on how lines of code are not a good indicator of productivity or quality. My best solution so far is to pick a number of lines a developer could write in a day and work out the number of developer hours from there. If I go with that method, I would like to have some (preferably research based) evidence to back up my claim of developer productivity. The one thing I have going for me is that to generate my final metric, all I really need is a lower bound on the developer hours or cost of the project. The higher the estimate, the better my metric will be, but I would rather the estimation technique be unassailable than have a high number. Is there a better way to estimate the value of an open-source project?"}
{"_id": "142075", "title": "creative & complex vs simple and readable", "text": "Which is a better option?   It's not always that when you have something creative your code is going to look ugly.   But at times it does go a bit ugly.   e.g.               if ( (object1(0)==object2(0) &&          (object1(1)==object2(1) &&          (object1(2)==object2(2) &&          (object1(3)==object2(3) )         retval = true;     else         retval = false;      is simple and readable               bool retValue = (object1(0)==object2(0)) &&                      (object1(1)==object2(1)) &&                      (object1(2)==object2(2)) &&                      (object1(3)==object2(3));      but having something like this will make some newbies scratch their heads. So what do I go for? including simple code everywhere might sometime hamper my performance.   What I could think of was commenting wherever necessary but at times you get too curious to know what is actually happening."}
{"_id": "1763", "title": "Generous budget: what's your ideal setup?", "text": "If you had a generous, but not ridiculous budget (ie no yachts!), describe your ideal setup for programming. What hardware would you have? Desktop and a laptop or just one or the other? How many screens - two, three, four, more? Private office, work from home, cubicle? What operating system(s) would you be using? What tools would you have - IDE, other tools, databases, VCS, documentation? What local development and test servers and other services would you want - VCS server? Build server? database server?"}
{"_id": "252159", "title": "Is Lambda Still Supported In Python?", "text": "Only one or two years ago, I remember reading Python constructs that would be removed from Python -- reduce was one of them -- and other constructs that would be emphasized like comprehensions and generators. I saw a very nice description of how Python could be made more functional here, and I was wondering on which list lambda appeared, supported or soon-not-to-be supported."}
{"_id": "252156", "title": "What is this boolean law?", "text": "A friend of mine has shown sometime ago the name of the below boolean technique/law but I forget that name unfortunately. Does someone know what it's called? example in C language:               !(a || b)      It's a short to:               !a && !b"}
{"_id": "253263", "title": "Origin of letter \"X\" for close icon", "text": "Who exactly presented the idea that letter \"X\" should be used for closing/exiting a window or an application? According to Medium.com, > The first appearance of [x] in GUI design was likely the **Atari TOS** , > possibly influenced by the Japanese **batsu** and **maru** conventions. > Thanks to a last minute design change in **Windows 95** , and the mass > adoption of Windows worldwide, [x] has become the standard symbol for > \u2018close\u2019, a symbol that dominates web, app and software design today. It is stating that letter \"x\" for closing/exiting a app originated around 1995 but according to my senior, letter \"x\" for exit was used first in 1980's in **wordstar 4** on CP/M OS. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aDnDY.png)"}
{"_id": "162937", "title": "What do I need to learn to decide on rename/recompile source package names because of company rebranding?", "text": "My company is currently at a rebranding process and the brand names have been used in the sources' package names but these names are only visible to developers who maintain this code so nobody from project management is really interested in changing them considering also that it would imply the recompiling of several old components. What factors do I need to consider when deciding on a change like that? I don't know if I should worry about legal issues or not and if so, how to address this with project management. * * * More background details. I have all the sources and dependencies but since the company rebranding, other development areas have adopted some of the code that needs package name-changing so I cannot take the decision only by myself so I don't make everyone else's code to crash with my core components and I cannot change other areas' code without the permission of those areas' users so yes, my concern is more political than technical. I am going try to coordinate the involved it areas to make the change anyway, since it seems to be the best approach.      Unfortunatelly in my company there's no continuous integration build server so we build our code manually on demand and to get something to production I have to justify the change (even just the package name changing) to QA with an user requirement and some other bureaucratic documentation so that's why I was hesitating the change in first place."}
{"_id": "145446", "title": "How not to degenerate into only a programmer who stitches together APIs?", "text": "This one I heard when I was recently interviewing a person and asked him why he was looking for a change within an year of joining his previous company. Particularly a company which is known to be in the business of processing high volume transactions, 100s of 1000s of orders flowing through the system every minute etc., etc. (you know what sells, so lets cut it) What the candidate told me was interesting -- he had joined originally hoping to be able to get into the lower layers of the system, understanding the secret sauce that binds a high volume reliable system etc. What he ended up doing was using a lot of tools - open source and commercial, and was in the business of just glueing it all together, which never gave him any understanding of the real deal. There were tight work deadlines too, so he couldn't really get into the hang of at least the open source stuff either. I had to agree here. But tell me then, how would you prevent yourself from degenerating into an API stitching kind of a programmer in this specific situation? Are there any signs in the job interview process itself that signal you of this degeneration?"}
{"_id": "229865", "title": "How can I determine the level of talent a prospective programmer has?", "text": "I have a friend who asked me whether I can be her mentor as a programmer. I had to tutor several junior programmers in the past so I have experience working with / tutoring people on different skill levels. This is the first time however when there was no **pre-filtering** and the future programmer is an **absolute beginner**. Is there a method that has a chance to work in order to tell someone's innate talent level?"}
{"_id": "28352", "title": "Abstract classes in package structure", "text": "I have an abstract class that will have many implementors. There are, of course, many places to put abstract classes in a Java package structure. Should the abstract class be in the same package as the implementors, or should it be in an \"abstract package\" package, or somewhere else? Please explain why you would place it there - I'm looking for design discussion, not just what I should do in this particular case."}
{"_id": "28351", "title": "Skillset improvement in coming new year", "text": "Here is a little background information.   1. I have been working for Java 10 years.   2. The product I am working on went to live about 3 years ago. Now, the product is getting stable.   3. After all the post-product drama, I gained a lot of knowledge about Oracle & SQL. People(mainly management) were desperated enough to give me deep oracle-related task over DBAs. I admit I considered becoming DBA but eventually decided to remain as a programmer.   4. DBAs & Management are demanding all the DB & Query related task back to DBA, which makes me a bit sad.  **In short, I anticipate a lot of time next year**. What would you do to improve your skillset?? I am thinking to upgrade my Java version(Not from experience though, we are using JDK1.5) to 1.6 getting certificate. Any good idea from fellow developers?? \\-----------Edit --------------------- How about data modeling for application? Do you guys think it is developer role??"}
{"_id": "8710", "title": "What reasons do you have/give for using an MP3 player/iPod while programming?", "text": "At my last job, as a Project Manager, I argued (unsuccessfully) for the Developers to be able to use MP3 players while they were working. Unfortunately, the culture in that company was such that many of the so-called business people could not cope with the concept that some people would be able to use their music players, whilst others (e.g. Call Centre staff) could not. The company I worked at before that (as a Software Development Manager) were open to Developers using their iPods, and I found them more productive because of it - albeit they weren't allowed to plug in their iPods to their PCs for security and copyright reasons. So to help me in my next job, if I come across this situation again, how would you successfully put the rationale behind allowing MP3 players?"}
{"_id": "179993", "title": "Is the addition of a duration to a date-time defined in ISO 8601?", "text": "I've writing a date-time library, and need to implement the addition of a duration to a date-time. If I add a 1 month duration: `P1M` to the 31st March 2012: `2012-03-31`, does the standard define what the result is? Because the resulting date (31st April) does not exist, there are at least two options:   * Fall back to the last day of the resulting month. This is the approach currently taken by the ThreeTen API, the (alpha) reference implementation of JSR-310:               ZonedDateTime date = ZonedDateTime.parse(\"2012-03-31T00:00:00Z\");     Period duration = Period.parse(\"P1M\");     System.out.println(date.plus(duration).toString());          // 2012-04-30T00:00Z        * Carry the extra day to the next month. This is the approach taken by the DateTime class in PHP:               $date = new DateTime('2012-03-31T00:00:00Z');     $duration = new DateInterval('P1M');     echo $date->add($duration)->format('c');          // 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00      I'm surprised that two date-time libraries contradict on this point, so I'm wondering whether the standard defines the result of this operation?"}
{"_id": "164195", "title": "Can I assume interface oriented programming as a good object oriented programming?", "text": "I have been programming for decades but I have not been used to object oriented programming. But for recenet years, I had a great opportunity to learn OOP, its principles, and a lot of patterns that are great. Since I've learned OOP, I tried to apply them to a couple of projects and found those projects successful. Unfortunately I didn't follow extreme programming that suggests writing test first, mainly because their time frame were tight. What I did for those projects were   1. Identify all necessary classes and create them with proper properties and methods   2. whenever there is dependency between classes, write interface between them   3. see if there is any patterns for certain relationships between classes to replace By successful, I meant that it was quick development effort, the classes can be reused better, and flexible enough so that another programmer does not have to change something else to fix another part. But I wonder if this is a good practice. Of course, I know I need to put writing unit tests first in my work process. But other than that, is there any problem with this approach - creating lots of interfaces - in long term?"}
{"_id": "94957", "title": "What are some best practices for populating and using a test database?", "text": "So, I'm developing some database-driven RESTful Java web services, using Hibernate and MySQL. For testing purposes, I'm using the H2 in-memory database. H2 is nice and fast, so this has worked out really well. The only problem is that populating the DB tables prior to my tests is sort of tedious. I basically create and persist a bunch of objects by hand. I'm wondering if maybe I'm going down the wrong road. Please tell me, what are the best practices for doing what I'm trying to do? Any tools that could help me? Any general strategies or tips?"}
{"_id": "164190", "title": "Does NaCl mean the death of Internet Explorer?", "text": "From the wikipedia - > Google Native Client (NaCl) is a sandboxing technology for running a subset > of Intel x86 or ARM native code using software-based fault isolation. It is > proposed for safely running native code from a web browser, **allowing web- > based applications to run at near-native speeds**. (Emphasis mine) (Source) Compiled C++ code running in a browser? Are other companies working on a similar offering? What would it mean for the browser landscape?"}
{"_id": "114277", "title": "What's new in Windows 8 for desktop apps?", "text": "I see all kinds of demonstrations about Build of the new features in Windows 8 for Metro apps, but not much for Desktop applications. Is there anything new for desktop-style apps; or has nothing changed?"}
{"_id": "110796", "title": "What are some good tasks to assign co-op students/interns?", "text": "My company is investigating hiring a University Computer Science co-op student (BSc year 3) for a 4- or 8-month work term. (I'm not sure how internationally- recognized the term co-op is - it's essentially a paid internship, after which the student returns to their studies.) My team develops a web application in ASP.NET and handheld thick clients on iOS, BlackBerry, and Android. For any of you that have brought interns into an experienced development team, what kind of tasks did you find for them to do? I realize that's a hard question to ask since any answer can be quite specific to an individual business. I'd expect the following:   * Tasks that require mentoring but not babysitting   * Tasks that will take a few weeks to finish (so the mentor can remain productive)   * Tasks that expand the student's understanding of software development I've considered things like expanding code coverage in our unit tests, or developing a feature that's been designed, or improving/writing missing requirements documentation from features that were added without any supporting documentation. I never did an internship so I don't know what sort of tasks are valuable to both the student and the company. Any recommendations? Edit: These are all excellent and thoughtful answers that have helped me a great deal. Thank you all very much. I can only choose one answer, so I'll go along with the crowd and accept the most popular one."}
{"_id": "110797", "title": "Why is PHP so frequently used on web servers?", "text": "My web server uses PHP as do 76.9% of web servers according to W3Techs: http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all The reason I use PHP is an inertia born out of seeing everyone else using it on web servers. What is it about PHP that would make it so ubiquitous on web servers? (Note that this question is similar to the following question but takes it in a different direction: Why isn't Java used for modern web application development?)"}
{"_id": "50884", "title": "How do Programmers in the East see programmers in the West?", "text": "The other half of this question: How do programmers in the west see the programmers in the east? I think it's just as interesting and important to see how programmers in the east view programmers in the west. * * * The eastern part of the world (India/China/Philippines ) is often seen as mainly providing outsourcing services to the western world (USA and Europe). Do you have the experience of working as part of an offshore team? If yes, how was it? Do you hold any generalized ideas or opinions about the programmers from the West (e.g. Are they cooperative, do they deliver on time or do they do quality work?)"}
{"_id": "50887", "title": "Recommended requirements when outsourcing xhtml/css site building?", "text": "I'm considering outsourcing a part of our web application development project for freelancers, namely the site building part. What I mean by site building is the process of creating the xhtml/css template files, with dummy content, from a psd file (or any other graphical layout file). The resulting xhtml/css files will be used by our developers as templates for cms based page rendering. The cms in this case is Drupal, but that might not be of much relevance. I'm looking for a good set of requirements, that   1. will result in good quality xhtml/css code, complying with today's standards   2. leaves little to the freelancer developer's imagination in terms of what I need I'm thinking about requirements like:   * Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional document type, validated by validator.w3.org   * Identical rendering in all modern browsers (FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE7-8) and also in IE6   * All opening and closing block-level elements should be properly commented, referencing the functional part of the user interface they belong to (menu, toolbar, content, etc)   * No inline CSS definitions And so on. How would you organize a list like that? What requirements would you add? Edit: started bounty. I'd like to have a clear set of requirements that will save me some troubles."}
{"_id": "250194", "title": "Should I use session or cache to keep the time it last polled when polling to server at intervals?", "text": "I'm building a web chat app using session to keep the time the app last polled so that the server can determine whether messages exist between the current polling time and last polling time. It works well however, there are few instances whereby the messages sent from client A is not received by client B or the same message is produced twice on client B. Of course, the messages are not lost, always stored in the db after they are sent. I'm wondering, is this related to my usage of session storage whereby the last and current polling time of both clients are **always different** (due to session data not being accessible by other user/client)? Or should I change to cache storage so that the last and current polling time of both clients to the server are **always the same**? p.s. I'm using Apache server and MySQL though with AJAX setTimeout() function to poll the server at regular intervals."}
{"_id": "160473", "title": "What is the best way to use inheritance with ORMs?", "text": "If I have a People table and those people can be at different addresses, and each address can have more than one person, thats a many-to-many relationship. So, using ORMs like Entity Framework and Django, I've got the hang of doing that. But my problem is that there are different types of people, like employees and customers and other clients that all have these fields also. This would leave me with a top level class called Person which has a many-to- many relationship with Address and then these other classes (Customers, etc.) that inherit from person. I read that there are different types of inheritance, so what would be the best approach?"}
{"_id": "190954", "title": "What is the maximum value of index of an ArrayList?", "text": "I was thinking about it. You may have access to endless memory (one computer with lot of RAM) so that you can keep on adding more and more elements to your ArrayList. But, I think that you can only access elements BY INDEX up to a certain value of index. The maximum size of this index could be = maximum number your computer can represent, that is long 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 in Java. I know that you can access the NEXT element using an iterator. But, how do i access elements after the (9,223,372,036,854,775,807)TH index, using an index number ?"}
{"_id": "160475", "title": "Tools for modelling data and workflows using structured text files", "text": "Consider a case when I want to try some idea of an application. But I want to avoid investing a lot of effort in coding UI/work flows/database schema etc before I see that it's going to be useful to me (as example of potential user). My idea is stay lightweight and put all the data in text files. So the components could be following:   1. Domain objects are represented by text files or their fragments   2. Domain objects are grouped by their type using directories   3. Structure the files using some both human- and machine-friendly format, e.g. YAML   4. Use some smart text editor (e.g. vim, emacs, rubymine) to edit and navigate those files   5. Use color schemes and macros/custom commands of the text editor to effectively manipulate those files   6. Use scripts (or a lightweight web framework like Sinatra) to try some business logic ideas on top of the data model The question is: **Are there tools or toolkits that support or can be adopted to this approach?** Also any **ideas, links to articles/other knowledge sources** are very welcome. And more specific question: _What is the simplest way to index and update index of files with YAML files_?"}
{"_id": "66976", "title": "How important would a statistics course be to a software developer?", "text": "How important would a statistics course be to a software developer? More specifically given the description: > 2510 Statistics for Physical Science Students (F) & (W) examines elements of > probability, conditional probability, Bayes' Theorem, discrete random > variables, cumulative distribution function, introduction to continuous > random variables, mathematical expectation, estimation of mean, proportion > and variance, hypothesis testing for one-sample case I'm trying to find out whether I have room to add more CS courses. This course (STAT 2510) is not required, but is \"recommended\"."}
{"_id": "184249", "title": "Best Traversing Strategy / Logic Help Needed", "text": "**Background:** Here is the scenario, imagine I have a little Robot. I give this robot a Map, and I want him to traverse the map, after doing so, I want the Robot to tell me the shortest possible path on the map. So here is an example of a Map: ![Robot Map](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Rs5kd.jpg) **Difficulties:** The Robot is given the Map in the form of a HashMap. For the above map it will be something like this:               A > B, E     B > A, C, E     C > B, E     D > E     E > A, B, C, D, F     F > E      So node [ A ] has neighbours [ B ] and [ E ] and so on. The Robot can only know the neighbours of the node it is currently at. So only when at node [ A ] will the Robot know that the neighbours of [ A ] are [ B ] and [ E ]. The Robot has no way of knowing what neighbours [ B ] has unless it is at [ B ], once there, the Robot can call the **getNeighbouringNodes() method** to find out the neighbours (Returned to Robot as a List). **Current Thinking:** At the moment my logic for getting the shortest path from Start to Exit is as follows: Essentially, it is a breadth first traversal. Once at the start node [ A ], I get the list of neighbouring nodes, then visit first neighbour in the list [ B ]. Once at [ B ] I call the **isThisAnExitNode() method** to check that [ B ] is an exit node, if yes, write my short path, and exist the map. If no, I go back to node [ A ] and grab the next neighbour of [ A ] which is [ E ]. Do same with [ E ], now if no Exit node was found, I move onto [ B ] to explore its neighbours. I think you get the idea. My question is, am I doing it right? Is there a better, more efficient way than my method of traversal? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You."}
{"_id": "207497", "title": "How to display in compositional relationship that the item knows about the container?", "text": "I'm drawing a class diagram and noticed that sometimes I got a relationship (composition or aggregation) where the item uses the container, and sometimes not. **What is the visual difference in a composition where the item class uses the container class vs where the item class doesn't know about the container class?**"}
{"_id": "207495", "title": "how to pluralize 'special' terms e.g. class names", "text": "Quite often I find myself referring in text to objects which have strict naming conventions e.g. Java objects, processes, services. I find myself in a dilemma over how to pluralize these names. It seems wrong to pollute the meaningful name by adding an 's' - or worse, a plural that modifies the rest of the name like SomethingUtility -> SomethingUtilities. What if someone does a text search looking for the name? Or cuts and pastes from my comment to search through a log file? I have sometimes resorted to an ungrammatical apostrophe, but this can confuse plural with ownership. Is there any better solution?"}
{"_id": "96087", "title": "When developing a plugin or a standalone software app can I include in its name the name of the host application?", "text": "I am making a commercial software product and I want to publish it soon. In my product title can I have words like Photoshop, Visual Studio, Delphi, etc? For example, a full name would be something like: \"My product for Photoshop ver 123\" or \"My Product for Delphi 123\"."}
{"_id": "96089", "title": "How to guide stakeholder(s) not to get far from the scrum vision?", "text": "Consider this scenario: Stakeholder(s): Let's build a web application to manage user's financial data. Scrum team: Ok, let's do it. . . . **After 3 sprints** Stakeholder(s): Let's also implement a mailing system, so that when user's financial status is not good, (s)he would be warned. Scrum team: Ok, it's not that hard. We'll do it. . . . **After 5 sprints** Stakholder(s): Let's become a mailing provider. Here, how should scrum team guide stakeholder to stay inside the scope of scrum vision? Maybe a more fundamental question is, should the at all? **Update:** Of course there is a product owner. But by scrum team I meant PO, SM, and Team."}
{"_id": "253404", "title": "Storing a WCF endpoint in the registry - worried about security", "text": "I am storing my wcf endpoint in the registry, and using that whenever my app starts up to instantiate a wcf derived object. The user can change the endpoint location, to another server, and the registry gets updated. I am worried about security... lets say a malicious user updates my registry key that is set, and this will cause the client app to make a connection to who knows where... What are the best practices involved here, for what I am doing?"}
{"_id": "253406", "title": "Crowd movements with Python", "text": "I've done a program in order to calculate the time required to evacuate a room. The program takes in arguments the number of people (N), the dimensions of the room (L,l), and the location of the exit door. People are represented by 1, and free places by 0. At each step, people can move of one square. There is a counter which counts the number of steps. However, sometimes I get a number of steps which is less than the number of people. And normally, maximum one person can go out by step. Where is the mistake ? Thank you.               def evacuation(N,L,l,iporte,jporte):      a=np.zeros((L,l),dtype=int)           Z=np.sum(a)                           for h in range(N):         ir=rd.randint(0,L)         jr=rd.randint(0,l)         while (a[ir,jr]==1):             ir=rd.randint(0,L)             jr=rd.randint(0,l)         a[ir,jr]=1     A=0     for i in range(L):         for j in range(l):             if a[i,j]==1:                 A=A+1     count=0     run=True     while run:                     #print (a)                     count=count+1                     a[iporte,jporte]=0                     for i in range(L):                         for j in range(l):                             if a[i,j]==1:                                 d=np.ones(4)*10000                                 if i >=0 and i +1 <= L and j >=0 and j+1 <= l:                                                              if i >0 and a[i-1,j]==0:                                         d[0]=np.sqrt((i-1-iporte)**2+(j-jporte )**2)                                     if i <L-1 and a[i+1,j]==0:                                         d [1]= np.sqrt((i+1-iporte )**2+(j-jporte )**2)                                     if j >0 and a[i,j-1]==0:                                         d [2]= np.sqrt((i-iporte)**2+(j-1-jporte)**2)                                     if j <l-1 and a[i,j+1]==0:                                         d [3]= np.sqrt((i-iporte )**2+(j+1-jporte)**2)                                 dmin=min(d)                                 kmin=[]                                 for k in range(4):                                     if d[k]==dmin:                                         kmin.append(k)                                 if len(kmin)==2:                                     b=rd.randint(0,2)                                     if b==0:                                         kmin=kmin[0]                                     if b==1:                                         kmin=kmin[1]                                 else:                                     kmin=kmin[0]                                 if kmin==0 and i>0 and a[i-1,j]!=2:                                     a[i-1,j]=3                                     a[i,j]=0                                 if kmin==1 and i<L-1 and a[i+1,j]!=2:                                     a[i+1,j]=3                                     a[i,j]=0                                 if kmin==2 and j>0 and a[i,j-1]!=2:                                     a[i,j-1]=3                                     a[i,j]=0                                 if kmin==3 and j<l-1 and a[i,j+1]!=2:                                     a[i,j+1]=3                                     a[i,j]=0                             if a[i,j]==2:                                 a[i,j]=2                             if a[i,j]==0:                                 a[i,j]=0                     for i in range(L):                         for j in range(l):                             if a[i,j]==3:                                 a[i,j]=1                     m=0                     for i in range(L):                         for j in range(l):                             m=m+a[i,j]                     if m==Z:                         run=False     return count"}
{"_id": "253400", "title": "Why are these seemingly unnecessary merges happening in git?", "text": "Consider this screenshot from our development repository: ![Branching](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SXGpq.png) We are relatively new to git, so things are still somewhat confusing. The question at hand: If you take a look at the commits by me at the very top; are confusing to us. Why do I need to merge something if I didn't even branch anything? I commited the `adjust buildpath` commit, and after that, git immediately made me do a merge. but with what? The `invitation` branch is not interesting for me, and I never touched it in any way. Where did this `anonymous` blue branch come from and why? My colleague (blue avatar) only works in the `invitation` branch currently. Can someone explain to me why this is happening in git-layman terms (as I said, we are new to this)?"}
{"_id": "253402", "title": "Best Practices For Temporary Scripts (Python)", "text": "I am running two separate programs which are similar enough that they share a lot of code. I run these programs often and after I evaluate the output. This is a very fluid process and everytime is different from the last time. Currently I write a script named something like: \"temp_evaluate_program_A\" and then I will copy it to \"temp_evaluate_program_B\" and change a few lines, along with writing a lot of code on the fly. Often the code isn't very readable and only parts of it will ever be reused. This seems suboptimal as I get a lot of duplication. What do other people do in these fluid situations where there is scope for sharing code between these related programs and reusing the code over time but the scope is limited."}
{"_id": "213513", "title": "Best Way to Handle dynamic infograph with javascript?", "text": "I've currently been assigned a project to create the following with javascript, you can view the final product here: http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg583/leetpete1994/Infografic- TrafficSources_zpsf50dfa6d.png It's basically my job to take the provided PDF and create a way to dynamically display the data that the image conveys. The data itself is going to be calculated elsewhere, so all I have to worry about is accepting the values for each beaker, and filling them appropriately. My idea right now: Right now my idea is using the canvas. I've created a beaker class, and then made the 5 beakers an instance of the class. This works pretty well, and I'm sitting with a canvas that has 5 empty beakers in the correct place. I've divided each beaker by 100, then I can fill each one correctly the amount of pixels needed to be whatever percent it happens to be, but this is where I run into issues. Each beaker is a different shape, and as each one gets filled the shape changes. Therefore, I'm having a difficult time trying to actually draw in the liquid in the beakers. Secondly, if I do manage to draw the liquid in correctly, it's going to cover details of the beaker. If I did liquid first then beakers it would be the opposite problem. So, is there a better way to go about doing this, or to easily draw the odd shapes onto the canvas? I'm beginning to think using the canvas is not going to be the best way. I know I could just make several images for each at different liquid levels, but I want to avoid using that many images in the final product."}
{"_id": "213516", "title": "How should developers go about managing complex plural words with ActiveRecord?", "text": "I'm playing with `pluralize` at the command line, and it's beginning to scare me. Multiples of _leaf_ is _leafs_ (not _leaves_ ) Multiples of _cactus_ is _cactus_ \\- not _cacti_ , or even _cactuses_. _Radius_ becomes _radius_ instead of _radii_ Yet it correctly gets _women_ , _octopi_ , _knives_ , and _errata_ (the finer things in life). As I understand it, ActiveRecord uses the same pluralize method that I'm using. And from my tests, it seems that if made enough tables without thinking, you would eventually run into a problem where you couldn't locate the proper table because you were expecting the plural to be different. Is the conventional recommendation to just test all plurals in the command line, and make a note of what the table will be called? Or do most developers just label something as `uncountable` when it gets fuzzy? Side note- no `ActiveRecord` tag??"}
{"_id": "25046", "title": "Is recursion an instance of being \"too clever\" when programming?", "text": "I've read several books and learned through experience that optimizing code to the point where it is inscrutable, or coming up with an extremely fast but extremely complex solution to a problem is not desirable when working in teams, or even when you're working by yourself and have to understand your clever solution some time later. My question is, should recursion be treated in the same manner? Does the average programmer understand recursion easily and thus one should use it with impunity, or does the average programmer not understand recursion very well and one should stay away from it for the sake of overall team productivity? I know there are simple answers of, \"Any programmer who doesn't understand recursion isn't worth a grain of salt, so don't worry about them\" but I was wondering if you all had some real world experience you would like to share that would illuminate the issue more than the opinion I just mentioned."}
{"_id": "166131", "title": "Collaboration between client, web designer, and web developer", "text": "I am primarily a Web Developer (back end programming) - but intend to offer a complete service to my clients, from concept, to brand design, photoshop mock- ups and everything else in between. I'm aware that it's a good idea to outsource this design aspect of the project to someone that I trust. My question is more about the process: I imagine that in order for the designer to really grasp what the client wants to create, they would need some sort of interaction. Therefore, does anyone know if it is common to bring both parties into a 3 way discussion? Or is it more common to get all of the info from the client, and then pass it onto the designer, and act as a back and forth middleman? Afterall, I am the designer's client. Any insight into this would be great"}
{"_id": "166133", "title": "What is use of universal character names in identifiers in C++", "text": "The C++ standard (I noticed it in the new one, but it did already exist in C++03) specifies universal character names, written as `\\uNNNN` and `\\UNNNNNNNN` and representing the characters with unicode codepoints `NNNN`/`NNNNNNNN`. This is useful with string literals, especially since explicitly UTF-8, UTF-16 and UCS-4 string literals are also defined. However, the universal character literals are also allowed in identifiers. What is the motivation behind that? The syntax is obviously totally unreadable, the identifiers may be mangled for the linker and it's not like there was any standard function to retrieve symbols by name anyway. So why would anybody actually use an identifier with universal character literals in it? Edit: Since it actually existed in C++03 already, additional question would be whether you actually saw a code that used it?"}
{"_id": "166135", "title": "How can I add the version of a file to the file name with Tortoise-SVN?", "text": "I would like to start giving unique names to \"cache-able\" files - i.e. *.css and *.js - in order to prevent caching, without requiring changes to the web- server settings (as is currently done in IIS). For instance, let's I have a JavaScript file called `global.js`. Going forward I would like it to have the name `global.123.js` when revision 123 is checked in. This would also require the following:   * The previous version of the file - perhaps it was `global.115.js` \\- is removed when the file is deployed.   * All references to the file are updated with the new file name How do I go about doing this? What concerns do I need to consider?"}
{"_id": "166137", "title": "What Design Pattern is separating transform converters", "text": "For converting a **Java object model** into **XML** I am using the following design: For **different types** of objects (e.g. primitive types, collections, null, etc.) I define each its own **converter** , which acts appropriate with respect to the given type. This way it can easily extended without adding code to a huge if-else-then construct. The converters are chosen by a method which tests whether the object is **convertable** at all and by using a priority ordering. The priority ordering is important so let's say a `List` is not converted by the POJO converter, even though it is convertable as such it would be more appropriate to use the collection converter. **What design pattern is that?** I can only think of a similarity to the command pattern."}
{"_id": "193565", "title": "Changing the license in a fork from GPL to GPL compatible?", "text": "I have forked a project that was released under the GPL and made substantial modifications, however there are still some parts and general ideas that are the same as upstream. Due to user interest I am wondering how, if at all, I can relicense the project. Another developer and I have attempted to reach the upstream dev multiple times but he has never responded. Since there hasn't been updates in several years I'm considering the upstream project abandoned and looking at other options. GNU lists Apache and Modified BSD as GPL compatible, which are 2 licenses that come up often and are less \"viral\" than the GPL. Since they are compatible can I Just relicense my project with either of those licenses? If I am unable to do that, are there any options I have to change the license? It's important because there are several users who have software that is incompatible with the GPL, and therefore makes it impossible for them to adopt the project. I'm trying to avoid simply rewriting everything, which is hard since there's only a handful of good (or correct) ways to accomplish the project goals and I'd end up splitting hairs on what constitutes \"derivative\" code."}
{"_id": "206726", "title": "Is this a good measure of PHP script usage of the system?", "text": "I've been trying to see a way to get a measure of how much a PHP script costs of memory to the server. Well, I've found some solutions out there that requires some software to make tests and even require to install something on the server. Those solutions are not what I'm looking for, as I just want a simple measure of the consumption. My try was to do the following:               <?php          $initialMem = memory_get_usage();          /* Script comes here */          $finalMem = memory_get_usage();          echo ($finalMem - $initialMem)/1024 . \" Kbytes\";     ?>      Where I divided by 1024 to convert from bytes to kilobytes. The idea was that the function memory_get_usage() gets the amount of memory allocated for the execution of the script and so I thought that taking the difference would be a good measure of the usage. Is this correct? Is the difference between those values a good measure of the usage of memory by the script? If not, how can I get a good measure of this usage without having to install anything on the server?"}
{"_id": "56103", "title": "MVP Pattern Philsophical Question - Security Checking in UI", "text": "I have a philosophical question about the MVP pattern: I have a component that checks whether a user has access to a certain privilege. This privilege turns on or off certain UI features. For instance, suppose you have a UI grid, and for each row that gets bound, I do a security check to see if certain features in the grid should be enabled or disabled. There are two ways to do this: have the UI/view call the component's method, determine if it has access, and enable/disable or show/hide. The other is have the view fire an event to the presenter, have the presenter do the check and return the access back down to the view through the model or through the event arg. As per the MVP pattern, which component should security checks fit into, the presenter or the view? Since the view is using it to determine its accessibility, it seems more fitting in the view, but it is doing database checks and all inside this business component, and there is business logic there, so I can see the reverse argument too. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "191336", "title": "What should a test method test?", "text": "Suppose we're unit testing a class with xUnit-like framework - so a test class is created for class-under-test. Now, how much should be tested by individual test methods? Should there be one-to-one mapping between methods-under-test and test methods:               class TestMath {              testSqrt() {             assertEquals(Math.sqrt(4), 2);                  assertException(Math.sqrt(-2));         }     }      Or is it better to have one test method per \"scenario\":               class TestMath {              testSqrtOfPositiveNum() {             assertEquals(Math.sqrt(4), 2);         }              testSqrtOfNegativeNum() {             assertException(Math.sqrt(-2));         }     }      Which is better and what are pros and cons of both methods?"}
{"_id": "194126", "title": "What does \"if w in [1..5, 8, 11]\" mean in pseudo code?", "text": "In some pseudocode, I saw the following:               if w in [1..5,8,11]      Does it mean that if w is from 1 to 5 or 8 or 11? Or is it something else?"}
{"_id": "194125", "title": "In what way is JavaScript (ECMAScript) similar to Self and Scheme", "text": "When looking at the ECMAScript 4th Edition specification here it mentions that > ES3 is a simple, highly dynamic, object-based language that takes its major > ideas from the languages Self and Scheme. I'm not familiar with these two languages and cannot seem to find any mention of what exactly is similar to these languages in ECMAScript. Would someone be able to explain to me the features that ECMAScript has taken from these languages?"}
{"_id": "57271", "title": "What are the best resources for learning TDD?", "text": "I want to learn (and master) TDD. What are the best:   * books   * websites   * videos    * list of exercises   * personal words of wisdom for learning, appreciating, and using TDD?"}
{"_id": "51829", "title": "What attracts software developers such as yourselves to choose to program for the Android mobile platform?", "text": "Dear programmers, as part of my final year university project, I am conducting research into what makes programmers prefer to program for Android as opposed to other mobile operating systems. The description does not need to be detailed however, I am trying to find patterns between programmers to determine what properties (other than money) a software company such as Android must have in order to attract programmers and therefore grow."}
{"_id": "198819", "title": "Are there any Clojure libraries for p2p?", "text": "I'm a web developer, but lately I have been learning Clojure and now I'm interested in creating a p2p application. And since Clojure is a general purpose language, I guess I can just use that. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "65690", "title": "SOLID vs. Avoiding Premature Abstraction", "text": "I understand what SOLID is supposed to accomplish and use it regularly in situations where modularity is important and its goals are clearly useful. However, two things prevent me from applying it consistently across my codebase:   * I want to avoid premature abstraction. In my experience drawing abstraction lines without concrete use cases (the kind that exist now or in the _foreseeable_ future) leads to them being drawn in the wrong places. When I try to modify such code, the abstraction lines get in the way rather than helping. Therefore, I tend to err on the side of not drawing any abstraction lines until I have a good idea of where they would be useful.   * I find it hard to justify increasing modularity for its own sake if it makes my code more verbose, harder to understand, etc. and doesn't eliminate any duplication. I find simple, tightly coupled procedural or God object code is sometimes easier to understand than very well-factored ravioli code because the flow is simple and linear. It's also much easier to write. On the other hand, this mindset often leads to God objects. I generally refactor these conservatively, adding clear abstraction lines only when I see clear patterns emerging. What, if anything, is wrong with God objects and tightly coupled code if you don't clearly need more modularity, don't have significant duplication and the code is readable? EDIT: As far as individual SOLID principles, I meant to emphasize that Liskov Substitution is IMHO a formalization of common sense and should be applied everywhere, since abstractions make no sense if it isn't. Also, every class should have a single responsibility at some level of abstraction, though it may be a very high level with the implementation details all crammed into one huge 2,000 line class. Basically, your abstractions should make sense where you choose to abstract. The principles I question in cases where modularity isn't clearly useful are open-closed, interface segregation and especially dependency inversion, since these are about modularity, not just having abstractions make sense."}
{"_id": "198810", "title": "Dependent Object Serialization", "text": "What's the recommended way to serialize dependent objects, especially when objects are being freshly constructed (to avoid malicious byte streams, or whatever)? For example.... After creating a (genericized, but setup through Spring for my company) fiscal calendar based on JodaTime, I'm creating the next version based on JSR310 (using the back-port for development) in preparation for Java 8. Currently, I'm working through serialization; how am I supposed to serialize dependent objects? Most of the existing stuff has a 'single' chronology, but I don't get to rely on that (for instance, the fiscal year can start on any day during the ISO year, which means a new FiscalChronology). Something like this:               public class FiscalDate implements Serializable {         private final long epochDays;         private final FiscalChronology chronology;              // Many of the other 'date' instances also have a reference to their 'era':         private final transient FiscalEra era;     }          public class FiscalChronology implements Serializable {         // These two control year/month patterns.         private final YearPattern yearPattern;         private final MonthPattern monthPattern;         // This should be derived during deserialization, for safety reasons.         private transient final FiscalEra[] eras;              private Object readResolve() {             return FiscalChronology.create(yearPattern, monthPattern);         }     }      What do I do for the 'derived' era?               public class FiscalEra implements Serializable {         // So that eras can be singletons, per JSR310 documentation/recommendations.         private static final ConcurrentHashMap<FiscalChronology, FiscalEra[]>;              private final int eraValue;         private final FiscalChronology chronology;              public static FiscalEra of(FiscalChronology chronology, int era) {             return putIfAbsent(chronology, makeEras(chronology))[era];         }     }      Should I just remove serialization? Only serialize `eraValue` (and rely on the serialization graph including the Chronology on its own)? * * * # EDIT: Related to this, what am I supposed to do for the output of `toString()` \\- should it just be the name of the era (which I'm linking to the ISO eras), and expect people to include chronology information if it's important, or always include information about the chronology?"}
{"_id": "198816", "title": "Should I keep using the normal mysql_query or switch to PDO interface in php?", "text": "I'm building a big website, and using the normal old `mysql_query` method for transactions and communications with the database, and everything i going fine, including security. I'm a little bit confused, should I switch to the new PDO interface? cause I learnt that's safer, or keep using the old `mysql_query()` and `mysql_fetch_assoc()` methods? I'm very close to completing the website, and to switch to the `PDO` interface will cost me time, to start updating my codes. I'm a little confused, **which should I use and what are the pros and cons?**"}
{"_id": "149260", "title": "Difference between a CMS and a Web Development Framework", "text": "The web world is flooded with CMSes. Some tout their CMS as Web Development Framework. Some say it as Content Management Solution and nowadays i m hearing Content Management Framerowk. When we hear \"Framework\", it sort of sounds like more complex and sophisticated. Is there any specific difference between these two i.e. CMS and Web Development Framework? Or Is it that a Web Development Framework can be a CMS and vice versa? Thanks"}
{"_id": "193791", "title": "Idiomatic Javascript code architecture", "text": "I am writing a node.js application which I am breaking down into modules, the issue is I am not sure how to organise my code in an idiomatic Javascript way. Currently each of my modules exposes a set of functions that are intended to be called directly. All state is modified by the module with the gameId being the first parameter :               //snip         var gameId = gameModule.createGame();         // Return the gameId down to a remote client         client.send(gameId);     }     // When a remote client wants to add a player         gameModule.addPlayer(gameId, \"Player 1\");     }      An alternative approach would be to actually use objects e.g. :               //snip     var game = new gameModule.Game();     // Return the gameId down to a remote client     client.send(game.getId());     }     //snip     // When a remote client wants to add a player     var gameToModify = gameModule.getGame(gameId);     gameToModify.addPlayer(\"Player 1\");     gameModule.saveGame(gameToModify);      My question is to any Javascript programmers (or regular ones) is which of the two above alternatives looks easiest to work with / most natural?"}
{"_id": "120414", "title": "Inspiring problems to show off the importance of regular expressions?", "text": "I am planning to give a presentation/demonstration on regular expressions at work to encourage young developers to add this powerful and important tool in their toolbox. Just teaching syntax doesn't cut it. I often see people say nice. After the presentation, they get on with their programming lives without ever thinking of using it mostly. I am raking my grey matter to come up with some solid examples, not just problems that matches 'cat' and 'cut'. I missed to note down the occasions of my regex enlightenments to use here. :^( Do you have some inspiring problems to share that could be solved with regex? Update: Wow! I didn't expect so many wonderful answers. Thank you. For now, I will mark @tdammers' answer as accepted. Bring those regex memories keep coming :-)"}
{"_id": "37619", "title": "Multi-lingual error messages and error numbers", "text": "So we're looking at the possibility of porting our software to support multiple languages and one of the areas we're going to have to deal with is error messages and other notifications. These obviously have to be reported to the users in their own language. Our team (largely) only speak English and even if we were all multi-lingual we're looking at selling to a wide range of countries and could never expect to have a reasonable number of people speaking all languages (we're a small company). The obvious way to get round the language issue when errors or other messages we may get asked about which are being reported is error numbers which would be consistent across language. While these are going to exist in the backend (if only as key on the error message), I'd really rather not throw them at users if we don't have to but I don't have any other solution. Anyone have any useful suggestions for alternatives?"}
{"_id": "120410", "title": "Are there any language agnostic unit testing frameworks?", "text": "I have always been skeptical of rewriting working code - porting code is no exception to this. However, with the advent of TDD and automated testing it is much more reasonable to rewrite and refactor code. Does anyone know if there is a TDD tool that can be used for porting old code? Ideally you could do the following:   1. Write up language agnostic unit tests for the old code that pass (or fail if you find bugs!).   2. Run unit tests on your other code base that fail.   3. Write code in your new language that passes the tests without looking at the old code. The alternative would be to split step 1 into \"Write up unit tests in language 1\" and \"Port unit tests to language 2\", which significantly increases effort required and is difficult to justify if the old code base is going to stop being maintained after the port (that is, you don't get the benefit of continuous integration on this code base). EDIT: It's worth noting this question on StackOverflow."}
{"_id": "250177", "title": "Do development standards vary by city?", "text": "I'm a .Net C# developer who got most of my experience working for a government office in DC. There, it was relatively easy to find a job. I would put my resume out, and in no more than a month I would have an offer. I now live in Seattle, and a 2-month job search full of in-person interviews returns the same output: \"We like your personal skills and you're a good team fit, but your coding is not up to par with our standards.\" I have 2 theories as to why this might be: 1) Most development jobs in DC are for support of low-level administrative applications. Just so long as 20-30 people can use it without problems, it's a good product. However, most development in Seattle is done for real companies who develop real products used by a wide array of customers... and HAS to be up to tighter development standards. 2) (This one is probably more obvious) I'm searching for jobs that match what I made in DC. Since the cost of living is lower here, that means I'm setting my bar to a more Senior level, which is working against me. Does this at all make sense to anyone else? Does anyone else find this kind of variance between being a developer in contrasting areas? ...or am I just trippin'? lol"}
{"_id": "250173", "title": "Is there a standard for naming the parts of a file path?", "text": "For example:               /path/to/file.zip     # absolute path     /path/to/             # path     file.zip              # file name      I can't seem to find a standard on naming the parts of a path anywhere..."}
{"_id": "152993", "title": "Is 100% code coverage a pipe dream?", "text": "Is it feasible to expect 100% code coverage in heavy jquery/backbonejs web applications? Is it reasonable to fail a sprint due to 100% coverage not being met when actual code coverage hovers around 92%-95% in javascript/jquery?"}
{"_id": "152997", "title": "Truly useful UML diagrams", "text": "UML has a _jungle_ of Diagrams.   Profile Diagrams, Class Diagrams, Package Diagrams... ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8tmN9.jpg) However, (IMH-and-not-too-experienced-O) I quite see that doing each and every diagram is overkill. Therefore, which UML Diagrams are more suitable in a web context, more expecificly a blog (we want to build it from scratchs). I understand that just because I used UML Diagrams does not imply that our code would be great and brilliant... but, it certainly would be better than just unplanified code..."}
{"_id": "9503", "title": "How do you approach learning a framework?", "text": "When you need to learn a framework, what steps do you take to learning it? Do you have a specific methodology to learning a framework?"}
{"_id": "9506", "title": "Did anyone else get a deeper understanding about pointers when learning linked lists?", "text": "I'm a student at the University and I'm taking the Data Structures class. When learning linked lists and doubly linked lists, did you guys feel you learned a deeper understanding of pointers, dynamic memory allocation, and memory usage? I just created my first linked list(it was actually a doubly linked list) and it seemed to me like a real eye opener. Your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "221941", "title": "Selecting the (right?) application design", "text": "While working to build software products for early stage startups, I have seen two very common schools of thought that define an approach to application design. Those 2 paradigms typically include designing an application predicated on an \"extendible codebase\u201d or a \"throw away codebase\". What factors should one consider/measure to identify their approach to application design? What are alternatively ways to think about application design? Some factors suggested to date include:   * the amount of time available to build the product.    * the total amount of budget available.    * the level of quality."}
{"_id": "49098", "title": "I'm tasked with leading the documentation effort for an existing, entirely undocumented, software product - what resources are there to help me?", "text": "I'm a software developer at a technology company. I have been tasked with leading the documentation effort for the product I work on. The goal is to produce documentation internal to developer, and the project spills over into the business side, where it covers requirements documentation. This project is challenging. Specifically, I'm dealing with a product which: \\- has been around for a long time, at least 6 years. \\- has no form of documentation other than some small, outdated pieces here and there. \\- has comments in the code, but they are technical and do not convey any over- arching behavior (even on technical side). \\- as a consequence of having little to no documentation, is often unnecessarily complex under the covers In addition, we have not been given a lot of time to work on this project. I do not have any formal documentation or writing background, training, or experience. I have displayed some ability in writing/communication around the office, which may be why I was assigned to this project. Please share your advice or recommendation for resources to help me prepare and deal with this project. I'm looking for references to books/website/forums/whatever, to help me come up with the design of a plan with milestones, learn about best practices, task delegation, templates, buy- in, etc. I'm hoping specifically for resources targeting or giving special mention of introducing good documentation to **existing, undocumented, projects**."}
{"_id": "150624", "title": "Bug fixing appproach", "text": "I have been working on a project comprising of databases, and I recently received a bug report for the remote execution of some queries. Usually, you try to find out the actual cause for the bug to occur and then fix it.   But sometimes what I do when I'm fed up of doing some research (and can't find suitable information on the internet) is just change the logic, which takes me much less time compared to the other option. Is this approach correct, or should I try to fix the original bug involving more R&D?"}
{"_id": "43140", "title": "Using JSTestdriver to test UI/DOM?", "text": "Can JSTestDriver be used to test DOM behaviors and interactions? I see I can write tests to exercise pure JS but how do I go about testing against HTML or DOM? Can I deliver with each test HTML for browsers to render and the tests to run against?"}
{"_id": "199149", "title": "Is this a valid example of a dangling pointer?", "text": "The book \"Data Structures in C\" (Horowitz and Sahni) suggests that in the following code the pointer pf is behaving as a dangling reference:               float f,*pf;     pf=(float*) malloc(sizeof(float));     *pf=2.6;     pf=(float*) malloc(sizeof(float));      The reasoning they give is that after the last line there is no way to retrieve the storage in which 2.6 was stored. However, wikipedia defines a dangling pointer as               Dangling pointers and wild pointers in computer programming are pointers that do not point to a valid object of the appropriate type      In the code above pf does not satisfy that definition - it points to a valid object of appropriate type. Is pf a dangling pointer, or something else?"}
{"_id": "81775", "title": "Do customers/clients care about MVC or web forms?", "text": "I have a plan to start a small business soon. It is going to be a type of freelancing to build websites and applications using ASP.NET. I want to focus on one thing Web forms or MVC. However, I have no idea if that has any importance to the client. I mean do the clients know about MVC or web forms? Do they prefer one of them?"}
{"_id": "2516", "title": "What is the hardest bug to find?", "text": "If possible write how to avoid this kind of bug (besides testing, of course, please write a specific technique)"}
{"_id": "167262", "title": "Is the creator of a piece of software bound by the license he gives it?", "text": "For example, if a person creates an application that they open-source under a license that says you can use this code but you cannot sell it, has that person just bound himself to not selling it now as well?"}
{"_id": "167263", "title": "How to implement child-parent aggregation link in C++?", "text": "Suppose that I have   * three classes `P`, `C1`, `C2`,   * composition (strong aggregation) relations between `P <>- C1` and `P <>- C2`, i.e. every instance of `P` contains an instance of `C1` and an instance of `C2`, which are destroyed when the parent `P` instance is destroyed.   * an association relation between instances of `C1` and `C2` (not necessarily between children of the same `P`). To implement this, in C++ I normally   * define three classes `P`, `C1`, `C2`,   * define two member variables of `P` of type `boost::shared_ptr<C1>`, `boost::shared_ptr<C2>`, and initialize them with newly created objects in `P`'s constructor,   * implement the relation between `C1` and `C2` using a `boost::weak_ptr<C2>` member variable in `C1` and a `boost::weak_ptr<C1>` member variable in `C2` that can be set later via appropriate methods, when the relation is established. Now, I also would like to have a link from each `C1` and `C2` object to its `P` parent object. What is a good way to implement this? My current idea is to use a simple **constant** raw pointer (`P * const`) that is set from the constructor of `P` (which, in turn, calls the constructors of `C1` and `C2`), i.e. something like:               class C1     {       public:         C1(P * const p, ...)         : paren(p)         {         ...         }            private:         P * const parent;         ...     };          class P     {       public:         P(...)         : childC1(new C1(this, ...))         ...         {             ...         }            private:         boost::shared_ptr<C1> childC1;         ...     };      Honestly I see no risk in using a **private constant** raw pointer in this way but I know that raw pointers are often frowned upon in C++ so I was wondering if there is an alternative solution."}
{"_id": "167260", "title": "Why would an employer ask for a 'long' code sample?", "text": "What would a large project that spanned multiple files and >1000 lines show to an employer that a few individual files and a couple hundred lines couldn't capture?"}
{"_id": "49326", "title": "Is an 'if password == XXXXXXX' enough for minimum security?", "text": "If I create a login for an app that has middle to low security risk (in other words, its not a banking app or anything), is it acceptable for me to verify a password entered by the user by just saying something like:               if(enteredPassword == verifiedPassword)          SendToRestrictedArea();     else          DisplayPasswordUnknownMessage();      It seems to easy to be effective, but I certainly would not mind if that was all that was required. Is a simple check on username/password combo enough? **Update:** The particular project happens to be a web service, the verification is entirely server side, and it is not open-source. Does the domain change how you would deal with this?"}
{"_id": "46517", "title": "Why are marketing employees, product managers, etc. deserving of their own office, yet programmers are jammed in a room as many as possible?", "text": "I don't understand why many (many) companies treat software developers like they are assembly line workers making widgets. Joel Spolsky has a great example of the problems this creates: > With programmers, it's especially hard. Productivity depends on being able > to juggle a lot of little details in short term memory all at once. Any kind > of interruption can cause these details to come crashing down. When you > resume work, you can't remember any of the details (like local variable > names you were using, or where you were up to in implementing that search > algorithm) and you have to keep looking these things up, which slows you > down a lot until you get back up to speed. > > Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that > if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away > 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff > and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal- > fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the > strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could > ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since he's sitting right next to Jeff, he > asks Jeff. Jeff gets distracted and loses 15 minutes of productivity (to > save Mutt 15 seconds). > > Now let's move them into separate offices with walls and doors. Now when > Mutt can't remember the name of that function, he could look it up, which > still takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which now takes 45 seconds and > involves standing up (not an easy task given the average physical fitness of > programmers!). So he looks it up. So now Mutt loses 30 seconds of > productivity, but we save 15 minutes for Jeff. Ahhh! Quote Link More Spolsky on Offices Why don't managers and owner's see this?"}
{"_id": "152669", "title": "How can I avoid concurrent access in PostgreSQL?", "text": "I would like to have your opinion, how I can handle the case when PDO engine and Hibernate engine \"talk\" to the same db? There is a PHP application as frontend, and a Java doing some job after user through PHP says so. So can we avoid concurrent access to same records? And not have problems? The database is PostgreSQL."}
{"_id": "46511", "title": "Question between aggregations, compositions, references (arrow) and simple link (nothing) relations within UML2?", "text": "I have some questions regarding relations between aggregations, compositions, references (arrow) and simple link (nothing) relations within UML2 ?   1. If A -> B -> C each have composition relationship. Are the root responsable of creation and destruction of the object B and C ?   2. What aggregations have that the simple link or references doesn't ? What make them different ? Thanks. Edit: The question was a bit unclear and not objective. I edited it."}
{"_id": "52967", "title": "Architectural Composition Languages", "text": "Recently stumbled upon this paper (PDF) talking about ACLs, or Architectural Composition Languages. They're a fusion of two earlier lines of research: Architectural Definition Languages (such as UML) and Object Composition Languages (such as XAML, WWF, or scripting languages). The goal of an ACL is to have a high-level description of a program's architecture which can also be compiled into a runnable program. The high- level description assists automated analysis, while the 'executability' means changes can be tested immediately. You would still author the components of the program in a conventional programming language (C, Java, Python, etc), but they would be _composed_ into a complete program by the ACL. One of the expected benefits is that a program can be ported to a different platform by swapping in \"similar but different\" components. I've been hankering for something like this for a long time (see this answer I gave on a StackOverflow question a few years ago). The paper mentions that the researchers were working on a language called ACL/1 that initially targeted Java, but would be ported to support .Net as well. However, I can't find any more mention of ACL/1 anywhere. Has there been any more work done on this? Are there any other implementations of the ACL concept that are available for use or experimentation?"}
{"_id": "47558", "title": "How can programming ability be used to help people in poverty?", "text": "As a student studying Computer Science in college, I often hear from friends working on various humanitarian projects, and I want to do something myself. But it seems that programmers don't have as many obvious avenues to help out as, say, doctors or teachers. What are some ways in which programmers can put their talent to use for people in poverty?"}
{"_id": "46512", "title": "In what order do people build websites?", "text": "For a website, you need to have an idea, you need to have a design and you need to have data, events and output, right? Whether it be a blog, web app, Q&A site, search engine... Anyway, that is only slightly related to my question. My question is, when designing a website, providing I know the purpose, what should I start with? Should I start with the CSS, design and look&feel using dummy data first, or should I program in the logic, events and output, and style it later? What is the design process of most websites that are built from the ground up?"}
{"_id": "152662", "title": "Is there a point to writing in C or C++ instead of C# without knowing specifically what would make a program faster?", "text": "I wrote a small library in Python for handling the xbox 360's STFS files to be used on my web applications. I would like to rewrite it for use in the many desktop programs people are writing for 360 game modding, but I'm not quite if I should continue using C# or delve into C++ or even C. STFS is an in-file file system used by the xbox 360 and the job of the library would be extracting/injecting files, which could take noticeable amounts of time to do. What I know in C# comes from internet tutorials and resources, as would anything I learn about C++, so what I'm asking is if it's better to bring myself to a slightly lower-level language without knowing beforehand the features of the language that increase performance, or continue assuming that compiler optimizations and that my lack of experience will mean that the language I choose won't matter."}
{"_id": "157013", "title": "Good examples for teaching software estimation (size, schedule, effort)?", "text": "I'm going to be teaching a class that covers a broad brush of estimation techniques. I intend to cover absolute estimation techniques based on SLOC (e.g. Function Points, COCOMO II etc.) and relativistic ones like T-shirt sizing, story-point estimation etc. I was wondering what would be some good exercises to conduct in class to help understand the what, why and how of estimation. I hope to pique their interest with actual hands-on examples rather than _death by powerpoint_. An example that was suggested by a colleague of mine was to bring a newspaper to class and ask them to estimate the number of words in the paper (for short papers or just a page for long ones). Since they can't absolutely count it, they'll be forced to come up with their own heuristics and they to take the lecture from there to help them gain insights into their own _estimation technique_. Although a good example, it doesn't seem to link well with software estimation IMHO. I was wondering what would be some good examples for teaching software estimation w.r.t. size, schedule and effort estimations that they'll encounter in practice. I prefer practical examples that I can actually 'conduct in class' rather than 'just talk about it'. **UPDATE** : To throw some more light on the structure of the class - Yes, I'll be covering the aspects of granularity i.e. at the RFP stage what's the best one could do. How can the estimate be refined when more is known about the problem (e.g. FPs after prototyping is done) and how story-points can be useful once you have a list of stories to go by Or how COCOMO like models based on SLOC count can be applied post architecture/design. I.e. narrowing the cone of uncertainty as you progress towards completion of the project. My aim is to elicit examples that the student teams can practice in class to get a better feel for the techniques and understand its ease of use (or difficulty) and the level of accuracy that can be obtained at that level of granularity and knowledge. **PS** : If you are downvoting, I'd appreciate a comment highlighting the same. This is not a subjective question and rather non-trivial to teach in a hands-on manner and does have the possibility of selecting the 'best answer'"}
{"_id": "68113", "title": "Where can I get the code I write on my own for practice evaluated?", "text": "I am a fresher. My job is not very demanding of me when it comes to exercising my programming prowess. So, I have started to write code on my own (a simple space invasion program, chat application, etc). I will be completing some of these in a few weeks, but what i am worried about is how I shall get my code evaluated/criticised . I am new and they say it takes years to become a good programmer, so obviously I am making mistakes. But who can tell me what mistakes I am making? The amount of code that I write at my company and gets checked or revised by senior developers is too small to make any significant impact on my career. Please help."}
{"_id": "98844", "title": "Is a module allowed to make implicit assumptions?", "text": "I use .Net and C#. I have the following code in some module:               DateTime validFrom = Convert.ToDateTime(validFromTxt.Text);      This makes (in my opinion) the implicit assumptions   * that there is text in validFromTxt.Text   * that it is possible to convert this into type DateTime. My question is, may the module make these implicit assumptions (due to \"knowledge\" of context of the page) or would it be better to check them before the command?"}
{"_id": "98845", "title": "How can a server side language span many servers?", "text": "I would like to ask you as experts about PHP, ASP.NET/C#, Python or any other server side language. How do they span multiple servers? When I see a big website and look how many dedicated servers it uses, at least it uses 10 servers. I sit and think how the langauge that was used in building this site span these servers? Is there something in the language itself or its architecture that make it able to go with this **and is there some language that are better than others regarding this?** **Edit:** But I see many ASP.NET and PHP powered sites that are on many servers, in this case how can the same programmed site be on server 1, on server 2, etc. Does **Server 1** contain some functionality for example and **Server 2** contain others? Or do they just progrm the site and the hosting company makes balance between these servers?"}
{"_id": "22819", "title": "Correct alignment when outcommenting code", "text": "Suppose I have some code               void some_block(void)     {         some_statement_1();         some_statement_2();         some_statement_3();     }      Now I wish to out-comment statement #2, but here I never can find a way where it feels right. Usually I will do the following:               void some_block(void)     {         some_statement_1();     //    some_statement_2();         some_statement_3();     }      But now we got what looks like extra indentation of statement #2, yet it is arguable whether the indentation is still \"correct\". Alternatively we could do:               void some_block(void)     {         some_statement_1();         //some_statement_2();         some_statement_3();     }      This looks a bit better, yet still somehow also wrong. However the following just looks misplaced:               void some_block(void)     {         some_statement_1();       //some_statement_2();         some_statement_3();     }      How do you outcomment code and keep \"correct\" indentation? **Update** It seems most people who have provided answers did not answer my question, but simply state that it is bad practice to leave dead code around. While I completely agree with that, that was not the point of the question. Right now I am facing a case of example where I have 5 helper functions, that manage 5 similar but slightly different structs for me. I use these helper functions to make my code easier to read. But, at the moment (and for the next month probably) one of the structs are not going to be used. And I cannot commit anything which causes compiler warnings, so I have to outcomment that part of the code and commit it like that. Also I forgot this last variant, which I think just looks plain wrong:               void some_block(void)     {         some_statement_1();     //  some_statement_2();         some_statement_3();     }"}
{"_id": "197475", "title": "\"Generators are function derivatives\"", "text": "I am reading this article on a new feature of ECMAscript 6, generators, that are landing in the V8 JavaScript interpreter. Not too far from the top, the author suggests an analogy: > generators are like functions, with their bodies taken to the first > derivative. Calling `next` integrates between two `yield` points. I really like this analogy. Has this analogy already been discussed in the literature? Are there similar ones? Does it fit within a bigger framework of analogies? (I made a quick Google search but that was not helpful.)"}
{"_id": "211208", "title": "Finding the right license for my open source", "text": "I'm about to create a new open-source project and I'm not sure about the licensing method I should choose. Here is what I know:   * The project will be built on the basis of an already existing open source. I will fork from the original project and will build a community around a new project that has a code base from the original project.   * In case the new project becomes successful, I will want to, one day, fork to an extended version of it which I will earn from. I want the non-free version to be non open-source. For now, I have 2 main projects that I can use as my base project. One has a GPL license and the second has MIT license. I'm wondering what would better suit my needs. Also I'm wondering which license should I use for my open- source in order to, maybe, someday fork for a paid version which will not be open-sourced?"}
{"_id": "60464", "title": "Beginner Trying to Understand Existing Project", "text": "I have a project that requires me to control movement of SCARA robot using VC. I am a beginner in programming so I thought of using existing program as my reference. The SCARA robot that I am using is regarded as a valuable property of the department and must be operated with extra care. I cannot simply make a program out of nowhere to ensure no damage on the robot. I find it difficult to understand the existing program and am overwhelmed with the long lines of coding. Unfortunately, the last person involved with the program already left and no one in my department has any experience with the program. Currently I am not getting the help that i really need.Hopefully someone can give me guidance on this project."}
{"_id": "60460", "title": "What to do when you cannot renegotiate a certain software design?", "text": "Well, I have a certain dispute with a colleague of mine. We have a software design where we build all of our widgets server side and send them client side as html. Most of the time it's better and easier to control and add stuff to. But sometimes it just is not that good; it makes the client side act \"retarded\" regarding the situation at hand. Another major flaw is that it gets really slow for unapparent reasons. So what would you do in this case? **Edit:** When I say \"retarded\" I mean the client side is not aware of any changes made by the server side, it just gets a string of functions it supposed to call to if something goes wrong with loading one of the resources that is passed from the server side(f.e. an image or another script) the client side is limited when in need to handle the errors. This situations are handled very poorly since the client side does not have a \"clear view\" of the state at hand. Of course you can handle the situation from the server side(in a twisted way), but then again why bother so much when it is so much more simplified when dividing the rolls."}
{"_id": "116106", "title": "How can I protect a java app to be deployed in the google chrome app market?", "text": "I'm making a java app. Is to solve a problem in engineering. I'm thinking that it would be nice to sell it as an app in the google chrome market, but I'm worried about security. I've been trying to find any info on the subject, but to no avail. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? how secure is the google chrome market? I mean security in the sense that someone downloads your software and uses it -and distribuites it- without permission. I would appreciate any kind of info, be it links to books or personal experiences, whatever. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "211202", "title": "How to deal with system \"static\" data in java", "text": "I was just wondering if there is some better way how to handle system \"static\" configuration data. Let say you have a system which offers several operation which are in code translated to operation code but you need to keep other related information to that operation like description, priority etc. Nasty way I have seen is public static final constants. Better way I was using before was create a class eg:               public abstract Codebook{     private int id;     private String description;     ... getters setters     }      Then for given cathegory - in this case OperationalCode:               public class OperationalCode extends Codebook{}      Instance of this class were created with the data from BD. Now I cannot use DB so I thought I will create factories which will populate classes with given set of parameters. BUT all is hardcoded to factory class which I don't like. Is there a better solution how to tackle this case as I believe I am not the first one solving that. Some handy framework or ... I wasn't probably clear enough. I am fully aware of Properties capability in java but that doesn't match the criteria. Let me explain more: When I say configuration I mean business configuration. You never know how many possible items you will get. For example in banking system you can cancel contract and you are forced to provide a reason for termination - predefined list which includes text, code in your system and translation to codes of third party systems where your system need to perform cancelation operation as well. Those possibilities need to be externalized of your system as they will probably change offten. Property files doesn't seems as a right choice and the opposite site - using Buisiness Rule Systems (e.g. Drools ) seems to me as overkill. Using enums with specified properties wouldn't fit quit well because time to time you need to be able to recognize that it is configuration and not just normal enum. That the reason for class inheritance - instanceof operator solve this."}
{"_id": "94177", "title": "Proprietary formats and Open source software", "text": "How come open software like OpenOffice.org and supports proprietary formats like Microsoft DOC and MP3? AFAIK, the DOC format is not open and implementing the feature in OO.org required serious amounts of reverse engineering. So why isn't Microsoft (or any such proprietary players) making an issue out of this? In the same light, how come the GStreamer plugins are able to play proprietary formats?"}
{"_id": "94171", "title": "Best algorithm/practice when creating a search mechanism for your database?", "text": "I have been designing a database where it is very important to provide users with a good search mechanism. So I was wondering what some of the best practices are for using keywords to search over multiple database tables and return the relevent records? Some other things I am curious about:   * The users location, if they provide an address   * The speed of the algorithm Additional Information: I am using C# and LINQ-To-SQL."}
{"_id": "116101", "title": "How can I start testing in a testing anticulture?", "text": "I have a confession to make: Formalized automated testing was never a part of my programming background. I now work in a very large company with many developers (most of them _web_ developers of one sort or another), and it's apparent that most of them don't test* either. (*I'm not going to keep saying _formally_ ; please infer it.) If I wait to have the support of my organization to begin testing it will never happen. If I try to \"change things from the inside\" by pushing testing at management I will run out of steam before change happens. I need to start testing now. But with TDD and its ilk I'm going to end up with lots of testing code right along with the production code. Our version control systems (all centralized) aren't organized for storing testing code. I'll have to find a place for all that on my workstation. Is it possible to begin a personal practice of software testing in a culture that doesn't value or provide the tools for it? What techniques and tools do you use to enable you to test when the official tools and organization don't have a place for tests, frameworks and automations?"}
{"_id": "113556", "title": "Is there a common capitalization convention in C++?", "text": "I do a lot of work in Python and Java, and both those languages have fairly common (though not universal) conventions on how capitalization should be used in identifiers: both use `PascalCase` for class names and `ALL_CAPS` for \"global\" constants, but for other identifiers a lot of Java code uses `mixedCase` whereas a lot of Python code uses `underscore_delimiters`. I know that no language or library _enforces_ any particular capitalization, but I've found that when I stick to the standard conventions for the language I'm using, my code seems much more readable. Now I'm starting a project in C++, and I'd like to apply the same idea. Is there any most common convention for capitalization that I should know about?"}
{"_id": "162168", "title": "What are C++/CX and C++/CLI, and how do they relate to C++ and WinRT?", "text": "I was considering taking up the challenge of learning C++ for designing Metro apps and that's when I came across C++/CX. Can Metro apps be coded in C++ 11? Do they require C++/CX to work? And what exactly is C++/CX? Is it possible to create a Metro app using only C++, or is C++/CX required? Also, how does C++/CLI tie into this picture?"}
{"_id": "113551", "title": "Java certification - Should I upgrade?", "text": "I have Java 1.2 certification which I completed in 2002. Now I have 10 years of Java experience and I tried to catch up with all Java 5/6 new features but at times I am lost in some of the new things especially on multithreading and generics which were revamped in the later releases? Should I re-take the SCJP for Java 6 or Java 7? Any experience on this? Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "199492", "title": "Why don't computers come with specialized hardware such as sorting networks?", "text": "Instead of programming the way we do, why don't we make specifications of common tasks such as \"sorting\", and then let the environment compile it to make best use of it's hardware? This way, we could ship computer with new specialized hardware such as sorting networks, and it would automatically work with existing code."}
{"_id": "90667", "title": "Simplified knapsack in PHP", "text": "I have two instances where I'd like to display information in a \"justified\" alignment - but I don't care if the values are switched in order. One example being displaying the usernames of people online: `Anton Brother68 Commissar Dougheater Elflord Foobar Goop Hoo Iee Joo` Rearranging them we could get exactly 22 characters long on each line:               Anton Brother68 Foobar     Commissar Elflord Goop     Dougheater Hoo Iee Joo      This is kind of a knapsack, except seems like there ought to be a P solution since I don't care about perfection, and I have multiple lines. Second instance is identical, except instead of names and character count I would be displaying random images and use their width."}
{"_id": "102551", "title": "What's the difference between ASP.NET Web Applications and Websites?", "text": "Currently, I am reading _Pro ASP.NET 4 in C#_ and in it, two ways of creating a web application are described:   * Website   * Web Application Project In which scenarios should I choose the former over the latter, and vice versa?"}
{"_id": "102552", "title": "Should I stick with or abandon Python to deal with concurrency?", "text": "I have a 10K LOC project written in Django with quite a deal of Celery (RabbitMQ) for asynchronicity and background jobs where needed, and have come to the conclusion that parts of the system would benefit from being rewritten in _something_ other than Django for better concurrency. Reasons include:   * Signals handling and mutable objects. Especially when one signal triggers another, handling them in Django using the ORM can be surprising when instances change or disappear. I want to use some messaging approach where the data passed along doesn't change in a handler (Clojure's copy-on-write approach seems nice, if I got it right).   * Parts of the system are not web-based, and need better support for performing tasks concurrently. For example, the system reads NFC tags, and when one is read an LED goes on for a few seconds (Celery task), a sound is played (other Celery task), and the database is queried (other task). This is implemented as a Django management command, but Django and its ORM being synchronous by nature and sharing memory is limiting (we are thinking of adding more NFC readers, and I don't think that the Django+Celery approach will work any longer, I'd like to see better message-passing capabilities). What are the pros and cons of using something like Twisted or Tornado compared with going for a language such as Erlang or Clojure? I am interested in practical benefits and detriments. > How did you come to the conclusion that some parts of the system would fare > better in another language? Are you suffering performance problems? How > severe are those problems? If it can be faster, is it essential that it is > faster? **Example 1:** Django at work outside an HTTP request:   1. An NFC tag is read.   2. The database (and possibly LDAP) is queried, and we want to do something when data becomes available (red or green light, play a sound). This blocks using the Django ORM, but as long as there are Celery workers available it doesn't matter. May be a problem with more stations. **Example 2:** \u201cmessage-passing\u201d using Django signals:   1. A `post_delete` event is handled, other objects may be altered or deleted because of this.   2. At the end, notifications should be sent to users. Here, it would be nice if arguments passed to the notification handler were copies of deleted or to-be-deleted objects and guaranteed not to change in the handler. (It could be done manually simply by not passing objects managed by the ORM to handlers, of course.)"}
{"_id": "78398", "title": "Do we actually have to pay to make Windows Phone, Android, or iPhone apps?", "text": "I want to know how much does it cost to develop a free phone app (which means i price it at $0) on:   1. WP7   2. iPhone   3. Android What if now I want to price the app at $0.99? How much do I have to pay if its:   1. WP7   2. iPhone   3. Android Also, do I need additional hardware (I'm using Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit) And do I need to pay for any software?"}
{"_id": "112687", "title": "What's a generic word for both Methods and Attributes?", "text": "In a class diagram, each class contains methods and attributes. What's the correct word for describing both of them besides something generic such as contents or items? Context: > The Orange class extends the Fruit class and inherits its **stuff**. where _stuff_ = a single word for both methods and attributes"}
{"_id": "58233", "title": "Will taking a job that's web and database related limit my software development opportunities later on?", "text": "I love programming, particularly OOP. My school experience was mostly in Java/OOP, and I had a job for a limited time in Java, Python, and other OOP kind of languages. However, a move necessitated a change in jobs, and what I've ended up with now is a web-development and database intensive job. I may possibly hold this job for several years. My question is, will this limit my choices later on? Will I be able to find another Java / software-development kind of job, or will I be rejected because my experience will be mostly in a different area?"}
{"_id": "58232", "title": "How does git use SHA-1 to detect corruption in transfers?", "text": "I've been reading about git in Apress' \"Pro Git\" book. It mentions that SHA-1 is used to detect changes to commits and also to verify there is no corruption during pulls from the server. I am aware of the message digest detecting change, but how is it checking and presumably correcting for corruption ? The Wikipedia page for SHA-1 does not mention features like CRC. Thanks, Scott"}
{"_id": "190172", "title": "3 Tier Application Architecture, logic and database", "text": "(Note: The examples are simplified) I've seperated my solution into 3 projects   * WebSite   * Business Logic   * Data Access Logic The Website has access to BL and DAL   The BL has access to nothing   The DAL has access to the BL On the website I can do something like               BL.User user = DAL.GetUser(1)      I also have this type of logic in the website               user = [new user information]          If Not DAL.DoesEmailExists(user) Then         DAL.InsertNewUser(user)     End If      What would be my option to remove this if/insert from the website?   My ideal option would be to put this logic inside the BL.User but that's not possible. If the BL has access to the DAL it will make a circular reference."}
{"_id": "190173", "title": "What should I look for when job-hunting to find a strong OOD focus?", "text": "I'm currently seeking a job. I've got a good CV, but little industry experience, and so my difficulty is that I'm not entirely certain what I'm looking for. **What I've done** is a good BSc in Computer Science, and an extensive six- year stint as an all-purpose programmer in a military unit. I won't go into the details, but I've worked on a fairly large number of projects, with huge variety but each of fairly limited scope. I'm also, so far, very much a generalist - I don't have a specific domain I specialize in. **What I've enjoyed most** has been in the realm of design - the object-oriented design of modules, APIs, project architecture, what-have-ye. **As an eventual goal** I believe I'd like to see myself as a software architect. **What I'd like right now** is a position where the OOD features significantly - where I can learn and develop my skills, and eventually practice OOD at a rather larger scale than I have so far. Obviously, nobody has pure OOD as a job description; that's not what I'm expecting and it's not what I'm looking for. But I'm somewhat unfamiliar with the major sub-fields of the software engineering job market, and I my knowledge of major current technologies is pretty basic. I'm finding it very hard to tell from a job description (and even from speaking to an interviewer) whether the job is likely to have a major design element. So many positions I see could involve lots of OOD, or none at all - or at least, so it seems to this inexperienced job-seeker. It seems to depend so much on the precise nature of the job, and on how precisely they use tech stacks I don't know (and won't even know the names of without serious digging, or accepting the job :P). **What can I look for in a position to find a job with a focus on OOD?** Are there particular fields, company-types, or positions I should seek or avoid? Are there questions I can ask at interviews that will help me out?"}
{"_id": "168202", "title": "I have a library and several small programs that use it: how should I structure my git repositories?", "text": "I have some code that uses a library that I and others frequently modify (usually only by _adding_ functions and methods). We each keep a local fork of the library for our own use. I also have a lot of small \"driver\" programs (~100 lines) that use the library and are used exclusively by me. Currently, I have both the driver programs and the library in the same repository, because I frequently make changes to both that are logically connected (adding a function to the library and then calling it). I'd like to merge my fork of the library with my co-workers' forks, but I don't want the driver programs to be part of the merged library. What's the best way to organize the git repositories for a large, shared library that needs to be merged frequently and a number of small programs that have changes that are connected to changes in the library?"}
{"_id": "190178", "title": "Should an open source gem contain .rvmrc?", "text": "Using `.rvmrc` seems to be considered a best practice for apps. But should an open source gem contain `.rvmrc` in their source code on Github? I think it's not good to require everyone who wants to contribute to use the exact same version of Ruby or gemset as you."}
{"_id": "78397", "title": "linux script as a service within PHP & JS", "text": "Is it possible to create a web application/service in PHP in which the backbone of the application/service is really a linux script and PHP is just relaying the data from the script? The linux script requires certain types of hardware and drivers in order to execute smoothly. I will be hosting the web application and linux script however not the hardware or drivers. I'm thinking of writing up some javascript code that will check if the end-user meet the hardware/driver requirements & have some sort of connection, if so the linux script will execute and utilize the user's hardware to process data that is then passed to PHP. YIKES!? ;o Is my approach for this correct or is there an easier way? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "108735", "title": "Schemes to resolve deadlocks", "text": "I am interested in research that detects and recover from deadlocks. In other words the system is able to recover from deadlock faults. I'm interested in shared memory multicore processors. Uptill now I have only seen research for distributed systems. Can anyone guide me on this."}
{"_id": "54999", "title": "How to recover after embarrassing yourself and your company?", "text": "I work in an outsourcing company in Russia, and one of our clients is a financial company located in USA.   For the last six months I have been working on several projects for this particular company, and as I was being assigned a larger project, **I was invited to work onsite in USA in order to understand and learn the new system**. Things didn't work out as well as I hoped because the environment was messy after original developers, and I had to spent quite some time to understand the quirks. However we managed to do the release several days ago, and it looks like everything's going pretty smooth. From technical perspective, my client seems to be happy with me. My solutions seem to work, and I always try to add some spark of creativity to what I do. However I'm very disorganized in a certain sense, as I believe many of you fellas are. Let me note that my current job is my first job ever, and I was lucky enough to get a job with flexible schedule, meaning I can come in and out of the office whenever I want as long as I have 40 hours a week filled. Sometimes I want to hang out with friends in the evening, and days after that I like to have a good sleep in the morning\u2014this is why flexible schedule (or lack of one) is ideal fit for me. [I just realized this paragraph looks too serious, I should've decorated it with some UNICORNS!] Of course, after coming to the USA, things changed. This is not some software company with special treatment for the nerdy ones. Here you have to get up at 7:30 AM to get to the office by 9 AM and then sit through till 5 PM. Personally, I _hate_ waking up in the morning, not to say my productivity begins to climb no sooner than at 5 o'clock, i.e. **I'm very slow until I have to go** , which is ironic. Sometimes I even stay for more than 8 hours just to finish my current stuff without interruptions. Anyway, I could deal with that. After all, **_they are paying for my trip, who am I to complain?** They need me to be in their working hours to be able to discuss stuff._ It makes perfect sense that fixed schedule doesn't make any sense for me. But it _does_ makes sense that it does make sense for my client. And _I_ am here _for client_ , therefore sense is transferred. Awww, you got it. I was asked several times to come exactly at 9 AM but out of laziness and arrogance I didn't take these requests seriously enough. This paid off in the end\u2014 **on my last day I woke up 10 minutes before final status meeting with business owner, having overslept previous day as well**. Of course this made several people mad, including my client, as I ignored his direct request to come in time for two days in the row, including my final day. Of course, I didn't do it deliberately but certainly I could've ensured that I have at least two alarms to wake me up, et cetera...I didn't do that. He also emailed my boss, calling my behavior **ridiculous and embarrassing for my company and saying \u201che's not happy with my professionalism at all\u201d**. My boss told me that \u201cthe system must work both in and out\u201d and suggested me to stay till late night this day working in a berserker mode, fixing as many issues as possible, and sending a status email to my client. So I did, but I didn't receive the response yet. These are my questions to the great `programmers` community: > Did you have situations where your **ignorance and personal non-technical > faults created problems for your company**? > > Were you able to **make up for your fault** and **stay in a good > relationship** with your client or boss? How? > > How would you act **if you were in my situation**? * * *"}
{"_id": "216189", "title": "Adding a callback to a function?", "text": "Is there a way to add a callback to any given javascript function without changing its definition? Can this be done without using a library like deferred?"}
{"_id": "203963", "title": "Representing floating-point numbers in bytecode", "text": "How do interpreted languages typically go about representing floating-point numbers in their bytecode? For example, suppose I've got a Java program with the line `double a = 3.0;` What does `3.0` look like in the program's bytecode? I see two possibilities: 1) Writing the bit-level representation of the in-memory number into the bytecode, and then just reading it back into memory when we need it. There are probably problems with portability here (the size of `double` on different machines can vary, so how do we store a number in bytecode in a portable way?). 2) Write a canonical representation of the number into the bytecode which can be decoded when program execution time comes. The literal string `3.0` might serve that purpose here, but then we're wasting execution time parsing a floating-point number during runtime. So my question is, which strategy is most common/efficient/best? You can feel free to cite examples from different interpreted languages that compile down to bytecode (Python, Lua, etc.), or merely point me in the direction of some resources of some relevant articles if that's necessary (I've been Googling quite a bit, but few virtual machines are well-documented)."}
{"_id": "113882", "title": "When should I prefix names with the project name?", "text": "If you work with SharePoint, you'll see classes like `SPList`, `SPSite` etc. I've seen variations of this on other projects, in other technologies, e.g. for a CRM project, classes named `CRMLoggingFactory`, `CRMEntity` etc. This stands out when you look at the code and you know what the prefix corresponds to, but when do you draw the line? What are the conditions for a class to be prefixed by the project name, company name, etc. (i.e. the \"domain name\" of the project)?"}
{"_id": "113884", "title": "Providing users with program revision history information?", "text": "One limitation of a program that I maintain is that the end-users often don't know what changes have been made. To remedy this I would like to show my users a simplified list of changes made to their program. Is there a good methodology/approach to follow that would create a easy to update list that could then be fed into the user interface? For example: Should I store everything in a XML file that is read into a form? Should the change history go into a database? Note: The program is Winforms (C# 4.0). **UPDATE** Based on the excellent feedback I have decided to use SQLite as my information storage and will provide the users with a chronological list of changes in a TreeView control."}
{"_id": "254121", "title": "Ruby on Rails application interfacing with a Datamax barcode printer", "text": "I am trying to find a standalone way to interface with a Datamax M-Class Mark2 label printer through a Ruby on Rails application. I currently have a solution that is working, which i use javascript to interface with an ActiveX object on the users machine. If at all possible i would like to accomplish this without the need for the ActiveX object."}
{"_id": "148618", "title": "How to solve installation errors reported by users, on Android?", "text": "I've some application on the Google Play, free to download, but I have some people reporting things like: \"There has been problem installing on my htc x.\" How do I help these people? I could reply and ask things like their android version and what not, but this won't really help me debug it, since the error occurs on installation! Any general ideas on how to handle this? Maybe some tips about general android installation issues, or on how to help the people?"}
{"_id": "210795", "title": "Fixing data duplication in two similar tables in different databases", "text": "I'm currently doing maintenance on an old order system that has grown into the poster child for bad coding practice. One of the tings I'm dealing with is a lot of data duplication, which I want to fix. The problem, is that one central table \"users\" exists in two different databases (A and B), in A ties into the ordering system, B ties into the logistics system. New users are added to both tables, and they contain identical information, except for that in B there are three aditional fields. My instinct is to remove this data duplication. Now, a lot of queries are made against A and B by their respective toolchains.   1. My first thought is to change the queries for A.users to B.users, and delete the A.users table. Though this seems bad there would be JOINS going from A to B whenever any order tools needs to check against the user table (which is a lot).    2. My second idea is to move the users table into a seperate database that contains only user specific data and move the fields pertinent to logistics into a seperate table on B. Any ideas on how to untangle this?"}
{"_id": "132323", "title": "Mobile Web Security Articles", "text": "I'm starting to introduce mobile web apps to my company but my not-so-techie boss is worried about web security issues on mobile devices. I'm new in the mobile world but as a web developer I know the basics about web security (like the best practices listed in OWASP) but I don't know if there's anything else that could make my mobile web app vulnerable specifically for mobile web browsers. Also, I need an internet article readable from not-so-techie bosses that could help me convince him how secure our mobile web app could be if I apply the common web security best practices. Can you help me with this? PS. I'm using Java as my backend and jQuery Mobile as my frontend."}
{"_id": "224368", "title": "How to use mock objects [C++] without passing them as arguments to functions", "text": "I'm in the process of integrating a Unit Testing Framework for an existing code base in C++. I've zeroed down on CxxTest, but as it turns out we can use other Mocking Frameworks (like googlemock) in conjunction with CxxTest too. After reading tutorials on CxxTest (Mocking) and googlemock (the infamous turtle example), I have the general idea that you have to define a mock class (using macros etc), declare an object of the mock class and then pass it to the function you are unit testing. Now, there are many occurences in the existing code base where it isn't possible to do that. Here's an pseudo example to clarify:               class CCandidateForTest     {         public:         bool foo(int a)         {             CAnotherClass obj;             int b = obj.bar(a+2);             if (a == b) {                 return true;             } else {                 return false;             }         }     }      (This is over-simplified, there are also exceptions and the primitive types may also be other objects etc.; but you get the general idea) (also, creation of objects is not always direct and may sometimes use a factory) I want to write a test for the function `CCandidateForTest::foo`. This method internally creates an object of `CAnotherClass`, which I need to mock so that `CAnotherClass::bar` returns different values so that different code paths in `foo` are traversed in unit testing. In a nutshell, the problem is that the function being tested internally creates an object of the class that needs to be mocked - hence passing an instance of the mocked object to the function is not possible. How do I use mocking in such a case? Is there a specific mocking framework that makes this possible?"}
{"_id": "132325", "title": "What to do (or not do) when a developer doesn't deliver the goods?", "text": "I've recently had the misfortune of hiring a developer who failed to deliver a **working** product by the arranged date. I have the software, but it produces errors on installation. The developer said the product works. I had wanted to give the developer the benefit of the doubt, but they have ignored all requests to show me a working demo. I set up a website specifically so that they could install the software, but they have done nothing (it should be a matter of uploading the zip and changing a few things in the configuration). They have also ignored all requests for information on their configuration. Actually it is really difficult to get any reply from them at all. It is almost 1.5 months after the deadline. **Possible ideas**   * Have a third party check the software.    * Put in a claim with Paypal (although I think it is too late and isn't covered anyway).   * Make it public (I'm assuming it isn't defamation because it is true). **QUESTION:** What should I do (or not do) about this? **EXTRA**   * I've noticed that even if the software was to work there are a number of features that I requested (prior to their acceptance of the job) that they have ignored.   * I've found comments on the web about the company saying that this situation is normal for them. They seem to use errors in their software as an excuse to extort more money from their clients. Actually this was a relief as it backed up my belief that I'd been scammed.   * They don't have a phone number on their website.    * The developer is based in the US. **EDIT:** The arrangement was that I paid 25% of the cost of the development. The developer would keep all rights for the product. The product was integrating an already existing open source component with a CMS. I produced icons and did the styling for part of the component (completed). The developer would have the component done with the features I requested by mid December. **EDIT2:** The developer said that they would be able to provide all the features I requested. **EDIT3:** There is no documentation with the software."}
{"_id": "132328", "title": "What's the best practice for rendering a different GSP template based on the type of object in a collection?", "text": "Let's say I have a collection that is setup in my controller, named \"things.\" In this collection is a heterogeneous assortment of objects. Let's say some are of type \"Thing\" and some others are of type \"OtherThing\". In the GSP page that renders this list, I want to render each different object type differently. I know that the following code works, but I can't escape the feeling that there should be a more elegant way to do this. Does anybody have a better way?                       <div id=\"eventStream\">                  <ul>                 <g:each in=\"${things}\" var=\"thing\">                          <g:if test=\"${thing.type.equals( 'Thing' )}\">                         <g:render template=\"/renderThing\" bean=\"thing\" />                     </g:if>                          <g:if test=\"${thing.type.equals( 'OtherThing')}\">                         <g:render template=\"/renderOtherThing\" bean=\"thing\" />                     </g:if>                      </g:each>                    </ul>              </div>      (Note: there is a \"type\" field defined on 'Thing' and 'OtherThing' that contains those string literals. That's just a shortcut). EDIT: Just realized that there's another way to do this, that depends on the notion of \"convention over configuration.\" I could just go with a convention that the templates are always named something like: _renderXXXXTemplate.gsp where XXX is \"Thing\" or \"OtherThing\" or whatever. Then I just render with something like:               <g:render template=\"/render${thing.class.name}Template\" bean=\"thing\" />      Anybody care to share their thoughts on the merit of that approach?"}
{"_id": "142750", "title": "Alternatives to using  cookies?", "text": "Whate are alternatives to using cookies/client-side storage for a PHP/MySQL based site on Apache. Scenario/Requirements:   * I want to try using some anti-bot code to prevent specific scrapers etc. from accessing the site.       * I would like to run this code before launching the rest of the site (before DB access etc.).      * I don't want to constantly run the same code on every page-load after a visitor has passed the initial check.    * I'd like to avoid the use of Cookies/Client side storage if at all possible. The only solution I can currently think of is to write files to the server based on the visitors IP/UA, or to write a list of them to a single file. Yet this has the limitation of multiple users through a proxy/same connection, etc ... So, any ideas/suggestions? Or am I simply over working the issue?"}
{"_id": "106702", "title": "Constant database calls or store in objects?", "text": "I'm creating a pretty simple database driven application. Whenever I create a db app, I create classes that mimic the data in the db. Is this good practice? Am I better off making one big call to the database and populating my objects and working with these objects, or should I retrieve data from the db only when needed?"}
{"_id": "196789", "title": "MIT License: Why isn't it considered viral?", "text": "The first part of the license implies you can do basically whatever you want with it (copy, modify, sell etc). But the second part says that these freedoms must propagate into all copies of the software. My interpretation of that is, you can incorporate the software into your proprietary project, but that portion must remain open....so any modifications to the software must keep that license attached, forcing my changes to be open sourced. Isn't this the reason people consider the GPL to be restrictive/viral? Because it forces modifications to be open sourced? Here is a copy of the license: > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy > of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to > deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the > rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or > sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING > FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS > IN THE SOFTWARE."}
{"_id": "99712", "title": "What's the standard for entity design/database connectivity for a mySQL database?", "text": "I'm hosting a solution that serves as a web tier on a Ubuntu machine running Apache and Mono. I'm currently developing the project on OSX, using Mono. I understand there is no native support for Linq to SQL in Mono, so I've been going old school and developing stored procedures for my database interaction. I use ADO.NET for connectivity. Development is painstakingly slow. Whenever I make a change to a stored procedure, I must update fields all across my architecture. I've gotten very lazy in terms of being able to easily delete an entity in Linq to SQL and have my objects updated with new fields. It feels like development is taking 10x as long as it would natively in .NET in Windows. Is there a better architecture I could be using for my database connectivity? While the methodology I'm adhering to is straightforward and works fine, it's simply a slow approach."}
{"_id": "115489", "title": "what is a good way to show mysql experience?", "text": "As always, if this is a duplicate question that I have yet to uncover, please feel free to close or delete it. I'm attempting to get into the programming industry. I've focused mainly on PHP due to how widely it's used, but I have some experience in other languages as well. The thing is, I know SQL syntax quite well, and PHP-wise I don't have much if any problem using either the mysqli interface (if I have to) or PDO. However, I'm a bit stumped as to what to create as a portfolio piece that would be a good showcase of what I can do with SQL. The reason for this is that most frameworks worth their salt include some form of ORM. Most of the grunt work in terms of setting up database queries and so forth is usually both done for you and hidden from you, so that you can focus on your domain logic. I have a _bit_ of experience with CakePHP, which uses its own form of ORM, and am interested in developing this experience further due to it being a fairly popular (and thus likely to show up as a job requirement) framework. Symfony is equally unhelpful AFAIK in that you have the choice of using Propel or Doctrine; I'd love experience with either but I'm not seeing a whole lot of demand for them, at least not for the entry-level jobs I've been looking at. However, I am aware that CodeIgniter will allow you to override its ORM / ActiveRecord capabilities and allow you to write your own SQL queries. I have a relatively simple web app I want to create as a portfolio piece. If I use CakePHP to create it, I wind up with a piece that shows off my CakePHP skills, but not my SQL skills, at least not directly. If I use CI, I can show off my SQL skills directly, but then gain experience in a framework that doesn't appear to be used as often, at least not in industry. The real question comes down to this: if you were (or are) in charge of hiring a new programmer for your team, and your requirements include, for example, MySQL, how would you prefer that the incumbent programmer show his or her expertise in this skill? Would you accept a programmer who only had ORM-based solutions to show you directly but could, if requested, easily whip up a fairly complex SQL query? If not, what would you recommend as a means of demonstrating skill in SQL? I suppose an alternate title for this question could be \"What do interviewers expect from entry-level candidates in terms of SQL?\""}
{"_id": "99710", "title": "Silverlight 5 In or Out of Browser?", "text": "I'm deciding which I need for my new LOB application. I will list PRO's of each and if I'm wrong - correct me please as this is how I see it. In Browser   1. Users can navigate using URL's. I see it as a BIG thing. Users can share links like app.com/orders/12345   2. With elevated permissions I can do all the same stuff. Use COM, file system, etc.   3. I can open other browser windows with other functionality if multi-window needed. The only difference - I won't have such control over those windows as with out of browser. Out of browser   1. Runs out of browser. Not sure why I care?   2. More problematic to handle updates   3. Yes, there is windows I can open but not modal. So, in-browser separate IE window almost identical Do I miss anything? I tend to keep it in browser but I want to see where I'm limiting myself."}
{"_id": "99715", "title": "If a story is de-scoped during the iteration then what to do with its estimate/size?", "text": "Sometimes we change user story scope to complete it during the iteration. For example, Original story (8 points): As a user i want to save my data as PDF. De-Scoped story: As a user i want to save my **text** data as PDF. Now do i need to decrease the size of the de-scoped story as well? **EDIT** What do you do in such cases and why?"}
{"_id": "67169", "title": "Rails conventions vs. \"enterprise\" architecture", "text": "(The title for this probably isn't as good as it should be, I cannot think of a better one) I am about to revisit a startup idea and my platform of choice is Ruby on Rails. I've also recently started re-reading the book \"Enterprise Rails\" which suggests that you do **not** follow the Rails default conventions but instead separate out your layers into \"physical\" and \"logical\" components. This is the only book I have yet to see where this opinion is expressed; every other Rails book seems to just follow the \"convention over configuration\" mantra. In short the book suggestions you divide your app/ folder into the following:   * app/models/physical (used for the actual .rb model files)   * app/models/logical (used for web service APIs I believe) and do the same with your controllers and other areas of the app. The book also advises not to use database migrations at all but use raw SQL scripts (and later on makes use of using SQL views and functions) under a separate folder that doesn't adhere to the Rails norm. My question is whether or not I should worry about these things if I am just beginning to develop my application. Obviously the book advises that I do to avoid _possible_ problems down the road, and the .NET developer in me wants to agree, but the Rails developer in me (still an infant) is telling me to just follow the \"Rails Way\" 100% since I'm still learning the framework and the Ruby language. I wonder how many successful Rails apps actually just follow the norm with all the models in app/models, all the controllers in app/controllers without any further segregation, and how many do some kind of \"enterprise-y\" architecture?"}
{"_id": "67168", "title": "Off-shore bug fixing", "text": "If a prospective employer told you they \"outsourced bug fixing because developers hate fixing bugs\", What would you think? What might be your concerns?"}
{"_id": "186632", "title": "Most secure method of asynchronous exchange of randomized loot in a strictly offline ARPG", "text": "I'm interested in the conceptual (programming language agnostic problem) process of sending a game object to another player of the game in exchange for another game object without a face-to-face online presence of both parties. This should be done so that in theory in game exploitation of inherent bugs of the trading system would not be possible to dupe items or steal items from another player. In this case I am not considering cheaters, (I strictly define cheating as manipulating of in game RAM/saves and NOT exploitation of programming/inherent bugs/flaws) only the ability of users to dupe or steal items from strictly within the game itself. Possible method idea to solve this:   1. Player 1 (P1) and (P2) meet out of game to arrange a trade of in game loot and come to an agreement amongst themselves.   2. Both players go in game to set up the trade by giving their item \"to the game\" to hold and remain inaccessible for the duration of the trade. In exchange they are given a procedurally generated alphanumeric encryption code (such as pokemon mystery dungeon or similar) specific to themselves and the other player's name and ID number (similar to the mainstream pokemon games)   3. Both players share their codes with each other and enter the opposite code into their game.   4. a confirmation screen appears for both players showing the other player's offer. if a player accepts the offer they are given another code to give to the other person.   5. Both players enter in the other's confirmation code to their game and both players receive their item in game.   6. not sure but may additionally need both players enter in a thank you code to truly confirm both players got their items, but I think that is covered by the confirmation code because if P1 confirms and gets P2's confirm then that means P2 confirmed also. And likewise if P2 confirmed and received P1's confirm then P1 confirmed.  But as I think of it, if P1 accepts and P2 accepts and P1 gives the code but then P2 does not, then P2 is able to get his desired item at the cost of his item and P2 is now a scammer to P1 because P1 was denied his new item, (it vanished) It would cause players to incrementally trade items of lesser worth because they wouldn't stand for losing that great loot they couldn't use but would still be valuable; wasting people's time and discouraging trade. Also a thank you code would add time to the process and not cause any added security. I actually think this is a real world problem of agreements, trading goods, and trust that requires synchronous trade. I think this cannot be solved in a game any more so than in real life. Correct me if I am wrong."}
{"_id": "186634", "title": "User Stories - How should it be defined for complex changes involving multiple applications", "text": "This is one of the definitions that I asw for user stories - _When the time has come for creating user stories, one of the developers (or the product owner in Scrum) gets together with a customer representative. The customer is responsible for formulating the user stories. The developer may use a series of questions to get the customer going, such as asking if some particular functionality is desired, but must be careful not to dominate the idea creation process._ In a large organization there could be multiple lines of business. For a particular line of business , there could be multiple applications (more than 10) that may be involved in fulfilling a business requirement. The requirement to each of these application teams could be provided by a business analyst and the high level solution could be formulated by a solution designer. In scenarios such as these , would a single user story be defined for a specific change request that impacts multiple applications or would different user stories be created for each application? If it is a single user story then would a separate SRS be defined for each impacted application would it need to be associated with the user story defined?"}
{"_id": "186635", "title": "Does a \"QA Programmer\" style job exist?", "text": "Basically a programmer that comes in during the testing phase of a project and once a tester finds a bug, tracks down the cause. I enjoy this investigative process and am generally able to track down the cause of obscure bugs even in code that I have never worked on. I've done something like this internally in companies I've worked for, but I wonder if this is something people do on an independent contractor basis?"}
{"_id": "115485", "title": "How to do TDD for something with many permutations?", "text": "When creating a system like an AI, which can take many different paths very quickly, or really any algorithm that has several different inputs, the possible result set can contain a large number of permutations. What approach should one take to use TDD when creating a system that outputs many, many different permutations of results?"}
{"_id": "137662", "title": "Could you describe \"GNU General Public License (GPLv2)\" in \"for Dummies\" terms?", "text": "I just want to make sure I'm using the right license for my open source API wrapper project for some social networks and also make sure I understand it. Could you just describe the basics of that license? What I can and can't do, etc? Does these things suit the GPLv2 license:   * Open Source'ness   * Ability to use it in your own project   * But also give credit for it on ones website and keep copyright notices at the top of source files   * Have control over it as in if you don't like how someone is using your code, you can report it somewhere after contacting the developer.   * I would also like to make commercial versions and add ads to my project - so exceptions in the license would be noted. * * * Thank you all for your answers and comments. I've gone with the shorter and easier to understand New BSD License (BSD). Thanks anyway."}
{"_id": "137666", "title": "Is it bad practice for a decorator to break the decoration chain?", "text": "I'm currently using decorators to apply various modifications to a template prior to rendering it. I'm unsure about my cache decorator, though, because it is currently able to break the chain of decorators and return a cached object as opposed to the original decorated object.               class Cache : Decorator     {         public String Render()         {             if(templateCache.IsCached('some_template_identifier'))             {                 return templateCache.Get('some_template_identifier');             }             String renderedTemplate = Template.Render();             templateCache.Cache(renderedTemplate);             return renderedTemplate;         }     }      Is this bad practice? Should I _always_ be returning the original decorated object or is it ok to break the flow like this and return a different object?"}
{"_id": "137664", "title": "Implementing RSA into an Android Messaging App", "text": "I am implementing RSA encryption on a Android App so that I can send SMS message securely, each phone will have its own public and private key generated by the App. But am stuck deciding the best way to store the keys, my options are:   1. Create a keystore and hold the public and private key in the keystore.   2. Save the public and private key to separate files.   3. Use sharedpreferences to store keys. I was also thinking of encrypting the private key with blowfish if just stored in a file. Can anyone help explain to me which is the most secure option?"}
{"_id": "72096", "title": "Is a small demo a good idea for an interview?", "text": "Unfortunately most of my work is internal -- I was toying with the idea of a small web demo to give the company better insight. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "157902", "title": "How should I test my TEST code?", "text": "> One of the few things that most software developers agree on is that you > shouldn't rely on code to work correctly unless you test it. If you don't > test it, it may have hidden bugs that are only going to cause you more work > down the road. I understand how to test my normal code, but **how should I test my test code to make sure it can effectively find and report errors when they are present?** I personally have been stupid enough to write erroneous test cases that would pass when they should not have, thus defeating the purpose of my writing tests in the first place. Fortunately, I found and fixed the errors in time, but according to testing mantra it seems like no test suite would be complete without having its own set of tests to make sure it worked. It seems to me that the best way to do this would be to make sure the test fails for buggy code.* If I spend 2 minutes alternately adding bugs to the code and making sure it fails, I should have an acceptable degree of confidence that the tests 'work'. This brings me to my second question: **What are good ways to introduce bugs to make sure that they are caught by the test cases?** Should I just randomly comment out statements, make sure the wrong branch of an `if-else` gets run by negating its condition, and change the execution order of code with side-effects, etc., until I'm satisfied my tests will catch _most_ common bugs? How do professional developers validate that their tests actually do what they're supposed to do? Do they just assume the tests work, or do they take the time to test them as well? If so how do they test the tests? I'm not suggesting the people should spend so much time testing their tests and then testing the tests for their tests that they never actually write the real code, but I've done stupid enough things that I feel like I could benefit from a bit of 'meta-testing', and was curious about the best way to go about it. :D * I could check to see if the test passes when testing 'bug-free' code, but using the code as a spec for the test seem quite backwards..."}
{"_id": "72094", "title": "Is the link between C# programming language and music obvious for English native speaker?", "text": "French is my native language and I just realized that the `#` in `C#` is the same character as for the _diese_ music character that raises a note by a half tone. Also, As I made my music elementary class in french, I did not realized that the C was also a musical note, as in french we use _do_. With a little searching, I noticed that this link was made on purpose. So, here is my question: Is that link obvious for English native speaker? Does that link automatically activate some bell as the for the BASIC acronym and a fundamental piece of knowledge, or the SOAP acronym and the cleaning compound."}
{"_id": "68807", "title": "Is this a good test to check programmers' ability? Any other suggestions?", "text": "For hiring new engineers at our company, we strongly believe in testing whether someone can actually write meaningful, usable, reasonable-quality code. Have been trying to devise a test for this for some time. The qualities i am looking for in this test are:   1. It should not take less than 3-4 hours of work which is the allotted time for the test.   2. It should be language and technology independent.   3. It should not be a trick question, if you can code well in your language of choice, you should be able to do it easily with a bit of googling.   4. The exact answer code should not be available from google itself.   5. It should consistently be of the same difficulty level so that we are always comparing apples to apples. At the same time, one candidate walking out of the door after attempting the test should not be able to give any hint or answers to the next candidate. Given all these considerations, the one test we are considering is to have a very large number of URLs pointing to news stories on the web and the idea is to give each candidate a random URL from this large set and ask her to scrape the news story, given a language of her choice, and save it in a structured way (json, xml) such that we have all required fields properly extracted. For example story title, date, author, text etc. Candidates are free to use internet and use whatever help they would otherwise have available when attempting a real programming problem in a job-setting. What does the community think of this way of testing? What biases do you think exist in this test? Also Id love to hear other people testing programmers with similar testing methods. Would also like to hear suggestions for similar/better test questions. EDIT: I realize that the question we devised is not ideal, in fact far from it. So while, your critique is welcome, you should also suggest some questions which are language-neutral, domain-neutral, require non-trivial coding and dont have answers already available on the internet. EDIT: Clearly people think its actually offensive for programmers to call their friends if they are stuck with a problem so i am taking that out from the process. (But, ironically asking someone on stackoverflow is ok)"}
{"_id": "157907", "title": "BitBucket working with multiple developers on same project", "text": "I am new to BitBucket. I have my repository. And 2 people working on it me, Admin and another developer with **Read** only access. So in order for him to do changes he forked repository and made changes, uploaded to his repository and created pull request. Now I merged this pull request with my repository. And made few small changes afterwards and also committed them and uploaded to my repository. What would be the next step for him to continue working? Does he have to fork it each time I make changes to my repo? Is there some way for him to sync his with my repository without creating new fork each time?"}
{"_id": "132491", "title": "Is it legal to reuse code in other customers' projects?", "text": "I'm working as a independent software developer for mobile applications. A customer asks me to develop a mobile app. So at the moment I'm calculating the time and effort to write an offer for this project. The app itself will only be used for a certain time as it is related to a certain event after that if will be useless. But the base functionality of the app will be reusable for other customers who want to have a similar app for their event. At the moment I'm wondering if it is OK to develop the app for the customer let him pay the development and reuse part of the source code for another customer's app? So what would be the best way for me to deal with this scenario?   * To whom belongs the source code of the app?   * Do I have to give the source code to the customer as they paid for the development?    * If I have to, can I still keep a copy of it and reuse it later?   * Do I have to ask the customer to reuse the code?    * Do I have to work with some kind of licensing model here. And let the first customer only pay a certain part of the development so I can reuse the code without any concerns?  I hope I made my situation clear. I'm looking forward to you answers."}
{"_id": "23075", "title": "What is the most productive way to handle development-related failures?", "text": "We've all been there:   * Your project failed or got cancelled.    * The code you spent days working on got rejected by your team.    * The design pattern you introduced to the team created chaos.    * Everyone ignores your ideas. My question is, what is the most productive way for a programmer to handle development-related failures such as these?"}
{"_id": "109468", "title": "Command handlers and DDD", "text": "I have an ASP.NET MVC application, that uses a query service to get data and a command service to send commands. My question is about the command part. If a request comes in, the command service uses a command dispatcher that will route the command to its designated command handler. This command handler validates the comand first and if everything is acceptable, it executes the command. Concrete example: the AddCommentToArticleCommandHandler receives an AddCommentToArticleCommand, which has an ArticleId, CommentText and EmailAddress. First; validation has to occur, like: \\- check if article exists \\- check if article is not closed \\- check if comment text is filled in and between 20 and 500 characters \\- check if email address is filled in and has a valid format. I'm wondering where to put this validation? 1/ in the command handler itself. But then, it cannot be reused in other command handlers. 2/ in the domain entity. But as a domain entity doesn't know about repositories or services, it cannot do the needed validation (cannot check whether an article exists). But on the other hand, if the entity doesn't contain logic, than it becomes a simple data container, which is not following DDD principles. 3/ the command handler uses validators, so that validation can be reused in other command handlers. 4/ Other mechanisms? I'm looking for the chain of responsibilities for this particular example and what objects (entities, repositories, ...) play a role in it. Do you have ideas on how you would implement this, starting from the command handler up to the repositories?"}
{"_id": "196436", "title": "Can an 81 digit number generator lead to copyright infringement?", "text": "I'm looking to write a program that will generate valid sudoku puzzles. Essentially, a sudoku puzzle is just an 81 digit number. (The blanks are zeroes.) I would then like to use these puzzles in an Android app. Is there any risk to using randomly generated puzzles in an app? If another app has the same puzzle, am I infringing somehow? All computer data is numbers, so theoretically a random number generator could stumble upon a copyrighted work at some point."}
{"_id": "109464", "title": "Do I need to license my code as GPLv2 if I only read/write to a database and pipe?", "text": "I'm writing an API for an open source network monitoring system which is licensed under the GPLv2. I also intend to open source this API but would like to license it under the BSD License.   * I don't re-use or link to any of the code in this system and I don't use any header files.    * I will not be re-distributing any part of the network monitoring code.    * Part of my application will install into the network monitoring installation folders, but not replace, remove or modify any of its files My hook into the system is via:   * existing MySQL databases belonging to the service, my API reads and writes to these databases directly. My concern here would be that whilst I am not copying their SQL statements, there are some complex operations. I've found that in a couple of cases I've arrived at SQL statements or sequences of work that aren't too dissimilar to theirs, it's hard not to.   * I talk to a pipe to issue various commands and submit data directly into the checking engine. This pipe is documented by the author as an official mechanism to communicate with the checking engine. The command pipe uses single line strings to issue commands, the pipe does not return any data, it's \"fire and forget\".   * There are a number of HTTP CGI scripts in the system from which I can scrape status information. I may use these in a future release. Is this considered \"arms length\" enough for me to license my code under a different license? i.e. > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation > > However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside > your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the > free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not > combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program. Would reading and writing rows to a database be considered \"exchanging complex internal data structures\"? > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation > > By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication > mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are > used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if > the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, **exchanging complex > internal data structures** , that too could be a basis to consider the two > parts as combined into a larger program."}
{"_id": "219615", "title": "How many strings are created in memory when concatenating strings in Java?", "text": "I was asked about immutable strings in Java. I was tasked with writing a function that concatenated a number of \"a\"s to a string. What I wrote:               public String foo(int n) {         String s = \"\";         for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {             s = s + \"a\"         }         return s;     }      I was then asked how many strings this program would generate, assuming garbage collection does not happen. My thoughts for n=3 was   1. \"\"   2. \"a\"   3. \"a\"   4. \"aa\"   5. \"a\"   6. \"aaa\"   7. \"a\" Essentially 2 strings are created in each iteration of the loop. However, the answer was n2. What strings will be created in memory by this function and why is that way?"}
{"_id": "29121", "title": "How to contact an open-source organisation (e.g. Apache) about a new project?", "text": "I've developed some software within my company and we have agreed that the future of the work is to open source it into the public domain. Is there an official contact procedure to contact the Apache Software Foundation, apache.org, to propose a new project? Looking at apache.org I've not been able to find a contact email or enquiry form, so I've resorted to searching lists of people involved in Apache projects and by chance some of them have blogs which may have a contact facility. Seems a bit haphazard way to make an important proposal about a new project, to me. I'm considering Apache as an Open Source Software (OSS) organisation first because   * the project is based on existing Apache libraries and is therefore a practical business problem demonstration applying those libraries, existing on the same open source platform is mutually beneficial - for example library updates may be easier, the project may be easier to find as a related project   * Apache Software License appears to be the most suitable license to use, given that the libraries that the project uses use the same and that ASL seems to be more flexible and pragmatic than GPL and possibly attracts more developers including those with commercial motivation   * Java-based: the project is Java based and Apache is a large, possibly even the largest, independent non-profit open source supporter of Java. I would consider other platforms too and if so would want to know how to contact them. **Background Reading** I've been researching how to Open Source, some notable references so far: (but so far not seen how to contact an OSS organisation once you are nearly ready to publish)   * http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517960/toc.html?CMP=ILC-search_spot1&ATT=intel-property-book \\- book describes all the major OSS licenses and industry stories   * http://producingoss.com/ \\- general advice   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3813613/looking-for-case-studies-of-managing-open-sourcing-code-from-a-company \\- my post about how others did it   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1914104/how-to-license-code-source-but-keep-control-of-it/1914145#1914145 \\- I got the accepted answer here"}
{"_id": "47933", "title": "Programming by dictation?", "text": "ie. you speak out the code, and someone else across the room types it in Anyone tried this? Obviously the person taking the dictation would need to be a coder too, so you didn't have to explain everything and go into tedious detail (not 'open bracket, new line...' but more like 'create a new class called myParser that takes three arguments, first one is...'). I thought of it because sometimes I'm too easily distracted at my computer. Surrounded by buttons, instant gratification a click away, the world at my fingertips. To get stuff done, I want to get away, write my code on paper. But that would mean losing access to necessary resources, and necessitate tedious typing-up later on. The solution? Dictate. Pros:   * no chance to check reddit, stackexchange, gmail, etc.   * code while you pace the room, lie down, play billiards, whatever   * train your brain to think more abstractedly (have to visualize things if you can't just see the screen)   * skip the tedious details (closing brackets etc.)   * the typist gets to shadow a more experienced programmer and learn how they work   * the typist can provide assistance/suggestions   * external pressure of typist expecting instructions, urging you to stay focussed Cons   * might be too hard   * might not work any better   * rather inefficient use of assisting programmer   * need to find/pay someone to do this"}
{"_id": "135968", "title": "Simple explanation of the Unix sockets", "text": "I can search and I've already looked at the wikipedia entry and in some other places, but even though I have some programming experience, I don't really grasp the concept. Can you treat me like a 10 year old and give me a clear explanation on socket communication?"}
{"_id": "25895", "title": "Percentage or Pixel for layouts?", "text": "* What will you use for a webpage layout? Percentage or pixels?    * When should one use one over the other?"}
{"_id": "194461", "title": "heuristic for searching through non-perfectly sorted data", "text": "Given sorted data, the search solution is obvious. Given unsorted data, sensible options are sort then search or just linear search. This question is about what to do if the data is _somewhat_ sorted, **but cannot be re-organized** (write operations require sector erase, and sectors won't fit in ram). the details: Data records are logged **sequentially with a timestamp**. The timestamp clock however, from time to **time resets to Epoch** for a while before it's synced or it's simply adjusted back due to daylight savings etc. The search result should be the log record with timestamp closest to the time specified. While performing a binary search for record at a particular timestamp, it is possible to land on a patch of discontiguous log data, and pivot the wrong direction. Besides a brute linear method, is there a heuristic we can take advantage of here? e.g. a Simplex Search immune to local minima? **update:** We can assume about 95% of the records are in sorted sequence. about 5% (scattered through the log) are the dirty hiccups. The the beginning of the hiccups _can_ be identified when the timestamp goes backwards in time and **and have an earlier stamp than the beginning of the log**"}
{"_id": "222996", "title": "Unit testing method name standard for overloaded methods", "text": "I have read several posts which discuss coding standard for naming the unit test methods for improving readability. I follow this `NameOfMethod_ExpectedBehavior_WhenSomeScenario`, but now I am confused as to how should I continue with this in the face of overloaded methods. There can be several methods with same name but different signatures. Can someone please suggest me how to incorporate overloading in method names? For example: Java Code               class ClassUnderTest{         public int method1(){         }              public int method1(int arg){         }     }      Now I need to test both the methods individually from my test case. I am thinking of some standard that is applicable for this scenario."}
{"_id": "193550", "title": "Passing parameters to a stored procedure for use in a data reader object", "text": "using (SqlConnection con = db.con(user.Authority))     {         string command = \"[Dashboard_GetUserPTOAndIncidentTotals] \";         using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(command, con))         {             cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue(\"@UserName\", cboIncidentsActiveDirectory.Text.Trim());             // Display the selected users information             con.Open();                  using (SqlDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader())             {                 if (dr.HasRows)                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         nudPTO.Value = Convert.ToDecimal(dr[\"PTO_REMAINING\"]);                         nudIncidents.Value = Convert.ToDecimal(dr[\"TOTAL_INCIDENTS\"]);                     }                 }                 else                 {                     nudPTO.Value = 0;                     nudIncidents.Value = 0;                 }                 dr.Close();             }         }     }      I am writing a business application to help track the remaining PTO time and incidents for our employees, however, I am running into an issue with the parameters of my code. I initially started out with an embedded SQL statement in place of [Dashboard_GetUserPTOAndIncidentTotals], which worked perfectly, however, after finishing the base code I was asked to migrate all application statements to stored procedures on the server side. After this transition I have ran into multiple issues and this is the only one I can't seem to work out. Every time I run this code, it throws this error message \"Procedure or function 'Dashboard_GetUserPTOAndIncidentTotals' expects parameter '@UserName', which was not supplied\". This error occurs on this line :                using (SqlDataReader dr = cmd.ExecuteReader())      I'm confused because to the best of my knowledge, I am supplying the requested parameter here :               cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue(\"@UserName\", cboIncidentsActiveDirectory.Text.Trim());      Am I just setting this up incorrectly, or does something additional just have to be done to correctly instantiate the datareader object with my stored procedure?"}
{"_id": "34532", "title": "Changing my Sun SCJP certification to an Oracle one?", "text": "I hold a Sun SCJP from ten years ago or so. At first it was supposed to be a temporary certification (valid for a few years, I don't remember exactly: all I remember is that I had an expiration date on my certification card) then Sun changed their mind and decided the SCJP was lifetime valid. Another SCJP programmer told me I could change my cert so I contacted Sun (there was a procedure for that that I don't remember either) and received my new SCJP (without any expiration date). Now that Oracle bought Sun I was wondering: can I get somehow a Oracle/Sun SCJP paper/card/badge whatever knowing that I do own a SCJP? If anyone here holding an old SCJP changed it to an Oracle/Sun one (if such a thing exist), I'd be interested to hear what can be done. (btw I'm new here so I cannot create a new tag: maybe someone with more rep could create a Sun tag?)"}
{"_id": "34537", "title": "Ashamed to admit using jQuery?", "text": "Something I've noticed over the past few weeks is how many big commercial websites use jQuery combined with lots of plugins - but don't admit it. They will rename the main library to something obscure, as well as the plugins. Quite a few will even remove the comments that contain the MIT/GPL license information. (just noticed today that odeon.co.uk have done exactly this) Why are they doing this? are they abashed by the face that they are using a free and open source library?"}
{"_id": "34535", "title": "Why might RMI be a sensible option for communication between client and server in a web application?", "text": "Question: **Why might RMI be a sensible option for communication between client and server in a web application?** _So why would RMI be used for communication between client and server in web apps?_"}
{"_id": "209892", "title": "Do we need even more web frameworks in C# now that async await is here", "text": "Developing endless frameworks for web application, websites and web services is always great fun. It's one of the richest areas where you have 100 different ways of achieving pretty much the same thing. Even with all this abundance, I've recently managed to find myself missing a web framework in C#. I feel that the new async-await API of C# 5.0 is really going to change the way server-side code is written. Reaching the zen state of full asynchronicity has always been the holy grail of server-side developers. But it always was too complicated and took too much code. Shamefully, 90% of the web frameworks in the world are still blocking. That's why I think node.js became so popular - it offers cheap asynchronicity. But now, with async-await, C# is going to steal the show and become the new \"asynchronous wonder child\". Goodbye JS (in server-side, don't get pissed off). At least that's the case for me, C# just became sexy. Does this new era call for a new generation of web frameworks? I'm missing a web framework, or more of a web ecosystem in C# that's reminiscent of `node.js` Something like node.cs. It's fundamental principals:   * Promise of full asynchronicity. Every package in the ecosystem **must** offer async-await API. I can't even imagine anymore accessing a DB and blocking when doing it. In addition, the core itself should be built around async interfaces - with flows looking like this.   * Package-based and modular. C# is notorious for having bloated monolithic web frameworks. I want to mix and match. I want a choice between 10 view engines (written by 10 different people), and a choice between 10 routing engines. These things should not be part of the core.   * Lean and concise code. I'm sorry but frameworks in C# never seem agile. Everything is always so overfeatured. Layers and layers of abstractions until you have no idea what's really going on. Don't get me wrong, those huge frameworks are good for many things, just not everything.   * Reduce vendor-lock. I'll be nice to offer hosting alternatives to IIS. Maybe come with its own optional async web server like node. Although IIS should be supported as well. Mono support on Linux is important, with async integrations to nginx and friends. I haven't been able to find an ecosystem with these characteristics. If it existed, it would draw developers towards the great benefits hidden inside the async-await pattern.. that is unique to C# (in production at least). **Edit:** Sorry my question wasn't clear. I'm asking:   1. Are you familiar with an existing solution that fits my requirements?   2. If not, do you think it's something worth writing? Do you find it useful? Would you use it as an alternative to the currently available web frameworks in C#?   3. What critiques and praises do you have for the proposals listed above if I were to create a framework that addresses said proposals."}
{"_id": "209893", "title": "LIcense Issues Of Publishing A WordPress Theme, Built With Roots Theme, At Themeforest", "text": "I want to develop a WordPress theme using Roots theme framework and then sell it on themeforest.net. Roots theme license allows me to sell the theme as per its founder's discussion with some guy on this google group post. It says that the product should have an MIT compatible license. The question is:- If I sell it on themeforest then will it be under compliance with the MIT license? I believe that themeforest has its own 'regular license'. Will the purchaser of the theme have the right to modify my theme's source code and sell it again on themeforest? Note: I don't have much knowledge of the licenses, that's why I'm here. Please don't ask me to read the license because I'm unable to understand their complex English. \"INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED\", \"AS IS\", \"TORT OR OTHERWISE\" etc. Can't understand it clearly."}
{"_id": "145902", "title": "Django development best practices", "text": "I have spent some time studying Django and I've done some applications. But I really don't know what is the best approach while developing an application, I mean, there are several options: Make all the models, then all the urls, the views and then make all the templates. Other people recommend using an agile approach, take a use case and go all the way until it's totally functional, and of course there might be other possible recommendations. Personally I feel really attracted by the agile approach, but I don't really know because for example every single model I append to my database would imply to create a new one. To sum up, what is the best approach one should take when developing and application in Django, taking into account all the consequences that it carries?"}
{"_id": "180771", "title": "Is there a database programming language with encapsulation to prevent the injections?", "text": "One of things that annoys me about SQL is that it can't think in terms of objects and it's lack of encapsulation makes me constantly have to escape commands to prevent injections. I want a database language that can be polymorphic and secure. I have searched online for non-procedural database programming languages and so far my google search has been unsuccessful. I know in languages like php there are ways to prevent the injections by making the PHP encapsulated well, but not all database programming situations involve embedding the database language in another language. In situations where it's database programming only, is there a database programming language that is object oriented in itself? If not, are they working on one?"}
{"_id": "209897", "title": "Apache License 2.0 - Beginner", "text": "I'm building close-source application with some libraries that's using Apache License 2.0. Number 4 point a) of the license stated that:               (a) You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License;      Does this mean that my application is now under Apache License 2.0 because I included that license to my app? Where should I include this license? In my source code or on the GUI? Thanks."}
{"_id": "224238", "title": "How to get involved in open-source project? (Android/java programmer)", "text": "My question might sound stupid and not suitable for this site, but i dont have any better place to ask then here, so please bear with me. Im a college student that love playing with android. Around last year, i changed my main OS to Ubuntu, and i found its amazing. So, i decided that i want to help developing open-source project. However, ubuntu uses C++ & QML, not java so i cant code for them. Do you know where i can find a good or widely use android open-source project? I know i can find some projects in code.google, but theres too many project. I dont know which one is suitable/good for me. Any help/suggestion is appreciated (im still a college student after all). And if you wondering \"why dont i learn c++?\", well i think i dont have enough time to learn now because i also have a part-time job as a android developer. Thats why i prever android, or at least java. Thanks for your time"}
{"_id": "26609", "title": "How to teach Delegates", "text": "How do you go about teaching Delegates to new programmers? Any examples outside the programming concept that you would use to teach them? For instance, with inheritance, you teach it as follows. Cat is an Animal. Dog is an Animal too. So, we can put the common features that all Animals have in the Animal group (read as class) and then put the specific features that Cats have in the Cat group (read as class). In a similar way (or a different way), how would you teach Delegates?"}
{"_id": "92535", "title": "What efforts you make to stay on the edge of perfect productivity?", "text": "May be it is only me, but sometimes I think I spend to refactoring and working with abstractions too much time. My project usually begins with studying some new technology, like MVP, .NET, MVC, WPF and so on.. It's very rarely I stand on something that I've already knew. New things always win the competition in my mind. Then I'm trying to make good inrastructure, dealing with abstractions, interfaces and so on. At the same time I try some little concrete things to make sure I know how this certain piece will done and unfortunately these researches take much time too. And then... I begin to refactor my abstractions, because they already don't meet my actual needs. Looks like it's a bad habit or some hidden attempt to escape from the real challenge. Hidden part of iceberg becomes too huge in comparison of what I'd expected. Looks that one of my part likes to \"play programming\" which is unacceptable by my other part: produce result! I didn't mention the requirements because in my current project I know exactly what the program should do, even in details. All this gives some result anyway, but too slowly. I definitely know that I must increase my productivity. My mind (when it's clean enough, heh) produces some directions of improvment:   1. Trainings on concentration   2. Become a manager for someone else (I currently work alone)   3. Stop programming and start something else   4. Just work more   5. Move to big city and join professional team   6. Read some books with related ideas   7. Begin to ask such questions :)   8. ... What line I should take at first, or may be there are some other advices? I simply want to know what attempts you make (or would make in my context) to stay on the edge of perfect productivity, and also how detect that it is time do some something else, just for a while. And sorry about such non-specific question, but I really think I overpass something. I'm new to SO btw. Thanks."}
{"_id": "92532", "title": "Use of Apache 2.0 Licensed K9 Email Android App in Commercial Email App", "text": "I want to improve usability of K9 Email client, Make a new UI and implement some additional functionality. This software is Licensed Under Apache 2.0. http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/ https://github.com/obra/k-9 Can I use the whole source code of this app with some modifications to some of classes and make this app a Commercial One? I want some legal Advice. If I succeed in this then I have wish to share revenue with original developer of this app. Please give me some pointers on this. I have read about Apache 2.0 license. I am not clear about this line.. \"provide clear attribution to The Apache Software Foundation for any distributions that include Apache software\" From Apache FAQ http://www.apache.org/foundation/licence-FAQ.html And Clause 4 D from this link http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 Please Provide your Inputs on this.."}
{"_id": "188565", "title": "How to invoke anonymous functions in testing?", "text": "Below is Java code. I need to cover the below function. I searched for many websites, but I still have no ideas. Is there any methods to cover the override anonymous classes?                 public static void addEnterListener(Text text, final String methodName, final Object callee) {         text.addKeyListener(new KeyListener() {         @Override         public void keyReleased(KeyEvent arg0) {         if (arg0.keyCode == '\\r') {           try {             Method method = callee.getClass().getMethod(methodName, KeyEvent.class);             method.invoke(callee, arg0);           } catch (Exception e) {e.printStackTrace();}         }       }            @Override       public void keyPressed(KeyEvent arg0) {        }     });     }"}
{"_id": "253903", "title": "Prepared statement alternatives for this middle-man program?", "text": "I have an program that is using a prepared statement to connect and write to a database working nicely, and now need to create a middle-man program to insert between this program and the database. This middle-man program will actually write to multiple databases and handle any errors and connection issues. I would like advice as to how to replicate the prepared statements such as to create minimal impact to the existing program, however I am not sure where to start. I have thought about creating a \"SQL statement class\" that mimics the prepared statement, only that seems silly. The existing program is in Java, although it's going to be networked anyways so I would be open to writing it in just about anything that would make sense. The databases are currently MySQL, although I would like to be open to changing the database type in the future. My main question is what should the interface for this program look like, and does doing this even make sense? A distributed DB would be the ideal solution, but they seem overly complex and expensive for my needs. I am hoping to replicate the main functionality of a distributed DB via this middle-man. I am not too familiar with sql-based servers distributing data (or database in general...) - perhaps I am fighting an uphill battle by trying to solve it via programming, but I would like to make an attempt at least."}
{"_id": "61786", "title": "Licenses that allows distributing an application without the source", "text": "Let's say I'm planning to sell a _.NET_ application in my website. If I need to use a library `A` (a reference to the compiled assembly, not the source code)... **Under which license could be`A` so I can do this?**"}
{"_id": "193190", "title": "Understanding unit tests/TDD for ASP.NET webforms", "text": "I'm the lead programmer at a small software firm (currently 4 developers including myself), we develop bespoke ASP.NET WebForms applications for businesses. I joined there in 2010 just after graduation, so it was my first real job. After more senior programmers left, I was promoted to lead and we hired a bunch of junior devs for me to mentor. My issue is that currently, we have a huge amount of work from delayed projects (some 2-3 years delayed) so our development is very rushed and testing is left to the very last minute, and our releases often go out with obvious bugs we should have picked up. This really brings down morale and gets everyone very stressed, including myself. We have no testing framework at all, or barely even any organisation to what we're meant to be doing. We never use unit tests, and all testing is manual and very laborious. This sort of methodology is all I've been exposed to since becoming a programmer, but I'm fast learning that this is not how a software house should work. I've been trying to familiarise myself with TDD and Unit testing, but it's all extremely foreign to me and I'm having a hard time visualising how we could actually use these in our applications. Most of the logic inside our apps are in the code behind for each page (something I am now pushing to get away from) and from what I've read this makes testing much more difficult. Does anyone have any advice, or know of any good tutorials, that'll help us get up to scratch with TDD? We have a lot of other issues, including not using SVN efficiently, having a very basic HelpDesk for our bugs and giving our team fairly vague specs. Again these are things that I want to learn myself, but I'm needing to spend a lot of time actually teaching myself all of this. So if anyone has any advice for this I'd appreciate it but our testing is the most crucial thing right now."}
{"_id": "170939", "title": "How to make the switch to C++11?", "text": "I've been programming in C++ for a while now, but mostly things centered around the low-level features of C++. By that I mean mostly working with pointers and raw arrays. I think this behavior is known as using C++ as C with classes. Despite this, I only having tried C recently for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised how languages like C# and Java hide these details away in convenient standard library classes like Dictionaries and Lists. I'm aware that the C++ standard library has many containers like vectors, maps and strings as well and C++11 only adds to this by having std:: array and ranged loops. How do I best learn to make use of these modern language features and which are suitable for which moments? Is it correct that software engineering in C++ nowadays is mostly free of manual memory management? Lastly, which compiler should I use to make the most of the new standard? Visual Studio has excellent debugging tools, but even VS2012 seems to have terrible C++11 support."}
{"_id": "110967", "title": "How to include conditions in UML sequence diagrams?", "text": "I like to draw a UML sequence diagram to display the sequence of actions and interactions of different parts of my system (I think they called actors). However, I need to include `if then else` statements here. Do I do something wrong? Can I use conditional if statements in my UML sequence diagram? How?"}
{"_id": "209576", "title": "What are the reasons to create UIView subclass?", "text": "I've noticed that there are a lot of UIView subclasses in my legacy project. Mostly the only reason of such a subclass is to split bigger view into custom subviews and provide layout for its subviews and delegation of UIButtons actions through the view delegate protocol. So I'm wondering, is it a correct design?"}
{"_id": "50694", "title": "Industry attitude towards what is called an \"undergraduate Master's\"", "text": "I'm enrolled in an undergraduate Master's degree. It will be my first degree - 4 years course - but it will be called Master's. I will not get any intermediate degree. It's from one of the most prestigious institutes in India ranked in Top 20 in Asia for technology and science by Asia Week. How does the industry treat this? On par with other MS candidates or on par with other BS candidates?"}
{"_id": "209760", "title": "What are CPU registers?", "text": "This question has been bothering me for some time now and today I figured I would Google it. I've read some stuff about it and it seemed very similar to what I've always known as processor cache. Is there a difference between the two or am I right when I think they are the same? Is a register actually required to be inside a CPU for it to work? According to Wikipedia a register is a place in the CPU where memory can be quickly accessed and modified before being sent back to the RAM. Did I understand this wrong or are the cache and register actually the same?"}
{"_id": "209575", "title": "How to charge customers for AGPL-3 based solution?", "text": "If I talk about openERP its and source (AGPL-3), I have studied it, but can't find some question e.g 1: we have developed a School Management System using openERP Version 7.0, as according to my understanding, we cannot sale it to any customer as it appears to be free like other modules of openERP. So I should charge my client for my services? what should be the criteria for that? OR still there is a chance that I can sell my newly developed module?"}
{"_id": "164256", "title": "Is catching general exceptions really a bad thing?", "text": "I typically agree with most code analysis warnings, and I try to adhere to them. However, I'm having a harder time with this one: > CA1031: Do not catch general exception types I understand the rationale for this rule. But, in practice, if I want to take the same action regardless of the exception thrown, why would I handle each one specifically? Furthermore, if I handle specific exceptions, what if the code I'm calling changes to throw a new exception in the future? Now I have to change my code to handle that new exception. Whereas if I simply caught `Exception` my code doesn't have to change. For example, if Foo calls Bar, and Foo needs to stop processing regardless of the type of exception thrown by Bar, is there any advantage in being specific about the type of exception I'm catching? Maybe a better example:               public void Foo()     {         // Some logic here.         LogUtility.Log(\"some message\");     }          public static void Log()     {         try         {             // Actual logging here.         }         catch (Exception ex)         {             // Eat it. Logging failures shouldn't stop us from processing.         }     }      If you don't catch a general exception here, then you have to catch every type of exception possible. Patrick has a good point that `OutOfMemoryException` shouldn't be dealt with this way. So what if I want to ignore every exception but `OutOfMemoryException`?"}
{"_id": "151508", "title": "Content of AUTHORS file", "text": "GNU recommends making an `AUTHORS` file to list the authors and contributors of a program. But how many \"levels\" of authors and contributors should the file contain? E.g. if I write a program `foo` that actively use some library, should I include the authors of that library in the `AUTHORS` file? It seems that the answer is \"yes,\" because total code of `foo` contains code from the library. But if yes, that means I should also include the authors of all other libraries, including standard libraries of the compiler, authors of the compiler and other tools for producing final executable code, authors of the OS... When I should stop?"}
{"_id": "23386", "title": "Pros and Cons of RESTful architecture", "text": "The most common discussion I've seen regarding the pros and cons of REST tends to frame that discussion relative to SOAP. I have no experience in either. I am currently faced with a decision which my lack of experience is making hard for me to evaluate. I am beginning to develop an application that has several components - primarily an administrative aspect that allows the owner to administer several sites - and a public facing user interface that allows the user to interact with data held on the host. I need to evaluate the implications of allowing the latter part to be hosted anywhere and communicate with the former via a RESTful architecture - or demanding that both components reside on the same host. What are the key implications of developing RESTful architecture, particularly with regards to it's capacity in the following areas: 1: Security 2: Performance 3: Interface complexity EDIT: Looking at some of the answers to this question - I should clarify. I'm not looking for a comparison to SOAP - rather an overview of REST applications vs applications where all components reside on one host. (thanks for those answers though!)"}
{"_id": "66786", "title": "What should be done when upgrading compiler introduces bug in existing project?", "text": "We've 4 embedded firmware at hand. Two of them are released, are in maintenance phase. Other two are going to be released. The released product uses OKI 411 micro, where as yet to be released products are on OKI 431 micro. So far we've been compiling the code using OKI's CCU8 3.08 compiler. It supports both 411 and 431 hardware. Recently they've updated the compiler to 3.10 and we started using it for all the products. Suddenly we've found that 3.10 is producing unexpected behaviour in one 431 based project. It is related to compiler optimization. So the release build exhibited a bug and two whole days were wasted to figure it out that the firmware works fine if compiled with 3.08 version of the compiler. Note that the other 431 based product didn't show any issue. So we've decided to abandon the latest compiler for all projects and use the previous one. What steps should be taken when this kind of situation occurs? Also when upgrading compiler, what should be done to ensure that it will not break any build?"}
{"_id": "61258", "title": "Model-view-presenters and user-interactions involving separate dialogs", "text": "I have a UI form written using model-view-presenter that has, among other things, a listbox containing a number of different domain objects. The form also contains an add/update button which pulls up a dialog allowing the user to add/update a domain object. The domain-object form is general and is used to gather basic information, like the name of the object. It's essentially a humble dialog that collects information and dispatches an event with said information when the form is closed successfully allowing the domain object to be added or updated accordingly. To clarify a bit more, I'm unsure in a number of different areas:   * Is there a standard interaction model or are there standard interaction patterns for use between UIs when using MVP?   * Should the responsibility for displaying any required forms or dialogs lie with the presenter, view, or neither?   * Does the fact that I'm using a humble dialog for the information gathering violate \"tell, don't ask\" and make things harder than needed?   * Is the answer UI specific and, if so, what questions would guide me to a good answer? Other notes:   * It feels like the responsibility for displaying required forms and dialogs lies more with the view than with the presenter, as other views could use alternative means to gather that information -- the presenter only needs be appropriately alerted.   * I'm more interested in the related patterns and practices than in technical details.   * In the spirit of low coupling, I typically use message passing between forms and components."}
{"_id": "22035", "title": "How to be a responsible early adopter?", "text": "A disconcertingly high number of new technologies/paradigms are overhyped (as is evident from replies to this question). Combine this with the fact that being early adopter is inherently risky. This makes evaluation of technology before adoption critical. So how exactly early adopters among you go about it. I can think of following general criteria.   1. For early adoption technology must address previously unaddressed issue and/or   2. For acceptance beyond early adoption technology should address performance   3. One indicator that something is **not right** is when there is too much of jargon for technology which is either irrelevant or there is no evidence to back it up What is your opinion. Update: 4\\. BTW, the biggest reason to **fear** technology is when it is imposed by the tech-unaware management based entirely on number of buzzwords."}
{"_id": "189387", "title": "How to create a feature map?", "text": "I have a big side project that I do now for 3 years. It has a lot of extra small tools to help me do tasks. Most of those tools are so old that I forgot what I have there. How to create a feature map to have easy reminder of what is possible ? Is there some special UML diagram notation for it? How to do it? I think graphic version would be better than a readme text file."}
{"_id": "189386", "title": "How to license my closed source & freeware (donation ware) - using creative commons?", "text": "After doing a bit of research about licensing my free software, I reached this: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ * * * how do I include it in my software or website ? * * * going here: https://creativecommons.org/choose/ I see the text that I should include: > This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- > NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/."}
{"_id": "61255", "title": "How to decide : Phone App or Web App", "text": "From your real life experience & executed work. How to choose between starting a project as a Phone App or a Web App ? From what I've read, it is a matter of : the need vs time & $ cash to solve it. I am not sure for the long term & with a limited budget what path to take. My main concerns and comparisons : Phone App   * locked in on a given platform   * specific to each device   * specific dev skills needed for each device   * cost of programming    * cost of distributing   * limited distribution channel  Web App   * open platform    * multiple devices friendlier    * overlapping dev skills    * cost of programming    * no distribution cost   * no distribution channel What are your Pros / Cons"}
{"_id": "73057", "title": "Java Certified Programmers: Was there anything in particular that caught you off guard on the Certification Exam?", "text": "I am about to take the Java 6 SE Certification Exam on Thursday. Just wondering if any of you found anything unexpected on these exams or things you wished you had paid more attention on. Any general tips, tricks, or warnings, would be greatly appreciated. (Please don't waste time trying to tell me that I am wasting my time/money, because I am just doing this so that I can get an instant A in my Java class.) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "188385", "title": "How are line/column position data dealt with in parser combinator libraries?", "text": "I'm building a parser using a parser combinator library. I need to keep track of where AST nodes started and ended in the textual input -- line and column numbers. How is this problem approached and/or what are strategies for dealing with it? **Clarification:** I'm asking about how/when/where the line and column data is calculated. Two possible alternatives are 1) as an extra piece of state ala monads and monad transformers, that is updated whenever a token (character) is consumed, and 2) preprocessing the token stream to add the line/column to each one. Drawbacks: 1) would result in the same work being done multiple times if there's backtracking. 2) would increase memory usage a lot if the entire input stream were done up-front."}
{"_id": "119168", "title": "Is \"White-Board-Coding\" inappropriate during interviews?", "text": "This is a somewhat subjective quesiton but I'd love to hear feedback/opinions from either interviewers/interviewees on the topic. We split our technical part into 4 parts. Write Code, Read & Analyse Code, Design Session & Code on the white board. For the last part what we ask interviewees to do is write a small code snippet (4-5 lines) on the whiteboard and explain as they go through it. Let me be clear the purpose is not to catch people out. We're not looking for perfect syntax. Hell it can even be pseudo-code. but the point is to give them a very simple problem and see if their brain can communicate the solution to us. By simple problems I mean \"Reverse a string\", \"FizzBuzz\" etc... **EDIT** > Just with regards the comment about Pseudo-Code. We always ask for an > explicit language first. We;re a .NET C# house. we've only said \"pseudo- > code\" where someone has been blanking/really struggling with the code. My question is **\"Is it innappropriate / unreasonable to expect a programmer to write a code snippet on a whiteboard during an interview ?\"**"}
{"_id": "165328", "title": "\"Opportunity\" to take over maintenance of a small internal website. What should I do?", "text": "I have been offered an `\"opportunity\"` to take over maintenance of a small internal website run by my group that provides information about schedules and photos of events the groups done. My manager sent me the link to the site and I checked it out. The site looked clean and neat but loaded in ~5 seconds. I thought this was a little long considering the site really didn't contain a lot of content. This prompted me to take a look under the hood at the pages source code. To my horror it'd been totally hacked together using **nested tables**! I'm new so I really can't say no to this `\"opportunity\"` so what should I do with it? Every fiber of my being feels that the only correct thing to do is overhaul the site using CSS, Div's, Span's and any other appropriate tags that a sane/good web developer would used to begin with instead of depending on the render incentive magic of tables. But I'd like to ask programmers with more experienced then me, who have been in this situation. What should I do? Is my only realistic option to leave the horror as is and only adjusting the content as requested? I'm really torn between good development and the corporate reality I'm part of. Is there some kind of middle ground where things can be made better even if they're not perfect? Thanks ahead of time. **Edit:** I've been looking into this a little deeper and noticed an extension type that rendered as HTML but was actually \".cfm\". After looking into it I found out this was a ColdFusion file. Which is apparently an Adobe WYSIWIG program which must have been used by my predecessor to create this site. This means maintenance will be trivial once I get a copy of ColdFusion. I will probably still need to do things like create thumb nails and move some of the content on the home page elsewhere to improve load times. I doubt I can go much further in optimizing the site past this without throwing out ColdFusion. I am very grateful for all the good advice and will keep it in mind for future \"Opportunities\"."}
{"_id": "99192", "title": "Why was Rails written in Ruby?", "text": "I know PHP and Ruby. Using a PHP Rails clone (not out of choice), called Symfony, (which is apparently the best PHP framework), I notice that it's a clone of Rails. I think Symfony is stupid and that (SensioLabs is a clever business) because Rails already exists. Apart from open-source projects gaining money, I don't understand why people are making Rails clones in PHP, when Rails already exists. Why not use Rails? Surely DHH coded Rails with Ruby for a reason. Using Symfony, I notice that something doesn't quite feel right but I don't know what it is. I learnt Rails through a crap Sitepoint ebook and forgot it, so now I'm learning it through the PragProg ebook and I love that ebook. I don't fully know Rails, but I understand how it works (thanks to Symfony). I would love finish getting through the whole ebook so I can make 2 Rails apps. I remember Rails being more fun than Symfony using the Sitepoint ebook that I couldn't finish, and that had nothing to do with Ruby's pretty syntax.   1. Why is Rails coded in Ruby?   2. What is it about PHP Rails clones, that don't feel right?   3. What is it that Rails is doing, that Rails clones aren't doing?"}
{"_id": "165321", "title": "is it allowed to create a app with overscroll feature?", "text": "As Apple won lawsuits against Motorola and Samsung with the so called `overscroll patent`, I am asking myself what the legal consequences of releasing an application with such a feature are? I think if one releases the app in IOS it would be okay, but what happens in Android or Windows? Am I getting sued? What happens if I am writing an app for the browser? Isn't this overscroll patent a design patent? If this is true, all apps that use overscrolling and not written by Apple, would be illegal. Very confusing. Can anyone explain is?"}
{"_id": "99195", "title": "How does Python's handling of line-breaks differ from JavaScript's automatic semicolons?", "text": "Javascript has a feature called Automatic Semicolon Insertion where basically if the parser encounters an invalid token, and the last token before that was a line break, then the parser will insert a semicolon where the linebreak is. This enables you to basically write all your javascript code without semicolons, but you have to be aware of some edge cases, mostly if you have a return keyword and then the value you want to return on a new line.               function test(){         // This will return 'undefined', because return is a valid statement         // and  \"john\" is a valid statement on its own.         return                \"john\"     }      Because of these gotchas there are dozens of articles with titles like 'Automatic semicolon insertion is Evil', 'Always use semicolons in Javascript' etc. But in Python no one ever uses semicolons and it has exactly the same gotchas.               def test():         # This will return 'undefined', because return is a valid statement         # and  \"john\" is a valid statement on its own.         return          \"john\"      Works exactly the same, and yet no-one is deadly afraid of Pythons behaviour. I think the cases where the javascript behaves badly are few enough that you should be able to avoid them easily. Return + value on a new line? Do people really do that a lot? Any opinions? Do you use semicolons in javascript and why?"}
{"_id": "56667", "title": "What are the licensing issues involved in the Oracle/Apache java dispute?", "text": "I've just started following with interest the soap opera involving Oracle's acquisition of Java and the detriment of goodwill it seems to have generated in the open source community. Specifically, I'm now trying to get my head around the implications of Oracle's decision to refuse Apache an open source license for Harmony. My questions: 1) What is Harmony anyway? Their website states \"Apache Harmony software is a modular Java runtime with class libraries and associated tools\". How is this different than J2SE or J2EE? Or is Harmony akin to Andriod? 2) The crux of this issue is around the Java Technology Compatibility Kit (or TCK) which certifies that your implementation adheres to the JSR specifications. If I understand correctly, Oracle refuse to offer free or open source license access to the TCK, denying projects like Harmony from being released as open source. Why is this such a big deal for Apache? E.g. why can't (or don't) they release Harmony under a restricted license? 3) From this site is the following quote: > It looks like Oracle\u2019s plan is to restrict deployments of Java > implementations in certain markets, particularly on mobile platforms, so > that it can monetize its own Java offering in those markets without any > competition. Presumably anything Oracle produced would be subject to the same restrictions it is imposing on others with respect to end-technology licensing, so how could they get a leg up on the competition? While no doubt distateful, wouldn't other competitors such as Google or Apache be able to release competing platforms under the same license as Oracle?"}
{"_id": "98434", "title": "Should the build drive your tags or should the tags drive the build?", "text": "Our current method of creating a product release is to tag all of our component repositories with the next appropriate version and then modify a master build script with these new version numbers for each component. The master build script will then be run and it will perform a SCM checkout of each component, then modify the AssemblyInfo.cs file so that the compiled .exe (or .dll) has the correct version number, and then compile the component. All of these components are then coalesced into a product release which is \"versioned\" with a pure marketing decided number. So our process falls under the \"tags drive the build\" description, but I am not certain that is the best method. Specifically, where I see this failing us is if we were to integrate our release build into the CI process, it seems like it would be backwards. Not just that, but where in a typical release-management process does the decision for the new component version numbers come in? Someone has to decide when component A goes from 2.1.4 to 3.0.0 and if library B should change from 6.3.2 to 6.3.3 or 6.4.0. Where are these version numbers stored and at what stage are they decided? Currently, we make these decisions at the \"last moment\" and they are stored in the master build script. The master build script itself is versioned and is tagged with the \"marketing\" version number."}
{"_id": "56669", "title": "Contractor - Acceptable Payment Terms?", "text": "I'm wondering whether or not I've done the right thing as a contractor. Basically I'm in to my 3rd month, and my current client messed up the payment in the first month, and I just found out that they are again late in paying me for my 2nd month. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't in a bit of a financial situation due to this being my first contract experience. But as a matter of principal, I walked out on them and will be telling them that I will not be going back in until they resolve the pay. Part of me feels as though this was not a very professional thing to do, but I also don't feel that it was very professional for them to mess my payments up, twice in a row. Did I make the right decision? I still want to work for these guys and enjoy the job, but I have a life to attend to that requires finances and I can't afford to keep getting messed up with pay like this. I attempted to phrase the question to be oriented around contractors behaviour around clients that mis-treat them, and as some of the answers that have been posted so far, it's a good discussion. The answers coming in are great around different subjective situations. Update: In answer to some of the responses, the set-up is Me -> Umbrella Company -> Client. I am an employee of the Umbrella Company who's terms are that I do not get paid unless the client paid up. Thus, when I found out that the client was going to be late paying the Umbrella company, I was quite upset. Also, I do believe that in THIS instance, it was a bad move to have simply walked out. The most professional way to handle it would have been to have made my issues known to my immediate manager and then let him resolve it, instead, his boss and others found out way before him and he was left with crap to deal with, with no chance of handling it before it got out of control. If I was still unhappy with their solution, then I could of told the Umbrella Company that I wasn't happy and was prepared to walk out, which then they could of advised me in a more professional way what my options were. Later which I found out, there were lots of other more professional ways of handling this. However, I've not contracted for long and had a very emotional response to the situation that I've not been in before. I'm positive that a more professional and mature response would have been anything but simply walking out, creating a difficult situation for my boss and now other people in the company and myself. Absolutely great answers so far. Thank you all for your experienced advice."}
{"_id": "100939", "title": "Is SQL important if I know ORM frameworks well?", "text": "I don't have any serious experience in SQL and I even hate to write SQL instead of LINQ. I am happy enough with ORMs. From the employers and sector view point, is it important to know SQL? Do I have to master on it? Are companies that prefer pure SQL over ORM frameworks a \"dinosaur\" in the programming world?"}
{"_id": "145016", "title": "Tips for going from personal projects to enterprise scale projects", "text": "I wanted to know if anyone had any tips for transitioning from small personal projects and coursework, to a large enterprise scale project? Im in my second year at university and have attained a placement with a large tech company, to work on a pretty large project, I'm just a little apprehensive about 'finding my way around' such a large project."}
{"_id": "145010", "title": "What steps can I take to avoid character encoding issues in a web application?", "text": "In previous web applications I've built, I've had issues with users entering exotic characters into forms which get stored strangely in the database, and sometimes appear different or double-encoded when retrieved from the database and displayed back in the browser. I'm starting a new project now, and I want to prevent these issues right from the start. What I'm looking for is a checklist of things I can do to prevent character encoding issues such as these, no matter what users enter into forms. If I set my database tables to UTF-8, and set all of my web pages to assume content is UTF-8, is this enough? Will some characters still appear differently than the user entered them? Should I do some validation on the client side that doesn't let users enter in certain characters?"}
{"_id": "183950", "title": "Cyclomatic complexity with two IFs - why it is 3?", "text": "I have read an article with following example:               void func()     {     if (condition1)     a = a + 1;     if (condition2)     a = a - 1;     }      It says the CC is 3 as there are three possible paths. How come? Why not 4? I Would expect TRUE,TRUE; FALSE,FALSE; TRUE, FALSE and FALSE, TRUE. Does not matter what the statements are. CC=Ifs-EndPoints+2. It is always 3 for 2 IFs and one ending.."}
{"_id": "224900", "title": "Parser and interpreter knowledge as a way to gauge programmer ability", "text": "This is only anecdotal evidence but from my past encounters with programmers at various workplaces the programmers that understand the fundamentals of parsing and interpreting seem to be overall better programmers. They also tend to be less religious about their tools. My subjective experience indicates they tend to write better code as well. I've mostly worked with application programmers and I know this is a very limited sub-discipline of programming in general so take my limited experience for what it is and nothing more. What are some other foundational components of CS that tend to be correlated with programming skill and ability? I'm assuming some basic understanding of basic data structures so that's a given."}
{"_id": "101044", "title": "What is the best practice for reading a large number of custom settings from a text file?", "text": "So I have been looking through some code I wrote a few years ago for an economic simulation program. Each simulation has a large number of settings that can be saved to a file and later loaded back into the program to re-run the same/similar simulation. Some of the settings are optional or depend on what is being simulated. The code to read back the parameters is basically one very large switch statement (with a few nested switch statements). I was wondering if there is a better way to handle this situation. One line of the settings file might look like this:               #RA:1,MT:DiscriminatoryPriceKDoubleAuction,OF:Demo Output.csv,QM:100,NT:5000,KP:0.5 //continues...      And some of the code that would read that line:               switch( Character.toUpperCase( s.charAt(0) ) )     {         case 'R':              randSeed = Integer.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() );              break;         case 'M':               marketType = s.substring(3).trim();               System.err.println(\"MarketType: \" + marketType);               break;         case 'O':               outputFileName = s.substring(3).trim() ;               break;         case 'Q':               quantityOfMarkets = Integer.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() );               break;         case 'N':               maxTradesPerRound = Integer.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() );               break;         case 'K':               kParameter = Float.valueOf( s.substring(3).trim() );               break;      // continues...     }"}
{"_id": "130233", "title": "Am I supposed to remember code from the book I'm using to learn?", "text": "I'm currently using a great book to learn what I need to know about making app's for the iPhone using cocos2d. So far, I am doing great, I read all the code and most of the time, It fits and I understand it. Sometimes, I go through it a couple of more times, over and over just so I fully understand something. My question is.. am I supposed to remember this code? Because while I do understand every block of code and why it exists, I can remember the code as well, but is that necessary ? What am I supposed to remember? The order? I already understand 99% of the syntax (so far everything is clear) .. I hope I'm making sense here. Do I move on after I read the block of code and understand it? Or do I move to the next block of code only if I remember what was in the previous code block? Because I can understand it, write out the code, learn why it's there, etc and then I move on, but is remembering it all what I'm supposed to do?"}
{"_id": "253367", "title": "City exploration algorithm", "text": "The purpose of the algorithm is to create `n` routes on a geographical map, where `n` is being given, whereas all routes take no longer than `t` time units by foot and end where they start, while trying to have as little overlap as possible, meaning the user walking the routes walks on as few streets twice or more often as possible. The software is to calculate closed routes (starting point = ending point) while the length of the routes should equal the time `t`. Another restriction is that each street should be walked along as few times as possible to always explore new areas while walking for the same time period. Example: You are in New York City (google maps for an example map)   * You want to walk for 40 minutes.   * You want to be on new roads or paths as often as possible. Picture having a thread. The thread has a length of `velocity_walking * t` in a smaller scale. Now you glue the end and start to a starting point on your map, `lat` and `lon`. Then you move the thread so it is only on streets/walking paths, without being on the same street twice. Now you take another thread and glue the end and start to a starting point on your map, `lat` and `lon`. Now you do the same thing as above, trying to not put it over the other thread. You repeat this `n` times, all in all, so given the first two threads, you repeat it `n-2` times. So the steps are   1. Enter `n`   2. Enter `t`   3. Enter the starting point in `lat` and `lon`   4. Create `n` routes that take `t` time units to walk by foot, start and end in `lat`,`lon` and if possible don't contain the same streets or parts of streets twice. My idea: Having a circle of radius equaling `walking_velocity * t / 2`. Plan routes from start to point on circle to start. Disadvantages:   * Same streets to the circle's circumference and back.    * Many streets are omitted. What is the better algorithm to do this? Language does not matter, algorithm matters."}
{"_id": "253366", "title": "am I simply too old to try and get work as a programmer?", "text": "Just wanted to ask all you programming pro's these Q's. I am no spring chicken I am 36. I have been learning python and visual basic for about 2 years now and enjoy it a lot. I never got into programming before and regret not doing so as I find I enjoy it a lot. I know if I had found out how much I liked it and took to it years ago I certainly would have pursued it a lot earlier. I have never worked in programming or even IT before I have always worked in manual laboring jobs and am wondering if I could try and get work as a programmer once my programming knowledge is better in 1 or 2 years which will put me in my late 30's. Would this be too old to try and get work in the field? I am really only after anything I can get and know I won't be working for EA Games or something. I hope I could be a 'junior' somewhere despite the embarassement at my age. Starting so late in the field with no experience has me very worried that I would not be taken seriously. My programmer friend says you can start any age as long as you know what you doing, but I have heard different again. As much as I want to work as a programmer I really don't want to spend more time learning more programming only to find myself not even considered by employers because I'm too old and inexperienced and not some young University hotshot. What should I do? others say there is online opportunities which could potentially be used as experience, but is there? please help me out."}
{"_id": "27231", "title": "Ideal Operating System", "text": "Okay. So I'm currently trying to design an operating system, but I need ideas. Nevermind the feasibility right now, it's just in the design phase. If you had an OS that did whatever you wanted, what would you want it to do? Please be specific, and no \"emulate unix or DOS\" answers. Thank you."}
{"_id": "205093", "title": "UML representation of type being passed as a parameter", "text": "I want to draw a UML diagram of my program. Class `Barney` has a method `Yabadaba(Doo d)` which takes a parameter of type `Doo`. How do I represent that class `Doo` is used in class `Barney` in my UML diagram?"}
{"_id": "140621", "title": "Software solution from the 2000's, should I attempt to patch or remake the whole thing?", "text": "I was sent out to discuss a system that a certain company is currently using and what should be done with it. The company manufactures various carton displays. This system was developed to keep track of clients, orders and prices. Lots have happened since the system was created and the system is now, as the manager described it, \" _locked up_ \" and \" _problematic_ \", which I translate as \"not dynamic\" and \"unstable\". Some info about the system   * It was developed around the year 2000   * Fairly small system, 2-5 users, 6 forms, ~8 tables with average quantities of data   * Built on early Visual Basic, forms created with the drag and drop design. Interface is basically just a window with a menu and some forms   * Uses MSSQL database (SQL2005 server) to store data and ODBC driver to query, data was migrated from excel before this system, and before excel it was handled, calculated and written by hand and paper   * Users work in Microsoft XP environment (and up) Their main problem is that they can't adjust and calculate prices, can't add new carton types etc, correctly anymore because they can't (or rather, they don't know how to) touch the data on the server. I suggested 3 possible solutions   1. Attempt to patch the current system   2. Create a fresh new interface (preferably similar environment, VB.net or VB based)   3. Bring it back to an Excel solution, considering it is such a small system There might be more options, but these are the ones I could think of. My questions are   * What should I recommend and why?   * What is or could be the pros and cons of these alternatives?   * Are there other (possibly better) alternatives?"}
{"_id": "205099", "title": "When creating an open source project, is coding in VB.net a bad idea?", "text": "I am planning on creating an open source project, however, I was wondering if developers tend to steer away from projects that are coded in VB.net, even if they know VB.net. From what I have read, more professionals use C++/C# and don't like VB.net, but beginners tend to like VB.net more. I am trying to make my project as beginner friendly, however, I still want some more experienced programmers so I don't have to carry the bulk of the load of the harder stuff. **Will I have much more contributions (to code, not money) when I chose either C++ or C#? Will more developers \"play around\" with my code?** I'm not worried about people who don't bother looking at the code, I just want to know would my project be more likely to prosper if I use a more popular language, or if I have a good idea, it will succeed no matter what language I use? By the way, no matter the language I chose, I will use the .net framework for ease of use. **If I do chose to use some form of C, do you recommend C# or C++? I have some experience with C (Arduino) and I plan on getting a book at the library if I use it for my project, so that is not a problem, but I really don't want my project to become abandon-ware. In fact, I hope someday, if I can, have it not dependent on me at all. (Not saying I won't contribute, but I don't have to spend all my time working on it.) * * * **EDIT:** So far, almost everybody thinks I should use either C# or C++. **Which one is more popular? Is there a benefit of one over the other?** * * * **EDIT 2:** ## **Please provide your answers with facts (like number of open source projects that use __ language, etc. so it can show trends).**"}
{"_id": "246439", "title": "extensible effects in purescript", "text": "In Purescript, IO an other effects are managed with the Eff monad, and extensible effects, which are declared like this:               main :: Eff (trace :: Trace, random :: Random) {}      So if I understand well, this `main` declaration only allows to log to console, and generate random numbers. The `trace :: Trace, random :: Random` is a row of effect, ie an unordered labeled collection of effects. Now I get that `Trace` is an effect, and `trace` is its label. But why do we need both? It makes sense for records such as `{ foo::String, bar::String }` but I cannot understand why I would need to manage two `Random` effect with different labels. ie I would write the following:               main :: Eff (Trace, Random) {} -- no redundant labels      Are effect labels useful in purescript? If yes what for?"}
{"_id": "246432", "title": "How to allow innovation in an Agile Methodology", "text": "It is one thing to say that agile methodologies are good in settings where requirements are poorly understood, or that significant novelty is involved. But should it be applied where outright innovation is required? If yes, how? If what you are contemplating is unknown in the industry, or even thought to be impossible, it may be difficult to conceive of the user stories and related tasks. For example, would it have benefitted Albert Einstein (or a hypothetical employer he reports to) to have devised the theory of general relativity by breaking it down into epics, sprints, and tasks? If the answer is \"yes,\" then what special accomodations should have been incorporated to help an agile approach work best with Einstein's way of achieving revolutionary insight? To give a specific software example, imagine the year is 2008 and you would like to use WCF to provide COMET or \"long-polling\" type capabilities. All your research of \"prior work\" turns up nothing, and you even read an MSDN blogger say it isn't possible. Again, what adjustments or \"flavor\" could be brought into the user stories and tasks to accomodate the inventiveness (or audacity?) of this endeaver? Or would it indeed be better to conclude the effort is so innovative (in 2008), it is best left as an undirected think-tank exercise? The innovator who is operating under two-week sprints certainly does not want to be shot-down every time he abandons a dead-end task and starts working on a newly discovered task that was not envisioned when the sprint was defined. Likewise, when the sprint ends and no working code or working approaches are delivered, the innovator should not be shot down by management. There needs to be a way to label the effort as \"success\" even in these circumstances. In perhaps one or three more sprints of this kind of \"dead end\" pursuits, the innovator might finally hit on something that works. How does agile allow management know that each sprint was \"ok\" despite the innovative set-backs? How is this managed so that the burn-down chart does not look preposterous?"}
{"_id": "146667", "title": "How would you transfer data between your data structures and databases?", "text": "I'm learning programming in school and I have this question that's bugging me about data structures and transferring the information stored inside them to databases. We're doing just small systems - registration for an event, point of sale for a local restaurant, sales and inventory, etc Let's say someone registers himself, should it be passed into a data structure and then into the database, or should it just be transferred directly to the database?"}
{"_id": "146664", "title": "Is the Mercury Programming Language used in the field?", "text": "I've strong interests in Functional and Logic programming and Mercury seems like a good blend of the two. Is it used in industry at all? I'm one to learn a language just for the fun of it but it would nice to have practical, employable avenues for it. I could not find much in the way of examples of use in industry on the language website."}
{"_id": "25569", "title": "Is Haskell worth learning?", "text": "I am looking at this question primarily from a career point of view, so I hope you answer it accordingly. I am fairly proficient with Python, can write C++ and I am a final year student of computer science engineering I am looking to learn Haskell because I have heard a lot about it. My question is: apart from learning it because of all the good I have heard about it, is it any good for my career? Is it used in the industry? I am curious to learn it but unless it helps me somehow in my career, I am not willing to make that change at this stage. Looking for some personal experiences here. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "85446", "title": "Can non-IT people handle a wiki?", "text": "My company is looking to improve their market research data management. **Current data management style:**   * \"Hey Jimbo, where's that picture of our WhatZit 2.0?   * \"yeah I remember that email about that company from that guy, gimme a few minutes to search my Outlook\"   * \"who has the newest copy of the Important Competitor's product catalogue? Mine is from 2009.\" ... \"Colleen does, and she's on maternity leave. You'll have to call her to get her workstation password...\" **Desired data management style:**   * data organized neatly by topic (legal, economic, industrial, competitor)   * for each topic, multiple media types stored together (company product images, press releases, contact info) but still neatly sorted by type   * data editing histories   * communal access (no data silos) I was thinking about setting up a department wiki for all users to access. It seems to satisfy the four criteria above, but I'm a little concerned about how user-friendly (read: decipherable to non-technical people) it is for the more advanced features like image galleries, article formatting, and the like. Has anyone here setup a wiki for non-IT people and had it not catch on fire, become a ghost town, or look like Geocities? Bonus question: can you see any obvious drawbacks to my choice of MediaWiki (or any other wiki) for solving this problem? (I'm hoping that some of you will have encountered this issue before and can offer some insights...)"}
{"_id": "85447", "title": "How do I justify upgrading to Windows Server 2008?", "text": "We're just about to start a new greenfield project - it's a highly functional web application using ASP.NET MVC3, SQL Server etc. We're also going to be using Windows Workflow Foundation for the first time. Our client only wants to use his existing Windows Server 2003 web servers. My main issue (other than it is 8 years old) is that we don't much experierence of WWF development, but understand that using AppFabric (Server 2008 only) will improve WWF development. It's a significant cost to the client, as we need fail-over servers and a UAT environment as well. Am I correct in my understanding, and what methodologies can I use to justify the cost of upgrading?"}
{"_id": "85449", "title": "How do you write a code analysis & refactoring tool to interface with Visual Studio?", "text": "Recently while working on a project of mine and doing some refactoring I got an idea to write a custom tool to help me analyze my code in a very specific context and perform some very custom refactoring. What I wish to do is to interface with Visual Studio somehow and use its powers to analyze my code and do some refactoring. There is a class view which displays the logical structure of a project with its classes, methods and variables so I assume the high-level information about the code is available. The question is, does it get exposed to the user? Is there some API for me to use? Basically I want the following:   1. A way to run some simple code analysis code blocks with the complexity of unit tests, nothing really fancy. Like getting the list of the classes matching a certain name pattern, iterate through their methods, filter the ones with certain attributes, look inside if there are calls to certain methods if so assert those calls having specific parameters. Then throw the analysis result into the output window, so that when I double-click there a location in the respective code file is opened in the workspace.   2. A possibility to command Visual Studio to perform surgical refactoring like renaming a specified variable and then applying its built-in renaming refactoring project-wide. These basic refactoring operations are available for the user in manual mode, can they be invoked from code?   3. Nothing that would damage the code style. Like the built-in refactoring which leaves the code style intact.   4. Not a static plugin for Visual Studio but solution-dependent code, so that it travels with the solution. Without installation. Perhaps like a separate analysis project in a solution, which I can set as active, uncomment the desired analysis methods and let them run.   5. Something very basic, without a GUI. A configuration file and the analysis code files will do.   6. Possibly without using any third-party tool, don't wish to introduce an extra dependency If it is at all possible, can you please give me some clues to the names, keywords, what to google for? I'm interested in any information you can provide to the subject - outline the scope of my options, known issues, difficulties, problems? Anything to make the big picture clear. And a million dollar question: provided it's possible, can something like that be quickly hacked together in a few hours?"}
{"_id": "74200", "title": "Why is it considered a best practice to package the program code and the graphical interface code in different classes?", "text": "So my teacher tells me that it is very important to not encapsulate the program code and the graphical interface code in the same classes, But to keep them completely independent. Im currently writing an iphone game with a grid in it. to me it makes much more sense to Create both the graphical grid and the technical code in the same \"Grid\" class. Will other programmer frown upon this? Is it indeed very important to keep the graphical interface and code independent. What problems will arise if I don't? Thank you! EDIT: thanks guys! Would it be ok for me to write up the project first and then copy code around to form the separation of concerns design. I know that this may totally defeat the purpose, but just as practice...So that next time I can apply this design pattern from the start?"}
{"_id": "140999", "title": "Application layer vs domain layer?", "text": "I am reading Domain-Driven Design by Evans and I am at the part discussing the layered architecture. I just realized that application and domain layers are different and should be separate. In the project I am working on, they are kind of blended and I can't tell the difference until I read the book (and I can't say it's very clear to me now), really. My questions, since both of them concerns the logic of the application and are supposed to be clean of technical and presentation aspects, what are the advantages of drawing a boundary these two?"}
{"_id": "253247", "title": "Calculate Pi to N number of places", "text": "I am trying to work out how to calculate Pi to N decimal places, I think the default DP's for a float/double is 5 and then you have setprecision() however these are obviously inadequate, I need infinite number of places. Also would anyone have any idea of how to code something like y-cruncher?"}
{"_id": "166674", "title": "Using Metro style in my web applications", "text": "I love the Metro UI (Modern UI/Windows 8 style UI, whatever) and would like to have the \"tile\" design on my site as well. Something like this or this. Am I allowed to do this or do I have to contact MS first about this? There is already one question but in this one the posted and accepted answer covered more the pivot control than the tileish UI."}
{"_id": "166672", "title": "Does it ever make sense to license source code as a learning resource under GPL?", "text": "I recently came across a series of articles walking through how to make a scheme interpreter. I was browsing through the code when I realized that it was AGPL. For the most part, the code itself is the teaching tool. Basically, the code as-is is what I need, however, I did want to understand how it all fits together as well. I realized though that if I copy and paste a single line of code, my project would become AGPL. Possibly by even more trivial actions? Anyway, is this a standard practice at all? Am I just being over-paranoid? Also, what benefits are there to this licensing scheme?"}
{"_id": "166673", "title": "How To Start Programming", "text": "I have taken a programming course 2 years ago but I haven't worked in programming since then. I recently found a programmer job, but there is no programming team so for me to gain valuable experience from. I am Programming by myself and making changes on a program already made by my Ex-colleague. I need to know what should I do to be on the right track for becoming a professional programmer without a team to take experience from. What are the good practices to improve and what are the bad ones? I'm using VB.Net, ASP.Net and SQL."}
{"_id": "135771", "title": "What is the proper way to write a setter?", "text": "I am am trying to learn JAVA on my own. In one book I am reading the author says there is no convention for writing a correct setter. His example would go something like this:               public void setUnitCost(double inUnitCost) {          unitCost = inUnitCost;     }      However, when using Eclipse, and tell it to create getters and setters it does this:               public void setUnitCost (double unitCost){          this.unitCost = unitCost;     }      My question is which way is better? Does it make a difference in the programming world? What exactly is the difference between the two?"}
{"_id": "200571", "title": "Handling Difficult Distributed Version Control System Merges With Pair Programming", "text": "A common problem in my very small team workflow is handling merges from trunk/stable repositories up to feature branches which are ahead of the trunk or stable versions, but which need to track the changes in the trunk and stable versions. We are using mercurial, but any DVCS would perhaps have a similar workflow, including Git, or others. Originally we had a workflow where a senior developer (me) did most of the merging, as that was the model I had experienced at a previous workplace, but similar to the previous place where we worked like that, this put a lot of burden on one developer to take the results of a large number of commits, and clean up the resulting mess. If you were merging one change, with one commit message, maybe you could do this cleanly, but what often happens to me, is that I get a little behind, and a week of changes needs to be merged. What I'm wondering is, when you DO get into a situation where a large merge is necessary, using Mercurial or DVCS, what is the process that you use, and does it involve collaboration between multiple developers on the team, and does your team use pair programming to solve this complex programming problem of How Do I Sort Out and Land the Changes from TRUNK that need to get to FEATUREXYZ branch. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SOli1.jpg) The workflow or standard-practice I am envisioning looks like this:   * when a merge up to a feature branch looks easy and only involves my own changes I do it on my own   * when a merge up to a feature branch also pulls in someone else's changes that are not trivial, I involve that person in the merge. Common sense? I think so. But I suspect that others have been down this road and can offer a more clearly elaborated, and \"tried and true\" approach for this general situation."}
{"_id": "139216", "title": "It takes me hours to completely understand solutions to 1000-pt problems on TopCoder. Should I get discouraged?", "text": "Sometimes this applies to the 500-pt ones too. I sometimes start feeling I will never improve enough to code them with ease like the others. Should I just quit? If not, why? It is extremely annoying, saddening and makes me feel immensely unable and dumb."}
{"_id": "139217", "title": "About Open source program license", "text": "I am developing an open source program which for my school project. I have done some research on it, but there are still few questions. It is a school project, it is not any advance application and I am willing to share my work.   1. Is that mean if I release my program with license, people will afraid to change my code because it may result in law sue?   2. Can I claim my product as \"open source\" if I don't have license, I can define some rule of it (but without law protection)?   3. Do i have to apply for those license (e.g. GNU), I have to submit my product code or only fulfill in a form?"}
{"_id": "70587", "title": "Doing two internships simultaneously?", "text": "I need advice and I would appreciate your help. I recently got accepted for two internships, both require me to work 20 hours a week, and am wondering, is it wise to accept both and work 40 hours a week as an intern for both companies, is that even possible? I am interested in both to be honest and its hard for me to choose between them, yet I am afraid that doing both will be too much for me to handle. On the other hand, if I work for both I can be in a more stable state (money wise) and it would help me a lot in paying my college funds (among other stuff). I need some advice please?"}
{"_id": "168264", "title": "Verfication vs validation again, does testing belong to verification? If so, which?", "text": "I have asked before and created a lot of controversy so I tried to collect some data and ask similar question again. E.g. V&V where all testing is only validation: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/4-5-2005-68117.asp According to ISO 12207, testing is done in validation:   1. \u2022Prepare Test Requirements,Cases and Specifications   2. \u2022Conduct the Tests In verification, it mentiones. > The code implements proper event sequence, consistent interfaces, correct > data and control flow, completeness, appropriate allocation timing and > sizing budgets, and error definition, isolation, and recovery. and The > software components and units of each software item have been completely and > correctly integrated into the software item Not sure how to verify without testing but it is not there as a technique. From IEEE: > Verification: The process of evaluating software to determine whether the > products of a given development phase satisfy the conditions imposed at the > start of that phase. [IEEE-STD-610].   >  Validation: The process of evaluating software during or at the end of the > development process to determine whether it satisfies specified > requirements. [IEEE-STD-610] At the end of development phase? That would mean UAT.. So the question is, what testing (unit, integration, system, uat) will be considered verification or validation? I do not understand why some say dynamic verification is testing, while others that only validation. **An example: I am testing an application. System requirements say there are two fields with max. lenght of 64 characters and Save button. Use case say: User will fill in first and last name and save. When checking the fields and Save button presence, I would say its verification. When I follow the use case, its validation. So its both together, done on the system as a whole.**"}
{"_id": "70582", "title": "What design would you propose to log reporting data so that the capture of, say, an additional form field can implemented easier?", "text": "Why is there an emphasis to log reporting information through an application to a separate database? I have seen designs where a logging manager is available to every business layer class whether it needs it or not. This in itself can create overhead? I was thinking that reporting information logging should be done as a separate service if it needs (at all) to consumed within another application. Nonetheless, much of the data (especially where data is stored as schemaless xml) just wastes database space. Why are there so many bad designs such that it becomes difficult to respond to reporting requirements without changing, say three, different software layers? What design would you proposed to log reporting data so that a change in reporting requirements can be done with ease? Typically, a change in report requiremnets would involve a request to the capture of an addition field on a form."}
{"_id": "70581", "title": "Use of past tense (passive voice) to connote immutability? (E.g. Array.Transposed vs. Array.Transpose)", "text": "_[Note: The below is a bit C# heavy in its syntax and conventions, such as citing FxCop rules, because this is my background, but the intent of this discussion is to be language-agnostic and the code examples used should generally be regarded as pseudo-code. -- Mike]_ I think we would all agree that classes should generally be designed so that their object instances are immutable wherever practical, and the results of calling class members should be free of side effects, as much as possible. Historical naming conventions, however, tend to use the active voice: 'GetSomething', 'DoSomehing', etc. and this is good because it states clearly what action that the class member is going to take. I am now beginning to think, however, that members might sometimes (or possibly often) benefit by being named in the past tense to connote that a value is returned without affecting the referenced object. For example, for a method that transposes an array, current naming styles would probably have it called 'Array.Transpose', but if this member returns a _new_ array, without transposing the referenced object, then I think that calling it 'Array.Transposed' would be more accurate and makes it clearer to the programmer. When working with an 'Array.Transpose()' method one might accidentally try to use code such as the following:               Array myArray = new Array();      myArray.Transpose();      But if the 'Transpose' method returns a new array without affecting the referenced object, then this code does nothing -- that is, 'myArray' would quietly _not_ be transposed. (I suppose that if 'Transpose' were a property, then the compiler would catch that the above is not legal, but FxCop guidelines state that a member that performs a conversion should be a method.) But if the method were named in the past tense as 'Array.Transposed', it would be clearer to the user that the following syntax is required:               Array myArray = new Array();      Array transposedArray = myArray.Transposed();      Other names that I think would fit into this category would be members named 'Resized' vs. 'Resize', 'Shifted' vs. 'Shift', etc. The present tense would be used for members that affected the referenced object, while the past tense would be used for members that returned a new value without affecting the referenced object. Another approach that is more common currently is to prefix each name with \"Get\" or \"To\", but I think that this adds unnecessary weight, while changing to past tense communicates the meaning effectively. Does this make sense to other programmers here, or does this past tense idea sound too awkward when reading it? **Edit:** Great discussions below, I thank everyone a lot. A few points I'd like to summarize based on your comments and my own revised thinking on this follows below. _Method Chaining \"Fluent\" Syntaxes_ Based on the discussions below, the use of the past tense is probably of some value when used on a mutable class in order to make it clear which members do, or do not, affect the internal state of the referenced object. However, for immutable classes, which should be the majority of the cases (one would hope), I think that the use of the past tense can make the syntax unnecessarily awkward. For example, with \"fluent syntaxes\" such as those created by method chaining, the use of past tense would make the code less readable. E.g., when using LINQ via C#, a typical method chain could look as follows:               dataSource.Sort().Take(10).Select(x => x.ToString);      If changed to the past tense, this would become awkward:               dataSource.Sorted().Taken(10).Selected(x => x.ToString);      Mind you, dataSource.Sorted() is actually clearer in meaning than dataSource.Sort(), because LINQ expressions always create a new enumeration without affecting the source. However, since we are fully aware of this when using this paradigm, the use of past tense is redundant and makes the \"fluency\" of reading it awkward for no real gain. _Use of Properties vs. Methods_ A key issue that was brought up below regards the FxCop guidelines for the use of \"Get\" methods vs. read-only properties. E.g., FxCop rule CA1024. Although not explicitly mentioned in that FxCop rule, the use of \"To\" methods would seem to apply to this rationale as well, since ToXXXXXX() methods are conversion methods. And in the case of ToArray(), the method is both a conversion method and is a method that returns an array. _Use of Past Tense for Boolean Properties_ Some suggested that the past tense can connote a boolean value, e.g. a 'Succeeded' or 'Connected' property. I believe that the retorts below emphasizing the use of an 'Is', 'Has', or 'Are' for Boolean properties and fields are correct. Past tense can help in this regard too, but not nearly as much as using an 'Is' prefix. Feel free to use the past tense for Boolean properties and fields, it does help, but I think that it's even more important to prefix the name with 'Is', 'Has', or 'Are'. _Overall Conclusions?_ For the issue of Tranpose() vs. Transposed(), I think that 'skizzy' got it right, suggesting that it should be Transpose() for a mutating action vs. GetTransposed() for a non-mutating result. This makes it 100% clear. But, again, I think that this might only apply for a mutuable class, such as an array. For immutable classes, especially where a fluent method-chaining syntax might be used, then I think that this syntax would become unnecessarily awkward. For example, compare:               var v = myObject.Transpose().Resize(3,5).Shift(2);      to:               var v = myObject.GetTransposed().GetResized(3,5).GetShifted(2);      Hmmm... actually, even here it seems to make it 100% clear that the result does not affect the source, but I'm not sure. I guess for a paradigm like LINQ where it is well known, the use of \"Get\" and/or the past tense is not necessary, but for a new API, it might have some value -- at first! If the API contains only immutable objects, once the user understands this, the use of \"Get\" and/or the past tense only reduces the readability. So I think there are no easy answers here. I guess one needs to think about the entirety of your API and choose carefully! \\-- Mike"}
{"_id": "134421", "title": "Understanding Loose / Tight Coupling in the \"Real World\"", "text": "I wont say what \"community\" because I want a non-biased explanation, but let's say you're building a reusable _module_ and that module requires 3+ dependent modules and removing 1 of them causes a breaking error not only in your app as a whole which uses this module, but the module itself. From my understanding (which must be wrong) a loosely coupled modular system will not break by simply removing one module. The app should still run but without that \"feature\" / module and the module itself shouldn't causes everything to not run simply because a dependent module doesn't exist. Is this wrong? If so, if modules are still dependent to the point of everything not working whats the difference between tight/loose coupling?"}
{"_id": "203003", "title": "how to follow python polymorphism standards with math functions", "text": "So I am reading up on python in Mark Lutz's wonderful LEARNING PYTHON book. Mark makes a big deal about how part of the python development philosophy is polymorphism and that functions and code should rely on polymorphism and not do much type checking. However, I do a lot of math type programming and so the idea of polymorphism does not really seem to apply--I don't want to try and run a regression on a string or something. So I was wondering if there is something I am missing here. What are the applications of polymorphism when I am writing functions for math--or is type checking philosophically okay in this case."}
{"_id": "203002", "title": "Sending email notifications to users", "text": "What is the preferable way to send email notifications to users? I can do it both ways but what is better?   1. have some c# code that calls stored procedure in the database. Stored procedure based on some logic pulls all the emails data and sends email using database mail   2. or c# code calls stored procedure, gets all the nesessary data back and sends email itself using smtp server etc. I just wonder what is the preferable way in the sense of performance etc... C# code is a library that would be a part of the web application. So it's where it's better to put the load, on the application server or the database server? System will not be crazy busy, it's not like Amazon or something. But still it would be nice to create something that makes sense."}
{"_id": "146592", "title": "Need to learn powershell for sharepoint configuration", "text": "I need to be familiar with at least the basics of using powershell to configure sharepoint solutions and their user accounts over the next couple of weeks. Would general powershell learning resources differ much from those more sharepoint-specific? Or is powershell powershell? i.e. is the syntax pretty similar whether it's for configuring sharepoint or used for other purposes? Also, does anybody have links to recommended pdfs for such reading? (I'll be looking myself now anyway, but it's worth asking in case any of you have an ebook that has helped you personally.)"}
{"_id": "39808", "title": "Stats on the average percentage of time required to create \"usable\" documentation", "text": "UPDATE: I've gotten a lot of feedback, but no info on what percent of time people spend on docs. To keep it simple, say the docs are for developers and peer reviewed; meaning the peer understands how to do it, and the comments are more for the what is being done, not how to do it from scratch; which in my case is the request, just don't think the request is common. Been working a project for 2 months, and it's done. When the project started, documentation was not a requirement; focus was \"get it done.\" So, all the sudden there's an interest in creating documentation for the project... that's 100% turn-key, meaning that someone with no understanding of anything, would be able to do everything required to duplicate the work done. In case it matters, the project was a data profiling, extraction, transformation, and loading themed. Meaning I was given sets of data, a final state of the data -- and figured out all the issues/solutions to make that happen. Just wondering if anyone has seen stats on the average percentage of time take to write docs. (Have questions/feedback, just comment -- thanks.)"}
{"_id": "146597", "title": "Handling SMS/email convergence: how does a good business app do it?", "text": "I'm writing a school administration software package, but it strikes me that many developers will face this same issue: when communicating with users, should you use email or SMS or both, and should you treat them as fundamentally equivalent channels such that any message can get sent using any media, (with long and short forms of the message template obviously) or should different business functions be specifically tailored to each of the 3? This question got kicked off \"StackOverflow\" for being overly general, so I'm hoping it's not too general for this site - the answers will no doubt be subjective but \"you don't need to write a whole book to answer the question\". I'm particularly interested in people who have direct experience of having written comparable business applications. Sub-questions:   1. Do I treat SMS as \"moderately secure\" and email as less secure? (I'm thinking about booking tokens for parent/teacher nights, permission slips for excursions, absence explanation notes - so high security is not a requirement for us, although medium security is)   2. Is it annoying for users to receive the same message on multiple channels?   3. Should we have a unified framework that reports on delivery or lack thereof of emails and SMS's?"}
{"_id": "233805", "title": "Is it correct to ask contributers to rebase their pull requests on github", "text": "I maintain a relatively popular github repo. When a pull request is good to merge I usually ask the author to rebase it to a single commit before I merge it (especially when there have been multiple small edits). Is this good git practice? Is this acceptable/standard GitHub etiquette? So some benefits:   * I get a nice clean commit history in the commit logs   * I don't need to alter the commit myself   * It delegates some of the work Some possible drawbacks:   * I'm not sure if this is good etiquette   * I'm not sure if this is a good git practice   * I've usually already asked for a few other changes - this is one more and I don't want to discourage contributors."}
{"_id": "39803", "title": "Getting started with C# and Databases", "text": "I want to start using Databases in my C# Applications, unfortunately there appears to be lots of different ways of going about this. Which is the 'best' way from a learning perspective? (IE: What is likely to be used in a business setup)? If I want to download mySQL/Postgres and connect to that from C#, is that ok?"}
{"_id": "62885", "title": "Must source code released under GPL be human-readable?", "text": "In a response to another question, a poster suggested that under the GPL: > ...you need to provide the human readable [code], not a whitespace stripped > version... Readability would seem to me to be subjective and unlikely to be explicitly required by the GPL. Is it?"}
{"_id": "105344", "title": "Is there a chart for helping me decide between open-source licenses?", "text": "The Open Source Initiative lists 9 different licenses in their list of \"License that are popular and widely used or with strong communities\". I want to license my project as open-source. Unfortunately, I do not speak legalese. Is there some chart I could consult that will help me make the right choice, or at least point me in the right direction? For example a table summarizing the differences between the licenses, or perhaps a flow-graph using my requirements to guide me into the correct license for me? I also intend to meet a lawyer, but any information to start with will help."}
{"_id": "231908", "title": "Android apps and GPLv2 classpath exception", "text": "My Android app needs javax.activation and javax.mail (both GPLv2 licensed). However, I don't want to make my app GPL-licensed. What are the possibilities to not break the license requirements regarding the classpath exception? Currently, I use maven-dependency-plugin to pull those packages' source code and merge the compiled stuff with my own into one apk. Is that ok? If not, what is?"}
{"_id": "157384", "title": "How to support mixed grammars?", "text": "I am currently writing a grammar for a programming language (PowerBuilder) and I am also collecting documentation about parsing and compilers creation. Now I would like to add in my grammar (that looks roughly like Visual Basic) the possibility to handle embedded SQL statements that are supported inline by the language (with the usage of binding variables like `select foo into :ls_bar from baz where col=:ls_criteria;`). As the embedded SQL is regular SQL syntax, I would not complexify my existing grammar but instead adapt an existing SQL-92 grammar to my needs and use it on these SQL blocks. The parser generator that I am mainly using (AntLR) has some possibilities to support mixed or \"island\" grammars as described in that article or another. I would like to compare these techniques with AntLR with others tools like Lex/Yacc, Flex, JFlex, that I used while playing with several simple language designs described in different CS courses available online. Could you point me to examples of implementations of parsers that support mixed grammars?"}
{"_id": "36588", "title": "OpenSource license with commerial-use exemptions for the owner", "text": "I'm looking for an **open source** license which grants me additional privileges. Features:   * Anyone can freely modify, fork, use the code, as long as they make their source changes publicly available. They can use it in other open source projects, but not in closed-source projects. (similar to, say, GPL v3, with strong emphasis on contributing back)   * Only I and entities I specifically designate can use the code as part of a closed-source application. I am also exempt from the duty to publish the source code changes. (exemption from GPL duties).   * In return for my work, I do want the freedom to benefit from other's contributions (by using the project in my closed-source work), even if they fork the code. I'm not trying to forbid the commercial use, just to allow myself more flexibility to use the code, while still contributing to open source. I don't want to burn myself by being legally forbidden from using the libraries I wrote in my commercial projects. Large companies use such dual licenses to maintain an open source project, while also selling the premium version. Which licenses of this type are available? What caveats or obstacles exist? Is there any read-made license for this situation? Consulting lawyers is not an acceptable option at this point in development."}
{"_id": "190153", "title": "is down-casting always bad?", "text": "At my company, we have many different \"services\" that work in parallel and send messages to each other using a common messaging system. All message objects are derived from a common generic object we defined for messaging. When any service receives a message, the first thing it must do is downcast the object to the derived type so that it can extract the data needed. I have read all over the internet that you should not have to downcast a base object pointer to a derived object pointer and that having to do this is often a sign of bad design. I agree with this sentiment for most cases. And I can imagine different designs for the generic message object that wouldn't necessitate down-casting. But I don't see any big reason to handle this situation differently. So my overall question is: Is down-casting always a bad thing? Are there situations in which down-casting is necessary or acceptable?"}
{"_id": "18952", "title": "What arguments exist against ever using the keyword substitution feature in many version control systems?", "text": "Are there any arguments out there against using the keyword substitution (i.e. replacing `$Revision$` with `$Revision: 5$`) feature in many version control systems? Are there any overall bad practices that using the feature encourages? Are the any pervasive and hard-to-solve problems that it causes when you do use it? Here an argument against using it:   * Keyword Substition: Why You Don't Need It It's succinct, and I think the argument about the problems it causes for binary files is cogent, but I don't find it compelling."}
{"_id": "18953", "title": "Basic hardware for iPhone development", "text": "I am new to Mac. If I want to start a iPhone development, what is the basic hardware I require? Would Mac Mini be good enough?"}
{"_id": "71181", "title": "Good use of wrapper functions?", "text": "What do you consider good use of wrapper functions? When are they useful abstractions and in what cases harmful and unnecessary complexity?"}
{"_id": "71182", "title": "In MVC where do you put action methods for views in the shared directory?", "text": "I have a website built using a **MVC.NET framework with C#** that uses some shared views and partial views. In order to display the views properly there is a bit of code that must reside in the controller. Currently I have that logic duplicated between controllers. An example would be an view that takes in an error id and then pulls down the record from the database and formats the view differently based on the error type. There is a small amount of work that needs to be done to the data in the controller before it can be displayed. **If the view is in the Shared directory where would the controller for it go? Or, is it better design to create a new controller just for it?** I am trying to choose a design that will prevent the \"controller creep\" that we had in a prior project. Update: I am currently learning about MVC using Razor and learned about the HTML.Action extension method. If I were going to go back and rewrite this project I would put the method into a \"Shared\" controller and use HTML.Action to format the data to display it on what ever screen I needed it."}
{"_id": "18959", "title": "What proportion of programming is done for embedded systems?", "text": "What proportion of programming is done for embedded systems? More generally, please share any interesting statistics on programmers by domain, e.g. real- time/business/UI/gaming/\u2026 How you define the domain boundaries (e.g. what is an embedded system) is up to you, but please give a few words to explain your definition."}
{"_id": "41376", "title": "Better Understand the 'Strategy' Design Pattern", "text": "I have been interested in design patterns for a while and started reading \"Head First Design Patterns\". I started with the first pattern called the 'Strategy' pattern. I went through the problem outlined in the images below and first tried to propose a solution myself so I could really grasp the importance of the pattern. So my question is that why is my solution to the problem below not good enough. What are the good / bad points of my solution vs the pattern? What makes the pattern clearly the only viable solution? **MY SOLUTION** **Parent Class: DUCK**               <?php     class Duck     {      public  $swimmable;      public  $quackable;      public  $flyable;           function display()      {       echo \"A Duck Looks Like This<BR/>\";      }           function  quack()      {       if($this->quackable==1)       {        echo(\"Quack<BR/>\");       }      }           function swim()      {       if($this->swimmable==1)       {        echo(\"Swim<BR/>\");       }      }           function  fly()      {       if($this->flyable==1)       {        echo(\"Fly<BR/>\");       }      }               }     ?>      **INHERITING CLASS: MallardDuck**               <?php     class MallardDuck extends Duck     {      function MallardDuck()      {       $this->quackable = 1;       $this->swimmable = 1;      }           function display()      {       echo \"A Mallard Duck Looks Like This<BR/>\";      }     }     ?>      **INHERITING CLASS: WoddenDecoyDuck**               <?php     class WoddenDecoyDuck extends Duck     {      function woddendecoyduck()      {       $this->quackable = 0;       $this->swimmable = 0;      }           function display()      {       echo \"A Wooden Decoy Duck Looks Like This<BR/>\";      }     }"}
{"_id": "41373", "title": "Successful technical communities except for open-source?", "text": "Have you ever seen a successful technical community -- e.g. user group, industry organization? Am I asking about a group of software engineers who get together F2F (or maybe online) and discuss technical and industry issues with deep zeal and interest -- a place where meaningful connections are made. Here are the only examples I have ever seen:   * Open source   * Maybe the Silicon Valley Java Users' Group   * Homebrew Computing Club in the '70's This sort of thing does exist in academia. Also, business people do it all the time -- but networking is part of their job. Of course, there are lots of conferences and attempts at user's groups. However, almost all committed, serious software engineers, when asked about this, say \"I don't have the time\", which means that the organizations are not worthwhile to the best in our profession. Has anyone seen any organizations with an ongoing spirit of enthusiasm from top software engineers?"}
{"_id": "84711", "title": "What are the real benefits of participating in ACM student group?", "text": "Are there any ACM students here? What are the real benefites of participating in this program? And is it truth that it's not free?"}
{"_id": "123280", "title": "How to encourage creative user interface design?", "text": "When I picture a really well functioning software team in my mind, one of the visions I have is of a developer showing off to a small group of devs some cool, clever UI that they just came up with based on something that they were just playing with. I'm afraid that while we're doing great at being creative writing expressive, well architected, high quality code - we aren't pushing any creative boundaries when it comes to effective user interface. What's an effective strategy for encouraging developers to push their boundaries with user interface? Edit: I'm looking for something \"lab oriented\", like for instance pair programming sessions focused on some problem or other."}
{"_id": "72974", "title": "Where to host open source mini-projects like jQuery plugins", "text": "I've written few jQuery plugins (as well as some other stuff) and I publish all the code on my blog (http://erraticdev.blogspot.com). I update them as people tell me about any issues they came across by leaving comments on blog posts. Then I update the code and republish my original post. Worked so far as expected. But this seems like a bad way of code hosting. It does work I admit but it's not really version controlled. Only latest version (which should be used anyway) is accessible. I've use Google Code hosting for few of my other non-jQuery projects which seems fine because I can centrally track all my web content (blog an those projects) in Google Analytics. The bad side is it takes some time to set up new projects with writing project page description. Version control seems the main benefit although some projects may not be updated at all... So what's the point then? My plugins are therefore available as is. No minified versions or similar. I guess I could also upload full + minified version on my Google Docs and link them on my blog if I wanted to, couldn't I? ## Question What would you suggest where (or how) should I make my public code available to public? Should I change code hosting at all apart from having it freely available on my blog?"}
{"_id": "86403", "title": "I need to know the reasons why learning Linux Shell Scripting (BASH) benefits me as a PHP developer", "text": "I have been developing web sites/applications using the LAMP stack for almost 5 years. Currently I am interested to dig more into Linux OS, specifically BASH **but from a web developer perspective, not from sys admin perspective.** I am not intending to administrate Linux Servers. Only, I want to know, does learning shell scripting benefit me as a PHP developer? Does it make me a better, more skilled developer, or just its something irrelevant? Reasons, and examples are highly appreciated. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "86402", "title": "What is the best practice for verify if a client has already dowloaded information from server?", "text": "I need to verify what data wasn't downloaded yet. For example, how does Twitter or Facebook verify if a specific client has already dowloaded a piece of information? When a mobile app like twitter make a request to twitter.com will receive only new data but not data that it has already downloaded in old requests."}
{"_id": "37189", "title": "How to improve concepts for interview", "text": "I had an interview and interviewer told me to improve on the concepts. E.G.:   * He asked me types of arrays are there and I answered that there was two types of array: A simple array and an associative array.   * He also asked me why we use PDO and I answered we can use any database, E.G. Oracle and MySQL and it helps with SQL injection. He then asked me how it helps with SQL injection and I was told I didn't give the correct answer.   * He asked me about persistent connections and told him I just used `mysql_pconnect`. I don't know where it will be used and how. Is there is any standard way I can follow to help me improve upon these concepts?"}
{"_id": "14183", "title": "What does an MSDN subscription offer?", "text": "I'm curious because I notice that the Ultimate subscription costs $12,000... for one year (after that, it's $3,800 to renew). Looking at the subscription chart, you do get quite a bit of software that is normally expensive by itself. Is the package meant for 1 person or is it meant for like a business-type bundle of some sort? If it's the latter, I can _kind of_ understand that, but I can't fathom where anybody is going to have 12 grand to plop down on something that only lasts 12 months. Anyway, yeah, my question is, is this a good deal to anyone at all? Maybe it's just me not having any industry experience and this is actually a steal and millions of companies should be buying it right now, but I just can't personally picture this being worth the money."}
{"_id": "212000", "title": "Building and Debugging an IDE using the same IDE", "text": "This may be a question more suited some Programming Meta Discussions. I was trying to delve deeper into the inner plugin management feature for QT Creator 2.x IDE provided by Digia Inc. So I effectively downloaded the source code for QT Creator and built it to debug how this functionality is implemented. Hence I used an IDE to debug the same IDE. So my question is are there any pit-falls while doing so? Is it recommended that in such a scenario it's better to use two different IDEs (e.g. using Visual Studio to build QT Creator)."}
{"_id": "15856", "title": "When do you get your best ideas?", "text": "Are there certain activities that provide inspiration at unexpected times? One that I've noticed is when I'm mowing the lawn or shoveling snow - living in Minnesota it seems I'm always doing one or the other. The physical activity gives my brain a chance to wander and ponder either the most pressing problem on my mind or some random thought of the day."}
{"_id": "137302", "title": "Do I really need a unit test framework?", "text": "Currently at my job, we have a large suite of unit tests for our C++ application. However we don't use a unit test framework. They simply utilize a C macro that basically wraps an assert and a cout. Something like:               VERIFY(cond) if (!(cond)) {std::cout << \"unit test failed at \" << __FILE__ << \",\" << __LINE__; asserst(false)}      Then we simply create functions for each of our tests like               void CheckBehaviorYWhenXHappens()     {         // a bunch of code to run the test         //         VERIFY(blah != blah2);         // more VERIFY's as needed     }      Our CI server picks up \"unit test failed\" and fails the build, emailing the message to the developers. And if we have duplicate setup code, we simply refactor it like we would any other duplicated code we'd have in production. We wrap it behind helper functions, make some test classes wrap setting up frequently used scenarios. I know there's frameworks out there like CppUnit and boost unit test. I'm wondering what value do these add? Am I missing what these bring to the table? Is there something useful I could gain from them? I'm hesitant to add a dependency unless it adds real value especially since it seems what we have is dead simple and works well."}
{"_id": "137304", "title": "Triggering custom events in AJAX callbacks", "text": "I'm pretty new to JavaScript, but one of the things that's been frustrating is that our AJAX callbacks have been getting packed with different functionality, making it difficult to keep everything separated and organized. I'm really new to programming, I have a feeling learning MVC a bit more would help me, but for now using custom events seems like it could help me keep my code a lot cleaner and prevent some problems. Here's what I'm talking about:               function myAjaxFunctionThatGetsTestData(){         $.post('ajax/test.html', function(data) {             $(document).trigger('testDataLoaded',data);         });     }          function myOtherFunctionThatsDependentUponAjax(){         getSomeTestData(); //start process of retrieving the data from ajax         //then let me know when data has been retrieved         $(document).one('testDataLoaded', function(data){             alert (data);         }     }          function getSomeTestData(){         //maybe data was already retrieved by a different module, so check first         if (data){             $(document).trigger('testDataLoaded',data);          }         else{             myAjaxFunctionThatGetsTestData();          }     }      I also don't know if it's ok that I'm triggering document or not... Are there any patterns that look like this that I can read more about? What are the potential problems with this?"}
{"_id": "178804", "title": "Using NSpec at various architectural layers", "text": "Having read the quick start at nspec.org, I realized that NSpec might be a useful tool in a scenario which was becoming a bit cumbersome with NUnit alone. I'm adding an OAuth (or, DotNetOpenAuth) to a website and quickly made a mess of writing test methods such as               [Test]     public void UserIsLoggedInLocallyPriorToInvokingExternalLoginAndExternalLoginSucceedsAndExternalProviderIdIsNotAlreadyAssociatedWithUserAccount()     {     ...     }      ... and I wound up with maybe a dozen permutations of this theme, for the user already being logged in locally and not locally, the external login succeeding or failing, etc. Not only were the method names unwieldy, but every test needed a setup that contained parts in common with a different set of other tests. I realized that NSpec's incremental setup capabilities would work great for this, and for a while I was trucking a long wonderfully, with code like                 act = () => { actionResult = controller.ExternalLoginCallback(returnUrl); };                      context[\"The user is already logged in\"] = () =>                 {                     before = () => identity.Setup(x => x.IsAuthenticated).Returns(true);                     context[\"The external login succeeds\"] = () =>                     {                         before = () => oauth.Setup(x => x.VerifyAuthentication(It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(new AuthenticationResult(true, providerName, \"provideruserid\", \"username\", new Dictionary<string, string>()));                         context[\"External login already exists for current user\"] = () =>                         {                             before = () => authService.Setup(x => x.ExternalLoginExistsForUser(It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(true);                             it[\"Should add 'login sucessful' alert\"] = () =>                             {                                 var alerts = (IList<Alert>)controller.TempData[TempDataKeys.AlertCollection];                                 alerts[0].Message.should_be_same(\"Login successful\");                                 alerts[0].AlertType.should_be(AlertType.Success);                             };                             it[\"Should return a redirect result\"] = () => actionResult.should_cast_to<RedirectToRouteResult>();                         };                         context[\"External login already exists for another user\"] = () =>                         {                             before = () => authService.Setup(x => x.ExternalLoginExistsForAnyOtherUser(It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>(), It.IsAny<string>())).Returns(true);                             it[\"Adds an error alert\"] = () =>                             {                                 var alerts = (IList<Alert>)controller.TempData[TempDataKeys.AlertCollection];                                 alerts[0].Message.should_be_same(\"The external login you requested is already associated with a different user account\");                                 alerts[0].AlertType.should_be(AlertType.Error);                             };                             it[\"Should return a redirect result\"] = () => actionResult.should_cast_to<RedirectToRouteResult>();                         };      This approach seemed to work magnificently until I prepared to write test code for my ApplicationServices layer, to which I delegate viewmodel manipulation from my MVC controllers, and which coordinates the operations of the lower data repository layer:               public void CreateUserAccountFromExternalLogin(RegisterExternalLoginModel model)     {         throw new NotImplementedException();     }          public void AssociateExternalLoginWithUser(string userName, string provider, string providerUserId)     {         throw new NotImplementedException();     }          public string GetLocalUserName(string provider, string providerUserId)     {         throw new NotImplementedException();     }      I have no idea what in the world to name the test class, the test methods, or even if I should perhaps include the testing for this layer into the test class from my large code snippet above, so that a single feature or user action could be tested without regard to architectural layering. I can't find any tutorials or blog posts which cover more than simple examples, so I would appreciate any recommendations or pointing in the right direction. I would even welcome \"your question is invalid\"-type answers as long as some explanation is provided."}
{"_id": "83150", "title": "Is deprecating a real commitment?", "text": "If you deprecate something, are you guaranteeing you will get rid of it in the next major release? Is it reasonable to take two or three releases before you get rid of it completely? Update: Thanks for the answers. Java is a good standard for how to do this - any others? Any examples from Microsoft's APIs? Update2: It seems like in \"Microsoft-ese,\" deprecation means \"it's going away in the next release.\" Which was part of my confusion; others don't endow the word with this meaning."}
{"_id": "33955", "title": "Using EC2 instance as main development platform", "text": "**My problem** I am working as a consultant for various companies. Each company provides me with a laptop with their software on and I also have my own, where I have my development environment. I tend to buy a new laptop every second year and find myself spending lots of time configuring and installing software. I also spend a lot of time waiting for my laptop to process things. To solve all these issues, I am now considering using EC2 (running windows instances) as my main development platform and just access this from any PC I happen to be at. I calculated that running the Large instance (cheapest 64-bit) for 8 hours a day for a year costs me 960$ per year, which is acceptable. I imagine that when I approach the workplace each day, I will make a single tap on my phone to fire up the instance, so it is ready when I get to work. I should have different icons on my phone to fire up the various instance types. The same software should of course automatically be loaded on the various hardware (sometimes I would even need their instance with 68.4 GB of memory). Another advantage is that if I am having a specific problem with my instance, I could fire up another instance and have someone look into the problem and update the image. **My question:** Does anyone have experience with such a setup on EC2? What kind of problems do you foresee?"}
{"_id": "33954", "title": "In general how do Event Handlers work?", "text": "This is a general topic, **How do Event Handlers work?** This means behind the scenes - what happens when they are created. I have a rough idea - but would like to have it confirmed."}
{"_id": "219584", "title": "How to calculate the worst-case runtime of this search-algorithm", "text": "I've written a special `indexOf` function for a list of unsorted unique values. I can search for one or multiple (unsorted) values, passed as array/list, and the function will return me an array/list of indices (possibly empty). Based on the following circumstances:   * I know that the values i'm searching for are in the list   * I don't care about the order in which the indices are returned   * Uniqueness I'm doing the following:   1. Walk through the list (of size n)   2. Compare the values with all values in the search-list   3. If there's a match break, add to results, break out of the loop and remove the found value from the search-list (so it's smaller on the next item)   4. If there are no more values left to search for, break out of the list-traversal. I'd like to know how to analyse this algorithm, and specifically what the worst-case runtime is. (I guess if I'm searching for all values contained in the list.) Source in JavaScript:               function multipleIndexOf(search, arr) {              var searchArr = search.slice(0);         var result = [];              /* loop through array */         for (var i = 0, l = arr.length; i < l; i++) {                  /* loop through search values */             for (var i2 = 0, l2 = searchArr.length; i2 < l2; i2++) {                      /* if a search value matches... */                 if (arr[i] == searchArr[i2]) {                     /* add to result */                     result.push(i);                          /* remove from array */                     searchArr.splice(i2, 1);                          /* continue search with next */                     break;                 }             }                  if (searchArr.length == 0) {                 break;             }         }              return result;     }"}
{"_id": "106271", "title": "Where can I find a quick overview of Enterprise Java Beans?", "text": "I'm a fresh graduate, and I'm about to interview in two days and things are tight. I am well versed with Java EE Servlet and JSP technology, but never really used EJBs. Is learning about EJBs really important to effectively use the Java EE framework? Is it even necessary to have an idea about the technology for the interview? If yes, where can I find something that will be just an overview on the topic - a simple \"hello world\" tutorial that states what else is possible? I tried the terse roseindia tutorial and the very detailed Oracle tutorial, but I'd need _some_ time in order to complete it. As something unrelated, in the interview, can I mention of my knowledge about Django despite knowing that the company does not pretty much employ Django?"}
{"_id": "238191", "title": "Should we write a unit test for class that call another class that have code written", "text": "Suppose that there are two class 'A' and 'B' 'A' has a lot of nested conditions that have all unit test covered. 'B' has a property that will call class 'A' and return value according to the result of class 'A' On class 'B', when i want to write unit test. Should i just mock class A and verify on class B that it has been called a specific class 'A' method."}
{"_id": "33959", "title": "Qt plugin for Eclipse/PyDev", "text": "I have installed PyDev and want to start with GUI apps. Heard about Qt but how to integrate it with PyDev? Is there any Python IDE that comes bundled with Qt or other GUI frameworks and also Visual Studio like ToolBox to add controls on the Form? I don't want to go with IronPython."}
{"_id": "219589", "title": "Algorithm to calculate estimated future usage of a defined value", "text": "I am looking for the name of a computer algorithm. I'm fairly sure that one should exist which will help me, but I can't for the life of me figure out what to search for. If you have implementations of the algorithm, that'd be awesome - but I'm really just researching this because I'd like to figure out how to build it myself. Basically, I'm looking for an algorithm that can calculate future usage of some set of data based on my previous usage. For example, my electricity supplier knows how much power I've used for the previous 20 days of a 30 day month, so they can extrapolate that out and predict how quickly I will run out of money on my power account. I'd like to know if there's an algorithm out there that can tell me in how long I'm likely to run out. What I'm looking for is something that given the following inputs:   1. A range (e.g. 30 days)   2. A period of time through that range (e.g. 4, never smaller than zero, never greater than the max of the range)   3. Some values for previous time periods - either the previous days, or the same days from previous months)   4. A total value for this range (e.g. 300) Can give me a date range in which I'm likely to run out of the total value (300). What I'd like at the other end would be something simple - e.g. \"Based on previous usage, you're going to run out in 2 days.\" I've done the usual Google searches, but haven't come up with anything particular that even looks close - yet as far as I can see it's a reasonably common algorithm used all over the place."}
{"_id": "207656", "title": "What design do I follow to convert my classic ASP pages to a Java Enterprise Web Application?", "text": "There are so many Java technologies that it is difficult for me to know where to start. I understand JSP and Servlets. I know what http servers to use. Real basic stuff. What I don't understand is what I do after that? I don't want to create a bunch of jsp and servlets. That's not very different than what I have. I need to query various databases. Some are direct hits. Some have webservices I need to consume. I will have to create a login system that hits active directly. Aren't I supposed to do more to make a \"big java\" enterprise application?"}
{"_id": "207657", "title": "How to document program flow so the outcome looks professional?", "text": "I have designed a simple website on paper. Now I want to produce a professional-looking document for my customer to approve. How can I do this? I've tried Visio, but it seems horribly overcomplicated and unsuitable for my purpose. I could describe what I've written in words in a Word document but that'd be much harder to read and understand. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1rTG3.jpg)"}
{"_id": "207650", "title": "ASP.NET tags best practices", "text": "I'm working on my first ASP.NET project and I'm torn between using asp tags (`<asp:SomeElement`) everywhere or use some regular HTML for simple things that need no code behind, like fixed divs, static text, etc. I think it would be best to use ASP tags only for code behind and other dynamic stuff, whereas static elements can be in vanilla HTML, but that's assuming I won't ever need to turn them into ASP.NET in the future. Is there a best practice/recommended approach for this?"}
{"_id": "34982", "title": "What is a good C or Obj-C framework for manipulating Git Repositories?", "text": "What Obj-C/C libraries have you used for manipulating git repos in your Mac apps? I am working on a Mac app that I would like to be able to clone and modify git repos. Using git directly is not an option as it is GPL and I'd like to sell my app commercially without opening the source. I've seen libgit2, which I could link, but I'm not sure how to do that properly, and it doesn't appear to implement any of the things necessary for pushing/pulling repos over the git protocol."}
{"_id": "232766", "title": "When to use python function nesting?", "text": "I am writing a program that creates backup of directories. Which of the following approach is better for code organization? Create separate class for Backup and Zip logic -               class BackupUtil:         def backup(self):            None          class ZipUtil:         def archive_dir(self):            None      Or use function nesting like this -               class BackupUtil:         def backup(self):             def archive_dir():                 None              None"}
{"_id": "232767", "title": "delegate classes for UI events", "text": "When designing a delegate to represent the state of a UI (java swing) what is cleaner: to manipulate the delegate directly from the custom event handlers defined in the UI code, or to register the delegate as a change listener on the UI elements? (expunging basically all logic from UI code) I'm more for the second design, but I'd like some feedback before churning out a load of (bad) code."}
{"_id": "232760", "title": "Building an organization-specific XML editor in HTML", "text": "I'm building a user friendly XML editor in HTML/JS. Looking for some general advice on how to build the editor UI and which approach you'd recommend on mapping the data to the UI. **Details about the problem:** Basically I'll fetch a single object as XML from a sever. The XML objects in question will be a small set of organization-specific XML which can only be structured in a few different ways. (Overall there are only about 15 different types of nodes available.) So I'll know all kinds of nodes that can appear, so I know which kind of UI to create for each type of node. Basically, all classes have the same root node ( _Item_ ). The 1st child node of that class can be a single _List_ , _Table_ , _Person_ or _Building_ node. After that, there are usually about 4 levels of multiple child-nodes, of varying structures. For example:   * A _Person_ containing a _List_ of _Addresses_ , where each Address node has two properties; an _id_ and a _type=\"personal address\"_. Anywhere inside the text of each Address there can also be a reference, a kind of internal link to an id in the system.   * A _Table_ consists of _Header_ , _Footer_ and a _Body_ with and an optional number of _rows_ and _cells_ The use case is the following: The user will always start by loading an existing XML item into the editor. The user is allowed to edit existing values, remove them, and add new values. (Since all items have the same kind of root node, the user will have access to add pretty much any kind of node they want.) When they are done they hit 'Save' and the editor closes, and a view mode (already completed) shows the saved item. * * * I have 2 ideas for the editor UI:   * A sort of Markup-editor in the style of StackExchange (a single text field with simple markup tags)   * A HTML form where you render each node as one or more input fields, and use buttons to move/add/delete the fields. I'd render _Tables_ as HTML tables, and _Lists_ as an unordered list with every list item containing multiple input fields (one input field for each _Address_ and one dropdown for the _type_ , and stash the id in a _data-id_ parameter). **Which of these UI approaches would you recommend?** (Feel free to ask more questions about the XML.) **How would you recommend mapping the data to the UI?** Would you keep all the data inside the HTML during editing and then parsing it back to XML when the user saves his work. Or store the data as a JavaScript object, work directly with the JS object and just update the UI based on the JS object? Perhaps using some MV* framework with 2-way-binding? (I suppose that method would only be considered if I built the UI as a Form.) Or would it always be easier to traverse the XML node-by-node and generate UI elements based on that?"}
{"_id": "229058", "title": "How do I maintain consistency between hard-coded values in different files?", "text": "I have a C source file and another (non-code) file in a project which contain the same hard-coded value. Ideally, the value would be specified in only one location and be copied to the other location automatically during the build process. It's not hard to think of hackish ways to accomplish this task, but I want to know if there is a common way of doing it. What standard method or approach should I use to guarantee that the two values remain consistent? In other words, how should I maintain consistency in a non- hackish way?"}
{"_id": "229055", "title": "How to organize repositories for a split library?", "text": "I have two libraries that implement a protocol: one provides tools for establishing a channel between two parts, and the other provides classes and tools for building and parsing the binary protocol messages. These two libraries can be used independently, they don't depend on each other, and each has its own build setup. However, they do share a common set of examples (using both libraries) and documentation (tutorials). * * * I have two alternatives in mind for organizing this in Git repositories: # Alternative 1 Make each library be in its own repository. A central repository would keep the common documentation, examples and tools for cloning both repositories and bootstraping them. Users would use this main repository, and developers would work on the dedicated repositories. I don't want to use Git submodules since they are hard to manage this way (versioning becomes much harder to do when the libraries constantly change). # Alternative 2 Place it all together: both libraries, documentation and examples. Versioning would be applied to both libraries, since they would be treated as a single (though separated) entity. This is how we are doing it now. It makes things simpler but I feel it could be improved. * * * So... what are the best practices for organizing it all using Git? I'm open to other alternatives too. Even though we're not using it right now, it's possible that we will be using continuous integration tools, automated testing and builds, etc."}
{"_id": "175981", "title": "Good technique for search text tokenization", "text": "We are looking for a way to tokenize some text in the same or similar way as a search engine would do it. The reason we are doing this is so that we can run some statistical analysis on the tokens. The language we are using is python, so would prefer a technique that works in that language, but could probably set something up to use another language if necessary. # Example **Original token:**               We have some great burritos! **More simplified:** (remove plurals and punctuation)               We have some great burrito **Even more simplified:** (remove superfluous words)               great burrito **Best:** (recognize positive and negative meaning):               burrito -positive-"}
{"_id": "229051", "title": "How do I make a domain model that doesn't violate OOP?", "text": "My game reads a number of JSON files, deserializes them, and hands the resulting objects off to the classes that need them. These deserialized objects, which can be thought of as the domain model, are normally very simple:               public class Settings     {         public bool FullScreen = false;         public int WindowWidth = 800;         public int WindowHeight = 600;     }      But one of these objects is not so simple:               public class Sprite     {         [JsonProperty]         private readonly string assetName;              [JsonProperty]         private Vector2 position;              // other properties...              public Sprite( string assetName, Vector2 position )         {             this.assetName = assetName;             this.position = position;         }              public void Move( Vector2 direction )         {             // do move         }              // other methods...     }      The properties of the Sprite class are private because I want to have good encapsulation. This means it has a constructor that accepts many arguments and several other methods for setting its properties. Also, each property needs an attribute so it can be read by the JSON parser. It looks like a POCO, but I read that POCOs should be persistance ignorant. I could create a simpler domain model that acts more like a DTO to satisfy this:               public class Sprite     {         public string AssetName = \"default.png\";         public Vector2 Position = Vector2.Zero;     }      Now my Sprite class is nice and ignorant. I can write another class to handle business logic type of stuff:               public class SpriteWhatever     {         private Sprite sprite;              public SpriteWhatever( Sprite sprite )         {             this.sprite = sprite;         }              public void Move( Vector2 direction )         {             // do move         }              // other methods...     }      But then I'm worried that my domain model is anemic. In order to avoid _that_ , I could just make all the properties of the Sprite class public, and keep all the business logic in it, but then I have no encapsulation. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "31551", "title": "Forked a project, where do my version numbers start?", "text": "I have forked a project and have changed lots of it. This fork isn't just a small feature change here and a buried bug fix there, its a pretty substantial change. Only most of the core code is shared. I forked this project at v2.5.0. For a while I've started versioning my fork at v3.0 . However I'm not sure if this is the right way, mainly because when that project hits v3.0, things get confusing. But I don't want to start over at v1.0 or v0.1 because that implies infancy, instability, and non-refindness of a project. This isn't true, as most of the core code is very refined and stable. I'm really lost on what to do, so I ask here: Whats the standard way to deal with this kind of situation? Do most forks start over again, bump up version numbers, or do something else that I'm not aware of."}
{"_id": "31550", "title": "Public Speaking in software development", "text": "Greetings my fellow cubicle dwellers. I've found my role gradually change from \"feature-maintainer\" to \"feature- developer\". While much of the former would consist of fixing and/or updating an existing feature (and quietly grumbling about it's implementation with complete naivet\u00e9), in this new role I find:   * Have to communicate with immediate management to define the development requirements to turnaround the new feature   * Have to communicate with design to determine the user requirements of the new feature   * Have to communicate with QA to determine test sets for the new feature, as well as it's current state during development.   * Have to communicate with producers/project-managers to define remaining turnaround time as well as updates in development requirements.   * and finally, have to occasionally communicate with upper-management to defend the new feature and demonstrate it's minimized risk to the upcoming release. The last item is key here, and this took me a couple occasions to completely realize. In all, though, it becomes very apparent that communication skills ARE important, even or especially as such for developers who feel they 'own' the feature they're working on. All of this said, I recognize it's importance and would like to improve my skills in this area further. I enjoy one-on-one communication but find I tend to stutter a bit when speaking to any group larger than a few people I know well. Where can I find good resources to improve my own communication skills?"}
{"_id": "233411", "title": "Does the Composite design pattern implement recursive behavior?", "text": "The Composite design pattern allows us to call an `operation()` on a 'composite' node in a tree structure, and this `operation()` will be called on all of the children, subchildren and so on. When an element's `operation()` is invoked, it is it's responsibility to call `operation()` on all of it's children, and so on. Each child responsible to invoke the operation on it's own direct children. I understand why this has a **_recursive nature_**. When we learn of this design, the word 'recursion' is inside our heads all the time. **But can this be considered 'recursive behavior' in the strict sense of the word?** I always thought that recursion simply means a process where **'a function calls itself'.** ('function' or 'method' or 'procedure' etc). However, in the Composite design pattern, **no method calls itself.** A method calls the identically-named method in the objects composed with it (serving as it's 'children') - but it never calls itself (aka `void operation(){ this.operation(); }` never happens). So, does the Composite design pattern create **recursive behavior**? Or does it create behavior **resembling the nature of recursion**? Is my definition of recursion wrong because it's too strict? If so, **how would you define recursion?**"}
{"_id": "3086", "title": "Which are the topics in Mathematics that a developer should absolutely know?", "text": "I've studied mathematics and found the subject very interesting, but after getting into programming and coding stuff, I feel like I've forgotten most of the advanced stuff that I've studied. I know some of you might find this outrageous, but in my case its the truth. Now I want to repent and make up for that mistake by re-learning, but theres just one problem I don't know where to start. List of Topics based on answers to the current question and this Math Classes   1. Discrete mathematics   2. Calculus    3. Elementary Algebra   4. Modular Arithmetic   5. computational number theory"}
{"_id": "171605", "title": "Free cloud web service development", "text": "I am looking for a free (as in beer) combination of services, for **learning** \"cloud SW development\" and very small scale private use (say, a private streamlined web shopping&todo list with simple auth). The combination should include the full set of needed services:   * DVCS service (like github)   * A cloud service to run the backend code   * A suitable data storage service (preferably not SQL), accessed by the backend (if not included in the backend service)   * A web service, serving the web pages seen by user, to access the backend functionality   * A \"cloud IDE\" (ideally one, two is ok too) for both backend and HTML/javascript coding   * If (backend) deployment uses some CI, then that Other points:   * Backend programming language can be anything, except VB or PHP   * Everything has to be in the cloud, nothing permanent on a local PC (graphics is not part of the question)   * Looking for ready-to-use service combination, not a virtual server where I can set anything up myself   * I don't care if service insists on displaying ads in the user web UI   * \"Cheap\" and \"free trial\" are ok too, if \"free\" does not exist   * As per example use case, storage, CPU and bandwidth quota requirements are negligible Google finds several services of course, all requiring at least registration before testing, so I'm looking for a known-good _combination_ , so ideal answer starts with \"I use this service combo: ...\", contains links to services and brief description and personal experiences."}
{"_id": "255248", "title": "Viable method of sharing our PHP project", "text": "We are two developers that have no previous experience in sharing one PHP project. In particular, cakePHP. We both use NetBeans and we have set the project up as a \"PHP application from a remote server\". For the project we also use git + bitbucket for version control as well. Now the problem is that whenever one of us makes any changes to the code and saves it, it gets updated on the server, but not in the other developer's environment. Is this the right path we are taking for sharing the project? How to make the code updates and how to avoid overriding other code?"}
{"_id": "89025", "title": "What should be the workflow with a git repository?", "text": "I work on several git repositories though on most not more than 2 people work. Mostly me and my boss. Very often when we work in parallel it happens that \"git log\" doesn't look so nice because of the merge commits. My boss always complains about that. I really hate that fact because this makes me effectively serialize my work. To prevent these merge commits I must always rebase to the most recent version and go to the other office to make sure that my boss doesn't forget to process the merge requests before committing stuff himself. Even worse he told me that since one week or so he doesn't get email notification for merge request, though I have problems to believe that. Even more worse he now does himself merge request for peer reviewing, elevating the problem more. (The best part is he thinks I always forget to rebase and update on time...) On several occasions I already tried to explain to him that I do everything the way he suggests but he doesn't believe me because he has more experience with git, at least in non-teamwork- environments. I work at this place since 3 months, though I actually do teamwork since a few weeks. I really wished we would use svn because with this workflow in git I waste a lot of my time and I get a headache. In particular we have about 40 repos with modules which are in most cases not longer than 3000 LOC. So when I change something intimate in Repo A I might have to change something in Repo B. If I was deciding, I would put all that stuff into one repo, at least the modules which belong to one group of software. Of course as a new employee you cannot critisize your boss too much or influence him too much. So what is the best way to deal with this problem?"}
{"_id": "233419", "title": "Collection vs data structure vs aggregate", "text": "I know three terms that have to do with storing objects or data. I'm not sure I understand the exact differences between the terms. Please confirm if what I'm about to write is accurate. **A data structure** is a group of data types or objects of the same type, grouped together in some formation. **A collection** is the same as a data structure (I don't mean a Java Collection, I mean a collection in the more general meaning). **An aggregate** is an object containing a collection or data structure, providing an interface to communicate with the inner data structure. For example, the object `someContainer`, which contains an inner `ArrayList`, is an aggregate because it contains a data structure, encapsulates it, and provides an interface to manipulate it. Is all of this accurate?"}
{"_id": "230699", "title": "Should we be using git branches or separate repositories?", "text": "So I have talked my employer into finally jumping on version control...up until now my experience with git has been for personal projects and freelance work where everything is on one server, or small scripts...so, this is a bit above my knowledge. We are going to have 3 web-servers\u2026 test, staging, production. We are going to use beanstalk (like github) which will store our repositories remotely and beanstalk will deploy to our servers via sftp (or ssh or whatever we decide). Inside our htdocs folder we have a drupal multi-site install, and we have a bunch of stuff outside of drupal (landing pages, etc...). We would like to have all of our htdocs (except images, file folders, etc...) inside of version control. Should we use one repository with multiple branches? Or 3 separate repositories, each with one branch since they will be deploying to 3 separate servers?"}
{"_id": "242847", "title": "Storing a looong lookup table", "text": "## Background The product i am working on has a _very_ long lookup-table. the table contains static data and cannot be auto generated. there are about 500 rows and 10 columns. columns have mostly integers and strings. to complicate the matters, there are actually two such tables. every row in table-1 maps to zero-or-more rows in table-2. we use an SQLite database with two tables. the product installer places the SQLite file in the installation directory. the application is written in dot- net and we use ADO to load the data once on startup. **now,**   1. the lookup table grows. in each release a month, we add about 10 new entries   2. existing entries are adjusted. every release we fine tune existing entries. ## The problem a team of (10) developers work on the lookup table. Code goes in the SVN, but the little devil the SQLite does not. this prevents multiple developers to work on it. we do take regular backups of the file, but proper versioning is not possible. we never know who did the breaking change. the worse thing is we dont know if there is any change at all. diff'ing databases is tedious if not impossible. the tables are expected to grow quite large in years to come and we would need developers to work in parallel on it. the data is business critical. we need to be able to audit changes made to it. ## Question What would be a solution for the problems outlines above? one idea was to transform the whole thing to XML and treat it like just another source file. that way SVN can do the versioning and we can work in parallel. but the data shows relational behavior. with XML we loose the unique and foreign-key constraints. also we cant query it with sql like ease. any help here will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "89004", "title": "What should I know moving from a startup to a corporate role?", "text": "I recently took a position with a fairly large company. So far, I've worked with small companies (just a few employees) and startups so I've gotten used to a certain style of working. I'm a bit nervous about what to expect and what to prepare for: what should I keep in mind as I transition into a larger corporate workplace?"}
{"_id": "230690", "title": "Shared source file between two parts of project", "text": "I have the following sort of directory structure:               part1         build         src     part2         build         src      Now I have a header file that I would like to include in both parts of these projects, it will contain constants and some macro definitions as well as some utility functions, and I want these to be synchronized between the two parts. What would be the generally acceptable way to format my directory structure? Something like so?               part1         build         src     part2         build         src     share         src      and set up my make files in the `build` directories to also look in `../../share/src` Or is there a more \"correct\" way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "242841", "title": "Should one always know what an API is doing just by looking at the code?", "text": "Recently I have been developing my own API and with that invested interest in API design I have been keenly interested how I can improve my API design. One aspect that has come up a couple times is (not by users of my API but in my observing discussion about the topic): _one should know just by looking at the code calling the API what it is doing_. For example see this discussion on GitHub for the discourse repo, it goes something like:               foo.update_pinned(true, true);      Just by looking at the code (without knowing the parameter names, documentation etc.) one cannot guess what it is going to do - what does the 2nd argument mean? The suggested improvement is to have something like:               foo.pin()     foo.unpin()     foo.pin_globally()      And that clears things up (the 2nd arg was whether to pin foo globally, I am guessing), and I agree in this case the later would certainly be an improvement. However I believe there can be instances where methods to set different but logically related state would be better exposed as one method call rather than separate ones, _even though you would not know what it is doing just by looking at the code_. (So you would have to resort to looking at the parameter names and documentation to find out - which personally I would always do no matter what if I am unfamiliar with an API). For example I expose one method `SetVisibility(bool, string, bool)` on a FalconPeer and I acknowledge just looking at the line:               falconPeer.SetVisibility(true, \"aerw3\", true);      You would have no idea what it is doing. It is setting 3 different values that control the \"visibility\" of the `falconPeer` in the logical sense: accept join requests, only with password and reply to discovery requests. _Splitting this out into 3 method calls could lead to a user of the API to set one aspect of \"visibility\" forgetting to set others that I force them to think about by only exposing the one method to set all aspects of \"visibility\"_. Furthermore when the user wants to change one aspect they almost always will want to change another aspect and can now do so in one call."}
{"_id": "38380", "title": "Detect a new tweet with any framework or language (desktop or web-based)", "text": "I hope this doesnt get perceived as ambiguous or too vague, but i'm attempting to make a service that monitors twitter and archives tweets. Apart from PHP cron jobs i cant think of any way to detect if there has been a new tweet posted? I'm not too fussed about what programming language i have to write it in, or what framework i have to work in. Also whether its desktop or web based. What route would everyone go down for this? Thanks"}
{"_id": "213751", "title": "Algorithm to update priority ordered list where changing priority of an item is expensive", "text": "I am working against an API where I can add and update items in a list that is ordered by a priority field I can set (which need not be contiguous but must be a positive integer). Updating a list member is an expensive operation, so I want to minimise the number of updates. What I want is an algorithm that will minimise the number of updates required when the list is reordered. i.e. The worst case scenario for this is to use contiguous priorities starting at 1. e.g.               Priority  | item     ----------------     1           A     2           B     3           C     4           D     5           E      In this case to move item E to the top of the list, every single item would need to have its priority updated. The naive solution I have though of is to implement large numbers for priorities, and put in priorities that are half way through the interval between two items when an item needs to be placed there. e.g.               Priority  | item     ----------------     1000000     A     2000000     B     3000000     C     4000000     D     5000000     E      In this case to move E to the top only one update is required (and I can set its priority to 500000) The issue with this is that it will act like a binary search, and even in the case of using starting numbers of the order of 10^9 it will only take 30 operations until the priorities could become contiguous. Is there a better algorithm than this? Is there an existing one I can use (but have not found via google), or can someone suggest an improvement to this?"}
{"_id": "245310", "title": "How to transition from \"help vampire\" to \"developer\"?", "text": "I've been a computer enthusiast my entire life, but didn't first start programming (web development) until I began College. It is now four years later - I am about to graduate, have had a handful of full-time internships and part-time work, all revolving around web dev... But I still find myself more often than not seeking out help, tutorials or stackexchange answers to my questions instead of working out problems entirely on my own. I hear the term \"help vampire\" -- someone who asks/seeks help with their problems rather than work through issues themselves -- and while that isn't true for me a hundred percent, I find my threshold of getting \"frustrated\" when trying to accomplish something is quite low and it doesn't take long once I've found a problem to start searching online for a solution, as opposed to work one out myself. I am certainly able to do my work, but I want to know how I can actually learn to THINK and REMEMBER like a developer, as opposed to relying on online answers as a crutch. It's a nasty habit and I really feel like it's limiting my development potential, speed, flexibility and adaptation to new languages/environments. _TL;DR: How did you transition from seeking help (whether in the form of Q &A's, plugins, tutorials, code-inspecting, etc) to developing solutions (answering the Q&A's, writing your own plugins, creating the tutorials, etc)?_"}
{"_id": "213756", "title": "What exactly does it mean that storing \u201clarge blobs in the database reduces performance\u201d?", "text": "To someone who knows database internals this may be an easy question, but can someone explain in a clear way why storing large blobs (say 400 MB movies) in the database is supposed to decrease performance and what exactly does that mean? This is a claim often found throughout the internet, but I've never seen it really explained. To be specific, I'm referring to SharePoint/MSSQL performance, i.e. file- upload performance, site browsing, displaying lists, document opening etc. - operations that are said to become slower once a database gets too big. Blob externalization to filesystem (which in SharePoint is called Remote Blob Storage, aka moving files out of the database, leaving only a reference) is supposed to solve this to an extent, but what exactly - at the bottom level - is the difference? It's obvious that backups would take longer with giant files stored in the database ... but what operations exactly are impacted and what's the underlying mechanism of it (i.e. in what way are files stored on filesystem outside of the database accessed or stored differently)? Suppose a simple table containing columns `ID(guid, PK), FileName(string), Data(varbinary(max))` \\- would large `Data` column really slow down operations such as displaying a list of files on a website (which I assume internally means running `SELECT FileName FROM table`), or inserting a new row? It's not like the actual binary content columns are indexed. I know there have been some questions like this asked already, but I've not found an adequate explanation."}
{"_id": "213757", "title": "Properly licensing FOSS: text location", "text": "I have a few FOSS projects that I want to release under the BSD license, since I only wish to maintain the intellectual property of the code, that others will know I've been writing it. I suppose all I need to do is:   1. Have a file called `LICENSE` only in the main folder of the software.   2. Write at the top of each source file the following text: > This software is released under the BSD License.   >  Full text of the license can be found in the file named 'LICENSE' at the > main folder of the software.   >  Copyright (c) 2013, Dor. Am I correct? Is there anything to add/remove/change?   Should I include my full name,   or may I just use the first name and first letter of last name (e.g. `Dor K.`)? The BSD license text that's contained in the file `LICENSE` is:               ------------------------------------------------------------------------     This software is released under the BSD License     ------------------------------------------------------------------------     Copyright (c) 2013, Dor K.     All rights reserved.          Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:           * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.      * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.     ------------------------------------------------------------------------"}
{"_id": "228018", "title": "What's the point of Continuous Integration services like Travis CI?", "text": "As far as I can tell, services like Travis CI and CircleCI take your project and run its test suite whenever you push a new change to your repository. Assuming that it's also possible to either manually or automatically run such test suite locally before you commit or push your change, what's the point in using a service like this?"}
{"_id": "228017", "title": "Rest Api Client response handler", "text": "I have two instances of Laravel: `Rest Server` API and `Rest Client`. Let's say I want to display list of positions on the front page. I'm making request to my Server API from my client controller:               public function add_employee() {         $data['employee_positions'] = Client_API::generic_request('/employees/position_list');         $this->layout->content = View::make('employees.add_employee')->with($data);     }      If my API request returns 400-500 errors, I want my application be redirected to login page. Where should I validate my API responses? I can't do redirects in my Client's `Client_API` wrapper class. So far, the only way I can accomplish it is by validating responses before returning them inside `Client_API` class and in case of `400-500` error - I'm throwing Exception, and then handling my business logic (redirects) inside catching exceptions function. I've been told that Exceptions shouldn't be used as a part of business processes inside my application."}
{"_id": "202137", "title": "Building Websites: Fast Debugging Without a Browser", "text": "Is there a methodology to debug websites without a browser? Normally I use a web browser to view a results page. The slow debugging process confuses me a little. To correct an error I need to switch to a code window (which takes some time). Then I correct the error and return to a browser window, press F5, and wait for the page to update (which could take 10 secs). It could take only 1 second if the page automatically updates after I correct my code. I'd like a tool where I could see my code and a corresponding result page on one screen. I need a tool that updates an open page upon code changes. I would also like to edit both server and client sides (generally JavaScript), and see my changes as soon as possible, without unnecessary 'user' manipulations. **Update**. I need a tool which controls source files. It must reload a browser when any source file is changed. A good feature can be reloading with cache clear (for example if a changed file has specific extention such as .js, .css)."}
{"_id": "47007", "title": "Software Bug Bash Tips", "text": "I am trying to put together a bug bash at my office and I was what was the best way to conduct it. Ideally, I'm looking for the most effective way to manage testing and provide the staff with incentives to find relevant errors."}
{"_id": "87438", "title": "Should I not show all my skills?", "text": "I have been programming for a very long time and I have in depth knowledge of several technologies. Recently I applied for a web development job and in my resume I had listed all the skills - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, PHP, ASP, JSP, C/C++, ARM. Except for C/C++ and ARM I had shown the skill level for all technologies as expert. Many of my friends had applied for the same job and they did not have any web development experience. ALL of them got a call for interview. However I got a rejection saying that we have received applications from very high level candidates and you have not be selected to go to the next level. This has seriously demotivated me. I do not understand why I have been rejected when I had all the required skills and all those who did not have any of the skills have been selected. One reason which I think is that the employer might be thinking that how one person can be an expert in all the technologies. Once in another interview I was told by the HR manager that it is unbelievable that you know ASP, JSP and PHP all in depth as we have different programmers for each of the technology. Such incidents make me very unhappy as in spite of being highly capable of the position I am rejected. Should I not list all my skills in the resume to avoid such situations?"}
{"_id": "15321", "title": "What do you look at first: the code or the design?", "text": "If you've just been introduced to a new project, what's the first thing you look for to get an idea of how it works? Do you look for the design first? If there is a design, what do you look for in it? Class diagrams or deployment diagrams or sequence diagrams or something else? Or do you go straight for the code? If so, how do you understand how the different layers interact?"}
{"_id": "103584", "title": "How to tackle a boss/manager who likes to race the coders", "text": "After a recent restructuring happened in our corporation - I have got a new line manager. He is generally ok and not as sneaky as the previous one. By \"sneaky\" I don't mean he was an evil manager - I just refer by this term to someone who keeps most of the information to himself and doesn't share with other team members in order to be the only \"go-to person\" - you get the idea. But nonetheless I had managed to maintain quite a good relationship with my previous manager - and I had been quite productive. My new boss is more open, which is a good thing, but I really hate one his quality - he likes to race the coders - by giving the same task to a different developer in order to fix the issue ASAP. As you may have already understood the information does NOT flow freely in an environment like ours. So the person who my manager was talking to 10 minutes ago might be starting work on the same issue I am working on now. It happened a few times, and every time I overheard that there might be someone working on the same issue - I did go and ask my manager - who owns the issue - but he usually was very evasive in his answers. So my question is - how to stop my manager from doing it? In our small team of half a dozen developers I am the most senior one and I am usually spared from the racing but when it hits me it really gets to my nerves. And one more thing: I am not implying that my manager is a bad/evil boss, neither I believe in that the world is or should be fair, I just want to find a way to make him stop racing me. One thing at a time."}
{"_id": "87437", "title": "What are the advantages of version control systems that version each file separately?", "text": "Over the past few years I have worked with several different version control systems. For me, one of the fundamental differences between them has been whether they version files individually (each file has its own separate version numbering and history) or the repository as a whole (a \"commit\" or version represents a snapshot of the whole repository). Some \"per-file\" version control systems:   * CVS   * ClearCase   * Visual SourceSafe Some \"whole-repository\" version control systems:   * SVN   * Git   * Mercurial In my experience, the per-file version control systems have only led to problems, and require much more configuration and maintenance to use correctly (for example, \"config specs\" in ClearCase). I've had many instances of a co- worker changing an unrelated file and breaking what would ideally be an isolated line of development. What are the **advantages** of these per-file version control systems? What problems do \"whole-repository\" version control systems have that per-file version control systems do not?"}
{"_id": "155670", "title": "IOS Variable vs Property", "text": "Just started diving into Objective-C and IOS development and was wondering when and the correct location I should be declaring variables/properties. The main piece of code i need explaining is below: Why and when should i be declaring variables inside the interface statement and why do they have the same variable with _ and then the same one as a property. And then in the implementation they do @synthesize tableView = _tableView (I understand what synthesize does) Thanks :-)               @interface ViewController : UIViewController <UITableViewDataSource, UITableViewDelegate>      {         UITableView *_tableView;         UIActivityIndicatorView *_activityIndicatorView;         NSArray *_movies;     }          @property (nonatomic, retain) UITableView *tableView;     @property (nonatomic, retain) UIActivityIndicatorView *activityIndicatorView;     @property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *movies;"}
{"_id": "108827", "title": "How to decide which classes are necessary for the system", "text": "I know design principles and design patterns in theory. But it's embarrassing to realize that it's not clear when applying it in practice. For example, let's think about simple tic tac toe console game. How would you decide what class is for certain responsibility and how do you determine that responsibility/class is necessary for the system even before applying design patterns or principles? I understand it should be based on requirements and domain knowledge, but there are lots ways to satisfy the requirements. If I take agile (TDD) approach, there are still many ways to achieve the key requirement by making it testable. I wish there are many materials (books or web sites) on this but most of them are on theory but rarely on practices. I would appreciate if anybody can refer to such materials with which I can practice the class designs."}
{"_id": "48698", "title": "I don't program in my spare time. Does that make me a bad developer?", "text": "A lot of blogs and advice on the web seem to suggest that in order to become a great developer, doing just your day job is not enough. For example, you should contribute to open source projects in your spare time, write smartphone apps, etc. In fact a lot of this advice seems to suggest that if you don't love programming enough to do it all day long then you're probably in the wrong career. That doesn't ring true with me. I enjoy my work, but when I come home from the office I'm not in the mood to jump straight back onto the computer and start coding away until bedtime. I only have a certain number of hours free time each day, and I'd rather spend them on other hobbies, seeing friends or going outside than in front of the computer. I do get a kick out of programming, and do hack around outside of work occasionally. I'm committed to my personal development and spend time reading tech blogs and books as a way to keep learning and becoming better. But that doesn't extend so far as to my wanting to use all my spare time for coding. Does this mean I'm not a 'true' software developer at heart? Is it possible to become a good software developer without doing extra outside your job? I'd be very interested to hear what you think. _Update: thanks everyone for your comments & answers. A lot of good thoughts and advice!_"}
{"_id": "131884", "title": "How should I deal with nested compositions?", "text": "I came across the following question on a website for interviews: > Here are 3 products: table, chair and bench. Product can be of material: > wood, metal, and plastic. Design class structures for this. My first thought was to have an abstract class Product with a protected Material class member as shown below. My actual question is after the code block below               #include <stdio.h>     #include <string>     using namespace std;          class Type {         public:         // Commented out virtual below. Was a typo !         /*virtual*/void SetType(string s) {             m_typeName = s;              }         virtual void PrintType() {              printf(\"Type = %s\\n\",m_typeName.c_str());          }         virtual ~Type()=0;         Type& operator=(const Type& rhs) {             if ( &rhs != this ) {                 m_typeName = rhs.m_typeName;             }             return *this;         }         private:         string m_typeName;     };     Type::~Type() {}          class Wood: public Type {     };          class Plastic: public Type {     };          class Product {         public:         Product():m_type(NULL) {         }         virtual void SetType(Type* t){             m_type = t;         }         virtual void PrintInfo() {             printf(\"I am %s product\\n\",m_productName.c_str());             m_type->PrintType();         }         virtual ~Product()=0;         protected:         string m_productName;         Type* m_type;     };     Product::~Product() {}          class Table: public Product {         public:         Table() {              m_productName = \"table\";         }     };          class Chair: public Product {         public:         Chair() {              m_productName = \"chair\";         }     };          int main()     {         Plastic *p = new Plastic();         p->SetType(\"plastic\");              Table *t = new Table();         t->SetType(p);              t->PrintInfo();              delete t;         delete p;              return 0;     }      However, I have a feeling it could be designed better. In general, if your compositions (Product in the example) contain compositions (Material in the example), what is a good design pattern?"}
{"_id": "46451", "title": "Are two database trips reasonable for a login system?", "text": "I am designing a login system for a project, and have an issue about it requiring two trips to the database when a user logs in.   1. User types in username and password   2. Database is polled and password hash is retrieved for comparative purposes (first trip)   3. Code tests hash against entered password (and salt), and if verified, resets the session ID   4. New session ID and username are sent back to the database to write a row to the login table, and generate a login ID for that session. EDIT: I am using a random salt. Does this design make sense? Am I missing something? Is my concern about two trips unfounded? Comments and suggestions are welcome."}
{"_id": "46452", "title": "Who was your mentor? Where can I find mine?", "text": "In many of articles I've read, finding a mentor is often suggested. One to who would guide, teach and more. (I wouldn't know the details, I don't have one, yet.) So, who was your mentor, if any? I have only had indirect mentors: professor at university, manager at work whom I've watched and learnt from the most. And otherwise, Twitter has been a great place to follow the professionals and discover more about the technologies that interest me. But I still wonder how I could find one because I can sense that I might be lacking in my experience. Ideas?"}
{"_id": "200965", "title": "What the correct algorithm to invert italics in a mixed text?", "text": "The question motivations was depicted in the section below. There are many ways to make text italic, so, perhaps, there are more than one good \" ** _swap italics algorithm_**\". The problem reveals some aditional dificulties in a XHTML code, and using the `<i>` tag, that **must to be balanced**. Example:                <!-- original text: -->      <p id=\"p1\"><i>Several more</i> Homo sapiens <i>fossils were discovered</i>.</p>      <!-- same text, swapping italics: -->      <p id=\"p2\">Several more <i>Homo sapiens</i> fossils were discovered.</p>      So, looks like this,   1. _Several more_ Homo sapiens _fossils were discovered_.   2. Several more _Homo sapiens_ fossils were discovered. * * * # Algoritms introduction and discussion For \" **layout solution** \", the simplest algorithm is checking the `font- style` CSS-property of all text blocks, and invert them with jQuery:               $('#myFragment *').each(function(){        if ($(this).css('font-style')=='italic')            $(this).css('font-style','normal')         else            $(this).css('font-style','italic')             });       But this algorithm not survive to a little more complex test,                <p id=\"p3\"><b><i>F</i>RAGMENT <big><i>with italics</i> and </big> withOUT.</b></p>      The second simplest algorithm is for a **concrete solution** , and was used in the \"Examples\" section. Have two steps:   1. enclose the XHTML fragment into italics;   2. invert open/close italic tags (ex. `</i>` to `<i>`). That is, writing with Javascript,               var s = '... a fragment of XHTML content ...';     s = '<i>'+        s.replace(/<(\\/?)i>/mg,                function (m,p1){                   return p1? '<i>': '</i>';               }        ) +        '</i>';        But also not survive to the second test, losting balance of tags... The \"corrected\" algorithm runs (!), but is not portable, neither fast or elegant. It is demonstred here, and at the example section below. # The point! So the question is, **there are a simple, good and generic (usable in any browser and portable to another languages) algorithm?** You know another \"swap italics algorithm\"? PS: \"generic\" in the sense that I even translate your algorithm to XSLT. The algorithm **must produce directallybalanced XHTML code** (without a intermediary blackbox like Tidy). * * * ## Motivations I need to port the \"swap italics algorithm\" to text editors, server parsers, etc. In all cases I can \"normalize input\" (and output) by standard XHTML and `<i>` tag. I am parsing XHTML text of prose books and scientific articles, exported from different origins and styles... The most texts are exported as \"normal text\", but a lot of titles (ex. article title, chapter title), and, sometimes, a full chapter or a full text-box (ex. article abstract) are stylized with italics. All these \"stylized with italics\" must be inverted. Typical cases:   * Transform the original \"all chapter italics\" into \"all chapter normal text\": see this case, where in a roughly 300-page book, 8 of the 25 chapters need to be inverted.   * Italicized quotation marks, abstracts, etc. See this example. Need change back to normal, but without lost the emphasis words.   * Writing binomial names of species, in Scientific texts, are usually typeset in italics (or inverted, in a font different from that used for \"normal text\"). Hundreds of italicized titles (of articles and of article-sections) of XHTML-exported articles must be inverted at my work place. PS: see the example of the beginning of the question (\"Several more _Homo sapiens_ ...\"). I need also **translate the generic algorithm (of your answer!) to a XSLT library** , where no \"tag balancing correction\" not exists. ## Examples Implementing in Javascript and PHP a **non-generic** \"Swap italics algorithm\". A generic one need a general \"XML interleaving algorithm\"... Here I use browser's (DOM) and Tidy corrections, as an alternative to \"interleaving\". ### Javascript It runs with complex inputs (!). Illustrating, by an jQuery implementation:                var s = $('#sample1').html(); // get original html text fragment           // INVERSION ALGORITHM: add and remove italics.      s = \"<i>\"+          s.replace(/<(\\/?)i>/mg,                     function (m,p1){                        return p1? '<i>': '</i>';                    }          ) +          \"</i>\";  // a not-well-formed-XHTML, but it is ok...      $('#inverted').html(s); // ...the DOM do all rigth!      // minor corrections, for clean empties:      s = $('#inverted').html();      s = s.replace(/<([a-z]+)>(\\s*)<\\/\\1>/mg,'$2'); // clean      s = s.replace(/<([a-z]+)>(\\s*)<\\/\\1>/mg,'$2'); // clean remain      $('#inverted').html(s);        // END ALGORITHM           alert(s);      ### PHP, with Tidy The same of Javascript, \"translated\" to PHP -- the natural translation is using `DOMDocument()` class and `loadHTML`/`saveXML` methodos, but what have the same behaviour than browser's correspondents is the `tidy` class. Shows the same results (!)                $sample1='<b><i>O</i>RIGINAL <big><i>with italics</i> and </big> withOUT</b>';      $inverted = '... inverted will be here ...';      echo $sample1;      // Tidy correction      $s = $sample1; // get original html text fragment       // INVERSION ALGORITHM: add and remove italics.       $s = \"<i>\".           preg_replace_callback('/<(\\/?)i>/s', function ($m){            return $m[1]? '<i>': '</i>';}, $s) .           \"</i>\";  // a not-well-formed-XHTML, but it is ok...       $config = array('show-body-only'=>true,'output-xhtml'=>true);       $tidy = new tidy;       $tidy->parseString($s, $config, 'utf8');       $s = $tidy;  // ... because Tidy corrects!            // minor corrections, for clean empties:       $s = preg_replace('/<([a-z]+)>(\\s*)<\\/\\1>/s', '$2', $s); // clean       $s = preg_replace('/<([a-z]+)>(\\s*)<\\/\\1>/s', '$2', $s); // clean remain       // END ALGORITHM       echo \"\\n\\n$s\";"}
{"_id": "173110", "title": "Which metric/list should be used to evaluate whole software development team?", "text": "The title might be seem vague, so let me tell you a little bit history what i am trying to clarify question. I have been hired as a consultant for a corporate's small development division. The company also owns a couple of software development companies. My ex-manager runs a BI team, with reports, analyst and developers. He asked me to evaluate overall design, software development process and code quality. Here what I found:   * Lots of copy/paste code everywhere ( no reuse ).   * Even though they have everything TFS, VS Ultimate etc, they have no build process.   * No Cruise Control.net / Teamcity...   * No unit tests.   * Web Pages with 3700 lines of code, Lots of huge functions ( which can be divided into smaller functions).   * No naming convention both db and c# code   * No 3rd party or open source projects.    * No IoC.   * No Separation Of Concerns.    * No Code Quality Check ( NDepend or FxCope or anything ).   * No Code Review.   * No communication within the team.   * They claim they wrote an application framework ( 6 months, 3 persons), but I would hardly call a framework ( of course no unit test, there are some but all commented out). The framework contains 14 projects, but there are some projects with only one file with twenty lines of code. Honestly, what people are doing fixing bug all the day( which will provide more bugs eventually), they are kind of isolated from community, some team members even don't know github or stack Overflow they probably went there with google but they don't know about it. So here is question, Is This list ok? Or am I being picky? Since I don't have any grudge against them, I just want to be fair, honest and I would like to hear you suggestions, before I would submit this list. And since this list also will be review by software division's manager, I don't want any heart break or something like this. http://www.hanselman.com/altnetgeekcode/ For example I would love to such lists, I can't make references. Here what I think after this question Since sorf of list wanted I will submit it. But I will definetly reference this question and great answers to make my intention clear ( I dont want to be picky a* _*_ *e, I respect what they do, but I believe they can do better) . I will recommend them to take it slowly, use their time wisely, and if they let me I will try to investigate the real problem and try to solve it with them. Not as an enemy or a person who didnt like what they do, as a friend, a person who likes building things."}
{"_id": "231125", "title": "When am I justified in using a License?", "text": "I recently wrote a little CLI Hangman game in Python; it's not anything huge, but I did write it all myself. I would like to keep the program open and free (GPL ver.3), but it's so small I don't know if I need to/can license it. Is there a certain point where a program becomes \"license-able\", or can I license any program I write?"}
{"_id": "173115", "title": "Is it legal to modify MIT licensed code and sell it?", "text": "I have a project and I want to use a ready-made script that is licensed under MIT in it. But using this script separately will be redundant. So I've decided to merge my code and the MIT licensed script in the same file. (Let's say I'll modify, improve and/or add new features to it.) I'm planning to sell this work on a market, but is it fair (legally)? NOTE: Meanwhile, I'll put (refer) the MIT licensed script's copyright already in the final file."}
{"_id": "173117", "title": "How to go about designing an intermediate routing filter program to accept input and forward accordingly?", "text": "My predicament: I designed an app, written in Python, to read my mail and check for messages that contain a certain digital signature. It opens these and looks for keywords. If the message contains these keywords, certain related functions area executed on the computer. It is a way I can control my computer from my cell phone without being there. I am still in the beginning stages and it can only currently remotely open and close applications/processes. The obvious issue is security risks. I hoped to spearhead that by requiring and checking for that digital signature. However, my issue comes when I'd like to make this program usable by multiple users. The idea is that the user will send keywords: username and password, for instance, to log into their personal email account and send messages to it to be parsed. Please ignore the security implications of sending non-encoded passwords through email. (Though if you could help me on that part I'd much appreciate it as well, but currently, that is not the scope of my question.) My issue is designing an intermediary process that will take an email/password to read an email and scan for those keywords. The issue is, that the program has to be accessing an email to read the email for the username/password! I have got myself into a loop and cannot figure out how to have this required intermediary program. I could just create an arbitrary email account and have that check for login-creds, but is there a better way of doing this than that? Also, is there a better way of communicating with a computer remotely than this? Especially if the computer is not a server and is behind a router with only a subnet ip? If I am asking this question in the wrong place, I deeply apologize. Any help would be much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "73933", "title": "What Are The Uses of Algebraic Data Types?", "text": "I'm reading about Algebraic Data Types (thanks to Richard Minerich I found this excellent explanation of the concept). While I think I understand the notion of sum types and product types etc., what I'm not quite understanding is how Algebraic Data Types are useful beyond specifying pattern matching. What other things can one do with ADT's beyond pattern matching? * * * EDIT: I'm not asking what can a developer do with ADT's that can't be done with objects. I'm asking if there are other operations that ADT's allow; for example, can one do additional reasoning about the types involved if ADT's are employed? Do ADT's facilitate some sort of type analysis that wouldn't be possible without them?"}
{"_id": "224574", "title": "Visitor Pattern still useful in languages supporting class extensions?", "text": "Is the visitor pattern useful in languages supporting class extensions? Why bother implementing it, when you have open classes or can subclass. If you want new functionality for a class you could just subclass it, so unless I'm missing something, is it still (very) useful in languages supporting class extensions?"}
{"_id": "73937", "title": "Computational intensive application: loading vs. querying database", "text": "My company has a suite of mature (roots go back 15+ years), computationally intensive applications (simulations) which we use to do consulting work. I work on the simulation/consulting side of the house, not the software development side. I recently learned about a particular feature of the architecture which concerns me: our large (200-500MB, sometimes more) set of input data are first completely loaded into memory from the database. Then, the simulation engine access the input data from memory as it goes. The struck me as \"pre-mature optimization\" and/or an old-fashioned idea, as I believe there are database servers out there that can be quite fast. The architecture causes another problem, which is our simulation database can only be so big (a little over a GB) before a sim cannot run at all. The chief architect is a scientist, not a software developer, and somewhat hard-headed at that, so I am seeking comments on this question from the community. Is our architecture hurting us? Are there any papers/work/test on the subject-- tradeoffs between database reading as-you-go and a database copy in memory? Any comments or insight would be appreciated. I would like to get schooled up before I take the issue up with my company."}
{"_id": "19006", "title": "In a resume, what all constitutes a Programming Language", "text": "In your resume, what would you classify as a Programming Language? For instance, under Programming Languages (or a similarly titled section of your resume), do you list C#, Java, C and leave it at that or do you go and add XML (because, well it is eXtensible Markup Language) and XSLT and jQuery and all that too? If you are not going to add jQuery under languages, where exactly would you put it? One resolution to this dilemma would be put in the technologies you have used under the project, but that way, you are forcing the recruiter to go through the projects that you have done rather than giving a highlight of the technologies and languages you are familiar in. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "177605", "title": "What are the downsides of leaving automation tags in production code?", "text": "I've been setting up debug tags for automated testing of a GWT-based web application. This involves turning on custom debug id tags/attributes for elements in the source of the app. It's a non-trivial task, particularly for larger, more complex web applications. Recently there's been some discussion of whether enabling such debug ids is a good idea to do across the board. Currently the debug ids are only turned on in development and testing servers, not in production. There have been points raised that enabling debug ids does cause performance to take a hit, and that debug ids in production may lead to security issues. What are benefits of doing this? Are there any significant risks for turning on debug tags in production code?"}
{"_id": "19934", "title": "What's with Delphi's support cycle?", "text": "![Delphi support](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OZ3iM.png) This is a chart I whipped together showing the length of _active_ (meaning ongoing bug fixes and service packs) support offered for each version of Delphi. It is based on the published support data obtained from Embarcadero's website. Delphi 2010 and XE are excluded because their active support is still ongoing so they can't really be compared accurately. Ironically, Delphi 7, which was regarded by many to be the most stable until the release of Delphi 2009, had a support cycle three times as long as Delphi 2009. Granted, this chart spans three different companies with three different agendas. My question is why is Delphi 2009's support cycle so short? I understand Embarcadero has a business to run and they don't make money with service packs but really, 12 months? I would expect that of a $10 shareware title with low profit margins not a $900-$3500 world class development tool."}
{"_id": "42784", "title": "Why hasn't C# gained much traction within the opensource community?", "text": "I'm not expecting C# to be on par with say Java or Python in the open source community, but it still surprises me just how far behind it is. 'Multi language' open source repos like google code or github have barely any C# projects in comparison to the other languages I mentioned. I'd like to see C# and .Net shake off that slight corporate feel and move more into the open source arena but I just can't see that happening. I'd be interested to hear peoples opinion on why this might be?"}
{"_id": "119825", "title": "What's Microsoft's strategy on Windows CE development?", "text": "Lots of specialized mobile devices use Windows CE or Windows Mobile. I'm not talking about smart phones here -- I know that Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft's current technology of choice here. I'm talking about barcode readers, embedded devices, industry PDAs with specialized hardware, etc... the kind of devices (Example 1, Example 2) where Windows Phone Silverlight development is not an option (no P/Invoke to access the hardware, etc.). Since direct Compact Framework support has been dropped in Visual Studio 2010, the only option to develop for these device currently is to use outdated development tools (VS 2008), which already start to cause trouble on modern machines (e.g. there's no supported way to make the Windows Mobile Device Emulator's network stack work on Windows 7). Thus, my question is: What are Microsoft's plans regarding these mobile devices? Will they allow native applications on Windows Phone, such that, for example, barcode reader drivers can be developed that can be accessed in Silverlight applications? Will they re-add \"native\" Compact Framework support to Visual Studio and just haven't found the time yet? Or will they leave this niche market?"}
{"_id": "45181", "title": "Software Developer Interview Question - Fair or Unfair", "text": "I just phone interviewed with a company for a graduate software developer position and was asked the following questions. I should add that the company concerned are not a database vendor.   1. How does a query optimiser work?   2. If a database was performing badly how would you use the performance logs to find out the problem. I have asked whether they ask such questions of all candidate software developers (graduate or experienced) in a first phone interview. They replied that they like to test their candidates knowledge of database development. I want to write to the company to say that these questions are unreasonable to ask at a software developer interview and to request that my interview be done over. I would like to check the reasonableness of the following assumptions **a)** Those questions cannot be fairly classified as database development questions.   **b)** I think the questions are appropriate for a DBA interview but wholly unreasonable for a software developer interview (experienced or not).   **c)** The first question is only relevant to a database vendor.   **d)** The second question is not fair because software developers typically don't deal with database performance logs as that is the job of the DBA. Perhaps some of you will be kind enough to comment on my assumptions or may have any other suggestions, before I write to the company."}
{"_id": "119827", "title": "Can anyone help solve this complex algorithmic problem?", "text": "I got this question in an interview and I was not able to solve it.   * You have a circular road, with N number of gas stations.   * You know the amount of gas that each station has.   * You know the amount of gas you need to GO from one station to the next one.   * Your car starts with 0.   * You can only drive clockwise. The question is: Create an algorithm, to know from which gas station you must start driving so that you complete a full circle. As an exercise to me, I would translate the algorithm to C#."}
{"_id": "224400", "title": "How can I take a list of tokens (of variable number) and know what each token means?", "text": "I have to read a text document with data formatted as follows: (a couple of examples)               07 M W F 1400 1450 C 2004     M W F 0900 1030 EN 2036     06 M T R 1300 1350 EN 1003     17 T R 0900 1015 EN 1052      The problem I'm having is, once splitting up these strings with `.split(\" \", -1)`, I get a different number of tokens for many of them, and the position of the difference varies in the first two \"sections\". The first part of the string is supposed to represent a scheduling code. It's optional, as can be seen by it being missing in the second line. The second area depicts which days of the week this schedule applies to. It could be anywhere from one to five days, but in these examples there are only 2 or 3. Then the rest are pretty much static: Start time, end time, building code and room number. What I need to do is construct multiple objects for this schedule based on this info (one object for each day), and I'm not sure how to proceed. How can I tell, when iterating over the array of tokens, what each token represents? I thought about using a `switch` statement, but that would only work for the days, as there are 5 of them. The following is the code I (tentatively) plan to use for this object.               public class TimeSlot {            private Day day;       private int startTime;    // # of minutes after midnight       private int endTime;       private Room room;       private String slot;            /**        * Default constructor. Create an instance of TimeSlot.        * @param day   day of the week        * @param start start time of lecture represented as minutes after midnight        * @param end   end time of lecture represented as minutes after midnight        * @param room  room the class takes place in        */       public TimeSlot(String slot, Day day, int start, int end, Room room) {         this.slot = slot;         this.day = day;         this.startTime = start;         this.endTime = end;         this.room = room;       }     }          enum Day {       MONDAY,       TUESDAY,       WEDNESDAY,       THURSDAY,       FRIDAY,       SATURDAY,       SUNDAY;     }          public class Room {            private String buildingCode;       private String roomNumber;            public Room(String building, String room) {         this.buildingCode = building;         this.roomNumber = room;       }            public String buildingCode() {         return buildingCode;       }            public String roomNumber() {         return roomNumber;       }          }"}
{"_id": "153738", "title": "What are some practical uses of the \"new\" modifier in C# with respect to hiding? ", "text": "A co-worker and I were looking at the behavior of the `new` keyword in C# as it applies to the concept of hiding. From the documentation: > Use the new modifier to explicitly hide a member inherited from a base > class. To hide an inherited member, declare it in the derived class using > the same name, and modify it with the new modifier. We've read the documentation, and we understand what it basically does and how it does it. What we couldn't really get a handle on is why you would need to do it in the first place. The modifier has been there since 2003, and we've both been working with .Net for longer than that and it's never come up. When would this behavior be necessary in a practical sense (e.g.: as applied to a business case)? Is this a feature that has outlived its usefulness or is what it does simply uncommon enough in what we do (specifically we do web forms and MVC applications and some small factor WinForms and WPF)? In trying this keyword out and playing with it we found some behaviors that it allows that seem a little hazardous if misused. This sounds a little open-ended, but we're looking for a specific use case that can be applied to a business application that finds this particular tool useful."}
{"_id": "154108", "title": "iOS and Server: OAuth strategy", "text": "I'm trying to working how to handle authentication when I have iOS clients accessing a Node.js server and want to use services such as Google, Facebook etc to provide basic authentication for my application. My current idea of a typical flow is this:   1. User taps a Facebook/Google button which triggers the OAuth(2) dialogs and authenticates the user on the device. At this point the device has the users access token. This token is saved so that the next time the user uses the app it can be retrieved.   2. The access token is transmitted to my Node.js server which stores it, and tags it as un-verified.   3. The server verifies the token by making a call to Facebook/google for the users email address. If this works the token is flagged as verified and the server knows it has a verified user. If Facebook/google fail to authenticate the token, the server tells iOS client to re-authenticate and present a new token.   4. The iOS client can now access api calls on my Node.js server passing the token each time. As long as the token matches the stored and verified token, the server accepts the call. Obviously the tokens have time limits. I suspect it's possible, but highly unlikely that someone could sniff an access token and attempt to use it within it's lifespan, but other than that I'm hoping this is a reasonably secure method for verification of users on iOS clients without having to roll my own security. Any opinions and advice welcome."}
{"_id": "81176", "title": "Project Management Tool for developers and sysadmins: shared or separate?", "text": "Should a team of system administrators who are on a software development project share a project management tool with the developers or use their own separate one? We use Trac and I see the benefit in sharing since inter-team tasks can be maintained by a single system where there may be cross-over or misfiled bugs (e.g. an apparent bug which turns out to be a server configuration issue or a development cycle which needs a server to be configured before it can start) However sharing could be difficult since many system administration tasks don't coincide with a single development milestone if at all. So should a system administration team use a separate PM Tool or share the same one with the developers? If they should share, then how?"}
{"_id": "100050", "title": "Model Design: Which layers should access resources?", "text": "I am implementing a model design where DB tables are 'resources', and a model can use many 'resources'. When I return a row from a table, it is represented by an 'item'. (This came from a book by Keith Pope, but I've seen it in several other places too). So, my question is, who should be able to access the resources? In particular:   * From time to time I'm tempted to let controllers access the resource directly, rather than through the model, for very simple tasks like finding a record. Is this OK?   * Many of my resources are accessed by more than one model. For example, the 'country' table is accessed by the Organisation Model, and the User model. Presumably this is OK? Any pointers appreciated, as always!"}
{"_id": "69203", "title": "Is there a canonical book on ABAP programming?", "text": "I am an ABAP programmer with a knowledge of basic ABAP programming and concepts necessary for a beginer. I want to have a deeper understandings of the subject including the small tips and tricks which will be helpful in times of need; I want to have a systematic structure of the concepts which I can search and learn easily. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about ABAP programming? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "154103", "title": "Taking too long to get skills for entry level programmer position", "text": "**I don't have the skills for an entry level position as a .Net programmer. I am trying to learn what I need but there is too much to learn and too little time. What can I do?** About two months ago, I went to a job interview for an entry level C# .Net programming/consultant position in NYC. When I heard back from them, they told me that the knowledge gap between what I knew and what they needed me to know was too big and I might have been a better fit if I had 6 months of experience. This was the first interview that I went on since graduating college. before the interview, I read a book on visual C#. Turns out it wasn't a very good book and I was missing a lot of key areas of knowledge such as   * ADO.net   * SQL (I had learned some LINQ)   * A little bit about how memory is handled   * Multiple threaded programming, etc. Because the book wasn't very good, the stuff I did know, I didn't know very well. I felt crushed. I've applied for jobs to gain experience but when recruiters hear that I have no experience they lose interest. I figured that I can at least work on my knowledge. Since then, I read \"SQL Essentials\" to cover the SQL bit and I found a pretty awesome book that is good enough to clear up what's hazy in my mind and covers almost all of the extra topics. The book is \"C# 4.0: The Complete Reference\" by Herbert Schildt. I'm even learning a lot about the topics I was familiar with. For a month now I've been working my way through this beast of a book. However, gaining the knowledge I need is taking too long. I can't hold off not having a full-time job much longer. I'm not stupid and I'm studying constantly pouring through the book, asking questions on stackoverflow, referencing the C# specification, etc. I have made great progress but there is just too much ground to cover. I'm on chapter 12 which is about a 3rd through the book. To get an idea of what I know vs don't know, the table of contents is on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/C-4-0-The-Complete-Reference/dp/007174116X **How on earth can someone know enough to function as a programmer in the real world?** **Can I try for a job in academia? Will I have time to finish learning the rest of the C# language or am I just un-hireable?**"}
{"_id": "154102", "title": "Http handler for classic ASP application for introducing a layer between client and server", "text": "I've a huge classic ASP application where in thousands of users manage their company/business data. Currently this is not multi-user so that application users can create users and authorize them to access certain areas in the system. I'm thinking of writing a handler which will act as middle man between client and server and go through every request and find out who the user is and whether he is authorized to access the data he is trying to. For the moment ignore about the part how I'm going to check the authorization and all that stuff. Just want to know whether I can implement a ASP.net handler and use it as middle man for the requests coming for a asp website? I just want to read the url and see what is the page user is trying to access and what are the parameters he is passing in the url the posted data. Is this possible? I read that Asp.net handler cannot be used with asp website and I need to use isapi filter or extensions for that and that can be developed only c/c++. Can anybody through some light on this and guide me whether I'm in the right direction or not?"}
{"_id": "63068", "title": "Building a table (DataGridView) while keeping decoupled from Model", "text": "I'll try to keep this simple.   * Small C# app, dialog based, one has a DataGridView.   * I've got an UpdateTable function in the form that accepts a DataSet and passes it to the DataGridView.DataSource.  The DataGridView has columns defined already.   * I've never used DataGridView and whatnot, so I was doing a bit of testing with it by passing it a DataSet I'd constructed myself.  Using this method gives me the correct number of rows, however the entries were all blank.   * When I set the DataGridViewTextBoxColumn.DataPropertyName to the same as the column names in the DataSet, the entries show up.   * If I remove the premade columns from the DataGridView, I get everything in the DataSet, but the columns are (obviously) unformatted in terms of size, and the column names are the names of the columns in the DataSet rather than easier to read / formatted names. What's a good way to handle this in an MVP implementation, where the View doesn't have to know or worry about what columns will be in the DataSet it's being handed, but the column names can still be formatted properly in terms of size and name?  Should perhaps the Presenter pass in a vector of strings of DataPropertyNames, Column Names, and column sizes, so the View isn't cognizant of it?"}
{"_id": "152462", "title": "How to convince management that I can lead a team?", "text": "I am a developer working with small organization from last two years. I have completed some successful projects and organization believe on my technical skill. Now I get nominated for Team leader position, So how can convince them that I can lead a team ?   What skills I have to show besides technical stuff ? Any help will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "152464", "title": "I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?", "text": "I have just recently started my career as a web developer for a medium sized company. As soon as I started I got the task of expanding an existing application (badly coded, developed by multiple programmers over the years, handles the same tasks in different ways, zero structure). So after I had successfully extended this application with the requested functionality, they gave me the task to fully maintain the application. This was of course not a problem, or so I thought. But then I got to hear I wasn't allowed to improve the existing code and to only focus on bug fixes when a bug gets reported. From then on I have had three more projects just like the above, that I now also have to maintain. And I got four projects where I was allowed to create the application from scratch, and I have to maintain those as well. At this moment I'm slightly beginning to get crazy from the daily mails of users (read managers) for each application I have to maintain. They expect me to handle these mails directly while also working on two other new projects (and there are already five more projects lined up after those). The sad thing is I have yet to receive a bug report on anything that I have coded myself. For that I have only received the occasional let's-do-things-180-degrees- different change requests. Anyway, is this normal? In my opinion I'm doing the work equivalent of a whole team of developers. Was I an idiot when I initially expected things to be different? I guess this post has turned into a big rant, but please tell me that this is not the same for every developer. P.S. My salary is almost equal if not lower than that of a cashier at a supermarket."}
{"_id": "213116", "title": "Are branches in unit tests bad practice?", "text": "Say I want to assert that a certain option menu is displayed in the front-end of a project. The menu is on screen X and I have to first select data in Y to get to X. Now, it doesn't matter at all what data I select in Y, it will always lead to X. But sometimes, depending on the data, I will get a screen Z which I can just skip through. Now obviously, if I write the test in a deterministic manner the test may fail if the data I selected leads to screen Z. The data I'm talking about is test data, set up before every test to the same state. So theoretically, I could just select one data entry that I know will not go to screen Z. But, I could also simply include a check to see if I'm on screen Z after selecting the data and skip Z. Now, even changes to the test data (though rare, it happens) would not break my test. Somehow I don't like this approach but I can't really explain why. Adding a method to check for Z would add a (probably) \"useless\" method to my test framework. So my question is, are branches to handle conditional behaviour that is not being tested in that specific test okay? Are there any problems with this approach? Is it good to do this?"}
{"_id": "219879", "title": "Data duplication vs Encapsulating. Which design to use?", "text": "The problem that I face is how to combine encapsulating and optimal memory use. I can't show you my code and therefore explain it on extensive (I hope) example. Let's say we need to have a database of mans. We want to know only 2 things about those people:   1. Age of the man (in hours from birth).   2. Name of the town he lives in. The convenient and natural way to manage this data is to create an object, which corresponds to a man and store it in an array:               class OMan1 {       public:         OMan( const int &age, const astring &t ): fAge(age), fTown(t) {}         const int& age() const: { return fAge; }         const astring& Town() const: { return fTown; }         astring FullId() const: { return fTown+fAge; }       private:         int fAge;         astring fTown;     }          OMan mans[N];      Here our OMans are self-containing object and everything fills nice. Except of the fact that we clone names of the towns thousands of times, and waste memory and execution time this way. An improvement we can do is to make an independent array for town names and for each OMan, store only the age, an id of the town and a pointer to towns array:               class OMan2 {       // same functionality as for OMan1         int fAge;         int fTownId;         astring* fTowns;     }      object is still self-contained, `sizeof(int) + sizeof(void*)` is much less then `sizeof(astring)`, we win a lot. But still it is factor of 2-3 more than `sizeof(fAge)` and we repeat `fTowns` billions of times. Memory optimisation is crucial for me, therefore what I do is keeping only `fAge` and `fTownId` and move such functionality as `Town()` and `FullId()` out of the `OMan` class to some class like `OManDataBase`:               class OMan3 {       public:         OMan( const int &age, const int &tid ): fAge(age), fTownId(tid) {}         const int& age() const: { return fAge; }         const int& TownId() const: { return fId; }         // const astring& Town() const: { return fTown; }         // astring FullId() const: { return fTown+fAge; }       private:         int fAge;         int fTownId;     }          class OManDataBase {       // constructor, destructor         const int& age( const int& i) const: { return fMans[i].TownId()]; }         const astring& Town( const int& i) const: { return fTown[fMans[i].TownId()]; }         const astring& FullId( const int& i) const: { return Town(i)+age(i); }       private:         vector<OMan3> fMans;         vector<astring> fTowns;     }      And `OMan3` now is not self contained object. It doesn't know it's fullname, for instance. That means that if I need to do some data processing with one man I have to use whole `OManDataBase` instance:               OBillType47 NewBillType47( const OManDataBase &db, int i ) { ... }      instead of               OBillType47 NewBillType47( const OMan &m ) { ... }      encapsulation has been broken here and the code readability has been clearly decreased. (I put `Type47` to emphasise that I can have a lot of functions, which works with `Oman-S` and can't include all of them into `OManDataBase` class). I wonder **is there any other way(-s) to solve data duplication problem, keeping objects as self-containing as possible**?"}
{"_id": "236694", "title": "Why are so many Python files really big (5k+ lines)?", "text": "Is there any specific reason driving Python files to often be so large? Python files may contain several classes within one file, and some files go up over 10k lines in length. This seems to go against the idea of modularity and encapsulation. Also it doesn't seem \"Pythonic\" in the first place, considering IMO it can be harder to read and follow."}
{"_id": "149102", "title": "Stick with custom or migrate to CMS?", "text": "I have a site that has been built from scratch by a few different programmers over time. The first programmer, who built the initial system and database, was not very tech savvy. Other programmers who worked later also did things their own way, taking shortcuts, patching things instead of dealing with root cause issues, as a result I got a website which is buggy and unmaintainable. The site is made for wholesale distributors who come to buy and sell products. They register an account and take advantage of premium features. There is quiet a bit of different things that go on under the hood, for example, to stop fraudsters to continuously registering new accounts, we automatically block their account if any of the previous info they registered with is matched with their new registration info. We also have robot call and verify their phone number. We also developed a system where anyone can send an email to our designated email address, and their email body and subject contents get posted as a buy and sell ad. I want to rebuild the site. I've been thinking that in order to prevent future problems associated with programmers doing things their own way, it is good to migrate the whole site to a CMS such as Drupal or Wordpress and rebuild other features in the form of plugins. That way I suspect, the core, the framework, of the site will remain untouched by programmers, and every time core CMS updates come out, my site remains up-to-date. what do you think? Is this a good idea? Or should I keep the site custom but hire a savvy programmer who could try to fix all the problems, optimize PHP and Database. I also would like to know if migrating my site and database is going to be expensive?"}
{"_id": "236697", "title": "Best way to indicate more results available", "text": "We have a service to return messages. We want to limit the number returned, either allowing the caller to specify the max number to return, or else to use an internal hard limit. We also have thought it would be nice to include in the response whether more messages are available. The \"best\" way to go about this is not clear. Here are some ideas so far:   1. Only set the \"more messages\" indicator if the user did not specify a max limit, and the internal max limit was hit.   2. Same as #1 except that \"more messages\" indicator set regardless of whether the internal hard limit is hit, or the user-specified limit is hit.   3. Same as #1 (or #2) except that we internally read limit + 1 records, but only return limit records, so we know \"for sure\" there is at least one additional message rather than \"maybe\" there are additional messages.   4. Do away with the \"more messages\" flag, as it is confusing and unnecessary. Instead force the user to keep calling the API until it returns no messages.   5. Change \"more messages\" indicator to something more akin to an EOF indicator, only set when the last message is known to have been retrieved and returned. What do you think is the best solution? (Doesn't have to be one of the above choices.) I searched and couldn't find a similar question already asked. Hopefully this is not \"too subjective\"."}
{"_id": "236690", "title": "How to deal with interactions between many objects", "text": "I've been working on a game in my spare time. I'm pretty much done defining the primitives and until today everything was pretty well segmented and encapsulated but now it's come time to implement path finding (and other ways for the objects to interact with each other). Here path finding requires at minimum a knowledge of the map, a knowledge of where units are in the map and which types of terrain are passable by the unit whose path is being found. There are three ways I've thought to implement this   * Implement it in some high level class that knows about all of these things already (i.e. a game state object)   * Implement it in some specific method inside one of the \"involved\" classes (like unit or map) and pass in all relevant state   * Implement it in some function which is completely separate (because no state needs to be retained) and again pass in all of the relevant data I want to get your opinion on which of these makes sense (or if there are others I haven't thought of). I like The first one the most because it only couples the objects at a high level and doesn't require exposing objects to state they don't (otherwise) need to know about. I don't like number 2 because it doesn't do those things and number 3 I'm neutral on at this point; it doesn't seem necessarily better or worse than number 1. If number 2 is in fact the winner I have concerns about how much complexity will be propagated up to this high level game class."}
{"_id": "219872", "title": "Cyclomatic complexity when calling same method multiple times", "text": "Thanks to a question over at Code Review I got into a little disagreement (which essentially is an opportunity to learn something) about what exactly the Cyclomatic Complexity is for the below code.               public static void main(String[] args) {         try {             thro();             thro();             thro();             thro();             thro();             thro();             thro();         }         catch (NullPointerException e) {         }     }          private static Random random = new Random();          public static void thro() throws NullPointerException {         if (random.nextBoolean())             throw new NullPointerException();         System.out.println(\"No crash this time\");     }      When writing this code in Eclipse and using the Eclipse metrics plugin, it tells me that the McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity for the main method is 2, and for the `thro` method it says 2. However, someone else tells me that the complexity of calling `thro` multiple times is `number of calls * method complexity`, and therefore claims that the complexity of the main method is 7 * 2 = 14. Are we measuring different things? Can both of us be correct? Or what is the actual cyclomatic complexity here?"}
{"_id": "149105", "title": "Booking system (Handle working hours, Get available time slots)", "text": "I'm currently working on a time booking system for a friends hair salon. The plan is to try to keep it as simple as possible. The user view (where the owner see the booked appointments) is more or less complete so now it's time to start working on the view where the customer book their appointments. The thing is, it feels a bit overwhelming and I really don't know where to start. # Problem 1 (work schedule): The system is meant to be used by two persons and their working hours could differ a bit. What would be the best solution to store their work schedule? I did plan to place them in a own table but I couldn't come up with any good table layout. ## Table example:               tbl_workschedule         int_id                       int_dayOfWeek                int_user_id              time_startTime           time_endTime      If I use this kind of layout I could end up with table content like the one below. The feeling I get is that it doesn't look like a good solution?               int_id  int_dayOf Week  int_userID  time_startTime      time_endTime     1       1               1           08:00               17:00     2       2               1           09:00               18:00     3       3               1           08:00               17:00     4       4               1           11:00               19:00     5       5               1           12:00               20:00     6       6               1           08:00               17:00     7       7               1           00:00               00:00     8       6               2           07:00               16:00     9       6               2           12:00               20:00     10      6               2           08:00               17:00     11      6               2           08:00               17:00     12      6               2           12:00               20:00     13      6               2           08:00               17:00     14      6               2           00:00               00:00      # Problem 2 (time booking): ## My basic idea is:   * The customer sign in and choose what kind of service he/she wants. I have a table which contains the different services and how long time each service takes (see db structure in the end of the post).   * The customer choose which hair dresser he/she want.   * The customer choose a date when he/she wants to book an appointment.   * I fetch the working hours for the choosen hair dresser.   * I fetch all booked appointments for the chosen hair dresser that specific date.   * In some way I have to collect all free slots and place them in a array.   * I loop through the free slots array and compare it against the time the specific appointment takes. If I find a free slot that matches I collect it in another array.   * I display the different time proposals to the customer. First of all, is this a good way to handle it? ## My basic idea (more detailed info):   * Fetch the working hours for the specific date and place them in two variables $dayStart, $dayEnd.   * Run a loop that checks the time difference between $dayStart and the start time of the first appointment of the day. If the slot time is more than, let's say the timescale of the service that takes the smallest amount of time I place it in the free slot array. For the next loop sequence I take the end time of the first appointment instead of the $dayStart time and do the same check as described above.   * When the whole day is done I have all free slots in a array like this: array(array(amount of free time, slot start time, slot end time)) E.g: array(array(04:00, 08:00, 12:00))   * Then I, as I wrote above, need to compare the free slot array against the timescale of specific appointment. Here I'm stuck.  * * * Anyone that could guide me in the right direction? Thank you in advance # Database ## Tables: tbl_events               - int_eventID (INT)     - int_serviceID (INT)     - date_eventDueDate (DATETIME)     - date_eventCreationDate (DATETIME)     - int_userID (INT)     - int_customerID (INT)     - int_eventOnlineBooked (INT)      tbl_customers               - int_customerID (INT)     - int_userID (INT)      - str_customerFirstName (VARCHAR)     - str_customerLastName (VARCHAR)     - str_customerEmail (VARCHAR)     - str_customerPassword (VARCHAR)     - str_customerCellPhone (VARCHAR)     - str_customerHomePhone (VARCHAR)     - str_customerAddress (VARCHAR)      tbl_services               int_serviceID (INT)     str_serviceName (VARCHAR)     str_serviceDescription (VARCHAR)     int_servicePrice (INT)     int_serviceTimescale (TIME)      tbl_users               int_userID   (INT)     str_userFirstName (VARCHAR)     str_userLastName (VARCHAR)     str_userEmail (VARCHAR)     str_userPassword (VARCHAR)     str_userCellPhone (VARCHAR)"}
{"_id": "219870", "title": "Is it an implementation of a stateful mechanism for Rest API authentication?", "text": "In many articles about Rest API's best practices, it is recommended to not depend upon sessions on server side since it leads to a stateful mechanism. I currently use Play 2.2 framework, with a mechanism that store the data about logged in user in the Play cache (temporary persistent so). When the user wants to authenticate, it calls a dedicated API that grabs its credentials and if valid, server generates a cookie that will be sent to him. This cookie contains a reference id of the user's data in the Play's cache. Then, each time a user calls an API requiring user authentication, server grabs the user cookie (if any), asks for the cache and checks in there whether user is well already authenticated regarding the validation duration. Here a little sample:               def myApi = userAuthenticatorRequest.securedAction {    //user has to be already logged in         implicit request =>           //do something       }      Should I leave from this solution in order to be compliant with best practices, or should I keep it? Is it really considered as a stateful mechanism? If I understand, this is stateful since a call to a secured API required actually two calls:   * authentication api   * secured api while a stateless would authenticate user directly in the secured api, and thus would be totally independent of any context. Of course, user would have to sent each time its credentials (or API key)"}
{"_id": "45404", "title": "Do I deserve a promotion/higher salary?", "text": "I'm a software developer and have been working at my current employer for almost 2 years. I joined straight out of university, so this is my first real full-time job. I was employed as a junior developer with no real responsibilities. In the last year, I have been given more responsiibility. I am the official contact person at my company for a number of clients. I have represented the company by myself in off-site meetings with clients. My software development role has grown. I now have specialised knowledge in certain tools/products/technologies that no one else here does. My problem is that I am still officially a junior developer, and still earning less than I feel I am worth.   * Am I being taken advantage of?    * How long should I reasonably expect to stay a junior developer before I expect a promotion of some kind?    * What would you do in my situation?"}
{"_id": "45405", "title": "Anyone had success with selling source code, at sites like code canyon?", "text": "Recently I came across two sites that help programmers sell source code - binpress and codecanyon. Anyone have experience/success with sites like these?   Would you use them again? What was good about them? What was bad about them?"}
{"_id": "124399", "title": "Use Case level confusion", "text": "I'm working on the use case model of a web design application something like Dreamwaver, I'm little confusing about to which level should I write the use case model. ex: when the user insert a text should I provide a use cases of:     1. select font     2. select size     3. color     4. Italic     5. bold   ..   ..   ..   or it's enough just providing a use case called \"modify text properties\"?"}
{"_id": "162360", "title": "How can you learn names of methods or classes of a framework or an API?", "text": "I've been programming C++ for a year now. I've gone through the language features and I've written good programs with it, so I decided to move on to OpenGL. At first it seemed confusing. As I kept going through tutorials it appeared to be easier, but I can't remember the names of classes, methods, arguments, etc. In fact this doesn't just apply for OpenGL; I often get stuck with other frameworks too. I have a program in my head, I know how it would work, but I cannot remember the names of methods or classes to use. My question here is, in a nutshell, what techniques can you use to memorize those names? Does writing it over and over help you grasp it?"}
{"_id": "225020", "title": "Achieving multiple tasks within one loop", "text": "With relation to what's considered good OOP engineering principles, SOLID, DRY, KISS etc I am wondering whether to complete multiple tasks within one loop when easily done. The problem is that this conflicts with some principles (SRP), but could also partially lean in favor of others (DRY, KISS). A simple example would be We have a array of image file paths and we want to complete 4 overall tasks per image               get size of image     resize the image     apply a watermark to the image     apply a border to the image      This could be achieved by using one for each loop on the array, and applying each function one after the other, or we could do this with four separate foreach loops, one for getting the size, one performing a resize and so on for the other tasks. I am trying to adhere to these principles as much as possible to remove any bad habits and improve my coding skills."}
{"_id": "58033", "title": "Is there any copyleft (GPL-like) license with both the Affero and Lesser modifications?", "text": "Looking for a license that covers public network service, like AGPLv3, but like LGPL isn't infectious. Basically I wrote some useful helper functions I want to allow to be used in any work, including closed-source software, but I want to require improvements to MY CODE to be released back to me and the general public. Can you recommend a suitable license? It should also include some of the other AGPL-permitted restrictions (attribution, indemnity), either in the license text or as permitted variations. EDIT: I should clarify that this software consists only of header files (it is rather template-heavy). So the LGPL obligations of users would be attribution and an offer to provide a copy of the (possibly modified) header file(s) used, per section 3. LGPL section 4 requirements to be enable the user to relink don't appear to apply to header files."}
{"_id": "135434", "title": "What other patterns can I use for this singleton?", "text": "I have a bit of code which uses a plugin and core model, revolving around four major objects: the `Core`, `Server`, `Logger`, and `Parser`, in slightly particular order. The `Core` acts as the central factory, with a catch: it's bound to a single render context (much of this is graphics related, but the other details are not important). The objects it creates and manages are specific to that core, and multiple cores can be created with different contexts. Cores can never share resources with each other. The `Core` is initialized from a configuration file; more on this later. The `Core` must have, from its creation, a `Server`, `Parser`, and `Logger`. The `Server` handles loading and initializing all the plugins, as well as creating objects from them. It acts as a single, in-process plugin server and object registry, similar in many ways to a STA in-process COM server. As plugins are loaded into the process, not a particular `Core`, I'm fairly sure this is appropriate. The `Server` must have a `Parser` and `Logger`. The `Logger` handles logging messages, particularly errors, to disk. It does very simple pre-formatted file writing, with some basic \"log level\" filtering. The `Logger` requires a `Parser` for resolving file paths. The `Parser` handles variable replacement, particularly in paths. For example, a plugin may request the file `$(root)/resources/a.txt` and the `Parser` will replace that with the application's root directory; or `$(startup)/a.txt` for the startup directory. Simple stuff. Variables are contained in the `Parser` itself, and many are specific to the thread. However, a few are tied to a single `Core`, and thus enters the... Config file. Each `Core` is initialized from a config file, which contains a multitude of settings: plugins for the `Server`, variables for the `Parser`, and a file for the `Logger`. Each `Core` can use a different config file, and most likely will. In my current model, the `Server`, `Logger`, and `Parser` are singletons. They all must provide a single global instance, accessible from the core and plugins (and each other), potentially before a `Core` has been created. All handle process-level functions, but the `Logger` and `Parser` do handle some `Core`-level functionality. The issue with this is that, in order to make the `Logger` and/or `Parser` `Core`-specific, the `Server` would then need its own instances, which would be potentially lacking important characteristics (like what file to use for the `Logger`). The `Server` also handles work that is _very clearly_ common to the whole process: there's just no way to load a plugin into a single `Core`, that's not how shared libraries work. In a previous version, I had all four of these created when a `Core` was created, and belong to a specific `Core`. This caused some issues and oddities, however: the `Core` loads itself as a \"plugin\" when it starts up, but the `Server` had the same lifetime as the `Core`, making this seem odd. The `Parser` has a number of variables that belong to the process: the initial directory, root directory, and so on. The `Logger` _must_ precede the `Core` in some way, particularly the plugin-loading stage, so errors can be accurately logged. My questions then are:   * Is this setup too over-engineered? The separation of responsibility between objects seems good, but perhaps too split.   * What design pattern(s), be it singleton or otherwise, is/are appropriate in this case, for these objects?"}
{"_id": "135435", "title": "how to break up feature requests into work units", "text": "Im not a paid developer, I spend two or three hours a day working on a development project as a hobby. As time goes by, I come up with \"good-ideas\" for the project, that are generally features or bug reports. I would like to manage them using a ticket database. My question is about the \"scope\" of a ticket. I see from looking at other projects ticketing db that tickets are generally high level features to be implemented, and that these get loosely associated with a feature branch in a VCS. How do you manage the \"To do list\" associated with a ticket ? Is it better to \"re-write\" the original ticket into smaller tasks ? How small of a task rates a ticket ?"}
{"_id": "200033", "title": "Branching strategy to avoid multiple release branches for different customers", "text": "I am currently thinking of the following branching strategy   1. Main branch   2. Development branch    3. Feature branch    4. Release branch Basically the whole idea is to have a release branch so that hot fix can be applied quickly for specific release. Here is the issue what if I have an urgent feature that I need to do for a specific customer and I do not want those feature to be applied to other customer using the same release version until it is fully tested. At the same time I do not wish to create multiple release branches for different customers as this will complicate stuff. What is the best way to handle such situation?"}
{"_id": "135437", "title": "Using the decorator pattern in a deep class hierarchy", "text": "How would one use the Decorator design pattern for anything other than trivial toy problems, in a deep class hierarchy? For example, let's say you have the class               class Decorated     : public Foo, Bar, Baz     {     public:       void operation();     };      You would decorate it like this               class Decorator     : public Decorated     {       void operation() { d.operation(); }     private:       Decorated d;     };      The issue I'm having is that Decorated can have many inherited methods (from Foo, Bar and Baz) and the Decorator needs to \"redirect\" them all to its inner object or the object's state will be split between the decorator and the decorated object. How can one make sure the a Decorator correctly decorates another object and that no methods are called on the decorator instead of the decorated?"}
{"_id": "58038", "title": "How do I tell my parents that landing a job is what actually counts?", "text": "On one side, I just want to get a degree with a 3.0 GPA. On the other side, my parents want more than just a 3. Now here's the thing. I program with a passion. I spend day and night programming. And I ace all my programming courses. However, I do terrible on all my elective courses -- such as writing, history, and all that stuff -- which only leaves me with a 3.1 to 3.2 GPA. And my parents want more. They think that university is like high school, where you need super-stellar grades to get to the next level. But they don't realize that _good enough_ grades will land me a job. And they don't realize that a programmer needs to practice to become good at programming, and that having good skills is what will land a job in a nice software development company. Thankfully, though, they don't threaten to beat me with a baseball bat or anything like that. They just occasionally give me the little \"tsk-tsk\". But even that little \"tsk-tsk\" makes me feel guilty for opening up an IDE. And on top of that, I procrastinate because of that feeling of guilt. So now, I want to come clean with them. I want to know what's a good way to do that. **[Edit]** OK, so now, I realized, I should aim for higher grades, as some have suggested below."}
{"_id": "190379", "title": "Is it correct to exclude argument names from function prototypes?", "text": "I was recently creating a small technical documentation for an application. The document is to be used by newly hired programmers to get acquainted with the application. It is much friendlier than the Javadocs we have, and includes information that usually isn't being documented. When describing a function, I first bring the prototype and than the description, usage, etc. I have to choose to include argument names or omit them in the prototypes. On one hand, argument names are mostly trivial (like `MyClass myClass`), on the other hand they sometimes contain information of the purpose of the argument (which I will indicate when describing the function anyway). I had the same dilemma in C++ when creating a class in two files. Should I include argument names? Does it really work for readability?"}
{"_id": "163096", "title": "Specifying Author in Source Code in a Commercial Product", "text": "Usually there is an `@author` tag in API documentation (JavaDoc, PHPDoc etc). Is it acceptable to use this tag on every function you make in a commercial product?"}
{"_id": "38810", "title": "Can there be too much uniformity in coding standards?", "text": "Is there such a thing as too much uniformity? Where I work we of course have standards including naming conventions, architectures, frameworks to leverage etc. However lately there has been a lot of critiquing of things I would consider more style. For example writing `if` statements in multiple lines vs one line, using the c# `??` null-coalescing operator instead of say `== null`, amounts of spacing for indentations etc. It seems to me this starts getting more into a personal style choice and doesn't need to be uniform across a team or company. What one person thinks reads more clearly another may not. Is there some value to this \"extra\" uniformity?"}
{"_id": "158754", "title": "What does it mean when we say that some function is polynomially bigger/smaller than some other function?", "text": "I was going over this video lecture on master theorem from Introduction to Algorithm  and while explaining case A of the master theorem professor says that some function `f(n)` is polynomially smaller than some other function at point 53:08 seconds: ![formula](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CxEWP.png) What does it mean for a function to be polynomially smaller than this function? I am confused here as polynomially is not equivalent to poly-logarithmically. Has the professor used the wrong term here ? It is highly unlikely though since he goes on to say the same term a number of times."}
{"_id": "158756", "title": "How to structure a development team", "text": "I am the manager of a team of 11 software developers who look after my company's web sites / web applications, running up to 4 concurrent projects plus day-to-day support at any time. Within the 11 developers there is a mixture of technical skills, job titles and experience, although the team structure is flat with all 11 developers reporting directly to me. The whole team having a single manager is starting to prove not to scale very well. I am starting to be spread too thinly so want to reduce my number of direct reports. All the ways I can think to do this have significant downsides:   * Have junior developers report to senior ones. This reduces the time spent on development by the best technicians.   * Split the team by software product, e.g. developers 1-6 work on intranet and 7-11 work on external sites, with each section having new team lead (possibly a new job description with more management / mentoring / coaching responsibility than the current senior developers). This adds artificial silos and might make it difficult to get an \"intranet developer\" to work on an external website if I want them to.   * Keep the structure flat and add managerial support in the shape of Project Managers / Team Administrators just to take the pressure off. This doesn't solve the problem as the team can't go on growing like this forever. Is there a standard way of solving this problem which I am missing? If not, how have others of you solved this problem?"}
{"_id": "244731", "title": "Algorithm to measure how \"diffused\" 5,000 pennies are in an economy?", "text": "Please allow me to use this example/metaphor to describe an algorithm I need. **Objects**   * There are 5 thousand pennies.    * There are 50 cups.   * There is a tracking history (Passport \"stamp\" etc) that is associated with each penny as it moves between cups. **Definition** I'll define a \"highly diffused\" penny as one that passes through many cups. A \"poorly diffused\" penny is one that either passes back and forth between 2 cups **Question** How can I objectively measure the diffusion of a penny as:   1. The number of moves the penny has gone through   2. The number of cups the penny has been in   3. A unit of time (day, week, month) Why am I doing this? I want to detect if a cup is hoarding pennies. **Resistance from bad actors** Since hoarding is bad, the \"bad cup\" may simply solicit a partner and simply move pennies between each other. This will reduce the amount of time a coin isn't in transit, and would skew hoarding detection. A solution might be to detect if a cup (or set of cups) are common \"partners\" with each other, though I'm not sure how to think though this problem. **Broad applicability** Any assistance would be helpful, since I would think that this algorithm is common to   * Economics   * The study of migration patterns of animals, citizens of a country   * Other natural occurring phenomena  ... and probably exists as a term or concept I'm unfamiliar with."}
{"_id": "124476", "title": "Does freelancing require supreme ability on programming?", "text": "I can write independent java, python, c, c++ code but I do not know every aspect of them. For example, I don't how to code with database in python/c/c++. I have few experience with GUI programming. I was aware that most of the jobs isn't just need us to write an simple code. They may need some GUI and you need to upload the programming result to a FTP server via some ftp code with some I-don't-know-the-name plugin/library. I have seen a job of web scrapping by python, and the client wants the program to insert the data into a database immediately after the web scrapping, and delete old data older than 6 month. A client won't accept a contractor to say \"I will need to figure this xyz- technology for sometime before I can tell you whether I can do it\". What is worse, is that you find you are incapable of doing his job for whatever the reason, you are screwed. I am wondering, do you apply for a freelance job if you don't feel like an expert to all the fields/technology listed in the job requirement?"}
{"_id": "244738", "title": "How can I rank teams based off of head to head wins/losses", "text": "I'm trying to write an algorithm (specifically in Ruby) that will rank teams based on their record against each other. If a team A and team B have won the same amount of games against each other, then it goes down to point differentials. Here's an example:               A beat B two times     B beats C one time     A beats D three times     C bests D two times     D beats C one time     B beats A one time      Which sort of reduces to               A[B] = 2     B[C] = 1     A[D] = 3     C[D] = 2     D[C] = 1     B[A] = 1      Which sort of reduces to               A[B] = 1     B[C] = 1     A[D] = 3     C[D] = 1     D[C] = -1     B[A] = -1      Which is about how far I've got I think the results of this specific algorithm would be:               A, B, C, D      But I'm stuck on how to transition from my nested hash-like structure to the results. My psuedo-code is as follows (I can post my ruby code too if someone wants):               For each game(g):       hash[g.winner][g.loser] += 1      That leaves `hash` as the first reduction above               hash2 = clone of hash     For each key(winner), value(losers hash) in hash:       For each key(loser), value(losses against winner):         hash2[loser][winner] -= losses      Which leaves `hash2` as the second reduction Feel free to as me question or edit this to be more clear, I'm not sure of how to put it in a very eloquent way. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "235922", "title": "New User Registration Logic", "text": "I am writing up a user registration application in PHP as part of my learning process. I have written up the general rules my code should follow. Please let me know what you guys think of it.   1. Have a form with the email address and password.   2. Generate 2 random tokens to be appended to the URL to validate the email and complete the registration. Send user en email with the URLs. Use the first token to continue the registration and the second token to cancel (In the case where the registration request was unsolicited).   3. At this point, in the database table, I maintain a table with 6 columns - email, password, register_token, cancel_register_token, counter, timer.    4. When user clicks on the link to continue with the registration process, prompt the user for the password. If the user had inadvertently entered an incorrect email address, then that someone else obviously doesn't know the password and cant continue with the registration.    5. If the user who already has an active email in the db, waiting to register, wants an activation email sent again (maybe someone else registered the email on his behalf, unsolicited and he doesn't have the password to continue), then create another 2 random tokens, erasing the first set from the table and keeping a counter, increasing the counter each time a new set of tokens are generated against an email. When the counter reaches a maximum, do not accept any more requests. Maybe a max of 5 such requests and no more.   6. Keep the register link alive for 1 day if there is no activity. Use the timer column for the same."}
{"_id": "235920", "title": "Suggestion to Design API Centric Application using Appengine", "text": "I have been planning to create an new application. So I was designing the application structure.i know this application will be accessed form multiple devices and the app feature will be increased. So following is what I collection   1. Application is big, so need to splitup   2. Need Central Database with API (so all other clients including webapp will use this application)   3. Need Central Authentication System I am using Appengine as PAAS and Datastore as Database Following are various ways I thought I can implement it:   1. **Keep Authentication and API in one application with has common datastore     * problem here is webapp need datastore so frequently , so accessing it from another application will be performance impact, right?**   2. Keep Authentication, API, WebApp as different applications In above two cases following is my problem,   1. datastore cannot be shared, I know about cloud datastore which is currently too complex   2. maintaining data consistent across multiple application is hard (I don't have clear idea in it) Using New Appengine Modules would solve some of the issues (i.e keeping datastore, authentication, webapp in one application with different versions), but the problem here is application will be under heavy load, since is common. Any better solutions or drawbacks in current application design is very much appreciated."}
{"_id": "10749", "title": "What languages are more suited for long term projects?", "text": "What languages are more suited for long term projects ( _will have to be recompiled in 20 years, with the minimum amount of changes in the source code_ ), in terms of minimal amount of rewriting what's already written due to changing of the versions of the language & changing of compilers & OSs (i.e. backward compatibility), as far as we can judge from past references? (we can't tell what the future will bring, so no _predictions_ here - just base your answer on so far known ones) IMHO, yes, *nix oriented ones will have some advantage in here. For example,   Perl (good, AFAIK), vs.   Python (bad with it's v2.5 -> v3.x rather large backward compatibility breakup - it has also been said that back compatibility will not be kept in future versions). If you could explain your arguments as to why did you choose a particular language, along with what were the larger changes in it."}
{"_id": "69590", "title": "Programmers doing testing", "text": "I am wondering how typical it is for programmers to switch hats and do testing on each other's work. Assume that the team wants to take a \"shared responsibility\" approach to moving tasks from being formalized to their release - **(1)** is it a good idea to have programmers work as software testing as long as they didn't write a feature? **(2)** Does this happen often? Also, I am wondering **(3)** to what degree a programmer can \"test\" their own work. Even with TDD and unit tests, isn't there still a need for a software testing apparatus in the development process?"}
{"_id": "54207", "title": "Where are some good places to announce a personal programming project?", "text": "Where can I advertise my personal projects for free? Other than hosting services. It seems to get followers on github you need them to already know about what you're doing from another source."}
{"_id": "112911", "title": "Why the scorn for COBOL?", "text": "When people mention COBOL, it's usually either met with a snort or groan. I don't know much about COBOL, but I've seen some programs written in it. I can see that it's wordy, and to uninitiated eyes such as mine, unintelligible. But, really, aren't all programming languages complete gibberish to a lay person? I understand that it works, works well, and is still in widespread use in the industries it was designed for. Aren't those the hallmarks of a good language? What's so bad about COBOL?"}
{"_id": "246770", "title": "Cross Platform Compilation of C++ .exe", "text": "I have been asked to re-write an old C/C++ project in C++11. The old project is multi-platform, however, in order to deploy the system on other architectures the current process is to log into a remote service which has all the available target platforms (Red Hat Linux, Umbuntu, Sco Unix et al.) and build the .exe on each platform for distribution. Is there a way that I can send the user a package that will self-compile on their architecture and build the correct .exe _without giving the source code_? I am also open to cross-compilation to get around having to log into separate servers and compile for each platform. How easy or not is it to compile a code for different architectures using a cross compiler?"}
{"_id": "251500", "title": "can non-programing fizzbuzz work?", "text": "We all know what a fizzbuzz is and I've seen many varients of programs to be implemented. However, it takes time to watch someone write the code out, it seems time inefficent to sit there watching code be written after someone has already 'figured it out'. It's also harder to give a programing fizzbuzz over the phone. I was wondering if other simple questions can be used as a fizzbuzz? Questions like \"when is it best to use the following structures: hashmap, a linked list, or a sorted tree\" or \"in Java what other method should you always override if you override the equals method\"? Would questions like these work as well as a standard programing fizzbuzz? If you were in person, where a person could write on paper, would you ever consider a non-programing fizzbuzz over a programing one? Would a non-programing fizzbuzz be less likely to seem insulting then a programing one?"}
{"_id": "246774", "title": "Can XCode work with TFS?", "text": "We have been using Team Foundation Server (TFS) for source code management of our solution which contains components for a number of platforms - asp.net, windows & android so far. We now wish to develop iOS apps for the solution but is there any integration possible between XCode and TFS? What's the best way to use TFS version control with Xcode now that I find out we need to write some iOS apps? We will also eventually want to have automated builds for a Continuous Integration process"}
{"_id": "218553", "title": "Why does the modifier access for the properties need to be public with Unity?", "text": "Why does the modifier access for the properties need to be public with Unity? I'm very interested in a detailed explanation for my question. I read about tips to do it in other ways, but not a detailed explanation about why this can't be declared explicitly in my code."}
{"_id": "13091", "title": "Maintainability of Boolean logic - Is nesting if statements needed?", "text": "Which of these is better for maintainability?               if (byteArrayVariable != null)         if (byteArrayVariable .Length != 0)              //Do something with byteArrayVariable       OR               if ((byteArrayVariable != null) && (byteArrayVariable.Length != 0))       //Do something with byteArrayVariable       I prefer reading and writing the second, but I recall reading in code complete that doing things like that is bad for maintainability. This is because you are relying on the language to not evaluate the second part of the `if` if the first part is false and not all languages do that. (The second part will throw an exception if evaluated with a null `byteArrayVariable`.) I don't know if that is really something to worry about or not, and I would like general feedback on the question. Thanks."}
{"_id": "168047", "title": "2D grid with multiple types of objects", "text": "This is my first post here in programmers.stackexchange (I'm a regular on SO). I hope this isn't too general. I'm trying a simple project to learn Java from something I've seen done in the past. Basically, it's an AI simulation where there are herbivorous and carnivorous creatures and both must try to survive. The part I am trying to come up with is that of the board itself. Let's assume very simple rules. The board must be of size X by Y and only one element can be in one place at one time. For example, a `critter` cannot be in the same tile as a `food` block. There can be obstacles (rocks, trees..), there can be food, there can be critters of any type. Assuming these rules, what would be one good way to represent this situation ? This is what I came up with and want suggestions if possible: Use multiple levels of inheritance to represent all the different possible objects (AbstractObject -> (NonMovingObject -> (Food, Obstacle) , MovingObject -> Critter -> (Carnivorous, Herbivorous))) and use polymorphism in a 2D array to store the instances and still have access to lower level methods. Many thanks. Edit: Here is the graphic representation of the structure I have in mind. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4QK7N.png)"}
{"_id": "125446", "title": "Alternatives to pulling updates off the website", "text": "So, I think it look pretty bad when you release an update and pull it off the web. I'm pretty sure this has happened for at least two of the the last three Delphi XE2 updates. I'm not complaining because I'd do (and have done) the same thing. The only problem is, how do you do this gracefully? And, how do you alert the 10-20 facilities ( 500-2000 end users ) who downloaded your awful software that what they downloaded is no good, but what they're going to download is super awesome? The reason I ask it is because I work for a small business, Embarcadero is a big(ger) business and we do the exact same dumb thing when our release is found to be deficient. The problems might be as simple as a file missing or even a legal problem, the code might be perfect and there still might be problems with the app."}
{"_id": "44758", "title": "Is measuring software project metrics popular in todays industry?", "text": "I encountered a developer who wanted some outside advice on their teams project. I found out they're developing a huge software suite for the companies executives, project manager and developers that can calculate metrics automatically and graph them per iteration. As a student from a computer science background I know very little on metrics and their importance, but my questions are:   1. Do most companies have some way, doesn't have to be an elegant program, to measure meaningful metrics?   2. Which metrics, single or combined, help you narrow down your projects scope and estimates?   3. As a person who analyzes metrics, how often do you base decisions off of them? IE. Tests failed per week is increasing drastically?   4. Do you feel that the introduction of studying metrics has helped you understand the project better? Not sure why but the developers project intrigued me and I must know more. If y"}
{"_id": "44751", "title": "Published Windows Phone 7 apps: good for the Resume/CV?", "text": "I'm a long time Microsoft developer who has recently started publishing Windows Phone 7 apps to beef up my current C#/.NET skills, and get more direct exposure to WPF/Silverlight, and of course because it is new and cool. So far I've published over 10 apps successfully.   1. Is this a good thing to put on my resume?   2. Does it appear to show a grasp of the latest Microsoft technologies?   3. Any downside seen by potential employers?    4. Would you put this on your resume, if looking for a full time professional Software Engineering position?"}
{"_id": "168049", "title": "svn vs git for the sole developer?", "text": "If I am sole developer (I do not work in a team) working from my laptop (Windows OS and Linux VM) and backing up data to the cloud (Dropbox etc), then is git still better than svn for my version control needs? I was thinking not since I wont need any of git's distributed features. But is git such a better approach to version control that I should consider moving anyway? With so many articles saying how people are moving from svn to git? I was wondering, if they are talking about large or open projects with teams of developers vs the sole developer. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "220091", "title": "How to represent (enum) types in a public API", "text": "I am working on a simple API that I want to use for my own client, and to open to the public in the future. I have \"Item\" objects which can have different \"types\". The type is a C \"typedef enum\", for the moment I have :               typedef enum {         ItemTypeBool,         ItemTypeNumber,         ItemTypeDate,     } ItemType;      (I may add some in the future) I am wondering if I should rather transfer it as integers or as defined \"strings\". The JSON would be : For integers :               {       \"name\": \"The name\",       \"type\": 0,        ...     }      For strings :               {       \"name\": \"The name\"       \"type\": \"boolean\"        ...     }      I'm wondering if there's a best practice for this. Keeping the integer would slightly simplify the code, and reduce the bandwidth, but strings would be easier for developers to remember. I remember I worked on a project, and I had to remember 1=image, 2=audio, 3=html,... which doesn't make any real sense. So I'm asking you, if you know any other aspect I should consider."}
{"_id": "169794", "title": "Why are UUID / GUID's in the format they are?", "text": "Globally Unique Identifiers (GUID) are a grouped string with a specific format which I assume has a security reason. > A GUID is most commonly written in text as a sequence of hexadecimal digits > separated into five groups, such as: > > 3F2504E0-4F89-11D3-9A0C-0305E82C3301 Why aren't GUID/UUID strings just random bytes encoded using hexadecimal of X length? > This text notation contains the following fields, separated by hyphens: >   >   >     | Hex digits | Description >     |------------------------- >     | 8            | Data1 >     | 4            | Data2 >     | 4            | Data3 >     | 4            | Initial two bytes from Data4 >     | 12           | Remaining six bytes from Data4 >   There are also several versions of the UUID standards. > Version 4 UUIDs are generally internally stored as a raw array of 128 bits, > and typically displayed in a format something like: > > uuid:xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"}
{"_id": "169793", "title": "What am I allowed to do programmatically with pictures that have a Creative Commons \"don't modify\" license", "text": "I'm working on a project that uses some icons that are under a Creative Commons license (ND) that forbids modification of the picture. What can I do with this icons as a programmer? Can I modify the looks of the image in the program as long as I don't change anything in the file that contains the icon? Have I modified the image if I put a colored transparent layer over it so the color of the icon changes?"}
{"_id": "255507", "title": "At what point should you start putting functions in a new file?", "text": "I'm currently writing a python script. It's currently about 400 lines long, and it seems like it's getting a bit long, as when I'm trying to scroll through it with eclipse it takes a bit to get from function A to function B. The structure is that it reads in a file, and then performs actions on what it reads in depending on the flags passed in by the user on the command line. Everything is more or less related (and in fact many functions call on other functions), so it makes sense in that regard to just leave everything in the same file. I'm currently adding more features, or more things that can be put in for command line flags, and I'm wondering if there are any standards about how long a file should be before you start putting things into a new file. PEP 8 mentions the length of a line but nothing on the length of a file. In summary: Are there any standards for how long a file should be before you just start throwing stuff into a new file?"}
{"_id": "194196", "title": "Why did Aiken decided to separate data and instructions in the Harvard Mark I?", "text": "When Aiken devised the Mark I, why did he decided to separate data and instructions? It was not mentioned in Wikipedia (or in any other searches I've looked) on how or why Aiken separated data and instructions."}
{"_id": "255503", "title": "Null checking whilst navigating object hierarchies", "text": "I had to implement some code which traversed a small object hierarchy to fetch a value and display it in a TextView object (this is Android / Java). I had to do this _6 times_ to populate _6 TextViews_ for various values in the object hierarchy. My implementation was **Implementation B**. But upon review, my colleague disagreed and certain that **Implementation A** was the way to go. I believe that my version is not just cleaner, but also less error prone as I could easily miss something as a developer. Could you provide me with your opinion, with pros and cons for both of these implementations? ### Implementation A:               if (house != null && house.getLounge() != null && house.getLounge().getLetter() != null)     {         String myValue = house.getLounge().getLetter();         textView.setText(myValue);     }     else     {         // Do nothing, or maybe make textView hidden.     }      ### Implementation B:               try     {         String myValue = house.getLounge().getLetter();         textView.setText(myValue);     }     catch (NullPointerException e)     {         // Do nothing, or maybe make textView hidden.     }"}
{"_id": "255501", "title": "How to protect software on an Amazon Machine Image?", "text": "There are other similar questions for ways to protect software from piracy or license violations: 1, 2, 3, 4 with great answers. A lot of those suggestions don't completely apply to my situation, since I am hoping to sell a service, not software. However, some customers may refuse service, so want to optionally sell the software too. I have prepared an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for a turnkey distribution solution which is important since I must provide a free trial period, which may make some security options available beyond a normal binary distribution/installer. I acknowledge that it's difficult/impossible to prevent reverse engineering, but I would like to know what are some easy to implement measures I can take. Here are the ideas I have so far:   1. Specify in the license agreement how they're permitted to use the software, and then ask them to delete it when the business relationship expires. This is probably the best option, but my question is to explore programming solutions, not business/legal solutions.   2. After compiling code on the AMI, I can just delete the source code. This means customers who want updates will need to maintain a business relationship with me.   3. I can look at the system time and compare it to an expiration date compiled into the binary, a sort of self-destruct option. Sounds trivial to implement, and although I know it can be defeated, how difficult is it really for someone who's never done it before? What if I disable root access on my AMI?   4. I can use Amazon's Shared AMIs option, and simply delete the AMI when the business relationship expires. I understand that this can be defeated if a user clones my AMI, but is there anything else I can do to protect an AMI or to lock the software to a particular AMI?   5. I can use Amazon's Paid AMIs option, which uses their DevPay system to make sure users are paying to continue to use my software. How secure is this system?   6. I can have the AMI \"phone home\". I don't think my customers would approve. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "113292", "title": "Database design for tagging system", "text": "I'm creating a system where items will have one or more tags. Now there will be an **item** table that will store each item, and a **tags** table, that will store all tags used in the system. My question is: What is the best design I can have that will allow me to link items to their respective tags, and record how many times an item received a particular tag from a user? For example, I'm wondering if I should create a third table that would associate a particular item with a particular tag and how many times that tag was selected. The fields would be like this: item_id, tag_id, tag_hits - where tag_hits is the number of times the tag was used. This solutions would associate all items with their tags in a single table. **Or** the other solution I'm thinking of is to create a table for each item and record each tag and the amount of the time the tag was used. So, for itemX I would create a table **itemX** and the fields would be: tag_id, tag_hits. For another itemY, I would create a table called itemY with the same fields. So for every item, there would be a table associating it with its tags. Now there could be hundreds of thousands of items in this system. I suppose the developers of this website had to make similar consideration because each question is tagged. And you can browse questions by tag. My system will have similar functionality. Can someone recommend a design solution, taking into consideration all that I have said, and performance consideration. Please indicate where you think indexing might help also. I use SQL databases in my development, but if you think a no-SQL solution would do it, please suggest a design along these lines. please be very specific. Thanks, Ron"}
{"_id": "157922", "title": "Should laying out a GUI graphically be considered \"cheating?\"", "text": "I have a friend who has a slightly greater amount of programming experience as me. We were talking about all the different programming technologies we use and Interface Builder came up in conversation. Being of no programming background except for what I've taught myself, I personally believe that IB and all it's features (`IBOutlets`, `IBActions`) help coders of my skill level (and all skill levels, for that matter) complete projects of theirs in less time. His view of IB is a little enthusiastic. He believes that coders that utilize Interface Builder are \"cheating\" in the fact that they don't have to lay out interfaces by hand. * * * Question: **Should using a GUI builder to lay out interface elements be considered \"cheating\" (since most programming originally required laying interfaces out by hand in code)?** Why?"}
{"_id": "20293", "title": "VPS versus Shared Hosting", "text": "Is there any compelling reason a programmer would host on a shared platform versus just having a VPS account somewhere?"}
{"_id": "147698", "title": "Alternatives to the singleton pattern", "text": "I have read different opinions about the singleton pattern. Some maintain that it should be avoided at all costs and others that it can be be useful in certain situations. One situation in which I use singletons is when I need a factory (let's say an object f of type F) to create objects of a certain class A. The factory is created once using some configuration parameters and then is used each time an object of type A is instantiated. So every part of the code that wants to instantiate A fetches the singleton f and create the new instance, e.g.               F& f                   = F::instance();     boost::shared_ptr<A> a = f.createA();      So the general my scenario is that   1. I need only one instance of a class either for optimization reasons (I do not need multiple factory objects) or for sharing common state (e.g. the factory knows how many instances of A it can still create)   2. I need a way to have access to this instance f of F in different places of the code. I am **not interested** in the discussion whether this pattern is good or bad, but assuming I want to avoid using a singleton, what other pattern can I use? The ideas I had were (1) to get the factory object from a registry or (2) to create the factory at some point during program start up and then pass the factory around as a parameter. In solution (1), the registry itself is a singleton, so I have just shifted the problem of not using a singleton from the factory to the registry. In case (2) I need some initial source (object) from which the factory object comes so I am afraid that I would again fall back to another singleton (the object that provides my factory instance). By following back this chain of singletons I can maybe reduce the problem to one singleton (the whole application) by which _all other singletons_ are directly or indirectly managed. Would this last option (using one initial singleton that creates all other unique objects and injects all other singletons at the right places) be an acceptable solution? Is this the solution that is implicitly suggested when one advises not to use singletons, or what are other solutions, e.g. in the example illustrated above? **EDIT** Since I think the point of my question has been misunderstood by some, here is some more information. As explained e.g. here, the word **singleton** can indicate (a) a class with a single instance object and (b) a design pattern used to create and access such an object. To make things clearer let us use the term **unique object** for (a) and **singleton pattern** for (b). So, I know what the singleton pattern and dependency injection are (BTW, lately I've been using DI heavily to remove instances of the singleton pattern from some code I am working on). My point is that unless the whole object graph is instantiated from a single object living on the stack of the main method, there will always be the need to access some unique objects through the singleton pattern. My question is whether having the complete object graph creation and wiring depend on the main method (e.g. through some powerful DI framework that does not use the pattern itself) is the only **singleton-pattern** free solution."}
{"_id": "135333", "title": "How should I implement a secure priority queue in C?", "text": "I have an assignment to implement a priority queue in C as well as make an app that uses it. I, however, only know basic-level C (I do know Java). My intuition says that I need to learn pointers. What other stumbling blocks should I expect or prepare for? How do I go about making this secure?"}
{"_id": "156618", "title": "What's the proper way to check commit data in Git?", "text": "My goal is to check commit data that don't meet certain requirements and then reject either the commit being created or pushed to the remote repository. The problem of doing a pre-commit hook is that it's hard to deploy to many people who have to manually update their pre-commit hook file. As well, Git does not allow you to have submodules in the .git folder which would've been very easy for deployment yet alas. The other option I see is doing the checking in I believe the update hook on the remote side, which will check each commit being pushed by a dev and reject the push if any of the commits fail the tests. Does anyone have any insight on this problem? And if so, could you provide or point me towards an example update hook script? I'm a little confused as to how it works."}
{"_id": "29726", "title": "Any reason behind hyphens in a GUID?", "text": "Just when I generated a GUID, I found some hyphens in between the character and also at specified intervals               8b55fec7-c987-4e7b-abad-16e5aaea9b53      Is there any story behind this? **Note:** My intention is to remove those hyphens as I am adding this GUID to a filename and our filename should only be aplhanumeric."}
{"_id": "156613", "title": "Is this an assembly language?", "text": "In my childhood I used to program on an MK-61 Soviet calculator. It had four operating registers (X, Y, Z, T) and 15 storage registers. A program could have 105 steps. As I recall it, it had commands like:   * Swap X and Y registers   * Shift registers (Z to T, Y to Z, X to Y)   * Copy from storage register (1..15) to X   * Copy from X to storage register (1..15)   * If X < 0 then go to program step ##   * Perform operation (+, -, *, /) using X and Y values and put result to X Is this command set an assembly language? Did I have a basic idea of assembly languages by using this device? ![Device](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yRDXh.jpg) It turns out it is something called \"keystroke programming\". Funny fact: a similar calculator (like this one, but with energy independent memory) was used as a back-up hardware for space mission trajectory calculations in 1988. :-)"}
{"_id": "28098", "title": "Why does it matter that HTML and CSS are not programming languages?", "text": "Example here: What languages should I know if I'm interested in building web applications ? Yes, I understand that HTML and CSS are not Turing-complete. Yes, I understand that they are declarative, not imperative languages. But why are people always clubbed over the head with this pedantic (and arguably obvious) fact when they ask a question about these languages?"}
{"_id": "163542", "title": "How can a non-technical person learn to write a spec for small projects?", "text": "How can a non-technical person learn to write specs for small projects? A friend of mine is trying to outsource some development on a statistics project. In particular, he does a lot of work in excel, and wants to outsource the creation of scripts to do what he now does by hand. However, my friend is extremely non-technical. He is poor at writing technical specs. When he does write a spec, it is written the way you would describe doing something in excel (go to this cell and then copy the value to that cell). It is also overly verbose, and does examples several times. I'm not sure if he properly describes corner cases. The first project he outsourced was a failure. I think he overdescribed some details, but underdescribed corner cases. That and/or the coder he hired didn't think through the corner cases and ask appropriate questions. I'm not sure. I got on IM with him and it took me half an hour to dig out a description that should have taken five minutes or less to describe. I wrote the scripts for him at the end, but didn't examine why his process with the coder failed. He has asked me for help. However, I refuse to get involved, because taking his spec and translating it into clear requirements is 10x more work than executing on a clearly written spec. What is the right way for him to learn? Are there resources he could use? Are there ways he can learn from small, low-pressure practice projects with coders? Most of his scripts are statistical and data processing oriented. e.g. take this column and run an average over it. Remove these rows under these conditions. So the challenge is different than spec'ing a web app."}
{"_id": "40928", "title": "Delivery terminology and order of magnitude", "text": "What is the standard way of describing how software products are released and the proportionate order of magnitude to which the changes relative to the software product are conveyed? Is   1. Release    2. Update   3. Patch    4. Bug Fix redundant? or Is   1. Update   2. Patch  too terse? As an end user I'd think that all bug fixes are patches (insofar as they are not 100% new code) and all patches should be updates (insofar as they don't degrade the product) and all updates should be releases (insofar as they are actually released), but this really doesn't help anyone understand why they need to get them. Then, if the person who makes the software change appends \"critical\" or \"zero- day\" in the notes, I would be unwise to leave the changes unapplied."}
{"_id": "200137", "title": "Implementation defined behaviour changing const type in c", "text": "The C standard states that if an attempt is made to change a const type,the result is implementation defined.This gives error on my system,but what does it depend on(compiler,os)? What are the possible results(implementation defined) on various machines?"}
{"_id": "164010", "title": "Organisation of Application Development Team Wiki?", "text": "Are there any resources available around that suggest best-practice structure for setting up a wiki for developers? I'll be managing a team that has not had the best track record for documentation, communication and knowledge-sharing. I'd like to have a framework set up to make it easier for the team to get started in this area. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "164011", "title": "What are some best practices for deleting from source control?", "text": "When is it okay to delete? ...destroy? When should you never delete/destroy no matter how old (ie. health-management software?)"}
{"_id": "164012", "title": "API Auth vs User Auth", "text": "I have read many posts and articles on this topic but still cant connect the dots. I want to make a Rails app that is strictly a JSON API maybe using Sinatra or the rails-api gem. I also want to make both a web client app and an iPhone app which consumes the API. No plans on letting third party dev's use it. So I could create a separate username/password combination for both the web and mobile client and use HTTP Basic over SSL. Each app would have these values as configs in the source and use it to authenticate to the API so only these can make a call. Anyone else trying would get a 401 error returned. This would be considered handling the API authentication. The web and mobile client apps allow end users to sign up and read/write data to the API. When each user is created, I create and save a token in their profile. If a user successfully signs in, I send back the token. On each future read/write then also send along this token in the header. I get the token and lookup the user in the database and make the read/write. Does this sound like an appropriate way to handle it. For the web client, when I initially send back the token, where do I store it. In a cookie? Do I also drop a cookie to handle session state?"}
{"_id": "164015", "title": "Programmaticaly finding the Landau notation (Big O or Theta notation) of an algorithm?", "text": "I'm used to search for the Landau (Big O, Theta...) notation of my algorithms by hand to make sure they are as optimized as they can be, but when the functions are getting really big and complex, it's taking way too much time to do it by hand. it's also prone to human errors. I spent some time on Codility (coding/algo exercises), and noticed they will give you the Landau notation for your submitted solution (both in Time and Memory usage). I was wondering how they do that... How would you do it? Is there another way besides Lexical Analysis or parsing of the code? This question concerns mainly PHP and or JavaScript, but I'm opened to any language and theory."}
{"_id": "164017", "title": "How can I convince my boss that ANSI C is inadequate for our new project?", "text": "A few months ago, we started developing an app to control an in-house developed test equipment and record a set of measurements. It should have a simple UI, and would likely require threads due to the continuous recording that must take place. This application will be used for a few years, and shall be maintained by a number of computer science students during this period. Our boss graduated some 30 years ago (not to be taken as an offense; I have more than half that time on my back too) and has mandated that we develop this application in ANSI C. The rationale is that he is the only one that will be around the entire time, and therefore he must be able to understand what we are doing. He also ruled that we should use no abstract data types; he even gave us a list with the name of the global variables (sigh) he wants us to use. I actually tried that approach for a while, but it was really slowing me down to make sure that all pointer operations were safe and all strings had the correct size. Additionally, the number of lines of code that actually related to the problem in hand was a only small fraction of our code base. After a few days, I scrapped the entire thing and started anew using C#. Our boss has already seen the program running and he likes the way it works, but he doesn't know that it's written in another language. Next week the two of us will meet to go over the source code, so that he \"will know how to maintain it\". I am sort of scared, and I would like to hear from you guys what arguments I could use to support my decision. Cowardly yours,"}
{"_id": "1135", "title": "What do you think of \"Planning Poker\"?", "text": "Planning Poker Summary, in case you don't want to read the wiki article:   1. Get a list of tasks you want to do for the upcoming iteration   2. For each task:   2.1 Discuss with the group what it entails   2.2 Everyone writes down / selects an estimation of how much effort is required for the task   2.3 Everyone reveals their estimation   2.4 The highest and lowest outliers explain their reasoning   2.5 Repeat until a consensus is reached Usually something similar to numbers from the Fibonacci sequence like 0, \u00bd, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40, 100 are the allowed values, so you don't get long arguments over close values like 23 vs 27. Further, the numbers represent a unit-less value of effort, whose value is determined by a baseline task that everyone agrees equals about a 1, and all else is relative to that. Ultimately, the goal is to get a good feel for a given team's \"velocity\", which is the number of these points that can be completed in a given iteration. With that, it's possible to make reasonably accurate estimates of how long any given feature will take. * * * We did this at iteration planning meetings at one company I worked at, and I thought it was one of the few good things about that particular company. So, what I'm wondering is, has anyone used this? Do you think it's a useful tool for estimation? Does it work in all situations, or does it lend itself to certain teams, projects, etc?"}
{"_id": "179812", "title": "Matrix Pattern Recognition Algorithm", "text": "I am designing a logic analyzer and I would like to implement some Matrix Algorithm. I have several channels each one represented by a row in the matrix and every element in the column would be the state, for example:               Channel 1   1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1     Channel 2   1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1     Channel 3   0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0      I would like to detect a pattern inside my matrix for example, detect ALL the matches of the bitmap inside the matrix:               1 0     1 1      I think it can be accomplished testing element by element but I think there should be a better way of doing it. Is there any Java API or any way to do it ? If there is a API ARM optimized for NEON instructions would be great also but not mandatory. They will be about 8 matrix of 3 or 2 rows by 20000 columns approximately, the matrix is not fixed, it change every time I scan it because I am constantly receiving data. I need to process them in 500mS or less. I am working on an ARM platform, dual core, 1.2GHz, 1Gb RAM, Android 4.1.2 Thank you very much in advance."}
{"_id": "179817", "title": "Decrementing/Incrementing loop variable inside for loop. Is this code smell?", "text": "I have to read lines from a text file in sequential order. The file is a custom text format that contains sections. If some sections are out of order, I would like to look for the starting of the next valid section and continue processing. Currently, I have some code that looks like this:               for (int currentLineIndex=0; currentLineIndex < lines.Count; currentLineIndex++ )     {         //Process section here         if( out_of_order_condition )         {             currentLineIndex--;//Stay on the same line in the next iteration because this line may be the start of a valid section.            continue;         }     }      Is this code smell? UPDATE: I didn't mention this earlier, but the root cause of this kind of code was a complicated switch-case (typical when you're parsing). I got rid of the incrementing/decrementing variable by using the \"goto case\" statement. The structure now looks like this:               switch(state)     {        case State.BOF:            {                //Process BOF case            }        case State.SeenHeader:            {                if( out_of_order_condition )                {                    state = State.BOF;    //Reset the state to some respectable one                         //currentLineIndex--; Removed                    //continue;           Removed                         goto case State.BOF;//Handle this in this iteration itself.                 }            }     }"}
{"_id": "191968", "title": "Unit test cases(JUnit), not by developer but other team members", "text": "I have a very interesting situation. Management has strictly asked to do unit testing for the code being developed and divided the task in such a way that few are developing the code and others are writing the test cases for the code. Now developer keeps on refactoring the code and others keep on changing the test cases. I told them that this is not the best practice(since person who is developing the code need to write test case), but they are not willing to listen me and citing all kind of examples from their past experiences where work is divided like this way. How should I convince them or deal with this situation. Edit: I am looking for some argument/proof which could make them think. * * * Note I asked management about reasons for this and they told me that we are just dividing the workload. I opposed for this and told them that it is not best practice, then they started citing some of their past experiences. Actually, one of team members has accepted the task in past. At that time I tried to convince him to oppose this and now they are saying if he can do why can't you. I have accepted to do as of now but I want to stop this as practice. To my best I want to demonstrate something that can convince them."}
{"_id": "226087", "title": "How to convey your approach is faster than the built-in, alternative approaches?", "text": "Imagine you have a tool that's much faster than another one (built-in, alternative). You want to mention this in the description of the tool so people can see the point of your tool existing. By comparison, I mean say 40x faster, and when the data set gets large, the performance gain increases even more, say 70x. I didn't want to use \"orders of magnitude faster\", because that to me implies it's a few times faster. How can I convey this message in a good, understandable manner? Also I thought of using numbers but then like I said, as the data set becomes larger, so the performance gain. Should I just say mine runs in linear time? Not sure if I can verify that."}
{"_id": "71148", "title": "Why do programmers still use mailing lists?", "text": "Why do many open source projects collaborate primarily through mailing lists rather than through, say, forums? I may be ignorant in my assessment, but I, along with my communication teacher, think mailing lists are rather inefficient:   * It's hard to reference old messages. You have to wait until an archiving site picks up the message you want to link to, then look it up.   * It's hard to reply to messages you haven't received from subscription, since you have to manually copy the sender and message contents.   * It's impossible to moderate threads of discussion. Posts cannot be deleted or modified without supernatural powers.   * It's tricky to keep threads together (namely, to ensure all participants in the conversation are copied/replied to).   * It's tricky for users to participate in multiple high-volume mailing lists, as they have to subscribe and set up filters (or just be really involved). What _real_ edge do mailing lists have that didn't occur to me?"}
{"_id": "238834", "title": "What to translate in a billingual software", "text": "I'm designing/building a web application that will be available in two languages: French/English. I placed i18n mechanisms to extract every text from the application. But what about the user's input? I have some \"system settings\" that currently ask for both lang for their labels...   But I can't obviously ask a translation for every input (pure data, receipts, etc)... Where can you trace the line between what should be available in translations? N.B : An instance of the application (a same database) will be used by more than one person (~10 users)."}
{"_id": "119003", "title": "Should you abandon an ORM framework when you need to implement a bulk operation?", "text": "Here's a common situation:   * You need to implement a bulk operation in an application that uses an ORM framework.   * After the first pass, you've noticed significant performance problems. Here's my question:   * In this situation, should you _favor_ a solution that includes raw SQL?   * Or are there well-known design patterns that can help you mitigate problems that are commonly associated with bulk operations with ORM frameworks? **EDIT:**   * I'm not asking if you should remove the ORM framework from the entire application.   * I'm asking: Should you forgo the ORM framework for this small slice of the application?"}
{"_id": "256088", "title": "C# Linq question", "text": "I am desperately trying to understand linq and now I have a concrete example of what I want to do (and fail):               Console.WriteLine(\"{0}\", (from myaddresses[x].PostalNr where x => myaddresses[x].SortType == \"110\" ))      `myaddress` is a dictionary of `OneAddress` objects (my own object) and that object contains the properties `SortType` and `PostalNr`. I thought I didn't need a loop to do the above, but when the above is rewritten to work it might only take the first hit it gets or? The questions I want to perform is:   For each entry in the dictionary that has `SortType` set to 110, print out it's postal number."}
{"_id": "119006", "title": "How do I deal with a problem that will pop up in a later iteration", "text": "This is an Agile development project and I do not have the ability to change that. The design that will be the fastest and most obvious for the first phase of our project will not be compatible with the needs of our second phase. The change would not be difficult to implement now but it would take a little more time to implement. Our PM is pushing for the quick phase 1 approach saying we will deal with the problem in phase 3 when we get there. Making the change at phase 3 will require refactoring and data transformation will be very intensive. Is there anything I can or should do now that fits in the agile methodology?"}
{"_id": "95239", "title": "why no hasLock/testLock on mutexes", "text": "looking through the docs of posix' `pthread_mutex_t` and window's `mutex` and `CRITICAL_SECTION` I noticed there is no easy way of checking whether the current thread holds a specific mutex posix' `pthread_mutex_t` can be tested when it's not reentrant but that is only a artifact of a non-reentrant mutex ofcourse checking whether another thread holds a mutex is trivial with trylock java does allow checking whether the current (and only current) thread holds an object monitor with `Thread.holdsLock(Object)` which is advised to only be used for debugging likewise the interface of `java.util.concurrent.locks.Lock` in also doesn't provide any checking method (the implementation `ReentrantLock` however does with `ReentrantLock.isHeldByCurrentThread()`) * * * I can imagine that this can be quite easily implemented alongside any other lock (and is even required when implementing a reentrant mutex) all it would require is a unique handle for each thread (already available in threading libraries or could even be the TLS pointer whichever is smaller) and at most 2 extra fields (one for the handle and one for the holdcount)   1. when locking: after the lock is acquired increment the holdcount and set the handle to the current thread handle   2. when unlocking: before unlocking decrement the holdcount and set the handle to nil only when the holdcount is now 0   3. when testing: get the handle and compare it to the current thread's handle   this may be possible without any membarriers as long as a simultaneous write doesn't mangle the bits of the read in a such way that a handle is read that wasn't being written (i.e. the reading thread's handle) the only race conditions possible are in #3 (the rest happens when the lock is held) and may be irrelevant depending on the memory model given the size of the read value (one word) ( **edit** : if a atomic read/write scheme is used this is even solved entirely) the holdcount is not even be necessary when the mutex is not reentrant and you're not making it reentrant * * * **EDIT2** : I want to clarify that the `hasLock` would only be used for debugging purposes (asserts) for example to ensure that a method that needs a lock held by the caller actually has it as for the race condition being irrelevant:   1. first requirement is that you need a way to write and read concurrently in a way that you would only get values that were actually written   2. second the test `handle == currentHandle` would treat both `nil` and the handle of another thread the same way   3. the only way that currentHandle would be equal to handle is when the current thread has written it during locking"}
{"_id": "134065", "title": "In Windows 8 will it be possible to use WCF in conjunction with HTML5/JS?", "text": "Correct me if I'm wrong but I've heard that communicating with a database in Windows 8 will more than likely be done with WCF when working with C#/XAML. If this is true then will this also be the case when working with HTML5/JS?"}
{"_id": "221339", "title": "Implementing a programming language without the specification", "text": "What if, instead of looking at the C++ specification, you analyze the behavior (by inspecting the source code and testing with sample inputs) of existing C++ compilers and use your knowledge of C++ to create a new compiler? Is it a good way to implement programming languages? What are the possible disadvantages of this approach?"}
{"_id": "221338", "title": "Is there a reason for the crossover from the Ruby community to the Clojure Community?", "text": "When we look at the the overlap between the Ruby Community - we see the following overlaps:   * Think Relevance (now Cognitect) has switched from Ruby to Clojure   * Jay Fields has switched from Ruby to Clojure   * David Chelimsky \\- author of RSpec \\- has left the Ruby RSpec project to join Cognitect Is there some linguistic similarity that has lead to this crossover?"}
{"_id": "221332", "title": "What does it mean for \"Bootstrap\" to be precompiled?", "text": "I was reading the Bootstrap Getting Started docs, and I came across \"Pre- Compiled Source\" as a feature. Upon downloading the package, I just found `.js`, `.css`, and some image files. What is there to be \"pre-compiled\"? Doesn't it all compile in the browser upon page load? I'm guessing this means that it was compiled and tested before shipping, but I don't understand why this would need to be advertised."}
{"_id": "154925", "title": "What actions should I not rely on the packaged functionality of my language for?", "text": "While talking with one of my coworkers, he was talking about the issues the language we used had with encryption/decryption and said that a developer should always salt their own hashes. Another example I can think of is the mysql_real_escape_string in PHP that programmers use to sanitize input data. I've heard many times that a developer should sanitize the data themselves. My question is **what things should a developer always do on their own, for whatever reason, and not rely on the standard libraries packaged with a language for it?**"}
{"_id": "50450", "title": "Naming a class that decides to retrieve things from cache or a service + architecture evaluation", "text": "I'm a junior developer and I'm working on a pet project that I want to learn as much as possible from. I have the following scenario: There's a WCF service that I use to retrieve and update data, lets say Cars. So it's called **CarWCFService** and has a GetCars(), SaveCar(), ... . It implements interface **ICarService**. This isn't the Actual WCF service but more like a wrapper around it. Upon retrieving data from the service, I want to store them in local memory, as cache. I have made a class for this called **CarCacheService** which also implements interface **ICarService**. (I will explain later why it implements ICarService) I don't want client code to be calling these implementations. Instead, I want to create a third implementation for **ICarService** that tries to read from the **CarCacheService** before calling the **WCFCarService** , stores retrieved data in the **CarCacheService** , etc. 3 questions:   1. How do I name this third class? I was thinking about something as simple as **CarService**. This does not really says what the service does exactly, tho. Is the naming for the other classes good?   2. Would this naming and architecture be obvious for future programmers? This is my biggest concern.    3. Does this architecture make sense? The reason that I implement **ICarService** on the **CarCacheService** is mainly because it allows me to fake the **WCFService** while debugging. I can store dummy data in a **CarCacheService** instance and pass it to the **CarService** , together with an(other) empty **CarCacheService**. If I made **CacheCarService** and **WCFService** public I could let client code decide if they want to drop the caching and just work directly on the **WCFService**."}
{"_id": "126136", "title": "Why was I asked general, non-technical questions during an interview?", "text": "I got through the first phone interview at Amazon last week and they asked some basic technical questions during that interview. Today, I had my second phone-interview and I prepared myself well expecting for another technical interview, but it was not technical at all. After we introduced ourselves, he asked questions like:   1. Why do you like to do programming?   2. What do you Not like about programming?    3. What do you expect from a new job?   4. In the last project you worked on, how did you make sure the project was implemented to the client's requirements?   5. Was there was any project, that during the development, you felt like the design was bad, and if so, what did you do to fix the issue?   6. As an engineer how would you keep up with the new technologies? Additionally, when I explained to him about a recent project I worked on, he asked me about why we decided to make a specific design decision and whether it was my decision. I was wondering why he asked me these kind of questions; since English is not my native language, I assume that one of the reasons was to test my knowledge of the language. And most of the answers I gave him were very short and since I felt like he's expecting more, I tried to come up with things to say and ended up just blabbering. Overall I think the interview went really bad because I couldn't clearly convey my points to him. Why was I asked these types of questions, and what kind of answers do interviewers expect?"}
{"_id": "126131", "title": "Methods on packaging an assembler with compiler", "text": "I am planning on creating a compiler that will generate assembly, that is as far as I really want to go with this project (don't want to create the object files myself or any of the machine code). Since I'm doing this on linux, I would like to use the gas assembler. I'm not sure the best way to package the application. Should I require that the people have gas on their system already (which it is on most linux distros by default if I'm not mistaken, which I could be)? Or is it better to package the source with my application, or even package the actual application with my compiler? * * * By packaging I mean any form of distribution so that would include putting the code up on github as well."}
{"_id": "96192", "title": "How to become good at object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD)?", "text": "Becoming a good analyzer and designer can greatly benefit a developer. But there are definitely obstacles for this. Not everybody is interested in OOAD, and not every person who is interested, knows the path. Should a good OOAD know multiple OO languages? Or should he/she have failed projects? How can one become a good OOAD?"}
{"_id": "245450", "title": "What is the Enterprise Architecture Pattern called for a web service wrapping a web service?", "text": "As part of a service orientated architecture (SOA) I've been asked to create a web service which itself acquires data from a third party web service. I'm to hide any implementation specific details of the third party web service and map the data returned so as to avoid leaking any implementation details of the third party service. I'm new to SOA. I would colloquially call this project something like \" _a web service bridge_ \".   **What is the correct SOA enterprise architecture pattern term for this?** I'm very confused as many of the enterprise architecture patterns seem to be describing the same thing (service facade?, message broker? message channel? proxy?). I don't think I'm quite in tune with the level of abstraction required."}
{"_id": "245452", "title": "What, why or when it is better to choose a queuing tool vs database task table?", "text": "I would like to know what, why or when it is better to choose a queuing tool and what, why or when it is better to choose database task table? I don't understand the difference of sending my tasks in a queuing tool or in a database table that will be read and act as a queue. Is there some properties that queuing tools has that database cannot do? Read my question as \"what are the benefit or what are the arguments to choose a queuing tool solution\". My question is not about what language, technology, or project one should take up next. Thank you,"}
{"_id": "61018", "title": "Which are C# 4.0 programming paradigms?", "text": "* Which are C# 4.0 programming paradigms?   * In what category does extension methods fall into? > A programming language can support multiple paradigms. For example, programs > written in C++ or Object Pascal can be purely procedural, or purely object- > oriented, or contain elements of both paradigms. > > In object-oriented programming, programmers can think of a program as a > collection of interacting objects, while in functional programming a program > can be thought of as a sequence of stateless function evaluations. When > programming computers or systems with many processors, process-oriented > programming allows programmers to think about applications as sets of > concurrent processes acting upon logically shared data structures. > > Just as different groups in software engineering advocate different > methodologies, different programming languages advocate different > programming paradigms. Source: Wikipedia"}
{"_id": "189142", "title": "Why do most issue tracking systems have only single status field?", "text": "Most issue tracking systems have only single status field. Typical Status: New -> Fixed When code is pushed to repository with commit message \"Fixed issue #1234\", the issue #1234 is automatically mark as \"Fixed\". I have the below idea but no system can fulfill. **The question is: Am I right or just not finding the suitable tool?**   1. Programming status I think this is problematic because only the programmer says he has fixed an issue.   2. QA / release status It is not possible to know if QA team has verified or not. There is no place for QA team to mark the status. Also, even for open source projects, the end-user may not want to compile from source. The end-user is only interested in whether he can get a release version. If the new release is not ready to ship, from the point of view of the user, it is nothing \"Fixed\".   3. Feedback status It is also useful if the user can set the \"feedback status\" to \"Fixed\" after testing the released version or source code, rather than leaving a comment \"Thanks, it works!\". Status fields are searchable."}
{"_id": "194487", "title": "Ring of numbers where adjacent entries sum up to a prime", "text": "Given a number n, find a permutation of the numbers 1...n such that all adjacent entries sum up to primes. If such a permutation does not exist, throw an error. Is there a purely-functional way to do this problem? The solution, which apparently uses backtracking, given uses C++, a language which I am not very familiar with, and loops in loops in loops with very badly-named variable names and a whole lot of mutation. Even if the solution requires mutation, nested loops are really difficult to translate into Racket, the language I currently use. A more general question would be, how to do backtracking algorithms purely functionally when the concept of backtracking seems to always involve maintaining a state of where you are currently and a big history breadcrumb global state variable that keeps getting mutated? Of course the dumb way would be to generate all permutations and test them one by one, but are there more efficient ways, preferably implementing a backtracking method, to do so functionally? Since I use Racket, the solution might not be _purely_ functional but preferably mostly functional, i.e. no repeatedly mutating counter vars in loops or such."}
{"_id": "216937", "title": "Earliest use of Comments as Semantically Meaningful Things in a Program?", "text": "In certain corners of the PHP meta-programming world, it's become fashionable to use PHPDoc comments as a mechanism for providing semantically meaningful information to a program. That is, other code will parse the doc blocks and do something significant with the information encoded in those comments. Doctrine's annotations and code generation are an example of this. What's the earliest (or some early) use of this technique? I have vague memories of some early java _Design by Contract_ implementations doing similar things, but I'm not sure of those folks were inventing the technique, or if they got it from somewhere. Mainly asking so I can provide some historical context for PHP developers who haven't come across the technique before, and are distrustful of it because it seems a little crazy pants."}
{"_id": "216936", "title": "How to elevate engineering culture at large corporations?", "text": "One thing I have realized working at a large corporation is that it doesn't matter how smart you are because if everyone else doesn't see the value in what you are doing then you are not going to get very far. It's much harder to convince 1000 people that a certain part of the software stack should be in groovy than it is to convince 10 people of the same thing. I'm curious how people go about elevating the engineering culture at large corporations because I've been running into walls left and right and I would like to be more proactive about how I go about it. I have been advocating tech talks and tech demos along with code reviews as potential solutions. Do people have other suggestions? Note that 1000 people and groovy are just representative examples. I am not married to groovy or any other language and 1000 people is meant to indicate large scale and how to go about teaching a large group of people about best practices and engineering principles in general."}
{"_id": "26529", "title": "Application Development: Python or Java (or PHP)", "text": "I'm looking to get into application development, such as Facebook or Android apps and games. I am doing this for fun and to learn. Once my skills are to par I would like to have some side income from the apps, but I'm not banking on living off that (just so you know where I'm coming from and know what my end goals are). Currently I know and am familiar with PHP and frameworks such as cakephp and yii. However, I have been wanting to learn another language to broaden my horizons and to become a better developer. So I have narrowed it down to 2 languages. Python, and Java (I can already hear people cringing at the difference in the languages I have chosen, but I have some reasons). Python: closer to PHP than Java. Cross-platform. Also great as a general scripting language and has many file system level benefits that PHP does not. Cleaner syntax, readability, blah blah and the list goes on. Python will work great for cross platform apps and can be run on many OS's and is supported by Facebook for app development. But there is no support on Android (for full fledged apps). Java: a much stronger typed language, very robust community and corporate backing. Knowing Java is also good for personal marketability for enterprises, if you're into that. The main benefit here is that Java can write apps natively for Android and the apps can be ported for web versions to play on Facebook. So while I have seen many developers prefer Java over the two, Java has this significant advantage, where I can market my apps in both markets and in the future build more potential income. But like I said it is for fun. While money isn't the goal, it would still be nice. PHP: I'm putting this here because I know it already, and I'm sure a case could be made for it. It obviously works great for Facebook but like Python does not do so well on android. While it's mostly the realm of 'application development' that appeals to me, I do find Android apps fairly interesting and something that has a ton of potential to. But then again Facebook has a ton more users and the apps can also potentially be more immersive (desktop vs. mobile). So this is why I'm kinda stuck on what route to choose. Python for Facebook and web apps, with likely faster development to production times, or Java which can be developed for any of the platforms to make apps. Side note: I'm not really trying to get into 3D development, mostly 2D. And I also want to make an app with real-time play (websockets, etc). Someone mentioned nodejs to me for that but Python seems to be more globally versatile for my goals. So, to anyone that does Facebook or Android development in either language: what do you suggest? Any input is valuable and I do appreciate it. And sorry for being long winded. **EDIT:** as mentioned in one of the answers, my primary goal is gaming. Although I do have some plans for non-gaming apps such as general web based and desktop based ones. But gaming is my main goal with the possibility of income. **EDIT:** Another consideration could be Jython. Writing Python code which is converted into Java bytecode. This would allow the ability to do Android apps using Python. I could be wrong though, I'm still looking into it. **Update 1-26-11:** I recently acquired a new job which required I learn .NET using C#. Im sure some of you are cringing already but I really like the whole system and how it all works together between desktop and web development. But, as I am still interested in Python very much, and after some research I have decided I will learn Python as well as the IronPython implementation for .NET. But (again: I know...) since .NET is mostly a Windows thing and not as cross- compatible as I like, I will be learning Mono which is a cross platform implementation of .NET where I can use what I learn at work using C# and what I want to learn, Python/IronPython. So while learning and writing C#/.NET @ work I will be learning Python -> Mono -> Iron Python for what I want to do personally. And the benefit of them all being very closely related will help me out a lot, I think. What do you guys think? I almost feel like that should be another question, but there's not much of a question. Either way, you guys gave very helpful input."}
{"_id": "214573", "title": "Printing a table from mysql and php as PDF", "text": "I would like some help with printing out put of mysql tables as PDF. I have scenarios where a user views their details from the database printed to an HTML table, I would the same HTML table to also print in PDF."}
{"_id": "214576", "title": "Unit Testing of JavaScript - Are we testing the logic of the code or the behavior against a browser", "text": "[Warning]: I am new to the whole unit testing and have been trying to learn as much as possible. I am working on a MS CRM 2011 project and I have been trying to introduce unit testing in my company. For unit testing JavaScript web resources, I found this link at MSDN blog. The Solutions Architect in my company suggest that this is a bad approach as we are not even testing against the IE's JS engine but testing using CScript (Windows Host) and while I agree to that point, isn't the whole idea of Unit Testing all about testing the individual function's functionality and not about the dependency. For testing whether it will work within IE, would a testing tool such as Selenium not be better? Or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "110182", "title": "Implementing your own Membership Provider in ASP.NET MVC", "text": "Are there are any specific rules and regulation to follow while developing a custom membership provider. Like, implementing a particular Interface or Abstract class. Or a definite model architecture to follow. If yes, then what are the rules or I am free to design, model and code anything ?"}
{"_id": "110189", "title": "Detecting Internet code leaks", "text": "I'm curious after reading today about a minor code leakage from a large project to some blogs & forums (to say it short: the guys forgot to _anonymize_ the code before asking for help), all detected and (angrily) complained by the **customer** who reasonably wanted to protect the IP they paid for. First of all, I know it's a good practice (correct me if I'm wrong), when required to disclose code to public sites in order to ask for help, to take appropriate _anonymization_ measures, like renaming in all snippets something like `com.thecompanyiworkfor` with `com.somecompany` or `com.bank.MortgageRiskCalculatorClass` to `com.somecompany.SomeGenericRiskIndicatorClass` and so on... Now, suppose I would like to find out **if** and **where** (and maybe _who_ , but it's not important now and it's not part of the question) the originally restricted code was leaked in order to properly react (read \"send all the guys an email telling either they delete/clean posts or something bad will happen to the culprit\", haha). I suppose that a good way could be googling something _unique_ that you could find in the code. For example, if I worked for Inintech I would try to google for `com.inintech` to see if somebody was stupid enough to paste code full with `import`/`using` directives. It's not a comprehensive method, it's based on the assumption that someone is better trying to protect the _binding_ between company and code (ie. for security by obscurity reasons, public image...) rather than preventing intellectual property from being freely available to the public. My straight questions are: ### Do you know/think there are other good practices to perform such investigations? How would you do that if your boss asks to find if someone leaked the company's code? I don't think someone would ever try to google for an entire source code file in one query string :) ### Do you know if there are companies performing such investigations? If so, what could you tell me about them more than their names, like the way they work?"}
{"_id": "26295", "title": "Which according to you are the top languages to watch out for in 2011 and beyond?", "text": "Which according to you are the top languages to watch out for in 2011 and beyond? This article  talks about 9 languages to watch out for in 2011. What are your views and inputs on this?"}
{"_id": "104232", "title": "How do you address or avoid problems with new features being quickly added to the scope of a project?", "text": "I am working on a project with a single developer (so far) and myself in a testing role. There are a bunch of new features being added. The project is .NET4.0 based, but some users need 3.5 compatibility, support for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. These are all features wanted by users, but with the number of people participating in this project, it might get out of hand. What experiences do you have in controlling feature requests and scope creep?"}
{"_id": "165650", "title": "Rules and advice for logging?", "text": "In my organization we've put together some rules / guildelines about logging that I would like to know if you can add to or comment. We use Java but you may comment in general about loggin - rules and advice   1. Use the correct logging level     * ERROR: Something has gone very wrong and need fixing immediately     * WARNING: The process can continue without fixing. The application should tolerate this level but the warning should always get investigated.      * INFO: Information that an important process is finished     * DEBUG. Is only used during development   2. Make sure that you know what you're logging.    3. Avoid that the logging influences the behavior of the application  The function of the logging should be to write messages in the log.   1. Log messages should be descriptive, clear, short and concise. There is not much use of a nonsense message when troubleshooting.   1. Put the right properties in log4j Put in that the right method and class is written automatically. Example: Datedfile -web               log4j.rootLogger=ERROR, DATEDFILE     log4j.logger.org.springframework=INFO     log4j.logger.waffle=ERROR     log4j.logger.se.prv=INFO     log4j.logger.se.prv.common.mvc=INFO     log4j.logger.se.prv.omklassning=DEBUG          log4j.appender.DATEDFILE=biz.minaret.log4j.DatedFileAppender     log4j.appender.DATEDFILE.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout     log4j.appender.DATEDFILE.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} %-5p [%C{1}.%M] - %m%n          log4j.appender.DATEDFILE.Prefix=omklassning.     log4j.appender.DATEDFILE.Suffix=.log     log4j.appender.DATEDFILE.Directory=//localhost/WebSphereLog/omklassning/        1. Log value. Please log values from the application.   1. Log prefix. State which part of the application it is that the logging is written from, preferably with something for the project agreed prefix e.g. `PANDORA_DB`   1. The amount of text. Be careful so that there is not too much logging text. It can influence the performance of the app.   1. Loggning format: -There are several variants and methods to use with log4j but we would like a uniform use of the following format, when we log at exceptions: `logger.error(\"PANDORA_DB2: Fel vid h\u00e4mtning av frist i TP210_RAPPORTFRIST\", e);` In the example above it is assumed that we have set log4j properties so that it automatically write the class and the method. Always use logger and not the following: `System.out.println(), System.err.println(), e.printStackTrace()` If the web app uses our framework you can get very detailed error information from EJB, if using try-catch in the handler and logging according to the model above: In our project we use this conversion pattern with which method and class names are written out automatically . Here we use two different pattents for console and for datedfileappender:               log4j.appender.CONSOLE.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ABSOLUTE} %5p %c{1}:%L - %m%n          log4j.appender.DATEDFILE.layout.ConversionPattern=%d [%t] %-5p %c - %m%n      In both the examples above method and class wioll be written out. In the console row number will also be written our.   1. `toString()` Please have a `toString()` for every object. EX:               @Override     public String toString() {       StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();       sb.append(\" DwfInformation [ \");       sb.append(\"cc: \").append(cc);       sb.append(\"pn: \").append(pn);       sb.append(\"kc: \").append(kc);       sb.append(\"numberOfPages: \").append(numberOfPages);       sb.append(\"publicationDate: \").append(publicationDate);       sb.append(\"version: \").append(version);       sb.append(\" ]\");       return sb.toString();     }      instead of special method which make these outputs               public void printAll()     {         logger.info(\"inbet: \" + getInbetInput());         logger.info(\"betdat: \" + betdat);         logger.info(\"betid: \" + betid);         logger.info(\"send: \" + send);         logger.info(\"appr: \" + appr);         logger.info(\"rereg: \" + rereg);            logger.info(\"NY: \" + ny);            logger.info(\"CNT: \" + cnt);        }      So is there anything you can add, comment or find questionable with these ways of using the logging? Feel free to answer or comment even if it is not related to Java, Java and log4j is just an implementation of how this is reasoned."}
{"_id": "148072", "title": "Creating alternate keys with Visio ERD diagrams", "text": "I'm trying out Visio for the first time today, creating ERD's. Is it possible to specify alternate keys in _addition_ to PK's in Visio ERD diagrams. I can't see any way to define more than one key on a table. Any ideas? Cheers."}
{"_id": "165652", "title": "Refactoring code to separate concerns", "text": "While programming an object that represent a GUI, the class is a mix of code of following sections:   1. Overrides of super GUI, for behavior customization   2. Implementations of interface contracts, to talk/listen to other GUI objects   3. Local event handling methods   4. Local data crunching methods   5. Code to query/update a remote database and a global object provider Assuming all this is crammed into one class file, how would you split it into separate files or parent-child classes so that you can delegate these to different developers with minimum dependency on each other?"}
{"_id": "118758", "title": "Should a method comment include both a summary and return description when they're often so similar?", "text": "I'm a proponent of properly documented code, and I'm well aware of the possible downsides of it. That is outside of the scope of this question. I like to follow the rule of adding XML comments for every public member, considering how much I like IntelliSense in Visual Studio. There is one form of redundancy however, which even an excessive commenter like me is bothered by. As an example take List.Exists().               /// <summary>     ///     Determines whether the List<T> contains elements     ///     that match the conditions defined by the specified predicate.     /// </summary>     /// <returns>     ///     true if the List<T> contains one or more elements that match the     ///     conditions defined by the specified predicate; otherwise, false.     /// </returns>     public bool Exists( Predicate<T> match )     {         ...     }      `Summary` and `returns` are basically saying the same thing. I often end up writing the summary more from a `returns` perspective, dropping the `returns` documentation altogether. > Returns true when the List contains elements that match the conditions > defined by the specified predicate, false otherwise. Additionally, the returns documentation doesn't show up in IntelliSense, so I rather write any immediately relevant information in `summary`.   1. Why would you ever need to document `returns` separately from `summary`?   2. Any information on why Microsoft adopted this standard?"}
{"_id": "118759", "title": "How to quickly search through a very large list of strings / records on a database", "text": "I have the following problem: I have a database containing more than 2 million records. Each record has a string field X and I want to display a list of records for which field X contains a certain string. Each record is about 500 bytes in size. To make it more concrete: in the GUI of my application I have a text field where I can enter a string. Above the text field I have a table displaying the (first N, e.g. 100) records that match the string in the text field. When I type or delete one character in the text field, the table content must be updated on the fly. I wonder if there is an efficient way of doing this using appropriate index structures and / or caching. As explained above, I only want to display the first N items that match the query. Therefore, for N small enough, it should not be a big issue loading the matching items from the database. Besides, caching items in main memory can make retrieval faster. I think the main problem is how to find the matching items quickly, given the pattern string. Can I rely on some DBMS facilities, or do I have to build some in-memory index myself? Any ideas? **EDIT** I have run a first experiment. I have split the records into different text files (at most 200 records per file) and put the files in different directories (I used the content of one data field to determine the directory tree). I end up with about 50000 files in about 40000 directories. I have then run Lucene to index the files. Searching for a string with the Lucene demo program is pretty fast. Splitting and indexing took a few minutes: this is totally acceptable for me because it is a static data set that I want to query. The next step is to integrate Lucene in the main program and use the hits returned by Lucene to load the relevant records into main memory."}
{"_id": "104238", "title": "Is it efficient to attach a comment on every function?", "text": "I moved to this company recently, and my first reaction of the development process leaves me with doubts. Here is where I really doubt the efficiency: _Every single_ function _must_ have Javadoc style comment, and the code is tested by White-box Test automatically. Even when I write simple & short function, the function must have a Javadoc style comment. For example:               void request_ait(void)     {           hoa_request_ait();     }      If I write code without a Javadoc style comment, even for this simple function, the QA tool register it as a defect. So I write a simple comment template. For example:               /**       * @author peter       * @version 1.0       * @since   2011-08-28       */         void request_ait(void)         {               hoa_request_ait();         }      I know that comments on API functions or important functions are really useful. But forcing every function to have a Javadoc style comment is inefficient... I want to listen your opinion. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "220068", "title": "File with Apache 2.0 and my modifications", "text": "I read the original text of Apache License, Version 2.0 and the explanation in plain English. OK, I copy a class distributed by _The Best Company in the World_ , their license, and modify the code a bit. **The original file with my changes.**               /*      * Copyright (C) 2011 The Best Company in the World      *       * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the \"License\");      * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.      * You may obtain a copy of the License at      *       * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0      *       * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software      * distributed under the License is distributed on an \"AS IS\" BASIS,      * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.      * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and      * limitations under the License.      */          package com.mypackage;          public class MyClass {              private void someMethod() {             // Their code             // My little change         }     }      Then I use MyClass in my application.   1. Do I need to replace _The Best Company in the World_ with the name of my company or with my own name? If not, will my project contain two licenses: theirs and mine? Where to save them in this case?   2. And as far as I understand, I must distribute my application using Apache Licence, Version 2.0. Wikipedia says: > The Apache License is widely, but not universally, considered permissive in > that it does not require a derivative work of the software, or modifications > to the original, to be distributed using the same license (unlike copyleft > licenses \u2013 see comparison)."}
{"_id": "220061", "title": "can you have too many dto/bo - mapping method", "text": "I have a windows service, 2 web services and a web interface that need to follow the same path (data wise). So I came up with two ways of creating my solution. ![first one](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zcPcD.png) My concern is the fact that the UI/WS/etc will have their own kind of DTO (let's say the model in ASP.Net MVC) that should be mapped to a DTO so the SL can then map it to a BO then mapping it to the proper EF6 DTO so that I can save it in a database. So I'm thinking of doing it this way ![second one](http://i.stack.imgur.com/viDm4.png) to remove one level of mapping. Which one should I take? Or is there a 3rd solution?"}
{"_id": "191619", "title": "How can I access my Handler/runnable class from all my other classes in Android?", "text": "I am trying to create a class which allows me to do something every 5 seconds and I want to be able to start and stop this from running from any of the other classes. Here is my Timer class:               public class Timer extends Activity {          @Override     protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {         // TODO Auto-generated method stub         super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);               }              Handler handler = new Handler();         Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {                  public void run() {                      Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), \"DISPLAY MESSAGE\", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();                 handler.postDelayed(runnable, 5000);             }         };     }      Now my knowledge on Object Orientated programming is not as good as I thought it was, I am used to creating instances of classes and using the classes properties, but how can I use a classes properties once across the whole program, do I still create instances of the Timer class in other classes? Should I use the Singleton pattern, or should I make the class static? So basically In Class1 I would like to start the timer by doing this:               Timer.runnable.run();      And perhaps in Class2 stop the runnable started in Class1 by doing this:               Timer.handler.removeCallbacks(runnable);      I am looking for advice and an explanation on the correct way to program this idea and why. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "55662", "title": "How can Agile methodologies be adapted to High Volume processing system development?", "text": "I am developing high volume processing systems. Like mathematical models that calculate various parameters based on millions of records, calculated derived fields over milions of records, process huge files having transactions etc... I am well aware of unit testing methodologies and if my code is in C# I have no problem in unit testing it. Problem is I often have code in T-SQL, C# code that is a SQL stored assembly, and SSIS workflow with a good amount of logic (and outcomes etc) or some SAS process. What is the approach YOu use when developing such systems. I usually develop several tests as Stored procedures in a designed schema(TEST) and then automatically run them overnight and check out the results. But this is only for T-SQL. And Continous integration IS hard. But the problem is with testing SSIS packages. How do You test it? What is Your preferred approach for stubbing data into tables (especially if You need a lot data initialization). I have some approach derived over the years but maybe I am just not reading enough articles. So Banking, Telecom, Risk developers out there. How do You test your mission critical apps that process milions of records at end day, month end etc? What frameworks do You use? How do You validate that Your ssis package is Correct (as You develop it)/ How do You achieve continous integration in such an environment (Personally I never got there)? I hope this is not to open-ended question. How do You test Your map-reduce jobs for example (i do not use hadoop but this is quite similar). luke Hope that this is not too open ended"}
{"_id": "222516", "title": "Support Vector Machines as Neural Nets?", "text": "This is more of a conceptual question. I have learned about Neural Nets, and I have some clue as to how Support Vector Machines work. I read somewhere however that given the appropriate kernel (is that right?), the SVM is identical to the Neural Net. Could someone who understands this please enlighten me as to how that's possible?"}
{"_id": "79997", "title": "What's wrong with being a code monkey? (Or, what is a code monkey?)", "text": "Programmers tend to talk about being a \"code monkey\" in a derogatory way. \"Don't work _there_ , you will just be a code monkey!\". I have two offers for jobs, one at a small company, one at a very large company (same salary). My friend just told me I will be a code monkey at the large company, and knows from first hand experience that the small company will be more rewarding than reducing me to a \"code monkey\". I don't really understand the distinction between a \"code monkey\" and a \"real\" programmer. Please elaborate. I love programming, so to me the idea of sitting at a computer programming (i.e., code monkey) doesn't seem bad. What does a programmer mean by \"code monkey\" if he/she enjoys programming?"}
{"_id": "116807", "title": "Is my description of the actor model right?", "text": "If I understood, the actor model is just like the object model, but with a few differences:   1. EVERY object spawns it's own separate thread and its not a problem even when you have thousands of objects.   2. Actors don't interact by calling functions and getting return values but instead by sending and receiving messages.   3. If you don't violate that model your app will be using concurrency to its full power without any risks of race conditions.   4. Everything you can do in OO you can do using actors but better, the problem being that everything we coded in the last years was OO based - but a transition is imminent. So for instance, suppose I have to define 3d vector class/actor, create two instance and call a sum operation on them. OBJECT ORIENTED:               class V3d {        constructor V3d(x,y,z) //bla        float x,y,z;        function sum(V3d b)         {            return V3d(x+b.x,y+b.y,z+b.z);         }     }          //using:     mySum = V3d(1,2,3).sum(V3d(3,2,1)) //creates 2 instances, sum, returns instantly     drawPoint(mySum) //uses the result      ACTOR MODEL:               actor V3d      {         constructor V3d(x,y,z) //bla         float x,y,z;         loop          {            receive 'sum',b:V3d :                send(caller,'sumResult',V3d(x+b.x,y+b.y,z+b.z))         }      }          //using:     send(V3d(1,2,3),'sum',V3d(3,2,1)) //creates 2 instances, send to the first one a request to sum with the second one          loop      {        receive 'sumResult',result:           drawPoint(result) //receives result and draws it     }      Is that it? Or am I completely wrong?"}
{"_id": "79991", "title": "Questions about using open source software commercially?", "text": "Here's my situation: I'm starting a small computer repair business on the side. I'll be making house calls in my neighborhood but in the future I'd like to provide remote support. I was thinking of a VNC-based solution but I don't know if it would be practical to use an existing one or not. I was tossing around the idea of writing a custom VNC-based remote support solution. It would have all my own wording and logos so it would seem much more professional I think. First, how difficult would something like that be? I have a little coding experience and I usually just learn new things out of necessity, like in this case. Also, since I'd be basing my software off of open source and using it for profit, would that be allowed? Would I have to release the source? Thanks."}
{"_id": "250745", "title": "Daily builds with SVN for a small team", "text": "I have a general question regarding best practices. I have a small team working on a medium-scale software project, which involves integrating code from different environments, etc. The project is a standalone piece of desktop software. Based on lessons learned from a similar prior project that went badly, I am trying to implement some better software engineering practices. I'd like to start by automating daily builds. We use SVN for source control, and all the developers are working in the trunk, including me. My question is rather simple: Where locally do we do the daily builds? Should I make another folder on my local machine that is the \"daily build\" folder? Should I set up a virtual machine? Should I suck it up and do it in my development folder? I understand the revision control paradigms pretty well. I'm mostly looking for how folks implement it _in practice_."}
{"_id": "151834", "title": "Quantitfying a cost for a software project", "text": "_Disclaimer: I didn't know exactly where to put this question. If you feel that this question is not suitable for Programmers @ StackExchange, feel free to migrate it._ _Background:_ Broadening my last question, there is a request for tender for a software system that's open and I have decided to take it on. I am a software developer & engineer by profession and, in this tender process, I have to put on the pricing for my bid. I have been provided a documentation consisting of functional and non-functional requirements only. I have to put a project manager's cap on and think of all aspects, e.g. cost for implementation for the project, resources needed, etc. My question is: Is there a project framework that I can follow that breaks the project cycle into steps and corresponding cost aspect or how would I go about best calculating/approximating the cost for the project?"}
{"_id": "25369", "title": "Is Ruby on Rails supposed to have a steep learning curve or is it just me?", "text": "I'm a self-taught programmer. I've been learning RoR since October with varying intensity (sometimes all day, sometimes nothing for several weeks). Before that I knew only Java, but knew it pretty well. I've heard so much hype about RoR and how it's supposed to make you happy, productive, etc. So far it's only made me frustrated. I learned it out of the Agile book, and I suspect part of the difficulty might have to do with my not knowing JavaScript and CSS, and having only a shaky grasp of databases and HTML. But apparently it took me much longer to complete the project in the Agile book than other people, and I still don't remember much of it. There are some things about Rails that I just can't seem to get, e.g. when to use symbols and when NOT to, or how dynamic methods are called. Recently I was given a small Rails assignment where I'm asked to make a small change to the interface. It's taken me around 25 hours and although I've made some progress in understanding the code, I still have no idea how to proceed. I can't even ask Stack Overflow because there is so much code I'll have to provide to give context. So my question is in the title: is RoR supposed to take a long time to learn or am I just slow? Can it be that I've been learning from the wrong book? My learning style is such that I either understand nothing or understand everything, if that makes sense."}
{"_id": "151830", "title": "Is there any functional difference between immutable value types and immutable reference types?", "text": "Value types are types which do not have an identity. When one variable is modified, other instances are not. Using Javascript syntax as an example, here is how a value type works.               var foo = { a: 42 };     var bar = foo;     bar.a = 0;     // foo.a is still 42      Reference types are types which do have an identity. When one variable is modified, other instances are as well. Here is how a reference type works.               var foo = { a: 42 };     var bar = foo;     bar.a = 0;     // foo.a is now 0      Note how the example uses mutatable objects to show the difference. If the objects were immutable, you couldn't do that, so that kind of testing for value/reference types doesn't work. **Is there any functional difference between immutable value types and immutable reference types? Is there any algorithm that can tell the difference between a reference type and a value type if they are immutable?** Reflection is cheating. I'm wondering this mostly out of curiosity."}
{"_id": "167652", "title": "How to justify technology choice to customer?", "text": "When freelancing / contracting a customer will typically specify functional requirements, acceptance criteria, etc, and the implementation details are in the developer's hands. As a developer your technology choice is a balancing act between what you are most familiar with, technologically what the right tool appears to be, ease of finding coders with this skill and their expense, and a few other factors. I'm in a situation where I have evaluated my options and selected a somewhat obscure open source technology that I believe will get me there faster, easier, and be more maintanable in the long term. It's different, but I think that that is what the requirements call for. The customer has inquired about what I'm going to use to build the solution, and now they are concerned because they've never heard of it before. The reasons for my choice are mostly technical, whereas the customer isn't (but they know some buzzwords!). Explaining these technical reasons will not be easy, and I am not sure if that is the right way to approach this situation anyway. And that's my question: what is the right way to approach this situation so as to cause the least amount of headache for everyone involved?"}
{"_id": "25366", "title": "How do you decide what kind of database to use?", "text": "I really dislike the name \"NoSQL\", because it isn't very descriptive. It tells me what the databases _aren't_ where I'm more interested in what the databases _are_. I really think that this category really encompasses several categories of database. I'm just trying to get a general idea of what job each particular database is the best tool for. A few assumptions I'd like to make (and would ask you to make):   1. Assume that you have the capability to hire any number of brilliant engineers who are equally experienced with every database technology that has ever existed.   2. Assume you have the technical infrastructure to support any given database (including available servers and sysadmins who can support said database).   3. Assume that each database has the best support possible for free.   4. Assume you have 100% buy-in from management.   5. Assume you have an infinite amount of money to throw at the problem. Now, I realize that the above assumptions eliminate a lot of valid considerations that are involved in choosing a database, but my focus is on figuring out what database is best for the job on a purely technical level. So, given the above assumptions, the question is: what jobs are each database (including both SQL and NoSQL) the best tool for and why?"}
{"_id": "151838", "title": "const vs. readonly for a singleton", "text": "First off, I understand there are folk who oppose the use of singletons. I think it's an appropriate use in this case as it's constant state information, but I'm open to differing opinions / solutions. (See The singleton pattern and When should the singleton pattern not be used?) Second, for a broader audience: C++/CLI has a similar keyword to `readonly` with `initonly`, so this isn't strictly a C# type question. (Literal field versus constant variable in C++/CLI) Sidenote: A discussion of some of the nuances on using const or readonly. My Question: I have a singleton that anchors together some different data structures. Part of what I expose through that singleton are some lists and other objects, which represent the necessary keys or columns in order to connect the linked data structures. I doubt that anyone would try to change these objects through a different module, but I want to explicitly protect them from that risk. So I'm currently using a \"readonly\" modifier on those objects*. I'm using readonly instead of const with the lists as I read that using const will embed those items in the referencing assemblies and will therefore trigger a rebuild of those referencing assemblies if / when the list(s) is/are modified. This seems like a tighter coupling than I would want between the modules, but I wonder if I'm obsessing over a moot point. (This is question #2 below) The alternative I see to using \"readonly\" is to make the variables private and then wrap them with a public get. I'm struggling to see the advantage of this approach as it seems like wrapper code that doesn't provide much additional benefit. (This is question #1 below) It's highly unlikely that we'll change the contents or format of the lists - they're a compilation of things to avoid using magic strings all over the place. Unfortunately, not all the code has converted over to using this singleton's presentation of those strings. Likewise, I don't know that we'd change the containers / classes for the lists. So while I normally argue for the encapsulations advantages a get wrapper provides, I'm just not feeling it in this case. A representative sample of my singleton               public sealed class mySingl     {         private static volatile mySingl sngl;         private static object lockObject = new Object();              public readonly Dictionary<string, string> myDict = new Dictionary<string, string>()         {             {\"I\", \"index\"},             {\"D\", \"display\"},         };              public enum parms         {             ABC = 10,             DEF = 20,             FGH = 30         };              public readonly List<parms> specParms = new List<parms>()          {              parms.ABC,              parms.FGH          };              public static mySingl Instance         {             get             {                 if(sngl == null)                 {                     lock(lockObject)                     {                         if(sngl == null)                             sngl = new mySingl();                     }                 }                 return sngl;             }         }              private mySingl()          {             doSomething();         }     }      Questions:   1. Am I taking the most reasonable approach in this case?   2. Should I be worrying about const vs. readonly?   3. is there a better way of providing this information?"}
{"_id": "55946", "title": "Release build vs nightly build", "text": "A typical solution is to have a CI (Continuous Integration) build running on a build server: It will analyze the source code, make build (in debug) and run tests, measure test coverage, etc. Now, another build type usually known is \"Nightly build\": do slow stuff like create code documents, make a setup package, deploy to test environment, and run automatic (smoke or acceptance) tests against the test environment, etc. Now, the question:   * Is it better to have a third separate \"Release build\" as release build?    * Or do \"Nightly build\" in release mode and use it as a release? What are you using in your company? (The release build should also add some kind of tag to source control of potential product version.)"}
{"_id": "104584", "title": "What are the reasons that make PHP more popular for freelancing world?", "text": "In many freelancing websites, you see many job ads for PHP (backed by MySQL). However, job ads for .NET, Java, Ruby, etc. are not that much. What are the reasons which make PHP so popular for freelancing? Is it because of its importance? Or is it because PHP is free? The reason I'm asking this question is that, I'm an ASP.NET developer and while I see that ASP.NET development productivity is higher (because of fascinating tools it has), it still doesn't attract developers as much as PHP. I want to know if I'm missing something here that I should take into account or no."}
{"_id": "104582", "title": "Algorithm design for comparing split times in a race", "text": "I need to determine the ranking of values in an array without altering their position, so that I can print the position of each split time next to the actual value of the split time in a table like so.               <table>     <tr>       <th>Split 1</th>       <th>Split 2</th>       <th>Split 3</th>     </tr>     <tr>       <td>4.66 (1)</td>       <td>5.12 (3)</td>       <td>4.75 (2)</td>     </tr>     </table>      My array = [4.66, 5.12, 4.75] and I need to iterate through it and print the rank rank as seen in parenthesis above. I can't sort, because I need to do this for several decimals in the html table. Any suggestions for implementing this algorithm?"}
{"_id": "150122", "title": "Productivity enhancing development strategies for small teams", "text": "I think one of the best ways to learn and become a better programmer is to share knowledge gained from working on personal or work projects with others. One way to do this at the workplace is to set aside an hour or so a week and let one or several team members present their progress on the part of the code base they have been working on. This is especially helpful when each team member has a specialized skill set. What are some other useful practices that managers can institute to increase team cohesion and improve productivity?"}
{"_id": "82364", "title": "Common Industry Term For Negative Logging?", "text": "It is one thing to log something that happened in code, a process, or procedure. It is another thing to log something that didn't happen. For example, if your ETL system is supposed to receive a file every hour for import, and a file did not arrive at the usual appointed time, then it would be good to log \"what didn't happen.\" I've called this negative logging, but I'm curious if there is an industry common term for this - a term which means \"log both what happened **and what didn't happen**.\" Any idea?"}
{"_id": "150120", "title": "Definition of \"state\"", "text": "What is a good way to define \"state\", as in state variable or state machine, to a new (previously non) programmer? What are some good ways to explain why this concept is useful for writing software? Is the concept of state explicitly taught in beginning programming courses or books commonly?"}
{"_id": "150127", "title": "Securing client->database game", "text": "OK, I am creating a game using JavaScript and HTML5. The variables such as `map`, `x`, `y`, `level`, `exp`, etc are stored in JavaScript to keep track. On my client page, the JavaScript variables are stored to play along with the game. Every 5 seconds, the client page sends a POST AJAX call to the MySQL database and it successfully updates it. However a user can easily modify the JavaScript variables and cheat their way in the game. Then once they edit the JavaScript variables, the POST grabs that and updates it even though they edited it unethically. So, how do I prevent this from happening?"}
{"_id": "155330", "title": "How do you call the process of taking a part of a function and making an individual function of it?", "text": "I know there was a **technical term** for this. I'm just can't remember what it was. If the title needs clarification, here is what I mean; If this is the old code:               Result foobar(Param1,Param2,Param3) {       code that does abc       code that does xyz       code that does asdf       more code that does something     }      and it's changed into:               SomeResult do_xyz(SomeParams) {       code that does xyz     }     Result foobar() {       code that does abc       do_xyz(args);       code that does asdf       more code that does something     }"}
{"_id": "253614", "title": "Implementing custom \"Remember Me\" with Stripe", "text": "Implementing **remember me** with Stripe, while not using their `Checkout` (not supported on PhoneGap), seems to be fine using the path: **First time:**   1. Request token on the client side using card info.   2. Create customer on server side using token.   3. Upon confirm, charge customer. **Second time:**   1. Check if current user is Stripe customer by requesting the info from our server.   2. If is Stripe customer, show \"use credit card on file\" instead of regular CC form.   3. Upon confirm, charge customer. However, there is one important convenience items missing--last four digits of card number. Most sites inform you of the card you're using before making the payment, pretty important in case you have to switch out cards. I have seen that you can retrieve charges which would allow me to get the last four digits. Is it bad practice to pull that and display it? Are there alternative solutions anyone has in mind?"}
{"_id": "253617", "title": "Does a custom scripting language require it's own compiler/assembler?", "text": "Or is the script generally converted to a known language such as C++ first? And how generally to you integrate a scripting language with the say a game engine?"}
{"_id": "253616", "title": "Tracking contributions from contributors not using git", "text": "I have a central git repo located on a server. I have many contributors that are not tech savvy, do not have server access, and do not know anything about git. But they are able to contribute via the project's web side. Each of them logs on via a web browser and contributes to the project. I have set things up so that when they log on, each user's contributions are made into a cloned repo on the server that is specifically for that user. Periodically, I log on to the server, visit each of their repos, and do a git diff to make sure they haven't done anything bad. If all is well, I commit their changes and push them to the central repo. Of course I need to manually look at their changes so that I can add an appropriate commit message. But I would also like to track who made the changes. I am making the commit, and I (and the web server) are the only users that are actually writing anything to the server. I could track this in the commit messages. While this strikes me as wrong, if this is my only option, is there a way to make userx's cloned repo always include \"userx: \" before each commit message that I add, so that I do not have to remind myself which user's repo I am in? Or even better, is there an easy way for me to make the commit, but in such a way as I credit the user whose cloned repo I am in?"}
{"_id": "127778", "title": "Knowledge and skills required for Sharepoint", "text": "I was just wondering what skills and technologies I need to know to in order to start a career path in Sharepoint. I know that it primarily depends on the job I am applying for but there must be a number of baseline skills that are common among most Sharepoint jobs. Btw, I'm currently a CS student who has only learnt Java."}
{"_id": "253612", "title": "One boilerplate class or many similar classes?", "text": "Lets say I'm trying to model a variety of objects that are virtually identical, the only difference being their class variables. Am I better off creating one boilerplate class and just calling the constructor with the specific variables, or creating a lot (in this case 100+) of essentially identical classes and hard coding their class variables (which will never change)? To be clear:   * Identical methods    * Identical class variable names but different values   * Identical intended functionality To be clear, my language (Python) doesn't support interfaces that I'm aware of - some of the other similar questions seemed to get answers recommending that. The other option that seems to make sense to me would be to create a base class with each field and method and then create a bunch of unique child classes that contain their unique values. The amount of work to create all the child classes isn't significant to me - I've written a program that quickly parses a text file (that has all the unique values) and can write all the classes to a .py file quickly and easily. Making changes down the road is rather easy for the same reason. (somewhat) Related questions   * Create many similar classes, or just one   * Good Programming Practice for similar child classes"}
{"_id": "64572", "title": "How do you feel about browsers getting into the low level intricacies?", "text": "i was working on a website with FF4 and while resizing an element with Firebug, FF4 just crashed my nVidia Display Driver. Fortunately Windows 7 was able to help me by recovering from this serious error and i was able to completely recover my work again. So my question is, should those browser developers get into low level hardware intricacies, something that was reserved only for game developers and complex graphic software?"}
{"_id": "153474", "title": "Why are so many languages passed by value?", "text": "Even languages where you have explicit pointer manipulation like C it's always passed by value (you _can_ pass them by reference but that's not the default behavior). What is the benefit of this, why are so many languages passed by values and **why are others passed by reference** ? (I understand Haskell is passed by reference though I'm not sure)."}
{"_id": "215620", "title": "Whether to separate out methods or not", "text": "I am new to java and want to learn best coding practices and understand why one method is better than another, in terms of efficiency and as the coding becomes more complicated. This is just an example, but I can take the principles from here to apply elsewhere. I have need an option to display `stuff`, and have put the method `stuff` separately from the method to ask if the user wants to display the `stuff`, as `stuff` has a lot of lines of code. For readability I have done this:               public static void displayStuff ()     {              String input = getInput (\"Display stuff? Y/N \\n\");                  if (input..equalsIgnoreCase (\"Y\"))                      {                     stuff ();                 }             else if (input.equalsIgnoreCase (\"N\"))                 {                     //quit program                   }             else                 {                     //throw error                        System.out.print(\"Error! Enter Y or N: \\n\");                      }         }               private static String stuff ()         {             //to lots of things here                  return stuff ();         }      Or               public static void displayStuff ()     {              String input = getInput (\"Display stuff? Y/N \\n\");                  if (input..equalsIgnoreCase (\"Y\"))                      {                     //to lots of things here                                         stuff;                 }             else if (input.equalsIgnoreCase (\"N\"))                 {                     //quit program                   }             else                 {                     //throw error                        System.out.print(\"Error! Enter Y or N: \\n\");                      }         }      Is it better to keep them together and why? Also, should the second method be private or public, if I am asking for data within the class? _I am not sure if this is on topic for here. please advise._"}
{"_id": "120202", "title": "Is it good practice to use functions just to centralize common code?", "text": "I run across this problem a lot. For example, I currently write a read function and a write function, and they both check if `buf` is a NULL pointer and that the `mode` variable is within certain boundaries. This is code duplication. This can be solved by moving it into its own function. But should I? This will be a pretty anemic function (doesn't do much), rather localized (so not general purpose), and doesn't stand well on its own (can't figure out what you need it for unless you see where it is used). Another option is to use a macro, but I want to talk about functions in this post. So, should you use a function for something like this? What are the pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "64579", "title": "How do you feel about being asked to code during an interview?", "text": "I have seen a lot of comments about good interview questions and puzzles to require potential developers to solve during the interview process. I have personally had several interviews in which the interviewer has asked me to write some piece of code or solve a problem during the interview, and I have always performed very poorly in these \"tests\". The reason is simple, as a developer who spends my days talking to computers, I find I have to prepare myself and \"switch gears\" to be in \"interview mode\". I prepare myself to make a good impression. When I'm programming, I'm very focused and am totally different from when I'm being \"interpersonal\". I just can't get into \"the zone\" when I'm also having to be a charming and witty potential employee. I feel that by asking a developer to prove his skills during an interview, all you're doing is finding out if they can code under pressure, and at the drop of a hat. It has almost no ability to determine how you would perform in a \"real life\" development situation. Maybe, if you're looking for someone that can code and chat at the same time, i can see how that would be beneficial. But I think you overlook potential candidates that simply do not perform well in such an artificial environment. While I appreciate that a potential employer wants to see what I can do, I don't think an interview is the place for such a test. I mean, suppose a job for an over the road trucker required that you drive while being interviewed. How does that really end well? So I'm curious as to what others think about such situations. Have you failed interviews because you were not in the right frame of mind? Have you failed to make a good interpersonal impression because you were too distracted trying to solve the problem? If you're a hiring manager, or someone that gives interviews, do you even think about such things? Is it really important that someone perform well in an interview? EDIT: To clarify, I'm not against testing applicants. My concern is about testing during an interview. **See also** : What are the pros and cons for the employer of code questions during an interview? looking at this from the interviewer's point of view."}
{"_id": "195426", "title": "Is there a name for being able to quickly find the relevant code?", "text": "I notice that a property of codebases that I like hacking on is that it's quick to find the relevant code for some feature, without knowing much about the code base at all. For example, searching for a label in the GUI, and immediately hitting the code that implements that feature. This seems to be in direct tension with abstraction layers, where the label is probably buried behind an I18N module, and the business logic is probably further removed in an MVC framework. (It can be mitigated by including GUI labels in comments though, for example.) It's obviously part of maintainability, but is there a name for this specific, desirable, property?"}
{"_id": "120208", "title": "How do I display copyright correctly when using components with multiple permissive licenses?", "text": "I am writing a commercial application that will make use of some open libraries licensed under different licenses. For example one library will be licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, another will use the LGPL license. Both licenses allow usage in commercial applications, but differ in the way the attributions of licensed work is given. It is my first commercial application that uses 3rd party libraries and I want to do the right thing so that the 3rd party licenses are satisfied. I am not only asking what I should do, but also what I must not do. What is the best way to go about displaying these licenses?"}
{"_id": "251615", "title": "What is meant by \"OOP hides the state\"?", "text": "In one of many anti-OOP rants on cat-v.org I found a passage by Joe Armstrong raising several objections against the OOP model, one of which was the following: > Objection 4 \u2013 Objects have private state > > State is the root of all evil. In particular functions with side effects > should be avoided. > > While state in programming languages is undesirable, in the real world state > abounds. I am highly interested in the state of my bank account, and when I > deposit or withdraw money from my bank I expect the state of my bank account > to be correctly updated. > > Given that state exists in the real world what facilities should programming > language provide for dealing with state? > > OOPLs say \u201chide the state from the programmer\u201d. The states is hidden and > visible only through access functions. Conventional programming languages > (C, Pascal) say that the visibility of state variables is controlled by the > scope rules of the language. Pure declarative languages say that there is no > state. The global state of the system is carried into all functions and > comes out from all functions. Mechanisms like monads (for FPLs) and DCGs > (logic languages) are used to hide state from the programmer so they can > program \u201cas if state didn\u2019t matter\u201d but have full access to the state of the > system should this be necessary. > > The \u201chide the state from the programmer\u201d option chosen by OOPLs is the worse > possible choice. Instead of revealing the state and trying to find ways to > minimise the nuisance of state, they hide it away. What exactly is meant by this? I have very little low level or procedural experience, mostly OOP, so that probably explains how unfamiliar with this I am. And from a more modern standpoint, now that most of the Object-Oriented hysteria is passed (at least as far as I can tell), how accurate/relevant do you guys think that passage is? Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "251614", "title": "Django CBVs vs FBVs", "text": "For creating a large Django project with many apps, my first initial thought was to used Class Based Views (as the Django tutorials seem to emphasize). However, I noticed that due to a lot of the customizations to each app (multiple forms on each page etc), it became very tedious and was much easier to just implement Function Based Views where I just added decorators such as `@require_GET` and `@login_required` for easy authentication and method not supported messages, and am thoroughly convinced I will never go back to CBVs. From a long term support perspective, has anyone had issues with choosing FBVs over CBVs? Am I doing something in the short term that will hurt long term, and could perhaps be solved by custom Class Based Views?"}
{"_id": "251612", "title": "Architecture for application-wide diagnostic-gathering tool?", "text": "My product owner wants us to report more information on the state of the product when a user contacts customer service through an in-app form. The form eventually results in an email being sent to a customer service email list and handled elsewhere. The part I'm struggling with is how to augment my existing iOS project to allow for some controller to collect diagnostic information from a variety of disparate classes, and do it in a way that's minimally invasive and won't cause a headache if refactoring later. ## Blocks I've experimented with a few ideas, including having an interface that allows an arbitrary class to register a block to be executed when attempting to collect the diagnostic information:               [DiagnosticCollectionController addBlockForDiagnosis:^(DiagnosticCollectionController *controller){         // Add some information here to the controller to send in the diagnostic report     }];      ## Notifications Another idea I had in mind was to have the diagnostic controller broadcast a notification when it's ready to start gathering information, so that other objects can attach what they need to. The (potential) advantage here is that I can get away from using blocks thus prevent myself from having block copy issues:               [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self                                               selector:@selector(someSelectorToHandleDiagnosticPopulation:)                                                   name:DiagnosticCollectionControllerWillSendDiagnostics                                                 object:someDiagnosticController];     // Elsewhere     - (void) someSelectorToHandleDiagnosticPopulation:(NSNotification *)note {         DiagnosticController *controller = [note object];         [controller addDiagnosticData:someDataDictionary];     }"}
{"_id": "218673", "title": "Do $_POST, $_GET, etc violate the encapsulation principle?", "text": "Using globals makes your code hard to test thus more prone to bugs, not secure and unpredictable. That's why we pass the variables we want inside a function/object. So my question is simple: **Do $_POST, $_GET, etc violatethe encapsulation principle?** I'm thinking that, to retain control of those variables in an OO way, an ideal solution would be to add some lines like this to the code:               // Convert the $_GET array to an object     $get = json_decode(json_encode($_GET), FALSE);  // stackoverflow.com/a/1869147     // Stop it from being included from anywhere     unset($_GET);          // Small example of what could be done later on     $DB = new PDO(/* ... */);     $Person = new Person($DB, $get->id);      I haven't seen this anywhere, not even a tutorial nor recommendation. Also, we can clearly see how the code above is much easier to be tested than one that includes `$Person = new Person($DB, $_GET['id']);` or even (the ugly) `$Person = new Person($DB);` as you can use a mock `$get` object. Is the code above in the right direction or am I missing something? **EDIT:** After some investigation (Zend framework and Cake PHP) as Alexander Kuzmin suggested, it seems to be the right thing to go. They're probably too big for me to dig into the code ATM, but I'll keep it in mind."}
{"_id": "210056", "title": "Is it safe to transmit access tokens via HTTP headers?", "text": "It's the first RESTful web service and I am concerned about security issues. Is it safe to transmit my access token via HTTP headers? For example:               POST /v1/i/resource HTTP/1.1     Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded     Api-key: 5cac3297f0d9f46e1gh3k83881ba0980215cd71e     Access_token: 080ab6bd49b138594ac9647dc929122adfb983c8          parameter1=foo&parameter2=bar      The connection made over `SSL`. Also, What is need to be defined as the `scope` attribute for every `access token`"}
{"_id": "117178", "title": "Silverlight UI and PRISM - how to properly break down components?", "text": "This is how my solution looks like right now. And it get's to the point where my Controls need reference to Model. It get's real tough to keep Infrastructure, Constants, Controls and Model separated. For download size and modularity MAIN and Modules (there is many) will stay separate. But those core libraries seem to be referenced by all modules and MAIN. I don't see a point in keeping them in separate projects. I'm sure all of you had this same issue. So, I wonder if I should keep trying and keep them separate/loosely coupled (hard to do now without circular references) or it is OK to merge them into one Infrastructure project? My Model has lot's of metadata and this metadate needed in controls and other places. Thats where it get's tight. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GvAus.jpg)"}
{"_id": "193612", "title": "Reuse MVC4 codebase / deploy MVC4 as standalone desktop application?", "text": "We have an MVC4 application that we would also need to distribute as a standalone (no network connectivity) desktop application. Rather than rebuild the HTML/JS front-end we would like to reuse that so in essence we're distributing a self-hosted HTML-view-based .NET MVC application. What we _roughly_ envision is: MVC4 .NET DLL + JS libraries + Self-hosted HTTP core + self/embedded browser view. For this standalone desktop app, we're only concerned with Windows OS. Question: Is that practically doable or just a theoretical idea? How would we practically go about achieving that? We are attempting to minimize codebase fragmentation (and duplicate maintenance). We anyways have to support IE for the \"online\" version of the MVC app. To Clarify: The user experience we would like to have is:   * Single large .exe file that encapsulates all resources within it   * Double clicking it launches a rectangle window within which the HTML app is rendered. This would be similar to how iOS apps have an \"HTML view\" which uses the OS's in-built HTML renderer (on Windows I assume it's IE?)"}
{"_id": "193614", "title": "How to write unit tests without mocking data", "text": "My design doesn't allow me to mock the data so I am using sqlite as test database that has minimum data to run the unit tests. Below is the pseudo code               //Method to be tested     public IList<Funds> GetFunds()     {           List<Funds> objFundsList = //gets two records from sqlite db;       return objFundsList;     }               //Test Method     public void Check_If_Get_Funds_Returns_List_of_Funds()     {           FundsService obj = new FundsService();           var lstFunds =   obj.GetFunds();           Assert.AreEqual(2,lstFunds.Count());           //Do I need to get first item here to check if bindings for fund is successful           var fund = obj.GetFunds().First();           Assert.AreEqual(\"test\",fund.Name);     }      Since I am not using in-memory mock objects, I can't do sequenceequal. In this scenario, which other tests I can include."}
{"_id": "166308", "title": "What are the options for setting up a UNIX environment to learn C using Kernighan and Richie's The C Programming Language?", "text": "I'm a novice programmer and have been experimenting with Javascript, jQuery and PHP but felt I wasn't getting a real depth of understanding of what I was doing. So, after reading Joel Spolsky's response to a question on this site (which I can't find now!), I took it back to basics and read Charles Petzold's 'Code' and am about to move onto Kernighan and Richie's The C Programming Language. I want to learn this in a UNIX environment but only have access to a Windows system. I have Ubuntu 12.04 running on a virtualised machine via VMWare Player, and done some coding in the terminal. Is using a Linux distro the only option for programming in a UNIX environment on Windows? And what are the next steps to start programming in C in UNIX and where do I get a compiler from?"}
{"_id": "166300", "title": "How to implement a text editor in a browser?", "text": "This is purely an exercise in self improvement and education.I am trying to implement an extension for a vi-like text editor within a browser. Can anyone give any advice or pointers as to where and how I should start?"}
{"_id": "255191", "title": "Writing a compiler, which targets a custom Virtual Machine", "text": "I've been stuck on a concept for a while. I've been writing toy-languages that are interpreted recently. I've decided I want to move on and to try and create a compiler. I don't really want to use something like LLVM, but instead I want to create my own Stack Based Virtual Machine to generate code for. My question is, how would I go around this? Or rather, what are some good references for building a compiler, which generates code for a custom virtual machine, and finally -- what's the formal term for such a compiler?"}
{"_id": "199755", "title": "How does signing headers and/or body provide security", "text": "I'm securing a WCF webservice with `TransportWithMessageCredential` security that uses certificates. So I'll have to choosee between **signing** headers & body or **signing and encrypting**. Now my question is, after reading _Understanding Protection Level_ what the advantage is of just signing? The fact that WCF will notice that someone has been messing around with the message and going to reject it or am I wrong? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "2700", "title": "What was the worst piece of code you fixed that you are proud of?", "text": "I have had a few that I am proud of and some of them were written by myself few years ago. It doesn't have to be necessarily buggy, just bad code."}
{"_id": "93820", "title": "Pair programming. How?", "text": "I always want to try some pair programming especially with the one who is more experienced programmer than I am. But how can it be done? Are there any websites where people can collaborate and find partners or something else?"}
{"_id": "25052", "title": "In plain English, what is recursion?", "text": "The idea of recursion is not very common in real world. So, it seems a bit confusing to the novice programmers. Though, I guess, they become used to the concept gradually. So, what can be a nice explanation for them to grasp the idea easily?"}
{"_id": "206745", "title": "Having trouble understanding recursion", "text": "I have just started learning about recursion but I'm having a hard time understanding it. Please would you recommend any links or books that explain recursion in detail."}
{"_id": "93825", "title": "Which assembly should I learn?", "text": "I would like to learn about reverse engineering, but I'm little bit confused with many different assemblies. So to say... Let me explain! Everytime I start reading assembly tutorial it states it is for MC8600 or x86 or some other CPU. I found here explanation why there is so many assemblies. And I found here and here some useful stuff about RE and assembly. Nevertheless, I'm still little bit scared that I will be learning assembly for 2-3 months, then take some \"real-world\" application and won't be able to do RE because I know, let say, MC8600 assembly and it's compilled on x86 CPU. So, the question would be... If I want to learn assembly which can be used on modern application (not only for RE), which assembly should I learn? Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "93824", "title": "Social Impact projects", "text": "I'm working at a software consultancy that a has a lot of volunteers available for about a month and a half at a time (when we're between projects and learning things) and we'd like to start contributing to open source projects that have a positive social impact. Any idea which projects we can look at? The constraints are:   * Built on a fairly modern language and stack that's suitable for beginners but has wide adoption - Java+Spring+Hibernate / RoR / Groovy+Grails - basically a stack we'd expect to work on in other projects too.    * Has / aims to have a positive on peoples lives - like Ushahidi, OpenMRS, RapidFTR, FrontlineSMS, etc.    * Has well defined stories and requirements, or has owners who are willing to work with our analysts to come up with them.  Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "191102", "title": "Machine Learning Algorithm for Heating/Lighting Optimization", "text": "I'm working on a project where I'm developing an interface that learns how you typically use a space, and tries to create the most appropriate control strategy for heating/lighting. I've done some research into the area of machine learning techniques, but I was wondering if there were any recommendations on which learning algorithm would work best for this scenario. I have a lot of different input parameters: I designed a low-cost wireless sensor which reports light, temperature, humidity, and motion detection every 8 seconds... I also tap into live weather feeds through the internet for exterior conditions... And I'm also storing all of the different UI changes (toggles, sliders, etc...) so hopefully I can tell when people are actually changing certain settings and adapt accordingly. As far as learning algorithms... there's a lot of different options including (to name just a few):   * K-Means   * Decision Tree   * Na\u00efve Bayes   * Neural Networks   * Hidden Markov Models   * Nearest Neighbors Which of these would be most ideal for the scenario I'm referring to of: Having multiple data sources and correlating them with user input to predict future desires and plan accordingly."}
{"_id": "210772", "title": "How can a server side developer survive in a position which expects front-end involvement?", "text": "My background is back-end server development. **Very** back-end. Now I work in a position where I need to also take care of front-end. Nothing fancy but I need to be able to code for front-end as well. As I said no fancy stuff as I am not a designer. I know some very basic stuff about html/css/js but most of the time I spend googling when I need to do something. So I am wasting time. **To give an example** I needed to upload a file from the web page but I was not aware that there is an `input` tag specifically for file-upload. So I spend quite a while googling to figure out how to do it. So I am not sure if for example this should be something I should have known and it is a gap that I have or not. So what I am interested in is in what should I invest time to \"master\" so that what I daily need to do, I will be able to do, without spending too much time searching my way.   In a nutshell I am interested to understanding on what are the core \"fundamentals\" I should focus. **To give an example:**   In CSS I think I should invest time in attribute selectors or positioning but spending time learning fonts is a waste of time for my needs. Am I wrong? So with this is mind I am interested in the what to _must_ know to survive in html/css/javascript? **UPDATE**   None of the answers so far are really relevant and I really need some help.   May be my post need some clarifications? Is there something not clear?"}
{"_id": "191107", "title": "How valuable for my career is working on an extremely primitive platform?", "text": "I work for an analog company on a proprietary sequencer having a few bytes of free RAM (maybe 20 bytes, not kB, bytes); maybe 500 bytes statically allocated; 8 registers including PC; no indirection (in C, a \"pointer\"); no stack. We write 100% of our application code in assembly, and 95% of our business depends on legacy code, meaning any new code must neatly fit into the existing assembly code. I write assembly code and verify/debug code written (and _not_ tested) by my superiors. The sequencer would have been considered primitive in the 70's. There is no `MOV` instruction: to move `M` into `K`, you must write `CLX A; ORX M; STX K` which much complicates dependency resolution, or at least optimization. Many operations work only on specific registers: for example, a 32-bit right shift uses `K` in the upper word and M in the lower word. This sequencer is used for extremely low-power applications, and has a ROM program. The chip sells for under $0.50 in unfathomably large quantities. I hope I need not justify a higher level language to you; however, my management is not convinced it will be \"worth the effort\" of developing it, or porting an existing compiler. I feel confident I could write a little Lisp evaluator to produce machine code, but what would that get me? I feel like what I'm doing is an immense waste of time, money, not to mention my own professional development. Is there some authoritative resource I can show my boss and his boss to make them understand? All of this seems like common sense to me (having studied software, my superiors having studied analog, and not being able to write a single line of C), and it's very hard to convey the idea that \"if you put a round block into a square hole, it will not fit\" to somebody who doesn't know what a block, hole, round, or square is."}
{"_id": "219197", "title": "Designing the bridge between REST layer to service layer", "text": "I am working on a project and would like to expose some rest services. The technologies used are RestEasy, EJB and JPA/Hibernate. I have structured my app so that there is a clear delimitation between the service layer and model layer. A typical service that retrieves data from the database have a signature like this: `getWhateverList(idForWhichTheListWillBeRetrieved, start)` \\- so pretty basic.   What I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is how to bring together the stiffness of the service layer with the flexibility of the rest layer. Say for example that I would like a typical GET method producing a json array support operations like:   * filtering - use a query param to get, for example items that have a property of type date greater/lower than the param that I provide   * sorting - rest api should support asc or desc    * limiting the fields that are returned from the GET operation How would one go about designing this?"}
{"_id": "61903", "title": "Is Computer Science a \"solvable\" field?", "text": "Perhaps this is just an overly futurist version of those \"does programming have a future\" topics, but the questions been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe you've seen this future timeline or things like it, and one of the predictions it makes is that by the year 4000, computer science will be dead as a science. That is to say, that the hardware will have reached the limits of physics and that all the problems of algorithms and software will be solved. Is that a thing that can happen? I could see how, theoretically, physics might reach an end point where you've found all the natural laws there are. But I'd always considered computer science to in some ways be more like economics, a field about decisions and trade-offs. Or could we someday discover all the algorithms, and then it's just a matter of software engineering to select the most appropriate one to use?"}
{"_id": "229538", "title": "Handling login errors with User Class", "text": "We have a User class which handles all things related to users within a Content Management System. As you'd expect, the class contains a function `login()`. This function accepts three arguments: `$username`, `$password` and `$remember` (the latter defaulting to `true`). My question is: what is the best way to handle login errors so that they can be displayed to the user? We're using a custom MVC model here, so we have controllers and views that need to remain abstract from the class itself. I have identified the following possible solutions:   1. Return signed integers from the `login()` function that can be interpreted inside the controller.   2. Add a variable to the `User` object containing the error message in plain text   3. Output the error directly from within the function call Point 3 is moot, since we won't be doing that (coupling output with a class == bad). Point 2 seems to be the most logical, but will make multi-language (a feature that may well be added later) difficult. For example, we might do something like this:               class User     {         public $loginError;              public function login($username, $password, $remember = true)         {             if($password !== $ourStoredPassword)             {                 $this->loginError = 'Password does not match';                 return false;             }         }     }      I think the best option is #1. For example, we could do this inside the Class:               class User     {         public function login($username, $password, $remember = true)         {             if($password !== $ourStoredPassword)             {                 return -1;             }         }     }      Then inside our controller, just look at the return value from `login()`, and handle it therein. What are people's thoughts? Is there a better way to tackle this?"}
{"_id": "52145", "title": "Card deck and sparse matrix interview questions", "text": "I just had a technical phone screen w/ a start-up. Here's the technical questions I was asked ... and my answers. **What do think of these answers**? Feel free to post better answers :-) **Question 1** : how would you represent a standard 52 card deck in (basically any language)? How would you shuffle the deck? **Answer** : use an array containing a \"Card\" struct or class. Each instance of card has some unique identifier... either it's position in the array or a unique integer member variable in the range [0, 51]. Shuffle the cards by traversing the array once from index zero to index 51. Randomly swap ith card with \"another card\" (I didn't remember how this shuffle algorithm works exactly). Watch out for using the _same_ probability for each card... that's a gotcha in this algorithm. I mentioned the algorithm is from Programming Pearls. **Question 2** : how to represent a large sparse matrix? the matrix can be very large... like 1000x1000... but only a relatively small number (~20) of the entries are non-zero. **Answer** : condense the array into a list of the non-zero entries. for a given entry (i,j) in the array... \"map\" (i,j) to a single integer k... then use k as a key into a dictionary or hashtable. For the 1000x1000 sparse array map (i,j) to k using something like f(i, j) = i + j * 1001. 1001 is just one plus the maximum of all i and j. I didn't recall exactly how this mapping worked... but the interviewer got the idea (I think). **Are these good answers**? I'm wondering because after I finished the second question the interviewer said the dreaded \"well that's all the questions I have for now.\" Cheers!"}
{"_id": "141808", "title": "What is the preferred tool/approach to putting a SQL Server database under source control?", "text": "I've evaluated RedGate SQL Source Control tool (http://www.red- gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-source-control/), and I believe that Team Foundation Server 2010 offers a way to do this as well (as touched on here http://blog.discountasp.net/using-team-foundation-server-2010-source- control-from-sql-server-management-studio/). Are there alternatives, or is one of these considered the preferred/standard solution?"}
{"_id": "105821", "title": "Does project architecture have a strong relation to used libraries?", "text": "Programmers, when it comes to talk about popular patterns in enterprise applications, preach that you should code against interfaces to remove strong relations between components; doing this will aid in changing concrete types while minimizing changes in other areas of the application. The underlying assumption is that interfaces are all about abstractions. When it comes to real life it is almost impossible. Lets use an example: Lets say you currently use an ORM framework in your application, which you abstracted by applying the repository pattern. Now, can you really change ORM framework seamlessly?               public interface IRepository<T>     {                 T GetById(int id);               void Add(T entity);         void Remove(T entity);         void Update(T entity);         IQueryable<T> Query(Expression<Func<T, bool>> filter);                                     }       Theoretically, this implementation can be applied to the rest of the application, but many questions remain about the actual application of this pattern:   1. How does this pattern shield me from the internal process of libraries?   2. How does the abstraction deal with the variation in exceptions thrown by each library?   3. If I have selected an ORM which provides a caching mechanism internally and I later decide to switch to an alternative ORM with no such support, how does the pattern handle this? So, from this, I believe that the project architecture is strongly influenced on the libraries that are used. Is there anything wrong with this? Am I assuming too much from this pattern?"}
{"_id": "53231", "title": "Have you ever had to sacrifice programmer integrity for customer satisfaction?", "text": "I mean did you ever reluctantly adopt a less than ideal solution because management told you that \"customer is always right\"? I'll go with mine first. A few years back, me and my team developed a website of quizzes. Users create quizzes, answer them, rate/tag/vote/share etc. If a quiz had more than 10 questions in it, the UI would serve the quiz in segments. A 30 question long quiz will be split into 3 segments. We used JavaScript and DOM manipulation to let the user easily switch back and forth between segments, without ever having to refresh the whole page. The customer, a big US corporation that owned the site, wasn't happy with this. They didn't care about user experience, they just wanted high page hits. So they wanted the whole page to refresh when the user hit 'Next' or 'Previous'. We had to replace the JavaScript solution, with a very ugly hack involving PHP and Smarty. The result was a sluggish UI, which irritated the H out of the testers. In the same project, the team researched the best practices for improving front-end performance and worked hard to implement them. But all those efforts were in vain when the customer injected their heavy Flash based ads into the pages, making them load real slow. I know it's not an objective question and very likely to be closed, but I would like to hear from the members of the community if they ever had such experiences."}
{"_id": "187452", "title": "Table scaling with partitions or with separate databases?", "text": "Let's say I have a table (let's call it `BigTable`) which could experience **5,000,000 INSERTS per day** (with possibly just as many SELECTs). Each row inserted is about 50kb. These daily INSERTs are split across 5 clients equally (the table has a FK called `ClientID`). There is never a need to SELECT or JOIN data across multiple clients. I am worried about the database performance as this table grows, so I have come up with three solutions. **SOLUTION 1:**   * Partition `BigTable` by `ClientID`   * Store each partition on a separate hard disk on the server (using Azure blog storage).    * Partition all data which is 1 month old (archive data, yet still need to be queryable) into another set of READONLY partitions. Essentially this means the following partitions on their own storage devices:   * Primary (all data excluding `BigTable`)   * ClientA's `BigTable` (5,000,000 rows per day / 5 clients x 30 days = 30,000,000 rows)   * ClientB's `BigTable` (30,000,000 rows)   * ClientC's `BigTable` (30,000,000 rows)   * ClientD's `BigTable` (30,000,000 rows)   * ClientE's `BigTable` (30,000,000 rows)   * ClientA's `BigTable` archive   * ClientB's `BigTable` archive   * ClientC's `BigTable` archive   * ClientD's `BigTable` archive   * ClientE's `BigTable` archive The number of rows in the archive tables will be (5,000,000) x (age of DB in days) - (30,000,000). This is still a huge table, but will only be used to drawing up the odd report. SQL Server will be hosted on a 14GB, 8core Azure VM. **SOLUTION 2:** The other option is to host separate databases for each client. This means each will have it's own dedicated SQL Server machine. Partitioning will still happen for archive data. This option is not optimal because of the physical separation of the data. Having to manage updates to multiple databases could be very problematic. Having separate database connections for each client will also be a consideration for the developers. Could anyone perhaps advise on these options? **SOLUTION 3:** Archive data into a faster database platform. I don't know much about this, but perhaps a NoSQL database could handle billions of records much better than SQL Server?"}
{"_id": "187457", "title": "What is the principle of least astonishment?", "text": "In programming what is called Principle of Least Astonishment? How is this concept related to designing good APIs? Is this something applicable to only object oriented programming or does it permeate other programming techniques as well? Is this related to the principle of \"doing a single thing in your method and do it well\" ?"}
{"_id": "187456", "title": "Database data structures for RESTful api", "text": "I am creating a RESTful API. I am struggling to decide on the best way to design my database tables around my resources. Initially, I though a table per resource would be a good way to go, but I'm now worried that this will result in exponentially bigger tables the further down the resource chain you go. For example, imagine I have three resources - users, clients, sales. Users are subscribers to my api, clients are the users customers, and sales are purchases made by each client to the users account. A sale resource is accessed as follows               GET /users/{userID}/clients/{clientID}/sales/{salesID}      So if there are 10 users, each with 10 customers, and for each customer there are 10 sales, the table size gets larger the further down the resource chain we go. Im fairly confident that SQL can cope with large tables, but I'm not sure how read and writes will slow things down. The example above maybe doesn't illustrate it, but my api will have progressively more writes and reads the further down the resource chain we go. I therefore have the scenario where the biggest tables in my database, will be read and written to more times than smaller tables. It will also be necessary to join tables before running queries. The reason is that I allow each user to have a client with the same name. To avoid getting the wrong client data, the users table and clients tables are joined by {userID}. This is also the case for sales. Will joining large tables and running reads and writes slow things down further?"}
{"_id": "63504", "title": "Would a cut and paste coder ever get past a job interview?", "text": "As a long time cut and paste coder I never committed much of the syntax of a language to memory. Even worse, I now use google to solve many of the coding problems which are of the type typically used in job interviews. This has greatly increased my productivity, the quality of the end result and stops me perpetuating the same bugs across all my code. However it means I don't actually remember the detail of the solution. For some reason in a job interview \"I would look that up on google\" does not seem to be the right answer. Am I better off in the interview to pass no comment on my coding style and simply pull out an iPad and produce the solution?"}
{"_id": "179719", "title": "Is there some software to manage a XP Project?", "text": "I was wondering if there's some software to manage a XP project. I'm starting a school project and I want to follow this methodology, but, we don't have a place to work. Each one works at home (in pairs), therefore I can't follow XP ambient patterns. So, anyone knows of any software to manage this?"}
{"_id": "9714", "title": "Can cloud computing replace enterprise architecture?", "text": "Is cloud computing mature enough to alleviate some of the pains of maintaining the IT infrastructure on site? If so, what are some of the drawbacks of adopting it? Is security and privacy a big concern?"}
{"_id": "37348", "title": "I'm porting my app from iOS to Android: what do I need to know?", "text": "What pitfalls should I avoid?   * What Java language paradigms do Objective-C developers consistently misunderstand? I learned to program in Java, but I have worked in nothing but Objective-C for years now.   * How are the design patterns different between Android and iOS?   * If you've made the transition yourself, what parts of Android confused you or took you longer to learn than it should have?   * Is Eclipse the best OS X IDE for Android? For the record, my app is very strongly tied to UIKit and Foundation, so the word \"porting\" may be a misnomer; I'll actually be completely rewriting it for Android. No code reuse. Also, I'm doing this to learn Android, so I'd rather fail at the port and learn Android than take a shortcut. * * * As a bit of background, this question was prompted by the types of questions I see on Stackoverflow. Frequently you can tell what someone's background was (C# or Java) by what silly mistakes they make when they're trying to write Obj-C. I'd like to avoid the kinds of mistakes that make Java developers roll their eyes and say, \"Silly Objective-C developers, won't they ever learn?\""}
{"_id": "112270", "title": "Is it unusual for a small company (15 developers) not to use managed source/version control?", "text": "It's not really a technical question, but there are several other questions here about source control and best practice. The company I work for (which will remain anonymous) uses a network share to host its source code and released code. It's the responsibility of the developer or manager to manually move source code to the correct folder depending on whether it's been released and what version it is and stuff. We have various spreadsheets dotted around where we record file names and versions and what's changed, and some teams also put details of different versions at the top of each file. Each team (2-3 teams) seems to do this differently within the company. As you can imagine, it's an organised mess - organised, because the \"right people\" know where their stuff is, but a mess because it's all different and it relies on people remembering what to do at any one time. One good thing is that everything is backed up on a nightly basis and kept indefinitely, so if mistakes are made, snapshots can be recovered. I've been trying to push for some kind of managed source control for a while, but I can't seem to get enough support for it within the company. My main arguments are:   * We're currently vulnerable; at any point someone could forget to do one of the many release actions we have to do, which could mean whole versions are not stored correctly. It could take hours or even days to piece a version back together if necessary   * We're developing new features along with bug fixes, and often have to delay the release of one or the other because some work has not been completed yet. We also have to force customers to take versions that include new features even if they just want a bug fix, because there's only really one version we're all working on   * We're experiencing problems with Visual Studio because multiple developers are using the same projects at the same time (not the same files, but it's still causing problems)   * There are only 15 developers, but we all do stuff differently; wouldn't it be better to have a standard company-wide approach we all have to follow? My questions are:   1. Is it normal for a group of this size not to have source control?   2. I have so far been given only vague reasons for not having source control - what reasons would you suggest _could_ be valid for **not** implementing source control, given the information above?   3. Are there any more reasons **for** source control that I could add to my arsenal? I'm asking mainly to get a feel for why I have had so much resistance, so please answer honestly. I'll give the answer to the person I believe has taken the most balanced approach and has answered all three questions. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "22993", "title": "System Programming & Object Oriented Design - what to look out for", "text": "Next semester (starts in just under 5 weeks), I'm taking System Programming and OOD concurrently. Apparently SP centers on working in C on Linux, and I only have Java and Python experience, so I am a little nervous about this. For those of you who've taken these at an university, what should I look out for? I've already taken Computer Organization which included an overview of Assembly. With the exception of implementing loops in assembly, I ranged from B+ to A- in the assembly projects. Building circuitry was another story, however."}
{"_id": "223744", "title": "Explicitly writing default empty constructor", "text": "Does it make sense to write default constructor when it has no arguments, empty body and no other constructors exist? The only benefit I can think of is reducing the risk of forgetting to add the default constructor when another one is created. But this error would show up anyway if the default constructor is actually being used (at least if the class is \"internal\" and not in a library), and if it isn't used it can be omitted (yagni). What benefit can this have?"}
{"_id": "24107", "title": "How do you react to non-programmers with ideas of 'The Next Big Thing'?", "text": "Recently and quite often, people with no programming background come and say they have this great idea that can be the next big thing and that the idea(s) is worth a fortune by itself. Then as they know I'm a programmer, they ask me if I'm willing to \"code it up\" for them or find someone willing to do it for next to nothing. Judging from the enthusiasm, it's like they're drunk on their idea and that that by itself is the most important thing, but they just need a programmer. My response to them, depending on my mood and their general attitude towards what we do, is something along the lines of:   \"Having the core of an idea is one thing. Developing it to the point that it becomes a platform that changes the world in which it lives is another, and you're going to be willing to pay proportionately to how big you think your idea is worth.\" Have you been approached by these business type entrepreneurs (with no technical/developer's knowledge) with such a proposal and how do you react to them?"}
{"_id": "223747", "title": "What are the advantages of dynamically binding a method to class instance?", "text": "I came across Instagram's API client written in Python. In their class **InstagramAPI**, they bind the methods to a function in **bind.py**. When called, the function returns an instance of the class **InstagramAPIMethod** and execute the request call.   1. What are the advantages of doing it this way? (over directly creating instances of **InstagramAPIMethod** in **InstagramAPI** )?   2. What will happen if the methods in **InstagramAPI** are called numerous times? Will it create new a instance every call? Note, the only advantages I thought of are (probably I'm off track):   * The class doesn't/shouldn't care what the implementing class is.   * If a particular method is not called, we will never create an instance."}
{"_id": "95946", "title": "How should I determine my rates for writing custom software?", "text": "For a custom software that will likely take a year or more to develop, how would I go about determining what to charge as a consultant? I'm having a hard time coming up with a number, and searches online are providing vastly different numbers (between $55/hr and $300/hr). I don't want to shoot too low because it's going to take me so much time (and I'm deferring my education for this project). I also don't want to shoot too high and get unpleasant looks and demand for justification. FWIW I live in Canada, and have approx. 10 years of development experience. I've read the \"take your salary and divide it by 1000\" rule of thumb, but the thing is I don't have a salary. Currently I'm just doing fairly small programming tasks for a friend who is starting a marketing company, pricing each task fairly arbitrarily. I don't know what I would make over the course of a year doing it, but it would be incredibly low. My responsibilities for the project would be the architecture, programming, database, server, and UX to some degree. It's going to be a public facing web service so I will also need to put a lot of effort into security and scalability. Any advice or experience?"}
{"_id": "137146", "title": "Building Portfolio ASP.Net MVC", "text": "I have been working on building a sample application to add to my portfolio (for freelancing). I am working on building a Shopping website using ASP.Net MVC. My question is - what are the good features of a portfolio? Is it to showcase your coding skills (by developing everything from scratch?) or using open-source shopping cart such as nopcommerce to quickly build soemthing that works and is fool-proof?) I am confused as to which direction to proceed. Kindly guide me. Also, what are the good features to add in my site? As I mentioned earlier, this is an ASP.Net MVC application. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "59173", "title": "Why do ads for s/w engineers always say they \"offer a fast-paced environment\"?", "text": "Who wants to work in a fast-paced environment? Not me! I want a civilized environment where people have a sense of balance. Higher quality work gets done that way and work life isn't full of stress and anguish."}
{"_id": "67086", "title": "A friend wants some FREE CRUD code", "text": "A 'friend' of mine asked me to write a complete CRUD system with AJAX for him for free. What should I do? Technically, its bread and butter for me. However, I am wondering if I should get paid for it. I mean it's a commercial project. On the other hand, I was thinking that I do not care if he pays me. Do what ever you want with my code. If it makes you more intelligent and helps you write better code, then I will sense a feeling of accomplishment... So can anyone help me decide?"}
{"_id": "137143", "title": "How can I get vampire numbers", "text": "In class we have a big trouble, how can we get the first \"n\" vampire numbers, we're working on oracle SQL but in my case I am totally lost, how can i do a query to get it. > A \"vampire number\" is a number with an even number of digits, and half the > digits (in any order) can be multiplied by the other half of the digits (in > any order) to be equal to that number. > > For example, 1260 is a vampire number because it can be broken in half, and > the two halves rearranged (21 and 60) can be multiplied together to make > 1260"}
{"_id": "30173", "title": "About C# objects and the possibilties it has", "text": "As a novice programmer and I always wonder about c# capabilities. I know it is still early to judge that but all i want to know is can c# do complex stuffs or something outside windows OS.   1. I think C# is a proprietary language (I don't know if I said that right) meaning you can't do it outside Visual Studio or Windows.   2. Also you can't create your own controller (called object right?) like you are forced to use these available in toolbox and their properties and methods.   3. Can C# be used with OpenGL API or DirectX API    4. Finally it always bothers me when I think I start doing things in Visual Studio, I know it sounds arrogant to say but sometimes I feel that I don't like to be forced to use something even if its helpful, like I feel (do I have the right to feel?) that I want to do all things by myself? Don't laugh I just feel that this will give me a better understanding.   5. Is Visual C# like using MaxScript inside 3ds max in that C# is exclusive to do Windows and Forms and Components that are Windows related and maxscript is only for 3d editing and manipulation for various things in the software. If it is too difficult for a beginner I hope you don't answer the fourth question as I don't have enough motivation and I want to keep the little I have. Note:   1. Sorry for my English, I am self taught and never used the language with native speakers so expect so errors.   2. I have a lot of questions regarding many things, what is the daily ratio you think for asking (number of questions) that would not bother the admins of the site and the members here. Thank you for your time."}
{"_id": "44936", "title": "What are the consequences of GPL dependencies?", "text": "I am developing software for my company and I would like to use some libraries under GPL license. What could be the consequences? Does it mean that the code developed above these GPL dependencies will also be under GPL? Do I have the obligation to publish the source code of these products?"}
{"_id": "71962", "title": "Steps in creating a Complex Web Application", "text": "Hey guys I have this great idea for a web application, but I am unsure on how to develop it. I know I need a team of people to make it, Developers and Designers, but where do I start? Eventually I know I will need everyone, but for a startup, who are the people you need first, and who can you add on as time goes by. So first of, I know exactly what every web page will do, I know what elements each page should have and roughly the layout. So, I thought the best use of my time would to draw out Wire Frames of every page, and then use cases to describe the user interactions. So thats everything I think I can possibly do. The first set of people that come to my mind to hire would be a database designer, since I already know what information we need from the users and how their information and data collected from third parties. Also, they already know how data is going to be displayed from the Wireframes and use cases. Then I thought I would need to hire a designer, to design the web layout and interface. Then I thought I would need a Developer to connect everything together. If you were a small startup and could only hire 1 person at a time, is this the way you would go?"}
{"_id": "108670", "title": "What should I be focusing on when building a development PC?", "text": "I've beeen given a budget for building a desktop PC for app and game development. What components should I consider to be a priority when selecting parts for the computer, and which should I ignore or pay less attention to? Additional Information:   * Budget: $900   * Wish to use by two users at the same time, via two monitors and keyboard/mice"}
{"_id": "71961", "title": "What should be done with code that has reached end of life?", "text": "When a project has reached end of life and is being retired, either because the technology is obsolete, a newer version of the program has been rewritten, or it no longer solves a problem that is needed to be solved, what should be done with the code? Should it be deleted, or kept for future reference? This also applies to projects that someone might develop as a contractor, and the company which needed them goes out of business."}
{"_id": "189998", "title": "How to show data to the user using PHP?", "text": "I'm always trying to find new methods on development. So I looked into some websites and analyzed their ways of presentation.   1. Returning part of the page using AJAX Normally I will use an array to return values, for example:               //GET User details           $user_id = $_POST['user_id'];           $user_details = $this->get_user($user_id);           if ($user_details['status'] == true) {          exit(json_encode(array('status'=>true, 'data'=>$user_details['data'])));      } else {          exit(json_encode(array('status'=>false, 'reason'=>'SomeReasons....')));      }       But I see that some sites returning `HTML'. Is this preferable in any reason? Also what is the best method to use: `AJAX` or an `iframe`?"}
{"_id": "157202", "title": "Debug PHP: is XDebug worthwhile? Are there any alternatives?", "text": "How do you debug PHP? Just with debug-prints in your script? Or is it worth installing XDebug? Is there any better debugging possiblity?"}
{"_id": "136818", "title": "Password hashing and support to your user", "text": "We've recently moved to a better password storage strategy, with it came all the good stuff:   * Passwords are stored after going through bCrypt   * User is sent an activation link on account creation to confirm ownership of address   * Forgot password without security question, a link is sent to their email.   * The link expires after 24 hours, at which point they will need to request a new one.   * If the account is created from our staff, an email is sent with a random strong password in it. Upon login in the user has to reset it to something we don't know and that is bCrypt'd. Now this is in accordance with the \"best-practice\" around, but this increased our amount of support request a lot from regular users who don't understand all this, they just want to login. We often get request from users who complain about:   * Incorrect password (from the one that they need to reset they often paste it with a space at the end). They tell us what they are using but we have no way of telling them what their actual password is.   * Saying they aren't receiving the email we send them (activation, reset, etc.). This is often not the case, after much troubleshooting we usually found out they did a typo in the email, that they aren't checking the right email account or that it simply went in the spam folder. We of course can not try it for them as we don't have the password. We are logging the failed attempts but we also clear the password they used since it's likely to be the password used for another account and we didn't want to store in a plain text log file. This leaves us with pretty much nothing to help them when they report problems. I\u2019m curious as to how most people deal with issues like these?"}
{"_id": "142380", "title": "Usage of repository between EF model and code consumer", "text": "I have binary data in my database that I'll have to convert to bitmap at some point. I was thinking whether or not it's appropriate to use a repository and do it there. My consumer, which is a presentation layer, will use this repository. For example:               // This is a class I created for modeling the item as is.     public class RealItem     {         public string Name { get; set; }         public Bitmap Image { get; set; }     }          public abstract class BaseRepository     {         //using Unity (http://unity.codeplex.com) to inject the dependancy of entity context.         [Dependency]         public Context { get; set; }     }          public calss ItemRepository : BaseRepository     {         public List<Items> Select()         {             IEnumerable<Items> items = from item in Context.Items select item;             List<RealItem> lst = new List<RealItem>();             foreach(itm in items)             {                 MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(itm.Image);                 Bitmap image = (Bitmap)Image.FromStream(stream);                 RealItem ritem = new RealItem{ Name=item.Name, Image=image };                 lst.Add(ritem);             }                  return lst;         }     }      Is this a correct way to use the repository pattern? I'm learning this pattern and I've seen a lot of examples online that are using a repository but when I looked at their source code... for example:               public IQueryable<object> Select     {         return from q in base.Context select q;     }      as you can see no behavior is added to the system by their approach, so I was confused that maybe repository is something else and I got it all wrong. At the end there should be extra benifits of using them right?"}
{"_id": "136812", "title": "Raise a ticket to issue tracking from external web application", "text": "I don't know if it's the right place to post this question but, to improve my productivity I need to install an open source issue-tracking system to keep tracks of all bugs and information about the completion. There are a lot of open source systems to do that but I'm looking for one which could be hosted on PHP / MySql / Linux server and, in particular allows to raise a ticket via rest or soap from my Spring webapp (I thought to create a simple form in my webApp to submit a ticket). I took a look to The Bug Genie, Mantis and WebIssues and the first two are very hard to be used by non IT user. WebIssues seems to be very easy also for my customers that just need to take a look to the ticket resolution status. Any tips? * * * Note I prefer to install my own system in order to pay only one hosting service."}
{"_id": "142382", "title": "What are known approaches to graphing algebraic expressions?", "text": "I am planning to build an expression parser that will be used to graph algebraic functions ( think TI-83 ) with JavaScript. Functions will take the form of `f(x)=` Aside from typical operators such as: `+ - * / ^` I'd also like to add support for inline functions such as: `sin()`, `cos()`, `log()` and `random()`. I have looked at implementing the Shunting Yard algorithm for parsing expressions, but it does not look like an efficient approach to evaluating a function with a hundreds or thousands of inputs. What other known algorithms exist for this task?"}
{"_id": "189993", "title": "Finding the possible combinations of x switches out of y being true", "text": "I am working on an algorithm to find possible fills for gaps in text. My function will receive as input: (example)               [false,\"o\",false,\"b\",false,\"r\"]      representing the string \"foobar\" with some values cut out. My function should find opportunies for the possible ways to fill the gaps given a set maximum characters (and a minimum of one blank filled). so, given a maximum of 2 it should return:               [     [true,\"o\",false,\"b\",false,\"r\"],     [false,\"o\",true,\"b\",false,\"r\"],     [false,\"o\",false,\"b\",true,\"r\"],     [true,\"o\",true,\"b\",false,\"r\"],     [true,\"o\",false,\"b\",true,\"r\"],     [false,\"o\",true,\"b\",true,\"r\"]     ]      Can anyone give me a shove in the right direction? Oh, and I planned to run the results through another function to sort these out, but if I can NOT get results where there is a false between the blanks (ie, from the above, `[true,\"o\",false,\"b\",true,\"r\"]`) it would be a huge bonus. This is in a javascript/jQuery environment"}
{"_id": "142384", "title": "Forking an open source project: should one create a new changelog file? Should restart version number?", "text": "I am going to fork an open source project. Would you recommend to create a new changelog file or to update the original one? Would it be reasonable to increment its version number or would it be better to reset it?"}
{"_id": "189995", "title": "How can I prove Google Chrome Web Store that I'm a developer and not a spammer in order to be able to publish my extenssions?", "text": "I have some _chrome extenssions_ to publish, but when I log into my Chrome Webstore account it says: > Before you publish your first item, you must pay a one-time US$5.00 > developer registration fee. We charge this fee in order to verify developer > accounts and better protect users against fraudulent activity. As it says, this charge is to verify my account. My problem is that due to US sanctions on my country, google doesn't provide any financial trades with us, and so **I have no means to pay this 5$** , so I can not publish any extenssions :( My question is, by what other way I can verify my account? Any kind of help would be appreciated. **Edit** : My question is not about bypassing law, It is about finding a legal way. And I'm trying to develop opensource extenssions without any commercial use. **I don't want to do payments, I know this is not possible for Google.** But There must be some other way of verification."}
{"_id": "142386", "title": "Rails and Mongoid best way to implement sharing system", "text": "I have to model **User** and **Board** in rails using mongoid as ODM. Each board is referenced to an user through a foreign key **user_id** and now I want to add the ability to share a board with other users. Following CRUD I'd create a new Model called something like **Share** and it's releated Controller with the ability to create/edit/delete a Share but I have some doubts:   1. First, where to save informations about **Shares**? I think I may create a field in the Board's collection called **shared_with** including an array of user ids. in a MySQL I'd created a new table with the ids of who share, the resource shared and the user the resources is shared with but I don't think that's necessary using MongoDB.   2. Every user a Board is shared with should be able to edit the Board (but not to delete it) so the Board should have two relations one with the owner and another with the users the board is shared with, right?   3. For permission (the owner should be able to delete a board but the users it is shared with shouldn't) what to use? I'm using Devise for authentication but I think something like CanCan would fit better. but how to implement it? What do you think about this way? Do you find any problems or have better solutions?"}
{"_id": "211011", "title": "Immutable Data Structure For Time Series Data", "text": "I'm wondering what the best data structure (for storing data on disk) is for storing immutable **time-series** data (99% of the data is truly immutable, the 1% is metadata that is separate from the immutable data). I've been looking at log-structured merge-trees in particular because of it's heavy use by Cassandra and the like."}
{"_id": "137495", "title": "Should I nest functions in languages that allow me to do that or should I rather avoid it?", "text": "In JavaScript, PL/SQL and some other languages, functions can be nested, i.e. declared within another function. This could be used to break a large function into smaller pieces, but keep those pieces within the context of the larger function.               function doTooMuch() {         function doSomething () {            ...         }         function doSomethingElse() {            ...         }         function doYetAnotherThing() {            ...         }              // doTooMuch body              doSomething();         doSomethingElse();         doYetAnotherThing();     }      In some cases, when those smaller functions do not use local variables of the larger function, this could easily changed to a version where all functions are unnested.               function doSomething () {        ...     }     function doSomethingElse() {        ...     }     function doYetAnotherThing() {        ...     }     function doTooMuch() {         doSomething();         doSomethingElse();         doYetAnotherThing();     }      Assuming that those nested functions are not to be used anywhere else, is it better to keep them within the context of the large function or is it bad because this is exactly what makes the large function, well, large?"}
{"_id": "169960", "title": "Looking for some OO design advice", "text": "I'm developing an app that will be used to open and close valves in an industrial environment, and was thinking of something simple like this:-               public static void ValveController     {         public static void OpenValve(string valveName)         {             // Implementation to open the valve         }              public static void CloseValve(string valveName)         {             // Implementation to close the valve         }     }      (The implementation would write a few bytes of data to the serial port to control the valve - an \"address\" derived from the valve name, and either a \"1\" or \"0\" to open or close the valve). Another dev asked whether we should instead create a separate class for each physical valve, of which there are dozens. I agree it would be nicer to write code like `PlasmaValve.Open()` rather than `ValveController.OpenValve(\"plasma\")`, but is this overkill? Also, I was wondering how best to tackle the design with a couple of hypothetical future requirements in mind:-   1. We are asked to support a new type of valve requiring different values to open and close it (not 0 and 1).   2. We are asked to support a valve that can be set to any position from 0-100, rather than simply \"open\" or \"closed\". Normally I would use inheritance for this kind of thing, but I've recently started to get my head around \"composition over inheritance\" and wonder if there is a slicker solution to be had using composition?"}
{"_id": "234528", "title": "Preference to see if a field's value was changed js or linq object?", "text": "We have some requirements to send emails when various field values are changed in our system. It's an asp.net system using linq to sql with javascript/jquery. Is it preferred to check if a value is changed via js (hidden field is set if the value is changed) or is it better since we are using linq and I have access to the object in question to check that object's current value with what the user has entered (basically compare the textbox value with the object's field value before it is being updated)?"}
{"_id": "220800", "title": "Python garbage collection giving me a hard time", "text": "**Context:** I am developing a web application using `webapp2` web-framework with python to be hosted on GAE. The web application ( _web-app_ from now on), is a chess variant. Being a first timer, I have definitely made a lot of design blunders. One of them, is what this question is regarding to, I will come to it in a short while. The aim of the web-app was to allow quite a large number of players to play 2-player chess, such that multiple games are running in parallel. While not exceeding the free quota on GAE. ( _I am a student_ ). To do that, I thought that I would create a new game object, and store its `id(game_object)` along with the `machine_id` of the two players playing on that instance, in the datastore. When querying the datastore with the `machine_id` of a player, I could get a `id()` value, and I thought could use that value as a `key` in a dictionary wherein a reference to the `game_object` forms the value. Doing this, doesn't need me to write/update the datastore, hence saving on the precious writes. I could easily modify the game-state of the `game_object`, and it could be still referenced by the `id()`. **But, now what happens is, this works fine for a few moves. After that the garbage collection takes place and the`game_object` is wiped off the memory. Raising a NameError exception.** **My question is, can this be solved by creating new game_objects in a separate module where garbage collection is turned off, and then periodically/event-triggered freeing the memory? If not? How do I come around this problem?**"}
{"_id": "234527", "title": "Zero behavior objects in OOP - my design dilemma", "text": "The basic idea behind OOP is that data and behavior (upon that data) are inseparable and they are coupled by the idea of an object of a class. Object have data and methods that work with that (and other data). Obviously by the principles of OOP, objects that are just data (like C structs) are considered an anti-pattern. So far so good. The problem is I have noticed that my code seems to be going more and more in the direction of this anti-pattern lately. Seems to me that the more I try to achieve information hiding between classes and loosely coupled designs, the more my classes get to be a mix of pure data no behavior classes and all behavior no data classes. I generally design classes in a way which minimizes their awareness of other classes' existence and minimizes their knowledge of other classes' interfaces. I especially enforce this in a top-down fashion, lower level classes don't know about higher level classes. E.g.: Suppose you have a general card game API. You have a class `Card`. Now this `Card` class needs to determine visibility to players. One way is to have `boolean isVisible(Player p)` on `Card` class. Another is to have `boolean isVisible(Card c)` on `Player` class. I dislike the first approach in particular as it grants knowledge about higher level `Player` class to a lower level `Card` class. Instead I opted for the third option where we have a `Viewport` class which, given a `Player` and a list of cards determines which cards are visible. However this approach robs both `Card` and `Player` classes of a possible member function. Once you do this for other stuff than visibility of cards, you are left with `Card` and `Player` classes which contain purely data as all functionality is implemented in other classes, which are mostly classes with no data, just methods, like the `Viewport` above. This is clearly against the principal idea of OOP. Which is the correct way? How should I go about the task of minimizing class interdependencies and minimizing assumed knowledge and coupling, but without winding up with weird design where all the low level classes contain data only and high level classes contain all the methods? Does anyone have any third solution or perspective on class design which avoids the whole problem? P.S. Here's another example: Suppose you have class `DocumentId` which is immutable, only has a single `BigDecimal id` member and a getter for this member. Now you need to have a method somewhere, which given a `DocumentId` returns `Document` for this id from a database. Do you:   * Add `Document getDocument(SqlSession)` method to `DocumentId` class, suddenly introducing knowledge about your persistence (`\"we're using a database and this query is used to retrieve document by id\"`), the API used to access DB and the like. Also this class now requires persistence JAR file just to compile.   * Add a some other class with method `Document getDocument(DocumentId id)`, leaving `DocumentId` class as dead, no behavior, struct-like class."}
{"_id": "234521", "title": "Why doesn't MySQL have an explicit \"No Limit\" option for queries?", "text": "I use SQLyog Community edition and like many other SQL applications out there it puts a 1000 result limit on queries that do not have a limit provided. I am wondering why MySQL doesn't have an _explicit_ `NO LIMIT` option when it comes to writing queries. I'm sure that i'm not the only developer that ends up sticking a large limit on the end (within reason) to get a full display view of the records in the table. Providing the records in the table is sensible i'd like to be able to do: `SELECT * FROM course NO LIMIT;` instead of `SELECT * FROM COURSE LIMIT 2500;`"}
{"_id": "144975", "title": "Which collection structure I should use for parametrical grouping ordering in c#?", "text": "I have various windows forms applications that contain various controls that build up custom \"group by\" and \"where\" clauses for my class methods. I am thinking to pass a collection structure of some kind in order for the methods to be able to build the group by's and the where clauses. Let's say a list containing the field and the value for the group by or where. Am I going to the right direction? Update: I dont have code yet but let me try to explain better:   1. We have a form with 10 dropdownlists and a checkmark beside them.   2. Also we have adatagrid on the form.   3. Every dropdownlist corresponds to a field in a table.     * If a dropdownlist has its checkbox checked means that it must be part of the group by clause in the select statement.     * The value of the dropdownlist must be part of the where clause. * **note: *** Another application could have different numbers of dropdownboxes and different corresponding fields. I want to create a common method that will retrieve data with user selectable group by and where clauses. So what i think is to pass to the method 2 lists.   * One with (fieldname, value) for the where clauses   * And one with (fieldname) for the group by depending on the logic above... I hope this is more clear."}
{"_id": "115725", "title": "Why use services (REST/SOAP) instead of a library?", "text": "Let's say you're looking at breaking up your applications into services. Are there any good reasons to adopt a SOA approach vs. just creating a library API that can be loaded by the applications that need it."}
{"_id": "115720", "title": "Which database should I use to manage relationship?", "text": "I need 2 capabilities:   * calculating mutual friends distinguishing between different types of edges, (e.g. FRIEND, ENEMY and other)   * getting relationships distinguishing between different types of edges as over My problem is speed: If I use a database as MySQL, I can get thousands of relationships in few moments, but if I need to calculate mutual friends, it costs a lot for my server, doesn't it? I've about 100,000 accounts on my site, and I want to introduce a relationship system, but obviously I have to decide the right way to develop it. Do you have any idea?"}
{"_id": "144972", "title": "Is there a lightweight method to describe web services, similar to robots.txt or sitemap.xml?", "text": "I'd like to provide a very lightweight method to describe my web services. No WSDL, WADL or similar complex stuff. Just a mapping from the web service's base URL to a simple description which can be detected and parsed automatically. Basically   * The **name** of the service   * A **link** to some human readable documentation (optional)   * Possibly a **contact** address   * Usage conditions, URL patterns etc. are less needed to keep it simple. The best I could find is OpenSearch Description Documents, but first it could be simpler with plain text config files, and second there is no standard how to connect these service description documents to arbitrary web services (only autodiscovery in ATOM/RSS and HTML). I thought about creating my own format and provide it similar to `robots.txt`:               $ curl http://example.org/services.txt          service: http://example.org/foobar     name: Foobar API     about: http://example.org/foobar-doc.html          service: http://example.org/some/unapi     name: Example ORG's unAPI          # additional fields, to be discussed     standard: http://unapi.info     pattern: ?id={id}&format={format}      So if you know the base URL of a service, such as `http://example.org/some/unapi`, you can look up at least the name in the service description file. Instead of defining my own standard, however, I'd like to know whether there is already something similar to reuse."}
{"_id": "31023", "title": "What is the difference between Visual Studio 2010 Express and the Regular version?", "text": "i was wondering if i am going to have to pay for the real one. I am developing websites"}
{"_id": "114895", "title": "How does a developer set up an environment to hack on an OS like Linux, Plan9 or BSD?", "text": "I've always found it daunting and confusing how an OS hacker sets up their workflow. As a web-developer I find it easy to set up a workflow because web- sites run on servers and as such my OS is never touched. But an OS programmer, how do you do it? Do you develop on one machine and then somehow transfer code to the other machine? Do you develop on the OS you are developing, that last option seems rife with paradoxes? So how you do it? P.S. My similar Quora question still has no answer to this question..."}
{"_id": "114894", "title": "How to keep settings for C++ Unit Test modules in sync with the production code modules?", "text": "* Note: I'm coming from a Windows / Visual-C++ background.   * Note: I have already read Michael Feathers' Working Effectively with Legacy Code.   * **Note:** _Broad_ question, asking for _narrow_ answers, i.e. while I don't want to narrow this question down to a specific compiler/platform/make system, useful answers will likely only contain one combination. ## The C++ development model Even ideally, you have your, well organized, source files:   * Klass1.h/cpp   * Klass2.h/cpp   * CustomAlgorithms.h (header only)   * main.cpp (may not be needed for a dyn/static lib module) Then, your application consists of **n** modules (even if they are just static libraries all linked together to an executable module in the end. To get from the source to the binary module(s), you need project files / make files / whatever. These files \"tell\" the _compiler_ (and the linker) how to generate the binary modules from your sourcecode. ## Adding in Unit Tests Regardless of which Testing Framework you use and regardless of where you actually put your test code, **you need to produce different/additional binary modules for your test code than for your production code**. (At least for any executable or dynamic library, static libs should be a tad easier.) If you need to produce different binary modules for your test code, then you need to **maintain a separate/additional set of (compiler) settings for this test code**. With _Visual Studio_ you can try to minimize the amount of work by using vsprops files, but you still are left with a separate project file for your tests and your production modules. This can become problematic to maintain. With a make system, I'm not sure how this is done, but I explicitly want this question to encompass both, as techniques from one may translate into the other. So, **TL;DR** , how do you prevent yourself from having to manually edit two different \"project files\" (one for test, one for production), every time you add or change something in the production settings.(*) * * * (*) You might think you don't change things that often, but think of a real world scale project with dozens (hundreds) of modules and dozens of developers. Each tiny amount of manual work you save for the test scaffolding will multiply."}
{"_id": "147778", "title": "Flexible cloud file storage for a web.py app?", "text": "I'm creating a web app using web.py (although I may later rewrite it for Tornado) which involves a lot of file manipulation. One example, the app will have a git-style 'commit' operation, in which some files are sent to the server and placed in a new folder along with the unchanged files from the last version. This will involve copying the old folder to the new folder, replacing/adding/deleting the files in the commit to the new folder, then deleting all unchanged files in the old folder (as they are now in the new folder). I've decided on Heroku for the app hosting environment, and I am currently looking at cloud storage options that are built with these kinds of operations in mind. I was thinking of Amazon S3, however I'm not sure if that lets you carry out these kinds of file operations in-place. I was thinking I may have to load these files into the server's RAM and then re-insert them into the bucket, costing me a fortune. I was also thinking of Progstr Filer (http://filer.progstr.com/index.html) but that seems to only integrate with Rails apps. Can anyone help with this? Basically I want file operations to be as cheap as possible."}
{"_id": "147772", "title": "Good way to explain the need for nestable lambda expressions", "text": "I'm in a situation where I need to explain lambda expressions to a colleague. He's well-educated, with some programming experience, and my first time showing him lambda expressions seemed to go well. What I'm not explaining well to him is the idea that you can nest lambda expressions inside each other. I use lambdas all the time, and feel like this should be easy to explain to him, but I'm having trouble coming up with an example on the spot, so I'll just pass his question on to all of you: **Why would anyone ever need to nest lambda expressions?** I'm looking for an example sort of like this:               x.f(y => y.g(z => y+z))      where one lambda expression is nested inside another, where the innermost bit of code (`y+z` in this example) makes use of both lambda input parameters. We're using C#, but the language isn't what matters, just a situation where you'd want nested lambdas in a language that isn't mostly lambda calculus."}
{"_id": "188480", "title": "What is the etiquette of renaming an open source fork?", "text": "I want to fork on Github the TestNG java testing framework (Apache 2 license) so I can add/change some minor things to suit my needs. It's unlikely that all of my changes would be approved in the main project or that other people would use my fork. This would in no way be a competition to the main project. Now, in terms of naming, I want to change the artifact name (testng-mycompany) or the version (6.8.mycompany) so there's no confusion with the official version in my maven repository. Would this be considered poor etiquette? If yes, what is the best approach to distinguish your fork?"}
{"_id": "147770", "title": "A Huge Database: Picking the right schema and data model", "text": "We want to store some genomic variant data but there are some problems, more important ones like problem of the data's immense size and variability.   1. Variant data can be huge. For example, a single individuals variant data could feasibly some day require a million rows of data in a table, or require of a gigabyte of raw storage on disk. Multiply this over several thousand individuals, and you could potentially end up with terabytes worth of information that you need to make sense of.    2. Each client and/or system we integrate with, will expose or want to see data slightly differently depending on their needs and use cases. This can potentially lead to hundreds of fields that we might need to store, all of which might need to be in different configurations based on the clients needs. So this variant data model will need to keep this in mind in order to remain easy to use, expandable and most importantly, scalable in the long term. What do you think is better for such a problem? We were thining of having some coulmns in each table that point to an external database or even a file, where we save the huge BLOB data?"}
{"_id": "188486", "title": "ASP.NET MVC 4 with Entity Framework 5 and SimpleMembership integrated into Repository and Unit Of Work pattern", "text": "I have a ASP.NET MVC4 project in which I would like to use the SimpleMembership. The application has a Person table that holds relevant information about users in the system. I would like a link between the currently logged in user and the Person information. So I have made a foreign key in the Person table to the UserId column of UserProfile table (from SimpleMembership). I use Entity Framework 5 as ORM and have implemented a generic repository to handle CRUD methods and so on. Now I am at a point where I want to implement user profile creation. The creation consists of 2 parts parts:   * login: username and password (to be stored in SimpleMembership tables)   * personal information (to be stored in Person table) In order to create a user I guess I need to:   1. Save user information through SimpleMembership   2. Save personal information together with userId from step 1 through my PersonRepository I would like some kind of UserRepository that could save SimpleMembership data but I do not know if it's the right approach? Is there a better approach?"}
{"_id": "225352", "title": "Inform caller or just let them deal with exception?", "text": "I'm not sure how to proceed in the following situation. say we have a function as so:               def runsATask(codes):         myDicts = [helperFunc(code) for code in codes]         for item in myDicts:             # some logic.      Here's the problem, codes is some iterable and should be either a list or a tuple, ie it should be used as so: `runsATask(['code1', 'code2', ... 'codeN'])`, but sometimes `N` is 1 and so people could call it mistakenly, like so, `runsATask('code1')` This code will still run, but later on in the `for loop` it will crap out because `myDicts` doesn't have the correct objects in it because the list comprehension that made it iterated over a `string` rather than a `list/tuple`. So should I leave it as it is or would the following be a solution:               def runsATask(codes):         if not isinstance(codes, (list, tuple)):             raise Exception(\"Codes should be a list or a tuple\")         myDicts = [helperFunc(code) for code in codes]         for item in myDicts:             # some logic.      I'm not sure which way to go because I hear Python circles say to let callers deal with the issue, but debugging a situation like this can be annoying because the caller would deal with the issue in the for loop and had he been informed way earlier about the wrong parameter being passed, then it would save a lot of wasted time."}
{"_id": "196572", "title": "Are error codes wrong in SQL queries too?", "text": "I have an SQL query which does several things at once\u00b9: it does multiple checks and then, if the checks pass, updates some data. Without entering in the domain-specific details, here's an imaginary example:               -- The user password should be updated only if the user account is not removed and     -- not locked, and the threshold was not exceeded.     if exists (select * from [People].[User] where [UserId] = @UserId)     begin         if exists (select * from [People].[User] where [UserId] = @UserId and [IsLocked] = 0)         begin             if exists (select * from [People].[User]                        where [UserId] = @UserId and [IsRemoved] = 0)             begin                 update [People].[User] set [PasswordHash] = @Hash where [UserId] = @UserId                 select 0 -- Success.             end             else             begin                 select 3 -- The account doesn't exist any longer.             end         end         else         begin             select 2 -- The account is locked.         end     end     else     begin         select 1 -- The user cannot be found.     end      The query is then used like this:               var errorCode = new SqlDataQuery(query, Program.ConnectionString)         .With(new { UserId = this.Id, Hash = this.ComputeHash() })         .ReadValue<int>();          // Error codes are used only between the database and code, and transformed into exceptions     // as soon as possible.     switch (errorCode)     {         case 1: throw new UserNotFoundException();         case 2: throw new AccountPermissionException();         case 3: throw new AccountRemovedException();     }      In general programming, error codes are considered bad and should be replaced by conventional error handling procedures, including exceptions. Is it also bad to use them in SQL queries? If yes, how should I rewrite the query to follow best practices? * * * \u00b9 Given the non-functional requirements related to the load and performance, there is no way to make several consecutive queries. All the checks and the update should be done in a single query."}
{"_id": "126721", "title": "How Much Logic in Getters", "text": "This question has been asked in different ways, but nothing that's actually what I want to know. Got me confused at work now. They tell me there should be as little logic as possible in getters and setters. Yet, I am convinced that a lot of stuff can be hidden in getters and setters to shield users/programmers from implementation details. An example of what I do:               public List<Stuff> getStuff()     {        if (stuff == null || cacheInvalid())        {            stuff = getStuffFromDatabase();        }        return stuff;     }      An example of how work tells me to do things (they quote 'Clean Code' from Uncle Bob):               public List<Stuff> getStuff()     {         return stuff;     }          public void loadStuff()     {         stuff = getStuffFromDatabase();     }      Any suggestions? How much logic is appropriate in a setter/getter? What's the use of empty getters and setters except a violation of data hiding?"}
{"_id": "225359", "title": "DMCA as a license for closed-source javascript code", "text": "I have a proprietary project, with parts of it written in javascript. We would like a software license to include in the header file for this code which ensures the work remains:   * proprietary    * cannot be reverse engineered (as it will be obfuscated / minimized)   * cannot be reused elsewhere   * cannot be linked to does the DMCA do all of this? Does anyone use the DMCA in this way? I looked at this other question, Best existing license for closed-source code, about other possible language, but want to know specifically about the benefits and failings of the DMCA as a license."}
{"_id": "103741", "title": "Is functional decomposition really an antipattern?", "text": "While I was reading The worst anti-patterns you have came across, I clicked on the link in this post to land on the web site about anti-patterns. And the http://sourcemaking.com/antipatterns/functional-decomposition page got me wondering. How bad this anti-pattern is, and is it an anti-pattern at all? Because, although I am doing mostly OOP programming nowadays, I still feel a reluctance against pure OOP-everything languages like Java, and also the design practices that they bring. And I guess, I still have some traits of the functional programming while I write the code. And this brought up a question, am I doing wrong by sticking to OOP+Functional style, or is it common in industry and is not actually that bad. What I do know from experience, is that OOP+Functional style is not completely compatible with pure OOP developers. But at the same time, while OOP developers have problems with OOP+Functional development, the counterargument is that OOP solutions are quite often over-engineered and too hard to use, and from my experience, were not even a single bit easier, and actually introduced some blind spots for VERY serious bugs to hide. So, even though I had discussion with my colleague about these topics, I came to conclusion that none of the ways is actually perfect. And I still have the question unanswered. The OOP problem was also reinforced by a link from another post in the same thread. The link looks at the Java style OOP http://chaosinmotion.com/blog/?p=622 So what is the general attitude toward mixing functional programming with OOP? And what is the balance a developer should strive to achieve?"}
{"_id": "103745", "title": "Quality vs Time", "text": "I have heard of developers who work with code which is a complete mess because originally the code was quickly developed and the quality was not there in the first place. Its always good to get maintainable, reusable code but I was wondering if it was best to sacrifice some of this due to time constraints. A common problem I come up against is over engineering something and wasting a lot of time. We all know in the real world due to time constraints its going to be very difficult to get near perfect code. I was wondering if there was a general rule for getting good quality if there is not much development time? Do you find this a common problem in development balancing code quality and time?"}
{"_id": "196579", "title": "Storing data in code", "text": "A few times in my past I've wanted to store data in code. This would be data that seldom changes and is used in places where access to a database isn't possible, practical, or desirable. A small example would be storing a list of countries. For that you could do something like:               public class Country     {         public string Code { get; set; }         public string EnglishName {get;set;}     }          public static class CountryHelper     {         public static List<Country> Countries = new List<Country>             {                 new Country {Code = \"AU\", EnglishName = \"Australia\"},                 ...                 new Country {Code = \"SE\", EnglishName = \"Sweden\"},                 ...             };              public static Country GetByCode(string code)         {             return Countries.Single(c => c.Code == code);         }     }      I've got away with doing this in the past because the data sets were relatively small and the objects pretty simple. Now I'm working with something that will have more complex objects (5 - 10 properties each, some properties being dictionaries) and around 200 objects total. The data itself changes very rarely and when it does change it's really not even that important. So rolling it into the next release version is perfectly fine. I'm planning to use T4 or ERB or some other templating solution to turn my data source into something that is stored statically in the assembly. It seems my options are   1. Store the data in XML. Compile the XML file as an assembly resource. Load data as needed, store loaded data into a Dictionary for repeat-use performance.   2. Generate some kind of static object or objects that are initialized at startup. I'm pretty sure I understand the performance implications of option 1. At least, my hunch is that it wouldn't have stellar performance. As for option 2, I don't know what to do. I don't know enough about the internals of the .NET framework to know the best way to actually store this data in C# code and the best ways to initialize it. I poked around using .NET reflector to see how `System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCulture(name)` works, since this is actually a very similar workflow to what I want. Unfortunately that trail ended at an `extern`, so no hints there. Is initializing a static property with all the data, as in my example, the way to go? Or would it be better to create the objects on demand and then cache them, like this?                   private static readonly Dictionary<string, Country> Cache = new Dictionary<string,Country>();               public static Country GetByCode(string code)         {             if (!Cache.ContainsKey(code))                 return Cache[code];                  return (Cache[code] = CreateCountry(code));         }              internal static Country CreateCountry(string code)         {             if (code == \"AU\")                 return new Country {Code = \"AU\", EnglishName = \"Australia\"};             ...             if (code == \"SE\")                 return new Country {Code = \"SE\", EnglishName = \"Sweden\"};             ...             throw new CountryNotFoundException();         }      The advantage to creating them at once in a static member is that you can use LINQ or whatever else to look at all the objects and query them if you want. Though I suspect doing this has a startup performance penalty. I'm hoping someone has experience with this and can share their opinions!"}
{"_id": "143479", "title": "How should I group these variables?", "text": "I have a shape that will be defined by:               char s_type;     char color;     double height;     double width;      These variables are scanned in from a request string sent to my server and passed into my printing function, which then prints out the shape. Currently they are just local variables sitting in my `main()`; however, I was wondering if there would be any advantage in creating a struct containing these variables, and then passing the struct to my printing function? or how else might I improve my program's structure/style, would passing a struct by reference have any kind of performance benefit if there were many requests and therefore many printing function calls?               printer(char st, char cr, double ht, double wd);          int main()     {         // Other main functionality.              char s_type;         char color;         double height;         double width;              sscanf (serv_req, \"GET /%c/%c/%lf/%lf\", &s_type, &color, &height, &width);              printer(s_type, color, height, width);              // Other main functionality.              return 0;     }      It seemed \"neater\" if I had a struct or something that didn't leave me with declarations in the middle of everything else going on in main. I'm interested in structure/style as well as performance. EDIT: didn't mean to put printer declaration inside main."}
{"_id": "216542", "title": "How to keep word document, html and pdf documentation aligned", "text": "Is there a way to write documentation in a WYSIWYG editor which can then export into HTML, WORD and PDF and keep copies synchronized? This documentation are mostly technical notes and some contextual help for some softwares so they must contain images and some styling, they are not programmer's documentation (API list or functions list) for which probably a program like Javadoc or Doxygen would be the best choice. For example how do companies with hundreds different software lines and thousands of programmers deal with this? I have several solutions but they all seem lacking in some aspect:   * Latex/Tex : very good pdf and html export, not very user friendly and no full-blown WYSIWYG editor available.   * LibreOffice/OpenOffice : full blown WYSIWYG editor however html export not so good (need to edit manually exported html which needs to be maintained separately )   * Mediawiki or any other wiki : could be keeping documentation in wikitext format, so html is automatically generated, pdf exportation is quite good with many available plugins. Again however need some formation for the staff to use it and need to setup a server for this. Notice I'm not asking for software A vs software B, I'm asking for general advice, big companies procedures for documentation and yes some software product names if available."}
{"_id": "156156", "title": "Why is it called Just In Time?", "text": "I know what the JIT compiler is but how about why is it called that, it obviously catches exceptions _Just in Time_ , but how and why should it be called this? Sorry if this sounds a bit vague."}
{"_id": "126608", "title": "Pair Programming with Scrum", "text": "I'm on a team that is currently using Scrum, and we're considering adding pair programming to help improve the cross-functional skills of the team, as well as help reduce defects with a \"two heads are better than one\" philosophy. On our team, each team member typically signs up for a full workload during sprint planning (with \"full\" being a number that is less than 40 hours a week, allowing for meetings, collaboration, etc.), with a single dedicated owner for each task. I believe this is fairly common on Scrum teams but may not necessarily be by the book. In particular, I'm looking to avoid a situation where team members are hesitant to pair because they have their own tasks to work on, which I'm afraid is likely to happen if the team simply self-organizes without time set aside for pairing. Given this, what is the best way to account for effort/hours/story points in a pairing scenario, to make sure we have appropriately allotted time for pairing? Some options considered are:   1. Allow two people to sign up for each task and (roughly) double the number of estimated hours   2. Only the \"hands on keyboard\" team member signs up for each task, which is estimated based on that person's estimated hours. Anyone on the team who will be supporting pairing will sign up for fewer tasks in the sprint to allow time to support pairing."}
{"_id": "215253", "title": "What will be the better way for data retrieval on application that needs to handle limited amount of data.?", "text": "This is not really a coding question since, I am not adding any code in here. Since, adding my code snippets itself would make this question really long. Instead, I am pretty interested in knowing a better ways for data retrieval on application that needs to handle limited amount of data which isn't updated regularly. Let's take this example: I am writing an application which gets a schedule as an XML from server. I have written a logic in order to parse XML version and update database only if the version is newer than the local version. Although the update is checked automatically/manually on daily basis based on user preference, the actual version update happens only once per few months or so. Since, this is done by some other authority which doesn't provide API but, rather inform publicly on their changes. The actual XML contains a \"(n number of groups) _(days in a week)_ (n number of schedule)\" . The group is usually 6 and the number of schedule is usually 2. So basically there would usually be only around 100 strings. Now although I have used SQLite at the moment. I want to know how to make update on database. **Should I show progress dialog that the application is updating and exit the app when it's done?** Since, my updates are infrequent i don't think this will really harm user experience but, **is there any better ways to do it?** Because I don't want update to be made when user is searching which is done using database. This will cause an database already open exception. Atleast I have faced this problem before. **Is it better to rather parse XML every time when user wants to view certain things or to use SQLite?** Since, I make lots of use of adapter in my app to create lists, will that degrade the performance? It would really be a great help if anyone can give me better overview about it. Or may be counter argument against each. Many thanks!"}
{"_id": "111914", "title": "Reason behind multi-line declaration style?", "text": "I'm a little curious about the reason behind the Windows header file declaration styles. When I read them, I see multi-line declarations such as the following:               WINBASEAPI     HANDLE     WINAPI     GetStdHandle(         IN DWORD nStdHandle         );      What is the primary reason why they're not written as something like:               WINBASEAPI HANDLE WINAPI GetStdHandle(IN DWORD nStdHandle);      i.e. in a single line?"}
{"_id": "186466", "title": "Does this situation call for well specified associations, single table inheritance, or polymorphic association?", "text": "I'm building a web-app where users can keep track of who owes whom money. I have users and debts. Given a user I want to be able to find out all the debts to other users, and all the loans to other users. Given a debt I want to be able to find out who the debtor and lender are. The asker of this question ran into a similar situation, but I don't belive our situations similar enough to warrant just using the top answer: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4729725/how-do-i-do-two-has-many-belongs- to-relationships-between-two-models Taken from that question, the three paterns sugested there are   * well specified associations   * single table inheritance   * polymorphic association What pattern should I use in my situation? One of these three, or is there an even more appropriate one?"}
{"_id": "66063", "title": "How to hunt for software developer jobs if it is hard to travel on site interview", "text": "I am a software developer with 3 years of experience in different domains. I was trying to find a job via online sites. Particularly I tried to send motivation letter with CV to UK vacancies. All companies which responded back to me asked to go to the interview on site. I explained them that I am from another country and maybe it is possible to do it over the phone/skype? Everyone replied that it is not possible. Could anyone suggest me what to do in this situation? Maybe I am doing something wrong? Any help would be the most welcome. P.S. it will really hit my pocket to go for every interview over there."}
{"_id": "188737", "title": "Storage and naming of log data", "text": "I'm in the process of rewriting a small application from console mode to a GUI mode. The input is a file with log data from a measuring device:               ...     00029;00044;00076;00044;00021     00309;00032;00037;00000;65535     00013;00016;00008;00007;00005     ...      Each row of data represents 5 counters which summarize the range in which the measure fell, i.e. first column is \"<40%\", 2nd column is \"[40-50[\", and so on... First row as example:               29 counts below 40% | 44 counts between 40% and 60% | 76 counts between 60% and 80%     44 counts between 80% and 90% | 21 counts between 90% and 100%      In the console application I used an array of integers to store each data row, putting each row array in a list. So far, so good... The application then used a for-loop to print out the values with descriptions to the console. **My problem:** I wanted to create a GUI with WPF and apply databinding. But I have a conceptual issue with how to create the data binding to the arrays of integers and visual elements. I have not had problems with data binding to single properties. The challenge is due to the arrays. I think I should create a class like this (could also be used as a ViewModel):               public class CounterRecords     {         public List<CounterRecord> DataRecords { get; set; }     }      But how should I go about the `CounterRecord` class?   What's a clean / clear implementation of this object that I can bind to?               public class CounterRecord     {         public int Range40 { get; set; }         public int Range40_60 { get; set; }         public int Range60_80 { get; set; }         public int Range80_90 { get; set; }         public int Range90_100 { get; set; }     }"}
{"_id": "188735", "title": "Use of `is` and `as` in multiple conditions", "text": "Quite recently, I thought about the use of `as`, `is` and direct cast in C#. Logically, is it a better idea to use :                var castedValue = value as type;      if (null != castedValue)      {          // Use castedValue.      }      than :               if (value is type)     {         var castedValue = (type)value;         // Use castedValue.     }      But I still have issues when dealing with this kind of pattern:               if (value is Implementation1)     {         var castedValue = (Implementation1)value;         // Use castedValue in a first way.     }     else if (value is Implementation2)     {         var castedValue = (Implementation2)value;         // Use castedValue in a second way.     }     else if (value is Implementation3)     {         var castedValue = (Implementation3)value;         // Use castedValue in a thrid way.     }     // And so on...      How can I improve this code to prevent casting two times when OK, and is it really necessary to cast twice? I don't want to make the code unreadable, but the idea is not to test a cast if a previous one succeeded. I had several ideas to fix this, but none of them seems to really satisfy the conditions... **Edit:** Here is a case I've got... There is this object that is created by a lower part of teh code I do not have control on. This object can be of several inherited types. In my layer, I do want to create a specific object depending on this type. I do have this constructor class:               public static IHighLevelObject MakeHighLevelObject(LowLevelObject lowLevelObject)     {         IHighLevelObject highLevelObject;              if (lowLevelObject is LowLevelObject1)         {             highLevelObject = new HighLevelObject1((LowLevelObject1)lowLevelObject);         }         else if (lowLevelObject is LowLevelObject2)         {             highLevelObject = new HighLevelObject2((LowLevelObject2)lowLevelObject);         }         else if (lowLevelObject is LowLevelObject3)         {             highLevelObject = new HighLevelObject3((LowLevelObject3)lowLevelObject);         }         // And so on...              return highLevelObject;     }      How do I solve this case ?"}
{"_id": "181850", "title": "Are exceptions an OOP concept?", "text": "Having read a post yesterday, I realized I did not know much about the origin of exceptions. Is it an OOP related concept only? I tend to think it is, but again there are database exceptions."}
{"_id": "72685", "title": "Branching model suggestion for same project multiple clients", "text": "We have a very big project that includes several applications that acts as the base for different clients. Every client has its own personalization of the product, different milestones, different requirements and so on, and thus each project will evolve independently based upon its own needs. The core of the project, is _similar_ (but not equal) in every project and the organization is made so that there are teams that handle each client independently (but with communication among them as needed). So far, I've been unable to find any scheme that suits our needs, either by searching the internet or coming up with some brilliant idea :) So far, we've been working by getting the product as a suit all needs, with specific branches for needed changes but, though the product has a good architecture, it's slowly becoming a big problem. Here are the main problems we face:   * Different milestones for each client: Which means each team has to produce versions as different times without the rest of the commits affecting the stability or their product.   * Different requirements, which may or may not affect the core of the system in some cases.   * Large teams (20+ team members)   * Handling bugs in the system: What do you do if a team finds a bug in his project that might affect other clients? **Note:** We're talking about a project that has 10+M LOC. **Note:** We're using Team Foundation System, Visual Studio 2008 and C# (mainly). Any suggestions, sources or ideas about how to address the situation? Is there any model in the market that has a similar problem?"}
{"_id": "23223", "title": "Book or resources to gain a better DB understanding", "text": "Please see this response I'm creating a website that has the potential to become extremely reliant on its data, and would need to be, eventually, serving up lots of data fast. When I read the above answer, I feel that perhaps MySQL isn't the best DB for me to be using. The problem is that I don't really know much about databases in general. I'm this atypical \"Web 2.0\" programmer who thinks MySQL is great because, well, it's all I've ever used. I have some questions:   * What should I know about databases so that I may make a more informed decision in the future? What resources would you recommend?   * Can I still use a PHP Framework, such as CakePHP, while choosing \"alternative\" databases? Is this a recipe for disaster?"}
{"_id": "136363", "title": "Determining if language/framework/technology is 'Future-proof'", "text": "I'm a PHP developer and I recently started to work with CodeIgniter. It seems that whenever I search for something related to CodeIgniter, the blog posts and what not are usually from '09 or '10, so it got me thinking, is CodeIgniter still relevant and is it going to be in the future? Is there another framework that is taking it's place? The same goes for other languages and frameworks as well. At what point do you abandon learning certain languages or frameworks? Is there any easy way to find those that are emerging and worth picking up?"}
{"_id": "136366", "title": "Writing recursive functions", "text": "I am having a lot of trouble writing recursive functions related to trees. I can't just use google for these functions as they are not general and I won't be able to use google in an exam setting! Is there some 'trick' to successfully coming up with an algorithm/writing psuedocode for recursive functions? Is there a certain way I should think about/approach this? **Example** : Write a recursive function that determines whether a given binary tree has a structure consistent with a valid AVL tree. **Solution Expected** :               template <typename Type>     bool is_avl (const Binary_node<Type> * tree)     {     if (tree == NULL)     {     return true;     }     return is_bst (tree)     && is_avl (tree->left()) && is_avl (tree->right())     && std::abs(height(tree->left()) - height(tree->right())) <= 1;     }"}
{"_id": "177442", "title": "Address search from large text file", "text": "Basically I want to develop a Address lookup(part of my project) using C# (and I can use SQL if necessary). I have a very large text file which have all the UK address and postcodes. Addresses needs to be looked up from this text file. For example, as soon as a user type in the first letter of the postcode it should list all the postcodes starting with that letter and as they type in further, the list should narrow down. Could you guys please how I can do this search very fast and list the results in a efficient way. If you guys know any methods and technologies pls do advice."}
{"_id": "30956", "title": "Catering for client's web-hosting needs, minus the headaches?", "text": "I'll be trying to sell my Ruby on Rails development skills to _small local businesses_. It seems I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I couldn't manage to put their apps into production, in fact catering for this would be a selling point. However, **I do not want to bill every client monthly for the cost of their hosting** , they would have to be the contract holders with the hosting service, and _I'd only consult if they needed technical help when scaling_. I've looked on one hand at cloud platforms, like engine yard, which seem like they would be too costly for the smaller clients, and on the other hand at vps providers which seem they would not be client friendly enough. Has anyone faced the same issue and come up with a decent solution ?"}
{"_id": "109232", "title": "The future for a .net developer after the BUILD conference", "text": "Looking back on Microsoft's BUILD conference and everything that came out of it, I'm not sure what direction I'm supposed to take as a developer? If I understood it right MS is putting HTML5 before WPF, Silverlight and Flash, and there's also talk about WinRT and Metro UI. I'm going to buy a couple of courses in the winter but I'm not sure what to choose? **I KNOW**   WinForms   MVC3   LINQ   CSS2   jQuery   json **LEARNING**   HTML5   CSS3 What else?"}
{"_id": "177448", "title": "About to graduate from good school without any progamming skills", "text": "I am about to graduate from a good US school with a Computer Science degree, having good grades and high GPA. I have no freaking clue how to write a good program, how to properly test it... nada, zero. We were never taught how to write software. Yeah, sure the Computer Architecture class is important, and I can tell you a lot about how MIPS processor works, and I can tell you about Binary Trees and Red-Black Trees and running time of operations in Big Oh, but it has nothing to do with programming in \"real\" life. Heavens to Betsy, none of my classmates know how to use STLs or write templated code! To be honest, I found many of my classes to be a waste of time. What should I do? How do I step into real life and learn how to program ?"}
{"_id": "228651", "title": "When should one give source code to a client?", "text": "I am a member of a small team who developed software to control the hardware of a robotic device. Now the customer demands to see our commercial code. Our promise was just to develop the software and make his machine work. (He failed to program the robot himself, that is why he hired us). But the project did not start as a hiring agreement, more as a develop and make it work, we did lots of research to make his robot even possible to work I wonder if we should give the source code? I have serious doubts about releasing the code. I believe the customer is planning to steal our c++ / c# code. We provided him the executables installed on the finished programmed robots. Our code wasn't developed just for his robotics device, but is part of our libraries we use commonly in various projects. When can a customer claim that he owns software? And when he does what does it mean. I mean having the c++ code, having a disassembler code, having c# code? Where does it end? We gave our software to an escrow agent, and we believe that is fair. But giving them our code seams to us unfair, knowing that customer will then go on to develop based upon our code. Parts of the code also use a home developed software protection, which we cannot give due to that it is used in other products."}
{"_id": "228659", "title": "delivering ebook throught mobile app", "text": "I have designed the interface of a mag app which would deliver digitized magazine in the size of A3 paper to the mobile phone. My choice of fileformat is jpg of each of the pages, but is there any better way to do this that using jpeg format. The file for one sample magazine was 16MB, and I'm stuck weather to deliver page by page or as a whole file which can be flipped"}
{"_id": "3918", "title": "What to do if a co-worker is editing your code just to change the appearance?", "text": "What should you do, if a co-worker is editing your code? Without the purpose of adding functionality or fixing bugs, just to change how it looks..."}
{"_id": "249512", "title": "Creating a voting platform for submissions during timeperiod", "text": "I have a site where stories are submitted at any time by users. The staff would like the ability to create a voting period at any time. For example, they can choose to open up voting from today until next week. The staff also gets to choose which stories are put into the voting ring to allow votes. During that period, people have the ability to vote one time on a story. Once they vote, they can no longer cast a vote. I am thinking way to hard about how to program this and I don't know why. From a database standpoint, I already have a table that contains all of the submissions. I need to then have a table that stories which stories are voting allowed to be voted on. I then need to have a table that contains the stories that are voted on by the users. Is there an easy process you can think of to accomplish this? Some times a little discussion is all I need to get out of my current mindset. Thanks"}
{"_id": "145734", "title": "Subrepositories (submodules) as a dependency tracking solution - yes or no?", "text": "What do you think about SCM-based (subrepositories in mercurial, submodules in git) dependencies management? Is it definitely a good way of managing dependencies? Or definitely bad way? Should I prefer some build system (ant/phing/rake) over subrepositories? Some particular example for you to have a context: I have several web applications that share across reusable components, say jquery plugins."}
{"_id": "100219", "title": "How to begin writing a relational SQL database", "text": "I was wondering about how databases like MySQL and SQLite are developed to run as quickly and as well as they do. I'm looking for answers to questions **like** :   * How is SQL token-ized? Do you build an AST and compile/interpret like any other language?   * How should one handle connections to the database? TCP? IPC? How do big-name databases do it?   * How is the data is these fast relational databases stored? I know SQLite uses a flat file -- seems like a synchronization nightmare. Obviously, I don't expect anyone to just explain all of relational database theory to me -- but I've been looking around and I'm really at a loss for references to start learning about this stuff. To answer the inevitable \"why don't you just use MySQL?\": (a) because I'm curious and (b) maybe someday I'll want to design my own database with a specific use in mind. EDIT: I guess I should've made this more clear. I realize this is a broad topic. I am not looking for someone to say \"oh, you design a database by...\" If this is a topic covered in a large number of books, what are those books? If this is covered well in a P.h.D. thesis you know of, what is that thesis? I am very aware that this is a broad topic -- I'm not asking for a specific answer for a broad question, I'm asking for specific resources for a broad question. As always, thanks for all the help!"}
{"_id": "145736", "title": "I target short projects, but fail miserably on projects that requires persistence", "text": "I know this is kind of time-management question. I do well in short assignments, but fail miserably, when it comes to projects that require hours and hours of work to be done day after day. I cannot code more than 10 minutes, unless there is a deadline. I kinda wander and come back and code. It takes me ridiculously large amount of time even for simple project. I kinda lack persistence. I have my thesis coming up in December. The more time I spend, the better my publication will be. I was wondering, may be I could get some help on how to code persistently? I just get out of my chair and start doing other things, when I see a bug or when I have a module that requires thinking and it takes me long time to come back sit and put my thought back to the code. Any advice on how to improve my persistent coding skills?"}
{"_id": "187332", "title": "Is changing the type of a variable partway through a procedure in a dynamically typed language bad style?", "text": "In Python (and occasionally PHP) where variables do not have fixed types, I'll frequently perform 'type transformations' on a variable part-way through my code's logic. I'm not (necessarily) talking about simple casts, but about functions that change the type of a variable while leaving it basically representing the same value or data. For example, I might write code like this when doing a web request, using the `response` variable to store an addurlinfo object, then the string content of that object, and the dictionary returned by parsing the string as JSON:               response = urlopen(some_url)     assert response.info().type == 'application/json'          response = response.read()     logger.debug('Received following JSON response: ' + response)          response = json.loads(response)     do_something(response)      (Okay, it's a slightly contrived example, but I think it demonstrates the idea fine). My feeling is that this is better than using three separate variable names because a) it conveys that the `response` variable contains basically the same information, just 'transformed' into a different type, and b) it conveys that the earlier objects aren't going to be needed any further down the function, since by reassigning over their variable I've made them unavailable to later code. The tradeoff, I guess, is that the reader could become confused about what type the variable is at any given moment. Is this bad style, and should I be using three different variables in the above example instead of reassigning to one? Also, is this standard practice in dynamically typed languages, or not? I haven't seen enough of other people's code to know."}
{"_id": "180101", "title": "Term for a single C++ endpoint/object file", "text": "I have heard several terms for a C++ \"Codepoint\" (which is what I've heard used the most often), or a `.cpp` file that is compiled into an object file. For instance, `.cpp` files can include other `.cpp` files (or any other file, really, so long as it compiles), but during compilation, there is really only one 'main' code file that is used/generated. I know there is a widely accepted term, I just can't recall what it is. What is the accepted term for the final `.c`/`.cpp` file used to generate an object file?"}
{"_id": "50150", "title": "How to determine if a programming language is verbose or terse?", "text": "Programming languages can often be described as **verbose** or **terse**. From my understanding, a verbose language is easy to read and understand, while a terse language is concise and neat, but more difficult to read. _Should there be other things to consider in the definitions?_ It seems much of the popular programming languages of today are verbose, and these terms two terms are only used to describe a language as being more or less, relative to than another language. _How do we determine if a programming language is more verbose/terse over another?_ Example: Is C# more verbose than Java?"}
{"_id": "187331", "title": "Parallelization: Choice of communication model", "text": "**Disclaimer:** If you're not into parallelization (on clusters), this question is probably not interesting to you and probably not worth a read. **TL;DR:** I search for a communication model (preferably compatible with `MPI`) that efficiently assures that each data line is processed once. Read the next paragraph as well to know what I mean by data line. Consider the following problem: An algorithm takes a data line (in my case, an array of integers with fixed size) and produces various data lines which then need to be processed by the same algorithm. Each _unique_ data line only needs to be processed once, since the outcome is purely deterministic. The set of unique data lines is finite, so after a finite number of recursive calls of this algorithm it produces the whole set. The goal is to find this set. I've already implemented the algorithm and I've also implemented a parallelization. Obviously, since we need to process each _unique_ data line, at each time all currently unprocessed data lines may be processed by different processors in parallel. On the other hand, parallelization introduces the problem of keeping the different processors from doing redundant work. A trivial implementation would send data lines to processors, collect all results and distribute again. This may be inefficient since the (possibly large) result lists have to be merged before any further work may be done. If all lists are returned around the same time, the master is overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data while all slaves idle until all merging is done. My (as far as I think, improved) communication model is still basically Master-Slave: This is what the Master does:               Distribute initial chunk of data lines to slaves     While there is at least one active slave       for each active slave         Request data line         if slave doesn't have a data line           set slave inactive, break         else           if the data line was previously processed             break           endif           if there is an inactive slave             send the data line to inactive slave and mark that slave as active             send the sending slave a notification to not process the data line           else             notify the slave to process the data line it just sent           endif         endif       endfor     endwhile      Each slave does this:               while true      wait for request      if data line available        send it        wait for master to say if the line should be processed here        process if necessary        go back to beginning      else        notify master        wait for master to send a data line        process the received line        go back to beginning      endif      The slave manages its own local list of processed and unprocessed data lines. For each request, one element of the unprocessed ones is moved to the processed ones. Only unique entries among both lists are stored. In conclusion: Only the master knows about the full set of processed lines. a slave processes a data line if and only if the master says that it wasn't previously processed. The Master doesn't know about the results for each data line until it has requested all available lines from each slave. As far as I can think, this model of communicating the list of processed data lines is pretty efficient, but I'm new to the world of parallelization, especially in the world of parallelization on a cluster. What are other ways of efficiently communicating data lines among several processors to assure that each data line is processed exactly once? This question is basically not bound to the combination of `C++` and `MPI`, though any answer reflecting the way the Message Passing Interface works are greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "211878", "title": "Clarification of Python Functional document", "text": "I'm rereading this http://docs.python.org/2/howto/functional.html document and hit this line, '...Unfortunately, proving programs correct is largely impractical and not relevant to Python software. Even trivial programs require proofs that are several pages long; the proof of correctness for a moderately complicated program would be enormous, and few or none of the programs you use daily ( **the Python interpreter** , your XML parser, your web browser) could be proven correct. Even if you wrote down or generated a proof, there would then be the question of verifying the proof; maybe there\u2019s an error in it, and you wrongly believe you\u2019ve proved the program correct.' /Emphasis mine on the Python interpreter part/ What does that mean that the Python Interpreter cannot be proven correct? Is that because it would be a long proof or that it in principal can't be proven correct, ala Godel like theorem? Is using the Interpreter then a useful fiction that all the while we use it, it could be wrong all the while, and what would being wrong mean? I mean, the interpreter has given me correct answers on integral arithmetic, so far... Clarification much appreciated."}
{"_id": "73484", "title": "Letters of recommendation from customers?", "text": "I am leaving my job soon and am looking for letters of recommendation. My problem is, I've worked more closely with my customers than my project lead (not technical) or manager (the customers usually talk to me first and rarely even if CC my lead if I don't). So in this case, the customer has seen my work more closely than my leadership and can better attest to my abilities, communication skills, and performance. Are recommendations from customers viable, or will they be largely dismissed? Secondarily, can they be more useful than letters from managers that don't really know your work at all? Note: I already have a letter from the only coworker I've really worked with, but I'm looking to get more than one for good measure."}
{"_id": "32702", "title": "Legal aspects of Java specification implementations in other programming languages", "text": "I am planning to implement an official Java specification in a different programming language. Would this be a copyright violation? Hypothetical examples:   * a **JMX** \"wrapper\" library for C++ which can control a Java application over JMX, and uses similar concepts and class/method names as the Java implementation   * a **JavaMail** API and implementations (for different .Net network libraries) for C#"}
{"_id": "117815", "title": "Making big changes incrementally", "text": "Currently working on a complete front-end and back-end overhaul of our webapp. We did this because a lot of changes needed to be made to the database schema as well as the user experience. Now we are almost done with the overhaul and I'm thinking if we could have taken a more incremental approach? We started a new codeline for this overhaul and now we have to figure out a good data migration plan to make sure the old data is transferred over to the new schema properly. We made the decision to do a separate codeline because we thought that if we did incremental changes to the schema, there would be more downtime to the site. A separate development cycle for it would reduce that downtime to the final day when we do the data migration. And of course that carries more risk. What are some good approaches to this problem for the future if we ever need to do another major overhaul? Incremental approach would be desirable."}
{"_id": "181271", "title": "event listener pattern in api - what should adding the same listener twice do?", "text": "In designing an API that provides an event listening interface, it seems there are two conflicting ways of treating calls to add/remove listeners:   1. Multiple calls to addListener will only add a single listener (like adding it to a set); can be removed with a single call to removeListener.    2. Multiple calls to addListener will add a listener each time (like adding it to a list); must be balanced by multiple calls to removeListener. I've found an example of each: (1) - The DOM addEventListener call in browsers only adds listeners once, silently ignoring requests to add the same listener a second time and (2) - jQuery `.on` behaviour adds listeners multiple times. Most other listener APIs seem to use (2), such as SWT and Swing event listeners. If (1) is chosen, there's also the question of whether it should fail silently or with an error when there is a request to add the same listener twice. In my implementations, I tend to stick with (2) since it provides a cleaner setup/teardown type interface and reveals bugs where 'setup' is unintentionally being done twice, and is consistent with most implementations I've seen. This leads me to my question - Is there a particular architecture or other underlying design that lends itself better to the other implementation? (ie: why does the other pattern exist?)"}
{"_id": "117813", "title": "I keep failing hands on part of the interview, suggestions?", "text": "So I have a couple of software/site in my portfolio. They make money but not a whole lot. So I decided to get some job experience, mainly applying to Java/PHP junior development positions. The problem is that I answer all the technical questions correctly and we schedule to do a coding \"test\", the final phase of the interview. I can never relax and over think things and end up doing the test very slowly. OR sometimes I just hit a block and find it very difficult to think on my feet. I don't understand this because other stuff I had written were solving far more complex problems while the \"Test\" is actually brutally simple such as writing and testing palindrome. Other times, they will give me a logic test with flows to math operations and again I won't be able to do it in the time they assign. I know I can write sellable software/websites that can generate small revenues and find ways to solve problems but I have great difficulty with simple coding tests in interviews. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "233896", "title": "I'm looking for recommendations or advice on how to improve our workflow?", "text": "I'm working within a team and corporate is breathing down our necks to become more efficient, as projects are on average taking us 6+ months to complete. I was only recently hired (back end development) and it feels very unorganized to me. Unfortunately, being the newcomer, I don't have much of a voice. I'd like to propose a new workflow and was hoping to get some advice that might help make a positive impact / impression? **Current work flow:**   1. Sales - makes a sale. Discusses any potential issues with development before hand.   2. Sales, design and copy meet with client for strategy session. Development is only invited when programming related questions are expected to come up.   3. Design creates a few mockups which are then approved by the client.   4. Copy writes / proof-reads the content, creates a list of keywords for SEO, also approved by the client.   5. Design creates the inner pages and lays the copy into the PSD.   6. Front end development creates the template including all content, and all client-side functionality, approved by client.   7. Back end development creates the databases, programs the website and hooks up CMS / content management.   8. Development trains the client on the back end and if approved, adds analytics and launches the site.   9. Development continues to provide client support if necessary. **Proposed work flow:**   1. Sales - makes a sale. Discusses any potential issues with development before hand.   2. Sales, design, copy and development meet with the client for strategy session, regardless of whether or not programming is involved.   3. Design creates a few mockups which are then approved by the client.   4. Development reviews approved mockup and discusses any potentional issues with CMS / inner page design.   5. Design can now work on the inner pages while both copy writes content and front end development creates the initial template.   6. After inner pages and / or copy is complete, front end finishes the template. Both copy and front end can be simutaneously approved by the client.   7. Back end development creates the databases, programs the website and hooks up CMS / content management.   8. Development trains the client on the back end and if approved, adds analytics and launches the site.   9. Development continues to provide client support if necessary."}
{"_id": "233898", "title": "Commercial vs Personal software licenses", "text": "If I work for a company and write code for them but I choose to buy a tool for myself and use it to write code for the company, do I need a commercial or personal license? Specifically, in this case, I am asking about WebStorm IDE JetBrains have Commercial (For companies and organizations) and Personal (For individual developers). I am an individual developer working for a company!"}
{"_id": "181279", "title": "Testing UI for azure web app on iPad", "text": "I am working on debugging my mobile application. There is a specific requirement/issue that I am having related to a drag and drop touch interface on an iPad. I am at the trial and error phase of trying to figure out how to fix this (meaning I have no idea how to fix the issue I'm seeing). The only way I have been able to figure out how to test my app on a mobile device is to deploy it to my azure test instance because the azure compute emulator always runs sites under 127.0.0.1. This is really annoying since each deploy to azure takes 10+ minutes. So my question is, how the heck to people do mobile development on this platform? I've have found some people suggesting I could set up a reverse proxy using fiddler to allow remote connections but so far I haven't been able to get this to work. Is there some sweet ios simulator that I haven't been able to find? Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "214790", "title": "Code Review tools - to use or not?", "text": "On my dev team, we're doing code reviews, however not in a proper way i believe. The issues our process suffers from:   1. Not enough time is allocated for proper code review.   2. Doing reviews is not mandatory - many times it is simply not done.   3. Devs sit together for reviews, due to lack of another easy mechanism for doing it \"offline\" without spending both developers' time. My question is: can integration of a tool for code reviews improve the points mentioned above? Is it not needed? I would love to hear from positive/negative experiences."}
{"_id": "131359", "title": "Is the financial sector any different from other sectors in terms of language fragmentation?", "text": "## Language Choices of Large Corporations Having spent almost 12 years working in the financial sector, at both large and small companies, my overriding impression, with the exception of Goldman Sachs, is that **fragmentation** (or, putting a more positive spin on things, **diversity** ) is the name of the game. Within a single company, we might see C, C++, Smalltalk, Java, J++, Perl, C# and more. Even now, I hear about large swings _towards_ using languages which have been around for 30 years but which are not widespread within the company (i.e. avoidable fragmentation; if the language wasn't appropriate 5 years ago, why now?) I guess I'm interested by   * Are large, technology-focused companies outside the financial sector as fragmented as those within it?    * Why has this fragmentation happened?   * Are _software companies_ as fragmented? ## The position of Java My impression is that Java largely \u201cwon\u201d the first decade of this century in the financial sector, which (probably) saw the biggest historical expansion of systems. By \"won\", I simply mean that it was the most popular choice for new systems during this decade. I'd be grateful to be pointed towards any **evidence** as to these points, and especially sector-comparisons. _PS. My reasons for asking this question are that I will be giving a talk to students in London about building financial IT systems. I would like to be able to place my experiences of financial IT in a wider context, and I do not want to make sweeping generalizations._"}
{"_id": "124223", "title": "Users and roles: Where to put queryUsersWithRole()?", "text": "I have two model classes `User` and `Role` and two managers/DAOs (`UserManager` and `RoleManager`) plus a method which gives me all users with a certain role (`List<User> getUsersWithRole(Role)`). In which manager does this method belong and why?"}
{"_id": "77475", "title": "How to choose between git and Mercurial", "text": "Both Git and Mercurial are DVCS, and that's great. I wonder if there is a list of particular situations when one of those systems are preferable, something like 'In mobile development for many platforms git is better because ...'."}
{"_id": "156979", "title": "What is the most basic and simple platform for collaborative development (PHP project)?", "text": "I need to work with 4-5 programmers on a fairly average PHP application using codeigniter. We're in 5 different locations in one city, and all of the programmers are all not too well educated and I'm assuming that most of them have never used any version control system. Can you recommend some very very easy-to-get-into platform for collaborating on a project like this? I'm talking about something that is only a tad more sophisticated than a shared dropbox folder."}
{"_id": "131355", "title": "Google Analytics and customers privacy", "text": "I work in a company that sells SaaS web applications for HR and financial issues. Our customers are key accounts to which we guarantee the privacy of their data, for obvious reasons. We need to make usage statistics of our applications by its customers (which links are clicked the most? Which browsers are used the most? What is the average screen resolutions? etc). I personally use Google Analytics on my sites. GA is a very powerful and complete solution for this. But it raises questions of privacy.   * Have you already had this problem?   * Were you able to impose on your customers? how?   * If not, did you use an alternative? or did you develop your own measurement tools of statistics?"}
{"_id": "215185", "title": "ASP.NET Web Forms is bad, or what am I missing?", "text": "Being a PHP guy myself I recently had to write a spider to an asp.net site. I was really surprised by the different approach to ajax and form-handling. For example, in the PHP sites I've worked with, a deletion of a database entry would be something like:               GET delete.php?id=&confirm=yes and get a \"success\" back in some form (in the ajax case, probably a json reply). In this asp.net application you would instead post a form, including all inputs on the page, with a huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION. This would be more than 10 times as big as above. The reply would be the complete side again, with a footer containing some structured data for javascript to parse and display the result. Again, the whole page is sent, and then throwed away(?) since it's already displayed. Why not just send the footer with the data to parse (it's not json nor xml but a | separated list). I really can't see why you would design a system that way. Usually you've a fast client, and a somewhat fast server but a really slow connection. Why not keep the datatransfer to a minimum? Why those huge __VIEWSTATE and __EVENTVALIDATION? It seems that everything is done way to chatty and way to complicated. I really can't see the point and that usually means that I'm missing something. So please tell me, what are the reasons for this design and what benefits (and weaknesses) does it have? (Yes I know that __VIEWSTATE is used to tell what type of form-konfiguration should be sent back to the server. But WHY is this needed?) Please keep this discussion strictly technical and avoid flamewars. * * * Update: Please excuse the somewhat rantish question. I tried to explain my view to be able to get a better answer. I am _not_ saying that asp.net is bad, I am saying that _I_ don't understand the meaning of those concepts. Usually that means that I've things to learn instead of the concepts beeing wrong. I appreciate the explanations about that \"you don't have to do this way in asp.net\", I'll read up on MVC and other .net technologies. However, there most be a reason for this site (the one I referred to) to be written the way it is. It's written by professionals for a big organisation with far more experience than what I've. Any explanation about their (possible) design choice would be welcome."}
{"_id": "77479", "title": "How difficult is Python and Django to pick up for a Java/.NET web developer?", "text": "I just started a new job a couple months ago at a small company where I am currently leading all development efforts present and future. I personally have years of experience in software design and development from mostly Java but also a .NET perspective. I picked up .NET later in my career with great ease and required literally no training to hit the ground running, and on top of that it helped me to truly grasp and appreciate the universality of many best practices and common themes by seeing two different perspectives to solving the same problem. My boss has a startup company on the side, and without divulging too much information, he had a need of a moderately sophisticated web application that integrates into Google Maps to build routes. He contracted out the web application to which they overpromised, majorly underdelivered, and ran over the deadline, he is currently in a fight to try and recover at least some of the money he invested. He has the source code for the site as it is right now but has a laundry list of things he would like fixed and added before he goes live with it. He asked me if I would like to do this on the side for some extra cash but the problem is that the site was written in Python using Django, which I have no experience in whatsoever. I told him that I am really not the best person for this because I no virtually nothing about Python or Django and would have to learn it from scratch. I feel it wouldn't be fair for me to bill him hourly for my time if I am using that time learning a language and platform. Based on the summary of my experience level how difficult or how much time would you guess it would take for me to pick this up? If you think its a waste of time could anybody recommend a suggestion for where to find experienced Python web developers? Money is a concern for him right now so he doesn't have the biggest budget anymore. Thanks for your suggestions!"}
{"_id": "215184", "title": "Should I just always Convert.ToInt32 my integers to account for potential nullable integers?", "text": "If my MSSQL database contains a data type that is NULL (i.e. null is allowed) then ORMs, such as EntityFramework in my case, create .NET objects that are nullable. This is great, and the way I use nullables is like this: **C#**               int? someInt = 5;          int newInt = someInt.Value; // woot      **VB.NET**               Dim someInt As Integer?          Dim newInt As Integer = someInt.Value ' hooray      However, recently I had to make a change to the database to make an Id field no longer NULL (nullable). This means that `.Value` is now broken. This is a nuisance if the Id property is used a lot. One solution that I thought of is to just use `Convert.ToInt32` on Id fields so it doesn't matter if an int is nullable or not. **C#**               int newInt = Convert.ToInt32(someInt); // always compiles      **VB.NET**               Dim newInt As Integer = Convert.ToInt32(someInt) ' always compiles      Is this a bad approach and are there any alternatives?"}
{"_id": "43819", "title": "Easy way of engaging non-programmers (i.e. designers) into using version control?", "text": "What are some key ways of getting your team involved in using version control during development, web development or otherwise? I refuse to work without it, which means anyone involved in the project must also use it. It's just good practice. GUIs like Tower have helped, but the concept of it is either met with anger ('not my job!' kinda attitude), timidness, or just straight up not using it (using FTP instead, circumventing version control for say, dev or deployment). Edit: I should have clarified a little that I don't just mean images/PSDs."}
{"_id": "199946", "title": "In API design, when to use/avoid ad hoc polymorphism?", "text": "Sue is designing a JavaScript library, `Magician.js`. Its linchpin is a function which pulls a `Rabbit` out of the argument passed. She knows its users may want to pull a rabbit out of a `String`, a `Number`, a `Function`, perhaps even a `HTMLElement`. With that in mind, she _could_ design her API like so: # The strict interface               Magician.pullRabbitOutOfString = function(str) //...     Magician.pullRabbitOutOfHTMLElement = function(htmlEl) //...      Each function in the above example would know how to handle the argument of the type specified in the function name/parameter name. Or, she could design it like so: # The \"ad hoc\" interface               Magician.pullRabbit = function(anything) //...      `pullRabbit` would have to account for the variety of different expected types that the `anything` argument could be, as well as (of course) an unexpected type:               Magician.pullRabbit = function(anything) {       if (anything === undefined) {         return new Rabbit(); // out of thin air       } else if (isString(anything)) {         // more       } else if (isNumber(anything)) {         // more       }       // etc.     };      The former (strict) seems more explicit, perhaps safer, and perhaps more performant -- as there are little or no overheads for type checking or type conversion. But the latter (ad hoc) feels simpler looking at it from the outside, in that it \"just works\" with whatever argument the API consumer finds convenient to pass to it. **For the answer to this question** , I'd like to see specific pros and cons to either approach (or to a different approach altogether, if neither is ideal), that Sue should know which approach to take when designing her library's API."}
{"_id": "205681", "title": "Why is Inversion of Control named that way?", "text": "The words `invert` or `control` are not used at all to define Inversion of Control in the definitions that I've seen. ## Definitions Wikipedia > inversion of control (IoC) is a programming technique, expressed here in > terms of object-oriented programming, in which object coupling is bound at > run time by an assembler object and is typically not known at compile time > using static analysis. ~http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_of_control Martin Fowler > Inversion of Control is a common pattern in the Java community that helps > wire lightweight containers or assemble components from different projects > into a cohesive application. ~ _based on_ > http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html _(reworded)_ * * * So why is Inversion of Control named Inversion of Control? What control is being inverted and by what? Is there a way to define Inversion of Control using the terminology: **_invert_** and **_control_**?"}
{"_id": "69046", "title": "Interesting non programming tasks for programmers", "text": "This question is related to my another questions asked to HN community http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450143 Here is the summary of above thread: I asked HN community if we should give 2nd and 4th Saturdays off to our developers? Right now we have 1st and 3rd Saturdays off only and we work on others. OR We should have some fun, events, pet projects, movies, informal one to ones etc on those 2 Saturdays? What should be a better option for our 7 years old, small IT service company of 50 developers? I got lot of good responses. Most of them says \"Give them OFF\" :) I still want to try giving these 2 Saturdays to developers to do their own stuff. They can improve communication, writing skills, write blogs, work on pet projects etc etc. I wanted to know what are the other non-programming activities we can do for programmers. I am sure I am gonna get lot more good answers from this community :) Update: Well I guess that didn't go very well with everyone. Thanks for commenting and answering anyway. But I think, it will be very hard for you to understand the context I am coming through. It is my mistake that I could not explain it properly here. It is pretty common to work on Saturdays in developing countries like India. You guys are fortunate to be liberated much earlier than us (Assuming you are from US and developed European countries). Your grand fathers and great grand fathers built your country working probably 7 days a week and you are earning benefits of their hard work now by working 5 days a week. And some of you may be proposing 4 days a week too now. We still have to play catch up game and we can not afford to have leisure of working limited number of hours every week. Probably our children or grand children will enjoy working 4 or 5 days a week consistently. I am not against 5 days a week or 4 days a week here. But we have many more areas to improve up on as programmers and as individuals. English not being our native language, we have to work hard on improving English. Writing skills, Technical improvements, there are so many things we have to work on. And not every programmer is as motivated to do on his/her own. They need some guidance. We want to spend those 2 days helping them do that for their own good. Company is not going to earn from those 2 days. Yes in long term it will benefit company as well but it will be more beneficial to them. So I came here to understand from experts like you guys, what programmers can do to improve up on. We as a company will help them do that. No offense to anyone, but I hope this clarifies, why I asked this question."}
{"_id": "135638", "title": "Effective template system", "text": "I'm building a content management system, and need advice on which theming structure should I adopt. A few options (This is not a complete list):   1. Wordpress style:     * the controller decides what template to load based on the user request, like: home page / article archive / single article page etc.     * each of these templates are unrelated to other templates, and must exist within the theme     * the theme developer decides if (s)he want to use inner-templates (like \"sidebar\", \"sidebar item\"), and includes them manually where (s)he thinks are needed.   2. Drupal style:     * the controller gives control to the theme developer only to inner-templates; if they don't exist it falls back internally to some default templates (I find this very restrictive)   3. Funky style:     * the controller only loads a \"index.php\" template and provides the theme developer conditional tags, which he can use to include inner-templates if (s)he wants. Among these styles, or others what style of template system allows for fast development and a more concise design and implementation."}
{"_id": "140811", "title": "Does MVC apply only to web", "text": "It is almost and instantaneous whenever I talk to developers about Model View Controller ( **MVC** ) they say you make a request to a url the server builds a entity (MODEL) and provides you with visual representation of that model.   * So does this mean MVC **is only for the web** or have I been meeting people who are just developers who employ MVC for writing web applications?   * Are there usages for MVC on desktop style applications?   * I for one am new to paradigm and would like to know of any super-set to MVC"}
{"_id": "205689", "title": "Using .exe of program with GNU General Public License version 2.0 for commercial", "text": "I have a question to somebody who is expert about \"GNU General Public License version 2.0\" license. I am making program and my code is using another program (\"HoboCopy\") inside which have this one license. I downloaded just a .exe of this one program and I am wondering if its ok with license if my boss will sell program which I made without code of course, he wants to sell it like a normal program, just .exe to use. I checked out for question like that, and no matches. Sorry I know that in a big licence documentary is probably wroten answer for my question, but forgive me, that I dont want to read it all, maybe somebody already know it and can tell me or eventually tell me the exactly piece of licence documentary where I can found answer for my question. Thanks in advance. EDIT: After published my post I read this one: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE as part of commercial product. Looks like I got answer that he can sell it. And I dont have to give my source, and HoboCopy source (even I dont have it). Just maybe somebody can make me sure."}
{"_id": "180285", "title": "Arithmetic Coding vs. Machine Numeric Precision", "text": "When subdividing intervals for arithmetic coding, the worst case scenario is that the final interval will have size `2^(1-n)`, where `n` is the number of unique symbols you are encoding. This will reach the limits of machine precision, when using regular datatypes, really quickly: For instance, I've made a JavaScript implementation and it breaks after encoding around just 15 characters! As this is pretty limiting, how do codecs get around this?   * Encode [very] short blocks, within the machine's limits, and concatenate them together? That will add overhead.   * Use non-native types with arbitrary precision? This will be slow.   * Something else?..."}
{"_id": "140814", "title": "Copyrights concerning code snippets and larger amounts of code", "text": "I am designing a public code repository. Users will be allowed to post and edit whatever amount of code they want, from code snippets to **entire multi- file projects**. I have a few major legal concerns about this:   * **Not getting sued/shut down** \\- I feel the site would be a much easier target than tracking down an individual user to sue. I have looked around a bit and see links to legal info in the footer of each page is common. What specific things should I do--and what does does a site such as YouTube (which I see copyrighted material on all the time) do--for protection?   * **Citing sources and editing sourced code** \\- If a user wants to post code that isn't theirs, what concerns/safeguards should I have? Will a link suffice, and what do I need further to allow the code to be edited (to improve it for example)? What can happen if a user posts copyrighted code without citing it?   * **Large chunks of code** \\- What legal differences should I look out for as the amount grows?   * **Not having a mess of licenses for the site** \\- I would like to have a single license (like RosettaCode) that keeps things simple for interaction on the site. I want the code to be postable _and editable_. I have looked into StackOverflow's CreativeCommons license a little and it says that > If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the > resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. And on RosettaCode: > All software found on Rosetta Code should be considered potentially > hazardous. Use at your own risk. Be aware that all code on Rosetta Code is > under the GNU Free Documentation License, as are any edits made by > contributors. See Rosetta Code:Copyrights for details. What other licenses are like this?   * **Commercializing the site** \\- In what ways can I and can't I make money off of a site that contains code like this? All code will be publicly visible. Initial thoughts are having ads or making money by charging for advanced features."}
{"_id": "135631", "title": "Logistically, how do you manage embedded SQL?", "text": "My current application is running into issues with its ORM, and we're relying on some pretty hairy SQL to express queries that the ORM can't. Are there best practices in terms of how to manage the SQL queries? For example, where do these usually live in relation to other parts of the code? Are they in separate `.sql` files, or do you edit them directly in your other source files? If the latter, does your IDE (or editor) allow syntax highlighting? Are there schemes for Vim or Eclipse which will perform SQL syntax highlighting given a set of tags (like `#begin sql` and `#end sql`, or something similar?)"}
{"_id": "184734", "title": "Matching up articles with similar ones", "text": "I am creating a site where people can write on a niche topic. It is almost like a blog, however the area as I mentioned is a small niche with (hopefully) passionate users. I want a functionality where once someone posts his article. People with similar experience can be notified, so that they can read about. Now my question is - how to determine similar articles? I know that tagging is a way - just like here in stackexchange and I will be implementing it. But suppose people do not tag, or tag incorrectly, the whole user experience will be hard to indulge in. Does anyone have any pointers on how to match up articles other than the tagging method?"}
{"_id": "184733", "title": "How to organise utility scripts inside a development team?", "text": "Inside my development team there are a lot of tooling/utility scripts around all members. Those scripts are mainly for specific tasks and shouldn't be part of our SCM (perforce). How should we organize those tooling scripts and snippets to spread them and let other members have access to them? Are there any good tools to share, organize and documentate scripts and snippets inside a team? Cheers."}
{"_id": "208028", "title": "Sort an array in a specific order - not ascending/descending", "text": "I'm working on an algorithm that works best if the inputs are passed to it in a particular order, so I want to sort them that way. The difference is drastic enough for me to consider re-sorting the array. Consider an array `a` with length `n`. I want to sort it the following way, and return the array of indices of `a` instead of the values: I define another array `w`, also of length `n`. I want to sort such that the first element is closest to the first element of `w`. Then, from the rest of the elements (excluding the one already sorted), the second element is closest to the second element of `w`, and so on. For example `a = {5.5, 6.5, 2.4, 3.1}`, `w = {1, 2, 6, 5}`. `2.4` is closest to `1`, so `output[0] = 2`, the index of `2.4`. `2.4` is closest to `2`, but already processed, so choose `3.1`, `output[1] = 3`. Next come `0` and `1`, in that order. `0` is chosen because it comes first, although both are equidistant. So, `output = {2, 3, 0, 1}` and the sorted array would be `sorted = {2.4, 3.1, 5.5, 6.5}` (each index is used to find the corresponding element). I can only think of brute-forcing this algorithm. Can there be a more efficient way to do it?"}
{"_id": "209704", "title": "Pattern or solution for using classes with different interface the same way", "text": "What I would like to achieve is to use classes (now two, later more) with different interface the same way, so I would like avoid using decisions based on the interface on upper levels for instance, I don't want to see things like this:               if ($class instanceof 'ThisInterface') {         $thisInterfaceImplementation->doStuff();     }      Instead, I would like to call the method like $class->doStuff() and put the decisions into a wrapper like class. I would like to avoid empty methods also. I'm thinking about to use Wrapper or Adapter (and maybe Observer), but I'm curious, maybe there is a better way to do this. To be more clear here is a small explanation what I try to solve. We are building an application that has to communicate with printing houses. This means we have to add an additional page(s) to the print sheets (or not, or maybe different way), maybe we have to rename the pdf files on ftp this or that way, or not at all. We have a couple decisions to made based on the printers (on our interfaces), but at different steps or processes, therefore I think Strategy pattern wouldn't be a good fit (and I would have to create empty methods or use those ifs) The Observer pattern seems to solve all my \"problems\", but it might be an overkill in this case. With this, I could simply dispatch events at the points I have to make a decision and only the observers subscribed to this event would do the necessary things. No empty methods, not much problem with different interfaces. On the other hand, we would dispatch every event only one place in the code, so this seems to be a \"miss usage\" of this pattern. Any advice would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "184739", "title": "Communication between a C# application and C++ DLL", "text": "I am currently building an audio streamer and I have a CPP .dll that I use functions of inside the WPF C# GUI. The program needs to deal with sorts of events such as   * Lower/Increase Volume   * Manipulate Equalizer Bands To this point I have used named events to deal with this issue. What would be a better way of handling all those events from the GUI to the .dll? The events system I use (.dll spawns a thread which while-s on a WaitForMultipleObjects), or would it be better/smarter/more-beneficial or just better-practice to use a named pipe instead?"}
{"_id": "229732", "title": "Is this mini-DSL for hiding URI passwords compatible with the URI spec?", "text": "# Passwords exposed in URIs An application stores URIs to be used for file transfers via SFTP, FTP, FTPS and SCP. Many of these URIs contain passwords, for example:               sftp://someuser:sekrit@host.example.com/      These URIs are visible to too many people. We cannot hide email addresses from these people. # A mini-language to get passwords out of URIs Using a mini-DSL, we can specify the parts of the email address we don't want to show:               sftp://someuser:<<CONFIG:customers/widgitco/password>>@host.example.com/      The program that does the file transfer would look for instances of this mini- DSL in the URI, parse them, look up the appropriate strings from restricted sources, and substitute those strings into the URI. For example, supposing that restricted source contains this key/value pair:               customers/widgitco/password: moresekrit      Then, after replacement, the URI should be:               sftp://someuser:moresekrit@host.example.com/      Each instance of the mini-DSL within the URI would be delimited with `<<` and `>>`. Details of the mini-DSL between the `<<` and `>>` would be free to vary in order to meet future requirements; the only requirement would be that it contain no `>>`. This would achieve my goal of reducing the exposure of these passwords. # Is this mini-language fragile?   * Are there valid FTP/FTPS/SFTP/SCP URIs which will break this scheme?   * Are they at all likely?   * What mini-DSL is less likely to be broken by valid URIs?"}
{"_id": "250867", "title": "Is it improper to have an application wide source for dropdown binding", "text": "The WPF Combobox needs to bind a collection to it's ItemsSource and something to bind the selected item or value to. Until now, I've included both the collection and the selected value properties that I'm binding on the ViewModel that is responsible to the given view hosting the Combobox. Lately, I've been reviewing how I've implemented MVVM in my past projects, and I've noticed some things that I'm not happy with. One of them is that if multiple views need the same ComboBox, then each associated ViewModel had it's own copy of the collection. I was thinking that it would be better to expose the collection at an application level, and just provide a property for binding the selected value in each pertinent ViewModel. The way I see it working is to have a singleton ViewModel that is kept alive for the entire lifetime of the application. This ViewModel would have all of the standard collections that aren't specific to individual ViewModels. As I'm using Entity Framework, it would have it's own context, so the Selected Item properties would have to bind to the foreign key of the entity instead of the navigation property since the various ViewModels wouldn't share contexts. From there, I could encapsulate the various collections within a ResourceDictionary as a set of StaticResources, and then use those to bind to the ItemsSource of various ComboBoxes throughout the application. My question is this; Is this crazy/stupid? I taught myself WPF/MVVM from a number of sources, and I'm never sure if I'm straying from generally accepted practices. My thoughts behind all of this was that having the one source would allow multiple viewmodels to have a synced set of drop down collections. If I change the collection in one spot, the rest would show the same changes, as they all are bound to one source. Before, I needed a mediator to maintain consistency between ViewModels. Additionally, it would provide a simple, centralized and bindable singleton class to store application scoped variables, such as the currently logged in user. So, is there an obvious flaw to this that I might be missing? In the past, I implemented my MVVM pattern without any external validation. It works, with only a few growing pains... but I'm sure that it could have benefited greatly from some peer review."}
{"_id": "134321", "title": "Is it a good practice to name the returned variable \"result\"?", "text": "Is it a good practice to call the variable a method returns with a variable name `result`? For instance:               public Zorglub calculate() {         Zorglub result = [...]         [...]         return result;     }      Or should I name it by its type?               public Zorglub calculate() {         Zorglub zorglub = [...]         [...]         return zorglub;     }      I have seen both in the wild, if I need to choose one what reasons could make me prefer the former or latter (or any better name)? I am mainly thinking about Java."}
{"_id": "244810", "title": "Count unique visitors by group of visited places", "text": "I'm facing the problem of counting the unique visitors of groups of places. Here is the situation: I have _visitors_ that can visit _places_. For example, that can be internet users visiting web pages, or customers going to restaurants. A visitor can visit as much places as he wishes, and a place can be visited by several visitors. A visitor can come to the same place several times. The places belong to _groups_. A group can obviously contain several places, and places can belong to several groups. Given that, for each visitor, we can have a list of visited places, how can I have the number of unique visitors per group of places? Example: I have visitors A, B, C and D; and I have places x, y and z. I have these visiting lists:               [      A -> [x,x,y,x],      B -> [],      C -> [z,z],      D -> [y,x,x,z]     ]      Having these number of unique visitors per place is quite easy:               [      x -> 2, // A and D visited x      y -> 2, // A and D visited y      z -> 2  // C and D visited z     ]      But if I have these groups:               [      G1 -> [x,y,z],      G2 -> [x,z],      G3 -> [x,y]     ]      How can I have this information?               [      G1 -> 3, // A, C and D visited x or y or z      G2 -> 3, // A, C and D visited x or z      G3 -> 2  // A and D visited x or y     ]      Additional notes :   1. There are so many places that it is not possible to store information about every possible group;   2. It's not a problem if approximation are made. I don't need 100% precision. Having a fast algorithm that tells me that there were 12345 visits in a group instead of 12543 is better than a slow algorithm telling the exact number. Let's say there can be ~5% deviation.   3. I have a finite number of visitors and a finite number of places. I don't have so much places (approximately 60 for now, but it can grow to 200) but I have quite many visitors (estimated to 50 millions and this number could grow to 200 millions in the next months). Is there an algorithm or class of algorithms that addresses this type of problem?"}
{"_id": "203903", "title": "Can we reduce confusion in line-based diff tools by annotating the code with some unique tokens?", "text": "Let's say I have               procedure1() {         --body of first procedure--     }      Then I rename it into `procedure2` and create a `procedure1` above it:               procedure1() {         --body of second procedure--     }          procedure2() {         --body of first procedure--     }      Not once a line-based diff tool has highlighted the code from `--body of second procedure` all the way to `procedure2() {` as **new code** inside `procedure1`. This is bound to happen, since most diff tools are oblivious of the underlying structure of the source code. AST-based diff tools can't work very well either, because of several reasons and I know what people really want is a _semantic_ diff tool, but that's not going to happen. I haven't seen a discussion though, about whether or not it would be practical to annotate the code in such a way that a line-based diff tool would understand the underlying structure of the source code. For example, I could throw in some UUIDs in the code, like this:               //BeginBlock{E999A3BF-626E-428F-A2C1-6AFF0CD22BF2}     procedure1() {         --body of first procedure--     }     //EndBlock      And the modified code would look like this:               //BeginBlock{7C734F0A-92F4-45EB-B653-DBB9A0F18354}     procedure1() {         --body of second procedure--     }     //EndBlock          //BeginBlock{E999A3BF-626E-428F-A2C1-6AFF0CD22BF2}     procedure2() {         --body of first procedure--     }     //EndBlock      The point is to assign some tokens (unique within a file or project) to some marks that would reflect part of the structure of the source code. An IDE could update those annotations automatically and they could help a diff tool better detect structural changes. The tool would scan the code once to identify the sections of the program (and how they've been moved around) and then compare those blocks having the same ID. Do you think this approach is practical?"}
{"_id": "209708", "title": "Does Scrum make sense when implementing a new compiler backend?", "text": "I have an existing language that I need to port to a new platform. I'll probably attempt this by changing the backend of the existing compiler. It is a significant amount of work to re-write the backend. I can't see a way breaking this down into sensible stories without violating INVEST criteria. I can't see how each story can be Negotiable - they are all required for a working compiler. The stories are all of equal priority and it doesn't matter what order I deliver them. I need to do them all. There are some parts of the software I'm implementing that are lower priority than others and I can see that we can deliver that incrementally. However, there is a significant core that is Must Have. I plan on trying to follow Scrum, but am I just going through the motions? Are there recommended practices for this kind of project?"}
{"_id": "165515", "title": "Software Architecture - From design to sucessful implementation", "text": "As the subject goes; once a software architect puts down the high level design and approach to a software that is to be developed from scratch, how does the team ensure that it is implemented successfully? To my mind the following things will need to be done   * Proper understanding of requirements   * Setting down coding practices and guidelines   * Regular code reviews to ensure the guidelines are being adhered to   * Revisiting the requirements phase and making necessary changes to design based on client inputs if there are any changes to requirements   * Proper documentation of what is being done in code    * Proper documentation of requirements and changes to them    * Last but not the least, implementing the design via object oriented code where appropriate Did I miss anything? Would love to hear any mistakes that you have learned from in your project experiences. What went wrong, what could have been done better. Thanks for taking the time.."}
{"_id": "5015", "title": "What is a good estimation technique for initial, high-level estimates?", "text": "I'm currently using Planning Poker to do our detailed estimates. This works great but relies upon a fairly detailed work breakdown. Often it takes 6-8 weeks to get a sufficiently detailed design and work breakdown. I've found the 6-8 weeks of analysis are often wasted as the estimate comes out so high it doesn't make economic sense to continue the project. I think providing a high-level estimate up front with a wide range might be better to weed out these shaky business cases. What tools and techniques exist for high-level initial estimates? Right now I just pick a previous project that \"feels\" the same and provide a -50%/+100% range."}
{"_id": "205537", "title": "Advanced .NET Generics, and where to start?", "text": "I have been reviewing C# code that has a lot of generics (and generics with generics...) and its taking me longer to grok the code. I know the gang of four patterns, and I know some of the fowler enterprise patterns (learning them as I go).   1. Are there any techniques you could suggest when tackling understanding systems like this?   2. Are there any resources on developing systems like this?"}
{"_id": "205535", "title": "Java naming conventions vs. C++/C naming conventions", "text": "I am a Java developer who is starting to pick up more and more C++/C (yes I know they're different, bear with me). One thing that struck me as odd was the different naming conventions used by these languages. In Java, is is very common to see something like this:               int someVariable = someFunction(someParameterToPass);      However, in C++/C, it would look a bit different:               int some_variable = some_function(some_parameter_to_pass);      The reason I ask is because I (alone, no team) have just started a large project using C++, and right now am using Java naming conventions in my code (it's what I'm used to). But then I add in some external libraries to my code and it mixes the naming conventions together. I understand the code easily, and use the differences to tell my code apart from library code. Should I switch my naming convention for the sake of readability to others (while the LOC is relatively low), or stick with what I'm doing now (since I am the only developer)? **Note -** my code has been peer reviewed, however, the reviewers mainly focused on the function of the code. They didn't mention mixed conventions, and I did not specifically ask them about this. They also didn't have experience with switching naming conventions."}
{"_id": "135983", "title": "In javascript and other languages which lack a compiler, is unit testing a good method to ensure correct syntax and variable naming?", "text": "I've been working on a medium sized web application that makes very heavy use of javascript. I tend to introduce common errors per 10 lines of code with either an unknown variable name or function name from another module\\namespace or forgetting a return and other common errors. I'm noticing I'm getting quite a lot of feedback in fixing these errors as a side effect of my qunit testing. Is unit testing a typical way to make up for a compiler in dynamic languages?"}
{"_id": "135984", "title": "How to improve programming environment for optimal productivity?", "text": "As a beginner programmer I find myself spending hours and sometimes even days on my desk reading code, writing code, focusing, getting headaches and whatnot. I've documented myself on computer health and such, purchased an ergonomic keyboard & mouse, however since I wish to take a career in programming, this question keeps coming in my mind. We all know programming is a tough job especially from a health point of view. Programmers spend hours and sometimes don't even sleep, they develop health problems and eating disorders because they _have_ to get the job done. My example could be purely unique. The question however is not necessarily for health as it is for productivity. I've read articles which said therapy music could help your brain think sharper and be more productive. The real question is, as the title suggests (hint hint): how to improve programming environment for optimal productivity? Are there any specific rules I should be following when programming to help me focus and keep my mind sharp so I develop better code?"}
{"_id": "135986", "title": "Trying to do some Obfuscation, How should I approach this particular case?", "text": "I currently have an assignment that is really pushing my limits so I need some help on how to approach this.   1. We have a set of 25 results   2. We are using a jquery plugin to vertically scroll through these 25 results, the container displays five results at a time.    3. When viewing the source code of the page, you can see the html for all 25 results. Obviously the jquery plugin is what is making them visible or not.   4. The task is to make it so that only five of the result set are displaying at any time during a source code viewing. All the rest of the results must come from javascript or some other technique. So I somehow have to either:   1. Send a pool of 25 results to JS and have it generate the div info on the fly OR   2. Some type of timed script that grabs five results at a time and displays them. But this all has to continuously scroll vertically so that is a consideration also. So I am trying to get my head around how I should approach this: One idea I had was to run an ajax call every five or ten seconds that has a php script generate five new results, then display them in the appropriate div. This is slow and would basically mean a page that is constantly sending out ajax calls. the random results are coming from a php script that is parsing an xml feed. I am really just looking for a roadmap or some conceptual directions on how this could be approached."}
{"_id": "246578", "title": "Should I be using a composite key for this table?", "text": "My database is going to store words, so the Word table is the most important. The Rhyme table lists which words a particular word perfectly rhymes with. It consists of three fields:               RhymeID - primary key.     WordID - foreign key linking to Word table     Rhyme - a non key integer which refers to a different record in the Word table.      E.g. 'cat' has WordID 009, 'bat' has WordID 014 and 'fat' has WordID 035, two records in the Rhyme table might look like this               RhymeId - WordId - Rhyme     001 - 009 (cat) - 014 (bat)     002 - 009 (cat) - 035 (fat)      The question is, should I make WordId a primary key to form a composite key with RhymeId? Do I need it to uniquely identify each record? I have no practical experience with databases, this one is still in the planning stage."}
{"_id": "249566", "title": "How can I test a search engine for an uncommon human language?", "text": "We are writing a search engine from scratch in a quite uncommon language, Aramaic, mostly for learning purposes but also because few resources are available in given language. The engine is/will be written in Python, and:   1. It is a human language search engine.    2. It's not about paying someone to do the tests, but trying to find a way to resolve the issue programmatically (if even possible) for learning purposes mostly. We would like to test automatically if the search engine works efficiently but without knowing the language we were wondering if there were maybe tools or ways to test it get statistics. If we had users who spoke the language we could ask them to evaluate the search results but not having that, what are the other ways to test a search engine?"}
{"_id": "246573", "title": "When to use [Pure] on a constructor?", "text": "I'm learning about code contracts in .NET, and I'm trying to understand the idea of pure constructors. The code contracts documentation states: > All methods that are called within a contract must be pure; that is, they > must not update any preexisting state. A pure method is allowed to modify > objects that have been created after entry into the pure method. And the `PureAttribute` documentation states: > Indicates that a type or method is pure, that is, it does not make any > visible state changes. I understand these statements when it comes to methods, but what about constructors? Suppose you had a class like this:               public class Foo     {         public int Value { get; set; }              public Foo(int value) {             this.Value = value;         }     }      This constructor obviously does affect the state of the new `Foo` object, but it has no other side effects (e.g. it doesn't manipulate any of the parameters or call any non-pure methods). Is this a candidate for `[Pure]` or not? What is the significance of placing a `[Pure]` attribute on a constructor, and when should I do this in my own code?"}
{"_id": "246570", "title": "Alternative to Static Abstract Property/Method", "text": "Since trying to use them will cause an error what is the workaround to get the same effect as them? My Base Class:               public abstract class IPacket     {         public abstract int Identifier { get; set; }              public abstract void Handle();     }      Child Class:               public class DoSomething : IPacket     {         public override int Identifier         {             get             {                 return 1;             }         }              public override void Handle()         {             // Do Something         }     }      Incoming Packet Routing:               Dictionary<Byte, IPacket> Packets = new Dictionary<byte, IPacket>         {             {DoSomething.Identifier, DoSomething} // <-- Not Possible         };          Packets[ID].Handle();      Basically I get a packet from Server which contains an Identifier. I use this identifier to find the handler for that packet from a dictionary and pass the packet to it's handler."}
{"_id": "130007", "title": "Is it possible to automatically convert code from a low level language to a high level language?", "text": "I have seen several applications that claim to convert Java code to valid C or even C++. Converting from a high level language to a low level language is possible, no doubt about it. At least in theory, can the reverse be done _without_ any manual steps? For instance:   * Converting Assembly to C or Machine Code to Assembly?   * Hardware Description Languages (HDL) to Assembly? (which ever is lowest?)   * C to C#?"}
{"_id": "4418", "title": "Do we really need to save source code?", "text": "While hacking on some static analysis tool, I realized I could make the task at hand (irrelevant for this question) much easier by saving the source files on-the-fly, while they were being edited. This seemed weird at first, but being a lazy cat I actually did it, and it turns out I find this pretty useful :   * no need to check if all files were saved before running a compiler/interpreter   * forces you to make granular commits much more regularly My editor has been behaving this way for a couple of days, I never had such a clean commit history, and didn't get burned yet. In the days of DVCS when by saving we actually mean commit, do you think that manually saving files is still a relevant practice ?"}
{"_id": "70178", "title": "Are Chrome Developer Tools an adequate substitute for Firebug?", "text": "Are Chrome Developer Tools an adequate substitute for Firebug? I'm learning how to develop simple web apps using Django. The book I have recommends installing Firefox/Firebug. I'm used to Chrome and wanted to know if I need to switch or if Chrome Developer Tools contain all the essential functionality of Firebug."}
{"_id": "125606", "title": "Can I use GPL, LGPL, MPL licensed packages with my application and make it closed source?", "text": "I saw a company is using BusyBox and also using Gpl + Lgpl + Mpl packages on it, and then they have there own application running on it. Their application is a closed source package. You buy the device but its closed source. How come GPL mixed with LGPL+MPL becomes closed source? I thought the rule is?? Or I am wrong or this following info is wrong?: > GPL: If you use it in your application then you must release your > application under the GPL. That doesn't mean you can't also sell it (like > they sell Linux CD's) but you must also release the source code for free. > That might work for you, but probably not. > > LGPL: If you use it in your application then you can still have a closed > source proprietary licensed application. But if you modify the LGPL library > then you must release your modifications under the LGPL, even though your > application can remain closed source."}
{"_id": "125604", "title": "What are all these license types for applications?", "text": "I am thinking of making some applications for Linux (primarily Ubuntu) and I have an intention of selling some in the Ubuntu Software Center and offering a few applications for free. These free applications will be minor programs mainly used for fun and/or for a little convenience in day-to-day tasks (say, a ToDo list). What is the suitable license I should use for this? As for the paid applications, they will be more business-oriented (eg: a decision making software). For these, what is the suitable license type? I really confused about all these licenses (I have heard of Creative Commons, GNU, etc but have no idea whatsoever). And I'm hoping to make these applications using PyGTK and Quickly and some with Java. So if anyone could provide some light on this subject, I'm really grateful."}
{"_id": "125605", "title": "Will taking up a job in the enterpise s/w domain reduce my chances of later shifting to consumer software?", "text": "I have been offered a job from campus in the Enterprise s/w domain. I'm at loggerheads with myself deciding if I should take up the job, since I'm generally interested in consumer s/w esp in companies that encourage open source contributions. My question is if i'll find it difficult to later(maybe after a year or two) change my domain and move onto B2C (Business to Consumer) software companies. Will my past experience with enterprise software stand against me?"}
{"_id": "151564", "title": "Almost Realtime Data and Web application", "text": "I have a computer that is recording 100 different data points into an OPC server. I've written a simple OPC client that can read all of this data. I have a front-end website on a different network that I would like to consume this data. I could easily set the OPC client to send the data to a SQL server and the website could read from it, but that would be a lot of writes. If I wanted the data to be updated every 10 seconds I'd be writing to the database every 10 seconds. (I could probably just serialize the 100 points to get 1 write / 10 seconds but that would also limit my ability to search the data later). This solution wouldn't scale very well. If I had 100 of these computers the situation would quickly grow out of hand. Obviously I am well out of my league here and I have no experience with working with a large amount of data like this. What are my options and what should I research?"}
{"_id": "36287", "title": "How would you tackle a pattern-finding program?", "text": "Just to be clear, I don't think this should be question better suited for stackoverflow.com simply because there's not a single answer but a wide range of possible solutions, making this question far more subjective in nature. I was curious how you guys would tackle a pattern-finding program, which is to say I'd do the following operations:   1. I enter in some input.   2. Program predicts my next input based on all previous inputs.   3. Rinse. Repeat. Since the amount of input I could provide is so varied, including empty strings, conventional means such as switches or regular expressions are out, since it would require you to have an inkling of information about what to expect. I was thinking about some form of genetic algorithm, yet even then I don't have a clue as to how to approach a problem of this caliber. I think some feedback mechanism would be necessary as well as to let the program know how close it was. Anyone had to do a similar type program before?"}
{"_id": "122051", "title": "Are there any GUI or user interface design patterns?", "text": "I was curious about GUI design patterns, so I searched and got some information, including a list of UI patterns for the web. This UI patterns website says that: > UI Patterns is a growing collection of User Interface Design Principles and > User Interface Usability Patterns present on web applications and sites > today. Are there any other design patterns for constructing websites or other user interfaces? Are there any books that describe these patterns? I'm particularly interested in patterns for Windows desktop development and web development in the .NET platform."}
{"_id": "113224", "title": "Object-Oriented Design of Car", "text": "While I am studying for job interview, I got this kind of OOD questions a lot. But from my TDD perspective, I think it would be reasonable to ask more about use-cases of (or requirements for) the Car. Otherwise, there are tons of way of designing car. Am I missing something here? How would you handle this sort of interview questions?"}
{"_id": "187251", "title": "Is there anything special to consider when writing my own exception class in C++?", "text": "If I wanted to implement my own version of the std::exception for no good reason, are there any special things about implementing this kind of object that I should be aware of? It seems like a fairly simple thing that is mostly a string wrapper... Here is my implementation so far:               #pragma once;          #include <string>          class MyException     {     public:         MyException(const std::wstring&);         virtual ~MyException(){}              virtual MyException& operator=(const MyException& rhs);         virtual const std::wstring& what(){return msg;};          private:         std::wstring msg;     };          MyException::MyException(const std::wstring& message)     :msg(message)     {     }          MyException& MyException::operator=(const MyException& rhs)     {         if(this == &rhs)         {             return *this;         }         msg = rhs.msg;         return *this;     }"}
{"_id": "87258", "title": "Difference between extensible programming and extendible programming?", "text": "What exactly is the different between \"extensible programming\" and \"extendible programming?\" Wikipedia states the following: > The Lisp language community remained separate from the extensible language > community, apparently because, as one researcher observed, any programming > language in which programs and data are essentially interchangeable can be > regarded as an extendible [sic] language. ... this can be seen very easily > from the fact that Lisp has been used as an extendible language for years. If I'm understanding this correctly, it says \"Lisp is extendible implies Lisp is not extensible\". So what do these two terms mean, and how do they differ?"}
{"_id": "134589", "title": "Assuming \"clean code/architecture\" is there a difference in \"effort\" between PHP or Java/J2EE web application development?", "text": "A client asked us to estimate effort when selecting PHP as the implementation language for his next web-based application. We spent about a week exploring PHP, prototyping, testing etc., We are quite new to this language - may have hacked around it in the past but, let's go with PHP-noobs but application development experts (for the lack of a better, less flattering word :) It seems, that if we write, clean maintainable code, follow separation of concerns, enterprise architecture patters (DAOs etc.) the 'effort' in creating an object-oriented PHP based web-application seems to be the same for a Java based one. Here's our _equation_ for estimating the effort (development/delivery time):               ConstructionEffort = f(analysis, design, coding, testing, review, deployment)      We were specifically comparing effort estimates in creating an enterprise application with the following:   1. PHP + CakePHP/CodeIgniter (should we have considered others?)   2. Java + Spring + Restlet  It's an end-to-end application:   1. Client: Javascript/jQuery + HTML/CSS   2. Middle tier/Business Logic - _(Still evaluating PHP/Java)_   3. Database: MySQL The effort estimates of the 1st and 3rd tier are constant and relatively independent of the middle tier's technology. At a high level with an initial breakdown into user stories of the requested features as well as a high-level SWAG on the sheer number of classes/SLOC that would be required for PHP doesn't seem to differ by much from what is required of the same in Java. Is this correct? We are basing our initial estimates on the initial prototyping/coding we've done with PHP - we are currently disregarding fluency with the language as a factor, since that'll be an initial hurdle and not a long term impediment IMHO (we also have sufficient time to become quite fluent with PHP). I'm interested in knowing the programmers' perspective with respect to effort when creating similar applications with either of the languages to justify choosing one over the other. Are we missing something here? It seems we are going against popular belief of PHP being _quicker_ to market (or we being very fluent with Java have our vision clouded). It doesn't seem to have any coding/programming effort saving from what we/ve played around with."}
{"_id": "87250", "title": "Is possible to write too many asserts?", "text": "I am a big fan of writing `assert` checks in C++ code as a way to catch cases during development that cannot possibly happen but do happen because of logic bugs in my program. This is a good practice in general. However, I've noticed that some functions I write (which are part of a complex class) have 5+ asserts which feels like it could potentially be a bad programming practice, in terms of readability and maintainability. I think it's still great, as each one requires me to think about pre- and post- conditions of functions and they really do help catch bugs. However, I just wanted to put this out there to ask if there is a better paradigms for catching logic errors in cases when a large number of checks is necessary. **Emacs comment** : Since Emacs is my IDE of choice, I have it slightly gray out the assert statements which helps reduce the feeling of clutter that they can provide. Here's what I add to my .emacs file:               ; gray out the \"assert(...)\" wrapper     (add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook       (lambda () (font-lock-add-keywords nil         '((\"\\\\<\\\\(assert\\(.*\\);\\\\)\" 1 '(:foreground \"#444444\") t)))))          ; gray out the stuff inside parenthesis with a slightly lighter color     (add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook       (lambda () (font-lock-add-keywords nil         '((\"\\\\<assert\\\\(\\(.*\\);\\\\)\" 1 '(:foreground \"#666666\") t)))))"}
{"_id": "87252", "title": "Has the MVVM pattern been adopted widely in real world Silverlight projects?", "text": "MVVM pattern is a hot word recently and I am planning to learning and refactor my existing project into this pattern. I have no experience and foresight of the potential risk. Have you guys really get lots of benefit from the MVVM Pattern in real-world projects? Is it worth refactoring an existing non-MVVM (mainly using Code-Behind files) into the MVVM pattern?"}
{"_id": "146415", "title": "Explaining how the code you wrote works", "text": "I was asked to create for a freelance project a Monopoly game in Java. After finishing it the same guy asked me to create four UML diagrams from which he could understand how the game works. Everything went well this far but his third request presented me with some problems. He now wants me to write for him in about 20-25 pages, how the game's code works, so he can understand it. I have been programming for about a year and I was never asked to do this before. I don't even know where to start to do this, from which portion of the code should I start to explain it? I basically suck at writing. Is there any guide that could help me achive what I need? I've already created the use case diagram sequence diagram, class diagram and activity diagram."}
{"_id": "36134", "title": "Javadoc usage on real projects", "text": "I'm wondering if the Javadoc is using on real projects, what your experience says about it?"}
{"_id": "36139", "title": "C library build system dependencies", "text": "This debate has cropped up on a mailing list for a project I'm involved in. Unfortunately we're quite a small bunch at the moment, so I want to ask a wider audience. We're writing a C library (for arbitrary precision arithmetic) and are investigating build systems. Currently we have a bash script in desperate need of work. I believe we can't use autotools etc due to licensing (bsd vs gpl). So I suggested we use a modern scripting language like python or perl. The question is: is having something like perl or python around at build time _an unrealistic dependency_ on Unix-like platforms these days?"}
{"_id": "133679", "title": "Is there a correlation between some software engineering practices and software engineering success stories?", "text": "I've been reading the book \"The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives\" by Leonard Mlodinow and it's a truly enlightening read. The book deals with probabilities and human reasoning. And let's just say, for the record, that while some things sometimes work, there's a chance that the things you thought made it work, are unrelated to what actually made it work. > Probabilities are unintuitive. However, it gave me an idea. There ought to be studies on this already, that have attempted to quantify the results of software engineering endeavors (which of course is a hard problem in itself). And these studies should point to what kind of software engineering practices are really important in terms of quantifiable success. i.e.   * A team that employs TDD is `this` much less likely to have `this` kind of problem.   * A team that employs SOLID principles is `this` much less likely to have `this` kind of problem.   * etc. etc. What I'm looking for here is software engineering practices that show strong correlation between implementation and success. I'm confident that these things exist but that they are hard to come by and that's why I pose this question. What studies or what practices do you know of that have strong correlation between implementation and success (where success is **somewhat arbitrary** but I think you get the idea)? > If we're gonna sell that idea that software engineering is better than > cowboy coding, I think we need proofs."}
{"_id": "128186", "title": "Are interviews required for software/programming internships?", "text": "Do companies interview prospective software or programming interns? Do any companies use video interviews? Thanks."}
{"_id": "128181", "title": "Wrapping a 3rd party API - Gateway Pattern connections", "text": "Given a 3rd party API with a very cumbersome object with many different responsibilities-- we decide to wrap using small, manageable, single- responsibility objects. This is the gateway pattern (I think). So any time you do this there is going to be some kind of \"connection\" where you have to connect to the resource. Furthermore, calling applications may want to keep a single connection open and use it with multiple objects (those small, manageable, single-responsibility ones we created). What form should this connection take? Should this connection be another object? Should it be passed it to the constructor of the small wrapper objects? Or, should the wrapper objects inherit from a connection object? Or aggregate it? What about the special case where we can have only have only one connection per application?"}
{"_id": "132981", "title": "Studies of open source software adoption", "text": "I'm not 100% sure this is approriate here, but I figure the area of study is particular to programmers, since it's open source software. If it's better posted somewhere else then please say so and I will post it there. * * * Can anybody point me in the right direction of any studies on businesses and consumers adopting open source software? Ideally, I'd like some qualitative information on why both parties choose (not) to adopt open source software, but raw numbers are good too. Any relevant experiences and case studies of this from users would be welcome as well."}
{"_id": "149749", "title": "Why are you choosing XYZ? - Is this valid question in interview?", "text": "I am tired of the question from interviewers - Why have you selected 'XYZ' (the interviewer's organization). In today's IT world, does anybody go looking for a COMPANY. I mean what the interviewers are thinking? that somebody from the sky will come searching for their company and desperate to work with them.. I faced the same question multiple times. I dont understand what to answer this. Can anybody help here..."}
{"_id": "203279", "title": "What is the name of this array transformation?", "text": "Start with an array of arrays; in this case, they are different lengths in order to demonstrate the technique, but they do not have to be.               [[1,2,3,4], [5,6,7], [8,9,10], [11,12,13,14,15]]      At the other end of the transformation, you have an array of arrays where the first array contains the first element from each of the original arrays, the second array contains the second element from each of the original arrays, and so on.               [[1,5,8,11], [2,6,9,12], [3,7,10,13], [4,14], [15]]      Is there a mathematical or CS term for this operation?"}
{"_id": "70790", "title": "Should I let my users write BnfExpressions to extend my grammar?", "text": "## Preface I'm designing a templating language (please skip the don't/why?? speech). One of the major goals of this language is to be extensible. There are 2 main elements in my language. \"Tags\" and \"Directives\". Tags, for the most part, map 1-to-1 to HTML tags, with the exception of a few of them which do a bit more. \"Directives\" are things like conditionals and for/while loops. \"Tags\" are simple, because they all follow the same structure: `tag_name(arg1=val1, arg2=val2) { content }`. Directives are more complicated because they look like this: `directive(anything-can-go-here) { content }`. ## Question I'm trying to decide how to let users (other devs using the templating language) write their own directive -- i.e., define the \"anything can go here\" part. I'm using Irony to parse my language. Should I give them the same level of access, and define their own `BnfExpression` (requiring them to learn a bit of Irony/EBNF), or should I just toss them a string (the stuff between `(` and `)`) and let them parse it however they want? ## My Concerns The former is perhaps more powerful and easier to work with (once you know it), but it would also potentially give them too much power (they wouldn't have to stop at the next `)` \\-- well, unless I stripped out the inner string first and then basically let them define a sub-grammar to parse only that). Not sure how to approach this. ## More About Tags For reference, users can define \"tags\" like this:               class ANode : HtmlNode     {         public ANode(AttrDict attrs, params TagNode[] children)             : base(\"a\", attrs, children) { }     }      Would be the most basic example, which just extends the HtmlNode I've already defined. A more complicated one might define some default attributes or do something fancy with the child elements, or generate multiple html tags."}
{"_id": "203274", "title": "Interviews that include Algorithms and Data Structures", "text": "I want to start looking for jobs in great companies and I have four years of enterprise corporations development, three years with C#.NET and alomst one year with Ruby On Rails, JS, etc... But when I look up interview questions from Google, Amazon, Fog Creek, DropBox, etc... they are really targeted at students that are coming fresh out of college and still remember what was Dynamic Programming and Dijkstra algorithms ... but I don't! :( It has been a while for me ... If a I need a sort algorithm I would either Google it or there already is a library and method that does it for me. So what should I do? Do they realize that this guy is not coming from college and will ask more general questions about software architecture or nop! I should go back find my old Data structures book from the storage and read them? In that case wht books and language do you recommend to hone my skills?"}
{"_id": "189366", "title": "Which license should I choose?", "text": "I'm working on an engine (I haven't started coding it yet but I like to have everything done as soon as I can, and since I'm unable to start coding it now, I'm working on these small things) and I want to license the code. For now, I'm thinking of leaving the project open-source, but later I might turn it proprietary so I was wondering what would be the best license for an open- source project (it's an offline project, I mean, it's C++/Lua based, not a web project) and also a proprietary license for later, in case I really turn it proprietary (I did search about both types of licenses, but from what I understood I have to make the proprietary license by myself, which would include registering copyright, contracting a laywer, etc. and don't want to waste money on this project, at least not for now). I would like users to have the possibility to modify, use parts of my code and use my whole engine in their projects (for the open-source license, of course the proprietary license will have other rights, but paid) BUT EVER HAVING STATED THE CODE IS COPIED/MODIFIED FROM MY ENGINE, AND IS NOT THEIRS CODE."}
{"_id": "133582", "title": "Architecting Challenge: How would you write an opensource script installer to run in a browser?", "text": "I currently have an installer that works, but I have to repackage the open source apps and hack things together to get the installer to install them. I want to be able to use the apps installation method without having to hack and repackage. So I am thinking about rewriting it. It will allow a user with little to no tech experience install open source apps (ie. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, et.al.). There are a few requirements I want to meet:   * The installation should run the scripts install process to make sure the database is setup correctly and the passwords use the apps default password encryption processes.    * Ability to track the progress and report back any errors.   * Ability to run upgrades for future releases.   * Ability to remove the application if someone decides they do not want it any longer.   * The only access I will for sure have to the users remote server is via FTP. I have thought about using Selenium. However, if you were challenged to hand spin the code in PHP, how would you do it? **UPDATE FOR CLARIFICATION:** The installer will collect the scripts settings from a form in the browser filled out by the end user. The installation process (that runs in the background and connects over FTP to the users server) will then process the installation. (i.e. SimpleScripts, Installatron, Softaculous, Fantastico, WebPub, etc.) I am trying to figure out how you would design the cleanest simplest install process possible. It needs to create databases, install the application using the scripts install method (as if the user was running it manually), etc. I hope that clarifies the challenge."}
{"_id": "137804", "title": "Processes: documenting changing spec", "text": "A little background: I work at a relatively small (<10 developers) tech company which basically produces a single product, which is constantly evolving and being added to. The product is an off-the-shelf client/server product, where we run the server and the clients are mobile apps running on a variety of platforms (Android, iOS, WinMo, etc.). The bulk of the specification and documentation is maintained in an internal Wiki. Whenever we add a new feature or expand an existing one to the client apps, the process goes more or less like this:   1. A spec. for the change is produced. Generally these specs are very low on detail, often just consisting of a few user stories: \"As a user, I want to...\"   2. The feature is implemented on a single platform. Which platform often depends on which developer is most free at the time, as different developers specialise in different platforms.   3. Once the feature is more or less completed on the lead platform, it gets ported to the other platforms. Because the initial specification is so general, step 2 usually requires making a lot of the more detailed decisions - file formats, what to do when things go wrong, etc. Decisions are generally made after consultation with the project manager. The problem we have is that there's no real procedure for making sure the decisions made in step 2 actually get documented. In an ideal world I guess responsibility might fall to the project manager, but since he's also a company director he frankly doesn't have the time! My question is: **Can anyone suggest a process (or processes) we could use to ensure these decisions get documented?** It's all very well to say \"just update the wiki when decisions get made\" but real-world considerations (time pressure, interruptions to deal with user support issues, etc.) often mean that it gets forgotten."}
{"_id": "39613", "title": "Tracking software piracy to gauge strength of anti-piracy measures", "text": "I've been looking up this thread on how software piracy can be prevented. It's got a number of interesting suggestions ranging from using copy protection to providing free versions, and not surprisingly, none of them will satisfy you 100%. It will perhaps be apt to experiment with each of the popular anti-piracy measures to gauge success. Are there reliable surveys that point to the success or failure of such measures? Furthermore, surveys are often biased because of countless factors, and perhaps the software product developer himself should attempt to gauge success or failure of a particular measure. If I decide to resort to the second option, what would you suggest to obtain hard data about software piracy patterns for _my_ specific product?"}
{"_id": "172870", "title": "What is meant by sandboxing?", "text": "Sanboxing is listed as one of the many security features in html5 specification . Can someone explain what is meant by sandboxing? Does it relate to HTML only or to JavaScript also?"}
{"_id": "172872", "title": "Designing a Business Rule Engine", "text": "I have a requirement where there are 10 Rules to be applied on data in excel. If Rule 1 and Rule 2 fails rest of the rules are not checked. But if Rule 1 and Rule 2 passes the rest of all the Rules should be verified and if any errors found- they should be logged. Is there any design pattern which I can use to keep this Rule Engine flexible for adding these 10 rules and Closed for any additional chains in the Current Rule. I was thinking of something like a Decorator Pattern. Will this help me achieve that?"}
{"_id": "241339", "title": "\"Collection Wrapper\" pattern - is this common?", "text": "A different question of mine had to do with encapsulating member data structures inside classes. In order to understand _this_ question better please read _that_ question and look at the approach discussed. One of the guys who answered that question said that the approach is good, but if I understood him correctly - he said that there should be a class existing just for the purpose of wrapping the collection, instead of an ordinary class offering a number of public methods just to access the member collection. For example, instead of this:               class SomeClass{              // downright exposing the concrete collection.                      Things[] someCollection;             // other stuff omitted              Thing[] getCollection(){return someCollection;}          }      Or this:               class SomeClass{              // encapsulating the collection, but inflating the class' public interface.              Thing[] someCollection;              // class functionality omitted.              public Thing getThing(int index){             return someCollection[index];         }              public int getSize(){             return someCollection.length;         }              public void setThing(int index, Thing thing){             someCollection[index] = thing;         }              public void removeThing(int index){             someCollection[index] = null;         }          }      We'll have this:               // encapsulating the collection - in a different class, dedicated to this.          class SomeClass{         CollectionWrapper someCollection;              CollectionWrapper  getCollection(){return someCollection;}     }          class CollectionWrapper{              Thing[] someCollection;              public Thing getThing(int index){             return someCollection[index];         }              public int getSize(){             return someCollection.length;         }              public void setThing(int index, Thing thing){             someCollection[index] = thing;         }              public void removeThing(int index){             someCollection[index] = null;         }          }      This way, the inner data structure in `SomeClass` can change without affecting client code, and without forcing `SomeClass` to offer a lot of public methods just to access the inner collection. `CollectionWrapper` does this instead. E.g. if the collection changes from an array to a `List`, the internal implementation of `CollectionWrapper` changes, but client code stays the same. Also, the `CollectionWrapper` can hide certain things from the client code - from example, it can disallow mutation to the collection by not having the methods `setThing` and `removeThing`. **This approach to decoupling client code from the concrete data structure seems IMHO pretty good.** Is this approach common? What are it's downfalls? Is this used in practice?"}
{"_id": "233334", "title": "Globalizing geographical information in data design", "text": "I am building my database/models/viewmodels right now and can't think of a good variable name to define for the equivalent of a \"state\" in other countries. I currently have `Country` and `City` which are pretty common.   I know Canada has `Province`s and France has `Department`s instead of states.   What are some ways you guys have abstracted user's locations? I thought about `FirstDegree`, `SecondDegree`, `ThirdDegree` but that is too vague. What are some common field names you have seen in the past?"}
{"_id": "233335", "title": "What is a good way to store geographical data for distance calculations", "text": "What would be the best way to store data in a database for geographical calculations? Say I have an `ItemsForSale` table paired to a `Users` table which holds their geo location. I know I can use latitude and longitude to look up items that are within a certain mile radius by using Lambert's formula for long lines or the Haversine formula but I am not sure if there is a better approach for this."}
{"_id": "233332", "title": "Permutations of an array", "text": "I have an array of integers of length 20, filled with fourteen 0s, two 1s, two 2s and two 3s. It is like this: [0,0,0,3,0,2,0,0,3,0,0,0,1,0,2,0,0,1,0,0]. I need a way to list all of its 20!/(14! 2! 2! 2!) permutations, without repetitions. (Note that in the list there are duplicate elements!) I'm just looking for the right idea, it isn't necessary that you write the code. But, if you prefer writing the code, I only understand C and Java. Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "7166", "title": "Do you find languages with indentation requirements cumbersome? ", "text": "Thoughts on these? Python is one example, and no this is not a stab against Python I like the language. What languages have a indentation requirement?"}
{"_id": "233339", "title": "Are NuGet metadata a good place to exclusively set license for source code?", "text": "I've found a library (that I'd like to fork, if it makes any difference). On NuGet, the project file says it's distributed under the MIT license (with a link to the license). However, in the GitHub repository of the project, I don't see any mentions of the MIT license (or any other license) either in the source code files or in a readme. I'm a little concerned about this, since NuGet is a repository for binaries and I'm interested in the source. **Should I assume that the source code is covered under the MIT license, judging only by the NuGet metadata of a package?** Or does this mean that the permissions apply only for the binary and not for the source?"}
{"_id": "33560", "title": "Do you keep your ideas secret? and why?", "text": "I believe any programmer has several ideas that she/he considers as innovative or at least valuable. It may be an idea of a new product which will make this world better or a new development approach, etc. But a great idea must be implemented and promoted/advertised. This requires a lot of work (proofs of concept, prototypes, technology previews, etc.) and a lot of money (appropriate advertisement, marketing, etc.). So months later, the idea stays in our heads, but nothing else is done, because it's difficult, long and expensive, sometimes even impossible for a single developer. On the other hand, it would be painful to share our ideas, and see a medium- size company which has enough resources making something useful from it and having success and money. So what do you do with your ideas you can hardly implement or patent? Do you talk freely about them in discussion boards and with other developers? Do you keep them like a precious thing without never talking about them to anybody? If you keep your ideas, why are you doing so? Is it just because you hope that one day, you will be able to implement them and have a huge success, while you know very well by experience that it's an utopia?"}
{"_id": "182193", "title": "How to organize projects in Redmine?", "text": "I deployed a Redmine installation yesterday and today I try to fill it with some relevant data. One issue I came across is the organization of projects itself. While I took a look at how Redmine itself uses parts of the software, they unfortunately have only one project set up and I haven\u2019t seen any other examples. I know that this is heavily tied to your workflow, but seeing / reading about some examples would guide me to the right path. We are two guys (a designer & developer, both of us do also other stuff like marketing or paperwork) and we have more than 20 projects that I want to map to Redmine. Less than a handful of projects are active at the same time and they aren\u2019t specifically related. However, we want to see how much time we spent on all projects and also see the overall project situation, i.e. should we start another project or add this or that to the current one or won\u2019t this be doable for such a small team? At the moment I tend to have one of these setups:   1. A company project and all of our real projects organized as subprojects.   2. Separate Redmine projects for each of our projects, and eventually subprojects for broader functionality if needed (sync support for app xyz). The problems I see with the first approach is that the projects aren\u2019t necessarily related to each other. They may share a common framework which is a project for itself, but otherwise they are really separate things. All of them are software projects, so they share common metaphors like Trackers, though. I haven\u2019t seen a way to separate versions. The roadmap would be an overview of the current work situation, but it could get pretty confusing. My biggest fear is that we will have endless drop down lists with unrelated things like versions from other projects. The second approach seems to be saner, but my biggest fear is that we won\u2019t have the general overview. We would have to look at all other roadmaps to plan the current one, we wouldn\u2019t see just one calendar with things to do in all projects. I think the core of the problem is that we have very limited human resources that have to be shared across a lot of projects, but they mustn\u2019t overlap. Any ideas how this can be mapped to Redmine?"}
{"_id": "33568", "title": "Aggressive Auto-Updating?", "text": "What do you guys think is best practice regarding auto-updating? Google Chrome for instance seems to auto-update itself as soon as it get's a chance without asking and I'm fine with it. I think most \"normal\" users benefits from updates being a transparent process. Then again, some more technical users might be miffed if you update their app without permission, as I see it there's 3 options: 1) Have a checkbox when installing that says \"allow automatic updates\" 2) Just have a preference somewhere that allows you to \"disable automatic updates\" so that you have to \"check for updates manually\" I'm leaning towards 2) because 1) feels like it might alienate non-technical users and I'd rather avoid installation queries if possible. Also I'm thinking about making it easy to downgrade if an upgrade (heaven forbid) causes trouble, what are your thoughts? Another question, even if auto-updates are automatically, perhaps they should be announced. If there's new features for example otherwise you might not realize and use them One thing that kinda scares me though is the security implications, someone could theorically hack my server and push out spyware/zombieware to all my customers. It seems that using digital signatures to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks is the least you could do otherwise you might be hooked up to a network that spoofs the address of of update server."}
{"_id": "226096", "title": "Is it bad practice to include two types of views in the same class?", "text": "In my app, I use a widget with a loading spinner to signify that a network request is waiting. On failure, there will be another view which contains a failure message and a \"Reload\" button. My question is, since both of these views/widgets will ALWAYS be used together (either one or the other will be shown - or neither), should I merge them into a single widget? Would that be bad or good practice? That way I wouldn't have to prepare them both whenever I want to use one of them. The main disadvantage I see is that modularity would be destroyed."}
{"_id": "226094", "title": "Why do these iOS and OSX framework structures contain a version called 'A'?", "text": "I've been looking at development strategies for frameworks and have found a few good resources. However in the structure of frameworks in iOS and OSX I want to know why inside of the versions folder, there is a folder called 'A'?               MyFramework.framework/         MyFramework  -> Versions/Current/MyFramework         Resources    -> Versions/Current/Resources         Versions/             A/                 MyFramework                 Resources/                     English.lproj/                         InfoPlist.strings                     Info.plist             Current  -> A      According to the Apple documentation it seems that multiple versions can be created, however is there a logical or possibly historical reason why the character 'A' is used instead of using something like a date or version number? Sources:   * Apple Developer: Anatomy of Framework Bundles   * Cocoa Tutorial: Creating You Very Own Framework"}
{"_id": "89903", "title": "OOP design question", "text": "I'm working on an application written in PHP using OOP principles. The classes in my application usually represent a table in the database; for instance, 'student', 'teacher', 'class', 'schedule', etc. As the application gets more and more complex, I start running into situations where it feels like writing a new query would be more efficient / faster than reusing the lower level objects + methods than I've already written. What's the standard philospohy when it comes to this? Is it handled on a case-by-case basis? Do you **always** reuse your code to prevent repeating yourself, even at the cost of the efficiency gained from one database query?"}
{"_id": "226092", "title": "Allowing enum to express a valid combination of values", "text": "Suppose in a manufacturing environment, there are certain stock materials available for use in a product. For example, there are only a few different sizes of copper tube, each having a specific thickness and diameter combination. For the purposes of clean and minimal code as well as the ability to control the available options, is an `enum` a good fit for this combination of data? I was thinking I could make an `enum` with a member for each valid stock item (representing metal, physical measurements, etc.), and then provide extension methods on the `enum` to return the mentioned details. The stocks available for use may change over time, so maybe an `enum` is not the best answer. Is there a better way to express the valid combination of related values? I am using c#."}
{"_id": "108882", "title": "terminology: Memory leak", "text": "When I hear the term _memory leak_ by that I mean a bug in a program that doesn't cause _any_ problems _except_ that it doesn't free memory resource and if it continuously does that it can eat a lot of memory, hurting system performance and in the worst case crash the program (or an other program, if the OS decides to choose to kill that one). But now in this comments section of this question the upvotes made me think whether that's the whole meaning of the term. I previously always saw used it in that meaning. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7451437/is-this-a-mem-leak-in-main So, would you call something a simple memory leak that crashes a program by some other side-effect or causing a dead-lock by not freeing a lock? **Update** \\- Note: unfortunately some admin deleted the comment section there so I cannot refer to that discussion anymore :/ Basically I said that a memory leak is _harmless_ except that it eats up memory (and consequently on the long term in that respect can be harmful, crashing the app/system). They said that's not true, with C++ RAII it can cause serious problems. - Yes, if you don't delete an object with some important code in the destructor that can cause problems, but in my vocabulary that's a major bug and not a memory leak."}
{"_id": "30031", "title": "Starting on Web Project now - Do we choose HTML5/JS over Silverlight?", "text": "we are about to start on a Web Development project (the planning starts early 2011). Do we choose HTML5/JS over Silverlight? Are there any applications which now run on HTML5? Samples? A simple Google Search led me here. Those look great (especially the Star Wars one!), but they are not what you call proper applications as such."}
{"_id": "249920", "title": "How to represent hard-to-calculate \"properties\" of \"objects\" in functional code?", "text": "I have a polyline \"class\" in my Clojure program, which is represented by a vector of points. (It's not really a class or anything.) The polyline's length (in the geometric sense) is something that is often needed for computations. It's also fairly slow to calculate every time it's needed. In OO code, I'd just have the length as a property of the Polyline class. But in functional code, I'm lost. Do I duplicate the OO pattern and make the polyline a map of `{:points points, :length (length points)}`? Do I make a `length` function and `memoize` it? Do I just depend on the compiler to cache the results?"}
{"_id": "76246", "title": "What Are The Best Practices for Managing Version Strings in Google App Engine Apps?", "text": "In Google App Engine, you can upload up to 10 different versions on your appspot project. For instance, if I have a project called `example`, the URL would be:               http://example.appspot.com      Each version I upload is given a version string. Possible examples are:   * dev   * 1   * 1_2   * staging   * anystring To access a specific version, I would prefix the domain with the version string, like so:               http://1.example.appspot.com      Of course, if that version is made the \"default\" version, then I can access it without prefixing with the version string, such as in the original URL at the beginning, http://example.appspot.com. What are the current best practices for managing version strings on Google App Engine Apps, in your experience? Also, once I surpass the max 10 versions and have to start deleting them, what is the suggested practice?"}
{"_id": "76245", "title": "Anyone Been Through the .NET Program with SetFocus?", "text": "By day, I'm a PowerBuilder developer. By night, I dream of being a .NET developer. Sure, I can self-teach mostly everything I need, but I also love classroom learning and 'earning' my education. I am considering 'attending' the SetFocus course for .NET development. My hesitations? It's expensive. Anyone? Feel free to tell me its a crazy idea, regardless of the money. I'm interested in your opinions."}
{"_id": "123096", "title": "Advice for becoming a better programmer", "text": "I am a team lead dealing with a programmer with a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science. He has a couple of years of experience and is still a code monkey. Having observed him for quite a while, he is very slow in programming even fizzbuzz style questions. For other stuff, he tries to make do with just tinkering with code or asking for help on programming forums. For scripting stuff he get can barely get by with that, but for our core work of embedded systems using our proprietary toolchains, online forums are not of much help. As a result, he is either very late or incomplete so that I am forced to assign his work to others. When confronted he acknowledges all of this, but he does not know what practical steps he needs take on how to improve. He gets stuck on issues for a long time, being unable to debug. How to develop his skills to the next level, make him a problem solver, develop architecture skills and understand large systems, debugging skills and make him plan his tasks? In all his annual performance reviews he has never rated high. As his team-lead I have to develop a plan of action in consultation with him. Asking him to quit is always the last option but I would like to avoid that."}
{"_id": "203375", "title": "Is C++ really a bad language for beginners?", "text": "I'm learning C++ right now, and it's the first language I'm learning. I keep seeing on stackexchange and other forums (Reddit, etc.) that I should drop C++ and learn a higher level language like Python or Java. The only arguments I see are that \"C++ is harder to learn and is more low-level than others.\" which don't really give a reason NOT to learn it. I want to know if there are any actual reasons for dropping C++ and taking up another, \"easier\" language. Or if I should keep focusing on it, and just learn others later (which is what I plan on doing)."}
{"_id": "123092", "title": "How did you pick up the art of solving real life problems? Can you shortcut the process?", "text": "I have been coding on and off on C and to a certain extent on C++ since my college days(2003), but I never had the opportunity to work with a hard core programming responsibility, which could have taught me \"industrial grade coding\" better and what is needed really for solving real life problems. To me it looks like I had been coding naive codes, like linked lists, binary trees, and Dijkstra and Kruskal's Algos all these years. Additionally I feel my academic experience just taught me the language not how to solve real life problems. So my question is:   * So how did you pick up the art of solving real life problems?   * Any way to shortcut the process?   * Is it only my education or in general everyone coding education sucked big time?   * How often do you have to learn \"new things\" to solve a problem in a better way.  For example, though I have used delegates and events for simple windows programming, but my current problem will require a much more in depth knowledge of it, plus I have forgotten most of it. So its as good as new for me. I will have to learn threaded programming and multicore programming. So it gives me an impression-\"heck then what did I learn really all these years?\""}
{"_id": "86619", "title": "Is it a \"pattern smell\" to put getters like \"FullName\" or \"FormattedPhoneNumber\" in your model?", "text": "I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC app, and I've been getting into the habit of putting what seem like helpful and convenient getters into my model/entity classes. For example:               public class Member     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public string FirstName { get; set; }         public string LastName { get; set; }         public string PhoneNumber { get; set; }              public string FullName         {             get { return FirstName + \" \" + LastName; }         }              public string FormattedPhoneNumber         {             get { return \"(\" + PhoneNumber.Substring(0, 3) + \") \" + PhoneNumber.Substring(3, 3) + \"-\" + PhoneNumber.Substring(6); }         }     }      I'm wondering people think about the `FullName` and `FormattedPhoneNumber` getters. They make it very easy to create standardized data formats throughout the app, and they seem to save a lot of repeated code, but it could definitely be argued that data format is something that should be handled in mapping from model to view-model. In fact, I was originally applying these data formats in my service layer where I do my mapping, but it was becoming a burden to constantly have to write formatters then apply them in many different places. E.g., I use \"Full Name\" in most views, and having to type something like `model.FullName = MappingUtilities.GetFullName(entity.FirstName, entity.LastName);` all over the place seemed a lot less elegant than just typing `model.FullName = entity.FullName` (or, if you use something like AutoMapper, potentially not typing anything at all). So, where do you draw the line when it comes to data formatting. Is it \"okay\" to do data formatting in your model or is that a \"pattern smell\"? Note: I definitely do not have any html in my model. I use html helpers for that. I'm strictly talking about formatting or combining data (and especially data that is frequently used)."}
{"_id": "212638", "title": "Is it poor practice to name a property/member the same as the declaring type in C#?", "text": "For instance, a class like:               class Dog { } //never mind that there's nothing in it...      and then a property like:               Dog Dog { get; set; }      I've been told that if I can't come up with a more imaginative name for it, then I must use:               Dog DogObject { get; set; }      Any thoughts on how to name these better?"}
{"_id": "207592", "title": "How to bootstrap a FOSS social software project beyond 1 dog eating dog food?", "text": "The development target is a facility that provides a particular kind of structural support to open, public discussions. Each separate deployment of the facility is specific to a single topic of discussion. This is important to know, because the plan is to bootstrap the development of the facility by deploying it on the topic of the facility itself; so the developers will be eating their own dog food. The problem is, how should a lone developer go about attracting others to the food bowl? The only answers I have so far (and neither seems good enough) are:   1. Continually ask in public forums for advice on the development problems that arise, such as design or implementation bugs. Maybe someone will jump in and help. (But this is a little bit sneaky and spam-like; and I apologize because I'm doing this right now.)   2. Continually share information in private with experts such as social scientists; specifically new information that happens to cross their paths of expertise. Maybe they'll reciprocate or reply in some other helpful way. (But this seems too slow on its own.) What other strategies are there? * * * I'll post a link to the project later, in case anyone is interested. Some other things you might need to know in the meantime:   * The utility is novel and unique; no other facility serves the same purpose.   * Both the utility and the user base are comparable to web search. Picture a discussion search engine, but more useful.   * There might be commercial potential, but it might also be largely wiped out by a successful, non-commercial, FOSS launch. Please assume the second case.   * A fully functional prototype is already deployed on the topic of the facility itself (as planned) and is open for anyone to use. It was assembled from off-shelf components. No code was written to make it functional, but code will certainly be needed to improve it.   * The facility is viable with only one or two participants, but nothing to write home about. Its utility and attractiveness increase rapidly with scale. It works partly by crowdsourcing and partly by self-organization and self-governance."}
{"_id": "207597", "title": "What is this (anti?)pattern called? (or how to describe it)", "text": "The case where a source-level operator actually describes an operation to take place at some future point, thunking the real operator together with its operands. I don't know if this has any kind of general name, or perhaps it's too low- level a design element to be thought of as a \"pattern\" at all, but anyway it's an element that is frequently seen in a number of situations:   * If I understand correctly (not a frequent C++ user), Boost::Phoenix does this to represent its lambdas and lazy operations, e.g. overloading + to actually capture the arguments along with the real + function for their type   * Parser combinators in functional languages (or something like Spirit) look like operators on data, but actually build a parser that runs later   * Other EDSLs (in languages with operator overloading) seem to do this a lot, e.g. functional reactive programming libraries tend to invisibly build procedures that will do what the operation looks like it's doing right now   * (Again, if I understand correctly) IO in Haskell builds an imperative computation out of pure components that is then \"executed\" by dark magic hidden in the language runtime, while looking like it's just executing the functions in-place   * At a simpler level, Greenspunning an embedded mini-Lisp into a C program could be considered the same thing: S-expressions can be built out of calls to C functions, to be run later (this last one would probably usually be considered the antipattern case), letting you look like you're passing \"a lambda\" to a C function, when you're really passing interpreter data It's obviously not an antipattern in all cases, as in some of those it's the only way to use the tool in question (doing it in C might earn one a beating though). I don't think it's \"Greenspunning\" or \"using an EDSL\" by itself, as it can be more generic and widely applicable than that. I don't think it's the Interpreter pattern, although I may not have correctly understood that one: the computation is being built directly by executing host language code (so it effectively exists at compile-time, but usually not as a first-class language construct), rather than parsed out of a string or other runtime loaded data. In all cases, what seems to happen is that an operation looks like it's doing one thing (not necessarily very convincingly, if it's C and you need to write out Add instead of overloading +, but same idea), while actually packaging that action up for later consumption. Something like a \"computation builder\" pattern? But I haven't found that term in use. I don't have a practical problem to solve here; it's just bugging me that there seems to be a common design element that I can't put a name to. (Question originally posted at StackOverflow, moved by hand)"}
{"_id": "207594", "title": "Is it possible to escape the GPL by deriving the same work from multiple sources?", "text": "Suppose you have an arbitrary code base, **C** , possibly composed of multiple programs, none of which fall under a copyleft license. Suppose this code, taken together, does the same job as a nice integrated program, **A** licensed under some copyleft license like the GPL, but that for whatever reason the GPL code is superior (faster, cleaner, less buggy, whatever). Now suppose that for each feature in **C** , you find the equivalent feature in **A** and, through careful step-by-step refactoring, create two chains of patches that converge on a third program, **B**. In other words, you can show step by step, via patches, how to derive any of the three programs from any of the others:               A <--> B <--> C      It seems that through this procedure, you have extracted value from **A** and even created a derived work, but the new work doesn't necessarily resemble **A** , and there is a clear chain of evidence showing that **B** was derived from a different code base entirely. My question is: **Would a \" _dialectic_ \" implementation like this provide the same legal effect as a traditional \"clean room\" implementation?** _Note: feel free to replace the licenses of A and C with your most and least favorite options, respectively. The question is about the process in general._"}
{"_id": "184503", "title": "Given that I voluntarily choose not to implement virtual memory in my kernel, how would the memory-management-unit work?", "text": "For my basic kernel I refuse to implement the dreaded confusion of virtual memory scheming, so I want only real memory addresses for everything. Some people have argued with me that since virtual memory is hardware supported, and sometimes the MMU hardware is integrated with the CPU, is that a rule that virtual memory is mandatory by hardware-design? I have at least one good reason to not care about virtual memory at this point, being that the real memory I have is plenty (32 GB), and that I don't care to go through trouble and workarounds with virtual addressing and such(and that I honestly don't like the idea, regardless of the fact that it helps in many areas). So if my question wasn't clear, is it possible to write a dedicated kernel and not _at all_ implement virtual memory and use only real addresses for everything, with a MMU? (Some of these low-level programming and hardware-concepts are mind-boggling, even after hours and hours of studying and implementing). PS: I'm guessing the answer to some point is \"yes\", but hearing someone with more knowledge on the subject would definitely be a good pointer for me and others who read this."}
{"_id": "212635", "title": "How to solve binary labeling with graph cut?", "text": "Many literature references suggest that the _binary labeling problem_ can be converted into a graph cut problem and solved with the max flow/min cut algorithm. I'm trying to understand the formulation given in Xiaowei Zhou's presentation of the reduction. The binary labeling problem consists of partitioning `n` items (here segments of the overlapped regions of two images) into two disjoint sets in a way which minimises an energy function. We can denote the partition as a vector `(x_1, ..., x_n)` whose elements are `0` or `1`; we also have per-item fitness functions `D_i`; and we define a per-item-pair transition function `V_{i,j}` which penalises discontinuities. Then the energy function is given by               E(x_1, ..., x_n) = SUM_p D_p(x_p) + SUM_{p,q} V_{p,q}(x_p, x_q)      In my particular case I have 32 segments, so there are 2^32 possible vectors to evaluate. I could evaluate `E` for each combination, performing 2^32 evaluations, and so get the minimum energy and the combination which achieves it. This is what my intuition suggests. But this is impractical, because the complexity is exponential. Therefore I want to use the graph cut approach, but I don't understand how to formulate the graph. The 32 segments are the nodes of the graph, but what would be the weight of the edges? And what would be the capacity?"}
{"_id": "158139", "title": "Existing buggy code or a brand new one? (From time perspective)", "text": "I am facing some issues with a buggy library I currently have and it's used in my current project, I need to finish this project as soon as possible in order to deliver it to our client. However, this library is horrible! Lots of bugs, lots of errors and bad performance, I thought to write my own library to handle what that library handles (GUI/Graphics and some Data manipulation) but I lack time to do it. I have wasted a lot of time repairing this library thus I am very close to my deadline with 85% completion and still lots of bugs I face and fix everyday. Maybe you will ask me the following question: > Why did you use it in the first place if you knew it was buggy? I will answer that question, the reason why is because the buggy library is considered a standard in out company; plus, I am not the only one who thinks that library is buggy, almost all developers hates it! My question is, should I deliver the current project with that library then develop a new library and use it to enhance the project after that deliver it to the client again as an update, or develop the new library and restart the whole project using the new one? and why?"}
{"_id": "158134", "title": "Good principles to explain the use of data objects", "text": "I'm in a little need of names clarification. First a brief description of my position. I prepare as debutant giving a junior developer job descriptions, which also provided another perspective on how important communication is, and to put it beyond doubt. Simply; I like to understand what he mean with \"Context\" and I like to give a adopted description of what a POCO is. Now, this is not the exactly problematic words. We haven't even spoken yet. I describe it more as the semantic problem and focus on data and IoC, because there is the place we're going to met (He = GUI, I'm BL). I give a manual-typed sample just as a reference for naming different part of it. Some terms are local to a Manufacturer or tool and some are used more Generic, which I prefer the latter.               // Poco, Model?     public class Customer     {         public int CustomerId { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }     }               // A short sign of repository pattern     public class CustomerContext     {             // Is this a context or even a entity?         List<Customer> cust;        public CustomerContext()        {           cust = new List<Customer>();           cust.Add(new Customer() { CustomerId = 1, Name = \"Doe\" });           cust.Add(new Customer() { CustomerId = 2, Name = \"John\" });           cust.Add(new Customer() { CustomerId = 3, Name = \"Zelda\" });           cust.Add(new Customer() { CustomerId = 4, Name = \"Kim\" });        }             public IQueryable<Customer> Get()        {           return cust;        }     }      * _What terms fit best? *_ Are 'Customer' a Model (tooked from MVC)? Does we, simply put, mean the same with POCO? What do I call the sample typed data above? Mocks? Simply \"Data\"? What do I call the object CustomerContext? A repository? A Context? Is it an Entity? Are there other terms that have escaped this scope? It appears common to write about repositories and generics, even though fell into a scope of a manufacturer (where i.e. 'Entity' commonly means Entity Framework). A strong indication of what terms means what (and when), would be of help."}
{"_id": "255980", "title": "HTTP Request & Response Parameters", "text": "1. How are request parameters stored and arranged for a post request if it's not json or xml?   2. Is it possible to send response parameters back in the same way?"}
{"_id": "255985", "title": "Should I use expect or should when writing RSpec specs?", "text": "Please can someone explain to me how I should go about deciding whether to use expect or should syntax for my rspec examples. From my understanding we should no longer be using the 'should' syntax. The replacement is to use expect().to or is_expected.to Is this correct? On some really good references, it seems to be common practice to still use should. And these references are being updated consistently. Any help in the correct direction would be appreciated. References (+ others, but excluded)   https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda-matchers   https://www.railstutorial.org/book"}
{"_id": "238767", "title": "ASP.NET deployment/maintenance best practices", "text": "I have been in the web development industry for around 5 years now, always working in an open source environment. Mostly apache, mysql, and php with a little bit of ruby, using git for version control. But recently took up a job where development is entirely C# ASP.NET MVC. While I was able to pick up the language etc fairly easily, the other members of my team (with a lot more MS Development experience than me) all have a different way of thinking when it comes to publishing and deployment of the final site, and particularly future changes. The mentality with the other developers is that once a site has been published it is final. No more changes can be made to the site, when I have asked the reasons behind this, the answers have been it is too dangerous, time consuming or difficult. From my past experience, updating a site is simply a case of uploading the changed files, which is usually quite quick if it was a little change, or putting the site in maintenance mode while the update occurs. We recently published an MVC Site, and the business contacted us to update some of the text and add a link to a new pdf document. The rest of my team were quick to say that this should not be done because the site is now live and should not be modified. Is there something I have missed by not being 'brought up' a Microsoft developer? What are the argument against making modifications to a live web application in production and is this mindset unique to .NET developers? I genuinely would like to understand this mindset and whether it is justified in a Microsoft development environment, or if this is just an older way of thinking. _NOTE: We use TFS for version control and use publish profiles to determine where the site gets deployed (UAT or Production)_"}
{"_id": "154808", "title": "Building a template engine - starting point", "text": "We're building a Django-based project with a template/generator component. This component will be separate from the project as such and can be Django/Python, Node, Java or whatever works. The idea is to generate questions based on a pattern. For eg., I would want to generate questions like \"What is 2 + 3\", \"What is 5 + 8\" based on the pattern \"What is X + Y ; where X,Y < 10\". In this sense, it's like a template engine. The templates will contain references to objects with properties that are defined in the DB, say, a Bus. For eg, it could be something like > [object type=\"vehicle\" weight=\"heavy\"] and it would have to pull a random object from the DB fulfilling the criteria : type=\"vehicle\" weight=\"heavy\" (bus/truck/jet) and then substitute that tag with an image, say, of a Bus. Also it would have to be able to handle some processing. Eg: > What is [X type=\"integer\" lte=\"10\"] + [Y type=\"integer\" lte=\"10\"] > > [option X+Y correct_ans=\"true\"] > > [option X-Y correct_ans=\"false\"] > > [option X+y+1 correct_ans=\"false\"] The engine would be expected to fill in a random integer value <= 10 for X and Y and show radioboxes for each of the options. Would also have to store the fact that the first option is the correct answer. Does it to make sense to write something from the scratch? Or is it better to use an existing templating system (like Django's own templating system) as a starting point? Any suggestions on how I can approach this? edit : Clarification of use case"}
{"_id": "10644", "title": "Leading an offshore team", "text": "I'm in a position where I am leading two teams of 4. Both teams are located in India. I am on the west coast of the U.S. I'm finding leading remote teams challenging: First, their command of the English language is weak. Second, I'm having difficultly understanding them through their accents. Third is timing, we are 12 hours apart. We use Skype to communicate. I have a month to get the project done. We've burned through a week just setting up the environments. At this point I'm considering working their hours, 11p PDT to 7a PDT, to get them up to speed, so that I can get the project off the ground. A 12 hour lag time is too much. I'm looking for steps I can take to be successful at leading an offshore team. **Update** The offshore team's primary task is coding, of course, most coding tasks do involve some design work. The offshore team's are composed of one lead, 2 mid level (4 to 5 years) developers and a junior (~2 years) developer. The project is classic waterfall. We've handed the offshore team a business and a technical design document. We are trying to manage the offshore in an agile way. We have daily conference calls with them and I'm requiring the teams to send me a daily scrum in the form of an email answering the following questions:   1. What did I do today?   2. What am I going to do tomorrow?   3. What do I need from Chuck so I can do my job tomorrow? There is some ambiguity in the tasks. The intent was to give them enough direction for them to develop the task with out writing the code for them. I don't have a travel budget. I am using Fogbugz to track the tasks. Each task has been entered into Fogbugz and given a priority. Each team member has access to FogBugz and can choose what task they wish to complete. _Related question_ : What can we do to improve the way outsourcing/offshoring works? **Update 2** I've decided that I can not talk to the team once a day. I must work with them. Starting tonight I've started working the same hours they are. This makes me available to them when they have questions. It also allows me to gain their trust and respect. **Update 3** The project was completed and delivered on time. The key factor was me working the same time as the offshore team. If that had not occurred I'm confident we would have failed. I managed two offshore teams. One of the teams under preformed and I fired them taking on the work myself. Things that lead to success was: Communication, understand their culture and how they communicate. Build rapport with them. A couple of the workers I keep in touch a year after the project completed. Meetings, we met at the beginning of their day so any questions or blocked tasks could be addressed. At the end of the day a daily summary was send out by the worker describing their day and if they encountered any issues. Ideally we could resolve their issues by the start of their next day. Questions, ask questions. Most cases information is not volunteered. Be visible. Being online, available and reachable help fostered the team's commitment to the project. I was not just the daily email. Make it easy. Internally we had a complex QA system in which bugs where tracked. It was complex and hard to use. I paid the $$ for a fogbugz account for each of the team members. Most of the team had used FogBugz and understood the workflow. Daily I would update the fogbugz with new bugs and update the QA system from Fogbugz. **Stackoverflow question** Leading an offshore team"}
{"_id": "5435", "title": "What can we do to improve the way outsourcing/offshoring works?", "text": "These days one only gets to hear the anti-outsourcing argument citing failed projects, lost jobs, cultural differences, communication issues and so on. The success stories, cost savings, shared cultural experiences often get conveniently ignored. What can programmers from both sides of the globe do as a community to improve the way outsourcing works and to make it more meaningful and relevant? Please suggest constructive ideas/experiences rather than letting this be another opportunity for ranting."}
{"_id": "160820", "title": "What kind of metrics, if any, can be collected from requirements development?", "text": "We elicit requirements from our product stakeholders by creating and refining user stories in monthly sprint planning meetings. This includes defining use cases, acceptance criteria, and identifying constraints, and the final result is a sprint backlog of user stories. The high-level customer requirements are refined into lower-level product requirements through design reviews among the development team throughout the sprint. The design reviews result in UML diagrams, software interfaces, and, in general, a human language description of various software requirements. We are increasing our metric-awareness as an organization so that we can better identify potential areas of process improvement (and so that we can eventually be appraised at CMMI level 3). What kind of useful metrics are there to collect in the elicitation and refinement of customer requirements?"}
{"_id": "160823", "title": "Standards of unit testing output", "text": "Simple question, what's more common / standard / won't make future developers look at me cross-eyed for unit testing: Displaying just the errors, or reporting every passed test?"}
{"_id": "209071", "title": "How much functional programming expertise can programmers be expected to have?", "text": "I'm coding in a non-functional language with functional mechanisms (C# to be specific, but you could substitute, say C++ and use function pointers, or what have you) on a small team. It's my habit to use functional techniques -- passing delegates (objects representing functions) as arguments, using closures, occasional anonymous functions, etc -- and I try to document this better than I think a reasonable programmer would need them documented. Looking at code I see online and on Stack Exchange communities, I think my style is pretty normal among C# developers. Our team, however, isn't sophisticated in these techniques and I end up having to explain (and defend) myself -- my high level of documentation is actually used as evidence by them that I shouldn't code the way I do for the sake of readability. Now, given the make-up of my team, I understand that I might just give up the good fight here and code to their standards, understanding its better for the team. Does anyone have successful experience using empirical studies, accreditation criteria or best practices lists published by respectable sources that suggest that programmers today have more experience in these functional programming idioms, and that, therefore, we don't need to shy away from them for purposes of maintainability?"}
{"_id": "230150", "title": "Big Data: Can it be pre-processed?", "text": "My question is about \"big data\". Basically, big data involves the analysis of a large amount of data to make meaningful insights from it. I would like to know: Whether or not large amounts of data can be pre-processed? (like say for example you are running some matching service for people, so you take all the information you have on the people and you process it at a certain point for use later on) **If pre-processing is possible, how would you normally go about doing this?** * * * To help narrow the scope of my question, please look at this hypothetical scenario. > Say I have a customer database and my company is a global retailer that is > using some type of points system to reward the shoppers (for arguments sake, > the points are tallied up on a type of electronic card or mobile app). > > So based on my rewards system, I am now able to fully aware of exactly what > a shopper is purchasing and when they normally make purchases of recurring > items. > > My database is growing all the time with this information and I would now > like to make recommendations (or send notifications) to shoppers about > special offers of products they buy or related products that may interest > them, when they enter 1 of the stores. > > Instead of processing all the accumulated data when a shopper enters the > store, I would like to continually process the data-stream as the data comes > in (meaning from previous shopping experiences), so that when it comes time > to make a recommendation (for the next time a shopper walks into the store), > it is simply a matter of retrieving the recommendations and providing a list > of it to the shopper. > > With this method in mind, I can easily space out my CPU-intensive tasks, > instead of say: processing all customer data on a busy day when foot-traffic > is at peak volumes. By asking how I would do this, I would be referring to common methods available for achieving this. This can include any special databases or programming techniques or even specialized software that can carry out these timed calculations that can \"pre-process\" the data at specific times, in order to balance out CPU-intensive tasks. You can consider the customer-recommendation scenario as the \"situation\". It is the best example scenario I could think of that would explain why \"pre- processing\" (or calculating the recommendations at specific times) would make sense."}
{"_id": "160827", "title": "Can anyone point me to some examples / reading material that outline updating the dom automatically?", "text": "Basically I would like to know how apps such as hotmail receive emails in realtime, without making periodic checks on the server - I've sent an email to myself from outlook with hotmail open and saw this in the console a couple of seconds later - GET http://sn108w.snt108.mail.live.com/mail/messageshelper.mvc the contents of which is the html to update, but I'd like to know what listens for the get request which presumably fires some javascript to update the dom? My question isn't specific to hotmails methodolgy in fact far from it as they will be working on the .NET platform whereas my proficiencies (if you can call them that!) are in the LAMP stack but any reading material on the subject would be great, thanks!"}
{"_id": "230158", "title": "How to write camel case for words like \"phonenumber\", \"motorcycle\", \"wavelength\", etc", "text": "I am having a problem in understanding how to apply camelCase syntax to some of my variable names. For example, how should I correctly write a word like \"phonenumber\" in camel case? Is it `phoneNumber` or `phonenumber`? Similarly with \"username\", is it `username` or `userName`? I think it doesn't look right with camel case like `motorCycle`, `passWord`, `sunDay`, `setUp` or `waveLength` since these are just one word each. I think that could be why it's called `hashMap` but also `hashtable` in camel case without the capital in the last case because hashtable is one word while hash map is two words. But if the motorcycle has a color then would it be `motorcycleColor` since a word is concatenated? Is that correct or should it be `phoneNUmber`, `waveLength`, `sunBlock` and even `sunDay` for the Sunday of the week? Why for instance is the method called `getISOCountries` while it says `HttpHeaders` e.g. it's not clear what becomes lowercase if we have a method like `String camelCaseString = dog.toCamelCase()` or `interface CamelCase`."}
{"_id": "72945", "title": "When does freelancing become a start-up?", "text": "In one of my previous question in this Q&A site, someone suggested me that freelancing is not for everyone. I gave a thought over it and came to a conclusion that it is correct. While it may be a choice of veterans and experts in their own fields in some countries, it is like a rescue boat option in few countries, where there is fierce competition. I am confused on when to use the term freelancing and when to use the term start-up. I may be a freelancer with my name on my business cards, whereas, I may be a freelancer with a one-man start-up, with my firm's name on my business card. I registered my start-up legally but still, it is a one-man show. It is a one- man company. Is it still freelancing? In that case, should I print my firm's name on business card or wait till I get a handful of hired employees? When does the label of freelancing get removed for someone who plans for a start-up?"}
{"_id": "81503", "title": "What version control system is typically used in Java Enterprise development?", "text": "There are many vcs available. Which of them are typically used in JavaEE world?"}
{"_id": "38225", "title": "What to do when coding begins to feel boring, like it is all just more of the same?", "text": "I started programming at the age of 6 on a Commodore 64. Now I'm 28, and I have to complete 4 courses from a first degree in Computer Science. I'm starting to get bored with writing code after all these years. I've taken a course in Computer Science in theoretical computer languages and 10 years of C system coding in network security field and I just don't get any stimulation from writing code. I can write code in C, C++, Python or whatever language you want, but I can't get excited about what I'm doing. I can't feel any challenge. I've written multi-threaded code, HTTPS MITM proxy and a WSGI application without the need of any specific algorithms skill. I feel that all this new stuff is all the same, with simpler (or more) abstractions or automation in it, but it all sounds the same to me. Over and over again. The computable language is all Turing computable, so coding is only a replication of a similar pattern in this subset of a partial function. In my everyday work I'm feeling bored even with searching for bugs, or doing benchmarks on code, or fixing the problem with the library X,Y,Z. I'm a very curious person. I always get stimulated by something. But I can't even when I look at great code. I feel more comfortable in how the things work. **Is it time to make an advance in my career? Or to get more challenging stuff in Computer Science? Maybe get a major degree in CS?** I've started to read my first book on project management \"Peopleware\" and I'm getting more interested in the software development lifecycle. What do you suggest to do? Perhaps trying to get into Google or Microsoft or Apple like some friends of mine have done. Or perhaps a more managerial career path. I have also tried to find a good book about communication rules and \"people personality\" to prepare me for the possibility of getting into management. Any suggestions? P.S: I have a lot of interest, **i'm not depressed** :) i love mountain, trekking, take photo shoot and i'm a sport climber, i love to swim and sport in general, sometimes i do running, actually I'm reading book about my country (Italy) story from AC to today and i love trips (this summer i made 4000Km to see a lot of place in Spain and climb in it, all over in only 3 week, not a holiday but a marathon, 24 km of trekking made my hernia injury .. :)))) ), i love theater and life in general * * * Thanks to all, thinking about all the answer give to me the opportunity to make my path more clear. For a summary purpose we can generalize about the most voted up answer. First of all all the people vote-up the **necessity** to made our work a support of your life and not the only reason to stay in life (this is not my case), so, if you only reason of life if working you come fast to a really depressive situation. As peopleware say, Vienna don't waiting for you :) After this reminder people suggest to:     * increase technical complexity I'm actually working on to increase challenge and get less bored about it.   * change the field of expertise to a non technical field trying to become a manager or make some carer advance in a non technical fields related to your work.   * change the field of expertise in another kind of technical challenge, are you a system programmer ? try to get less bored developing about application for human so you can feel more comfortable viewing people using your useful software   * make some advance in your computer science degree in your academic path For my purpose the right answer is to advance in computer science, for my feeling i think programming is not the only computer science way to get and i think i can feel better getting other path in computer science different from software engineering carer. Thanks to all."}
{"_id": "208816", "title": "What is it called when a website URL replaces WWW with something else, and what purpose does it serve?", "text": "What is it called when a website has another word in place of where `www` usually goes? For example, `images.google.com` vs `google.com/images`. I know the latter is a file on the server that the browser downloads, but what exactly is the purpose of the former? It would be helpful to know what this is called."}
{"_id": "147423", "title": "Pros and cons of an HTML/JavaScript only web app", "text": "I come from an ASP.NET forms background and have found server side coding very powerful in the past. More recently, however, I have been wanting to phase out the server side code of the front-end and replace it with pure HTML/JavaScript, which accesses the data through JSON webservices. I have no real experience in this, and so I would like to hear whether this is a tried and tested model. Also, what are the pitfalls surrounding it? I find ASP.NET user controls very useful, so I would like to keep the theory behind it by storing markup templates in separate HTML files on the server. These will be retrieved and used through jQuery AJAX and the jQuery HTML templates plugin respectively. Any input will be extremely appreciated. P.S. Sorry for the noob question, but is this type of Web architecture what is referred to as web-2.0 or am I completely off-track?"}
{"_id": "208810", "title": "Could applications build by Xamarin be possibly banned by Apple for selling on app store?", "text": "Consider having restricted man resources and thinking about using Xamarin studio for building cross platform application. Will you be afraid of Apple trying to ban all applications NOT developed by xCode? I mean in future. It is obviously not banned now. I am just asking this because I heard this on a meeting today as argument of not using Xamarin studio. I am not an expert in this area but very curious because it sounds odd. The application should be banned because of some kind of generated code which is always there when building app using Xamarin."}
{"_id": "18495", "title": "Egoless programming, is it possible or even desirable", "text": "After reading this question; Why are so many programmers arrogant It does bring a related question to my mind. Is it possible to have egoless programming or is it even desirable? As a profession we do seem to want to show off the latest gizmo, technique or say \u201clook at this awesome piece of code I\u2019ve written\u201d. Yet we can get very defensive when asked to submit items of work for code reviews or get negative comments from other programmers (hearing the term WTF, has never been a good sign). Can we as a profession be able to sit down and analyse a piece of code, data or architecture for its merits or constraints and a calm and respetful manner, without causing offence or antagonising our colleagues, or are we just the archetypal Dilbert character, raging against the system?"}
{"_id": "174848", "title": "Number Game Algorithm", "text": "Problem Link - http://www.iarcs.org.in/inoi/2011/zco2011/zco2011-1b.php The task is to find the maximum score you can get in the game. Such problems, based on games, where you have to simulate, predict the result, or obtain the maximum possible score always seem to puzzle me. I can do it with recursion by considering two cases - first number picked or last number picked, each of which again branches into two states similarly, and so on... which finally can yield the max possible result. But it's a very time-inefficient approach, since time increases exponentially, due to the large test cases. What is the most pragmatic approach to the problem, and to such problems in general?"}
{"_id": "174843", "title": "Consultant in a firm that doesn't understand the tech!", "text": "I got the job as a Consultant in a firm that has 3 other programmers. My job is to rewrite all the old system in Java, Spring etc but the staff programmers only know perl and the manager does not know any programming. I am trying to get them to understand that I have 6 projects to rewrite here but no one has design docs or spec. the staff programmers never had to write any documents. Plus I cant get the manager to understand the new java tech stuff.. he keeps asking some of the staff for views on things but the staff don't know it or understand it. Where do I go from here to make the manager understand that the staff programmers or someone has to write a design document so I know what to build. or if I have to write the documents how do I get the information?"}
{"_id": "174840", "title": "Examples of when we'll use interpreted language over compiled language?", "text": "I understand the differences between interpreted and compiled languages, but if someone could provide some examples of situations when one is likely to use interpreted languages over compiled languages, as well as situations when one is likely to use compiled languages over interpreted languages, it'd be really helpful."}
{"_id": "192100", "title": "How to effectively put code live", "text": "What are the general strategies to employ when attempting to ensure that a module of code will function correctly on the live system? A common problem we have at our software house is that we typically deploy solutions to a remote client's server, which hasn't got any software-development-related software installed on it. When problems (inevitably) arise in the deployed software, we get annoyed clients telling us to fix the issue, but since we can't remotely debug the code, we get locked into a cycle of effectively having to guess whether our code will work before we deploy it, and then repeating the cycle when the deployed code has issues. Furthermore, due to the remoteness of the client, it's typically not possible to get a full working test copy of their system set up on our end, so we end up developing against approximations of their system on our end. This makes our debugging and code planning on the development side significantly less effective, because when we deploy we don't know precisely what variable between our test system and the live system is causing problems with our code. So far, I've implemented a basic error logger in all deployed code that captures the stack trace, exception details, method, class, namespace, parameters and additional messages and error codes at each exception, but this really just speeds up the process of fixing that specific error. I've also tried writing individual tests for specific subsections of modules as executables and running them on the client system, but for modules that are tens of thousands of lines long, this usually just isn't feasible without grinding all development to a halt. I'm trying to get a strategy in place which would help us better avoid the exceptions in the first place, but I'm stuck on the fact that:   * We don't have (and typically can't get) a working test system that accurately models the live system, e.g. an image of the live system, if we do have it then it's months out of date   * We can't install remote debugging software on the live server   * The client typically has no dedicated test server, so any deployments have to go straight to live   * Having no access to a copy of the live system means that we can't write effective unit tests which actually model the conditions the code will run under on the client side If it helps, the code is typically C# running under .NET 3.5. How to better tackle this issue?"}
{"_id": "96478", "title": "Dealing with coworkers when developing, need advice", "text": "I developed our current project architecture and started developing it on my own _(reaching something like,`revision 40`)_. We're developing a simple subway routing framework and my design seemed to be done extremely well - _several main models, corresponding views, main logic and data structures were modeled \"as they should be\" and fully separated from rendering, algorithmic part was also implemented apart from the main models and had a minor number of intersection points._ I would call that design scalable, customizable, easy-to-implement, interacting mostly based on the \"black box interaction\" and, well, very nice. **Now, what was done:**   * I started some implementations of the corresponding interfaces, ported some convenient libraries and wrote implementation stubs for some application parts.   * I had the document describing coding style and examples of that coding style usage (my own written code).   * I forced the usage of more or less modern `C++` development techniques, including `no-delete` code (wrapped via smart pointers) and etc.   * I documented the purpose of concrete interface implementations and how they should be used.   * Unit tests _(mostly, integration tests, because there wasn't a lot of \"actual\" code)_ and a set of mocks for all the core abstractions.  * * * _**I was absent for 12 days**._ * * * **What do we have now (the project was developed by 4 other members of the team):**   * 3 different coding styles all over the project _(I guess, two of them agreed to use the same style :)_ , same applies to the naming of our abstractions _(e.g`CommonPathData.h`, `SubwaySchemeStructures.h`)_, which are basically headers declaring some data structures.   * Absolute lack of documentation for the recently implemented parts.   * What I could recently call a `single-purpose-abstraction` now handles at least 2 different types of events, has tight coupling with other parts and so on.   * Half of the used interfaces now contain member variables `(sic!)`.   * Raw pointer usage almost everywhere.   * Unit tests disabled, because \"`(Rev.57) They are unnecessary for this project`\".   * ... _(that's probably not everything)_. Commit history shows that my design was interpreted as an overkill and people started combining it with personal bicycles and reimplemented wheels and then had problems **integrating** code chunks. Now - the project still does only a small amount of what it has to do, we have severe integration problems, I assume some memory leaks. * * * **Is there anything possible to do in this case?** I do realize that all my efforts didn't have any benefit, but the deadline is pretty soon and we have to do something. **Did someone have a similar situation?** Basically I thought that a good (well, I did everything that I could) start for the project would probably lead to something nice, however, I understand that I'm wrong. Any advice would be appreciated, sorry for my bad english."}
{"_id": "96476", "title": "Where should I store my user session data?", "text": "Should I store only the user's session id along with the data in a table, or should I store the user's session id in a table and access an array of data from the user's session id? and why? What is more efficient? I will not be generating any reports."}
{"_id": "89273", "title": "Where are all the functional programming design patterns?", "text": "OO programming literature is full of design patterns. Most books on object oriented programming dedicate a chapter or two to design patterns like factories and decorators. So what are the equivalent patterns in functional languages and why hasn't anyone written a book about them yet? Is there something special about functional languages that obviates the need for design patterns?"}
{"_id": "127572", "title": "Where can I find accessible bug/issue databases with complete revision history", "text": "I'm performing some research and analysis on bug/issue tracking databases and more specifically on how programmers and teams of programmers actually interact with them. What I'm looking for involves understanding how those databases change over time. So what I **don't** need for example: is a database of all the bugs of some open source project as the bugs exist today. What I do need is a complete set of revision history for every issue/bug in the database. This would enable me to pick a specific datetime and say here were the list of all the issues/bugs that existed at that moment in time. Anyway know of some publicly accessible issue/bug databases that expose this revision data? Ideally, the revision would look something like this (shown for a single bug, with two revisions)                ISSUEID  PRI  SEV  ASSIGNEDTO  MODIFIEDON      VALIDUNTIL      1        2    2    mel         apr-1-2010:5pm  apr-1-2010:6pm      1        2    3    steve       apr-1-2010:6pm  NULL"}
{"_id": "225014", "title": "Layering buttons when a number needs to be pressed more than once during an equation?", "text": "I am very new to HTML5 (and web coding in general), and I am trying to create an interactive calculator. I will try to explain this as clearly as I can. The basic idea is that the user will use pre-set equations to add numbers with the calculator. All of the buttons on the calculator will have an animated 'push down' effect, but the buttons that need to be pressed to perform the equation will light up one at a time after each successive button is pressed. I'm getting stuck developing this when a number needs to be pressed more than once during an equation... i.e. 257+6732. - notice that the # 7 is used twice. Here are my two ideas (both have failed):   1. In this example the #7 button would need to preform two functions (1st. light up the 'plus' button on the first click, and 2nd. light with the \"three' button on the second click). I know that coding the button to perform two functions this way is possible, however, the button can ONLY be active at correct points in equation. During the remainder of the equation clicking the #7 button will not preform any function, and will only give an animated push down effect.  OR   1. The #7 button could be duplicated and on the first click the top button disappears. The 2nd #7 button would then stay hidden until the appropriate time during the equation. Again, the #7 button would have a grayed out appearance and only give an animated push down effect while the button is not in use. Can anyone shed some light on this for me? I'm pulling my hair out over this. The entire design is complete and things look fantastic, but the value of this project is adding up to a POS until I can work out the coding."}
{"_id": "130073", "title": "User story does not fit in a sprint", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Scrum: how to handle backlog-items that are longer than one sprint I have a project with complex user stories which take way longer to implement than spring length. For example: user story sounds like this : > \"User is able to receive a report at 10:00 am daily\" But behind the scenes, it requires around 2.5 month of development so it does not fit in our two weeks sprints. Could you share the best practices for this case?"}
{"_id": "127577", "title": "Structuring Visual Studio folders", "text": "If I'm doing a website, I end up with folders like \"Controllers, Views, Models, Extensions, and Helpers\". If I'm doing a DLL library I end up with folders reflecting the namespaces of my classes. If I write a desktop app, I end up with \"Presentation and models\" where models is subdivided further by namespaces. My question is, where is a common place to put classes that aren't necessarily part of your logic or model? For instance, if I find some code to convert XML to some arbitrary format, I usually put it in a static class and drop it in a folder called utilities. That's easy, but when I get into something that borders on domain logic that converts from XML into a domain specific language, where do I draw the line? That's a pretty specific case, but I run into tons of these where I'm torn on putting it in the Utilities folder, the helpers folder etc. **These are all folders I use, but hopefully the concept is clear, I just don't know how to organize my code when it isn't clear domain logic.**"}
{"_id": "150327", "title": "What are the drawbacks when designing a class?", "text": "When I read the book Effective Java chapter 4, I met some sentences but I can't think them out :   1. What is the implementation when designing a class , why subclass will rely on the implementation detail of superclass?   2. Why will inheritance break encapsulation?"}
{"_id": "127579", "title": "How does unit testing work?", "text": "I am trying to make my code more robust and I have been reading about unit testing, but I find it very hard to find an actual useful use. For instance, the Wikipedia example:               public class TestAdder {         public void testSum() {             Adder adder = new AdderImpl();             assert(adder.add(1, 1) == 2);             assert(adder.add(1, 2) == 3);             assert(adder.add(2, 2) == 4);             assert(adder.add(0, 0) == 0);             assert(adder.add(-1, -2) == -3);             assert(adder.add(-1, 1) == 0);             assert(adder.add(1234, 988) == 2222);         }     }      I feel that this test is totally useless, because you are required to manually compute the wanted result and test it, I feel like a better unit test here would be               assert(adder.add(a, b) == (a+b));      but then this is just coding the function itself in the test. Can someone provide me with an example where unit testing is actually useful? FYI I am currently coding mostly \"procedural\" functions that take ~10 booleans and a few ints and give me an int result based on this, I feel like the only unit testing I could do would be to simply re-code the algorithm in the test. edit: I should also have precised this is while porting (possibly badly designed) ruby code (that I didn't make)"}
{"_id": "225019", "title": "PHP passing parameters to a function", "text": "I want to pass a parameter to a function as below for clarity. It doesn't give any error. But is this a bad practice. Do I have to avoid this.               test('','','',$d='text','');          function test($a, $b, $c, $d, $e){          }"}
{"_id": "55373", "title": "\"Half of everything you know will be obsolete in 18-24 months\" = ( True, or False? )", "text": "Just ran across this, and wondering if anyone has a way to prove or disprove this statement: > Something to keep in mind ... what's the half-life of knowledge in high > tech? It tracks with Moore's Law: half of everything you know will be > obsolete in 18-24 months. **SOURCE:** Within answer by **Craig Trader** to this question \" **What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills?** \""}
{"_id": "64775", "title": "Research paper on distributed computing - Advice?", "text": "I am writing my first research paper on distributed storage systems. We also have a prototype working (partially). The project was a complete implementation based project where we envisage to take this project a step further and do some future development. So, my questions are:   1\\. How should I go about creating the \"skeleton\" or the outline of the paper? Any pointers.   2\\. I understand, benchmarks and some working stats of the systems is important, but what is the breakup? How much content should be dedicated to theoretical algorithms (which we implemented, did not create new ones) and the benchmark data.   3\\. What format (IEEE, ACM etc) should I select and why? PS: The project does not really concentrates on creating something new and unique, but it's aim to create an app which can be used by students and researchers to help understand the field of study better. Performance is not an objective for us, since there are alot of open source implementation (production quality) of the same domain. Think of Kaffe for JVM, that's what we are building for distributed storage systems."}
{"_id": "64776", "title": "Separately tracking software failures and faults", "text": "I've recently finished reading a couple of Gerald Weinberg books on Quality Software Management. In them, he strongly recommends that organizations distinguish between software **failures** (which we would call bugs) and software **faults** , i.e. coding errors. He also recommends than an organization keeps separately track of failures and faults, linking one or more of the former to one of the latter. The specific terms he uses are **System Trouble Incident** for a failure report, and **System Fault Analysis** for the work that leads to the discovery of a fault. I've searched for any further references to these terms on the internet but didn't find anything. Does anyone work in an organization where failures and faults are recorded separately? And if yes, are there any tools out there that will let you do this seamlessly, and let you link failures to faults? Is it worth the trouble?"}
{"_id": "153673", "title": "Fastest way to set up a JSON server on my local machine", "text": "I am a front-end developer. For many experiements I do I need to have a server that talks JSON with my client side app. Normally that server is a simple server that response to my POSTs and GETs. For example I need to setup a server that saves, modifies and read data from a \"library\" database like this:   * `POST /books` create a book   * `GET /book/:id` gets a book and so on... What is the fastest to set up and easiest technology stack for database and server in this case? I am open to use Ruby, Nodejs and anything that do the job fast and easy. Is there any framework (on any language) that do stuff like this for me?"}
{"_id": "153671", "title": "Using submitted code in a commercial product", "text": "I have made a product which I have used the GPL licence, and am now getting pull requests from other authors. The product also has a less restrictive commercial license available for purchase. Can I include the submitted code with the commercial licensed product?"}
{"_id": "235065", "title": "My UML class diagram is too complicated, what should I do?", "text": "Classes have 10-20 links with one another and you can't see anything in that mess of a diagram Unfortunately we finished coding already and if we change the class diagram we have to redo the whole thing"}
{"_id": "121939", "title": "Why the loops are avoided in Kruskal's algorithm?", "text": "I read Kruskal's algorithm as it's presented on Wikipedia. There, it says that it's an algorithm in graph theory that finds a minimum spanning tree for a connected weighted graph. But while going through the examples that illustrate this algorithm I am unable to understand why the _loops are avoided_ by marking some of the edges in red. What is the reason for this?"}
{"_id": "121937", "title": "Programming logic to group a users activities like Facebook", "text": "So I am trying to develop an activity feed for my site. Basically If I `UNION` a bunch of activities into a feed I would end up with something like the following. > **Chris** is now friends with **Mark** > > **Chris** is now friends with **Dave** What I want though is a neater way of grouping these similar posts so the feed doesn't give information overload... E.g. > **Chris** is now friends with **Mark** , **Dave** and **4 Others** Any ideas on how I can approach this logically? I am using Classic ASP on SQL server. Here is the `UNION` statement I have so far:               SELECT          U.UserID As UserID, L.UN As UN,Left(U.UID,13) As ProfilePic,U.Fname          + ' '          + U.Sname As FullName, 'said '          + WP.Post AS Activity, WP.Ctime     FROM         Users AS U LEFT JOIN Logins L ON L.userID = U.UserID      LEFT OUTER JOIN          WallPosts AS WP ON WP.userID = U.userID WHERE WP.Ctime IS NOT NULL     UNION SELECT         U.UserID As UserID, L.UN As UN,Left(U.UID,13) As ProfilePic,U.Fname          + ' '          + U.Sname As FullName, 'commented '          + C.Comment AS Activity, C.Ctime     FROM Users AS U      LEFT JOIN Logins L ON L.userID = U.UserID      LEFT OUTER JOIN         Comments AS C ON C.UserID = U.userID WHERE C.Ctime IS NOT NULL     UNION SELECT          U.UserID As UserID, L.UN As UN,Left(U.UID,13) As ProfilePic, U.Fname          + ' '          + U.Sname As FullName, 'connected with <a href=\"/profile.asp?un='+(SELECT Logins.un FROM Logins WHERE Logins.userID = Cn.ToUserID)+'\">'          + (SELECT Users.Fname          + ' '          + Users.Sname FROM Users WHERE userID = Cn.ToUserID)          + '</a>' AS Activity, Cn.Ctime     FROM          Users AS U      LEFT JOIN          Logins L ON L.userID = U.UserID      LEFT OUTER JOIN         Connections AS Cn ON Cn.UserID = U.userID WHERE CN.Ctime IS NOT NULL"}
{"_id": "241353", "title": "How to diagram custom programming languages, non textual?", "text": "I've used and created domain-specific languages before, plenty of times (e.g. using yacc/lex). Normally we'd start with grammar written in BNF, and a bunch of keywords. This is easy to do, easy to share. Recently, I've started working with diagrammatic programming languages - closest parallel is circuit-diagrams in electronics, where it's very difficult to express ideas in text, but very easy to express them in wiring-diagrams. This is a new and novel problem for me: how to efficiently express these mini- languages, and share concepts in them with colleagues? (i.e. how to whiteboard-program within them. Actual programming is easy - you have physical components to hand) Are there tools for this? Or good/best practices (e.g. equivalent of \"always use BNF as starting point for your new DSL, and use tools like yacc to generate the parser, compiler, etc\"). My googlefu is proving weak - all I get is false positives for wiring diagrams, and UML editors (since these are custom languages, UML doesn't seem to help)"}
{"_id": "241355", "title": "\"bug\" in C++11 text by Stroustrup?", "text": "I found an apparent contradiction in the c++ text having to do with the result of the `c_str()` function operating on `std:strings` (in my copy, the definition and contradiction are on p1040). First it defines the `c_str()` function as something that produces a 'C-style' (zero-terminated) string, but later it talks about how a C++ c_str value can have embed a 'C'-style, end-of-string terminators (i.e. NUL's) embedded in the string (that is defined by being NUL terminated). Um... does anyone else feel that this is a 'stretching' of the definition of a C-string beyond it's definition? I.e. I think what it means, is that if you were to look at the `length()` function as applied to the `string`, it will show a different end of string than using the C-definition of a z-string -- one that can contain any character except NUL, and is terminated by NUL. I likely don't have to worry about it in my of my programs, but it seems like a subtle distinction that makes a C++ `c_str`, not really a **'C'** -string. Am I misunderstanding this issue? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "82619", "title": "Iphone/Android app \u2013 chatroom development \u2013 what framework & hosting needs?", "text": "I have some experience regarding IPhone and Android development but I am now struggling to solve a new class of problem: apps that involve a client/server chatroom feature. That is, an app when people can exchange text over the internet, and without having the app to constantly \u201cpull\u201d content from the server. So that problem can\u2019t be solved with a normal php/mysql website, there must be some kind of application running on a server that is able to send message from the server to the phone, rather than having the phone to check for new messages every 10 seconds. So I\u2019m looking for ways to solve the different problems here:   * What framework should I use on the two sides (phone / server)? It should be some kind of library that doesn\u2019t prevent me to write paid apps. It should also be possible to have the same server for the Iphone and android version of the app.   * What server / hosting solution do I need with what sort of features, I just have no experience regarding server application that can handle and initiate multiple connections and are hosted on hardware that is always online I tried to find resources online but couldn\u2019t so far, either the libraries had the wrong kind of license/language or I just didn\u2019t understand. Sometimes there were nice tutorial but for different needs such as peer2peer chat over local network. Same with the server and the hosting problem, not sure where to start really, I\u2019m calling for help and I promise I will complete this page with notes about the experience I will get. Obviously the ideal would be to find a tutorial I missed that include client code, server code and a free scalable server. That being said, If I see something as good, it probably means that I have eaten the wrong kind of mushroom again. So, failing that, any pointer which might help me toward that quest, would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "65790", "title": "What are good dynamics that can improve learning in a web programming course?", "text": "~~At my company we are starting a course for free that will cover 4 modules (`HTML / CSS and W3C Standards, Javascript and jQuery, PHP, MySQL`) during 7 months. The main goal is to be able to train new possible employees and at the same time share knowledge with programming enthusiasts, although it is very personalized (8 - 10 people). The dynamic is: one 4 hours class (with a break) every week, and a big homework that includes investigation and practice. Also once a week students come to the office to work on real life examples and get help with their homework. This would be the third time we do this. We were no teachers when we started but feel satisfied in general with the results. However there is always room for improvement, we have noticed for instance some difficulty when trying to introduce programming for the first time (`javascript`) also when switching from event based to procedural (`php`) programming. My question is , are there any advices or guidelines based on experience that you can give us in order to improve the learning experience? What are resources that we should take into account for teaching web development from scratch?~~ > **UPDATE** : To make it a wider question, what are good dynamics (or > advices) that can improve the learning process in a web programming course?"}
{"_id": "213279", "title": "Abstracting user interface from domain", "text": "My course text suggests creating a 'facade' class to completely abstract the user interface from the domain layer. That is, the UI uses only basic types, and if it needs a reference to a domain object, it only knows it as an `Object`. To give you an idea, this is what it might look like (example in Java but could equally apply to other languages):               public class Facade     {         ...         public Object getLastOrder(Object customer)         {             Customer castCustomer = (Customer)customer;             Order lastOrder = domainController.getLastOrder(castCustomer);             return lastOrder;         }     }      Note: I'm not sure whether this is in fact a type of facade pattern (I've heard it defined differently elsewhere), but I don't want to get _too_ bogged down in terminology. Compared to nothing (having the UI call the domain controller directly), I can see that this has the advantage that the UI is much more independent of changes to the domain model implementation. There's always a risk that very major changes (such as not having anything representing an order any more) will break things, but this seems to be able to absorb anything else. However, it seems to sacrifice type checking, and it means that getting even simple properties of domain objects more convoluted than it needs to be (`anOrder.getNumber()` vs `facade.getOrderNumber(anOrder)`). * * * My own thought was that it would be better for the UI to reference domain objects in terms of interfaces, rather than plain Objects. For example:               public class Facade     {         ...         public IOrder getLastOrder(ICustomer customer)         {             Customer castCustomer = (Customer)customer;             Order lastOrder = domainController.getLastOrder(castCustomer);             return lastOrder;         }     }      or even if the domain controller itself exposed only the interface types, forgetting the 'facade' altogether. As far as I can see, this is better from a type checking point of view. Major changes (e.g. removing `Order` from the system) can break things, but that was true of the 'plain `Object`' solution. And any methods that are stable (e.g. `anOrder.getNumber()`) can be specified in the interfaces, so calling them from the UI is simpler and more object- orientated. Obviously this only applies to methods whose signatures are stable, to avoid breaking the UI, but the implementation is still free to change. Is there something I'm missing? Does my 'interface' solution have any drawbacks I haven't spotted? Or is there a completely different, better solution that I haven't though of?"}
{"_id": "213278", "title": "Properly structure an existing project into the MVC architecture", "text": "I'm taking a legacy classic asp project up to more modern technology (I've been working with ASP.NET MVC lately so using this concept is stuck in my mind), but I'm trying to think of how to structure the project. The idea is that the company provides a service to clients, but the service is housed on the company's website (instead of the client's) and has some branding/specifics to the client. Let's say there are 4 or 5 pages/steps for the service, but a few of those pages/steps can be customized for each client. So, what I'd prefer is: `*/step1` `*/step2` `*/step3` `*/step4` `*/step5` Where `*` is the `client` name but the steps are reusable. This doesn't seem to lend itself to the standard MVC structure, or I can't seem to see the forest for the trees. I wouldn't want a controller for each `client` and repeat the steps for `n` clients. I'd rather have 5 steps where `step2` or `step3` could be expanded upon for client X, expanded upon more for client Y and left alone for client Z. If the company has 100 clients that want the standard 5 steps (no customization), you wouldn't want 100 controllers serving up 5 steps (500 `.cshtml` pages in the project)...right? How would one design this properly?"}
{"_id": "82613", "title": "What should I call the less-than and similar operators?", "text": "Most programming languages support operators similar to the following 6, which are spelled here as in C.               ==  !=  <   <=  >   >=      I'm aware of several terms used to include all of these operators. In approximately my perceived best-first order, these are... **EDIT** list fixed after Jerry Coffins answer...   * Relational operators   * Comparison operators   * Conditional operators   * Relative operators What are the reasons to prefer/avoid each particular term."}
{"_id": "69078", "title": "Different customers in the same ASP.NET solution?", "text": "I'm having a asp.net website running live with its specific style and specific content. From that site we've built another site with the same logic (in other projects) but with different style and different content (and different files) in the same solution. We've changed the start options from Default.aspx to the root folder for that second site. Now I want to build a more general site which works for several customers, using the same logic and data layers - but with different style and content. The current site(s) relies heavily on SQL Server 2008 R2, where most of the content resides - but not all. All of the content could be placed in the database with some work if we need to - especially if we get a more general site. My idea is to use a different start file for every new customer, such as: Default_Customer1.aspx, Default_Customer2.aspx e t c but I'm far from sure if this is the right way to do it. I don't want to have different solutions for every customer. I know that all of the customers will get all of the compiled code, even if some of the code never will be used by that specific customer (who has its specific needs). So what do I do? Should I try to use different start options (files) for every customer, as mentioned above, or is there a better way handling different customers in the same solution?"}
{"_id": "240404", "title": "Japanese Multiplication simulation - is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed?", "text": "On SuperUser, I asked a (possibly silly) question about processors using mathematical shortcuts and would like to have a look at the possibility at the **software application** of that concept. I'd like to write a simulation of Japanese Multiplication to get benchmarks on large calculations utilizing the shortcut vs traditional CPU multiplication. **I'm curious as to whether it makes sense to try this.** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/swF5p.png) **My Question:** I'd like to know whether or not a software math shortcut, as described above is actually a shortcut at all. This is a question of programming concept. By utilizing the simulation of Japanese Multiplication, **is a program actually capable of improving calculation speed? Or am I doomed from the start?** * * * **The answer to this question isn't _required_ to determine whether or not the experiment will succeed**, but rather whether or not it's logically possible for such a thing to occur in any program, using this concept as an example. * * * **My theory** is that since addition is computed faster than multiplication, a simulation of Japanese multiplication may actually allow a program to multiply (large) numbers faster than the CPU arithmetic unit can. I think this would be a very interesting finding, if it proves to be true. If, in the multiplication of numbers of **any immense size** , the shortcut were to calculate the result via less instructions (or faster) than traditional ALU multiplication, I would consider the experiment a success."}
{"_id": "240405", "title": "Terms in conditions in installer or is on website ok", "text": "I am currently in the process of packing my first c# wpf app. The app will be paid so it requires the user to agree to some terms and conditions. Is it best to have these built into the installer? Or can I get away with having the user accept them on the website they buy them from during the purchase and before download the app?"}
{"_id": "124212", "title": "Ideal data structure/techniques for storing generic scheduler data in C#", "text": "I am trying to implement a generic scheduler object in C# 4 which will output a table in HTML. Basic aim is to show some object along with various attributes, and whether it was doing something in a given time period. The scheduler will output a table displaying the headers: `Detail Field 1 ....N| Date1.........N` I want to initialise the table with a start date and an end date to create the date range (ideally could also do other time periods e.g. hours but that isn't vital). I then want to provide a generic object which will have associated events. Where an object has events within the period I want a table cell to be marked E.g.               Name Height Weight 1/1/2011 2/1/2011 3/1/20011...... 31/1/2011     Ben  5.11    75       X        X                       X     Bill 5.7     83                X        X      So I created scheduler with Start Date=1/1/2011 and end date 31/1/2011 I'd like to give it my person object (already sorted) and tell it which fields I want displayed (Name, Height, Weight) Each person has events which have a start date and end date. Some events will start and end outwith but they should still be shown on the relevant date etc. Ideally I'd like to have been able to provide it with say a class booking object as well. So I'm trying to keep it generic. I have seen Javasript implementations etc of similar. What would a good data structure be for this? Any thoughts on techniques I could use to make it generic. I am not great with generics so any tips appreciated."}
{"_id": "154370", "title": "Development environment to manage multiple Oracle databases", "text": "I am in an enterprise environment where we have applications that need to run against multiple Oracle databases. Developers may need to manage multiple vintages of these databases to support different test data or diagnose bugs against different versions of the code. Right now, we have a limited set of test environments set up on \"real\" Oracle servers within the data center. We juggle these among development and QA groups and there is a lot of conflicts and inefficiencies that arise because of it. I am taking a look at Oracle Express Edition which would allow me to spin up a local Oracle database. This is similar to the workflow I most often see with SQL Server. Devs work on their location machine until they are ready to integration and then they push their DB changes to integration / QA environments. However, from what I read it seems that Oracle XE only supports one database instance at a time. So if I have an application that utilizes two different databases, I can't have both of them running on my local machine. Is that correct? Does Oracle Standard or Personal editions get around this limitation? If I had one of those installed locally, how difficult would it be to get multiple databases working on the same development machine? How do dev shops handle developing against Oracle where they need to be using several different Oracle instances for their applications?"}
{"_id": "124214", "title": "Is Silverlight suitable for an enterprise class web-based product UI?", "text": "Our team is currently working on building our next generation HIS (Hospital Information System) comprising of over 30 modules (currently estimated at 400 man months), to be possibly hosted in a central location and accessed across geographies. Hence the primary UI NFRs (Non Functional Requirements) would be   * Multi browser compatibility   * Fast loading pages with rich GUI   * Ability to integrate with hardware devices like biometric scanners, biometric readers etc.   * Ease of development, maintenance (incorporating changes), shorter development cycle   * Ability to open multiple forms within the same browser window (without launching additional windows) **Pros:**   1. **UI would be browser agnostic** , we do not have to worry about ensuring that our web pages work with IE 7, 8, 9++/ Chrome 8, 9, 18++/ Mozilla Firefox (currently a lot of development effort goes into this compatibility check and fixing)   2. We could possibly make our application more modular, unlike a monolithic ASP.Net application   3. Usage of isolated storage on the client PC **Cons:**   1. Silverlight memory leak issues. We faced them in a few samples that we built using SL and have the same problem in a legacy XBAP application. The following links, substantiate the fear http://davybrion.com/blog/2010/08/silverlight-getting-worse-when-it-comes-to-memory-leaks/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5091636/silverlight-4-memory-leaks   2. Microsoft does not appear very gung ho about SL future. They seem to be investing more on HTML 5. The future releases of a SL 5 or 6 is also uncertain. http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean45 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-our-strategy-with-silverlight-has-shifted/7834 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/will-there-be-a-silverlight-6-and-does-it-matter/11180   3. The HIS modules would open as multiple tabs within the same browser window (we are talking about a maximum of 8 tabs open simultaneously). How much of a load would it put on that browser instance and how would that effect the memory leak problem?   4. Learning curve for ASP.Net developers   5. Another Stack link on SL Silverlight, Wpf Web App (xbap) or Click Once? Pros and Cons **Neutral**   1. SEO compatibility is not a concern _**My queries are?_**   1. Would you use SL, knowing the above (and other) Pros and Cons   2. In case we use the MVVM pattern to build a product with SL as the front end, would it possible to replace the UI tomorrow with another UI (ASP.Net or something else). My understanding is that the rework would be substantial. What does the community think?   3. We have spent a considerable time in the above analysis (and in creating proof of concepts). Is there an important fact / decisive factor that we are overlooking? _Please do not mark this as a duplicate, as a lot of research and effort has gone into this exercise._ PS: We have spent the past 6 months in building the product using ASP.Net web forms (using MVP pattern) and now are looking at a technology shift due to the above reasons."}
{"_id": "191748", "title": "Test case design - do for all positive tests exist also negative ones?", "text": "There is ambiguity in all papers I have read so I would like to ask about the following requirement: **Requirement: Being a Game master, I can access the GM menu by typing \"menuInvoke\".** Trying to do that as a regular player - is **that a negative test or still positive in terms of verifying the requirement?** Because some authors say negative testing means dealing with inputs unknown to specification, which would not be this case as the spec does say you need to be a Game master, implying it is not allowed for the other ones. However if you think like that, it is always implicit: range 1-1000 implies that nothing else can be entered, yet we test it as a negative test. An example of ambiguity: Login system. Some say that providing incorrect password to receive Login error is negative test but I agree with the others - it is plain positive test as the requirement definitely specifies that only a user with valid password can login."}
{"_id": "191749", "title": "How do you handle your marginalized talent?", "text": "I've felt frustrated in the past with some jobs due to management marginalizing my talent, even after \"proving\" it to them for several years. Things like choosing to rewrite a single method from scratch (just building command parameters and executing a stored procedure, returning the result), instead of using code I wrote, that is in production in multiple apps, just because I wrote it. And the flimsy BS excuses they used to justify it. The funny thing is, I'm the ONLY ONE at the company that complies with coding standards, patterns and practices, analysis, unit testing and code coverage! How do you handle a job that is making you feel like you are wasting your talent and marginalized?"}
{"_id": "80617", "title": "Licensing & EULAs", "text": "First off, is there any difference between a license and a EULA? Second, can a developer write his own license or is there some special legal crap you have to do. Finally is there some kind of lawyer that specializes in writing licenses for software? What kind of legal professional would you hire to do something like this?"}
{"_id": "148460", "title": "I'm the .1x programmer at my company. How can I best contribute?", "text": "I work at a newly-minted startup of five people. We have a Ph. D in machine learning, a former member of the RSpec core team, and the guy who compiles the Git binary for OS X. That's just the employees; the founder has a Ph. D and was CTO for a multi-billion-dollar corporation before leaving to start a (successful) startup, and has now left that to start this one. We also might get a guy with a Ph. D in math. Aaaaaaaaand then there's me, college-dropout intern. I think I'm pretty smart and I'm reading non-stop, but the delta of experience, skill, and knowledge between me and my co-workers is just breathtaking. So put yourself in their shoes: you've got a bright young intern who has a lot to learn but is at least energetic. What would be annoying? What use would you hope to get out of him in the here and now? What would be pleasantly surprising if it happened?"}
{"_id": "54590", "title": "What do I need to do, to get placed in any software company?", "text": "I'm doing my 3rd year CSE Engineering. I guess this is the right time to ask this question! As in the next year, I'm going to do projects, \"get my hands dirty\". And there is only few days left out, as I know many people in Stack Overflow are working in Software field, I thought to ask these question.   1. Does the project that I'm doing in my final year need to be excellent? If so, what kind of project to do? And how do you say that the project is excellent or not?   2. Writing the code is very fun and serious at times. But the code should have a good algorithm?   3. And mostly in any software companies interview, what kind of question they ask?   4. Not but not the least, mastering in any particular language speaks in interviews?"}
{"_id": "148464", "title": "ssl requirement -is this just initial handshaking so that subsequent socket communication can commence as normal", "text": "I am new to SSL/HTTPS so uncertain on the basics. PROBLEM: A Java applet must communicate with a socket server listening on a port on the web server. Also communication must be secure. Without SSL, the Java applet can make a direct socket communication to the server port (running on the web server). But if communication must be encrypted using SSL, then how will the Java client communicate with the socket server? My confusion is that the Java client will need to communicate with the HTTPS port (which is presumably connecting to a web server). But then how does the communication channel get 'split off' to communicate with the custom socket server? How would the ssl client specify the custom port in the message?"}
{"_id": "195458", "title": "Inheritance and constricted referencing", "text": "Let's say I have `BaseA` and `BaseB` classes. `BaseB` can have to several references of `BaseA` instances. Now, we have two other classes, `DerivedA` and `DerivedB` that respectively inherit from `BaseA` and `BaseB`. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rnlRx.png) How can I show in such a diagram that `DerivedB` should only store instances of `DerivedA` and not instances of `BaseA`? It seemed pretty simple before I tried to draw it, but now I'm confused. One obvious answer would be \"redesign your code\"; if there is no alternative, I will probably try to do so."}
{"_id": "11981", "title": "What are some interesting masters degrees to take a programming career in an unusual and interesting direction?", "text": "So I'm thinking about doing a masters, or some other form of degree to add to my Bsc in Computer Science - and am looking for ideas on some of the more unusual options out there. It seems to be fairly easy to understand \"typical\" career paths for programmers (and indeed, I may take one of those) - but I also want to explore what other possibilities exist. So - What is this question: I am looking for people who have taken their programming careers into more unusual directions, specifically with a focus on the education to get there:   * Politics   * Law   * Psychology   * Business (ok, not that unsual, but I'll include it)   * Other sciences (biology, etc)   * Anything else you can think of I suspect the science option will not be the one for me - but for completness on the question I will include it. Likewise if there are some really interesting offshoots that I have not thought of lets add them in. What this question is not: There are quite a few other questions on this and other stackexchange sites dealing with similar questions - and there are quite a few answers from people detailing why they advocate staying in computers forever. I love programming. And I may continue looking for ways to grow in this industry (team lead, architect, etc). But those answers have been _well and truly_ covered. So for this question I would really like to hear from people who have gone through different routes, the career paths they ended up on, and their thoughts on it. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "237333", "title": "Should classes that define settings and application configuration follow SOLID?", "text": "I'm just wondering if you have an application where you define a class that defines some user configurable settings (from an xml file, or a GUI), should you design it so that it follows SOLID as much as possible like the rest of the application? More specifically, how do you change the available settings without violating the **Open Closed Principle?** Because I'm having trouble picturing this. I can see the addition of settings you can extend the class, but with the removal of settings, or change of a setting there would be no way to modify the configuration class so that it follows SOLID. Or is it possible somehow? I can also imagine trickle down effect from those settings changes, that require classes that depend on them to be modified as well."}
{"_id": "195452", "title": "JavaScript static methods retrieval", "text": "I have been thinking about it and wanted some feedback, recently I thought about doing it like this:               function foo(){        if ( !foo.prototype.statics ){            foo.prototype.statics = {               // declare static functions/vars here            }        }        if ( !(this instanceof foo) ){             return foo.prototype.statics;        }             var statics = foo.prototype.statics; // shortcut        // if it reaches here then it's an instance (new foo())     }          foo().callStaticMethod();     (new Foo()).callInstanceMethod();      Is this a good way to do it or do you think of any reason why this can be an anti-patern?"}
{"_id": "195454", "title": "How to keep my Activity code readable and maintainable?", "text": "I have written a rather small App with only one activity. From my understanding an activity has to be seen as kind of a view and controller in one class. But even for a little app, with 3 dialogs (made with AlertDialogBuilder and all those anonymous inner classes that come with it) my activity has 500+ LOC and became very hard to maintain. The activity houses mainly android lifecycle handlers and view handling. Business logic is very little. How to handle activity classes to keep them readable and maintainable?"}
{"_id": "195456", "title": "Keeping git repositories on different hosts in sync", "text": "I am thinking about starting a small project and I want to make its versioning with git. Bitbucket seems a good option for me with their free plan. I want to use it as the main tool for working with git since they nice tools, like web-interface, Mac OS client, and so on. But in order to have higher protection from any accidental damages that can be caused by using third-party service I want also to install git on my NAS as a second back-up copy of the repository. Now my question is, whether it is possible to create a repository on two different hosts and then keep them in sync? For example once per week I update the repository on my NAS to what is on the Butbucket. And in case something happens with Bitbucket, I still have full repository with full history of development on my local NAS storage. And is there a way to import existing repository with full history to another git-service?"}
{"_id": "17310", "title": "How do you protect your WCF service?", "text": "sometimes a programmer comes up with a brilliant idea to protect his/her webservice created with Windows Communication Foundation. I would like to hear from you guys, which techniques do you use to protect your WCF service and avoid unauthorized users to consume it? For example, you would:   * avoid Impersonate, use it only if necessary    * publish metadata information to prevent tampering   * avoid memory consuption enforcing a maximum size quota    * create a security context token to control number of sessions"}
{"_id": "17313", "title": "How to morph from a programmer noob to a guru?", "text": "I have been a programmer for two years, and i am getting hard to level up my skill especially working at legacy code maintenance right now. I think working hard is not enough to elevate my skill, because there are ton of opensource around us, the preoject i have been involved are all mixture of opensources --- from front end to back end from presentation tier to business logic tier. My work is just gluing all these together or something fewer complex which is to collect data from UI to logic module then retrieve the data processed and put it to UI. Sometime there is a need to add some simple logic(like assembling the data to a form that fit business logic interface) while transport data. Could you please give me any suggestion what should i do on the side to improve my skill? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "52302", "title": "GPLv2 and formats", "text": "Do you think a re-distributor providing full source in a weird archive format is complying with the GPL? This project http://sourceforge.net/projects/minivmac/ is GPLv2 based on the earlier vMac emulator but it provides the source exclusively in mac disk images. While after jumping through some hoops you can eventually access it on most platforms or use a Linux LiveCD to extract it and translate it to some open format it seems to go against the requirement of providing usable source code. Even if this particular example was fine. Where does one draw the line? What's to stop a malicious vendor from distributing their modifications to busybox in WordPerfect format? Photographs of ENIAC punchcards in Deluxe Paint format? Or, ultimately, some ad-hoc format nobody can read?"}
{"_id": "17315", "title": "What is the difference in a developer's years of experience with a language?", "text": "As stated by the title, what is the difference in years of experience in given language in terms of developers? For example, if one developer has had five years working with language A and the other developer has had two years working with language B followed by three years working with language A, would there be perceivable difference between them?"}
{"_id": "52306", "title": "How do you manage your reading list?", "text": "How do you manage your reading list? Like me, you probably have 12 technical books on the go at once, and that's not including the non-technical books :) Any tips? Regard TDG"}
{"_id": "52308", "title": "Documents of requirement specification", "text": "I need to work with IT projects in system or web development in order to improve my skills by following the requirement specification. Is there any available requirement specfication to download in order to create an application?"}
{"_id": "162539", "title": "Is the .NET/Microsoft technology stack a financially viable option for a startup with limited finances?", "text": "I have an unpaid internship for a very new startup company with little tech experience that's trying to be a Groupon clone. They're currently using Wordpress and I've been trying to decide what web framework to push them towards, since I'll have to learn that language and implement it as well. Is ASP.Net MVC a realistic option for a web based startup company with little financial backing? For example, I know in the Rails hosting is slightly cheaper because of the whole free OS thing and there are free \"gems\" available to do things like a mailers, but how much more expensive can it get if I go with ASP.Net MVC since such add-ons stop being open source? How much does the cost of hosting for .NET applications add to the equation?"}
{"_id": "235685", "title": "Why would I want a UnitOfWork layer if my service/business logic layer is specific enough?", "text": "I'm getting into the Repository pattern (which I love), and as I read up on it I see this UnitOfWork pattern in many articles. Before I knew anything about UnitOfWork I was just using my Repository pattern inside my service layer (business logic). This seems to work great so I'm wondering why having another layer (ie. UnitOfWork) may be beneficial? Why would I want a UnitOfWork layer in my service/business logic layer? If your service layer is specific enough and doesn't cover everything under the sun then it doesn't seem like it's needed. Note that I'm looking at this from an EF perspective. I've even read articles where people mention that EF's DbContext is a UnitOfWork. So why make my own UnitOfWork if EF's DbContext already does this for me? Why not create my DbContext in my service layer and then pull in the repositories I need and do all good? The Repository I get because it makes testing my services easier, but I don't see the benefit of a UnitOfWork especially if you are using an ORM."}
{"_id": "235683", "title": "How to do an effective code review of library changes?", "text": "One of my projects just changed the version number of a supporting third-party library. Specifically, we changed a J2EE app from JPA 1.x to JPA 2.0. Our CI system has had this change for a week and the tests are passing. In general, how can I do an effective code review and QA check when another developer changes the version of a third-party library? I have already done the following:   * reviewed the changelogs for the library, watching for things that would affect my application   * checked the dependency declarations (Maven POMs) for mistakes   * searched our ticketing system for prior attempts or upgrades of the same libraries, did we try this before and fail or find a blocker"}
{"_id": "162532", "title": "What Pattern will solve this - fetching dependent record from database", "text": "I have these classes               class Match     {       int MatchID,       int Team1ID, //used to reference Team       int Team2ID,       ... other fields     }      Note: Match actually have 2 teams which means 2 TeamID               class Team     {        int TeamID,        string TeamName     }      In my view I need to display `List<Match>` showing the TeamName. So I added another field               class Match     {       int MatchID,       int TeamID, //used to reference Team       ... other fields            string TeamName;     }      I can now do               Match m = getMatch(id);     m.TeamName = getTeamName(m.TeamId); //get name from database      But for a `List<Match>`, `getTeamName(TeamId)` will go to the database to fetch TeamName for each TeamID. For a page of 10 Matches per page, that could be `(10x2Teams)=20` trip to database. Example:               for(1..10)     {        Match m[i] = getMatch(i);             //the team are never going to be repeated, 20 teams spread over ten matches         m[i].Team1Name = getTeamName(m.Team2Id);        m[i].Team2Name = getTeamName(m.Team2Id);     }      To avoid this, I had the idea of loading everything once, store it in memory and only lookup the TeamName in memory. This made me have a rethink that what if the records are 5000 or more. What pattern is used to solve this and how?"}
{"_id": "9159", "title": "How to be an agile programmer?", "text": "I am a trainee in development sector. My Boss says that i should be an agile programmer. I went through through the net and found some interesting things about agile programming. Being a newbee how should I start with agile? What should be my first step in Agile programming? At present I am in pair programming. But it's not exactly pair programming as I am just watching what my co-developer is doing. I also wish to be an agile developer. Can you suggest a way for me stepwise? I wish to develop myself and also my programming skills."}
{"_id": "166836", "title": "Sites with overlapping code-bases. Developing multiple sites with little changes", "text": "I have to develop 3 different sites   1. video.com for hosting video    2. audio.com for hosting audio    3. docs.com for hosting docs. _domain names for example only_ Almost 80% of the functionality is the same for all the three, with remaining 20% being completely different features... How do I handle this? How does sites like SO handle this? I am developing this in YII framework and was thinking of having these different features as modules but in this case the menu/code links in html code can become difficult."}
{"_id": "225198", "title": "What's the easiest (quickest) way to share one dataset in my app with someone else", "text": "I have some javascript that creates a canvas image that I want users to be able to share. I simply need to save the image somehow. Nothing else. I've been contemplating using bits and pieces of ruby and activerecord, or perhaps sinatra but I feel like both would be over kill for this simple task. Ideally I'd like to do it with JavaScript but I don't feel like including all of node. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "176147", "title": "Is file system one of the NoSQL? What's the main difference?", "text": "I am confused about it. I can use lucene to create index and run query against file system. I can find any particular file very fast, if I can provide a primary key, in this case, directory path and filename act as primary key. It looks very much like a NoSQL."}
{"_id": "21197", "title": "What do you do to improve your speech communication skills?", "text": "Being a programmer is not just grokking the latest cool technology or debugging a sneaky code error , we have to speak to our coworkers, project manager or boss, in the most effective way possibly; we have demos, interviews, code reviews and so on where this skill is pretty crucial. Personally, as a solo programmer (since 2008) I have not invested much time on improving this skill and I would like to know whay you are doing to improve it."}
{"_id": "250852", "title": "Integrate MS Dynamics AX with Play Framework", "text": "In my company we use MS Dynamics AX 2009. This is the ERP of the company. We have around 100 users. The servers of MS Dynamics AX are in the headquarters company. We are developping a new website using Play Framework and Scala language. However, the website server isn't in the headquarters company, the dedicated server is hosted in OVH, an European ISP. The website needs the ERP data in real time, but the MS Dynamics AX Database is located in the headquarters company and the internet connection is very unstable. That's the problem! We need bidirectional comunication between the website and the ERP, but the internet connection of the ERP Servers are very unstable. We've thought two solutions:   * Use RabbitMQ in the headquarters and website. When an event occurs in the ERP, the ERP puts a message in RabbitMQ and the website gets this message when the internet connection works. When an event occurs in the website, the website puts a message in RabbitMQ and the ERP gets this message when the internet connections works. So, we have 2 RabbitMQ, one in the headquarters and another one in the website server.   * Use MS SQL Server Replication to replicate the database from headquarters to ISP, we would need two servers in the ISP: the website (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Play Framework) and the SQL Replica (Windows, SQL Server). When an event occurs in ERP, the SQL Server replication propagate these changes to the SQL Replication server in the ISP, and the website always reads the data in the SQL Replication Server. When an event occurs in website, we also need a RabbitMQ queue like before. What do you think about this architecture? What is the best solution? Could MS SQL Server replicate ussing an unstable internet conecction? Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "254576", "title": "Is it a good practice to declare instance variables as None in a class in Python?", "text": "Consider the following class:               class Person:         def __init__(self, name, age):             self.name = name             self.age = age      My coworkers tend to define it like this:               class Person:         name = None         age = None              def __init__(self, name, age):             self.name = name             self.age = age      The main reason for this is that their editor of choice shows the properties for autocompletion. Personally, I dislike the latter one, because it makes no sense that a class has those properties set to `None`. Which one would be better practice and for what reasons?"}
{"_id": "224922", "title": "Refactor an old model of a LastUser Modification on every Object?", "text": "I have a software requirement, that needs to store the user that made the last modification to another object, for every object (assume that all objects are already mapped and into a BD). So we have the ParamBase an object that holds the basic data for every object, this will be a super class, every other parameter in the system will Inherit this class, (Using @MappedSuperClass)               @MappedSuperclass     ParamBase {         @Id         @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)         private Long id;              @Version         private Long version;              @Temporal(value = TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)         private Date timeStampLastModification;              @Column         private User userOfLastModification;         //constructors, getter setters, other stuff, etc     }       The User object, this will represent the user, also mapped into a BD, for now is just simple Object mapped as Entity, all other Parameters will have to store this User into a field.               @Entity     User {        //User stuff, cons, get, seters, etc     }          @Entity     Country extends ParamBase {         //This class extends ParamBase so will have a field to hold the          //userOfLastModification     }      In an EJB I have business logic that will work with several operations and objects, when in this case a parameter is updated, the userSession (assigned at login) will update the userOfLastModification field. THE PROBLEM: All of the objects will have a relation with User, so all other Objects have a mapped field userOfLastModification_id, this creates a massive dependency of all clases to User. To give you an idea, just picture on an Entity Relation diagram ER, all tables related to one single User Table, it's a mess!!! THE REFACTOR!: I think this model is wrong, I think breaks the equilibrium of software design I don't think you need to create a relation between all the tables/object to one table (User) to accomplish this requirement, I will like some feedback or ides on how to: 1\\. Explain the design error, if there is one? (I always think that I can be wrong, and there's no problem with that)   1. Is there a better way to do this? Thanks for your help!"}
{"_id": "21440", "title": "What are the major challenges you face as a one-person ISV?", "text": "As a one-person ISV, what are the major challenges you faced? How did you overcome these challenges?"}
{"_id": "121069", "title": "What is the best way to design a table with an arbitrary id?", "text": "I have the need to create a table with a unique id as the PK. The ID is a surrogate key. Originally, I had a natural key, but requirement changes have undermined this idea. Then, I considered adding an auto incrementing identity. But, this presents problems. A. I can't specify my own ID.   B. The ID's are difficult to reset. Both of these together make it difficult to copy over this table with new data or move the table across domains, e.g. Dev to QA. I need to refer to these ID's from the front end, JavaScript...so they must not change. So, the only way I am aware of to meet all these challenges is to make a GUID ID. This way, I can overwrite the ID's when I need to or I can generate a new one without concern for order (E.G. an `int` based id would require I know the last inserted ID). Is a GUID the best way to accomplish my goals? Considering that a GUID is a string and joining on a string is an expensive task, is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "63293", "title": "Method to remove logic from UI", "text": "In my less experienced days I added a lot of business logic in the code behind of my .aspx. Now I'm revisiting it I would like to refactor the mess and get it all sorted out. How do I go about this? If I am to move my logic, where do I put it? Do I have a seperate class for each page?"}
{"_id": "211656", "title": "MVC Models instantiation", "text": "Where should the Models be instatiated in a MVC arhitecture? I understand the preferred way would be outside controllers, in a bootstrap file and injected using a Dependecy Injection Container. But most of the models I'm working with depend on run time parameters.               //PHP Example     class UserController {        protected $objUser;        protected $objDictionary;             public function Show() {            $objUserMapper = new UserMapper();            $this->objUser = $objUserMapper->FindById($_GET['id']);            $this->objDictionary = new Dictionary($this->objUser->Language);        }     }"}
{"_id": "158496", "title": "What is the best way to handle last minute changes to product scope?", "text": "What is the best way to handle changes to product requirements or scope during or after User Acceptance Testing (UAT)? How dangerous is it to make those changes, and how can the danger be mitigated?"}
{"_id": "158494", "title": ".Net Language Interoperability Gotchas", "text": "I hope this is the appropriate forum to ask this question. A group of colleagues and I just starting learning C# a few weeks ago and we are planning on having a discussion about language interoperability. So, I am looking for known/classical examples of .Net language interoperability issues. Like this one, where the case-insensitiveness of VB.Net makes an overloaded C# method incompatible. **In C#**               public class Foo     {         public void foo() { }         public void fOO() { }     }      **In VB.Net**               Public Class Bar        Sub Bar()           Dim foo As Foo           foo = New Foo()           foo.foo(); //compiler error        End Sub     End Class      Or this one in which a VB.Net keyword is used in a C# method name: **In C#**               public class Foo     {        public virtual void Stop() { }     }      **In VB.Net**               Public Class Bar         Inherits Foo              Public Overrides Sub Stop() 'compiler error         End Sub          End Class      I would love to gather a few more examples of this type of issues. Does anyone know any other interesting cases of language interoperability gotchas? I used C# and VB.Net in these examples, but any .Net language interoperability issue will be just as good to enrich a discussion on the subject."}
{"_id": "236085", "title": "Are there any valid uses for the System.Collections.Specialized classes any more?", "text": "Are there any valid uses for the classes in the System.Collections.Specialized namespace any more or are they all superseded by the classes in the System.Collections.Generic, System.Collections.Concurrent and System.Collections.ObjectModel namespace now? The classes in the namespace are:               HybridDictionary     ListDictionary     NameValueCollection     OrderedDictionary     StringCollection     StringDictionary     StringEnumerator      Similarly, are there any real reasons why one might use the non-generic System.Collections namespace classes such as:               ArrayList     BitArray     Hashtable     Queue     SortedList     Stack"}
{"_id": "149733", "title": "Algorithms for pairing a rating system to an assignment queue", "text": "Attempting to research how to allow a group of people to effectively rank a set of objects (each group member will have contributed one object to the group), and then assign each member an object that's not their own based on:   * Their ratings of the objects,   * Their objects rating, and    * The object remaining to be assigned. Idea is to attempt to assign objects to people based on the groups rating of their contribution to the group relative to other member's contribution, the the personal preferences expressed via the ratings. Any suggestions for:   * Further research,   * Refining the statement of the problem/solution, or   * A solution."}
{"_id": "236081", "title": "How to make my code decide which class to instantiate based on a parameter?", "text": "I have a system in which I will perform queries to a database. I want Query1, Query2 and Query3 to use the same methods in their way to the data source layer. To do that I would like to make something similar to Strategy or Template Patterns, where I have a part of the code which is a default behavior for all queries (getting to the database layer, connection, executing the query and so on) and a variable part (building the query itself). I think this idea is good and feasible. I would receive a parameter from the client specifying the query to be built, build it and run. The only question is: given this parameter, how can I decide which method to call to build the query? This is my current solution: (is this solution a pattern?)               public Query QueryFactory(string queryIdentifier){        if(queryIdentifier == \"query1\")           return BuildQuery1();        else if(queryIdentifier == \"query2\")           return BuildQuery2();      }      It works, but I don't think this is \"pretty enough\", I would like something nicer. It would be perfect if it didn't require the developer to add a new if statement when he created a new query. **Is there any way to improve this if/else chain? And to make this decision automatic?** Edit: The problem I want to solve is: I have queries that are going to be called against a database. I want to have the same flow so I don't have duplicated code for the queries that do not have any business logic applied to it (ex: get all users, get all students, and so on)"}
{"_id": "149736", "title": "How do you use JavaScript?", "text": "I'm not a professional programmer, but having a PhD in an engineering field, I've taught myself many programming languages over the years. The past few years I've been using primarily Ruby, and now I'm trying to learn JavaScript so I can do a bit of web programming. I guess like a lot of people, I had a mostly negative impression of JavaScript going in, but as I'm studying the language (through the book JavaScript: The Good Parts by Crockford), I find that the functional part of the language is really neat. I dabbled in Haskell a few years ago, so I had some idea about functional programming. I'm wondering how professional programmers tend to use the language. Do you stick to one paradigm when writing in JavaScript, or do you use it like a swiss army knife, and used different paradigms for different problems? Is there a \"most popular\" way to use it these days, or does it simply depend on the programmer, problem, company, etc.?"}
{"_id": "211658", "title": "TCP and UDP basics: connecting to a website", "text": "I am just learning computer networks so please forgive me if this question is naive. I know the TCP protocol binds itself to a port till the transfer of messages is over (port 80) and UDP is best effort (ie no binding). My question is if I try and access two websites at the same time (multiple tabs on my browser), assuming both websites are web servers, my questions are   1. Does my computer communicate with one webservice (website) first and then communicate with the other (serially). Also if this is the case is the time difference so small that I feel it loads simultaneously?   2. Suppose I have my own web server (tomcat) running on port 80, how can I communicate with other websites if it happens on the same port?   3. Do websites decide which protocol to use TCP or UDP?"}
{"_id": "48248", "title": "Is the HL7 membership model normal?", "text": "To me, it's a little odd that HL7 requires you to be a member to distribute the standard within your organization and in that sense implement the standard and tell others who have implemented the standard what parts you'll be implementing, especially when it's nothing classier than a few pipes and carets for 2.x and some sort of XML for 3.0. I can understand paying money to use a library to utilize HL7 or even the source code to build the library to utilize HL7. But what's the point of requiring membership to see the spec to write the sourcecode to build the library to utilize HL7?"}
{"_id": "251897", "title": "What would the register-machine bytecode for this code look like?", "text": "I hope this kind of question isn't off-topic on this site. I'm finally getting the hang of what a stack based machine is, and how to compile code for it. For example, the following code: `2 * 5 + 1` would compile to this bytecode:               push 2     push 5     mult     push 1     add      However what I want to understand is, the fundamental differences between compiling for a stack based machine and compiling for a register based machine. Basically I want to see what a register-machine's bytecode would look like, as opposed to a stack-machine's bytecode. To understand this, I'd like to ask you to show me what the bytecode for the above expression would look like, for a register machine. I.e. what this: `2 * 5 + 1` would compile to."}
{"_id": "251890", "title": "Passing Anonymous Type to a Bound Control", "text": "Generally speaking, I'm fairly opposed to the use of anonymous types in real- world code (except in LINQ and some other specific scenarios), but I'm looking right now at a situation where I need to bind an ASP `GridView` control with a collection of tuple values and they're looking pretty tempting. Basically, I need to show a list of proprietary accounts that are associated with different computer names. I don't currently have a type that contains those two properties because I don't use them together like this anywhere else. What I would normally do in a situation like this is just create a new class that has the properties, set the `ItemType` on the `GridView` to reference that type, then build objects of that type in my `Select` method (I use `ObjectDataSource` much of the time). But I'm thinking now that there's really no benefit to throwing in that extra class, since no matter what it's getting bound via reflection. **Is there any reason to shy away from using anonymous types in data-binding situations like this?** I'd accept anything: performance, readability, maintainability, principle, or whatever else you can throw at me. But the only disadvantage I can think of is if I wanted to use the `Item` property to strong-type my data-binding, but in this particular case I have no use for anything more than `BoundField`s. Of course, this is all based on the assumption that it even works, admittedly I haven't tried it yet with anonymous types, so it might just not be supported for one reason or another."}
{"_id": "251892", "title": "How can I figure out if another project is mostly maintenance and bugs?", "text": "I started working in a relatively big company that unfortunately has its share of quite a lot of legacy code and I ended up spending an extra ordinary amount of time in maintainance and bug fixes. I would like to switch project as on the surface there are other project that \"seem\" interesting. The issue is I am not really sure if it is any better there either. I have asked some colleagues to see what's going on and they \"claim\" that they are involved in cool things but I don't really believe them as in one of the cases I know for sure he is the same situation as I am. So my question is the following: If I don't have someone I can really trust to make a good choice about swapping to another project is there a way I could find out myself (I mean if it is the same everywhere)? One idea would be to do some \"reverse\" engineering i.e. start tracking each persons commit in the repository to figure out what he's been up to. But this approach seems to me irrational. Surely there must be a better way?"}
{"_id": "210904", "title": "creating a clone of a site is good idea for project?", "text": "I am trying my hand in python, Django, JQuery.. etc to make a clone of imdb site. Currently I'm in web-development from past 10 months on same technologies. In my spare time I want to develop a side-project which may look good on resume. I came up with an _idea_ , to make a clone of imdb.com. But after 2 weeks of development I stopped. reasons: _its not different_   1. Why create another imdb?   2. I'm not improving it?   3. Face it, it will be sub standard of original one. The need for the project is to showcase my skills in above technologies but at same time I want it to be useful."}
{"_id": "157771", "title": "I am a git user confused by mercurial's branching. How am I supposed to track small changes?", "text": "I've always used git before, but I want to contribute to python so now I have to learn mercurial and I find it very frustrating. So, I've made a couple of small patches and I wanted to track them as commits in my local mercurial repository. Apparently there are 4 ways to handle branching in mercurial. 1 and 4 looked completely ridiculous to me, named branches seem to be heavyweight and I feel that I'm not supposed to use them for quick 1-commit fixes, so I used bookmarks. Now, my patch gets rejected and I want to remove one of my bookmark-branches from my repository. OK, in git I would just force-delete my branch and forget about it, so I delete my bookmark and now I have following problems:   * TortoiseHG and `hg log` still show that commit and `default` branch has 2 heads. And if I understand correctly, you can't delete commits in hg without additional plugins.   * Mercurial has not only hashes, but also revision numbers. As I've added a couple of my own commits, all commits pulled after that have different revision numbers from the main central repo.   * I do `hg update` after pulling to move my `master` bookmark to the latest commit automatically, but I couldn't find a way to do that in TortoiseHG. What am I doing wrong? Is this normal and expected and should I just ignore these issues? Or how am i supposed to work with my branches?"}
{"_id": "157774", "title": "How do I locate Uncalled Functions?", "text": "I am looking at some C/C++ code that appears to have functions that are defined, but never used. This is a pretty tedious process to trace through the code and verify. I've done some surveys and there are a number of tools that can do this type of analysis. Can anyone share any experiences or tips on which tools and techniques are best or alternative methods of verifying this code is in fact not used?"}
{"_id": "237681", "title": "Alternatives to null values and option-like types", "text": "Related to this question i want to know if there is a concise way to eleminate null values out of code in general or if there is not. E.g. imagine a class that represents a user with birthday as attribute which _can_ be set but does not have to, which then means it's null. In scala and similar languages one could use the Option type to describe this and i see why this is better then just having a regular null value as one would code it in java. However i wonder if this is the right concept or if we can do it better in this case and even in general. I came to the idea that we could replace the users birthday (and other optional or possibly unknown/unset attributes) with a list of possible optional attributes. So we could have like               ourUser.getOptionalAttributes()     // could return a list [Date Birthday, Float Height, Color Eyecolor]     // or just [Color Eyecolor]     // or even an empty list      However using a regular list would mean that we could store multiple birthdays e.g. So we needed a way to tell the compiler that the list may only contain one Birthday type. Am i totally on the wrong track here and are option types the (philosophical) correct way to express optional attributes? Also, are there additional concepts for handling the logic of optional attributes other than nullable types and option-like types?"}
{"_id": "175499", "title": "would a composite design pattern be useful for group membership?", "text": "I'm trying to think about the best way to handle group memberships on a website. People sign up and select checkboxes in a list of interests. Every week we send out interest-themed emails to those members that indicated that interest. however i store the information in the database, while i am working with the lists and generating lists of email addresses or manipulating group memberships, the composite design pattern looked interesting. it would be easy to populate the group, then do some aggregating functions that say... generate the list of email addresses based on the interests. but i'm not sure i'm seeing any other advantages. i do need something scalable, and flexible. thoughts?"}
{"_id": "90163", "title": "Rewriting code / better initial outline", "text": "Single-programmer project. I'm constantly having to rewrite my own code on an on-going project. It's not buggy, but every time I expand my program (which previously-planned features), I keep having to expand previous classes, which cause me to re-write code that worked fine before. I have unit-tests, so bugs aren't introduced but it still seems counter- productive and seems to be wasting time. I'm constantly adding features that weren't originally needed, but become needed as project grows in complexity. Should I continue with this iterative development? It seems with every iteration I keep having to re-write more and more of old code as new features are added. Is there a better way to manage my project? I know (approximately) what I want my program to do, and how to do it.   Also, what tools / development-philosophies should I use to manage one-man projects? I have a running to-do list (and that's all) has been doing a fine job so far. Maybe some kind of abstract class-outlining program?"}
{"_id": "90161", "title": "Does this pattern disregard the DRY principle, and can I modify the pattern to fit?", "text": "I just started working at a company and we're currently in a fairly intensive (full-days most work days) training program to bring us up to speed on the way the company does things, and train us in VB.NET, along with some C#. They're beginning to migrate towards a modified Model-View-Presenter architecture, with server remoting playing a fairly large role. An example .NET program might look like this:               SomeSolution     |     +-+- ServerProject     | |     | +- ServerEmployee.vb     | |     | +- Server.vb     |     +-+- Presenter     | |     | +- PresenterEmployee.vb     | |     | +- Presenter.vb     | |     | +- IView.vb     |     +-+- ViewProject       |       +- ViewEmployee.vb       |       +- View.vb      The classes in question would be the employee classes. The example that I was given was that the `ServerEmployee` would have the most information - being retrieved from a database, it would likely have the most attributes, such as `.FirstName`, `.LastName`, `.MiddleInitial`, `.PreferredName`, `.HireDate`, and whatever other attributes were present on the database. The `PresenterEmployee` would have the other attributes, as well as a `.FullName` attribute that perhaps was generated this way:               If employee.PreferredName <> String.Empty Then         employee.FullName = employee.PreferredName & \" \" & employee.LastName     Else         employee.FullName = employee.FirstName & \" \" & Employee.MiddleInitial & \" \" & Employee.LastName     End If      And finally, the `ViewEmployee` would only have the `.FullName` and `.HireDate` attributes. We were informed that the rationale behind this design was that if we have say, a `DataStructures` class that's referenced by the other classes then each time the DataStruture class has to be rebuilt, the entire project must be re- deployed (which I understand is a somewhat tedious process because of some infrastructure decisions). I understand that that would not be A Good Thing\u2122, but it seems that if you have some code that probably won't change much (a fairly generic superclass with some straightforward properties), it would make sense to avoid the code duplication. Am I correct in thinking that this is a violation of the DRY principle? The first thing I thought of when they taught this was \"ewww, that kinda smells...\" Other than (potentially) not having to redeploy the entire application every time the superclass is changed, is there any benefit to doing things this way? And if it is broken, and I want to take the onus to try and fix it, what are some good arguments to defend my choice?"}
{"_id": "175492", "title": "Wide gap in my resume as a Java developer. What are must-have skills required to get hired those days?", "text": "For some legal reasons I haven't worked for anybody for the last 12 years. I am a java web developer or at least I am thinking so. For this period I have been working on my project- some sort of business network - and I did few small jobs, so right now I feel I am far behind in terms of my skills and the skills needed today. I lingered too long on Struts and Hibernate and thought that could the job for my project. I need to get a job, right now, so I am spending most of my time brushing my skills. My question is: What are the current necessary skills that could convince employers to hire me regardless of my past employment or the lack of it. Right now I am on AspectJ, IoC and Spring"}
{"_id": "175490", "title": "Structure of a correctly implemented JTable with TableModel and Listeners?", "text": "I am pretty new to Java and its JTables and this is where I am struggling at the moment. I need to create a GUI which shows me results of a sql query like `SELECT * FROM tblPeople WHERE name='Doe'`. My idea was to create a a JFrame which displays a JTable with all found records. Besides this, I need to also implement some code to handle when a user is double clicking a record or selecting it by using his arrow keys (additional feature: pressing `12`(e.g.) should select the 12th record). What is the best way to structure my program (what classes do I need and especially where do I store my logic)? I came up with structuring it the following way:   * **Main.java** (\"view\")   * **SQLConnection.java**   * **PeopleTableModel.java** (only stores and returns data given by the passed ResultSet, \"model\" inherits from DefaultTableModel)   * **PeopleTable.java** (stores basically all my logic including KeyListener and MouseListener, \"controller\", inherits from JTable) Are there better ways to achieve my goals? If so, what are they?"}
{"_id": "179131", "title": ".Net search engine architecture and technology choice", "text": "I am in the process of designing a search engine for an asp.net site. The site currently uses Microsoft Indexing Server to index and search content which range from simple text files to MS documents to PDFs. MIS is also used to crawl File servers. MIS in tandem with Index Server Companion crawls for content from external sites. I intend to replace MIS with the indexer/crawler I am trying to build. The motivation for going away from MIS is   1.MSFT would be discontinuing MIS support in their upcoming Server 2012 releases.   2.Major PaaS providers do not support MIS. Since my platform is completely on the Microsoft stack, I cant afford(due to deployment/maintenance issues than cost issues) to have a Java application server. Thus, Solr, and effectively, SolrNet is ruled out. With this being the context, I have couple of questions. ### 1.Technology choice I had done my initial investigation and looked at Lucene.Net. There seemed to be 2 issues in using Lucene.Net. First being, it cant crawl external content. There doesn't seem to be a direct port of Nutch in .Net. Second, since it is just an indexer, it cant parse various document types. The parsing is left to the developer.   So, what would be best technology choice on the .Net platform to achieve indexing & crawling? Are there any .Net open source libraries available for document parsing? ### 2.Architectural pattern Is there any general architectural pattern or best practice that needs to be followed in designing such a search engine?"}
{"_id": "179133", "title": "Is there a well grounded theory on backward and forward compatibility of formats, languages, grammars and vocabularies?", "text": "I have a friend who has the _specific_ problem of building a case against the use of a custom HTML <wrapper> tag in some site's markup. Now, intuitively we can answer that use of such a tag is risky, as future HTML specs may define a wrapper tag with semantics that conflict with its use on the site. We can also appeal to a particular section of the HTML5 spec which also recommends against the use of custom tags for this reason. And while I agree with the conclusion, I find these arguments a little on the weak side, on their own. Is there some well grounded and proven theory in computer science from which we can derive this conclusion? Have programming language theorists created proofs about the properties of vocabulary versioning, or some such thing?"}
{"_id": "179132", "title": "DDD and Value Objects. Are mutable Value Objects a good candidate for Non Aggr. Root Entity?", "text": "Here is a little problem Have an entity, with a value object. Not a problem. I replace a value object for a new one, then nhibernate inserts the new value and orphan the old one, then deletes it. Ok, that's a problem. Insured is my entity in my domain. He has a collection of Addresses (value objects). One of the addresses is the MailingAddress. When we want to update the mailing address, let's say zipcode was wrong, following Mr. Evans doctrine, we must replace the old object for a new one since it's immutable (a value object right?). But we don't want to delete the row thou, because that address's PK is a FK in a MailingHistory table. So, following Mr. Evans doctrine, we are pretty much screwed here. Unless i make my addressses Entities, so i don't have to \"replace\" it, and simply update its zipcode member, like the old good days. What would you suggest me in this case? The way i see it, ValueObjects are only useful when you want to encapsulate a group of database table's columns (component in nhibernate). Everything that has a persistence id in the database, is better off to make it an Entity (not necessarily an aggregate root) so you can update its members without recreating the whole object graph, specially if that's a deep-nested object. Do you concur? Is it allowed by Mr. Evans to have a mutable value object? Or is a mutable value object a candidate for an Entity? Thanks"}
{"_id": "168589", "title": "How important are unit tests in software development?", "text": "We are doing software testing by testing a lot of I/O cases, so developers and system analysts can open reviews and test for their committed code within a given time period (e.g. 1 week). But when it come across with extracting information from a database, how to consider the cases and the corresponding methodology to start with? Although that is more likely to be a case studies because the unit-testing depends on the project we have involved which is too specific and particular most of the time. What is the general overview of the steps and precautions for unit-testing?"}
{"_id": "168581", "title": "Is there a difference between arguments and parameters?", "text": "It might be like this: Parameter means from the callers POV and arguments mean inside the procedure, or other way round. Or is there no difference? ## Update In Swedish we say \"anropsparametrar\" i.e. \"parameters that are calling the procedure\" and we would not say \"anropsargument\" (\"arguments that are calling the procedure\")."}
{"_id": "190330", "title": "combining (something like) Flash in a windows form application", "text": "I know this is a place where people ask advice for designing code. I am at a bit strange side on my coding quest, on one side people send me design stuff. Special graphics and ideas on how they should be shown in a program workflow. (i think the marketing designers are a bit to powerfull in this project They tend to think here that their pictures are the program itself, but all that coding still has to be written still ..by me in 1 week.. ) They want tweans of graphics and rotation etc.. Well in short this reminded me of things i have seen in flash But flash is for the web, as far as i know. But i think.. those people most likely use Adobe software so might safe it as some Adobe flash formats. In the end it is all about a interface for a machine Because of some hardware limits, i need to do it all in .net 2 on normal win forms. And on slow PC hardware (no direct10 or so).. directX is to much for me to finish in 1 week anyway Now i was thinking would it be possible to run flash on a form, or what would be something close the the Flash Experience ..you know text tweens/ slide ins etc something that could be combined with C# ?."}
{"_id": "143677", "title": "MIT app executing a GPL command", "text": "Can my MIT/BSD licensed, open source project, or a closed source project I build and sell, execute a command, where the command is a program released under the GPL? I would not be distributing any version of the GPL'd program, either source code or binary. I would be telling the customer/end user that they need to have the package/binary installed prior to running the program."}
{"_id": "62168", "title": "How can I improve the ease of which I can extend my software?", "text": "I am thinking about how software like Microsoft Windows grows from small as MS-DOS to Windows 7, Adobe Photoshop from its first version to version CS5. What techniques were used to accomplish this? Did they extend their software from the existing software or redesign for the next version? Or have they already planned their software solidly before they built them? It's hard for me to extend my application/software when I need to add new features and it makes a mess of other existing features. How can I improve my software's extensibility so that I can easily add new features to your software?"}
{"_id": "143674", "title": "How to deal with social login", "text": "In my new web app I'm going to allow social login through Twitter (maybe), Facebook and Google and I'm in search of the best way to do it. Actually I'm using Rails with Devise + Omniauth and this is the problem: **Should I ask the user to choose a password so that he can login without a social network?** **Or maybe the user should be able to set a password if he want (for example when editing his account?)** The second way seems the best one but since Twitter doesn't provide user email and google doesn't provide an username I'll probably have to ask the user for username/email when he log in so in that case I may also ask for the password... waht do you think?"}
{"_id": "143673", "title": "How important is it for a programmer to have an online presence?", "text": "I've noticed more and more mentions (both in posts here and in actual job descriptions) of programmers' \"portfolios\" - typically their public profiles on sites such as this, GitHub, etc. How important is this, and would companies (startups in particular) reject (or immediately discard without even interviewing) otherwise outstanding candidates who don't have an online presence? Personally, I prefer to keep a very low profile online. My name here cannot identify me, and I have other handles for other sites. I have a very spartan (and completely private) Facebook page. I do code on my own, but the code lives in local repositories. In general, the less information online about me, the better. I could see a designer needing some sort of online portfolio, but for a programmer, is this really a big negative when job-searching?"}
{"_id": "175721", "title": "Why create a Huffman tree per character instead of a Node?", "text": "For a school assignment we're supposed to make a Java implementation of a compressor/decompresser using Huffman's algorithm. I've been reading a bit about it, specially this C++ tutorial: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/computersciencetheory/huffman.html In my program, I've been thinking about having **Nodes** that have the following properties:   * Total Frequency   * Character (if a leaf)   * Right child (if any)   * Left child (if any)   * Parent (if any) So when building the Huffman tree, it is just a matter of linking a node to others, etc. However, I'm a bit confused with the following quote (emphasis mine): > First, **every letter starts off as part of its own tree** and the trees are > ordered by the frequency of the letters in the original string. Then the two > least-frequently used letters are combined into a single tree, and the > frequency of that tree is set to be the combined frequency of the two trees > that it links together. My question: why should I create a tree per letter, instead of just a node per letter and then do the linking later? I have not begun coding, I'm just studying the algorithm first, so I guess I'm missing an important detail. What is it?"}
{"_id": "256049", "title": "How do I fill in the BSD license template for multiple copyright holders?", "text": "I am involved in an open-source project with multiple copyright holders. The project is licensed under the 3-clause BSD license. Unfortunately, the individual code files contain no reference back to their original owners (no copyright headers), but for the project as a whole a single file LICENSE.txt, which contains the BSD license text, is provided. The project also contains a separate file which identifies all copyright holders. However, I am struggling with a pragmatic question: the first line of the BSD license is supposed to identify the copyright owner:               Copyright (c) <year>, <copyright holder>      In our case, there is no single copyright owner (at least not for the project as a whole). So what should I put here, practically speaking? Obviously I can't just leave it out as the license itself refers to retaining \"the above copyright notice\". Is there a recommended way / format to list all copyright holders here, or perhaps to refer to an external list of copyright holders? We are talking 10 or more contributors by the way, some of them individuals, some companies, so it's not a short list. I looked at how some other projects do this (e.g. Linux), but most I could find use GPL, which does not contain the `<copyright owner>` bit in the license - and I have sofar failed to find a project that uses BSD and has multiple owners."}
{"_id": "94427", "title": "How to get the team back on track for SCRUM/Agile?", "text": "_There was a company developing software product. They had adopted SCRUM as agile method for entire development department incl. programmers, testers and analysts. It had been working grand for them in early months. However later things started to revert, enthusiasm cooled down and slowly people drifted back into their usual habits. The sprint became 6-8 weeks long, daily stand ups became weekly status updates around the table with bug count parade, scrum master became just a badge rotated between team members like a hot potato, product owner disengaged and lost the ownership of the backlog, and so on._ My question for you, fellow agile practitioners, is how to regain the SCRUM principles in such situation? What could the team members who still believed and care do? What are the best steps for development manager to take in such situation in order to get the team back on track for SCRUM/Agile?"}
{"_id": "256045", "title": "How should I \"dig deeper\" as a web developer?", "text": "I am currently a full-stack web developer working mainly in Ruby/Rails/Javascript. The languages I use on a daily basis (ruby, css, javascript, php) are great, but they are very dynamic, high level languages. I would like to learn a lower level, preferably statically-typed, non memory- managed, language that gets me closer to the underlying architecture. However, I would like to approach this language from the angle of a web developer, and hopefully utilize the knowledge I gain to make me a better web developer. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "230376", "title": "lots of images and ajax, or better solution?", "text": "I have a control where the user can select a value for the x and y axis from 2 dropdowns, and then there is a 4 by 4 grid (an image) which will show what their selections correspond to (updating dynamically). So, if the grid is:               a b c d     e f g h     i j k l     m n o p      If the user picks 2 for row (column is `null` for now), `e f g h` should highlight (using an outline). If they then pick 3 for column, only `g` should highlight. And so on for every combination. I know I can figure this out by making 25 separate images (one for each square + 4 rows + 4 cols + both null) and then load in the right image using ajax, but my question is if there is a better way or some sort of dynamic solution where I can draw over the image, or overlay another image in an intelligent fashion?"}
{"_id": "94651", "title": "What is \"The Cloud\"? What do I say when people ask if my web service is \"on the cloud\"?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is \"the Cloud\" and how does it relate to development? First some context: I don't understand what people are asking when they ask \"It it on the cloud?\" Here is an example. I make a \"website\" with php that is two pages hosted on a dedicated linux box running apache. One has a form where you upload a file, and the second computes some stuff based on that file and coughs back an answer. Presumably you could call this an API as well if there is a check-box on the form to specify the response as human readable vs. XML. Is that \"service\" \"on the cloud\" or it is just a hosted service? Is gmail \"on the cloud\"? Is amazons S3 cloud \"on the cloud\" or is it \"the cloud\" or just \"a cloud\"? I'm pretty sure at this point that \"on the cloud\" is marketing jargon for \"on the internet\" Is there more to it than this? Should I ask this one on english.stackexchange? To differentiate my question from What is \"the Cloud\" and how does it relate to development? I am asking specifically how to answer the question I keep getting asked \"Is it on the cloud?\" without saying \"What you are asking is meaningless.\" given the example of my little web service/API. Is every webpage \"on the cloud\"?"}
{"_id": "256040", "title": "Freelancer websites and share source code with staff", "text": "How safe is sending project files via popular freelance websites? For example their staff/admins has unlimited access to tons of very valuable sources, what's the sense then to upload there something valuable?"}
{"_id": "67533", "title": "Evolution of my MVC design with new UI complexity", "text": "I have a desktop instrumentation application in MVC. Currently I had 2 versions of the application, thus 2 views and 2 controllers, each having common code in a base class. The views react directly to events sent by the model, and the controller has a message queue for linking user actions to the model. Notably the message queue is common to the two controllers. In these two versions the UI logic is very simple, it's mainly reacting to buttons, passing parameters to the controller, and . In the next version I have some workflow tasks, so the UI will get more complex. I also want the initial versions to be still functional. Where do I put this complexity? Should I add another message loop that is in- between? Will it belong to the controller or the view? Where should I put the state of my workflow? Or should I build an intelligent view?"}
{"_id": "216383", "title": "Junior developer introduction to job industry", "text": "I am a junior developer at my second working experience, the first one using PHP with WordPress and currently on Groovy on Grails. I like coding, I attend meetup to discuss technology etc but I still did not understand how to become a real professional with the \"know how\" attitude. I read Clean Coder, the author advises to spend 20 hours per week of my spare time to learn new technologies and to keep myself up to date. I do not find this realistic, if you want to have a bit of a social life, and I also noticed that learning at work, at least in the places where I worked, is not ideal. No support from seniors for new projects, no pair programming and code reviews, no company trainings, one hour a week tech meetings where seniors walk away after a bit because they already know the topic discussed and so on. Sometimes is quite hard to keep the motivation... My questions are:   1. Is our industry supposed to be like this? Is there real team working in the sense of sharing knowledge and help juniors to get up to speed?   2. Are we supposed to learn new technologies or technology features just in our spare time?Clean Coder says football players do not train during official matches and our working hours are like official matches, we should just perform and learn in other moments. Is it really like this?   3. How can I improve my skills with no support? Is it enough to read books and try out the exercises and perhaps some katas? In almost 5 month of Groovy on Grails experience at work, I have never had the opportunity to create anything from scratch, just worked on existing issues where it was even really difficult to get the domain knowledge from senior devs."}
{"_id": "237353", "title": "What should I do when I get stuck with a task for so long?", "text": "My team are using Scrum and we are new to this methodology. I use Essential Scrum as our guideline but I haven't finished it yet. On a chapter, it says the team should focus on idle tasks, not idle workers which I somewhat agree with it. Anyway, it doesn't say (at least on that chapter) what to do or how to solve it. What are some good suggestion about how to tackle idle tasks? **Update** Idle task in this context means a task that has been in progress for a lot longer than we expect, for example, if a task is estimated to be finish in 2 hours but it has been taking 6 hours and not sure when it will be finished."}
{"_id": "67539", "title": "Applying RESTful design to an entire website?", "text": "This all may come across very newbish, but I'm trying to wrap my head around designing a website that is thoroughly RESTful. I understand applying RESTful design to things like Users, Photos, Blog Posts, etc. because I think of them like \"objects\". But, what about an \"about us\" page. What kind of resource is that? Is it even a resource in the RESTful sense of the word? Also, say I go to the URL \"http://www.example.com/\", what resource am I asking for? The index resource?"}
{"_id": "237354", "title": "Should a REST interface include the query ID as part of the response?", "text": "I am currently working an Android app that receives most of the displayed data from a REST interface. First, I request the information for a company the request includes a list of store IDs. With each ID I can then request the details for this store. As part of my app I can update the store opening hours and send them back to the server. For that, I obviously need the store ID to tell the server which store to update. Now, my question: The JSON object returned by {SERVER}/StoreDetails/{ID} does not include the the store ID. So I need to first fetch the JSON, parse it, and then manually add the store ID to the object - which I feel needlessly complicates my logic, as well as my model objects which now either need a setter of some kind of copy/update constructor when they could otherwise be totally immutable... Would it be/have been reasonable to include the store ID in the returned JSON object or is that considered redundant and a bad practice?"}
{"_id": "188131", "title": "\"Public APIs are forever: Only one chance to get it right\"?", "text": "In an OS book I just read that, \"Public APIs are forever: Only one chance to get it right\". Is it true? Is it applicable only in APIs of Operating Systems or other APIs too? For example, will this be true for the APIs of Android Applications such as Tasker, Locale and Pushover?"}
{"_id": "188130", "title": "What is the best way to store a table in C++", "text": "I'm programming a decision tree in C++ using a slightly modified version of the C4.5 algorithm. Each node represents an attribute or a column of your data set and it has a children per possible value of the attribute. My problem is how to store the training data set having in mind that I have to use a subset for each node so I need a quick way to only select a subset of rows and columns. The main goal is to do it in the most memory and time efficient possible (in that order of priority). The best way I have thought of is to have an array of arrays (or std::vector), or something like that, and for each node have a list (array, vector, etc) or something with the `column,line`(probably a tuple) pairs that are valid for that node. I now there should be a better way to do this, any suggestions? **UPDATE:** What I need is something like this: In the beginning I have this data:               Paris    4    5.0    True     New York 7    1.3    True     Tokio    2    9.1    False     Paris    9    6.8    True     Tokio    0    8.4    False      But for the second node I just need this data:               Paris    4    5.0     New York 7    1.3     Paris    9    6.8      And for the third node:               Tokio    2    9.1     Tokio    0    8.4      But with a table of millions of records with up to hundreds of columns. What I have in mind is keep all the data in a matrix, and then for each node keep the info of the current columns and rows. Something like this:               Paris    4    5.0    True     New York 7    1.3    True     Tokio    2    9.1    False     Paris    9    6.8    True     Tokio    0    8.4    False      Node 2:               columns = [0,1,2]     rows = [0,1,3]      Node 3:               columns = [0,1,2]     rows = [2,4]      This way on the worst case scenario I just have to waste               size_of(int) * (number_of_columns + number_of_rows) * node      That is a lot less than having an independent data matrix for each node."}
{"_id": "188137", "title": "Strategy for website with international strings", "text": "What things need to be considered for a Website that contains International strings, for instance Simplified Chinese and English mixed. UTF8 seems to me a natural choice, including a meta tag. Still, some users may only see white boxes. What is the best solution do deal with this? Currently I am thinking to provide an alternative image-based rendering, or even make it default. But IMHO this seems a weak solution. Or I could tell the user which OS/Browser combinations are known to work but such a list would probably be endless. Update: it's a Chinese learning site, most users will not have visited Chinese websites before"}
{"_id": "66667", "title": "Storing documents in DMS", "text": "I need your opinions and suggestions about storing documents in a DMS system. I think the DMS should save its own copies of the documents, not their original path on the disk. So, the DMS should have its own space to write on. But what about the way they're stored? Do they have their own extension different from the original one? What about the algorithm that stores them? What about the algorithm that retrieves them? What do you suggest??"}
{"_id": "63908", "title": "Default values - are they good or evil?", "text": "The question about default values in general - default return function values, default parameter values, default logic for when something is missing, default logic for handling exceptions, default logic for handling the edge conditions etc. For a long time I considered default values to be a \"pure evil\" thing, something that \"cloaks the catastrophe\" and results in a very hard do find bugs. But recently I started to think about default values as some sort of a technical debt ... which is not a straight bad thing but something that could provide some \"short term financing\" get us to survive the project (how many of us could afford to buy a house without taking out the mortgage?). When I say a \"short term\" - I don't mean - \"do something quickly first and do refactor it out later before it hits the production\". No - I am talking about relying on a hardcoded default values in a production software. Granted - it could cause some issues, but what if it only going to cause a single trouble in a whole year. Again - I am talking about the \"average\" mainstream software here (not a software for a nuclear power station) - the average web site or a UI application for the accounting software, meaning that people lives are not at stake, nor millions of dollars. Again, from my experience, business users would rather live with the software which \"works somehow\", rather then wait for a perfect one. And the use of default values helps a lot if you develop a software in a RAD style. But again - the longest debug sessions I have spent were because of the bugs introduced by a default value which either stopped being \"a default\" along the way or because a small subsystem has recently been upgraded and as a result of this upgrade it does not handle the default correctly (e.g. empty list vs null, or null string vs empty string). So my question is - are the default values good or evil. And if they are a technical debt - how do measure up how much you can borrow so you can afford the repayments? Would really appreciate any input. Cheers. EDIT: If I am using the default values as a way to cut the corners during the development - and if the corners cutting results in a bugs and issues - what is the methodology to recover from these issues?"}
{"_id": "220209", "title": "Most suitable data structure for in-memory string -> int conversion for variable length strings", "text": "My project involves validating and normalising email addresses in this format [userpart]@[domainpart].[tld] After syntactic validation of the address, [tld] is checked to exist, otherwise the validation fails. After validation, [userpart] and [domainpart] are normalised into a 32-bit numeric ID called [partid] (one for each part), partid and the part string are permanently stored on disk when new strings are discovered. 4 bytes seems the most sensible for each as 3 bytes is not enough (there are around 200 million registered domain names just now). To process lists of new emails quickly, I've been using Judy arrays (JudySL to be exact, http://judy.sourceforge.net/doc/index.html) , where the part string is mapped to the part id. I've used Judy Arrays as I know how to use them and they generally perform well, although they are not thread safe which is a slight drawback (I use mutexes to get round that). There's no collisions that I'd get with a hash table... which reduces complexity somewhat. However they seem to be taking up a much larger proportion of memory than I'd like, so my question is what would you suggest as a better storage method? Example case:   * 64-bit system (Debian based)   * 150,000,000 \"parts\", averaging around 8 bytes each, 12 bytes total when including the partid   * ~1.67GB for that data in itself   * ~5.1GB used by Judy   * Perhaps worth noting that the emails are evaluated after being converted to punycode format.   * Input would come in lists varying between 10K and 1M rows   * Inserts on-demand, when a new [part] is found, ++partid is assigned as its partid and partid,part are written to disk   * No deletes required, only inserts and lookups. So I need around 3x more memory than disk space in order to convert [~8-byte- string] to an int. Is there any better(*) data structures that I should be considering? (* by better, I'd hope for reasonably fast, with a smaller memory footprint and preferably something pre-written like a library...) **Update** The TL;DR of my original question... converting a variable length string to a 32 bit INT. Strictly speaking the userpart is case sensitive but from what I understand the standard implementation is to ignore case. In that case (no pun), there are 56 valid characters in either punycoded domain part, or 6 bits worth. I'm thinking I can sacrifice 1-bit to indicate direct conversion of string->int without a lookup table, which will allow conversion back too. The bit would be switched on when this can occur and would prevent collisions with lookups, leaving 31 bits for data, and 2^31 IDs for all other domain parts that don't fit. I was messing around with fixed length 4-5-6 bit length codes based on the least frequent character, but huffman encoding would seem to (obviously?) win out in the long run and avoids a 2nd pass of the input string. Here's some data based on the char distribution across those 150m parts. http://pastebin.com/DTrUWSna Huffman manages to have yahoo, gmail and even hotmail squeezed into 31 bits which is excellent. 6.1% of all parts can be mapped this way. With the same huffman encoding, a further 70.5% can be mapped to 63 bits which'd allow a fixed length int key->value list. This should save on memory (I'll try report back) That leaves less than 25% of all parts to be mapped still. This new layout should help a lot for saving on memory, thanks for the suggestions so far."}
{"_id": "161753", "title": "Naming a \"do X if needed\" method", "text": "What is a good way to name a method that checks if X needs to be done, and does X it if necessary? For example, how to name a method that updates a user list if new users have logged in? `UpdateListIfNeeded` seems too long, while simple `UpdateList` implies a possibly expensive and unnecessary operation is done every time. `EnsureListUpdated` is a variant as well. C# has a `bool TryXXX(args, out result)` pattern (e.g. `int.TryParse(str, out num)`) to check if X is **possible** and do it, but that is subtly different."}
{"_id": "161759", "title": "Can I use code in my own projects that I have written for someone else?", "text": "In the past I did a freelancing project for someone where I wrote a couple of image filters. Nothing fancy, and a very very low cost project for them. I was wondering, if I wish to use these in a project of mine, would I legally/ethically be allowed to do that? If I couldn't use the exact code, could I at least use the general data I used to make them. (I modeled the filters in Photoshop and then coded a duplicate filter in a programming language.) My specific work was done through freelancer.com and we had no special terms or conditions."}
{"_id": "222895", "title": "Complexity in nested loops", "text": "Foreword:   * In this post, I will make the common confusion between `O(n)` and `Theta(n)` as complexity notations.   * I will write pseudo-code to talk about algorithms, using whatever notation I find to my liking. * * * I know, yet another question about nested loops and complexity. I recently wrote a nested algorithm, that would work as a bottleneck of a more complex application. It somehow looked like this:               while(firstLoopRunning) {         foreach(element in myArray) {             doSomeAction(element);         }     }      My keen-eye brought me to the conclusion that, as doSomeAction is in `O(1)`, the algorithm had to be in `O(n\u00b2)`. I know however that nested loops can have a different complexity. For instance the following is in `O(n.log(n))`:               for(i in 0..n) // n is constant in this loop         for(j in 0..i) // j goes up to i and not to a constant             print(j);      Then I thought, hey, I know that myArray has a maximum length. In this particular case, I _know_ by design that there will never be more than 8 elements in myArray, so the algorithm could look like this:               while(firstLoopRunning) {         // Let's do this one in Java, myArray would actually be an ArrayList         try {             doSomeAction(myArray.get(0));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(1));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(2));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(3));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(4));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(5));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(6));             doSomeAction(myArray.get(7));         } catch(ArrayOutOfBoundsException ex) {            // Just a lazy way for me to avoid checking if the index exists         }     }      And voil\u00e0! Here it is in `O(n)`! Moreover, I know for a fact that compilers usually transform _fake_ loops such as this one:               for(i in 0..8) // not really a loop         someCall(i);      into a sequence of calls. Which brought me to a first conclusion: > A iteration over an array which length will have a known finite upper-bound > is in O(1). I think I'm right about this one (aka: correct me if I'm wrong). On the other hand, we are working with finite data and the whole point of the complexity theory is to work on theorically infinite data. So let's use another classical example: we are iterating over the squares in a grid (=~ bidimensional array), so clearly an `O(n\u00b2)` algorithm. What if however we would to put all the squares in a single list and change this:               // O(n\u00b2) algorithm over myGrid[][]     for(i in myGrid)         for(j in myGrid[i])             yieldAction(myGrid[i][j])      into this               // O(n) algorithm over myFlatGrid[]     for(i in myFlatGrid)         yieldAction(myFlatGrid[i mod rowLength][j])      Basically the same thing but different complexity, yet no loop has in fact been gained. Granted that the grid can grow in both dimensions so the variable really is quadratic, but in a way it can definitely be treated in a linear way (even though that's not worth it). But I must be missing something. What sense does it make that if a twist the data a litte, I can change the complexity of an algorithm on a theorical point of view although the exact same number of operations is performed?"}
{"_id": "121953", "title": "What data is available regarding cowboy coding?", "text": "I'm not a programmer; I'm a freelance writer and researcher. I have a client who is looking for stats on certain \"threats\" to the apps market in general (not any specific app store). One of them is cowboy coding: specifically, he wants to see numbers regarding how many apps have failed to function as intended/crashed/removed because of errors made by, in essence, sloppy coding. Note that I'm not here to debate the merits of cowboy coding, and whether or not it is sloppy. Is there any data about this type of development?"}
{"_id": "156428", "title": "How to make Unit Tests to make sure stored procedure is deleting row from the database?", "text": "I'm new to unit testing and I need some help with the following. I have created a small project to help me learn how to make Unit Tests. The functionality for one of the forms in my application deletes a user from the User table (and other rows in mapping tables). Currently, the unit test I have created to test this sets up the required objects and then calls the business rules method (passing in the user id) which calls the data access method to execute the stored procedure that deletes the rows in the tables. Is this the correct method to test whether something is being deleted successfully? Should the unit test / setup method first insert some test data which the unit test then deletes?"}
{"_id": "129339", "title": "Automatically update copyright date range from git?", "text": "As I write, we're 10 days into 2012. I bet many programmers are editing the copyright string at the top of their source files to something like:               // Copyright 2008, 2010-2012 Some Company Unlimited      Your version control system knows when files were modified so surely it can help write or rewrite these strings. So my question: is there a script that can examine git logs for each file and output (or better insert) a string like that about? I'm using git so that's of primary interest but do let me know if such scripts exist for other systems. **Update:** We need a script that does this:   * Walks all source files in our working copy   * Locates existing copyright string and identifies years e.g. 2007,2009-2011 would be {2007, 2009, 2010, 2011}   * For each year that is not mentioned, diff between 1 Jan and 31 Dec (or today if current year). Examine diff and decide if it's worthy of a mention in the copyright string   * Insert new copyright string."}
{"_id": "156426", "title": "What does it mean for SVN \"to pollute the local source tree\"?", "text": "I'm reading \"Professional Team Foundation Server 2010\" by Wrox, and in an advantages/disadvantages list, the said: \"Like CVS, SVN makes use of .svn directories inside the source folders to store state of the local working copy, and to allow synchronization with the server. However, it can have the affect of polluting the local source tree, and can cause performance issues wiht very large projects or files.\" What does the bit about pollution mean? I've used SVN for C# & ASP.NET projects for a long time and haven't encountered any problems. What probably does this quote think I should have been watching out for?"}
{"_id": "126308", "title": "Drag and drop application design", "text": "I am hoping to create a mind-mapping like application and it needs to have a central workspace that will hold the map. Users should be able to drag items (like rectangles, texts, etc.) from a container to the workspace. The important thing is when a user is dragging an element to the workspace, _the element should move with the mouse, **not** just the text._ What I'm looking for is something like the web apps LucidChart, Cacoo, MindMeister, etc. So is this possible to do in Java without too much hassle? And if yes, what is the application design (algorithm)? I have searched many resources but have only found ways to drag only the text, images or the like. Not the entire element itself. It would be even better if I could make it to drag an entire JButton, so the users can create a map of JButtons. Sorry if this is not the place to post this (should I post it in StackOverflow or here?)."}
{"_id": "220107", "title": "Safari for windows not showing that my ipad is connected", "text": "I want to inspect some code on the ipad and I have enabled the developer menu on safari(windows version). However, my safari developer menu doesn't detect the ipad that is connected to it via the usb ... Version of ipad ios - 6 Version of Windows - 7 Version of installed Safari - 5.1.7 How do I make this happen ?"}
{"_id": "126304", "title": "Using SVN poorly - is Mercurial the answer?", "text": "At work we use SVN, but in name only. We don't branch or merge. We keep two copies of the repository, one serving as the \"tag\" branch that gets copied when we do a deployment and kept for bug fixes and immediate \"this has to go live asap\" type of features. We have to remember to copy changes made in one copy to the other copy (the \"trunk\"). We have a dozen projects inside a single folder in the repository, instead of splitting them out. In short about the only thing we use SVN for is being able to commit. Everything else is done manually. I've been evaluating Mercurial; I have used Git in the past (I'm the only one on the team who has used a DVCS), and I'm picking up Mercurial quickly. I'm debating introducing Mercurial to the rest of the team as a \"better way\" of doing things because branching is a snap, merging is a lot easier, and we can commit things locally to our heart's content and only push them to the central branch when they're ready. We would get all of the benefits of SVN (and we aren't getting many benefits right now anyway since nobody really understands SVN) plus for new features we don't have to have tons of unversioned files floating about so if we have to rollback we're screwed. The workflow seems a bit simpler - we just have to remember that \"Commit\" is local and \"Push\" is like SVN's commit, and \"Pull\" is like SVN's Update (what the team refers to as \"get latest\"). Is this a good approach to take? Keep in mind that the team is very flexible and will go along with anything that will improve our quality of work and make how we do things easier - the CIO even asked me when I mentioned how we weren't using SVN to it's potential \"Is there something better we can use?\" so he's on board with it too."}
{"_id": "246412", "title": "Database Password problem when using GIT to manage project that uses Spring to initiate Datasource", "text": "## Program Situation I use Spring Framework to code my Web Service, using Dependency injection to inject a DataSource bean into the DAO bean that will be used by the Web Service. I have all the database properties(Url, Password, Username, the stuff I don't want people to see) written in the DataSource Bean XML! ## Workplace Situation I have git setup to commit my entire project....(Hint: Including my DataSource Bean XML which has my password written in plain text) I thought of using the .gitignore but the Bean XML is a crucial component in my Web Service project and it shouldn't be ignored. (Right?) But I also don't want the world to see my password. **_What should I do?_**"}
{"_id": "246415", "title": "w3c library license: does it prevent the inclusion in/distribution with paid software?", "text": "From W3C Software Notice and License: > Permission to copy, modify, and distribute this software and its > documentation, with or without modification, for any purpose and without fee > or royalty is hereby granted My app depends on the xml-apis 1.4.01 library that in turn includes W3C software and I need to distribute it along with my non-free app. I am not explicitly charging for the included xml-apis/W3C components. Does the stated license statement exclude such a paid distribution? Don't answer if you are not aware of the GPL linking exception."}
{"_id": "150869", "title": "User defined type for healthcare / Medical Records variable name prefixes?", "text": "I was reading Code Complete regarding variable naming in trying to find an answer to this question and stumbled on a table of commonly accepted prefixes for programming word processor software. Well, I'm not a word processor software programmer, but if I was, I'd be happy to use those user defined types. Since I'm a programmer for a smallish healthcare ISV, and have no contact with the larger community of healthcare software programmers (other than the neglected and forsaken HealthCareIT.SE where I never had the chance to ask this question). I want to know if there is a coding convention for medical records. Like Patient = pnt and Chart = chrt and Medication = med or mdctn or whatever. I'm not talking full on hungarian notation, but just a standard that would fit in code complete in place of that wonderful chart of word processor UDT's which are of so little use to me."}
{"_id": "253132", "title": "Implementing multiple tables for the same entity due to processing power on Client apps", "text": "I reached a design/architectural issue on the large application I'm working on, at the point of writing possibles solutions on a chalkboard. Our product consist of a **client-server** information system whose implementation was built on REST paradigms. A particular use case defines the use of multiple resources (most of them available only server-side) in order to process data into actual information, before being sent to the client-side. You can think of it as a massive processing of a queried resources **to present them in a certain order**. It's almost like **a huge sorting algorithm**. Due to the fact that most of the resources used by the algorithm are available only server-side (because they don't fulfill any other purpose on the client) and the fact that massive processing power is needed to perform it, it's not practical to reproduce this client-side. Also to prevent possible reverse- engineering. To fulfill a requirement we need to implement local storage on the client-side application, which means we would need to present this _sorted_ information even if no network is available. In order to present them, we are considering the possibility of duplicating the database table for this resource, into a table that will be used only to store already sorted results. To this point, what are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, and what best practices are going to be needed into consideration. I'm also open to any design pattern, used to solve this problem, that I'm not aware of."}
{"_id": "253133", "title": "How to collect industry usage of data persistence technologies?", "text": "In our organization, we are using various data access/persistence technologies in different projects. The ones used till now are Hibernate, JPA, Spring Data JPA, JDBC, Spring JDBC, MyBatis, and QueryDSL. How do I find out what is the industry usage of these technologies? i.e. which is used more widely than others - or even a pie chart showing the distribution of such technologies. Also curious to know which technologies are being used by major players - like big silicon valley companies, or prominent investment firms. Do you know a way to find this data? Can the firms like Forrester or Gartner would have such a data? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "59248", "title": "Is an agile methodology appropriate in this situation?", "text": "Imagine a project where the interface to be delivered has been locked down 90%, and you are already in possession of a solid architectural design. Would an agile methodology still offer any value in this situation? It seems to me that agile methodologies (and I'm thinking Scrum), offer most value where there is a high degree of uncertainty about the requirements."}
{"_id": "50791", "title": "Do professional software developers still dream of creating industry/world-changing apps?", "text": "I'm a hobby programmer. The absence of real world deadlines, customer feedback, or performance reviews leaves me free to daydream about having and implementing The Next Great Idea That Changes the World. Of course I'm aware I probably have a better chance of winning the lottery, but it's fun to imagine knocking out some fully-homebrewed app that destroys the status quo. I know many professional programmers have side projects, some for profit others not. I was wondering on the way to work this morning (non-IT boring work) if having to code for your food tended to dampen the dreaming? Does greater experience leave you jaded and more focused on the projects at hand? Not trying to be a downer, just interested in the mindset of the real software professional :-)"}
{"_id": "178776", "title": "What constitutes a programming language and how does one copyright a programming language?", "text": "I've decided to create a programming language of my own, mostly just for fun. However, I got interested in the legal aspect of it all. You can, for example, licence specific programs under specific terms. However, how do you go about licensing a _language_? Also, by that I don't just mean the implementation of the language (compiler & VM), but the standard itself. Is there something else to a programming language I'm missing? What I would like to achieve by such licensing:   1. Make it completely FOSS (can a language even be FOSS, or is that the implementation that can be FOSS?)   2. Establish myself as the author (can you legally be an author of a language? Or, again, just the implementation?)   3. Make it so that anyone implementing my language would be required to attribute me (MIT-style. Please note that I do not have any hopes for anyone actually ever doing that though, I'm just learning.) I think that the solution would be to separately license the VM and the compiler for my language, as \"the official implementation\", and then license the design document _as the language itself_. What exactly am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "50794", "title": "What's new in Expert F# 2.0?", "text": "I own the first edition of Expert F# by Don, et al. and I'm considering buying the next edition, Expert F# 2.0. But I'm wondering if it's worth it. Sure the syntax will be updated and all, but I'd be more interested if there were new topics covered or just compelling expanded coverage of the same topics otherwise. Glad to hear from anyone who owns both editions, thanks."}
{"_id": "178771", "title": "Does Visual Studio 2012 Express support NUnit tests?", "text": "I am currently using Visual Studio Express 2012 Desktop (the free version). I now have received source code with NUnit tests included. I can not bring them to run with Visual Studio (not seeing them in the Test Explorer) and I seem not able to install the official NUnit Plugin. **Can someone confirm that the Express version does not support nUnit or tell me how to do it?**"}
{"_id": "178772", "title": "What is the meaning of # in R5RS Scheme number literals", "text": "There _is_ a partial answer on Stack Overflow, but I'm asking something a teeny bit more specific than the answers there. So... Does the formal semantics (Section 7.2) specify the meaning of such a numeric literal? Does it specify the meaning of numeric operations on the value resulting from interpreting the literal? If yes, what are the meanings (in English -- denotational semantics is all greek characters to me :))?"}
{"_id": "110883", "title": "How does event bubbling generally work and is it synonym to event propagation?", "text": "I'm trying to wrap my head around the general workings and principles of event dispatching in event-driven (sub-)systems. Although I have used it on quite a few occasions in for instance Javascript, Flash (Actionscript 2 and 3) and have even made a simple event dispatching system in PHP for myself at one time, I've never really understood event bubbling and/or propagation that well. **First question:**   Is event bubbling synonym to event propagation? **Second question:**   Am I correct in my understanding that when an event \"bubbles\", this means that it gets \"moved\" up the hierarchy of objects? **Third and most important question:**   If my understanding in question 2 is correct; how is this \"moving\" up the hierarchy of objects generally implemented?   Does it generally mean that the parent object \"redispatches\" the same event to _its_ parent (until it reaches the root object)? And if so; do all these objects in the hierarchy need to listen to their children for these events, or am I missing something vital principle in my understanding about event bubbling, where there's no need to let parent object register them selfs as listeners of child object events? If you could illustrate these basic principles by means of some simple pseudo code, I'd be more than grateful."}
{"_id": "241018", "title": "What is software maintenance?", "text": "I'm a hobbyist programmer, so no professional experience. People here often talk about doing maintenance of software at work. The author of this question talks about doing 90% maintenance and 10% development at his job. My question is: what is 'software maintenance' anyway? Is it mainly about fixing bugs? If so, does that mean that people spend most of their time at work fixing bugs? Or does 'maintenance' include other things, other than bug fixing?"}
{"_id": "221274", "title": "Is double password protection safe for admin authentication?", "text": "I was looking at some of my past codes, and I viewed one of my admin boards I've made. I had it setup so that the admin has to define/enter 2 passwords for his account. Is this really double-safe or was I deluded? It seems that it's reaaally hard to force-match username and 2 passwords from the client side. I've got it limited to 100 tries, dogh..."}
{"_id": "92140", "title": "How to make non-technical management more realistic when it comes to developing software", "text": "I manage a small in-house development team for a large organization. We develop for both internal and external clients. I find it impossible to educate the non-technical senior management about the importance of team work, testing, etc etc. However, the most difficult thing is trying to make non-technical people understand what is realistic to expect from us in terms of running concurrent projects and timescales etc. It is definitely still a case of people think we just press a few buttons and applications build themselves. Does anyone know of a simple business case template for non-technical managers to justify the investment in my team's time?"}
{"_id": "110889", "title": "Mobile Web Framework that will only control rendering and page transitions", "text": "I have been using jQueryMobile for a bit now, and there are some things I like about it and others I do not. First I will give a bit of background. I have a light weight mobile application that has a few configurations and 6 pages. Ideally I Would like to load all pages into the DOM (they interact with each other quite often and pages will be switched in the same frequency). The application will post for some JSON every **_n_** seconds and refresh the values on the page (yes it is primarily a information display app). with the jQuery Mobile framework the only real thing I like is how easy it is to have a standardized UI a crossed all devices and browsers, I'm really not using too much else out of the framework other than the basic page navigation (if you are familiar with the framework; a bare-bone multi-page design is all i need). Why I want to step away from jQueryMobile is how weighty it is. Not only do you need to include the mobile library, but also the base jQuery libraries. This I do not like because I'm not using jQuery anywhere else on the site. Any suggestions on light-weight mobile frameworks that have a similar rendering as jQueryMobile?"}
{"_id": "78962", "title": "Programmer's blog - How often should I post?", "text": "I've decided to write a blog to see if it helps me, and maybe even others, as programmers, and to help invest myself in programming communities. Because I've just started, I have plenty of ideas, but I've been unsure if I should write articles on all these ideas at once, or space them out more regularly. I'm guessing it won't matter if I write them quickly, but I was concerned that my other content would be lost behind the newer content, and that I could exhaust content too quickly before I think of more topics. So, should I write them quickly as possible, or publish them more slowly and regularly?"}
{"_id": "32541", "title": "Why are PHP function signatures so inconsistent?", "text": "I was going through some PHP functions and I could not help notice the following:               <?php     function foo(&$var) { }          foo($a); // $a is \"created\" and assigned to null          $b = array();     foo($b['b']);     var_dump(array_key_exists('b', $b)); // bool(true)          $c = new StdClass;     foo($c->d);     var_dump(property_exists($c, 'd')); // bool(true)     ?>      Notice the `array_key_exists()` and `property_exists()` function. In the first one, the property name(key for an array) is the first parameter while in the second one it is the second parameter. By intuition, one would expect them to have similar signature. This can lead to confusion and the development time may be wasted by making corrections of this type. Shouldn't PHP, or any language for that matter, consider making the signatures of related functions consistent?"}
{"_id": "111425", "title": "Server-side event logs through DB or writing to file?", "text": "I am developing a web application as well as the API the web application uses. I'm trying to determine whether it is better to log events (to determine the path that leads to an error as well as to determine whether the site has been compromised) in a database or simply by writing to a file. On the one hand, I don't want to bog down my database with a queries every single time I need to log an error. On the other hand, I don't want to have to dig through a giant event / error log file. I'm thinking of turning into re- write mode once the file / table reaches 10,000 or 100,000 events. I know the general factors I should consider:   1. Performance (both DB and general--in my case I'm using PHP and Postgres)   2. Ease of finding the path a user took to create a bug or error (I'm almost certain DB is better for this)   3. Scalability - Is this the same solution I'm going to be using with 20 users as I am with 100,000 users? Can you tell me how these two possible solutions fit in with the above-- really, I think the most important one for me is performance. How demanding is it to write to a file vs. writing to a DB and if every single event and command sent by the user (and there will be many) is logged (before a re-write limit), which solution will end up being faster?"}
{"_id": "8333", "title": "Is there a correlation between buzz words and ability?", "text": "We've just been through a hiring cycle and one thing that struck me was the fact that interviewees that threw every buzz word on the planet at us tended to rate the lowest. We gave them each a simple design problem and asked them how they would approach it. The people that sketched a simple process flow on the board were generally the ones that impressed. The ones that leant back and then said something like \"This look like a typical xxx pattern. It's an interesting paradigm and probably requires a phase-shift in your current methodology\" didn't generally impress."}
{"_id": "111427", "title": "What are the advantages to BDD for a solo developer?", "text": "I have found this lines below about the advantages of BDD (Behavior Driven Development) > The domain experts define what they need in the program in a way that the > developers can not misinterpret (or at least not as much as in most other > approaches). Are there any more advantages apart from that?   If I'm working alone (I'm not in contact with managers that could write BDD features),   do I need to use BDD?"}
{"_id": "20369", "title": "Career advice: stay with PHP or start a new career in something else ( .Net?)", "text": "I'm planning on moving to NY in 6-12 months tops, so I'm forced to find a new job. When I'm planing to start my life in another city it's also probably a good time to think about career changes. I've found a lot of different opinions about PHP vs .Net vs Java and this is not the topic here. I don't want to start a new fight about which language is better. Knowing a programming language is not the most important thing for being a software developer. To be a really good developer you need to know OOP, design patterns, testing... and a language is just a tool to make things happen. So back to my question. I have mixed experience in IT - 1 year as an IT support guy (Windows administration and support), around 2 years of experience in embedded programming (VB.Net 2005) and for the last 2 years I'm working with PHP/MySQL. I have worked with Magento web shop, assisted in some projects in Symfony, modified few Drupal sites. My main concerns are the following:   1. Do I continue to improve my skills in PHP e.g. to start learning some major PHP framework like Zend, Symfony maybe get some PHP certification.   2. Or do I start learning .NET or Java. I'm more familiar to .NET so I'll probably choose it if choice falls between .NET and Java ( or you could convince me to choose Java :). Career-wise, I don't know what is the best choice. Learning a new framework and language is more time consuming then improving my existing skills in PHP. But with .NET you have a lot of possibilities (Windows 7 Phone development, Silverlight, WPF) and possibly bigger chances to find better jobs. PHP jobs are less well payed then .NET, at least, according to my research (correct me if I'm wrong). But if I start now with .NET I'm just a beginner and my salary will be low. I need at least 2+ years of experience in some language to even try to find some job that is paying higher than $50-60k in NY. My main goal in the next 2-3 years is to try to find a job in the $60-80k category. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just chasing money, but money is an important factor when you're trying to start a family. I'm 27 years old and I feel that there isn't a lot of room for wrong decisions regarding my career, so any advice will be very welcome. **Update** Thank you all for spending time to help me with my problem. All of the answers and comments have been very helpful. I have decided to stick with PHP but also to learn C# and Silverlight 4. We'll see where the life will take me."}
{"_id": "115960", "title": "Help on clarification of a formal statement concerning algorithms running time", "text": "I am reading the following in a book on algorithms (Cormen's to be specific): > That is, we are concerned with how the running time of an algorithm > increases with the size of the input in the limit, as the size of the input > increases without bound. I can not understand what is the meaning of the phrase: `with the size of the input in the limit`.   What is the limit refering about? **UPDATE:** Please note that at this point in the book (early fundamentals of chapter 2) there has been no formal definition or mention of Big O or other asymptotic notation except a vague reference on Theta notation Any help?"}
{"_id": "111423", "title": "When would be the best time to start porting the code of my own project?", "text": "If I have a personal programming project that I plan to port in another language so it could run in other environments, would it be more ideal to start porting the code as soon as possible and work on two versions concurrently? Or would that slow down my production a lot, and should I wait until I have finished some key components of the program?"}
{"_id": "196166", "title": "Transform math formula into code (line-line intersection)", "text": "I'm having hard times transforming a math formula to code. I can solve it on the paper easily, but it's hard for me to bring it into code form. Is it generally possible to bring a math formula _directly_ into a program, or, if not, how can it be transferred? Taking, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem: `a\u00b2 + b\u00b2 = c\u00b2`. Having `a` and `b` defined in the code, it is straight forward to apply this formula.               c = sqrt(pow(a, 2) + pow(b, 2))      Currently, I'm having hard times bringing the line-line intersection, that I've solved on paper, into my program. Assuming a line being defined as `L: O + a * D`, one can find the intersection of two lines by setting them as equal.               L1: O1 + a * D1     L2: O2 + b * D2          => O1 + a * D1 = O2 + b * D2      Using pen an paper, I would have already defined values and can solve the equation by splitting the equation into three sub-equations and applying simple substituion (I hope you can read my hand writing): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/APIIP.jpg) ## My actual problem ... is that substitution can not be applied algorithmically, or I don't know how to do. The equation `L1 = L2` must be transformed to a generalized formula that can be directly translated into code (like `a\u00b2 + b\u00b2 = c\u00b2`), but I don't know how. I was hoping for a step-by-step explanation (either as answer or linked) on how to come to the formula/algorithm I am searching for. I know there are quite many websites that describe the intersection of two lines, but I would like to understand how to find the algorithm **from a mathematical starting point**."}
{"_id": "166409", "title": "TDD - Outside In vs Inside Out", "text": "What is the difference between building an application **Outside In** vs building it **Inside Out** using TDD? These are the books I read about TDD and unit testing:   Test Driven Development: By Example   Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide: A Practical Guide   Real-World Solutions for Developing High-Quality PHP Frameworks and Applications   Test-Driven Development in Microsoft .NET   xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code   The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .Net   Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests\\--->This one was really hard to understand since JAVA isn't my primary language :) Almost all of them explained TDD basics and unit testing in general, but with little mention of the different ways the application can be constructed. Another thing I noticed is that most of these books (if not all) ignore the design phase when writing the application. They focus more on writing the test cases quickly and letting the design emerge by itself. However, I came across a paragraph in xUnit Test Patterns that discussed the ways people approach TDD. There are 2 schools out there **Outside In** vs **Inside Out**. Sadly the book doesn't elaborate more on this point. I wish to know what is the main difference between these 2 cases.   When should I use each one of them?   To a TDD beginner which one is easier to grasp?   What is the drawbacks of each method?   Is there any materials out there that discuss this topic specifically?"}
{"_id": "189267", "title": "Building an RPC framework", "text": "I'm curious about what it takes to build a simple and robust RPC framework. I've only looked at a few ruby frameworks but they are all lacking in some way. What I want out of an RPC framework is some kind of registration/discovery mechanism and a simple plugin architecture. Pretty much all the frameworks out there provide a simple plugin mechanism but I haven't found one that provides a simple discovery mechanism. The only one that does provide something in terms of discovery is MCollective but that has its own set of issues that I've run into while trying to use it at work. So how hard would it be to build one from the ground up using tcp sockets or maybe 0MQ? Any issues I should be aware of ahead of time before I start this project?"}
{"_id": "189261", "title": "NoSQL (Azure Table Storage) RowKey design for ordered data", "text": "I store large quantities of GPS data in storage tables. Each partition can reach up to 1 million entities. Each GPS entity that is inserted into the table is actually sequential to the previous data inserted, so order matters. Sometimes I need to perform the following query: > _**Get the previous/next 3 GPS entities from the current entity (within the > same partition)._** Options for RowKey design:   1. **Create an incrementing integer.** But how do I track what the current size of the table is? There is no way to get table row count, or to get the last inserted row.   2. **Use DateTime Ticks.** But how do get the previous/next entity using ticks? I'm using the SDK version 2.0 in C#."}
{"_id": "56438", "title": "Not getting paid for hours you've worked?", "text": "So I was reading from a previous thread about App vs Game Development:   If it was for you to chose Game Development vs Application Development, which will you chose? Which brought me to this site: EA: The Human Story A lot of it talked about developers working something like 85 hours a week, and not getting paid overtime, or anything. Just getting paid for the 40 hours. Is this normal for most software companies? I mean where I work I'm only an entry level guy but I get overtime, and anything over 40 hours is considered this. But it got me thinking \"Holy crap\" I could never do that. My FREE time is important to me. But is this commonplace in most software companies? Or is more a rarity to certain types (game development, etc)? Because it got me scared! Like I understand having to put some extra hours in for a project... but like 80! that's ridiculous."}
{"_id": "56437", "title": "What is the best way to learn how to develop secure applications?", "text": "I would like to get into computer security in my career. What are the best ways to learn how to program securely? It seems to me that, besides textbooks and taking classes in the subject, perhaps learning how to \"hack\" would be one of the best ways to learn. My reason for thinking this is the thought that the best way to learn how to prevent someone from doing what you don't want them to is to learn what they're capable of doing. If this is the case, then this poses another question: How would you go about learning to hack in an ethical manner? I definitely don't want to break laws or cause harm in my quest."}
{"_id": "56430", "title": "Haskell web frameworks survey", "text": "There are several web frameworks for Haskell like Happstack, Snap, and Yesod, and probably a few more. In what aspects do they differ from each other? For example:   * features (e.g. server only, or also client scripting, easy support for different kinds of database)   * maturity (e.g. stability, documentation quality)   * scalability (e.g. performance, handy abstraction)   * main targets Also, what are examples of real-world sites / web apps using these frameworks? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "253798", "title": "What to Return with Async CRUD methods", "text": "While there is a similar question focused on Java, I've been in debates with utilizing Task objects. What's the best way to handle returns on CRUD methods (and similar)? Common returns we've seen over the years are:   * Void (no return unless there is an exception)   * Boolean (True on Success, False on Failure, exception on unhandled failure)   * Int or GUID (Return the newly created objects Id, 0 or null on failure, exception on unhandled failure)   * The updated Object (exception on failure)   * Result Object (Object that houses the manipulated object's ID, Boolean or status field to with success or failure indicated, Exception information if there was one, etc) The concern comes into play as we've started moving over to utilizing C# 5's Async functionality, and this brought the question up of how we should handle CRUD returns large-scale. In our systems we have a little of everything in regards to what we return, we want to make these returns standardized... Now the question is what is the recommended standard? Is there even a recommended standard yet? (I realize we need to decide our standard, but typically we do so by looking at best practices, see if it makes sense for us and go from there, but here we're not finding much to work with)"}
{"_id": "253799", "title": "Approaching SICP in Clojure instead of Scheme", "text": "I am a third year bachelor student in a software engineering program, and I brought up the idea of reading SICP to an adviser to gain a deeper and more fundamental understanding of the principles behind all this software we engineer. He suggested not to learn Scheme to complete the book (because it's not as common as modern dialects of Lisp) but to do the exercises in Clojure instead. It's an already difficult book, if I do attempt the book's exercises in the more modern Clojure, how would that work? For example, I can't find any real solutions, the syntax they teach for Scheme is different, etc."}
{"_id": "227942", "title": "ANSI C pointers corrupted values", "text": "I am working on ANSI C and having some issues with the pointers. That is that after a point in my program the pointer's values change without me interfering, is something like overwriting them. I know that this could happen in C, but while being a beginner, can not find a remedy for that. Is there a straightforward way of solving this? As I understand, many people will have faced similar issues. Thank you guys for your answers,were very helpful,was indeed a memory problem solved by just allocating larger blocks of memory!!! Thank you again!!!!"}
{"_id": "227941", "title": "Next power of 2 for a number (in search for better \"bit-twiddling\" way)", "text": "I just wonder if there exists _better_ (i.e. faster?) way to get the next power of 2 for a given number than the following one (maybe some _better_ sort of \"bit-twiddling\" hack is possible?) ...               static size_t     npow2(size_t n)     {             n--;             n |= n >> 1;             n |= n >> 2;             n |= n >> 4;             n |= n >> 8;             n |= n >> 16;             return n + 1;     }      Thanks for your ideas."}
{"_id": "155904", "title": "Importing Data from Google Analytics", "text": "I am planning on building a web app with many different public-facing HTTP servers; each of which will have Google Analytics (GA) installed on them. I'd like to create a \"dashboard\" app that consolidates the GA data into one screen. I've been perusing the documentation for this so-called GA API, but I can't tell what the end result of the GA API is:   * Does the GA API allow me to do exactly what I am looking for it to do? Or...   * Does the GA API do something entirely different (like allow me to share my data with Google+ or something else weird) Since an API can be used to CRUD any kind of data, I guess I'm asking which way the GA API goes: is it for querying (reading) data from 1+ server instances, or is it for modifying data on those servers or somewhere else? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "22404", "title": "What order do you develop program layers?", "text": "I liked the question about favorite program layer: What is your favorite program layer to work on? What order do you build them in or do different team members develop corresponding parts simultaneously?"}
{"_id": "143623", "title": "What are deferred callbacks?", "text": "I understand the idea of a callback, where I pass a function into another function and that function then uses the supplied function at will. I am struggling to understand deferred callbacks, even after googling it. Could someone provide a simple explanation please? I program in Ruby, but also know C/C++ a bit, but most of all I was a experienced assembly language programmer. So I am wondering is it a bit like a stack of callback addresses that get pop'd? I am hoping to learn jquery or node.js and these deferred callbacks seem integral to both. I understand basic threading principles (though mutex object makes my head hurt ;)"}
{"_id": "250449", "title": "Test Driven Development for Complex Games", "text": "I'm coding a game in my spare time, but I am mostly still a beginner when it comes to programming. I'm sorry if this question is off topic or if it ends up not being helpful to anyone else, but hopefully it will be. I've spent a lot of time reading books about the design of code, as well as different methodologies and approaches to coding. In the course of this research I keep running into the concept of Test Driven Development. The people who espouse this idea usually seem very passionate about it. I do believe that it can help the speed and efficiency of writing software. Time is a very precious resource so I would rather learn to do things the best way rather than muddle through without trying to expand my knowledge of the programming craft. Anyway, possibly because I am a beginner, I cannot imagine how to apply test driven development to games. I've found a couple of articles on the subject but they were not very helpful. Most of the examples of unit tests that I have seen are very simple boilerplate examples, or examples from software that is not at all like a game. In my own coding, I try to approach it with a similar mindset to test driven development, although I'm sure it does not actually qualify as TDD. I write the minimum amount of code to try to implement whatever feature I am adding to the game, and then I immediately test the game to see if it works. If things don't happen as I intended, I immediately make changes to get it closer to what I want. If it is not working or broken, and if I cannot find the bugs by reading the code, I step through the methods in the debugger until I find the unexpected behavior, and then I remove it. What I am trying to say is that I am constantly testing the game, pretty much after each and every incremental change. Testing drives my development. The \"unit test\" is in my head, because for example I know what the unit in my game is supposed to be doing, so I test to make sure that it is doing it, and if not, I try to fix it right away. On to my actual question. How can one write unit tests for a complex game? By complex, I mean with many emergent aspects of gameplay, such that the meat of the gameplay emerges from the interaction between the many different elements inside the game combined with the player's choices. For example, a roguelike rpg with a procedural world. What kind of unit tests would one write for a game like that? How could one apply test driven development to such a game?"}
{"_id": "250448", "title": "I have a legacy project that I'm working on, how should I improve its structure?", "text": "I have a slightly old PHP project I'm working on for a client (I think it was started around 5 years ago), it makes extensive use of the outmoded `mysql_query` function, which is concerning not only because it's now deprecated but because it could also open security holes. The project doesn't seem to have much of a structure either, I think the original developer had some kind of method when working on it, but there's no documentation and I'm not able to get in contact with him regarding said project. As I've been going through I've been switching the database queries to use PDO, and trying to clean things up a little, but it's quite a big project (a few hundred php files) and I don't want to spend too much time restructuring things at it detracts from the time I've got allotted to this each month. What should I do? Would a rewrite be a good idea? Or should I simply try and re-mold the current project into something a little nicer?"}
{"_id": "250447", "title": "Android Icons Square", "text": "I created an action bar icon for an Android app I'm working on and it seems to downscale my icon. The thing is, it isn't a square icon. The width is greater than the height. Do I really HAVE to provide square icons or is there a workaround for this? I don't really want to ditch my icons just because of this..."}
{"_id": "250441", "title": "What are the key differences between Java's and Python's OOP support?", "text": "The only language I've ever used is Java. I like it a lot but decided it's time to learn another language :) . I'm interested in learning Python. It seems like a good choice because it's partly similar to Java (e.g. full class based OOP support) and partly very different (e.g. dynamically typed). I was reading some tutorials and am starting to learn the basics. Some of what I've read so far is confusing and I'm starting to think that maybe there are major differences in the OOP implementation of the two languages. I want a clear picture of this: please explain the key differences of the OOP support between the two languages."}
{"_id": "250443", "title": "Asynchronous Web Language", "text": "I'm searching for a suitable way to make web requests to databases and display results in real-time. The data will be used in an interface for staff, so there cannot be any blocking or lag as time is a key factor. So far, I've been using PHP for the backend of the system. However now that I've come to the interface, I'm slightly stuck. I've used java (android) asynchronously before, and ideally am after a similar method of processing calls. From what I've read there is no current way of using php truly asynchronously. **What** is a good web language to use for this purpose? or what are my available options?"}
{"_id": "190867", "title": "In an interview, is it better to code a brute-force solution to a tough question, or to spend the interview examining the question carefully?", "text": "Sometimes interview questions are hard, whether the interviewer intends them to be, or not. It can come down to a choice of whether to use the limited interview time to code up an ugly, inefficient, brute-force solution, or spend the time understanding every aspect of the problem with the interviewer. For example, Problem 91 at Project Euler can be solved by a not-so difficult brute-force solution of calculating every possible triangle, writing an isRightTriangle() test, and popping all triangles that pass the test into a set. But the two pair of X/Y coordinates make that an O(x^4) solution with a high constant value. A friend and I just came up with a solution that is much more elegant and efficient, but the two of us spent 3 hours on it and drew dozens of diagrams, tested multiple formulae, examined multiple approaches, etc. Not every interview question is fair. Also what's easy for one person may be hard for another. If someone struggles with a question, would you be more impressed by a brute force ugly solution that works? Or excellent problem comprehension and in-roads toward an elegant solution, but no coded solution? Is there a rule like after 20 minutes you should just start coding no matter what?"}
{"_id": "160580", "title": "How to force evaluation in Haskell?", "text": "I am relatively new to Haskell and I am trying to learn how different actions can be executed in sequence using the do notation. In particular, I am writing a program to benchmark an algorithm (a function)               foo :: [String] -> [String]      To this purpose I would like to write a function like               import System.CPUTime          benchmark :: [String] -> IO Integer     benchmark inputList = do                              start <- getCPUTime                              let r = foo inputList                              end <- getCPUTime                              return (end - start) -- Possible conversion needed.      The last line might need a conversion (e.g. to milliseconds) but this is not the topic of this question. Is this the correct way to measure the time needed to compute function foo on some argument inputList? In other words, will the expression `foo inputList` be completely reduced before the action `end <- getCPUTime` is executed? Or will `r` only be bound to the thunk `foo inputList`? More in general, how can I ensure that an expression is completely evaluated before some action is executed?"}
{"_id": "246690", "title": "Why does F# Core define generic array types?", "text": "I just noticed that the FSharp.Core namespace includes generic array types of up to 4 dimensions, i.e. Core.[]<'T>, Core.[,]<'T>, etc. C# and VB seem to be doing just fine with System.Array - although it's not clear to me how they manage to support strongly-typed specialized array types like int[], string[]. I guess this becomes two questions then:   * How does C# support strongly-typed specialized array types like int[] based on the non-generic System.Array?   * Given that C# manages to do this, why does F# define generic array types?"}
{"_id": "160589", "title": "How would you test Google Maps \"Get Directions\" feature?", "text": "(I imagine this would be a good interview question, but in my case it's more pragmatic than that.) We have a large & complex application that models an extremely long and sophisticated chemical reaction process between dozens of chemical components. We are at the stage of designing Acceptance Tests for the application, but we are somewhat daunted by the intractable number of possible paths to test. It occurred to me that our situation is very much like what the Google Maps dev team must have faced when it came time to test the route-planning algorithm in their \"Get Directions\" feature. Obviously they couldn't test (verify and validate) every possible route. So how did they get confidence that their application would work in every situation? And since I don't expect to find out how _they_ did it, let me ask you: How would _you_ go about designing a test suite with adequate code coverage, to satisfy yourself that a given application is robust -- when it is literally impossible to probe every potential path through the system? What I'm looking for are the principles that you would use to break down an intractable problem into smaller, tractable pieces, the sum of which provide a satisfactory estimate of the whole: \"I can't test everything, but I can test this, this and this -- and that's enough.\" I'm not looking for an approach that is \"provably correct\", but rather one that is _prudent_ , given real- world budget/time constraints. (I'm using the Google maps example as something of a foil to solicit answers that are as specific as possible.)"}
{"_id": "253868", "title": "Passing functions into other functions as parameters, bad practice?", "text": "We've been in the process of changing how our AS3 application talks to our back end and we're in the process of implementing a REST system to replace our old one. Sadly the developer who started the work is now on long term sick leave and it's been handed over to me. I've been working with it for the past week or so now and I understand the system, but there's one thing that's been worrying me. There seems to be a lot of passing of functions into functions. For example our class that makes the call to our servers takes in a function that it will then call and pass an object to when the process is complete and errors have been handled etc. It's giving me that \"bad feeling\" where I feel like it's horrible practice and I can think of some reasons why but I want some confirmation before I propose a re-work to system. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this possible problem?"}
{"_id": "75327", "title": "Is iron ruby on Silverlight a viable alternative to C#?", "text": "I've heard a lot of buzz about the Iron languages.. I mostly write line of business applications in c# and I'm not really enjoying c# these days. Is IronRuby mature and fast enough to be used in silverlight right now? As in am I gonna get a call in the middle of the night from an angry customer cause the silverlight app they depend on is buggy / grindingly slow?"}
{"_id": "75322", "title": "Which language was used to create Visual Studio 2010?", "text": "In order to produce a plug in and incorporate it (merge) easily with Visual Studio 2010. I was wondering which language was used by Microsoft to create it? In order to offer our product to Microsoft, we must know which language is better to integrate with Visual Studio. Was it pure C++? A friend of mine told me it was written in C#."}
{"_id": "3662", "title": "Is your physical programming environment organized?", "text": "So the question is this: wherever you sit down and do your magic, is it neat and organized or chaotic and in disarray ? Do you find that your level of organization follows linearly with your current position in the project? (ie. The project is on track and life is good, few bugs and major milestones are being met, desk is clean enough to do brain surgery or the project is way off track, bugs are flying everywhere and my desk is a dumpster)"}
{"_id": "21831", "title": "Do you believe it's a good idea for Software Engineers to have to work as Quality Assurance Engineers for some period of time?", "text": "I believe it is. Why?   1. I've encountered many Software Engineers who believe they are somehow superior to QA engineers. I think it may help quench this belief if they do the job of a QA engineer for some time, and realize that it is a unique and valuable skill-set of its own.   2. The better a Software Engineer is at testing their own programs, the less cost in time their code incurs when making its way through the rest of the software development life-cycle.   3. The more time a Software Engineer spends thinking about how a program can break, the more often they are to consider these cases as they are developing them, thus reducing bugs in the end product.   4. A Software Engineer's definition of \"complete\" is always interesting...if they have spent time as a QA engineer maybe this definition will more closely match the designer of the software's. Note I make above suggestion with a small time-frame in mind as I am aware having someone work in a position that is not the position they are hired for is definitely a recipe for losing that developer. What do you all think?"}
{"_id": "253863", "title": "Project structure: where to put business logic", "text": "First of all, I'm not asking where does business logic belong. This has been asked before and most answers I've read agree in that it belongs in the model: Where to put business logic in MVC design?   How much business logic should be allowed to exist in the controller layer?   How accurate is \"Business logic should be in a service, not in a model\"?   Why put the business logic in the model? What happens when I have multiple types of storage?   However people disagree in the way this logic should be distributed across classes. There seem to exist three major currents of thought:   1. Fat model with business logic inside ~~entity~~ classes.   2. Anemic model and business logic in \"Service\" classes.   3. It depends. I find all of them problematic. The first option is what most Fowlerites stick to. The problem with a fat model is that sometimes a business logic funtion is not only related to a class, and instead uses a bunch of other classes. If, for example, we are developing a web store, there should be a function that calcs an order's total. We could think of putting this function inside the Order class, but what actually happens is that the logic needs to use different classes, not only data contained in the Order class, but also in the User class, the Session class, and maybe the Tax class, Country class, or Giftcard, Payment, etc. Some of these classes could be composed inside the Order class, but some others not. Sorry if the example is not very good, but I hope you understand what I mean. Putting such a function inside the Order class would break the single responsibility principle, adding unnecesary dependences. The business logic would be scattered across entity classes, making it hard to find. The second option is the one I usually follow, but after many projects I'm still in doubt about how to name the class or classes holding the business logic. In my company we usually develop apps with offline capabilities. The user is able to perform entire transactions offline, so all validation and business rules should be implemented in the client, and then there's usually a background thread that syncs with the server. So we usually have the following classes/packages in every project:   * Data model (DTOs)   * Data Access Layer (Persistence)   * Web Services layer (Usually one class per WS, and one method per WS method). Now for the business logic, what is the standard approach? A single class holding all the logic? Multiple classes? (if so, what criteria is used to distribute the logic across them?). And how should we name them? FooManager? FooService? (I know the last one is common, but in our case it is bad naming because the WS layer usually has classes named FooWebService). The third option is probably the right one, but it is also devoid of any useful info. To sum up:     * I don't like the first approach, but I accept that I might have been unable to fully understand the Zen of it. So if you advocate for fat models as the only and universal solution you are welcome to post links explaining how to do it the right way.   * I'd like to know what is the standard design and naming conventions for the second approach in OO languages. Class names and package structure, in particular. It would also be helpful too if you could include links to Open Source projects showing how it is done. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "24801", "title": "How can I judge whether a project is particularly complex or if I'm just slow in picking it up?", "text": "I'm making little progress on a major project. The source is massive, many layers of objects, macaroni code, double-diamond graphs of multiple inheritance, half-baked features frozen when the original writer left, and no one knows why many pieces of it were designed the way they were. So, I suppose any competent programmer would have some trouble figuring it all out well enough to fix bugs, finish the half-baked stuff and add new features. But I suspect I'm going slower than a typical programmer. How to judge whether the source is unusually bad, and I'm just doing as well as anyone could, versus the source is typical for a project like this and I'm just slow-witted or underskilled?"}
{"_id": "133145", "title": "Should I use WADL to describe my RESTful API?", "text": "I'm about to embark on a project that makes extensive use of a properly RESTful approach. That is, it uses HATEOAS and serves up resources in a manner that allows for general exploration by a client. I would like to ensure that I provide a description of my endpoints in a manner that would allow client applications to be automatically generated in a wide variety of languages. I understand that for SOAP based web services I can use WSDL and that apparently there is WSDL2 that provides greater definition of the HTTP verbs in use with REST. However I see many articles swinging back and forth over it's utility. So, should I use WADL to allow external code generators to quickly build a client for my web application or is there a better standard that is expected?"}
{"_id": "253864", "title": "How to refactor a myriad of similar classes", "text": "I'm faced with similar classes A1, A2, ..., A100. Believe it or not but yeah, there are roughly hundred classes that almost look the same. None of these classes are unit tested (of course ;-) ). Each of theses classes is about 50 lines of code which is not too much by itself. Still this is way too much duplicated code. I consider the following options:   1. Writing tests for A1, ..., A100. Then refactor by creating an abstract base class AA.   _Pro_ : I'm (near to totally) safe by the tests that nothing goes wrong.   _Con_ : Much effort. Duplication of test code.   2. Writing tests for A1, A2. Abstracting the duplicated test code and using the abstraction to create the rest of the tests. Then create AA as in 1.   _Pro_ : Less effort than in 1 but maintaining a similar degree of safety.   _Con_ : I find generalized test code weird; it often seems ... incoherent (is this the right word?). Normally I prefer specialized test code for specialized classes. But that requires a good design which is my goal of this whole refactoring.   3. Writing AA first, testing it with mock classes. Then inheriting A1, ..., A100 successively.   _Pro_ : Fastest way to eliminate duplicates.   _Con_ : Most Ax classes look very much the same. But if not, there is the danger of changing the code by inheriting from AA.   4. Other options ... At first I went for 3. because the Ax classes are really very similar to each other. But now I'm a bit unsure if this is the _right_ way (from a unit testing enthusiast's perspective)."}
{"_id": "243279", "title": "Parsing a website's source", "text": "I want to create an application and maybe upload it to the play store but I am not sure if that what my app does is legal or not. I am downloading a page's source from a website to get some information I need. For example if I download a page about the song \"Ramble On\" by Led Zeppelin and parse this page source to get the song's name, maybe a link to an image and the lyrics. Would that be illegal or can I display these information to my users without getting any problem? Also the website says it's an \"open 'wiki-style' [...].It's completely user built by people like you and used every day by fans and developers alike.\""}
{"_id": "40018", "title": "Amount of man hours to write a social network", "text": "I have big dreams of writing the next Facebook (unrealistic I know) and I'm in the planning stages as we speak and I'm umming and ahing about using a php framework for this and how many development hours it would actually save me. If any? Also is it unrealistic for one person to hand code an entire social network solo? Whats the largest application anyone has written on their own? I should also point out that I have a day job, so late nights and evenings it is. And pregnant partners to deal with :)"}
{"_id": "114615", "title": "C++ XML Parsing: Suggestions on Approach for Parsing and Storing data", "text": "I am looking into developing a C++ application to parse xml (using the rapidxml framework), and I would like some advice on how to approach this. The file I want to parse is a XML game file that defines a set of addons for a starship ('outfits'), which have several attributes in common (like name and cost), but also fall into various categories. For example: Fixed weapons: range, rate of fire Turret weapons, range, rate of fire, turret slew speed Afterburners: acceleration modifier, fuel burn speed etc etc etc There are at least 5 classifications of outfits (and say 3 or 4 outfits that fall into each category), and some, like the weapons, have a few attributes in common with each other, but not with other categories like afterburners. I want to write parsing code to handle each type of object and store its data in objects. I also want to minimize how much code I have to retype (i.e. make use of good OOP style so I can add new categories or tweak existing ones in the future). **What is the best way to approach this?** I have already started the program, but I would like to have some input on the best approach. Since this is a really broad question, I will give you some of my thoughts/specific questions so you can see what I am looking for:   * Should I have a basic class called 'outfit' and use inheritance to customize the parsing for each specific category (i.e. 'fixed-weapons')? Should I have multiple levels of inheritance for similar categories (i.e. 'weapons'). How can I minimize code retyping so I only have to write the specific routines for each category?   * Where should I handle the errors: in 'outfit', or in the derived classes? How much error handling do I need?   * How can I easily access these objects later? Should I make a list-object with a vector containing each object? How can I access each object by name? Any input is appreciated; you don't have to give a complete and comprehensive rundown on how to do this (though that would be nice :P)."}
{"_id": "209239", "title": "Which one subsumes the other: class-based object-orientation or prototypal inheritance?", "text": "In this talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook, Douglas Crockford claims that class-based object-orientation can be represented in terms of prototypal inheritance. The construction he gives is something like:               var theObject = function() {       var private1 = ...;       var private2 = ...;       ...       return {         public1: ...,         public2: ...,         ...       };     };      He also claims that the converse is not true: prototypal inheritance cannot be in general encoded using class-based constructs only. I have been thinking about it for a while, and it seems to me that both claims are wrong.   1. The supposed \"encoding\" of class-based object-orientation is wrong from an operational semantics point of view. In a typical class-based object-oriented language, member variables and functions are _known_ to exist, so they can be directly used. The prototypal \"encoding\" relies on testing _at runtime_ whether a member is present in an object/hashtable. Ergo, the semantics are different.   2. Prototypal inheritance actually _can_ be encoded in a class-based object-oriented language. I will use C++ as an example, but any other class-based object-oriented language could be used.               struct prototypal     {       std::shared_ptr<prototypal> base;       std::unordered_map<std::string, boost::any> members;            boost::any & operator [] (const std::string & key)       {         auto it = members.find (key);         if (it == members.end ())         {           if (base)             return (*base) [key];           else             throw std::logic_error { \"Member not found.\" };         }         else           return *it;       }     };      Is my analysis wrong? Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "99912", "title": "git/svn Hooks for PHP/Zend Projects", "text": "just because i think we are not using the full potential of all possibilites here yet: What Pre/Post Commit Hooks (i.e. PHPUnit, PHPDoc) do you people use on your Team Git/SVN Servers? By now we do use a minification script (sadly only removes unneccessary space and comments and merges files), PHPDoc, PHPUnit and that's it already. Any good ideas that might be usefull as well?"}
{"_id": "99915", "title": "Orthogonality of unit tests vs. concision of unit tests", "text": "I'm writing unit tests for a steering system for a video game. The system has several behaviours (avoid this area because of reason A, avoid this area because of reason B, each adding a bit of context to a map of the region. A separate function then parses the map and produces a desired movement. I'm having trouble deciding how to write the unit tests for the behaviours. As TDD suggests, I'm interested only in how the behaviours affect the desired movement. For instance, avoid-because-of-reason-A should result in a movement away from the suggest bad position. I don't care actually how or why the behaviour adds context to the map, only that the desired movement is away from the position. So my tests for each behaviour set up the behaviour, make it write to the map, then executes the map-parsing function to work out the desired movement. If that movement satisfies my specifications then I'm happy. However now my tests depend on both the behaviours working correctly, and the map parsing function working correctly. If the parsing function fails, then I would get hundreds of failed tests rather than a couple. Many test-writing guides suggest this is a bad idea. However if I test directly against the output of the behaviours by mocking out the map, then surely I'm coupling too tightly to the implementation? If I can get the same desired movement from the map by using a slightly different behaviour, then the tests should still pass. So now I'm suffering cognitive dissonance. What's the best way to structure these tests?"}
{"_id": "210403", "title": "Storing graphs with json and db", "text": "I have a Rails 4 app having to do with graphs. These graphs need to be stored and I'm not sure of the best way to do it. Firstly, the app has a SQLite db in development and PostgreSQL in production. I would love to have graphs in JSON, but that can be achieved in several ways. Also, these graphs are going to be manipulated using some interface. I was thinking a graphical solution and a raw one in JSON. I have some alternatives to implementation:   1. Store the graph JSON files directly in the db. (how?)   2. Store the graphs in db with tables (graph, edges, vertex) (probably not...)   3. Store the graphs in db with tables and build a parser to manipulate the in JSON format. What is your recommendations?"}
{"_id": "64988", "title": "How can I learn how to use Smarty effectively?", "text": "I have some experience in PHP4, but after learning the object-oriented parts of PHP, I'm having difficulty understanding how to use the Smarty template engine. The official documentation appears to require a level of knowledge I don't have yet so it doesn't seem like a good place to start. What do I need to know to jump into Smarty template development? Or if Smarty isn't the standard PHP template system anymore, how should I go about templating?"}
{"_id": "99919", "title": "What features did c get from c++?", "text": "What features were added to C that were originally in C++?   When where they added and for what reason(what where the pro/con arguments)?   How do they differ in C as compared to C++?   Did the features originate in C++ or in another language? Examples (feel free to expand on): const, Function prototypes, implicit exit(0);"}
{"_id": "243122", "title": "How to be Agile when new work keeps affecting completed work?", "text": "The project I'm working on is to re-skin an existing website. The functionality will stay the same, it's just the styles that are changing. In other words, I'm not modifying the HTML, only the CSS files. The site is pretty complex, with dozens of pages. Logged-in users can have a number of different roles, and depending on their role, the content of the page and what pages they are allowed to see varies. We're using Git and Github. I'm trying to write CSS that works as components, so when the same form elements, headings, etc. appear on multiple pages, they are consistent. Most of time this is working well. Sadly, the format and class names in the HTML are at times messy and unpredictable. When I fix something on one page it can break another. The job is also harder as no one knows exactly all the variations that are possible due to user roles; as such I'm continuously finding new variations as I go along. I'm making headway by putting a lot of comments in my CSS. If I need to remove a CSS rule, I'll comment it out so that I can still see it with Chrome dev tools, and I'll put a comment in the CSS saying why I removed it and for what page this was done. This means that if on another page I'm about to add a rule to fix a different problem, there is a better chance that I'll see how it'll break the first page. This allows me to either find a different solution that will work for both pages, or I can make the override page specific. This has been working quite well for me. If I had free reign and the only goal was to finish the project by the deadline, then this method would be fine. However, my manager is trying to mitigate risk by breaking the work into areas to be completed per sprint. This is counter to how I have been approaching things as something like my typography styles will affect all other pages on the site. The other issue is that the different stakeholders want to sign off on each section as I go along. The problem is, once I've finished a section it may change if I change CSS that affects it along with the new section I'm working on. I've asked that the stakeholders have a quick unofficial sign off in stages (e.g. per sprint), and have the final official sign off at the end of the project, but this is being met with resistance. I understand why it would be higher risk to do this, but the only way to guarantee that a signed off section will not change is to make ALL future changes page specific. In addition to this I'm being told that all work that I push to the Git repo should be ready to go live, and as such should not contain any code comments. This is risky for me as I won't know until I've finished the site if I will ever benefit from these comments or not. Has anyone else been in a similar situation and managed to find a compromise that worked for my development approach and also the desires of management and stakeholders to have a more Agile approach? A more Agile workflow works great when you can break the work into components and know that once something is done it won't be affected by future work. However the nature of this project makes this hard to achieve."}
{"_id": "64983", "title": "How well should a fresh graduate know a language?", "text": "I am CS student and have just few months before I graduate. I can write programs, but use pretty many manuals in the process. It's almost 50% writing/50% reading (maybe even more reading). What I want to ask is how much do you need to know a language (technology, method etc.) to say in you CV, that you know it? Thanks in advance. P.S. I feel uneasy to learn just one technology to perfection, because it's limiting my further possibilities."}
{"_id": "153883", "title": "How are comments expressed in programming language grammars?", "text": "I'm learning how to build parsers using grammars, but I got stuck trying to express comments, because they can appear almost anywhere. This indicates that comments can be stripped from the token stream before parsing takes place. Is that the standard practice, or are comments ever/often specified in grammars?"}
{"_id": "153882", "title": "Testing To Prevent Cascading Bugs", "text": "Yesterday, Twitter was hit with a \"Cascading Bug\" as described in this blog post: > A \u201ccascading bug\u201d is a bug with an effect that isn\u2019t confined to a > particular software element, but rather its effect \u201ccascades\u201d into other > elements as well. I've seen this kind of bug, on a smaller scale of course, on some projects I've worked on. They can be difficult to identify in dev/test environments, even within a test driven development environment. My questions are... What are some strategies you use, beyond the basic TDD and standard regression testing, to identify and prevent the potential trouble points that might only occur in the production environment? Does the presence of such problems indicate a breakdown in the software development process or simply a by-product of complex software systems?"}
{"_id": "96131", "title": "SSIS: How long does it usually take to bring a new hire up to speed?", "text": "I\u2019m a self-taught SQL developer that has worked for small to mid-sized companies. Most of my experience has been writing SQL statements for reporting, data scrubs, and never in a formalized IT department. For my last job I planned and executed a full migration and wrote all of the new business processes and trained end-users. For the most part I\u2019m used to being the expert when it comes to developing database solutions, but this is only because no one in the room ever knew anything about databases. Now I\u2019m working with a team of developers as an SSIS interface developer. For the most part it\u2019s not rocket science but I\u2019m finding it hard to get up to speed. There is a lot going on in the database and the packages are we\u2019re developing are pretty complicated. I have spent much of my first month studying the system rather than coding. Is this normal? If so how long will it be before I\u2019m being productive and contributing in a meaningful way. I\u2019m used to hitting the ground running and being able to contribute from the get-go. How long does it usually take to bring a new hire up to speed?"}
{"_id": "57747", "title": "Combining Code Review with Trust Metrics", "text": "I don't get the chance to partake of it at work. But I love the idea of **code review**. Especially of online open source code review like Gerrit Code Review. I love what **Trust Metrics** have done for forums and collective intelligences sites on the internet like stackexchange, reddit, and wikipedia. Would it be possible to combine the two and come up with an open source project management system. Something that ends up being mostly community driven. Perhaps a kind of wikipedia of code for a project. Where submitters become popular/trusted by having lots of patches reviewed favoriably by others, and accepted into the trunk. And popular/trusted submitters get their patchs accepted faster/easier. I'm looking for some opinions on the idea, or perhaps pointers to where its been done before, if thats the case. This might leave the lead maintiner little more to do than:   * wrangle the direction of the project by fast-tracking or vetoing specific patches.    * settling disputes when the CI tests break, or fixing it himself.  Is design by community worse than design by committee?"}
{"_id": "23351", "title": "Algorithm for Learning development", "text": "This is a fairly general question. I know a bit of Perl and Python and I am looking to learn programming in more depth so that once I get the hang of it I can start developing applications and then websites. I would like to know of an algorithm (sequence of steps :)) that could describe my approach towards learning programming in general. I have posted small questions on Perl/Python and I have recieved great help from everyone. Note:- I am not in a hurry to learn. I know it takes time and that's fine. Please give any suggestions you think are valid. Also, please don't push me to learn Lisp, Haskell etc - I am a beginner."}
{"_id": "196832", "title": "function level error reporting: to combine/bundle errors or not?", "text": "What is in your opinion the best way to handle (at runtime) the situation when a **more than one** input parameter to a function is incorrect. I can see two ways. First one - a simply return an first error (by raising the exception or via some other way supported by a programming language) telling that the first of incorrect parameters is wrong. Alternatively, the function can check all the parameters, combine all the error messages into one and return it as a one. Or there might be some other approach. What would be your preference and why? Thank you."}
{"_id": "196831", "title": "Quicksort and middle pivot", "text": "I am having a head ache understanding quicksort with middle pivot. I found lot of explanations about using left most or right most, but not many about a middle one. Can I safely assume these?:   1. If left and right pointers meet at the same position, means that the element at that position is at its final sorted position, so I can split the list in two without including that element (list1 length + list2 length = list length -1).   2. If left and right cross each other ( so left > right), means that no element is at its final sorted position yet, so I must split the list in two using left and right as boundaries ( list1 length + list2 length = list length). Is this right? Thanks. **Update** : The reason why I want to use a middle pivot, is to implement the \"median algorithm\" that increases QS speed. In this techique, the pivot is selected by approximating the list middle value: http://www.brpreiss.com/books/opus4/html/page500.html"}
{"_id": "196830", "title": "Boolean Method Naming Affirmative vs Negative", "text": "Should boolean methods always take the affirmative form, even when they will only ever be used in the negative form? Say I wanted to check whether an entity exists before creating one, my argument is that the first form below is better than the second form, whether or not the method is ever used in the affirmative form. In summary, I find `if(!affirmative)` easier to read than `if(negative)`. I have a colleague who disagrees, thoughts? **First Form:**               int entity_id = 42;     if(!entity_exists(entity_id)) create_entity(entity_id);      **Second Form:**               int entity_id = 42;     if(entity_not_exist(entity_id)) create_entity(entity_id);"}
{"_id": "60157", "title": "Will Design Patterns Help me in this case?", "text": "recently I have been given a task of finding the combinations of the given word. For example, say The given word is **like** then possible answers are liek,lkie and so on. This has to be implemented in any language, doesn't matter, but the rule is we don't use the built-functions/API to find the combinations. And I guess we know design patterns are for solving any problem with a given solution. For example, Information Expert is a Design Pattern. Now my question is whether there is any design pattern for finding combinations? Or for these kind of things Design patterns wont suit and say i have to learn a good algorithm for finding the solution. Then what's the difference between Algorithm and Patterns, both try to solve the problem in a good efficient way, right? I don't know wthether my view is correct or not, please correct if I am wrong!"}
{"_id": "222707", "title": "Can I use Dependency Injection without breaking Encapsulation?", "text": "Here is my Solution and projects:   * BookStore _(solution)_     * BookStore.Coupler _(project)_       * Bootstrapper.cs     * BookStore.Domain _(project)_       * CreateBookCommandValidator.cs       * CompositeValidator.cs       * IValidate.cs       * IValidator.cs       * ICommandHandler.cs     * BookStore.Infrastructure _(project)_       * CreateBookCommandHandler.cs       * ValidationCommandHandlerDecorator.cs     * BookStore.Web _(project)_       * Global.asax     * BookStore.BatchProcesses _(project)_       * Program.cs **Bootstrapper.cs** :               public static class Bootstrapper.cs      {         // I'm using SimpleInjector as my DI Container         public static void Initialize(Container container)          {             container.RegisterManyForOpenGeneric(typeof(ICommandHandler<>), typeof(CreateBookCommandHandler).Assembly);             container.RegisterDecorator(typeof(ICommandHandler<>), typeof(ValidationCommandHandlerDecorator<>));             container.RegisterManyForOpenGeneric(typeof(IValidate<>),                 AccessibilityOption.PublicTypesOnly,                 (serviceType, implTypes) => container.RegisterAll(serviceType, implTypes),                 typeof(IValidate<>).Assembly);             container.RegisterSingleOpenGeneric(typeof(IValidator<>), typeof(CompositeValidator<>));         }     }      **CreateBookCommandValidator.cs**               public class CreateBookCommandValidator : IValidate<CreateBookCommand>     {         public IEnumerable<IValidationResult> Validate(CreateBookCommand book)         {             if (book.Author == \"Evan\")             {                 yield return new ValidationResult<CreateBookCommand>(\"Evan cannot be the Author!\", p => p.Author);             }             if (book.Price < 0)             {                 yield return new ValidationResult<CreateBookCommand>(\"The price can not be less than zero\", p => p.Price);             }         }     }      **CompositeValidator.cs**               public class CompositeValidator<T> : IValidator<T>     {         private readonly IEnumerable<IValidate<T>> validators;              public CompositeValidator(IEnumerable<IValidate<T>> validators)         {             this.validators = validators;         }              public IEnumerable<IValidationResult> Validate(T instance)         {             var allResults = new List<IValidationResult>();                  foreach (var validator in this.validators)             {                 var results = validator.Validate(instance);                 allResults.AddRange(results);             }             return allResults;         }     }      **IValidate.cs**               public interface IValidate<T>     {         IEnumerable<IValidationResult> Validate(T instance);     }      **IValidator.cs**               public interface IValidator<T>     {         IEnumerable<IValidationResult> Validate(T instance);     }      **ICommandHandler.cs**               public interface ICommandHandler<TCommand>     {         void Handle(TCommand command);     }      **CreateBookCommandHandler.cs**               public class CreateBookCommandHandler : ICommandHandler<CreateBookCommand>     {         private readonly IBookStore _bookStore;              public CreateBookCommandHandler(IBookStore bookStore)         {             _bookStore = bookStore;         }              public void Handle(CreateBookCommand command)         {             var book = new Book { Author = command.Author, Name = command.Name, Price = command.Price };             _bookStore.SaveBook(book);         }     }      **ValidationCommandHandlerDecorator.cs**               public class ValidationCommandHandlerDecorator<TCommand> : ICommandHandler<TCommand>     {         private readonly ICommandHandler<TCommand> decorated;         private readonly IValidator<TCommand> validator;              public ValidationCommandHandlerDecorator(ICommandHandler<TCommand> decorated, IValidator<TCommand> validator)         {             this.decorated = decorated;             this.validator = validator;         }              public void Handle(TCommand command)         {             var results = validator.Validate(command);                  if (!results.IsValid())             {                 throw new ValidationException(results);             }                  decorated.Handle(command);         }     }      **Global.asax**               // inside App_Start()     var container = new Container();     Bootstrapper.Initialize(container);     // more MVC specific bootstrapping to the container. Like wiring up controllers, filters, etc..      **Program.cs**               // Pretty much the same as the Global.asax      Sorry for the long setup to the problem, I have no better way of explaining this other than detailing my actual problem. I don't want to make my CreateBookCommandValidator `public`. I would rather it be `internal` but if I make it `internal` then I will not be able to register it with my DI Container. The reason I would like it to be internal is because the only project that should have notion of my IValidate<> implementations are in the BookStore.Domain project. Any other project just needs to consume IValidator<> and the CompositeValidator should be resolved which will fulfill all validations. How can I use Dependency Injection without breaking encapsulation? Or am I going about this all wrong?"}
{"_id": "222706", "title": "Combination of asp.net server side + html/js/jQuery client side", "text": "While working with asp.net, I came to an approach that uses asp.net services for the data/business logic layer and html/javascript/jquery for the UI layer, because I could not reach the needed level of customization of the user interface with asp.net web controls. While I've seen plenty of books describing usage of asp.net web controls and their integration with asp.net server side technology, and of html/js/jQuery client side web development without connection to any server side technology, I haven't seen any book dealing with combination of asp.net server side + html/js/jQuery client side. My question is, is this approach acceptable, or have I overlooked some widespread technology which is better suited to accomplishing such tasks? My constraint is that it has to be based on asp.net/mvc server side technology, because my management urges that."}
{"_id": "116618", "title": "Should I get a Math bachelors and then go into Computer Science?", "text": "This is my first question. I love Mathematics; I love the logic and the problem solving. At the same time, I enjoy Computer Science and hope to go into Artificial Intelligence research after I get my Bachelors degree, i.e pursue a PhD in Computer Science. Are there any advantages of having a firm grasp of Mathematics to studying Computer Science? Also, would I be at a disadvantage in getting a Bachelors in Mathematics instead of Computer Science when applying for graduate school to study Computer Science, particularly at institutions with high quality research infrastructure, like MIT and Stanford? Also, in reference to the first question, could you please tell me the advantages of a solid grasp of Mathematics, if there are any? Thank you."}
{"_id": "116614", "title": "Where does the term \"Red/Black Tree\" come from?", "text": "A Red/Black Tree is one way to implement a balanced binary search tree. The principles behind how it works make sense to me, but the chosen colors don't. Why red and black, as opposed to any other pair of colors or of attributes in general? When I hear \"red and black,\" the first things that come to mind are checkerboards and Les Mis\u00e9rables, neither of which seems particularly applicable in this context."}
{"_id": "199388", "title": "Why are there so many numeric types (bit, int, float, double, long)?", "text": "I've learned PHP, Java, and C. Now I'm curious as to why there are so many types of numerical data types like bit, int, float, double, and long. Why not make only one type for numericals? Is there any benefit to this? Maybe if we use integers to hold such small numbers we can save memory?"}
{"_id": "113065", "title": "Strange software development terminology", "text": "I have been working in a professional software development environment for a short while now. Over this short period of time I have heard some terminology I never knew existed. For example, in a status call a few weeks ago one of our developers said that he had been \"hand-jobbing\" things left and right. A few days ago, I heard a new one again, where someone in our company wants to \"dog-food\" some product of ours. So what is a \"strange\" term with respective definition, or list of terms that you know, that can improve on a new developer's professional vocabulary to improve on their communication and understanding of processes in the workplace? My list is as follows and I will add more as I come across them!   * Hand-jobbing: When a programmer resorts to some primitive or less-than-best-practice method of getting the job done, for the sake of getting something working, usually temporarily.   * Dog-fooding: When a company uses a product for internal use that they have or are currently selling to their customers, usually to save time and money, but also to show confidence in their own products. Also as a side note, I guess they don't have to really be TRUE software terminology as I've never heard anyone ever \"hand-job\" something as much as he did. However it should be something you have heard used in a professional environment that you would like to share."}
{"_id": "170731", "title": "Is perfectionism a newbie's friend or enemy?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where do you draw the line for your perfectionism? I see that the development community is very focused on doing things the right way and personally I would like to do the same too, however, is it a good or bad idea for a newbie to focus on design principles, design patterns, and commenting code when getting started, or is it better to let creativity run wild and potentially write sloppy code. Where should a newbie draw the line?"}
{"_id": "113061", "title": "Are there standard guidelines for auditing software for possible buyout?", "text": "We are in the process of auditing a company with a view to buying them out. One of the key parts of this decision is the software they've developed over a long period of time. We always have the option of building our own, but we are all aware that it could take us longer to get operational if we build from scratch. My question is rather specific: I come from a development / PM background, and have been asked to do a full audit of this company's software, which is a web application. We want to know as much as possible about it before we make the decision of whether to buy them out, and after a basic demo, their system seems to do what we want, but we know that we'll need to modify it to a certain extent. I am looking for a template or framework to work through in order to produce my final report. Its been really tough finding anything through Google; most of what I've found is just basic checklists at best. I would need a template or framework that deals with infrastructure, design, architecture, hosting, etc. Has anyone had experience with this? I would be very grateful if someone is willing to share their template/framework with me."}
{"_id": "53910", "title": "How to help junior programmers whose first language isn't English?", "text": "I've just changed jobs and am now working with a junior programmer whose first language is Cantonese. They have a computer science degree but are working in their first programming role after many years outside the computer industry. They have been working for the past two years in almost total isolation and have developed a lot of bad habits. A fellow contract programmer also speaks Cantonese, but his spoken English is quite poor, is also frustrated by the juniors approach to programming and are unsure what to do. Despite working on projects together in Cantonese the projects over run as the lack of an agreed/reviewed design means they have a merry-go-round of updates until a solution is reached. Despite gentle verbal encouragement to do so both still struggle to create even the most basic design documents, enter proper check-in comments (i.e. not just 'bug-fix','updates' etc) and contribute at all to the project wikis. At present the junior programmer doesn't read blogs, books or technical resources. When I ask how they become a better programmer they say they just think more about their own code. They are highly prone to reinventing the wheel with what I can only generously say are uniquely imaginative solutions to well solved problems. I have tried to explain the KISS principle and SRP to them but I'm not convinced they understand the benefit. I'm sure I can't have explained it very well to be honest. Since I'm not sure if English comprehension is a problem then that is a problem in itself. Can you recommend ways I can help them when;   * I can't speak any Cantonese and don't see learning any being effective in a realistic time frame   * Sending links to resources like thedailywtf.com appears to go over their heads   * The programming books we've bought remain unread I've found the following SO questions which might be useful to them but point two above applies;   * Programming information in your mother tongue   * Does \u201cEnglish\u201d hinder you to enhance your programming skills? Are there some programming exercises we could work through together? What tips are there to get some basic documentation created? Are there any Cantonese resources I could point them to? I appreciate how much easier it is when English is your native language. I genuinely want to help them as much as possible and not judge what could otherwise be perceived as an unwillingness to improve as a programmer."}
{"_id": "186201", "title": "If I hire you for \"a day\", how many hours are expected?", "text": "I've seen a lot of advice for freelance programmers which advocates quoting your rates in periods of a minimum of one day. That means that when someone asks your rate, you would say \"$500 per day\" rather than giving the equivalent hourly rate. If I agree to do 10 days of programming work for a client at a particular daily rate, how many hours are expected of me per day? What happens if I do 6 hours of actual programming on Monday and then do 8 on Tuesday.. is that two \"days\" or \"1.75 eight hour days\" or what? What's the standard?"}
{"_id": "199384", "title": "What does \"deploy to a physical machine\" mean", "text": "I was asked whether I've ever \"deployed to a physical machine\" and I'm seeing this terminology when googling, but not getting a definition. What does it mean? What other way could someone deploy an application if not to a physical machine?"}
{"_id": "205706", "title": "How can I apply Readme Driven Development to an ongoing project?", "text": "I'm assigned to a project where the goal is to update an existing software. This software was developed in a totally _ad hoc_ manner, which means that any documentation generated is outdated, confused and just plain useless. I do not want to retroactivelly produce all the missing artifacts, since this would just be a waste of time. The code base is ugly, and really need some serious refactoring, but this is another story. What I want is to apply Readme Driven Development to guide this project. So, basically, I want to write a Readme, which will document every change meaningful at the user level. The problem is, I have no idea about how to structure this document. For me, it's pretty clear that it should have a different layout than the traditional Readme. I really want to document changes, and not the current state of affairs. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "251799", "title": "Which patterns/architecture to apply for \"Import Data, Process Data, Export Result\"", "text": "I was wondering which architecture/patterns to choose for the following problem divided into three steps:   1. Import TestScript Description from File (e.g. .xls, .txt)   2. Process Described TestScript   3. Export Description with processed Results as .xml Here is what I got so far:   * Importer that reads in xls and creates a hierarchical object structure   * Parser that creates an Abstract Syntax Tree (If,then,else,end,command) from the object structure   * A Processor (VisitorPattern) of the AST. This Processor instantiates the command implementation, executes the command, collects the results and controls the flow (if, then, else) Currently the imported object structure already contains a field for the result and can just be serialized out as xml. But in my opinion it's not very elegant having a result field in the input objects. The main reason I don't like it is that I can not reuse the imported object structure in order to process it multiple times. I would like to divide the whole component also into three parts:   1. Import, which creates an hierarchical object structure that describes the TestScript (containing a fileparser and a preprocessor)   2. Process, which creates an AST and processes it   3. Export, which takes the results and the descriptions and writes it out Here a few other conditions:   * Not every AST Node represents an object in the object structure (description)   * But each result object is connected to an description object   * Description and Results are hierarchical"}
{"_id": "242832", "title": "Why are most GNU's software written in C", "text": "I am a Java developer, and I rarely write GUI program in C. However, I noticed that many GNU's projects, such as PSPP, R, Dia, etc., are written in C, instead of Java or C++. I personally don't mind this, but I am really curious why GNU favors C so much. My understanding is that C is the one that supports the least in object- oriented programming, and today's CS education really emphasizes OOP, as OOP really makes codes more reusable. In this case, why would so many developers choose to develop in C instead of C++ or Java. Does anyone know why GNU's software are so exclusively written in C? Do you think or GNU's software should be written in C++ or Java so that the source code could be more useful to people? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "251796", "title": "Boost Software License seems to extend disclaimer of warranty automatically but the author says it doesn't", "text": "Here is a copy of the Boost software license.               Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person or organization     obtaining a copy of the software and accompanying documentation covered by     this license (the \"Software\") to use, reproduce, display, distribute,     execute, and transmit the Software, and to prepare derivative works of the     Software, and to permit third-parties to whom the Software is furnished to     do so, all subject to the following:          The copyright notices in the Software and this entire statement, including     the above license grant, this restriction and the following disclaimer,     must be included in all copies of the Software, in whole or in part, and     all derivative works of the Software, unless such copies or derivative     works are solely in the form of machine-executable object code generated by     a source language processor.          THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR     IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,     FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT     SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS OR ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE     FOR ANY DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,     ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER     DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.      The second paragraph of the license requires the warranty disclaimer to be retained in all copies of the software (except purely binary ones). Further, in the warranty disclaimer both \"THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS\" as well as \"ANYONE DISTRIBUTING THE SOFTWARE\" is protected from being liable for damages. Here is a copy of the MIT license.               Copyright (C) <year> <copyright holders>          Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining     a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the     \"Software\"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including     without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,     distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to     permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to     the following conditions:          The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be     included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.          THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,     EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF     MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.     IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY     CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,     TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE     SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.      In contrast, the MIT license doesn't require the warranty disclaimer to be retained in all copies of the software and only the \"THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS\" are protected from being liable for damages. It looks like the Boost Software License provides better protection against liabilities to anyone dealing with the software (even those who are simply distributing the software). Also, the Boost Software License makes it mandatory to reproduce the disclaimer in all copies. Why then does the author of the Boost license mention in http://ideas.opensource.org/ticket/45 that the Boost license _\"does not extend the disclaimer of warranties to licensees, so that they may, if they choose, undertake such warranties (e.g., in exchange for payment)\"_?"}
{"_id": "251797", "title": "Is there anything inherently bad about mixing paradigms in an application?", "text": "I am currently in the process of writing a (custom) Minecraft server application in C#. I figured it's a good way to teach me a lot of important things like concurrency and especially memory efficiency (due to simply the vastness of the object space in Minecraft). While on the train yesterday, I was finding it hard to really \"think\" of a way to organize the network module. I wanted a simple external interface that would give out the necessaries (Let users react to a connection being received, message being received, and when a connection is dropped). However, I also wanted it to be fairly abstract such that I could allow for either real game clients to connect or simple fake clients. I started over-engineering things a la `IConnection`, `INetworkModule`, `IConnectionFactory`, `IConnectionProtocol`, `IMessageEncoder`, `IMessageDecoder` and so on. Kingdom of nouns galore. Not only that but I wasn't really getting **anywhere** \\- it just felt like I was putting the fundamental problem behind other layers of abstraction in that **I had no idea how I wanted to organize the communication between all these modules**. Then I came to the thought - why don't I just use **verbs** (actions/functions/methods/whatever) instead of **nouns** (types) - let's focus on what I want to achieve for now, and split it up into nouns later! And so, I came up with something similar to this:                   private static Func<IDisposable> Listen(             Action<TcpClient> onConnectionReceived,             Action<TcpClient> onConnectionDropped,             Action<TcpClient, int, byte[]> onBytesReceived,             Func<bool> isOpen)         {             // todo: 25565 needs to be injected             // todo: give opportunity to supply listener             // todo: refactor listener into role interface             var listener = new TcpListener(IPAddress.Any, 25565);             return () => Observable.FromAsync(listener.AcceptTcpClientAsync)                 .DoWhile(isOpen)                 .Subscribe(client =>                 {                     var stream = client.GetStream();                     // on subscribe invoke the delegate first                     onConnectionReceived(client);                     // the delegate has the option to disconnect the client                     // based on whatever criteria it see fit.                     // we should now create an observable to                      // listen for messages on this client.                     Observable.Defer(() =>                     {                         // 8kb buffer for each connection                         // this is actually fairly small                         var buffer = new byte[8024];                         // we can handle the 'doing' of things with these bytes                         // inside the passed function. This function will be doing too much otherwise                         return Observable.FromAsync(ct => stream.ReadAsync(buffer, 0, buffer.Length, ct))                             .Select(n => new {Read = n, Bytes = buffer});                     }).Subscribe(a =>                     {                         // drop connection if nothing was read                         if (a.Read <= 0)                             onConnectionDropped(client);                         else                             onBytesReceived(client, a.Read, a.Bytes);                     });                 });         }      Really simple. Well, I mean, not quite, but this basically does the role of all of the nouns (except `IMessageEncoder/Decoder` that I listed earlier), but only making assumptions of the fact that we need a `TcpClient` (obviously, that isn't what I want right now, but I can work to that in iteration 2!) However, my problem with this is, is that this isn't really **typical** C# code.. and it surely breaks the SRP in that this function is returning a function for the entire execution of a server. But - it makes sense to me. So my question is, is there any real inherent downside to using a functional- esque paradigm like this as opposed to traditional Kingdom of Nouns OOP inside of C# - traditionally a multi-paradigm language? And if there are downsides, what would I face and why? For the record, I intend for this to be OSS, so there's another issue in that some developers might not understand the code style because it's simply not OOP orientated, just pure functions."}
{"_id": "251795", "title": "Retaining disclaimer is mandatory in BSD-2-Clause license but not in MIT license", "text": "I see a difference between the BSD licenses and the MIT license. The BSD licenses require the complete disclaimer to be retained in all redistributions of source code or binary code. MIT license doesn't require it. I am reproducing the complete BSD-2-Clause license followed by the MIT license for your convenience. Here is the BSD-2-Clause license.               BSD-2-CLAUSE LICENSE     ====================          Copyright (c) <YEAR>, <OWNER>     All rights reserved.          Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without     modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are     met:          1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright        notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.     2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright        notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the        documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS     \"AS IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT     LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR     A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT     HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,     SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT     LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,     DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY     THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT     (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE     OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.      Here is the MIT license.               MIT LICENSE     ===========          Copyright (C) <year> <copyright holders>          Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining     a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the     \"Software\"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including     without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,     distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to     permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to     the following conditions:          The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be     included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.          THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,     EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF     MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.     IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY     CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,     TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE     SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.      While the BSD license mentions, \"must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and **the following disclaimer** \", the MIT license only mentions, \"The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included\", i.e. the MIT license doesn't require the disclaimer to be included. I am not looking for legal advice. I want to understand, as a programmer, if there is any good reason to release code in one of these licenses instead of the other because of this difference."}
{"_id": "105449", "title": "What's the difference between the terms \"protocol\" and \"standard\"?", "text": "I find the term \"protocol\" confusing (in the terms of computer science that is). If the protocol is just a set of rules, wouldn't it be easier if we used the term \"standard\" instead (like in \"HTTP standard\")?"}
{"_id": "105446", "title": "Applying SOLID principles", "text": "I am quite new to the S.O.L.I.D. design principles. I understand their cause and benefits, but yet i fail to apply them to a smaller project which I want to refactor as a practical exercise to use the SOLID principles. I know there is no need to change an application that works perfectly, but I want to refactor it anyway so I gain design experience for future projects. The application has the following task (actually a lot more than that but let's keep it simple): It has to read an XML file which contains Database Table/Column/View etc definitions and create an SQL file which can be used in order to create an ORACLE database schema. (Note: Please refrain from discussing why I need it or why I don't use XSLT and so on, there are reasons, but they are off-topic.) As a start, I chose to look only at Tables and Constraints. If you ignore columns, you could state it the following way: A constraint is part of a table (or more precisely, part of a CREATE TABLE statement), and a constraint may also reference another table. First, I will explain what the application looks like right now (not applying SOLID): At the moment, the application has a \"Table\" class which contains a list of pointers to Constraints owned by the table, and a list of pointers to Constraints referencing this table. Whenever a connection gets established, the backwards connection will be established as well. The table has a createStatement() method which in turn calls the createStatement() function of each Constraint. Said method will itself use the connections to the owner table and referenced table in order to retrieve their names. Obviously, this doesn't apply to SOLID at all. For example, there are circular dependencies, which bloated the code in terms of \"add\"/\"remove\" methods required and some large object destructors. So there are a couple of questions:   1. Should I resolve the circular dependencies using Dependency Injection? If so, I suppose the Constraint should receive the owner (and optionally the referenced) table in its constructor. But how could I run over the list of constraints for a single table then?   2. If the Table class both stores the state of itself (e.g. table name, table comment etc) and the links to Constraints, are these one or two \"responsibilities\", thinking of the Single Responsibility Principle?   3. In case 2. is right, should I just create a new class in the logical business layer which manages the links? If so, 1. would obviously no longer be relevant.   4. Should the \"createStatement\" methods be part of the Table/Constraint classes or should I move them out as well? If so, where to? One Manager class per each data storage class (i.e. Table, Constraint, ...)? Or rather create a manager class per link (similar to 3.)? Whenever I try to answer one of these questions I find myself running in circles somewhere. The problem obviously gets a lot more complex if you include columns, indices and so on, but if you guys help me out with the simple Table/Constraint thing, I can maybe work out the rest on my own."}
{"_id": "105444", "title": "What is a good way to reset the Primary Key?", "text": "We've hit an application issue with an Oracle table Primary Key exceeding the limits used by a Java Integer (2 ^ 32) and one of the suggestions is to reset this to 1000 and let it start again. OR change the code to use Java Long (2 ^ 64) instead. This has a ripple effect since this key is used as ID by a lot of other systems as well. And there can be future duplication (in the far future) Are there any suggestions on good and bad outcomes in this approach?"}
{"_id": "102796", "title": "What is the minimum subset of best/well-known practices in software development for a solo programmer?", "text": "I've been the lonely programmer in my work for quite a long time. Usually I've read articles and posts about   * Version Control Systems   * Continuous Integration/Delivery   * Development methodologies: Scrum, Waterfall, V-Model, Agile, XP, etc.   * Software Project Management But almost all of them seem to be focused on TEAMS. I'm not a team, so what would be the absolutely minimum set of practices for just one programmer? Consider the following conditions:   * I don't have conflicts with other's people code.   * I don't need to maintain files/directory trees, my developement environment cares about versioning by itself (image-based development).   * There are no formal requirements, my users don't know what they want and they're are ok with that.   * The only one which could be interested in delivering a release or documentation it's me, basically customer want RESULTS and doesn't care about software methodologies, etc My view is that I don't want to spend (too much) time and energy in anything not directly related with the customer requirements. Any recommendations?"}
{"_id": "251425", "title": "Why (most?) retro computer emulators are single threaded?", "text": "All real computer hardware works in parallel. So why most emulators of retro systems (like NES) are single threaded (or I'm not right?)? You have main loop and you counting CPU cycles and after certain cycles activating other hardware like PPU. Same thing applies to IBM PC and (MDA/CGA/VGA) emulation ? Thanks"}
{"_id": "113393", "title": "Recommended content for layers", "text": "As an expansion from my previous question about using separate projects for seperate layers - Good practice on Visual Studio Solutions I now wish to know if I am putting the right functionality in the correct layers. **Background** I'm building a WPF application from scratch, that contains business logic and business objects. The database itself sits on another server on the web with access to it, restricted to web API calls using OAuth authentication. I think the following content should be in these layers. The idea being, you go from layer 1 to layer 4, you are only depending on the layers below you. To prevent circular dependencies. **1\\. Presentation** WPF View (what the user will see) WPF ViewModel (how the program responds to user interaction) _No WPF Model, as it will just be the business object_ **2\\. Application/Services** Repository (class used by ViewModel to load/save business objects) Utility classes to assist in saving objects, by selecting the correct API calls. **3\\. Business layer** Business objects/Entities/DTO (whichever name is preferred) Factories (Used by the repositories in the creation of business objects) Other misc business class (i.e. storage of currently logged in user) **4\\. Infrastructure/Data Access** OAuth client (makes authenticated calls against the web server, used by repository classes)"}
{"_id": "251427", "title": "Pattern that prevents events to trigger themselves", "text": "I am working at the client-side part of a web application, that is responsible for getting answers from users for specific questions and storing and restoring them from the database (or cookies) and I am running into the issue that **updating the answers from the db will also trigger saving them again** (because the same method `answerQuestion` is called). Here's a simplification of my use-case (coffeescript):               class Questionnaire       constructor: ->         @prefillAnswers()         @listenToInput()         @listenToQuestionChanges()            prefillAnswers: ->         for q in @questionNames           @answerQuestion getAnswer(q)            listenToInput: ->         $('.input').on 'change', (e) =>           $input = $(e.currentTarget)           @answerQuestion $input.data('questionName'), $input.val()            listenToQuestionChanges: ->         @subscribeToEvent 'answeredQuestion', (msg, data) =>           saveAnswer(data.question, data.answer)            getAnswer: (qName) ->         # fetches answer from a database (such as cookies, but is irrelevant)            saveAnswer: (qName, answer) ->         # saves the answer            answerQuestion: (qName, answer) ->         @publishEvent 'answeredQuestion', {question: qName, answer: answer} # This part triggers unnecessary saving, but where is the best place for this?         # Change state of UI and data \"model\"         # ...      **My question is, is there an OOP pattern that discusses this issue and possible solutions?** I don't know how to start addressing this, and reading an entire book is not an option right now (I however have it on my todo list). Perhaps this could be rewritten with a MVC pattern, and I'm moving towards that by starting to read the book JavaScript Web Applications, but can't see right now even with MVC, how my problem is avoided in the best way..."}
{"_id": "194097", "title": "What to do with a programmer that can't handle priorities?", "text": "One colleague in our team has multiple jobs to do, but he don't focus on the job that is currently the most important. In our team we always discuss the next steps, but he still don't focus on one thing. He always has a reason why he's NOT doing the right thing.   He's with us for 9 month, so we thought this is common with guys newly from university. But the problem gets bigger every week. But we want to give him a chance. How can we motivate him?   What would you guys do with him?"}
{"_id": "194094", "title": "how to stay efficient when a build is almost always broken", "text": "I work in a middle sized team which shares the same source code and while have a continues integration in place, but as all of us has to work in the same branch, the build is almost always broken. As we also have a rule, which has been introduced recently to alleviate the broken builds, which states that no one is allowed to check-in while to build is red. Having said that, during a day everyone have a handful of 10-15 minutes windows where we allowed to check-in. And as the team is growing, the windows of check-in opportunities shrinking even more. That forces developers to accumulate their changes locally, which results in a bigger change sets which even more difficult to ensure that the changes are not breaking anything. You can see the vicious cycle. What can you recommend to allow me to stay effective working in environment like this. Also, please keep in mind that I am a developer, not a manager, and can't change the process or other people behavior much."}
{"_id": "146161", "title": "A question on nature of generated assembly in C++ and code Algebra", "text": "I wrote this code:               #include <iostream>     int main()     {         int a;         std::cin >> a;         if(a*a== 3){             std::cout << a;         }         return 0;     }      On MSVC I turned ON all optimization flags. I expected that since a*a can never be 3, so compiler should not generate code for the section:               if(a*a== 3){         std::cout << a;     }      However it generated code for the section. I did not check GCC or LLVM/CLang. What are the limits of expectation from a C++ compiler in these scenarios?"}
{"_id": "210241", "title": "Subtractive color mixing algorithm", "text": "Here is my problem: I have a set of 'n' colors including the primary colors and their codes in hexadecimal. Now given another color 'x' I wonder if it's actually possible to come up with a mix between two or more of the colors of the set that will produce 'x'. The mix should be subtractive. Here is an example of the result of the algorithm: My set of colors is: c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6. I am trying to find the mix to produce the color x. The result could be: 50% of c1, 25% of c4 and 25% of c5. If anyone could point me in the right direction (or at least tell me if it is unfeasible), any help would be gladly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "210240", "title": "Is it safe to just use MySQLi?", "text": "I have developed an open source PHP application and currently it uses both the MySQLi or MySQL extension for backwards compatibility. I'm wondering about switching it over to only be compatible with MySQLi since PHP now no longer supports the MySQL. Another reason I'd like to get away from supporting both MySQL and MySQLi is that I'm basically using MySQLi the same way I do as with the old MySQL extension. Can anyone explain to me if this is a good or bad idea?"}
{"_id": "27862", "title": "Setting up Developers Conference", "text": "In our local city in the UK, there are as far as I am aware no developer conferences. I am confident that our region has many professional developers as well as many graduating students whom who really benefit from a conference. I would like to ask the following questions:   * What steps or advice would one take if the task was given to set up a local developers conference?   * What would the costing look like? (excluding building/hosting of website(s))   * How would one build interest and promote this?   * How would I approach, Local Companies & Universities to collaborate with them? I'm not just aiming this question to users who may have experience in setting up such conferences (but are highly welcome). Rather how would you attack this if you was tasked with this?"}
{"_id": "195611", "title": "Why NoSQL (Key-Value) storage become popular these days?", "text": "It seems that NoSQL concept not something very new and innovative, but these days become very popular. Why it become popular recently but not happen in the time when SQL is very popular?"}
{"_id": "204074", "title": "How does the Microsoft Operations Framework define the role of Architects and architecture in the SDLC", "text": "I have been trying to get some architecture documentation passed at work. I've spoken to my CIO and he has said to me that if I prove to him that if we stay within MOF then we can implement it. I am not an architect, I am a software developer trying to become an architect. I downloaded the MOF documentation and did some searches for \"architect\" or \"architecture\" and really only found 3 very minor references. So I'm trying to find out more about the role of \"Architecture\" in MOF."}
{"_id": "99002", "title": "Short Deadline and QAing Yourself", "text": "When you have a short deadline to being with, and you're nearing the end of development, would you rather rush through coding to dedicate more time to QAing or keep your pace and possible have VERY little QA time? I am a sole developer on this project and I am the sole QAer as well. It is an extremely short time period I have to do this, notice to release. It is a very data-driven application and the data tends to be a little......user-inputed. I could spend days searching through intermediate processes, but it will take away from the little valuable time I have left. What do you recommend? Maximize QA time by rushing to finish? Or keep steady and cross my fingers on release? I don't like the feeling of a release version and just watching a new batch of data just waiting for it to snag and fail. Thoughts? Opinions?"}
{"_id": "195614", "title": "UML Class diagram confusion", "text": "I am learning how to draw a UML class diagram and after reading a few tutorials, I am still confused about the appropriate usages of **Association type** (The clear diamond and black diamond). I understand their usages but I haven't got a very concrete understanding on when to use them and when not to. For example in the sample class diagram below, I would have thought that if **Customer** does not exist, the **Order** will be gone too but an association diamond was not being used. Hope someone can provide me with more explaination/examples on the usages of association types. Thanks. ![Sample ordering class diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HQxT9.png)"}
{"_id": "99009", "title": "Staying Relevant As a Programmer", "text": "I am interested in hearing how various people remain in the Software Engineering industry for so long in their careers. I am at a crossroads myself as I have worked with Network Engineering, Communications, VoIP, Parking, Government Contracting, and Military related projects. **Question: How does one manage to stay relevant as a programmer while bouncing between different engineering areas (Testing, Integration, etc) and remaining motivated in the profession?** Old questions:   1. Do you bounce between pure Software Tester, Integration, and back to straight coding?    2. How do you prevent being a one-hit wonder in this economy?    3. How do you find your passion ?"}
{"_id": "233135", "title": "Does a data-driven application need a database?", "text": "This may be a terribly stupid question, but I can't find anything even related on Google (maybe I am not searching properly). I've been a developer for around a year now. I do desktop and web apps using Visual Studio at my day job and use a WAMP setup for freelancing. For storing data I have either used a database or not. What I mean is that if the program stores data for longer than the app runs then I use a database; that's all I know. Here's the thing, I have always worked with **existing** databases for desktop apps. I have never made a desktop app from scratch (the programming part yes, but the database has just always been there and on a local server somewhere for the app to pull from). I want to develop a desktop application that would need a database. My question is how does that process work? In providing the application do I supply the database, say SQLserver, or is there another way in which that works? To be clear: The application would need to store your typical customer information, files, possibly images, payment information - which I know a database would provide, but I do not know how that works once you sell and install the application. I know other applications do these sorts of things - quickbooks, email clients, etc. How do they do it with just an install?"}
{"_id": "194542", "title": "How to close a bug that is no longer relevant", "text": "I'm currently on a medium-sized team of web developers. We're using jira for bug tracking. We're working on a product with frequent layout changes. A lot of times bugs are filed about a bug in the layout in some browser. Sometimes, by the time we get around to dealing with a low priority bug, the layout has already changed and it is no longer relevant.   * What should we close it as?   What I mean is how we should _treat_ these issues? While Jira is the bug tracking software we use, I'm more interested in how to handle these sort of issues in general.   * Does it even matter? (We _might_ return to the layout later, but it's very unlikely)"}
{"_id": "194545", "title": "Should a User class only contain attributes and no methods apart from getters/setters?", "text": "I'm trying to improve my OOP code and I think my User class is becoming way too fat. In my program a user has rights over \"lists\". Read, Write, Update, Delete. So I made a User class               class User     {     protected $_id;     protected $_email;     protected $_username;     protected $_hashedPassword;          //...Various setters/getters          public function canRead(List $list){         //Database query verifies if user has READ rights     }          public function canUpdate(List $list){         //Database query verifies if user has UPDATE rights     }     //etc...     }        * Should canRead, canUpdate, canWrite, canDelete methods be moved to another class (UserAccessCheck or something...)?   * If not, should the actual SQL be moved into the List object (listCanBeReadByUser()) ?"}
{"_id": "33760", "title": "Are there any online certificate/degree programs focused on Information Retrieval or Language Processing?", "text": "I'm a software engineer looking to try something different in my career and get into search indexes, information Retrieval or Natural Language Processing applications and systems. Where can I learn more about this stuff under a degree or certificate program?"}
{"_id": "58923", "title": "iPhone App Store Release Question", "text": "I am developing an Application its purpose to view uploaded files on the host server, and it has a credentials that will be entered on the Login Page to authenticate the user. When I post my application to the App Store, how suppose apple is going to test, or at least view my application, when Apple needs enter a valid credentials that I am not suppose to know? It's private to my client."}
{"_id": "37068", "title": "Optimizing lifestyle and training", "text": "I am a college freshman who has recently discovered a passion for computer science. Having had my first lick of formal python training last semester, I have cast aside my previously hedonist way of life and tunneled my sights on becoming the most rounded and proficient programmer I can be. I know that I'm taking strides in the right direction (I've stopped smoking, I've been exercising every day, I've taught myself C++ and OpenGL, and I've begun training in kung-fu and meditation), yet I am still finding myself struggling to achieve satisfactory results. I would like to be able to spend a good 3-4 hours every day burning through textbooks. I have the time cleared and the resources allocated. The problem lies in the logistics-- I have never taken anything seriously before. Recently I've realized that I am clueless when it comes to taking care of myself and gaining control of my mind, and it drastically hinders my productivity. My question is this: How can I learn to manage my time and take care of myself such that I can spend the maximum amount of time every day studying with steady concentration? Personal tricks would be key here: techniques you use to get yourself to sleep, a diet that yields focus, even computer break stretching routines or active reading techniques. Anything you could think of here would be great. I was a low-life in high school and I have the drive to turn my life around, I'm just quite a bit behind in the way of good habits :)"}
{"_id": "198471", "title": "Simple explanation of Continuous Integration", "text": "How would you define Continuous Integration and what specific components does a CI server contain? I want to explain to someone in the marketing department what Continuous Integration is. They understand Source control - i.e. they use Subversion. But I'd like to explain to them properly what CI is. The Wikipedia Article never properly defines it, the Martin Fowler article only gives the following, which is basically a tautology followed by a vague explanation of 'integration': > Continuous Integration is a software development practice where members of a > team integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at > least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is > verified by an automated build (including test) to detect integration errors > as quickly as possible. **Update** : I sent them this image, I couldn't find a simpler one. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Cy2Ny.jpg) **Update 2** : Feed back from the marketing chap (for the time when there was 3 questions): > I actually like all 3 answers \u2013 for different reasons. I feel like logging > in just to thank them all! Obviously he can't - so thanks on his behalf :) **Update 3** : I've realised looking at the Wikipedia article that it does contain the principles which, when you take just the headings, is quite a good list:   1. Maintain a code repository   2. Automate the build   3. Make the build self-testing   4. Everyone commits to the baseline every day   5. Every commit (to baseline) should be built   6. Keep the build fast   7. Test in a clone of the production environment   8. Make it easy to get the latest deliverables   9. Everyone can see the results of the latest build   10. Automate deployment"}
{"_id": "33768", "title": "Balancing dependency injection with public API design", "text": "I've been contemplating how to balance testable design using dependency injection with providing simple fixed public API. My dilemma is: people would want to do something like `var server = new Server(){ ... }` and not have to worry about creating the many dependencies and graph of dependencies that a `Server(,,,,,,)` may have. While developing, I don't worry too much, as I use an IoC/DI framework to handle all that (I'm not using the lifecycle management aspects of any container, which would complicate things further). Now, the dependencies are unlikely to be re-implemented. Componentisation in this case is almost purely for testability (and decent design!) rather than creating seams for extension, etc. People will 99.999% of the time wish to use a default configuration. So. I could hardcode the dependencies. Don't want to do that, we lose our testing! I could provide a default constructor with hard- coded dependencies and one which takes dependencies. That's... messy, and likely to be confusing, but viable. I could make the dependency receiving constructor internal and make my unit tests a friend assembly (assuming C#), which tidies the public API but leaves a nasty hidden trap lurking for maintenance. Having two constructors which are implicitly connected rather than explicitly would be bad design in general in my book. At the moment that's about the least evil I can think of. Opinions? Wisdom?"}
{"_id": "198474", "title": "Evaluating JSON from popular auto-suggests", "text": "I was evaluating the various ways in which the big guys implement auto suggest. These are my observations.(Search string used was \"ab\") Questions towards the end. Yahoo tries something like this, where the response was a JSONP. Response is readable and serves the purpose. ## Yahoo's response               yasearch({\"q\":\"ab \",\"gprid\":\"Y435dN7TRFqnYqQhnBueJA\",\"f\":[\"k\",\"m\"],\"r\":[[\"ab de villiers\",0],[\"ab exercises\",0],[\"ab king pro\",0],     [\"ab infi-net internet banking\",0],[\"ab mujhe raat din\",0],[\"ab workouts\",0],[\"ab mp3\",0],[\"ab meri bari\",0],[\"ab ke baras\",0],[\"ab meri baari\",0]]})      Bing had a similar approach. Returns an \"if\" block, sa_inst.apiCB() seems to be a function which would process the JSON. Again response is readable and legit. ## Bing's response               if(typeof sa_inst.apiCB == 'function') sa_inst.apiCB({\"AS\":{\"Query\":\"ab\",\"FullResults\":1,\"Results\":[{\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Suggests\": [{\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>p</strong> <strong>news</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"\"},      {\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>bottapp</strong>.ab<strong>bott</strong>.<strong>in</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS1\"},{\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>t</strong> <strong>travels</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS2\"},{\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>p</strong> <strong>ananda</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS3\"},     {\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>hibus</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS4\"},{\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>p</strong> <strong>maza</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS5\"},  {\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>b</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS6\"},     {\"Txt\":\"ab<strong>outgoogle</strong>\",\"Type\":\"AS\",\"Sk\":\"AS7\"}]}]}} /* pageview_candidate */);      Now comes Google. Response is sent as 2 JSON objects(separated by /\"\"/). Most of it is unreadable. ## Google's response               {e:\"XteVUYKqDoKHrAfdz4D4Aw\",c:0,u:\"https://www.google.com/s?hl\\x3den\\x26gs_rn\\x3d14\\x26gs_ri\\x3dpsy-ab\\x26tok\\x3dvsobDhICRmdcnY7ayKTGng\\x26cp\\x3d2\\x26gs_id\\x3dd\\x26xhr\\x3dt\\x26q\\x3dab\\x26es_nrs\\x3dtrue\\x26pf\\x3dp\\x26output\\x3dsearch\\x26sclient\\x3dpsy-ab\\x26oq\\x3d\\x26gs_l\\x3d\\x26pbx\\x3d1\\x26bav\\x3don.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.\\x26bvm\\x3dbv.46751780,d.bmk\\x26fp\\x3d2647af89de6b6c61\\x26biw\\x3d1366\\x26bih\\x3d453\\x26tch\\x3d1\\x26ech\\x3d2\\x26psi\\x3dVteVUcYuzOGsB6LpgdgB.1368774484351.1\",p:true,d:\"[\\x22ab\\x22,          [[\\x22ab\\\\u003Cb\\\\u003Ec\\\\u003C\\\\/b\\\\u003E\\x22,0,[]],[\\x22ab\\\\u003Cb\\\\u003Ec news\\\\u003C\\\\/b\\\\u003E\\x22,0,[]],[\\x22ab\\\\u003Cb\\\\u003Eercrombie\\\\u003C\\\\/b\\\\u003E\\x22,0,[]],[\\x22ab\\\\u003Cb\\\\u003Ecya\\\\u003C\\\\/b\\\\u003E\\x22,0,[]]],     {\\x22j\\x22:\\x22d\\x22,\\x22q\\x22:\\x22t8z6h8KhWvbkEX6xablxgYxDUq4\\x22,\\x22t\\x22:     {\\x22bpc\\x22:false,\\x22tlw\\x22:false}}]\"}     /*\"\"*/     {e:\"XteVUYKqDoKHrAfdz4D4Aw\",c:-1,u:\"https://www.google.com/searchdata?hl\\x3den\\x26gs_rn\\x3d14\\x26gs_ri\\x3dpsy-ab\\x26tok\\x3dvsobDhICRmdcnY7ayKTGng\\x26cp\\x3d2\\x26gs_id\\x3dd\\x26xhr\\x3dt\\x26q\\x3dab\\x26es_nrs\\x3dtrue     \\x26pf\\x3dp\\x26output\\x3dsearch\\x26sclient\\x3dpsy-ab\\x26oq\\x3d\\x26gs_l\\x3d\\x26pbx\\x3d1\\x26bav\\x3don.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.\\x26bvm\\x3dbv.46751780,d.bmk\\x26fp\\x3d2647af89de6b6c61\\x26biw\\x3d1366\\x26bih\\x3d453\\x26tch\\x3d1\\x26ech\\x3d2\\x26psi\\x3dVteVUcYuzOGsB6LpgdgB.1368774484351.1\",     p:true,d:\"{\\x22snp\\x22:1}\"}     /*\"\"*/        1. Are those hex codes or what do you call them?   2. Why is there a need for 2 objects to be returned?   3. What is the need for encoding the JSON?   4. Which is the ideal format for JSON among these three? Any thoughts on this are welcome."}
{"_id": "37063", "title": "How can I keep directories in sync", "text": "Context: I'm developing software that reproduce the functionality of Windows Home Server Drive Extender, where users use multiple hard disks to prevent data loss.   The software exists since Dec-2009, but it has issues with renames (detailed below). I have a directory, dirA, that users can work in: they can create, modify, rename and delete files & sub-directores in dirA.   I want to keep another directory, dirB, in sync with dirA.   The goal is to have a backup of all the files in dirA, in case the drive it's on fails (dirB would be on another drive). What I'd like, is a discussion on finding a working algorithm that would achieve the above, with the limitations listed below. Requirements:   1\\. Something asynchronous - I don't want to stop file operations in dirA while I work in dirB.   2\\. I can't assume that I can just blindly rsync dirA to dirB on regular interval - dirA could contain millions of files & directories, and terrabytes of data. Completely walking the dirA tree could take hours. Those two requirements makes this really difficult.   Having it asynchronous means that when I start working on a specific file from dirA, it might have moved a lot since it appeared.   And the second limitation means that I really need to watch dirA, and work on atomic file operations that I notice. Current (broken) implementation:   1\\. Log all file & directory operations in dirA.   2\\. Using a separate process, read that log, and 'repeat' all the logged operations in dirB. Why is it broken:               echo 1 > dirA/file1     # Allow the 'log reader' process to create dirB/file1:         log = \"write dirA/file1\"; action = cp dirA/file1 dirB/file1; result = OK     echo 1 > dirA/file2     mv dirA/file1 dirA/file3     mv dirA/file2 dirA/file1     rm dirA/file3     # End result: file1 contains '1'     # 'log reader' process starts working on the 4 above file operations:         log = \"write file2\"; action = cp dirA/file2 dirB/file2; result = failed: there is no dirA/file2         log = \"rename file1 file3\"; action = mv dirB/file1 dirB/file3; result = OK         log = \"rename file2 file1\"; action = mv dirB/file2 dirB/file1; result = failed: there is no dirB/file2         log = \"delete file3\"; action = rm dirB/file3; result = OK     # End result in dirB: no more files!      Another broken example:               echo 1 > dirA/dir1/file1     mv dirA/dir1 dirA/dir2     # 'log reader' process starts working on the 2 above file operations:         log = \"write file1\"; action = cp dirA/dir1/file1 dirB/dir1/file1; result = failed: there is no dirA/dir1/file1         log = \"rename dir1 dir2\"; action = mv dirB/dir1 dirB/dir2; result = failed: there is no dirA/dir1     # End result if dirB: nothing!"}
{"_id": "109910", "title": "How do I move a client from UI mockups to a set of real requirements?", "text": "Say you are given a mock-up of 25 screens of the visual states of your application. The expectation is that this is enough for us to be confident we can develop and hand it to the original stakeholder or customer as a finished application, and they will be satisfied. Naturally, you're going to end up asking the stakeholders many questions over again that were used to come up with the UI, which is wasteful. However, I have many many times found that this is very much not enough, in the course of developing the application the requirements become blurred by the fact that we are replicating an interface and in the end the customer is not as happy as they first seemed when we asked them for all the info to create the UI. I am just not sure what else to ask for, I have tried to be specific and ask for requirements and an understanding of the overall goal, but I don't know what I should ask for. If I just start now, lots of time is going to be wasted re-hashing all the info that lead up to the UI and during this phase many important reasons the customer originally had will be lost. How can I get people to understand that we cannot lock down requirements based on UI mock-ups by asking for something actionable they can create for me? What would you ideally start with in order to properly execute the task of developing an application for end users?"}
{"_id": "237853", "title": "How to make your JavaScript private?", "text": "I wanted to know if there is a way to make your JavaScript private from client side?"}
{"_id": "107170", "title": "Where to find resources to write a program like sandboxie?", "text": "Sandboxie is a program that will let you read from the hard drive, but when you try to write back it will redirect the file to a separate container. I would like to learn how to do something similar. I do not know what terms or libraries to look for. Is there a file redirection API in windows? Is there a open source library that can help me out with the down and dirty pieces? I know there is likely no API in windows to do this out of the box and I will likely need to write my own driver. I don't mind writing a driver, this project is to be a learning experience for me and I kind of want to learn how to do it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. * * * **Clarification:** I am trying to replicate the behavior of sandboxie, IE: launching a unmodified exe of another program and redirecting the way it handles file IO. What I want to do is basically have a launcher that will turn my SSD disk in to a cache for my spinning drive. I launch my app and it in turn launches another app. Any resources the other app requests will be passed through to the spinning disk, but also copied to the SSD. Any further reads and all writes will be done to the SSD copy of the file. Once the other program closes, my app will flush the writes from the SSD back to the spinning disk. I could technically do this through sandboxie and some scripting tricks but I want to learn the internals of file IO and how to do the redirection. * * * **Clarification 2:** I no-longer have a issue using a prebuilt library, as long as it is free (as in beer). It does not need to be open source or free (as in speech) ."}
{"_id": "107172", "title": "Approaches to updating and adding features to PHP websites", "text": "I would like to know how people approach with developing their websites that are in production. For example:-   1. How do you manage versions, etc.   2. Also, do you create a subdirectory within the production server and work there or do you use any other environment and roll the updates there   3. Do you have any special management software where you keep notes, tips, deadlines, etc. I am asking this because I have a website which I would like to add new features to. But that website is in production. So, what are your suggestions on how you would update your websites and add new features? I use PHP with Apache on CentOS"}
{"_id": "39515", "title": "At What Point Should You Start To Think About Performance?", "text": "As I'm building applications I find myself constantly asking if this is best way to perform or implement a certain functionality. Often, I'll post questions on stackoverflow or another forum desiring feedback only to receive comments about how not to \"put the cart before the horse\" regarding performance. Do most programmers really not think about performance until the application is finished, or performance is absolutely unacceptable?? I mean, I understand that development environments differ from production environments and that you shouldn't completely rely on the results from your dev laptop...but, there are practices and techniques that yield better performance than others. Is it bad practice to consider performance throughout the development process? Should I push these considerations off until performance actually is tanking?? **Update** Just to be clear, I'm talking about the situation where you are considering or just about to work on some piece of functionality. You know there are several ways to implement it, but you're not quite sure how well each implementation will scale. Also there might be several techniques you're not even familiar with. On a small scale any of the approaches would probably be adequate, but on a larger scale some will keep up and some won't. Often when I ask for opinions or guidance the response is: worry about it later..."}
{"_id": "78152", "title": "Real programmers use debuggers?", "text": "If experienced programmers actually ever use debuggers, and if so under what circumstances. Although in the answer to that question I said \"months\" ago I probably meant \"years\" - I really don't use a debugger. So my specific answerable question is under which circumstances would you, as an experienced programmer, use a debugger?"}
{"_id": "156457", "title": "COBOL program or JCL?", "text": "I have to perform 3 tasks: an insert, a delete, and a write I'm not sure what the best way to do this is. My mainframe program design skills aren't too tight, so I was looking for advice. Could I avoid doing a COBOL program for this? The way I see it, I just need JCL that executes SQL statements. If I design my statements correctly, then they should be able to preform tasks 1 and 2 this way. But I'm thinking I may need to have a COBOL program to write to a file? If I do, would I just run through database with a cursor, then process each row and take appropriate action based on the row? Each task seems similar, but the queries are different and produce different results, so the SQL statements are very different. But they are all working with the same table. Task 1:   * preform SQL query   * For each row that the query picks up      * Insert a new row based on that row Task 2:   * perform SQL query   * For each row that the query picks up      * delete the record Task 3:   * perform SQL query   * For each row that the query picks up      * Write that record to a file"}
{"_id": "233682", "title": "What to focus on when separating a monolithic codebase into separate (NuGet) packages?", "text": "I work on a fairly large web application. The main solution containing the web application project has over 100 projects. The average build time of that solution is 2 minutes on a 12 GB quad-core machine with an SSD. We are looking into ways we can improve our deployment process. I am going to work on a proof-of-concept to move code out of the main source repository into separate repositories, to be built and packaged as NuGet packages. These will be hosted on an internal feed and installed into the main solution from there. For the proof-of-concept I want to focus on the most important/challenging aspects. I have some experience building stand-alone libraries, and of course the experience of working on this monolithic codebase. I would like to ask you: What should I focus on for the proof-of-concept? * * * Some areas I think I should experiment with:   * Versioning   * Assembly binding   * Unit testing   * ILMerge to merge dependencies   * Debugging   * Performance PS. Automating the building and publishing of packages to the NuGet repository is not my responsibility."}
{"_id": "184117", "title": "I'm Having Trouble Keeping Up", "text": "I'm almost 39 and have been developing for 17 years. The new 20-somethings seem to know newer ways of doing things and it's taking me A LOT longer to get up to speed. I used to do .NET but I took a new job where they do mostly Java and wow, it's a lot harder! What should I do?"}
{"_id": "67277", "title": "How do you represent container classes in UML?", "text": "When drawing out quick class diagrams, I'm often at a loss how to represent classes that are used just to pass data around between various parts of the program. I've been putting them out in the middle of nowhere, so that other people can see what the class in the parameters/returns is. Is this the correct way to do it? _(They look awefully lonely out there by themselves.)_"}
{"_id": "67273", "title": "Time management training programs for developers", "text": "My company asked me to set up a personal goal of improving time management. This means keeping up with time reporting, revising estimates and being responsive to email inquiries. Of course, I have read books on the topic and have tried numerous systems. I just get absorbed in coding to the exclusion of administrative tasks. I think most of it is an attitude or a psychological issue unrelated to actual time management. The company is willing to pay for it as professional training, so I'm looking for a recognized and effective training program. I would like something that doesn't just \"fix\" a problem, but potentially makes me more \"promotable\". I'm valued for my technical skills, but management is frustrated by my poor fit into overall planning and I understand that it's my main obstacle to handling more responsibility. What programs are out there that are tailored to effective and timely software development? I wonder if any project management training would be applicable, but something more specific to a software developer, or technical lead perspective would be great. Thank you."}
{"_id": "115576", "title": "Designing Subclasses for an abstract base class in C++", "text": "I'm doing a small assignment in C++ where I have to use concepts like virtual functions and inheritance in a domain of my choice. I'm implementing the prototype for a package manager in Linux. I have the base class Package, this has attributes like package_id, name, version, dependencies etc. There are two types of packages MetaPackages and ConcretePackages which differ in the way they must be installed and removed. I am thinking of declaring the methods install and remove in Package as virtual. While storing these packages in a datafile can I somehow know if the stored package is Meta or Concrete. I'm not sure as to how I should best design this. Can anybody point me to a resource so that I can better learn this stuff. We have Grady Booch in our curriculum and honestly it's a pain to read much less comprehend."}
{"_id": "34001", "title": "What are the ways to Promote android App", "text": "This is not kinda Tech question, But can anyone tell me what are good ways to Promote app other than Market."}
{"_id": "34006", "title": "Office arangement - comfort vs. teamwork?", "text": "Our team works in an open-space office. Luckily the cubicles are quite big (L shaped tables for everyone!), there is quite a lot of space so we are not sandwiched. Without going into further detail, there are comfortable spots (window), normal spots and stupid spots (near the corridor). * * * Until recently, the development team of twelve engineers was **seated** so that all types of spots were occupied and we were all **close together**. In the old arrangement, **verbal communication was very easy** \\- half of the team was withing talking distance. The other half was like ten steps away. Often times I could ask, discuss, solve problems without leaving the cube. Most of the communication is work related, no bullshit or mental masturbation that would unnecessarily distract others. * * * Now we have moved to another part of the building and have larger space to occupy. At this point, everyone could pick their spot. Naturally all stupid spots are left empty (for the poor newcomers to occupy bwehaha). In the new arrangement, **the development team is stretched** across the floor and some of the key engineers are seated 'far' from each other - definitely not within talking distance. I have yet to experience how this works out but am getting concerned that team work and communication may have been traded for personal comfort. * * * Finally the questions... What do you think is better office arrangement? Such that allows for free verbal communication but trading for some developer's comfort, or such that potentially hinders verbal communication but makes developer's more comfortable in their spot? Or maybe it does not matter at all and we will evolve to be efficient in any arrangement? What is your personal experience? _Note - yes I read books and posts how workplace is important in our job. However in this case - we are all still in open space and the difference between the different spots are not really groundbreaking. So I'm thinking the little comfort that few developers gain is not worth the loss of easy communication._"}
{"_id": "131963", "title": "Drawing Ellipse from a bounding box?", "text": "Does anyone know a good algorithm for drawing an ellipse from a bounding box?               draw_ellipse(int s1, int s2, int s3, int s4, color c);       I don't need something optimized to incomprehendable , unreadable efficiency. Just something good enough to use for a simple drawing api. You can provide the algorithm in your answer in all programming languages or even pseudocode, but I would prefer it if you use C++ or a C++-like syntax."}
{"_id": "224702", "title": "2 closest points between 2 rectangles", "text": "On a 2D plane, I have 2 rectangles. I want to find the closest pair of points (one on each rectangle), which are closest to each other. By points I mean the corners of the rectangles. And no, they do not overlap. Is there any way to do that other than checking all the distances between all the combinations of points and finding the smallest one?"}
{"_id": "224706", "title": "Question regarding ExtJS 4 GPL/commercial license", "text": "I am currently in the process of selecting a widget framework to be used for a new project. Current choices are Dojo/ExtJS4. We are leaning on ExtJS4 but might have some issues with the licensing. From the Sencha license page: > Our open source license is the appropriate option if you are creating an > open source application under a license compatible with the GNU GPL license > v3. However on the GPL FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#UnreleasedMods > **A company is running a modified version of a GPL'ed program on a web site. > Does the GPL say they must release their modified sources?** > > The GPL permits anyone to make a modified version and use it without ever > distributing it to others. What this company is doing is a special case of > that. Therefore, the company does not have to release the modified sources. > > It is essential for people to have the freedom to make modifications and use > them privately, without ever publishing those modifications. However, > putting the program on a server machine for the public to talk to is hardly > \u201cprivate\u201d use, so it would be legitimate to require release of the source > code in that special case. Developers who wish to address this might want to > use the GNU Affero GPL for programs designed for network server use. Seems **contradicting** on what they have on **Sencha's** licensing page. Moreover, the webapp will be deployed on the cloud and will offer a subscription model. I've read that this is the so called **ASP loophole** and that the **Affero GPL** was made to address this. The project will have multiple modules, but certainly there would be backend/integration and frontend modules. The **frontend** will just **consume exposed REST services** and will be an entirely **different application**. The question is, would there be any license issues if we use the **GPL** version and willing to offer the source code ( **frontend module only** ) which uses ExtJS for our future clients?"}
{"_id": "197016", "title": "Retrieving maximum value from a range in unsorted array", "text": "I have an _unsorted array_. I have queries in which I give a range and then the maximum value from that range has to returned. For example:               array[]={23,17,9,45,78,2,4,6,90,1};     query(both inclusive): 2 6     answer: 78      Which algorithm or data structure do I construct to quickly retrieve maximum value from any range. (There are a lot of queries) **EDIT:** This is indeed a simple version of the actual problem. I can have the array size as large as 100000 and the number of queries upto 100000. So I definitely require some preprocessing which'll facilitate a fast query response."}
{"_id": "197017", "title": "Why should I should url routes to the user in a single page application?", "text": "Why a single page application is a desktop client replacement why should I show certain url`s in the url bar of the browser. Why is mysite.com not enough. My question to you guys is now: What are the reasons and advantages for the user to show such an url like mysite.com/customers/3 Are there any reasons like the user wants to be able and bookmark a site and this would need an URI ?"}
{"_id": "197010", "title": "Is there any situation when there's no alternative to instanceof?", "text": "It seems to me that `instanceof` comes from the land of functional programming and is a watered down version of _pattern matching_ and that the OO altenative to it should be dynamic dispatching. In OO languages (think Ruby), is there any situation where `instanceof` is the only solution? I can't think of any myself, especially in Ruby where you can patch any class with any methods you like."}
{"_id": "176294", "title": "need explanation on amortization in algorithm", "text": "I am a learning algorithm analysis and came across a analysis tool for understanding the running time of an algorithm with widely varying performance which is called as amortization. The autor quotes \" An array with upper bound of n elements, with a fixed bound N, on it size. Operation clear takes O(n) time, since we should dereference all the elements in the array in order to really empty it. \" The above statement is clear and valid. Now consider the next content: \"Now consider a series of n operations on an initially empty array. if we take the worst case viewpoint, the running time is O(n^2), since the worst case of a sigle clear operation in the series is O(n) and there may be as many as O(n) clear operations in the series.\" From the above statement how is the time complexity O(n^2)? I did not understand the logic behind it. if 'n' operations are performed how is it O(n ^2)? Please explain what the autor is trying to convey.."}
{"_id": "234482", "title": "Is parsing a submitted JSON object safe?", "text": "I have a RESTful API, built in NODE.js that does what you would expect it to: consumes data and then makes it accessible. Currently, data being submitted to my server is nested form data:               data[0][username]=...     data[0][email]=...     data[0][phone]=...     ...     data[12][username]=...     data[12][email]=...     data[12][phone]=...      or as a query string               data[0][username]=...&data[0][email]=...&data[0][phone]=...      SO when I parse it on the server, I get a JS array of objects with those particular fields. What I am wondering is, is it safe for me accept a string that I can JSON.parse and the process it?               data=(some stringified json object)      I am unsure if it's possible for malicious code or anything to be included in the JSON object that would blow up my server once run through a parser Thanks."}
{"_id": "157432", "title": "Clojure state and persistence", "text": "I'm learning Clojure to see if it's something I can leverage at my current job, and more importantly, how I can convince my bosses that Clojure has a 'killer feature' over java that makes it worth the investment1. The feature that I'm guessing most clojure evangelists would tout is **state management and concurrency**. The example that I see often in blogs and books is an account balance that\u2019s being updated by multiple threads. Clojure\u2019s state management can always cleanly ensure that the balance will be accurate regardless of the number of threads reading and writing that value. In practice, though, an application would never allow an account balance to live only in memory, it would have to be persisted outside of the JVM (probably in a database) for two hopefully obvious reasons:   1. If the app goes down the database will need to accurately reflect the latest state for recovery. For this reason the database cannot be asynchronously updated, and all reads would have to block until the database update is complete.   2. If other applications are reading or manipulating the account balance (maybe because we\u2019ve scaled our app out to several servers), that balance would need to be kept in sync between all instances. **Can Clojure\u2019s state management handle situations like this elegantly?** For instance, given scenario 2 above, _all_ reads of the account balance would first need to check the database to get the value, and if the database is locked, it would have to block until the correct value is available, no? It\u2019s great that Clojure handles my in-memory concurrency very elegantly but if that elegance can\u2019t be extended to external state then do I really gain anything? 1(note that things like expressiveness, elegance, etc. are rarely considered killer features by mgmt.)"}
{"_id": "76000", "title": "Which software development practices would you recommend non-programmers implement in their fields of work?", "text": "Say you had to give a talk to non-programmers who were looking to learn something from software development that they could apply to their own functions. **Question** : What practices would you preach? Assume the jobs involve taking basic technical building blocks and combining them in creative ways to solve user-specific problems. **Example** : I'm a corporate financial analyst. I'd have loved it if a software development person taught me about the following ideas when I was younger:   1. **Orthogonality** has helped me think about independent analytical tools that can be reused more easily (vs. huge integrated analytics that break the second one piece of the tool is changed).   2. **Code to an interface, not an implementation** has helped me think about defining interfaces to my spreadsheets that aren't as dependent on things like independent cell locations, etc.   3. **Test-driven design** has helped me to test my analytics on test cases before I roll them out."}
{"_id": "157435", "title": "Is event chaining considered good practice?", "text": "From time to time I've encountered scenarios where several complex conditions need to be met prior to triggering an event. Furthermore, most listeners also run additional checks to determine the course of action. This got me thinking whether a better solution would be to think in terms of smaller events and let them trigger inside each other. Chaining events would allow me to weave in any additional listeners later on with fairly low effort (possible violation of YAGNI?). My code would consist of simple easily understood elements, which shouldn't be difficult for others to understand. However, the possible downsides to this solution would be the fact that should something happen to go wrong in the chain (e.g false event triggering due to human error), it would be quite difficult to catch the bug. Is event chaining a good ideaTM? If not, what are the alternative methods to keep event related code getting cluttered?"}
{"_id": "76002", "title": "Why is spring so good for Java middleware development?", "text": "I'm planning on doing some Java web development in my spare time to learn a new set of programming skills, and just want to survey opinion on why Spring is so good for middleware development? What are the key features and advantages of using this over, say struts or writing server pages?"}
{"_id": "210892", "title": "What are some good assignments for an introductory course on concurrent programming?", "text": "I am teaching a course which involves introducing the students to the concept of threads and concurrent programming. I am in search of programming assignments that can gently get them to accept the technique as a part of a programmer's essential toolkit. A good assignment would be to implement a program that   * is impossible to implement sequentially, or shows great increase in efficiency when parallel processing is introduced.   * does not overly rely on the introduction of complicated unrelated concepts. This rules out most of the Wikipedia example list of Embarrassingly parallel problems \\- even the Mandelbrot set requires the students to know about imaginary numbers, which I can not assume.   * does not seem contrived. Optimally, the assignment would not seem like a stretch useful only for the introduction of the concept. What would an example of such a program/algorithm be? In case it matters, the assignment will be in Java. The students are around the age of 18, with at least a year of solving simple programming assignments behind them (they are familiar with control flow, loops, most common datatypes, OOP, simple GUIs) but so far have little experience with large software projects or usual computer science subjects (such as recursion and algorithm analysis)."}
{"_id": "215702", "title": "Trace code pascal", "text": "I haven't worked with Pascal so far, and my problem is understanding the recursive aspects that prm assignment operators and how the final (correct) value is derived. Would someone please explain that line for me.               Program test(output);          FUNCTION prm(az:integer) : real;     begin         if az = 1 then             prm := sqrt(12)         else             prm := sqrt(12*prm(az-1));     end;          begin         writeln(prm(30):0:2);     end."}
{"_id": "206955", "title": "One Scheduler vs. Many Schedulers", "text": "I've been using a single scheduler to handle all my scheduled tasks (Quartz.Net). I'm starting to rethink how this operates because if I need to update 1 task, I have to stop the entire process, release the update, and start it back up. My Question: Is it better to have many Windows Services running individual tasks (or groups of similar tasks) or 1 Service running all of the tasks (my current set up)?"}
{"_id": "84986", "title": "How should I prepare for a coding phone interview?", "text": "I'm going to write code during a phone interview in the next few weeks. The interviewer and I will use a collaborative text editor to both view the code. I have a few questions since this is my first time writing code during a phone interview:   1. What are common **questions** asked during this type of interview?   2. What are common **gotchas** in this situation? (for both interviewer and candidate)   3. Does the **interviewer** commonly **write code** too? (perhaps a function w/ an empty body) Any other tips and advice is greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "84987", "title": "Are computers just means to an end, or can they contribute to the productivity and creativity of programmers?", "text": "This is not a question with a single answer, but I am fascinated by the diversity of computer set-ups in the office. Some people work on ancient machines that are absolute donkeys with CRT monitor, whereas others have really complex and elaborate configurations that would make Forex traders jealous. To add to the intrigue, in a recent job interview I had, the employer stressed several times that \"modern high-spec workstations\" were provided to developers, including access to latest gadgets in the mobile and tablet world. While this seems like a no-brainer, majority of large companies I encountered don't exactly pump cash into internal technology provisioning, or advertise the kind of hardware they provide to employees. What are your experiences and opinions on this? Can computers that are not up to the task really be severely detrimental to productivity of programmers? At the end of the day, for companies, it's up to the cost/benefit ratio; Does it make sense to equip IT staff with latest and greatest? Technology is becoming more and more pervasive in everyday life. If a company doesn't keep up, how does that reflect on it? This is a topic that interests me personally, but I also believe it should be examined in more detail. In addition to opinions expressed here, should you wish to help formalize some research in this area, you can take 5 minutes of your time and fill out the survey at the link below. Thanks in advance! :) http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/508308/Workstations-and-productivity"}
{"_id": "108351", "title": "Integration tests across a 3-tier .NET solution", "text": "I have a 3-tiered .NET solution.   1. Database (SQL SERVER 2008)   2. Web Service (SOAP Service - *.asmx)   3. WPF Client I am comfortably writing Unit Tests within (3) The Client.   I am currently working on writing tests between (1)Database & (2)Service. My question is, what are some useful ways to run integration tests across all 3 tiers. I would like this to run locally in my Test Runner, as well as part of the integration test. Primarily, I am stuck on how to have a transient (setup-teardown-able) (2) Web Service & (1) Database that can be tested with (3) Client code as part of a full integration test."}
{"_id": "108353", "title": "Tips for organizing a \"Hack Day\" at work", "text": "**I was thinking about organizing a \"Hack Day\" at work** , think google's 20% time but just for 1 whole day (maybe just once per year or quarter). Similar to Atlassian Fedex Days I'd like for all the developers in our group to have a free day to work on any kind of project / technology they like and then show it off. Ideally, developers have fun programming without worrying about their day to day projects or technology restrictions and at the same time we can generate some cool ideas that could turn into future projects or patents etc. **Do you have any tips / suggestions for me?**   \\- Has anyone organized something similar before?   \\- Any pitfalls to watchout for or tips for success?   \\- Any resources I should request to make the day go better? day more productive /enjoyable?   \\- Should I encourage / enforce groups? Or is it better for people to work on things individually?   \\- What can I use to persuade management to support this?"}
{"_id": "229735", "title": "Scope vs Visiblity vs Lifetime vs Accessibility vs etc", "text": "I have been trying to understand what it means to say \"scope of a named entity\". In reading about scope, there are terms like visibility, lifetime, accessibility and more that are used. What is confusing is the fact that the terms are at times used distinctly and at times interchangeably. Quoting from this IBM article: > scope is... the largest region in which the name potentially is valid. Fair enough. But then what does this mean - > The visibility of an identifier is the region of program text from which the > object associated with the identifier can be legally accessed. Is visibility related to accessibility? Further it goes on to say > Scope exceeds visibility when a duplicate identifier is used in an inner > declarative region, thereby hiding the object declared in the outer > declarative region. The original identifier cannot be used to access the > first object until the scope of the duplicate identifier (the lifetime of > the second object) has ended. Does this mean scope and lifetime are the same things? Do these terms like scope fundamentally mean the same thing in C++ as it does in say PHP or Python or even Java. Or they could mean different things conceptually depending on the language you are working in. The article I have quoted is C/C++ related, but I want to understand the terms in the general sense."}
{"_id": "91350", "title": "What should every programmer know?", "text": "Regardless of programming language(s) or operating system(s) used or the environment they develop for, what should every programmer know? Some background: I'm interested in becoming the best programmer I can. As part of this process I'm trying to understand what I don't know and would benefit me a lot if I did. While there are loads of lists around along the lines of \"n things every [insert programming language] developer should know\", I have yet to find anything similar which isn't limited to a specific language. I also expect this information to be of interest and benefit to others."}
{"_id": "229733", "title": "Coarse-grained views on server vs fine-grained views assembled on client vs fine-grained views with batching", "text": "I've currently got a browser talking via an \"API\" to the server. API is scare quoted because the API really wouldn't support another user interface very well, because it consists of every call our UI happens to need, in the form it happens to need it, and nothing else. Which could be fine. However, we are starting to have calls along the lines of \"GetUserSummaryData\", \"GetUserHisFriendsAndHisPurchases\", \"GetUserAndHisPurchases\", etc. Note that on the server a more reasonable fine-grained API is written, (and the current API calls just cause the server to wire those together) it's just that what is exposed to the UI matches _exactly_ what it needs at that particular moment. The justification for the current approach is that going from \"I need those 6 things at the moment\" to \"I need to make 6 calls and put the data together\" has to happen _somewhere_ , and if you do it on the server then the browser can make 1 course-grained call, vs. the alternative of either making 6 calls and taking a (significant) performance hit, or else figuring out some system of batching the 6 calls (including dealing with the issue of dependencies, possibly by having the call batching mechanism smart enough to say \"the 3rd parameter of call 2 should be this part of the JSON response object from call 1\" and having the server understand that). Doing things on the server as we are does make it pretty much impossible to write another UI without making more customized views on the server to support it. But we have no reasonable current expectation that someone without access to the server would want to write another UI. Is continuing to make really customized views on the server as the only \"API\" the right approach, and if not what would be better?"}
{"_id": "79206", "title": "Are certification test engines really what they claim?", "text": "I am studying for my MCPD certification from microsoft. There are plenty of resources for these certs. However I had someone reccomend CertMagic recently. With a little research I quickly discovered that there are quite a few sites like this. So i have two questions: 1) Will these sites really help ? I don't want to memorize exam answers. I want my certification to be a true representation of my skills in that subject. 2) If these sites really are helpful, which do you find to be most helpful ?"}
{"_id": "103468", "title": "what is the correct/best way to populate a secondary property of an MVC Model and how do I unit test it?", "text": "I'm building an web application is ASP.NET MVC 3 (.NET 4) and trying to unit test as much as possible. I have a controller action `Details(int customerId)` which should display a view who's model is a `Customer`               public class Customer     {         public int? Id { get; set; }              [Required]         [Display(Name = \"Customer Name\")]         public string Name { get; set; }              ...              public IList<CustomerComment> Comments { get; set; }     }       The controller action looks like this:               public ActionResult Details(int customerId)     {         var model = service.Get(customerId);         if (model != null)             return View(model);              return RedirectToAction(\"Index\");     }      As you can see, this directly calls `service.Get`               public Customer Get(int id)     {         return repository.Get(id);     }      The service has an `ICustomerRepository` injected in it and calls the `Get` method of that repository directly. My question regards populating the `Comments` collection. **How/where should the`Comments` be populated and how do I test it?** The `Details` view is the only place that displays the list of comments, so it needs this data. I can see two ways of populating this.   1. Do it all in the `ICustomerRepository.Get` implementation.   This might lead to a situation down the line where I'm using Get but not displaying the comments. This would mean I'm doing an _expensive_ (maybe) `JOIN` but not using the results.   2. Have an `ICustomerCommentsRepository/Service` injected into either my Service or Controller which is used to populate the `Comments` when required. Is there a preference? Secondly, how would you test this? In the second instance, I could assert that `ICustomerCommentsRepository.Populate(Customer customer)` is called on my mock by the Controller/Service. In the first situation all the responsibility lies in my repository so in a Unit Test sense, is untestable as the concrete implementation used in the actual app needs to speak to the DB and so is an integration test. Am I missing something? Would the `ICustomerCommentsRepository` be a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "103464", "title": "Train for the job or train for the skill?", "text": "I'm in charge of hiring for a small java shop. We have a very limited hiring budget so we tend to pickup fresh grads cheap and spend time training them. I have found colleges and universities do quite an inadequate job these days and usually a lot of training is required. I train in 2 steps: a) Get them comfortable with Java conventions. b) Teach them programming concepts (again). Training ranges from 1 week to 1 month depending on the number of people we hire. My problem is that training them on Java I feel I rob them of the ability to _understand_ what they are doing. Colleges train them for C# so they never really understand what the code _translates_ to for the JVM or how the computer interprets this. I of course keep realizing this when I see blatantly inefficient code being laid down. My question is, if an employee will stick with the company for 3 years, is it better to train the employee for the job so they can start coding in Java or is it better to get them comfortable with Java and pick-up languages like Python, C/C++, Prolog, LISP to teach them what they are really doing? (Keep in mind there will be a learning curve again if I change languages). So over 3 years, what do you feel will pay-off more? The suits clearly say train for the job since iteration is high. **UPDATE** Bottom line is that they will be working on a product that is effectively a development environment in Java. Basically a BPMN based product that lets you specify the flow of an application graphically and use stock features to add functionality and lay-down custom java code as needed."}
{"_id": "229739", "title": "Method to store some site content data, allowing reusability", "text": "(Don't believe this is a \"best practice\" question as I believe there will be a _single better_ choice). I need to choose a data storage option to store specific site data to allow easy management and re-usability: _array; class; DB; Other;_ but am not sure which one would be adequate. The data in question is my _Services_ , which is a list of titles and descriptions. Example of the text: > **On-site SEO**   >  We provide On and Off site SEO, by careful keyword assignment and > placement, blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, > etc. > > **Logo Design**   >  We can provide clean and elegant logos suited to your current company > branding... blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah > etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, etc blah etc, > etc. Each title is no more than 5 words, and descriptions are about 70 words/350 chars, and I have about 20 titles and descriptions. As services can be changed, retracted, and new added, I want control over the data - more than just editing a view/template file where the raw output/HTML is done, because I:   1. Require the data to be reusable on different templates   2. Want the option to use only a part of each data, eg just the title(s) so a specific array index, or class method, DB table row, etc I'm reluctant use an array, given the size of the _Description_ text and number of services (20). And it might end up fiddly accessing a specific array value, having to know the exact key (the title), and the key being long.   I could use a multidimensional array, with the top level key being a simple reference, but it seems well overkill for the requirements. It seems a waste of a class as the data itself is static, and feel I'd be abusing the point of OOP a bit. I could use a DB, but the site doesn't require a DB for anything else currently, though am happy to implement one if worthwhile for this. The site is on a framework, loosely on MVC/P, so can implement anything easily. So, out of the options: array; class; database; (other?) which would be the most suitable for this scenario? The overhead difference is not an issue, as it'll be marginal enough between all three for my requirements (small site, good hosting etc). Access to said data will only be on a couple of pages, so having it in memory isn't a large requirement (AFAIK)."}
{"_id": "73561", "title": "Platform Independency Vs Architecture Neutrality", "text": "Is it true that platform independency is more of a myth today? Because programmers look for efficiency and power over portability which have to be compromised to some extent when achieving platform independency. On the other hand architecture neutrality is welcomed because it provides a very powerful way to make a software which can dominate a particular operating system family. My question is: Lets consider a hypothetical situation where we have to pick either one of them.What should be compromised? Portability or Power? I know this question is a bit subjective,but I'm looking for your views in general. Thank you. **EDIT:** Is it right to accept a particular answer just for the sake of it,especially for a question that would be answered according to individual perspectives?"}
{"_id": "188676", "title": "Has anyone used git as a runtime datastore in their application?", "text": "I used to work on a document workflow system, and it basically implemented a half-baked version control system for documents; using a database for versioning information and a filestore for the files. It was a lot of code, and hard to maintain. There were all sorts of bugs with locking and similar things, you name it. If I had to rewrite it from scratch, I would seriously consider using git as my data store. It occurred to me that I haven't read much about git (and most version control systems) being used in application implementations, as versioned data stores. What applications use git, or another VCS, behind the scenes for storing and versioning data?"}
{"_id": "188672", "title": "Consuming JSON stream into AWS Database on the cheap", "text": "I'm working on a project that needs to consume a JSON stream (approximately 1MB / minute), and parse and insert objects into a database. Amazon's DynamoDB or SimpleDB seem like attractive options for this. Is there a web service that can run a very simple script to eat the data and put it in a database? I could use a worker on Heroku or Elastic Beanstalk, or even pure EC2, but I'd like to find a service that's much cheaper, due to the very low amount of bandwidth and CPU required. (Sorry for the crappy tags. I'm not even sure where to categorize this question.)"}
{"_id": "224250", "title": "Practical mysql schema advice for eCommerce store - Products & Attributes", "text": "I am currently planning my first eCommerce application (mySQL & Laravel Framework). I have various products, which all have different attributes. Describing products very simply, Some will have a manufacturer, some will not, some will have a diameter, others will have a width, height, depth and others will have a volume. Option 1: Create a master products table, and separate tables for specific product types (polymorphic relations). That way, I will not have any unnecessary null fields in the products table. Option 2: Create a products table, with all possible fields despite the fact that there will be a lot of null rows Option 3: Normalise so that each attribute type has it's own table. Option 4: Create an `attributes` table, as well as an `attribute_values` table with the value being varchar regardless of the actual data-type. The products table would have a many:many relationship with the attributes table. Option 5: Common attributes to all or most products put in the products table, and specific attributes to a particular category of product attached to the categories table. My thoughts are that I would like to be able to allow easy product filtering by these attributes and sorting. I would also want the frontend to be fast, less concern over the performance of the inserting and updating of product records. Im a bit overwhelmed with the vast implementation options, and cannot find a suitable answer in terms of the best method of approach. Could somebody point me in the right direction? In an ideal world, I would like to offer the following kind of functionality - http://www.glassesdirect.co.uk/products/ to my eCommerce store. As can be seen, in the sidebar, you can select an attribute the glasses to filter them. e.g. male / female or plastic / metal / titanium etc... Alternatively, should I just dump the mySql relational database idea and learn mongodb?"}
{"_id": "132702", "title": "Is there an efficient way to adapt data from a structure to another in c++?", "text": "I'm writing an interface between two configuration models that use different structures. While I know that there is no \"magic\" way to do the translation from a structure type to another, I wandered if there might be some best practices or an efficient/effective way to setup such a system. I think it's similar to how programs may manage different configuration structures accross versions. Here's a simple example: let's say we have a structure of type A which contains 3 parameters:               struct A {       int alpha;       bool beta;       bool charlie;     };      The second configuration structure share the same parameters, but in a different order, let's see structure B:               struct B {       union {         struct {           char beta : 1;           char charlie : 1;         } bit;         char field;       }       int alpha;     };      A simple program to convert an A to a B would be:               void convert(A const *aelem, B *belem) {           belem->alpha = aelem->alpha;           belem->bit.beta = aelem->beta;           belem->bit.charlie = aelem->charlie;         }      So, while this may seem fairly simple with such basic structures, I'm dealing with dozens of structures, each of one contains around 50 parameters. So do anybody knows of a good pattern to follow for such a problem ?"}
{"_id": "241111", "title": "How can I have a shell script log into a remote server and execute imqcmd there?", "text": "I want to write a shell script to connect to the remote server and execute a command (any linux command). I am using linux and want to prepare a shell script which can login to the virtual directory server and execute a given command. I.e. if I want to execute the `imqcmd` command, how can I do this?"}
{"_id": "183665", "title": "The best way to implement authorization for a REST API", "text": "We develop social-based applications for mobile. Every application consumes RESTful API web-services. When I implement login I usually store the username and password somewhere on device. Then I send them and as a response I get access to my profile. But I also know there's another way to do this. One somehow generates a token with a particular algorithm, and then send it instead of the username and password to gain access. How should I implement that? Should I send this token along with every other request than login?"}
{"_id": "241116", "title": "Scenario to illustrate how unit testing leads to better design", "text": "For an internal training session, I'm trying to come up with a simple scenario that illustrates how unit testing leads to better design, by forcing you to think about things like coupling before you start coding. The idea is that I get the participants to code something first, without considering unit testing, then we do it again, but considering unit testing. Hopefully the code produced second time round should be more decoupled and maintainable. I'm struggling to come up with a scenario that can be coded quickly, yet can still demonstrate how unit testing can lead to better overall design."}
{"_id": "87863", "title": "Understanding Backtracking in C++", "text": "I have a good basic understanding of the fundamentals of C++, I also have an understanding of how recursion works too. I came across certain problems like the classic eight queens problem and solving a Sudoku with Backtracking. I realize that I'm quite lost when it comes to this, I can't seem to be able to get my mind around the concept of going back in the recursion stack and starting again in order to solve the problem. It seems easy with a pen and paper but when it comes to writing code for this, I'm confused on how to begin attacking these problems. It would be helpful if there were a tutorial aimed at beginners to backtracking or if there were a good book where this was covered. If somebody can shed light on this topic or give me some links to decent references, I'd be really grateful. And yes I do know that it would be easier in functional languages but I'd like to understand the implementation in imperative languages too."}
{"_id": "180314", "title": "How deep should we dive into testing different layers", "text": "We use Drupal 7 as our base CMS tool. For one specific product, something like an ERP, we've created sort of a non- drupal layer, to keep our specific business code in. It would be something like this:               -------------     |  Business | -> This would be our business specific code layer     -------------     |    Glue   | -> This is where we connect with the basic Drupal API as we need     -------------     |   Drupal  | -> This is Drupal API     -------------      We have the concept of `Repository`, which is a basic class that retrieves something from the database in the form of an `Entity` or a `ArrayObject` of `Entities`. This layer is connected to Drupal, since it needs access to the `db_query()` method, from the Drupal 7 API. Our whole `Business` layer is tested using `PHPUnit`, with 100% coverage. Now we are trying to test the `Glue` layer as well, the unit of the `Repositories`, their return values and parameters. In order to do that, we came to the conclusion that we would need to mock the `Drupal` database access API. But to do that, what would be the correct or best approach?   * Wrap the `db_query` function from `Drupal` into a class that could be mocked in the tests?   * Not test the `Repositories` at all?"}
{"_id": "244542", "title": "How can I write byte[] to socket outputstream and specify the end of file?", "text": "I've googled 2 days straight and I can't find how to do this. I have an open stream between client and server, and client will send a JSON string (encrypted to bytes) to the server each 3 to 5 seconds. How can I write to the `Socket` `OutputStream` so that I can read each JSON string in the server. I'm guessing I need to specify some kind of end of file or something, but can't find any info on how to achieve this."}
{"_id": "244544", "title": "Why is a software development life-cycle so inefficient?", "text": "Currently the software development lifecycle followed in the IT company I work at is:   * The \"Business\" works with a solution manager to build a Business Requirement document   * The solution manager works with the Program manager to build a Functional Spec   * The PM works with the engineering lead to develop a release plan and with the engineering team to develop technical specifications   * If there are any clarifications required, developers contact the PM who contacts the solution manager who contacts the business and all the way back introducing a latency of nearly 24 hours and massive email chains for any clarifications   * By the time the tech spec is made, nearly 1 month has passed in back and forth   * Now, 2 weeks go to development while the test writes test cases   * Code is dropped formally to test, test starts raising bugs. Even if there is 1 root cause for 10 different issues, and its an easily fixed one, developers are not allowed to give fresh code to test for the next 1 week. After 2-3 such drops to test the code is given to the ops team as a \"golden drop\" ( 2 months passed from the beginning)   * Ops team will now deploy the code in a staging environment. If it runs stable for a week, it will be promoted to UAT and after 2 weeks of that it will be promoted to prod. If there are any bugs found here, well, applying for a visa requires less paperwork This entire process is followed even if a single SSRS report is to be released. How do other companies process such requirements? I'm wondering why, the business cannot just drop the requirements to developers, developers build and deploy to UAT themselves, expose it to the business who raise functional bugs and after fixing those promote to prod. (even for more complex stuff)"}
{"_id": "136467", "title": "What parts of Java do I need to learn for specific software projects?", "text": "I'm starting a 12 week Java course next month through my local junior college. I'm starting from square 1. I have a basic understanding of OO and Java will be my first OO language. My Google-Fu returns way too much and I can't tell which is good, bad, etc. As far as learning the language, is it best to use a plain editor, I use JEdit currently, or an IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans? I don't have experience with either IDE. Is there other IDEs I should consider? My project goals are:   * GUI programs to control different radios and test equipment, which means I/O via USB, sound card, and networking across *NIX, Windows, and Mac OS.   * Programming for Android devices, both phone and tablets. Database backed apps for logging data. Quite possibly accessing radio/test gear over WiFi.   * JBoss environment.  How should I setup a testing environment for different platforms?"}
{"_id": "230569", "title": "Building an executable", "text": "I am an Electronics engineer so forgive my newbieity. Ok I want to build an `exe` file for multiple steps to be done on a windows when someone press on that file. the steps are:   * Install a media center,   * Change some data in the files of the media center,   * Install some plug ins to the media center,   * Change some setting in this media center,   * Make this media center work as shell on windows booting. The file should include:   * The media center installation files,   * The data which will be changed,   * The plug ins. I prefer to add like a unique password for every media center so it will work on this specific one only and only used for installation. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "185798", "title": "If I own an open source project why would I not host it on Github?", "text": "I've noticed that one rather well-known open source project (which I won't name so that noone focuses too much on that specific project) offers sources for download as a .zip via FTP instead of having them on GitHub. To me looks like GitHub would be more convenient.   1. It's free for open source projects   2. It has change history and many other perks of a version control system   3. If I want to change something I can just fork-change and then make a pull request instead of writing a long email explaining what to change in which file That's just what I could think of in one minute. Now what problems are there with Github that would make me prefer shipping sources as an archive via FTP?"}
{"_id": "185799", "title": "Copyright law with regard to MIDI tracks in games", "text": "I'm trying to understand what the law says about the use of MIDI or otherwise synthesized representations of songs under copyright within computer games, be they online or installed. I have read opinions, which make some sense to me, which state that a played back MIDI file counts as an unauthorized performance, albeit by a soundcard, and thus falls under standard copyright law. Is this the case? Does it make any difference at all whether all or part of the representation is performed by a human being, and whether, for example, vocals are replaced by a synth line? Does it make a difference if only a core motif from the song is used as opposed to the full track? And does it make any difference how realistic the sound is - for example, is a bleepy 8 bit rendition any less a violation of copyright than a MIDI file rendered down to a wave file using top-notch orchestral VSTs? I'm well aware that the digital world is awash with blatant copyright violations and that often it comes down to whether it is worth the copyright holder's effort to enforce the law. But I'm interested to learn exactly what the law is, because this seems like a vague area."}
{"_id": "230564", "title": "Threading and async intterupting on same process and thread, along with related", "text": "So, I'm trying to understand threads. I realize they are a mix of hardware and OS decisions. I also know that a thread, or process, has a set of register/stack variables and functions. In each thread, they get duplicated when forked, \"packed up\" when not running and \"unpacked\" back into the registers when they start again. I can use them fairly decently, but there are a few things I do not know: What happens when you interrupt the same thread? Eg, I'm on the main thread, bug a SIGCHLD is called or any interrupt, which interrupts the main thread in order to run this one function, then goes back. How do the stack variables \"pack up\", if they even do? (basically, same thread is interrupted, what happens to stack vars and function stack) A game loop, or event loop is continuous. I've started to accept the idea that, halfway into any function, it could just stop and switch to another thread \"context\". I also know that after every loop, it may or may not say \"I'm waiting for a timer/event, sleep for a few ms on me\", so will it try to run its interrupts there or just at any random time? How do I tell my own loops to stop and wait if I want to keep a certain pace? - I realize this might be in a book on OS's, just don't know what part. (Basically, how do threads sleep? Are they really interrupted halfway into a task?) (the above is surprising to me because I always thought of a program as a continuous set of things, it's like I have to change my mindset completely to understand how it really works) As far as I'm aware, sync-ing ensures that a variable is the same across all registers. So with my first Q, is the register and stack the same when the main thread is interrupted? Must I sync anything? If they are different threads, does it wake up the others just to sync the variables, or do the threads stay \"asleep\"? I'm betting they all point to the same heap vars, but where could differences arise besides pointers pointing to old addresses? I realize if I knew where to read, maybe I could infer more than half of this. I apologize if they sound basic, I've been reading but a lot of this, I just don't get but would like to. I use GCD a lot which hides the details, so I know to sync, gate, but I have absolutely no idea where my threaded variables are going and when/how. I learned about this from some sockets programming and an OS book I was reading, but obviously I'm missing some critical details. Thank you. Stephen"}
{"_id": "255972", "title": "SPA: outsourcing client-side development", "text": "Given a SPA-based web site (with a client developed using any JS MVC framework and the server providing a REST API), does anyone have any experience in outsourcing the development of the client side and parallel development of the server-side? What were the problems you encountered? Was it really beneficial?"}
{"_id": "130707", "title": "How early is too early to be involved in new feature development?", "text": "I develop an internal business application that our engineers use to test and debug the company's product. The engineering manager has been pushing to get the software developers involved when the engineers are in their design phase. He says that he wants to give us an idea of what's coming down the pipe, and give us the opportunity to provide feedback on their designs (we rarely have feedback). The engineering manager wants the developers and engineers to implement new features simultaneously, so that by the time the engineers have implemented their end, they can use the software to test them. The feature designs tend to be volatile until they are fully implemented by the engineers, making it difficult to draw up requirements. He thinks the engineers and developers can do all of our debugging side-by-side, at integration time. It all seems inefficient and backwards to me."}
{"_id": "109004", "title": "Who should set the goal for a retrospective?", "text": "I am the SM of a team and would like to know who should set the goal for the retrospectives"}
{"_id": "140131", "title": "How to cure the \"can not deliver\"/ \"cannot deliver on time syndrome\"", "text": "I am an above average programmer (I take interest in the development of languages, frameworks and technology in general and have a good grasp of systems), but I constantly find my self not being able to deliver things (on time). This does not affect my day to day work as it has good control process (bite sized tasks with shame driven development) But it definitely hurts me in my personal projects. Some of the reasons that I think are at play. -I make things more complicated than they need to be. Often a lot more than I admit to my self. -I am not very good at making the tasks smaller at times. -I wander off into obscure corners when I encounter them instead of keeping a laser focus. The result is often that I don't deliver. Now I may know at the back of my head that what I need to do, but I would appreciate your strategy on how to be the guy who \"delivers\"."}
{"_id": "240395", "title": "Single Page Web Application Web Service Scalability", "text": "I am trying to build a single page web application that will call multiple web services (both SOAP and RESTful) and aggregate the data in the UI. Initially I though I could do it all client-side, with ajax requests, but I realize that   * If there are many requests, and they are fired per user, the data can take a long time to load.   * If there are a lot of users, then I can easily reach my limit of API calls. So now I'm thinking that I will have to have some kind of server-side process that runs every hour (or whatever), retrieves the items, and inserts/updates them in a database. Is this the right approach? Are there any other pitfalls I need to avoid?"}
{"_id": "128680", "title": "Any good tips for a PHP Programmer for starting on Iphone and ipad apps? (have pc only)", "text": "I am trying to learn creating apps for IPhone and IPad, apps like database oriented websites where user can save their data. I am a normal php programmer and use only Windows PC. Any good tips that you guys can suggest me to begin with would be highly appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "233910", "title": "Should static data be stored in a database or somewhere else?", "text": "I'm working on some software at them moment and I'm not sure which route to take with this. I have some data to store somewhere on a mobile device. The data will never change, and has a hierarchical relationship, and will be used to populate the display. There is a reasonably amount of this data. I have the following options:   1. A set of enums/objects   2. An XML file   3. The embedded SQLite database In this particular case I think that the enums option is the least work, but I get a smell from the data being embedded in the code like that. The XML file makes the most sense I think, but parsing it will be a resource hit that seems like a waste since it will 'never' change. The database should provide less of a performance hit, but seems like overkill for static data. Which is the correct design path here? **Note:** By 'Never' change I mean that it will rarely change. The data in question is a model of a set of government standards, so they may well change at some point in the future but its not going to be regularly and its not going to automatically update our software either as a change in the standards could well trigger a change in our requirements."}
{"_id": "128687", "title": "web content management system", "text": "Quite a few of my friends want to have their own personal website to showcase their talents. However, they don't want to deal with such technical things as writing html and managing web server. Neither do I. It would be nice that we go to our URL and view our pages and we edit and update our information when logging in. So basically the content displayed will be what we provide and at the same time we can choose from some provided templates for page layout and style. It seems a typical content management system to me. If it is, I'd like to build a simple one myself because I'd like to have the experience of building a simple CMS. Since I have no previous experience for this, I need some help figuring out what is all I need for it. And, what are the most appropriate tools and technologies? So far, I have **html** , **css** , **JSP** , **Tomcat** , **SQLite** in my mind. Is that enough? Are they the best combination? Also, I have no idea how to approach the authorization and security aspects of building the system. (PS: I'm not sure what tags are proper for my question. Feel free to edit them for me)"}
{"_id": "74514", "title": "When to use RCP?", "text": "I like to write small GUI applications using Java and Swing, something like a client for the social website Tumblr Should I use Eclipse RCP or the Netbeans platform? And what benefits do I get from using either one over using plain swing/SWT? Do RCP applications require more dependencies than those developed using Swing or SWT?"}
{"_id": "74516", "title": "Please share experience on how to make the source code easy for other to follow?", "text": "I can write source code in a period of time, but after a while of not touching the project, it takes me time to be familiar with the source code again. Also, other people need some time to study the program... How do you make source code more easy for others to follow?"}
{"_id": "135288", "title": "Is there a typical way of having a view that is a dependent on another?", "text": "I am working on a program with two views, html and ajax (which will be html transmitted via json). The HTML view is the standard, and by default the ajax should look the same. However, the ajax view is also meant to have options configurable on the client side for which components of the page should be displayed. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around making an elegant way to handle this requirement. Is there a standard way to handle related views like this?"}
{"_id": "139503", "title": "Modelling project structure for Management", "text": "The project I am putted in is running awful. :-) Main Problem is a missing architecture and a missing guidline how to organize projects. In this case I have done a sample project architecture with UML class and component diagrams and layer diagrams. The main problem is, that I have to present this architecture to the management. But the management is not familiar with UML or Layer Diagrams and for most of them its not possible to understand the logic behind it. In that case I want to present the management a visualized project structure with easy understanding. I've searched for some ressources and examples with easy understanding visualizations, but was not able to find one. So my question is how you would visualize your software architecture to the management, which techniques do you use? Little Note: its a very big sharepoint project with more than 50 sub projects."}
{"_id": "135287", "title": "What's a generation in Software Development?", "text": "I've heard about software and apps going into Generation 1.2 or 2.6, is there an actual methodology behind this? or it's more of a marketing thing? Currently we are using Scrum as our methodology in agile software development and it's based on sprints, but I haven't been able to find any information detailing what's actually a generation in software development (neither on Agile based methodologies and non-agile). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_%28scrum%29#Sprint"}
{"_id": "135285", "title": "When does it become mandatory to sign up with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG)?", "text": "My company is looking to add Bluetooth functionality to our hardware, so that we can integrate connectivity to our products with various tablet devices. To do this, we are looking to purchase an all-in-one chip that we can integrate into our boards. Everyone within the development team is new to Bluetooth integration and as I am doing my research, I am finding a lot of references and material that points me back to Bluetooth.org and mention becoming a Special Interest Group (SIG) member. This has raised various questions regarding the necessity for us as a company to join the SIG. We would rather not have to go through that process because that would involve paying various fees and dragging corporate lawyers into the process. We've already had to jump through a few legal hoops ( _ahem_ , MFi anyone?) and would prefer not to have to go through any of that again for the sake of development time. If we want to integrate simple Bluetooth connectivity into our devices, do we have to go through the process of joining the Bluetooth SIG or are we covered and allowed to promote our devices as Bluetooth enabled since the all-in-one chips we will be integrating will becoming from a major manufacturer who has already become a SIG member and has had there chipset certified by the SIG?"}
{"_id": "231420", "title": "Passing a Scala function to a Java 8 method", "text": "The following Scala code works and can be passed to a Java method expecting a function. Is there a cleaner way to do this? Here's my first pass:               val plusOne = new java.util.function.Function[Int,Int] {       override def apply(t:Int):Int = t + 1            override def andThen[V](after:function.Function[_ >: Int, _ <: V]):         function.Function[Int, V] = ???            override def compose[V](before:function.Function[_ >: V, _ <: Int]):         function.Function[V, Int] = ???     }      Here's my second pass - it uses a generic wrapper for the Java-8 Function interface to make the Scala syntax simpler:               // Note: Function1 is Scala's functional interface,     // Function (without the 1) is Java 8's.     case class JavaFunction1[U,V](f:Function1[U,V]) extends Function[U,V] {       override def apply(t: U): V = f(t)       override def compose[T](before:Function[_ >: T, _ <: U]):         Function[T, V] = ???       override def andThen[W](after:Function[_ >: V, _ <: W]):         Function[U, W] = ???     }          val plusOne = JavaFunction1((x:Int) => x + 1)     val minusOne = JavaFunction1((x:Int) => x - 1)      Can we do better? As a follow-up, is there any chance that Scala will someday use the invoke- dynamic op-code as Java 8 does for its first-class function application? Will that make everything magically work, or will there still need to be a syntactic conversion?"}
{"_id": "177184", "title": "Naming convention: field starting with \"m\" or \"s\"", "text": "I saw lot of code (for example some Android source code) where fields name start with a \"m\" while static fields start with \"s\" Example (taken from Android View class source):               private SparseArray<Object> mKeyedTags;          private static int sNextAccessibilityViewId;      I was wondering what \"m\" and \"s\" stand for... maybe is \"m\" mutable and \"s\" static? Since it seems that is a largely adopted pattern do you know if there some literature about this kind of naming convention?"}
{"_id": "177183", "title": "should I extend or create instance of the class", "text": "I have two classes Class A and Class B in Class A, i have three methods that perform the save, delete and select operation based upon the object I pass them. in Class B I perform the logic operations, such as modification to the property of the object before being passed to the methods of Class A, My problem is in Class B, should it extend Class A, and call the methods of class A , by parent::methodName or create instance of class A and then call Class A does not includes any property just methods.               class A{       public function save($obj){              //code here         }             public function delete($obj){              //code here         }              public function select($obj){              //code here         }      }      //Should I extend class A, and call the method by parent::methodName($obj) or create an instance of class A, call the method $instanceOfA->methodName($obj);                class B extends A{              public function checkIfHasSaved($obj){              if($obj->saved == 'Yes'){                       parent::save($obj);   //**should I call the method like this**                      $instanceOFA = new A();   //**or create instance of class A and call without extending class A**                       instanceOFA->save($obj);                 }                  //other logic operations here           }           }"}
{"_id": "7292", "title": "Would you make use of \"Google 20%\" time if your employer encouraged and funded it?", "text": "We know about Google's 20% projects, whereby a developer can spend up to 20% of their time on a personal project which interests them. If your employer let you spend 20% of your time on a project that wasn't part of your day-to-day work, would you make use of it? I can think of a couple of reasons why not:   * It would make your normal work take 20% longer (extended deadline)   * You might want to keep your personal idea \"personal.\""}
{"_id": "10311", "title": "What are the most common ways used to migrate a Delphi application incrementally to .NET?", "text": "If you have several million lines of Delphi code and want to incrementally migrate to .NET/C#, what strategy would you use?"}
{"_id": "173401", "title": "Exception Handling Frequency/Log Detail", "text": "I am working on a fairly complex .NET application that interacts with another application. Many single-line statements are possible culprits for throwing an Exception and there is often nothing I can do to check the state before executing them to prevent these Exceptions. The question is, based on best practices and seasoned experience, how frequently should I lace my code with try/catch blocks? I've listed three examples below, but I'm open to any advice. I'm really hoping to get some pros/cons of various approaches. I can certainly come up with some of my own (greater log granularity for the O-C approach, better performance for the Monolithic approach), so I'm looking for _experience_ over opinion. * * * **EDIT:** I should add that this application is a batch program. The only \"recovery\" necessary in most cases is to log the error, clean up gracefully, and quit. So this could be seen to be as much a question of log granularity as exception handling. In my mind's eye I can imagine good reasons for both, so I'm looking for some general advice to help me find an appropriate balance. * * * ## Monolitich Approach               class Program{         public static void Main(){             try{                 Step1();                 Step2();                 Step3();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);             } finally {                 CleanUp();             }         }              public static void Step1(){             ExternalApp.Dangerous1();             ExternalApp.Dangerous2();         }              public static void Step2(){             ExternalApp.Dangerous3();             ExternalApp.Dangerous4();         }              public static void Step3(){             ExternalApp.Dangerous5();             ExternalApp.Dangerous6();         }     }      ## Delegated Approach               class Program{         public static void Main(){             try{                 Step1();                 Step2();                 Step3();             } finally {                 CleanUp();             }         }              public static void Step1(){             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous1();                 ExternalApp.Dangerous2();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }         }              public static void Step2(){             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous3();                 ExternalApp.Dangerous4();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }         }              public static void Step3(){             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous5();                 ExternalApp.Dangerous6();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }         }     }      ## Obsessive-Compulsive Approach               class Program{         public static void Main(){             try{                 Step1();                 Step2();                 Step3();             } finally {                 CleanUp();             }         }              public static void Step1(){             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous1();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous2();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }         }              public static void Step2(){             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous3();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous4();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }         }              public static void Step3(){             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous5();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }             try{                 ExternalApp.Dangerous6();             } catch (Exception e) {                 Log(e);                 throw;             }         }     }      **Other approaches welcomed and encouraged. Above are examples only.**"}
{"_id": "121263", "title": "Updating Java SE and Java EE knowledge", "text": "I wonder how you guys are updating your tech knowledge on a daily basis. Definitely it will be from internet. But what are those sources? E.g. I didn't know about the DWR technology but knew if from my colleague and used it in my work. I like to know about technologies like this, to use in our Java SE and Java EE projects as soon as they are available to the community."}
{"_id": "121266", "title": "\"Worker object pool\" pattern?", "text": "In my application requests are processed by objects of `Processor`-derived classes, something like `CreateItemProcessor` or `MoveItemToGroupProcessor`. Base Processor class implements most of common processing logic, and derived ones make some specific business logic related tasks. An object of a certain processor type is created before request processing, and then wiped out afterward. Eventually it came to a situation, when creation of a single processor object was taking major part of request processing time. So now I'm thinking about creation of a pool of request processor objects, and reuse them instead of using create/delete approach. The problem here is that any single `Processor` object is not thread-safe, and actually shouldn't be tread-safe: it stores request-specific data inside. So my general approach to that is as follows:   * Try to acquire 'processor' from a pool;   * If there are no any available, wait;   * When we have processor available, mark that as 'working' and start processing;   * When job is done, \"return\" processor to the pool;   * Notify pool that free processor is available. Is there a kind of design pattern for that? Am I missing something from the existing GoF patterns? Any C#-related implementation details?"}
{"_id": "77897", "title": "Why were Java collections implemented with \"optional methods\" in the interface?", "text": "During my first implementation extending the Java collection framework, I was quite surprised to see that the collection interface contains methods declared as optional. The implementer is expected to throw UnsupportedOperationExceptions if unsupported. This immediately struck me as a poor API design choice. After reading much of Joshua Bloch's excellent \"Effective Java\" book, and later learning he may be responsible for these decisions, it didn't seem to gel with the principles espoused in the book. I would think declaring two interfaces: Collection, and MutableCollection which extends Collection with the \"optional\" methods would have led to much more maintainable client code. There's an excellent summary of the issues here. Was there a good reason why optional methods were chosen instead of the two interfaces implementation?"}
{"_id": "236240", "title": "In c++, difference between linking a class object and just including it.", "text": "this is my first time here. I'm a physics grad student and I've recently found a research group to work with. We study statistical mechanics using computer models, so there is a significant programming aspect to it. My first job has been to take the old data analysis code (written in java) and clean it up in c++. The guy before me who wrote the original program used the traditional physics method of using an enormous amount of spaghetti code and shoving it all in a constructor. This irked me quite a bit, so I divided it up into separate classes and now it has a reasonable class structure. In the past, whenever we had defined a class we would put its definitions and its methods in a header function, then to use it we would just include it. I know this breaks the rules of how to use .h and .cpp files, but is there any reason other than code etiquette to compile and link a class object rather than include it? Sorry for the long question."}
{"_id": "236245", "title": "Using mocks to set up object even if you will not be mocking any behavior or verifying any interaction with it?", "text": "When building a unit test, **is it appropriate to use a mocking tool to assist you in setting up an object** even if you will not be mocking any behavior or verifying any interaction with that object? Here is a simple example in pseudo-code:               //an object we actually want to mock     Object someMockedObject = Mock(Object.class);     EqualityChecker checker = new EqualityChecker(someMockedObject);          //an object we are mocking only to avoid figuring out how to instantiate or      //tying ourselves to some constructor that may be removed in the future     ComplicatedObject someObjectThatIsHardToInstantiate = Mock(ComplicatedObject.class);          //set the expectation on the mock     When(someMockedObject).equals(someObjectThatIsHardToInstantiate).return(false);     Assert(equalityChecker.check(someObjectThatIsHardToInstantiate)).isFalse();          //verify that the mock was interacted with properly     Verify(someMockedObject).equals(someObjectThatIsHardToInstantiate).oneTime();      Is it appropriate to mock ComplicatedObject in this scenario?"}
{"_id": "246943", "title": "what is the technical term for this presentation model?", "text": "I have an application I've inherited that I'd call \"proto-MVC\", and I love the concept of MVC but am new to it. In my ideal dream of a lightweight application, all of the document's content is stored in an array:               <script>     var MVCDocument={         DOM:{            ...         },         listeners[           {..},           {..}         ]     }     </script>      That array defines the content and structure of the page, as well as what programming assets are present at the time. Next, I would have listeners or running processes that monitor the structure of the MVCDocument and react to any changes in it. These processes are the \"brains\". Ajax calls will modify or annotate the MVCDocument. Changes to the MVCDocument object might in turn modify the listeners/\"Brains\". CSS would function to style the presentation layer. The problem is that I don't know the right terms to look for examples of what I'm wanting to develop. I prefer NOT to re-invent the wheel. What are some good examples of aps that run based on this premise? and are there more components than just the bones (document array), brains (javascript coding), and clothing (css)?"}
{"_id": "125011", "title": "Does not testing internals entail diligent refactoring and/or rely on developer talent?", "text": "I'm not asking here what the arguments are for/against testing internal methods (though I'll restate some, and don't mind hearing others). My questions relate to the implications of only testing public interface. Especially, whether I understand the extent of the \"refactor\" part of Red- Green-Refactor in by-the-book TDD, and if there are non TDD techniques TDD practitioners use that address the problems that make me want to test internals. My question is: If you write the most straightforward code possible to get the light green, and if you don't test internal methods, does it follow that from time to time you allow yourself to start off by writing a class that does far more than it should with a bunch of member variables you know will not survive refactoring? And wind up after refactoring with a bunch of methods that aren't explicitly tested? As I get familiar with TDD, it feels like anyone would at least be tempted to test internal methods. And many practitioners flatly say you shouldn't. E.g. (of about 23 million results): Item 2 here and it's comments and this StackOverflow post Given an implementation will involve more than one non-trivial problem, if you only test the public interface, there are two possibilities: 1) non-trivial logic winds up getting tested only indirectly, AND tested in the same calls as other non trivial logic. 2) you make methods public that you don't expect clients other than the SUT and the tests to call. I think what I hear from the advocates of by-the-book TDD is \"1 is right. Yes, a lot of non trivial code is tested only indirectly, and that isn't a problem. After all, you don't want your tests to start failing when you improve the implementation. Even if they don't fail, it's not innocuous if tests keep passing when they're targetting a bunch of no-longer-used code, because the tests show how to use your class. You Should Only Test the Public Interface.\" And that sounds like a reasonable thing to say, but I haven't seen it said explicitly. But even though it sounds reasonable -- if I don't test internals I feel like I lose part of what helps keep the tests DRIVING the coding (maybe part of my difficulty applying the precepts is that I don't distinguish between coding and developing). If there's some internal logic that has to turn a String to a valid int32, int64 or decimal value depending on what's in the string and the type of some other object, I want to test that little bit of logic, not just find out that the whole method failed. I want one test to pinpoint those few lines of code and exercise what should fail. The thinking in the doubly downvoted answer here seems so obviously attractive that I have to wonder if the by-the-book fellows are neglecting to mention some instrumentation/tracing/logging code they use in addition to TDD, or if they watch it work in a symbolic debugger. Or do they just recognize that as a failure point and write a test with input that will cause a failure pinpointing those few lines of code? If they do that it's testing the implementation though. It seems so natural to want to test that code in isolation, and verify it fails where it should, even though it's an implementation detail. I suppose that with talent and experience you can classify bigger chunks of code as \"non-trivial\" but I haven't seen anyone bluntly saying or condescendingly implying that that's why they don't have to test implementation details. Lots of time it makes perfect sense to me to test the public interface, lots of methods really are like what you see in TDD examples. But for the feel of where I wonder if purists are doing something more than writing tests on a public member: Say you want to put data from an ISAM file into a database. There is one public method to the envisioned consumer of the code: public void LoadIt(SqlConnection c). \"Loadit\" has a bunch of other dependencies that will be resolved using configuration files and environment variables: some code has to determine that it can find the name of the folder where the ISAMs live; to find, load and parse the schema file for the isams using the ISAM vendor's DDL library; so forth+so on. But none of that is of any interest to any envisioned calling code. My only reason for moving the dependency resolvers out of the Loadit class would be so I could test them OR to make the code easier to understand/maintain. Moving to another class to make them testable is Doing It Wrong -- they're really just implementation details of LoadIt. And in my first implementation, I am just trying to write enough code to get the light to turn green. So I won't write anything with reasonable maintainability if it's easier to just manhandle a bunch of variables in a big method or two. I won't write helper classes. Instead, I'll get the light green and then do the Refactor part diligently. Even when I clean it up, any classes introduced keep \"internal/friend\" accessibility, and only get tested via the call to LoadIt. Thanks for reading this far; as a reminder, my question is in the second paragraph."}
{"_id": "85575", "title": "How suitable is D2 for numerical work", "text": "I'm interested in working with the D programming language for simulating physics. How suitable is it? Is DMD's floating point code generation mature enough to compete with compilers available for c++ and fortran? Have fast matrix libraries been ported to D (or are they accessible from D)? Is there anything in the language itself that would inhibit/improve the floating point performance of the language? I love programming in the language, however I'm worried that the compilers/libraries might not be suitable yet for numerical work."}
{"_id": "128020", "title": "How to deploy a heterogeneous server application to customers?", "text": "We have a bigger application server which customers would like to have deployed locally. It consists of an MySQL server database, a REDIS database, multiple Web servers for sub parts, a NGINX reverse proxy so that these web servers are reachable from Port 80 and a homegrown C++ server. All sub parts (DB, Webservers, ...) have to be configured to be accessible by each other. At the moment (for in house use) deployment and configuration is done by hand; but in order to roll it out to customers, we would like to have a Out-of-the- Box-Solution which gets assembled by some build script. What would you suggest?   1. Maintaining a VM which just gets configured and then deployed?   2. Maintaining some installation script or package   3. Something else? Usually we would prefer 2. as it seems the more natural way and let the customer decide whether he wants to use a real server or a VM. Also sounds automatic creation of VMs rather time-expensive. The Problems we face are the usually not-to-be-embedded-components like MySQL and NGINX. NGINX configuration is stored in /etc/nginx/. I don't think that .DEB-packages are allowed to overwrite foreign NGINX configuration nor is it a good practice. The same with MySQL. It is also possible to embed MySQL/NGINX/Redis but this is not a trivial task."}
{"_id": "125014", "title": "What about ALM systems, ERPs, and embedded products?", "text": "We are working on getting a new application lifecycle management (ALM) system, including a bug tracker, a documentation system, project management, etc. The concern is that we deal with quite complex embedded systems and we would like to have the best possible integration of the different services (project management, issue/task tracking, documentation, etc.). If it was software only, I'd just buy something like JIRA, but the fact that we would hope to manage software, firmware (no big problem there), and hardware in the same system makes me doubt a little bit. I'm looking for advice regarding these points:   * What about managing \"bugs\" with embedded products? In software, you have the versions of the affected module(s). In embedded products, you have different software driving often times different firmware operating sometimes different hardware. Is it good in practice to simply consider hardware parts as if they were software modules in a software-intended system? I tend to believe it will add many custom fields to the bug tracking interface and consequently won't promote its systematic use.   * Some would like to push integration to the level where you have hardware inventory integrated to the rest. This means that a project in the ALM (think JIRA) would have to reserve its hardware components based on the sub-components. It would also mean that, for example, the ALM in question would have to be able to manage part providers and offer facilities to easy purchase order creation, sending, and management in general. I'm wondering, at that point, if everything in an embedded project management process can be integrated in one management system, or if a line has to be drawn between 1) bug/task tracking (possibly software and hardware) and project management and 2) high level project management, inventory tracking, sale/buy orders, etc. What is ultimately wished for seems to be nothing less than an integrated JIRA and ERP. Or is it possible to do proper ALM in an existing ERP or have a decent ERP in an ALM system already? My personal opinion, from what I know right now, would be to split issues and project management (ALM + documentation + ...) from the ERP. The problem with that is that there's documentation about a project both in the ERP and in the project management of the ALM (which would be used for software, firmware, hardware, ...). What's funny in this is that some things might seem very unrelated at first, like the time sheets (ERP) and an issue (bug tracker in ALM), but in the end, it might very well be interesting, wanted, or even required to know how much time was spend on a bug, or a project altogether (bugs, issues, features, other tasks). This gives a point toward total unification of ERP/ALM... At this point, you should get a feel of my questioning. Any helpful input is greatly appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "57885", "title": "LINQPad still being used much out there?", "text": "I'm trying to guage how popular and how used LINQPad is today. I'm just wondering if it's still a useful tool or not as VS and other tools have gotten better. Furthermore, I am coding over LLBGen by working with LINQ to SQL. I see there is a plug-in for LLBGen and LINQPad. Still I wonder if LINQPad is really worth it or what benefits it can give me or if it's still highly suggested out there for ORMs, etc."}
{"_id": "135868", "title": "What language is the CLR written in?", "text": "Just out of curiosity, what language is the CLR written in? I read on the Java Virtual Machine wikipedia entry that it is programmed in C++; is this the same for the CLR? Sorry if this is off-topic, I didn't feel that this question was technical enough to go on Stack Overflow. Thanks! :)"}
{"_id": "184945", "title": "Why is an interface in Java not allowed to have state?", "text": "There must be a good reason why Java designers didn't allow any state to be defined in interfaces . Can you please throw some light on this aspect of design decision ?"}
{"_id": "38441", "title": "When not to use Google Web Toolkit?", "text": "I'm considering use of GWT on a major in-house web app development project, namely it's major advantage in my eyes is the cross-compilation to Javascript which would (at least theoretically) help my team reduce the size of tech stack by one. However, having been burnt before (like most devs), I would like to hear from programmers who did actually use it on any problems with GWT which would hamper, or limit, it's use within a certain problem domain. What are the arguments against using GWT, and why?"}
{"_id": "208276", "title": "CakePHP: Automation triggers after save - best done as component or behavior?", "text": "Folks, first time on CodeReview - just looking for some input in creating some automation in CakePHP, wondering if this is best used a component or a behavior. It's model driven but involves logic and processing. Here's the scoop: The app I'm creating requires the user to be notified when a model meets certain conditions - additionally data in the affected model or a related model might need to be changed. For example, if a customer model is saved with a certain state/province, assign that customer to a sales rep (by changing a relational field) and notify them through a Growl or an Email. So it's data driven, for sure, suggesting behavior, presumably afterSave() But it also requires logic and other utilities not typically used in the model or behavior (email, for example and Session/system configuration/user preferences) - functionality typically found in a controller/component and not readily available to a model or behavior. So is this best developed as a behavior or a component? Any tips on how to approach by Cake Guru's this would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "208274", "title": "When using int's as boolean values, is it in poor form to use 0's and 1' directly?", "text": "Is it better to do this               #define INT_TRUE 1     #define INT_FALSE 0          int someFunctionalityIsEnabled = INT_TRUE;      or this?               int someFunctionalityIsEnabled = 1;      It can be safely assumed that false will always be zero and true will be non- zero."}
{"_id": "870", "title": "If you could only have one programming related book on your bookshelf what would it be and why?", "text": "One per answer please. I'll add my favourite as an answer."}
{"_id": "4596", "title": "Is local \"User\" rights enough or do developers need Local Administrator or Power User while coding?", "text": "We have an offshore development crew who has a bad habit of installing nonsense software on corporate desktops (which has nothing to do with their job function) and so are considering removing their local administrator rights. Is Local Administrator, or local Power User a requirement with VS2010? How do you run without elevated rights? What issues will you run into?"}
{"_id": "204568", "title": "Established antipattern name? Only getting data ducks in a row right before you need them", "text": "This one's all over our codebase but I'm not sure I've ever heard a name put to it. We have C# and Java (and Rails but we don't have to touch it very often) so I'll speak more generally. It's like the data concerns never get fully established until you're literally right in a view controller preparing to drop it on the page (note: we're way past the actual SQL queries in most cases here). For instance, we have data for a certain product type coming in from CRMs, from scans done with our mobile app, and pulled up from inventory in DBs and yet somehow it's not until we get to the spot where we're literally about to drop it on the page that we suddenly discover that there's business logic to attend to. Our actions and view controllers are GIGANTIC. We're asking all kinds of questions of every object and branching on them, whether it isThis or hasThat, data sources, customer preferences and sometimes stuff so seemingly arbitrary it might as well be phase of the moon, migration habits of species I've never even heard of, most-googled film stars... And it doesn't always stop at the controller. The Java in particular is notorious for letting it all spill out into the JSP and then even onto the client-side in the JS. This phenomenon has to have a name, but I've never heard it. What is it?"}
{"_id": "203828", "title": "Regaining my spark on a project", "text": "So I'm in a little bit of a pickle. I suppose some people have gotten in my situation at some point, I know but at least as many have kept going for various reasons. To put the problem shortly; I am stuck in a project which I have after several attempts of \"new fresh attitude\" ended up drained out of energy and creativity and been less productive than I wish I were. The scenario is this; I had earlier been handed a, in my opinion, half done project made in Drupal. At first it had really terrible code, but I managed to get them to clean it up a bit first. Needless to say, a poorly constructed house full of used clothes and thrash is still a poorly constructed house even without the used clothes and the thrash. My hope currently is to regain that spark I have for all of my other projects that lets me work effeciently and mainly gets things done. In this case, I have little to none interest in working with this project. Here are some reason:   * The code have quite some room for improvements. The only things that I find acceptable are the things contributed from Drupal, which are simply implemented into this project. Most custom things made in it is nothing I cherish.   * I can't push myself to endure it, because I know this project will be something I'm forced to work with in the long term. In the same way I can't push myself to run the last mile of a marathon faster if I know I have to walk the entire way home afterwards.   * I've read up quite a bit regarding people's opinion upon Drupal, and have came to the conclusion that Drupal is great if you have the right mindset for it. I don't have that mindset.   I prefer to create as much as possible myself and simply let a framework such as CodeIgniter worry about the process. It helps me be more confident with my code and less dependent on a module fetched from somewhere.   * I generally don't believe in the project. It already takes silly long time to load, weird bugs appears from time to time that I can't even solve through google effeciently. It feels like the best thing I can do with the project is to patch it up, but I strive to do great websites, not make bad ones less bad.   * Drupal has a long learning process, and I've been put in the middle of a half made project and am supposed to implemented more advanced features. Usually I have no problem to add these things in my other projects, but in Drupal it feels close to impossible often. Apart from this, I might add that I'm currently economicly independent and don't fear loosing my job for that reason. I generally have nice colleagues but I work alone as a developer and would prefer to have at least someone whom I could discuss technical solutions with. This project isn't something that will go away from my understanding, I've sat down with my boss, explaining how I feel regarding this project but all I get in reply is \"We've spend too much time and money on this project. It needs to get completed.\" From my point of view, we're currently throwing money into a pit, hoping that the money will reach the surface sooner of later. **Question:**   How can I regain the spark for this project? The creativity simply isn't there for me. This project won't give me much knowledge that I will have use of in the future (I have maintained lots and lots of code for 3 years) and it doesn't lead me towards my goal; to create \"the perfect website\". If I can't regain the spark, what other alternatives should I consider? **Note:**   I am aware that this question can seem too localized, but I think my main question can help many in a similiar position. I'm sorry if I sound like a spoiled developer who only wants to take on specific tasks, but I work _so_ much better with project I'm comfortable with and I also like being productive."}
{"_id": "204562", "title": "Is there any situation in which it would be appropriate to use unless... else?", "text": "This construction is considered wrong               unless       #..     else       #..     end      This is for the general reason of double-negative confusions. It translates to:               if not        #..     if not not       #..     end      _We all agree this is confusing._ * * * Is there any situation (include semantic) that the `unless..else` construction would be more appropriate?"}
{"_id": "80898", "title": "How do you ask or get asked to speak at a software conference?", "text": "This is in my TODO.txt. How would you go about achieving this goal?"}
{"_id": "133420", "title": "How should I include third-party models in my domain model?", "text": "I'm currently trying to design a little application using Domain Driven Design but I'm afraid I don't really get the concept yet. Let me try to explain this as clearly as possible.               public interface IMyDomainRepository     {         void Add(IAnInterfaceFromAThirdParty element);     }      The interface above is defined in my domain model and this will be used in a different project called `ThirdPartyImplementionVersionX`. Now `IAnInterfaceFromAThirdParty` is not defined in my domain model but comes from my third party library. I could create a class/interface in my domain model which implements the same properties and methods as the interface `IAnInterfaceFromAThirdParty` but this interface has 20 methods defined thus making it a difficult task to implement the same logic. Is this the way to go or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "80894", "title": "Managing re-usable code in user-centric agile stories?", "text": "I work on an agile team at the moment where our stories are written primarily from the user perspective as well as testing. So, for example, we may have a request for a date picker. The story would go something like:               User goes to page x and clicks on date to launch a native date picker      All fine and good, but the problem is how to communicate what that is from a development POV. For example, the issues we'd want to address:   * we have to support multiple devices   * even though the user sees a 'native' widget, we're often having to build emulated versions in JS   * we'd want to be using said widget on many other pages than just x and would want to incorporate variations needed on page y and z into this one component. We're struggling in figuring out how to best handle this to enable the dev team. One option seems to be for our dev team to build our own component and pattern libraries. We'd then take the user stories and use that data to enhance our own component/pattern library. Have you ran into this problem and, if so, have you found a way to consolidate the discrepancies between user stories and the concept of reusable component code for the dev team?"}
{"_id": "24681", "title": "Charles Barkley syndrome", "text": "Charles Barkley was an excellent basketball player, a hall of fame, and a dream team member. He played for the 76ers, Suns, and Rockets. Yet he never won an NBA championship. Some might argue this was because he was never surrounded by other players of his caliber, and in the NBA, you can't win on your own. So what does this have to do with programming? How many of you out there feel like Sir Charles? Leading your team in every category, KLOCs, bugs fixed, systems configured... Always the one pushing for improvements, upgrading systems, negotiating with customers... Feeling like you are carrying the team. Anger just under the surface. Only to retire eventually, without \"the ring\"1. * * * 1: Keep in mind, Charles never blamed his team. He just performed at his best."}
{"_id": "80891", "title": "Understanding my dvcs workflow", "text": "We are going to be building a new project using Mercurial as our version control system. I'm still trying to fully understand what my workflow should look like, so I've listed below a case that I need some help undertanding. A single application with multiple modules (Each module being hosted in its own repository) Multiple developers need to make changes to the same module. How should this be managed?   * Should a hg pull be done and all changes be made on the local developers machine. Once those changes have been made the changes are pushed to dev.   * Should each feature/bug fix get a new repository or branch on the server and the developer pushes his changes from his local hg to the remote hg. Once the feature is completed that repo/branch is merged back into dev.   * Or a combinatiom of both. Small changes go straight into dev, and a feature that could take some time gets its own branch/repo.   * Or any other strategies that you think are better suited."}
{"_id": "5209", "title": "How valuable are programming conferences?", "text": "Inspired by this, just how useful are programming conferences of various types? What do they offer that you can't get from just reading and researching subject online?"}
{"_id": "145501", "title": "Are any companies moving from DVCSs to CVCSs?", "text": "Are there any actual business cases that have made any company move from a DVCS to a CVCS (regardless of whether they were on a CVCS originally)?. Other than having a closed mind and rejecting the paradigm shift altogether (for the particular case of companies coming from a CVCS) I cannot think of any cause for this happening. Double chocolate cookie for anyone with empiric evidence."}
{"_id": "175121", "title": "Constant values in the interface", "text": "Some time ago I have read two different books and each of them gives totally different answer for the question if it is a good pattern to define constant values in the interface (in java). So I am curious of your opinions with some reasonable arguments. Is it a good habit/ pattern to define constant values in interfaces in java? Is it generally good, generally bad or it depends?"}
{"_id": "175127", "title": "How do you safely work around broken code?", "text": "Once in a while, a co-worker will check-in bad code which blocks my application from initializing properly. To get around this problem quickly, I comment out the offending code. I then forget to uncomment the offending code at the time of my check-in, so I want to prevent this from happening again. Do you have any suggestions on how to:   1. Disable bad code that stop you from working    2. Prevent yourself from checking in unwanted changes? I'm currently using Visual Studio as my IDE and TFS as my source code repo."}
{"_id": "187849", "title": "Unindented elses", "text": "Been writing code since about 18 years now. Lately, I've got into the habit of not indenting elses and when I look at the code it does worry me a bit mostly that someone who might look at the code might cry foul. The snippet below explains the need for the style               if(condition) {        ...     } //1      if(condition) { // Don't want this second block to be entered unnecessarily        ...     }      So I put an else where the comment labelled 1 is               if(condition) {        ...     } else     if(condition) {         ...     }      Putting an else there helps maintain readability especially when forgetting to put one there doesn't necessarily break anything. What I'm uneasy with is that it doesn't strictly follow conventions (Sun's in this case) in two different ways - 1) proper indentation 2) having an open brace after the else I guess what I'm trying to do is prevent having massive indents which really makes a difference in blocks that have a lot of conditions - 5 or more although only three are showcased below.               if(condition) {        ...     } else {        if(condition) {            ...        } else {           if(condition) {               ...           } else {              ...           }        }     }      I find it a lot neater to have the else unindented and without a brace following. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "164261", "title": "How can I implement a database TableView like thing in C++?", "text": "How can I implement a TableView like thing in C++? I want to emulating a tiny relation database like thing in C++. I have data tables, and I want to transform it somehow, so I need a TableView like class. I want filtering, sorting, freely add and remove items and transforming (ex. view as UPPERCASE and so on). The whole thing is inside a GUI application, so datatables and views are attached to a GUI (or HTML or something). So how can I identify an item in the view? How can I signal it when the table is changed? Is there some design pattern for this? Here is a simple table, and a simple data item:               #include <string>     #include <boost/multi_index_container.hpp>     #include <boost/multi_index/member.hpp>     #include <boost/multi_index/ordered_index.hpp>     #include <boost/multi_index/random_access_index.hpp>          using boost::multi_index_container;     using namespace boost::multi_index;          struct Data     {       Data() {}       int id;       std::string name;     };          struct row{};     struct id{};     struct name{};          typedef boost::multi_index_container<       Data,       indexed_by<         random_access<tag<row> >,         ordered_unique<tag<id>, member<Data, int, &Data::id> >,         ordered_unique<tag<name>, member<Data, std::string, &Data::name> >       >     > TDataTable;          class DataTable     {     public:       typedef Data item_type;       typedef TDataTable::value_type value_type;       typedef TDataTable::const_reference const_reference;       typedef TDataTable::index<row>::type TRowIndex;       typedef TDataTable::index<id>::type TIdIndex;       typedef TDataTable::index<name>::type TNameIndex;       typedef TRowIndex::iterator iterator;            DataTable() :         row_index(rule_table.get<row>()),         id_index(rule_table.get<id>()),         name_index(rule_table.get<name>()),         row_index_writeable(rule_table.get<row>())       {       }            TDataTable::const_reference operator[](TDataTable::size_type n) const       { return rule_table[n]; }            std::pair<iterator,bool> push_back(const value_type& x)       { return row_index_writeable.push_back(x); }            iterator erase(iterator position)       { return row_index_writeable.erase(position); }            bool replace(iterator position,const value_type& x)       { return row_index_writeable.replace(position, x); }            template<typename InputIterator> void rearrange(InputIterator first)       { return row_index_writeable.rearrange(first); }            void print_table() const;            unsigned size() const       { return row_index.size(); }            TDataTable rule_table;       const TRowIndex& row_index;       const TIdIndex& id_index;       const TNameIndex& name_index;     private:       TRowIndex& row_index_writeable;     };          class DataTableView     {       DataTableView(const DataTable& source_table) {}       // How can I implement this?       // I want filtering, sorting, signaling upper GUI layer, and sorting, and ...     };          int main()     {       Data data1;       data1.id = 1;       data1.name = \"name1\";       Data data2;       data2.id = 2;       data2.name = \"name2\";            DataTable table;       table.push_back(data1);       DataTable::iterator it1 = table.row_index.iterator_to(table[0]);       table.erase(it1);       table.push_back(data1);       Data new_data(table[0]);       new_data.name = \"new_name\";       table.replace(table.row_index.iterator_to(table[0]), new_data);       for (unsigned i = 0; i < table.size(); ++i)         std::cout << table[i].name << std::endl;          #if 0       // using scenarios:       DataTableView table_view(table);       table_view.fill_from_source(); // synchronization with source       table_view.remove(data_item1); // remove item from view       table_view.add(data_item2); // add item from source table       table_view.filter(filterfunc); // filtering       table_view.sort(sortfunc); // sorting            // modifying from source_able, hot to signal the table_view?       // FYI: Table view is atteched to a GUI item       table.erase(data);       table.replace(data);     #endif            return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "164267", "title": "XDIME for Mobile Applications", "text": "I'm involved in a project that requires to mobile-enable some previously developed Portlets. The Portlets are deployed in WebSphere Portal, and the container offers a technology called IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator that uses XDIME to render mobile pages according to the device. I'm trying to document myself in the technology and I'm having a bad time: Google only shows some outdated sites from IBM and even older posts from Volantis, another company involved in the technology (Amazon shows no related books). So... what's the current status of that technology actually? Is has some decent level of adoption?"}
{"_id": "36071", "title": "What javadoc equivalents do you use in .net?", "text": "Java developers use Javadoc in order to write inline documentation in their comments. What are the alternatives for .net - specifically c# and VB.net that people actually use in real world projects?"}
{"_id": "237112", "title": "Randomized Hash function with no collisions", "text": "Related to the question Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed? Is there a way to create a hash function, or find one, whose hash length depends completely on the input length, has an adjustable hash character set (Since it must be 1-to-1 function the input must comply to this character set constraint as well). Moreover the most important part is that the hash function generates as **random** as possible strings. So for example it would be possible to get the following two different results.               Hash(aaaa)->blue // for character set a-z      and               Hash(aaaz)->pink  // for character set a-z      More examples:               Hash(aa@12a)->dakj@4   // for character set a-z, @, 0-9      and               Hash(a2#46Ww)->@3#0Pdw // for character set a-z A-Z, !-), 0-9      **Notice** the character length between input and output and the character sets. What I thought so far was a probability distribution function, there are random distribution functions but I am not sure how to get there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution"}
{"_id": "237113", "title": "Why are interfaces more helpful than superclasses in achieving loose coupling?", "text": "( _For the purpose of this question, when I say 'interface' **I mean the language construct`interface`**, and not an 'interface' in the other sense of the word, i.e. the public methods a class offers the outside world in order to communicate with and manipulate it._) Loose coupling can be achieved by having an object depend on an abstraction instead of a concrete type. This allows for loose coupling for two main reasons: **1-** abstractions are less likely to change than concrete types, which means the dependent code is less likely to break. **2-** different concrete types can be used at runtime, because they all fit the abstraction. New concrete types can also be added later with no need to alter the existing dependent code. For example, consider a class `Car` and two subclasses `Volvo` and `Mazda`. If your code depends on a `Car`, it can use either a `Volvo` or a `Mazda` during runtime. Also later on additional subclasses could be added with no need to change the dependent code. Also, `Car` \\- which is an abstraction - is less likely to change than `Volvo` or `Mazda`. Cars have been generally the same for quite some time, but Volvos and Mazdas are far more likely to change. I.e. abstractions are more stable than concrete types. All of this was to show that I understand what loose coupling is and how it is achieved by depending on abstractions and not on concretions. (If I wrote something inaccurate please say so). **What I don't understand is this:** **Abstractions can be superclasses or interfaces.** **If so, why are interfaces specifically praised for their ability to allow loose coupling? I don't see how it's different than using a superclass.** The only differences I see are: 1- Interfaces aren't limited by single inheritance, but that doesn't have much to do with the topic of loose coupling. 2- Interfaces are more 'abstract' since they have no implementation logic at all. But still, I don't see why that makes such a big difference. **Please explain to me why interfaces are said to be great in allowing loose coupling, while simple superclasses are not.**"}
{"_id": "237115", "title": "How do Traits in Scala avoid the \"diamond error\"?", "text": "_(Note: I used 'error' instead of 'problem' in the title for obvious reasons.. ;) )._ I did some basic reading on Traits in Scala. They're similar to Interfaces in Java or C#, but they do allow for default implementation of a method. I was wondering: can't this cause a case of the \"diamond problem\", which is why many languages avoid multiple inheritance in the first place? If so, how does Scala handle this?"}
{"_id": "71079", "title": "One controller per page or many pages in one controller?", "text": "I just wanted some advice regarding the MVC way of doing things. I am using codeigniter and I was wondering if it's better to have one controller per page for a _website_ or to have one controller for all the pages? Let's say I have a simple website where you can visit the homepage, login, create an account and contact the admin.   1. Would it be better to have these controllers: frontend(index), login, account, contact OR having one controller called frontend or whatever with the actions such login, createAccount, contact?   2. When do you know if its better to use one controller in a situation?"}
{"_id": "33243", "title": "What is the difference between Acceptance Test-Driven Planning and Acceptance Test-Driven Development?", "text": "What is the difference between Acceptance Test--Driven Planning and Acceptance Test--Driven Development? Are they the same?"}
{"_id": "50034", "title": "Enterprise VS Regular corporate developer", "text": "Ok, I \" _almost_ \" lost a job offer because I \" ** _didn't have enough experience as an enterprise software engineer_** \". I've been a programmer for over 16 years, and the last 12-14 professionally, at companies big and small. So this made me think of this question: What's the difference between a software engineer and an enterprise software engineer? Is there really a difference between software architecture and enterprise architecture? BTW: I try to do what every other GOOD software programmer does, like architecture, tdd, SDLC, etc."}
{"_id": "11199", "title": "One-week release cycle: how do I make this feasible?", "text": "At my company (3-yr-old web industry startup), we have frequent problems with the product team saying \"aaaah this is a crisis patch it now!\" (doesn't everybody?) This has an impact on the productivity (and morale) of engineering staff, self included. Management has spent some time thinking about how to reduce the frequency of these same-day requests and has come up with the solution that we are going to have a release every week. (Previously we'd been doing one every two weeks, which usually slipped by a couple of days or so.) There are 13 developers and 6 local / 9 offshore testers; the theory is that only 4 developers (and all testers) will work on even-numbered releases, unless a piece of work comes up that really requires some specific expertise from one of the other devs. Each cycle will contain two days of dev work and two days of QA work (plus 1 day of scoping / triage / ...). My questions are: (a) Does anyone have experience with this length of release cycle? (b) Has anyone heard of this length of release cycle even being attempted? (c) If (a) or (b), how on Earth do you make it work? (Any pitfalls to avoid, etc., are also appreciated.) (d) How can we minimize the damage if this effort fails?"}
{"_id": "71070", "title": "Python : how can I impress people coming from Ruby/Java?", "text": "I am preparing a presentation about Python for my company, and would like to show Python's awesomeness to developers using Java or Ruby ! I guess it will be very simple to write shorter and cleaner looking stuff than in Java, however I've never coded in Ruby (well only a few stuff with rails, but I don't know the language) ! **PLEASE NOTE** : This topic **IS NOT** about which language is the best. I just want to convince people that don't know Python at all, or even -for some- think that it is weird, that it is worthy of interest as well (as much as Ruby, Java, etc... are). And for this, I need input from people that know Ruby (or Java) and Python ... I'm looking for an easy to understand code snippet or application that would shows where Python shines. I was thinking of a couple of list comprehensions, because I think it is really great. Some operator overriding, because that looks dead simple in Python, maybe some metaclass programming, and/or why not a doctest/sphinx example ... Any other/better suggestions ? PS : the people are backend web developers"}
{"_id": "18649", "title": "\"To code quickly, you must quit coding\"", "text": "First off, not my phrase: http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/11/to- code-quickly.php Props to Mr. Markham. BUT, it got me to thinking about a lot of questions I have seen about being able to get things done. The approach advocated (setting a timer for a set period, in this case 50 minutes, but I've seen people talk about breaking procrastination by setting times as short as five minutes on tasks that you just cannot bring yourself to do, and then taking a short break) seems to be common sense, but lots of people advocate getting into the \"zone\" and staying there as long as possible, maybe many hours, rather than break their groove. I keep trying different approaches and find that each has its own strengths and weaknesses. What kind of technique do you use to be more EFFECTIVE (i.e., getting work done to the quality level demanded by your client / boss / etc. in the time frame allowed) in your software development and not just to spend more time at the keyboard?"}
{"_id": "2715", "title": "Should curly braces appear on their own line?", "text": "Should curly braces be on their own line or not? What do you think about it?               if (you.hasAnswer()) {         you.postAnswer();     } else {         you.doSomething();     }      or should it be               if (you.hasAnswer())     {         you.postAnswer();     }     else     {         you.doSomething();     }      or even               if (you.hasAnswer())         you.postAnswer();     else         you.doSomething();      Please be constructive! Explain why, share experiences, back it up with facts and references."}
{"_id": "140027", "title": "Good practice and terminology of braces", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Should curly braces appear on their own line? I've come across two methods of using braces with if/for/switch/while/function blocks in Java, JS, C++, and PHP (any language that uses braces for creating scopeblocks) One of them is like this:                If(...){         ...      }else{       ...      }      I've always used this, it's become an unbreakable habit for me. This leads to compact code, but many people who look at my code get confused because they don't realise that there is an opening brace. I personally call this method 'bouncing braces' (don't know why) The other method is this:                If(...)      {         ...      }      else      {       ...      }      This is less compact, but is clearer. This is what most people seem to expect (from what I've seen--and I've not seen much). If they don't see the opening brace below the if, they think its missing. So I have two questions:   * What are these two practices, (if they have names) called?   * Which one is better practice?"}
{"_id": "17929", "title": "Web versus desktop development - is web development worse?", "text": "As a longtime desktop developer looking at doing our first large-scale web application, what are the pros and cons of doing web development? Is developing a web application much worse than developing a desktop app? E.g., is it more tedious or annoying? Is the time to market much worse? Is the web platform excessively limiting? If the answer to any of these is yes, then why? (And how does developing a Flash or Silverlight app compare?)"}
{"_id": "252224", "title": "When is it appropriate to do calculations in front-end?", "text": "My team is developing a WEB based finance application and there was a bit of an argument with a colleague where to keep the calculations - purely in back- end or keep some in front-end too? Brief explanation: We are using Java (ZK, Spring) for front-end and Progress 4gl for back-end. Calculations that involve some hardcore math & data from database are kept in back-end, so I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the situation where the user enters value X, it is then added to the value Y (shown in screen) and the result is shown in the field Z. Pure and simple jQuery-ish operations, I mean. So what would be the best practice here: 1) Add values with JavaScript that saves from going to the back-end and back and then validate them at the back-end \"on save\"? 2) Keep all the business logic in the same place - therefore bring the values to the back-end and do the calculations there? 3) Do the calculations in the front-end; then send data to the back-end, validate them there, do the calculations again and only if the results are valid and equal, display them to the user? 4) Something else? Note: We do some basic validation in Java but most of it is still in the back- end as all the other business logic. Increase of data that would be sent by recalculating everything in a back-end wouldn't be a problem (small XML size; servers and bandwidth would withstand the increased amount of operations done by users)."}
{"_id": "87049", "title": "How come many project-hosting sites don't have a forum feature?", "text": "I'm considering starting an open-source project, so I shopped around some popular project hosting sites. What I find surprising is that many (see here for a nice feature table) of the popular project hosting sites (e.g. GitHub, BitBucket) don't have a forum feature, i.e. a place where users can talk to the devs, ask questions, raise ideas, etc.   IMHO an active forum is an important factor in creating a user community around a project, so I would expect that most project owners would be interested in such a feature. I've also noticed that some projects _do_ have support forums (or mailing lists) hosted elsewhere - e.g. Ruby on Rails is hosted on GitHub but has a Google Groups support group, and TortoiseHG is hosted on BitBucket but has a mailing list on SourceForge - so it's not like this feature is unneeded. So how come many project hosting sites don't have a forum feature?"}
{"_id": "187844", "title": "Is there any taxonomy/language to describe user interfaces?", "text": "I'm currently researching the options which I have, to build an 'Online Help System'. This system should offer the user information about dialogs - which consists mainly out of forms. So my main question is: Is there any taxonomy/language to describe user interfaces? I have searched a lot on this subject matter, but end up with things like XUL. Which is not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a structure / language / taxonomy to describe the user interface (of the dialogs). However, I'm not sure of its existence. Since I'm not, I would also be pleased with any (search) terms which are worth investigating in this case. Besides this, I'm also looking for languages / taxonomies which are used for regular Online Help systems. The things I came across were: DocBook, DITA and MAML. Are there any other big players in this 'market'?"}
{"_id": "246053", "title": "Cloud Newbie ... what should I know while creating my App", "text": "I never developed for the Cloud, and to tell you the truth I am not fully 100% sure of what Cloud is when coming down to servers and services. I am starting to develop an App where I will need to be able to scale as needed. The App has a lot of User entries as well as file uploads. Think is as a \"forum\" (this is the closest model that I can think that applies to my App). User will be able to register, create \"threads\", create \"polls\", answer, and vote. They can also upload images, videos, and audio files. The person that previously created the website used 'Auto-increment\" fields to keep track of the user ids. while rebuilding the page I was thinking to drop that part and use UUID() for all the users entries, this, I believe might solve the concurrency of entries at the same millisecond or weird locks or duplicate ids or possible other problems... but... other than that, I do not have a clue of what the \"cloud\" would do. Those are my questions:   * I will use MySQL as DB, will I have to connect to different DBs to write to alleviate the stress or I should not even worry about that because the \"cloud\" will take care of that? (I will have replication for the reads)   * When accessing files, will I have to know on what server the files where uploaded to be able to serve them, or will the \"cloud\" magically do that ?   * If I increase the \"cloud\" space by adding a new server, what should I know about it? simply deploy it and everything is up and running or will I need to do something to my code to tell \"hey, there is another instance, now do this and that differently\" Thank you and I hope you understood what I meant."}
{"_id": "87047", "title": "Can I legally publish my Fortran 90 wrappers to Nvidias' CUFFT library (from the CUDA SDK)?", "text": "From a legal standpoint (licensing issues), can I legally, in agreement with the license, publish Fortran 90 wrappers (bindings) to the CUFFT library from Nvidia CUDA Toolkit, under some open source license (either CC0, that is, public domain, or some kind of permissive license like BSD)? Nvidia provides only C bindings with their CUDA SDK. Header files contain the following text.               /*      * Copyright 1993-2011 NVIDIA Corporation.  All rights reserved.      *      * NOTICE TO LICENSEE:      *      * This source code and/or documentation (\"Licensed Deliverables\") are      * subject to NVIDIA intellectual property rights under U.S. and      * international Copyright laws.      *      * These Licensed Deliverables contained herein is PROPRIETARY and      * CONFIDENTIAL to NVIDIA and is being provided under the terms and      * conditions of a form of NVIDIA software license agreement by and      * between NVIDIA and Licensee (\"License Agreement\") or electronically      * accepted by Licensee.  Notwithstanding any terms or conditions to      * the contrary in the License Agreement, reproduction or disclosure      * of the Licensed Deliverables to any third party without the express      * written consent of NVIDIA is prohibited.      The `License.txt` file includes the following fragment > Source Code: Developer shall have the right to modify and create derivative > works with the Source Code. Developer shall own any derivative works > (\"Derivatives\") it creates to the Source Code, provided that Developer uses > the Materials in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. > Developer may distribute the Derivatives, provided that all NVIDIA copyright > notices and trademarks are propagated and used properly and the Derivatives > include the following statement: \"This software contains source code > provided by NVIDIA Corporation.\""}
{"_id": "87041", "title": "At what point in the process do you create the visual design?", "text": "I like to do a wireframe before I start coding and work from there. But when should I start worrying about the visual design? When should I consider the colours, the font, whether corners should be round or sharp, icon design, etc? Is that the last thing to do before launch? Or is there any reason to work on it while you're still in the coding phase, or testing and debugging phase?"}
{"_id": "45927", "title": "What is the role of QA in a BDD-driven project?", "text": "If running a project using BDD with 100% coverage of user stories with automated acceptance tests, what would be the role of a tester / quality assurance person? I guess I am imagining that developers would write the acceptance tests in conjunction with the product owner, let me know if that seems like a foolish assumption."}
{"_id": "252228", "title": "How does requirements management work in the long term with Agile projects?", "text": "Requirements Management in the short term for Agile projects seems like a solved problem to me. From the Scrum angle new requirements or changes to existing requirements are delivered through User Stories. And User Stories grouped under an Epic or Feature facilitate the delivery of larger more complex requirements. Of course, a User Story isn't technically a requirements document. It is a manageable grouping of work which maps to what is often called a _Vertical Slice_ of functionality. And the scope of these stories can be defined unambiguously through the use of Acceptance Criteria (AC). So, although User Stories aren't formal requirements, browsing through them can give you a pretty clear idea of their underlying requirements. In the short term. I say in the short term because, as a project progresses, the number of User Stories increases. Thus, browsing through an ever increasing list of Stories to find a Requirement becomes less and less efficient over time. This problem is compounded when you consider User Stories that expand on, supersede, or even negate previous Stories. Now, imagine a 2 year gap between development iterations on a project (stable in production). The original team is gone and so is all their knowledge. If the original team knew this was going to happen (eg, it's the nature of the business), then what measures could they take to help subsequent teams? Sure, the backlog will provide some information, but it's hardly in an easily browsable form. So, what can be done to help subsequent teams understand the state of the project, including _why_ and _how_ it got there? In my experience, the following things don't work:   * **Backlog grooming** to delete or update previous User Stories so that the Backlog can be read as a requirements document.   * **Documentation Sprints** where team members are tasked with documenting the current state of the system.   * **Documentation through Behaviour Tests**. This approach is the only one I have seen come close to working. Unfortunately, Coded Behaviour tests are victims the Naming Problem. Although the tests might properly document the system, getting a fluctuating team of developers to write their tests following the same Domain terminology, wording, and style is almost impossible. So, to reiterate: How does one manage Agile project Requirements in the long term?"}
{"_id": "254973", "title": "Tweaking a ranking algorithm from a few variables", "text": "I'm going to have a mySQL table with elements in it and would like to rank them in the same manner than Reddit but not quite. I'd like to know how to add or remove importance to a variable in my ranking algorithm. For instance, what I have is a time (a timestamp, so a huge value) and a number of upvotes (a smallish value, under 50). How do I give more importance to the upvotes and less to the time?"}
{"_id": "254978", "title": "What's wrong with comments that explain complex code?", "text": "A lot of people claim that \"comments should explain 'why', but not 'how'\". Others say that \"code should be self-documenting\" and comments should be scarce. Robert C. Martin claims that (rephrased to my own words) often \"comments are apologies for badly written code\". My question is the following: What's wrong with explaining a complex algorithm or a long and convoluted piece of code with a descriptive comment? This way, instead of other developers (including yourself) having to read the entire algorithm line by line to figure out what it does, they can just read the friendly descriptive comment you wrote in plain English. English is 'designed' to be easily understood by humans. Java, Ruby or Perl, however, have been designed to balance human-readability and computer- readability, thus compromising the human-readability of the text. A human can understand a piece of English much faster that he/she can understand a piece of code with the same meaning (as long as the operation isn't trivial). So after writing a complex piece of code written in a partly human-readable programming language, why not add a descriptive and concise comment explaining the operation of the code in friendly and understandable English? Some will say \"code shouldn't be hard to understand\", \"make functions small\", \"use descriptive names\", \"don't write spaghetti code\". But we all know that's not enough. These are mere guidelines - important and useful ones - _but they do not change the fact that some algorithms are complex._ And therefore are hard to understand when reading them line by line. Is it really that bad to explain a complex algorithm with a few lines of comments about it's general operation? What's wrong with explaining complicated code with a comment?"}
{"_id": "126545", "title": "Would you rather make private stuff internal/public for tests, or use some kind of hack like PrivateObject?", "text": "I am quite a beginner in code testing, and was an `assert` whore before. One thing worrying me in unit testing is that is often requires you to make `public` (or at least `internal`) fields that would have been `private` otherwise, to un-`readonly` them, make `private` methods `protected virtual` instead, etc... I recently discovered that you can avoid this by using things like the PrivateObject class to acces anything in an object via reflection. But this makes your tests less maintainable (things will fail at execution rather than compile time, it'll be broken by a simple rename, it's harder to debug...). What is your opinion on this ? What are the best practices in unit testing concerning access restriction ? edit : consider for instance that you have a class with a cache in a file on disk, and in your tests you want to write to memory instead."}
{"_id": "129641", "title": "Is there a canonical book on C Programming in GNU/Linux?", "text": "I am looking for a good ebook (or two) for learning the C programming language, specifically programming in a GNU/Linux environment. I'm not a beginner programmer, but I have almost no experience in this particular area. I need to learn both the fundamentals of C and the GNU toolchain (gcc, gdb, and make). For the C language side, I know K&R comes highly recommended, but it doesn't seem particularly practical for me given that it won't describe modern best practices, current libraries, or any particulars about GNU/Linux programming. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on C Programming in GNU/Linux and covering the GNU toolchain? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "129646", "title": "Bluetooth or Bump API for membership card functionality?", "text": "I am looking to implement membership card functionality inside a mobile application for a local coffee shop. The idea is to make payments at the point of sale, and deduct the amount from the client's prepaid account. I was looking into NFC functionality, but only a few devices support them (and most are not available in Montreal yet). The other idea is to use the Bump API, which would work great for iOS and Android. The last resort would be to use Bluetooth somehow. Any thoughts on any of these approaches, or for those who have tried this, any pros and cons for these ideas."}
{"_id": "213840", "title": "Implementing basic data structures in programming interviews", "text": "I have been preparing to do my first technical interview in a month, and I have a question about implementing common data structures like stacks or linked lists. I plan to do the interview in either Python or Java but I am not sure which one to use yet. I was practicing and tried to implement a stack in Python, using already built-in lists. However, lists in Python already have all stack methods, while there is still some work to do when arrays in Java are used to implement a stack. If I am asked to implement a stack and my language of choice is Python, what should I do? Should I define Node class? Would I not even be asked to implement such low-level data structure in Python anyway?"}
{"_id": "245627", "title": "Is duplicate syntax for defining named functions a bad language design decision?", "text": "I am modelling a programming language for fun, and the syntax is heavily influenced by Scala - specifically function definitions. I have encountered a design problem because my language **does not differentiate** between functions defined via the `def` syntax (class methods) and anonymous functions assigned to values (created using `=>`) - it removes the differences in both implementation and behaviour. The result is that the following two definitions mean the same thing:               def square(x: Int) = x*x          val square = (x: Int) => x*x      There is no reason for the latter form (immediate anonymous function assignment) to be used in any normal situation - it's simply _possible_ to use it instead of the `def` form. **Would having such duplicate syntax for defining named functions hurt the orthogonality of the language or some other design aspect?** I prefer this solution because it allows for short and intuitive definitions of methods and named functions (via `def`), and short definitions of anonymous functions (using `=>`). Edit: **Scala _does_ differentiate between the two** \\- anonymous functions are not the same as methods defined with `def` in Scala. The differences are relatively subtle though - see the posts I linked before."}
{"_id": "178576", "title": "How to handle sorting of complex objects?", "text": "How would one sort a list of objects that have more than one sortable element? Suppose you have a simple object `Car` and car is a defined as such:               class Car {         public String make;         public String model;         public int year;         public String color;         // ... No methods, just a structure / container     }      I designed a simple framework that would allow for multiple `SortOption`s to be provided to a `Sorter` that would then sort the list.               interface ISorter<T> {         List<T> sort(List<T> items);         void addSortOption(ISortOption<T> option);         ISortOption<T>[] getSortOptions();         void setSortOption(ISortOption<T> option);     }          interface ISortOption<T> {         String getLabel();         int compare(T t1, T t2);     }      Example use               class SimpleStringSorter extends MergeSorter<String> {         {             addSorter(new AlphaSorter());         }              private static final class AlphaSorter implements ISortOption<String> {             // ... implementation of alpha compare and get label         }     }      The issue with this solution is that it is not easily expandable. If car was to ever receive a new field, say, currentOwner. I would need to add the field, then track down the sorter class file, implement a new sort option class then recompile the application for redistribution. Is there an easier more expandable/practical way to sort data like this?"}
{"_id": "218741", "title": "What is the benefit of switching on Strings in Java 7?", "text": "When I was starting to programme in Java, the fact that switch statements didn't take strings frustrated me. Then on using Enums, I realised the benefits that you get with them rather than passing around raw values \u2014 type safety (which brings easier refactoring) & also clarity to other developers. I'm struggling to think of a situation where with SE7 I'll now decide to use a switch with strings as inputs rather than Enums. If they are implemented via switching on whole strings (e.g. rather than partial or regex matches), it doesn't seem to offer less reason for the code to change. And with IDE tools and the read-write ratio of coding, I'd be much happier auto-generating an extra Enum than passing around string values. What benefit do they bring to us as programmers? Less boiler-plate? It doesn't feel like the language was crying-out for this feature. Though maybe there's a use-case I'm overlooking."}
{"_id": "212469", "title": "Real-World node.js", "text": "I am 14 years old, and have been studying web/app/software development. I am trying to learn a backend language, and am considering node.js. I have heard awesome things about it, plus I like that fact that I can already use the JS I know in it. However, I am concerned that it may just be a \"trendy/hip\" technology, and that it may not be being used in the real-world that much. Are people really applying node.js in production? Or is it just hip right now?"}
{"_id": "67590", "title": "What do you call a cron that cksums all your files and writes them to a database?", "text": "It is a way to take inventory of many cgi scripts and web applications in a Software Service environment. It will be a way of creating changelogs and to keep track of which customers have which programs and will use diff and cksum to notice, compare and identify versions. It \"takes inventory\", but we actually have inventory systems for non software companies (distributors, etc). So I would prefer not to have confusing names. Edit: We do not use a code repository. So this is not as much for compromised file checking (although it is pretty cool that will be covered), but it is really more as a replacement for a repository and as a way to keep track of which customers have what products to make sure we don't get out of sync with billing. We actually make most of our modifications live. Since these are not public systems, it does not matter that much. If it is public, we either create copies of the program or we run the program on a PC and then test it and then upload it to be live."}
{"_id": "47719", "title": "Unit testing data access objects", "text": "I have recently started using test-driven development and unit testing, and it has paid off immensely in the areas where I have aplied it. One area that it has been helpful in is database access. When I abstract away the data access, the testing of methods that need the data become almost ridiculously easy. However, I haven't been able to find or figure out a way to test the DAOs themselves. (It would be self-defeating to abstract them out!) A DAO should in theory just move data back and forth between the database and the application; can this be considered too simple to test? I have experimented with setting up a Derby database on my local machine for tests, but it's difficult to automate starting the server, creating the databases, and creating the tables. Is there any way to automate testing of data access objects?"}
{"_id": "179448", "title": "Why does the Scrum guide say no testers?", "text": "I have been reading the Scrum Guide from scrum.org and it says: > Development Teams do not contain sub-teams dedicated to particular domains > like testing or business analysis. In its literal translation this means that there are no testers which is confusing. How can they be suggesting this?"}
{"_id": "212463", "title": "When using an ORM should mappings be defined in the code file?", "text": "Doctrine offers three ways to define the object mapping properties: in XML, in YAML and as inline docblock annotations in the code. The Doctrine documentation doesn't give any advice on choosing among them, but I'm specifically wondering if there is a generally accepted for best practice with regard to keeping mapping metadata for an ORM system in the file where the objects are defined versus keeping it in a separate data file. Is there?"}
{"_id": "195949", "title": "How to create in Python Tkinter a widget that would act like a choice tree?", "text": "I would like to know if there is such widget in tk (or in any different standard Python 3 module), or how to create it: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sg5g9.png) Of course it doesn't have to look like this, but it should offer same functionality. Unfortunately PyQT, wxWidgets or any other non standard modules I cannot use."}
{"_id": "6905", "title": "What unit test frameworks exist for Java?", "text": "I've used TestNG and JUnit. What other frameworks are out there? What makes them special and/or different from the rest?"}
{"_id": "12423", "title": "FP and OO orthogonal?", "text": "I have heard this time and again and I am trying to understand and validate the idea that FP and OO are orthogonal. First of all, what does it mean for 2 concepts to be orthogonal ? FP encourages immutability and purity as much as possible. and OO seems like something that is built for state and mutation(a slightly organized version of imperative programming?). And I do realize that objects can be immutable. But OO seems to imply state/change to me. They seem like opposites. Does that meant they are orthogonal ? A language like Scala makes it easy to do OO and FP both, does this affect the orthogonality of the 2 methods ?"}
{"_id": "213594", "title": "Test Driven Development: A good/accepted way to test file system operations?", "text": "I am working on a project at the moment that generates a table (among other things) based on the contents of a file-system, and and in turn does some meta-data modifications on the things it finds. The question is: how should tests be written around this, or set up? Is there a easy way to mock this out? Or should I setup a \"sandbox\"?"}
{"_id": "82133", "title": "Solution organisation", "text": "I have been working on asp.net applications for 6 years but almost all of it has been extending and maintaining existing applications. I now have the need to develop a new application and I am scratching my head :( There is a lot of material on Software Design principles and patterns but not much content on organisation. Should the various layers be in separate namespaces, folders or projects? I do have plan to create WCF in future so having Service layer as project makes sense but I am unsure of how many projects I should have? By default, MVC 3 web site has Models and Controllers in the same project does it make sense to separate them to different projects? I would be very very appreciative if someone can post screen shot of well organised MVC 3 solution. I understand this probably depends on personal preference and project size but I need some kind of guidance. Our main application has over 70 projects in a mammoth solution...Please help me avoid this. Many thanks."}
{"_id": "82131", "title": "Does a License Change for OSS cover all versions, including previous releases?", "text": "If we decide to use a piece of open sourced software that is currently released under a license that allows inclusion in an internal closed source system, what protection are we offered if the owners of the open source software decide to change the license? Typically I'm thinking of where the new license does not allow inclusion in closed source software (I think the PDF generation api iText did this back in 2009). Can the new license be applied retrospectively to the old versions? I'm guessing it can, but often isn't. We are just looking at worst case scenario, would we be in a position where we could just continue using an old version for as long as it suited and then make a decision about the future - or would we be in a position where we'd have to decide to either pay the commercial fee that is often available or find a different \"free\" alternative."}
{"_id": "123116", "title": "If I want my client program to be free software, do I also have to release the server software as free software?", "text": "Imagine I've written a game and I want to make it free software. Am I also required to make the game server software free software because the game uses it to connect to other players to play against? Imagine I've written a stock ticker and I wish to make it free software. Can I charge for the subscription to the stock information, even though the software serves little purpose without paying for such a subscription? I'm also interested in revenue sources for free software that go beyond charging for distribution or support, that counteract one person purchasing your software and then distributing it themselves and undercutting your prices."}
{"_id": "206237", "title": "Does understanding functional programming help in understanding popular javascript libraries?", "text": "I am not experienced in javascript. I try to use some popular javascript libraries such as jQuery, Angular.js and Meteor.js. I wonder if understanding the logic of functional programming (in javascript of course) will help in understanding and using these libraries better?"}
{"_id": "206230", "title": "Unit test strategy for layered (or derived) method calls", "text": "Forgive the title -- it needs work. I am struggling to find better English to express my issue. Edits encouraged. Example to describe my issue: ## Checker Method I have an argument checking method called `public static void StringArgs.checkIndexAndCount(String, int, int)`. Given a string, an index, and a count, confirm the string is not null, and the index & counts are reasonable. Unchecked (runtime) exceptions are used to report errors. There is a battery of unit tests written to check all angles of this method. ## Layered (or Derived) Method The checker method is called by other methods, such as `public static String removeByIndexAndCount(String, int, int)`. The first line of this method checks the arguments by calling the above checker. ## Unit Test Strategy When I write unit tests for the second/layered/derived method, how do I account for the existing set of unit tests for the checker method? It seems to violate duplication/copy-paste principles to simple re-add the same unit tests (modified slightly) from the checker method to the second method. Please advise. My code is Java, but I don't think that particularly relevant, as this same issue could occur in any language."}
{"_id": "238355", "title": "How do we call database table entity in Java?", "text": "For each database table, I create an entity (object) which contains all columns of the database as Class fields. Now, how do we call these entities in Java? I could not find an official term so I read on forums that people refer to them as `entities`, `models`, etc. I'd like to know either Java standardized term or Java community accepted term."}
{"_id": "171117", "title": "Using Mock for event listeners in unit-testing", "text": "I keep getting to test this kind of code (language irrelevant) :               public class Foo() {             public Foo(IDependency1 dep1) {           this.dep1 = dep1;        }             public void setUpListeners() {           this.dep1.addSomeEventListener(.... some listener code ...);        }     }      Typically, you want to test what when the dependency fires the event, the class under tests reacts appropriately (in some situation, the _only_ purpose of such classes is to wire lots of other components, that can be independently tested. So far, to test this, I always end up doing something like :   * creating a 'stub' that implements both a `addXXXXListener`, that simply stores the callback, and a `fireXXXX`, that simply calls any registered listener. This is a bit tedious since you have to create the mock with the right interface, but that can do   * use an introspective framework that can 'spy' on a method, and inject the real dependency in tests Is there a cleaner way to do this kind of things ? EDIT : to clarify what I mean, my trouble is that if I could write something like this :               public class FooTest() {            public void testListensToDependencies() {             IDependency mockDependency = createMock(IDependency.class)             Foo tested = new Foo(mockDependency);        tested.setUpListeners();             expect(mockDependency.addSomeEventListener).toHaveBeenCalled();            }     }      However, obviously this test would pass _no matter what the listener does_. This is troubling me, since I want to test that I am wiring my objects to do the proper thing. The next best thing would be : public class Foo() {                 public Foo(IDependency1 deps) { .... }            public void setUpListeners() {               // In a language with first class function :           this.dep1.addSomeEventListener(this.handleSomeEvent);                      // In a language without it :           this.dep1.addSomeEventListener(new Foo.SomeEventHandler());       }      And then I would write tests to :   * check that the 'addSomeEventListener' was called either with the right handler function, or with an instance of the right event handler class   * check that the handler function, or the event handler class, actually implement the expected behavior.  Now I am not sure if that would be clearer, or if it is the sign I'm wiring my objects at the wrong place...."}
{"_id": "104867", "title": "What does the latest \"C++ Renaissance\" mean?", "text": "There's recently some voice about C++ renaissance, among which the most noteworthy one is from Herb Sutter, Chairman of the C++ Standard Committee. You can search for \"C++ renaissance\" on Google and you'd find a bunch of links including Herb's talk on \"C++ and Beyond\" and other talks on Channel9 from Microsoft. The key argument here is that with the Cloud trend becoming clearer and more popular than ever, a lot of the dev work on the cloud side calls for high- performance native languages, which on some level, basically means C/C++. I don't mean to start again some flame war about C vs C++. But I do want to know to what extent does this trend affect the growing and expanding of C++ community and popularity. How exactly are C++ used on the cloud side? high-perf backend? more? How large, exactly, is the Cloud dev market anyway? P.S. I've been lucky to be able to use C++0x in my project recently, and it _is_ *awesome* (VC++10). The most useful feature for everyday programming is of course lambda. And the second I would say is rvalue reference (I finally had the courage to return vector!!) Below are Herb's words C++ and Beyond: > I\u2019ve been asked to give the opening \u201cWelcome, Everyone!\u201d talk at C&B 2011, > and it\u2019s time to cover an increasingly open secret: After a decade-long > affair with managed languages where it became unfashionable to be interested > in C++, C++\u2019s power and efficiency are now getting very fashionable again. > At the same time, C++ has been getting easier to use; key productivity > features from the C++0x standard (aka C++11), like auto and lambdas, are > increasingly widely available in commercial compilers and making using C++ > easier than ever before without sacrificing its cornerstone \u2014 efficiency. > > This opening 40-minute talk covers the reasons why C++ is now enjoying a > major renaissance, and why that will continue to grow over the next few > years because of industry trends from processor design to mobile computing > to cloud and datacenter environments. > > We already know that C++ is \u201cthe\u201d language of choice for demanding > applications. Here, we\u2019ll cover why \u201cdemanding applications\u201d increasingly > means \u201cmost applications\u201d and will be the bread and butter of our industry > for the foreseeable future. We\u2019ll see why and where other languages are > still appropriate, but why C++\u2019s applicability and demand is now again on an > upswing more so than it has been for over a decade."}
{"_id": "171113", "title": "Is SOA an Utopia?", "text": "I have attended to many SOA related sales pitches and presentations through the years. SOA projects have died because of lack of interest or because of grandiose scopes. The very buzzword has lost momentum. Has someone seen SOA implemented ? Or is it a kind of utopian vision one must strive for ? Do one have to believe in SOA without touching it or having seen it ?"}
{"_id": "110711", "title": "Front-End Java Web App Framework", "text": "I have not done web development in Java for the past three years and now I need to use one for a project I am working on. I am thinking of using Seam, Flex + BlazeDS, Struts2 or Spring MVC. The most attractive of the four is Flex, however I am trying to stay away from it since the app will end up being entirely in Flash. Struts2 and Seam are mature but might require more time to learn. I had basic experience with Spring framework in the past so I am also considering its MVC. Should I use one of these or go for some other framework?"}
{"_id": "171111", "title": "Using Completed User Stories to Estimate Future User Stories", "text": "In Scrum/Agile, the complexity of a user story can be estimated in story points. After completing some user stories, a programmer or team of programmers can use those experiences to better estimate how much time it might take to complete a future user story. **Is there a methodology for breaking down the complexity of user stories into quantifiable or quantifiable attributes?** For example, User Story X requires a rich, new view in the GUI, but User Story X can perform most of its functionality using existing business logic on the server. On a scale of 1 to 10, User Story X has a complexity of 7 on the client and a complexity of 2 on the server. After User Story X is completed, someone asks how long would it take to complete User Story Y, which has a complexity of 3 on the client and 6 on the server. Looking at how long it took to complete User Story X, we can make an educated estimate on how long it might take to complete User Story Y. I can imagine some other details:   * The complexity of one attribute (such as complexity of client) could have sub-attributes, such as number of steps in a sequence, function points, etc.   * Several other attributes that could be considered as well, such as the programmer's familiarity with the system or the number of components/interfaces involved   * These attributes could be accumulated into some sort of user story checklist. To reiterate: **is there an existing methodology for decomposing the complexity of a user story into complexity of attributes/sub-attributes,** or is using completed user stories as indicators in estimating future user stories more of an informal process?"}
{"_id": "171110", "title": "Using a random string to authenticate HMAC?", "text": "I am designing a simple webservice and want to use HMAC for authentication to the service. For the purpose of this question we have:   * a web service at example.com   * a secret key shared between a user and the server [K]   * a consumer ID which is known to the user and the server (but is not necessarily secret) [D]   * a message which we wish to send to the server [M] The standard HMAC implementation would involve using the secret key [K] and the message [M] to create the hash [H], but I am running into issues with this. The message [M] can be quite long and tends to be read from a file. I have found its very difficult to produce a correct hash consistently across multiple operating systems and programming languages because of hidden characters which make it into various file formats. This is of course bad implementation on the client side (100%), but I would like this webservice to be easily accessible and not have trouble with different file formats. I was thinking of an alternative, which would allow the use a short (5-10 char) random string [R] rather than the message for autentication, e.g.               H = HMAC(K,R)      The user then passes the random string to the server and the server checks the HMAC server side (using random string + shared secret). As far as I can see, this produces the following issues:   * There is no message integrity - this is ok message integrity is **not** important for this service   * A user could re-use the hash with a different message - I can see 2 ways around this      1. Combine the random string with a timestamp so the hash is only valid for a set period of time     2. Only allow each random string to be used once   * Since the client is in control of the random string, it is easier to look for collisions I should point out that the principle reason for authentication is to implement rate limiting on the API service. There is zero need for message integrity, and its not a big deal if someone can forge a single request (but it is if they can forge a very large number very quickly). I know that the **correct** answer is to make sure the message [M] is the same on all platforms/languages before hashing it. But, taking that out of the equation, is the above proposal an acceptable 2nd best?"}
{"_id": "19199", "title": "Is this technique a design pattern? If so, what's it called?", "text": "I'll use C# as an example, but it should apply globally. Say I have a string value that should be one of a few constants, but I also want the client to set which string value to use so:               private int foo;     private string bar;          public int Foo {         get { return foo; }         set         {             foo = value;             bar = getStringValueFromDatabase(value);         }     }          public string Bar { get { return bar; } }      I use this technique quite a lot and want to know if it's considered as any formal concept."}
{"_id": "224503", "title": "ruby for desktop app or web app development", "text": "i am a beginner to ruby . i just did some minor research about why RUBY ? why choose RUBY ? whats new in it. Whenever i do type in a word RUBY in google search there comes a suggestion like RUBY on RAILS . so my mind changed to learn stuffs about ruby on rails. I went through some forums but got the same answer from everyone. RUBY ON RAILS is a web development FRAMEWORK . once again i learnt stuffs about what a framework is. There are lot of questions which is u know like itching my mind.Varieties of answer from everyone. i dont know which is the right one. first if anyone wish to give me a reply .. tell me solution for this. just like java we run ruby programs in command prompt by moving to the directory in cmd where ruby is installed.it is similar to java. so can we create a desktop application by using it.i mean like a file searching program which is default in windows . We can create the same file searching program using java swing and playing with some string functions isn't it? can we do the same with ruby .? thats my first one. i will raise doubts on ruby on rails after i get cleared about the above question."}
{"_id": "117726", "title": "Becoming a part-time freelancer", "text": "I have a full time job as a senior software developer. It pays well but the work is unsatisfying for many reasons. I often daydream about going freelance but don't want to throw away a stable paycheck without dipping my toe in the freelancing water first. I have recently developed a commercial-grade application in my spare time so have a healthy respect for the kind of lifestyle having two jobs can lead to but the experience has also given me the confidence that I can pull it off, at least for a while. I joined eLance but was quickly disheartened by the number of bids at very low prices by well established studios and teams of programmers with good ratings. How can I compete with other freelancers if I am only willing to work evenings and weekends? I can prepare a solid portfolio which will certainly give me an advantage over 'sweatshops' in third world countries but I still struggle to see why anyone would employ me when they could get their project completed in less time by employing a full-time developer or a dedicated studio. Should I 'fail to mention' that I already have a full time job? This doesn't seem honest though, and I don't want freelance contractors phoning me while I'm at work. I'm willing to work for cheap at first. Contracting and travelling are out of the question. Where can I find part-time programming work from home?"}
{"_id": "117721", "title": "Do employers and headhunters maintain a database somewhere about programmers?", "text": "Is there a website that is being maintained somewhere in which trash talk and nasty allegations about workers are entered by employers and headhunters sort of like a reverse glassdoor.com? I ask this as a worker, NOT as an employer."}
{"_id": "193469", "title": "Application Architecture", "text": "first of all I am new here and I hope that this is the right place for my question. I have a question about the recommended architecture of a project. IDEA: Automate some calculations concerning to aerodynamics. I have some input data and I need to process this data in several sub-calculations. You can see such a calculation somehow like a black box: INPUT => CALCULATION => RESULTS Some of these calculations are already available as open source programs and some of them I need to program on my own. This shouldn't be a problem at all. But I want to connect these calculations in a flexible way. For example: INPUT => CALCULATION 1 => CALCULATION 2 => CALCULATION 3 => RESULTS Number and order of calculations should be changeable. Should I see each calculation as standalone program and connect them in a kind of framework where I can specify order and arguments of program calls? Or are there other techniques to solve problems like this? Thanks a lot for each advice and every recommendation. Sebastian"}
{"_id": "193468", "title": "Communication between View and Model", "text": "I have a basic issue with the MVC architecture. I am aware that the View usually listens to the Model. But how are user requests propagated to the Model? Currently I do it like this, when the user clicks e.g. the update Button in the GUI. So the `ActionListener` calls a method of the View. The View calls a method of the Controller. And the Controller calls a method of the Model. But I have three concedrns about this.   * The View must be aware of the Controller.   * The long call chain seem to be not the right way   * With the number of user actions, the number of those call chains increase. What are the best practises here?"}
{"_id": "193463", "title": "What is a Service Locator?", "text": "I've heard the term pop all around. I've read various articles regarding the subject and heard two main definitions to the term \"Service Location\":   1. A glorified Registry - Bad practice, global variables, general evil.   2. A type of Dependency Injection Container - Can help with managing dependencies, making modular and extensible applications, generally helpful. But I can't differentiate between the two. What does a Service Location really means? Can you give a simple example of a Service Locator? Is it good or evil?"}
{"_id": "193462", "title": "JavaScript codes complexity and maintainability", "text": "I am trying to make my way back to JavaScript (been there last time some 7 years ago) with the help of lovely \"Eloquent JavaScript\" book. While I admire author's capabilities and approach, I have also began being concerned. I am from C/C++ background and there I learnt it rather hard way that funky constructs often undermine project survival. Experience with the Perl proved different. Being capable of cool tricks seemed a valuable perk. **So, what is the common view upon JavaScript code complexity. Does using it at \"full speed\" (OOP done own way, higher order functions everywhere etc) help having maintainable projects?** Thanks for your answers"}
{"_id": "161341", "title": "Is speed a parameter for responding emails of technical tests?", "text": "I am sending my CV to different companies and some of them have replied asking me to complete a test to have an idea of my skills. I wonder if the time to respond to this email is key factor for being selected? I have a job now and I need to take my spare time to answer that questions. So, I don't know if I should take time to respond the questions carefully or try to respond them in the same day, even is that implies not to sleep too much that night."}
{"_id": "161340", "title": "Which CSS attributes should be in HTML and which in BODY?", "text": "I have the following:               html {     overflow-y: scroll;     }          body {     font-family: Georgia, \"Times New Roman\", serif;     font-size: 1.125em;     line-height: 1.5em;     margin: 0 auto;     max-width: 41em;     }      Which attributes should be with the HTML section, and which within the BODY section?"}
{"_id": "193467", "title": "What tools can I use for professional document-creation and -printing in PHP?", "text": "I'm in the process of building a new pledge management system for one of my clients, a charity foundation. I have already built one for them (it was done using Delphi), but its feature-set is a little limited. Now, I have decided to move to PHP and use the Laravel framework to manage the database for the new system - its Eloquent ORM allows me to easily implement new features that are needed at present. This is good and well \u2013 I know everything that I need to do there. However, I am not sure which direction to take for when it comes to creating, saving, and printing documents that will be hand-delivered to donors. At the moment, it used Word to process documents - i.e. creating invoices, letters of appreciation, and any other templates that may be selected during a pledge submission. The thing is, I am not extremely happy with the implementation, and don\u2019t believe this is the best route to take. There have been times where the documents did not print correctly, or multiple documents where printed (where only one was needed). Nonetheless, I could stick to Word, provided that PHP can handle it properly and show me progress as it goes along (i.e. **Opening Word** -> **Opening Invoice Template (companies)** -> **Replacing Variables** -> **Saving** -> **Printing** -> **Closing** -> **Opening Food Project Mission Statement** -> **Replacing Variables** \\- > **Saving** -> **Printing** -> **Closing** \u2026 etc.). I guess that progress notifications are not necessary, but I would like to have them there - just in case it freezes, the user would be able to see whatever it may be struggling with. I would assume that I could do this using a jQuery script (with AJAX) that interfaces with a PHP script, but I honestly have no idea how to do it. (Note: I\u2019d have to use AJAX as Laravel uses buffered output.) I also know that I could pass the information about a pledge to an EXE which would handle the printing on its own, but I don\u2019t think I want to use this implementation as I have plans to make the system cross-platform. **Question 1:** Is there a package for PHP that allows me to create documents, save them, and then print them? If not, is there a suitable package that handles Word without difficulty, and with a large array of features? If it is the latter, I would need to be able to access the full COM API so that I can prevent dialogs from popping up in the background and pausing the procedure. **Question 2:** Is there a package (jQuery, AJAX) available that would allow me to track the progress of the document-creation procedure? **EDIT** Having reconsidered everything, and weighed the pro's and con's, I would like to put emphasis on **printing** here. When the user submits a pledge to the database, I need the document to print immediately. I do not necessarily want to focus on a document creation tool only. The reason I asked my question as I did is because I would, ideally, like to find something that can do both the creation and printing of each document. In addition, I do not want to make it too difficult for myself. This is why I originally chose Word - and, it was a lot easier to manage from a Delphi application. Because of this, I will be leaving the question open (just in case something very interesting is proposed), but will be asking a new question that is a little more specific to the problem that this question originated from. (To those who have answered so far, thank you for your help and showing me the various options.)"}
{"_id": "126893", "title": "How do you handle time series .Net?", "text": "I have been looking for Time Series models over in SO, but I figured this place was the best site to actually ask the question. I am wondering what is the \"best\" way to handle Time Series in .Net. First, I would define a Time Series as a mapping of different `DateTime` with a single value of type `T`. The value can possibly be `null`. Several methods should be available so that the series can be manipulated easily. For example, you want to be able to `Filter` the data (based on criteria on dates and/or on values). You would also like to have an `Apply` method, which applies a given function to all the values. Ideally, you would be willing to run some of these functions in parallel to increase performance. Several data structures already implement such features, such as a `Dictionary<DateTime,T>`, possibly even a `SortedDictionary<DateTime,T>`. However, these are mutable structures, which can be an issue if there are some closure effects. Which model would/did you use? Do you know an existing library already widely used for this matter?"}
{"_id": "126890", "title": "Encapsulating a single property", "text": "If you have a single property that is relevant across a full project, but you should logically have only a single representation of, how would you represent this? In my case, I am developing a simple drawing app where the user can select a colour. This colour should then be available to all the pen/shape classes in the project. Would I simple just have a static class with a static property of Color CurrentColor (C#), that each client class could then call, or is there a more effective way?"}
{"_id": "250223", "title": "Spring Controllers and Services", "text": "we are at the middle of a project. It's a REST Service. Now we have controllers to handle the Requestmappings and the forwarding to the Services. A concrete example we have a UserController, GroupController, UserService and a GroupService. The user controller has as injection the UserService and the GroupController has as injection the GroupService. (one to one dependency) When I create/update/delete a user then the scenario is simple: userControllers tells the userService and it do this. Now the system has a lot of other controller/services that are going to be added. But what I don't know is: what is the best way when I have to to mix user/group action? For example: I have to add a user in a group. But I must check that the user exists, that the group exists and after save the information in the user (Entity/DTO) that the user is now port of this group. 1) schould I manage all from the userController: -userService.checkUser() -groupService.checkGroup() -userService.updateUser() 2) or schould I manage al from the userService: -userService.addUser() (in the userService then: -checkUser() -checkGroup() -updateUser() ) In the solution 1 what I don't like is the injection of some other Services that not belongs to users In the solution 2 I have the idea that I'm going to replicate concepts that exists on the groupServices... The exapmle above is only a litle part of the great picture. But that what i would understand is how can I design this part to don't have a lot dependency and a lot of code replication?"}
{"_id": "126895", "title": "Need help understanding reference operator(C++) in specific functions", "text": "In the current semester at the university we are working on OOP with C++.   I would like to understand the difference between a pointer and a reference operator. The differences that I understand are:   1\\. Cannot change the object that the reference variable is binded to   2\\. we can use the reference variables to refer to the binded object without having to type the & operator (in contrast with the pointers where we would write *pi = 5;) Also,does a reference variable contain the address of the object that is binded to?   In example:               int i;     int &ri = i;       Here ri contains the address of i? And the reason why when overloading ++ operator in this example of enumeration we are using the dereference or reference(*) operators before the name of the function."}
{"_id": "244971", "title": "Exception handling in WIn Forms application", "text": "When handling exceptions for example in a method in my presentation logic, is it ok to catch all possible exceptions in a one catch block as follows if the only purpose here is alerting the user.               private void Do()     {         try         {             //  Do some stuff here which might throw an exception         }         catch (Exception e)         {             MessageBox.Show(e.Message);         }     }      Or else should we always catch every possible exceptions (like `OutOfMemoryException`, `NullReferenceException` etc. followed by more generalized exceptions) in separate catch blocks ? Since the information in e.message is not relevant for average users, we could do like               MessageBox.Show(\"Exception occurred and contact system administrator\");      Is that the standard way ? NOTE : My sole purpose is to alert user and try to keep the system up (with out crashing)"}
{"_id": "184313", "title": "How can \"hash functions\" be used to implement hash maps at all?", "text": "My understandment is that hash maps allow us to link, say, a string, to certain memory location. But if every string were to be linked to a unique place in memory it would need a huge block of empty memory. I don't get it."}
{"_id": "244977", "title": "Best way to let users/visitors alter the website design", "text": "What I am trying to do is give the users/visitors the option to alter the whole website based on their taste. So they can move for example the sticky bar from top to bottom, alter background colors, news box from left to right etc. For users I will probably store all the information in the DB but I am not sure how I should handle this afterward. Should I store all the settings into a cookie instead of grabbing that info from the DB all the time and \"rebuilding\" the website based on their taste or do you have any other idea?"}
{"_id": "82792", "title": "Red flags of unpaid IT internship", "text": "I read the following question: Tips for a first year CS student looking for a summer internship to gain experience? But rather than how to get and/or look for internships, my questions concerns of how to filter companies looking for free labor to do their website VS companies that might not offer a paid check, but it will offer you mentorship and skills. I have a cousin that is a college freshman and she is looking for Sofware development internships, but at this point, she is desperately looking for any internship that is IT related. Besides the big software names and elite small software shops, How do you recognize a good internships in non-it- companies(large or small) doing IT maintenance vs the bad ones? If you don't have work experience, what questions a college student should ask to prevent ripoff? Are there any red flags that you can spot before accepting an offer?"}
{"_id": "213334", "title": "Django REST + Backbone/Ember/Angular Implementation Method", "text": "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10941249/separate-rest-json-api-server-and- client In light of this post, I wanted to ask questions regarding Django and specifically the implementation methods of getting one of these client side technologies to work with Django. Currently, I have a backend that is setup that uses Django Rest Framework to serialize the data. My problem though, is I'm not sure how to get the client side to access the backend. Django is a MVC framework. Originally I thought that I could just take out the View, and just implement the model and controller. Then, I would write complete separate View code so to speak using Backbone/Ember/Angularjs. Then the client would access the REST resources. How would I combine these two later if I wanted to deploy this to Heroku? Heroku only takes a whole Django application. How can I get the client code on there as well then? The other option, which I've seen before, is to NOT take out the View completely, but to use Django templates WITH Backbone/Ember/Angularjs. Then, I can just simply put these js files in the \"static\" folder so to speak. But then that seems weird, because then I'd have a View on the server side (correct me if I'm wrong), that accesses my own REST resources. I tried this, but for some reason even though my page retrieves the javascript files, it does not seem to be working as expected."}
{"_id": "241255", "title": "Flags with deferred use", "text": "Let's say I have a system. In this system I have a number of operations I can do, but all of these operations have to happen as a batch at a certain time, while calls to activate _and_ deactivate these operations can come in at any time. No matter how many times the `doOperation1()` method/function is called the operation is done only once in the batch. To implement this, I could use flags like `doOperation1` and `doOperation2` but this seems like it would become difficult to maintain. Is there a design pattern, or something similar, that addresses this situation?"}
{"_id": "213332", "title": "Best way to define 'snap points' between two arbitrary objects in 3D?", "text": "I'm working on a simple in-browser 3D model constructor using THREE.js. The user picks a plane body, and adds wings, cockpit, tail etc of their choice, choosing from multiple options. I need to be able to define relationships between many bodies and many add-ons, and of course I don't want to manually have to define the position/rotation of each combination of parts. Therefore, I want to be able to define a set of 'snap points' on the body, places where certain components may be inserted, and to define a matching set of points on the add-on parts, basically matching the two in software to position the add- ons correctly. I though of defining a triangle of 3 points, as that would lock in all 3 degrees of freedom. If I make the order important, it will even prevent the object from \"flipping\" across the plane defined by the three points. Here's an illustration: ![before](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LCeyZ.png) ![after](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ierSd.png) I'm thinking of making a \"dummy\" for the 3D designers to use to get the coordinates of the points, but once case I can see this failing is when the two triangles don't exactly correspond to each other. Should I simply set in stone that the points must form an equilateral triangle of side length 10 units for example, or is there another way I could do the maths from triangles which do not completely match? Perhaps there's another, more standard way to do what I want? Thanks"}
{"_id": "241250", "title": "Using packages (gems, eggs, etc.) to create decoupled architectures", "text": "**The main issue** Seeing the good support most modern programming platforms have for package management (think `gem`, `npm`, `pip`, etc), does it make sense to design an application or system be composed of internally developed packages, so as to promote and create a loosely coupled architecture? **Example** An example of this would be to create packages for database access, as well as for authentication and other components of the system. These, of course, use external packages as well. Then, your system imports and uses these packages - instead of including their code within its own code base. **Considerations** To me, it seems that this would promote code decoupling and help maintainability, almost in a Web-based-vs.-desktop-application kind of way (updates are applied almost automatically, single code base for single functionality, etc.). Does this seem like a rational and sane design concept? Is this actually used as a standard way of structuring applications today?"}
{"_id": "214108", "title": "How small is the footprint of a small C compiler?", "text": "This week I could optimize using a reduced C library that allowed a drastic shrinkage in code size - from about 60 K to about 6 K and then we could load the code in the 8 K on-chip memory of an FPGA (Altera DE2) which I suppose is SRAM so there is SRAM both on-chip and off-chip(?) The program was rather small itself and we noticed that most of the size was from libraries and doing embedded system we reduce the libraries to only what is needed so that the footprint is minimized. It makes me wonder about something I heard in the media which was a story, maybe fictious, that Microsoft had to deliver a C compiler in only 20 K or so in the 70s or early 80s when there was not much memory available for software, is it true? What is a feasible size of the footprint for a small C compiler?"}
{"_id": "241258", "title": "Websockets VS SSE", "text": "Suppose I have a service which requires to _seek_ the database for different data once and in a while. For this I have 2 or 3 SSE, each one with a different _retry_ basetime (20000 miliseconds, 1000 miliseconds...). **What I'd like to know is if websockets can handle different \"data type\" accordingly to the request** , for example, could I create **one** websocket to handle a notification system, a chat system, a group system instead of separated **_SSEs_** and treat data differently with javascript? And if so, would it be of higher interest (performance) than actually performing different queries to the server through different _SSEs_? If this is possible then would it be bad design to create multiple sockets for each service here?"}
{"_id": "119735", "title": "What is (are) the most useful technique/visualization for overall project status?", "text": "For reasons \"above my pay grade\", we're developing an issue/project tracking system where I work (similar to Trac, FogBugz, etc). The managers want a useful tool to be able to track the overall health of the project (e.g. How much time left, how are we performing vs estimates) and one of the features that has been requested is some type of critical path support and visualization. The logic explained to me is that they want to be sure that at least the most important pieces of the project are currently being worked on. The initial idea was that we would create task-based dependencies. My understanding of project management tells me that this kind of granular approach is unnecessary - having milestones with specific deadlines/dependencies is much more useful. I would like to know what are the most useful techniques and \"pretty pictures\" you've seen/used for project development. Having objective data would be best, but somewhat subjective data is helpful too."}
{"_id": "215851", "title": "Validating data to nest if or not within try and catch", "text": "I am validating data, in this case I want one of three ints. I am asking this question, as it is the fundamental principle I'm interested in. This is a basic example, but I am developing best practices now, so when things become more complicated later, I am better equipped to manage them. Is it preferable to have the try and catch followed by the condition:               public static int getProcType()     {         try         {             procType = getIntInput(\"Enter procedure type -\\n\"                 + \" 1 for Exploratory,\\n\"                  + \" 2 for Reconstructive, \\n\"                 + \"3 for Follow up: \\n\");         }         catch (NumberFormatException ex)         {             System.out.println(\"Error! Enter a valid option!\");             getProcType();         }         if (procType == 1 || procType == 2 || procType == 3)         {             hrlyRate = hrlyRate(procType);             procedure = procedure(procType);         }         else         {             System.out.println(\"Error! Enter a valid option!\");             getProcType();         }              return procType;     }      Or is it better to put the if within the try and catch?               public static int getProcType()     {         try         {             procType = getIntInput(\"Enter procedure type -\\n\"                 + \" 1 for Exploratory,\\n\"                  + \" 2 for Reconstructive, \\n\"                 + \"3 for Follow up: \\n\");                  if (procType == 1 || procType == 2 || procType == 3)             {                 hrlyRate = hrlyRate(procType);                 procedure = procedure(procType);             }             else             {                 System.out.println(\"Error! Enter a valid option!\");                 getProcType();             }         }         catch (NumberFormatException ex)         {             System.out.println(\"Error! Enter a valid option!\");             getProcType();         }              return procType;     }      I am thinking the if within the try, may be quicker, but also may be clumsy. Which would be better, as my programming becomes more advanced?"}
{"_id": "215853", "title": "What happens with project backlog if sprint due date is missed?", "text": "Suppose that I have project backlog item with effort of 40 hours. My sprint is 40 hours (1 week) and I have one developer in team. So developer creates child task to pending backlog and estimates work to 40 hours. At the end of the sprint developer didn't succeed in resolving his task. Suppose that developer works only and only 40 hours per week. On the next week there would be new backlog items and new sprint. What should I do with backlog item and velocity graph? Obviously backlog item is not resolved on that sprint. Should I estimate the remaining work and subtract it from effort , so that now I see that our velocity is, say, 38hr per 40hr sprint?"}
{"_id": "13775", "title": "Is it absolutely necessary for a web programmer to be a web designer?", "text": "Though it is always a plus point to have knowledge of multiple technologies, but due to time-constraint it is not possible for me right now. I have extensive experience in .NET Windows development and 1 year experience in PHP. I want to apply for a job of web programmer. Is it absolutely necessary for me to learn web-designing also that includes CSS and PhotoShop?"}
{"_id": "69916", "title": "What are the main things a programmer expects from the senior programmer?", "text": "Recently I read the following 5 Types Of Bosses and How To Deal With Them , which describes the attires of the worst boss. I've just started leading a small team of software developers. I would like to know what are the main things a programmer expects from the senior programmer or what are the things we should avoid while managing a team. Also, I would like to know how to keep the programmers satisfied and create a productive & completeness environment for my team."}
{"_id": "13779", "title": "Payments and open source core developers", "text": "I'm not sure if there's an established protocol for this (even if it's not an official one), but thought those most experienced with open source might want to share with us. I'm aware that random patches submitted to open source projects are never paid. They may be indirectly funded by a client but they're never paid for by the open source project itself. But how about core developers? I heard for example that drupal has some 800 core developers behind it. Core developers means that they work on drupal core itself and together they push the main releases, so they're very important to the project. Of course drupal is just an example, but in general, is there any established protocol in the open source world that defines whether the company behind the project is expected to pay them and do these core developers expect such payment? Any facts or first hand experiences?"}
{"_id": "13778", "title": "When one should read 'Code Complete'?", "text": "I'm pretty sure about `Who` but when ? The one with proficient knowledge of programming and software development or the one who's just a beginner in cyber ( programming, to be precise ) world ? I'm persuing bachelors right now, when its preferable for me( and folks like me) to read this **_Must read for programmers_** book ?"}
{"_id": "81442", "title": "Is splitting up programming tasks a good idea?", "text": "We have a small but growing team at work, and are thinking of doing things differently. We develop websites from scratch and do HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP/MySQL coding. Currently, we all work on things as they come, and everybody could do either of those things. So everybody in the team has currently several projects assigned, and they could be doing different things, so for one project somebody takes care of the front-end things - mostly Javascript/CSS, and for another site it's the back-end part with mostly PHP/MySQL. The issue is that most in the team have a decent basic understanding of things but are still learning the details. And it seems to take its toll in terms of productivity. I think we could improve this by assigning everybody to just specific tasks (only CSS / Javascript / PHP / MySQL... just one thing at a time). This way:   * Tasks are clearer for everybody   * Everybody can better learn one particular thing and not get overwhelmed   * When mastering one skillset, one can upgrade to the next level   * Productivity should go up What do you think?"}
{"_id": "160066", "title": "Preferring Python over C for Algorithmic Programming", "text": "I've been studying a bit of algorithms and have been looking at sites like SPOJ.pl TopCoder etc. I've seen that programmers prefer C or C++ usually for most algorithmic programming contests. Now I've been having some trouble lately. I know both a bit of C and Python and when trying to write a code I seem to prefer Python over C for most algorithms. Everytime I sit down to write a code in C I give up after about 15 minutes because I find it too cumbersome and tend to move over to python. Passing matrices Pointers and so on seem to be useless time wasted that I could actually be utilizing to think about the algorithm itself. Now I know and have heard from a lot of people that C is a very important language and is the bread and butter of a lot of programmers out there. What I wanted to know was whether this approach of mine has any drawbacks/consequences/Disadvantages etc. This is not a Python vs C debate; This a question about how this specific practice of preferring python over C because of the ease of use will affect me or any other programmer/computer Scientist in the long run. * * * I'd love to hear from people who've used these languages in the industry/and or to develop large software/libraries etc."}
{"_id": "60393", "title": "How to maintain different, customized versions of the same software for multiple clients", "text": "we have multiple clients with different needs. Although our software is modularized to a degree, it's almost certain that we need to adjust every module's business logic here and there a little for each customer. The changes are probably too tiny to justify splitting the module into a distinct (physical) module for each client, I fear problems with the build, a linking chaos. Yet, those changes are too large and too many to configure them by switches in some configuration file, as this would lead to problems during deployment and probably a lot of support troubles, especially with tinker-type admins. I'd like to have the build system create multiple builds, one for each client, where changes are contained in a specialized version of the single physical module in question. So I have some questions: Would you advise letting the build system create multiple builds? How should I store the different customizations in source control, svn in particular?"}
{"_id": "94246", "title": "Do companies hire software developers that are aspiring entrepreneurs?", "text": "There are developers out there that not only write code and solve problems, but aspire to one day be an entrepreneur and run their own company. They may participate in open source projects, go to various networking events/meetups, or even write code to help shape/start their own business outside of work. And, for example, an fully-candid interview with a prospective hire might go something like this: > Company: _Where do you see yourself in 5 years?_ > > You: _I see myself running my own software company in City Z, doing xx > projects, solving yy kind of problems._ This might be a red flag to a company, who may consider this kind of developer a high risk for leaving, and that they would take with them the experience of developing a particular software or specific industry knowledge. Should developers hide these kind of aspirations/traits from their current employers, or where they are interviewing? Is it unprofessional to mention these kind of things? Does it help or hurt their chance of getting hired?"}
{"_id": "60398", "title": "iOS App Store Developers - What is the 'copyright name' of an app?", "text": "I understand that whenever you upload a new app, you can set the copyright name for the app. **Where is this name displayed?** Is this name displayed underneath the name of the app when searching in the app store? Or is that the seller name that you specify when you upload your first app?"}
{"_id": "201276", "title": "Why is it rare to collect analytics/usage data in open source software?", "text": "So, I've been developing some analytic software at my work and also have started to take more notice to analytics in general. For instance, I recently installed Google Analytics on my blog(which is custom and open source). I mostly make open source software outside of work, so I think it might be cool to be capable of gathering some form of usage data and such on how my tools are used, opt-in only of course. However, this seems to almost never be done. Why? What's with the taboo of analytics in open source software?"}
{"_id": "19225", "title": "In Java, what are checked exceptions good for?", "text": "Java's checked exceptions have gotten some bad press over the years. A telling sign is that it's literally the only language in the world that has them (not even other JVM languages like Groovy and Scala). Prominent Java libraries like Spring and Hibernate also don't use them. I personally have found one use for them (in business logic between layers), but otherwise I'm pretty anti-checked exceptions. Are there any other uses that I don't realize?"}
{"_id": "235180", "title": "Functional tests only to testing the infrastructure layer, or test too the domain services without mocking?", "text": "This is a code example: My entities (Domain Layer):               class Account:         def __init__(name, author):             self.name = name             self.email = email      My repositories interfaces (Domain Layer):               class AccountRepository:         def add(self, account):             \"\"\" @type account Account \"\"\"             pass              def find_by_name(self, name):             pass              def find_by_email(self, email):             pass              # remove, and others...      My domain services (Domain Layer):               class SignUpService:         def __init__(self, account_repository):             \"\"\" @type account_repository AccountRepository \"\"\"             self._account_repository = account_repository              def create_account(self, username, email):             account = Account(username, email)             self._account_repository.add(account)              # other methods that uses the account_repository      My repositories strategies implementations (Infrastructure Layer):               class MongodbAccountRepository(AccountRepository):         def __init__(self, mongodb_database):             self._mongodb_database = mongodb_database              def add(self, account):             account_data = account.__dict__             self._mongodb_database.accounts.insert(account_data)              # and the other methods      So I can do: **A** :   * Functional test for MongodbAccountRepository, testing the add, and directly querying to mongodb to check if the data is persisted as i suppose.   * Unit test for SignUpService, mocking the AccountRepository   * **Pros:** Too quickly   * **Cons:** can I really suppose that if my infrastructure works fine, and my domain service works fine with mock, the real integration will work fine?.   * And if i'm introducing a bug in my mock object, and the test passes when should be failing? **B** :   * Functional test for SignUpService, using the real MongodbAccountRepository.   * **Pros:** I can be sure that SignUpService really works fine.   * **Cons:** too many tests (with all strategies, etc), too slow What do you think?"}
{"_id": "235183", "title": "What features does MIT-Scheme have that make it ideal for SICP?", "text": "I've been thinking about trying to get through the SICP again, this time well- armed with a better idea of what the SICP is meant to accomplish, and being older and wiser than my first attempt back in university. I've been told by old hands that the MIT Scheme is the _only_ scheme I should think about using, and that other schemes lack features that make the SICP harder to accomplish. \"There's a reason all the 'SICP-in-X' end with chapter 3. Other languages can't support what's in chapter 4.\" When I asked what's in chapter 4, the answer is, \"You'll have to get through the first three chapters to understand.\" Which is very Zen, I admit, but not helpful. The only things I can think of that older lisps have is dynamic scope and fexprs, but those don't seem to be the issue. What features does MIT Scheme possess that makes it \"ideal\" for getting through SICP? (Other than that it's the target language of the book, of course.)"}
{"_id": "11436", "title": "Start to understand an existing project for beginner programmer", "text": "I want to understand an existing project for improve myself more but i am not sure that project is overwhelming for me or not. I am not sure i am capable to understand it. I even think that i will be failed. When i look at projects, at a glance it makes me feel scary to see thousand line of codes . I don't even know where to start read codes.Do i have to follow by debugging or another else? Can you please guide me about this situation ? I am totally get confused for start. Edit : Few thing for specify about my question. I know C# language and I have learned some WEB technologies like ASP.NET MVC 2 and Web Forms but sure still there will be many thing which i still don't know. I call myself as beginner but it is just because lack of professional experience in this area. But my OOP understanding is enough good. I am thinking to improve myself on WEB so i am looking for WEB projects like blog engines which is simpler than others for starting."}
{"_id": "17100", "title": "Clarify the Single Responsibility Principle", "text": "The Single Responsibility Principle states that a class should do one and only one thing. Some cases are pretty clear cut. Others, though, are difficult because what looks like \"one thing\" when viewed at a given level of abstraction may be multiple things when viewed at a lower level. I also fear that if the Single Responsibility Principle is honored at the lower levels, excessively decoupled, verbose ravioli code, where more lines are spent creating tiny classes for everything and plumbing information around than actually solving the problem at hand, can result. How would you describe what \"one thing\" means? What are some concrete signs that a class really does more than \"one thing\"?"}
{"_id": "116185", "title": "How to develop a career path for programmers in a small company?", "text": "I am working in a small software company, which has grown from 4 to just over 50 employees (1 to 12 developers respectively) in the last 4 years with me being the lead developer/manager of the development team. No developer has quit so far and during the last round of feedback interviews everyone emphasized that they like the environment, colleagues and their current tasks at hand. However, for the first time, a few people mentioned that they started to think about how to expand their horizon (beyond the component/team they are currently working on) or develop additional skill sets (in addition to \"plain\" programming), e.g., to look into technical pre-sales activities. These issues were all raised by developers who have been with the company the longest and had seen the wild early days. Since then we've established processes to improve stability and quality which seem to work okay and a certain part of the daily work load has shifted from \"new and exciting\" to \"routine and maintenance\", so I can understand that they are looking for additional challenges. I've read several questions on SO from developers concerning steps to improve their career, but I am now faced with the other side: **What kind of career path can I offer a developer in a small company like ours?** Obviously, those people provide a lot of our specific domain knowledge and are very valuable to the team, so I want to make sure I can keep them happy. Given that business constraints and tight resources in a small company don't allow for a lot of extra projects on the side, any suggestions on what kind of options I can offer them?"}
{"_id": "52515", "title": "Specifying and applying broad changes to a program", "text": "**How do you handle incomplete feature requests, when the ones asking for the feature cannot possibly write a complete request?** Consider an imaginary situation. You are a tech lead working on a piece of software that revolves around managing profiles (maybe they're contacts in a CRM-type application, or employees in an HR application), with many operations being directly or indirectly performed on those profiles -- edit fields, add comments, attach documents, send e-mail... The higher-ups decide that a _lock_ functionality should be added whereby a profile can be locked to prevent anyone else from doing any operations on it until it's unlocked -- this feature would be used by security agents to prevent anyone from touching a profile pending a security audit. Obviously, such a feature interacts with many other existing features related to profiles. For example:   * Can one add a comment to a locked profile?   * Can one see e-mails that were sent by the system to the owner of a locked profile?   * Can one see who recently edited a locked profile?   * If an e-mail was in the process of being sent when the lock happened, is the e-mail sending canceled, delayed or performed as if nothing happened?   * If I just changed a profile and click the \"cancel\" link on the confirmation, does the lock prevent the cancel or does it still go through?   * In all of these cases, how do I tell the user that a lock is in place? Depending on the software, there could be hundreds of such interactions, and each interaction requires a decision -- _is the lock going to apply and if it does, how will it be displayed to the user?_ And the higher-ups asking for the feature probably only see a small fraction of these, so you will probably have a lot of questions coming up while you are working on the feature. How would you and your team handle this?   * Would you expect the higher-ups to come up with a complete description of all cases where the lock should apply (and how), and treat all other cases as if the lock did not exist?    * Would you try to determine all potential interactions based on existing specifications and code, list them and ask the higher-ups to make a decision on all those where the decision is not obvious?    * Would you just start working and ask questions as they come up?   * Would you try to change their minds and settle on a more easily described feature with similar effects? The information about existing features is, as I understand it, in the code -- how do you bridge the gap between the decision-makers and that information they cannot access?"}
{"_id": "52516", "title": "I want to write a Todo list application for mac but I only have experience with C++", "text": "Do I learn objective C? Is using Cocoa the easiest and best way to make a UI?"}
{"_id": "215277", "title": "At what point does caching become necessary for a web application?", "text": "I'm considering the architecture for a web application. It's going to be a single page application that updates itself whenever the user selects different information on several forms that are available that are on the page. I was thinking that it shouldn't be good to rely on the user's browser to correctly interpret the information and update the view, so I'll send the user's choices to the server, and then get the data, send it back to the browser, and update the view. There's a table with 10,000 or so rows in a MySQL database that's going to be accessed pretty often, like once every 5-30 seconds for each user. I'm expecting 200-300 concurrent users at one time. I've read that a well designed relational database with simple queries are nothing for a RDBMS to handle, really, but I would still like to keep things quick for the client. Should this even be a concern for me at the moment? At what point would it be helpful to start using a separate caching service like Memcached or Redis, or would it even be necessary? I know that MySQL caches popular queries and the results, would this suffice?"}
{"_id": "215276", "title": "Storing a pass-by-reference parameter as a pointer - Bad practice?", "text": "I recently came across the following pattern in an API I've been forced to use:               class SomeObject     {     public:         // Constructor.         SomeObject(bool copy = false);              // Set a value.         void SetValue(const ComplexType &value);          private:         bool         m_copy;         ComplexType *m_pComplexType;         ComplexType  m_complexType;     };          // ------------------------------------------------------------          SomeObject::SomeObject(bool copy) :       m_copy(copy)     {     }          // ------------------------------------------------------------          void SomeObject::SetValue(const ComplexType &value)     {         if (m_copy)             m_complexType.assign(value);         else             m_pComplexType = const_cast<ComplexType *>(&value);     }      The background behind this pattern is that it is used to hold data prior to it being encoded and sent to a TCP socket. The copy weirdness is designed to make the class `SomeObject` efficient by only holding a pointer to the object until it needs to be encoded, but also provide the option to copy values if the lifetime of the `SomeObject` exceeds the lifetime of a ComplexType. However, consider the following:               SomeObject SomeFunction()     {         ComplexType complexTypeInstance(1);  // Create an instance of ComplexType.              SomeObject encodeHelper;         encodeHelper.SetValue(complexTypeInstance); // Okay.              return encodeHelper;              // Uh oh! complexTypeInstance has been destroyed, and         // now encoding will venture into the realm of undefined         // behaviour!     }      I tripped over this because I used the default constructor, and this resulted in messages being encoded as blank (through a fluke of undefined behaviour). It took an absolute age to pinpoint the cause! Anyway, **is this a standard pattern for something like this? Are there any advantages to doing it this way vs overloading the SetValue method to accept a pointer that I'm missing?** Thanks!"}
{"_id": "215271", "title": "Requiring a specific order of compilaiton", "text": "When designing a compiled programming language, is it a bad idea to require a specific order of compilation of separate units, according to their dependencies? To illustrate what I mean, consider C. C is the opposite of what I'm suggesting. There are multiple `.c` files, that can all depend on each other, but all of these separate units can be compiled on their own, in no particular order - only to be linked together into a final executable later. This is mostly due to header files. They enable separate units to share information with each other, and thus the units are able to be compiled independently. If a language were to dispose of header files, and only keep source and object files, then the only option would be to actually include the unit's meta- information in the unit's object file. However, this would mean that if the unit A depends on the unit B, then the unit B would need to be compiled _before_ unit A, so unit A could \"import\" the unit B's object file, thus obtaining the information required for its compilation. Am I missing something here? Is this really the only way to go about removing header files in compiled languages?"}
{"_id": "245213", "title": "Open source license limitations and compatiblity", "text": "I am new to open source licenses and it seems very confusing, therefore need some suggestions. We are developing an application which utilities existing components with following license types:   * Apache License v2   * LGPL v2.1   * MIT License   * BSD style license   * Mozilla Public License v1.1 Now my concern is:   1. What kind of distribution limitations our application might have from commercial perspective?   2. What kind of license possibilities we have for our application? (e.g. Apache, proprietary, GPL, etc.) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "235233", "title": "How to Learn Doing it Right Way?", "text": "I am self taught web developer. I do not have any computer science degree from university. I know HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, PHP and some Python. But I am having difficulties about being efficient. When I create a project, I am buried into files, folders, bugs and todoes. Because I am managing multiple projects at a time, I totally feel stressed and not in control. I see real programmers whom have computer science degrees use utilities like Git for source management. They use Unit tests for testing and other tools for Debugging in an easy and quick way. I am sure there are lots of other tools they have which help them stay safe and calm while they manage their projects. But because I do not have any computer science degree, I do not know how to do things in a right and efficient way. I just do it, in an organized way. It works but it burns out me, too. I Googled a bit and find some books from Amazon about Project Management but I feel intimidated. The tools and resources I found also very scattered which seems getting them together to create an organized routine is also requires another expertise. As a self taught web developer what can I do to learn doing things right way? Do I need a computer science degree or a course about programming? Can I learn the right way by Googleing or from books?"}
{"_id": "958", "title": "What IDE features would you miss most if you didn't have them?", "text": "What features of your IDE would you miss most if you didn't have? Please list one one feature or group of related features per answer."}
{"_id": "251220", "title": "X509 certificate question on WCF", "text": "**My condition:**   1. A WCF service which is self-hosted and it's on a Win8 Machine.    2. Client is a WPF Program on another machine.   3. Then I follow the article on Codeproject about how to set X509 certificate for WCF. **Problem Description:**   1. Communication between Client and Service was OK when they are on the same Machine.   2. When I put the Client on another machine, exception occurs that it says \"The caller is not authenticated by the service\". I believe the cause of the exception above may be relevant to X509 Certificate. When I put the Client.exe on another computer, I just generate a new certificate for client, is it right? I want to know if the X509 Client certificate should be exported from the service Machine which has generated both client and server certificate, and then be imported into other Client Machine, or just use makecert.exe generate another certificate for other Client Machine? In short, can the certificate be generated by any machine or only by the machine having generated the service certificate?"}
{"_id": "251225", "title": "Requesting Advice Regarding Storing Encryption Keys", "text": "I am using HMAC to hash some data before inserting it in a database and currently I have my key as a static field. Just wondering what the best practice regarding storing the key would be. Is having it in code good enough, or should it be in a configuration file. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "118066", "title": "Solutions for implementing a full-duplex game server?", "text": "I am designing a game server which would be used for Android terminals. I've been searching for products or frameworks to use for two-way socket communication but haven't found anything worth mentioning. Simply, I want to implement the architecture below: ![Server architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/leKtu.png) In other words, one TCP connection from the client to the server, and another from the server to the client, in order to avoid always having to be connected. Just to be clear, my main aim is for the **server** to be able to send data to the **client** , **without** the client having to explicitly request it. I do **not** want the client to have to poll the server to see if there is any new data. What combination of design strategies, network protocols, and/or products or frameworks (if any) would be appropriate for implementing this architecture?"}
{"_id": "70877", "title": "Are design patterns really essential nowadays?", "text": "I was reading \"Coders at Work\" and have faced the fact that some of the professionals interviewed in the book are not so enthusiastic about design patterns. I think that there are 2 main reasons for this:   1. Design patterns force us to think in their terms. In other words, it's almost impossible to invent something new (maybe better).   2. Design patterns don't last forever. Languages and technologies change fast; therefore, design patterns will eventually become irrelevant. So maybe it's more important to learn how to program properly without any particular patterns and not to learn them. EDIT: The point also was that usually when people face a problem and they don't have much time, they try to use a pattern. This means copying and pasting existing code into your project with minor changes in order to get it working. When it's time to change or add something, a developer doesn't know where to start because it's not his code and he's not deeply familiar with it."}
{"_id": "107834", "title": "How often do you actually use design patterns?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Are design patterns really essential nowadays? I recently read a book on design patterns. A few of them seem very usefull in specific situations. Im not sure how much use they will be in everyday coding though. How often do you use design patterns in your everyday work? Should I be trying to find situations to apply them?"}
{"_id": "49379", "title": "When should I use\u2014and not use\u2014design patterns?", "text": "In a previous question of mine on Stack Overflow, FredOverflow mentioned in the comments: > Note that patterns do not magically improve the quality of your code. and > Any measure of quality you can imagine. Patterns are not a panacea. I once > wrote a Tetris game with about 100 classes that incorporated all the > patterns I knew at the time. Why use a simple if/else if you can use a > pattern? OO is good, and patterns are even better, right? No, it was a > terrible, over-engineered piece of crap. I am quite confused by these comments: I know design patterns help to make code reusable and readable, but when should I use use design patterns and perhaps more importantly, when should I avoid getting carried away with them?"}
{"_id": "224934", "title": "Are design patterns essential for good code?", "text": "Are design patterns (e.g. factory pattern, observer, etc...) required to be known to write good code? I often have no idea of what people mean when they talk about _inserting pattern name here_ pattern and sometimes I realize I\u2018ve implemented that pattern without knowing it even had a name. I\u2018m a self-taught programmer so I try to learn about patterns as I go, but are they necessary? I find them over-engineered sometimes, like just fancy design concepts that programmers sometimes overestimate and force themselves to use them even if they can write clean and working code that is however not a common pattern."}
{"_id": "95718", "title": "To design pattern, or not to design pattern", "text": "Design patterns are good, but complex. Should we use them in small projects? Implementing design patterns needs more sophisticated developers, which in turn raises project costs. On the other hand, they make code neat and clean. Are they necessary for small projects? **Update:** Should we insist on using design patterns when the team is not efficient at working with them?"}
{"_id": "219767", "title": "What if I will not use Software Design Patterns?", "text": "What kind of problems may I face, if I won't use Software Design Patterns? Can you tell me about the problems of approaching the design using standard object-oriented techniques?"}
{"_id": "235238", "title": "How do you get over tooling problems in a communal open-source project?", "text": "Two different teams (from different companies) are uniting to work on a communal open-source project. Agreeing on technical design is something we have no trouble with, but I'm struggling with tooling/workflow problems. I really like a BDD testing tool called `phpspec` (analogous to RSpec), whilst a lot of my teammates stick to what they know (`phpunit`) regardless of the pros and cons of either tool. How do you move forward with a project when members are in disagreement like this? Should you enforce a standard testing tool? Is there a way of using both? I think it boils down to whether members will break out of their comfort zones to learn new technologies that are better for the job. I'm of the strong opinion that you should always be willing to learn new things, but I get the impression that others are purely concerned with getting things done in the quickest way possible - thereby using tools they've used before."}
{"_id": "118063", "title": "What is a good way to familiarize myself with PHP, coming from an ASP.NET background?", "text": "Currently, I'm very comfortable with building tools/web apps in an ASP.NET environment. I'm not really looking to leave tbh, as I really like C#, ASP.NET, MVC 3, Visual Studio, etc. However, right now I know almost nothing about PHP and that seems like a deficiency that I'd like to rectify. Are there any books (or other learning methods) that would be a good resource to learn PHP? Obviously there are plenty of beginning PHP books, but I am already comfortable with much of what is involved with building a web page, and interested in focusing on PHP itself which might not be compatible with the scope of some beginning PHP books. I went through the PHP Manual quite a bit, and it doesn't seem to flow as smoothly as might be ideal. Is there a beginning PHP book that would be appropriate? I miss the cohesiveness that most books contain when looking through those samples. There is lots of info more, but it feels more like a reference while coding than a primary learning vehicle."}
{"_id": "118060", "title": "Is is possible to develop an application for both metro and classic style?", "text": "Is it possible to develop one application that can be be run in both: metro and classic style in Windows 8? I mean, application with the same core and two separate UIs, adjusted to currently used mode."}
{"_id": "118061", "title": "What's there in Eclipse, other than PyDev, for a Python developer?", "text": "Like many other people, I use Eclipse with the excellent PyDev plugin (available in the Eclipse Marketplace) to develop my Python projects. And like most people with the same setup, I came to PyDev without any prior Eclipse experience. What other tools, plugins, features, etc are there in Eclipse that could be useful for us Python developers? And/or, said another way, how could we become more proficient and make a better use of the Eclipse IDE for Python developing? I'll start adding my own 2\u20accents: EGit, or similar plugins for CVS, SVN, etc.., are good for integration with a version control system / repository. (even if I admit I'm usually just writing git command lines in the terminal)."}
{"_id": "80798", "title": "Is is possible to do TDD without a test tool?", "text": "We want to implement a fairly rough outline of test driven development which involves a developer asking themselves the tests at each stage of the development process. I have read here that its impossible to perform TDD without a tool. Is this true?"}
{"_id": "49018", "title": "CS Concentrations and Career Paths", "text": "I'm approaching the end of Sophomore year in college (Studying Computer Science), and very soon I'm going to have to decide on my concentration, but I honestly don't know what each concentration means. I basically have two questions:   1\\. How much influence does your concentration have on your career path? For example, would a video game development company only look at people with a concentration in Game Development? 2.It would be great if you guys could, in a line or two, tell me what sort of jobs am I looking at for each of the concentrations? I need to pick at least two of the 9 below. \\- Algorithms and Data Structures   \\- Artificial Intelligence   \\- Computer and Network Security   \\- Computer graphics and vision   \\- Human-Computer Interaction   \\- Game Development and Design   \\- Numeric and Symbolic Computation   \\- Programming languages   \\- Systems"}
{"_id": "152912", "title": "Warn about 3rd party methods that are forbidden", "text": "Note: This question refers to code written in Java or C#. I am managing a couple of large projects where we have discovered issues (not necessarily bugs) with some 3rd party/SDK methods and have written our own extensions that should be used instead. We want developers to remember that using those methods is not recommended for this project. If we had been using our own libraries we could easily remove that method or mark it obsolete/deprecated but we cannot do so for libraries that we didn't write. As an example, we use a library that provides us with two overloads:               acme.calculate(int quantity_, double priceInUsDollars_);     acme.calculate(int quantity_, string currencyCode_, double priceInCurrency_);      We want developers to always use the first one and get price in US Dollars from our own standard FX rate systems. And it'd be nice to have the IDE (Eclipse/Visual Studio) warn the developers when they use the first one. A compiler warning will suffice too. Right now, as it stands, we have to rely on the code reviewers to spot such errors and as you can see that is not a reliable approach. One possible way I am prepared to go is to write my own check style check (http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/writingchecks.html). But I was wondering if there was something simple that I could use. Does anyone know of ways to achieve an IDE/compiler warning of the sort I have described? Non IDE/compiler solutions are most welcome."}
{"_id": "80792", "title": "What modes of profit are open to programmers?", "text": "This is an important question because \"apply for a job/internship\" isn't a solution for everyone especially during economic stress periods when constant rejection can push good programmers into depression. Can people with experience briefly comment on other ways to get programming revenue:   * Creating \"free for non-commercial\" software   * Turning an idea into a startup with near-zero resources and **not flopping**   * Turning an idea into a startup with near-zero resources and coming out **employed**   * Using outsourcing sites and **actually** getting paid   * Making freeware and getting sponsors/advertisers (I know we all hate installer spam, but still)"}
{"_id": "62829", "title": "What is better making a separate temporary table or inserting directly to big table?", "text": "I have a big table with 1,400,000 rows, and I need to insert 3000 rows daily in it. When I insert 3000 rows daily should   * I first insert to a temporary table than dump that temporary table to the main table.   * insert directly to the big table. Which approach is fast and why?"}
{"_id": "153359", "title": "Asynchronous update design/interaction patterns", "text": "These days many apps support asynchronous updates. For example, if you're looking at a list of widgets and you delete one of them then rather than wait for the roundtrip to the server, the app can hide the one you deleted, giving immediate feedback. The actual deletion on the server will happen in the background. This can be seen in web apps, desktop apps, iOS apps, etc. But what about when the background operation fails. How should you feed back to the user? Should you restore the UI to the pre-deletion state? What about when multiple background operations fail together? Does this behaviour/pattern have a name? Perhaps something based on the Command pattern?"}
{"_id": "153351", "title": "Is there an specific way or algorithm to decode protocols?", "text": "I am designing a simple logic analyzer, I know that the best way to decode a protocol like I2C, SPI, UART is whit something like an FPGA but I want to do it by software by now :) I am running on an OMAP4460 ARM proccesor. I would like to know if there is an special way of decoding protocols like I2C, SPI, UART or it is simply if() and flags as the normal way."}
{"_id": "153350", "title": "Are too many assertions code smell?", "text": "I've really fallen in love with unit testing and TDD - I am test infected. However, unit testing is normally used for public methods. Sometimes though I do have to test some assumptions-assertions in private methods too, because some of them are \"dangerous\" and refactoring can't help further. (I know, testing frameworks allow testing private methods). So it became a habit of mine that the first and the last line of a private method are both assertions. However, I've noticed that I tend to use assertions in public methods (as well as the private) just \"to be sure\". Could this be \"testing duplication\" since the public method assumptions are tested from the outside by the unit testing framework? Could someone think of too many assertions as a code smell?"}
{"_id": "158965", "title": "Template rendering engine legitimate use of a singleton?", "text": "I wrote a standalone singleton class (scaffold) tonight that serves as a facade to a few other classes, including a template class and a view class. Templates and views are both named and instances of each are stored in the scaffold object. Templates can contain views and views can contain other views. A template and it's contained views is rendered when:               scaffold->render('template_name')      Making scaffold a Singleton seemed like a good idea because:   * I want to control when and how the object is constructed   * I only want one instance (the gui will only be rendered once, regardless of the template which is rendered)   * All state can easily be released from the scaffold class (if, for testing reasons or whatever, I wanted to) Does this seem like an acceptable use case? If not, what specific design considerations am I overlooking? No religious wars, please. I didn't include the language because I'm hoping for a language agnostic consideration, but I will say:   * Scripting language   * Single threaded"}
{"_id": "99243", "title": "Why doesn't Python allow multi-line lambdas?", "text": "Can someone explain the concrete reasons why BDFL choose to make Python lambdas single line? This is good:               lambda x: x**x      This results in an error:               lambda x:         x**x      I understand that making lambda multi-line would somehow \"disturb\" the normal indentation rules and would require adding more exceptions, but isn't that worth the benefits? Look at JavaScript, for example. How can one live without those anonymous functions? They're indispensable. Don't Pythonistas want to get rid of having to name every multi-line function just to pass it as an argument?"}
{"_id": "210737", "title": "Is learning C essential for Computer Science?", "text": "I am a front-end developer who barely even see a file with `.h` or `.c` extension. I know basic C syntax, I've learned it in Unreality but never was interested in such low level programming because it was simply too much setup for simple things. I am very interested in learning all aspects of Computer Science but I want to believe I do not really have to know a specific language in order to understand most of concepts in Computer Science. Yet when I start reading books and articles about fundamental Computer Science concepts like Data Structures and Algorithm Design it seems that I have to learn C, because all examples and even lessons are in C (and sometimes Java). My question is, is C as a programming language essential for Computer Science or we just happened to have all of our resources in CS written in C? Can one learn Computer Science without learning C?"}
{"_id": "125976", "title": "How does Assembla compare to FogBugz + Kiln", "text": "I'm choosing a project management solution and narrowed it down to either Assembla or FogBugz + Kiln. These were my criteria:   * Hosted service but with an option to go to a custom installation (rules out e.g. Codebase HQ)   * Centered around projects, not repositories (GitHub, although having added some PM features recently, seems to be repo-centered)   * Git repository hosting a must, SVN + Mercurial nice to have   * Popular service with (at least somewhat) guaranteed continuity - both FogBugz and Assembla seem to be amongst the most popular PM solutions   * Wikis, discussions, code reviews, user management etc. The more features, the better. This rules out (otherwise a very nice service) BitBucket and others. Both FogBugz and Assembla seem quite feature packed. I'm looking for someone who has experience with both FogBugz and Assembla and could compare them. This is what I've gathered so far from feature pages / screenshots / random mentions on the web:   * FogBugz seems to have quite a nice UX. Assembla makers are certainly trying hard and the screenshots don't look that bad but it still feels less elegant.   * FogBugz is offered with Kiln which I'm sure is a nice product but I'd prefer Git over Mercurial. I know FogBugz can be used with other SCM services but I'd rather have one integrated solution out of the box.   * Assembla is cheaper, actually much cheaper should there be more than a few users. Maybe I'm wrong, these are just my first impressions. If someone could offer a more complete / educated comparison I would be grateful."}
{"_id": "16851", "title": "how to get clients and domain experts on board and interested", "text": "So I think this might be **me** soon!   Excuse my ignorance in this post, I am not formally educated and young! =S   (Taken from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell) ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/r3lVG.png) Im building an inhouse application for a bank and it might not be big but its the largest project I've worked on. ## Issues I can't do much about   1. There is tons of beaurocracy in doing anything, it took 4 months to get them to sign a contract with me.   2. I have to work with Finance managers, who have never worked with someone making software for them.   3. I am not usually taken seriously because I am young. ## My Problems   1. The managers don't give a crap about the Bank and they never bother to read my emails most of the time, or give me any input on mockups or demos. I spent 20 hours over 2 days on the last mockup and they would rather crap on the phone than attend the meeting!   2. New features keep coming and going like hot cakes and they just cannot decide which ones are important. Or they don't care to discuss it! And the top dogs keeps reminding me of the dealines!? ## My question So Im going straight to the top dogs to politely try to change things. These guys however are older and won't give me much time, **I need a very convincing, quick, succinct way to explain to them how important it is that their \"managers\" communicate with me and tell me what the heck they want and what they don't**   Any funny presentations or pictures like oatmeal would be really awesome to show the top dogs. ## Other Solutions I was thinking of   1. Signing up for teambox.com (as opposed to email!)   2. If in 3 days I dont get a response on a feature it is NO MORE!   3. I display features on a board and they get 5 secs to tell me if its important or not. Any more policies I should adopt? Any other ideas? Thanks so much, Gideon **EDIT** * * * In response to the first comment: The departmental heads (top dogs) are the people really looking forward to shiny software that will solve all their problems. They are more or less the stakeholders but I don't interact with them much, I only interact with their subordinates(the managers)."}
{"_id": "125971", "title": "Has SSRS replaced Crystal Reports as a new standard for Visual Studio reporting tool?", "text": "I never used SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) before but used little Crystal Reports. My present project has extensive use of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005. This choice brought some nasty issues of Crystal Reports in front. The very first report failed to print or export because of a bug. After wasting a week, I got stuck in another issue of reducing font size on print and export. Help in forums is also not coming soon. I want to know whether I should learn and switch to SSRS or migrate my project to Visual Studio 2010 with a higher version of Crystal Reports. Has SSRS replaced Crystal Reports as a de facto standard reporting tool?"}
{"_id": "198671", "title": "Why is C++ preferred over C for commercial applications?", "text": "I program in C mostly. However, it is pretty obvious that many more commercial applications are done in C++. As far as I can tell, C++ is a very complex language, with seemingly convoluted syntax and too many constructs. C++ also encourages the abuse of Objects where structs and functions will do. In fact, the only significant advantage I see in C++ is the use of templated generic types (though, according to the developers of Go, generics are bad for programs). Basically, my question is, did I miss something? Or is C++ more popular purely by merit of luck or marketing? Edit: I'm sorry that I apparently asked a loaded question; in retrospect I can see that the way I worded it appears to be complete flamebait. What I meant was, since C++ has so many different constructs and paradigms available to it, why hasn't it been replaced by languages that do less but are better at that specific thing? For instance, both Java and C# are much better suited for OOP than C++ is, while C is much simpler for system-level programming, and something like lisp is more suited for functional programming. Why is C++ used over one or more of these other languages?"}
{"_id": "125978", "title": "Should I decompress zips before I archive?", "text": "I am writing a small personal archiving tool. I frequently work with a lot of client databases for short periods, what my tool will do is in overnight batch jobs it will detach the database and zip up the database files and any extra files that where sitting in the folder that the database resided in and move it to a network storage drive. My question is quite frequently there will be zip files sitting inside the folder (the most common one would be the client's original backup before I did the processing on it). Would it be better to unzip the file to a unique sub- folder name, delete the zip, then compress the whole parent folder, or are compression algroithoms good enough that I could leave the file zipped (it was likely done with a 7zip Fastest setting) and my archiving (which will be a 7zip Ultra setting) will just compress (mostly) the difference between the two compression levels? If I can get another 1% off of a 20GB database file it may be worth it to do the decompression."}
{"_id": "12165", "title": "How do you structure your branches in TFS", "text": "I'm not sure if i should ask this question here, or on SO ... i'll cross post it to SO if this is the wrong place. My group at work has been trying to come up with a good process that we can use with TFS. I'm just wondering if some of you guys had some successful strategies with using TFS across multiple sites using multiple branches. One specific issue that we have is probably our release engine. On the simple side, a developer should be able to check in his/her changes into the DEV Branch, and then ok certain date (say a freeze date) the DEV Branch will be \"reverse integrated\" into the Main Trunk (QA) in which then the changes will be pushed to the Production branch. The issue arose when a user check into the DEV Branch, but he doesn't want those changes to be moved into QA (because maybe other portion of the code is not done yet) ... any thoughts on that? thanks in advanced"}
{"_id": "46599", "title": "Best time to start writing technical blogs", "text": "I want to know how much time I should wait until I start writing a blog since, IMO, a newbie does not have that skills to write something substantial. I'm talking about technical blogs like writing about new C# features or Advantages of Ruby over other languages."}
{"_id": "190464", "title": "How to rewrite from scratch a code for which I own the copyright so I can use it on my job without losing the rights to the first version?", "text": "Well I don't want to make it open-source! That's the problem. But I do want to use it on my current job. Company did not agree to sign any alternative license with me and told me to rewrite everything from scratch so they will own it. :( So how can I do it in a safe way so later on the company don't come back to me and say that I am using the code I wrote for them, which will be similar to the first version I wrote and own the copyright, on my personal projects or even on another job? How would you rewrite a second version of a hash map without making it look like the first version? This sounds kind of hard to me. :("}
{"_id": "42674", "title": "Any recommendations on a good Objected-Oriented book", "text": "I'm looking to really grasp OO once and for all. Any recommendations on a good Objected-Oriented book? I program in .Net, so if it's .Net oriented all the better. Regards,"}
{"_id": "158960", "title": "Allocation problem identification", "text": "I have a matrix. I have a list of people who have to occupy n1,n2,n3 etc cells, different number of cells in different rows. I have to place the people in the cells. Occupying the same cell across rows is considered overlap. Overlap has to be minimized. I have people referring to this variously as an optimization problem, an allocation problem and even linear programming. I need to first get a consensus on what is this class of problem called. Second, I need to know what an efficient solution should look like, in terms of the big-o notation or anything else. Here is an example: There is a board of 4 x 4 cells. There are many pieces each of one color (R, G, B). Each color peice has to fill a number of columns in each row. A possible example:                     Row1   Row2   Row3   Row4     Red      1      2      3      2     Blue     2      2      0      0     Green    1      0      1      2      That is the input. The input arrangement could be different but it occupies the entire board... no cell is left blank. The count of same color pieces occupying a COLUMN should be minimized. One possible (bad) arrangement based on the input is this:                   1    2    3    4     1   r    b    b    g     2   r    r    b    b     3   r    r    r    g     4   r    r    g    g      This is bad because it actually maximises the count of colors in the same column. A better arrangement is like this:                   1    2    3    4     1   r    b    b    g     2   b    r    r    b     3   g    r    r    r     4   r    g    g    r      Overlap is unavoidable, but should be minimized, and provably so. I dont know if there is only one best solution or if there could be many solutions. Even if there could be many solutions, we need to come up with just one. As I think about it more, it looks like a loose version of eight-queens problem. I am getting worried because I keep seeing recursion and back- tracking. EDIT 1: I am thinking a relaxed version of sudoku puzzle generation."}
{"_id": "249764", "title": "Where and how to reference composite MVP components?", "text": "I am learning about the MVP (Model-View-Presenter) Passive View flavour of MVC. I intend to expose events from view interfaces rather than using the observer pattern to remove explicit coupling with presenter. **Context:** Windows Forms / Client-Side JavaScript. I am led to believe that the MVP (or indeed MVC in general) pattern can be applied at various levels of a user interface ranging from the main \"Window\" to an embedded \"Text Field\". For instance, the model to the text field is probably just a string whereas the model to the \"Window\" contains application specific view state (like a persons name which resides within the contained text field). Given a more complex scenario:   * Documentation viewer which contains:      * TOC navigation pane     * Document view     * Search pane Since each of these 4 user interface items are complex and can be reused elsewhere it makes sense to design these using MVP. Given that each of these user interface items comprises of 3 components; which component should be nested? where? who instantiates them? **Idea #1 - Embed View inside View from Parent View**               public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView {         public DocumentationViewer() {             ...                  // Unclear as to how model and presenter are injected...             TocPane = new TocPaneView();         }         protected ITocPaneView TocPane { get; private set; }     }      **Idea #2 - Embed Presenter inside View from Parent View**               public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView {         public DocumentationViewer() {             ...                  // This doesn't seem like view logic...             var tocPaneModel = new TocPaneModel();             var tocPaneView = new TocPaneView();             TocPane = new TocPanePresenter(tocPaneModel, tocPaneView);         }         protected TocPanePresenter TocPane { get; private set; }     }      **Idea #3 - Embed View inside View from Parent Presenter**               public class DocumentationViewer : Form, IDocumentationViewerView {         ...              // Part of IDocumentationViewerView:         public ITocPaneView TocPane { get; set; }     }          public class DocumentationViewerPresenter {         public DocumentationViewerPresenter(DocumentationViewerModel model, IDocumentationViewerView view) {             ...                  var tocPaneView = new TocPaneView();             var tocPaneModel = new TocPaneModel(model.Toc);             var tocPanePresenter = new TocPanePresenter(tocPaneModel, tocPaneView);             view.TocPane = tocPaneView;         }     }      **Some better idea...**"}
{"_id": "46592", "title": "So what *did* Alan Kay really mean by the term \"object-oriented\"?", "text": "Reportedly, Alan Kay is the inventor of the term \"object oriented\". And he is often quoted as having said that what we call OO today is not what he meant. For example, I just found this on Google: > I made up the term 'object-oriented', and I can tell you I didn't have C++ > in mind > > \\-- Alan Kay, OOPSLA '97 I vaguely remember hearing something pretty insightful about what he _did_ mean. Something along the lines of \"message passing\". Do you know what he meant? Can you fill in more details of what he meant and how it differs from today's common OO? Please share some references if you have any. Thanks."}
{"_id": "167954", "title": "How to calculate Sin function quicker and more precisely?", "text": "I want to calculate `y(n)=32677Sin(45/1024\u2022n)`, where `y` is an integer and `n` ranges from 0 to 2048. How can I make this process quicker and more precisely? Now I want to show you a reference answer: Since `Sin(a+b)=Sin(a)Cos(b)+Cos(a)Sin(b)` And `Cos(a+b)=Cos(a)Cos(b)-Sin(a)Cos(b)`. So I can store `Sin(45/1024\u20221)` and `Cos(45/1024\u20221)` only.Then use this formula: `Sin(45/1024\u20222)=Sin(45/1024\u20221+45/1024\u20221)`, `Cos(45/1024\u20222)=Cos(45/1024\u20221+45/1024\u20221)`, `Sin(45/1024\u2022n)=Sin(45/1024\u2022(n-1)+45/1024\u20221)`, `Cos(45/1024\u2022n)=Cos(45/1024\u2022(n-1)+45/1024\u20221)` , This way maybe quicker without storing large array."}
{"_id": "75072", "title": "How can I stay focused and motivated on a project?", "text": "I'm working on starting my own software development business, but I've noticed that I have major issues getting projects out by their deadlines, and in general getting them out of the \"almost-done\" stage. I feel my problem is that I like complex programming too much, and I end up rewriting code to make it cleaner/more efficient/less error prone as a means of putting off more \"boring\" development. I end up with polished applications at the end, but I spend twice as long on the project as I should have. If I ever want my company to succeed, I need to work on staying focused on what actually needs to be done, so the question is: What techniques do you use to keep yourself focused and motivated on a project, in your career?"}
{"_id": "119477", "title": "How to concentrate on one project at a time. Divide and Conquer doesn't work for me", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Tips for staying focused and motivated on a project I have serious issues on concentrating on one project at a time. I cant even follow the Divide and Conquer Approach. Once I start a project, I try to get the things done as neatly as possible but very soon I end up messing so many components of it. I try to do divide and conquer, but my approach doesn't work smoothly, and then I then wonder here and there in other projects. Sometimes I try spending so many hours for some trivial issues, which in-fact are not even issues. How do I avoid this jargon and be a smooth developer and have a nice workflow around my projects. I tend to loose my concentration on the current project and wonder in another project."}
{"_id": "167951", "title": "Is it more difficult to upgrade your certification from SQL Server 2008 to 2012 than to get it from scratch?", "text": "I was wondering about the new MCSA certification on SQL 2012 and how it seems to be more difficult to upgrade your certification from 2008 to 2012 than to get the 2012 from scratch. Reason I think that is true is because anyone with any MCTS SQL Server 2008 certification can upgrade it to a MCSA 2012 by passing 2 tests (457 and 458). If you try to get it from scratch, you need to pass 3 tests (461, 462 and 463 - which are pretty much the same as 432, 433 and 448 for SQL 2008). But the thing is, even though its one test less to upgrade, all the skills necessary to pass 461, 462 and 463 are squeezed on 457 and 458 so, it seems easier to get from scratch than upgrade. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "196706", "title": "Creating a coding standards document", "text": "I work in a control systems company, where the primary work is SCADA and PLC, along with other control systems stuff. Softwre development is not really something the company does, apart from little bits here and there, until there was a decision to create an internal project management and appraisal system. This project has been taken on by people who came here as software people originally and we are mostly junior. The project started off small, so we only documented stuff like design, database stuff etc, but we never really agreed upon a coding format/conventions. We started using Stylecop to make sure we had well documented code, but I feel we need an official document for coding conventions/practices so we can continue a good standard and if there is any more major development work in the future, whomever works on it has a good baseplate. Therein lies the problem, I have no idea how to draft up a document for coding conventions and standards, all I can think of is examples of good vs bad practice (for example camel case when naming variables, avoiding Hungarian notation etc) we are all competent enough programmers (apparently) but we just don't have a charter for this kind of stuff. To put a point on it, my question is: **What are the key aspects and contents of a good coding standards document?**"}
{"_id": "196709", "title": "how safe/sane is it to use git for deployment on my webapp production server?", "text": "I started with sftp, then switched to WebDAV and I'm currently using rsync through ssh to deploy any updates/upgrades from my development server into my production server. I'm still not very happy using this system and think using git to deploy may be better, mainly because of the possibility of rolling back any changes instantly with just one command. Appart from using ssh tunnel to pull and push to the production server (leaving the git service behind the firewall), I've also realized I have to edit .htaccess to deny web access to .git folder. Is this the correct approach, should I check anything else, do something in a different way, or should I go in a totally different direction?"}
{"_id": "167958", "title": "Are only companies and no private programmers allowed to use VS Studio 2012 Express Desktop?", "text": "Programming is my hobby and I've just downloaded VS Studio 2012 Express Desktop. Now I am going to register it but they want me to tell them business information > ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YrryP.png) Are only companies and no private programmers allowed to use VS Studio 2012 Express Desktop? And what shall I type in these text fields?"}
{"_id": "162709", "title": "Five new junior developers and lots of complex tasks. What's now?", "text": "Our company has hired five new junior developers to help me to developer our product. Unfortunately the new features and incoming bug fixes usually require deeper knowledge than a recently graduated developer usually has (threading/concurrency, debugging performance bottlenecks in a complex system, etc.) Delegating (and planning) tasks which they (probably) can solve, answering their questions, mentoring/managing them, reviewing their code use up all of my time and I often feel that I could solve the issues less time than the whole delegating process takes (counting only my time). In addition I don't have time to solve the tasks which require deeper system knowledge/more advanced skills and it does not seem that it will change in the near future. So, what's now? What should I do to use their and my time effectively?"}
{"_id": "123495", "title": "Why is Zend Framework so complicated?", "text": "I am web developer and have experience of developing several web applications in PHP. I have an idea of developing a product for myself and decided to use a MVC based framework because I really like the idea of MVC and how one can easily manage and modify the application without any difficulty. I chose Zend Framework and it seems more difficult than learning a new programming language. There are so many things going at one time even to run a small application. Similarly the idea of routing is very complex as it is new for a core programmer. I know that the guys here read thousand of such questions like one I am asking but I am not looking to learn Zend Framework overnight. I am willing to give as much time as it needs but until now it's making no sense to me. There are thousand of classes in the Zend library, but how would a noob know where to use a specfic class and how to use it? I am still finding it very difficult to understand the bootstrap of Zend Framework and its mapping. I read the manual, follow it and things start working but I really don't exactly how they are actually happening. I also still have no clue how models, views and controllers work together and how to plan an application in Zend Framework. When it comes to core php I exactly have the idea in my mind what to do and than easily translate them in code but in Zend Framework I don't know how to translate my idea."}
{"_id": "216773", "title": "Relation between \" lines of the longest working program \" in a language and familiarity with it?", "text": "In some computer master program online application, it says: > Please list the programming languages in which you have written programs. > For each language, indicate the length in lines of the longest working > program you have written in that language. You may approximate, but only > count those parts of the program that you wrote yourself.   1. I don't quite remember that, and I have never counted the lines of each program. Do programmers always know approximately how many lines in each of his programs, and keep record of them?   2. What is the relation between \" lines of the longest working program \" in a language and familiarity with it? Typically, how many lines will indicate the programmer being excellent, good, fair, or unfamiliar with the language? Is knowing \"lines of the longest working program\" really helpful?"}
{"_id": "29212", "title": "How often do you run & test your code while programming?", "text": "Especially when writing new code from scratch in C, I find myself writing code for hours, even days without running the compiler for anything but an occasional syntax check. I tend to write bigger chunks of code carefully and test thoroughly only when I'm convinced that the code does what it's supposed to do by analysing the flow in my head. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't write 1000 lines without testing at all (that would be gambling), but I would write a whole subroutine and test it (and fix it if necessary) after I think I'm finished. On the other side, I've seen mostly newbies that run & test their code after every line they enter in the editor and think that debuggers can be a substitute for carefulness and sanity. I consider this to be a lot of distraction once you've learned the language syntax. What do you think is the right balance between the two approaches? Of course the first one requires more experience, but does it affect productivity positively or negatively? Does the second one help you spot errors at a finer level?"}
{"_id": "53649", "title": "Business layer access to the data layer", "text": "I have a Business layer (BL) and a Data layer (DL). I have an object o with a child objects collection of Type C. I would like to provide a semantics like the following o.Children.Add(\"info\"). In the BL I would like to have a static CLASS that all of business layer classes uses to get a reference to the current datalayer instance. Is there any issue with that or must I use the factory pattern to limit creation to A class in the BL that knows the DL instance. * * * Let me Clarify. In the past when defining DL I create an interface IDL that the DL implements. The only objects I allow to be created from my BL are the factories which in their constructors take A reference to the IDL IE                  IDL idlRef = new DataLayer();          IBlFactory iFac = new BLFactory(IDL);        IBLa = IBlFactory.Geta(...);      As I have tried to work statics and singletons out of my system my factory creates all the objects and always passes the reference the the IDL to the new objects. Some on my team have complained about my copious use of interfaces and factories and would like to utilize concrete classes from the BL directly. So the issue is if you have a object which can be created IE a new object are you better severed by utilizing the factory. IE               IBLA oBLA = iFac.GetBLA();      or forcing the client to always passing the reference to the DL to new object. IE BLA oBLA = new BLA(idlRef); or would testability really be harmed by having one static property in the BL.               Static IDL CurrentDL;      Allowing albeit with some breaking of encapsulation more succinct style Assuming that each BL object will know what the currentDL is."}
{"_id": "53648", "title": "What are the best and worst policies you have seen used to run a programming team?", "text": "If I were to begin managing a team of programmers (which I'm not, I'm just asking out of curiosity) what are some of the office / team policies you have seen that are either particularly conducive or particularly prohibitive to productivity and teamwork? Some of the well known bad ones include regular overtime, micromanagement, not having admin rights, very strict hours, and endless meeting requirements. What else is there to avoid, and what interesting policies have you seen that do wonders for a team?"}
{"_id": "163253", "title": "What are the best education options for software engineers after an undergraduate degree?", "text": "Having recently completed a BSC (computer science), I am working as software engineer. With one year of experience, what educational options are available to me? I want to move further in management. Please provide suggestions. I am considering a MSC but I got negative reply from lots of people."}
{"_id": "163250", "title": "Showing user and userinterface interaction on a sequence diagram", "text": "I need to draw a sequence diagram and I am not sure exactly if it is correct to show interaction between user and user interface in this diagram. For example I want to make a panel visible or invisible based on choosing a check box by user. Is it correct to have it on a sequence diagram? and how can I draw it? thanks"}
{"_id": "168285", "title": "Difference between a REPL and interactive shell", "text": "Noob question. I am not quite able to tell the difference between a REPL and an interactive shell just by reading the definitions on Wikipedia. Wiki notes that REPL is a particular kind of interactive language shell. Is it a proper subset though? The Wiki definition seems to restrict the terminology REPL to Lisp-like languages, whereas the stated properties don't really contain any distinguishing features. In particular, would it be correct to call IPython a REPL?"}
{"_id": "195176", "title": "How does dependency inversion principle work in languages without interfaces?", "text": "In C#/Java, the dependency inversion principle is often demonstrated by high- level classes that depends on an interface/abstraction (that it owns). Low- level classes will implement the interface, thus inverting the dependency. I wonder, how is it applied in object-oriented languages with no interface? For example, I'm not an expert in Ruby, but it seems that in this language you can't define interfaces like in Java/.NET"}
{"_id": "63151", "title": "Any good tools for managing list of tasks?", "text": "We are changing how we manage low priority admin, support and development tasks. The plan is to have a 'Stack' of tasks, which anyone can pick up if/when they are light on work. We would like a tool to make it easy to find tasks, check them out and work on them as well as creating and prioritising them. We could do this at a simple level using a custom sharepoint list, as we have that available, and it fits in pretty well with our environment but has anyone got any experience of using any third party tools for this? It is somewhat similar to a standard ticketing system, so I guess we could look at things like Bugzilla, but I don't have any experience in such things (Our incident management system we use in hosue isn't really fit for the job). has anyone used one in this way? Or any other tool suggestions would be welcome."}
{"_id": "176338", "title": "When do you typically write a software module yourself vs. buying an existing product?", "text": "I'm trying to find out your decision rationale of when to do what. Would be great to learn from you. I'm happy to provide more context, but I want to make it general for now."}
{"_id": "142069", "title": "Using macro as an abstraction layer", "text": "I am having a discussion with a colleague about using macro as a thin (extremely) layer of abstraction vs using a function wrapper. The example that I used is Macro way.               #define StartOSTimer(period)  (microTimerStart(period))      Function wrapper method               void StartOSTimer(period)     {         microTimerStart(period);     }      Personally, I liked the second method as it allows for future modification, the #include dependencies are also abstracted as well."}
{"_id": "236765", "title": "How to provide a service with RESTful API?", "text": "Generally speaking, RESTful API's are very good for representing resources and collections of resources.   * http://example.com/resources   * http://example.com/resources/item17 And we are good, if we work with resource. However, what should be done, when you need to expose API which does an action which doesn't create/update or delete a resource. Couple of examples:   * You have an algorithm (as example add two numbers)   * You have an action which uses external system (as example send an email). I saw two approaches: **Represent an action as a subresource** POST http://example.com/resource/item17/sendemail On one hand, it's straightforward. On other hand, it start smelling SOAPy (read RPC calls). **Represent an action as a standalone resource** POST http://example.com/emailsender This looks more RESTful. However, it doesn't feel right too (only one of CRUD actions is implemented). This resource actually doesn't have a representation. I am not sure, may be there are other methods which I have missed. The question is - \"Is there a consensus on this subject? What is the preferred way to do it?\""}
{"_id": "112600", "title": "When a co-worker asks you to teach him what you know, do you share the information or keep it to yourself?", "text": "I am the only developer/DBA in a small IT department. There is another guy who can do it, but he's more of a backup as he spends his time working on IT support stuff. Anyway we have a new hire and I've been training him on the IT support side of things. Seems like he is eager to learn and be productive, but nobody is going out of their way to show him anything. He's been asking me to teach him database design, SQL, etc. For some reason, the boss has him working with me. He is also sending him to meetings that I go to, yet he hasn't said outright that I have to teach him anything. Meanwhile, the boss insists on doing a lot of the support work himself (i.e. he hoards information and doesn't delegate to anyone). I'm a little bit on the fence. First, the new guy doesn't yet have a strong foundation on the IT support functions which is where we really need help at this time. Second, I paid thousands of dollars for classes and spent many hours learning this stuff. Is it my responsibility to teach others skills that I had to learn on my own? Others here really aren't quick to share information so I'm not sure that I should either in this environment. I do know that if I get him involved, and get him started on projects, then I'd be responsible for his mistakes. I had to take the heat for the other guy when he made mistakes. OTOH the guy wants to learn something, is motivated, and I don't want to stop him. We've had our share of slackers in the group and it's nice to have someone who is willing to work for a change. So what would you guys do? Would you teach him the skills that you spent all of that time learning? Set him up with a test database on his PC and recommend some books for him? Encourage him to get a strong foundation in IT support first and ask later? We haven't had a new hire in years, let alone one that is interested in what I do, so this is new to me."}
{"_id": "112601", "title": "Designing around the constraints of external services in a client-server architecture", "text": "Suppose you have a client that interfaces with a server which in turn invokes an external service to fulfill some of the client's requests. I'm designing the client and server and need to accommodate the limitations of the external service. I have these options:   1. Encapsulate (as much as possible) all code dealing with the service's limitations inside the **server** application.   2. Encapsulate (as much as possible) all code dealing with the service's limitations inside the **client** application.   3. Design both the client and server applications around the external service's limitations. I had chosen option #1 because the server application was 'closer' to the external service and I didn't want to have to redesign the client if and when the external service was improved. However, now I'm being asked to choose option #3 by the server-side team so we can deal with the external service limitations in the API instead of by handling exceptions. Is there a design pattern I can reference to convince them (or myself) that one option is preferred? (Separation of concerns looks promising, but I haven't convinced myself that it's sufficient because it could also argue for option #2)"}
{"_id": "115374", "title": "Using SQLDataSource / DataBound Controls in ASP.NET - Bad Practice?", "text": "When programming in ASP.NET, you can get very quick, effective functionality out of using DataBound controls (`GridView`, `FormView`, etc) with an `SQLDataSource` control on the page (In my opinion, anyway - I could be alone on that one). For instance, I often use these types of controls to create basic search functionality - like looking at Order History in a Shopping Cart application. However, this answer on SO got me thinking: **Is the use of the`SQLDataSource` control considered bad practice?** I've not been able to find any resources online that substantiate this claim, so I thought I'd ask here. The question on SO is regards calculating the grand total of a column in a `GridView`. The downsides of the `SQLDataSource` pointed out by the answerer (in their comment) include:   * ASPX is presentation, not business logic.   * This practice causes you to repeat SQL on every page that needs it.   * When you make a change to a DB you have to change SQL in aspx.   * Because it makes simple tasks like displaying grand total hard.   * Solution provided calculates grand total it in `DataBound` event. What if you don't use control with `DataBound` event?   * Because it's not testable. I'm somewhat new to ASP.NET development (coming from a Java / C# background), and I just wanted to make sure I'm not heading down the wrong path here (with using the `SQLDataSource` control)."}
{"_id": "179306", "title": "Remembering user credentials in standalone Application", "text": "I'm developing a standalone application using java, I have a Login screen, wherein user enters his username and password. For each instance of the application, user have to enter his credentials. From a usability standpoint, I thought of keeping a remember me check Button. My question is, as I am not using any database, how do I persist the user details. I have some rough thoughts, storing them in a property file and retrieving. I think there may be better approaches than the one I had. Any Ideas and suggestions?"}
{"_id": "179307", "title": "Interface extension", "text": "Suppose that I have an input stream interface, which defines a method for reading data. I also have a seekable interface which defines a method for seeking. A natural way of defining a input file is then to implement both input stream and seekable. I want to construct a data decoder from the input stream interface so I can read data from a file or from another stream. The problem is that I also want to implement seek functionality to the data decoder, since I want to be able to step individual records not raw bytes. This is not possible if I only provide an input stream, which does not have the bytewise seek method. Should I skip the seekable interface and add the seek method to input stream instead and force all streams to at least leave it as a nop. EDIT: The decoder does not need to seek if the client does not request a seek operation. Also the stream is associated with the decoder and cannot be changed after initialization"}
{"_id": "152006", "title": "Is a readonly field in VB.NET thread safe?", "text": "Is a readonly field in VB.NET thread safe? For example, see the code below:               Class Customer       ReadOnly Name As String            ReadOnly ZIP As Integer = 98112            Sub New(ByVal Name As String)              Me.Name = Name            End Sub     End Class"}
{"_id": "251912", "title": "Why Increment Pointers?", "text": "I just recently started learning C++, and as most people (according to what I have been reading) I'm struggling with pointers. Not in the traditional sense, I understand what they are, and why they are used, and how can they be useful, however I can't understand how incrementing pointers would be useful, can anyone provide an explanation of how incrementing a pointer is a useful concept and idiomatic C++? This question came after I started reading the book A Tour of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup, I was recommended this book, because I'm quite familiar with Java, and the guys over at Reddit told me that it would be a good 'switchover' book."}
{"_id": "251918", "title": "How do I ensure my site will be crawled when articles are generated by the database?", "text": "I wasn't sure how to ask the question. But basically, it's a textbook scenario. I'm working on a site that's article based, but the article information is stored in a database. Then the page is rendered with the information in the database based on the requested article id: For example: `http://www.mysite.com/articles/9851` I'm new to SEO, so I'm wondering how engines are able to crawl the contents of pages like this and/or what I need to do in order to ensure that it _will_ be crawled. So for instance, this site. All of the articles/posts on this site appear to live in a database somewhere. The URL has an ID which looks like it is used to tell the server which data to use to generate the page -- so the page doesn't actually exist somewhere, but it's template does. When I search google, I might find one of these posts based on the content of the post. I understand that crawlers normally just find a page and follow it's links and follow its links' links and so on, but how does that work when the site is search based like this? Do have to create a page that randomly picks articles out of the database so that the crawler can see it or something?"}
{"_id": "26931", "title": "UI automation patterns and best practice for desktop applications", "text": "**Background** I'm currently automating some tests for a plugin for MS Office. We are creating Coded UI tests in VS 2010. I suppose I could use the \" _Coded UI test builder_ \" tool, but it does not really suit my particular case. Because of this I created my own UI Map class and extension methods for each UI Control/Map where I add different action functionality. For example press buttons or assert some UI values. The scenarios of the test cases are in the test classes. I am new in this area and also I'm new in working as a automation tester. **The question** Would people be kind enough to share their experience and advice for some good practices for test automation on desktop applications from a programming/design point of view?"}
{"_id": "232998", "title": "How to reuse spaghetti code", "text": "We're working on a new firmware for our new V2 device. The company has an older V1 firmware (and hardware). Hardwares are similar to each other (but there are some differences) so basically we could use V1 firmware with \"some\" modifications. Unfortunately V1 firmware is spaghetti code. We need to support both hardware including new features, so code should be maintainable. We've tried to create a backlog with small stories. Each story would show a new working function to the user while it extracts out a reusable part of V1 code to a library project and use it in V2. It would have been kept both V1 and V2 firmwares always releasable and we would have been able to show a working demo early (with limited functionality at first). In time it turned out that management expects that it will be a short project (since hws are similar) and they suggest another approach: move everything to the library project and modify only those parts which are different. This approach seems riskier because we won't be able to demonstrate any progress (the first demo will be later, it's rather all or nothing, every module has to work more or less for the first demo) and I guess it could lead to unpredictable bug fixing. What should I take into account before deciding between the two approaches? Is there a third one?"}
{"_id": "169887", "title": "Given a project and working with 1 other person - never worked with someone before", "text": "I'm taking a class where I work with a partner to implement the link layer of the OSI model. I've worked programmed with a partner once before and it went bad. Is the goal to divide the work up and decides who does what or should one person code and the other person reviews and switch roles after a while? Any tips are much appreciated. Literally I know nothing about working with a partner to program so even if it's basic please tell me."}
{"_id": "68738", "title": "What's a good question to measure the candidate's capacity to abstract?", "text": "It's part of my job to interview new candidates and I came up with a test that pretty much measure the coding skills of the candidates. However I couldn't (yet) come up with a good question to measure the candidate's capacity to deal with abstraction. Earlier I had the following question in my test: > Suppose a tree structure where each node stores an integer value. Draw the > simplest Class Diagram using UML that represents the domain model described. Then I'd ask: > Now change the model on question above to represent a leaf (i.e. a node that > has no children). Eventually, after several interviews, I realized those two questions were not giving me any clue if that candidate knew abstraction. Some people knew the answer but during the interview showed me they actually don't have a clue when it comes to abstract more complex subjects. I can't really have a very deep complex question in this test because:   1. The total time for the entire test is ~2h and they already spend about 1h to 1h30 in the first part (coding skills)   2. A good candidate might fail in a specific complex question and that would not really prove they can't abstract at all After reading this article I got intrigued when he says: > Inventing questions that force candidates to understand pointers without > using C isn\u2019t too hard. Nearly any question that forces candidates to invent > a data structure (e.g., a hashtable, an AVL tree, or the like) will test how > they handle indirection, the idea that having a thing is different from > having a pointer to that thing. So I\u2019ve picked a question that forces > candidates to design a data structure. And, sure enough, I see candidates > who have a lot of programming experience, but who don\u2019t \u201cget it\u201d, completely > bomb out in my interview. The way I see it, inventing a data structure is a good way to measure abstraction skills. So my question is, does anyone know a good question (or a set of small questions) that could measure for abstraction skills in a test? I'm looking for those kind of questions that:   1. Don't depend on any language in particular   2. Can be answered by smart people   3. Can't be answered by people who know all books by heart   4. Will take average 40 min to solve   5. Will not produce huge amount of pages as an answer"}
{"_id": "232996", "title": "Is a genetic algorithm needed when computation is infinitely fast?", "text": "From what I understand, genetic algorithms try out multiple variations and evaluate the fitness of each variation. Then they select the best variations, change them a bit and continue the process with the next generation. But what if we have unlimited computation resources? Can we then just try out all possible variations and evaluate their fitness without resorting to the complex process of breeding new generations? In other words, are genetic algorithms only needed when computation is expensive and when a brute-force method is impossible? Or do they add other benefits as well?"}
{"_id": "149563", "title": "Should we avoid object creation in Java?", "text": "I was told by a colleague that in Java object creation is the most expensive operation you could perform. So I can only conclude to create as few objects as possible. This seems somewhat to defeat the purpose of object oriented programming. If we aren't creating objects then we are just writing one long class C style, for optimization?"}
{"_id": "255212", "title": "What to do if you're stuck on a project because you got dumped in without the information you need?", "text": "I'm a junior developer and I'm supposed to be debugging this project, but the simple fact is that neither I, nor anybody else here (the only person who's worked on it just left recently) knows much about how it works. I'm frustrated because I'd like to get this done and get it off of my plate, but that's not really possible at the moment. Is this normal?"}
{"_id": "255210", "title": "Large internal features on kanban", "text": "This days I'm reading some tutorials/advices about Kanban process and Agile methodologies, but I have two big questions about this Kanban methodology. What I understood is user stories are about adding bussiness value, like a feature which our customers can use. The main problem is we have a lot of features that looks trivial (simple form that manages synonyms for solr, for example) but are hard to implement and may take several days/weeks to complete, due to scaling/coordination details on our cluster (refreshing the synonyms using zk and reloading from database, for exmaple). How do you break down this user story into smaller ones since Kanban specificies every user story has to be independent? Can I break it down into user stories about implementation details? (implement coordination algorithm, implement X storage service, etc) And my last question is about architectural changes/refactoring. Since it doesn't add any bussiness value (invisible to our customers) how do you reflect this tasks in this methodology?"}
{"_id": "219531", "title": "Which one of these designs is preferred?", "text": "In the case of an application with a single simple responsibility (eg, a simple replacement for `grep` or `wc`), which of these designs is preferred and why? I find that they are all testable and they all do their job. Does any of them have any significant advantages over the other? 1: All methods in the main class:               public class App {         public static void main(String[] args)         {             App app = new App();             AppInput input = app.readInput();             AppOutput output = app.processInputToOutput(input);             app.writeOutput(output);         }              public AppInput readInput() { .. }         public AppOutput processInputToOutput(AppInput input) { .. }         public void writeOutput(AppOutput output) { .. }     }      2: Basic methods in a separate class, main class only making calls to read and process input, and output result:               public class App {         public static void main(String[] args)         {             AppWorker worker = new AppWorker();             AppInput input = worker.readInput();             AppOutput output = worker.processInputToOutput(input);             worker.writeOutput(output);         }     }          public class AppWorker {         public AppInput readInput() { .. }         public AppOutput processInputToOutput(AppInput input) { .. }         public void writeOutput(AppOutput output) { .. }     }      3: Have all the work in a separate worker class, with the main class only instantiating the worker and triggering it to do its work:               public class App {         public static void main(String[] args)         {             AppWorker worker = new AppWorker();             worker.doYourWork();         }     }          public class AppWorker {         public void doYourWork()         {             AppInput input = readInput();             AppOutput output = processInputToOutput(input);             writeOutput(output);         }              public AppInput readInput() { .. }         public AppOutput processInputToOutput(AppInput input) { .. }         public void writeOutput(AppOutput output) { .. }          }"}
{"_id": "245693", "title": "Generating all the words accepted by a deterministic finite automaton", "text": "1. Imagine you've got a finite deterministic automaton `A` defining some finite regular language `L`, consisting of `N` words.   2. The first question is: how would you determine the number of words `N`?   3. Then, I want to enumerate all these words, i.e. create a function like `f: {1..N} -> L`. Any suggestions? And the following restrictions apply:   * `N` may be large enough, for instance `[0-9A-Z]{8}` yields `N = 36^8` different combinations, so storing it all in memory is not an option.   * I want to be able to persist the state. For instance, compute `f(x)`, then store all the needed intermediate data in the DB, and some time later compute `f(x+1)`. What I've done for now is a simplification for fixed length words. Any suggestions for doing this for an arbitrary DFA? I suspect this is a common problem, so any algorithm references are welcome. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "216191", "title": "How should I structure my database to gain maximum efficiently in this scenario?", "text": "I'm developing a PHP script that analyzes the web traffic of my clients websites. By placing a link to a javascript on the clients website (think of Google Analyses), my script harvests information like: the visitors IP address, reference link, current page link, user agent, etc. Now my clients can view these statistics via a control panel that I have build. These clients can also adjust profile settings, set firewall rules, create support tickets and pay invoices. Currently all the the traffic is stored in one table. You can imagine that this tabel would become very large as some my clients receive thousands of pageviews per day. Furthermore, all the traffic data of each client would be stored in the same table, creating a mess. This is the same for the firewall rules currently, and the invoice and support system. I'm looking for way to structure my database in a more organized way to hold large amounts of data of multiple users. This is the first project that I'm developing that deals with so much data, and would like to hear suggestions and tips. I was thinking of using multiple databases to structure the data. The main database will store users data (email,pass,id,etc) admin/website settings. Than each client will have an unique database labeled prefix_userid, which carry tables holding their traffic, invoice, and support ticket data. Would this be a solution, and would it slow down or speed up overall performances (that is spreading the data over muliple databases). I have a solid VPS, but would like to safe and be as effient as possible."}
{"_id": "216190", "title": "Help with design structure choice: Using classes or library of functions", "text": "So I have GUI Class that will call another class called `ImageProcessor` that contains a bunch functions that will perform image processing algorithms like `edgeDetection, gaussianblur, contourfinding, contour map generations, etc.` The GUI passes an image to `ImageProcessor`, which performs one of those algorithm on it and it returns the image back to the GUI to display. So essentially `ImageProcessor` is a library of independent image processing functions right now. It is called in the GUI like so               Image image = ImageProcessor.EdgeDetection(oldImage);      Some of the algorithms procedures require many functions, and some can be done in a single function or even one line. All these functions for the algorithms jam packed into ImageProcessor can be pretty messy, and ImageProcessor doesn't sound it should be a library. So I was thinking about making every algorithm be a class with a shared interface say `IAlgorithm.` Then I pass the IAlgorithm interface from the GUI to the ImageProcessor.               public interface IAlgorithm{        public Image Process();     }     public class ImageProcessor{            public Image Process(IAlgorithm TheAlgorithm){             return IAlgorithm.Process();       }     }      Calling in the GUI like so `Image image = ImageProcessor.Process(new EdgeDetection(oldImage));` I think it makes sense in an object point of view, but the problem is I'll end up with some classes that are just one function. What do you think is a better design, or are they both crap and you have a much better idea? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "99051", "title": "Should functions always return a success/failure status?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When and why you should use void (instead of i.e. bool/int) What is the reasoning behind making all functions (and methods!) return a uniform type, usually int, as a status? To me it feels odd; especially when you're calling a getter and it returns a status (which is usually the same always) and sets one of the parameters to the value you're getting."}
{"_id": "156583", "title": "Allow app analytics opt-out?", "text": "Given that mobile app analytics reporting can cost a customer data traffic that, unlike a web app, use of the mobile app may otherwise not require, should a mobile app provide a user accessible setting to allow customers to opt out of app analytics collection or reporting? If and where should a customer be notified that running a given mobile app might capture and transmit analytics data on the app's usage? Are there any app stores where either of the above is a requirement?"}
{"_id": "168425", "title": "Hiring Developers - Any tips on being more efficient?", "text": "I represent a software company that is in process of building a large software development team. We are picky in who we hire and have really good retention rate (most of the devs have been here for an average of 5-6 years). We've been spending a lot of developers' and HR time and have a low applications to hire ratio. Here's the process we use:   * HR Interview on phone - Involves asking basic behaviorial and tech questions   * Online test - Involves a 30 minute technical test   * Technical Phone interview - A 60 minute interview by a developer   * Onsite Interview - A 60-90 minute interview by several senior developers Although this process has been working, we've been spending way too much time on interviews. Any thoughts on how this can be done differently? Our goal is to automate any tasks if possible still retaining the quality of talent. * * * **UPDATE:** Thanks for the responses. Need to clarify a few things. Our aim is to reduce the number of applicants that go from one stage to the other. Here's our current numbers.   1. We receive 1000 resumes   2. 800 resumes pass the HR interview   3. 500 pass the online test   4. 100 pass the initial phone screen   5. 10 pass the onsite and get hired As you can see, we need to do a better job of weeding out the candidates earlier on in the process. Can we do a better job in the way the online test evaluates people? Here are more details on the process based on some responses:   * HR Interview on phone - They ask very basic technical questions (What is a CLR?) to weed out as many people as possible   * Online test - Have around 10 basic questions with 3 coding questions   * Tech phone screen - Covers a variety of technologies. We don't care if the applicant doesn't know everything as long as they can demonstrate they will be able to pick up new technologies and come up to speed quickly   * Onsite - Coding questions in front of the developers. More architectural level questions."}
{"_id": "209819", "title": "Creating a custom GUI. App/DE/WM?", "text": "I am starting with this project of mine of writing a custom UI for linux. What would happen is:   * The computer would boot into this UI which would not be the typical taskbar/icons/startbutton kind of thing. Think more like a dedicated UI instead of a general purpose one.   * It would provide access to wifi, ethernet, bluetooth etc. Basically have access to most system resources. Up until this point, I don't planning on having a file manager for the user. The app would take care of this. Sort of the way apps on mobile phones work. My first instinct was to work (fork an existing one) on a custom DE like Gnome/KDE. So I read up a lot about window managers and desktop environments and while window managers seem to be the best option for what I am trying to do, another idea occurred to me which would be much less complicated. I could simply (I know!) write an app which the native OS boots into, without any splash screen etc. So, take a distro like Arch Linux, strip it down to the basics and then build an app on top of that. I would like to get some advice on what the best way to go forward with this would be. Do you guys concur that an app is better to go with? Please excuse me if the question seems naive. Any suggestions/ideas welcome."}
{"_id": "168427", "title": "Forced to write Stored Procedures", "text": "Can you think of some reasons that the management force the developers to write and call Stored Procedures instead of inline SQL statements directly? Even a very simple CRUD statement, writing a stored procedure takes more time and create extra workload."}
{"_id": "26688", "title": "How important is blogging/tutorial generation to career development?", "text": "Lately I've seen a number of application developer job postings with a dedicated field for personal blog site. I was wondering how important keeping a blog and generating tech related content is for career development? How does having one/not having one effect your potential for getting hired?"}
{"_id": "187145", "title": "Which controller should I put for a search action that touches many different models?", "text": "I currently have the following models and am designing search functionality that searches within these 3 models: Locations Users User_friends Should I create a search controller or should I put the action in one of the existing locations, users, or user_friends controllers? If so should it be pluralized - searches_controller or just search_controller?"}
{"_id": "2829", "title": "What licence should I choose for my project?", "text": "I originally thought of creative commons when while reading a book about wordpress (professional wordpress), I learned that I should also specify that the product is provided > ... WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE and they recommend GNU GPL. How do I write a license or select 1? btw, what does `MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE` mean actually? Isn't without warranty enough?"}
{"_id": "26682", "title": "Use of underscores and earmuffs", "text": "I have seen underscores and earmuffs (like `_good_` or `*good*`) frequently used in conversations among programmers. All I know is that underscores are used to denote private variables or methods in languages like C, Python etc. and earmuffs are the preferred way of indicating that something is a global variable. Do these have any other punctuational meaning when they are used outside code, in mailing lists etc? Does the highlighted word have any hidden meaning or expression added to it? Or, are they just like air quotes?"}
{"_id": "209813", "title": "What is a battery backup up cache?", "text": "I've read an article about Innodb performance optimization an in that post the author was repeatedly mentioning someting named a \"battery back up cache\". It is not clear for me what he was talking about and google did not help either. My guess is that this is some kind of backup storage in case there is a power outage. Am I right?"}
{"_id": "209814", "title": "How to promote Scala to the management?", "text": "As a developer I like Scala and could tell the management about technical benefits of the language. But even if management understands that a superior technology has business impact, I fear that they don't understand what I'd be talking about. What arguments would you present to managers with technical backgrounds (computer scientists not programming for many years)?"}
{"_id": "209815", "title": "Sql Server Data Tools & Entity Framework - is there any synergy here?", "text": "Coming out of a project using Linq2Sql, I suspect that the next (bigger) one might push me into the arms of Entity Framework. I've done some reading-up on the subject, but what I haven't managed to find is a coherent story about how SQL Server Data Tools and Entity Framework should/could/might be used together.   * Were they conceived totally separately, and using them together is stroking the wrong way?   * Are they somehow totally orthogonal and I'm missing the point? Some reasons why I think I might want both:   * SSDT is great for having 'compiled' (checked) and easily versionable sql and schema   * But the SSDT 'migration/update' story is not convincing (to me): \"Update anything\" works ok for schema, but there's no way (AFAIK) that it can ever work for data.   * On the other hand, I haven't tried the EF migration to know if it presents similar problems, but the Up/Down bits look quite handy."}
{"_id": "160632", "title": "Is it good/safe OOP practice to have a method whose only purpose is to send/retrieve data from another class?", "text": "I have a class that performs basic MySQL operations. This is all in PHP.               class dbTables {         public $name;         protected $fields = array(); // array of dbTableField objects         public $result_sets = array();         protected $primary_key; // filled using getFields() from __construct()                   public function __construct($table_name) {             $this->name = $table_name;             $this->getFields();         }         public function removeWhitespace($table_name) {             $this->name = $table_name;             $this->getFields();         }         // etc...     }      So all you need is the table name to create the object, and construct automatically gets a bunch of field data from `INFORMATION_SCHEMA` (names, data types, etc). I also have a method for removing whitespace from a column It's currently located in another class, but I'm thinking of moving into the above `dbTables` class. You can see the method below. I don't think it's really necessary to read the method to answer my question, but it could be helpful.               protected function removeWhiteSpace($target_field,$abbrev_field,$from_size,$to_size,$options) {         // optional conditions based on original character length and resulting character length.         /* options: from_size = all/longer_than/shorter_than         *   to_size = all/longer_than/shorter_than         */         $temp_table = $this->table_name;                 $sql = \"UPDATE `$temp_table`              SET `undo_sku` = `$target_field`, `$target_field` = REPLACE(`$target_field`,' ',''), `$abbrev_field` = 'w'\";         $where = array();             if($options['from_size'] == 'longer_than') {                 $where[] = \"`$target_field` > $from_size\";             } else if($options['from_size'] == 'shorter_than') {                 $where[] = \"`$target_field` < $from_size\";             }             if($options['to_size'] == 'longer_than') {                 $where[] = \"LENGTH(REPLACE(`$target_field`,' ','')) > $to_size\";             } else if($options['from_size'] == 'shorter_than') {                 $where[] = \"LENGTH(REPLACE(`$target_field`,' ','')) < $to_size\";             }                            //WHERE `$target_field` = '' AND LENGTH(REPLACE(`vnd_sku`,' ','')) <= $string_length\";         $result = mysql_query($sql);     }      Now, if I do move it into `dbTables`, I will still want to use the functionality in the other class. Should I just instantiate a `dbTables` object whenever I need to use `removeWhitespace`? Or, could I give `dbTables` its own `removeWhitespace` method like this:               protected function removeWhiteSpace($target_field,$abbrev_field,$from_size,$to_size,$options) {       /* options: from_size = all/longer_than/shorter_than       * to_size = all/longer_than/shorter_than       */       $dbtable = new dbTables($this->table_name);       $temp_table = $this->table_name;            $result = $dbtable->removeWhiteSpace($target_field,$abbrev_field,$from_size,$to_size,$options);       return $result;     }      The advantage I see is that now I have a way to limit instantiation of the `dbTables` object in various other classes. Methods that need to use `removeWhiteSpace` can use `$this->removeWhiteSpace` instead of instantiating a `dbTables` object. The class's own `removeWhiteSpace` method takes care of that. I'm kind of new to OOP, though, so I'm just wondering if that is good practice or bad. I also hope I'm asking this question in the right place. I'm pretty sure it's not a StackOverflow question."}
{"_id": "202041", "title": "Are there any benefits to removing unused script files in a web site/project?", "text": "VS Web sites/projects come loaded with several .js files, most of which I don't use (e.g., I use a CDN for newer versions of jQuery and jQuery-UI). I know it's safe to remove these unneeded .js files from my projects, but is there any benefit from doing so? Are they deployed to the web server if left alone?"}
{"_id": "66250", "title": "What is the most productive way to start and manage the development of a large web application?", "text": "I've searched high and low for a good answer to this question, and as far as I can gather it's just a combination of standard organization tools (keeping a routine, good folder structure, extensive documentation) and making sure you think about each step before you move on. I'm planning on starting a new web application very soon, and I'm finding the volume of choices I need to make almost overwhelming. Although I usually create applications using Django I've been considering the alternatives recently. Also, things like which host should I go for, which version control system should I use and which bit should I start on first are driving me crazy. I was wondering if anyone had any professional advice for me on how I can better manage what I'm doing so that I get this project off on the right foot."}
{"_id": "151673", "title": "What are the key points to evaluate to select a good SMS gateway?", "text": "We are planning to add a \"SMS verification account\" option for our customers. (So we will only send SMS. We do not need a short code.) We have found several companies who offer SMS gateways through REST APIs (we use PHP). As we are totally new to the SMS world, we are wondering: What are the key points to pay attention to/evaluate to select a good SMS gateway?"}
{"_id": "66254", "title": "Can a user relicense LGPL as GPL or GPL as AGPL?", "text": "The LGPL (we'll just assume version 3 for all in discussion for ease), is a less restrictive version of the GPL, likewise, the AGPL, is a more restrictive version of the GPL, but is it possible to use LGPL code, make additions(or don't), and relicense it as GPL or AGPL; can GPL code be modified and relicensed as AGPL?"}
{"_id": "66257", "title": "When thinking about dates and times - is midnight today in the past or future?", "text": "This is always a puzzle to me- and I realise that it is not strictly an issue in programming or software development, but it seems to be a reasonable common one in our field. For example, if I were to set an expiry datetime as 2011-04-08 00:00:00 - and given my current local time is 10:45 on the 8th already - have I already expired? Or do I still have half a day or so left? Is there are universal standard for which end of the day midnight 'belongs' to? Or should I take a leaf from the British military, and say that the day ends at 23:59:59 and starts at 00:00:01 and that there is no midnight?"}
{"_id": "34246", "title": "Can One Get a Solid Programming Foundation Without Going To College/University?", "text": "First, I have already searched the site and read all the previous \"self-taught vs. college\" topics. The majority of the answers defended that going to college was the best choice, for two main reasons:   1. Going to college gives you the paper, which is essential to landing jobs, especially in tough economic times.   2. Going to college gives you a solid programming base, teaching you the principles that will be essential regardless of the language/path you take after. Here comes my question: I am not worried about reason 1 at all, because I already have my own company (I build websites/ do affiliate marketing) and a stable financial situation, so I am pretty sure I won't need to look around for a job. I am worried about reason 2 though. That is, I want to make sure I'll have as solid a programming foundation as anyone else out there, and I am wondering if that is possible with self-learning. Suppose I take my time to study the very basics, like discrete maths, algorithm design, programming logic, computer architecture, Assembly, C programming, databases and data structures - mostly using books,online resources and lots of coding. Say I spend 1-2 years covering those basics. Do you think my foundation would be solid, or still lack in comparison to someone who went to college?"}
{"_id": "164703", "title": "Useful programming languages for hardware programming", "text": "I am thinking to take the next semester a course called \"Digital systems architecture\", and I know that we need to program micro-controllers with several programming languages such as C, C++, verilog, and VHDL. I want to be prepared to take that course, but I need to know if I need to study deeper these languages. At this moment, I have taken one course in basic Java dealing with basic methods, data types, loop structures, vectors, matrices, and GUI programing. Must I study deeper Java and then go with C, and C++? Besides, I know basic verilog and VHDL."}
{"_id": "164707", "title": "Spring AOP advice order", "text": "In Spring AOP, I can add an aspect at the following locations   * before a method executes (using MethodBeforeAdvice)   * after a method executes (using AfterReturningAdvice)   * around a method (both before and after a method executes) (using MethodInterceptor) If I have all three types of advice, is the order of execution always as follows?   * Around (before part)   * Before   * Method itself   * After   * Around (after part)"}
{"_id": "164709", "title": "How do software patches and updates work?", "text": "So, how exactly do software patches work. If there is a certain bug in the source code of a program, how is this source code changed when one installs a patch? After the patch has been installed how is the program 'automatically' rebuilt?"}
{"_id": "157983", "title": "Pair Programming and ISO 27001", "text": "I\u2019ve been working in an eXtreme programming team and doing pair programming for over 7 years in a windows environment. When we first started doing it someone would log in with their windows credentials and therefore all access to domain resources, and more specifically version control, would be accountable to that windows user. Eventually we have evolved to have windows pairing accounts for specific pairing stations (e.g pairA, pairB, PairC etc\u2026). All the devs know the passwords to these accounts. Accountability for commits (check-ins) is achieved by putting the programmers initials in the comment during the commit. Up until now this has worked fine for us, but my company is currently going through a ISO 27001 audit and this was flagged up by the auditor as a risk. I have a number of possible solutions such as creating a pairing account for every pair combination, but I really would like to know whether anyone else has encountered this problem and how they solved it? What solution was acceptable by the auditors?"}
{"_id": "157984", "title": "How to manage, in practice, licence files when combining GPL and BSD licensed code?", "text": "I am writing code that uses one library with GPL (not LGPL) license, and one with the 3-clause BSD license. Since I link to GPL-licensed library, my code will need to be GPL as well. How should I, in practice, deal with the original LICENSE.txt from the BSD-library? (A) Can I distribute a project so that the main source code is GPL-licensed, and then some subdirectory is BSD-licensed? (B) If I were not only to link to libraries, but to use and combine the BSD and GPL code in a more involved manner, what to do with the LICENSE.txt then? The 3-clause BSD text tells: \"Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.\" so apparently I should retain the copyright notice, and that list of conditions, somewhere. But then I'll also need to put the GPL license txt-file somewhere. Further, apparently I don't need to retain the \"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:\" part of the BSD license text, since it only tells me to retain the other parts. So, how, and in which text files, should I in practice organize the GPL license text and the parts of the BSD license and copyrights that I retain? EDIT: So in case B, I would be taking 3-clause BSD licensed code, and redistributing it under GPL, which is permitted, as 3-clause BSD license is (one-way) compatible with GPL. I am just asking how to deal with the license texts and textfiles in practice."}
{"_id": "220192", "title": "Using raw types in Java method signatures", "text": "In general I try to avoid using raw types in the signature of methods in the libraries I develop. However, lately I am starting to relax this (self- adopted) rule-of-thumb, and I am starting to write raw types more often than before. For example, assuming a method receiving _any_ list as parameter (i.e., the type of the list members is not important), I was tempted before to declare it as:               void myMethod(List<?> list) {...}      But now I am starting to write more and more:               void myMethod(List list) {...}      Because it is shorter. My concrete question is: In the scenario where type parameters are not important, is using raw types in method parameters considered a good practice ? If not, why not ? The only problem I see is being condemned to see an eternal warning in the IDE I use (although probably that can be deactivated somewhere), but I would like to be sure I am not missing something else. **Update:** Got fully convinced I should use generics everywhere after reading the paragraph below here: > Use of raw types is discouraged. The Java Language Specification even states > that it is possible that future versions of the Java programming language > will disallow the use of raw types."}
{"_id": "73765", "title": "Should a EULA be translated?", "text": "I have a application which will be available in 4 languages: French, German, Danish and English. All the text in the app will be translated, but should the EULA also be translated? What is the common way of handling this? The lawyer has accepted the english version of the EULA and I assume all the translated versions should also be accepted then. Is it okay just to use a English EULA?"}
{"_id": "73763", "title": "How to Pick Which MCPD Certification is Appropriate", "text": "I've been developing on multiple platforms for years, including Java, PHP, Flash/Flex, ASP.NET (including MVC), Ruby on Rails, and many others. I've decided (for various reasons) that it's time to pick one technology to learn deep, instead of learning many technologies wide; and I chose .NET. I've decided that one crucial move will be to grab some Microsoft certifications -- if only to show that I'm serious about this as my technology of choice. But **how do I choose which certification to take?** There are several of them, with similar-sounding descriptions. Although I will probably choose between **the windows and web versions of the MCPD.** I'm targeting team lead and project-manager style jobs, if that helps. **Edit:** The reason I want to do certification is because my resume reads as:   * 3 years JEE   * 3 years C++   * 2.5 years Flash/Flex   * 2 years .NET   * 1 year Ruby on Rails   * 1 year PHP When I say I have \"ten years of experience\" and apply for a job that says \"5+ years of experience in .NET,\" I know I can learn and do the work. But I don't have those five years; I gave them to Flex, C++, and JEE. I think considering my specific situation, a certification is a (small) step in the right direction."}
{"_id": "197153", "title": "Using third party/ open source controls", "text": "I usually feel reluctant to use any third party or open source controls while coding in Objective-C iPhone due to following reasons. Open source controls are developed in incremental manner. So once integrated I have to keep looking for update and will have to update my code. Will increase effort. Open source controls may likely add memory leaks and thus make application incompetent in terms of memory. Third party libraries are difficult to manage, as well as they keep conflicting with your classes. Please correct me on these points, so that I may feel comfortable with open source codes."}
{"_id": "101678", "title": "Is SCRUM Methodology a good technique to go with in crucial deadline project?", "text": "I am just join a firm and they are working in a (their called) SCRUM methodology, They have very sharp deadline and the project development doesnt seems to have any direction or neither it is looking like (This is what we want.) I am developing a module which doesnt have Database, neither I have any information which needs to linked to this module, the people who are linked to the modules and messed up with their own work because which I am not able to get their support in it. Now could anyone suggest me that is this the good way to go ahead in this methodology, which doesnt contain any DB table for to be developed module? Please Suggest Something.. Thanks"}
{"_id": "207674", "title": "How to formalize feature requests", "text": "I'm new to developing software and have been handling feature requests for an internal web-app I built. Sometimes the feature requests are straight-forward and require minimal business logic for me to implement, so I talk to the person for a bit, write their requirements down, and get to work. However, I'm starting to work on feature X where X has dark-corners of business-logic and special-case scenarios keep on popping-up because I didn't ask the right questions and/or the person I'm speaking with didn't think about mentioning it. So I'm curious, how do professionals handle this process? Some things that I thought of are:   1. Require feature requests be written down with the appropriate requirements.   2. Understand their job well-enough so I can do mine. An example to illustrate a similar problem is, implementing government regulations in code. I researched the regulations, created a flowchart and went from there. I could have saved a couple days had someone well-versed in said regulations, written the requirements down and handed them to me. I'm doing the same thing for feature X, except, nothing is written down so I'm unable to deduce their business logic without going through a step-by-step process through their job. Even that fails sometimes, because some special- case wasn't present that day. Using the above example, is it the responsibility of the developer to research this or something that should be provided? Any suggestions for making this process go a bit smoother?"}
{"_id": "32578", "title": "SQL: empty string vs NULL value", "text": "I know this subject is a bit controversial and there are a lot of various articles/opinions floating around the internet. Unfortunatelly, most of them assume the person doesn't know what the difference between NULL and empty string is. So they tell stories about surprising results with joins/aggregates and generally do a bit more advanced SQL lessons. By doing this, they absolutely miss the whole point and are therefore useless for me. So hopefully this question and all answers will move subject a bit forward. Let's suppose I have a table with personal information (name, birth, etc) where one of the columns is an email address with varchar type. We assume that for some reason some people might not want to provide an email address. When inserting such data (without email) into the table, there are two available choices: set cell to NULL or set it to empty string (''). Let's assume that I'm aware of all the technical implications of choosing one solution over another and I can create correct SQL queries for either scenario. The problem is even when both values differ on the technical level, they are exactly the same on logical level. After looking at NULL and '' I came to a single conclusion: I don't know email address of the guy. Also no matter how hard i tried, I was not able to sent an e-mail using either NULL or empty string, so apparently most SMTP servers out there agree with my logic. So i tend to use NULL where i don't know the value and consider empty string a bad thing. After some intense discussions with colleagues i came with two questions:   1. am I right in assuming that using empty string for an unknown value is causing a database to \"lie\" about the facts? To be more precise: using SQL's idea of what is value and what is not, I might come to conclusion: we have e-mail address, just by finding out it is not null. But then later on, when trying to send e-mail I'll come to contradictory conclusion: no, we don't have e-mail address, that @!#$ Database must have been lying!   2. Is there any logical scenario in which an empty string '' could be such a good carrier of important information (besides value and no value), which would be troublesome/inefficient to store by any other way (like additional column). I've seen many posts claiming that sometimes it's good to use empty string along with real values and NULLs, but so far haven't seen a scenario that would be logical (in terms of SQL/DB design). P.S. Some people will be tempted to answer, that it is just a matter of personal taste. I don't agree. To me it is a design decision with important consequences. So i'd like to see answers where opion about this is backed by some logical and/or technical reasons."}
{"_id": "220199", "title": "How to organize methods that check username/email availability in a REST API?", "text": "I am developing a RESTful API in my project, but I do not have experience on that. To fill these gaps I've been watching some videos, mainly from Apigee, which are great. One situation brings a lot of discussion on my project and I hope you can help me clear it out. The client using the API is able to create a user by posting to my /Users url, but it has some requirements as: name format, username availability, email availability, valid region and many others. I can easily validate the name format in my client app, that would be easy. The problem is when it comes to availability (mainly if the email and the user name are available to be user or are already taken). We have two different lines of thoughts on my team: the first one would break each verification in a different url, something like /Users/EmailAvailable and /Users/UsernameAvailable ou /Available/Email and /Available/Username They claim that it would make the interface cleaner (more intuitive) and would also keep cohesion, since one method has only one responsibility. The second line of thought is to have only one URL /User/Verify and it will verify either the username, email or both, depending on the JSON it receives. They claim that it would only require one trip to the server and that cohesion is not a problem because, since the URLs are not necessarily mapped to methods, they can divide the calls into methods that do one thing each. They also claim that the interface shouldn't care about cohesion My questions: 1- Are these arguments about cohesion from the second line of though valid? 2- How would you do? (Either one of those or any other that you know of) thanks!"}
{"_id": "144052", "title": "How to convince teammates to use TDD", "text": "I am the only person on my team that use TDD. How do I make them to use it? I am annoyed that when I pull, someone's code will break my tests and I am the one who has to fix them. Will using github, fork and pull request solve this problem, so that they need to pass the test before the pull is accepted? I am not the project manager and I can't seems to convince her to use it."}
{"_id": "73233", "title": "Learn Java resource (for programming noobs) that doesn't use an IDE", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best Java book you have read so far I have learned to program some in Ruby, but I'm having trouble grasping OO concepts. I've been told that there are a lot of guides/books that teach object oriented programming that use Java. I've heard that Java is a good language for learning OO for a number of reasons... haha, reasons that I don't know. Anyway, I tried to use an IDE (Eclipse) and I don't care much for it. Are there any good guides/books/videos that focus on teaching OO concepts using Java that don't use an IDE such as Eclipse to teach it?"}
{"_id": "111215", "title": "Beginning to code with java (No coding experience)", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Best Java book you have read so far I want to learn java but, I have absolutely no coding experience. what is the best website, book, or anything that is best at teaching java?"}
{"_id": "114963", "title": "What is the best book to prepare for a Java interview?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to prepare yourself for programming interview questions? I found older questions but I was wondering if newer, better books/guides have been published in the last two years. I am interviewing for a technology analyst position in finance and I expect to have a lot of technical questions based on running time/data structures etc. This is for an entry-level position so I have not had previous experience programming for work, only experience through my coursework."}
{"_id": "98973", "title": "What is a good Planned Release/Freeze/Beta Methodology?", "text": "I've been working on a nightmare of a project for some months now. The product is a small Ruby on Rails app/website for internal use by a small group of people. I'm coming up to the finish line and I'd like the actual beta release to go smoothly. I still have a number of small bugs that affect functionality in a minor way and do not break the build. This is my first job and first time taking a product to launch. I'm curious what people's methodologies are for a smooth transition to bring your application from a development environment to a live production environment."}
{"_id": "143003", "title": "Whats the difference between a Ledger and a list of transactions?", "text": "re: algorithm and data structure concepts When accountants talk about Ledgers they have something very specific in mind. As a programmer I'm very used to thinking about tables of information, but clearly there are specific things that make a ledger a ledger. So, given a simple list of transactions (date, money in, money out, notes) what needs to be added/changed to make that list into something Accountants would call a ledger? e.g. formatting considerations, does it have to be immutable, does it have to reflect something happening in a real bank account somewhere, does it have to have some sort of 'foreign key' describing which entity each transaction refers to..."}
{"_id": "222917", "title": "TDD and complete test coverage where exponential test cases are needed", "text": "I am working on a list comparator to assist sorting an unordered list of search results per very specific requirements from our client. The requirements call for a ranked relevance algorithm with the following rules in order of importance:   1. Exact match on name   2. All words of search query in name or a synonym of the result   3. Some words of search query in name or synonym of the result (% descending)   4. All words of the search query in the description   5. Some words of the search query in the description (% descending)   6. Last modified date descending The natural design choice for this comparator seemed to be a scored ranking based on powers of 2. The sum of lesser important rules can never be more than a positive match on a higher importance rule. This is achieved by the following score:   1. 32   2. 16   3. 8 (Secondary tie-breaker score based on % descending)   4. 4   5. 2 (Secondary tie-breaker score based on % descending)   6. 1 In the TDD spirit I decided to start with my unit tests first. To have a test case for each unique scenario would be at a minimum 63 unique test cases not considering additional test cases for secondary tie breaker logic on rules 3 and 5. This seems overbearing. The actual tests will actually be less though. Based on the actual rules themselves certain rules ensure that lower rules will always be true (Eg. When 'All Search Query words appear in description' then rule 'Some Search Query words appear in description' will always be true). Still is the level of effort in writing out each of these test cases worth it? Is this the level of testing that is typically called for when talking about 100% test coverage in TDD? If not then what would be an acceptable alternative testing strategy?"}
{"_id": "91621", "title": "Guidelines for HTML/CSS/JS optimization process", "text": "Currently we have a Development server on which we write the HTML/CSS/JS code. We do not optimize our code using compressors/minifiers. So our deployment process from Development to Production is simply to copy the files on the Development server to the Production server. But now we are planning to use compressors/minifiers. We are confused about the process we should follow. Currently we use a single JS file called common.js and a single CSS file called common.css. Also now we are planning to use multiple CSS files in Dev like reset.css, common.css, etc. and when deploying them to production we will be combining them to a single CSS file. The simplest process I can think of is:   1. Make an exact copy of the development files on the Development server. Use the copy in the further steps.   2. Combine all CSS files to a single CSS file say common.css. Same with JS files. Delete the other files for example reset.css.   3. Compress/minify common.css and common.js to common.min.css and common.min.js. Delete common.css and common.js.   4. In all the HTML files remove all link tags and script tags except for common.css and common.js   5. In all the HTML files modify the script src and link href from common.js to common.min.js and common.css to common.min.css.   6. Copy all the files to Production server.   7. Delete the copy This looks too tedious for us. What can be a better process? Is there any tool which can do the optimization (above steps) automatically. It looks like it would not be very difficult to write a script which performs all of the above steps. But I would like to use an existing tool rather than developing one myself. I would like to put the efforts only if such a tool does not exist. Also when is the testing generally performed? I think it should be performed on the optimized files (just in case the compressors have some bug). But then the process would become more tedious as the above process would have to be repeated after every Test-Bugfix cycle."}
{"_id": "197802", "title": "Object Constraint Language (OCL) for Stack in java.util package", "text": "I have an exam coming up and I'm looking at past papers to get some ideas of what to expect. I'm a bit stuck on the following one and would really appreciate if someone could give some example answers. Write preconditions and postconditions in OCL for each of the following operations (included in the Stack class in the java.util package):   * (1) Boolean empty() - Tests if this stack is empty   * (2) E peek() - Looks at the object at the top of this stack without removing from the stack   * (3) E pop() - Removes the object at the top of this stack and returns that object as the value of this operation   * (4) E push(E item) - pushes an item onto the top of this stack Here E denotes the type of elements in the stack. My attempts are as follows:               Boolean empty()     pre: none     post: self -> IsEmpty() = true     //should this be result -> IsEmpty() = true because it returns a boolean value?          E peek()     pre: self -> NotEmpty() = true     post: result = ???      // I lose hope at this stage.       I also don't know if I should be referencing the elements in the stack. For example: self.elements -> IsEmpty() = true If anyone could help me out I'd really appreciate it. **EDIT** A friend has the following ideas:               context Stack empty()     pre: self.data.size = 0          context Stack peek()     pre: self.data.AsSequence.first          context Stack pop()     pre: !self.data.isEmpty     post: self.data.AsSequence.first.remove (not sure about this one)     post: self.data.count = @pre:data - 1          context Stack push(E Item)     post: self.data.asSquence.prepend(E.asSequence)     post: self.data.size = @pre.data.size + 1"}
{"_id": "143009", "title": "Why is CS never a topic of conversation of the layman?", "text": "Granted, every profession has it's technicalities. If you are an MD, you better know the anatomy of the human body, and if you are astronomer, you better know your calculus. Yet, you don't have to know these more advance topics to know that smoking might give you lung cancer because of carcinogens or the moon revolves around the earth because of gravity (thank you Discovery Channel). There's sort of a common knowledge (at least in more developed countries) of these more advanced topics. With that said, **why are things like recursive descent parsing, BNF, or Turing machines hardly ever mentioned outsided 3000 or 4000 level classes in a university setting or between colleagues?** Even back in my days before college in my pursuit of knowledge on how computers work, these very important topics (IMHO) never seem to get the light of day. Many different sources and sites go into \"What is a processor?\" or \"What is RAM?\", or \"What is an OS?\". You might get lucky and discover something about programming languages and how they play a role in how applications are created, but nothing about the tools for creating the language itself. To extend this idea, Dennis Ritchie died shortly after Steve Jobs, yet Dennis Ritchie got very little press compared to Steve Jobs. So, the heart of my question: **Does the public in general not care to hear about computer science topics that make the technology in their lives work, or does the computer science community not lend itself to the general public to close the knowledge gap?** Am I wrong to think the general public has the same thirst for knowledge on how things work as I do? Please consider the question carefully before answering or vote closing please."}
{"_id": "106966", "title": "In Scrum, why shouldn't the Product Owner and ScrumMaster roles be combined?", "text": "In the more traditional projects that I've worked on, the project manager (and, on larger projects, there might be associate/deputy/assistant project managers should one person be unavailable) is the person responsible for communicating with the customer, receiving project health and status updates, determining scheduling and budgeting, managing the process, ensuring the team has what they need to complete tasks, and so on. In Scrum, however, these responsibilities are split between the Product Owner and the ScrumMaster. The Product Owner is the voice of the customer. They interact directly with the customer, create user stories, organize and prioritize the product backlog, and other user/customer facing issues. The ScrumMaster handles the process, overseeing meetings (including estimation and planning), removing impediments, and monitoring the overall health of the project, making adjustments as needed. I've read in multiple sources, including Wikipedia, that the role of ScrumMaster and Product Owner should be held by two different people. I've not only read about, but worked on successful \"traditional\" style projects where the activities of both were handled by a single individual. In fact, it makes more sense for one to three people to be responsible for handling project (including human resources/staffing) and process level tasks, as they often go hand-in-hand. Process changes have an impact on scheduling, budgeting, quality, and other project-level goals, and project changes have an impact on process. Why does Scrum call for isolating these activities into two roles? What advantages does this actually provide? Has anyone been on a successful Scrum project where the Product Owner and ScrumMaster were the same individual?"}
{"_id": "114131", "title": "Where should I look to know which technology is used in a web app?", "text": "Let's say, I have one or more web app I find interesting, and as I want to do something similar, I would like to know on which technology they are based (programming language, database, web server, framework, ...). Is there any site where such information is centralized? If not, where should I look for this information?"}
{"_id": "114138", "title": "Delegate vs Interfaces-Any more clarifications available?", "text": "After reading the article- When to Use Delegates Instead of Interfaces (C# Programming Guide), I need some help understanding the below given points, which I found to be not so clear (for me). Any examples or detailed explanations available for these? **Use a delegate when:**   * An eventing design pattern is used.   * It is desirable to encapsulate a static method.   * Easy composition is desired.   * A class may need more than one implementation of the method. **Use an interface when:**   * There are a group of related methods that may be called.   * A class only needs one implementation of the method. _**My Questions are,_**   1. What do they mean by an eventing design pattern?   2. How the composition turns out to be easy if a delegate is used?   3. if there is a group of related methods that may be called,then use interface-What benefit it has?   4. if a class only needs one implementation of the method, use interface-how is it justified in terms of benefits?"}
{"_id": "93665", "title": "Interview Assignment: Production, Bug-free, or Bells & Whistles?", "text": "I was given a small project to complete over the weekend for an interview. Not a very difficult project at all. Fortunately, I was able to spend all my time designing, developing, and testing the application rather than having to research something I wasn't familiar with. After working out a couple of critical bugs, I am left wondering if I should add anything more to the assignment. Assume, at this point:   * everything is commented   * no bugs found   * any known exceptions are handled   * 8 hours remain in allotted time **So, is it better to go ahead and submit a bug-free, working assignment earlier than the deadline?** ...or ... **Take the fully allotted time to add a feature (obviously something simple like logging)?** ...or ... **Provide a list of TODOs that could improve flexibility, scalability, or general usability?** These would be improvements that simply could not be done within a day or could introduce too many issues to resolve in the time allotted. FWIW: the project consisted of creating a multi-threaded sort controller implementing 3 different sorting algorithms; results to be displayed on WinForms UI."}
{"_id": "188309", "title": "Terminology for class", "text": "I am integrating with a Financial Management System (FMS). I have a class that prepares a set of objects (each of these objects is called a TransactionEntity). These are then passed to the FMS.      I give particular importance to correct terminology. What should I name this class that prepares the transactions? I am thinking TransactionSomething. Example TransactionBuilder, TransactionFactory etc. But I don't think these names are correct.      For the record, I use .Net but I don't think the framework should have an impact on this."}
{"_id": "188307", "title": "JavaEE server experience matters for a developer?", "text": "Lately I am seeing quite a few application development job ads asking for experience with this or that Java EE server. I can understand this if it is for a server administrator, however I find it stupid and ridiculous to ask for some one with a specific server implementation experience when the job is Java software development. The whole idea behind Java EE as I studied in my initial days was for development of standards and to deploy to any platform of choice that including servers, OS, etc. My question is, are the various Java EE application container implementations so vastly different that they can be considered their own career path for development? What kinds of features exist amongst Java application containers that require such specialized skill that I might not want to not consider applicants with otherwise impressive software development qualifications?"}
{"_id": "51437", "title": "Harmful temptations in programming", "text": "Just curious, what kinds of temptations in programming turned out to be really harmful in your projects? Like when you really feel the urge to do something and you believe it's going to benefit the project or else you just trick yourself into believing it is, and after a week you realize you haven't solved any _real_ problems but instead created new ones or, in the best case, pleased your inner beast with no visible impact. Personally, I find it very hard to not refactor bad code. I work with a lot of bad legacy code, and it takes some deep breaths to not touch it when I have no tests to prove my refactoring doesn't break anything. Another demon for me in user interface, I can literally spend hours changing UI layout just because I enjoy doing it. Sometimes I tell myself I'm working on usability, but the truth is just I love moving buttons around. **What are your programming demons, and how do you avoid them?**"}
{"_id": "150989", "title": "NLP as a job requirement", "text": "When an employer points out that NLP is required in a position what does he expect? Can I teach myself natural language processing theory or must know specific frameworks or what?"}
{"_id": "189659", "title": "What's the best programming language to learn for solving partial differential equations?", "text": "I have to create a program that compares two or three different methods (FEM FVM FDM) for solving an easy pde. Is there a program language in which I could do this easily? (i need to operate with vectors/matrix and perform inversions on matrix)"}
{"_id": "22305", "title": "How do you handle supporting Chrome versions?", "text": "I'm working on a site for my company which, up until a certain point, was an Internet Explorer-only site for various reasons, mainly that when the site was originally conceived IE had a 90%+ market share so the work to get it working in other browsers just didn't make sense. Now that we live in a more diverse browser economy we're doing the work to get the site working everywhere, and as luck would have it a decent chunk of it just happens to already work. However, one issue we're struggling with is the issue of what to support and what not to support. For starters, non-IE browsers release much more frequently than IE did, and you don't know which versions are still in the wild. There's been basically three versions of IE released in the last decade, and IE6 is still supported until 2014. But there's an update for Firefox every other day, Apple updates Safari more or less annually. And then there's Chrome. Chrome has gone from 0.2 to 9.0 in a little over two years. 7.0.517 was released a month and a half after 6.0.472. There's three different versions out right now, a stable, a beta, and a dev. And the dev version of 9.0.587 was actually released before the latest beta version of 8.0.552. With IE we've had the situation arise where we have to support an old version because the IT department of the company in question does not allow the employees to upgrade. With non-IE browsers I'm thinking we'll adopt the line of \"update to the latest or we can't help you\" but I'm not sure how effective that is. Also, my company does some amount of artificial limitations. For example we have a product aimed at companies so we don't support \"Home\" versions of Windows (i.e., XP Home, 7 Home Premium) even though there's no technical reason we couldn't. When my company starts asking \"what version or versions of Chrome do we support\", how should I answer?"}
{"_id": "189656", "title": "Thread safety IDE warnings", "text": "I wonder, would it not be possible for an IDE to detect any shared mutable objects that are used in multiple threads? You could flag types as either `[ThreadSafe]` or `[Immutable]` using attributes in .NET for example, and then those variables would never cause warnings, but any other variable that is used inside of a method invoked via `Thread` would be highlighted as \"possibly unsafe\" unless all assignments occur inside of a `lock` or something like that. I know it wouldn't be perfect because the compiler simply can't reason about all the possible scenarios (humans barely can), but hints like these would be quite valuable, no? Is this even feasible?"}
{"_id": "150986", "title": "Javascript: Safely upload a client data file", "text": "I'm (still) working on a template-based XML editing program. It's a GUI-based XML editor that only allows users to add certain tags and attributes based off the requirements. You can see the current version here for an idea. Now, I'd like to allow users to upload their own data templates, but I'm concerned about potential XSS hacks. Currently, the template file is in Javascript object literal notation, which unsurprisingly is a security nightmare if the user can upload their own. I was thinking of using XML instead, but is there an even better alternative?"}
{"_id": "145099", "title": "I can't draw. How can I make polished applications?", "text": "I'm not a graphic designer. I'm pretty bad at drawing anything. I struggle to build things that look even as nice as \"sample\" applications bundled with development tools; primarily because I don't have squat in the way of art assets. What strategies might I take to mitigate this?"}
{"_id": "145091", "title": "Why are virtual machines required?", "text": "Instead of compiling the source code for the respective OS (on which it is targeted), you compile once and run everywhere. For the sake of this question, I would call it VM (for example, both for Java and .NET). So this the execution of programs becomes something like                ------------       ----      ----     | Executable |  -> | VM | -> | OS |      ------------       ----      ----      It perfectly makes sense, the compiler remain generic for the respective VM. However, the implementation of VM may vary depending on the machine it is going to be installed i.e. (*nix, windows, mac) x (32 bit, 64 bit). My question is, instead of writing VM for respective machines, why isn't the compiler is written for that specific machine? By this, instead of downloading respective VM you download the respective compiler and that compiler will take care of the machine-code+OS for that specific machine. End result, the execution of native code for any machine. Definitely, each source code would need compilation for that specific machine but now a days, the automated systems, scm builds can help us do this thing. Do my reasons of being confused are right or I am missing some bits of technicalities here? Edit: **PORTABILITY** : Yes, it is one reason but is portability a big issue in today's automated systems? how often do we have to worry about the fact that we don't have to compile it for other machines? Having a code compiled for native machine would give much better performance. Take Java for instance, you can't do low level programming on Windows and you have to choose JNI. Take automated systems like TeamCity/Jenkins or others. We could have such an automated system setup where code submitted through version control would result in the executable."}
{"_id": "74759", "title": "How to get good scenario coverage in performance benchmarks?", "text": "If it is relatively easy to get good _code coverage_ from profiling (because profiling tells you which functions are/aren't called, how many times, and with what parameters), how do I get good _performance scenario coverage_ when doing performance benchmarks? How do I even know that there isn't some \"performance blackholes\" which can't be discovered except when certain test parameters are very near the \"blackhole\"? For a toy example, a sorting algorithm can be tested with data sets of size `1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, ...`. An example of non-numerical coverage would be to test the sorting algorithm with `sorted data`, `unsorted data`, or `evil- constructed data intended to expose the worst case`. These scenarios have been exhaustively investigated by the academia in the case of sorting algorithms. How to apply that thinking into other kinds of software systems?"}
{"_id": "74756", "title": "What are the characteristics for a good report generation software for reporting and tracking software benchmarking results?", "text": "This is an offshoot question from this answer to a previous question, where http://speed.pypy.org is highlighted as an example having a good presentation. (However, it appears to me that the project doesn't separate the components of execution/tracking/report-generation/web-service, which makes it harder for other people to adopt.) I am interested in both the functional and the UI requirements of such software. I hope to be able to choose an existing one based on the criteria so that I can use it in my project. Right now, the only thing I can think of is that the Execution UI should be similar to a Unit Testing harness, but the Reporting UI should be totally different from the xUnit family of software. Webpages seem to be a better way to navigate through the results. And, along with some minor ideas:   * There should be a tracking component to track performance changes at all levels   * However, the presentation layer should highlight only \"relevant\" performance changes, that is, performance drops in important areas that are serious enough to require developers' attention. I am also interested in whether any of the advices from Edward Tufte can be applied here."}
{"_id": "74757", "title": "Correct path towards a Microsoft certification?", "text": "So here's my situation - Currently in college and confident, that i want to pursue a career in Microsoft technologies (.NET development more specific). I haven't got any real world experience (as in no experience in paid nor open source projects, just personal applications and school projects) and it's hard to get into any development position, as most if not all ask for years of professional experience. I'm pretty sure going for a certification is the right thing to do, to \"seperate myself from rest of the pack\", which should help me get into open source projects and paid jobs alike. The question is, which certifications should i choose? I thought about about going for MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Windows Applications ( 70-511 ) and then MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Web Applications ( 70-515 ) Is that even the correct way to do what i'm trying to do ? Should i disband anything related to desktop applications since everything is moving towards web based ? Which way to go after the given certs ? Any input appreciated! L.A."}
{"_id": "65931", "title": "Are there serious companies that don't use version-control and continuous integration? Why?", "text": "A colleague of mine was under the impression that our software department was highly advanced, as we used both a build server with continuous integration, and version control software. This did not match my point of view, as I only know of one company I which made serious software and didn't have either. However, my experience is limited to only a handful of companies. Does anyone know of any real company _(larger than 3 programmers)_ , which is in the software business and doesn't use these tools? If such a company exists, are there any good reason for them not doing so?"}
{"_id": "196286", "title": "How to maintain standard quality of images uploaded by many users?", "text": "We're developing a site where individuals (store owners) will be able to take pictures and upload to the site. Our biggest concern is the variance in quality of pictures across the site. The options we are considering are:   1. Minimum image cleaning scripts (including filters, resizing, sharpening, etc.)   2. Approval process for uploaded images   3. Having a team take the photos for them I'd like to see if anyone has had any experience with 1 and 2 above. How effective is 1, and how efficient is 2?"}
{"_id": "196280", "title": "Should semantic breaking changes be tied to syntactic breaking changes?", "text": "**Explanation** First let me briefly define how I'm using terms (I might be bending their typical use a little): When I talk about _semantic breaking changes_ , I'm referring to a change in the meaning/behavior of a public API. It may require changes to consumer code, but it isn't immediately obvious, since nothing 'broke'. Changes are only required because the assumptions made about preconditions/behavior are no longer valid. This is in contrast to _syntactic breaking changes_ by which I'm referring to changes in the public API that require the calling code to change the way it calls the API. This kind of breaking change is obvious since it usually results in compile errors which have to be fixed. **Example** Let's say I'm writing a micro-ORM that given a POCO object, a database connection, and a query will map the results into the object for you. The public API, is fairly simple:               Query<T>(connection As IDbConnection, sql As String)      I'm very unlikely to have a syntactic change in how you interact this tool. However, since there is a lot of behavior bound up in that simple statement, I'm very likely to have semantic changes. **Question** Since there's no syntax change, how do I effectively communicate to consumers of my API that there has been a semantic change? Should I always bundle up semantic changes in syntatic changes so there's no question that something has changed? If semantic versioning encompasses semantic as well as syntactic changes, then that goes a long way to solving the issue. But it would still be possible for developers to build against a newer version, not notice any compile errors, assume things will be fine (since they haven't read the docs), and introduce bugs due to semantic changes in my API."}
{"_id": "65939", "title": "What's the first language that had the 'Unless' conditional/loop built into itself?", "text": "What's the first _(oldest)_ language that had the 'Unless' conditional/loop built into itself? Where an example could be               unless (myVar) == if (!myVar)          until (myVar) == while (!myVar)"}
{"_id": "214848", "title": "OpenGL extension vs OpenGL core", "text": "I was doubting: I'm writing a cross-platform engine OpenGL C++, I figured out windows forces the developers to access OpenGL features above 1.1 through extensions. Now the thing is, on Linux, I know that I can directly access functions if the version supports it through glext.h and opengl version. The problem is that if on Linux, the core doesn't support it, is it possible there is an extensions that supports the same functionality, in my case vertex buffer objects? I'm doing something like this: Windows:   `#define glFunction functionpointer_to_the_extension` Linux:   Since glext already defined glFunction, I can write in client code glFunction, and compile it both on Windows AND Linux without changing a single line in my client code using the engine (my goal). Now the thing is, I saw a tutorial use only the extension on Linux, and not checking for the opengl implementation version. If the functionality is available in the core, is it also available as extension (VBO's e.g.)? Or is an extension something you never know is available? I want to write an engine that gets all the possibilities on hardware, so I need to check (on Linux) for extensions as well as core version for possible functionality implementation."}
{"_id": "214841", "title": "When do you say \"near ID\" / \"far ID\" when using RTMFP in ActionScript 3?", "text": "I've been using RTMFP streaming for around a year in ActionScript 3, and I pretty much know the difference between a near ID and far ID. The near ID is your peer ID, and the far ID is the other guy's peer ID. The problem I'm having is that, to my knowledge, choosing whether to use one term or the other in a given sentence is a little like choosing whether to say \"go\" or \"come\". In English, \"go\" and \"come\" have opposite meanings, but ironically, they can still be used almost interchangeably. It's because whether you're going or coming is so heavily dependent on perspective, as opposed to anything concrete. Is the choice of words between \"near ID\" and \"far ID\" just as ambiguous, or is there some sort of method to the madness? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "175749", "title": "emacs keybindings", "text": "I read a lot about vim and emacs and how they make you much more productive, but I didn't know which one to pick. Finally when I decided to teach myself common lisp, the decision was straight forward: everybody says that there's no better editor for common lisp, than emacs + slime. So I started with emacs tutorial and immediately I ran into something that seems very unproductive to me. I'm talking about key bindings for cursor keys:               forward/backward: Ctrl+f, Ctrl+b     up/down: Ctrl+p, Ctrl+n      I find these bindings very strange. I assume that fingers should be on their home rows (am I wrong here?), so to move cursor forward or backward I should use my left index finger and for up and down right pinky and right index fingers. When working with any of Windows IDEs and text editors to navigate text I usually place my right hand in a position so that my thumb is on the right ctrl and my index, ring and middle fingers are on the cursor keys. From this position it is very easy and comfortable to move cursor: I can do one- character moves with my 3 right fingers, or I can press `ctrl` with my right thumb and do word-moves instead. Also I can press `shift` with my left pinky and do single-character or word selections. Also it is a very comfortable position to reach `PgUp`, `PgDn`, `Home`, `End`, `Delete` and `Backspace` keys with my right hand. So I have even more navigation and selection possibilities. I understand that the decision not to use cursor keys is to allow one to use emacs to connect to remote terminal sessions, where these keys are not supported, but I still find the choice of cursor keys very unfortunate. Why not to use `j`, `k`, `i`, `l` instead? This way I could use my right hand without much finger stretching. So how is emacs more productive? What am I doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "214845", "title": "How can I introduce QA and break it into parts for various people?", "text": "I was recently asked how to do this, specifically:   1. How to introduce QA into an organization?   2. How to break up QA into parts that others can do ?   3. How to prioritize what needs QA?   4. How to determine what to buy? code? etc. The organization uses Rails on Rails extensively as the development platform Note: I am posting a lengthy answer myself but I will also upvote additional good answers (and probably incorporate them into my answer)."}
{"_id": "214847", "title": "Canonical representation of a class object containing a list element in XML", "text": "I see that most implementations of JAX-RS represent a class object containing a list of elements as follows (assume a class House containing a list of People)               <houses>       <house>         <person>           <name>Adam</name>         </person>         <person>           <name>Blake</name>         </person>       </house>       <house>       </house>     </houses>      The result above is obtained for instance from Jersey 2 JAX-RS implementation, notice Jersey creates a wrapper class \"houses\" around each house, however strangely it doesn't create a wrapper class around each person! I don't feel this is a correct mapping of a list, in other words I'd feel more confortable with something like this:               <houses>       <house>         <persons>         <person>           <name>Adam</name>         </person>         <person>           <name>Blake</name>         </person>         </persons>       </house>       <house>       </house>     </houses>      Is there any document explaining how an object should be correctly mapped apart from any opninion?"}
{"_id": "74286", "title": "What is the proper amount of time required to interview a .NET developer?", "text": "I had two interviews during the last two weeks, one of them was about 30 minutes, and they had me fill out a job application before it, and the other one was less than 10 minutes! In your own point of view, how much time do you need to interview a .NET developer with almost 2 years experience?"}
{"_id": "55977", "title": "Should I avoid SharePoint Development in Visual Studio?", "text": "Not long ago I started an internship at a company that supplies SharePoint consultancy, hosting and development. While their consultancy seems to be pretty good and solid, I feel their development department lacks direction. The reason for this, most likely, is that they stopped outsourcing not too long ago. One thing that I've frequently bumped my head into is the following: My supervisor strongly insists that everything that can be done natively in SharePoint (somehow this includes editing xslt files in Designer) should be done in SharePoint. Even if this results in longer development time (at least when they make me write XSLT) and reduced usability. Her main arguments for this are:   * Better maintainability   * Editing the functionality doesn't require programming knowledge I feel the company is a little biassed and I am unable to get a decent discussion going. This is why I am looking for other places to get some responses on the subject (and not only on the arguments of my supervisor, but more on the subject in general). Kind regards"}
{"_id": "142848", "title": "Interfaces: profit of using", "text": "First of all, my ubiquitous language is PHP, and I'm thinking about learning Java. So let me split my question on two closely related parts. Here goes the first part. Say I have a domain-model class. It has some getters, setters, some query methods etc. And one day I want to have a possibility to compare them. So it looks like:               class MyEntity extends AbstractEntity     {         public function getId()         {             // get id property         }              public function setId($id)         {             // set id property         }              // plenty of other methods that set or retrieve data              public function compareTo(MyEntity $anotherEntity)         {             // some compare logic         }     }      If it would have been Java, I should have implemented a `Comparable` interface. But why? Polymorphism? Readbility? Or something else? And if it was PHP -- should I create `Comparable` interface for myself? So here goes the second part. My colleague told me that it is a rule of thumb in Java to create an interface for every behavioral aspect of the class. For example, if I wanted to present this object as a string, I should state this behaviour by something like `implements Stringable`, where in case of PHP `Stringable` would look like:               interface Stringable     {         public function __toString();     }      Is that really a rule of thumb? What benefits are gained with this approach? And does it worth it in PHP? And in Java?"}
{"_id": "224980", "title": "Who actually performs the task of log rotation?", "text": "I know _log rotation_ is a feature seen in application servers like Oracle's Weblogic. I would like to understand:   1. What is actually meant by log rotation?   2. What is it useful?   3. Who performs the task? Is this duty performed by the logging frameworks that the developers use or is it handled by the servers themselves? Would log rotation be available in a server like Weblogic if the application doesn't use any logging framework(not `java.util.logging`) and simply rely on `System.out.println()` and `System.err.println()` etc?"}
{"_id": "224988", "title": "What is the proper copyright information?", "text": "I want to know what should I write in copyright part? I mean the copyright part when you right click on the executable, click properties, and click the details tab. I was developing a little tool that parses some information from output files. It's been a year now and somehow it became something more than a simple, personal tool. We are using it for academic purposes and it's going to cited in several academic papers. BTW, I do not want to make it freeware. Also, I am the only developer of the software. I have used Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate that I obtained for free with the academic license provided my university."}
{"_id": "104611", "title": "Real-time chat in Ruby on Rails without owning a server", "text": "I'd want to implement a Real-time chat for my Rails app but I can't really host the server which handles the sockets. I've tried Faye but it needs a server. I've also heard of pusher but it's limited to 20 users at a time on the chat and I can't really be sure they won't be more. I've thought of IRC but I think I can't really embed it into a rails app, maybe it needs sockets... How can I implement a real-time chat without owning a server?"}
{"_id": "220402", "title": "How far should we rename code and data when end users nomenclatures change?", "text": "A long time ago we added a feature where our users could \"Accept\" an image after it was added to a workflow queue. Turns out, we used the wrong term, and users actually \"Approve\" the image. Changing Accept to Approve on our interface is easy, just replace one word. But we programmed all layers with the word \"accept\", from the CSS class name to the database values.   * The CSS class that turns the button green: \".accepted\";   * The model method that verifies and binds the class attribute on the DOM node: \"isAccepted\";   * JavaScript status attribute: Array with \"unreviewed\", \"accepted\" and \"published\";   * Mysql status column: ENUM with \"unreviewed\", \"accepted\" and \"published\";   * Test names; It's trivial (specially when you have tests) to replace most occurrences of accept to approve. A little bit harder is to migrate the data, specially since it needs to be synchronized with deployment. This specific case is simple, but I've faced similar, yet more complex cases, during my career. When a file is also renamed and deployment happens on dozens of servers, or when proxy caching, memcached and mysql are involved. Leaving \"accepted\" on every other layer except the interface is a bad idea, since new programmers joining the team might not learn the historical reasons it led to this decision, and while accept -> approve are close words in terms of meaning, if it was renamed to \"queued for managerial next status meeting\", it certainly wouldn't make any sense. And it feels if we compromise here and there, in a few iterations the user interface concepts will have no bearings to the system internals, and I certainly do not want to work on a system where half of the output has no connection to its innards. So, do you always rename everything when needed? If this happened to you, and you decided that the trade-off was not worth, did it come back to bite you? Is code comment or developer documentation enough to avoid this issue?"}
{"_id": "57533", "title": "Just wondering about \"Do-It Yourself Apps\" on the internet versus apps written by us developers", "text": "I have been doing Objective-C programming over the past few weeks, and I have learnt a lot. However, I see that there are other Web-companies offering services to consumers directly from their website that allow consumers to create their apps through a point and click and drag features without any code. Clearly they are more cost effective and fast than having a developer write an app. I was wondering if there are any advantages then of having a developer build an app for someone, other than the obvious advantage that its got a custom look and feel. Could someone please clarify, since Im new and would like to evaluate whether it is worthwhile spending time towards learning a whole new development environment when someone could just use a webservice to make an app for multiple platforms Thanks"}
{"_id": "165895", "title": "What happens at control invoke function?", "text": "A question about form controls invoke function.   Control1 is created on thread1. If you want to update something in Control1 from thread2 you must do something like:               delegate void SetTextCallback(string txt);            void setText(string txt)       {         if (this.textBox1.InvokeRequired)         {            SetTextCallback d = new SetTextCallback(setText);            this.Invoke(d, new object[] { txt });         }         else         {             // this will run on thread1 even when called from thread2          this.textBox1.AppendText(msg);         }       }`        What happens behind the scenes here? This invoke behaves different from a normal object invoke. When you want to call a function in an object on a specific thread, then that thread must be waiting on some queue of delegates, and execute the incoming delegates. Is it correct that the windows forms control invoke function is completely different from the standard object invoke function?"}
{"_id": "223660", "title": "Why do we need to use sealed on a class? Do we really need sealed?", "text": "Reading this article (by Eric Lippert), it has four arguments as to why you should use `sealed`, however, I don't understand why we actually **need** it. Philosophical/aesthetic reasons aside, why do we need to use sealed? I can see how things like `readonly` from C# or `const` from C++ actually catch genuine errors. Is there any type of error that `sealed` can catch? An often cited reason for sealing a class is because, it hasn't been to designed to be extended. What does that mean? Why is it important? Are there any real examples of this? The point on compatibility isn't a reason why we need to seal classes but why it should be default. The final point again is strange, because sealing your class doesn't prevent someone providing an alternative implementation in a heirachy. **Edit:** If I didn't put enough emphasis, on it already I'm looking for reasons we actually **need** it. Not the usual, \"someone else might write bad code\". I understand that plenty of people _like_ using `sealed` for design intent, but I'm looking for a practical purpose beyond that."}
{"_id": "223669", "title": "How to provide data to a web server using a data warehouse?", "text": "We have data stored in a data warehouse as follows: Price Date Product Name (varchar(25)) We currently only have seven products. Once every business day, seven new data points are added representing the day's price for each product. On the website, a user sees this information on a page load. Analytics shows that the amount of page loads is about 100 per day. The website server is an external server to our data center. The data warehouse server is internal to our data center and has other critical data (in different tables) not related and should not be accessible to the website. The following approaches have been considered: 1) The data warehouse could daily push (SFTP) a CSV file containing the daily data to the web server. The web server would have a process running on a crontab every 15 minutes. It would check if the file had changed. If so, it would update its database with the data. Then, on page loads, the web server would query its database to get the data to display on the web page. Usually, the push would only be once a day, but more than one push could be possible to communicate (infrequent) price corrections. Even in the price correction scenario, all data would be delivered in the file. The polling process would pick up the change and overwrite the data in the database. 2) The web server could request data from the data warehouse using JDBC or similar SQL connection technology. However, a security concerns have been voiced. The concern is that by allowing the web server access to our data warehouse, SQL injection attack or some other external attack through the website could compromise the data warehouse. Measures could be put in place to reduce the risk, but the easiest and safest approach has been suggested to simply not allow any public facing system to directly access the data warehouse. In other words, the data warehouse can establish a communication with other servers (say to SFTP the file), but no server can initiate a connection with the data warehouse. Do these concerns seem reasonable and hard to mitigate? 3) A web service could be built, and the web server could call the web service that is hosted in our internal data center. 4) A process hosted in our internal data center could call the web server when it knows the data warehouse has data available. If so, how should this be done? HTTPS with some way to prevent other unauthorized clients from making the same call? Which of the above approaches is best or is there a better approach than listed above? What are the pros and cons to an approach?"}
{"_id": "235427", "title": "Is it fine to reuse a class instance?", "text": "I ask in terms of high cost classes, with a particle engine as an example. I read somewhere that an instance of a class with a high cost to initialize, like a particle manager, should have its state variables altered at run time rather than reinitialize the particle manager with new data every time it is used in a different way. The particle manager would create perhaps thousands of instances of particles on initialization and then manage them from then on. For example, let's say this particle manager is used to manage shrapnel in an explosion; and you're creating a ground zero simulation for an artillery attack; thus there are many explosions. Instead of multiple managers for each explosion, which is extremely expensive, you alter the variables for each explosion and have a scattered sequential set of explosions using the same manager and the same particles. So I ask: is it fine to reuse a class instance at run time? Or is the above really just a super optimization case?"}
{"_id": "75489", "title": "How did you find the slow performance in your application?", "text": "What makes the web application perform and scale better is always a big topic. And finding the performance problems and tuning them is another... Here is some my thoughts of how to \"finding\" performance problems: For a \"new\" api/application or other   * Analzying the detail api and then preparing the Jmeter/Grinder testing scripts for it.   * Using different load to identify the threshold for the api   * Adding profiling codes find the slownes   * Restart from point one again.. For a \"old\" api/application or other   * Analyzing the user pattern from the access detail log    * Simulate the real user load to find the slowness   * Adding profiling codes find the slownes   * Restart from point one again..  So,how can you identify the performance problems?"}
{"_id": "141577", "title": "iOS build machine setup: problem with certificates", "text": "some background:   * work with multiple team mates   * each work on our own MBP   * I'm setting a build machine that we can `git push` to in order to generate a build (aim to allow anyone to push to the build machine and then generate an archive, upload to testflight and send on its way)  problem:   * getting my apple developer certificates on the build machine.  I installed Lion, XCode, etc and I signed into my developer account through Xcode organizer, provisioning profiles download,etc. but beside each one it says: `valid signing identity not found` I also download my certificate from the developer.apple.com page, imported it into keychain, etc but no luck. Anyone else have a similar issue? Or maybe hints to fix? Thanks"}
{"_id": "141574", "title": "Importing an existing project into Git", "text": "# Background During the course of developing our site (ASP.NET), we discovered that our existing source control (SourceGear Vault) wasn't working for us. So, we decided to migrate to Git. The translation has been less than smooth though. Our site is broken up into three environments DEV, QA, and PROD. For tho most part, DEV and the source control repo have been in sync with each other. There is one branch in the repo, if a page was going to be moved up to QA then the file was moved manually, same thing with stuff that was ready for PROD. So, our current QA and PROD environments do not correspond to any particular commit in the master branch. Clarification: The QA and PROD branches are not currently, nor have they ever been in source control. # The Question How do I move QA and PROD into Git? Should I forget about the history we've maintained up to this point and start over with a new repo? I could start with everything on PROD, then make a branch and pull in everything from QA, and then make another branch off of that with DEV. That way not only will the branches reflect the differences in the environments, they'll be in the right order chronologically with the newest commits in the DEV branch. # What I've tried so far I thought about creating a QA branch off of the current master and using robocopy to make the working folder look like the current QA environment. This doesn't work because the new commit from QA will remove new files from DEV and that will remove them when we merge up, I suspect there will be similar problems if I started QA at an earlier (though not exact) commit from DEV."}
{"_id": "227758", "title": "Is it normal to get your software development products critiqued?", "text": "I am currently a software developer on coop that was in an interesting situation today. I cannot say too much, as the things I do are under NDA, but I make Grasshopper 3D (which is a Rhino plugin) components. Our firm has under three software developers including me. We all specialize in different languages. This project I was working on, I was in charge of creating a piece of software that has a very broad general use. It's an extension from typical Grasshopper behavior. With this said, the other developer I worked with has been in this industry for a good... decade or two. He is very knowledgeable towards the use of Grasshopper. His prior education involved great use of it, and his daily work involves the use of Grasshopper (though not explicitly what I am doing, which is creating C# components for it). With that said, my final component went through a number of iterations. It seemed each iteration was better than the previous. An interesting point is, the other developer I worked with (I was essentially under his wing) manages to break my component every single time. I don't mean this in a malicious way. By breaking, I meant, he was able to overflow particular lists. He was able to, after almost every iteration, find ways that my component could be improved on. Honestly, I really feel grateful for his suggestions and critique, because these were honestly things that either I overlooked, or did not know could happen. My question is are three-fold:   1. Is it normal in software development practices/companies to have someone critique and improve your code? There was no code review. It was simply ways improving the tool through either UX improves or back-end improvements. And honestly, even though there was no code review, I learned so much from his suggestions which I always found success in implementing.    2. Are there any suggestions for a more \"formal\" testing procedure? I am relatively new to the software development world, and thus am interested in software dev testing procedures.   3. How can I improve on my way to \"predict\" issues? At one side, I feel like there are issues that I cannot normally find out myself because everyone uses a piece of software differently. On another side, I feel it may be my oversight or incompetence that's causing this. I'm reading up on this thread, and it seems in a way, we have a loose testing procedure, though it's all dependent on me to ask for critique."}
{"_id": "75487", "title": "How to suggest using an ORM instead of stored procedures?", "text": "I work at a company that only uses stored procedures for all data access, which makes it very annoying to keep our local databases in sync as every commit we have to run new procs. I have used some basic ORMs in the past and I find the experience much better and cleaner. I'd like to suggest to the development manager and rest of the team that we look into using an ORM Of some kind for future development (the rest of the team are only familiar with stored procedures and have never used anything else). The current architecture is .NET 3.5 written like .NET 1.1, with \"god classes\" that use a strange implementation of ActiveRecord and return untyped DataSets which are looped over in code-behind files - the classes work something like this:               class Foo {          public bool LoadFoo() {              bool blnResult = false;             if (this.FooID == 0) {                  throw new Exception(\"FooID must be set before calling this method.\");             }                  DataSet ds = // ... call to Sproc             if (ds.Tables[0].Rows.Count > 0) {                  foo.FooName = ds.Tables[0].Rows[0][\"FooName\"].ToString();                 // other properties set                 blnResult = true;             }             return blnResult;         }     }          // Consumer     Foo foo = new Foo();     foo.FooID = 1234;     foo.LoadFoo();     // do stuff with foo...      There is pretty much no application of any design patterns. There are no tests whatsoever (nobody else knows how to write unit tests, and testing is done through manually loading up the website and poking around). Looking through our database we have: 199 tables, 13 views, a whopping **926** stored procedures and 93 functions. About 30 or so tables are used for batch jobs or external things, the remainder are used in our core application. Is it even worth pursuing a different approach in this scenario? I'm talking about moving forward only since we aren't allowed to refactor the existing code since \"it works\" so we cannot change the existing classes to use an ORM, but I don't know how often we add brand new modules instead of adding to/fixing current modules so I'm not sure if an ORM is the right approach (too much invested in stored procedures and DataSets). If it is the right choice, how should I present the case for using one? Off the top of my head the only benefits I can think of is having cleaner code (although it might not be, since the current architecture isn't built with ORMs in mind so we would basically be jury-rigging ORMs on to future modules but the old ones would still be using the DataSets) and less hassle to have to remember what procedure scripts have been run and which need to be run, etc. but that's it, and I don't know how compelling an argument that would be. Maintainability is another concern but one that nobody except me seems to be concerned about."}
{"_id": "75486", "title": "Why aren't young programmers interested in mainframes?", "text": "A key issue with mainframes is that the cohort of supporting programmers is dwindling. While normally this wouldn't be a problem in that a falling supply of programmers would be offset by an increasing amount of salary those causing a rising supply of programmers via the law of supply and demand, I'm not sure this is really happening for mainframes. While they still form critical infrastructure for many businesses, the simple fact is there isn't an adequate number of young programmers coming up along to keep the support population populated. Why is this? What makes mainframes unattractive to young programmers?"}
{"_id": "26108", "title": "Is it more valuable to double major in Computer Science/Software Engineering or get an undergraduate CS degree with a Masters in SE?", "text": "A friend and I (both in college) are currently in a debate over which is better, in terms of employment opportunities, experience, and education: a Bachelors degree in both Computer Science and Software Engineering, or a Bachelors in Computer Science with a Masters in Software Engineering. My point of view is that I would rather go to school for 4-4.5 years to learn both sides of the field, and be out working on real projects gaining real experience, by going the double major route. His point of view is that it would look better to potential employers if he had a Bachelors in CS and Masters in SE. That way, when he's finally done after 4 years of CS and 2-4 of SE (depending on where he goes), he can pretty much have his choosing of what he wants to do. We are both in agreement on the distinction between the two degrees: CS is \"traditional\" and about the theory of algorithms, data structures, and programming, where SE is the study of the design of software and the implementation of CS theory. So, what's your stance on this debate? Have you gone one route or another? And most importantly, why?"}
{"_id": "26107", "title": "What are your decision critera in C++ to make something a data member or virtual method?", "text": "(Figured this was too subjective for SO, so posting here...) I have some behavior that I can implement in various ways. At least two methods are shows in the code snippet below. Presume that the m_well data member is correctly set somehow at object construction time.               struct Behavior     {         virtual bool behavesWell() { return true; }          private:         bool m_well;     public:         bool behavesMemberWell() { return m_well; }     };          struct OtherBehavior : public Behavior     {         virtual bool behavesWell() { return false; }     };      Obviously the one relies upon virtual dispatch, and the other merely the return of a data member. A third, non-shown method would likely have the non-virtual public member function not return a fixed data member, but instead call a virtual - lets leave that aside for the purpose of this please. What would lead you to one or other other of these two methods of implementing functionality, such that a user of this class can interrogate an object's behavior?"}
{"_id": "204760", "title": "\"every statement and declaration an expression that yields a value\" why?", "text": "At the end of the answer to \"Can I do ++x and x++ in Python?\" on this page: http://norvig.com/python-iaq.html, you can read: > [...] I'm with my fellow Dane, Bjarne Stroustrup, on this one. He said in > The Design and Evolution of C++ ``If I were to design a language from > scratch, I would follow the Algol68 path and make every statement and > declaration an expression that yields a value''. Why?"}
{"_id": "204763", "title": "Data integrity in NoSQL situations", "text": "**Background** To start off, at work I work with a legacy system that, in its day, was quite spectacular, but now is ...interesting... to work with. It uses IBM (now Rocket) UniVerse as its backing database. One particular part of it that has caused some issues is its lack of data-integrity checks. By data integrity, I don't mean file corruption, but rather things like orphaned records or invalid keys. The particular version they use doesn't support things like triggers and such and so unless the programmer remembered to update their computed indexes, it becomes \"broken\" and filled with bad data. Now, the other programs have been built to live with this bad data, but it is most annoying when putting it into another database, such as MySQL (using InnoDB as the engine) which actually has constraints on the data. **The question** I'm experimenting with MongoDB and NodeJS just to see what all the hype is about. I really like Mongoose as well and its schema system. I've been reading a lot about what to store on each record vs in a separate collection. Perhaps its just my own RDBMS bias, but I decided to store each \"type\" of thing in a separate collection and utilize Mongoose's \"populate\" functionality to essentially relate the records together. Now, I am sure someone is going to say that that is going against the whole NoSQL thing, but I haven't really read anywhere that says that just because something stores documents instead of records and has no set schema on the db level that it can't be made relational. In my experiment, I have \"Posts\" and \"Comments\". I see four ways to store the relation between these two:   * The full data for each comment is put directly onto the post as a subdocument. There are two main cons that I have seen with this: If I decide to put comments on something else (let say a \"Page\") as well, I have to essentially repeat myself and it isn't quite as simple to find out how many comments a user has posted if the comments are actually stored in several collections   * Comments are a separate collection and they store their parent's key and a Schema name for mongoose to use when populating (the schema name switching wouldn't be automatic). This isn't too bad, but its biased towards loading comments first and posts later. Finding out the comments on a post isn't hard, but requires a manual query.   * Comments are a separate collection and posts have a list of comment ids that relate to them. This is biased towards loading posts first and finding out what a comment is attached to becomes difficult. However, mongoose would let me load the comments without having to write anything additional.   * Comments are a separate collection and have a parent id. Posts also have a list of comment ids. This combines the above two methods and neutralizes their cons and makes for relatively few \"manual\" queries, but introduces the possibility of data becoming dirty and out of sync like the legacy system that I described above (e.g. a comment says it belongs to one post and another post (or multiple posts) claims that they own that comment). I was going down the latter path listed above and I realized that I was starting to enter the realm of this legacy system that had caused so many headaches with its manually updated indexes and possibility for bad data. Now, I don't expect to do a ton with this little experiment of mine, but its the principal of the thing that has me thinking. What would you all recommend to go with on this? I want to be able to keep query counts low, but I also don't want to have to remember to update all these indexes. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. Another option, of course, is to just use MySQL with some nice schema constraints, but that isn't the point of this particular exercise for me since I've done that tons of times already."}
{"_id": "250635", "title": "When I test out the difference in time between shifting and multiplying in C, there is no difference. Why?", "text": "I have been taught that shifting in binary is much more efficient than multiplying by 2^k. So I wanted to experiment, and I used the following code to test this out:               #include <time.h>     #include <stdio.h>          int main() {         clock_t launch = clock();         int test = 0x01;         int runs;              //simple loop that oscillates between int 1 and int 2         for (runs = 0; runs < 100000000; runs++) {                   // I first compiled + ran it a few times with this:         test *= 2;              // then I recompiled + ran it a few times with:         test <<= 1;              // set back to 1 each time         test >>= 1;         }              clock_t done = clock();         double diff = (done - launch);         printf(\"%f\\n\",diff);     }      For both versions, the print out was approximately 440000, give or take 10000. There was no (visually, at least) significant difference between the two versions' outputs. So my question is, is there something wrong with my methodology? Should there even be a visual difference? Does this have something to do with the architecture of my computer, the compiler, or something else?"}
{"_id": "187963", "title": "When would using a scripting language within a larger program be useful?", "text": "I have heard of several situations of people using say, JavaScript or Python (or something), inside a program written in C#. When would using a language like JavaScript to do something in a C# program be better then just doing it in C#?"}
{"_id": "187965", "title": "Will the Apache License or the GPL License protect my trademarks?", "text": "I'm trying to see if these two open source licenses give protection of trademarks to the originator. I have read both licenses but they only seem to talk about their own trademark i.e. 'Apache'."}
{"_id": "63839", "title": "Joomla or development from scratch?", "text": "As someone who has very little experience in it, I would like to know what makes you think that Joomla can fulfill all you requirements?. What makes you choose it over development from scratch (or using a framework like Yii or Kohana). What are the most common or crucial problem that you are facing when using Joomla? Since I don't have much experience in it, I would pressume that one of the biggest problem is flexibility. You can't scale or customize the behaviour of your app, and even if you could, you need to break some rule in Joomla, or wait for the next release. Is this true?. Currently I am building a long term project, there might be a lot of specific functions and behaviours in it. I would like to build it from scratch or with help from some PHP frameworks. But I've seen so many websites (and some of them are great in terms of complexity) are using Joomla. This gave me some doubts about choosing the right tech. I would like to know is there any, one or two ultimate reasons to choose Joomla/other."}
{"_id": "75155", "title": "Design of an evaluator object for propagation and IO of results", "text": "We are having a discussion about design. Keep into account this is fortran, so we can't be too smart. We have the following classes: Application, System, Calculator, CalculatorSimple, CalculatorPeriodic, Result. Application is an application object which handles System objects. In order to compute information on the System object, the Application passes System to a Calculator, which returns a Result. Inside Calculator there are two specialized classes CalculatorSimple, and CalculatorComplex, which act on System depending on information available on the system itself. Some Systems require CalculatorSimple. Others require CalculatorComplex. The decision happens inside Calculator, and the Result object may contain additional information if the CalculatorComplex was run. These additional info can be queried with methods on the Result object, to test if the information is present or not. This info is of small size. To keep separation of roles, I want to keep this part unaware of input output. The Result object is received by the Application, and then the Application has the role of writing the data onto the file, according to what it finds on the Result object. A colleague instead proposes to pass the file to the Calculator object, and have it percolate through the chain so that stuff is written directly on the file. The additional point is that we must have only one output file, so when the program runs in parallel, only the master node must write on the output file, which is identified via an absolute path and due to a limitation of our raw IO lib cannot be accessed by MPI slave processes. We need an independent opinion. What would you do ? **Edit** : thanks. I spread votes and awards as much as I could, as there's clearly not a correct answer, just a set of feedbacks."}
{"_id": "147939", "title": "Best overview to modern C++ paradigms?", "text": "I used to write C++ extensively between 8 and 10 years ago. I have since moved on to C# for professional reasons. However, from time to time I see statements like > \"If you're still manually tracking pointer references, you're doing it > wrong\" or > \"C++ is perfectly safe as long as you're using modern concepts like RAII and > not manually allocating memory like a recovering C developer.\" Both of those were standard procedure a decade ago. I have seen that C++ has been improved considerably in recent times; C++ 0x in particular seems like it has some new capabilities. What's the best resource for a \"C/old C++\" programmer to get caught up on \"modern\" C++ patterns and practices?"}
{"_id": "37451", "title": "Telecommuting with a foreign employer as a permanent job", "text": "Does anyone have any experience in telecommuting (working at home) for a company based in some foreign country? By this I don't mean working on some contracted job, but more or less permanent job. Is this even possible, what are options for payment, and can you expect to be paid by usual rates for that country or significantly less? Is there any working hours control, or as long as you deliver on time it's all good."}
{"_id": "147937", "title": "How much detail about a user story can a developer expect?", "text": "The biggest drawback of agile development I have experienced is that people not involved in development focus on the mantra that a user story (3-10 ideal person days) should not contain more than 1-3 sentences like: > As a customer, I can use free-text search so that I can find the products > I'm looking for. Giving this sentence, project managers expect me as a developer to commit to an estimate and develop the story. They assume that agile development means that sentences like this are all they have to provide to developers. I won't blame them because the well-known literature about agile development creates the impression that this would actually work. I've read something like 2 pages in natural language per story in \"Planning XP\", but that's it. Because \"working software\" is favored over \"comprehensive documentation\", this topic seems to be generally avoided. The reality is, of course, that if the developer is given the chance to do so, an interview with the customer brings up a long list of requirements that the customer has about the story: >   * We need boolean operators like AND and OR. >   * We need fuzzy search an all terms. >   * We need to search by single words as well as by phrase. >   * We don't want to find products that meet criteria X, Y, and Z. >   * We want to sort the result. Oh, and by the way, the user can select the > sort criteria in a combo box with options a, b, and c. > So you see that I'm not talking about technical details or software design or even implementation details. It's pure requirements. The longer we talk the more the customer realizes that there's actually quite a lot to say about what they want. But often enough I find myself in the situation that such information is not provided or in very shoddy fashion. Neither is it possible that I do the interview, nor does the person that would be in the position to do the interview provide me with a result of it. Sometimes, managers even come up with technical details like \"we want Lucene search\" but they don't want to think about if they want find only product names or also product descriptions. Sometimes I think they are just lazy ;) For me, this is the top issue in projects I work in (e-business web application, 500-2000 person days per project). I've addressed this problem often enough, and managers are aware that most developers have a problem with the situation. But they believe that developers are just too much \"perfectionists\". They seem annoyed that developers \"always want to have everything specified\". Due to the lack of generally acknowledged numbers it's hard to argue. Everybody knows how long an iteration should be. But nobody can tell how much requirements are needed to estimate and develop a story. Do you have some reference?"}
{"_id": "37457", "title": "How is the price of a website evaluated?", "text": "I cannot find a good way to to ask this question: Every day I read the news about the sale of \"Twitter\" or \"Friendster\" or \"hi5\". What I would like to know is how the price of such websites are evaluated?"}
{"_id": "138166", "title": "I want to publish my slides for students", "text": "I want to make a website for uploading my slides for students but i don't want to use public sites that every one can see my slides, I want only my students to see and download them. what is the best things can I do? Is it to use WordPress for example (I am not sure if I can upload my slides in WordPress or not)? Or is there any easy to install and use script for this purpose?"}
{"_id": "249933", "title": "Why is C++ \"this\" poorly designed?", "text": "1) For every `a` and `b` which are non-const pointers of the same type, you can do `a = b;`, right? 2) Inside non-const member functions the `this` keyword exists, which is a non-const pointer. So logicaly if `b` is same type as `this` you can also do `this = b;` right? Wrong. You cannot do `this = b;`, because `this` uses pointer syntax but logically `this` is a reference! But why on earth is `this` syntactically a pointer but logically reference? Can this weird behavior be corrected in next C++ standard, by introducing a new keyword, for example `me` which will be reference not only logically but also syntactically? (See also my attempt to solve this here: Is it a good idea to \u201c#define me (*this)\u201d ?)"}
{"_id": "249936", "title": "As an API-user, would you tolerate BestPractice Exceptions?", "text": "I'm in the process of designing an API, part of which involves writing POCOs to a database. In C#, we have the `DateTime` structure. The \"default\" value for this (`DateTime.MinValue`) is 01/01/0001. Part of the API serializes POCOs to the database. If a date field is optional, it should _really_ be nullable (in C# syntax, this would be defined as `DateTime?`). What I'd like to avoid, is programmers falling in to the trap of writing `DateTime.MinValue` to the database _at all_. It's a valid date, for sure - but smells of something. So I am debating implementing a `BestPracticeException` class that would be thrown in circumstances such as this. If the user of the API really needs to deal with that date, they probably also need to deal with dates prior to that and need an entirely different structure (e.g comparing how many months have occurred between 500 BC and today). Do you think preventing writing 01/01/0001 to the database, on the whole, is a good thing to do? One might argue that you need to differentiate between being no date entered, and the user entering nothing. My answer to _that_ would be it is the function of a more broader auditing process that would pick that up, rather than attempting to ascertain intent from a field being null, or not null."}
{"_id": "70507", "title": "How do I know that the freelancer (Developer) gave me my money's worth?", "text": "I am hiring a PHP developer to build me a website. Their rate is 70$ an hour. He seems to have a good portfolio and experience. How do I know that I get a good website that is scalable and easy to maintain? Do I ask them to give me code samples so I can review it (I am a programmer but I did not do much PHP)? What are good credentials for a PHP developer? experience with Drupal? LAMP?"}
{"_id": "209063", "title": "Problem in Understanding Algorithm from TAOCP \"Multiply Permutations in Cycle Form\"", "text": "I am not able to understand one algorithm discussed in TAOCP Volume 1; Section 1.3.3 named as \"Algorithm A\" stated as \"Multiply permutations in cycle form\" while compared with the stated example in next page. The step that is not clear is mentioned in 8th and 9th rows;i.e. how can be the \"CURRENT\" value becomes \"g\" after the previous iteration where the CURRENT value was \"d\"? Please refer to \"The Art of Computer Programming Volume 1\" by Knuth for more details (section 1.3.3). It contains the detailed description of this algorithm. Detailed Algorithm: **Algorithm A (Multiply permutations in cycle form).** This algorithm takes a product of cycles, such as (6), and computes the resulting permutation in the form of a product of disjoint cycles. For simplicity, the removal of singleton cycles is not described here; that would be a fairly simple extension of the algorithm. As this algorithm is performed, we successively \"tag\" the elements of the input formula; that is, we mark somehow those symbols of the input formula that have been processed.   * A1. [First pass.] Tag all left parentheses, and replace each right parenthesis by a tagged copy of the element that follows its matching left parenthesis. (See the example in Table 1.)    * A2. [Open.] Searching from left to right, find the first untagged element of the input. (If all elements are tagged, the algorithm terminates.) Set START equal to it; output a left parenthesis; output the element; and tag it.   * A3. [See CURRENT.] Set CURRENT equal to the next element of the formula.   * A4. [Scan formula.] Proceed to the right until either reaching the end of the formula, or finding an element equal to CURRENT; in the latter case, tag it and go back to step A3.   * A5. [CURRENT = START?] If CURRENT i- START, output CURRENT and go back to step A4 starting again at the left of the formula (thereby continuing the development of a cycle in the output).   * A6. [Close.] (A complete cycle in the output has been found.) Output a right parenthesis, and go back to step A2."}
{"_id": "209062", "title": "Where should I put methods that make an Http Request to get data from a web service in iOS development?", "text": "I have a Model Car in my iOS application where it's parameters like name, year, value etc are fetched from a web service in order to fill a list with cars data. **Where should I put the method that asynchronously goes to the server and returns an array of cars (this method already converts the JSON to a Car array)?** My current approach is a static method in my Car class that receives an HttpClient (so I'm able to unit test it mocking the client) and returns an NSArray of cars, is this good? What have you guys done in this situation? I'm concerned because I recently started reading clean code which says that a Class should do only one thing, and the way I have it now appears to do 2 things (hold information about a Car and get a list of cars)."}
{"_id": "147388", "title": "Static objects and concurrency in a web application", "text": "I'm developing small Java Web Applications on Tomcat server and I'm using MySQL as my database. Up until now I was using a connection singleton for accessing the database but I found out that this will ensure just on connection per Application and there will be problems if multiple users want to access the database in the same time. (They all have to make us of that single Connection object). I created a `Connection Pool` and I hope that this is the correct way of doing things. Furthermore it seems that I developed the bad habit of creating a lot of static object and static methods (mainly because I was under the wrong impression that every static object will be duplicated for every client which accesses my application). Because of this all the Service Classes ( classes used to handle database data) are static and distributed through a `ServiceFactory`:               public class ServiceFactory {          private static final String JDBC = \"JDBC\";     private static String impl;          private static AccountService accountService;     private static BoardService boardService;          public static AccountService getAccountService(){         initConfig();              if (accountService == null){             if (impl.equalsIgnoreCase(JDBC)){                 accountService = new JDBCAccountService();             }         }              return accountService;     }          public static BoardService getBoardService(){          initConfig();              if (boardService == null){             if (impl.equalsIgnoreCase(JDBC)){                 boardService = new JDBCBoardService();             }         }              return boardService;     }     private static void initConfig(){         if (StringUtil.isEmpty(impl)){             impl = ConfigUtil.getProperty(\"service.implementation\");                  // If the config failed initialize with standard             if (StringUtil.isEmpty(impl)){                 impl = JDBC;             }         }     }      This was the factory class which, as you can see, allows just one Service to exist at any time. Now, is this a bad practice? What happens if let's say 1k users access `AccountService` simultaneously? I know that all this questions and bad practices come from a bad understanding of the static attribute in a web application and the way the server handles this attributes. Any help on this topic would be more than welcomed. Thank you for your time!"}
{"_id": "255253", "title": "Data persistence for transactional customer emails", "text": "I'm developing a system to handle sending transactional emails to our customers. This is how it works:   1. An event occurs during the order's life cycle, for example 'shipped'    2. This event will trigger the creation of an email in the database (email queue)    3. A separate windows service is polling the db table for new emails to send. When it finds one it calls a Web service with all the required data. It's the Web service's responsibility to handle the actual sending of the email.  My question relates to step 2. When an email triggering event occurs, should I take a snapshot of all the data required by the service (thereby duplicating data and introducing new tables) or should I get the required data from the transactional db tables only at the point where I'm ready to call the Web service. [Note: I'm not at all concerned with the body of the email, all I'm doing is passing the data to a Web service. The email templates etc are handled by another system. My concern is purely to queue the email notification and pass the required data to the Web service.]"}
{"_id": "54648", "title": "Decompilers - Myth or Fact?", "text": "Lately I have been thinking of application security and binaries and decompilers. (FYI- Decompilers is just an anti-complier, the purpose is to get the source back from the binary)   * Is there such thing as \"Perfect Decompiler\"? or are binaries safe from reverse engineering? (For clarity sake, by \"Perfect\" I mean the original source files with all the variable names/macros/functions/classes/if possible comments in the respective headers and source files used to get the binary)   * What are some of the best practices used to prevent reverse engineering of software? Is it a major concern?   * Also is obfuscation/file permissions the only way to prevent unauthorized hacks on scripts? (call me a script-junky if you should)"}
{"_id": "222130", "title": "What is idiomatic use of arbitrary blocks in C?", "text": "A block is a list of statements to be executed. Examples of where blocks come up in C are after a while statement and in if statements               while( boolean expression)         statement OR block          if (boolean expression)         statement OR block      C also allows a block to be nested in a block. I can use this to reuse variable names, suppose I really like 'x'               int x = 0;     while (x < 10)     {         {             int x = 5;             printf(\"%d\",x)         }         x = x+1;     }      will print the number 5 ten times. I guess I could see situations where keeping the number of variable names low is desirable. Perhaps in macro expansion. However, I cannot see any hard reason to need this feature. Can anyone help me understand uses of this feature by supplying some idioms where it is used."}
{"_id": "232450", "title": "What is a scalable and practical way to search existence of a group of strings in a huge file", "text": "**Context** : I built an app which generates around **1000 domain names** based on user input. I need to check if they are **available or not** by matching against a huge zone file of parsed domain names which is around **2 GB**. I have an amazon micro instance and cannot store the text file in there due to space constraints. I am expecting around **100k - 200k** and more in **search queries** per month. **Naive approach** (Potentially): 1\\. Store the text file in dropbox. Then get the contents of the file and search for the strings and spit out the available domain names on the EC2 instance. I only need to check if domains exist or not. **Should I have to store it in a database?** Some Info: There are currently 100 million dot com names registered according to Verisign. And my parsed domain names are one on each line. Like:   * GOOGLE    * APPLE    * FACEBOOK    * STACKOVERFLOW etc What is the best and practical way to deal with the problem? Ideally the checking should take only a few seconds. But I am fine with anything that works at this point."}
{"_id": "232454", "title": "Readers Writers algorithm help - starvation and no starvation", "text": "I found this link, as an explanation of r/w problem - http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~bart/537/lecturenotes/s7.html But, I'm having problems realizing is there any starvation present here and why? Also, if there is, what should be changed? I would also appreciate help with confirming the answers on the questions that are provided below the lecture: >   * Is the first writer to execute Lock.P() guaranteed to be the first > writer to access the data? > No? >   * Can OKToRead ever get greater than 1? What about OKToWrite? > Yes and No?"}
{"_id": "222139", "title": "why no native compiler of C# or other \u201cproductive\u201d language?", "text": "I've been reading about D and Go and how they aim at being compiled to machine code yet be convenient (like garbage collection, no need to manipulate pointers unless needed) and I agree that there is a need for such a language. However designers of both Go and D for some reason decided to invent a new language. Why? Why not take existing language which is popular, proven to be productive but is not compiled to native code like C#? What are technological reasons for that? Would it be hard to implement garbage collection (D does), linq or something entirely else?"}
{"_id": "106106", "title": "Can applications override the OS keyboard layout?", "text": "We have in-house .NET application, which can be used across multiple languages. Lately we received a strange bug that is when our application is being used, user was unable to enter accent characters (Spanish, Win 7) in other applications (ex: MS Word or Notepad). Strange, huh! Did anyone come across similar bug? If yes how did you solve that?"}
{"_id": "106107", "title": "Test-driven development and improving white box testing skills", "text": "I am an entry level Java Programmer straight out of school. I have good knowledge and experience with J2SE. Can anyone advise me on how to improve or tune my skills towards being a Java white box tester? Wide range of inputs are welcome. And what is Test Driven Development?"}
{"_id": "106104", "title": "How can I use Scrum with a freelance team?", "text": "I'm working in a start-up. I have a background with teamwork and management, but I'm currently the only developer. We have a project that will involve a few developers in the form of 2 freelancers. I will function as a developer as well as the ScrumMaster. The project is scheduled to last three to four months. The 3 developers (myself and the two freelancers) have never worked together before. Would it be possible or advisable to use Scrum to manage this type of project? Would there be any problems organizing or running the team using Scrum?"}
{"_id": "113215", "title": "Is It OK to Develop Against a 3rd Party Library You Discover?", "text": "If you find out a way to interact with a web service API that is not publicly documented as available, and can emulate it within an application you develop, is it illegal to do so? Furthermore is it illegal to charge for a product that you build to interact with these services (maybe all that's needed is a reference to the 3rd party)? An example would be, lets say, Google didn't advertise how to do a search in your program, but you found out how and made it so people could do the search differently than how Google presents it, can you build against the service you discovered and sell a version of it?"}
{"_id": "188886", "title": "What's the standard practice to prevent users from having unreasonable expectations?", "text": "There's some subscription-based data processing web service - users pay via PayPal for the right to use the service. The \"terms of service\" document prepared by lawyers explicitly says that there're no guarantees so customers can't possibly file a lawsuit. Now the service doesn't always work trouble-free. Sometimes there're network problems and so it's unreachable to some clients. Sometimes there's a problem with third-party services the service depends upon. So something like twelve hours per year total it doesn't work. This is not perfect, but IMO very good. Yet clients feel that since they've paid for it - it must just work, period, at all times and they even write claims for compensation to the service support. I'd guess they just don't read the \"terms of service\" but I can't be sure. What's the standard practice (besides having \"terms of service\") to prevent users from having unreasonable expectations?"}
{"_id": "188881", "title": "How to optimize calls to multiple APIs at once and return as one set?", "text": "I have a web app that searches across 2 APIs right now. I have my own Restful web service that I call, and it does all the work on the backend to asynchronously call the 2 APIs and concatenate them into one result set for my web app to use. I want to scale this out and add as many other APIs as I can (currently looking at about 10 more). But as I add APIs, the call to my service gets (potentially) slower and more complex. How do I handle one API not responding ... and other issues that arise? What would be the best way to approach this? Should I create a service call for each API, that way each one is independent and not coupled to all the other calls? Is there a way on the backend to handle the multiple API calls without all the extra complexity it adds? If I go the route of a service call per API, now my client code gets more complex (and I have a lot of clients)? And it's more work for the client, and since I have mobile apps, it will cost the client more data usage. If I go one service call, is there a way to set up some sort of connection so I can return data as I get it, in case one service call hangs?"}
{"_id": "85995", "title": "Matching my skills with Java and Web Programming", "text": "here is my main question:   **What is the most common way that Java is used in web development?** The reason I ask:   I am currently in the process of finding my _first_ internship. Every employer has a separate set of languages, technologies and acronyms they want their candidates to know.   * In school I did well with Java.    * As a hobby and interest I have developed a handful of web pages widgets, scripts, etc. My university emphasized _Java_ , C and theory. My hobbies emphasize HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and a little jQuery, etc. I can't learn a dozen different technologies to satisfy most prospective employers (in what is left of the summer). I think my best bet is combine my skills with Java and my interests in web development. That brings me back to my original question: _What is the most common way that Java is used in web development?_"}
{"_id": "102617", "title": "Pointless Code In Your Source", "text": "I've heard stories of this from senior coders and I've seen some of it myself. It seems that there are more than a few instances of programmers writing pointless code. I will see things like: >   * Method or function calls that do nothing of value. >   * Redundant checks done in a separate class file, object or method. >   * `if` statements that always evaluate to true. >   * Threads that spin off and do nothing of note. > Just to name a few. I've been told that this is because programmers want to intentionally make the code confusing to raise their own worth to the organization or make sure of repeat business in the case of contractual or outsourced work. My question is. Has anyone else seen code like this? What was your conclusion was to why that code was there? If anyone has written code like this, can you share why?"}
{"_id": "36503", "title": "What is \"Open Core\" software?", "text": "What does the term \"Open Core\" software mean?"}
{"_id": "112167", "title": "Is there a \"SMACCS\" for jQuery?", "text": "I find my usage of jQuery scaling in proportion with user expectations and RIA app. development. Problem is, I'm no jQuery Guru. I am looking for some nice practices that also do not require a deep knowledge of js/jquery. An article I ran across today inspired me to ask this question. Is there such a simple set of general guidelines for jQuery? I have not read \"javascript the good parts\" as of yet, so looking for some basic stuff."}
{"_id": "112162", "title": "How much does/should your style imply about your skill in a language?", "text": "Two things I've noticed in the past week that make me wonder:   * An interview where my Perl skills were reviewed. I always use C-style for loops and use map about once in every 10,000 lines of code, so I almost always have to reference it before using it. While I can interpret others code using that, it's not my style and that is for reasons involving readability and ease of changing between languages. I at least perceived that I was dinged for that.   * This answer to my question in which the answerer proceeded to refactor and bullet-proof my tiny script. I admit I was a little bit offended and kind of annoyed at that, though I can understand how that as a habit may be helpful. I understand that in a team, my style will need to adapt what the team has decided is correct -- this is necessary in every project and everybody has their own ideas. Yet I feel like I'm judged for what is syntactically fine and readable code. How much does the style of your smaller snippet code weigh in? Does code like that imply to others that I don't have control of the language because I didn't use all the features? Does my code imply that I'm not familiar with unit testing and proper testing because I didn't fully error-protect a tiny script?"}
{"_id": "230344", "title": "How to create a WinForms project that is \"WPF-ready\"", "text": "I'm a C# developer who hasn't had the privilege of learning WPF yet. However, I recently initiated the architecture phase of a new project which I expect will eventually employ WPF (probably; although ASP.Net is still an option) -- but the GUI development won't begin for _several_ months. (We need to get buy- in on a WinForm-based proof-of-concept before we proceed with full production- grade development.) When we are ready to begin implementing the GUI, I will either learn WPF myself or hire someone with experience (preferably both). So my question is, what are some key fundamentals (design patterns, language essentials, etc) that I could employ right away which would facilitate a smoother migration down the road? For example, my code is a simulation model which will contain a very large number of entities that will eventually need to be \"visualized\", with interactive user-controls. Are there certain techniques that, if implemented from the ground up, would make wiring up these objects with WPF less painful later on? (Like dependency properties, or what- not.) Similarly, if I stick with the MVC approach that I am familiar with for right now, will it be straight-forward to morph that into an MVVM strategy later? Are there some simple concepts that I could apply now that would make the migration easier, but which won't take two weeks out of my current dev- cycle to master? Basically, I am trying to follow Uncle Bob's advice to postpone architectural decisions (in this case, the GUI layer) until I absolutely have to make them. But I want to know if there are any unnecessary migration costs that I could avoid if I anticipate them in advance."}
{"_id": "234853", "title": "Appending local MySQL data to same MySQL data in web server", "text": "my IT boss wanted this scenario to be undertaken: First, we develop an Alumni program using PHP and deploy this in the web server which can be accessed by that school alumni in the web to update their personal data anytime. Then, using exactly that SAME program we must also deploy this locally, thru the LAN in its satellite campus which is far and have a very erratic and unreliable internet connection. The purpose is that that the latter system (in LAN) can still be used to add new alumni data even during \"offline\" periods, and then, once the internet signal is OK, or now being \"online\" to just upload these offline-generated data in MySQL to the web server hosting THE SAME software program. How do we do a seamless data transfer then of this MySQL database - from the LAN to the web server - once the online signal is now steady? Thanks for any advice..."}
{"_id": "83225", "title": "Should a developer be forced to memorize details?", "text": "Many times I forget things about my application. I don't memorize the table names or what a query did and I search to get what I want. My team leader told me I'm supposed to memorize the table names that I use. Is the developer required to `memorize` the table names in the database, the classes names...etc? And if the answer is \"Yes, all the time,\" what should I do to remember those things?"}
{"_id": "34906", "title": "Why is it good not to rely on changing state?", "text": "This question arises out of the question Is Haskell worth learning? Generally a few often repeated statements are made, about how Haskell improves your coding skills in other languages, and furthermore, this is because Haskell is stateless, and that's a good thing. Why? I've seen someone compare this to only typing with the left hand, or perhaps closing your eyes for a day and just relying on touch. Surely there is more to it than that? Does it relate to hardware memory access, or something else which is a big performance gain?"}
{"_id": "202352", "title": "Should we be looking out for lying code?", "text": "This is referring to a discussion in an answer and the comments of this question: What's with the aversion to documentation in the industry?. The answer claimed that \"code can't lie\" and thus should be the go-to location instead of documentation. Several comments pointed out that \"code can lie\". There is truth on both sides, at least partly because of how poorly and inappropriately documentation is handled. Should we be on the lookout for lying code, comparing it against any existing documentation? Or is it usually the best source for what it needs to be doing? If it is agile code, is it less likely to lie, or can that code not lie at all?"}
{"_id": "202356", "title": "Is Node.js future-safe?", "text": "I've been getting great results with Node.js since a year+. Everything is perfect and I couldn't be happier. Yet I have a feeling that this model won't last long and will be forgotten as soon as something replaces JavaScript on the browser, so I'm considering migrating to Haskell or similar as soon as I can. Is Node.js a future-safe technology, or is it a middle-term solution?"}
{"_id": "133156", "title": "When using Git, is using the master branch for active development advisable?", "text": "First, some background, we are in the process of moving all of our project teams over to using git and are in the process of laying down the guidelines for how the repositories should be organized so that certain branches can also be monitored for continuous integration and automatic deployment to the testing servers. Currently there are two models that are developing:   1. Heavily influenced by the nvie.com article on successful branching with the master branch representing the most stable code, a development branch for the bleeding edge code, and an integration branch for code that is ready for QA testing.    2. An alternate model in which the master branch represents the bleeding edge development code, an integration branch for code that is ready for QA testing, and a production branch for the stable code that is ready for deployment. At this point, it is partly a matter of semantics in regards to what the master branch represents, but is doing active development on the master branch actually a good practice or is it not really that relevant?"}
{"_id": "133159", "title": "Entity-Component-System architecture: interaction between systems", "text": "I am studying the Entity-Component-System architecture philosophy. As I have read about it, a typical entity system has: 1) **Entities** \\- which are merely ID tags which have a number of components 2) **Components** \\- which contain _data_ on various aspects of an enity that the component is responsible for 3) **Systems** \\- which update relevant components of every entity. Say, a rendering system updates the rendering component, or simply saying, draws a picture that is stored in the data of that component. A positional and movement system handles position and movement of each entity who has a corresponding component. These statements follow from this article which in my opition tries to be the most clear and pure in it's statements - But the author did not explain how the interaction between systems should be realized. For example, the rendering system must know the data from the positional component of an entity in order to draw it in a correct position. And so on. So the question is - how should I implement the interaction between the various systems?"}
{"_id": "85976", "title": "How should you approach supporting rapidly-updating web browsers?", "text": "Today, Firefox 5 was released. If all goes according to plan, Firefox 7 will be out by the end of the year. Firefox has adopted the Google Chrome development model wherein version numbers are largely unimportant and so just supporting \"the latest (publicly available) one\" is probably the best strategy. But how do you best test that? As my QA guys have pointed out, if you tell the client that you support \"the latest version\" but a version comes out that breaks your site, then you have a problem because now you've stated you support a web browser you don't. And since both Firefox and Chrome now update themselves automatically, the average person probably has no clue or care what version they're running. And having them either not upgrade or roll back is nontrivial. I'm finding there are a number of organizations that mandate their employees use IE (the head of IT subscribes to the Microsoft school of thought), or mandate their employees use Firefox (the head of IT subscribes to the IE-is- insecure school of thought), so Chrome updating constantly was a non-issue. But now that Firefox is a member of that club, I can see this becoming a bigger issue soon. My guess, in the case of Firefox, would be that the Aurora channel is the key, but what is the best way to approach testing it? Should we fix anything that comes up as an issue in Aurora, or should we wait until closer to the scheduled release? Do people automate this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "85975", "title": "Learning Erlang vs learning node.js", "text": "I see a lot of crap online about how Erlang kicks node.js' ass in just about every conceivable category. So I'd like to learn Erlang, and give it a shot, but here's the problem. I'm finding that I have a much harder time picking up Erlang than I did picking up node.js. With node.js, I could pick a relatively complex project, and in a day I had something working. With Erlang, I'm running into barriers, and not going nearly as quickly. So.. for those with more experience, is Erlang complicated to learn, or am I just missing something? Node.js might not be perfect, but I seem to be able to get things done with it."}
{"_id": "47554", "title": "Why does there seem to be a lot of fear in choosing the \"wrong\" language to learn?", "text": "Perhaps its just me, but as a current CS student I have already come across many questions on this site and elsewhere about not just \"Which language should I use for x?\" but also \"Does anyone still use language Y?\" My first CS class was taught in Scheme, which, if I'm not mistaken, isn't used widely (at least in comparison to languages like Java, PHP, Python, etc). Many of my classmates balked at the idea of having to learn a language they would never have to use again, but I don't quite understand where so much of this fear of learning less popular languages comes from. No, I may not use Scheme in any job I get, but I certainly don't regret having learned to use it (albeit in a very beginner, not very in-depth manner in that one semester). I am taking a search engines class this semester, which is done in Perl and again I am seeing classmates complaining about the language choice. I can understand having a favorite language and disliking others but why do some get worked up over learning it in the first place? Can you really learn the \"wrong\" language? Isn't learning something like Scheme or Haskell good mental exercise if nothing else, and useful at least to exposure to different ways of solving problems?"}
{"_id": "125687", "title": "Can I use Ruby to automate everything?", "text": "I face various types of applications (web-based, GUI-based, command-line, etc.) on various platforms (Windows, Linux, etc.) to operate everyday. There is a great opportunity for me to automate tasks by scripting. But almost every type of application and platform has its **native** scripting language or tools (such as VBScript and PowerShell for Windows, Bash scripts for Linux, Selenium for web applications, and AutoIt for GUI applications, etc.). It kills me to learn and maintain so many scripting languages. I have a feeling that Ruby can interoperate with various platforms easily, and it is very expressive. So my question is:   1. It is possible to use Ruby to script everything?   2. If it is, what are the main disadvantages compared to the **native** scripting language of each platform?"}
{"_id": "138837", "title": "When checking for transposed day and month values between two Dates - should comparing 11/11/2000 and 11/11/2000 return true or false?", "text": "Assuming a function with a signature of               boolean isTransposed(Date date1, Date date2);      Example outcomes:               date1   date2           Outcome     06/02/2000  02/06/2000  true     02/06/2000  06/02/2000  true     02/06/2000        null  false     06/02/2000  02/06/1987  false     11/11/2000  11/11/2000  true     04/04/2001  04/04/2000  false      Granted the behavior can be documented but what are your thoughts on `isTransposed('11/11/2000', '11/11/2000')` returning `true` verse `false`?"}
{"_id": "102873", "title": "Should I be able to design good interfaces and produce quality content?", "text": "I'm just coming into my final year of university so I'm going to start looking for jobs as a software developer and I just wanted to know just how important it is to be able to design good looking interfaces and produce good quality content in a software development job? I'm only asking because I struggle to be creative due to my dyslexia but If given a design to do (i.e. a picture or description of some sort) I am able to do it to a high standard, Will this affect my career options?"}
{"_id": "238113", "title": "Controller and Model Interaction", "text": "I'm fairly new to MVC and I'm trying to get a better understanding of it. There is endless information about the theory and general responsibilities of each part of an MVC app, which I've read a good deal of, but I find myself constantly second guessing my implementation. I currently have my application setup where my \"Model\" provides a number of methods that effectively do CRUD work on the application data. Methods like `add_document(name, path)` and `update_account(id, code, name, status)` At this point it works, but it feels clunky, as I effectively have to decide whether I want to write a method to update every property of a model object, or whether I want one method that can handle updating any property for a given object. These methods all interact with model objects in SQLAlchemy (A Python db toolkit and ORM). Lately I've considered the possibility of passing ORM objects back and forth between the Model and Controller. The controller would change a property, then pass the object back to the Model which would handle sessions, commits, and error conditions. While this seems so much easier than writing tons of CRUD methods, it also seems to break the division of responsibility by allowing the Controller to touch ORM objects at all... I was hoping to get some guidance here. Are a whole ton of CRUD operations normal in MVC apps? Is it acceptable to pass ORM objects between the Model and Controller - where the Controller only ever updates properties while the model handles session and database work? I'm also open to alternative ideas about how to separate responsibilities in an elegant way."}
{"_id": "238115", "title": "Is often using int constants as parameters in communication between objects considered bad design?", "text": "An app I'm working on is designed with MVC. The components often interacts with each other by passing int constants, which then have to be interpreted with `if` statements. I'm wondering if this is considered bad OO design. (Not specifically with MVC, but in general). For example: When the user clicks a specific button, the controller is told by the view `controller.somethingHappened(Controller.SOME_INT_VALUE);` The view uses a constant int value in the controller as a message to tell what happened. The controller then has to have a lot of `if` statements to interpret the message from the view. E.g.:               public void somethingHappened(int message){         if(message == AN_INT_VALUE) doSomething();         if(message == ANOTHER_INT_VALUE) doSomeThingElse();         if(message == A_DIFFERENT_INT_VALUE) doAnotherThing();     }      As a result the controller passes another int value into the model, as a message to do something. I.e. `model.doSomething(Model.SOME_INT_VALUE);`. Which forces to model to also have a bunch of `if` statements:               public void doSomething(int message){         if(message == AN_INT_VALUE) doSomething();         if(message == ANOTHER_INT_VALUE) doSomeThingElse();         if(message == A_DIFFERENT_INT_VALUE) doAnotherThing();     }      This results in both the controller and model having a lot of `if`s to interpret the messages the receive. **Is this considered ugly and/or bad design?** Should I try to pass actual objects into methods, or make more specific method calls - instead of passing constants that have to be interpreted with a bunch of `if`s? **Or is this practice of using a lot of constants as messages considered reasonable?** If it is considered bad design, how can I avoid this? _(Please note: For the purpose of this question I'm also referring to enums)_."}
{"_id": "78053", "title": "how to make the move from C++ to java", "text": "I have a few years worth of C++ professional experience under my belt. Recently, I decided to look for a new job, and found out that find a C++ job is not as easy as it used to be. Nearly all jobs posting and head hunters are in the market for Java/C# developers.   Event though I have a some experience with Java, it's not enough to make me interesting to any of the companies I applied for. I've decided that after I get a new job (C++ as it appears) I must get my hands dirty with Java or C# . Currently, my only possible plan is to either join or start my own open source project. But will it be enough? Can such a project replace 2-3 years of working in a commercial company? Is there another way to make the transition?"}
{"_id": "238116", "title": "Describe business logic with diagrams", "text": "I am currently developing a web application for my thesis.I was asked by my professor to make diagrams to describe the business logic. Since I don't have a prior experience, I am pretty confused with all the terminology. I managed to clarify,I think, what business rules and business logic are, but I can't find out how you describe the business logic. Is it something particular or is it something more general? Do I need to learn UML? Does the fact that I use MVC affects the way I'll describe it?"}
{"_id": "238119", "title": "Replacing string comparisons with dictionary lookups", "text": "Given 2 strings s1 and s2, if I do a simple equality check , it is considered to be O(n) when calculating algorithm efficiency. So, if I am using a brute force approach for the rotated substring question the efficiency is O(n^2) (take the 2nd substring, rotate by 1 and check. Repeat till rotations = strlen or matched) However, a Dictionary lookup is considered O(1). If I instead used a dictionary with the sole element having a dummy value and a key = s1. Then , instead of doing a string compare I checked for the existence of s2 in the dictionary, wouldnt my complexity go down to O(n)? Intuitively it doesnt make sense to me, so I'm guessing one of my assumptions is incorrect..."}
{"_id": "137385", "title": "What do you do when you can't seem to understand a certain part of programming?", "text": "I'm learning new languages as I go along, I write code for very basic programs in multiple languages, and I go to classes. I've read books, articles, lessons, videos, you name it, however I can't seem to get the hang of certain things. For example I never understood pointers - what they are good at. (NOT PART OF THE QUESTION - retagging with \"Pointers\" is not required...) * * * My question however, is not what pointers do, but instead how can I understand things like that? If, after reading a book or an article about a certain part of programming, and I don't understand, what do I do? Writing code in a certain feature of programming surely helps, however it doesn't actually help with understand that much. The theoretical part is important in understanding."}
{"_id": "173262", "title": "Gerrit code review, or Github's fork and pull model?", "text": "I am starting a software project that will be team AND community developed. I was previously sold on gerrit, but now Github's fork and pull request model seem to almost provide more tools, ways to visualize commits, and ease of use. For someone who has at least a little experience with both, what are the pros/cons of each, and which would be better for a team based project which wants to leave open the possibility for community development?"}
{"_id": "173260", "title": "Microsoft Dev Centre accounts", "text": "Looks like Microsoft is offering a special offer of 95% of the yearly subscription for the Phone Dev Centre (I didn't say anything about desperate). What I was wondering is do you need a seperate account to publish to the Windows Phone app centre and the Windows App Centre? Also I heard some horror stories about the time it takes to get application published on the Windows phone marketplace, does anyone have any experience with this? Windows Phone Dev Centre Windows App Dev Centre"}
{"_id": "45251", "title": "When would you use multiple languages in one project?", "text": "When would you consider incorporating another language into your project? Some domains are inherently multi-language ( Database interaction, interactive web client side development), but others could be done with 1 language and the idea of introducing another language could hinder understanding more than help it. Currently I have high performance code in C++ that also needs to do a fair amount of routine file and i\\o manipulation which would be easier and faster to write correctly in a higher order language like Python. To be honest I don't know C++ extremely well when it comes to 3rd party libraries including Boost."}
{"_id": "109703", "title": "How to Avoid Fragile Unit Tests?", "text": "We have written close to 3,000 tests -- data has been hard coded, very little reuse of code. This methodology has began to bite us in the ass. As the system changes we find ourselves spending more time fixing broken tests. We have unit, integration and functional tests. What I'm looking for is a definitive way to write manageable and maintainable tests. **Frameworks**   * FakeItEasy   * nUnit   * AutoFixture"}
{"_id": "109702", "title": "Complexity vs maintainability in modern hardware", "text": "Today with the modern hardware and memory coming cheap, how much sense does it make to spend effort to analyze algoriths or data structure complexity?   Wouldn't it be better instead, to focus on clean, maintainable code, readable code than on optimizations for complexity?   Note:I not talking about embedded systems or systems with similar kinds of constraints."}
{"_id": "231431", "title": "UDP distributing/sharding methods", "text": "Currently I'm sending UDP messages to a server which handles and processes the message. To make the processing more scalable, I'd like to have some sort of autoscaling mechanism for the receiving servers. I have two ideas: 1.) Use a UDP load balancing technology   2.) Distribute the messages on the client side. For the second option, I would update the receiving server list on the client side using a background thread on the client and would hit some sort of internal API and retrieve an updated list periodically. My question is, does this sound like a reasonable method? Also, would something like zookeeper be good for this? It would store the server list and be retrieved by the clients."}
{"_id": "109706", "title": "I will be delivering a lecture on Android development tomorrow. Any topics I should cover?", "text": "I have been asked by my local Association for Computing Machinery chapter to give a lecture on Android development, and while I already have some topics to cover, I was curious if the community of SO had any suggestions of things that would be interesting to hear about. Thus selected:   * OpenGL   * Using hardware features (camera, audio, accelerometer, multitouch)   * Good UI practices   * Social media integration"}
{"_id": "246616", "title": "An algorithm for finding converse duplicates of ordered pairs", "text": "Given an array of ordered pairs of values, is there a well-known algorithm to find converse duplicates? [Converse meaning the same values, but in the opposite order.] That is, given [ab,ac,ad,bc,bd,ca,db] is there an efficient way to find ca and db, being the converse duplicates for ac and bd? The application is simple enough: the ordered pairs are edges in a directed graph and if there is a converse edge then a single double-ended edge is to be drawn rather than one edge in each direction. The values are strings, being node names. It can be viewed as a lookup in a sparse array. Given coordinates (a,b), check whether (b,a) exists. However, common programming languages do not (appear to) provide sparse 2d arrays. I have written a solution in ruby using hash-of-hash, but it's about 20 lines of awkward code and an unsatisfying outcome. Writing the same code in a language like C# or Java would be longer. A better solution is sought, in any convenient language (or pseudocode). * * * I haven't attempted to define 'efficient' or 'better', and performance is not an overriding consideration for a drawing of a few hundred nodes. The nodes are not sorted, so the default algorithm would be, for each pair, to form the converse and brute-force search the preceding half. A binary search would require a prior sort. A solution based on hash indexing should be much faster."}
{"_id": "171683", "title": "What's the best language to use for a simple windows 7 dynamic gui desktop app", "text": "[Note: I hope I am not breaking etiquette, but I originally posted a variant on this question here, but am re-asking here because I am making this now solely a question about programming.] I would like to program of the following simple form:   1. The user can produce X number of resizable frames (analogous to HTML frames).   2. Each frame serves as a simple text editor, which you can type into and save the whole configuration including resized windows and text.   3. The user should be able alternately \"freeze\" and present the information, and \"unfreeze\" and edit frames. Thus it will be a cross between a calendar and a text editor. I don't particularly care if it is a web application or not. What languages are ideal for such a setup? I know some C and Python and Html, and am willing to learn others if need be. It seems to me this should be a relatively easy program to make, but I need a little direction before starting. EDIT: My OS is Windows 7."}
{"_id": "148721", "title": "Fluid VS Responsive Website Development Questions", "text": "As I understand these form the basis for targeting a wide array of devices based on the browser size, given it would be a time consuming to generate different layouts targeting different/specific devices and their resolutions. * * * ## Questions: * * *   * Firstly right to the jargon, is there any actual difference between the two or do they mean the same?   * Is it safe to classify the current development mainly a html5/css3 based one?   * What popular frameworks are available to easily implement this?   * What testing methods used in this regard?   * What are the most common compatibility issues in terms of different browser types?   * I understand there are methods like this http://css-tricks.com/resolution-specific-stylesheets/ **which does this come under?**.   * Are there any external browser detection methods besides the API calls specific to the browser that are employed in this regard? * * * **Points of interest [Prior Research before asking these questions]**   1. Why shouldn't \"responsive\" web design be a consideration?   2. Responsive Web Design Tips, Best Practices and Dynamic Image Scaling Techniques   3. A recent list of tutorials 30 Responsive Web Design and Development Tutorials by Eric Shafer on May 14, 2012 * * * ## Update Ive been reading that the basic point of designing content for different layouts to facilitate a responsive web design is to present the most relevant information. now obviously between the smallest screen width and the highest we are missing out on design elements. I gather from here http://flashsolver.com/2012/03/24/5-top-commercial- responsive-web-designs/ The top of the line design layouts (widths) are   * desktop layout (980px)   * tablet layout (768px)   * smartphone layout \u2013 landscape (480px)   * smartphone layout \u2013 portrait (320px) Also we have a popular responsive website testing site http://resizemybrowser.com/ which lists different screen resolutions. I've also come across this while trying to find out the optimal highest layout size to account for http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10538599/default-web- page-width-1024px-or-980px which brings to light seemingly that 1366x768 is a popular web resolution.   * Is it safe to assume that just accounting for proper scaling from width 980px onwards to the maximum size would be sufficient to accommodate this? given we aren't presenting any new information for the new size.   * Does it make sense to have additional information ( which conflicts with purpose of responsive web design) to utilize the top size and beyond?"}
{"_id": "39302", "title": "How to handle people who lie on their resume", "text": "> **Moderator comment** > > Please note that this is a **two year old** question that has just been > migrated from Stack Overflow. Please take your time to read **all** the > answers and ask yourself \"would my answer add anything to this?\". I'm conducting technical interviews to fill a few .NET positions. Many of the people I interview really _do_ know .NET pretty well, but I find at least 90% embellish their skillset anywhere between \"a little\" to \"quite drastically\". Sometimes they fabricate skills relevant to the position they're applying for, sometimes they don't. Most of the people I interview, even the most egregious liars, are not scam artists. They just want to stand out among the crowd, so they drop a few buzzwords on their resume like \"JBoss\", \"LINQ\", \"web services\", \"Django\" or whatever just to pad their skillset and stay competitive. (You might wonder if a person that lies about those skills is just bluffing their way through a technical interview. My interviews involve a lot of hands- on coding and problem-solving - people who attempt to bluff will bomb the hands-on coding portion in the first 3 minutes.) These are two open-ended questions, but it would really help me out when I make my recommendations to the hiring managers:   1. **Regarding interviewing etiquette, should I attempt to determine whether a person really possesses all of the skills they claim to have? Can I do this without making the candidate feel uncomfortable?**   2. **Regarding the final decision, should I recommend candidates who are genuinely qualified for the positions they're applying for, even if they've fabricated portions of their skillset?**"}
{"_id": "233498", "title": "Logging in a latency sensitive system", "text": "Requirements:   1. My application is latency sensitive. Millisecond level responsiveness matters. Not all the time, but when it acts, it needs to be fast.   2. My application needs to log information about what it's done in those times.   3. The actual writing of the logs does not need to be that fast, just the actions.      * However, the log files need to be written at human speed, in other words, I cannot set `immediateFlush` to false. So, obviously, certain kinds of logging are getting offloaded to another thread. I am using logback as a framework, but for certain sorts of log messages I still want to offload the work to another thread. Here is how the system currently works:   * Each part of the latency sensitive system gets a particular logger interface injected. Each of these log methods has a signature specific to the sorts of things I know the logger will need to log.   * A `SimpleLogger` implementation is written for each case. This writes to the log on the same thread.   * I have also written a `ThreadedLogger` which implements ALL the logging interfaces, and gets a \"backing\" logger implementation injected for each sort of logger.   * Whenever a log method is called in `ThreadedLogger`, it wraps the request in an `SomeLogObject implements LogCommand`, throws the objected into a `LinkedBlockingQueue`, and returns. This is similar to the Go4 Command pattern     * There is a consumption thread that blocks on `BlockingQueue.take()` waiting for log objects to come in. When they do, it calls `LogCommand.execute()`, which calls the appropriate method in the backing `Logger` in `ThreadedLogger`.   * Currently the `LogCommand` implementations are very stupid. They just call the appropriate method in the proper injected logger. I am trying to decide if I should refactor this system. Currently, if I need to create a new place to do these offloaded logs, I have to create:   * A new interface   * A new implementation of this interface   * Two new DI bindings (one for the simple logger, one for the `ThreadedLogger` backer)   * A new `LogCommand` implementation   * A new method for creating this `LogCommand` object   * Code for injecting and storing as a field the appropriate logger in `ThreadedLoggger` It seems to me that it would be a lot simpler to offload the creation of the `LogObject` to the calling threads, but I am concerned that I'm exposing too much of the internal workings of the log system if I do that. Not that this is necessarily a problem, but it seems unclean. Another possibility would be to combine the functionality of the simple logger implementations with their respective log objects, so the objects change from being \"I am an object that does logging when given log data\" to \"I am a log event that knows how to log myself\", and these objects can be created by a log factory."}
{"_id": "233497", "title": "Is it bad software design to mix JDBC SQL calls and use an ORM in an application?", "text": "Is it bad software design to have JDBC/raw SQL and also use an ORM? I don't mind using an ORM for boilerplate CRUD, but some queries are better in SQL (for me). I'm not arguing for or against ORMs. I've read about them until I'm blue in the face. I used JDBC in my question, but it could have been DBI, or some other database interface. ORM can be any of them. How about maintainability? Would mixing the strategies complicate it? To me the maintainability of an application efficiently becomes even more blurrier, if it is a compiled language vs. a scripting language. I have to recompile Java. I don't have to recompile Python or PHP. If my SQL is in a model layer, does that change anything? EDIT: If I use find a point where I need to use SQL in my ORM, in my model, what kind of data is sent back? I won't be able to use something like person.save('somevalue'), for example, will I?"}
{"_id": "173191", "title": "Solutions for Project management", "text": "* The team consists of **3** people.    * The method of development is **Scrum**.    * The language of the project is **C++**.    * The project will be under the control of the **git** system.    * The start up budget is **0**. **The following things have to be chosen:**   1. Build and Version Numbering   2. Project documentation ( file with the most common info for current stage of the project, which will be changed every time the new version or subversion of the project emerges )   3. Project management tool ( like Trac or Redmine, I cannot use them, because there is no hosting )   4. Code documentation ( I consider Doxygen ) **The following questions have arisen:**   1. What can you add to the above list of the main solutions for project management in the described project?   2. One of three project participants has linux os (No MS Office), one has Windows and MS Office (does not want to use Libre or Open Office), one has Windows, but does not have MS Office. What formats, tools can u suggest using for project documentation? The variant of using online wiki does not fit, it must be files.   3. OneNote mb is a good tool for project management, but because of the reason mentioned above it is not possible. What can you advise?   4. Offer a system for Build and Version Numbering."}
{"_id": "173193", "title": "Open source library, can the project owner change the license to be more restrictive?", "text": "A company releases a library with an open source MIT license. If they wanted to, could they change the license to be very restrictive so competitors cannot use it? What impact would this have on previous versions? Meaning if on Nov. 1st they make it very restrictive to some other license, would all versions prior to Nov 1st be still on MIT?"}
{"_id": "173192", "title": "How would I implement this application idea?", "text": "I am a D&D gamer and a developer that has mostly worked with ASP.NET applications professionally. I have written some chat bots in Node.js and I have only played a little with PHP but wrote nothing serious. I have had inspiration to create a site that allows a person to keep track of characters (aka the character sheet). I am thinking of using this as a learning opportunity to learn noSQL and to write a full javascript front-end. I want this application to save the value as I change it. So if I edit the armor class, it is saved immediately instead of waiting until I hit the submit button. I think that will make it easier to use while gaming and not losing anything because I forgot to save the change. I have never done anything like this. How do you implement this style of application? Is there a tutorial or howto to get me on the right path? While I would really like to use ASP.NET but I don't have a Windows server to publish on (and I really can't afford to pay for a service). What language that runs on Linux would work well for this type of application? Note: I feel noSQL would work in this case because of the sheer number of tables required to create something like this in SQL."}
{"_id": "173194", "title": "Is there a way to add unique items to an array without doing a ton of comparisons?", "text": "Please bare with me, I want this to be as language agnostic as possible becuase of the languages I am working with (One of which is a language called PowerOn). However, **most languanges support for loops and arrays.** Say I have the following list in an aray:               0x  0  Foo     1x  1  Bar     2x  0  Widget     3x  1  Whatsit     4x  0  Foo     5x  1  Bar      Anything with a 1 should be uniqely added to another array with the following result:               0x  1  Bar     1x  1  Whatsit      Keep in mind this is a very elementry example. In reality, I am dealing with 10's of thousands of elements on the old list. Here is what I have so far. Pseudo Code:               For each element in oldlist      For each element in newlist       Compare       If values oldlist.element equals newlist.element, break new list loop       If reached end of newlist with with nothing equal from oldlist, add value from old list to new list      End     End      **Is there a better way of doing this? Algorithmicly, is there any room for improvement?** And as a bonus qeustion, what is the O notation for this type of algorithm (if there is one)?"}
{"_id": "229942", "title": "Keeping data consistent across ACID database and a bunch of blobs or files", "text": "I have a database that is ACID. And I have a different data storage that is not relational or acid compliant. Let's say its just a bunch of blobs or files. I want to make sure that these two data stores are in sync, so if someone creates a new file the database has a record created. If someone deletes the file the record is deleted. and the other way around. and one operation cannot happen without the other one happening as well, \"if someone wants to put a book in the library they have to put the book in the index\". How to make sure this happens? If I create a process that remembers one action and expects the other one, what happens if the process dies before completing the second action? Should I create some kind of a write ahead log that says \"I am about to do these two things, if you are reading this I died trying to do X, please undo Y\"?"}
{"_id": "88356", "title": "OpenGL CPU vs. GPU", "text": "So I've always been under the impression that doing work on the GPU is always faster than on the CPU. Because of this, in OpenGL, I usually try to do intensive tasks in shaders so they get the speed boost from the GPU. However, now I'm starting to realize that some things simply work better on the CPU and actually perform worse on the GPU (particularly when a geometry shader is involved). For example, in a recent project I did involving procedurally generated terrain, I tried passing a grid of single triangles into a geometry shader, and tesselated each of these triangles into quads with 400 vertices whose height was determined by a noise function. This worked fine, and looked great, but easily maxed out the GPU with only 25 base triangles and caused a very slow framerate. I then discovered that tesselating on the CPU instead, and setting the height (using noise function) in the vertex shader was actually faster! This prompted me to question the benefits of using the GPU as much as possible... So, I was wondering if someone could describe the general pros and cons of using the GPU vs CPU for intensive graphics tasks. I know this mainly comes down to what your trying to achieve, so if necessary, use the above scenario to discuss why the \"CPU + vertex shader\" was actually faster than doing everything in the geometry shader on the GPU. It's possible my hardware (newest macbook pro) isn't optomized well for the geometry shader (thus causing the slow framerate). Also, I read that the vertex shader is very good with parallelism, and would love a quick explanation of how this may have played a role in speeding up my procedural terrain. Any info/advice about CPU/GPU/shaders would be awesome!"}
{"_id": "88359", "title": "Is the Spark View Engine for ASP.NET dead?", "text": "Is the Spark View Engine for ASP.NET dead? I'm considering using it for a new project. I tried to get approved to the Google Groups but nobody would approve me. The last message posted there was in May. I tried emailing the developers but nobody would reply back. I'm not having happy feelings about this using SPARK for a major project of mine at the moment. Is this project now dead especially after the Razor came out?"}
{"_id": "229949", "title": "How to handle field level Acces Security when using Entity Framework", "text": "Scenario: a large existing system (~300 tables, 500 stored procs, 200 views and a code base of several 100k lines) with most security level stuff in stored procedures needs to be refactored (for maintainability reasons and just availability of skills more will likely be moving to the C# layer, as well as we are hoping for performance since we'll be able to better control what gets pulled when better). Entity Framework is something we are seriously considering to make things more easily extensible (inheriting the backend schema from a base class for example without having to track down a massive join yourself each time). Question: how do you handle security with Entity Framework? The examples I've seen where just how to get your model/data model to handle service wide security (tokens for can this guy login? types of things). How can you say a normal user can see these 3 fields on a class but an admin can see these 10? These fields could be logically other classes tables (eg. a particular customers orders). How about things like \"this post is read\"? Do you just add a list of \"haveRead\" people to the class or is there a smarter way to get EF to return different versions of the same object depending on who you are? Is there a way to get EF to do this for you without needed a lot of logic in stored procs? If not how do you manage performance (say a person can see a single object and you hit the model for a list of objects then do the filtering higher up in C# meaning you might be getting 1000's of items but only passing on 1 to the client). Can you lazy load individual fields so that if only weak users are making requests all the admin fields don't get pulled over from the database?"}
{"_id": "177685", "title": "What kind of specific projects can I do to master bitwise operations in C++? Also is there a canonical book?", "text": "I don't use C++ or bitwise operations at my current job but I'm thinking of applying to companies where it is a requirement to be fluent with them (on their tests anyway). **So my question is:** Can anyone suggest a project which will require gaining a fluency in bitwise operations to complete? On a side note, is there a canonical book on optimization techniques using bitwise operations since that seems to be an important use of them?"}
{"_id": "177684", "title": "What are the benefits vs costs of comment annotation in PHP?", "text": "I have just started working with symfony2 and have run across comment annotations. Although comment annotation is not an inherent part of PHP, symfony2 adds support for this feature. My understanding of commenting is that it should make the code more intelligible to the human. The computer shouldn't care what is in comments. What benefits come from doing this type of annotation versus just putting a command in the normal PHP code? ie-               /**      * @Route(\"/{id}\")      * @Method(\"GET\")      * @ParamConverter(\"post\", class=\"SensioBlogBundle:Post\")      * @Template(\"SensioBlogBundle:Annot:post.html.twig\", vars={\"post\"})      * @Cache(smaxage=\"15\")      */     public function showAction(Post $post)     {     }"}
{"_id": "228093", "title": "Good idea to put bug numbers in a comment in the beginning of the source file?", "text": "Is it a good practice to put bug numbers in the file itself inside a header comment? The comments would look something like this:                MODIFIED    (MM/DD/YY)      abc 01/21/14 - Bug 17452317 - npe in drill across in dashboard edit mode           cde 01/17/14 - Bug 2314558  - some other error description      It seems helpful, but is it considered bad practice?"}
{"_id": "159468", "title": "Studies on how well can a programmer understand code in unfamiliar languages?", "text": "Are there any serious studies on how well an experienced programmer who knows language X can understand code written by a competent programmer using language Y, for a good range of widely used languages as X and Y? Of course the real world isn't so simple as a programmers knows just one language. What we'd like to know is: if we do our project in, say, C#, and someday some old physicists who know only Fortran and Algol look at it, to what extent would it make sense to them? Mathematical parts of it might read fine to them, if they ignore what to them are some random-ish punctuation marks. Or, would a Python expert be able to find flaws in my clever Ruby script? There could be issues from the level of superficial syntax to the level of grand concepts such as objects, template metaprogramming, functional and so on. I'm not expecting the one programmer to fully understand every syntax detail of code in a \"foreign language\" or to follow the religion of some grand concept, but wondering to what extent they'd get the main flow of control, find the spot where something is drawn on the screen and what determines its color or size, verify that a robot programmed to drive a car will turn off the engine when it's done, those sorts of things. A good quality study would include published academic research, an official report from some industry group or major software company, though I'll take systematic unbiased observations by experienced leaders of workshops and classes or other sources. Not interested in short blogs, single-case examples, or anecdotes. (Well, maybe a few anecdotes if they make for a good read.)"}
{"_id": "159465", "title": "Web services and business rules engines", "text": "We have a web service that takes in input different types of messages. The function of the webservice is to merely write in a database the content of the messages. There is about one table (with foreign keys to others) for every kind of message. We have been asked to transform the webservice in a configurable product by using a business rules engine. To have full configurability, a collegue suggested that the best way could be transform the webservice from one that accepts many types of messages to one that accepts one type of message, but in the content of the message there is a field that indicates the type of the content. This way, there would be just one table for the messages (plus other tables for static informations), and it would be more configurable using business rules engines. What is the best way to tackle such situation? **Update:** for the business rules engines we are very likely going to use an implementation of the Rete Algorithm, like Drools"}
{"_id": "159461", "title": "Industries and types of projects avoiding OO", "text": "Seems like OO is everywhere. What if someone just doesn't grok it beyond a simple level, no matter how many books, workshops, kindly mentors etc they've had? Like some people are tone-deaf and can't carry a tune in a bucket, there seem to be some who just aren't going to carry on within a project based on deep and sophisticated object designs. Yet these are smart people who surely would be of great benefit in some role in some organization. What types of projects in what industries are largely free from OO, and can be expected to stay that way for the next several years?"}
{"_id": "100506", "title": "One global HashMap vs. many local HashMaps?", "text": "Which is more efficient; which is faster? Trade-offs? Goal is for fast look-ups in a web application. UUIDs are the keys, so global will work.   Approx 50 million values. A global cache is definitely more manageable than many smaller ones, even using JMX. But, I had a hunch that maybe the total overhead of the hashtable's internals would somehow be less with a global hashtable vs many spread out through various classes. However, I cannot find any evidence of this. Edit: Please, you must back-up your claim if it is that the overhead is minimal or even if it is significant. Maybe this should be moved to the Computer Science forum?"}
{"_id": "218834", "title": "Language with syntactic sugar that translates to C++ that looks \"hand-written\"", "text": "I'm a college student and I have homework in C++. My professor wants separate hpp and cpp files for each C++ class. And it just didn't feel good how much I had to type, and how much I had to click to create two new files for every class. I haphazardly put together a simple Python script that would read a single file and generate all the needed classes (the easy stuff like class name, list of members, and list of things to #include I sprinkled with syntactic sugar, but the hard stuff to parse like typenames and function bodies I copied and pasted for the most part, except my script pokes around in a very primitive way to qualify method signatures with the class name when it generates the implementation file). And I felt pretty good about it. But I realized, that if a lot of other people had worked on a similar problem in the past, they probably could have done it better. I know that Chicken scheme translates to C, and so does vala and genie, but from what I understand, with these sorts of translators, you don't really have full control over the C output. Do you know of any translators that output C++ that largely keeps the semantics of C++ intact, so that the output C++ files look handwritten, but the source language is just loaded with wonderful syntax that makes life easier? Maybe even have the language mess with the body of functions so that if I typed something like `vector<int> v = [1,2,3,4,5]` it would become `vector<int> v; v.push_back(1); v.push_back(2); ..` in the generated source? Maybe have braces automatically inserted based on indentation? Have newlines serve as semicolons?"}
{"_id": "218833", "title": "history and application areas of 'pull'/'push' programming paradigm", "text": "Recently reading a lot materials on Reactive Programming, one thing frequently mentioned is the 'PUSH' versus 'PULL' style of application. Event driven ( Reactive programming ) Some of the authors say that both these styles have their area of applications, but aren't most application domains we are trying modeling are all changing rapidly in real world and thus event driven is more appropriate? And why we started from the 'PULL' approach and now turning into 'PUSH' approach, are there specific reasons causing the change?"}
{"_id": "103095", "title": "Why there is a testing team?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why to let / not let developers test their own work Developers develop the code and software. Ya that means they know very well of what they have done. But why there is always a separate department in IT companies called as Testing department? (Mainly for testing developers outcome) Why a developer is not doing **Testing** his or her own code? Is it Testing department knows very well about developers code, if so how come? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "77143", "title": "Is it possible to insert the hash of an executable into the executable itself without changing the resulting hash? What's the best alternative?", "text": "I've been thinking about this problem recently and it really doesn't seem like it's possible, but I figured that I'd ask just in case. Assume a simple program, in pseudocode:               run hash on an executable we think is mimicing the true executable     check the value against the hash that's hard coded into this executable     if it matches, do x     if not, do y      In theory it should be quite secure, since only the true executable would be able to produce the same hash that's coded into the executable, but the minute that hash is compiled into that executable the hash would change. Do you think it's even possible to hard code the resulting hash in any realistic way? On to the question that has a more likely answer; what would be the most secure way to make sure that an executable is in fact the same executable that was distributed with a program and not some impostor executable trying to hijack the system?"}
{"_id": "246612", "title": "How to handle enums in an indirection with functionpointers at ANSI-C?", "text": "Moinsen, I am somehow stucked in a design problem. Language is ANSI-C. Lets assume we have a tinkerbox of software-modules:   * one module for the logic **Logic**   * (at least) one module doing some logging **Logger**   * two modules, both giving a \"frame\" to let the program run, lets say      * one with a GUI     * one for commandline   * ... Therefore, the same logic could used in a comandline- and a graphic-version of the software. The **Logic** has to log some errors but should not know anything about the specific logger as it could be dependent on the \"frame\". It is obvious to give **Logic** a function pointer that has to be filled by the frame to bind the used **Logger** to the **Logic**. At **Logging** -Module (all code Pseudo-ANSI-C):                   void Logger_Log(char *sLogText)         {           //do some stuff         }      At **Logic** -Module:                   void Logic_PseudoLog(char *sLogText)         {           printf(sLogText);         }              void(* Logic_Log)(char *sLogText) = &Logic_PseudoLog;              void Logic_SetLogger(void(* LogFct)(char *sLogText))         {           Logic_Log = LogFct;         }      At GUI/Cmd-Line:                   #include \"Logger.h\"         #include \"Logic.h\"         Logic_SetLogger(&Logger_Log);      Now I want to introduce different severity levels for logging and implement them as an enum in **Logger** :                   //Logger.h:         typedef enum {           DEBUG,           INFO,           ERROR         } teLogLevel;              void Logger-Log(char *sLogText, teLogLevel eLevel);      And here the problem rises: The function-pointer at Logic needs to have the correct signature. To do so, it has to know about `teLogLevel`. Therefore **Logic** has to know about the **Logger** , exactly the case I wanted to avoid with the indirection in the first place.                   #include \"Logger.h\"         void(* Logic_Log)(char *sLogText, teLogLevel eLevel);      The situation as layed out is just an example. Please don't solve it by saying something like \"use `int` instead of `enum`\" or \"build three functions for the levels\". The bottemline question is: **How to handle enums in an indirection with functionpointers at ANSI-C?** **How to \"inject\" enums into a module, that should not now about the origin of the enums?**"}
{"_id": "201073", "title": "Easily add metrics to measure java code usability", "text": "I'm trying to create a process for better understand what's happening in my code. I want to create metrics to automatically give my answers about simple or complex questions like:   1. How many times a url was clicked? (how many requests arrived to a certain servlet method)   2. How many times a certain user requested the same page?   3. How many requests are pending in a queue on average? and so on... Is there an easy way to do this automatically and elegantly (for example - attribute like @CountHits would be great)? I found this open source: http://metrics.codahale.com/getting- started/#reporting-via-jmx But it's too coupled to the code. Not so elegant :/"}
{"_id": "201070", "title": "Best way to set up a dev environment for Node.js using AWS s3?", "text": "We are getting ready to port part of our app over to node.js, and are looking for a way to support s3 uploads and testing in our development environment. Right now we are thinking about setting up test buckets (ie 'myProductionBucket-test'), setting this in our dev environment configuration, and then creating a lifecycle rule to delete content after 24 hours. This seems clunky though, wondering if there is are local alternatives we could run on our dev boxes that might work better. Also, we're leaning towards node-config vs node-convict or just loading json. Any thoughts there also greatly appreciated. **Edit:** We've looked at https://github.com/jubos/fake-s3, and also thought about just mocking for tests, but it would be handy to put and retrieve the same files, since that's the basic function of the app. It seems crazy to pay amazon for running dev/test and production."}
{"_id": "4000", "title": "How involved should our employers be in our education?", "text": "I consider myself a Software Craftsman. I like to attend local user groups and events to learn about new technologies as well as network with other software craftsman. We love to talk about what we're doing, what we're learning, and in general how to get better at the things we like. Some of these meetups and events are free, others are not and sometimes take place during working hours (9am - 5pm). My work generally did not allow me to attend events during office hours unless it directly had something to do with what we were currently implementing/using. Nor did they provide any support to any software resources/plugins that could help boost productivity. For the most part, I've been in charge of educating myself and actually purchasing my own software tools (example: Resharper). My question is: **How involved should our employers be in providing software developers with tools, resources, and general education on up and coming technologies?** Should they provide MSDN subscriptions for their developers to install software at home? Should they pay for conference fees to learn about new technologies?"}
{"_id": "4001", "title": "What are off-shore resources' experiences like working for foreign companies?", "text": "Are you an off-shore coding resource for a foreign company? What are the challenges of working with foreign companies? What helps make the project more successful?"}
{"_id": "68682", "title": "How do you remember encapsulation types for effective use?", "text": "I've been attempting to learn C#.NET for the past month or so, and the array of ideas that seems to always trip me up is encapsulation. As this is one of the three pillars of OOP, I feel that I am operating at a loss for not understanding their use and implementations more clearly. When learning, though, it is often useful to develop or assimilate mnemonics to assist in maintaining all this knowledge. Having a good reference manual on hand is one thing, but keeping a functioning base of understanding is another entirely. When keeping track of whether a type/method is `public`, `private`, `protected`, `static`, or `sealed`, I find myself wondering what and why all at the same time. My question, then is **how do you go about remembering encapsulation keywords and when to use them**? Trial and error is what is working for me now as a student, but I would hope to move beyond that before making professional use of this skill."}
{"_id": "253851", "title": "Ninject/DI: How to correctly pass initialisation data to injected type at runtime", "text": "I have the following two classes:               public class StoreService : IStoreService     {         private IEmailService _emailService;              public StoreService(IEmailService emailService)         {             _emailService = emailService;         }     }          public class EmailService : IEmailService     {     }      Using Ninject I can set up bindings no problem to get it to inject a concrete implementation of IEmailService into the StoreService constructor. StoreService is actually injected into the code behind of an ASP.NET WebForm as so:               [Ninject.Inject]     public IStoreService StoreService { get; set; }      But now I need to change EmailService to accept an object that contains SMTP related settings (that are pulled from the ApplicationSettings of the Web.config). So I changed EmailService to now look like this:               public class EmailService : IEmailService     {         private SMTPSettings _smtpSettings;              public void SetSMTPSettings(SMTPSettings smtpSettings)         {             _smtpSettings = smtpSettings;         }     }      Setting SMTPSettings in this way also requires it to be passed into StoreService (via another public method). This has to be done in the Page_Load method in the WebForms code behind (I only have access to the Settings class in the UI layer). With manual/poor mans DI I could pass SMTPSettings directly into the constructor of EmailService and then inject EmailService into the StoreService constructor. With Ninject I don't have access to the instances of injected types outside of the objects they are injected to, so I have to set their data AFTER Ninject has already injected them via a separate public setter method. This to me seems wrong. How should I really be solving this scenario?"}
{"_id": "170554", "title": "How to check if my open source idea already exists?", "text": "I've got a great idea for an open source project. What should I do before starting, to make sure that I'm not duplicating anyone's efforts? Of course I've googled, but which keywords to use isn't obvious. Is there a site to discuss such ideas? To address a common answer: My goal is not to be the author of a successful project. It is to make sure that this product exists, and can be improved. (There's already a similar commercial venture, which is of low quality and not being developed.) Thus, it won't help me to have the only project that can be found in this niche. If there's a start out there, I'd like to find it and help."}
{"_id": "19425", "title": "Static Create method -- pros and cons compared with constructors", "text": "What are the pros and cons of having static object creation methods over constructors?               class Foo {       private Foo(object arg) { }            public static Foo Create(object arg) {         if (!ValidateParam(arg)) { return null; }         return new Foo(arg);       }     }      Few that I can think of: Pros:   * Return null instead of throwing an exception (name it `TryCreate`). This can make code more terse and clean on the client side. Clients rarely expect a constructor to fail.   * Create different kinds of objects with clear semantics, e.g. `CreatFromName(String name)` and `CreateFromCsvLine(String csvLine)`   * Can return a cached object if necessary, or a derived implementation. Cons:   * Less discoverable, more difficult to skim code.    * Some patterns, like serialization or reflection are more difficult (e.g. `Activator<Foo>.CreateInstance()`)"}
{"_id": "19427", "title": "Which Open Source License to choose for an ASP.NET MVC 3 OpenId StarterKit?", "text": "I've built a ASP.NET MVC 3 (RC at the moment) site that uses OpenID login system. I was still learning about OpenID while implementing this so I commented the code heavily. The result is a site that let's users login/register with OpenID, add other OpenIDs to their account and also remove them. This little project can be then used as a starting point for any new project that would use OpenID login system. It can also be used as a resource for people to learn OpenID with. I decided to release this project as open source. This will be my first open source project and I need to decided what license to use. I want people to be able to use this for any purpose they wish for. They can learn from it, use it for commercial or non-commercial projects and make their own forks of the code. It would also be nice for others to be able to contribute back to the project with stuff like bug fixes on sites like GitHub. But I'd like to be the copyright owner of the code that is under my control. For example the code that is in my GitHub repository (I'll call this the main code base). I've heard that for this I need to get every contributor, that adds code to this code base, to give me the copyright for their contribution. How exactly does this work? I also use other licensed (mostly open source) resources in my projects. Here's their list and their licenses:   * DotNetOpenAuth (Ms-PL)   * T4MVC (part of MvcContrib which is licesned using Apache License 2.0)   * ASP.NET MVC (Ms-PL)   * ADO.NET Entity Framework CTP4 (I couldn't find a license) I of course want to use the main code base for any type of projects I want. Commercial, non-commercial, open source, ... So I have some very important questions here:   1. Which license should I use? I think GPL or LGPL is not suitable here. I was looking at Apache 2, New BSD, MIT and Ms-PL. Ms-PL seems to be a good fit as, but I'm not sure.   2. What restrictions and/or obligations do I have towards the resources I use in this project? I think I read somewhere that I have to add -LICENSE.txt for Ms-PL resources. Is that true? How does this work for Apache 2 and other licenses? What do I have to do if I modify any of these resources' code and then use that in my project?   3. I'd also really like a \"as-is\" clause in the license, so people can't sue me if something goes wrong while they're using my code.   4. Do I need to add anything to my files to make clear what the license is? If so, how do I format that? Also one last thing. If I decide to make a Visual Studio template out of this samples how do I license that?"}
{"_id": "136762", "title": "How does bit flipping / complementing work?", "text": "I am currently learning about bitwise operation, so bear with me. I understand AND, OR, and shifting. What I don't understand is bit flipping. So, `5` is `0101`. When someone says to me \"flip those\", it would result in `1010` which is `10`. So why does `~5`result in `-6`? I think I got this very wrong. Can someone enlight me? (I am putting this here because I think it is a general programming question and not a specific one, which would belong to stack overflow). **Edit 1** Thanks to mcfinnigan's comment I learned that there is a \"most significant bit\" that defines if a number is positive or negative (correct me if I'm wrong). This would explain why positive results are ending up negative and vice versa. However, IMO the example above would result in `-10` then. **Edit 2** Thanks to Don 01001100 and S.Lott, I finally got it."}
{"_id": "239036", "title": "How are negative signed values stored?", "text": "I was watching this video on the maximum and minimum values of signed integers. Take an example of a positive signed value - 0000 0001 The first bit denotes that the number is positive and the last 7 bits are the number itself. So it is easily interpreted as +1. Now take an example of a negative signed value - 1000 0000 which comes out to be -8. Okay, the computer can understand that it is a negative value because of the first bit but how the hell does it understand that 000 0000 means -8? In general, how are negative signed values stored/interpreted in a computer?"}
{"_id": "235431", "title": "Is there any performance benefit in checking the item count prior to executing a foreach loop?", "text": "I saw this in code and was wondering if there is any performance benefit to checking the item count prior to looping:               if (SqlParams.Count > 0)         foreach (var prm in SqlParams)             cmd.Parameters.Add(prm);      I always prefer to do a `null` check instead and let the `foreach` loop just hop out if there are `0` items.               if (SqlParams != null)         foreach (var prm in SqlParams)             cmd.Parameters.Add(prm);      Isn't that the better way?"}
{"_id": "185051", "title": "CQRS with Repository pattern and Inversion of Control (with DI)", "text": "I assigned a POC project to someone where I asked to implement both Command Query Responsibility Segregation, Inversion of Control (with Dependency Injection) and Repository pattern. \u201cSomeone\u201d gave me a POC solution project but I am not sure whether this is the way it is done. I will brief here about the POC project   * The project is a simple 3-tier application \u2013 the Presentation Layer (PL), the Business Logic Layer (BLL) and the Data Access Layer (DAL); each tier being a separate project   * The Presentation Layer is a Web Application, the BLL and DAL are class library projects   * In the Business Layer, there are defined Repository Interfaces. The reference of BLL library is added to DAL project and inside the DAL project there are concrete classes that implement the Repository Interfaces. This is how Inversion of Control is applied   * Since **Command-Query-Responsibility-Segregation** is done, the repository interfaces in the Business Layer only declare Add/Update and Delete methods. For read, there are \u201cRead\u201d interfaces directly in the DAL and in the DAL there are concrete classes that implement these interfaces.   * The Presentation Layer contains reference to both the BLL library and the DAL library. Calls to Add/Update/Delete are routed through the BLL to the DAL while any read is done directly from the DAL. I believe this conforms to Command-Query-Responsibility-Segregation concept of bypassing the BLL for doing reads. Here is an illustration of how this is all setup. There are three projects   * NW.Web   * NW.Business   * NW.DataAccess Below is a snapshot of code in the different layers. **\\-- NW.Web --**               // A class in the Presentation Layer     public class CustomerPage      {              // Business layer Interface from  NW.Business namespace         private ICustomerBusiness ICustB;              //DAL Read interface from NW.DataAccess.Read namepsace         private ICustomerRead<Guid> ICustR;              //Constructor for the Customer Page that uses Constructor Injection       public CustomerPage(ICustomerBusiness ICustB, ICustomerRead<Guid> ICustR)         {             this.ICustB = ICustB;             this.ICustR = ICustR;         }     }      **\\-- NW.Business --**               //Declaration of business interface in the Business Layer     interface ICustomerBusiness     {         void Persist();     }          // A class in the Business Layer that implements the business interface     public class Customer: ICustomerBusiness      {         //Repository interface object that will be injected by Constructor Injection.         private ICustomerRepository ICustRep;              public Customer(ICustomerRepository ICustRep)         {             this.ICustRep = ICustRep;         }              public void Persist()         {                      ICustRep.AddOrUpdate();              }     }          //Declaration of Repository interface in the Business Layer     public interface ICustomerRepository     {         void AddOrUpdate();         void Delete();     }      **\\-- NW.DataAccess--**               public class CustomerRepository : ICustomerRepository     {              public void AddOrUpdate()         {             //implementation of Add or Update         }              public void Delete()         {             //implementation of Delete         }     }          //A Read interface in the Data Access Layer     interface ICustomerRead<T>     {        // A read is returned as DTO since in Database this may map to more than 1 table         CustomerDTO GetCustomerDetails(T id);     }          // An implementation of the Read Interface in the Data Access Layer     namespace NW.DataAccess.Read     {         public class CustomerRead<T> : ICustomerRead<T>          {                  public CustomerDTO GetCustomerDetails(T id)             {                //implementation here             }         }     }      My gut feeling is that there is something wrong here. It seems CQRS or at least the above implementation does not address some requirements   * The Customer Business object (Customer class) may need to read from Database for its internal purpose (like initializing variables etc). With read directly defined in DAL layer, the only way to do this would be to reference the DAL dll in the BLL. But this would create circular reference and go against the IOC that is done   * What happens when there is some common Read requirement across all business objects ?"}
{"_id": "235437", "title": "Why no MVC methodology for desktop applications?", "text": "I'm currently learning how to develop web apps with C#, ASP, .NET and MVC. I am enjoying the MVC paradigm a lot, but then thought about using this to develop desktop software with. I googled around, but found nothing using the MVC pattern to create desktop apps that connect to databases. So what software pattern do .net programmers like use if they not using MVC? Thanks."}
{"_id": "181745", "title": "What are the cons of using XML for GUI development?", "text": "I'm hoping this question fits within the scope of Programmers SE and that it's not too open ended. I've always hated GUI design. I don't mean to offend anyone, but I've hated CSS/HTML, I've hated Java Swing, I can't stand any type of GUI editor, and in general I don't have any skill making anything look nice. But then the Android platform came around, and I've been in love with it ever since. GUI design isn't a problem anymore, because the abstraction of the design in XML files (which combine both structure and style) out of the code (Java files). It was clean, easy to use, and very extensible. Making themes was incredibly easy, and it followed the same structure as the concept of overriding in computer science. This brings me to my question. The Android platform was released in 2007. It's been 5 years as of the posting of this question. And yet I haven't seen this idea of XML for GUI design pop up anywhere other than for Android. (For reference on how android design works, here's an official hello world tutorial) Are there any cons that would make using XML for GUI design a bad choice for either web or desktop development? Are there any other reasons why this type of model would be hard to make or use or simply any reason preventing it from becoming widespread? As for a little context, this question popped into my head as I was recently struggling with a GridBagLayout in Java."}
{"_id": "203302", "title": "How does the ? make a quantifier lazy in regex", "text": "I've been looking into regex lately and figured that the `?` operator makes the `*`,`+`, or `?` lazy. My question is how does it do that? Is it that `*?` for example is a special operator, or does the `?` have an effect on the `*`? In other words, does regex recognize `*?` as one operator in itself, or does regex recognize `*?` as the two separate operators `*` and `?`? If it is the case that `*?` is being recognized as two separate operators, how does the `?` affect the `*` to make it lazy. If `?` means that the `*` is optional, shouldn't this mean that the `*` doesn't have to exists at all. If so, then in a statement `.*?` wouldn't regex just match separate letters and the whole string instead of the shorter string? Please explain, I'm desperate to understand."}
{"_id": "203303", "title": "Is a function plotter a legitimate use of eval() in JavaScript?", "text": "From PHP development I know that eval is evil and I've recently read What constitutes \u201cProper use\u201d of the javascript Eval feature? and Don't be eval. The only proper use of eval I've read is Ajax. I'm currently developing a visualization tool that lets users see how polynomials can interpolate functions:   * Example   * Code on GitHub ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RSRab.png) I use eval for evaluation of arbitrary functions. Is this a legitimate use of eval? How could I get rid of eval? I want the user to be able to execute any function of the following forms:   1. a x^i with a,i in R   2. sin, cos, tan   3. b^x with b in R   4. any combination that you can get by      * adding (e.g. x^2 + x^3 + sin(x)),     * multiplying (e.g. sin(x)*x^2) or      * inserting (e.g. sin(x^2))"}
{"_id": "38894", "title": "Advice On How To Securely Manage [Client] Server Details Across Team?", "text": "Does anybody have any advice on this? I currently work as a kind of lead developer/team leader and we have some remote team members and sometimes a contractor or two. At times, the entire team might be working on a large project and server details are usually managed by the entire team. What is the best practice way to deal with this? Is there something I'm missing? I can't see anyway to have somebody access a server without the details. Also, I'm considering the security protection they have on their machines, should I be ensuring certain things happen to the data like encryption, shredding. Should I use a 'company' proxy for connections? Please advise!"}
{"_id": "38891", "title": "Starting my first RoR project, what JS library is good to go with it?", "text": "I'm starting my first Ruby on Rails project as I've been excited about the language for quite a while now and I'm sick of writing PHP. I've gathered that rails is pretty much an automation framework which should really speed up programming on the backend for me. Though this does not impact the frontend, I still need to write tables, styles and div's to put my layout together. I know there's libraries like ExtJS out there that automate a big part of this process but I was wondering if there's any frameworks out there that actually integrate with Ruby on Rails, as in, offer a build-in way to handle ajax queries for example. **TLDR** : I would really appreciate some tips on a good JS framework to go with Ruby on Rails."}
{"_id": "253153", "title": "How do processes communicate?", "text": "What transports/pipes/interops are available that most or all languages support across OSs? Not necessarily, network, but interprocess. Or is interprocess communication OS specific? I mean, for instance, the COM interop is on windows. Is there an equivalent on Linux, for instance, that would work the same and a programming language could use interchangeably? I know most languages support network IO. Do we have to use that for interprocess communication or are there other options?"}
{"_id": "256228", "title": "how to upgrade software", "text": "I am a beginner in computer programming with C/C++. I have previous experience in programming for the web. There is some confusion that I am having with the software development process in desktop applications. Web applications are easy to upgrade because it is basically a bunch of source files, but I have a question about desktop applications. The major thing I notice about desktop applications is that they are released in different versions. This requires the user to go through the uninstall/re-install process in order to obtain a newer version of the software. In C/C++ software for various platforms, how would a programmer implement an \"upgrade\" option that would allow a user to update an already installed application without having to go back to a website. How hard is it to upgrade an executable file on platforms like Windows and Linux. I understand that the process may be different for different platforms. Say, for example, I have a desktop application (version 1) that the user has already downloaded and installed onto their own PC. After a while, I make some changes to the software and make improvements that the user would want applied to their software. The user has made customizations to the software, but would like to upgrade to version 2 without having to re-customize their application all over again. Originally, I thought that an \"upgrade\" feature would replace certain parts of an executable file, but is that really what you would have to do? My main question is: How exactly would someone go about accomplishing this \"upgrade\" process? Is it possible?"}
{"_id": "80225", "title": "Has any language become greatly popular for something other than its intended purpose?", "text": "Take this scenario:   * A programmer creates a language to solve some problem.   * He then releases this language to help others solve problems like it.   * Another programmer discovers it's actually much better for some different category of problems.   * By virtue of this new application, the language then becomes popular for that application primarily. **Are there any instances of this actually occurring?** Put another way, does the intended purpose of a language have any bearing on how it's actually used, or whether it becomes popular? Is it even important that a language _have_ an advertised purpose?"}
{"_id": "80227", "title": "Scoping recommendations while developing in C", "text": "While developing a library using C, what are your recommendations about variable and function scoping? In C++, OOP and namespaces made the whole thing a lot easier. But how to do that with plain C? Specially how to use the keywords `static` and `extern` in headers and code files to manage scoping?"}
{"_id": "218163", "title": "How would you model an objects representing different phases of an entity life cycle?", "text": "I believe the scenario is common mostly in business workflows - for example: loan management the process starts with a loan application, then there's the loan offer, the 'live' loan, and maybe also finished loans.   * all these objects are related, and share many fields   * all these objects have also many fields that are unique for each entity   * the variety of objects maybe large, and the transformation between the may not be linear (for example: a single loan application may end up as several loans of different types) How would you model this? some options:   * an entity for each type, each containing the relevant fields (possibly grouping related fields as sub entities) - leads to duplication of data.   * an entity for each object, but instead of duplicating data, each object has a reference to it's predecessor (the loan doesn't contain the loaner details, but a reference to the loan application) - this causes coupling between the object structure, and the way it was created. if we change the loan application, it shouldn't effect the structure of the loan entity.   * one large entity, with fields for the whole life cycle - this can create 'mega objects' with many fields. it also doesn't work well when there's a one to many or many to many relation between the phases."}
{"_id": "20178", "title": "How can I quickly weed out \"copy & paste\" coders?", "text": "I need a way to filter out resumes of folks who just copy-and-paste code then hope it works, and check it in if it does. All this happens without having an understanding (or care) to understand the rest of the code in the system. Sure I know that copying and pasting code is part of learning a new object, control, etc... but how can one tell if that accounts for 70% (or more) of their development career? I've come across some senior level guys perhaps whose skills are so outdated or irrelevant for the project, that all they do is google, copy-then-paste some code without thinking about the solution as a whole. As a result we have a mismash of JSON, AJAX, callbacks, ASMX, WCF and postbacks in the same project. It is clear there is no consistency or logic behind where each technology is being used. In the worst case, this type of developer creates security issues and vectors for attack. **Question** How would you recommend I filter out people who have a poor programming background? Can I do it at the resume level? If not, how do I do this during the interview."}
{"_id": "254320", "title": "Is this a good place to ask a question i have about programing?", "text": "I have asked the same question twice about a program on python and it keeps getting put on hold and i thought this was a good place to ask programming questions and I just wanted to make sure."}
{"_id": "42079", "title": "Is it common practice to hire third parties to do code reviews for contractors?", "text": "I recently observed some contract offers which included a \"code review by third party\" clause - the contract would not pay out fully until the code review was completed and it received a pass. I was surprised, especially considering that these were fairly simple, and small-scale contracts (churning out vanity apps for the iPhone). Is this kind of third-party code review a common thing to run into when contracting out as a programmer?"}
{"_id": "135126", "title": "Should I drop in on local businesses and offer my services as an intern to get experience?", "text": "I am trying to get an entry-level developer job, but have no relevant experience. I am able to code C#, SQL, HTML, and CSS and understand principles of OOP and have completed a couple of applications both in WinForms and WebForms. I've tried applying to graduate roles, but I get blocked by recruiters who don't like my experience so far. I was thinking about writing a detailed report (like a CV) on what I've done so far, visiting software shops, introducing myself, and ask for an internship. Is this an effective way to get my foot in the door in software development? Should I try cold-calling first, to try and get a formal interview?"}
{"_id": "42077", "title": "How do I deal with code of bad quality contributed by a third party?", "text": "I've recently been promoted into managing one of our most important projects. Most of the code in this project has been written by a partner of ours, not by ourselves. The code in question is of _very_ questionable quality. Code duplication, global variables, 6-page long functions, hungarian notation, you name it. And it's in C. I want to do something about this problem, but I have very little leverage on our partner, especially since the code, for all its problems, \"just works, doesn't it?\". To make things worse, we're now nearing the end of this project and must ship soon. Our partner has committed a certain number of person-hours to this project and will not put in more hours. I would very much appreciate any advice or pointers you could give me on how to deal with this situation."}
{"_id": "124570", "title": "Why pointer symbol and multiplication sign are same in C/C++?", "text": "I am writing a _limited_ C/C++ code parser. Now, multiplication and pointer signs give me really a tough time, as both are same. For example,               int main ()     {       int foo(X * p); // forward declaration       bar(x * y);  // function call     }      I need to apply special rules to sort out if `*` is indeed a pointer. In above code, I have to find out if `foo()` is a forward declaration and `bar()` is a function call. Real world code can be lot more complex. Had there been different symbol like `@` for pointers, then it would have been straight forward. The pointers were introduced in `C`, then why some different symbol was not chosen for the same ? Was keyboard so limited ? [It will be an add-on if someone can throw light on how modern day parser deal with this ? Keep in mind that, in one scope `X` can be typename and another scope it can be a variable name, at the same time.]"}
{"_id": "124575", "title": "What is a practical way to debug Rails?", "text": "I get the impression that in practice, debuggers are rarely used for Rails applications. (Likewise for other Ruby apps, as well as Python.) We can compare this to the usual practice for Java or VisualStudio programmers --they use an interactive debugger in a graphical IDE. How do people debug Rails applications _in practice_? I am aware of the variety of debuggers, so no need to mention those, but do serious Rails programmers work without them? If so, why do you choose to do it this way? It seems to me that console printing has its limits when debugging complex logic."}
{"_id": "48612", "title": "Has anyone had a positive experience using Google Analytics in their native iOS app?", "text": "I'm having a hard time finding reviews on Google Analytics for native iOS apps and I was hoping to find some programmers on here that have any experience with it. If so, how well did it work? Thanks so much for your thoughts!"}
{"_id": "134293", "title": "What data structure could I use for modeling a network of nodes and edges?", "text": "My application needs to model of and perform operations on a network with 40 - 50 nodes and typically less than 6 edges per node. Both nodes and edges are objects with around 1K data each. During execution the mapping of the network is frequently changed - nodes added and deleted, edges added and deleted, in addition to the properties of individual nodes and edges being adjusted. The node objects and edge objects are allocated using 'new' with the resulting pointers stored in a `std::list` for each object type. I have experimented with two different approaches for mapping:   1. Put a container in each node to hold IDs of edges, and 2 variables in each edge to store the IDs of the end nodes.   2. Add a new top-level container, separate from the container of edges and container of nodes, to store the mapping information. Functions in the node and member classes will be easier to implement, if the mapping information is stored in those classes. Making changes to the network mapping would be much easier, if all the mapping data was stored separately. But if the mapping is not stored in the nodes and edges, then member functions in the nodes and edges need a way to get mapping information from the parent object. Is there a data structure or a conceptual technique that gives the best of both approaches, without duplicating data or breaking encapsulation? Performance is not major concern, since there are not any extremely expensive calculations involved. The more important concern is for safe, understandable, maintainable code."}
{"_id": "134292", "title": "Product classifying algorithm - text classification - C# - algorithm suggestions", "text": "Alright people. Finally with the help of stackoverflow community i have gathered 20 commercial product selling websites product pages with the following features               Product URL     Product Price     Product Name     Product Category     Product Page Title     Product Page Description     Product Page Keywords      Now with using these features of the products i have to classify them. What does classification means ? Let me explain it. Now as you can imagine every website lists the products in their own ways. There is not format. So lets say iphone 4 is being sold at 20 different websites with 20 different way. So what i need to achieve is grouping the these 20 iphone page at 20 different websites. So when person query my website with iphone 4 word i will show that 20 results. Basically out of over 500.000 product urls i need to group every product. So lets say there are 15 gefore gtx 570 card out of these 500k urls so i need to group them as same product. You can imagine it as google products. But i am doing it at my own country which is Turkey and google does not have product search for Turkey. In short with using the features above what algorithm would you suggest. I don't want to use any training techniques if possible. Everything automated. I am using C# 4.0 WPF and data is stored at the MSSQL 2008 R2 database"}
{"_id": "48616", "title": "How does one learn to program (and think) the Ruby way?", "text": "**Why I Ask this Question:** I've just starting to learn Ruby (and by extension IronRuby since I work in the Microsoft world). I picked up IronRuby Unleased to teach me the basic syntax of Ruby, and any particulars of IronRuby. However, learning the syntax is not my primary goal (if that was, I would just obtain The Ruby Programming Language, which I might get eventually anyway). I say this because I could learn the syntax, but still write programs in a non-Ruby way. Such as:   1. Forcing heavy-handed DI via DI frameworks *****   2. Using Ruby to write mostly C, Java, or Perl type code To me, doing these things sounds the effective equivalent of writing procedural code in Java, or learning the syntax of F#, but writing programs as if the language were C#. **Therefore** , my main goal is to learn to program, to think, in the way that embodies Ruby's:   1. Language idioms   2. Dynamic style   3. Tried-and-true principles and patterns of the community * * * *Response #28 to the link above (Forcing heavy-handed DI via DI frameworks), asks a similar question to the one I post here. The blog's author suggested reading Jim Weirich's code and perhaps Rails. I'm looking for additional suggestions."}
{"_id": "48617", "title": "How does one pluralize <see cref=\"Notation\">'s?", "text": "What is the most appropriate way of writing this comment:                   /// <summary>         /// Order - Identifies the ordinal location of this category         ///     relative to other listed categories.         /// </summary>      if I'm wanting to wrap \"category\" in `<see>` tags? I've considered:                   /// <summary>         /// Order - Identifies the ordinal location of this <see cref=\"Category\"/>         ///     relative to other listed <see cref=\"Category\"/>'s.         /// </summary>      Do you see my dilemma? **Edit:** I should add that I am using Visual Studio's XML Comments. So I am somewhat restricted as to the schema. I believe `cref` has to point to a valid type reference."}
{"_id": "201920", "title": "How to share control of links/domains on an open source project with many collaborators?", "text": "I'm trying to help the Rebol project re-engineer its web presence now that it is open source as Apache 2 -- after nearly two decades of proprietary license! The language's creator currently has registrar control of the rebol.com/.org/.net sites. He wishes to keep control of the `rebol.com` domain as a holding for his Rebol Technologies company (and its remaining non-open codebases). But he has indicated a willingness to let the community take over `rebol.org` and `rebol.net` -- which are sites that show their age at present. They need large overhauls in terms of organization / content / visual theming; and the current proposal is that the .org become a neutral Wikipedia-like documentation and curated module library (with few outbound links), while the .net be a more sociable \"developer network\" of diverse community resources. While the creator is trusted as being benevolent, he can't really be a benevolent dictator for the project, as he has largely released his interest in Rebol due to a new career. Moreover, the turnaround in responding to community concerns has historically been on very long timescales... and hence many alternative sites have popped up to fill in the gaps. The question of how to take control of the issue and get the community to invest in content hosted under the nice domain names--rather than each going their separate direction--is a thorny one. For comparison, I did WHOIS domain- name checks and a little research on the main go-to sites for Ruby and Python. **ruby-lang.org**   * Admin Name: Matsumoto.Yukihiro Matsumoto.Yukihiro   * Admin Organization: Ruby Users Group It seems that the source to ruby-lang.org is maintained on GitHub. If I read it correctly, there are 35 members of the ruby GitHub organization, though I don't know enough about that to know which of these people have commit access or what the checks and balances are. I don't see any official link defining the \"Ruby User's Group\". There is a non-profit called Ruby Central that seems to do some organization, but the only holdings I could find was some controversy when the Rails guy tried to prevent people from using the rails logo. ruby-lang.org seems to have almost no remarks on legal structure. **python.org**   * Admin Name: Domain Administrator   * Admin Organization: Python Software Foundation This seems significantly more formal, as they have bylaws and you can either buy your way into the voting structure with sponsorship...or be nominated / elected by a member of the existing membership. * * * I like how lightweight and trusting the Ruby model is. But if Matz were hit by a bus--then other than people being sad--what would happen? Whose hands would ruby-lang.org fall into? What if the situation were slightly different such that Matz were very trusted on technical matters, but not to follow up on getting site issues fixed in a timely manner? Python seems to have this more planned out, but is rather heavyweight. According to Wikipedia the Python Software Foundation was formed in 2001, has 124 members with Guido Van Rossum as president, and had a budget of $750,000 in 2011! So how might a project with fewer resources manage something as simple as a couple of domain names, and how content disputes will be resolved? There's a desire to reboot the identity...but without some form of enforceable contract it's not likely going to please the parties involved."}
{"_id": "201923", "title": "General questions regarding open-source licensing", "text": "I'm looking to release an open-source iOS software project but I'm very new to the licensing side of the things. While I'm aware that the majority of answers here will not lawyers, I'd appreciate it if anyone could steer me in the right direction. With the exception of the following requirements I'm happy for developers to largely do whatever they want with the projects source code. I'm not interested in any copyleft licensing schemes, and while I'd like to encourage attribution in derivative works it is not required. As such, my requirements are as follows:   * Original source can be distributed and re-distributed (verbatim) both commercially and non-commercially as long as the original copyright information, website link and license is maintained.   * I wish to retain rights to any of the multi-media distributed as part of the project (sound effects, graphics, logo marks, etc). Such assets will be included to allow other developers to easily execute the project, but cannot be re-distributed in any manner.   * I wish to retain rights to the applications name and branding. Futher to selecting an applicable license, I have the following questions:   * The project makes use of a number of third-party libraries (all licensed under variants of the MIT license). I've included individual licenses within the source (and application) and believe I've met all requirements expressed in these licenses, but is there anything else that needs to be done before distributing them as part of my open-source project?   * Also included in my project is a single proprietary, close-sourced library that's used to power a small part of the application. I'm obviously unable to include this in the source release, but what's the best way of handling this? Should I simply weak-link the project and exclude it entirely from the Git project?"}
{"_id": "201924", "title": "Static code analysis for bash scripts", "text": "I program CLI utilities in bash to automate much of my work as a DBA. I would like improve my code and make it more robus,t maybe with the help of some static code analysis tool like the one I used to use for Java. Does any of you use a static code analysis tool for bash scripts ? Is so, which one do you use ? Does one exist ?"}
{"_id": "163016", "title": "What to do when projects are slow and you are being held up by others?", "text": "Where I work, projects take a significant amount of time because the teams are large, there is a lot of \"design and analysis\", a lot of documentation, and work always gets pushed off. I work in the middle tier and I always have to wait for the services and client folks to get their work done. Oftentimes there are weeks at a time when I can't get any work done. I feel bored and weird just sitting here scrambling to at least appear like I am busy. Management seems to do little when asked for more work. What do you do in such cases?"}
{"_id": "139719", "title": "Web Development Algorithms", "text": "While searching for jobs online I noticed that most PHP web developer jobs ask you to know about algorithms and data structures.While I don't know PHP yet I have started to learn it in order to obtain a job in that field. While I have seen some similar questions on the forum I don't feel like the answers satisfied my needs. I already have some knowledge of the quicksort algorithm and how to use a stack from when I was working in Java and Javascript , but I am guessing it is not enough.What I would like is a list of the most common used algorithms in web development."}
{"_id": "231396", "title": "Best way to migrate a series of code (v1, v2, etc) into a new VCS?", "text": "I am completely new to using VCS and haven't settled on Git or Hg, but I do know that I will be using it soon. My old project folder has versions of files labeled v1, v2, etc. How easily can I fold this into a new [local] repo? There are only a few sets of files with version counters (so commit, then copy paste, then commit is an option). I should also note that I am not a classically trained programmer but a self-taught former analytical chemist."}
{"_id": "231397", "title": "Is it conventional to raise a NotImplementedError for methods whose implementation is pending, but not planned to be abstract?", "text": "I like to raise a `NotImplementedError` for any method that I want to implement, but where I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. I might already have a partial implementation, but prepend it with `raise NotImplementedError()` because I don't like it yet. On the other hand, I also like to stick to conventions, because this will make it easier for other people to maintain my code, and conventions might exist for a good reason. However Pythons documentation for NotImplementedError states: > This exception is derived from RuntimeError. In user defined base classes, > abstract methods should raise this exception when they require derived > classes to override the method. That is a much more specific, formal use case than the one I describe. Is it a good, conventional style to raise a `NotImplementedError` simply to indicate that this part of the API is a work in progress? If not, is there a different standardised way of indicating this?"}
{"_id": "139712", "title": "Is performance testing applicable to a QA or business user testing?", "text": "Performance testing is something that I, as a developer do when optimizing. However, if the change is purely optimization, should the QA or business user perform their own performance testing? I would reckon they should, aside from testing that the functionality remains the same. If that's the case, is it acceptable for them to test via manually timing the response time from the screen?"}
{"_id": "236163", "title": "Storing tokens during lexing stage", "text": "I am currently implementing a lexer that breaks XML files up into tokens, I'm considering ways of passing the tokens onto a parser to create a more useful data structure out of said tokens - my current plan is to store them in an arraylist and pass this to the parser , would a link list where each token points to the next be better suited? Or is being able to access tokens by index easier to make a parser for? Or is this all a terrible strategy? Also if anyone has used antlr , I know it uses a token stream to pass tokenized input to the parser, how can the parser make decisions on if the input is valid / create a data structure if it does not have all the tokens from the input yet?"}
{"_id": "236161", "title": "assembly.GetTypes() vs assembly.DefinedTypes.Select(t => t.AsType());", "text": "public static IEnumerable<Type> GetAccessibleTypes(this Assembly assembly)         {             try             {     #if NET40                 return assembly.GetTypes();     #else                 return assembly.DefinedTypes.Select(t => t.AsType());     #endif             }             catch (ReflectionTypeLoadException ex)             {                 // The exception is thrown if some types cannot be loaded in partial trust.                 // For our purposes we just want to get the types that are loaded, which are                 // provided in the Types property of the exception.                 return ex.Types.Where(t => t != null);             }         }      What are differences between assembly.GetTypes() and assembly.DefinedTypes.Select(t => t.AsType()); Original code: https://entityframework.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#src/Common/AssemblyExtensions.cs"}
{"_id": "179541", "title": "Pattern for loading and handling resources", "text": "Many times there is the need to load external resources into the program, may they be graphics, audio samples or text strings. Is there a patten for handling the loading and the handling of such resources? For example: should I have a class that loads all the data and then call it everytime I need the data? As in:               GraphicsHandler.instance().loadAllData()     ...//and then later:     draw(x,y, GraphicsHandler.instance().getData(WATER_IMAGE))     //or maybe     draw(x,y, GraphicsHandler.instance().WATER_IMAGE)      Or should I assign each resource to the class where it belongs? As in (for example, in a game):               Graphics g = GraphicsLoader.load(CHAR01);     Character c = new Character(..., g);     ...     c.draw();      Generally speaking which of these two is the more robust solution?               GraphicsHandler.instance().getData(WATER_IMAGE)     //or     GraphicsHandler.instance().WATER_IMAGE //a constant reference"}
{"_id": "161526", "title": "When to prefer a generalized solution over solving specific cases", "text": "In programming we're often faced with a choice: cover each conceivable use case individually, or solve the general problem: ![XKCD - The General Problem](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_general_problem.png) Its obvious that solving the immediate problem is faster, however creating a generalized solution will save time in the future. How do I know when it's best to try and cover a finite list of cases, or make a generic system to cover all possibilities?"}
{"_id": "70269", "title": "Idea for CAPTCHA", "text": "CAPTCHAs have a lot of downsides, accessibility and user friendliness are two things that are often sacrificed. I've thought of an idea that might work really well, has this ever been attempted before? ## Prerequisites The prerequisite for it is that email verification _must be a requirement_ on your website, which is currently very common. ## Initial Process   * User/robot signs up   * User/robot notified that email verification is required   * Email dispatched in HTML format ## Verification Link in Email The email link will include the verification link. For the example, I've given the link 3 querystring parameters:   * **UID** \\- ID of user registering   * **Code** \\- Unique code for activation   * **F** \\- Fail flag It will render as follows: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/INGm0.png) But the HTML in the email is as follows:               Thank you for registering!<br /><br />          To activate your account, please click on the link below:<br /><br />          <a href=\"http://www.example.com?UID=27&Code=GR452AF&F=1\">h</a><a href=\"http://www.example.com?UID=27&Code=GR452AF&F=2\">ttp://www.example.com/Verify</a>          <br /><br />     Regards<br />     Tom      ## Outcome The assumption here, is that the robot will either click the fail link as it's first in the email, or it will click both links.   * If both links are clicked, we can mark them as a potential bot.   * If only the first link is clicked, we can mark them as a potential bot   * If the second link is the only one clicked, we can assume they are a legitimate user ## Review **Downsides:**   * HTML emails for client must be enabled or it will be very confusing for the end client   * A small % of clicks in the honey pot area of links (however, you could probably hide this H link with some more HTML, but that risks confusing end users depending on how you approach this so I wouldn't try) **Benefits**   * It's not a binary pass/fail. If the fail link is clicked, then you can manually review the account, or resend an activation link.   * It's accessible (as long as the client enables HTML email)   * It's non interruptive for user friendliness, the flow for the user is natural and they wont know they've just passed a CAPTCHA test If this method has a lower false positive rate than traditional methods, it's worth having. Not only that, but it's an invisible verification process from the genuine users point of view. Thoughts? Criticisms? Has this been done before?"}
{"_id": "121438", "title": "Database design", "text": "I'm on the way developing an application which requires a kind of dynamic database, So this is what I want, ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/0fxbc.png) This is the for reading the details of a class, the number of variables and methods will only be known at run-time, and I have to create a number of classes like this. In the above scenario,how can I design a database (MySql) to store all these datas and retrieve them later?"}
{"_id": "176640", "title": "Requiring multithreading/concurrency for implementation of scripting language", "text": "Here's the deal: I'm looking at designing my own scripting/interpreted language for fun. I'm only in the planning stages right now; I want to make sure I have a very strong hold on exactly how I will implement everything before I start coding. What I'm currently struggling with is concurrency. It seems to me like an easy way to avoid the unpredictable performance that comes with garbage collection would be to put the garbage collector in its own thread, and have it run concurrently with the interpreter itself. (To be clear, I don't plan to allow the scripts to be multithreaded themselves; I would simply put a garbage collector to work in a different thread than the interpreter.) This doesn't seem to be a common strategy for many popular scripting languages, probably for portability reasons; I would probably write the interpreter in the UNIX/POSIX threading framework initially and then port it to other platforms (Windows, etc.) if need be. Does anyone have any thoughts in this issue? Would whatever gains I receive by exploiting concurrency be nullified by the portability issues that will inevitably arise? (On that note, am I really correct in my assumption that I would experience great performance gains with a concurrent garbage collector?) Should I move forward with this strategy or step away from it?"}
{"_id": "247209", "title": "Why isn't there a next operation on enums?", "text": "In most popular programming languages like Java and C# there is a way to define `enums`, which are essentially datatypes with a fixed set of values, e.g. `DayOfWeek`. The problem is, given a value, e.g. `DayOfWeek.Monday`, how do I get the next value of the `enum`, in this particular case `DayOfWeek.Tuesday`? I realize that not all `enums` are ordered and there might be different kinds of orders for them (cyclic, partial etc.), but a simple `next` operation would be sufficient in most cases. In fact, since the set of values in a `enum` is fixed and limited, this could be done completely declaratively, assuming there is a means in the language to do so. However in most programming languages that is simply not possible, at least not as easily as it could be in theory. So, my question is: why is that so? What are the reasons for not providing a simple syntax for declaring the `next` value for a `enum`? I suggest, in C# or Java this could even be done with a special _attribute_ or _annotation_ , resp. But there are none, as far as I know. I am explicitly _not asking_ for workarounds; I know that there are alternative solutions. I just want to know why I have to employ a workaround in the first place."}
{"_id": "247203", "title": "Why do some functional programming languages use a space for function application?", "text": "Having looked at some languages for functional programming, I always wondered why some fp-languages use one or more whitespace characters for function application (and definition), whereas most (all?) imperative/object-oriented languages are using parentheses, which seems to be the more mathematical way. I also think that the latter style is much more clear and readable than without the parens. So if we have a function _f(x) = x\u00b2_ there are the two alternatives to calling it:   * FP: `f x` Examples:     * ML, Ocaml, F#     * Haskell     * LISP, Scheme (somehow)   * Non-FP: `f(x)` Examples:     * Almost all imperative languages (I know, see the comments/answers)     * Erlang     * Scala (also allows \"operator notation\" for single arguments) What are the reasons for \"leaving out\" the parentheses?"}
{"_id": "121434", "title": "Is it more sensible to log exceptions in a catch-all or in a base exception class?", "text": "I'm in the process of refactoring a fairly large web app. One of the major issues is inconsistent error handling and I'm trying to come up with a sensible strategy. I've created a custom error handler, via set_error_handler that essentially turns PHP errors in ErrorExceptions and a custom base exception class, that directly inherits from Exception. On production I'm using a generic exception catch-all, via set_exception_handler, and I'm about to add exception logging* to the mix. My dilemma is where to do the actual logging, in the base exception class or in the catch-all. I've thought of a couple of reasons to log it in the catch-all:   * There are quite a few exceptions in the code that need to be converted to some appropriate child of the base exception class. Until that happens, not all exceptions will get logged.   * It somehow feels more natural to do it in the catch-all, a base exception class shouldn't do more than being just that. (It might be a single responsibility principle thing, but it could just be a misguided feeling) and one reason to log in the base exception class:   * Currently the catch-all is only used on production. It would be easy to introduce it on our other environments (development, testing) but that would call for a few adjustments, as errors are handled differently per environment, as on production they are translated to 404/503 error pages. Is there any acceptable practice for where to logging exceptions? * Logging will involve writing to a text file at first, and it may evolve to sending mails for certain types of exceptions. * * * Some clarifications, prompted by @unholysampler's answer: I'm facing a 2*10^6 sloc codebase, with a lot of third party stuff I have no control over, and some of the code I do have control over pre-dates exceptions in PHP. And there's also some crappy recent code, we are recovering from a long period of intense pressure where we virtually had to stop thinking and just hacked. We are actively refactoring to address all the inconsistencies and introduce a sensible error handling approach, but that's going to take some time. I'm more interested in what to do until I reach the point where errors are handled appropriately. I'll probably ask another question on a sensible exception strategy at some point. The main motivation behind logging is to get an email on my phone whenever something bad happens on production. I don't care if data dumps get huge, if they do I'll have a cron job deleting old ones every now and then."}
{"_id": "247200", "title": "Coding shortcuts for type conversions or similar", "text": "bool? example = null;      is actually               Nullable<System.Boolean> example = null;      Now for the `bool` to `System.Boolean` conversion or actually compile-time replacement:   We ususally hardly care, as it is very obvious. I even think I _never_ used `System.Int32` or anything. However:   The conversion into a `Nullable<T>` through appending a `?`, that is something not so common. It is not custom to VS(#devel does it too) and my guess is that it is some secret magic in the compliler. My question is:   Are there more of these \" _Conversions_ \" / typing shortcuts available in `.NET / C#`?   I do NOT mean keyboard shortcuts.   A term to google for or something similar migth be best."}
{"_id": "255059", "title": "UnmarshalException while consuming a web service", "text": "I have a web service based on a number of entity classes. one of them is shows below               @Entity     @Table(name = \"users\")     @XmlRootElement     @NamedQueries({     @NamedQuery(name = \"Users.findAll\", query = \"SELECT u FROM Users u\"),     @NamedQuery(name = \"Users.findByUserName\", query = \"SELECT u FROM Users u WHERE u.userName = :userName\"),     @NamedQuery(name = \"Users.findByUserPassword\", query = \"SELECT u FROM Users u WHERE u.userPassword = :userPassword\")})          public class Users implements Serializable {          private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;          @Id     @Basic(optional = false)     @Column(name = \"user_name\")     private String userName;          @Basic(optional = false)     @Column(name = \"user_password\")     private String userPassword;          @JoinColumn(name = \"user_category_id\", referencedColumnName = \"category_id\")     @ManyToOne(optional = false)     private UserCategory userCategoryId;          @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, mappedBy = \"userName\")     private List<UserRecord> userRecordList;          public Users() {     }          public Users(String userName) {         this.userName = userName;     }          public Users(String userName, String userPassword) {         this.userName = userName;         this.userPassword = userPassword;     }          public String getUserName() {         return userName;     }          public void setUserName(String userName) {         this.userName = userName;     }          public String getUserPassword() {         return userPassword;     }          public void setUserPassword(String userPassword) {         this.userPassword = userPassword;     }          public UserCategory getUserCategoryId() {         return userCategoryId;     }          public void setUserCategoryId(UserCategory userCategoryId) {         this.userCategoryId = userCategoryId;     }          @XmlTransient     public List<UserRecord> getUserRecordList() {         return userRecordList;     }          public void setUserRecordList(List<UserRecord> userRecordList) {         this.userRecordList = userRecordList;     }          @Override     public int hashCode() {         int hash = 0;         hash += (userName != null ? userName.hashCode() : 0);         return hash;     }          @Override     public boolean equals(Object object) {         // TODO: Warning - this method won't work in the case the id fields are not set         if (!(object instanceof Users)) {             return false;         }         Users other = (Users) object;         if ((this.userName == null && other.userName != null) || (this.userName != null && !this.userName.equals(other.userName))) {             return false;         }         return true;     }          @Override     public String toString() {         return userName;     }           }      I was able to successfully deploy the web service and then i added a new Restful web client using netbeans, which created the following class               public class Client {     private WebTarget webTarget;     private javax.ws.rs.client.Client client;     private static final String BASE_URI = \"http://localhost:31691/ProductionEntitiesService/api\";          public Client() {         client = javax.ws.rs.client.ClientBuilder.newClient();         webTarget = client.target(BASE_URI).path(\"entities.users\");     }          ...     public <T> T find_XML(Class<T> responseType, String id) throws ClientErrorException {         WebTarget resource = webTarget;         resource = resource.path(java.text.MessageFormat.format(\"{0}\", new Object[]{id}));         return resource.request(javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType.APPLICATION_XML).get(responseType);     }               public <T> T findAll_XML(Class<T> responseType) throws ClientErrorException {         WebTarget resource = webTarget;         return resource.request(javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType.APPLICATION_XML).get(responseType);     }          public void close() {         client.close();     }          }      This line of code then returned an xml result of the query               result = c.findAll_XML(String.class);      which had this format               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" standalone=\"yes\"?>     <userss>     <users>         <userCategoryId>             <categoryId>2</categoryId>             <userCategory>admin</userCategory>         </userCategoryId>         <userName>admin</userName>         <userPassword>d033e22ae348aeb5660fc2140aec35850c4da997</userPassword>     </users>     </userss>      However, this line of code               List<Users> l = (List<Users>)c.findAll_XML(Users.class);      produces an exception, which seems to be caused by the \"userss\" tag that surrounds the xml result, I'm not sure how that came about. Can anyone help me resolve this?               Exception in thread \"AWT-EventQueue-0\" javax.ws.rs.BadRequestException: HTTP 400 Bad Request     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.AbstractRootElementJaxbProvider.readFrom(AbstractRootElementJaxbProvider.java:124)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.ReaderInterceptorExecutor$TerminalReaderInterceptor.aroundReadFrom(ReaderInterceptorExecutor.java:188)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.ReaderInterceptorExecutor.proceed(ReaderInterceptorExecutor.java:134)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.MessageBodyFactory.readFrom(MessageBodyFactory.java:988)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.InboundMessageContext.readEntity(InboundMessageContext.java:833)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.InboundMessageContext.readEntity(InboundMessageContext.java:768)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.InboundJaxrsResponse.readEntity(InboundJaxrsResponse.java:96)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.translate(JerseyInvocation.java:740)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.access$500(JerseyInvocation.java:88)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation$2.call(JerseyInvocation.java:650)     at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:315)     at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:297)     at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:228)     at org.glassfish.jersey.process.internal.RequestScope.runInScope(RequestScope.java:421)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.invoke(JerseyInvocation.java:646)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation$Builder.method(JerseyInvocation.java:375)     at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation$Builder.get(JerseyInvocation.java:275)     at service.Client.findAll_XML(Client.java:83)     at examples.Find.<init>(Find.java:44)     at examples.Find$1.run(Find.java:166)     at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:311)     at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(EventQueue.java:744)     at java.awt.EventQueue.access$400(EventQueue.java:97)     at java.awt.EventQueue$3.run(EventQueue.java:697)     at java.awt.EventQueue$3.run(EventQueue.java:691)     at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)     at java.security.ProtectionDomain$1.doIntersectionPrivilege(ProtectionDomain.java:75)     at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:714)     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:201)     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:116)     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:105)     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:101)     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:93)     at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:82)      Caused by: javax.xml.bind.UnmarshalException: unexpected element (uri:\"\", local:\"userss\"). Expected elements are <{}userCategory>,<{}users>     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext.handleEvent(UnmarshallingContext.java:681)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportError(Loader.java:247)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportError(Loader.java:242)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.Loader.reportUnexpectedChildElement(Loader.java:109)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext$DefaultRootLoader.childElement(UnmarshallingContext.java:1086)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext._startElement(UnmarshallingContext.java:510)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallingContext.startElement(UnmarshallingContext.java:492)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.SAXConnector.startElement(SAXConnector.java:163)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(AbstractSAXParser.java:509)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:378)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl$NSContentDriver.scanRootElementHook(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:604)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:3122)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl$PrologDriver.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:880)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:606)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.java:117)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:510)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:848)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:777)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:141)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1213)     at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:649)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal0(UnmarshallerImpl.java:243)     at com.sun.xml.internal.bind.v2.runtime.unmarshaller.UnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(UnmarshallerImpl.java:214)     at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:140)     at javax.xml.bind.helpers.AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.unmarshal(AbstractUnmarshallerImpl.java:123)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.XmlRootElementJaxbProvider.readFrom(XmlRootElementJaxbProvider.java:140)     at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.AbstractRootElementJaxbProvider.readFrom(AbstractRootElementJaxbProvider.java:122)     ... 33 more"}
{"_id": "255056", "title": "Whether to store all numbers or just their ranges in database for this application", "text": "I'm developing a (`PHP MySQL`) Web App which will sell dynamically generated real time cell phone numbers for cellular companies. A company will ask for, say, a thousand numbers and this app will check for available numbers and provide them. The number will be an 8 digit figure. The first `two digits` of the number will mostly be fixed as specific `codes` for a particular company, rest of the digits will be dynamically generated. My question is whether               a) I should store all the sold numbers in database, if yes then:        i)  Separate number in separate row or        ii) All the numbers in a single row          b) Should store range of numbers i.e 32500001-32510000      Keeping performance and ease of handling the algorithm in mind, kindly suggest me your solution."}
{"_id": "255051", "title": "Adding an update feature to a web application", "text": "I'm interested in the best approach to adding auto update functionality to a web application. Currently   * The patches are downloaded from the softwares support site   * Uploaded to the host server(s)   * Extracted   * The patch process is run The patch process needs to know a few things, specifically the webroot of the application and the database host, name and user in order to run migrations between the point releases. What I would like to see happen if implement a module inside the application which using some technology similar to cURL fetches the latest package, extracts it and runs the necessary command to apply the patch. However I don't think the end user should be expected to know the specifics of the server. e.g. the location of the application, the database host, user and password. I'm thinking the best way to secure this information would be a separate database table accessed by the update module using the users existing login credentials (provided they had necessary privileges to update the installation) What other considerations do I need to take into account? Are there any factors I have overlooked?"}
{"_id": "137979", "title": "What is the relationship between the business logic layer and the data access layer?", "text": "I'm working on an MVC-ish app _(I'm not very experienced with MVC, hence the \"-ish\")_. My model and data access layer are hard to test because they're very tightly coupled, so I'm trying to uncouple them. What is the nature of the relationship between them? Should just the model know about the DAL? Should just the DAL know about the model? Or should both the model and the DAL be listeners of the other? * * * In my specific case, it's:   * a web application   * the model is client-side (javascript)   * the data is accessed from the back-end using Ajax   * persistence/back-end is currently PHP/MySQL, but may have to switch to Python/GoogleDataStore on the GAE"}
{"_id": "252580", "title": "What to do with a long unfinished project?", "text": "I am a programmer hobbyist (self learnt), and once in a while I like to make games and interactive scripts (nowadays mostly in JavaScript for its ease). Sometimes I start long projects that end up being forgotten because of other things I have to do. Sometimes a project gets really big (say, 3000 lines is a huge deal to me). My code is mostly uncommented, unorganized, and unoptimised and some of my projects are never finished. **Question:**   * What do programmers (or teams), do with such projects ?   * Is there a recommended practice regarding this issue in the \"real world\"?"}
{"_id": "216421", "title": "Working with CPU cycles in Gameboy Advance", "text": "I am working on an GBA emulator and stuck at implementing CPU cycles. I just know the basic knowledge about it, each instruction of ARM and THUMB mode as each different set of cycles for each instructions. Currently I am simply saying every ARM instructions cost 4 cycles and THUMB instructions cost 2 cycles. But how do you implement it like the CPU documentation says? Does instruction cycles vary depending on which section of the memory it's currently accessing to? http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#cpuinstructioncycletimes According to the above specification, it says different memory areas have different waitstates but I don't know what it exactly mean. Furthermore, what are Non-sequential cycle, Sequential cycle, Internal Cycle, Coprocessor Cycle for? I saw in some GBA source code that they are using PC to figure out how many cycles each instruction takes to complete, but how are they doing it?"}
{"_id": "125226", "title": "How can I create Assert.AreEqual(myobject,somevariable) a test in TDD before writing production code?", "text": "Im researching TDD, I'm not really sure how to write a test before I have written production code. The problem is that TDD states that you make assertions and then write your code so that these assertions pass. But You have not created any classes yet (as part of the production code) so how are you meant to write the tests if you dont have any classes with which to assert. Hope someone can explain...."}
{"_id": "137975", "title": "Functional Programming For Embedded Software", "text": "I was discussing F# and Functional Programming with a friend last night and he brought up an interesting question to me. How would you do embedded software in functional? I mean this seems like a fairly natural fit in terms of stateless code but embedded also entails being very frugal with memory and I'm not sure of the story for functional in that regard. Any suggestions about languages or packages for embedded with functional?"}
{"_id": "255584", "title": "How to avoid model duplication in JavaEE web applications with a JSON front end", "text": "Recently we developed a web app that uses the following tech stack:   * hibernate as orm   * spring   * extjs (MVC javascript front end) For 1 business object, let it be a Personnel, we have: 1) a Personnel class (hibernate) 2) PersonnelDTO (will explain why we needed this) 3) a Personnel javascript model for Extjs (I don't know may be other javascript UI frameworks does not need a model defined) Need for number 2 arised when we couldn't deal with sending hibernate objects back and forth, dealing with sessions and circular references etc. etc. Plus, in some cases you need a fully filled Personnel object (full fields joined), sometimes just a few fields and a relation. Sometimes you need all the info to process a Personnel but you can't send it all the way to the client (security, privacy reasons). So we used DTO's to decouple model objects and objects that will be sent through the wire. Adding-removing a field in such a project design becomes very tedious and error prone. Adding a field requires:   * add to DB tables   * add to model object   * add to DTO   * add to model -> DTO converter (when it's a field that can't be automatically mapped) regarding different scenarios that requires different amount of information about model   * add to Extjs model   * add to CRUD forms on the page   * add to client and server validators... Isn't there a better approach to building similar applications? We are thinking of starting a new project and don't want to make the same mistakes."}
{"_id": "255583", "title": "How does one learn QA?", "text": "When starting to learn programming you would usually point someone over to Code Academy, or Learn Python the Hard Way or even The C Programming language and tell them start writing code until it works.   But how would one proceed if he wants to learn QA? More specifically, a programmer who wants to learn about the QA process and how to manage a good QA methodology. I was given the role of jumpstarting a QA process in our company and I'm a bit lost, what are the different types of testing (system, integration, white box, black box) and which are most important to implement first? How would one implement them?"}
{"_id": "255582", "title": "Creating a web app that authenticates users from two different databases", "text": "I am in a bit of an awkward programming situation, and it will help me a lot to get your input in this situation. I am building a web app which expects to authenticate users from another, separate application (through API calls), and also authenticate users from it's own database. Essentially, there are two separate user bases. Let's say the app I'm building is App1, and the other app which I'm making API calls to is App2. This communication is only one-way; App1 makes API calls to App2, but App2 does not make calls to App1. Users can register in App1 and create an account in App1's database - but during this process, App1 makes an API call to App2 to make sure the email/username being entered into App1 is not already present in App2. Now, the other side of this. If a user is already registered in App2, they do not need to go and register again in App1. They can simply go to App1 and log in. In doing so, App1 sends an API call to App2 to authenticate the user, and creates a copy of the App2 user's account in it's own (App1) database. Problems arise when there are two distinct users, one in App1, and the other in App2, that share the same username. Now, when the App2 user attempts to log into App1, there will exist two users in App1 with the same username! How can a scenario like this be avoided? Is this even a place I want to be (working with App2's user base)?"}
{"_id": "255581", "title": "Public API Facade with Micro Services", "text": "Consider a micro service infrastructure in which each service is responsible for one set of activities, and exposes a RESTful interface to its functionality. For example, assume a chat application. We might have one service which is responsible for creating users, and a second service that is responsible for creating messages. Now, we want to create a public-facing REST interface to the application. Are there any best practices for creating this public facade to the micro services? I'm interested in a couple of things, mainly:   1. Which layer should handle authentication/authorization (if the underlying services - do they share this data or each implement their own auth)   2. Clearly in this application messages are sent from users to users. However the message service can easily be written in such a way to be usable for anything. Should the public proxy be the one to determine the user information and then delegate to a message service?"}
{"_id": "255580", "title": "Which JSON Module Should I Download?", "text": "I see there are many modules available to use with Python for using JSON. Now I am a bit confused! I see people are talking about SimpleJSON also there are references to DemJSON and also good words for Metamagic JSON. Now my question is which one is best module for Python? Specially for Python 3.4 version???"}
{"_id": "218665", "title": "How does the CPU know when it received RAM data and instructions?", "text": "Well, the title is pretty much self explanatory, but I'll expound it a bit, and say the origin of my question. So, I've been wondering as to how the CPU knows when it received the RAM. I'm pretty sure it doesn't OR the RAM outputs together, because 0x00 is still a number, yet ORing that together says that the RAM has not outputed anything. Does the RAM have some kind of \"request acknowledged\" line? Well, my friend was making an MC CPU, and he used interrupts for RAM reading, so that's where I got this idea. Anyways, the origin of my problem is probably when I was thinking about Virtual Memory. In virtual memory, you have to fetch from the disk and to the RAM. How does one compensate for the gap between the speeds? May this be answered too?"}
{"_id": "134028", "title": "What sources of sample work should be used in a job interview?", "text": "One of my friends has been laid off. When I talked to him, he said they didn't let him take a copy of anything he worked on. When he asked how to show what he worked on to another employer in an interview, he was told that he will have some explaining to do. Should we, as programmers, be allowed to take samples of our previous work former employers? What sources of code should we be expected to show off in an interview? When almost every employer asks for sample work, how are we to justify what can be sent? Is it our responsibility to maintain after-work projects for our entire life so we have code we can legally show to our next employer?"}
{"_id": "164546", "title": "Using prefix incremented loops in C#", "text": "Back when I started programming in college, a friend encouraged me to use the prefix incrementation operator `++i` instead of the postfix `i++`, citing that there was a slight chance of better performance with no real chance of a downside. I realize this is true in C++, and it's become a general habit that I continue to do. I'm led to believe that it makes little to no difference when used in a loop in C#, regardless of data type. Apparently the ++ operator can't be overridden. Nevertheless, I like the appearance more, and don't see a direct downside to it. It did astonish a coworker just a moment ago though, he made the (fairly logical) assumption that my loop would terminate early as a result. He's a self-taught programmer, and apparently never came across the C++ convention. That made me question whether or not the equivalent behavior of pre- and post- fix increment and decrement operators in loops is well known enough. **Is it acceptable for me to continue using`++i` in looping constructs because of style preference, even though it has no real performance benefit? Or is it likely to cause confusion amongst other programmers?** * * *   * Note: This is assuming the `++i` convention is used consistently throughout all code."}
{"_id": "164542", "title": "Getting URLs from search results", "text": "After 1 months research I basically give up on getting all URL's from a search results programmatically, I looked at Google Search API to find a way to get millions of search results \"URL's\" to be specific to a text file or something relative but no success, but I am 100% there must be a way or trick of doing it. Real Question : Is there anyway programmatically or manually I can get 1000+ search results (URLs using search query e.g. \"Apple\" returns million of results on google and I want as much as possible URLs of them results in a text file) Note : Don't care for any specific search engine or programming language or technique or software or just point me to right direction, but yeah I tried it with google API i can't get more then 100 results at all."}
{"_id": "133214", "title": "Roadblock-confused about structure of program", "text": "I'm new to programming, and I'm working in C. I know that this is structured programming but if I use blocks, say for local variables:               {      int i;      for(i=0; i<25; i++){        printf(\"testing...\\n\");        }     }      Doesnt this make it kind of object oriented-like? Is this still structured?"}
{"_id": "119085", "title": "Who should train new programmers? Junior or senior programmers?", "text": "On my team, we often require the most senior programmers to train/mentor the brand new junior programmers. However, these same senior programmers are the ones who are doing the bulk of the real, important work. I've tried to argue to my manager that it makes sense to have the junior programmers, who are showing a high aptitude, take the new programmers under their wing. First off, it will free up the senior developers to work on more important initiatives (not that mentoring isn't important). Next, it will give the junior programmers a bit of pride in their job that they would be looked to for such a responsibility and they may learn something in teaching. Finally, it will save the company money, as senior developers cost a great deal more than juniors. My boss has failed to be persuaded since this is how it has worked on this team since the beginning of time, apparently. Assuming that the decision has been made that some sort of training/mentoring is mandatory, can anyone provide me with some better arguments or tell me why I am wrong? What does your team do? **We can all agree that seniority does not necessarily denote competence so just assume by \"senior programmers\" i mean \"top programmers\"."}
{"_id": "133219", "title": "Can I re-license Academic Free License code under 2-Clause BSD / ITC?", "text": "I want to fork a piece of code licensed under the Academic Free License. For the project, it would be preferable to re-license it under the ISC License or the 2-Clause BSD license, which are equivalent. I understand that the AFL grants me things such as limitation of liability, but licensing consistency is much more important to the project, especially since we're talking about just 800 lines of code, a quarter of which I've modified in some way. And it's very important for me to give these changes back to the community, given the fact that this is software relevant to security - I need the public scrutiny that I'll get by creating a public fork. In short: At the top of the file I want to say this, or something like it:               # Licensed under the Academic Free License, version 3     # Copyright (C) 2009 Original Author          # Licensed under the ISC License     # Copyright (C) 2012 Stefano Palazzo     # Copyright (C) 2012 Company      Am I allowed to do this? My research so far indicates that it's not clear whether the AFL is GPL- Compatible, and I can't really understand any of the stuff concerning re- licensing to other permissive licenses. As a stop gap, I would also be okay with re-licensing under the GPL, however: I can find no consensus (though I can find disagreement) on whether this is allowed at all, and I don't want to risk it, of course. * * *   * Wikipedia: ISC License   * Wikipedia: Academic Free License"}
{"_id": "162870", "title": "GPL - what is distribution?", "text": "An interesting point came up on another thread about _alleged_ misappropriation of a GPL project. In this case the enterprise software was used by some large companies who essentially took the code, changed the name, removed the GPL notices and used the result. The point was - if the company did this **and** only used the software internally then there isn't any distribution and that's perfectly legal under GPL. Modifications by their own employees for internal use would also be allowed. _So At what point does it become a distribution?_   Presumably if they brought in outside contractors under 'work for hire' their modifications would also be internal and so not a distribution. If they hired an external software outfit to do modifications and those changes were only used internally by the company - would those changes be distributed? Does the GPL apply to the client or to the external developers? If the company then give the result to another department, another business unit, another company? What if the other company is a wholly owned subsidiary? ps. yes I know the _answer_ is ask a lawyer. But all the discussion I have seen over GPL2/GPL3 _distribution_ has been about webservices - not about internal use."}
{"_id": "162874", "title": "Python Coding standards vs. productivity", "text": "I work for a large humanitarian organisation, on a project building software that could help save lives in emergencies by speeding up the distribution of food. Many NGOs desperately need our software and we are weeks behind schedule. One thing that worries me in this project is what I think is an excessive focus on coding standards. We write in python/django and use a version of PEP0008, with various modifications e.g. line lengths can go up to 160 chars and all lines should go that long if possible, no blank lines between imports, line wrapping rules that apply only to certain kinds of classes, lots of templates that we must use, even if they aren't the best way to solve a problem etc. etc. One core dev spent a week rewriting a major part of the system to meet the then new coding standards, throwing away several suites of tests in the process, as the rewrite meant they were 'invalid'. We spent two weeks rewriting all the functionality that was lost, and fixing bugs. He is the lead dev and his word carries weight, so he has convinced the project manager that these standards are necessary. The junior devs do as they are told. I sense that the project manager has a strong feeling of cognitive dissonance about all this but nevertheless agrees with it vehemently as he feels unsure what else to do. Today I got in serious trouble because I had forgotten to put some spaces after commas in a keyword argument. I was literally shouted at by two other devs and the project manager during a Skype call. Personally I think coding standards are important but also think that we are wasting a lot of time obsessing with them, and when I verbalized this it provoked rage. I'm seen as a troublemaker in the team, a team that is looking for scapegoats for its failings. Since the introduction of the coding standards, the team's productivity has measurably plummeted, however this only reinforces the obsession, i.e. the lead dev simply blames our non-adherence to standards for the lack of progress. He believes that we can't read each other's code if we don't adhere to the conventions. This is starting to turn sticky. Now I am trying to modify various scripts, autopep8, pep8ify and PythonTidy to try to match the conventions. We also run pep8 against source code but there are so many implicit amendments to our standard that it's hard to track them all. The lead dev simple picks faults that the pep8 script doesn't pick up and shouts at us in the next stand-up meeting. Every week there are new additions to the coding standards that force us to rewrite existing, working, tested code. Thank heavens we still have tests, (I reverted some commits and fixed a bunch of the ones he removed). All the while there is increasing pressure to meet the deadline. I believe a fundamental issue is that the lead dev and another core dev refuse to trust other developers to do their job. But how to deal with that? We can't do our job because we are too busy rewriting everything. I've never encountered this dynamic in a software engineering team. Am I wrong to question their adherence to coding standards? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how have they dealt with it successfully? (I'm not looking for a discussion just actual solutions people have found)"}
{"_id": "164099", "title": "How do I Export to excel on aspx page?", "text": "I am trying to take data that I request from an access database and put it into and excel file on the client computer. I usually use ajax to request a summary of the data I need. It is formatted into an html table. I need that table to be in an excel format for the user to download. What I have tried already is to use the vb.net code to open excel and silently save the data to a file, however I realized it's the server side that opens excel, not the client side, in my locally testing of the code, excel would open on my machine and create the file. When running this on the network, I realized excel isn't on the server, I am not sure if I should just install it or try stream the file?"}
{"_id": "94859", "title": "Laptops or Notebooks in a meeting?", "text": "Is taking the laptop to the meeting a good idea? Of course, the project leader needs to have one -- but the programmers -- especially those who only need to get straight instructions on what to do next on the project -- do they need to take laptops? I feel it takes longer to save notes in a software -- and it's lot easier to just jot down \"things to do\" in a simple note book. That way you can keep up with the discussion and not lose track of what someone else is saying by spending too much time entering text in the machine."}
{"_id": "179896", "title": "is Microsoft LC random generator patented?", "text": "I need a _very_ simple pseudo random generator (no any specific quality requirements) and I found Microsoft's variant of LCG algorithm used for rand() C runtime library function fit my needs (gcc's one seems too complex). I found the algorithm here: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator#C However, I worry the algorithm (including its \"magic numbers\" i.e coefficients) may by patented or restricted for use in some another way. Is it allowed to use this algorithm without any licence or patent restrictions or not? I can't use library rand() because I need my results to be exactly reproducible on different platforms"}
{"_id": "179894", "title": "Rails-API gem, Is there such thing as an API only application?", "text": "I've built a few API's using the complete rails stack. In each project there have been multiple uses for rails core features. Each of the API has had management screens for monitoring usage, managing authentication keys, etc. Is there such thing as an API without a management front end?"}
{"_id": "195868", "title": "Why use typedefs for structs?", "text": "in C (ANSI, C99, etc.), structs live in their own namespace. A struct for a linked list might look something like this:               struct my_buffer_type {        struct my_buffer_type * next;        struct my_buffer_type * prev;        void * data;     };      It seems quite natural however for most C programmers to automatically typdef those structs like the following               typedef struct tag_buffer_type {        struct my_buffer_type * next;        struct my_buffer_type * prev;        void * data;     } my_buffer_type;      And then reference the struct like a normal type, i.e. `get_next_element(my_buffer_type * ptr)`. Now my question is: Is there a specific reason for this? Wikipedia says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typedef#Usage_concerns > Some people are opposed to the extensive use of typedefs. Most arguments > center on the idea that typedefs simply hide the actual data type of a > variable. For example, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Linux kernel hacker and > documenter, discourages their use for anything except function prototype > declarations. He argues that this practice not only unnecessarily obfuscates > code, it can also cause programmers to accidentally misuse large structures > thinking them to be simple types.[4] > > Others argue that the use of typedefs can make code easier to maintain. K&R > states that there are two reasons for using a typedef. First, it provides a > means to make a program more portable. Instead of having to change a type > everywhere it appears throughout the program's source files, only a single > typedef statement needs to be changed. Second, a typedef can make a complex > declaration easier to understand. I personally wonder if there is not enough benefit of having the separate `struct` namespace to sometimes not use typedef'd structs and since there are several C programming cultures around (Windows C programming has different traditions than Linux C programming in my experience) if there are other traditions that I am not aware of. Then I am interested in historical considerations (predecessors, first versions of C)."}
{"_id": "164094", "title": "Why does Javascript use JSON.stringify instead of JSON.serialize?", "text": "I'm just wondering about _\"stringify\"_ vs _\"serialize\"_. To me they're the same thing (though I could be wrong), but in my past experience (mostly with asp.net) I use `Serialize()` and never use `Stringify()`. I know I can create a simple alias in Javascript,               // either     JSON.serialize = function(input) {         return JSON.stringify(input);     };          // or     JSON.serialize = JSON.stringify;      http://jsfiddle.net/HKKUb/ but I'm just wondering about the difference between the two and why stringify was chosen. * * * for comparison purpose, here's how you serialize XML to a String in C#               public static string SerializeObject<T>(this T toSerialize)     {         XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(toSerialize.GetType());         StringWriter textWriter = new StringWriter();              xmlSerializer.Serialize(textWriter, toSerialize);         return textWriter.ToString();     }"}
{"_id": "164096", "title": "Naming variables with fixed point units", "text": "What should I name a variable that has units with a fixed point?               int herpLimitLo_psig2 = 6000; // 60.00 psig     int derpLimitLoPsigwithtwodigits;     int herpLimitHiPsigfixedtwo;     int herpLimitHi_psig_timesOneHundred;      Apparently I suck at naming things."}
{"_id": "238256", "title": "Use Generic of Specific Function names for similar objects", "text": "Is there a school of thought on putting focus on using generic names for functions, opposed to naming functions based on the things they do? **Example** Say we have a `Bill / Price Sheet` object, that has line items               Bill:     * Shipping Charge  $5.00     * Crate Charge $6.00     * Tax Charge $8.00      Generic function names would be:               //function's code knows how to add a line item     bill->addLineItem(\"Shipping Charge\", 5);     bill->addLineItem(\"Crate Charge\", 6);     bill->addLineItem(\"Tax Charge\", 8);      Specific function names would be:               //function's code reflects knowledge of this specific line item     bill->addShippingCharge(5);       bill->addCrateCharge(6);     bill->addTaxCharge(8);      This can be extended to any set of similar actions where something similar is being done. A more generic function takes the actual parameter, and can be deemed more flexible - any new line item can be added using the same function. A more specific function can only be used for that particular line item. Adding a new type of line item requires a new function. Something tells me that the specific way is more preferred, but I can't verbalize why, and maybe I am wrong. But perhaps it makes the code more clear as to what this line item is intended to do. So if specific naming is superior, and I am writing code for a restaurant with 600 items on the menu (such restaurants do exist), I am not sure I want to have 600 unique functions for each menu item. But in that case maybe a different approach is warranted. So what I am asking here, is if I have a reasonable class of items (i.e. 10-20) for my specific possible line item list, would you recommend any particular approach from the ones described (specific vs general), or does it all depend on my project specifics?"}
{"_id": "114333", "title": " Is there a general pattern that could be used to describe Data Migration?", "text": "In our company we have to dismiss a software and introduce a new one. I have received the task to follow and take care of the whole data migration.   We use 3 different data sources (each containing different kind of information), whose records have to be merged into a unique target DB. Since the new DB has a different schema also some mapping steps are required to coincile data from the two environments. Technically it is everything clear, but I have to describe in a \"proof of concept\" the migration process. **About data migration is there a general pattern that could be used to describe it?** I will describe the involved systems, which data will be moved, the mapping tables used and the planned tests to ensure data quality. However can anyone suggest a different approach? Maybe in this way I can realize that I am missing something in my documentation."}
{"_id": "238254", "title": "Javascript MVC application design (canvas)", "text": "I'm having difficulty grasping how to structure/architect a canvas application using an MVC like approach in Javascript. UI will be fairly fluid and animated, the games fairly simplistic but with heavy emphasis on tweening and animation. I get how MVC works in principle but not in practice. I've googled the buggery out of this, read an awful lot, and am now as confused as I was when I started. Some details about the application area:   * multi screen game framework - multiple games will sit within this framework common UI \"screens\" include: settings, info, choose difficulty, main menu etc.   * multiple input methods   * common UI elements such as top menu bar on some screens   * possibility of using different rendering methods (canvas/DOM/webGL) At the moment I have an AppModel, AppController and AppView. From here I was planning to add each of the \"screens\" and attach it to the AppView. But what about things like the top menu bar, should they be another MVC triad? Where and how would I attach it without tightly coupling components? Is it an accepted practice to have one MVC triad within another? i.e. can I add each \"screen\" to the AppView? Is \"triad\" even an accepted MVC term?! My mind is melting under the options... I feel like I'm missing something fundamental here. I've got a solution already up and running without using an MVC approach, but have ended up with tightly coupled soup - logic and views and currently combined. The idea was to open it up and allow easier change of views (for e.g. swapping out a canvas view with a DOM based view). Current libraries used: require.js, createJS, underscore, GSAP, hand rolled MVC implementation Any pointers, examples etc., particularly with regards to the actual design of the thing and splitting the \"screens\" into proper M, V or C would be appreciated. ...or a more appropriate method other than MVC _[NB, if you've seen this question before it's because I asked it in 2 other incorrect stackexchange communities... my brain has stopped functioning]_"}
{"_id": "238252", "title": "Jenkins: .NET website XML transforms, but no .sln or build file", "text": "We're setting up Jenkins for CI and deployments. We have .NET website that isn't managed through visual studio. Its a Logi Analytics application, so we develop exclusively through LogiStudio. As such, there are no build files (.sln). However, there are web config and other XML files that need to change depending on the environment they are deployed in. Slow Cheetah looks like a good solution for transforming non-web.config xml files, but again the problem is we aren't managing this as a visual studio solution, ergo no .sln file. In the past I would have used NAnt for this kind of thing, but I like the MS convention used by slow cheetah for defining transformations. I'd hate to have to put the application in a solution just to make this work, and I'm hoping to get away from NAnt since I'm the only one around here that is comfortable using and maintaining NAnt scripts. Are there any great options out there that I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "238253", "title": "Mimicking a bluetooth disconnection", "text": "I've written a program to control a bluetooth device. I'm trying to test cases when the bluetooth disconnects, i.e. if its out of range. Physically taking the device out of range is one possibility, but its quite cumbersome and I have to go outside my office to achieve this. What can I do to trigger a disconnection? Is there, for example, an interferer I can setup, say with an Android phone, that would make the connection drop? Or limit the Bluetooth transmit power? Any other possibilities?"}
{"_id": "114338", "title": "Why are exception specifications bad?", "text": "Back in school some 10+ years ago, they were teaching you to use exception specifiers. Since my background is as one of them Torvaldish C programmers who stubbornly avoids C++ unless forced to, I only end up in C++ sporadically, and when I do I still use exception specifiers since that's what I was taught. However, the majority of C++ programmers seem to frown upon exception specifiers. I have read the debate and the arguments from various C++ gurus, like these. As far as I understand it, it boils down to three things:   1. Exception specifiers use a type system that is inconsistent with the rest of the language (\"shadow type system\").   2. If your function with an exception specifier throws anything else except what you have specified, the program will get terminated in bad, unexpected ways.   3. Exception specifiers will be removed in the upcoming C++ standard. Am I missing something here or are these all the reasons? My own opinions: Regarding 1): So what. C++ is probably the most inconsistent programming language ever made, syntax-wise. We have the macros, the goto/labels, the horde (hoard?) of undefined-/unspecified-/implementation-defined behavior, the poorly-defined integer types, all the implicit type promotion rules, special- case keywords like friend, auto, register, explicit... And so on. Someone could probably write several thick books of all the weirdness in C/C++. So why are people reacting against this particular inconsistency, which is a minor flaw in comparison to many other far more dangerous features of the language? Regarding 2): Isn't that my own responsibility? There are so many other ways I can write a fatal bug in C++, why is this particular case any worse? Instead of writing `throw(int)` and then throwing Crash_t, I may as well claim that my function returns a pointer to int, then make a wild, explicit typecast and return a pointer to a Crash_t. The spirit of C/C++ has always been to leave most of the responsibility to the programmer. What about advantages then? The most obvious is that if your function tries to explicitly throw any type other than what you specified, the compiler will give you an error. I believe that the standard is clear regarding this(?). Bugs will only happen when your function calls other functions that in turn throw the wrong type. Coming from a world of deterministic, embedded C programs, I would most certainly prefer to know exactly what a function will throw at me. If there is something in the language supporting that, why not use it? The alternatives seem to be:               void func() throw(Egg_t);      and               void func(); // This function throws an Egg_t      I think there is a big chance that the caller ignores/forgets to implement the try-catch in the second case, less so in the first case. As I understand it, if either one of these two forms decides to suddenly throw another kind of exception, the program will crash. In the first case because it isn't allowed to throw another exception, in the second case because nobody expected it to throw a SpanishInquisition_t and therefore that expression isn't caught where it should have been. In case of the latter, to have some last resort catch(...) at the highest level of the program doesn't really seem any better than a program crash: \"Hey, somewhere in your program something throwed a strange, unhandled exception.\". You can't recover the program once you are that far from where the exception was thrown, the only thing you can do is to exit the program. And from the user's point-of-view they couldn't care less if they get an evil message box from the OS saying \"Program terminated. Blablabla at address 0x12345\" or an evil message box from your program saying \"Unhandled exception: myclass.func.something\". The bug is still there. * * * With the upcoming C++ standard I'll have no other option but to abandon exception specifiers. But I would rather hear some solid argument why they are bad, rather than \"His Holiness has stated it and thus it is so\". Perhaps there are more arguments against them than the ones I listed, or perhaps there is more to them than I realize?"}
{"_id": "160732", "title": "Function declaration as var instead of function", "text": "More and more I'm seeing functions being declared like               var foo = function() {              // things     };      Instead of how I had learned, like               function foo() {              // things     }      What's the difference? Better performance? Scope? Should I be using this method?"}
{"_id": "231101", "title": "Handling internal IT issues", "text": "In the company I work at, developers also serve as internal tech support. This means we have to do three types of things:   * **Development:** writing actual code to implement new features and new products   * **Maintenance:** handle bugs and minor changes with existing customer-facing software   * **Tech support:** handle internal issues other employees have e.g. locked out of AD, network drive is missing, internet is down, new software installation, need permissions changes, etc. The tech support aspect of my job is the most troubling right now. This is because:   * someone with a problem will likely interrupt you immediately, taking you away from development   * problems come in too many ways: email, google chat, phone call, post-it notes on your desk, etc.   * people often cannot or do not determine the severity or scope of their problem before asking for help, i.e. simple problems that inconvenience one person might come in the same way -- and often with the same urgency -- as major customer-facing issues that could affect thousands **My question is: What are the proven methods for dealing with internal IT issues?** Should we use software designed for this purpose? If so, how should it be separated from any software used for customer-facing issues or bug tracking software? How can the IT/development department ensure it's used properly? Also, is it a problem that developers handle these internal problems in the first place? Would it be ideal to have a separate person or department to handle these types of problems?"}
{"_id": "108518", "title": "Sequel vs S-Q-L", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What's the history of the non-official pronunciation of SQL? I hear it every so often, \"In sequel server...\", and for some reason I cringe every time. Maybe it's because SQL doesn't mean sequel, it means Structured Query Language. However, I hesitate to mention anything because it is a little bit nitpicking after all. I do see the resemblance between SQL and sequel, but it's still wrong, is it not? Where does this way of phrasing come from?"}
{"_id": "156872", "title": "PHP function __autoload($class_name) how to Load two class path directories", "text": "I am using following function to autoload classes, it works fine if i am using only one directory called 'classes' however when i try to use Smarty lib also it fails and give me the error               Fatal error: Class 'Database' not found in /home/...      for ex:               require_once(DOC_ROOT.\"/libs/Smarty.class.php\");     function __autoload($class_name) {            require_once( CLASS_LIB.\"/\".$class_name . '.class.php');     }     $db = new Database();     $session=new Session();     $smarty = new Smarty();      but if i do this it give me the error unable to load the smarty class..               function __autoload($class_name) {            require_once( CLASS_LIB.\"/\".$class_name . '.class.php');         require_once(DOC_ROOT.\"/libs/Smarty.class.php\");     }          $db = new Database();     $session=new Session();     $smarty = new Smarty();          Warning: require_once(/home/.../classes/Smarty_Internal_TemplateCompilerBase.class.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.../includes/init.php       Any idea what i am i doing wrong here ? i need to be able to load classes directory automatically but needs to make sure i dont loose smarty path too.."}
{"_id": "252052", "title": "How to validate information on server without using database or session", "text": "Each user has multiple sites they can access reporting data for in an application I am working on. To prevent having to go to the database on every single request, I validate that they have access to the site only when they change sites and I then store the the current site id in the session. **I am trying to eliminate session state so that my async ajax requests are not synchronized and also so that the user can have a different site open on each browser tab. I also don't want to go back to calling the database on every request to validate that the user has access to the given site making a request.** I've seen implementations where people will encrypt the id on the client, but it's not sure what would prevent a third party from looking over someone's shoulder (seeing the id on the query string perhaps) then using that same id with their own login to make a request. **I have two ideas:** 1) Encrypt the id with the persons authenticated user name as the seed... Then encrypt it again with some private key. When the request comes in I would decrypt with the private key then try to decrypt with the current user name and get the id back. Or perhaps I would combine the user name with the id like username@username.com_[SITEID] then encrypt that with the private key and split them to see if the current username matches the first part. The problem with this though is that it never expires really, so they could in the future make a request even if they have lost access as long as they have the id around. 2) Similar to idea 1, but I would use the session id with encryption as a third key perhaps. The problem here though is if the session expires and they leave a tab open, all the requests would fail from the tab that was left open even though a session is active. 3) Use a cache so that async requests are not affected and just store keys like username@username.com_[VALIDATED_SITE_ID] then see if the key exists when the request comes in and if not, hit the database to establish the validation key. **Has anyone addressed this type of scenario where you need to validate the user can make a specific type of request, yet you doing it without session or hitting the database every time a request is made?**"}
{"_id": "252053", "title": "What's in the \"contrib\" folder?", "text": "Often open-source software projects have a folder called \"contrib\". For example, Django has one. What is it for?"}
{"_id": "237923", "title": "Where should you put functions and variables that are only needed by one function in a class?", "text": "Say you have a Car class. Properties that make sense for a Car class might be:               var make;     var model;     var year;     var turnOn; // a function      But the `turnOn` function is very complicated and ends up needing a static variable and a couple sub functions:               var isTurningOn; // too specific to be a class variable     function turnOn() {         // 30 lines to start the engine         // 30 lines to start the air conditioner         // 30 lines to start the radio     }      So now we have a function that maybe isn't really suitable to be made into its own class and it's polluting the Car class with a variable that only the `turnOn` function ever uses. Plus the function contains sections of code that should be made into their own functions. So what do you do in situations like this?"}
{"_id": "110106", "title": "What is the proper way to implement the OnClickListener interface for many buttons", "text": "My Android Activity contains multiple buttons that all need an OnClickListener. I've seen lots of different ways of doing this such as::   * Implementing the interface in activity class   * Creating a separate class that implements the interface   * Defining an anonymous inner class for each button. I've seen many examples of each approach. However, its not clear to me why one approach would be used instead of another. Are the differences between these approaches stylistic or are there reasons that make one approach better?"}
{"_id": "114481", "title": "How do mashups work with same-orgin policy?", "text": "If Javascript is only allowed to access scripts from the same domain, how can a website create mashups which must read and modify content from another domain?"}
{"_id": "114483", "title": "How can I design an efficient moderation system for comments?", "text": "Here's the job I want to do: My project is a website where there will be a **lot** of comments. Those comments will be moderated: a moderator will connect, see comments and accept or refuse them. I need those things:   * the comments won't have any \"moderator\" associated. Which implies that when a moderator connects, the system \"assigns\" the 20 first comments to this moderator then sends them via an AJAX/JSON request   * of course, this implies that those comments musn't be assigned to other moderators How can I make a design so that I'll be sure \"getting the 20 first comments for a moderator\" can be an atomic operation? And there's another thing to think of (I don't know if it may have an impact or not on my problem): if there are say 10 moderators connected, one of them has 20 comments to validate, and this guy leaves his PC for the whole day. I may implement kindof a \"timeout\" for this moderator, then, when he tries to validate, a message will tell him \"sorry this comment has already been moderated by another moderator\", and the AJAX script will get a \"fresh new 20 comments). My first idea was the simplest idea:   * a moderator connects   * a jQuery AJAX script asks the server for 20 comments   * the server (1) makes immediately a request of the 20 first free comments to the database   * the server (2) \"freezes\" the 20 free comments   * the server (3) makes up a JSON response and sends it But the operations (2) and (3) are not atomic, what happens if, in-between, another operator asks for the 20 first free comments? They both will get the 20 first free comments. That's not a good solution. I think this is a classical problem of atomic operation on db. Any idea how to design this (or where to look)? Thank you very much indeed!"}
{"_id": "89569", "title": "How to gradually improve on an old IBM Host C++ framework", "text": "Imagine a C++ framework as a business layer, but with controlling logic as well. E.g. user rights, state of the webflow etc. With some plain C code to access DB2. The whole framework is host based. We are looking for a way to replace the existing framework gradually with a java framework. The main challenges are: the application is already huge, there are several application clients connected to the c++ framework at the same time (it's one web application with many instances), my knowledge of what is possible today with java on host is very limited (since all people I work with stick with C++) Do some good ideas exist for gradually moving the old framework without breaking existing code? I guess as entry one would expect a web service or RMI server for transactions. But how to replace the business/controlling logic gradually is still a black box to me."}
{"_id": "89563", "title": "i am \"scared\" to learn a new language", "text": "I have be developing in c# for the last about the last 8 years.   I feel that i am quite experienced and knowledgeable in the whole .net platform. I have got to the point where i want to start learning objective-c. I have been watching dev videos, reading books and researching online. So far i am getting a good idea of the development principals. BUT. I have not written 1 line of code. For some silly reason i have some type of mental block about writing code. I keep thinking: But what if i am not as good as when i do c# coding.   This leaves me in a endless spiral where i cannot code. If you have been in this kind of situation what was the best way to get out of it."}
{"_id": "89562", "title": "What does the term day-one-bug mean?", "text": "I came across this term recently in a mail chain. Google tells me there is a term zero-day bug and that Microsoft and Adobe are the frontrunners :) Is there such a term as **day one bug**? What might that mean?"}
{"_id": "127262", "title": "Do more object declarations affect the program?", "text": "I am programming in Windows Forms and MySQL. If I declare this in the program, I can use the connection and command objects in the whole .cs page:                MySqlConnection connection = null;      MySqlCommand command = null;      MySqlDataReader Reader;      But if I write the code below, connection and command objects are declared twice:                private void cmbo_class_SelectedValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)             {                 string clas = cmbo_class.SelectedItem.ToString();                                  try                 {                     MySqlConnection connection = new MySqlConnection(hp.myConnStr);                     MySqlCommand command = connection.CreateCommand();                     MySqlDataReader Reader;                     command.CommandText = \"select id,code from reg_class_master where name ='\" + clas + \"' and Delete_Status=0\";                     connection.Open();                     Reader = command.ExecuteReader();                     while (Reader.Read())                     {                         class_id = Convert.ToInt32(Reader[0].ToString());                         class_code = Reader[1].ToString();                     }                     connection.Close();                 }                 catch(Exception ex)                 {                     MessageBox.Show(\"Error in \",\"Information\",MessageBoxButtons.OK,MessageBoxIcon.Information);                 }                      cmbo_division.Items.Clear();                      try                 {                     MySqlConnection connection = new MySqlConnection(hp.myConnStr);                     MySqlCommand command = connection.CreateCommand();                     MySqlDataReader Reader;                     command.CommandText = \"select name from reg_division_master where class_id = \" + class_id + \" and Delete_Status=0 order by display_index\";                     connection.Open();                     Reader = command.ExecuteReader();                     while (Reader.Read())                     {                         cmbo_division.Items.Add(Reader[0].ToString());                     }                     connection.Close();                 }                 catch                 {                 }      I think one object declaration is the best way. Do more object declarations affect the program?"}
{"_id": "207696", "title": "Does having more classes necessarily increase the memory requirements of the app?", "text": "When we add .edmx files to a DLL, the physical size of the DLL increases. DLL's are loaded into memory. However, the .NET infrastructure with functionality such as JIT compilation and the GAC complicates things. Is it true that having a larger DLL automatically increase the memory requirements of an application? In other words, are memory concerns a good reason to split generated code such as entity framework into N DLL's?"}
{"_id": "127264", "title": "Am I misusing instance initialization?", "text": "I often write tests when I need to set data object for integration tests involving a few pages with forms. Herein each form on a page could be represented by a different data object class. There are are times when test end up in filling same data for a specific page while varying it for other pages and validating the overall flow. I thought instead of setting data object each time from test method I can take advantage of instance initialization block to set data for tests. Herein I have listed a smaller version of tests I usually write - This my data class which holds data for form values - textbox, drop down etc. I have not kept setters for sake of brevity -               public class DataClass {          private int i;     private int j;          public DataClass() {         i=1;         j=1;     }             public int getI(){         return i;     }          public int getJ(){         return j;     }     }      Following is the helper class which is used by test class to fill form data on page -               public class WorkerClass {          private DataClass data;          public void setData(DataClass data){         this.data = data;            }          public int add() {         return data.getI()+data.getJ();     }          public int substract() {         return data.getI()-data.getJ();     }     }      And here is the test method. Notice that instead of calling setData of WorkerClass in each test method I used instance initialization block -               public class TestClass {          private DataClass data = new DataClass();     WorkerClass workerClass = new WorkerClass();          {         workerClass.setData(data);     }          @Test     public void testAddition() {         assert workerClass.add()==0:\"addition Failed\";          }          @Test     public void testSubstraction() {         assert workerClass.substract()==0:\"substraction failed\";             }        }      My question is, am I misusing instance initialization block and should rather be calling it from each test method, even if all the test method require same set of data?"}
{"_id": "127268", "title": "Is it worth listing testing or self-learning repositories on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9?", "text": "I have a GitHub repository with toy programs that I write when I learn something. For example, when I read an about an algorithms or data structures, I write up a quick implementation of of it to make sure that it works and I understand it. I sometimes solve algorithm and data structure puzzles and that gets pushed into the repository. Would this repository be worth linking on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9, or would it actually be a detriment to my chances of getting hired?"}
{"_id": "48976", "title": "What is the biggest weakness of students graduating with degrees in Computer Science?", "text": "This question is directed more toward employers and graduate student advisors/professors but all opinions are welcome. What do you find is a common weakness of new hires and/or new grad students? Is it entirely variable dependent on the student and his or her university? Is there a particular skill or skillset that you wish new hires/researchers had expertise in and how can we remedey this deficiency? I realize that this question is general and really encapsulates two questions, one more about the weaknesses of new software engineers and one about the weaknesses of new researchers. However, both types of people tend to come from similar courses of study so I'm wondering if there is any overlap. Note: I am not a professor but I'm interested in how best to revise the undergraduate curriculum in CS."}
{"_id": "129855", "title": "How can I gauge a candidate's ability to learn in an interview?", "text": "We are hiring for a small development department within a medium sized company for which software is not the main line of business. As such, we are attempting to recruit what we have labeled a _Senior Programmer_. The goal is to find someone that can design, implement and maintain entire new and existing systems from the database through to the front-end. Regardless of a candidates claim to experience (read: massively spun CVs), or the results of the technical test, what I really care about is their ability to learn and the speed at which they will pick up technologies or concepts they are not familiar with to fill any gaps they might have in their knowledge. How can I go about getting an idea as to a candidates ability to (or speed of) learning?"}
{"_id": "129859", "title": "How is Python used in the real world?", "text": "I'm looking to get a job as a Python programmer. I know the basics of the language and have created a few games with it using pygame. I've also started to experiment with Django. However, looking at the job market, it doesn't seem very many Python jobs are web-related. On the desktop side of things, it doesn't seem like very many companies use the popular GUI libraries like pyQt or wxPython. How are companies actually using Python? What areas should one focus on to land a job as a Python programmer?"}
{"_id": "26885", "title": "What scenarios are implementations of Object Management Group (OMG) Data Distribution Service best suited for?", "text": "I've always been a big fan of asynchronous messaging and pub/sub implementations, but coming from a Java background, I'm most familiar with using JMS based messaging systems, such as JBoss MQ, HornetQ, ActiveMQ, OpenMQ, etc. I've also loosely followed the discussion of AMQP. But I recently became aware of the Data Distribution Service Specification from the Object Management Group, and found there are a couple of open-source implementations: OpenSplice OpenDDS It sounds like this stuff is focused on the kind of high-volume scenarios one tends to associate with financial trading exchanges and what-not. My current interest is more along the lines of notifications related to activity stream processing (think Twitter / Facebook) and am wondering if the DDS servers are worth looking into further. Could anyone who has practical experience with this technology, and/or a deep understanding of it, comment on how useful it is, and what scenarios it is best suited for? How does it stack up against more \"traditional\" JMS servers, and/or AMQP (or even STOMP or OpenWire, etc?) Edit: FWIW, I found some information at this StackOverflow thread. Not a complete answer, but anybody else finding this question might also find that thread useful, hence the added link."}
{"_id": "223359", "title": "Use null object as argument to method", "text": "Consider the following piece of code               class Foo         {         public:         //...             bool valueFirstGet(int& value) const                 {                 if(this==nullptr)                     {return 0;}                 value=values[0];                 return 1;                 }         //...              private:             int* values;             size_t n_values;         };          int main()         {         Foo* obj=findObject(\"key\");         int value;         if(!obj->valueFirstGet(value))             {printf(\"key does not exist\\n\");}              return 0;         }      findObject returns nullptr if it cannot find the object. Is it ok to let the member function do the null check instead of its caller. In my code, there are several calls to findObject directly followed by a call to valueFirstGet so leaving the check to the caller makes the code ugly. EDIT: Is there a cleaner way to avoid all null checking besides having findObject to throw an exception instead of returning null? EDIT 2: What about a static wrapper?"}
{"_id": "163833", "title": "Best Method of function parameter validation", "text": "I've been dabbling with the idea of creating my own CMS for the experience and because it would be fun to run my website off my own code base. One of the decisions I keep coming back to is how best to validate incoming parameters for functions. This is mostly in reference to simple data types since object validation would be quite a bit more complex. At first I debated creating a naming convention that would contain information about what the parameters should be, (int, string, bool, etc) then I also figured I could create options to validate against. But then in every function I still need to run some sort of parameter validation that parses the parameter name to determine what the value can be then validate against it, granted this would be handled by passing the list of parameters to function but that still needs to happen and one of my goals is to remove the parameter validation from the function itself so that you can only have the actual function code that accomplishes the intended task without the additional code for validation. Is there any good way of handling this, or is it so low level that typically parameter validation is just done at the start of the function call anyway, so I should stick with doing that."}
{"_id": "195750", "title": "What is the best way to understand code in a project with null documentation?", "text": "It is our first game and we are a start-up. We had a programmer who suddenly is seeming to be a dead weight. Though we knew him personally we thought that he was as motivated as we are and hence I never looked for a code review or documentation. Now it seems that he is slacking a lot and we want him out. Now during a conversation he said that he would not document the code so as we could be dependent on him. I looked at the code and there is no documentation. The code is all over the place. What would be the best way to understand his code? Details of the code:   * Written in C# and targeting a mobile platform using Unity3D.   * The game play mechanic and camera is scripts are the main and they have no documentation.   * Too much of Send/Broadcast messages so I am not able to see the references through Mono.   * Again hefty use of strings in either invoking methods or passing parameters   * Update function everywhere which could have been reduced to coroutines.   * Naming is poor and inconsistet    * Absolutely no pooling with usage of destroy and instantiation. I am expecting memory leaks. What protocols should I adopt to understand the code and work on top it?"}
{"_id": "117686", "title": "Why are brackets required for try-catch?", "text": "In various languages (Java at least, think also C#?) you can do things like               if( condition )         singleStatement;          while( condition )         singleStatement;          for( var; condition; increment )         singleStatement;      So when I have just one statement, I don't need to add a new scope with `{ }`. Why can't I do this with try-catch?               try         singleStatement;     catch(Exception e)         singleStatement;      Is there something special about try-catch which requires always having a new scope or something? And if so, couldn't the compiler fix that?"}
{"_id": "163835", "title": "Get system info from C program?", "text": "I'm writing a little program in C that I want to use to output some system stats to my HD44780 16x2 character display. The system I'll be working with is a Debian ARM system and, although irrelevant, the display is on the GPIO header.(The system is a Raspberry Pi). As an initial (somewhat unambitious) attempt, I'd like to start with something simple like RAM and CPU usage (I'm new to C). I understand that if I make external command calls I need to fork() and execve() (or some equiv that will let me return the results), what I would like to know is how I go about getting the information I want in a nice clean format that I can use. Surely I will not have to call (for e.g);               free -h      And then use awk or similar to chop out the piece I want? There must be a cleaner way? The question should be seen as more of a generic, what is best practice for getting info about the system in C (the RAM/CPU usage are just an initial example)."}
{"_id": "117689", "title": "Asp.Net MVC CMS or Shopping Cart or any other type of System", "text": "I have been learning Asp.Net MVC for a while now and have gone through numerous tutorial ranging from MVC Music Store to Code-First to Custom Membership to Data Annotations. In essence, I have a firm grip on how things work in this new framework. But, there are few things which i am not able to realize and understand on my own. Stuffs like achieving pagination, product Catalog, AJAX and some other things. Therefore i was thinking of learning and knowing these aspects via any opensource CMS, shopping cart or any other type of system. This way I can see the code and understand how these things can be achieved in Asp.Net MVC. Things were pretty easier in regular Asp.Net as we weren't dealing with the HTML so i am bit sluggish in these departments and need help in small matters like pagination. **So, Are there any available opensource Asp.Net MVC CMS or any other type of system utilizing razor ?**"}
{"_id": "193345", "title": "Multiple threads and single output source", "text": "For the sake of an exercise, say you have an input file with a series of lines of text with the objective of reversing their respective character sequences. Now introduce 5 threads that will each do the reversing, thread 1 taking care of line 1, thread 2 taking care of line 2 and so on. If the aim is to save these reversed lines in order, how would you save them to the same file ? P.S: I've thought of having some kind of queue but there is no guarantee on the order. Also, I'm wondering if there's some way to lock the file temporarily and have a thread wait it's turn. I imagine I should keep track of which line is being saved."}
{"_id": "161060", "title": "Abstracting a zip as a filesystem - C++", "text": "I would like to access in read and write mode to a zip without decompressing it on disk: what options do I have? I need to perform the usual IO actions reserved for a filesystem like reading, writing new file, deleting them. If it's possible I would like to stick with the zlib library."}
{"_id": "7505", "title": "How to read and understand ER diagrams", "text": "I've been handed the ER diagram for a quite complex database. Complex to me at least, 849 tables. One of the architects says to understand the code, you need to understand the database and relationships. Now I am basically a Java programmer hence not too familiar with this How do I start? Should I start from something basic like USER or ORDER and see which relationships they have with other tables around them? Any tips or tutorials would help a lot"}
{"_id": "92847", "title": "What would you define as sensitive user data?", "text": "A recent previous question of mine had an answer that sparked a different and unrelated question in my mind: Customer wants to modify the .properties files packaged in our WAR file The question that I thought of after reading this answer is, just how low-risk is the data being collected on people (non-users, lets just say, \"people\") in my application?   * A first name and last name   * Company or organization that person currently is employed at.   * (Optional) An email address   * (Optional) A persons phone number   * A photograph of the persons face   * An digitally signed PDF document physically signed with electronic signature pad (a persons hand written signature) No other sensitive data like social security numbers, credit card numbers or anything that can accurately identify a person with 100% accuracy. How sensitive would you rate the data types listed above? Is identity theft even remotely possible with the above information? In light of all the recent news outbreaks of hacking successes and data breaches, if such a thing were to happen to my application (assume that I have reasonable security measures, SSL, encrypted passwords with salt, account lock after so many failed attempts, etc...), what kind of a response would be appropriate for my organization in your opinion? Should every attempt be made to notify the persons that this information has been compromised? Is it worth it? Thanks for sharing your thoughts."}
{"_id": "7502", "title": "Is it worth it to translate an Android app into Spanish and other languages?", "text": "I have the \"user's side\" of the story, I think they want it better if it's on Spanish. But, what about the programmers? Do you make your programs multi- language? Why? Why not? Who translate your software? Are you ok with paying somebody to translate your app or you prefer doing it yourselves? Is the benefit bigger than the costs?"}
{"_id": "92845", "title": "Area calculation of irregular shapes", "text": "Is there any algo that can help splitting irregular shape into regular shapes, and eventually calculate the area of the main object by summing the areas of those regular objects?"}
{"_id": "206001", "title": "Does a group of Select Statements count as a valid model?", "text": "I'm making a facebook app and I'm trying to follow MVC properly. But I was wondering if I had a class that was a bunch of fql queries (getting data from facebook) should I have keep these in a controller or a model? According to Codeigniter's user guide \"Models are PHP classes that are designed to work with information in your database\". Since fql interacts with facebook's databases and not my own, would having a class full of what is basically just SQL Select statements count as valid model?"}
{"_id": "96548", "title": "what is best way to learn latest technology", "text": "We have too many technologies in IT world today. How can be best be able to clear technical funda conceptually ? How do we able to find all the concept available within technology & required to be learnt ? Programming Experince always matters, but I want to know the ideas keeping experince aside. I mean like if I start developing a project on my own hand, how do I be able to find out about which latest technology & concepts tha I should use with ? Please suggest."}
{"_id": "191275", "title": "What problems can be solved using Generics?", "text": "I haven't used Generics in C# for a long while. Every time I think I need to use them I either go in the wrong direction and give up or find that I don't really need them. I feel that I'm missing out or ignoring a technique which could be useful and powerful. I'm aware of how generics are meant to be used (or at least I think I am). If you have three methods that are all doing the same thing with different types, then using generics enables you to have just one method that will work with these three types. EDIT (in response to comment) **Are there any code smells or patterns that I should be looking out for?** Note I use `List<>` a lot, so I'm not ignoring generics in the the standard library. It's just that I've not written custom code using Generics for a while."}
{"_id": "191276", "title": "Audit trails and recording actions", "text": "**Background** A discussion that has come up at work recently is how we handle audit logging and the recording of events. We are integrating with a 3rd party app so triggers are a no no from the off so we are handling it in code. We've written a number of prototype components for handling it but nothing feels right as yet. The main issue being we want to create Facebook style time lines for the users to see what action have happened recently but these don't seem to fit well with how we record audits. My question is how would be best to handle this type of scenario?   * Should we tailor the audit log tables to fit the requirements of the front end?   * Should we have separate tables to handle the \"Actions\" and have the events and auditing separate   * Should we look to a more message based architecture so this will be more like an Event sourcing type component?  Input from somebody who has done this type of system would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "127483", "title": "Want to do some damage control", "text": "I applied for a job in a company. The initial conversation went well.They sent me an assignment and asked me to write a web application, and send it in a specified time. It seemed fairly simple. I completed and sent it to them. Now my mind is completely revolving on the code that I wrote, and now I feel that, there was one small requirement which I did not fulfill. Before they give the verdict shall I be proactive and admit it. Definitely they will find it and I am certain of it. I can send them email saying that I forgot to add that. What shall I do? Is there anything I do for damage control?"}
{"_id": "158080", "title": "For Which Kind of Cache will this Program not run well? How can it be optimized?", "text": "Consider the following code fragment:               int a[8192], b[8192], c[8192];     int i;     for(i = 0; i < 8192; i++)         c[i] = a[i] + b[i];      For what kind of cache will this program not run well (set associative, direct, associative)? I've been thinking about how to optimize this, but can't really see how it can be done. How can I change this code to have fewer cache misses?"}
{"_id": "255878", "title": "Correct terminology in type theory: types, type constructors, kinds/sorts and values", "text": "In an answer to a previous question, a small debate started about correct terminology for certain constructs. As I did not find a question (other than this or that, which is not quite the right thing) to address this clearly, I am making this new one. The questionable terms and their relationships are: _type, type constructor, type parameter, kinds or sorts, and values_. I also checked wikipedia for type theory, but that didn't clarify it much either. So for the sake of having a good reference answer and to check my own understanding:   * How are these things defined properly?   * What is the difference between each of these things?   * How are they related to each other?"}
{"_id": "105103", "title": "How and when do you scale Azure instances?", "text": "When dealing with Azure instances that are under-performing, how do you decide when to scale the instances? Do you scale horizontally by adding more instances or vertically by making the existing instances more powerful?"}
{"_id": "194592", "title": "Function that modifies an argument, should I return the modified object?", "text": "We have a function that modifies a JS object, by adding some custom properties to it. The function doesn't return antyhing               addTransaction: function (obj) {          obj.transactionId = this.getTransactionId;          obj.id = this.recordId;     },      Somebody said they preferred that `addTransaction` return the `obj`. Here's what I thought   * If I don't return anything (and document that the object is going to be modified), it's kind of clear that the object is going to be modified, as if the name were addTransactionToObj   * If I do want to add a return value, I shouldn't modify the incoming object, I should clone the given object, add my properties to the clone and return the clone.   * Having a return value that just returns one of the (modified) parameter just sounds wrong Does anybody have a preference in this matter?"}
{"_id": "149303", "title": "Naming classes, methods, functions and variables", "text": "There are 3 important naming conventions:   1. `with_underscores`   2. `PascalCased`   3. `camelCased` Other variants are not important because they are not commonly used. For variables it seems that the one with underscores is the most used by developers so I'll stick with that. I think it's the same for functions. But what about class, and method names? Which of these 3 is the most used by developers for such constructs? (personally, it's 3. for methods and 2. for classes) Please do not post things like \"use what you feel is right\", because the code I'm writing is API for other developers, and I'd like to adopt the most popular coding style :)"}
{"_id": "105100", "title": "ASP.Net MVC ambigious action methods - why the path choosen", "text": "Is there someone who could shed a light on why ambiguous methods are not allowed in ASP.Net MVC?   I updated my question just to clarify it (using Carson63000 example from his answer), the question itself remains the same. So, lets say we have the following action               /article/list/sport      which calls               public ActionResult List(string category) { }      and want to be able to have the following action as well:               /article/list/sport/20110904      which we would like to call accompanying method               public ActionResult List(string category, DateTime date) { }      Currently the framework throws an `AmbiguousMatchException` since it found two methods called List. That's the only reason for throwing the exception, that more than one method with was found that matches the actions name. After the framework has figured out what method to use and decided that it is not ambigious, it will then try to map the supplied data from the request to the parameters of the method. Why not do this the other way around? First get all applicable methods, and then try to find the best fit by mapping parameters. If ambiguous methods where allowed, I think the following is still possible to do.   Given that `/article/list/sport` uses the route `/{controller}/{action}/{category}` and that `/article/list/sport/20110903` uses the route `/{controller}/{action}/{category}/{date}`   it would then still be possible to map data for url `/article/list/sport?date=20110903` since it will match the route for just category, but can still map the data for method `public ActionResult List(string category, DateTime date) { }`. At the moment I fail to see the reason for not allowing ambiguous methods from a design perspective. The only thing I can think of myself is that it will slow down the framework too much, and therefor the current solution is the more logical one. Or am I missing another point here?"}
{"_id": "255873", "title": "Is it ever OK for a conditional to have side effects?", "text": "I'm taking intermediate data structures course as a prereq for entry into the CS MS program at a University everyone in America has heard of. One line of code that was written in class caught my eye: `if (a > 33 | b++ < 54) {...}` This would never pass a code review at my workplace. If you wrote code like this in an interview, you would not be hired. This is not an exaggeration. (In addition to being a conditional with side effects, it's being clever at the expense of clarity.) In fact, I've never seen a conditional with side effects, and Googling doesn't turn up much, either. Another student stayed behind after class to ask about it, too, so I'm not the only one who thought this was weird. But the professor was pretty adamant that this was acceptable code, and that he would write something like that at work. (His FT job is as a Principal SWE at a company you've all heard of.) I cannot imagine a world in which this line of code would ever be acceptable, let alone desirable. Am I wrong? Is this OK? What about the more general case: conditionals with side effects? Are those ever OK?"}
{"_id": "193695", "title": "Where to start in developing a game engine as a web app", "text": "I have to create a web application, preferably I would host that on Google App Engine. it is a multiplayer game, So it needs to be interactive. I am only familiar with C/C++ coding, and have started learning python. I have made multiplayer games before too(multi-player and single player) but with no GUI. Someone told me that the webapp interface would have to be written in JavaScript. And the back end could be in python or any other language. Please note, I have no issues in coding up the back-end, the game engine, of thew web app. Just that I do not know what are and how to, etc about web apps. And basically how to integrate the back end code into the web application (which I have to build from scratch) (I would also be writing the back end, so there is complete flexibility as of now) So please show me the light! I have absolutely no clue about where to start! Please tell me where to begin, and what all to read up which can quickly give me some insight into development work! How to go about the GUI. And what all possible language combinations can I use? The easier to use, the better."}
{"_id": "149307", "title": "Seperable Kernel, MMX/SSE and TCP Transmittal of them?", "text": "So I was reading about Java Convolve and someone said that it may be faster than the MMX / SSE implementation. In it one of the comments had a kernal array and said it was seperable.   1. What is a seperable kernel? How is this useful for image processing?   2. What is MMX/SSE? The wikipedia page lists them as instruction sets. Are they specificially designed for image processing?   3. How would you transmit a MMX/SSE format (I assume) data set through TCP? Thanks."}
{"_id": "69892", "title": "How do you read other's code?", "text": "Almost every advanced programmer says that it's very useful to read the code of other professionals. Usually they advice open source. Do you read it or not? If you do, how often and what's the procedure of reading the code? Also, it's a bit difficult for newbies to deal with SVN - a bunches of files. What's the solution?"}
{"_id": "153967", "title": "How to stop a .NET application from being duplicated?", "text": "I have created a .net windows form application that I want to restrict from being duplicated. I want this application to be portable, so I would like to allow it to be moved. How would I be able to do this without managing it through a remote server?"}
{"_id": "64867", "title": "Writing jenkins plugin: where is the documentation?", "text": "On my current project we're using Jenkins to monitor our builds. Now they want me to write a Jenkins plugin to add some more monitoring parameters. I've taken a look at how the status monitor plugin works, and I can't figure some things out. I've tried to look for documentation for writing a plugin, but that seems to be sorely lacking. (the site only mentions how to generate the base project, and refers to a tutorial that's not that informative) What I'm trying to do is just add some options to each build, add a link, and a monitoring page. Adding to the main page is apparently done by adding the action, but I'm still trying to figure out the rest. And how it all ties in. Does anyone have any pointers, or a place where I can find some decent documentation?"}
{"_id": "153961", "title": "Stuff to read up on pricing applications", "text": "I'm about to release an app and I have no idea what would be the ideal pricing point. I'm not sure how pricing high and selling few copies will compare in revenue to pricing low and selling lots of copies in my case. Can somebody point me to books/articles/blog posts/etc that elaborate on the subject, preferably taking into account stuff like competition, number of features, being the first one to the market, research if this kind of app is even needed, etc?"}
{"_id": "16463", "title": "Use switch statements for application flow?", "text": "I generally use switch statements to simplify a block of multiple if statements - for example - returning a feedback string to a user based on a multiple choice input. I also tend to construct classes so that there is one \"management\" method, to avoid sequential steps or chained method invocation within other methods of the class. I've found this helps to keep methods flexible and focussed - i.e.               class MyClass{              // this method does nothing more than invoke the relevant method         // depending on the status following the previous. It's entire purpose         // is to control application flow         public function manageFlow($input){             $status = $this->stepOne($input);             if($status == false){                 //exit routine             }                  $status = $this->stepTwo($input);             if($status == false){                 //exit routine            }         }              // this method has several sequential steps implemented direcly within it,          // for example to a user logging in         // it makes it impossible to re-use any of the intermediary steps         public function tangledFlow($input){              if($input == 'something){              //100 lines of code              }              //then handing on to the next bit              if($this->User->Authenticated){              //another 100 lines...              }         }     }      Then it occurred to me that I could use a switch statement to control this kind of sequential execution - so my question is: has anyone used a switch statement for this kind of flow control?"}
{"_id": "121884", "title": "Object-Oriented Operating System", "text": "As I thought about writing an operating system, I came across a point that I really couldn't figure out on my own: Can an operating system truly be written in an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) Language? Being that these types of languages do not allow for direct accessing of memory, wouldn't this make it impossible for a developer to write an entire operating system using only an OOP Language? Take, for example, the Android Operating System that runs many phones and some tablets in use around the world. I believe that this operating system uses only Java, an Object-Oriented language. In Java, I have been unsuccessful in trying to point at and manipulate a specific memory address that the run-time environment (JRE) has not assigned to my program implicitly. In C, C++, and other non-OOP languages, I can do this in a few lines. So this makes me question whether or not an operating system can be written in an OOP, especially Java. Any counterexamples or other information is appreciated."}
{"_id": "57197", "title": "Best way to estimate cost related to porting code from language A to language B?", "text": "Have a client thinking about estimating the cost of porting a project from language A to language B. What's the best way to put together an request for proposal to do this?"}
{"_id": "16468", "title": "How should I approach doing similar work on the side to what I do at work during the day?", "text": "Currently got a good job, spending 70% of my day doing what I love, the downside of this is of course that I am working for someone else and not my self. Ideally would love to get something of my own going, a night project etc which could trickle in some funds. The downside of this of course if that it would be a conflict of interest. I could of course just go ahead an start up my own little thing but if it got discovered I could risk my job. I could quit my job, but then I would miss the income (family + mortgage) and my ideas might not pan out. Thinking about it tonight, I will discuss it with my boss tomorrow - he's a good guy but I just hope he doesn't burry it or just offer over time. Anyone in this boat? Do what you love during the day (for someone else) and can't peruse it during the night.... Edit: Just to clarify, that what I want to do at night is very similar to what I do during the day. It's not a 'I love programming' in general, but I like doing data mining - and thats what I do at work. Very closely related."}
{"_id": "221820", "title": "Preventing a parser from turning into a (seemingly) god-sized object", "text": "So I have a program whose purpose is to take text files and parse them into a binary format that an embedded system understands. However, the text format I've inherited that I need to parse is sufficiently complex enough that after refactoring the main `parse` routine I'm left with a class with more than 50 methods that almost all look something like `parseChannel`, `parseWCommand`, `parseVCommand`, `parsePCommand`, `parseLoop`, `parseHex`, `parseInt`, etc. etc. etc. Needless to say, the class, from its declaration, looks huge and daunting. However, the methods to interface with the class are extremely simple, just `parse` (compile the text, figure out its compiled size) and `link` (fix the pointers once the location in memory is known, return the finalized raw binary data). Really, to the user the class has virtually no other reason for existence besides those two functions, but there's so much seemingly useless fluff in the class declaration that it's hard to even see what it's supposed to do. There's a similar situation going on with the rather massive number of data members that, again, are useless to everything but the class's internal methods that need them to talk to each other, though I don't know if that's as much of an issue. I've considered making a separate class solely for parsing that's used within the `parse` method, but it seems strange to me to build an entirely separate class that's only used in a single method in a single class. It seems a bit...superfluous, I guess? And I don't even know if that's attacking the right problem.    I guess in the end, here's what I'm asking:   1. Is this seemingly-huge class actually a problem? I don't think it's strictly a \"god object\", but it superficially looks like one.   2. If it is a problem, what are the best method(s) to fix it?"}
{"_id": "214314", "title": "How do I limit the resources available to a program?", "text": "I'm delving into multi-threaded programming with Java, but I'm finding it hard to test my program for bugs. My computer simply has too many resources and cores, making it hard to see how my program acts under stress. Is there any way to limit the resources available to my program? It seems ridiculous that my only option right now is to open another application and render HD video in order to starve out the application I'm debugging."}
{"_id": "61989", "title": "What's expected of a web-developer?", "text": "I've been getting into more web development later and talking to people often I'll get \"Can you make me a website [for my book]?\" types. \"Yes. But.... Well, what do you want from it?\" \"I want it to look nice and attract people and people will want to buy my book.\" \"...\" **What all does making a website for somebody really entail from the designer/developer end?**   * How responsible are we for graphics? Are we expected to make them a nice header with their name/logo and pretty like?    * Color scheme? Overall feel of the site? (I mean, do we decide by ourselves or have some back and forth with the client?)   * Specific wording of content (such as homepage flavor text. Obviously we wouldn't be expected to write the About the Author section.)?   * Additional functionality that we think the user may appreciate?   Ideally you'd talk to the client and figure out what they want, but really--do clients ever _really_ know what they want? **What is expected of the client in order to be able to make a website for them?** **Are web-designer and web-developer essentially interchangeable in casual speak, or...?** * * * I guess this question really stems because I'm learning I don't like doing most of this. I don't program to be a designer. My artistic skills are probably better than the average programmer, but that isn't the point. I would actually prefer it if a client came to me and said \"I want it to look like this\" and handed me a paper copy, which I could then duplicate. What _does_ interest me is more of the behind the scenes functionality of websites. Is it smooth, functional, does the user have to navigate all over or rely on 'search' to find what he's looking for? Please shed some light on this perceived division of tasks for me."}
{"_id": "65405", "title": "Must strong developers carry the weight of the world on their shoulders?", "text": "As developers we constantly strive to solve problems of the masses. We also constantly look for new methodologies, languages and possibly organizations to help us further our ability to solve problems. I feel as if I've always been one of the top members on my team. I also feel that I look for ways to improve my work in ways others often do not care to. I'm starting to feel a little burnout from ~6 years of supporting technology. I blame the fact that I do work so hard and hold myself to high expectations. Some of the greatest devs on the planet do not even write code for a living any longer. Often, its burnout. Some have said they grow tired of \"the game\", but I wonder if the problem is a bit simpler. One of \"carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders\". If you feel you are a strong developer and also feel that this is not a problem for you, please enlighten me with your approach. How do you stay up to date with tech, help others and solve problems quickly/accurately without getting all wound up?"}
{"_id": "61981", "title": "Where is the golden mean between language monoculture and polyculture?", "text": "My company has been using Java (as a language and a platform) for many years. We have lots of products varying greatly in size, purpose and complexity. Whatever the requirements, the answer is always the same - Java. This stance obviously has advantages and disadvantages. On a plus side, there is no context switching between work assignments on different projects, every developer in the company can be relatively productive on many projects; on a minus side, a small tool might end up being \"crushed\" by Hibernate. On one hand, packaging, deployment and execution environments could be standardized; on the other hand, we might loose agility of the mind and miss out on optimal solutions by always \"thinking in Java\". I could go on and on and on. Polyglot programming has become quite common in the recent past, as much as I can observe. Sayings like \"right tool for the job\" always ring loud in my ears as well. A desire to open up and expose ourselves to more \"right tools\" is quite strong, but where is a catch? Better yet, where is the golden mean? It's always dangerous to go from one extreme to another. I dread a day of waking up into an incomprehensible mess of a giant pile of Java, Groovy, Python, Ruby, PHP, Scala, etc. with all their corresponding tools, frameworks, servers and philosophies. Do you have a practical experience working in language and platform polyculture for at least two years? What are your main observations? What are you still excited about and what do you dread?"}
{"_id": "137896", "title": "Software engineer, already in late thirties, would I have trouble finding a new position?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is ageism in software development based on anything other than bias? I have been a software engineer in the U.S for about 10 years now and I am already in my late thirties. I still have the passion and dedication for this industry and I am still trying to improve myself every day at work. For family reasons, I have to relocate to another state where I need to find a new job. Since I am a pure technical guy I would still like to find a software engineer job. However I am a bit worried about my age since I am already in my late thirties. I am confident about my past experience and my technical strength however the age factor is something beyond my control. My question is: Will I be discriminated because of my age when looking for a software engineer position? If I am really as good as I think, would the employers be interested in hiring me anyways? Any comments/suggestions for improving my chances of being hired are also welcomed! No suggestions like \u201ctry to become a manager\u201d please, since I am not interested in any management related jobs. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "61983", "title": "When to take that leap and program", "text": "I've been studying a beginners guide to ASP.NET 4 for the past month and a half, and I'm at the end of the books. The next book will be one up (Professional guide). As yet I've only programmed exercise that are in the books, not my own code. When should I start developing my own code? After reading both books? Also I'm still confused over Object-Oriented and how it works with ASP.NET 4."}
{"_id": "250343", "title": "Is there any practical use for the empty type in Common Lisp?", "text": "The Common Lisp spec states that `nil` is the name of the _empty type_ , but I've never found any situation in Common Lisp where I felt like the _empty type_ was useful/necessary. Is it there just for completeness sake (and removing it wouldn't cause any harm to anyone)? Or is there really some practical use for the _empty type_ in Common Lisp? If yes, then I would prefer an answer with code example. For example, in Haskell the _empty type_ can be used when binding foreign data structures, to make sure that no one tries to create values of that type without using the data structure's foreign interface (although in this case, the type is not really empty)."}
{"_id": "158559", "title": "What are some good ways to get familiar with .Net's IL?", "text": "I recently accepted a job where I will be working with the IL a lot(on the team of a certain obfuscator that's included with Visual Studio). They know I have little knowlegde of it, so I'll have some time to learn it on the job. But, I want to get a bit of a jump start on it in the interim. For my background, I've never wrote any IL and read very little of it. I do understand what it is though and such. I know x86 assembly and such as well, so I'm not dumb as far as assembly-type code goes. But anyway, what are some good ways of getting familiar with IL and learning the usual opcodes and such and also how it's garbage collection and such magically works at an assembly level?"}
{"_id": "119507", "title": "Where do you put scenarios on a scrum board?", "text": "So traditional scrum board looks something like this               Backlog       |       Story    notStarted   inprogress    Done     story 1               Story1   tasks            Story 2               Story2   tasks     Story ..     Story n     Epic  x     Epic  x+1      However in general a story has many scenarios and when working with BDD you want to write each scenario for a story as Given, when and then. Also the scenarios don't belong in the notstarted column, inprogess or Done as a scenario is not a task. So you realize that a scenario/s should have their own column between \"story\" and \"notstarted\", as a scenario can have many task to be considered done. If you are going to build your task from scenarios then why would you need the story on the scrum board in the first place, maybe they should be left in the backlog. Some people put scenarios on the back of each story. This is a on going debate in my team and I wanted to see if anyone has solved this differently. Cheers!"}
{"_id": "119500", "title": "Website or any material to practice algorithms that explains the solution", "text": "I know some projects and web pages for practicing algorithms like TopCoder and Project Euler. However, they just dictate the solution of a particular problem. I wonder if there is a resource, website or any material, that doesn't only give away the code, but also explains the solution thoroughly ?"}
{"_id": "240930", "title": "What's the copyright status of boilerplate code?", "text": "I check Open Source Compliance for commercial code. I have recently found a few examples where the commercial source is matched against quite a few OSS projects. The matches are very similar, but not exact, say about 30 lines of code with about 4 methods, a few variables names differ, some extra lines in the commercial code, ... but substantially the same. I don't think this is auto-generated code, nor copy-pasta, because things like comments will differ. Rather it just looks like boilerplate - the developers say that Grails (and these examples always seem to come up in Grails, but it could be any framework) requires a specific script format for CRUD operations (and these examples are also predominantly CRUD operations). If one adds in a standard source-code style, then it amounts to boilerplate - even if it is original it's going to end up as very similar looking across a number of codebases. Which leaves me with 2 questions:   1. Is this a reasonable defence against accusations of copyright infringement?    2. How would one form a judgement that codeX is such boilerplate, but codeY is not (as a non-expert in the language+framework)?"}
{"_id": "43067", "title": "Why do we have postfix increment?", "text": "_Disclaimer_ : I know perfectly well the semantics of prefix and postfix increment. So please don't explain to me how they work. Reading questions on stack overflow, I cannot help but notice that programmers get confused by the postfix increment operator over and over and over again. From this the following question arises: is there any use case where postfix increment provides a real benefit in terms of code quality? Let me clarify my question with an example. Here is a super-terse implementation of `strcpy`:               while (*dst++ = *src++);      But that's not exactly the most self-documenting code in my book (and it produces two annoying warnings on sane compilers). So what's wrong with the following alternative?               while (*dst = *src)     {         ++src;         ++dst;     }      We can then get rid of the confusing assignment in the condition and get completely warning-free code:               while (*src != '\\0')     {         *dst = *src;         ++src;         ++dst;     }     *dst = '\\0';      (Yes I know, `src` and `dst` will have different ending values in these alternative solutions, but since `strcpy` immediately returns after the loop, it does not matter in this case.) It seems the purpose of postfix increment is to make code as terse as possible. I simply fail to see how this is something we should strive for. If this was originally about performance, is it still relevant today?"}
{"_id": "240932", "title": "automated acceptance testing / BDD & workflow for designing a system", "text": "Recently, I started reading the book Specification by Example, which relates to automated functional testing and BDD (from what I've understood till now). I've tried using Concordion (.Net), and seems very interesting. I've been having issues with keeping any form of useful documentation for any designed system, and this might help My issue is, how would one suggest that the workflow in designing a complete system is? Some questions that arise are:   * Is it ideal to try to design the entire whole system in the beginning?    * Should you design a very high level overview of the system, and then create specifications one main feature at a time, i.e create detailed specifications -> develop -> test -> move to next main feature?   * Should you create BDD-style specifications for **each and every** method in the system, even trivial ones like some `GetProductByReferenceCode`? The issue is that most of the times when you actually start developing, you start to realise something's that need to be done differently than originally thought, or omissions not noticed during the initial design. I find that sometimes the initial design stage takes a lot of time, only for the actual design of the system to be very different once the product is launched. My current workflow for designing a system is:   1. First start with the user-interface, creating mockups of each and every screen the users will be dealing with. I find this to be the most visual method that the business users can understand.    2. Define logic that is directly related to the user-interface   3. Define any logic that happens _in the background_ , for example notifications, etc.  Does this make sense? Any ways this could be improved?"}
{"_id": "2259", "title": "How should I organize programming files into directories?", "text": "Sometimes, one creates a exploratory prototype and forgets about structure in the directories... What are good tips on dividing the programming files over (several levels of) directories?"}
{"_id": "240937", "title": "URI Representing a Single Resource with Two Possible Identifiers", "text": "I have a resource that can be represented in one of two ways:   1. Big Serial Number, or   2. Small Serial Number Is it closer adherence to REST principles to:   * A: have a query string specify the type (https://acme.org/api/widget/aaa-111-aaa?type=big vs https://acme.org/api/widget/aaa?type=small), or   * B: have query strings specify the type as search parameters (https://acme.org/api/widget?serial=aaa-111-aaa?type=big vs https://acme.org/api/widget?serial=aaa?type=small), or   * C: in the URI (https://acme.org/api/widget/big/aaa-111-aaa vs https://acme.org/api/widget/small/aaa), or   * D: something else (ex: headers)? To me, it seems like having it in the URI (option C) specifies an entirely different resource, and in this case, they should represent the exact same resource. Is option A the best way to represent this?"}
{"_id": "199065", "title": "Conditional construct for a kleenean data type", "text": "I was thinking of an hypothetical programming language with a `kleenean` data type which would implement Kleene's three-valued logic. To sum up, it's an extension of the boolean data type with the three constants `true`, `false` and `unknown` where `unknown` means that the value is either `true` or `false`, but we don't know which. The truth tables for a kleenean type are well-known and the logic is quite easy to understand. However, I was wondering how one would design a conditional construct to take in account this `unknown` value. A basic `if-then-else` conditional construct is almost always as follows:               if (boolean condition) then         condition is true, do something     else         condition is false, do some other thing     end      However, I have troubles seeing what a kleenean `if` construct would look like. How could we interpret the `unknown` constant? Technically speaking, it could satisfy the `true` condition as well as the `false` condition since it is one of these two. However, we can't have it match any of those since it could be the other, it is not really `true` nor `false`. Is there a well-known way to implement such a construct? **EDIT:** To specify a little bit, I would prefere something different than the way `boost::tribool` works, or from a simple `switch` as if was an enum. Answers about quantum superposition and semantics are welcome."}
{"_id": "240939", "title": "When is a script no longer a script?", "text": "I write many a PowerShell script for the organization I currently work for. Most recently I have been co-writing a tool that, in the end, will have a lot of functionality (beyond a single purpose), will be configurable, and will have both a CLI and GUI, all in PowerShell. So when does a script stop being a script and when can you call it an application or a program. Is this just kind of in the eye of the beholder?"}
{"_id": "124900", "title": "How assertive should I be in handling exceptions in objects?", "text": "I have been writing in C# 4.0 a lot lately and trying to write as lean as possible. As such, I have not been using the classic `try/catch` blocks and `using` statements as often. I understand the general function of .Net's garbage collection and exception handling - _I want to bulletproof my code and be efficient with objects, but I am trying to achieve this with the minimum amount of 'extra code'_ (since 'bloat' pissed people off). And to be clear, I understand `using()` is fundamental for relinquishing resources to handles and other code and its relationship to the `IDisposable` interface. But I am trying to get a better grip about how assertive a programmer should be in exception handling objects. Are there key places in code you'd say `try/catch` blocks and/or `using` statements are inarguably necessary? Within the contexts of garbage collection and exception handling, what common-use objects/scenarios would you recommend explicit attention? Should you simply make a catch block for every possible exception an object might through? How deep should they be nested? Are there steps I can take to proactively collect garbage (for example, to combat the example in comments of waiting for `Dispose()` to be called)?"}
{"_id": "2254", "title": "What are good keyboards for programming?", "text": "Programmers tend to type a lot of code, bashing a lot of shortcuts and a lot of other things. What keyboards are good for programming?"}
{"_id": "2252", "title": "How do you respond to \"Tell me a little bit about yourself.\" question in interviews?", "text": "I've been asked this in a few interviews. And it always catches me off guard.My professional and academic background are already in the resum\u00e9, which the interviewer has obviously looked at. What more to tell him/her? Should I start with my hobbies? I like gardening, or looking at NSFW pictures on reddit in my free time? What and how do you answer to this specific question? Do you have a prepared answer for it? Am I wrong if I think this question is a bit silly? **UPDATE** There have been a lot of great answers to this question. I'm in pickle which to choose as the 'correct' answer, because most of them are very insightful. I found a great writing on this subject matter. It's a bit crazy for my taste, but it's interesting: How To Introduce Yourself\u2026 I Mean Practically"}
{"_id": "154464", "title": "Licensing a JavaScript library", "text": "I am developing a free, open-source (duh) JavaScript library, and wondering how to license it. I was considering the GNU GPL, but I heard that I must distribute the license with the software, and I'm not sure anymore. I would like the library to be available much like jQuery: In a free, downloadable script, preferably in either original or minified form. Am I mistaken about the GNU GPL license terms? jQuery is dual licensed under GNU GPL or MIT licenses. How does the GPL apply to single script files like that? Can I license my library with nothing more than a few sentences in the script file? Is there another license that better suits my needs? What would be nice is a license that allows you to put the URL in the source, for people to read if they want. I don't know that many do, unless I am mistaken. I am generally looking to release the library as free software like the GPL specifies, **but don't want to have to force licensees to download the full license unless they wish to read it.**"}
{"_id": "69766", "title": "Which is more valuable in product development: an action-oriented or visionary bent?", "text": "As a software development professional in a fairly conservative large-firm, I always had a much more action-oriented bent, as my job was fairly stable and all that mattered was doing as I was told and completing tasks that were germane to the career of a benevolent dictator (i.e., my boss' boss). Now that I'm no longer working for \"the Man\", I find it just as important to use the left side of my brain and wrap my head around this whole \"vision thing\". Which do you think is more important for software product development in a small, yet feisty start-up: Knowing the path or walking (or running) it?"}
{"_id": "152709", "title": "How to host a site in another site - with little or no coding", "text": "**SUMMARY:** All of these happens on Site A   * User visits site A   * User enter username and password   * User click on Login Button   * User authenticated on Site B behind the scene   * User is shown a page on Site A that contains his/her profile from Site B as layout/styled from Site B   * User can click links in the Profile page that links to other area in Site B Meaning: Session has to be maintained somehow I have web application where I store users' password and username. If you logon to this site, you can login with the password and username to have access to your profile. There is another option that requires you to login to my site from your site and have your profile displayed within your site. This is because you might already have a site that your clients know you with. This link is close to what I want to do: http://aspmessageboard.com/showthread.php?t=235069 _A user on Site A login to Site B and have the information on site B showing in site A. He should not know whether Site B exists. It should be as if everything is happening in Site A_ This latter part is what I don't know to implement. I have these ideas: Have a **fixed IFrame** within your site to contain my site: but I am concerned about size/layout since different clients have different layout/size for their content section. I am thinking of how to maintain session too **A webservice** : I don't know how feasible this is since the Password and ID are on my server. You may have to send them back and forth. It means client would have to code with my API. _But I am not just returning data, I have to show them a page that contains the profile details_ **OpenID, Single-SignOn** : Just guessing - but the authentication and data resides on my server. there is nothing to access on your side in this case Examples: like login into facebook within my site and still be able to do post updates, receive notifications Facebook implement some of these with IFrame e.g. the Like button *NOTE: * I have tested the IFrame option. It worked but I still have to remove my site specific content like my page Banner, Side Navigation etc. I was able to login normally as if I was actually on the site. This show my GUI but - style sheet was missing - content not styled with CSS - Any relative url won't work. It would look for that resource relative to the current server. Unless I change links to absolute - Clicking on the LogIn button produces this error: _The state information is invalid for this page and might be corrupted._ **UPDATE:** I was reading about REST webservice few days ago and I got this idea: What about the idea of **returning an XML from a webservice [REST or SOAP] and providing an XSLT (that I can provide) to display it**. Thus they won't have to do much coding?"}
{"_id": "105891", "title": "Where can I find articles on why interruptions are bad for programmers?", "text": "I've read/heard that interruptions are bad for programmers. I've also read/heard that getting into 'the zone' is good. I don't doubt these assertions, but I'd like to educate colleagues (managers, mainly) and family members (for when I work from home) about the perils of interruptions and the productivity gains to be had from 'the zone'. So could anyone point me to articles and/or books that make the arguments well? Feel free to make those arguments here in an answer if you like. It would be helpful if there were some in there that were aimed at managers and non-programming colleagues."}
{"_id": "21355", "title": "How do you explain the complexity of bulk emailing to a manager?", "text": "I think we've all been there, you've been asked to write something to send bulk emails for whatever reason. It's a solved problem, theres a multitude of companies out there to handle this for you, and theres no point in catching up on their many years of single minded focus on making sure your email reaches its destination without being waylaid by spam filters. Now, I could go into a point by point talk about DKIM, SPF, ISP rate limits, content inspection, bounces, getting blacklisted, getting unblacklisted etc, but the eyes will glaze over. How do you convince a non technical manager of the issues around bulk email like this?"}
{"_id": "211365", "title": "Who owns modifications to open-source software?", "text": "Suppose a piece of software is distributed under some permissive license, e.g. BSD. Now, I modify this software and want to distribute my derivative work. My questions:   * Who is the owner of the derivative? Is it the original author, the new author or there is joint ownership?   * Is a copyright notice (say under the original copyright) sufficient to establish the new ownership?"}
{"_id": "211364", "title": "Generic name for types and values", "text": "In computer science, what is the abstract common name of types and values (I mean an abstract \"something\" that can be a type or a value) ? To be more specific:   If we have `template <typename X>` or `template <int X>` what is the abstract name of `X`?"}
{"_id": "211368", "title": "C# Delegates are immutable - but why does that matter?", "text": "This is a followup question to this other question. **Background** Working from the MSDN Delegates Tutorial (C#), I see the following: > Note that once a delegate is created, the method it is associated with never > changes \u2014 delegate objects are immutable. And then, in the code sample, I see this (Spread out a little througout the code):               public delegate void ProcessBookDelegate(Book book);          bookDB.ProcessPaperbackBooks(new ProcessBookDelegate(PrintTitle));     bookDB.ProcessPaperbackBooks(new ProcessBookDelegate(totaller.AddBookToTotal));      **The Question** Now obviously, the way the code is written here a new delegate is created for each process. I am _guessing_ the immutability is relevant if you try to do stuff like               ProcessBookDelegate thisIsATest = new ProcessBookDelegate(PrintTitle);     ProcessBookDelegate thisIsATest = new ProcessBookDelegate(totaller.AddBookToTotal);      which should... still compile when `thisIsATest` is immutable? So what problem has Microsoft solved by making it immutable? What problems would we run into if C# 6 made delegates mutable? **EDIT** I believe the immutability will prevent this:               ProcessBookDelegate thisIsATest = new ProcessBookDelegate(PrintTitle);          thisIsATest.ChangeTheDelegateInABadFashion();          someFunction(thisIsATest); //This function works as normal                                //because the delegate is unchanged                                //due to immutability      but the immutability will NOT prevent this:               ProcessBookDelegate thisIsATest = new ProcessBookDelegate(PrintTitle);          thisIsATest = new ProcessBookDelegate(ChangeTheDelegateInABadFashion());          someFunction(thisIsATest); //This function works weird now because                                //it expected the unchanged delegate      Am I correct in this understanding?"}
{"_id": "60586", "title": "How to test a random feature in MS Excel/WORD/PPT", "text": "Interviewers often ask questions about testing a random feature in Excel, Word, Notepad etc.. I am someone who will be interviewing for a SDET position and has a SDE background not specifically SDET background. I am extremely interested in testing though so applied for a SDET position. So how should one go about testing a random feature in a software, especially word/excel/notepad kind of software? Exploratory testing? What about a feature like File-> open dialog in word/Excel/ How to tackle such interview questions? What is an interviewer specifically looking for in an experienced candidate when he/she asks such questions?"}
{"_id": "167033", "title": "Is there a way to help streamline your typical developers discussions?", "text": "Often, my colleagues and I run into specific problems, for example what's the best way to deploy this, or would this or that technique be a good one to use, or just \"hey, have you seen that new thing\". However at the moment this communication goes via mail, or skype, or twitter, and a lot of information becomes hard to find very quickly. Is there a service or methodology to keep this kind of information ordered and traceable?"}
{"_id": "167031", "title": "Best method in PHP for the Error Handling ? Convert all PHP errors (warnings notices etc) to exceptions?", "text": "What is the best method in PHP for the Error Handling ? is there a way in PHP to Convert all PHP errors (warnings notices etc) to exceptions ? what the best way/practise to error handling ? again: if we overuse exceptions (i.e. try/catch) in many situations, i think application will be halted unnecessary. for a simple error checking we can use return false; but it may be cluttering the coding with many if else conditions. what do you guys suggest ?"}
{"_id": "167030", "title": "How can I view github tasks which are not assigned to a person?", "text": "On the main Issues page, you can click `Everyone's Issues`, or `Assigned to me`. If you want to view the tasks assigned to a particular person, you can click the `search` icon, and on the left choose the `assigned to anyone` drop-down, then choose from a list of assignees. But how to I list all the items which are not assigned to anyone?"}
{"_id": "94033", "title": "Is there a canonical book for CMS design patterns and concepts?", "text": "I've been trying to understand the fundamentals of content management systems: I've looked into APress's _Pro ASP.NET 4 CMS_ , but it dives into implementation, dedicating a lot of time to technologies and not core principles. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about content management systems? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "116221", "title": "Appropriate uses of fall-through switch statements", "text": "When is it appropriate to use a fall-through (classic) switch statement? Is such usage recommended and encouraged or should it be avoided at all costs?"}
{"_id": "56935", "title": "Why are pointers not recommended when coding with C++", "text": "I read from somewhere that when using C++ it is recommended not to use pointers. Why is pointers such a bad idea when you are using C++. For C programmers that are used to using pointers, what is the better alternative and approach in C++?"}
{"_id": "102458", "title": "How to learn Java web application development?", "text": "I\u2019m planning on making a Java web application using Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk. AWS Elastic Beanstalk basically provides PaaS on top of AWS\u2019s cloud computing resources. The problem I\u2019m having is trying to learn how to make a Java web application. I\u2019m familiar with making basic programs with Java (1st year computer science stuff) and have read the Head First java book, however I\u2019m totally clueless when it comes to a large project like this. I\u2019ve tried to find a suitable tutorial in the AWS docs, but as far as I can tell it assumes you know how to make Java applications. I tried the Oracle Java docs, and I\u2019ve been searching the internet for something useful.    The problem is that all the resources I find assume familiarity with what I\u2019m trying to learn. Ideally I would like an article or tutorial that describes the process and how to make a Java web app that assumes only basic knowledge of the Java programming language. So if anyone can offer any advice, or docs that could help me achieve that goal, I would greatly appreciate your help :-)    Thanks in advance, and I apologize if it seems that Googling could answer this question, but I have honestly looked quite hard to find some way of learning this and have come up with nothing. So I\u2019ve come to you guys - the experts ;) - who presumably knew as little as I did at the start.       Basic details of the app:   It will have a web based interface as well as Android and iOS apps to connect to it. It will be of medium complexity and will involve user interaction. For the browser based part it will involve taking payments from users if they wish to buy a premium part of the service."}
{"_id": "102459", "title": "How do you track your progress in a project?", "text": "Here's the type of situation that I've been struggling with, and I'm certainly not the first:   * Project has a budget based on the estimated time to develop the solution   * Deadline to turn project over to the PM for QA is one some date   * I am working on multiple projects at once, and each has a budgeted number of hours and deadline Tracking my progress against a budget and deadline would be pretty straightforward if I knew exactly how I was going to implement it, and only had one or two projects to focus on at a time. However, I'm building websites with Drupal, and every project includes some functionality that might be available as module - or the available module won't work at all, and it will require significant effort to build that functionality. What strategy have you found most helpful to keep track of where you are in a project so that you can accurately report to the PM how far along you are, and identify early on if the project is in danger of running late or going over budget, especially in cases where the time required for some parts is unknown?"}
{"_id": "235374", "title": "Make a monolithic architecture in something modular", "text": "Currently my architecture is a monolithic block that handles a really specific duty. Now it needs to be generalized. Right now it handles a request and all processes (1 or many) associated to it. There's a class `Request` and a class `Process` and since it serves one specific duty this model was OK. Right now I need to split both classes to achieve modularity. For instance, the `Request` class should be split. So I'll still have a `Request` class, which holds general request information, and many `RequestDetailsForServiceOne`, `RequestDetailsForServiceTwo` and so on, that hold detailed information relatively to a specific type of request. Equally for `Process`. _The question right now is: how to bind together`Request` class with `RequestDetailsForServiceOne` (at run time)?_ I had thought about Dependency Injection, but `RequestDetailsForServiceOne` and `RequestDetailsForServiceTwo` doesn't share any common behaviour, (that classes only store some properties), this way will drive me to code an `IRequestDetailsForService` completely empty. That sounds as a code-smell to me. Would be a better idea in this case use, (inside `Request`/`Process` class) a Dictionary of properties and completely avoid `RequestDetailsForService*` classes? I don't really like the loss of type-checking that this way get me back. What would be an ideal solution?"}
{"_id": "235375", "title": "Does WinRt have support for .Net Framework and Wpf?", "text": "I want to find out if   1. WinRt does or not support .Net Framework?   2. WinRt does or not support WPF? Our company has developed applications using WinForms and they want to have them also running on WinRt. So is it possible to use classes developed under .Net Framework 4.5 in WinRt?"}
{"_id": "191187", "title": "What type of projects should each of these projects be given their particular purposes?", "text": "I'm working in a creation of a new system that should be able to change the presentation layer without trouble, also be able to comport web-services, shop areas, internal control of data, creation of reports, multiple web portals, etc. Following this post about the \"benefits of multiple Projects and One Solution\" on Stackoverflow also in some self-experience I came with the idea of the following structure.   * TestProject.BLL (Business)   * TestProject.DAL (Persistence (Mappings, Conventions etc))   * TestProject.WEB (Presentation Layer)   * TestProject.BASE (Framework) But, after some search on the web, I found that those project are **not** always the type of \" **ASP.NET Web Application** \". * * * My question is, what are the types that I should create each project? Should I build them as \" **Windows Forms Application** \" or what?"}
{"_id": "207030", "title": "Solving which bugs will give greatest cost benefit", "text": "I wanted to get an idea of categorizing bugs based on how easy is it to solve and how much benefit it will give me. for e.g., if there is a bug which will take say an hour (double file close etc.) to solve vs another which takes a day (segmentation fault). But if solving the first bug is not very important, then I'll probably work on the second one. Are there any research papers which categorize bugs based on cost-benefit or similar metric? [EDIT] Let's say it is possible to categorize bugs based on bug characteristics e.g. security vulnerability, memory error, logic error etc. On the other dimension there could be parameters like difficulty (easy, medium, hard). Are there other dimensions I should be looking for. To simplify things, I can assume two things:   1. Every programmer in the team is equally capable of solving any bug   2. There is no deadline"}
{"_id": "102450", "title": "EF vs. NHibernate", "text": "In the past 2 years since I started writing business applications (before I did either high level front end or very low level systems programming), learned datasets, linq to sql, and now entity framework. The logical thing to look at next seems to be NHibernate. Reasons I eventually ended up at EF are: (1) it has the best designer support and (2) it is the most supported by Microsoft. Reasons (these have elements of assumption) I am interested in NHibernate are: (1) it might not get superceded by a totally different thing as quickly as MS churns data access technologies (2) It seems like its either the front running or second to front running tool for what it does and (3) It appears to be stable and tracable back through time quite a bit. Has anyone published a comparioson of the two? Is one better than the other for certain types of architectures? Or is it just a matter of style and preference?"}
{"_id": "102453", "title": "c# Web Content Filter", "text": "Can anyone point me to any GOOD open source .NET parental web content filters? I would like to gain an understanding of how I can filter/block web traffic based on Url and/or keyword. I've looked on google but can't seem to find any developed c#"}
{"_id": "162007", "title": "Should a stack trace be in the error message presented to the user?", "text": "I've got a bit of an argument at my workplace and I'm trying to figure out who is right, and what is the right thing to do. Context: an intranet web application that our customers use for accounting and other ERP stuff. I'm of the opinion that an error message presented to the user (when things crash) should include as much information as possible, including the stack trace. Of course, it has to start with a nice \"An Error has occurred, please submit the below information to the developers\" in large, friendly letters. My reasoning is that a screenshot of the crashed application will often be the only easily available source of information. Sure, you can try to get a hold of the client's systems administrator(s), attempt to explain where your log files are, etc, but that will probably be slow and painful (talking to the client representatives mostly is). Also, having an immediate and full information is extremely useful in development, where you don't have to go hunting through the log files to find what you need on every exception. (But that could be solved with a configuration switch.) Unfortunately there has been some kind of \"Security audit\" (no idea how they did that without the sources... but whatever), and they complained about the full exception messages citing them as a security threat. Naturally, the clients (at least one that I know of) has taken this at face value and now demands that the messages be cleaned. I fail to see how a potential attacker could use a stack trace to figure anything out he couldn't have figured out before. Are there any examples, any documented proof of anyone ever doing that? I think that we should fight this foolish idea, but perhaps I'm the fool here, so... Who's right?"}
{"_id": "235379", "title": "Picking a card from a shuffled deck", "text": "I'm pretty new to Haskell although I did some ML many moons ago. I'm trying to set up a deck of playing cards, shuffle them and then deal them. I have the deck and shuffle sorted (of a fashion) but I'm not sure what I'm doing after that. This is what I have so far:               import System.Random     import Data.Array.IO     import Control.Monad          -- | Randomly shuffle a list     --   /O(N)/     shuffle :: [a] -> IO [a]     shuffle xs = do             ar <- newArray n xs             forM [1..n] $ \\i -> do                 j <- randomRIO (i,n)                 vi <- readArray ar i                 vj <- readArray ar j                 writeArray ar j vi                 return vj       where         n = length xs         newArray :: Int -> [a] -> IO (IOArray Int a)         newArray n xs =  newListArray (1,n) xs          ranks=[2..14]          suits=[1,2,3,4]          cards=[(r,s) | r <- ranks, s<- suits]          deck=shuffle cards               myAction :: IO [(Integer, Integer)]     myAction = shuffle cards          main :: IO ()     main = do         xs <- myAction         print xs      There was no particular reason I chose that list shuffler other than the reason I could interrogate (or at least display) the resulting list. I'd like to be able to pull items off the returned **IO [(Integer, Integer)]** but I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. I understand that I can't simply convert it to a vanilla list (this is covered sufficiently elsewhere) so presumably I either need to:   * extend the IO (monad?) somehow   * write a custom list of tuples shuffler   * write my own monad   * use some other method I haven't learnt yet Anecdotally, I believe this can be done \"uncleanly\" but I don't want to go to programmer hell until I understand how hot the fires are... Any idea how best to proceed?"}
{"_id": "52722", "title": "Technologie Roadmap: Portlet JSR286 vs Widget/Gadget", "text": "IBM got me confused (again). For many years IBM have been pushing for Portlet Containers with the JSR 168 and later the JSR 286 Specification. 2008-2009, IBM the Lotus division introduced the iWidget Specification. Based on my reading, it is a more dynamic and lightweight version of the Portlets, close to Google Gadget. It uses a different paradigm than Porlet while providing the same features. A major differentiator with this kind of client side technologies is that you don\u2019t need a big and costly Portal infrastructure. To not fall in the \u2018It depends on needs\u2019 discussions, let consider the following:               * New company, no legacy portlet, no portal in place.      What are your thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "27985", "title": "Learning to Program in Assembly - Useful Resources", "text": "Following on from a previous thread, it has got me interested in learning a little about Assembly programming. Not so much for wanting to program useful apps in, just to get a feel for low level programming to better understand what is happening. Can anybody recommend any books or online resources for beginners? Thanks."}
{"_id": "27983", "title": "What do you do when you have to work on a project using a language that you hate?", "text": "I've recently been assigned to work on a project written in PHP. I can't change that, and have no intention of really trying. However, this can't be an uncommon scenario. How do you motivate yourself to work on the project when the code you're looking at and producing constantly makes you want to cry? EDIT: It should be noted that this is pretty much the only on-campus job doing anything software related available at the moment, so \"just change jobs\" isn't really an option :("}
{"_id": "27982", "title": "How to explain a project for a potential employer", "text": "I went to an interview last week for a junior programmer and mentioned that I have been working on a project with a buddy of mine. Tomorrow they would like to see this project in order to decide if they should hire me or not. So I was wondering:   * What parts of a project are of interest to someone who has not seen the project before?   * What could I show that would change their perspective of me as a programmer and what I know? The project is in C# and have been a hobby project for 6 months now. Without going into to much details:   * it's a networked program   * it's server / client based where clients end up connecting to each others   * there is synchronization of data between clients   * we are using files to store information about the different clients, which is also being synchronized   * the program in whole is divided into some different projects (some which go into .dll's)   * the project will later handle multiple layers of displaying the data to the user (meaning cmd, a window etc..) I have green lighted this with my buddy as well and it is ok to show. My idea was to show the shell (cmd) that we have which is working and the top layers of the hierarchy, the ones that the shell communicates directly with. These are three classes in particular, one that connects and communicates with the server, one that handles the synchronization and one that handles the objects that are being synchronized. I'll try to go into some details about how we store the objects and how this is communicated to the synchronizer class. Then discuss on a higher level of how we synchronize the data, ending with going into some detail about how this is done.   Basically, **start from an abstract layer and go into detail where the magic happends.** But I wonder how this will be understandable for someone who has never seen our project before. How will this show that I am a better or worse programmer than my next? They are programmers so I guess they will understand the basics and be able to follow the functions and what the code do. But I know that _I_ have trouble with understanding the overall picture of a project, much less in 1-2 hours. Also, I wouldn't know how to decide if it was a good programmer or bad unless I saw some bad code. So my question is:   1. Is the above idea something to work on? (top > bottom)    2. Should I concentrate more on algorithms?   3. Should I try to build a UML diagram or some other visual representation of the project?  Any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "52725", "title": "What should I ask interviewer during the interview?", "text": "I have an SDET interview upcoming in a week. I have been preparing for a long time. It is a good company. I am working as SDET for two years. I wonder what questions I should ask my interviewer regarding testing and other things. I would appreciate your help if you give me some sample questions that I should ask my interviewer during the interview. Some of them I thought are:   1. What type of testing methodologies do you use?    2. Do you have triage meeting everyday?    3. What percentage of code coverage is done by unit tests? I do not find these questions to be more effective. I would appreciate if somebody could help me out in coming out with better questions."}
{"_id": "211096", "title": "What does \"Released under MIT and GPL license\" mean?", "text": "There are lots of projects released under more than one license. One example is Mozilla's tri-license, which states that the Software is released under the MPL, but the user can also choose GPL or LGPL instead of MPL (I think this is because the MPL license is incompatible with the GPL license). However, I came across projects released under both the GPL license and the MIT license. What conditions must be met in this case? For the MPL/GPL/LGPL case, things are clear because you can choose MPL or GPL or LGPL. But from GPL & MIT I understand that the conditions from both licenses must be met at the same time in order to use it, and this doesn't make much sense because they have different purposes. In this case, should the MIT license be interpreted as an exception, similar to, for example, the QT's LGPL exception or as an additional set of conditions on top of the GPL license?"}
{"_id": "157283", "title": "HTML in docblock comments?", "text": "In the PEAR standards there is no reference to HTML, if its allowed or not. http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.sample.php But I see some people use HTML tags like `<kbd>` and stuff.. So is HTML allowed? Will it break some doc parsers?"}
{"_id": "52729", "title": "How to become a Kernel/Systems/Device driver programmer?", "text": "I currently work in a professional capacity as a software engineer working with the Android OS. We work at integrating our platform as a native daemon among other facets of the project. I primarily work in Java developing the SDK and Android applications, but get to help with the platform in C/C++. Anywho, I have a great interest to work professionally developing low level for linux. I am not unhappy in my current position and will hang around as long as the company lets me (as a matter of fact I quite enjoy working there!), but I would like to work my way that direction. I've been working through Linux Kernel Development (Robert Love) and The Linux Programming Interface (Michael Kerrisk) (In addition to strengthening my C skills at every chance I get) and casually browsing Monster and similar sites. The problem I see is, _there are no entry level positions._ How does one break into this field? Anytime I see \"Linux Systems Programmer\" or \"Linux Device Driver Programmer\" they all require _at the minimum_ 5-7 years of relevant experience. They want someone who knows the ropes, not a junior level programmer (I've been working for 7 months now...). So, I'm assuming, that some of you on stackoverflow work in a professional capacity doing just what I would like to do. How did you get there? What platforms did you use to work your way there? Am I going to have a more difficult time because I have my bachelors in CSC as opposed to a computer engineer (where they would experience a bit more embedded, asm, etc)? _EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION!_ I am aware of the opensource nature of the linux kernel/drivers etc. I plan on contributing regardless of where my day job is. I'm more curious of what kinds of entry level positions will allow me to do relevant work and get paid doing it! Thanks for all the replies so far!"}
{"_id": "17738", "title": "Time allocated to code reviews", "text": "If you are doing code reviews   * How much time do you spend on code reviews, compared to implementation?   * How much of the changes undergo code review?   * you think it's to much / should be more? Are there any studies about effectiveness? [edit] thank you all for the answers, it's hard to pick a \"winner\" for such a question, there is lots of valuable info in the other replies, too."}
{"_id": "68384", "title": "Mathematical Knowledge Required prior to entering Computer Science", "text": "I am currently a College Student in a Systems Analysis (3 year course). I am about to finish my course and would like to enroll in Computer Science at a University near me. I have a deep interest in learning sorting algorithms, measuring time complexity, cryptography, systems programming and security research. I am bored by the typical, high-level knowledge; java and general algorithm knowledge. I have absolutely no problem learning and utilizing new programming languages, mentalities and syntaxes. My only worry with regards to entering this course is what Mathematical knowledge is required prior to entering. I have done linear algebra but not quadratic equations; I have not done Calculus, nor have I done any Big-O notation. I plan on enrolling in 1 (one) year, so this gives me one year to prepare. I would like to know what I should be studying and reading to prepare. Books, worksheets, videos and any sort of advice or opinion(s) would be greatly appreciated. I have a great passion for efficient computing/programming and solving problems in the most efficient manner. I'm just trying to figure out if I would be in over my head entering Computer Science. Some people have said that I am to old, 22 this year, I would love to hear the opinions and advice of the Stack community. Thanks To All In Advance,"}
{"_id": "250968", "title": "What is design pattern/paradigm for ASP.NET web-apps?", "text": "I don't actually know if my question is correct, but working on a webapp porting from ASP.NET world to Java + Spring platform I came up with this question in mind. Using Spring MVC, the new version of the the application, I'm obviously applying MVC pattern, but which was the ASP.NET design/paradigm. I know that ASP.NET uses event-oriented paradigm, but is this a design pattern? Hope to be clear..."}
{"_id": "254046", "title": "And at what point of modification to the original does source code with no license become owned by me?", "text": "I've recently come across a publicly viewable project on Github that has no license associated with it. In this repo, there is a file with the logic and most of the code needed to work as a piece of a project I am working on. Not verbatim, but about 60% of it I'd like to use with various modifications. Once my code base is a little bit more stable, I plan to release what I've done under the WTFPL License. I've emailed the repo owner, and so far have not gotten a reply. I know I have the rights to fork the repo, but if I release a stripped down and modified version of the other project's file with mine, under the WTFPL, am I infringing on copyrights? Per Github's Terms of Service, by submitted a project on Github and making it viewable to the public, you are allowing other users to see and fork your project. Doesn't say anything about modifying, distributing, or using the fork. And at what point of modification to the original does it become owned by me?"}
{"_id": "254041", "title": "Performing a Depth First Search iteratively using async/parallel processing?", "text": "Here is a method that does a DFS search and returns a list of all items given a top level item id. How could I modify this to take advantage of parallel processing? Currently, the call to get the sub items is made one by one for each item in the stack. It would be nice if I could get the sub items for multiple items in the stack at the same time, and populate my return list faster. How could I do this (either using async/await or TPL, or anything else) in a thread safe manner?               private async Task<IList<Item>> GetItemsAsync(string topItemId)     {         var items = new List<Item>();            var topItem = await GetItemAsync(topItemId);              Stack<Item> stack = new Stack<Item>();                    stack.Push(topItem);         while (stack.Count > 0)         {             var item = stack.Pop();             items.Add(item);                                     var subItems = await GetSubItemsAsync(item.SubId);                  foreach (var subItem in subItems)             {                 stack.Push(subItem);             }         }              return items;        }      I was thinking of something along these lines, but it's not coming together:               var tasks = stack.Select(async item =>     {         items.Add(item);                    var subItems = await GetSubItemsAsync(item.SubId);              foreach (var subItem in subItems)         {             stack.Push(subItem);         }        }).ToList();          if (tasks.Any())         await Task.WhenAll(tasks);      The language I'm using is C#."}
{"_id": "113769", "title": "Displaying and processing objects in a list?", "text": "I currently have code like this to display some objects that meet some criteria in a grid:               // simplified     void MyDialog::OnTimer()     {         UpdateDisplay();     }          void MyDialog::UpdateDisplay()     {         std::list<MyClass *> objects;         someService_->GetObjectsMeetingCriteria(objects, sortField, sortDirection);              for(std::list<MyClass *>::iterator it = objects.begin();             it != objects.end() ; it ++)         {             AddObjectToGrid(*it);         }          }         This works fine. Now the requirement has come in to process these objects when they meet some criteria. The information on the objects can change quickly so it would be most desirable to check if an object meets criteria and then process it immediately and continue on in this fashion. My question is how to best architect this to handle the display and processing. I could simply add a method to process the object such as:               for(std::list<MyClass *>::iterator it = objects.begin();         it != objects.end() ; it ++)     {         ProcessObject(*it);         AddObjectToGrid(*it);     }      However ideally I'd check if an object meets the criteria immediately before processing it to ensure its acting on the most recent info. In this example, all the objects are checked to see if they match the criteria and then afterwards each one is processed. Also I'm concerned this is coupling the processing code with the display code although I'm not sure how to separate them or if it's even necessary. I could solve that like this:               void MyDialog::OnTimer()     {         ProcessObjects();         UpdateDisplay();     }      But then I'm iterating over the list of objects twice, once to process and once to display. Finally I could do something like:               // simplified     void MyDialog::OnTimer()     {         ProcessAndDisplayObjects();     }          void MyDialog::ProcessAndDisplayObjects()     {         std::list<MyClass *> objects;         someService_->GetAll(objects, sortField, sortDirection);              for(std::list<MyClass *>::iterator it = objects.begin();             it != objects.end() ; it ++)         {             if(someService->MeetsCriteria(*it))             {               ProcessObject(*it);               AddObjectToGrid(*it);             }         }     }         Overall what's holding me up is I'm worried about coupling the display and processing code together and the code running efficiently because timely processing is critical. How can I best structure this code?"}
{"_id": "9795", "title": "What to look out for in employment contracts", "text": "I thought of this today after a co-worker looked through the contract they had signed several years ago and was quite alarmed. What should one look out for before signing a contract, as most employers _will_ get you to sign one. Please post ideas separately so they can be voted individually."}
{"_id": "148556", "title": "Should a website use its own public API?", "text": "I am starting to write a webservice, and I've built with nodeJS and a RESTfulish approach. From what I gather:   * The advantage is that you don't have to duplicate code.   * The disadvantages are that you:      * will update the public API frequently, but should be solved with versioning     * can't really make service specific caching and optimizations What is considered best practice? Do sites such as Stack Exchange, Github, Twitter, etc use their own APIs for their clients?"}
{"_id": "148551", "title": "Design Patterns / Strategies For Custom Fields & Data Types", "text": "Are there any common strategies or design patterns for designing applications that have either the ability to add custom fields to data objects, or for creating your own custom definition of objects. For example, I am thinking of products such as SalesForce, where you can have your own types of information,frameworks such as Expression Engine and the way it handles channels and channel field groups (Example), or How CMSes Like wordpress have the ability to add fields to custom post types."}
{"_id": "220881", "title": "Understanding bitmap logic", "text": "I was going though this blog and it says > You can represent a list of distinct integers no larger than N using exactly > N bits: if the integer i appears in your list, you set the i th bit to true. > Bits for which there is no corresponding integers are set to false. For > example, the integers 3, 4, 7 can be represented as 00011001. As another > example, the integers 1, 2, 7 can be represented as 01100001. Can someone please explain me how [3, 4, 7] = 00011001 and [1, 2, 7] = 01100001 and also why 8 bits are taken?"}
{"_id": "112415", "title": "Is there a difference between property and attribute?", "text": "These two words are completely synonymous for me, but I wonder if there's actually a useful semantic difference that I can incorporate into coding/naming conventions/process."}
{"_id": "91129", "title": "Why are we still using the DOM in the browser rather than a desktop paradigm", "text": "From my understanding, the web interface was developed to use HTML because at the time it wasn't possible to simulate a desktop style application in the browser such as how Silverlight and Flash work, because of bandwidth limitations, and possibly processing power. Why hasn't there in the past, and the present been a larger acceptance and push for technologies like Flash/Silverlight? From my experience they are more pleasing to develop with (of course my opinion), and you don't have to deal with cross browser compliance, and older browsers (for the most part). Handling postbacks, AJAX, etc seems like extra unnecessary effort compared to the development paradigm of desktop applications. Do the DOM and it's complimenting technologies continue to thrive mainly on the fact that Silverlight/Flash requires a plugin install, and some mobile devices don't support the plugin?"}
{"_id": "222033", "title": "The practical size limits of an AngularJS based application", "text": "We have been tasked with replacing a series of 25 year old mainframe applications with web applications. There are 4 applications in the series and we are trying to come up with a stack that will work on all 4. Now these applications are big. Not huge, but big. Based on the work that our sister company did to replace similar pieces of their systems, the small one is expected to come in at about 150k lines of rest service code and about 80k of UI code. For the big one, a million of service code and 200k of UI code isn't out of the question. The small application, so far we have about 150 different views, The big one has about 500 we know about. Now I understand that line numbers are a bad metric to use, but at the moment, its the best i got, so lets just go with that. So in the world I typically work in, this is one medium size application and three large ones. The next issue we have. Across the board, all systems. No user action is to take more than one second. Meaning, if you come into an application, the app has to be loaded and ready to login within one second. If you click on a search button, the response has to be displayed within one second. We have people that use the mainframe systems that process paperwork and in order for them to hit their daily quota, they have to average a start to finish processing time of 15 seconds for each case. The green screens they use right now just barely hit that mark. Dont get me going on eliminating the paper. State and Federal law requires it. So we already know that we have to build the app in such a way that a user can use it without touching the mouse. No way are they going to hit their quotas if they have to be mousing all over the place. Thats not such a big deal, we can define hot keys to do that. But the big issue is the speed. The typical internal framework is JSF. The standard is RichFaces, but many years of horrible performance out of Rich has finally convinced them to move to Prime. We would be about the 2nd or 3rd to use Prime. But since our performance requirements are the highest they have ever encountered, they asked my team to evaluate different frameworks. For internal applications, the current acceptable response time is between 5 and 7 seconds. Pretty typical in an enterprise, usually pretty easy target to hit with JSF. So we spent the past 5 weeks evaluating various options and by leaps and bounds the highest performing framework was GWT. In our benchmarks it blew Vaadin and JSF/Prime completely out of the ball park. Also, aside from JSF, its pretty much the only thing we could find designed to handle applications of this size with surprising ease. (Struts and SpringMVC are strictly forbidden in our enterprise) Then the problems started. Our Enterprise group said no, we can't use it. They acknowledge the fact that there is very little chance of JSF pulling off our performance requirements and the only practical way of hitting our goal is a thick browser front end, but, instead of GWT, they want us to use Angularjs. For the purpose of this post, lets not get into why they said no, lets just stick to the fact the answer was no. So, the past 2 days, I started digging into Angular. So far, I'm not impressed. It looks ok for very small applications (compared to what I normally deal with) but I can't find anything anywhere that shows an experience in trying to build an application of the size that I need to build. The closest I found was a guy talking about his \"Enterprise\" application he built with Angular that was about 9k lines. He said it was a bitch to pull off, mostly from inexperience, but once he found the tool Lineman, it became tolerable and he was able to pull it off. In the applications I need to build, 9k lines won't cover the logic I need to build into my search UI (so far we have identified about a dozen different ways to search for various data, and counting). To say nothing about actually doing anything with the results. So I called up two of our really, really good developers and asked their opinion. After we got past the initial \"Your out of your mind, that's what GWT was built for\" phase of the conversation, it was settled that to try to pull off apps of this size as single page javascript apps, like you can in GWT very easily, would be complete suicide. Angular just simply wasn't designed to go that big, it was designed for tiny stuff. Mobile apps, small web apps, etc. Nothing of this scale. The idea is we have to break the app into smaller modules. But, this brings the problem of how to transfer application state from one module to the other. This problem has been tackled at this company before with very poor results. But, they had an idea. Since we can't switch out our Websphere servers for Node.js, Their suggestion was to try a hybrid approach. The idea is to create a JEE6 Conversation bean. Then create a JSF file for each module of the application. That JSF would be linked to the conversation bean. This way, each module can run Angular to handle the MC side and the V side can be basic HTML with Twitter Bootstrap to make it pretty. When the user switches from one module to another, the JS application state is posted to the conversation bean. The conversation bean then redirects you to the new JSF module page, then the JSF can grab the object that represents the current application state from the conversation and pass that to Angular, loads it and they are off to the races. Then of course Angular would talk to the REST services directly. We are using the slow ass JEE stack as little as possible, but still able to sorta easily move app state from one module to another. The stack sounds ok to me. We have the ability to break the app into modules, if the module gets too big, we can break them into sub modules, use the conversation to move the state from module to module, and we can use Angular. My problem with this stack is 2 fold. One, thats a lot of plumbing. Lots of things to go horribly wrong. Two, I can't find anyone that has tried something like this. Questions: What is the practical size limit of an application based on Angular that does not have the benefit of Node.js sitting behind it? I have been told by my UI programmers that when an application gets to the point of about 10k HTML elements within a single page JS module, the performance starts to degrade. When you hit about 25k elements, the performance drops off a cliff, and about 40k elements the app usually doesn't load. Are these numbers consistent with medium to large applications that you have written? For comparison sake, lets say Stack Exchange is a medium sized application, Google Drive is large. Does a design pattern exist for this scenario. Meaning does a pattern exist where you can break a large JS based front end app apart into modules that can be handled easier by the JS frameworks by using JSF or some other system to transfer the application state from one module to another. The failed attempt made in the past was to post the app state object to a web service and that service store it in an application scoped EJB to be retrieved by the next module. That technique failed miserably when the app came under any kind of meaningful load. Are there any other frameworks out there to consider that can give us the performance, scalability, flexibility, and ease of developing large applications like this that doesn't have Google in its name? BTW, I was told about Angular Modules about 15 minutes before I walked out the door today. All I really know about it is its name. If you think it could help me, please let me know. Thanks guys/gals. I'm really stumped here."}
{"_id": "20406", "title": "starting off with non trivial programs -- publish or not?", "text": "I've just started making some simple but non trivial(i think) programs in Ubuntu -- as of now have made a small xkcd scraper, which i plan to develop into a multi webcomic downloader+viewer At this point, would it be a good idea to start publishing the code on a site like Github or launchpad? (currently I'm not really worried about people copying my code/licensing) Or is it better to publish the code only after the program is completed? Also, can you suggest some such sites where I can post such codes and get suggestions for improvements/discuss the code with others?"}
{"_id": "91121", "title": "Lisp: Benefits of lists as code over arrays as code?", "text": "Question for lisp programmers: Lisp code is lisp data, usually lists. Is there an advantage to code being lists over code being arrays? Would macros be easier to write/faster to run? You can assume that, in such a language (you could call it \"arrap\"), elements can be deleted from or inserted into arrays and that the arrays would grow and shrink as needed."}
{"_id": "99450", "title": "When initially releasing an app, do you hold some of the features back for future releases?", "text": "New to the site so sorry if this is the wrong section. I'm starting app development and wondering what is the best practice when initially releasing my app. Do developers tend to keep some of the features for future updates to keep users active, or do they try to release the most complete app possible? Basically, is it advised to release an app as soon as possible, and then periodically update it to the complete app you have in mind, or wait until you have it fully developed and release it with fewer update prospects? EDIT: Thanks for the answers. I am currently just designing the app and writing down all the features I can think of and trying to prioritize which to include to the initial launch. Based on the answers given, I think I will get a MVP (thanks for the term) out as soon as it is ready, and then update with new features as soon as they are built. I am not holding back built features, was just torn between if I should build them all before launch or just the necessary ones, release, and then build the others. As far as I am aware this isn't a clone. It is my first app though and I will be using it as a learning experience"}
{"_id": "100032", "title": "Using continuous build results as part of performance review metrics?", "text": "My boss is planning to use the metrics from our continuous build (builds and runs tests on every commit) as part of our performance reviews (in our 'quality' metric). This seems like a REALLY bad idea to me, but I'd like to know if anyone has studied this or seen this tried before. My thought is that it's going to have our developers not put in as many tests as they otherwise would, for fear that the tests are going to fail. I feel that he's turning a valuable developer tool into a stick to beat the developers with. The obvious counter argument is that it will promote people being more careful before they commit, and therefore leading to higher quality. Am I off base here? Please leave aside the question of whether we should be doing performance reviews at all or not - that's been answered elsewhere."}
{"_id": "195034", "title": "Implicit optimization versus explicit optimization", "text": "To explain what I mean, let me start with an example. Consider a `deque` that supports `O(logn)` concatenation with another deque and `O(n)` addition of `n` elements at one end. This dequeimplements a general `seq` interface (or type-class, or what have you) that allows iterating over a collection. An explicit optimization approach would be, having a `concat` method (or function) for deque objects and a separate `pushSeq` method for seq objects. Each method would be documented with the appropriate complexity. An implicit optimization approach would be to have a single `concat` method that accepts a seq. An internal dynamic type test checks whether the supplied argument is actually a deque, and if so, calls an implementation method for concating deques. This is documented in the API. Obviously you could have both of these. The point of implicit optimization is that you don't give the user explicit control over optimization. It just \"happens\", unless the user deliberately looks for it. Right now I'm writing a library and I'm facing a very similar choice. I very much like the idea of a compact interface where things just \"work\". An implicit approach also gives me a lot more freedom. For example, maybe I can perform ten dynamic type tests to optimize the concat operation for different collections. Having ten different methods wouldn't make sense. What's your take on this? Which approach is better, and why?"}
{"_id": "198007", "title": "What are standard directory layouts for storing database scripts in TFS?", "text": "I recently took over the maintenance of 10-15 SQL Server databases and to my surprise found out that the team does not store the code scripts anywhere. They currently deploy changes to each environment without any paper/code trail. The code for applications that use these databases are all stored in TFS and I need to implement a directory structure for storing the scripts - tables, views, stored procedures - in TFS. On our Oracle side of the house we use a two directory structure:   * ddl   * sql  But I think there could be improvement in storing the scripts on the SQL Server side. I was thinking of using something similar to the way SSMS stores objects:   * tables   * views   * stored procedures/functions Is there a standard structure or best practice that is used to store SQL scripts?"}
{"_id": "195032", "title": "Why doesn't C# have local scope in case blocks?", "text": "I was writing this code:               private static Expression<Func<Binding, bool>> ToExpression(BindingCriterion criterion)     {         switch (criterion.ChangeAction)         {             case BindingType.Inherited:                 var action = (byte)ChangeAction.Inherit;                 return (x => x.Action == action);             case BindingType.ExplicitValue:                 var action = (byte)ChangeAction.SetValue;                 return (x => x.Action == action);             default:                 // TODO: Localize errors                 throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Invalid criterion.\");         }     }      And was surprised to find a compile error: > A local variable named 'action' is already defined in this scope It was a pretty easy issue to resolve; just getting rid of the second `var` did the trick. Evidently variables declared in `case` blocks have the scope of the parent `switch`, but I'm curious as to why this is. Given that C# does not allow execution to fall through other cases (it requires `break`, `return`, `throw`, or `goto case` statements at the end of every `case` block), it seems quite odd that it would allow variable declarations inside one `case` to be used or conflict with variables in any other `case`. In other words variables appear to fall through `case` statements even though execution cannot. C# takes great pains to promote readability by prohibiting some constructs of other languages that are confusing or or easily abused. But this seems like it's just bound to cause confusion. Consider the following scenarios:   1. If were to change it to this:              case BindingType.Inherited:         var action = (byte)ChangeAction.Inherit;         return (x => x.Action == action);     case BindingType.ExplicitValue:         return (x => x.Action == action);      I get \" _Use of unassigned local variable 'action'_ \". This is confusing because in every other construct in C# that I can think of `var action = ...` would initialize the variable, but here it simply declares it.   2. If I were to swap the cases like this:              case BindingType.ExplicitValue:         action = (byte)ChangeAction.SetValue;         return (x => x.Action == action);     case BindingType.Inherited:         var action = (byte)ChangeAction.Inherit;         return (x => x.Action == action);      I get \" _Cannot use local variable 'action' before it is declared_ \". So the order of the case blocks appears to be important here in a way that's not entirely obvious -- Normally I could write these in any order I wish, but because the `var` must appear in the first block where `action` is used, I have to tweak `case` blocks accordingly.   3. If were to change it to this:              case BindingType.Inherited:         var action = (byte)ChangeAction.Inherit;         return (x => x.Action == action);     case BindingType.ExplicitValue:         action = (byte)ChangeAction.SetValue;         goto case BindingType.Inherited;      Then I get no error, but in a sense, it _looks_ like the variable is being assigned a value before it's declared.   (Although I can't think of any time you'd actually want to do this -- I didn't even know `goto case` existed before today) So my question is, why didn't the designers of C# give `case` blocks their own local scope? Are there any historical or technical reasons for this?"}
{"_id": "210941", "title": "Design: multiple algorithms on the same large data sets", "text": "I have several algorithms that I would like to test against the same data sets to compare their results. I don't know how to design it so there is maximum readability and maximum efficiency. I have considered creating a class for each algorithm, and giving it a copy of the data to work with, but it doesn't seem that that is the right answer:   1. Each data set is fairly large (10,000 float numpy array), so I don't want to copy each one ~30 times.   2. Many of the algorithms have similar pre-processing routines (thus repeating them for each algorithm seems wasteful)   3. Some algorithms have nearly identical code, except a few parameters which are different. At the same time, having one function call per algorithm also seems wrong: as per (2), many will call the same preprocessing functions, and then it becomes very difficult to tell who is calling who. I want to be able to allow the user (which will be me) to easily call a variety of algorithms on the data, while keeping the code as clear as possible. I just keep thinking I need the inverse of a class; where each objects of a class will have the same methods but different data, I need something where each member will have the same data but different methods."}
{"_id": "78291", "title": "Fast cold start text editor", "text": "Is there text editor with c# syntax highlight which starts VERY FAST? I just want look source code some files in project and i donnt want wait 30 seconds while VS starts."}
{"_id": "163351", "title": "Where is the object browser in VS 2010", "text": "I am teaching myself C# and Im using a book that references Visual Studio 2008. However, I am using VS 2010. The book wants me to look at the object browser by choosing View, Other Windows, Object Browser from the menu. However, the object browser is not there. I moused over the icons on the menu and nothing stood out. So, where is it? Also, am I going to run into more problems like this? Is it worth getting an updated book?"}
{"_id": "195038", "title": "Proper name for a project supports 2 different release", "text": "Is there a technical name for a software project where the current and prior stable releases are both maintained?"}
{"_id": "255891", "title": "How does the Common Language Runtime improve performance?", "text": "I read on the wikipedia article for Common Language Runtime that one of the benefits that the runtime provides is \"Performance improvements\". Executing managed code (Or bytecode) must surely always be **slower** due to additional overhead for JIT compilation than executing native code. How then is it possible that the CLR causes \"Performance improvements\"? **Update:** I have looked at the question and answers to What backs up the claim that C++ can be faster than a JVM or CLR with JIT?, but it has not been helful as that question is actually asking why C++ would be faster rather than slower. What I am interested in is how it is possible, from an architectural point of view, that managed code could lead to performance improvements"}
{"_id": "44822", "title": "what is a normal developer to pageview ratio?", "text": "I work for an e-commerce site that has lately been shedding its workforce. I was hired ten months ago as a UI Developer. At that time we had three other developers. One was the technical lead who had been with the company for 10 years. The other two were server-side developers who had been there for 10 and 3.5 years respectively. In ten months, the technical lead left for a better position, one developer was laid off, and the other very recently left. So, I am now the only developer on staff. We have one DBA and one network administrator. They are currently looking to hire another developer but are not willing to pay enough to hire a senior person. I consider myself a junior developer with two years of experience. I have argued that we need to hire at least one senior developer and another junior developer if we're going to keep our current site operational (not to mention develop new features)...even if that means laying off staff in other departments. Right now we get 6.5 million pageviews per month, and I feel like 3.2 million pageviews per developer must be incredibly abnormal. My question is then: what is a normal developer to pageview ratio? Are there any industry standards or literature on the subject that I can use to argue for more staff?"}
{"_id": "157863", "title": "What is the name to differentiate between parts of an app that have different types of users in each part?", "text": "On a project I'm working on, I'm trying to find a noun to describe the different parts of the application dependent on user interface. There are three parts: super admin, admin and regular users. Each of these parts consist of modules, interfaces with users, interfaces with the other parts. I've tried \"sub-system\", \"module\", \"environment\", \"platform\" but none of these really described what each of these parts of the system is. I need a noun that captures everything included within each part e.g. the super admin(?) enables the owner to manually add and edit content. Normally I would just use \"module\" but there are many modules within each part."}
{"_id": "111991", "title": "Software Engineer with no post-secondary degree?", "text": "So here's the deal: Right now I am in college and due to a maelstrom of recent events including difficulty in non-cs and -math related courses, I'm really not sure that I want to continue studying at a university next year. While I thoroughly enjoy my computer science and math courses, I find that I just can't keep up with the class. Take my calculus-based physics for example. I'm sure that, given enough time, I could make it through the course and learn everything I need to know; but because I am working and taking 4 other courses, I just don't have that time. I feel that I would benefit a lot more from teaching myself these courses one at a time, i.e. finishing Calculus before I take calculus-based physics. I probably should have registered for the algebra-based course, but it's too late to do that now. What kind of repercussions (career-wise) would there be if I decided to drop out of school and learn on my own? I might consider coming back after a few years of working full-time, but I really don't know. Is it worth paying for school if I don't feel like I'm gaining as much as I can from it?"}
{"_id": "224164", "title": "How to create Public API wrapper with different configuration parameters", "text": "I'm looking to see if there is a design pattern that can solve the following problem. The example is fairly specific but the goal is a public + internal API. I need specific information for my underlying library but I want to present the API generically. If my question is vague or terrible I'll try and spruce it up with your comments. As an example, let's say I am creating a public API and I want it to be agnostic to the implementation. Continuing the example, I am creating a job handler API using the Quartz (can be any library) library in the current implementation. I want people to be able to type:               Job job = jobManager.getJob(\"my.job.name\");     String otherInformation = job.getOtherInformation();     job.setSchedule(new IntervalSchedule(repeatInterval, intervalUnit));     job.setSchedule(new CronSchedule(cronExpression));      The Quartz API has builders for schedules (used in Trigger):               CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule(cronExpression);     CalendarIntervalBuilder.calendarIntervalSchedule()                            .withInterval(repeatInterval,                                 DateBuilder.IntervalUnit.DAY);      In my current example I would have a base interface or class Schedule. With this structure how would it be possible to get the specific information I need for the schedule builders without revealing an implementation specific object in my interface while keeping it extensible. My goal is to prevent implementation classes from leaking in to the public API. If in the future Quartz falls out of favor, the public API doesn't need to change and deprecate the Quartz specific classes. What design pattern or code reorganization am I missing?"}
{"_id": "29001", "title": "Copyright issues with encryption algorythms", "text": "I'm developing an application for Android/Java. This application is a kind of password manager, so I'm storing encrypted passwords under the hood of a master password. There are a number of encryption algorythms DES/AES/BlowFish/TwoFish and so on. My intention is to develop application which is free of commercial copyright issues. So the questions are:   1. If I use built-in Java encryption API's (e.g. DES/AES)- does it mean that I will be free from possible commercial interests of DES/AES alike copyright holders?   2. Encryption algorythms sometimes are export limited, keeping in mind that I'm from Moscow/Russia - are there any implications of that fact? Any other thoughts would be helpful."}
{"_id": "37922", "title": "need some concrete examples on user stories, tasks and how they relate to functional and technical specifications", "text": "Little heads up, I'm the only lonely dev building/planning/mocking my project as I go. I've come up with a preview release that does only the core aspects of the system, **with good business value** , and I've coded most of the UI as dirty throw-able mockups over nicely abstracted and very minimal base code. In the end I know quite well what my clients want on the whole. I can't take agile-ish cowboying anymore because I'm completely dis-organized and have no paper plan and since my clients are happy, things are getting more complex with more features and ideas. So I started using and learning Agile & Scrum Here are my problems: * * *   1. I know what a functional spec is(sample): Do all user stories and/or scenarios become part of the functional spec?   2. I know what user stories and tasks are.   Are these kinda user stories? I don't see any Business Value reason added to them. * * * I made a mind map using freemind, I had problems like this: Actor : Finance Manager >> Can Add a Financial Plan into the system because well _that's the point of it_? What Business Value reason do I add for things like this? > Example : A user needs to be able to add a blog article (in the blogger app) > _because..??_ It's the point of a blogger app, it centers around that > feature? * * * How do I go into the finer details and system definitions:   _Actor:_ Finance Manager >> _Action:_ Adds a finance plan. This _adding_ is a complicated process with lots of steps. What User Story will describe what a _finance plan in the system is_ ??   I can add it into the functional spec under definitions explaining what a _finance plan_ is and how one needs to add it into the system, but how do I get to the **backlog** planning from there? > Example: A Blog Article is mostly a textual document that can be written in > rich text in the system. To add a blog article one must...... But how do you create backlog list/features out of this? Where are the user stories for what a blog article is and how one adds/removes it? * * * Finally, I'm a little confused about the relations between functional specs and user stories. Will my spec **contain** user stories in them with UI mockups? Now will these user stories then branch out tasks which will make up something like a technical specification? Example : _EditorUser_ Can add a blog article.   1. Use XML to store blog article.   2. Add a form to add blog.   3. Add Windows Live Writer Support. That would be agile _tasks_ but would that also be part of/or form the technical specs? Some concrete examples/answers for my questions would be nice!!"}
{"_id": "184579", "title": "Method overload in scala", "text": "I know method overload is not allowed in Scala and I have read some posts regarding the reasons. But still, I see some functions overloaded in Scala library (example: println). I want to know how it is done and if I can use the same mechanism to some of my methods."}
{"_id": "235909", "title": "Testing abstract class' behavior", "text": "I'm currently refactoring an existing design, which was created without TDD. There is a class hierarchy with one abstract base class and two subclasses. In the original design, these classes were mostly just data holders without much behavior. I have identified some functionality which should be implemented in the base class, and I'd like to write tests for this functionality now. But since the class is abstract, I cannot instantiate it (obviously). **Note:** The functionality I'd like to test doesn't invoke any `pure virtual` methods.               class Base {}; // Is abstract          TEST(BaseTest, doesSomethingAmazing) {         Base aBase; // <-------- Not possible!!!          ASSERT_THAT(aBase.amazeMe(), Eq(AMAZING_RESULT));     }      _Edit:_ To clarify a few things:   * Inheritance does actually make sense in this situation - both subclasses map to specific domain concepts, and polymorphism helps keep the surrounding code clean   * There is behavior which will be used in both subclasses, and which needs data that is common to both classes. So I think it makes sense to put it in a common super class. I can think of several possible solutions, but none of them seems optimal to me:   * Add a subclass to the test code, which implements all `pure virtual` functions. Downside: Hard to name that subclass in a concise way, understanding the tests becomes harder   * Instantiate an object of the subclass instead. Downside: Makes the tests pretty confusing   * Add empty implementations to the base class. Downside: Class is not abstract anymore I tend towards option 3, to make the tests as clear as possible, but I'm not really satisfied with that. Is there a better way I'm not aware of?"}
{"_id": "194883", "title": "Python, magic and objects that add attributes to its owner", "text": "Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm _not_ the best programmer out there. I _do_ however study I.T. and learnt a bit of Java and C. I'm getting stuck into Python and Django + Mongoengine, I'm not going to explain it into detail as it will deviate from the original question. While trying to understand what is happening at this bit of Django code I was **shocked** by some of concepts I seemed to understand. Mostly I was completely confused by how one object could add accessible attributes to a parent object and how Python defines `__set__()` and `__get__()` in such a way as to be so confusing as that. Could someone tell me how _orthodox_ this design style is and whether I find it bizarre because I'm an amateur programmer."}
{"_id": "72608", "title": "copyright notice for client work", "text": "I'm wondering what's the best way to add copyright/info into source for a client. Normally I do projects for myself and release them as GPL however I'm working with a client and not sure how to give them the source. Would something like this be correct? > /* Package: Project Name   >  File: filename.php   >  Author: My name (emailme@example.net)   >  (c) 2011 Client Name All Rights Reserved > > File Description....   >  */ The client owns the code once they have paid for it but I still think it's a good idea to add a file description and copyright to each file. Maybe this is a conversation to have with each client but does this seem like a fair (and legal) way to do it?"}
{"_id": "79650", "title": "Is it still ok to get MCTS in .NET 3.5?", "text": "As I work for a Microsoft Gold Partner, they are keen for me to become certified. They have left it up to me to decide which certifications I want to go for. I had started training for the .NET 4 MCTSs but I am finding them harder than expected. Part of the problem is that I mostly work with 3.5 as my part of job and only work with 4 at home. Should I just give myself a break and go for the 3.5 exams? Would other employers think it was bad/strange that I'm still sitting 3.5 exams in 2011? I would still like to know all the latest technologies but at the moment I'm just finding that there is too much. By the time I'm ready for .NET 4 they will probably have released 5, and the cycle will continue."}
{"_id": "194635", "title": "Why do bitwise operators have lower priority than comparisons?", "text": "Could someone explain the rationale, why in a bunch of most popular languages (see note below) comparison operators (==, !=, <, >, <=, >=) have higher priority than bitwise operators (&, |, ^, ~)? I don't think I've ever encountered a use where this precedence would be natural. It's always stuff like:                 if( (x & MASK) == CORRECT ) ...   // Chosen bits are in correct setting, rest unimportant            if( (x ^ x_prev) == SET )      // only, and exactly SET bit changed            if( (x & REQUIRED) < REQUIRED )   // Not all conditions satisfied      The cases where I'd use:                 flags = ( x == 6 | 2 );     // set bit 0 when x is 6, bit 1 always.      are near to nonexistent. What was the motivation of language designers to decide upon such precedence of operators? * * * For example, all but SQL at the top 12 languages are like that on Programming Language Popularity list at langpop.com: C, Java, C++, PHP, JavaScript, Python, C#, Perl, SQL, Ruby, Shell, Visual Basic."}
{"_id": "194634", "title": "SourceTree app, how do I know what is my current branch?", "text": "I have branched from my `develop` branch `bugfix/issue2` to work on a bugfix. Now that it's done I want to merge this branch `bugfix/issue2` back onto `develop` but it's asking me if I want to merge into my current branch. And I don't know if my current branch is `develop`? See attached screendumps: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/cLFGl.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sEM44.png)"}
{"_id": "194631", "title": "The physical implementation of quantum annealing algorithm", "text": "From that question about differences between Quantum annealing and simulated annealing, we found (in comments to answer) that physical implementation of quantum annealing exists (D-Wave quantum computers). Can anyone explain that algorithm in terms of quantum gates and quantum algorithms, or in physical terms (a part of algorithm that depends on quantum hardware)?"}
{"_id": "144792", "title": "Is it a good practice to use smaller data types for variables to save memory?", "text": "When I learned the C++ language for the first time I learned that besides int, float etc, smaller or bigger versions of these data types existed within the language. For example I could call a variable x               int x;     or      short int x;      The main difference being that short int takes 2 bytes of memory while int takes 4 bytes, and short int has a lesser value, but we could also call this to make it even smaller:               int x;     short int x;     unsigned short int x;      which is even more restrictive. My question here is if it's a good practice to use separate data types according to what values your variable take within the program. Is it a good idea to always declare variables according to these data types?"}
{"_id": "114817", "title": "How to learn C in two days (if I already know C++)?", "text": "I've been programming in C++ for a few years, and I've done a school project or two in C (as well as several other languages). However, I don't know C very well at all. I have a programming interview in two days, and I just realized that this interview will be in C. How do I approach this? How do I learn C well enough to succeed in a programming interview? This job is not looking for a \"C expert\" or anything like that, so I think they'll be somewhat understanding if I explain that I have not programmed much in C. They just choose to host their interviews in C. Buying and reading a textbook is not feasible, so my resources will have to be on the internet."}
{"_id": "26769", "title": "Chrome extensions every programmer should know", "text": "I just switched from Firefox to Chrome, so what I wanna know: Are there any Chrome Extensions which are indispensable for a programmer?"}
{"_id": "180639", "title": "Describing requirements in SRS - use cases?", "text": "I do not have the access to the IEEE standard and information on the net are contradictory. Can I capture user requirements in SRS using use cases? Or I should keep use cases separate as they are more like scenarios than separate requirements?"}
{"_id": "26761", "title": "Summarize terms of service?", "text": "What's your opinion on summarizing the ToS?   Example:               [ToS here]     Basically, it means you won't sue me.     [I accept][I don't accept]      Is this good practice or will this just get you sued more?"}
{"_id": "26537", "title": "How: Personal life of a Software Developer", "text": "have just graduated and am looking for job in the field of Software Development. Since, I like to go with application developments. Well, being a Software Engineer; Can able to survive personal family life. I am single :) Once I get married. Will I able to spend time with my wife and kids? I see, nowadays many Software Specialists are not returning to home at nights. due to the workload. That makes their wife to scary about in someways. How the understandings will go? How do you compromise your personal life?"}
{"_id": "136676", "title": "Do you need to meet personally to collaborate effectively?", "text": "If you are starting up a web, mobile, or standalone application, how well must you know the rest of your collaboration team? Would it be a bad idea to ever work with someone unless I've met him personally? Is it okay to sometimes accept small public contributions such as code snippets and artwork without meeting the contributor? Should I ever actively collaborate with people online that I have not met, as long as the person has a detailed profile and a good reputation. If you do collaborate online, what tools do you to build teams and find contributors? If not, would you consider the idea if there was a safe medium? Any other input on the subject would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "188404", "title": "Re-gaining confidence of senior programmer", "text": "My boss found out I'm not as smart as he thought. An example from my experience: I'm a junior programmer, and I work in a team of two, my boss (senior programmer) and myself. I was tasked with developing an internal web-application for the company we work at. I wrote the back-end to the front-end (the database design was in already place and the server technology had been chosen). He would periodically check on my progress by observing the web-application in action and was happy with out it was coming along. When I finished the web-app he was pleased with how well the end-product turned out. A few days ago he became interested in the code so I told him what technologies I used (for the front-end), and this is where it went south. For the front-end of the web-app I used a Javascript framework (Backbone.js). When asked why I would do such a thing. My response was because that I felt that the framework fit into this app quite well, and would help me structure the code better than if I wrote it from scratch....\"Well, that's dis-heartening\" was his response. So given this example my question is: If your a senior programmer and have lost confidence in the ability of your junior programmer, what would you like to see from your junior to gain the confidence back? **EDIT** : Thank you everyone for the great answers and supportive feedback!"}
{"_id": "188407", "title": "What is the C++ convention, if any, for naming to differentiate between structure types and other types?", "text": "In general, should I use some sort of convention for structure names which is distinct from other type name? I was thinking about this when my professor started talking about structures. I had the following discussion with myself, and since I do not want to come to any unreliable conclusions. How would you answer the question(s) and which answer(s) are untrustworthy? Q: Should I distinguish structure names and type names to make the code more clear? A: A structure is a type, so there doesn't need to be a distinction. RE: Q: So there is never a case when someone uses `typedef int SOMETYPE` to rename a built-in type to make the code more flexible? RE: A: There is no practical reason to rename built-in types. Actually, defining `int` types as `SOMETYPE` makes the code less readable because someone reading the code will not know the built-in type used for that type. Honestly I do not trust either answer. Looking at some of the base structure in a new Win32Project using Visual Studio, I see things like `typedef short HFILE;` which, I guess, makes it more clear to the programmer what the variable is used for. Perhaps that is too subjective however. As an aside, how does one usually determine what is going on when they come across variable declarations which use types you have never seen before. Do you just rely on the IDE to take you to or display the declaration?"}
{"_id": "152444", "title": "Is making my own copyright licence safe?", "text": "I've seen various open source libraries (actually I've seen it for assets as well) having a home-baked license in the following manner : > SomeGuy's License:   > 1\\. You can use this code freely in commercial projects and modify it as you > wish, but not sell it   > 2\\. If you want to sell a modified version, drop me an email first, or give > credits to me Edit: The above example is ambiguous, so I am giving another one, I want to know if 3 lines of license will hold some ground: > SomeGuy's License:   > 1\\. You can use this code in a commercial project as a 3rd party library   > 2\\. You can't sell it as a derivative work I know that such license is not polished at all, for example the Creative Commons set of licenses seem to be short, but actually have some large legal stuff underneath it, but I wonder if at least some level of protection can be gained with a hobby license like that ? My question is, **could this hold any ground in the court** , or would the corporative lawyers of the company X tear it apart ?"}
{"_id": "111335", "title": "Ruby isn't a PHP generator, right?", "text": "My boss was looking down on me about learning Ruby because \"It's just a PHP generator\" which I can't find anything about it being so. Is this the case? I understand that the Rails framework can be used to generate PHP code, but isn't Ruby in-and-of-itself its own programming language?"}
{"_id": "143214", "title": "What is Script Binding, and How is it done?", "text": "I have heard such thing as Script Binding - binding Javascript or lua with API's from C++ or Objective-C. I want to know more about it- however Google has strangely proven unuseful for this. How is it done? - it OK if I get pointed to other sources, but, just how? I never knew a Scripts jitter could interact with compiled libraries."}
{"_id": "250805", "title": "Improve coding quality", "text": "I have been dealing with programming for several years now (I am still a student but with a lot of internships). Mostly working with C++, Python and MATLAB, I noticed that whenever I download an SDK or a library from Internet/GitHub and look inside, the code is much more complex than mine, using error catches everywhere and other things that would never come to my mind while writing my own code. My question is, how can I learn or practice this kind of things? From my experience, no programming course talked about coding style, when and how to use try/catch efficiently, how to debug faster etc... I am also not thinking about using mutex while accessing one variable from different functions at the same time because my code is simply working without them and I didn't face any problem until now. Currently I am working on a project using Python and Pycharm is helping me a lot keeping a correct coding style but it is limited to the syntax and naming conventions."}
{"_id": "34785", "title": "Which software licenses should I be aware of?", "text": "Licensing is something that I really haven't paid any attention to; I guess I felt there was no need. However I can't but help thinking that I should. So which are the most common licenses that I, as a programmer, should be aware of? Also, it would be helpful if you could include a brief description of each provided."}
{"_id": "189757", "title": "Are there any programming languages understood by all operating systems, if so what?", "text": "I'm curious if there's a programming language that you can write code for all operating systems in, and if so what language that might be? I'm guessing something very low-level like Binary could do this, but am not sure."}
{"_id": "189755", "title": "Should developers be worried about automation that make them redundant eventually?", "text": "Should developers be worried about possible automation happening in their projects that might make them redundant ? I never particularly worried about this myself but I have seen many developers worrying about it, even if they don't admit this openly. There is a fear that if you automate most of the aspects of a system that you are handling it might make you redundant eventually. I myself had an experience on this. 1 year back I had started working in a project were any requirement/change request that came, the only deliverable was a bunch of insert queries. That team had 2 developers and 1 tester working on it (all on shore). The only thing that the developer had to do would be to configure the insert queries based on the requirements. When I came to work on it, I immediately suggested to build a web application that would enable the business people to do it directly. Every thing would be configured in the web application including error reports in case anything went wrong. Needless to say my manager loved the idea but it never passed through with the higher management. The logic for that was until the client comes up with such a requirement it should never be done as it will involve future losses for the company and possibly loss of employment of the employees currently handling it. So should a developer be concerned about this ?I would certainly like to believe that > If you don't take care of your customer some one else will but experience tells me otherwise."}
{"_id": "131029", "title": "Handling invoices with timestamps", "text": "I'm currently going to write something to **automatically create invoices** with cronjobs by using PHP and timestamps. I have a, for me, **well-considered idea** of how to solve it, but I want to ask the community **if someone may see errors in reasoning** and **possible problems with my solution**. I'm trying to describe my idea as detailed as possible so everyone can follow my way of thinking: In General there are **4 types of invoices** :   1. Paid yearly   2. Paid semiyearly   3. Paid quarterly   4. Paid monthly **Purchased products are saved in a SQL database** with the billing cycle:   * ID of User   * Product ID   * Billing Cycle   * Last Due Date Now there is a cronjob that runs once a day to check if it should create a new invoice for each purchased product. In the row `Last Due Date` I save the timestamp of the first date to pay when it's created. A code I already wrote calculates the **time that has gone by** since the `Last Due Date` timestamp and outputs something like this:   * Timestamp is in past or in future   * Month gone by   * Days gone by Now my **rules for creating a new invoice** are:   1. **Paid yearly** if ( Timestamp is in past = true AND Month gone by = **11** AND Days gone by >= 20 ) then ( create a new invoice and set \"Last Due Date\" to time() )   2. **Paid semiyearly** if ( Timestamp is in past = true AND Month gone by = **5** AND Days gone by >= 20 ) then ( create a new invoice and set \"Last Due Date\" to time() )   3. **Paid quarterly** if ( Timestamp is in past = true AND Month gone by = **3** AND Days gone by >= 20 ) then ( create a new invoice and set \"Last Due Date\" to time() )   4. **Paid monthly** if ( Timestamp is in past = true AND Month gone by = **0** AND Days gone by >= 20 ) then ( create a new invoice and set \"Last Due Date\" to time() ) As you can see a new **invoice would be created ~10 days before date of payment** and the timestamp in `Last Due Date` is set to the current time, so when the cronjob checks back the next day no invoice will be created for this purchased product. My question is **if this is an appropriate way of solving** this and if you can **see any errors in reasoning or problems that may occur**?"}
{"_id": "131028", "title": "Resources for C/C++ security (whitehat) hacking", "text": "I'm currently working as a C++ developer in a software security department, but not as a researcher or whitehat hacker. Security is an interest of mine, mainly in the areas where I can exploit code or reverse engineer executables/communication/protocols. I've done some work in reverse engineering but only as a hobby (ie. modifying a saved game file for a game). As a person that knows C, C++ and some assembly (MASM), what types of resources would you recommend that I read so that I may gain more knowledge about these fields? Books, blogs, and articles would probably be best. Currently I'm reading 24 Deadly Sins of Software Security: Programming Flaws and How to Fix Them."}
{"_id": "92781", "title": "What would be a good name of practices you don't (usually) learn at university?", "text": "I'm preparing a course dedicated to fresh graduated CS students. I have to name it. Is there an English word or sentence to define all the practices you don't learn at college/university? Here are a (partial) list of things are not teach to most students I interview or talk with:   * Unit Testing + mocking   * Design Patterns   * Agility (such as Scrum or Extreme Programming)   * DRY, YAGNI, SOLID, DIP, KISS, ...   * Source Control, DVCS, ... I once heard \"Software Industrialization Practices\" (literally translated from French), and while it sounded great in French, I'm not sure it does in English."}
{"_id": "77381", "title": "What should be \"D\" for a good unit test?", "text": "I'm trying to introduce what is unit testing, and how to write good unit test to a friend. I think it's better if I give him some principles for a good unit test, and suddenly I remember about \"ACID\" properties of transaction: **A** \\- atomic: a unit test should test only one thing **C** \\- consistent: a unit test, if passed, should pass thousand times, whenever you run it, so it should not depend on external things, such as network, database... **I** \\- independent: a unit test, should be independent from others, therefore, you can run unit tests in every order, without changing the result. But i get a bit stuck with \"D\" - durable. Durable unit test? It makes no sense. Any suggestion about this D? Thank you."}
{"_id": "77385", "title": "Use of the word \"glitch\"", "text": "I find myself talking about computers with a lot of non-tech people, who often use the word \"glitch\" to describe an undesirable outcome of a program or operating system(of course, never Linux!). I have never heard another programmer use the word \"glitch\" and hearing it makes me think the user has no idea what they are talking about. SO my question: Do you use the word glitch in everyday, technical conversation, if not, does its use imply to you ignorance and lack understanding?"}
{"_id": "107248", "title": "emacs - project explorer and auto complete features - is it available?", "text": "I know that Emacs is a very powerful editor out there. I try to use it occasionally and want to learn it better. But to learn it better i have to use it more frequently than I am using now. But one big obstacle is that I could not find the basic properties like a project auto completion. Maybe I am lazy but I dont want to write again and again the same long method names. Another one is go to definition stuff, I want to see the real declaration of any class or method or even a variable. Also I know that it can handle the make files but an actual representation of a project alongside the editor would be very good. So, what I am asking is, is there a way to provide these options in Emacs? Or is there an extended version of Emacs that supports these features?"}
{"_id": "67912", "title": "How will closures in Java impact the Java Community?", "text": "It is one of the most talked about features planned for Java: Closures. Many of us have been longing for them. Some of us (including I) have grown a bit impatient and have turned to scripting languages to fill the void. But, once closures have finally arrived to Java: how will they effect the Java Community? Will the advancement of VM-targetted scripting languages slow to a crawl, stay the same, or acclerate? Will people flock to the new closure syntax, thus turning Java code-bases all-around into more functionally structured implementations? Will we only see closures sprinkled in Java throughout? What will be the effect on tool/IDE support? How about performance? And finally, what will it mean for Java's continued adoption, as a language, compared with other languages that are rising in popularity? To provide an example of one of the latest proposed Java Closure syntax specs:               public interface StringOperation {        String invoke(String s);     }          // ...          (new StringOperation() {        public invoke(String s) {            new StringBuilder(s).reverse().toString();            }     }).invoke(\"abcd\");          would become ...               String reversed = {          String s =>          new StringBuilder(s).reverse().toString()       }.invoke(\"abcd\");      [source: http://tronicek.blogspot.com/2007/12/closures-closure-is-form-of- anonymous_28.html]"}
{"_id": "203408", "title": "Unit test SHA256 wrapper queries", "text": "I have the following SHA256 wrapper.                   public static string SHA256(string plainText)         {             StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();                  SHA256CryptoServiceProvider provider = new SHA256CryptoServiceProvider();             var hashedBytes = provider.ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plainText));                  for (int i = 0; i < hashedBytes.Length; i++)             {                 sb.Append(hashedBytes[i].ToString(\"x2\").ToLower());             }                  return sb.ToString();         }      Do I want to be testing it? If so, what do you recommend? My thought process is as follows:   1. What logic is there here.   2. The answer is my for loop and `ToString(\"x2\"`) so from my understanding I want to be testing this part? I can assume `Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plainText`) works. Correct assumption? I can assume `SHA256CryptoServiceProvider.ComputeHash()` works. Correct assumption? I want to be only testing my logic. In this case is limited to the printing of hex encoded hash. Correct? Thanks. EDIT: Update method based on MainMa's excellent answer:                   /// <summary>         /// Returns a SHA256 hash of the plain text.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"plainText\">The pain text.</param>         /// <returns>The hash.</returns>         public static string SHA256(string plainText)         {             if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(plainText)) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"The plain text cannot be empty.\");                  StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();                  Byte[] hashedBytes;             using (SHA256CryptoServiceProvider sha256Provider = new SHA256CryptoServiceProvider())             {                 hashedBytes = sha256Provider.ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(plainText));             }                  foreach(Byte b in hashedBytes)             {                 sb.Append(b.ToString(\"x2\").ToLower(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture));             }                  return sb.ToString();         }"}
{"_id": "180189", "title": "Acceptance tests for large multi-step online form", "text": "I have to extend/fix a large online form written by other developer. There is a lot of code, mixing PHP and JS. It's kind of write-only style of coding and I want to redo it completely, but currently I can't. It works like this:   * It is a wizard-style form with 12 steps - let's call them _phases_ to not confuse with steps of the tests.   * User has to fill at least ~100 fields to finish.   * Some fields are grouped by 3-5. Those groups can be dynamically added and removed with JS.   * Validation is done after submitting each phase. If some errors occured, user is notified immediately and cannot go further until he/she fixes all errors.   * Submitted data is temporarily stored in the session between phases. No permanent storage.   * User cannot skip phases, only sequentially go back and forth to already completed phases. It is ridiculous to test this thing manually, so I wrote a test using Behat with Mink and Selenium2. I have only 1 test now, which completes all 12 phases of the form. To go to specific point in the process of filling the form, I created a step definition wich just makes webdriver wait 1 hour (laugh at me). When I need to test some specific phase, I just add this step where I want Selenium to stop - this leaves browser window open so I can do whatever I want manually without having to fill all previous fields. It saves a ton of time, but feels stupid. I have reasons to do that:   * Has to be done ASAP.   * I cannot test each separate step in the form.   * I cannot reuse parts of the filling process without having to write quite a lot of PHP code. Now my test is just ~120 lines written in Gherkin language. Simplified version of my question is: **how should I test this?** I can think of several ways:   * Modify the code to allow skipping phases. This can be done safely by detecting environment parameters withing the application and deciding whether client (webdriver or user) can or cannot skip phases, so skipping is not allowed in a production environment.   * Just write more tests with a lot of copy-pasting and be a bigger monkey.   * Write step definitions to complete specific phases separately. So, I could just write               When I complete phase 1     And complete phase 2     And complete phase 3     ...      in the tests. So, the full version of my question is: **which way is preferable and what (dis)advantages each way has?** Maybe there are other ways, like designing an application in a completely different way so there are no such problems."}
{"_id": "180184", "title": "Is there ever a reasonable time to have test fixtures test MVC3 controller construction?", "text": "I've recently started with a new firm and I'm trying to understand the mechanics behind something, so I'll anonymize the code and present but a sample:               [Test(Description = \"Retreives the New view for XXXX.\")]     public void New()     {       \"~/XXXX/New\".ShouldMapTo<XXXXController>(x => x.New());       \"~/XXXX/New\".WithMethod(HttpVerbs.Post).ShouldMapTo<XXXXController>(x => x.New(null));     }      and again:               [Test(Description = \"Test the model injection into the New view.\")]     public void New()     {       var @new = WXYZController.New();       @new.AssertViewRendered();            Assert.IsInstanceOf<WXYZSettingsModel>(@new.ViewData.Model, \"Expected the data model to be of type WXYZSettingsModel, but the model was another type.\");       var model = @new.ViewData.Model as WXYZSettingsModel;       if (model == null)         Assert.Fail(\"Failed to cast data model to type WXYZSettingsModel.\");              Assert.IsNotNull(model.YYYY, \"Expected an instantiated service message, but a null message was returned.\");         Assert.AreEqual(model.YYYY.Status, WXYZ.Success, \"Expected a success status code, but another code was returned.\");         Assert.IsNotNull(model.Categories, \"\");         Assert.AreEqual(model.ZZZZ.Status, ABCD.Success, \"Expected a success status code, but another code was returned.\");     }      It seems to me this violates the purpose of unit-testing, as you should never unit-test the framework, but rather, your own code, right? Did someone just get carried away? Or am I missing some fundamental component of this code that is just obvious to someone who is more familiar with unit testing. Note that there are entire files (one of each of the above per controller) that never test a single line of internal code, but are filled with these tests. Even to the point of this is fairly boilerplate now that I've anonymized it. If we were instead testing like this (pseudocode now)               [Test(Description = \"thingy tester, duh\")]     public void ThingTest(){       var mock = new MyDataMock();       var finalMock = new MyFinalMock();       var controller = new thingController();            var test = controller.Thing(mock);       assert.AreNotEqual(test,mock,\"It didn't change it\");       assert.AreEqual(test,finalMock,\"It worked!\");     }      I would expect that to be what the unit tests I should see should look like, no?"}
{"_id": "199846", "title": "Which Ext JS license should be acquired (when developing a Spring MVC/Hibernate/Ext JS web application)?", "text": "I am inquiring about a web app which uses _Spring MVC_ and hibernate on the server and _ExtJS 4_ (Sencha JavaScript framework) for the client framework (widgets). The app is cloud-hosted - it is not \"distributed\" to users. It is required that users of the app shall need to purchase a license from the vendor in order to use it. I am completely new to software licensing and am not sure which ExtJS license is required/preferable, i.e the commercial license or the GNU GPL license? I have a few questions to hopefully help clarify:   1. Is it possible to use the GPL license or similar allowing only part of the app's source to be distributable, e.g. the Extjs components, but not allow users to see other components of the system? i.e. the _Spring MVC_ , hibernate server components? Is it possible to restrict access to the _ExtJS_ source if using a GPL license? In general is it possible to restrict distribution of some aspects of the source when using GPL?   2. If the GPL license is acquired, is the source available only to users of the system or is it open to the whole general public?"}
{"_id": "209602", "title": "Identity Design ASP.NET", "text": "I am trying to design a system with the below features, and am currently trying to figure out best way to handle Identity :   1. There will be multiple decoupled parts of the system, with same customers accessing various parts    2. I would like users organized by organizations/companies, i.e. user1 & user2 belong to ORG1   3. I would like additional info to be stored within a user profile, info will originate from various systems, as well as global info such as address, etc   4. For roles I haven't yet decided whether or not they will be handled by individual apps or globally and specialized in certain apps  My conundrum is whether to use the new MVC Identity released in ASP.NET Beta currently out, or use WIF or Active Directory. I am assuming that a centralized application handling users & their associated admin tasks and then federating to other applications is best. If I understand correctly any of the 3 are able to do that. What I am wondering is which to use to be most flexible. Basically something that can be expanded later and doesn't have a huge learning curve, possibly to mobile & api use. I don't know enough about WIF or AD as I have never really used them, and ASP.NET Identity is still in beta and not really 100% documented. My experience with authentication systems is working with ones out of the box. I've never really had to deal with SSO or federation One thing I wanted to add is there is no need for outside registration. Registration will be handled purely by admins, not sure if this ties in at all, but thought it may be of importance"}
{"_id": "199840", "title": "How to calculate throughput if there is network traffic", "text": "I came across this question in a textbook, but there are no solutions and I'm not sure how to solve this. The question is: Suppose Host A wants to send a large file to Host B. The path from Host A to Host B has three links of rates R1=500Kb/s, R2=2Mb/s and R3=1Mb/s. Assuming that there is another busy flow that travels through the same set of links (say from Host C to Host D), what will be the throughput for this file transfer? I know that the throughput for no traffic would be the min(R1, R2, R3), so would the throughput with traffic be the max(R1, R2, R3)?"}
{"_id": "151428", "title": "Random Cache Expiry", "text": "I've been experimenting with random cache expiry times to avoid situations where an individual request forces multiple things to update at once. For example, a web page might include five different components. If each is set to time out in 30 minutes, the user will have a long wait time every 30 minutes. So instead, you set them all to a random time between 15 and 45 minutes to make it likely at most only one component will reload for any given page load. I'm trying to find any research or guidelines on this topic, e.g. optimal variance parameters. I do recall seeing one article about how Google (?) uses this technique, but can't locate it, and there doesn't seem to be much written about the topic."}
{"_id": "223191", "title": "Difference between event loop and system calls/interrupts", "text": "When you create programs (like a socket server) that are designed to run on an operating system, such as Ubuntu, frameworks like Qt for C++ use something called a main event loop:               app = new QCoreApplication(argc, argv);     int rc = app->exec()      Now programming language like C or C++ enable a program to make system calls through built-in functions, like fork() or pthread_create() and use software interrupts to change kernel mode. For example, the program can request use of the kernel by means of a system call in order to perform privileged instructions, such as process creation or input/output operations. Other examples are open, read, write, close, wait, execve, fork, exit, and kill. All this can be achieved within C/C++ directly without an event loop. So what's the purpose of the event loop?"}
{"_id": "28759", "title": "Merits of Namepsaces/Packages", "text": "Some programming languages (e.g. Java and C++) have language features called \"packages\" or \"namespaces\". How useful is it really to have namespaces? It is possible to mark functions and classes as belonging to some particular library without using such a language feature, like the SDL does (e.g. `SDL_BlitSurface()`). Are namespaces not helpful enough to be worth having? Are they useful in libraries but not in applications? Are they useful everywhere except for in small projects? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "151424", "title": "Javascript Form Validation", "text": "When validating a JavaScript form, would it be better to process each input field individually, or, where possible check collectively? e.g.               validate()     {          noblanks()          fieldOne()          fieldTwo()     }      or               validate()     {          fieldOne()          fieldTwo()"}
{"_id": "176049", "title": "What is the use of Association, Aggregation and Composition (Encapsulation) in Classes", "text": "I have gone through lots of theories about what is encapsulation and the three techniques of implementing it, which are Association, Aggregation and Composition. What i found is, ## Encapsulation Encapsulation is the technique of making the fields in a class private and providing access to the fields via public methods. If a field is declared private, it cannot be accessed by anyone outside the class, thereby hiding the fields within the class. For this reason, encapsulation is also referred to as data hiding. Encapsulation can be described as a protective barrier that prevents the code and data being randomly accessed by other code defined outside the class. Access to the data and code is tightly controlled by an interface. The main benefit of encapsulation is the ability to modify our implemented code without breaking the code of others who use our code. With this feature Encapsulation gives maintainability, flexibility and extensibility to our code. ## Association Association is a relationship where all object have their own lifecycle and there is no owner. Let\u2019s take an example of Teacher and Student. Multiple students can associate with single teacher and single student can associate with multiple teachers but there is no ownership between the objects and both have their own lifecycle. Both can create and delete independently. ## Aggregation Aggregation is a specialize form of Association where all object have their own lifecycle but there is ownership and child object can not belongs to another parent object. Let\u2019s take an example of Department and teacher. A single teacher can not belongs to multiple departments, but if we delete the department teacher object will not destroy. We can think about \u201chas-a\u201d relationship. ## Composition Composition is again specialize form of Aggregation and we can call this as a \u201cdeath\u201d relationship. It is a strong type of Aggregation. Child object dose not have their lifecycle and if parent object deletes all child object will also be deleted. Let\u2019s take again an example of relationship between House and rooms. House can contain multiple rooms there is no independent life of room and any room can not belongs to two different house if we delete the house room will automatically delete. **The question is:** Now these all are real world examples. I am looking for some description about how to use these techniques in actual class code. I mean _what is the point for using three different techniques for encapsulation_ , _How these techniques could be implemented_ and _How to choose which technique is applicable at time._"}
{"_id": "212809", "title": "Before you develop a web app, how much of a spec do you need?", "text": "If you were to accept a role as a full time web app developer responsible for creating a new application from scratch, how much of a defined specification and design would need and/or expect to start development? What tools/software is even used for this (for web apps built with something like RoR)? I would expect a mockup/wireframe to be required, but what else is done in the design stage? What is the best method or process to convey the functionality of the application so that developers know what to translate into code. I'm interested to hear from web app developers who have thought: \"If I only had <this>, I could develop this so much quicker/easier/cleaner\", or \"I have no idea what this customer wants unless they document it in <thing>.\" I'm not trying to start a philosophical debate, I am curious from the developers' perspective what is the \"right\" way to design web apps from scratch. There is probably a book somewhere that someone can tell me to RTFM, but I've only been able to find resources on learning actual coding and development, not the design phase."}
{"_id": "35788", "title": "Advantages of Hudson and Sonar over manual process or homegrown scripts", "text": "My coworker and I recently got into a debate over a proposed plan at our workplace. We've more or less finished transitioning our Java codebase into one managed and built with Maven. Now, I'd like for us to integrate with Hudson and Sonar or something similar. My reasons for this are that it'll provide a 'zero-click' build step to provide testers with new experimental builds, that it will let us deploy applications to a server more easily, that tools such as Sonar will provide us with well-needed metrics on code coverage, Javadoc, package dependencies and the like. He thinks that the overhead of getting up to speed with two new frameworks is unacceptable, and that we should simply double down on documentation and create our own scripts for deployment. Since we plan on some aggressive rewrites to pay down the technical debt previous developers incurred (gratuitous use of Java's Serializable interface as a file storage mechanism that has predictably bit us in the ass) he argues that we can document as we go, and that we'll end up changing a large swath of code in the process anyways. I contend that having accurate metrics that Sonar (or fill in your favorite similar tool) provide gives us a good place to start for any refactoring efforts, not to mention general maintenance -- after all, knowing which classes are the most poorly documented, even if it's just a starting point, is better than seat-of-the-pants guessing. Am I wrong, and trying to introduce more overhead than we really need? Some more background: an alumni of our company is working at a Navy research lab now and suggested these two tools in particular as one they've had great success with using. My coworker and I have also had our share of friendly disagreements before -- he's more of the \"CLI for all, compiles Gentoo in his spare time and uses Git\" and I'm more of a \"Give me an intuitive GUI, plays with XNA and is fine with SVN\" type, so there's definitely _some_ element of culture clash here."}
{"_id": "212808", "title": "Treating a 1D data structure as 2D grid", "text": "Hopefully this is a good question. I am working with a native class that represents a 2D image as a 1D array. If you want to change one pixel, for example, you need to now how to derive the index from the `x,y` coordinates. And I am trying to grok, in abstract terms, how to map a multidimensional object to its underlying unidimensional representation. So, let's say we have a 1D array `array1d` like this:               array1d = [ a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y ]      In the context of our program, `array1d` represents a 2D grid:               a b c d e     f g h i j     k l m n o     p q r s t     u v w x y      And we want to perform operations on `array1d` such as:   * Get the value at `x,y` coordinates (in this example, `1,2` would give `l`)   * Get any sub-grid using `x,y,width,height` (`1,2,2,2` would give `[l, m, q, r]`)   * Set the value at any `x,y` coordinate (etc.) Is there a computer science-related or mathematical term for said operations, which map points/regions in 1D data to coordinates in 2D/3D/4D... objects? If so, what is it? Clearly all computers with displays solve this same issue, so what is this fundamental problem called and how is it conventionally solved?"}
{"_id": "181583", "title": "For PL/SQL, do large companies prefer ANSI SQL joins or old Oracle joins?", "text": "I am interviewing for a PL/SQL position with a large corporation. I will have to write a multiple choice exam. I am wondering whether the exam will likely use old-style joins (joining happens in the 'WHERE' clause) or ANSI ones. My apologies if this is not the correct forum for this question."}
{"_id": "93788", "title": "Should I update this code or continue with current design", "text": "I am working with ASP.NET Application. The application is great and works fine but it a few flaws. To give you an example,   1. Every control uses an absolute position layout. This makes working with code very difficult in design mode. Absolute position has been used more than 700 times in the code.   2. There are different menus uses instead of one. And to stitch them together, again absolute position is used for each menu control   3. The application is role based. All the roles are implemented using Roles.IsUserInRole property. I would like to use proper permission for every role with page level permission.   4. There are a few security risk in the current code but that is easy fix in current program though.   5. There is no true admin. The top level role act as admin which is also a functional role, used by other members. Now that we are adding new functionality to this code and I mean adding some big functionality, what do you recommend. Should I rewrite this code or work in the existing. I would esp like to fix   1. The layout issues. Remove all fixed positions and make the code clean and easy to maintain.   2. Unfortunately to do so I have to rewrite the menu. Because I want to write one menu instead of 4 being used.   3. In order to achieve point 2 above, I have to crete new roles and provide proper security for the application. My question is **Should I work with the current code or rewrite the existing code keeping in mind that our company is growing and that it may take me 2-4 weeks to do rewrite up.** Would it be bad idea or a good one. I don't have a technical lead in my company."}
{"_id": "181587", "title": "Good design pattern for a c++ wrapper around a c object", "text": "I have written an extensible c++ wrapper around a very hard to use but also very useful c library. The goal is to have the convience of c++ for allocating the object, exposing its properties, deallocating the object, copy semantics etc... The problem is this: sometimes the c library wants the underlying object (a pointer to the object), and the class destructor should not destroy the underlying memory. While most of the time, the destructor should deallocate the underlying object. I have experimented with setting a `bool hasOwnership` flag in the class so that the destructor, assignment operator, etc... will know whether or not it should free the underlying memory or not. However, this is cumbersome for the user, and also, sometimes there is no way to know when another process will be using that memory. Currently, I have it setup where when the assignment comes from a pointer of the same type as the underlying type, then I set the hasOwnership flag. I do the same when the overloaded constructor is called using the pointer from the c library. Yet, this still does not handle the case when the user has created the object and passed it to one of my functions which calls the c_api and the library stores the pointer for later use. If they were to delete their object, then it would no doubt cause a segfault in the c library. Is there a design pattern that would simplify this process? Maybe some sort of reference counting?"}
{"_id": "181585", "title": "Why would I use Control.Exception in Haskell?", "text": "I'm trying to really master Haskell error handling, and I've gotten to the point where I don't understand why I would use Control.Exception instead of Control.Monad.Error. The way I can see it, I can catch Control.Monad.Error exceptions in both pure and impure contexts. By contrast, exceptions defined in Control.Exception can be caught only in impure/IO contexts. Given that they provide two separate interfaces and semantics that I would need to memorize, under what circumstances would I need Control.Exception instead of Control.Monad.Error?"}
{"_id": "46920", "title": "Offshoring: does it ever work?", "text": "I know there has been a fair amount of discussion on here about outsourcing/offshoring, and the general opinion seems to be that at best it is difficult, and at worst it fails. I have direct experience of offshoring myself; a previous company, where I was a development manager, wanted to send some development offshore, and we ran a pilot scheme to see how well it would work. Of course, it was a complete failure, although it is not completely clear to me whether this was down to the offshore developers being less talented, the process, or other factors (no doubt it was really a combination). I can see as a business how offshoring _looks_ attractive (much lower day rate), but as far as I can see, the only way it could _possibly_ work is if you do _exceptionally detailed_ design up front, with _incredibly detailed_ specifications; and by the time you have invested in producing that, you have probably spent as nearly as much as if you had written the actual code locally (which I think is an instance of No Silver Bullet). So, what I want to know is, does anyone here have any experience of offshoring actually working _ever_? Especially if there are any success stories of it working in a semi-agile way? I know there are developers here from all over the World; has anyone worked on an offshore project they consider successful?"}
{"_id": "93786", "title": "How to work with new director with different ideals?", "text": "### Background Over the past 2 years, we have built us a decent team of developers. The CEO of the company and myself have been working closing to make sure we are moving done a good path. As our department as grown, I've been telling the owner we need a manager/director over us that understands technology, but can lead the company on more of the business aspects of running an interactive development shop. He's gone out and done just that, I didn't get to meet the man before his first day, but quickly got his CV. He had owned a company in the late 90's that was bought out and has been working as a consultant since then. Most of his knowledge was in large corporate systems. We build web applications and sites for medium sized companies. And that is where the issues are starting to crop up. He's brought up on several occasions our need to switch to Flash, Oracle and J++ for the sites and applications we are building. Versus the LAMP stack we are using now for 90% of our development. The new guy is very smart when it comes to the business side of technical projects, but he is trying to lead the technical direction. And he and I aren't seeing eye-to-eye for a couple of upcoming projects. ### Question Now, I don't want to go into the issues with those comments. I want to ask how I, as the Senior Developer, can work with our new Director to ensure the success of our department within this company. While also keeping our developers happy, and working with the technologies that we enjoy, and are comfortable with."}
{"_id": "32830", "title": "Usage of Pirated software at a company", "text": "I started to work at a company as an engineer a couple of months ago. It's a small company and what they basically do is answering service on phones. Now they are switching from normal phones to IP phones so that computers take more important place in the work. However, all the computers used by workers are equipped with pirated software, including their operating systems. Moreover, they didn't even buy one license to make copies for other computers. In other words, they did not spend any money for the software in office. I am not saying copying a licensed one is legit, but the situation is too much. There is one guy who installed the pirated software. He does not feel any sense of guilt and even justified when I asked about it. He is not even a specialist. He just searched on the internet to install pirated software. Our boss does not have any knowledge of computers, so he took the cheaper way. What do you think about this? Since I am still new to the company, I am not doing maintenance on those cracked computers. But I have to use those software daily. And later on I will be doing support, help desk kind of stuff. I really don't want to take responsibility for operating pirated software. From an aspect of developer and engineer, pirated software is not able to get legal support and it may work unexpectedly. So, I am thinking about changing jobs. Am I thinking too much? Should I wait until I have more credibility with the boss and try to change his policy? So far, the boss does not take any words from me. Any opinions are welcome. Thank you"}
{"_id": "32832", "title": "Should APIs be in en_US or en_GB or both?", "text": "Should I write APIs in US spelling or British spelling? Or should I provide with mapping both of them to a single one and internally using anyone which I like so that both of them works ? At present most of the APIs are with US spelling. What is the solution for it? edit: Is there a way to standardize this. May be support both?"}
{"_id": "145119", "title": "What do you suggest for cross platform apps, including web", "text": "I have always preferred cross platform development over most other concepts as long as I can remember. Which is one of the reason I never got into .Net. Currently, I use php/javascript/python as my primary languages of choice for web development. Which I also have been using at work. But the need to learn c# has come up and one of the windows guys has been teaching me c#, so I am still very new. I have really liked the language. I have also been brainstorming on an app that I have been wanting to make for some time and have not determined the best way to build it. The main system will be online where users can log in and do everything. But I also want to make a desktop client that ties into and syncs the users content with the server (considering using couchdb for my particular use case for this app). They should be able to do everything the web app can. I would like to launch to linux, windows, and mac as well as make mobile versions. In learning c#, my co-worked recommended I look at Mono, so I can use .Net as a cross platform system and even possibly use asp.net for the main site. So I am hoping to get some insight on where I could go. It seems as if I used .net with mono, I could reuse a lot of code for web and mobile using monodroid/monotouch. But then how could this setup compare to using something like sencha touch for making a mobile version and node.js for the server side (am fairly proficient with JS and php already, I just need to learn c#/.net for work and would like to learn it more anyways). Or is there anything else I should consider? I'm not really asking which method is better, I just want to know what options I have, which I could then make a calculated decision based on my needs and further research. Such as what features would the .net/mono route have that I would not in sencha/node.js, and vice versa (node.js is awesome at real time uset to user interaction, for example) I am just looking for some insight and advice, and help woudl be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "35432", "title": "Inline functions in C++. What's the point?", "text": "According to what I read, the compiler is not obliged to substitute the function call of an inline function with its body, but will do so if it can. This got me thinking- why do we have the inline word if that is the case? Why not make all function inline functions by default and let the compiler figure out if it can substitute the calls with the function body or not?"}
{"_id": "101160", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Resharper Annotations?", "text": "A new colleague has mooted the idea of using **Resharper annotations** within our code base (we already are great fans and users of Resharper). My new colleague cites things like explicitly stating whether a parameter can be null or not null at coding time is a good thing so that consumers of that class can see warnings at coding time. My reservation is it adds noise to the code, is not runtime executed hence I favour Guard clauses. I am also concerned that like comments that they can go stale. I am also concerned about code readability and the overhead of writing them in the first place. Ultimately I am trying to keep development lean so don't want to add overhead for relatively little gain. Finally it feels wrong decorating code for one vendor's tooling support. What are your thoughts? Good/bad experiences?"}
{"_id": "101163", "title": "What causes floating point rounding errors?", "text": "I am aware that floating point arithmetic has precision problems. I usually overcome them by switching to a fixed decimal representation of the number, or simply by neglecting the error. However, I do not know what are the causes of this inaccuracy. Why are there so many rounding issues with float numbers?"}
{"_id": "23845", "title": "What's so bad about creative coding?", "text": "I was watching Bob Ross paint some \"happy trees\" tonight, and I've figured out what's been stressing me out about my code lately. The community of folks here and on Stack Overflow seem to reject any whiff of imperfection. My goal is to write respectable (and therefore maintainable and functioning) code, by improving my skills. Yet, I code creatively. Let me explain what I mean by \"coding creatively\":   * My first steps in a project are often to sit down and bash out some code. For bigger things, I plan a bit out here and there, but mostly I just dive in.   * I don't diagram any of my classes, unless I'm working with others who are creating other pieces in the project. Even then, it certainly isn't the first thing I do. I don't typically work on huge projects, and I don't find the visual very useful.   * The first round of code I write will get rewritten many, many times as I test, simplify, redo, and transform the original hack into something reusable, logical, and efficient. During this process, I am always cleaning. I remove unused code, and comment anything that isn't obvious. I test constantly. **My process seems to go against the grain of what is acceptable in the professional developer community, and I would like to understand why.** I know that most of the griping about bad code is that someone got stuck with a former employee's mess, and it cost a lot of time and money to fix. That I understand. What I don't understand is how my process is wrong, given that the end result is similar to what you would get with planning everything from the start. (Or at least, that's what I have found.) My anxiety over the issue has been so bad lately that I have stopped coding until I know everything there is about every method for solving the particular problem I am working on. In other words, I have mostly stopped coding altogether. I sincerely appreciate your input, no matter what your opinions are on the issue. **Edit:** Thank you all for your answers. I have learned something from each of them. You have all been most helpful."}
{"_id": "93435", "title": "best hosting structure to sell your app on a website", "text": "I'm considering trying to sell a small desktop application (I would be considered a one-man mISV, I guess?) at a price of about $20-$30 USD. I would distribute to customers by download only. I get the sense the best and most intuitive way to do this is provide a download link from the application's website. What are the best ways to go about this? Should I create a website with a standard web hosting provider (like, e.g. DreamHost) and use that to allow customers to download it (it's 18MB or so in size)? I want to allow for the possibility that many people may attempt to download it at once (if I were able to get a write-up on some very widely-read sites), and I would not want my provider to not be able to handle that, since that would be THE crucial sales period. I'd also like to keep costs of hosting/serving as low as possible, since I'm not sure I am going to make any money selling this at all. I'd also like to keep things relatively simple."}
{"_id": "165598", "title": "Removing occurrences of characters in a string", "text": "I am reading this book, programming Interviews exposed by John Wiley and sons and in chapter 6 they are discussing removing all instances of characters in a src string using a removal string... so `removeChars(string str, string remove)` In there writeup they sey the steps to accomplish this are to have a boolean lookup array with all values initially set to false, then loop through each character in `remove` setting the corresponding value in the lookup array to true (note: this could also be a hash if the possible character set where huge like Unicode-16 or something like that or if str and remove are both relatively small... < 100 characters I suppose). You then iterate through the str with a source and destination index, copying each character only if its corresponding value in the lookup array is false... Which makes sense... I don't understand the code that they use however... They have               for(src = 0; src < len; ++src){        flags[r[src]] == true;     }      which is turning the flag value at the remove string indexed at src to true... so if you start out with `PLEASE HELP` as your str and `LEA` as your remove you will be setting in your flag table at `0,1,2... t|t|t` but after that you will get an out of bounds exception because r doesn't have have anything greater than 2 in it... even using there example you get an out of bounds exception... Am is there code example unworkable? **Entire function**               string removeChars( string str, string remove ){        char[] s = str.toCharArray();        char[] r = remove.toCharArray();        bool[] flags = new bool[128]; // assumes ASCII!        int len = s.Length;        int src, dst;        // Set flags for characters to be removed        for( src = 0; src < len; ++src ){           flags[r[src]] = true;         }             src = 0;        dst = 0;        // Now loop through all the characters,        // copying only if they aren\u2019t flagged        while( src < len ){            if( !flags[ (int)s[src] ] ){            s[dst++] = s[src];        }        ++src;        }        return new string( s, 0, dst );     }      as you can see, r comes from the remove string. So in my example the remove string has only a size of 3 while my str string has a size of 11. len is equal to the length of the str string. So it would be 11. How can I loop through the r string since it is only size 3? I haven't compiled the code so I can loop through it, but just looking at it I know it won't work. I am thinking they wanted to loop through the r string... in other words they got the length of the wrong string here."}
{"_id": "93437", "title": "What are the biggest bottlenecks when developing large projects?", "text": "Let's say that my company was to develop a replica of MS Word (just as an example). What would be the bottleneck to the development process, assuming that one has infinite cash available and an organization like Microsoft? In other words, what are the most usual hindrances from developing such software fast? Let's assume that all specifications are in place and the organization is working perfectly, so we just focus on the software development until the product is ready to be shipped. Some alternatives might be: \\- Writing the code \\- Writing tests \\- Manually testing the end product \\- Rewriting the code due to poor design in the first place \\- Designing the code \\- Code review done by experienced developers \\- Designing GUI \\- Redesigning GUI based on alpha/beta-user feedback \\- Processing feedback from users \\- Waiting for alpha/beta-user feedback Please use references in your answer or state your experience on the subject."}
{"_id": "165594", "title": "Is there a known algorithm for scheduling tournament matchups?", "text": "Just wondering if there is a tournament scheduling algorithm already out there that I could use or even adapt slightly. Here are my requirements:   * A variable number of opponents belonging to a variable number of teams/clubs each must be paired with an opponent   * Two opponents cannot be from the same club   * If there are an odd number of players, 1 of them randomly is selected to get a bye Any algorithms related to this sort of requirement set would be appreciated. **EDIT:** I only need to run this a maximum of one time, creating matchups for the first 'round' of the tournament."}
{"_id": "23848", "title": "Being a good mentee - a prot\u00e9g\u00e9", "text": "The complement of the Being a good mentor question. I work with many very senior people that have vast amounts of knowledge and wisdom in Software, Engineering and our business domain. What are some tips for gaining as much knowledge from them? I don't want to take up too much of their time, but also want to take full advantage of this since it really could help develop my skills. What are some good questions to get the conversation rolling in a sit down mentor/mentee session? Some of the people providing mentorship have little experience in this area, so it would help to be able to lead some of these discussions."}
{"_id": "253082", "title": "Right options for the Creative Commons license for the theme", "text": "First I am not so much expert with the license terms and system but have some basic knowledge. I have been developing theme for one of the Open Source PHP script since two versions. It has been package included with GPLv3 till now. Currently, I am working on new version and now ready to release alpha version. But before I release it, I just want to change the license to Creative Commons. This is just to prevent a bit the copyright/credits notes. I want to allow user to modify, alter the theme and they can redistribute. But they must contains the original copyright and credit notes and the license. I am not sure either I can release new version under CC license and if yes what will be the best option for it. Also will just a logo (not with entire description) will consider the same rights?"}
{"_id": "253084", "title": "How to store satellite data in C data structutres", "text": "I've been reading through Introduction To Algorithms 3rd Ed, and am really enjoying the material; however, I am having difficulty in implementing some practical situations. It's not the theory, or implementing the internals of the data structures themselves, but rather how to design a good interface that makes the data structures useful for storing real data (as opposed to just the keys). Specifically, I'm told that C has a very \"trust the programmer\" type philosophy. I just don't know how much trust is too much trust .. As an example, many data structures can be implemented as linked structures with similar nodes having a key, satellite data, and pointers to other nodes in the ds, ex:               typedef struct {         int key;         void *data;         node_t *prev;         node_t *next;     } node_t;      Q1. To what extent should I be encapsulating my implementations? For most structures, you have both: (a) a data structure type, and (b) a type that can be inserted/deleted from the data structure. Should they both be hidden? Clearly if I expose a some `node_t` with the intention someone only alters `key` and `*data`.. theres the possibility `prev` or `next` is altered, thus destroying the data structure. A similar risk exists if I expose the data structure type and someone messes around with the root.. Q2. How should the keys be stored/accessed/compared? Presumably, the keys depend on the satellite data, but if you go the approach as above, you've decoupled the key from the data itself. What would happen if a user updates the data but forgets to update the key (or worse, they update the key, but don't remove/reinsert it into the ds)? For something like a binary tree which uses only comparisons, I could design the interface to accept comparators that accept pointers to the satellite data? This makes the structure more generalized, but all the defreferencing has to have an impact on speed. Alternatively, (and would be needed for structures like hashes which need a concrete key), I could accept a pointer to a `int toKey(void *data)`function.. I'm relatively new to C (and designing software) and am unclear on how good software should be designed for use in the real world.."}
{"_id": "141458", "title": "Visually and audibly unambiguous subset of the Latin alphabet?", "text": "Imagine you give someone a card with the code \"5SBDO0\" on it. In some fonts, the letter \"S\" is difficult to visually distinguish from the number five, (as with number zero and letter \"O\"). Reading the code out loud, it might be difficult to distinguish \"B\" from \"D\", necessitating saying \"B as in boy,\" \"D as in dog,\" or using a \"phonetic alphabet\" instead. What's the biggest subset of letters and numbers that will, in most cases, both look unambiguous visually and sound unambiguous when read aloud? * * * Background: We want to generate a short string that can encode as many values as possible while still being easy to communicate. Imagine you have a 6-character string, \"123456\". In base 10 this can encode **10** ^6 values. In hex \"1B23DF\" you can encode **16** ^6 values in the same number of characters, but this can sound ambiguous when read aloud. (\"B\" vs. \"D\") Likewise for any string of N characters, you get (size of alphabet)^N values. The string is limited to a length of about six characters, due to wanting to fit easily within the capacity of human working memory capacity. Thus to find the max number of values we can encode, we need to find that largest unambiguous set of letters/numbers. There's no reason we can't consider the letters G-Z, and some common punctuation, but I don't want to have to go manually pairwise compare \"does G sound like A?\", \"does G sound like B?\", \"does G sound like C\" myself. As we know this would be O(n^2) linguistic work to do =)..."}
{"_id": "32781", "title": "Declarative programming vs. Imperative programming", "text": "I feel very comfortable with Imperative programming. I never have trouble expressing algorithmically what I want the computer to do once I figured out what is it that I want it to do. But when it comes to languages like SQL or I often get stuck because my head is too used to Imperative programming. For example, suppose you have the relations band(bandName, bandCountry), venue(venueName, venueCountry), plays(bandName, venueName), and I want to write a query that says: all venueNames such that for every bandCountry there's a band from that country that plays in venue of that name. **EDIT (due to answers): in other words, I want all the venueNames in which bands from _all_ countries (bandCountry) played. Also, by \"relation\" I mean an SQL table.** In my mind I immediately go \"for each venueName iterate over all the bandCountries and for each bandCountry get the list of bands that come from it. If none of them play in venueName, go to next venueName. Else, at the end of the bandCountries iteration add venueName to the set of good venueNames\". ...but you can't talk like that in SQL and I actually need to think about how to formulate this, with the intuitive Imperative solution constantly nagging in the back of my head. Did anybody else had this problem? How did you overcome this? Did you figured out a paradigm shift? Made a map from Imperative concepts to SQL concepts to translate Imperative solutions into Declarative ones? Read a good book? PS I'm not looking for a solution to the above query, I did solve it."}
{"_id": "32786", "title": "Programmer aptitude test", "text": "I have many friends that see what I do, find it interesting and ask me the question               Do you think I could be a programmer?      My response is               ...   ummm  ...  do you like math?      I'd like to have a helpful response, so I didn't know if anyone knew of a fairly decent aptitude test for someone that would be starting from square one, but has critical thinking and problem solving skills?"}
{"_id": "55580", "title": "Vulnerabilities and employability", "text": "I am a web developer. If I find a vulnerability in a prospective employer's website and notify them of it at the same as I send my (unsolicited) application, am I more likely to get the job? Less likely? Why?"}
{"_id": "56058", "title": "Ways to find a tutor for 1st year University student", "text": "I tried searching here (and SO) without much luck. I also stared at the yellow box to the right and think this question is relatively on topic and can be answered. A co-worker asked me if I had any suggestions for how to find a tutor for his son. In this specific case, it was for Eclipse and Java, but it got me thinking about good general strategies one could use in situations like this. He preferred a local 1-to-1, but I suppose online might be a reasonable (or perhaps more likely) alternative. Any suggested strategies?"}
{"_id": "56055", "title": "How to handle growing QA reporting requirements?", "text": "**Some Background:** Our company is growing very quickly - in 3 years we've tripled in size and there are no signs of stopping any time soon. Our marketing department has expanded and our IT requirements have as well. When I first arrived everything was managed in Dreamweaver and Excel spreadsheets and we've worked hard to implement bug tracking, version control, continuous integration, and multi- stage deployment. It's been a long hard road, and now we need to get more organized. **The Problem at Hand:** Management would like to track, per-developer, who is generating the most issues at the QA stage (post unit testing, regression, and post-production issues specifically). This becomes a fine balance because many issues can't be reported granularly (e.g. per-url or per-\"page\") but yet that's how Management would like reporting to be broken down. Further, severity has to be taken into account. We have drafted standards for each of these areas specific to our environment. Developers don't want to be nicked for 100+ instances of an issue if it was a problem with an include or inheritance... I had a suggestion to \"score\" bugs based on severity... but nobody likes that. We can't enter issues for every individual module affected by a global issue. **[UPDATED] The Actual Questions:** How do medium sized businesses and code shops handle bug tracking, reporting, and providing useful metrics to management? What kinds of KPIs are better metrics for employee performance? What is the most common way to provide per- developer reporting as far as time-to-close, reopens, etc.? Do large enterprises ignore the efforts of the individuals and rather focus on the team? Some other questions:   * Is this too granular of reporting?   * Is this considered 'blame culture'?   * If you were the developer working in this environment, what would _you_ define as a measureable goal for this year to track your progress, with the reward of achieving the goal a bonus?"}
{"_id": "56056", "title": "Does it make sense to compute cyclomatic complexity/lines of code ratio?", "text": "In general, maintainability index relies on many factors. For example, in Visual Studio, it rely on cyclomatic complexity, depth of inheritance, class coupling and lines of code; those four values must be as low as possible. At the same time, I've never seen, neither in code metrics tools, nor in books, the comparison between only cyclomatic complexity (CC) and lines of code (LC). Does it make sense to compute such ratio? What information does it give about the code? In other words, is it better to decrease more the CC than the LC to have a lower ratio? What I notice is that for small projects, the ratio CC/LC is low (\u2153 and lower). In other words, LC is high, and CC is low. In large projects, CC/LC is in most cases bigger than \u00bd. Why?"}
{"_id": "36202", "title": "How Do You Test Your Software?", "text": "I'm currently working on 2 software projects:   1. A Social Networking Web Site for an NGO   2. A Patient Management System for a hospital Although I've been programming for 5 years, I can't just say that I'm very good at testing or Test Driven Designing an application. How would you arrange your Software Testing before coding phase, during coding and after you finished the coding phase for   * a. providing stakeholders with information about the quality of the product or service under test.   * b. providing an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation.  and how do you understand that your program/application/product   * c. meets the business and technical requirements that guided its design and development   * d. works as expected p.s. please feel free to edit the question since my english is not very powerful."}
{"_id": "36200", "title": "How do I improve my skills as a Qt GUI programmer?", "text": "I'm a python & Qt programmer and my day job is create small GUI programs to ship with hardware devices. However, my job is pretty basic: read/write data to the device through a serial port using pyserial, and display and edit data using PyQt and PyQwt. Because of how basic this job is, I'm not confident there's a lot of job security here. What can I do to improve my skills in this area?"}
{"_id": "36207", "title": "What is the most secure way to \"Grandfather In\" existing users of a paid iOS app that will go free?", "text": "The title pretty much says it all, but I can elaborate. I have a paid iOS app that has plenty of existing customers. I think i want to convert to a free app now, and allow full upgrade via in-app-purchase. The problem is, I don't want to make my existing customers buy the app again to use it, nor do I want to make it easy for hackers to just flip a switch and get the pro version. What is the **most secure** way to \"Grandfather In\" existing users of a paid iOS app that will go free?"}
{"_id": "130088", "title": "How to resolve methods with the same name and parameter types?", "text": "In many cases, I want to write methods that have the same functionality for different types of inputs. This is easily accomplished by method overloading if the parameter types are different. But what's the best (most robust) way to go about resolving the case when the parameter types are the same (i.e. two different representations of the data with the same type)? An example of this would be an integer matrix which can naturally be stored as an `int[][]`. But what if you want to write a method which accepts the transpose of the matrix as well? The transpose is also an `int[][]` but a clearly different representation altogether. I can see a couple ways of doing this:   * Giving the methods different names   * Adding a flag to the method   * Wrapping each representations in different classes I think the third method is the most clear way of doing this. Unfortunately I'm working on some high performance libraries where that's not a feasible solution."}
{"_id": "186910", "title": "Is it called an instance in Javascript?", "text": "Say I have a function.               function foo(){         //do stuff     }      And then I create an object of that function.               var fooObj = new foo();      What is `fooObj` called? An instance, An object instance, or something else entirely? Pardon the newbie question, but I am rather new to prototype based programming(and all programming really)."}
{"_id": "130082", "title": "Best way to convincingly evangelize front end best practices to colleagues?", "text": "I've had experiences in the past working with (traditionally back-end) developers, whose occasionally cross into the front end realm. The resulting code would typically involve:   * global namespace pollution (many many global functions included inline without flexibility or re-use in mind)   * many one-off implementations of functionality which is already supported, or may be more easily implemented with the assistance of an already-included library (raw JS implementations of AJAX/DOM-related functionality)   * mass groupings of inline styles As a (relatively) seasoned front end professional, I've had some success conveying best practices to colleagues who were interested in learning. However, that success was largely based on trust and open-mindedness. What one's options are when it comes to responding to questions asking to why some accepted \"best\" practices are genuinely better in a way which gains said trust and interest?"}
{"_id": "218039", "title": "Programming methodologies at stackoverflow", "text": "I am in the middle of starting up a software company where we would use ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebAPI extensively at shop. We will be a group of 4 and no more than 10 will work on any particular project at any point in time(these are ground rules). I would like to know, what programming methodologies best suit a small(guerilla) team. Specifically, I would also like to know which ones are being used at famous ASP.NET MVC shops like Stackoverflow. The ones I know are:   1. Scrum and   2. Waterfall(I know its bad).  But what's the recommended way of development for smaller, group of 9-10 team. Also, will Test Driven Development help such a team in producing quality software? Are there any other techniques the team will have to know to be good at producing quality software?"}
{"_id": "128275", "title": "what is exactly an enterprise app store", "text": "My idea of an enterprise app store is that there is a page on the company's website where all the apps that that company developed for its employees are listed so they can use them. And access to this apps is restriceted to the employees of the company. As far as I know you can download an Android App from any website and install it on an Andoid phone, you don't have to use Android Market. However installing an App that does not come from the Android Market is not that straightforward. For Apple, you can only install an app from the Appstore, so how can you have an enterprise app store? Please tell me what exactly is an enterprise app store. I think I got it wrong, also I read a lot on the internet for this keywords."}
{"_id": "140898", "title": "Implementing a ILogger interface to log data", "text": "I have a need to write data to file in one of my classes. Obviously I will pass an interface into my class to decouple it. I was thinking this interface will be used for testing and also in other projects. This is my interface:               //This could be used by filesystem, webservice     public interface ILogger     {        List<string> PreviousLogRecords {get;set;}        void Log(string Data);     }          public interface IFileLogger : ILogger     {       string FilePath;       bool ValidFileName;     }          public class MyClassUnderTest     {       public MyClassUnderTest(IFileLogger logger) {....}     }          [Test]     public void TestLogger()     {        var mock = new Mock<IFileLogger>();        mock.Setup(x => x.Log(Is.Any<string>).AddsDataToList()); //Is this possible??             var myClass = new MyClassUnderTest(mock.Object);             myClass.DoSomethingThatWillSplitThisAndLog3Times(\"1,2,3\");             Assert.AreEqual(3,mock.PreviousLogRecords.Count);          }      This won't work I don't believe as nothing is storing the items so is this possible using Moq and also what do you think of the design of the interface?"}
{"_id": "74127", "title": "How do I determine which language/framework is best for our web-based project?", "text": "I'm in the early stages of development for a web application that has three developers (myself included) working on it. The project is, at its core, a web-based database that will be used by around 5,000 people. Its primary purpose is to track information about game characters while enforcing a set of rules and security. Meanwhile, it's supposed to be as usable as possible. While the main presentation will be over a networked desktop web browser, we're also hoping that   * certain features of the application will be usable while disconnected from the network and   * that we can develop a version of the frontend for mobile devices. Here is some basic background for the developers; I think it's fairly relevant to the question.   * Developer A maintains the system we are redesigning. It was built in PHP but there is very little actual code that we can keep. He also has veto power, though he takes suggestions readily.   * Developer B is familiar only with VB and SQL, though he has been studying AJAX and HTML/CSS lately.   * Developer C (me) has a degree in Software Engineering with experience in multiple (non MS) languages as well as with some general web/database development, but has only developed code in Ruby since graduating (2009). Dev C has experience in an older version of PHP and helped work on one project in the latest version of Rails back in 2008. The main tools we're considering are Ruby on Rails 3 and PHP 5. Developer A seems fairly opposed to learning Rails, but my guess is that he is assuming it is more difficult to learn than it actually is. I don't know that for sure, though. Regardless of which we choose, I want to use a MVC architecture. **What are some other notable concerns we should address in order to determine which language would best suit us?** Are any of the concerns listed below trivial? The main issues/points/concerns I _think_ I need to consider/address are:   * The learning hurdle for Rails - for developer A, mostly, but also if it would be harder to learn a bit just to help for developer B than it would be for him to learn a bit of PHP.   * The possibility that there will be performance issues with Rails.    * The lack of forced structure with PHP - should I expect difficulties enforcing an MVC   * Ease of AJAX integration in PHP vs. Rails."}
{"_id": "74126", "title": "How likely is it for a programmer to become a good designer?", "text": "I'm a programmer, and I'm pretty good at programming. I can easily pick up most technical topics such as Linux, Systems Administration, Databases and of course, new programming languages. I even dabbled with 3d modelling and wasn't horrible at it. However, I am awful at Graphic Design. I have no skill there whatsoever, and even after quite a few Photoshop tutorials I can't design a website (or anything else really). I'm wondering if I pour a whole bunch of time into it, if I can become a _good_ graphic designer. So what I'm looking for is anyone else who has done this, or advice, thoughts, etc."}
{"_id": "196094", "title": "Is a try and catch that does not throw an exception more efficient than a conditional?", "text": "I came across this example recently: > If 999 times out of 1,000 an exception will not be thrown then the exception > is only generated once. On the other hand a conditional would have been > called needlessly 999 times, therefore in this case the exception is > superior. In this instance it's C#, but generally speaking is this true? I had previously assumed try/catch statements had their own overhead that would equal the time spent handling a conditional. Granted, just throwing try/catch blocks anyplace a conditional would normally go would be a terrible way to code, but resource-wise does this statement hold up?"}
{"_id": "253558", "title": "Type inference in Golang/Haskell", "text": "I've read that Go doesn't actually have true type inference in the sense that functional languages such as ML or Haskell have, but I haven't been able to find a simple to understand comparison of the two versions. Could someone explain in basic terms how type inference in Go differs from type inference in Haskell, and the pros/cons of each?"}
{"_id": "253559", "title": "How would you create a program where two objects randomly move throughout the screen BUT never collide?", "text": "they are free to move anywhere on the screen weather in straight lines or curved ones just as long as they don't be at the same place at any given time. btw I'm not asking how to write it in code, but rather the logic if you will? 1- how would you make an object move randomly? (disregarding predefined functions or classes..etc) 2-how do you ensure they never hit?"}
{"_id": "205605", "title": "Best data structure for representing English verb forms", "text": "I need to come up with a data structure to keep information about English verb forms. In most cases a verb can be in one of 4 forms: base, present participle, past participle and past simple, for example:   * take   * taking   * taken   * took It's seemingly easy to define 4 types for each form and be over with it. However there are few exceptions that ruin this simple idea.   1. Present single third person form, which is in our example would be \"takes\".   2. Copular verb \"to be\" has multiple irregular forms in the present tense: \"am\", \"is\", \"are\" and \"was\" and \"were\" in the past tense   3. Verbs like \"may\" that don't inflect in the present single third person form: \"she may\". What data structure would be efficient, accurate yet unambiguous for representing such information (with exceptional cases) given the following requirements have to be met:   * for an arbitrary form answer the question what conjugations the form represents   * for an arbitrary conjugation and a form answer the question whether the form represents the given conjugation or not?"}
{"_id": "253553", "title": "Common phrases to know which resources are no longer available", "text": "I'm working on an script for tracking urls on a web page. This script runs daily to identify resources that are no longer available. If a page returns a `status code` like `404` I know the resource is not available anymore, but sometimes the page returns a `200` with a message like: > This resource has been moved to ...... Or > This resource is not available anymore.... I would like to know which `keywords` are used to say a resource is not longer available regardless the `status code`."}
{"_id": "200231", "title": "Where to learn graph theory applications", "text": "I am completely new to designing algorithms with graphs. I am following CLRS and other video lectures in Youtube, notably from IIT/MIT. They are pretty good, and I currently have decent idea about graph data structures, search, spanning-tree, etc. However, I am completely clueless as to how to identify a coding problem (the likes of which you see in Topcoder/Codechef) that requires a graph-based approach. In which problem, shall I need to use a minimum spanning tree? Where do I need to use Prim's Algorithm? Is there ay book/resource which covers lots of problems on graphs, explaining (well, kind of spoon feeding) how to identify that this problem requires a graph-based solution, and finally how to do it?"}
{"_id": "205606", "title": "Strategy for keeping secret info such as API keys out of source control?", "text": "I'm working on a website that will allow users to log in using OAuth credentials from the likes of Twitter, Google, etc. To do this, I have to register with these various providers and get a super-secret API key that I have to protect with pledges against various body parts. If my key gets ganked, the part gets yanked. The API key has to travel with my source, as it is used at runtime to perform authentication requests. In my case, the key must exist within the application in a configuration file or within the code itself. That isn't a problem when I build and publish from a single machine. However, when we throw source control into the mix, things get more complicated. As I'm a cheap bastard, I'd much prefer to use free source control services such as TFS in the cloud or GitHub. This leaves me with a slight conundrum: **How can I keep my body intact when my API keys are in my code, and my code is available in a public repository?** I can think of a number of ways to handle this, but none of them are that satisfying.   * I could remove all private info from code, and edit it back in after deployment. This would be a severe pain to implement (I won't detail the many ways), and isn't an option.   * I could encrypt it. But as I have to decrypt it, anyone with the source could figure out how to do so. Pointless.   * I could pay for private source control. LOL j/k spend money? Please.   * I could use language features to segregate sensitive info from the rest of my source and therefore keep it from source control. This is what I'm doing now, but it could easily be screwed up by mistakenly checking in the secret file. I'm really looking for a guaranteed way to ensure I don't share my privates with the world (except on snapchat) that will work smoothly through development, debugging and deployment and be foolproof as well. This is completely unrealistic. **So what realistically can I do?** Technical details: VS2012, C# 4.5, source control is either going to be TF service or GitHub. Currently using a partial class to split the sensitive keys off in a separate .cs file that won't be added to source control. I think GitHub may have the advantage as .gitignore could be used to ensure that partial class file isn't checked in, but I've screwed that up before. Am hoping for a \"oh, common issue, this is how you do it\" but I may have to settle for \"that doesn't suck as much as it could have\", :/"}
{"_id": "200237", "title": "Having a Starting Place for Coding a Site", "text": "This is more of preference question that I wanted to toss out to other developers to learn a bit more about others process when developing a site. Every time I start a site I feel I could save a lot of time if I had a better starting point to work from. I have a 'starter' folder that has a CSS folder, a JS folder, an index.html file, etc. that I use as a guide, but I make tweaks every time I build a site, so I feel like I end up working from the last site I built instead of the starter folder most of the time. I figured there has to be a better way to setup a starting place that gets you up and running programming a site more efficiently. What do you use handle this in your workflow? Where/how do you save code snippets to reuse from site to site, etc.?"}
{"_id": "75839", "title": "I've learned so much about OO programming I have no idea how to write procedural code. What's a good way to learn?", "text": "When I learned to program, I learned Object Oriented Programming very early on. For a while, I blundered around with my beautiful hammer, trying to use it for _everything,_ partially because I had no idea how to solve problems any other way. As I read more, I began to realize you need to use the right tool for the right job, and I quickly realized I had no other tools because I'd never learned any other style! I'm working on functional programming, and there are plenty of good books and articles about it. But what's a good way to learn procedural programming **the right way?** I have a basic idea of how to make global variables and pass state to functions, but I want to delve deeper into procedural code. I know most of the time people have to learn the other way, and procedural code is often bashed around for being unmaintainable, but I want to learn it anyway so I have more ways of approaching a problem. OOP may often be a 'better' choice, but right know its the only thing I know, and I want to branch out. I know procedural code was virtually the only style available for programming for many years, so most books don't say \"we're going to teach you procedural programming!\" and instead just say they'll teach you how to program, and the procedural is assumed. Those people can just find books that have OOP in size 72 font on the cover and know that's what it teaches. But I'm trying to go the other direction and feel a little lost... How did you learn procedural programming? Which books/languages do you recommend? Are there any important tips to learning the **right** way to write procedural code so its as maintainable and beautiful as possible? What tips would you give an OO junky as to how to write awesome procedural code?"}
{"_id": "203769", "title": "Programming A Function in Python", "text": "I am quite new to programming, and was wondering if someone might be able to help me get the following working in python: Define ![$\\\\Phi_mx\\(mn+r\\)=mx\\(n\\)+\\\\frac{r}{m}\\(x\\(n+1\\)-x\\(n\\)\\)$](http://i.imgur.com/ZQeqIvx.gif), where we consider x(0)=0, r is always positive and less than m, and all values of n are positive integers. ![$\\\\Phi_m$](http://i.imgur.com/JAncAHQ.gif) takes in a string of numbers and outputs another string. How might I program this?"}
{"_id": "137708", "title": "Mentoring Millennials", "text": "I'm in the process of revamping our company's software development internship program and the area I'm most passionate on is implementing an enjoyable and effective student/intern mentoring program. We have quite a demographic variance among our software development groups, however, the vast majority would be considered Generation-Xers. **Over the years I've seen our younger Millennial-Generation students/interns/employees struggle when working with older developers.** Software architecture, Agile principles, the importance of TDD, design patterns, all of these are important and I'm looking for insight on communicating these things to interns/students/younger professionals. I would love to hear of any good tips regarding mentoring today's incoming Millennial-Generation software developers, especially students/interns. What's worked well for you, what hasn't? What observations have you made that taught you something about a younger software developer, how they think, what they value, etc. How can we make this an experience and industry that they're excited to be a part of? Thank you very much for any and all comments."}
{"_id": "218209", "title": "Entity framework separating entities for product and customer specific implementation", "text": "I am designing an application with intention into making it a product line. I would like to extend the functionality across all layers and first struggle is with domain models.   For example, core functionality would have entity named Invoice with few standard fields and then customer requirements will add some new fields to it, but I don't want to add to core Invoice class. For every customer I could use customer specific DbContext and injected correct context with dependency injection.   Also every customer will get they own deployment               public class Product.Domain.Invoice      {         public int InvoiceId { get; set; }         // Other fields     }      How to approach this problem? Solution 1 does not work since Entity Framework does not allow same simple name classes.               public class CustomerA.Domain.Invoice : Product.Domain.Invoice     {         public User ReviewedBy { get; set; }         public DateTime? ReviewedOn { get; set; }     }      Solution 2 Create separate table and link it to core domain table. Reusing services and controllers could be harder.               public class CustomerA.Domain.CustomerAInvoice      {         public Product.Domain.Invoice Invoice { get; set; }              public User ReviewedBy { get; set; }         public DateTime? ReviewedOn { get; set; }     }"}
{"_id": "146498", "title": "Programming languages, positional languages and natural languages", "text": "Some programming languages are modeled on machine code, like assembly languages. Other languages are modeled on a natural language, the English language. Others are not modeled on either machine code or natural language. Languages such as PROLOG, for example, don't follow either model. I came across this Perl module Lingua::Romana::Perligata, that allows to write programs using a syntax that is very similar to Latin. Are there programming languages that have less positional syntax? Are there other languages or modules that allow you to write in syntaxes inspired by other natural languages, like French, Hebrew or Farsi? There is a very long list on Wikipedia, but most of those projects are dead. There is a related question on StackOverflow. The answer that was accepted is \"Use Google\"."}
{"_id": "39922", "title": "Where to put profile test?", "text": "I have an application with multiple threads that may be run on different hardware. To assist with tuning on different hardware I would like to create a \"profiler\" that can automatically run a fixed amount of data through using different numbers of threads. I've thought of several ways of implementing this:   1. It's a test, so put it in with the unit tests   2. It's also a part of the app, so make it part of the top level class running the app   3. It's a helper, so create entirely new class `Profiler` I'm leaning toward option 2, because I think it is simplest to implement and seems to fit in well. Anyone have any other ideas or comments?"}
{"_id": "39923", "title": "Why GRASP patterns are less known than GOF ones?", "text": "Design patterns help developers to improve the quality of their design, but only GOF patterns are very known, and paterns like GRASP that gives a good concepts like Information Expert,low coupling and high cohesion are less known. I think that GRASP patterns could be a good introduction to patterns for students and developers, they will master GOF patterns better if they knew GRASP patterns."}
{"_id": "218205", "title": "Understanding exceptional cases", "text": "I've been studying the use of exceptions in various php projects (such as Doctrine and Zend Framework). Exceptions seem to be thrown when unordinary input/state occurs. A perfect example is Doctrine throwing an exception when you try to use a invalid query string. I think the creators of the doctrine api understood that first, you can't query data by using an invalid DQL statement, and a developer should immediately be warned that an error has occurred, rather then letting execution continue with the possibility of an error code going un-checked. I also bet that this simplifies reading the code. I can't think of a situation where you would want to use an invalid DQL statement, except unit testing. Since this is true, it's better to avoid plaguing a bunch of code with null/error checks and use exceptions. I've read in books that exceptions shouldn't be thrown when validating dating user input. I've seen examples where of where the guideline is broken. One example is the Zend framework. If supplying an invalid controller or action name, an exception is thrown. Unlike doctrine, the user has more direct control over this sort of input. I know you can configure an error controller and set up a 404 message or what have you, but I'm curious why they have used an exception in this scenario? I guess you can argue the Zend Framework does not know how to continue processing the request. One last example Is I wrote a function to return some html based on a given resource type. This resource type is hard-coded and sent when a user interacts with a web site (such as clicking a button to display the form to input data). I don't _expect_ users to be mucking around with the request type. Under normal operating conditions, the resource type should be valid. To clean up some logic, I was going to throw an exception if a particular form wasn't found. This is mainly to find the correct form associated with a resource type so proper validation can occur. Does this sound like a valid use case for an exception? Right now it's pretty trivial, but I do plan to implement a restful consumer and re-using a function to map resources to their validation services would be very useful. I can then catch the exception and based on the consumer, return an error message suitable for the request type..."}
{"_id": "223146", "title": "Is a tree with nodes that have reference to parent still a tree?", "text": "If we make reference to the parent for each node in a tree, do we still have a tree (by definition) anymore? Wikipedia definition is: > In computer science, a tree is a widely used abstract data type (ADT) or > data structure implementing this ADT that simulates a hierarchical tree > structure, with a root value and subtrees of children, represented as a set > of linked nodes. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SXgBW.png)"}
{"_id": "145034", "title": "Should large or old Codebases be expected to be easy to navigate?", "text": "I'm an Undergraduate Computer Science Student currently on a placement year at a company that produces and supports a large enterprise web application. I'm loving the experience of seeing how software is produced in the real world, and feel very lucky to find a company that offers a chance to not only maintain and extend existing functionality but also develop entirely new features for the product. All that said, though, I'm very conscious that this is very, very unlikely to be a perfect example of how to develop correctly. Far from it, in fact. I feel I'm learning a massive amount from my experience here, and I don't want to learn the wrong things or pick up bad habits from colleagues that could be hard to shake off further down the road. Mostly it's easy to tell what's good and what's not - for example the Unit Test coverage here is practically non- existent for various reasons (mostly poor excuses mixed in with one or two valid points). Lately, though, I've been noticing a regular occurrence that I'm just not sure about. Whenever we start a new project, naturally we need to find any relevant code that needs to be extended, altered, or removed. It seems to me that, the vast majority of the time, anything not within the most commonly used sections of the application takes people an age to find within the codebase. There are one or two tech leads who know their section of the code well, but even they get stumped sometimes and have to spend a long time searching for what they require, or turn to someone who has been editing that part of the code recently (if anyone) for help. When I say a long time, I don't mean hours (usually) but it seems to me that a good codebase would be navigable to any point within a few minutes at worst, to anyone even vaguely familiar with the system. So, my question. Is the above problem due to poorly structured code? Alternatively, is it down to developers not having enough knowledge of the codebase? Or is it simply unavoiable in large applications, regardless of how much work goes into keeping the file structure clear? Or, indeed...am I just wasting my time on a topic that really doesn't matter?"}
{"_id": "98264", "title": "Technical manager (not lead architect) of development team", "text": "Can you be a technical manager of a development team, without knowing the technology they work with? I'm very technical, having been a tech lead for a while, now I'm a manager, and the new team reports to me now, administratively and technically. Problem is, a big part of the technology being used is old and archaic (delphi). Is it possible for someone with 'zero' experience in that to lead that team? What are some of your experiences?"}
{"_id": "166029", "title": "Are dynamic languages at disadvantage for agile development?", "text": "From what I've read agile development often involves refactoring or reverse engineering code into diagrams. Of course there is much more than that, but if we consider the practices that rely on these two methods, are dynamically typed languages at disadvantage? It seem staticly-typed languages would make refactoring and reverse engineering much easier. Is Refactoring or (automated) reverse engineering hard if not impossible in dynamically typed languages? What does real world projects tell about usage of dynamically typed languages for agile methodology?"}
{"_id": "98267", "title": "Agile Retrospective Ideas", "text": "I am a Junior at workplace and i have been to a number of our retrospectives over the last year. I have been asked to facilitate a retrospective of my own. So far, we have done \"hats (red, green, white etc)\", \"mad, sad, glad\", \"imagining going forward to end of next sprint, and discussing how it might have gone\". I would like to try something new. If you practice agile in your workplace, what do you use and would you recommend trying it for a retrospective? Thanks, Kohan"}
{"_id": "166023", "title": "What does \"windowed streaming\" stand for?", "text": "So I was asking around the Mercurial development mailing list about binary diffing and patch handling and I got the following examples:   * whole file approaches (classic diff, bsdiff, Mercurial's internal bdiff)   * windowed streaming approaches (rsync, xdelta, libxdiff) What does \"windowed streaming\" stand for in this context? (and in general)"}
{"_id": "227658", "title": "Front controller in PHP", "text": "When you are reading about web application development, \"front controller\" and \"single point of entry\" are frequent words you are confronted with. To my understanding, the point is to provide a single location where you decide what to do in your program. That's all nice and well in theory, but I am confused as to how this would look in reality. In OOP, I suppose your \"controller\" would commonly be instantiated in the \"index.php\", or whatever file is your \"entry point\". But how to go from there and how does the controller class look like? Is it something along the lines of this:               //Dummy-code, it's just to make a point     class Controller {              //first function to be called         public function main() {             switch($appAction) {                 case \"login\": userLogin(); break;                 case \"view\" : viewArticle(); break;                 //...             }         }              protected function userLogin() {             //Sanitisation of user input             //making instances of necessary classes etc.         }              //...     }      or did I get the whole concept completely wrong? This is the only thing I can imagine to be the case, but I'm just not sure if there is a major mistake in approaching it this way or if I just misunderstood the purpose of a front controller."}
{"_id": "232393", "title": "How to manage multiple database credentials across multiple projects", "text": "We have 10 separate projects that all access the same database. Initially, all 10 projects had database credentials hardcoded into them. I decided to move the credentials into a utility method and have all of the projects call that instead. For example               public String getDBUser() {        return \"username\";     }      So instead of hardcoding it in 10 places, I hardcode it in one place. All was fine. Fast-forward some months and I run into a wall with this solution, because now there are different credentials depending on which database server we're trying to connect to. For context, I'm trying to set up properly separated testing/production environments, but the servers have different username and passwords. One solution is to simply change the credentials to make them the same, but I imagine this is sometimes not an option and if I run into such a situation I would like to be prepared. What is a good way to manage multiple database credentials across multiple applications?"}
{"_id": "101838", "title": "Class as first-class object", "text": "Could a class be a first-class object? If yes, how would the implementation look? I mean, how could syntax for dynamically creating new classes look like? EDIT: I mean what example syntax could look like (I'm sorry, English is not my native language), but still I believe this question makes sense - how you give this functionality while keeping language consistent. For example how you create reference for new type. Do you make reference first-class object too and then use something like this:               Reference<newType> r = new Reference<newType>();     r.set(value);      Well this could get messy so you may just force user to use Object type references for dynamically created classes, but then you loose type-checking. I think creating concise syntax for this is interesting problem which solving could lead to better language design, maybe language which is metalanguage for itself (I wonder if this is possible)."}
{"_id": "101836", "title": "How much should Developers interact with Clients?", "text": "A philosophical discussion has come up in my department that I'd like p.se's opinion on. We're a 6 person development department inside a 60 person IT shop. All other departments are growing FAST, and ours has been the same size (and not fully booked at that size) for a few years. My manager, and old-school mainframe guy, contends that developers should never ever have ANY client contact. That all interaction with the client should be mitigated by a Project Management layer. He asserts that this allows a coder the focus they need in order to CODE, and protects the business's relationship with the client from the autism-spectrum tendencies of Joe Average Code Monkey. (My words, not his.) His boss, the owner of the company, told him this morning that every single person in the company needs to think of themselves as an extension of the sales department, and needs to be listening all the time for upsell opportunities. To this end, he thinks clients ought to have more or less full access to developers directly, in part so that devs have the opportunity to hear sales opportunities. I'm somewhere in the middle, myself. I think it's nice to shield devs from clients to some extent, but in practice that will never be total. And yes, every single job in the company includes sales, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone has the same opportunity for it. EDIT: We're not an agile shop. Some of us (cough) would like to head that direction, but for now assume this is a traditional fixed-bid-contract shop. EDIT2: The autism joke wasn't funny. Got it. Entirely possible that autism jokes never are. That said: there are developers who have a capacity to represent themselves and their employers well and developers who don't (currently) have that capacity. My manager has a real concern about how the company would be represented if all developers were structurally empowered to be company representatives. It's also getting increasingly clear from reading your responses that the real push-and-pull here is between waterfall and agile."}
{"_id": "137881", "title": "Flexible development environments for creating a common code base targeting tablets (iPad/Android) and x86 PCs", "text": "Hopefully this won't be flagged for being too vague, but I'm really looking for suggestions from anyone with experience in this sort of situation. I work for a group that develops very specialized engineering calculations for Intel x86 platforms. We do not intend to continue using this existing x86 code. Instead, we would like to start a new code base capable of targeting both x86 PCs and iPad and/or Android tablets. Clearly the UI code will have to be maintained independently. But I suspect the backend engineering code, which we want to keep common, is possible to be shared among all platforms. I would like to know if there are any development environments or techniques for simplifying this multiple-platform development with a common backend code base, or will it be necessary to develop this backend code for each platform independently as well. Please let me know if you need any clarification! Thanks **EDIT** For example, we would need to write a large amount of code in C. Is it true both the iOS SDK's objective-C compiler can build native iOS code using the (relatively) same C code we would use to build native windows code using MSVC? Mind you, the code would not need to rely on _specialized_ OS-dependent facilities. Are there any tools for assisting in this sort of cross-platform development that may require multiple compilers? or perhaps any individual compilers that can target both platforms?"}
{"_id": "101832", "title": "Why is Objective-C not widely used beyond Cocoa environments?", "text": "Objective-C features nice object orientation, simplicity, elegance, and (as a superset of C), low level ability. It could seem like the simple, modern alternative to C++ that many people look for and try to find in Go. But it is just used at Cocoa and post-NextSTEP environments, and even in this case is seen more as a burden for historical reasons than as an optimal choice. Why it's not more widely used then? What are its problems?"}
{"_id": "101831", "title": "Why is the c family the standard CS study regiment for Mathematics/CS programs instead of the LISP family?", "text": "I have been familiarizing myself with LISP for self improvement purposes. One of the things I have noticed is that LISP is much more within the paradigm of Mathematics than say C. The syntax and design structure seems to echo directly the actual mathematical model of an algorithm. It doesn't make sense to me why even good Mathematics based CS programs study C instead of LISP. I think that LISP more directly employs higher mathematical concepts than C. I am not saying that you can't model mathematical structures in C. I am merely noticing that LISP seems to be hard-wired for mathematicians. I have read many of Joel Spolsky's rants on the JAVA schools and what not--and I agree with his assesment--, but my school didn't teach JAVA for that very reason. They were stringent in teaching fundamental concepts like pointers, algorithm design, recursion, and even assembly instructions. However, they did this all in C and c++. Does anyone know the reasons for this and/or its history?"}
{"_id": "101830", "title": "Question about Cyclomatic Complexity", "text": "I am new to static analysis of code. My application has a Cyclomatic complexity of 17,754 lines of code. The application itself is only 37,672 lines of code. Is it valid to say that the complexity is high based of the lines of code? What exactly is the Cyclomatic complexity saying to me?"}
{"_id": "33076", "title": "As a C# developer, would you learn Java to develop for Android or use MonoDroid instead?", "text": "I'd consider myself pretty well versed in C#. It's my language of choice at the moment, and it's where basically _all_ my professional experience lies. Still, I'm puzzled by the existence of the MonoDroid project. My understanding has always been that C# and Java are _very_ close. Like, if you know one, you can learn the other really quickly. So, as I've considered developing my first Android app, I just assumed I would familiarize myself with Java enough to get started and then just sort of learn as I go. Wouldn't this make more sense than using MonoDroid, which is likely to be less feature-rich than the Java Android SDK, and requires learning its own API (albeit a .NET API) anyway? I just feel like it would be better to learn a new language (and an extremely popular one at that) and get some experience in it\u2014when it's so close to what you already know anyway\u2014rather than stick with a technology you're experienced with, without gaining any more valuable skills. Maybe I'm grossly misrepresenting the average potential MonoDroid user. Maybe it's more for people who are experienced in Java and .NET and just prefer .NET. Or maybe (in fact it's likely) there are other factors I just haven't considered. I'm just wondering, why would you use MonoDroid instead of just developing for Android using Java?"}
{"_id": "135411", "title": "If ASP.NET MVC 4 supports RPC style communication what does that mean for WCF?", "text": "From http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28942 > ASP.NET MVC 4 also includes ASP.NET Web API, a framework for building and > consuming HTTP services that can reach a broad range of clients including > browsers, phones, and tablets. ASP.NET Web API is great for building > services that follow the REST architectural style, plus it supports RPC > patterns. If ASP.NET MVC 4 supports RPC style communication what does that mean for WCF? On what basis should we chose to use WCF or ASP.NET MVC Web API's RPC mechanism?"}
{"_id": "18852", "title": "How do I learn linking compiling, makefile quickly? Any book recommendations?", "text": "I'm very good at programming in C++ but when it gets to linking and the other important stuffs I feel very ignorant. I want to learn allegro without wasting time. So please suggest a book or a resource to learn the concepts mentioned above. Thanks a lot in advance."}
{"_id": "134505", "title": "Are XML Schemas bad for constantly evolving file formats?", "text": "I'm struggling with a client-server project where I have Java apps out on the Internet that store data to a backend server. The format of this data is well- defined, but the project is constantly evolving, so the definition keeps changing! To cope with the change I defined a simple REST interface on the server that offers only key-value storage. Clients can store or retrieve a chunk of data by referencing a unique key. This is nice because I don't have to modify the server interface (or the backend database) when the data format changes. To the server, it's just a bunch of opaque blobs. Of course, the issue then becomes, \"What goes inside the blob?\" For that I wrote an XML Schema that defines the content of a blob. At first it was great, since the Schema gives a bunch of nice things \"for free\": A formal yet human- readable spec of the file format, automatic validation of its contents, marshalling/unmarshalling to a stream, and auto-generated Java classes for programmatic access to the data. But then change happened! The Schema had to be altered, and naturally I ran into forward- and backward-compatibility issues. To deal with the constantly changing Schema, I came up with a solution that embeds a version number into the XML namespace, and I apply a series of XSL Stylesheets to \"upgrade\" any given blob to the latest version. For example, I'm now on version 1.3 of my Schema, so when I unmarshal a blob, I run it through a 1.0-to-1.1 XSLT, then a 1.1-to-1.2 XSLT, and finally a 1.2-to-1.3 XSLT. This works, but it's not sustainable because the chain keeps getting longer, which lowers performance and sucks up memory, plus I have to keep writing new Stylesheets, which takes time and isn't fun. Now here's the funny thing... In addition to the Java clients, the project also has iOS apps as clients, and iOS has none of the nice enterprise-y features associated with XML Schemas. There's no validation of the stream, no auto-generation of Objective-C classes, etc., just a low-level event-driven XML parser. But ironically I'm finding this _so_ much easier! For example, if the XML gets a new element, I just add a new `if` clause. If an element goes away, I remove its clause. Basically, I do a \"best effort\" at interpreting the XML stream, silently ignoring any unrecognized elements. I don't need to think about what version the file format is or whether it's valid. Plus this is much faster because there's no XSLT chaining, and it saves a lot of my time because I don't have to write any XSLT code. So far this approach has worked out great, and I've not missed having an XML Schema on the iOS side. I'm now wondering if a Schema, despite its nice feature set, is totally the wrong technology for a file format that often changes. I'm thinking about ditching my XML Schema altogether and using the same \"best effort\" low-level approach in Java that I'm doing in iOS. So is my negative assessment of XML Schemas correct? Or is there something I've missed? Perhaps I need to rethink the server interface? Or maybe I shouldn't have been using XML in the first place? I'm open to all suggestions. Thanks for reading!"}
{"_id": "41232", "title": "How to process payments for a software (activation code)?", "text": "I want to sell software online and I need an easy to implement payment processing system. What I'm actually going to be selling is an activation code (one per purchase) that would activate the trial version of a product. I was about to use this one but I just found out that people without a paid email account (not hotmail or yahoo) can't process their orders, which I'm sure would discourage many, if not most, of the possible buyers."}
{"_id": "134502", "title": "Website with test data files for specific algorithms/data structures?", "text": "Is there any website, like SPOJ and Project Euler, with the test data files available for specific algorithms/data structures? I know it's a fun challenge to solve those problems on your own, but I am looking for test data files where the algorithm/data structure to use are explicitly mentioned. \"Implement a linked list and do this and that with the data to confirm!\", \"Implement a hash tree and do this and that with the data to confirm!\" etc."}
{"_id": "84058", "title": "Should the test and the fix be written by different people?", "text": "There is a common practice in TDD to write a test before fix to avoid regression and simplify fixing. I just wonder what if the test and fix will be written by different people, total spent time will be almost the same but as now three people will think about possible failures (+tester) we increase probability that fix will cover all possible failure scenarios. Does this practice make sense or it will just waste additional time needed for one more person to familiarize with bug?"}
{"_id": "249879", "title": "Is it poor form to use C features such as the size_t type instead of their c++, such as std::size_t?", "text": "I have recently been told that using `size_t` as declared in the global namespace is incorrect in C++, ostensibly because `size_t` is a C-feature. I looked this up and came across this question on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5813700/difference-between-size-t-and- stdsize-t The top answer makes it pretty clear that there isn't any _real_ difference between `size_t` and `std::size_t`, but that leaves open the question of style and correctness. Since I'm programming in C++, is it \"wrong\" to use a C feature such as `size_t` in place of the slightly longer but no better C++-specific `std::size_t`?"}
{"_id": "41238", "title": "Recording unstructured suggestions and feedback in an issue tracker?", "text": "I'd like to advocate the use of issue-tracking software within an organisation that currently does not use it. But there's one aspect of their situation for which I'm unsure of what to suggest: their projects frequently receive informal verbal feedback or casual comments in meetings or in passing from a wide group of interested parties, and all this information needs to be recorded. Most of these messages are noise, but they're vital to record and share with developers for two reasons:   1. Good suggestions often come out of this process.   2. It can be necessary to have evidence of clients' comments when they forget previous instructions or change their mind. Is this the sort of information that should be stored in an issue-tracking system, or kept apart in a separate solution? Can issue-tracking system have good support for this sort of unstructured information?"}
{"_id": "84054", "title": "Confused about the different terminology with .NET", "text": "What is the difference between .net and asp.net? Which role does PHP more closely fill? If someone was developing a website using asp.net and C#, how would you communicate that idea to a colleague, i.e. what's the language you would use?"}
{"_id": "249875", "title": "Can I include a modified GPL/Apache licensed font in my LGPL project?", "text": "I want to include a GPL & Apache duel-licensed font in my LGPL project, but didn't really find a clue if that's possible. There are two problems here:   1. I didn't find any clue about Apache license's \"LGPL Compatibilty\". I know both the licenses involved here are compatible with GPL, but I still prefer to release the work under LGPL.   2. It's kind of tricky since it's a font. It was GPL & Apache duel-licensed, but the LGPL terms are asking about \"Library\", its \"Public API\", \"Linking\" or something. I am not really sure what the operation belongs to if I just edit a .ttf file manually, not even sure about if that's counted as \"source\". Any help would be really appreciated!"}
{"_id": "249872", "title": "Should a domain object wrap/contain a DTO interface?", "text": "Using .NET - I have an interface IPerson. This interface is implemented by classes in multiple, separate repositories, e.g. EF6 (EfPerson), custom SQL (SqlPerson), or even custom assembly connecting to a web service (WebPerson). Assuming rich domain model, my idea is that my lovely rich domain object 'Person' could have a private member variable _PersonDto of type IPerson, supplied via constructor. The members of Person would be the only way to access data from the _PersonDto. Q. Is there anything actually inherently wrong with that approach? (Assume I'm not lazy loading, and that I will possibly have a service layer for cross- cutting stuff). Please note I'm using DTO here to simply mean the anaemic objects I get back from my repositories."}
{"_id": "249873", "title": "How to deal with multiple output modes of multiple types?", "text": "_Note: The business domain being a bit complicated to explain, I replaced the names of actual classes by more illustrative examples._ I'm writing an application in which the business layer returns a set of `Pet`s: either a `Cat` or a `Dog`:               class Pet(metaclass=ABCMeta): # Pet is abstract.         ...         getName(self):         ...          class Dog(Pet):         ...          class Cat(Pet):         ...      I want to display those pets using a given format which is determined by the user. For example, the user may ask to show only the name of each pet, or obtain a JSON representation, or have a rich representation which is biased towards cats, i.e. it _displays much more information about cats than about dogs_. In the presentation layer, I have an abstract class `Output` with an abstract method which outputs the pets, and then I have concrete implementations of every type of output: a `class NameOutput(Output)`, a `class JsonOutput(Output)`, or a `class RichOutput(Output)`. The first two ones are easy: they just use the abstract `Pet` class, and don't care if it's a dog or a cat. The problem is the last class, since the logic is different for a dog than for a cat.               class Output(metaclass=ABCMeta): # Output is abstract.         generateOutput(self):             for pet in self.pets:                 yield self.processPet(pet)              @abstractmethod         processPet(self, pet):             pass          class NameOutput(Output):         ...          class JsonOutput(Output):         ...          class RichOutput(Output):         ...         processCat():             ...         processDog():             ...      Determining the type of pet during the execution and calling different methods for each pet feels ugly. Also, when a maintainer would need to add `class Hamster(Pet)`, he will learn the hard way that he also should create an additional method in `RichOutput(Output)`. On the other hand, moving the output logic to the pets themselves doesn't look right either: what if I need to create an additional display format? What are my options? How is this problem usually solved?"}
{"_id": "249870", "title": "Should I group all of my .js files into one large bundle?", "text": "One of the difficulties I'm running into with my current project is that the previous developer spaghetti'd the javascript code in lots of different files. We have modal dialogs that are reused in different places and I find that the same .js file is often loaded twice. My thinking is that I'd like to just load all of the .js files in _Layout.cshtml, and that way I know it's loaded once and only once. Also, the client should only have to download this file once as well. It should be cached and therefore shouldn't really be a performance hit, except for the first page load. I should probably note that I am using ASP.Net bundling as well and loading most of the jQuery/bootstrap/etc from CDN's. Is there anything else that I'm not thinking of that would cause problems here? Should I bundle everything into a single file?"}
{"_id": "83589", "title": "How did they count the number of lines of code executed at runtime?", "text": "There was a PC game released in 2001 called Black & White by Lionhead studios in which there was a lengthy statistics page which updated in real-time. There were stats such as how many people killed, how much money you've earned, etc... but the really puzzling one was Total lines of code executed, which was into the billions and counting. How would they have known this, how would they have calculated this at runtime? Did they make it up?"}
{"_id": "83588", "title": "Tracking hours on a project", "text": "Other than the following, are there any helpful (to programmers) reasons to track hours/time on a project down to the \"accurate number of hours per week\" level? Reasons:   * Beneficial to see how estimates vs. actuals came out (to improve estimation)   * Management said so (for contractual or business reasons) This is a bit tongue in cheek, but my personal preference has always been to track at an abstracted level. For example: a person is either \"full time\" (defined as either 40hrs/week or a less intense 32hrs/week) or part time, or they spend a few hours here and there on the project. It seems (as a manager) that chasing any kind of accurate number for actual hours is much like measuring the length of a coastline. The more accurate you try to get, the more confounding it is. That said, I'd appreciate any insights on benefits to programmers. thanks!"}
{"_id": "40183", "title": "What is the advantage of learning about and understanding compiler construction?", "text": "I'm a undergraduate in my 3rd year of a Software Engineering degree. From this year on, my university has introduced a new course called 'Compiler Constructions', which teaches you the basics of the theory of building a compiler. What would be the real world advantage for a Software Engineer of learning about compiler construction?"}
{"_id": "113403", "title": "What is the equivalent of functions and methods in SQL?", "text": "In language like C or Java, there are things like functions/methods to modularize and abstract stuff. What is there in SQL, specifically for Oracle? I've seen people talking about using views to reduce the complexity in various blogs but there is only so much that can be done with a view. (For example, a bind variable cannot be passed as a runtime parameter to a view). In tools like Oracle Reports the query sometimes gets very awkward running several hundreds of lines. I was wondering what sort of techniques people use to manage the complexity of their SQL? What are the equivalents of functions and methods in SQL to keep SQL from becoming extremely complex?"}
{"_id": "113409", "title": "How to specify WIP limits in Kanban?", "text": "Consider a typical Kanban board: Input, Analysis, Dev Ready, Development, Build Ready, Test, Release Ready How to specify WIP limits for each column? any formula?"}
{"_id": "83587", "title": "Is there a common denominator of all Smalltalk implementations?", "text": "In most languages, there is standard libraries. And this is foundation, common denominator of them. Applications can be written with guarantee of the denominator. What's the core of Smalltalk?"}
{"_id": "159938", "title": "Are there any FOSS operating systems available that conform to NASA's JPL coding standards?", "text": "I, like many others, have been completely enamored with the recent successful landing of Mar's Curiosity rover. After reading a couple of articles, and following a few links, I've found a couple C based coding standards that NASA JPL uses to formalize their code and protect it from error. (See here and here.) This has me curious. Are there any open-source operating systems available that adhere to these coding standards that are available for common architecture, such as x86, x64 or possibly ARM?"}
{"_id": "202499", "title": "Provide multiple SendCompleted callbacks to SmtpClient", "text": "I have an `Email` class that has a `Send` method that optionally takes an `SmtpClient` and sends an email asynchronously using `SendAsync`. If no `SmtpClient` is supplied to this method, it instantiates a default `SmtpClient` and uses that to send the email. Inside the `Send` function, I provide a `SendCompleted` callback which disposes of the `MailMessage` and the default `SmtpClient` if one was not supplied to the method. **So when I am supplying the`SmtpClient`, how do I go about disposing it?** I can't dispose of it inside `Send` because it may be used for sending other emails, plus I figure it's the responsibility of the thing that instantiated the passed in `SmtpClient` to dispose of it again. Is it possible to add multiple `SendCompleted` callbacks to the `SmtpClient` that run after each other?"}
{"_id": "202490", "title": "Except garbage collector, what else makes Java a non real time programming language", "text": "Except the garbage collector, what are some other features in Java that make it unsuitable for real time programming? On the net, whenever Java vs C++ is discussed with regards to real time programming, it is always the garbage collector that is mentioned. Is there anything else?"}
{"_id": "202496", "title": "PayPal proof of payment - is there a need to store it at our server?", "text": "I am developing an iPhone app, which I am integrating with PayPal. I did it successfully using PayPal library. I am testing it on sandbox mode. When I transfer money from one account to the other account, it displays a message \"send to server for verification\". Is there a real need to store this PayPal transaction id and other details on our server?"}
{"_id": "84584", "title": "Thoughts on type aliases/synonyms?", "text": "I'm going to try my best to frame this question in a way that doesn't result in a language war or list, because I think there could be a good, technical answer to this question. Different languages support type aliases to varying degrees. C# allows type aliases to be declared at the beginning of each code file, and they're valid only throughout that file. Languages like ML/Haskell use type aliases probably as much as they use type definitions. C/C++ are sort of a Wild West, with `typedef` and `#define` often being used seemingly interchangeably to alias types. The upsides of type aliasing don't invoke too much dispute:   * It makes it convenient to define composite types that are described naturally by the language, e.g. `type Coordinate = float * float` or `type String = [Char]`.   * Long names can be shortened: `using DSBA = System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepBoundaryAttribute`.   * In languages like ML or Haskell, where function parameters often don't have names, type aliases provide a semblance of self-documentation. The downside is a bit more iffy: aliases can proliferate, making it difficult to read and understand code or to learn a platform. The Win32 API is a good example, with its `DWORD = int` and its `HINSTANCE = HANDLE = void*` and its `LPHANDLE = HANDLE FAR*` and such. In all of these cases it hardly makes any sense to distinguish between a HANDLE and a void pointer or a DWORD and an integer etc.. Setting aside the philosophical debate of whether a king should give complete freedom to their subjects and let them be responsible for themselves or whether they should have all of their questionable actions intervened, could there be a happy medium that would allow the benefits of type aliasing while mitigating the risk of its abuse? As an example, the issue of long names can be solved by good autocomplete features. Visual Studio 2010 for instance will alllow you to type DSBA in order to refer Intellisense to System.Diagnostics.DebuggerStepBoundaryAttribute. Could there be other features that would provide the other benefits of type aliasing more safely?"}
{"_id": "84586", "title": "How to stay focused on learning a language with so many other possibilites?", "text": "What do you do to stay focused when learning a new language with so many other interesting languages out there?"}
{"_id": "84587", "title": "Best source control system for busy web development team", "text": "Having had a number of instances of merge problems and other difficulties with a large Subversion repository and a team of 10+ developers I'm considering whether SVN is the right tool and what else to consider? Primary system being managed is a large PHP web application with release cycles averaging 2-3 weeks apart and 4+ concurrent projects in active development at any time. Is subversion the right system or should we adopt Git, Mercurial or something else?"}
{"_id": "219150", "title": "MVC sending information from view to controller", "text": "I am using the MVC pattern. Lets say I want to create a new object and add it to my database. Where is it better to create the new object: View:               Boo boo = new Boo(\"awesomness\");     Controller.AddDB(boo);      Controller:               public void AddDB(string name)     {        Boo boo = new Boo(name);        addtodb(boo);     }"}
{"_id": "197028", "title": "Controller JSP - no view", "text": "Most people say do not use JSPs. But what if I have a JSP that does not show anything, it only acts as a controller? Why would I do that? Because we do not need to redeploy complete webapp to make a small but significant change in a servlet -> instead can just put my new JSP in the JBoss _tmp_ folder till we do a full deploy. This controller JSP will of course include / redirect to other view JSPs for final rendering. Question what are the downsides of doing this? If we already have it in our application (it's been working for the last 8 years before I joined); should we keep it as it works or are there any compelling reasons to change it to a regular servlet? Note: the JSPs in question are not the only controller, rather they do some of the processing for certain use cases"}
{"_id": "182113", "title": "How and why to decide between naming methods with \"get\" and \"find\" prefixes", "text": "I always have trouble figuring out if I should name a certain method starting with `getSomething` versus `findSomething`. The problem resides in creating _helpers_ for poorly designed APIs. This usually occurs when getting data from an object, which requires the object as a parameter. Here is a simple example:               public String getRevision( Item item ) {         service.load( item, \"revision\" );         // there is usually more work to do before getting the data..         try {             return item.get_revision();         }         catch( NotLoadedException exception ) {             log.error( \"Property named 'property_name' was not loaded\", exception );         }         return null;     }      How and why to decide between naming this method as `getRevision()` or `findRevision()`?"}
{"_id": "182112", "title": "Referential integrity in a database where tuples are not physically deleted", "text": "Many modern Relational Database Management Systems automatically support referential integrity, i.e. when you try to delete a tuple which has a reference (in the form of foreign key, for example), the DBMS doesn't complete the operation and brings an error. Consider a database where every table has an attribute, which indicates if a tuple is deleted or not. So no data is actually deleted from the database, but is marked as deleted instead. If a tuple is marked as deleted, all its references need to be marked as deleted too or an error should occur. How can this be supported? Is performing additional checks (programmatically or with triggers) before deleting a tuple the only way to have referential integrity? Are there any accepted practices or algorithms? Edit: This flag is mostly used for statistics, and partially for data recovery after a long period of time. It is filter with a special meaning, and right now when queries are made, referential integrity is checked right in the query, which is extremely error prone and not reliable at all."}
{"_id": "204260", "title": "Why is binary search,which needs sorted data, considered better than linear search?", "text": "I have always heard that linear search is a naive approach and binary search is better than it in performance due to better asymptotic complexity. But I never understood why is it better than linear search when sorting is required before binary search? Linear search is `O(n)` and binary search is `O(log n)`. That seems to be the basis of saying that binary search is better. But binary search requires sorting which is `O(n log n)` for the best algorithms. So binary search shouldn't be actually faster **as** it requires sorting. I am reading CLRS in which the author implies that in insertion sort instead of using the naive linear search approach it is better to use binary search for finding the place where item has to be inserted. In this case this seems to be justified as at each loop iteration there is a sorted list over which the binary search can be applied. But in the general case where there is no guarantee about the data set in which we need to search isn't using binary search actually worse than linear search due to sorting requirements? Are there any practical considerations that I am overlooking which make binary search better than linear search? Or is binary search considered better than linear search without considering the computation time required for sorting?"}
{"_id": "41588", "title": "Will Python 3.0's backwards-incompatibility affect adoption?", "text": "I visited Slashdot this morning to find out that Python 3.0 has been released. I know C# and Perl, but have wanted to learn Python for some time, especially after I saw its ease of use to create useful tools, not to mention its use in game scripting. My question is, how does the intentionally backwards-incompatible release of Python 3.0 affect adoption, and should I learn Python 2? Or should I take the dive and learn Python 3.0 first, and wait for the libraries to be ported?"}
{"_id": "178921", "title": "How many bits' address is required for a computer with n bytes of memory?", "text": "How many bits of address is required (for the program counter for example) in a byte-addressed computer with 512 Mbyte RAM? What does the formula look like? How is this connected with the fact that 32 bits can address no more than 4 GB RAM?"}
{"_id": "238095", "title": "Dealing with similar objects with different method signatures", "text": "I am fairly new to OO design and have problems with the design of some software and looking for a pattern or a combination of patterns that could help me solving my problem. I have a type that has a collection of different geometric shapes (say lines, rectangles, and cubes). I actually even have composites of these shapes. Each shape has one or more values. A value is a coordinate (between one-dimensional for lines and three-dimensional for cubes). All types of shapes have two methods that are essential. A method for adding values and a method for getting all values of a shape. E.g. `Cube.AddValue(new Value3D{X=4,Y=7,Z=11})` or `Line.AddValue(new Value1D{X=42})` respectively `Cube.GetValues()` would return a collection of `Value3D` and `Line.GetValues()` would return a collection of `Value1D`. Since these methods have fundamentally different signatures, I can't just derive from a single interface to store all of these different objects in one collection. Splitting the collection into multiple separate collections, one for each type would be possible, but not desirable since they belong together (domain wise). I've considered using three-dimensional values for all shapes and just ignoring Y/Z for lines/rectangles, but that isn't really nice and would actually violate the O and L in SOLID (a 4th dimension is possibly needed in the future). Another possibility would probably be to use a generic Interface like `IShape<T>` where `T` is Value*D. This interface would look like:               public interface IShape<T> {         public IEnumerable<T> GetValues();         public void AddValue(T value);     }      But this would require another, non-generic `interface INonGenericShape {}` because I can't use a generic interface without specifying the type. I would end up with something like this:               public class SomeShape{         private IList<INonGenericShape> _shapes = new List<INonGenericShape>();     }      But then I could as well use `System.Object`, since IShape does not provide any valuable information. So here I am, not knowing how to solve this (storing the objects in a single collection for consumers of that class). Can anyone provide some idea or insight?"}
{"_id": "558", "title": "How can you learn to design nice looking websites?", "text": "I am a moderately capable web developer. I can put stuff where I want it to go and put some JQuery stuff in there if I need to. However, if I am making my own website (which I am starting to do) I have no idea how to design it. If someone was to sit next to me a point to the screen and say \"put this picture there, text there\" I can do that quite easily. But designing my own site with my choice of colours and text will look like a toddler has invented it. Does anyone know any websites/books I can look at or has anyone got any tips on the basics of non-toddler web design?"}
{"_id": "178927", "title": "Is there a difference between a component and a module", "text": "I have a little problem with the terms module and component. In my mind, a module are bundled classes, which are only accesable via a well defined interface. They hide all implementation details and are reusable. Modules define modules on which they depend. What is the difference to components? I looked it up in some books, but the description of components is very similar."}
{"_id": "202144", "title": "C project avoiding naming conflicts", "text": "I'm struggling to find pragmatic real-world advice on function naming conventions for a medium sized C library project. My library project is separated into a few modules and submodules with their own headers, and loosely follows an OO style (all functions take a certain struct as first argument, no globals etc). It's laid our something like:               MyLib       - Foo         - foo.h         - foo_internal.h         - some_foo_action.c         - another_foo_action.c         - Baz           - baz.h           - some_baz_action.c       - Bar         - bar.h         - bar_internal.h         - some_bar_action.c      Generally the functions are far too big to (for example) stick `some_foo_action` and `another_foo_action` in one `foo.c` implementation file, make most functions static, and call it a day. I can deal with stripping my internal (\"module private\") symbols when building the library to avoid conflicts for my users with their client programs, but the question is how to name symbols in my library? So far I've been doing:               struct MyLibFoo;     void MyLibFooSomeAction(MyLibFoo *foo, ...);          struct MyLibBar;     void MyLibBarAnAction(MyLibBar *bar, ...);          // Submodule     struct MyLibFooBaz;     void MyLibFooBazAnotherAction(MyLibFooBaz *baz, ...);      But I'm ending up with crazy long symbol names (much longer than the examples). If I don't prefix the names with a \"fake namespace\", modules' internal symbol names all clash. Note: I don't care about camelcase/Pascal case etc, just the names themselves."}
{"_id": "86698", "title": "White box testing with Google Test", "text": "I've been trying out using GoogleTest for my C++ hobby project, and I need to test the internals of a component (hence white box testing). At my previous work we just made the test classes friends of the class being tested. But with Google Test that doesn't work as each test is given its own unique class, derived from the fixture class if specified, and friend-ness doesn't transfer to derived classes. Initially I created a test proxy class that is friends with the tested class. It contains a pointer to an instance of the tested class and provides methods for the required, but hidden, members. This worked for a simple class, but now I'm up to testing a tree class with an internal private node class, of which I need to access and mess with. I'm just wondering if anyone using the GoogleTest library has done any white box testing and if they have any hints or helpful constructs that would make this easier. * * * Ok, I've found the FRIEND_TEST macro defined in the documentation, as well as some hints on how to test private code in the advanced guide. But apart from having a huge amount of friend declerations (i.e. one FRIEND_TEST for each test), is there an easier idion to use, or should I abandon using GoogleTest and move to a different test framework?"}
{"_id": "255386", "title": "Are there two type of associations between objects or are there just different representations?", "text": "I've been spending some time on 're-tuning' some of my OOP understanding, and I've come up against a concept that is confusing me. Lets say I have two objects. A `user` object and an `account` object. Back to basics here, but each object has **state, behaviour and identity** (often referred to as an entity object). The `user` object manages behaviour purely associated with a user, for example we could have a `login(credentials)` method that returns if successfully logged in or throws exception if not. The `account` object manages behaviour purely associated with a users account. For example we could have a method checkActive() that checks if the account is active. The account object checks if the account has an up-to-date subscription, checks if there are any admin flags added which would make it inactive. It returns if checks pass, or throws exception if not. Now here lies my problem. There is clearly a relationship between `user` and `account`, but I feel that there are actually two TYPES of association to consider. One that is data driven (exists only in the data/state of the objects and the database) and one that is behaviour driven (represents an object call to methods of the associated object). ## Data Driven Association In the example I have presented, there is clearly a data association between `user` and `account`. In a database schema we could have the following table:               -----------------       USER_ACCOUNTS     -----------------      id      user_id      ----------------      When we instantiate the `account` and load the database data into it, there will be a class variable containing `user_id`. In essence, the `account` object holds an integer representation of `user` through `user_id` ## Behaviour Driven Association Behaviour driven associations are really the dependencies of an object. If object A calls methods on object B there is an association going from A to B. A holds an object representation of B. In my example case, neither the `user` object nor the `account` object depend on each other to perform their tasks i.e. neither object calls methods on the other object. There is therefore no behaviour driven association between the two and neither object holds an object reference to the other. ## Question Is the case I presented purely a case of entity representation? The association between `user` and `account` is always present, but its being represented in different ways? ie. the `user` entity has an identity that can be represented in different forms. It can be represented as an object (the instantiated `user` object) or as a unique integer from the users table in the databases. Is this a formalised way of recognising different implementations of associations or have I completely lost my mind? One thing that bugs me is how would I describe the differences in UML or similar? Or is it just an implementation detail?"}
{"_id": "14715", "title": "Find bugs in Java programs, specially using the eclipse plug-in", "text": "Is it any good ? http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/ I had a go on the webstart/demo version and it did indeed look useful. Has anyone got any experience with it, is it a valuable tool ?"}
{"_id": "160271", "title": "URL parameters in RESTful web services", "text": "I'm wondering about the appropriateness of URL parameters in RESTful resource creation. First, here's some context. I'm working on an API that will remotely update the software on embedded devices connected to an online device cloud. The basic workflow is:   1. Discover available updates   2. Apply desired updates   3. Monitor update progress The update discovery resource will allow users to POST a new update discovery.               POST /updateDiscovery?apikey=a1b2c3      The above URL will trigger update discovery for all devices. It is also useful to restrict which devices are targeted for updates. There are two identifiers used to restrict target devices:   1. a device id   2. a group id (which may reference many devices) This restriction can be communicated using either URL parameters or the request body. Using URL parameters:               POST /updateDiscovery?deviceIds=1,2,3&groupIds=2,3      Using the request body:               POST /updateDiscovery     Content-Type: application/json     {         targets: {              deviceIds: [1, 2, 3],              groupIds: [3, 4]          }     }      Either way, a new resource will be created with the following representation:               {         id: 1,        targets: {             deviceIds: [1, 2, 3],             groupIds: [3, 4]        },        status: 'pending',        ...     }      Which of the above methods best follows the RESTful design pattern and why?"}
{"_id": "190312", "title": "Disk I/Os incurred by readLine () in Java", "text": "Does `readLine()` Java function used with `BufferedReader` cause one disk I/O per call? If yes, is there any way to read specific number of lines, say n, from a text file causing only one disk I/O? Here's the code:               String file;     BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader (new FileReader (file));     int n = 10;     for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)     {         String line = br.readLine ();         /* Do something */     }"}
{"_id": "207519", "title": "Source code \"prints\" at release", "text": "Is there a best practice for how to document the source code you're releasing? Currently, we have a table of the versions of the software, what SVN tag it's labeled as, what SVN rev that tag was created at and the SVN URL. Then, our CM department wants us to include a file listing of all the source files we're including for the .zip that we provide them which is just a zip of the tag we're releasing. I'm more fishing for ideas to update our print template, hopefully with good arguments to remove the file listing."}
{"_id": "207518", "title": "Why is a tooltip's attribute labelled 'title='?", "text": "> HTML 4 supports a \"title\" attribute that can be inserted inside any HTML > tag. Inserting this attribute effectively gives the element a tooltip that > pops up when the mouse moves over it. It just seems like a bad word choice.. or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "208727", "title": "How fast should a Python factoring script be?", "text": "Just how efficient is \"good enough\" for all intents and purposes? I wrote a script to simply list off all numbers that divide into an input, x, as pairs (i, n//i) and was just curious how efficient I should be going for? what is the acceptable rate at which the script starts to lose its efficiency? This is my code (although advice is appreciated, I just want to give an idea as to how it works).               import time     print('''This program determines all basic factors of a given number, x, as ordered            pairs, (a, b) where ab=x.     Type \"quit\" to exit.''')          timer = input('Would you like a timer? (y/n) ')     while  1:         try:             x =(input('x = '))                                                            T0 = time.time()             b = []             n = int(x)**0.5             ran = list(range(1, int(n)+1))             if int(x) % 2 == 1:                                                           ran = ran[::2]             for i in ran:                 if int(x) % i == 0:                     m = (i, int(x)//i)                     b.append(m)             else:                 pass         except ValueError as error_1:             if x == 'quit':                 break             else:                 print(error_1)         except EOFError as error_2:             print(error_2)         except OverflowError as error_3:             print(error_3)         except MemoryError as error_4:             print(error_4)         T1 = time.time()         total = T1-T0         print(b)         print(str(len(b)) + ' pairs.')         if timer == 'y':         print(\"%.5f\" % total + ' seconds.')      some of the results are:               x = 9     [(1, 9), (3, 3)]     2 pairs.     0.00000 seconds.          x = 8234324543     [(1, 8234324543)]     1 pairs.     0.07404 seconds.          x = 438756349875     [(1, 438756349875), (3, 146252116625), (5, 87751269975), (15, 29250423325), (25,         17550253995), (75, 5850084665), (125, 3510050799), (375, 1170016933), (557, 787713375),   (1671, 262571125), (2785, 157542675), (8355, 52514225), (13925, 31508535), (41775,   10502845), (69625, 6301707), (208875, 2100569)]     16 pairs.     0.88859 seconds.      So this program can be pretty quick, but then the speed drops rather rapidly once you get up to higher numbers. Anyways, ya, I was just wondering what is considered acceptable by todays standards?"}
{"_id": "208720", "title": "Estimating tasks in Scrum", "text": "Our team using Scrum three iterations. We successfully estimate PBI in storypoints using poker-planning. But next we cannot do anything because we don't know   1. Who create tasks? PBI is created by everyone and approved by product owner, but what about task   2. Who estimates task?   3. What technique should be using for task estimating? Poker planning are good for PBI estimating"}
{"_id": "232640", "title": "Alternatives to JDT Annotation - License issues", "text": "I have used the JDT Annotation library in my Java project as I am quite fond of what it offers. To be more exact, I used the `@Nullable` and `@NonNullByDefault` annotations as I can use the synergy with Eclipse to automatically analyse possible `null` values and what may lead to `NullPointerException` bugs. Unfortunately, JDT Annotation is licensed under EPL1 which, as far as I know, is incompatible with GPL2 due to the former being a weak copyleft license and choice of some clauses. As the project should be published under a GPL2 license, I am exploring different options but have yet to fine any that would offer the same, or nearly the same, functionality. I am not keen on adding null checks as they only clutter the code with what an annotation could have solved as well. But unfortunately it seems to be the only viable option? I am looking for some expertise regarding this matter. What I propose is to use Google's `Preconditions` to formulate preconditions such as:               Preconditions.checkArgument(providedArgument != null, \"The provided argument must not be null!\");      respectively:               Preconditions.checkState(invariantField != null, \"The field may not be null!\");      These will solve the problem of course and be more explicit, in my opinion, when it comes to documenting my contracts by code. I usually also report these with custom tags in my Javadoc, for example, `@pre providedArgument != null` or `@inv invariantField != null`. I would be thankful for all"}
{"_id": "214394", "title": "Problem with OAuth2 authentication process and session persistance", "text": "We're using node-oauth2-provider as an authentication library for our service. The current process for a user to log in is:               POST /oauth2/access_token      Which creates and saves the access_token to the database. On subsequent requests we send the `access_token` which is pulled from the database to verify that it exists. From there the user is added to session manually by us in a similar fashion to their examples. After this happens, if a request comes in without the access token, the session still seems to be set. As if it's persisting across requests. Maybe I misunderstand how this is supposed to work... but shouldn't the access token be the indication that a user's requests are still valid? If so, do I need to clear the session manually? If not and it stores it in memory... possibly indicated by:               express.session({store: new MemoryStore({reapInterval: 5 * 60 * 1000}), secret: 'abracadabra'})      Then how does the server know that subsequent requests are valid?"}
{"_id": "232649", "title": "Using words instead of numbers for versioning?", "text": "Would it be considered acceptable to use word compounds instead of numbers for version iterations? For example in a pattern: \"[Adjective] [Noun]\" The first version could be something like: \"Auspicious Armadillo\" Thus on each sequential release the noun would change to the next letter of the alphabet and the version could be along the lines of: \"Auspicious Bear\" Once the alphabet for the nouns runs out the Adjective gets changed and the Nouns can start over e.g: \"Bewildered Armadillo\" etc. This would give me around 676 possible different versions to iterate through. Assuming the project is small & short enough to fall within these 676 releases before a complete remake/overhaul, would such a versioning pattern be considered acceptable to use? Or would it just create needless confusion and chaos? I understand this might be somewhat opinion related, but I was hoping for some kind of a general consensus on whether this is an acceptable or terrible idea."}
{"_id": "171529", "title": "Can a recursive function have iterations/loops?", "text": "I've been studying about recursive functions, and apparently, they're functions that call themselves, and don't use iterations/loops (otherwise it wouldn't be a recursive function). However, while surfing the web for examples (the 8-queens-recursive problem), I found this function:               private boolean placeQueen(int rows, int queens, int n) {         boolean result = false;         if (row < n) {             while ((queens[row] < n - 1) && !result) {                 queens[row]++;                 if (verify(row,queens,n)) {                     ok = placeQueen(row + 1,queens,n);                 }             }             if (!result) {                 queens[row] = -1;             }         }else{             result = true;         }         return result;     }      There is a `while` loop involved. ... so I'm a bit lost now. Can I use loops or not?"}
{"_id": "199230", "title": "In an online questionnaire, what is a best way to design a database for keeping track of users all attempts?", "text": "We have a web app where users can take online exams. Exam admin will create a questionnaire. A questionnaire can have many Questions. Each question is a multiple choice question (MCQ). Let's say an admin creates a questionnaire with 10 questions. Users attempt those questions. Now, unlike real exams users can attempt single questionnaire multiple times. And we have to keep track of his all attempts. e.g.                +-------+-----------------+------------+-------+------------+----------+      |User_id|Questionnaire_id |question_id |answer |attempt_date|attempt_no|      +-------+-----------------+------------+-------+------------+----------+      |1      |1                |1           |a      |1 June 2013 |1         |      |1      |1                |2           |b      |1 June 2013 |1         |      |1      |1                |1           |c      |2 June 2013 |2         |      |1      |1                |2           |d      |2 June 2013 |2         |      +-------+-----------------+------------+-------+------------+----------+      Now it can also happen that after user has attempted same questionnaire twice, admin can delete a question from same questionnaire, but users' attempt history should still have reference to that so that user can see his that question in his attempt history in spite of admin deleting that question. If user now attempts this changed questionnaire he should see only 1 question.                +-------+-----------------+------------+-------+------------+----------+      |User_id|Questionnaire_id |question_id |answer |attempt_date|attempt_no|      +-------+-----------------+------------+-------+------------+----------+      |1      |1                |1           |a      |3 June 2013 |3         |      +-------+-----------------+------------+-------+------------+----------+      Also, after this user modified some part of question, users attempt history should show question before modification while any new attempt should show the modified question. How do we manage this at database level? My first gut feeling was that, For deletes, do not do physical delete, just make a question inactive so that history can still keep track of users attempt. For modifications, create versions for questions and each new attempt refres to latest version of each question and history keeping reference to version of question at attempt time."}
{"_id": "13940", "title": "mercurial or tfs for codeplex?", "text": "I've been working on a .NET personal project for a little while now and it's almost ready to go open source. I've decided (arbitrarily) to host it on codeplex. Codeplex offers TFS or mercurial. I'm wondering which I should pick. Consider:   * I've only ever used subversion.   * I'm using VS 2010 express as my IDE.   * Tools must be free (so the mercurial client if I go that route).   * From what I've been hearing, mercurial sounds interesting but I know _very_ little about it so if there's a learning curve, then I don't want to add too many more learning objectives to the project.   * I don't expect any contributors. So I guess the actual question is, is mercurial easy enough to use with codeplex and does it add anything that the TFS option doesn't?"}
{"_id": "171526", "title": "design a model for a system of dependent variables", "text": "I'm dealing with a modeling system (financial) that has dozens of variables. Some of the variables are independent, and function as inputs to the system; most of them are calculated from other variables (independent and calculated) in the system. What I'm looking for is a clean, elegant way to:   1. define the function of each dependent variable in the system   2. trigger a re-calculation, whenever a variable changes, of the variables that depend on it A naive way to do this would be to write a single class that implements `INotifyPropertyChanged`, and uses a massive case statement that lists out all the variable names x1, x2, ... xn on which others depend, and, whenever a variable `xi` changes, triggers a recalculation of each of that variable's dependencies. I feel that this naive approach is flawed, and that there must be a cleaner way. I started down the path of defining a `CalculationManager<TModel>` class, which would be used (in a simple example) something like as follows:               public class Model : INotifyPropertyChanged     {         private CalculationManager<Model> _calculationManager = new CalculationManager<Model>();               // each setter triggers a \"PropertyChanged\" event         public double? Height { get; set; }         public double? Weight { get; set; }         public double? BMI { get; set; }              public Model()         {             _calculationManager.DefineDependency<double?>(                 forProperty: model => model.BMI,                 usingCalculation: (height, weight) => weight / Math.Pow(height, 2),                 withInputs: model => model.Height, model.Weight);         }              // INotifyPropertyChanged implementation here     }      I won't reproduce `CalculationManager<TModel>` here, but the basic idea is that it sets up a dependency map, listens for `PropertyChanged` events, and updates dependent properties as needed. I still feel that I'm missing something major here, and that this isn't the right approach:   1. the (mis)use of `INotifyPropertyChanged` seems to me like a code smell   2. the `withInputs` parameter is defined as `params Expression<Func<TModel, T>>[] args`, which means that the argument list of `usingCalculation` is not checked at compile time   3. the argument list (weight, height) is redundantly defined in both `usingCalculation` and `withInputs` I am sure that this kind of system of dependent variables must be common in computational mathematics, physics, finance, and other fields. Does someone know of an established set of ideas that deal with what I'm grasping at here? Would this be a suitable application for a functional language like F#? * * * **Edit** More context: The model currently exists in an Excel spreadsheet, and is being migrated to a C# application. It is run on-demand, and the variables can be modified by the user from the application's UI. Its purpose is to retrieve variables that the business is interested in, given current inputs from the markets, and model parameters set by the business."}
{"_id": "13945", "title": "How to control work of programmers (outsourcers)", "text": "Some time ago I decided to outsource web development projects (php coding & design). I've opened small office abroad with manager and couple of programmers and designer. I just started but already have a problem controlling their work. Some programmers are fast, others work much slower. I pay them fixed salary, so it matters for me if they do their job on time. When they work from office, I at least have a person responsible for the project to tell if they really worked. But sometimes they work from home and in that case I have no way to know if they really spent that time working on some issue. Some of my ideas were: controlling amount of code done with svn, strict deadlines, everyday reporting.. But nothing seems perfect to me. It creates even more work from my side. Can anyone suggest a way of fair judgement on how much really time was spent on actual work? How to stimulate people to work? Maybe create some bonus system if work is done fast? Any idea/experience on this topic would be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "68542", "title": "Does (/could) an LGPL-based license exist without clause 4d?", "text": "I've started writing a framework in C (you may have heard of it: Raphters). Someone contacted me to ask whether I could re-license it because it would be useful in embedded products, but clause 4d (the clause that says, and I'm paraphrasing, you must allow modified versions of the library to be re-linked against your executable) would make that difficult. I like LGPL because it prevents people making modifications and keeping them secret, but I don't want to prevent people using Raphters in their embedded products. What do you suggest?"}
{"_id": "5531", "title": "What do you consider to be the prime cause of software defects (and how to minimize them)", "text": "I define **defect** as : > \"something within the application design or code which prevents it > functioning as per requirements.\" I'm looking for ideas about the causes of defects, eg the human factor, lack of testing, lack of prototyping, and possible ideas to mitigate these."}
{"_id": "18141", "title": "Is a degree needed for low-level/embedded programming jobs?", "text": "I know that it is possible to get into software development without a degree in computer science, but is it possible (or rather, common) to be able to get an embedded programming job without the computer science degree (or any engineering degree as well)?"}
{"_id": "89761", "title": "Fellow programmer used worst programming practices", "text": "I know it seems odd to say, but a fellow programmer at work deliberately used a couple of bad programming practices on purpose! I'll explain. First let me say that he's an intelligent guy and for the most part he writes intelligible code. He was asked to implement licensing on a web application project written in Java. Since it's Java, if one really wanted to, one could probably hack open the jars and read the names of the classes and methods written inside. His solution to this problem was to quite literally to awkwardly call variables and methods less-than-obvious names and plant them inside already congested classes rather than generating new classes. His justification was that if a hacker wanted to switch out certain classes in order to bypass licensing checks (and therefore get a free copy of the product), he'd have a far more difficult time of it if it weren't obvious which methods perform these particular tasks. Only after he had done it did I confront him about it, suggesting that we could perhaps buy some sort of obfuscator library to do it for us, while maintaining good programming practices. He claims to not have had the time or resources to search for that kind of solution. ..Which leaves me at a dilemma. Do I look for a obfuscator library in Java and fix his old code (which might be a little touchy about remodeling his code), or do I leave it as it, as much as that irks me to no end?"}
{"_id": "242966", "title": "Program coded in .Net", "text": "What does it generally mean when a programmer says his program/application was \"coded in .Net\"? When I think of .Net I think of C# and Visual Basic. I don't usually think of any other language on this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CLI_languages"}
{"_id": "18147", "title": "how do you seperate from designing question to programming questions?", "text": "As i try to program a solution to a request arise. I can't separate the difference between implementation problems and design problems. How do you specifically express the design problem?"}
{"_id": "103155", "title": "Avoiding wrapper objects in collections", "text": "I'm getting a little annoyed of having to wrap primitive types in wrapper objects to store them in collection data structures (sets, maps, lists, etc.) in languages like Java and Objective C. I'd really like to have, say, a Map data structure that works the same way whether I'm mapping NSNumbers to Strings or integers to doubles or integers to MyBigCustomObject*. My understanding is that the reason collection data structures in these languages require wrapping in an object is so it can just always assume that the number given is a pointer - I actually _can_ make a NSDictionary with [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject: MyCustomObject forKey: 1], but it will treat the 1 as a pointer instead of an integer, try to access memory address 1 and segfault. But I don't see any reason why you couldn't make a collection data structure that keeps track of the _type_ of keys and values that wouldn't have this problem. Even a relatively inflexible data structure like a Map of specifically-ints to specifically-pointers-to-objects would be a decently common use case (I certainly could use one, I'm doing a lot of work recently that involves indexing objects by an integer ID). Is there a reason why this isn't a common paradigm in languages that have an Object/primitive type distinction?"}
{"_id": "68547", "title": "Best resources for learning idiomatic PHP", "text": "My experience has primarily been in Java, but I'm working on a PHP project and conscious of my lack of knowledge of idiomatic PHP. What resources (online or print) will help me avoid making the mistakes that people with Java goggles normally make? First prize would be something that would give me short in- depth examinations of important PHP ideas, a la Joshua Bloch's Effective Java."}
{"_id": "83057", "title": "LINQ Style preference", "text": "I have come to use LINQ in my every day programming a lot. In fact, I rarely, if ever, use an explicit loop. I have, however, found that I don't use the SQL like syntax anymore. I just use the extension functions. So rather then saying:               from x in y select datatransform where filter       I use:               x.Where(c => filter).Select(c => datatransform)      Which style of LINQ do you prefer and what are others on your team are comfortable with?"}
{"_id": "73309", "title": "Software technical and project specification: How to?", "text": "We have a project here in my company of developing a new CRM. It's, basically, a big CRUD, with sub-CRUDS, with various details, such as, some users can do that, others don't. We will develop the system in PHP with Symfony. Developing is easy, but we're having some difficulties in the analysis part of the job. We have to present the project specification, as well the tecnical specification of the project. We have to draw and explain how to system will work. And we're not sure on how to do this. We always just... did the system. Not planning with graphics or text, or explaining what we were doing. We already asked everyone and got suggestions, as well requirements. Apparently, we have to take that and explain the system. Any tips, guys? :)"}
{"_id": "226249", "title": "Citing Borrowed Code", "text": "If you borrow code from some source, it is probably best to cite it (like \"adapted from [source]\"). However, if you take let's say you borrowed this function (example in C++):               void doWork()     {          cout << \"Doing work!\\n\" << endl;     }      and now you editted it to be like this:               void doWork()     {          string name = \"\";               cout << \"Starting work...\\n\" << endl;          cout << \"Hello user. What is your name?\" << endl;               cin >> name;          ...     }      Would you still have to say \"adapted from [source]\" or something like that? Or are you in the safe zone? **Note** : I am specifically wondering how this applies to copyrighted (and open source) code"}
{"_id": "132019", "title": "What is the value in hiding the details through abstractions? Isn't there value in transparency?", "text": "## Background I am not a big fan of abstraction. I will admit that one can benefit from adaptability, portability and re-usability of interfaces etc. There is real benefit there, and I don't wish to question that, so let's ignore it. There is the other major \"benefit\" of abstraction, which is to hide implementation logic and details from users of this abstraction. The argument is that you don't need to know the details, and that one should concentrate on their own logic at this point. Makes sense in theory. However, whenever I've been maintaining large enterprise applications, I always need to know more details. It becomes a huge hassle digging deeper and deeper into the abstraction at every turn just to find out exactly what something does; i.e. having to do \"open declaration\" about 12 times before finding the stored procedure used. This 'hide the details' mentality seems to just get in the way. I'm always wishing for more transparent interfaces and less abstraction. I can read high level source code and know what it does, but I'll never know how it does it, when how it does it, is what I really need to know. What's going on here? Has every system I've ever worked on just been badly designed (from this perspective at least)? # My philosophy When I develop software, I feel like I try to follow a philosophy I feel is closely related to the ArchLinux philosophy: > Arch Linux retains the inherent complexities of a GNU/Linux system, while > keeping them well organized and transparent. Arch Linux developers and users > believe that trying to hide the complexities of a system actually results in > an even more complex system, and is therefore to be avoided. And therefore, I never try to hide complexity of my software behind abstraction layers. I try to abuse abstraction, not become a slave to it. # Question at heart   1. Is there real value in hiding the details?   2. Aren't we sacrificing transparency?   3. Isn't this transparency valuable?"}
{"_id": "47323", "title": "Can I use an LGPL-licenced library in my commercial app?", "text": "I want to use an LGPL-licensed library in my app for Microsoft's app marketplace. Is that OK?"}
{"_id": "132014", "title": "Is it possible to integrate UDP file transfer into a .NET web application?", "text": "# Background I have recently been tasked with designing a rebuild of an existing .NET web application that _currently_ uses a third-party company to handle large file transfers (as big as 50Gb). Currently, the .NET app depends on a .JAR (Java Applet) provided by this third-party which is called up inside of an iFrame and exposes the appropriate file-system interaction for selecting entire directories for upload and so forth. I realize that so far all of this is possible using some combination of .NET networking classes (ftp) and Flash or Silverlight for client access. I have been told that the reason that the third-party plugin is so special is that it uses UDP protocol so that if an upload or download is interrupted, it can be resumed later right where it left off. I have also been told that the third-party tool suite allows the IT folks to throttle bandwith (I don't even know what that means) and do a couple of other cool things. # Question Assuming that we will use the latest version of C# and and the .NET framework (4.0), is it reasonably possible to replicate this UDP-based behavior? By reasonable, I mean could it be accomplished in less than, say, 240 dev hours. **Please note** that the rebuilt app will ideally use all Microsoft technologies (including Silverlight for client access) and will run on Azure."}
{"_id": "15044", "title": "Graphic demonstrating emphasis of front end in web apps", "text": "I remember stumbling across an amusing graphic a year or so ago which demonstrated the tiers of web development. The back-end was shown as a tiny box, but the front end was shown as a huge box crammed with lots of front-end technologies like AJAX, DHTML. This is all a vague recollection. Does anyone know where on the Intraweb this graphic might be? It was probably on a programming cartoon site, but I only view XKCD on a regular basis, and I couldn't find it on there. Although tagged as fun, my request does have a productive edge to it - it would be quite useful in driving home to my colleagues how UI top-heavy web application development has become."}
{"_id": "155132", "title": "Is it possible to develop an IOS application without a Mac?", "text": "I'm a postgraduated student and I had the idea to build an app for elementary school kids. My question after many days of searching is whether anyone here have ever tried and what was their experience of developing an IOS app on other platforms than Xcode such as Phonegap, Monotouch, flex or others?"}
{"_id": "87774", "title": "Are Datasets Patentable", "text": "I'm working on a project that uses a dataset produced from software informally licensed as \"non-commercial use only\". I'm developing an application that uses that dataset as an input to another algorithm. Our own software has a permissive free software license in which we don't restrict commercial usage. Are there legal implications of using that dataset in our own software in the sense that we are violating a copyright? **Edit** : Thanks folks, the ask a lawyer thing is the way to go, but its helpful for me to hear some opinions bounce around."}
{"_id": "155136", "title": "How should I write new code when the old codebase and the environment uses lots of globals in PHP", "text": "I'm working in the Wordpress environment which itself heavily relies on globals and the codebase I'm maintaining introduces some more. I want this to change and so I'm trying to think how should I handle this. For the globals our code has introduced I think I will set them as dependencies in the constructor or in getter / setter so that I don't rely on them being globals and then refactor the old codebase little by little so that we have no globals. With Wordpress globals I was thinking to wrap all WP globals inside a Wrapper class and hide them in there. Like this               class WpGlobals {         public static function getDb() {             global $wpdb;             return $wpdb;         }     }      Would this be of any help? The idea is that I centralize all globals in one class and do not scatter them through the code, so that if Wordpress kills one of them I need to modify code only in one place. What would you do?"}
{"_id": "192078", "title": "Is it possible for a browser to use peer-to-peer browsing?", "text": "I was recently asked this from my friend after explaining how \u00b5Torrent worked, he then went to ask me, \"Could this be used for browsing the web?\", (not a direct quote) but I found my self thinking about this for a while there after.   * Could someone be credited with making the first Peer-2-Peer browser?    * How could it send the correct data without it being modified?   * Would it be faster than normal browsers? (Referring to the way \u00b5Torrent works, I find when I use a torrent it's faster than a web download.)    * Can it save on server loads, prevent DDoS, more?"}
{"_id": "206645", "title": "How can I reverse engineer a hash code?", "text": "I am building an application in C# that works with a Progress database. The passwords that are stored in this database are stored using a hash algorithm that Progress has not made public. However, I would like to authenticate using these hashes. Is it feasible to reverse engineer such a hash algorithm and how would I go about doing this? To be clear: I am not looking for a way to get the unhashed passwords from the hashes. I'm looking for the algorithm to get a hash from a password."}
{"_id": "206647", "title": "Why must a constructor's call to the superconstructor be the first call?", "text": "It is an error if you do anything in a constructor before calling the superconstructor. I remember that I had problems because of that. Yet, I do not see how this saves us from errors. It could save you from using uninitialized fields. But, the Java compiler that checks for using uninitalized variables does that and this stupid rule does not improve anything here. The only serious consideration argument I remember was that we need it for OOP, because objects in real life are constructed this way: you create a cucumber by first creating a vegetable and then add cucumber attributes. IMO, it is opposite. You first create a cucumber and, by duck is a duck principle, it becomes a vegetable. Another argument was that it improves safety. Not writing the code improves the dependability much better, so I do not consider this as argument. Creating more complex code when you need to workaround a stupid restriction, is what makes the program more error-prone. This rule creates a serious pain (at least for me). So, I want to hear the serious argument and serious example where it could be useful."}
{"_id": "173011", "title": "How to solve cyclic dependencies in a visitor pattern", "text": "When programming at work we now and then face a problem with visitors and module/project dependencies. Say you have a class A in a module X. And there are subclasses B and C in module Y. That means that module Y is dependent on module X. If we want to implement a visitor pattern to the class hierarchy, thus introducing an interface with the handle Operations and an abstract accept method in A, we get a dependency from module Y to module X, which we cannot allow for architectural reasons. What we do is, use a direct comparison of the types (i.e. `instanceof`, since we program in Java), which is not satisfying. My question(s) would be: Do you encounter this kind of problem in your daily work (or do we make poor architectural choices) and if so, how is your approach to solve this? Here is a minimal example in Java to illustrate my point. Package a has ClassA and the Visitor-Interface over the ClassA Hierarchy:               package pkg.a;       public abstract ClassA extends ClassA {           public abstract void accept(ClassAVisitor visitor);          /* other methods ... */        }           package pkg.a;       import pkg.b.ClassB;     import pkg.b.ClassC;     public interface ClassAVisitor {           public abstract void handle(ClassB visitee);         public abstract void handle(ClassC visitee);       }       Package b has the concrete classes that extend from ClassA:               package pkg.b;       import pkg.a.ClassAVisitor;     public ClassB extends ClassA {           public void accept(ClassAVisitor visitor) {               visitor.handle(this);           }        }           package pkg.b;     import pkg.a.ClassAVisitor;       public ClassC {           public void accept(ClassAVisitor visitor) {               visitor.handle(this);           }        }      Package a and b have a cyclic dependency."}
{"_id": "239056", "title": "AngularJS: structuring a web application with multiple ng-apps", "text": "The blogosphere has a number of articles on the topic of AngularJS app structuring guidelines such as these (and others):   * http://www.johnpapa.net/angular-app-structuring-guidelines/   * http://codingsmackdown.tv/blog/2013/04/19/angularjs-modules-for-great-justice/   * http://danorlando.com/angularjs-architecture-understanding-modules/   * http://henriquat.re/modularizing-angularjs/modularizing-angular-applications/modularizing-angular-applications.html However, one scenario I have yet to come across for guidelines and best practices is the case where you have a large web application containing multiple \"mini-spa\" apps, and the mini-spa apps all share a certain amount of code. I am not referring to the case of trying to have multiple `ng-app` declarations on the same page; rather, I mean different sections of a large site that have their own, unique `ng-app` declaration. As Scott Allen writes in his OdeToCode blog: > One scenario I haven't found addressed very well is the scenario where > multiple apps exist in the same greater web application and require some > shared code on the client. Are there any recommended approaches to take, pitfalls to avoid, or good sample structures of this scenario that you can point to?"}
{"_id": "239054", "title": "How to use Subversion in conjunction with DTAP with several Scrum teams?", "text": "I've read _How Do You Pull Something from a Release?_ , but it doesn't solve our problems, as our case is more complex. Our situation is as follows. We're developing an application for an internal customer. We're doing Scrum with four more or less aligned teams (i.e. sprints end on the same day), one of which is off site. We have a basic DTAP street and we use Subversion for source control. We want to deploy to the TAP-end of the street from source control, as a preparation to use continuous integration later on. To be able to deploy from source control, we maintain branches that are in sync with each of the T, A, and P environments.   Our current setup is a clean trunk, which is in sync with Production, an acpt branch that was branched from trunk at some point in the past and which is in sync with Acceptance, and a branch for each sprint that branches from the acpt branch at the start of each sprint and merges back into it at the end. This sprint branch is in sync with the Test environment for the duration of the sprint. At the end of each sprint, issues that are done are merged into acpt. A new sprint branch is made and a new sprint begins. Meanwhile, the acpt branch is deployed to Acceptance and tested there. Of course, in an ideal world, we would complete all user stories during the sprint and during UAT there would be no defects found. But alas, this world is not perfect and problems _are_ found during UAT. _Of course not bugs_ , but we may have interpreted a request incorrectly. Or there may be some other reason for a user story to not be released (yet). So now we have to pull some stories from that branch. Since the changes were merged from sprint branch to acpt branch in one go, this is not a trivial task. **How can we adjust our method to allow for user stories to be pulled from the acpt branch?** * * * I've also read _Agile version control with multiple teams_ by Henrik Kniberg. That looks like a model that's better suited to our needs, but even then I have some questions about it. If we adopt his model, should we sync the trunk to Acceptance? That would give us opportunity to conduct UATs _during_ a sprint, and would effectively uncouple the sprint schedule from the release schedule. But Kniberg promotes a stricter adherence to Scrum than we currently follow, where user stories are done pretty much in sequence. **How could we adjust Kniberg's method to suit our needs?**"}
{"_id": "239052", "title": "How to present domain model exceptions thrown through validation", "text": "In domain model of my web application I've an entity Foo which can be created only by a pojo FooBean: `Foo.newInstance(FooBean fooBean)` (Might have been better a Builder-pattern.) In the factory methode `newInstance()` the pojo FooBean is validated and throws NullPointerExceptions and IllegalArgumentExceptions if needed. The fields of the pojo are filled by a form on the presentation layer. That form does some validation on the user input and shows user friendly messages if needed. The exception message of the NullPointerExceptions and IllegalArgumentExceptions thrown in the `newInstance()` method are rather technical and shouldn't be displayed to the end user. What is a proper way to show user friendly error messages that are originated by the NullPointerException or the IllegalArgumentException?"}
{"_id": "88498", "title": "Bitbucket and a small development house", "text": "I am in the process of finally rolling Mercurial as our version control system at work. This is a huge deal for everyone as, shockingly, they have never used a VCS. After months of putting the bug in management's ears, they finally saw the light and now realise how much better it is than working with a network of shared folders! In the process of rolling this out, I am thinking of different strategies to manage our stuff and I am leaning towards using Bitbucket as our \"central\" repository. The projects in Bitbucket will solely be private projects and everyone will push and pull from there. I am open to different suggestions, but has anyone got a similar setup? If so, what caveats have you encountered?"}
{"_id": "231609", "title": "UI design for changing multiple records at once", "text": "I have a desktop application where the user has tabular views on some data records. Now we got the requirement to let the user select multiple of these records at the same time and let the him edit some properties of the selected records all at once in a separate edit dialog. The idea is   * to change only the properties the user really want change   * to keep all other properties unchanged Furthermore, when the user has selected the records and opens the edit dialog, the properties with equal values in all of the selected records are shown in the corresponding UI fields, the other properties should be shown as \"undefined\" as long as the user does not starts to enter something in there. After pressing \"Ok\", the changes are applied to the records. This kind of UI behaviour is not \"rocket science\", we already found this, for example, in graphical editors (where you can select multiple drawing elements at once and change their properties.) The problem is how to visualize the \"undefined\" state in an intuitive manner, especially for text properties. For boolean values, this is easy: we use just a tri-state check box. For number values, this is easy, too: the \"undefined\" state is displayed as an empty numeric UI field, and if there is actually a number in there, the state is \"defined\". But how shall one design this for text properties? An empty text box field is actually not an \"undefined\" state, since many of the text properties _can_ actually be empty. One could add a separate check box beside each text box to indicate the difference between \"undefined\" and \"defined\", but since our edit dialog contains already check boxes for boolean properties, this seems to be counterintuitive and confusing to the user. If this matters, we are using Winforms (but I think this problem is not specfic to the actual UI framework)."}
{"_id": "231603", "title": "Which license retains copyright while allowing work to be shared and derived from?", "text": "I am working on an academic research project whose results and _some_ code we intend to publish. Research journals and conferences explicitly require that the authors have copyright over the work done in a paper. However, I would like to share the code with the community as it progresses using an open source license. Is there a license that explicitly retains copyright while allowing sharing, redistribution and derivative works based on the original work? Alternatively, which license would be suitable for such projects?"}
{"_id": "231607", "title": "Most efficient data structure for implementing inheritance structure without classes", "text": "I have a number of types that all relate to each other in terms of them being 'derived' from one another. I'd need a way to do `is` relationships, which made me initially think of classes, but I realized that other than the `is` relationships, there would be no reason to use classes as each 'type' of data function the exact same way. I'd also thought of enums, but since there is no way to extend or inherit from enums it was a poor choice. For context (this being my specific example): I have a number of different kinds of resources that all are 'types' so that they can be used in conjunction with an int to denote how much of that resource is available. I have several different kinds of these resources, such as foods, metals, building materials etc. Within the food category would be something like wheat or corn; under metals would be copper, iron, gold etc. Since all of these are still just 'resources' and have no actual functionality other than typing, it seems pointless to use classes and OO inheritance. How would I implement this kind of data type without resorting to using classes?"}
{"_id": "231604", "title": "What's the difference between lists constructed by quote and those constructed by cons in Scheme?", "text": "(define ls1 '((1 . 2) 1 . 2))     (set-car! (car ls1) 6)     ls1     (define ls2 (cons '(1 . 2) '(1 . 2)))     (set-car! (car ls2) 6)     ls2      After `set-car!`ing, ls1 will be `((6 . 2) 1 . 2)` and ls2 `((6 . 2) 6 . 2)`. It seems that `ls1` and `ls2` have different storage model, and what does it mean when someone says `x is bound to a list`? is x stand for a `starting address` or `location` like that a is the starting address of a[10] in C?"}
{"_id": "231605", "title": "Organisation by business function vs technical function", "text": "I am designing a large application (a static code analyser) and I have a choice in how to organise the code into modules:   * One approach is by what I'd call by **technical function**. This is where you have a package for data objects, another for service functions, views, controllers, etc.   * Another approach is what I'd call by **business function**. This where you'd have a package for, say, stock control, another for product listings, customer orders, etc. Most frameworks tend to push me towards the first approach. Sometimes there are technical reasons for this, e.g. if the view is written in JavaScript and the rest in Python, you really need to keep it separate. But mostly it is just a matter of convention. Sometimes organising by technical function results in spreading related code across the application. If I have code to support a product, I end up with ProductModel, ProductService, ProductView, etc. Often I feel it would be neater to simply have a Product object that does all these. Organising by business function has issues too. Some classes are borderline and it's quite arbitrary which package you put them in. And there are some support objects that are used across all business functions. Which approach will be the most effective for making a scalable and maintainable application?"}
{"_id": "228110", "title": "Disadvantages of vertical user stories", "text": "The **agile approach** is to structure the work into **vertical user stories** and deliver a focused but fully functioning piece of the application from **end-to-end**. Because this is the new approach to building software I read a lot of literature about why this is better than horizontal stories but I do not find much about the disadvantages to this approach. I already drank the agile cool-aid and I too agree that vertically slicing the cake has much advantages over horizontal slicing. Here is a short list of disadvantages that I could come up with:   * A developer might initially be slower at implementing a feature because s/he must understand all the technologies required to develop the story (UI + service layer + data access + networking, etc...)   * Overall architecture design (crating the backbone of the application) does not really fit this mantra (however some might argue that it is part of a user story to develop/change the overall architecture) **What are some more drawbacks of vertically slicing user stories?** _Note: The reason I am asking this question now is because I am going to attempt to convince a team to start writing stories the 'vertical way' and I want to be able to bring up the possible trade-offs ahead of time so they won't consider the approach a failure when they are faced with the drawbacks._"}
{"_id": "199365", "title": "Efficient Copy While Sorting", "text": "I have an algorithms library called NDex. I am in the process of upgrading it to a new version. Part of this upgrade involves providing two versions of many algorithms: an in-place version and a version that copies the results to a destination list. I will be providing two sort variations: quick sort and merge sort. The merge sort is stable. I am curious whether quick sort is better than, say, heap sort when copying items to a new list. Merge sort uses a buffer internally. I am curious when doing a merge sort whether I can double up the destination as the buffer. I was hoping someone could give me some advice or point me to some useful material."}
{"_id": "228118", "title": "Communicate to a junior developer about bad style", "text": "I have a friend who's managed to pick up comma first (best case might be made here: http://ajaxian.com/archives/is-there-something-to-the-crazy-comma-first- style) but it's 100% against our org's style guide and the Python culture. If you don't want to click the link, he's basically doing this:               a, b, c, d = tuple('abcd') # setup for interpreter demo, if desired     foo = ( a           , b           , c           , d           )      Maybe it's just habit or training, but I do not want to even begin to have the spark of a thought about even starting to think about doing this; much less see others pick it up. But I'm also a bit of a grammar fiend too. How do I communicate to a him that keeping to idiomatic style is better for his career and reputation as a programmer?"}
{"_id": "39174", "title": "Separation of Tasks in an n-tier app: By module or by tier?", "text": "Developing an n-tier app with a team, is it better to divide tasks by module or use case (e.g. Employee 1 creates Admin module, employee 2 creates Payroll module, etc.) or by tier (e.g. Employee 1 creates UI, Employee 2 creates Logic, Employee 3 creates all Data Access)? I'm more inclined towards the former. I think that it's only logical that if I'm coding one whole module or at least related use cases, I would be able to code continuously without waiting for others to finish before integrating my work. But the counter-argument, which is the latter, is that by separating tasks between layers, a programmer can take advantage of n-tier's separation of concerns and focus only on a specific layer (to some) they're familiar with."}
{"_id": "165219", "title": "What are the benefits and drawback of documentation vs tutorials vs video tutorials", "text": "Which types of learning resources do you find the most helpful, for which kinds of learning and/or perhaps at specific times? Some examples of types of learning you could consider:   * When starting to integrate a new SDK inside an existing codebase   * When learning a new framework without having to integrate legacy code   * When digging deeper into an already-used SDK that you may not know very well yet For example - (video) tutorials are usually very easy to follow and tells a story from beginning to end to get results, but will nearly always assume starting from scratch or a previous tutorial. Therefore such a resource is useful for quick learning if you don't have legacy code around, but less so if you have to search for the best-fit to the code you already have. SDK Documentation on the other hand is well-structured but does not tell a story. It is more difficult to get to a specific larger result with documentation alone, but it is a better fit when you do have legacy code around and are searching for perhaps non-obvious ways of employing the SDK or library. Are there other forms of resources that you find useful, such as interactive training?"}
{"_id": "84875", "title": "How are you setting up re-usable development environments?", "text": "I'm trying to come up with a good approach to creating a re-usable development environment such that it doesn't take a couple days to re-build a machine if it starts to sputter and to be able to onboard new developers faster. Reading about Quora's development setup made me consider alternatives to the old development environment build delay. For a .NET/Windows shop though, how are you solving this problem?   * Local virtual machine on your desktop/laptop that you can share with the other members of the team?   * A dedicated server (physical or virtual) that all developers remote desktop into and that can be easily backed up. (obviously requires a network connection, so there's a downside)?   * An instance in the cloud (like Quora)?"}
{"_id": "69568", "title": "How do you automatically test a time check?", "text": "Say you have a property `startTime`. Then you have a method `doSomething`:               doSomething() {        //...stuff        startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();        //... more stuff     }      How do you test that `startTime` was assigned correctly? You can't test against an absolute timestamp - it'll likely change between assignment and test. Maybe use a range?"}
{"_id": "215429", "title": "Is it wise to store a big lump of json on a database row", "text": "I have this project which stores product details from amazon into the database. Just to give you an idea on how big it is: ` [{\"title\":\"Genetic Engineering (Opposing Viewpoints)\",\"short_title\":\"Genetic Engineering ...\",\"brand\":\"\",\"condition\":\"\",\"sales_rank\":\"7171426\",\"binding\":\"Book\",\"item_detail_url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/product/?asin=0737705124\",\"node_list\":\"Books > Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Biotechnology\",\"node_category\":\"Books\",\"subcat\":\"\",\"model_number\":\"\",\"item_url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/ecom-plugin- redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=128\",\"details_url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/product/?asin=0737705124\",\"large_image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/large- notfound.png\",\"medium_image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/medium- notfound.png\",\"small_image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/small- notfound.png\",\"thumbnail_image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/thumbnail- notfound.png\",\"tiny_img\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/tiny- notfound.png\",\"swatch_img\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/swatch- notfound.png\",\"total_images\":\"6\",\"amount\":\"33.70\",\"currency\":\"$\",\"long_currency\":\"USD\",\"price\":\"$33.70\",\"price_type\":\"List Price\",\"show_price_type\":\"0\",\"stars_url\":\"\",\"product_review\":\"\",\"rating\":\"\",\"yellow_star_class\":\"\",\"white_star_class\":\"\",\"rating_text\":\" of 5\",\"reviews_url\":\"\",\"review_label\":\"\",\"reviews_label\":\"Read all \",\"review_count\":\"\",\"create_review_url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/ecom-plugin- redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=132\",\"create_review_label\":\"Write a review\",\"buy_url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp-content/ecom-plugin- redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=19186\",\"add_to_cart_action\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/ecom-plugin- redirects/add_to_cart.php\",\"asin\":\"0737705124\",\"status\":\"Only 7 left in stock.\",\"snippet_condition\":\"in_stock\",\"status_class\":\"ninstck\",\"customer_images\":[\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/51M2vvFvs2BL.jpg\",\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/31FIM- YIUrL.jpg\",\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/51M2vvFvs2BL.jpg\",\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/51M2vvFvs2BL.jpg\"],\"disclaimer\":\"\",\"item_attributes\":[{\"attr\":\"Author\",\"value\":\"Greenhaven Press\"},{\"attr\":\"Binding\",\"value\":\"Hardcover\"},{\"attr\":\"EAN\",\"value\":\"9780737705126\"},{\"attr\":\"Edition\",\"value\":\"1\"},{\"attr\":\"ISBN\",\"value\":\"0737705124\"},{\"attr\":\"Label\",\"value\":\"Greenhaven Press\"},{\"attr\":\"Manufacturer\",\"value\":\"Greenhaven Press\"},{\"attr\":\"NumberOfItems\",\"value\":\"1\"},{\"attr\":\"NumberOfPages\",\"value\":\"224\"},{\"attr\":\"ProductGroup\",\"value\":\"Book\"},{\"attr\":\"ProductTypeName\",\"value\":\"ABIS_BOOK\"},{\"attr\":\"PublicationDate\",\"value\":\"2000-06\"},{\"attr\":\"Publisher\",\"value\":\"Greenhaven Press\"},{\"attr\":\"SKU\",\"value\":\"G0737705124I2N00\"},{\"attr\":\"Studio\",\"value\":\"Greenhaven Press\"},{\"attr\":\"Title\",\"value\":\"Genetic Engineering (Opposing Viewpoints)\"}],\"customer_review_url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/ecom-customer- reviews/0737705124.html\",\"flickr_results\":[\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/5105560852_06c7d06f14_m.jpg\"],\"freebase_text\":\"No around the web data available yet\",\"freebase_image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/plugins/ecom/img/freebase- notfound.jpg\",\"ebay_related_items\":[{\"title\":\"Genetic Engineering (Introducing Issues With Opposing Viewpoints), , Good Book\",\"image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/140.jpg\",\"url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/ecom-plugin- redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=12165\",\"currency_id\":\"$\",\"current_price\":\"26.2\"},{\"title\":\"Genetic Engineering Opposing Viewpoints by DAVID BENDER - 1964 Hardcover\",\"image\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/2013/10/ecom_images/140.jpg\",\"url\":\"http://localhost/wordpress/wp- content/ecom-plugin- redirects/ecom_redirector.php?id=130\",\"currency_id\":\"AUD\",\"current_price\":\"11.99\"}],\"no_follow\":\"rel=\\\"nofollow\\\"\",\"new_tab\":\"target=\\\"_blank\\\"\",\"related_products\":[],\"super_saver_shipping\":\"\",\"shipping_availability\":\"\",\"total_offers\":\"7\",\"added_to_cart\":\"\"}] ` So the structure for the table is:   * asin   * title   * details (the product details in json) Will the performance suffer if I have to store like 10,000 products? Is there any other way of doing this? I'm thinking of the following, but the current setup is really the most convenient one since I also have to use the data on the client side:   * store the product details in a file. So something like ASIN123.json   * store the product details in one big file. (I'm guessing it will be a drag to extract data from this file)   * store each of the fields in the details in its own table field Thanks in advance! **UPDATE** Thanks for the answers! I just want to add some more details to my question. First, the records are updated for a specific interval. Only specific data such as the price or the title are updated. Second, I'm also using the json encoded data in the client-side so I thought at first it would be easier to just have it json encoded so I can easily use it in the client side without having to convert. Does this change your opinion about simply storing the fields in a regular table field in an RDBMS setup?"}
{"_id": "100711", "title": "Is it time to do away with 'front-end' and 'back-end' as tech jargon?", "text": "It seems that the primary usage of these terms is either:   1. mutual mystification of contractors and/or clients who don't know what they are talking about or how to talk about it,   2. the innocent and ignorant (see this question) , or   3. laziness to avoid having to say user-interface/user-facing or business logic/database/infrastructure. Granted, you don't always want to explain to the boardroom what the aforementioned terms mean. Is that justification for adding confusion by using these terms to generalize and mis-generalize all kinds of technologies?"}
{"_id": "154661", "title": "What is a best practice tier structure of a Java EE 6/7 application?", "text": "I was attempting to find a best practice for modeling the tiers in a Java EE application yesterday and couldn't come up with anything current. In the past, say java 1.4, it was four tiers:   1. Presentation Tier   2. Web Tier   3. Business Logic Tier   4. DAL (Data Access Layer ) which I always considered a tier and not a layer. After working with Web Services and SOA I thought to add in a services tier, but that may fall under 3. the business logic tier. I did searches for quite a while and reading articles. It seems like Domain Driven Design is becoming more popular, but I couldn't find a diagram on it's tier structure. Anyone have ideas or diagrams on what the proper tier structure is for newer Java EE applications or is it really the same, but more items are ranked under the four I've mentioned? **Aftermath:** Really, I should have reworded my question as my real intent was to ask where to put the business logic in a Java EE application? In thinking along those terms, I somehow concluded that the tier structure had changed, when it had not. However, with the advent of POJO programming and lightweight frameworks that I was using in my day to day work, I lost sight of all this. The tier structure of Java EE apps still holds to the same, but now instead of heavy weight EJB2 type business logic in the middle tier I was using POJO's with services to implement business logic."}
{"_id": "224325", "title": "Small Product backlog / user story feedback - media player application", "text": "I have been tasked with developing a short product backlog for the following: > A media player application is needed for playing mp3 files. It should have > the ability to search the users file structure for playable files which can > be played or imported into a media library for playing later. There should > be the usual options for starting, pausing and stopping playback of a > selected file\u2026 My solution / user stories are as follows:   * As a user I can use the media player application so that I can play MP3 files.   * As a user I want the ability to search for playable files to play them later   * As a user I want the ability to search for files so that I am able to import them to my media library.   * As a user I can use certain options on an app so that I can start, pause and playback a file. Am I on the right track?"}
{"_id": "120040", "title": "Design review for application facing memory issues", "text": "I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I want to paint an accurate picture of the problems my app is facing and then pose some questions below; I am trying to address some self inflicted design pain that is now leading to my application crashing due to out of memory errors. An abridged description of the **problem domain** is as follows;   * The application takes in a \u201cdataset\u201d that consists of numerous text files containing related data    * An individual text file within the dataset usually contains approx 20 \u201cheaders\u201d that contain metadata about the data it contains. It also contains a large tab delimited section containing data that is related to data in one of the other text files contained within the dataset. The number of columns per file is very variable from 2 to 256+ columns. The original application was written to allow users to load a dataset, map certain columns of each of the files which basically indicating key information on the files to show how they are related as well as identify a few expected column names. Once this is done, a validation process takes place to enforce various rules and ensure that all the relationships between the files are valid. Once that is done, the data is imported into a SQL Server database. The database design is an EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) model used to cater for the variable columns per file. I know EAV has its detractors, but in this case, I feel it was a reasonable choice given the disparate data and variable number of columns submitted in each dataset. **The memory problem** Given the fact the combined size of all text files was at most about 5 megs, and in an effort to reduce the database transaction time, it was decided to read ALL the data from files into memory and then perform the following;   * perform all the validation whilst the data was in memory    * relate it using an object model    * Start DB transaction and write the key columns row by row, noting the Id of the written row (all tables in the database utilise identity columns), then the Id of the newly written row is applied to all related data    * Once all related data had been updated with the key information to which it relates, these records are written using SqlBulkCopy. Due to our EAV model, we essentially have; x columns by y rows to write, where x can by 256+ and rows are often into the tens of thousands.    * Once all the data is written without error (can take several minutes for large datasets), Commit the transaction. The problem now comes from the fact we are now receiving individual files containing over 30 megs of data. In a dataset, we can receive any number of files. We\u2019ve started seen datasets of around 100 megs coming in and I expect it is only going to get bigger from here on in. With files of this size, data can\u2019t even be read into memory without the app falling over, let alone be validated and imported. I anticipate having to modify large chunks of the code to allow validation to occur by parsing files line by line and am not exactly decided on how to handle the import and transactions. **Potential improvements**   * I\u2019ve wondered about using GUIDs to relate the data rather than relying on identity fields. This would allow data to be related prior to writing to the database. This would certainly increase the storage required though. Especially in an EAV design. Would you think this is a reasonable thing to try, or do I simply persist with identity fields (natural keys can\u2019t be trusted to be unique across all submitters).    * Use of staging tables to get data into the database and only performing the transaction to copy data from staging area to actual destination tables. **Questions**   * For systems like this that import large quantities of data, how to you go about keeping transactions small. I\u2019ve kept them as small as possible in the current design, but they are still active for several minutes and write hundreds of thousands of records in one transaction. Is there a better solution?    * The tab delimited data section is read into a DataTable to be viewed in a grid. I don\u2019t need the full functionality of a DataTable, so I suspect it is overkill. Is there anyway to turn off various features of DataTables to make them more lightweight?  Are there any other obvious things you would do in this situation to minimise the memory footprint of the application described above? Thanks for your kind attention."}
{"_id": "120047", "title": "What is block level design in context of mobile application?", "text": "I was wondering if anyone can give me some direction related to \"Block level design\" in context of mobile application? Recently I saw a video in my university and a professional mentioned about building block level design of applications, since then it has stuck in my brain! It would be really helpful if someone can share their knowledge."}
{"_id": "55222", "title": "Why should I not do a masters degree", "text": "I have left university on July 2010 where I studied web design (as we all know you learn more by your self but that\u2019s not the issue at the moment). Since then I have not managed to find a job (apart from a one month work experience), from the way things are going, and by taking into account the fact that all my university friends are in the same situation, I don\u2019t think that I am going to find a job soon (within the industry) Now as we all do, even though I don\u2019t have a job, I am still working on personal projects and try to keep up to date (I don\u2019t need a job or uni to do this) \u2013 but I am thinking, because there is not work available, would it be worth going back to uni for a master degree? I know I don\u2019t need it and I know that is unlikely that I will learn anything important, as I believe in self learning, and in most cases it is a lot more effective (but I have to say I don\u2019t mind going back to school) The only reason I am thinking of doing the master is, (and this is where I need your help): If it takes me a year to get a job, then on the interview, would the employer think \u201cwhat the hell did this guy do since he left university\u201d \u2013 now if I go to university that would solve this problem. Or I\u2019m I making up a problem that does not exist Plus, I know that employers need examples of sites that I have been working on, at the moment I only have 3 (as when working on personal projects, where their is not time limit I tend drag things in order to get them perfect, and they never get perfect) \u2013 so by going back to uni, then this problem maybe solved I said all this as I have read a lot about the fact that you don\u2019t need to have a masters degree to work on web design market (and I totally agree) but considering my concern, the question is should I do a masters course to avoid just spending hours in my room working and learning in my own (but that it would be hard to convince employers that I was really learning in my room) Maybe because I\u2019m still young age 22 not that old anyway :), but I don\u2019t have the \u201cdream\u201d of being rich, so if I were to tell the truth I don\u2019t really care of the fact that I don\u2019t have a job (at the moment), because regardless, I am working on what I love every day, but I know that in the future when I will need the job I may find it harder to get one, if I neglect doing so now Every time I ask a question that I\u2019m not sure about, I keep going on and on, but I really hope you get what I am trying to get across. By the way the course that I am looking at for a masters says that it would teach me how to do these: e-commerce e-government e-science e-learning I don\u2019t know any of them, a part from e-commerce Thanks"}
{"_id": "21118", "title": "What is the general tech news website every programmer should read?", "text": "A link and a quick explanation why would be very helpful. General tech news, I mean not like InfoQ which is too technical. Probably much more like P.SE than SO. EDIT: site should help developers gain general knowledge about the industry, technologies, inventions, etc. Much like when we listen to the news every morning in our car to know what is happening in our world. But target audience must be either programmmers, geeks or any other persons interested in technology."}
{"_id": "236558", "title": "Generic object construction - Inherited Classes", "text": "Basically I am writing a MSMQ based multi-threaded messaging pattern utility library. It's like a set of components all inherited (directly or indirectly) one class that's called my base component class. Each of these messaging components have the ability to listen to multiple queues via multiple threads and to process messages via multiple threads. So I have a worker base class that executes itself on a thread, but in implementation you would inherit this class, and fill in the gaps. So I want to be able to basically construct a generic object that inherits this class on the fly, and then put it to work. So far I have this which works, but I am just wondering if there is a better way to do it out there. My current code...               public class EzQBaseComponent<TWorker> : IEzQComponent where TWorker : EzQWorker     {         /// LOTS OF CODE YOU DON'T NEED TO KNOW :\"D              private void Listener_MessageRecieved(Guid listenerID, MessageQueue queue, Message msg, MessageQueueTransaction myTransaction)         {             try             {             lock (m_MessageRecievedLocker)             {                 if(myTransaction == null)                 {                     // YAWN                 }                 if(msg.Label == c_CustomComponentMessageCommandLabel)                 {                     // YAWN                 }                 else if(Workers.Count < DelegatedWorkers)                 {                     Type t = typeof(TWorker);                     ConstructorInfo[] conInfos = t.GetConstructors();                     ConstructorInfo correctConstructor = null;                     foreach (ConstructorInfo cInfo in conInfos)                     {                         if (cInfo.GetParameters().Count() < 1)                         {                             correctConstructor = cInfo;                         }                     }                          if (correctConstructor == null)                     {                         throw new Exception(\"Generic TWorker class does not contain a consturctor with '0' arguments. Cannot Construct class.\");                     }                          TWorker worker = (TWorker)correctConstructor.Invoke(null);                          // YAWN                 }                 else                 {                     // YAWN                 }             }         }         catch (Exception Ex)         {             // NOOOO EXCEPTION!!         }     }      Basically, my base class has a no-parameter constructor. So I look for the one without parameters via reflection, and then use that constructor. Any thoughts on the construction of the generic object? Is that the best way?"}
{"_id": "241537", "title": "Algorithm for optimal combination of two variables", "text": "I'm looking for an algorithm that would be able to determine the optimal combination of two variables, but I'm not sure where to start looking. For example, if I have 10,000 rows in a database and each row contains price, and square feet is there any algorithm out there that will be able to determine what combination of price and sq ft is optimal. I know this is vague, but I assume is along the lines of Fuzzy logic and fuzzy sets, but I'm not sure and I'd like to start digging in the right field to see if I can come up with something that solves my problem."}
{"_id": "236552", "title": "Is it appropriate to use inheritance to prevent code duplication of the logic for a user control?", "text": "Suppose I have two or more `UserControl` implementations with vastly different implementations but near identical code-behind. One strategy to avoid code duplication is as follows:   1. Change each `UserControl` to inherit from a new abstract class, `AwesomeUserControl`   2. Move all of the codebehind from each `UserControl` into `AwesomeUserControl` (`AwesomeUserControl` does not have an ascx file).   3. Add abstract getters to `AwesomeUserControl` for any controls from the ascx file of the original UserControls.   4. Implement these getters in each `UserControl`. This strategy works extremely well and is easy to maintain. However, it also introduces stupid scaffolding code; every new implementation of `AwesomeUserControl` has a bunch of getters to hook `AwesomeUserControl` the UI elements inside of the new control. Any time I find myself using a strategy which _requires_ copy-pasted scaffolding code, I worry that I am doing something wrong. Though it does have a nice effect of failing to compile if the UI elements are missing (as opposed to skipping the scaffolding code in favor of reflection and required naming). Is this use of inheritance reasonable?"}
{"_id": "236550", "title": "What's the algorithm of \"Shuffle Mode\" in audio/music players", "text": "I was researching on how is the \"Shuffle mode\" in music players implemented and what is the algorithm behind this. How it makes sure that any songs won't repeat? What's the most efficient algorithm for doing this?   * **Added on 2014-Apr-23:** The Fischer-Yates Shuffle Algorithm is the simplest algorithm for Shuffling. This blogpost titled \"The Art of Shuffling Music\" explains another algorithm with illustrations."}
{"_id": "219936", "title": "What is the most efficient way to manage large collection", "text": "I have a rather difficult problem: I periodically receive a `Dictionary<decimal, int> subDict` containing 100 records where   * decimal is a Price   * and int is Amount The outcome I need is a dataGrid showing prices with amounts. But I cannot display subList directly, because sublist is often missing some prices: subDict:   * Price | Amount   * 100.0001 | 192   * 100.0005 | 123   * 100.0007 | 2   * 100.0008 | 123 above needs to be displayed as:   * Price | Amount   * 100.0001 | 192   * 100.0002 | 0   * 100.0003 | 0   * 100.0004 | 123   * 100.0005 | 0   * 100.0006 | 0   * 100.0007 | 2   * 100.0008 | 123 I have to store a price with 4 decimal places, however the range of Price can be anything from 0 to 10 000. Final requirement is - once I click on the amount in the DataGrid, I need to be able to get access to all values in the row. So I decided to ask for some help - can anyone think of a good strategy of dealing with such a problem? One idea that came to my mind would be to initialize `Dicionary<decimal, int> bigDictionary` containing every price in the range. However, if I initialize this dictionary with all the prices, with specified granularity (i.e. step of 0.0001) I end up with 10 000 * 10 000 records. That is rather large list, which takes considerable amount of memory. Of course it is easy to bind it to DataGrid in WPF so this can sort of work, but is in my opinion very inefficient. The other idea I have would be to save incoming prices to a `Dictionary<decimal, int> smallDict` but then I would need to have some sort of mechanism to update DataGrid in such a way, that price gaps would be filled on the fly. Also I would somehow need to keep the dataGrid sorted by the price. The first idea I am able to implement. The second one, I have no idea about so any code would be excellent. I would be greatfull for any ideas! Thank you for your time"}
{"_id": "159164", "title": "Do accompanying tools/scripts also need to be licensed to put my bash script under GPLv3?", "text": "This is some sort of follow up to an older question of me. So I put the GPLv3 license into the project which contains my script and also added the copyright notice and copying permission statement to the top of my script. Now, apart from the script, the package also contains files which are helpful for using the script (e.g. a bash completion file and unit tests) but which are not relevant for the script to actually work. Do I also need to put copyright notice/permission in there? I've looked into some projects on github, and most don't seem to add these information to accompanying things. Still, I'm unsure what's the best approach."}
{"_id": "124293", "title": "How to detect impacts caused by changes?", "text": "I've often run on this problem. Now I am working on a team of 4 and we built a lot of stuff. We are still finishing somethings and making **changes**. The problem is that those changes can (and most probably will) cause interface/business to crash. We do not have any kind of map that show us something like \"If you change the DataSource of this table the code X on that table will have to change. And on the screen X the list will have to be changed\". Unit tests can help validate business rules, what about interface business? Can it also validate code bound to the interface? Should we rely only on unit tests? And how deep does it have to be to prevent the code breaking because of changes? Should we use some other approach as well?"}
{"_id": "162245", "title": "Git workflow / practices for a small project (flowchart in png)", "text": "I'm trying to come up with a personal workflow. I've put together a flowchart of the hypothetical lifespan of a release: one developer pushing to a public github repo + a friend helping with some feature and fixing a bug. Is this a reasonable approach to version control? The main idea is to keep the public repo tidy:   * Each new release gets on its own branch until it's finally tagged in the master branch when it's finished.   * All work is done on \"feature\" or \"hotfix\" branches, never on an actual release branch, to prevent anomalies.    * Merges to higher-level branches are always rebased or squashed (to avoid clutter).  If it's overkill I don't mind because the whole point is for me is to learn skills I might need for a larger project. The only problem would be if I'm doing something flat out wrong or unnecessary. **edit 2:** fixed bad idea in the original flowchart and made it a bit easier to navigate. ![v1.1](http://i.stack.imgur.com/kxOIy.jpg)"}
{"_id": "16179", "title": "Is Object Oriented Programming a solution to complexity?", "text": "Do you think Object Oriented Programming is a solution to complexity. Why? This topic may be a bit controversial but my intentions to know the answer of Why from the experts here !"}
{"_id": "159160", "title": "Class design for internationalized object", "text": "I'm looking for some pointers on class design for a global application. Let's say I have to make a class structure to manage products, and the products are sold in different countries. Some of the fields for the product will have the same value across all countries (eg. product code, ERP Description) I will call these \"international\" fields, and some fields will be specific to a single country (eg. Local Description), lets call these \"local\" fields. Of course, some \"local\" fields will be the same for groups of countries (es. weight : 1 kilogram / 2 pounds). Also I expect that not all countries will have values for all fields. Which fields are \"international\" and which fields are \"local\" may change from one installation to another and I am reluctant to bake this into the design as I'm sure it will bite me later on. So, I'm trying to figure out how to structure the objects so that I can use a product at an international level and always refer to the same \"product\", but also maintain and use the local information when necessary? Just to be clear, I'm not talking about user-locale, number or date formatting etc. The source data is coming from different database schemas (one for each country). The end product will be written in C#. I'm wondering if anyone has experience or can point me to a pattern that would provide a good solution to this before I go and reinvent the wheel?"}
{"_id": "124297", "title": "S-expressions readability", "text": "In a nutshell and for those who didn't know it, Lisp functions/operators/constructs are all uniformly called like this:               (function arg0 arg1 ... argN)      So what in a C-like language you would express as               if (a > b && foo(param))      is transformed to a Lisp sexp like               (if (and (> a b) (foo param)))      . As things get more real/complicated, so do their corresponding s-expressions, for me. I'm aware that this is most likely a subjective question, but - is for many Lisp hackers this one little annoyance one will have to always deal with? Or does one mostly get used to this (lack of) syntax sooner or later? In any case, is adding breaklines (that you wouldn't add in your C equivalent, most times) for readability a good idea, especially on the long run? Any other suggestions would be welcome."}
{"_id": "81349", "title": "Best permissive license for a utility library?", "text": "I have a small utility library of useful stuff written in Java that I plan on releasing open source. I've been wavering on what license to use. I quite like the BSD license, which is short and easy to understand, but I don't want/need the clause about including the disclaimer in their product's documentation. Considering just dropping that bit out. Would the MIT license suit me better, then? It doesn't have the endorsement prohibition clause like the BSD one does, which is something I like about BSD's. Also, does MIT's clause about keeping the copyright notice on substantial portions of the software just refer to the source code, and not binary form or any documentation they produce? From surveying other SO questions on the topic, I've seen a few people recommend the Apache license. Having a quick scan though it, it actually might do most of what I want really well, although even that amount of legalese makes my head hurt (particularly at 2:30AM when I should be in bed instead of on SO.) Thoughts? Basically I want something that is:   * easy to understand,   * says you can use the code as you like, but keep my copyright and permission notice on the source code,   * you don't need to put the name of me or my product or copyright notice etc. in any documentation, manuals, etc. that you produce,   * don't try and use me or my product as a selling point for your product (not that my endorsement would count for much anyway!)   * and covers my butt in a reasonable manner. :-) EDIT: Wow, 30 minutes and already some good responses! In response: I'd prefer not to \"mix and match\" if I can help it, and produce yet another open source license. Using a standard license makes it easier for all of us. The butt covering comment is a bit tongue in cheek. The warranty disclaimer that all the licenses mentioned include is really all I'm talking about. EDIT: Reading through the Wikipedia page on the MIT License, I discovered that ncurses uses a modified version that has been approved by the FSF, that adds a non-endorsement paragraph. I figure if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me. I was considering the Apache license, however compatibility problems with GPLv2 would be an issue I didn't want to introduce."}
{"_id": "165217", "title": "Is the book \"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs\" a good read for Java programmers?", "text": "This may be subjective and likely to be closed but I still wanted to know if its really helpfull to read Structure and Interpretation of Computer programs. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs The book does not use Java. Not that I wanted to learn Java. I am just curious as to know if it be will useful read to be a better programmer and what are the things that I can gain from the book or are their any other alternatives to this book more suited to Java programmers?"}
{"_id": "240485", "title": "Is it good style to store view data inside the model?", "text": "I'm using a variant of the MVC pattern. In my GUI code, often the need arises to synchronize \"view data\" (e.g., selected item) between different views. For example, let's imagine a vector drawing program. We have two views: the image, and a listview of all objects (rectangles, squares, ...). The currently selected item should remain in sync - if you click on \"Rectangle A\" in the listview, the same rectangle should be highlighted in the image view. The way I usually do it is to have a ViewState class contained in my model. Is that a good idea? If not, what would be a better solution?               class VectorDrawing     {       List<Object> Items;       DrawingViewstate Viewstate;     }     class DrawingViewstate     {       Object SelectedItem;       event SelectedItemChanged;     }     class ListviewController     {       ListviewController(VectorDrawing model)       {         model.Viewstate.SelectedItemChanged += ... // Subscribe to event         ...       }     }     class ImageViewController     {       ... // similar to the ListviewController     }"}
{"_id": "190033", "title": "implement cons function in Java - type safety question", "text": "I am working on a small functional library written in Java, which mimics the a functional style of programming. I am stuck with a undesirable type cast in one of my method definitions and would love some help. Ok, so we do not have first class functions in Java, so I define them as objects, with one method 'apply()' like so:               public abstract class Function2<R,T1,T2> {         public abstract R apply(final T1 paramOne, final T2 paramTwo);     }      I then define my cons method as a Function2 object, which I can pass around like I would a function in another language that supports it:               public static <T> Function2<List<T>, T, List<T>> cons(){         return new Function2<List<T>, T, List<T>>(){             @Override             public List<T> apply(T x, List<T> xs) {                 return new NonEmptyList<T>(x, xs);             }           };         }      I have omitted my list structure for brevity; assume it is a functional style list data structure with all the usual head/tail/etc. operations. I then want to implement a function like 'reverse', which returns a list of items in reverse order. I use foldl1 (fold a non empty list from the left) to achieve this, and pass the cons function as a parameter to foldl1 like so:               public static <T> List<T> foldl( Function2<List<T>, T, List<T>> f,                                      List<T> acc,                                      List<T> xs ){         if(xs.isEmpty()){ return acc; }         return foldl(f, (f.apply(xs.head(), acc)), xs.tail());     }              public static <T> List<T> reverse(List<T> xs){         // how do I avoid this cast??         return foldl( (Function2) cons(), new EmptyList(), xs);      }       But when I pass my 'cons()' object in 'reverse', I need to cast it as a Function2, and I have no idea how to avoid doing this. I have tried all manner of messing around with types...I feel this is simply a lack of experience on my part with the Java type system...anyone? PS. I am aware of other functional libraries in Java, I just wanted to do my own small one as a learning experience. EDIT - OK, so I am using a regular 'foldl' now to get back a List, but I still have to perform the cast? The return type of 'cons' align with 'foldl'..."}
{"_id": "38483", "title": "Explaining Drupal to a Programmer", "text": "(Apologies in advance for the vague and miasmic question) Is there a book, or other resource, there that can explain **using** Drupal, The System, to a web app oriented programmer? I've read through the Apress Pro Drupal Development book and it was a fantastic overview of the system's architecture. That's not what I'm looking for here. Instead I want something that's going to tell/show me \"Here is how people use Drupal to manage their sites and build applications\". I've been building websites and web applications since the beginning, and whenever I sit down to spend some time with Drupal I find I can't leave behind my concepts of   1. A URL equal one HTML page, and everything flows from there   2. A URL equals a controller action, and everything flows from there and Drupal seems to be built on an entirerly different model. So any books, tutorials, or explanations that start from the above two points and explain how Drupal is different, and what Drupal developers spend their days doing would be fantastic."}
{"_id": "135376", "title": "How extensive is the difference between building a WPF app and a Silverlight 5 app?", "text": "I have a fair amount of experience with WPF (C#) and XAML. I might soon be asked to create a Silverlight 5 application. I have no experience with any version of SL. What sort of learning curve could I expect in creating a SL 5 app, given that I have some experience with WPF?"}
{"_id": "158417", "title": "Is my mediator layer a sensible way to manage this scenario using the Single Responsibility Principle?", "text": "I'm not sure how to start to explain my question, but here goes. We have just finished an MVC application that hits 2 WCF services. But there has been a bit of a disagreement between those who worked on the project and some who haven't over the design used. What we have is two WCF services, one on each site (site specific data) and another at head office (data shared/common between all sites). Normally we would have two apps, one for site and another for head office. In this case I decided from a UX point of view that it would be better to have it look like one app from the users point of view so they would not need know two urls. Basically, the user does not know if they are hitting site or head office. Now comes the design decision that has caused the disagreements. The MVC App has controllers that need to hit either a site wcf service or a head office WCF service. So to prevent the need of the controllers needing to be aware of the two WCF communications layers and converting the WCF results into a model the controllers could use, I created a layer in between the controllers and WCF Proxies. Which accepts a request from a controller, then calls the appropriate site or central WCF proxy call, then if needed, convert the WCF result into a model that the controller can use. This layer, I called a Mediator, but after much discussion, I am of the opinion that it is not the correct description for it. Anyway, the reason for this layer is when tring to keep to the SOILD object oriented principles, in particular the Single Responsibility Principal. The controllers responsibility is to handle client requests and return a view/result. It should not need to know or maintain a WCF proxy and convert its result. (It could go directly to a database instead of a WCF call but the controller shouldn't be responsible or even aware of that because it is responsible for the view) The same goes for the WCF proxy, it should not know what is consuming its result and that the WCF data contract should be converted into a model specific for each controller. The mediator layer in between is what decides which WCF service and method to call and then either via a extension method or a specific handler converts the result to a model the controller can use. (sometimes it may take several wcf calls to create the model).               Controller1 -> Mediator -> HeadOfficeWCFProxy     Controller2 -> Mediator -> SiteWCFProxy        * So the controller asks for data (not knowing where it comes from)   * The mediator converts and passes the request to the appropriate WCF Proxy(s)   * The WCF Proxy(s) make the calls across the wire and return the results.    * The mediator then converts the result(s) into a model (if needed) via an extension method and returns it to the controller.    * The controller renders the view using said model. Now what I described here was just on the MVC side. I have a similar setup on the WCF service side but the mediators benefit is clearer. On the head office WCF service               WCFListener -> Mediator -> DataLayer (LinqToSQL)                             -> SiteSyncHandler (sends change to all sites asyncronously)                             -> ThirdPartyContentManagementHandler (via web service)      Now the devs that have worked on the project, like the separation of concerns alot as it is very clear where everything belongs and keeps code to a minimum in each layer. But the down side in the MVC app is for a lot of the calls the mediator just makes a single WCF call and doesn't even need to convert the result (most of the time the data contract is fine for use as a model) resulting in a fair amount of one liner method boiler plate code. The mediator doesn't really add much in that scenario except to keep things consistent across controllers. Some devs that haven't worked on the project, insist that there is no need at all for the Mediator layer and that it could be all handled by the controllers themselves. Which means maintaining the appropriate WCF Proxy in each controller. This in my mind violates the Single Responsibility principle. To which they argue that SOLID is more like a set of guidelines, and not to be blindly followed. Which while I kinda agree with that statement its also not to be blindly ignored. I have conceded that the term mediator is not really appropriate (perhaps director or relay), but I still think the basic design is valid, and would use it again. The same can be said for those who have worked on the project. I would like to know what other people think. Is there a better solution or have I \"over complicated it\". (I still don't agree that is is complicated, its a very simple concept and easy to maintain)"}
{"_id": "90250", "title": "UML to portray SQL objects", "text": "I am delving into the science of UML. The tool I am using is **ArgoUML**. I feel very confident portraying OO designs through this tool. But what still vexes me is the incorporation of the database. What does one do in UML to show table structure? Stored procedures? So on and so forth."}
{"_id": "244477", "title": "Is it possible to have a mutable type that is not garbage collected?", "text": "I'm wondering if such a thing can exist. Can there be an object that is mutable but not flagged as garbage collected ( specifically, tp_flags & Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC ) I have a C++ struct-like object that I'm writing and I'd like to know if all of its members are immutable. I'm thinking of checking for the Py_TPFLAGS_HAVE_GC flag to determine this. If all members are immutable I want to speed up the deepcopy by doing a faster shallow copy, since I know members are immutable then it shouldn't have to go through an expensive deep copy. Is this logically sound, or is there some mythical type that will blow me out of the water here."}
{"_id": "244476", "title": "What is decoupling and what development areas can it apply to?", "text": "I recently noticed decoupling as a topic in a question, and want to know what it is and where it can apply. By \"where can it apply\", I mean: Is it only relevant where compiled languages like C and Java are involved? Should I know about / study it as a web developer?"}
{"_id": "244472", "title": "Modern.IE VM license", "text": "Microsoft provides some VMs for testing purposes (advertised on StackOverflow) and I'm trying to understand the license terms. The one I don't really understand is > 1.b. You may use the software for testing purposes only. You may not use the > software for commercial purposes. My thoughts: a) Testing a website in several browsers on several different virtual machines seems a quite professional approach. I hardly believe many private developers would do that. Of course they should, but which private developer has the time to do so? b) If that's really only available to private developers, what is the offer to companies doing the same thing? I am missing the advertisement for a paid service. My question as a non-native English speaker: Is testing by a company considered as a commercial purpose? Can I use the VMs within a company for testing or not?"}
{"_id": "13443", "title": "Should source-code in textbooks and the like be translated?", "text": "A few weeks ago, my class was assigned to translate to Portuguese the book Real World Haskell. As I did the translation of the text and comments, I started to wonder if I should translate the code as well, as the instructor suggested. For example:               data BookInfo = Book Int String [String]                   deriving Show would become               data InfoLivro = Livro Int String [String]                    deriving Show Since I haven't read any software-related books in Portuguese, I don't know if that's a common practice, neither if it should be done this way. In the end, the code is a language mix (perhaps the example in Haskell is not a good one, since you can create synonyms quickly like `type CadeiaDeCaracteres = String`, but you get the point). So it doesn't really matter how hard you try, you'll have to rely on the reader previous experience with some sort of basic English words. Knowing this, I really don't see the point in translating code, since we learn in the early days of our coding life it should be written in the universal language. Nevertheless, if the surrounding text (comments, for example, and text itself in a book) needs to be translated, what is possible and feasible in this matter? Can you provide me with some guidance of what to do?"}
{"_id": "152547", "title": "Should I tell a departed coworker about their \"sev 1\" defect?", "text": "I had a co-worker leave our company recently. Before leaving, he coded a component that had a severe memory leak that caused a production outage (`OutOfMemoryError` in Java). The problem was essentially a `HashMap` that grew and never removed entries, and the solution was to replace the `HashMap` with a cache implementation. From a professional standpoint, I feel that I should let him know about the defect so he can learn from the error. On the other hand, once people leave a company, they often don't want to hear about legacy projects that they have left behind for bigger and better things. What is the general protocol for this sort of situation?"}
{"_id": "254281", "title": "Emacs stops taking input when a file has changed on disk", "text": "I'm using Emacs v24.3.1 on Windows 8. I had a file change on disk while I had an Emacs buffer open with that file. As soon as I attempt to make a change to the buffer, a message appears in the minibuffer.               Fileblah.txt changed on disk; really edit the buffer? (y, n, r or C-h)       I would expect to be able to hit `r` to have it reload the disk version of the file, but nothing happens. Emacs completely stops responding to input. None of the listed keys work, nor do any other keys as far as I can tell. I can't `C-g` out of the minibuffer. `Alt-F4` doesn't work, not does `Close window` from the task bar. I have to kill the process from task manager. Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong here? In cases it's various modes not playing nice with each other, for reference, my init.el is here. Nothing complex. Here's the breakdown:   * better-defaults (ido-mode, remove menu-bar, uniquify buffer `forward, saveplace)   * recentf-mode   * custom frame title   * visual-line-mode   * require final newline and delete trailing whitespace on save   * Markdown mode with auto-mode-alist   * Flyspell with Aspell backend   * Powershell mode with auto-mode-alist   * Ruby auto-mode-alist   * Puppet mode with auto-mode-alist   * Feature (Gherkin) mode with auto-mode-alist The specific file was a markdown file with Github-flavored Markdown mode and Flyspell mode enabled."}
{"_id": "152541", "title": "When is an object oriented program truly object oriented?", "text": "Let me try to explain what I mean: Say, I present a list of objects and I need to get back a selected object by a user. The following are the classes I can think of right now:               ListViewer          Item          App [Calling class]      In case of a GUI application, usually click on a particular item is selection of the item and in case of a command line, some input, say an integer representing that item. Let us go with command line application here. A function lists all the items and waits for the choice of object, an integer. So here, I get the choice, is choice going to conceived as an object? And based on the choice, return back the object in the list. Does writing this program like the way explained above make it truly object oriented? If yes, how? If not, why? Or is the question itself wrong and I shouldn't be thinking along those lines?"}
{"_id": "152540", "title": "multitenancy with some data sharing", "text": "I'm in the planning stages of a new webapp, and I am leaning strongly toward a multitenancy model. The app has a file storage function, where the user can upload (and operate on) files. I would like the ability of the user to share these files, however. How is this typically accomplished in a multi-tenant model? The example would be something like google docs. Each user has their own files; they can edit and tag and build collections with these files. Then, they can share a doc or a collection with someone else for collaboration. If every user has their own Database and tables, what strategy would one use to allow this kind of sharing while minimizing duplication of files and associated metadata?"}
{"_id": "53031", "title": "Should I use Ruby version 1.8.7 or 1.9.2 to start developing Rails apps?", "text": "I'm diving into RoR and I see that the current version of Rails (3.0.5) works with both 1.8.7 and 1.9.2. Currently, I have both versions of Ruby installed using RVM, but I'm wondering which version I should be using as I dive into Rails and start developing apps. I suppose I'd prefer to use the newest version (1.9.2), but I don't know the technologies well enough to know pros/cons of using either. Thanks so much!"}
{"_id": "131951", "title": "How to use BPMN and use case and other diagrams together", "text": "I asked this question on stackoverflow, but it seems this question is not suitable there, so I post here for discussion. BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notations) is used for modeling business process by visualization, thus making intangible ideas become physically concrete through the expression of BPMN diagrams. The question is, **how do I organize the BPMN with the UML**. Initially, I thought of two ways to organize use cases and business process diagram:   * **1 to one/many:** By mapping each step (`step` here means each node in the BPMN digram) in the business process diagram with one or several use cases. Each use case is mapped with relevant several class diagrams/component diagrams (I prefer this one, since you can encapsulate a set of classes into one component which has input and output), several sequence diagrams (optional). After you have class diagrams/sequence diagrams, code is written/generated based on the model.    * **Many to one:** By mapping several steps into one use case. The subsequence steps are the same.   * **Many to many:** For example, one step in the business process can be mapped with two or more use cases, and the same two or more use cases can be mapped with other steps. The above methods can be done by the modeling tool, and in my case, I use Enterprise Architect from Sparx System. I discover it recently and I am using its trial, but I will buy it in the future. I can organize many use case diagrams with one step of the BPMN diagram, and can click to view the necessary use cases. However, I don't if it supports many to many cases. After thinking my own method for organizing BPMN and Use Cases, I searched the Internet, and found two other papers, each suggest the following method:   * **Turn each use case into each step of BPMN diagrams:** To visualize how refined use cases fit into the business process. I like this approach, since the business process with steps can be modeled, and later each step is turned into a use case. One step is one use case. This is the same with my one to one mapping above. Original presentation is here: Visualizing Use Case Sets as BPMN Processes ![Use case - BPMN mapping](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uxPpf.png)   * **Each use case is exactly a business process:** Each step in the use case is each step of the business process. Original paper is here: Describing Business Processes with Use Cases ![Use case is a process](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jpYVW.png) It seems to me that there's not standardized way of gluing these artifacts (BPMN and Use Cases and other digrams) together. Maybe it's a management problem and rely more on creative usage rather than follow a formal steps. **What are the usage of these diagrams together?**"}
{"_id": "62472", "title": "What is the genesis of the \"Golden Master\" term?", "text": "The name \"Golden Master\" evokes a level of martial arts proficiency or maybe even a final cut of a film. I think context clues provide adequate explanation of a Golden Master release. I would define it as the version of a software [product] that has been approved as the release version following a pre- determined phase of development completion and testing. If my definition is nearly accurate, what is the genesis of the term Golden Master? Apple is famous for their iOs, OSX GM candidate releases and I have yet to hear anyone else use the same term."}
{"_id": "96947", "title": "Why should I declare a class as an abstract class?", "text": "I know the syntax, rules applied to abstract class and I want know usage of an abstract class > Abstract class can not be instantiated directly but can be extended by other > class What is the advantage of doing so? How it is different from an Interface? I know that one class can implement multiple interfaces but can only extend one abstract class. Is that only difference between an interface and an abstract class? I am aware about usage of an Interface. I have learned that from Event delegation model of AWT in Java. **In which situations I should declare class as an abstract class? What is benefits of that?**"}
{"_id": "58661", "title": "Can an agile shop really score 12 on the Joel Test?", "text": "I really like the Joel test, use it myself, and encourage my staff and interviewees to consider it carefully. However I don't think I can ever score more than 9 because a few points seem to contradict the Agile Manifesto, XP and TDD, which are the bedrocks of my world. Specifically: the questions about schedule, specs, testers and quiet working conditions run counter to what we are trying to create and the values that we have adopted in being genuinely agile. So my question is whether it possible for a true Agile shop to score 12? **Edit:** On recommendation from an answerer below I am adding a link to my blog where I originally wrote about this and which led to me wanting to post the question here. http://simonpalmer.com/2011/03/16/why-i-will-never-score-more-than-9-on-the- joel-test/ I'm putting this in because I agree with much of what has been said below and I wanted to declare my full position."}
{"_id": "160086", "title": "Should a github maintainer rewrite author's in pull requests?", "text": "I'm not a programmer by profession, but I do some coding and have used github some. I've run across what I find to be a surprising situation. I'm very familiar with git. There is a project which I found a (small) bug in that was affecting me. I spent an afternoon finding and fixing it. I forked the repository, commit the change, and issued a pull request. After seeing that it was closed as \"Merged into development branch\" I figured all was well. I was browsing the repo today getting ready to remove my branch, and I can't find where the commit was merged into the maintainer's repo at all. After some time I realize it's been added as a commit, but the author is no longer me. As far as I can tell the only way to do that would be to specifically use a rebase, amend, or other history rewrite to remove the original author. This seems very wrong to me. At best it's confusing, at worst the author of this repo is taking credit for everyone's commits and then the history of the original contributor is lost. Again it's a small bug, I don't use this for my professional resume, it just seems dishonest. Is this normal? Should I say something about it? Edit: The general feeling seems to be that I should go ask, so I'll do just that this morning. As per the request below. I've checked and my code exists and was applied exactaly as I wrote it (including the comment). I verified that both the committer and author have been changed. There was one additional change also added at the same time as my changes. It's a single line, which would affect the patch as well as other code before it. IE the one line addition is not related to the bug I was fixing. **Update** It seems the answer was that the author maintains a development branch and does not want to merge from his master branch into it. He re- authored my commit to avoid a merge. I wasn't concerned with the original branch b/c git's plenty powerful to cherry-pick, rebase, and merge commits around as needed. Is this typical on github?   Should I be contacting the maintainer of a project to ask which branch to apply patches to?"}
{"_id": "11975", "title": "I want to start using TDD. Any tips for a beginner?", "text": "I never used an automated test mechanism in any of my projects and I feel I'm missing a lot. I want to improve myself, so I have to start tackling some issues I've been neglecting like this and trying Git instead of being stuck on SVN. What's a good way to learn TDD? I'll probably be using Eclipse to program in Java. I've heard of JUnit, but I don't know if there's anything else I should consider."}
{"_id": "58667", "title": "I'm scared for my technical phone interview for an internship!", "text": "[EDIT 2.0 ]Hello everyone. This is my second phone interview for a development internship. My very first one was okay, but I didn't get my dream internship. Now, I'm facing fears about this upcoming interview. My fears include the following:   1. I'm 19 years old. The thought of 2 lead developers interviewing me makes me think that I'll know so little of what they'd want me to know. Like they will expect so much.   2. I'm a junior having these panic attacks that I did not get in the other internship. I have a little voice saying \"You didn't get the other one. What makes you think you'll get this one?\".   3. I'm scared that I'll freeze up, forget everything I know, and stutter like an idiot. I'm still traumatized by the last one, because I really really wanted that internship, and I even studied very hard for it. When I was in the interview, I was so nervous I couldn't think clearly. As a result, I didn't do as well as I know I could have. The minute I hung up, I even thought of a better solution to the interview question! Any tips for a soon-to-be intern (hopefully!)? Thank you! P.S. I'm preparing by using this guide for phone interviews."}
{"_id": "124436", "title": "Visual Studio c++ Windows forms?", "text": "I've been slacking off with learning how to program because I'm at my wits end trying to figure out the next step. I want to be able to create forms applications just to test random things and give myself the freedom I feel I have with javascript, which is why I learned it and am as comfortable with it as I am. I have no clue, however, what to do in Visual C++. I'm staring at an ugly, gray, blank form right now and have no clue what to click or what to write. I don't know how to find any tutorials either, as it's quite a specific request (c++, visual basic, windows forms). Does anyone have any advice for me? thanks"}
{"_id": "124434", "title": "What is ethical/unethical while seeking help on the web with programming assignments?", "text": "I have used the web and Stack Overflow extensively during the past month or so in creating my final project for my C# class. I have used so much code that I didn't write myself that I feel I am being unethical by not giving proper credit to the people who helped me; or the websites that have provided excellent examples. Is it unethical to publish work which was created by me, even though its hardest problems were solved by other people? Should I credit these people for helping me with my assignment? Or the web sites which provided examples?"}
{"_id": "175411", "title": "Programming Interview : How to debug a program?", "text": "I was recently asked the following question in an interview : > How do you debug a C++ program ? I started by explaining that programs may have syntax and semantic errors. Compiler reports the syntax errors which can be corrected. For semantic errors, various debuggers are available. I specifically talked about gdb, which is command line, and Visual Studio IDE's debugger, which has a GUI, and common commands. I also talked about debug and release version of code, how assertions should be used for debug build, how exceptions helps in automatic cleanup & putting the program in valid state, and how logging can be useful (e.g. using std::clog). I want to know if this answer is complete or not. Also, I want to hear how other people will go about answering this question in a structured manner ? Thanks."}
{"_id": "175417", "title": "Automatic static analysis vs White box testing", "text": "Many sources note that automatic static code analysis include data flow and control flow. But these two are included in white box testing as well. Is there a difference in the automation? That in automatic static analysis all is done by the tools while in white box testing, a person creates the data to exercise the possible paths?"}
{"_id": "232030", "title": "How do I stop designing and start architecting this project as suggested by my lead?", "text": "I'm a junior developer (~3 years' exp.) and at my job we're in the process of architecting a new system. My lead developer will be the principal architect, however he's challenged me to try architecting the system myself (in parallel). Over the course of a few iterations of brainstorming ideas and proposing what I saw as architecture suggestions, my lead has given me the feedback that most of what I've been doing was \"designing\" and not \"architecting\". He described the difference as architecture being implementation-agnostic whereas a design is the description of an implementation. He said I need to take off my designer hat and put on my architect hat. He gave me a little bit of advice on how to do so, but I would like to ask you as well: **How do I get out of software designer mode and start thinking more like an architect?** * * * Here are some **examples** of \"designs\" I came up with that weren't seen as relevant to the architecture by my lead:   1. I came up with an algorithm for loading and unloading resources from our system and my lead said that algorithms are categorically not architecture.   2. I came up with a set of events the system should be raising and in what order it should raise them, but this too didn't seem to cut it as architecture. I seem to be getting caught up in the details and not stepping back far enough. I find that even when I come up with something that is at an architecture level, I often got there by trying out various implementations and mucking around in the details then generalizing and abstracting. When I described this to my lead, he said that I was taking the wrong approach: I needed to be thinking \"top down\" and not \"bottom up\". * * * Here are some more **specific details about the project** :   * The project we're architecting is a web application.   * I'm estimating around 10-100 thousand lines of code.   * We're a start up. Our engineering team is about 3-5 people.   * The closest thing I could compare our application to is a lightweight CMS. It has similar complexity and deals largely with component loading and unloading, layout management, and plug-in style modules.   * The application is ajax-y. The user downloads the client once then requests data as it needs it from the server.   * We will be using the MVC pattern.   * The application will have authentication.   * We aren't very concerned about old browser support (whew!), so we're looking to leverage the latest and greatest that is out there and will be coming out. (HTML5, CSS3, WebGL?, Media Source Extensions, and more!)  * * * Here are some **goals of the project** :   * The application needs to scale. In the near term our users will be on the order of hundreds to thousands, but we're planning for tens of thousands to millions and beyond.   * We hope the application will be around forever. This isn't a temporary solution. (Actually we already have a temporary solution, and what we're architecting is the long-term replacement for what we have).   * The application should be secure as it may have contact with sensitive personal information.   * The application needs to be stable. (Ideally, it'd be stable around the level of gmail but it doesn't need to be at the extreme of a Mars rover.)"}
{"_id": "164976", "title": "Dealing with \"I-am-cool-and-you-are-dumb\" manager", "text": "I have been working with a software company for about 6 months now. I like the projects I work on there and I really like all the people there except for 1 guy. That guy is technically smart, and he is a co-founder of the company. He is an okay guy in person (the kind you wouldn't want to care about much) but things get tricky when he is your manager. In general I am all okay but there are times when I feel I am not being treated fairly:   * He doesn't give much thought to when he makes mistakes and when I do something similar, he is super critical. Recently he went as far as to say \"I am not sure if I can trust you with this feature\". The detais of this specific case are this: I was working on this feature, and I was already a couple of hours over my normal working hours, and then I decided to stop and continue tomorrow. We use git, and I like to commit changes locally and only push when I feel they are ready. This manager insists that I push all the changes to the central repo (in case my hard drive crashes). So I push the change, and the ticket is marked as \"to be tested\". Next day I come in, he sits next to me and starts complaining and says that I posted above. I really didn't know what to say, I tried to explain to him that the ticket is still being worked upon but he didn't seem to listen.   * He interrupts me in-between when I am coding, which I do not mind, but when I do that same, his face turns like this :| and reacts as if his work was super important and I am just wasting his time. He asks me to accumulate all questions, and then ask him altogether which is not always possible, as you need a clarification before you can continue on a feature implementation. And when I am coding, he talks on the phone with his customers next to me (when he can go to the meeting room with his laptop) and doesn't care.   * He made me switch to a whole new IDE (from Netbeans to a commercial IDE costing a lot of money) for a really tiny feature (which I later found out was in Netbeans as well!). I didn't make a big deal out of it as I am equally comfortable working with this new IDE, but I couldn't get the science behind his obsession. He said this feature makes sure that if any method is updated by a programmer, the IDE will turn the method name to red in places where it is used. I told him that I do not have a problem since I always search for method usage in the project and make sure its updated. IDEs even have refactoring features for exactly that, but...   * I recently implemented a feature for a project, and I was happy about it and considering him a senior, I asked him his comments about the implementation quality.. he thought long and hard, made a few funny faces, and when he couldn't find anything, he said \"ummm, your program will crash if JS is disabled\" - he was wrong, since I had made sure it would work fine with default values even if JS was disabled. I told him that and then he said \"oh okay\". BUT, the funny thing is, a few days back, he implemented something and I objected with \"But that would not run if JS is disabled\" and his response was \"We don't have to care about people who disable JS\" :-/   * Once he asked me to investigate if there was a way to modify a CMS generated menu programmatically by extending the CMS, I did my research and told him that the only was is to inject a menu item using JavaScript / jQuery and his reaction was \"ah that's ugly, and hacky, not acceptable\" and two days later, I see that feature implemented in the same way as I had suggested. The point is, his reaction was not respectful at all, even if what I proposed was hacky, he should be respectful, that I know what's hacky and if I am suggesting something hacky, there must be a reason for it. There are plenty of other reasons / examples where I feel I am not being treated fairly. I want your advice as to what is it that I am doing wrong and how to deal with such a situation. The other guys in the team are actually very good people, and I do not want to leave the job either (although I could, if I want to). All I want is respect and equal treatment. I have thought about talking to this guy in a face to face meeting, but that worries me that his attitude might get worse and make things more difficult for me (since he doesn't seem to be the guy who thinks he can be wrong too). I am also considering talking to the other co-founder but I am not sure how he will take it (as both founders have been friends forever). Thanks for reading the long message, I really appreciate your help."}
{"_id": "124439", "title": "What kind of interface should a double container offer?", "text": "I want to write a class which offers two sequences of elements to its users. The first one (lets call it \"primary\") is the main of the class and will be use 80% of the time. The second one (lets call it \"secondary\") is less important, but still need to be in the same class. The question is: what interface should the class offer to its users? By looking at STL style, a class with a single sequence of elements should offer begin() and end() functions for traversal and function like insert() and erase() for modifications. But how should my class offer the second sequence? For now, I have two ideas:   * Expose the two containers to the user (what about the Law of Demeter ?)   * Provide the main container with STL interface and expose only the second one. Here is an example.               #include <vector>          class A {          public:             std::vector<int>&  primary();             std::vector<char>& secondary();              private:             std::vector<int>  m_primary;             std::vector<char> m_secondary;     };          class B {          public:             std::vector<int>::iterator begin();             std::vector<int>::iterator end();             std::vector<char>& secondary();              private:             std::vector<int>  m_primary;             std::vector<char> m_secondary;     };          // Classes implementation     // ...          int main() {              // --------------------------------------------------         // Case 1         // --------------------------------------------------              A a;              for(auto it = a.primary().begin(); it != a.primary().end(); ++it) {             // ...         }            for(auto it = a.secondary().begin(); it != a.secondary().end(); ++it) {             // ...         }                 // --------------------------------------------------         // Case 2         // --------------------------------------------------              B b;              for(auto it = b.begin(); it != b.end(); ++it) {             // ...         }            for(auto it = b.secondary().begin(); it != b.secondary().end(); ++it) {             // ...         }        }      What is the more C++ish way to do that? Is one best than the other or is there an other solution? ## Context This problem came in the context of an exercise in which I am writing a simple database access framework. Here are the classes involved in the question:   * table   * column   * row   * field The table class consists of a sequence of columns and an other sequence of rows. The main use of the table is manipulating (access, add and remove) the rows. Deeper in the hierarchy, a row is made of column and field so a user can ask the value (field) corresponding to a given column or column name. Each time a column is add/modify/remove from the table, every rows will need to be modify to reflect the modification. I want the interface to be simple, extensible and combining well with existing code (like STL or Boost)."}
{"_id": "237609", "title": "Why don't more languages have the ability to compare a value to more than one other value?", "text": "Consider the following:               if(a == b or c)      In most languages, this would need to be written as:               if(a == b or a == c)      which is slightly cumbersome and repeats information. I know my above sample syntax is slightly clunky, but I am sure there are better ways to convey the idea. Why don't more languages offer it? Is there performance or syntax issues?"}
{"_id": "118923", "title": "What's the best way to learn image processing?", "text": "I'm a senior in college that hasn't done much image processing before (except for some basic image compression on smartphones). I'm starting a research project on machine learning next semester that would require some biomedical image processing. What's the best way to get up to speed with the basics of image processing in about two months? Or is this impractical? It's my impression that once I'm good with the basics learning more from other resources would be easier."}
{"_id": "237600", "title": "UML Diagram for Locations of Components", "text": "I am about to deploy a new project that will have different components being deployed on different servers and in different web sites/technologies/etc. I was just wondering what would be the best way to communicate this with the business? I want to show that Service X will exist on server Y as a Windows Service and Service Z will exist on server Q as a .NET web service etc."}
{"_id": "237602", "title": "Enforcing coding standards: What are the trade-offs of different methods?", "text": "Our team has recently agreed on some very light coding standards, and that we need a means of enforcing them. We already have a mature Continuous Integration practice including frequent, small check-ins and pre-tested commits. We're considering two methods for implementing an enforcement mechanism: a pre-commit SVN hook, or a dedicated build configuration on the CI server. Here's the trade-offs we've considered so far:   * An SVN hook ...      * (-) requires SVN server admin privileges to setup, which we don't have. We can work with IT, but avoiding the overhead is nice.     * (-) points to a script, which we'd like to keep under version control with the rest of the product. I don't immediately know how to point at the correct hook-script, taking into account branches, tags, and trunk work.     * (-) requires more work for reporting. The script would need to handle both generating and publishing the report.     * (+) gives quick feedback.     * (+/-) provides hard enforcement: the code checks-in, or it doesn't . Usually a good thing (it's called \"enforcement\" for a reason), but may give false positives.   * The CI build configuration ...      * (-) consumes time on both the CI server and an agent. Might be trivial, but does add up.     * (-) introduces some extra latency, making feedback less immediate.     * (+) easily handles standards that evolve over time, by pointing to the version of the script that exists in whichever branch we're working on.     * (+) provides easier reporting. We already use the CI system for other reports. Adding a new one would be straight-forward.     * (+) configurable enforcement: easier to soften the requirements, if necessary. We could collect a list of violations to fix out-of-band, or provide warnings about standards we're adopting on a trial basis. What are the trade-offs of these different methods in enforcing coding standards here? **Related** : Should coding standards be enforced by the CI server? \\- Raises some good points, but doesn't consider SVN hooks."}
{"_id": "13190", "title": "Is it possible to work with distrusting clients", "text": "One of our junior developers has been assigned a new client (we don't have the client yet, we're still working with him to see if we can meet his needs) and the junior developer said the client will hire us if we can do the work on his project without getting access to his server. I've had a direct conversation with the client who turned out to have had his code stolen before by some offshore company that he outsourced. This made me more sympathetic but I still have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I want to prove to the client that we're not all bad apples. Also if we do a good job with him, we get a loyal client who'll hire us for all his projects. I haven't heard of this happen before but I guess it happens more often than we'd all like to admit. On the other hand I'm hesitant to accept working with him because deployment time is going to be a nightmare and no where in my career or education has anyone taught me how to work with clients like him. I (or the junior developer) would have to write a detailed description of exactly what to do with the source to deploy it and that is an annoying burden when I could deploy and test the whole thing in an hour myself. As I said, I've never had to deal with this before (we're signing a non- disclosure but apparently so did the offshore company before us). We're not fully fully booked so it's not like I have an immediate replacement, but we're not begging for work either and I wonder if working under such restricted environment is worth the trouble. Another side is that the experience itself could be rewarding for us, but is it experience worth having, as in what's even the likelihood of getting a similar client anytime soon. Are we even expected to comply with such clients? So since I don't have any first hand experience with this and it definitely wasn't covered in school, how would those with longer experience working with clients deal with a distrusting client like this? Would you even accept the job?"}
{"_id": "237604", "title": "Large MySQL Batch Inserts From PHP: Run insert from script, or save as SQL file?", "text": "We have a large dataset that's current residing in many, many spreadsheets.   I've been tasked with getting part of that data into our MySQL DB.   When all is said and done, I will probably be inserting somewhere around 3 million rows. I intend to collect the inserts into batches of about a quarter-million or so (parsing through it with PHP).   Initially, my plan was to just run/send those batch INSERTs straight from my script.   More recently, though, I thought about actually writing out the INSERTs to _.sql_ files for later importing. I tried to google around on this a little ... didn't find much.   Are there any real pro's/con's one way or the other?   If not, I'm inclined to stick with my original plan.   Otherwise, I'm completely open to suggestions."}
{"_id": "120956", "title": "How to build completely modular web applications", "text": "In the coming months we're going to begin a project where we take a system we've built for a client (v1) and rebuild it from scratch. Our goal with v2 is to make it modular, so that this specific client will have their own set of modules they use, then another client may use a different set of modules altogether. The trick here is that Company A might have a series of checkout and user modules that change how that system works. Company B might stick with the standard checkout procedure but customize how products are browsed. What are some good approaches to application architecture when you're building an application from scratch that you want to have a `Core` that's shared among all clients while still maintaining the flexability for anything to be modified specifically for a client? I've seen CodeIgniter's hooks and don't think that's a good solution as we could end up with 250 hooks and it's still not flexible enough. What are some other solutions? Ideally we won't need to draw a line in the sand."}
{"_id": "128735", "title": "Are there any frameworks available for drawing with CSS?", "text": "I realize this sounds silly. Let me explain: I just came across this page about using CSS elements to create shapes- square, circle, triangle, star, yin-yang (yin-yang!), etc. using pseudo elements. Having struggled with HTML5 Canvas drawing in the past, I immediately thought that some combination of JavaScript and CSS pseudo-elements should be able to draw just about anything. So I first googled \"CSS Fractals\". No dice. Then \"JS Fractals\". Some dice, but not what I was looking for. Am I crazy, or is there potential here? jQuery can add and remove elements from the DOM by the thousands all day long. It seems to me that--given the existence of triangles via pure CSS--there is potential for a nice drawing mechanism (2D and 3D) sans Canvas. Any thoughts, frameworks, tutorials, white papers, etc would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "128734", "title": "Self-Executing Anonymous Function vs Prototype", "text": "In Javascript there are a few clearly prominent techniques for create and manage classes/namespaces in javascript. I am curious what situations warrant using one technique vs. the other. I want to pick one and stick with it moving forward. I write enterprise code that is maintained and shared across multiple teams, and I want to know what is the best practice when writing maintainable javascript ? I tend to prefer Self-Executing Anonymous Functions however I am curious what the community vote is on these techniques. **Prototype :**               function obj()     {     }          obj.prototype.test = function() { alert('Hello?'); };     var obj2 = new obj();     obj2.test();      **Self-Closing Anonymous Function :**               //Self-Executing Anonymous Function      (function( skillet, $, undefined ) {         //Private Property         var isHot = true;              //Public Property         skillet.ingredient = \"Bacon Strips\";              //Public Method         skillet.fry = function() {             var oliveOil;                  addItem( \"\\t\\n Butter \\n\\t\" );             addItem( oliveOil );             console.log( \"Frying \" + skillet.ingredient );         };              //Private Method         function addItem( item ) {             if ( item !== undefined ) {                 console.log( \"Adding \" + $.trim(item) );             }         }          }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery ));        //Public Properties           console.log( skillet.ingredient ); //Bacon Strips            //Public Methods      skillet.fry(); //Adding Butter & Fraying Bacon Strips           //Adding a Public Property      skillet.quantity = \"12\"; console.log( skillet.quantity ); //12             //Adding New Functionality to the Skillet      (function( skillet, $, undefined ) {         //Private Property         var amountOfGrease = \"1 Cup\";              //Public Method         skillet.toString = function() {             console.log( skillet.quantity + \" \" +                           skillet.ingredient + \" & \" +                           amountOfGrease + \" of Grease\" );             console.log( isHot ? \"Hot\" : \"Cold\" );          };               }( window.skillet = window.skillet || {}, jQuery ));     //end of skillet definition               try {         //12 Bacon Strips & 1 Cup of Grease         skillet.toString(); //Throws Exception      } catch( e ) {         console.log( e.message ); //isHot is not defined     }      I feel that I should mention that the Self-Executing Anonymous Function is the pattern used by the jQuery team. **Update** When I asked this question I didn't truly see the importance of what I was trying to understand. The real issue at hand is whether or not to use new to create instances of your objects or to use patterns which do not require constructors/use of the `new` keyword. I added my own answer, because in my opinion we should make use of patterns which don't use the `new` keyword. For more information please see my answer."}
{"_id": "125520", "title": "Why exclusively UNIX is taught at universities' operating systems courses?", "text": "I'm not sure this question can be asked here, but nevertheless. Almost each operating systems or systems programming course is taught using UNIX only. I wonder what are the reasons for this? Why Windows does not take at least a half of those courses?"}
{"_id": "225223", "title": "Push vs Poll when large delay (hours) is acceptable", "text": "It seems commonsense nowadays that polling is a bad practice and pushing is the way to go when developing mobile applications that require to constantly receive data from a remote server. All major mobile shops provide their version of a push notification service:   * Apple Push Notification Service   * Google Cloud Messaging for Android   * Microsoft Push Notification Service However I'm wondering to what extend this assumption is valid. I mean, if I have an application that polls a remote server only a couple of times a day, and to which \"notifications\" don't need to be delivered instantly (a large delay is acceptable), then would it be a good decision to poll for data instead of pushing it? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "128733", "title": "Tags or specify revision?", "text": "At my company, we have your typical svn structure. Each project has branches, tags and trunk.               repo     -Project A      * trunk      * branches      * tags     -Project B      * trunk      * branches      * tags     -Project C      * trunk      * branches      * tags     -Project D      * trunk      * branches      * tags     -Application 1      * trunk      * branches      * tags      So Project A is core functionality pretty much all of our other projects use. D may depend on C & B as well, and application 1 uses them all. Note that we have many more libraries and applications than I've illistrated above, but its all done the same way. The assemblies generated by building project A are included in needed library or application projects as externals. We've got quite a few libraries like this. What we've been doing after a release is tagging the RC branches we created for each project used by the application, and then these then become tags. Obviously this is a fair amount of work as we ensure that tags only point to other tags, and you start by creating the tag for Project A, making the other stuff point to that, etc., the idea being we want to branch from the tags should a patch release be required before our next feature release. Given the amount of effort that can be involved getting this all together, one proposal is to tag only the application's RC and for all the externals point to a specific revision. If we need to create a branch to fix one of the libraries, branch from that revision and do the work then. I'm not against this, as I would like to not have to spend the time getting all the tags for all the projects setup, but I wanted to ask, can anyone think of any pitfalls of this approach? Is there any reason to create these tags over just pinning to a specific revision?"}
{"_id": "128732", "title": "Can we compare programming languages ergonomically?", "text": "For instance, would Python be a more ergonomic programming language since it doesn't force you to make curly braces which requires the AltGr key. Also Python usually requires less code to achieve the same or am I being biased towards Python and PHP actually is an ergonomical and comfortable language despite forcing the programmer to use the AltGr key? Isn't forcing the programmer to use the AltGr key not very ergonomical?"}
{"_id": "85049", "title": "c++ makefile importance and cross platform", "text": "I'm new to c++ and I wanted to know few questions regarding makefile. 1) Is writing makefile really important ? I mean there are many IDE's which does this automatically. Also, do people in programming job write makefiles or do they use automation? 2) Should I learn GNU make or something else like cmake or other ? Can anyone point of pros and cons of these?"}
{"_id": "255620", "title": "Is it fair to patent workarounds?", "text": "While developing a FAT32 driver for my bootloader, I thought to make it complete by adding the long file name support.   While watching around for some specification, and I also found articles about Microsoft suing for infringement of their patents on something that basically is a workaround.   Knowing about this events made me think: is it fair to patent things _that are_ workarounds?"}
{"_id": "213960", "title": "Is it legal to distribute EXEs inside system32 folder with my product", "text": "I'm developing a product related to printing. To work it properly in all windows versions I need to include few exe (lpr.exe) files from system32 folder. So I need to know it is legal to distribute these exe file with my product."}
{"_id": "172965", "title": "Picking a code review tool", "text": "We are a startup looking to migrate from Fogbugz/Kiln to a new issue tracker/code review system. We are very happy with Jira, especially the configurability, but we are undecided on a code review tool. We have been trialing Bitbucket, but it doesn't fit our workflow well. Here are the problems we have identified with BB:   1. Comments can be hard to find:      * when commenting on code not visible in the diff     * when code that is commented on is later changed     * viewing the full file doesn't include comments (also doesn't show changes)     * Viewing comments on individual commits can be a pain   2. We have the implementer merge the diff and close the issue, whereas pull requests are more suited to the open source model where someone with commit rights merges   3. We would like to automate creation of the code review (either from Jira or a command line tool)   4. No syntax highlighting   5. Once the pull request exceeds a certain size, BB won't show the whole thing and you have to view individual commits   6. Linking BB pull requests to Jira issues is a bit janky: we have a pull request URL field on Jira, but this doesn't work when there are changes in multiple repositories Does anyone have any good suggestion given the above? We are tight on budget, and Jira integration is a big plus. We also have multiple commits per issue, and would like to have the option of viewing individual commits in the review. It might also be worth noting that we have a separate reviewer and tester for each issue."}
{"_id": "48421", "title": "Best practices for documenting ASP.NET code", "text": "Any preferences for Asp.Net programmers on how to document their code? I read XML with Sandcastle is a good way to go. What do you use?"}
{"_id": "64683", "title": "What is this domain of study?", "text": "Suppose I have a situation where I'm designing a website for a shoe reseller. They have different brands and kinds of shoes and of course, they want a really good search function. So there are different properties that shoes can have. They can have exclusive properties, such as size, width, gender, and children's/adults'. Or they can have non-exclusive properties such as color (there could be two or more colors on a shoe). Some categories might conflict with certain others, such as 'dress' and 'casual' (a shoe cannot be both a dress shoe and a sneaker (ignoring \"comfort\" dress shoes for this example)), whereas they don't conflict with yet others, such as 'dress' and 'boot' (a shoe can be a dress boot). The exclusive properties are easy to model, but how about potentially conflicting properties? Would this be a problem for set theory? What would this kind of applied computer science be called, in general? Data modelling, or something more specific? I want to get into the more abstract philosophical principles, such as exclusive and non-exclusive properties, and see how those principles are implemented in code, data structures, and database schemas. A good example of what I'm talking about would be the modified preorder tree traversal algorithm. It's a great way to make a nested hierarchical categorization system. So you have a real-life organizational problem: categories, and then you have a data structure that models that problem. Where can I learn more about this type of stuff?"}
{"_id": "7325", "title": "Logical Operators", "text": "A typical curly brace programming lang has two types of AND and OR: logical and bitwise. `&&` and `||` for logical ops and `&` and `|` for bitwise ops. Logical ops are more commonly used than bitwise ops, why logical ops are longer to type? Do you think they should be switched?"}
{"_id": "10084", "title": "Any other guides out there like Why's Guide to Ruby and Learn You Haskell?", "text": "I was looking for some guides to start programming with, I'm a college student and I'm learning Ruby as my first language (Side-question, is that something good to start with?). I found _Why's guide to Ruby and I also found Learn You Haskell (which is of course not Ruby) and I was curious if there were any more guides/books like these, free and fun to read? Just for future reads and to know about. Will reading a book or guide actually teach me programming, do I just have to hop from one book to another until I understand the concepts because I feel like most books focus on theoretical stuff and I don't actually pick up much programming from them. Are there any \"just do it\" ways of learning programming? Like do I just sit here and start writing bad code until I get better or do I go out there and find some code and edit it? Because ultimately I want to write my own code but I want to see some good examples."}
{"_id": "78675", "title": "Math underpinnings of software testing?", "text": "In my software engineering course, we recently (briefly) covered testing. Over the course of the discussion some topics came up that made me wonder about the math underlying software testing (such as finer vs. coarser test sets, using equivalence classes to partition infinite input spaces into \"testable\" sets, etc). Are there any resources available exploring the math behind software testing?"}
{"_id": "251445", "title": "docker-izing a classical db-based webapp - single or multiple containers?", "text": "I have a classic Java webapp. It is composed of a database (PostgreSQL), a servlet container (Tomcat) and my code (deployed on Tomcat as a *.war file). I want to package/deploy it using Docker (mostly for testing for now), but I'm unsure what would be the best way to \"map\" it. My initial idea was to have an app-in-a-box - define a container that has Java, Postgres and Tomcat on it, exposing just the http port. Further reading of the Docker docs shows that this, although possible (install and run supervisord as the single foreground process, have it start both Postgres and Tomcat) is probably not the intended usage. Going by the spirit of the tutorials I should probably create a container for Postgres, another for Tomcat, and a data-container to hold the application code (my *.war) and database files. This would mean 3+ containers (should the db files and *.war share the same data container?) What's the common practice here? Since I have no previous experience with Docker, what pitfalls can I expect from each approach? Is there some other approach I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "224831", "title": "In PHP, should I delete objects immediately after use?", "text": "I've read in _PHP Advanced and Object Oriented Programming_ by Larry Ullman that it is good programming practice to delete object immediately after use but reason is given nowhere. I am a student web developer and objects in web applications are deleted automatically as soon as the script finishes. So, there seems no good reason to delete them manually. So, my question is what are the good reasons to delete unnecessary objects after use other that blindly following a convention?"}
{"_id": "164359", "title": "How come verification does not include actual testing?", "text": "Having read a lot about this topic --- such as on this Software Testing Fundamentals site on verification and validation and Software Testing and Quality Assurance: Theory and Practice by Naik and Tripathy \\--- I still do not get it. Verification should prove that you are building the product right, while validation proves that you built the right product. But only static techniques (code reviews, requirements checks...) are mentioned as being verification methods. How can you say if its implemented correctly if you do not test it? It is said that verification ensures that the product meet specified requirements. Again, if the function is specified to work somehow, only by testing I can say that it does. Could anyone explain this to me please?"}
{"_id": "202540", "title": "Is there industry demand for developers who have no GUI experience?", "text": "Is there still demand for developers who crate software without GUI's in the industry? Are jobs still in demand? I only ask because I write a lot of software for myself in C. I mainly use FreeBSD without a GUI. My software is for data mining, automation and marketing purposes most of the time as this is the field I work in. I find that a GUI is not needed and I feel comfortable working within a console. I've never worked for a company as a programmer, but in the industry do you have dedicated programmers who work exclusively on the GUI's and other who write the logic?"}
{"_id": "191847", "title": "Should lookup tables enumerating strings have an integer primary key?", "text": "When I learned relational databases, the prof said that one would \"almost always\" want an artificial int as the primary key in a table, but did not specify what the exceptions are. At some time I stopped using them for junction tables, and never had a problem. Now I am making a database with a lot of lookup tables, and wonder whether this is a case where leaving artificial keys out wouldn't make for a cleaner design and simple programming. A toy example: assume that this is a mockup of the UI I want to achieve. ![example for a UI view](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wkZCW.png) The design option with artificial IDs would be (Type is a foreign key):               LiteraryWork     Title                           Type     Winnie The Pooh                 1      The Nightingale and the Rose    2      Snowwhite                       2          LiteraryWorkType      ID TypeName      1  Novel      2  Fairy Tale      And the option without them uses the Type name itself as the key (again, the column Type is properly declared as a foreign key):               LiteraryWork     Title                           Type     Winnie The Pooh                 Novel      The Nightingale and the Rose    Fairy Tale      Snowwhite                       Fairy Tale           LiteraryWorkType      TypeName      Novel      Fairy Tale      I tend towards using the second option, because I would need one less join when showing data on the screen. (I don't want to get rid of the lookup table entirely because I want to be able to restrict the values users may enter, for example by giving them a drop-down list bound to the lookup table). The only disadvantage I can think of is that, when a stakeholder says \"but I want my UI to say 'story', not 'fairy tale'\", I would have to update all data rows in the `LiteraryWork` table. I can live with this, as I don't expect it to happen often in my case. Does the first design have any other advantages I am missing? Which of the two options is considered best practice, and why? **Edit2** As I understand it, the existing answers are afraid that I am trying to break normalization, as in               LiteraryWork     Title                           Type        LiteraryWorkTypeIsFiction     Winnie The Pooh                 Novel       Yes     The Nightingale and the Rose    Fairy Tale  Yes     Snowwhite                       Fairy Tale  Yes      To make it clear: the above is **not** what I am trying to do. Instead, if there really was more information pertaining to LiteraryWorkType, and I was using string IDs, I would record it this way:               LiteraryWork     Title                           Type     Winnie The Pooh                 Novel      The Nightingale and the Rose    Fairy Tale      Snowwhite                       Fairy Tale           LiteraryWorkType      TypeName         IsFiction     Novel            Yes     Fairy Tale       Yes     Conference paper No      The only difference to the \"typical\" database design would be that the ID is a nvarchar, not an integer. Which certainly has its drawbacks in storage needed, as pointed out, but I don't see which normalization rule it is supposed to hurt. But this example aside, I am not trying to use string IDs when there actually is more information to be recorded about a LiteraryWorkType (so that LiteraryWorkType should be considered an entity in its own right). I am speaking about cases as simple as the toy example I gave at the beginning: the whole second table exists only because SQL has no \"enum\" type, and each data record in it consists of nothing but a single word, unique between records."}
{"_id": "191840", "title": "How web-servers identify a client", "text": "I have seen on some sites which say ,for-example, multiple votes/views from same computer will be neglected/penalized etc. For-example liking a facebook page, or youtube video from same computer(different accounts) will not increase its worth(according to my knowledge). How do these sites identify bogus votes? I just need a direction."}
{"_id": "191849", "title": "Any performance advantage in copying the session to a variable?", "text": "I have a fair number of items in a session, and I am wondering if there are any advantages to copying the session variable to a normal php variable (in order to close the session file as quickly as possible) and then do any calls from there. Something like:               session_start();     $copiedSession = $_SESSION;     session_write_close();     if (isset($copiedSessionData['foo'])){         ...     }     ...        1. I am looking for ways to test performance on this.   2. Does it make sense to do so?   3. Is there a break-even point where it helps / doesn't help?"}
{"_id": "191848", "title": "Are there standard style guides for PHP?", "text": "I've been working in a very small team for PHP development and we've been using an ad-hoc, \"Invented Here\" style guide. Now that our team and codebase is growing, we would like to use a more broadly-used style guide that would be, if not an official standard, a de facto standards used in many PHP communities. Does such a thing exist as it exists in the C/C++/Java/Javascript/etc. circles ?"}
{"_id": "178262", "title": "Why Open-Source Code?", "text": "What reasons to companies have for open-sourcing libraries and applications? Doing this may allow a developer to better understand the code, but could doing this allow people to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the library or application?"}
{"_id": "252779", "title": "Why would I use ElasticSearch if I already use a graph database?", "text": "I don't find any deep explanation on the web about a comparison between ElasticSearch and the graph databases. Both are optimized to traverse data.   ElasticSearch seems to be optimized for analytics.   However Neo4j is also based on Lucene to manage indexes and some fulltext features. Why would I use ElasticSearch if I already use a graph database ? In my case, I'm using Neo4j to build a social network.   What real benefit may ElasticSearch bring? **UPDATE ----------** I've just found this paragraph: > There are myriad cases in which elasticsearch is useful. Some use cases more > clearly call for it than others. Listed below are some tasks which for which > elasticsearch is particularly well suited. > > Searching a large number of product descriptions for the best match for a > specific phrase (say \u201cchef\u2019s knife\u201d) and returning the best results Given > the previous example, breaking down the various departments where \u201cchef\u2019s > knife\u201d appears (see Faceting later in this book) Searching text for words > that sound like \u201cseason\u201d Auto-completing a search box based on partially > typed words based on previously issued searches while accounting for mis- > spellings Storing a large quantity of semi-structured (JSON) data in a > distributed fashion, with a specified level of redundancy across a cluster > of machines It should be noted, however, that while elasticsearch is great > at solving the aforementioned problems, it\u2019s not the best choice for others. > It\u2019s especially bad at solving problems for which relational databases are > optimized. Problems such as those listed below. > > Calculating how many items are left in the inventory Figuring out the sum of > all line-items on all the invoices sent out in a given month Executing two > operations transactionally with rollback support Creating records that are > guaranteed to be unique across multiple given terms, for instance a phone > number and extension Elasticsearch is generally fantastic at providing > approximate answers from data, such as scoring the results by quality. While > elasticsearch can perform exact matching and statistical calculations, its > primary task of search is an inherently approximate task. Finding > approximate answers is a property that separates elasticsearch from more > traditional databases. That being said, traditional relational databases > excel at precision and data integrity, for which elasticsearch and Lucene > have few provisions. Can I assert that if I don't need approximate answers, then ElasticSearch would be useless compared to an already used graph database?"}
{"_id": "121608", "title": "How and where do I publish my open standard?", "text": "I have been writing an open standard for a protocol I am developing. As far as writing concerns I have it under control. But the main question is where can I publish such document. I have been searching on the internet and didn't find such site where I could upload a TXT or PDF file. I have no intention of keeping secrets and I would like people to read this and if possible make protocol better."}
{"_id": "176858", "title": "Is there something special about the number 65535?", "text": "2\u00b9\u2076-1 & 2\u2075 = 2\u2075 (or? obviously ?) A developer asked me today what is bitwise 65535 & 32 i.e. 2\u00b9\u2076-1 & 2\u2075 = ? I thought at first spontaneously 32 but it seemed to easy whereupon I thought for several minutes and then answered 32. 32 seems to have been the correct answer but how? 65535=2\u00b9\u2076-1=1111111111111111 (but it doesn't seem right since this binary number all ones should be -1(?)), 32 = 100000 but I could not convert that in my head whereupon I anyway answered 32 since I had to answer something. Is the answer 32 in fact trivial? Is in the same way 2\u00b9\u2076-1 & 2\u2075-1 =31? Why did the developer ask me about exactly 65535? Binary what I was asked to evaluate was 1111111111111111 & 100000 but I don't understand why 1111111111111111 is not -1. Shouldn't it be -1? Is 65535 a number that gives overflow and how do I know that?"}
{"_id": "136070", "title": "What are the advantages of separating 'result' from 'status'", "text": "Let's say you have some automated processes that generally go through the following states; scheduled - initiated - validating - executing - completed On top of that these processes can prematurely end because of an error or explicit user cancellation. My first impulse is to simply add _error_ and _cancelled_ to the list of possible status values, but I was wondering about the (conceptual) advantages of separating _result_ from _status_ (even though it seems to me that one might argue that error and cancelled are also simply different states than the _completed_ state)."}
{"_id": "4183", "title": "How much of your time at work is actually devoted to working?", "text": "A friend of mine told me that at a **very** big company, the programmers were told they are expected to actually work about 60% of the time **Added:** She meant 60% of the time they were at work, they are supposed to work, the rest if spent on surfing the web playing pool or ping pong or whatever, chatting, etc. I think I'm at about 70% How much do you?"}
{"_id": "119329", "title": "Aging vs. Coding Skills", "text": "A little background, since it can be part of my point fo view. I'm a C#/Java programmer with age of 23, coding since my 18's. I started studying C and working with Cobol, and after 1 year I quickly moved to C#/Java Web Development, and have worked with it in about 3/4 companies. (I've just moved again) In my (brief) professional career I encountered some older programmers, all the times it was very hard to work with them, since I was way better programmer than they. And it is not about just the language skills, some of them had seriously problems understanding basic logic. Now I wonder how theese programmer get jobs on the market since (I imagine) they have more expenses, and thus have to make more money, and are really counter-productives. In theese examples, others project member have to constantly keep stoping for helping them out. All the times, they eventually quit... So I wonder...   1. May the aging process slow down the learning rate and logic thinking?   2. Does the programmer has to, or at least should, move to a management area before getting old? **Please, my intention is not to be disrespectful with older persons. I am fully aware that this is NOT the case of all older programmers, I often see around very good old programmers on the net, I just never met them for close.**"}
{"_id": "119326", "title": "Is it possible to effectively develop PHP applications on Windows that will be deployed on servers running Linux?", "text": "Is it fine to code PHP on Windows and host it later on a server running Linux? Can there be any problems in the migration of such a project? I would think that there really can't be any problems, especially since I am a beginner in PHP and I won't use any of the advanced functions that may be OS- specific. However, I would like to make sure since I really don't like Linux at all."}
{"_id": "119325", "title": "Recommend Stanford Online Database Class?", "text": "I am taking the Stanford Online Machine Learning class which is outstanding. http://ml-class.org Is anyone taking the Stanford Online Database class: http://www.db-class.org? Does it seem useful if you have a few years of fairly simple database experience, but no formal education in the area? Or is it mostly academic and not relevant to developing and maintaining databases in the \"real world\"?"}
{"_id": "255523", "title": "Do else blocks increase code complexity?", "text": "Here is a **_very_ simplified example**. This isn't necessarily a language- specific question, and **I ask that you ignore the many other ways the function can be written, and changes that can be made to it.**. Color is of a unique type               string CanLeaveWithoutUmbrella()     {         if(sky.Color.Equals(Color.Blue))         {             return \"Yes you can\";         }         else         {             return \"No you can't\";         }     }      A lot of people I've met, ReSharper, and this guy (whose comment reminded me I've been looking to ask this for a while) would recommend refactoring the code to remove the `else` block leaving this: (I can't recall what the majority have said, I might not have asked this otherwise)               string CanLeaveWithoutUmbrella()     {         if(sky.Color.Equals(Color.Blue))         {             return \"Yes you can\";         }         return \"No you can't\";     }      **Question:** Is there an increase in complexity introduced by not including the `else` block? I'm under the impression the `else` more directly states intent, by stating the fact that the code in both blocks is directly related. Additionally I find that I can prevent subtle mistakes in logic, especially after modifications to code at a later date. Take this variation of my simplified example (Ignoring the fact the `or` operator since this is a purposely simplified example):               bool CanLeaveWithoutUmbrella()     {         if(sky.Color != Color.Blue)         {             return false;         }         return true;     }      Someone can now add a new `if` block based on a condition after the first example without immediately correctly recognizing the first condition is placing a constraint on their own condition. If an `else` block were present, whoever added the new condition would be forced to go move the contents of the `else` block (and if somehow they gloss over it heuristics will show the code is unreachable, which it does not in the case of one `if` constraining another). Of course there are other ways the specific example should be defined anyways, all of which prevent that situation, but it's just an example. The length of the example I gave may skew the visual aspect of this, so assume that space taken up to the brackets is relatively insignificant to the rest of the method. I forgot to mention a case in which I agree with the omission of an else block, and is when using an `if` block to apply a constraint that **must be** logically satisfied for **all** following code, such as a null-check (or any other guards)."}
{"_id": "50711", "title": "Video documentary on the open source culture?", "text": "I'm looking for some videos on these subjects:   1. A movie/documentary detailing the origin, history, and current state of open source culture    2. A movie/documentary on how open source software actually gets developed. What are the technical workflows. How do people create projects, recruit contributors, build a community, assign roles, track issues, assimilate new comers ... etc etc. Could someone suggest a title?"}
{"_id": "148959", "title": "Why aren't there other programming languages that compile to Python bytecode?", "text": "In Java, there are multiple languages that compile to Java bytecode and can run on the JVM -- Clojure, Groovy, and Scala being the main ones I can remember off the top of my head. However, Python also turns into bytecode (.pyc files) before being run by the Python interpreter. I might just be ignorant, but why aren't there any other programming languages that compile to python bytecode? Is it just because nobody bothered to, or is there some kind of inherent restriction or barrier in place that makes doing so difficult?"}
{"_id": "126070", "title": "How to build a .Net app which runs on desktop and as a Windows Service", "text": "Ok, I hope this is not too much confusing (with my poor English). I want to build a small .Net 4.0 app which monitors several other applications on a Windows Server OR on a regular Windows PC. It will have a WPF GUI with a variety of graphical controls. The app will be used in the following scenarios:   1. If installed on a PC it should run as a \u201cnormal\u201d single Windows desktop app   2. If installed on a Server, it should run as a Windows Service. To use/manage the app it must have the same WPF GUI as in scenario 1 and the GUI should be run on the Server or on a remote PC At the moment I consider to write the application logic and connect it to the WPF GUI using a self-hosted WCF Data Service IN BOTH SCENARIOS. Since I\u2019m not a pro developer I suppose it\u2019s possible that I've missed something ;-) Will this work? Are there other/better solutions? Any answer or comment is highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "148952", "title": "How much should app iphone or ipad development cost?", "text": "I'm an iOS developer (freelancer) and i want to know how much cost to build an app? and how should i do to estimate the price? like this app http://www.finalcad.fr/en/index.html"}
{"_id": "253250", "title": "Why do a lot of logging frameworks provide individual methods instead of a enum 'level'?", "text": "I see some of the more preferred logging frameworks like log4j, log4net etc all use 'trace, debug' etc methods. Why do they use these instead of methods that take something like a enum level?"}
{"_id": "127389", "title": "Does it make sense to use Kanban if all steps are done by the same person?", "text": "In our team all task's steps are always done by the same developer. I.e for task 1, person A does design, development, and testing; for task 2, person B does does design, development, and testing, etc. Does it make sense to use Kanban in this case?"}
{"_id": "200334", "title": "How to unit test a class which is just an adapter that logs input and output to a third-party library?", "text": "I have the following (in C#, but the question could also apply to Java):               public interface ILibraryAdapter     {         string Property1 { get; }         string Method1(string param1);         ...     }          public class ThirdPartyLibrary : ILibraryAdapter     {         private readonly ThirdPartyClass thirdPartyClass;         private readonly ILog log;              public ThirdPartyLibrary(ThirdPartyClass thirdPartyClass, ILog log)         {             this.thirdPartyClass = thirdPartyClass;             this.log = log;         }              public string Property1         {             get             {                 log.Trace(\"ThirdPartyClass.get_Property1()\");                 var result = thirdPartyClass.Property1;                 log.Trace(string.Format(\"ThirdPartyClass.get_Property1() returned {0}\", result));                 return result;             }         }              public string Method1(string param1)         {             log.Trace(string.Format(\"ThirdPartyClass.Method1({0})\", param1));             var result = thirdPartyClass.Method1(param1);             log.Trace(string.Format(\"ThirdPartyClass.Method1({0}) returned {1}\", param1, result));             return result;         }              ...     }      where the `...` represents more of properties and methods being wrapped and logged (about two dozen total). The separate calls to the logger in each method are part of the requirements. How should I unit test this class? **Note:** The names of the properties and methods of the third-party class do not always match the names of the properties and methods of ILibraryAdapter."}
{"_id": "129950", "title": "How to avoid \"DO YOU HAZ TEH CODEZ\" situations?", "text": "I have a strange situation at work, where a colleague of mine often asks me and other co-workers for working code. I would like to help him, but this constant request of trivial snippets interrupts my thoughts and sometimes makes it hard to concentrate. Plus, I have the impression (...) that this requests are generated by lack of competence, more than by laziness. In fact, he often asks things pretending to know the answer, since when I solve the problem he usually says things like \"Sure\", \"Yes, that's what I thought\", giving me the impression that my answer isn't worth it. How can I solve this embarrassing situation?   Should I show more explicitly in front of other colleagues his lack of knowledge (by saying things like: \"do it yourself if you can, please\") or continue giving him what he wants? I think that he should aggregate all his questions in one, so that I can give him a portion of my time and he can work all by himself on his things. There is no hierarchy in the team, I must say we both have a similar seniority of five years, more or less. For the same reason I believe I cannot report to management, since trivial questions are often ignored. I discussed with other two members and they agree with me: in fact he often ask things cycling through colleagues."}
{"_id": "127382", "title": "Pros and cons of using HTML5 vs frameworks for cross-platform mobile development", "text": "I'm going to start developing an app for my job, and I would like to know what is the best approach. The app will be a basic tracker for some application that we have, and since our employers uses both Android and Apple phones I don't want to develop the app twice just so it could work on both platforms. Is it worth developing an HTML5 app that could work on all the devices or should I use some the frameworks like appcelerator? Are there strong pros and cons for either approach?"}
{"_id": "245793", "title": "Is there any benefit to just artificially reducing WIP in a Kanban system?", "text": "So imagine this scenario: There is only 1 developer, who also is the bottleneck (testers, etc are busy on other contracts). There is a nontrivial backlog of tickets, most of which are blocked for not being reproducible, unintelligible requirements, unsolvable (with current ideas, staff and technologies). Is there any particular benefit to creating a system that parcels out the tickets to the sole developer one or two at a time? The system so far has immediately created slack on account of delays in assigning new tickets after current tickets are worked. When blocked tickets are assigned, they now sit on the developer's desk blocked until they are moved back to unassigned tickets. Are there any benefits to this \"artificial low-WIP\" system and how could/should it have been implemented?"}
{"_id": "230086", "title": "Help With Dependency Injection", "text": "I am still very confused as to why and when to use Dependency Injection. If anyone could explain maybe using the below example that would be great, any other explanations would be appreciated. Lets say I am creating a web-app that will save movie reviews written in C# with ASP.NET MVC 5. If I have the following **Model code** ,               namespace MovieReviewProject.Models         {          public class MovieReviews           {             [Key]             public int ReviewID_int{ get; set; }                  /// <summary>             /// Submitter email address             /// </summary>             public string EmailAddress_str{ get; set; }                  /// <summary>             /// Movie name             /// </summary>             public string MoveName_str{ get; set; }                  /// <summary>             /// The review             /// </summary>             public string Review_str { get; set; }                  /// <summary>             /// The submission date from             /// </summary>             public DateTime SubmissionDate_dt { get; set; }                  /// <summary>             /// The movie rating             /// </summary>             public int Rating_int { get; set; }         }     }      how would a class that provides the Controller with the List of all the reviews, adds an average for a movie, and more look like? I know that DI is mostly used to allow for easier unit testing but other than that what are the perks to it? Is it worth going through old projects and make sure all the providers are using this principal?"}
{"_id": "178486", "title": "What exactly does the condition in the MIT license imply?", "text": "To quote the license itself: > Copyright (C) [year] [copyright holders] > > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy > of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to > deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the > rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or > sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > > **The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software.** I am not exactly sure what the bold part implies. Lets say that I'm creating some library, and I license it under the MIT license. Someone decides to fork that library and to create a closed-source, commercial version. According to the license, he should be free to do that. However, what does he additionally need to do under those terms? Credit me as the creator? I guess the \"above copyright notice\" refers to the \"Copyright (C) [...\" part, but, wouldn't that list _me_ as the author of _his_ code (although I technically typed out the code)? And wouldn't including the \"permission notice\" in what is now _his_ library practically license it under the same conditions that I licensed my own library in? Or, am I interpreting this incorrectly? Does that refer to my obligations to include the copyright and the permission notice?"}
{"_id": "216879", "title": "Fixed Sized Buffer or Variable Buffers with C# Sockets", "text": "I am busy designing a TCP Server class in C# that has events and allows the user of the class to define packets that the server can send a receive by registering a class that is derived from my \"GenericPacket\" class. My TCPListener uses Async methods such as .BeginReceive(..); My issue is that because I am using the .BeginReceive(); I need to specify a buffer size when I call the function. This means I cant read the whole packet if one of my defined packets is too big. I have thought of creating a fixed sized Header that gets read using .BeginRead(); and the read the rest using Stream.Read(); but this will lead to the whole server having to wait for this operation to complete. I would like to know if anyone has come across this before and I would appreciate any suggestions."}
{"_id": "200338", "title": "Getting Started with Data Collection and Analysis", "text": "I have a very very limited understanding of SQL and PHP. I have a few projects I want to try and work on, which will require doing some web scraping for data collection and then storing, sorting through, and analyzing the data. I would like to also have this data available on my website so others can sort through it as well. My question is which direction I should go to learn the skills necessary for this. I am willing to put the time and effort in, but want to make sure I am going about it the right way. My first thought was to take an online Standford Intro to Databases course, then some web scraping tutorials, and then some PHP tutorials. I then stumbled onto the software called \"Orange\", which is \"Open source data visualization and analysis for novice and experts. Data mining through visual programming or Python scripting. Components for machine learning. Add-ons for bioinformatics and text mining. Packed with features for data analytics.\" Would it be better to scrap the SQL and PHP learning and focus on learning this \"Orange\" program? Or any other programs? Any help would be appreciated. I am willing to work hard at this, but do not want to spend a lot of time learning SQL and PHP if I should focus elsewhere."}
{"_id": "178488", "title": "LSP vs OCP / Liskov Substitution VS Open Close", "text": "I am trying to understand the SOLID principles of OOP and I've come to the conclusion that LSP and OCP have some similarities (if not to say more). > the open/closed principle states \"software entities (classes, modules, > functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification\". LSP in simple words states that any instance of `Foo` can be replaced with any instance of `Bar` which is derived from `Foo` and the program will work the same very way. I'm not a pro OOP programmer, but it seems to me that LSP is only possible if `Bar`, derived from `Foo` does not change anything in it but only extends it. That means that in particular program LSP is true only when OCP is true and OCP is true only if LSP is true. That means that they are equal. Correct me if I'm wrong. I really want to understand these ideas. Great thanks for an answer."}
{"_id": "151157", "title": "What is the equivalent word for \"compile\" in an interpreted language?", "text": "(I was encouraged to ask this question here.) In C, we say: > GCC _compiles_ `foo.c`. For interpreters (such as Lua), what is the equivalent verb? > The Lua interpreter **___ __ ___** `foo.lua`. When I write instructions for users of my Lua script, I often say: > Run the interpreter on `foo.lua`. I think this can be said more succinctly: > _Interpret_ (or _Translate_ ) `foo.lua`. but that sounds awkward for some reason (perhaps because I'm unsure of its correctness). I can't really say _compile_ because users may confuse it with the usage of the Lua compiler when I actually mean the Lua interpreter."}
{"_id": "126389", "title": "Beginners guide to developing optimization software", "text": "I am novice in \"serious\" programming i.e. applications that deal with real- life applications and software projects that go beyond school assignments. My interests include optimization, operations research, algorithms and lately i discovered how much I do like software design/development/engineering. I have already developed some simple desktop applications for some \"famous\" problems like TSP using heuristc approaches, a VRP solver (in progress) and so on. While developing this kind of software I actually used basic concepts taught at school such as object-orientation analysis and design. But, I found these courses rather elementary and quite boring (for my expectations). So I decided to go a little further and start developing \"real\" software (and this is where I realized how important and interesting software engineering/design is.) Now, here's my issue: I can not find a \"study guide\" for developing software of this kind. Currently, there are numerous resources out there (books, websites, tutorials) in designing and developing complex IS, web applications, smartphone apps but I can't find a book for example entitled \"optimization software development\". Definetly, someone could claim that \"design patterns apply to software in general\" but that's not my point. My point is that I could simply use my imagination for \"simple\" implementations, but what happens, when my imagination can not go further? In other words I'm looking for a guide/path to bridge the gap between: Mathematics-Algorithm Design-Software Engineering-Optimization-Software development"}
{"_id": "28228", "title": "Boss solution vs Developer solution", "text": "The problem: When we were sending newsletters to customers, there was no way to confirm if the customer already received the mail. So the boss decided to implement this idea: Boss's Idea: Each time mail was being sent, do an INSERT in a db with the title of the newsletter being sent and the email address which is receving the email address. To ensure that any email address does not receive the same email twice, do a SELECT in the table and find the title of the newsletter being sent:               if (title of newsletter is found)     {       check to see of the email we are sending mail to is already present. if it does, do not send mail     }      else     {      send mail     }      MY idea: create a column called unique and mark it as UNIQUE. Each time mail was being sent, concatenate email + newsletter id and record it in the UNIQUE row. The next time we do a \"mysql_affected_rows\" check to see if our INSERT was successful, we send the mail, else, there is already a duplicate and no need to send it."}
{"_id": "1380", "title": "How much Code Coverage is \"enough\"?", "text": "We are starting a push for code coverage here at my work, and it has got me to thinking.... How much code coverage is enough? When do you get to the point of diminishing returns on code coverage? What is the sweet spot between good coverage and not enough? Does it vary by the type of project your are making (ie WPF, WCF, Mobile, ASP.NET) (These are C# classes we are writing.)"}
{"_id": "245240", "title": "Formulate release notes consistently", "text": "In my project, I came across understanding that writing release notes is both helpful and necessary. However, it is not required by my management and I keep these files virtually to myself. You could say, I do it for self-organization. For each version of the internal prototyping software, I create a version number and update RELEASE file with the changes that have occurred since the last version. Release notes are classified into lists of new features, bug fixes and remaining limitations (features to be implemented in the next version). As my management does not require this document from me, I keep writing release notes in a free manner. Now, I am not sure how to best formulate (I hope not be sent to English@SE; I am interested not in grammar features, but in experience of other developers here who _do_ fill in release notes for customers) features that have been implemented. At the moment I use different grammar which is inconsistent between notes. I want to gather experience from other developers. Do you formulate release notes:   * starting with I/we (I/we have integrated/tested/updated some new feature), or   * as unpersonalized sentences (some new feature has been integrated/tested/updated), or   * as nouns: integration/test/update of some new feature, or   * other? At the moment, I mix all of these styles and by choosing one style, I want to be consistent with the industry standard."}
{"_id": "95998", "title": "Do I Need To duplicate comments in Every File?", "text": "I have very similar code over multiple files in my project. If a client wanted some level of commented code, would I have to invest the time into duplicating the code for every file. I think it would simply be a waste of time. What would be the best/easiest way to provide comments to a client. (Refer them to a readme to show one file with the comments?) It's along the lines of URL's to point to and BOOL's to change. **For Clarification: I don't want to, nor do I think it would be a good idea to consolidate code to create a single place for settings. If I was building a desktop app or using PHP, I would create a config file. But this isn't a situation where that would be called for. Infact, it might actually be considered (from what I understand) a best-practice. I totally get that It's a good idea to eliminate duplicate code, but I don't even think there's an efficient and simple way to eliminate the duplicate base code. My question pertains how I should Comment for clients/dev's in these sort of situations*** Disclaimer: Next time, I'll start with comments rather than adding them in later."}
{"_id": "245247", "title": "Quadtree with duplicates", "text": "I'm implementing a quadtree. For those who don't know this data strucutre, I am including the following small description: > A Quadtree is a data structure and is in the Euclidean plane what an Octree > is in a 3-dimensional space. A common use of quadtrees is spatial indexing. > > To summarize how they work, a quadtree is a collection \u2014 let's say of > rectangles here \u2014 with a maximum capacity and an initial bounding box. When > trying to insert an element into a quadtree which has reached its maximal > capacity, the quadtree is subdivided into 4 quadtrees (a geometric > representation of which will have a four times smaller area than the tree > before insertion); each element is redistributed in the subtrees according > to its position, ie. the top left bound when working with rectangles. > > So a quadtree is either a leaf and has less elements than its capacity, or a > tree with 4 quadtrees as children (usually north-west, north-east, south- > west, south-east). My concern is that if you try to add duplicates, may it be the same element several times or several different elements with the same position, quadtrees have a fundamental problem to handle the edges. For instance, if you work with a quadtree with a capacity of 1 the unit rectangle as the bounding box:               [(0,0),(0,1),(1,1),(1,0)]      And you try inserting twice a rectangle the upper-left bound of which is the origin: (or similarly if you try inserting it N+1 times in a quadtree with a capacity of N>1)               quadtree->insert(0.0, 0.0, 0.1, 0.1)     quadtree->insert(0.0, 0.0, 0.1, 0.1)      The first insert will not be a problem: ![First insert](http://i.stack.imgur.com/p9NQa.png) But then the first insert will trigger a subdivision (because the capacity is 1): ![Second insert, first subdivision](http://i.stack.imgur.com/a0Gxx.png) Both rectangles are thus put in the same subtree. Then again, the two elements will arrive in the same quadtree and trigger a subdivison\u2026 ![Second insert, second subdivison](http://i.stack.imgur.com/laE9l.png) And so on, and so forth, the subdivision method will run indefinitely because (0, 0) will always be in the same subtree out of the four created, meaning an infinite recursion problem occurs. Is it possible to have a quadtree with duplicates? (If not, one may implement it as a `Set`) How can we solve this problem without breaking completely the architecture of a quadtree?"}
{"_id": "245246", "title": "Property value validations on POCO entities", "text": "Sorry in advance if this question is so trivial. ## The situation There is a `Customer` entity whose ID is limited to two letters (A to Z) in the database. Also, a user can enter the `ID` value from a Windows form. I think that the best option is that this form will validate (using the controller) with a regular expression like this `^[a-zA-Z0-9]{2}$` whether the value is valid. ## The question(s)   * Does the `Customer` entity should also do the validation when I set the value of the ID property?   * Should this validation be outsourced if, for example, there is also similar validation in other properties of the entity? I think that the answer is that it depends if the property value is a requirement of the user or it is a design decision on the database, but I appreciate your knowledge and experience to guide me on the correct way. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "220146", "title": "Why the Scala fascination with flatmap? (This doesn't seem to be the same for mapcat in the Clojure world)", "text": "In the Scala community - there is an apparent fascination with the FlatMap function. Now I understand that FlatMap is significant because it is used for the bind part of a Monad. (and that the Clojure community hasn't dived into Monads yet, with some wonderful exceptions). Now in the Clojure Community - there is no corresponding cultural idiom, eg \"MapCat that S***\". My theory on the difference between the two communities and the reason for this difference is that the concurrency primitives in Clojure lend it towards solving problems on a single machine, in a single instance. (Ie Clojure is good at concurrency). Whereas in the Scala World, with the rise of the Actor model, Scala is a little more focused on solving multi-machine problems. This focus on multi-machine problems has a higher focus on breaking problems down into their parts, and a greater focus on what can be broken down and Scale. (eg Monoids) (Now I realise there is an STM in Scala, and that Actor models, Avout and Cascalog are wonderful exceptions to this - I'm making a generalization) My question is, why the Scala fascination with flatmap? (I'm not trying to start a flamewar - I think both communities have benefited from each others existence - I'm trying to understand a cultural behaviour)."}
{"_id": "27909", "title": "How do you decide your side projects", "text": "At any given time, I usually have a bunch of ideas for weekend/side projects that I can work on. The ideas can be generally be categorized into these:   1\\. Self Learning: Learning a new language/ technology/ framework   2\\. Work related: Learning/Doing something that would help you at work   3\\. Money: Projects that (you think) can make some money   4\\. Fun/Utility projects These are just the rough categories that I can think of and there can be more/other ways of classification. My question is based on your experience what should drive the decision of what kind of project to work on. What parameters apart from the type of project should impact this decision (time, effort, money...)"}
{"_id": "25917", "title": "What are the common misuses of \"enum\" in C?", "text": "I have seen C code where people used enum heavily. But all it does is confuse others. In many places plain integers can do the same thing with less ambiguity. What are the common misuses of enum?"}
{"_id": "66881", "title": "Is programming tourism a realistic possibility?", "text": "I'm going on vacation to Paris, France for 10 days. Actually, it's my girlfriend's wish to go there but I'm not very interested in visiting, sightseeing, etc. Recently, I came up with an idea of trying to do something like programming tourism. :) I'd like to do something related to programming in a startup-like company. I do not want a salary or any kind of compensation. I want to overview process, social aspects, environment, and\"what it feels like to develop software in another country. I'm from Russia. I've been a software developer since 2003, and while I prefer C#, I'm ready to use anything Turing-complete. I have some MS certifications and am familiar with all .NETs since 1.1. Currently I'm finishing a PhD in CS. I'm interested in multidimensional indexing and I can turn any piece of data and code into an OLAP system, but it'd take too much time. :) What can I do? I have no more than one week, but I want a _totally complete project in a short amount of time_.   1. Implement some features in well-tested project   2. Do a code review   3. Debug memory, performance and concurrency issues   4. Do unit testing So, about the questions:   1. Is it legal? I'm ready to sign NDA if it's necessary, and I'll have a tourist visa.   2. Is it possible? I'm sure that bureaucratic companies with lots of HR people and PMs will not allow such experiments, but small companies can afford it. I'm ready to guarantee support on my code after leaving for home. :) P.S. I still haven't started learning French; I hope it will not take too much time :) * * * P.P.S.   1. Yes, it's girlfriend-approved.    2. What's in it for me? It's fun. It's fun to see new systems and people who created them. It's fun to complete meaningful things. Quickly.    3. What's in it for them? Features, debugging, reviewing or testing. If my short-term colleagues like this style of working I can invite them to make a similar trip to my company. :) I think in Russia it's even more exciting. :)"}
{"_id": "118496", "title": "One stop shop for good coding practices and performance tips?", "text": "While this may be a very subjective question I was wondering if there's a place (or many places) on the web where one can read up about good coding and performance tips for different languages and how they may compare with others? For example in AS3 it's faster to multiply rather than to divide, is this the same for JS? What other tips are there to really make our code run lightening fast? And where are these tips?"}
{"_id": "197877", "title": "Modern REPL for Haskell - is anybody working on it?", "text": "It's time Haskell had a modern REPL like Mathematica's (or better). Make each calculation run in a separate thread, so user has control over each computation box's resources (ability to pause, play, cancel, replay, set memory/stack/time limits, etc). Allow for graphics output as well (how?). Then detach these boxes from today's GHCi 1D canvas into 2D space, allow the boxes to be cloned (a clone receives same source, waits for the user to press \"play\" button...), their source code edited (allow for more than one line, too). Then allow for these boxes to be assembled into chains - or networks - if types fit (deduce new constraints, if any, as in usual type inference). Make the joined boxes into one function/module, automatically produce the resulting source file, etc., etc. Is this feasible? Can a community of experts self-organize to produce something like that, \"for great good\"?"}
{"_id": "160503", "title": "Does custom created code for a client imply copyright ownership?", "text": "I know of a potential customer that has been paying for website development work on an hourly basis for several years by several independent contractors, but has never signed an agreement as to terms or ownership for it. They just get a bill and pay it. So, does this mean that there is implied ownership by the developer(s) who wrote the software and I can't modify the code without something in writing? Who owns the source code in this case as there are two other developers that worked on it? By the way, I'm a developer in the USA, working in Missouri. I did find this useful link that confirmed some suspicions I had about copywrite ownership of software. They also have a free IP(intellectual property) ebook download. No registration required either. Disclaimer: I understand that any answers are not to be construed as legal advise perse, but I'm wondering if someone else has run into this issue and knows by firsthand experience."}
{"_id": "160500", "title": "How to achieve a loosely coupled REST API but with a defined and well understood contract?", "text": "I am new to REST and am struggling to understand how one would properly design a REST system to both allow for loose coupling but at the same time allow a consumer of a REST API to understand the API. If, in my client code, I issue a GET request for a resource and get back XML, how do I know what to do with that xml? e.g. if it contains `<fname>John</fname><lname>Smith</lname>` how do I know that these refer to the concept of \"first name\", \"last name\"? Is it up to the person writing the REST API to define in documentation some place what each of the XML fields mean? What if producer of the API wants to change the implementation to be `<firstname>` instead of `<fname>`? How do they do this and notify their consumers that this change occurred? Or do the consumers just encounter the error and then look at the payload and figure out on their own that it changed? I've read in REST in Practice that using a WADL tool to create a client implementation based on the WADL (and hide the fact that you're doing a distributed call) is an \"anti-pattern\". But I was planning to do this-- at least then I would have a statically typed API call that, if it changed, I would know at compile time and not at run time. Why is this a bad thing to generate client code based on a WADL? And how do I know what to do with the links that returned in the response of a POST to a REST API? What defines this contract and gives true meaning to what each link will do? Please help! I dont understand how to go from statically-typed or even SOAP/RPC to REST!"}
{"_id": "66886", "title": "How do you handle the problem of abstraction when you learn a techonology / language?", "text": "I find that when I am trying to learn say Python for example I end up worrying about problems that are out of scope like how does Python implement this thing etc. For example say I am learning twisted framework , I end up thinking how can Python define things in such a manner and stuff - this leads be to worry mostly about internals of language insted of problem at hand ! However I can take another approach where I accept the abstraction and say ok ... TCP does this ...I need not know more and accept TCP connections are handled when I give this command ... and carry on with my work and then worry about these things later on . What exactly do you guys follow ? I am perlexed to see many of them so good at both these things while I just seem to be having a hard time there :) Do you really sometimes learn topics with abstraction or do you go find under the hoods stuff as much as possible ? Mayve you could say I am facing a problem of overdesign which is a big problem and need some help to solve this :)"}
{"_id": "152201", "title": "Sharing object between 2 classes", "text": "**edit** : I am thinking that dependency injection is the best approach. I am struggling to wrap my head around being able to share an object between two classes. I want to be able to create only one instance of the object, `commonlib` in my `main` class and then have the classes, `foo1` and `foo2`, to be able to mutually share the properties of the commonlib. `commonlib` is a 3rd party class which has a property `Queries` that will be **added** to in each child class of `bar`. This is why it is vital that only one instance is created. I create two separate queries in `foo1` and `foo2`. This is my setup:               abstract class bar{     //common methods     }               class foo1 extends bar{     //add query to commonlib     }          class foo2 extends bar{     //add query to commonlib     }          class main {              public $commonlib = new commonlib();              public function start(){         //goal is to share one instance of $this->commonlib between foo1 and foo2          //so that they can both add to the properites of $this->commonlib (global         //between the two)              //now execute all of the queries after foo1 and foo2 add their query         $this->commonlib->RunQueries();          }                    }"}
{"_id": "216007", "title": "Where should the database and mail parameters be stored in a Symfony2 app?", "text": "In the default folder structure for a Symfony2 project the database and mail server credentials are stored in `parameters.yml` file inside `ProjectRoot/app/config/parameters.yml` with these default values:               parameters:         database_driver: pdo_mysql         database_host: 127.0.0.1         database_port: null         database_name: symfony         database_user: root         database_password: null         mailer_transport: smtp         mailer_host: 127.0.0.1         mailer_user: null         mailer_password: null         locale: en         secret: ThisTokenIsNotSoSecretChangeIt      During development we change these parameters to the development database and mail servers. This file is checked into the source code repository. The problem is when we want to deploy to the production server. We are thinking about automating the deployment process by checking out the project from git and deploy it to the production server. The thing is that our project manager has to manually update these parameters after each update. The production database and mail servers parameters are confidential and only our project manager knows them. I need a way to automate this step and suggestion on where to store the production parameters until they are applied?"}
{"_id": "56213", "title": "Focus on Javascript or Jquery?", "text": "I am a student in college, and I notice that a lot of companies look for people who have experience with Javascript. Does this include Javascript's libraries, like JQuery? Or, are they looking for Javascript people only? It probably depends on the company, but what is the general advice for a student wanting to do some front end work? Is Javascript more powerful than JQuery? I know Jquery is a library and simplifies many tasks, but is there some reason why you would use Javascript over Jquery?"}
{"_id": "56215", "title": "Why on C++ you can have the method definition inside the header file when in C you cannot?", "text": "In C, you cannot have the function definition/implementation inside the header file. However, in C++ you can have full method implementation inside the header file. Why is the behaviour different?"}
{"_id": "116922", "title": "How to handle \"X\" data sets as input", "text": "I participated in a coding competition today, and I found that almost all of the command line input our programs needed to receive would start with an integer representing the amount of data sets to follow. There were 6 different problems, and they all started this way. For example, one sample problem had: \"Input to this problem will begin with a line containing a single integer N (1 <= N <= 100) indicating the number of data sets. Each data set consists of the following components:   * A line containing a single integer W that specifies the number of wormholes   * A series of W lines containing....   * etc. \" Pretty much all the competition problems had this format, with the first integer representing the amount of data sets to follow. My initial reaction (and the way I tried to solve the problem) was just using a vector of size N, where each element represented a data set. Trouble is, there are a whole bunch of things in these data sets. Using this approach often left me with a vector of vector of vectors (maybe an exaggeration but you get the idea) which was very hard to manage. Another idea was looping through the entire program N times, but this doesn't always seem that applicable. I realize this is a vague question, but that's because I'm looking for a general solution to this type of problem. What is the best approach to handling this type of input?"}
{"_id": "110370", "title": "Is it true that having the Nexus S is much better as an Android developer?", "text": "Soon, I'll be starting Android development, as I know a bit of Java. I'll also be getting an Android phone. My two options are the Nexus S and the Atrix 4G. I've heard the Nexus series is ideal for developers - can someone tell me why? Why is getting the Atrix bad as a developer?"}
{"_id": "110371", "title": "How do freelancer web developers manage web hosting for customers?", "text": "I have built a number of websites for friends, family, etc. and I have put them all on a single shared web hosting account. Now that they are built, I want to get out of business of supporting them and paying for them (my friends are reimbursing me but I am paying for the actual bill) so I was thinking of having them create their own hosting accounts and slowly migrating the sites over. It got me thinking how does any freelancer do this? Do they force their clients to setup their own hosting up front and let the programmer log into the customer account during development. What if there is a bug in the future and they need to go back in? I was curious to see what model most people use who build websites for others as it seems like a tricky situation."}
{"_id": "114690", "title": "How is oData different from a REST service?", "text": "I am looking into writing a web service API and I am thinking of creating a REST service. What does OData means in this context? Can you please explain the difference between OData and REST?"}
{"_id": "127215", "title": "HTML5 hype as native app replacement - reliable analysis and sources", "text": "I am asking this as an objective question and have no interest in inciting a flamewar. My point here is to gather some evidence to assist in decisionmaking and communicating with non-technical folks up the management chain. I'm on a UX team at a software company. We\u2019ve worked with WPF and Silverlight in the past, but some managers have bought into the hype and are considering moving everything into HTML5. Our concerns with pursuing HTML5, based on several months of experimentation with it, are these:   * HTML5 provides a dramatically less evolved development, backend and UI model than WPF or Silverlight. It takes a long time to do anything and the end result is far less smooth.   * Collaboration between designers and developers. One big WPF advantage was that the UX team could design the entire UI and hand it over to developers for remaining work. With web apps we are back to designing redlines/wireframes and throwing them over the wall, given the lack of good tools and the amount of coding required to get even basic animations to work.   * Cross browser headaches. Our experience has been that browser support is very inconsistent and fallbacks are required for pretty much anything.   * It is not clear how HTML5 is any different from previous HTML/JS/CSS. The new tags (section, nav, etc) don't provide any obvious benefit. We lose all binding, security, database functionality and the rich UI.   * Styling, UI presentation. We can't style controls beyond very basic styling or needing to resort to hacks.   * Typography is undependable compared to WPF/Silverlight. So my question is: has done any similar analyses for HTML5 vs a native app (and by this I don't mean a trivial phone app, but a very large enterprise complex application), and has sources or analysis they can share?"}
{"_id": "104468", "title": "If this is camelCase what-is-this?", "text": "The naming convention for a term like `doSomething` is camel case. What would the naming convention of `do-something` be called?"}
{"_id": "195652", "title": "How to calculate percentile in Java without using Library", "text": "I am trying to calculate `95th Percentile` from the data sets which I have populated in my below `ConcurrentHashMap`. **I am interested in finding out how many calls came back in 95th percentile of time** My Map will look like this and it will always be sorted in ascending order on the keys- In which               key - means number of milliseconds     value - means number of calls that took that much milliseconds               Milliseconds    Number          0               1702     1               15036     2               14262     3               13190     4               9137     5               5635     6               3742     7               2628     8               1899     9               1298     10              963     11              727     12              503     13              415     14              311     15              235     16              204     17              140     18              109     19              83     20              72      For example, from the above data sets, it means > 1702 calls came back in 0 milliseconds > > 15036 calls came back in 1 milliseconds Now I can calculate the 95th percentile by plugging the above data sets in the `Excel sheet`. But I was thinking to calculate the percentile in Java code. I know the algorithm will look something like this- Sum all values from the map, calculate 95% of the sum, iterate the map keys in ascending order keeping a running total of values, and when sum equals or exceeds the previously calculated 95% of the total sum, the key should be the 95th percentile I guess. But I am not able to plugin this algorithm in the Java code. Below is the map which will have above datasets.               Map<Long, Long> histogram = new ConcurrentHashMap<Long, Long>      I am not sure what is the best way to calculate the percentile in Java. I am not sure whether I am algorithm is also correct or not. I am just trying to find out how many calls came back in 95th percentile of time.               private static void calculatePercentile() {              for (Long time : CassandraTimer.histogram.keySet()) {                   }          }      Can anyone provide some example how to do that? Any help will be appreciated. **Updated code:-** Below is the code I have got so far. Let me know if I got everything correct in calculating the 95th percentile-               /**      * A simple method to log 95th percentile information      */     private static void logPercentileInfo() {              double total = 0;         for (Map.Entry<Long, Long> entry : CassandraTimer.histogram.entrySet()) {             long value = entry.getKey() * entry.getValue();             total += value;         }              double sum = 0.95*total;              double totalSum = 0;              SortedSet<Long> keys = new TreeSet<Long>(CassandraTimer.histogram.keySet());         for (long key : keys) {                  totalSum += CassandraTimer.histogram.get(key);                  if(totalSum >= sum) {                //this is the 95th percentile I guess                 System.out.println(key);             }         }          }"}
{"_id": "194922", "title": "How useful is \"rubber duck debugging\"?", "text": "I just learned about rubber duck debugging, where the programmer explains code, line by line, to a rubber duck or other inanimate object in order to find the problem. This approach sounds time-consuming, but seems to work well from what I've read. Can someone with experience with this approach tell just how effective this is, and whether this is a time-efficient way to debug faulty code compared to other techniques, such as stepping through a program and watching variables in a debugger?"}
{"_id": "118142", "title": "What is a 'good number' of exceptions to implement for my library?", "text": "I've always wondered how many different exception classes I should implement and throw for various pieces of my software. My particular development is usually C++/C#/Java related, but I believe this is a question for all languages. I want to understand what is a good number of different exceptions to throw, and what the developer community expect of a good library. The trade-offs I see include:   * More exception classes can allow very fine grain levels of error handling for API users (prone to user configuration or data errors, or files not being found)   * More exception classes allows error specific information to be embedded in the exception, rather than just a string message or error code   * More exception classes can mean more code maintenance   * More exception classes can mean the API is less approachable to users The scenarios I wish to understand exception usage in include:   * During 'configuration' stage, which might include loading files or setting parameters   * During an 'operation' type phase where the library might be running tasks and doing some work, perhaps in another thread Other patterns of error reporting without using exceptions, or less exceptions (as a comparison) might include:   * Less exceptions, but embedding an error code that can be used as a lookup   * Returning error codes and flags directly from functions (sometimes not possible from threads)   * Implemented an event or callback system upon error (avoids stack unwinding) As developers, what do you prefer to see? If there are MANY exceptions, do you bother error handling them separately anyway? Do you have a preference for error handling types depending on the stage of operation?"}
{"_id": "21697", "title": "When do I need to use a framework?", "text": "I am new to web programming and at this time I am learning about PHP. I would like to know when do I need to use a PHP framework such as CakePHP? What are things that this and other similar PHP frameworks offer for me? And is it really important to use a framework to be a professional?   * And can I create my own framework to provide the features I like into it?"}
{"_id": "121073", "title": "Would refusing to use a PHP framework be a bad idea?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When do I need to use a framework? I feel fairly competent at creating a number of applications in PHP and thus far have not seen the need to use one of the popular frameworks (CakePHP, Zend, etc). As a programmer it gives me comfort to know exactly what my code is doing and I suppose before now that has made sense since I've been learning the language. Is it ignorant of me to not want to use one of these mainstream frameworks? **Will it hurt my productivity? Why should I not just create me own code base that makes sense for me?** Other than possibly hindering later career choices where many roles might require framework experience, I'm not sure I'm missing out..."}
{"_id": "253718", "title": "String contains trailing zeroes when converted from decimal", "text": "I've run into an unusual quirk in a program I'm writing, and I was trying to figure out if anyone knew the cause. Note that **fixing** the issue is easy enough. I just can't figure out why it is happening in the first place. I have a WinForms program written in _VB.NET_ that is displaying a subset of data. It contains a few labels that show numeric values (the `.Text` property of the labels are being assigned directly from the Decimal values). These numbers are being returned by a DLL I wrote in _C#_. The DLL calls a webservice which initially returns the values in question. It returns one as a string, the other as a decimal (I don't have any control over the webservice, I just consume it). The DLL assigns these to properties on an object (both of which are decimals) then returns that object back to the WinForm program that called the DLL. Obviously, there's a lot of other data being consumed from the webservice, but no other operations are happening which could modify these properties. So, the short version is:   * WinForm requests a new `Foo` from the DLL.   * DLL creates object `Foo`.   * DLL calls webservice, which returns `SomeOtherFoo`.              //Both Foo.Bar1 and Foo.Bar2 are decimals     Foo.Bar1 = decimal.Parse(SomeOtherFoo.Bar1); //SomeOtherFoo.Bar1 is a string equal to \"2.9000\"     Foo.Bar2 = SomeOtherFoo.Bar2; //SomeOtherFoo.Bar2 is a decimal equal to 2.9D        * DLL returns Foo to WinForm.              WinForm.lblMockLabelName1.Text = Foo.Bar1 //Inspecting Foo.Bar1 indicates my value is 2.9D     WinForm.lblMockLabelName2.Text = Foo.Bar2 //Inspecting Foo.Bar2 also indicates I'm 2.9D      So, what's the quirk? WinForm.lblMockLabelName1.Text displays as **\"2.9000\"** , whereas WinForm.lblMockLabelname2.Text displays as **\"2.9\"**. Now, everything I know about C# and VB indicates that the format of the string which was initially parsed into the decimal should have no bearing on the outcome of a later decimal.ToString() operation called on the same decimal. I would expect that `decimal.Parse(someDecimalString).ToString()` would return the string without any trailing zeroes. Everything I find online seems to corroborate this (there are countless Stack Overflow questions asking exactly the opposite...how to keep the formatting from the initial parsing). At the moment, I've just removed the trailing zeroes from the initial string that gets parsed, which has hidden the quirk. However, I'd love to know why it happens in the first place."}
{"_id": "155271", "title": "Do I have to change my company to make sure I'm good enough?", "text": "I have been working as a developer since my fourth year of university until now. I'm getting my master's degree next year (in math modeling). I've worked for the same company all the time, first on .Net, then on Android, and now .Net again. It seems I'm doing quite well in my current company. Some of my coursemates have tried to work in my company, but they failed after some time. This (and not only this) makes me think that I'm really worth something. But we're working on a very specific project. I was wondering if I am good enough and if I can make it in another company. I love my current job, but sometimes I have a feeling that I'm not moving on. So, is it possible to keep improving when working at the same company with the same technology and at similar tasks? I know that most of the programmers go from one place to another very frequently. Is it the only way?"}
{"_id": "214437", "title": "Prefer examples over documentation. Is it a behavioral problem?", "text": "Whenever I come across a new API or programming language or even simple Linux man pages, I always (ever since I remember) avoided them and instead lazily relied on examples for gaining understanding of new concepts. Subconsciously, I avoid documentation/APIs whenever it is not straightforward or cryptic or just plain boring. It's been years since I began programming and now I feel like I need to mend my ways as I now realize that I'm causing more damage by refraining from reading cryptic/difficult documentation as it is still a million times better than examples as the official documentation has more coverage than any example out there. Even after realizing that examples should be treated as \"added\" value instead of the \"primary\" source for learning. How do I break this bad habit as a programmer or am I overthinking?"}
{"_id": "82087", "title": "How much can one programmer do on his own?", "text": "With software products taking whole teams of people to develop, how much can one programmer accomplish on his/her own? In other words, could a single person write Photoshop, MS word, etc...? And if they couldn't, would web development be an area where one programmer could do a lot?"}
{"_id": "127036", "title": "How to treat \"The field is never used\" warnings?", "text": "> Warning 1 The field 'MCS_SPS_School.Fees.DiscountAmt.rtvalue' is assigned > but its value is never used G:\\Jagadeeswaran\\Nov 17\\MCS-SPS School\\MCS-SPS > School\\Fees\\DiscountAmt.cs > > Warning 2 The field 'MCS_SPS_School.Fees.DiscountAmt.dt' is never used > G:\\Jagadeeswaran\\Nov 17\\MCS-SPS School\\MCS-SPS School\\Fees\\DiscountAmt.cs This type of warning is still in my project. But the project runs safely. Now what I do for this warnings, to fix or Ignore? Is any dangerous if ignore that, performance wise or other?"}
{"_id": "213421", "title": "Method parameter takes object from it's own class?", "text": "I'm not absolutely sure if this is the right place for this question. But I guess StackOverflow won't be the right place. Is it for any reason a bad way to pass an object to a method from the same class? For some reason I don't feel well with the first solution. The method `Start` starts the game with the given player.               CurrentGame.Start(CurrentGame.CurrentPlayer);      or               CurrentGame.StartWithCurrentPlayer();      But the last method could require a second method like:               public void SetCurrentPlayer(Player player)     {         CurrentPlayer = player;     }"}
{"_id": "253710", "title": "Ruby on Rails - Belongs_to and Active Admin not creating foreign ID", "text": "I have the following setup:               class Category < ActiveRecord::Base      has_many :products     end          class Product < ActiveRecord::Base              belongs_to :category              has_attached_file :photo, :styles => { :medium => \"300x300>\", :thumb => \"200x200>\" }              validates_attachment_content_type :photo, :content_type => /\\Aimage\\/.*\\Z/           end               ActiveAdmin.register Product do             permit_params :title, :price, :slideshow, :photo, :category                       form do |f|          f.inputs \"Product Details\" do            f.input :title            f.input :category            f.input :price            f.input :slideshow            f.input :photo, :required => false, :as => :file          end          f.actions        end             show do |ad|          attributes_table do            row :title            row :category            row :photo do              image_tag(ad.photo.url(:medium))            end               end        end             index do             column :id             column :title            column :category             column :price do |product|               number_to_currency product.price             end             actions         end          class ProductController < ApplicationController               def create            @product = Product.create(params[:id])          end     end      Every time I make a product item in activeadmin the category comes up empty. It wont populate the column category_id for the product. It just leaves it empty. What am I doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "155279", "title": "OAuth2 vs Public API", "text": "My understanding of OAuth (2.0) is that its a software stack and protocol to allow 2+ web apps to share information about a single end user. User A is a member of Site B and Site C; Site B wants to fetch some data from Site C about User A, and this is where OAuth steps in. So first off, if this assessment is incorrect, please begin by clarifying this for me and correcting me! Assuming I'm on the right track, then I guess I'm not seeing the need for OAuth to begin with (!). I'm sure I'm just not seeing the \"forest through the trees\" here, but the way I see it, couldn't Site C just expose a public API that Site B could use to fetch the same data (sans OAuth)? If Site C required user credentials to access the data, could this public API just use HTTPS for secure transport and require username/password as a part of each API call? Again, I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm just not understanding why I would need OAuth when a secure, public API written and exposed by Site C seems more than capable of delivering what Site B needs regarding User A. In general, I'm looking for a set of guidelines to go by when deciding to choose between using OAuth for my web apps or just writing my own web service ( exposing public API). Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "253712", "title": "How should I store and secure self-signed certificates?", "text": "I'm fairly certain I shouldn't commit certificates into source control. Even if the repository is private and only authenticated coworkers (for example) have access to it. That would allow for accidental exposure (thumb drives, leaked credentials, whatever). But, **how should I store and secure certificates?** I don't suppose I should just plop them on the network file server, for some of the same reasons I wouldn't put them into source control, right? Is there some kind of secure certificate store that I can run? Does the Java \"keystore\" do that generally or is it specific for like weblogic servers or something?"}
{"_id": "253713", "title": "Where to store front-end data for \"object calculator\"", "text": "I recently have completed a language library that acts as a giant filter for food items, and flows a bit like this `:Products -> Recipes -> MenuItems -> Meals` and finally, upon submission, creates an `Order`. I have also completed a database structure that stores all the pertinent information to each class, and seems to fit my needs. The issue I'm having is linking the two. I imagined all of the information being local to each instance of the product, where there exists one backend user who edits and manipulates data, and multiple front end users who select their `Meal`(s) to create an `Order`. Ideally, all of the front end users would have all of this information stored locally within the library, and would update the library on startup from a database. How should I go about storing the data so that I can load it into the library every time the user opens the application? Do I package a database onboard and just load and populate every time? The only method I can currently conceive of doing this, even if I only have 500 possible `Product` objects, would require me to foreach the list for every `Product` that I need to match to a `Recipe` and so on and so forth every time I relaunch the program, which seems like a lot of wasteful loading. Here is a general flow of my architecture: Products:               public class Product : IPortionable     {         public Product(string n, uint pNumber = 0)         {             name = n;             productNumber = pNumber;         }                   public string name { get; set; }         public uint productNumber { get; set; }     }      Recipes:               public Recipe(string n, decimal yieldAmt, Volume.Unit unit)         {             name = n;             yield = new Volume(yieldAmt, unit);             yield.ConvertUnit();         }         /// <summary>         /// Creates a new ingredient object         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"n\">Name</param>         /// <param name=\"yieldAmt\">Recipe Yield</param>         /// <param name=\"unit\">Unit of Yield</param>         public Recipe(string n, decimal yieldAmt, Weight.Unit unit)         {             name = n;             yield = new Weight(yieldAmt, unit);         }              public Recipe(Recipe r)         {             name = r.name;             yield = r.yield;             ingredients = r.ingredients;         }              public string name { get; set; }         public IMeasure yield;              public Dictionary<IPortionable, IMeasure> ingredients = new Dictionary<IPortionable,IMeasure>();      MenuItems:               public abstract class MenuItem : IScalable     {         public static string title = null;              public string name { get; set; }         public decimal maxPortionSize { get; set; }         public decimal minPortionSize { get; set; }              public Dictionary<IPortionable, IMeasure> ingredients = new Dictionary<IPortionable, IMeasure>();      and Meal:               public class Meal     {         public Meal(int guests)         {             guestCount = guests;         }              public int guestCount { get; private set; }              //TODO: Make a new MainCourse class that holds pasta and Entree         public Dictionary<string, int> counts = new Dictionary<string, int>(){            {MainCourse.title, 0},            {Side.title , 0},            {Appetizer.title, 0}         };              public List<MenuItem> items = new List<MenuItem>();      The Database just stores and links each of these basic names and amounts together usings ID's (`RecipeID, ProductID and MenuItemID`)"}
{"_id": "214438", "title": "Can you use proprietary libraries in MPL 2.0 licensed source?", "text": "Is it legal to use a third party library in a software project that is itself licensed under MPL 2.0? So some potential project hierarchies would look like this   * Library Project [MPL 2.0] (Open Source, Distributed)      * Third party library [Proprietary] (Closed source, not distributed) * * *   * Someone else's project [MPL 2.0] (Open source, distributed)      * Library Project [MPL 2.0] (Open Source, Distributed)        * Third party library [Proprietary] (Closed source, not distributed) * * * My practical feeling is that this is fine otherwise there could be no use of this license on many platforms whose base libraries are proprietary, like on iOS for example. The only difference being that these libraries are distributed to registered developers."}
{"_id": "253716", "title": "How vibrations might effect Kinect depth measurements", "text": "I'm currently doing some research into development with the Microsoft Kinect product. My project manager has come up with a potential design for mounting the camera to do the capturing. However the solution means that the camera might be subject to vibrations as the platform it is on is directly connected to where the subjects will be moving. It was my thought that vibrations would effect the quality of the results, however I could not come up with a viable explanation as to why, other than it's the same as if you held a camera in your hand and your hand was shaking vs using a tripod. Do vibrations effect the depth measurements on a Kinect and if so how can I explain this in simple terms to my PM to help come up with a better design to attach the sensor to?"}
{"_id": "253717", "title": "What is the right way to process inconsistent data files?", "text": "I'm working at a company that uses Excel files to store product data, specifically, test results from products before they are shipped out. There are a few thousand spreadsheets with anywhere from 50-100 relevant data points per file. Over the years, the schema for the spreadsheets has changed significantly, but not unidirectionally - in the sense that, changes often get reverted and then re-added in the space of a few dozen to few hundred files. My project is to convert about 8000 of these spreadsheets into a database that can be queried. I'm using MongoDB to deal with the inconsistency in the data, and Python. My question is, what is the \"right\" or canonical way to deal with the huge variance in my source files? I've written a data structure which stores the data I want for the latest template, which will be the final template used going forward, but that only helps for a few hundred files historically. Brute-forcing a solution would mean writing similar data structures for each version/template - which means potentially writing hundreds of schemas with dozens of fields each. This seems very inefficient, especially when sometimes a change in the template is as little as moving a single line of data one row down or splitting what used to be one data field into two data fields. A slightly more elegant solution I have in mind would be writing schemas for all the variants I can find for pre-defined groups in the source files, and then writing a function to match a particular series of files with a series of variants that matches that set of files. This is because, more often that not, most of the file will remain consistent over a long period, only marred by one or two errant sections, but inside the period, which section is inconsistent, is inconsistent. For example, say a file has four sections with three data fields, which is represented by four Python dictionaries with three keys each. For files 7000-7250, sections 1-3 will be consistent, but section 4 will be shifted one row down. For files 7251-7500, 1-3 are consistent, section 4 is one row down, but a section five appears. For files 7501-7635, sections 1 and 3 will be consistent, but section 2 will have five data fields instead of three, section five disappears, and section 4 is still shifted down one row. For files 7636-7800, section 1 is consistent, section 4 gets shifted back up, section 2 returns to three cells, but section 3 is removed entirely. Files 7800-8000 have everything in order. The proposed function would take the file number and match it to a dictionary representing the data mappings for different variants of each section. For example, a section_four_variants dictionary might have two members, one for the shifted-down version, and one for the normal version, a section_two_variants might have three and five field members, etc. The script would then read the matchings, load the correct mapping, extract the data, and insert it into the database. Is this an accepted/right way to go about solving this problem? Should I structure things differently? I don't know what to search Google for either to see what other solutions might be, though I believe the problem lies in the domain of ETL processing. I also have no formal CS training aside from what I've taught myself over the years. If this is not the right forum for this question, please tell me where to move it, if at all. Any help is most appreciated. Thank you."}
{"_id": "120560", "title": "What are the things Java got right?", "text": "What are the things that Java (the language and platform) got categorically right? In other words, what things are more recent programming languages preserving and carrying forward? Some easy answer are: garbage collection, a VM, lack of pointers, classloaders, reflection(?) What about language based answers? Please don't list the things Java did wrong, just right."}
{"_id": "25135", "title": "If your workmate is quitting his job, would you notify your boss?", "text": "If a colleague on your team is planning to quit his job and this may cause bad feelings in your company, would you notify your boss?"}
{"_id": "215746", "title": "What does the English word \"for\" exactly mean in \"for\" loops?", "text": "English is not my first language, but since the keywords in programming languages are English words, I usually find it easy to read source code as English sentences:   * `if (x > 10) f();` => \"If variable `x` is greater than `10`, then call function `f`.\"   * `while (i < 10) ++i;` => \"While variable `i` is less than `10`, increase `i` by `1`.\" But how a `for` loop is supposed to be read?   * `for (i = 0; i < 10; ++i) f(i);` => ??? I mean, I know what a `for` loop is and how it works. My problem is only that I don't know what the English word \"for\" exactly means in `for` loops."}
{"_id": "25131", "title": "Can somebody explain me what are lambda things in programming?", "text": "So far I heard about :   * Lambda calculus   * Lambda programming   * Lambda expressions   * Lambda functions Which all seems to be related to functional programming... Apparently it will be integrated into C++1x, so I might better understand it now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B0x#Lambda_functions_and_expressions Can somebody defines briefly what are lambdas things and give an where it can be useful ?"}
{"_id": "186287", "title": "Design Pattern for enterprise application", "text": "I read few articles about composite pattern and I want to know whether its applicable in following situation, I found that \"A Composite Entity object can represent a coarse-grained object and all its related dependent objects\"               public class PatientRegistrationDTO     {         public string RegistrationNo;         public string ID;         public DateTime AdmitDate;         }               public class PersonDTO     {          public string ID{ get; set; }          public string FullName { get; set; }          public string FirstName { get; set; }     }      by using these two objects I need to create               public class Patient       {             public string ID{ get; set; }             public string FullName { get; set; }             public DateTime AdmitDate;       }      Can I use Composite pattern for enterprise applications in here? Is it possible for me to add some class like below?               public class PatientDTO     {         public static Patient ConvertToEntity(PatientRegistrationDTO pregDTO, PersonDTO person)         {             Patient p = new Patient();             p.ID= pregDTO.ID;             p.FullName = person.FullName;             p.AdmitDate = pregDTO.AdmitDate;                  return p;         }     }"}
{"_id": "25139", "title": "Efficiency of self-education", "text": "Do you think being self-educated in software development is good? Please give an example of what you have learnt successfully by yourself."}
{"_id": "222785", "title": "Is it worth using VCS (Version Control Softwares) for hobbystic/small/personal projects?", "text": "The question is fairly self-explainatory. Is it worth using VCS (Version Control Softwares) for hobbystic/small/personal projects?"}
{"_id": "222784", "title": "Invoking a web service in a Web API Project\u2026in which layer to invoke?", "text": "I am using **Microsoft ASP.NET Web API 2** and one of my end points has to internally invoke a legacy non-Microsoft web service (not `asmx` or `svc`) . Which layer should I invoke this in? I currently have : **Repository layer:** where all the CRUD calls to DB are done now. **Domain Manager:** where respective manager classes invoke the `Repository Layer` methods. And my **Web API Controller** methods invoke the respective Domain Manager methods. Should I just have another method in my **Repository Layer** which invokes the web service? And follow the usual pattern above?"}
{"_id": "53992", "title": "Identifying which pattern fits better", "text": "I'm developing a software to program a device. I have some commands like `Reset`, `Read_Version`, `Read_memory`, `Write_memory`, `Erase_memory`. `Reset` and `Read_Version` are fixed. They don't need parameters. `Read_memory` and `Erase_memory` need the same parameters that are Length and Address. `Write_memory` needs Lenght, Address and Data. For each command, I have the same steps in sequence, that are something like this `sendCommand`, `waitForResponse`, `treatResponse`. I'm having difficulty to identify which pattern should I use. Factory, Template Method, Strategy or other pattern. ## Edit I'll try to explain better taking in count the given comments and answers. I've already done this software and now I'm trying to refactoring it. I'm trying to use patterns, even if it is not necessary because I'm taking advantage of this little software to learn about some patterns. Despite I think that one (or more) pattern fits here and it could improve my code. When I want to read version of the software of my device, I don't have to assembly the command with parameters. It is fixed. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. To read a portion of the memory (maximum of 256 bytes), I have to assembly the command using the parameters `Len` and `Address`. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. To write a portion in the memory (maximum of 256 bytes), I have to assembly the command using the parameters `Len`, `Address` and `Data`. So I have to send it. After wait for response. If there is a response, treat (or parse) it and returns. I think that I could use Template Method because I have almost the same algorithm for all. But the problem is some commands are fixes, others have 2 or 3 parameters. I think that parameters should be passed on the constructor of the class. But each class will have a constructor overriding the abstract class constructor. Is this a problem for the template method? Should I use other pattern?"}
{"_id": "166224", "title": "What happens to programmers most oftenly while reading the code of others?", "text": "When reading others code do you usually have any troubles understanding it, Or its more usually that you question the others code about it being wrong/non- efficient/bad-formatted(etc)? Someone reading what you coded on your first job"}
{"_id": "82556", "title": "How did programmers use networking to share expensive computer resources in the 60's and 70's?", "text": "I'm young and wasn't alive during the 60's and 70's to experience networking and programming as it once was. I have been watching some talks by Van Jacobson on Content Centric Networking, and in these talks he gives a historical perspective stating that in the 60's and 70's, networking was designed to solve the problem of resource sharing, such as getting access to scarce card readers or high speed tape drives. He then proceeds to say that there was very little data in this era, and that data \"didn't live on computers\", it was something you carried around with you, e.g. on tapes or printouts. I have two questions regarding this: 1) How did people \"remotely\" use something like a card reader? Surely at some point the physical cards had to be delivered to wherever the computer was. If you were 100 miles away, did this mean they posted the cards off ahead of time and then simply used networking to execute the commands necessary to run those card decks? 2) How did people generally get the result of their programs? Was it sent back across the wire, or were print outs/tapes etcetera posted after the program had been run back to the remote researcher? I apologize if I've gotten my eras mixed up in any way here, as I said, I wasn't alive at the time. Thanks."}
{"_id": "194016", "title": "How do I evaluate programming interview preparation websites?", "text": "I ran across the CareerCup website which says they can help prepare you for programming interviews with various US based top tech companies. They don't \"guarantee\" anything, and the site appears to be backed by a well reviewed book*. *The reviews are on Amazon  I have been an active member on StackOverflow so according to me best resource for preparation would be StackOverflow. But I saw that CareerCup has collected interview questions from various companies. So the key difference is that I would have to dig for interview questions within SO versus having questions already aggregated by the other site. How do I go about evaluating the credibility of a website like this?   How can I evaluate if their interview preparation offerings are worthwhile?"}
{"_id": "194014", "title": "Incorporating web designer's HTML pages into an MVC4 application", "text": "We are embarking on a new project which will be using the ASP .NET MVC4 platform. I have been informed that the design is being outsourced to a custom design firm and they will be supplying us with HTML pages and stylesheets. How easy will it be to incorporate these css stylesheets and HTMl pages in our application? Do I need to ask for something more than HTML pages? My personal experience is limited to one site that was built for an in-house and I used the HTMLHelper to generate Views. Another past experience I have from long-ago is using Classic ASP and that was a breeze since I could literally mash up ASP and HTML together. My question is, what is this a good approach to incorporating HTML and stylesheets from a web designer into an ASP.NET MVC4 web application?"}
{"_id": "210673", "title": "How do I get rid of cyclic references in this design?", "text": "I have 3 classes: **Meeting** , **Project** and **Agenda**.   * A **Project** contains all sort of information + a list of meetings.   * The **Agenda** contains a list of upcoming Meetings.   * A **Meeting** contains some data + a list of Projects that were discussed there. The Agenda checks for upcoming meetings. When it finds one, it calls its _Meeting::alarm()_ method, which in turn displays data it gets from the list of projects this meeting refers to. **Meetings** can be referenced in a project without being scheduled in the **Agenda** , but it doesn't really make sense to have a reference to a meeting in the agenda if it is not contained in a project. ![Dependency between the classes](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FDo2L.png) Because the **Agenda** can be parsed in a thread while the main thread deletes a **project** , I made both Agenda and Project use shared pointers on Meetings, so that the parsing thread doesn't find a dangling pointer. In the destructor of **Project** , I ask **Agenda** to check the meetings related to this project to clean up those who don't have any other related project. Here is my problem:   _What kind of data structure should the Meeting::parentProjects member be?_   If a Meeting gets called by the Agenda while its Project is being deleted, and parentProjects is a simple raw pointers container, I might have a dangling here. But I can't use a shared_ptr to Project either, since that would make a cyclic dependency... I feel like it is unnecessarily complicated. _How could I refactor this?_ Note: I **have to** keep the 2 threads though."}
{"_id": "187880", "title": "Algorithm to detect a CLICK within Square range", "text": "It might be a simple question but I am looking for optimal solution. I will have numbers printed on a screen and I will be aware of coordinates. Numbers/Symbols will have 4 points(Square) to define their boundaries. Coordinates of that particular symbol will be stored in a file. Lets' say there is a number _5_ and it's 4 coordinates on screens are: **(2,20,20,20,2,40,20,40)** Now lets assume that a string _555_ represent a value in a file, say the value is _Car1_ When the user press num pad of _5_ thrice then it should detect that he needs _Car1_. I am interested to know whether there's some standard formula/Algo to find the range between these 4 coordinates or I have to work on my own. The Formula that was coming in my mind is: Symbol = (X1+X2+X3+X4)(Y1+Y2+Y3+Y4) = (62)(120) = 182(Representing _5_ ) But I am skeptical whether it's right and whether the formula will always be given a unique value per symbol/character based on given coordinates?"}
{"_id": "187881", "title": "Deterministic and controllable fully automated memory management", "text": "Fully automated memory management increases productivity and integrity greatly, but usual implementation (GC) has a critical problem. It's non- deterministic, and not controllable. This causes many problems such as burst CPU load which is critical for realtime applications. Some kind of optimizations (incremental/concurrent GC) can reduce those problems but still non-deterministic and can't eliminate the problem completely. I have been thought GC never can solve this problem, but recently, I learned and realized that GC operation doesn't need to be fully hidden. GC also can be deterministic and CPU burst-free by exposing some properly designed behavior controls. I think (RC + manually invoked cycle detection) can do this. But this doesn't look efficient. Is there any better approach for deterministic and controllable fully automatic memory management implementation? Or can I get some link to example implementations? **Edit** I added these lines to make my question more clear.   * _deterministic and controllable_ in this context means user can track and run code at object creation and destroying explicitly. And also controls amount and time of memory management operation load.   * _fully automatic_ means it allocates and clears memory as like GC without extra concern."}
{"_id": "187882", "title": "How can I become better on explaining the code to other developers?", "text": "While the question itself might sounds silly, the answer is quite important to me, as I feel that issue is negatively affecting my work performance. A bit of the background here: I am a seasoned senior software developer in a medium size software department of non-software company. While being above average on the technical side of the things, I am much poorer on communicating and explaining things. Even when explaining something to other developers. The most difficulties happen when I explain how a particular _small piece of code_ works. The funny thing is, that explaining and providing examples on how something works on a much higher level, e.g. interactions between separate modules and subsystems, is much easier for me. To make it clearer, what I call \"source code explaining skill\" is a a) ability to clearly explain the execution flow of the code - e.g. \"this thingy calls that thingy, which returns that object, which is later calls method A, passing the object B to ...\" a) ability to clearly explain the problems with a current design, or, which is more important, implications of the source code change as in \"if, for performance reasons, we start caching the object as a field of the class, we would have to make modification in ten different places to ensure that the cache is always in up to date state\" etc I tried to analyse why I am bad on explaining things and haven't found any explanations except maybe that I explain things in a bullet points manner, which some may find too rigid. Also when I explain things I perhaps focus too much on what I say myself and missing the questions, what people ask, but again to me it feels like these questions are often irrelevant and simply draggin the conversation away. What could you recommend (except the obvious \"practices which makes it perfect\", which I don't really buy, as I think I would probably practice more of the same mistakes again and again) me to do, so I could improve the source code explaining skills."}
{"_id": "191025", "title": "Machine Learning with sample data set", "text": "I have a question regarding Machine Learning in general. Consider the following scenario: Given a piece of text, we want a program to know whether the text is 'abusive' or not. To do this we can give the program 1000 text samples and manually mark which ones are positive and which ones are negative. The program studies these and records which words/patterns are common in abusive texts. We then give it another 1000 un-marked texts, and it manages to identify 95% of these correctly using the patterns it learnt from the original 1000. That's all good, but what about after that once the software 'goes live'? That is, we leave it to pull another 1000 texts every day and it's left to determine whether they are abusive or not on it's own. One might think it would be a good idea to continue to recognise words/patterns in an attempt to 'learn' more and more each day? But the problem here is we don't know for sure whether the program is identifying each text correctly. So if it marks a clean text as abusive, it will falsely record words/patterns as abusive. This will then cause the program's intelligence to become more and more incorrect and off-track. What is the general approach to the above problem?"}
{"_id": "117348", "title": "Should interface names begin with an \"I\" prefix?", "text": "I have been reading \"Clean Code\" by Robert Martin to hopefully, become a better programmer. While none of it so far has been really ground breaking it has made me think differently about the way I design applications and write code. There is one part of the book that I not only don't agree with, but doesn't make sense to me, specifically in regards to interface naming conventions. Here's the text, taken directly from the book. I have bolded the aspect of this I find confusing and would like clarification on. > I prefer to leave interfaces unadorned. The preceding I, so common in > today\u2019s legacy wads, is a distraction at best and too much information at > worst. **I don\u2019t want my users knowing that I\u2019m handing them an interface**. Perhaps it is because I'm only a student, or maybe because I have never done any professional or team based programming but _I would want the user to know it is an interface._ There's a big difference between implementing an interface and extending a class. So, my question boils down to, **\"Why should we hide the fact that some part of the code is expecting an interface?\"** **Edit** In response to an answer: > If your type is an interface or a class is your business, not the business > of someone using your code. So you shouldn't leak details of your code in > this thrid party code. Why should I not \"leak\" the details of whether a given type is an interface or a class to third-party code? Isn't it important to the third-party developer using my code to know whether they will be implementing an interface or extending a class? Are the differences simply not as important as I'm making them out to be in my mind?"}
{"_id": "61825", "title": "How to not mix HTML with PHP?", "text": "I made an application in EXTJS, but my technical architect and project manager say we don't want big file, so removed the EXTJS and made in object oriented PHP and JavaScript code, mixing HTML with PHP. But I don't want to mix HTML and PHP because of bad coding structure and bad coding practice. What should i do?"}
{"_id": "117342", "title": "Should ActiveRecord-based domain models have visible properties? Why or why not?", "text": "Should ActiveRecord-based domain models have visible properties? Why or why not? My experience and studies have always lead me to believe that object properties should always be protected, and that data should only be manipulated/accessed through methods. This ensures that if the internals of the class need to be refactored, other objects that rely on that object do not then also need to be refactored. I often see domain models with publicly visible properties however, and the models can be passed to say view objects which directly access those properties while building the view. I have always thought that this is perhaps the one exception to the above mentioned rule, because otherwise you would basically have to create getters and setters for objects like the view to use, or some other equally troubling sounding solution. Perhaps I am wrong on this? I would like to get some feedback on the subject."}
{"_id": "117344", "title": "Is there a good reason to avoid node.js for non-realtime web apps?", "text": "I've seen a lot of talk about how awesome Node.js is for realtime web apps -- things that need sockets, Comet, AJAX-heavy communications, and so forth. I know that its event-driven, asynchronous, thread-driven model is also good for concurrency with low overhead. I've also seen Node.js tutorials for more simple, 'traditional', non-realtime apps (e.g., the standard blog example, which seems to be the standard 'Hello World' for people learning app development). And I also know that node-static allows you to serve static assets. My question is: is there any good reason to _avoid_ Node.js for traditional web apps, like classifieds, forums, the aforementioned blog example, or the sort of CRUD apps you build for internal business applications? Just because it excels at all the funky realtime stuff, does that contraindicate it for more staid uses? The only thing I can think of, off the bat, is the lack of mature libraries (although that's changing). (The reason I'm asking is that I'm considering ditching PHP for Node.js, mostly to get over the impedance mismatch of switching between languages, but also so I can reuse validation code and whatnot. My superego admonishes me to choose the best tool for the job; however, I don't have a lot of time to learn fifteen languages and all their userland libraries just to have a comprehensive arsenal. It's also reassuring that Node.js might give me an easier optimisation path than PHP/Apache in the future when I have to start thinking about heavy traffic.) **[EDIT]** Thanks for the answers so far, folks; I just want to see if anyone else will weigh in before I choose an answer. The answer from @Raynos kinda confirms what I'm thinking, and the links from the commenters provided good food for thought, but I want to see if anyone else has any Node-specific answers, like 'DON'T USE NODE FOR PROBLEM X'. (Besides high-CPU tasks; I know that already :-)"}
{"_id": "129069", "title": "How to deal with designers?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do you handle a graphic designer who thinks he's a web designer? As a mobile/web developer in my company, I deal a lot with designers (i.e. Adobe suite designers). The problem is that these designers always want things from their point of view, by which I mean, they don't understand UX rules and other things such as how users interact with the software. And this is where problems start... Any suggestion on how to deal with them?"}
{"_id": "53373", "title": "Software Process Management", "text": "We want to formalize our development process. Aim is to provide a clear view of software in each phase. For example, to translate requirements to task, to specify the pre and post-conditions of task etc. So that each role (analyst, developer, tester) can perform better and has a checklist to finish his job properly Does your company follow any software process e.g. Agile, OpenUP, RUP etc. If yes what tools do you use to enforce it or to facilitate it?"}
{"_id": "9614", "title": "When does a \"scripter\" become a \"programmer\"?", "text": "Is there a difference between 'scripters' and 'programmers'? What is the dividing line between scripters and programmers? Perhaps all scripters be considered to be a programmer. If not all scripters can fall into the same camp, what about those people who use external objects such as COM objects, Win32's, etc. via an interop library? As far as script languages I'm thinking of are (but not limited to) perl, bash, javascript, powershell, and batch files."}
{"_id": "99088", "title": ".Net - web controls and win form controls", "text": "The next version of the application will be a .NET based application (both desktop and web). The **requirement** is that both applications have to look and work exactly the same way. I was thinking that maybe there was a way to create a web control or something and use it in both applications. Is this possible? For example can I create a user control for the web and use it for the desktop (without using a web browser control)? If the above isn't possible, what are my alternatives? Please let me know."}
{"_id": "140164", "title": "How frequent should the Token Updation in CSRF security be?", "text": "To start with the background, this post is what Jeff Atwood says about CSRF tokens. In this very page, he goes on to say: > An even stronger, albeit more complex, prevention method is to leverage > server state -- to generate (and track, with timeout) a unique random key > for every single HTML FORM you send down to the client. We use a variant of > this method on Stack Overflow with great success. But in this post itself, Jeff never remarks about when and how the tokens should be updated. I was using a similar technique in a web-app I was working on. It works like this:   1. Whenever the user will `POST` data to my server, a csrf token is sent along.   2. This CSRF token is stored in a cryptographically strong cookie in user's session.   3. If the token is valid, the user's request is processed and vice-versa.   4. If the request is valid, discard the old token on server side and create a new token. The response from server contains a new csrf token to be used in the next request. The old token on all the forms on a page is updated with the new one so that the next request is processed properly. Is it wise to update the tokens after ever `POST` request or should the updation be done only whenever the user makes a `GET` request and keep the same token till the next GET request is made?"}
{"_id": "36959", "title": "How does a government development shop transition to developing open source solutions?", "text": "Our shop has identified several reasons why releasing our software solutions to the open source community would be a good idea. However, there are several reasons from a business stand point why converting our shop to open source would be questioned. I need help from anyone out there who has gone through this transition, or is in the process. Specifically a government entity. About our shop: \\- We develop and support web and client applications for the local law enforcement community. \\- We are NOT a private company, rather a public sector entity Some questions that tend to come about when we have this discussion are:   1. We're a government agency, so isn't our code already public?   2. How do we protect ourselves from being 'hacked' if someone looks into our code? (There are obvious answers to this question like making sure you don't hard code passwords, etc. However, the discussion needs to consider an audience of executives who are very security conscience.)"}
{"_id": "99083", "title": "Is it possible to deploy Perl or Python scripts in the same way as PHP scripts?", "text": "PHP's deployment model is uber simple: upload and run. This is especially ideal for web applications that are intended to be installed on shared hosting by end users (think: Wordpress). Compare this with the installation of a popular Perl app. I want to stop writing things in PHP, but want to keep the same deployment model. Is it possible to achieve this with Python or Perl in such a way that it'll work with most shared web hosts? In other words, how can I run Python or Perl scripts outside of the cgi-bin directory on most shared hosts, like I can with PHP scripts?"}
{"_id": "108601", "title": "Why do schools (or most schools) teach Java as the intro language?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why do we study Java at university? This is a question I've wondered a lot as a young developer that just graduated from college. Why do schools teach Java in-depth vs something like C? A lot of my co-workers complain that there are no good C programmers anymore because schools no longer teach C in any real form. For example, my first 6-8 undergrad CS courses were all in Java. Then I had exactly 2 courses in upper division that used C and C++, and the rest were in Java. That was it. A lot of students had to retake the C/C++ classes because nobody had introduced us to C/C++ or any concepts in C/C++. We were just expected to somehow program instantly in C/C++. Now you could say that once you learn a language, everything other language is more or less the same but a lot of my classmates had problems with pointers and memory allocation. I think I honestly spent half the quarter understanding pointers and memory allocation before I sort of understood it and even now I am not confident enough to say I truly understand it. So why do schools do this? I've heard many developers say that going from C/C++ as a first language to Java is easy, but the reverse is much more difficult (This is also my sentiment). So why not do C/C++ first?"}
{"_id": "146633", "title": "Writing commit messages as a solo developer?", "text": "On my projects where the repository is shared between me and other programmers, I always write commit messages even if I'm the primary developer. But on those projects where I'm the solo developer working on a project, and the repository is hosted on my personal laptop, and is not even hosted by the client, hence no one except myself would see the commits, should I still write commit messages? So far I have been writing them, but I've found that I've never gone back and viewed my commit messages. I take time off development to write down the messages, but then they're never seen again even by me. Are there any good reasons for writing commit messages as a solo developer, or should you just skip them in favor of staying focused on development?"}
{"_id": "1814", "title": "How to deal with users who think their computer could think?", "text": "Along my career, I had to deal with users who think their computer could think: > My computer hates me! or > He just do this so he could laugh at me! This is often a joke, but some users are serious. It's easy when I know the causes of the problem, but when it's unexpected behavior it's more complicated. In those cases, I usually turn it as a joke, putting that on the fault of moon phases and tide, but they are likely to prefer their explanations. Do you have any tricks to deal with those users?"}
{"_id": "112336", "title": "Creating a blog for software changes", "text": "I work for a small company where I maintain a number of project all at once. I would like to create a blog and note software changes/update so that I can keep track of things. Plus it will also serve as help tool for other if they need help. I would like to install something locally on my machine or network, either ASP or PHP is fine. **Which software would you recommend? Is it good idea, bad idea? Has anyone done it? I have worked with wordpress and I like it but I am afraid it is not best for code snippets.** Any thoughts I do use source control. I am not an expert on it though. I use three different development environment. 1. Visual Studio 2. Eclipse 3. SQL Server Management Studio"}
{"_id": "241142", "title": "Use unnamed object to invoke method or not?", "text": "If I have a class with only only public method. When I use this class, is it good to use unnamed object to invoke its method? normal:               TaxFileParser tax_parser(tax_file_name);     auto content = tax_parser.get_content();      or unnamed object version:               auto content = TaxFileParser(tax_file_name).get_content();      Because I've told that we should avoid temporary as possible. If `tax_parser` object is used only once, can I call it a temporary and try to eliminate it? Any suggestion will be helpful."}
{"_id": "137069", "title": "Programming *into* a language vs. writing C code in Ruby", "text": "Code Complete states that you should aways code _into_ a language as opposed to code _in_ it. By that, they mean > Don't limit your programming thinking only to the concepts that are > supported automatically by your language. The best programmers think of what > they want to do, and then they assess how to accomplish their objectives > with the programming tools at their disposal. (chapter 34.4) Doesn't this lead to using one style of programming in every language out there, regardless of the particular strengths and weaknesses of the language at hand? Or, to put the question in a more answerable format: Would you propose that one should try to encode one's problem as neatly as possible with the particulars of one's language, or should you rather search the most elegant solution overall, even if that means that you need to implement possibly awkward constructs that do not exist natively in one's language?"}
{"_id": "137066", "title": "Is this bad design for a Shape interface?", "text": "I'm creating a vector editing program in C++, and I need a Shape interface which other concrete classes will implement. There is a requirement that _no implementation inheritance_ is allowed. The design doc says that if you need polymorphism, **use interfaces**. If you need code reuse, **use composition**. The **Shape** interface is:               class Shape     {       public:             virtual void get_name()=0;        virtual void set_name()=0;        virtual void get_linewidth()=0;        virtual void set_linewidth()=0;             ...        ...about 20 other getters/setters        ...             virtual void draw()=0;        virtual int area()=0;        virtual void rotate(int angle)=0;          }      The Circle class:               class Circle: public Shape     {       string name;       int line_width;       int angle_of_rotation;       int radius;     public:       string get_name(){ return name; }       string set_name(string name){ this->name=name; }       ...       ...about 20 other getters/setters       ...            int area()       {         return PI*pow(this->radius,2);       }          }      I have no problem with this, except common properties have to be **repeated for each type of shape**! This is solved using inheritance, but I am **not allowed to use that**. So, I create a **ShapeProperties** class               class ShapeProperties     {       string name;       int line_width;       int angle_of_rotation;          public:            string get_name(){ return name; }       string set_name(string name){ this->name=name; }            ...       ...about 20 other getters/setters       ...          }      and a properties() method for the interface:               virtual ShapeProperties* properties()=0;      A user would then do:               Shape *shape = new Circle();     shape->properties()->set_name(\"my shape\");     shape->properties()->set_line_width(4);     int area = shape->area();      **My question:** Is this good design? Is this bad design? Are there any obvious problems? How could it be made better?"}
{"_id": "137062", "title": "How to simplify my complex stateful classes and their testing?", "text": "I am in a distributed system project written in java where we have some classes which corresponds to very complex real-world-business objects. These objects have a lot of methods corresponding to actions that the user (or some other agent) may apply to that objects. As a result, these classes became very complex. The system general architecture approach has lead to a lot of behaviors concentrated on a few classes and a lot of possible interaction scenarios. As an example and to keep things easy and clear, let's say that Robot and Car were classes in my project. So, in the Robot class I would have a lot of methods in the following pattern:   * sleep(); isSleepAvaliable();   * awake(); isAwakeAvaliable();   * walk(Direction); isWalkAvaliable();   * shoot(Direction); isShootAvaliable();   * turnOnAlert(); isTurnOnAlertAvailable();   * turnOffAlert(); isTurnOffAlertAvailable();    * recharge(); isRechargeAvailable();   * powerOff(); isPowerOffAvailable();   * stepInCar(Car); isStepInCarAvailable();   * stepOutCar(Car); isStepOutCarAvailable();   * selfDestruct(); isSelfDestructAvailable();   * die(); isDieAvailable();   * isAlive(); isAwake(); isAlertOn(); getBatteryLevel(); getCurrentRidingCar(); getAmmo();   * ... In the Car class, it would be similar:   * turnOn(); isTurnOnAvaliable();   * turnOff(); isTurnOffAvaliable();   * walk(Direction); isWalkAvaliable();   * refuel(); isRefuelAvailable();   * selfDestruct(); isSelfDestructAvailable();   * crash(); isCrashAvailable();   * isOperational(); isOn(); getFuelLevel(); getCurrentPassenger();   * ... Each of these (Robot and Car) is implemented as a state machine, where some actions are possible in some states and some aren't. The actions changes the object's state. The actions methods throws `IllegalStateException` when called in an invalid state and the `isXXXAvailable()` methods tell if the action is possible at the time. Although some are easily deducible from the state (e.g, in the sleeping state, awake is available), some aren't (to shoot, it must be awake, alive, having ammo and not riding a car). Further, the interactions between the objects are complex too. E.g, the Car can only hold one Robot passenger, so if another one try to enter, an exception should be thrown; If the car crashes, the passenger should die; If the robot is dead inside a vehicle, he can't step out, even if the Car itself is ok; If the Robot is inside a Car, he can't enter another one before stepping out; etc. The result of this, is as I already said, these classes became really complex. To make things worse, there is hundreds possible scenarios when the Robot and the Car interacts. Further, much of that logic does needs to access remote data in other systems. The result is that unit-testing it became very hard and we have a lot of testing problems, one causing the another in a vicious circle:   * The testcases setups are very complex, because they need to create a significantly complex world to exercize.   * The number of tests is huge.   * The test suite takes some hours to run.   * Our test coverage is very low.   * The testing code tends to be written weeks or months later than the code that they test, or never at all.   * A lot of tests are broken too, mainly because the requirements of the tested code changed.   * Some scenarios are so complex, that they fail on timeout during the setup (we configured a timeout in each test, in the worst cases 2 minutes long and even this time long they timeouts, we ensured that it is not an infinite loop).   * Bugs regularly slips into production environment. That Robot and Car scenario is a gross over-simplification of what we have in reality. Clearly, this situation is not manageable. So, I am asking help and suggestions to: 1, Reduce the classes complexity; 2. Simplify the interactions scenarios between my objects; 3. Reduce the test time and the amout of code to be tested. EDIT:   I think I was not clear about the state machines. the Robot is itself a state machine, with states \"sleeping\", \"awake\", \"recharging\", \"dead\", etc. The Car is another state machine. EDIT 2: In the case that you are curious about what my system actually is, the classes that interact are things like Server, IPAddress, Disk, Backup, User, SoftwareLicense, etc. The Robot and Car scenario is just a case that I found that would be simple enough to explain my problem."}
{"_id": "190774", "title": "How often is Inheritance used?", "text": "I admit that I am a junior developer, and so far I've only built simple web applications in ASP.NET MVC. But I've never had to use the inheritance aspect of Object Oriented Programming in my own classes! It is true that in using ASP.NET MVC I inadvertently use inheritance (any controller I create will inherit from the base controller class), but I am referring here to the conscious use of inheritance in my design of a particular web system. Is it because I am a bad programmer? Or could it be that inheritance only comes into play in certain scenarios? Don't get me wrong, I understand what inheritance is and how to code using inheritance if I had to. I just can't seem to find a scenario to use it at. Basically, I am wondering how often it is used in OO programming in general."}
{"_id": "49437", "title": "Can you be a programmer and Business manager at the same time?", "text": "I think I'm struggled in some situation! We are a new start-up with 5 employees (2 Programmers). I'm the Technical Manager and that was so fine! Now I can see the fingers point to me to take the control of everything, as I've the big vision of what our organization do and play the role of CEO or General Manager! I want to, but I've no idea if it would be risky to our organization to make such a decision? How would managerial interrupts affect the technical productivity? Any tips or previous experience about such situation would help :) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "190770", "title": "Object-Oriented Programming: Why \"Oriented\"?", "text": "I am most of the way through my games programming degree. This is not a computer science degree, so a lot of the theory is eschewed in favour of practical portfolio building and what I see as JIT learning, which is apparently more important in the games industry. The first subject was \"Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming\". That phrase didn't bother me until I learned about the different programming paradigms (I'm getting this list from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_programming_paradigms):   * Imperative   * Functional   * Procedural   * Structured   * Event-Driven   * Object-Oriented   * Declarative   * Automata-Based I get that this is not an exhaustive list, and that not all of these concepts are equal, and most of them aren't even exclusive, but I don't understand why most of them get just one word - imperative; functional; declarative - but when we talk about programming with objects, we have to clarify that we are _oriented_ around those objects. Can't we just _use_ objects? Can't we just _have_ objects? Why must they _orient_ us, as our guiding star? Looking here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming), nowhere is the use of the term \"oriented\" addressed as its own term. Only \"object\" is explained. Also, I can see for practical reasons why Event-Driven is used, because Event Programming is already a thing that you do when you're running a conference, and Automata Programming makes it sound like you're setting up a robotic production line, so it helps to have additional clarifying words there. **What makes Object Programming, as a phrase, not enough to describe what we do when we use objects in our programming?** Obviously from my tone I'm not too fond of the word \"oriented\". It reminds me of my time as a court reporter, listening to lawyer after lawyer use the phrase \"in relation to\" as a kind of verbal tick. It didn't mean anything; it was just a term that they used to fill the air while they tried to think of what to say next. However, I'm not trying to advocate a change of language, I'm just asking why it is the way it is. If someone knows why it came to be known that way for purely historical, vestigial reasons, then that's the answer. It will be ammunition if I ever decide to waste my time advocating for a change of language. On the other hand, if there is actually a useful reason for why a language or piece of code must _point_ towards objects, to the exclusion of all other directions, as opposed to merely having them in its toolbelt, as _tools_ , I would really be interested to learn about it. I like learning useful things."}
{"_id": "190771", "title": "Can REST API be used as business layer?", "text": "I am using PHP Codeigniter **MVC** design pattern and I had this project with some sort of specific business processes In my application I will be dealing with 2 existing REST APIs:   1. Google    2. Trello I came up with idea to create **REST API** to act as **Business Logic Layer** (BBL) that in turns access my models directly to fetch needed data to formulate business rules and controller with communicate with BLL with REST client, ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/p5rMQ.png) Is that bad approach for performance ? Is it better to create **2 layers** of Models one as Data Access Layer **(DAL)** and one as Business Logic Layer **(BLL)**"}
{"_id": "211114", "title": "BLL structure and organization", "text": "let's say you have a class diagram http://i.stack.imgur.com/gpb55.png and you would like to start a class library project in visual studio to act as BLL to convert this diagram into actual code files. how would you structure your BLL project (in the solution explorer), how would you organize classes files and thier hierarchy?"}
{"_id": "211117", "title": "State pattern long state class names", "text": "I am using state pattern on 28 states in my application. The states are for membership cards that has 7 major states, there are 4 boolean attributes for the membership card that actually affects the its behavior so I have decided to embed them with states, that's how it multiplied to 28 states. The problem now is with states class naming, it is getting crazing, I am ending up with class state named like this `Membership-UnderCreation-Printed- Linked-Premium-Frozen` \\----- I have hyphened different attributes to make it clear. Is it ok for state class names to be like this?"}
{"_id": "197467", "title": "Preventing Web Users From Using Their Location Bar Within An App", "text": "My boss asked me to alter our Java Webapp such that users cannot go to places in our Webapp by typing URLs into their browser location bar. I told her that I can not disable their location bars. I told her the way this is usually done is to launch a WebApp in a new customized browser window sans a location bar. That was not acceptable to her. I already have a Java Filter class set up to enforce various rules. So, I was thinking of this approach   1. Implement a system wide \"writeFlagCookie\" javascript function to write a cookie anytime a user initiates a GET by clicking on a link or a button.   2. Everywhere the WebApp does a redirect or a forward, put a flag variable, say \"wasRedirected\" into the HTTP session.   3. In my Filter, intercept each request and check for the request type.   4. If it is a POST, I know a human didn't type the URL into their browser, so I automatically let it through.   5. If it is a GET, look for a javascript generated cookie, or the flag stored in the session to indicate a redirect or a forward. If I find neither send the user back to the page they just tried to leave from. Though it will be a lot of work, it sounds too simple to be adequate. Is there anyway this approach can bite me in the ass? My boss wants two problems solved   1. Users going to screens out of sequence and getting error messages. This includes multi-screen forms ( which we have to keep ) and users using a back button.    2. Preventing the user from leaving particular pages and going to other parts of the application until they fill out what we want them to fill out on those screens. I have ideas how to solve #1 & #2, also laborious, but my boss likes the idea of disabling typing URLs for navigation for a catch-all solution. Maybe once she sees how much work is involved in disabling typed navigation I can market her on just solving those problems. Thanks Steve"}
{"_id": "211113", "title": "how to write a stored procedure to insert data in to a sql server database in a datagridview in a form?", "text": "I need to insert data through a form using a `datagridview` connected to a SQL Server 2008 R2 database. is it ok, if I write a single insert stored procedure query in a while loop in the `form.cs`"}
{"_id": "68027", "title": "How difficult did you find the Java Certification Exam", "text": "I'm just starting out as a Java programmer and have very minimal experience. I would like to improve my knowledge and study for the Java certification. I realize everyone will have a different answer but for those who have taken the certification and passed it, I'd really appreciate if you could tell me your experiences. Just a couple of lines to let me know if you found it hard, very hard. Also how much time did you spend studying. Sorry that this is not a good question. My native language is not English so it is hard for me to say what I want to ask."}
{"_id": "157123", "title": "Having 2 Initialize Paragraphs in 1 COBOL program", "text": "I am designing a COBOL program that does 2 things.   1 reads specific rows from a table, and inserts a new row based on the original.   2 reads different rows from the same table, and updates those rows. Is it bad standards to have 2 initialization procedures? I need to declare 2 SQL cursors, one for each task. So I was thinking:   `1 initialize cursor, 2 process, 3 initialize cursor, 4 process.` But that seems like bad logic. something is telling me it should be more like:   `1 initialize cursor, 2 process` But I'm having trouble thinking it out because to me, they are 2 separate tasks. I tried to think of a way that my SQL query could do the work, and then I could just do some validation. But I'm not sure the query would be any more efficient than having a second read of the table. Here's my structure ideas   I've added a 3rd chart that I believe follows the answer given to me on this question. Does the 3rd chart seem to me the most logical?"}
{"_id": "68022", "title": "Should I keep all my class definitions in the same class library?", "text": "I am starting to work with class libraries in my C# class. We were told to write code that can be used more than one time. Should I keep all my class definitions in one class library for the length of the term, or separate them by project?"}
{"_id": "199565", "title": "Is Objective C a reasonable way to learn C?", "text": "I want to learn C but I tend to learn best when I have a project to work on. I've never done iPhone development, so I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone. Will learning objective c also teach me to program c reasonably well, or are they too dissimilar? EDIT: I'm mostly wondering if objective-c/iphone-development would teach me all the little gotcha's that are inherent to c. I come from a .Net background so I haven't done much in terms of memory management or working with pointers."}
{"_id": "199560", "title": "Finding maximum number of congruent numbers", "text": "Let's say we have a multiset (set with possible duplicates) of integers. We would like to find the size of the largest subset of the multiset such that all numbers in the subset are congruent to each other modulo some m > 1. For example:   1 4 7 7 8 10 for m = 2 the subsets are: (1, 7, 7) and (4, 8, 10), both having size 3.   for m = 3 the subsets are: (1, 4, 7, 7, 10) and (8), the larger set of size 5.   for m = 4 the subsets are: (1), (4, 8), (7, 7), (10), the largest set of size 2.   At this moment it is evident that the best answer is 5 for m = 3. Given m we can find the size of the largest subset in linear time. Because the answer is always equal or larger than half of the size of the set, it is enough to check for values of m upto median of the set. Also I noticed it is necessary to check for only prime values of m. However if values in the set are large the algorithm is still rather slow. Does anyone have any ideas how to improve it?"}
{"_id": "199561", "title": "DDD/SOA in (.NET) MVC and Message pattern(s) / Request Response", "text": "We're currently considering whether it makes sense (or if the benefits are worth the added code) to introduce a Message based pattern (such as Request Response) into a Domain Driven Design / Service Oriented Architecture under an MVC app (with DI and potentially used by MVC, WCF, Windows Services, etc.). Basically (in MVC) the controller uses an injected service which in turn uses an injected repository to save/update/delete objects. There are Application Services, and Domain Services and the application service might use multiple domain services to e.g. save something and then send an email about the item being saved. Considering the `example use case` where something is saved and then an email is sent, it could be useful to present any potential errors to the user such as \"Save succeeded, but the email wasn't able to be sent. Please try again in 5 minutes or contact support etc.\" vs just a generic error such as \"Save or email didn't succeed\". The message based pattern with Request and Response objects seems fine (in theory), or at least the response objects with e.g. a couple inherited fields could be useful.               public abstract class ResponseBase     {         public bool Success { get; set; }         public string Message { get; set; }     }      Then there could be an object to extend it with the ViewModel result as a property and finally the controller could decide whether to show e.g. an error message, or update the view etc. This seems nice, but in the `simple cases` where you are simply saving an item and it's clear the save succeeded or failed, it can also seem to be overkill. Creating and passing extra objects where maybe you just need an ID and a Boolean seems to make this pattern redundant. The thing is that this object needs to transfer from the controller, through the services, down to the repository, and back. The request part could be possible to ignore and only worry about returning a meaningful result too. It's hard to estimate whether it could be 50-50 or 40-60 where this type of system could be useful, but there are many cases that could use it, as well as many that aren't very useful. Is there better approaches to this issue, or have you found this pattern useful for the scenario portrayed? Is it worth the extra coding for the simple cases (in your case(s))?"}
{"_id": "199563", "title": "Untyped lambda calculus: Why is call-by-value strict?", "text": "I'm currently reading Benjamin C. Pierce's \u201cTypes and Programming Languages\u201d. Before really getting into type theory it explains lambda calculus and evaluation strategies. I am a bit confused by the explanation of _call by name_ vs _call by value_ in this context. The two strategies are explained in the following manner: ### _call by name_ Like _normal order_ in that it chooses the leftmost, outermost redex first, but more restrictive by not allowing reductions inside abstractions. An example:                 id (id (\u03bbz. id z))     \u2192 id (\u03bbz. id z)     \u2192 \u03bbz. id z      ### _call by value_ Only the outermost redexes are reduced and a redex is reduced only when its right-hand side has already been reduced to a value\u2014a term that is finished computing and cannot be reduced any further. An example:                 id (id (\u03bbz. id z))     \u2192 id (\u03bbz. id z)     \u2192 \u03bbz. id z          (identical to the call by name evaluation)      Ok, so far so good. But this is followed by the following paragraph: > The call-by-value strategy is _strict_ , in the sense that the arguments to > functions are always evaluated, whether or not they are used by the body of > the function. In contrast, _non-strict_ (or _lazy_ ) strategies such as > call-by-name and call-by-need evaluate only the arguments that are actually > used. I know what call-by-value and call-by-name means practically, from having used (among others) C and Haskell, but I cannot see why the evaluation strategy explained above leads to this in the lambda calculus. Is this an additional rule that always accompany call-by-value, or does if follow from the reduction strategy outlined above? Especially since the reduction steps in the examples are identical, I fail to see the difference between the two strategies and would love if someone could help me gain some intuition."}
{"_id": "193156", "title": "How can I create a web form that displays and accepts Tamil language?", "text": "I am developing a PHP Application that needs to display and accept content written in tamil. For example \"login\" should be written in tamil on the form. How can I achieve this ?"}
{"_id": "168334", "title": "Naming Convention for Dedicated Thread Locking objects", "text": "A relatively minor question, but I haven't been able to find official documentation or even blog opinion/discussions on it. Simply put: when I have a private object whose sole purpose is to serve for private `lock`, what do I name that object?               class MyClass     {         private object LockingObject = new object();              void DoSomething()         {             lock(LockingObject)             {                 //do something             }         }     }      What should we name `LockingObject` here? Also consider not just the name of the variable but how it looks in-code when locking. I've seen various examples, but seemingly no solid go-to advice:   1. Plenty of usages of `SyncRoot` (and variations such as `_syncRoot`).     * **Code Sample:** `lock(SyncRoot)`, `lock(_syncRoot)`     * This appears to be influenced by VB's equivalent `SyncLock` statement, the `SyncRoot` property that exists on some of the ICollection classes and part of some kind of SyncRoot design pattern (which arguably is a bad idea)     * Being in a C# context, not sure if I'd want to have a VBish naming. Even worse, in VB naming the variable the same as the keyword. Not sure if this would be a source of confusion or not.   2. `thisLock` and `lockThis` from the MSDN articles: C# lock Statement, VB SyncLock Statement     * **Code Sample:** `lock(thisLock)`, `lock(lockThis)`     * Not sure if these were named minimally purely for the example or not     * Kind of weird if we're using this within a `static` class/method.     * EDIT: The Wikipedia article on locks also uses this naming for its example   3. Several usages of `PadLock` (of varying casing)     * **Code Sample:** `lock(PadLock)`, `lock(padlock)`     * Not bad, but my only beef is it unsurprisingly invokes the image of a _physical_ \"padlock\" which I tend to not associate with the _abstract threading concept_.   4. Naming the lock based on what it's intending to lock     * **Code Sample:** `lock(messagesLock)`, `lock(DictionaryLock)`, `lock(commandQueueLock)`     * In the VB SyncRoot MSDN page example, it has a `simpleMessageList` example with a private `messagesLock` object     * I don't think it's a good idea to name the lock against the type you're locking around (\"DictionaryLock\") as that's an implementation detail that may change. I prefer naming around the concept/object you're locking (\"messagesLock\" or \"commandQueueLock\")     * Interestingly, I _very rarely_ see this naming convention for locking objects in code samples online or on StackOverflow.   5. (EDIT) The C# spec under section \"8.12 The Lock Statement\" has an example of this pattern and names it `synchronizationObject`     * **Code Sample:** `lock(SynchronizationObject)`, `lock(synchronizationObject)` **Question:** What's your opinion _generally_ about naming _private_ locking objects? Recently, I've started naming them `ThreadLock` (so kinda like option 3), but I'm finding myself questioning that name. I'm frequently using this locking pattern (in the code sample provided above) throughout my applications so I thought it might make sense to get a more professional opinion/discussion about a solid naming convention for them. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "168331", "title": "git changing head not reflected on co-dev's branch", "text": "Basically, we undid history. I know this is bad, and I am already committed to avoiding this at all costs in the future, but what is done is done. Anyway, I issued a git push origin <1_week_old_sha>:master to undo some bad commits. I then deleted a buggered branch called release(which had also received some bad commits) from remote and then branched a new release off master. I pushed this to remote. So basically, remote master & release are clones and just how I want them. The issue is if I clone the repo anew(or work in my current repo) everything looks great....but when my co-devs delete their release branch and create a new one based off the new remote release I created, they still see all the old junk I tried to remove. I feel this has to do with some local .git files mistaking the new branch release for the old release. Any thoughts? Thanks."}
{"_id": "168330", "title": "Useful git commit messages for merged branches", "text": "_As a follow-up tothis question:_ If I'm working on a team by myself, I can maintain useful commit messages when merging branches by squashing all the commits to a single diff and then merging that diff. That way I can easily see what changes were introduced in the branch, and I have a single summary describing the feature/change/whatever that was accomplished in that branch when browsing the master branch. My question now is, how can I accomplish this when working with a team? In that situation, the branches will be pushed to a remote repository, meaning that I can't squash all the commits in the branch down to a single commit. If the branch is public, can I still have a single useful merge commit in the master branch? (By \"useful\" I mean that the commit in the master line tells me (1) a useful summary of what was done in the branch and (2) diffs of the same.)"}
{"_id": "168339", "title": "Optimization of a hybrid pagination scheme", "text": "I'm working on a Web Application using node.js in which I'm building a partial copy of the database on the client-side to decrease the load on my server. Right now, I have a function like this (expressed as python-style pseudocode, but implemented in JavaScript):               get(table_name,primary_key):         if primary_key in cache[table_name]:             return cache[table_name][primary_key]         else:             x = get_data_from_server(table_name,primary_key) # socket.io             return cache[table_name][primary_key] = x      While this scheme works perfectly well for caching individual rows, I'd like to extend it to support the creation of paginated tables ordered according to the primary_key, and loading additional data using the above function for only the current and possibly the adjacent pages. Now, I don't want to keep the list of primary keys on the server to be retrieved every time I need to change the page (which, for reasons beyond the scope here, will be very frequent), and keeping it on the client side, subject to real-time create/delete events from the server, doesn't seem that good an idea, even after compression (using ranges, instead of individual values). What is the best way to calculate which items are to be displayed on a random page, minimizing the space requirements & the need for communication with the server?"}
{"_id": "58303", "title": "Is Agile the new micromanagement?", "text": "This question has been cooking in my head for a while so I wanted to ask those who are following agile/scrum practices in their development environments. My company has finally ventured into incorporating agile practices and has started out with a team of 4 developers in an agile group on a trial basis. It has been 4 months with 3 iterations and they continue to do it without going fully agile for the rest of us. This is due to the fact that management's trust to meet business requirements with a quite a bit of ad hoc type request from high above. Recently, I talked to the developers who are part of this initiative; they tell me that it's not fun. They are not allowed to talk to other developers by their Scrum master and are not allowed to take any phone calls in the work area (which maybe fine to an extent). For example, if I want to talk to my friend for kicks who is in the agile team, I am not allowed without the approval of the Scrum master; who is sitting right next to the agile team. The idea of all this or the agile is to provide a complete vacuum for agile developers from any interruptions and to have them put in good 6+ productive hours. Well, guys, I am no agile guru but what I have read Yahoo agile rollout document and similar for other organizations, it gives me a feeling that agile is not cheap. It require resources and budget to instill agile into the teams and correct issue as they arrive to put them back on track. For starters, it requires training for developers and coaching for managers and etc, etc... The current Scrum master was a manager who took a couple days agile training class paid by the management is now leading this agile team. I have also heard in the meeting that agile manifesto doesn't dictate that agile is not set in stones and is customized differently for each company. Well, it all sounds good and reason. In conclusion, I always thought the agile was supposed to bring harmony in the development teams which results in happy developers. However, I am getting a very opposite feeling when talking to the developers in the agile team. They are unhappy that they cannot talk anything but work, sitting quietly all day just working, and they feel it's just another way for management to make them work more. Tell me please, if this is one of the examples of good practices used for the purpose of selfish advantage for more dollars? Or maybe, it's just us the developers like me and this agile team feels that they don't like to work in an environment where they only breathe work because they are at work. Thanks. Edit: It's a company in healthcare domain that has offices across US. It definitely feels like a cowboy style agile which makes me really not wanting to go for agile at all, esp at my current company. All of it has to do with the management being completely cheap. Cutting out expensive coffee for cheaper version, emphasis on savings and being productive while staying as lean as possible. My feeling is that someone in the management behind the door threw out this idea, that agile makes you produce more so we can show our bosses we're producing more with the same headcount. Or, maybe, it will allow us to reduce headcount if that's the case. EDITED: They are having their 5 min daily meeting. But not allowed to chat or talk with someone outside of their team. All focus is on work."}
{"_id": "58301", "title": "Converting our Windows Software to the web", "text": "We're looking at converting a software package from Windows over to the browser. It's a back office system consisting of Ledgers, Stock Control, Order Processing, etc and it's written in a legacy language (Dataflex). The project consists of 200+ database tables, 100+ reports, 300+ Views, 100+ Dialog boxes and 200 or so Selection Lists. I'm really struggling to get my head around the technologies that I'll need to use to convert this to a more modern web based programming language / framework. Even simple screens (Entering a stock location) seems overly complex. With the current language, I can drag a bunch of Fields to a form (a-la VB), wire in a tiny bit of database code and I've got a screen that'll allow me to find, delete, edit and change records easily. 10 minutes of development, tops. Has anyone got any suggestions on how I can move from my current VB style programming language to one that allows similar functionality on the web? Has anyone got any ideas how I go about working out how many man hours it's going to take to convert this sort of project to a new language on the web? What Web Framework options are available, and how do I decide between going with something like Rails vs going with something like ASP.Net? We've a tonne of code wired to OnClick and OnChange events. (I know this is bad). What strategies can I take with regard to converting this to the web? I'll admit - I'm hopelessly confused by some of the newer syntaxes used by modern languages. Is there any language that allows me access to the database without having to subclass everything through IEnumerable and various weird Typecasting things. Has anyone done anything like what we want to do? What were the pitfalls? Sorry about the vagueness of the question. I'd be more specific but don't know where to start. Delete away if I'm asking the wrong thing or in the wrong place."}
{"_id": "58306", "title": "Class Naming in Stock Trading Application", "text": "What do you normally call a class that stores open, high, low, close, volumne, and timestamp of a financial instrument(e.g. stock)? For example, in a 5 minute intraday chart, this object would hold OHLC, and volume between 10:00 and 10:05AM. Can anyone working in the field give me an advice?"}
{"_id": "197098", "title": "Why are there non-decidable languages? Can anyone explain me my book's solution?", "text": "Well in my book it is says that \"there are non-decidable languages\" And the proof is: > Every algorithm is a word. Then there are only countable algorithms. But > there are uncountable languages and therefore more than algorithms Why is it said that every algorithm is a word? A word is a concatenation of symbols, elements of an alphabet, then what's the relation between a word and an algorithm? Can anyone explain me that?"}
{"_id": "197096", "title": "Using only UI testing. Is that Ok?", "text": "I am a sole developer working with an offshore employer. I do realize the importance of unit testing (although haven't practiced before) but currently, the code hasn't ever been tested. The problem with the code is that it isn't what I call \"been moduled well\", some parts are really messy, extensive use of globals and the code doesn't really show loose coupling. If I am not wrong, the code might require heavy refactoring before being able to be unit tested. Also, it seems the employer, isn't quite interested in testing. He rather suggests to spend this time in building features. So what I suggested to him is UI testing. Because UI testing is something we do every time, testing features, clicking, checking if something is not broke, it made sense to both of us to use it to automate the process of checking features and save us time. Since I have never done UI testing before, I don't know what possible disadvantages might be associated with using just UI testing alone or will it be much beneficial at all?"}
{"_id": "197091", "title": "Javascript Architectural Model", "text": "Are there any obvious flaws to this OO architectural model which I intend to implement using javascript? It is similar to the MVP model but instead the role of the model is broken down into three modules:   * the cache (stores data instead of rerequesting from server)   * the model (manages requests for raw data, retrieving it from the cache if available or the server)   * the modifier (handles requests which require data which makes changes to the data on the server) For a diagram showing how data flows through this model: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sUjYY.png) **view**   * sets up & manages the UI possibly requiring the requesting of data from the presenter   * sets up controls to alter what is displayed, possibly requiring the requesting of data from the presenter **cache**   * contains a record of some fetched data in data objects   * has a .store() method for storing data in the cache   * has a .retrieve() method for retrieving data from the cache   * access for storage and retrieval is available to the model and the modifier (acting as a faster intermediate location for the sharing of information than the server) **presenter**   * handles requests for formatted data from view   * requests data from Model (passing a callback for completion) formats data for presentation and calls view callbacks **model**   * handles requests for data from presenter   * requests data from cache (cache.retrieve())   * if data not in cache, requests it from server and then stores it in cache (cache.store())   * data passed back to presenter via callbacks **modifier**   * handles requests from view for modifications to data   * specify post, put and delete request types   * only support specific types of request which may be handled separately (eg settings)   * stores new data in cache (cache.store())   * pushes data to the server   * calls callback about the success of data storage This is quite big project and there will be a number of others working on it so it would be good to get it right from the off. **edit 1** The cache.store() and cache.retrieve() methods both only receive the information required to refer to the data in the cache, but do not specify how it is stored. The cache methods use this information to respond with or store the correct data, but the internal structure in which the data is stored is kept secret."}
{"_id": "220929", "title": "How do I make multiple calls to a web service without taxing that service heavily? Scaling question", "text": "is there a good pattern for how to send multiple calls to a web service but without taxing it and ensuring the data is sent back? I don't know enough to correctly describe the problem to even start googling it properly - current google results compare streaming vs. non-streaming wcf answers? Scenario: I am working on an app (I'm a jr. dev.) that needs to gather information from several sources about a 'customer' and the domains they own Technical: for one of the sources, I need to send a string array of domains to a web service and this web service returns an entry for each domain name, but this list of domain names will be thousands long - I would like to attempt to divide this list into bite-size chunks (1k domain names each) and then... queue them up to send to that web service, but ensure the web service doesn't skip one PseudoRequirements: Consumer of web page does not care how long it takes, but would like a list of results up front that does not require pagination to navigate. Current Theory: Should I take my massive 30k list, break it into 1k chunks, stuff each 1k-sized chunk into a 'request' object, assemble those 'request chunks' into a 'request chunk list' and iterate over that list (sequentially / blocking, so I don't strangle the WS) and for each 'request chunk' get back a 'response chunk' assemble those into a list, and then pass that list back into the front end for viewing? is this a viable method? is there a better way to queue items? Does anyone know off-hand any useful articles for this sort of queuing? are there any 'gotchas' or additional items to consider before I attempt my first pass? Additional Edits: -I do not have full control to the receiving service, I can not view it's code and the developers that manage it are... less than responsive to email. I do not currently know the stress testing limits of the web service. I emailed the owners of that component but have yet to receive a response - I was going to work up my design while I waited on them."}
{"_id": "234408", "title": "How to capture \"Display advertisement\" use case?", "text": "What kind of use case it would be for to \"show ad in part of the view\"? Who could be the actor to relate with? User or System? As user has no specific goal to see ads, i am wondering what is the best way to capture this in use case diagram? Any assistance will be helpful"}
{"_id": "220926", "title": "Binary data storage scheme (saving user-uploaded files)", "text": "In our app we are currently saving binary data to the database (terrible, I know; but this is legacy stuff and it wasn't my decision). We're trying to migrate this data out to an external device and I'm trying to come up with a scheme to save these files. We have multiple tenants, I'd like to have a directory per tenant. My scheme for that is to build path using the first-three letters of the tenant. So if you had a tenant called `apple`, its files would be at `/a/p/p/apple`. Within these directories, I will save the files. For the files, I want to generate a random 6-character alphanumeric name (only lowercase characters for the time being because internal reasons). So if we generate a file name called `6a8jxo`, it will stored as `<tenant>/6/a/6/6a8jxo`. With this strategy, each tenant can have a maximum of approximately 916 billion unique files (not that we're attempting to save that many), with a maximum of 46,656 files per directory. If I go for a 5-character name, we will have a maximum of 60.5 billion unique files with 1,296 files per directory. Are there any drawbacks to this approach? I realize that certain directories may only contain one or two files, but in my mind that is not a huge problem. My colleague doesn't want to do it this way; he wants to use an autoincremented field in the database and then base the directory structure on the hex-value (I assume 32-bit) of that instead of using the tenant. With his strategy the hex value would be used as follows: the file will be stored in the directory located at `<tenant>/aa/bbb` where `aa` is the first two characters (most significant nibbles) of the hex value, and `bbb` is the next three. His reasoning is that he only wants to create new directories when one fills up instead of having numerous, partially-filled directories. This approach introduces numerous difficulties on the code side of things and I don't see having completely-filled directories as an argument that justifies the extra effort required to do this. Are there any other strategies or approaches I haven't considered?"}
{"_id": "115648", "title": "Is there a Django reference?", "text": "I am new to Django. I have found the official topic guides https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/ an excellent place to learn from. But now I am in a place where I need quick reference to see what methods an object has, what arguments it takes, what it returns etc, kind of like the Python docs or Java docs. More of a reference than a tutorial. The official docs are tutorial style and do not necessarily have reference to all the methods. Am I missing something here? Do the Django official docs suffice for everyone?"}
{"_id": "115643", "title": "Why are all desktop environments but KDE using GTK?", "text": "I recently did some hacking with Qt, and found it quite pleasant. Then I switched distributions on my laptop a couple of time, and noted that only KDE is using Qt, all the others are using the Gnu Image Manipulation Program Tool Kit. GTK is primarily a widget toolkit, although Windows and Mac ports do seem to exist. Not sure why one would build a DE on top of a toolkit for an image editor. Qt more of a cross-platform framework including threading, networking, and other non-GUI features. I heard licensing is considered a problem. Did I just answer my own question, or are there other things besides getting all zealotty about freedom? **update** I'd like to clarify that I'm not after opinions, but _observations_. \"Qt is not real C++\" is an observation, as is \"GTK has been general purpose for a very long time\". Besides, > But software and programming isn\u2019t always a hard science, either. Once you > get past the does this code compile or not questions, you\u2019re dealing with > issues of best practices, experiences, and behaviors. Perhaps because our > communities have become so accustomed to getting quick, accurate, and timely > answers, they feel that even a subjective Stack Overflow is better than the > alternatives. So much so, that our fellow programmers created a sister site > specifically for their pent up subjective questions. Take one heaping pile > of subjective questions, bottle it up for over two years and\u2026 kablooey!"}
{"_id": "77091", "title": "How to dissuade a customer who just learned a technology and wants to use it everywhere?", "text": "My customer recently discovered what is URL Rewriting, without completely understanding what it is, how it works and the pros and cons of it. Now, he asks for lots of strange changes in actual requirements of current projects and changes in old projects in order to implement what he believes is URL Rewriting. **On one hand, I'm annoyed being asked to do things which doesn't make any sense** instead of doing real work. **On the other hand, I can't tell my customer that he doesn't understand anything in the subject** despite his interest in it. I think many people have had situations when their manager or their customer just learned a new buzzword or a new technology, and he loved it so much than he wanted to use it in every project, everywhere, rewrite the whole codebase just to use this new thing, etc. Also, I've recently read something related on Programmers.SE where people told about their experiences when there was a huge buzz around XML, and some managers would ask to introduce XML in every project just to show to everyone that they have used it. So those who have been in similar situation, how have you managed it?"}
{"_id": "114998", "title": "Is there any circumstance in which a strict waterfall project can succeed when requirements are not clearly defined?", "text": "I can not see how a software project can make any meaningful progress under a waterfall methodology if the requirements cannot be clearly stated from the outset. Am I missing anything?"}
{"_id": "114999", "title": "How often to release in Scrum sprint", "text": "How often to you release during a sprint. Only at the end of the sprint or every time a feature is ready. And how to you handle bugfix releases?"}
{"_id": "78738", "title": "Parameterize Agent Based Simulation (OOP-Question)", "text": "I'd like to hear my fellow programmer's thoughts on the issue of parametrizing agent based simulations: Consider:   * Simulation core, including geometry, collision tests, some rules   * Different agents (modelled in OOP-fashion: has-a, is-a, abstract interfaces)   * Agents have different sensors, different actors, different controllers, ... All connected together by references/pointers and accessed using abstract interfaces. So essentially, each agent is composed of an ownership tree (agent owns sensors, controller, actors), superimposed by a dataflow-graph (sensor connected to controller, connected to actor). The tree, the graph plus the parametrization of the things together form a **simulation setup**. Running a simulation amounts to:   * Read in simulation setup   * Instantiate a bunch of objects, parametrize and connect them together to form the tree and the graph   * Run simulation   * Output some data (statistics, signals, whatever) The question is how best to save the simulation setup, and how to instantiate & parametrize stuff. Requirements (some of them conflicting):   1. The parametrization should probably be structured along the ownership tree, as it feels most natural.   2. A lot of times I'd like to instantiate a bunch of similar agents with just the 1 or 2 parameters changed between instances. That needs to be easy.   3. I'd like to keep parametrization and code close together. When experimenting with algorithms that are affected by parametrization, I wouldn't want the changes to be spread out over too many places.   4. Conversely, I'd like to keep parametrization out of the code, so that it's easy to automate simulation runs in order to systematically sweep through parameter spaces.   5. Parameters have meta-data: type, value range, physical unit, textual description, logical dependencies (e.g. if you specify X you must not specify Y)   6. Parameters not only affect data (member variables) but also code (usage of a particular specialization of the abstract base) * * * Now my colleges and me are tasked with building a new agent-based simulation:   * Do you know any frameworks / libraries / techniques?   * Are any patterns applicable? Best practises?   * Meta-programming?    * Abandon OOP altogether? Looking forward to your thoughts."}
{"_id": "147433", "title": "Is it safe to download VS11/.NET4.5 beta and still deploy to servers with .NET 4.0?", "text": "I've been wanting to try out VS2011 and .NET 4.5 beta, but the upgrade path is confusing at best. If I understand what I've read, the .NET 4.5 framework overwrites the .NET 4.0 libraries on your local machine, so libraries such as mscorlib.dll and System.dll will be replaced with the 4.5 version - fully backward compatible, but still different. If I'm developing ASP.NET sites with VS2011, and assuming I don't use any of the new 4.5 features in the code, do you know of any issues I might have by deploying to a web server with only the .NET 4.0 framework? I wouldn't expect any problems since it's the same CLR, but I'd like to know for sure before I do it. There's always the option of keeping a separate virtual dev machine for 2011/4.5 so that I can develop on 4.5, but go back to my original 4.0 machine to compile and publish, but I'd rather not go that route if I don't have to. Thanks"}
{"_id": "132252", "title": "Should I include not-yet released projects on my resume/CV?", "text": "I finished a website project with new technologies such as HTML5 and CSS3. But my company will not let it go to production. They plan to launch the new site in their new project version function. Should I include such a non-yet-online project on my resume/CV?. Maybe with an additional explanation such as \"this project is not released\"?"}
{"_id": "186705", "title": "Why is the main memory for object allocation called the 'heap'?", "text": "Has anybody got an idea why the area of main memory where objects are allocated is referred to as the heap. I can understand the rationale for that of the stack LIFO but would like to know what the rationale is for the 'heap' name."}
{"_id": "186706", "title": "Should my login logic be part of the controller or a service in MVC webapp", "text": "I'm using Shiro as my security manager for a Spring MVC web application. The login basically happens in these lines:               Subject user = SecurityUtils.getSubject();     user.login(new UsernamePasswordToken(username, password));      Where should I put this logic? `login()` can throw exceptions if the requested user doesn't exist or wrong password was provided, etc. Should I call the code from my controller and do the error handling there or should I call it from my service layer, catch exceptions and rethrow my own up to the controller?"}
{"_id": "34081", "title": "Is there a graph with FOSS licenses detailing what can be linked with what?", "text": "I'm looking for a chart like this: ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MmRTg.jpg) Basically something that tells you whether an app with a given license can be linked with a library of a given license. Does such a thing exist?"}
{"_id": "34086", "title": "Dealing with a fundamental design flaw when you're new to the project", "text": "I've just started working on an open source project with around 30 developers in it. I'm working on fixing some of the bugs as a way to get into the \"loop\" and become a regular committer to the project. The problem is I think I've uncovered a fundamental design flaw that's causing one of the bugs I'm working on. But I feel like if I blast this on the mailing list I'm going to come off as arrogant, and some of the discussions I've had about the issue are butting heads with some of the people. How should I go about this?"}
{"_id": "111811", "title": "Easiest language for simple Windows applications for novice Windows programmer?", "text": "Expertise: 11 years PHP programming I'd like to get into simple Windows programming for a kiosk project. What language should I choose? **My criteria:**   * easy to learn, \"higher\"-level language (e.g. not C++, I don't have a year to learn this)   * quick to get up-and-running (that's what I loved about PHP)   * well-documented & lots of community resources   * easy GUI creation   * client wants windows machines so Linux is not an option **What I've gathered from other Stackexchange answers and Google, but have no experience using:**   1. QT + Python (wish PHP-Qt was more mature -- it doesn't seem to have much of a community)   2. C# (seems like overkill for a simple kiosk)   3. Firefox + kiosk extension + AMP for GUI, and macro software to manipulate windows, files, lower-level stuff."}
{"_id": "222208", "title": "SQL Query syntax - formatting?", "text": "I'm looking at a very large (5-6 digit LOC), very complex, code-base, full of interacting bulky, interdependent, views and stored procedures (multiple 4-5 digit count silos). The source SQL has been touched many times, by many different people, and no formatting constraints have been enforced. This led to wildly differing formatting for SQL, even within single stored procedure/view definitions. The code continues to be worked on by several groups of, mostly, senior programmers, and sees a steady stream of small changes and improvements. * * * Under these conditions: a. what is a sane standard to conform to for formatting (eg, should we use all caps for keywords? seems like the small benefits from having so many programmers not have to press Shift actually add up to significant time/cost savings) b. is it worthwhile advocating for a major refactor to standardize the formatting (ie, is the cost of training a large body of programmers/changing their behaviour/ill will at enforcing a new constraint worth the benefit in the long-term?)"}
{"_id": "34085", "title": "Source code for TCP/IP stack", "text": "Am looking for an open source code for the TCP/IP stack. An explanation along the lines of the stack would also help me in understanding the different modules and their interactions. I tried searching but there is very less information relating to just the TCP/IP stack."}
{"_id": "225254", "title": "Naming objects and properties clearly without exposing implementation details", "text": "I'm re-architecting an iOS mobile app that consumes an API with somewhat haphazard and oftentimes slow performance. The reason for the slowness is because the API is actually a layer on top of a variety of other platform- level services, some of which run slowly. You then get into the weakest link type of situation where the time it takes for the API to respond is bound by the slowest lower-level service response. When consuming the API I'm getting dealing with an object, let's call it `Foo`, that I display in a table, and also on a detail screen as necessary. A trade-off made by the API designer/implementer was to provide a call to get a list of `Foo` with some specific properties omitted (getting these properties for more than 1 or 2 objects at a time is very slow) and a \"detailed view\" call to provide a single object with all the properties filled in. The initial model schema had two model objects `Foo` and `FooDetails`. Feeling that this exposes unnecessary implementation details, I've merged both `Foo` and `FooDetails` into `Foo`, but a way to easily represent whether `Foo` is complete or not is still needed. (Meaning does `Foo` have extra properties present or not.) The best I could come up with was an enum:               typedef enum : NSUInteger {              ELYFooAbridgedState,         ELYFooCompletedState          } ELYFooCompletenessState;      I did not want to go with a `BOOL` due to the possibility of multiple \"in between\" states in the future as some lower level services are tuned. Can anyone provide an alternative naming or representation for this situation? Are there drawbacks w.r.t. to future proofing when taking this approach? This may the only time it's possible to do a ground up refactor of the app's model schema entirely, and I'd like it to be as resilient as possible."}
{"_id": "79282", "title": "When you use inheritance to reuse code, do you find it too tricky that it swallows the benifits of reuse?", "text": "I've been coding for about 8 years, however I still find inheritance is too flexible and sometimes it makes you totally confused with the code you have written. One simplest example would be:               abstract class AClass {         protected void method1() {             if(check()) {                 do1();             } else {                 do2();             }         }         protected abstract void do1();         protected abstract void do2();     }      The intention of the class is that people can implement do1() and do2() so that some further logic can be done, however sometimes people decide to overload method1(), and then things become complicated immediately. I find only in strategy pattern, code is reused well through inheritance, in most case the designer of the base class know its subclasses very well, and that inheritance is totally optional. I have a class that's inherited by 4 classes - an IoHandler, and it's subclasses for server side, client side, edge server, origin server, and it begins to drive me crazy. I was always in code refactoring, I always came out with ideas I think would work and then were proven not. It's said that human brain can only hold 7 pieces of information one time, am I carrying too many?"}
{"_id": "106412", "title": "Writing documentation for well understood methods like equals in Java", "text": "Is it a good practice to write comments for widely known methods like equals, compareTo etc? Consider the below code.                /**      * This method compares the equality of the current object        with the object of same type      */     @Override     public boolean equals(Object obj) {                         //code for equals               }         My company madates to enter comments like the above.Is the above Javadoc comment required? Is it not obvious and well understood what the equals method and the likes (compare,compareTo) etc does? What are your suggestions?"}
{"_id": "186709", "title": "How to make ASP .NET MVC website have a continuous process running?", "text": "This website is supposed to be a game where the players have some 'buildings' and these buildings produce resources. E.g. an iron mine may produce 30 pieces of iron ore per minute and automatically add it to the user's inventory. It doesn't matter whether the user is online or not, it should be running 24/7. So when the user does log in to their account, they will see their stack of iron ore has built up depending on how long it has been. Some pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated :)"}
{"_id": "106417", "title": "What factors should I be looking at to increase performance in image resizing?", "text": "I'm setting up a web app in which people will upload images. Once uploaded the images will be watermarked then resized multiple times (Thumbnails, different sizes etc.) and finally uploaded to Amazon S3 for storage. The web app is written in Python with the Tornado framework, I don't really want to lock up the Tornado threads with the image processing so I'm going to send it out to a seperate script (and possibly even seperate servers) using Gearman (I've developed an async-gearman client for Python/Tornado). One of the advantages of Gearman is that it's possible to launch jobs in multiple languages, so the actual processing and uploading of the image could be done in ether Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, Java, C, or something else. This leaves the question, is one better for the job? Are there certain libraries only available for specific languages that are especially good at image resizing? The most important thing will be performance: we'd like to be able to run as many jobs on a server as possible. Are there other factors I should be looking at? I'd prefer to stick with Python, Ruby, or PHP because that's what I'm familiar with but if the performance gain from doing it in Java/C is good enough I'd be okay with implementing it like that. I'm **not** looking for code examples, I can find those myself, but I'd like to know if there are any big differences between the image processing libraries. I know PHP probably has the easiest to use wit GD, and I've used a couple of the Python libraries before and they seem okay. I've never done anything with images in Ruby."}
{"_id": "216466", "title": "Dependency inversion always includes dependency injection?", "text": "This is a question on a home work. I've been up and down my notes and I can't even see how the two are related. Googling this gives me questions/answers on one or the other, but never both."}
{"_id": "216460", "title": "MVVM and service pattern", "text": "I'm building a WPF application using the MVVM pattern. Right now, my viewmodels calls the service layer to retrieve models (how is not relevant to the viewmodel) and convert them to viewmodels. I'm using constructor injection to pass the service required to the viewmodel. It's easily testable and works well for viewmodels with few dependencies, but as soon as I try to create viewModels for complex models, I have a constructor with a LOT of services injected in it (one to retrieve each dependencies and a list of all available values to bind to an itemsSource for example). I'm wondering how to handle multiple services like that and still have a viewmodel that I can unit test easily. I'm thinking of a few solutions:   1. Creating a services singleton (IServices) containing all the available services as interfaces. Example: Services.Current.XXXService.Retrieve(), Services.Current.YYYService.Retrieve(). That way, I don't have a huge constructor with a ton of services parameters in them.   2. Creating a facade for the services used by the viewModel and passing this object in the ctor of my viewmodel. But then, I'll have to create a facade for each of my complexe viewmodels, and it might be a bit much... What do you think is the \"right\" way to implement this kind of architecture ?"}
{"_id": "216462", "title": "How to create single integer index value based on two integers where first is unlimited?", "text": "I have table data containing an integer value X ranging from 1.... unknown, and an integer value Y ranging from 1..9   The data need to be presented in order 'X then Y'. For one visual component I can set multiple index names: X;Y   But for another component I need a _one-dimensional integer_ value as index (sort order). If X were limited to an upper bound of say 100, the one-dimensional value could simply be X*100 + Y.   If the one-dimensional value could have been a real, it could be X + Y/10. But if I want to keep X unlimited, is there a way to calculate a single integer 'indexing' value from X and Y? [Added] **Background information** : I have a Gantt/TreeList component where the tasks are ordered on a TaskIndex integer. This does not need to be a real database field, I can make it a calculated field in the underlying client dataset. My table data is e.g. as follows:               ID    Baseline   ParentID      1       0          0     (task)      5       2          1     (baseline)      8       1          1     (baseline)      9       0          0     (task)     12       0          0     (task)     16       1         12     (baseline)       Task 1 has two baselines numbered 1 and 2 (IDs 8 and 5)   Task 9 has no baselines   Task 12 has one baseline numbered 1 (ID 16) Baselines number 1-9 (the Y variable from my question); 0 or null identify the tasks   ID's are unlimited (the X variable) The user plays with visibility of baselines, e.g. he wants to see all tasks and all baselines labeled 1. This is done by updating a filter on the table. Right now I constantly have to recalculate TaskIndex after changing the filter (looping through records with a counter). It would be nice if TaskIndex could be calculated on the fly for each record knowing only the _ID_ and _Baseline_ data in the current record (I work in Delphi where a client dataset has an OnCalcFields event handler, that is triggered for each record when necessary). I have no control over the inner workings of the visual component."}
{"_id": "156290", "title": "Entry level engineer question regarding memory management", "text": "It has been a few months since I started my position as an entry level software developer. Now that I am past some learning curves (e.g. the language, jargon, syntax of VB and C#) I'm starting to focus on more esoteric topics, as to write better software. A simple question I presented to a fellow coworker was responded with \"I'm focusing on the wrong things.\" While I respect this coworker I do disagree that this is a \"wrong thing\" to focus upon. Here was the code (in VB) and followed by the question. Note: The Function GenerateAlert() returns an integer.               Dim alertID as Integer = GenerateAlert()     _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, NewErrorInfo(Now(), alertID))          vs...                _errorDictionary.Add(argErrorID, New ErrorInfo(Now(), GenerateAlert()))      I originally wrote the latter and rewrote it with the \"Dim alertID\" so that someone else might find it easier to read. But here was my concern and question: Should one write this with the Dim AlertID, it would in fact take up more memory; finite but more, and should this method be called many times could it lead to an issue? How will .NET handle this object AlertID. Outside of .NET should one manually dispose of the object after use (near the end of the sub). I want to ensure I become a knowledgeable programmer that does not just rely upon garbage collection. Am I over thinking this? Am I focusing on the wrong things?"}
{"_id": "136006", "title": "Would it be hard to screen form submissions (e.g., comments) for non-words/non-sentences?", "text": "I've been thinking a lot lately about the need for better form security, and good ways to accomplish that. We currently use captcha codes to screen for bots, but that's annoying to users and may not work forever. I think that we need a more intuitive, organic system for screening bad comments/contact form submissions. One option that has come to mind would be trying to screen comments for things that are obviously not words, in addition to screening for duplicate comments. E.g., when a spammer on Facebook, Twitter, or a comments section is stopped from just posting the same thing a lot of times, they add garbled letters and or numbers somewhere in the post to make it \"unique\". If it was possible to screen out obvious not-text, this could be overcome. If you could go a step further, and screen out posts that obviously have words placed in for no reason except to make the post \"unique\", you could force the spammer/scam artist down to only use repetitive post options which actually make gramatical sense. At the very least, you could have posts be flagged for moderator attention if they looked similar but which just had random garbage added in for no reason. This would significantly reduce a spammer's ability to keep spamming, even across multiple accounts. Could it be possible to screen form field results for random word and number combinations, and words thrown in just to make a post \"unique\"?"}
{"_id": "185248", "title": "Visitor stability vs instanceof flexibility", "text": "I am working on a GUI application which generates a configuration file. I have a class hierarchy for the configuration model and I use an object tree of that hierarchy in several different contexts. Currently, I use the Visitor pattern to avoid polluting my model classes with context specific code.               interface IConfigurationElement {         void acceptVisitor(IConfigurationElementVisitor visitor);     }      In an earlier version I used chains of `instanceof` conditions instead of the Visitor. Comparing the two approaches I see the following tradeofs. _Visitor_   * It is easier and safer to add new `IConfigurationElement`. Just add a new declaration to `IConfigurationElementVisitor` and the compiler generates errors for all visitor implementations. With `instanceof` chains you have to remember all the places you have to extend with the new configuration element. Basically `instanceof` violates the DRY principle as it duplicates logic in several places.   * The visitor pattern is more efficient than a chain of `instanceof`conditions _instanceof_   * The great advantage of `instanceof` is its flexibility. For example `instanceof` allows me to define special solutions for different subsets of `IConfigurationElement` implementations which need to be handled similarilly in some cases. In contrast, Visitor forces me to implement a method for each implementation class every time. Is there a common solution for this kind of problem? Can I adapt the Visitor somehow, so I can provide a common solution for some cases?"}
{"_id": "185244", "title": "Fernando J. Corbat\u00f3's \u201cConstrained languages\u201d", "text": "For his 1990 Turing award speech, Fernando J. Corbat\u00f3 listed reasons why complex systems will inevitably fail. In his conclusion, he gives some suggestions for decreasing the probability of failure. He lists one idea as follows: > [U]se of constrained languages for design or synthesis is a powerful > methodology. By not allowing a programmer or designer to express irrelevant > ideas, the domain of possible errors becomes far more limited. What does he mean by \"constrained language?\" For a moment I considered constraint programming. However, constraint programming is about restricting the program's solution space. It is a tool that empowers a programmer. The feature Corbat\u00f3 is referring to seems to be something which actually restricts the programmer, or at least makes her more inclined to write terser code. My second thought is that he is referring to conservative programming languages. Corbat\u00f3 received his Turing award for work done in the 1960s and 1970s. It's my understanding that he dealt with a lot of punch cards. I have never seen a punch card, so I certainly don't know how to program one, but I might guess that punch card programming is extremely liberal. I suspect the notions of type checking, static analysis, and so forth simply didn't exist. So, is Corbat\u00f3 perhaps referring to the idea of languages that restrict the developer from making dumb mistakes? This doesn't seem to be the case, either. Safety checking and data modeling have nothing to do with terseness, which is what he seems to be talking about when he mentiones \"not allowing ... irrelevant ideas.\""}
{"_id": "66147", "title": "Descriptive Locking and Concurrency", "text": "I'm thinking about how one would go about designing a descriptive concurrency model for an OOP language that helps simplify concurrency scenarios for programmers (no easy task, concurrency is hard). I've read a bunch about software transactional memory, the actor model, immutability etc etc but they don't exactly seem to offer an easy model either, and while functional programming is great for some concurrency and parallel scenarios some times you simply need to mutate some kind of state. While locking is considered bad by some atleast it's fairly easy to reason about on a basic level (until you get into deadlock territory that is) Anyways, one of the ways I thought programmers could somewhat easier handle multi-threaded scenarios was that each class is responsible for it's own thread-safety on a per method/property basis. Ie other classes can only access properties and methods, they can't really lock on anything specifically, nor should they have to. One way to make it easier though would be to annotate methods and properties for concurrency with their indent rather than locking specifics. The compiler will then try to deduce the most performing lock from that. So assuming atomicity what do you think good annotations would be? and what are potential problems with this approach, I'm aware that it can't solve all scenarios (like transactions) but it should help the compiler enforce the programmers intent, and might even be able to warn on potential deadlock/racing scenarios Here's some of the attributes i thought of so far (also note that none of them are mandatory but strictly compiler \"hints\")               <property preference=\"none|read|write|fair\">             <get access=\"free|exclusive|shared\"             load=\"unknown|many|few\"             duration=\"unknown|nano|brief|long\"/>              <set access=\"free|exclusive|shared|upgradeable\"             load=\"unknown|many|few\"             duration=\"unknown|nano|brief|long\" />          </property>      So for instance if get and set was set to shared access you might end up with an reader-writer lock. (do I need an attribute to control visiblity.) If duration for a write was set to nano perhaps it would use a spinlock. If there are many reads and few writes perhaps the compiler would use a different lock that if there were many writes and few reads etc etc. Methods can be coupled into read/write pairs similarly to properties (in case you need more than one parameter). For numeric properties that typically update based on some condition of it's value I was also thinking that instead of passing just a new value, you could pass an operator and an amount. That way you could lock, calculate the new value, see if it meets some internal condition and in that case update. Anyways, I'm struggling a bit coming up with good attributes/notations that are somewhat easy for a programmer to wrap their head and reason about, any help and feedback deeply appreciated. Sorry for the long rant, as I said this isn't an easy topic :)"}
{"_id": "185242", "title": "Formal term to web-ify a piece of existing software or program or a module?", "text": "There is a software we run as a windows service. Its currently not designed to take a huge load. So we kind of need this service to be hosted over http so that multiple clients can make use of it. Its not the whole windows service as such, but some modules it uses. Those modules are currenly not designed to work as \"web service\" (generic sense). What would be the formal word for this?"}
{"_id": "216635", "title": "category theory based language", "text": "It may sound naive, but is there any programming language, or research thereof, based entirely on category theory? I mean this as opposed to embedding CT concepts as an additional feature (like for Haskell or scala). Would it be too abstract or too complex as an approach, or are there any known reasons that makes it impossible or impractical? I have only a relative understanding of the theory as related to programming, so please give me some explanation if the question doesn't makes sense at all EDIT What I mean is to define a language where categories are first class concepts, instead of let's say types. E.g. haskell is defined in terms of _types_ and _functions_ over those. Does it makes sense to design a language where fundamental entities are _categories_ and _arrows_? From there you would, for example, define algebraic operations on numbers as individual \"intances\" of the proper algebraic category (ring, monoid, group...) instead of starting from standard integer/float operations and defining the corresponding categorical typeclass. Does it makes sense?"}
{"_id": "181955", "title": "Want some architecture input to help with current requirements and future (unknown) requirements :-)", "text": "**BACKGROUND:** I am starting to architect a web project using asp.net mvc. I'm going to use a very common architecture where I have the following layers:   1. Service    2. Biz   3. Data   4. Domain The Service layer interacts with the Biz, Data and Domain layers. The mvc controllers will have the service layer injected into them using a DI framework. The controllers will need to be aware of the Service layer interfaces and will reference the Domain objects (POCOs). The front end will be HTML5 + Javascript. I have been told to keep in mind we need to expose _portions_ of this website to mobile devices. The _portions_ to expose via mobile devices is to be defined :-). When rendering the site I can simply have a mobile layout that renders to a mobile device. But one thing management told me is mobile users might want additional functionality the website doesn't expose. Maybe they want to access a feature that only a native mobile application can provide. Hey, I don't make up these requirements, this is what I was told :-). **THOUGHTS:** My service layer is the gateway to storing objects in my database. For any potential native mobile devices I was thinking about using the Web API to wrap my service layer. What I want to do NOW is focus on on my asp.net mvc application and only worry about native mobile apps when those requirements become more defined. **QUESTION:** would it provide any benefits to code the Web API layer now and have my mvc controllers use it? * * * Pros for creating the Web API now   1. It will be coded and ready if / when a native mobile app comes online. Cons for creating the Web API now   1. It is overhead that is not needed, especially if I host the WebAPI in a seperate process or another site besides my original asp.net mvc site.   2. The technology is fairly new and enhancemens will be forthcoming. If i wait until later some of the issues will be fixed.   3. Who knows, my users may never want a native mobile device and the feature is never utilized.   4. The code becomes more complex because of having to maintain the web api layer now. I'm looking at not worrying about the Web API layer for now and simply coding it when necessary. Typically I don't worry about writing for functionality that is yet to be defined. But I thought it might not hurt to ask, you never know what some brilliant maverick programmer is doing out in the wild :-)."}
{"_id": "181951", "title": "Does the use of personas in Agile have any value during implementation?", "text": "This is about the use of personas, primarily in the agile development realm. What value, if any, do personas give during implementation?   On agile modeling, the discussion about personas remains in the context of requirements investigation.   On wikipedia, the benefits are described to \"assist with brainstorming, use case specification, and features definition.\" I'm familiar with personas in use while writing user stories such as the following: > As Willow, I want ordering a combo meal to give me the option to select > alternate sides.   >  As Xander, I want the default side to be selected when I order a combo > meal. In these examples, Willow is the nutrition-conscientious user of meal-ordering software and Xander is the hungry, impatient user that thinks \"fast food should be _fast_.\" When coming up with these requirements, it may have been helpful to have the personas in mind. I imagine a possible discussion: > Person 1: Willow needs to have more options than fries for the combo meal, > otherwise she would never order a combo.   >  Person 2: But Xander doesn't want to have to sift through different options > when ordering a combo! He just wants fries and he'll probably always want > fries. This discussion may have created the two requirements above, but once the requirements have been created, why do we mark each requirement with a persona? I wouldn't code the 'default side' requirement any differently knowing that it is for Xander. What value does retaining the \"As Willow\" and \"As Xander\" starts to the requirements once they have been written? What value does the persona give to the one who implements the requirement?"}
{"_id": "25963", "title": "Is there any hard data on the (dis-)advantages of working from home?", "text": "Is there any hard data (studies, comparisons, not-just-gut-feel analysis) on the advantages and disadvantages of working from home? My devs asked about e.g. working from home one day per week, the boss doesn't like it for various reasons, some of which I agree with but I think they don't necessarily apply in this case. We have real offices (2..3 people each), distractions are still common. IMO it would be beneficial for focus, and with 1 day / week, there wouldn't be much loss at interaction and communication. In addition it would be a great perk, and saving the commute. * * * Related: Pros and Cons of working Remotely/from Home (interesting points, but no hard facts) * * * To clarify: it's not my decision to make, I agree that there are pro's and con's depending on circumstances, and we _are_ pushing for \"just try it\". I've asked this specific question because (a) facts are a good addition to thoughts in arguing with an engineer boss, and (b) we, as developers, should build upon facts like every respectable trade."}
{"_id": "196329", "title": "Extension objects pattern", "text": "In this MSDN Magazine article Peter Vogel describes Extension Objects partten. What is not clear is _whether extensions can be later implemented by client code residing in a separate assembly_.   And if so _how in this case can extension get acces to private members of the objet being extended_? I quite often need to set different access levels for different classes.   Sometimes I really need that descendants does not have access to the mebmer but separate class does. (good old friend classes) Now I solve this in C# by exposing callback properties in interface of the external class and setting them with private methods. This also alows to adjust access: read only or read|write depending on the desired interface.               class Parent     {         private int foo;              public void AcceptExternal(IFoo external)         {             external.GetFooCallback = () => this.foo;         }     }          interface IFoo     {         Func<int> GetFooCallback {get;set;}     }      Other way is to explicitly implement particular interface. But I suspect more aspproaches exist. **Update 1**   New Peter's article makes it a bit clearer."}
{"_id": "196323", "title": "Approach of delivering \u201cLogging API\u201d", "text": "I faced a question in a .NET interview. As a client i need a LoggingAPI. How you go the approach of design and development and delivering Logging API to the client? I don't care about WPF or a language specific. I want a LoggingAPI which has to log some data? what is your approach in delivering the same. I failed to answer for this question. Please guide how to proceed for answering this type of questions."}
{"_id": "196322", "title": "How can we track how well we're preventing and avoiding security vulnerabilities?", "text": "It's pretty easy to track when we fix security vulnerabilities in existing code. But to make sure the whole team is staying on their toes about writing secure code, I'd like to also track how well we are preventing and avoiding writing new security vulnerabilities. What is the right way to measure that?"}
{"_id": "29635", "title": "Are there any arguments that can make a contractor reconsider working on fixed price?", "text": "I've been working for a contractor who brings in some good projects, but they are all fixed-price and often fixed-time. As a result he always has me making a quote over loose requirements, which never fails to bring a lot of tension due to feature creep. He claims he'd never get a contract if he couldn't agree on a price with his clients first, but as far as I'm concerned I don't wanna go through another project under these terms. Is there any argument I could make to have him pay me by the hour, or should I just suck less at estimating ?"}
{"_id": "156740", "title": "Can applications affect power consumption in a substantial way? ", "text": "Is there anything that can be done for a single general purpose application to affect the power consumption of the device it is running on? I am not familiar with how optimizations to individual applications may affect power consumption in a general way, can someone explain if different approaches to writing applications affect power consumption of the device they are running on? That is, can a single program, that does the exact same thing functionally, written in different ways drastically affect the power consumption of a device in general, not about how different un-related programs might affect the power consumption of a device."}
{"_id": "156745", "title": "RDBMS same type of optional data for multiple tables", "text": "I have an embedded database (SQLite), it stores information about events and page views, its purpose is to track the user journey inside my application. I need to provide support for optional custom properties on my events and page views. In code this is not a problem, however I am torn between two solutions for storing that information. So I have Events and PageViews tables, my first option for persisting the optional custom properties is to have a EventsCustomProperties table which has only a name and value column and a reference (foreign key) to the event. In this solution I would also have a PageViewCustomProperties with the same structure. The problem I have with this is having two tables which are identical other then their relationships with other tables. In my other solution I would have one CustomProperties table, and in addition to the name, value and relationship key, it would also have a type column, which I should use manually in code to map the relationship id to an event or a page view. In this solution the actual use of foreign keys is redundant. My dilemma is that in the first solution I am respecting one normalisation rule of repeating groups of data, buy in the second solution I am breaking another rule although I cannot get my head to remember the name of the rule. So it seems I will break rules whatever I do. Can anyone suggest a better way or a preference to the first or second solution."}
{"_id": "204451", "title": "Should I split a Python class with many methods into multiple classes?", "text": "I have a class that will end up having more than ~30 methods. They all make sense to be part of the same class because they require access to the same data. However, does it make any sense to split up a large class into several smaller abstract classes (by functionality, type, use, etc.) and have the main class extend (i.e. multiple inheritance) from all the smaller classes?"}
{"_id": "3811", "title": "How crucial are computer science topics toward getting a job?", "text": "I've been considering moving to a new city (getting seduced by those big city lights), and I'm trying to decide if my lack of \"computer science\"-y skills is going to make me overly uncompetitive. Let me explain my situation a bit more:   * Programming since jr. high school, professionally since 2004. I've worked for a small company that does custom web applications (PHP) since 2006.    * I've studied design patterns on my own, and used them in my work.    * Worked with MVC frameworks (PHP) for a couple years now. I have a strong understanding of how to write good, maintainable MVC code that adheres to the principles of MVC (rather than just cramming code into wherever I can in the framework.)    * Recently done some work with C#, through which I'm learning dependency injection and the MVVM pattern. Grokking these, but still a ways to go.   * Full complement of web development skills (normalized databases, SQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript), and I'm very confident of my skills in these. Also aware of security issues, and how to write a secure application. My main deficiency is scalability, which I've never had a need to learn, unfortunately. Where I get nervous is with the things you'd learn in a CS degree. My degree is in aerospace engineering, not CS, but I've decided that programming is the thing I really care about. What I know:   * Basic data structures: I took a class in which I implemented basic linked lists, and queues and stacks built on those. I've written a basic binary tree (inserts, various traversals, but not removal (I was really drunk when I wrote the code, and it turned out not to work at all)). I know about hash tables, and understand some of the principles of their implementation.   * I understand big-O notation, but since I'm not really familiar with algorithms, I suspect I might miss interview questions about this topic. (what's the worst-case insertion time into a hash table? I have no idea.)    * I've done a little bit of functional programming by way of JavaScript, python, and dabbling in Haskell. (I realize the first two aren't functional programming languages, but they have functional aspects to them). I understand currying and higher-order functions. What I don't know:   * Don't really know formal algorithms at all. I couldn't sort my way out of a paper bag (well _maybe_ bubble sort, which I know is O(n2)). I guess I know some of their names.   * Never written a parser, or compiler, or any component of an OS. I've never done anything interesting with concurrency (e.g., anything beyond using basic asynchronous calls in .NET to keep my UI from blocking.) I _want_ to learn all these things, purely out of interest, but for now I simply don't have time right now with main job + side job + life outside programming ( _gasp!_ I know). I don't want to put my larger life plans on hold unnecessarily if I don't have to. I'm not aiming for a Google or a Microsoft, but I'd like to at least get a job that's interesting. How much will I be held back by the deficiencies I've listed? I feel relatively confident that in a job I would actually apply for and get, I would be able to perform very well, but what about interviews? I'd like to know:   * How crucial are computer science topics toward getting a job?"}
{"_id": "144166", "title": "How do I handle a Controller that's not controlling a specific Model?", "text": "I've got a nice MVC set up going but my website requires some views that don't map directly to a model. Specifically I've got some generic Reports users need to run, and now I'm creating a utility for comparing some system configurations. Right now the logic is crammed into a Reports Controller and I'm starting a Comparison Controller but this feels like a big abuse of the system. Both controllers use an assortment of different Models to pull data from, and they're only related based on _what the user is doing_. Reports are run from the Reports Controller and their views are all grouped together in the file system/URL structure. Is this an acceptable use of the Controller paradigm? I can't think of a better way to structure my Controllers, and making a Controller for each model I'm using to make reports/ect doesn't seem like a good idea; I'd end up with one Controller/Model/View per report or comparison, vastly complicating the apparent structure of my site."}
{"_id": "238674", "title": "What's the right OO way to create a counter/inventory class that works for both differentiated and undifferentiated countables?", "text": "You are writing a videogame about trading beans. Red beans, black beans, pinto beans, you name it. As everybody knows all beans are the same. You write the \"Inventory\" class for a trader in that videogame as follows (skipping all the null checks):                   class BeansInventory{     HashMap<BeanType,Integer> amountsOwned;          public void receive(BeanType typeReceived, int amount)     {amountsOwned.put(typeReceived,amountsOwned.get(typeReceived)+amount)}          public void remove(BeanType typeRemoved, int amount)     {amountsOwned.put(typeRemoved,amountsOwned.get(typeRemoved)-amount)}          public Integer amountOwned(BeanType type)     {amountsOwned.get(type)}     }      It works fine for years. Then suddenly somebody else has the great idea to add to the game trading coffee beans. As everybody knows each single coffee bean is completely different from the other. So you can't just add coffee as another bean type. Each coffee bean is its own instance. The coffee inventory class looks something like this:               class CoffeeInventory{         HashMap<CoffeType,List<CoffeeBeans>> coffeOwned;              public void receive(CoffeType typeReceived, CoffeeBeans... beans)         {coffeOwned.get(typeReceived).addAll(beans)}              public void remove(CoffeType typeRemoved, CoffeeBeans... beans)         {coffeOwned.get(typeRemoved).removeAll(beans)}              public Integer amountOwned(CoffeType type)         {amountsOwned.get(type).size()}         }      But now you have tons of problems. You have two APIs for the same task. All the trading infrastructure now has to check carefully if it is trading pinto beans or coffee beans and call a different inventory and a different method with a different signature for what is after all the same task: \"store this\". So now I have this code that is getting filled of `if` checks and `instanceof` and all the other signs of code smell. But I can't figure out a way to use a single simple API. I have no idea what's the right oo thing to do."}
{"_id": "144165", "title": "Is dynamic HTML layout good from an SEO perspective?", "text": "Just wondering whether dynamically built HTML layout is fine from SEO perspectives? So let's assume e-commerce engine and its most popular page - products catalog. So 90% of the page is built using AJAX and MVVM library knockoutjs which builds HTML on the fly on the client side. So how search bots would parse such content? Is it fine indexed and would be such effective as server-side built HTML pages from the SEO perspectives?"}
{"_id": "144162", "title": "how to do database updates in each release", "text": "Our application uses database (mostly Oracle), and database is at the core. Each customer has its own database, with its own copy of application. Now with each new release of our product, we also need to update the database schema. These changes are adding new tables, removing columns, manipulating data etc. How do the people handle this? Are there any standard processes for this? EDIT:- The main issue is the databases are huge with many tables and more of huge amount of data. We provide the scripts and some utilities to manipulate the data. How to handle the failures and false negatives? More of looking for this kind articles. http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Database-Changes-Done- Right.aspx"}
{"_id": "76999", "title": "Is there any value in Open sourcing your for fun projects", "text": "I have written a bunch of fun for me projects and have shown them to friends and such. Is there any value in doing the work and making these projects open source since the interest and usefulness limited."}
{"_id": "109086", "title": "Copying a competitor's database schema?", "text": "I am going to be releasing some software soon which will require users to run a local database. There is a competitor in the space that is doing the same thing and they have a pretty sophisticated database schema that they use. Their software is commercial but the database schema is completely viewable once installed. What's the legality of basing my product of the same database schema and just potentially renaming columns and tables and maybe removing one or two things?"}
{"_id": "194845", "title": "Is it reasonable to use Javascript MVC Frameworks for closed source paid web applications?", "text": "I am wondering if it is reasonable to write closed source, paid web apps in Javascript (JS MVC Frameworks like AngularJS, Backbone, Knockout, ...)? I'm concerned because in this type of frameworks you use typically a REST backend for CRUD operations and the majority of business and application logic happens in Javascript which can be looked up by anyone using my app. He can see how i do things. When I use for example PHP or Java (Wicket) most of the logic is happening on the server and so a lot less of my source code is exposed. This seems to me a lot safer if I want to have an edge over my competitors, so potentially I earn more money. So is it reasonable to use JavaScript MVC Frameworks for paid applications? Does it depend on something and if yes on what?"}
{"_id": "177278", "title": "are programmers more forgiving of buggy software?", "text": "From your experience are you, or programmers in general, more or less likely to forgive bugs in the software you use? e.g. if you run across a bug in some app (commercial or open source), is your reaction annoyance at incompetence, empathy, or something else (pity)?"}
{"_id": "177271", "title": "Is it bad to be the only person supporting software you have developed?", "text": "My employer has a need for a web-based application to manage and share data within the department, with approximately 50-75 possible users. I feel I have the ability to write it for them. I would likely use Python/Django with a MySQL database, so it would be open source. However, I'm the only IT person in my department (our larger organization has a separate IT support staff with which I often work, but not for web development). I want to develop this application, but if I leave in 1-2 years, and someone else has to come in after me and support it, will this be seen as a bad decision? This is assuming all the obvious points -- I will write documentation, I will comment my code, and I will strive to follow good application design principles. But will that be enough? In principle, is it acceptable for one person to develop and support an entire web application? Is this a \"do first, then show and ask\" kind of situation, or should I be certain it will be adopted by everyone involved first? With regards to specifics, I work in an academic department of a university that has specific processes for student applicants and for their being admitted. You have to apply to the university, AND my department separately. The department-specific process is very manual and pieced together, which is where my development would come in. We (myself and IT) are already planning on incorporating the additional questions that pertain to my department into the main university application (which IS electronic, and feeds into PeopleSoft), so that solves the front-end piece and everything would be in one place. But for the faculty and staff to acquire and \"digest\" that information throughout the admissions process will require an application of some sort, which I would prefer to do \"my way\". The IT staff want to develop it ALL in PeopleSoft, and I fear it will be too inflexible and will not be well received by our department, and may still not completely meet our needs. There are third-party solutions which meet this need perfectly but they are cost-prohibitive. I would query the data from PeopleSoft and present it how I know the faculty and staff need to see it. (Getting access to query PeopleSoft is a different battle altogether.)"}
{"_id": "177273", "title": "DB API for shell scripting (any shell)", "text": "I am faced with some legacy shell scripts that run batch data processing jobs in Oracle using `SQL+`. For the most part, the data tier does not have to communicate back to the script with retrieved data to be passed for shell- level processing but in a few cases it does. The problem is, SQL+ is really meant to be an end user app and not an API that can communicate with other clients programmaticaly. That is why people have invented APIs such as `DBD::DBI` for Perl, `JDBC` for Java, ODBC etc. The way it is done is they invoke SQL+ and then parse the output, which is clearly designed for human eye consumption, using tools like `sed` and `awk`. The whole thing is at best a hack and very prone to bugs. Since this client is rather conservative with their technology, they don't want to scale their scripts up to Perl or Python where there are data access APIs. So I am wondering whether there are similar APIs for shell, e.g. K or bash. What I would like is if an API would return data in a 2-dimensional array or strings (for the lack of type setting) so that I can just read DB data like that. The way they do it now is akin to parsing regular web page HTML to get a single stock quote rather than cleanly calling a web service and be done with it. Anybody know of a product I can use? Thanks"}
{"_id": "187071", "title": "Is this a test smell or is it even worse?", "text": "I have recently been looking at some testscripts which looks a bit like               ...     try {       receiveSomething();       // something was received even though it shouldn't       failTest();     } catch (TimeoutException e) {       // nothing should be received       succedTest();     }      The problem I have with these types of tests is   1. They are not deterministic. You don't know if nothing was sent on purpose or if everything has crashed.   2. Its very hard to simultaneously test something else, which might actually, in this case, send something. My thoughts are one the one side, how can this types of tests be designed better, and secondly can this be an indication of a bigger design smell of the software that is being tested? EDIT To clairify, these test scripts are used for black box-testing of event-based, complex software, not unit testing, and my feeling is that the 'doing nothing' event is a very ambiguous one. :)"}
{"_id": "224126", "title": "Which layer should order the columns shown to the user when using MVC?", "text": "Say you want to render a table with five columns, but you want the order of the columns to be different depending on some specific parameter. This would be very easy to accomplish if the model sets the order. The view can then simply use a loop and create the table accordingly. However, unless I have misunderstood things, we want to let the view handle how things are rendered (although I guess there may a gray area involved here in terms of what the view \"should decide how to render\")? It also feels ugly to let the model set formatting / order, but maybe this is another thing I might have misunderstood? If the view is supposed to deal with the order of the columns, what is a good way to accomplish it (read: having to use a lot of if-statements and other ugly code in the view)?"}
{"_id": "228460", "title": "Single product owner for multiple Scrum teams", "text": "Is that a common practice to have a single product owner for more than one Scrum team, or usually you have a product owner for each team (even if multiple teams work on the same product). Thanks"}
{"_id": "224123", "title": "Use a setStatus($arg) function or have separate enable() and disable() functions?", "text": "I've got two functions at the moment:               suspendGroupsAndUsers($groupId){}     enableGroupsAndUsers($groupId) {}      But the difference between the two is one variable/string. Should I just have:               setStatusGroupsAndUsers($status,$groupID) {}      This feels more DRY... Or have the above two functions actually call the setStatus function? Gut says use setStatus ..."}
{"_id": "162786", "title": "Design documents as part of Agile", "text": "At my workplace, we face a challenge in that \"agile\" too often has meant \"vague requirements, bad acceptance criteria, good luck!\" We're trying to address that, as a general improvement effort. So, as part of that, I am proposing that we generate design documents that, above and beyond the user story level, accurately reflect the outcome of preliminary investigations of the effect of a given feature within the system and including answers to questions that we have asked the business. Is there an effective standard for this? We currently face a situation where a new feature may impact multiple areas in our \"big ball of mud\" system, and estimates are starting to climb due to this technical debt. Hopefully more thoughtful design processes can help."}
{"_id": "55264", "title": "Haskell vs Erlang for web services", "text": "I am looking to start an experimental project using a functional language and am trying to decide beween Erlang and Haskell, and both have some points that I really like. I like Haskell's strong type system and purity. I have a feeling it will make it easier to write really reliable code. And I think that the power of Haskell will make some of what I want to do much easier. On the minus side I get the feeling that some of the Frameworks for doing web stuff on Haskell such as Yesod are not as advanced as their Erlang counter parts. I rather like the Erlang approach to threads and to fault tolerance. I have a feeling that the scalability of Erlang could be a major plus. Which leads to to my question, what has people's experience been in implementing web application backends in both Haskell and Erlang. Are there packages for Haskell to provide some of the lightweight threads and actors that one has in Erlang?"}
{"_id": "254073", "title": "Perl: Negative look behind regex question", "text": "The Perlre in Perldoc didn't go into much detail on negative look around but I tried testing it, and didn't work as expected. I want to see if I can differentiate a C preprocessor macro definition (e.g. #define MAX(X) ....) from actual usage (y = MAX(x);), but it didn't work as expected.                   my $macroName = 'MAX';         my $macroCall = \"y = MAX(X);\";         my $macroDef = \"# define MAX(X)\";              my $boundary = qr{\\b$macroName\\b};         my $bstr = \"  MAX(X)\";         if($bstr =~ /$boundary/)         {             print \"boundary: $bstr matches: $boundary\\n\";         }         else         {             print \"Error: no match: boundary: $bstr, $boundary\\n\";         }              my $negLookBehind = qr{(?<!define)\\b$macroName\\b};         if($macroCall =~ /$negLookBehind/) # \"y = MAX(X)\" matches \"(?<!define)\\bMAX\\b\"         {             print \"negative look behind: $macroCall matches: $negLookBehind\\n\";         }         else         {             print \"no match: negative look behind: $macroCall, $negLookBehind\\n\";         }              if($macroDef =~ /$negLookBehind/) # \"#define MAX(X)\" should not match \"(?<!define)\\bMAX\\b\"         {             print \"Error: negative look behind: $macroDef matches: $negLookBehind\\n\";         }         else         {             print \"no match: negative look behind: $macroDef, $negLookBehind\\n\";         }      It seems that both `$macroDef` and `$macroCall` seem to match regex `/(?<!define)\\b$macroName\\b/`. I backed off from the original `/(?<\\#)\\s*(?<!define)\\b$macroName\\b/` since that didn't work either. So what did I screw up? Also does Perl allow chaining of multiple look around expressions?"}
{"_id": "109646", "title": "Multithreaded Programming?", "text": "Recently I've finished learning about multithreaded programming on single shared objects, but was curious about how different things would be in order to successfully program on multiple shared objects?"}
{"_id": "131252", "title": "What do I need to consider when using code under the Apache License in an application submitted to Mac App Store?", "text": "First off, I am new to licenses and app stores. There is an example app on a framework that has a `Class` file with much of the functionality I'll need for my own app. It's less than 1000 lines of code and distributed under the Apache License 2.0.   1. As far as I know I can use/modify the code and just acknowledge the developer and include the license, but does this mean my _whole_ project will be distributed under the Apache License 2.0 or just does it just apply to that source file?   2. Once my project is done, would I be able to publish my app in the Mac App Store? Would I be able to sell it there?  The file is from an example project that pretty much demonstrates all which is possible in the framework, and using it in my project would save me a ton of time. However, if this is not possible I guess I'll just have to code it myself."}
{"_id": "189542", "title": "Is memory management in programming becoming an irrelevant concern?", "text": "**Background**   I revisited an old (but great) site I had not been to for ages - the Alioth Language Shootout (http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/). I started out programming in C/C++ several years ago, but have since then been working almost exclusively in Java due to language constraints in the projects I have been involved in. Not remembering the figures, I wanted to see, approximately, how well Java fared against C/C++ in terms of resource usage. The **execution times** were still relatively good, with Java at worst performing 4x slower than C/C++, but on average around (or below) 2x. Due to the nature of the implementation of Java itself, this was no surprise, and it's performance time was actually _lower_ than what I expected. The real brick was the **memory allocation** \\- at worst, Java allocated:   * a whopping 52x more memory than C   * and 25x more than C++.  52x the memory ... Absolutely nasty, right? ... or is it? Memory is comparatively cheap now. **Question:**   If we do not speak in terms of target platforms with strict limits on working memory (i.e. embedded systems and the like), **should memory usage be a concern when picking a general purpose language today?** I am asking in part because I am considering migrating to Scala as my primary language. I very much like the functional aspects of it, but from what I can see it is even more expensive in terms of memory than Java. However, since memory seems to be getting faster, cheaper and more plentiful by the year (it seems to be increasingly hard to find a consumer laptop without at least 4GB of DDR3 RAM), could it not be argued that resource management is becoming increasingly more irrelevant as compared to (possibly implementation-wise expensive) high-level language features which allow for faster construction of more readable solutions?"}
{"_id": "6166", "title": "Has programming for a living ruined your ability to enjoy technology?", "text": "To quote Arthur C. Clarke: > Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Used to be I looked on technology with wonder and amazement. I wanted to take it apart, understand how it worked, figure it all out. Technology was magical. I'm older, I know more and I spend my days creating stuff that, hopefully, fills other people with that kind of wonder. But lately I've found my own awe for technology has been seriously curtailed. More often I'm just annoyed that it isn't as elegant or seamless or as polished or perfectly delivered as it seemed to be in my youth. It all looks broken and awkward, or cobbled together and poorly tested. Has programming ruined your ability to enjoy technology? Have you stopped wondering in awe and just started saying, \"They could have done this better\" every time you pick up a bit of technology?"}
{"_id": "24615", "title": "Is Visual Studio just an IDE?", "text": "For Windows Development I mean. Looking over other questions there are alternatives to VS, but they seem to be web based ones, which is fine, or you could program an entire .net website in notepad, should the urge drive you to. But is there more to it than just an IDE for Windows Development? I.E. Is it possible for me to create an application in just notepad, is the compiler part of Visual Studio, or is it separate, which could be called via command line or something? I don't want to not use VS, I'm happy with it, does what I need etc etc, just more a facet I'm curious about."}
{"_id": "180398", "title": "SICP - Why use accumulate with cons when filter already passes back a list", "text": "In SICP 2nd Edition section 2.2.3, the authors have the following code:               (define (even-fibs n)       (accumulate cons                   nil                   (filter even?                           (map fib                                (enumerate-interval 0 n)))))      My question is why did they use _accumulate_ in this case? Couldn't they have got the same answer from _filter_ without using _accumulate_?"}
{"_id": "130786", "title": "Is using PhoneGap for your first ever mobile app a good idea?", "text": "I am a beginner programmer. I've gotten an AS degree in CS which exposed me to the basics of c++, data structures, and algorithms and have light experience with html/css/javascript from just messing around building my own basic websites. I am no where near a proficient professional programmer as of yet. My question is, would using PhoneGap to attempt to develop my first \"app\" for android/ios/whatever be a good idea or should I start out making native apps first? With all the hype over html5/javascript at the moment, PhoneGap seems too good to be true for a beginner like me. Thoughts? pros/cons?"}
{"_id": "200379", "title": "What is a Package Diagram? and What is a Sequence Diagram?", "text": "In many interviews I've been asked this question. What is a Package Diagram? and What is a Sequence Diagram? and difference between Package Diagram and Sequence Diagram. Thanks in Advance. **Edit** Sorry, google give me lot of answer, but i want to practical answer with example."}
{"_id": "181043", "title": "Hash function classification interview question", "text": "In several places on the Internet there's the interview question > Classify the Hashing Functions based on the various methods by which the key > value is found. with answers like   * Direct method   * Subtraction method   * Modulo-Division method   * Digit-Extraction method   * Mid-Square method   * Folding method   * Pseudo-random method which I find strange. I think I know a lot about hashing, but this is plain gibberish to me, could anybody explain?"}
{"_id": "181040", "title": "How to document a dual open source license?", "text": "If a project is dual-licensed **GPL** & **BSD** , should there be one `LICENSE` file with the text of both licenses? Or two separate files, one for each license? And I think I should put a copyright/license comment at the top of each source file. How should that comment indicate the dual-licensed status of the project?"}
{"_id": "255862", "title": "Dealing with proj files in multi-platform apps", "text": "So I've been doing some cross-platform mobile applications using cocos2d-x. Basically it uses common c++ code, that can easily be compiled to the popular mobile platforms with some small wrapper code that stays constant while working on the common c++ code. Everything works great, but I have a problem keeping all my project files up to date. For example, to compile to windows I have a .csproj file that holds all the c++ code to compile, for iOS I have a .xcodeproj that holds the files, and for android I have a make file that points to the files to compile. This means any time I add a new file to my project, or do anything to alter the file structure I have 3 files I must update in order to continue to build for all platforms, if I add any other platforms the problem continues to get worse. I am wondering, is this a problem that has been solved? I'm sure I'm not the first to have problems like this, keeping up multiple project / make files to update for the different platforms to compile. I was thinking of writing my own wrapper that can easily update these files without having to open an IDE / notepad to manually update any time I add a file. But before I do I thought I'd ask the question if there was a well accepted way to handle this problem, perhaps something that already exists that deals with this exact problem. I was curious about whether to ask this here or stackoverflow, as I'm curious both at the cocos2d-x specific case, but also the general case whenever multiple projects must be updated whenever new code is added. I chose to post it here, but am interested to the answer to both questions (specifically if cocos2d-x has something already widely used to solve the problem, and solving the problem in the general case)."}
{"_id": "135572", "title": "Why is it evil to run selects from a prod server?", "text": "I'm basically looking for arguments to persuade the internal \"consultants\" at work as the following are not working:   * What happens if you do a Cartesian join and crash the server?   * You don't need to do selects from that server. You have other servers for that.   * It's not for you it's for the clients. We're going to be implementing DB wide triggers to stop casual logging on during work hours but with a fail safe so that devs / DBAs can fix issues if they come up but need some more arguments to forstall the screaming that's probably going to happen. **EDIT** To clarify; there are no actual problems. The database will be locked down better no matter what. I'm not looking for technical reasons to do things or advice on how to manage a DB. I'm hoping that some other technical people on here have some advice on how to explain to non-technical people the, possibly only perceived, importance of this particular issue."}
{"_id": "141261", "title": "Multi-tenancy - single database vs multiple database", "text": "We have a number of clients, whose systems share some functionality, but also have quite a degree of diversity. The number of clients is growing - always a healthy thing! - and the diversity between their businesses is also increasing. At present there is a single ASP.Net (Web Forms) Web Site (as opposed to web project), which has sub-folders for each tenant, with that tenant's non- standard pages. There is a separate model project, which deals with database access and business logic. Which is preferable - and most importantly, why - between having (a) 1 database per client, with only the features associated with that client; or (b) a single database shared by all clients, where only a subset of tables are used by any one client. The main concerns within the business are over:   * maintenance of multiple assets - backups, version control and the like   * promoting re-use as much as possible How would you ensure these concerns are addressed, which solution is preferable, and why? (I have been also compiling responses to similar questions) **Edit** : here's the highlights from my research from other sources: Should I use one database per application or share a single database amongst multiple applications Splitting up a single project into libraries Supporting multitenancy Multi-tenancy - single database vs multiple database http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479086.aspx http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2213006/how-to-create-a-multi-tenant- database-with-shared-table-structures http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1610582 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2011/03/23/moving-to-multi-tenant- model-made-easy-with-sql-azure-federations.aspx http://ask.sqlservercentral.com/questions/3615/one-database-or-multiple.html http://devlicio.us/blogs/anne_epstein/archive/2009/04/24/the-case-for- multiple-dbs-in-multi-tenancy-situations.aspx http://ayende.com/blog/3497/multi-tenancy-the-physical-data-model http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/51334/Multi-Tenants-Database-Architecture http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?design.4.319460.16 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3479297/multiple-application-using-one- database http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1676552/single-or-multiple-databases http://mikehadlow.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/multi-tenancy-part-1-strategy.html http://mikehadlow.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/multi-tenancy-part-2-components- and.html http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic893107-373-1.aspx#bm1047297"}
{"_id": "208148", "title": "Good practice for object instantiation in MVC", "text": "In MVC the Domain Models(from Model Layer) should instantiate other Domain Models or all the Domain Models should be instantiate in the controllers and passed down using Dependency Injections? How do you implement this in real applications? If you choose this path isn't the controller getting to fat?"}
{"_id": "141269", "title": "Thoughts on web development architecture through integrating C++ in the future to a web application", "text": "I'm looking to build a website (it's actually going to be a commercial startup) I saw this question and it _really_ shed some light on a few things that I was hoping to understand (kudos to the op). After seeing that, it would make sense that, unless the website were required to actually have millions of hits per day, it wouldn't be a viable solution to write a C++ backend on the server side. But this got me thinking. what if it in the (unlikely) events of the future, it _does_ go that route? The problem is that, while I'm thinking of starting this all using .Net (in the beginning) just to get something quick and easy up without a lot of hassle (in terms of learning), and then moving towards something more Open Source (such as Python/Django or RoR) later to save money and to support OSS, I'm wondering IFF the website actually becomes big, will it be a good idea to integrate a C++ backend, and use Python ontop of C++ for a strong foundation, and then mitigate HTML/CSS/AJAX/etc ontop of the backend's foundation? I guess, what I'd like to know is that, given the circumstance, if this _were_ to happen, would it be a proper approach in terms of architecture? I'd definitely be supporting MVC as that seems to be a great way to implement a website. All in all, would one consider this rational, or are there other alternatives? I like .Net, and I'd like to use it in the beginning, because I have _much_ more experience with that than, say, Python or PHP, and I prefer it in general, but I really do want to support OSS in the future. **I suppose the sentence I'm looking for is, \"is this pragmatic?\"**"}
{"_id": "22721", "title": "Sharing programming fees with a fellow software developer", "text": "My question relates to how I should share the fees paid by clients to me and a fellow programmer, both of whom are freelancers. I've thought of a few options, but I'm in a dilemma as to which one would be the most motivating for both of us. 1) The first option I've thought is a fifty-fifty share. However, more brainwork is going to be done by my colleague, while initially at least, I will be handling the communication with customers. 2) The second option is a 60-40 share, where the colleague exerting more efforts gets a bigger share. This is the option I feel most inclined to adopt, but I'm not sure how it's going to feel in the long run. 3) The third option is calculating each one's contribution in terms of the number of hours spent, and sharing the revenue accordingly. It will be wonderful to hear everybody's thoughts on this!"}
{"_id": "22723", "title": "XAML - Like/Dislike?", "text": "After bashing my head against the brick wall that is XAML, I've decided to come here and ask other people if they are as frustrated as I am. So,   * Do you like XAML? Please justify.   * Is XAML the problem, or the lack of good tools? My issue could be resolved if the binding system gave me a file-line number location of the binding that's failing. This isn't a XAML issue so-much-as a debugger issue. Apart from the issues with tooling, I find that XML does not make a suitable programming language, and that XAML has workarounds to fix things that wouldn't have been a problem in any other \"real\" programming language. For example, string formatting on a binding. XAML also breaks when you need to step outside the hierarchical structure for things like context menus. Because they are defined within the xaml hierarchy people assume that they are part of the visual hierarchy too, which is not the case. This can lead to subtle binding issues, which are difficult to debug etc. As a comparison, HTML-CSS-Javascript works well because each part handles a specific part of displaying a web page. HTML for data and layout, CSS for style, and Javascript for execution. In contrast, XAML is trying to do everything and fails. Please note, I love WPF, so don't take this as a critisism of WPF, Silverlight or any particular WPF/Silverlight control. I'm only interested in a discussion about the XAML language."}
{"_id": "86888", "title": "Case convention- Why the variation between languages?", "text": "Coming from a Java background, I'm very used to camelCase. When writing C, using the underscore wasn't a big adjustment, since it was only used sparingly when writing simple Unix apps. In the meantime, I stuck with camelCase as my style, as did most of the class. However, now that I'm teaching myself C# in preparation for my upcoming Usability Design class in the fall, the PascalCase convention of the language is really tripping me up and I'm having to rely on intellisense a great deal in order to make sure the correct API method is being used. To be honest, switching to the PascalCase layout hasn't quite sunk in the muscle memory just yet, and that is frustrating from my point of view. Since C# and Java are considered to be brother languages, as both are descended from C++, why the variation in the language conventions? Was it a personal decision by the creators based on their comfort level, or was it just to play mindgames with new introductees to the language?"}
{"_id": "204875", "title": "How to model optional use cases in UML", "text": "Let's say, I want to model an application which allows users to model class diagrams. The high level use case can be modelled as UC1:Model Class Diagram, which refines itself into UC11: Model Class, UC12: Model Connection, UC13: Model Composition, etc. Since UC11, 12, 13 are part of UC 1, I used the include-Association. Unfortunately, the UML specification says that included use cases are essential parts and if you would leave one of them out the high level behavior could not be achieved any more. But in this example a valid class diagram can be created without modelling a connection or a composition, so these use cases are optional. To boil it down to an essence: How can optional use cases be modelled in UML while providing a mechanism for reuse (like the include association)?"}
{"_id": "86883", "title": "PHP Open Source Tools for Agile Development", "text": "Hello Everyone, There are so many Questions on Stackoverflow about Agile tools, but I haven't seen a tool which can be installed on a PHP Server. I'm just looking for an _**Open Source Scrum Tool**_ or just an _**Open Source Scrum Dashboard**_ for my Team, which can be installed on my webspace( **php** ). Thank you for Help!"}
{"_id": "166373", "title": "What is occurring in the world of server-side technologies in regards to the mobile app boom?", "text": "With mobile technologies becoming increasingly popular what is happening on the server-side with most of these apps when they need to communicate with a back end? I'm used to the world of technology from 10 years ago when most resources were accessed by requesting a dynamic web page that behind the seen used a server- side language to get the information it needed from a relational database. Is this still the case, and if not, what are the big changes?"}
{"_id": "255869", "title": "On linux, how to get \"incompatible\" i386 f77 libraries to work with current Fortran compilers, like gfortran?", "text": "I would like to run the elf32-i386 library libkernlib.a with a Fortran 77 program on my latest Ubuntu linux machine. From what I've read, `gfortran` is backwards compatible with Fortran 77, but I'm having trouble to get it to work with the library. I've tried -ff2c, -fbackflash, etc. but everything is still giving me               $ gfortran -ff2c -O -o output f77fortran.f -lkernlib          /usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/local/lib/libkernlib.a when searching for -lkernlib     /usr/bin/ld: canot find -lkernlib      I have also tried using `fort77`. I cannot find a `f77` that works. **If anyone knows how to run f77 programs and its libraries, whether using`gfortran` or something else, that would be great.** Btw, the libkernlib.a library has older versions from \"libraries\" links on this page, but the ones I've tried all give the same error and are all i386 (I figured out that by `objdump -f libkernlib.a`). Context: This is part of a Mathematica project that uses old code."}
{"_id": "230877", "title": "Domain Model vs View Model", "text": "I'm in the early stages of my programming career and I've been working with MVC for just about a year now. I've spent much time learning about the pattern and the concepts behind it, but as the projects I'm working with get larger I'm starting to think that maybe I don't have the best understanding of how the model layer is supposed to work. I hear a lot about always having a View Model to protect your Domain Model but how does this work in practice? What does the relationship between the two look like? What if a model doesn't need any extra \"view\" logic, should I just create a copy of it? Why?"}
{"_id": "230874", "title": "Java for a perfect Media Player?", "text": "I am looking forward to build a media player with java, and basically what I found was JMF. But, then again, this API is not upto date and doesn't support latest formats such as `MKV`. On more research, I stumbled upon http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10440152/any-simple-and-up-to-date-java- frameworks-for-embedding-movies-within-a-swing Got all excited, but then digging some more, left me with this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8153227/adding-other-video-codecs-dvd- support-to-javafx-2-2 Now, I am disappointed and in a fix that how all the good media players (VLC, KMPlayer etc) been able to support all video and audio formats. They must be build using a programming language, IMHO ! So, my question would be, in-order to build a `complete media player` which supports `all kind of media files`:   1. Is `JAVA` incompetent ?   2. Has one ever build a good media player using `JAVA` ?   3. If Java can't, how are their so many media players on `android`, with all video support ?   4. Is it just Java or no modern language can do it ?   5. Do I have rely and choose C, C++ to do this ?"}
{"_id": "230872", "title": "Using a single table for identity and metadata", "text": "I'm in the early design phase of a project to provide an e-commerce platform that will require several entities to be modelled, products, customers, orders, CMS pages, etc. They will all have a few things in common (ID, creation timestamp, last modified timestamp, etc). My first thought was the usual one of giving the various tables an ID column that will use the database's mechanism for assigning uniqueness (autoincrement in MySQL, sequences in Postgres, etc) but given they have a few things in common I was considering a design where all that data is kept in a base BusinessObject table and the tables for the other entities use a primary foreign key that references the BusinessObject table. For example (in pseudocode)               CREATE TABLE BusinessObject (         id,         date_created,          date_updated,          is_deleted,         // etc         PRIMARY KEY id AUTOINCREMENT     );          CREATE TABLE Customer (         id,         forename,         surname,         // etc         PRIMARY KEY id         FOREIGN KEY id REFERENCES BusinessObject.id     );          CREATE TABLE Product (         id,         name,         price,         description,         // etc         PRIMARY KEY id         FOREIGN KEY id REFERENCES BusinessObject.id     );      and so on. I can think of a number of advantages to this approach. First, a particular ID always only maps onto one particular object. For example, the id 3 in a system where each table generates its own IDs could refer to a customer, an order or anything else, whereas in the above design, ID 3 will always be an order, because there could never be a customer or product with ID 3. This would make stuff like extrapolating the referenced business object from the URL a lot easier, allowing for simpler routing in the application layer. However, it also means that every table in the system must join against the BusinessObject table, and I'm worried that this would result in some significant drawbacks. For example the fact that one particular table is going to be involved in nearly all queries may result in degraded performance for that table, or that it might be possible for a row in Customer to reference the same row in BusinessObject as a row in Product, resulting in loss of data integrity unless some additional steps are taken to prevent that. So basically, what are the pros and cons of a design where a single table provides the identity data for most of the rest of the database? Are such designs fairly common or is it better to just have each table have its own identity source and rely on cleverer application logic to determine the object being referenced?"}
{"_id": "165258", "title": "Data structure: sort and search effectively", "text": "I need to have a data structure with say 4 keys . I can sort on any of these keys. What data structure can I opt for? Sorting time should be very little. I thought of a tree, but it will be only help searching on one key. For other keys I'll have to remake the tree on that particular key and then find it. Is there any data structure that can take care of all 4 keys at the same time? these 4 fields [source ip, destination ip, source port, destination] are of total 12 bytes and total size for each record - 40 bytes.. have memory constraints too... around one lac records operations are : insertion, deletion, sorting on different keys. For printing , sorting the records on any of one keys should not take more than 5 seconds."}
{"_id": "75646", "title": "Is \"3 or more use a for\" a good rule of thumb?", "text": "When do repetitive operations become a code smell? I read this article by Charles Petzold where he suggested this and was wondering what people thought."}
{"_id": "205476", "title": "Refactoring the shipping application code to use DDD factories", "text": "I was trying to find examples for using DDD factories and I came across the shipping application from Eric Evans' book. However when I checked the BookingService the code to create a `Cargo` had this comment at line **37** :               34    public TrackingId bookNewCargo(final UnLocode originUnLocode,     35                                   final UnLocode destinationUnLocode,     36                                   final Date arrivalDeadline) {     37      // TODO modeling this as a cargo factory might be suitable     38      final TrackingId trackingId = cargoRepository.nextTrackingId();     39      final Location origin = locationRepository.find(originUnLocode);     40      final Location destination = locationRepository.find(destinationUnLocode);     41      final RouteSpecification routeSpecification = new RouteSpecification(origin, destination, arrivalDeadline);     42       43      final Cargo cargo = new Cargo(trackingId, routeSpecification);     44       45      cargoRepository.store(cargo);     46      logger.info(\"Booked new cargo with tracking id \" + cargo.trackingId().idString());     47       48      return cargo.trackingId();     49    }      How should the DDD factory be used here? Which parts exactly should be refactored to use the factory in these piece of code?"}
{"_id": "98548", "title": "Should all development, including refactoring work, be accompanied by a tracking issue?", "text": "**The debate:** Should all development, including refactoring work, be accompanied by a tracking issue? (in our case, Jira) **The common ground:** Our primary goal is quality. A working product, every release, is more important than anything else. Our codebase is old and automated tests are lacking; we are working on this but it's a long-term project, we need interim processes. **Position 1:** Refactoring work must be tracked in Jira. If it is not obviously related to the change you are making then you must raise another issue. If you don't then the work bypasses review and testing and there is a risk to our primary goal. The argument has been made that PCI compliance (a near-future goal of the business) requires this level of tracking; I'm not in a position to say that is true or false with any level of certainty. **Position 2:** Code quality is vastly important. The better it gets (to a point; a point we are nowhere near), the more likely we are to keep releasing a working product. Anything which puts a barrier, no matter how small, in the way of refactoring is a risk to our primary goal. Often, the IDE does the work for you, so it isn't likely to go wrong anyway. **The following cases have been made:** Would it satisfy both positions if a developer writes \"Refactor\" and the relevant revision numbers on a card? Honestly, this feels like it's going to make everyone equally unhappy. It still puts a level of resistance on doing the refactoring, but doesn't offer sufficient tracking. What about having all-encompassing Jira issues that cover the refactoring work for an iteration? Yes, this removes the developer resistance layer, but I fear it also removes the tracking benefits of having a Jira issue. How do QA get a clear idea what to test? This seems to be a political solution, keeping everyone calm by adding in a light-weight but ultimately pointless process. It seems to me that, given that both sides of the debate ultimately want the same thing, there should be a solution that makes everyone genuinely happy. We can't have been the first people to ask this question, so what experiences have others had in similar situations?"}
{"_id": "75648", "title": "What are the main practices and design patterns every .NET guy should know?", "text": "In my brief time as a professional programmer I've seen lots of applications written by programmers who's entire education appears to have been reading the first couple of chapters in a .NET 2.0 book. Heck when I started I wrote most of those applications! What are the biggest design patterns crucial for writing AWESOME .NET applications? By awesome I mean on the inside too!"}
{"_id": "138675", "title": "Which applications have driven the mass spread of floating point units?", "text": "Floating point units are standard on CPUs today, and even desktops might use them today (3D effects). However, I wonder which applications have initially driven the development and mass adoption of floating point units in history. Ten years ago, I think most uses of floating point arithmetics constituted in either   1. Engineering and Science applications   2. 3D graphics in computer games I think for any application where decimal numbers might have appeared at those times, fixed point arithmetic has been sufficient (2D graphics) or even desirable (finance). Usage of integers would have been sufficient then. I think these two applications have been the major motivation to establish floating point arithmetic in hardware as a standard. Can you name others, or is there a compelling reason to disagree?"}
{"_id": "138674", "title": "Main class passes dbConn obj to all its services, I need to change the dbConn for one of its services. - suggestion for design pattern", "text": "There is this main class and there are several services ( which uses db connection to retrieve data ) These services are initialized in the main class db properties are obtained from the property file and then dbconnection is opened by calling a method dbOpen() written in the main class and the resultant connection object is set to the service objects by iterating through the list of services and by calling setConnection method on the service `note: that the services are instantiated in the main class and the main class is not a superclass for services.` I also need to mention that there is this `recycle db connection` scenario only main class is aware of.               /** connects to DB, optionally recycling existing connection),           * throws RuntimeException if unable to connect */          private void connectDb(boolean recycle) {             try {                 if (recycle) {                     log.status( log.getSB().append(\"Recycling DB Connection\") );                     closeDb();                 }                 openDb();                        for ( int i = 0 ; i < service.length ; i++ )                 {                     service[i].setConnection(db);                 }             }      One of the service needs to use a different database, what is the best design pattern to use?"}
{"_id": "254078", "title": "In WPF, should I base my converters on types or use-cases?", "text": "I'm looking for some advice on how to write my WPF value converters. The way I'm currently writing them, they are very specific, like (bool?,bool) => Brush, i.e. I'm writing each converter for a specific use case, in this case, the Brush is bound to an indicator showing equality information between the bool? and the bool. This obviously makes re-use very hard and I end up with a quite large list of converters. Should I strive to write my converters in a more general way? Can I?"}
{"_id": "130126", "title": "Technique for multiple users on same datasets", "text": "This is more a learning question than coding, but I'm certain it's a common issue for anyone developing administration systems or applications in php/mysql/js etc. I've developed quite a complex application that lets users upload images, and define hotspots in them with associated actions. The images are stored in a table, and the actions in another, with json data for every action in a text field. However, like I say, the problem is generic. Basically, my fear is that if someone is editing the same image and set of actions at the same time, and they both submit changes, or if it was edited by someone else then there's a whole series of structures that potentially will fail on submission. I don't want to implement a locking system, as the system is very wide ranging (links to other images, etc), and I think it's a bit ugly. I saw this link (MSDN Multi-tenant architecture article) in another question, but it seems a little overwhelming and specialised for sql server. So - what are the terms for data and system architecture here that I can investigate, or are there some good articles to do with this topic that people can recommend? Specifically for php/web world would be great!"}
{"_id": "70036", "title": "using trademarked/copyrighted images in my public web application", "text": "Consider a public web application that wants to 'look' better by including the use of corporate images. The imagery would be used to give the website visitor a choice: Coke or Pepsi, Starbucks or Dunkin, Yankees or Red Sox, etc. It's a service that wants to enhancing the user experience by having those logos in place in the relevant spots. The web application would not be selling those images, or anything with the images. The site would be generating revenue via ads or paid services. Is there a general accepted practice on the web regarding trademarked images or logos? Has this been legally tested in any jurisdiction?"}
{"_id": "70032", "title": "When can I say I know how to program in C?", "text": "Let's see. I've seen in several places, including Advice for Computer Science College Students, by Joel Spolsky, that a graduated Computer Science student must know C. **How do I know if I know C or not?** I have developed a few projects in C (an implementation of the _ext2_ filesystem with FUSE, and a few others), but I suppose it means more than just knowing pointers, free, etc."}
{"_id": "104104", "title": "Scaling yourself up against a better programmer/role model?", "text": "After having watched this video I have to ask how a programmer can go about measuring themselves against other, better programmers much as a chess player would. How would you decide who is a role model to start with? I mean James Gosling is known by every Java programmer but he invented the language and there is almost certainly an expert out there who could show him a few tricks. Now say you have you found that role model. This could be, say, StackOverflow's own superstar Jon Skeet. It's possible to read his answers on StackExchange, visit his blog and read his books but what about actual programming skill? How could you go about fixing challenges and determining where you are in the programming skill spectrum?"}
{"_id": "125726", "title": "Review my class hierarchy", "text": "I have created a class hierarchy for an inventory system for a book/magazine. Here's the picture: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3WGKd.jpg) Will it do? I know there's no magazine class yet but I was wondering if anyone could suggest a better idea."}
{"_id": "85289", "title": "Selling an open source project: some issues", "text": "I am the creator / main developer of a small sized open source (PHP) project (GPL3). Currently there is a development team of 3 people (me included). This team has been quite active for some time, but since almost 2 years not much has happened. I myself have decided I want to stop working on the project, but I can't just leave the project because I care about it and I know if I abandon it, it will just be a matter of time before the project completely dies. At this moment, there are still some users and the project is only slightly out- of-date. So I'm thinking about selling the whole project. Of course I'd need to get consent of the other developers, but for now I'm assuming that's not a big problem. So at this moment I have 2 questions: 1) If the project would be sold to a commercial party, would it be possible for them to convert the project to closed source? I would prefer to sell the project to a company/organization that would continue the development under an open source license. 2) Does anyone have any tips to find interested parties? I don't know if I just want to put up a \"For Sale\" sign on the website of the project. Maybe someone has experience with a comparable situation. Ok guys, thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "122710", "title": "Where is the M in MVC?", "text": "I'm trying to refactor my application into MVC, but I'm stuck on the M part. In a database-backed app, the model is implemented in the app code, right? But then, **what is in the database -- is that not also the model?** _(I'm not using the database as a simple object store -- the data in the DB is an enterprise asset)._"}
{"_id": "246322", "title": "How to support multiple firmware versions?", "text": "I'm working on an app which talks to a bluetooth low energy (BLE) device and exchanges customized data with it. Our team has defined the data models and there's a method that will parse the data payload and assign values to the corresponding characteristics. It works all fine until we have introduced a new firmware. In this new firmware some values in the data payload have been re-defined or the offset of a specific value has been changed. So the parsing method will need to be updated/re-written according to the new payload definition. Then here comes the problem: both two versions of the firmware need to be supported! Of course I could write a lot of if/else in the parsing method right now, but what happend if 3 other firmware updates arrive one after other? I can imagine the code will become hard to read and lose it's simplicity. I'm wondering if there's an elegant way to manage the co-existence of firmware versions. Maybe a design pattern that can be adopted here? **To make it more specific:** In my model class `Temperature` I've the following properties:               @property (nonatomic, readonly) float temp_outside;     @property (nonatomic, readonly) float temp_inside;      The library has to support 3 different firmware versions:   * **V1** does only support `temp_outside`   * **V2** does support `temp_outside` and `temp_inside`   * **V3** does support `temp_outside` and `temp_inside`, but `temp_inside` has to be obtained differently compared to **V1 & V2** Assuming the firmware provides their information within the `manufacturer data` of the advertisings as raw data:   * **V1 firmware:** 00 42 0a      * (byte 1: sw id, byte 2: protocol id, byte 3: temp_outside)   * **V2 firmware:** 00 43 0a 10      * (byte 1: sw id, byte 2: protocol id, byte 3: temp_outside, byte 4: temp_inside)   * **V3 firmware:** 00 44 10 0a      * (byte 1: sw id, byte 2: protocol id, byte 3: temp_inside, byte 4: temp_outside) What is the best way to implement this? There are several things to consider:   1. The model has values which might not be filled by a specific firmware; should I have separate models per firmware or how can I make sure that only supported properties will be accessed?   2. The method responsible for parsing the bytes into the model has to support all firmwares. Should there be one method / parser with several conditions based on the protocol id or several parser classes?   3. The usage of the library within view controllers should be as convenient as possible."}
{"_id": "231831", "title": "What sort of information can I extract out of a dll file?", "text": "I was dealing with a virus earlier today which was a .dll file disguised as RUNDLL.dll which is regularly seen in the task manager and launches on startup. I would like to know how much information I could have extracted from that dll before deleting it. I used .NET reflector, and the file was unrecognized (meaning it was not c# code from what I understand.) I used visual studio and attempted to reference it but was greeted by another error. Visual studio handles all of the .net languages so I was surprised to say the least. I expected to find atleast the function names in the object browser if not anything else. Decompiling it was probably a waste of time if it was c++/c since that would just be assembly code. In what ways could a .dll file like this one prevent revealing information (function names, number of functions, etc.)? Are c++/c .dll files basically impossible to investigate for further information? Thanks."}
{"_id": "246328", "title": "How can a manager ensure developers are pushing up to the origin every day?", "text": "Our team has been using Git for a couple of years. I love it, after previously using Visual Source Safe, SVN and TFS. However, my manager has been getting increasingly agitated about it and is threatening to go back to SVN or TFS. The problem is human nature: Developers forgetting to push up to the origin every day, then going sick or taking a holiday, and someone else having to pick up the project, and not knowing whether the latest code is in the origin, or whether it is sitting on the absent developer's machine. There is no visibility of which developer was the last to work on which file, as there is with a centralized source control system. I really want to avoid going back to SVN of TFS. So my question is: How can a team use Git successfully in a way that takes into account human nature (forgetfulness, laziness, etc)? How can I ensure that at the end of every day the latest code has been pushed to the origin so that someone else can step in and take over the next day, if need be? Is the answer continuous integration? I've read about workflows that include having to push to a CI branch on the origin to build the project."}
{"_id": "119020", "title": "Use Google Analytics to track visitor/download stats for a Google Code Project?", "text": "Can you use Google Analytics to track visitors/downloaders for a Google Code project? I've searched google for an answer but I get results about Google Analytics as a Google Code project itself and not for applying it to a Google Code project for visitor/download data."}
{"_id": "176317", "title": "Morse Code - Binary Tree", "text": "How is the Morse Code representation of a letter determined? \"E\" = \".\" \"T\" = \"-\" Why is it not alphabetic? As in let \"A\" = \".\", \"B\" = \"-\", \"C\" =\".-\", etc. I'm trying to develop an algorithm for a traversing Binary Tree filled with these letter. My main aim is to search for a letter, like \"A\", but I don't know what conditions to use that determines when to branch to the right or left node."}
{"_id": "84625", "title": "Amazon Cloud (EC2) w/SQL Server. Pay for SQL instance, or use an AMI w/SQL Server Express?", "text": "I have been considering using the Amazon cloud (EC2) for a small workflow application. In terms of power and storage, a SQL Server Express database will more than meet my needs. I have been cautioned against paying for just a Windows server instance and installing SQL Server Express due to mainly security issues. Is it reasonable to think that there is an Amazon Machine Image (preconfigured images that you can load onto your instance) with SQL Server Express installed where most of the server \"hardening\" has been taken care of? The wise course may be to just pay for the Windows + SQL Server instance so it is already configured for me, but it is quite a cost difference."}
{"_id": "70693", "title": "SQL problems and answers book for a functioning SQL programmer", "text": "It was pointed out to me yesterday that I need to get a book on SQL and learn about it properly. That is probably a fair assessment; I'm a functioning SQL programmer who can in general extract from the database the information that is needed, but as soon as extracting the data needs more than a couple of `joins` and a `where` clause the query that I come up with is probably not as good as it could be. Previously I was working at an Oracle shop where there were a few very good SQL programmers who would generally design the more complex queries and would be on hand to answer questions, but now I'm at a SQL Server shop where no one really has much of a clue about SQL and so I feel like I need to get my skills up. What I'm looking for is a book that is fairly short and very practical that I can work through in the evenings with a series of difficult SQL problems and then well explained solutions along with a few pieces of sage advice that is aimed at a programmer who can \"do SQL\" who wants to become more of a \"SQL programmer\". I appreciate that many things about SQL are platform dependent, so since I'm currently in a SQL Server shop then my preference would be for a book aimed at TSQL. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "203133", "title": "How advanced are author-recognition methods?", "text": "From a written text by an author if a computer program analyses the text, how much can a computer program tell today about the author of some (long enough to be statistically significant) texts? Can the computer program even tell with \"certainty\" whether a man or a woman wrote this text based solely on the contents of the text and not an investigation such as ip numbers etc? I'm interested to know if there are algorithms in use for instance to automatically know whether an author was male or female or similar characteristics of an author that a computer program can decide based on analyses of the written text by an author. It could be useful to know before you read a message what a computer analyses says about the author, do you agree? If I for instance get a longer message from my wife that she has had an accident in Nigeria and the computer program says that with 99 % probability the message was written by a male author in his sixties of non-caucasian origin or likewise, or by somebody who is not my wife, then the computer program could help me investigate why a certain message differs in characteristics. There can also be other uses for instance just detecting outliers in a geographically or demographically bounded larger data set. Scam detection is the obvious use I'm thinking of but there could also be other uses. Are there already such programs that analyse a written text to tell something about the author based on word choice, use of pronouns, unusual language usage, or likewise?"}
{"_id": "203135", "title": "Algorithms for Data Redundancy and Failover for distributed storage system?", "text": "I'm building a distributed storage system that works with different storage sizes. For instance, my storage devices have sizes of 50GB, 70GB, 150GB, 250GB, 1000GB, 5 storage systems in one system. My application will store any files to the storage system. Question: How can I build a distributed storage with the idea of data redundancy and fail-over to store documents, videos, any type of files at the same time ensuring that should one of any storage devices fail, there would be another copy of these files on another storage device. However, the concern is, 50GB of storage can only store this maximum number of files as compared to 70GB, 150GB etc. With one storage in mind, bringing 5 storage systems like a cloud storage, is there any logical way to distribute or store the files through my application? How do I ensure data redundancy through different storage sizes? Is there any algorithm to collate multiple blob files into a single file archive? What is the best solution for one cloud storage with multiple different storage sizes? I open this topic with the objective of discussing the best way to implement this idea, assuming simplicity, what are the issues of this implementation, performance measurements and discussion of the limitations."}
{"_id": "203134", "title": "Uses of persistent data structures in non-functional languages", "text": "Languages that are purely functional or near-purely functional benefit from persistent data structures because they are immutable and fit well with the stateless style of functional programming. But from time to time we see libraries of persistent data structures for (state-based, OOP) languages like Java. A claim often heard in favor of persistent data structures is that because they are immutable, they are _thread-safe_. However, the reason that persistent data structures are thread-safe is that if one thread were to \"add\" an element to a persistent collection, the operation returns a _new_ collection like the original but with the element added. Other threads therefore see the original collection. The two collections share a lot of internal state, of course -- that's why these persistent structures are efficient. But since different threads see different states of data, it would seem that persistent data structures are _not_ in themselves sufficient to handle scenarios where one thread makes a change that is visible to other threads. For this, it seems we must use devices such as atoms, references, software transactional memory, or even classic locks and synchronization mechanisms. Why then, is the immutability of PDSs touted as something beneficial for \"thread safety\"? Are there any real examples where PDSs help in synchronization, or solving concurrency problems? Or are PDSs simply a way to provide a stateless interface to an object in support of a functional programming style?"}
{"_id": "202842", "title": "Security Risks of Unsigned ClickOnce Manifests", "text": "Using signed manifests in ClickOnce deployments, it is not possible to modify files after the deployment package has been published - installation will fail as hash information in the manifest won't match up with the modified files. I recently stumbled upon a situation where this was problematic - customers need to be able to set things like connection strings in app.config before deploying the software to their users. I got round the problem by un-checking the option to \"Sign the ClickOnce manifests\" in VS2010 and explicitly excluding the app.config file from the list of files to have hashes generated during the publish process. From a related page on MSDN > \"Unsigned manifests can simplify development and testing of your > application. However, unsigned manifests introduce substantial security > risks in a production environment. Only consider using unsigned manifests if > your ClickOnce application runs on computers within an intranet that is > completely isolated from the internet or other sources of malicious code.\" In my situation, this isn't an immediate problem - the deployment won't be internet-facing. However, I'm curious to learn what the \"substantial security risks\" of what I've done would be if it was internet-facing (or if things changed and it needed to be in the future). Thanks in advance! * * * **Edit / follow-up:** Does _not signing_ the ClickOnce manifest constitute an unsigned manifest (as per MSDN's definition)? The application manifest contains a hash of the files in the deployment package. Any changes to the files within it results in a validation failure during installation. Does this negate the above security risks, at all?"}
{"_id": "202843", "title": "Solutions for floating point rounding errors", "text": "In building an application that deals with a lot of mathematical calculations, I have encountered the problem that certain numbers cause rounding errors. While I understand that floating point is not exact, the problem is _how_ do I deal with exact numbers to make sure that when calculations are preformed on them floating point rounding doesn't cause any issues?"}
{"_id": "247021", "title": "Automatically create or update object in database", "text": "I have a database class with the following interface:               public Database {         //returns false if p (its ID) is already available         //otherwise adds p the the list and returns true         public boolean create(Person p);              //returns false if p (its ID) was not found in the list         //replaces the available Person q (q.ID == p.ID) with p and returns true         public boolean update(Person p);              //returns false if p (its ID) was not found in the list         //marks the available Person q (q.ID == p.ID) as inactive returns true         public boolean remove(Person p);     }      The `Person` is immutable and can be identified by a unique id. I have a `EditDialog` which looks like this: ![Editing a Person and the available Save/Chancel/Remove functionalities](http://i.stack.imgur.com/H7l0E.png) I wanted to reuse my code and so the `EditDialog` is used for create a `Person` or update it. So this dialog is initialized either by a available `Person` instance (Edit-Operation) or by a new one (Create-Operation). Because I learned that there is always an evil user I wanted to avoid the following scenario:   * Click \"Create Person\" button      * New `Person` is created in Database     * `EditDialog` for new `Person` is displayed   * Click \"Chancel\" button      * `Person` has to be removed (= marked inactive) from `Database`     * `EditDialog` is disposed   * repeat Which would lead to many inactive `Person`s in the `Database`. So I decided to only create the `Person` in the `Database`, if the user clicks the \"Save\" button. Which leads to two possible scenarios for the `Listener` of the \"Save\" button:   1. New `Person` should be created in `Database`   2. `Person` should be updaated in `Database` So the code of the Listener looks like the following:               if(!database.create(p) {         database.update(p);     }      Which is not so pretty in my opinion. The Long and the short of it is, **should the Database automatically**   * **update a`Person` if it's availabe at invokation of `create(Person)`?**   * **create a`Person` if it's not yet available at invokation of `update(Person)`?** **Or is there another solution/practice I didn't think about?**"}
{"_id": "146286", "title": "How to Model a simple file-system by UML class diagram", "text": "I want to model a file system which contains both files and directories, and directories can contain either files or other directories. This is what I have reached so far: ![My simple file system class diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6URV9.png) In OOSE book, however, a similar model is presented: ![class diagram for file system presented](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GonyF.png) Now I have two questions:   1. I wonder why the author did not use an _Interface_ to represent the abstract type **FileSystemElement**? Isn't using an interface for this type correct?   2. As we know, files and directories must have names with similar constraint (e.g. maximum length of 256 characters). Therefore, it would be nice if I model this in the **FileSystemElement**. But an **interface** cannot have a _abstract attribute_ , so I have to repeat **name** attribute in both **Directory** and **File** classes. Is there any better workaround for this problem?"}
{"_id": "146281", "title": "What an architect should do?", "text": "It seems that the role of architect varies in between software companies. What does the role of a standard architect include? E.g...   1. Draw high level diagrams and explain to the team why this is a reasonable architecture.   2. Write documents for managers or customers.   3. Write the infrastructure of a software upon to which others add more features.   4. Write various prototypes and run performance tests.   5. Conceive additional features and improvement to existing features and guide the team towards them.   6. Other responsibilities."}
{"_id": "218437", "title": "What is the difference between requirements and acceptance criteria?", "text": "I am trying to understand the difference a little better as it seem like they are the same thing. I have work in projects with no use of the requirements and everything is an acceptance criteria, and on projects that have both."}
{"_id": "236826", "title": "New and old technologies coexist in legacy system", "text": "New technologies can accomplish existing tasks in more efficient and powerful way. But sometimes old technologies cannot be discarded unfortunately, so more numbers of technologies in one system make maintain difficult. Is it worth to introduce new technologies? For instance, a legacy system uses SOAP internally and JSON is new technology to replace the SOAP. The problem is JSON can only replace **some** of SOAP, because the rest of SOAP is too complex to replace. As a result, the system will use both SOAP and JSON at same time. The maintain is even more difficult than before. Is it reasonable to introduce new technologies to replace **part** of old ones?"}
{"_id": "236823", "title": "Web app design: Local caching vs demanding", "text": "I'm writing a web application in javascript that will be served to the clients' browser. The intent is for the app to appear to the client as a monolithic application, not a series of interlinked refreshing web pages. My question deals with common architecture. In order to relate the question I'll mention a specific feature of the web app is a \"tour\"; when the client clicks a button labeled \"tour\" the web app will load a div with a bit about the app itself, and what it can do for the user. There are two ways this could be handled, the client browser could fetch the tour markup from the server when the user clicks the button, or the server could download it (and all other such features) when the app is initially downloaded. If I fetch the tour on demand, then I possibly save network bandwidth as not everyone will take the tour, the app will be smaller too. But this means that in order for someone to fully use the app there will be more network congestion as there will be another hit on the network for loading the tour. If I just serve all the features initially, the app is larger, but there is less congestion on the network because, once downloaded, there is less need to access the network (unless a fresh copy of the app is required (ie if- modified-since). This 'tour' feature isn't really the issue itself, it's just an example to explain my question. How to balance caching vs demanding in web app design?"}
{"_id": "71344", "title": "Should one Consider Periods in \"Year of Experience\" while actually not Coding on regular basis", "text": "Sorry if the title sounds a bit clumsy. The scenario I am trying to describe is during my academic years I have mostly coded in C/C++. Few small projects were done but no large scale work was done. From there on, after entering industry, I rarely code in C++ but whenever I do, I use its features as deep as my understanding. Now, should I even consider myself a C++ programmer and count every year since I first started coding as my number of years in C++."}
{"_id": "236829", "title": "Is the following example a strategy pattern?", "text": "In my problem I had lots of objects with slightly different behaviour, but identical attributes and methodes with identical interfaces. The objects variants were quite big in number, and I didn't want to create a class for each of them, with lots of repeting code. I circumvented creating a lot of derived classed by the following construct (pseudocode for abbrevation)               #aTP = all the parameters     def _function_version_1(aTP):         ...          ...          def _function_version_BIG(aTP):         ...          class BaseClass(object):         _typesOfImplementation = {'ONE' : _function_version_1,                                    ...                                   'BIG' : _function_version_BIG,                                  }              def __init__(self, type, ...)             ...             if type not in _typesOfImplementation:                 raise Exception('Unknown type')             # respective function for this object             self.function = lambda aTP:BaseClass._typesOfImplementation[type](self, aTP)      Is this still an implementation of the strategy pattern, although I didn't use classes for the respective function version (which would have been an awful bunch of classes again)?"}
{"_id": "12933", "title": "What is the most effective work rhythm for a programmer?", "text": "I was wondering what is the best work rhythm for the job a programmer does? I am coding all day long and sometimes I get stuck in a problem and it keeps me occupied a few hours before I realize that maybe I need a break. Some say frequent and short brakes help you but sometimes when I am focused on a problem I feel like a break would not help, but rather loose my focus. So how often should a break be taken, and how long? The more basic question regarding this issue is comes from the fact that, you can get tons of \"good ideas\" ('promodo' for instance) on the net, that promise you will be more effective in whatever you do. Are these principles good or, this is something everybody should decide for himself? I wonder if any of them can accomplish what it promises! I mean what they promise is that (if the conditions are met) it works for **everybody**. Are there really such principles? And if there are, what are these and how can we find them?"}
{"_id": "232562", "title": "Why do most sites require email activation", "text": "Most popular applications nowadays require account activation by email. I've never done it with apps that I've developed so am I missing some crucial security feature? By email activation I mean when you register to a site they send you an email that contains a link that you have to click before your account gets activated."}
{"_id": "41798", "title": "programming an expert system", "text": "I need to program an expert system that, according to a series of complex possibilities, returns a well defined result, together with some kind of diagnostic of what that results means. What is the general process to define the behavior of an expert system, from the initial assessment of the conditions to the actual code ?"}
{"_id": "232561", "title": "How to POST CSV with XMLHttpRequest", "text": "I would like to send a CSV file via POST in a XMLHttpRequest, but I am unsure of two things. First is there anything to distinguish a CSV file from a string split up by comma's? And what sort of Content-Type am I supposed to put in to the `setRequestHeader`?"}
{"_id": "232568", "title": "Calculating combinations from categories", "text": "I'm trying to calculate every possible selection from different categories. 1 choice must be made from every category and the categories are always in the same order. I save a string where each character is the number of that choice from that category. I have solved this with recursion and it works well when there are thousands of possibilities but is too slow when there are millions. I'd like to change it to looping to hopefully speed it up. Here is my recursive function (C#):               private void GetPartNumberPermutations(IList<int> choices, string partNumber)     {         for (int i = 0; i < choices[0]; i++)         {             if (choices.Count > 1)                 GetPartNumberPermutations(choices.Skip(1).ToList(), partNumber + i.ToString());             else             {                 //add partNumber to the list             }         }     }      Choices is a list of the number of choices for each category and might look like { 2, 4, 5, 8, 2, 4 }. Let's ignore the problem when one of the entries is > 9. My final list of partNumbers comes out to: 000000   000001   000002   000003   000010   000011   000012   000013   000100   000101   etc"}
{"_id": "123449", "title": "How to tackle massive Linux/makefile projects effectively?", "text": "I have been developing Windows applications in C++ for like 10 years now. And recently I've started digging into some Linux projects, and I can't stand how unproductive I am... I'm a fast learner, and I've been using Linux as a primary platform for some time now. And I do feel very comfortable with shell, OS principles and GUI. But when it comes to development, it feels like I'm back to school. As soon as I open some larger project, I'm stuck. Most of them are makefile based, so basically when I try to navigate them with QT or CodeBlocks, at best, I can use intellisense on a per-file basis. And most of the time variables leak from scope. Then there is a go-to-definition stuff, which seems nonexistent, try to join some larger project from sourceforge, and you're stuck for days, because navigating to definitions is so hard... `grep -r \"this_def\" . --include \"*.cpp\" --include \"*.h\"` seems so slow and clumsy. And then, the debugging, gdb does work, but no matter what I do, it seems like it's light years behind WinDbg or VisualStudio debugger. And these things are making me desperate, I want to write code, but it just goes so slow... I'm starting to think that Linux developers learn function definitions by heart and analyze code by eyes, but I can't believe it's so. Has anyone gone through this? Is there something that I'm missing that could make me more productive?"}
{"_id": "247028", "title": "Alias variable vs multiple use of getter", "text": "Would you rather:               $this->getDoctrine()->getManager()->persist($currency);     $this->getDoctrine()->getManager()->persist($user);     $this->getDoctrine()->getManager()->flush();      or               $em = $this->getDoctrine()->getManager();     $em->persist($currency);     $em->persist($user);     $em->flush();      Is using a aliasing variable for faster coding a smart choice, or should the programmer rather use variables only if they are really variables."}
{"_id": "180804", "title": "What is the reason behind methods with return values and methods with void?", "text": "I want to uderstand why there is a method in C# that could reurn a value, for example:               public int Accelerate()     {        Speed++;        return Speed;     }      and a method that does not reurn a value (void)? What is the difference in the following example of the above one:               public void Accelerate()     {       Speed++;       Console.WriteLine(Speed);     }      I see that last one will save us a time rather than defining a variable to hold this field in when creating a new object! I'm beginner, so could anyone explain?"}
{"_id": "151365", "title": "Reading input all together or in steps?", "text": "For many programming quizzes we are given a bunch of input lines and we have to process each input , do some computation and output the result. My question is what is the best way to optimize the runtime of the solution ?   1. Read all input, store it (in array or something) ,compute result for all of them, finally output it all together. or 2\\. Read one input, compute the result, output the result and so on for each input given. UPDATE Since no answer was specific I would ask which approach is the best for problems like this: > ### Quadrant Queries (30 points) > > There are N points in the plane. The ith point has coordinates (xi, yi). > Perform the following queries: > > 1) Reflect all points between point i and j both including along the X axis. > This query is represented as \"X i j\"   >  2) Reflect all points between point i and j both including along the Y > axis. This query is represented as \"Y i j\"   >  3) Count how many points between point i and j both including lie in each > of the 4 quadrants. This query is represented as \"C i j\" > > ### Input: > > The first line contains N, the number of points. N lines follow.   >  The `i`th line contains xi and yi separated by a space.   >  The next line contains Q the number of queries. The next Q lines contain > one query each, of one of the above forms.   >  All indices are 1 indexed. > > ### Output: > > Output one line for each query of the type \"C i j\". The corresponding line > contains 4 integers; the number of points having indices in the range [i..j] > in the 1st,2nd,3rd and 4th quadrants respectively. > > ### Constraints: >   >   >     1 <= N <= 100000 >     1 <= Q <= 1000000 >   > > You may assume that no point lies on the X or the Y axis.   >  All (xi,yi) will fit in a 32-bit signed integer   >  ..."}
{"_id": "147880", "title": "New senior developer tasks", "text": "I've got a senior developer with eight years of .NET experience starting tomorrow to work on a 11,000-lines-of-code application. In the team there's myself and another programmer. We've both got about three years experience each. It's my first project as a manager (I'm also a developer on the project) and this is the first time I've ever had to introduce someone to an already established code base. Obviously I'll be going over each module, the deployment process, etc., and handing them the location of the source control repository, documentation (which isn't the best), etc. How long should I give them before they're ready to start writing new features and fixing bugs?"}
{"_id": "182093", "title": "Why store a function inside a python dictionary?", "text": "I'm a python beginner, and I just learned a technique involving dictionaries and functions. The syntax is easy and it seems like a trivial thing, but my python senses are tingling. Something tells me this is a deep and very pythonic concept and I'm not quite grasping its importance. **Can someone put a name to this technique and explain how/why it's useful?** * * * The technique is when you have a python dictionary and a function that you intend to use on it. You insert an extra element into the dict, whose value is the name of the function. When you're ready to call the function you issue the call _indirectly_ by referring to the dict element, not the function by name. The example I'm working from is from Learn Python the Hard Way, 2nd Ed. (This is the version available when you sign up through Udemy.com; sadly the live free HTML version is currently Ed 3, and no longer includes this example). To paraphrase:               # make a dictionary of US states and major cities     cities = {'CA':'San Diego', 'NY':'New York', 'MI':'Detroit'}          # define a function to use on such a dictionary     def find_city (map, city):         # does something, returns some value         if city in map:             return map[city]         else:             return \"Not found\"          # then add a final dict element that refers to the function     cities['_found'] = find_city      Then the following expressions are equivalent. You can call the function directly, or by referencing the dict element whose value is the function.               >>> find_city (cities, 'New York')     NY          >>> cities['_found'](cities, 'New York')     NY      Can someone explain what language feature this is, and maybe where it comes to play in \"real\" programming? This toy exercise was enough to teach me the syntax, but didn't take me all the way there."}
{"_id": "182094", "title": "How should I represent an enumerated type in a relational database?", "text": "I am working on developing a relational database that tracks transactions that occur on a device I'm working on for my company. There are different types of transactions that could occur on the device, so we have a \"trans_type\" field in one of our main record tables. My group has decided to make the type of this field an integer and treating it as an enumerated type. My intuition tells me that it would be a better idea to make this field a string so that our database data would be more readable and usable. My co-workers seem to be worried that this would cause more trouble than it is worth. That string comparisons are too costly and the possibility of typos is too great of a barrier. So, in your opinion, when dealing with a field in a relational database that is essentially an enumerated value, is it a better design decision to make this field an integer or a string? Or is there some other alternative I've overlooked? Note: explicit enumerated types are not supported by the database we are using. And the software we are developing that will interface with this database is written in C++."}
{"_id": "147886", "title": "When programmers talk about \"data structures\", what are they referring to?", "text": "When programmers talk about \"data structures\", are they only talking about abstract data types like lists, trees, hashes, graphs, etc.? Or does that term include any structure that holds data, such as composite types (class objects, structs, enums, etc.) and primitive types (boolean, int, char, etc.)? I've only ever heard programmers use the term to reference complex data structures or abstract data types, however the Wikipedia article that provides a list of data structures includes both composite types and primitive types in the definition, which is not what I expected (even though it does make sense). When looking around online I see other places that refer to the term \"data structure\" in the programming sense as only referring to abstract data types, such as this lecture from Stony Brook University's Department of Computer Science which states > A data structure is an actual implementation of a particular abstract data > type. or this wikibook on data structures, which uses the term in sentences like this: > Because data structures are higher-level abstractions, they present to us > operations on groups of data, such as adding an item to a list, or looking > up the highest-priority item in a queue So why do I only ever hear programmers referring to complex data structures or abstract data types when they use the term \"data structure\"? Do programmers have a different definition for the term than the dictionary definition?"}
{"_id": "226193", "title": "How does database connection pooling improve application performance?", "text": "I can't understand why connection pooling improves application performance. I suppose connection establishment would cause latency. But reusing an established connection requires more complex error handling. Application server need track state of every connection to set connection to initial state before reusing (such as discarding all transactions, switching to the default isolation level), which also costs time."}
{"_id": "214303", "title": "Why doesn't Git daemon start in the background?", "text": "Just as in the title, why doesn't `git daemon` start the service in the background, since it's a \"daemon\", being a background process? I know that I can start it in the background using `git daemon &`, but I'm just wondering about the philosophical reason for this decision."}
{"_id": "237883", "title": "Is recursive code slower than non-recursive code?", "text": "Now I'm only a novice programmer, but what my friends that are studying programming tell me is that recursive code is a good thing, it leads to less code duplication and it looks more elegant. Now it may be so, but everytime I've tried my hand with recursive code I've always found it to be significantly slower than non-recursive code, I'm not sure if it's something about the ways I've used it but I highly doubt it, I've used it for fairly simply thing's like Collatz Conjecture and Fibonacci number generation but whenever I've compared it against normal iterative code the recursive approach will consistently clock at around twice the time of the iterative solutions."}
{"_id": "123199", "title": "Organizing large Javascript applications - The view layer", "text": "Today Javascript application of a relevant size become more and more common, and as the need arises, certain patterns are identified to manage the code complexity. I try to follow good advice, but I have some trouble in organizing the view layer of an application I am writing. While the other layers are nicely decoupled, I have a big blob for the UI that I would like to avoid. To make things clear, I am not talking of application the size Osmani (see the link above) considers - like Gmail - but still big enough to deserve a slightly better architecture. My problem is that I have a lot of UI elements that I have to place. All these elements can have margins, paddings and so on, and I need to explicitly set their size, as the UI has a lot of constraint that are not expressible by CSS (for instance, some images have to be sized to that an integer number of them appears in a row, without blank space at the end). As if this was not enough, the size of some elements depends on how much space their container allows, and this may depend on the size of other elements and so on. What I am doing right now is to compute the size of all elements every time the window size changes. I start from the first one, which I can compute freely. As soon as this is placed, I fire an event which trigger the computation of the second one and so on. This approach more or less works, but is ugly as hell. Every function is full of code like               function resizeFoo() {         var parent = $('#foo').parent(),             parentWidth = parent.width(),             availableWidth = parentWidth - parseInt(parent.css('padding-left'), 10);              $('#foo').width(availableWidth);     }      only much longer. As soon as I add some right padding to #foo's parent, I have to update this. Of course, I could subtract the padding from both sides right from the start, making it event longer. > Are there any useful patterns to handle complex UI sizing and positioning > requirements, so that I can reorganize all of the above mess into something > meaningful?"}
{"_id": "86714", "title": "Using lookahead assertions in regular expressions", "text": "I use regular expressions on a daily basis, as my daily work is 90% in Perl (legacy codebase, but that's a different issue). Despite this, I still find lookahead and lookbehind to be terribly confusing and often unreadable. Right now, if I were to get a code review with a lookahead or lookbehind, I would immediately send it back to see if the problem can be solved by using multiple regular expressions or a different approach. The following are the main reasons I tend not to like them:   * They can be terribly unreadable. Lookahead assertions, for example, start from the beginning of the string no matter where they are placed. That, among other things, can cause some very \"interesting\" and non-obvious behaviors.   * It used to be the case that many languages didn't support lookahead/lookbehind (or supported them as \"experimental features\"). This isn't the case quite as much, but there's still always the question as to how well it's supported.   * Quite frankly, they feel like a dirty hack. Regexps often already are, but they can also be quite elegant, and have gained widespread acceptance.   * I've gotten by without any need for them at all... sometimes I think that they're extraneous. Now, I'll freely admit that especially the last two reasons aren't really good ones, but I felt that I should enumerate what goes through my mind when I see one. I'm more than willing to change my mind about them, but I feel that they violate some of my core tenets of programming, including:   * Code should be as readable as possible without sacrificing functionality -- this may include doing something in a less efficient, but clearer way as long as the difference is negligible or unimportant to the application as a whole.   * Code should be maintainable -- if another programmer comes along to fix my code, non-obvious behavior can hide bugs or make functional code appear buggy (see readability)   * \"The right tool for the right job\" -- I'm sure you can come up with contrived examples that could use lookahead, but I've never come across something that really needs them in my real-world development work. Is there anything that they're really the best tool for, as opposed to, say, multiple regexps (or, alternatively, are they the best tool for most cases they're used for today)? My question is this: **Is it good practice to use lookahead/lookbehind in regular expressions, or are they simply a hack that have found their way into modern production code?** I'd be perfectly happy to be convinced that I'm wrong about this, and simple examples are useful for examples or illustration, but by themselves, won't be enough to convince me."}
{"_id": "159740", "title": "Python simulation-scripts architecture", "text": "**Situation:**   I've some scripts that simulate user-activity on desktop. Therefore I've defined a few cases (workflows) and implemented them in Python. I've also written some classes for interacting with the users' software (e.g. web browser etc.). **Problem:**   I'm a total beginner in software design / architecture (coding isn't a problem). How could I structure what I described above? Providing a library which contains all the workflows as functions, or a separate class/module etc. for each workflow? I want to keep the the workflows simple. The complexity should be hidden in the classes for interacting with the users' software. Are there any papers / books I could read about this, or could you provide some tips?"}
{"_id": "86712", "title": "Designing controller for modular Java architecture", "text": "We are designing a system which mimics a BPEL application with sets of functional requirements such as bulk messaging, managing SLAs, error handling and so on. One of the intentions is to modularize these functional and non-functional aspects into separate web apps so that we can choose at build time and plug them all together. How does one go about designing this app - choosing design patterns for a controlling framework that delegates between the modules? Put another way - it's like the chain of activities in an ESB, so the controller passes on to A then B then C. In other cases it goes A > B > D and so on. So my question: what design pattern does this controller have? How can it decide the logic of whether at the end of A, should it call B or C"}
{"_id": "171190", "title": "what does composition example vs aggregation", "text": "Composition and aggregation both are confusion to me. Does my code sample below indicate composition or aggregation?               class A {          public static function getData($id) {              //something          }               public static function checkUrl($url) {              // something          }           class B {         public function executePatch() {                $data = A::getData(12);           }              public function readUrl() {                $url = A::checkUrl('http/erere.com');          }              public function storeData() {                 //something not related to class A at all          }       }     }      Is class B a composition of class A or is it aggregation of class A? Does composition purely mean that if class A gets deleted class B does not works at all and aggregation if class A gets deleted methods in class B that do not use class A will work?"}
{"_id": "226224", "title": "Suggestion on how to fill a web form (several times)", "text": "I need to fill a form using data from a CSV file. I was planning to use CURL+PHP to do it, but then I realized the form has several steps (one on each page), plus it uses javascript to fill hidden inputs. It is an ASP.NET form, so it has a lot of variables a postback, etc. I am thinking now, to make a browser extension that would load the CSV file and without any more user input would fill the form, and advance from page to page filling up the form and then somehow wait for the form to finish processing, retrieve the output and restart the form. I would like to repeat this for 500-600 times. The website in question does not provide an API so filling up forms is the only way. Does this idea sound feasible, any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "212178", "title": "Pointer access and cache coherency", "text": "To my understanding, when you access a variable, that variable and the surrounding area of memory is put into the L1 cache. If I'm wrong here, please tell me. Now my question is, say I have an array of pointers, and I want to iterate through them all performing operation X. If I first have to access the pointer, to get the address of the actual data, does this mean that the memory near the pointer will be put into cache, then the memory near the data, then back to the pointer, then to the data etc? i.e. Cache thrashing? If this is the case, how might one go about keep cache coherency?"}
{"_id": "250333", "title": "Relevance of search results", "text": "I implemented an easy-to-use text search for our application. It has the usual text fields for   * all of the keywords   * any of the keywords    * none of the keywords Now I would like to prioritize my results. Just counting the \"all\" and \"any\" hits would be probably good enough, but may be the result is more relevant if more than the one necessary \"any\" term was hit. Or one could say that a lot of hits for a single word should yield \"diminishing returns\". Could you please give me a hint how this problem is usually handled? **Disclaimer** : I know that a \"hand made\" search won't scale and won't give the best possible results. This implementation is just a temporary solution, which will be replaced by something like Apache Solr, as soon as we have the resources."}
{"_id": "40443", "title": "Why should I learn to make apps for Windows Phone 7 instead of Android?", "text": "What would be the reason one learn to make apps for Windows Phone 7 instead of Android phones? Is there any reason why Windows Phone 7 is the platform that a developer choose instead of Android? Thanks heaps"}
{"_id": "238689", "title": "Is there a difference in the C++ language between Visual Studio and Code::Blocks?", "text": "I used to program C++ on Code::Blocks, but it's boring now. The view of Visual studio is that it's much better. Will it change anything? Or is it the same thing? Same syntax?"}
{"_id": "47796", "title": "How important is it that you know the C++ standard?", "text": "I did try searching, but I did not see a similar question (either that or my search terminology was incorrect - if so, feel free to close). I am an avid user of SO, and I notice that there are lots of references to the C++ standard in discussions and answers - and I have to admit, I have never read this particular document, the language makes my eyes hurt... So, the question is, can a C++ developer really code for a living without ever having read this document? Is it really important for us mere mortals who are not in the business of writing compilers?"}
{"_id": "47797", "title": "Does Microsoft really offer \"support\"?", "text": "One of the arguments against using Open Source is that there is no \"support\". However, do big vendors (e.g. Microsoft) really offer \"support\" of any kind? I'm sure there is some sort of 4-figure-per-hour \"paid support\" option out there, but is that really an \"option\" for any problem short of one that is going to bankrupt your business? To put it more concretely... I buy a Microsoft product... it has a bug... now what? And how is that better than what I get from Open Source?"}
{"_id": "230054", "title": "Pythonic version of Java interfaces", "text": "I fully acknowledge that Python and Java are different programming languages and should be used differently. That said, \"Program to an interface, not to an implementation\" is good language-agnostic programming advice. Say I have some DAO interface in Java:               public interface DataDao {            Object load();       void update();       void delete();     }      Programming to that interface allows me to persist data in files while I'm prototyping, swap that out for a database as I get further along, etc. rather painlessly as long as I honor the contract of the `DataDao`. What's the Pythonic approach/version (if any) to programming to a contract to keep your classes orthogonal, modular, and enable frictionless implementation changes?"}
{"_id": "14525", "title": "My coworker created a 96 columns SQL table", "text": "Here we are in 2010, software engineers with 4 or 5 years or experience, still designing tables with 96 fracking columns. I told him it's gonna be a nightmare.   I showed him that we have to use ordinals to interface MySQL with C#.   I explained that tables with more columns than rows are a huge smell. Still, I get the \"It's going to be simpler this way\". What should I do? EDIT * This table contains data from sensors.   We have sensor 1 with   Dynamic_D1X   Dynamic_D1Y   [...] Dynamic_D6X   Dynamic_D6Y   [...] EDIT2 * Well, I finally left that job. It is a sign when the other programmer goes dark for months at the time, it is another sign when management does not realise this is a problem"}
{"_id": "14524", "title": "How a freelancer can learn industry standards?", "text": "Being a freelancer, I don't have access to corporate training programs where employees learn best practices. Most of the time I am advised to look into the available code on the Internet. Ideal places would be: CodePlex and SourceForge. But this proves to be of limited rather very little help. I want my existing code to be analyzed and a better solution be suggested to improve the quality of the code. How to learn coding that matches standards?"}
{"_id": "230059", "title": "Apple eating problem", "text": "Player A and Player B play a game. On the middle of the table there is a pot full of N apples of different weights. Player A starts first and choose an apple and start eating it. Losing no time player B do the same. When a player eats the whole apple, without losing time repeat the same procedure. In case both player have eaten the apple at the same time, Player A still have the advantage of choosing first. Note that both players eat with same speed What apple should the Player A choose at first to ensure that with right tactics he'll eat as much as grams of apples possible if the player B plays optimally? * * * I thought that choosing the smallest or the biggest apple should do the job, but there are specific cases when this doesn't work. This is C++ contest problem, so there should be a nice solution to this. I think that brute force maybe provide a solution, but this will require much time, because the number of apples is up to 10000. I would rather like some hint on how to approach this question, how to find the optimal tactic or intuition rather than a code."}
{"_id": "219478", "title": "What could be the Model Layer when consuming Web-Services and no Database in Django?", "text": "I'm using Django as an application framework and it only needs to consume web services (no need to have traditional Django Models and the related ORM). In this case, since Django is a variant on the MVC architecture (MVT, to be precise) should I wrap the web service calls into a 'model' that my App uses or should I just call those web services directly from the Django View and remove the model layer?"}
{"_id": "68932", "title": "Sell a web app with limit per client?", "text": "This is not a \"classic\" programming question, but it's related to our job. I develop and sell data driven web app for some customer, some small (10 employess or less), some bigger (1000-2000 employers). My questions are:   1. Can i sell my app with different prices, based on customer's \"dimension\" ? Is it common in \"software market\"..isn't ?   2. How can **\"control\" and maybe \"limit to work\" my asp.net web** app when customer exceed their limit license ? Are there some ready-made server side component to do that ? Thanks EDIT: Last question: how to _justify_ the higher price for big company against small price for smaller company ?"}
{"_id": "76526", "title": "Pragma Mark in Cocoa", "text": "I'm a newb to cocoa programming and looking around in various open source code online I see things like:               #pragma mark global variable declaration      and I was wondering what the meaning of \"pragma mark\" is in that is it any different than a // or /* (comment) block..like is it used throughout the program, and is there a commonly used methodology to it, or is it more or less a way for programmers to organize and collect their code for themselves (and others if the case may be) to use later? I found this article: http://inchoo.net/mobile-development/iphone- development/what-is-a-pragma-mark/ and it is pretty helpful, but I just needed to clarify again if it's more or less used by the coder or used by XCode? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "38140", "title": "Can a freelancer use agile development?", "text": "I want to improve the way that I develop software. I want to develop faster and a great code! Today I use the waterfall method as freelancer, writing web stuffs (sites, systems, etc). Is there a way to use agile development (XP, SCRUM, etc) working in this way? I don't know nothing about agile development, where should I start? Thank you very much."}
{"_id": "72862", "title": "GPL copyright notice", "text": "I don't have copyright licence from local government. How can I use GPL? As far as I know a step to apply GPL is to add the copyright notice:               Copyright XXXX shabab haider...      What shall I write in this section? Am I eligible to write such thing? Do I have to redirect the copyright to free software foundation or something similar?"}
{"_id": "158781", "title": "Cpu-heavy web server", "text": "When reading about web servers, frameworks, etc most of the time I notice that the goal is to have a technology that has the next features:   * Able to handle as many connections as possible.   * Fit an I/O model (connections to DBs and other web services). Those features fit the actual web model but I am interested in knowing which technologies will fit a heavy-cpu user case. For example, Node.js is a technology that really shines when you have to write an application that uses a lot of I/O. On the other hand, due to the Node.js nature of being evented, It is not suitable for being use in CPU-heavy user cases.(video encoding, machine learning, graphics) I also have take a look at Haskell web frameworks like Snap and Warp and at the benchmarks they really are fast. Are they Haskell web frameworks suitable for CPU-heavy problem? Which other languages/technologies are candidates?"}
{"_id": "38145", "title": "What are the advantages of storing xml in a relational database?", "text": "I was poking around the AdventureWorks database today and I noticed that a number of tables (`HumanResources.JobCandidate` and `Sales.Individual` for example) have a column which is storing xml data. What I would to know is, what is the advantage of storing basically a database table row's worth of data in another table's column? Doesn't this make it difficult to query off of this information? Or is the assumption that the data won't need to be queried and just needs to be stored?"}
{"_id": "207721", "title": "Why no gender recognition studies are performed yet to recognize gender without seeing (based on behavior)?", "text": "Each website has visitors, and each visitor might be a potential customer (lead), thus it's really good to do whatever a marketer can do to attract that lead and turn it into a real customer. However, some marketing strategies work on the gender of the lead. In other words, men would be attracted in one way, and women in another way. I see that there are some studies on **gender recognition** based on some physiological and facial patterns like: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6249810 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5268753/face-gender-detection-library http://www.advancedsourcecode.com/gagender.asp However, in online marketing, which is a hot topic in the realm of Internet, you can't see the face of the visitor of your site. But still based on some preferences and some attribute there might be chances that you guess the gender of the visitor, which might increase the profit overall by absorbing more customers through good strategies. For example women usually like pink color and men usually like online games. But I wonder why till now no study has been done for that? In a world where Google and Facebook and internet giants try to understand their users more and more, seems a little odd that websites which have many visitors (like news websites cnn, bbc, msn, yahoo, etc.) has done nothing or few things to handle this concept. Imagine how much work can be done once you understand that the visitor is male, or female. So, are there any technical limitations for not working on **gender recognition** just the way we've worked on **handwriting recognition** and **speech recognition** and **face recognition**?"}
{"_id": "136942", "title": "Why doesn't Python need a compiler?", "text": "Just wondering (now that I've started with C++ which needs a compiler) why Python doesn't need a compiler? I just enter the code, save it as an exec, and run it. In C++ I have to make builds and all of that other fun stuff."}
{"_id": "207726", "title": "Do I need IDs in my database if the records could be identified by the date?", "text": "I am writing my first application for Android and will use the SQLite database so will be trying to limit the size as much as possible, but I think the question applies in general to database design. I am planning to store records that will have text and the date of creation. The app is a stand-alone app, i.e. it will not link to the internet and only one user will be updating it, so there is no chance that there will be more than one entry with a given date. Does my table still need an ID column? If so, what are the advantages of using the ID as a record identifier as opposed to the Date?"}
{"_id": "201760", "title": "Duck typing, data validation and assertive programming in Python", "text": "About duck typing: > Duck typing is aided by habitually not testing for the type of arguments in > method and function bodies, relying on documentation, clear code and testing > to ensure correct use. About argument validation (EAFP: Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission). An adapted example from here: > ...it is considered more pythonic to do :               def my_method(self, key):         try:             value = self.a_dict[member]         except TypeError:             # do something else      > This means that anyone else using your code doesn't have to use a real > dictionary or subclass - they can use any object that implements the mapping > interface. > > Unfortunately in practise it's not that simple. What if member in the above > example might be an integer ? Integers are immutable - so it's perfectly > reasonable to use them as dictionary keys. However they are also used to > index sequence type objects. If member happens to be an integer then example > two could let through lists and strings as well as dictionaries. About assertive programming: > Assertions are a systematic way to check that the internal state of a > program is as the programmer expected, with the goal of catching bugs. In > particular, they're good for catching false assumptions that were made while > writing the code, or abuse of an interface by another programmer. In > addition, they can act as in-line documentation to some extent, by making > the programmer's assumptions obvious. (\"Explicit is better than implicit.\") The mentioned concepts are sometimes in conflict, so i count on the following factors when choosing if i don't do any data validation at all, do strong validation or use asserts:   1. Strong validation. By strong validation I mean raising a custom Exception (`ApiError` for example). If my function/method is part of a public API, it's better to validate the argument to show a good error message about unexpected type. By checking the type I do not mean using only `isinstance`, but also if the object passed supports the needed interface (duck typing). While I document the API and specify the expected type and the user might want to use my function in an unexpected way, I feel safer when I check the assumptions. I usually use `isinstance` and if later I want to support other types or ducks, I change the validation logic.   2. Assertive programming. If my code is new, i use asserts a lot. What are your advices on this? Do you later remove asserts from the code?   3. If my function/method is not part of an API, but passes some of its arguments through to a other code not written, studied or tested by me, I do a lot of asserts according to the called interface. My logic behind this - better fail in my code, then somewhere 10 levels deeper in stacktrace with incomprehensible error which forces be to debug a lot and later add the assert to my code anyway.  Comments and advices on when to use or not to use type/value validation, asserts? Sorry for not the best formulation of the question. For example consider the following function, where `Customer` is a SQLAlchemy declarative model:               def add_customer(self, customer):         \"\"\"Save new customer into the database.         @param customer: Customer instance, whose id is None         @return: merged into global session customer         \"\"\"         # no validation here at all         # let's hope SQLAlchemy session will break if `customer` is not a model instance         customer = self.session.add(customer)         self.session.commit()         return customer      So, there several ways to handle validation:               def add_customer(self, customer):         # this is an API method, so let's validate the input         if not isinstance(customer, Customer):             raise ApiError('Invalid type')         if customer.id is not None:             raise ApiError('id should be None')              customer = self.session.add(customer)         self.session.commit()         return customer      or               def add_customer(self, customer):         # this is an internal method, but i want to be sure         # that it's a customer model instance         assert isinstance(customer, Customer), 'Achtung!'         assert customer.id is None              customer = self.session.add(customer)         self.session.commit()         return customer      When and why would you use each of these in the context of duck typing, type checking, data validation?"}
{"_id": "11342", "title": "Is testing the easiest way to contribute to an Open Source Project?", "text": "I want to contribute to an open source project, but I don't know much about unit testing. I want to learn how to test and then practice my skills on an open source. Will this also be acknowledged as a contribution. I want to first get my name out there and then conc. on development."}
{"_id": "201765", "title": "Reason for return statement in recursive function call", "text": "I just had a doubt in my mind. The following subroutine(to search an element, in a list, for example) has a return statement at the end:               list *search_list(list *l, item_type x) {       if (l == NULL) return(NULL);       if (l->item == x)         return(l);       else         return( search_list(l->next, x) );     }      I cannot get the significance of return statement at the end (i.e. return search_list(l->next, x) ). It would be really helpful if anyone could explain this concept, using stack model."}
{"_id": "238537", "title": "Deleting Old Nuget Package Folders after upgrading", "text": "Should you delete the old Nuget package files/folders under the packages directory after you upgrade a package? Maybe I'm just being overly picky, but seeing files/folder for older package versions it bothering me. Is there a good reason NOT to delete the package folders for previous package versions?"}
{"_id": "174963", "title": "Inter-process and inter-thread data sharing", "text": "I know that operating systems facilitate inter-process and inter-thread data sharing. I want to know about the mechanisms used to facilitate such sharing. I read about \"pipes\". What are the other ways?"}
{"_id": "174964", "title": "Sharing Large Database Backup Among Team", "text": "I work on a team of three - five developers that work on an ASP.net web application remotely. We currently run a full local database from a recent backup on all of our machines during development. The current backup, compressed, is about 18 GB. I'm looking to see if there's an easier way to keep all of our local copies relatively fresh without each of us individually downloading the 18 GB file over HTTP from our web server on a regular basis. I guess FTP is an option, but it won't speed the process up at all. I'm familiar with torrents and the thought keeps hitting me that something like that would be effective, but I'm unsure of the security or the process."}
{"_id": "240904", "title": "Three variants of circular references between objects: how to choose?", "text": "I'm designing an object dependency graph of my program and one ambiguity between design variants appears from time to time. Imagine two objects having a reference to each other. Obviously, at least one reference should be assigned after object's initialization (for example, through a subscription method) and another one optionally can be a direct dependency. Here's an object diagram ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7w2Jl.png) I'm not sure I've used correct UML, so here's my description: 1) Both objects have subscription/binding methods. Usage:               A a = new A();         B b = new B();         a.Set(b);         b.Set(a);      2) `ObjectB` is a component of `ObjectA`:               A a = new A(new B());               // somewhere, possibly in a's method :         b.Set(a);      3) Third is actually an opposite of the second, no need to explain. In my situation I can use any of these and my program will work, but I want some theoretical reasons. Can they be found?"}
{"_id": "26548", "title": "What is the \"default\" software license?", "text": "If I release some code and binaries, but I don't include any license at all with it, what are the legal terms that apply by default (in the US, where I am). I know that I automatically have copyright without doing anything, but what restrictions are there on it? If I upload my code to github and announce it as a free download / contribute at will, then are people allowed to modify and close source my work? I haven't said that they cannot, as a GPL would, but I don't feel that it would by default be acceptable to steal my work either. So what can and cannot people do with code that is freely available, but has absolutely no licensing terms attached? By the way, I know that it would be a good idea for me to pick a license and apply it to my code soon, but I'm still curious about this."}
{"_id": "88840", "title": "Common Javascript mistakes that severely affect performance?", "text": "At a recent UI/UX MeetUp that I attended, I gave some feedback on a website that used Javascript (jQuery) for its interaction and UI - it was fairly simple animations and manipulation, but the performance on a decent computer was horrific. It actually reminded me of a lot of sites/programs that I've seen with the same issue, where certain actions just absolutely destroy performance. It is mostly in (or at least more noticeable in) situations where Javascript is almost serving as a Flash replacement. This is in stark contrast to some of the webapps that I have used that have far more Javascript and functionality but run very smoothly (COGNOS by IBM is one I can think of off the top of my head). I'd love to know some of the common issues that aren't considered when developing JS that will kill the performance of the site."}
{"_id": "214630", "title": "Why do we write the action to be performed by a function in jQuery inside the parentheses?", "text": "Generally whenever we're programming in any Programming language, say C, we would pass the parameters we need to pass to a function using the parentheses next to the name of the function. Whereas in jQuery, other than the user defined `function()` we write the action we need the function to perform inside the parentheses, for example,               $('div').mouseenter(function(){        /* blah blah blah*/     });      Why?"}
{"_id": "229470", "title": "Are there advantages to declaring stack variables constant in C++", "text": "It's not clear to me what benefits there are of declaring your stack variables as constant in C++, I was hoping somebody might explain the benefits and purpose for this technique. For example:               void func(const std::string& arg)     {        if(someCondition)        {           const std::string foo (\"some string plus \" + arg);           std::out << foo << std::endl;           someFunction(foo);           // dozens more lines of code...        }        // bla bla bla...     }      Thanks!"}
{"_id": "127634", "title": "What would be the best way to manage a lot of jQuery code?", "text": "Sorry for the blunt question, I will try to explain further. I am going to have a website which uses jQuery, and I feel that at some point in time, there will be A LOT of jQuery code, meaning A LOT of functions, jQuery selectors, etc. Is there a way to limit the availability of jQuery code for specific pages? Perhaps using objects? I'm looking for the best approach here so I don't just run off into a storm and can't find my way out. Thanks."}
{"_id": "127639", "title": "Why do some sorting methods sort by 1, 10, 2, 3...?", "text": "I've noticed than many numerical sorting methods seem to sort by 1, 10, 2, 3... rather than the expected 1, 2, 3, 10... I'm having trouble coming up with a scenario where I would need the first method and, as a user, I get frustrated whenever I see it in practice. Are there legitimate use cases for the first style over the second? If so, what are they? If not, how did the first sort style ever come into being? What are the official names for each sort method?"}
{"_id": "103346", "title": "Why does the Git community seem to ignore side-by-side diffs", "text": "I used to use Windows, SVN, Tortoise SVN, and Beyond Compare. It was a great combination for doing code reviews. Now I use OSX and Git. I've managed to kludge together a bash script along with Gitx and DiffMerge to come up with a barely acceptable solution. I've muddled along with this setup, and similar ones, for over a year. I've also tried using the Github diff viewer and the Gitx diff viewer, so it's not like I've not given them a chance. There are so many smart people doing great stuff with Git. Why not the side- by-side diff with the option of seeing the entire file? With people who have used both, I've never heard of anyone that likes the single +/- view better, at least for more than a quick check."}
{"_id": "103345", "title": "How to best annotate MVC custom action filters?", "text": "As I get deeper into the area of ASP.NET MVC 3, I feel like I'm finding a lot of very nice technical nuggets as well as new ways of doing things versus classic ASP.NET. One of those \"nuggets\" is custom action filters. You can simply decorate your controller classes or methods with attributes that, by convention, point to a \"custom action filter\" class that can perfom some operations given some point of execution (e.g. On Exception, On Method Execution, etc). They are VERY handy if you have some sort of operation that needs to be performed at a regular point in the execution of your code. The question is this: How does this best fit in with object oriented design? What do you think is the best way of annotating that on a UML diagram or when you are trying to draw them up on a white board and explaining the design? I'm very visual, so I like explaining my designs on the white board, but I'm at a loss of how to best convey custom action filters in an Object Oriented basis. They are not really an interface that needs to be implemented. They do take advantage of inheritance, but not in the context of where they are executed. They seem to fit best under the realm of \"Aspect oriented\" programming, where you have actions that take place under the covers for different scenarios (e.g. Logging, Exceptions). Any thoughts are appreciated."}
{"_id": "214639", "title": "How much freedom should a programmer have in choosing a language and framework?", "text": "I started working at a company that is primarily C# oriented. We have a few people who like Java and JRuby, but a majority of programmers here like C#. I was hired because I have a lot of experience building web applications and because I lean towards newer technologies like JRuby on Rails or nodejs. I have recently started on a project building a web application with a focus on getting a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time. The software lead has dictated that I use mvc4 instead of rails. That might be OK, except I don't know mvc4, I don't know C# and I am the only one responsible for creating the web application server and front-end UI. Wouldn't it make sense to use a framework that I already know extremely well (Rails) instead of using mvc4? The reasoning behind the decision was that the tech lead doesn't know Jruby/rails and there would be no way to reuse the code. Counter arguments:   * He won't be contributing to the code and is, frankly, not needed on   this project. So, it doesn't really matter if he knows JRuby/rails or not.   * We actually can reuse the code since we have a lot of java apps that JRuby can pull code from and vice-versa. In fact, he has dedicated some resources to convert a Java library to C#, instead of just running the Java library on the JRuby on Rails app. All because he doesn't like Java or JRuby I have built many web applications, but using something unfamiliar is causing some spin-up and I am unable to build an awesome application in as short of a time as I'm used to. This would be fine; learning new technologies is important in this field. The problem is, for this project we need to get a lot done fast. At what point should a developer be allowed to choose his tools? Is this dependent on the company? Does my company suck or is this considered normal? Do greener pastures exist? Am I looking at this the wrong way?"}
{"_id": "155072", "title": "Overwhelmed by complex C#/ASP.NET project in Visual Studio 2008", "text": "I have been hired as a junior programmer to work on projects that extend existing functionality in a very large, complex solution. The code base consists of C#, ASP.NET, jQuery, javascript, html and xml. I have some knowledge of all these in addition to fair knowledge of object- oriented programming and its fundamental concepts of inheritance, abstraction, polymorphism and encapsulation. I can follow code up through its base classes, interfaces, abstract classes and understand a large part of the code that I read while doing this. However, this solution is so humongous and so many things get tied together whenever I navigate through the code that I feel absolutely overwhelmed. I often find myself unable to fully follow everything that is going on with objects being serialized, large amounts of C# and javascript operating on the same pages and methods being called from template files that consist mainly of markup. I love learning about code, but trying to deal with this really stresses me out. Additionally, I do know that a significant amount of unit testing has been done but I know nothing about unit testing or how to utilize it. Any advice anyone could offer me regarding dealing with a large code base while using Visual Studio 2008 would be greatly appreciated. Are there tools that I can use to help get a handle on what is going on? Perhaps there are things even in Visual Studio that I am not aware of. How can I follow the code to low level functionality in order to get a better grasp of what is going on at a high level?"}
{"_id": "229479", "title": "How did separation of code and data become a practice?", "text": "**Please read the question carefully: it asks _how_ , not _why_.** I recently came across this answer, which suggests using a database to store immutable data: > It sounds like many of the magic numbers you describe - particularly if they > are part dependent - are really data, not code. [...] It may mean an SQL > type database, or it may simply mean a formatted text file. It would seem to me that if you have data that is part of what your program does, then the thing to do is to put it _in the program_. For example, if your program's function is to count vowels, what's wrong with having `vowels = \"aeiou\"` in it? After all, most languages have _data structures_ designed for precisely this use. Why would you bother to _separate data_ by putting it in a \"formatted text file\", as suggested above? Why not just make that text file formatted in your programming language of choice? Now is it a database? Or is it code? I'm sure some will think this is a dumb question, but I ask it in all seriousness. I feel like \"separate code and data\" is emerging culturally as some sort of self-evident truth, along with other obvious things like \"don't give your variables misleading names\" and \"don't avoid using whitespace just because your language considers it insignificant\". Take for example, this article: The Problem with Separating Data from Puppet Code. _The Problem_? What problem? If Puppet is a language for describing my infrastructure, why can't it also describe that the nameserver is 8.8.8.8? It seems to me that the problem isn't that code and data are mingled,1 but that Puppet lacks sufficiently rich data structures and ways to interface to other things. I find this shift disturbing. Object oriented programming said \"we want arbitrarily rich data structures\", and so endowed data structures with powers of code. You get encapsulation and abstraction as a result. Even SQL databases have stored procedures. When you sequester data into YAML or text files or dumb databases as if you are removing a tumor from the code, you lose all of that. Can anyone explain how this practice of separating data from code came to be, and where it's going? Can anyone cite publications by luminaries, or provide some relevant data that demonstrates \"separate code from data\" as an emerging commandment, and illustrates its origin? 1: if one can even make such distinctions. I'm looking at you, Lisp programmers."}
{"_id": "245008", "title": "Why did Shannon's outguessing machine beat Hagelbarger's?", "text": "I'm reading \"Rock Breaks Scissors\", which describes two \"outguessing machines\" built at Bell Labs that try to exploit human non-randomness in the game of matching pennies. There was an outguessing machine built by the famous Claude Shannon, and one built by Dave Hagelbarger. The machines worked like this (quoted from the book): > Suppose you win twice in a row with the same choice. What would you pick > next? You could stick with the choice that's been winning - or you could > switch, perhaps on the grounds that three times in a row wouldn't be > \"random.\" > > Each time a particular situation occurred, [Shannon's] machine archived what > the player had decided. Every decision was encoded as a 1 or 0 and slotted > into one of the machine's 16 precious bits of memory. For each of the eight > given situations, Shannon's machine cataloged the last two decisions only. > That filled the machine's 16 bits. > > When the machine needed to predict, it looked at what the player had done > the last two times that the same situation had occurred. Whenever the > player's response had been identical both times, the machine predicted that > the player would do the same thing once again. Otherwise, it guessed > randomly from its [random number generator]. > > The main difference between Shannon's machine and Hagelbarger's was that > Shannon's was simpler. Hagelbarger's machine kept track of a percentage of > outcomes for each of the eight situations. The higher the percentage, the > more likely Hagelbarger's machine was to predict a repeat of the past. This > may sound more reasonable and nuanced than Shannon's all-or-nothing > approach, but in practice, Shannon's device was the better predictor. Shannon's machine beat humans at a higher rate than Hagelbarger's, and also beat Hagelbarger's machine when they played each other. I don't understand why Shannon's simpler approach was significantly better than Hagelbarger's percentage-based approach."}
{"_id": "215581", "title": "Is there a pattern to restrict which classes can update another class?", "text": "Say I have a class ImportantInfo with a public writable property Data. Many classes will read this property but only a few will ever set it. Basically, if you want to update Data you should really know what you're doing. Is there a pattern I could use to make this explicit other than by documenting it? For example, some way to enforce that only classes that implement IUpdateImportantData can do it (this is just an example)? I'm not talking about security here, but more of a \"hey, are you sure you want to do that?\" kind of thing. ## UPDATE I've been faced with similar situations before, that's why I tried to keep the question more generic but it seems that a more concrete example is definitely required. So here it goes: I have a Context class with a a property CurrentYear. Many classes use this Context object and, whenever CurrentYear changes, they need to react (reload themselves, for example). Now, there are some classes that can legitimately change CurrentYear. Of course, you don't want just everybody to change CurrentYear as that has an effect in many other classes. How would you go about that?"}
{"_id": "124979", "title": "What's better approach when creating a user control: receive a full object or only the needed values?", "text": "I'm working with ASP.NET Web User Control (WUC) and I got to this question: I'm creating a WUC to show an object's data. This object is already loaded when I call that WUC. I'm wondering what would be better: give the WUC the full object or only the necessary attributes?"}
{"_id": "120363", "title": "How do you keep SOA DRY?", "text": "In our organization, we've shifted to a more \"service oriented architecture\". To give an example, let's assume we need to retrieve a \"Quote\" object. This quote has a shipper, a consignee, phone numbers, contacts, email addresses, and other location information. In other words, a Quote object is made up of many other objects. So, it seems like it would make sense to make a \"Quote Retrieval Service\". In our situation, we've accomplished this by creating a .NET solution and writing the service. The service API looks something like this (in pseudo-code):               Function GetQuote(String ID) Returns Quote      So, so far so good. Now, when this service is consumed, to keep things \"de- coupled\", we are creating essentially a duplicate of the Quote object and mapping from the QuoteService version of the Quote into the consumer's version of the Quote. In many cases, these classes will have the exact same properties. So, if the Quote service is consumed by 5 other applications, we would have 6 definitions of what a \"Quote\" is. One for each consumer, and one for the service. This feels wrong. I thought code was supposed to be DRY, but it seems like our method of SOA is forcing us to create tons of duplicated class definitions. What are we doing wrong, or is the code duplication just a \"necessary evil\" of SOA?"}
{"_id": "235101", "title": "Why are JOINS deprecated for a in-memory database?", "text": "Correct me if I'm misunderstanding. Refer to the following sentence: > Stack Overflow copied a key part of the Wikipedia database design. This > turned out to be a mistake which will need massive and painful database > refactoring to fix. **The refactorings will be to avoid excessive joins in a > lot of key queries.** This is the key lesson from giant multi-terabyte table > schemas (like Google\u2019s BigTable) which are completely join-free. **This is > significant because Stack Overflow's database is almost completely in RAM > and the joins still exact too high a cost.** 1 Actually I'm trying to pass from the interest on single technology like Asp.net MVC to architectures design. Can you better clarify the quoted sentence? [1] http://highscalability.com/stack-overflow-architecture"}
{"_id": "235105", "title": "Git work-flow for uncertain premise (pending decision)", "text": "I am not quite sure, how to name my problem. But I will start with how I usually used git. I am working as a single developer on one git repository. Usually I make feature-branches from master, and merge them back into master, when the feature is finished. When meanwhile another feature-branch was merged into master, I rebase the other branch on master, before merging. That worked very good, until recently. One dependency I have in my project, needs an update. But it was not yet decided how this update will be implemented. But I can simulate the new behavior quite simply. So I branched from master, and simulated that fix. So when the actual fix is available and merged into master, all changes above can be rebased back on master. But the decision on that fix is still pending, and my branches are stacking up:               * ee8d0ab (HEAD, featureTwo)      * e659932      * 27986c0 (featureOne)      * f0011e6      * d4187cf      * 552e35a      * 37d597f (simulatedFix)      * e0eb3d0 (origin/master, master)     * b06583c      * d295b3e       I feel, that this is not good. It feels like I am building up dept. Imagine how this would look at featureTen, or featureTwenty. What are the possible drawbacks of this method? And what is the best way, to handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "218986", "title": "How is it called when you define constants that simply refer to a large namespace?", "text": "I am using JRuby. I have many classes implemented in Java, and I want to create objects off of them in my Ruby scripts. Suppose that I have a class `Sprite` in Java. In Ruby, to refer to it, I use the following:               Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Sprite      Because Sprite is defined in the package `com.myWebsite.myProjectName`. Now then, to simplify things, I like to do this:               Sprite = Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Sprite      Which sets the constant `Sprite` to the `Sprite` class defined in Java. Now my Ruby code can refer to it by just writing `Sprite`. I have a file full of that kind of declarations. Something like:               Sprite   = Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Sprite     Texture  = Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Texture     Bitmap   = Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Bitmap     Math     = Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Math     Geometry = Java::ComMyWebsiteMyProjectName::Geometry      Now, I am not exactly very familiar with programming concepts. I am having problems giving this file a name, because I don't even know if there is a name for this kind of thing. **Does this kind of \"practice\" have an actual name?**"}
{"_id": "69715", "title": "How do you incorporate GTD into your daily programming tasks?", "text": "David Allen's \"Getting Things Done\" method seems to be a very useful way of organizing tasks and getting those tasks done. Has anyone here used GTD in their day-to-day programming tasks, and if so, what's the best way to go about it?"}
{"_id": "2247", "title": "How can I track programming productivity on a daily basis?", "text": "How can I track that I'm developing software more or less productive than the previous days?"}
{"_id": "214188", "title": "Is smarter software necessarily bigger?", "text": "This is kind of a vague question so I apologize in advance. When software is \"smarter\", I tend to interpret that as really just saying that it covers more edge cases. First of all, is this correct? Assuming it is, does this mean that the software is full of if/switch statements to make sure input is handled properly, therefore making it \"smarter\"? This thinking makes me feel like the code would end up bloated and messy. I'm running into a point where I'm wanting to handle these edge cases, but I don't want to bloat my code merely overlooking some best practice. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "214183", "title": "Is it possible to do decent spam filtering without scanning the contents of emails?", "text": "I don't have much knowledge of the subject but as I know, when servers receive an email they have two sources of data to classify it as SPAM or not. The contents of the message (subject + body) and the metadata that goes with it (from who / to who / server that sent the message, etc). I know you can do basic filtering by blacklisting emails list and other sorts of metadata. But is it possible to do decent spam filtering without checking the contents of a message? Defining 'check the contents' as using any function that relies on data found on the body/subject of the message to classify it as spam or not spam. **Edit** : The reason I ask for this because of the \"scroogled\" campaign where Microsoft accuses Google of scanning the contents of emails for advertising purposes, and I think that they do the same for spam prevention purposes. So I asked them and they said: > We have tools and system set up to filter spam emails to and from > Outlook.com email accounts. However, we are not allowed to disclose how > these spam filters work for security purposes. > > ME: So can you assure me that no content from my personal email is being > analysed and cross referenced with other data in any way? > > ...In response to your question, its a yes, we can assure you that."}
{"_id": "154038", "title": "Interview: how to ask development process/culture related questions", "text": "I just watched a presentation about simplicity by Rich Hickey at InfoQ where he goes over the constructs programmers use to produce artifacts and how those constructs make various trade-offs when it comes to achieving simple artifacts. I think that most programmers would agree with a lot of what he says but at the end of the day I don't know how many development shops are actively practicing development processes and using tools that allow them to make simple artifacts. As an interview candidate I would like to work at a software development shop where producing simple artifacts is a top priority. What are some questions I can ask to figure out if the place that is interviewing me is actually such a place."}
{"_id": "201184", "title": "Best Way to Access Hardware per COM Serial Port over USB Adapter", "text": "We are starting a total new Branch at our firm. I am usually developing database interfaces or internal server/client applications/tools for our company, but I never had to do something with hardware. **Szenario** My Boss want to sell a device, which has a touch-screen to set up the many, many features. However, the configuration of the device can be very time consuming. He wants to give a software free for a good customer and for a litte charge to \"small\" customers. The customer should only be able to use the software, if he registers at our system, so that he can't copy the software without a notice by us. **Requirements** The device has a build in USB cable. If you plug it in your computer it opens a new COM serial port. The software has the following requirements:   * Configurating different presents for the device   * Reading and writing the presets to the device   * Software will refuse to start, if the user has no registration at our server   * The user can store his presets at our server and share it with other customers   * One preset, copied over and over to multiple devices My boss has seen similar system (he said something about logitech harmony remote controls) and it is now on me, to create the architecture. Server Side: The server is not that kind of problem. We have enough different machines to suite any kind of favour (IIS, LAMPP, Apache/Tomcat etc.) I could take MSSQL or MySQL DBase to store the data, thats not the problem. Client Side: This is the tricky part for me. I never did something with hardware. My boss suggested I should use Silverlight. I claimed that I want to do it with a native application. But what is the best combination?   * Total Client-Side (C++, C# or Java are the languages I could write)   * Mixed Structure #1 Silverlight + Native \"Driver\" Application   * Mixed Structure #2 Java-Applet + Native \"Driver\" Application   * Browser Only - Silverlight or Java-Applet?   * Any other suggest The device is for a special customer group who's getting personal trained with any purchase so security risks like unsafe code or dangerous browser plugins are no negative selling argument. I did some research about COM Serial Port connection with Silverlight and P/Invoke but I don't want to start without a discussion what would be the best way."}
{"_id": "201180", "title": "How do I know I'm not violating a software patent?", "text": "I'm using a android like lock screen (The one with the nine dots that you have to connect to log in) in my application currently. I'm afraid of getting a mail from google because of some patents that I didn't know. Is the android lock screen patented or can I rebuild it and use it in my application?"}
{"_id": "43494", "title": "What is a good stopword in full text indexing?", "text": "When you go to the Appendix D in Oracle Text Reference they provide lists of stopwords used by Oracle Text when indexing table contents. When I see the English list, nothing puzzles me. But the reason why the French list includes _moyennant_ (French for _in view of which_ ) for example is unclear. Oracle has probably thought it through more than once before including it. How would you constitute a list of appropriate stopwords if you were to design an indexer?"}
{"_id": "240567", "title": "Can a layer consist of multiple projects / dlls?", "text": "I am working on the architecture for a new web application and I am pretty much a complete newbie when it comes to architecture. Working my way through .NET Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition and learning a lot. I have decided to go for the \"standard\" 3-layer architecture: Presentation layer, Business layer, Data layer. Will be using ASP.NET MVC and Entity Framework. Currently the business layer contains the logic and business entities (anemic models). I am planning to use the business entities as EF entities. That would, however, cause the data layer to have a depency on the business layer. This \"problem\" can be solved by moving the business entities into its own project and have the layers that have dependencies on the business entities reference that project.   1. Is that an ok / good way of doing things?   2. Will / can / should the business entities project be considered part of the business layer?   3. Can a layer consist of multiple projects, that is, the layer only acts as a \"logical container\"? In the above mentioned book they talk about how the business layer can consist of \"Business Workflow\", \"Business Components\", \"Business Entities\", and I assume that each of those are a separate project (maybe even multiple projects)?"}
{"_id": "168747", "title": "What are all the components of a \"Facebook App\"?", "text": "I am a developer who has never personally partaken in social media (in any form) for reasons completely outside the scope of this question. I am \"off the grid\" (no Facebook, Twitter, etc accounts). I'm currently building a web app and would like the app to have a presence on Facebook, and possibly even \"port\" my app over as a Facebook app. My _understanding_ of Facebook Apps is that they're just normal web apps that get `<iframe>`d into a Facebook page. The app is actually hosted on your server (not FB's servers). But this got me thinking:   1. Don't Facebook Apps have \"profile pages\"? Is there anything developers can do to customize the behavior of their own profile pages?   2. Do apps have the ability to do things like MySpace themes used to do (i.e., customize and interact with User profile pages, Groups, etc.)?   3. Do Facebook Apps gain any sort of extra capabilities (inside of Facebook) that a normal web app would not have? It seems to me like if all a Facebook App is, is an iframed-web app, that it would still need to communicate with Facebook via its many APIs, just like a normal app would have to, right?   4. If it's not possible to write an app that can customize the UI or behavior of user profiles and other pages, then how do games like \"Farmville\" interact with User profiles so that you see updates to profiles like \"John Smith reached level 2 of Farmville\"? Basically, I'm asking any battle-worn Facebook app developers if my understanding of Facebook Apps is correct, or if I'm missing anything big here. It's my understanding that for security reasons (obviously) Facebook doesn't allow apps to customize anything outside of the iframe it lives in. So if I want my app to appear like it's \"interacting\" with its Facebook users, it looks like I just need to publish stuff to the users' news feeds to try and encourage people to use my app (please correct me if I'm wrong here!). Thanks in advance for any corrections, clarifications, advice or suggestions!"}
{"_id": "69336", "title": "How do you keep enthusiam up when working on an overwhelming project?", "text": "When I'm working on a complex / large programming project and I get overwhelmed or lost, I often lose motivation and just don't have the energy to really dig into the problem once again to figure it out. After some time goes by, I may get back to it and have the renewed enthusiasm it takes to think about the problem from first principles again. This usually works, if I get back to the original problem. More often than not, I get side- tracked on other projects and the original program/problem lies dormant forever. I know this is a common reaction to complexity, or being overwhelmed by a problem and not knowing where to go to next. You run out of steam pretty quickly. But there are things I've come across that I can focus on for fun, and it often gets me stoked to get back into programming, the more complex the project the better! These things would sound incredibly dorky on any other site, but probably less so here. I'm talking about things like listening to a Stack Overflow podcast, reading an old Steve Yegge or Paul Graham article, watching an episode of Matt Chat where he's interviewing some programmer that worked on an old game for the Atari 800, or just watching a movie like Wargames (not many other movies come to mind though). The problem is, sometimes I run out of these ideas that renew my interest in computer science, so I'm asking for some of your ideas. Maybe limit it to one per answer so people can vote for particular answers/recommendations. Thanks for your input!"}
{"_id": "154034", "title": "Amazon SOA: database as a Service", "text": "There is an interesting interview with Werner Vogels which is partly about how Amazon does Service Oriented Architecture: > For us service orientation means encapsulating the data with the business > logic that operates on the data, with the only access through a published > service interface. No direct database access is allowed from outside the > service, and there\u2019s no data sharing among the services. I do not understand that. Why do they need to 'wrap' a database into some layer if it already can be consumed as a service by other service through database adaptors? Does Amazon do that just because they need to expose the database to third parties or because of anything else? Why \"no direct database access is allowed\"? What are the advantages of such an architectural decision?"}
{"_id": "154037", "title": "Ajax application: using SOAP vs REST ?", "text": "I'm building an ajax heavy application (client-side strictly html/css/js) which will be getting all the data and using server business logic via webservices. I know REST seems to be the hot topic but I can't find any good arguments. The main argument seems to be its \"light-weight\". My impression so far is that wsdl/soap based services are more expressive and allow for more a more complex transfer of data. It appears that soap would be more useful in the application I'm building where the only code consuming the services will be the js downloaded in the client browser. REST on the other hand seems to have a smaller entry barrier and so can be more useful for services like twitter in allowing other developers to consume these services easily. Also, REST seems to Te better suited for simple data transfers. So in summary SOAP is useful for complex data transfer and REST is useful in simple data transfer. I'm currently under the impression that using SOAP would be best due to the complexity of the messages but perhaps there's other factors. What are your thoughts on the pros/cons of soap/rest for a heavy ajax web app? **EDIT:** While the wsdl is in xml, the data I'm transferring back and forth is actually in JSON. It just appears more natural to use wsdl/soap here due to the nature of the app. The verbs GET and POST may not be enough. I may want to say something like: processQueue, or executeTimer. This is why my conclusion has been wsdl/soap would be good for bridging a complex layer between two applications (client and server) whereas REST would be better (due to its simplicity) for allowing many developer-users to consume resources programmatically. So you could say the choice falls along two lines   * Will the app be verb-oriented (completing tasks: use soap) or noun-oriented (consuming resources: use REST)   * Will the api be consumed by few developers or many developers (REST is strong for many developers)?  Since such an ajax heavy app would potentially use many verbs and would only be used by the client developer it appears soap/wsdl would be the best fit."}
{"_id": "16584", "title": "What kind of screen has the best image quality for reading/programming?", "text": "I'm thinking about buying a new laptop, and while I bought my original one oblivious to the fact that there could be different quality screens out there, after seeing the screen on my sister's netbook I realized that I might have to be cautious with my next purchase. Granted, I did not confirm that the reason my sister's screen looks the way it does is due to the screen itself and not color scheme/graphics card, but I know very little about the different screen technologies and how they differ in image quality and therefore can't really tell if wondering about it even makes sense or not. So what I'm asking is: should I be worried about screen quality? And if so, what technologies should I be looking for? How do they differ and which are the best ones? What are the different elements that determine the quality of a screen and which stats should I go for in each element? For the record, I'm not interested in opinions about screen size, but picture quality for lots of reading/coding."}
{"_id": "80715", "title": "What is the benefit of using sharp architecture?", "text": "I'm working in a project that use nhibernate as orm. Is there any benefit for me to use sharp architecture? what is these benefits?"}
{"_id": "80716", "title": "AddIn, AddOn, And Plugin", "text": "Even though at first glance the words AddIn, AddOn, And Plugin give the same meaning, there are some differences between them. Could anyone explain to me the subtle differences between _AddIn_ , _AddOn_ , And _Plugin_?"}
{"_id": "173605", "title": "What is the correct UI interface to learn for creating Windows phone 8 apps?", "text": "I am a veteran Delphi 6 programmer transitioning to C# development. My first project is a open source library that will have a minimal user interface since it is meant to be used as a Component primarily on desktop PCs running Visual Studio. My next project is going to be a Windows 8 phone app and I intend for that platform to be my primary focus for future C# development, not the desktop. My concern is that I waste as little time as possible learning a presentation framework that will benefit or distract me from writing Windows 8 phone apps. The plethora of framework names I have already encountered include, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Framework), Silverlight, Silverlight Mobile, Metro and there may be others. Given my goal outlined in the first paragraph above, which is the correct framework to study for developing Windows 8 phone apps? I read about the Portable Library Tools on this Stack Overflow thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5522355/windows-phone-7-wpf-sharing-a- codebase But the reply by Simon Guindon seemed to indicate to me that it's not the best solution for writing a competitive Windows 8 phone app."}
{"_id": "12696", "title": "What amount of time do you spend doing each of the following", "text": "Recently I've been thinking I spend too much time on SO and general learning / keeping up with technology rather than actual coding. So my question is what ratio's of your time do you spend on the following:   * Actual coding   * Reading around the subject, improving knowledge, learning new things"}
{"_id": "88267", "title": "Are there any good resources for refactoring existing C# code to use LINQ while keeping your tests passing?", "text": "I've been teaching myself a little LINQ and an exercise I thought would be useful was to take my existing Project Euler C# code, which I built using Test Driven Development and gradually convert it to LINQ. I realise that LINQ is not always the best solution for all of the Project Euler problems, but I don't want to get into that here. I'm wondering whether or not it's feasible to refactor \"traditional\" OO C# code to use LINQ and functional programming syntax whilst keeping all of your tests passing. I can't find a way to make the tiny steps I'm used to making using TDD when converting to LINQ and this is a roadblock for me. I seem to have to make large changes to come up with a single function that I then replace whole chunks of my code with. I realise I could write this from scratch in LINQ, but in the real world, I'd like to be able to replace parts of my existing C# code to take advantage of LINQ where appropriate. Has anyone been successful with this approach? What resources did you find useful for refactoring existing C# code to use LINQ whilst taking a Test Driven Development approach?"}
{"_id": "161921", "title": "Robot arm sample problem in Skiena's \"Algorithm Design Manual\" seems to be invalid to me", "text": "I'm reading Skiena's _Algorithm Design Manual_ and there is a problem on page 5, \"Robot Tour Optimisation\", where he says this about the sample problem: \"Suppose we are given a robot arm equipped with a tool, say a soldering iron. In manufacturing circuit boards, all the chips and other components must be fastened onto the substrate. More specifically, each chip has a set of contact points that must be soldered to the board. To program the robot arm for this job, we must first construct an ordering of the contact points so the robot visits the first contact point, second, etc...\" \"We must first construct an ordering\" - that seems strange to me. Because, well, every chip has certain number of pins and they're numbered and their position is documented, look here: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Q0MWK.jpg) I mean that chip doesn't have a set of pins, it have an ordered list of pins, ok, it doesn't but it has very specific dimensions and specific order of pins on each side so their precise position (and order) can be easily calculated. Maybe unrelated, but probably IRL the board is moving on some sort of clamp in X, Y dimension and soldering iron only goes up and down. The simplest problem I can give as an example of Robot Optimisation tour is a pizza courier who rides a car and needs to visit all his clients (let's assume that traffic is near zero) and returns to the restaraunt with as little gasoline spent as possible. So he needs a tool (car navigator), that will solve this problem for him. And that navigation application needs to find the optimal route - so, it illustrates the problem. Am I right that original problem illustration with robot arm is wrong?"}
{"_id": "46045", "title": "Why is it always \"what language should I learn next\" instead of \"what project should I tackle next\"?", "text": "Why do beginning programmers (like me) always ask about the next language they should learn instead of asking about the next project to tackle? Why did Eric Raymond, in the \"Learn How To Program\" section of his \"How To Become A Hacker\" essay, talk about the order in which you should learn languages (vs. the order in which you should tackle projects). Do beginning carpenters ask \"I know how to use a hammer ... should I learn how to use a saw or a level next?\" I ask because I'm finding that almost any meaningful project I'm interested in tackling (e.g. a web app, a set of poker analysis tools) requires that I learn **just enough** of a **multitude of languages** (Python, C, HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL) and frameworks/libraries (wxPython, tkinter, Django) to implement them. Thanks, Mike"}
{"_id": "173608", "title": "Is it bad style to redundantly check a condition?", "text": "I often get to positions in my code where I find myself checking a specific condition over and over again. I want to give you a small example: suppose there is a text file which contains lines starting with \"a\", lines starting with \"b\" and other lines and I actually only want to work with the first two sort of lines. My code would look something like this (using python, but read it as pseudocode):               # ...     clear_lines() # removes every other line than those starting with \"a\" or \"b\"     for line in lines:         if (line.startsWith(\"a\")):             # do stuff         elif (line.startsWith(\"b\")):             # magic         else:             # this else is redundant, I already made sure there is no else-case             # by using clear_lines()     # ...      You can imagine I won't only check this condition here, but maybe also in other functions and so on. Do you think of it as noise or does it add some value to my code?"}
{"_id": "161928", "title": "Javascript tools for branch coverage", "text": "I'm looking for tools that will help me write test cases to cover all paths through a function in Javascript. Ideally, I'd like something that will spit out a list of combinations of parameter and property values that should be tested. However, if the tool simply told me which parameters and properties have an effect on the function, that would be very useful as well. Thanks! edit: I'm not certain that \"branch coverage\" is the correct term for what I'm describing. If \"code exploration\" is a better term (or anything else), please add a comment."}
{"_id": "97069", "title": "Is there a language offering LISP-like macros with a more complex syntax?", "text": "LISP's macros are extremely powerful constructs, and the inability to introspect and modify the program itself beyond the method signature level has always struck me as a limitation. Yet I favour \"complex\" syntax because it tends to be closer to natural language. **So far I have failed to find a language which combines a powerful macro mechanism such as LISP's with a naturally looking syntax** (1). Is anyone aware of such a language? Footnote:   1. I would consider python to have a naturally looking syntax as it allows constructs like this: `if 0 < a < 5 and b in list`. The avoidance of braces to structure blocks is irrelevant in this case, though."}
{"_id": "177731", "title": "How to deal with well-meaning open-source contributors?", "text": "If a programmer contacts you and asks to contribute to your project, how do you handle it?   * You don't know if this guy is any good. Perhaps he'll be more trouble than he's worth.   * He might be trying to attach his name to a successful project just for the kudos.   * He might be trying to take the project in a direction you don't really want, adding features you think aren't worth the extra complexity.   * Or, he might be a very useful contributor. You just don't know. How do you handle such requests from people you don't know (On GitHub, specifically, if that makes any difference)? What's the etiquette here?"}
{"_id": "177730", "title": "How to sell logistical procedures that require less time to perform but more finesse?", "text": "I am working with a group where part of the responsibilities is managing a certain set of configuration files which, of course, have the same skeleton/structure across different environments but different values (like server, user, this setting, that setting etc.). Pretty classic scenario... The problem is that everyone just goes and modifies final, environment- specific files and basically repeats the work for every environment. Personally, I am offended to have to peform repeatable, mundane tasks in this day and age when we have technologies to automate it all. So I devised a very simple procedure of abstracting the files into templates, stubbing env-specific values with parameters and then wrote a simple Perl script that, given a template and an environment matrix with env-specific values for each param, produces the final file. So this is nothing special, cutting-edge or revolutionary -- I am pretty sure that 20 years ago efficient places did their CM like that. However, that requires that changes are made at the template level and then distributed across different environments using the script and not making changes in the final environment-specific files. This is where I am encountering resentment as they feel \"comfortable\" doing it their old, manual, repeated labor way. Personally, I don't have a problem with them working hard rather than smart but the problem is when I have to build on top of someone else's changes, I have to merge their changes into my template from a specific file, which takes time and is grueling. So my question is how to go about selling my method, which makes it so much faster in an environment that is resentful to change and where most things have to be done at the level of the least competent team member?"}
{"_id": "177732", "title": "Why was support for Windows XP dropped in PHP 5.5?", "text": "In the release notes for PHP 5.5.0 it's announced that Windows XP and Windows 2003 are not supported anymore: > Drop Windows XP and 2003 support. (Pierre) Why is this? Many people in different companies develop applications under Windows XP. So, can anyone tell me what is the sense of dropping Windows XP and 2003 support?"}
{"_id": "177739", "title": "Looking for enterprise web application design inspiration", "text": "I've checked many websites to be inspired about what the look and feel of a serious enterprise web-application should look like. But the whole I saw were designed for being used by single users and not serious corporate users. The designs I saw were mostly happy-colored, and looked like being developed by a small team of eager young passionate developers. But what I'm looking for, are showcases of serious web apps' designs (e.g. web apps developed by large corporations) that are developed for being used by a large number of corporate uses. Can you suggest me sources for this kind of inspiration?"}
{"_id": "97065", "title": "Who is the father of CIL?", "text": "...formerly known as MSIL, simple question, it is widely known that Anders Hejlsberg is the father of C#, but is there a \"father of CIL\"?"}
{"_id": "95513", "title": "to know how many visitors visit my website, i absolutely have to put some kind of tracking code within the page itself?", "text": "Is it true that to know how many visitors visit my website, some kind of tracking code had to placed within that page itself, and there is no other way around it? Even if we use something like Google Analytics indirectly they are also placing some kind of tracking script within our pages right? Or is it true that even there are no tracking script within my page, someone (some authority?) will have access to this info?"}
{"_id": "191557", "title": "Is it bad practise to create instances from a SQL-query?", "text": "I'm researching ways to create a OO-model/repository-layer using PHP's PDO. My idea was to create model classes that represent a domain object and a repository class for each model that has the responsibility of:   * Saving to the database by taking a model as argument and mapping the objects properties to the VALUES of the SQL-query.   * Reading from the database by return an instance of a model in a similar fashion. I was inspired from a course in OOP in which we used .NET, EF and LINQ for the Labs. I asked a question on SA about how this could be achived on SA. I got flamed because is is supposedly bad practise. I don't see why this is the case."}
{"_id": "210682", "title": "Scrape Intranet site without a web server", "text": "I'm trying to rebuild a simple c# time tool that displays certain statistics about time worked for the web, however, I don't have access to a server so I can't use server code like PHP which I would do if I could and this task would be a doddle. The employee's work information is stored on an intranet site that the C# tool could access by scraping that site and grabbing what it needed. How can I do this (scrape the intranet site) without using server code and only client-side things like HTML, JavaScrit/jQuery? **Edit:** Forgot to mention the Windows machines don't have .net installed"}
{"_id": "195242", "title": "How to read large XML files efficiently", "text": "I have a large XML file (about 75,000 lines) where I have to build a catalogue (houses) from. Building the lists works fine, but now I have a problem. The catalogue should have a detailed presentation page of one house. One house (`<item id=\"123\">`) has about 800-1200 lines of data, based on the house type. **Which is the best way, as referring to making the script faster and saving lines of code, to read these data and present them?** Some houses, for example, have a sauna, and when these data are in the XML file, the presentation page should contain a section sauna. I tried before to read the whole XML content with a recursive function into arrays and with a lot of `foreache`s (maximum depth of children is three) with SimpleXML, but it was really ugly slow, and the recursion did not work at all, because my computer could not handle so much input. **Is there any other way to build this data except to query every variable with`if`?**"}
{"_id": "19807", "title": "Useful Scripts for CM?", "text": "I'll be forming a remote team, and I want to be able to use scripts (or something) to make _sure_ that people's code is checked in every night. I currently use some BASH scripts that are kindof wonky and aren't customizable easily. Does anyone have any useful tools, tips, or resources for this?   Are there any pitfalls to doing this that I'm not seeing, or can I do it better another way? (cross-posted to super-user)"}
{"_id": "7826", "title": "Do libraries and frameworks swing more on the GPL or MIT side?", "text": "I like the GPL license but the project I'm working on is a more general purpose one that will be used inside other programs. It doesn't run independently like a CMS or application would. So I'm looking around at other projects to see what they've done.   * JQuery has an interesting MIT/GPL license   * Zend framework has New BSD license   * Symfony framework has MIT license  As developers, is there an established preference that we expect from libraries. I rarely cared because I never build applications that were sold or distributed, which eliminated the possibility that I would be in conflict with the license of a library I'm using, but I want to know what others are thinking. Will you avoid using a library or a framework if it's GPL? I'm a bit torn. I'd like to use GPL and as the only license (unlike JQuery for example) but I also worry that this will scare developers away who want to use the library to build distributable code. The other thing is I'm seeing that many libraries are frameworks are released as MIT, but I find the MIT license, well, a bit too \"loose\" for my taste."}
{"_id": "63660", "title": "Do you read C or C++ compile errors after the first one?", "text": "I never understood why C and C++ compilers try to recover from errors and continue parsing. Almost always, the first error generates a stream of bogus errors that will disappear as soon as the first one is fixed. After several years of experience, I simply stopped looking at any error except the first one of every file. I rerun the compiler and then do that again until there is no more errors. Is it a common practice?"}
{"_id": "236459", "title": "Browser security and payments", "text": "I've been finding a lot of blog posts claiming JS encryption is unsafe, here's a couple of detailed ones: http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/ http://rdist.root.org/2010/11/29/final-post-on-javascript-crypto/ My question is, if browsers truly are inherently unsafe then, by extension, entering any PCI-related info in the browser is unsafe - regardless of JS encryption, HTTPS, or any other security measures? Which would imply that malicious parties should be taking major advantage of this fact, right? Could someone provide specific examples where browser vulnerabilities were leveraged to steal **massive** amounts of PCI-info/PII (by \"massive\" I mean comparable to the amount that could be obtained by hacking into the hosting servers/DB)? Also, despite all those posts describing security flaws there's a proliferation of payment services and JS crypto libraries - does that indicate that most companies/communities:   1. are unaware of browser vulnerabilities?   2. are simply disregarding the underlying issues and jumping on the bandwagon to make some dough?   3. have weighted the (possibly low) likelihood of someone going through the trouble of exploiting browsers and decided it's still worth to capture payments through browsers? EDIT Using SSL/TLS addresses some of the issues, but definitely not all. Here are a few notable issues that fall outside of the area that SSL/TLS can solve (quoted directly from the Matasano blog post): > The prevalence of content-controlled code. > >   * We mean that pages are built from multiple requests, some of them > conveying Javascript directly, and some of them influencing Javascript using > DOM tag attributes (such as \"onmouseover\"). > > > The malleability of the Javascript runtime. > >   * There is no reliable way for any piece of Javascript code to verify its > execution environment. Javascript crypto code can't ask, \"am I really > dealing with a random number generator, or with some facsimile of one > provided by an attacker?\" And it certainly can't assert \"nobody is allowed > to do anything with this crypto secret except in ways that I, the author, > approve of\". These are two properties that often are provided in other > environments that use crypto, and they're impossible in Javascript. > > > What else is the Javascript runtime lacking for crypto implementors? > >   * Two big ones are secure erase (Javascript is usually garbage collected, > so secrets are lurking in memory potentially long after they're needed) and > functions with known timing characteristics. Real crypto libraries are > carefully studied and vetted to eliminate data-dependant code paths --- > ensuring that one similarly-sized bucket of bits takes as long to process as > any other --- because without that vetting, attackers can extract crypto > keys from timing. > Again, my main point is that, technically, once a credit card number (or some other important piece of info) is entered into a text field of a page there's a chance that it's been compromised - and at that, compromised more easily then if it were entered in the native application."}
{"_id": "236451", "title": "How to name filename parameter to make clear it should contain full path?", "text": "I'm seeking vital naming of string `filename` parameter in parameter list used in various methods where **filename with full path** is expected. In many cases also UNC path can be actually supplied as full path because many libraries handle it natively. I usually call the parameter just `filename`, but it can be misleading in two ways:   * Beginners tend to think it is only name of file \u2013 without path.   * If there is a need of splitting the value into path and filename, term **filename** sticks better with filename part without path which appeared after split. Anyway, it is not easy to give that second part better name than `filename`. Alternative of splitting `filename` to `path` and `filenameOnly` looks weird to me. I think it might be better to use clearly distinguishable term for filename with path than borrowing **filename** which already has stronger meaning for something else. I was thinking about term `absoluteFilePath` or `fullyQualifiedFilename` to stand as argument names. Maybe they are good and I need only some encouragement to start using them, but I would like to understand your best practices. **EDIT:** I would still like to stick with official VB.NET naming and capitalization conventions, so the only thing I need help sharpening is clear self-documenting wording of the term. (Not whether I should use Hungarian notation or not \u2013 I cannot.)"}
{"_id": "52599", "title": "Java GNOME bindings, are those a good idea?", "text": "What do you think of Java's GNOME bindings and I was surprised to know that the latest version of the bindings was released this month and they're backed by a company that uses them, which means that there's a considerable amount of activity in the project, and that it's not going to be ditched anytime soon Is this going to be a second chance for Java on the desktop, since GTK+ is cross platform like swing, but less bloated and more responsive Should I be learning how to develop applications using it? or it's not worth the time?"}
{"_id": "64121", "title": "Currently in Grad School, itching to get back in the mix", "text": "I was in the software industry for 3 years before going back and pursuing my masters. I have a year of grad school under my belt with a year left and a 4.0 GPA. I'm really itching to get back into do software dev full-time. I'm doing research and an area I'm interested in, Computer Graphics, but know that I probably won't work in industry using what I've learned. I think the main benefit to finishing my degree is to pad my resume and learn certain things that I wouldn't have learned other wise. Would it be dumb for me to quit grad school and get back into the work force? Is grad school a bad decision for passionate programmers( I consider myself one )?"}
{"_id": "17183", "title": "How do you check bugs on your client's PC's?", "text": "It seems like there are a plethora of methods for dialing in and checking out what's going on on a client's PC. But they seem to boil down to just 2. Dialing in and checking it out with VNC and Remote Desktop. VNC seems abysmal with more graphics laden OS's and it sometimes is too much to ask to get a access to a terminal server (especially when the client doesn't have one). What other methods are out there for connecting with clients to diagnose and fix bugs they they can reproduce, but may not necessarily be able to adequately describe over the phone. Alternatives to VNC and Remote Desktop are appreciated, but really looking for a better way to do it than just to dial in and check it out - or the most effective way to use VNc and Remote Desktop."}
{"_id": "52595", "title": "Session state provider and atomic operations", "text": "I've been thinking about this and it is blowing my mind... How does a session state provider properly works internally? I mean, I tried to write a custom session state provider based on Azure Tables or Blobs, but quickly I realized that because there is no way to ensure an atomic operation or establish a lock, race conditions are suitable to happen when several web servers do operation on that shared information. I know that there is a SQL Server Session State Provider (SQLS-SSP) and people is happy with it, so I guess that it's using some kind of transaction isolation level in order to accomplish some degree of concurrent safety, like checking is the data is lock (a simple column), locking it if not and returning the data in an atomic operation, but is that so? what does happen if the data is lock? does it returns an error? block the call for a while? returns it in read-only fashion? Cloud computing paradigms could be somehow new, but webfarms have been here for a while, so as I'm pretty new on it... do you recommend any good lecture about the topic? Thanks."}
{"_id": "235817", "title": "DRY code, DRY tests?", "text": "At some point I had to create some class \"Class1\" and that class needs a method \"method\". So I have the following:               Class1MethodTest: A total of N tests that check the behavior of Class1.method     Class1 method: A full implementation of the method      But a bit later I need a different class \"Class2\" to have a completely similar method \"method\". Now I have several approaches: ## Approach 1               Class1MethodTest: A total of N tests     Class1 method: Full implementation     Class2MethodTest: Another set of identical tests     Class2 method: Another full implementation      Pros: Stupid simple Cons: not DRY At least that's the first attempt and I might even write this before doing any refactoring, right? ## Approach 2:               _hidden_private_implementation_function: Full implementation of required method     Class1MethodTest: A total of N tests     Class1 method: Call hidden_private_whatever     Class2MethodTest: Another set of identical tests     Class2 method: Also call hidden_private_stuff      Pros: DRY code, still stupid simple Cons: Tests aren't DRY, \"Test interface, not implementation\" ## Approach 3:               MethodTest: A total of N tests     TotallyPublicCommonMethod: Full implementation of required method     Class1MethodTest: Just one test to verify that Class1 method calls the Public one     Class1 method: Call public common method     Class2MethodTest: One more test     Class2 method: Also call common method      Pros: DRY, stupid simple Cons: .. any other than \"You're testing implementation, not interface\"? ## Approach 4: This is where it gets a bit exotic. Python allows me to DRY the \"Approach 3\" directly:               _hidden_private_implementation_function: Full implementation of required method     makeTestForClass(cls): return a total of N tests for class cls     Class1MethodTest = makeTestForClass(Class1)     Class1 method: Call hidden_private_whatever     Class2MethodTest = makeTestForClass(Class2)     Class2 method: Also call hidden_private_stuff      Pros: DRY, \"Don't test implementation\" Cons: Not that simple. Too hard to modify if I ever decide to change something in Class1.method, but not Class2.method I can think of a couple more approaches but those are not very different from these above. Right now I have some code looking something like \"Approach 1\" and I am thinking on which way I should go next to make it all cleaner and better."}
{"_id": "212137", "title": "What is the best way to deploy commercial programs on Linux?", "text": "Due to the diversity of Linux distributions, it is quite common for programs to be distributed in source format together with scripts in order to assist the configure, make, make install sequence. When it comes to commercial programs, however, distributing the source is usually simply not possible. So if anybody wants to sell a program and deploy it to a Linux environment, what should he do? How is this normally done?"}
{"_id": "235811", "title": "How to plan for multi-platform application development", "text": "In my earlier days of programming, I was using Visual Basic for learning. It taught me many concepts, and I was able to make some cool programs (in my opinion, anyways...). I have expanded my horizon to basic C/C++, PHP, and MySQL. One of my most favourite projects, I want to turn into a multi-platfrom (for x86/x64) windowed application, and have it open source. I decided on the license already, but I want to know, before I start developing in a new language, how can I choose which language to use, that is multi-platform, and allows for windows to be created? I do not wish to use web technologies, as the application will work with lots of local files at a time. This is **not** a question about which technology is better, but about which one would be useful for this project. I know something has to be possible, because there are apps that run as Mac OSX binaries, Windows binaries, and even Linux binaries, all in windows (i.e. VLC Media Player, Firefox (Ice Wheazel), etc)"}
{"_id": "149077", "title": "Text Classification Implementation", "text": "I've been trying to implement a text classification system. It needs to read a text file, and extract the words and the word frequency. So far, I've been planning to parse the words, put them in a dictionary and save it to an XML file. I am using C++/CLI. Is this a good implementation or is there a simpler or better implementation? May be related question (some code implementation): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10631309/save-dictionary-to-xml-file"}
{"_id": "8986", "title": "What to do when you're forced to code under bad coding (design) standards", "text": "This isn't about the typical naming conventions, where to place your comments, should we use regions, etc. This is about a coding standard that discusses specifics on how a programmer should design his applications. Stuff like: (on a .NET app and not in the exact wordings)   * Make as few classes possible   * Classes should do as much as their real world counterparts can   * Modification is better than extension   * One DLL per category (One library for email functions, one library for File related functions) Everyone's had their experience with bad code and possibly bad design, but what if you were placed in a team (leaving is not an option) where they had design standards that just don't feel right. I'm unsure how to respond professionally when I feel like I'm dying inside whenever I'm asked to code this way."}
{"_id": "8988", "title": "How much time should I dedicate to refactoring my code?", "text": "I don't know if it's just with me, but when I start refactoring some code I waste a lot time doing that and it never ends. Every time I read the code again, I find something that can be improved, code refactoring is like my brain into a infinite loop and the end conditional is reached randomly with no satisfaction. So, how much time should I dedicate to refactoring my code?"}
{"_id": "212916", "title": "Is The Free Lunch Over?", "text": "In his famous The Free Lunch Is Over article from 2005, Herb Sutter predicted a Concurrent Programming Revolution as big as Object-Oriented Revolution. Has this revolution really happend in years 2005 - 2013? * * * Key points in the article:   * Processor manufacturers have run out of room with most of their traditional approaches to boosting CPU performance. Instead of driving clock speeds ever higher, they are instead turning to hyperthreading and multicore architectures.    * Applications will increasingly need to be concurrent if they want to fully exploit CPU throughput gains.   * \u201cOh, performance doesn\u2019t matter so much, computers just keep getting faster\u201d statement will be wrong.   * Efficiency and performance optimization will get more, not less, important. Those languages that already lend themselves to heavy optimization will find new life; those that don\u2019t will need to find ways to compete and become more efficient and optimizable. Expect long-term increased demand for performance-oriented languages and systems.   * Programming languages and systems will increasingly be forced to deal well with concurrency. We desperately need a higher-level programming model for concurrency than languages offer today."}
{"_id": "48329", "title": "Is it reasonable to expect a new graduate to be able to roll his own blogging software?", "text": "When deciding whether to hire a new graduate, is it reasonable to expect them to have a software development portfolio, where they have produced at least something equivalent in complexity to a blog software?"}
{"_id": "214516", "title": "How much mocking is \"just right?\"", "text": "I titled the question jokingly because I'm sure that \"it depends,\" but I have some specific questions. Working in software that has many deep layers of dependency, my team has become accustomed using mocking fairly extensively to separate each code module from the dependencies beneath it. Therefore I was surprised that Roy Osherove suggested in this video that you should be using mocking only something like 5% of the time. I'd guess that we're sitting somewhere between 70-90%. I've seen other similar guidance from time to time as well. I should define what I consider to be two categories of \"integration tests\" which are so distinct that they really should be given different names: 1) In- process tests which integrate multiple code modules and 2) Out-of-process tests which talk to databases, file systems, web services, etc. It is type #1 that I am concerned with, tests which integrate multiple code modules all in- process. Much of the community guidance I have read suggests that you should prefer a large number of isolated, fine-grained unit tests and a small number of coarse-grained end-to-end integration tests, because unit tests give you precise feedback on exactly where regressions might have been created, but the coarse tests, which are cumbersome to set up, actually verify more end-to-end functionality of the system. Given this, it seems necessary to make rather frequent use of mocking to isolate these separate units of code. Given an object model as follows: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SIvbe.png) ... Also consider that our application's dependency depth goes much deeper than I could fit in this image, so that there are multiple layers N between the 2-4 layer and the 5-13 layer. If I want to test some simple logical decision being made in unit #1, and if every dependency is constructor-injected into the code module that depends on it such that, say, 2, 3, and 4 are constructor injected into module 1 in the image, I would much rather inject mocks of 2, 3, and 4 into 1. Otherwise, I would need to construct concrete instances of 2, 3, and 4. This can be more difficult than just some extra typing. Often 2, 3, and 4 will have constructor requirements which can be challenging to satisfy and according to the graph (and according to the reality of our project), I'll need to construct concrete instances of N through 13 to satisfy the constructors of 2, 3, and 4. This situation becomes more challenging when I need 2, 3, or 4 to behave in some certain way so that I can test the simple logical decision in #1. I might need to understand and \"mentally reason about\" the entire object graph/tree all at once to get 2, 3, or 4 to behave in the necessary way. It often seems much easier to do myMockOfModule2.Setup(x=> x.GoLeftOrRight()).Returns(new Right()); to test that module 1 responds as expected when module 2 tells it to go right. If I were to test concrete instances of 2 ... N ... 13 all together, the test setups would be very large and mostly duplicated. Test failures might not do a very good job of pinpointing the locations of regressions failures. Tests would not be independent (another supporting link). Granted, it is often reasonable to do state-based, rather than interaction- based, testing of the bottom layer, since those modules seldom have any further dependency. But it seems that mocking is almost necessary by definition to isolate any modules above the bottom-most. Given all of this, can anyone tell me what I might be missing? Is our team overusing mocks? Or is there perhaps some assumption in typical unit testing guidance that the layers of dependency in most applications will be shallow enough that it is indeed reasonable to test all of the code modules integrated together (making our case \"special\")? Or perhaps differently, is our team not bounding our bounded contexts adequately?"}
{"_id": "48320", "title": "Is C++ not suitable for OOP?", "text": "I read somewhere in one of the answers to a question here (can't remember which) that C++ is not suitable for object-oriented programming. There was some mentioning that you could make use of its feature or something like that, but not in a purely OOP sense (I actually didn't really understand what the person meant). Is there some truth in this; if so, why?"}
{"_id": "48321", "title": "PHP-based indexing and search implementation", "text": "Is there such thing? I designed a while back a rudimentary form based app for my users. We receive from our suppliers hardware manufacturing data in XML files: file name is made of eleven fields separated by tildes, with each field having its own meaning. R&D guys wanted to be able to search each field of the file names so I used regex() with decent results. Problem is that we have now in the upwards of 2.5 million files. And my app can't hack it anymore. I looked at Apache Lucene & Solr. Though it seemed like the best solution to my problem, the fields in the filenames are not peers to the file content. Big no-no with Solr. What is the best way to implement a PHP app with indexing and search capability with such large number of files? Do I have to buy Zend and use Zend_Search? Is it the only way? Thanks for your input."}
{"_id": "163784", "title": "Choosing the right version control system for .NET projects", "text": "I'm getting ready for my first \"bigger\" .NET project (ASP.NET MVC 3/4) on which I'm going to lead another 2 programmers and right now I'm choosing the right version control system for the job (plus I'm gonna use it for my future development too). My problem is that I did't use any version control system before, so I would like it to have as fast learning curve and intuitive merging as possible. So far I quickly looked at VisualSVN (I like the Visual Studio integration in it), but I'm reading everywhere how Git is awesome and dunno which one to choose (not limited to these two).. Maybe I'm ovethinking this but I like when everything goes smoothly:) I'd like to hear some opinions from people who used multiple version control systems (preferably on VS projects) **what do you think is the less complicated and effective version control system for such a use (one to 5 man projects)?**"}
{"_id": "254749", "title": "2D linked list vs. multidimensional array/vector", "text": "I hope that programmers is the correct stack exchange for this, as it is quite a concept based question. I'm working on a data structure in C++ that is a represents data in 3D space. The x-y plane is large (say 0 - 10 000) while the z-axis has a very small range (0 - 10). All the data is located on integer (x,y,z) points. However there can be more than one than one data point on an (x,y,z) coordinate. I have thought of three ways of approaching this subject, and don't have the necessary experience to choose between them.   1. Using a 2D linked list inside vectors (dynamic arrays) `vector<vector<structureA*>> Data` where the first list item for that (x,y) point can be accessed using `Data[x][y]`. structureA contains an its z value, its actual data, as well as a pointer to the next structure in the list (that may, or may not have a different z coordinate, but is located on the same line defined by x and y). Accessing elements at the middle and end of this list is slow.   2. Using a three dimensional array/vector: `vector<vector<vector<structureB>>> Data`. In this case the first two vectors define the x and y coordinates (as before) and the third vector gives us an array of all of the elements on that line defined by x and y. We can quickly determine how many elements are on this line (by querying the third vector) and can iterate from the back and the front. `structureB` contains, the point's z value and its data. This seems like a fairly good and safe (regarding memory allocation) solution to me.   3. Using a three dimensional array/vector and a linked list. In this case the data could be accessed as such: `Data[x][y][z]` and would point to the first element of a linked list of data that resides at this coordinate. The structure pointed to would not contain its z value here as this is already dealt with in its address in the array. However, many (x,y,z) points have no data, whereas most of those that do have data have 10+ data structures. (All lines defined by a specific (x,y) contain at least one structure). This seems the worst solution to me as in many cases I would have to iterate through empty z coordinates, before hitting a linked list to iterate through. The emphasis in this program is speed, my data set is less than 100MB on a modern computer, so even an inefficient method of storing it in RAM is fine. Option 2 seems the best to me, although in the past I've normally seen people more inclined to go with option 1. I'm interested to hear your opinions on the best way to handle this along with your reasoning. Many Thanks. **Update** Thanks for the responses, I stand to learn quite a lot from your comments as I am a hobby programmer, having taken only one short course on the fundamentals of C a few years back. @MorphingDragon The array is not jagged, all z \"slices\" have the same range of x and y. The values also don't seem sparse enough for a hash table (which IIRC slow down significantly on hash collision - which is guaranteed as multiple elements have the same (x,y,z)). The dimensions of the set are known on file load (they are included in the file header along with an md5 hash of the file for error checking and a few bit relevant to the analysis). @J Trana / Florian F The data set is pre-built and is infrequently modified by the program - a piece of data may need to be moved or deleted. For adjusting data particularly just adjusting its z-value (or removing it), which are the most frequent operations. The linked list will be faster as these operations are O(1) as opposed to O(n) in a vector. However, I believe these changes are infrequent enough that having O(n) for changes may be worthwhile if the lookup speed is even marginally faster (as this is the more frequent operation). The majority of the time the data will be accessed iteratively, taking an n*p slice from the x-y plane. Pseudocode example:               for each y between startY and (startY + p)       for each x between startX and (startX + n)         read all nodes in Data[x][y] //gets nodes for each z on an (x,y) line         analyse(&nodes) //possibly modify the nodes, possibly just compute something based on their values      Data access is **always** related to the (x,y) line an element is on, but we don't always need all the nodes on that line (dependant on their z). So we either have a structure that doesn't require us to retrieve all of them (just the ones we want) or we perform a secondary sort. The data on file represents a sorted list in ascending z for each (x,y). I will also look into those other data structures. I've never met them, as with very little training, my method is to use STL vectors or lists for everything. I'd like to spend the time to do this properly this time though. I spent a fair amount of time thinking about this last night after posting the question and seeing the first responses. I realised that \"if one piece of data from a point (x,y,z) is required, then all elements from that point are required at the same time.\" This has led me to think that option 3, my least preferred when I started this yesterday afternoon, is actually the best of the options I've enumerated. If I use a three-dimensional dynamic array of pointers to linked list, I don't exactly lose much speed or heap space setting a pointer to NULL rather than attaching a struct. This also allows full access to any 3d, which while not currently _required_ may reduce some operations from O(n) to O(1). Having had a brief look over octaves/r-trees, I feel safe saying that my data set is not complex enough to require such an engineering heavy solution. When it comes down to it, i am fairly sure that any of the three options I outlined would work, even if not the fastest, but I would like to learn a good and relatively efficient method, rather than just relying on the awesome power of modern computers to brute force a problem like I normally do. Thanks for the replies and suggestions so far. :)"}
{"_id": "254742", "title": "A scheme to check only one namespace in an XML document", "text": "I want to validate an XML document against some XML scheme, but ignore all elements (and probably attributes) which are not of a given namespace. Does such a XML scheme language exist?"}
{"_id": "152085", "title": "Help with Abstract Factory Pattern", "text": "I need help with a abstract factory pattern design. This question is a continuation of: Design help with parallel process I am really confused where I should be initializing all of the settings for each type of medium (ex: RS232, TCP/IP, etc). Attached is the drawing on how I am setting up the pattern: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mDfjH.png) As shown, when a medium is created, each medium imposes a **ICreateMedium** interface. I would assume that the Create() method also create the proper object, such as SerialPort serialPort = new SerialPort(\"COM1\", baud); however, TCPIPMedium would have an issue with the interface because it wouldn't need to initialize a serial port object. I know I am doing something majorly wrong here. I just can't figure it out and have been stuck for a while. What I also get confused on show the interface **IMedium** will get access to the communication object once it is created so it can write out the appropriate byte[] packet. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. My main goal is to have the **Communicator** class spit a packet out without caring which type of medium is active."}
{"_id": "251994", "title": "Which approach would be better for persisting these overridable configuration keys and values? A simple key-value store, or a graph database?", "text": "I'm creating a system where there are config keys and values. So for example:               config.key = 10      Is an example of a configuration key and a value. These keys can also have overrides based on \"dimensions\". So for example, if we wanted to apply `config.key` to applications with the dimension `foo`, the overridden key would essentially be:               config.key.foo = 20      In future we may have multiple dimensions in arbitrary order, so this could be a possibility in future:               config.key.foo.bar = 30      A more concrete example would be if we had a key/toggle called `display.pintrest.feed` that has a `boolean` value. So the default value would be `false`, but you could have overrides like so:               display.pintrest.feed = false     display.pintrest.feed.femaleUser = true      Here `femaleUser` is a dimension (so we want to set the value of this config to `true` for only female users). This is essentially what I am trying to do. My question is regarding persistence. What would be the best way to persist this kind of data? This is data that will be queried somewhat frequently but written to less often. The naive solution would be to use MySQL or PostgreSQL and create a table like this:               +----------------------------------+-------+     |                Key               | Value |     +----------------------------------+-------+     | config.key                       | 10    |     | config.key.foo                   | 20    |     | display.pintrest.feed            | true  |     | display.pintrest.feed.femaleUser | false |     +----------------------------------+-------+      But we lose the type safety of `Value` and also have a single point of failure. We also have a lot of redundancy (the base part of the configuration key is repeated each time). So I wondered about perhaps representing it as a graph so that I could write it to a graph database. I was thinking of modeling it like so: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/X8Evj.png) Is this viable or overkill? I don't mind using a simple key-value store either but it should be fault- tolerant and should be able to be clustered. Also we only really care about eventual consistency (i.e., don't mind it taking time to propagate changes to all the nodes). So my question is what kind of data store should back this kind of data? Is a simple key-value store enough or should I go for a graph database? My rationale for the latter is simply to mitigate the redundancy from keys but I don't know if that's strong rationale."}
{"_id": "163788", "title": "Is my sequence diagram correct?", "text": "NOTE: I am self studying UML so I have nobody to verify my diagrams and hence I am posting here, so please bear with me. This is the problem I got from some PDF available on Google that simply had the following problem statement: **Problem Statement** : A library contains books and journals. The task is to develop a computer system for borrowing books. In order to borrow a book the borrower must be a member of the library. There is a limit on the number of books that can be borrowed by each member of the library. The library may have several copies of a given book. It is possible to reserve a book. Some books are for short term loans only. Other books may be borrowed for 3 weeks. Users can extend the loans. Draw a use case diagram for a library.      I already drew the Use Case diagram and had it checked by a community member. This time I drew **sequence diagrams** for borrowing a book and extending the date of return.   Please let me know if they are correct.   I drew them using _Visual Paradigm_ and I dont know how to keep a control of the sequence numbers. If you do, please let me know :)      **Diagrams** ![Borrowing](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WebPr.png)    ![Extending the date](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6YWMt.png)"}
{"_id": "254744", "title": "Wpf: Event driven vs MVVM design pattern", "text": "I'm a beginning coder and I've been working on a WPF app for several months now and struggled to implement anything in MVVM due to time constraits to learn so I coded my program the only way to knew how: with code behind, tight coupling, and a whole bunch of spaghetti code. My program has grown into 20,000+ lines of messy (but working) code that is mostly event driven. The app I am building will probably be used and continue to be developed for years to come, but I will be the only one working on the code. However, now that I have time to start learning MVVM, I'm wondering how useful it really is to follow the MVVM pattern. I'm considering refactoring my code into the MVVM pattern but everything seems 100x difficult to do with little documentation. With using code behind and tight coupling, I can make the UI do exactly what I want it to do and everything seems like it can be coded so much faster through the event-driven methods. How important is it to follow the MVVM design pattern for WPF apps, especially in the long run? Do you think it's a good idea for me to invest my time to redesigning this app and following an MVVM pattern?"}
{"_id": "58149", "title": "Learning new thing and implementing new thing in a company", "text": "In my new company, I wanted to use Doctrine DBAL for data abstraction. But it's not working due to the PHP Version 5.2 we are using on our development server. Here it's all about rights issues. You don't have access to anything. I can't use anything new due to this rigidity of the product! What can I do about this? How should I talk to my TL and project manager about this?"}
{"_id": "214511", "title": "Creating a new database with Active Record", "text": "Please tell me if this is mad, but basically, I've created a custom rake task, and before it does its thing, it gives the user a warning message:               Warning, please back up your database before continuing      Just in case something does go wrong. But I thought this would be awesome:               Warning, please back up your database before continuing. Do you wish to create it now [Y/N]      and upon pressing Y, the existing database would be replicated. I don't want to create to duplicate the tables, I literally want to create a new, pristine, isolated database so that their architecture is identical, just in-case something does go wrong. I don't want any dependencies though, I only want to use libraries included with Rails. Could I have a simple example of how to create an empty database with RoR, if this is possible? I can create a new database like this:                 require 'sqlite3'            db = SQLite3::Database.new( \"test.db\" )      However, this will only work if the user is using sqlite3. I can detect which database they're using with               database_type = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.adapter_name #=> sqlite3      and then use a case statement to execute slightly different commands for each database type, but that seems a bit elaborate, and not very dynamic. (Every single database will have to be thought up before-hand). So can I do it through Active Record?"}
{"_id": "255291", "title": "Why is (f . l) not allowed and equal to (apply f l)?", "text": "In scheme when defined               (define f (lambda (a b c d) d))          (define l (list 'a 'b 'c 'd))      Why it does not do argument destructuring? I mean arguments should evaluate first, why destructuring is not part of that?               (f . l)      What are reasons that this expression is not equal with following?               (apply f l)        * Edited to make it clearer, according suggestions in comments"}
{"_id": "160326", "title": "How do you organize highly customized software?", "text": "I'm working on a large software project which is highly customized for various customers arround the world. This means that we have maybe 80% code which is common between the various customers, but also a lot of code which has to change from one customer to the other. In the past we did our development in separate repositories (SVN) and when a new project started (we have few, but large customers) created another repository based on whatever past project has the best code basis for our needs. This has worked in the past, but we ran into several problems:   * **Bugs** which are fixed in one repository are not patched in other repositories. This might be a problem of organization, but I find it difficult to fix and patch a bug in 5 different repositories, keeping in mind that the team maintaining this repository might be in another part of the world and we don't have their test environment, neither know their schedule or what requirements they have (a \"bug\" in one country might be a \"feature\" in another).   * **Features** and improvements made for one project, which might also be useful for another project are lost or if they are used in another project often cause big headaches merging them from one code base to another (since both branches might have been developed independently for a year).   * **Refactorings and code improvements** made in one development branch are either lost or cause more harm than good if you have to merge all these changes between the branches. We are now discussing how to solve these problems and so far came up with the following ideas on how to solve this:   1. **Keep development in separate branches** but organizing better by having a central repository where general bug fixes are merged into and having all projects merge changes from this central repository into their own on a regular (e.g. daily) basis. This requires huge discipline and a lot of effort for merging between the branches. So I'm not convinced that it will work and we can keep this discipline, especially when time pressure puts in.   2. **Abandon the separate development branches** and have a central code repository where all our code lives and do our customization by having pluggable modules and configuration options. We are already using Dependency Injection containers to resolve dependencies in our code and we are following the MVVM pattern in most of our code to cleanly separate business logic from our UI. The second approach seems to be more elegant, but we have many unsolved problems in this approach. For example: how do handle changes/additions in your model/database. We are using .NET with Entity Framework to have strongly typed entities. I don't see how we can handle properties which are required for one customer but useless for another customer without cluttering our data model. We are thinking of solving this in the database by using satellite tables (having a separate tables where our extra columns for a specifiy entity live with a 1:1 mapping to the original entity), but this is only the database. How do you handle this in code? Our data model lives in a central library which we would not be able to extend for each customer using this approach. I'm sure that we are not the only team struggling with this problem and I'm shocked to find so little material on the topic. **So my questions are the following:**   1. What experience do you have with highly customized software, what approach did you choose and how did it work for you?   2. What approach do you recommend and why? Is there a better approach?   3. Are there any good books or articles on the topic that you can recommend?   4. Do you have specific recommendations for our technical environment (.NET, Entity Framework, WPF, DI)? **Edit:** Thanks for all the suggestions. Most of the ideas match those that we already had in our team, but it is really helpful to see the experience you had with them and tips to better implement them. I'm still not sure which way we will go and I'm not making the decision (alone), but I will pass this along in my team and I'm sure it will be helpful. At the moment the tenor seems to be a single repository using various customer specific modules. I'm not sure our architecture is up to this or how much we have to invest to make it fit, so some things might live in separate repositories for a while, but I think it's the only longterm solution that will work. So, thanks again for all responses!"}
{"_id": "58144", "title": "What is spreadsheet useful for?", "text": "I have been in computer business for 15 years in various roles (sysadmin, developer, researcher), and I have never encountered someone using excel for something more advanced than for formatting tables, or as an ad-hoc database that could have been maintained in a text-file. I had to do heavy data-processing and plotting and for that I used some perl scripts + gnuplot, got tiredof it, and went over to R eventually. 2D spreadsheet just didn't seem well-suited for doing statistical analyses over 5-dimensional datasets (not to mention that it produces _UGLY_ plots). I attempted to use spreadsheet for time-tracking, and found out that I would have better been served by a relational database, so I gave up on using excel for that too. For example, it's important to consistently name tasks, and I needed to find out unique task names in a given column across several sheets (I had one timesheet for each month). How do you make such \"query\" in a program that essentially evaluates independent cells and has little notion of relations between them? So, what _are_ spreadsheets useful for? Why do they have a bunch of mathematical stuff built into them when, AFAICT, people use them mostly as table formatters or bad substitutes for databases?"}
{"_id": "190202", "title": "How do I know if I have a good programming professor?", "text": "Today I begun my second programming course. The professor seemed a bit different from the others - we had some fun saying things like _\"he's probably a misunderstood genius\"_. He criticized some other (long gone) professors (with good reasons). Then it struck me to ask him _\"how do I know if **you** are a good professor?\"_ ... but I decided to save it for later... Now, however, such question has developed a lot in my mind. I'm very curious - **how do I know if my programming professor is good**? Some observations:   * Apparently, very few students do finish the course with him with aceptable scores - but it is possible it is the students' fault, not his.   * From our brief first class, I understood very well whatever he said (he talked a bit about everything). But I feel it might be because I was already prepared and had good experience programming before, and not necessarily the fact that he's good at expressing his ideas.   * He has a tendency to make jokes. Like most professors I've met. Unfortunately, he is the least funny."}
{"_id": "58140", "title": "Senior software developer", "text": "I'm not sure if this is the place of my question or not. I'm working in a software company as senior software engineer, but my team leader is controlling everything in the development life cycle. I can't give my opinion on anything. I'm just forced to tasks only without any discussion. I can't even apply any design patterns or UI guidelines. Is that OK in my career position now? What is the responsibilities of senior engineer?"}
{"_id": "255299", "title": "Proper Response to HTTP Request When Too Much Data is Requested", "text": "I'm building an API for an ad serving platform that will allow you to request tracker data for ad campaigns. Campaigns often exceed hundreds of millions of requests, which means there will be many terabytes worth of data. Therefore we need to prevent API consumers from requesting too much data at once (such that the request times out), but I'm not sure what the best practice is for doing so is. **Options I've already identified are:**   1. add an extra parameter to the request that indicates which section of the data is desired   2. truncate the data and somehow tell the client that they need to use more specific filters   3. respond with HTTP status code 413 (but this appears to be for large request bodies, not responses)   4. switching to a streaming API (like twitter's streaming APIs) **But my question is, what is the standard practice / proper response for this kind of situation?** Note: DoS attacks aren't much of a concern since this will not be a public API"}
{"_id": "158629", "title": "High-level language to assembly", "text": "If assembly language is only a readable way to represent machine code, then why are HLLs converted to assembly first and then to machine code? Shouldn't HLLs be directly converted to machine code?"}
{"_id": "169804", "title": "How ad retargeting works?", "text": "Recently, I read that Facebook ads are moving towards retargeting and got interested deeper into subject. Essentially, retargeting is technique advertisers use that tracks purchase intent by putting cookies into your browser and when you visit another website within ad network you will see ad for item you \"wanted to buy\". In order this to for, both publisher and advertiser need to work together. Publisher needs add couple of lines of javascript and publisher need to be able to read this info across sites. In most cases, javascript inserts iframe from adnetwork domain. Iframe script sets cookies for both host domain and remote adnetwork domain. However, Same Origin policy do not let iframes read/set content from parent domain. Is there something I'm missing here? Can someone explain how this technique actually works?"}
{"_id": "211466", "title": "How to effectively share projects with other developers", "text": "I'm thinking of working with some other people on a c++ or java project. Usually for small projects, we collaborate mostly through emailing source code files back and forth, but on a larger scale, it becomes too easy for things to go wrong. I read up on version control systems such as git and it seems to fit my needs of collaboration, but the problem is that tutorials show these tools being used through the command line, which could probably become tedious very quickly. I could use the git integration included in most IDEs, but I don't know what to do in the case of working in different IDEs or more importantly on different OS's. How do most teams handle problems like this? What tools do they use? And how do they handle linked libraries? Any advice would be extremely helpful!"}
{"_id": "169807", "title": "Would Using a PHP Framework Be Beneficial in My Context?", "text": "I've just started work at a small start-up company who mainly uses PHP to develop their front-end apps. I had no prior PHP experience before joining, and this has led to my apps becoming large pieces of spaghetti code. I essentially started by adding code to implement an initial feature, and then continued to hack in more code to implement further features \u2013 without much thought for the overall design. The apps themselves output XML to render on small mobile devices. I recently started looking into frameworks that I could use. I reckon an advantage would be that they seem to force developers to modularise their programs using good-practice design patterns. This seems great for someone in my position. The extra functions they provide, for example: interfacing with databases in such a way as to make SQL injection impossible, would be very useful too. The downside I can see is that there will be a lot of overhead for me in terms of the time taken to learn the framework itself (while still getting to grips with PHP itself). I'm also worried that it will be overkill for the scale of the apps we develop. They tend to be programs that interface with a fairly simple back-end DB, and will generate about 5 different XML screens. Probably around 1 or 2 thousand lines of code. The time it takes just to configure the frameworks may not be worth it. The final problem I can see is that developers in the company \u2013 who have to go over my code, and who do not know the PHP framework I may use \u2013 will have a much harder time understanding it. Given those pros and cons, I'm still not sure on what the best course of action will be; so any advice will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "158624", "title": "Are some NOP codes treated differently than others?", "text": "I'm curious about this, let's say I have:               00000000001 90                              nop             00000000002 90                              nop             00000000003 90                              nop       Is it executed exactly the same as this?               00000000001 0F1F00                          nop        dword [ds:rax]      What effect would the second example have as opposed to the first?"}
{"_id": "169801", "title": "How to avoid javascript becoming spaghetti code?", "text": "I've done quite a lot of javascript over the years and I'm using a more object-oriented approach, specifically with the module pattern. Which kind of approach do you do use to avoid a bigger code-base to becoming spaghetti. Are there any \"best approach\"?"}
{"_id": "13259", "title": "Advantages of Scrum for the developers themselves?", "text": "Scrum being a project management methodology, how would you 'sell' it to the developers in a team that is reasonably happy with its current situation? It seems easy to me to explain to our Product Manager how Scrum will allow him to get regular releases, to amend requirements, and get the team to focus on the high-priority stories first. I found it easy to explain what TDD or Continuous Integration bring in a developer's day-to-day life. But how can developers be convinced to embrace Scrum? How would Scrum make their life easier?"}
{"_id": "90046", "title": "Software Health Check Audit Template / Checklist", "text": "Does anyone know of a template / checklist that can be used to conduct a software health check. My team supports a number of legacy applications and we have been asked to present a score card to senior management on the health of the applications. The template would be used to:   * Identify you have performance or stability issues that may cause production outages, delays or financial impacts.   * Identify data, authorization or authentication security holes / shortcomings in the application / service.   * Identify the backup, disaster recovery and business continuity compliance of the application / service.   * Identify the compliance of the application / service to a reference architecture or predefined set of technical standards.   * Identify the current and required monitoring and alerting of the application / service.   * Identify the level of transaction support and potential for data corruption or error of the application / service.   * Identify licensing concerns of the application / service.   * Identify the minimum hardware requirements of the application / service.   * Identify the technology, vendor support and community support for the application / service.   * Provide a recommendation on all findings. A quick search on Google didnt seem to realize anything useful, other than this template to purchase http://www.it- checklists.com/application_health_check_toc.html"}
{"_id": "90047", "title": "Is it possible to get into quantum computing as a hobby?", "text": "I'd like to begin working with quantum computers as a hobby. Is this possible?   1. Where can I buy a quantum (personal) computer so I can run (my) quantum computer programs?   2. What quantum computing programming languages are out there? Is there something like a compilable quantum computing programming language? Any pointers to resources, tutorials are very appreciated. I've read Quantum Computing for Computer Scientists and it's very interesting! Can't wait to begin programming."}
{"_id": "179071", "title": "C# Algorithms for * Operator", "text": "I was reading up on Algorithms and came across the Karatsuba multiplication algorithm and a little wiki-ing led to the Schonhage-Strassen and Furer algorithms for multiplication. I was wondering what algorithms are used on the * operator in C#? While multiplying a pair of integers or doubles, does it use a combination of algorithms with some kind of strategy based on the size of the numbers? How could I find out the implementation details for C#?"}
{"_id": "13250", "title": "Should I switch tech.?", "text": "I am a PHP developer. I have 1 years of experience in PHP in a middle scale company. now I just realize that there is no top MNC use this technology. So for a better opportunity should I switch technologies and I should learn new technology?   Actually I am worried because I have already learned Zend and Magento... It will get totally wasted if I switch... But I have to think about my career too. :( please suggest Thanks! Richa"}
{"_id": "179075", "title": "What are the conditions to convert BSD-licensed code to another language?", "text": "I'm in the process of writing a library in PHP, based on a Java package that comes with a BSD license. The code will obviously not be the same as the original, but most class/method names, and the in-line documentation, will be the same. Is a link the original Java library in the code documentation enough? Can I then release my code with an MIT license?"}
{"_id": "193955", "title": "What's the word for an operation that can be applied multiple times and never change state beyond the initial application?", "text": "I'm trying to remember a word, I _think_ it's related to computational or database theory. The closest synonym is `atomic` but that's not exactly it. Basically it's a kind of computation that should produce the same result even when run multiple times in a row, meaning it doesn't create side effects for itself. I specifically ran across this word in a Stack Overflow answer about a chmod command (or some other permission related operation). Hopefully that's enough to go on. Poking around Wikipedia isn't much help."}
{"_id": "203855", "title": "Text search - big data problem", "text": "I have a problem I was hoping I could get some advice on! I have a LOT of text as input (about 20GB worth, not MASSIVE but big enough). This is just free text, unstructured. I have a 'category list'. I want to process the text, and cross-reference the items in the category list, and output the categories for each match, e.g. ## Input text The quick brown fox ran over the lazy dog. ## Category lookup _Colour_ Red | Brown | Green _Speed_ Slow | Quick | Lazy | Fast ## Expected Output Colour - Brown Speed - Quick, Lazy To add to the complexity of the problem, the source text probably doesn't match the categories exactly, e.g. there will have to be a fuzzy match algorithm of sorts applied here. I want to use 'Big data' tech to solve this (whether or not it TRULY NEEDS big data isn't the question - it's a secondary objective). My thoughts are to utilize Hadoop Map/Reduce with Lucene to do the fuzzy- matching. What do you think? Am I way off base? Thanks a lot - ANY advice appreciated!! Duncan"}
{"_id": "176955", "title": "Architecture : am I doing things right?", "text": "I'm trying to use a '~classic' layered arch using .NET and Entity Framework. We are starting from a legacy database which is a little bit crappy:   * Inconsistent naming   * Unneeded views (view referencing other views, `select *` views etc...)   * Aggregated columns   * Potatoes and Carrots in the same table   * etc... So I ended with fully isolating my database structure from my domain model. To do so EF entities are hidden from presentation layer. The goal is to permit an easier database refactoring while lowering the impact of it on applications. ![Assemblies are drawn as components](http://i.stack.imgur.com/5wjcD.png) I'm now facing a lot of challenges and I'm starting to ask myself if I'm doing things right.   1. My Domain Model is highly volatile, it keeps evolving with apps as new fields needs are arising. Complexity of it keeps raising and class it contains start to get a lot of properties.   2. Creating include strategy and reprojecting to EF is very tricky (my domain objects don't have any kind of lazy/eager loading relationship properties):              DomainInclude<Domain.Model.Bar>.Include(\"Customers\").Include(\"Customers.Friends\")     // To...     IFooContext.Bars.Include(...).Include(...).Where(...)        3. Some framework are raping the isolation levels (Devexpress Grids which needs either XPO or `IQueryable` for filtering and paging large data sets) I'm starting to ask myself if :   * the isolation of EF auto-generated entities is an unneeded cost.   * I should allow frameworks to hit `IQueryable`? Slow slope to hell? (it's really hard to isolate DevExpress framework, any successful experience?)   * How can I lower the volatility of my domain model? ## Precisions **EF Isolation and fields that should or should not be included on service calls** Here is how I isolate EF Entities. Presentation layer is an isolation layer as no presentation can access to repositories class.               // Inside a service class. For this sample Customer is defined in the service model     // And Person is autogenerated by Entity Framework     /// Get the customers who bought an item ///     IEnumerable<Customer> GetCustomers(Item item){         var query = from person in _personRepository.GetItemBuyers(item.Id)                     select new Customer {                       Id = person.CustomerId                       , FirstName = person.FirstName                       , LastName = person.LastName                       , Sex = person.Sex == 'M' ? Sex.Male : Sex.Female};         return query;     }      It can get time consuming especially when you need to include (or not) some relationship properties. There is multiple solutions for including:                1. GetCustomersWithOrders(Item item);       2. GetCustomers(Item item, IncludeStrategy<Customer> include);      3. GetCustomers(Item item, params string[] fieldsIncluded);        1. Will obvioulsy result in service class containing thousands of GetCustomersWith...With...   2. Will create a lot of IncludeStrategy inherited class. I'm still working on a dynamic fluent approach `DomainInclude<Customer>.Include(\"Orders\").Include(\"Friends\")`   3. Will need the creation of some mapping dictionnary \"Orders\" => \"CustomerAccount.PayedOrders\" **Framework hitting IQueryable** Repositories don't expose IQueryable, the goal is to hide entity framework. Devexpress datagrids need an IQueryable to allow paging/filtering without loading the whole table in memory. Finding a workaround is nearly impossible as it will be really time consuming and the portability of the workaround is not assured with new devexpress releases. My question here is: Is it a big deal to allow devexpress going through the layers up to the EF context class. Should I drop Devexpress instead and use a more flexible datagrids (Sencha ExtJs, ...)"}
{"_id": "94040", "title": "What to study at Grad School if I want to know about Programming Languages?", "text": "I listening to the latest podcast in This Developer's Life and before that I was watching this talk with Uncle Bod, The Last Programming Language, and, along with that, I have been having thoughts on getting back to school, so, based on the fact that I like programming languages a lot, thought: why not getting back to school to study programming languages?? I have a degree in computer systems (that's how it is called in Mexico, it's degree in which you basically touch a little bit of math, computer science and software engineering) and I really don't have a much of clue what/where to go and especially, what kind of studies to do? I mean, should I study **linguistics**? should I go and get a degree in **Computer Science**? Thanks for your answers! ={D"}
{"_id": "163435", "title": "Is it a bad practice to quit a company only to begin as a consultant?", "text": "Like the title says; is it a bad practice to quit a company after a few years, only to begin as a consultant for the same 'customer'? I've been lucky enough to come in to a company in the oil business from the beginning, developing software for relatively new and unused technology. Long before I even got this job, I've wanted to start my own consulting firm. Is it morally wrong of me to quit my job after a few years, only to hire myself out as a 'specialist' or consultant on our systems?"}
{"_id": "163432", "title": "Is functional programming a superset of object oriented?", "text": "The more functional programming I do, the more I feel like it adds an extra layer of abstraction that seems like how an onion's layer is- all encompassing of the previous layers. I don't know if this is true so going off the OOP principles I've worked with for years, can anyone explain how functional does or doesn't accurately depict any of them: Encapsulation, Abstraction, Inheritance, Polymorphism I think we can all say, yes it has encapsulation via tuples, or do tuples count technically as fact of \"functional programming\" or are they just a utility of the language? I know Haskell can meet the \"interfaces\" requirement, but again not certain if it's method is a fact of functional? I'm guessing that the fact that functors have a mathematical basis you could say those are a definite built in expectation of functional, perhaps? Please, detail how you think functional does or does not fulfill the 4 principles of OOP. Edit: I understand the differences between the functional paradigm and object oriented paradigm just fine and realize there are plenty of multiparadigm languages these days which can do both. **I am really just looking for definitions of how outright fp (think purist, like haskell) can do any of the 4 things listed, or why it cannot do any of them. i.e. \"Encapsulation can be done with closures\"** (or if I am wrong in this belief, please state why)."}
{"_id": "163430", "title": "Specific reasons for still using Subversion?", "text": "I want to choose a version control system for my company. So far I know I have Git, Subversion and Mercurial. These days I see that Git is the most used, so I'm left wondering: would there be any specific reason to still use Subversion, or should I go directly to Git?"}
{"_id": "54338", "title": "Pitfalls of using MySQL as your database choice?", "text": "I've read online on multiple occassions that MySQL is a bad database. The places I've read this include some threads on Reddit, but they never seem to delve in on _why_ it's a poor product. Is there any truth to this claim? I've never used it beyond a very simple CRUD scenario, and that was for a university project during my second year. What pitfalls, **if any** , are there when choosing MySQL as your database?"}
{"_id": "122452", "title": "Single responsibility principle - am I overusing it?", "text": "For reference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principle I have a test scenario where in one module of application is responsible for creating ledger entries. There are three basic tasks which could be carried out -   * View existing ledger entries in table format.   * Create new ledger entry using create button.   * Click on a ledger entry in the table (mentioned in first pointer) and view its details in next page. You could nullify a ledger entry in this page. (There are couple more operation/validations in each page but fore sake of brevity I will limit it to these) So I decided to create three different classes -   * LedgerLandingPage   * CreateNewLedgerEntryPage   * ViewLedgerEntryPage These classes offer the services which could be carried out in those pages and Selenium tests use these classes to bring application to a state where I could make certain assertion. When I was having it reviewed with on of my colleague then he was over whelmed and asked me to make one single class for all. Though I yet feel my design is much clean I am doubtful if I am overusing Single Responsibility principle"}
{"_id": "112863", "title": "Do real-world algorithms that greatly outperform in the class below exist?", "text": "Last night I was discussing with another programmer that even though something may be O(1), an operation which is O(n) may outperform it if there are is a large constant in the O(1) algorithm. He disagreed, so I've brought it here. Are there examples of algorithms which greatly outperform those in the class below it? For example, O(n) being faster than O(1) or O(n2) being faster than O(n). Mathematically this can be demonstrated for a function with an asymptotic upper bounds, when you disregard constant factors, but do such algorithms exist in the wild? And where would I find examples of them? What types of situations are they used for?"}
{"_id": "112865", "title": "What is the difference between skill level amongst programmers?", "text": "I am a beginning programmer and in 5-10 years I'd like to be an expert. I love programming because it is a distinct skill set that you can continually improve on. But then I thought, how can you continually improve? At a certain point, don't you just \"know\" how to program? I imagine, just like at most things one can be great at, that, at the top, the difference in skill is probably minimal. So what makes a better programmer? Clearer code? Faster understanding of concepts? Being able to write a post on SO without it being closed? (I feel like this post is doomed, but it really is a question I was wondering.)"}
{"_id": "179383", "title": "Open Source License that prevents re-selling", "text": "I have an open source project that is a add-in to TFS (ie it is for developers and those using TFS.) It is currently using the GPL. But it occurs to me that the GPL does not really represent what I am trying to do with my license. I want my code to be free to everyone who wants to use it. And if you modify it and use it then that is great too. You should not have to open source your modifications. But I would like to block someone from building my code and selling it. Or modifying it and selling it. (Anyone that wants to do that should have to negotiate a separate license with me.) **Is there an open source license that prevents re-selling, but allows full non-vending use for a person/company that downloads it?**"}
{"_id": "155852", "title": "Programming SOLID Principles", "text": "Over time I could understand two parts of SOLID \u2013 the \u201cS\u201d and \u201cO\u201d. \u201cO\u201d \u2013 I learned Open Closed Principle with the help of Inheritance and Strategy Pattern. \u201cS\u201d \u2013 I learned Single Responsibility principle while learning ORM (the persistence logic is taken away from domain objects). In a similar way, what are the best regions/tasks to learn other parts of SOLID (the \u201cL\u201d, \u201cI\u201d and \u201cD\u201d)? References   1. msdn - Dangers of Violating SOLID Principles in C#   2. channel9 - Applying S.O.L.I.D. Principles in .NET/C#   3. OOPS Principles (SOLID Principles)"}
{"_id": "179381", "title": "Integrating feature request functionality directly into the business software you write?", "text": "What are relative merits of something like a button on a piece of custom bizware that says, \"press me to ask for a feature\" or \"click here if something didn't work right\". The problem I'm trying to remedy is the general lack of formality surrounding feature requests. Most specifically, the rate at which I receive walk-ups from end-users. Taken one at a time, it can be beneficial, but sometimes it can hinder productivity on the larger scale. Has anyone done something like this and has it been a general success or alternately somewhat a waste of time. My instincts are not giving me a hint here."}
{"_id": "179386", "title": "What are the downsides of implementing a singleton with Java's enum?", "text": "Traditionally, a singleton is usually implemented as               public class Foo1     {         private static final Foo1 INSTANCE = new Foo1();              public static Foo1 getInstance(){ return INSTANCE; }              private Foo1(){}              public void doo(){ ... }     }      With Java's enum, we can implement a singleton as               public enum Foo2     {         INSTANCE;              public void doo(){ ... }     }      As awesome as the 2nd version is, are there any downsides to it? (I gave it some thoughts and I'll answer my own question; hopefully you have better answers)"}
{"_id": "155856", "title": "Does anyone have a good example/sample of \"goto\" spaghetti code?", "text": "I've read a lot about how GoTo was considered harmful and removed for other control structures that were more intuitive. Does anyone have a good example / sample of goto spaghetti code? Preferrably, the sample code should be difficult to follow, but realtively easy when rewritten into more conventional control structures. I know I could try to write you some of my own, but I've never really used goto and don't think I could due justice to the headaches its abuse can lead to. I want this for didactic purposes to train junior developers on what to avoid. Mainly, to point to illustrate how OOP is taking the same idea to next logical consequence. EDIT: by **good example** I mean code that is terrible to read and abuses it, rather than code that uses goto for reasonable optimization"}
{"_id": "143735", "title": "Adding a forum to an existing site", "text": "I've got a site with ~500 registered members, 300 of which are what you'd call \"active\". Site data is kept in a MySQL dbase. I'd like to add a myBB forum to the site, but this question applies to any forum really. What I very much want to avoid is requiring my users to register both on the site and on the forum because my userbase is not technically literate and this would confuse a lot of them. However the forum software has its own registration, login, cookie, and password management system which naturally are different from the site's mechanics. I envision the following possibilities:   * install myBB into the existing database and customize the login code to unify the two systems. This would probably mean changing the site's code to use the myBB system as that would likely be less painful to refactor and wouldn't hurt future myBB upgrade ability.   * install myBB into separate database and write a bridging script of some sort that auto-registers existing site users with the forum if they elect to participate. Also check new forum registrations against the site's username list to prevent newcomers from taking existing names.   * run them fully separate and force users to re-register (easiest for ME, but least desirable for them) I would like a suggested course of action from those who have trod this path before."}
{"_id": "155859", "title": "Why do we need to put N before strings in Microsoft SQL Server?", "text": "I'm learning T-SQL. From the examples I've seen, to insert text in a `varchar()` cell, I can write just the string to insert, but for `nvarchar()` cells, every example prefix the strings with the letter N. I tried the following query on a table which has `nvarchar()` rows, and it works fine, so the prefix N is not required:               insert into [TableName] values ('Hello', 'World')      Why the strings are prefixed with N in every example I've seen? What are the pros or cons of using this prefix?"}
{"_id": "175609", "title": "How to structure a XML-based order form using ASP.NET", "text": "First question here; please help me if I'm doing something wrong. I'm a graphic designer who's trying to teach himself ASP.NET/C#. My server- side background is PHP/WordPress and some ASP Classic, and when I do code I've hand-coded just about everything since I started learning HTML. So, as I've started to learn .NET, my code has been very manual and procedural. I'm now trying to create a really basic order form that pulls from an XML file to populate the form; there's an image, a title, a price, and selectable quantities. If I was making this form as a static HTML file, I'd have each field named manually and so on postback I could query each field to get the values. But I'm trying to do this dynamically so that I can add/remove items from the form and not have to change the code. In terms of displaying the XML, I rolled my own by loading `XmlDocument` and using `XmlNodeList` and a bunch of `foreach` loops to get things displayed. Then, I learned about `<asp:XmlDataSource>` and `<asp:Repeater>`, which made displaying the XML simpler by a large margin. However, I've had a really hard time getting the data that's been submitted on postback (it was implied on SO that there are better ways to get data than nested RepeaterItems). So, what I've learned so far is that you can do things a bunch of different ways in .NET. that's why I thought it'd be good to ask for answers regarding the best way to use ASP.NET to display a XML document and dynamically capture the data that's submitted. Any help is appreciated! I'm using Notepad++ to code .NET 2.0."}
{"_id": "179389", "title": "Find the new coordinates using a starting point, a distance, and an angle", "text": "Okay, say I have a point coordinate.               var coordinate = { x: 10, y: 20 };      Now I also have a distance and an angle.               var distance = 20;     var angle = 72;      The problem I am trying to solve is, if I want to travel 20 points in the direction of angle from the starting coordinate, how can I find what my new coordinates will be? I know the answer involves things like sine/cosine, because I used to know how to do this, but I have since forgotten the formula. Can anyone help?"}
{"_id": "94745", "title": "If your team does code review, to what extent do you verify that review fixes are carried out?", "text": "On my team, we carry out code reviews (without the use of external tools). The reviewer produces a list of items which the developer should address or consider and then essentially leave them to it (after discussing with them the relevant points) without follow up on their subsequent changes. Occasional spot checks suggest that for the most part all the comments are being addressed. However, in a lot of literature on the subject of code-reviews there is a strong emphasis on verifying that the code review comments are addressed. I'm wondering what people's thoughts are on this. Does your team have (or had) issues with people not addressing comments? Does your team behave like mine and not do the verification step? If your team does do the verification step, how often is it just a rubber stamp exercise?"}
{"_id": "237416", "title": "Why can we not insert into files without the additional writes? (I neither mean append, nor over-write)", "text": "This occurs as a programming language independent problem to me. I have a file with the content               aaabddd      When I want to insert `C` behind `b` then **my code** needs to rewrite `ddd` to get               aaabCddd      Why can I not just insert `C` at this position? I can not do this in Java, Python, ... . I can not do this in Linux, Windows, ... . Am I right? I do not understand why `C` can't simply be inserted without the additional writes. Would someone please explain why this is so?"}
{"_id": "148859", "title": "Programming with voice recogition software", "text": "I used Dragon Naturally Speaking very briefly a few years ago and was thinking if it would be a viable solution for programming? I was thinking more so if you break your arm or something that would be a major hinderance to programming. This same question on SO but was never answered."}
{"_id": "148856", "title": "Do DVCSes discourage continuous integration?", "text": "Say there is a team of ten agile developers. Every day they each pick a task from the board, commits several changes against it, until (by the end of the day) they have completed the task. All developers check in directly against trunk (Google-style, every commit is a release candidate, using feature toggles etc). If they were using a centralized CVS like SVN, every time one of them commits, the build server will integrate and test their changes against the other nine developers' work. The build server will be pretty much running continuously all day. But if they were using a DCVS like git, the developer may wait until they complete the task before pushing all their local commits together up to the central repository. Their changes will not be integrated until the end of the day. In this scenario, the SVN team is continuously-integrating more frequently, and discovering integration problems much faster than the git team. Does this mean DVCSs are less suitable for continuous teams than older centralized tools? How do you guys get around this deferred-push issue?"}
{"_id": "201152", "title": "OOP Design - Possible wrong approach makes it impossible to implement it in code", "text": "This last semester i've had lectures about OOP design, i understood most of what i was supposed to   but there is something that i can't get right. I'm pretty sure that the models i create are wrong because they cannot be implemented. I wrote quite a lot because i can't tell where the problem is. This isn't homework , it is a sample of a problem from the past year. An example: Design a \"Stackoverflow\" like thing for a class. Use case: Posting a question pre-conditions: There is a authenticated student pos-conditions: The question was recorded and everyone that can read the question has been notified. Scenario:               1. The student tells the system he wants to submit a question and supplies the title     2. The system asks for the question body.     3. The student submits the question body.     4. The system records this.     5. The system reports all used question tags on that student's class.     6. The student submits the choosen question tag     7. The system records everything and reports the used tags     8. The student tells if he wants the question to be public     9. The system records everything and notifies the people it should      Steps 6,7 can be repeated until the user tells us he's done. There are extensions but not necessary to demonstrate my problem. How would i do it: System Sequence Diagram               newQuestion(title)     ------------------>          OK     <------------------          submitBody(bodytext)     ------------------->  _                           | LOOP     Existing tags         |     <-------------------  |                           |     choosetag(tag)        |     ------------------->  |                           _     chooseVisibility(b)                             ------------------->          OK     <-------------------      The domain model would have: Student Class Instructor Question Tag StudentCatalog InstructorCatalog The relations between each other's are simple ( i believe ) thats why i'm not sketching it up. I noticed my issue when making the interaction diagram for this use-case. I decided that the use-case controller would be a made up \"handler\" class QuestionHandler so the first two interaction diagrams i would believe to be something like:               newQuestion(title)      - it has to create a question with the proper title title      submitBody(bodytext)      - it has to set bodytext has the text for the question we are creating ( and i don't know where it is!)      **The actual problem:** From all this i imagine the code to be:               class QuestionHandler      method postQuestion(title) {       newQuestion(title);       submitBody(bodytext);       ... etc      }      And i can't see this working like this, my problem where does \"submitBody(bodytext)\" gets the currentQuestion from? How do i handle the \"context\" of each use-case, which in this case i would make it messy ( that's how it feels to me) and use the return values to make it work. But what if i have a use-case \"context\" that requires lots of things to me change and moved around? Im totally lost, i thought it would solve itself but it turns out o can't see how things would be implemented with this issue."}
{"_id": "252744", "title": "Open source from protected rights", "text": "I've got a question about author rights and open source software. Assuming I want to build a software. A similar software is already created, but isn't free at all and owned by a company. Can a build an open source clone of the proprietary software from scratch? Or is it forbidden by intellectual property? And what if I use proprietary ideas in the open source software?"}
{"_id": "252746", "title": "Assigning responsibility for cancelling an Order", "text": "During a conversation with our Domain Expert we can across this feature: > A Customer service agent can cancel an Order by decreasing its quantity. To > cancel an Order we decrease its quantity by the specified quantity, change > its status to either partially cancelled or fully cancelled and log the CS > agent who issued the cancellation. We are currently split between several solutions (assuming we have the `agentId`, `orderId` and `cancelledQty` from the request): **Solution 1:**               CSAgent agent= (CSAgent) EmployeeRepository.getById(agentId);     Order order= OrderRepository.getById(orderId);     agent.cancel(order,cancelledQty);      vs   **Solution 2:**               CSAgent agent= (CSAgent) EmployeeRepository.getById(agentId);     Order order= OrderRepository.getById(orderId);     order.cancel(cancelledQty,agent);      **Solution 1** really captures what the requirements is conveying and reads really well; however, **solution 2** seems more natural when coding the implementation of the cancel() method as I'll mostly update fields in the `Order` class itself which I hope to keep `private` with no public setters.   The only thing I need from the `CSAgnet` class is a snapshot of its data to be stored with the `Order`. So how should I determine the best course of action from a DDD perspective?"}
{"_id": "252740", "title": "Checked vs unchecked exception when validating documents in this service", "text": "I have a service that allow users to add dynamic content to a repository. So basically I have a generic Document class that contains a list of property for that specific object depending on what type of document the user is adding (eg. an invoice document has an invoice number property while a wiki document has an author property, and so on). The service is comprised of different layers and at some point I have a class that has to check if the document to be added is compliant to the rules configurer, evaluating if all required properties are provided, if they are all of the right type, etc. If any of these validations fail I want to throw a custom exception which contains the validation status. The question is:   * Should my ValidationException be checked or unchecked?  I read a lot of best practice on how to decide what kind of exception use. I was thinking about using RuntimeException but in this case the exception is not caused by error in coding or stuff like that but just by the user input... On the other hand using a checked exception would mean to propagate the \"throws\" syntax in all the above layer of the application and probably in the 90% of the service's methods making the code much less readable and maintainable."}
{"_id": "252741", "title": "Scaling Azure across subscriptions", "text": "I've been doing a lot of work with VMs recently and can see the massive advantages of the platform. It's my understanding that subscriptions are a very good way of managing your clients. For example I have some software which requires a VM, a SQL database and two websites. When I sign up a new client I create a new Subscription which they pay for and deploy my various components to it - they get the hosting bill. However, it seems to me that where Azure doesn't scale particularly well is when I have a hundred or a thousand clients. It's my understanding I'd need a publish profile for each one and every time we do a release I'd need to deploy 400 components. Is there a better way of managing multiple instances of your solution?"}
{"_id": "252748", "title": "Is it actually worth unit-testing an API client?", "text": "This is something that's been troubling me for a while now. Is it actually worth unit-testing an API client? Let's say you're creating a small class to abstract-away the calls to a petshop REST API. The petshop is a very simple API, and it has a basic set of methods:   * `listProducts()`   * `getProductDetails(ProductID)`   * `addProduct(...)`   * `removeProduct(ProductID)` In testing this, we'd have to either create a mock service or mock the responses. But that seems overkill; I understand that we want to make sure that our methods don't stop working through typo/syntax errors, but since we're writing functions that call remote methods and then we're creating fake responses from those remote methods, it does seem like a waste of effort and that we're testing something that can't really fail. Worse, if the remote method changes our unit tests will pass while production use fails. I'm pretty sure I'm missing something, or I've got the wrong end of the stick, or I'm not seeing the wood for the trees. Can someone set me on the right track?"}
{"_id": "156508", "title": "Why use binary files to stack up different versions on DMSs?", "text": "I've used both Liferay and Alfresco trying to use them as the Document Management System for an intranet. I noticed the following:   * They use the file system and the database to store files   * They use a GUID to name the file on the filesystem and that GUID is used as an Id in the database.   * The GUID-named file is a binary file   * The GUID-named binary file stores all versions for a given file   * The path for the file in the DMS doesn't match the one in the file system   * The URL makes reference to the GUID when a certain file is requested What I want to know is why is this, and what would be the best way of doing it. Like how to would you create the binary file (zip?), and what parts would you keep in the binary file and what parts would you store in the database (meta-data, path?). I'm assuming some of the benefits of doing it like this. As having the same URL for a file, regardless of its current document path. And having only one file even if the file has changed names over time."}
{"_id": "29436", "title": "Is it a bad idea to release software on the night before Christmas?", "text": "We're about to go live with a new version of our system. It's getting really close to Christmas. I work in a very small company. Everyone will be on leave or sporadically available over the next week or so. I've argued with my boss that this is very risky and that we should go live in the new year when everyone is back and when we can provide full support. He is unflinching - he argues that we need to go live sooner - so that we can get new users and more revenue which we need. The number of new users will be minor amount over the next week or so. There has been a decent amount of system testing performed on the system. However a new live system, in my experience, needs a lot of care and attention in the first few days. Am I being pessimistic or realistic? Update - January: The system did not go live over Christmas. Ongoing system testing revealed various problems. So no support issues to deal with. Still preparing for release..."}
{"_id": "216111", "title": "Reverse subarray of an array with O(1)", "text": "I have an idea how to implement sub array reverse with O(1), not including precalculation such as reading the input. I will have many reverse operations, and I can't use the trivial solution of O(N). **Edit:** To be more clear I want to build data structure behind the array with access layer that knows about reversing requests and inverts the indexing logic as necessary when someone wants to iterate over the array. **Edit 2:** The data structure will only be used for iterations I been reading this and this and even this questions but they aren't helping. There are 3 cases that need to be taking care of:   * Regular reverse operation   * Reverse that including reversed area   * Intersection between reverse and part of other reversed area in the array Here is my implementation for the first two parts, I will need your help with the last one. This is the rule class:               class Rule {         public int startingIndex;         public int weight;     }      It is used in my basic data structure City:               public class City {         Rule rule;         private static AtomicInteger _counter = new AtomicInteger(-1);         public final int id = _counter.incrementAndGet();              @Override         public String toString() {             return \"\" + id;         }     }      This is the main class:               public class CitiesList implements Iterable<City>, Iterator<City> {              private int position;         private int direction = 1;         private ArrayList<City> cities;         private ArrayDeque<City> citiesQeque = new ArrayDeque<>();         private LinkedList<Rule> rulesQeque = new LinkedList<>();                   public void init(ArrayList<City> cities) {             this.cities = cities;         }              public void swap(int index1, int index2){             Rule rule = new Rule();             rule.weight = Math.abs(index2 - index1);             cities.get(index1).rule = rule;             cities.get(index2 + 1).rule = rule;         }              @Override         public void remove() {             throw new IllegalStateException(\"Not implemented\");         }              @Override         public City next() {             City city = cities.get(position);             if (citiesQeque.peek() == city){                 citiesQeque.pop();                 changeDirection();                 position += (city.rule.weight + 1) * direction;                 city = cities.get(position);             }             if(city.rule != null){                 if(city.rule != rulesQeque.peekLast()){                     rulesQeque.add(city.rule);                     position += city.rule.weight * direction;                     changeDirection();                     citiesQeque.push(city);                 }                 else{                     rulesQeque.removeLast();                     position += direction;                 }             }             else{                 position += direction;             }             return city;         }              private void changeDirection() {             direction *= -1;         }              @Override         public boolean hasNext() {             return position < cities.size();         }              @Override         public Iterator<City> iterator() {             position = 0;             return this;         }          }      And here is a sample program:               public static void main(String[] args) {             ArrayList<City> list = new ArrayList<>();             for(int i = 0 ; i < 20; i++){                 list.add(new City());             }             CitiesList citiesList = new CitiesList();             citiesList.init(list);                  for (City city : citiesList) {                 System.out.print(city + \" \");             }             System.out.println(\"\\n******************\");             citiesList.swap(4, 8);                  for (City city : citiesList) {                 System.out.print(city + \" \");             }             System.out.println(\"\\n******************\");             citiesList.swap(2, 15);                  for (City city : citiesList) {                 System.out.print(city + \" \");             }         }      How do I handle reverse intersections?"}
{"_id": "29433", "title": "How to write a good exception message", "text": "I'm currently doing a code review and one of the things I'm noticing are the number of exceptions where the exception message just seems to reiterate _where_ the exception occurred. e.g.               throw new Exception(\"BulletListControl: CreateChildControls failed.\");      All three items in this message I can work out from the rest of the exception. I know the class and method from the stack trace and I know it failed (because I've got an exception). It got me thinking about what message I put in exception messages. First I create an exception class, if one does not already exist, for the general reason (e.g. `PropertyNotFoundException` \\- the _why_ ), and then when I throw it the message indicates what went wrong (e.g. \"Unable to find property 'IDontExist' on Node 1234\" - the _what_ ). The where is in the `StackTrace`. The _when_ may end up in the log (if applicable). The _how_ is for the developer to work out (and fix) Do you have any other tips for throwing exceptions? Specifically with regard to the creating new types and the exception message."}
{"_id": "230011", "title": "Running time question", "text": "I have an array A of n integers, sorted from min to max, and two numbers a<=b, which are known to be in A. I would like to write a pseudo-code for a procedure whose running time is c1+c2log(n) and which returns the number of elements in A which satisfy a<=A[i]<=b. I wrote the following but am not sure it satisfies the requirement for the running time and would appreciate some help: _NB <\\- denotes an arrow_               LBound(Input: integer n, sorted array of integers A, integer a) {       min  \u2190 1       max  \u2190 n       while (min <= max) {     mid  \u2190  |_(min \uf02b+ max) / 2_|         if (A[mid] < a)           min  \u2190  mid + 1     else           max  \u2190  mid - 1       }       output(min)     }     LBound(Input: integer n, sorted array of integers A, integer a) {       min  \u2190 1       max  \u2190 n       while (min <= max) {     mid  \u2190  |_(min \uf02b+ max) / 2_|         if (A[mid] > b)           max  \u2190  mid - 1     else           min  \u2190  mid + 1       }       output(max)     }     Range(Input: integer n, sorted array of integers A) {      output (1 + UBound(n,A,b) \u2013 LBound(n,A,a))      }"}
{"_id": "89859", "title": "Fixing sudden serious problem in software", "text": "For example, company that uses our software suddenly has found a serious bug and can't continue to work. The bug has exposed a big problem in software design and fixing it will take few days. What is the best approach to solve such problems? What developers should do: start to rewrite code to fix the bug, writing a quick hotfix first, etc?"}
{"_id": "175066", "title": "How to promote code reuse and documentation?", "text": "As a team lead of about 10+ developers, I would want to promote code reuse. We have written a lot of code-- a lot of them are repetitive over the past few years. The problem now is that a lot of these code are just duplicate of some other code or a slight variation of them. I have started the movement ( discussion) on how to make code into components so that they can be reused for the future projects, but the problem is that I afraid the new developers or other developers who are ignorant of the components will just go forward and write their own thing. Is there anyway to remind the developers to reuse the components/ improve the documentation/ contribute to the underlying component instead of duplicating the existing code and tweaking on it or just write their own? How to make the components easily discover-able, easily usable so that everyone will use it? Edit: I think every developer knows about the benefit of reusable components and wants to use them, it's just that we don't know how to make them discoverable. Also, the developers when they are writing code, they know they should write reusable code but lack of the motivation to do so."}
{"_id": "179924", "title": "Does low latency code sometimes have to be \"ugly\"?", "text": "(This is mainly aimed at those who have specific knowledge of low latency systems, to avoid people just answering with unsubstantiated opinions). Do you feel there is a trade-off between writing \"nice\" object orientated code and writing very fast low latency code? For instance, avoiding virtual functions in C++/the overhead of polymorphism etc- re-writing code which looks nasty, but is very fast etc? It stands to reason- who cares if it looks ugly (so long as its maintainable)- if you need speed, you need speed? I would be interested to hear from people who have worked in such areas."}
{"_id": "179921", "title": "Training a newbie tester", "text": "I am training an engineering fresh out of college to work on testing (both manual and automated testing). What are some possible ways to go about it? (books, videos, beta testing sites, etc.) Obviously I will be using the person on our codebase too, but I am also interested in them gaining a larger breadth of testing knowledge that they can then bring into our project."}
{"_id": "27726", "title": "Obsession, how much is too much?", "text": "I'm 17 and I've started programming and reading SE all day, every day. I absolutely love it and want to program for a living, but how much is too much? Is it unhealthy to sit at a computer all the time? Is this just a phase? Did this happen to you? If so, what did you do about it?"}
{"_id": "161149", "title": "Expected behavior when an request for a collection will have zero items", "text": "Let's say you are given the following...               List<Thing> theThings = fubar.Things.All();      If there were nothing to return, what would you expect fubar.Things.All() to return? Edit: Thanks for the opinions. I'll wait a bit and accept the entry with the most ups. I agree with the responses so far, particularly those suggesting an empty collection. A vendor provided an API with several calls similar to the example above. A vendor who did $4.6 million in revenue via their API(s) last year, BTW. They do something I fundamentally disagree with -- they throw an exception."}
{"_id": "129567", "title": "What should be the Roadmap for JAVA EE", "text": "I have done Java SE and want to start JAVA EE. But i am very confused, from where i have to start .So please tell me the roadmap from where to start Java EE ?"}
{"_id": "97801", "title": "Planning to move to financial sector", "text": "I am planning to get a job in the financial software domain. I have plenty programming experience(10 years) but none in financial software. I have some basic knowledge of financial concepts but I wonder what financial software companies look for when selecting employees. Thanks"}
{"_id": "129569", "title": "How to incrementally update a database when deploying a website?", "text": "We use JSF over Tomcat along with a backing proprietary DB. I want to know how the addition of new database fields or/and stored procedures should be handled when we deploy a new version of the application. We deploy by sending a WAR file to the hosting Team, as such our WAR should be able to setup the stored procedure when it starts. What are the possible appropriate strategies to be able to incrementally update the database?"}
{"_id": "238947", "title": "Do we tell the object to do something or do we do something (on/with/to/etc.) the object?", "text": "Take the (unprecedented and groundbreaking) example of the calculator:               public class Calculator     {         public double Add(double augend, double addend)          {             return augend + addend;         }     }      When I write `calculator.Add(val1, val2)` which of the following am I doing?   * Telling the calculator to add the inputs   * Adding the inputs with the calculator (One could also ask: \"Is it a method _of_ the object or is it a method _on_ the object?\") Other examples: do we tell the repository to add the entity or do we add the entity to the repository? Do we tell the message service to deliver a message or do we send a message through the message service? Do we tell the can of paint to mix itself or do we mix the can of paint?"}
{"_id": "238944", "title": "Access items of a container with a pattern", "text": "I've two C++ classes with a relation: a container class which has a list of items. For example a library has got many books. The classes are the library and the book. Now from the external world I have to create, update and delete books. In addition there other classes that are interested to know when an event on a book happens and these (observers) instances can be created at run-time. Now I've got different ways to proceed: 1) Use always the container to do the operation: central point of management but I have to create couples of methods for example setTitle(bookID) that call setTitle() on the book, bad; 2) Use a getBook() on the container to return a reference of the book, allow the modification, at this point I have to use a commit method to notify the container which can notify the observer but in this way the pattern doesn't force a \"commit\", I mean if the external caller doesn't call commit() I loose :) 3) Use a getBook() on the container to return a copy of the book and an update method of the container to overwrite the book, central point of management again but the book if big is a problem, a lot of copies are really bad. Any tips? Is there any pattern that covers this use case?"}
{"_id": "178030", "title": "Concurrency checking with Last Change Time", "text": "I have an app with the following three tables   1. Email (emailNumber, Address)   2. Recipients (reportNumber, emailNumber, lastChangeTime, status)   3. Report (reportNumber, reportName) I have a `C#` application that uses inline queries for data selection. I have a select query that selects all reports and their Recipients. Recipients are selected as comma separacted string. During updating, I need to check `concurrency`. Currently I am using **MAX(lastChangeTime)** for each reportNumber. This is selected as maxTime. Before update, it checks that the               lastChangeTime <= maxTime. --//It works fine      One of my co-developers asked why not use `GETDATE()` as \u201cmaxTime\u201d rather than using a `MAX` operation. That is also working. Here what we are checking is the records are not updated after the `record selection time`. Is there any pitfalls in using `GETDATE()` for this purpose?"}
{"_id": "178037", "title": "How does Google plus page loading work", "text": "On Google plus, when I click on a Google plus profile or any Google plus link the page gets redirected to that link without a full page load but the URL changed and a record added to browser history. How this can be done? Is there any tutorial or document?"}
{"_id": "178038", "title": "What language was \"standard\" for Apple development before Objective C?", "text": "I don't think Objective C was in use from the beginning of Apple hardware development. What languages did app developers use for the earlier Apple computers, such as Apple II or Mac Classic?"}
{"_id": "117990", "title": "Why not use the word bug instead of exception?", "text": "If we refer to exceptions as bugs, why not just call it a bug in the first place instead of an exception? If in the code it's called exception and as soon as it occurs it's called a bug. Then why not call it a bug in the first place? Thank you for any answer or comment."}
{"_id": "55469", "title": "How often is software speed evident in the eyes of customers?", "text": "In theory, customers should be able to feel the software performance improvements from first-hand experience. In practice, sometimes the improvements are not noticible enough, such that in order to monetize from the improvements, it is necessary to use quotable performance figures in marketing in order to attract customers. We already know the difference between perceived performance (GUI latency, etc) and server-side performance (machines, networks, infrastructure, etc). How often is it that programmers need to go the extra length to \"write up\" performance analyses for which the audience is not fellow programmers, but managers and customers?"}
{"_id": "78807", "title": "Hosted Mercurial with Project Management tools", "text": "I have used a couple of the hosted SCM's like Unfuddle and Codespaces before and I like that they have Project Management tools built in. I've started using Mercurial and really like it, I would like to make the switch to it, but I can't seem to find any hosted mercurial solutions that contain project management tools. Does anyone know any hosted solutions that have mercurial repositories with project management solutions? Similar to Aseembla, CodeSpaces, Unfuddle, etc. I know there is BitBucket, but I don't see any project management tools. EDIT: Details about the types of tools I'm looking for. It is for a very small team, 2-5 people. Looking for Agile (or close to Agile) tools. For example, in CodeSpaces there is a card wall, Assembla has a robust ticketing system that you can create swim lanes in, etc."}
{"_id": "198035", "title": "How would you approach this Domino problem?", "text": "This is a problem from an algorithmic competition from a few years back. It has a very simple description, but I don't see any algorithm to solve it efficiently. I am not looking for an implementation, but a general idea how to solve this problem. > Description: We would like to build a domino chain from all tiles we are > given (as in domino two tiles can be joined iff the same number appears on > its adjacent sides). This isn't always possible. Therefore we should output > the minimum number of tiles it is necessary to add to build the chain. > > Input: n pairs of integers in the range [0, 10000] n <= 1000000 (so the > algorithm can be O(nlogn) at worst) > > Output: How many tiles (at least) should be added. > > Example: Input: >   >   >     2 1   >     2 3   >     4 5   >   > > Output: >   >   >     1 >   > > Explanation: (1 2) (2 3) ! (4 5) It's impossible to build the chain without > adding any tiles. Adding one tile ((3 4)) where \"!\" stands creates a correct > chain containing all tiles, therefore the answer is 1."}
{"_id": "117999", "title": "moving from development to quality assurance", "text": "I'm looking for advice on the best way to move from software engineering to quality assurance type of jobs. Let's imagine a middle aged developer who is not up to date on all the current technologies and is having hard time finding a software engineering jobs because he's not really senior/principal engineer type and all the non- managerial positions seem to be taken by younger folks. He has some decent scripting background in Perl/Python/Shell. I would think that he might be very useful on a QA team as a QA/scripter. Does this make sense? Is it possible to find a QA job like that with no pure QA experience on the resume? What's a good way to write a cover letter explaining this? Looking for ideas/good sounding phrases for the cover letter/general feedback on the direction I'm thinking about."}
{"_id": "117998", "title": "How to manage IDE project files on a forked repository", "text": "I recently forked a Git repository, and locally I created a project in my IDE to compile with. My IDE creates a variety of artifacts that I would like to keep saved somewhere. The obvious place would be in the VCS. If I add these files then they will be in the history for my fork. If i want send a pull request to merge upstream I wouldn't want these files included. What would be a recommended workflow for managing these changes that I would never want to go upstream."}
{"_id": "111744", "title": "How can I manage my ViewControllers in my game?", "text": "I'm building a very simple iOS game that doesn't require any fancy OpenGL; I'd like to stick with Core Graphics & Core Animation. I'd like to make this a fullscreen game, and my question is of ViewController hierarchy + management: It seems as though I should have two types of ViewControllers: Basic VCs for navigating between menu screens (ie. Settings, Main Menu, Level Select, etc.), and Gameplay VCs for managing all my UIViews and CALayers. What's a good way to manage these? Is it best practice to have one hierarchy of VCs like a traditional `UINavigationController`-based app, covering the NavBar when I'm displaying a Game ViewController? Or instead should I be removing all other ViewControllers from the stack when I enter \"game mode\", and setting it as my `window.rootViewController` property? Any alternatives / downsides to continually resetting `window.rootViewController`? My gut tells me the latter is better on resources+performance, but advice + direction here would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "196204", "title": "Referencing countries via Foreign Key Constraint", "text": "To make things simple to explain: I've got two tables: `Table1` and `Countries`. The `Countries` table contains a nice flag and some information, such as DisplayName, the ISO3166 ALPHA3 code and the phone code (+49, +xx). `Table1` contains customers with a column `Country`. Is it (in terms of usability, normalization and common human sense) okay to reference from `Table1.CountryId` to `Countries.Id` via a foreign key instead of having a plain `Table1.Country` `nvarchar(255)` field and insert a `string` into that?"}
{"_id": "196207", "title": "Working alone on a project", "text": "So I am working on a small Project at my company, I am a mere trainee engineer (halfway through a Software Engineering degree), where we are developing an intranet - based project management and people management system - it incorporates Employee appraisals, personal skill management and development and so on. Ive been working on this project for a little while, under the direction of a more senior engineer and there has been another trainee working on it too. However soon, a big contract is coming up and the other two have been press- ganged for some of the work, which will tie them up for a long, long time. This leaves me alone to work on this (really fun and full of learning) project alone. Dream come true! Or is it? I've been worried about how I'm simply going to manage the work of three people, are there techniques, tools I can use? The more I think about it, the more intimidated I am (but still relishing the idea of a good challenge). I have to think about planning, diagramming, release notes, test specs and my own hallways testing (where I grab a random person and say \"break it!\"), not to mention the actual programming work! So in short, **how can one person adapt to taking on the workload of three people?**"}
{"_id": "221425", "title": "Why most \"well-known\" imperative/OO languages allow unchecked access to types that can represent a 'nothing' value?", "text": "I have been reading about the (un)convenience of having `null` instead of (for example) `Maybe`. After reading **this article** , **I am convinced that it would be much better to use`Maybe`** (or something similar). However, I am surprised to see that all the \"well-known\" imperative or object oriented programming languages still use `null` (which allows unchecked access to types that can represent a 'nothing' value), and that `Maybe` is mostly used in functional programming languages. As an example, look at the following C# code:               void doSomething(string username)     {         // Check that username is not null         // Do something     }      Something smells bad here... Why should we be checking if the argument is null? Shouldn't we assume that every variable contains a reference to an object? As you can see, the problem is that by definition almost all variables can contain a null reference. What if we could **decide** which variables are \"nullable\" and which not? That would save us a lot of effort while debugging and looking for a \"NullReferenceException\". **Imagine that, by default, no types could contain a null reference**. Instead of that, you would **state explicitly that a variable can contain a null reference** , only if you really need it. That is the idea behind Maybe. If you have a function that in some cases fails (for example division by zero), you could return a `Maybe<int>`, stating explicitly that the result may be an int, but also nothing! This is **one reason to prefer Maybe** instead of null. If you are interested in more examples, then I suggest to read **this article**. The facts are that, despite the disadvantages of making most types nullable by default, most of the OO programming languages actually do it. That is why I wonder about:   * **What kind of arguments would you have** to implement `null` in your programming language instead of `Maybe`? **Are there reasons at all** or is it just \"historical baggage\"? _Please ensure you understand the difference between null and Maybe before answering this question._"}
{"_id": "92357", "title": "what is the benefit of using key/value stores with respect to database sharding?", "text": "What has key/value stores got to do with making database sharding easier? Because if I do not use a key/value store, I can easily shard my database too right? (Like say, I can easily say users with names that start with this character will have their data stored in this server, and those tables themselves aren't key/value stores. so what exactly had key/value stores got to do with database sharding?)"}
{"_id": "119179", "title": "Usefulness of Javadocs with unit testing?", "text": "I am sure some else has experienced the problem of documentation regarding unit tests. I was wondering if anyone has used javadocs with their unit testing to generate their own internal javadoc files to keep track and document their unit tests? If so, did you find it successful? Or you think this a bad way to document unit tests, please let me know. If you have any suggestion for a better way for unit test documentation, it would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "119176", "title": "How to deal with changes that need further testing while working on another test?", "text": "TDD means to test before you start writing production code. So I start writing a test for `MyClass` called `MyClassTest`. It fails and I start to implement the wanted functionality in `MyClass`. During the implementation phase of `MyClass` I encounter that changes on another class (e.g. `MyClassUtils`) are needed to be done. `MyClassUtils` has a test class of its own. Following TDD I should test first before implementing any new functionality. So should I interrupt the work on `MyClass` for the first test and implement the needed methods in `MyClassUtilsTest` first? Or is it better to somehow track (e.g. writing it down on paper, TODOs in the code etc.) the test methods that need to be added and disregard \"test first\"? I often encounter that problem and I am not sure what is the best way to deal with it. The first possibility leads to bigger and messed up commits with changes in at least four classes and longer time periods without commits. The second one disregards the test first principle, leads to a backlog of unimplemented tests and lowers the code coverage. How do you deal with it? I am thankful for any advice. :)"}
{"_id": "119173", "title": "Why use sealed instead of static on a class?", "text": "Our system has several utility classes. Some people on our team use (A) a class with all-static methods and a private constructor. Others use (B) a class with all-static methods (these the juniors). On code analysis, (A) and (B) raise warning CA1052, which recommends marking the class as sealed. Included in the MSDN documentation there is the following advice: > If you are targeting .NET Framework 2.0 or earlier, a better approach is to > mark the type as static. Why does this make any sense? I would have thought the opposite; AFAIK, previous to 2.0 there was no way to mark a class as static."}
{"_id": "50523", "title": "Question about a voting system implementation", "text": "I am implementing a voting system and need some input from fellow programmers. Do you see anything that could go wrong by having users input a valid email and perhaps have a captcha to stop automated voting instead of a traditional login and vote?"}
{"_id": "50520", "title": "Converting to a mac-book pro for multi disciplined development", "text": "I am in a bit of a bind. I have been contracted to create a small suite of applications for Android, iOS and WP7. Currently I am also on the market for a new notebook for development. Now the issue I have is I can either buy a consumer grade macbook and a laptop or I could just buy an 8gb Ram, SSD, i7 mackbook and virtualise windows 7. I have never used a mac or macbook before so before I go purchase anything I would like to know what your thoughts are on this. Has anyone any experience with this?"}
{"_id": "127172", "title": "How can I make an in-house user group successful?", "text": "I would like to launch an in-house user group/forum for the developers in my company, but I'm not sure how to get started. We have several teams of developers spanning many technologies and levels of experience. I envision this as an opportunity for all of us to come together and share techniques, best practices, lessons learned, pain points, new technologies, or anything else a dev finds interesting. This could also be a great way for new hires to integrate, learn how we do things, and share some of the expertise they bring with them. This is my first attempt at anything like this and I'd like to do it right. I'm interested in things like:   * Driving participation   * Keeping things interesting for both 20-year veterans and fresh, green graduates   * Avoiding pitfalls known to be toxic to user groups Has anyone done this successfully? If so, what can you share about the experience?"}
{"_id": "127173", "title": "Work load balance/Task distribution algorithm", "text": "I'm looking for an algorithm to either use or as a jump point for load balancing. Environment: We have ~7 job types that can be scheduled at any time by our users. Some jobs are fast, others are slow (lot of data processing). We have a single instance of a \"job processor\" that will discover jobs that have been scheduled and then execute them. The \"job processor\" will run up to 5 jobs at a time, \"threads\". The problem is that one job could consume so many resources that the other 4 jobs don't get processed and even worse, the other scheduled jobs are delayed for long periods of time. Some jobs can be scheduled as \"run immediately\" which makes them next in line. Solution: Add more instances of the \"job processor\". We have a big VM server that IT is rolling out 3 VM's to each handle an instance of this \"job processor\". By default, it's going to help but I believe that there should be more thought behind it. My solution: In addition to making the \"job processors\" scale horizontally, I think there needs to be a way to determine which jobs an instance will grab based on current load of the instance and also allow for a bias. I suggest we determine statistics for each job type (avg run time, etc) and give it a score of 1-5 (5 being long running). Each instance will determine what its current load is either based on the total score of the jobs its running currently and then factoring in it's bias. For example, I think we should be able to set an instance to be biased toward small jobs so it avoids larger jobs while another instance is biased toward medium jobs, etc. I'm looking for advice on how to go about this. Jobs can consume large amounts of time, cpu and/or memory. My goal is to make sure each instance is only pulling down the work it's capable of doing while keeping the scheduled job queue moving along as quickly as possible. One of the other devs suggested we leave the \"job processors\" alone to just pull whatever is in the queue next or \"round robin\". I say that this could lead to a potential issue where a single instance has pulled down too many large jobs and is struggling to get them done while the other instances are idle."}
{"_id": "127170", "title": "What is better done in Ruby and what is better done in Haskell?", "text": "If you have experience with both Ruby and Haskell, which of the following best describes the applicability and comparative power of the two languages?   1. The two languages better suit different kinds of programs, i.e. Ruby is better for x and Haskell is better for y.   2. They are both general-purpose, and one language better for almost all applications than the other.   3. They are both general-purpose, and whether one language is better than the other is mostly just a matter of personal preference. Or feel free to add your own conclusion. I know Ruby well, and have been studying Haskell for a few weeks without having written any serious applications with it. I primarily want to know which bits of my production Ruby applications I should try rewriting in Haskell, and also what future applications (not toy applications, but real production applications) I ought to consider writing in Haskell rather than Ruby."}
{"_id": "211085", "title": "When is it okay to log filename/line information for errors?", "text": "We have a closed-source commercial C++ application. Some of our logged error messages are in plain English like \"ERROR: could not read file 'foo'\". While others use a macro to print filename/line information like \"\"SplineReticulator.cpp(423): out of bounds\". This is not an assert or a crash, the application recovers fine, but it's an error we want to log. What is a good rule of thumb when plain-English error message is appropriate vs. a filename/line one? Or are filename/line type errors even appropriate for closed-source commercial software? We've heard the argument they are unprofessional looking, but they are handy for debugging."}
{"_id": "127178", "title": "Two HTML elements with same id attribute: How bad is it really?", "text": "Just browsing the google maps source code. In their header, they have 2 divs with id=\"search\" one contains the other, and also has jstrack=\"1\" attribute. There is a form separating them like so:               <div id=\"search\" jstrack=\"1\">         <form action=\"/maps\" id=\"...rest isn't important\">             ...             <div id=\"search\">...      Since this is google, I'm assuming it's not a mistake. So how bad can it really be to violate this rule? As long as you are careful in your css and dom selection, why not reuse id's like classes? Does anyone do this on purpose, and if so, why?"}
{"_id": "49488", "title": "When NOT to use a framework", "text": "Today, one can find a framework for just about any language, to suit just about any project. Most modern frameworks are fairly robust (generally speaking), with hour upon hour of testing, peer reviewed code, and great extensibility. However, I think there is a downside to ANY framework in that programmers, as a community, may become so reliant upon their chosen frameworks that they no longer understand the underlying workings, or in the case of newer programmers, never learn the underlying workings to begin with. It is easy to become specialized to a degree that you are no longer a 'PHP programmer' (for example), but a \"Drupal programmer\", to the exclusion of anything else. Who cares, right? We have the framework! We don't need to know how to \"do it by hand\"! Right? The result of this loss of basic skills (sometimes to the extent that programmers who **don't** use frameworks are viewed as \"outdated\") is that it becomes common practice to use a framework where it is not required or appropriate. The **features** the framework facilitates wind up confused with what the base language is capable of. Developers start using frameworks to accomplish even the most basic of tasks, so that what once was considered a rudimentary process now involves large libraries with their own quirks, bugs, and dependencies. What was once accomplished in 20 lines is now accomplished by including a 20,000 line framework AND writing 20 lines to use the framework. Conversely, one does not want to reinvent the wheel. If I'm writing code to accomplish some basic, common little task, I might feel like I am wasting my time when I know that framework XYZ offers all the features I am after, and a whole lot more. The \"whole lot more\" part still has me worried, but it doesn't seem that many even consider it anymore. There has to be a good metric to determine when it is appropriate to use a framework. What do you consider the threshold to be, how do **_you_** decide when to use a framework, or, when not."}
{"_id": "22528", "title": "Does \u201cnotification center\u201d pattern encourage good or bad program design?", "text": "Sometimes I come across these message-hub-style APIs, for example the Cocoa NSNotificationCenter: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSNotificationCenter_Class/Reference/Reference.html Usually these APIs provide a global access point on which you subscribe to or broadcast messages/events. I'm thinking this is a problem because it encourages a flat and unstructured program architecture, where dependencies are not explicit in the API, but hidden in the source code. You are not forced to think about object ownership and hierarchies, but can rather make any object in your program result in any code anywhere being called. But maybe this is a good thing? Does this pattern generally encourage good or bad program design, and why so? Does it make the code harder or easier to test? Forgive me if this question is too vague or broad. I'm trying to wrap my head around the potential consequences of extensive use of an API like this, and the different ways you could use it. Edit: I guess my biggest issue with this pattern is that the API \"lies\" about dependencies and object couplings, and can be illustrated with this example:               myObj = new Foo();     myOtherObj = new Bar();     print myOtherObj.someValue; // prints 0     myObj.doSomething();     print myOtherObj.someValue; // prints 1, unexpectedly, because I never indicated that these objects had anything to do with each other"}
{"_id": "22526", "title": "Python MVC framework for desktop applications", "text": "I'm used to program with Python and GTK using pygtk library. I feel like my programs are not well separated according to MVC model. I think following a framework it would help me to design better desktop applications. I'd like to know which Python MVC framework for desktop apps you're using and why."}
{"_id": "227868", "title": "Choosing the right Design Pattern", "text": "I've always recognized the importance of utilizing design patterns. I'm curious as to how other developers go about choosing the most appropriate one. Do you use a series of characteristics (like a flowchart) to help you decide? For example: > If objects are related, but we do not want to specify concrete class, > consider Abstract > > When instantiation is left to derived classes, consider Factory > > Need to access elements of an aggregate object sequentially, try Iterator or something similar?"}
{"_id": "22525", "title": "Low level programming - what's in it for me?", "text": "For years I have considered digging into what I consider \"low level\" languages. For me this means C and assembly. However I had no time for this yet, nor has it EVER been neccessary. Now because I don't see any neccessity arising, I feel like I should either just schedule some point in time when I will study the subject or drop the plan forever. ## My Position For the past 4 years I have focused on \"web technologies\", which may change, and I am an application developer, which is unlikely to change. In application development, I think usability is the most important thing. You write applications to be \"consumed\" by users. The more usable those applications are, the more value you have produced. In order to achieve good usability, I believe the following things are viable   * **Good design** : Well-thought-out features accessible through a well-thought-out user interface.   * **Correctness** : The best design isn't worth anything, if not implemented correctly.   * **Flexibility** : An application A should constantly evolve, so that its users need not switch to a different application B, that has new features, that A could implement. Applications addressing the same problem should not differ in features but in philosophy.   * **Performance** : Performance contributes to a good user experience. An application is ideally always responsive and performs its tasks reasonably fast (based on their frequency). The value of performance optimization beyond the point where it is noticeable by the user is questionable. I think low level programming is not going to help me with that, except for performance. But writing a whole app in a low level language for the sake of performance is premature optimization to me. ## My Question What could low level programming teach me, what other languages wouldn't teach me? Am I missing something, or is it just a skill, that is of very little use for application development? Please understand, that I am not questioning the value of C and assembly. It's just that in my everyday life, I am quite happy that all the intricacies of that world are abstracted away and managed for me (mostly by layers written in C/C++ and assembly themselves). I just don't see any concepts, that could be new to me, only details I would have to stuff my head with. So what's in it for me? ## My Conclusion Thanks to everyone for their answers. I must say, nobody really surprised me, but at least now I am quite sure I will drop this area of interest until any need for it arises.   To my understanding, writing assembly these days for processors as they are in use in today's CPUs is not only unneccesarily complicated, but risks to result in poorer runtime performance than a C counterpart. Optimizing by hand is nearly impossible due to OOE, while you do not get all kinds of optimizations a compiler can do automatically. Also, the code is either portable, because it uses a small subset of available commands, or it is optimized, but then it probably works on one architecture only.   Writing C is not nearly as neccessary anymore, as it was in the past. If I were to write an application in C, I would just as much use tested and established libraries and frameworks, that would spare me implementing string copy routines, sorting algorithms and other kind of stuff serving as exercise at university. My own code would execute faster at the cost of type safety. I am neither keen on reeinventing the wheel in the course of normal app development, nor trying to debug by looking at core dumps :D   I am currently experimenting with languages and interpreters, so if there is anything I would like to publish, I suppose I'd port a working concept to C, although C++ might just as well do the trick.   Again, thanks to everyone for your answers and your insight."}
{"_id": "60872", "title": "How to store prices that have effective dates?", "text": "I have a list of products. Each of them is offered by N providers. Each providers quotes us a price for a specific date. That price is effective until that provider decides to set a new price. In that case, the provider will give the new price with a new date. The MySQL table header currently looks like:               provider_id, product_id, price, date_price_effective      Every other day, we compile a list of products/prices that are effective for the current day. For each product, the list contains a sorted list of the providers that have that particular product. In that way, we can order certain products from whoever happens to offer the best price. To get the effective prices, I have a SQL statement that returns all rows that have `date_price_effective >= NOW()`. That result set is processed with a ruby script that does the sorting and filtering necessary to obtain a file that looks like this:               product_id_1,provider_1,provider_3,provider8,provider_10...     product_id_2,provider_3,provider_2,provider1,provider_10...      This works fine for our purposes, but I still have an itch that a SQL table is probably not the best way to store this kind of information. I have that feeling that this kind of problema has been solved previously in other more creative ways. Is there a better way to store this information other than in SQL? or, if using SQL, is there a better approach than the one I'm using?"}
{"_id": "157297", "title": "Is C++ really going out of fashion?", "text": "The TIOBE index claims that the popularity of C++ is waning, and is currently way below C and Java. Echoing this claim, a blogger suggested today, that because C++ is going out of fashion, C++ programmers might be a bargain relative to other programmers. As a C++ programmer, I don't want to be left behind, if the industry moves on to something else, and I certainly don't want to be a \"bargain\". I've been programming in C++ for many years, and clunky as C++ may seem, in my current field (scientific/numeric programming), I just don't see any good alternatives, even though I've looked at dozens of languages. They seem to be either slow, less portable or even clunkier than C++. So, my question is, **are there reliable figures for the popularity of different languages, and C++ in particular** , in the industry? I'm skeptical that C++ is on its way out, because 75% of the qualified Google Code Jam entries were in C++ this year (This does not include the C entries)"}
{"_id": "60876", "title": "Could Most Software Companies & Users Benefit From Rolling Versions", "text": "Having used Google Chrome now for a couple of years, I've really gotten to like rolling/automatic updates. I know that most modern software has \"automatic updates\", but many large pieces of software only have \"minor version automatic updates\", leaving you to pay to for each major version. Obviously, these companies get you hooked with version 1 and then get you to buy each subsequent version since you're often locked in and/or you're used to the product. Is there a viable business model for \"automatic major version updates\"? For instance: \"Is there a business model in which Microsoft could just sell Office\"? There would be no version number. As new features come out, they're automatically added. How could/would they continue to make just as much money?"}
{"_id": "190984", "title": "If I accept contributions under a CLA, can I write \"Copyright (c) My-Name\"?", "text": "I'm thinking about open sourcing a project of mine. I'd accept contributions under a CLA that grants me a copyright license (I'll explain what I mean at the end of this question). \u2014 Now, if someone submits a contribution, is it then okay that I write `Copyright (c) 2013 My-Name` at the top of each file? And mention any contributors in a separate document only, and refer people to the Git commit log and to GitHub statistics if they want details on individual contributors? I think this should be fine with `Copyright (c) My-Name`, since I've been granted a copyright license? If it's not okay, then I suppose the copyright-info-preamble of each source code file would have to include the name of all contributors to that file? Which doesn't seem practical (if there are very many contributors). * * * Here I'll try to explain what I mean with a _\"a CLA that grants me a copyright license\"_. This is an edited excerpt from a CLA by Google: > .2. [...] You [ _that is, the contributor_ ] hereby grant to [ _My-Name, > that is, me_ ] and to recipients of software distributed by [ _My-Name_ ] a > perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable > copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly > display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Your Contributions and > such derivative works."}
{"_id": "165497", "title": "Having two sets of infrequently changing data or converting on the fly", "text": "I am currently working on a small project in which I work with some \"static data\", which is extracted from one source. The data might change from time to time (up to once a week). I don't need all of the information the data includes in my project so to allow easier and a more logical access to it I wrote some small tool that converts the extracted data into my desired format. The conversion is mostly dropping data I don't need, and splitting some strings into arrays. No intensive calculations or anything. But, I drop more than 50% of the original data because their is no need for it. Now since it is static data would it make more sense to just store that converted data and do all further operations from this data or would it make more sense to convert from the raw data on the fly? Since the project is in JavaScript speed of course is important, but if converting on the fly has significant advantages it might make more sense to go with that approach. It is static data from a computer game that defines several units and other objects within the game. They are stored in JSON therefore I can easily use them in JavaScript. But I don't need a lot of the information, just some parts of it to build a kind of \"encyclopedia\", now since the data is already present in JSON I was wondering if I should just use it or convert it before usage."}
{"_id": "165494", "title": "What role does .ini play?", "text": "I am working with a MFC application for the first time and I have lots of doubts the biggest at the moment is What is .ini file and why is it there? What exactly is the role it plays? Can some tell me the required? Edit : What if I make an application and do not have .ini file, what do I loose on?"}
{"_id": "75407", "title": "Handling scripting in windows", "text": "I worked in Linux environment before and I have to work in windows XP for my current project. In linux, I enjoyed using script files for automating tasks(even smaller ones), and it did save me a lot of time. I see windows command prompt is severely handicapped in terms of power and the number of commands available. I came across Power shell, but I think it is a overkill , because I am not a windows admin or something. Have you been in my situation before? Do you work on windows and automate tasks? Is there any place where I can learn them ?"}
{"_id": "150013", "title": "How to work with badly written and formatted code", "text": "I was wondering how people deal with working in a project with badly written and formatted code, I'm talking mixed tabs and spaces, unnecessary parentheses and newlines and a whole bunch of warnings appearing on the code from the IDE. For context I have this problem on java projects, where no formatting was agreed upon. Also, in my case they are projects that have not gone public yet. The possible solutions I can see are:   1. Try and talk to the team leader/code owner, agree to a formatting and reformat everything in one commit. (my preferred choice)   2. Format the piece or pieces of code that you have to change, commit, then make the change and commit (second best)   3. Deal with it, make your changes as minimal as possible, leaving everything else as was.. (worst choice, for me)"}
{"_id": "98389", "title": "xml parser vs JSON parser performance in Java / C / C++", "text": "I am trying to understand which data format is better on embedded device communicating with Server over REST API. XML or JSON?. Is JSON parsing faster than XML parsing in Java / C and C++? I understand for web client JSON is way to go since java script has inbuilt support for JSON but not sure about embedded device(Java/C/C++)."}
{"_id": "26185", "title": "Freelance web development vs. design", "text": "Do web design freelancers (I'm thinking individuals, not companies) typically do all development _and_ design work themselves? What are the options for those with a strong base in back-end web development but less with web design, color schemes, layouts, graphic design, etc.?"}
{"_id": "92974", "title": "TDD: Where should I start?", "text": "I've read a lot about TDD and I've tried to develop using TDD without success ... I always stop staring at the screen... I've learned that I should not write tests for methods or class. I should write tests for behaviors. That's because objects interact with each other and this interaction should be tested. Following the example bellow: > Imagine that, I, as a company owner, would like to save my customers > information to consult that later. That's my business value. Just to learn, I would not like to use any framework or library, just plain PHP and PHPUnit. Ok, now, where should I start? I think that my users must enter an url to go to the form ... So should I test if it's loading the page? Is this a good start? If it's true, how could I test it?"}
{"_id": "209571", "title": "Logic design question for SQL query", "text": "Was wondering if you could help me on a SQL problem I\u2019m having. I have a set of records of events where each event has a start time and end time. No event has the same start time, and the end time for each event is greater than or equal to the preceding event. What I want to be able to do is pull out the set of records that are not overlapping \u2013 where the start time for an event is not between the start/end for any other event. In the example below, the start time for B/C/D are in- between A\u2019s start and end, so I want to keep A, and get rid of B,C,D. Then start over again, keeping E, and get rid of F, then start over and keep G, getting rid of H/I, etc. Seems like this requires a self join but I can\u2019t figure out the criteria for that would identify the records this way. Any ideas?               Event |  Start  | End     A             1            10 (keep)     B             2            11 (discard because start time of 2 < 10)     C             5            15 (discard because start time of 5 < 10)     D             9            12 (discard because start time of 9 < 10)     E             10           13 (keep -  this starts a new set because it\u2019s the first record after A with start >= A end)     F             11           20 (discard because 11 < 13)     G             14           22 (keep -  this starts a new set because it\u2019s the first record after E with start >= E)     H             15           22 (discard because 15 < 22)     I             17           27 (discard because 17 < 22)     J             22           27 (keep -  this starts a new set because it\u2019s the first record after G with start >= G)"}
{"_id": "26188", "title": "What do you put into an Architecture Specification?", "text": "I'm currently revising a number of document templates for my company. One thing we've never had is a formal Architecture Specification, so I'm starting to put one together. What sort of things do you put into your architecture specs? Feel free to copy and paste a table of contents - that would be helpful. Are there any good templates already available on the web?"}
{"_id": "114711", "title": "The relation between Business Rules Engines and Constraint Programming languages", "text": "If one looks at (perhaps older) manuals of Drools or some other rule engines, one of the illustrations of their added value is solving puzzles such as the Miss Manners puzzle (manual of Drools). Now, such puzzles are naturally formulated and solved using Prolog or the more recent Constraint Programming languages, and one wonders why would anyone would use Drools for this purpose. The added value which Prolog and CPL give in this case is their ability to naturally formulate the puzzle as a set of logical predicates and to automatically search the space of solutions (with CPL being more efficient in this respect). But what is the added value of product such as Drools (I mean besides of the bells and whistles of taking, for example, an Excel file and translating it into a set of rules)? More specifically, Prolog implements backtrack search, CLP implement backtrack search with constraint propagation, and therefore instead of searching, so to speak, the whole Cartesian product of spaces for individual variables, they prune away large portions of this product space. This what makes them effective and useful. Both Prolog and CLP are discussed amply in the literature. On the other hand, while it is clear that Rete algorithm caches the set of rules in the form of some data structure(s), thus (to my understanding) making it more effective to evaluate the output if some of the inputs have changed, and giving means to efectively update this data structure for incremental changes, it is difficult (for me) to understand the basic idea, and even more so, its efectiveness (compared to what? to Prolog? to CLP)? Unfortunately, it is hard to find good references that view Rete algorithm in this wider context. The documentation of Drools is unfortunately not very informative in this respect. The most I could find was \"The Rete algorithm, Leaps algorithm, and its descendants such as Drools' Reteoo (and Leaps), provide very efficient ways of matching rule patterns to your domain object data. These are especially efficient when you have datasets that do not change entirely (as the rule engine can remember past matches). These algorithms are battle proven\". Very efficient - compared to what? Battle proven - could one point to real world applications? I would appreciate if one could throw some more light on this subject or give a valid reference."}
{"_id": "114719", "title": "Organizing Git repositories with common nested sub-modules", "text": "I'm a big fan of Git sub-modules. I like to be able to track a dependency along with its version, so that you can roll-back to a previous version of your project and have the corresponding version of the dependency to build safely and cleanly. Moreover, it's easier to release our libraries as open source projects as the history for libraries is separate from that of the applications that depend on them (and which are not going to be open sourced). I'm setting up workflow for multiple projects at work, and I was wondering how it would be if we took this approach a bit of an extreme instead of having a single monolithic project. I quickly realized there is a potential can of worms in _really_ using sub-modules. Supposing a pair of applications: `studio` and `player`, and dependent libraries `core`, `graph` and `network`, where dependencies are as follows:   * `core` is standalone   * `graph` depends on `core` (sub-module at `./libs/core`)    * `network` depdends on `core` (sub-module at `./libs/core`)    * `studio` depends on `graph` and `network` (sub-modules at `./libs/graph` and `./libs/network`)    * `player` depends on `graph` and `network` (sub-modules at `./libs/graph` and `./libs/network`)  Suppose that we're using CMake and that each of these projects has unit tests and all the works. Each project (including `studio` and `player`) must be able to be compiled standalone to perform code metrics, unit testing, etc. The thing is, a recursive `git submodule fetch`, then you get the following directory structure:               studio/     studio/libs/                    (sub-module depth: 1)     studio/libs/graph/     studio/libs/graph/libs/         (sub-module depth: 2)     studio/libs/graph/libs/core/     studio/libs/network/     studio/libs/network/libs/       (sub-module depth: 2)     studio/libs/network/libs/core/      Notice that `core` is cloned twice in the `studio` project. Aside from this wasting disk space, I have a build system problem because I'm building `core` twice and I potentially get two different versions of `core`. ### Question How do I organize sub-modules so that I get the versioned dependency and standalone build without getting multiple copies of common nested sub-modules? ### Possible solution If the the library dependency is somewhat of a suggestion (i.e. in a \"known to work with version X\" or \"only version X is officially supported\" fashion) and potential dependent applications or libraries are responsible for building with whatever version they like, then I could imagine the following scenario:   * Have the build system for `graph` and `network` tell them where to find `core` (e.g. via a compiler include path). Define two build targets, \"standalone\" and \"dependency\", where \"standalone\" is based on \"dependency\" and adds the include path to point to the local `core` sub-module.   * Introduce an extra dependency: `studio` on `core`. Then, `studio` builds `core`, sets the include path to its own copy of the `core` sub-module, then builds `graph` and `network` in \"dependency\" mode. The resulting folder structure looks like:               studio/     studio/libs/                    (sub-module depth: 1)     studio/libs/core/     studio/libs/graph/     studio/libs/graph/libs/         (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched)     studio/libs/network/     studio/libs/network/libs/       (empty folder, sub-modules not fetched)      However, this requires some build system magic (I'm pretty confident this can be done with CMake) and a bit of manual work on the part of version updates (updating `graph` might also require updating `core` and `network` to get a compatible version of `core` in all projects). Any thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "96071", "title": "Developing cross-DB applications", "text": "So far I've always coded using raw/embedded, dialectic SQL. This seems obviously wrong to me because it ties you to concrete technologies so your software can't be deployed to any machine - especially servers. In general (independently of the programming language and RDBMS), what options does one have in this case? How good are each one of them? What would you say is the standard approach?"}
{"_id": "93005", "title": "Designing authentication for REST API", "text": "I'm working up an API for a REST service that I'm going to both be producing and consuming. I've spent the past few days trying to figure out how to handle authentication nicely, and think I've finally come up with something. I'm coming up with this based on the following facts about the application stack:   1. Client & Server are in .NET4 (Client part in Client Profile)   2. Server exposes using WCF REST   3. I really don't want to keep the user name and password in memory in the app From 3, I wanted to use a form of token authentication, so that after the credentials are verified by the server, the client gets a token back to use throughout the rest of the app (this will allow me to do other things, such as timing out users, being able to move users seamlessly between the web and desktop versions, etc). After figuring out how to make the calls replay and tamper resistant, I've come up with the following:   1. Before the client attempts to authenticate, it generates a Diffie-Hellman key pair using the `ECDiffieHellmanCng` class.   2. It sends the public part of the key pair over the wire along with the user name and password (Over HTTPS of course).   3. Server authenticates the username/password combination, if successful, it then does the following:      1. Creates a unique session token     2. Generates its own DH key pair, and calculate the shared secret from the public key provided by the client     3. Makes note of the session token, the shared secret, the user, and the \"last action\" time (used for a rolling expiration window) in its database     4. Returns the session token, its public DH key, and an authentication success message   4. Client takes the DH key from the response, calculates the shared secret, and store both token and secret in memory. From this point on, the session token/secret combination works like most other REST APIs, with the request being fingerprinted and timestamped, and then have some sort of HMAC generated. Whenever a client performs an action against the server, it checks the token/secret pair, and allows the action if it is valid and not expired, and updates the last action record in the session. I don't see any obvious flaws, and is probably over-engineered for this, but I need to learn how to do this at some point. The HMAC prevents replay attacks, the DH negotiation helps prevent MITM attacks (I can't think of a workable attack off the top of my head between HMAC/DH). Any holes anyone can poke in this?"}
{"_id": "93006", "title": "Good practice for unit testing with large or complex fixtures?", "text": "I am trying to use JUnit to test a class (`FooWriter`) that is responsible for writing my application's data to disk using a custom file format. The data set being written is potentially very large, and I want to at least be able to test simple things, such as whether or not the expected number of lines were written out. My problem is that I'm not sure what the best way is to set the test up with realistic test data. It seems like my options are:   1. Read the test data in from disk and then use that data for the `FooWriter` test case   2. Write a hard-coded text fixture for the `FooWriter` test case to use (1) seems like a bad idea because then the `FooWriter` test case would no longer be isolated from other complex, breakable operations. (2) seems like a bad idea because it would result in about a thousand lines of code to compose the data structure, along the lines of:               foo.addBar(new Bar(\"bof\", \"bam\"));     foo.addBar(new Bar(\"baz\", \"boom\"));      Not only is that tedious and error prone, if I were to later make a change in the way the data is constructed, the test could then fail whether or not the application itself is actually broken. In cases like this where I see no good options, I've found it's usually because I'm being stupid. Where's the stupid?"}
{"_id": "104343", "title": "Is it normal for a school to focus on specific programming languages and frameworks?", "text": "Next year I'm going to school to study IT. I went to some schools' open door days already and I was given much information. However, at one school I was told they primarily focus on the .NET Framework and Java. I'm concerned about this because I think the programming language and frameworks used isn't as important as the design of a software program. I'm also concerned about the fact that you can get used to the flaws in those languages and frameworks and you may lack knowledge of other paradigms (such as functional programming). Am I getting this right? Is it normal for a school to focus on a specific language or framework?"}
{"_id": "196984", "title": "How to handle product rebranding in code in a short time frame", "text": "We've all been there - a product feature is called \"gold\", and then a week before launch they decide it is to be called \"platinum\". Luckily, you had some nous about you so the UI code is easy to change. But...what about all the variables and methods? Sure, you could change all these but what about the testing time? Obviously Resharper or some other enterprise level refactoring tool may help but how do you sell a zero-value proposition to the business? After all, that text change on the front screen is just a 2 minute job - right?"}
{"_id": "116713", "title": "What is likely to be the bottleneck between the SQL Server, IIS and .net when receiving json as text from the DB?", "text": "I have spent the best part of a month working on the jQuery Calendar plugin. The setup is such that all the calendar entries are stored in a table inside SQL Server and im using a single \"Select As\" statement to construct the json data within the SQL query itself. This has an execution time of less than one second. However, calling the actual final aspx page in the browser requires a wait of over 240 seconds while the data is passed as json to the browser. I've tried various methods to get around this. For example, i tried writing the query results to a json file first, and then calling the file in on the final page. This reduces the page load time to around 90 seconds but still not fast enough. I've also implemented a function whereby if the data hasnt changed the same json file is returned and is not re-generated. When there is no data that has changed on the calendar this reduced the page load time to around 1 second. Im convinced that writing the json data into the file is the bottleneck here.. But the real question is, is this as efficient as things are realistically going to get with IIS and .net? Or is there room for improvement? I also dont know which aspect to investigate further now. I dont know whether to consider if IIS is causing the hold up, or the way i have put the project together. Is there a more efficient solution that the one i have put together above?"}
{"_id": "116715", "title": "How can I progress from a software developer to a software manager or team leader?", "text": "I've been a software developer (whether part time or full time) for almost 3 years. I've always been the type of person to have that knack for taking a lead on things, and providing the organization around getting things done. Ever since I was the lead on my senior design project back in college, I felt that this was my true calling, not sitting behind a desk coding. Now, I know I need to understand how to code for other developers to truly respect me. Also, I really do love coding. I work on plenty of side projects at home outside of work, keep up with best coding practices, and try and continuously further my knowledge of the domain. My main question is, what type of things or opportunities should I be looking out for that will help me progress my career to a more managerial role, rather than a coding role. Like I said, I LOVE to code, however I'd love even more to be able to design things at a high level, and organize the team in such a way to get things done, and monitor their progress, while helping out with technical decisions here and there. These types of things truly make me happy, as opposed to just sitting behind a desk coding all day long. Obviously one of my main dreams is producing some sort of software on my own that would eventually blow up and make it big, and then beginning to hire a team and do it all myself, but I feel like the chances of that happening are far worse than just altering my career path a little to get where I want to go. I feel like I can garner that same satisfaction doing it for an employer rather than myself. Even though I haven't felt that way before, I feel like it has been mainly because I'm not doing what I TRULY want to do. Any tips, pointers, or things to keep in mind? Anyone that has done just this, and if so, how did you do it?"}
{"_id": "220486", "title": "Game development design patterns and architectures?", "text": "Some friends and me wish to develop a 2D game just for the experience of learning this paradigm. We are all software engineers with experience in business apps, but we are unsure if the typical design patterns and architectures (MVC, 3-layer, etc) apply as well, and we are totally unknown about the techniques that are typically used in Game development (Scenegraphs, key bindings implementation, event management, sound/texture banks...) We plan on developing with C# and XNA/Monogame, and I would be grateful if someone could point out any useful bibliography that could be helpful for us to plan an architecture and deal with any day-by-day game development issues. Thank you"}
{"_id": "220484", "title": "Multi regex matching -- what to do to optimize it?", "text": "I have multiple regexes matching an input in greedy-first mode. All regexes are already compiled and I don't see what I can do more to speed-up things. I mean using tools coming with .Net framework. Since I don't do any replace, or capturing, I wonder if it makes sense to built my own regex matching -- in result I would execute matching only once (per multi-regex) instead of multi matching (per each single regex). Am I thinking too far? Is there other way to speed it up?"}
{"_id": "220480", "title": "HMVC and Database Connections", "text": "Whilst I have good experience with OOP, I'm fairly new to the concept of (H)MVC. I understand the basic concept of modular design that comes with HMVC, it's the great attraction of it. But one thing that has been bugging me, and will hopefully help me understand HMVC better is how do you handle the database connection? I would assume that you would have a module, lets call it Database, that would initiate the connection. Now at the start of my script I would have something along the lines of:               $dbConn = new Database();      That would initiate the connection to the database. However, when I want to run a query I need to run something along the lines of:               $query = \"my query string\";     $result = $dbConn->query($query);      So I need to access the query function of the database object. Now as far as I can tell in HMVC I shouldn't directly access `$dbConn` from within a model of another module. But almost every module will need to access `$dbConn`. From my understanding this means that in the controller of all other modules, any time I need to run a query I would have to create a new instance of the Database module, passing in an array of arguments, telling Database which method to run and what arguments that method needs. But then what if I need to make a call to the database half way through a method in a module's model? Quite often I will need to update a table, or select some data based on an if statement. Surely I shouldn't be moving that logic to the controller? So that means I need to be able to access another module from within a model, which seems to break the rules of HMVC. **So how do I implement a database module as this is confusing me?**"}
{"_id": "105568", "title": "Inject dependency as method parameter instead of constructor parameter", "text": "I'm using an ORM which doesn't allow me to inject dependencies in the constructor. Let's say I'm using DDD for the business logic, and the MVC pattern for the UI. Now one of my domain objects needs to access an external service. I'm very opposed to the service locator anti-pattern (wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole), but as I see it, that leaves me with the following:               class Controller     {         private readonly IExternalService _externalService;              public Controller(IExternalService externalService)         {             _externalService = externalService;         }              public ViewResult Action(Guid Id)         {             // Omitted repository access for brevity.             domainObject.DoSomethingWichNeedsAnExternalService(_externalService);         }     }      Somehow I get the feeling this isn't very clean, what if the \"domainObject\" is buried deep into the model/graph, should the \"_externalService\" be passed all the way down? Are there any best-practice alternatives?"}
{"_id": "106181", "title": "Standards to constraint HTML renderer in only US-EN", "text": "Does W3C or any other organisation has standard or protocol to constraint all developers to make sure they must use american english while they develop any sort of interpreter? To avoid something like, > I was writing code and tried to align image in centre(spelled in british > english) > > align='centre' > > above didn't work!! > > There is no spelling mistake, above spelled word meaning is \"middle\" > > when I wrote > > align='center' it worked, > > Does this mean HTML is written in \"American English\"? What if a developer from British background writes a renderer for web browsers such as gecko? **EDIT** Sorry I am not ranting but, I was wondering if W3C has any standards written somewhere which states that any future code or html tag written for HTML language must be in US-EN. Does anyone have idea whether W3C have some constraint on this?"}
{"_id": "134936", "title": "What should I learn more about debugging?", "text": "To debug my programs I mainly use the following methods:   1. Use printf (or equivalent in other languages) to check the value of a variable after a particular statement or to check whether the program enters a conditional statement or a loop.   2. Use watch/breakpoints when using IDEs. I am able to solve the problems using the above methods. But I have noticed that there are two kinds of builds - debug and release. From the name I can understand that debug build would be helpful in debugging. Also I have read that debug build stores something called symbol table information and stuff. How can I use the debug build for debugging? Are there any other debugging techniques which I should learn?"}
{"_id": "113759", "title": "Which popular object-oriented languages support readonly methods?", "text": "I thought that many object-oriented languages have a reserved keyword for methods which do not modify the state of an object. These methods often have names that start with `get`. AFAIK a \"getter\" is always related to a single object attribute and \"accessor\" is too general, so \"readonly\" may the right term for this kind of methods (?). To give an example:               object Timespan {         attribute start         attribute end              // getter, not changing the state         readonly method getStart    { return start }          readonly method getEnd      { return end }              // also not changing the state         readonly method getDuration { return ( end - start ) }     }      The compiler/interpreter should check that readonly methods have no side- effect by modifying object attributes. I wonder why this language feature is not more common - just naming a method `getFoo` does not ensure that it won't modify the object."}
{"_id": "102699", "title": "What does it mean to be agile?", "text": "We have a project that everyone says we will be doing in a agile way but I doubt we have clearly understood what agile is. In previous projects we had planning meetings, then defined the product back log and allocated the work to developers in 2 to 3 week sprints. Every morning we had scrum meetings (which seemed to go on for 1/2 an hour each time) and each developer got on with it after that. Hardly anyone wrote any tests until at the end of sprint and work that was not completed was added on to the next sprint. Developers hardly spoke to each other and there was no TDD involved in development. In fact most developers had a spec at the start and just got on with it for the 2 or 3 weeks the sprint was arranged for. There was hardly any communication with the client/stake holder. QA got involved usually a few months later and by then we found missing requirements which further increased the amount of work we had to do. Clearly there was no feedback loop. So my question is, where did we go wrong and how can I prevent the team from making the same mistakes."}
{"_id": "146048", "title": "Is C# more superior than Java as a programming language, objectively speaking?", "text": "A colleague (a .NET fan) argued that (in context to Java vs .NET comparison), while there are different arguments for Java and for .NET, and to determine which one is the better choice is a business or personal decision depending on many factors, but from programming language point of view, .NET's C# is clearly a more powerful programming language than Java To summarize, everything that can be written in Java can be written in C# just as easily or easier, but the reverse is not true. Many features such as lambda expression, and linq is impossible (or very hard in Java), and C# also has syntactic sugar that makes things a lot easier, such as extension method, automatic properties, etc. But there is almost no feature that can be done in Java but impossible or very difficult in C#? So, in any possible situation C# is equal or more powerful than Java. Is my colleague's assertion correct? If not, what are some examples of coding that is clean and easy in Java but messy, difficult or impossible in C#? Note: I don't think this is a subjective/argumentative question. I am not looking for arguments that Java is a better choice, or .NET is. I am just asking for evaluation based on facts and concrete examples. For example (made- up example): in .NET iterating on a list will need a dirty workaround and takes dozens of lines, while in java it's just a few clean line"}
{"_id": "251507", "title": "Run RSpec from within a ruby script while refreshing all ruby configs etc", "text": "I'm working with a very large project with tons of established tests that include some reasonably complicated environment setups and what not. I've recently run into a situation testing some eventually true conditions and stuff like that where I want the ability to run a specific test many many many times and figure out the approximate run time to help me figure out how I should be configuring the waiting times on those tests before I assume failure. I wanted to do this via ruby so I could easily dump the rspec results into json blocks for ease of interpretation and modifcation, as many of the tests dump TONS of text into the sysout stream, and I don't really want to parse it all just to get the bit at the end that reports results. Eventually I also want the ability to inject flags into the middles of tests to give me finer grain timing information about how long, for example, a specific part of a specific test runs on average. So far my attempt looks like this.               #some setup code to get $runnerargs configs etc     until $i >= $repetitions do       $config = RSpec.configuration       $json_formatter = RSpec::Core::Formatters::JsonFormatter.new($config.output)       $reporter = RSpec::Core::Reporter.new($json_formatter)       $config.instance_variable_set(:@reporter, $reporter)       #some other stuff       RSpec::Core::Runner.run($runnerargs)       #get results in a json file and do cool things with them     end       The problem I'm having is that it looks like ruby doesn't seem to refresh the environment from within a script by default when running rspecs. For example if I do a similar thing to this test in a shell script it works fine, but gives me really ugly output that I don't want to work with. but running things this way, the first test runs fine, but the next test crashes because environment variables used within the test spec have changed during the execution of the first test and they are not properly restarted. I'm not sure if the fault is ruby or rspec. Anyways, anyone else encounter something similar? Is there a way to force ruby or rspec to completely close down the old environment and spin up a new one the way running from shell script does?"}
{"_id": "188805", "title": "Why build data models in a dynamic language?", "text": "**Background** This question stems out of an architectural discussion we had at work. For the current project we are using Python and an object oriented database. There are input services that we consume, and certain interfaces that we are expected to provide output through. Someone on our team started designing a data model, and my question was: why? A data-only object in Python can just as well be be represented by a dict (there is a fair amount of questions about that on this site). We don't have a relational database that has columns that we need to map objects to either. At the same time, there is a cost to a data model in that it will always need to be maintained. When interfaces change it (IMHO) simply becomes another dependency that needs to be satisfied, but unlike in static-typed languages it does not actually enforce anything. **Question:** The way it seems to me is that when you are in an environment where everything is dynamic, it makes sense for the interfaces to define your data model implicitly rather than maintain some sort of classes that define a model. Are there ever any good reasons to the contrary? **EDIT** In the comments and answers people seem to be focusing on two areas, they are: database mapping and representation as well as validation of the data model. I apologize for not being more explicit about the DB, but in this environment that we face we have an object-oriented DB that stores blobs in a file system- like representation. There is no mapping to SQL and no ORM of any sort to speak of. I do understand the argument though. For example, Django's models require subclassing for ORM to work. In thise case, making model classes makes perfect sense because the DB is effectively a static-typed data store and not 'dynamic'. But this is not the scenario of the question, because it's not a pure dynamically typed environment. Regarding validators: yes. One will need to create validators that check fields being present, and them being of the right type. In static-typed languages the model implicitly does this (when you're coding C++/Java you can't stick user 'std::string' to where a User class should be). But in Python, a model class does not enforce anything. If I am building validators that check presence of attributes anyway, does this not make classes, dicts, generators etc functionally interchangable? And if so, should the solution not be one with least code? Validators in general seem to me to be an argument in favour of _not_ building data model classes rather than the contrary. Am I wrong in this?"}
{"_id": "126121", "title": "What are C's advantages over OOP languages, other than performance?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When to use C over C++, and C++ over C? C still has its own importance in the programming world! And one reason for it is its performance. But, I have some questions.   * Is there anything that is special to C that other languages missing?    * What are its importance today, other than performance issues?    * What are the advantages of C over OOP languages like C++, Java, Python, etc.,?   * Is there anything other that gives a plus point to C?"}
{"_id": "251508", "title": "Is there a stricter strtoull() in any ubiquitous C library?", "text": "I want a function that will interpret a string as a strictly unsigned integer, failing when the string overflows, represents a negative number, or does not represent a number. `strtoull()` does set errno to ERANGE on overflow or EINVAL for a string that does not begin with a number, but accepts negative numbers as valid. `strtoumax()` is the same as `strtoull()` `atoll()` and `strtonum()` are ruled out because they are strictly for signed integers. `sscanf()` sets errno to ERANGE on overflow and stops processing the string if it does not begin with a number (reflected in sscanf's return value), but also accepts negative numbers as valid. Is there another option that I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "185837", "title": "Declaring functions in order to avoid explicit nested loops", "text": "My programming professor has told me that it is a good programming practice (at least in C/C++) to declare a function with the inner loop when nesting loops (not _for_ loops, since when, i.e. looping through a multidimensional array this is very intuitive). For example, if I write               int main()     {         while (cond1)         {             // ...(1)...             while (cond2)             {                 // ...(2)...             }         }     }      then it is better:               type inner_loop(param)     {         // ...(1)...              while (cond2)         {             // ...(2)...         }     }          int main()     {         while (cond1)         {             inner_loop(param);         }     }      What improvements do imply this method? Is there any case in which this way of programming nested loops can be counterproductive? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "146045", "title": "Language that can statically ensure a map's fields are present", "text": "If data is simple and objects are complex, I'm curious if there are any existing statically typed languages that would be able to augment(?) a map type into a type with guaranteed fields. I realize that at runtime, in any language this type of check is pretty doable. But in theory I also believe this should be possible to check with a compiler. To do everything below in Java, would be an explosion of interfaces (HasComplete, HasTitle, HasTitleAndComplete) So has anyone done it? If not, how come? If so, how was it implemented? This would allow you to read in data but then manipulate it with at least some type safety:               // User input is often simply converted to a Map     function parse(json) -> Map {...}           // result still has all user input fields,      // but this would be a runtime exception      // if specified fields are missing     function cast(Map, Map<fields...>) -> Map<fields...> { ... }          input = \"{title:'do it', complete: false, rank: 5, subtitle: 'now'}\"          // Would throw class cast exception if complete or title were missing     todo = cast(parse(input), Map<title:str, complete:bool>)               // Runtime introspection     todo instanceOf Map -> true     todo instanceOf Map<title:str, complete:bool> -> true     todo instanceOf Map<title:str> -> true     todo instanceOf Map<complete:bool> -> true     todo instanceOf Map<complete:date> -> false     todo instanceOf Map<rank:int> -> false because cast() did not specify rank     todo instanceOf Map<title:str, complete:bool, author:str> -> false           // Typed methods based on map with certain fields     function capitalize_title(Map<title:str>) {...}     function finish_task(Map<complete:bool>) {...}     function finish_and_rename(Map<title:str, complete:bool>, newTitle) {...}     function increase_rank(Map<rank:int>) {...}          // Static Check compile pass     todo = capitalize_title(todo)     todo = finish_task(todo)     todo = finish_and_rename(todo, \"[complete]\")          // Static Check Compile Fail because cast() did not specify rank     increase_rank(todo)          // Methods could return a type with added (or removed) fields     function add_uuid(Map) -> Map<+id:int> {...}     todo_with_id = add_uuid(todo)     todo_with_id instanceOf Map<title:str, complete:bool, id:int> // true"}
{"_id": "139876", "title": "Efficient methods for storing tens of millions of objects for querying, with a high number of inserts per second?", "text": "This is basically a logging/counting application that is counting the number of packets and counting the type of packet, etc. on a p2p chat network. This equates to about 4-6 million packets in a 5 minute period. And because I only take a \"snapshot\" of this information, I am only removing packets older than 5 minutes every five minutes. So the maximum about of items that will be in this collection is 10 to 12 million. Because I need to make 300 connections to different superpeers, it is a possibility that each packet is trying to be inserted at least 300 times (which is probably why holding this data in memory is the only reasonable option). Currently, I have been using a Dictionary for storing this information. But because of the large amount of items I'm trying to store, I run into issues with the large object heap and the amount of memory usage continuously grows over time.               Dictionary<ulong, Packet>          public class Packet     {         public ushort RequesterPort;         public bool IsSearch;         public string SearchText;         public bool Flagged;         public byte PacketType;         public DateTime TimeStamp;     }      I have tried using mysql, but it was not able to keep up with the amount of data that I need to insert (while checking to make sure it was not a duplicate), and that was while using transactions. I tried mongodb, but the cpu usage for that was insane and did not keep either. My main issue arises every 5 minutes, because I remove all packets that are older than 5 minutes, and take a \"snapshot\" of this data. As i'm using LINQ queries to count the number of packets containing a certain packet type. I also am calling a distinct() query on the data, where I strip 4 bytes (ip address) out of the keyvaluepair's key, and combine it with the requestingport value in the Value of the keyvalupair and use that to get a distinct number of peers from all the packets. The application currently hovers around 1.1GB of memory usage, and when a snapshot is called it can go so far as to double the usage. Now this wouldn't be an issue if I have an insane amount of ram, but the vm I have this running on is limited to 2GB of ram at the moment. Is there any easy solution?"}
{"_id": "20932", "title": "Whats the real overhead of TDD once the entire team is used to it?", "text": "What percentage of time is saved and costed doing TDD. I assume this percentage of cost and reward changes during a projects life- cycle. I'd imagine the **initial phase** has a lot more cost but little rewards attached. Further on (during **re-factoring** ) you get the benefit of your tests. I've heard anywhere from **30-50% of your time** is writing unit tests. However that doesn't take into account the **time saved** from writing those tests. What's everyones' experience with this? Wes **EDIT** Whats the time saved as well as the time cost? In bug fixing and refactorablity?"}
{"_id": "235757", "title": "A specific problem with architecturing a part of our application", "text": "Firstly, I'll try to describe the real world model of what we are trying to express in C# code. We have a device called M100. It's purpose is to read\\write data from\\into cards (plastic or ULTRALIGHT cards such as MIFARE). It can be with one up to 3 antennas (the device read\\write data through antenna). One of antennas is internal (so card can be put on the device surface and the device will be able to perform read\\write operations), the other are external. Let's consider the usual situation. We have a point of service terminal. M100 reside inside the terminal and it has two external antennas wich are placed over a tract of cards dispenser. Cards dispenser is another device which is responsible for accepting and dispensing cards for performing read\\write operations by M100. So, card dispenser takes the card from the user, move it to the read\\write position and after that M100 can perform read\\write operations. M100 can be equipped with only one (internal) antenna. So we have to main cases: with and without card dispensers. We have one application that interacts with dispensers and the other uses M100 without card dispensers. We developed M100Provider with it's interface IM100Provider. This is the low- level class which interacts with M100 directly, passes commands through COM- port. We have a higher level-operations such as AuthorizeOperator, WriteTicket, ReadCard (all this operations require M100) so we developed M100Communicator class (maybe the name does not reflect it's intention at the time, but we will think about the name a bit later). M100Communicator is a singleton. Because we need to manipulate card dispensers to accept and dispense users cards M100Communicator interacts with CardDispensersManager class. We haven't decide yet wil it be composed into M100Communicator or will it be a singleton (it seems like it's a singleton). All these operations are have to perform in a kind of a unified way:   1. Block the current object.   2. Check if there are some dispensers configured   3. If they are - pass to them a command to open the tract for card acception.   4. Pass to M100 a command to search a card through specified antennas.   5. When the card was found, perform read\\write operations.   6. Dispense card back to the user. Here are the problems we are faced:   1. Considering that M100Communicator sometimes doesn't require CardDispensersManager we are forced to check it's state to null reference everywhere (and it will be quite strange to have a special case CardDispensersManager which will return meaningfull responses while there are no dispensers!).   2. M100Communicator and CardDispensersManager have to be initialized from the start of the system so it's unclear how to update the configuration of CardDispensersManager and M100Communicator and how to communicate with CardDispensersManager directly when we want to close ports and stop communication with dispensers explicitly, because it will be very strange to expose dispensers API through M100Communicator. (yes we have the requirement to be able to access dispensers API from everywhere, so we think that CardsDispenserManager has to be a singleton)."}
{"_id": "194227", "title": "In what programming language did \"let\" first appear?", "text": "I was wondering about the origins of the \"let\" used in Lisp, Clojure, and Haskell. Does anyone know which language it appeared in first?"}
{"_id": "99168", "title": "Do I have to release my code as open source if I use Git?", "text": "This is a question **focused on the legal aspects of software licensing**. I am starting to develop a proeject want the option to claim the source code as properitary and retain full copy rights. I like 'git' (license under GNU v2), but want to make sure of a couple legal things.   1. What is the legal status of source code under version control of 'git' (which is distributed under the GNU v2 license)? Does it qualify as a 'derivative work'?   2. What are the legal ramifications of the source code's legal status? Specifically in regards to being legally obligated to realeasing source code.   3. What besides git (GNU v2 license), what are my other version control options (legally speaking)?"}
{"_id": "99166", "title": "Dijkstra quote on object-orientation?", "text": "I came across the following supposed Dijkstra quote on object-orientation > Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only > have originated in California However even my source isn't convinced the quote is genuine. Does anyone know whether it's genuine, and if so what the context he was speaking in was? I'm aware of the shortcomings of OOP, just wondered which one was in his mind at the time."}
{"_id": "197366", "title": "How to be robust against webservice downtime caused by third parties", "text": "I'm using iPage as my cloud based server provider. I haven't had any problems with them yet. They hold the scripts for my RESTful services for the mobile app I'm developing. My problem however is that tonight the service went down. I got a \"This is a 500\" error. I'm wondering how do I build redundancy into my RESTful services to prevent this stuff from happening. They say it'll be 2 hours at least until they can solve this problem. If my app is live I can't wait 2 hours. My users will get annoyed. I know this happens anyway but how can I build redundancies to prevent it."}
{"_id": "99163", "title": "Ideas about how to prevent malicious code to go into production especially in case of SAAS environments", "text": "As nowadays SAAS is becoming popular way of developing and deploying the applications, and I have just started working at a company providing SaaS solution for payment authorization services. Since past few days, I have been thinking what would happen if some \"unsatisfied / angry\" developer write a malicious code (lets say deleting transaction table !)which would activate on some particular time (so that it would not be caught during testing process) and can create havoc for any time critical SAAS application. Any good SAAS offering comes with proper backup strategy and hence data restoration could be possible upto certain extent but it would seriously hamper the availibility of system and in turn the image with clients. Sometimes I think this could be controlled through code reviews but I have seen that most of the times the code reviews are not done properly and such malicious logic can be camouflaged behind some complicated string manipulations. So I am just boucing my thoughts to community for some good ideas, which could be implemented in development process to catch such malicious activities early on. P.S. : Sometimes though I am unsatisfied / angry developer but would never do such unethical things being a coding lover."}
{"_id": "198535", "title": "What's the best way to create a static utility class in python? Is using metaclasses code smell?", "text": "Ok so I need to create a bunch of utility classes in python. Normally I would just use a simple module for this but I need to be able to inherit in order to share common code between them. The common code needs to reference the state of the module using it so simple imports wouldn't work well. I don't like singletons, and classes that use the classmethod decorator do not have proper support for python properties. One pattern I see used a lot is creating an internal python class prefixed with an underscore and creating a single instance which is then explicitly imported or set as the module itself. This is also used by fabric to create a common environment object (fabric.api.env). I've realized another way to accomplish this would be with metaclasses. For example:               #util.py     class MetaFooBase(type):         @property         def file_path(cls):             raise NotImplementedError              def inherited_method(cls):             print cls.file_path               #foo.py     from util import *     import env          class MetaFoo(MetaFooBase):         @property         def file_path(cls):             return env.base_path + \"relative/path\"              def another_class_method(cls):             pass          class Foo(object): __metaclass__ = MetaFoo               #client.py     from foo import Foo          file_path = Foo.file_path      I like this approach better than the first pattern for a few reasons: First, instantiating Foo would be meaningless as it has no attributes or methods, which insures this class acts like a true single interface utility, unlike the first pattern which relies on the underscore convention to dissuade client code from creating more instances of the internal class. Second, sub-classing MetaFoo in a different module wouldn't be as awkward because I wouldn't be importing a class with an underscore which is inherently going against its private naming convention. Third, this seems to be the closest approximation to a static class that exists in python, as all the meta code applies only to the class and not to its instances. This is shown by the common convention of using cls instead of self in the class methods. As well, the base class inherits from type instead of object which would prevent users from trying to use it as a base for other non-static classes. It's implementation as a static class is also apparent when using it by the naming convention Foo, as opposed to foo, which denotes a static class method is being used. As much as I think this is a good fit, I feel that others might feel its not _pythonic_ because its not a _sanctioned_ use for metaclasses which should be avoided _99%_ of the time. I also find most python devs tend to shy away from metaclasses which might affect code reuse/maintainability. Is this code considered code smell in the python community? I ask because I'm creating a pypi package, and would like to do everything I can to increase adoption."}
{"_id": "198537", "title": "Ensuring that headers are explicitly included in CPP file", "text": "I think it's generally good practice to `#include` the header for any types used in a CPP file, regardless of what is already included via the HPP file. So I might `#include <string>` in both my HPP and CPP, for example, even though I could still compile if I skipped it in the CPP. This way I don't have to worry about whether my HPP used a forward declaration or not. Are there any tools that can enforce this `#include` coding style? _Should_ I enforce this coding style? Since the preprocessor/compiler doesn't care whether the `#include` is coming from the HPP or CPP, I get no feedback if I forget to follow this style."}
{"_id": "198485", "title": "Updating copyright headers each new year just because Jan 1st has passed?", "text": "I've seen some projects that - with each new year - start to change all files in their source-tree to update the copyright year. Isn't this just pushing hot air on a level of magnitude? AFAIK:   * Copyright year is based on relevant changes of a work (also) - not only because of a trivial change of the copyright year in a file-header that is the only change.   * Changing nearly all files without an actual need brings the code out of order in version control. I can't help myself but have problems to see why someone wants to do such superfluous stuff, albeit I know some projects are doing this (for example Zend Framework 1 in 2012). Is there any use in changing the copyright year in each file only because Jan 1st has passed?"}
{"_id": "227812", "title": "Why do we need years in a software license?", "text": "I start every `.java` file in my project with a license (BSD, in my case). And its first line says:               /**      * Copyright (c) 2011-2014, Firstname Lastname      *      * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without      * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions      etc.      The question is, why do I need to show years there? I see many other projects are doing the same. What will I lose by just saying `Copyright (c) Firstname Lastname`, without that time interval."}
{"_id": "221997", "title": "Quickest way to split a delimited String in Java", "text": "I am building a Comparator that provides multi-column sort capability on a delimited String. I am currently using the split method from String class as my preferred choice for splitting the raw String into tokens. Is this the best performing way to convert the raw String into a String array? I will be sorting millions of rows so I think approach matters. It seems to run fine and is very easy, but unsure if there's a faster way in java. Here is how the sort works in my Comparator:               public int compare(String a, String b) {              String[] aValues = a.split(_delimiter, _columnComparators.length);         String[] bValues = b.split(_delimiter, _columnComparators.length);         int result = 0;              for( int index : _sortColumnIndices ) {             result = _columnComparators[index].compare(aValues[index], bValues[index]);             if(result != 0){                 break;             }         }         return result;     }      After benchmarking the various approaches, believe it or not, the split method was the quickest using the latest version of java. You can download my completed comparator here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/multicolumnrowcomparator/"}
{"_id": "107582", "title": "Why would an employee not be allowed to share techniques?", "text": "Few days back, I faced two interviews. It's obvious that they are going to ask about the different techniques I have learned. So, I gave them link of my tutorials while giving telephonic interview (Skype). In short, I explained the things using my blogs which they wanted to know. Say for example, Q: What challenge did you face earlier and how did you solve it ?   A: I got stuck when client insist me to have customized moviePlayer in iPhone, I came out to an solution. I have given complete brief of that technique here. After this conversation, this was their response: > We are happy to see you active in such manner. But our company has some > rules and regulations. You are not allowed to post anything regarding our > project. If you are willing to obey our rules, we are happy with that and we > will hire you. I just couldn't understand why knowledge sharing is strictly prohibited? I am fully agree that if company is developing new APIs, or new technologies I should not publicly discuss it. But my blogs are about some techniques sharing. Why am I forced to shut down my open-source sharing if I want to join that company? I also explained them, If no one is going to share their knowledge, how are you going to learn such things? I gave examples like these:   * If Ray Wenderlich doesn't post about game development, how am I gonna learn game development basics for iPhone / iOS?   * If Jon Skeet is not allowed to give answer on Stack Overflow, how am I gonna learn superstitious things? **Summary** :   1. Why do company think like that \"Our developer share our company's details?\"   2. Why do company think like that \"It's their own property, If we do some research regarding development on office? \" (need brief, I can elaborate more, just comment for that, I will edit question). **Edit** : Well! I am sharing techniques in small pieces & functionalities. I am not sharing whole project. Similarly, I am also doing some research work at my home & share about my technical experience. What is the reason behind interrupting someone's life. Its all about sharing the stuff that you have learned & it's strongly not about sharing companies client details or company projects."}
{"_id": "107584", "title": "As a teen, how can I find \"friends\" for programming", "text": "I'm a teen who has been programming for about 3 years, I can do some basic Software and so, but I feel I can't do all by myself. What can I do to find people interested in Programming ? None of my friends does, I only have a Cousin which is studying Software Engineering, but he is in another country. I live in Spain, so It's more difficult that in USA."}
{"_id": "58805", "title": "Should you put personal beliefs in your program?", "text": "Recently I've found two examples of programmer's personal beliefs in programs that have removed or crippled useful functionality   * uTorrent using KB (rarely used) vs Kb (what most ISPs and other programs use as their metric) in their current connection speed. Various attempts by others and me to give options to at least give an option to show in Kb have ended with \"ISPs should use KB\"   * Kleopatra (gpg4Win key manager) not having PGP Key Pictures since they \"give a false sense of security\" and \"increase the size of certificates\". While the latter is true, the former is debatable. Both of these hurt the program and its usefulness to me. uTorrent's forums used to be filled with people saying they have 10 Mb download pipe but uTorrent only goes up to 2 MB (not knowing that Mb `!=` MB), and with feature requests to show in Mb. Kleopatra has lost usefulness to me since I don't have the functionality to add pictures to PGP keys. These all are political statements; developers attempting to make change in, in their minds important, issues. But should this come at a cost to end user functionality? If a programmer heavily believes X but everyone else believes Y, should the programmer refuse to add support for Y because in their mind X is horrible? In short, should a programmer make political statements in their program?"}
{"_id": "112407", "title": "What to do if boss always postpones major decisions about requirements and overall design?", "text": "When starting a new project, my boss always avoids to make fixed decisions. He is usually saying: ok, just start to write something and be as generic as possible. When you're finished we look how we continue. His argument is basically that you never know and \"agile development\". To keep the question as generic as possible: what do you do if your boss doesn't like to make decisions? Just stick to it and write code that might undergo heavy refactoring and partial rewriting a few weeks later? Or keep on discussing until the boss does at least a few decisions? This is more or less my current strategy. Because it's like a law of physics, at some point something needs to be delivered. Either because the boss' boss wants to see results or because stuff is becoming ridiculous at some point. I also observe that my boss is criticizing nearly everything. Even suggestions that are based on his own..."}
{"_id": "197363", "title": "Reasoning to wait until third time in the Rule of Three?", "text": "I just came across the article \"Rule of Three\" in wikipedia > Rule of three is a code refactoring rule of thumb to decide when a > replicated piece of code should be replaced by a new procedure. It states > that the code can be copied once, but that when the same code is used three > times, it should be extracted into a new procedure. The rule was introduced > by Martin Fowler in Refactoring and attributed to Don Roberts. I know that this is just a rule of thumb, but why is it recommended to refactor only after the second duplication? Is there any downside to refactoring when we write the first duplication?"}
{"_id": "33402", "title": "What do you do when your naming convention clashes with your language?", "text": "Okay, this is one of those little things that always bugged me. I typically don't abbreviate identifiers, and the only time I use a short identifier (e.g., `i`) is for a tight loop. So it irritates me when I'm working in C++ and I have a variable that needs to be named `operator` or `class` and I have to work around it or use an abbreviation, because it ends up sticking out. Caveat: this may happen to me disproportionately often because I work a lot in programming language design, where domain objects may mirror concepts in the host language and inadvertently cause clashes. How would you deal with this? Abbreviate? (`op`) Misspell? (`klass`) Something else? (`operator_`)"}
{"_id": "18406", "title": "Do I need to understand algorithms and data structures to be called a programmer?", "text": "It has been six years since I have been coding. Coding into all kinds of things like ActionScript, JavaScript, Java, PHP, Ajax, XML HTML, ASP, etc. I have used arrays, maps, linked lists, sets, etc and wherever I worked people like me. But whenever I am interviewed it is very likely that people ask me question on hashes, trees, stacks, and queues. Some questions are on juggling some sorting algorithms. I don't know if I should really know them or should I stop calling myself a programmer. There is something in me which also tells me even if people who are asking all these questions select me, they will never be making me work of these things. Am I really required to know all this?"}
{"_id": "223992", "title": "Documenting/defining data structures in Python", "text": "What is the preferred way to document the contents of and logic behind dynamically generated data structures in Python? E.g. a dict which contains the mapping of a string to a list of lists of strings? I find it hard to transport the meaning and algorithmic workings of the data elements through Python code alone. It is unsatisfying and sometimes counterproductive to try to shape the code which erects such a dict into a form which tells another programmer easily about the structure of a dict entry. Similarly, placing a comment with an example entry is anything but optimal in my eyes."}
{"_id": "102032", "title": "Have any of you tried \"Basic for Android\"?", "text": "I have developed for Android for half a year or so and it is going quite well. I found the learning curve steep in the beginning, but then I somehow got the idea of it all and now I don't have to fight so much anymore. Rather I spend the time on specific problems like \"How to do X in Android\" but that is usually simple enough to google - or to ask here :) Anyhow, I just discovered Basic for Android and I must admit it looks attractive. It has the kind of IDE I am used to (Delphi) and it seems to be very capable. But on the other hand I am still new in the Android universe so I don't find myself competent enough to really judge the pros and cons of the tool. Have any of you tried it, and if so, what are your thoughts about it?"}
{"_id": "205947", "title": "Where to load and store settings from a file?", "text": "I think this question should apply to most programs that load settings from a file. My question is from a programming point of view, and it is really how to deal with the loading of settings from a file in terms of different classes and accessibility. For instance:   * If a program had a simple `settings.ini` file, should its contents be loaded in a `load()` method of a class, or perhaps the constructor?   * Should the values be stored in `public static` variables, or should there be `static` methods to get and set properties?   * What should happen in the event of the file not existing or not being readable? How would you let the rest of the program know it can't get those properties?   * etc. I'm hoping I'm asking this in the right place here. I wanted to make the question as language agnostic as possible, but I'm mainly focusing on languages that have things like inheritance - especially Java and C#.NET."}
{"_id": "15635", "title": "What do you do if you've had a series of bad employers?", "text": "So I've had a series of really bad experiences and am wondering what I'm doing wrong. I started out as a part time programmer at a major university. I developed a problem with my wrist and asked (nicely) for some help with my ergonomic accomodations. My boss started screaming at me, then later claimed I screamed at her. When questioned about it, she just started sobbing. Luckily, there were others around who heard the screaming and knew I was telling the truth. She was eventually let go. My contract went up and I switched jobs, this time to a startup. Well, we went several months without my getting a development machine. When the economy tanked, they started asking for insane amounts of overtime. I complied because I was afraid of having to look for work. The final straw was they contacted me right before my father's funeral to fix a problem. I was laid off, didn't receive my final check on time and the company screwed my COBRA up to the point where I couldn't get prescriptions for months. They recently were fined by the State of X for what they did. Now, even though I worked my heart out for them and they were willing before being fined, they are refusing to provide a reference. I took a new job quickly, mainly because I really needed my health insurance set up. They wanted me to do several months of work in a couple of weeks. They had no project plan. Their customers were seriously not doing well, as whole sections of the application would stop working if someone ran a spell check. Even though they had completely unreasaonble expectations about my work, they were happy to say it would take several months to repair the spell check bug. There was virtually no training. They had me interviewing candidates and I selected one. Apparently, that person was my replacement because I was let go after a few months. Recently, my former boss called my current employer and made up allegations that I am discouraging people from applying to open positions at his firm, which is insane because I didn't even know they were hiring. I feel like I have a T-shirt that says, \"If you're insane or would like someone to kick around and treat badly, hire me!\". Then again, when I look at some programmers' resumes, I do see horror stories, too. So are there things I can do differently to avoid these problems? Is it part of our profession that people do not have standards? Perhaps it is a personality issue, that resides purely with me? Has anyone else had a series of bad experiences and turned things around?"}
{"_id": "30171", "title": "Advantages and possible drawbacks of using Java for cross-platform development vs. .NET?", "text": "If I were to begin writing an application using Java with the intention of porting it to other platforms with little or no modification, would it be wise to consider using the .Net framework instead? I have no specific targets in mind with respect to platform. At a minimum, Windows/Mac/Linux support would be nice. Also ease-of-use for the end-user is a consideration."}
{"_id": "9007", "title": "How do you feel about using online Version Control Systems?", "text": "I have been running my own home-based server for ages for my own personal code, and have tried one system or another (SVN, VSS, etc). But recently, I've enjoyed having some more precious (no source code) data off-site, without having to constantly worry about backups in case of hardware failure, using services like Dropbox, Skydrive, Google apps, etc. This has made me want to do the same with my source code for various projects, however, I have a few worries about them. Namely, how secure is my code from curious/prying eyes, and do I need to possibly have a fail-safe service, in case one goes belly up overnight, or simply has massive data issues? This wasn't actually a concern until I read someone's experiences with Mozy.com, which while not a code repository service, data storage is data storage. If you do use/recommend such a service, which would you recommend? I'm open to using any system, be it Mercurial, SVN, GIT, TFS, etc, so long as it has a Windows and a Mac client option (web-based would be a very nice \"bonus\"). And most importantly, why?"}
{"_id": "9006", "title": "What's your strongest opinion against functional programming?", "text": "Functional programming is one of the oldest programming paradigms. However it isn't used much in the industry compared to more popular paradigms. But it have largely been emphasized in academia. What's your strongest opinion against functional programming?"}
{"_id": "107637", "title": "Violation of the DRY Principle", "text": "I am sure there's a name for this anti-pattern somewhere; however I am not familiar enough with the anti-pattern literature to know it. Consider the following scenario: `or0` is a member function in a class. For better or worse, it's heavily dependent on class member variables. Programmer A comes along and needs functionality like `or0` but rather than calling `or0`, Programmer A copies and renames the entire class. I'm guessing that she doesn't call `or0` because, as I say, it's heavily dependent on member variables for its functionality. Or maybe she's a junior programmer and doesn't know how to call it from other code. So now we've got `or0` and `c0` (c for copy). I can't completely fault Programmer A for this approach--we all get under tight deadlines and we hack code to get work done. Several programmers maintain `or0` so it's now version `orN`. `c0` is now version `cN`. Unfortunately most of the programmers that maintained the class containing `or0` seemed to be completely unaware of `c0`\\--which is one of the strongest arguments I can think of for the wisdom of the DRY principle. And there may also have been independent maintainance of the code in `c`. Either way it appears that `or0` and `c0` were maintained independent of each other. And, joy and happiness, an error is occurring in `cN` that does not occur in `orN`. So I have a few questions: 1.) Is there a name for this anti-pattern? I've seen this happen so often I'd find it hard to believe this is not a named anti-pattern. 2.) I can see a few alternatives: a.) Fix `orN` to take a parameter that specifies the values of all the member variables it needs. Then modify `cN` to call `orN` with all of the needed parameters passed in. b.) Try to manually port fixes from `orN` to `cN`. (Mind you I don't want to do this but it is a realistic possibility.) c.) Recopy `orN` to `cN`\\--again, yuck but I list it for sake of completeness. d.) Try to figure out where `cN` is broken and then repair it independently of `orN`. Alternative _a_ seems like the best fix in the long term but I doubt the customer will let me implement it. Never time or money to fix things right but always time and money to repair the same problem 40 or 50 times, right? Can anyone suggest other approaches I may not have considered? If you were in my place, which approach would you take? If there are other questions and answers here along these lines, please post links to them. I don't mind removing this question if it's a dupe but my searching hasn't turned up anything that addresses this question yet. * * * EDIT: Thanks everyone for all the thoughtful responses. I asked about a name for the anti-pattern so I could research it further on my own. I'm surprised this particular bad coding practice doesn't seem to have a \"canonical\" name for it."}
{"_id": "24036", "title": "How important is XML for a developer?", "text": "Is it must that every developer should know XML? How important is XML for a developer? Any suggestion..."}
{"_id": "37231", "title": "Using a GPL licensed library in a commercial app", "text": "I develop an android application and in my app I use a libary (jar) that I download from the internet. This jar is open-source under the \"GNU General Public License v2\". I tried to read the text of the license but had difficulty understanding it. My question is: can I use this libary without changing nothing in the jar in a commercial application? I will be making profit from selling my app which uses this GPL-ed .jar file. If possible, I would like to avoid converting my application to open-source."}
{"_id": "226428", "title": "Naming convention of getters and setters", "text": "Given a string variable `variable`, for example, the convention to expose it is: > public class SomeClass { >   >   >     public String variable = \"\"; >     public String getVariable() {return variable;} >     public void setVariable(String variable) {this.variable = variable;} >   > > } Which looks like: > class.getVariable(); // Gets \"variable\" > > class.setVariable(\"Hello\"); // Sets \"variable\" * * * **Is the following convention considered bad style?** : > public class SomeClass { >   >   >     public String variable = \"\"; >     public String variable() {return variable;} >     public void variable(String variable) {this.variable = variable;} >   > > } Which looks like: > class.variable(); // Gets \"variable\" > > class.variable(\"Hello\"); // Sets \"variable\" * * * Keep in mind that the established design pattern of fluent interface seems to suggest that one create objects using something like: > public class SomeClass { >   >   >     public String variable = \"\"; >   >     public SomeClass(String variable) {this.variable = variable;} >   >     public String variable() {return variable;} >     public SomeClass variable(String variable) {return SomeClass(variable);} >   > > } Which looks like: > SomeClass sc = new SomeClass().variable(\"Hello\"); // Instantiates a new > SomeClass object with variable equal to \"Hello\". Evidently, the word \"set\" is implied in the _fluent interface_ pattern. (Yes, technically, the fluent interface returns the class instead of void when setting. This is not important.)"}
{"_id": "233766", "title": "How to structure many projects that can be versioned and deployed separately", "text": "My team is in a situation where we need to create about 30 different processors. By processors I mean code that takes data from a DB and sends it to a remote service somewhere else in the world. They each do fundamentally the same thing, only with different data. Only some of these processors will be deployed to server A, some to server B, and so on. And they won't all version at the same time. If we make a change to processor X, we would version and ship X while leaving the rest of the processors alone. We've come up with three possible options, each of which have their own issues:   1. Have 30 different solutions   2. Have one solution with 30 different projects   3. Have one solution, with one project, with each processor functionality separated by namespace The main con of #1 is having to create and maintain 30 different solutions. And if we have to make a change to many processors at once, we'll need to open n solutions to do so. The main con with #2 is versioning. If we branch the code, we branch the whole thing, even if only one project changed. The main con with #3 is the same as #2. And then we also need to find a way to exclude certain processors from certain servers for deployment. #3 is the easiest to manage during development, but the most difficult during deployment. Is one of these the best option, or is there something else I haven't considered?"}
{"_id": "55052", "title": "Writing a client contract for Web development?", "text": "I am a small time web dev freelancer during my time off at university and I have some horror stories when it comes to designing sites for people (not that the sites are bad - just the clients DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WANT) this _really_ grinds my gears. To set the context this is what I want to avoid: > I had a client last year that I built a site for _ANON_. We agreed upon a > price (\u00a3200 - I am a student so their mentality is \"Oh you are a student > that makes you cheap right?\") I had the site done to the original > specification within about 3 days (nothing was ever written down be it > original specification costs etc it was all done over phone/Skype) The > client _then_ decided that his original idea wasn't that good looking in > practise so I was told to scrap it and start again, fine, Im'm a > professional I can take that. > > I then redid the site to the new spec that he gave me, took another 3-4 days > and the same thing again, don't like it, start again. By this time I'm > getting rather annoyed with the lack of constructive criticism, So I redo > the site to basically how it is now (see URL above) he says \"yeah looks okay > ship it\" so it gets put on the web THEN he decides \"Oh by the way I want and > e-commerce solution AND a members only section or you aren't getting paid > anything.\" being in the position I was in I couldn't very well just say no > due to the 12 or so days of my life he had waisted so I proceeded to add the > e-commerce and members only sections, this then led to a **plethora** of > other changes. > > For example there is a page with a variety of \"packages\" the user can choose > from, I had these done in _glorious_ CSS3 I mean it looked amazing, really > chuffed with my work I put it online and linked him to it... \"It's crap get > rid of it do it in photoshop and put .jpg's up instead\". Baffled as to how > it could look \"crap\" I asked what browser he was using... \"IE6\", I could > have killed him, but restrained myself and told him to upgrade to Chrome or > FF3.6, So he upgrades to FF, \"Wow that looks great!... But still redo it in > photoshop so people with IE6 will see it fine\" I tried to tell him that the > site demographics showed he was the ONLY one using IE6 but he wasn't having > any of it, so I spend a while doing it in PS put them up, all was fine. > > _Then_ , he says \"oh by the way I want to change the package prices\" I say > \"well if you had left them in CSS3 and HTML you could have done it > yourself\", He didn't want to hear it and made me redo the jpg's - This > occurs **every time** he has a new package that needs put up as you would > imagine this gets very annoying after a while and I was beginning to get fed > up, but he decided that with how it was done now looked great and kept him > happy, I then asked about payment \"Oh I only have \u00a350 that I can give you > but I can give you 2x 12 week training packages\". I think okay, I'll make > the best of a bad situation and take it, so I agree, I get \u00a350 for 2-3weeks > work and 1x12 week training package, I finish that then ask about the other > one \"Oh that was only if I could afford to give it to you, right now I can't > so you'll have to pay \u00a3120 for that.\". Not only that but he keeps pestering > me to do little remedial changes on the site that I taught him how to use, > but he doesn't want to know, so not only am I not getting paid for any > changes I make for him he threatens me that if I don't change them he's > going to spread bad rep about me to any of his clients and everyone he > knows. As you can imagine this got me very edgy about clients and I would now like to develop a contract that:   * No compromises are made for IE6.   * 25% up front 25% half-way and 50% upon completion.   * I have a _minimum_ standard that I will work to so jobs under \u00a3500 are not viable.   * Remedial and quarterly changes are payable on a per-hour rate.   * I can reserve the right to take down any site if the 50% upon completion is not paid within 30 days.   * There are no \"cash-substitutes\" - no cash - no site. If anyone could suggest what to add above as clauses in my contract and if the above are suitable, as in would they scare clients off? Any suggestions on any part of the contract would be appreciated as well as where to get them written up. Thanks all!"}
{"_id": "184010", "title": "Where does the the term \"feature creep\" come from?", "text": "There is a decent Wikipedia article on the \"Feature Creep\", but it doesn't state an origin. A Google search only leads to some vague article claiming \"Earl Rich\" coined the term, but there isn't much backup for that claim. There is a Dilbert comic from 2001 on the subject, but the tone seems to imply that the term pre-existed; more or less confirmed by the fact that Google has results pre-2000. However, finding the exact origin proofs difficult. So, who, if anyone at all, coined the term \"Feature Creep\"? Where does it come from?"}
{"_id": "184011", "title": "Copyrighting simple JavaScript code", "text": "Googling around I found a particular page: PCB Via Calculator Looking the page code I found in the JavaScript code: > //copyright circuitcalculator.com > > //please do not copy without permission Taking in account the simplicity of this code, can I write my own JavaScript function for this? I think some related links can be useful. * * * **UPD** : So, talking more specifically this code cannot be accused in any sense?"}
{"_id": "184016", "title": "Fastest native C++ multi-platform compiler & IDE & debugger", "text": "If I'll begin developing cross platform applications, The complied file speed is very important for me . I have research before than and find same result about IDE : (I ignored eclipse because very java base, but not complete) for IDE : >   1. NetBeans C/C++ IDE . >   2. CodeBlocks . >   3. CodeLite . >   4. or others . > And for complier || framework || toolkit : >   1. QT toolkit or UnitTest++ . >   2. gnu g++ . >   3. gnu gcc . >   4. wxWidgets . >   5. cygwin . >   6. VC++ . >   7. or others. > But I watch to some QT apps are very dependent to QT's libs :( , It's not good and decrease speed. Now my real question if I want start project what is the best IDE with debugger ,what is the best compiler that give fast speed native code to me, or I force use multi-compiler for any OS ? & please say your reason why that IDE & why that complier."}
{"_id": "120886", "title": "CPU Architecture and floating-point math", "text": "I'm trying to wrap my head around some details about how floating point math is performed on the CPU, trying to better understand what data types to use etc. I think I have a fairly good understanding of how integer math is performed. If I've understood correctly, and disregarding SIMD, a 32-bit CPU will generally perform integer math at at least 32-bit precision etc. Is it correct that floating-point math is dependent on the presence of a FPU? And that the FPU on the x86 is 80-bit, so floating point math is performed at this precision unless using SIMD? What about ARM?"}
{"_id": "184018", "title": "What is the business cost of anemic domain model", "text": "I am looking to quantify the cost or problems of bad software development practices. Specifically can software that has been developed resulting in an anemic domain model be quantifiable in terms of business cost or risk? My initial thoughts (which are all nearly impossible to generically quantify) are: -   * Reduced flexibility.   * Potential for increased support costs. Any assistance you can offer would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "51576", "title": "Simulating simultaneous entities", "text": "Consider the need to simulate a set of entitities in an accurate way. All entities exist in an artificial timeline. Within 'steps' of this timeline, all entities can do certain operations. It is imperative that timed events, are handled accurately, and not in processing order. So simple threading isn't a proper simulation, nor is procedurally walking across all entities. Processing may be slow, accuracy is key here. I have some ideas how to implement this myself, but most likely something like this has been done before. Are there any frameworks available for these purposes? Is there any particular paradigm more suitable? UPDATE: **example** for clarification Example: A and B send C a message at the exact same time. Assume sending the message takes time based on distance, and they both are at the exact same distance from C. C should be able to handle this action as a simultaneous 'event', not based on processing order if A would be traversed before B."}
{"_id": "86866", "title": "Advice on learning programming languages and math", "text": "I feel like I'm getting stuck lately when it comes to learning about programming-related things; I thought I'd ask a question here and write it all down in the hope to get some pointers/advice from people. Perhaps writing it down helps me put things in perspective for myself aswell. I study Interactive Multimedia Design. This course is based on two things: graphic design on one hand, and web development on the other hand. I have quite a decent knowledge of web-related languages (the usual HTML/JS/PHP) and I'll be getting a course on ASP.NET next year. In my free time, I have learnt how to work with CodeIgniter, aswell as some diving into Ruby (and Rails) and basic iOS programming. In my first year of college I also did a class on Java (19/20 on the end result). This grade doesn't really mean anything though; I have the basics of OOP down but Java-wise, we learnt next to nothing. Considering the time I have been programming in, for example, PHP.. I can't say I'm bad at it. I'm definitely not _good_ or _great_ at it, but I'm decent. My teachers tell me I have the programming thing down. They just tell me I should keep on learning. So that's what I do, and I try to take in as much as possible; however, sometimes I'm unsure where to start and I have this tendency to always doubt myself. Now, for the 'question'. I want to get into iOS programming. I know iOS programming boils down to programming in Cocoa Touch and Objective-C. I also know Obj-C is a superset of C. I have done a class on C a couple of years ago, but I failed miserably. I got stuck at pointers and never really understood them.. Until like a month ago. I suddenly 'got' it. I have been working through a book on Objective-C for a week or so now, and I understand the basics (I'm at like.. chapter 6 or so). However, I keep running into similar problems as the ones I had when I did the C class: I suck at math. No, really. I come from a Latin-Modern Languages background in high school and I had nearly no math classes back then. I wanted to study Computer Science, but I failed there because of the miserable state of my mathematics knowledge. I can't explain why I'm suddenly talking about math here though, because it isn't directly related to programming.. yet it is. For example, the examples in the book I'm reading now are about programming a fraction-calculator. All good, I can do the programming when I get the formulas down.. but it takes me a full day or more to actually get to that point. I also find it hard to come up with ideas for myself. I made one small iOS app the other day and it's just a button / label kind of thing. When I press the button, it generates a random number. That's really **all** I could come up with. Can you 'learn' that? It probably comes down to creativity, but evidently, I'm not too great at being creative. Are there any sites or resources out there that provide something like a basic list of things you can program when you're just starting out? Maybe I'm focusing on too many things at once. I want to keep my HTML/CSS at a decent level, while learning PHP and CodeIgniter, while diving into Ruby on Rails and learning Objective-C and the iOS SDK at the same time. I just want to be good at something, I guess. The problem is that I can't seem to be happy with my PHP stuff. I want more, something 'harder'; that's why I decided to pick up the iOS thing. Like I said, I have the basics down of a lot of different languages. I can program something simple in Java, in C, in Objective-C as of this week.. but it ends there. Mostly because I can't come up with ideas for more complex applications, and also because I just doubt myself: 'Oh, that's too complex, I can never do that'. And then it ends there. To conclude my rant, let me basically rephrase my questions into a 'tl;dr' part. A. I want to get into iOS programming and I have basic knowledge of C/Objective-C. However, I struggle to come up with ideas of my own and implement them and I also suck at math which is something that isn't directly related to, yet often needed while programming. What can I do? B. I have an interest in a lot of different programming languages and I can't stop reading/learning. However, I don't feel like I'm _good_ in anything. Should I perhaps focus on just one language for a year or longer, or keep taking it all in at the same time and hope I'll finally get them all down? C. Are there any resources out there that provide basic ideas of things I can program? I'm thinking about 'simple' command-line applications here to help me while studying C/Obj-C away from the whole iPhone SDK. Like I said, the examples in my book are mainly math-based (fraction calculator) and it's kinda hard. :( Thanks a lot for reading my post. I didn't plan it to be this long but oh well. Thanks in advance for any answers."}
{"_id": "146951", "title": "why are both index[array] and array[index] valid in C?", "text": "For example consider:               int index = 3;     int array[4] = {0, 1, 2, 3};      then both `index[array]` and `array[index]` are valid expressions, much like `*(index + array)` and `*(array + index)`. In C arrays why is this true? array[5] == 5[array] explains how it works. My question is: Why did the language designers choose to allow this? Why not just enforce that `index[array]` is invalid, for clarity's sake?"}
{"_id": "246929", "title": "Terminology: queue versus fifo", "text": "When referring to or documenting a typical lock-free circular data structure (or class or object) used to communicate between arbitrarily long asynchronous threads or processors: \"queue\", \"fifo\" or \"FIFO\" are commonly used. Is there a technical reason why one term might be the more accurate or better communicative usage in some situation over the other term."}
{"_id": "256136", "title": "How do I convert 64 bit frames to 32 bit?", "text": "The problem: We have a camera that is grabbing frames in 64 bit format. We use 32 bit software, and this worked fine on older 32 bit systems. Then the systems changed to 64 bit, and so did the frames, and my application can't access the image frames anymore. We have been able to save the frame to an image file (tiff), then open this file with our application, but it is very slow, and it feels like there has to be a better way to do this. I'm thinking I could call a script from my application that would access the 64 bit frame through the existing library, convert the frame to 32 bit, and return that frame to my application. The problem is, I'm not even sure where to start: how are frames stored before they are saved to files? Once I access the frame, is it even possible to convert it to a 32 bit format for my main application to access?"}
{"_id": "189864", "title": "better way to define an exception thrown by a method in Java?", "text": "I know how to define exceptions and all, but I'm not sure if the way I'm doing it is the most intuitive and readable by another users. I have a very simple method I've written that I want to throw an exception, because it's easier then manually checking return values; the method is private and there is no way need to define a public Exception type. None of the existing Java exceptions fit the error exactly, so I'm trying to figure out what type of exception I want to throw here? I don't want to just throw a RuntimeException, I only want to catch my specific exception I throw, all other Exceptions should propagate up. I figured I would define a little inner class for my exception. However, i don't really need to overwrite anything in the RuntimeException class, I just want to catch and and print it's message. So now I have a line that says something like               private class MissingPropertyException extends RuntimeException{};      This does nothing but allow me to catch _only_ the exception I'm intentionally throwing while ignoring the rest. Is this good syntax? it feels odd to define a inner class without implementing anything within it. Is there a way to do this elegantly without creating an empty inner class?"}
{"_id": "189865", "title": "Read K&R before learning low latency C++?", "text": "I have never really done a large amount of C programming but am in the middle of teaching myself low latency C++. Would it do more harm than good to read the K&R C programming book? I am a bit worried I will be reading about C conventions which may no longer hold in C++ (especially with C's fondness of global variables)."}
{"_id": "189866", "title": "Testing a REST client against a REST Server. How to do fixtures?", "text": "When writing unit tests, it's common to use fixtures: little testable data, so we can say: 1\\. Get all clients should include Willy Wonka. 2\\. Delete client 3, and now get clients should not include Willy Wonka anymore. That's fine for unit tests. Use setup/teardown to re-load the fixtures or rollback the transaction. So testing **creates, updates, and deletes are done inside a transaction**. The new temporary data lasts just for the length of that test, then is reset. **But what about when we've separated the REST server from the REST client?** We want to make sure our REST client is not just reading correctly, but creating, updating, and deleting correctly. I haven't been able to find any examples or suggestions for **how to do this against a remote test REST server.** Assuming I've got a test REST server serving only fixtures. The whole stateless nature of HTTP means it'd be hard to send a \"BEGIN TRANSACTION\" and \"ROLLBACK TRANSACTION\" or \"RELOAD FIXTURES\" type of message, right? I can't be the first to want to do this, so I have a feeling I need a different way of thinking about this. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "108789", "title": "Would licensing software engineers increase skill and salary levels?", "text": "When I apply for jobs I have to compete with too many other software engineers who have little or no skill and dilute the candidate pool. I feel it devalues our profession and ultimately pushes down salary levels for all practicing software engineers. I feel my career, and that of other skilled software engineers, would benefit if less unskilled software engineers were prevented from entering the field until they passed a standard set of tests to become \"licensed\", like other professions such as medicine and law -- they have made it very hard for others to join them, creating an artificial shortage via strict license and boards. They are paid a lot more than most engineers. And even other engineers have PE exams before they are allowed to \"practice\". Would requiring licensure of software engineers or having a Software Engineer Board increase skill and salary levels in the field?"}
{"_id": "189861", "title": "Is it a good idea to create multiple heads with Mercurial?", "text": "I just made a commit that I want to reverse, but I want to keep the bad commit in history. So, I `hg update` to the previous (good) commit. Then I keep working. This leaves me with a new head: the abandoned bad commit. Is this bad practice? What's the best way to keep bad commits in history while not using them?"}
{"_id": "189869", "title": "Choosing DOCTYPE for an online eBook", "text": "I'm about to begin working on a project which involves creating an eBook-like website which will contain lots of large documents with text and images.   The site should have a rather minimalistic design, but it will include a UI with some scripting and animations to make browsing the large documents easier. I've been thinking on this matter for a while now and I can't decide what markup to use for such a project.   Should it be `HTML 4.0 strict`? `XHTML 1.0 strict`? Perhaps `HTML5`? It is a likely that people who are not especially internet-savvy will visit the site due to its content, and as such I think it's very plausible for some of the visitors to have relatively old browsers. Can `XHTML` or `HTML5` hurt me in this regard? Reading about various eBook formats (specifically `EPUB`), I learned that many of them use `XHTML` internally; does this mean that if I use `XHTML` (correctly) the site might also be packaged and delivered as an `EPUB` in the future? The strictness and cleanliness of `XHTML`/`XML` also appeals to me greatly. Overall `XHTML` appeals to me the most, but I'm scared about the implication of its use. It has supposedly been discontinued by W3C in favor of `HTML 5`. However, I don't really see any advantages to using `HTML5` over `HTML 4 strict`, as I won't be using any of it's features. I'm also worried about browser compatiablity of `HTML5`. Should I just stick with good ol' `HTML 4 strict`?"}
{"_id": "71894", "title": "Subversion/source control only for production code?", "text": "I graduated from college in Computer Science a year ago, and am now working at a small web development company (me and one other developer, plus managers, customer service and tester). Until just before I started, there was no source control system. We're now slowly starting to implement SVN, but the other (senior) developer (henceforth referred to as Joe) insists that the only code that should be committed to our SVN repository is that which has been tested and approved as production-ready. That means that, on larger projects, there might be no commits for weeks at a time or more. Is this a normal practice? It seems to me like we lose a lot of the benefits of source control, including:   * Fine-grained tracking of project progress   * Tracking of issues as they appear and are resolved   * Easily rolling back mistakes   * Easy backup of code, so we don't lose much if a workstation goes down   * Easier to identify exactly what code is running in which production sites, assuming we stamp revisions into executables as described here   * Easy collaboration (though we don't do any teamwork; it's all solo projects)   * Etc. EDIT: I should emphasize that historically, there hasn't been any true teamwork in this company; just two developers working on separate projects. Also, a lot of the projects are small, so they can be completed in a couple of weeks. And the company has been in business for more than a decade and has gotten along fine without source control. Projects are usually completed within their estimated timeframe."}
{"_id": "108785", "title": "What are the best FizzBuzz questions for interviewing a candidate for a Software Developer role?", "text": "I'm looking for some advice on interviewing technical candidates. I touched on this briefly in a question I previously asked: template questions in a technical interview and was informed that FizzBuzz questions are designed to weed out candidates you definitely don't want coming near your code. Moving on from that, I'd like to know what FizzBuzz questions work best? In my own experience, the common one I've seen is \"Can you write a method to determine if a number is prime or not?\". Personally, I find this a little too easy (writing the most efficient one is another story). Are there better FizzBuzz questions that can be used? What ones would you put to a candidate?"}
{"_id": "256135", "title": "In AngularJS, why do we use scope instead of $scope in the directive link?", "text": "Just curious why whenever I see an example of a directive using a link, the parameter for scope is scope and not $scope? This is always biting me because I'm so used to typing $scope, my brain auto- types it and I have to go back and correct it."}
{"_id": "68275", "title": "Does studying logic puzzles help to pass interviews or limit you?", "text": "It is still under question\u2014a Programmers.SE question\u2014if competence in solving logic puzzles is a good assessment of programming skills. Nevertheless, they're still used, and chances are high that you will bump into such a question when you decide to change your employer next time. Mr. Job recommends in a comment to the answer that you should just \"study the puzzles, and pass interview\". Indeed, there is a plenty of them, and you may have a lot of fun and practice solving them, and you will probably demonstrate (to yourself only, unfortunately) your ability to crack them without any help. However, I'm not sure how it would help you at an interview. Assume you've studied a lot of these puzzles, and come to a job interview. The interviewer asks you to solve X, and...you already know how, because you've solved it before. You tell that you've solved this puzzle before, but it does not matter that you've **solved** it: what counts is that you've **seen** it, and thus the interviewer can't tell if you're capable to solve it, or just read the solution coined by someone else. He picks another puzzle\u2014and you've seen it before too. And again, and again. Finally, the interviewer finds a problem you haven't seen: a badly formulated one with quite a stupid and illogical solution (that's why you haven't encountered it during your practice). No wonder you fail to solve it. But the assessment's been already made: you failed to solve a puzzle you were eligible for. The question is, how should you behave if you like logic puzzles, solve a lot of them (on your own), and encounter them at an interview?"}
{"_id": "157375", "title": "Why does XMLHttpRequest not seem to follow a naming convention?", "text": "I've been working with the XMLHttpRequest object in JavaScript recently, and I couldn't help but notice that the casing of this name makes no sense. Why is 'XML' all in caps while 'Http' is not? They're both acronyms! Surely it'd make more sense for the name to be one of the following:   * XmlHttpRequest _(PascalCase, best practice for class names in JavaScript)_   * xmlHttpRequest _(camelCase, also common though not for classes)_   * XMLHTTPRequest _(caps-for-acronyms, rarely used in programming?)_ I'm sure there must be some reason and I'd hate to think it's now set in stone just because no one questioned this at the time. Is there another naming convention that I'm unaware of? Thanks! XMLHttpRequest specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/XMLHttpRequest/"}
{"_id": "157373", "title": "Python mutable default argument: Why?", "text": "I know that default arguments are created at the function initialisation time and not every time the function is called. See the following code:               def ook (item, lst=[]):         lst.append(item)         print 'ook', lst          def eek (item, lst=None):         if lst is None: lst = []         lst.append(item)         print 'eek', lst          max = 3     for x in xrange(max):         ook(x)          for x in xrange(max):         eek(x)      What I do not get is why this was implemented this way. What benefits does this behaviour offers over an initialisation at each call time?"}
{"_id": "211708", "title": "Is the Entity Component System architecture object oriented by definition?", "text": "Is the Entity Component System architecture object oriented, by definition? It seems more procedural or functional to me. My opinion is that it doesn't prevent you from implementing it in an OO language, but it would not be idiomatic to do so in a staunchly OO way. It seems like ECS separates data (E & C) from behavior (S). As evidence: > The idea is to have no game methods embedded in the entity. And: > The component consists of a minimal set of data needed for a specific > purpose > > Systems are single purpose functions that take a set of entities which have > a specific component * * * I think this is not object oriented because a big part of being object oriented is combining your data and behavior together. As evidence: > In contrast, the object-oriented approach encourages the programmer to place > data where it is not directly accessible by the rest of the program. > Instead, the data is accessed by calling specially written functions, > commonly called methods, which are bundled in with the data. ECS, on the other hand, seems to be all about separating your data from your behavior."}
{"_id": "67425", "title": "suggestions for staff id authentication", "text": "I'm developing an ipad app for managing HR attendance, so the idea is that the staff come to the center, choose their name from a table, and write down their personal id, for the time they come and the time they leave, still evaluating for the requirements if they want the time automatically saved or the staff write the time down (with a roller disk), or both, so what other way of authentication with an ipad comes to mind? (other than typing a code), (no ipad 2 wanted), so they don't want pictures. also how to avoid one person writing the code for a friend??, the data will be stored in coredata, and sync with server, thank you!"}
{"_id": "137568", "title": "What should I do with production error logs?", "text": "We have a PHP intranet site that we run with warning/error logging on (as it's not under heavy load and there's a number of bugs/bad code left to find). Because the site is relatively unstable and in active development, I've been clearing the production error logs when each new version releases so I get a clean look at what problems we're having. We _usually_ don't release until all logged problems identified in the last production build are fixed. I still keep Apache's error logs because our code shouldn't mess up Apache (and if it does it's a huge deal), so if something's wrong there I want to know. I'm wondering what a good practice is here; our previous code base logged _hysterically_ verbosely so I've been trying to limit the logs so it's actually usable information, but just clearing the logs seems suspect as well. For reference, most of the logs are undefined variables because a past programmer liked to use `if (!$var)` instead of `if (empty($var))`. I've been eager to remove _those_ entries since the application doesn't perform any unexpected actions but I would get dozens of the same warning daily until we fixed it. Those are also why I left warning logging on in production. **Should I keep all my error logs for future reference?** Should I segregate old logs somehow and tag them to build numbers?"}
{"_id": "124709", "title": "Is there a canonical book on Android Development?", "text": "I am getting into Android Development and want a book to help fill in some of the gaps. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on Android Development? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "108257", "title": "In agile (scrum), how do you go about breaking down a user story?", "text": "In agile (scrum), how should one ideally break down things into a user story. The team size is about 6 developers if that makes a difference, and iterations are 3 weeks. Is breaking a user story with points and hours considered agile, or is it ONLY user points for a given user story? Should we break a user story into tasks also? In the actual workflow for a user story, you have things like:   1. requirement gathering   2. review of the user story by managers etc.   3. qa related tasks in the user workflow  How are these things handled in a agile environment?"}
{"_id": "229673", "title": "Will using multiple recordsets in one database request be more efficient?", "text": "I am redeveloping an old ecommerce website which is currently written in C# ASP.NET 2.0. Because this is a reasonably high volume website and has suffered performance issues I want to develop in the most efficient manner possible. To minimise database trips (using SQL Server 2012), as database performance is the usual bottleneck in the current system, I am looking at creating stored procedures that return everything required for the current page in one query as multiple recordsets. For example the home page query might return the promotional banner image filenames and text, the new release products, the top selling products, etc. The product page might return the product details, related products, etc. I can't remember seeing this technique used often if at all. Is returning all data in a single database request more efficient than retrieving the same data in several database requests? Are there any flaws in doing this?"}
{"_id": "225197", "title": "How to remove redundant code that enables button. Or \"if\" statement", "text": "I got probably \"micro optimization\" problem. I got **\"History number\"** , **\"Next Number\"** , **\"Reset\"** buttons, as well **\"label\"** for text. Every time I click At **\"Next number\"** button I would like to show random number in the **label** , and add this number to **history array** where I keep track of the past number. Every time I click at **\"History number\"** it would randomly show one of the random numbers from **history array**. Every time I click at **\"Reset\"** button, it would just clear **history array**. And you can see that, that clicking at the **\"History number** makes only sense when the **history array** is NOT empty. And I wonder how to do this, without redundant **\"if\"** statement at the **\"history number\"** callback. Or Deactivating **\"history number\"** button at the start of the program. Then activating it **EVERY** time the **\"next number\"** is clicked (which is uuugly). And deactivating this button again on **\"Reset\"** button. This scheme on whiteboard demonstrate what I mean : ![Scheme that demonstrate buttons label and concept](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GOwQB.jpg) And I have JavaScript code where I implemented one of ugly solution (latter one, with deactivating and activating on appropriate callbacks). http://jsbin.com/aJESAYu/17/edit PS: I stumbled upon this problem writing in Objective-C, but I though, that it would be stupid to publish repository with iOS Objective-C code, while not everybody have to have Xcode. So I done Javascript Example. So don't restrict your answers to only on language. PS2: I though about having two **\"next number\"** functions. 1) One that would have the line of code that enable **\"history number\"** button and 2) second without. At the start the 1) function would be handler. And at the end of that 1) function, the handler would replace itself to the 2) function. Also the **\"reset\"** handler would put again handler to the 1) function. PS3: I know, this could be overkill. But I just several times struggled with this kind of situation. And I wonder if there are better solution. Thank you very very much in advance."}
{"_id": "79369", "title": "Version control of application data", "text": "Put very simply, my company's product is a webapp with a database backend. We have a stage environment and a production environment for each of roughly 100 clients. There is a separate database for each environment. The database contents come from a number of CSV files that are created and maintained by our (non-technical) data team. Data is client specific and must also be updated when dev adds new features to the product. However, not all clients use the same version of the product, so not only the contents but also the structure of the CSVs varies by client. Currently, the CSV files are versioned in SVN. However, there is no separation between tested and untested data. My team is responsible for loading new data to customer environments, but we've gotten burned before by loading untested data to a production environment. The clear answer to this is to mimic a development setup and create a trunk, branches, and tags, where trunk is always stable (tested data), branches contain experimental/untested changes, and tags are created every time new data is loaded to an environment. My question involves the dependency between data and code...when dev makes a release that includes new features, the data has to be updated to accommodate those features before we can upgrade the code on an environment. How can we track whether the data for a particular client is compatible with a particular version of code? My first instinct is to create a branch in the data repo every time a code upgrade is planned for a given customer. The branch name would correspond to the release number. However, because the code version on our production boxes usually lags significantly behind that on our stage environments, the data team would have to work in two branches simultaneously, ensuring that new features for the latest and greatest code only go in the newest branch, but fixes continue to go in the older branch as well. Of course, once the code on stage and production diverge, we cannot be 100% sure that the data fixes we test on stage will work on the older code installed in production. Does anyone have any ideas about how we can manage this process better?"}
{"_id": "229674", "title": "Get user specific data client or server side", "text": "Websites that have membership systems and shopping carts usually show different information on the page depending on whether the user is signed in or not, whether there are items in the cart, etc etc. The rest of the page is often the same for all users, signed in or not. To show this user specific information you can either do it on the server side as the page is rendered, or on the client side with an AJAX call when the page loads. Doing it on the client side might have some benefits in performance of the server as server side load is reduced as the page can be served from cache, and although the user specific data still has to be generated on request it will be minimal. The disadvantage is another request to the server, of course. Looking for opinions on the pros and cons of each technique and what is commonplace on big high-volume websites. What do Stack do?"}
{"_id": "225194", "title": "How to Explain Coding is not just Copy and Paste to non Software Developers?", "text": "We have 6 people in my group. My boss and the others are all SQL developers with little understanding of programming, design patterns, good object oriented design, etc. But, they have all taken a Java course in college. When new projects come up, I am usually asked to give a time estimate for how long my part will take. If this project is needed with quick turn around and they don't like the estimate I have given them, they will look at previous modules/portlets I have built and say things like, \"It basically looks the same as Project X, so you should be able to just copy/paste that code and modify the SQL a little. You should be able to do this in 1/2 the time you gave us\". Recently, it got so bad, my boss called me into a daily status update meeting with the group there, and each of the SQL developers asked me why I couldn't just copy/paste the existing code. They even `took the wiki documentation I created` from the previous projects and **began explaining my documentation to me**. Has anyone else ran into this? How do you handle this?"}
{"_id": "234230", "title": "How does Observer create loosely-coupled design?", "text": "I completely understand the Observer design pattern, what it is for and how to implement it. I also understand what the term 'loosely-coupled' means. But I'm not sure how Observer makes designs more loosely-coupled. For example, let's say I want objects B and C to get updates from object A about it's state. The Observer pattern is a great way to do that. But one could also implement this with a more 'brute-force' way, not using the pattern. Please explain to me how the Observer pattern allows for more loosely-coupled designs. I'm not sure I completely understand. Thanks _(Again, I understand what 'loosely-coupled' means, but not exactly how Observer allows for designs to be more loosely-coupled)._"}
{"_id": "79365", "title": "What should someone learn to become a great web-app builder by 2015", "text": "My brother just started learning some html/css at school and he loves it. He asked me to give my advice on what languages to learn in order to build great web-apps by the time he leaves school. (2015 or something like that.) I did some research, and right now I want to tell him (in this particular order):   * HTML -> HTML5   * CSS -> CSS3   * Javascript -> jQuery -> AJAX   * PHP -> Zend Framework   * MySQL   * Ruby -> RoR I would like to know if this is correct before I waste his time. Stackoverflow seems like a place where people know the answer to these kind of questions ;). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "91097", "title": "Designing classes containing the same objects but different amount of them", "text": "I am creating a main object, MACHINE, which will contain a diversity of several other objects -- AXIS, AMPLIFIER, ENDEFFECTOR, etc. The number of contained objects will vary depending on the MACHINE model object that I am using. For example, a certain machine might have one AXIS and one ENDEFFECTOR; another 3 AXIS and 2 ENDEFFECTORS, etc. I was planning to create subclasses with each machine model, and initialize the respective number of contained objects depending on the model. My fear is that there is going to be an explosion of machine models, as well as quite a lot of repeated code and settings among subclasses. I get the feeling that there is a cleaner way to implement this, but I am not sure how to. Any ideas will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "234236", "title": "Can referentially transparent functions have side effects?", "text": "I read everywhere that referential transparency and side-effects are mutually exclusive for all functions, however, what about the case in which a function changes some state that has no effect on its outputs. For example:               global_variable = 0          def foo(a,b):         global_variable += 2         return a + b          # Other code ...      Now, if you call this function, it seems to fit the standard definition of referential transparency while it also changes state and thus has side- effects. With that in mind, I wonder, do I misunderstand referential transparency or the even the idea of a side-effect? Is it correct to say that the function foo is both referentially transparent and has side-effects? To an extent, I feel that it is counter-productive to expand the definition of referential transparency with the condition that side-effects with no effect on the return value of a function still excludes functions from being considered referentially transparent."}
{"_id": "232967", "title": "Are there any algorithms for splitting or combining words into their more common form?", "text": "Are there any existing algorithms which can look through a list of words and split or combine words into their more common form? For example, I have a list of many business names in the health care industry. The word \"`healthcare`\" is often written \"`health care`\". There are also business names which might be split or combined, such as \"`Walmart`\" and \"`Wal mart`\". Are there any algorithms which can look at my list of words and identify that \"`healthcare`\" is more often written as two words, and that \"`Wal mart`\" is more often written as a single word? I'm looking for the names of existing algorithms (which can help when searching the web), or links to existing white-papers or blog posts. I'd prefer an algorithm that doesn't depend on a dictionary or other external list of words or business names. EDITS: Background: I already have some code that is moderately successful at this task. The code was thrown together without much rigor. I hoped there were some established algorithms, which would likely be more academic and complete then what I've come up with. This question is not about the method I've come up with, but saying \"it's impossible\" doesn't convince me. Clarification: The \"more common form\" of a word is the way the word(s) are most often written. For example, \"`Walmart`\" appeared many times, and \"`Wal mart`\" appeared many times, but \"`Walmart`\" appeared more often then \"`Wal mart`\" and so \"`Walmart`\" is the \"more common form\" of the word. I don't expect this algorithm to produce perfect results. Like any machine learning problem, I expect the results to be dependent on the quality of data I give it, and how much data I have."}
{"_id": "232965", "title": "Interface questions for using Command Pattern and Dependency Injection together", "text": "I have many projects that have essentially the same high level requirement: test all hardware on a device. Each device can have a different communication protocol, requires different test equipment to exercise the device, etc. So, at a high level a test is essentially the following:   1. obtain handles to test equipment   2. apply stimulus to device   3. measure/detect/record something measurable   4. remove stimulus   5. store results   6. handle errors  I thus created an interface class ( CTestEquipment ) as every piece of test equipment can be a concrete class with a unique implementation. The device under test can be considered a piece of test equipment as well. I'm using Dependency Injection for the driver of the test equipment. This is to allow for easy changes from one driver to another and to keep the driver and the equipment somewhat decoupled. For instance, a power supply might use a GPIB driver, a VISA driver, or raw serial commands. Each project can choose which is applicable and change one line ( the driver instantiation ). Next, I created classes to implement the Command pattern for the test equipment/device. So, CTestEquipment inherits from CCmdReceiver. A concrete command class calls the execute method which via the receiver calls the test equipment's tx/rx methods. Those methods call the underlying driver. Questions/Problems: How do I extract the received data from the command? Right now execute has no arguments and returns nothing. A concrete command might only transmit, only receive, or do both so the execute interface needs to either return a value even when there's no received data or some other way I need to be able to access it. CSetSerialNumber has no received data. CGetMode does. Since the command is calling tx/rx which ultimately calls the driver's tx/rx how do I package the data to those calls since each driver could take something different? I've contemplated a CPacket interface and various concrete implementations but then how do I make sure passing a concrete class that doesn't match the driver is caught?               //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     // CCommand     //      Abstract interface that defines the execute method     //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     class CCommand     {     protected:     CCmdReceiver *      _rcvr_p;            // receiver interface          // Default Constructor     CCommand()     {}          public:     // Constructor     CCommand         (         CCmdReceiver *  r               // receiver interface         ) :        _rcvr_p      ( r )     {}          // Destructor     virtual ~CCommand()     {}          // Method to Execute the Command     virtual void execute() = 0;     };          //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     // CCmdReceiver     //      Abstract interface that defines the command action     //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     class CCmdReceiver     {     public:     virtual void flush() = 0;          virtual void rx( std::vector< unsigned char > & v ) = 0;          //virtual void tx( std::string const & s ) = 0;     virtual void tx( CPacket * p ) = 0;     };          /*------------------------------------------------------------------------------     Test equipment driver abstract base class     ------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     class CDriver     {     public:     /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Constructor     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     CDriver() :         _is_open            ( false )     {}          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Destructor     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     virtual ~CDriver()     {}          //protected:     /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Close the Driver         Must be implemented in a derived class     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     virtual void close() = 0;          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Get the Received Data     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     template< typename tVal >     tVal getRxData();          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Determine if the Driver is Open     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     virtual bool isOpen()     {     return( _is_open );     }          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Open the Driver         Must be implemented in a derived class     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     virtual void open() = 0;          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Receive Data     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     virtual void rx()     {}          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Set Open/Closed Flag State     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     inline void setOpenState         (         bool const & open = true         )     {     _is_open = open;     }          /*--------------------------------------------------------------------------     Transmit Data     --------------------------------------------------------------------------*/     virtual void tx         (         std::string const & cmd         // command to transmit         )     {}          private:     bool    _is_open;           // flag to indicate if protocol is open     };          //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     // Abstract Test Equipment Class     //      Utilizes constructor DI for device driver     //      Utilizes RAII for open/close     //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     class CTestEquipment : public CCmdReceiver     {     public:     /// Constructor     CTestEquipment         (         boost::shared_ptr< CDriver > const &                     drvr        // device driver         ) :         _drvr           ( drvr ),         _init_cnt           ( 0 )     {     _drvr->open();     incInitCnt();     }          /// Destructor     virtual ~CTestEquipment()     {     if( isInitialized() )          {          _drvr->close();          }     }          /// Function to Access the Equipment's Driver     inline boost::shared_ptr< CDriver > const & accessDriver() const     {     return( _drvr );     }   // accessDriver()          /// Decrement the Initialization Count     inline void decInitCnt()     {     --_init_cnt;     }   // decInitCnt()          /// Get the Initialization Count     inline int getInitCnt() const     {     return( _init_cnt );     }   // getInitCnt()          /// Increment the Initialization Count     inline void incInitCnt()     {     ++_init_cnt;     }   // incInitCnt()          /// Check if Initialization has Occurred     inline bool isInitialized() const     {     return( _init_cnt >= 1 );     }   // isInitialized()          /// Determine if the Driver is Open     inline bool isOpen() const     {     return( _drvr->isOpen() );     }   // isOpen()            protected:     /// Reset the Equipment     virtual void reset()     {     //_drvr->reset();     }          /// Function to Receive Data from the Equipment     inline void rx()     {     _drvr->rx();     }          /// Function to Set the Device to a Default State     virtual void setToDflts()     {}          /// Function to Transmit a Command to the Equipment     inline void tx( std::string const & cmd )     {     _drvr->tx( cmd );     }          /// Function to Transmit a Command, Receive the Response, and Return the Parsed    Value     template< typename tVal >     tVal txRx         (         std::string const & cmd         // command to transmit             )     {     _drvr->tx( cmd );     _drvr->rx();          return( _drvr->getRxData< tVal >() );     }          protected:     boost::shared_ptr< CDriver > const &             _drvr;              // device driver     int     _init_cnt;          // initialization count     };          class CGetMode : public CCommand     {     public:     CGetMode         (         CCmdReceiver *  rcvr            // command receiver         );          void execute()         {         // G: what type is cmd?         // G: what type is buffer?         // G: how do we access buffer?         _rcvr_p->flush();         _rcvr_p->tx( cmd );         _rcvr_p->rx( buffer );         }      };          //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     // CSetSerialNumber     //     Extends command interface. Implements the execute method and invokes it on a receiver.     //--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     class CSetSerialNumber : public CCommand     {     public:     // Constructor     CSetSerialNumber         (         CCmdReceiver *  rcvr                // command receiver         );          void execute()         {         // G: what type is cmd?         _rcvr_p->tx( cmd );         }     };"}
{"_id": "232969", "title": "How much effort should I invest in creating loosely coupled designs?", "text": "I am currently learning about design patterns. I think most people would agree that these patterns are great tools, but should be used with moderation and not as the answer for everything. Using them too much would over-complicate the application with little benefit. Patterns should be used only where they can be the best solution or help in the creation of a good solution (do you agree?). With this in mind: The book I'm reading (Head First Design Patterns) frequently emphasizes the importance of **loose coupling**. This loose coupling is acheived by following principles such as 'program to an interface, not an implementation' and 'encapsulate what varies'. Basically, most patterns I learned so far exist mostly to allow designs to be loosely coupled, and thus more flexible. I understand the importance and benefits of loose coupling. But my question is, **how much effort should one actually invest in creating loosely coupled, flexible designs?** Those who oppose design patterns say that the costs to using these patterns often outweighs the benefits. You invest a lot of time in creating a loosely coupled design using some pattern, **where in reality - the loose coupling, 'programing to an interface, not an implementation', and all of these principles - might not actually be so important.** What I'd like to know, is how much effort should I actually put in creating additional levels of abstraction and designs, only to allow my application to follow OO principles such as loose coupling, programmign to an interface, etc. Is it really worth it? How much effort should I put in this?"}
{"_id": "205326", "title": "Premature optimization in deciding how to optimize?", "text": "We have a class that has been properly identified for optimization. We've done the profiling and testing, and it's a problem. Now we have two possible approaches for optimizing this class:   1. There is some very low-hanging fruit. We can rewrite this in a few days in such a way that the interface and results aren't changed, so we don't have to change any code that uses the class. We can see what effect this has on performance and go from there. This seems to me to be a very low risk, low investment approach.   2. Since we're already going to be making changes, we could go all out in our optimization. The suggested approach would implement a third-party engine and require us to change the code that uses this class, as well as transform the existing client data that is sent to the class into a format usable by the third-party engine. This may not take too much longer to code, but there would be much more testing required. This seems like a very high-risk, high-investment change and will require a lot of extra testing to make sure we don't break the calling code and don't break the existing client data. I of course can't test ahead of time, but the second approach will _probably_ execute more quickly and be more memory-efficient. However, I'm not sure how much faster, and I'm not sure if the extra effort will even be worth it. I'm not sure that once we made the low-risk changes, we would still consider the the code to be a valid target for optimization. You can probably guess which approach I would rather take. I'm at odds with a coworker on this one. So here's my question: Is the second option premature optimization despite the fact that we've already identified this code for optimization? What's the approach that should be taken in this situation?"}
{"_id": "147606", "title": "Backtracking with Killer Sudoku", "text": "I'm developing a Killer Sudoku solver for a school project. I've programmed 10 human strategies showing what they are doing in order to be the most educational possible. It can solve hard Killer Sudokus right now but my teacher proposed that I use backtracking to solve every possible grid. I've been trying for one week searching for general resources on backtracking or resources based on Sudoku... The fact is that with Killer Sudoku, you can't just say a cell has a solution without relying on zones and on what the previously written cells imply on zones and possibilities everywhere. What I'd like to do is something which applies all my strategies everytime it suggests a number to be more efficient and return the only solution. But to apply strategies, we need a copy of the grid right ? So I can clone my objects totally using some methods and I can apply my strategies using another method. What would be the structure for this function ? PS: I've tried several times to write some code and everytime the solution returned was incorrect. (The grid can easily be checked for validity) It was something like this :               def bt(sudoku)       if sudoku.valid? then         true       else         sudoku2 = sudoku.clone         sudoku2.first_cell_not_solved.possibilities.each do |p|           sudoku2.first_cell_not_solved.solution = p         end         sudoku2.apply_all_strategies         if sudoku.completed?           return sudoku.valid?         else           bt(sudoku2)         end       end     end"}
{"_id": "147607", "title": "How to render a terrain using height maps and getting basic collision detection on top of the terrain and camera (moving on the terrain)", "text": "I have loaded a .RAW file into a 2x2 array in my class. The way I am rendering it works fine but I am struggling to get the camera to move on top of the terrain. The terrain renders from 0,0,0 (x,y,z) as that is where I put my camera. My camera class allows to the \"camera\" to move through the scene. I want to be able to \"walk\" on top of the terrain with some basic collision detection (if possible). Any tips on where to go for this or any tips?"}
{"_id": "132429", "title": "What are the three main technologies for a redesign of a COBOL legacy system", "text": "There exists an application that reports financial data of a bank to a national bank (all located in Europe). It is a legacy system that is written mainly in COBOL. Only the user interface is written in Java. The business logic is stored as complex data base tables and entries. Without knowing all internals, the system can hardly be changed according to new financial regulations. Thus, the current system is very hard to debug and unmaintainable. My aim is now to identify state-of-the art technologies/methods for a redesign and rewrite of the whole system. What would you consider as the three most important technologies to use for a rewrite of a COBOL System in finance? Current considerations include:   1. Using a DSL approach (domain specific language)   2. Using a modern programming language like Scala   3. MS OLAP cube (suggested by a colleague, not by me)"}
{"_id": "103632", "title": "Is it OK to Use Dropbox in a Web Installer?", "text": "So I'm working in a modding project and they gave me the installing part as to do. We plan to publish it between **30 Aug. - 01 Sept.** **My question is;** is it logical to use **Dropbox** to download files in the **web installer**? I saw Dropbox's public folder has **10 GB download bandwith** limit daily, after reaching that; they lock the account. I can insert a quota function and can use more than one Dropbox accounts. But it seems (not sure but) it's illegal or opposite to company's politics. I don't know is the same bandwith limit applies to downloading directly from the **root folder.** Also total size of the packages reaches **1 GB**. This why I'm afraid of the bandwith limit. And, if you **don't recommend** using Dropbox, what would you advise? I think a simple web automator with **Mediafire** is a good choice but resuming download will **not be** possible. Also I have a **Fileserve Premium Account** (a friend of mine gave as a gift) but most probably it will be banned after using different IP's at the same time. One more thing I'm writing it in **C#**. Thanks..."}
{"_id": "132421", "title": "Windows GUIs: How Long Will 'Deprecated' APIs Last?", "text": "Note I said 'deprecated' and not 'abstracted'. Back in the days of the MFC, the WinAPI wasn't deprecated because, from what I've read, the MFC merely abstracted the WinAPI. There's a difference, for a deprecated API is one who's functionality has a newer slide-in replacement as opposed to a layer on top. I ask in light of the direction Windows has taken. First, GDI objects were bypassed with WPF by using DirectX. Unless I've read misinformation, this means the Windows GUI could have been reimplemented in an API that doesn't need GDI underneath. Then came Windows 8, announcing the move to HTML/JavaScript interfaces, which means DirectX isn't needed too. Ha. Of course it is, the IE engine running such interfaces probably uses hardware acceleration provided by DirectX these days. But GDI isn't needed right? In fact, because GDI isn't needed anymore, doesn't that deprecate GDI, GDI+, MFC, and the various other templating libraries built on the GDI? Now, contrary to common thought, it's known that Windows traditionally took backwards compatibility very seriously. But how long will they go before dropping GDI? How long until .NET's core libraries are rewritten to call the kernel and private low-level Windows routines directly for services without going through the WinAPI itself? After all, C# supports unsafe code, so the public WinAPI layer being bypassed isn't inconcievable even for the lower- level stuff. I'm not talking about the C code being eliminated or anything like that. Just wondering if some of the public interfaces presented by Windows might not be available if MS deems them unneccessary in the future."}
{"_id": "132425", "title": "How did you get good practices for your OOP designs?", "text": "I realized I have a difficulty creating OOP designs. I spent many time deciding if this property is correctly set it to X class. For example, this is a post which has a few days: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/8041/how-to-improve-my-factory- design I'm not convinced of my code. So I want to improve my designs, take less time creating it. How did you learn creating good designs? Some books that you can recommend me?"}
{"_id": "183743", "title": "Dilemma of QA vs. iterations", "text": "In my company, we successfully working with agile practices - but without using iterations. The main reason is that we can't find a clean way to fit in QA in an iteration cycle. We understand QA as an extra bit of verification to a _certain build_ (release candidate) before this build gets deployed to the customer. The point is to avoid that a single malicious commit damages the whole release. Since you never know which one it is, QA has to wait until _all_ features/commits for the release are in the build. (No famous last words \"It was just a tiny change\" allowed.) If QA finds bugs in a release candidate, developers fix these bugs in the respective release branch (and merge it into trunk). When all bugs are fixed, a new build is deployed for QA to re-test. Only when no bugs are found in a certain release candidate, it's offered to the customer for verification. This usually takes around two to three candidates, about one week, per release. The time to write the fixes is typically much lower than the testing efforts. So in order to keep the developers busy, they work on release N+1 while QA works on N. Without using iterations, this is no problem because we can overlap the work for releases N and N+1. However, from what I understand, this is not compatible with iteration-based approaches like Scrum or XP. They demand an iteration to be releasable at its end with all testing effort to be incorporated in the iteration. I find that this necessarily leads to one of the following unwanted results: **(A)** Developers are idle at an iteration's end because QA needs time to verify a release candidate and bug fixing work is not fully keeping devs busy. **(B)** QA starts working already before first release candidate is ready. This is what is mostly recommended on Stack Exchange. But it's not what my company understands as QA because there is no specific release candidate tested. And the \"tiny change\" that breaks everything can still be introduced unnoticed. **(C)** Bugs are carried over to the next iteration. This is also recommended on Stack Exchange. I don't think it's a solution at all. It basically means that we are never getting a verified build because whenever bug fixes are made, new, unverified commits are added to the same branch as well. **Is there any way out of this dilemma?**"}
{"_id": "186511", "title": "Do changes in performance violate the Liskov Substitution Principle?", "text": "Say I have:               interface Thing     {         GetThing();     }          class FastThing : Thing      {         public int GetThing()         {             return 1;         }     }          class SlowThing : Thing     {         public int GetThing()         {             return GetThingFromDatabase();         }     }      Is this a violation of the Liskov Substitution Principle?"}
{"_id": "64592", "title": "How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?", "text": "There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re- training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix \"bugs\" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? **EDIT: These were my findings** The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: _Cost of investigation_ : The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) _Political costs over infrastructure_ : I considered performing an \"infrastructure\" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. _Cost of fixing unit tests_ : A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! _Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code_ : There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. _Cost of bespoke releases_ : Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. _**The bottom line:_** One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway."}
{"_id": "77610", "title": "When does Continuous Integration add value?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective? When does continuous integration (such as CruiseControl) add value to a project?   Do factors such as   * Number of Unit Tests   * How often changes are made   * Branch development   * Team Size make a difference in the value added by continuous integration, or is it something that's always worth the trouble?"}
{"_id": "183744", "title": "Parallel computing using xcode", "text": "I'm making mandelbrot fractals in C using Xcode and I want to use parallel computing but everything I've tried so far doesn't work. Such as This Question and other how to guides. Whats the easiest way to use frameworks such as mpi.h to run my program in parallel?"}
{"_id": "241015", "title": "MVC design pattern. Overloading controller responsibilities", "text": "I'm developing a desktop application with a GUI. To do so, I'm using the MVC design pattern for the GUI part. For now the application consists of a single window (view) with one controller interacting with the backend (model). The interaction is becoming more complex day by day with the controller getting more and more methods to handle inputs and adding more dependencies with model objects. Since it's a best practice to keep the classes and methods small I feel like delegating some tasks, is it right? Is there any clean way to do so? Regarding the dependencies with the model, I'm using a facade object, but again I feel like it's getting too overloaded."}
{"_id": "241016", "title": "Refactoring a 1500 LOC method that only builds the graphical UI", "text": "I'm currently scratching my head over how to refactor a method that basically only builds the UI. The method is more than 1500 lines of code (LOC) long - and counting. It has grown, there was no plan how to approach this. You **might** find this familiar. Anyway, it's basically just one large method that goes a little something like this:                   .         .         .              # null checks         null_checks_bx = Box(True)              null_checks_ck = CheckBox()         null_checks_ck.set_text('Null checks throwing exceptions of type:')              if 'doNullChecks' in options:             null_checks_ck.set_active(options['doNullChecks'])         else:             null_checks_ck.set_active(True)              # dict to sorted list: extract values from dict by list comprehension         exceptions = sorted([exception.get_full_name() for exception in JavaTypes.exception_types])              null_checks_se = Selector()         null_checks_se.add_items(exceptions)         null_checks_se.set_enabled(null_checks_ck.get_active())              if 'nullChecksExceptionFullClassName' in options:             null_checks_se.set_value(options['nullChecksExceptionFullClassName'])         else:             # default to first entry             #(defaulting to doEquals = True and doHashCode = True by using hardcoded Commons Lang implies availability of Commons Lang NullArgumentException)             null_checks_se.set_value(JavaTypes.exception_types[0].get_full_name())              # callback         Callbacks.sync_model_active_status(null_checks_ck, null_checks_se)              null_checks_ck.add_clicked_callback(lambda: Callbacks.sync_model_active_status(null_checks_ck, null_checks_se))              null_checks_bx.add(Label(indent), False, True)  # dummy indent label         null_checks_bx.add(null_checks_ck, False, True)         null_checks_bx.add(null_checks_se, False, True)              # relationship entity class constructor calls         relationship_constructor_calls_bx = Box(True)         #relationship_constructor_calls_bx.set_spacing(5)         #relationship_constructor_calls_bx.set_padding(3)              relationship_constructor_calls_ck = CheckBox()         relationship_constructor_calls_ck.set_text('Instantiate relationship entities (if all necessary columns present)')              if 'doRelationshipConCalls' in options:             relationship_constructor_calls_ck.set_active(options['doRelationshipConCalls'])         else:             relationship_constructor_calls_ck.set_active(False)              relationship_constructor_calls_bx.add(Label(indent), False, True)  # dummy indent label         relationship_constructor_calls_bx.add(relationship_constructor_calls_ck, False, True)              # relationship not-null checks: this is an option independent of the null checks!         relationship_not_null_checks = Box(True)         #relationship_not_null_checks.set_spacing(5)         #relationship_not_null_checks.set_padding(3)              relationship_not_null_checks_ck = CheckBox()         relationship_not_null_checks_ck.set_text('Not-null checks before relationship instantiation')              relationship_not_null_checks_ck.set_enabled(relationship_constructor_calls_ck.get_active() and not null_checks_ck.get_active())              if 'doRelationshipNotNullChecks' in options:             relationship_not_null_checks_ck.set_active(options['doRelationshipNotNullChecks'])         else:             relationship_not_null_checks_ck.set_active(True)              # callback         Callbacks.sync_convenience_constructor_options(null_checks_ck, relationship_constructor_calls_ck, relationship_not_null_checks_ck)              null_checks_ck.add_clicked_callback(lambda: Callbacks.sync_convenience_constructor_options(null_checks_ck, relationship_constructor_calls_ck, relationship_not_null_checks_ck))         relationship_constructor_calls_ck.add_clicked_callback(lambda: Callbacks.sync_convenience_constructor_options(null_checks_ck, relationship_constructor_calls_ck, relationship_not_null_checks_ck))              relationship_not_null_checks.add(Label(indent), False, True)  # dummy indent label         relationship_not_null_checks.add(Label(indent), False, True)  # dummy indent label         relationship_not_null_checks.add(relationship_not_null_checks_ck, False, True)              # build final box         checks_bx = Box(False)         checks_bx.set_spacing(5)         #checks_bx.set_padding(3)         checks_bx.set_homogeneous(True)         checks_bx.add(omit_auto_increment_columns_bx, False, True)         checks_bx.add(omit_auto_timestamp_columns_bx, False, True)         checks_bx.add(null_checks_bx, False, True)         checks_bx.add(relationship_constructor_calls_bx, False, True)         checks_bx.add(relationship_not_null_checks, False, True)              # callback         Callbacks.sync_model_active_status(convenience_constructors_ck, checks_bx)              convenience_constructors_ck.add_clicked_callback(lambda: Callbacks.sync_model_active_status(convenience_constructors_ck, checks_bx))              # need wrapped box for Panel class         constructors_bx = Box(False)         constructors_bx.set_spacing(5)         constructors_bx.set_padding(3)         #constructors_bx.set_homogeneous(True)         constructors_bx.add(convenience_constructors_bx, False, True)         constructors_bx.add(checks_bx, False, True)              constructors_pn = Panel(TitledGroupPanel)         constructors_pn.set_title('Constructors')         constructors_pn.add(constructors_bx)              # getters and setters         is_conversion_bx = Box(True)         #is_conversion_bx.set_spacing(3)         #is_conversion_bx.set_padding(3)              is_conversion_ck = CheckBox()         is_conversion_ck.set_text('Convert respective column names starting with \"is_\"')         is_conversion_ck.set_tooltip(\"Column is_incognito => getter isIncognito() (not getIsIncognito()) and setter setIncognito()\")              if 'doIsConversion' in options:             is_conversion_ck.set_active(options['doIsConversion'])         else:             is_conversion_ck.set_active(True)              is_conversion_bx.add(is_conversion_ck, False, True)              # generate code for relationship getters and setters to synchronize with column fields         sync_relationship_pk_fields_bx = Box(True)         #sync_relationship_pk_fields_bx.set_spacing(3)         #sync_relationship_pk_fields_bx.set_padding(3)              sync_relationship_pk_fields = CheckBox()              .         .         .      You get the point. What I don't see is what the criteria might be to split this method up so the code will become more managable, more understandable etc pp. **What are the best practices here?** I could create some methods that would create recurring types of panels and widgets, but this would become a rather tedious effort for what I fail to see the real gain. Again, what are some useful, practical approaches to large, clumsy methods that only build the graphical UI? Thanks PS: oh and BTW the UI is a single Dialog in a standard, windowed application (no web), and this dialog has 6 tabs which contain mostly check boxes, radio buttons, and text boxes. It is a code generation plugin that the user can choose a lot of options from. I might post an image as soon as I get the plugin running again..."}
{"_id": "241017", "title": "What is Atomicity?", "text": "I'm really struggling to find a concrete, easy to grasp, explanation of Atomicity. My understanding thus far is that to ensure an operation is atomic you wrap the critical code in a locker. But that's about as much as I actually understand. Definitions such as the one below make no sense to me at all. > An operation during which a processor can simultaneously read a location and > write it in the same bus operation. This prevents any other processor or I/O > device from writing or reading memory until the operation is complete. > Atomic implies indivisibility and irreducibility, so an atomic operation > must be performed entirely or not performed at all. What does the last sentence mean? Is the term `indivisibility` relating to mathematics or something else? Sometimes the jargon with these topics confuse more than they teach."}
{"_id": "241012", "title": "How to represent a tree structure in NoSQL", "text": "I'm new to NoSQL and have been playing around with a personal project on the MEAN stack (Mongo ExpressJs AngularJs NodeJs). I'm building a document editor of sorts that manages nodes of data. Each document is actually a tree. I have a CRUD api for documents, to create new trees and a CRUD api for nodes in a given document. Right now the documents are represented as a collection that holds everything, including nodes. The children parent relationship is done by ids. So the nodes are an map by id, and each node has references to what nodes are their children. I chose this \"flat\" approach because it is easier to get a node by id from a document. Being used to having a relation table between nodes and documents, a relation table between nodes and children nodes I find it a bit weird that I have to save the entire \"nodes\" map each time I update a node. Is there a better way to represent such a data type in NoSQL?"}
{"_id": "180212", "title": "Good implementation strategies for encapsulating shared data in a software pipeline", "text": "I'm working on re-factoring certain aspects of an existing web service. The way the service APIs are implemented is by having a kind of \"processing pipeline\", where there are tasks that are performed in sequence. Unsurprisingly, later tasks may need information computed by earlier tasks, and currently the way this is done is by adding fields to a \"pipeline state\" class. I've been thinking (and hoping?) that there's a better way to share information between pipeline steps than having a data object with a zillion fields, some of which make sense to some processing steps and not to others. It would be a major pain to make this class thread-safe (I don't know if it would even be possible), there is no way to reason about its invariants (and it's likely it doesn't have any). I was paging through the Gang of Four design patterns book to find some inspiration, but I didn't feel like there was a solution in there (Memento was somewhat in the same spirit, but not quite). I also looked online, but the second you search for \"pipeline\" or \"workflow\" you get flooded with either Unix pipes information, or proprietary workflow engines and frameworks. My question is - how would you approach the issue of recording the execution state of a software processing pipeline, so that later tasks can use information computed by earlier ones? I guess the major difference with Unix pipes is that you don't just care about the output of the immediately preceding task. ======== As requested, some pseudocode to illustrate my use case: The \"pipeline context\" object has a bunch of fields that the different pipeline steps can populate/read:               public class PipelineCtx {         ... // fields         public Foo getFoo() { return this.foo; }         public void setFoo(Foo aFoo) { this.foo = aFoo; }         public Bar getBar() { return this.bar; }         public void setBar(Bar aBar) { this.bar = aBar; }         ... // more methods     }      Each of the pipeline steps is also an object:               public abstract class PipelineStep {         public abstract PipelineCtx doWork(PipelineCtx ctx);     }          public class BarStep extends PipelineStep {         @Override         public PipelineCtx doWork(PipelieCtx ctx) {             // do work based on the stuff in ctx             Bar theBar = ...; // compute it             ctx.setBar(theBar);                  return ctx;         }     }      Similarly for a hypothetical `FooStep`, which might need the Bar computed by BarStep before it, along with other data. And then we have the real API call:               public class BlahOperation extends ProprietaryWebServiceApiBase {         public BlahResponse handle(BlahRequest request) {             PipelineCtx ctx = PipelineCtx.from(request);                  // some steps happen here             // ...                  BarStep barStep = new BarStep();             barStep.doWork(crx);                  // some more steps maybe             // ...                  FooStep fooStep = new FooStep();             fooStep.doWork(ctx);                  // final steps ...                  return BlahResponse.from(ctx);         }     }"}
{"_id": "145605", "title": "REST vs RESTful vs \"normal\" web service - the same or not?", "text": "I've read a couple of definitions and discussion on REST and/or RESTful applications, but I still do not understand the real meaning of it. I usually work with the apps which either fetch data via GET or send data via POST to some web service (usually a PHP script) which then either get data from the database or do writing into the database. Now, is this a RESTful app? If not, what would be a RESTful app? What is difference between RESTful concept and the concept I worked so far with? Please explain via an example. Also, someone is talking about the REST and someone about RESTful apps. I found that the REST term refers to the theoretical concept, while RESTful is used when we talk about the specific app. Is this right or there are real differences between REST and RESTful apps?"}
{"_id": "221910", "title": "Why is there a gap between JBoss EAP and the JBoss AS/Community edition?", "text": "Admittedly new to this but I wanted to understand why there is a gap between Red Hat's JBoss EAP project (their _enterprise_ version) and JBoss AS/Wildfly/community project. Looking at this post from Red Hat, it seems that they don't withhold the source/patches. Makes sense since withholding the source would be a GPL violation, which in spirit wants source distributions so end users can recreate/reuse the binaries. So if the sources are identical, then why isn't the AS/community version **_exactly_** at par with the EAP version? Shouldn't they be bit-exact, like having the same SHA256 value? It appears that the AS/community version usually lags by several hundred patches (from here, \"Intro\" section) > _Talking about the latest JBoss Application Server is always tricky. Red Hat > simultaneously offers two versions of JBoss: community edition, the current > release where is 7.1.1-Final, and Enterprise Application Platform, EAP, > edition where JBoss AS component version is 7.1.3-Final. The difference > between these is actually a few hundred bug-fixes, which is enormous ..._ Since EAP binary distribution is controlled by Red Hat, surely there is enough community interest that the community itself rebuilds and redistributes AS/Wildfly binaries that are at-par with the EAP binaries, right? (a single Maven server should suffice). I mean look at the popularity of CentOS (the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) - the community IS interested in using software in production without RedHat's blessings/support. So, what am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "240760", "title": "Hashing + security as it pertains to a theoretical file sharing site", "text": "These days it's possible to hash a file client-side, send the hash to the server, and have the server check whether or not that file is already uploaded. If it is, we can skip the file upload and make it appear to upload almost instantly to the user. This can also save have oodles of bandwidth for a large site. This has some important security implications, however.   1. If the user is clever, he can use this information to determine what files are already on the server, including illegal or sensitive documents   2. He can produce millions of fake hashes, send them to the server, and hope for a collision to gain access to random documents   3. There is a legitimate but unintentional collision where the hashes are the same, but the file is actually different My question is: is it worth the trade-off? Can we mitigate some or all of these problems? How?"}
{"_id": "136215", "title": "How to Determine Frequency (In Hertz, Real Time) with Java Sound", "text": "I've been looking around and I've found some questions similar to mine but have never been quite satisfied with the answers. I'm more or less a Java n00b, although I am moderately proficient with C++ and I would consider myself intermediate to advanced, as a programmer in general. I'm looking to write a program in Java that functions similarly to a tuner - what I want to do is record an instrument's pitch over about a 3 second time frame, and to measure the average deviation. (This is for a band class.) What I'm thinking is that I'll have a big array of numbers, and each entry in the array will be a number in terms of frequency. I want to be able to loop through the array, and calculate the average Hertz for displaying it on screen or something. So what I want to do is have some way of \"polling\" (for lack of a better word) the microphone to see what frequency is being inputted right that instant. Is there a simple way to accept audio input from a microphone in terms of Hertz? This will be in Java, under a Windows platform."}
{"_id": "101673", "title": "Which books or references cover design of domain specific languages?", "text": "There are a lot of books on domain specific languages (DSLs). Such books talk about compilers, interpreters, parsing, lexing, semantic analysis, and other various bits someone needs to implement a DSL. I already know how to implement a DSL; I've implemented several. However, several such DSLs have been monsters to work with. One starts out with whatever features one wants to support in the DSL, only to find that more features get added later, resulting in a mess of wacky and inconsistent conventions. I'm going to be designing a new DSL here and I want to start off on the correct foot, with an eye this time for future expansion of the language. The few books I've been able to find on language design seemed to be focused on general purpose (and C derived) language design, which is not a path that makes sense for my domain. What kinds of references or books are available on this topic?"}
{"_id": "136216", "title": "Networkx / Python : Is using a class for a node better practice than defining multiple attributes?", "text": "I've read through the NetworkX tutorial and documentation, but was unable to find real world answers for this question. Usually when using NetworkX, I might use strings to define nodes, then set several attributes. e.g.               G = nx.Graph()     G.add_node('John Doe', haircolor = 'brown')     G.node['John Doe'][age] = 22      However, it seems like declaring a class with members instead of attributes is better in practice, especially when there are many attributes and readability might be an issue.               class Person:          name = None          age = None          Person p     p.name = 'John Doe'     p.age = 22     G.add_node(p)      Could someone be kind enough to validate my reasoning? I lack the foresight to see if Networkx node/edge attributes would be preferable."}
{"_id": "101677", "title": "Ruby IDE code completion", "text": "I just started writing some ruby in my spare time and am currently using Netbeans 7 with the Ruby and Rails plugin v0.111. I'm primarily a Java programmer coming from IntelliJ and Eclipse. One downside of my Ruby programming setup is that my Netbeans isn't very helpful when it comes to code completion. This seems due to the fact that Ruby is not strongly typed and since the IDE doesn't know the type it can't suggest methods. As a result I must spend a lot of time in my browser looking at documentation and switching back to my IDE to manually type in the method there. Are there any changes I can make to my setup to get code completion for Ruby or is it pretty much impossible due to the nature of the language? How do other developers work with Ruby, other than memorizing all the methods in the Core Library?"}
{"_id": "136212", "title": "Jumping from 16-bit console to protected-mode game programming.", "text": "I am a just a little script kiddy, but I want to make the jump from just doing standrard console games in C++ to full graphic video games. I am just wondering if there are any good Directx 11 tutorials that I could start with."}
{"_id": "188027", "title": "Is BDD scalable for medium to large projects?", "text": "In every Website you read about BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) you find a very simple nice example showing you how obvious and easy is it to define your requirements. But trying to implement this process in a big product (not a calculator example) showed me that things can get (or will get) pretty complex and unreadable; especially changing requests at a later point means a lot of work to correct the Integration tests for this. So I'm wondering, is BDD really worth it? Does it solve a problem that other techniques don't!"}
{"_id": "188026", "title": "Combining KanBan in a SCRUM process", "text": "Does anybody have an experience in combining KanBan in SCRUM, could this work, would this make sence or would it be an overdesign?"}
{"_id": "188025", "title": "Alternative to simplexml_load_string() function", "text": "I am using `simplexml_load_string` for xml string interpreting to object from results of a REST API. It's working fine in my local server, which is using PHP5. But my hosting is in Yahoo and the service provider is giving me PHP4. For that I need to change the way of interpreting XML string to object to another method, which I don't know how to do."}
{"_id": "230444", "title": "Why is ~0 a Sequence of 1s", "text": "Why is `~0` a sequence of `1` bits and not just a single bit? Where do the extra `1` bits come from? Does this mean `~1` a sequence of `0` bits or just a single `0` bit? My understanding was that the `~` operator is applied on the specific bits mentioned."}
{"_id": "76813", "title": "IntelliJ IDEA vs phpStorm for developing PHP projects?", "text": "I'm a Java Developer, and now I'm using **IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition**. Is it worth to buy **phpStorm** for developing PHP projects? Also, are there any other features for PHP developers which **IDEA** doesn't have? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "76814", "title": "how to prevent visual studio from messing with my code's identation?", "text": "Visual Studio 2010 automatically changes indentation of my code from this ::               public void fetchWebserviceCounters()  {         csv = new StringBuilder();         try  {            Category = new PerformanceCounterCategory(\"Web Service\");            foreach (String instance in Category.GetInstanceNames())  {               counters = Category.GetCounters(instance);               foreach (PerformanceCounter counter in counters)  {                   if (counter.CounterName == \"Total Bytes Sent\" | counter.CounterName == \"Total Bytes Recieved\") {                      csv.Append(counter.CounterName + \",\");                      csv.Append(counter.NextValue().ToString() + \", \");                   }               }            }        }        catch (Exception e) {                 Console.WriteLine(e.Message);        }        Console.Write(csv.ToString());      } to this               public void fetchWebserviceCounters()         {             csv = new StringBuilder();             try             {                 Category = new PerformanceCounterCategory(\"Web Service\");                 foreach (String instance in Category.GetInstanceNames())                 {                     counters = Category.GetCounters(instance);                     foreach (PerformanceCounter counter in counters)                     {                         if (counter.CounterName == \"Total Bytes Sent\" | counter.CounterName == \"Total Bytes Recieved\")                         {                             csv.Append(counter.CounterName + \",\");                             csv.Append(counter.NextValue().ToString() + \", \");                         }                     }                 }             }             catch (Exception e)             {                 Console.WriteLine(e.Message);             }             Console.Write(csv.ToString());         }      **How can i prevent Visual Studio from Doing this to My code**"}
{"_id": "216685", "title": "Reverse horizontal and vertical for a HTML table", "text": "There is a two-dimensional array describing a HTML table. Each element of the array consists of:   * the cell content   * rowspan   * colspan Every row of this two dimensional array corresponds to `<td>` cells of a `<tr>` of the table which my software should generate. I need to \"reverse\" the array (interchange vertical and horizontal direction). Insofar I considered algorithm based on this idea: make a rectangular matrix of the size of the table and store in every element of this matrix the corresponding index of the element of the above mentioned array. (Note that two elements of the matrix may be identical due rowspan/colspan.) Then I could use this matrix to calculate rowspan/colspan for the inverted table. But this idea seems bad for me. Any other algorithms? Note that I program in PHP."}
{"_id": "140073", "title": "How should code \"Goal Tending\" be handled by a Development Manager?", "text": "First allow me to coin a term: > _**code goal-tending:** Checking out code in the morning, then silently > reviewing all of the changes made by the other developers the previous day > file by file, (especially code files you originally developed), and fixing > formatting, logic, renaming variables, refactoring long methods, etc., and > then committing the changes to the VCS._ This practice tends to have a few pros and cons that I've identified:   * **Pro** : Code quality/readability/consistency is often maintained   * **Pro** : Some bugs are fixed due to the other developer not being too familiar with the original code.   * **Con** : Is often a waste of time of the goal-tending developer.   * **Con** : _Occasionally_ introduces bugs which causes hair-pulling rage by developers who thought they wrote bug-free code the prior day.   * **Con** : Other developers get aggravated with excessive nitpicking and begin to dislike contributing to the goal-tender's code. Disclaimer: To be fair, I'm not actually a development manager, I'm the developer who is actually doing the \"goal tending\". In my defense, I _think_ I'm doing this for good reason (to keep our extremely large code base a well oiled machine), but I'm very concerned that it's also creating a negative atmosphere. I am also definitely concerned that my manager will need to address the issue. **So, if you were the manager, how would you address this problem?** UPDATE: I don't mean for this to be too localized, but some have asked, so perhaps some background will be illuminating. I was assigned a giant project (200K LoC) three years ago, and only recently (1 yr ago) were additional developers added to the project, some of which are unfamiliar with the architecture, others who are still learning the language (C#). I generally do have to answer for the overall stability of the product, and I'm particularly nervous when changes are surprisingly made to the core architectural parts of the code base. This habit came about because at first I was optimistic about other developer's contributions, but they made way too many mistakes that caused serious problems that would not be discovered until weeks later, where the finger would be pointed at me for writing unstable code. Often these \"surprises\" are committed by an eager manager or a co-worker who is still in the learning phase. And, this probably will probably lead to the answer: we have no code review policy in place, at all."}
{"_id": "239169", "title": "Scala/SBT - Documenting Configuration Change for Releases", "text": "I'm trying to collect different ways of managing configuration across multiple environments. I have a requirement to document configuration changes for the deployment plan. Dev values are defaults in the code and QA manages their own as well so the documenting and sharing of the info is a critical point. Rather than copy/pasting diffs into tickets, I'm wondering if there is a sharper way to do this. Keeping multiple copies of the config for each env seems to be divergent change. Manually documenting is just hard work and very error prone. Should be copy/pastable. I think templating may be an option but not sure how we'd plug that into build. Custom code is fine so I guess we could make a new build target if needed. Using scala/sbt but a maven solution or any other would be fine as it can be translated."}
{"_id": "139463", "title": "Ensure data entered by users adjusts to what actually is", "text": "This is more of a usability issue I'd say, looking of suggestions on it. I have a system that depends on the data entered by the users to be correct, as in the address exists, the name is correct, etc. This is all for places. Now the way I figured I could do this is that I have every entry peer reviewed, as in, have 5 other users check and ensure the data is correct before allowing it to be indexed and viewed on the site. The problem with this approach is that the site isn't one where the users will inhabit long, just log on look for a place and that's it, so they might not be inclined to verify that other user's entries are correct. What do you think about this, can anyone suggest a solution that might adjust to my situation?"}
{"_id": "128965", "title": "OOP - How to handle multiple instances of a class", "text": "In OO programming, what's the preferred way of handling multiple instances (objects) of a single class? Say you want to write a program where a random number of circles get drawn on screen, where every circle is an instance of a Circle class, and when you click a button, every circle changes color. How would you do that? I see two ways, either to use a static variable (array) in the class holding all instances, along with a static function which loops through that array and calls a recolor method on each instance. Or to use the same variable and method, but instead put it in a separate class, maybe called CircleManager."}
{"_id": "206920", "title": "Are areas a good organizational feature, or just extra work?", "text": "Do `Areas` in ASP.NET MVC end up being a help or just a drag in the end (because of the URL construction)? Would it be better to have subdirectories inside the main Controllers folder? or are there any other options to organizing a project? _**EDIT_** For example, this is your average link without Areas:               @Html.ActionLink(\"Home\",\"Index\",\"Home\")      and this is your average link with Areas:               @Html.ActionLink(\"Home\",\"Index\", new { Area = \"\", Controller = \"Home\"})      Could the following work? (Main controller with subdirectories) ![Main controller with subdirectories](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6Y9N2.png) I'm just trying to find out if implementing Areas in a project is worthwhile, because I also read that it can be problematic when using Dependency Injection. And is there an alternative to Areas?"}
{"_id": "92016", "title": "Most efficient way of finding entities in a grid?", "text": "I'm working on my first game; a tower defense. So far It's coming along nicely. The only issue I am having (so far) is I can't figure out a way to effciently discover if an entity has entered a towers line of sight. So far I have considered just having every entity run though each known entity and calculate LOS, but that would bog down extremely quick. Then I thought of just having a bounding box for each tower and one each game step see if anything is in the bounding box. I have the same performance issue with that. Can anyone put forth some advice to put me on the correct track?"}
{"_id": "121347", "title": "Are there studies about the disadvantages of using issue tracking systems?", "text": "I don't like issue tracking systems because:   * It takes too much time to describe issues in it. This discourage its usage.   * You create a place to keep your bugs. And if there is a place for them, people usually don't care too much about fixing a bug cause they can put it there so that someday someone can fix it (or not).   * With time, the bug lists gets so long that nobody can deal with it anymore, taking up a lot of our time. I prefer handling issues using post-its on a white board, face-to-face conversations and killing important bugs as soon as they appear. I don't care too much to keep track of bug history because I don't think that it is worth the overhead. Am I alone here? Are there studies (book/article/whatever) about the disadvantages (or great advantages) of using issue tracking systems?"}
{"_id": "101092", "title": "Should 'mathematical' functions follow mathematical notation?", "text": "I suppose this question is going to be immediately flagged as subjective, but which do you think is better:               double volume(double pressure, double n_moles, double temperature) {       return n_moles * BOLTZMANN_CONSTANT * temperature / pressure;     }      or               double volume(double P, double n, double T) {       return n*R*T/P;     }      **In other words, should functions that implement some equation follow that equation's notation, or should they use more verbose names?**"}
{"_id": "173722", "title": "Independent contractors posting projects to their portfolio", "text": "I'm about to hire freelance contractors to do small pieces of my web projects. Is it standard to allow them to put the project on their portfolio? Say a simple debugging task getting a specific mobile problem fixed in <5 hours. I'm just concerned as it could potentially dilute my company's portfolio by having it listed by each contractor when in fact the majority of work is done by me. I'm trying to build a portfolio here as an agency. I think it's a risk for my company since I'm working hard to get clients and the whole point is putting projects on _my_ portfolio. Am I wrong here? Is there an standard policy for this? Perhaps a limited policy whereby attribution is required to the agency? Did exactly X for agency Y (link)."}
{"_id": "173721", "title": "What is a proper way of building Winform apps with multiple \"screens\"", "text": "What's a proper way of building a Winform app that has multiple 'screens'? For example, I'm trying to write a small backup program (mainly for giggles), and I've been dumping controls and containers onto the form. I'm using panels and group boxes to separate out the different screens (eg: I'm using a panel to hold all of the controls for the \"Settings\" window, and another panel to show all the current backups that have been set up). Well, my form.cs file ballooned into a massive amount of code, and I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I can hardly find anything in the file, and I'm ready to start over. This project was just for me to expand my knowledge of C# and .NET, so starting a new project is not a huge deal."}
{"_id": "139798", "title": "How to learn ASP.NET MVC without learning ASP.NET Web forms", "text": "First of all, I am not a web developer but I can say that I understand in general the difference between PHP, ASP.NET, etc. I have played a little with ASP.NET and C# as well, however, I didn't continue the learning path. Now I'd like to learn ASP.NET MVC but there is no a book for a beginner in ASP.NET MVC so I had a look at the tutorials but it seems that I need to learn C# first and SQL Server and HTML, am I right? So please tell me how can I learn ASP.NET MVC directly (I mean without learning ASP.NET Web forms). What do I need to learn (You can assume that I am an absolute beginner). **Update:** It is true that i can find ASP.NET MVC tutorial that explain ASP.NET MVC, but I used to find ASP.NET web forms books that explain SQL and C# at the same time and take you step by step. In ASP.NET MVC I don't know how can I start! How can I learn SQL in its own and C# in its own and then combine them with ASP.NET MVC!"}
{"_id": "173729", "title": "Co-worker uses ridiculous commenting convention, how to cope?", "text": "A co-worker in the small start-up I work at writes (C++) code like this:               // some class     class SomeClass {              // c'tor         SomeClass();              // d'tor         ~SomeClass();              // some function         void someFunction(int x, int y);     };               // some function     void SomeClass::someFunction(int x, int y) {              // init worker         m_worker.init();              // log         LOG_DEBUG(\"Worker initialized\");              // find current cache         auto it = m_currentCache.find();              // flush         if (it->flush() == false) {                  // return             return false         }              // return         return true     }      This is how he writes 100% of his code: a spacer line, a useless comment which says nothing other than what is plainly stated in the following statement, and the statement itself. This is absolutely driving me insane.   A simple class written by him spans 3 times as much as it's supposed to, It looks well commented but the comments contain no new information. In fact the code is completely undocumented in any normal definition of \"documentation\". All of the comments are just a repetition of what is written in C++ in the following line. I've confronted him several times about it and each time he seems to understand what I am saying but then goes on to not change his coding and not fix old code which is written like this. I've went on and on again and again about the distinct disadvantages of writing code like this but nothing get through to him. Other co-workers doesn't seem to mind it as much and management doesn't seem to really care. What do I do?   (sorry for the rant)"}
{"_id": "182507", "title": "Why shouldn't you use JDBC in Java applets?", "text": "I've heard people saying usage of JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) isn't recommended in Java applets. All I they say is: 'because of the security reasons'. What 'security reasons' do they mean? What would a potentially 'bad person' do when he/she found out about JDBC used in an applet, placed somewhere on a website? To make one's applet safe, it is wise to place a servlet between an applet and a database. I believe most programmers do it, I would like to know why."}
{"_id": "6394", "title": "Project Proposal templates/requirements", "text": "When drafting a project proposal, do you use any standard template? What features/information should be included? What is nice to have included? What sort of boiler plate information should I shove in? Do you find any design pattern or concept particularly helpful?"}
{"_id": "182505", "title": "While learning is it better to use other's plugins or develop my own?", "text": "As I have been learning to program, be it in my intern-ship or school, I have often come across situations where an extra piece of software is needed (from fairly basic to quite complex) and I am almost always told that I shouldn't waste my time developing a solution and use something someone else has already done. Does it make sense to do this or should I take the time to research and develop my own? At the moment I'm doing my final project which I have 15 weeks to complete, but the tutor and my classmates tell me not to bother. I can't help but think I am letting opportunities pass me by."}
{"_id": "141389", "title": "Why is a small fixed vocabulary seen as an advantage to RESTful services?", "text": "So, a RESTful service has a fixed set of verbs in its vocabulary. A RESTful web service takes these from the HTTP methods. There are some supposed advantages to defining a fixed vocabulary, but I don't really grasp the point. Maybe someone can explain it. Why is a fixed vocabulary as outlined by REST better than dynamically defining a vocabulary for each state? For example, object oriented programming is a popular paradigm. RPC is described to define fixed interfaces, but I don't know why people assume that RPC is limited by these contraints. We could dynamically specify the interface just as a RESTful service dynamically describes its content structure. REST is supposed to be advantageous in that it can grow without extending the vocabulary. RESTful services grow dynamically by adding more resources. What's so wrong about extending a service by dynamically specifying a per-object vocabulary? Why don't we just use the methods that are defined on our objects as the vocabulary and have our services describe to the client what these methods are and whether or not they have side effects? Essentially I get the feeling that the description of a server side resource structure is equivalent to the definition of a vocabulary, but we are then forced to use the limited vocabulary in which to interact with these resources. Does a fixed vocabulary really decouple the concerns of the client from the concerns of the server? I surely have to be concerned with some configuration of the server, this is normally resource location in RESTful services. To complain at the use of a dynamic vocabulary seems unfair because we have to dynamically reason how to understand this configuration in some way anyway. A RESTful service describes the transitions you are able to make by identifying object structure through hypermedia. I just don't understand what makes a fixed vocabulary any better than any self-describing dynamic vocabulary, which could easily work very well in an RPC-like service. Is this just a poor reasoning for the limiting vocabulary of the HTTP protocol? # Reflection Just to clarify my thoughts a little better than I have done. Suppose you are designing any general purpose API, maybe not even web facing. Would you be happy if someone said you can only use these method names on your objects? REST isn't restricted to HTTP, but consider the situation where every API you write, web facing or otherwise simply consisted of objects containing GET POST PUT and DELETE methods. So that object.foo method you wanted to define isn't possible. You have to define a new object called foo, and call its GET method. That's essentially how REST works, and it makes me a little uncomfortable to think about it. You don't have any better generic understanding of what foo does, you were just forced to create a new object for what is essentially a method on a parent object. Furthermore your API is no less complex, you have just hidden interface complexity by creating more objects. RESTful web services force us to adopt an interface which may or may not be sufficient in the context of the API we are exposing. Perhaps there is a good reason for doing this with web facing APIs, but a good reason to not adopt standard interfaces for every object in every general purpose API. A practical example would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "124649", "title": "Does command/query separation apply to a method that creates an object and returns its ID?", "text": "Let's pretend we have a service that calls a business process. This process will call on the data layer to create an object of type A in the database. Afterwards we need to call again on another class of the data layer to create an instance of type B in the database. We need to pass some information about A for a foreign key. In the first method we create an object (modify state) and return it's ID (query) in a single method. In the second method we have two methods, one (createA) for the save and the other (getId) for the query.                   public void FirstMethod(Info info)         {             var id = firstRepository.createA(info);                        secondRepository.createB(id);         }              public void SecondMethod(Info info)         {             firstRepository.createA(info);             var key = firstRepository.getID(info);             secondRepository.createB(key);         }      From my understanding the second method follows command query separation more fully. But I find it wasteful and counter-intuitive to query the database to get the object we have just created. How do you reconcile CQS with such a scenario? Does only the second method follow CQS and if so is it preferable to use it in this case?"}
{"_id": "124648", "title": "How are software tests done at tech startups?", "text": "I've seen a lot research articles and tech blogs that boast the benefits of software testing. I've convinced on that. But since all the software testing research are conducted by large software companies, I do not believe they really apply to startups. Since startups have different needs and constraints compared to large software companies. So this raised the questions. Should tech startups write automated tests? If so, are they done in the same manner as the large software companies? (smoke test, regression test, etc.) It's best if you can refer some research articles on this subject..since I was unable to find any on my own. (I must admit that even though I'm still early in my career, but I have yet to see a startup that's seriously committed to writing automated tests)"}
{"_id": "140925", "title": "Why was Tanenbaum wrong in the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debates?", "text": "I was recently assigned reading from the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debates in my OS class. In the debates, Tanenbaum makes some predictions:   1. Microkernels are the future   2. x86 will die out and RISC architectures will dominate the market   3. (5 years from then) everyone will be running a free GNU OS I was a one year old when the debates happened, so I lack historical intuition. Why have these predictions not panned out? It seems to me, that from Tanenbaum's perspective, they're pretty reasonable predictions of the future. What happened so that they didn't come to pass?"}
{"_id": "125111", "title": "Do I need an IDE to develop Android apps?", "text": "After reading some articles on Google, I decided to start working on Android apps since it's an open source platform from Google. So I wanted to create some apps.I have Android 2.2 Os So I just googled it to find the things and I finally found this link to create Android apps. Is this the link that enables me to create apps or does we need any other IDE? Like we have gcc for c and VC++ for C++. What other things to do I need to set up to get going on this?"}
{"_id": "213839", "title": "Want to create a simple gui app using C++ but dont know what to use", "text": "I have learned C++ to an intermediate point and now I'd like to create something beyond a console program. I would like to create a simple program that grabs info from specific text files and displays it in a GUI. Just simple statistics. Nothing complex like a spreadsheet or anything. I also know batch, and could use that for the none gui things, as I can put script together in much quicker speeds than writing C++. I don't have any issue having the batch scripts running in the background while the GUI opens, or is running. I have QT but learning it seems to be intimidating. What I'd like to do are simple things, like grabbign info from external files, but that seems to be difficult in Qt. I understand events signals and slots, but the Qt library is overwhelming and it seems like I need to learn everything I learned to create a C console app, all over again. And I don't want to do that. I also have Visual Studio 2012. Should I use that instead? What are my options here to create a simple GUI program with C++? I'm sick of just creating console apps. Thanks."}
{"_id": "219257", "title": "Understanding parameters", "text": "I have read this statement: \"A parameter is used as a sort of temporary messenger, carrying data originating from outside the constructor or method and making it available inside it.\" So, does that mean that values of parameters are stored at first in the constructors and then passed to fields? I still didn't understand the meaning of that. Any good explanation?"}
{"_id": "219254", "title": "Approach to algorithm for assignment of resources", "text": "We have a requirement to be able to match people with locations based on availability and certain conditions. Let's say I have a group of people each with 3 types of things they may need to park. A car, a truck and a boat. Each person also indicates their preferred parking location (choices 1, 2 and 3). I also have a list of parking locations which can handle a certain number of each of those things. The goal is to match everyone up so that we maximum usage. The main requirement is that each individual person has to be able to park everything in the same location OR they don't get to park at all. Example:   Starting with the parking locations I have:               Lot    Cars    Trucks    Boats     A       2       0         2     B       2       1         3     C       0       5         0      For people I have:               Person    Cars    Trucks    Boats    Choice 1  Choice 2  Choice 3     Tom        2       1         0         A         B         C     Betty      1       0         1         B         C         A     Sam        0       2         0         C         A         B     Pat        3       2         1         A         C         B      My initial thought is to simply sort the people by the number of items they have (largest to smallest). Then attempt to place each one based on choice. IE: I'd try to place Pat first (most items), but couldn't because no lot meets the requirements. Then I'd try Tom, who would go into Lot B. Etc. Do you know of any issues with that approach? Bonus points: is there a name for this type of problem?"}
{"_id": "154264", "title": "Evolution of an Application: how to manage and improve core engine?", "text": "The web application I work on has been live for a year now, but it's time for it to evolve and one of the ways in which it is evolving is into a multi-brand application - in this case several different companies using the application, different templates/content and some slight business logic changes between them. The problem I'm facing is implementing a best practice across the site where there are differences in business logic for each brand. These will mostly be very superficial, using a an alternative mailing list provider or capturing some extra data in a form. I don't want to have if(brand === x) { ... } else { ... } all over the site especially as most of what needs to be changed can be handled with extending the existing class. I've thought of several methods that could be used to instantiate the correct class, but I'm just not sure which is going to be best especially as some seem to lead to duplication of more code than should be necessary. Here's what I've considered: 1) Use a Static Loader similar to Zend_Loader which can take the class being requested, and has knowledge of the Brand and can then return the correct object.               $class = App_Loader::getObject('User', $brand);      2) Factory classes. We use these in the application already for Products but we could utilise them here also to provide a transparent interface to the class. 3) Routing the page request to a specific brand controller. This however seems like it would duplicate a lot of code/logic. Is there a pattern or something else I should be considering to solve this problem? 4) How to manage a growing project that has multiple custom instances in production? _Update_ This is a PHP application so the decisions on which class to load are made per request. There could be upwards of 100+ different 'brands' running."}
{"_id": "141033", "title": "Best Practices To Build a Product Registration System?", "text": "What are some practices I should use in a product registration system I'm building? I likely can't stop all malicious hacking, but I'd like to slow them down a great deal. (Note, I know only PHP.) I'm talking about things like encrypting traffic, testing the encryption from hacking like a man-in-the- middle attack, etc. The other concern I have is that this needs to work on most PHP5-based web hosting environments, which may not have mcrypt installed."}
{"_id": "134215", "title": "What are graph datastores better at doing than other datastores and why?", "text": "Where previously there was only relational databases, the data store world is now rife with options like Key-Value, Document, and Graph datastores. Unfortunately, every datastore likes to show how it can be used for _anything_ , but none of them really help people figure out when to use one model over another. So, the question is: **What \"things\" are graph datastores better at than relational datastores?** (ie. faster, simpler, more flexible, more powerful) **What makes them better at doing those things?**"}
{"_id": "249769", "title": "What is the best approach to storing a multi-dimensional array with unknown bounds?", "text": "I'm trying to store content scraped from several lyric and chord websites into separate variables into either a multi-dimensional array, or into separate string arrays, but I've been stuck trying some different approaches. I've searched through the site and have found many questions that were similar, though incompatible or difficult to adapt with my project. If content was stored in a multi-dimensional array, it would look like this: _Search Site > Artist > Link to artist page > Song > Link to song page > Tab types (Chords, Lyrics, Tabs) > Link to tab type (Chords, Lyrics, Tabs) > Content_ A good visual representation of this array would look like this: http://i.stack.imgur.com/GrATD.jpg Keep in mind the content is **dynamic** , so it is not possible for me to hard-code array bounds without first retrieving the size of the content I'm storing (e.g. amount of songs per artist) Below are the approaches I've tried and their shortcomings, or where I failed to implement correctly: _Multi-dimensional (jagged) arrays_ required explicit bounds, and only the rightmost array can be resized. (This approach can be made to work by setting explicit bounds after all content has been captured, but creating temporary variables and passing them all to the multi-dimensional array requires a lot of code and seems like a \"dirty\" solution to my problem.) _Tuples_ seemed promising, but for some reason, I was not able to create a tuple containing different variable types, or the approach was confusing. _Individual arrays_ did not give me enough flexibility and required creating multiple new arrays dynamically. (e.g. an array for the list of songs for a specific artist, another for the tab links in a specific song, etc.) I'm sure I've tried others, but I cannot remember at the moment, I've seen a similar approach done with **_Structures_** on a sample for a user control here and others who implemented a local database to contain all the elements. All that is needed is an approach that is simplistic but functional. Any help is gladly appreciated. Another representation here: ![representation](http://i.stack.imgur.com/h65Hf.jpg)"}
{"_id": "249767", "title": "Is it a good idea to \"#define me (*this)\"?", "text": "This macro can be defined in some global header, or better, as a compiler command line parameter:               #define me (*this)      And some usage example: **some_header.h:**               inline void Update()     {         /* ... */     }      **main.cpp:**               #include \"some_header.h\"          class A {     public:         void SetX(int x)         {             me.x = x;                me.Update();          }              void SomeOtherFunction()         {             ::Update();         }              /*             100 or more lines             ...          */              void Update()         {             // ...          }              int x;       };      So in a class method when I access a class member, I am always using `me`, and when accessing a global identifier I always use `::`. This gives the reader which is not familiar with the code (probably myself after a few months) localized information of what is accessed without the need to look somewhere else. I want to define `me` because I find using `this->` everywhere too noisy and ugly. But can `#define me (*this)` be considered a good C++ practice? Are there some practical problematic points with the `me` macro? And if you as C++ programmer will be the reader of some code using the `me` macro, would you like it or not? **Edit:** Because many people arguing not specificaly contra using `me`, but generaly contra explicit this. I think it may not be clear what are benefits of \"explicit this everywhere\". **What are benefits of \"explicit this everywhere\"?**   * As a reader of the code you have certainty what is accessed and you can concentrate on different things than verify - in some distant code - that is really accessed what you think is accessed.    * You can use search function more specifically. Search \"`this->x`\" can give you more wanted results than only search \"`x`\"   * When you are deleting or renaming some member, compiler reliably notifies you at places where is this member used. (Some global function can have same name and exist chance you can introduce error if you are not using explicit this).   * When you are refactoring code and making non-member function from member (to make better encapsulation) explicit this shows you place which you must edit and you can easily replace this with pointer to instance of class given as non-member function parameter    * Generally when you are changing code, there are more posibilities to errors when you are not using explicit this than when you are use explicit this everywhere.    * Explicit this is less noisy than explicit \u201em_\u201c when you are acessing member from outside (`object.member` vs `object.m_member`) (thanks to @Kaz to spot this point)   * Explicit this solves problem universaly for all members \u2013 attributes and methods, whereas \u201em_\u201c or other prefix is practicaly usable only for attributes. I would like to polish and extend this list, tell me if you know about other advantages and use cases for **explicit this everywhere**."}
{"_id": "184829", "title": "Algorithms for data structures in distributed system", "text": "The hash table data structure can be easily spread across multiple machines with a simple algorithm to distribute the keys:               machine_to_query = item_key % machine_count      When you want to read and write key value pairs, you use the key to work out which machine stores the data, then you talk to that machine. If you want a count of the total number of items, you'd need to request the count from each server and add them up. What algorithms exist for efficiently managing data structures where the data is partitioned across multiple machines? Distributed algorithms, not parallel algorithms. How might something like a sorted array work in a distributed fashion? Efficiently."}
{"_id": "249762", "title": "Socket connection to external IP through server", "text": "I am working on an application using sockets. Essentially I want to stream data between two clients. Since I can't connect the two clients together directly (they aren't on the same network), I will need to connect the two through a server. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/gLpR0.png) My client-side is written in Java but the server-side could be written in any language. I have already explored using socket.io etc. but the issue I ran in to is that Java doesn't have a nice websocket solution. What other options are there out there to achieve the same effect? The solution I have in mind right now is basically \"forwarding\" the stream from one client to the other through the server, but there could be a better way out there..."}
{"_id": "208334", "title": "Big switching from one platform to another", "text": "As an example I want to switch from C#/.NET to Scala/Jvm. I'm working as a self-employed and I'm free to choose my favorite language/platform. Having more than 8 years of experience in C#/.NET leads me to have lots of reusable codes, libraries and framework. I can work on my projects and ideas without thinking about language so I'm focused on what I'm doing. Why should I do such migration? Because;   * Scala is open-source and innovative   * Scala runs on JVM which is cross-platform that decreases costs and some risks   * Scala has all C# feature (with something more)   * Benefit of Java comminuty   * More open-source libraries in Java platform   * Doing open-source in .NET is a little harder and doesn't get attention as it does in Java or other plaforms. Is it OK to manage such a big risk and learn a new language/platform (in this case, Scala, Play framework, etc.) and use it in at least a small commercial project to find out if it's suitable?"}
{"_id": "215180", "title": "How does Google store its PageRank matrix?", "text": "I'm curious to know how Google stores the matrix that's used in the PageRank algorithm; and am looking for a data-structure for storing a very-large (not fitting in memory of any one computer) sparse matrix, and efficiently (not sure what that means yet) performing operations on it. If there's a white-paper available please post a link or a title (I've done some research, and couldn't find one), and if not, it would be great if you could post links or just names of papers or books that would help get me started. In my initial research I found the sparse row-wise format [1], and I started reading Sparse Matrix Technology [2]; so please let me if I'm on the right track here.   * [1] Chang, 1969 Curtis and Reid, 1971 Gustavson, 1972   * [2] Pissanetzky, 1984"}
{"_id": "80997", "title": "Multi-threading in C# .NET Windows Service", "text": "I am writing a Windows Service (using C# .NET 3.5 VS2008) and my requirement is:   * When the Windows Service start - it performs record check operation (in Database) @ every 30 second interval (I have used a timer for this)   * If the appropriate record was found in the database - then it starts multiple threads and performs the required operation (that may be network operation or Database operation). The number of multiple threads also depends on the amount of records found (like if 10 record found then starts 5 threads and for 20 records start 10 threads etc...) How to design/code for these multiple threads? Example: 10 records found in the database, I want to start 5 threads for first 5 records which may perform network operation... out of 5 threads whichever thread completes his job - will start processing for next the record (i.e Record number 6, 7 ... 10) Please suggest best possible solution for the above case."}
{"_id": "170824", "title": "Use Android NDK for portability with iOS?", "text": "I am currently planning to implement a little painting app using OpenGL ES 1.1. I believe this question applies to any OpenGL ES project. I am starting development on Android and I would like to know if you would recommend writing the drawing logic (using OpenGL) in C++ with the NDK so it will easier to port to iOS, or to use the Java API and being locked on Android. The reason I am asking that is because I have seen mixed opinions on the Web about using the NDK (some people say it is an added level of complexity). From what I have already seen, I believe that I should go with the Java API since I am starting on Android and then, if I decide to go on iOS, to rewrite the OpenGL logic in Objective-C or C++. This should be pretty straightforward since the calls appear to be the same in both languages. What do you think? Am I right?"}
{"_id": "122691", "title": "CSS and HTML inconsistent when declaring multiple classes", "text": "I'm learning CSS \"seriously\" for the first time, but I've found that the way you deal with multiple CSS classes in CSS and HTML quite inconsistent. For example, I learned that if I want to declare multiple CSS classes with a common style applied to them, I write:               .style1, .style2, .style3 {        color: red;     }      Then, if I want to declare an HTML tag that has multiple classes applied to it, I write:               <div class=\"style1 style2 style3\"></div>      And I'm asking why? From my personal point of view it would be more consistent if both could be declared by using a comma to separate each class, or if both could be declared using a space; after all IMHO we're still talking about multiple classes, in both CSS and HTML. I think that it would make more sense if I could write this to declare a `div` with multiple classes applied:               <div class=\"style1, style2, style3\"></div>      Am I'm missing something important? Could you explain me if there's a valid reason behind these two different syntaxes?"}
{"_id": "200652", "title": "Please explain object versioning in the nodejs module system", "text": "This question is about the persistance of variables across different modules in nodejs when they don't directly \"require\" each other, but do \"require\" a common ancestor. It is also the generalised version of this stackoverflow question. Whilst I received an answer there that helped me solve my specific case, I'm still unclear as to the answer to the architectural problem I posed. I hoped that the general problem was a good fit for a programmers.stackexchange question. Assume we have a nodejs program structured like so:   * Module Alpha - exports variable a.   * Module Beta - requires module Alpha, reads variable a -> prints it to console periodically   * Module Gamma - requires module Alpha, periodically writes to variable a Is the instance of module Alpha, and thus variable a, common across all three modules. e.g. can module Gamma make changes to variable a that are successfully printed to the console by module Beta. If this is true, why is this true **even though there is no direct \"requires\" relationship between modules Gamma and Beta?** If this is not true, **can you explain the best way to share a variable than needs to be modified at runtime between multiple node modules?** Can you explain the underlaying data model which is causing this behaviour in nodejs modules?"}
{"_id": "5120", "title": "How to handle egocentric programmers?", "text": "Let me explain this a little. In a previous job, I had a coworker that has a good reputation with the management. He always finished on time. And the bosses were happy with his progress so het got certain privileges. The problem was that the other programmers knew his secret. He has optimized the 80/20 rule, so he worked his 20 percent time to finish 80 percent of the code. The other (hard) 20% was left to the maintenance programmers. Who (not surprisingly) got penalized because of their lack of progress. But because this programmer had a good reputation with the management, it was almost imposible to shift the blame to him. (Fortunately he left the company). My question is, what to do as programming team if you have such a programmer within your team. Do you try to warn management with risk of ruining your own chances? Do you accept the fact? Or are there other options."}
{"_id": "170829", "title": "Is a simple iPhone app more appealing to users than a mobile website?", "text": "My client wants to do an iPhone app because she's found that people are significantly more likely to use the iPhone app over a mobile optimized site. The iPhone app is very simple - it just displays a couple images and some text. As a programmer I'd much rather do a mobile site given the simple nature of the content. From a technical perspective I feel that it's overkill to use an iPhone app in this situation. Does it make sense to build an iPhone app when a mobile site would suffice, simply because your users would much rather it be an iPhone app? Is there anyway to easily convince users that a mobile site is just as easy to use?"}
{"_id": "200657", "title": "Writing code based on code snippet from the internet without license", "text": "I'm working on an assembly project and I need to write code to switch from text to VGA mode. This is fairly complex and requires setting up a lot of data, so I'd rather not write it myself. Fortunately I found a snippet of code on the internet that does exactly what I want. Unfortunately it does have a copyright notice, but no license is anywhere to be found. I've currently written my own code with the snippet as a reference, but in the end it's basically the same code with different variable names and comments. Then again, with assembly there's only so many ways you can introduce variation in your code. Is it okay if I publish my code with for example a notice that it was inspired by that snippet? Or am I not allowed to do this at all?"}
{"_id": "246482", "title": "Does one really need multiple instances of a class?", "text": "Generally I'm extremely skeptical of anyone who criticizes the singleton design pattern in software. In the MVC (model-view-controller) design pattern, views and controllers are usually singletons and the only cases of multiples instances of a class are the model classes (usually modeling a database table). In my experience, the only type of software that consistently utilizes Object Oriented programming to the fullest (multiple instances of multiple types of classes) is simulation software, which is no surprise considering Object Oriented software was invented for that purpose. So my question is, besides simulation:   * what other types of software need having multiple instances of a class?"}
{"_id": "191164", "title": "Better performance on web with big PNGs", "text": "I'm currently developing a web that is all made from images (an HTML version of a Flash web). The client provided me with a big PSD which I had to export each layer as a PNG to keep transparencies. There are some layers that are heavy in detail, and of course, in size, like 5MB each (mainly the background, it's like 6 PNG, 4-6Mb each). Loading them with CSS3 renders them great, but I'm having performance problems in the browsers (Chrome lags, Opera reloads images each time I scroll down/up, Firefox lags, IE obviously lags, etc) and in a future when I upload the finished page to a server, it will suffer from heavy image load, a lot to download from the client. My client knows this and I'm waiting for them for a possible solution (lower the PSD resolution for example), but meanwhile I'd like the go ahead on this problem and try something else, do you have any tips for this situation? I tought in the basic solutions for this, like compression and other things, but if you have any other tips it will be great. Oh, and another \"detail\", this HTML version is primarly focused at iPad/iPhone devices."}
{"_id": "33365", "title": "On-the-fly graphical representation of code", "text": "I know about Omondo's plugin for live code-UML synchronization in Eclipse, but I was wondering if there was any other tool/IDE/IDE-extension that has some form of live graphical code representaiton (structural, flow, call-stacks, dependencies, etc.). I'm essentially looking for richer visual feedback on code while programming, not really looking for purely graphical code editors, though round-trips would be nice (edit graphically, code gets modified; edit code, representation gets modified). If you don't know about any graphical live documentation tool for code, maybe someone that can coexist with code, such as MySQL Workbench or Enterprise Architect. **EDIT** : Please, original answers, meaning other tools different than what I quoted (even if they are similar to Omondo, MySQL Workbench and Enterprise Architect). **EDIT 2** : I found Netbeans' C/C++ call graph: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SNk6c.png)"}
{"_id": "207028", "title": "How to use my proprietary framework on a new job without making it open-source?", "text": "I have been working on a framework for years. It is solid, extensive and tested. It is exactly what the employer needs for the foundation of its new project. There is no point in rewriting the whole thing from scratch or using a competing open-source alternative. My desire is to give a free, non-exclusive, non-redistributable license to the employer for access to the binaries and sources, so the employer can change the code. I understand that the employer cannot depend on closed-source code so I am willing to give my sources to the employer for free (the equivalent to two years of my work for free). I just want to protect my copyright and prevent the employer from giving the code to someone else. I believe many programmers will find themselves in this situation when starting a new job. However, making it open-source is out of question for a variety of reasons that do not matter for the purpose of this question. I want to keep the source closed, but provide a free copy under a non-exclusive, non-redistritubable license. So my questions are:   * When do I bring it up that I have a framework that I would like to use? Probably before I take the job because if they don't want to use it OR don't accept my license I am not taking the job.   * What kind of license should I use to make this deal with my employer?   * Any other considerations or comments? **UPDATES:**   1. One thing I can say is that there are other companies using the software (with licenses) so I cannot make it open-source or simply transfer the copyright to my new employer, which is what actually happens if you use it in your job without having this discussion."}
{"_id": "246153", "title": "Coding and testing in the same sprint", "text": "How is testing handled within the same sprint as coding, if all or most of the coding is not done until the end of the sprint? (I'm referring to the \"soup- to-nuts\" development and testing of a single PBI within a sprint.) Most of the answers I've seen online involve QA automation, but even that isn't really possible since you generally need a functional UI to record or create automated tests from. I only have storyboards that continue to evolve as I develop features and discover new requirements. In my case, I am developing a new desktop application. Desktop apps don't generally lend themselves to automated testing very well. I have some automated unit tests, but they are not the manual functional/integration tests that a QA professional would perform. So, where I'm at now is that my sprint ends tomorrow, I still have coding to finish, and my QA folks have nothing to test yet, and no idea how to test whatever I'd give them without me holding their hands. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this dilemma. In the past, I've done a pipeline: in the current sprint the test team tests the features that have been implemented during the previous sprint. At my current job, the PM refers to this approach as \"waterfall\", and as such, unacceptable."}
{"_id": "207026", "title": "Zend Framework 2 - Keeping all the models and mappers in Application module?", "text": "I am in process of planning web application by following the best practices and approaches of software development. I am building this application using zend framework 2 and going through its documentation and best practices of building applications through zend framework 2 and MVC patterns. Right now I am confused about where to keep my model layers. So far all the applications I have developed using Zend I used to keep my model layers in application module because I think models are not related to single module and a single module may communicate with multiple models. Also in Zf2 modules gets loaded only when it is requested except the Application module which loads with every request despite which module is requested. If I place my models in the specific modules and load them in the service config of there relative modules. I will not be able to use them in other modules. So what should I do?"}
{"_id": "252505", "title": "Should the check correctness of a time constrained puzzle game application be done on the server side?", "text": "I am working on an application where a user has to complete a puzzle and check within a given time limit. This is an HTML5 based game, I can't keep the solution on the client side. but I also want to avoid the latency that will be caused when we check for the correctness of the player's attempt. Is there a way I can check the correctness of the solution on the client side safely ? One implementation I was considering was to take the hash of the solution and compare it with hash of user's solution at the client side and once he finally submits it, recheck it on the server side. Any potential flaws here or are their cleaner ways to accomplish the same ?"}
{"_id": "252508", "title": "Implementing a Username Class", "text": "I am attempting to encapsulate several features about a user in a single class. Although the main use for this class would be to initialize it once and never have to call set any variables again, I would like this class to be scalable to be called many times. Although by putting this into a class I feel like I am either over-complicating it or breaking OOP standards. At the moment I am currently using these current sorts of calls throughout VBA code:               username = GetUsername()      OR               IF userHasSecurity(GetUsername(), \"WhatUserHasAccessTo\") = true THEN      What I am hoping to do it replace it (respectively) with:                 Set UserID = New Username       UserID.GetUserName      OR               IF UserID.HasModuleAccess(\"WhatUserHasAccessTo\") = true THEN      In addition to this change, I have a function that returns `Active Directory` information and also verify if usernames input exist in `Active Directory` The Class Diagram is as such               Private UserName As String     Private FirstName As String     Private MiddleInitial As String     Private LastName As String          Private Sub class_Initialize()     Private Function findCurrentUsername() As String     Private Function doesUsernameExist(usernameToCheck As String) As Boolean       Public Property Get GetUserName() As String     Public Property Let setUsername(newUsername As String)     Public Property Get getFirstName() As String     Private Property Let setFirstName(newFirstName As String)     Public Property Get getLastName() As String     Private Property Let setLastName(newLastName As String)     Public Property Get getMiddleInitial() As String     Private Property Let setMiddleInitial(newMiddleInitial As String)     Private Function findNameDetails()     Public Property Get getFullName() As String     Public Function HasModuleAccess(moduleName As String, Optional appName As String) As Boolean     Public Function getUserActiveDirectoryGroups() As DAO.Recordset      Is this more an opinion based execution(standalone functions vs. class) thing or is there something to gain? Does this break OOP standards and am I using classes incorrectly?"}
{"_id": "146564", "title": "how to license my application", "text": "I want to release a software application developed by me as freeware and after I make considerable profits(from its commercial version), I'll release it as an open source. So, could someone please suggest me how I can release my app under freeware license, from where I can get that license, suggest me the best way. (I don't know much about these governing laws). I hope freeware license we can make it at free of cost. Please don't leave me by giving a set of vendors list, suggest me which one fits to my release. I don't have any specific terms or conditions that user has to obey while using that application. Note: Till now I've not released it or discussed it any where else."}
{"_id": "44177", "title": "What is the single most effective thing you did to improve your programming skills?", "text": "Looking back at my career and life as a programmer, there were plenty of different ways I improved my programming skills - reading code, writing code, reading books, listening to podcasts, watching screencasts and more. My question is: What is the most effective thing you have done that improved your programming skills? What would you recommend to others that want to improve? I do expect varied answers here and no single \"one size fits all\" answer - I would like to know what worked for different people."}
{"_id": "146568", "title": "Should programmers have access to PHI for development and testing?", "text": "My responsibilities at a small company are mostly programming-related, but I also perform a number of other roles that definitely require access to PHI1. In larger organizations with clearer delineation of responsibilities, is it prudent to provide programmers with only dummy data and never actual PHI? 1 Protected Health Information, as outlined by the US legislation that governs patient privacy, HIPAA."}
{"_id": "123872", "title": "How to develop my own phone OS", "text": "I know it's a very big question to ask :), I'm just asking out of curiosity. Is it possible for someone to build a phone OS? Can someone guide me through this please. For example, how to choose a H/W and how should you test your code, is it possible buy some device (eg HTC) and just try the code with it? The good thing here is Linux Kernel is there so one won't start from scratch."}
{"_id": "242678", "title": "Condition to use polymorphism", "text": "is polymorphism only possible when there is a scenario of inheritance or is the implementation of polymorphism not dependent on inheritance. Or is polymorphism mainly usefull when there is inheritance ?"}
{"_id": "254837", "title": "Does ASCII have a header or footer or anything similar?", "text": "I'm working through a problem in Programming Pearls -- specifically, the implementation of a program which sorts a file containing, at most, 10,000,000 integers, each of which is 7 digits long (Column 1, Problem 3). The problem has some very strict constraints when it comes to memory, so I'm considering reading and writing the integers in ASCII -- 7 bytes at a time. I need to know if ASCII has any headers or footers or anything similar that I should be considering (I'm putting everything on 1 line without any separators, so new lines aren't an issue)."}
{"_id": "254830", "title": "How to model users accounts in ASP MVC Framework with Entity Framework using code-first approach?", "text": "How do you design your code-first approach in entity framework when your code should include user data (name, password...) without repeating/overwriting what the MVC framework will generate in terms of user tables, classes, authorization and authentication As simple example, if i have an application that will manage user projects, my models will contain the following classes, and have the following relationship:               - One user may be assigned one or MANY projects     - One project may be assigned to one or MANY users      ( just to show the many to many ERD relationship nature)               class User{         //implementation of the class members and          // navigation properties to alow Entity Framework to create the DB tables     }          class Project{         //implementation of the class members and          // navigation properties to alow Entity Framework to create the DB tables     }      Now the problem i am facing is that EF and ASP .net MVC framework takes care of creating user tables, profiles and roles entities... I am not sure whether it is possible to design my classes in a way to show an automatic (conventional) relationship with the rest of the tables created by MVC. In the case this needs to be done by writting custom Authentication classes, can you please explain how? because i have found many articles that discuss the same issue but without pointing out the relationship between the project classes and the MVC created classes / tables, plus if the developer choses to use the MVC way he will end up with two data contexts, even after merging both tables in one sql server catalog."}
{"_id": "242673", "title": "Example of persisting an inheritance relationship using ORM", "text": "I have some experience with OOP and RDBs, but very little exposure to web programming. I am trying to understand what **non-trivial** types of problems are solved by ORM. Of course, I am familiar with the need for **data** persistence, but I have never encountered a need for persisting **relationships between objects** , a situation which is indicated in many online articles about ORM. I am not asking about the **process** of persisting a POJO to a database and restoring it later. Nor am I asking about why ORM **frameworks** are useful -- or a pain in the butt -- for doing so. I am particularly interested in how the need arises to persist and restore **relationships between objects**. In various documentation, I have seen many examples of persisting POJOs to a database, but the examples have all been for only very simple objects that are essentially nothing more than records anyway: a constructor, some private fields, and getter/setter methods. The motivation for persisting such an \"object-record\" seems obvious and trivial. This example: Hibernate ORM Tutorial offers such an example, but goes on to discuss mismatch issues of granularity, inheritance, identity, associations, and navigation that are not motivated by the example. If someone could offer a toy example of an instance where, say, the need arises to persist an inheritance relationship, I would be grateful. This might be blindingly obvious for anyone who has already encountered this situation but I have not and a great deal of searching and reading have not turned up any examples."}
{"_id": "242672", "title": "Does my use of the strategy pattern violate the fundamental MVC pattern in iOS?", "text": "I'm about to use the 'strategy' pattern in my iOS app, but feel like my approach violates the somehow fundamental MVC pattern. My app is displaying visual \"stories\", and a `Story` consists (i.e. has `@properties`) of one `Photo` and one or more `VisualEvent` objects to represent e.g. animated circles or moving arrows on the photo. Each `VisualEvent` object therefore has a `eventType` `@property`, that might be e.g. `kEventTypeCircle` or `kEventTypeArrow`. All events have things in common, like a `startTime` `@property`, but differ in the way they are being drawn on the `StoryPlayerView`. Currently I'm trying to follow the MVC pattern and have a `StoryPlayer` object (my controller) that knows about both the model objects (like `Story` and all kinds of visual events) and the view object `StoryPlayerView`. To chose the right drawing code for each of the different visual event types, my `StoryPlayer` is using a `switch` statement.               @implementation StoryPlayer          // (...)          - (void)showVisualEvent:(VisualEvent *)event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView     {         switch (event.eventType) {             case kEventTypeCircle:                 [self showCircleEvent:event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView];                 break;         case kEventTypeArrow:                 [self showArrowDrawingEvent:event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView];                 break;         // (...)     }      But switch statements for type checking are bad design, aren't they? According to Uncle Bob they lead to tight coupling and can and should almost always be replaced by polymorphism. Having read about the \"Strategy\"-Pattern in Head First Design Patterns, I felt this was a great way to get rid of my switch statement. So I changed the design like this: All specialized visual event types are now subclasses of an abstract `VisualEvent` class that has a `showOnStoryPlayerView:` method.               @interface VisualEvent : NSObject          - (void)showOnStoryPlayerView:(StoryPlayerView *)storyPlayerView; // abstract      Each and every concrete subclass implements a concrete specialized version of this drawing behavior method.               @implementation CircleVisualEvent          - (void)showOnStoryPlayerView:(StoryPlayerView *)storyPlayerView     {         [storyPlayerView drawCircleAtPoint:self.position                      color:self.color                      lineWidth:self.lineWidth                     radius:self.radius];     }      The `StoryPlayer` now simply calls the same method on all types of events.               @implementation StoryPlayer          - (void)showVisualEvent:(VisualEvent *)event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView     {         [event showOnStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView];     }      The result seems to be great: I got rid of the switch statement, and if I ever have to add new types of VisualEvents in the future, I simply create new subclasses of `VisualEvent`. And I won't have to change anything in `StoryPlayer`. But of cause this approach violates the MVC pattern since now my model has to know about and depend on my view! Now my controller talks to my model and my model talks to the view calling methods on `StoryPlayerView` like `drawCircleAtPoint:color:lineWidth:radius:`. But this kind of calls should be controller code not model code, right?? Seems to me like I made things worse. I'm confused! Am I completely missing the point of the strategy pattern? Is there a better way to get rid of the switch statement without breaking model- view separation?"}
{"_id": "41617", "title": "Do I need to paste open source license information at the top of my webpage?", "text": "I'm developing a JavaScript application that uses several open source JavaScript projects. All their licenses have a phrase like \"You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License\". Does this mean I need to make a massive HTML comment at the top of my webpage with all the licences of the software that I use? I ask this question because I've never seen the source code of a webpage that does this."}
{"_id": "41616", "title": "What is the current \"standard\" for setting up a development environment that supports remote collaboration as well as secure version control?", "text": "What is the current \"standard\" for setting up a development environment that supports remote collaboration as well as secure version control? Considering a virtual dedicated solution with vm for a web layer and a data layer, using VPN for each programmer. We're a small start-up that do both Microsoft and open-source development. Is there a set software tools or packages that are appropriate for a small shop and yet scalable?"}
{"_id": "129767", "title": "What would be the best way to spend a day learning Guice?", "text": "I have just joined a company where the major projects, including the one i have landed on, use Guice. I have never used Guice. I am familiar with dependency injection, in the shape of CDI (a bit) and the obscure but decent Nucleus (part of ATG). We just completed a successful iteration, so tomorrow (friday the 13th!) is a day that developers have to spend on things they think are valuable. I have some meetings during the day, but i will have about four or five hours to do this. I have a machine to myself, with Eclipse installed and configured to my liking. I would like to spend my day learning about Guice. How should i spend my time? (I'm not entirely sure this is an appropriate question for Programmers, but there's only one way to find out)"}
{"_id": "239165", "title": "pattern to share objects between API and application", "text": "I'm having serious doubts about the design for my Web application. I wanted to separate the business logic from the interface so I made a Web API that handles all the requests to the database. It's an ASP.NET Web API with Entity framework and a unit of work and generic repository pattern. So far, everything is good. **PROBLEM** Where I need help is I can't figure out an efficient way of sharing objects between the API and the application. I don't want to serialize directly the entity object, I thought it would be a bad practice because if the entity model changes, I could end up with serializing large objects for no reason. **How it's implemented now** Because my interface is ASP.NET Web application in C# and my API is in C#, I made a common library with the definition of all my classes I want to share between them. I know that solution won't work when I will develop an android app, I will have to create my classes again in Java but that's not my biggest problem. The problem is I feel like I'm always converting my objects. **EXAMPLE** Here's an example of my work flow : I start with a model with all the objects and the data annotations for my form then user would POST that model to a controller. In the controller I have to convert this model to a class in my common library then send that object to my API. Then a controller in my API catch the call and convert that object to an entity object to update the database. So I have 3 classes   1. The model for the view with all the data annotation for the validation (Client)   2. The common library classes to share the objects (DLL)   3. The Entity classes (API) I have a feeling that I do something really wrong. Is there something more elegant? I would like to make sure that I have a good solution for this problem before the project gets too big."}
{"_id": "178637", "title": "How is Pash licensed?", "text": "Pash is an open source reimplementation of Windows PowerShell. It was released in 2008, and has been idle since then. I would like to take up the mantle. It's not clear what the license is. There is no LICENSE file or license details in the code. The only reference to a license I can find is on this page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pash/ where it says: > \"License: BSD License, GNU General Public License (GPL)\" But I'm not sure if I can take that as authoritative. I have tried to contact the author but he has not responded. I would hate to proceed with this project and later discover that I am violating a license, and have the project crippled as a result."}
{"_id": "178636", "title": "Does a patch for an opensource project inherit the same license?", "text": "I have submitted a patch for a GPL'd project and now a third-party wants to include this patch in a product. They have asked me what license my patch uses. Does my patch have to adopt the GPL license? Or I can choose an alternative one?"}
{"_id": "137977", "title": "job prospects for a 45 year old beginner in programming", "text": "I am about to finish my associates degree in programming and want to know if it its a good idea to go for bachelors program for someone of my age (45)? If your answer is yes which language or skills do you think I should acquire to get a job after I am out of college?"}
{"_id": "133294", "title": "Is it possible to release Code using the MS Solver Foundation under GPLv3?", "text": "I have written a piece of software using the Microsoft Solver Foundation. Now the work is done I want to release the code under the Terms of the GPLv3, if that is possible. The problem is, the GPLv3 states in section 1: > The \"System Libraries\" of an executable work include anything, other than > the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a > Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) > serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to > implement a Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to > the public in source code form. A \"Major Component\", in this context, means > a major essential component (kernel, window system, and so on) of the > specific operating system (if any) on which the executable work runs, or a > compiler used to produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run > it. The way I see it, the Solver Foundation does not fall into this definition, making it incompatible with the GPL (which is not a surprise by itself). Now, I do not want to distribute any form of the MSF (or the included Gurobi license for that part) and I will not provide any binaries for the software, so I am unsure whether thew MSF not being a system library does affect my licensing options at all (first time I have to choose a license myself for anything). The rest of the libraries I used use Apache2 and (L)GPLv3 licenses plus the zlib license for NUnit (which allows everything for binary distribution), so those should not be a problem (please correct me if I'm wrong). But the MSF and Gurobi part bothers me a bit. What I had in mind was to provide the Visual Studio solution (which lists the MSF as a dependency) and instead of including the gurobi plugin dlls, there would be a readme on how to include them after acquiring the gurobi solver along with the MSF. So, is this possible? If it isn't, maybe a different FOSS license could be found?"}
{"_id": "137974", "title": "How can I move a team from C# ASP.NET development to PHP development using Drupal?", "text": "I have a team of skilled C# developers with vast experience in creating ASP.NET MVC applications. We will soon be starting a new big web site project based on the Drupal platform. My developers do not have any experience in Drupal or PHP and I want to make the transition as quickly and effective as possible. We decided to make this decision based on two factors:   1. In my organization there are a couple of teams competing on doing this project. None of the other teams has experience in PHP or Drupal, and I truly believe that my team would do it the best, whether it's ASP.NET or Drupal.    2. One of the requirements from higher management was that we won't build something from scratch, but use an existing foundation. Many of the requirements are available in plugins/modules for the various CMS.  I know this is not an ideal environment, but it's a given state and I have to make the best out of it. None of the .NET Framework based CMS supported all of our requirements. Since my team is dynamic in nature, I believe it can adapt to working with Drupal. Hiring other people is not an option, and sending them to a course will take too much time. I thought about dedicating a week in which each developer will study a specific subject and then will pass it on to the team. Any suggestions on how you would do it?"}
{"_id": "19244", "title": "Are certain problems solved more elegantly with AOP?", "text": "I've come across the idea of Aspect Oriented Programming, and I have some concerns with it. The basic idea seems to be that we want to take cross-cutting concerns which aren't well modularized using object and modularize them. That is all very fine and well. But the implementation of AOP seems to be that of modifying code from outside of the module. So, for example, an aspect could be written that changes what happens when a particular object is passed as a parameter in a function. This seems to go directly against the idea of modules. I should not be able to modify a module's behavior from outside of that module, otherwise the whole point of modules are overturned. But aspects seem to be doing exactly that! Basically, aspects seems to be a form of code patching. It may useful for some quick hacks; but, as a general principle perhaps its not something you want to do. Aspect Oriented Programming seems to me taking a bad practice and raising to a general design principle. Is AOP a good practice? Are certain programming problems solved more elegantly with AOP?"}
{"_id": "137972", "title": "Advice on caching/updating data in memory for silverlight client", "text": "Currently in my Silverlight app I'm polling the database for changes to cached objects and am looking for advice on how to update the views that are displaying these lists. Example: I have a static class that has lists of objects (Areas, vehicles drivers etc.) that I will be using throughout the application. I have a timer in my shell that will poll the database passing a timestamp of the last update. So if the timestamp has changed the updates will be passed back and the lists will be updated. How do I update the views that will be displaying these lists. If the user is editing a record that displays a combobox bound to this list how will this data be updated and if the user has made a selection from the list will this affect the selection? Bear in mind that some users will be adding to these lists that I will be inserting to the database. Am I going about this in the right way?, or has anybody implemented this with success in their application?"}
{"_id": "137971", "title": "How to approach functional tests in segregated systems", "text": "I'm implementing some automatic functional tests in an environenment that has about 20 applications talking to eachother using queues and/or restful interfaces. The problem I'm facing is that I added some test to one of the application, lets call it Payments, and they all looked very nice and green. One of the changes on the Payments application added an extra field in a messages that is send to another application, lets call it CRM, and the CRM discarded the message, which meant that the applications started to become out of sync. The Payments application (as most other applications) send messages in a fire-and- forget way, which means that the producer never knows if a message is processed or discarded. I'm wondering is how to test these dependencies between systems. One option (that I dislike from my gut, but no idea why) is to connect to the other system and verify that the record was updated. Most applications have a restful interface and also provide clients, so is not a lot of work. But I have the strong feeling that doing this will make the test more brittle. One of the reasons why I don't like this, is that most of the applications talk to another 4-10 other applications, so it's not just checking another app... and since lots of things are asyncronous, it adds even more uncertainity to the test. So, how do you create functional tests for this type of environment?"}
{"_id": "137970", "title": "Making sure database connection information is secured", "text": "This is the first time that I am working on a web application. I was going through the question What should every programmer know about web development? and noticed one thing that I knew nothing of: > Make sure your database connection information is secured. I am confused about it because as per my knowledge the database info, password, etc will be on my server used in my coding to connect to the db. Then what does this line specifically mean?"}
{"_id": "195863", "title": "Requirement gathering in an agile methodology", "text": "In the great book User Stories Applied the author specified the following process for trawling requirements in the form of user stories: Create user roles (personas) **\\-->** brainstorm user goals for each role **\\-->** Write user stories **\\-->**   estimate all user stories **\\-->** prioritizes stories **\\-->** select some user stories for the first release **\\-->**   write acceptance criteria for each story **\\-->** divide each story into tasks **\\-->** estimate tasks However, I don't get why **ALL** stories should be estimated first and if they need to be estimated why leave the acceptance criteria out of the story till it's time to work on it? Next thing is about the acceptance criteria itself, in the book acceptance criteria where simple statements as:   * test with Master Card for payment.   * test with Visa for payment. Isn't the **Given... When... Then...** format better for writing acceptance tests? Last thing is about breaking user stories to tasks, why bother re-estimating the tasks when the task itself was estimated in story point?"}
{"_id": "207688", "title": "Do we need to use JCA while connecting to db from inside EJB", "text": "While writing an EJB (deployed on WAS) that connects to a db, i have never needed to use JCA. But apparently JCA is the standard for connection to thrid party EIS (which includes database). So does the WAS implement JCA internally? Under what situation would the app develoepr need to use JCA related classes?"}
{"_id": "180438", "title": "Visualization of N>2-D array?", "text": "I have an array of dimension 5. But, I can't figure out how to visualize that array?               int[][][][][] array = new int[4][4][4][6][2].      Is there a good way to visualize arrays with dimension counts of 3 or more?"}
{"_id": "47615", "title": "What will be the best practice for having 'reviewed' source code in a source control repository?", "text": "What will be the best way to manage reviewed source code in a source control repository? Should the source code go through a review process before getting checked in, or should the code review happen after the code is committed? If the review happens after the code is checked in to the repository, then how should that be tracked?"}
{"_id": "207682", "title": "Publish/subscribe, observer pattern implementation question", "text": "I'm developing desktop application in java/swing. I have a component that is registered as a subscriber to many panels and gets messages (my custom event) from them. That component is something like message tray. When there is a validation error or some kind of info message it's delivered from panel to that tray by my \"publish\" method. But now I'm facing a problem. I have window that consist my message tray and internal panel. in this internal panel there are some components and other Panel. And in this Panel there are panels that implements Publisher interface but they are being created on the fly from metadata and I don't have access to them to register subscriber. So I cannot directly register my message tray as subscriber to panels because:   1. I don't have access to them   2. they are created dynamically from metadata and can change. Is it ok to set my subscriber object reference in the middle (between) panels, and when creating dynamically my publisher panels register that reference to them? Is it ok with the observer pattern because now other classes have reference to the object that they don't strictly need. Maybe this object should be injected in other way? or maybe it is all OK and I just messed my mind today ;) ![Picture to make it clearer](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iiHxN.png)"}
{"_id": "207680", "title": "Do I need to understand the Internals of a programming language?", "text": "I am beginner to Python and I really like it so far. One question that comes to my mind very often is if I need to understand and therefore learn the Internals of a programming language (as in my case Python). As you might know, Python itself is written in C. So my question is: How deep do have to dive into a programming language to be proficient or fluent in this language. I compare this question to \"natural\" languages. I don't know every detail in grammar in my mother language but I am able to express myself with no problems in that language. This is when I say I am fluent in a language. Does that apply to programming languages too?"}
{"_id": "170935", "title": "What is JavaScript, really?", "text": "All this started when I was looking for a way to test my webpage for JavaScript conformance like the W3C HTML Validator. I have not found one yet. So let me know if you know of any...   1. I looked for the official JavaScript page and find ECMA Script. These people have standardized a scripting language (I do not feel like calling it JavaScript anymore!) and called it ECMA-262 (Wikipedia). Their latest work is Edition 5.1   2. JavaScript was developed my Mozilla Corporation and their last stable version is 1.8.5 (see this) which is based on the ECMA's edition 5.1   3. The Wikipedia page linked mentions dialects. Mozilla's JavaScript 1.8.5 is listed as a dialect along with JScript 9 (IE) and JavaScript (Chrome's V8[Wiki]) and a lot others. Am I to understand that JavaScript 1.8.5 is a derivative of the ECMA-262 and SpiderMonkey[Wiki] is an engine that runs it? And Chrome has its own dialect and V8 engine is the program that runs it? With all these dialects based off ECMA-262, what I can no longer understand is \"What is _JavaScript_ \"? Are there any truly cross browser scripting languages? Do the various implementers come together to agree on the dialect cross compatibility? Is this effort ECMA?"}
{"_id": "15570", "title": "Representing business rules with exceptions", "text": "I know it is expensive but (IMO) I believe it is a very good practice. I'm talking about rules like say, you can't save an Invoice if you are not a sales person... so in that case throwing an exception saying 'your are not authorized' or such... Another approach it would be having objects with a status or something like that Is there any other approach? how do you feel about it?"}
{"_id": "175959", "title": "Are there any reliable solutions for annotations/reflection/code-metadata in C?", "text": "Not all languages support java-like annotations or C#-like attributes or code metadata in general, however that doesn't mean it is not possible to have in languages that don't have this. An example is PHP with Stubbles and the Doctrine annotation library. My question is, is there anything like this for C?, or are there any reliable ways of doing reflection with extended code metadata in C? Ideally, I'm looking for something that reads javadoc-like comments. Edit: The reason for me ***needing*** as opposed to just wanting, is that I need to generate C code and code-metadata from a database, as well as being able to edit that metadada and update the database. The volume of the work (~15,000 variables/structures/functions to generate from this database) justifies the solution."}
{"_id": "175958", "title": "How to keep a generic process unique?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that makes connection between different banks which send us information on which that project replies. A part of that project configures the different protocols that are used (not every bank uses the same protocol), this runs on a separate server. These processes all have unique id's which are stored in a database. But to save time and money on configurations and new processes, we want to make a generic protocol that banks can use. Because of PCI requirements we have to make a separate process for every bank we connect to. But the generic processes have only 1 unique identifier and therefor we cannot keep them apart. Giving every copy of that process a different identifier is as I see it impossible because they run entirely separate. So how do I keep my generic process unique?"}
{"_id": "175950", "title": "In MVC , DAO should be called from Controller or Model", "text": "I have seen various arguments against the DAO being called from the Controller class directly and also the DAO from the Model class.Infact I personally feel that if we are following the MVC pattern , the controller should not coupled with the DAO , but the Model class should invoke the DAO from within and controller should invoke the model class.Why because , we can decouple the model class apart from a webapplication and expose the functionalities for various ways like for a REST service to use our model class. If we write the DAO invocation in the controller , it would not be possible for a REST service to reuse the functionality right ? I have summarized both the approaches below. **Approach #1**                 public class CustomerController extends HttpServlet {              proctected void doPost(....)  {                      Customer customer = new Customer(\"xxxxx\",\"23\",1);                 new CustomerDAO().save(customer);              }                }      **Approach #2**                 public class CustomerController extends HttpServlet {              proctected void doPost(....)  {                      Customer customer = new Customer(\"xxxxx\",\"23\",1);                 customer.save(customer);              }                }           public class Customer {             ...........             private void save(Customer customer){                  new CustomerDAO().save(customer);             }          }      **Note** \\- Here is what a definition of Model is : Model: The model manages the behavior and data of the application domain, responds to requests for information about its state (usually from the view), and responds to instructions to change state (usually from the controller). In event-driven systems, the model notifies observers (usually views) when the information changes so that they can react. I would need an expert opinion on this because I find many using #1 or #2 , So which one is it ?"}
{"_id": "206378", "title": "When is the register keyword actually useful in C?", "text": "I am confused about the use of `register` keyword in C. It is generally told that its use isn't needed like in this question on stackoverflow. Is this keyword totally redundant in C due to modern compilers or are there situations in which it can still be useful? If yes, what are some situations in which use of `register` keyword is actually helpful?"}
{"_id": "123257", "title": "Using bug-tracking / issue-tracking software to discuss design questions, new tools etc", "text": "Does anybody have experience with using a bug-tracking / issue-tracking software like bugzilla, mantis or JIRA not only for bugs or tasks, but to initiate and maintain discussions that in the end lead to a decision? For example, a developer thinks that all protected fields should be abolished and changed to private fields with protected methods that access them. It is not his call, and he would like to discuss it. Normally he brings up the point in the next developer meeting at the end of which a decision is made. Instead, my idea was for him to open an issue of a certain type \"decision\" and describe his intent like normally one would describe a bug or task. Other developers can make their comments if they feel like it, and in the end, the issue is closed as \"accepted\" or \"denied\". The advantages I see in this:   * Asynchronous communication: no one is forced to voice his opinion in a meeting when they didn't have time yet to oversee all ramifications of said decision.   * Written log of considerations that lead to a decision. If one later raises that question again he can be referred to it.   * Relations to other issues can be made, e.g. a task can be followed back to a decision.   * Integration with version control software, e.g. a commit can be traced back to a decision. Disadvantages:   * Heavy smell of a golden hammer: issue tracking software normally is used to track actionable items   * Organizational overhead may be disproportionate: instead of a small informal talk one has to communicate his ideas in written form"}
{"_id": "206374", "title": "Does modular programming affect computation time?", "text": "Everyone says that I should make my code modular, but isn't it less efficient if I use more method calls rather than fewer, but larger, methods? What is the difference in Java, C, or C++ for that matter? I get that it is easier to edit, read and understand, especially in a group. So is the computation time loss insignificant compared to the code tidiness benefits?"}
{"_id": "233201", "title": "Isolating unit tests in python", "text": "As a 30-year software developer, mostly in OO languages, but a newbie at python, I'm looking to find what is best practise for isolating unit tests in python. Let's say I have the following, semi-pseudo-code. I know some_database_client isn't a real database client:               from some_database_client import connection          connection.connect('server_id', 'username', 'password')          def function_under_test():         return connection.get_value('some_value_reference') + 10      If I write a test for `function_under_test()`, then I'm effectively testing the potentially enormous amount of logic in connecting and retrieving the data from `connection`. Instead, I really want to test that `function_under_test()` adds ten to the value retrieved. This relates to a practical real-world example where the module-level variable `connection` (or it's real-world equivalent) is referenced heavily all over the code. Therefore, it would involve a large and therefore very risky change to pass `connection` as an argument to all the functions that use it. Without doing this though, I can't easily separate the variable `connection` when I'm trying to unit-test the functions that use it. `connection` is instantiated before I even get to run the unit-test. Is there a recommended way to isolate functions like this for testing? I can certainly think of many, many ways, but I suspect that some have more of the \"Zen of Python\" about them than others. e.g. Wrapping everything in classes is a possibility, but that is perhaps moving too far away from keeping stuff simple, which is a goal of python."}
{"_id": "171019", "title": "Is it required to start a business to sell Android Apps (US)?", "text": "I know you can sell apps using your own personal tax information, but what if there are several people working on the app? Our plan is to just have one of us register for the Google Merchant account and then we'll privately divide up any revenue that comes to the PayPal account. Is this legal? Or do we need to actually create an LLC and have a payroll, etc?"}
{"_id": "207972", "title": "Organising staggered user story in Scrum", "text": "How would you organise a backlog item that is planned to change in future releases? I've got a requirement that states that: In release 1 users can open content from local machines. In future releases users can open content from remote servers, FTP and web streams. Is it typical to just create 2 backlog items to describe that requirement. Then just assign the enhancement to a future release? (Using TFS for any contextual answers)"}
{"_id": "226117", "title": "Make an app that communicates with an app on a server over wifi", "text": "This is a very broad question, and I'm just looking for a pointer in the right direction more than a specific answer, but it's something I've always wondered and never known. Lets say I have a program that I wrote, and I put it on a server. Then, I write an android app that I want to use to control that program (give it inputs, basically) To boil it down even further, what I want to do is have a program that sits on a server, and basically make an android app that is just a gui for that program, and it can be controlled from anywhere, I guess sort of like a remote printing over Wi-Fi type of thing. I really know nothing about this or even where to begin. I'd appreciate even some vocab words that point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "223964", "title": "Visualizing a complex software application", "text": "## Question What is a good way to go about visualizing a complex software application? Are recommended software applications that can be used for this purpose? ## Background About 3 years ago, I started building a web data mining application. Started out as just me, but has since grown into a project with 5 developers. I used to be able to keep track of all the parts of the application in my mind, but now it has grown in complexity such that I'm feeling the need for some sort of visual documentation of the application's structure. I'm not really sure where to go from here. I'm thinking something that looks kind of like a flow chart. But I don't have any background, experience, or formal training in software development on this scale. I have also never served on another team where I could observe someone else architecting a complex application or managing a team. Any pointers in the right direction such as books or resources on the subject would be much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "206086", "title": "Separation of construction and initialization", "text": "I'm confused by this post by Mark Seeman. And his comment on IInitializable below: > The problem with an Initialize method is the same as with Property Injection > (A.K.A. Setter Injection): it creates a temporal coupling between the > Initialize method and all other members of the class. Unless you truly can > invoke any other member of the class without first invoking the Initialize > method, such API design is deceitful and will lead to run-time exceptions. > It also becomes much harder to ensure that the object is always in a > consistent state. The same time he writes:   > This issue is similar to the issue of invoking virtual members from the > constructor. Conceptually, an injected dependency is equivalent to a virtual > member. I thinks this statement is true only if admit that constructed != initialized. What we get now:   Dependecnies are injected in constructor but it is not recommended to use them.   Initialize phase brings complexity and should be avoided.   Isn't it contradictory? Imagine class needs to set its state using the provided dependencies. Loading saved setting for example.   Init is bad, constructor is bad, so where to perform this operation?   And another point:   Are not methods like Connection.Open() just another name for Initialize? Question:   _So can anyone describe a good initialization pattern in the context of Dependency Injection that addresses the concerns Mark Seeman brings up?_"}
{"_id": "236224", "title": "What to test in this project?", "text": "Every developer advocates test-driven development, but I am coding a website in NodeJS and I am not testing my app. This is **not** because I don't see any reason. I know it allow me to check at each commit whether my code is right, thus avoiding security flaws. I don't do any tests because I don't know how or what to test. I coded a MVC app with express + mongoose + passport, and I have no idea what to test or how to test. I know it is possible to mock express requests or mongodb, but I don' find that clean and flexible. So, what and how to test?"}
{"_id": "196019", "title": "Preferrable Method to record Documentation", "text": "As any taught Software Engineer knows how important Documentation for good software projects is. Could you show me best practices for assure good documentation beside of JavaDoc comments? In my opinion the documentation should not only contain javadoc comments to assure good human readable text for future and present programmers. My thought would be to assure maybe some paper or wiki. Is there maybe any Software that helps recording documentation beside the standart solutions like JavaDoc, etc."}
{"_id": "206088", "title": "Will SQL Server autonumber reuse a value if a record is deleted?", "text": "The titled basically states it. If I have a bigint column with primary key and autonumber, and a record is deleted, will SQL Server ever reuse that now available value? The underlying issue is that I have a multi-user environment, and if I retrieve a record from the database into memory, then another user makes changes (like deleting and/or re-adding), if I do updates or deletes based on that ID in memory, is there a chance that I could be editing a record that was added in the background that doesn't truly represent the record I should be editing? I realize I could use Guids, but I'd really like to know if BigInt/Autonumber is \"safe\" in this scenario. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "86106", "title": "Search for a sub-string in a given array of strings", "text": "I have an array of n strings. I want to select all the elements of the array that starts with the given string. Sorry if that is not clear. I'll give an example.               input = \"as\"     array = [\"abas\", \"aras\", \"as\", \"ask\", \"asi\", \"aso\", \"atas\" ]     output =            [\"as\", \"ask\", \"asi\", \"aso\"]      Which algorithm will I need to do this selection. I need the fastest algorithm that will perform this operation since I'm using it for autoComplete in JavaScript. So the search should be faster than the typing speed of the user. **Edit** : Was just thinking about the data I have to pre-process if using a data structure. The data would be dynamic, and I have to perform insert operation that many number of times. I'm fetching data dynamically using AJAX requests. **Edit 2** : The array might contain 1 million entries and the search should be made at two places. One on the server side, to select all elements matching the condition. This can be restricted to 10000 entries, and the other on the client side... search size will be those 10000 entries, and this can be restricted to first 250 entries. Sorry for the late editing of the question."}
{"_id": "95899", "title": "What Does Bubbling Mean in this Context?", "text": "This page it has the following: _If we want to stop the event (e.g., prevent its default action and stop it bubbling), we can do so with the extended event object's Event#stop method:_               $('foo').observe('click', function(event) {       event.stop();     });"}
{"_id": "7588", "title": "Continuous Build server (cc.net, hudson, bamboo, etc...) remote build experience?", "text": "We currently use once cc.net server for our build process, which builds both .net (using msbuild & nant) and java (using maven and ant). CC.net monitors source control, and triggers a remote build running on a separate server. CC.net then collates the results. When we run the remote build, it typically:   * runs nunit or junit or similar using mocked data   * optionally runs a DB script to create a fresh database instance or restore a database from a known position.   * runs selenium or similar to test UI   * runs emma or ncover for code coverage   * builds the system for various deployment environments (test, acceptance, production) We may have several builds running at a time, some .net and some java (from different project teams). It's quite time consuming to get the remote builds working when we set up a new project and we feel that there must be something more suited to remote builds than cc.net. Does anyone have any experience with remote builds with continuous integration systems?   I don't really want feature lists of CI servers, I'd more appreciate hearing about how you've used them in a multi language, multi server environment."}
{"_id": "95894", "title": "As a new programmer, how much time should I spend learning new libraries?", "text": "As a junior programmer, how much time should I spend focusing on new libraries or language features, as opposed to learning how things worked before those libraries came about? How dangerous is it to learn these libraries before I can understand the details of their implementation, or even fully appreciate the problems they solve? This came up as I was doing a bit of research on Reactive Extensions. One thing I do know about .NET events and asynchronous programming is that they're kind of a pain, so I can sort of intuit what's exciting about the framework, and even some cases where our own product could probably benefit from it. But I have not yet spent much quality time with events or asynchronous programming in general. I find I have to remind myself about things like delegates, lambdas, even what the IEnumberable and IEnumerator interfaces look like, before I can really get the RX concepts. This makes me apprehensive about spending time learning the framework, out of a worry that I won't truly understand it, or I'll end up using it inappropriately. I have similar feelings about LINQ, though in that case it's more about not fully understanding how it's implemented. I'd spent more than enough time with collections to understand and love what LINQ can do right out of the box, but not enough time to understand how it does it, or the best ways to use it. Not knowing what's going on behind the scenes makes me nervous about doing something grossly inefficient, or just plain dumb. This makes me think I need more time with the foundational stuff that led to the development of these libraries - but that leads me to think that I'd probably get a higher ROI, and help my team more, if I spend what little time I have to learn new things getting acquainted with the stuff that would make all our lives easier. Though I'm coming at this from a .NET perspective, I'm sure there are analogs on other platforms. I guess the real question is, can you ever get the most out of a \"paradigm shifting\" feature without having spent some real time drudging through the old paradigm?"}
{"_id": "7581", "title": "Is Java to Linux what .NET is to Windows?", "text": "Is Java becoming the de facto standard from Linux application development in the same way .NET is the standard for Windows application development? If not why not?"}
{"_id": "219532", "title": "What to send when a client wants a sample of my code to test my qualities?", "text": "We've all faced this. You apply to a cool project and they ask you to send them a piece of your code. On the surface, this look OK and I am fine with it. But what shall I send them? My cool utility? Snapshot of structure in complex project? Something else? So far, I have tried to persuade them to have a desktop share via Skype and that I lead them through code and structure. But somehow clients do not like this approach. So I'd like to hear your thoughts."}
{"_id": "213075", "title": "Unit-testing databases: test all possible permutations of read and write to table?", "text": "I am testing a resource management class that is interacting with a database or a file system, or a combination of both. I was wandering if it is the norm to test **all possible permutations** of read and write for all columns of a data-set when a database is involved. What I mean is: Database table of test case:               +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+     | users                                                                                     |     +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+     |       user_id        |      user_name       |      user_email      |      user_role       |     +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+     |          1           |      A New Name      | email@provider.com   |          1           |     +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+     |          2           |   A different name   | address@domain.com   |          1           |     +----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+----------------------+      I could envision something different going wrong in the abstraction layer, updating the first record but no others, updating the second record, but not the fourth, or any of other permutation or combination. Is it the norm to write tests for all those scenarios (if I am thinking this through correctly it would be 4! = 24 cases, right)? Now if I want to retrieve columns, I again could imagine something going wrong only retrieving the first and the fourth column, just the third, or all possible permutations of that. Now what if write and read is mixed, first a read, then a write, then a read. Maybe a write to one column, a read of three columns, then a read of one, or any other permutation. Very soon there are potentially thousands of test cases... Am I over thinking this and should I just test what I am actually encountering, or is it the norm to do due diligence and test all of this. I am asking because database access is causing my test suites to balloon in execution time. Edit: In case this wasn't clear, I am not trying to test if the database is doing what it should be, but if my abstraction layer behaves as intended."}
{"_id": "190528", "title": "Error handling - Should a program fail on errors or silently ignore them", "text": "I'm writing a simple little program to transmit MIDI over a network. I know that the program will encounter transmission problems and / or other exception situations that I won't be able to predict. For the exception handling, I see two approaches. Should I write the program so that it:   * fails with a bang when something goes wrong **_or_**   * should it just ignore the error and continue, at the expense of data integrity? Which approach would a user reasonably expect?   Is there a better way of handling exceptions? Additionally, should my decision about handling exceptions be affected by whether or not I am dealing with a network connection (ie. something where I can reasonably expect to have problems come up)?"}
{"_id": "150254", "title": "What does Jamie Zawinski's Law mean?", "text": "I need a proper explaination of Jamie Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: > Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs > which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."}
{"_id": "65150", "title": "Is there any good reason for someone who knows Python to learn Perl?", "text": "Reading the answers to Python vs. Perl in ten years time here on SE, most people seem to say go with Python. I agree (sorry Perl fans ;-) ). I already know Python, and I think it is a very good language, sure, as any programming language it _does_ come with its defects, but when I tried Perl I just didn't like it nearly as much as I liked Python. I \"know\" C, Python, Java and Scheme and have toyed with several other languages. Now, is there any good reason for me to learn Perl? **What is Perl \"better\" at than Python?** I do (hobby) application development and am learning some systems development as well (mostly programming for the Linux kernel). I'm pretty sure Perl is not fundamentally enough different from what I know this far to broaden my mind too greatly either (I would probably do better by focusing on Haskell, Scala, Forth or something like that for that purpose)."}
{"_id": "150252", "title": "Beginning development of a C++ project", "text": "I study in software engineering and this year a new association at my university is opening a robotic submarine club. It's a new club and they needed software guys for micro-controllers manipulation, gui output and other software oriented requirements. I've been accepted to the club and there is nothing established right now. Although the language might not matter on a higher level we are working in C++ under a UNIX system. Since I have to set up the base I'd like to have input from people with experience on starting up big projects with collaboration in mind. Obviously we want this to scale nicely over the years and have a solid API for the future students who will replace the older ones. So to make my question more precise, I'm looking for tips on setting this up and perhaps books that could help me. I'm comfortable on implementation in C++ and I've done some analysis and conceptual OO courses too. It's really just that I've never had the chance to start up on something bigger than a 2-3 man group with SVN. I don't know either if there is a similar JUnit system and perhaps maintenance system that works well for C++ that I could set up for the team(I've used maven with trac in Java). This is an opportunity for me and the others because we have a green flag on using any of the latest technology and best practices, so I would like to exploit that and learn a thing or two about software management that I wouldn't normally learn in a company with a system already in place."}
{"_id": "158003", "title": "Is it best practice to have a file only of \"includes/requires\"?", "text": "I have 5-10 files on one server that all catch XMLRPC-PHP requests. There's about 20 lines of `require_once` in each one that are all the same. It'd make life simpler for me to create a separate file that only has the `requires` and `require` that in my XMLRPC files. Is this best practice, or does it open up issues that I don't know about?"}
{"_id": "224446", "title": "Can I distribute open-source software that uses the syntax/interface of a proprietary program (Stata)?", "text": "Stata is a proprietary statistical program used largely by economists. I want to write a basic multiple regression package that uses the same commands as Stata, e.g., `regress var1 var2 var3, robust if var4[_n - 1] < .` Is it legal (in the US) to distribute source code that does this under an open-source license? In other words, does any IP protection apply to the command syntax used by proprietary software?"}
{"_id": "215956", "title": "If an entity is composed, is it still a god object?", "text": "I am working on a system to configure hardware. Unfortunately, there is tons of variety in the hardware, which means there's a wide variety of capabilities and configurations depending on _what_ specific hardware the software connects to. To deal with this, we're using a Component Based Entity design where the \"hardware\" class itself is a very thin container for components that are composed at runtime based on what capabilities/configuration are available. This works great, and the design itself has worked well elsewhere (particularly in games). The problem is that **all** this software does is configure the hardware. As such, _almost all_ of the code is a component of the hardware instance. While the consumer only ever works against the strongly typed interfaces for the components, it could be argued that the class that represents an instance of the hardware is a God Object. If you want to do anything to/with the hardware, you query an interface and work with it. So, even if the components of an object are modular and decoupled well, is their container a God Object and the downsides associated with the anti- pattern?"}
{"_id": "215957", "title": "Why is it not standard to implement abstraction layers for the file system?", "text": "I have been taught to access databases through abstraction layers. I was wondering why it is not also standard practice to access the file system through an abstraction layer? It seems to me unit testing would become much simpler, since mocking the filesystem is often a pain and poorly supported by some languages."}
{"_id": "215950", "title": "Best way to rename existing unique field names in database?", "text": "I have a database table that contains `id, filename, userId`   * id is unique identifier   * filename should also be unique   * table may contain >10000 records > When a user uploads a file it should be entered in database with given > rules:   1. If there is no record with same filename, it should be _added as it is_ (Ex. **foobar.pdf** )   2. If there is _record with same filename_ , it should be _added as uploadedName(2).ext_ ( **foobar(2).pdf** )   3. If there are n records with same base filename ( _foobar_ ), it should be _added as uploadedName(n+1).ext_ ( **foobar(20).pdf** )   4. Now if _foobar(2).pdf_ is uploaded, it should be added as **foobar(2)(2).pdf** & so on > This pattern needs to be followed because the file is already being uploaded > at client side using ajax before sending the details to server and the file > hosting service follows the above rules to name the files. * * * _**My solution:_**   1. maintain a file that contains all the names and the number of times it has occurred.   2. if a filename that exists in file is entered, increase occurrence count and new name is generated, else add to it to file   3. if the new name generated is in database, add it to file and generate new name"}
{"_id": "154780", "title": "How do I handle a user story that I complete, but with compromise and need to revisit?", "text": "I have just fulfilled (is that a good term?) two user stories out of a new project backlog I have just built. These are user registration and password reset, both requiring mail. I need to implement a substitute mail component because my initial choice, and a normally reliable one, wasn't working. Because I was focused on delivering the user stories, not debugging the mail component, I swapped it out to deliver working code at sprint end. Do I now log a new support issue for the mailer, or 're-insert' these stories into the backlog? If I do the latter, am I not introducing too much tech detail into user stories?"}
{"_id": "96278", "title": "elevator algorithm and implementation", "text": "I wanted to know how (real) elevators work. But, so far, I could not find much material about the algorithms they use, nor software (if any) for simulation. Could anybody give me references for that?"}
{"_id": "201681", "title": "Are there any standard for exchanging rules rather than data?", "text": "Just out of curiosity. There are many open standards for data exchange, as well as standards for exchanging code (jsonp, for example). But are there any standards for exchanging formulas/rules, for them to be executed on different platforms?"}
{"_id": "160957", "title": "Does following TDD inevitably lead to DI?", "text": "I learned to do Test Driven Development (TDD), Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IoC) all at the same time. When I write code using TDD I always end up using DI in my class's constructors. I am wondering if this is because of how I learned to do TDD, or if this is a natural side-effect of TDD. So my question is this: Does following TDD principals and writing unit tests that do not depend on external services inevitably lead to DI?"}
{"_id": "96270", "title": "Best tool to privately share code with members of a team?", "text": "I'm getting into freelance web design and I have a team of several people. I was wondering what is the best tool (preferably free) to share code with other members of the team, allow them to edit it etc. A way for us all to work fluidly."}
{"_id": "69485", "title": "Code and intellectual property", "text": "Years ago I developed a website in Flash for one of my clients. I was in charge of code/animation and also maintaining Hosting and Domain. I also have a basic contract with my client and in the contract it does not mention who is the owner for the code. My Client (ex client) decided suddenly to work with a different company, so they moved the website without asking my permission and left me with unpaid bills for hosting and domain registration. Now the website is running on the same name but with a different extension, the website is managed by my competitor. The other company probably used some SWF Decompiler and uploaded the entire website on the new domain. My question:   * Even if in our contract it is not mentioned who the owner of the code/website, I would like to know if I have some right on the code/website I developed?   * Do you now any international regulation on this matter (I'm in Europe)? If you like please share your opinion or similar story on this, I would appreciate it."}
{"_id": "82902", "title": "Is functional programming just different, or is it actually really tougher?", "text": "Is functional programming just _different_ , or is it actually really _tougher_? Say someone who have never learned programming at all before, and is taught functional programming. vs someone who have never learned programming at all before, and is taught imperative programming. which will he find tougher? or the same? My question: say the problem now is to camel-case an input, such that `qwe_asd_zxc_rty_fgh_vbn` becomes `qweAsdZxcRtyFghVbn` The procedural way is:   1. split it along the `_`   2. loop through the array skipping the first item   3. for each entry we capitalise the first letter   4. join the results together The functional way is:   1. if cannot find `_` return `input`   2. cut the `input` along the first `_` (such that we get `qwe` and `asd_zxc_rty_gfh_cvb`)   3. capitalise the first letter of `head` and concat that with `f(tail)` Ok if you have a _functional-background_ AND have substantial experience in procedural-programming, I would like to ask: will it take you longer to figure out the procedural way or will it take longer for you to figure out the functional way? If you have a _procedural-background_ but have many years of experience with functional-programming, I would like to ask the same question: will it take you longer to figure out the procedural way or will it take longer for you to figure out the functional way?"}
{"_id": "82903", "title": "Anyone know about webs.com?", "text": "I have a friend who created a website with web.com which use to be called freewebs.com. He also has his domain name registered through them as well. Are theses one of those dangerous sites to stay away from or is he going to be okay for now?"}
{"_id": "214397", "title": "Service Method to Use for Uploading Large Chunks of Data", "text": "I have a need to be able to provide a web-based service to upload large amounts of data that would come in as chunks as large as 10,000 lines of 950 byte records, which is 9.5 MB. I've gotten advice that I shouldn't use web services (aspx) because MS has deprecated this, and I've also been told that WCF services aren't designed to be used for this purpose either (although this seems odd). FWIW, I've tried both WS and WCF and have run into size issues, and even though some solutions claim to fix this, I've not found any settings in either case that enable me to upload anything larger than 4 MB. The question is, if not WS and also not WCF, what else is there? I am trying to replace a number of different applications that all use FTP to upload data to a mainframe accounting system, and so for this question, FTP is not the answer. Unless the answer is that I need to abandon a service-based solution and stick with FTP."}
{"_id": "214396", "title": "Can I bundle my JavaScript code with an MIT licensed code and keep my code unaffected from the MIT license?", "text": "Can I bundle my proprietary JavaScript code with MIT licensed libraries (e.g. JQuery, AngularJS) into the same file, distribute it via HTTP but disallow my users to use my own code as an MIT licensed code? This way I could minimize the number of browser requests, and reduce errors due to network errors. I don't want to let my users copy, modify and reuse my own code outside of my website."}
{"_id": "82906", "title": "Is there any value in writing unit tests for code that already works when inheriting applications?", "text": "Obviously some old applications can't be or is extremely difficult to unit test because of the way it was written in the first place. But in places, like some helper methods which could probably be unit tested, should I bother writing unit tests for them? I mean, they could be written like a dog, but however complexly fragile the logic, the test of time has proved that it works the way it should. Should I only bother to unit test if I'm say re-factoring it or should I write unit tests for them whenever I have the time? Is there any value in doing this? Take into account also that the method definition may be vague, and I may need to research what some of the methods should actually do in given conditions."}
{"_id": "214390", "title": "Preferred location for installing user guides, sample documents on Windows?", "text": "By default, the installer for my product copies files to the **Users\\Username\\AppData\\local\\MyProduct** directory (though the user can change this during installation, of course). I want to bundle some other files with product - documentation, sample spreadsheets (it includes an Excel add-in) etc. It doesn't seem appropriate to copy these additional files to **AppData** because it's a hidden folder that users shouldn't really muck about with. I could, of course, create a new sub-folder in the user's Documents directory and stick the files in there but as I haven't asked their permission to do this it seems impolite. So - any suggestions as to an easily accessible location to put these files in?"}
{"_id": "82904", "title": "Are MSDN licenses transferrable? How about if they have expired?", "text": "I have a coworker who will likely be leaving the company soon. An msdn subscription (Premium I believe) was purchased for him - but I believe it was more than 1 year ago. Is this license transferrable to me when he leaves the company?"}
{"_id": "214392", "title": "Finding the lowest average Hamming distance when the order of the strings matter", "text": "I have a sequence of binary strings that I want to find a match for among a set of longer sequences of binary strings. A match means that the compared sequence gives the lowest average Hamming distance when all elements in the shorter sequence have been matched against a sequence in one of the longer sets. Let me try to explain with an example. I have a set of video frames that have been hashed using a perceptual hashing algorithm so that the video frames that look the same has roughly the same hash. I want to match a short video clip against a set of longer videos, to see if the clip is contained in one of these. This means that I need to find out where the sequence of the hashed frames in the short video has the lowest average Hamming distance when compared with the long videos. The short video is the sub strings Sub1, Sub2 and Sub3, and I want to match them against the hashes of the long videos in Src. The clue here is that the strings need to match in the specific order that they are given in, e.g. that Sub1 always has to match the element before Sub2, and Sub2 always has to match the element before Sub3. In this example it would map thusly: Sub1-Src3, Sub2-Src4 and Sub3-Src5. So the question is this: **is there an algorithm for finding the lowest average Hamming distance when the order of the elements compared matter?** The na\u00efve approach to compare the substring sequence to every source string won't cut it of course, so I need something that preferably can match a (much) shorter sub string to a set of million of elements. I have looked at MVP- trees, BK-trees and similar, but everything seems to only take into account one binary string and not a sequence of them.               Sub1: 100111011111011101     Sub2: 110111000010010100     Sub3: 111111010110101101          Src1: 001011010001010110     Src2: 010111101000111001     Src3: 101111001110011101     Src4: 010111100011010101     Src5: 001111010110111101     Src6: 101011111111010101      I have added a calculation of the examples below. (The Hamming distances aren't correct, but it doesn't matter)               **Run 1.**     dist(Sub1, Src1) = 8     dist(Sub2, Src2) = 10     dist(Sub3, Src3) = 12     average = 10          **Run 2.**     dist(Sub1, Src2) = 10     dist(Sub2, Src3) = 12     dist(Sub3, Src4) = 10     average = 11          **Run 3.**     dist(Sub1, Src3) = 7     dist(Sub2, Src4) = 6     dist(Sub3, Src5) = 10     average = 8          **Run 4.**     dist(Sub1, Src3) = 10     dist(Sub2, Src4) = 4     dist(Sub3, Src5) = 2     average = 5      So the winner here is sequence 4 with an average distance of 5."}
{"_id": "192070", "title": "what is a efficient way to find repeating decimal", "text": "I am trying to find a efficient algorithm in Java to find the repeating decimal part of two integers `a` and `b` where `a/b`. eg. 5/7 = 0.714258 714258.... I currently only know of the long division method."}
{"_id": "116550", "title": "How do I convince the IT department to relax Antivirus settings on my PC", "text": "I've been given a relatively decent new laptop at Work. I really thought it would help speeding development up, especially build times and the like. The problem is that our company runs Mcafee antivirus and it is slowing my machine down to a halt. My harddrive is almost always active even when I'm doing nothing. It seems to be doing some kind of real time scan. I run no antivirus at home and haven't had any problems in years as I know not to do anything stupid like download attachments that I'm not expecting etc. Also, the corporate firewall is pretty strict so I believe that would make it even harder to obtain a virus. How would you convince the IT department to relax AV settings for you? edit: As many people have pointed out, the chance of getting them to turn it off is slim to non so I've changed the subject from disable to relaxing settings."}
{"_id": "124988", "title": "Ways of marking changes being made to a file", "text": "I am looking for a lightweight way to notate changes made to a file. The obvious answer to this is a version control system. But this is more robust than necessary for what I would like to do. All I want is the functionality to compare an edited file to its original in a lightweight manner."}
{"_id": "120328", "title": "how to deal with controller mutations", "text": "During development process, things are constantly changing (especially in early phases). Requirements change, UI changes, everything changes. Pages that clearly belonged to specific controller, mutated to something completely different in the future. For example. Lets say that we have website for managing Projects. One page of the website was dedicated to managing existing, and inviting new members of specific project. Naturally, I created members controller nested under projects which had proper responsibility. Later in the development, it turned out that it was the only page that was \"configuring the project\" in some way, so additional functionalities were added to it:   * editing project description   * setting project as a default   * ... In other words, this page changed its primary responsibility from managing project members to managing project itself. Ideally, this page should be moved to \"edit\" action of \"projects\" controller. That would mean that all request and controller specs need to refactored too. Is it worth the effort? Should it be done? Personally, I am really starting to dislike the 1-1 relationship between views and controllers. Its common situation that we have 1 page (view) that handles 2 or more different resources. I think we should have views completely decoupled from controllers, but rails is giving us hard time to achieve this. I know that AJAX can be used to solve this issue, but I consider it an improvisation. Is there some other kind of architecture (other than MVC) that decouples views from controllers?"}
{"_id": "116557", "title": "Technical Support Developer position with a Software Engineering degree", "text": "I've received a job offer from a company for a technical support developer. I originally had an interview lined up with them for a C# Developer role but this was filled internally before my interview. I am feeling under a lot of pressure to take this role because of the economy and since it'll be my first role since graduating. The reason for this post though... will I be hurting my chances of becoming a fully fledged software developer in the near future? The job will involve mostly bug fixing and testing with skills required such as C#, ASP.net, MVC, Javascript. As far as I'm aware, there'll be no pure development. There will be chance to progress to new roles in the business but I'm unsure of the time frame. I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has been in similar positions."}
{"_id": "89306", "title": "Finding and managing a group of testers", "text": "I am about to release a piece of software that will be licensed with the **GPLv3** (the project itself is \"for fun\" and has no commercial dimension in it). The software is intended to help designing digital clocks and I know the core functionality works as - beside having unit tests - I used it for designing a couple of clocks myself. Yet, before getting the software advertised on hackers and makers sites, I would like to get a few voluntary testers... trying to use it and reporting any problems. The only tests I did so far in my life were with fellow programmers or with the customers. So I would appreciate input from the community on:   1. **Where to find voluntary testers** (is there a well-known website that escaped my googling perhaps?)   2. **How to brief them** (fellow programmers and clients know a great deal on the software they are going to test... should I try to brief in depth these \"unknown\" testers or should I contrarily try to let them \"on their own\"?)   3. **How to structure the tests** (I'm not asking what to ask them to do here, but if I should structure my test in some specific way: for example in more phases, like having one group to make a test, then fix bugs, then having a second group test again... or collecting data in a particular way [e.g. with a questionnaire with scores rather than with free-form e-mails])   4. **How to give maximum visibility to their contribution** (Again: I can't afford to invest _also_ money on this project, but I would be happy to give them as much glory as I can to them! The focus of the test would be primarily **usability** (Does the GUI make sense? Is the workflow easy to follow? Are there unexpected behaviours?). But of course any bug that should emerge in the core functionality would definitively receive all my attention too! Thanks in advance for your advice and time."}
{"_id": "89300", "title": "What's the best way to get up to speed with Java?", "text": "I'm a software developer that just switched teams so I shall write code in Java now. Last time I wrote something in the language was in programming 101 at uni (I was already an amateur coder back then). So what is the best book/tutorial to get up to speed with Java? Where's the _Java - the good parts_? Learn you some Java for great good? _Learn Java the hard way_? Or is it too enterprisey for that kind of passion...?"}
{"_id": "201534", "title": "Why would a developer create a public class that has all static properties?", "text": "A previous developer has a couple public classes that do not inherit from any other classes but are filled with static properties. Is this another way of creating a struct or enum? Is this an older or newer technique of housing static data to be referenced? I find it odd/different to see a class built in this way but am wondering what other fellow programmers thoughts or feelings are about what this coder was trying to accomplish. This is a made up example of what I am seeing...                   public class CashRegister         {             public static decimal OneDollarBill             {                 get { return (decimal)1; }             }                  public static decimal TenDollarBill             {                 get { return (decimal)10; }             }         }"}
{"_id": "89309", "title": "Does it make sense to sanitize email form input?", "text": "So, I'm expending this email submission form script for a client and saw something rather strange to my experience. As you can see below, the original programmer has sanitised the user input. Is this a good practice or does this makes sense at all?               // Build Message Body from Web Form Input      foreach ($_POST as $Field=>$Value)         $MsgBody .= \"$Field: $Value\\n\";      $MsgBody .= \"\\n\" . @gethostbyaddr($_SERVER[\"REMOTE_ADDR\"]) . \"\\n\" .         $_SERVER[\"HTTP_USER_AGENT\"];      $MsgBody = htmlspecialchars($MsgBody, ENT_NOQUOTES);  //make safe      Thanks everyone!"}
{"_id": "5916", "title": "Why are /// comment blocks important?", "text": "Someone once said we should prefix all our methods with the `/// <summary>` comment blocks (C#) and I am wondering if that is true or not. I started to use them and found they annoyed me quite a bit, so stopped using them except for libraries and static methods. They're bulky and I'm always forgetting to update them. Do you recommend using them? Why? **EDIT** : I normally use `//` comments all the time, it's just the `/// <summary>` blocks I was wondering about"}
{"_id": "17226", "title": "Which library/framework did you ditch as being too complex for the problem it is solving?", "text": "... and coded the functionality \"manually\"? As a rather metaphorical example, you'd hardly need a library for solving quadratic equations, although such libraries do exist and someone takes them seriously. As a more questionable case, depending on the circumstances I may ditch jQuery (for example when I don't need to support some stone age browsers): it does simplify some things but it adds another layer of complexity and unreliability to DOM. And overusing jQuery leads to absurd problems, such as one seen recently on SO: how do I assign an empty href to an `a` tag with jQuery? Turned out it was a HTML question, not even JavaScript. Another absurd case and yet non-obvious for many is using some templating engine/language built on top of another templating system: PHP. Third level of templating anyone? And another one: _sometimes_ just spitting out XML with (figurally) `printf` is far easier than doing it with some monstrous XML engine. Any other cases from your experience?"}
{"_id": "63620", "title": "What would happen if you defined your system's CSV delimiter as being a quotation mark?", "text": "Title says it all. If the CSV's system delimiter was `\"` (as opposed to a comma or pipe or other common alternatives), how would anything deal with it? The crux of the matter is of course that by definition, CSV will surround any values containing the delimiter with quotation marks, and will convert all quotation marks to double quotation marks. Would the result be parse-able? (Inspired by an answer in Most common \"Y2K-style\" bugs today?) ![System Delimiter \\(which drives excel, databases, etc\\)](http://i.stack.imgur.com/lWhbO.png)"}
{"_id": "162080", "title": "How can I send a signal to a program via external hardware", "text": "I am trying to find a piece of hardware that will signal a program to start a timer when it is moving and stop when it stops. The hardware can just be a ball that moves and is connected to the computer through USB, I was thinking of something similar to the way a mouse would work. For the programing I would like to use c# or possibly ActionScript with adobe air. I am a web developer and have not had any experience with hardware or drivers and would appreciate any ideas on where to start. Maybe there is some piece of simple hardware out there that I can use to send signals to the computer or some literature of articles for beginners that you can point me to. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "90945", "title": "Are niche job boards effective?", "text": "There are number of job openings each day and also there are number of job seekers actively looking for job everyday. Still it is challenging to find right candidate for a job. It gets even more challenging and surprising when both the employer and the candidate are active seekers, but could not connect each other. There are very niche job sites that focus on specific technologies. Are these places more effective at connecting employers with qualified candidates than the more conventional and less focused job sites?"}
{"_id": "162086", "title": "How could I avoid a distributed deadlock during a mutual connection between two nodes?", "text": "Suppose we have two peer nodes: the first node can send a connection request to the second one, but also the second one can send a connection request to the first one. How to avoid a double connection between the two nodes? To resolve this issue, it would be sufficient to make sequential the operations performed for creating inbound or outbound TCP connections. This means that each node should process sequentially each new connection creation operation, both for incoming connections and for outgoing connections. In this way, maintaining a list of connected nodes, before accepting a new incoming connection from a node or before sending a connection request to a node, it will be sufficient to check if this node is already present in the list. In order to make sequential the operations of creating connections, it is sufficient to perform a _lock_ on the list of connected nodes: in fact, for each new connection, the identifier of the new connected node is added to this list. However, I wonder if this approach can cause _distributed deadlock_ :   * the first node could send a connection request to the second one;   * the second node could send a connection request to the first one;   * assuming that the two connection requests are not asynchronous, both nodes lock any incoming connection requests. How could I solve this problem? **UPDATE:** However, I still have to lock on the list every time a new (incoming or outgoing) connection is created, since other threads may access this list, then the problem of deadlock would still remain. **UPDATE 2:** Based on your advice I wrote an algorithm to prevent mutual acceptance of a login request. Since each node is a peer, it could have a _client routine_ to send new connection requests and a _server routine_ to accept incoming connections.               ClientSideLoginRoutine() {         for each (address in cache) {             lock (neighbors_table) {                 if (neighbors_table.contains(address)) {                     // there is already a neighbor with the same address                     continue;                 }                 neighbors_table.add(address, status: CONNECTING);                  } // end lock                  // ...             // The node tries to establish a TCP connection with the remote address             // and perform the login procedure by sending its listening address (IP and port).             boolean login_result = // ...             // ...                  if (login_result)                 lock (neighbors_table)                     neighbors_table.add(address, status: CONNECTED);              } // end for     }          ServerSideLoginRoutine(remoteListeningAddress) {         // ...         // initialization of data structures needed for communication (queues, etc)         // ...              lock(neighbors_table) {             if(neighbors_table.contains(remoteAddress) && its status is CONNECTING) {                 // In this case, the client-side on the same node has already                 // initiated the procedure of logging in to the remote node.                      if (myListeningAddress < remoteListeningAddress) {                     refusesLogin();                     return;                 }             }             neighbors_table.add(remoteListeningAddress, status: CONNECTED);              } // end lock     }      **Example:** The IP:port of node A is A:7001 - The IP:port of node B is B:8001. Suppose that the node A has sent a login request to the node B:8001. In this case, the node A calls the login routine by sending by sending its own listening address (A:7001). As a consequence, the neighbors_table of node A contains the address of the remote node (B:8001): this address is associated with the CONNECTING state. Node A is waiting for node B accept or deny the login request. Meanwhile, the node B also may have sent a connection request to the address of node A (A:7001), then node A may be processing the request of the node B. So, the neighbors_table of node B contains the address of the remote node (A:7001): this address is associated with the CONNECTING state. Node B is waiting for node A accept or deny the login request. If the server side of node A rejects the request from B:8001, then I must be sure that server side of node B will accept the request from A:7001. Similarly, if the server side of node B rejects the request from A:7001, then I must be sure that server side of node A will accept the request from B:8001. According to the \"small address\" rule, in this case the node A will reject the login request by the node B, while node B will accept the request from node A. What do you think about that?"}
{"_id": "60504", "title": "Scrum on very short projects?", "text": "I'm using Scrum and really liking it. However, my shop finds itself in projects where the duration of the development effort is two or four weeks. We've already modified the sprint length to two weeks, and everyone here says \"it'll be Scrum, just with one and a half sprints.\" I don't think we can get a lot of value from one and a half sprints. How can we get the benefits of an iterative development process with only one, two, or one-and-a-half iterations?"}
{"_id": "60505", "title": "What is the effect of creating unit tests during development on time to develop as well as time spent in maintenance activities?", "text": "I'm a consultant and I am going to introduce unit tests to all developers at my client site. My goal is to ensure that all new applications should have unit tests for all classes created. The client has a problem with high maintenance costs from fixing bugs in their existing applications. Their applications have a life span from between 5-15 years in which they continuously add new features. I'm quite confident that they will benefit greatly from starting with unit tests. I'm interested in the effect of unit tests on the time and cost of development:   * How much time will writing unit tests as part of the development process add?   * How much time will be saved in maintenance activities (testing and debugging) by having good unit tests?"}
{"_id": "64685", "title": "How important do you think IE-friendliness is?", "text": "I think most web developers will agree that it is often easier getting something to work well in most browsers, but not as much in IE. I was wondering: When designing/developing a website, how important do you think IE-friendliness is? I mean, how worth it is it to bust yourself trying to make a website that works perfectly in major browsers work the same in IE?"}
{"_id": "60501", "title": "iPhone, iPad & XCode 4 - Noob question", "text": "I'm new just about everything 'Apple' with the exception of owning an iPhone and iPad for over a year. I have 15+ years on Wintel platforms w/ C/C++/C# experience, so Obj-C doesn't scare me. I recently purchased a Mac Book Pro and have XCode 4, but I've noticed most online tutorials (at least that I can find) are still geared for XCode 3.x. My question, does anyone know of any online tutorials (text or video) geared around XCode 4? The only ones I'm aware of are on developer.apple.com. While good, those seem to assume you're transitioning from XCode 3.x. Thanks [Edit] - Adding a link, and will try to keep this current for other readers.   * Standford's"}
{"_id": "148269", "title": "Data/Object Design Problem", "text": "**Goal:** I'm trying to figure out the best way to model/design and then implement a \"user\" feature in a system. **Background:** I am designing an on-line access request system, so our company can use a web- based method for users to request access to various software systems. Since the system is all about the \"user\", the user is the focal point of the system. So, a User can request access to a system. Then, the User's Manager will approve/reject the request. After that, the System Owner will approve/reject the request. Then it's the System Admin who approves/rejects, and finally the Security Administrator approves/rejects and adds them to the appropriate Active Directory group so they have access to the target Active Directory- driven application (not this application). **Problem:** I see all entities that represent a User as a core (set of) class(es) in the system. The User object is straight-forward - just pass their Windows login to Active Directory (AD) via an LDAP query and get their info and load it into an object. In an LDAP query, if there are other Users that report to them (a user's manager is stored in our AD), then this \"user\" is not only a User in this system but also a Manager. If this User is also in the database as a System Owner, they are also a System Owner. **So Far:** (Assume a Manager is someone with at least one direct report assigned to them in AD.) I've considered a single User object, with properties such as IsManager or IsSystemOwner. However, should I construct an object hierarchy where (for example) a Manager class inherits from User? There are quirks with this, because a System Owner could inherit from User or Manager. Not all system owners are managers. However, Managers, System Owners, System Admins, and Security Admins are all Users, because they can be requesting access to some software system where there role in this system is only as a User. Here is an overview of \"is a\" for all of the user entities:   * A User can request access to some other software system in this system.   * A Manager is a User.   * A System Owner is a User.   * A System Admin is a User.   * A Security Admin is a User (but unlikely to be, due to our organization).   * A Manager may be a System Owner, but not always.   * A System Owner may be a Manager, but not always.   * A System Admin may be a Manager, but not always.   * A System Admin may be a System Owner, but not likely.   * A Security Admin may be a Manager, but not always.   * A Security Admin may be a System Owner, but not likely. Some additional info:   * I don't anticipate Security Admins to be using the system as a User to request access, but it's always a possibility.   * A Manager may create an access request on behalf of one of their employees (to revoke access to a fired employee, for example)   * All employees in the Windows domain will have access to this site. I assume that I will have some Active Directory groups created for System Admins and Security Admins, as the users in these groups will not be dynamic, rather, users in one team are Sys Admins and users in another team are Security Admins.   * The System Owner is subject to changed and will be stored in the database, along with the option to designate an alternate approver when on vacation, etc.   * I may need a Manager to have an alternate approver, but I didn't plan on storing all users on the domain in the database! This seems like it's so easy to model on paper, but getting it into good, flexible code is stumping me. All suggestions are welcome. EDIT: Based on Karl's feedback, I have this prototype model. Does it look solid from an OOP perspective, based on my intended use?               Public Class MyCustomUserObject              Public Property LoginID As String         Public Property FirstName As String         Public Property LastName As String         Public Property EmailAddress As String              Public Property Roles As List(Of Role)              Public Function IsManager() As Boolean             ' If List(Of Role) contains an object of type ManagerRole, then True, else False.         End Function              Public Function IsSystemOwner(systemName As String) As Boolean             ' If List(Of Role) contains an object of type SystemOwnerRole with matching name             ' in SystemOwnerRole.SoftwareSystems, then True, else False.         End Function              Public Function IsSystemAdministrator(systemName As String) As Boolean             ' If List(Of Role) contains an object of type SystemAdministratorRole with matching name             ' in SystemAdministratorRole.SoftwareSystems, then True, else False.         End Function              Public Function IsSecurityAdministrator() As Boolean             Return My.User.IsInRole(\"My Active Directory group name for Security Admins\")         End Function          End Class          Public Class SoftwareSystem              Public Property ID As String         Public Property Name As String          End Class          Public MustInherit Class Role              Public Property DesignatedApproverLoginID As String          End Class          Public Class ManagerRole         Inherits Role              Public Property Subordinates As List(Of AafUser)         ' Or this, with a List of login IDs?         ' Public Property Subordinates As List(Of String)          End Class          Public Class SystemOwnerRole         Inherits Role              Public Property SoftwareSystems As List(Of SoftwareSystem)          End Class          Public Class SystemAdministratorRole         Inherits Role              Public Property SoftwareSystems As List(Of SoftwareSystem)          End Class          Public Class SecurityAdministratorRole         Inherits Role              ' Explictly a Security Admin for all Software Systems.          End Class"}
{"_id": "11680", "title": "What tools do you use to stay focused?", "text": "This is related, but I'm thinking about something more like a chastity belt for keeping me from checking programmers.SE or my email every time I compile. Rather advice like \"go take a walk and you'll feel more like coding\", I just need something to augment my weak constitution - a net nanny for my geek fetish I guess. I'll take my answer off the air and I promise not to check programmers.SE for at least a day."}
{"_id": "148263", "title": "Do you start migrating your Swing project to JavaFX", "text": "I have a 4 years old project which is written in Swing + SwingX. Currently, it is still alive and still kicking. However, as more GUI related feature requests coming in (For instance, a sortable tree table), I start to feel the difficulty in fulling the requests. This is true especially since there isn't any active development going around SwingX project. Also, I can hardly find any good, yet actively maintained/ developed/ evolving GUI Java framework. I was wondering, do any of the Swing developers feel the same thing? Have you start to migrate your Swing project to a much more active developed GUI framework, like JavaFX?"}
{"_id": "121808", "title": "Should your client be able to view your project management board?", "text": "We're making a bespoke software for our client and use Codebase for our project management. Is it a good idea to let our client view our project management board? The advantages that we thought of are that this would enhance the cooperation between the client and the dev team, following agile practices. He would essentially become part of our team. It would also reduce communication overhead and make sure we're on the same page. The client could track the progression of the system and make suggestions along the way on the user stories. In addition, he could submit bugs or feature requests. The disadvantages that we though of are that some aspects of the board might be too technical to the client. He would suggest changes to the user stories too often and he might view some content that we normally wouldn't want our client to see. For example, when we compromise on technology or functionality, the client might question that and insist on doing things one way or the other."}
{"_id": "121801", "title": "Understanding and developing web services", "text": "This question is in conjuction with **How would you approach developing a Hotel Reservation System?** The solution to a system with different interfaces (or clients I should say) is to go with developing a Web service and have other systems interact with it. I never had the requirement for developing a Web service so I am bit short on it. All I understand is that **A web service is a system or application that performs some operations which may include modifying, sending or receiving data over a network using HTTP protocol**. (Let me know if the understanding is wrong) Now, from the other question it's clearly understood that I need to develop a web service but I have no idea as to how should I go about it. My language of choice is C# and .NET Framework. **Question** : How do we develop a webservice and which tools, technology and framework should I use for the same using C# language? **Question** : How can I interact with this from a desktop WPF application, website and mobile app."}
{"_id": "150788", "title": "Is it acceptable that after reading a certain technology in a book, you put it in your resume as a skill?", "text": "I am a junior IT person and I am a bit short on experience and I am diploma graduate so which makes me lack knowledge in the eyes of the human resource department. so what I do is I read technical books like AJAX, SOA, RUBY and stuff like that. Now is it alright if I put that on my resume as a skill of mine without the expensive, somewhat unnecessary, almost boring formal education with them certificates to prove your knowledge?"}
{"_id": "154206", "title": "Moving from mock to real objects?", "text": "I'm like doing TDD so I started everything mocking objects, creating interface, stubbing, great. The design seems to work, now I'll implement the stuff, a lot of the code used in the stubs are going to be reused in my real implementation yay! Now should I duplicate the tests to use the real object implementation (but keeping the mocks object of the sensitive stuff like Database and \"services\" that are out of my context (http calls, etc...)) Or just change the mocks and stubs of the actual tests to use the real objects....... So the question is that, keep two tests or replace the stubs, mocks? And after that, I should keep designing with the mocks, stubs or just go with real objects? _(Just making myself clear I'll keep the mock object of the sensitive stuff like database and services that are out of my context, in both situations.)_ EDIT               [Fact]     public void Change_status()     {         var dbContext = MockRepository.GenerateStub<IDbContext>();         var repository = MockRepository.GenerateMock<IRepository<Foo>>();              var predicate = MockRepository.GenerateStub<Func<Foo, bool>>();         repository.Expect(x => x.Get(predicate)).Return(_foo).Repeat.Once();         dbContext.Expect(x => x.Commit());              var ctl = MockRepository.GenerateStub<IFooCtl>();         ctl.Stub(x => x.RejectRequest(_fooView)).WhenCalled(delegate         {             var foo = repository.Get(predicate);             foo.Status = Status.Rejected;             _fooView.Status = Status.Rejected.ToString();              }).Return(true);              ctl.RejectRequest(_fooView);              repository.VerifyAllExpectations();         dbContext.VerifyAllExpectations();         Assert.True(_fooView.Status == \"Rejected\");         Assert.True(result.Count() == 1);     }      This is a test, where I mock the repository, context and stub the facade. So what I'm trying to say is if I should change the stub of the facade to use the \"real\" code so this should be tested as               [Fact]     public void Change_status()     {         var dbContext = MockRepository.GenerateStub<IDbContext>();         var repository = MockRepository.GenerateMock<IRepository<Foo>>();              var predicate = MockRepository.GenerateStub<Func<Foo, bool>>();         repository.Expect(x => x.Get(predicate)).Return(_foo).Repeat.Once();         dbContext.Expect(x => x.Commit());              var ctl = new FooCtl(loanRepository, happyLoanDbContext);         var result = ctl.RejectRequest(_loanView);              repository.VerifyAllExpectations();         dbContext.VerifyAllExpectations();         Assert.True(_result);     }      Or if I should leave everything mocking and stubbing that tests the designs and create new ones that tests the implementation. EDIT Thanks for all your answer, I think I understand it better, I must know which is my SUT and test that, no mock or stub the SUT just the components that will help the SUT to pass the test"}
{"_id": "154207", "title": "Is running \"milli\"-benchmarks a good idea?", "text": "I just came across the Caliper project and it looks very nice. Reading the introduction to microbenchmarks, one gets the feeling that the developers would not suggest to use the framework if the benchmark takes longer than a second or so. I looked at the code and it looks like a RuntimeOutOfRangeException is actually thrown if a scenario takes longer than 10s to execute. Could you explain to me what the problems are with running larger benchmarks? My motivation for using Caliper was to compare two join-algorithm implementations. Those will definitely run for quite some time and will do some disk IO, yet running the entire database would make it hard to do the comparison, because the configuration of the algorithms and the visualization of the results would be a pain."}
{"_id": "124322", "title": "What am I missing from my CI stack?", "text": "Right now, the current deploy process at my work is based around tagging from the trunk and switching various PHP web sites for clients on our QA and Production servers. While this is simple from the technical level, it becomes really tedious when you have over a dozen updates to a dozen different sites that need to go out in one day. Towards this end, I'm implementing the following stack:   * SVN   * Hudson   * Capistrano And it will work like this:   1. Code goes into `svn`   2. `svn` post-commit hook triggers `hudson`   3. `hudson` runs a `capistrano` script to deploy to the dev server   4. project managers check out the dev server, and if the bug is fixed, they go into `hudson` and promote the build   5. `hudson` runs a post-promotion script which tags and deploys the code to whatever server is specified by the promotion Capistrano (along with the symfony framework) will be used to migrate the databases. Am I missing anything here? I've never done anything more complicated than subversion before, so that's why I'm asking."}
{"_id": "124320", "title": "Pros and Cons of Joint Application Design", "text": "I was asked to lead \"JAD sessions\", which I've heard of before, but never facilated before; at least in name, they appear just to be a fancy name for stakeholder workshops. My experience has been that \"group think\" and \"follow the leader\" are common issues with this approach, but trying to stay open to the concept. Based on what I'm able to tell the phrase has been around since the 1980s, so clearly it's no \"silver bullet\". What are the key pros and cons of this approach?"}
{"_id": "124321", "title": "programmer meta skills", "text": "I used to think that my ability to create clever algorithms or my comfort with the languages I work in would determine my success as a programmer, but after a dose of real world development, I realized that these skills aren't nearly as valuable as the ability to choose the right tools for the job, to communicate with a team effectively, to decide when to use something out of a box vs. write your own version, and to have patience when trying alternatives until your high level of excellence is met or exceeded. I was wondering what other 'meta' skills people think are useful for a programmer/software engineer to have and how important they are _relative_ to the technical skills. This is NOT the same as simply asking what soft skills will help make a good programmer. More importantly, when looking to hire someone, how can you test for these better indicators of success (most interview questions I see are still just testing technical ability). Also, does anyone know of any books or blogs which focus on these meta skills? Thanks."}
{"_id": "27903", "title": "How to properly license open source software", "text": "I have a project I've been working on which I would like to push into a new, public Github repository as open source. After searching on StackExchange for the right license to use I've settled on the BSD license. My question is: now what? Do I just need to copy the BSD license text into a file called LICENSE in the root of my repository and call it good? Is that the general rule for how all open source licenses work? Or do I need to notify some other organization that I'm using this license so I can 'enforce' it if necessary?"}
{"_id": "118234", "title": "Where can I learn the most up-to-date standard for HTML and CSS?", "text": "I'm looking to learn updated HTML/CSS in preparation for HTML5. Since I am new to this it's hard for me to know which websites are teaching old HTML coding styles and which are teaching the good one. Does anyone know of some websites that fit my criteria?"}
{"_id": "118231", "title": "Are there standard practices when writing a spec for a software development project?", "text": "Are there standard practices when writing a spec for a software development project? Is there a specific format to follow? Also, does the developer or the client write this up? If the dev, is this billable?"}
{"_id": "14596", "title": "Where do you draw the line between quantity and quality?", "text": "My manager has talked with me and says that the quality of my work is excellent, but I need to step up the quantity of how much I crank out. I've only been working for a couple of years, so I still feel like I have a lot to learn. Which route do I take (or is there another?): Quantity: If they want crap, I can give them lots of it. Quality: Ignore the request, and hope that my productivity will increase with experience."}
{"_id": "99362", "title": "3D Secure MPI providers - suitable for multiple third party payment systems?", "text": "Long time user of SO, and figured this is the best place to ask this question. I am currently consolidating our eCommerce payment clearing systems into one Asp.Net MVC website that will work like PayPal but for our own websites. The businesses within the group have different rules as to the payment provider that is to be used throughout the world and, at present, we currently integrate with Servebase, Moneris and PayPal. Thus, I have an architecture that allows new providers to be written and plugged in through a single extensibility point. In the future I am likely to have to support 3D Secure, which complicates matters significantly; not only because of the additional web workflow but because each provider appears to recommend it's own MPI provider/solution for the 3D Secure process. Assuming that all three of these payment providers appear to offer the same kind of 3D Secure hooks (I'm seeing similar parameters in all of their APIs), do you think I'm going to be able to use a single MPI to manage the 3D Secure process for all or do you think I'm going to have to have a different 3D Secure implementation for each of my providers? For example, PayPal recommend using Cardinal Centinel for 3D Secure - so let's say I get a single account for them, what are the chances I'll be able to reuse it for Moneris or Servebase, say. Is the 3D Secure system a 'standard' (using the term loosely there!) that is simply being echoed by these other payment providers? It doesn't matter if you know nothing of the other APIs I mention here - i.e. Moneris, Servebase - if you've had any experience similar to mine I would appreciate any thoughts."}
{"_id": "99360", "title": "How to apply design patterns in this scenario", "text": "I want to use design patterns for the following scenario. How to? I have classes named Person, Employee and Customer and all of them have their own save, update, get and delete methods. Employee and Customer classes are derived from person. What may be the best way to code?"}
{"_id": "198732", "title": "How to organize cross platform js/web application?", "text": "My friend and I are working on an application that already works for Windows 8 and is written in Javascript, HTML, and CSS. Our desire is to make it cross platform for areas like windows mobile, chrome, firefox, and android. So, our directory structure looks like this:               .     \u251cSomeApp.sln         // Visual Studio solution file     \u251cSomeApp.suo         // other Visual Studio related file     \u251cSomeApp.v11.suo     // other Visual Studio related file     \u251cdeploy.py           // Deployment script for apache     \u251cMakefile            // For things like building the desktop version     \u2502                    // and for testing/linting/deploying     conf     \u251c\u2500\u2500 apache.conf     SomeApp     \u251c\u2500\u2500 AppPackages     \u251c\u2500\u2500 bin     \u2502\u00a0\u00a0 \u251c\u2500\u2500 Debug     \u2502\u00a0\u00a0 \u2514\u2500\u2500 Release     \u251c\u2500\u2500 bld     \u2502\u00a0\u00a0 \u251c\u2500\u2500 Debug     \u2502\u00a0\u00a0 \u2514\u2500\u2500 Release     \u251c\u2500\u2500 css     \u251c\u2500\u2500 images     \u251c\u2500\u2500 js     \u2502\u00a0\u00a0 \u2514\u2500\u2500 lib     \u251c\u2500\u2500 pages     \u251c\u2500\u2500 promo images     \u2514\u2500\u2500 strings         // i18n language files         \u251c\u2500\u2500 ar         \u251c\u2500\u2500 bg         \u251c\u2500\u2500 cs         \u251c\u2500\u2500 da         \u251c\u2500\u2500 de         \u251c\u2500\u2500 el         \u251c\u2500\u2500 en-US         \u251c\u2500\u2500 es         \u251c\u2500\u2500 fr         \u251c\u2500\u2500 he         \u251c\u2500\u2500 hr         \u251c\u2500\u2500 hu         \u251c\u2500\u2500 it         \u251c\u2500\u2500 ja         \u251c\u2500\u2500 ko         \u251c\u2500\u2500 nb         \u251c\u2500\u2500 nl         \u251c\u2500\u2500 pl         \u251c\u2500\u2500 pt         \u251c\u2500\u2500 ro         \u251c\u2500\u2500 ru         \u251c\u2500\u2500 sv         \u251c\u2500\u2500 tr         \u251c\u2500\u2500 uk      I added things like the deploy script and the make file... but I'm really at a loss on how to organize a project like this. Would I create directories like this?               .     \u251c\u2500\u2500browserExtension/        \u2502  \u251c\u2500\u2500 build/           // put makefile here?                \u2502  \u251c\u2500\u2500 conf/            // put apache conf here?                \u2502  \u251c\u2500\u2500 chrome/           \u2502  \u251c\u2500\u2500 firefox/     \u251c\u2500\u2500web/                  // normal web page      \u251c\u2500\u2500windows/                     \u2502  \u251c\u2500\u2500 WindowsMobile8/           \u2502  \u2514\u2500\u2500 Windows8/        // put existing solution files here?     \u251c\u2500\u2500mobile/            \u2502  \u251c\u2500\u2500 android/     \u2514\u2500\u2500common/        \u251c\u2500\u2500 css/        \u251c\u2500\u2500 js/        \u2502   \u2514\u2500\u2500 test/        \u2514\u2500\u2500 html/      Is there a good example of a project that's already been successful doing this that I can follow?"}
{"_id": "152780", "title": "Should my source code be in UTF-8?", "text": "I feel that often you don't really choose what format your code is in. I mean most of my tools in the past have decided for me. Or I haven't really even thought about it. I was using TextPad on windows the other day and as I was saving a file, it prompted me about ASCII, UTF-8/16, Unicode etc etc... I am assuming that almost all code written is ASCII, but why should it be ASCII? Should we actually be using UTF-8 files now for source code, and why? I'd imagine this might be useful on multi-lingual teams. Are there standards associated with how multilingual teams name variables/functions/etc?"}
{"_id": "210670", "title": "OOP - Modeling a Chat", "text": "When modeling a chat, should a chat object receive messages or a message be sent to a chat object? I'm not sure whether there is a definitive answer but maybe someone can point out benefits of one over the other. ` message.send(chat); ` VS. ` chat.sendMessage(message); `"}
{"_id": "80503", "title": "Any tips how to successfully job hunt?", "text": "I have been looking for a job for more than 3 weeks and have applied for about 30 vacancies. From all of these I only received few calls from recruitment agencies which didn't propose anything special. One of them just forwarded my CV to the employee and another suggested me to fix my current CV. I made some changes to CV which they didn't like and resent it back. No reply since. I feel frustrated and worried. First of all I don't like that everything vacancy should go through recruitment agency. Even if I want to apply directly I cannot find any name or any lead which company is recruiting. Secondly I don't see any reason why nobody replies back. My cover letter is in plain text and CV is made in Latex. Everything is crafted by all suggestion I have read over the internet and one very interesting book \"The Google Resume\". What I am doing wrong? Is there any tips how to search direct jobs? Particularly I am interested in UK job market. P.S. I am using http://www.simplyhired.co.uk/ which I believe is the best site because it accumulates from all it job boards."}
{"_id": "210674", "title": "How to simulate inner join on very large files in java (without running out of memory)", "text": "I am trying to simulate SQL joins using java and very large text files (INNER, RIGHT OUTER and LEFT OUTER). The files have already been sorted using an external sort routine. The issue I have is I am trying to find the most efficient way to deal with the INNER join part of the algorithm. Right now I am using two Lists to store the lines that have the same key and iterate through the set of lines in the right file once for every line in the left file (provided the keys still match). In other words, the join key is not unique in each file so would need to account for the Cartesian product situations ...               left_01, 1     left_02, 1     right_01, 1     right_02, 1     right_03, 1          left_01 joins to right_01 using key 1     left_01 joins to right_02 using key 1     left_01 joins to right_03 using key 1     left_02 joins to right_01 using key 1     left_02 joins to right_02 using key 1     left_02 joins to right_03 using key 1      My concern is one of memory. I will run out of memory if i use the approach below but still want the inner join part to work fairly quickly. What is the best approach to deal with the INNER join part keeping in mind that these files may potentially be huge               public class Joiner {            private void join(BufferedReader left, BufferedReader right, BufferedWriter output) throws Throwable {              BufferedReader _left = left;         BufferedReader _right = right;         BufferedWriter _output = output;         Record _leftRecord;         Record _rightRecord;              _leftRecord = read(_left);         _rightRecord = read(_right);              while( _leftRecord != null && _rightRecord != null ) {                if( _leftRecord.getKey() < _rightRecord.getKey() ) {             write(_output, _leftRecord, null);             _leftRecord = read(_left);           }           else if( _leftRecord.getKey() > _rightRecord.getKey() ) {             write(_output, null, _rightRecord);             _rightRecord = read(_right);           }           else {             List<Record> leftList = new ArrayList<Record>();             List<Record> rightList = new ArrayList<Record>();                  _leftRecord = readRecords(leftList, _leftRecord, _left);             _rightRecord = readRecords(rightList, _rightRecord, _right);                  for( Record equalKeyLeftRecord : leftList ){               for( Record equalKeyRightRecord : rightList ){                 write(_output, equalKeyLeftRecord, equalKeyRightRecord);               }             }           }         }              if( _leftRecord != null ) {           write(_output, _leftRecord, null);           _leftRecord = read(_left);           while(_leftRecord != null) {             write(_output, _leftRecord, null);             _leftRecord = read(_left);                   }         }         else {             if( _rightRecord != null ) {             write(_output, null, _rightRecord);             _rightRecord = read(_right);             while(_rightRecord != null) {               write(_output, null, _rightRecord);               _rightRecord = read(_right);             }           }              }         _left.close();         _right.close();         _output.flush();         _output.close();       }            private Record read(BufferedReader reader) throws Throwable {         Record record = null;              String data = reader.readLine();         if( data != null ) {           record = new Record(data.split(\"\\t\"));         }         return record;       }            private Record readRecords(List<Record> list, Record record, BufferedReader reader) throws Throwable {         int key = record.getKey();         list.add(record);         record = read(reader);         while( record != null && record.getKey() == key) {           list.add(record);           record = read(reader);         }         return record;           }            private void write(BufferedWriter writer, Record left, Record right) throws Throwable {            String leftKey = (left == null ? \"null\" : Integer.toString(left.getKey()));         String leftData = (left == null ? \"null\" : left.getData());         String rightKey = (right == null ? \"null\" : Integer.toString(right.getKey()));         String rightData = (right == null ? \"null\" : right.getData());              writer.write(\"[\" + leftKey + \"][\" + leftData + \"][\" + rightKey + \"][\" + rightData + \"]\\n\");       }            public static void main(String[] args) {             try {                    BufferedReader leftReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(\"LEFT.DAT\"));               BufferedReader rightReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(\"RIGHT.DAT\"));               BufferedWriter output = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(\"OUTPUT.DAT\"));                Joiner joiner = new Joiner();           joiner.join(leftReader, rightReader, output);         }              catch (Throwable e) {           e.printStackTrace();         }       }     }      After applying the ideas from the proposed answer, I changed the loop to this               private void join(RandomAccessFile left, RandomAccessFile right, BufferedWriter output) throws Throwable {              long _pointer = 0;              RandomAccessFile _left = left;         RandomAccessFile _right = right;              BufferedWriter _output = output;              Record _leftRecord;         Record _rightRecord;              _leftRecord = read(_left);         _rightRecord = read(_right);              while( _leftRecord != null && _rightRecord != null ) {                  if( _leftRecord.getKey() < _rightRecord.getKey() ) {                 write(_output, _leftRecord, null);                 _leftRecord = read(_left);             }             else if( _leftRecord.getKey() > _rightRecord.getKey() ) {                 write(_output, null, _rightRecord);                              _pointer = _right.getFilePointer();                 _rightRecord = read(_right);             }             else {                           long _tempPointer = 0;                 int key = _leftRecord.getKey();                                                                          while( _leftRecord != null && _leftRecord.getKey() == key ) {                     _right.seek(_pointer);                     _rightRecord = read(_right);                     while( _rightRecord != null && _rightRecord.getKey() == key ) {                         write(_output, _leftRecord, _rightRecord );                         _tempPointer = _right.getFilePointer();                         _rightRecord = read(_right);                      }                     _leftRecord = read(_left);                 }                 _pointer = _tempPointer;             }         }              if( _leftRecord != null ) {             write(_output, _leftRecord, null);             _leftRecord = read(_left);             while(_leftRecord != null) {                 write(_output, _leftRecord, null);                 _leftRecord = read(_left);                           }         }         else {               if( _rightRecord != null ) {                 write(_output, null, _rightRecord);                 _rightRecord = read(_right);                 while(_rightRecord != null) {                     write(_output, null, _rightRecord);                     _rightRecord = read(_right);                 }             }                    }         _left.close();         _right.close();         _output.flush();         _output.close();     }      _UPDATE_ While this approach worked, it was terribly slow and so I have modified this to create files as buffers and this works very well. Here is the update ...               private long getMaxBufferedLines(File file) throws Throwable {         long freeBytes = Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory() / 2;              return (freeBytes / (file.length() / getLineCount(file)));     }          private void join(File left, File right, File output, JoinType joinType) throws Throwable {              BufferedReader leftFile = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(left));         BufferedReader rightFile = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(right));         BufferedWriter outputFile = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(output));         long maxBufferedLines = getMaxBufferedLines(right);              Record leftRecord;         Record rightRecord;              leftRecord = read(leftFile);         rightRecord = read(rightFile);              while( leftRecord != null && rightRecord != null ) {                  if( leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(rightRecord.getKey()) < 0) {                 if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin                          || joinType == JoinType.LeftExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) {                      write(outputFile, leftRecord, null);                 }                 leftRecord = read(leftFile);             }             else if( leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(rightRecord.getKey()) > 0 ) {                 if( joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin                          || joinType == JoinType.RightExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) {                     write(outputFile, null, rightRecord);                 }                 rightRecord = read(rightFile);             }             else if( leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(rightRecord.getKey()) == 0 ) {                 String key = leftRecord.getKey();                  List<File> rightRecordFileList = new ArrayList<File>();                 List<Record> rightRecordList = new ArrayList<Record>();                 rightRecordList.add(rightRecord);                 rightRecord = consume(key, rightFile, rightRecordList, rightRecordFileList, maxBufferedLines);                      while( leftRecord != null && leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 ) {                     processRightRecords(outputFile, leftRecord, rightRecordFileList, rightRecordList, joinType);                     leftRecord = read(leftFile);                 }                      // need a dispose for deleting files in list             }             else {                 throw new Exception(\"DATA IS NOT SORTED\");             }         }              if( leftRecord != null ) {             if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin                      || joinType == JoinType.LeftExclusiveJoin                     || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin                     || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) {                 write(outputFile, leftRecord, null);             }             leftRecord = read(leftFile);             while(leftRecord != null) {                 if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin                          || joinType == JoinType.LeftExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) {                     write(outputFile, leftRecord, null);                 }                 leftRecord = read(leftFile);                           }         }         else {               if( rightRecord != null ) {                 if( joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin                          || joinType == JoinType.RightExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) {                     write(outputFile, null, rightRecord);                 }                 rightRecord = read(rightFile);                 while(rightRecord != null) {                     if( joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin                              || joinType == JoinType.RightExclusiveJoin                             || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin                             || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) {                         write(outputFile, null, rightRecord);                     }                     rightRecord = read(rightFile);                 }             }                    }         leftFile.close();         rightFile.close();         outputFile.flush();         outputFile.close();     }          public void processRightRecords(BufferedWriter outputFile, Record leftRecord, List<File> rightFiles, List<Record> rightRecords, JoinType joinType) throws Throwable {              for(File rightFile : rightFiles) {             BufferedReader rightReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(rightFile));             Record rightRecord = read(rightReader);             while(rightRecord != null){                      if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin                          || joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin                         || joinType == JoinType.InnerJoin ) {                                         write(outputFile, leftRecord, rightRecord);                 }                 rightRecord = read(rightReader);             }             rightReader.close();         }              for(Record rightRecord : rightRecords) {             if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin                      || joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin                     || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin                     || joinType == JoinType.InnerJoin ) {                                     write(outputFile, leftRecord, rightRecord);             }         }     }          /**      * consume all records having key (either to a single list or multiple files) each file will       * store a buffer full of data. The right record returned represents the outside flow (key is       * already positioned to next one or null) so we can't use this record in below while loop or       * within this block in general when comparing current key. The trick is to keep consuming       * from a List. When it becomes empty, re-fill it from the next file until all files have       * been consumed (and the last node in the list is read). The next outside iteration will be       * ready to be processed (either it will be null or it points to the next biggest key      * @throws Throwable       *       */     private Record consume(String key, BufferedReader reader, List<Record> records, List<File> files, long bufferMaxRecordLines ) throws Throwable {         boolean processComplete = false;         Record record = records.get(records.size() - 1);              while(!processComplete){             long recordCount = records.size();             if( record.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 ){                 record = read(reader);                                 while( record != null && record.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 && recordCount < bufferMaxRecordLines ) {                     records.add(record);                     recordCount++;                     record = read(reader);                 }             }             processComplete = true;             // if record is null, we are done             if( record != null ) {                      // if the key has changed, we are done                 if( record.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 ) {                          // Same key means we have exhausted the buffer.                     // Dump entire buffer into a file. The list of file                      // pointers will keep track of the files ...                                         processComplete = false;                     dumpBufferToFile(records, files);                     records.clear();                     records.add(record);                 }             }         }         return record;     }          /**      * Dump all records in List of Record objects to a file. Then, add that       * file to List of File objects      *       * NEED TO PLACE A LIMIT ON NUMBER OF FILE POINTERS (check size of file list)      *       * @param records      * @param files      * @throws Throwable       */     private void dumpBufferToFile(List<Record> records, List<File> files) throws Throwable {         String prefix = \"joiner_\" + files.size() + 1;         String suffix = \".dat\";         File file = File.createTempFile(prefix, suffix, new File(\"cache\"));         BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file));                     for( Record record : records ) {             writer.write( record.dump() );         }              files.add(file);         writer.flush();         writer.close();     }"}
{"_id": "251071", "title": "What is the best use case for selenium?", "text": "I've been trying to develop web applications while at the same time creating the testing. I understand unit testing, I can declare a test method and test specific methods in my application. But I don't see what is the best way to use selenium web driver for testing. I tried to test the a specific site for broken links or broken images and I had to use an external http connection library since selenium doesn't provide header results etc. It is very slow to traverse a whole site. While you can just pass the URL to W3C link checker and you're done. Are most developers creating a class for each page and testing individual ui elements since traversing the whole site is a lot more complicated. What are the benefits selenium brings or ui testing that can't be tested for with unit testing?"}
{"_id": "251070", "title": "How do you wrestle the DRY principle with configs?", "text": "For instance, lets say we have an nginx config pointing at foo1, foo2, and foo3, as well as a haproxy config pointing at foo1, foo2, and foo3, and finally, a deployment tool pointing at the same respective servers. How does one reconcile this? Build some sort of configuration generator for nginx and haproxy based on the hosts? It seems as though this would make grepping difficult and potentially hinder readability of the configuration files in general."}
{"_id": "16798", "title": "Handling contacts imported from users email account", "text": "In my web application, I give the user the option to import all of his/her contacts from their email account, and then send out invites to all of these accounts or map the user to the existing accounts based on emails. Now the question, is once all of these contacts are imported, would it be right to save these contacts back for repeated reminders, etc.? I am quite confused here because that is the way all of the sites operate, but would that not be violation of data privacy? Is there an algorithm for this?"}
{"_id": "190503", "title": "How to make .exe file from html5 css application?", "text": "I would like to make windows desktop application using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. I am trying   * tidesdk   * XULRunner   * appjs I read the documentations of these technologies. But I didn't see how to export the application as a .exe package. I want to write an application in HTML and JavaScript and export to an exe file. How can I do that?"}
{"_id": "12082", "title": "What tricks/tips do you use for innovation?", "text": "I am looking for a few ideas on how to change a highly conventional work culture to be more innovated in their approached to problem solving. I've come across this article and am looking for more specific and practical ways that we as developers can help each other think outside of the box. I've constructed a simple formula of how to energize innovation in my everyday development. (Please critique this for improvement) Input External Data/Info -> Creates New Ideas/Concepts -> Communicates/Shares Ideas -> Trusts Others -> Risks Trials -> Innovation Happens What are some of your attitudes, thought processes, and behaviors towards approaching a challenging problem in way that would be considered innovative?"}
{"_id": "49282", "title": "\"My stuff\" vs. \"Your stuff\" in UI texts", "text": "When refering to a users stuff should you use _My_ or _Your_ , for example: > My Cart | My Account | My Wishlist Or > Your Cart | Your Account | Your Wishlist I found this article that argues for the use of _your_. It says flikr does this. It also says MySpace and MyYahoo are wrong. I also noticed today that Amazon uses the term _Your_. However, I have heard they are the masters at testing variations and finding the best one, so what you see on their site might be the best variation, or simply something they are currently testing. I personally like the way _my_ looks better, but thats just my opinion. What do you think? What will hever the better impact on customers? Does it really even matter?"}
{"_id": "162625", "title": "Should I store log files in version control", "text": "The log files in question are metrics log files. One of them is a project file produced by SourceMonitor, to which I regularly add checkpoints to chart the progress of projects."}
{"_id": "193859", "title": "How should you deal with a popular project that you no longer want to maintain?", "text": "I am the maintainer of a project which has a large non-technical userbase. I've been maintaining it for about 4 years now and adding new features as they've been requested. I'd like to move on to other projects now and stop developing for this application. Because of the non-technical nature of the users, there have been very few code contributions in the past. I don't believe I will be able to find anyone else to take over the project in my stead. Bugs, issues, feature requests - these are still coming in. I am still responding to emails for help, as I am not sure if I should ignore them, tell them that I'm not working on the application, or if I should respond to emails in only certain cases. What is the best way to 'abandon' this project, but still let users use the application?"}
{"_id": "193856", "title": "Manage feature set of one app on multiple platforms/codebases", "text": "So I develop an app that is for both Android and iOS. From time to time changes occur when working on one version that need to implemented on the other. I find it tedious to keep track of these changes so I don't forget them later. I'm just curious as to what other workflows you guys use when managing a single feature set to be implemented in various projects. Thanks"}
{"_id": "193857", "title": "How to explain to your colleages to stop creating packages and classes named \"Utils\"?", "text": "In most of the projects at work it will eventually show up a package, a class (or multiple packages and classes) named \"Utils\", where every kind of function is dumped into. It becomes excruciating harder and harder to navigate the project without a properly named structure. I have tried to ask to stop using \"Utils\". When I find it if and the change to the codebase is small I normally refractor it and remove them, but they always end on showing up cluttering the code. So do you know any strategy to make them stop doing this? Or am I just being a nagger?"}
{"_id": "162629", "title": "When should code favour optimization over readability and ease-of-use?", "text": "I am in the process of designing a small library, where one of my design goals is that _the API should be as close to the domain language as possible_. While working on the design, I've noticed that there are some cases in the code where a more intuitive, readable attribute/method call requires some functionally unnecessary encapsulation. Since the final product will not necessarily require high performance, I am unconcerned about making the decision to favour ease-of-use in my current project over the most efficient implementation of the code in question. I know not to assume readability and ease-of-use are paramount in all expected use-cases, such as when performance is required. I would like to know if there are more general reasons that argue for a design preferring more efficient implementations\u2014even if only marginally so?"}
{"_id": "45707", "title": "Languages with similar features to JavaFX Script", "text": "I just completed a small project in JavaFX, only finding that it has been declared dead by Oracle. JavaFX Script actually seemed to be a pretty interesting language with some neat features for its domain, particularly with bind for data binding and on replace for triggered events. These features actually make the language very useful for small, quick, RIA type apps, which leads to my question: **Are there any _mainstream_ languages with features similar to bind and on replace?** After working with JavaFX, I got some ideas for some small personal (academic) projects that could take advantage of these features, but I would prefer to not start anything new in a language considered extinct by its owners."}
{"_id": "95702", "title": "Software design methods for Java or any other programming language", "text": "I'm junior programmer and I would like to know how professionals write their code or which steps they follow when they are creating new software. I mean, which steps they follow, which programming methodology, software architecture design application software, etc. I would like to find a tutorial where they explain from the beginning which steps I have to follow from The Idea I have in my mind to the final version of the application in any language. Or perhaps how is your programming steps or rules that you used to follow. Because everytime I want to create the an application I spend few time on the design and a lot of time coding (I know, that's not good)."}
{"_id": "34773", "title": "What features are helpful when performing remote debugging / diagnostics?", "text": "Obviously, the easiest way to solve a bug is to be able to reproduce it in- house. However, sometimes that is not practical. For starters, users are often not very good at providing you with useful information. > Customer Service: \"what seems to be the issue?\"   >  User: \"It crashed!\" To further compound that, sometimes the bug only occurs under certain environmentally conditions that can not be adequately replicated in-house. With that in mind, it is important to build some sort of diagnostic framework into your product. **What types of built-in diagnostic tools have you used or seen used?** Logging seems to be the predominate method, which makes sense. We have a fairly sophisticated logging frame work in place with different levels of verbosity and the ability to filter on specific modules (actually we can filter down to the granularity of a single file). Error logs are placed strategically to manufacture a pretty good representation of a stack trace when an error occurs. We don't have the luxury of 10 million terabytes of disk space since I work on embedded platforms, so we have two ways of getting them off the system: a serial port and a syslog server. However, an issue we run into sometimes is actually getting the user to turn the logs on. Our current framework often requires some user interaction."}
{"_id": "216638", "title": "Data structure supporting the following operations", "text": "I'm looking for a data structure for working with a set of data which is most efficient to do the following :   1. Check whether an item has been categorized or not. (The categorized and uncategorized set are disjoint sets).   2. Get the category of an item.   3. Get all the items in a particular category.   4. Get all the uncategorized items.   5. Remove a particular item from the data set. I was thinking of having a `Dictionary<String, Set<String>>` to hold all the items in a given category, but that doesn't solve 2."}
{"_id": "174733", "title": "Is wrapping a third party code the only solution to unit test its consumers?", "text": "I'm doing unit testing and in one of my classes I need to send a mail from one of the methods, so using constructor injection I inject an instance of `Zend_Mail` class which is in Zend framework. Now some people argue that if a library is stable enough and won't change often then there is no need to wrap it. So assuming that `Zend_Mail` is stable and won't change and it fits my needs entirely, then I won't need a wrapper for it. Now take a look at my class `Logger` that depends on `Zend_Mail`:               class Logger{         private $mailer;             function __construct(Zend_Mail $mail){             $this->mail=$mail;         }            function toBeTestedFunction(){           //Some code           $this->mail->setTo('some value');           $this->mail->setSubject('some value');           $this->mail->setBody('some value');           $this->mail->send();          //Some        }             }      However, Unit testing demands that I test one component at a time, so I need to mock the `Zend_Mail` class. In addition I'm violating the **Dependency Inversion** principle as my `Logger` class now depends on concretion not abstraction. Now how can I test `Logger` in isolation without wrapping `Zend_Mail`?! The code is in PHP, but answers doesn't have to be. This is more of a design issue than a language specific feature"}
{"_id": "111322", "title": "Server OS/Software Requirements For asp.NET Framework 4.0", "text": "**The Background:**   Me and my colleague are opening a new website design & development company. We have designed and implemented a website on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 using Web forms in .NET Framework 4. Because I was new to asp.NET at the time, I wasn't sure what Database to use. Therefore I created a new \"Microsoft SQL Server Database File\" and added all the tables etc. I then worked with this configuration until the website was complete. The website works like a dream in Visual Studio. **The Problem:**   We were supposed to be buying a server from a local source that cannot be named, and this server was supposed to have Microsoft SQL server 2005 for the database, and I'm assuming IIS to configure the server and handle requests etc (please keep in mind that my knowledge of servers is limited) And this company were going to configure everything blah blah blah, get everything set up so all we have to do is put our website on it, and life is sweet. The problem is, this company have messed us about, told us this and that and it turns out they're very unreliable and untrustworthy. We've already spent a large sum of money with them and they are dragging their feet giving us the money back, saying what we asked is impossible, that we cant have SQL running on an old server yada yada yada. **The Question:**   I have an asp.NET website with a SQL server database ( .mdf file, if that helps anything ) and we need to know what do we need to get it on the internet. we've considered buying our own computer, putting MS server software on it, installing SQL server 2005, installing IIS and running it off that. But we don't know what to do or how to do it. Before all this server hastle kicked off, i tried installing a copy of IIS on my computer, and hosting it from there as a test to get me used to the software, however I tried multiple tutorials, and all sorts and could not get our website to host! There may be examples of this all over the internet but i cannot find an answer. I dont understand most of the things people are talking about on these articals. I know I've rambled, But basically. I just need to know HOW to put an asp.NET application on the internet, and what minimum requirements I need. Do i even need SQL server software on my server? or is that purely for interacting with the sql database?"}
{"_id": "216630", "title": "An intern interview with Microsoft", "text": "I'm currently in my second year(Computer Science and Mathematics). In two days I have an interview on campus with Microsoft. I'm a bit nervous, because this will be my first in person interview. I have done reviewed basic things like linked list and binary trees. I am not really sure what kinds of questions I'll be asked. Has anyone been to such interview? If so what's it like? What kinds of questions will I be asked? Any help/suggestions will be much appreciated! Also can someone provide me with a list of things I ought to know for the interview?"}
{"_id": "78218", "title": "Open source engagement as a professional reference", "text": "if one commits his or her time to an open source project, he or she may be invest a substantial amount of time without getting paid. As much as altruism is appreciable, I wonder whether it \"counts\" as an activity which can be shown and is valued in job applications. If the company is worth your time and working power, which it should be in my honest opinion. So I wonder whether there is something like a common practice in open source projects for this matters. Say, something like > Mr. Martin has been working on our project for five years and has > contributed this and that,[...] I we wish him very best for his future. > > Mr. ChiefofProject I think this is a just concern. Do have experiences you can share?"}
{"_id": "78213", "title": "12 year old son interested in Android programming", "text": "So, my 12 year old son is interested in programming for Android. He's never done a real program before, but he did play briefly with Alice. I'm trying to figure out what the best way to introduce him to programming would be, and more specifically, if it would be better for him to just jump into Android programming, or if I should have him do Java first. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "198081", "title": "Does 'consider returning Null Object' apply to a DAO read method?", "text": "I was looking for an answer to the question of what a DAO should return when a search ends up to be for an entity that does not exist. There are some generic previous questions related to returning null, but I am looking for an answer specifically in the context of the DAO retrieve scenario.       To be clear, when I say _Null Object_ I am referring to the Null Object pattern. In the Java space, Josh Bloch recommends an empty collection solution in the book _Effective Java_ (See Item 43) which provides an very good introduction to the problem/solution.    Despite being aware of Bloch's advice when I first wrote this question I considered returning null appropriate in a read/retrieval scenario. I'm in good company making a mistake with nulls."}
{"_id": "78211", "title": "How mature is PyPy?", "text": "I am trying to determine the maturity of PyPy by other means than reading the opinion of the developers. Therefore, I am interested in hearing about any high-profile mission-critical projects using PyPy. All other indicators of maturity seem fine. I am just missing this one before I decide on utilizing it for my main project."}
{"_id": "198083", "title": "Rules of thumb regarding breaking into sub-projects", "text": "We are building a Game Client and Server, our system is broken into four major projects: (Client and Server, Shared Interfaces, Source Art). In addition, both client and server have a set of libraries where we put shared code for client and server respectively. As you can imagine this leads to a lot of projects, I count 12 projects in the entire source. My questions are; What are the good rules of thumb regarding when to keep code in one project versus breaking it into sub projects. No one likes a large monolithic project but lots of small projects also add a lot of overhead. Should all projects be branched and released in lock-step to keep things simple (one current version number for all) or should library projects be branched and released separately only when they change. This will lead to complex map of compatible versions. I know there is no absolute answer for these questions but what are the known best practices when deciding and/or good reference material to read up on this subject?"}
{"_id": "246694", "title": "How to design extension mechanism for java app", "text": "I have an application where I have a set of core features.   1. The application itself HAS to work in core only mode.   2. I would also want to make the application extensible such that, when certain jar/plugin files exist in the classpath/installation location, additional features would be available, things would just be there. This is OPTIONAL. The way I would do it is using the factory pattern with a modification. In the core package, I have an extension point (implemented by either a public static variable or a singleton, or other extension point model from my framework - Eclipse RCP). The extension jars/plugins get this extension point and registers its factory object to this extension point. (This is best done with RCP plugin/feature activation mechanism, or it can just be anything that causes a load of the extension jar/plugin factory class) When the application runs, the core factory would produce objects from the extension factory if one has been registered or use its core factory otherwise. This is how the application goes from core mode to extension mode if an extension jar exists. I wonder if this is a decent way to do what I wanted to do or this is just a hack, anti-pattern, etc... Please propose a better solution if you can. Thanks."}
{"_id": "12334", "title": "Methodologies of a high class development team", "text": "I've recently been tasked with increasing standards and efficiency within a development team. I've read similar posts about the makings of a good development team but these often discuss the human elements such as \"passion for learning\", \"being a team player\" etc. These are all of course important but I'm particularly interested in ideas surrounding practical methodologies. Some are just plain obvious, for example, my first implementations are:   * Implementation of Source Control - well, do I have to even explain why?   * A structured method of deploying builds that everybody adheres to - makes deployment easier for all involved   * Coding standards - ensures everybody is working in the same way and (hopefully) reduces technical debt   * Encouragement to make use of the developer community e.g. StackOverFlow and the like - keeps us in the loop with the big bad world and brings in ideas from outside our office walls What practical methodology does your team employ that you feel makes a tremendous difference to the productivity and overall \"goodness\" of a development team?"}
{"_id": "236645", "title": "object model and data model", "text": "I have heard/read mixed things on whether to start with an object model or a data model. And more people say to starting with an object model as it will ease your data modelling. My question is, Shouldn't an object model always drive the design of data model? Why and When would a data model design be different than an object model? If we have a good object model, shouldn't the classes we come up with translate into tables? And class associations as table relationships?"}
{"_id": "236641", "title": "For instance methods, would always returning self or this, instead of using a void return type, be a clean coding style?", "text": "I just came across this article, and in particular, this answer. Essentially they're talking about returning `self` from instance methods to allow for method chaining. That being said, one of the first thoughts that came to mind was, _Why not always take instance methods with`void` return types and make them return `this` or `self` instead?_ The next thought, which came to mind immediately, was, _There's probably a reason this isn't more common._ So what could be the harm in it? It seems like there honestly wouldn't be any. The reason is that nothing about the mere existence of a return value implies or even seems to imply the need to use that return value. If the method is a specialized getter or file reader or something, that's one thing, but if people aren't looking to use the return value, they naturally won't pay one any attention. Furthermore it shouldn't be too confusing, because `return this;` is pretty trivial; at most, somebody would probably think it's irrelevant. It certainly seems like it wouldn't hurt anything, and it's generally better to have too much than too little."}
{"_id": "54814", "title": "How to evaluate the quality of Rails code?", "text": "**In a code review, what do you look for to assess a developer's expertise?** Given an opportunity to look at a developer's work on a real-world project, what tell-tale signs are a tip-off to carelessness or lack of experience? Conversely, where do you look in the code to find evidence of a developer's skill or knowledge of best practices? For example, if I'm looking at a typical Rails app, I would be happy to see the developer is using RSpec (showing a commitment to using test-driven development and knowledge that RSpec is currently more popular than the default TestUnit). But in examining the specs for a Rails model, I see that the developer is testing associations, which might indicate a lack of real understanding of Rails testing requirements (since such tests are redundant given that they only test what's already implemented and tested in ActiveRecord). More generally, I might look to see if developers are writing their own implementations versus using widely available gems or if they are cleaning up code versus leaving lots of commented-out \"leftovers.\" What helps you determine the skill of a Rails developer? What's your code quality checklist?"}
{"_id": "179229", "title": "Top down or bottom up approach?", "text": "I'm an interface designer and now I'm working with a team of programmers to develop a new CMS for a heavy media site. As I've started developing a specification list for a prototype it turned out a very big one. I do realize now that the client-side will be JS heavy, with lots of DnD and other \"cool designer stuff\". The CMS will even include a small project management system for its users, nothing big like Basecamp, but with a live feed of comments etc. The problem is the the team has now separated. Someone is proposing the existing backend solution used in other CMS, someone is proposing to rewrite everything from scratch. The point to keep the code is that it is faster, the point to rewrite is to make it better for the proposed design (include Node.js and other stuff I don't actually get). The question is \u2014 can the UI specs influence back-end? The guys that propose to use the existing solution did everything with the Yii framework (as far as I know), and they say that everything on server is not affected by this \"interface coolness\". Others say that it does, that even autosave can't work without server load."}
{"_id": "211926", "title": "Writing a bootloader with no bootloader", "text": "I have a question that I really can't find a straight answer to. Let me start by saying I'm not asking for a step by step tutorial, or even plan on doing anything. I'm just curious. I've been reading up all day on the development of operating systems, and how they're built from scratch. I have a pretty firm grip on the theory of it. However, there is one step I can't seem to find an answer for. Before the existence of a full on, tool filled operating system, how would one even write a simple boot loader for a computer that doesn't any have a boot loader, or anything for that matter, in its boot sector? What would the very first step be after acquiring a computer with the bare minimal? (I.e., screen, keyboard, processor, ram, hdd, floppy)"}
{"_id": "211928", "title": "I have to use Visual Studio 2005. What are good alternatives to using LINQ?", "text": "I have recently started a new job and am being forced to use VS 2005 and .NET 2. This has been quite painful for a number of reasons, but the one big change from VS 2005 to its successors was the introduction of LINQ and extension methods. A common pattern that I used to follow when using enumerations was the following:               foreach(var myObject in myObjects.Where(x => x.Property == someValue)     {         //Do some stuff     }      What I am having difficulty with is coming up with a succinct way of expressing the same statement in C# 2. The best I have come up with is the following:               foreach(MyObject myObject in myObjects)     {         if(myObject.Property == someValue)         {             //Do some stuff         }     }      Is there a more effective or efficient way of writing this code? How would you write C# 2 code so that it can most easily be transformed into C# 5 code (we will be upgrading to VS2012/.NET 4.5 after the next release)?"}
{"_id": "53453", "title": "Interrupting Work Productivity: The Name?", "text": "Certainly it is a productivity killer when a developer is constantly interrupted by other workers, bosses, etc - but it is even worse when the developer is constantly interrupted by his or her own tools and equipment. For example, if a developer must wait 10 minutes for each build he makes - so that he can iteratively test code he is working on, the effect on productivity is devastating. Or perhaps the build is fast, but copying the bits to a test VM takes 3 minutes. Once again, the developer is being vexed by a lack of \"responsiveness\" in the tools and procedures being followed. I believe there is a name for an environmnent that is free of these problems, or perhaps a name that is plagued with these process and tool interruptions. I can't recall the name or industry \"label\" for this. Anyone recall?"}
{"_id": "152129", "title": "Can you program Android Apps in a functional language?", "text": "Can you program Android Apps in a functional language? I meant is it possible to program for Android in a language that was designed from the ground up to be functional? I'm aware that you can use the functional components of an OO or a procedural language to program in a functional style, I was asking whether it would be applicable to use one of the \"functional languages\" on Android."}
{"_id": "152128", "title": "Object oriented design importance", "text": "I started studying Object Oriented Design and Modelling using the this book by James Rumbaugh. It uses a tool called Object Modeling Technique (OMT). I have certain newbie questions. I searched the net, but couldn't get answers   1. The book is pretty old. Don't know why the school told me to learn this. I know OMT is a predecessor of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). So its a waste?   2. Whether the concepts change very much when we move from OMT to UML? I know OMT has Object, Dynamic and Functional Model. Wikipedia says UML is compatible with OMT and UML is a model too.   3. As per wikipedia the UML models are Static and Dynamic and they are represented by different diagrams like class, object, activity, sequence..... I couldn't find the equivalence of this in OMT.   4. I read that there are many object oriented development methods like OMT, Booch,.... Which one is used by Industry ?   5. Where could I get a comparison of different Object oriented development methods?"}
{"_id": "176562", "title": "Database development/admin - What exactly should I be trying to learn?", "text": "I've been a bit weary about approaching learning databases. I've dabbled into them before, and \"DATA\" in itself appeals to me a lot. Maintaining/searching/moving, everything about it in the abstract sense I love. (This isn't a career question, this is a learning question.) But as RDBMS's begin to be easier to maintain, and with tools that \"anyone\" can use to manage data I feared for the database admin jobs. (Yet I see jobs for SQL everywhere!). I know \"No-SQL\" was a big deal but it kinda has its niche. But that leaves me here... unsure of really \"what\" to study. What tools should I have in my tool belt? I'm sure RDBMS's will be around in both use and maintaining legacy code. But what else? Obviously data will always be around, but is this a secure field or a dying one? And what should I be concentrating on?"}
{"_id": "149606", "title": "Can I legally use the icon of a different software?", "text": "Suppose I am including a feature in my image-viewing software, which opens an image in Photoshop ('Send to Photoshop'), using Photoshop's OLE automation framework. Am I allowed to use the icon of Photoshop.exe as the image of this 'Send to' button?"}
{"_id": "142656", "title": "Am I experienced enough to learn and develop immediately using Ruby on Rails?", "text": "### General Question I understand that discussions revolving around questions of this form run the risk of becoming too specific to help others. So, perhaps a better, general question would be: > What kind of experience, if any, translates easily to Ruby on Rails; and if > none, then what's the learning curve like, in comparison to other popular > languages? ### Background I have the opportunity to build a website using whatever technologies I wish to use. It's a fairly simple website, for   * listing products,   * taking payments,   * managing customer data,   * providing a back-end portal for employees to manage data,   * possibly hooking in flight information (the products are travel related),   * possibly integrating a blog and all the social-networking goodies. ### Specific Problem I have to let the client know by tonight whether I'm interested in taking up this project, before he talks to other potential developers, but I'm on the fence.   1. I already work a full-time C++ development job, so the money doesn't do it for me. It's the opportunity to (be paid to) learn some new technologies and to have a real, running product in the end.   2. I've heard and read great things about Ruby, and am really intrigued.   3. I zipped through some introductory Ruby tutorials, no sweat.   4. However I found the Rails tutorials a little overwhelming, especially not being able to try it out anywhere.   5. And researching Rails hosts like Heroku and EngineYard makes me think that maybe I don't know what I'm getting myself into. The ship's leaving port! I wish I had more time to learn, better yet _play_ with the language, but I have to decide soon! Should I venture or pass? ### Additional Details My experiences are in C/C++/Tcl/Perl/PHP/jQuery, and basic knowledge of Java/C#. I didn't study C.S. formally so I wasn't exposed to design principles, programming paradigms, etc., which is my greatest concern. Will my lack of understanding in this realm make RoR frustrating to learn? Will it be so incompatible with a C++ \"way\" of thinking that I'll wish I never started? Am I putting my client at risk by attempting this? If it helps, I'm quick to learn new things (self-taught so far) and care a great deal about correctness, using things for their intended purposes, and so on. I've read numerous recommendations of **Agile Development with Rails** and would love to read it (though perhaps, while developing in parallel, for shortness of time). Worse comes to worst, I'd give up and do the standard LAMP gig, of course, not charging the client for wasted time. But I'm hoping to avoid the project altogether if it's gonna come down to that! Thanks in advance for any tips, insights, votes of confidence, votes of discouragement (for the better), and such."}
{"_id": "21534", "title": "Does anyone use Ceiling and *not* immediately cast it to an integer?", "text": "I think every single time I've used `Math.Ceiling` or its language variant, I've _always_ had to cast it to an integer. I mean... that's the whole point, isn't it? To get a whole number. So why doesn't it just return an `int`?"}
{"_id": "21535", "title": "What is the right level of site blocking for you as a developer?", "text": "Almost all developers who work for a large corporation find themselves on the wrong side of site blocking software. It can be both frustrating ( _\"Just let me read that damn blog!\"_ ) and helpful ( _\"Woah! Dodged a bullet with that site\"_ ). In your opinion, what is the right level of blocking to apply to developers and why?"}
{"_id": "176569", "title": "Cookie Settings Storage Method", "text": "I've got an web app that needs to store some non-sensitive preferences for the user. Right now I'm storing their language preference and what mode they want a window opened in by default in two cookies:   * \"lang\" can be \"en\" or \"de\"   * \"mode\" can be \"design\" or \"view\" I might add a few more in the future. I'm not sure how many, but probably never more than a dozen. Language is parsed on every request, whereas the mode cookie is only used occasionally. I saw a recommendation that made sense I shouldn't try to do what I was originally planning to do and strongly type a user settings class deserialized on each request because of the overhead involved. I see three options here and I'm not sure which is the best overall.   * Keep things as they are, add a new cookie for each new setting   * Combine the cookies into a single settings cookie and add future values to it   * Change the mode cookie to settings (leaving language alone), add new user settings values to the settings cookie All would work obviously. I'm leaning toward option three, but I'm not sure if there's a best practice for this?"}
{"_id": "158789", "title": "Can I link to a gpl library from a closed source application?", "text": "Ok, before everyone goes shouting about duplicate questions, yes, I've already seen several questions like this here. But none answer the question. If I link against a gpl'd library without modifying that library, do I need to release my source code? According to this question Can I use GPL software in a commercial application the answer is yes! But this answer is not satisfactory to me. The answer basically says that I cannot use gpl code in any way without making my code open source. But, here is the question I'm really interested in, if the previous is true then that would indicate that no person or organization could ever release any proprietary software on Linux ever. Which must be wrong. Simply because in order for any application to do anything useful, open files, write to the console, create tcp connections, the application must be linked to `libc` which is GPL'd. So my question is this, if the GPL states, as all the previous answers on the site say it does, that a program which links to another gpl program must be gpl itself, how is it possible to create/release/sell any proprietary application at all which runs on Linux? Since as I described above that application must be liked to gpl code just to run on Linux. A more practical example say I link to a shared library which is gpl'd in a non-gpl'd application, would that force the non-gpl'd application to become gpl'd? More specifically if I use a gpl library without modifying it, and then distribute that library as an `.so`so or `.dll` would that require my application be open source?"}
{"_id": "68470", "title": "Why hasn't a faster, \"better\" language than C come out?", "text": "With all the new \"modern\" languages out today, how is it that C is still heralded as the fastest and \"closest to the machine\"? I don't really believe in there ever being only one correct way to do things, and C has been around for a really long time (since the 60's!). Have we really not come up with anything better than something written nearly 50 years ago? I am aware that modern languages are higher-level and take care of certain tasks like garbage collection and memory allocation and utilize libraries and such. I'm just asking why there has never been a true second option to C. Can it be that C is so perfect that no other way of operating a computer could be possible (developer-adoption aside)? **EDIT** Look, I'm not trying to knock C or whatever your favorite language is. I'm wondering why C has become the standard and why other alternatives never emerged and C was just \"accepted\"."}
{"_id": "216091", "title": "How many developers on the same virtualized Windows Microsoft machine?", "text": "How many c# developers on the **same** virtualized Microsoft Windows edition is it sensible to have? If everyone uses their own documents and settings folder, should I expect it should be fine? Only Windows Server allows concurrent users if this option is enabled; How many concurrent users do you get out of the box?"}
{"_id": "243269", "title": "Why isn't there a python compiler to native machine code?", "text": "As I understand, the cause of the speed difference between compiled languages and python is, that the first compiles code all way to the native machine's code, whereas python compiles to python bytecode, to be interpreted by the PVM. I see that this way python codes can be used on multiple operation system (at least in most cases), however I do not understand, why is not there an additional (and optional) compiler for python, which compiles the same way as traditional compilers. This would leave to the programmer to chose, which is more important to them; multiplatform executability or performance on native machine. In general; why are not there any languages which could be behave both as compiled and interpreted?"}
{"_id": "168741", "title": "What is the correct pattern to use in this case?", "text": "I'm sure this scenario has arisen before, and I want to know what experience has taught to be the best solution. I have a number of classes that are all of a kind. Say all the objects are \"Content\". They may be \"Article\", or \"Book\" for example. The reason I want the \"Content\" abstraction is because I want to define a number of behaviours for all \"Content\" objects and not have to build a new DB Table and 10 classes of essentially the same code for each type of \"Content\". For example, to attach a \"Tag\" or a \"Premise\" to a content object would be much nicer if, say, I just had two columns one for ContentID and one for TagID. A solution I've played around with is to have a Content table with a unique ID, and then to have foreign key references on all the other tables (Book, Article, etc). This has actually proven quite solid, but I'm just not sure about it. Do you know how to call this described pattern?"}
{"_id": "168742", "title": "Is this usage of extend relationship in a use case diagram correct?", "text": "On this picture: ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/hUoau.jpg](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DST87.jpg) Does updating grades extend a feature that shows grades? I am not sure if the notation is correct, so I am hoping you guys will know it."}
{"_id": "2948", "title": "Daily standups- yea or nay?", "text": "How valuable (or not) do you think daily stand-up meetings are? If you're not familiar with it, this refers to a daily meeting that is part of Scrum adherents (and some other agile methodologies). The idea is that you hold a daily meeting, timeboxed to 15 minutes, and in which everyone must stand (to encourage people to be to-the-point). In the meeting, you go around the room and each say: \\- What you did yesterday \\- What you plan to do today \\- Any blockers or impediments to your progress. Do you think this practice has value? Has anyone worked at a place that's done it, and what did you think?"}
{"_id": "50220", "title": "Frameworks for targetting multiple environments", "text": "What should drive the decision behind doing development upon one or more than one framework? For instance, an ERP is (mostly) run on a Windows station. It leverages full access to device's resources, like printers, barcode readers, fingerprint readers and the like. It's usually more responsive and easier do develop with. That being said, some parts of it must be accessed exclusively in self-service mode, by enterprise's customers, suppliers and partners. This could be accomplished with smartphones, tablets, or even desktops running a web browser. What are the economics behind that? Should two team be kept, each one doing work upon its own framework? Or the most permissive framework should be chosen? Should I care something other than HTML technologies? Should I consider native technology for each device?"}
{"_id": "187625", "title": "CCtalk is it still a modern protocol or is it outdated?", "text": "I need to write some code to integrate a machine with a coin acceptor. This coin acceptor (euro's dollars etc), has several connection methods. The manufacturer wrote a C++ dll and a C# invoke example to use it with an usb connection. Its the only provided coding sample i could get my hands on so far. However also two other connectors are available One is yet to me unknown, seams some hardware io port. The other is a CC-talk connector. From what i've read about it, that's some kind of slow RS323 serial connection protocol that works in 2 ways and is commonly used in billing systems. I never heard about it before until now. SO I wonder if I should use it too. What I think of it is that it might be a pretty old protocol, but i am not sure. There is not much \"CC-talk\" on forums and only a few questions on stackoverflow. That might be a hint that it is old, or that it is something high secure and secret?. I'm looking for a bit guidance here, to decide where i put my energy. Might there be some programmers here perhaps who are familiar with CC-talk What is your opinion about it, is it an outdated protocol for old hardware these days mostly replaced by usb or tcp/ip networks. Or is there something very specific about it, and good about like well perhaps be able to create secure transactions and stuff like that. Just for the record my device and the coin machine are on a 1 meter distance, so i will not have problems with signal lose. (if that was good about cc-talk)"}
{"_id": "50225", "title": "Are Java's public fields just a tragic historical design flaw at this point?", "text": "It seems to be Java orthodoxy at this point that one should basically never use public fields for object state. (I don't necessarily agree, but that's not relevant to my question.) Given that, would it be right to say that from where we are today, it's clear that Java's public fields were a mistake/flaw of the language design? Or is there a rational argument that they're a useful and important part of the language, even today? Thanks! **Update:** I know about the more elegant approaches, such as in C#, Python, Groovy, etc. I'm not directly looking for those examples. I'm really just wondering if there's still someone deep in a bunker, muttering about how wonderful public fields really are, and how the masses are all just sheep, etc. **Update 2:** Clearly static final public fields are the standard way to create public constants. I was referring more to using public fields for object state (even immutable state). I'm thinking that it does seem like a design flaw that one should use public fields for constants, but not for state\u2026 a language's rules should be enforced naturally, by syntax, not by guidelines."}
{"_id": "50227", "title": "Where should salt hash values come from?", "text": "When adding salt values to a hash value for something like a password that cannot be stored in plain text, what is the best place to get the salt values come from? For context, let us suppose this is for passwords on a webpage login."}
{"_id": "232301", "title": "How to extract the active code path from a complex algorithm", "text": "I have been puzzled lately by an intruiging idea. I wonder if there is a (known) method to extract the executed source code from a large complex algorithm. I will try to elaborate this question: Scenario: There is this complex algorithm where a large amount of people have worked on for many years. The algorithm creates measurement descriptions for a complex measurement device. The input for the algorithm is a large set of input parameters, lets call this the recipe. Based on this recipe, the algorithm is executed, and the recipe determines which functions, loops and if-then-else constructions are followed within the algorithm. When the algorithm is finished, a set of calculated measurement parameters will form the output. And with these output measurement parameters the device can perform it's measurement. Now, there is a problem. Since the algorithm has become so complex and large over time, it is very very difficult to find your way in the algorithm when you want to add new functionality for the recipes. Basically a person wants to modify only the functions and code blocks that are affected by its recipe, but he/she has to dig in the whole algorithm and analyze the code to see which code is relevant for his or her recipe, and only after that process new functionality can be added in the right place. Even for simple additions, people tend to get lost in the huge amount of complex code. Solution: Extract the active code path? I have been brainstorming on this problem, and I think it would be great if there was a way to process the algorithm with the input parameters (the recipe), and to only extract the active functions and codeblocks into a new set of source files or code structure. I'm actually talking about extracting real source code here. When the active code is extracted and isolated, this will result in a subset of source code that is only a fraction of the original source code structure, and it will be much easier for the person to analyze the code, understand the code, and make his or her modifications. Eventually the changes could be merged back to the original source code of the algorithm, or maybe the modified extracted source code can also be executed on it's own, as if it is a 'lite' version of the original algorithm. Extra information: We are talking about an algorithm with C and C++ code, about 200 files, and maybe 100K lines of code. The code is compiled and build with a custom Visual Studio based build environment. So...: I really don't know if this idea is just naive and stupid, or if it is feasible with the right amount of software engineering. I can imagine that there have been more similar situations in the world of software engineering, but I just don't know. I have quite some experience with software engineering, but definitely not on the level of designing large and complex systems. I would appreciate any kind of answer, suggestion or comment. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "160171", "title": "User stories as a contract definition?", "text": "I am often asked to write a requirements document for a new piece of work. I write requirements using user stories. The list of requirements is then used as a contract with the client denoting the functionality that will be delivered. The temptation them becomes to add more and more detail and more and more stories in an attempt to define a water-tight specification that rules out any expensive mistakes. The problem is user stories just don't seem well suited to this task. Can anyone offer any clarification on the role of user stories? For example, is the same user story appropriate for client, programmer and the author of a functional spec? Regressing a little, perhaps I'm also asking what is the best way to define a contract of what will and will not be delivered in a software project?"}
{"_id": "107239", "title": "How do I decide whether to take a job I can't add to my portfolio?", "text": "I am a programmer, but since I've barely been in the professional market my portfolio is rather bare right now. Still, I started to try and get my website up and running to help a little bit, but what I really need right now is to be able to expand my portfolio. I have a guy who wants me to do a lot of work for him, and I'm willing to do it for a while at least until I can get better jobs. The real problem, though, is that he does not want me to tell anyone that I have been doing work for him. Naturally, since I'm both trying to earn money and expand my portfolio, this poses a problem. Part of the reason for doing an app was to prove I can develop one, but if I can't tell anyone I wrote it, then developing the app seems pointless; I may be better off creating my own app and eating the loss in profit because I can get more work out of it, but of course, at the same time, I'm in desperate need of cash. I do have jobs lined up elsewhere, but I'll likely get paid faster through doing this specific job. What factors should I be looking at when making a decision on whether or not I should take a job for money that I can't talk about?"}
{"_id": "79169", "title": "Why do people rewrite some libraries to many programming languages?", "text": "There are some libraries, which are available in their versions written in many different programming languages, like for example Lucene, which is written in Java (as they say, 100% pure Java), but has also its versions in C++, C, Perl, Ruby, Lisp and some other languages. And I'm talking about _implementations_ in these languages, not just FFI interfaces. Why do people do that? I can see one obvious reason: deployment and distribution (and probably development as well) easier when a project has fewer dependencies. But is there anything else? In what situations is it worth it?"}
{"_id": "79164", "title": "How to manage a developer with good knowledge of programming language but very poor analytical skills", "text": "I work as a team lead in a fast-growing services company. There is one developer in my team who's not performing well, and unable to solve even the simplest of the problems without being spoon-fed. I have held multiple meetings with him and even sat next to him while coding to understand the root cause of the problem. He has very good grip on Java, however he lacks the analytical skills and IQ to understand the problem at hand and arriving at a solution. When I sat with him while coding, I noticed that he has good domain knowledge, awarness about the code base, but he cannot think and get solution to the problems and was unable to fix the bugs. He's also a comp sci., graduate. He knows that he is not performing well and I have tried motivating him, punishing him etc. He does spend a lot of effort and he is also focused. But there is no improvement in his performance. Now, he's asking me for suggestions about what kind of job should he go for. He's very hard working and focused, it's just his inability to solve problems that is preventing him from performing. Should he be sent into software testing projects? Should we suggest him to go into technical support? What suits him the best based on the problem he is facing? Perhaps a technical writer job or something like that. Please let me know your opinions on this, so I can advise him appropriately."}
{"_id": "178177", "title": "why not use unmanaged safe code in c#", "text": "There is an option in c# to execute code unchecked. It's generally not advised to do so, as managed code is much safer and it overcomes a lot of problems. However I am wondering, if you're sure your code won't cause errors, and you know how to handle memory then why (if you like fast code) follow the general advice? I am wondering this since I wrote a program for a video camera, which required some extremely fast bitmap manipulation. I made some fast graphical algorithms myself, and they work excellent on the bitmaps using unmanaged code. Now I wonder in general, if you're sure you don't have memory leaks, or risks of crashes, why not use unmanaged code more often ? PS my background: I kinda rolled into this programming world and I work alone (I do so for a few years) and so I hope this software design question isn't that strange. I don't really have other people out there like a teacher to ask such things."}
{"_id": "209685", "title": "Get rid of long/Complex if..else statements using Chain of Responsibility?", "text": "I've an HttpHandler, which allows users to login to a system by passing in an encrypted code. Inside the `ProcessRequest` it performs quite a few steps.   1. Retrieve the encrypted code from request (could be in Form/X-Header/Query)   2. Decrypt it. (Results in an JSON string)   3. Deserialize to a dynamic type   4. Determine the type of request, could be login/register/activate   5. Validate request   6. Load user subscription   7. Load User entity   8. If Req.Type = Login -> Login using FormsAuth   9. If Req.Type = Register -> Create user   10. If Req.Type = Register -> Send Activation email This goes on. Currently this is something like a long if/else statement which I'm trying to refactor. I'm thinking of using the Chain Of Responsibility pattern to convert these steps in if/else to a chain which executes sequentially. However, this will be different from original CoR as only last few steps will actually \"handle\" the request, first steps will just do some pre-processing and make stage for last steps to perform it's job. My main problem is, different steps in the chain will work on different input data. First few steps (Decryption, Deserialization, etc) will work on strings while latter half should ideally work on deserialized dynamic object. I don't like the way it sounds. Am I trying to fit a round lid to an square bottle? Is this not a scenario where CoR can/should be applied? Are there any other patterns/strategies I could use to solve such scenarios. I thought of using the decorator pattern as well, but that doesn't suite me very well, as I'd like to be able to switch certain steps in and out (ex: email activation) for some scenarios. NOTE: I've seen this question as well, but not sure if it answers my question."}
{"_id": "240525", "title": "Correct way to inject dependencies in Business logic service?", "text": "Currently the structure of my application is as below Web App --> WCF Service (just a facade) --> Business Logic Services --> Repository -> Entity Framework Datacontext Now each of my Business logic service is dependent on more than 5 repositories ( I have interfaces defined for all the repos) and I am doing a Constructor injection right now(poor mans DI instead of using a proper IOC as it was determined that it would be a overkill for our project). Repositories have references to EF datacontexts. Now some of the methods in the Business logic service require only one of the 5 repositories, so If I need to call that method I would end up instantiating a Service which will instatiate all 5 repositories which is a waste. An example:               public class SomeService : ISomeService     {        public(IFirstRepository repo1, ISecondRepository repo2, IThirdRepository repo3)        {}             // My DoSomething method depends only on repo1 and doesn't use repo2 and repo3        public DoSomething()        {             //uses repo1 to do some stuff, doesn't use repo2 and repo3        }                public DoSomething2()        {          //uses repo2 and repo3 to do something, doesn't require repo1        }             public DoSomething3()        {          //uses repo3 to do something, doesn't require repo1 and repo2        }     }      Now if my I have to use `DoSomething` method on `SomeService` I end up creating both IFirstRepository,ISecondRepository and IThirdRepository but using only IFirstRepository, now this is bugging me, I can seem to accept that I am un-necessarily creating repositories and not using them. Is this a correct design? Are there any better alternatives? Should I be looking at Lazy instantiation `Lazy<T>` ?"}
{"_id": "77301", "title": "Is there any benefit by switching from C# to Java?", "text": "I've been a .NET developer for about six years. In those six years, I've worked at exactly **one** .NET shop that followed any kind of actual design pattern or industry best practice. That realization has frustrated me where I'm at the point of considering making a switch to Java and leveraging my C# experience because the Java community seems to have a larger handle on proper software engineering than the .NET community, which seems more focused on RAD techniques and quasi-procedural code and don't want to improve at all. For example, the average Java shop is probably using an MVC framework like Spring, Seam or venerable old Struts, is using Hibernate, is probably writing unit tests, knows how to use source control properly, and while there's the danger of the architecture astronaut is more than likely applying design patterns and following good practices like the SOLID principles. In contrast, the average .NET shop uses untyped DataSets, writes all the code to solve a problem in event handlers of WebForms, thinks testing means loading up the built-in web server and playing with the application, if they use source control at all use something like Visual SourceSafe and think it's great, and has no idea what the single responsibility principle even means or why it's a _good thing_. Attempts at introducing things like ORMs, design patterns, unit testing is usually met with a blank stare or outright rejection due to not even understanding why those things are better than the debugger or writing code in an event handler of a widget - it's like talking to a brick wall. I am aware of \"ALT.NET\" (I follow it myself), but I am finding an environment that knows about that, let alone follows it, and it seems to be like finding needle in a haystack, and trying to change an organization to use it has always ended badly for me, to the point where I've actually been shown the door and let go for wanting to do things better than the company had been doing before I joined. Would there be **any** benefit at all to my trying to leverage C# skills and make a transition to Java? I'm running out of options trying to find a .NET shop that actually follows real software engineering concepts instead of just throwing out code, and I'm starting to think my chances of finding that kind of place will greatly increase if I'm not using a technology stack that pushes the opposite as the right way."}
{"_id": "159006", "title": "How do you get the usernames/passwords onto a STUN or TURN server for long-term credential authentication?", "text": "The STUN and TURN specifications allow for client authentication using usernames and passwords, and call this authentication via long-term credentials. In fact, TURN requires that clients authenticate by this means. However, I would assume that almost all deployments run their STUN or TURN servers separately from their database server. For example, for a VOIP application that uses TURN servers, presumably all of the user data would be stored in a database, user account management might be primarily handled by a web server, while the clients would still need to be able to authenticate into a separate TURN server. What's the best practice for the STUN/TURN server to access the usernames and passwords from the database to authenticate clients? If most deployments or your solution relies upon a particular STUN/TURN server implementation that supports specific features, any recommendations as to STUN/TURN servers would be appreciated as well."}
{"_id": "62017", "title": "Can I get a job in the aerospace industry as a software developer if I'm self-taught?", "text": "I'm an employed, self-taught application developer. Although I love development, I'm fairly bored. To offset this (and because I love to learn), I study advanced mathematics, physics, engineering and advanced topics in computer science, among other things. I'm grateful for the good job I have, it pays the bills and feeds my family, but I want to do more. I'm very interested in the aerospace industry, but lack an engineering or computer science degree. I would like to develop software that aids in the design of aircraft, or software that contributes to the functionality or operation of an aircraft. I feel like I can hold my own during discussions of these topics, and also feel like I possess enough knowledge at this point to make a foray into the field. I had a troubled youth. I'm married now with children, and have settled down, but I'm still fairly young. Again, I'm grateful to have a solid job where I can do what I love and get paid well, but I feel like the stupid decisions that I made during my youth, combined with my decision to actually learn computer programming instead of going to college have really smoked me, as far as career opportunities go. Recently, I've been working on a jet engine design suite and test simulator using Haskell. Maybe if I finish this, I can show it to someone and get a job despite my lack of degree and troubled past? I can't unrealistically assume it would be worth much to a giant like Lockheed, but maybe they will think it is cool or something. Is there anyone out there that can relate, and if so, were you able to miraculously able to finagle a way into this field, or another advanced field? What can I do to make it in this industry? Do I need to enroll in college, or is there some sort of hack I can employ? Are you an aerospace software engineer? What is this field like in reality? Need an intern?"}
{"_id": "106844", "title": "Reasons for C++ Prototyping", "text": "I'm a beginning programmer, trying to get a grasp on everything, so pardon the probably mundane theoretical question: I see in a C++ tutorial that prototyping is needed to let the compiler know that a function(?) is coming up and not to throw up any errors. Why does it not search throughout a document to find the function it's looking for? Maybe the question I'm asking is; what is the purpose for prototyping? And can it be used in other languages?"}
{"_id": "91700", "title": "Can the strategy pattern be overused?", "text": "Example: A file, representing a serialized version of an object, needs to be read and deserialized. It would simple to implement this if we only cared about a single serialization format, but many such formats exist (JSON, YAML, etc.). One way to handle this would be to create an abstract serializer type/interface with methods such as `deserializeToArray`, `deserializeToObject`, and so on, and pass this interface as a dependency in order to decouple any dependent classes from any concrete implementation. This could be further generalized by having the serialization methods actually be implementations of another interface, which we'll call `Transform`. So here we're effectively using the Strategy pattern once again, this time encapsulating a family of algorithms for transforming one kind of data into another desired object or array format. Is this perhaps an overuse of the Strategy pattern? Are there better ways to structure things here or patterns more fitting for this sort of problem? Are there disadvantages to using several nested Strategy patterns as in this example?"}
{"_id": "144710", "title": "Eliminating tab characters in a new language", "text": "I'm working on a new programming language, which determines structure with indentation instead of braces in the manner of Python and CoffeeScript. Obviously placing lines indented with spaces next to lines indented with tabs will mess up that kind of syntax, so I'm disallowing that - any given source file must use one or the other, not both. I'm wondering whether it would be better to mandate one or the other across the board just to eliminate the possibility of time wasted on argument? Spaces seem to be slightly more popular than tabs, so if I were going to do that, I suppose I would mandate indenting with spaces (despite the fact that I personally prefer to use tabs). Are there any situations where eliminating the possibility of indenting with tabs, would cause a problem?"}
{"_id": "175032", "title": "Designing persistence schema for BigTable on AppEngine", "text": "I have tried to design the datastore schema for a very small application. That schema would have been very simple, if not trivial, using a relational database with foreign keys, many-to-many relations, joins, etc. But the problem was that my application was targeted for Google App Engine and I had to design for a database that was not relational. At the end I gave up. Is there a book or an article that describes design principles for applications that are meant for such databases? The books that I have found are about programming for App Engine and they don't spend many words about database design principles."}
{"_id": "175034", "title": "Git workflow for small teams", "text": "I'm working on a git workflow to implement in a small team. The core ideas in the workflow:   * there is a shared project master that all team members can write to   * all development is done exclusively on feature branches   * feature branches are code reviewed by a team member other than the branch author   * the feature branch is eventually merged into the shared master and the cycle starts again The article explains the steps in this cycle in detail: https://github.com/janosgyerik/git-workflows-book/blob/small-team- workflow/chapter05.md Does this make sense or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "231062", "title": "Is making webpage basing on ajax and modal a good idea?", "text": "Hello I'm new to web development and I'm making simple webpage for managing parts. I came with idea of making something like \"One page\". Render layout once and later replace body content with ajax calls. Because of each \"part\" of the webpage like StorageList consists of views `like create,details,edit etc` I decided to show those pages in modal windows over the main page and get this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Uh4rp.png) These modals are also loaded using ajax. As you can see \"Ajax. Ajax everywhere\" :) And now my question is my approach good or making this page basing on the ajax calls and dynamically loaded content will cause me any problems in future in maintaining?"}
{"_id": "34473", "title": "What are some reasonable stylistic limits on type inference?", "text": "C++0x adds pretty darn comprehensive type inference support. I'm sorely tempted to use it everywhere possible to avoid undue repetition, but I'm wondering if removing explicit type information all over the place is such a good idea. Consider this rather contrived example: `Foo.h`:               #include <set>          class Foo {     private:              static std::set<Foo*> instances;          public:              Foo();         ~Foo();              // What does it return? Who cares! Just forward it!         static decltype(instances.begin()) begin() {             return instances.begin();         }              static decltype(instances.end()) end() {             return instances.end();         }          };      `Foo.cpp`:               #include <Foo.h>     #include <Bar.h>          // The type need only be specified in one location!     // But I do have to open the header to find out what it actually is.     decltype(Foo::instances) Foo::instances;          Foo() {              // What is the type of x?         auto x = Bar::get_something();              // What does do_something() return?         auto y = x.do_something(*this);              // Well, it's convertible to bool somehow...         if (!y) throw \"a constant, old school\";              instances.insert(this);          }          ~Foo() {         instances.erase(this);     }      Would you say this is reasonable, or is it completely ridiculous? After all, especially if you're used to developing in a dynamic language, you don't really _need_ to care all that much about the types of things, and can trust that the compiler will catch any egregious abuses of the type system. But for those of you that rely on editor support for method signatures, you're out of luck, so using this style in a library interface is probably really bad practice. I find that writing things with all possible types implicit actually makes my code a lot easier for me to follow, because it removes nearly all of the usual clutter of C++. Your mileage may, of course, vary, and that's what I'm interested in hearing about. What are the specific advantages and disadvantages to radical use of type inference?"}
{"_id": "228832", "title": "Choice between 1-dimensional and 2-dimensional array", "text": "I'm implementing the Chessboard class to represent the chessboard. I've to implement the **transformations** (reflections and rotations) on the chess board possible. The possible transformations includes the combination of:                1. Vertical Reflection      2. Horizontal Reflection      3. Diagonal Reflection      Thus, we've **8** possible transformations for chess board. There are **64** squares on the Chessboard numbered **[0..63]**. Thus, to represent the total resulting values after the transformations is **8*64** (No.of Transformations * Chessboard_Size). There are two fundamental ways to represent the **transformed_board** using Arrays:               One-Dimensional Array with transformed_board[8*64]     Two-Dimensional Array with transformed_board[8][64]      **Questions** :   * Which approach is better?   * What are the pros and cons of each approach?   * How will effect the performance with respect to time factor?"}
{"_id": "50486", "title": "How can a student programmer improve his teamwork skill?", "text": "I am a student right now. Recently, I am working in a project as a leader with three other students. Due to the lack of experience, our project is progressing slowly and our members are frustrated. They do not feel sense of accomplishment in the project. I am pressured and frustrated, too. But as a team leader, I think I need to push them. But I do not know how to do. Do I help them solve coding problem or just encouragement? But if I pay too much attention on it, it would slow down my own progress. It is a not technical question, but it is very common in software development. I hope veteran programmers would give me some suggestions. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "221386", "title": "Why aren't Entities allowed to reference other entities inside an aggregate except the root?", "text": "I have read in several places this following rule concerning Aggregates: > Entities in one aggregate can hold references to any other Aggregate Root, > but never to an Entity or Value Object inside the other Aggregate. What can go wrong if an Entity was holding a direct reference to an entity in another Aggregate root? Can someone please explain why such rule is important? and preferably illustrate with an example, please?"}
{"_id": "221384", "title": "Javascript Naming Convention", "text": "I've been using Javascript for quite a while, but I've always ignored the common naming conventions that I see online (camelCase). I know it all depends on the developer's preference, but why camel case for Javascript? I'm originally a PHP programmer and I kind of have my own naming convention and I use it everywhere I can, including Javascript. Well, I have to sacrifice my naming convention when it comes to Java though as the program flow depends on those names sometimes. Anyway, my convention goes like:               var variable_name = 'I always use underscores to separate words';     var another_variable = 'I also tend to use single quotes all the time';          function epic_name_here (some_paramaters ...)     {          // Curly brackets on separate lines         do_something();     }          if (x == y)     {         // Same goes here     }      I have taken this kind of code-writing style from working a lot with phpBB, their docs encourage people to use this style. Why do I see a lot of people writing Javascript in camelCase? And will it be a problem if I don't use it?"}
{"_id": "221385", "title": "Several interdependent models, each with several data sources \u2014 how to avoid hell and nightmare", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that requires a complicated model structure and I'm struggling with picking the right architecture. First of all, there are several interdependent models. Change in one model can trigger changes in several other models. For example, user inputs a query, first model checks the database for type of the query and the second model requests its data depending on that query type. Secondly, each model can have several data sources. Data sources are used conditionally, dependent on system configuration. The app needs to function seamlessly, \u2014 for example, if one data source doesn't return required information, model must try and use another one. An important thing also is that the codebase will eventually be expanded with other models. So models, data sources etc. must be very modular. Currently there are several ways I can organise the model layer:   1. 'Dumb' models re-created by factory objects when input data (or a related model) changes. Model dependencies are resolved in an operation object, encapsulating the whole update routine. Operation object is configured and run by a domain model. I don't know where to inject a data source though.   2. 'Smart' models with update logic encapsulated in them. Each model queries a sort of a mapper/data-source-manager, which works as a proxy for different data sources. Models report their updates to a domain model. Dependencies are resolved by a model-controller or dependency manager object. Which architecture is more appropriate here? I'm leaning towards the first one as it is (to my mind) better to work with immutable models, updating the whole tree on change of input. This approach gives several benefits: for example it is easier to serialize as the presence of model equals to a finite state. But I'm really unsure about data sources..."}
{"_id": "188229", "title": "Is Microsoft's Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop no longer free? Or, why does it say product has expired?", "text": "I wanted to try this product when I heard there was a free version of Visual Studio. So I downloaded something from Microsoft called \"Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop\" and I never really used it much. Now when I start it, for the first time in awhile, it says that the product has expired. I was under the impression that it was simply freeware, so is it true that there is no permanently free version of this IDE which anyone has the freedom to download without cost? My theory is that Microsoft's website is finicky about easily finding what you want there. So maybe I just downloaded the wrong thing. I went to this page: Microsoft Under some purple header text titled \"Visual Studio Express 2012\" and some sub-text that says \"Visual Studio Express 2012 products provide free development tools for creating modern applications on the latest platforms.\" I feel like it has just got to be the right place to download the IDE. So I clicked for Windows Desktop, downloaded it, installed it. Product has expired. Conclusion? It is not free. I thought I would ask here if this is true so that I can be certain. I still think Microsoft is just finicky though. Maybe I should have downloaded 2010?"}
{"_id": "188227", "title": "1 Interface 2 Implementations and an EJB exception", "text": "In my JavaEE project I have an interface like this:               @Local     public interface DataAccess { ... }      And two stateless beans implementing it:               @Stateless     public class DataAccess_Online implements DataAccess { ... }          @Stateless     public class DataAccess_Offline implements DataAccess { ... }      And I get the exception: > Cannot resolve reference Local ejb-ref.... because there are 2 ejbs in the > application with interface ...DataAccess The problem is clear, there may only be one class implementing DataAccess. But it would be convenient if I could use two. In the client I want to work on the Interface DataAccess only, so I don\u00b4t have to distinguish between online/offline in my code, they both offer the same methods. In the client I have an dependency injection:               @EJB     DataAccess da;      And I see how this is a problem with two implementations for DataAccess, but what should I change to make it work? The client always starts with the online version of DataAccess, but after a while he could request the offline version, so the offline version only needs the same interface, if I need a DataAccess injection it will always be the online version. How can I use two implementations of an interface together with @EJB dependency injection?"}
{"_id": "165040", "title": "Is there a major difference between JMF 1.0 and JMF 2.1.1", "text": "Alright, this question stems from the fact that there are very few online resources for learning JMF. The books that are available are quite old, some of them out of publication.   This question is an extension to my other question where asked I for the name of a book that I could use to learn JMF.   So, is there a major difference between JMF 1.0 and JMF 2.1.1?   Should I go ahead and buy a book that covers JMF 1.0?"}
{"_id": "165041", "title": "Why did the web win the space of remote applications and X not?", "text": "The X Window System is 25 years old, it had it's birthday yesterday (on the 15'th). As you probably are aware of, one of it's most important features is the separation of the server side and the client side in a way that neither Microsoft's, Apples or Wayland's windowing systems have. Back in the days (sorry for the ambiguous phrasing) many believed X would dominate over other ways to make windows because of this separation of server and client, allowing the application to be ran on a server somewhere else while the user clicks and types on her own computer at home. This use obviously still exists, but is marginalized at best. When we write and use programs that run on a server we almost always use the web with it's html/css/js. Why did the web win, and X not? The technologies used for the web (said html/css/js) are a mess. Combined with all the back-end-frameworks (Rails, Django and all) it really is a jungle to navigate thru. Still the web thrives with creativity and progress, while remote X apps do not."}
{"_id": "165043", "title": "Reasons behind polymorphism related behaviour in java", "text": "I read this code somewhere               class Foo {         public int a;         public Foo() {             a = 3;         }         public void addFive() {             a += 5;         }         public int getA() {             System.out.println(\"we are here in base class!\");             return  a;         }     }          public class Polymorphism extends Foo{        public int a;        public Poylmorphism() {            a = 5;        }        public void addFive() {            System.out.println(\"we are here !\" + a);            a += 5;        }             public int getA() {             System.out.println(\"we are here in sub class!\");             return  a;         }              public static void main(String [] main) {             Foo f = new Polymorphism();             f.addFive();             System.out.println(f.getA()); // SOP 1             System.out.println(f.a);      // SOP 2         }     }      For SOP1 we get answer 10 and for SOP2 we get answer 3. Reason for this is that you can't override variables whereas you can do so for methods. This happens because type of the reference variable is checked when a variable is accessed and type of the object is checked when a method is accessed. But I am wondering, just why is it that way? Can anyone explain me what is the reason for this behaviour"}
{"_id": "27682", "title": "What are the real benefits of static code analysis?", "text": "Tools like pc-lint or QAC can be used to perform static code analysis on a code base. In my experience the static analysis often yields a huge amount of noise, i.e. warnings on things that are not real bugs but somehow violate one of the rules in a given rule set. Turning off certain rules (either for good in the rule set or via special comments in the code) can be a real cumbersome process. What are the real benefits of static code analysis?"}
{"_id": "51573", "title": "What is your advice for a new recruiter?", "text": "Next month a friend of mine is starting a job as a technical recruiter for a temp firm. He will be recruiting lower level temps for a Google/MS/Apple level company. As a largely non technical guy, what advice do you think would be most helpful for him to have? I have seen a number of horror stories about recruiters, so want to help him not to cause any of those in the future."}
{"_id": "27689", "title": "What is a good speed for a webscraper?", "text": "I'm currently working on a webscraper that is going to be processing about 2 million pages in total. But I'm not entirely sure how to benchmark it. Currently it processes about 100,000 pages in an hour at about 2mb/s. It isn't saturating the the bandwidth of the server but I've tried a lot of ways to make it quicker but to no avail. CPU is running 50% or so on average."}
{"_id": "181501", "title": "Why does Java MessageDigest.getInstance() have a String as a parameter?", "text": "I presume it's that way so it could be extended with custom algorithms, but wouldn't it be more convenient to apply, let's say, factory method pattern here and avoid the whole `NoSuchAlgorithmException` thing? Something like:               MessageDigest.getMD5Algorithm();      or               MessageDigest.getInstance(DigestAlgorithmFactory.getMD5Algorithm())      I'm guessing there's a bigger picture here, but I just can't see it."}
{"_id": "61669", "title": "Looking inside Microsoft's header files", "text": "When I open up the some of the often used header files like vector.h or cstdlib.h it just seems like a mess of #ifndefine #define #endif statements. Can anyone decode that mess and give me a glimpse into whats going on in there?"}
{"_id": "181505", "title": "What is a 'Null Terminated String' ?", "text": "I have just started reading C++, and I came across a term \"Null Terminated String\", I read about it but couldn't understand what it actually stands for. I also want to know what is the difference between a c-string(also referred as \"Null terminated String\") and a c++ string."}
{"_id": "67993", "title": "Client Portal Review Software", "text": "Can anyone share any software/techniques they use when showing clients graphical elements, storyboards, elements, etc. for the web project being worked on? I would like to have a way that the client can log in and see updates to what is going on and see the elements that have been created over time of the project. This could be status updates, creative elements, links to prototypes, wireframes, etc. Thank you in advance for any ideas that have worked best for you."}
{"_id": "143292", "title": "Development processes, the use of version control, and unit-testing", "text": "### Preface I've worked at quite a few \"flat\" organizations in my time. Most of the version control policy/process has been \"only commit after it's been tested\". We were constantly committing at each place to \"trunk\" (cvs/svn). The same was true with unit-testing - it's always been a \"we need to do this\" mentality but it never really materializes in a substantive form b/c there is no institutional knowledge base to do it - no mentorship. ### Version Control The emphasis for version control management at one place was a very strict protocol for commit messages (format & content). The other places let employees just do \"whatever\". The branching, tagging, committing, rolling back, and merging aspect of things was always ill defined and almost never used. This sort of seems to leave the version control system in the position of being a fancy file-storage mechanism with a meta-data component that never really gets accessed/utilized. (The same was true for unit testing and committing code to the source tree) ### Unit tests It seems there's a prevailing \"we must/should do this\" mentality in most places I've worked. As a policy or standard operating procedure it never gets implemented because there seems to be a very ill-defined understanding about what that means, what is going to be tested, and how to do it. ### Summary It seems most places I've been to think version control and unit testing is \"important\" b/c the trendy trade journals say it is but, if there's very little mentorship to use these tools or any real business policies, then the full power of version control/unit testing is never really expressed. So grunts, like myself, never really have a complete understanding of the point beyond that \"it's a good thing\" and \"we should do it\". ### Question I was wondering if there are blogs, books, white-papers, or online journals about what one could call the business process or \"standard operating procedures\" or uses cases for version control and unit testing? I want to know more than the trade journals tell me and get serious about doing these things. ### PS: @Henrik Hansen had a great comment about the lack of definition for the question. I'm not interested in a specific unit-testing/versioning product or methodology (like, XP) - my interest is more about work-flow at the individual team/developer level than evangelism. This is more-or-less a by product of the management situation I've operated under more than a lack of reading software engineering books or magazines about development processes. A lot of what I've seen/read is more marketing oriented material than any specifically enumerated description of \"well, this is how our shop operates\"."}
{"_id": "145193", "title": "Virtual Machines And Unit/Integration Testing Web Application", "text": "I am in the process of adding unit testing to a project I am working on at work and a suggestion came up that I should use VMs to populate the database with good data. This was suggested as an alternative to what I usually do which is use yaml fixture file to load the data. While I think that using a VM for the unit testing database might have some benefits, overall I do not see it as a great solution. The first concern I have is the speed of running tests. I don't know how long it would take to bring up and tear down a new VM instance based on a snapshot but my guess is that it would be longer to the data insertions that the yaml data fixture files do. Unit tests should run as fast as possible because they should be executed at least once before any push to the version control repository and that can happen several times a day (even more when in bug fixing mode). The next concern is having the data in a known state for all tests. Sure, the first test that is executed on the VM's database is going to know what state the database is in however once a test modifies data, that could screw up the other tests. With the yaml fixture data files, each test is guaranteed to know what state the database is in. The last major concern is the complexity using a VM setup would probably entail (of course I could be wrong since I have never had a setup like this before). Obviously we can't just run phpunit with using VMs in the setup. First we would have to create a script that basically creates and deletes the VM. This would have to either work on all OSes or we would have to force everyone to work in a VM environment (and running a VM within a VM seems like it is really going to be even slower). The VM suggestion was to combat the issue of managing yaml fixture data files however to me it seem like managing yaml file would be the easier of the two options. Has anyone ever worked in an environment where developers would use VMs for the database that unit testing (or integration testing or whatever you want to call it) required and was is successful?"}
{"_id": "145197", "title": "Hackathon and Scope", "text": "I enjoy going to hackathons as it gives numerous benefits (like free pizza), but I have never successfully navigated the projects through to a good ending. Most hackathons in my area are approximately 8 hours of actual coding. What is the best way to manage a project in such a short time period? From creating the idea to some sort of semi-working product. In such a short time, should a project have one feature and if it gets done, another feature can be started? Should everyone work on the same feature? How should leadership be formed? Should there be leadership or direct democracy? It always seems that either the scope of the project is too much, or major time will be lost on solving some sort of problem."}
{"_id": "51689", "title": "From console to GUI applications", "text": "I'm a beginner programmer and all I've worked with so far are console applications in C++. Coding wise, how is the graphical side of programs created? I understand the logic that I am using from console apps will be the same, but how do programmers create the graphics that this logic is then used in? I know this is sort of an ambiguous question but basically I am trying to understand how I would go about creating a program that is not a console application, such as a video game or an iPhone application."}
{"_id": "74656", "title": "Software licensing and Copyright of Open source", "text": "I have seen some source code containing Copyright notice in the beginning of the file. Most of them are either GNU General Public License or Apache License. If I want to develop any open source software what are the steps should I follow? Do I need licensing my software by registering somewhere, or I just add the text like described in Apache License 2.0. If I modify source code of another open source software then what should I do? Should I seek permission from them?"}
{"_id": "253004", "title": "Should ORM data access methods be wrapped or used directly?", "text": "We're using an internally-built ORM. Each table is represented by a Model class, which inherits from a base model class that has a handful of methods like GetAll, GetWhere (to get rows with specified column values), GetFirstWhere, etc. to access data from the table. There's a question of whether these methods should be protected (so that any database access needs to call a public wrapper method for the exact query) or public methods (so that code anywhere can call GetAll, GetWhere, etc.) I see some pros and cons for both sides. Which style would be considered best practice and more maintainable? **Protected** _Pros:_ it's easy to see all queries against a table, just open the Model file. This could be useful for checking whether the table is indexed properly, etc. _Cons:_ extra work and cognitive overhead for every data access. I now have to check whether a query method already exists and create it if not; I have to look up method names, which tend to be specific like \"GetThisThingByIDAndName\"; also, if I want to change a query, I need to make sure nothing else was using that method or create a new method. Many of these queries are only ever going to be used once, and in practice there end up being tons of these methods whose names don't always clarify exactly what the method does. **Public** _Pros:_ the standardized data access interface allows developers to easily memorize the few data access methods and use them consistently across tables, which makes development faster and simpler. Also, they can make changes directly where the query is taking place without breaking something elsewhere in the codebase. _Cons:_ requires a search to find all queries against a table. If not careful, there could be some duplication."}
{"_id": "253007", "title": "How does a clicked event work at a low level?", "text": "Specifically in regard to a drag and drop operation, how does a button, text box or whatever know that it has been clicked (or vice versa how does the display manager know what it clicked). I read some about the COM way of dragging and dropping and I think I get the general idea: on mousedown, detect what was clicked. While mouse is still down and cursor position moves a certain amount store the data associated with the drag source. When the mouseup event fires, drop the data if the mouse cursor is over a drop target. If it is not a drop target then cancel the operation. You can expand this to the scenario where you click and drag to select multiple files.. how does the UI know what files it selected? Does the display manager have a calculated pixel range for every element and compare mouse position clicks to that? If so, how does the display manager know this? If the answer is too long or difficult to explain here, can you point me to some resources that I could read? I understand that you store data on a mouse click event, but that is a higher level \"just call these API functions\" view of it."}
{"_id": "73152", "title": "Mobile App Development Language Converter?", "text": "I was talking with a friend about developing a mobile app (android/iphone) but I've never messed around with mobile app development code before. My friend flippantly told me that I don't _\"need to know mobile app code...\"_ because _\"there are converters out there that convert your code to mobile app code.\"_ My question is two-fold:   1. Is this true? Where can I find these fabled converters and are they any good?    2. I'm pretty handy with PHP/Javascript/Java (in order of skill level). Which mobile application language would be a good starting place? Or... which of my following code languages \"convert the best\" to mobile app language?"}
{"_id": "95280", "title": "Does printing out numbers involve converting the numbers into characters?", "text": "In programming languages, when numbers (either integer, or real) are printed out, are they firstly converted to the codes of the readable characters that are meant to represent the numbers, and then the codes are then decoded into the readable characters? For example, in C, functions such as `printf` can print out the value of an integer variable `a` to screen or files. Suppose the value of `a` is 1. Does `printf` first convert the number `1` to the number `0x31` which is the ASCII code of character `1` and then decode `0x31` to character `1` in its output? Thanks and regards!"}
{"_id": "197940", "title": "How to run C++ code in browser using asm.js?", "text": "An asm.js application is very fast (near native C++ speed): http://kripken.github.io/mloc_emscripten_talk/micro4b.png But how is it possible to write one in C++, convert it to LLVM code, then do some trick with emscripten/asm.js ? I haven't found any tutorial about it. And if I write the code in C++, then how to use the js API-s, for example XMLHttpRequest, WebSockets, Canvas or WebGL?"}
{"_id": "197941", "title": "Do Windows Installers for internal business applications make sense?", "text": "I'm trying to build a general understanding for what's common in this situation so that I can decide if it makes sense to pursue it further.   1. Are installers welcome in a typical corporate environment with the following?      * Change control process     * Dev/QA/Production environments     * Designated deploy teams for various areas (firewall, database, windows, etc.).   2. Is there a \"litmus test\" that could be applied to an application to see if it is a good candidate for creating an installer? *      * Are installers simple enough that every application should have one?     * Are installers even the right tool?   3. Is it reasonable to expect developers to learn something like WiX to support installers?      * Maintainability in general is a concern, i.e., is creating an installer a niche skill? > ## * > > For example, I have a set of winform applications that are in a shared > directory on a production server. Specific groups can run the applications > from this directory but only system admins can modify the executables. The > current deploy process involves having an admin copy/paste the executables > and libraries to the shared directory. > > Since the applications are not installed on the individual users' machine, > does it make sense to create an installer for deploying new versions of > these applications to the shared directory? Edit-- I felt that the answers here gave some solid advice so I wanted to share what I came up with for my current project where I needed to build a large number of applications and deploy them to individual folders. I found a NuGet package called _PublishedApplications that mimics the behavior of _PublishedWebsites for web projects. The idea is you install the NuGet package to your projects and it adds a target that will copy the build artifacts to a _PublishedApplications directory in the output path. This behavior is activated by running MSBuild from the command line and specifying an `outdir` property:               msbuild /p:Configuration=Release /p:outdir=C:\\path\\to\\outdir MySolution.sln      This will give you a directory structure similar to the following:   * C:\\path\\to\\outdir      * _PublishedApplications\\        * Project1\\          * `dlls, exes, etc.`       * Project2\\          * `...` From there, creating a zip that can be extracted in the various environments is fairly painless."}
{"_id": "197943", "title": "How should I structure modules in an Angular.js application?", "text": "I am fairly new to Angular.js, and one that confuses me is how to best use modules in an application. It seems to me that modules can contain any of the other common constructs in AngularJS (controllers, directives, filters, services, etc.), but from here I am unsure which module(s) should contain which things.   * Should I have one module that contains all of the other objects in my application? This seems the easiest to set up, but this smells of the God Object Anti-Pattern to me.   * Should I divide modules up by types of objects? i.e. one module for controllers, one for directives, etc.?    * Should I divide them by use? So that all directives, services, and filters that are used for part of the application are together?   * some other strategy I haven't yet seen / thought of? Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "206487", "title": "Unit testing and coupling", "text": "As a developer I should strive for low coupling between classes. But low coupling doesn't mean \"No coupling\" so sometimes I have to allow some code flexibility and use \"new\" inside a domain model. (I'm sure everybody does this in real production code) If I use \"new\" inside a method to create an object and I have to unit test this method I got a problem. Because I can't mock the objects I can't test the method in isolation. I know I can use dependency injection or I can send objects as parameters but I'm not talking about this clear cases. Is this acceptable in practice?   Is there a better way? (I can't always inject)   Is this a unit test or an integration test? PHP example:               class Car {        protected $objDoor;        public function createComponents() {            $this->objDoor = new Door();        }     }"}
{"_id": "166539", "title": "Is having functionality in DB a road block to scalability?", "text": "I may not be able to give the right title to the question. But here it is, We are developing financial portal for wealth management. We are expecting over 10000 clients to use the application. The portal calculates various performance analytics based on the the technical analysis of the stock market. We developed lot of the functionality through Stored procedures, user defined functions, triggers etc. through Database. We thought we can gain huge performance boost doing stuff directly in database than through C# code. And we actually did get a huge performance boost. When I tried to brag about the achievement to our CTO, he counter questioned my decision of having functionality implemented in database rather than code. According to him such applications suffer scalability problems. In his words \"These days things are kept in memory/cache. Clustered data is hard to manage over time. Facebook, Google have nothing in database. It is the era of thin servers and thick clients. DB is used only to store plain data and functionality should be completely decoupled from the database.\" Can you guys please give me some suggestions as to whether what he says is right. How to go about architect such an application?"}
{"_id": "98774", "title": "Need some clarity on the GPL", "text": "Suppose someone writes some code, and publishes it as open source under the GPL. Later they decide to close source their application and put it for sale. Is that in violation of the GPL? All code in the closed source app was written by the said author. Since he \"owns\" the code, I would think he can choose to re-license it however he wishes. Is that right?"}
{"_id": "196014", "title": "How does Facebook strip html/apostrophes for XSS but also display it?", "text": "I'm not quite sure if this is a question for programmers.se rather than stackoverflow, but here goes. So Facebook [or any other large company] when given something like an apostrophe or html, can strip it of its malicious intent, but still display it properly. My current sanitizing function in PHP just strips those characters/makes them harmless via htmlentities() and such. So if I wrote an HTML tag, I would want it to be sanitized but also displayed on the website. How do I do this?"}
{"_id": "136824", "title": "What's the deal with code reviews?", "text": "I've been wondering about code reviews recently, based on how many questions I've seen on here talking about them. Between my internships, contracts, and full time jobs, I've worked for six different companies, and only one of them has done code reviews. At the last two places I've worked, code was good (or at least good enough) if all the unit tests passed, and it got the stamp of approval from our tester. We were all compotent programmers, so if the code worked, we were happy. Now, there were a handful of times where something came up months or years down the line that might have been caught in a review, but they were so few and far between that I'm not sure it'd be useful. I guess my question is:   1. Do you consider reviews to be useful?   2. How often do you do them?   3. How much of your time is spent reviewing code?"}
{"_id": "166531", "title": "Best practice to propagate preferences of application", "text": "What is your approach with propagation to all classes/windows of preferences/settings of your application? Do you share the preference_manager class to all classes/windows who need it or you make variables in each classes/windows and update them manually each time setting are changed? * * * Currently I have a `PreferencesInterface` class that hold all preferences and is responsible to default all values with a dedicated method called on create and when needed, all values are public, so non getters/setters, also it have virtual `SavePreferences`/`LoadPreferences` methods. Then I have `PreferencesManager` that extends from `PreferencesInterface` and is responsible for actually implementation of `SavePreferences`/`LoadPreferences`. I've made this basically for _cross- platform_ so that every platform can have a different implementation of actual storage (registry, ini, plist, xml, _whatever_ )."}
{"_id": "241267", "title": "Advice Needed: Developers blocked by waiting on code to merge from another branch using GitFlow", "text": "Our team just made the switch from FogBugz & Kiln/Mercurial to Jira & Stash/Git. We are using the Git Flow model for branching, adding subtask branches off of feature branches (relating to Jira subtasks of Jira features). We are using Stash to assign a reviewer when we create a pull request to merge back into the parent branch (usually develop but for subtasks back into the feature branch). The problem we're finding is that even with the best planning and breakdown of feature cases, when multiple developers are working together on the same feature, say on the front-end and back-end, if they are working on interdependent code that is in separate branches one developer ends up blocking the other. We've tried pulling between each others' branches as we develop. We've also tried creating local integration branches each developer can pull from multiple branches to test the integration as they develop. Finally, and this seems to work possibly the best for us so far, though with a bit more overhead, we have tried creating an integration branch off of the feature branch right off the bat. When a subtask branch (off of the feature branch) is ready for a pull request and code review, we also manually merge those change sets into this feature integration branch. Then all interested developers are able to pull from that integration branch into other dependent subtask branches. This prevents anyone from waiting for any branch they are dependent upon to pass code review. I know this isn't necessarily a Git issue - it has to do with working on interdependent code in multiple branches, mixed with our own work process and culture. If we didn't have the strict code-review policy for develop (true integration branch) then developer 1 could merge to develop for developer 2 to pull from. Another complication is that we are also required to do some preliminary testing as part of the code review process before handing the feature off to QA.This means that even if front-end developer 1 is pulling directly from back-end developer 2's branch as they go, if back-end developer 2 finishes and his/her pull request is sitting in code review for a week, then front-end developer 2 technically can't create his pull request/code review because his/her code reviewer can't test because back-end developer 2's code hasn't been merged into develop yet. Bottom line is we're finding ourselves in a much more serial rather than parallel approach in these instance, depending on which route we go, and would like to find a process to use to avoid this. Last thing I'll mention is we realize by sharing code across branches that haven't been code reviewed and finalized yet we are in essence using the beta code of others. To a certain extent I don't think we can avoid that and are willing to accept that to a degree. Anyway, any ideas, input, etc... greatly appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "100871", "title": "Resources for understanding iOS architecture", "text": "I recently finished reading Randall Hyde's excellent book Write Great Code: Volume 1: Understanding the Machine, and I have a much better knowledge of what's going on under the hood now. I want to start making iPhone apps, and there are lots of guides for that. Embracing my inner Hyde, however, I want to first learn about the iOS system architecture. Apple has a really good overview here: iOS Technology Overview Before I start, I wanted to know if there were any other good resources for **understanding iOS architecture and using that knowledge for iPhone programming**. Thanks."}
{"_id": "52885", "title": "External modules security", "text": "I am developing some external modules for an application. These modules are BPL files and if present in the application folder the application loads them and uses whatever is available inside. How can I prevent the sharing of these modules by my clients? I need them to be authorized to use the modules (module by module). To have some sort of license, registration of the module, what is the best method? Thanks"}
{"_id": "220520", "title": "Coding styles when using several disparate libraries", "text": "I am working on some C++ code that uses several libraries, including some C libraries, that all have different coding styles. It will be open sourced once it reaches a usable stage. Which would cause the least confusion for a short- term contributor who checks out the code to fix one bug or add one feature?   * Have one consistent coding style throughout the entire application, even if it occasionally doesn't match the typical coding style of the libraries used.   * When a library is heavily used in a certain module, conform to the typical coding style of that library (i.e. the coding style used in the library's own code and documentation) in that module. My thought is that the latter will make it easier for experts in that particular library to make one-off contributions, and make it easier to incorporate tutorial/example code during development. However, it also makes the coding style inconsistent throughout the application. What are the pros and cons of each approach?"}
{"_id": "250066", "title": "Huge long addition overhead compared to Native call?", "text": "A run a simple test JDK 1.7.0_45 (Windows 7, 64bit): Test 1:                   long start = System.nanoTime();         for (int i=0; i < 1000000; i++) {             System.currentTimeMillis();         }         elapsed = System.nanoTime() - start;      Versus Test 2:                   long start = System.nanoTime();         long adjust = 313231;         for (int i=0; i < 1000000; i++) {             long result = System.currentTimeMillis() + adjust;         }         elapsed = System.nanoTime() - start;      On my system, first test ran at arund 28 nano/call. The second at around 1250 nano/call. That is a whopping 44x overhead. Can anyone explain such a huge difference?"}
{"_id": "141631", "title": "Java web app, with plugin framework and ability to connect to source for updates", "text": "I've searched all around for some good sources, but either have been searching for the wrong keywords, or I'm just missing something. I'm looking to redevelop a web app I've been using for some time now. Many parts are out of date, and we're constantly throwing in little hacks to attempt to give it new life. So what I'd like to do is re-engineer it from the ground up, built on some sort of plug-in framework. Before I continue, I'm more or less an intermediate Java programmer. In some ways, I'm hoping to use this project as a big learning experience. I've read a lot about OSGi, and it seems that's the most complete framework. Ideally, I would like an end result web app which I can run one instance as my hosting environment, and other instances can connect to it to grab new and updated plug-ins. Eventually I'll want to lock down these plug-ins based on some undecided criteria of who can get them (basically some will simply be updates, others will provide new functionality and should be \"purchased\" through an external system). But that will probably be handled in a later phase. There should be an administration view for managing bundles in a hot environment (looking to avoid having to restart the server for an update). I know all these things are possible, I'm just trying to find some good resources for reference. All the OSGi tutorials I'm finding seem to be too simplistic. If anyone here can guide me in the right direction on any or all of the items I'm looking for, it would be much appreciated. Also, this is my first post, so I'll take any comments/criticisms about the content of my post. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "211073", "title": "Why does Java not put the filename in args?", "text": "In C and C++, the main method holds the filename in the first position of the array at argv[0]. In Java, however, the filename is not included in the args string array. Is there a practical reason for this? I understand that this makes iterating through command line arguments 0-based instead of 1-based, but is there a benefit? Was the filename just deemed to be useless?"}
{"_id": "186995", "title": "Question on System Requirement", "text": "I have a scenario where a specific webservice must be consumed based on the state to setup user info. For instance if the state is NY or NJ call service A , if state is WA call service B etc. But specifying what service must be called is I guess is \"HOW\" to setup a user info and not a \"WHAT\". So should I just have single requirement stating system must have the capbality to setup up user info based on state? EDIT: I would also like to add that the services implemented for different states might want different info to be provided in addition to basic details such as first name and last name. Should the services , input to the services , output from the service , what the program needs to do with the output etc be part of system requirements? I guess all these deal with \"HOW\" more than \"WHAT\" - hence is it in the requirements realm?"}
{"_id": "179609", "title": "Fastest Functional Language", "text": "I've recently been delving into functional programming especially Haskell and F#, the prior more so. After some googling around I could not find a benchmark comparison of the more prominent functional languages (Scala,F# etc). I know it's not necessarily fair to some of the languages (Scala comes to mind) given that they are hybrids, but I just wanna know which outperforms which on what operations and overall."}
{"_id": "186996", "title": "Architecting an application with a single page javascript driven UI", "text": "I have a single page application where everything in the UI is javascript driven so any operation requiring data or updating of data is done via Ajax requests. The way things are setup right now is that my Ajax called are made to one ajax.php file which takes care of routing them to the proper service method. This works well but there's one problem. Whenever I have operations that require a user ID, I don't want to pass them as part of an ajax request so as to prevent tampering. Since I have a session running server-side, I have a Security service from which I can retrieve the user ID of the user currently logged in. The security does so by using a Session object that abstracts the access to the session (in my case, $_SESSION in PHP) implementing an interface. My security service gets injected into other services as needed, so for example, if I have a PostService->findUserPosts() method, that method uses the getUserId() method of the injected SecurityService object to figure out the user ID instead of having it passed as an argument. The problem is I suspect (and others seem to agree) that not passing in the user ID to the service is bad design. But how do I get around doing that without sending the user ID via ajax? I can think of a few options, none of which I really like or know of a good way to implement: 1) Add a controller layer on the server side, in which case I can call SecurityService->getUserId() in the controller and pass in a separate call to PostService->findUserPosts($userId); the problem with this approach is that it requires me to add a bunch of controllers that are for the most part pretty redundant. As it is, I already a PostService->findPosts() method that basically just calls PostGateway->findPosts(). I can live with that redundancy because there will be a lot of places where the service will need to do more. But adding a third layer with a controller with a findPosts() method, that seems too much of a pain. 2) Pass the user ID in the ajax request and come up with some kind of tampering mechanism to make sure the ajax request can't be altered. I could do that by hashing the URL string of my request and appending that as a parameter, and then on the server comparing the hash. This is more obfuscation than anything though, since the hash would need to be generated client side, which means somebody looking through the code could figure out how the hash is generated. 3) Keep things as they are, bearing in mind that my user ID is at least not hard coded and various implementations of the Session object could be used, that way the user ID can be retrieved in multiple ways, not tying me to the PHP $_SESSION object. 4) Use a hybrid method of #1 and the current setup where if I need to access session info I use a controller, otherwise I call the service directly. This could work, though it doesn't feel like a clean, unified approach. I tried to figure this out with two separate questions dealing with separate smaller problems, but I think the lack of context made it difficult to answer, so figured I'd formulate a question with the entire problem. Suggestions are welcome. Suggestions are welcome. Or should I say, much needed! **UPDATE:** maybe a valid compromise would be to have a PostService->findByUser($userId) method and then have a UserService->findPosts() method that gets the userId from SecurityService the same way PostService is doing now?"}
{"_id": "26225", "title": "What to look at when deciding which technologies to use on a new project?", "text": "So, we are starting a new project soon, and there are a lot of decisions that must be made. The one I am most interested in is: **What all do you have to take into consideration when deciding what technologies to use?** There is always something that you miss and only half-way through the project do you realise, _\"O yeah... I should have thought about that...\"_ , and usually it's something that would have made you go with a different technology. I would like to hear what you guys think. Maybe get a nice comprehensive list up to help the architects everywhere to make more informed decisions."}
{"_id": "21943", "title": "Is the Java package name convention flawed?", "text": "We're all familiar with the Java package name convention of turning the domain name around. I.e. `www.evilcorp.com` would, by convention, chose to have their java packages `com.evilcorp.stuff`. Increasingly I'm getting fed up with this. As a commercial programmer, I encounter time and again that the software package name is completely irrelevant due to some rebrand, acquisition or similar. In the opensource world there's less name changes so there it makes sense. However it seems to me the shelf life of many pieces of (commercial/internal) software are much longer than that of the organisation making them. The problem is often made worse by software projects taking the marketing department's lead to use the name _du jour_ they use refer to a certain project. A name that will, without fail, change 3 months down the line to make the emperor's new clothes feel fresh and new. Because of this, I've mostly stopped using the reverse domain as package name. Granted, if this is done on a large scale, there's risk of name collisions, but surely this is mitigated by either using \"unique\" software names, avoiding generic words, or use the reverse domain for projects intended to be sold/released as libraries. Other thoughts?"}
{"_id": "98197", "title": "How improve learning habits, best practices?", "text": "> During the freshman year of high school, I had decided to master pre- > calculus on my own during a summer recess. So I spend 2-3 months reading > each chapter and solving all odd problems (to be able to check against the > answers at the back of the textbook). While I've learned the material, in > retrospect, I think it wasn't the best time-efficient approach. Fast forward > 15 years, past my university years and years on a job, I seemingly cannot > master anything in depth; I sort of only scantly familiarize myself with a > material. I only read the material or watch on-line video courses (such as > Khan academy lectures, free video courses offered by leading universities, > etc). I feel that I don't even know how to study or concentrate anymore. > Always multitasking. Please advise on the development of effective study > habits. How do you study independently these days? Friends I am looking for the **actionable** steps, and not just philosophy. What and How I can arrange my study to effectively master a material."}
{"_id": "98192", "title": "Ticketing System / Development Phase", "text": "At the stage of a project right before you actually start putting code in the editor how do you organize the project and your \"tasks\". Ticketing systems are great but I can't seem to find a way to make them worthwhile on a project until after launch. When tracking bugs and gathering enhancement ideas for later versions. What is a good methodology or \"system\" that you have used in the past that has helped keep a project organized and moving forward. A way to track your tasks and notes?"}
{"_id": "209304", "title": "Hashing Algorithm: Deleting an element in linear probing", "text": "While using Linear probing method to implement hashing, when we delete and element, the position of the deleted element is declared as a tombstone/ mark it as deleted. Why can't we just shift all the elements from the current position until the next empty element is encountered? Won't this save the time when too many tombstones are encountered later and a rehashing might be required? Am I missing something? Please tell me if I need to clarify my question. Thanks a lot!"}
{"_id": "209307", "title": "Things to do before going to production", "text": "I am finishing up a decently sized Python/Shell project, and I'm wondering if there's a 'best practice' list of things to do when finishing up development. So far I've done:   * pylint   * pycallgraph   * grep'ed for :TODO: and :FIXME:   * find orphan code   * some more documentation   * install scripts for client and server   * make sure comments match the reality (before I forget the finer points) What other things do you do, generally, or Python-specific?"}
{"_id": "138208", "title": "Learning system instead of using sed/replace for reviewing test results", "text": "For every build of my software I run it through a series of tests that execute a number of commands on a command line and captures the results. Most of the time the output is a combination of: \\- Static information that is, and should be, the same between every run. \\- Dynamic information that is not easy to predict. For the purpose of testing this software I desire to only verify that the static information is the same between each test. Currently I use sed on the captured output of my automated tests to filter out the dynamic information. Any differences between test runs are then identified using the filtered data resulting from applying the sed rules. Because of the large variety of command output that is processed, maintaining the sed rules has become an onerous job. Is there a system, that with a large sample of executed test results, can show uncommon changes between two files contained in that large sample of test results? To clarify, if I were to diff two files, I would only want to see differences for items that changed 5% of the time between all the files involved. Any other data that changed 95+% of the time would be excluded as differences when comparing two of the files within the large set of test results. In this example, among the large set of test runs, the first column is almost always consistent: Run 1:               1/*/1    6643   2433   12343   232424    112       2/1/1    2311    455    1342    60233   5231     2/1/2    2355   1223      93    12389   1342      Run 2:               1/*/1    3121    112   98832      451   1233       2/1/1    6342   2345   84421     3456   8362     2/1/2   72453      5     421    64321   7634      Run 3:               1/*/1      12     65     312      653    973       2/1/1   12442  54231   46012        6    734       2/1/3     734     28     623       76   1834        On top of the three runs above, there are hundreds of samples of this same commands output generated for each incremental build of the software. When performing a difference between each of the three examples above I would like to have the following results: No Differences between Run #1 and Run #2. Difference showing that \"2/1/2\" was changed to \"2/1/3\" when asked to show the difference between Run #3 and either of the other two runs. Currently I have a sed script that replaces all the \"random looking\" numbers above (counts, timestamps, etc) with hashmarks or other constant indicators so that all that is left to compare is the starting column. What options, if any, exist in this area? Is there a name for this kind of text comparison?"}
{"_id": "204157", "title": "Optimize Reading of Multiple files", "text": "I have a unique problem which I'm hoping someone can assist with. I have One big text file, our **Production** file. The data in the file is delimited in the following format               Reference|Cost Centre|Analytics Base Value|....      UMBY_2288|023437|2883484|...      NOT_REAL|1343534|283434|...      The average size of this file is about 30MB. with about 120000 rows. and then I have about 20 **Regional** files. these files are similar to the Current big file in structure. except that they are smaller. average size 50000 rows. Now I have to loop through each line in the big Prod file. For each **Reference** code, I have to search through each of the 'Regional' files to see which ones contain that specific reference code. and then copying some of the data from that line into a report. There is no way of predetermining what files to look into. And each reference can be in multiple **Regional** files.. As you can imagine, looping through each row in each file, multiple times is a very time consuming process. Due to memory constraints, I can't load the files into memory. Does anyone have any smart ideas on how I can do this? I don't need code samples. just pointers on ways I could solve this problem. I'm developing the tool in C#."}
{"_id": "250065", "title": "How to transfer metadata using Bluetooth between an iPhone and an Android mobile?", "text": "I would like to develop a hybrid app to transfer data/meta data between an iPhone and an Android mobile device using Bluetooth. I could find BTStack and PhoneGap useful. But, is it possible to support meatadata using these? Ref :   https://code.google.com/p/btstack/w/list   http://www.randdusing.com/2014/02/19/bluetooth-low-energy-plugin-for-phonegap/"}
{"_id": "53130", "title": "Computer Science or Computer Engineering for Data Science and Machine Learning", "text": "I'm a 25 year old data consultant who is considering returning to school to get a second bachelors degree in computer science or engineering. My interest is data science and machine learning. I use programming as a means to an end, and use languages like Python, R, C, Java, and Hadoop to find meaning in large data sets. Would a computer science or computer engineering degree be better for this? I realize that a statistics degree may be even more beneficial, but I'll be at a school which dosn't have a stats department or a computational math department."}
{"_id": "79946", "title": "What is the best retort to \"premature optimization is the root of all evil\"", "text": "Often I hear the sentiment ... \"Why worry about performance, write slow code, get your product to market ... don't worry about performance. You can sort that out later\" The culmination of this sentiment is: \"... premature optimization is the root of all evil ... #winning\" I was wondering, does anybody have a **good** retort to this one liner. Ideally an equally strong **one liner** that encompasses the reverse of this sentiment?"}
{"_id": "99826", "title": "Implementing Lazy Registration", "text": "I'm interested in setting up Lazy Registration on my website. Ideally, I'd like people to be able to fill out a record that might include their name, email, address, etc. and then record it to a user record later. The problem is, sometimes the person filling out that form will already have a record on the site. At that point, if they enter a new address, this will overwrite the old one if there's already a record with that e-mail address (I don't want to create duplicate records for the same e-mail). Since this is an open website, I have to ensure if someone is changing an existing record, that somehow they have to verify they are who they say they are before the record can be changed. Right now I'm not sure what the best option is for confirming that. Is it better to:   * Avoid lazy registration altogether if this is a concern, and force users to log in if the form they are entering has the potential to change an existing record   * Embed a login into the form -- so if they enter an e-mail for an existing record, it displays a login form that they have to fill out before the data is confirmed   * Pop up an Ajax-based login form while they are filling out the form, if they enter details (email, etc) that match an existing record in the database"}
{"_id": "14028", "title": "As a programmer, can you work with noise?", "text": "I'm here to post this question and know more about your thoughts on it: **Can you work with noise?** Sometimes, when you're developing something really tricky, your deadline is getting close, and someone enters your room talking to your colleagues, with loud talking, suddenly... your logic is gone! :-) About me, it's really funny and ironic this: when it comes to music, I can think better, maybe because I'm focused in my solution avoiding distractions and chit-chat. But I know people who told me that they can't work in silence. I just can't work with too much noise. How about you?"}
{"_id": "3282", "title": "What's the scariest piece of Other People's Code you've ever had to maintain?", "text": "It's happened to all of us. Maybe the original author is no longer with the company, or maybe the boss just doesn't trust him to fix it (Kernighan's Law). Either way, they gave it to you, and you ended up having to fix it. What was it like? What was the problem? How bad was the code, and what did you end up doing with it?"}
{"_id": "167377", "title": "Is verification and validation part of testing process?", "text": "Based on many sources I do not believe the simple definition that aim of testing is to find as many bugs as possible - we test to ensure that it works or that it does not. E.g. followint are goals of testing form ISTQB:   1. Determine that (software products) satisfy specified requirements ( I think its verificication)   2. Demonstrate that (software products) are fit for purpose (I think that is validation)   3. Detect defects  I would agree that testing is verification, validation and defect detection. Is that correct?"}
{"_id": "186331", "title": "Naming convention for a method that both sets and gets", "text": "Let's say we have a method `setFoo` that sets a flag in a Bar object e.g.               class Baz {          public void setFoo(String foo)(            ...         }     }      inside setFoo, the method is doing some expensive load of the `Bar` object from the database.               class Baz {          public void setFoo(String foo)(            Bar bar = expensiveGetBar();            ...         }     }      To avoid the need to get the `Bar` object again, the developer changes the method to return it.               class Baz {          public Bar setFoo(String foo)(            Bar bar = expensiveGetBar();            ...            return bar;         }     }      Questions are:   1. Is this discouraged?    2. If yes, why and what is the alternative    3. Should the solution be adding some sort of cache instead?   4. How would you prefix the method? set? get? seget? geset?"}
{"_id": "186332", "title": "About classes and their valid states", "text": "I get stuck each time I need to write a constructor for any class I design. The reason is that I am not sure what should go into a constructor and what should not. On googling for this, I got the answer that the constructor need to do only as much as to make sure that the opbect created is valid. But my query is > How do you know if an object is in the valid state? My class represents a chess board:               public class ChessBoard     {         List<ICellRow> lstRow;         int cellOffset;              //Other function              public ChessBoard()         {             //What should go in here?         }     }      How do you decide when a class has the minimum information to be in the valid state? In this specific example, makes the board class valid?"}
{"_id": "106027", "title": "When should development branches be created?", "text": "We are moving our project's team from using a single Main/Trunk branch, to multiple Development/Work branches that should be regularly merged into Main. We're basing our new process on this article and the TFS Branching Guide (we are using TFS and Visual Studio 2010). There are currently between 1 and 5 people working on the project at any one time. Main must be stable at all times because we want the option to release whenever we need. We don't have fixed sprints - at least not yet - and at the moment release every 1-2 weeks. Right at this point in time each person is fixing bugs across the application. In a couple of weeks we will be starting development on a new large component for the app. One sticking point we are finding is **when development branches should be created**. We will be implementing multiple user stories in parallel depending on the skill set of the developer. We've thought about creating a branch for each developer but that doesn't make sense because there will always be some need for collaboration on a piece of work. We can't get by with a single development branch because we will want to merge to Main while other work is completed. Does anyone have some guidance on this?"}
{"_id": "53860", "title": "Entity Framework limitation", "text": "I was wondering if anyone had the same need and why (if possible). My problem is: I can't create a model in EF using two tables from different DBs without some weird workarounds. For my scope that is very much necessary. Did any of you ever needed to do this? What did you do? And, like me, do you think MS should add this feature? Thank you all."}
{"_id": "36428", "title": "How will you handle NULL values in your application?", "text": "At what level do you prefer to handle Null values in your application? My personal preference at the moment is the DB. When I build a view, I ensure that I return a value in place of a NULL value. So if your front-end app were to connect to the application it would never have to handle nulls. In my VB6 apps, I made liberal use of the IsNull function to handle Nulls. Share your experiences."}
{"_id": "57367", "title": "Are there opportunities working as full-time paid programmer for Non-profit organizations", "text": "Some recent events in my life have made me want to contribute more to causes I believe in rather than just working for a profit-driven company. I have been thinking that if I could find a non-profit organization that I like and believe in then I might feel more fulfilled working for them. I have a decent amount of web development experience and currently work as a Java / Spring web developer. I realize the compensation wouldn't have the same \"ceiling\" potential as for- profit but am wondering if its possible to get at least something close to a market rate for work as I am planning to start a family sometime soon and still need a legitimate income. If anyone has any knowledge or experience about this sort of thing would be happy to hear from you. EDIT: Without getting in to too much personal detail, I have a relative who recently passed away who suffered from a mental illness so while it doesn't have to be an organization specifically dedicated to this, I am hoping to work for something along these lines at least where there is more of a social cause rather than just working on an open-source project whose only cause is the advancement of technology."}
{"_id": "185972", "title": "How do we avoid GPL violation when modifying and releasing a program using code coverd by this license?", "text": "A friend and I have started a project using code from another project, that is covered licensed under GPL. We have distributed it freely on our website, and under its download button, we've added a direct download link to the modified source code also for free. At the about section of the application, we have credited the guys who built the original code. Does the fact that we have a different project name violate the terms of the GPL? And also, if we include the original GPLv2 notice from the original app does that help us comply with it? If not, please state exactly what we have to do to comply with the GPL. The code we're using is an older version, released under GPLv2, and that project has been discontinued, and moved to a different one, where they're still developing. We haven't used any of their current coding, which is released under GPLv3."}
{"_id": "18239", "title": "Who gives direction to the overall product offering and innovation?", "text": "I sometimes wonder how CEOs or Founders of companies like Microsoft and Oracle manage the overall technology movement and product link-up. Take for example Oracle, it started with the database only and now, when you open their official site, the bibliography opens. Take for instance, Oracle database 11g. The core database is continuously improving and new features are being added. At the same time you need to keep a vigil on the current market trends, needs and competitors. Does Larry monitors each and every activity of technology advancement? What about new ideas and innovations? Who is responsible for these? Another example that puzzles me is .NET. With a new thing launching every second day, who is the .NET father and who suggests these guys to add classes for this and that. Who gives direction to the overall product movement and also integration with the other products? This is simply a beauty. This seamless integration or communication between the products and the technology as a whole is remarkable. (Not a biased view). Few years back I read a book titled: _Microsoft Secrets_. The author writes that at Microsoft, even the very senior person has to code because until and unless you are able to code, you can't better run a software company. I sometimes think Ballmer codes or not and what about Bill? Is he coding another OS at home?"}
{"_id": "33618", "title": "Test descriptions/name, say what the test is? or what it means when it fails?", "text": "The API docs for `Test::More::ok` is               ok($got eq $expected, $test_name);      right now in one of my apps I have `$test_name` print what the test is testing. So for example in one of my tests I have set this to `'filename exists'`. What I realized after I got a bug report recently, and realized that the only time I ever see this message is when the test is failing, if the test is failing that means the file doesn't exist. In your opinion, do you think these `$test_name`'s should say what the test means if successful? what it means if it failed? or do you think it should say something else? please explain why?"}
{"_id": "33613", "title": "Knowledge Transfer without a Plan", "text": "We are doing work for a particular client managing their CRM implementation. (The CRM itself is a product which has been largely customized to suit my client's needs). Now, they want us to manage the Oracle batch jobs/ETL as well. And for this, they are ready to provide us with Knowledge Transfer. (The Oracle batch jobs/ETL is managed in-house by the client now). After much persuasion, I got one of the Project Lead (designation-wise) to email the client asking for a KT Plan. (The Project Lead kept saying that they have never had KT plans before and all that for which I offered I will draft a template and even that was rejected!). Email from us to them - > Can you please share with us the KT Plan? Response from them - > Not sure what is expected from my side? The KT is planned for tomorrow from > 11 am onwards where Functional knowledge of existing ETL Data migration > package will be shared. How do you handle such a client? Most likely what is going to happen is this. The person who is giving the KT will say that I have given complete Knowledge Transfer and we will go back and say that \"No, this was not covered. For this, they provided an overview alone and left it at that!\" and so on... My Project Lead also did not respond to that email. He just said that the meeting is scheduled to happen at 11 AM (basically repeating whatever the email said and left for the day!). What could I possibly do? PS: Look for another job is a very helpful answer, but I am not looking for it. :-) **EDIT** The meeting went on well where they shared a Oracle DB package (which runs to 10K LOC). They told us that ETL which fetches data from other core systems to a Staging_DB is the ETL team (another team's) responsibility. This Oracle DB package will move the data from Staging_DB to my CRM_DB which is what we are to manage/modify. **What I did** Drafted the Minutes of Meeting as below:   1. Listed down what is In Scope and what is Out Scope   2. No documentation regarding the functionality of the Database Package   3. No reports for performance of existing Database Package to baseline the performance   4. ...   5. ... And then went back to my management and told them I need time to do the documentation, baseline the existing performance and so, I will come back with clarifications which the client is supposed to answer. Let us see how that goes."}
{"_id": "230224", "title": "How to connect mvc application using entityframework or ado.net?", "text": "I am an ASP.NET developer. I want to learn ASP.NET MVC. In fact I am learning it. But Now I am confused at a point. How can I connect my database to my application. Using entity framework or linq or ado.net. I have good knowledge about ado.net. But about entity framework I cant say anything. Now my problem is this whichever ebook or website I see every entity framework is used. So is it essential for me to learn first entity framework before ASP.NET MVC or not?"}
{"_id": "34867", "title": "Is there such a thing as Programmer's block?", "text": "Is it possible for a programmer to suffer the equivalent of writer's block? What strategies are there to overcome it?"}
{"_id": "34861", "title": "In the world of .Net, managed code and the web is there still a place for VBA?", "text": "Microsoft has moved away from the COM stack, VB6 is so last century and .Net rules the (MS) roost. Yet I find myself still banging out reams of VBA code am I dinosaur? The need for VBA is a new project automating Excel seeing as you ask. I've tried to doing the same kind of thing using VSTO and it was just too damn buggy/hard/inefficient with a broken development model. I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm missing something, OTOH I really can't see a better way of solving this problem. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "251332", "title": "Creating menu structure using DB - is that fine?", "text": "Also I have an application that basically consists of a lot of screen so user needs to navigate a lot (like go from A>B>C>D) etc. I have been thinking how to implement this (mainly hold the structure of the menuj) as it needs to be on-screen menu (custom, no menu strips etc.) and did not find any solution. Now I realized I could use a database for that, which would allow me also to change strings later with no impact. My idea would be to have a table for each level (1-5) with options available. Once the user selects an option, the program will select any items in the table (CurrentLevel+1) based on its ID. Seems really a good solution to me but I am not a programmer (rather than an analyst). Or even I could use specific table names and hold the table name in a specific column, for example: > User selects Settings > > Program checks that with Settings, there is a table associated \"SETTINGS\" > and query this table for all items available Makes sense?"}
{"_id": "251334", "title": "When to use the whiteboard pattern versus direct calling", "text": "I'm creating the architecture for a new embedded project. The system has some inputs that go to wildly different outputs. The whiteboard pattern is very useful for this (see Listeners Considered Harmful: The \"Whiteboard\" Pattern), as it decouples the input component from the output components (a 1-to-N relationship). However, I'm struggling with the N-to-1 relationship (where one output gets data from wildly different inputs). Should I use the whiteboard pattern there? And what about the 1-to-1 relationship? Advantages that I see of the whiteboard pattern:   * separate deployment and testing of sources and listeners.   * the whiteboard (EventAdmin in the OSGi world) can be monitored separately.   * there is no build-time dependency. Disadvantages that I see:   * there is no compile-time check on the events (if someone makes a typo in the event topic or the data, you're screwed).   * overhead of the whiteboard (I've done measurements, and it's significant on our platform). I'm not quite sure how to balance these trade-offs."}
{"_id": "133059", "title": "Can I use Node to add email functionality to an existing site?", "text": "I have a client with an existing straight up HTML/JavaScript site. No back end of any kind. He wants to add email functionality to it and I was thinking of using Node to do this for two reasons:   1. It seems like an extremely lightweight way to do it   2. He's talking about adding further functionality in the future. What are the positives and negatives of this approach?"}
{"_id": "40100", "title": "How many lines of code can a C# developer produce per month?", "text": "An executive at my workplace asked me and my group of developers the question: > How many lines of code can a C# developer produce per month? An old system was to be ported to C# and he would like this measure as part of the project planning. From some (apparently creditable) source he had the answer of \"10 SLOC/ **month** \" but he was not happy with that. The group agreed that this was nearly impossible to specify because it would depend on a long list of circumstances. But we could tell that the man would not leave (or be very disappointed in us) if we did not come up with an answer suiting him better. So he left with the many times better answer of \"10 SLOC/ **day** \" _Can this question be answered?_ (offhand or even with some analysis)"}
{"_id": "113487", "title": "Architecture: for a Single website to be supported for different Clients", "text": "I have developed a system with one company profile. The system is built using WCF services, asp.net. Now another company wants to use our system as well. And they might need some customization and some of their data elements are different. So I am planning to create a separate database for the new company and branch the business logic layer. I thought of different options to architect this and ended up with the following. So what is the best way to design a system of this sort. **Approach A:** Expose the methods as two different WCF services one for each company. So there will be one WCF client interface (IClient) but two different Service classes for each company implenting them. `ClientAService : IClient, ClientBService : IClient.` **Problem:** The problem with this is all my datacontracts and datamembers are exposed to the client in 2 different namespaces. `(ClientAService.ObjectABC and ClientBService.ObjectABC).` So all the objects that I use in the website are conflicted. ie(when I have a list of `ObjectABC` in a datasource in the webpages, the website don't understand whether its from `ClientAService` or `ClientBService`. **Approach B:** Expose the methods as a single WCF Client, but 2 different business logic layer. But they will use the same datacontracts. So the methods will return the same datatype. so I will have one service class               ClientService : IClient          {     public <ObjectABC> Method1(String Companycode)     {     if(CompanyCode == \"A\")         return new AbusinessLogic().Method1();     else if(CompanyCode == \"B\")         return new BbusinessLogic().Method1();     }     }      **Problem:** The only problem I can think of right now for every new company, I have add the above else if part for all my methods. I am also open to know if this can done in any other better way than the stated options. note: I was told that there might be more companies to be added in future."}
{"_id": "133051", "title": "Adding complexity to remove duplicate code", "text": "I have several classes that all inherit from a generic base class. The base class contains a collection of several objects of type `T`. Each child class needs to be able to calculate interpolated values from the collection of objects, but since the child classes use different types, the calculation varies a tiny bit from class to class. So far I have copy/pasted my code from class to class and made minor modifications to each. But now I am trying to remove the duplicated code and replace it with one generic interpolation method in my base class. However that is proving to be very difficult, and all the solutions I have thought of seem way too complex. I am starting to think the DRY principle does not apply as much in this kind of situation, but that sounds like blasphemy. How much complexity is too much when trying to remove code duplication? EDIT: The best solution I can come up with goes something like this: Base Class:               protected T GetInterpolated(int frame)     {         var index = SortedFrames.BinarySearch(frame);         if (index >= 0)             return Data[index];              index = ~index;              if (index == 0)             return Data[index];         if (index >= Data.Count)             return Data[Data.Count - 1];              return GetInterpolatedItem(frame, Data[index - 1], Data[index]);     }          protected abstract T GetInterpolatedItem(int frame, T lower, T upper);      Child class A:               public IGpsCoordinate GetInterpolatedCoord(int frame)     {         ReadData();         return GetInterpolated(frame);     }          protected override IGpsCoordinate GetInterpolatedItem(int frame, IGpsCoordinate lower, IGpsCoordinate upper)     {         double ratio = GetInterpolationRatio(frame, lower.Frame, upper.Frame);              var x = GetInterpolatedValue(lower.X, upper.X, ratio);         var y = GetInterpolatedValue(lower.Y, upper.Y, ratio);         var z = GetInterpolatedValue(lower.Z, upper.Z, ratio);              return new GpsCoordinate(frame, x, y, z);     }      Child class B:               public double GetMph(int frame)     {         ReadData();         return GetInterpolated(frame).MilesPerHour;     }          protected override ISpeed GetInterpolatedItem(int frame, ISpeed lower, ISpeed upper)     {         var ratio = GetInterpolationRatio(frame, lower.Frame, upper.Frame);         var mph = GetInterpolatedValue(lower.MilesPerHour, upper.MilesPerHour, ratio);         return new Speed(frame, mph);     }"}
{"_id": "113483", "title": "\"sell\" coding my next project in an unfamiliar language", "text": "I want to code my next work project in a language I'm unfamiliar with (python). I can think of plenty of reasons from my point of view why its a good idea (not least of all because it sounds fun). However my manager will probably ask me why. I'm a little stumped on the advantages from his point of view. **EDIT** : I normally code in C# **EDIT2** My reasons for wanting to code in another language;   1. It will make an easy project much harder so I will learn more and it will be more interesting   2. I have just read a book on python. I want the chance to apply it in a business application so I properly understand it   3. It will increase my skill set and make me more employable    4. Python looks fun"}
{"_id": "113482", "title": "Where can I find an algorithm for creating 3D anaglyphs using a depth map image?", "text": "I'm looking for a generic algorithm to calculate a red/cyan anaglyph starting from the original image and its black/white depth map, as in this example? That algorithm is used, for example, in Photoshop but I can't find a readable explanation to reproduce it."}
{"_id": "147109", "title": "Exclusive use of a Jini server during long-running call", "text": "I'm trying to use Jini, in a \"Masters/Workers\" arrangement, but the Worker jobs may be long running. In addition, each worker needs to have exclusive access to a singleton resource on that machine. As it stands, if a Worker receives another request while a previous request is running, then the new request is accepted and executed in a second thread. _Are there any best-practices to ensure that a Worker accepts no further jobs until the current job is complete?_ Things I've considered:   * synchronize the job on the server, with a lock on the singleton resource. This would work, but is far from ideal. A call from a Master would block until the current Worker thread completes, even if other Workers become free in the meantime   * unregister the Worker from the registry while the job is running, then re-register when it completes. Might work OK, but something doesn't smell right with this idea... Of course, I'm quite happy to be told that there are more appropriate technologies than Jini... but I wouldn't want anything too heavyweight, like rolling out EJB containers all over the place."}
{"_id": "47458", "title": "What do you call a developer specializing exclusively in microsoft programming languages like T-SQL and C#?", "text": "What would you call this type of specialty? Is \"Microsoft Developer\" misleading?"}
{"_id": "47451", "title": "Is there such a thing these days as programming in the small?", "text": "With all the programming languages that are out there, what exactly does it mean to program in the small and is it still possible, without the possibility of re-purposing to the large. The original article which mentions in the small was dated to 1975 and referred to scripting languages (as glue languages). Maybe I am missing the point, but any language that you can built components of code out of, I would regard to being able to handle \"in the large\". Is there a confusion on what Objects are and do they really figure as being mandatory to being able to handle \"the large\". Many have argued that this is the true meaning of \"In the large\" and that the concepts of objects are best fit for the job."}
{"_id": "85834", "title": "Will LAMP meet the following needs?", "text": "I remember a few years back, when I had a web-site I wanted to develop, that many people recommended I go the LAMP route. Unfortunately, I never got around to studying/practicing that. I'm currently revisiting the web-site idea. The web-site will be dynamic, transactional, and hopefully end up with around 1,000,000 pv/mo and 300,000 members within 18 months. Will LAMP adequately support a site like that (i.e. have you seen it under a site with those specs)?"}
{"_id": "112757", "title": "Good practice on Visual Studio Solutions", "text": "Hopefully a relativity simple question. I'm starting work on a new internal project to create tractability of repaired devices within the buildings. The database is stored remotely on a webserver, and will be accessed via web API (JSON output) and protected with OAuth. The front end GUI is being done in WPF, and the business code in C#. From this, I see the different layers Presentation/Application/Datastore. There will be code for managing all the authenticated calls to the API, class to represent entities (business objects), classes to construct the entities (business objects), parts for WPF GUI, parts of the WPF viewmodels, and so on. **Is it best to create this in a single project, or split them into individual projects?** In my heart I say it should be multiple projects. I have done it both ways previously, and found testing to be easier with a single project solution, however with multiple projects then recursive dependencies can crop up. Especially when classes have interfaces to make it easier to test, I've found things can become awkward."}
{"_id": "47454", "title": "Can programmer experience be expressed in hours of coded like hours of flight for a pilot?", "text": "How useful would it be for a recruiter? In martial arts there are a minimum number of trainings, not years of practicing, to be evaluated for a higher level. I saw some exceptions but there are rare. In software, maybe this would be valuable to express experience in particular technologies such as OO, OR/Mappers or specific DBMS."}
{"_id": "225548", "title": "What is the most effective grammar to use for issue titles?", "text": "When choosing a title for a new issue, there are several grammatical options to choose from. Here are four different options for an example issue I just made up:   * **Descriptive** : \"Newlines are not stripped when multi-line headers are parsed\"   * **Imperative - negative** : \"Avoid leaving newlines when parsing multi-line headers\"   * **Imperative - context first** : \"Fix parsing of multi-line headers: strip newlines\"   * **Imperative - desired action first** : \"Strip newlines when parsing multi-line headers\" At my workplace the issue titles alternate between all of these formats, but I keep thinking it's better to pick a convention and stick to it. Which option (from the above, or a different one) is the preferred one, i.e. the one that will minimize the effort of developers reading these issues? **Edit:** as noted in the comments, different issue types may warrant a different choice of grammar, where an especially important distinction is between bugs and new work. To make the question more specific, let's say we choose, as msell offers in his answer, the descriptive option. Now let's look at a suggestion to improve an existing feature:   * \"Add city information to geolocation\" If we stick to the descriptive grammar, we should replace that title with   * \"City information missing from geolocation\" However, this seems less clear, since the lack of city information is not a bug, it is the expected behavior. The reporter is merely suggesting to improve that behavior. So it seems the imperative option is the way to go with that issue. Let's look now at an entirely new feature. Consider these options:   * \"No ability to export report to XML\"   * \"Add ability to export report to XML\"   * \"Export report to XML\" Describing the current behavior seems even more ridiculous here, but the imperative option doesn't look so good too. The third option simply describes the new feature itself, which might be the way to go here, assuming the issue has meta-data that indicates this is a \u201cnew feature\u201d issue.   * **So what's more important - sticking to one convention, or matching the grammar to the issue?**   * **Where would you draw the line between a descriptive title and an imperative title?**   * **When would you describe the current behavior and when the desired behavior?**"}
{"_id": "251867", "title": "How should I recursively process a file in Haskell?", "text": "Basically I'm expanding a literate program in Haskell. There are two things I need to look for to expand. Here's an example file:               program.c.lit:     ==============     Some comments in the source file that I can ignore         <main>=         code.. code ...         code..         <a>           Some comments in the source file that I can ignore         <a>=         code... code...         code..      In a file, I need to look at each `<some var>` and substitute it with its matching definition defined below `<some var>=`. All the lines which are indented with 4 spaces below a `<some defn>=` are included in that chunk. In the end i should have a file consisting of only `code ...` lines. How should I approach this problem in terms of file processing, what's a good approach? I'm comfortable with recursion, less comfortable with monads."}
{"_id": "225544", "title": "Is eventual consistency a wrong solution for e-commerce applications?", "text": "I'm reading about eventual consistency in couchDB. I'm somewhat confused by the term and its consequences on an application. Let's say I'm building a distributed e-commerce website where monetary transactions are critical. There could be online auctions running and people bidding on them in real time. Will using a eventual consistent DB such as couchDB be a wrong solution? Should I favor a more consistent solution such as a relational database? Is couchDB suitable for something non critical such as a social network where one wouldn't mind if his news feed isn't up to date or when comments on his posts are somewhat delayed by few seconds? Update I'm talking about building a distributed system. I think in case of a single server nothing of this will matter."}
{"_id": "138970", "title": "Search results in PhpStorm", "text": "I have two questions on the search results panel (Find Occurrences of...) in PHP Storm:   1. What does \"Unclassified usage\" mean? How can results be classified?   2. Is there any way _not_ to group results by file? I am using the latest version (3.0.3)"}
{"_id": "15776", "title": "What are the Top Developer Productivity Tools/Plugins for Java in Eclipse?", "text": "I personally use CodeRush in Visual Studio 2010 to do refactoring, write code faster with templates and generally navigate my code 10 times faster than stock VS. Recently, I've been working on another Android app and got to thinking... **What are the top productivity plugins for Eclipse?** Preferably free. I'm looking for plugins that help write in Java, not PHP or Rails or any of the other languages Eclipse supports."}
{"_id": "225540", "title": "Modeling objects as functions", "text": "I want to model simple objects as functions, to see where the pure functional approach gets me. Let's say my object is a person. There is some function that returns me a new person, but instead of just some data structure, it returns me a function that represents the person. I'm having difficulties to see what this function should exactly look like, because I mostly associate data/state with a person but not any function. So if I call this person, which is a function now, what input should it take and what should it return? If I look at the lambda calculus and some examples of how to model numbers, 0 is just the identity function. 1 is a function that takes another function and a value as input and returns the argument function applied to the value. 2 applies the function twice, etc. So should the implementation of a person be a function that takes another function as input and applies it to the person, returning its output? So it's actually just a container for the person's data allowing other functions to operate on it. May be it makes no sense to think about this without knowing exactly what a persons consists of. In a most simple case a person could be just a name. A briefly tried to outline this in Clojure:               (defn new-person [firstname lastname] (fn [f] (f firstname lastname)))     (defn get-firstname [person] (person (fn [x y] x)))     (def p (new-person \"Maja\" \"Abel\"))     (get-firstname p)     \"Maja\"      Then again the names are strings and not very functional ... Hope this makes some sense, glad if anybody has some thoughts on it!"}
{"_id": "138977", "title": "Pattern for group of entities with one required primary member", "text": "Given a parent entity with a collection of child entities where there must be exactly one primary child of the group? To make the question more concrete, I've seen a number of ways that this pattern might come up -- a group of people where one person is the leader or the contact details for a person where one is primary. Here are two different approaches that I've seen. **1\\. Flag the member as primary** In this approach, a field is added on the member to designate it as primary. The advantage is that it is simple to implement and avoids additional relationships. The disadvantage is that it is more difficult to enforce in the data model that one and only one member is primary and from an object perspective, potentially puts the responsibility on the child that should be on the parent. **2\\. Additional association** In this approach the parent tracks the primary member of the group and stores the id of the child. This is in addition to the children storing the id of the parent as a member of the group. This makes it explicit in the data model that there is only one primary member and an index can be added to enforce it. The disadvantage is that it requires two relationships and there is a chance that they can disagree (parent points to a child that doesn't belong to the parent). It seems to me that this is a common pattern and must be documented as a design pattern or model pattern in an architecture book somewhere. A similar pattern might be where the collection is a history and there is one current, but that is a bit easier as each member would have a date range that can be indexed. Are there better approaches? Or can someone point to where this pattern might be documented more formally?"}
{"_id": "138975", "title": "How to Console.WriteLine from [TestMethod]?", "text": "I am trying to show some information from a [TestMethod] method. Usually we use NUnit and a line with Console.WriteLine runs fine and we can see it in 'output' window, but on this project we must to use Testing tools embebed with VS2010 and Console.WriteLine doesn't run because we cannot see anything."}
{"_id": "54536", "title": "Agile development challenges", "text": "With Scrum / user story / agile development, how does one handle scheduling out-of-sync tasks that are part of a user story? We are a small gaming company working with a few remote consultants who do graphics and audio work. Typically, graphics work should be done at least a week (sometimes 2 weeks) in advance of the code so that it's ready for integration. However, since SCRUM is supposed to focus on user stories, how should I split the stories across iteration so that they still follow the user story model? Ideally, a user story should be completed by all the team members in the same iteration, I feel that splitting them in any way violates the core principle of user story driven development. Also, one front end developer can work at 2X pace of backend developers. However, that throws the scheduling out of sync as well because he is either constantly ahead of them or what we have done is to have him work on tasks that not specific to this iteration just to keep busy. Either way, it's the same issue as above, splitting up user story tasks."}
{"_id": "107771", "title": "How are my licensing options limited when I use and/or include other projects in my own?", "text": "### Setup I have a project (pynliner, a python module) on github that I never gave much thought about licensing. Today I got an email asking what license it is under because someone wants to use it in their commercial software. My first thought is that I would love to have 2 licenses one that is free for non-commercial use and one for commercial use. So I started researching software licenses... and got very dizzy. Then I realized I may not even be able to use most of them because my module uses several other modules. So I have a few questions about how licenses filter down. My module uses but does not include code under:   * **MIT License** BeautifulSoup   * **LGPL3** cssutils And my module uses and includes code under:   * **MIT License** soupselect.py This is a relatively minor project but I would like to use it as a learning process for the right way to approach licensing. ### Questions   * If I include someone else's code then any licenses I use must not break the included code's license correct?   * Does the same hold true for other software I use but don't include? _Am I limited by the MIT License on BeautifulSoup or LGPL3 on cssutils if I use them but don't include the source in my project?_ * * * ### edit Thanks for pointing out the licenses I had missed on cssutils and soupselect.py. Once these were pointed out the rest of my questions really come down to what is allowed within the MIT License since it is the only one over code I have included and whether or not the output of cssutils is free. I'm comfortable with looking these up the rest of the way. Thanks all."}
{"_id": "71440", "title": "Applicability of the Joel Test to web development companies", "text": "**QUESTION** : How can you re-write the questions of the Joel test to apply to web developers? > 1\\. Do you use source control?   >  **(source control for _all_ aspects of your app, including configuration, > database and user-based settings?)** > > 2\\. Can you make a build in one step?   >  **(can you deploy a site from staging to prod in 1 step?)**   >  ...   >  10\\. Do you have testers?   >  **(how do you test AJAX and CSS?)** **BACKGROUND** : This is for people who work in a shop that does some web development but also uses some off-the-shelf tools like Drupal and Wordpress, but doing custom development on top of that. RELATED LINKS: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html What do you think about the Joel Test?"}
{"_id": "71445", "title": "Is it usual if my employer asks me to get MCP certificates for higher salary?", "text": "I just got a salary negotiation this morning (I passed three interviews last 3 weeks), and it was like a game. I was stubborn with my expectation, or that number, or I leave. OK, to be honest, it's not about money, but I, a not-very- experienced developer, want to see how much the employer pays me, and it was fun. And at last, my employer gave me this: \"OK, _*_ $, but with two conditions, first, you get your spoken skill improved (English is not my native), and second, you got MCPs before the end of the year\". He asked me to get 3 MCP certificates. The company will buy any books that necessary to the exam, but I must read them at free time, take and pass the exams . If I not get them, my employer will not kick me out, but, salary discussion will be harder, for me. I accepted that offer, I thought it's good enough. But I wonder, is it usual? If you're an employer, have you ever given that offer to a candidate? If you're an employee, have you ever got, or will you accept an offer like that?"}
{"_id": "171253", "title": "Does immutability entirely eliminate the need for locks in multi-processor programming?", "text": "# Part 1 Clearly Immutability _minimizes_ the need for locks in multi-processor programming, but does it eliminate that need, or are there instances where immutability alone is not enough? It seems to me that you can only defer processing and encapsulate state so long before most programs have to actually DO something (update a data store, produce a report, throw an exception, etc.). Can such actions always be done without locks? Does the mere action of throwing out each object and creating a new one instead of changing the original (a crude view of immutability) provide absolute protection from inter-process contention, or are there corner cases which still require locking? I know a lot of functional programmers and mathematicians like to talk about \"no side effects\" but in the \"real world\" everything has a side effect, even if it's the time it takes to execute a machine instruction. I'm interested in both the theoretical/academic answer and the practical/real-world answer. If immutability is safe, given certain bounds or assumptions, I want to know what the borders of the \"safety zone\" are exactly. Some examples of possible boundaries:   * I/O   * Exceptions/errors   * Interactions with programs written in other languages   * Interactions with other machines (physical, virtual, or theoretical) Special thanks to @JimmaHoffa for his comment which started this question! # Part 2 Multi-processor programming is often used as an optimization technique - to make some code run faster. When is it faster to use locks vs. immutable objects? Given the limits set out in Amdahl's Law, when can you achieve better over-all performance (with or without the garbage collector taken into account) with immutable objects vs. locking mutable ones? # Summary I'm combining these two questions into one to try to get at where the bounding box is for Immutability as a solution to threading problems."}
{"_id": "171254", "title": "Are injectable classes allowed to have constructor parameters in DI?", "text": "Given the following code:               class ClientClass{              public function print(){             //some code to calculate $inputString             $parser= new Parser($inputString);             $result= $parser->parse();         }     }          class Parser{         private $inputString;              public __construct($inputString){             $this->inputString=$inputString;         }         public function parse(){             //some code         }     }      Now the `ClientClass` has dependency on class `Parser`. However, if I wanted to use Dependency Injection for unit testing it would cause a problem because now I can't send the input string to the parser constructor like before as its calculated inside `ClientCalss` itself:               class ClientClass{             private $parser;             public __construct(Parser $parser){                 $this->parser=$parser;             }             public function print(){                 //some code to calculate $inputString                 $result= $this->parser->parse(); //--> will throw an exception since no string was provided                  }     }      The only solution I found was to modify all my classes that took parameters in their constructors to utilize **Setters** instead (example: `setInputString()`).   However, I think there might be a better solution than this because sometimes modifying existing classes can cause much harm than benefit. So,   * Are injectable classes not allowed to have input parameters?   * If a class must take input parameters in its constructor, what would be the way to inject it properly? **UPDATE**   Just for clarification, the problem happens when in my production code I decide to do this:               $clientClass= new ClientClass(new Parser($inputString));//--->I have no way to predict $inputString as it is calculated inside `ClientClass` itself.      **UPDATE 2**   Again for clarification, I'm trying to find a general solution to the problem not for this example code only because some of my classes have 2, 3 or 4 parameters in their constructors not only one."}
{"_id": "77848", "title": "Documentless platform, how to overcome scarce resources?", "text": "I am working for a client and the platform we are using is vBulletin. I'm so frustrated with its almost zero documentation and non-existence in Google. We don't have resources and all we have is the source. I almost want to give up now and get a job which I am familiar and uses tools that are open source."}
{"_id": "77846", "title": "Standard GPL friendly clauses in employment contract?", "text": "My employer is happy for me to release certain work under GPL, however the standard contract has a \"All IP belongs to the company\" section of the contract. They are happy to amend this to something which is more GPL friendly, but we don't know the precise wording to use. Are there any online resources for such clauses? It would seem to be a sensible thing to exist. I am sure we will have to run it by a lawyer but if there was a standard template, it would simplify the process I am in the UK, so I would imagine that such a resource would have to be specific to that."}
{"_id": "91188", "title": "Is there such a thing as feature bloat?", "text": "I have come across the expression software/feature bloat, but is this a real thing or should we rather be talking about things like performance problems, memory and disk footprint, user experience and on-demand installation? What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "188609", "title": "Best way to unit test methods that call other methods inside same class", "text": "I was recently discussing with some friends which of the following 2 methods is best to stub return results or calls to methods inside same class from methods inside same class. This is a very simplified example. In reality the functions are much more complex. Example:               public class MyClass     {          public bool FunctionA()          {              return FunctionB() % 2 == 0;          }               protected int FunctionB()          {              return new Random().Next();          }     }      So to test this we have 2 methods. Method 1: Use Functions and Actions to replace functionality of the methods. Example:               public class MyClass     {          public Func<int> FunctionB { get; set; }               public MyClass()          {              FunctionB = FunctionBImpl;          }               public bool FunctionA()          {              return FunctionB() % 2 == 0;          }               protected int FunctionBImpl()          {              return new Random().Next();          }     }          [TestClass]     public class MyClassTests     {         private MyClass _subject;              [TestInitialize]         public void Initialize()         {             _subject = new MyClass();         }              [TestMethod]         public void FunctionA_WhenNumberIsOdd_ReturnsTrue()         {             _subject.FunctionB = () => 1;                  var result = _subject.FunctionA();                  Assert.IsFalse(result);         }     }      Method 2: Make members virtual, derive class and in derived class use Functions and Actions to replace functionality Example:               public class MyClass     {               public bool FunctionA()          {              return FunctionB() % 2 == 0;          }               protected virtual int FunctionB()          {              return new Random().Next();          }     }          public class TestableMyClass     {          public Func<int> FunctionBFunc { get; set; }               public MyClass()          {              FunctionBFunc = base.FunctionB;          }               protected override int FunctionB()          {              return FunctionBFunc();          }     }          [TestClass]     public class MyClassTests     {         private TestableMyClass _subject;              [TestInitialize]         public void Initialize()         {             _subject = new TestableMyClass();         }              [TestMethod]         public void FunctionA_WhenNumberIsOdd_ReturnsTrue()         {             _subject.FunctionBFunc = () => 1;                  var result = _subject.FunctionA();                  Assert.IsFalse(result);         }     }      I want to know wich is better and also WHY ? Update: NOTE: **FunctionB can also be public**"}
{"_id": "144456", "title": "Does LINQ require significantly more processing cycles and memory than lower-level data iteration techniques?", "text": "## Background I am recently in the process of enduring grueling tech interviews for positions that use the .NET stack, some of which include silly questions like this one, and some questions that are more valid. I recently came across an issue that may be valid but I want to check with the community here to be sure. When asked by an interviewer how I would count the frequency of words in a text document and rank the results, I answered that I would   1. Use a stream object put the text file in memory as a string.   2. Split the string into an array on spaces while ignoring punctuation.   3. Use LINQ against the array to `.GroupBy()` and `.Count()`, then `OrderBy()` said count. I got this answer wrong for two reasons:   1. Streaming an entire text file into memory could be disasterous. What if it was an entire encyclopedia? Instead I should stream one block at a time and begin building a hash table.   2. LINQ is too expensive and requires too many processing cycles. I should have built a hash table instead and, for each iteration, only added a word to the hash table if it didn't otherwise exist and then increment it's count. The first reason seems, well, reasonable. But the second gives me more pause. I thought that one of the selling points of LINQ is that it simply abstracts away lower-level operations like hash tables but that, under the veil, it is still the same implementation. ## Question Aside from a few additional processing cycles to call any abstracted methods, does LINQ require _significantly_ more processing cycles to accomplish a given data iteration task than a lower-level task (such as building a hash table) would?"}
{"_id": "229822", "title": "Using cost estimation models to predict C# software development costs", "text": "I'm a student currently on an internship. I've been asked to determine the feasibility of migrating an existing Windows-only C# software package to Mono. I've already conducted an analysis to identify the native libraries that will need to be ported or replaced with managed code, and identified the Windows- only API calls for which equivalents on Linux/OS X will need to be found. From this, I've cultivated some (very rough) estimates on what percentage of each assembly will need to be rewritten. I would now like to develop a time estimate for implementation of those changes. It appears people seem to like the COCOMO II for this type of task. However, I'm having trouble deciding on numbers for the SLOC (source lines of code) input. I have used USC's Unified Code Count tool to determine the Logical Lines of Code (LLOC) in the project as a whole and in specific assemblies of interest. Under one strategy, I estimate somewhere around 10% of the 165k LLOC project will need to be rewritten, and about 5% of the remainder will undergo significant modification. Using these numbers, COCOMO II gives me something like 30 man-months of effort. This seems high to me - is it actually? I don't think I have the experience to know for sure. I'm wondering if I should apply a twiddle factor to the LLOC input - I know people do something like this for some languages when using LOC (eg: dividing Python LOC by a factor of 6). Should I do this with C#, and if so, what factor? Finally, is using COCOMO-II even a reasonable method of doing this? All I want is an order-of-magnitude approximation. Fermi-scale inaccuracy is okay here. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "144454", "title": "question related to iPhone programming certification", "text": "Dear All, I am working for iOS application developement. Now am considering to go for certification in iOS application development. I am thinking about expertrating.com. Please guide me if you know any other certification in iOS development with more market value of the certification. Thanks in advance and have a great life ahead."}
{"_id": "208050", "title": "How can you denote the access modifiers \"friend\" and \"protected friend\" in UML?", "text": "The symbols for access modifiers that I know are relevant for many different languages: > **public** :        +   >  **private** :       -   >  **protected** :  #   >  **package** :    ~ ( _or none_ )   >    _However_ , in VB.NET there are other such access modifiers -- `friend`, and `protected friend` ( _these are called`internal` and `protected internal` in c#_). What are the UML symbols for these access modifiers?      Is `friend` close enough to \"package access\" that it could be denoted with a tilde \"`~`\"? Would that then mean that `protected friend` could be denoted as \"`#~`\"?"}
{"_id": "229826", "title": "In MV* pattern where does non-business model goes?", "text": "I am passing Menu items to View from ViewModel. My menu definition is a model with properties title, image, hasChildren and isEnabled. But this model is meant for UI unlike business domain models like Person, ContactDetail, Transaction, etc. So, when i see this menu model sitting along with business domain models i felt like polluted. Is there a right place to put these kind of UI specific models? Thanks."}
{"_id": "144450", "title": "How can I explain C# interfaces, and constructors to a 8 years old kid?", "text": "How can I explain C# interfaces and constructors to a 8 years old genius kid?"}
{"_id": "88415", "title": "What are the strategies to become a good open source developer?", "text": "I always hear that involving with open source projects is good for career and the more (good) open source you release, the closer you will be to getting your dream job before you've even had an interview. I am expert in Java and I am trying to become fluent in Scala. I always think about getting involved in open source development in Java/Scala but the following confusions stopping me to do so. How/where do I start in open source development projects in GitHub etc? Or How to find active/busy open source development projects? How to find an area where improvement is required or enhancement required in such projects? It looks too complex in the first analysis or its pretty hard to find such opportunities. What are the common strategies to follow if I want to become hobbyist/free time open source developer? People who have experience in open source development please share your learnings/expertise from scratch. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "231688", "title": "Is it a bad idea to have many protected variables, events and procedures in a unit?", "text": "I am writing a full fledged p2p networking library on top of Indy's UDP server with an intention of publishing it online. The design I have implemented has a P2P manager ( TIdUDPServer ) which can act as a server or a peer. Each connected peer is represented by a separate object which contains additional features and information about them. The classes are both contained in a single unit. For the purpose of simplification, I have declared those members used by either, under protected. Somehow, my instincts are giving me a bad feeling about this. The P2P manager has very few members but the peer object has nearly everything under protected. Going the other way will most certainly introduce a whole lot of code and method calls. I need to know;   1. Is it a good practice for networking libraries to have protected members?    2. Should I replace the variables with properties under protected? With getters and setters or direct access would be fine?"}
{"_id": "88419", "title": "How do I get feedback about whether escape analysis had any affect on my code or not?", "text": "One problem I have with compiler optimization is, that I actually never know what the compiler (or in this particular case the Jit) does with my code. So is there any possibility for me to know whether a particular compiler optimization took place or not? I just want to be sure about that some objects (math vectors) are created on the stack and not on the heap."}
{"_id": "234067", "title": "How to maintain an example project owned by an area-XX for each organisational area of my company?", "text": "My company is migrating from SVN to GIT. We have several projects in an only repository. Since SVN basically understands only folders and files, we have folders representing areas of the company, that contains the projects of that area. But in GIT, it seems that projects are owned by users, so if I want to maintain an example project owned by an area-XX of my company, I would need to create an user called \"area-XX\" to do this? And again and again for each organisational area of my company? I want a structure like `my_git_server/area-XX/project-A` for a project, instead of `my_git_server/user/project-A`. How can I do this?"}
{"_id": "34139", "title": "Should developers be forced to check-in before leaving work each day, even if the code does not compile?", "text": "During a previous consulting position, the developers where told to check-in code on a nightly basis, regardless if it complied or was complete. Managers were afraid of losing any code and said now we only lose one day at most. The place I'm currently it is investigating whether to implement this. Anyone have any pros/cons on this? Should developers be forced into check-ins?"}
{"_id": "194313", "title": "If functional testing is referred as black box..how can it be done on unit test level?", "text": "Preparing myself for ISTQB, I found a bit odd many things in their textbooks. E.g. they call black box testing as functional testing when you are not concerned with structured but only observe the ouput based on inputs. But later they say that functional testing is done at levels..well, how can I do unit testing without the knowledge how it works if I can just see it (and must see it). It is white box but then it is in the conflict.."}
{"_id": "100462", "title": "How do i put my head around ISAPI Filters", "text": "I am a newbie. I have decent command over C++ but i lack domain knowledge when it comes to servers and stuff. My current assignment is to write ISAPI filters for IIS Web Server. I have been googling for a couple of days and have found out that its quite a challenging task. I found some examples here. I need to understand and implement some filters which would log requests to the server and take a count of requests on each resource. I do not seem to understand the code examples. Can you guys please suggest a plan or list of to do's for me. I ask this because i know there are a lot of prerequisites to this project. Where should I start ? How should I proceed ? I am expecting you guys to look at the code examples here and tell me what stuff I should read up to grasp the examples. Then i could imagine writing my own filters."}
{"_id": "184205", "title": "How do scalable bloom filters work?", "text": "I was reading up on scalable bloom filters and could not understand how each time a constituent bloom filters fills up, a new bloom filter with larger size is added. The elements that contributed to the set bits in the initially created filters cannot be looked up for presence. Perhaps I am wrong in my understanding of this? I do understand basic bloom filters. However, I cannot wrap my head around dynamic bloom filters."}
{"_id": "100460", "title": "How far should I take email address validation when the cost of bad emails is high?", "text": "**When it's more important to prevent typos than to cover 100% of all possible email addresses, what syntactic email validations do you do?** Imagine this: > You're with the local gas & electric company. 10% of new installations are > cancelled because the customer is not home and it costs your company $50 a > pop. You start taking email addresses with the new install orders so that > you can send reminder emails the day before the appointment. You bring that > number to 0% _when you have a deliverable email_. The only problem is that > 15% of all the emails you take bounce back because of some typo. Email > addresses are recorded by call center agents who talk to the customer over > the phone. In this case, it's important to collect a valid email address. It's also not all that bad if someone cannot successfully use an email address like:               \"Big Momma D.'s #1 CA$H Maker, BOY!!!\"@naturalhistory.museum      My guess is that Big Momma D. can't use this email anywhere and either doesn't really use email, or has more conventional email address to use. This is related to this more general question: How far should I take e-mail address validation? Let's throw a few more assumptions on here:   1. This is in the US, so it's unlike people will have email addresses like \u6f22\u5b57@gmail.com (good luck communicating that to a call center agent in Austin, Texas)   2. Validation emails are not suitable, since the customer is only in contact with us by phone"}
{"_id": "177964", "title": "Necessitas or Java for android application development", "text": "I'm a Qt/C++ developer for Windows and Linux. Now I need to switch to Android OS and program for this operating system. I'm wondering whether it is reasonable to stay with Qt and use Necessitas project for Android Application Development or switch to Java?"}
{"_id": "184209", "title": "Need some input on storing stdin, stdout, stderr information for debugging", "text": "I am working with a legacy system that is not too bad, but I thought of making some improvements to it, and I wanted to solicit your feedback to help me make good decisions. The platform is Linix (different flavors of it). The system revolves around running [sometimes long] \"jobs\" - command line programs. The jobs usually succeed but sometimes may fail, and when they do it is very important to diagnose what went wrong efficiently, and fix the underlying problems (if any) and restarting a job. We are not using any third-party software for this because we need full control over the process. Right now information about a job is being saved on disk as files - there is one file for stdin, one file that stores the exit code, one file for stdout and stderr combined, and I also know exactly how the process was started - what was the name of the command and what were the arguments. Now ... I thought about splitting stdout and stderr outputs into different files, but then realized that when they are combined together, one can see the chronological order of messages, except that it now takes a human judgement to tell which was output and which contains the errors. Taking this to a further extreme - why not throw stdin into the mix? It might matter for debugging purposes what the specific line of input was that caused a failure. Ideally the error message would be descriptive enough to give plenty of context, but this does not always happen. I am looking for a clean way to organize this data so that automated logic could be used to aid humans with error diagnostics. With many jobs running these failures do happen rather often. An example of something that I might want to query for - what were the last 20 lines of input that preceded the first line in stderr? I suppose the exact time stamp can be useful, but not that critical. Also, since a logging module is being used, often the output lines already contain time stamps, but not always - I did not write every bit of this legacy system. I can make changes to it; I just do not want to rewrite it. Could you propose a good way to massage these streams (add some sort of metadata perhaps) to organize things cleanly? The requirement is that not much extra computing power or disk / ram space should be utilized. I suspect that my problem is not unique. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "177967", "title": "Why doesn't Haskell have type-level lambda abstractions?", "text": "Are there some theoretical reasons for that (like that the type checking or type inference would become undecidable), or practical reasons (too difficult to implement properly)? Currently, we can wrap things into `newtype` like               newtype Pair a = Pair (a, a)      and then have `Pair :: * -> *` but we cannot do something like `\u03bb(a:*). (a,a)`. (There are some languages that have them, for example, Scala does.)"}
{"_id": "177961", "title": "How to create Button/Switch-Like Tile where you can step on it and change its value?", "text": "If the player steps on a Button-Tile when its true, it becomes false. If the player steps on a Button-Tile when it is false, it becomes true. The problem is, when the player stands on (intersects) the Button-Tile, it will keep updating the condition. So, from true, it becomes false. Because its false and the player intersects it, it becomes true again. True-false-true- false and so on. I use ElapsedGameTime to make the updating process slower, and the player can have a chance to change the Button to true or false. However, it's not the solution I was looking for. Is there any other way to make it keep in False/True condition while the Player is standing on the Button tile?"}
{"_id": "224638", "title": "To MVC or not MVC, that is the question", "text": "Originally, I started off doing jQuery plugins, then moved onto Backbone.js applications, then been experimenting with MicroJS MVC modules, but these days I'm even wondering if there is any need for them at all. Recently, I've been prototyping a new application, and the code is slim, sleek, and beautiful. I then proceeded to rewrite it over 3 hours into a Backbone.js application, and the code turned away from its fitness model petiteness, into a bloated, complex, and ugly mess. The problem is, these days, this always happens. As soon as the MVC/MV* architecture is introduced, it all goes to puke. I'm wondering if the day and age of requiring these things on the client-side are over now, now that browsers are actually quite capable beings, maybe we don't need all the bloat of MV* frameworks anymore. What are your thoughts? Has others run into this? To MVC, or not MVC?"}
{"_id": "228194", "title": "How to decompose / model a chessboard", "text": "As someone new to programming, I am building a chess web application in JavaScript, both for fun and to learn more about design patterns. I keep running into a wall, which is how to decompose the program. To start, I have picked a straightforward representation of a chessboard, here:               Board = function() {       var turn = 0;       var model = [[-4, -2, -3, -5, -6, -3, -2, -4],                    [-1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1],                    [ 0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0],                    [ 0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0],                    [ 0,  0,  0,  1,  0,  0,  0,  0],                    [ 0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0],                    [ 1,  1,  1,  1,  1,  1,  1,  1],                    [ 4,  2,  3,  5,  6,  3,  2,  4]];      with some basic access routines, such as                 this.move = function(pt1, pt2) {         turn += 1;         model[pt2.x][pt2.y] = model[pt1.x][pt1.y];         model[pt1.x][pt1.y] = 0;       };       ...      It makes sense that the board encapsulates state and is responsible for changing state but may not know the rules of the game--I like the idea of being able to plug in some sort of `RulesContoller` and completely change the nature of the game at runtime. But beyond that, I'm a little paralyzed as to how granular to model the pieces. I see a few options. First, I could define a `Piece` constructor and instantiate a new piece for each index in the nested array, something like:                 _.each(state, function(row, y) {         _.each(row, function(val, x) {           state[y][x] = new Piece(x, y, val);         });       });      `Piece` could easily deduce its color, type (e.g. 'king'), and location from that information. But it also feels redundant, since I'm just translating a model that already completely represents the board. Also, it doesn't seem like the primary purpose of the `Piece` 'class' is this translation, e.g. \"Oh, I'm a -5, must be a dark Queen.\" Another option is to make the pieces dumber, i.e. not able to deduce this information from the model. But then I just build the array in-line, like                 var model = [new Rook(1,1,'dark'), new Knight(1,2,'dark'), new Bishop(1,3,'dark')... ],       ...      This seems closer to the way a chessboard is actually setup: there isn't some elegant formula; rather, you just put pieces in their correct location. But it's also just brute force. There are a few symmetries involved and patterns that might be simplified. Anyway, I'm just spitballing at this point. Any ideas would be useful. Thanks."}
{"_id": "228191", "title": "How should I structure my namespace tree so that I have a Math class and Math namespace?", "text": "I don't know if this is a good or bad idea, or if it's technically even possible... but I'd like to have something of the following sort:               public class Math {       public int gcd(a,b) // Method for Greatest Common Denominator       public int lcm(a,b) // Method for Least Common Multiple       public int factorial(a) // Method for factorial       ...     }      and then I'd also like to have a namespace called `Math` that has subclasses such as `Math.Matrix`, `Math.RowVector`, `Math.ColumnVector`, etc... so I can define my own Matrix data structure and its associated actions. Is this advisable? I am not too keen on the idea of using some other name for my `Math` class, as I want it to be a static class with all sorts of functions/methods that are useful to me, and at the same time, I want to gather all my relevant data structures under a `Math` namespace."}
{"_id": "228193", "title": "JSON Library - Jackson or Play Framework?", "text": "Working on a Java and Scala code-base, there's a debate about whether to use Java's Jackson JSON or the Play Framework's JSON Library. After reading the Play JSON Docs, as well as Chapter 9 (JSON) of Play for Scala, I also ran through an example from Mykong on Jackson. Based on looking at a few simple examples, Play's JSON Library seems like the superior choice due to, overall, its Functional Programming Approach:   * Providing compile-time safety when parsing JSON with Option/JsResult data types.   * As a result of the above, higher order functions (map/flatMap) are available and provide power and succintness   * As I understand, Jackson parses via the typical try/catch paradigm. Dealing with JSON errors at compile-time(Play) v. run-time(Jackson) is a no brainer Bottom line - Play's JSON library uses a functional programming approach that results in code that is easier to reason about than the Jackson library. Overall, the choice seems clear to me. Am I missing any pros/cons for either library?"}
{"_id": "136536", "title": "Use Case Structure", "text": "I am creating use cases for a project. A generic user is extended by user \"categories\" which then is extended by an administrator (that can do all tasks possible). Is the following acceptable to portray? Is there a better way to portray such info? ![sample use case](http://i43.tinypic.com/adm0b4.jpg)"}
{"_id": "203897", "title": "Help with learning the C++ Qt Framework", "text": "I've been a longtime PHP web developer. But now I've reached the limits and web doesn't fascinate me anymore. I am interested in learning cross-platform development. I have learned Java for almost a year and know much of its OOP concepts but I would like to develop high-performance cross-platform programs and I find Java to be somewhat slower unless you have a beast hardware. Searching for programming books on C and C++, I have only found that they only covers the basics which are same for every language. Datatypes, Loops, Conditionals, Operators etc. But the languages are no more this minimal. C++ provides STL and I've yet to find a book which shows you how to develop real- world programs using these standard features. I know PHP very well, I have known ins and outs of MVC and Singleton Design Patterns, but then I stumbled upon Qt Framework and some of the apps it has powered: Skype, VLC, KDE and they all are rock-solid. I've NEITHER faced any bugs or crashing issues with these applications on Windows NOR on Linux. **My request** _How should I approach learning Qt?_ The biggest difference I'm encountering is C++'s static typing which is very different than the dynamically-typed languages (PHP, Python etc.) I have already worked with."}
{"_id": "131540", "title": "CFO's Expectations and Scrum Development", "text": "When it comes to financial topics, I'm admittedly not well versed. I'm trying to lead my organization in our software development effort using a Scrum based development life-cycle. I am often discouraged when trying to coach executive leadership due to their belief that Scrum and Agile don't play well with their finanacial objectives. The other day I was challenged to show how my software developers could capitalize %60 of their work hours. I've found a few articles on the web ( http://itprojectfinancials.com/insights/2011/06/05/capitalizing-software- development-costs-from-sdcl-to-agile/ ), but haven't come up with any great arguments. I'm looking for advice or examples of organizations that capitalize software costs effectively in an Agile development environment. This article sums up the issue pretty well, but offers no advise http://blogs.collab.net/agile/2007/12/20/the-scrum-gaap/"}
{"_id": "241605", "title": "What does backup procedures and troubleshooting guidelines mean for a system", "text": "I am writing the documentation for a piece of software which I have made but I don't understand what it means in some aspects. It asks me to write about backup procedures but what exactly does this mean? Does this mean like backing up the database on another hosting service or something else entirely? I am dumbfounded by what troubleshooting guidelines are as well. If you have any idea what this could mean feel free to give your insight even if you aren't 100% sure in case it could spark what it means inside of me. Thanks."}
{"_id": "131548", "title": "Handling tough or unexpected technical questions in meetings", "text": "Depending on the project I'm working on, I may be required to attend more meetings with both internal stakeholders or technical management in client companies. During the course of these meetings, there will inevitably be a few questions crop up that either:   * You do not have an answer to.   * You have not thought about for one reason or another.   * You deem to be irrelevant or completely out of scope of the current meeting. In each case, how do you answer these questions? Any tips or tricks on remaining authoritative while remaining honest?"}
{"_id": "87994", "title": "How can open source projects be successful without documentation about their design or architecture?", "text": "I want to improve my programming skills by studying famous open source projects, but I find it is easy to get lost by just jumping into their source code. So I decided to read their documentation about their design or architecture (such as UML diagrams) to get a general idea about their code's organization first. To my surprise, however, I can't find any architectural documentation for large open source projects such as Hibernate, Spring, ASP.NET MVC, Rails, etc. So I've started to wonder: How can an open source project can be successful if new-comer developers have no architectural/design documentation to read, or if the project manager just opened the source code but closed its documentation?"}
{"_id": "241602", "title": "ffmpeg: cut multiple input files with seeking to one output file", "text": "I have list of video files (loaded from database), each with start and end time of requested interval:                 # file   begin  end       v1.mp4   1:01   2:01       v2.mp4   3:02   3:32       v3.mp4   2:03   5:23      And I need to create single video file containing these intervals:                [0:00]---v1---[2:00]---v2---[2:30]---v3---[5:50]      I preffer usig ffmpeg, since it is installed on server. Caller program is written in PHP. It is easy to cut one input to one output (argument escaping removed for clarity):                 exec(\"ffmpeg -ss $begin -i $input_file -ss $begin -c copy $output_file\");      I there any easier way than executing ffmpeg for each interval and then execute it once more to concatenate prepared clips together? I really do not like to have a lot of temporary files or dealing with complex process handling."}
{"_id": "100790", "title": "Freelancing as an individual. Products as a company. Should I integrate the two to grow?", "text": "When I started my company in 2005, I began with freelancing projects, but quickly moved to products. My personal site listed my consulting availability and portfolio pieces, which included a selection of the products sold by my company. Over the years, the company has gained rep through the products, and my personal site gained rep through the contract work. Of course, it's no longer just myself either for the products or the consulting work; other people in the company are involved, and the consulting work is technically billed through the company, as it always was. I want to maintain both sources of work; the consulting work that comes through from people finding my personal site, and the products sold by the company. But recently, the company has started receiving requests for custom development work directly, and I'm having trouble deciding what to do to reconcile the two \"faces\", or even if I should do anything about at all. Basically, the company has a small \"services\" page, which presents our products as portfolio pieces, and I have my original site which gets a lot of incoming client work, and also presents the same list of portfolio pieces (and some other client work). If I forward clients who contact the company for custom work to my personal page, we may lose some of the bigger clients, whom we are fully capable of serving, but who would prefer to deal with a company rather than a single developer. If I drop my personal site and refocus on the \"services\" side of the company, then I'd be ignoring the years of reputation building that the personal site has (and the client stream that still arrives at that door). Has anyone dealt with this? Any advice and suggestions would be appreciated. **EDIT:** To clarify, one of the disadvantages of having the two be separate channels is the lack of focus when it comes to marketing. Where do you point the signature in forums that may lead to clients seeking you out? Where do you point the people you hand your business card to? It just seems \"cleaner\", somehow, to integrate them or select one to concentrate on -- or maybe it's just the programmer in me trying to categorize things and put everything into its proper place."}
{"_id": "100792", "title": "API design pitfalls in C", "text": "What are some flaws that drive you nuts in C APIs (including standard libraries, third party libraries, and headers inside of a project) ? The goal is to identify API design pitfalls in C, so people writing new C libraries can learn from mistakes of the past. Explain why the flaw is bad (preferably with an example), and try to suggest an improvement. Although your solution might not be practical in real life (it's too late to fix `strncpy`), it should give a heads up for future library-writers. Although the focus of this question is C APIs, problems that affect your ability to use them in other languages are welcome. Please give one flaw per answer, so democracy can sort the answers."}
{"_id": "86028", "title": "Future of web development - Front-end > Back-end development?", "text": "People used to say it's \"better\"/\"Make more money\" to do back-end programming (PHP, asp.net) instead of front-end(HTML, javascript) for web development. But I notice that HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, Javascript are gaining importance. We can even use HTML5, CSS3 and JAVASCRIPT for building mobile web applications(For both iphone/android) and even Windows 8 applications in the future! Does it mean new web developers should now focus on front-end development instead of server-side development?"}
{"_id": "201330", "title": "What is meant by binary compatibility? What is its importance during serialization/deserialization in a language like Java that deals in byte code?", "text": "In computing what is meant by _binary compatibility_? I read about it in context of serialization/deserialization that this process of serialize/deserialize should be binary compatible. What does it mean in this context? In particular I am interested in understanding the role of binary compatibility in a language like Java that deals with byte code. This quote is from Effective Java: > When a serializable class is revised, it is important to check that it is > possible to serialize an instance in the new release and deserialize it in > old releases, and vice versa. The amount of testing required is thus > proportional to the product of the number of serializable classes and the > number of releases, which can be large. These tests cannot be con-structed > automatically because, in addition to binary compatibility, you must test > forsemantic compatibility. In other words, you must ensure both that the > serialization-deserialization process succeeds and that it results in a > faithful replica of the original object. The greater the change to a > serializable class, the greater the need for testing. The need is reduced if > a custom serialized form is carefully designed when the class is first > written (Items 75, 78), but it does not vanish entirely."}
{"_id": "4121", "title": "Do you want to work alone or in a team?", "text": "If you can choose whether to work on a project alone or in a team, what would be your choice and why? And if you want to work in a team, what is the ideal team size?"}
{"_id": "232882", "title": "Java Method Returns Unbounded Type", "text": "I was reading this article, https://weblogs.java.net/blog/emcmanus/archive/2010/10/25/using-builder- pattern-subclasses, about subclassing a builder class. I understood the article but there was one small bit that bothered me. There was this method,               public static Builder<?> builder() {             return new Builder2();     }      When I changed `Builder<?>` to `Builder`, a raw type, the compiler would not compile the code. What is the additional information was passed to the compiler via with the additional `<?>`? I have pasted the code here:               public class Shape {            private final double opacity;               public static class Builder<T extends Builder<T>> {              private double opacity;                   public T opacity(double opacity) {                  this.opacity = opacity;                  return self();              }           /*              public T height(double height) {                  System.out.println(\"height not set\");                  return self();              }      */              protected T self() {                  System.out.println(\"shape.self -> \" + this);                  return (T) this;              }                   public Shape build() {                  return new Shape(this);              }          }               public static Builder<?> builder() {              return new Builder();          }               protected Shape(Builder builder) {              this.opacity = builder.opacity;          }      }           public class Rectangle extends Shape {          private final double height;               public static class Builder<T extends Builder<T>> extends Shape.Builder<T> {              private double height;                   public T height(double height) {                  System.out.println(\"height is set\");                  this.height = height;                  return self();              }                   public Rectangle build() {                  return new Rectangle(this);              }          }               public static Builder<?> builder() {              return new Builder();          }               protected Rectangle(Builder builder) {              super(builder);              this.height = builder.height;          }               public static void main(String[] args) {              Rectangle r = Rectangle.builder().opacity(0.5).height(250).build();          }     }"}
{"_id": "232885", "title": "Configuration Settings Service/Repository: Are They Used in a Real World", "text": "I\u2019m currently enjoying reading \"Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases Through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation\" and the part that caught my attention is that on managing configuration settings for applications. What's proposed in the book is that all configuration settings are externalized and centralized in a repository of some sort, be it an LDAP directory, ESCAPE Server or somesuch and then retrieved from there. This sounds really compelling to me as this approach can provide a number of tangible benefits, but after Googling around for a bit it seems to me that this is not exactly a widespread approach. I know there is a Twelve-Factor App article on this subject, but it suggests using environment variables instead of a centralized repository. This approach seems to be the most commonly used one, but it feels like a dirty one compared to a repository-based solution. So, is the central-configuration-repository approach used in any significant manner in a real world, and if not -- what are the reasons for this?"}
{"_id": "232887", "title": "Does this in the Observer pattern count as composition?", "text": "In a classic implementation of the Observer design pattern, the subject has a list of references to all of it's observers, and each observer might have a reference to it's subject. Is this considered composition? As far as I understand, composition means one object 'includes' in itself another object, in order to **use functionality of that object**. In the Observer pattern, the subject does include in itself references to it's observers, but it doesn't exactly use their functionality internally to do things outwardly. It keeps references so it can notify them. On the other hand, the subject and observers maintain a relationship of HAS-A, which often characterizes composition (the subject has observers, the observers have a subject). Is this considered a kind of composition?"}
{"_id": "212001", "title": "What are the different aspects to consider when porting code from a single threaded environment to a multi threaded environment or vice versa?", "text": "I want to provide some library functionality and a reference application, which will run on a fully-featured, POSIX-compliant platform. The app and library will need bi-directional serial port communication, user input from keyboard, user display to text console, and probably timers. I also want to provide a porting guide so that users of the library can port it (with or without the reference application) to their own platforms, which may be POSIX-compliant or not, and may or may not support multiple threads. I am taking care of the main platform portability issue by writing portable code for everything as far as possible and providing a self-contained porting layer for platform-specific code. In my porting guide I will tell the user to replace the porting layer functions with implementations for their own platform. However as far as the threading model goes, I have two choices:   * implement my reference application as a very simple single-threaded program (main loop would poll keyboard, poll serial port, check timer status, and call library functions as needed)    * use the pthreads library and have a main app thread with separate threads for user input, serial port receive, and timer expiry, all of which would post messages to my main app thread for processing.  Whichever model I choose I will have to explain to users how to port it to a platform which may be using a different model. Even if I use a single-threaded implementation for the reference app, I will make sure any library functionality is re-entrant (or put big caveats around it if that isn't possible). What considerations should I bear in mind, in my implementation and the porting guide? What information would you want if you were porting some multi- threaded code to a single threaded system, or vice versa?"}
{"_id": "114218", "title": "When and how much should we validate input when working with (C)AP storage?", "text": "Herein, we consider a server-client architecture. Suppose we keep the details flexible, but there's more than one layer of servers supporting our hypothetical service. The general question is **\"When and how much do I validate client data?\"**. From other questions and answers I've read, the answer may be summarized as one of the following strategies (or a combination thereof).   1. Validate all data as soon as it arrives from the client. Other servers trust each other.   2. Validate all data on every server in the system. _(this is not heavily favored)_   3. **Validate all data _rigorously_ when it reaches the database, and optionally elsewhere as required by the application.**   4. At all levels, validate exactly as much data as that particular server needs to do its job. Number 3 seems particularly popular. In the answers I've seen, however, there seems to be an **implicit assumption of the classical RDBMS** (\"OldSql\") centralized data storage. These are the MySQLs and Postgres's of the world. Taking cues from the CAP theorem, let's call these **CP databases** , as they tend to provide tools for consistency at the expense of some class of availability: usually, only a delegated _master_ can write to a particular partition. Recent alternatives to the classical RDBMS (specifically Voldemort, Riak, and Cassandra, which are modeled after the Dynamo storage system) are better classified as **AP databases**. These tools allow natural inconsistencies to appear upon data retrieval (e.g. multiple data values with vector clocks) in exchange for \"always writeable\" availability. Given that these data stores have rather **unique properties** , I pose the question: **Does the client data validation story change when we use AP datastores? How much of my client data should I validate before and after insertion to an AP database?**"}
{"_id": "170619", "title": "Creating a layer of abstraction over the ORM layer", "text": "I believe that if you have your repositories use an ORM that it's already enough abstracted from the database. However, where I am working now, someone believe that we should have a layer that abstract the ORM in case that we would like to change the ORM later. Is it really necessary or it's simply a lot of over head to create a layer that will work on many ORM? ### Edit Just to give more detail:   1. We have POCO class and Entity Class that are mapped with AutoMapper. Entity class are used by the Repository layer. The repository layer then use the additional layer of abstraction to communicate with Entity Framework.   2. The business layer has in no way a direct access to Entity Framework. Even without the additional layer of abstraction over the ORM, this one need to use the service layer that user the repository layer. In both case, the business layer is totally separated from the ORM.   3. The main argument is to be able to change ORM in the future. Since it's really localized inside the Repository layer, to me, it's already well separated and I do not see why an additional layer of abstraction is required to have a \"quality\" code."}
{"_id": "60361", "title": "what's proper class name for manager/browser/editor", "text": "I've read somewhere that it's a bad idea to name classes after verbs (manager/browser/editor) but what's the proper name for manager/browser/editor? EDIT: the problem is that system could turn in a big ball of \"services\" - tiny objects which does something specific and does not contain any data - which is bad (at least because it just queries other objects) but I also need to be able add new \"managers\" easily (right now app needs to manage users, ftp accounts, mail accounts, etc.)"}
{"_id": "177342", "title": "How to implement a safe password history", "text": "Passwords shouldn't be stored in plain text for obvious security reasons: you have to store hashes, and you should also generate the hash carefully to avoid rainbow table attacks. However, usually you have the requirement to store the last _n_ passwords and to enforce minimal complexity and minimal change between the different passwords (to prevent the user from using a sequence like Password_1, Password_2, ..., Password_ _n_ ). This would be trivial with plain text passwords, but how can you do that by storing only hashes? In other words: how it is possible to implement a safe password history mechanism?"}
{"_id": "177345", "title": "What are the advantages of Maven when it comes to single man, educational projects", "text": "I've spend a few hours playing around with Maven + reading some stuff on the apache official site and also a few random googled articles. By this I mean that I really tried to find the answers myself - both by reading and by doing things on my own. Also maybe worth to mention that I installed the `m2e plugin` so most of the time I've tried things out from `Eclipse` and not using the command line too much. However aside from the generated project that for example prevent me from using the default package I didn't see that much of a difference with the standard way I've created my projects before try Maven. In fact I've almost decided to skip Maven for now and move on to the other technology I wanted to learn more in-depth - `Hibernate`, but when I start with opening the official page the first thing I've read was the recommendation to use Hibernate with Maven. That get me confused and made me taking a step back and trying once more to find what I'm obviously missing right now. As it's said in the `maven.apache..` site, the true strength of Maven is shown when you work on large projects with other people, but I lack the option to see how Maven is really used in this scenario, still i think that there are maybe advantages even when it comes to working with small projects alone, but I really have difficulties to point them out. So what do you think are the advantages of Maven when it's used for small projects writing from a single person. What are the things that I should be aware of and try to exploit (I mean features offered by Maven) that can come in handy in this situations?"}
{"_id": "244382", "title": "What metadada to save and whether to include it inside the binary file?", "text": "I'm wondering if there are any general guidelines or best practices regarding when to split data into a metadata format, as oppose to directly embedding it within the data. (Specific example below). My understanding of metadata is that it describes data (without the need to actually look at the data), allowing for data to be quickly search/filtered for easy access. Let's take for example a simple 3D model format. The actual data file is itself a binary file containing vertices and colors. Things like creation date, modified data and author name would be things that describe the binary data, so I would say these belong as metadata (outside of the binary file). But the following questions arise:   * What if the application had no need to search or filter by these fields?    * Would it be acceptable to embed these fields directly into the binary data itself?   * Could they be duplicated in both the binary data and the meta data, or would this be considered bad practice?    * What about more ambiguous fields such as the model name, which could be considered part of the data itself, but also as data describing the binary data?   * How do you decide which data to embed in the actual binary file, as opposed to separating into a more flexible metadata format? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "232832", "title": "Coordinating between developers on common resources", "text": "In our organization some of the resources (such as QA machines etc) are shared. Different folks get done at different times and some tests have to be run (during dev and QA) on these machines. Right now, we just skype a message to the team stating \"I am going to run some destructive tests on such and such machines - let me know if anyone has an issue\". This approach obviously has many issues (what happens if someone missed the message etc.) Apart from maintaining a shared google doc that needs to be constantly updated - is there an easier way that folks use for such coordination?"}
{"_id": "244384", "title": "Java best practice Interface - subclasses and constants", "text": "In the case where a couple of classes implements an interface, and those classes have a couple of constants in common (but no functions), were should I put this constant ? I've had this problem a couple of times. I have this interface : DataFromSensors that I use to hide the implementations of several sub classes like DataFromHeartRateMonitor DataFromGps etc... For some reason, those classes uses the same constants. And there's nowere else in the code were it is used. My question is, were should I put those constants ? Not in the interface, because it has nothing to do with my API Not in a static Constants class, because I'm trying to avoid those Not in a common abstract class, that would stand between the interface and the subclasses, because I have no functions in common, only a couple of constants (TIMEOUT_DURATION, UUID, those kind of things) I've read best practice for constants and interface to define constants but they don't really answer my question. Thanks !"}
{"_id": "230928", "title": "Why does the boolean type in C++ support `++` but not `--`?", "text": "Why does the operator `--` not exist for bool whereas it does for operator `++`? I tried in C++, and I do not know if my question apply to another language. I will glad to know also. I know, I can use the operator `++` with a bool. It makes any bool equal to true.               bool b = false;     b++;     // Now b == true.      Why can't we use the operator `--` in an opposite way?               bool b = true;     b--;     // Now b == false;      It is not very useful, but I am curious."}
{"_id": "228672", "title": "Doesn\u2019t active record violate SRP and OCP?", "text": "I have watched the active record classes in our project grow into large, do- it-all classes. When you need anything about a user, for example, you should go to the `Person` class. While this makes perfect sense when you consider the domain, in reality, the `Person` class is a mishmash of lots and lots of functionality, which do get modified sometimes as the domain becomes clearer, which means both SRP and OCP are violated. Is this one of the things that comes with the Active Record pattern, or are we doing it wrong?"}
{"_id": "185150", "title": "Validating Objects With XSDs: Is Re-Serializing Redundant or Negligible?", "text": "**Context:** I've got a web service that deals with request / response objects. There are strict, externally-defined schemas constraining both the structure and the content of both requests and responses. I need to validate all requests as they are received and all responses before they are sent back (on the web service end of the wire). I don't want to replicate the validation rules in code, so I'll be validating serialized request / response objects (XML), probably using XmlReader as a starting point (for speed). It'll be 1-way object --> XML validation method that screams if validation fails, otherwise the original object will be used for the actual work. I'm using WCF, but with XMLSerializer as the schemas are complex and I need the additional XSD support. **Question:** 1) Is there a way to avoid re-serializing the objects as they hit my end of the wire? _Ideally_ I'd like to get at the XML before it's de-serialized on the way in, and after it's serialized, just before it goes, on the way out. I'm aware of [OnSerializing] and [OnSerialized] annotations, but they won't work with XMLSerializer. I don't think I should be writing ReadXml() and WriteXml() using IXmlSerializable either - the schemas are complex and subject to change. 2) Given the XML documents are quite small (122kb seems to be the top end in the sample data set I have) am I right in asserting that the performance hit of re-serializing will be negligible? 3) Any better ideas?"}
{"_id": "185152", "title": "Cleaning Up Generated Code: Refactor or Map?", "text": "**Context:** I recently had to deal with a class file generated by XSD.exe. It was 3500 lines long with ridiculously-verbose class / variable names (think `someRidiculouslyLongPrefixThenMaybeOneThingUniqueAtTheEnd` \\- difficult to compare at a glance with `someRidiculouslyLongPrefixThenMaybeOneOtherThingChanged`) and annotations all over the place. Bottom line is it took me ages to work out what the heck was going on. I read it and thought I would never put my name next to something so... Un-clean. **Question:** 1) Is it bad practice to mess with generated code (i.e. clean it). 2) Would it be better practice to write a mapper to map the generated classes to my own nice, clean classes (which I could then get to work with, quite happily)? **EDIT:** Thanks for all the comments. If I was actually going to do anything interesting with it (i.e. if there were domain objects which were anything but transport objects) then I think I'd map them to 'cleaner' classes, which I'd have to do anyway to get any kind of functionality out of them. In this case the classes are effectively DTOs so perhaps it makes sense that the naming matches the corresponding elements. As stated, I don't need to touch it - just to call accessors / mutators before passing the data down to another layer for processing. For now, I think I'll leave them well alone."}
{"_id": "230767", "title": "When changing a class/method and you already have passing unit tests, should you change then test or write a test then change?", "text": "Say I have a class with a single constructor that accepts 2 parameters and initialises itself using those parameters. I have written tests for this and they are all passing. I later realise I need to make an addition to the constructor to accept three parameters. Should I a) Add in the new parameter, watch my tests break and try and fix it b) Rewrite existing tests to test for the new expected behavior, watch them initially fail and then add to the class (this to me seems a more TDD way) From a TDD point of view, I think that option 'b' makes more sense. However, option 'a' (to me) seems like a more natural approach. Is there any standard way that most people do this?"}
{"_id": "230764", "title": "Software architecture which allows for growth, real life situation", "text": "I know of Interfaces, Abstract classes that serve as Base class, I've been reading up on loose coupling, ... But I can't come up with a decent solution when a property of a class changes, and the new type needs to be implemented in other classes using this updated class. **Example** Below is a simplified representation of a real life situation. Invoice contains a Contact object which has an Address property.               Abstract Class Contact{         string Name{get;set;}         string Address{get;set;}     }                    Class Customer:Contact{         string CustomerNumber{get;set;}     }                    Class Invoice{         string DocumentNumber{get;set;}         Customer Customer{get;set;}     }      Next, we decide to upgrade the Contact class to contain multiple Addresses. Of which the Invoice will need one.               Class Address{         string Street{get;set;}     }                    Abstract class Contact{         string Name{get;set;}         List<Address> Addresses{get;set;}     }      Logically, the Invoice class needs to be changed to something like               Class Invoice{         string DocumentNumber{get;set;}         Customer Customer{get;set;}         Address InvoiceAddress{get;set;}     }      **Problem** You immediately see that _everywhere_ I used the **string** property `Address` before, I will now have to change it to an occurence of the type **Address** As stated before, this is just a simplified example. The real life problem would be much, much bigger as contacts will be used throughout the entire software. **Conclusion** I want to develop the software with a principle that will keep my software light for new versions of certain modules. So that if I decide to create a new Contact module, the impact to the other modules is close to non-existing. So, the added functionality can be implemented gradually. I want to know how I can tackle such versioning problems. This project is currently still in the architectural design stage, and I want this sorted out before we continue."}
{"_id": "23852", "title": "Bitwise-OR vs Adding Flags", "text": "I've seen others use Bitwise-OR to combine flags before:               #define RUN 0x01     #define JUMP 0x02     #define SHOOT 0x04          const byte madPerson = RUN | JUMP | SHOOT;      That's also the way I do it. But I've also seen some (not as many) combine flags using addition:               #define RUN 0x01     #define JUMP 0x02     #define SHOOT 0x04          const byte madPerson = RUN + JUMP + SHOOT;      Which one is more \"readable\"? (Which one do you think more people will recognize?) What is the \"standard\" way to do it? Which one do you prefer?"}
{"_id": "103840", "title": "Automatic programming: write code that writes code", "text": "After reading the book The Pragmatic Programmer, one of the arguments I found most interesting was \"write code that writes code\". I tried searching over the net for some more explanations or articles about it, and while I found some good articles on the subject, I still haven't found any specific code implementation or good examples. I feel it's still not a so common argument, something that lacks documentation or it's not embraced by so many people, and I would like to know more about it. What do you think about the subject? Is it something that will really increase your productivity? What are some good resources on the subject, among books, blogs, slideshows, etc? * * * Some code examples would be greatly appreciated to allow me to better understand its implementation. * * * Here's the wiki page on the subject with various relevant programming techniques, like Meta Programming, Generative Programming and Code Generation."}
{"_id": "19673", "title": "What are the 'must know' Emacs commands?", "text": "I'm a fairly new convert to Emacs and I really love it as an editor, primarily because I keep finding new and super-useful commands. Are there any other programmer 'must known' commands missing from my list?               M-x replace-string     - Find and replace a given string.     M-x goto-line          - Goto a specific line     M-x column-number-mode - Show the current column number in text bar"}
{"_id": "130635", "title": "How do you evaluate a small piece of code?", "text": "I'm creating a website based on users' code, a place where they can share code in a social way and one of the features I'm currently developing is Code Review. This feature will allow users to evaluate code in certain aspects, from the top of my head I came out with things like:   * Legibility,    * Performace and    * Modularity. What are the general characteristics that you evaluate when reviewing code?"}
{"_id": "130636", "title": "For email interviews, is it bad to research some answers?", "text": "So I got an email \"interview\" with questions to be answered. I'm not too sure only about one of them, so I wanted to google the answer. Of course in a real interview I can't do this, so should I say \"I don't know\", or research it? I mean, if I were on the job, I'd research it, so it can't be frowned upon? Right?"}
{"_id": "130630", "title": "Intelligence as a vector quantity", "text": "I am reading this wonderful book called _\"Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming\"_ by Peter Seibel and I am at part wherein the conversation is with Joshua Bloch and I found this answer which is an important point for a programmer. The paragraph, goes something like this. > There's this problem, which is, programming is so much of an intellectual > meritocracy and often these people are the smartest people in the > organization; therefore they figure they should be allowed to make all the > decisions. But merely the fact they are the smartest people in the > organization does not mean that they should be making all the decisions, > because intelligence is not a scalar quantity; it's a vector quantity. Here at the last sentence, I fail to get the insight which is he trying to share. **Can someone explain it in a little further as what he means by a vector quantity, possibly trying to present the same insight.** Further down, I get the point that he is not taking about having an organization where non-technical people (sometimes clueless) can be managers of the technical people for some reason that they can spend more time to write emails well, because the very next statement following the above paragraph was. > And if you lack empathy or emotional intelligence, then you shouldn't be > designing APIs or GUIs or languages. I understand that he is saying that in Software engineering, programmers should know how the users will see their product and design for them. I felt the above paragraph was very interesting."}
{"_id": "160455", "title": "How could you reconcile declarative database development and non-trivial data 'motions'?", "text": "Coming back to SQL Server after several years away, I find the Visual Studio Database projects (and now SSDT) very exciting, as they are aiming to offer a way to develop databases declaratively, rather than having to mess around with change scripts. However, the elephant in the room is the 'data motions' (I'm not too sure whether that's an official term): it's not too hard to automatically script a simple change in one table, but if you're normalising/denormalising, things get hairy very quickly. Gert Drapers said as much in this TechEd video, and that they're trying to work out a way of working with these complex data migrations too. **The question:** This got me thinking. How could you do this? Is there a way - even in theory - to define these data migrations declaratively? Or even a non-declarative way which could be combined elegantly with the declarative bits? Does anything like this already exist in other frameworks (I've vaguely heard something about Ruby/Rails?) _(I wondered whether to post this ondba, but I'm not sure whether they like 'good subjective questions (if this is one), feel free to migrate if necessary)_"}
{"_id": "255780", "title": "Making a configurable Java formatter?", "text": "AFAIK there's just `java.util.Formatter` and `java.text.Format` and AFAIK none of them is extensible. I mean not subclassing, but the possibility to specify how to handle objects by class, e.g., saying > please format `char[]` as string and > format `byte[]` in hex It's no big deal to do it manually, but it's verbose and then the `Formatter` (or `String.format`) make little sense if I have to do half the work manually (`java.text.Format` is a different story as it's meant for i18n). Also things like               String.format(\"%1$tY-%1$tm-%1$te\", new Date())      aren't exactly appealing. So I'm asking for ideas how to create such a thing, e.g., how to structure it and possibly what else should it do."}
{"_id": "65624", "title": "CRM in the context of C++ programming", "text": "I was asked by an employer about CRM in the context of C++ software development. The position I was applying for was C++ Software Engineer. I told them: As far as I know, CRM is an acronym that stands for Customer Relationship Management. It also refers to software tools that track the responses and actions of customers and employees that are involved in some business relationship. But they seemed disappointed that I didn't know how to code or implement a CRM framework in C++ and I couldn't seem to find much on the Net either. Does anyone know what an employer is looking for at this stage - before they hire you and train you up? I would appreciate some pointers to get started."}
{"_id": "125833", "title": "Is Java free software?", "text": "Free software as defined by FSF. Are its standard libraries free/open source? Is its implementation free/open source? Which parts of it are not free/open source? Any other relevant information."}
{"_id": "218001", "title": "MQTT, GWT, ActiveMQ stack to bring jms to the browser", "text": "I am in the preliminary stages of architecting a legacy replacement project. They already have sub half second performance on their green screens and they want the same on their web app. We have a 390 mainframe that can handle anything we throw at it but they don't have a good jvm for it, so we have two tiers of websphere servers between the mainframe and the browser, The ui server, and the bl server. For the ui, I'm leaning towards GWT. But one thing that I think would seal the deal is to add messaging capabilities to the browser. The idea is say you click on a link that displays a second panel of information, instead of the classic GWT where it triggers a GWT-RPC call to the ui server, the ui server routs it to the bl server, the bl sends it to the mainframe and back out, it drops an MQTT message directly to the bl server or directly to the mainframe. Say writes go to the bl, reads go to the mainframe. This is an easy enough thing in classic jms because you can issue a message that has an expected response. Then have your callback ready to get the resonse. But from what I'm reading so far. It looks like mqtt doesn't have that. It looks like it's strictly fire and forget, which would make it really tough to come up with a way to get a response back to the workstation that called it. Am I right here? Has anyone tried this stack before with gwt."}
{"_id": "125838", "title": "Avoiding \"Smart Guy\" Syndrome on Team Projects", "text": "A lot of bad practices were being committed at the beginning of a project, and I recognized them and fought against all of them. Since I didn't pick and choose my battles, my boss now assumes anything out of my mouth is an over complicated response, and spends a lot of time defending himself personally, instead of looking out for the best interest of the project. How do I push the team in the right direction, without waiting four months for everyone to come to the consensus I was trying to get in place all along, or scarring my reputation on the team as a difficult know-it-all?"}
{"_id": "218003", "title": "Explanation needed, for \u201cAsk, don't tell\u201d approach?", "text": "I'm taking a course on design patterns in software engineering and here I'm trying to understand the good and the bad way of design relating to \"coupling\" and \"cohesion\". I could not understand the concept described in the following image. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Tft7E.jpg) The example of code shown in the image is ambiguous to me, so I can't quite clearly get what exactly \"Ask, don't tell!\" approach mean. Could you please explain?"}
{"_id": "254206", "title": "Creating New Scripts Dynamically in Lua", "text": "Right now this is just a crazy idea that I had, but I was able to implement the code and get it working properly. I am not entirely sure of what the use cases would be just yet. What this code does is create a new Lua script file in the project directory. The ScriptWriter takes as arguments the file name, a table containing any arguments that the script should take when created, and a table containing any instance variables to create by default. My plan is to extend this code to create new functions based on inputs sent in during its creation as well. What makes this cool is that the new file is both generated and loaded dynamically on the fly. Theoretically you could get this code to generate and load any script imaginable. One use case I can think of is an AI that creates scripts to map out it's functions, and creates new scripts for new situations or environments. At this point, this is all theoretical, though. Here is the test code that is creating the new script and then immediately loading it and calling functions from it:               function Card:doScriptWriterThing()         local scriptName = \"ScriptIAmMaking\"              local scripter = scriptWriter:new(scriptName, {\"argumentName\"}, {name = \"'test'\", one = 1})         scripter:makeFileForLoadedSettings()              local loadedScript = require (scriptName)         local scriptInstance = loadedScript:new(\"sayThis\")         print(scriptInstance:get_name()) --will print test         print(scriptInstance:get_one()) -- will print 1         scriptInstance:set_one(10000)         print(scriptInstance:get_one()) -- will print 10000         print(scriptInstance:get_argumentName()) -- will print sayThis         scriptInstance:set_argumentName(\"saySomethingElse\")         print(scriptInstance:get_argumentName()) --will print saySomethingElse     end      Here is **ScriptWriter.lua**               local ScriptWriter = {}          local twoSpaceIndent = \"  \"     local equalsWithSpaces = \" = \"     local newLine = \"\\n\"          --scriptNameToCreate must be a string     --argumentsForNew and instanceVariablesToCreate must be tables and not nil     function ScriptWriter:new(scriptNameToCreate, argumentsForNew, instanceVariablesToCreate)              local instance = setmetatable({}, { __index = self })              instance.name = scriptNameToCreate         instance.newArguments = argumentsForNew         instance.instanceVariables = instanceVariablesToCreate         instance.stringList = {}              return instance     end     function ScriptWriter:makeFileForLoadedSettings()         self:buildInstanceMetatable()         self:buildInstanceCreationMethod()         self:buildSettersAndGetters()         self:buildReturn()         self:writeStringsToFile()     end          --very first line of any script that will have instances     function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceMetatable()         table.insert(self.stringList, \"local \" .. self.name .. \" = {}\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, newLine)     end          --every script made this way needs a new method to create its instances     function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceCreationMethod()         --new() function declaration         table.insert(self.stringList, (\"function \" .. self.name .. \":new(\"))         self:buildNewArguments()         table.insert(self.stringList, \")\" .. newLine)              --first line inside :new() function         table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"local instance = setmetatable({}, { __index = self })\" .. newLine)              --add designated arguments inside :new()         self:buildNewArgumentVariables()              --create the instance variables with the loaded values         for key,value in pairs(self.instanceVariables) do           table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"instance.\" .. key .. equalsWithSpaces .. value .. newLine)         end              --close the :new() function         table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"return instance\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"end\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, newLine)     end     function ScriptWriter:buildNewArguments()          --if there are arguments for :new(), add them         for key,value in ipairs(self.newArguments) do           table.insert(self.stringList, value)           table.insert(self.stringList, \", \")          end         if next(self.newArguments) ~= nil then --makes sure the table is not empty first           table.remove(self.stringList) --remove the very last element, which will be the extra \", \"         end     end     function ScriptWriter:buildNewArgumentVariables()         --add the designated arguments to :new()         for key, value in ipairs(self.newArguments) do           table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"instance.\" .. value .. equalsWithSpaces .. value .. newLine)         end     end          --the instance variables need separate code because their names have to be the key and not the argument name     function ScriptWriter:buildSettersAndGetters()         for key,value in ipairs(self.newArguments) do             self:buildArgumentSetter(value)             self:buildArgumentGetter(value)             table.insert(self.stringList, newLine)         end         for key,value in pairs(self.instanceVariables) do             self:buildInstanceVariableSetter(key, value)             self:buildInstanceVariableGetter(key, value)             table.insert(self.stringList, newLine)         end     end     --code for arguments passed in     function ScriptWriter:buildArgumentSetter(variable)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"function \" .. self.name .. \":set_\" .. variable .. \"(newValue)\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"self.\" .. variable .. equalsWithSpaces ..  \"newValue\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"end\" .. newLine)     end     function ScriptWriter:buildArgumentGetter(variable)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"function \" .. self.name .. \":get_\" .. variable .. \"()\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"return \" .. \"self.\" .. variable .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"end\" .. newLine)     end     --code for instance variable values passed in     function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceVariableSetter(key, variable)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"function \" .. self.name .. \":set_\" .. key .. \"(newValue)\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"self.\" .. key .. equalsWithSpaces .. \"newValue\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"end\" .. newLine)     end     function ScriptWriter:buildInstanceVariableGetter(key, variable)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"function \" .. self.name .. \":get_\" .. key .. \"()\" .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, twoSpaceIndent .. \"return \" .. \"self.\" .. key .. newLine)         table.insert(self.stringList, \"end\" .. newLine)     end          --last line of any script that will have instances     function ScriptWriter:buildReturn()         table.insert(self.stringList, \"return \" .. self.name)     end          function ScriptWriter:writeStringsToFile()         local fileName = (self.name .. \".lua\")         file = io.open(fileName, 'w')         for key,value in ipairs(self.stringList) do           file:write(value)         end         file:close()     end          return ScriptWriter      And here is what the code provided will generate:               local ScriptIAmMaking = {}          function ScriptIAmMaking:new(argumentName)         local instance = setmetatable({}, { __index = self })         instance.argumentName = argumentName         instance.name = 'test'         instance.one = 1         return instance     end          function ScriptIAmMaking:set_argumentName(newValue)         self.argumentName = newValue     end     function ScriptIAmMaking:get_argumentName()         return self.argumentName     end          function ScriptIAmMaking:set_name(newValue)         self.name = newValue     end     function ScriptIAmMaking:get_name()         return self.name     end          function ScriptIAmMaking:set_one(newValue)         self.one = newValue     end     function ScriptIAmMaking:get_one()         return self.one     end          return ScriptIAmMaking      All of this is generated with these calls:               local scripter = scriptWriter:new(scriptName, {\"argumentName\"}, {name = \"'test'\", one = 1})     scripter:makeFileForLoadedSettings()      I am not sure if I am correct that this could be useful in certain situations. What I am looking for is feedback on the readability of the code, and following Lua best practices. I would also love to hear whether this approach is a valid one, and whether the way that I have done things will be extensible."}
{"_id": "218007", "title": "The clock problem - to if or not to if?", "text": "Let's say, we have a simple digital clock. To \"power\" it, we use a routine executed every second. We update seconds part in it. But, what about minutes and hours part? What is better / more professional / offers better performance:   1. Ignore all checking and update hour, minute and seconds part each time, every second.   2. Use `if` \\+ a variable for checking, if 60 (or 3600) seconds passed and update minute / hour part only at that precise moments. This leads us to a question, what is better -- unnecessary drawings (first approach) or extra `if`s? I've just spotted a Javascript digital clock, one of millions similar on one of billions pages. And I noticed that all three parts (hours, minutes and seconds) are updated every second, though first changes its value only once per 3600 seconds and second once per 60 seconds. I'm not to experienced developer, so I might me wrong. But everything, what I've learnt up until now, tells me, that `if` are far better then executing drawing / refreshing sequences only to draw the same content."}
{"_id": "46411", "title": "Successful Common Code Libraries", "text": "Are there any processes, guidelines or best practices that can be followed for the successful implementation of a common code libraries. Currently we are discussing the implementation of common code libraries within our dev team. In our instance, our common code libraries would compliment mainstream .net software packages we develop against. In particular, im interested in details and opinions on:   * Organic vs design first approach   * Version management    * Success stories (when the do work)    * Horror stories (when they dont work) Many Thanks"}
{"_id": "170740", "title": "Do unit tests sometimes break encapsulation?", "text": "I very often hear the following: \"If you want to test private methods, you'd better put that in another class and expose it.\" While sometimes that's the case and we have a hiding concept inside our class, other times you end up with classes that have the same attributes (or, worst, every attribute of one class become a argument on a method in the other class) and exposes functionality that is, in fact, implementation detail. Specially on TDD, when you **refactor** a class with public methods out of a previous tested class, that class is now part of your interface, but has no tests to it (since you refactored it, and is a implementation detail). Now, I may be not finding an obvious better answer, but if my answer is the \"correct\", that means that sometimes writting unit tests can break encapsulation, and divide the same responsibility into different classes. A simple example would be testing a setter method when a getter is not actually needed for anything in the real code. Please when aswering don't provide simple answers to specific cases I may have written. Rather, try to explain more of the generic case and theoretical approach. And this is neither language specific. Thanks in advance. **EDIT:** The answer given by Matthew Flynn was really insightful, but didn't quite answer the question. Altough he made the fair point that you either don't test private methods or extract them because they really are other concern and responsibility (or at least that was what I could understand from his answer), I think there are situations where unit testing private methods is useful. My primary example is when you have a class that has one responsibility but the output (or input) that it gives (takes) is just to complex. For example, a hashing function. There's no good way to break a hashing function apart and mantain cohesion and encapsulation. However, testing a hashing function can be really tough, since you would need to calculate by hand (you can't use code calculation to test code calculation!) the hashing, and test multiple cases where the hash changes. In that way (and this may be a question worth of its own topic) I think private method testing is the best way to handle it. Now, I'm not sure if I should ask another question, or ask it here, but are there any better way to test such complex output (input)? OBS: Please, if you think I should ask another question on that topic, leave a comment. :) **EDIT2:** I accepted a answer as my correct because it made me think and decide my course of action, altough it didn't answered my queston completely. But for those who face the same problem as I do (one cohesive class that will change together, but is still too hard to test by itsfelf), I'll tell what I did and why. I decided that the output of that class is simply too hard to a computer to test correctly, so I didn't test it. I could have used a framework to test it's private methods (which would be the best idea, I think), but I didn't want to get to that point. If you are wondering what it is that is cohesive and respects SRP, and still is too hard to a computer to test, I'll give some examples: heightmap generation, hashing functions, procedural music generation (you can test some units, but the highest level unit is simply too subjective)."}
{"_id": "140222", "title": "Any Code Review tool with direct connection to CVS?", "text": "I've found many Code Review tools:   * Phabricator (by Facebook) - http://phabricator.org/   * Rietveld (by Google) - http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/rietveld.html   * GitHub - https://github.com/   * Crucible - http://www.atlassian.com/software/crucible/overview   * GitLab - http://gitlabhq.com/demo.html   * SmartBear - http://smartbear.com/products/software-development/code-review   * etc. But didn't found any, which would be directly connected with the versioning system. As I want the code review proccess to be required, so nobody can push any single line of unreviewed code to master, I need my versioning system to **deny all pushes of revisions which were not reviewed yet**. Is there any tool which does that? Or is there any easy way how to do that?"}
{"_id": "240265", "title": "How to manage a winforms application installed in many PCs connected to a single sql database?", "text": "I have a winforms application that connects to a single sql server 2012 database and is executed in many PCs of a company. I'm having several problems with some transactions inside the application, deadlocks and timeouts so the refactor idea comes to my head. Actually the app is using DbConnection object (the app starts with Framework 2.0 and recently was updated to Framework 3.5 but the data access layer was not changed) to perform the sql calls to the database and in the Program.cs the connection is opened and until the user doesn't close the app the connection maintains opened. What are my options to refactor this app?   * Entity Framework? => With this I must to say that the SQL database has not Foreign Keys   * Refactor the Data Access Layer to use a more efficient connection? Maybe using TransactionScope?   * Is the always connected app efficient?"}
{"_id": "176911", "title": "Designing a plug-in system", "text": "I'm working on a Java project and I would like to add a plug-in system. More precisely, I would like to let the user design his own module, pack it into a jar, leave it in a \"plugins/\" subfolder of my application and be done with it. I've managed to get a child classloader to instantiate objects of classes located in external jars, but now I'm facing a design dilemma: Say Joe makes a plug-in and he packs it in joeplugin.jar. I would really like Joe to have a class named \"instantiation.Factory\" and I would also like everyone to have this class with this exact location and name. (This factory class obviously implements a interface that I provide and through it I get what I want from the plug-in.) If Joe wouldn't be restricted in this way I would have to look into his entire jar for some class that implements my factory interface and I don't want to imagine how complicated things get. So my question is: should I enforce a strict naming convention for this single class? I have no idea how plug-in systems work."}
{"_id": "240262", "title": "Benefits of Java in education?", "text": "I hope this isn't too off-topic and/or opinion based. I'm looking for examples and reasons why Java is an acceptable language for education purposes. Here's why: I learned programming on my own in C at the age of about 15. In school we used Pascal (which I think is quite OK, especially in educational context). In University, Java was used and I was disgusted. Examples: Verbosity:               RenderingHints rh = new RenderingHints(          RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,          RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);     g2.setRenderingHints(rh);      * * * Listener classes instead of functions. * * * No overloading (resulting in ugly `.equals()` and `.get()` instead of `==` and `[]`). * * * When I was able to pick a programming language on my own again, I chose Python and everything \"felt just right\". Now the problem is that I'm going to become a teacher for computer science in german secondary schools (grade 5-13), where I will be forced to teach Java. So I'm looking for the _pretty parts_ of Java. What is especially easy/readable/... to implement in Java? Preferably in an educational context, but also from a professional programmer's point of view."}
{"_id": "225334", "title": "Why doesn't Haskell have a 'format' function for string interpolation?", "text": "I'm trying to use Shake and I stumbled upon the following problem: there's no easy and convenient way to interpolate a string. I know about `Text.Printf` \u2014 it's not what I'm looking for. The interpolation syntax I'm talking about is like this: (Make)               HEADERS_DIR := /some/path/to/dir          CFLAGS := \"-g -I$(HEADERS_DIR) -O2\"      (Python)               headers_dir = \"/some/path/to/dir\"          cflags = \"-g -I{headers_dir} -O2\".format(**locals())      And now compare this to possible Haskell's solution. Firstly:               $ cabal install interpolatedstring-perl6     $ ghci -XExtendedDefaultRules -XQuasiQuotes      And then:               > import Text.InterpolatedString.Perl6 (qq)     > let headers_dir = \"/path/to/some/dir\"     > [qq| -g -I$headers_dir -O2 |] :: String      While I think Make goes maybe a step too far in its eagerness to interpolate even when not asked, I wonder why Haskell doesn't have a `format` function like Python does. It could parse the supplied string and pull the value with same name as referenced in pattern:               let headers_dir = \"/path/to/some/dir\"     format \"-g -I$headers_dir -O2\"      Is there a specific reason why it's not implemented, or everyone is just happy with `Text.Printf`'s verbosity and/or lengthy setup of interpolation libraries? **Update** : A lot of people misinterpret the question as asking about general string formatting, with possibility of precision specification in case of integers, etc. The examples provided demonstrate one specific case of interpolation, which is just \"substitute the result of `show a` at the place of name\". It does allow for simpler syntax, and it does not use a variadic function per se."}
{"_id": "201802", "title": "Development of algorithmical concept for scheduling and allocation problem", "text": "I have to solve a problem in the field of _operations research_. I want to gather some general approaches to evaluate them to pick the most promising to design a problem-related program. * * * **Problem definition** Company ACME that sells customized collages and has a production that adheres to mass customization principles. **Production**   * A _desk_ **D** where the _collages_ are created (maybe there will be more desks in future, but not for now)   * A _collage_ **C** is composed of...   * Diverse _square pictures_ **P** We can consider the collage as created, when the last needed square picture is created.   * _Marker_ **M** of _color_ **T** and capacity **c_m** A _picture_ is drawn with one or more _marker(s)_ of same _color_. Each _picture_ consumes a certain amount of _marker capacity_. It is possible that a pictures can _consume_ more than one marker. Empty _markers_ can be refilled but that takes a fixed amount of time. The drawer is an android that works 24/7 (since androids have no human rights yet) and can hold _mutliple markers_ (there is a limit, we can assume 2 for now), if one _marker_ is empty, he can switch to the next and doesn't loose time because of refilling. Changing the _marker_ because another _color_ is needed, also takes time. The _markers_ are **not** at the android's desk, only the one he currently uses. They get there at the time they're scheduled. The problem now is to schedule the specific _square picture assignments_ , the according _marker assignments_ , _marker refills_ and _color switches_ so that every single step of the collage production is planned considering a high output rate (that includes the minimaziton of color switches). * * * **Question** I need help finding algorithms and ideas for solving the problem. Maybe there are some best practices or problem instances to map I haven't thought of. E. g. _TSP_ , where I'm not sure how to apply it in this special case. * * * **My Solutions/Ideas so far**   * Simulated Annealing The square Pictures assignments, marker assignments, etc. are consindered as events. Find a permutation of events that minimizes global cost function.   * Auction class algorithms Every square picture assignment gets a balance of money according to the return value of a per-assignment cost function. The assignments can _buy_ the needed resources in an auction house. Upon a valid buy, the resource and the assignment are scheduled.   * Map to _graph instance_ (Don't know exactly how to do that yet) and find path with minimum weight. * * * **Additional info** There is a meta tier with a superior **ERP** (Enterprise resource planning) system, that already does some rough planing. The task here is the detailed planing as a **MES** (Manufacturing Execution System) would do it. But I don't know the number of collages I have to plan in a given time frame. I just know that it is an ongoing problem, and that there is no need to use an online algorithm. The program I'll intend to develop gets called on demand to schedule the production for some days. I found a way to map the problem to simulated annealing and another approach following the auction class algorithms. I need help with evaluating these approaches, or even collecting new ideas, best practises to solve this problem, since I never dealt with a problem instance like this before. E. g. an answer like take a look at algorithm xyz would help me out, or first approaches to a graph mapping."}
{"_id": "117868", "title": "How to test software that burns CDs without wasting CDs?", "text": "I want to write an application that can be used to burn CDs (music). I know I should test it with real CDs anyway, but I don't want to do this every time I make a small change. But I do want to know and test if the right data will be burnt, so you don't get corrupted CDs. I am using a library which only exposes APIs to directly burn to a physical drive; it doesn't allow you to write to a disk image (which would be much easier to test). How could I test this without wasting CDs and time for every change/few changes I make?"}
{"_id": "139612", "title": "Looking for a better Factory pattern (Java)", "text": "After doing a rough sketch of a high level object model, I am doing iterative TDD, and letting the other objects emerge as a refactoring of the code (as it increases in complexity). (That whole approach may be a discussion/argument for another day.) In any case, I am at the point where I am looking to refactor code blocks currently in an if-else blocks into separate objects. This is because there is another another value combination which creates new set of logical sub- branches. To be more specific, this is a trading system feature, where buy orders have different behavior than sell orders. Responses to the orders have a numeric indicator field which describes some event that occurred (e.g. fill, cancel). The combination of this numeric indicator field plus whether it is a buy or sell, require different processing buy the code. Creating a family of objects to separate the code for the unique handling each of the combinations of the 2 fields seems like a good choice at this point. The way I would normally do this, is to create some Factory object which when called with the 2 relevant parameters (indicator, buysell), would return the correct subclass of the object. Some times I do this pattern with a map, which allows to look up a live instance (or constructor to use via reflection), and sometimes I just hard code the cases in the Factory class. So - for some reason this feels like not good design (e.g. one object which knows all the subclasses of an interface or parent object), and a bit clumsy. Is there a better pattern for solving this kind of problem? And if this factory method approach makes sense, can anyone suggest a nicer design?"}
{"_id": "233867", "title": "Design pattern for method to accept one of several static items in C#?", "text": "I want to illustrated my question by way of a (hopefully) representative example. Lets say I have a situation where I am developing a class library in C# to be used in some simulations. I want to define the planets (Earth, Mars, Saturn, etc.) and have each of them have some properties and methods that are common in interface (name, signature, etc.) but unique in implementation per-each. I.e. Earth.Mass is not equal to Mars.Mass. So far no big deal. I want to have some other classes/methods/algorithm that accept as an argument a planet and use its defined properties and method:               double MyApparentWeight(Planet someplanet, double MassInKG)     double DistanceFromInKM(Planet someplanet, Planet originplanet)      Planets could be used all over the place by someone using this library. All \"Earth\"s should be identical and all \"Saturn\"s should be identical. Obviously the \"Earth\"s are distinct from the \"Saturn\"s. I also want a user of the library to be able to easily create a new planet (e.g. Vulcan, Endor, Tralfamadore, Persephone, Rupert, etc.). It should be forced to supply the properties and methods of the existing ones and hence be useable by the MyApparentWeight and DistanceFromInKM methods. So the base level approach is that there is a Planet class and then the specific ones (Earth, Vulcan, etc.) simply inherit from that. In this case though a user needs to either create an instance of Earth and carry it around or create a new one every time it is needed. That could be unnecessarily clunky (especially in light of the expected users) and possibly a performance hit since some Planets could have initialization steps of reading date from files, etc. The next idea was the above but with a singleton paradigm. That's basically what I've done so far. This seems to be dictating internal implementation to any new Planets that are created (and again some what of a concern given the potential level of some users). This project is how I've been cutting my C#/.NET teeth. My initial naive approach was to try to do static classes with interfaces or inheritance. Obviously I learned quickly the folly of that path. At a high level that is the kind of paradigm I would have wanted though. Is there some other design pattern that I'm missing that could cover this type of situation? Appreciate any suggestions. # Updates I may not have made it clear that this `Planet` example was only meant to be illustrative structurally and not directly representative of the actual computations. Some people seemed to get a little wrapped up in the implementations of what data is being represented within them and other peripheral aspects. The suggestions of the individual planets (like Earth) merely being instances of the `Planet` class didn't catch my points about potentially significant different implementations for their internal mechanics supporting their methods and properties. I'm also at a loss as to how it helps with not wanting to manage carrying around those instances potentially anywhere you may want to use them or having to create new instances. Glenn's extension of Stephen's suggestion I think actually works the best in the context of what I need here. I can couple that with rsbarro's suggestion of having static properties for the built in `Planet` children. (Actually more like `interface IPlanet` implementers). That provides the easiest access for the users for the most commonly used items and offers a slight performance improvement of not having to retrieve from the dictionary by name each time. It still offers the ability for the users to dynamically add more types of Planets. I don't yet have the rep to up-vote all of the answers I mentioned above or I would. Thank you all for your suggestions and feedback."}
{"_id": "80076", "title": "What do you do if you find a rewrite is taking too long?", "text": "I know Joel says that rewrites are always bad, m'kay, but that is assuming the person who wrote the code in the first place had some idea what they were doing. I've got a medium sized (for a single developer anyway, ~18k LoC) C++ project, which I started when I did not truly know C++. Therefore, there are several things that are just... wrong. Wrong is the only way to describe it. It needs to be rewritten, plain and simple. However -- I've spent a long freaking time doing the rewrite -- bugs in the original aren't getting fixed. However, some of the bugs themselves are problems with the architecture of the original tool -- and some of that is what I need to fix would require touching almost every line of code anyway. On one hand, I feel fixing the bugs in the old program is going to be a massive wasted effort, because those bugs aren't even possible with the new design I've been working on. On the other hand, I've felt that I've neglected users of my original program because it's not been updated in so long. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "80077", "title": "What are the worst things that inexperienced developers forget to think about?", "text": "As a young developer, I would find it useful to get some advice regarding things to think about in order to develop a high-quality application. In my college courses, most teachers emphasized input validation and some talked about security concerns, but no one covered the importance of certain other things, like logging for example. What are some mistakes that inexperienced developers tend to make which could lead to frustration for more experienced developers?"}
{"_id": "205364", "title": "Make shareware program free in some countries", "text": "**Idea.** To make my shareware program free in less-developed countries. Or release a free edition for these countries. **Purpose.** More users, bug reports, extensions, active forum, etc. Anyway, 90% sales are in ~30 richest countries. Why not make it free in China, India, Russia... **Question.** What are possible problems? I can't find info on this topic. It seems that almost nobody does it (I know only Windows 7 Home Basic). **Algorithm.** How would you implement it? I know it's possible to detect country using IP. It's OK if would fail to detect in 20% cases. When country is detected, the user would get license key for free. Country detection and license key generation can be implemented in web server. EDIT: Country detection can be performed when user wants (clicks button 'Register for free'). Then program connects to my website, which detects country and generates a license key from user's hardware ID. Then the free key can be used on that PC like a purchased key, and no internet connection required. On other PC/hardware the user can simply repeat the procedure, as long as he/she is in one of these countries. EDIT: Country detection is easy and fast, i tested it with this php script+database. It worked with all IPs of my website visitors of this month. However some of them may actually live in other countries (see jwenting answer)."}
{"_id": "203409", "title": "Do logged in users need to browse a site over https?", "text": "I've never thought it was necessary, but a client has requested that all webpages served to logged in users be delivered over HTTPS. Aside from the implementation standpoint, which I don't think I'm going to pursue is there any real reason for this request ? For clarity, the login / logout process, account settings, registration preferences and all user related scripts are served over https. but I can't see the point in my news articles, press releases, events etc... being served in this manner? Am I missing something ?"}
{"_id": "70181", "title": "Has anyone used a Stub in production code?", "text": "I have a situation where some procedure returns an object (kind of like a DTO) with a certain interface:               interface ISomeInterface     {         string StringReadOnlyProperty { get; }         int IntReadWriteProperty { get; set; }     }      (In the real implementation, there are more properties). There are two different places where these objects are handled - one process that generates new instances, and another process that manipulates existing instances. Internally, these two implementations are very different. The \"new\" instance is just a stub, and the \"existing\" instance has lots of tracking logic. So I need to have this \"Stub\" implementation kicking around all the time. I was thinking about how nicely Rhino Mocks can stub up implementations of an interface without having to generate a concrete class. Has anyone ever used a \"stubbing\" mechanism like Rhino Mocks, but in their production code rather than in their unit tests? It just seems like a bad practice, because of the dependency to a testing framework."}
{"_id": "94709", "title": "Java stored procedures in Oracle, a good idea?", "text": "I'm considering using a Java stored procedure as a very small shim to allow UDP communication from a PL/SQL package. Oracle does not provide a UTL_UDP to match its UTL_TCP. There is a 3rd party XUTL_UDP that uses Java, but it's closed source (meaning I can't see how it's implemented, not that I don't want to use closed source). An important distinction between PL/SQL and Java stored procedures with regards to networking: PL/SQL sockets are closed when dbms_session.reset_package is called, but Java sockets are not. So if you want to keep a socket open to avoid the tear-down/reconnect costs, you can't do it in sessions that are using reset_package (like mod_plsql or mod_owa HTTP requests). I haven't used Java stored procedures in a production capacity in Oracle before. This is a very large, heavily-used database, and this particular shim would be heavily used as well (it serves as a UDP bridge between a PL/SQL RFC 5424 syslog client and the local rsyslog daemon). Am I opening myself up for woe and horror, or are Java stored procedures stable and robust enough for usage in 10g? I'm wondering about issues with the embedded JVM, the jit, garbage collection, or other things that might impact a heavily used database."}
{"_id": "10002", "title": "Is there a standard for when you include libraries or not?", "text": "I often come across a class which has a single reference to another library and was wondering if its better to include the library or to reference the object by it's full name. Is one better then the other? Is one more of a standard then another? For example using System.Windows.Messagebox: Option A:               using System.Windows;          public class MyClass     {         SomeMethod()         {             MessageBox.Show(\"Something\");         }     }      Option B:               public class MyClass     {         SomeMethod()         {             System.Windows.MessageBox.Show(\"Something\");         }     }      If B, how many references do you need before you decide to add the entire library?"}
{"_id": "70184", "title": "What are my options? - Separating out the UI", "text": "I'm working on a project where the everything is driven from the a .dll on the server. The UI and the business rules are all on this .dll This makes it pretty difficult to debug. My question is, I would like to present alternatives to allowing the users to the ability to still create customized screens without the UI and the rules being so tightly intertwined. Can anyone offer suggestions or references to ways of splitting out the UI but still allowing ultimate customization abilities? Let me know if I need to add further information."}
{"_id": "176761", "title": "Compute if a function is pure", "text": "As per Wikipedia: > In computer programming, a function may be described as pure if both these > statements about the function hold: The function always evaluates the same > result value given the same argument value(s). The function result value > cannot depend on any hidden information or state that may change as program > execution proceeds or between different executions of the program, nor can > it depend on any external input from I/O devices. Evaluation of the result > does not cause any semantically observable side effect or output, such as > mutation of mutable objects or output to I/O devices. I am wondering if it is possible to write a function that compute if a function is pure or not. Example code in Javascript:               function sum(a,b) {         return a+b;     }          function say(x){         console.log(x);     }          isPure(sum) // True     isPure(say) // False"}
{"_id": "219357", "title": "Design pattern for syncing data in android", "text": "I have been seeing two implementations for syncing data between the server and the client on majority of the apps. This assumes no GCM is set up:-   1. Running an intent service periodically which downloads the data from the network and stores in the database.   2. Implementing a Sync Adapter which runs periodically. Which of the above would you recommend to have in your app and why?"}
{"_id": "176762", "title": "Is it time to deprecate synchronized, wait and notify?", "text": "Is there a single scenario (other than compatibility with ancient JVMs) where using `synchronized` is preferable to using a `Lock`? Can anyone justify using `wait` or `notify` over the newer systems? Is there any algorithm that **must** use one of them in its implementation? I see a previous questions that touched on this matter but I would like to take this a little further and actually `deprecate` them. There are far too many traps and pitfalls and caveats with them that have been ironed out with the new facilities. I just feel it may soon be time to mark them obsolete."}
{"_id": "236333", "title": "Would a \"downcast if block\" be a reasonable language feature?", "text": "Consider the following \"if cast\":               class A     { public void f1() { ... } }     class B : A { public void f2() { ... } }          A a = foo(); // might return A or B          if ( a is B ) {         //  Inside block, implicitly \"redeclare\" a as type B         //  It's B, go for it         a.f2();         //  Wouldn't compile.         a = new A();     }      We don't enter the block unless `a` is a `B`, therefore within the block, the compiler treats `a` exactly as if it had been declared as type `B`. You could assign null to it in the block if it's a reference type, but it would be a compile-time error to assign `new A()` to it, for example (thanks @ThomasEding for bringing up that question). Anything that could break that assumption that `a` is `B`, could just as easily break the following legal C# as well:               if ( a is B ) {         B b = a as B;              b.f2();     }      The former looks to me like syntactic sugar for the latter. Even if this feature makes sense, I'm sure Anders Hjelberg's lads have more useful features to implement. I'm just wondering if it's a worse idea than I think it is. **UPDATE** A serious objection would be that the feature as described adds semantics without adding syntax: From one version of the language to the next, the meaning of the above block would change significantly. It would be more tolerable with a new keyword. But then you'd be adding a new keyword."}
{"_id": "176764", "title": "Custom .NET apps and clustering", "text": "So for a clustered environment - how would this work with your apps? what about your own custom .NET apps? Would there be a special way to develop them? I know that you can say create a simple Hello world app, and cluster that but they wouldnt be something you could see interms of the UI or anything, so they would effectively need to be developed as a Windows Service perhaps or even as a standard Console app which runs and not wait for user input but you wouldnt see any output from it (unless you redirect output to somewhere else) What im getting at here is... for those who have experience or developed a cluster application in .NET, how did you do it and what are the things to be aware of? For example we have the cloud service - fundamentally its built on clustering - if there is an outage, another node takes place and service is resumed as normal but we dont really see much of that downtime."}
{"_id": "219351", "title": "\"state\" or \"status\"? When should a variable name contain the word \"state\", and when should a variable name instead contain the word \"status\"?", "text": "Reading code and discussions pertaining to code, I often see the words \"state\" and \"status\" used interchangeably, but the following tendencies seem to exist:   * When a variable holds a value intended to indicate that something is in a certain state, the name of that variable more often than not contains the word \"state\", or an abbreviation thereof.   * However, when the return value of a function serves to indicate some such state, we tend to call that value a \"status code\"; and when that value is stored in a variable, this variable is commonly named \"status\" or something similar. In isolation that's all fine I guess, but when the aforementioned variables are actually one and the same, a choice needs to be made involving the perverted intricacies of English language (or human language in general). What is the prevailing coding-standard or convention when it comes to disambiguating between the two? Or should one of those two always be avoided? This english.stackexchange question is also relevant, I suppose."}
{"_id": "76890", "title": "Dominant team members in a Scrum team", "text": "What would you do in a situation where a team member tries to take responsibilities are not initially assigned to him but to the Scrum Master?"}
{"_id": "236338", "title": "Advise on loose coupling between user controls", "text": "I have 5 user controls on the page and each control implements it's own interface that contains properties and events. In order to enable communication between user controls, I am creating a property of target user control inside other user control. Through this property, it's state can be altered and be able to register its events. Below is the pseudo code of results user control. It subscribes to OnSearch event of Search user control.               public interface IResults     {          //other fields         ISearch SearchControl { get;}     }          public partial class Results : IResults     {      //other fields           public ISearch SearchControl      {              get{         this.Page.Parent.FindControl(\"UCSearch\") as ISearch;}      }           protected override void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)      {         this.SearchControl.OnSearch += new EventHandler(testMethod);      }     }      Is it ok to have the reference properties inside user controls to subscribe to the events and manipulating the state. Does it create any maintenance problem in future. Does FindControl and type casting degrade the performance of the application."}
{"_id": "141175", "title": "Why is verbosity bad for a programming language?", "text": "I have seen many people around complaining about verbosity in programming languages. I find that, within some bounds, the more verbose a programming language is, the better it is to understand. I think that verbosity also reinforces writing clearer APIs for that particular language. The only disadvantage I can think of is that it makes you type more, but I mean, most people use IDEs that do all that work for you. so, What are possible downsides to a verbose programming language?"}
{"_id": "246833", "title": "Does parallel mergesort run differently on mesh vs linear array of processors?", "text": "I'm currently taking course on introduction to algorithm and I came across the parallel mergesort algorithm. My question is: Is there any differences in the algorithm plan if it runs on a 2d mesh instead of infinite linear proccessors ? Thank you,"}
{"_id": "184783", "title": "Can Objective C categories serve the same purpose as Traits do in Scala?", "text": "The statement of the question seems little abstract to me, so please read the details below. Since the time when C++ was the first choice Object Oriented Language for almost anything, we had a big problem of Multiple inheritance in C++ when two different implementations of same function declared or defined in a (abstract or concrete)parent class of the two, come to a common child class and create ambiguity, popularly known as the Diamond problem. C++ gave a solution : the \"virtual\" keyword, to be used while specifying the parent class(es) so that only one copy goes to the final child class being decided at runtime instead of compile time based on certain rules. Java tried to solve this by providing single inheritance and avoiding multiple inheritance completely. But then it lacked a feature where a class behaviour could be influenced by a bit and that may change in future or more behaviour may be added to it and we needed a way to encapsulate behaviour, then came the construct \"interface\" which had nothing but method declarations which each implementing class had to implement in their own way. Protocols in Objective C are more or less the same thing. However this approach has a major drawback, and this is where my question comes into picture. The drawback is, if a class has many subclasses implementing the same interface in the same way. The same code has to be written everywhere in each class. If it was all the classes, then the implementation could have been there in the parent class which gives the implementation. At max what can be done is to introduce a class with the implementation of the common method in between the current parent class and make all those classes inherit from it. But this can lead to lot of bugs if not done properly in a complex project. Scala provides Traits which not only serve as interfaces but can add full blown implementations for few of them that can be mixed with some classes that require it and removed when not. I haven't seen the syntax but I have heard that Ruby solves the same problem using something called as mixins. In case of Objective C, we have protocols but they have the same limitations as Java interfaces. So my question is, If I create a category of a class and import it in any subclass of that class, Will the subclass get all those implementation methods? Also if I remove it, will it be synonymous to removing the trait inclusion declaration for a class? I might be wrong in any of my assumptions above, I am newbie when it comes to OOP design (and just got interested in FP). I would also appreciate any better solutions than this one."}
{"_id": "246502", "title": "Going through The C Programming Language K&R in Visual Studio", "text": "From what I have read, K&R seems to be a good place to start learning programming in general, and C programming specifically. However, I've just started the first chapter and I have a few questions. They may be extremely simple, and I apologize if that's the case (I am new, after all) -- but your helping me answer them would be very appreciated. 1) I understand the book is written to describe C languages in general. Does this mean the examples they give are just rough outlines, and that for me to attempt them myself I have to \"translate\" the general outline given into C++ or C# or whatever? For example, the textbook gives this program:               #include <stdio.h>      main()      {      printf(\"hello, world\\n\");      }      But I've found a program to print \"Hello, world\" in C#, for example is:               // A Hello World! program in C#.      using System;     namespace HelloWorld     {         class Hello          {             static void Main()              {                 Console.WriteLine(\"Hello World!\");                      // Keep the console window open in debug mode.                 Console.WriteLine(\"Press any key to exit.\");                 Console.ReadKey();             }         }     }      And the program in C++ looks different from both the above... So my question is: does the book expect me to be able to translate the first program (or outline, whatever it is) to a C# or C++ program -- I am using Visual Studio -- to be able to practice myself? 2) If the book does expect me to do this, do you all have any tips on how I can go about translating general C code to C# or C++. 3) This may be opinion, but which should I base my learning on (and practice coding in) -- C# or C++?"}
{"_id": "70459", "title": "Credibility of Windows azure architect program from Sundblad & Sundblad", "text": "I am planning to attend the Windows Azure Architect Program from S&S. http://www.windowsazurearchitect.com/ Although the website says it is a Microsoft Training Program, not sure how much credibility & recognition it has. If someone attended the program, please share feedback about the program as well."}
{"_id": "123935", "title": "Is there any example or resource explaining/showing code from High-level to Low-level to deep down Machine code?", "text": "I have been searching for an example over the internet that shows any operation like saving a file or drawing anything in UI or any other sort that shows the implementation from High-leve language code to Low-level code to deep down machine level code. The basic idea is to explain the computer working in a nutshell. Like, in high-level laguage we write `int c= int a + int b` which is compiled into low- level code `IL_0001: ldarg.1 IL_0002: ldarg.2 IL_0003: add` and then to machine level code. Any example or code flowchart from high-leve language to deep down machine code will be helpful."}
{"_id": "70454", "title": "Can memristors change programming paradigms? In what way?", "text": "Think about persistent storage that can preserve pointers: among other things there is no need to serialize/deserialize data. For example, you typically build a tree structure and then serialize it into XML so that it can be stored permanently on disk. Now there is no need for that: the structure in memory can be left there as is, possibly given a name, so that it can be used by other programs. Thus the concepts of loading/saving may be transformed into something else, if not eliminated altogether. File systems can become something entirely different: e.g. just memory with symbolic labels. Serialization will still be used in network communication of course. Besides, considering process isolation, memory protection etc, the scenario above may be a bit more complicated than that. One thing is clear though: large persistent addressable storage can at least save a lot of time, and at most cause paradigm shifts in programming. It would be interesting to hear your insights on this."}
{"_id": "123930", "title": "What's the best way to deal with large compressed files over FTP?", "text": "In my application, I'm getting product information files from an FTP server. They are text files that have been ZIP-compressed. At first, I thought uncompressed the file on the server then reading the text over the web would work, but the uncompressed files are ~900 MB, making it slow and inefficient while causing out-of-memory exceptions. How should I handle this type of problem? Should I download the compressed files, uncompress and process them locally, then re-upload them? Or is there another, more efficient way to do this?"}
{"_id": "42863", "title": "C#: Explicitly defining variable data types vs. using the keyword 'var'?", "text": "In C#, am I encouraged to use the all-purpose var keyword for every variable declaration? If yes, do I have to mention those special characters for literal values within the variable declaration like the M for decimal in the following statement:               var myDecimal = 14.5M;      If it makes a difference, I'm trying to do some web development with C#. Thanks for sharing."}
{"_id": "143416", "title": "Standard way of allowing general XML data", "text": "I'm writing a data gathering and reporting application that takes XML files as input, which will then be read, processed, and stored in a strongly-typed database. For example, an XML file for a \"Job\" might look like this:               <Data type=\"Job\">         <ID>12345</ID>         <JobName>MyJob</JobName>         <StartDate>04/07/2012 10:45:00 AM</StartDate>         <Files>             <File name=\"a.jpeg\" path=\"images\\\" />             <File name=\"b.mp3\" path=\"music\\mp3\\\" />         </Files>     </Data>      I'd like to use a schema to have a standard format for these input files (depending on what type of data is being used, for example \"Job\", \"User\", \"View\"), but I'd also like to not fail validation if there is extra data provided. For example, perhaps a Job has additional properties such as \"IsAutomated\", \"Requester\", \"EndDate\", and so on. I don't particularly care about these extra properties. If they are included in the XML, I'll simply ignore them when I'm processing the XML file, and I'd like validation to do the same, without having to include in the schema every single possible property that a customer might provide me with. Is there a standard way of providing such a schema, or of allowing such a general XML file that can still be validated without resorting to something as na\u00efve (and potentially difficult to deal with) as the below?               <Data type=\"Job\">         <Data name=\"ID\">12345</Data>         . . .         <Data name=\"Files\">             <Data name=\"File\">                 <Data name=\"Filename\">a.jpeg</Data>                 <Data name=\"path\">images</Data>             . . .         </Data>     </Data>"}
{"_id": "125306", "title": "How to choose the most suitable technologies for your project?", "text": "While architecting the system, often you have to choose the appropriate technologies to be used for every module. What are the different parameters to be considered while choosing the technologies/frameworks? How those parameters can affect the project quality, schedule, expense? Can anybody please explain in detail."}
{"_id": "121684", "title": "Building a complete program?", "text": "Reading books, watching videos, and reviewing tutorials is all very easy. Taking notes and actually learning the material may be slightly harder, but even then, anyone with a decent brain and a fair amount of interest, it's easy enough (not to mention, fun). The thing is, it doesn't really prepare you to write a full program or website. Let's say you're those teens (only in highschool, no true (college level) computer science or programming courses, and no real world experience), and you come out with Groupon. Or even Mark Zuckerburg, sure he was a genius, and he was a very capable programmer... but how? How do you recommend that people who are not necessarily new to programming, but new to programming real applications and real programmers go about developing it? What is the \"development process\" - especially for single programmers (or maybe 2-3 teens)? Also, as far as web development goes, what is the process? Was something like Facebook or Groupon written with a framework (like CodeIgniter or Zend for PHP)? Or do they develop their own frameworks? I'm not asking how to come up with a great idea, but how to implement great ideas in an effective way? Does anyone have advice? I've read a couple of books on both C and C++ (primarily the C Programming Language and the C++ Programming Language) and taken AP Computer Science (as well as read a few additional books on Java and OOP). I also have read a few tutorials on PHP (and CodeIgniter) and Python. But I'm still in highschool, and I'm technically not even old enough to work at an internship for a few more months."}
{"_id": "125302", "title": "How to organize code review process", "text": "I'm looking for a light-weight code review process. A couple of requirements, the reviewer must be able to do the review alone at the time of his/her choosing (not tied to check-ins), the reviewer must be able to easily find the target code, the review has to leave some document showing what was reviewed. I know there are tools available for code review but I work in a very ridig environment and introducing new tools is not an option. One idea I've been thinking about is to create a new Visual Studio Task List token called REVIEW, and use it to mark the code that needs reviewing. Something like,               // REVIEW doe_john: New method, not sure about the exception.      Then we would add a Review workitem in TFS (we're using the CMM template). Another possibility, which I would actually prefer, would be to have developers create a TFS Review workitem and add links to code to it, but I don't know if this is possible. Obviously you can add a link to a file, but I'd like to have a link to a particular method. PS. Posted originally to StackOverflow."}
{"_id": "186403", "title": "What is the common approach to component template databases?", "text": "**My Project:** I have employees who are required to go through a checklist when they encounter a duck, a cat, and a human. In our business, we have a set number of ducks, cats, and humans that come in and out of our doors. When they come in, we have to check that all of these features are present. **The features:** ![example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rYyiV.png) **Here is our current database design:** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/v4GP5.png) **Current Approach:**   1. When an animal enters our building, we get their ID.    2. Their ID gives us their animal record.   3. We create a new \"check_in\" record for the animal   4. Under the check_in record, we use the template given by the animal_type->feature_type relationship      * For example: Sam the duck will have a new check_in created with separate feathers, wings, beak, feet, and eyes check_in_feature entries.   5. We go through the process and set feature_is_present to true or false for each of the features   6. When done, we check them out and the check_in entry is complete **My Question:** In practice, this relational schema is very hard to work with. We've used it for years and are constantly slowed down when looking up information because of the weird joins this design tends to require. I have no doubt that this is a known problem with a more elegant solution than using this naive approach. Anyone know a better way to structure this, or better approach that will be easier and more efficient to work with? EDIT: Just realized there are artifacts from our actual system in the navigation properties sections, just ignore those. I don't want to recreate the images if I can avoid it"}
{"_id": "138560", "title": "Which books are good resources for designing APIs", "text": "I am looking for a book on how to design a web-service API. I'm constrained to using RPC-style Web services. In particular, I'm looking for guidance on   * [balancing...] **granular** _vs_ **course services**   * **required parameters** _vs_ **optional parameters**   * **small chatty services** _vs_ **services with large payloads** I'm also looking to address strategies for making reference data and caching on the consumer side. Even things like how to establish a rational naming convention are helpful. Which books are good resources for designing a web API that addresses these questions?"}
{"_id": "138563", "title": "Agile software development: How do you react *financially* to changing user requirements?", "text": "There's one thing I've always wondered when reading about all this \"agile development\" stuff here on SE and other sites: In \"traditional\" software engineering, you   1. collect the user's requirements,   2. write a specification based on these requirements,   3. give it to the customer and bill him for the work done so far,   4. do a (rough) technical design, so that you can estimate the cost of implementation,   5. give the user a price quote for the implementation,   6. wait for the customer to sign the specification and accept the offer,   7. design, implement, test,   8. bill. If, during the process, the requirements change, you send an offer (with a price) for the desired changes (or do it for free if the change is small, you like the customer and the customer doesn't do it too often). So, how does this work (financially) in an agile project, where frequent requirement changes are a part of the process?   * Do you write an offer for every design change? (Wouldn't this be quite a mess?)   * Or do you negotiate a fixed price and _hope_ that the customer does not change the requirements too often? (Could be risky, I know customers who would use this opportunity to request new features for years before accepting that the project is completed.)   * Or do you just bill the customer for the total time required? (Could be risky for the customer, who does not know the cost in advance.)"}
{"_id": "164465", "title": "Object construction design", "text": "I recently started to use c# to interface with a database, and there was one part of the process that appeared odd to me. When creating a SqlCommand, the method I was lead to took the form:               SqlCommand myCommand = new SqlCommand(\"Command String\", myConnection);      Coming from a Java background, I was expecting something more similar to               SqlCommand myCommand = myConnection.createCommand(\"Command String\");      I am asking, in terms of design, what is the difference between the two? The phrase \"single responsibility\" has been used to suggest that a connection should not be responsible for creating SqlCommands, but I would also say that, in my mind, the difference between the two is partly a mental one of the difference between a connection executing a command and a command acting on a connection, the latter of which seems less like what I have been lead to believe OOP should be. There is also a part of me wondering if the two should be completely separate, and should only come together in some sort of `connection.execute(command)` method. Can anyone help clear up these differences? Are any of these methods \"more correct\" than the others from an OO point of view? (P.S. the fact that c# is used is completely irrelevant. It just highlighted to me that different approaches were used)"}
{"_id": "164464", "title": "OO Software Architecture - base class that everything inherits from. Bad/good idea?", "text": "I am reviewing a proposed OO software architecture that looks like this:   * `Base`     * `Foo`       * `Something`     * `Bar`       * `SomethingElse` Where `Base` is a `static` class. My immediate thought was that every object in any class will inherit all the methods in `Base` which would create a _large_ object. Could this cause problems for a large system? The whole architecture is hierarchical.. the 'tree' is much bigger than this really. Does this sort of architecture have a name (hierarchical?!). What are the known pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "164466", "title": "How to discriminate commented code and documentation comments", "text": "After using version control tools, it is no longer necessary to comment out old code. However, some team members still comment out old code. Therefore, I want to clean them up. I want to mark commented lines which are really comments / documentation, so that every time I do not need to re-read all commented regions. The unmarked lines left are new commented code. How do I achieve this? Any existing tools or need to write on my own? Similar concept: in git, we have 'partial commit' to select some lines to commit. However, the lines marked in 'partial commit' is valid once only."}
{"_id": "211835", "title": "Path to learning compiler design", "text": "I'm not sure if this is an acceptable question, but compiler-os-design-where- to-start was, so I figured that I'd take a shot at it. I have taken no formal Computer Science classes. I have programmed in Python and attempted C# without success. My technical vocabulary is expansive, yet scattered over a very wide range of computer science topics. I have a very long way to go before I can get to a level where I could reasonably read a book about compiler design/theory. **I am asking what steps I need to take before attempting compiler design.** I have some examples here already:   * Computer architecture   * Binary   * How booting/kernels/OSes work   * Imperative vs. Comparative language design   * \"Grammars\" At least these are some examples of what I've seen. Edit: I can't for the life of me see how this problem is unclear. I quite clearly bolded what I was asking. I was expecting it to be marked as biased, vague/broad, or too generalized, but certainly not unclear. Don't be afraid to say it's unconstructive (just make sure whatever it is classified under is accurate)."}
{"_id": "133552", "title": "Real world implementation of functional programming?", "text": "I am trying to acquaint myself with different types of languages to understand the areas in which each one of them is extremely good at. So far, I have dabbled into C - a procedural language, C++ & java - static typed Object Oriented languages and groovy - a dynamic typed Object Oriented language. Every programming language has probably been started to answer a need. And I presume every language is extremely good at at least one thing because of which it becomes a standard in a specific area or field. Like C, C++ have become standard in areas like browser or game development. Python in the Linux world for its easy scripting ability, Java in the enterprise world, etc. Now I am interested to learn a functional programming language like Clojure or Lisp. So, where are functional programming languages used in real world scenarios? I don't think that one would use Clojure or Lisp for developing applications or UIs. So on what kind of projects should I indulge into after going through the basic tutorials and learning resources to get a brief understanding about the implementation of functional programming? And do you strongly recommend on One language in specific, like say clojure?"}
{"_id": "29866", "title": "Is MVC now the only way to write PHP?", "text": "Hey... its XMAS Eve and something is bugging me... yes, I have work on my mind even when I am on holiday. The vast amount of frameworks available for PHP now use MVC. Even ASP.net has its own MVC module. I can see the attraction of MVC, I really can and I use it frequently. The only downside that I can see is that you have to fire up the whole system to execute a page request. Depending on your task this can be a little wasteful. So the question. In a professional environment is this the only way to use PHP nowadays or are their other design methods which have alternative benefits?"}
{"_id": "202758", "title": "Avoiding null in a controller", "text": "I'm trying to work through how to write this code.               def get(params):         \"\"\" Fetch a user's details, or 404 \"\"\"         user = User.fetch_by_id(params['id'])         if not user:             abort(404)         # Render some template for the user...      What's the best way to handle the case where the lookup fails? One principle says you should avoid returning null values from functions. These lead to mistakes and AttributeErrors etc. later on in the file. Another idea is to have `fetch_by_id` raise a ValueError or similar if no user exists with that id. However there's a general principle that you shouldn't use exceptions for control flow, either, which doesn't help much. What could be done better in this case?"}
{"_id": "122084", "title": "Why high-tech OSs (like UNIX family) are mostly command based (rather than GUI based)?", "text": "DR-DOS, Plan, BSD, Sun Solaris, HP/UX, OpenServer.....and so on. Why high-tech OSs (like UNIX family) are mostly command based (rather than GUI based)?"}
{"_id": "1070", "title": "For ASP.NET Programmers: Does the executable 'dcpromo' have any significance?", "text": "`Dcpromo.exe` is famous among MCSEs for being they only way to create a Windows Domain Controller (in other words an Active Directory Domain) ... which in turn is often used by the ASP.NET Membership system. I'm trying to determine if I should put content on \"www.dcpromo.com\" geared for developers or more towards sysadmins. To me, a logical extension of this \"domain controller on the internet\" is to use WIF for the ASP.NET Membership system. We'd then have a website that will serve the developer's interests in the SSO, SAML, user managment and identity areas we all struggle with. So my question is: **Q:** Do programmers see a connection between the utility `dcpromo.exe` and ASP.NET Membership? If so does it make sense to have a purpose of http://www.dcpromo.com help developers in the areas of membership and cloud computing?"}
{"_id": "5372", "title": "How do programmers stay healthy?", "text": "Being a programmer is not a very healthy profession - long hours of sitting in front of a computer, with impending deadlines just over the cubicle. This takes a toll on the body and mind. So what tips do you have for programmers in order to stay healthy?"}
{"_id": "232050", "title": "How to build configurable forms?", "text": "I'm working on two separate projects now that are essentially just CMSs -- a bunch of forms for recording various bits of information. Each project is built to serve many clients, and each client seems to want to record slightly different information. In one project we've handled this either by copying and pasting all the logic surrounding that form for each client so that we could make the changes without affecting the other clients, or we build a master form containing all possible inputs and then programmatically remove the inputs that the client doesn't want (our framework allows us to remove inputs (essentially from the 'controller') before the final template rendering). Neither solution is really clean and causes the forms to be riddled with \"if\" conditions based on which client we're serving. The other project I'm just starting, and I don't want to run into the same pitfalls again, but I'm having trouble coming up with a good way to solve this problem. I could list out all the input IDs for each form element in the database and then create a mapping between them and the clients, and then in my form template wrap each widget rendering with a check to see if the input is enabled for the current client. On the backend -- when the form is submitted -- I could save only the data that is submitted and forgo the conditionals for the most part. This creates a dependency on the IDs used in the template must match those recorded in the DB -- I don't want to create the entire form programatically as that wouldn't give me enough customizability. That's the best I can come up with. Has anyone dealt with this sort of problem before? How did you approach it? What worked, what didn't? * * * For comparison, you might consider sites like Freshbooks, or Trello, or a bug tracker, or Facebook -- if any of those apps let each user customize his or her page to add or remove inputs so that they could record only the stuff they care about -- how would they manage this complexity from an architectural point of view?"}
{"_id": "175237", "title": "Rails vs. Drupal", "text": "I was querying indeed.com/salary to investigate general market trends. When comparing ruby on rails with drupal, you would observe a substantial difference between these two. I'm not sure if the data on indeed.com is reliable or not but I'd appreciate your comments if you have ever tried both rails and drupal. Actually I am a .net developer considering an alternative to my asp.net mvc skills and I like to learn some non-microsoft web programming skills as well."}
{"_id": "232058", "title": "How can I earn money on my software?", "text": "Over last several months I had written some good piece of numerical software in C# in .NET 4.0. Currently it has only versions for Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1 but thanks to Mono/Xamarin it wouldn't be too hard to port it to Linux, Mac OS and even to mobile devices. The software has some really nice features of programs like Mathematica, Matlab but it's easier and faster (and of course not that huge). But still it has: real and complex charts of any custom function, support for most of the special functions (bessel, gamma, mathieu etc), scripting language with easy matrix calculations, scientific calculator, numerical calculations etc. It has less bugs and more features every day because I really love to work on this. I was working on this software mainly as a hobby but few of my friend who are testing it told me that it is really good so I started to wonder how can I make money on it (or should I even try this). If I even try to publish it as a commercial product what should I do? I consider some options.   1. Make it free&open source, I would not make any money of it then but I would get a lot of users and popularity. It might be the best option for the development of my software. Still I feel like when it will be free and open source I would waste a lot of time on working for free.   2. Make it freeware on desktop but charge (or put ads in it) on mobile devices. It sounds reasonable but porting it on mobile devices would consume much time and I would need a lot of time to develop many different versions.   3. Make it commercial software. It could be nice if I will find people who will want to buy my application but it has many difficulties in it. I dont have any experience there, problems arrive: how should I charge for this, code obfuscation, key licensing etc. Any help would be appreciated here on how to do this.   4. Something else? I have some other questions too, e.g. what I need to do in the start. I guess I need to create support website and put some bug tracking software? Any components would you recommend for this (support website+ bug tracking software)?"}
{"_id": "178402", "title": "Is there a purpose for using pull requests on my own repo if I am the only developer?", "text": "So I got started with a real project of mine on GitHub and things are going pretty well and ideas are flowing a lot faster than I initially thought. In order to keep things organized, I setup some branches so I can develop different features separately. Now when I push my branch to GitHub, I have that section where I have two buttons : `Pull Request` and `Compare` with the name of the branch I recently pushed to. I understand the purpose of the `Compare` button but I don't get why I would want to create a pull request on my own repo. Can someone explain me why I would do that? Is it useful to make pull request on my own repo if I am the only developer?"}
{"_id": "178401", "title": "What is the standard term for my role?", "text": "I'm doing work that involves writing code and managing developers in a \"special projects\" division of a large company. I'd like to define my role better and figure out if there's an industry standard term for what I do, so that it will be easier for me to research best practices and work on a career path What I do all day:   * A macro that connects an Excel sheet to an Access database is acting funny; I get called in to figure out what's happening and debug it.   * Someone needs data extracted from a bunch of files on Sharepoint. I figure out a client-side solution because I'm not authorized to do anything server-side and getting IT to do anything would take several months and need a business case.   * A manager wants a new data entry tool for their team. I interview the manager and team members to work out the functional requirements, then design/develop/test the application.   * Someone needs a VBA script to crunch some data for their presentation that's due in two hours. I drop everything I'm doing to hack out a quick script and run the analysis, without much in the way of testing.   * A developer has been hired to build a database for one of the teams, since I'm working on too many different things and don't have time to take this project on in the timeframe required. I direct his work and push him to meet certain deadlines, interview stakeholders to get more info that will help him figure out how to build the necessary forms, and modify the functional requirements of the database to fit in the timeframe.   * Someone wants to load a set of data into a GIS system and set up an ongoing refresh and reporting of this data set. I facilitate the conversation between the GIS developers and the owners of this data set, and design a demo application as proof of concept. It's kind of an \"all-purpose programming and IT management\" position, but it's not officially IT because the company has an actual IT department with a rigorously defined system of submitting requests, developing code, and managing projects. What I do, I guess, is more of a handyman job, where stuff falls to me because I'm the geekiest one in the room. Is there a standard term in the software world for what I do?"}
{"_id": "202419", "title": "Am I doing wrong in my programming learning journey?", "text": "Well, I always liked programming, but I've never been committed or tied to any real project. I learned some autoit, some c#, some html and css. Now I've been hired **as apprentice** as programmer by an IT firm and I find hard times to understand the whole thing. They use a mix of C#, T-SQL, html, php, javascript, ASP and a lot of other things. I am missing the whole thing. I have to do C# programs that connects databases and synchronize data between them. But there is always some kind of problem with that _effin_ SQL. They use SQL management studio to put up their servers and that buggy piece of \"software\" by microsoft has 10212020 options, problems, dynamics and so on. EXAMPLE: I'll highlight in bold every technology or object I needed to link togheter or Had to/Hadn't to get togheter But the most frustrating thing is that I don't know enough. Every technology has tons of other ways to interface with others and to be configured and they expect me to know it. For example last week they expected me to know how to use **C#** to make a **Http** webrequest to consume a **wsdl webservice** with **soap** to get in response a long **XML** string which contained some orders made by another firm. Then I had to parse that string in **DataTables** and **Datasets** using **LINQ** because it's faster and \"easier\" (NO) than **XmlReaders** with **Xpath**. After that I had to make **Stored Procedures** in **T-SQL** to elaborate those orders and avoid duplicates after loading them into the **database** with various **SqlCommand, SqlConnection, DataAdapters, Connection strings** and so on. And every time it's something like this. For doing something you have to know how to use multiple technologies and become crazy because they have to set up 1000 settings or you'll get some weird Exception (Encoding, Comparing settings, blah blah blah). It seems too wide and too big for me. I don't know If I can do it. Until today, by documenting myself I managed to do the job in some way or with the help of workmates (and I'm thankful to them for teaching me). But there is just too much to know. A project can become big in a few minutes. In 1 month and half I had to mix what I already knew and get documented about: -Hardware specifics -Hardware settings -Hardware pieces of all kinds -All kind of sql weird behaviours, best pratices,strange settings -C# weird casting rules -C# **thousands** of objects you must use to accomplish even the simplest task -html -Weird and less used languages like Zebra language or Arduino (which is C-like) -Old and new technologies, like serial ports, MAC/linux systems (always been on windows), iOS 7 -A good way to interface different technologies (see the examle I made before, If it was for me, I would have done in a whole different way...) and the list could keep going for a long time, because I had to learn just too much. It's right for a programmer to have to know all of this? I think it's just too much for me or I'm just too stupid for it... I'm thinking to get another job, this is becoming too much of a stress and it seems to me that I'll never get \"the whole design of the thing\", meaning a clear idea of what I'm using or doing. What do you think? Have you felt the same way? Should I keep going? I feel sorry and ashamed I had to rely many times on my workmates or to have to google for everything..."}
{"_id": "254784", "title": "Best practice for unused inherited virtual functions (implementing superclass methods)", "text": "Let's assume I have a hierarchy of several classes each derived from each other using virtual functions. The base class acts as an interface and defines functions, which may not be required by all of the derived classes. Now I wonder what the best practice is for such intermediate functions. Should those still be implemented and simple chain down to the base class, or should they be skipped? The problem I have is, that implementing such a function, when it isn't needed, simply adds noise to the code. On the other hand, when using a higher class, in C++ you can not simply call a superclass method (like in Java), so you need to know in which base class the method is really implemented. And to my mind, this would violate encapsulation, because I would need to know some implementation details of the base class. To illustrate what I mean here is an artifical exmaple:               class MyInterface     {         virtual void foo(bool) = 0;         virtual void foo1(int) = 0;     };          class Base : public MyInterface     {         void foo(bool param) override         {             // do some stuff here.         }              void foo1(int param) override         {             // do some stuff here.         }     };               class A : Base     {         void foo(bool param) override         {             // do some stuff here.             Base::foo(param);         }         // class doesn't need foo1() here so it is not implemented.     };               class B : A     {         void foo(bool param) override         {             // do some stuff here.             A::foo(param);         }              void foo1(int param) override         {             // This class needs foo1() but as A doesn't have it implemented             // I have to knwo this and skip A going directly to Base             Base::foo1(1);         }     };      Here the class `B` needs to know that A doesn't implement `foo1` and has to skip it. Of course this can be seen in the header, but if I want to later change class `A` it shouldn't be neccessary to touch all the other classes that are derived from it (encapsulation and isolation principle) So even worse, if I implement now `foo1()` in `A` later, `B` would still skip it and never realise that the functionality has changed. So from an object model point of view I would assume that such empty functions should still be designed into a class?"}
{"_id": "17859", "title": "Define \"Intermediate\" (PHP) developer", "text": "I'm looking at the job market (as I imagine many are at the moment...) and I wanted to ask what the general consensus is on the skill levels required for \"intermediate\" or \"junior\" developers (PHP). For example, what tasks should an \"intermediate\" developer be able to handle - and what would you expect from a junior?"}
{"_id": "252312", "title": "Changing Careers from Testing to Development", "text": "I am a Test Automation Engineer, when i entered I.T. i aspired to be a Java developer but as a fresher i did not have any choice and was put into Test Automation. I am in Test Automation for the past 2 years and I want to kn if it is possible for me to switch to development ?"}
{"_id": "252311", "title": "Authentication strategy for mobile app with backend app using bcrypt", "text": "I have a backend app in node.js which implements user management, and it uses bcrypt to handle the password. So the password is stored in a single field using a format like `<header><salt><hashed password + salt>`. This part of the backend cannot be changed. I am writing some REST APIs for mobile apps to (among other things) authenticate the user, but I would prevent the password from being sent in clear (although over an SSL connection) from the mobile app to the server. At beginning I designed a process by which the client requests for an authentication token to the server, which is randomly generated and stored in a database. The client combines the token with the password (entered by the user, not stored locally), plus a secret key, hashes it all, and send to the server along with the authentication token. The server generates the same hash, compare it with the one obtained from the client, etc. The problem is that at server the password is hashed, so that doesn't work. An alternate way I thought about is for the server to return the salt along with the authentication token, so that the client can regenerate the same hash that's stored in the database, combine it with the authentication token, hash it again, and send back to the server. I feel that sending the salt to the client is not safe. I would like to know if that's a good strategy, and if not, which one would be more suitable and safer for this case? I remind that I cannot modify how the password is stored and managed at server side."}
{"_id": "129487", "title": "Immutable design with an ORM: How are sessions managed?", "text": "If I were to make a site with a mutable language like C# and use NHibernate, I would normally approach sessions with the idea of making them as create only when needed and dispose at request end. This has helped with keeping a session for multiple transactions by a user but keep it from staying open too long where the state might be corrupted. In an immutable system, like F#, I would think I shouldn't do this because it supposes that a single session could be updated constantly by any number of inserts/updates/deletes/ect... I'm not against the \"using\" solution since I would think that connecting pooling will help cut down on the cost of connecting every time, but I don't know if all database systems do connection pooling. It just seems like there should be a better way that doesn't compromise the immutability goal. Should I just do a simple \"using\" block per transaction or is there a better pattern for this?"}
{"_id": "252317", "title": "Reactive programming vs MVVM pattern for managing GUI updates", "text": "Reactive programming and MVVM are two approaches that can address the problem of separating the domain layer from the UI.   * MVVM does this by defining a viewmodel, which is a data structure mapped to UI components. The UI display the data, and maybe update it when user occurs.   * a reactive framework defines a graph of observables which notify the UI that some piece of data has changed Reactive frameworks are gaining mind share, both in mainstream platforms (with Rx in .net & java, react.js) and more experimental places (FRP in haskell). I have mainly used MVVM with angular, and I find the simplicity to expressiveness ratio quite satisfying, although I have only worked on small/medium projects with it. **What does a reactive framework buys the developer that mvvm don't?** **Is there really a difference?** For example, knockout.js is advertised as a mvvm framework, but has a reactive feeling in its interface:               this.firstName = ko.observable(\"John\");     this.lastName = ko.observable(\"Smith\");          this.fullName = ko.computed(function() {         return this.firstName() + \" \" + this.lastName();     }, this);"}
{"_id": "252316", "title": "Non Existent Keys Returning Null Instead of Exception", "text": "I have inherited a project from another developer, and it is riddled through and through with the following type of error:               echo $data['example'];           Notice: Undefined index: example      Obviously, I'm going to refactor this to check for the existence of the key prior to the print statement. However, my question is not related to the code per-se. Is there a version of PHP, or perhaps a setting within PHP whereby `echo $data['example'];` would simply return null or 0 in the case of a non-existent key? I ask because I'm trying to ascertain whether the previous developer had written bad code, or whether their development environment is misconfigured. If it's the latter, we can obviously resolve these issues for that developer's future projects."}
{"_id": "15984", "title": "Exceptions or Error codes", "text": "We are building a web service(SOAP, .Net) which would be talking to (mostly) native clients (windows, C++) and we are wondering what is the best way to communicate errors to the client (e.g. SomethingBadHappened like login service not available or something like user not found) and haven't been able to decide between throwing exception to the client or using some kind of error code model to do the above. What you would prefer on the handling on the client side: receiving a error code or handling a ServerFault exception which contains the reason for the error?   1) Why are we thinking exception: Because it would make server side code a lot more uniform   2) Why are we thinking error codes: Because we _think_ it makes more sense from the client side perspective. If 2) is really true we would probably want to go for error codes than exceptions? Is that the case here? Also, would the answer change if we were talking to managed clients instead of native clients?"}
{"_id": "129488", "title": "How difficult is it to install and maintain IBM Rational DOORS?", "text": "I want to use IBM Rational DOORS for software development, but I would probably have to install and maintain it myself. How much effort is required? Is it something I can easily deploy on a server and start using right away, or do I have to basically become an IBM Rational specialist in order to properly deploy it? In other words, do I run a couple setup programs and, \"Voila, it's done!\" or do I have to install and perform deep configuration on a dozen other enterprisey prerequisites before I can even run the DOORS installer?"}
{"_id": "66803", "title": "Scons, make, jam, ants, autotools etc and project files?", "text": "I wanted to get your thoughts. I see build systems like scons, make, jam, ants, autotools. Why do they exist? are they something like cross platform 'project files'? Do they address another need? to me .NET has almost a standard project file (xbuild on mono can build some of my projects created by msvc) I seen makefile's in each directory and sub-directory. In your opinion is this 'wrong'? My gut says if they are a 'project' file that allows you to pass in a few parameters for a complete build it should all be in one place (even if its multiple files). More importantly why do all of these tools exist?"}
{"_id": "66808", "title": "Java or Python for internet application?", "text": "In choosing a technology for internet applications where the number of users may scale over time, which one should we consider: Java or Python? What are the considerations in choosing one and not the other? If speed and scalability is our main criteria, which one should we use? We have looked around and it seems that there are more websites that use Python [i.e : Quora, digg, reddit, bitbucket and disqus] than Java. Based on that, can we say that Python is more suitable for internet applications where speed and scalability is the main criteria? However we have browsed around and found some comments saying that Java is actually faster than Python. Thank you for your insights."}
{"_id": "118419", "title": "Best Practices for Handing over Legacy Code", "text": "In a couple of months a colleague will be moving on to a new project and I will be inheriting one of his projects. To prepare, I have already ordered Michael Feathers' _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_. But this books as well as most questions on legacy code I found so far are concerned with the case of inheriting code as-is. But in this case I actually have access to the original developer and we do have some time for an orderly hand-over. Some background on the piece of code I will be inheriting:   * **It's functioning:** There are no known bugs, but as performance requirements keep going up, some optimizations will become necessary in the not too distant future.   * **Undocumented:** There is pretty much zero documentation at the method and class level. What the code is supposed to do at a higher level, though, is well-understood, because I have been writing against its API (as a black-box) for years.   * **Only higher-level integration tests:** There are only integration tests testing proper interaction with other components via the API (again, black-box).   * **Very low-level, optimized for speed:** Because this code is central to an entire system of applications, a lot of it has been optimized several times over the years and is extremely low-level (one part has its own memory manager for certain structs/records).   * **Concurrent and lock-free:** While I am very familiar with concurrent and lock-free programming and have actually contributed a few pieces to this code, this adds another layer of complexity.   * **Large codebase:** This particular project is more than ten thousand lines of code, so there is no way I will be able to have everything explained to me.   * **Written in Delphi:** I'm just going to put this out there, although I don't believe the language to be germane to the question, as I believe this type of problem to be language-agnostic. I was wondering how the time until his departure would best be spent. Here are a couple of ideas:   * **Get everything to build on my machine:** Even though everything should be checked into source code control, who hasn't forgotten to check in a file once in a while, so this should probably be the first order of business.   * **More tests:** While I would like more class-level unit tests so that when I will be making changes, any bugs I introduce can be caught early on, the code as it is now is not testable (huge classes, long methods, too many mutual dependencies).   * **What to document:** I think for starters it would be best to focus documentation on those areas in the code that would otherwise be difficult to understand e.g. because of their low-level/highly optimized nature. I am afraid there are a couple of things in there that might look ugly and in need of refactoring/rewriting, but are actually optimizations that have been out in there for a good reason that I might miss (cf. Joel Spolsky, _Things You Should Never Do, Part I_ )   * **How to document:** I think some class diagrams of the architecture and sequence diagrams of critical functions accompanied by some prose would be best.   * **Who to document:** I was wondering what would be better, to have him write the documentation or have him explain it to me, so I can write the documentation. I am afraid, that things that are obvious to him but not me would otherwise not be covered properly.   * **Refactoring using pair-programming:** This might not be possible to do due to time constraints, but maybe I could refactor some of his code to make it more maintainable while he was still around to provide input on why things are the way they are. Please comment on and add to this. Since there isn't enough time to do all of this, I am particularly interested in how you would prioritize. _Update:_ As the hand-over project is over I have expanded this list with my own experiences in this answer below."}
{"_id": "89401", "title": "Designing an administrator area in my CMS", "text": "I am trying to create a small CMS with ASP.NET MVC3, but I got confused in designing the administrator section. I decided to create two areas, one for users and another for admin. In my CMS I have a `Post` and a `News` object, and I want to put create/edit/delete functions in the admin area and other function that related to users in the user area to achieve functionality in my CMS. For example I have two `NewsController`, one in the admin area (include create/edit/delete functions) and another in the user area (include `preview(id)` function). Is this design good? How can I improve it?"}
{"_id": "127300", "title": "I would like to improve in writing goal-oriented user stories/features", "text": "I would like to improve my user stories writing abilities so I need your experience and guidance. I think that each _variable_ part of a user story can be improved by following certain guidelines. ## 1\\. Role Defining possible roles may be the easiest part. The only problem is that user stories usually just describe functional features that need development.   * **Do you write non-functional stories?** And I'm not thinking about technical stories that are related to other aspects of product planning like administrative things. I'm more thinking of additional supporting stories that support the same high-level goal. Like advertising related stories that are related to features? ## 2\\. Feature Defining features seems to be easy but it turns out it's not. Because I can see stories that are heavily related so certain roles can't be developed until others are finished. Example: User registration is a pillar user story that needs to be done first in order to develop other user stories that are related to registered user roles (logged in users and/or admins etc.). This one is very obvious but sometimes relationships are much more subtle.   * **How do you avoid relationships between user stories?** Is there a technique to break related stories apart so we can have better development parallelism? Breaking relationships also helps better sprint cycles because one story can't stall the whole sprint. ## 3\\. Benefit This one is the hardest part that I think I have least knowledge how to write good user stories with clear benefits.   * **Do you actually write benefits per story or do you rather provide high level goals instead?** Providing these instead of benefits makes it easy to see why certain user story is more important than the other? So it helps prioritisation.   * **Is it wise to have shared benefits/goals between set of user stories?**   * **Do you write user stories without benefits part?** Is that wise and what do you do instead?   * **Do you write benefits in a way so they can be measurable?** Can we do that and is it beneficial? ## 4\\. User stories as a whole   * **Have you ever defined all user stories as epics?** This would help filter out/prioritise those that give more to the common goals. Then split them into digestible chunks or per single feature user-stories.   * **What additional metadata do you add to user stories?** Also talking about user story grouping per higher feature or goal..."}
{"_id": "245715", "title": "Custom Domain or Attribute Reference Table or Both?", "text": "I'm designing my first real database and I'm weighing the pros and cons of how to enforce uniformity in my data. My first option is to create a custom domain and program my UI to only allow certain options. My second option is to create an \"attribute reference table\" that would store allowed values. My UI could query that table for allowed values and display them in a drop down box. Or I could do both My thoughts on the first is that it would be more difficult to maintain the UI. If the domain were to change, then I would need to alter the UI (unless there is a way to query the domain for values?). I don't know whether there is, but my thought is this would process and return results faster than having to query a second table. An attribute table seems beneficial in that I can design the UI to adapt on the fly, but less optimal in the sense that the data values are not controlled by the DBMS and it requires an additional query. Doing both would add all of the complexity, increase processing time, and increase UI maintenance."}
{"_id": "214928", "title": "moore's law and quadratic algorithm", "text": "I was going thru a video (from `coursera - by sedgewick`) in which he argues that `you cannot sustain Moore's law using a quadratic algorithm`.He elaborates like this In year 197* you build a computer of power X ,and need to count N objects.This takes M days According to `Moore's law`,you have a computer of power 2X after 1.5 years.But now you have 2N objects to count. If you use a quadratic algorithm, In year 197*+1.5 ,it takes (4M)/2 = 2M days 4M because the algorithm is quadratic,and division by 2 because of doubling computer power. I find this hard to understand.I tried to work thru this as below               To count N objects using comp=X , it takes M days.     -> N/X = M          After 1.5 yrs ,you need to count 2N objects using comp=2X     -> 2N/(2X) -> N/X -> M days      where do I go wrong? can someone please help me understand?"}
{"_id": "212515", "title": "Why is \"tight coupling between functions and data\" bad?", "text": "I found this quote in \"The Joy of Clojure\" on p. 32, but someone said the same thing to me over dinner last week and I've heard it other places as well: > [A] downside to object-oriented programming is the tight coupling between > function and data. I understand why unnecessary coupling is bad in an application. Also I'm comfortable saying that mutable state and inheritance should be avoided, even in Object-Oriented Programming. But I fail to see why sticking functions on classes is inherently bad. I mean, adding a function to a class seems like tagging a mail in Gmail, or sticking a file in a folder. It's an organizational technique that helps you find it again. You pick some criteria, then put like things together. Before OOP, our programs were pretty much big bags of methods in files. I mean, you have to put functions somewhere. Why not organize them? If this is a veiled attack on types, why don't they just say that restricting the type of input and output to a function is wrong? I'm not sure whether I could agree with that, but at least I'm familiar with arguments pro and con type safety. This sounds to me like a mostly separate concern. Sure, sometimes people get it wrong and put functionality on the wrong class. But compared to other mistakes, this seems like a very minor inconvenience. So, Clojure has namespaces. How is sticking a function on a class in OOP different from sticking a function in a namespace in Clojure and why is it so bad? Remember, functions in a class don't necessarily operate just on members of that class. Look at java.lang.StringBuilder - it operates on any reference type, or through auto-boxing, on any type at all. P.S. This quote references a book which I have not read: Multiparadigm Programming in Leda: Timothy Budd, 1995."}
{"_id": "212514", "title": "Domain Logic in Service Layer exposed as WCF service", "text": "I am designing an enterprise solution which consists of modularized products within a product range using Entity Framework code first to define the domain model and provide the data access. e.g. Solutions:               ProductRange.Authentication     ProductRange.Gateway     ProductRange.OrderSystem     ProductRange.MarketingSystem      Each of these products (solutions) will have similar layers, currently: Projects in each solution:               ProductRange.OrderSystem.Model (contains code first POCOs)     ProductRange.OrderSystem.DataContext (contains the dbContext)     ProductRange.OrderSystem.DataAccess (contains the Generic Repository)     ProductRange.OrderSystem.Service.DomainLogic (contains business logic)     ProductRange.OrderSystem.Service.ApplicationLogic (contains application logic)     ProductRange.OrderSystem.Presentation.AdminWebsite     ProductRange.OrderSystem.Presentation.CustomerWebsite      Some of the products will need to access the domain logic of another product, especially they will all need to access the ProductRange.Authentication but also ProductRange.MarketingSystem will need to query ProductRange.OrderSystem I am thinking to expose the domain logic between products in the range via a WCF service. But I will also need to reference the product locally (e.g. creating project references). How should I go about implementing this? Should I create a WCF service e.g. ProductRange.OrderSystem.WCF which calls the domain logic and exposes it or should my domain logic itsself be a WCF service? If the latter, would I always have to reference my domain logic via the WCF, even from the local ApplicationLogic? I guess I am looking for some guidance about what layers to have and how best to provide inter connectivity between the solutions."}
{"_id": "212517", "title": "Best practices for refactoring parameter file structure in multiple environments", "text": "**Background info and what I've tried** Within each of two mostly distinct environments, say 'Research' and 'Production', there is a need for a structured parameter file. The file contains things like database connections, tables, and some other parameters, nothing unusual. The current approach is to have two distinct parameter files, say \"params.txt\" and \"params_prod.txt\" (for production). (Also, in case it helps, we're not actually using .txt for this, we're using a markup language, but the details of that don't really matter for this question.) Most of the information is duplicated between these two files, leading to lots of copy/paste. Plus, in version control, everyone has to manually make changes to two files and we have to trust that they are propagating changes if checking things in. Needless to say, this leads to headaches to resolve when some divergence happens between the files. We have tried workarounds, like writing tests to check that the files are identical in all the ways they need to be, but this is not a perfect science since the structure of the files can change and the definition of what, exactly, must be identical between them changes too. I have had one idea: Just use a single file, but create sub-sections within the file. There can be a sub-section for general parameters that are always shared, another section for things that should be treated as the 'default' parameters (the 'Research' environment settings) and then another section for the 'Production' environment settings. We already have code that parses the parameter files and instantiates objects, loads data, etc. etc., based on the parameters. We could go back and add some options to that code, such that it loads data according to which sub-section of the parameter file it is told to use and ignores parameters from the other section. This has some benefits: (1) everything is in one file, so there's no \"just trusting\" that people are propagating changes. (2) It also does not require copy/paste code since anything that is shared between both environments needs to only appear in one section at the top of one parameter file. (3) If anything, this should make the parameter files themselves more modular and easier to use. (4) We save time/cost that would have been spent creating complicated test-based work-arounds that check whether the files are being propagated together during check-ins with version control. We don't need to do that in this case. It does have costs too: (1) time spent making the newly formatted parameter file specifications in XSD so we can validate it and ensure it is backwards compatible; (2) costs if we do need to re-code and make our software-that- interfaces-with-parameter-files have options for whether to use 'Research' or 'Production'. (3) If any of the properties that are currently considered to be in the sub-section that is shared, but which suddenly become things where we want to have different options between 'Research' and 'Production', we would then have to refactor all parameter files to move that item down into the other sections. (3) Seems like the biggest worry, but it also forces us to constantly re- factor these parameter files, which is a good thing in my view. Besides, if we want flexibility about re-assigning a parameter from one sub-section to another, there ought to be better ways to achieve it than duplicating the entire file. **Question** Are there any significant pitfalls that I am failing to realize about the proposed idea regarding don't-repeat-yourself vs. build-in-flexibility trade- offs in parameter file design?"}
{"_id": "226599", "title": "Mapping a list of optional values to an optional list of values", "text": "I have encountered the following pattern while programming in Haskell (but the pattern could occur in any language supporting lists, option types, and mapping of a function over a list). I have types `a` and `b` and a function               f :: a -> Maybe b      Now I want to define a function that maps f on a list of type `[a]`, but I am not interested to have a result of type `[Maybe b]`. Rather, I want to have `Just [y1, ..., yn]`, if `[f(x1), ..., f(xn)] == [Just y1, ..., Just yn]`, and `Nothing` otherwise (i.e. if `f(xi) == Nothing` for at least one i). So the result must be of type `Maybe [b]`. I solved this by using the following helper function:               combine :: Maybe b -> Maybe [b] -> Maybe [b]     combine me ml = do                        l <- ml                        e <- me                        Just (e : l)       and then               g :: (a -> Maybe b) -> [a] -> Maybe [b]     g f xs = foldr combine (Just []) (map f xs)      So, for example, if I have               f x = if x > 0 then Just x else Nothing     xs0 = [1, 2, 3, 4]     xs1 = [-1, -2, 3, 4]     xs2 = [-1, -2, -3, -4]      then               map f xs0 = [Just 1, Just 2, Just 3, Just 4]     g f xs0   = Just [1, 2, 3, 4]     map f xs1 = [Nothing, Nothing, Just 3, Just 4]     g f xs1   = Nothing     map f xs2 = [Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Nothing]     g f xs2   = Nothing      The solution with `combine` and `foldr` works, but I wanted to ask if you know of a more compact solution for turning a `[Maybe a]` into a `Maybe [a]` as described above."}
{"_id": "135642", "title": "What are some best practices for report writing?", "text": "I need to give a presentation to a coworker on some of the best practices regarding reports. Right now I use jaspersoft's iReport to do my reports and I need to give some input to a coworker. I'm looking for some general knowledge and insight on the topic."}
{"_id": "82009", "title": "Power failure should be considered as a scenario to implement?", "text": "Do you think that power failure is a scenario to implement? At what time that scenario should be taken into consideration? If power failure will cause some data loss so do you care about it ? if(IsImportant(data)) ... else .. ? What do you think If our application doesn't work anymore even power failure scenario shouldn't be fault to consider if power failure broke the application permanently ? So we have to consider these situations always ? Can you suggest pragmatic approaches for power failure scenarios ?"}
{"_id": "200227", "title": "How to get started with computer science research", "text": "I started programming later in my career (mid 30's) simply because I enjoyed it and had an opportunity to contribute at my job. While I still have tons to learn, at some stage I would like to know what is going on the area of computer science research. I'm wondering if folks here on the exchange can point me in the right direction of some methods or resources; good journals, etc. Are there some good topics to start with? Also, in what areas was reading research papers most helpful to you?"}
{"_id": "177539", "title": "Is it useful to unit test methods where the only logic is guards?", "text": "Say I have a method like this:               public void OrderNewWidget(Widget widget)     {        if ((widget.PartNumber > 0) && (widget.PartAvailable))        {             WigdetOrderingService.OrderNewWidgetAsync(widget.PartNumber);        }     }      I have several such methods in my code (the front half to an async Web Service call). I am debating if it is useful to get them covered with unit tests. Yes there is logic here, but it is only guard logic. (Meaning I make sure I have the stuff I need before I allow the web service call to happen.) Part of me says \"sure you can unit test them, but it is not worth the time\" (I am on a project that is already behind schedule). But the other side of me says, if you don't unit test them, and someone changes the Guards, then there could be problems. But the first part of me says back, if someone changes the guards, then you are just making more work for them (because now they have to change the guards and the unit tests for the guards). For example, if my service assumes responsibility to check for Widget availability then I may not want that guard any more. If it is under unit test, I have to change two places now. I see pros and cons in both ways. So I thought I would ask what others have done."}
{"_id": "193264", "title": "Licensing: source code vs. production code in JavaScript", "text": "For commercial and licensing purposes, what is the correct wording for differentiating JavaScript source code (written by the programmer and including comments) from the minified version used in production?"}
{"_id": "193267", "title": "When is it inappropriate to make objects immutable?", "text": "I have a class which represents an entity object in our system (for sake of argument, a Customer object)               public class Customer()     {       private int id;       private String name;       ... // 30+ fields            public Customer()       {         // empty constructor!       }            // getters and setters     }      I'm trying to refactor this so that the fields are extracted into their own objects where they are more sensibly grouped, and at the same time creating parameterised constructors - with the intent I could then lose the setter methods and make my objects immutable (since this is apparently a Good Thing(TM)). However, this doesn't make any sense - sometimes I need to update a customer's information! It's clearly not immutable. Should I just not make this class immutable - and can I apply the same argument to all my entity classes?"}
{"_id": "193262", "title": "Is using \"out\" or \"ref\" parameters in Java methods to return extra values bad?", "text": "I happened to create a mutable class like this:               class Mutable<T> {         private T value;         public Mutable() { this.value = null; }         public Mutable(T value) { this.value = value; }         T get() { return this.value; }         void set(T value) { this.value = value; }     }      And then it's often used in a method like this:               boolean operation(String input, Mutable<Set<String>> dataOut) throws ... {         boolean result;         try {              String data = doSomething(input);              result = validate(data);              if (result && dataOut != null) {                  List<String> values = Arrays.asList(data.split(\", \"));                  Collections.sort(values);                  dataOut.set(new LinkedHashSet<String>(values));              }         } catch(SpecificIgnorableException ex) {              result = false;              logger.debug(ex);         }         return result;     }      ...which is just an example, could be any use case, where one would use `ref` or `out` parameters in C#, or non-const reference parameters in C++, or pointers to output parameters in C. First, same could be done by using an array (with one element) instead of above custom type. Does it make sense to have this custom type which clearly states _mutable_ , instead of using an implicitly mutable array? Second, is this pattern bad and code smell in Java? Let's limit to cases where using `out` parameter would make sense in C#. Should every instance of this kind of Java code be replaced? With what?"}
{"_id": "7427", "title": "Getting humiliated by your senior programmer", "text": "As a junior, what would you think and do if you getting humiliated by your lead programmer if you can't handle his expectations ?"}
{"_id": "50970", "title": "What would you do? Long overdue on basically everything and now customer won't talk to you", "text": "I took over a rather complicated project as the sole developer/project manager and tester sometime last year. In November last year there was a deadline for some new functionality to be delivered. The system I took over which was supposedly ready to be used was far from being ready. Sitting with one of the our customers users he came up with new features and requirements which was required. Even though the features they asked for was implemented he argued it was nothing like what they specified in the requirements. So I had to get back to the drawing board and do extensive changes to the system. Promise after promise, this is my own fault, I missed subsequent deadline due to different reasons: over-optimistic planning on my behalf, sick kids and various other personal issues. And there have been failings on the customer side too: only testing when I watch over their shoulder and so on. Yesterday we agreed that we go live if their users approve the application. Of course some issues showed up and now today, when I tried to call our customer he hung up and hasn't replied to any of my emails. This is really wearing me out, the hours and time spent on this far exceeds normal working hours and has taken its toll on my family as well Obviously there are things in this situation that are specific to this project, but I don't think the overall pattern (multiple small problems, leading to project breakdown) is uncommon. What would you do in a similar scenario?"}
{"_id": "50973", "title": "A single access point for several applications", "text": "I've been asked to create a web page from which users can access several other applications created using oracle forms and jsf, this will include also sso. I cant think of an easy way to do it, what I was thinking about was that the user should register and enter all his usernames/passwords for each application, after which he will deal only with the username/password he created for this page. What I wanted to ask was if this is a good idea or is there a better way to deal with this?"}
{"_id": "206121", "title": "Version-control friendly, append-only file format: \"binary\" or \"text\"?", "text": "I'm designing an append-only (\"journaled\") file format, and I'd like it to be friendly towards being stored in VCS (git/Mercurial/...). On one hand, I'd like if after each change, only delta (difference) from previous file state was added into the repository (i.e. some trailing bytes), not the whole contents of the file again. So, for this, I'm considering making the format \"pseudo-text\", that is no NUL (0x00) byte in the contents (or maybe even some stricter subset of UTF-8), to make it easily diff-able by git/Mercurial. On the other hand, the \"pseudo-text\" file format would not be predisposed to merging, it would totally cripple the contents. So to avoid that possibility, I'm inclined to make it \"binary\", even if only by putting a NUL byte at offset 0 in file. But then, merging even for \"text\" but structured file formats is not always really possible, even for \"typical\" cases like sourcecode, so maybe no need to worry here? I'm quite certain there will be totally conflicts all over the place if anyone tries to merge such files, so that could be enough of a warning sign. Did you have experiences with similar choice in the past? Which choice should I make, and why?"}
{"_id": "95914", "title": "How are multiple values returned in Java?", "text": "Sometimes you want to return multiple values from a function. **How is this _normally_ done in Java?** One option is to use an array, like this Python snippet that returns a list or tuple:               value, success = read_unreliably()     if success:         print value      Another option would be to return a hash/dict, like this JavaScript example:               var result = readUnreliably()     if (result.success) {         alert(value);     }      One more would be to create a custom object just for this purpose, like this Java example:               ReadUnreliablyResult result = readUnreliably()     if (result.getSuccess()) {         System.out.println(result.getValue());     }      Of course you can also just use some global variables to store what you need instead of passing things around, but let's just say that's not an option."}
{"_id": "95916", "title": "Does anyone have suggestions for design or open source libraries specifically for a single page AJAX application?", "text": "I'm working on a major new version of a browser based application and I'm looking for comments/suggestions about the architecture/design. It's a single page application using AJAX and client side templating to get new \"pages\". I'm already using the Sammy Javascript library to handle bookmarking and forward/back buttons. I'm using JQuery, parts of JQueryUI, SlickGrid, and a little Dojo (mostly dojox/rpc/jsonrpc and it's dependencies) so far. I'm communicating with the server using JSON RPC calls through a very thin web server layer that just forward the JSON strings to the business server, which has an API accessible in various ways, but the browser uses JSON RPC only. Session state tracking happens in the business layer as part of the implementation of that API, though of course the RPC mechanism must give enough information to identify which session is calling it. All that was context; the question I have is: does anybody know of any resources supporting this kind of design? In particular I would be looking for open source Javascript libraries besides Sammy that support single page web applications. Sammy expects you to use client side templating, and has some support for that plus several plugins for particular templating libraries, but doesn't support similar functionality for using AJAX to apply CSS style sheets (and remove or deactivate others) when you change screens and would have changed pages in a more traditional web application. I'd also love to hear from anyone who has tried something similar. Were you okay with one stylesheet for the whole application? Did you have issues with memory leak issues from staying on one page for so long? Also, any suggestions for a client side design? Does MVP sound reasonable, with a model implemented in Javascript, presenter classes to implement events in an abstract way that's easier to unit test, and the view to handle the actual DOM stuff? Some sort of application manager to track what pages are up, and that would clean up resources when a screen closes? I haven't seen a lot of comprehensive references or libraries for the single page design, so anything people can tell me or refer me to would be appreciated. Note that I have read Dev approaches to complex JavaScript UI's, which is a great question but not specific to single page complex Javascript UIs."}
{"_id": "206125", "title": "Is there any reason not to include issue numbers in debug logs?", "text": "I was going through the answers to this question: What information must never appear in logs? And noticed that nobody mentioned this particular attribute. It's something I find useful- whenever any logging is added to the system as a result of tracing a particular issue raised in the bug tracker, or adding a feature, **_I tend to include the ticket number of the related helpdesk element._** This means that when going through the log, any programmer can cross reference each log message with the associated ticket number. Now I understand that using proper VCS/helpdesk integration means most commits are attached to a ticket number anyway- but over time it makes it easy for us to diagnose problems on inspection whenever a log message comes up. However it still makes me a bit uneasy leaving this in the logs. The problem is, I can't think of a scenario where this could become a problem. I'm hoping SE can help me out. By the way- I'm talking about the \"verbose\" log level. This is never done in a logging level that will appear in production."}
{"_id": "95912", "title": "The GPL License Mixing", "text": "From the understanding that I am gradually gathering about the GPL it is not possible to mix licenses unless both have a special clause added to allow so. So how are the following possible? Let's use Joomla as the basis of this example:   * People develop plugin scripts that have to invoke library functionality from the Joomla core in order to function. This surely means that the plugin has to be GPL.   * Said people then decide to sell the plugin scripts which I gather is fine as they are essentially selling a distribution/support service. But once purchased the end-user has every right to resell or do with it whatever they like (provided it falls under GPL terms). Q1. So, how can people sell non-GPL licensed plugins for Joomla? Q2. How is it acceptable to add some sort of activation system that limits use of the GPL source? Is this not going against the very goal of GPL? Q3. How can a non-GPL licensed plugin for Joomla be restricted to non- commercial use? Here is a response that I recently received from a non-GPL Joomla plugin vendor. They offer two varieties, non-commercial and commercial (but neither are GPL). > GPL does not mean that all associated or used software needs to be GPL. It > regulates its use. We also would call \"Joomla\" not a product, it is open- > source software under the GPL license. > > Our extensions are open-source software under our own specific license > terms, > > In case you want to resell sites that use our extensions or the extension > itself, that is not covered with our license. In case you want to use it on > your own site, or sites which you create as designer for your customers, > that is covered in our license. I will not make reference to the plugin vendor at any point in this question because I do not want to make any false allegations. I am simply confused. In my experience of Joomla I have seen this situation over and over again and I have received similar responses. I am sure that I am simply misunderstanding a fundamental aspect of the GPL, but I really want to understand it. Added: Please note, my intent is not to sue or anything like that. I want to understand so that I can avoid the same from happening to a project that I will be releasing as open source later in the year. I just want to understand each angle."}
{"_id": "161231", "title": "Should I take care of race conditions which almost certainly has no chance of occuring?", "text": "Let's consider something like a GUI application where main thread is updating the UI almost instantaneously, and some other thread is polling data over the network or something that is guaranteed to take 5-10 seconds to finish the job. I've received many different answers for this, but some people say that if it is a race condition of a statistical impossibility, don't worry about it at all but others have said that if there's even a 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% (I kid you not on the numbers, this is what I've heard) of some voodoo magic happening due to race condition, always obtain/release locks on the thread that needs it. What are your thoughts? Is it a good programming practice to handle race condition in such statistically-impossible situations? or would it be totally unnecessary or even counterproductive to add more lines of code to hinder readability?"}
{"_id": "178154", "title": "What should I use for a package name if I don't have a domain?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What is the point of Java\u2019s package naming convention?   >  What package name to choose for a small, open-source Java project? I write Java (and derivative languages with package names) for personal use, but I don't have a personal domain name, so the standard packaging naming convention doesn't hold. Since the same convention is used in Maven group- id's, the problem is the same there. What should I use for the root of my package name?"}
{"_id": "173466", "title": "What package name to choose for a small, open-source Java project?", "text": "I'd like to publish a small open-source library in Java. I wonder what package name should I choose? I'm not a company and I don't have a domain that I could use as the basis for naming the package according to the naming conventions. Still I'd like to somehow follow the naming conventions to prevent an accidental conflict and to keep things standard."}
{"_id": "117037", "title": "instantiate or initialize when using a new class?", "text": "my question is rather a matter of English language. For proper commenting my code I want to know when you do for example the following code, what comment you can write for it?               public class TestClass     {         public double volt {get; set;}         public double curr {get; set:}     }       Somewhere else in the same namespace               public class AnotherTest     {         TestClass test;              public AnotherTest(TestClass test)         {            this.test = new TestClass(); //how to comment this?         }     }"}
{"_id": "230398", "title": "How to document self explanatory setter functions?", "text": "Often boolean setters are pretty self-explanatory, like `setLogErrors($bool)`. I do see some benefit of providing some additional information in the documentation, in this instance maybe where these errors are logged. But how much documentation is too much, especially when it comes to documenting the value that is passed to the setter? Documentation tools like phpDocumentor would like that variable to be documented as well, but from the context it is pretty clear that it takes a boolean. Often I personally find it better when the code speaks for itself, especially in situations like this. What is the best practice in situations like this? **Should the argument be documented** or not, how about **the setter, should it be documented**? Wouldn't the code readability improve if there was less documentation in this circumstance? I am not part of a large developing team and I don't read a lot of code written by others. I was hoping to gain some insight into **what standards are set in larger organizations and what is the easiest for people to read when the code is not their own**. I hope this questions is not too opinion based."}
{"_id": "138971", "title": "SCRUM from scratch, with no base framework established?", "text": "We are a small group of 5 people that is about to start a new project. This is the first project where we will go all-in on scrum. We are struggling a bit with how we are going to establish a base for the project (frameworks and the like). Such tasks are not something the user will benifit from directly, so we are having a hard time figuring out how we write user stories for it. So in general, how do you use scrum, when you are starting a project from scratch, with no frameworks and no base library in place?"}
{"_id": "255930", "title": "When to create a new MVC Controller for a model", "text": "**The Project:** I have several cases where I'm not sure whether or not I should be using a 'Separation of Concerns' approach or a simplistic one. They're all similar to the setup below. e.g. An `Estimate` contains multiple `Notes` EstimateController.Details -> Displays the details of an Estimate (Name, Description, Etc.) and below that it displays a tabular view of Notes (separated by type). **My Thoughts:** On one hand, it would be a separation of concerns and creating a new controller sounds like the proper way to do things, making use of partial views if necessary. On the other hand, it seems a bit like overkill to have a controller for all the cases like this. (i.e. Estimates contain: Notes, Specification Numbers, Drawing Numbers, and Addendums. This is similar to multiple other models in the business model as well). **Question:**   * How trivial is to trivial to justify creating a separate controller for an sub-model? I've found many places saying that you should have a separate controller for each view model but out of the ones I've seen none of them mention **why** or mention **how trivial of a model is too trivial**?"}
{"_id": "255931", "title": "ISBN Code - What is the purpose of Publisher Code in an ISBN?", "text": "I want to understand the logic of how the Publisher Code range provided by ISBN Authority gets mapped to an ISBN. From the below links, http://xml.coverpages.org/costello-isbn-xsd.txt http://www.booklore.co.uk/Articles/Nigel/ISBNAtricle.htm                            Country     Publisher ID  If number ranges   Insert hyphen  Block Size                                              are between:     after the:                    ----------------------------------------------------------------------                       0           00.......19         00-19        3rd digit      1,000,000                    0           200......699        20-69        4th digit      100,000                    0           7000.....8499       70-84        5th digit      10,000                    0           85000....89999      85-89        6th digit      1,000                    0           900000...949999     90-94        7th digit      100                    0           9500000..9999999    95-99        8th digit      10                    1           55000....86979      5500-8697    6th digit      1,000                    1           869800...998999     8698-9989    7th digit      100                    1           9990000..9999999    9990-9999    8th digit      10       From the above table, what I understand is:   1. Any ISBN if broken for English Speaking areas should have a Publisher Code that falls in the above ranges specified.   2. Sample ISBN Number 978-0-00-000000-2, following forms the division, 978 as Prefix, 0 as English Speaking area, 00 as Publisher Code, Title digit - 6 digits (starts from 000000 to ending at 999999) and last the check digit calculated based on the number formed before. Questions:   1. Is my above assumptions and understanding correct ? Let me know if you need more information, please provide me the explanation for the table displayed above."}
{"_id": "10859", "title": "Where is the way for an experienced financial IT developer", "text": "I am a Java developer with more than 10 years work experiences. I have been working on investment banking industry since 2002 and I plan to continue my career in this industry. But recently I am a little confused about the direction to take in my career. I want to be expert in some aspects, but don't know how to develop myself. Could experts in this industry please help to shed light on this? Thanks in advance. Most of my experience is focused on trading system development including fixed-income and cash equity."}
{"_id": "225541", "title": "If we close browser window without getting logout, what will happen when we provide same URL in the browser?", "text": "A few days ago, I appeared in an interview in a software company for .net developer. There I was asked the following question: > If we close browser window without getting logout, what will happen when we > provide same URL in the browser? My answer was that user will be able to view the home page with login details instead of being prompted to provide username and password as session of the user has not ended. Login information will actually be retrieved from cookies. But it depends upon the logic we have implemented for Login. But the interviewer didn't seem be satisfied with my answer and didn't accept my answer. I am wondering what might be answer of this question. So, I need your kind guidance regarding correct answers. So please explain what I was supposed to reply."}
{"_id": "120658", "title": "How to mark an empty conditional block in Java", "text": "In C++ when I wanted to mark that if is empty by design I added `NULL;` as statement:               if (cond1) {         ...     } else if (cond2) {         NULL;     } else {         ...     }      However in Java it seems to be impossible to have `null;` as statement. What is the correct way of marking empty by design if in Java (is it just comment)?"}
{"_id": "48372", "title": "I feel something uncomfortable with Haskell record syntax", "text": "Most of Haskell syntax has beauty of purity. But the record syntax looks ugly. It's uncomfortable. It feels some kind of mixture with C. It requires comma and braces. Haskell has tab,line based separation. So it looks too verbose than originally it requires. Why is it designed in that way?"}
{"_id": "120657", "title": "Any good reason to open files in text mode?", "text": "(Almost-)POSIX-compliant operating systems and Windows are known to distinguish between 'binary mode' and 'text mode' file I/O. While the former mode doesn't transform any data between the actual file or stream and the application, the latter 'translates' the contents to some standard format in a platform-specific manner: line endings are transparently translated to `'\\n'` in C, and some platforms (CP/M, DOS and Windows) cut off a file when a byte with value `0x1A` is found. These transformations seem a little useless to me. People share files between computers with different operating systems. Text mode would cause some data to be handled differently across some platforms, so when this matters, one would probably use binary mode instead. As an example: while Windows uses the sequence `CR LF` to end a line in text mode, UNIX text mode will not treat `CR` as part of the line ending sequence. Applications would have to filter that noise themselves. Older Mac versions only use `CR` in text mode as line endings, so neither UNIX nor Windows would understand its files. If this matters, a portable application would probably implement the parsing by itself instead of using text mode. Implementing newline interpretation in the parser might also remove some overhead of using text mode, as buffers would need to be rewritten (and possibly resized) before returning to the application, while this may be less efficient than when it would happen in the application instead. So, my question is: is there any good reason to still rely on the host OS to translate line endings and file truncation?"}
{"_id": "63978", "title": "What reasons might a programmer have for wanting hyperthreading turned off?", "text": "My company just bought new computers to replace old 2GB Windows XP machines. Someone on my team noticed that they came with hyperthreading disabled, and told everyone to reboot and turn it on. Is there a benefit to programming on a machine with hyperthreading disabled?"}
{"_id": "187804", "title": "What is meant by Distributed Systems Coding interview questions", "text": "I was told that I will be asked coding questions in my interview and that the context will be related to Distributed Systems (I took ONE Distributed Systems course and I don't even remember much from it!). I've seen a lot of data structure/algorithms coding questions but for Distributed Systems, all I can think of is questions about different concepts. What could they possibly ask me to code for them? I've tried looking up examples to practise or at least get an idea what kinds of things to expect but I haven't found any because they all just seem to focus on concepts, not design. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "96753", "title": "Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, automated testing, and SVN", "text": "We have an HTML designer who is not a developer but needs to modify .aspx files from our ASP.NET 2.0 projects from time to time in order to get CSS to work properly with them. Currently, this involves giving her the .aspx page by itself, which she opens and edits via Visual Studio 2008 (her computer used to be a developer's). I'm considering getting her set up with Visual Web Developer 2010 Express and Subversion access so she can be more independent, but I wanted to make sure VS Express will work properly with what we do. So:   * Does VWD 2010 Express support automated tests?   * If no to the above, what happens when it opens a solution file that includes a test project, modifies it, and saves it?   * Are there any potential snags with setting up AnkhSVN with VWD 2010 Express?"}
{"_id": "187800", "title": "Is Rebol a functional programming language?", "text": "I ran into Rebol and I was wondering about it. I ran into the following script from here:                use [feed questions answers][         feed: load-xml/dom http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/rebol         questions: map-each entry feed/get-by-tag <entry> [             find/match entry/get <id> \"http://stackoverflow.com/q/\"         ]              answers: make block! length? questions              foreach question questions [             question: load-xml/dom join http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/question/ question             foreach entry next question/get-by-tag <entry> [append answers entry/tree]         ]              insert clear feed/find-element <entry> answers         feed/flatten      ]      All the collection manipulation operations like `map-each` remind me of JavaScript and C# both of which have functional abilities. Is Rebol a functional language? Does it support functional programming? Would it classify as a pure functional language (PFL)?"}
{"_id": "214210", "title": "How to explain to non-programmer to build my Visual Studio source code in \"Release\" mode?", "text": "I'm writing documentation for some software that I wrote. Specifically, I'm writing a guide to installing the software. I'm delivering the source-code to my client, so I expect that they will want to be able to build from source. I explain to open the solution in Visual Studio 2010 and to right-click on the project and select \"Publish\". There doesn't seem to be a clear and straight-forward way to explain that they must build it in \"Release\" mode or what the simplest way to explain how to do that is. What's the best way to explain this? **Edit:** In response to the comments asking me to be more specific, on my setup of Visual Studio 2010, there is a drop-down list next to the green icon that starts the debugger. It doesn't have any label next to it. That's how I'm familiar with changing the setting myself, but I don't want to write in my documentation, \"Click on the drop-down list next to the green button and select \"Release\". There's got to be a better way. I am particularly concerned that if I get in wrong, it could result in someone changing the setting at the project level instead of the solution level."}
{"_id": "150428", "title": "Visual Studio build everytime JS and CSS changes?", "text": "I am relatively new to Visual Studio Development and I was wondering - it seems that everytime I make changes to my JS or CSS in my project - I have to \"build\" the project again. Is there any way to simply refresh the browser as opposed to building everytime ? My understanding is that all the files are copied to some temporary directory but I was hoping that I can quickly debug/write JS and CSS within the solution and just refresh the browser to see the changes ?"}
{"_id": "203753", "title": "Moving from solo developer to a team", "text": "For the last 5 years I have developed as a lone developer. The business gives me the requirements, timescales etc and I do the rest. I choose which technology best fits the requirements, I decide on the architecture, I do all of the coding, releasing, testing and supporting. I have been looking at moving as I feel I am missing out on agile experience, team interaction and exposure to some practices. I was at an interview today and I was asked how I would feel having less control over the code I write as they have architects and project managers. I hadn't really thought about it to be honest and now I am wondering. I know what I stand to gain by moving, interaction with other developers, exposure to agile/scrum and also exposure to new technologies. My question here is, what do I stand to lose? I know I will no longer choose what technology I am using but just how little control will I be restricted to? How can I prevent myself from becoming someone elses code monkey who just has to write whatever they are told? I haven't experienced a set up with architects, BAs, projects managers etc so I am unsure what to expect. The teams are around 2-3 developers with an architect and/or lead developer."}
{"_id": "206832", "title": "Design in one team, coding in another", "text": "I will be involved in a project where all the software design is made by a local team and these designs are sent to an offshore team for coding. This is the first time I face a project with this characteristics and for me it feels kind of odd: The managers expects us to make very detailed design documents so there's no space for error for the offshore team; from my perspective they are making us coding in paper while we can do it in an IDE. So, my question is is this approach good, or proven right? What are the main considerations our software process has to have to have success in our project?"}
{"_id": "214218", "title": "Is there a name for web applications that do most of the navigation on the client side?", "text": "Does the web industry have any standard or common name that refers _specifically_ to web applications that don't use the conventional window- HTTP-navigation model, instead relying on mostly or wholly on DOM manipulation? These applications usually have the following attributes:   * load an application frame from the server once (or infrequently)   * use a combination of Ajax requests, DOM modifications and history manipulation (via web fragment or `pushState`) to change state after that (while preserving reloadability)   * do not typically trigger new conventional location bar navigation events (window- or frame-level HTTP requests)   * most likely, present UIs that are highly interactive with a combination of dialog boxes, overlay layers, infinite scrolling, etc. Examples:   * Facebook   * Twitter   * Gmail   * USAToday Popular counterexamples, still relying mostly on traditional models   * YouTube (some navigation is done this way, but not enough)   * cnn.com I'm interested in names for this type of web application specifically. It feels like something I must have heard already, but I can't think of anything specifically. These seem too broad:   * Web application (could mean anything)   * AJAX application (could mean anything)"}
{"_id": "150426", "title": "Grouping numbers to minimize group-means", "text": "I need to find a way or an algorithm that groups members of a given data set (of positive integers) so that the difference between group means is minimized (not maximized, as usual). There are two constraints:   1. The number of groups should not exceed log(N) base 2. N is the input array size. Let us assume that N = 16, always.   2. The size of the group should be at least log(N) base 2. In the below example, the size of the group should be at least 4. By searching on the WEB, I have found the following greedy algorithm. Please also see below example.   1. sort the numbers in the descending order   2. take the first K elements and put them into different groups. Here, K is the number of groups.   3. for the next (N - K) elements, put them in the group with the lowest sum. repeat this until completion of all the numbers. Can we get a better algorithm in terms of time complexity? Guidance toward a better solution to this problem is appreciated. Example:               for input array = (11, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 25, 26, 28, 31)          The solution:  (where sd: standard deviation, cv: coefficient of variation)              group           mean    sd  cv     (31, 20, 17, 11)    19.8    8.4 0.4      (28, 21, 18, 11)    19.5    7.1 0.4     (26, 21, 19, 14)    20.0    5.0 0.3     (25, 22, 18, 16)    20.3    4.0 0.2"}
{"_id": "250265", "title": "Hosting image oriented ASP.NET MVC site; how to keep things fast?", "text": "I have a site that heavily relies on high res images being uploaded and viewed constantly. Currently it's hosted internally which keeps everything fast. I now want to move the site externally, but I am not quite sure how to keep the image viewing fast. What is important to know, is that the connection from the internal location to the external site is slow. With messaging (RabbitMQ) I can make the sending part work quite nicely. The viewing part is the thing I can't figure out. What I would like is that when viewing an image, first a local version is requested, if it's not present it will request it from the external server. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "250266", "title": "General recursion to tail-recursion", "text": "Is it theoretically possible to transform every kind of general-recursion into tail-recursion? Are they equivalent for example from a lambda-calculus point of view? That's a debate between me and an acquaintance. My view is that it's not possible everytime. For example if you have a function which calls itself recursively twice or three times, then you can't make all the recursive calls into tail-calls, right? Or is there always a way to reduce the number of recursive calls to one single recursive call?"}
{"_id": "158211", "title": "How can I estimate projects when I need to include a learning curve for new technology?", "text": "Sometimes, there are research and development projects where nothing is known in advance about the technology, concepts, and client. However, the manager still needs time estimates. What can I do to produce useful estimates?"}
{"_id": "250268", "title": "Are there any public statistics on the implementation time of software tasks?", "text": "I'd like to get better at estimating how long it will take me to complete tasks. When estimating things I know little about, I think it's best to start with base rate information and adjust it based on things I _do_ know, rather than to go on 'gut feeling' which is what I normally do, and is generally optimistic. What I lack is that base rate information. Are there any statistics available which give typical ideal man-hour costs (or some other metric) based on some property/properties of the task in question? For some context, I work as a programmer in the video games industry, and I'm talking about chunks of work that typically take somewhere between 2-16 hours, though occasionally drag on far longer than that... ;) I realise this is a big ask, but I have to start somewhere! Things I've already tried:   * google - my search terms appear to be too general - lots of irrelevant results.   * This question \\- asks for overall estimate, in a different domain. Unsatisfactory answers."}
{"_id": "158217", "title": "Is this Hybrid of Interface / Composition kosher?", "text": "I'm working on a project in which I'm considering using a hybrid of interfaces and composition as a single _thing_. What I mean by this is having a contain*ee* class be used as a front for functionality implemented in a contain*er* class, where the container exposes the containee as a public property. Example (pseudocode):               class Visibility(lambda doShow, lambda doHide, lambda isVisible)         public method Show() {...}         public method Hide() {...}         public property IsVisible         public event Shown         public event Hidden          class SomeClassWithVisibility         private member visibility = new Visibility(doShow, doHide, isVisible)         public property Visibility with get() = visibility         private method doShow() {...}         private method doHide() {...}         private method isVisible() {...}      There are three reasons I'm considering this:   1. The language in which I'm working (F#) has some annoyances w.r.t. implementing interfaces the way I need to (unless I'm missing something) and this will help avoid a lot of boilerplate code.   2. The containee classes could really be considered properties of the container class(es); i.e. there seems to be a fairly strong has-a relationship.   3. The containee classes will likely implement code which would have been pretty much the same when implemented in all the container classes, so why not do it once in one place? In the above example, this would include managing and emitting the Shown/Hidden events. Does anyone see any isseus with this Composiface/Intersition method, or know of a better way? **EDIT 2012.07.26** \\- It seems a little background information is warranted: Where I work, we have a bunch of application front-ends that have limited access to system resources -- they need access to these resources to fully function. To remedy this we have a back-end application that can access the needed resources, with which the front-ends can communicate. (There is an API written for the front-ends for accessing back-end functionality as though it were part of the front-end.) The back-end program is out of date and its functionality is incomplete. It has made the transition from company to company a couple of times and we can't even compile it anymore. So I'm trying to rewrite it in my spare time. I'm trying to update things to make a nice(r) interface/API for the front-ends (while allowing for backwards compatibility with older front-ends), hopefully something full of OOPy goodness. The thing is, I don't want to write the front-end API after I've written pretty much the same code in F# for implementing the back-end; so, what I'm planning on doing is applying attributes to classes/methods/properties that I would like to have code for in the API then generate this code from the F# assembly using reflection. The method outlined in this question is a possible alternative I'm considering instead of implementing straight interfaces on the classes in F# because they're kind of a bear: In order to access something of an interface that has been implemented in a class, you have to explicitly cast an instance of that class to the interface type. This would make things painful when getting calls from the front-ends. If you don't want to have to do this, you have to call out all of the interface's methods/properties _again_ in the class, outside of the interface implementation (which is separate from regular class members), and call the implementation's members. This is basically repeating the same code, which is what I'm trying to avoid!"}
{"_id": "201476", "title": "Declare variable as interface", "text": "When should or shouldn't a variable be declared as a custom Interface type? When walking through some code, I required to know what was happening here:               Public Class MyMainProject         ....         Public Sub DoMyWork()             Dim objIMyInterface As IMyInterface             ....             objIMyInterface = GetReturnObject()         End Sub         ....     End Class      According to what I saw, `objIMyInterface` is only being used for one thing. I didn't know how many classes `implement` it, but there's no casting of similar types in this code. `objIMyInterface` is used just like a regular type, not anonymous in the least. Second of all, my research helped a little... `GetReturnObject` happens to return an instance of `IMyInterface`. The return object of `GetReturnObject`, of course, has a call to another method.               Public Function GetReturnObject() As IMyInterface         Dim retObject As IMyInterface         ...                 retObject = AnotherMethod()         ...         Return retObject     End Function      So I try to step into `AnotherMethod`, but it's in a project with no symbols. So after some research, I find the source and go through it. After repeating this process a few times, I eventually get to something like this:               Public Function FinalMethod() As IMyInterface         Dim FinalObject As MyClassType         ...                 FinalObject = GetMyClassType()         ...         Return FinalObject      End Function      Yay! `GetMyClassType` returns `MyClassType`! I go to that Class and of course:               Public Class MyClassType         Implements IMyInterface         ...     End Class      What I end up finding out is that `IMyInterface` is used by nothing else but this class. No biggie, it's all good code by the looks of it. But then I go back to my original project I notice this:               Public Class MyMainProject         ....         Public Sub DoMyWork()             Dim objIMyInterface As IMyInterface             ....             objIMyInterface = GetReturnObject()         End Sub         ....         Public Sub OtherWork()             Dim objMyType As MyClassType             ....         End Sub         ....     End Class      The guy who created this is long gone, but I'd like to know what your thoughts are on which method should be used. Should I declare both as `IMyInterface`? Or both as `MyClassType`? The code works fine either way."}
{"_id": "154503", "title": "Version control implementation advice on legacy websites?", "text": "Assuming no experience with version control systems, just local to live web development. I've been dropped in on a few legacy website projects, and want an easier and more robust way to be able to quickly push and revert changes en masse. I'm currently the only developer on these projects, but more may be added in the future and I think it would be beneficial to set up a system that others can use."}
{"_id": "252782", "title": "Implied precision of floating-point functions", "text": "While reviewing another programmer's implementation of a function to calculate the normal distribution CDF, I made a suggestion to either replace the entire implementation with Python's built-in functions or use SciPy, a common scientific library. Another programmer pointed out that neither `math.erfc()` nor `scipy.stats.norm.cdf()` provides any precision guarantees in their documentation. Therefore, I should be more cautious about replacing an approximation algorithm (which was taken from a respected source, and which had documented error bounds). To be honest, the thought to doubt the accuracy and precision of a built-in or library function had never crossed my mind. After all, I've been calling functions like `sin()` and `sqrt()` for years without much thought \u2014 why should `math.erf()` or `scipy.stats.norm.cdf()` be any different? But now, I'm concerned. My questions are:   1. In general, if the documentation makes no special mention, is it implied that these kinds of functions are completely accurate to the last decimal place, within the precision offered by IEEE double-precision floating-point?   2. Is that true for Python's `math.erf()` or SciPy's `scipy.stats.norm.cdf()` in particular? How can you tell?   3. This man page for `sin()` says\u2026 > These functions may lose accuracy when their argument is near a multiple of > pi or is far from 0.0. Why should such caveats exist, when the sine function is periodic and symmetrical? There seems to be a burden placed on the caller to canonicalize the input to obtain optimal accuracy. On the other hand, Mozilla's documentation for `Math.sin()` says nothing about accuracy or precision. Does that mean that it is fully accurate, or is it \"common knowledge\" that `Math.sin()` would only be accurate in certain circumstances in JavaScript, like everywhere else?"}
{"_id": "201479", "title": "Which design patterns would I use for this algorithm?", "text": "I need to create a string using the following algorithm:   1. Generate a GUID as a byte array.   2. Convert that GUID to a string.   3. From this string, get the UTF-8 encoding as a byte array.   4. From this byte array, hash those bytes to another byte array.   5. From this byte array, get the base64 encoding as a string.   6. Append a string constant to this string. What design pattern(s) would I use? I am thinking builder and/or chain-of- responsibility, although I am not sure I would handle the changing between string and byte array types. **UPDATE:** I am programming in an object-oriented language (C++, Java, C#). The encoding of UTF-8 may change in the requirements, as well as the hashing algorithm in step 4. I am asking about design patterns to adapt for a change in requirements."}
{"_id": "49120", "title": "Technical documentation of Android app", "text": "You are joining the development team of an existing Android app and are handed a technical document about it. What information would you like it to have?"}
{"_id": "49122", "title": "Which C# practices should be avoided in C++?", "text": "I'm currently teaching myself C++. I'm very proficient at C#, and was wondering which common practices in C# can lead to difficulties in C++, and what a C++ programmer should do instead."}
{"_id": "230863", "title": "What exactly is the Garbage Collector in Java?", "text": "I think I generally know what the Garbage Collector in Java does, but It's praised a lot, so I thought maybe I'm missing something about it's functionality. What I know is, that the GC takes care of erasing from the memory objects that have no reference to them, and thus are unreachable by the programmer. For example, if inside a loop I'm constantly creating a `new Object()`, the previous ones will eventually get deleted by the GC (correct me if I'm wrong). This is very useful for me as a Java programmer, and spares me a lot of headache that I assume C++ programmers have to deal with - manually deleting objects from the memory (again, correct me if I'm wrong). This feature is awesome, but is there anything more to the Garbage Collector? Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "1890", "title": "How do you name your private variables in C#?", "text": "What is the best practice, most commonly accepted naming conventions for private variables in C#?   1. `private int myInteger;`   2. `private int MyInteger;`   3. `private int mMyInteger;`   4. `private int _myInteger;`   5. `private int _MyInteger;`   6. Mysterious other option Which do you use and why? (My company is fairly new to C# and I would like to pick the most \"industry accepted\" method to try and get into our coding standard.)"}
{"_id": "101496", "title": "In a web application backed by a database, how often should I validate data?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Data input validation - Where? How much? Given that I have a web application with a user facing form that will store information in a database (that will be used by other applications as well), it seems to me to be worthwhile to validate 3 times: On the web client side via javascript to save postbacks to the server when the user enters bad data or forgets a field On the server side because we can't trust the web client to have validated the data and saves calls to the database when the data is invalid On the database side because this is the only way to ensure that the data stored in the database is valid. On the one hand, this seems excessive and violates the DRY principle. On the other hand, the performance would be noticeably different if I had to submit the request, send it to the database and return an error generated by the database for bad or missing user information. What is a reasonable amount of validation?"}
{"_id": "121864", "title": "How much data validation is too much?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Data input validation - Where? How much? I'm a new PHP developer and am into Powershell quite a bit but this question is language agnostic. I've been questioning my code quite a bit lately thinking about how many nets I should setup to catch exceptions, verify results, etc. I realize that I could go crazy trying to verify each and every line of code but at the same time I want the code as resilient as possible. I'm not talking about user input but verifying output from methods. Is there some standard or rule of thumb to go by when deciding when and where to do data validation?"}
{"_id": "167171", "title": "Does JAXP natively parse HTML?", "text": "So, I whip up a quick test case in Java 7 to grab a couple of elements from random URIs, and see if the built-in parsing stuff will do what I need. Here's the basic setup (with exception handling etc omitted):               DocumentBuilderFactory dbfac = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();     DocumentBuilder dbuild = dbfac.newDocumentBuilder();     Document doc = dbuild.parse(\"uri-goes-here\");      With no error handler installed, the parse method throws exceptions on fatal parse errors. When getting the standard Apache 2.2 directory index page from a local server: a SAXParseException with the message _White spaces are required between publicId and systemId._ The doctype looks ok to me, whitespace and all. When getting a page off a Drupal 7 generated site, it never finishes. The parse method seems to hang. No exceptions thrown, never returns. When getting http://www.oracle.com, a SAXParseException with the message _The element type \"meta\" must be terminated by the matching end-tag \" </meta>\"._ * * * So it would appear that the default setup I've used here doesn't handle HTML, only strictly written XML. My question is: can JAXP be used out-of-the-box from openJDK 7 to parse HTML from the wild (without insane gesticulations), or am I better off looking for an HTML 5 parser? PS this is for something I may not open-source, so licensing is also an issue :("}
{"_id": "81064", "title": "Forgetting to merge changes from trunk to branch", "text": "Recently, I forgot to merge changes from trunk to our maintenance branch. This caused us to rebuild - twice - and put QA on hold for two days while we fixed the mess. Normally, when committing to both branches, I commit a single changeset to trunk, and immediately merge it over to the maintenance branch.   However, this time there were 12 changesets spanning many code review changes, and I failed to merge all of the changes over. I had only merged one change over, which completely threw me off - I thought I remembered it was a rollup commit of all of the other changesets, but it wasn't. After some development discussion, we decided that the best approach would be to make 1-to-1 trunk and maintenance branch commits, so you could visually verify that all of the code was there. Is there a way to enforce changeset commits for a given fix-for version?   We use JIRA, Fisheye, and Crucible, and our Fisheye workflow won't let you resolve an issue unless the code reviews are complete. I'd like something similar that enforced parallel checkins on trunk and maintenance branches, based on the fix-for version specified in the issue. Or is there a better solution to this whole mess besides \"don't do that\"?"}
{"_id": "167175", "title": "What's the normal way machine-learning algorithms are integrated into normal programs?", "text": "I'm currently taking a machine learning course for fun, and the course heavily focuses on Matlab/Octave to write the code. One thing mentioned in the course is that, while Matlab/Octave are great for prototyping, they're very rarely used for production algorithms. Instead, those algorithms are typically rewritten in C++/Python/etc., using appropriate libraries, before reaching customers. Fair enough; I get that. But here's my question: is that done for cultural reasons, for technical reasons, or because there is really no language that provides Matlab/Octave-like fluidity, but in a compiled form that can be linked from C/C++/`$MainstreamLanguage`? The game industry uses Lua for game logic because it's easy to embed, and vastly superior for expressing things like AI. Likewise, there are Prolog variants for rules-heavy applications, Scheme variants for compilers, and so on. If there's a matrix equivalent language, what is it? If there isn't, why is this field different?"}
{"_id": "167179", "title": "Why does Scala require functions to have explicit return type?", "text": "I recently began learning to program in Scala, and it's been fun so far. I really like the ability to declare functions within another function which just seems to intuitive thing to do. One pet peeve I have about Scala is the fact that _Scala requires explicit return type in its functions_. And I feel like this hinders on expressiveness of the language. Also it's just difficult to program with that requirement. Maybe it's because I come from Javascript and Ruby comfort zone. But for a language like Scala which will have tons of connected functions in an application, I cannot conceive how I brainstorm in my head exactly what type the particular function I am writing should return with recursions after recursions. This requirement of explicit return type declaration on functions, do not bother me for languages like Java and C++. Recursions in Java and C++, when they did happen, often were dealt with 2 to 3 functions max. Never several functions chained up together like Scala. So I guess I'm wondering if there is a good reason why Scala should have the requirement of functions having explicit return type?"}
{"_id": "93983", "title": "Why don't all companies buy developers the best hardware?", "text": "I must be missing something. The cost of employing a programmer in my area is $50 to $100 an hour. A top end machine is only $3,000, so the cost of buying a truly great computer every three years comes to $0.50/hour. ($3000/(150 wks * 40 hours)) Do you **need** a _top-end_ machine? No, the $3000 here is to represent the _most that could possibly be spent_ not the amount that I would expect. That's roughly the cost of a top-end iMac or MacBook (17 inch). So suppose you can save $2000 every three years by buying cheaper computers, and your average developer is making $60. (These are the most charitable numbers that I can offer the bean-counters. If you only save $1000, or $750, it only strengthens my case.) If those cheaper computers only cost you 10 minutes of productivity a day. (Not at all a stretch, I'm sure that my machine costs me more than that.) then over 3 years the 125 lost hours would add up to a loss of $7500. A loss of 1 minute a day ($750) would give a net gain of $1250, which would hardly offset the cost of poor morale. Is this a case of \"penny-wise and pound-foolish\" or have I oversimplified the question? Why isn't there universal agreement (even in the 'enterprise') that software developers should have great hardware? **Edit:** I should clarify that I'm not talking about a desire for screaming fast performance that would make my friends envious, and/or a SSD. I'm talking about machines with too little RAM to handle their regular workload, which leads to freezing, rebooting, and (no exaggeration) approximately 20 minutes to boot and open the typical applications on a normal Monday. (I don't shut down except for weekends.) I'm actually slated to get a new machine soon, and it will improve things somewhat. (I'll be going from 2GB to 3GB RAM, here in 2011.) But since the new machine is mediocre by current standards, it is reasonable to expect that it will also be unacceptable before its retirement date. **Wait! before you answer or comment:**   1. $3000 doesn't matter. If the machine you want costs less than that, that's all the more reason that it should have been purchased.   2. I'm not asking for more frequent upgrades. Just better hardware on the same schedule. So there is no hidden cost of installation, etc.   3. Please don't discuss the difference between bleeding edge hardware and very good hardware. I'm lobbying for very good hardware, as in a machine that is, at worst, one of the best machines made three years ago.   4. $50 - $100 / hour is an estimate of _employment cost_ \\- not salary. If you work as a contractor it would be the billing rate the contracting agency uses which includes their expenses and profit, the employers Social Sec. contribution, employers health care contribution etc. Please don't comment on this number unless you know it to be unrealistic.   5. Make sure you are providing new content. Read all answers before providing another one."}
{"_id": "97401", "title": "How much should I pay to Microsoft when I am selling a desktop software built on VB.NET?", "text": "I am using Microsoft's free tool Visual Basic 2010 Express (downloaded from here ) to develop a desktop application with database features using Microsoft access as the database. Connectivity is being done by OleDbConnection. The software is now complete. I am planning to sell it for money. The software is going to cost 400$ to end customers. How much and where should I pay money to Microsoft?"}
{"_id": "197545", "title": "Implementing non-fixed length array support in a compiler", "text": "I'm thinking of building a language for PIC microcontrollers. I want to be able to use non-fixed size arrays, like this:   1. Declare the variable as `int[]`   2. Wait for input from serial connection   3. Make the variable _`input`_ long I think such a feature would be useful, but don't know how I should go about implementing this in a compiler which compiles to assembly. I want the arrays to be stored on consecutive register addresses, of course. Since I'm working with PICs, this has to be very memory efficient. When someone writes `int[]`, I don't think it's a good idea to reserve memory space for the variable yet, is it? Then the array would have a fixed maximum size. For example, when the array gets reserved memory address 5-100, and other variables get 4 and 101, the array has fixed borders and can't grow any bigger than 96 registers. Also, when I'd reserve memory from the start, let's say _x_ bytes, and I in the end only need _y_ bytes, I'm wasting _x_ \\- _y_ bytes. I don't want that. That means the only option I see is initializing the array and reserving space in the microcontroller, on the fly. This will take up some memory and execution time, of course. I thought of a system like this:   * Initialize an array `int[` _`x`_`] = {int, int}` which holds pointers to the start and end of arrays that are not initialized from the beginning - _`x`_ would be the maximum amount of arrays (this is a concession, but is better than a maximum length for all arrays)   * Store a variable _c_ = 0 to indicate the number of arrays used   * Store the borders of the initialized (reserved) memory in a variable somewhere   * When an array gets a length:     * Put pointers to the start (the current border) and end (the current border + the length) in the array from the first point at index _c_     * Increment _c_ I think this would work (wouldn't it?), but there a few cons, mainly concerning memory: I need to store the array, _c_ and the current memory borders as overhead. Would there be a better way to implement non-fixed size arrays in a language for PIC microcontrollers? My requirements are:   * Low memory overhead   * The array length does _not_ have to be changed on the fly   * With the system I thought up, one cannot store values in arrays that haven't been initialized yet. If there would be a system that can store values in an array of undefined length, that would be an advantage   * Faster systems (at runtime, compile time doesn't matter) are preferable"}
{"_id": "197547", "title": "how do you call the \u201cnumber of seconds since epoch\u201d format", "text": "I wanted to gives a good name for a variable date_in_(number of seconds since epoch format) I googled it and couldnt find anywhere the term to use. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "17079", "title": "Is it a good idea to appoint one of the scrum team member or scrum master as Product Owner?", "text": "Lately we had a project, in which client was busy touring. As usual scrum team was formed, management decided to appoint our analyst as Product owner since Client won\u2019t be able to participate actively. Analyst was the one who worked closely with client for requirement analysis and specification drafting. Client doesn\u2019t have the time to review first two releases. Everything went smoothly until, client saw third release; he wasn\u2019t satisfied with some functionalities, and those was introduced by make shift Product Owner (our analyst). We were told to wait till design team finished mock-up of all pages and client checked each one and approved to continue working. Scrum team is there, but no sprints \u2013 we finished work almost like classic waterfall method. Is it a good idea to appoint scrum team member or master as product owner? Do we need to follow scrum in the absence of client/product owner participation?"}
{"_id": "250882", "title": "Changing story-point estimates after closing the story", "text": "In a running multi-year multi-team project there is a set of stories that have been fully estimated and closed, having fulfilled the definition of done. Time has progressed and possibilities in Jira Agile have advanced, making it more useful to group user stories using an Epic to describe the total goal of the set of stories. There are new stories groomed and estimated that belong to these same epics, however the comparison between the old story points and the new story points cannot be made to fit: the new story points are worth less per story point. Is it acceptable to re-estimate the completed stories, increasing the number of story points that were completed a year ago? What sort of problems may arise from this if the changes are handled as scope changes?"}
{"_id": "211194", "title": "API design: concrete vs. abstract approach - best practices?", "text": "When discussing APIs between systems (on the business level) there are often two different point of views in our team: some people prefer a more - lets say - ~~generic~~ abstract approach, other a straight forward \"concrete\" approach. Example: the design of a simple \"person search\" API. the concrete version would be                searchPerson(String name, boolean soundEx,                   String firstName, boolean soundEx,                   String dateOfBirth)      People in favour of the concrete version say:   * the API is self-documenting   * it is easy to understand   * it is easy to validate (compiler or as a webservice: schema validation)   * KISS The other group of people in our team would say \"That is just a list of search criteria\"               searchPerson(List<SearchCriteria> criteria)      with               SearchCritera {       String parameter,       String value,       Map<String, String> options     }      with possibly making \"parameter\" of some enumeration type. Proponents say:   * without changing the (declaration of) the API the implementation can change, e.g. adding more criteria or more options. Even without synchronizing such a change at deployment time.   * documentation is necessary even with the concrete variant   * schema validation is overrated, often you have to validate further, schema cannot handle all cases   * we already have a similiar API with another system - reuse The counter-argument is   * lots of documentation about valid parameters and valid parameter combinations   * more communication effort because it's more difficult to understand for other teams Are there any best practices? Literature?"}
{"_id": "211197", "title": "How to use BDD to unit test a compiler?", "text": "My team is writing a compiler for a domain-specific language (DSL) which will be integrated into an IDE. Right now, we are focused on the analysis phase of the compiler. We are _not_ using any existing parser-generators (such as ANTLR) because we need real-time performance and highly detailed error/warning/message information. We have   1. classes, each of which represents a node in the concrete syntax tree for the language, as well as   2. classes which act as annotations for each node (i.e., for errors and additional information), as well as   3. internal classes which build and manipulate the concrete syntax tree (i.e., lexer, parser, cache for strings, syntax visitors). We are trying to decide on an overall strategy for organizing our tests. Our company is pushing behavior-driven development (BDD) and domain-driven design (DDD). Although we are building a DSL for our company\u2019s domain, the domain of the compiler is a programming language. We are still in the process of building the compiler and have some tests already. We are aiming to have 100% statement coverage. We currently have tests in which we input source code to the syntax tree builder, and then run a verification on each property of every node of the resultant syntax tree to make sure that the expected information (line number, relevant error(s), child/parent tokens, width of token, type of token, etc.). Now, since each node is its own class, and certain annotations and errors attached to a node are separate classes, this test ends up referencing many classes. We currently have tests for certain classes such as the lexer in which we can isolate the input (a string) and the output (a list of tokens) from other classes (e.g., the classes for the nodes of the syntax tree). These tests are more granular. Now, the tests in the paragraph immediately above can be put in correspondence with the class under test (e.g., lexer, string cache). However, the tests from the second paragraph above really test the whole analysis phase of the compiler; that is, each test can have well over 300 assertions for the syntax tree, given the input source code. The tests are for the behavior of the analysis phase. Is this an appropriate testing strategy? If not, what should we be doing differently? What organization strategy should we use for our tests?"}
{"_id": "211190", "title": "Javascript: initiating file download and routing file off via POST", "text": "Every so often (seems about once a year) I get a chance to play with JS.   While not proficient, I'm comfortable enough to get the job done if I have some good references. At this point, I feel like I'm just _not_ coming up with the right search terms to find anything useful. **GOAL:**   I'm looking for examples, tips, advice and/or links to any documentation/articles/instructions that my help. **BACK STORY:**   We have a vendor on whose site we search part numbers.   The results page has basic spec's and stat's, and there is a download link for a pricing sheet.   We have developed a tool to parse through the sheet and automatically enter the pricing into our system. The current workflow is to download the file and save it locally, and then upload the file to our form. **TASK:**   What I intend to do is make a bookmarklet to cut out a few steps.   I'd like to have the JS initiate the DL (?straight into a temp location?), and then POST the file right off to the current form-processing `action` url.   Done. **SUMMARY:**   Of course, snippets and examples are always _**awesome**_!!   Beyond that, any-and-every bit of sharing will be appreciated"}
{"_id": "250888", "title": "How to write JavaScript while keeping HTML/CSS out of it", "text": "What is / are some recommended ways to write JavaScript as to control behavior of showing HTML on screen, while keeping well-maintainable code? Basically, I started to look for ways to keep HTML/CSS out of JS (assuming it's the recommended practice), but I might as well check into the latest ways of writing JavaScript well. See below for more details. **My specific problem** I have JS files that look something like this:               var selection = eval(\"(\" + document.getElementById(\"result\").innerHTML + \")\");          if (selection[index].selected) {         result += '<TABLE class=\"list_grey\" style=\"float: left; margin-left: 20px;\">';         result += '<TR>';         result += '<TH colspan=\"2\">Data</TH>';         result += '</TR>';              var flag = \"All\";              if (selection[index].flag == 'P')             flag = \"Premium\";              result += '<TR>';         result += '<TD>Flag</TD>';         result += '<TD>' + flag + '</TD>';         result += '</TR>';         result += '</TABLE>';     }          document.getElementById('final').innerHTML = result;      In fact, entire JS codebase I work with is plagued by this. You can see here HTML, CSS JS, and JSON (`selection` var gets its content from JSON prepared by PHP earlier). I want to make this better. **My experience level** I am new to writing good JS or to having experience with JS patterns, tools, tips, techniques, and so on. I am looking for help with those. **My specific issue:** I have a series of tables and data to be shown to the user. It is a \"series\", so user can select which \"element\" of the series is currently active on the screen. An \"element\" is essentially an HTML partial (with JS and CSS and HTML), and is described below: \"element\": a block of HTML that serves as static data (tables, titles, and divs), and a long JSON string that encodes some previously prepared data. JSON string is assigned to a JS variable and that JSON data/JS variable stores records numbered `1` through `n`, where each `i` holds various data to be injected into the block of HTML, forming \"HTML partial\". I have navigational buttons on the screen, allowing user to step through the \"series\", where the HTML is the same, but the data inside it changes. I am looking for a good way to write this \"step through HTML blocks\" functionality using what is considered to be good maintainable JS code. Namely, I am looking for the following characteristics:   * separation of concern   * cleaner code - I need tools or techniques to allow me to avoid mixing HTML with JS with CSS (as in seen my example), unless where necessary or convenient. (what I have now is not convenient)   * I prefer techniques rather than tools, but open to considering/evaluating well-established tools. By \"techniques\", I mean pure JS, HTML, CSS, PHP approaches. By \"tools\", I currently know and trust jQuery, and for other tools prefer to have some track record to them. **Note on HTML visibility/hiding** I should also perhaps note that in my case HTML is static, aka it does not change structurally, as I step through the elements. However, based on the JSON/selection variable, some blocks of HTML are show/hidden (as is shown in my example). Once they are shown/hidden at page render time, they stay shown/hidden throughout stepping through selection."}
{"_id": "52602", "title": "Can I close the source of my application if I used code under the Mozilla Public License in it?", "text": "I need to use a group of Java classes licensed under the Mozilla Public License. I want to close the source code of my application. Is it possible without charging a fee for the MPL classes?"}
{"_id": "52603", "title": "Why does the use of interface-based programming appear to be limited to behaviour?", "text": "I have been doing a little thinking about inheritance vs. realization vs. composition. I am not about to post the whole detail here. So I was wondering, when we are not talking about creating interfaces to facilitate unit testing: Why does interface-based programming seem to focus upon the grouping of common behaviour, e.g., IPettable (for an animal), IEditable (for a user control), ISubmitable (for a form), etc. Why does the use of interface-based programming appear to be limited to behaviour and not essences. We could pragmatically use an interface, not so much realize behaviour but, to realize commonsense physical similarities which could have nothing to do with behaviour? It is not that there is some limiting feature within interface-based programming that we do not think to do this. This means that there is a tendency to use an interface in a fraction of its possible ways; so how come?"}
{"_id": "102240", "title": "Getting experience overseas", "text": "I'm English and been living in central Europe for most of my adult life. More recently, I've been having high hopes in a degree in Informations Systems Management and a few months Java training to get into a job as software developper. However, it seems the lack of relevant job experience and age (just turned 36) could form a serious obstacle and cause all of this effort to go to waste. A contact got into a job in London with little formal training so I'm wondering if I should contemplate getting experience overseas. The alternative would do my best to get a position here and perhaps continue with a Master's degree (education is dirt cheap). However, if things don't work out on the job front I fear that I may be sabotaging my chances of getting a good career off the ground. What do you think? Have you been down this road or know someone who has? Would a profile like mine stand a better chance in some countries you know?"}
{"_id": "90753", "title": "Contract-to-hire - determining rate?", "text": "I'm in discussion with a company for a full-time web development position. Since the position would require telecommuting or a relocation of my family, we've agreed on doing 2-4 weeks of contract work as a sort of evaluation period. Now they're asking what I would like my contract rate to be. I know generally what I'd like my salary to be, should this progress to the full time job, but I have no idea how that translates to the contract work. Taxes are different (I'm in the U.S.) and there are no benefits since I'm not yet an employee. Should I aim about on par with the salary I'm eventually hoping for, or do I need to adjust upwards to make up for taxes, etc.? (Or would I be expected to adjust down, since this is a sort of extended interview process?)"}
{"_id": "102245", "title": "Is there an encyclopedia of algorithms?", "text": "Is there an encyclopedia of algorithms similar in style to the Handbook of Mathematics? It seems useful to have large numbers of them available in one place. I know the Art of Computer Programming is considered a good source but it does not seem encyclopedic so much as instructive. > ### Moderator Note > > We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. > Don't just list a book: please explain _why_ you're recommending a book or > resource. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted. See Good > Subjective, Bad Subjective for more information."}
{"_id": "233042", "title": "Should one create underlying architecture to increase flexibility - in advance or when needed?", "text": "In this question I asked: Is the cost of designing more levels of abstraction to allow loose coupling worth the benefits, or not? People said that it's often worth the cost, but one should sense whether his/her application will actually be using this underlying design later on, or if it's just going to be a waste of time. My new question is: Should one create the infrastructure to allow flexibility and maintainability **in advance** \\- thus making the development 'cleaner' and more 'organized', as things are developed on existing infrastructure and abstraction levels? With this approach, you desing the underlying infrastructure while not having much knowledge on how things will actually be implemented later. Thus, you might be coding things that might not be used later, and waste your time. But, the development will be cleaner and more organized. Or should one create infrastructure to increase flexibility and make things more loosely coupled, **during** the implementation of something - thus wasting less time on things that might not actually be used later? This approach prevents you from coding things that won't be used, but forces you to design underlying abstraction levels and designs **for existing code** , thus modifying existing code, instead of coding the underlying designs **before** coding the code that uses these designs. **Example for approach 1:** \"Okay, now we start making this relatively large part of the application. This part will generally have to do with reacting to a couple of GUIs. Let's make an underlying level of abstraction for this part of the program, to later use when we implement it.\" **Example for approach 2:** \"Okay, I'm in the middle of designing this part of the program. While working on it, I see this part better be loosely coupled. Let's make another level of abstraction to allow it, and modify this code to use that level of abstraction\". Which approach makes more sense, or is more common?"}
{"_id": "60774", "title": "Model-View-Presenter implementation thoughts", "text": "I'm trying to get a good grasp of how to implement good decoupling between a UI and the model, but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly where to divide the lines. I've been looking at Model-View-Presenter, but I'm not sure exactly how to go about implementing it. For example, my View has multiple dialogs..   * Should there be a View class with instances of each of the dialogs? Then in that case, how should the dialogs interact with the Presenter? ie. if an individual dialog needs to request data from the Model via the Presenter, how should the dialog get a reference to the Presenter? Via a reference to the View given to it during construction?    * I was thinking maybe the view should be a static class? Then the dialogs GetView and get the Presenter from there...    * I'd been thinking about setting it up the Presenter with ownership of the View and Model (as opposed to the View having the Presenter and Presenter having Model) and the Presenter registering callbacks for events in the View, but that makes it seem a lot more coupled (or language depended, at least.) I'm trying to:   1. make this as decoupled as possible    2. ideally make it possible to couple the Presenter/Model with Views of other languages (I've not done a ton of inter-language stuff, but I know it's possible, particularly the more `void(void)` I can stick to, at least a C# app with a C++ library...    3. keep the code clean and simple  So.. any suggestions how the interactions should be handled?"}
{"_id": "251138", "title": "When to use packages or Repositories in Laravel?", "text": "I'm a Laravel (PHP) developer, and new with DI, Packages (workbench) and Repositories (Pattern). I want to know about the best concept/methodology for a more flexible design; ie. the project can grow and become something very modular. For example, after watching some Jeffrey Way videos in Laracasts I decide use that pattern:   * app/   * app/config   * app/controllers   * app/database   * app/views   * app/patrickmaciel (psr-4 in composer.json)   * app/patrickmaciel/user (repositories, eloquent model, validation, etc)   * app/patrickmaciel/group    * app/patrickmaciel/post    * app/patrickmaciel/billing   * app/patrickmaciel/helpers   * app/patrickmaciel/filters But after watch more videos, and reading more about flexibility, I see developers using **packages** instead of this psr-4 alternative (composer.json):               \"require\": {         \"patrickmaciel/group\",         \"patrickmaciel/user\",         \"patrickmaciel/post\",         \"patrickmaciel/billing\",         \"patrickmaciel/helpers\",         \"patrickmaciel/filters\"     }      So, **what is better for more flexibility**?"}
{"_id": "198625", "title": "which open source licence to use with my project?", "text": "I am working on a software project in my college. And I want to make it open source. But I want that people to only contribute to the project. I don't want that they should also release a project using my source with some modifications. So what will be the best Licence to use with my project ?"}
{"_id": "9694", "title": "Teaching a QA person to program", "text": "I have a friend who has been doing QA for about a year and wants to further their career. I have always leaned to C using gcc and makefiles as you have to do everything yourself. I have also read the best ways to teach a beginner to program, but in this case should I start with the technology his company uses, namely .NET? Is there any drawback to learning a object-oriented high-level language first, or should I stick with C?"}
{"_id": "235524", "title": "Pooling (Singleton) Objects Against Connection Pools", "text": "Given the following scenario   * A canned enterprise application that maintains its own connection pool   * A homegrown client application to the enterprise app. This app is built using Spring framework, with the DAO pattern While I may have a simplistic view of this, I think the following line of thinking is sound:   * Having a fixed pool of DAO objects, holding on to connection objects from the pool. Clearly, the pool should be capable of scaling up (or down depending on need) and the connection objects must outnumber the DAOs by a healthy margin. **Good**   * Instantiating brand new DAOs for every request to access the enterprise app; each DAO will attempt to grab a connection from the pool and release it when it's done. **Bad** Since these are service objects, there will be no (mutable) state held by the objects (reduced risk of concurrency issues) I also think that with #1, there should be little to no resource contention, while in #2, there'll almost always be a DAO waiting to be serviced. Is my thinking correct and what could go wrong?"}
{"_id": "251132", "title": "How should I approach storing single boolean results for a whole table?", "text": "I previously asked this question on stack overflow. But have not received any responses that might help me. So I thought I would try here. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24883527/best-way-for-me-to-approach- storing-single-boolean-results-for-overall-table Essentially I am creating a Java application that reads and writes form a database. In the course of the design it creates new tables with new information as well as linking the information from those tables. Anyway, the question is, the client has requested that the JTable that I use to display the Table names from the database now include 3 columns each with a checkbox. What would the best action be for me to store the data from these checkboxes? Some of the methods I have considered are   1. Store the information within the table in new columns (this will involve changing the code for modifying and writing of these tables, which is possible)   2. Create a new table and store the other table names and the values in columns within (have it on load check the current names against the meta data and add/remove where needed)   3. Create a properties file and pull the information from that, where it matches the names from the MetaData (ie. TableName=yes,no) The option that strikes me as the easiest/fastest to do/run would be to go with option 3, and make a properties file. NOTE: Within the application I already have methods for reading and writing from a properties file, as well as to create a new table within the database, and to write/read from the rows of each table."}
{"_id": "251130", "title": "Domain-specific Interfaces", "text": "Are there any real benefits of using interfaces over abstract classes in a domain model? Does anyone have any experience using interfaces in a domain model in a real project? From a technical perspective, DDD defines stereotypes like _aggregate_ , _value_ , _repository_ , etc. Repositories then, for example, can be defined as interfaces like `ICustomerRepository` which are then implemented by the infrastructure. Now that's a valid use case for an interface, since there can be multiple implementations of the repository (mocks, fakes etc.). However that is an entirely technical reason for using it: here the interface is only used to separate domain-specific repository from its technical implementation. But what about purely domain-specific interfaces? Has anyone ever encountered a situation in which both the interface and its realization were non- technical? In particular, what reasons could speak for choosing an interface over an abstract class when implementing a domain-specific type? Maybe when multiple inheritance is involved it would be required, but how probable is it and could it be considered a good design then?"}
{"_id": "142199", "title": "Proper way to measure the scalability of web Application", "text": "Let's say that I have a web Application where i'm going to have 300 users and each one have to see data on real time, imagine that each client make an ajax call to the server to see in real time what's happens with the changes of the data, this calls are made each 300 ms per user. I know that i can run a simulation to see if the hardware of my server supports this example. But what happen's if the number of users start to grow up. Is there a way that i can measure the hardware needed to handle this growing behavior, a software, a formula, algorithm or maybe recommend me if i need to implement an distributed application with multiplies servers and balance the loads."}
{"_id": "58388", "title": "Is SVN out of style?", "text": "It's been only several years since I migrated from Visual Source Safe to SVN. And SVN for me is still kinda \"WOW! I can do so many things! SVN is so cool!\" But many people around me keep saying \"SVN? Really? Meh...\" And there's so many of them that I'm worried. Should I move my team to Git / Mercurial or some other fancy thing? I know I sound ridiculous and the obvious answer would be \"stay with what works for YOU\". SVN does work for me... But every time I create a new project in my repository I keep asking myself - may be this was the time to move? So... Is SVN really that bad? Do I miss a huge opportunity by sticking with it?"}
{"_id": "112512", "title": "Do I need to learn Design Patterns if I'm preparing to be Android Developer?", "text": "Please advise if it is required to learn design patterns if I'm studying for Android development?"}
{"_id": "142192", "title": "Why would a programmer want to separate implementation from interface?", "text": "The bridge design pattern separates implementation from the interface of a program. Why is this advantageous?"}
{"_id": "104956", "title": "Should a developer accept a workload estimation done by a Excel macro?", "text": "In a new project, a friend had to write tests where the time required to write them was calculated by an Excel macro written by his non-developer manager. In such circumstances, should a developer accept the responsibility to write and run the tests in the calculated time? Are the results of these test trustworthy? For information, my friend refused to be responsible for estimations he didn't made, ask succeed to work on another project, and have been replaced by an inexperienced out-of-the-school yes-guy."}
{"_id": "58384", "title": "Python's Django or Delphi's IntraWeb?", "text": "Well, forgive me if it is an off-topic question. I have no knowledge about web programming, so I apologize in advance, if it is a stupid question. I will start to build a web based application. To be more specific, I will make a webpage which will have components like buttons, textboxes and etc. It will use a database to store information. My question is, which one is better to learn for that purpose? Python's Django or Delphi's IntraWeb? I know both Delphi and Python(although I know Delphi better)."}
{"_id": "186031", "title": "How can I break my vendor lock-in situation?", "text": "I'm developing software for about 10 years. I began on QBasic and now I'm developing .NET using C# language. I'm always trying to follow the best design patterns and principals like SOLID. In short I'm very happy with my work while as a tiny ISV I'm free to choose between technologies. Of course we almost develop mid-size web applications for start-ups. Although I'm moving to MS open stack more and more (Ex. MVC, EF, etc.) and I've also tried Mono, _I feel tied to MS_. I seriously want to break this vendor lock-in situation. I want to be able to develop Windows and Web application using a strongly-type open and free (at least more free) language using the best software practices which is more vendor independent. I think I have no choice except Java. Then;   * What is the best way to start breaking this situation?   * Should I migrate to the Java platform? (I know it cost me a lot)   * Then how can I start?    * C# is an amazing language. Some of its features do not exist in Java (LINQ, real generics, async/await, etc.)! How can I get to that?"}
{"_id": "186036", "title": "When should pointers be checked for NULL in C?", "text": "**Summary** : Should a function in C always check to make sure it is not dereferencing a `NULL` pointer? If not when is it appropriate to skip these checks? **Details** : I've been reading some books about programming interviews and I'm wondering what the appropriate degree of input validation for function arguments in C is? Obviously any function that takes input from a user needs to perform validation, including checking for a `NULL` pointer before dereferencing it. But what about in the case of a function within the same file that you don't expect to expose through your API? For example the following appears in the source code of git:               static unsigned short graph_get_current_column_color(const struct git_graph *graph)     {         if (!want_color(graph->revs->diffopt.use_color))             return column_colors_max;         return graph->default_column_color;     }      If `*graph` is `NULL` then a null pointer will be dereferenced, probably crashing the program, but possibly resulting in some other unpredictable behavior. On the other hand the function is `static` and so maybe the programmer already validated the input. I don't know, I just selected it at random because it was a short example in an application program written in C. I've seen many other places where pointers are used without checking for NULL. My question is general not specific to this code segment. I saw a similar question asked within the context of exception handing. However, for a unsafe language such as C or C++ there is no automatic error propagation of unhandled exceptions. On the other hand I have seen lots of code in open source projects (such as the example above) that does not do any checks of pointers before using them. I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on guidelines for when to put checks in a function vs. assuming that the function was called with correct arguments. I'm interested in this question in general for writing production code. But I'm also interested within the context of programming interviews. For instance many algorithm textbooks (such as CLR) tend to present the algorithms in pseudocode without any error checking. However, while this is good for understanding the core of an algorithm it's obviously not a good programming practice. So I would not want to tell an interviewer that I was skipping error checking to simplify my code examples (as a textbook might). But I also would not want to appear to produce inefficient code with excessive error checking. For instance the `graph_get_current_column_color` could have been modified to check `*graph` for null but its not clear what it would do if `*graph` was null, other than it should not dereference it."}
{"_id": "48299", "title": "Deciding between obj->func() and func(obj)", "text": "I was thinking about this when I was starting to set up some code for a new project: are there any rules of thumb for when a method should be part of an object, and when it should be a stand alone function that takes an object as a parameter? EDIT: as pointed out in a comment, this can depend on language. I was working in C++ when it came to mind, though I'm this is an issue across a number of languages (and would still love to see answers that pertain to them)."}
{"_id": "143825", "title": "What are the advantages of mainframes?", "text": "The downsides of Mainframes is well trodden ground; expensive, legacy, dwindling community, etc. I'm not particularly interested in the downsides, but I am curious if there are any benefits to mainframe hardware/software over the current Intel/AMD & Linux/Windows environment. I've been told that MFs are particularly good (and better than current servers) at heavy I/O loads. Is this still true?"}
{"_id": "20564", "title": "When being a technical genius is not enough to be a successful developer?", "text": "There has been a lot of discussion around the excellent question \"Will high reputation in Stack Overflow help to get a good job?\". I immediately agreed with **JoshK** that basically said \"No\" (I'll will explain why), but **Joel** chimed in with lot of convincing facts which made me upvote him as well. My question is **what other skills (other than being a technical genius) do you require from a developer?** To get the job, or to _keep_ it. I believe being a genius is far from being enough. I have met many technical geniuses in various companies I have worked for that impressed me a lot, but sadly in lot of cases, they were simply fired after a few months or put in ivory towers (mainly because of internal mutiny from other developers). I've seen many in personal distress as a result of this which I understand. That's why I'm a big fan of non-technical questions for technical positions. I like to know how the candidate will interact with others (including non- technical employees), how much consideration he will have for the business, if he will work for the desired outcome, and so on. I would like to know what you require from your developers and **WHY** it's important _(after all, you hire someone to write code, don't you? Why would you want him to be assertive?)_. **Ideally, I'd like you to come up with an example question you would ask during interviews** in support of your answer."}
{"_id": "195211", "title": "boolean or Boolean?", "text": "I was doing edit reviews on Stack Overflow and found out that people keeps correcting the word \"boolean\", replacing it with \"Boolean\" when it appears in text (but not in source code, of course). And then I found out that the spelling checker in my browser agrees with them. Is there any rationale behind this? It seems grammatically incorrect. I think the word boolean is used in two different ways, either among programmers as a simple noun, \"return a boolean\", or as part of a mathematical term, \"boolean logic\", \"boolean algebra\". None of these cases seem to motivate a capital letter. You don't write \"return a Float\", \"Fuzzy logic\" or \"Linear algebra\" (unless of course it is at the beginning of a sentence). I suppose that the capital letter in \"Boolean\" somehow refers to the name George Boole. But then that doesn't make sense either. I found this link which gives some excellent examples of similar cases, where some term is named after a person, but no capital letter is used. Any consensus? What is correct? What should we use?"}
{"_id": "48293", "title": "Legitimate use of the Windows \"Documents\" folder in programs", "text": "Anyone who likes their Documents folder to contain only things they place there knows that the standard Documents folder is completely unsuitable for this task. Every program seems to want to put its settings, data, or something equally irrelevant into the _Documents_ folder, despite the fact that there are folders specifically for this job1. So that this doesn't sound empty, take my personal \"Documents\" folder as an example. I don't _ever_ use it, in that I never, under any circumstances, save anything into this folder myself. And yet, it contains 46 folders and 3 files at the top level, for a total of 800 files in 500 folders. That's 190 MB of \"documents\" I didn't create. Obviously any actual documents would immediately get lost in this mess. **My question is** : can anything be done to improve the situation sufficiently to make \"Documents\" useful again, say over the next 5 years? Can programmers be somehow educated en-masse not to use it as a dumping ground? Could the OS start reporting some \"fake\" location hidden under AppData through the existing APIs, while only allowing Explorer and the various Open/Save dialogs to know where the \"real\" Documents folder resides? Or are any attempts completely futile or even unnecessary? * * * 1For the record, here's a quick summary of the various standard directories that should be used instead of \"Documents\":   * `RoamingAppData` for _user-specific_ data and settings. This is **the** directory to use for user-specific non-temporary data. Anything placed here will be available on _any machine_ that a given user logs on to in networks where this is configured. Do not place large files here though, because they slow down login/logout in such environments.   * `LocalAppData` for _user-and-machine-specific_ data and settings. This data differs for every user and every machine. This is also where very large user-specific data should be placed.   * `ProgramData` for _machine-specific_ data and settings. These are the same regardless of which user is logged on, and will not roam to other machines in a network.   * `GetTempPath` for all files that may be wiped without loss of data when not in use. This is also **the** place for things like **caches** , because like temporary data, a cache does not need to be backed up. Place your huge cache here and you'll save your user some backup trouble. \"Documents\" itself should only _ever_ be used if the user specified it manually by entering a path or selecting it in a Save dialog. That is the only time it is _ever_ appropriate to save stuff in \"Documents\"."}
{"_id": "148767", "title": "Best way of accessing data on different pages", "text": "I'm looking for a way to load data into properties/variables etc and have this information accessible to all the pages of my app. I want the information to be loaded via a background thread to keep UI thread free. Some of the pages will have various properties of their controls binding to these global properties. Here is what I tried.   * Created a static class. All pages could access the data but can't bind.   * Changed the static class to a Singleton and used DependencyProperty's. All pages could access data and binding worked fine but cross-threading issues when accessing via background threads. I have read in various places on this subject but haven't really come up with the best method yet for my situation."}
{"_id": "80333", "title": "Inspiring a team - Startup company - Real world problems", "text": "I joined my company 2 years back which is a startup company that has been around for 5 years now. From the beginning I've been working on one of the Microsoft technologies. Just after few days I joined the company I learnt that the company doesn't have a working process in place right through the software development life cycle. The employees are left unmonitored and the schedules, deadlines, milestones and the quality didn't come off as expected. I've been always passionate about programming and more importantly patterns and practices in both technical and non-technical areas and kept myself busy in my learning curve. Meanwhile the company's productivity started deteriorating every day. There is no mutual understanding between the management and the employees (just 12). The management didn't care much about the employees' benefits, their work environment, realistic schedules etc. Due to the miscalculations from the management the developer teams has been pushed to work crazy many a times. This made the employees unhappy making them to lose interest in their work. So they started producing very _bad_ results affecting the company's growth. There always was mistakes equally on both sides, the management and the employees. The trivial reason I find is that the management failed to educate employees about the process, importance of quality, software development patterns, practices etc. The management was always keen in delivering results and failing to look on 'how to' deliver the results. Recently I've been elevated to be a team leader (I just completed my 2 years) as the management believed that I have the technical proficiency as well as the managerial capabilities to handle a bunch of products. I was having a more _intimate_ relationship with my colleagues more than a _professional_ relationship. So I'm finding it very hard to employ some rules and establish a working model within the company. And so far I've been receiving adverse results if I push it a little bit more. Moreover I need to make myself qualified for this role and feel confident about the working model I propose as I've no good hand to guide on this. I kind of have more bookish knowledge rather than the practical experience. What can I do on this situation? Should I abandon the company or should I put more effort to set things right? _\"In a company of 10,000 people if 5 guys fail to work properly the company can withstand it. But in a company of 10-15 people even if one guy doesn't perform well it impacts the company's growth in a huge way.\"_"}
{"_id": "195377", "title": "Good Data Structure book to improve programming logic for children", "text": "My cousin (Age 10) who studies in Standard 5. He wants to learn programming and programming logic. Which book or resources should I refer? Is there any Good Data Structure book to improve programming logic specially for children?"}
{"_id": "80336", "title": "Do resumable exceptions make any sense?", "text": "Following up my previous question I wonder if `resumable exceptions` make any sense. It looks like nobody uses them in `Java`. Don't they use `resumable exceptions` because of Java limitations or just because they don't really need them? Suppose, I want to create a file in a directory, which should exist but does not. I would probably prefer use a `resumable exception` (i.e. throw an exception, catch it and create the directory, and resume the execution) instead of testing if the directory exists every time I create a file. Does it make sense in general ?"}
{"_id": "1262", "title": "Most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in a IDE", "text": "I'm considering whether I should start using VIM again instead of an IDE. What are the most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in an IDE?"}
{"_id": "210829", "title": "Git Staging: When to stage? What to do if modification occurs afterwards", "text": "I'm rather new to the broad world of Git. I have read the manual and have been practicing but I am confused about few aspects of it, which I couldn't figure out after searching for. I'm wondering:   * In a project (post first commit), when is the right moment to stage source files? Right before committing? Right after adding/deleting or modifying?   * If files are staged midway between two commits, and then they get modified, what happens with Git? Does it need care about content changes when it was stated and what it become since?   * If I create a new file, stage it and then want to delete it, why does Git ask me to use \"-f\" flag and a simple \"git -rm file.ext\" won't work? I have read \"What stage means\" and various other subjects of the manual and other tutorials on Git but as I said, I still don't understand the above matters. So, if you could, please answer the questions with your own words and examples so I might have a better chance of understanding it. Thank you."}
{"_id": "99667", "title": "Any alternative main stream programming methodologies to OOP using C#?", "text": "As far as programming languages go, I love C#, and for that matter all the good that comes from the .net framework (LINQ, etc). My main concern is I seem to be churning out too much code, and using OOP, I have a concern my code isn't always that easy to manage. I want to continue using C# and .Net, but are there any other approaches to applying the language to get overall less code, and easier to manage compared to text book OOP? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "186788", "title": "Should a service use session information?", "text": "As an example, if I have a Post service and have a method to retrieve all posts for the logged in user, is it OK to have a findPosts() method that uses an injected Security service to get the user ID and then pass that user ID to my post DAO to get the records? Or should the findPosts() method explicitly require the user ID as an argument?"}
{"_id": "111894", "title": "Do \"Builder\" static methods violate SOLID?", "text": "I am writing a class which consists mostly of data storage responsibilities. The context for the use of this class will, in general, be retrieving an array of objects of this type for display later. In light of that, I've created a static method, `build_question_array()`, which queries the database, instantiates the objects, and returns the array. Does this violate the \"SOLID\" principle?"}
{"_id": "156218", "title": "What to expect during an interview with a senior development executive?", "text": "I passed first two technical interviews at a global e-commerce company for the position of senior software engineer. I was told that there are two more interviews, one with a senior development executive and another with a person from human resources (HR).   1. What kind of questions I should expect during the interview with the senior development executive? Is is technical, high level architecture related, etc.?   2. During HR interviews, is it ok to ask about the work-life balance and actual working hours?"}
{"_id": "95131", "title": "How can I remove my fear of doing freelancing work?", "text": "I usually work in a web design company, but my manager also has his own company. He is a designer basically and he catches the projects with clients and then I do his work during weekends or whenever I have time. He is very bold. He has no knowledge of programming at all. But I have seen that many times he catches projects which even I don't know how to do. Last year he got projects in Joomla, Drupal, and Microsoft Sharepoint which I didn't know at the time. I told him that I don't know how to use those. He told me to take my time to learn and then do it. At that time I was thinking that I didn't know what would happen but eventually I finished them all. He sometimes hands unfinished projects to clients even though he knows that they're not done, but he's not worried because people won't notice at all. If they do notice then he tells me to do it. I sometimes wonder how he is running such a risky business. I have seen that I, who know programming, am afraid of accepting projects but he, who doesn't know anything doesn't hesitate to accept them. I'm always too afraid of doing personal projects because I start thinking about what can go wrong. If I did something wrong, then people will sue me. How will I pay the damages? Due to this thinking I was not able to get any projects done from my known clients. Whenever they ask me if I can do one, I say no. I'm afraid of accepting projects. Even though I have done many projects at work but I worry about it when it comes to me. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "95138", "title": "How can I make my career in supply chain optimisation and data mining?", "text": "There is a company in my city which does supply chain optimization, data mining and predictive modelling. I tried hard but was not able to enter there. Now I want to do similar sort of work. They apply many optimization techniques which makes the decision making of company easier. Presently I know Python, Django, PHP, Linux and web development. Can anyone guide me that what i need to do for that sort of work, what thing I need to learn so that after 5-6 years I can also start making those type of softwares for small shops. I mean which languages and tools I need to learn."}
{"_id": "8789", "title": "CMP Entity Beans as a \"naive\" ORM solution", "text": "I was browsing through this talk about \"Historically Bad Ideas\" over the history of Computer Science, and found an interesting presentation about the rise & fall of the Java Enterprise initiatives. Slide #16 grabbed my attention by suggesting that Container Managed Persistence is a \"na\u00efve ORM solution\". Of course, I assume the presenter made a live in-depth analysis of the problem, which is missing in the slide. So I was left intrigued by that statement. Is CMP Entity Beans just a heavy piece of naive engineering? Aside any bias from the author(s) of the presentation, what would constitute a more adequate ORM solution in the domain of languages like Java or C#? I'm not asking for specific tools or frameworks, but better approaches. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "223882", "title": "How can I share data across several websites?", "text": "I am trying to develop a simple system for sharing data across several websites. Most of them are developed in PHP while some are developed in Wordpress/Drupal. Redundant information is spread across several websites and this has caused a problem where we have to update the information across several websites separately. I am trying to provide a solution where even static pages can get shared data. Here is my proposed architecture: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/h7JFZ.png) I am doing this for an academic institution. The data varies from simple fees structures to academic policies. For example consider academic costs. Academic costs -> ug, graduate, pharmacy... each of the departments will have a fees structure categorized by off campus, on campus, commuter.               \"Undergraduate\": {         \"metaid\": \"0770\",         \"Offcampus\": {           \"FeesItems\": {             \"comprehensive\": {               \"label\": \"Comprehensive Fees\",               \"value\": \"2,141\"           }         }       }     }      For front end using mustache, they just have to include the js and use something like below to get values,               <td>{{Undergraduate.Offcampus.FeesItems.comprehensive.label}} </td>     <td>{{Undergraduate.Offcampus.FeesItems.comprehensive.value}}</td>      My questions: Is this design scalable?   How to give the data owners the ability to edit the data?   How to store the data in sql?"}
{"_id": "147341", "title": "Why is there a leading zero in HTML 4.01 version number?", "text": "I've never noticed this quirk until now, and it's screwing with my mind. Why was HTML 4.01 numbered with a leading zero, rather than as 4.1?"}
{"_id": "78406", "title": "Writing better timesheet", "text": "Recently, my company started to require us to fill out a monthly timesheet, writing down everything you do in office. A timesheet contain 29-31 days, depends on the number of days of the month. I need to write the things I did in every row of the excel file, which represent a day. This timesheet embarrasses me, because something like this can happen:   * **I spent Monday writing a program, and the program was done.** Because my boss didn't give me other program to write, basically I am just sitting there and pretending I am busy in the following days before my boss gives me another assignment. Of course I should not write it in the timesheet as it is. I can write it in the timesheet that I write the program using 4 days, but it makes me feel very inefficient.  I can separate the process into 1) write the program, 2)deploy the program, 3)test the program, but that can make the process so long like 3 weeks, really. Have you encountered such a situation? How would you deal with this? EDIT: some people said I should be more proactive about asking for more assignments, but here is the situation: the boss of my boss gives some jobs to my boss, then my boss gives the jobs to me, sometimes I can also see my boss being quite less busy. One of my colleagues said that I should not ask for another assignment in a proactive manner, because it would be a headache for my boss to **think a job out of nowhere** for me. I don't want the things turn out like that, really."}
{"_id": "78407", "title": "Software design for procedural programming", "text": "Right now, I'm trying to learn a well documented software engineering. I knew that if we code using Object Oriented concept, we can do software design concept using UML. But what if we code using procedural programming, how we do software design? as my understanding, UML is for OOP. And do you have any references in internet? Please advices and correct me if I'm wrong about UML."}
{"_id": "223888", "title": "Who is responsible for updating the Java API and how can other individuals contribute?", "text": "I made a search on google to find out who are the people in Oracle responsible for updating the Java API in other words who are those responsible for adding new classes and methods to the API and updating the Java Documentation. I could not find an answer to this question which leads me to the next question, what if I had some classes that are not found in the API which I wished to share with others, how do I get Oracle to add those classes for me?"}
{"_id": "198292", "title": "How should test for a \"for any different than x return false\" requirement look like", "text": "I tried to find if there's a similar question but didn't even know what keywords should I use :) I got a method in an interface accepting an other interface as a parameter:               bool CanDoIt(AnInterface subject)      One of the implementations needs to fulfill the requirement that the method should return false for all concrete types (implementing AnInterface) different than X. Simple implementation could look like (didn't wrote it since got no UT for that):               bool CanDoIt(AnInterface subject)     {         if(!(subject is X)) return false;         else ...     }      I know that this is a code smell accepting an interface and then checking it's concrete type - unfortunately for now I got to stick with it. I would like to write a test that would check if the requirement is implemented correctly. So that test would fail if someone would ever add a new type implementing AnInterface and changed the method not to meet the requirement. If writing such a test isn't possible then what can I do to consider the coded tested? Would writing a test using few exemplary types would be enough, or is it better not to write it at all?"}
{"_id": "179417", "title": "Formalizing a requirements spec written in narrative English", "text": "I have a fairly technical functionality requirements spec, expressed in English prose, produced by my project manager. It is structured as a collection of UI tabs, where the requirements for each tab are expressed as a lit of UI fields and a list of business rules for the tab. Most business rules are for UI fields on a tab, e.g:   1. Must be alphanumeric, max length 20.   2. Must be a dropdown, with values from table x.   3. Is mandatory.   4. Is mandatory under certain conditions, e.g. another field is just populated, or has a specific value. Then other business rules get a little more complex. The spec is for a job application, so the central business object (table) is the Applicant, and we have several other tables with one-to-many relationships with applicant, such as Degree, HighSchool, PreviousEmployer, Diploma, etc.   1. One such complex rule says a status field can only be assigned a certain value if a many-side record exists in at least one of the many-side tables. E.g. the Applicant has at least one HighSchool or at least one Diploma record. I am looking for advice on how to codify these requirements into a more structured specification defined in terms of tables, fields, and relationships, especially for the conditional rules for fields and for the presence of related records. Any suggestions and advice will be most welcome, but I would be overjoyed if i could find an already defined system or structure for expressing things like this."}
{"_id": "30853", "title": "Relation between developers and clients", "text": "I'm currently working in a small company that its taking care of implementing lots of systems, most of them for goverment institutions, in witch it generally means taking software developted 20 years ago and refurbish them so fit up-to-date needs. The clients generally are very used to them and tend to discourage change (they are in their 50s 60s give or take, so not technologie- friendly in general). As you can imagine, dev-team in most cases starts taking care of relation with clients, generating the documentation needed in this cases (CU usually), assisting to weekly meets to see improvements with clients. As for experience, this is a gold mine for me, because gives a nice perspective on all the aspects of software development, but also some problems rise because, if developers come from mars then clients are from venus. There is a fine gap on the vocabulary/experience/capability-to-interpret-needs that generates a noise in the communication, and some times affecting the final product. Should a developer be in direct contact with the client, or there should be an \"adapter\" guy that translates client needs in pseudo formal requirements understandable to us?"}
{"_id": "144690", "title": "how to structure MVC models and ORM models", "text": "I have some trouble getting a good folder structure in my project and i would like to know what other ways i could use to structure my files. I'm currently working in an MVC sturctured folder.               www/       Controllers/       Models/       Views/      Nothing special so far. But i'm also using an ORM system. With it i can easily get an 'object' from my database like:               ORM::load('table');      Now this sort of code should reside in a Model right? So i'd get something like this:               <?php     class userModel     {         public function getAllUsers ( )         {             return ORM::load('table');         }              public function getUserById ( $id )         {             return ORM::load('table', 'userid=?', array($id));         }     }     ?>      Looks good so far in my opinion... But there's one more thing. I can also specify a 'model' when using the ORM system. With this model i can basically set up validation rules. Like so:               ORM::withModel('authModel');      This lets the ORM know that before it adds a new row (or updates an existing one) to the DB, that it should check the following model first for validation rules.               <?php     class authModel //Or maybe authValidation??     {         // Method gets automatically triggered when an update is done with the ORM         public function onUpdate ( $obj )         {             if ( $obj->username == '' )                 throw new \\Exception('No username');         }              public function onInsert ( $obj )         {             // Validations here too.         }     }     ?>      Now the problem is, is that i have 2 sorts of models. One where i basically use getters/setters to get and store data to the database (from my controller to my model). And i have another model in which validation rules are set... I don't want to mix both in the same folder. So i must come up with another structure for this. Something like:               www/       Controllers/       Models/         Repositories/         Entities/       Views/      It's just that my model isn't a real 'repository', since it doesn't store any objects in the repo class and doesn't have a commit() method or anything like that. I also can't store the 2nd model (for validations) in the Entities folder, because they're not Entities at all... Any idea how i should structure this..??"}
{"_id": "144691", "title": "Why is the empty list used as the list terminator in Lisp?", "text": "It seems to me that the list terminator in Lisp could be any arbitrary value. For example, the string terminator in C is the null pointer. Is there a philosophical reason why the empty list was chosen to terminate lists?"}
{"_id": "30856", "title": "Licencing FOSS for profit", "text": "Some projects are available under restrictive FOSS licenses (GPL or AGPL, for example) which preclude them from being used in proprietary projects. The developers can then sell separate commercial licenses which allow the code to be used in proprietary projects. How common is this? Examples I'm aware of: MySQL x264 Cygwin"}
{"_id": "109373", "title": "Your Approach to Learning Language(s)?", "text": "_This question is geared specifically towards finding out what techniques you employ when faced with learning a new language - feel free to skip to the last paragraph for the straight-forward question._ I'm an inexperienced programmer and would like to learn a multitude of languages (quickly (thirsty for knowledge ;), but thoroughly). I've dabbled in computer programming since I was 10 years old (VB 6 - 19 years old now). I've played with PHP, C, Ruby and HTML + CSS (though the last two arent technically programming languages, though you obviously know that). I want to structure my learning for efficiency and productivity as I develop my career and would like to hear **how you approach learning a language.** For instance, I read up a little bit about a particular language and if I like the look of it, I usually do a bit of book research and buy a thoroughly (and positively) reviewed one since published content is usually better than a lot of the content you'll find on the web (don't quote me on that). I'll then follow the book and set myself mini-projects to complete, obviously from the first 'hello world' application to a CMS or minigame. I find setting myself projects is a good tactic - it requires research 'off the beaten trail' to find out what features of a language I need to know about to accomplish it in the most efficient way. **What works for you when learning a language? Anything different from reading books and setting small bite-size targets?**"}
{"_id": "194772", "title": "What is the difference, if any, between Model and QA environments?", "text": "I have worked for various organizations many of whom call their environment that comes after the test/developer environment and before the staging and/or production environment either model or QA. They all seem to use this term interchangeably, however, is there any technical difference or should there be a difference in these terms? Or are should they be completely interchangeable terms?"}
{"_id": "194775", "title": "Setting up and syncing a developer (local) version and a public version of a website", "text": "What is the best and most efficient way to set up two versions of the same website? I want one version that is online and open for everyone to use but I also want a developer version where I can develop and test new things instead of doing that against the ftp. Currently I have MAMP setup on my developing machine and I use Git for version control. In MAMP/XAMPP the location for the files are `localhost/example/` and on the ftp it is the host's (Dreamhost's in this case) file structure. Something like `/home/username/example.com/`. That results in having multiple versions of pretty much the same file. This isn't that efficient but I can't come up with a good solution for it. Are there any? It would be perfect if I wanted to add a new feature to the website I could do that in MAMP and when i commit the changes with Git it uploads the changes to the ftp."}
{"_id": "141017", "title": "UI patterns in functional languages", "text": "I would like to start fiddling with ClojureScript, but I am puzzled about some points. My problem is what is a good way to deal with state changes coming from user interaction, when you trying to work functionally. Let me give a couple of examples. I have in mind applications which run in the browser, but I think the issue is more general. Of course something will be changing - the DOM at least. But I would like to find out how to organize the rest of the code to work with immutable data structures. 1) Say I want to attach some events to some DOM object. This is not hard to do in a mostly functional way: when you create the node, you attach it a hash map with the various event handlers. **But** consider the case where you are using event delegation. Then when you create a new node, you may attach a event handler to some parent node that probably already exists. So you would have to change the hash associated to the already existing node. 2) Say I am designing an autocomplete module for an input field. Every time the user presses a key, I can make a call to a server to get the suggestions. This is easy. But now suppose I want to optimize it a bit. If I know all results matching `foo` there is no point in asking again for all results matching `foobar`; I can just filter the former. So I need to build some kind of cache. This cache will be updated every time the user inserts a new word which is not a superset of the words previously entered. Again: how do I model the cache? The most reasonable way seems to be a hash map mapping words to results, but it should be mutable. Can you suggest some patterns that would make it easier to incorporate changes due to user interaction into a functional design?"}
{"_id": "114914", "title": "Is an ASP.NET site in a Linux environment possible?", "text": "I found some software a while ago that claimed to execute ASP.NET applications on a Linux server, I remember that the information said that takes the code and converts it to Java. I never downloaded or tested the software. Does anyone know the name of this software? Also, is possible to execute ASP.NET on a Linux server in the first place?"}
{"_id": "114919", "title": "Is Visual Studio Express suitable for commercial application development?", "text": "If I were to develop a Silverlight game and publish it to a site where you can play it for free is the use considered to be commercial or personal? What about if the site has adverts on, is it then considered to be commercial if the program is free but its hosted on a site that makes money? My reason for asking this is Visual Studio Express can only be used for personal or non-commercial use so I want to check what the limits for the use are."}
{"_id": "136732", "title": "Is it a problem to have different styles of HTML coding within team?", "text": "I with 2 other friends are new to web development. We are learning HTML, CSS, Javascript and are creating simple websites to get a feel of different things. And as HTML is only a markup and not a programming language we have very different styles evolving. I mean whenever we look at each other's code, we tend to put a good amount of time in understanding why the other one does that. Now we want to build a larger website together and my question is- Is that a problem having very different styles in a team for web development(specifically)?"}
{"_id": "149416", "title": "Excellent knowledge of C++", "text": "I recently saw a recruiting page for a software company where one of the requirements was \"Excellent knowledge of C++.\" Now, I know this somehow implies as expert knowledge of C++, but where exactly does expert knowledge fit into. Is it the knowledge and experience of (let's say) eight years of programming in the language, having and knowing the ins and outs of a specific domain. Or, is it a more brush-up, surface approach to one or more domains and a at the same time a more detailed understanding of the whole language? For example, you cannot be an expert at writing system drivers and game engines at the same time. So, where does this excellent or expert knowledge fit into?"}
{"_id": "136736", "title": "Online Code Editor", "text": "The major online IDEs are hosted on the service provider's server. Examples are Kodingen, Cloud9, ShiftEdit. Hence they would be unavailable if the external server was down for some reason, and I prefer to do my computing on my own computer anyway. Does anyone know of an online IDE or editor (preferably just an editor - a simple implementation of the Ace or CodeMirror JS editors) which can be downloaded and run on localhost (on a local LAMP server)? I've found two so far - Eclipse Orion and Wiode, but I don't like either of them very much, and I'm looking for alternatives. Also suitable are browser extensions which run natively on the browser (offline) without going to some external site. An example would be SourceKit for Chrom(e/ium)."}
{"_id": "149413", "title": "Queuing RPC calls", "text": "I'm designing a system which listens to JSON RPC calls from clients, piles them up inside a list, and if the list gets full it will store them in a DB and keep receiving calls. My original plan is to listen to the RPC calls from Perl with the JSON-RPC and put them in an array. The clients do some long polling in another server to get responses as they appear.   * What is this blocking/non-blocking thing?    * Should I do a script for node.js to listen to the calls?    * What do you think is a good practice in this case?  The goal is to listen as much calls as possible."}
{"_id": "149419", "title": "How do professional software development teams deal with design complexity in non-trivial projects?", "text": "First, I realize this question may by somewhat long and vague and I apologize for this. This is probably a basic problem with a short name to anybody who's \"got it\", but as I find myself lacking in this regard, please bear with me in describing the problem. I've been doing programming in this way or the other since I was about 11 years old. This means that I've been mostly teaching myself everything from the start. I received a technical education, but not strictly in Computer Science (I graduated with a degree in Photonic Engineering). We had programming courses of course, but this was mostly basic stuff for me and I didn't learn much new things. I've kept educating myself along the way for the joy of it and always knew I would pursue a career in programming, but all my projects were quite small at that time. I had no trouble keeping them in my mind and maintaining them. Now, I find myself the lead on a team, but not in a corporate environment - I work for the university developing scientific software (in C++) for engineering applications. Suddenly the project is growing (relatively) big and I've trouble wrapping my mind around it most of the time. I'm losing a lot of time and effort on two things mostly:   1. When I have to return to a section of code I've not worked on for a while, I have difficulty remembering how it worked. I spend a lot of time reviewing the header files for the relevant classes and reading the comments I placed along the way in the source files. I wish there was some form of \"schematic\" I could glimpse at and regain the picture more easily;   2. When I introduce changes, sometimes I realize half-way that what I'm trying to do will break things somewhere else (or worse, it shows up only at runtime as a surprise). I revert and start doing it differently, only to find out I neglected the influence on some other component. I wish there was some \"architecture diagram\" where I could see how things get done, how what I'm trying to do will influence other components and a way for me to plan in detail before I start implementing changes. Most of the people I work with have similar stories as my own - strong technical orientation and sometimes great skills, but with no way of organizing their work. However, their projects are usually much smaller than mine so they cope somehow. Anyway, what that means for me is that I'm on my own and I have nobody to learn the good practices from. I took up a postgraduate course in managing IT and while I find it quite satisfying, it's mostly targeted at non-programmers, teaching about project management methodologies, budget/schedule estimations, enterprise architecture etc. - not software design and planning as such. That's OK, I'm trying to learn that stuff too. Of course, some tools (like UML) and the types of sofware development processes (cascade, iterative, agile...) were introduced, but obviously not in great detail and I've a hard time deciding what I should pick and use (and to what extent). I've been reading many questions and answers about software design on SO - there are many about doing it using this or that particular tool or methodology, and if I was convinced that UML documentation would solve my problems - I'd pick it up and start using it. But some people swear by it, others say it's useless. I'm looking for an answer on a higher level of abstraction - are there ways to solve the two problems I'm having, and how do you personally do it? What should I learn to be able to do it, possibly without being bound to one particular tool? These come and go out of style from time to time, and I expect their applicability varies depending on the type of the project. Thanks a lot for reading, I was unable to say what I mean more briefly (lacking in software design experience and vocabulary)."}
{"_id": "232380", "title": "Looking for changes in a MySQL database with node.js for a live dashboard", "text": "So, I work for a NOC in a small ISP. We're planning on getting a large wall mounted monitor and I'd like to make a dashboard in Node.JS - I've never used node before so it should be interesting. I'm aiming for something like this as a vague example: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/wp- content/uploads/sites/60/2012/02/developmentprocess.png The data we will pull will be from Nagios + Icinga boxes (we have many). Currently I have a script that fetches all the problems from our Nagios + Icinga boxes and dumps them in to a MySQL table. It's then possible to have a PHP dashboard that just displays data from those tables, and an auto-refresh plugin for the browser. What I want to do is use a node.js front end so refreshing isn't required. From tutorials, it seems you need to send events to node to make it work properly. What I want to do is the MySQL method as we can then use it for reports etc. Imagine in that image, the right contains a list of all problems, and the numbers are counts of all problems. How do I get node to realise there's new data, compare what clients are already displaying and display changes?   1. Constantly pull data from the database, compare to an array of currently displayed data, send any changes to the client   2. Somehow construct a query to find only new data (based on current time maybe?) push that (need to find out what has cleared though and is no longer in database)   3. Something else altogether I'm a pretty skilled PHP developer, but live updating with something like node is alien to me. I'm following the infrastructure used by Manuel Kiessling in nodebeginner.org (index > server > router > request handler for each page - there'll be different pages for different info i.e. nagios/icinga, BGP peers etc). Any help appreciated, if I can't think of a solid way to do it I'll end up going back to PHP which is a shame as node really interests me."}
{"_id": "143311", "title": "Weaknesses of 3-Strike Security", "text": "I've been reading some literature on security, specifically password security/encryption, and there's been one thing that I've been wondering: is the 3-strike rule a perfect solution to password security? That is, if the number of password attempts is limited to some small number, after which all authentication requests will not be honored, will that not protect users from intrusion? I realize gaining access or control over something doesn't always mean going through the authentication system, but doesn't this feature make dictionary/brute-force attacks obsolete? Is there something I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "221662", "title": "How to know, with good performance, which areas a certain point is in?", "text": "I'm interested in build a prototype that needs this sort of thing:   * Point A (xa, ya) with a radius of 500 meters.   * Point B (xb, yb) with a radius of 700 meters.   * Point C (xc, yc) with a radius of 1200 meters.   * Point D (xd, yd) with a radius of 200 meters.   * Person 123 is in some certain point. **Question** : which points 123 is in? For example, the person is both inside A, B and D areas, but not on C. All points are geographic coordinates, i.e. lat/long. I want to understand what are the best algorithms and strategies to implement a good index. My current idea (not implemented yet) is: > The hole map is divided in quadrants, small as (for example) 50~100 > > meters. When a point is marked, all quadrants inside their area will > be > marked as well. Then, when I search using \"Person 123\", I'll just > find its > quadrant and retrieve all points marked into it. Basically I'll build a huge prefix tree based on geohashes of all points (+10k points). Problem is, for a single point, there will be numerous entries inside the Tree (though it would be better for searching, I think). Note I lack the formal understanding of spatial indexes."}
{"_id": "143314", "title": "Trying to wrap my head around class structure for domain-specific language", "text": "My work is mostly in embedded systems programming in C, and the proper class structure to pull this off eludes me. Currently we communicate via C# and Visual Basic with a large collection of servos, pumps, and sensors via a USB- to-CAN hid device. Right now, it is quite cumbersome to communicate with the devices. To read the firmware version of controller number 1 you would use:               SendCan(Controller,1,ReadFirmwareVersion) or     SendCan(8,1,71)      This sends three bytes on the CAN bus: (8,1,71) Connected to controllers are various sensors.               SendCan(Controller,1,PassThroughCommand,O2Sensor,2,ReadO2)      would tell Controller number 1 to pass a command to O2 Sensor number 2 to read O2 by sending the bytes 8,1,200,16,2,0 I would like to develop a domain-specific language for this setup. Instead of commands issued like they are currently, commands would be written like this:               Controller1.SendCommand.O2Sensor2.ReadO2      to send the bytes 8,1,200,16,0 What's the best way to do this? Some machines have 20 O2 Sensors, others have 5 controllers, so the numbers and types of controllers and sensors, pumps, etc. aren't static."}
{"_id": "222820", "title": "License for free source (re)distribution, but no distribution of modified executables", "text": "## Question I want to put a phone/tablet app on Github and want to allow full rights for using, studying, sharing and modifying the source code, but disallow any redistribution of executables that result from modified code. The purpose of this second requirement is that I want to make it illegal for users to remove or redirect in-app payments. The actual app will be free. So, my requirements are:   * License must support forking on Github and therefore both modification and redistribution of source code by others (this excludes license-free distribution covered by plain copyright, Ms-RSL, and also CC BY-ND as it doesn't draw a distinction between source code and executables)   * License should permit redistribution of \"Standard\" executables - the ones originating from my version of the source code - but must not permit any distribution of \"Modified\" executables (this excludes any license that conforms to the Open Source or Free Software Definitions) (I'm aware that there is pirating is happening on especially Android app stores, I'm willing to live with that as pirates would have to both edit code and redistribute the modified version before I potentially take a hit from it. Even then, I could theoretically go after them through legal means.) ## Prior research The Artistic License starts off great by saying: > (1) You are permitted to use the Standard Version and create and use > Modified Versions for any purpose without restriction, provided that you do > not Distribute the Modified Version. but then goes on allowing Modified Versions if they're marked as sufficiently distinct from the Standard Version. qmail relied on plain copyright (shipping without any kind of license) to ensure that the Standard Version is not tampered with, and people were providing patches for its source code to provide other users with their modifications. That's _almost_ good enough for my purposes, in that others would be free to fork my own source code repository, however, forking someone else's modified repository would be illegal so I actually need a license to make that possible. This question brings up a related problem, but I chose to open another question because (a) the question does not deal with redistributing source code, as is required by Github, (b) none of the answers in there satisfy the requirements, (c) the original poster already accepted an answer that works around his requirements, so the question is basically closed, and (d) it's worded unnecessarily specific to Android and open source. That question was the closest match I was able to find on here. In the interest of minimizing license proliferation, I'd like to use an existing license. However I've exhausted my knowledge of licenses and googling skills, and didn't end up with anything that satisfies these (fairly simple and potentially popular?) requirements. Is anybody aware of a license that I could use or do I have to roll my own?"}
{"_id": "131709", "title": "How can I improve my English and Communication skills to communicate with clients?", "text": "Can somebody tell me how is it possible, as a programmer, to improve my communication skills and perfect my English as it is not my mother tongue ? What steps should I follow to improve on these two matters?"}
{"_id": "225835", "title": "Sass File Formating - what problems might are there with the following rules?", "text": "For a while now I have been considering the formatting of sass files to maximise their usability by other coders and I think that this would be perfect place to get some feedback on the rules I try to apply when writing a sass file. I am specifically interested in the usability of the source code as it is created and maintained by humans, as well as with the correct creation of css code. Some of these rules could be applied to sass or vanilla css. The rules I have been honing are as follows:   1. **Start general and get specific**. So start with body font size, colour variables, default tag declarations etc. then move through the parts of your site that are common to all pages, then onto the re-usable elements on the site and finally concluding with page specific styles, with the liklihood of cascading re-use and the potential for over-ridden styles increasing as you move through the document(s)   2. Try to **group selectors in a way that matches the distribution of html amongst views**. So if I look at widget.view the file or block of a file labeled widget.scss will contain those styles. NB, I specifically do not mean following html sructure with hierarchical sass in this case.   3. Following on from that. **Minimise the amount of hierarchy defined in sass**. Only use sassy {} based inheritence when needed.   4. **Group properties into logical sets** , so width and height together, font declarations together, rather than everything alphabetically.   5. Always **consider the resulting css file size** and be prepared to use classes if necessary instead of mixins, editor snippets or other bloat encourgaing techniques.   6. Put **more than one property per line** in certain cases, following on from the logical grouping of elements, meaning more code can be fitted onto a monitor screen without going so far as to make lines too long to read easily. No more than 3/4 properties per line.   7. **Block code in files** by indenting all selectors after an introductory comment to make the the left hand side of the file easy to scan and to quickly discover it's contents. Also provide a file map of these blocks at the top of the file if it is large.   8. Use **placemarkers for find operations** , such as ^NAVIGATION   9. **Only use classes for styles**. And don't be afraid to use classes for specifcity and to make re-use more atomic. [edit for clarity - I don't mean use only classes, I mean use classes instead of IDs]   10. Use a completely **separate set of javascript specific classes** for binding functionality to html elements, meaning that either form or function can be swapped out without damaging the other. These classes are not refered to in the css.   11. **Selectors one per line** and in alphabetical order as they are arbitrary in name"}
{"_id": "179084", "title": "Is there a modified LGPL license that allows static linking?", "text": "LGPL requires that it if a program uses LGPL-ed library, users must be able to re-link the program with a different version of the library: > ... > > d) Do one of the following: > > 0) Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, > and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under > terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a > modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, > in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying > Corresponding Source. > > 1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A > suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library > already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly > with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the > Linked Version. > > ... However in some cases, this can pose considerable difficulties. In particular, Haskell programs are almost always statically compiled. Moreover, the compiler does cross-module optimizations so its not possible to take a part of the code out and replace it with another. So it's very hard to satisfy this condition. (See this link at Haskell Wiki.) _Update:_ Dynamic linking would be a solution, but in many cases, this isn't possible. For example:   * Some platforms may not have dynamic linking at all.   * Some languages don't have the possibility of dynamic linking. Or, it's not possible to make modules multi-platform.   * In some cases dynamic linking would prevent important optimizations. While I'd say this is rarely a serious problem, in languages like Haskell the performance loss could be considerable. Therefore, I'm looking for a standard LGPL-like license that wouldn't require the possibility of re-linking (and I understand that that removes a bit of freedom given to users). Some projects use their own modification of LGPL, for example wxWidgets. But I'd rather use some standard license that is somewhat more official, perhaps checked by some law experts, and (L)GPL compatible. Is there some like that? (Also I'd be interested to know if are there some unforeseen consequences of such a modification of LGPL.)"}
{"_id": "107361", "title": "Is it okay to fake part of the class under test?", "text": "Suppose I have a class (forgive the contrived example and the bad design of it):               class MyProfit     {       public decimal GetNewYorkRevenue();       public decimal GetNewYorkExpenses();       public decimal GetNewYorkProfit();            public decimal GetMiamiRevenue();       public decimal GetMiamiExpenses();       public decimal GetMiamiProfit();            public bool BothCitiesProfitable();          }      (Note the GetxxxRevenue() and GetxxxExpenses() methods have dependencies which are stubbed out) Now I'm unit testing BothCitiesProfitable() which depends on GetNewYorkProfit() and GetMiamiProfit(). Is it okay to stub GetNewYorkProfit() and GetMiamiProfit()? It seems like if I don't then I'm simultaneously testing GetNewYorkProfit() and GetMiamiProfit() along with BothCitiesProfitable(). I'd have to make sure I setup the stubbing for GetxxxRevenue() and GetxxxExpenses() so that the GetxxxProfit() methods return the correct values. So far I've only seen example of stubbing dependencies on external classes not internal methods. And if it is okay, is there a particular pattern I should use to do this? **UPDATE** I'm concerned that we might be missing the core issue and that is probably the fault of my poor example. The fundamental question is: if a method in a class has a dependency on another publicly exposed method in that same class is it okay (or even recommended) to stub that other method out? Maybe I am missing something, but I'm not sure splitting up the class always makes sense. Perhaps another minimally better example would be:               class Person     {      public string FirstName()      public string LastName()      public string FullName()     }      where full name is defined as:               public string FullName()     {       return FirstName() + \" \" + LastName();     }      Is it okay to stub FirstName() and LastName() when testing FullName()?"}
{"_id": "107368", "title": "Is IronScheme complete enough or stable enough to be worth learning?", "text": "IronScheme is mentioned on Wikipedia as a successor to a failed project called IronLisp, bringing Lisp to CLR and .NET, the way Clojure does for the JVM. Does anyone have experience with this language? It looks fairly complete (99%) but I'm not sure how to judge whether it's worth my time to fiddle with getting it set up or not. By stable or complete, I mean using it for actual projects rather than just fiddling with tools and Project Euler style problems."}
{"_id": "67813", "title": "Do you do the exercises when reading a book?", "text": "How many of you actually work out the exercises when learning from a book (any programming related book), I'm currently working my way through a C++ book and find that some of the exercises I feel I can complete rather easily I skip. Do most people do this? Or do they read the whole book and come back to exercises that looked difficult?"}
{"_id": "203684", "title": "Is fewer lines of code always better?", "text": "Which of these programming styles is better?               var result = methodOne(methodTwo(a, methodThree(b)), c, d);      or               var result3 = methodThree(b);     var result2 = methodTwo(a, result3);     var result = methodOne(result2, c, d);"}
{"_id": "180068", "title": "Why was GOTO included in PHP 5?", "text": "I discovered some time ago that the GOTO control keyword was introduced in PHP 5.3.0. http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.goto.php Why did it happen? What are the language design goals behind this? Did the PHP developers community asked for it?"}
{"_id": "145872", "title": "Web application - database design/infrastructure", "text": "I have just begun development of a web application (that will be deployed using Google app engine), without going into the specifics, the web app will allow users to deploy a small website of their own, part of app allows the users to create a form to allow customers to sign up to the users website, however each user may require to collect different data on its customers, for example one user may require a customer\u2019s first name and email address only where as another may also require the customers age. My question is what would be the best way to structure the database(s)? By structure the database(s) I mean how can I implement them so that I can store the different data collection sets for each user and then store the information that is retrieved by each of these users from their customers? For example I don\u2019t think this is right but my initial though was that I would have to deploy a database for each of the users but this seems like overkill, or add a new table for each of the users (I don\u2019t even know if these two are options). I have only had experience with trivial databases and this problem has me confused."}
{"_id": "145877", "title": "Is there a way to publish software architectural design for open use and prevent patenting?", "text": "I'm not sure I have the correct verbage in my question, so let me explain: What I mean by \"software architectural design\":   * I have (what I believe) is a unique and useful design concept for an architecture that involves multiple clients, shared states, blah-blah, etc. etc.    * This architecture would be used in multiplayer games with persistent worlds.   * Although it would facilitate a novel kind of gameplay, it is not a description of \"gameplay.\" What I mean by \"for others\":   * Free for personal/edu/commercial use. (MIT/BSD style license?) What I mean by \"prevent patenting\":   * I want to make sure that this particular design cannot be patented/copyrighted by someone else. (Basically, litigation battles over software architectures for games like MMOs, etc. disgust me, and I want to keep this particular design idea free to use.) Is this something that I can easily accomplish? Can I just write up a design document for the architecture and publish it to the web under say, the MIT license even though its not actual code? Or do I have to file for a patent?"}
{"_id": "180066", "title": "Looking for the better way to combine deep architecture refactoring with feature based development", "text": "## **Problem statement:** **Given:**   * TFS as Source Control   * Heavy desktop client application with tons of legacy code with bad or almost absent architecture design.   * Clients constantly requiring new features with sound quality, fast   delivery and constantly complaining on user unfriendly UI. * * * **Problem:** Application undoubtedly requires deep refactoring. This process inevitably makes application unstable and dedicated stabilization phase is needed. **We've tried:** Refactoring in master with periodical merges from master (MB) to feature branch (FB). (my mistake) _Result:_ Many unstable branches. * * * **What we are advised:** Link to the article (pdf)   Create additional branch for refactoring (RB) periodically synchronizing it with MB via merge from MB to RB. After RB is stabilized we substitute master with RB and create new branch for further refactoring. This is the plan. But here I expect the real hell of merging MB to RB after merging any FB to MB. **The main advantage:** Stable master most of the time. Are there any better alternatives to the procees?"}
{"_id": "1533", "title": "What's the career path for a developer who doesn't like management?", "text": "If you're developer (Senior or Lead Developer) and you'd rather stay with code/design than pursue a management career, what are the available career paths at your company, or any you've heard of? How far can you go? Is it possible to continue being a geek until you bite the dust or is that too naive? Are people like Uncle Bob for example still considered developers, as they claim?"}
{"_id": "136085", "title": "Is musical notation Turing-Complete?", "text": "I'm wondering, is music notation language Turing-Complete? My first thought is that there are loops in musical notation, but there is no way to write conditional branches, right? I'm not a musician, so perhaps someone can help fill in the gaps?"}
{"_id": "23142", "title": "Should a large company standardize engineering tools across all teams internationally?", "text": "I've been thinking a lot about the problem of standardization across large companies. For me, the answer is pretty clear: do not arbitrarily standardize on tools just because that's what everyone else does. It's counter-productive. I'm thinking about source control, bug tracking and testing tools primarily. It seems so obvious to me that I can't really think of many good counter- arguments. Some I've thought of :   1. Easier sharing between teams   2. Easier for IT to manage (1) is definitely true if different teams are working on the same codebase/product. But in cases where one team doesn't work directly with the code I don't think is a valid reason. (2) is just kind of pisses me off if that's really an argument. The limitations placed on programmers, I believe, is more burdensome than any extra work piled on to IT. But I'm not an IT guy. I'm hoping for some better arguments than those."}
{"_id": "22234", "title": "Coworker that detrimentally picks on every minutia", "text": "Hypothetically speaking imagine that there exists a coworker that has a very shallow understanding of computing. To avoid stereotyping lets give this coworker the gender neutral name Chris. Now Chris' diagnostic ability is low and can't figure out the correct IP addresses to set his/her virtual machines to. Chris also fails to merge code properly and overwrites a commit I made fixing something, thereby re- introducing a bug. I let this slide, refix the bug and do not make a sound about it to management. Given a task Chris either 1) complains that there isn't sufficient information resulting in 2) you provide Chris with inordinately detailed instructions to satisfy 1). The more detail you provide in a list of steps to carry out, the more chance of an error being present in your instructions. Chris gets these instructions, tries to execute them, fails and it becomes your fault because your instructions aren't good enough. How do you deal with this?"}
{"_id": "228978", "title": "How to properly distinguish between MVC and three-tier?", "text": "Many webapp frameworks, e.g. Spring,call themselves MVC frameworks, but how is the distinction done between MVC and three-tier? It seems that some frameworks call themselves MVC frameworks but they are really three-tier frameworks, or how do we properly label which is which?"}
{"_id": "68455", "title": "Classic ASP to ASP.net or ASP.net MVC", "text": "We have a web application which is developed in classic ASP and it evolved over 5 years to its current form which has 100's of pages, huge database and more than 10000 active users going through at least more than 10 pages daily. Now, we wanted to upgrade it to latest version of .net. Initially we thought rewriting the entire app, but after analyzing the scenario we found that is not a viable option also not suggested by many experts. We have not yet decided on how to do it in otherway, but got some thoughts on how to achieve the rewriting in faces. **Option 1:** We thought of identifying the main modules in this application and rewriting them one by one by separating the application into different layers such as database (existing), then business logic and the view. This way newly developed modules will be added to existing system and new pages will replace old pages in that particular module. At the same time we can test the new layers alongside old system and release them once we feel confident. We also thought of developing API kind of structure for business logic and this will be accessed by view as an external application. **Option 2:** At the moment we have done a simple module and used it in classic ASP page through an IFrame, though it was quite troublesome sending data between classic ASP and new page in the IFrame. This is just in planning stage on how we should achieve the rewriting of the entire application without disturbing the user base. I want to get other programmers views, opinions and suggestions on should we approach in such scenario? if anybody has faced this kind of scenario please share your opinion too. Also would like to know using of ASP.net MVC is going to help me in this? **UPDATE** : Thanks for both the answers for putting up your views. Would like to get more inputs on both the options I specified above in migrating the application from classic asp to asp.net or asp.net mvc. It would be great help for me, if you all can through your views, points and thoughts on migration part rather than the point of choosing asp.net or asp.net mvc."}
{"_id": "151298", "title": "Javascript storing data", "text": "Hi I am a beginner web developer and am trying to build the interface of a simple e-commerce site as a personal project.The site has multiple pages with checkboxes. When someone checks an element, it retrieves the price of the element and stores it in a variable. But when I go to the next page and click on new checkboxes products the variable automaticly resets to its original state.How can I save the value of that variable in Javascript? This is the code I've writen using sessionStorage but it still dosen't work when I move to next page the value is reseted. How can I write this code so that it dosen't reset on each page change. All pages on my website use the same script.               $(document).ready(function () {         var total = 0;              $('input.check').click(function () {             if ($(this).attr('checked')) {                 var check = parseInt($(this).parent().children('span').text().substr(1, 3));                 total += check;                 sessionStorage.var_name = 0 + total;                 alert(sessionStorage.var_name);                  } else {                 var uncheck = parseInt($(this).parent().children('span').text().substr(1, 3));                 total -= uncheck;             }         })     })"}
{"_id": "151293", "title": "How does PHP internally represent strings?", "text": "UTF8?   UTF16? Do strings in PHP also keep track of the encoding used? Let's look at this script for example. Say I run:               $original = \"\u0936\u0915\u094d\u0928\u094b\u092e\u094d\u092f\u0924\u094d\u0924\u0941\u092e\u094d\";      What actually happens? Obviously I think `$original` will not contain just 7 characters. Those glyphs must each be represented by several bytes there. Then I do:               $converted = mb_convert_encoding ($original , \"UTF-8\");      What will happen to `$converted`? How will `$converted` be different from `$original`? Will it be just the exact same byte sequence as `$original` but with a different encoding?"}
{"_id": "24691", "title": "What do you use string reversal for?", "text": "In PHP it's `strrev()`, in Rails it's `.reverse`, but most languages don't have any string reverse function. Some have array reverse functions that can be used on characters. I was thinking this must be a major oversight but then it occurred to me, what would you actually use string reverse for??? The only time I can think I've seen it is in demos and lessons to turn \"Hello World!\" into \"!dlroW olleH\". My question is; Is there a use for reversing a string or is it completely pointless? . **Addendum** There have been way more answers that I had anticipated and not all of them were entirely academic. I would have put money that no one could come up with a legitimate example. I also didn't think I would learn anything new but Mark Canlas' regex suggestion is just brilliant and I look forward to the opportunity for it to prove itself. Thanks to all."}
{"_id": "91935", "title": "Software Engineer VS \"Harder\" Jobs", "text": "_This should probably be in a Dear Abby column, nevertheless..._ I am the only engineer in my entire family (including extended family). Occasionally I hear family members say that being a Software Engineer is not as hard as say a UPS Driver. While both may work the same hours, intrinsically the SW Engineer job is rated as less difficult than the other. The general consensus is that we just sit in front of computers all day with some occasional meetings. I feel that being a Software Engineer is not physically demanding but mentally draining. For those that have encountered this line of thinking before, what is the best way to convince your friends and family otherwise? Edit: My Wife told her Mother... I am tired after work and don't want to be running errands... her Mother said that I am in an office all day on a computer, how can I be tired. Side note: I am also an Army Reserve Officer, member of my city's planning commission, and a freelance blogger for my local newspaper. Plate is pretty full aside from being a SW Engineer - BUT, the notion still remains with the family that being a SW Engineer is nowhere as difficult as being an UPS Driver, which my brother-in-law is currently employed as."}
{"_id": "91934", "title": "Isn't the Spiral Model/Agile Development essentially just a more rapid and compressed Waterfall Model?", "text": "Since I learned about the Spiral Model of software development, I've tried to apply it to the different projects I've been involved in. However, I'm starting to feel like it's really just compressing and iterating more rapidly through a traditional Waterfall Model. Even in each Spiral or Agile cycle, there are still step-by-step tasks/objectives that need to be finished in order to complete the spiral, and that step-by-step process seems really similar (although shorter total cycle and perhaps less steps) to the Waterfall Model. Is the main difference the introduction of a feedback loop into the process of development earlier on and throughout the process, or is there a fundamental difference in the actual step-by-step completion of a task?"}
{"_id": "79461", "title": "How do you deal with stealing?", "text": "I have been recently hacking on a project I started a couple of months ago. It was a simple idea. Allowing people to collect achievements for code they shared on Github. So I started this noble endeavor, trying to rake in my friends to get coding and helping. I spent all my free time working getting this up and running and building it. _Enter musical time lapse_ My friends pitched in when they could. As you can imagine, I became very attached to its success. Then just as I was gearing up for release, a company releases a very similar product. I was very disheartened when I came to hear my little project was release by someone else, but it wasn't like I had rights to the idea. I swallowed my pride and shot them an email saying something along the lines of > Hey, I have been working on something similar. We should talk! It's super > cool stuff. We talk, I get the feeling that he really doesn't want to collaborate, although cordial we allow each other access to one another site. Couple of days pass, and **I see that some of the descriptions for my achievement are appearing on their achievement site.** After speaking to him originally, I **_was_** going to send them a nicely worded email outlining my plan for my achievement system and call it quits. **Once I saw the descriptions of my achievements appearing on their site, I couldn't just let it go.** I decided to fight back. I have open-sourced the project, just leveling the playing field and it frees me up from having to deal with the competition, since I am was only working on it part-time. This isn't the action I can take every time, I am wondering what options do I have if I find myself in this position in the future? lawsuit? stern email? Just as a heads up, I am looking for advice on how to deal with this without lawyers; or is this the way things play out in the real world?"}
{"_id": "55155", "title": "Is Cleanroom still used on software projects?", "text": "Cleanroom is a software engineering process that's often mentioned in textbooks. There was some documented use of the process in the 90s (I believe it was used at the NASA Software Engineering Lab), but I haven't heard anything about it years. Does anyone have any direct experience using it on a software project?"}
{"_id": "55156", "title": "Question about SDLC. How to answer this?", "text": "I have seen this asked many times in job interviews but I am still not sure how to answer this. I am a web developer for quite some time but I still have problem with explaining OOP and SDLC (Familiar with system development life cycle) . How to prepare for above 2 topics for an interview point of view. Still I use both all the time during development. I am not clear on OOP SDLC Is there any simplest answer to both of these?"}
{"_id": "8956", "title": "How do you decide how much your software will cost?", "text": "If you are a solo developer, or have a leading role in a software company, you might have to decide how much your software will cost one or another day... What is your experience with calculating how much your software costs for your customer? Why does this method it work for you?"}
{"_id": "73342", "title": "Is there a defined way to create a commit history for Git", "text": "I have been working (alone) on an open-source project without using any sort of formal version control. I recently started using Git and GitHub for this project and am wondering if it is possible for me to build a code/commit history based off of the archived, older versions of the code that I have. Development thus far has been solely linear. It's progressed from version 0.1 through 0.9.6.3 without any branches. I've looked through the Git User Manual and the closest thing I can think of would involve making labeled or named commits for each previous version. What is the best way to handle this? Do I need to create a new repository and start pushing labeled commits into it, ending with the current version? Is it possible to change the dates of existing commits? Is there a more straightforward way? I'm using Git on Windows XP (native, not Cygwin), but if it would be easier I can set it up on my Ubuntu box."}
{"_id": "224307", "title": "Do code style guides increase productivity?", "text": "Our team of 12 is currently considering implementing a style guide. The question came up if long term productivity benefits outweigh the short term productivity loss as everyone adapts. What has been your experience with style guides? I should also note our code base is rather large and we'll probably have to run our code through uncrustify or something similar to bring the entire code base into conformance with the guide."}
{"_id": "230994", "title": "Learning programming from a book which uses C++98", "text": "I am learning programming from a book called \"Programming Principles and Practice\" by Bjarne Stroustrup. It has been highly recommended over here and elsewhere. My only issue is that it uses C++98 and as I understand there have been two other standards c++2003 and c++2011. Going through this book will be a significant investment of time and effort for me (210 hours recommended) and I would not want to commit to if my skills or knowledge gained may be outdated or not as useful etc. On the other hand this book is written by an expert and is widely recognized as one of the best for entry level programming (assuming no prior knowledge). Despite a lot of research I have struggled to find another book which is written by such a leading authority and provides good and accurate introduction for the beginner. Could someone share some insight as to what and how much I would be losing out on if I use this book and learn C++98. And whether going through it would be a good choice for a person in my situation and worth the investment of time and effort. If you own this book or are experienced user of C++, your insight will be appreciated even more. Thanks."}
{"_id": "35579", "title": "Preferred lambda syntax?", "text": "I'm playing around a bit with my own C like DSL grammar and would like some oppinions. I've reserved the use of \"(...)\" for invocations. eg:               foo(1,2);      My grammar supports \"trailing closures\" , pretty much like Ruby's blocks that can be passed as the last argument of an invocation. Currently my grammar support trailing closures like this:               foo(1,2)     {        //parameterless closure passed as the last argument to foo     }      or               foo(1,2) [x]     {         //closure with one argument (x) passed as the last argument to foo         print (x);     }      The reason why I use [args] instead of (args) is that (args) is ambigious:               foo(1,2) (x)     {     }      There is no way in this case to tell if foo expects 3 arguments (int,int,closure(x)) or if foo expects 2 arguments and returns a closure with one argument(int,int) -> closure(x) So thats pretty much the reason why I use [] as for now. I could change this to something like:               foo(1,2) : (x)     {     }      or               foo(1,2) (x) ->     {     }      So the actual question is, what do you think looks best? [...] is somewhat wrist unfriendly.               let x = [a,b]      {     }      Ideas?"}
{"_id": "114007", "title": "What Is The Best Technique For Managing Bugs and New Features With Version Control in CVS/SVN for a Team of 6 to 9 People?", "text": "In a company working on a long term software project, there are 6 to 9 developers working in the same office. The development team uses JIRA for bug tracking and CVS (and some SVN) for version control of different Java Web Apps related to the software application. The team uses REST to communicate between the Web Apps on different servers. The environment consists of Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine Apps, all written in Java, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The development team commits the code every day. Using this strategy, deployments happen every 20-25 days, but they would like to target once per week or once every 2 weeks instead. When the code goes through testing, the testers find and report bugs, but when the development team fix the bugs and deploy the software, the software sometimes then has more bugs in it because developers working on new features are still committing code to the repository. Sometimes the sales team or customers find bugs as well on production systems. Our thought is that we could check out a copy of the code that is stable and make changes there. I suspect this is a problem with how the version control is used, but it could be something else in the process. How should this agile development team of 6-9 people make sure that the releases are both frequent, once per week or once every 2 weeks, and that the deployments are high quality with no regression bugs?"}
{"_id": "35572", "title": "Software Development vs. Information Technology", "text": "What are the major differences between Software Development and Information Technology. If you have majored in IT is it a fine major but as different as Software Development and Computer Science as stated in Joel's blog?"}
{"_id": "178661", "title": "How to make a legacy system time-zone sensitive?", "text": "I need to implement time zones in a very large and old Delphi system, where there's a central SQL Server database and possibly hundreds of client installations around the world in different time zones. The application already interacts with the database by only using the date/time of the database server. So, all the time stamps saved in both the database and on the client machines are the date/time of the database server when it happened, never the time of the client machine. So, when a client is about to display the date/time of something (such as a transaction) which is coming from this database, it needs to show the date/time converted to the local time zone. This is where I get lost. I would naturally assume there should be something in SQL to recognize the time zone and convert a DateTime field dynamically. I'm not sure if such a thing exists though. If so, that would be perfect, but if not, I need to figure out another way. This Delphi system (multiple projects) utilizes the SQL Server database using ADO components, VCL data-aware controls, and QuickReports (using data sources). So, there's many places where the data goes directly from the database query to rendering on the screen, without any code to actually put this data on the screen. In the end, I need to know when and how should I get the properly converted time? What is the proper way to ensure that I handle Dates and Times correctly in a legacy application?"}
{"_id": "101200", "title": "Using grammars to extract bibliographic citations", "text": "My task lays in the area of text mining / labelling, more particular extraction of bibliographic citations (references) from the plain text, as shown here: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CjLn6.png) Basically, for the input text the algorithm should recognize:   * The beginning and end of citation   * Journal name, title, author, issue, volume, pages This task was already approached in e.g. Citation Parsing Using Maximum Entropy and Repairs (Ng Yong Kiat, 2005), which demonstrated that CRF models deal better then MEMM or pattern-based approaches. Currently there are two projects, that do the job:   * ParsCit, a Perl program build on the top of CRF++ project   * Grobid \u2013 Java module, also based on CRF++ While the results of mentioned approaches are already known (and are very good), I was given a task to do the same but using the context-free grammars. Indeed, the information looks to be very structured but I am not sure if this approach can outperform CRF on sensitivity, at least I hope it can beat it on accuracy. My idea is the following:   * Define the fixed grammar rules for already known types:   `YEAR \u2192 (19|20)\\d\\d | \\d\\d\\d\\d`   `PAGE \u2192 \\d{1,3}\\-\\d{1,3} | e\\d{1,3}`   `ISSUE \u2192 \\d{1,3}`   * It is possible to infer from training set the probabilities of rule alternatives e.g.:   `PAGE \u2192 \\d{1,3}\\-\\d{1,3} with P=0.8 | e\\d{1,3} with P=0.2`   * From the pre-annotated training set generate the high-level rules (all chars between non-terminals are terminals):   `CITATION \u2192 AUTHORS, JOURNALTITLE, ISSUE, PAGES, YEAR | AUTHORS, BOOKTITLE, VOLUME, CHAPTER, CHAPTERTITLE, EDITORS, PUBLISHER, PUBPLACE | ...`   `CITATIONS \u2192 CITATION | CITATIONS; CITATION | CITATIONS; and CITATION` The problematic places are:   * `AUTHORS`: There is no fixed rule for them, but one can write a function, that can score that the given text looks like an author. Also the list of possible (English) surnames is not so huge, but if I create the thousands of rules it will slow down the grammar parser. Let's say for authors we have some scoring function, that for given input returns a number [0 .. 1] reflecting how the input really looks like an author. The grammar parser should feed all possible variants for `AUTHORS` and stop on one with a best score.   * `JOURNALTITLE`: The same story. There is obviously no general rule to define it. There is a list of all journals, but then comes also the subproblem of abbreviation: _Ann. NY Acad. Sci. = Ann N.Y. Academy Sci = Annals of the New York Academy of Science_. Again, we can define a scoring function for that; in worst case the function can measure the distance between input sting and all known journal titles using Damerau\u2013Levenshtein algorithm.   * The text like \"Vol\", \"Chapter\", \"edited by\" can be very useful as terminators prefixing the corresponding values (and thus reducing the ambiguity of the grammar), but can they be identified and learned automatically?   * The same for terminators before and after citation, which can be very useful (perhaps will speedup the parsing):   `SUPERCITATION \u2192 ( CITATIONS ) | ( see, e.g., CITATION ) | see, for example, CITATION | described in, e.g., CITATION | is disclosed by CITATION`   Does it make sense to \"hardcode\" them or try to learn them?   * The \"noise\" text between citations: how to deal with it? The goal of the lexical analysis is perhaps not to find the most probable parse tree, but also to maximise AUTHORS and JOURNALTITLE functions. Can somebody advise me:   * If SCFG is the right way to approach the problem? If yes, how is it possible to adapt this approach to create a parse tree based on probabilities and also on scoring functions?   * Are there any other relative works / articles?   * Are there any libraries that can help in chunking the text (written in a way that can be applied also for e.g. Chinese text)? I have found some monsters like UIMA, Mallet, MinorThird... I wonder about your personal experience when using them for the task like above. Thank in advance for any reply."}
{"_id": "21756", "title": "What non-technical skills do I need?", "text": "Apart from:   1. being strong technically   2. being able to communicate effectively What are the most important formal / informal skills required to really shine as a developer? (Naturally, I struggle with the first two, but even so...)."}
{"_id": "231027", "title": "Push response to the user for which the request is created in Asp.Net (Chat Server)", "text": "I am working on a Chat Server Application in Asp.Net with C#. Suppose there are 5 users online say User A,B,C,D,E. Suppose A sends a message in chatbox to user B, so how the chatbox (Textbox/Textarea of chat) of User B will load the new content? One Option is to refresh the chatbox every 10Seconds or 15 seconds but it's pretty unuseful way because as if there is no new message for the user the chatbox will still be refreshed. * * * I have an aspx page say client.aspx with client.aspx.cs as code behind file and server file say server.cs. There is a send button on aspx page on click event of this button i called a method of my server file say UpdateChatbox(from,to,content) now the from is User A, to is User B and content is my msg in chatbox, Now the question is : How Server.cs file update the ChatBox on client.aspx page of User B?"}
{"_id": "224873", "title": "Should I lock a list of objects while a socket is receiving messages?", "text": "I have a scenario where I will be receiving messages through a socket connection. I also need to keep a list of 100 messages (such as List) and periodically toss out old messages from the list when a condition is met.               List<Message> MessageList = new List<Message>();     Message CurrentMessage = new Message();          public void ReceiveSocketMessage (SocketMessage Message) {              if (Message.Type == duplicate) {             CurrentMessage = MessageList.FirstOrDefault(x=> x.MessageText == Message.Text);             CurrentMessage.Time = DateTime.Now;         } else {             MessageList.Add(Message);         }     }      Since the socket sends messages very quickly, it seems like any other method that attempts to access MessageList will cause a problem. Other methods will need to access the list at many random points in time. I just can't get my head wrapped around working on the list of objects without causing trouble. What is the traditional method of handling this? UPDATE: Would it be simpler just to maintain a list of items in a database table instead of a list of c# objects? A database would surely have all the major locking problems ironed out to a point where I shouldn't need to worry about it."}
{"_id": "234069", "title": "What is the best solution for printing a document from Azure with limited user interaction?", "text": "I currently have a web app hosted in Azure, with a few worker background jobs. My goal is for a user to click print on a page, and to them the printer will magically start printing a document(for security purposes). The setup will look something like this:                    Azure           |     _____________     |     |     |     B1    B2    B3      Where each 'B' is a building. When a user from B2 clicks on a web app to print a document, the document will start printing in the designated printer in B2. Each building is on its own network when it comes to workstations and computers. I'm not 100% sure how to approach this. One option is to have a Windows task running on each workstation that will continuously ping blob storage for new documents. If one shows up if will start printing. This is probably the easiest route but seems like it would be maintenance hell for 100+ buildings. It also seems like a waste when there may only be one document a day. Are there any other options for printing a document in such a fashion?"}
{"_id": "56718", "title": "SQL Server CE 4, graphical tools for designing tables, etc.?", "text": "I thought that Visual Studio 2010 SP1 would include support for using SQL Server Compact Edition 4 inside the designer, but it seems not. Was I wrong, or has I managed to botch up my installation somehow? I installed SQL Server CE 4 from the download page, not through the web installer. If Visual Studio 2010 SP1 does not, and should not, include such support, what are my choices, if any?"}
{"_id": "183867", "title": "Applying Denotational Semantics to design of Programs", "text": "I've read a bit on denotational semantics (DS) and I'm very intrigued about the process of designing computer programs where types and functions have strong and clear mappings to mathematics. Are there any resources that discuss designing programs based on DS in detail? I've seen a few superficial treatments of the subject. I'm conversant in Haskell, Scala, Common Lisp, and a bit of Scheme so any resources that use those languages would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "224879", "title": "Difference between the two enums", "text": "I came across an enum definition :-               typedef enum NSInteger {         kBorderTypeNone   = 0,         kBorderTypeLeft   = 1 << 0,         kBorderTypeRight  = 1 << 1,         kBorderTypeTop    = 1 << 2,         kBorderTypeBottom = 1 << 3     } BorderType;      and also (possibly) it can be equivalent to               typedef enum NSInteger {         kBorderTypeNone   = 0,         kBorderTypeLeft   = 1 ,         kBorderTypeRight  = 2,         kBorderTypeTop    = 4,         kBorderTypeBottom = 8     } BorderType;      What are the internal differences(if any)? Is there any advantage of one over the other? Which one is recommended? If both are same then how compiler handles it? In which phase of compiler is it reduced to same set of instructions?"}
{"_id": "34134", "title": "Is is common to use the command pattern for property get/sets?", "text": "Suppose I have a controller class with a bunch of properties. Each time a property is changed, I would like to update the model. Now also suppose that I use the command pattern to perform model updates. Is it common to use command classes within property get and sets of the controller class or is there a better way? Here is an example of what I am currently using:               class MyController {       private int _myInt;       public int MyInt {         get { return _myInt; }         set {           MyCommand cmd = new MyCommand();           cmd.Argument = _myInt;           cmd.Execute();  // Command object updates the model         }       }      }"}
{"_id": "56715", "title": "Resources for using TFS for Agile Project Development?", "text": "Our company just installed TFS for us to start using for project development processes and source control. They want us to start using it to manage our projects as well. We have a small team, no current bug or task tracking software, and 2 developers of the 3 have experience with any actual methodologies. What books, websites, and/or other information can you recommend for us to use to get started?"}
{"_id": "140751", "title": "Any language where every class instance is a class too?", "text": "Taking inspiration from Javascript prototypes, I had the idea of a language where every instance can be used as a class. Before I potentially reinvent the wheel, I would like to ask if there is a language already using this concept:               //To declare a Class, extend the base class (in this case, Type)     Type(Weapon,{price:0});          //Same syntax to inherit; simply extend the parent:     Weapon(Sword,{price:3});     Weapon(Axe,{price:4});          Sword(Katana,{price:7});     Sword(Dagger,{price:3});          //And the same to create an instance:     Katana(myKatana,{nickname:\"Leon\"});     myKatana.price; // 7     myKatana.nickname; // Leon          // An operator to return children of a class;     Sword_; // [Katana, Dagger]          // An operator to return array of descendants;     Sword__; // [Katana, Dagger, myKatana]          // An operator to return array of parents;     Sword^; // Weapon          // Arrays can be used as elements     Sword__.price += 1; //increases price of Sword's descendants by 1     mySword.price; //8          // And to access specific element (using its name instead of index)     var name = \"mySword\"     Katana_[name]; // [mySword]     Katana_[name].nickname; // Leon      Has this kind of approach been already studied/implemented?"}
{"_id": "140753", "title": "Google-Gson Converting JSon to CSV", "text": "What is the easiest way to convert a Json data to a String at CSV format ? I haven't read all the api yet but it seems that subclassing the default JSonWriter allows to remove unnecessary character in order to be closer to CSV format. Does a simpler solution exist ?"}
{"_id": "198900", "title": "Building a Graph Editor - How to create a data driven graph", "text": "I am developing a graph-editor that uses drag and drop to build hierarchical graphs (containing nodes and links). Each node in the graph should be linked to a table in our database (SQL Server). I did a lot of research about libraries based on javascript or/and JSON specifications to draw nodes and links. There are a lot of great examples to follow, but I have no idea about the way I can link a graph to a database (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL...). I thought about this architecture (Question posted on stackexchange.com) I have looked at the D3 library. It creates data-driven charts, but I think it only uses flat files, and not relational databases. First can you please tell me if my architecture is well thought out? And second can you give me some ideas about the way I can link my graphs to the DBMS? Thanks a lot."}
{"_id": "140757", "title": "Where should you store variables for a search program in java?", "text": "**I'm wondering which is a more effective storage method in java.** Would be better to save constants in a class or a resource? The constants will be searched later by my Search program which will go through the list of constants so as to recognize possible options. Also if there is a more efficient method of storing them please say so or if i doesn't matter where i store them. **1). A java class called Search is going to be inputted with two or more constants they will then either access a java class that will redirect them as needed.** **2). Search will receive the same information but will look to a external resource to see what possible files match it then corresponding what info was give will open a pathway to the java class it correlated.** Which version should be better or will it not matter? the values the constants contain are going to be ints but each int will have their own unique meaning. To clarify why i need these arrays each number is going to have a meaning and the arraylists will hold the numbers like 1 may mean work 2 may mean private and so a private work document would have name PDocument has [1,2] so on and so on hope that clarifies So which option is more effecient #1 or #2"}
{"_id": "104184", "title": "How can I configure my programming environment to enable rapid switching between projects?", "text": "It often happens that I develop multiple different projects at once, so I need a solution to switch from one environment to another. I have created batch files to do the job but as this thing grows, I'll soon need something better. Some things I do are:   * Map drives   * Launch applications   * Load test databases   * Set environment variables   * etc. Any suggestions on that? **Edited:** I want to unify the development process in some way. We use VS, Eclipse, Notepad++ or what ever the developer needs. The goal is to be able to load a project in any windows machine without having compiling or other issues. Example:   * The solution might need to reference files, sdk folders, test data paths or other stuff. To solve this: I have mapped the code to a drive. The project doesn't need to know whether the dev is using c:\\dev or c:\\programming folders (user choice). They only need to map their coding folder to a drive (lets say W:) every file of the solution is under W:   * Another problem is the SDKs. An sdk can be in c:\\programfiles\\Microsoft sdks\\etc.. or in c:\\programfiles **x86** \\Microsoft sdks\\etc.. Those Sdks should also need mapping to a standard folder that the solution knows. Another thing is that we want services running (apache lets say) if we develop a website. We don't want this to run all the time. The solution so far is to distribute batch files that the developer edits once in order to match their paths to the solutions and they run the batch before they start their new task. I am thinking on developing a app that will set the environment as desired. Preconfigured sets that are distributed. The developer executes them in order to set the enviromnent as desired. I hope to be clear now on the problem. Any suggestions on doing that in a better way?"}
{"_id": "205169", "title": "Differences between different creative coding libraries", "text": "I've worked with Cinder previously under Windows, but have recently switched to Ubuntu. Since Cinder doesn't work on Linux (::sadface::) I've began looking for alternatives. With that in mind, could you please tell me what the differences between Processing, openFrameworks and Polycode are, and compare them to Cinder? Specifically, I would like to know   * If there are differences in the _functionality of the packages_ compared to Cinder (ie. one does something that Cinder doesn't and vice versa).    * I would also like to know how different the _syntax of the package_ is from Cinder's. I have already seen the following articles : here and here and have also visited the corresponding website for each of the libraries but could not find a clear and concise answer to my question."}
{"_id": "196195", "title": "JavaScript Frameworks for traditionally structured web applications", "text": "I am looking for a way to control large amounts of JavaScript code in a ASP.Net MVC web application. I have been looking at Ember.js and whilst it's pretty compelling it takes control of the routing and as such treats the server as little more than a place from which to receive API calls. This isn't really useful for what I need. I wondered if there recommendations for similar projects out there that allow faster, more structured, JavaScript but in traditional server-based web applications?"}
{"_id": "196196", "title": "Data transfer between \"main\" site and secured virtual subsite", "text": "I am currently working on a C# ASP.Net 3.5 website I wrote some years ago which consists of a \"main\" public site, and a sub-site which is our customer management application, using forms-based authentication. The sub-site is set up as a virtual folder in IIS and though it's a subfolder of \"main\", it functions as a separate web app which handles CRUD access to our customer database and is only accessible by our staff. The main site currently includes a form for new leads to fill in, which generates an email to our sales staff so they can contact them and convince them to become customers. If that process is successful, the staff manually enter the information from the email into the database. Not surprisingly, I now have a new requirement to feed the data from the new lead form directly into the database so staff can just check a box for instance to turn the lead into a customer. My question therefore is how to go about doing this? Possible options I've thought of:   1. Move the new lead form into the customer database subsite (with authentication turned off).   2. Add database handling code to the main site. (No, not seriously considering this duplication of effort! :)   3. Design some mechanism (via REST?) so a webpage outside the customer database subsite can feed data into the customer database How to organise the code for this situation, preferably with extensibility in mind, and particularly are there any options I haven't thought of?"}
{"_id": "205160", "title": "Rest API Architecture from Rest in Practice book", "text": "We maintain an API that as part of its purpose makes a call to an external API. This external API takes a few seconds to fulfil the request we make to it. With our current architecture the request is made synchronously, meaning that the http response we return to the user request is blocked until our service get the response from the external API. I am considering changing our architecture to be able to deal with the request asynchronously... By this I mean accept the user request into our API and put a message on a queue so that we return an http response a lot quicker. The response would contain the address of where the full/complete result can be found. A background task would then pick messages up from the queue and make the call to the external API, then store the result at the address provided in our response. The address could then be polled by the user/client until the desired state of the respource is reached (i.e. when the background task has finished calling the external api and has stored the result). This architecture I have mainly lifted from the REST in Practice book. The crux however is that our external API only takes 2-3 seconds to return the response. The example in the book describes an ordering process that might take minutes or hours. Is this suggested solution worth the increase in complexity for such a short response time from our external dependency? i.e. will the application still scale with the existing synchronous architecture?"}
{"_id": "205161", "title": "Factory-Class versus Static Class", "text": "I've got a little problem in choosing the best design. I have some (5 at the moment) image processing operations in my coe (Java). Every processing step independent from the other ones and consoists of a small amount of code, 5-15 lines in general. These are mostly wrappers to JAI, AWT and so on. My current design is an abstract class:               public abstract class AbstractPreProcessingStep {         protected Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass().getName());              protected AbstractPreProcessingStep() {         };              public abstract BufferedImage startProcessing(BufferedImage input);          }      Every processing step implements this class and can be called uniform. (like the Strategy-Pattern). Since every processing step may have a different set of parameters, I created a factory class, like this:               public class PreProcessingFactory {                   public static AbstractPreProcessingStep createColorInverter() {             return new ColorInverter();         }                   public static AbstractPreProcessingStep createRescaler(float rescaleFactor) {             return new Rescaler(rescaleFactor);         }                   public static AbstractPreProcessingStep createEdgeDetector() {             return new EdgeDetector();         }              public static AbstractPreProcessingStep createBlackAndWhite() {             return new BlackAndWhite();         }     ...      So, if you want to create a black and white image with inverted colors, you need to do this (pseude code)               bw = PreProcessingFactory.createBlackAndWhite();     inv = PreProcessingFactory.createInverter();     result = bw.startProcessing(result);     result = inv.startProcessing(result);      In my mind, this is a good design since the implementation details are hidden and new processing steps can easily be add by adding a new class. The other approach which was in my mind was to create a single class with every step as a static method - however, I've got dislike of 'static' Do you have any suggestions to improve the code?"}
{"_id": "205165", "title": "Operator distributivity in expressions - syntactic sugar", "text": "When writing boolean expressions out, you often have to use something of the type:               A == any of B1, ..., Bn     C < all of D1, ..., Dm      But in code you have to use expanded forms:               A == B1 or ... or A == Bn     C < D1 and ... and C < Dm      That looks, to me, like _any of_ and _all of_ are simply the distributed form of _or_ and _and_. That made me wonder if you can apply distributivity to operators in some way that compilers/interpretors can understand. For the above example, say, something like this:               A == B1 +_or ... +_or Bn     C < D1 +_and ... +_and Dm      Essentially, taking operators as relations, it should work something like this:               R1(A, distributive_R2(B1, ... , Bn)) becomes     R2(R1(A, B1), ... , R1(A, Bn))      This could apply to more than just booleans:               X / Y1 +_+ ... +_+ Yn becomes     X/Y1 + ... + X/Yn      Of course, my `+_` prefix may not be the ideal syntax; I'm sure there's better ones out there. Nevertheless, this strikes me as being possibly quite useful and understandable. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "253217", "title": "Should CountDownLatch be used for waiting for an event?", "text": "I have a situation here, where I have a loop that loops x amount of times. The value x is determined by the user. Everytime it loops, I want it to wait for a button click before continuing the loop. ie. something like this (pseudocode):               loop(x times){     Button b;       wait until a click       when clicked{         b.onclicklistener{           setText(x);         }       }     }      I am using this for an android app, so with Thread.wait()/Thread.notify() what I learned was that it interrupts the main UIthread, so I cannot use that. So what I believe the only two options that I can use to kind of \"pause\" the loop is CountDownLatch.await() or AsyncTask (I don't know what that does, have not researched about it) Would CountDownLatch.await()/CountDownLatch.countDown() be the best methods and class to use in this example, or should I look into AsyncTask?"}
{"_id": "205167", "title": "Does using Creative Commons No-Derivatives license conflict with GitHub terms?", "text": "When a software project wants to use Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License that denies making derivatives, does it conflict GitHub terms of service clause F.1 that says: > By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow > others to view and fork your repositories. Eg. is forking (allowed by GitHub) the same as making derivatives (denied by CC). A fork has an owner, has its own download links, has separate history from the original repo etc. and any other feature you might expect from a \"derivative\". I know that using CC for a software project is not the brightest idea but some are still doing this and I wonder if it is even allowed by the GitHub terms. IANAL is OK, I just want to see some opinions about it"}
{"_id": "25276", "title": "Why is cleverness considered harmful in programming by some people?", "text": "I've noticed a lot of questions lately relating to different abstraction techniques, and answers saying basically that the techniques in question are \"too clever.\" I would think that part of our jobs as programmers is to determine the best solutions to the problems we are given to solve, and cleverness is helpful in doing that. So my question is: are the people who think certain abstraction techniques are too clever opposed to cleverness _per se_ , or is there some other reason for the objection? EDIT: This parser combinator is an example of what I would consider to be clever code. I downloaded this and looked it over for about half an hour. Then I stepped through the macro expansion on paper and saw the light. Now that I understand it, it seems much more elegant than the Haskell parser combinator."}
{"_id": "234062", "title": "Should I pass array or pointer?", "text": "I am writing a C++ library (but prefer C style interface functions) and one of the function returns array of floats. I am not sure if I should pass pointer or fixed array to get this data?               // in the library header file     #define MAX_ITEMS_SIZE   1000          int getData(float * data, int &size );      or               int getData(float (&data)[MAX_ITEMS_SIZE], int & size )      If I am passing the pointer, the client should allocate MAX_ITEMS_SIZE for it. Is that a reasonable and fair expectations? Passing it as array forces the client to pass the max memory required. Which one is better? Some more background, the MAX_ITEMS_SIZE is the maximum number of floats that can be returned. In reality the array will contain less items which is filled in the size parameter. The function returns int which is error code where zero means no error. My overall goal is how to return the data which is array of floats in easy to understand and reliable way. Even though I am using C++, I would like to stick with C interface functions so the library can be used more widely."}
{"_id": "204691", "title": "How to provide a ubiquitous object without including it in every parameter list", "text": "I'm writing a small C++ class, **Block** , to transform serialized data into a memory structure, and supply the structured data to callers through several accessor methods. I've tried to keep its scope specific and limited. The users of the class are very low-level - they, too, are very narrow in their focus and have as few external dependencies as possible. This is how I've been taught to engineer things if at all possible. By minimizing dependencies and creeping featurism, it's easier to unit test, and easier to reuse. The problem is that my class depends upon someone else's class, **Metadata**. It, too, does one very specific thing: it reads data that defines the characteristics of the data stream I'll be transforming from a database table and passes it to me. His class checks for mySQL errors, which should be rare, and logs any errors to a **Log** object. This **Log** object appears in all of our company's applications. Instantiating it is a big deal - it wants Job numbers, it wants a lot of configuration information from the database that's normally put there in production by account managers using a GUI. You have to do a lot of work before your program can instantiate the Log. Yet this tiny, low-level class ( **Metadata** ) with one tiny task wants it to be passed in, by me. My object certainly has no business instantiating the **Log** , so I have to take it as a parameter from whoever calls me. And so forth, up the calling hierarchy. I can understand why management wants a class to encapsulate and standardize message logging. But the need for it to be passed to, and through, just about every method is extremely ugly, and makes testing and reuse much more difficult. This kind of problem must be fairly common. How can this be done without cluttering up the signature of every method you write? Is this a legitimate case for Globals? Is there some kind of Object Oriented approach? And, is this a God object?"}
{"_id": "185549", "title": "CSS Classes for semantics vs. styles in general cases", "text": "The W3C spec on the `class` attribute says > There are no additional restrictions on the tokens authors can use in the > class attribute, but authors are encouraged to use values that describe the > nature of the content, rather than values that describe the desired > presentation of the content. Reference I work on a massive website that has many disparate pages. We have a default stylesheet that is shared across practically all pages. I find it useful to have CSS rulesets such as these:               .center { text-align: center; }     .red { color: red; }      However, these classes do not semantically describe content. I'm sure you can understand that there are an enumerable number of cases where I need to center text or color it red, and each of these specific instances may have nothing to do with one another. For example, the class `warning` may be useful in one spot, but in another it may just be `aside`. I wouldn't necessarily want _all_ warnings to be red either. I realize that this is a hyper-technical question, but I do want the hyper- technical answer. Is there any correct way to reconcile having general style rules that express no semantics with the HTML spec? Is this a case for _shudder_ inline styles?"}
{"_id": "74377", "title": "Should I continue using procedural php code or move to a framework", "text": "I haven't done any serious web development stuff since last year because of family/time issues. I need to get back into it because it's my career choice and I'll be finished with my associates degree soon. I decided to revamp a previous website I helped the owner build. After deciding what to change, I couldn't make up my mind if I should continue with writing procedural code or move to a framework. I know without a doubt I can do it with procedural code but I'm undecided between it. I guess I'm looking for a second opinion, what would you do if you were in a similar situation?"}
{"_id": "109295", "title": "How to publish paid Android apps if you're not from US/UK", "text": "I was pretty excited while creating one of my apps but as it turns out you can't actually sign up for Google Checkout if you don't live either in the USA or in the UK. And since Google Checkout is the only way Android Market will pay you, all my efforts seem to be going in vain. So because I live in India, I can't sell my apps. I tried contacting Google by various means on this, but haven't got any response so far. I tried searching the web as well just to find out that one can't be paid via any other way. I am pretty sure that many people here might have gone through the same problem. How did you solve it? I have a PayPal account and an AdSense account as well. Can they help in any way? And if nothing works out, how am I supposed to be selling my app?"}
{"_id": "185546", "title": "Abstracting out a module or using the Module Singleton directly?", "text": "I am working on a module which is dependent on other module for some functionality. Now the dependent module provides a lot of functionality and I need only few of them, hence got the idea to create an abstraction of the same in my module which is again be a singleton only. My question is when to abstract out and when to use the modules singleton class directly? Is there any guidelines for the same? Or its depend upon project to project?"}
{"_id": "185545", "title": "Renaming long named method in C#", "text": "I'm working on a project where exist one method with title               string ValidateNewPasswordExpireCurrentPasswordAndCreateNewPassword(...)      I'm sure the method name must be changed. But can't found good and descriptive alternative. Also I can't separate method in multiple methods, like ValidateNewPassword(), ExpireCurrentPassword() and CreateNewPassword(). How can I rename the method and the same time to not lose self describing ability ?"}
{"_id": "223065", "title": "Deploying v Releasing", "text": "So there's this desktop application. And I am wanting to inform it's users that a new version has been released. Is it more correct to say that a new version of a desktop application has been 'released' or 'deployed' (as with a web app)?"}
{"_id": "223067", "title": "Release as open source after granting usage rights?", "text": "I have written software and have granted usage rights to different companies per contract. Is it possible to change the software licence to an open source licence afterwards? At what circumstances is this impossible and how will this affect the current contracts? Like one of the companies is allowed to modify and resale the software. If I change to GPL are they forced to change to GPL, too?"}
{"_id": "227991", "title": "Does this justify goto statements?", "text": "I came across this question a second ago, and I'm pulling some of the material off of there: Is there a name for the 'break n' construct? This appears to be a needlessly complex way for people to have to instruct the program to break out of a double-nested for loop:               for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {         bool broken = false;         for (j = 10; j > 0; j--) {             if (j == i) {                 broken = true;                 break;             }         }         if (broken)             break;     }      I know textbooks like to say goto statements are the devil, and I'm not fond of them at all myself, but does this justify an exception to the rule? I'm looking for answers that deal with n-nested for loops. **NOTE:** Whether you answer yes, no, or somewhere in between, completely close-minded answers are **not** welcome. Especially if the answer is no, then provide a good, legitimate reason why (which is not too far from Stack Exchange regulations anyway)."}
{"_id": "227990", "title": "Transparently adding a database interface layer", "text": "I am currently looking for ways to optimize an application that is consuming unacceptable amounts of memory. The process basically takes input and parses it into a tree. The tree is currently stored in memory. For an average input, it may consume 100 MB to 2 GB of memory. For larger inputs, it may consume up to 6 GB, which is more than what most of our machines can handle if we wanted to test it locally. We are afraid there will be even larger inputs in the future, and so it's time to find a more scalable solution. Rather than storing everything in memory, I would like to move the tree, or parts of the tree, into external storage. Benchmarking the effects of not storing certain parts of the tree in memory has resulted in a 90% reduction in memory consumption. We have a framework (well, just our own library) that allows us to work with the tree using a set of standard getter and accessor methods. We use standardized methods for creating, reading, updating, and deleting nodes. Our parsers typically interact directly with nodes. For example, a sample method might say               // Takes some data and updates the tree with new data     private void managePerson(String id) {            // this returns a node with the given ID, or creates one if it doesn't exist yet       // and returns a reference to it       NodePerson node = getPerson(id)             // add or update some attributes       node.age.set(25)       node.name.set(\"John\")            // add some points to the existing value       int points = node.points.get()       node.points.set(points + 5)     }      Given this information, I am thinking of using a database. However, I would also like to be able to implement the changes transparently so as not to affect a decade's worth of code that relies on the tree. What can I use that will allow me to get data out into a database while allowing developers to get a reference to an object (eg: a person node) and treat it like any other object without any knowledge of where and how the tree is stored internally? It would also be nice if the solution tried to optimize the amount of queries that are made. For example, instead of inserting 10000 person nodes one at a time, it would somehow figure out a way to batch insert it. This is meant to be temporary storage: once the parsing is complete, all of the data can be discarded as we are serializing the data in a file (again, based on practices that have been implemented years ago. This can be changed, but we don't have plans for that yet)"}
{"_id": "7629", "title": "Recommended .NET / C# coding standards?", "text": "What coding standards do you think are important for .NET / C# projects? This could be anything from dealing with curly braces and spacing and pedantry like that. Or it could be more fundamental questions such as what namespaces in the .NET Framework to avoid, best practices with config files, etc. Try to avoid creating a post that is simply the corollary to another. For example, it would be fine to have one post focusing on curly braces. We don't need two to support one style vs. the other. The idea is not to vote for your pet standard, but rather to flesh out what should be thought about when creating standards."}
{"_id": "76392", "title": "Naming Convention for Private / Public Fields", "text": "I read the following on the MSDN: > Use Pascal casing for all public member, type, and namespace names > consisting of multiple words. > > Note that this rule does not apply to instance fields. For reasons that are > detailed in the Member Design Guidelines, you should not use public instance > fields. > > Use camel casing for parameter names. * * * Well it says it does not apply to instance fields so what applies to instance fields? I know I should not use them, but if I do, what is the correct convention? I guess it would be Pascal, but I'm not sure about it..."}
{"_id": "166702", "title": "Developing a search algorithm", "text": "I want to create a basic search engine, and I want you to give me some ideas how to filter out the best results for my visitors. I have three fields regarding a product the user can search in:   1. Title   2. Category   3. Description I came up with these ideas and I ask you to either competently criticize them or add to them.   1. If the search term occurs in all three fields it should be among the first results.   2. If it is in two of the fields it is below the results of 1.   3. Combine the amount of occurences and output a value in per cent. For instance if in all fields together the term clock appeared 50 times and in all fields together there are 200 words, then the per cent value is 50/200*100 = 25%. Another product entry amounts to say 20% so product one having 25% is listed before product two having 20%."}
{"_id": "166704", "title": "Function calls to calls in windows api", "text": "I am a beginner programmer who is learning C. I find it hard to grasp the whole programming concept, thus I have questions. When programming in Windows, how does Windows communicate with the programs that run on it? A question I have been pondering about is how when you incorporate a function call which is in another memory location on the disk or memory (not a function you yourself wrote and is included in the compilation), especially the Windows API, does the compiler know where the function location is so when the program is run it can call that function? For example, a very simple program that displays a window which reads hello world. You would have to call Windows API functions to achieve such features as creating the window, its size, colors and so on... So basically what I am struggling to grasp is how the programs I write communicate with the platform, framework they are run on(generally windows for Windows API). Apart from clarification on this one above, I would love a resource that explains this concept further."}
{"_id": "39791", "title": "Moving from Winforms to WPF", "text": "I am a long time experienced **Windows Forms** developer, but now it's time to **move to WPF** because a new WPF project is comming soon to me and I have only a short lead time to prepare myself to learn WPF. What is the best way for a experienced Winforms devleoper? Can you give me some hints and recommendations to learn WPF in a very short time! Are there simple sample WPF solutions and short (video) **tutorials**? Which **books** do you recommend? Is www.windowsclient.net a good starting point? Are there alternatives to the official Microsoft site?"}
{"_id": "57444", "title": "Learning graphical design as a developer", "text": "I'm mostly a developer and have been offered a job as webmaster. It's likely that I'll be asked to make some cosmetic changes to a website every now and then. Has anyone made this transition? If so, how did things go? Also, are there any good online sources to get up to speed on how things are done today?"}
{"_id": "57442", "title": "Catching typos or other errors in web-based scripting languages", "text": "My background is mainly strongly typed languages (java, c++, c#). Having recently gotten back to a bit of javascript, I found it a bit annoying that if I misspell something by accident (for example I'll type 'myvar' instead of 'myVar') my entire script crashes. The browser itself most of the time doesn't even tell me I have an error, my program will just be blank, etc. Then I have to hunt down my code line by line and find the error which is very time consuming. In the languages I am used to the compiler lets me know if I made a typo. My question to you is, how do you overcome this issue in scripting (javascript)? Can you give me some tips? (this question is mainly aimed at people that have also come from a strongly typed language). Note: I mainly use the terminal/VIM ... this is mainly b/c I like terminal and I SSH alot too"}
{"_id": "70610", "title": "How do I set up my \"personal\" library?", "text": "Through SO/P.SE browsing, I've been picking up useful pieces of Python code (e.g. a Mutable memoizer, an efficient prime generator) that I'd like to stick into one spot to have available should I need it in future projects. What are some best practices for how a \"personal\" code library of reusable classes/functions/modules should be set up? For example, do I just drop it all into one module? Or should I model it after the standard library, even though some modules may have 1 class/function in them?"}
{"_id": "101978", "title": "Advantages of a left to right language syntax", "text": "I've been watching an interview with Herb Sutter on Channel9 and he mentioned at the end of the video that left to right language syntax would be on the top on his whishlist for a future C++ standard(although he acknowledges that modifying C++ in that way would pretty much make for a completely different beast). Apart from:   * more understandable by humans, clearer to the naked eye;e.g.              //C syntax          /*pointer to function taking a pointer to function(which takes 2 integers as           arguments and returns an int), and an int as arguments and returning an int*/          int (*fp)(int (*ff)(int x, int y), int b)          //Go analogous syntax which is left to write          f func(func(int,int) int, int) int        * easier to parse(leads to better tool support as mentioned in the video - e.g. code refactoring)  what other advantages are there with a \"left to right\" syntax in a programming language. I know only of Pascal and Go employing that kind of syntax(and Go does not even go the full way as I understand from this blog post from which I took also the examples) Would it be feasible to have a systems programming language with that kind of syntax?"}
{"_id": "247305", "title": "Equidistant polygons", "text": "Consider these polygons: ![Consider these polygons](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jSeLV.png) For reasons of simplicity I only consider triangles or polygons with 4 vertices. These shapes are specified by the vertices, the output of the program should be modified vertices. I am trying to find an algorithm to create a space between the polygons, the colored area depicts the space: ![polygons with space](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yQD6h.png) I have tried these things:   * scaling each polygon around it's center of gravity    * scaling the bounding box of each polygon None of those worked. I am thinking of an algorithm to modify the corner points of each polygon to create the equidistant space. What would be a feasible algorithm for this problem?"}
{"_id": "250158", "title": "Business Logic vs Presentation/View Logic", "text": "I often question myself of where to put the logic that organize the data to a view that is not necessarily a business logic in a 3-layered architecture (DAO, Business, View). I'll put an example to be clearer: I have a UI in my aplication that shows pending tickets and answered tickets in two different tabs. To get the data from the database, I make a single query. Since there is no business logic, I'm returning the whole list to the Controller (View) and separating it in two lists to pass to the view template. Should I be separating this in the business layer? Or is it correct to separate in the controller, since the logic is attached to that single UI?"}
{"_id": "101974", "title": "Pros/Cons for a Data Structure covering multiple databases?", "text": "I'm about to extend a system containing two separate systems. Or domains, if we see the system as a domain level. **Today** One domain is used internally. The other is public, which means it is more exposed to whatever can happen \"out there\". Services of some kind (few options apply) perform operations between the two separate systems. The public and internal system have separated database storages, and are not related to each other. Let's call the domains client and store. **Tomorrow** I'm into a new application that will have lots of more user-specific information at the client domain. The design may be comparable to a 'private database' that has a facebook-account-link as a key. This compares to a database that held user actions, but had no user specific data (such as address, date of birth, email and so on), just a key to the Facebook-server. On the other side, the STORE database (compared to Facebook-server in this case) doesn't know anything about the user actions. **Goal** Approximately 85-90% of the queries will be within their own domain (client if client, store if store). Though, there are some situations where the client need to get data from the STORE database and the STORE needs to create/handle users in the CLIENT database. **Questions out from my head**   * Is this a good way to go?   * Pros/cons? Orphans? Database Performance? Problematic .NET coding?   * Principles of the choice for the boundaries of data? .. and other things you may know or think of   **An example of structure** ..dbStore.Users   * userid (PK)   * name   * dateOfBirth   * emailAddress -> Wallet (another table) ..dbStore.Wallet   * walletid (PK)   * userid   * createddate -> BankAccount (another table, not typed) ..dbClient.users   * storeUserId (unique, non-inc) <\\-- corresponds to dbStore.User, no restraint   * accessLevel   * lastLoggedIn   * serviceXxEnabled   * udpAccessKey ..dbClient.action   * actionid (PK)   * isSomething   * someDate   * anythingElse ..dbClient.installation   * installationid (PK)   * userid We won't collect bank-account information, it just to give a picture of the data structure and its importance in keeping it in separate systems. I hope this Q is comprehensible enough."}
{"_id": "75390", "title": "Why should I care about micro performance and efficency?", "text": "Many questions and answers on the C/C++ pages, specifically or indirectly discuss micro performance issues (such is the overhead of an indirect vs direct vs inline function), or using an O(N2) vs O(N _log_ N) algorithm on a 100 item list. I always code with no concern about micro performance, and little concern about macro performance, focusing on easy to maintain, reliable code, unless or until I know I have a problem. My question is why is it that a large number of programmers care so much? Is it really an issue for most developers, have I just been lucky enough to not to have to worry too much about it, or am I a bad programmer?"}
{"_id": "33131", "title": "Aren't there compilers better at telling the programmer what's wrong in a code?", "text": "I have worked a little while with the Microsoft compiler from Visual C++ but I worked a long time with G++, and I remember often having bad times understanding what was wrong in my code with the former. Beside binary code generation and optimisation, I think this is a very important feature of a C++ compiler: giving the programmer a clue that makes him understand as fast as possible what is wrong with his/her code. I can understand some programmers understand programming as some sort of \"competition\" to make less errors, but to me that's a counter productive opinion. I once tried Clang compiler for C from the LLVM thingie, I didn't use it for a long time, but I was impressed on how explicit and easy to understand the error messages were. What are your experiences, and how do you think this matters ? Some WIP of C++ Clang: http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html"}
{"_id": "105278", "title": "Creating a Performance Model for a Legacy product", "text": "I've been given the task for creating a performance model for a legacy product. The product is about 10 years old and has never had any performance requirements or performance models before. Generally whats happened in the past is a customer will complain that a particular feature is slow or they are not getting the throughput that they want/need and the developers will investigate and see if any more performance can be squeezed out the code for the feature. Since the product doesn't have any hard measurements and metrics for past versions I fell all I can do is create baselines for the current version and go from there. Other developers sometimes _notice_ that memory usage is really high and ask why. Also, I am new to the product so I don't know all the feature points (which there are hundreds to thousands) and the performance cost of running each. The program is an ASP.NET/.NET 2.0 webapp on IIS 6. I've started looking into performance counters and the CLR Profiler to start getting measurements. I've also read the following docs: Measuring ASP.NET Performance Improving ASP.NET Performance So my question is: **How can I create a performance model for a legacy product that I am new too and hasn't had a performance model/requirement in the past?**"}
{"_id": "134620", "title": "What is the ideal learning path to building Android apps with Scala, without prior Java experience", "text": "Unfortunately, there are not currently any books on the subject of 'Learn Android Development with Scala', which would be the ideal solution. I'm guessing that I'll need to pick up at least 3 books here, one for each topic. However, I have no idea what order to read them in, whether to read them simultaneously, what parts of the Java book I can safely skip, etc. What is the best path for me to get started building Android apps using Scala?"}
{"_id": "203644", "title": "Should user input of a contact form be validated?", "text": "On software company websites I visit the first time, I often open the \"Contact us\" page and try to submit the contact form with all fields empty. I am just curios if they validate the user input. If it is just submitted or only validated poorly (e.g. only Javascript validation), I often hear myself thinking > Oh, look how sloppy they are! Can't even validate user input. That calls > itself a software company? No, I don't think I want to buy any software > services of them. A friend of mine has such a \"sloppy\" contact form. You can submit a completely empty form. I asked him why he does not validate user input, and he said: > Look, I want that customers can contact me. They should enter any > information they want. If they only want to enter a message and leave the > other fields empty, why should I care? They enter the relevant information > anyway. I do not want to add any barriers when contacting me. I did not ask him how many empty messages he gets, though. However, what is the better option now? Both arguments (check how company handles user input vs. not adding any barriers in contacting) seem to make sense for me. I want that the user can easily contact me, but still has the impression that I am precise when programming webpages."}
{"_id": "203641", "title": "Building a sequential list in languages with cons/linked lists", "text": "In languages where cons lists are a major datatype, it is very easy to create a list from last to first by prepending items. When doing processing from some input file, however, one is most likely to encounter items in first to last order. Do languages like these typically recurse?               (define (parse file)       ...       (cons datum (parse file)))      Use append operations at each step? Build the list in reverse order and then reverse it? Is there some canonical design pattern that can solve the problem that input is typically going to be in the reverse order of the way the list is constructed?"}
{"_id": "84150", "title": "Globally important concepts to understand?", "text": "I have a history of web development using LAMP + html/css (though I admit the LAMP aspect isn't in great depth) and would like to follow the career path of software developer, so I'm currently learning C, after which I'll look at C++. **I was wondering if anybody could give me a list of subject area's within computer programming as a whole that are important to fully understand, right through to a 'senior' level of career progression?** Obviously I know it's the mindset and knowing when to use various techniques that makes a good programmer, but you have to start somewhere! By topic areas I mean for examples:   * Data types   * Variables   * Functions   * OO   * etc. Many thanks."}
{"_id": "141402", "title": "How does a web browser save passwords?", "text": "How do current web browsers (or mobile mail clients and any software in general) save user passwords? All answers about storing passwords say we should store only hashes, not the password themselves. But I'm having a hard time searching the web trying to find the best techniques to store passwords when we know we will need them in plain text later on \u2014 without storing them in plain text, without using a weak encryption (known key) and without asking the user for a master password. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "141403", "title": "Improving performance for web scraping code", "text": "I have a website in which the code scrapes other websites for getting the accurate data. While the code works good but there a decent lag in performance because the code firsts downloads the html stream from various sites(some times 9 websites), extracts the relative part and then renders the html page. What should I do to get an optimal performance. Should I change from shared hosting (godaddy) to my own server or it has nothing to do with my hosting and I need to make changes to my code?"}
{"_id": "84155", "title": "What are the pressures of being a software engineer?", "text": "I am thinking about a career in software engineering, but before I look for work I wanted to get an idea of what to expect particularly with pressure. This will be my first programming job (so I am looking for entry level), so I am not yet mature as a programmer yet. My question is what is the pressure like in these jobs? How high can the pressure get? If your boss gives you an assignment and it's due in two weeks but it takes you 3 will you get fired, because your unable to perform? Are you given time to learn more about the technology, develop your coding skills and grow, or are you expected to know it already and blaze through the project? If you have trouble with code are you expected to handle it yourself and work independently, or are you able to ask others for help if you are stuck? Are you expected to put in a lot of late nights to meet the deadlines? I know that this can depend on the company as well, but I just wanted some professional insight to the possible pressures of being a software developer/programmer etc. I also know that other jobs have pressure too! I just would like to know the pressure unique to software engineering. The reason I ask this question is because I had a bad experience programming once and I wanted to know if most of these jobs are the same. If software engineering/developing/programming is tough pressure that I don't want to handle are there other types of development like web development, system admin, etc that are less pressure that I can get into and still code? Thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts."}
{"_id": "159872", "title": "How can I prevent users from merging origin/X into Y in git?", "text": "Is it possible to force git to only merge remote tracking branches into the corresponding local branch? E.g. assume origin/X tracks X on origin and corresponds to local X and the same for origin/Y and Y. I want to prevent users to do `git checkout Y; git merge origin/X`. Is it possible? How? **Edit:** To make it clear: The workflow is not the problem. People try to merge the wrong branches because they forgot to checkout the correct branch before merging. It is not about \"offenders\" or pushing to the central repo. It's just people forgetting at which branch they are. The last \"incident\" was literally: > \"I should commit and push real quick before I leave. > > git add .   >  git commit -am 'Feature Y'   >  git push origin > > Whoops, whats that. It tells me to merge branch origin/X first. OK whatevs. > > git merge origin/X > > Whoops, whats that now. Lots of merge conflicts. What have I done. I better > call somebody...\" The user was working in branch Y and did not understand what the `git push origin` was saying. It told it that origin/X needed merging and that's what he did, because he wanted to \"push real quick\". In the case above branch X was one commit ahead of the local X, so pushing all branches yielded the \"needs merging\" error. I adjusted the \"workflow\" now to always push a branch explicitly, e.g. `git push origin Y` instead of just `git push origin`, but that's not curing the problem. It should (usually) not be allowed without a warning to merge origin/X with Y. For merging feature branches X and Y can be merged."}
{"_id": "133391", "title": "How should I choose the right documentation for my team?", "text": "I've asked this question a few days ago about how much documentation should be made and now I realize I may have been asking only half of the question. My goal is to promote some sort of documentation in order to increase continuous knowledge inside the team. My team is working mainly on server-side services which extends proprietary devices which are distributed locally (national not global) In addition we supply APIs and administration web apps to those services. **What would be the best types of documentation for my team?** **Should we focus on DFDs, sequence diagrams, class diagrams, just plain text... ?** **Are some documentation methodologies better for specific industries or are there some which are just a waste of time?** _I fear this last question would be put down as too subjective, but I do hope there are some standard answers for this question, similarly to when someone asks about good OOP techniques and gets directed to design patterns and SOLID principles._"}
{"_id": "202597", "title": "Ubiquitous Language and Custom types", "text": "Note that my question is referring to those attributes that even on their own already represent a _concept_ ( ie on their own provide a _cohesive meaning_ ). Thus such attribute needs no additional functional support and as such is _self-contained_. I'm also well-aware that even with _self-contained_ attributes the _custom types_ may prove beneficial ( for example, they give the ability to add new behavior later, when business requirements change ). Thus, my question focuses only on whether _custom types_ for _self-contained_ attributes really enrich Ubiquitous Language **UL** a) I've read that in most cases, even simple, _self-contained_ attributes should have custom, more descriptive types rather than _basic value types_ ( _double, string_ ... ), because among other things, _descriptive types_ add to the **UL** , while the use of _basic types_ instead weakens the language. I understand the importance of **UL** , but how does having a _basic type_ for a _self-contained_ attribute weaken the language, since with _self-contained_ attributes the name of the attribute already adequately describes the _concept_ and thus contributes to the **UL** vocabulary? For example, the term `person_age` already adequately explains the concept of _quantifying the number of years a person has_ :               class Person     {            string person_age;     }      so what could we possibly gain by also introducing the term `ThingAge` to the **UL** :               class person     {           ThingAge person_age;      }      thanks"}
{"_id": "159877", "title": "Entity Framework Joining Tables With Ranged Foreign Key Relationships", "text": "I'm not sure if \"Ranged Foreign Key Relationship\" is an actual term or if I just made it up, but this is what I am talking about: AgeGroup Table               int MinAge { get; set; }     int MaxAge { get; set; }     string Description { get; set; }      Customer Table               public int CustomerID { get; set; }     public string Name { get; set; }`     public int Age { get; set; }     public virtual AgeGroup AgeGroup { get; set; }      Given the above two tables, how can I join them using the (EntityFramework, DataAnnontations, DbContext) and be able to access `Customer.AgeGroup.Description`? Consider the following example data: AgeGroup               MinAge MaxAge Description     0      12     Youngin     13     19     Teenager     20     29     Twenties     30     39     Thirties     40     9999   Old      Customer               CustomerID Name        Age     345        Joe Smith   17     493        Cobaltikus  31     631        Jane Doe    29      How can I relate these? Cobaltikus has an Age of 31. There is no corresponding AgeGroup record with 31. The corresponding AgeGroup record is the one with MinAge = 30 and MaxAge = 39. I can do this easily in SQL, but how do you do it with EntityFramework?               SELECT       AgeGroup.Description          FROM       Customer,       AgeGroup          WHERE       Customer.CustomerID = 493       AND AgeGroup.MinAge <= Customer.Age       AND AgeGroup.MaxAge >= Customer.Age"}
{"_id": "133395", "title": "Using XML field Vs. creating a table for unstable organization", "text": "I am in the middle of design an application to issue and store invoices for an organization. The problem is the organization is not stable at all. There are many types of invoices and they may increase and change. First, I tried to use tables in my DAL, one table to store invoices, one for invoice fields, and one for invoice field values. The problem was, this way needs Reflection to detect fields later, and this may slow the application when invoice contains plenty items. Second, I tried to keep core of invoice data as two tables: invoices and invoice items. Other fields are fully catchable from other tables. I mean, Business Layer should provide different results per invoice type. It should choose the right queries, and process the results according to the type of invoice. Two problems with this solution are:   1. I still have lots of join between other tables when I want to show an invoice, for per invoice item. I should recalculate everything every time for every invoice item.   2. What if the invoice items table doesn\u2019t support a new type of invoice? Then I probably should add a new table to store that kind of invoices items.   3. My client asked me to keep all data related to an invoice, they do not want me to recalculate it every time. They want something like a snapshot of related data at the time invoice is creating. Now, what I\u2019m think can I use the benefit of XML in table? I can save the invoice, with whatever fields as xml.   * I can save the different version of their invoices.   * On changes, I only update my Business.dll and no DAL change required.   * Linq to XML is not slow. What do you suggest?"}
{"_id": "202599", "title": "How does the new google maps make buildings and cityscapes 3D?", "text": "Anyone who's seen the new Google maps has no doubt taken note of the incredible amount of three-dimensional detail in select American cities such as Boston, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. They've even modeled the trees, bridges and some of the boats in the harbor! Minor architectural details are present. It's crazy. Looking at it up close, I've found there's a rectangular area around each of those cities, and anything within them is 3Dified, but it cuts off hard and fast at the edge, even if it's in the middle of a building. The edge of the rectangle is where the 3D stops. This leads me to think it's being done algorithmically (which would make sense, given the scale of the project, how many trees and buildings and details there are), and yet I can't imagine how that's possible. How could an algorithm model all these things without extensive data on their shapes and contours? How could it model the individual wires of a bridge, or the statues in a park? It _must_ be done by hand, and yet how could it be for so much detail! Does anyone have any insight on this?"}
{"_id": "226111", "title": "Can I use MongoDB for a commercial web based service?", "text": "Can I use MongoDB as the database for providing a paid service? MongoDB is licensed under the AGPL, but the drivers I'm using are MIT licensed. Do I have to buy a commercial license for MongoDB or can I use it as a backend for my app?"}
{"_id": "139944", "title": "JSF for an internet facing, high traffic web application", "text": "I, perhaps, made a _wrong_ choice of going with a `Component-based Framework` like JSF for an internet facing, high traffic web application. Development with JSF has although been easier but what I fear now is whether JSF would allow me that scalability & performance with all it fundamental problems & issues. State saving in a high traffic web app, does that make sense at all!? How do I tune up my JSF app now to make it perform better under heavy load? I am already trying to reduce the state / component tree by reducing the no of components on page. What are other things I can tune up to make JSF app perform better ?"}
{"_id": "123372", "title": "Are COM objects a form of IPC?", "text": "In Pro C# 2008 it is stated > Using constructs such as AppIDs, stubs, proxies, and the COM runtime > environment, programmers can avoid the need to work with raw sockets, RPC > calls, and other low-level details. It then demonstrates a VB6 call where a COM object is instantiated by passing in the AppId. Then, a method call is performed on said object. Does this mean COM allows IPC directly with objects? Is this secure? Why does .NET disallow this behavior?"}
{"_id": "139946", "title": "Why is Twitto not secure?", "text": "I've come across Twitto, which basically is a web framework that fits in a tweet. It is so short that I can post the code here :               require __DIR__.'/c.php';     if (!is_callable($c = @$_GET['c'] ?: function() { echo 'Woah!'; }))       throw new Exception('Error');     $c();      It basically searches for a file named c.php and calls whatever function in that files that is the same name as `$_GET['c']`. On the project's website, there is a big red banner at the bottom of the page that reads : > \u00bb TWITTO IS NOT SECURE, DON'T USE IT FOR YOUR NEXT WEBSITE \u00ab I am no PHP guru, but to me it looks like if you take all the precautions you normally take with a standard PHP site (sanitizing user input, etc), it should be secure enough ? What is wrong with this tiny framework ? EDIT : I understand why this framework is not secure AS-IS, but with the proper bootstrapping and validation checks and everything inside the function you call, it should be just as secure as any other framework ?"}
{"_id": "228199", "title": "Developing only for 64 bit servers a bad idea?", "text": "In an attempt to solve one problem I encountered another. I would like to have an easy and memorable way of creating unique error numbers, across projects and across developers. The scheme I came up with was to use the initials of the developer, find their position in the alphabet, and append the date and time. Example: lets say the developer Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (initials MEZ) writes code that throws an exception on Feb 8th 2014 at 12:54AM. The error code would be: 8526020820140054 This works brilliantly on 64 bit machines, but the resulting integer is too large for 32 bit computers. Does that make this a bad idea? How common are 32 bit servers, and do we expect them to slowly disappear completely?"}
{"_id": "182010", "title": "Open Source Cloud Computing", "text": "Recently I realized that the most popular social platforms on the net are in the hand of just a few companies, Google, Twitter, Facebook, to name just a few. Taking into account the world changing power of these frameworks I am looking for a non-profit, democratic alternatives to these sites. (Mozilla is a non-profit project, however it could not thrive without the backing of Google.) In my imagination, the ideal approach (see explanation below) would be a distributed approach as used in file sharing programs or tools like seti@home. Every user willing to take part in the project would have to install software on his or her computer to act as a node in the network that would make up a social space similar to Google+, Facebook or Twitter but with a non-commercial approach. This approach could also be used for a \"democratic\" cloud to store data. Is anyone aware of projects that go in this direction? * * * I call it \"ideal approach\" for a couple of reasons. No need for big server farms or hardware maintaining costs. Invulnerability against most hack attack because it's distributed and there is no central node. Just some I could think of right now."}
{"_id": "147801", "title": "introducing pointers to a large software project", "text": "I have a fairly large software project written in `c++`. In there, there is a `class foo` which represents a structure (by which i don't mean the programmers struct) in which `foo`-objects can be part of a `foo`-object. Here's `class foo` in simplest form:               class Foo     {         private:             std::vector<unsigned int> indices;         public:             void addFooIndex(unsigned int);             unsigned int getFooIndex(unsigned int);     };      Every `foo`-object is currently stored in an object of `class bar`.               class Bar     {         private:             std::vector<Foo> foos;         public:             void addFoo(Foo);             std::vector<Foo> getFoos();     }      So if a `foo`-object should represent a structure with a \"inner\" foo-object, I currently do               Foo foo;     Foo innerFoo;     foo.addFooIndex(bar.getFoos().size() - 1);     bar.addFoo(innerFoo);      And to get it, I obviously use:               Foo foo;     for ( unsigned int i = 0; i < foo.getFooIndices().size(); ++i )     {         Foo inner_foo;         assert( foo.getFooIndices().at(i) < bar.getFoos().size() );         inner_foo = bar.getFoos().at(foo.getFooIndices().at(i));     }      So this is not a problem. It just works. But it's not the most elegant solution. I now want to make the inner `foo`s to be \"more connected\" with the `foo`-object. It would be obviously to change `class foo` to:               class Foo     {         private:             std::vector<Foo*> foo_pointers;         public:             void addFooPointer(Foo*);             std::vector<Foo*> getFooPointers();     };      So now, for my question: How to gently change this basic class without messing up the whole code? Is there a \"clean way\"?"}
{"_id": "182013", "title": "How to structure unit testing of huge libraries?", "text": "I am writing unit tests for a library written in Qt/C++. The library is rather big, with lots of functionalities. I have a separate `unitTest` folder which I have my `UnitTest.cpp` in there. Having all test case / unit tests in the same file, makes it one very big `.cpp` file. I was wondering what is the best approach to unit test huge libraries. Should I have different `UnitTest.cpp` files in different folder? Like one for every class? or every name space?"}
{"_id": "182014", "title": "Difference between daemon and child thread?", "text": "As per my knowledge daemon thread is a thread that runs in background(low priority thread) and also a child thread runs in the background when the parent thread runs foreground so where does the difference lie between a child and a daemon thread? It's in case of java and can you explain referring to other languages too."}
{"_id": "204343", "title": "Is abusing Application.UnhandledException for login redirection okay?", "text": "I'm programming a windows phone 7 app which needs authentication for news-like read access. I use Application.UnhandledException to handle (my) `AuthFailedException`, which can be thrown from any page, and navigate to a login page. To mimic a modal dialog, I do the following:   1. I attach a `BackKeyPress` event handler to clear the back stack, effectively causing the app to exit.    2. On login, I invoke the actual go-back behavior to get back to the previous page, which threw the `AuthFailedException` (all in the view model via proper dependency injection). This feels dirty, but at least a little better than what hacks might be neccessary otherwise... Any advice on how to improve the situation?"}
{"_id": "204342", "title": "Choosing the language to build an app in based on hiring market vs performance and maintainability", "text": "I'm facing a choice of whether to start building Haskell components for a certain production app that is all done in Ruby. I'm leaning toward Haskell for several reasons, primarily speed (compiled Haskell is like 4-8x faster), greater transparency (via Haskell type system), and safer refactorability (type system). I've written a few open source and production programs in Haskell already and enjoy writing it very much. Feasibility is not an issue. I've played around with the Haskell Snap web framework and database libraries like PostgreSQL.Simple and am satisfied that rewriting a Rails app and various backend programs with Haskell is feasible. The real issue is hiring programmers when we need to scale the dev team, or eventually handing off the programming responsibilities altogether. It's a lot easier to find programmers in Ruby than in Haskell. On the other hand, the Haskell community seems to be growing, and it's not too hard to train programmers to modify parts of a Haskell program if you approach it as a DSL (much like Ruby on Rails). The Haskell type system also seems to promise much safer collaboration than dynamic Ruby does. In his essay \"Beating the Averages\" (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html), Paul Graham argues that using a superior language can be a decisive advantage. But when does it make sense to forgo using a superior language in order to make it easier to add programmers to your team?"}
{"_id": "204341", "title": "Building a tool to fix compiler errors automagically", "text": "When a program doesn't compile, error messages are sometimes esoteric. Often a simple Google search leading to a site like stack exchange solves the problem. Now why can't we automate this? How about a Siri for coding? By Siri, I mean an intelligent personal assistant. Not talking about speech recognition here. I wonder if there is anybody out there (startups/ research labs) building a cool product like this. It will cut down debugging time drastically."}
{"_id": "204340", "title": "Do these specific tables need surrogate keys?", "text": "## Background I have this tables               +-------------------------+  +------------------------+     |Airport                  |  |Country                 |     |-------------------------|  |------------------------|     |airport_code string (PK) |  |country_code string (PK)|     |address string           |  |name string             |     |name  string             |  +------------------------+     +-------------------------+          +-------------------------+     |Currency                 |     |-------------------------|     |currency_code string (PK)|     |name string              |     +-------------------------+      **airport_code** is the IATA (International Air Transport Association ) airport code, you can see them in your luggage tags when you travel by plane. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rPnue.png) **country_code** is the ISO 3166-1 A3 standard country code, you can see them in the olympics. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EpjiB.png) **currency_code** is the IS0 417 standard 3-chars currency code, you can see them in international currency exchange display boards. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/YD3GW.png) ## Questions **Are these natural PKs good enough ?** **Is using world respected standards, which are accepted by whole industries good enough for PKs ?** **Do this tables need surrogates no matter what ?**"}
{"_id": "209112", "title": "Is it possible to release something with proprietary dependencies under Apache2 licence?", "text": "If I write code with proprietary dependencies, can I release my own code under the Apache licence? An example of this would be a plugin for a proprietary framework."}
{"_id": "40738", "title": "Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer", "text": "I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed for people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify:   * (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives.   * (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation.   * (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and \"real\", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays.   * (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code.   * (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible.   * (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C.   * (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages.   * (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding.   * (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type.   * (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures.   * (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell.   * (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose languages, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have **one** script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to \"clean up\" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction."}
{"_id": "86795", "title": "Can we technically un-blur images?", "text": "Since there is an algorithm to blur images, so that part of it cannot be recognised, can we reverse the algorithm and unblur part of than image? Is there a program that already does that, is that even possible, even in a near future?"}
{"_id": "86791", "title": "Can I use the test suite from an open source project to verify that my own 'compatible library' is compatible?", "text": "The question Is it illegal to rewrite every line of an open source project in a slightly different way, and use it in a closed source project? makes me wonder what would be considered a _clean-room implementation_ in the era of open source projects. Hypothetically, if I were to develop a library which duplicates the _publicly documented_ interface of an open-source library, without ever looking at the source code for that library, could that code ever be considered a derivative work? Obviously it would need the same _class hierarchy_ and _method signatures_ , so that it could be a drop-in replacement - could that in itself, be enough to provoke a copyright claim? What about if I used the test suite of the open source project to verify whether my _clean_ implementation behaved in the same way as the original library? Would using the test suite be enough to _dirty_ my _clean_ code? As should be expected from a question like this, I am not looking for specific legal advice, but looking to document experiences people may have had with this sort of issue."}
{"_id": "219745", "title": "How do I comply to GPL in case of Appliance?", "text": "We are developing an enterprise network appliance which has got some GPL softwares like linux and apache and some others with APL license. But the core of the service is proprietary software and access is provided only via a web interface. My query is what all I need to do in order to comply with GPL license in this scenario. Would providing a list of Third party softwares used in the appliance in the web interface be sufficient?"}
{"_id": "14618", "title": "How do I not undersell myself when looking for a job, while remaining honest?   ", "text": "I'm 10 months out of school and I lost my first programming job last week. I personally know a lot about different stuff - just look at my StackOverflow account, but I don't feel I have the professional experience necessary to ask more in salary. For example, I was told they were looking for a mid-level person at $75k/year. I told him I wasn't sure where I fell. He asked me where I could fall, so I said I was worth only $50k/year - which was close to my last salary. The guy told me I wasn't what they were looking for. How do I not undersell myself when looking for a job, while remaining honest?"}
{"_id": "219748", "title": "Help/suggestions for Parallel assembly line scheduling (Dynamic programming)", "text": "I am working on a problem similar to the assembly line scheduling by dynamic programming.The issue is that unlike the classic problem where we have predefined stations now I only have information which task should run before which other(could be more than one) tasks. I have to find out which tasks to put on which line to minimize the total time taken by the production.So obviously if the tasks are on a single line then they are executing in serial fashion and hence are slower. So I have following issues   1. How do I create time based levels/lines as I don't have a sequence of all tasks? I only know which task comes before which(one or many) tasks. Time based levels are necessary as I have to minimize the time (which would happen when the tasks are executed in parallel).   2. How do I determine the optimal order of tasks to minimize time? As several tasks would be waiting for a single task, I have to minimize this time as well.   3. Like the original problem, communication between different lines would also have a cost. I have to determine whether this communication cost is worth moving the task to a separate line(from its communicating task) **tl;dr** : A parallel version of the assembly line scheduling (Dynamic programming) where all lines could be busy at the same time and I don't have any station numbering/ordering. I just know which tasks should be executed before which. I have to decide which tasks to put on the same line and which tasks to put on the different lines (given the communication time when tasks are on different lines) to minimize the production time."}
{"_id": "14610", "title": "Code duplication with no obvious abstraction", "text": "Have you ever encountered a case of code duplication where, upon looking at the lines of code, you couldn't fit a thematic abstraction to it that faithfully describes its role in the logic? And what did you do to address it? It is code duplication, so ideally we need to do some refractoring, like for example making it its own function. But since the code doesn't have a good abstraction to describe it the result would be a strange function that we can't even figure out a good name for, and whose role in the logic is not obvious just from looking at it. That, to me, hurts the clarity of the code. We can preserve clarity and leave it as it is but then we hurt maintainability. What do you think is the best way to address something like this?"}
{"_id": "106613", "title": "What kind of questions and processes do you ask yourself and follow when designing software?", "text": "I've read books on design, I troll the internet for articles on best practices and software design principles. However, I always seem to struggle to put into practice the kind of suggestions and techniques supplied. My question is. What kind of things do you ask yourself when you are designing an application/class/method location/property location etc that helps ensure you come up with something that is, although not perhaps perfect, is good enough that you are happy with the result. For example, when trying to decide between putting a property on an object how do you decide whether the code that might use that object should be part of the class that contains it or exposed so other classes can use it. i.e. how do you decide who owns and responsible for a certain logic/property. I realise there are things like SOLID that you can apply, but I'm looking for techniques and thought processes people often go though in order to get to the end design that applies these principles. NOTE: I'm not looking at getting links to books or internet articles necessarily as these I look at quite regularly. I'm really after peoples read world practices on how they go about day to day resolving class and application design issues they come across. Thanks alot."}
{"_id": "106611", "title": "Are there technical reasons for an immediate update following a fresh download/install?", "text": "I've had this happen in all sorts of software products: You purchase a software product, download it, install it, and then after the install, the program immediately begins downloading an update or a patch. Ideally, I would imagine that the download package would somehow be linked to the product's repository so that stable releases could be pushed to the product site rather than having to force the user to wait through an update after install. Are there any technical reasons for the install/update process or is it just a case of poor deployment infrastructure on the part of a lot of companies?"}
{"_id": "76619", "title": "Choosing a JavaScript Asynch-Loader", "text": "I\u2019ve been looking at various asynchronous resource-loaders and I\u2019m not sure which one to use yet. Where I work we have disparate group-efforts whose class-modules may use different versions of jQuery (etc). As such, nested dependencies may differ, as well. I have no control over this, so this means I need to dynamically load resources which may use alternate versions of the same library. **As such, here are my requirements:**     1. Load JavaScript and CSS resource files asynchronously.   2. Manage dependency-order and nested-dependencies across versions.   3. Detect if a resource is already loaded.   4. Must allow for cross-domain loading (CDN's)   5. (optional) Allow us to unload a resource. **I\u2019ve been looking at:**     * Curl   * RequireJS   * JavaScriptMVC   * LABjs I might be able to fake these requirements myself by loading versions into properly-namespaced variables & using an array to track what is already loaded...but (hopefully) someone has already invented this. **So my questions are:**     * Which ones do you use? And why?   * Are there others that my satisfy my requirements fully?   * Which do you find most eloquent and easiest to work with? And why? **UPDATE:**   For those interested, I tried all the AMD libraries above (and more). In the end, I went with RequireJS. It's just cleaner and easier overall...and I'm glad to be using it."}
{"_id": "208443", "title": "Why does Facebook use hash in the URL...sometimes?", "text": "I've noticed that Facebook SOMETIMES uses a hash in the url. For example, when I'm on my home page, and then I click my profile page, the URL quickly changes to:               facebook.com/#_________      followed by some other stuff. before quickly loading to:               facebook.com/profileName      It doesn't always do this. What's going on here?"}
{"_id": "208444", "title": "Is state pattern a good solution for implementing UI changes for Landscape and Portrait modes?", "text": "For our iOS app, a lot of complicated UI logic depends on the interface orientation of the ViewController. This conditional logic is present in a lot of places. Can it be segregated into different states in form of objects?"}
{"_id": "102726", "title": "What is a good workflow for a C++ beginner?", "text": "I desire to become a more serious scientific C++ programmer. To do so, I need a consistent style of workflow (e.g., coding, test-driven development, etc.). My question is simply what sort of workflow should I consider? I am familiar with Linux and Mac, and prefer to use free tools like cppcheck, valgrind, g++, etc. I prefer to use Qt and Boost within my programming toolbox, and I am considering using mock objects (either Google Mock or MockPP) within the TDD. I typically use vim for my editor. In essence, should I do something like the following: > TDD -> code -> cppcheck -> valgrind -> debug -> repeat until ready to use > profilers and coverage mechanisms or, should I pursue some other way? I realize that the opinions will vary, and I also understand that I must first take the time to think through the process and document my thoughts whether written or UML before coding, and I also know that I should document the code as I step write the code. Any and all thoughts will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "30449", "title": "Is 4-5 years the \u201cMidlife Crisis\u201d for a programming career?", "text": "I\u2019ve been programming C# professionally for a bit over 4 years now. For the past 4 years I\u2019ve worked for a few small/medium companies ranging from \u201cweb/ads agencies\u201d, small industry specific software shops to a small startup. I've been mainly doing \"business apps\" that involves using high-level programming languages (garbage collected) and my overall experience was that all of the works I\u2019ve done could have been more professional. A lot of the things were done incorrectly (in a rush) mainly due to cost factor that people always wanted something \u201cnow\u201d and with the smallest amount of spendable money. I kept on thinking maybe if I could work for a bigger companies or a company that\u2019s better suited for programmers, or somewhere that's got the money and time to really build something longer term and more maintainable I may have enjoyed more in my career. I\u2019ve never had a \u201cmentor\u201d that guided me through my 4 years career. I am pretty much blog / google / self taught programmer other than my bachelor IT degree. I\u2019ve also observed another issue that most so called \u201csenior\u201d programmer in \u201cmy working environment\u201d are really not that senior skill wise. They are \u201csenior\u201d only because they\u2019ve been a long time programmer, but the code they write or the decisions they make are absolutely rubbish! They don't want to learn, they don't want to be better they just want to get paid and do what they've told to do which make sense and most of us are like that. Maybe that\u2019s why they are where they are now. But I don\u2019t want to become like them I want to be better. I\u2019ve run into a mental state that I no longer intend to be a programmer for my future career. I started to think maybe there are better things out there to work on. The more blogs I read, the more \u201cbest practices\u201d I\u2019ve tried the more I feel I am drifting away from \u201cmy reality\u201d. But I am not a great programmer otherwise I don't think I am where I am now. I think 4-5 years is a stage that can be a step forward career wise or a step out of where you are. I just wanted to hear what other have to say about what I\u2019ve mentioned above and whether you\u2019ve experienced similar situation in your past programming career and how you dealt with it. Thanks."}
{"_id": "172935", "title": "using \"IS\" is better or checking for \"NOT NULL\"", "text": "In C#.NET language: This style of coding is recommended or the one below it?                       if (sheet.Models.Data is GroupDataModel)             {                 GroupDataModel gdm = (GroupDataModel)sheet.Models.Data;                 Group group = gdm.GetGroup(sheet.ActiveCell.Row.Index);                    if (group!=null && controller != null)                 {                     controller.CheckApplicationState();                 }             }      or this one:                       var gdm = sheet.Models.Data as GroupDataModel;             if (gdm != null)             {                 Group group = gdm.GetGroup(sheet.ActiveCell.Row.Index);                    if (@group!=null && controller != null)                 {                     controller.CheckApplicationState();                 }             }"}
{"_id": "108540", "title": "WinRT for 'desktop' apps", "text": "So I'm reading up about the differences between the old and the new APIs, and I can't find whether the new WinRT API will provide for desktop apps, so far it seems its only available to write Metro apps - ie the full screen, 'phone style' apps. Does this mean that I can write a WinRT-based app and it will be invoked from a desktop but display like other Metro apps (eg IE) and I won't be able to write an old-style desktop app that runs in the old-style desktop? What does this mean for server side apps? I imagine WinRT would be the API of choice for servers, now that Windows Server comes with an optional GUI, so I imagine that if I can write a windows-less app using WinRT for the server, I should be able to write the same for the client too? (and if that's the case, surely I could connect a non-Metro UI to it)"}
{"_id": "233656", "title": "Run coded UI tests on different projects", "text": "With little or none previous experience of testing, I'm looking into adding automated testing to a continuous integration process of SharePoint applications. I've learned how this can be achieved using coded UI tests that are run before deployment and during the build and I've used Selenium with Java before, where we didn't record any scenarios but instead wrote tests by hand, identifying elements in the GUI and asserting results. With this little experience, I have a few questions about UI testing.   1. Is it possible to write test methods that can be applied on several different applications, such as testing buttons etc. or is this something that has to be written for each project, since the results of button click may vary? I assume that this would require following a specific standard .   2. Are there any UI testing methods that can be generalized and applied to all projects that go through a certain build, or is the same here that all UI tests must be written specifically for that application?"}
{"_id": "233655", "title": "Should exceptions do things other than tell the user something went wrong?", "text": "I created a general class that accepts a string when it is constructed, and it spits out that string when a user calls what(). This is all it does; on throw, it returns the initializing string.               class Exception_As {       private:           std::string message       public:           Exception_As(const std::string& message) { // constructor             this->message =\"EXCEPTION: \" +message;         }              virtual const char* what() const throw() {             return message.c_str();         }     }      How I use my custom exception class:               bool check_range(           const std::vector<std::string>& list,         const unsigned& idx_start,  // where to start checking         const unsigned& idx_end,    // where to stop checking         const std::string& key     ) {         if ( idx_start > idx_end ) {             throw Exception_As(\"check_range: start index > end index: now fix it! :D\");         }              ... rest of code     } // end of check_range      How a user would use check_range:               // some other user code using my check_range     void main() {         try {             ... set up variables                  my_hero_qualified = check_range(semi_finalists, third_place, first_place, my_hero);             ...rest of code         }              catch (const Exception_As& e) {             std::cout << e.what() << std::endl;         }     }      If the try/catch was not there, it would abort the program because of the thrown Exception_As. If it was there, the user would be notified that \"check_range: start index > end index: now fix it! :D\". For me, sure beats writing tons of BadEvent1Exception, BadEvent2Exception, etc classes. I can see I'm being lazy with this method, and yeah, I can't do anything fancy like modify values based on exceptions or morph an object's state; but if you just entered unexpected territory, who knows if you're handling it correctly? May as well just end it so you can fix what's up and develop properly. So, question: if all exceptions do is break the program on unexpected circumstances, won't a single exception class that returns the problem be enough? ...Or should exceptions be doing other things anyway? If not, why create so many classes of Exceptions that have different names, sure, but from what I've seen, only report that something went wrong."}
{"_id": "238606", "title": "How to divide OO project into packages?", "text": "I'm a hobbyist programmer working on my own projects. I use Java. Until recently my average project was only 1000 LoC. My latest project however is bigger and is starting to exceed 1500 LoC. I estimate it will reach about 2000. I've never organized my classes into packages. All of them were always in the default package and it worked fine. However as my projects grow and the amount of classes gets bigger, I'm starting to feel unorganized. My question is: how exactly does one divide his/her classes into packages? What I mean is, by what criteria do you divide classes? **Is it by the 'part' of the app?** Aka GUI classes in one package, business logic in the other, networking, etc.? **Or maybe high-level classes versus lower level classes?** Aka classes that do concrete, specific work in packages of their own, and 'architectural' classes that tie it all together in their own packages? **Or maybe you simply divide by the criteria of 'what feels right and organized' specifically to you?** For example, I'm working on an app that makes music. It is basically divided into two main systems: the system that makes the music, and the system that displays the GUI and controls the other system (i.e. a button press in that system activates the other system). The music-creation system is also divided into two systems: for creating melodies and for creating chord progressions. And the chord-progression generation part, among other things contains a group of classes that serve as interchangable algorithms for a Strategy pattern involved (i.e. classes used for a specific implementation detail). There are of course higher-level and lower-level classes involved in every system. For example the progression-generation system contains a `ProgressionGenerator` class, which is high-level and ties the entire system together. It also has a `Chord` class which is far more low level (i.e. takes care of playing specific notes). The way I would organize this into classes is like so: The music-creation system into one package, the GUI system that controls the other system into another package. Than the melody-creation into a subpackage of the music-creation pakcage and the progression-creation into a different subpackage. And inside the progression-creation subpackage, another subpackage contataing the classes used for that Strategy pattern involved somewhere in that system. **Does this sound like a good approach for organizing things into packagages? By what criteria do you divide the classes into packages? By 'what feels right', or by more technical terms?**"}
{"_id": "108548", "title": "Moving from one man project to team project in the future. What should I be doing now in preparation and what can wait?", "text": "To elaborate I am interested in knowing what people think you need to put in place while still a one man project (team source control, documentation, builds etc) and what things don't need to be done until that point when the second person comes onto the project. Anyone with any experience of moving through this scenario, their insights will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "33869", "title": "\"Software features that can't be demonstrated by automated tests simply don't exist\"-- Is it too extreme a statement?", "text": "Kent Beck famously said that > Software features that can't be demonstrated by automated tests simply don't > exist But is this too extreme? I mean, I can't demonstrate that my UI really works, the screen pixel is correct in automated tests. So my features don't exist?"}
{"_id": "33868", "title": "Script/tool to import series of snapshots, each being a new edition, into GIT, populating source tree?", "text": "I've developed code locally and taken a fairly regular snapshot whenever I reach a significant point in development, e.g. a working build. So I have a long-ish list of about 40 folders, each folder being a snapshot e.g. in ascending date YYYYMMDD order, e.g.:-   1. 20100523    2. 20100614   3. 20100721   4. 20100722   5. 20100809   6. 20100901   7. 20101001   8. 20101003   9. 20101104   10. 20101119   11. 20101203   12. 20101218   13. 20110102 I'm looking for a script to import each of these snapshots into GIT. The end result being that the latest code is the same as the last snapshot, and other editions are accessible and are as numbered. Some other requirements:   * that the latest edition is not cumulative of the previous snapshots, i.e., files that appeared in older snapshots but which don't appear in later ones (e.g. due to refactoring etc.) should not appear in the latest edition of the code.   * meanwhile, there should be continuity between _files_ that _do_ persist between snapshots. I would like GIT to know that there are previous editions of these files and not treat them as brand new files within each edition. Some background about my aim:   * I need to formally revision control this work rather than keep local private snapshot copies.   * I plan to release this work as open source, so version controlling would be highly recommended   * I am evaluating some of the current popular version control systems (Subversion and GIT) BUT I _definitely_ need a working solution in GIT as well as subversion. I'm _not_ looking to be persuaded to use one particular tool, I need a solution for each tool I am considering. (I haved posted an answer separately for each tool so separate camps of folks who have expertise in GIT and Subversion will be able to give focused answers on one or the other). The same but separate question for Subversion: Script/tool to import series of snapshots, each being a new revision, into Subversion, populating source tree?"}
{"_id": "212279", "title": "Javascript - Avoiding variable redundancy in nested for loops", "text": "**Please bear with me, I could only explain the problem in the comments of the code snippet below. Please read through them carefully. Question at the end:** I usually tend to name the variables used in `for` loops with `i`, like this:                for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++){           // do some COMPLEX operations here      }      This looks fairly simple; but when I'm at it I may require nested for loops within the above `for` loop. So, introducing the complexity now:                for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {           // do some           // VERY           // COMPLEX           // operations           // here                for (var i = 0; i < javascript_object.list.length; i++) {               // I may have inadvertently forgot of the variable 'i' was been used earlier               for (var j = 0; j < javascript_object.list[i].another_list.length; j++) {                   // Perform more complex operations here               }           }                this.getReports(arr[i]) // the value of this i              // which I now think refer to the first for loop might have been changed              // in second for loop and may lead to dangerous results!       }      How to avoid this from happening? How could the variables be named carefully so that it wouldn't clash with other variables being declared elsewhere?"}
{"_id": "208998", "title": "How does Mercurial determine which changesets I need when I pull?", "text": "This is a question about the internal workings of Mercurial. I vaguely remember a fellow programmer explaining to me how mercurial works out which changesets differ between two repositories and that it had a speedy solution to the problem. Does anyone know how this works or can point me towards a document describing the details?"}
{"_id": "234928", "title": "Testing ASP.NET .aspx and .ascx code behind files", "text": "I am wondering how to test .aspx.cs and .ascx.cs code behind. Can I use unit testing and if so how? Are there alternatives that will help test the functions in the code behind files? I don't know how to mock the page or control. I would like to try to apply tdd methodology but I don't know how to unit test the code behind. Do you setup tests for the code behind or move the code to alternate files that are easier to test. Is moving the code out of the code behind a better practice? Also, how would you go about unit testing the code behind files?"}
{"_id": "66473", "title": "How granular should a command be in a CQ[R]S model?", "text": "I'm considering a project to migrate part of our WCF-based SOA over to a service bus model (probably nServiceBus) and using some basic pub-sub to achieve Command-Query Separation. I'm not new to SOA, or even to service bus models, but I confess that until recently my concept of \"separation\" was limited to run-of-the-mill database mirroring and replication. Still, I'm attracted to the idea because it seems to provide all the benefits of an eventually-consistent system while sidestepping many of the obvious drawbacks (most notably the lack of proper transactional support). I've read a lot on the subject from Udi Dahan who is basically _the_ guru on ESB architectures (at least in the Microsoft world), but one thing he says really puzzles me: > As we get larger entities with more fields on them, we also get more actors > working with those same entities, and the higher the likelihood that > something will touch some attribute of them at any given time, increasing > the number of concurrency conflicts. > > [...] > > A core element of CQRS is rethinking the design of the user interface to > enable us to capture our users\u2019 intent such that making a customer preferred > is a different unit of work for the user than indicating that the customer > has moved or that they\u2019ve gotten married. Using an Excel-like UI for data > changes doesn\u2019t capture intent, as we saw above. > > \\-- Udi Dahan, Clarified CQRS From the perspective described in the quotation, it's hard to argue with that logic. But it seems to go against the grain with respect to SOAs. An SOA (and really services in general) are supposed to deal with _coarse-grained messages_ so as to minimize network chatter - among many other benefits. I realize that network chatter is less of an issue when you've got highly- distributed systems with good message queuing and none of the baggage of RPC, but it doesn't seem wise to dismiss the issue entirely. Udi almost seems to be saying that _every attribute change_ (i.e. field update) ought to be its own command, which is hard to imagine in the context of one user potentially updating hundreds or thousands of combined entities and attributes as it often is with a traditional web service. One batch update in SQL Server may take a fraction of a second given a good highly-parameterized query, table-valued parameter or bulk insert to a staging table; processing all of these updates one at a time is slow, slow, _slow_ , and OLTP database hardware is the most expensive of all to scale up/out. Is there some way to reconcile these competing concerns? Am I thinking about it the wrong way? Does this problem have a well-known solution in the CQS/ESB world? If not, then how does one decide what the \"right level\" of granularity in a Command should be? Is there some \"standard\" one can use as a starting point - sort of like 3NF in databases - and only deviate when careful profiling suggests a potentially significant performance benefit? Or is this possibly one of those things that, despite several strong opinions being expressed by various experts, is really just a matter of opinion?"}
{"_id": "229164", "title": "Algorithm for Testing interoperability", "text": "I am writing a php script that carries out a task. One input is a list of options that I need to test for interoperability. If the options are `A B C` then I need to test every combination, but I only keep the options that are compatible (\"left to right\") and throw away the ones that are not to get a final Result (R).   * A is compatible with B? -> Result   * R with C? -> R rather than:   * A is compatible with B?    * A with B?    * A with C?  The options might be provided in any order but I don't want to bother with the cost of sorting them first. My \"left to right\" rules imply that the first valid option found dictates compatibility going forward. So `A B C` could mean a different R than `B A C`. Also The options might be interspersed with invalid options. For example `A 0 C` The way I am solving this right now is as follows:   * I stored a predefined list `l` of possible option names with details about the option. Each option has the following static details:      * information about which options it is compatible with ** (starring this as we'll come back to it)     * details about how to implement it     * an index number, `i` ( by definition of it's storage) `l` might look like this (written as JSON for readability here):               { A : { \"description\"    : \"some text to help out\",             \"index\"          : 0,             \"conflict\"       : (1 << 1 | 1 << 3),             \"implementation\" : doA()           },       B : { \"description\"    : \"some text to help out\",             \"index\"          : 1,             \"conflict\"       : (1 << 0 ),             \"implementation\" : doA()           },     ...     }      When I'm given a list of options the algorithm is this:   * while options      * if option `o` is in the list `l`       * then keep it and find it's index `i` and compatibility \"mask\" `l[i][m]`       * update the aggregate compatibility \"score\" `m`       * update the aggregate conflict \"score\" `c`     * else throw it away for an given `l[i]` it's `m` (`l[i][m]`) is always an integer that represents an item's known compatibility with other items. It is not an array, but rather `m = 1 << i(X) | 1 << i(Y) | 1 << i(Z)` where it is compatible with `X` via it's index, meaning \"index of X\". So we can rewrite the algorithm more specifically as (still pseudo-code):               for options as o         _m = 1 << l[o][i]         _c = l[o][c]         if( !( _m & c )  && !( m & _c ) )             m |= _m             c |= _c      I'm pretty happy with it right now but since I'm new to using binary operations in a practical way I'm **uncertain as to it's re-use, especially maintenance with a large number of options**. Right now the biggest challenge is that when a new option is added I have to go through all the options to determine if its compatible and update the conflict values. If I get more than a couple of dozen options I may have to use option groups where anything in group must be fully compatible with that group but other groups might be compatible with this group and not share the same compatibility with other groups. I'm also concerned with **readability** for whomever comes after me. Implemented differently, the conflict values might just be a list of items `[A, C, ...]`. But that seems like extra overhead to me and even though conflict values are integers, the raw form of the conflict values directly lists those index values it is in conflict with. e.g. `1 << 1 | 1 << 3` means it is in conflict with whatever is at index 1 and and whatever is at index 3. So I hope that mitigates some of the readability issues. The good things that I see are:   * should be fairly performant   * easy to test new options. I have methods that will give you a sanity check of any options you ask about giving compatibility and conflict lists.    * good for debugging. I simply spit out a combined strategy number into a log and in a compact form I can see what the compatibility choices made were. Small enough I can even put that info into a terse production log as a \"code value\" **Thoughts?** +1 if you like it. Answers /comments if you have constructive criticism or feedback please side note: To be honest I don't really care about performance here because the task only happens once a day in the middle of the night, but I'm interested in the problem itself and I'm sure this will help me become a better programmer."}
{"_id": "229168", "title": "Domain Name Lookup", "text": "I'm trying to automate the process of sending many domain name lookup requests. I tried to do this by sending for example http request to domain registry site like Whois.net, but I notice they block you after several attempts. others like networksolutions adds token to the page to avoid automated requests. Is there any ideas please? I'm using Java."}
{"_id": "83312", "title": "What is the difference between system analysis and system requirement analysis", "text": "Are \"system analysis\" and \"system requirement analysis\" the same thing? I think system system analysis is broader term and system requirement analysis is part of it. Is this correct?"}
{"_id": "132117", "title": "Adding ordered nodes to tree in arbitrary order", "text": "I have a database of nodes. Each node can have exactly one parent, but any number of children. Some nodes may be stored with no parent, but at run time, I can create a default \"root\" node to be the parent of these. First off, what is this data structure called? I think it's just a \"tree,\" but I want to make sure I'm using the correct terminology. Another issue I'm running into is finding an efficient way to create the tree. The nodes can be retrieved from the database in any order, so when I add a node to the tree, its parent may not be in the tree yet. This means that when I add a node, I have to check whether any existing nodes have parents and then add the parent in the appropriate spot. I've searched a lot online, but most talk about trees just refers to \"binary trees,\" and even then I can't even find any good examples of constructing the tree in code -- it's usually working with an existing tree. Are there any examples of efficient ways to build this tree (whatever it may be called)? Language doesn't matter, but I'll be using php."}
{"_id": "132114", "title": "Two different user story forms, are both correct?", "text": "**Just ran across this user story form:**               \"As a <user role>, I can <activity> so that <business value>\"      (source-1 and source-2) **which to me seems different than what I believe to be the \"standard\" one:**               \"As a <role>, I want <goal/desire>, so that <benefit>\"      (source-1 and source-2) (Meaning that I'd believe \"I can\" would be in the \"benefit/value\" statement, not the \"goal\" statement. For example, \"So that I can [...].\") **Are both right, or is one flawed, and why?**"}
{"_id": "213628", "title": "Is it possible to share oAuth Session?", "text": "We are working on a project that includes a web server and a mobile application, we need to access the user's private data (facebook, twitter ...) from the web server by requesting from the user to authenticate our app using the mobile. I managed to access the user's private data from the mobile easily after the user has authenticated the app. now how can I propagate/share this privilege with the server, so that the server can access the user data anytime and work on it ? A typical use case for example:   * user install our mobile app.   * user registers for a direct messages counter service (dummy service).   * user authenticate our app to access his twitter account on the mobile.   * server starts daily pinging the twitter apis and get some data about the user.   * server publish the results to the mobile app. is this scenario possible ? if so where should I be looking to make it happen ?"}
{"_id": "144866", "title": "What is the future for ASP.NET Membership Providers?", "text": "While working on a new project with MVC3, a DI framework (Ninject), and unit tests (NUnit) paired with mocks (Moq), I found setting up the Membership Provider felt a bit \"awkward\". I've run into tasks that seem disproportionally hard, just as others have: injecting a repository to the provider, creating unit tests, and mocking the provider. This led me to a SO question on alternatives to the standard Membership provider (in turn linking to another interesting question on whether to roll your own authentication system), which didn't get as much attention as the votes on the question would warrant. So I'm finally left with **the question** : _Does anyone know what the future for Authentication in ASP.NET is? Or more specifically: did Microsoft provide any (official) insights on their direction for authentication?_ I couldn't find any blog posts from MS employees/teams. The only real related thing I could find was this highly upvoted ASP.NET uservoice ticket which doesn't seem to have any official response."}
{"_id": "144868", "title": "Is it better to teach conditional loops or iterative loops first?", "text": "I've seen tutorials and textbooks that teach conditional loops (while) first and I've seen others that teach iterative (for) loops first. Have there been any studies done as to which produces better results as far as student learning or is it a matter of personal taste?"}
{"_id": "205904", "title": "Host an MVC 3 with Razor syntax app on old server", "text": "I just started a new job, I have to create a web app for them and host it on their intranet on an Windows 2003 R2 server with SQL server 2008. As said in the question, I'll work on a MCV3 with Razor syntax application. I know that it won't work easily or even not work at all. On a recent server you have to install something more (I don't remember the name) for the Razor to be understood. What about on this old server? Will I get it to work or should I tell them to buy a more up to date server?"}
{"_id": "170793", "title": "How can I explain object-oriented programming to someone who's only coded in Fortran 77?", "text": "My mother did her college thesis in Fortran, and now (over a decade later) needs to learn c++ for fluids simulations. She is able to understand all of the procedural programming, but no matter how hard I try to explain objects to her, it doesn't stick. (I do a lot of work with Java, so I know how objects work) I think I might be explaining it in too high-level ways, so it isn't really making sense to someone who's never worked with them at all and grew up in the age of purely procedural programming. Is there any simple way I can explain them to her that will help her understand?"}
{"_id": "47176", "title": "Do you count a Masters in CS as a negative?", "text": "In my experience interviewing developers I feel like candidates who've achieved a Masters in Comp Sci tend to be **worse** programmers on average that those who don't have a Masters. Is that just me, or have others noticed this phenomenon? If so, why would that be the case? **UPDATE** I appreciate the thoughtful comments. I think I should have been clearer in the comparison I'm making. Given two candidates who graduated from college around the same time, someone who went on to gain a Masters seems on average to be a worse programmer than someone who spent all their time in industry."}
{"_id": "218900", "title": "Data Transfer Best Practices", "text": "At my company we have some vendors that we transfer data to and from. Sometimes the data is pulled into our local SQL database for business reporting. Other times we pull data from one vendor, transform it, and then transfer it to another vendor's FTP server. The guy I replaced has a couple of generic SFTP Push/Pull console applications that transfer data to/from these vendors. Then he has other applications that do the data imports to the SQL database or transforms the data and leaves it out in a directory to be pushed to the vendor. Every once in a while we will have problems with these processes not finding the file needed and I have to go back and run these manually to load the data. It seems to me that it would be more reliable if these processes just did their own FTP push/pull functions so we don't run into scheduling problems. Are there any standard practices that I can implement that would be more reliable or do I need to just _tweak_ what I have now? I'm in a Windows/.NET environment by the way."}
{"_id": "218903", "title": "Are Interfaces with Java 8 Virtual Extension Methods the Same Thing as Mixins?", "text": "This post describes a new feature in Java 8 called virtual extension methods (formerly called default methods, or defender methods). In the example provided, an interface has one method, which is implemented by a class. Then a second method is added, but instead of forcing the class to immediately implement the interface's new method, a \"virtual extension method\" is created within the interface as an implementation of this new method, thus the class doesn't need to implement the new method right away. But say that the programmer decides to create a virtual extension method in an interface and never plans to have subclasses implement its own version. Wouldn't that be a mixin? It seems like one to me, but I've never heard it referred to as such. Is there some fundamental difference that I'm not understanding?"}
{"_id": "170799", "title": "How does Google store search trends in backend?", "text": "Google trends shows what query has been searched how many times and some other properties of the said query. But how is this data stored in a database? Storing a new row for every search does not seem right. They also tell the query on a time graph, so they must have some way to look for individual searches made by users, but the number of queries they get every day, it does not feel right that they would store every search in a database row along with a time-stamp. This does not apply to just Google trends or Google in general but any other big site that gets awful number of queries and then has tools to see them in depth. I am not an expert on this but I am interested to know some high level structure of how things work behind the scenes."}
{"_id": "88594", "title": "I would like to contribute my time for free to a Ruby open source project, what are some beginner friendly Ruby projects?", "text": "I think I am at a point where I can truly contribute to a Ruby open source project, can you suggest one or more that would be open to having a true beginner contribute. This would be my first group project where I would like to be 'mentored' or something similar by a more experienced coder. I would be able to work in my free-time and for free."}
{"_id": "109630", "title": "Erlang or 'x'.. Is it worth it (vs. Python w/ GIL)?", "text": "So, I've finally gotten myself to a point where I'm comfortable enough with Python (using Pyramid as my framework of choice) to undertake a rather large personal project. As it's a personal project, I have the luxury of taking my time having absolutely no deadlines other than self-imposed ones. I love learning new frameworks, languages, etc. so if given a reason, I don't mind pushing back on development for a month or so while learning a new language and framework (takes longer when you're doing it on your own time ;)). I recently learned about CPython's GIL (Global Interpreter Lock), which raised my eyebrow a bit. If I understand it correctly, this means that if I have a `Queue` in my web app and have threads that complete jobs in the queue, then the code is locked until the thread for that request is complete, meaning that any subsequent request is locked while the previous thread is executing. **Question:** Has anyone in \"real world\" applications found this to be a problem? Is it worthwhile to learn a language that supports _real_ concurrency out of the box, such as Erlang? I'm most interested in any benchmarks that anyone has done in real world apps and whether or not anyone has seen any real noticeable issues with the GIL."}
{"_id": "87546", "title": "What advice would you give to someone going freelance?", "text": "I'm trying to get out of the Corporate game and go indie. I've always prided myself on being a jack of all trades so I think it suits me. If you're a freelancer or independent, what's the best advice you could give me as I start down this road?"}
{"_id": "87548", "title": "How can proprietary code be protected when collaborating with an external company?", "text": "Imagine I have a code base and I'm obsessively concerned about the protection and privacy of that code. If I were to hire a freelancer to work on that code base, I'd probably have the freelancer sign a nondisclosure agreement and hopefully I'd build up a relationship with him/her over time and gain some confidence that he/she can be trusted. However, if I wanted to collaborate with an external company, company X, what steps can I take to protect my code? I assume a nondisclosure agreement would offer some protection in the case that company X steals my code, but what could I do to protect against the code being stolen from a rogue company X employee with access to the code base? Should I require that all employees at company X sign a nondisclosure agreement? In general, what steps can be taken by a company like company X to encourage a trusting collaboration with their clients? How can company X assure me that the code they have access to won't be stolen? Are such collaborations even possible? **Postscript:** I'm not really confident in the protective power of most non-disclosure agreements. In general, I believe that all I can do is work with people that I trust and hope for the best. However, for the purposes of this question I'm interested in hearing if _any_ form of protection is available even if it isn't particularly robust."}
{"_id": "229788", "title": "Best practices in Application's flow diagram", "text": "I make web applications, mostly MVC, object oriented and database enabled. I always have trouble going back to project after a few months of release and work again. I don't even remember what I made on that project. How should I overcome this problem? I can't afford too much time consuming documentations and so many diagrams. Any quick way you guys practice to avoid this?"}
{"_id": "211416", "title": "How to properly structure a collection of immutable constants", "text": "I'm in the design stages of a program that based upon input received, would select a particular category, and action within that category. The category, the action within in, and the value(s) related to that action are all immutable values, along with the relationship between category and action. Normally I'd just assign it all into a multidimensional array or collection, but that strikes me as both messy and unnecessarily complex to search and sort. Constants don't allow me the luxury of defining relationships between them (aka you can't have constant A bound to subConstant B for example), and being a desktop app, having a user setting up a database server isn't appealing. Was thinking of having everything in xml files, but core rules of the application isn't appealing due to being able to easily edit, and hence change the primary functionality of the program that I wouldn't wish to be editable. Anyone ever ran into something like this, and if so, what was the setup that you used for your solution? EDIT: Let me see if I can explain this better with an example. Say I have the following structure               category A       -- action AB           -- result 1           -- result 2           -- result 3           -- result 4           -- result 5           -- result 6      where if I selected category A, and action AB, a one dice roll would select the result to be returned. The category, action, and result will never change both in name and in relationship (action AB will always be bound to category A, results within action AB will be bound to action AB, and the result contents will never change) EDIT: No network usage would be expected for this application, as it was asked in one of the responses."}
{"_id": "15251", "title": "Legality of collaborative reverse-engineering", "text": "I have been disassembling a large software project on my own, as a hobby. It is an educational exercise and I have learned a lot in the process. That said, I feel that my progress would be considerably quicker if I was to collaborate on the project with other like-minded individuals. Herein lies the problem -- maybe. I am reversing this software for personal interest and potentially (but unlikely; given the magnitude of the codebase in question) implementing an interoperable service to interact with this software, replacing the vendor's own service. My (very limited) understanding is that this particular use-case is protected under copyright law. However, my wish is to collaborate with others freely on the Internet, in a similar system employed by open source projects: version control repositories of assembly files, wikis to coordinate and share knowledge, public mailing lists, et cetera. I have a feeling this may be iffy at best. Is what I want to do blatantly illegal, a gray area or even legally defensible? Would the situation be any different if the collaboration was in private rather than public? If it has any bearing on the answer, I am located in Australia and the software vendor in located in the USA."}
{"_id": "171773", "title": "Should I use AND or should I use OR", "text": "An order can be in the \"status\" of Completed, Corrected or some other status. I saw some code that is checking it like this, the purpose is to disable some stuff when the status is in Completed or Corrected status.                if (model.CurrentStatus != DSRHelper.OrderStatusEnum.Complete && model.CurrentStatus != DSRHelper.OrderStatusEnum.Corrected)      I can't get it why the engineer has used \"AND\" for this, shouldn't it be an \"OR\"?"}
{"_id": "171770", "title": "What kind of programs/solutions can only be written with OOP or are too hard to achieve without it?", "text": "Paraphrasing a recent question: What is Object Oriented Programming ill-suited for? I would like to ask the opposite question: What kind of programs cannot be written unless you use OOP?   What kind of programs are not recommended to be written using non-OOP techniques?   What kind of programs need OOP in order to even be written? What kind of programs would be too hard to write without OOP ? The answer to this question can help sell the idea of OOP to project leaders that have no special interest in code quality. At least they could buy the idea if one shows them the kind of things that are not even possible unless you use OOP."}
{"_id": "211413", "title": "Inventory / Stock in multiple locations", "text": "I am working on a warehouse management system (WMS) that needs to support having stock in multiple locations. Could be in a different building, could be stored in n* places in a building (quick example would be stock, overflow, or fast moving slots all containing a qty of the same item). Where I am, they have always used one SKU assigned to one bin with paper notes pointing to overflow. Obviously they have grown beyond this and it's causing some serious issues. No one here can help me when I try to get what the best practice should be. I am having trouble conceptualizing how to setup the structure. I am thinking ...   * Warehouse (virtual or physical) Warehouses can belong to warehouses.   * Location - Anything really could be a pallet, box, or just a taped off area on the floor. Locations belong to warehouses.   * Rows - can be in locations   * Shelves can be in rows   * slots(traditionally called a bin here) the smallest unit that can be a location. Then a SKU could be in any one or many of these locations (except the virtual warehouse - used only from grouping physical locations but allowing a sales order to process them internally as if it shipping from one space). Locations (are their children) could be given priority. So if a SKU is in 2 locations, the systems knows which slot(bin) to empty first before routing to the next. I code it so that the structures above can be handled by the warehouse since i don't care physically about them only that the process makes sense and then give them a tool to mark a sort order so that they can determine the best routes through the warehouse with batch picking an order. I guess I just wanted to get this out of my head and get someone elses eyes on it before I wrote a single line of code. Does this structure make sense? Is it a best practice? If not what is and if that question is outside the realm of the site could someone point me to it?"}
{"_id": "35960", "title": "Learn a NoSQL or become a badass with traditional RDMS - Where is/will the work be?", "text": "New Question Version: I've got the opportunity to spend 3 months getting good at something, its going to be either a NoSQL technology like Cassandra or optimising relational database systems. I slightly prefer trying the 'flavour of the month' cassandra but would also love to improve my relational database skills which would be very practical. This isn't about which is better, its about my employment prospects and where I am going to get work. I know there is going to be more work in relational databases, but are we going to see a bump in the level of jobs wanting/requiring NoSQL experience? Thanks guys, I'm really impressed with the amount of advice people have given so far. Old version: I'm half way through my MSc and am thinking about my dissertation which I get 3 months to work on full time. Im very comfortable with the traditional Relational Database, the question is should I work on a project where I get a good understanding of something like Cassandra, or should I really push my RDMS knowledge to the limit. Getting great at something like MySQL is a solid safe option, will there really be much work for me with Cassandra in my tool belt? I would love to do either.... Thanks for your opinions and advice."}
{"_id": "39231", "title": "Should there be a \"data hygiene\" index for software - to indicate how clean the program is? not leaving temp files, etc", "text": "Should there be a \"data hygiene\" index for software - to indicate how clean the program is? not creating unused temp files, registry entries, environment variables, etc. For example, look in your users folder in Windows, you'll see all manner of work space files used by your applications. For example, this makes it hard to know what needs to be backed up and what can be discarded as being machine-generated."}
{"_id": "203928", "title": "When to start thinking about scalability?", "text": "I'm having a funny but also terrible problem. I'm about to launch a new (iPhone) app. It's a turn-based multiplayer game running on my own custom backend. But I'm afraid to launch. For some reason, I think it might become something big and that its popularity will kill my poor lonely single server + MySQL database. On one hand I'm thinking that if it's growing, I'd better be prepared and have a scalable infrastructure already in place. On the other hand I just feel like getting it out into the world and see what happens. I often read stuff like \"premature optimization is the root of all evil\" or people saying that you should just build your killer game now, with the tools at hand, and worry about other stuff like scalability later. I'd love to hear some opinions on this from experts or people with experience with this. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "137270", "title": "SSO between multiple Flex applications", "text": "We have three applications developed in **Flex** and all these use BlazeDS. These applications have their own authentication implementations **(Database)**. Also they will be deployed in **tomcat**. Deploying all these applications in the same tomcat instance is acceptable for us. We want to bring the authentication credentials of all these applications into a single place and also provide **SSO feature between these applications**. We also want the authentication module to be **configurable**. Something like the system administrator can decide if the authentication should be done against **a database or LDAP**. Say, if the user successfully logs into app1, and when he access app2 in the same browser he should be automatically logged in. Same goes for logout as well. We have been exploring **OpenAM, jGuard and JOSSO**. I'm not sure if these require lot of customization to work with **Flex**. I would like to know how people are implementing SSO for Flex applications. **Is there a common and simple SSO solution available for Flex based applications ?**"}
{"_id": "170424", "title": "reading parameters and files on browser, looking how to execute on server", "text": "I have a site done in Rails, which uses javascript to load files and generate forms for the user to input certain information. Those files and parameters are then to be used in a fortran code on the server. When the UI was on the server (using Qt), I would create a parameters file and execute the fortran code using threads so I wouldn't block the computer. Now that is web-based, I need to make the server and browser talk. What's the procedure for that? where should I start looking? I'm already using rails + javascript. I need that extra tool to do the talking, and no idea where to start."}
{"_id": "170429", "title": "Can an internally developed fast evolving, agile, short sprint web application lend itself to offshoring?", "text": "I have recently been set a target to achieve readiness to successfully manage and deliver results through the usage of offshore teams on our mainline development project within 12 months. Our mainline is a multi-thousand user highly available web application, and various related SAAS components delivered through the above mentioned web application. We work agile on the mainline with a rapid 1 week sprint using continuous integration. Our delivery platform is a bespoke php framework, although we have some .net services and components in the mix. My view is: an offshore team could work if we either ship out an entire isolated project for offshore development, or we specify a component for our system in huge detail up front. But we don't currently work like that, and it will conflict with the in-house method, and unless the off-shore is working within our team, with our development/deployment chain it could be an integration nightmare. So my question is, given we have a closed source bespoke framework (Private IP) which we train our developers to use, and we work agile minimising documentation, maximising communication and responding to rapidly changing requirements, and much of the quality control is via team skills building and peer review, how can I make off-shoring work on our main line development?"}
{"_id": "16500", "title": "Employer purchased a Macbook for me, as a programmer what do I need to do to get my environment setup?", "text": "I come from growing up on dos/windows and the more I got into programming and development the more I invested time/effort into linux distributions. I had a choice between an IBM and a Macbook. I went with the Macbook to get some experience but I am not really sure where to start? I find myself wanting to install virtualbox and boot up linux. Any advice for a new Mac user who wants to get back up to speed with programming efficiently?"}
{"_id": "202157", "title": "Any tools/suggestions on how to refute code coverage quality argument", "text": "Now I know people could consider this question duplicate or asked many times, in which case I would appreciate a link to relevant questions with answer to my question. I have been recently in disagreement with some folks about code coverage. I have a group of people who want our team to drop looking at code coverage altogether based on the argument that 100% coverage does not mean good quality tests and thus good quality code. I have been able to push back by selling the argument that Code Coverage tells me what has not been tested for sure and help us focus on those areas. (The above has been discussed in a similar fashion in other SO questions like this one - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695811/pitfalls-of-code- coverage) The argument from these folks is - then team would react by quickly creating low quality tests and thus waste time while adding no significant quality. While I understand their point of view, I am searching for a way to make a more robust case for code coverage by introducing **more robust tools/frameworks that take care of more coverage criteria** `(Functional, Statement,Decision, Branch, Condition, State, LCSAJ, path, jump path, entry/exit, Loop, Parameter Value etc)`. What I am looking for is **suggestion for a combination of such code coverage tools and practices/processes to go with them** which can help me counter such arguments while feeling comfortable about my recommendation. I would also welcome any accompanying comments/suggestions based on your experience/knowledge on how to counter such an argument, because while subjective, code coverage has helped my team be more conscious of code quality and value of testing. * * * Edit: To reduce any confusion about my understanding of weakness of typical code coverage, I want to point out that **I am not referring to** `Statement Coverage`(or lines of code executed) tools(there are plenty). In fact here is a good article on everything that is wrong with it: http://www.bullseye.com/statementCoverage.html I was looking for more than just statement or line coverage, going more into multiple coverage criteria and levels. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_coverage#Coverage_criteria The idea is that if a tool can tell us our coverage based on multiple criteria then that becomes a reasonable automated assessment of test quality. I by no means am trying to say that line coverage is a good assessment. In fact that's the premise of my question. * * * Edit:   Ok, maybe I projected it a bit too dramatically, but you get the point. The problem is about setting processes/policies in general across all teams in a homogeneous/consistent fashion. And the fear is general that how do you ensure quality of tests, how do you allocate guaranteed time without having any measure to it. Thus I like having a measurable feature that when backed up with appropriate processes and the right tools would allow us to improve code quality while knowing that time is not being force spent in wasteful processes. * * * **EDIT: So far what I have from the answers:**   * Code reviews should cover tests to ensure quality of tests   * Test First strategy helps avoid tests that are written after the fact to simply increase coverage %   * Exploring alternative tools that cover test criteria other than simply Statement/Line   * Analysis of covered code/number of bugs found would help appreciate the importance of coverage and make a better case   * Most importantly trust the Team's input to do the right thing and fight for their beliefs   * Blocks Covered/# of tests - Debatable but holds some value Thanks for the awesome answers so far. I really appreciate them. This thread is better than hours of brainstorm with the powers that be."}
{"_id": "127854", "title": "What is the role of traditional issue tracker when Scrum / Kanban board is used?", "text": "From a very high level view, to me it seems there are generally 2 types of Project Management tools:   1. **Traditional issue trackers** like Fogbugz, JIRA, BugZilla, Trac, Redmine etc.   2. **Virtual card boards** / agile project management tools like Pivotal Tracker, GreenHopper, AgileZen, Trello etc. Sure, they overlap in one way or another, e.g. Pivotal Tracker tasks can be imported to JIRA, GreenHopper itself is implemented on top of JIRA issue base etc. but I think one can still see the difference in orientation between those two types of tools. Traditional issue tracker seems to be used even in companies otherwise doing agile project management. My question is, why do they do that? I also feel that we should use an issue tracker in my company but when I'm thinking about it, I'm not actually sure why should we need it. For example, Trello development seems to be managed by using Trello itself (see this virtual wall) even though they have access to Fogbugz, one of the best issue trackers around. So maybe we don't need traditional issue tracker when we'll be doing 100% of our work in an agile manner using one of the agile PM tools?"}
{"_id": "173687", "title": "Design for a plugin based application", "text": "I am working on application, details of which I cannot discuss here. We have core framework and the rest is designed as plug in. In the core framework we have a domain object. This domain object is updated by the plugins. I have defined an interface in which I have function as `DomainObject doProcessing(DomainObject object)` My intention here is I pass the domain object, the plug in will update it and return it. This updated object is then passed again to different plugin to be updated. I am not sure if this is a good approach. I don't like passing the DomainObject to plugin. Is there a better way I can achieve this? Should I just request data from plugin and update the domain object myself?"}
{"_id": "200857", "title": "Should I write a wrapper within a manager object?", "text": "I have three classes that work together to do one function (from the perspective of the rest of my program). There is a little bit of set up between them, so, to make it easier for the rest of my program, I grouped them into:   * `ListManager`: object, which initializes them to the right values when it is constructed. The three objects it stores are:      * `Timer`:     * `TriggerManager`: basically a wrapper around an `ArrayList` that manages `Trigger` objects     * `CueList`: a linked list with the usual getters and setters that come with that.  Since the rest of my program is only interacting/referencing the `TriggerManager` class, should I write wrapper methods for the objects it manages?   1. So should I make `ListManager.add(Cue c)` as a wrapper for `CueList.add(Cue c)`.    2. OR should I just add getters for the three objects and let the rest of my program use that to manipulate them. I tend to think that the later option is far more maintainable, but at the same time, the code produced if I make the wrapper just seems... prettier... What's the best practice in situations like this?"}
{"_id": "100615", "title": "Is it a good idea to do contract work for a former full time employer?", "text": "Assuming:   * The employee and company are parting on good terms   * The new company is OK with a little contract work as long as it doesn't distract from the new job   * The former company wants the help and the employee is willing to work a few hours a week Is it a good idea to do contract work for a former full time employer? Has anyone ever done this? How did it work out for you? I can see some possible pitfalls, so I wonder how good an idea it really is. What difficulties do you encounter doing development work outside the office and on a different schedule from the rest of the programming staff and how can they be overcome? If I do go forward, what would be a fair amount to request as compared to current salary?"}
{"_id": "100617", "title": "Are there any notable examples of business disasters directly attrutible to open-source software?", "text": "In \"enterprise\" environments, I've observed a strong prejudice towards proprietary software. Even in large business that use Java, it is unusual to find MySQL or PostgreSQL, and WebSphere and WebLogic are strongly preferred over JBoss or Tomcat. This is very understandable. While many developers prefer Tomcat or Postgres to WebSphere or Oracle DB, they are not the ones that make the final decisions in these matters. Whoever does make the decision regarding which DBs and application servers will be used in production will find that the licence fees seem quite small compared to being fired for choosing the free software that caused something really, really, bad to happen. I'm not asking the question of whether Postgres is as good as Oracle. That's not the point. Oracle doesn't get chosen over Postgres after a careful considerations of features and benchmarks. Postgres doesn't enter the conversation, because free software isn't trusted in certain places. I'm curious if this lack of trust came about in response to any specific events. So my question is this: **Are there any documented cases of business calamities (failures, significant loss of revenue, significant loss of corporate data, etc.) that were shown to be the result of deficiencies in open-source software?** _Clarification:_ If you have experience with enterprise level companies that fully embrace OSS, that have to prejudice in the matter but make choices based on the needs of the particular situation, then **Good for you!** Your experience doesn't change the fact that other enterprise companies have a very different attitude, and my question is valid even if these companies are in the minority."}
{"_id": "184435", "title": "Workflow: Using binary document formats in Git without locks (moving from subversion)", "text": "We're a software consultancy with a multitude of projects for different customers. We traditionally use Subversion, but are currently considering moving to Git. A significant portion of the documents we produce are shared with our customers (requirements, global designs, test specs, etc), and we use MS Office to produce these. In Subversion, we could use its \"Lock\" feature to ensure that no one was editing the same document at the same time. In Git, you can't do that since by its distributed nature, git doesn't have locks. Locks are really little more than a communication mechanism, but they're a very effective one. Currently, our code and customer-facing documents are typically in different subfolders of a different svn repository. When moving to git, what would you recommend we do? I see a set of options:   1. We move the svn repositories to git 1-on-1. Instead of using locks on the Office files, we do what the git people suggest and somehow try to change our workflow to fix it. This could be working in a branch on any document edit, and merging that over review. This approach breaks over e.g. Excel sheets that contain project management info; they're easily edited by team members (and we encourage that this is done), but not subject to any formal review process   2. We use git for code and svn for docs and project management. This has the disadvantage that certain more design-ish documents won't be \"nearby\" the code it specs, increasing the chance that people forget to update them. Additionally, everybody has to use and understand two sets of tools. That said, maybe this is a great opportunity to move to text-based doc tools (latex, markdown, HTML, whatever) for non-customer-facing design docs.   3. Like 1, but we hack up a `git lock` command that does what svn lock does for us (toggle the read-only flag appropriately and sync with a server through some means). I don't buy the argument that locks don't work in a DVCS because the system should even work when you're entirely offline. Svn locks can be overridden as well; they're a _communication_ mechanism. Without some sort of network connection, you won't get your computer to communicate a lot. We can't be the only shop who're very happy with how `svn lock` fits in our workflow, right? Any ideas or tips? I found http://stackoverflow.com/questions/119444/locking-binary-files-using- git-version-control-system but the discussion is rather technical; i'm looking for ways to solve or avoid the practical problem of two team members editing the same binary file at the same time."}
{"_id": "184436", "title": "Reveal detailed license-errors?", "text": "So after one has programmed and integrated a licensing solution into his or her application, how should one deal with licensing errors? My understanding is: Show whether a license is valid or invalid - and report if the license server is not reachable. Nothing more, nothing less. Licenses could be invalid due to a variety of reasons: Invalid Machine-Code, maximum number of activations reached, invalid licensed version... But should we report them to the user or just tell him \"okay\", \"not okay\" or \"license server not reachable\"? I don't know if this is the right place to ask, maybe security.stackexchange.com is more suitable, but that could be true for ux.stackexchange.com, too... So I'm asking it here."}
{"_id": "84932", "title": "Can I migrate a clone of Google Code repository into Github?", "text": "I want to create a clone of a Google Code repository, which I cannot download due to Country restrictions and I want to migrate that clone into Github, which I can use without any problem. The thing is I have a Github account and I can browse through GoogleCode but I cannot take my TortoiseHg and clone a repo just like that because I'm from Cuba and I get a lovely Google page saying that I cannot go into Google code. I'm guessing you know how I manage to browse :) I would like to import a mercurial repository into my Github repo, my questions:   * **Is it possible?**   * **How can I do it?**"}
{"_id": "100618", "title": "Wrapping basic functions in high-level functional-programming languages", "text": "I'd like to know if there's a general guide or best practice for wrapping basic functions. Let's take J for example. It has several 1-or-2 character \"functions\" called primitives. Examples:   * `,` : Flatten a matrix or append to a vector   * `{` : Catalogue combinations or take nth item of a matrix   * `{.` : Take first or n elements of a matrix   * `}` : Amend items in a matrix Some J programmers think it best to use them as such, other will wrap them in functions like so:   * `Append =: ,`   * `TakeFirst =: {.` I found that's not always practical because I'm used to the actual \"symbols\", but that basically means I'm biased. So, any advice on the best practice to use? To wrap or not to wrap?"}
{"_id": "180501", "title": "Which is better: to include HTML inside PHP code or outside it?", "text": "Look at this:               <?php     echo \"Hello World\";     ?>     <br />     <?php     echo \"Welcome\";     ?>      And now look at this:               <?php     echo \"Hello World\";     echo \"<br />\";     echo \"Welcome\";     ?>      Which one of the above examples is considered to better (at least from performance point of view)?. I know the examples are trivial but I want to follow good practice habits from the beginning so when I have more and more lines they would not affect the performance or whatever in a negative way."}
{"_id": "180508", "title": "How to find a project that uses specific frameworks/technologies?", "text": "I would like to practice specific technologies/frameworks like Hibernate, Spring, GWT and so on. How can I find an open-source project that uses specific frameworks technologies so I can contribute to it?"}
{"_id": "159593", "title": "Why was the percent sign (%) chosen as the format specifier for the printf family of functions?", "text": "Everyone knows that, at least in C, you use the `printf` family of functions to print a formatted string. And these functions use a percent sign (`%`) to indicate the beginning of a format specifier. For example, `%d` means to print an `int`, and `%u` means to print an `unsigned int`. If you're unfamiliar with how the `printf` function and format placeholders work, or simply need a refresher, the Wikipedia article is a good place to start. **My question is, is there a particularly compelling reason why this was originally or should be chosen in the future as the format specifier?** Obviously the decision was made a long time ago (very likely for a predecessor of even the C language), and it's been more or less \"standard\" ever since then (not only in C, but also in a vast array of other languages that have adopted its syntax to varying degrees), so it's far too late to ever change. But I'm still curious if anyone has any insight on why this choice might have been made in the first place, and whether it still makes sense as the choice if one is designing a new language with similar functionality. For example, with C# (and the other family of .NET languages), Microsoft made a slightly different decision regarding the operation of the string formatting functions. Although some degree of type safety can be enforced there (unlike with the implementation of `printf` in C), and therefore it is unnecessary to include an indication of the type of the corresponding parameter, they decided to use zero-indexed pairs of curly braces (`{}`) as format specifiers, like so:               string output = String.Format(\"In {0}, the temperature is {1} degrees Celsius.\",                                   \"Texas\", 37);     Console.WriteLine(output);          // Output:     //     In Texas, the temperature is 37 degrees Celsius.      The documentation for the `String.Format` method contains more information, as does this article on composite formatting in general, but the exact details are rather unimportant. The point is simply that they abandoned the long- standing practice of using `%` to indicate the beginning of a format specifier. The C language could just have easily used `{d}` and `{u}`, but it didn't. Anyone have any thoughts on why, whether this decision makes sense in retrospect, and whether new implementations should follow it? Obviously there's no character that could be chosen that wouldn't have to be escapable so that it could be included in the string itself, but that problem is quite well solved already by just using _two_ of them. What other considerations are relevant?"}
{"_id": "159595", "title": "Limitations of Polymorphism in statically typed languages", "text": "I program mostly in statically typed languages, like C++ and Java. A common strategy employed in languages like these to handle dealing with collections of objects which are _related_ , but which need to employ specific behaviors, is to use polymorphism and inheritance hierarchies. But Polymorphism only works when the Base class has a method (virtual function) which can then be overridden by every Derived class. But there are often cases where a Derived class needs to have a method, and it doesn't make sense to place a method of the same name in the Base class, because it is very specific to the Derived class. Let me give a concrete example that many of us can probably relate to: the HTML DOM. Javascript programmers are quite used to doing things like iterating over collections of DOM nodes. They take for granted the dynamically-typed nature of Javascript when they do something like:               node = document.getElementById(\"foo\");     for (var i = 0; i < node.childNodes.length; ++i)          doSomething(node.childNodes[i]);      Something like this would be very messy to do in a statically typed language like Java, because inheritance-based polymorphism doesn't lend itself well to situations where Derived classes have methods which don't exist in the Base class. For example, when iterating over the above HTML Nodes, we might find a DIV node, which has certain methods, and a Text node, which has certain different methods, and a TABLE node, which has its own unique methods - and it wouldn't make much sense for ALL of these various methods to exist in a common Base class \"Node\", because they are highly specific to each Derived type. (e.g. a DIV node has no need of a \"cells\" method, but a TABLE node does.) So, in a statically typed language, you'd be forced to fall back on something like Type Enums and a lot of messy down-casting to check what type of Node you have. So basically you end up with messy code like:               Node node = document.getElementById(\"foo\");     for (int i = 0; i < node.childNodes().length(); ++i)      {        Node n = node.childNodes().elementAt(i);        if (n.type() == Node.DIV_NODE) doSomethingWithDiv(((DivNode)(n)));        else if (n.type() == Node.TABLE_NODE) doSomethingWithTable(((TableNode)(n)));        /* etc... */     }      This is similar to what C programmers do, and it's seemingly the sort of thing virtual functions were designed to _avoid_. And yet, when you're faced with a situation where there are various different methods in a Derived class for which it doesn't make any sense to place in a common base class, you have no recourse but to resort to something like Type Enums. So, how is this problem usually addressed in statically-typed languages? Is there a better design pattern than Type Enums?"}
{"_id": "240870", "title": "Javascript, JQuery and now AngularJS What is happening?", "text": "I have been away from computers for about 3 years and starting to get back into programming. Lots has changed in resources and help sites available on the web especially the evolving StackExchange community. I come from the IRC #javascript, #html, #php days with php.net and a bit of google search finds here and there. With that said, before I took my break from programming JQuery was around but not nearly as common as today. I personally stay away from it finding it easier to just write what I need done in traditional javascript. Now I have just stumbled across AngularJS. I do not know much about it, just looked at the home page and saw a few script samples. My question is: Am I hindering my clients by using javascript while being ignorant to JQuery and/or AngularJS?"}
{"_id": "159597", "title": "Graph/diagram editor that works with pseudographics", "text": "Is there a graph/diagram editing tool that can output (or even better also parse) pseudographics, that can be easily inserted into source code comments? Like this:               +---------------+                 |  Some Class   |            +---------------+     |  ----------   |----------->| Another Class |     | @its_attribute|            +---------------+     | @another_attr |           /      +---------------+  --------/             |         /             |        /     +---------------+     |Something Else |     +---------------+"}
{"_id": "19888", "title": "Ship Early, Ship Never", "text": "This started as a \"Note to Self,\" so please excuse me if the frustration is all too evident and the writing is less than stellar... Three major subjects I've had at the forefront of my mind lately:   1. Motivation   2. Learning (Curiosity)   3. Doing (Making) I've been studying motivation and incentives for months now. It seems there are an infinite number of different motivations that people might have for doing things (I realize that sounds trite but bear with me). I've been really drawn to it because I'm desperate to find out **why I do the things I do and why I don't do the things that I want to do but don't do**. I'm in the midst of reading Paul Graham's excellent Hackers and Painters book. In it, he makes the case that hackers and painters are very similar because they are both \"makers.\" Painters _make_ paintings. Hackers _make_ software. Painters don't necessarily need to understand the chemical composition of paint to make beautiful paintings. And hackers don't necessarily need to know 1's and 0's to make beautiful software. Graham then draws the distinction between disparate computer science fields:   1. some people seem to be studying mathematics   2. some people seem to be studying the computers themselves   3. the hackers are _making_ software. The difference is incredibly important. It seems the motivation for some is to _make_ beautiful things. And the motivation for the others is to learn out of curiosity. Certain motivations seem obvious to me, but curiosity seems a bit less obvious. I would certainly consider myself as a curious person with a seemingly unquenchable thirst to learn just about everything I can. But this is exactly where the problem comes up. The thing that scares me so much is that I desperately want to _make_ things. I desperately want to _do_ things. I want to write a book. I want to paint a painting. I want to compose a song. I want to _do_ things like travel. But the strangeness is that I also want to _learn_ things. I want to learn to play guitar. I want to _learn_ about art history. I want to _learn_ more about philosophy and literature. The key seems to be the balance between learning and doing... between studying and making. While I'm not sure how much one should learn about a given thing before doing it, I know for certain that I find myself constantly on one side rather than the other. As it stands now (and as far as I can tell I've always been this way), I am a learner and not a doer. I've read great books. I've practiced guitar for years. I've spent countless hours studying programming. But I've written 0 books. I've composed 0 songs. I've coded 0 beautiful programs. I've painted 0 beautiful paintings. I've started 0 viable businesses. The scary part of all this is that there are probably countless unfinished works of art in the world. Is this my misanthropic revenge against society and culture to never _produce_ or _finish_ any of the works of art that I start? Perhaps the worst part (aside from this being my natural inclination), is the fact that I f***ing know better. I just finished books like \"Getting Things Done\" and \"Making Ideas Happen.\" I've aggregated and synthesized countless words of wisdom on how to _do_ things and how to _make_ things. Imagine the horror of going through life without being able to do the things you want to do. If this is something you've struggled with (and hopefully overcome), please share. If not... perhaps some delicious pity would make me feel better. [UPDATE: Just wanted to send a quick thanks to everyone that shared their thoughts. I deliberately left the question somewhat open-ended in hopes of encouraging discussion and having others refashion the central problem around their similar experience, and I think it worked out great... there's a lot of amazing insight here to work with and it was really helpful. Thanks again.]"}
{"_id": "165454", "title": "Do startups need a dba?", "text": "I am a Database/ BI person with 5+ years of experience (SQL Server and Oracle). I would really love to work for a startup, but from the feeling I get from seeing the job postings, most startups are not looking for people other than developers for their IT team. Do startups even look for other IT people other than developers? And if so, how can I connect with ones that are looking for DB persons?"}
{"_id": "241476", "title": "Which is more expensive multiple conditional branches or multiple relational expression in a single condition?", "text": "Which is more expensive in terms of processing costs               if ( x < 20 && z == \"M\") {         // statements 3     }          if ( x >= 20 && w && x <= 65) {         // statements 1     }           if( x >= 20 && z == \"F\"){         // statements 2     }      or this               if ( x < 20 ) {         if( z == 'M') // statements 3;     } else         if ( x <= 65 && w == true ) // statements 1;         if ( z == 'F' ) // statements 2;     }"}
{"_id": "185925", "title": "How important is it to reduce the number of lines in code?", "text": "I am a Software developer who works on J2SE (core java).   Often during our code reviews we are asked to reduce the number of lines in our code. It's not about removing redundant code, it's about following a style that focuses on doing the same things with fewer lines in the code, while I believe in having clarity in code even if it means increasing the number of lines. What do you think is the right way of doing things?   If LOC (lines of code) is a small number, how does it affect the code? If LOC is a larger number, how does it affect the code? example from the website : \"javaranch\" -               public static void happyBirthday(int age)     {               if ((age == 16) || (age == 21) || ((age > 21) && (((age % 10) == 0) || ((age % 25) == 0))))                 {                  System.out.println(\"Super special party, this year!\");         }         else         {             System.out.println(\"One year older. Again.\");         }     }      VS               public static void happyBirthday(int age)     {              boolean sweet_sixteen = (age == 16);         boolean majority = (age == 21);         boolean adult = (age > 21);         boolean decade = (age % 10) == 0;         boolean quarter = (age % 25) == 0;              if (sweet_sixteen || majority || (adult && (decade || quarter)))         {             System.out.println(\"Super special party, this year!\");         }         else         {             System.out.println(\"One year older. Again.\");         }     }"}
{"_id": "245993", "title": "Entity Framework 6 Conventions", "text": "I use the Entity Framework often, but I have one area of confusion I would like to understand better. If I wanted to have a navigation property in an Entity such as               public virtual ExampleObject Example {get;set;}      it is also the done thing to have an Id property               public int ExampleId {get;set;}      My undertsanding is this creates a FK, but if I omit it, the functionality is the same and the FK seems to be created anyway. So, is there a reason for the additional field?"}
{"_id": "4714", "title": "Why doesn't the .NET world have anything like rails/grails/django/roo?", "text": "It seems to me that rapid-development web platforms are going to radically change the world of web applications. It has been five years since Rails 1.0 was released for Ruby, and since that time we have seen Grails for Groovy, Django for Python, and Roo for Java. But to my knowledge (which is probably limited, being a Java/Groovy progammer) there is no similar framework for C#. Does such a thing exist? If not, why not? **Edit:** It's quite possible I'm not using the right words when I say \"rapid- development,\" but I'm talking about frameworks that can conceivably allow you to build a working blog engine in 30 minutes. You couldn't reasonably do this with, say, Java, Spring, and Hibernate, given the various configuration needed to allow your controllers to be found, and both configuration and code necessary for your entities to persist and be retrieved. So I'm talking about frameworks that handle all of the CRUD with a convention- over-configuration mentality. If someone has the right words for what I'm talking about, let me know."}
{"_id": "159041", "title": "How can I get an anonymous user to submit bugs on a private GitHub project?", "text": "Our company has a private GitHub repository for the project I'm working on. After a full summer of work, it looks like we'll be launching this week (wheee!). However, I want to include a \"submit a bug\" link in the program that leads to a form somewhere where the user can fill out a form that becomes an issue for us on GitHub. Googling around hasn't found any solution (or someone who has the same problem). Is this possible (through some API, perhaps?) or will I have to manually enter the bugs my users report?"}
{"_id": "81266", "title": "\"A proof is a program; the formula it proves is a type for the program\"", "text": "This might be a philosophical kind of question, but I believe that there is an objective answer to it. If you read the wikipedia article about Haskell, you can find the following: > The language is rooted in the observations of Haskell Curry and his > intellectual descendants, that \"a proof is a program; the formula it proves > is a type for the program\" Now, what I'm asking is: doesn't this really apply to pretty much all the programming languages? What feature (or set of features) of Haskell makes it compliant with this statement? In other words, what are the noticeable ways in which this statement affected the design of the language?"}
{"_id": "159044", "title": "Can one edit a built-in Python module?", "text": "I'm currently learning Python and I'm at the point in the book about using the Math library. I looked on the Python website and noticed the library was a bit scarce and am writing some more useful functions. For example, I went ahead and wrote a function to take coefficients and return the roots of the equation. Essentially a quadratic formula function. I'm wondering if it's possible to add this to the python Math library. If it isn't, how do I save it such that I can use that function in other Python programs I write just by calling it?"}
{"_id": "249641", "title": "Object Design & Cohesion - Issue & potential refactoring", "text": "**Abstract** I have been trying to get my head around the cohesiveness of some functionality in our code base. I\u2019ve approached this design in different ways, and lately I\u2019m convinced that I took the wrong approach, as in I incorrectly applied the Single Responsibility Principle. **Issue** The problem domain is a Well, otherwise known as a round hole in the ground. The current code looks something like this... I have a set of data in a data only object... Note: This is not the full code, just method names to keep things short...               public class WellData     {         public string Name { get; set; }         public ICollection<SurveyPoint> SurveyPoints { get; set; }         public ICollection<GeometryItem> GeometryItems { get; set; }         public ICollection<TemperaturePoint> WellTemperature { get; set; }         public ICollection<FluidPoint> WellFluids { get; set; }     }      I broke functionality that operates on this data into several small classes. As per below\u2026               public class ReferenceWellSurvey     {        ICollection<SurveyPointCalculate> _calculatedSurveyPoints;        double GetTvdAtDepth(double depth) {}        double GetAzimuthAtDepthRad(double depth) {}        double GetInclinationAtDepthRad(double depth){}        double GetTortuosityPeriodAtDepth(double  depth ) {}        double GetTortuosityAmplitudeAtDepth(double depth ) {}     }          public class ReferenceWellGeometry     {        ICollection<GeometryItem> _geometryItems;        double GetFrictionAtDepth(double depth) {}        double GetHoleIdAtDepth(double depth) {}     }          public class ReferenceWellTemperature     {        ICollection<TemperaturePoint> _wellTemperatures;        double GetTemperatureAtDepth(double depth) {}        double GetSurfaceTemperature(double depth) {}     }     Etc.      I\u2019ve realized lately when looking at our code that I have to glue all this back together to make it usable where I need it in the application logic. Something like\u2026.               public class ReferenceWellData     {     private IReferenceWellGeometry _refWellGeometry;     private IReferenceWellTemperature _refWellGeometry;               private IReferenceWell _refWellGeometry;               private IReferenceFluid _refWellFluid;            //Proxy functions from each class to glue it all back together\u2026     }      A few things that led me to the current mess. The well data class contains several collections of information and if everything is in one class most functions will only operate on a small subset of the data. At the time I felt that would create low cohesion, now a few months later, I feel these things do actually all belong together. Additionally, there are several classes in my code that need to call just one method of the ReferenceWellSurvey class, GetTvdAtDepth(). Really what I did didn\u2019t solve this issue. After thinking more about this, and after reading this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohesion_(computer_science), I\u2019m starting to see that I have committed a few programming sins. \u2022 Anemic domain model \u2022 Low cohesion \u2022 Constructor over injection in code where I try to glue things together \u2022 Giving a class that depends on GetTvdAtDepth access to other methods that it does not need, violated Interface Segregation Principle. **Solution** I\u2019m looking for that Goldilox design that doesn\u2019t give too much responsibility to any one class (No God Objects), while yet maintaining a good degree of cohesion.   My current thoughts on fixing this are as follows. Move the functionality that operates on the well data into the same class. This should help get this functionality closer to Communicational/informational cohesion.               public class WellData : IWellData      {         public string Name { get; set; }         public ICollection<SurveyPoint> SurveyPoints { get; set; }         public ICollection<GeometryItem> GeometryItems { get; set; }         public ICollection<TemperaturePoint> WellTemperature { get; set; }         public ICollection<FluidPoint> WellFluids { get; set; }             // Operates on SurveyPoint collection         double GetTvdAtDepth(double depth) {}        double GetAzimuthAtDepthRad(double depth) {}        double GetInclinationAtDepthRad(double depth){}        double GetTortuosityPeriodAtDepth(double  depth ) {}        double GetTortuosityAmplitudeAtDepth(double depth ) {}        //Operates on WellGeometry collection         double GetFrictionAtDepth(double depth) {}        double GetHoleIdAtDepth(double depth) {}        //Operates on WellTemperature collection        double GetTemperatureAtDepth(double depth) {}        double GetSurfaceTemperature(double depth) {}     }      Next to address the issue of several classes needing just one function, I could make this one function into a separate interface IGetTvdAtDepth. In this way, my classes that need that functionality can depend just on this interface, which I can inherit into my WellData interface, and implement it there, but not tie my other classes to all the functionality that is in my WellData class. Thoughts on this approach vs. the original approach? One thing that bothers me about doing things way is that in my API I'm using bastard injection to fulfill the required dependencies of this class... Right now I have three required dependencies, a Survey calculator, and a special class that references data at different measured depths. I'd like to move away from this, but that seems to point back toward having services do more of the lifting..."}
{"_id": "159049", "title": "How can I motivate my teammates to work?", "text": "I've been recruited in a small team of seven developers about 4 months ago on a small scale Java project involving a basic game development, where each programmer has to do a certain part. For example programmers 1,2 and 3 have high experience in Java and they get harder tasks, while programmers 4 and 5 handle the small details of the project. (They also program, but they get the boring stuff) We are relatively well organised, we all live in different countries and communicate by skype and share the source by Dropbox, where we keep a log of updates, a task list and whatnot, but in general a problem always occurs in the project development. Basically everyone gets motivated for a day or two and works on some fast code that does it's job (Although not always 100% efficient, but clean and maintainable) then stops working and becomes un-motivated because he thinks he's the only one doing his job. Very little work gets done and their programming knowledge could lead the project sky-high if they used it properly. There's always a de-motivating factor in project development, such as \"I don't like this feature, I think we should go back\" or \"Nobody works so I won't either\" and in the end, it all turns out messy. My question is - what could be done to motivate them? How could I manage them in a way to constantly have them working on the project? **EDIT:** I forgot to add that all the programmers on the project are doing this mostly for experience, **_they work for free_** and they do not get paid. I personally work because I wish to gain experience in working with a team."}
{"_id": "249645", "title": "How can a true Vector be implemented in Haskell?", "text": "How could a true Vector type be implemented in Haskell? In order for something to be a Vector, it has to be stored sequentially in memory, with `O(1)` random access. But Haskell hides its memory management, and its datatypes describe trees! So how could you express that kind of requirement?"}
{"_id": "249646", "title": "Classic inheritance problem?", "text": "I keep seeing the following pattern when people learn about OOP: Problem: How do I put objects of different but related types into a container? Solution: Inherit from a common base class. New problem: I have a bunch of base class objects, how do I get the real type? Solution: ??? The classic inheritance example is to make a graphics program that deals with geometric objects. We have `Circle`s, `Ellipse`s and `Triangle`s. All these objects have a common base `Drawable`. ![Drawable](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LuLXm.png) In C++ this might look something like this:               struct Drawable{         virtual ~Drawable(){}         virtual void draw() const = 0;     };          struct Triangle : Drawable{         Point p1, p2, p3;         void draw() const override;         void stretch(double xfactor, double yfactor);         std::touple<double, double, double> getAngles() const;         //...     };          struct Circle : Drawable{         double radius;         void draw() const override;         //...     };          struct Ellipse : Drawable{         double radius;         void draw() const override;         //...     };          std::vector<Drawable *> drawables = {new Circle, new Triangle, new Ellipse};     for (const auto &d : drawables)         d->draw();      So far so good. Now I want to increase the radius of my `Circle`s and `Ellipse`s. As far as I know there are 4 ways to do that: 1: Put everything into the base class. The base class gets the virtual functions `getAngles`, `getRadius`, `stretch` and `getEccentricity`. There is a default implementation for each so that for example `getRadius` returns some dummy value when you are dealing with a `Triangle`. After this is done you can easily iterate over the `Drawable`s and increase their radius. This makes the base class ridiculously huge and working on a `vector<Drawable *>` becomes inefficient because the functions do nothing for most elements. 2: Use `dynamic_cast` hacks.               for (const auto &d : drawables){         if (dynamic_cast<Circle *>(d))             ((Circle *)d)->radius++;         else if (dynamic_cast<Ellipse *>(d))             ((Ellipse *)d)->radius++;     }      Unfortunately you need to repeat this ugly syntax every time you need to do something like this. You cannot put it in a function or macro. Every time a new `Drawable` is added you have to go through the whole code base and add it where appropriate. Also the `if`/`else`-chain is fairly inefficient. 3: Add a Tag as the first member variable and cast accordingly.               for (const auto &d : drawables){         switch(d->tag){             case Tag::Circle:                 ((Circle *)d)->radius++;                 break;             case Tag::Ellipse:                 ((Ellipse *)d)->radius++;                 break;         }     }      Slightly more efficient due to a switch instead of an `if`/`else`-chain, but there is already a kind of tag that shows the dynamic type, so the tag is redundant. Also it has the same problem as 2: since you need to change the whole code base whenever a new `Drawable` comes along. 4: Just keep the objects in separate containers.               vector<Circle> circles;     vector<Triangle> triangles;     vector<Ellipse> ellipses;     for (auto &c : circles)         c.radius++;     for (auto &e : ellipses)         e.radius++;      This is very efficient memory layout wise and you only iterate over objects that matter. It is my favorite, but unfortunately it breaks the first solution in that you do not keep differently typed objects in a single container. I tried to solve the problem by creating a variadic template that internally has a `vector` per type and forwards insertions to the right container. Ideally it would completely hide the fact that there are different containers under the hood. Usage would look something like this:               MultiVector<Triangle, Circle, Ellipse> mv;     mv.push_back(Triangle());     mv.push_back(Circle());     mv.push_back(Ellipse());     for (auto &d : mv.get<Circle, Ellipse>())         d.radius++;      The solution is not perfect, for example different types do not keep their order and implementing the iteration is tricky. I presented this problem and solution attempt to my (university) research group and got the reactions \" _If you design your classes right this is not a problem_ \" and \" _The proposed solution is a very specific tool to solve a very specific problem and it is questionable at best to add even more complexity to c++ for such a minor detail_ \". In my opinion this is a very basic problem that needs fixing and the usual solution of better class design only tries to find the least evil of the 4 workarounds in the specific case without actually solving the problem. The problem comes up almost every time inheritance is used. So finally here is the question: Did you run into this problem too / is this a real problem? Do you know of another workaround/solution? Do other languages deal better with the problem? I want to simulate a poll using 2 comments below so feel free to upvote either \" _I never had this problem / The problem is easily solved._ \" or \" _I also had this problem and never solved it to my satisfaction._ \" Edit: To prevent a close due to primarily opinion based / discussion: I want a clear answer that solves the problem or some resource that says that there is none. Edit: Related: Do I really have a car in my garage?"}
{"_id": "81714", "title": "Using lambdas to improve encapsulation", "text": "Just as many people believe tenaciously in small functions, some people believe lambdas should only contain small code fragments. An often overlooked advantage of lambdas however, is using them you can **encapsulate behavior which you would otherwise have to make available to the entire class**. Isn't it is a true advantage to maintain proper encapsulation, regardless of line count? Which possible disadvantages of using anonymous functions with a lot of lines of code am I overlooking? * * * The following is an actual example. `argumentsMatch` does very specific argument matching, highly dependent on the behavior of the function in which it is defined. The following code IMHO follows the Single Responsibility Principle. Moving `argumentsMatch` to a private method would result in it only being called from within this method.               /// <summary>     ///   Get the first found matching generic type.     ///   The type parameters of the generic type are optional.     ///   E.g. Dictionary<,>     ///   When full (generic) type is known (e.g. Dictionary<string,string>),     ///   the \"is\" operator is most likely more performant,     ///   but this function will still work correctly.     /// </summary>     /// <param name = \"source\">The source for this extension method.</param>     /// <param name = \"type\">The type to check for.</param>     /// <returns>     ///   The first found matching complete generic type,     ///   or null when no matching type found.     /// </returns>     public static Type GetMatchingGenericType( this Type source, Type type )     {         Type[] genericArguments = type.GetGenericArguments();         Type rawType = type.IsGenericType ? type.GetGenericTypeDefinition() : type;              // Used to compare type arguments and see whether they match.         Func<Type[], bool> argumentsMatch             = arguments => genericArguments                 .Zip( arguments, Tuple.Create )                 .All( t => t.Item1.IsGenericParameter || // No type specified.                            t.Item1 == t.Item2 );              Type matchingType = null;         if ( type.IsInterface )         {             // Traverse across all interfaces to find a matching interface.             matchingType =                  (from t in source.GetInterfaces()                  let rawInterface = t.IsGenericType ? t.GetGenericTypeDefinition() : t                  where rawInterface == rawType &&                        argumentsMatch( t.GetGenericArguments() )                  select t).FirstOrDefault();         }         else         {             // Traverse across the type, and all it's base types.             Type baseType = source;             while ( baseType != null && baseType != typeof( object ) )             {                 Type rawCurrent = baseType.IsGenericType                     ? baseType.GetGenericTypeDefinition()                     : baseType;                 if ( rawType == rawCurrent )                 {                     // Same raw generic type, compare type arguments.                     if ( argumentsMatch( baseType.GetGenericArguments() ) )                     {                         matchingType = baseType;                         break;                     }                 }                 baseType = baseType.BaseType;             }         }              return matchingType;     }"}
{"_id": "201104", "title": "sizeof style: sizeof(type) or sizeof variable?", "text": "I've seen two styles of using `sizeof` for memory-related operations (such as in `memset` or `malloc`):   * `sizeof(type)`, and   * `sizeof variable` or `sizeof(variable)` Which one would you prefer, or would you use a mix of the two styles, and when would you use each style? What are the pros and cons of each style and when you use them? As an example, I can see the following pair of situations where one style helps and the other doesn't: When you get the pointer indirection wrong:               type *var;     ...     memset(var, 0, sizeof var);    /* oops */      When the type changes:               new_type var;    /* changed from old_type to new_type */     ...     memset(&var, 0, sizeof(old_type));    /* oops */"}
{"_id": "201102", "title": "Keeping track of all objects of a class", "text": "I'm new to object-oriented programming, and I keep running into this issue. (I'm programming in Java) I've been a bit reluctant to ask about this, since it seems like such a basic issue, but I can't find any information on it, or questions about it here, and none of the textbooks I have read (on a quite basic level of course) have touched on this issue: Often I need to keep track of all objects of a class that have been created, to iterate through them for various purposes. They way I currently write programs, many objects are only referenced from other objects, meaning I have no array or collection with which to reference them all. I imagine that, as this seems like such a very basic necessity in OOP, there should be a quite institutionalized, and simple, way to go about this? Is it usual practice to keep a separate list of all the objects of a class? I thought about a static array or collection, to which through its constructor, every new object created would be added. This however would not work with subclasses, since constructors are not inherited? I realize this question might not have one easy answer; I just hope someone can enlighten me a bit on this subject. I feel like if I'm lacking a central piece of knowledge here."}
{"_id": "201103", "title": "IXRepository and test problems", "text": "Recently had a doubt about how and where to test repository methods.   Let the following situation: I have an interface `IRepository` like this:               public interface IRepository<T>         where T: class, IEntity     {         IQueryable<T> Query(Expression<Func<T, bool>> expression);         // ... Omitted     }      And a generic implementation of `IRepository`               public class Repository<T> : IRepository<T>         where T : class, IEntity     {         public IQueryable<T> Query(Expression<Func<T, bool>> expression)         {             return All().Where(expression).AsQueryable();         }     }      This is an implementation base that can be used by any repository. It contains the basic implementation of **my ORM**. Some repositories have specific filters, in which case we will `IEmployeeRepository` with a specific filter:               public interface IEmployeeRepository : IRepository<Employee>     {         IQueryable<Employee> GetInactiveEmployees();     }      And the implementation of `IEmployeeRepository`:               public class EmployeeRepository : Repository<Employee>, IEmployeeRepository // TODO: I have a dependency with ORM  at this point in Repository<Employee>. How to solve? How to test the GetInactiveEmployees method     {         public IQueryable<Employee> GetInactiveEmployees()         {             return Query(p => p.Status != StatusEmployeeEnum.Active || p.StartDate < DateTime.Now);         }     }      ## Questions   1. Is right to inherit `Repository<Employee>`?   The goal is to reuse code once all implementing `IRepository` already been made. If `EmployeeRepository` inherit only `IEmployeeRepository`, I have to literally copy and paste the code of `Repository<T>`.   2. In our example, in `EmployeeRepository : Repository<Employee>` our `Repository` lies in our ORM layer. We have a dependency here with our ORM impossible to perform some **unit test**.   3. How to create a **unit test** to ensure that the filter `GetInactiveEmployees` return all Employees in which the Status != Active and StartDate < DateTime.Now. I can not create a Fake/Mock of `IEmployeeRepository` because I would be testing? Need to test the actual implementation of `GetInactiveEmployees`. The complete code can be found on Github"}
{"_id": "198699", "title": "The Request/Response Cycle", "text": "When User A decides he want to pay a visit to http://example.com/ it all begins with a Request. A short moment later he is given a Response. In this cycle Request-Response a lot is going on, in different frameworks it's decoupled in different components among them Routing, Dispatching, etc. I'm looking to make a simple experimental MVP Framework for my learning, trying to use as many best practices, heck who knows it might even be worth using when I'm done. I'm not sure how I should decouple this cycle in to these different components and I'm not even sure of what each component is responsible for (Thinking SOLID, DRY, SRP, etc). That is what I am asking, looking at different frameworks these components seem to have different use-areas from time to time. What is each of these components responsible for and in what order are the used? Request, Response, Dispatcher, Router, Front Controller, Bootstrap, Events."}
{"_id": "212992", "title": "Difficulties With TDD & Refactoring (Or - Why Is This More Painful Than It Should Be?)", "text": "I wanted to teach myself to use the TDD approach and I had a project I had been wanting to work on for a while. It wasn't a large project so I thought it would be a good candidate for TDD. However, I feel like something has gone awry. Let me give an example: At a high level my project is an add-in for Microsoft OneNote that will allow me to track and manage Projects more easily. Now, I also wanted to keep the business logic for this as decoupled from OneNote as possible in-case I decided to build my own custom storage and back end some day. First I started with a basic plain words acceptance test to outline what I wanted my first feature to do. It looks something like this (dumbing it down for brevity):   1. User clicks create project   2. User types in title of project   3. Verify that the project is created correctly Skipping over the UI stuff and some intermediary planning I come to my first unit test:               [TestMethod]     public void CreateProject_BasicParameters_ProjectIsValid()     {         var testController = new Controller();         Project newProject = testController(A.Dummy<String>());         Assert.IsNotNull(newProject);     }      So far so good. Red, green, refactor, etc. Alright now it needs actually save stuff. Cutting out some steps here I wind up with this.               [TestMethod]     public void CreateProject_BasicParameters_ProjectMatchesExpected()     {         var fakeDataStore = A.Fake<IDataStore>();         var testController = new Controller(fakeDataStore);         String expectedTitle = fixture.Create<String>(\"Title\");         Project newProject = testController(expectedTitle);              Assert.AreEqual(expectedTitle, newProject.Title);     }      I'm still feeling good at this point. I don't have a concrete data store yet, but I created the interface how I anticipated it would look. I'm going to skip a few steps here because this post is getting long enough, but I followed similar processes and eventually I get to this test for my data store:               [TestMethod]     public void SaveNewProject_BasicParameters_RequestsNewPage()     {         /* snip init code */         testDataStore.SaveNewProject(A.Dummy<IProject>());         A.CallTo(() => oneNoteInterop.SavePage()).MustHaveHappened();     }      This was good until I tried to implement it:               public String SaveNewProject(IProject project)     {         Page projectPage = oneNoteInterop.CreatePage(...);     }      And THERE is the problem right where the \"...\" is. I realize now at THIS point that CreatePage requires a section ID. I didn't realize this back when I was thinking at the controller level because I was only concerned with testing the bits relevant to the controller. However, all the way down here I now realize I have to ask the user for a location to store the project. Now I have to add a location ID to the datastore, then add one to the project, then add one to the controller, and add it to ALL of the tests that are already written for all of those things. It has become tedious very quickly and I can't help but feel like I would have caught this quicker if I sketched out the design ahead of time rather than letting it be designed during the TDD process. Can someone please explain to me if I've done something wrong in this process? Is there anyway this kind of refactoring can be avoided? Or is this common? If it is common are there any ways of making it more painless? Thanks all!"}
{"_id": "212995", "title": "Multiple arguments in function call vs single array", "text": "I have a function that takes in a set of parameters, then applies to them as conditions to an SQL query. However, while I favored a single argument array containing the conditions themselves:               function searchQuery($params = array()) {         foreach($params as $param => $value) {             switch ($param) {                 case 'name':                     $query->where('name', $value);                     break;                 case 'phone':                     $query->join('phone');                     $query->where('phone', $value);                     break;             }         }     }      My colleague preferred listing all the arguments explicitly instead:               function searchQuery($name = '', $phone = '') {         if ($name) {             $query->where('name', $value);         }              if ($phone) {             $query->join('phone');             $query->where('phone', $value);         }     }      His argument was that by listing the arguments explicitly, the behavior of the function becomes more apparent - as opposed to having to delve into the code to find out what the mysterious argument `$param` was. My problem was that this gets very verbose when dealing with a lot of arguments, like 10+. Is there any preferred practice? My worst-case scenario would be seeing something like the following: `searchQuery('', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '', 'search_query')`"}
{"_id": "212996", "title": "Is it worth to move from ASP webforms to ASP MVC?", "text": "I have one year experience on ASP.net webforms and now I decided to move to another company where ASP MVC is the architecture. I decided because I always felt its not the real way to develop apps on web.(single form architecture and viewstate). But I know that I can accomplish everything on MVC on webforms with a controlled architecture? Will it give a value in job market if I moved to ASP MVC?"}
{"_id": "135232", "title": "How viable is it to switch stacks for setting up a startup", "text": "I am currently employed with a company for 2.5 years and I have been working with the .net stack for the entire duration mainly on the MVC framework. I _believe_ I have some cool ideas for a startup but I am not sure if I should continue in this stack or switch to some other stack like Ruby on Rails. The reason why I am consider this switch is due to the Infrastructure required to host a dot net application and scaling it successfully as compared to setting up a live running site on some other stack. I have a really good domain expertise in dot net at this moment but I believe it should be not so hard to move onto a new stack and adopt the best practices that I have picked up in the past two years. Let me know if I am missing something in the puzzle and if I am taking the right decision? Are there any complications of learning a new stack and building on it? Please guide me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "135233", "title": "Using a try-finally (without catch) vs enum-state validation", "text": "I have been reading the advice on this question about how an exception should be dealt with as close to where it is raised as possible. My dilemma on the best practice is whether one should use a try/catch/finally to return an enum _(or an int that represents a value, 0 for error, 1 for ok, 2 for warning etc, depending on the case)_ so that an answer is always in order, or should one let the exception go through so that the calling part would deal with it? From what I can gather, this might be different depending on the case, so the original advice seems odd. For example, on a web service, you would always want to return a state of course, so any exception has to be dealt with on the spot, but lets say inside a function that posts/gets some data via http, you would want the exception (for example in case of 404) to just pass through to the one that fired it. If you don't, you would have to create some way to inform the calling part of the quality of the outcome (error:404), as well as the outcome itself. Though it IS possible to try-catch the 404 exception inside the helper function that gets/posts the data, should you? Is it only I that use a smallint to denote states in the program (and document them appropriately of course), and then use this info for sanity validation purposes (everything ok/error handling) outside? **Update:** I was expecting a fatal/non-fatal exception for the main classification, but I didn't want to include this so as not to prejudice the answers. Let me clarify what the question is about: Handling the exceptions thrown, not throwing exceptions. What the desired effect is: Detect an error, and try to recover from it. If recovery isn't possible, provide the most meaningful feedback. Again, with the http get/post example, the question is, should you provide a new object that describes what happened to the original caller? If this helper was in a library you are using would you expect it to provide you with a status code for the operation, or would you include it in a try-catch block? If you are _designing_ it, would you provide a status code or throw an exception and let the upper level translate it to a status code/message instead? Synopsis: **How do you chose if a piece of code instead of producing an exception, returns a status code along with any results it may yield?**"}
{"_id": "205517", "title": "Syncing chat on android device with web application", "text": "I am trying to make a chat application in android. Just a one on one chat. However I also want the chat to be synced with the web app that runs on the browser. I am confused about how to go about it. So I want my web app as well as the android app to be in sync. I have 2 things in mind. One,use metoerjs for frontend and php for backend connected with a mongodb. I am inclined towards metoerjs for front end because it seamlessly syncs with the mongodb object and is a good real time js library. This would require me hosting my php script on an apache server and the front end running on node. Is it possible to make http post requests to the meteor js server(and add stuff to my database) through my android device? If it is then I can do away with using php, and develop both the client and server side in javascript. Second, use some xmpp client to set up the chat on android.But I have no idea how am I supposed to connect it to my webserver. I am a complete beginner with server side scripting in javascript, noSQL databases and the xmpp protocol. So I would really appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "90513", "title": "Optimizing sorting large amounts of text stored in a database", "text": "How would you store text information - in a relational database or maybe using NoSQL? The problem is that the text should be divided into various parts, each of which satisfies to some requirement, e.g. the same text should be contained in several \"places\". Is there another way to organize this? I have several books (each of them about 600 pages), which should be stored in a database, but there will be a mechanism which should sort the content of the books by some criteria. The criteria are complex, so I wonder if it is becoming a big problem. Would it help to store the same text in various \"tables\", each of which would satisfy a concrete \"condition\" Do I need to save the same text in various \"tables\", each of which satisfies a specific set of criteria?"}
{"_id": "90517", "title": "How do software development methodologies fit in the field of consulting?", "text": "I work for a fairly small consulting company, roughly 100 employees, and I've been with them for about a year currently. This is my first job out of college. As a company we do not specialize in any specific technology, but my day-to-day usually consists of some sort of .NET programming, whether it be ASP.NET, custom SharePoint development, etc. Our projects generally consist of adding features to, or expanding, a client's existing code-base. Rarely we will build web applications from the ground up. Something that has been bothering me is the distinct lack of any sort of methodology or framework that helps us deliver quality solutions to clients. We do not conduct code reviews, the testing we do seems weak, technical direction seems lackluster. It seems that little effort is made to ensure the code the team commits to a project meets any sort of standard of extensibility and maintainability or adheres to any best practices for the given environment. From my experience thus far, leaving that responsibility solely up to the individual programmer yields some lackluster results especially when inexperienced members of the team are involved. I would like to know if this is business as usual in the consulting world. If you work at a consulting firm, I would like to hear about any techniques, processes, or approaches that are used to make sure the solution your team is developing avoids becoming a mess, all the while under the restriction that you are working on a client's existing code-base that you may not have complete control of. What can I do as a junior member of the team to promote a culture of producing better software?"}
{"_id": "162476", "title": "Philosophy behind the memento pattern", "text": "I have been reading up on memento pattern from various sources of the internet. Differing information from different sources has left me in confusion regarding why this pattern is actually needed. The dofactory implementation says that the primary intention of this pattern is to restore the state of the system. Wiki says that the primary intention is to be **able** to restore the changes on the system. This gives a different impact - saying that it is possible for a system to have memento implementation with no need to restore. And that ability of restore is a feature of this. OODesign says that > It is sometimes necessary to capture the internal state of an object at some > point and have the ability to restore the object to that state later in > time. Such a case is useful in case of error or failure. So, my question is why exactly do we use this one? Is it to save previous states - or to promote encapsulation between the Caretaker and the Memento? Why is this type of encapsulation so important? Edit: For those visiting, check out this Implementation! **Edit** : I am working in implementing a memento solution to my problem. I will post another question regarding that and link that question to this one. Thanks all for responding with valuable suggestions! **Edit 3** : Here is the link to my sample implementation"}
{"_id": "101564", "title": "Non-transactional Database and Integration Testing", "text": "One issue I think I am going to run into with my integration testing is having multiple tests accessing the same database. While this is not a problem now, I know we have multiple applications here that access the same database and I am just trying to think of a way to prevent this issue before it happens. An idea I have seen a lot is using transactions. In the start up you start a transaction and then in the teardown you rollback the transaction. This means that multiple tests accessing the same database tables and will not effect each other which is great. The issue I have is that in my case, 85-95% of the tables I am working with in MySQL are MyISAM which don't support transactions. Are there any ways to get around storage engines that don't support transaction but still allowing multiple test to access the same tables without them effecting each other? From what I hear, the ruby on rails testing framework uses transactions in this way, how do they get around this issue (or do they)?"}
{"_id": "117954", "title": "How does Ruby, Python, PHP manage without Spring?", "text": "I write enterprise Java applications and web services at work (Spring, Hibernate, Maven, RESTEasy) and PHP (CakePHP) and Python (Django) for my side projects. While I do see the value that Inversion of Control, Aspect Oriented Programming etc. that Spring brings in, I am not sure how massive web applications that are not on the Java stack manage without a framework like Spring. So, do the developers just have to \"put up with\" tightly coupled components and other grievances that Spring eliminates or am I missing something? For those unfamiliar with Spring, the features we use the most are:   * Inversion of Control container: configuration of application components and lifecycle management of Java objects,   * Aspect-oriented programming: enables implementation of cross-cutting routines,   * Transaction management: unifies several transaction management APIs and coordinates transactions for Java objects."}
{"_id": "235726", "title": "Why we should (not) develop on a server via RDP", "text": "I have a client who is requesting that we develop their fairly small web application directly in their environment by RDP to the server that will host the app. They have had a contractor do this for a while and it has worked \"fine\" for them, so they are comfortable with that approach. The client's biggest concern at this point is cutting costs - they have a very tight budget. My manager does not seem to care or think that it makes a difference. However, I strongly do not agree with that practice. How best can I convince the client that it is bad practice to do things that way? I need to use \"management\" language, not developer language. I can think of a few advantages of developing locally (as a developer):   1. We can not guarantee code quality in the remote environment (why not?)   2. Internal team collaboration increases efficiency (how?)   3. Internally, we can take better advantage of source control (although that can also be installed on the server)   4. Internally, we can follow better quality control processes   5. With RDP, only one developer can work on project at a time   6. Developing locally increases a developer's efficiency (how? maybe because it is their comfort zone? maybe with multiple monitors? how does that benefit the client?) Unfortunately, these do not necessarily translate to something management appreciates (e.g. dollars and cents) Please help."}
{"_id": "235721", "title": "Why isn't there an html tag \"field\"?", "text": "There is a `<fieldset>` tag for a set of fields. Why isn't there a hierarchical child for fieldsets?               <form>         <fieldset>             <legend>Thin Sandwich Options</legend>             <field>                 <label>Meat</label>                 <div class='inputs'>                     <label>                         <input type=\"radio\" name=\"meat\" value=\"turkey\" />Turkey</label>                     <label>                         <input type=\"radio\" name=\"meat\" value=\"monkey\" />Monkey</label>                 </div>                 <div class='desc'>Pick one meat for the thin sandwich.</div>             </field>             <field>                 <label>Cheese</label>                 <div class='inputs'>                     <label>                         <input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"cheese\" value=\"chedder\" />Cheddar</label>                     <label>                         <input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"cheese\" value=\"swiss\" />Swiss</label>                 </div>                 <div class='desc'>Pick one meat for the thin sandwich.</div>             </field>         </fieldset>         <fieldset>             <legend>Beverage Options</legend>             <field>                 <label for=\"carbonated\">Carbonated</label>                 <div class='inputs'>                     <label>                         <input type=\"radio\" name=\"carbonated\" value=\"coke\" />Coke</label>                     <label>                         <input type=\"radio\" name=\"carbonated\" value=\"mtn-dew\" />Dew</label>                 </div>                 <div class='desc'>Pick one beverage per combo.</div>             </field>             <field>                 <label for=\"non-carbonated\">Non Carbonated</label>                 <div class='inputs'>                     <label>                         <input type=\"radio\" name=\"non-carbonated\" value=\"tea-sweet\" />Tea (non sweetend)</label>                     <label>                         <input type=\"radio\" name=\"non-carbonated\" value=\"tea\" />Tea</label>                 </div>             </field>         </fieldset>     </form>      http://jsfiddle.net/5dC8c/ I keep coming back to this question whenever I am working on my HTML form layouts. As MDN defines it: > The HTML `<fieldset>` element is used to group several controls as well as > labels () within a web form. I see a `<field>` element as grouping a single control (or set of radio buttons) with a single label and a description. The field tag would have some of the same attributes that the input tag has, readonly, required, etc. Why does bootstrap use the class 'form-group'? Why does Wufoo use li tags for each field? Enclosing related form elements into fields would add clarity. Every major front-end framework has some class or tag to differentiate each field. Why the heck don't we have a single HTML tag to bring some normality to form design? **Update:** added a better HTML example of the usage of a `<field>` tag."}
{"_id": "211315", "title": "How to indicate reliability when reporting availability of competencies", "text": "We have employees with competencies:               Pete      Welder               Carpenter     Melissa   Carpenter            Assume they both work 40 hours/week, and have not yet been assigned work.   We need to report the availability of these competencies, expressed in hours.   As far as I can see now, we can report this in two ways: Method A. When someone has multiple competencies, count them both.               Welder    40 hours     Carpenter 80 hours      Method B. When someone has multiple competencies, count an equal division of hours for each               Welder    20 hours     Carpenter 60 hours      Method A has our preference:   \\- A good planner will know to plan the least available competency first. If 30 hours of welding is planned, we will be left with 10 _welder_ , 50 _carpenter_.   \\- Method B has the disadvantage that the planner thinks he cannot plan the job when 30 hours of welding is required. However, if we report this **we would like to give an estimate of the reliability of the numbers for each competency** , i.e. how much are these over-reported? In my example A, would I say that _carpenter_ is 100% over-reported, or 50%, or maybe another number?   How would I calculate this for large numbers of competencies?   I'm sure we are not the first ones dealing with this, is there a 'usual' way of doing this in planning? Additionally:   \\- Would there be an even better method than A or B?   \\- Optionally, we also have an _preference order_ of competencies (like: use him/her in this order), Pete could be 1. _welder_ 2\\. _carpenter_. Does this introduce new options?"}
{"_id": "62530", "title": "Are the \"practical\" chapters at the end of the Siebel's PCL book supposed to be skipped during the first pass?", "text": "Just completed the first pass through Peter Siebel's Practical Common Lisp. I'm fairly comfortable with C#, Ruby, Java; The chapters that teach Lisp and the early 'practical' chapters were easy on my brain. However towards the end of the book, the practical chapters (on binary serialization, id3 parsing, web programming and the HTML generating DSL) seemed to be just out of reach - I recognized the primitives and methods being used ; but the means of combination left me flabbergasted. e.g. Given the specs, I couldn't sit down and write that code on my own.. I skipped some of them and strafed through the rest. Are there other who felt that there was a missing level between the first 22 chapters and the practicals ? Or is it just me ? Should I read the basics again? Or is there another book that will help me cross the chasm ?"}
{"_id": "62535", "title": "Choosing a programming language allowing that affinities of the customer?", "text": "I would like to have some professional opinion about the programming language used for a project in a company. Let's explain me... In my company, the first argument to choose Java as the main language is its name and its popularity from the perspective of the customer. It appears that if you propose to develop the client's software in Python/Ruby/..., he is less convinced. I would like to know if you are experiencing this kind of situation and what you think about that ?"}
{"_id": "122983", "title": "What makes one language any better than another when both are designed for the same goals?", "text": "I'm in the process of creating a grammar for a scripting language but as I'm working on it I started to wonder what makes a language good in the first place. I know the goals for my script but there are always 1000 different ways to go about doing things. Goals:   * Easy to use and understand (not my grandma could do it easy, but the secretary at the front desk could do it or the VP of marketing could do it type of easy)   * No user defined functions or subroutines.   * Its use would be in events of objects in a system similar to HyperCard. Conceptually I was thinking of a language like this:               set myVariable to 'Hello World'     set counter to 0     repeat 5 times with x     begin         set counter to counter add x     end     set myVariable to myVariable plus ' ' plus counter     popup myVariable          set text of label named 'label' to 'new text'     set color of label named 'label' to blue      The end result would popup a dialog with the contents `Hello World 15` it would also change the text of a label and make it blue. But I could do the same thing 1000 different ways. So what makes one language any better than another when both are designed for the same goals?"}
{"_id": "96824", "title": "Whole Solution Complexity ... vs Development Complexity", "text": "I am generally a PHP Developer that deals in a few different MVC frameworks. I am being tempted (like most) to break out of my comfortable LAMP environment in pursuit of a \"prettier\" and \"more simple\" language, attached to frameworks that are becoming more and more popular. I agree with most arguments to switching to a (the) ruby framework or a python framework, and would trade out PHP for Python in the LAMP acronym any day of the week. But as I've found in trying to get started with these, it's not quite that simple... In my attempts to figure out the spaghetti of dependencies, versions, and install procedures, I've found that while final development time/simplicity is a benefit, in my mind it is almost overshadowed by the complexity of deployment... Especially being use to the copy/paste deployment to the ever numerous lamp hosting services. I am specifically speaking of   * Ruby on Rails   * Django (python) To those that work in these platforms, was your initial experience similar? if so how did you overcome it?"}
{"_id": "96827", "title": "how to tell users to wait, becase page is loading", "text": "On my webpage, i have to generate some excel and pdf files but the user has to wait until the file is generated. the scenario is this: user press a link and waits until the files are generated and displayed as a links on the raports page. how can i 'tell' to the user to wait?"}
{"_id": "120856", "title": "How to document/verify consistent layering?", "text": "I have recently moved to the dark side: I am now a CUSTOMER of software development -- mainly websites. With this new role comes new concerns. As a programmer i know how solid an application becomes when it is properly layered, and I want to use this knowledge in my new job. I don't want business logic in my presentation layer, and certainly not presentation stuff in my data layer. Thus, I want to be able to demand from my supllier that they document the level of layering, and how neat and consistent the layering is. The big question is: How is the level of layering documented to me as a customer, and is that a reasonable demmand for me to have, so I don't have to look in the code (I'm not supposed to do that anymore)?"}
{"_id": "237761", "title": "A RESTful way to verify server state", "text": "I'm interested in building verifications into a REST service to help with service monitoring. For example, one could run assertions like `http://example.com/posts/verify?min-posts=5&since=1-hour-ago` which would respond with an error unless 5 new posts had been created in the past hour. Are there any existing services like this, or best practices? I'm particularly interested in a recommended error code for failed verifications, as I can't really see anything appropriate in the 4xx series. Errors like \"Precondition Required\" and \"Internal Server Error\" are more about the actual request or processing of it, than the meaning of it."}
{"_id": "237760", "title": "Should POCO domain classes contain collections?", "text": "The question title is not good, but I couldn't think of a way to word it better. I am used to develop using POCO classes in my projects, that is, domain objects contain absolutely no logic, only data. I am wondering which is the best approach when dealing with class relationships - to put a collection inside the class or to request it later. For example, consider we have an e-commerce application, that has Orders, and Items inside those Orders. So we could have (pseudo-code)               class Order     {          int id;          List<OrderItem> Items;     }          class OrderItem     {          Product product;          int quantity;     }      And then use it (1)               var o = LoadOrder(id);     foreach (var i in o.Items) {      ...or we could do:               class Order     {         int id;     }      And use it this way: (2)               var odr = LoadOrder(id);     var itms = LoadItemsOfOrder(odr);     foreach (var i in itms) {          .....      The first way is more compact and more \"OOP-ish\", but the second way gives more control on how and when items are requested, e.g. what if now I need to request only the items that have quantity > 3 ? And what if I don't use the Items collection at all (e.g. to display only a list of orders) - I will be doing unnecessary queries to the database. In my older, big projects I've gone with a hybrid approach - the domain classes are of the first flavor but there are various \"load\" methods, like \"LoadOrder\" and \"LoadOrderWithItems\" or \"FillOrderObject\". Now I am working on a small, toy project, no customers and crazy deadlines and got time to think on these issues. I tried searching the web but it is very hard to find a POCO answer not related to Entity Framework. (I am not working in .net this time, but would like to apply these concepts.) **Question** : is there a method which is clearly _better_ than the other, or both are valid and \"it depends\" on my project, if I am aiming for performance or for code clarity and maintainability?."}
{"_id": "20764", "title": "I feel lost among the various web technologies and I'm looking for pointers", "text": "In the last 3-5 months I was thinking about which web programming language I should use. PHP? Ruby? C#? Python? Perl? And you know what? Every time I keep changing my mind like crazy! I learn some things about each one of them and then move to another. Now I'm totally lost, totally lost guys. :) What I want form you is to help me to decide, not to decide for me, and give me some recommendations. It would be more than helpful if you can tell me a short story about yourself, how you got started, where you are now and what web programming technologies you are using."}
{"_id": "120859", "title": "UML Diagrams of Multi-Threaded Applications", "text": "For single-threaded applications I like to use class diagrams to get an overview of the architecture of that application. This type of diagram, however, hasn\u2019t been very helpful when trying to understand heavily multi- threaded/concurrent applications, for instance because different instances of a class \"live\" on different threads (meaning accessing an instance is save only from the one thread it lives on). Consequently, associations between classes don\u2019t necessarily mean that I can call methods on those objects, but instead I have to make that call on the target object's thread. Most literature I have dug up on the topic such as _Designing Concurrent, Distributed, and Real-Time Applications with UML_ by Hassan Gomaa had some nice ideas, such as drawing thread boundaries into object diagrams, but overall seemed a bit too academic and wordy to be really useful. I don\u2019t want to use these diagrams as a high-level view of the problem domain, but rather as a detailed description of my classes/objects, their interactions and the limitations due to thread-boundaries I mentioned above. I would therefore like to know:   1. What types of diagrams have you found to be most helpful in understanding multi-threaded applications?   2. Are there any extensions to classic UML that take into account the peculiarities of multi-threaded applications, e.g. through annotations illustrating that      * some objects might live in a certain thread while others have no thread-affinity;     * some fields of an object may be read from any thread, but written to only from one;     * some methods are synchronous and return a result while others are asynchronous that get requests queued up and return results for instance via a callback on a different thread."}
{"_id": "81888", "title": "What did Stallman mean in this quote about implementing other languages in Lisp?", "text": "I just read the following quote from Stallman as part of a speech he gave many years ago. He's talking about how it is feasible to implement other programming languages in Lisp, but not feasible to implement Lisp in those other programming languages. He seems to take for granted that the listeners/readers understand why. But I don't see why. I think the answer will explain something about Lisp to me, and I'd like to understand it. Can someone explain it? Here's the quote: > \"There's an interesting benefit you can get from using such a powerful > language as a version of Lisp as your primary extensibility language. You > can implement other languages by translating them into your primary > language. If your primary language is TCL, you can't very easily implement > Lisp by translating it into TCL. But if your primary language is Lisp, it's > not that hard to implement other things by translating them.\" The full speech is here: http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html Thanks."}
{"_id": "204559", "title": "SQL IN() versus OR", "text": "I was working with a query I wrote today had to change the code from the `WHERE` clause to use a IN(list of stuff) filter instead of using something like               item_desc = 'item 1'     OR item_desc = 'item 2'     OR item_desc = 'item 3'     OR item_desc = 'item 4'      The above ran for 15 minutes and returned nothing, yet the following gave me my result set in 1.5 minutes               item_desc IN (     'item 1'     ,'item 2'     ,'item 3'     ,'item 4'     )      I did this in SQL and am wondering why the IN(list of items) performed so much faster then the OR statement. \\-- EDIT -- SQL Server 2008, I do apologize for not putting this bit of info in in the first place. **Here is the Query in its entirety using the`OR` statements:**               DECLARE @SD DATETIME     DECLARE @ED DATETIME     SET @SD = '2013-06-01';     SET @ED = '2013-06-15';          -- COLUMN SELECTION     SELECT PV.PtNo_Num AS 'VISIT ID'     , PV.Med_Rec_No AS 'MRN'     , PV.vst_start_dtime AS 'ADMIT'     , PV.vst_end_dtime AS 'DISC'     , PV.Days_Stay AS 'LOS'     , PV.pt_type AS 'PT TYPE'     , PV.hosp_svc AS 'HOSP SVC'     , SO.ord_no AS 'ORDER NUMBER'     --, SO.ent_dtime AS 'ORDER ENTRY TIME'     --, DATEDIFF(HOUR,PV.vst_start_dtime,SO.ent_dtime) AS 'ADM TO ENTRY HOURS'     , SO.svc_desc AS 'ORDER DESCRIPTION'     , OSM.ord_sts AS 'ORDER STATUS'     , SOS.prcs_dtime AS 'ORDER STATUS TIME'     , DATEDIFF(DAY,PV.vst_start_dtime,SOS.prcs_dtime) AS 'ADM TO ORD STS IN DAYS'          -- DB(S) USED     FROM smsdss.BMH_PLM_PtAcct_V PV     JOIN smsmir.sr_ord SO     ON PV.PtNo_Num = SO.episode_no     JOIN smsmir.sr_ord_sts_hist SOS     ON SO.ord_no = SOS.ord_no     JOIN smsmir.ord_sts_modf_mstr OSM     ON SOS.hist_sts = OSM.ord_sts_modf_cd          -- FILTER(S)     WHERE PV.Adm_Date BETWEEN @SD AND @ED     AND SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_REMFOLEY'     OR SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_INSRTFOLEY'     OR SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_INSTFOLEY'     OR SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_URIMETER'          AND SO.ord_no NOT IN (         SELECT SO.ord_no         FRROM smsdss.BMH_PLM_PtAcct_V PV         JOIN smsmir.sr_ord SO         ON PV.PtNo_Num = SO.episode_no         JOIN smsmir.sr_ord_sts_hist SOS         ON SO.ord_no = SOS.ord_no         JOIN smsmir.ord_sts_modf_mstr OSM         ON SOS.hist_sts = OSM.ord_sts_modf_cd         WHERE OSM.ord_sts = 'DISCONTINUE'         AND SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_REMFOLEY'         OR SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_INSRTFOLEY'         OR SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_INSTFOLEY'         OR SO.svc_cd = 'PCO_URIMETER'     )     ORDER BY PV.PtNo_Num, SO.ord_no, SOS.prcs_dtime      Thank you,"}
{"_id": "244648", "title": "Open-sourcing a proprietary library without certain features", "text": "I hope I'm in the right place to ask that. I have a question regarding the practice of open-sourcing a proprietary library that we built and use at work. The licence will probably be MIT. I like the idea, but here comes the unusual part : I have been tasked to remove some of the most advanced features. Those will remain on our servers, available as a service. We will open-source the (JavaScript in case it is of interest) library, along with a minimal associated server code. I am _not_ asking a question about the technical problems (I imagine we will have to maintain and synchronize somehow different repositories, maybe with incompatible pull requests, but this question is for another day). What I would like to know is:   * How that would be perceived by the community at large ? Does it risk killing the eventual interest in this library?   * I don't personally know of any library that works like that. I'm pretty sure it is possible however, but any evidence of such a library is welcome (successful if possible). That's also because I'd like to see how they present it.   * More importantly, what could be the rationale for/against it? I'm not sure I understand the consequences of doing it so. **EDIT** After learning a thing or two from the answers and comments, I've collected here a few examples :   * http://www.jfrog.com/home/v_artifactorypro_overview   * http://www.easyrtc.com/pricing/   * http://rapidminer.com/the-core-of-rapidminer-is-open-source/ (note the angry comments on this one - but we're doing the opposite, from proprietary to open-core) As a developer, I would use the product we are going to release it in personal projects, so I think it's useful. But I have been working on it and I have an obvious bias. Also, most feedback I've seen basically says \"you can try, but it won't work\". See also http://blogs.gartner.com/brian_prentice/2010/03/31/open-core-the- emperors-new-clothes/ If someone is able to find a successful product doing open-core, I'd be grateful."}
{"_id": "244640", "title": "How to handle updated configuration when it's already been cloned for editing", "text": "Really sorry about the title that probably doesn't make much sense. Hopefully I can explain myself better here as it's something that's kinda bugged me for ages, and is now becoming a pressing concern as I write a bit of software with configuration. Most software comes with default configuration options stored in the app itself, and then there's a configuration file (let's say) that a user can edit. Once created/edited for the first time, subsequent updates to the application can not (easily) modify this configuration file for fear of clobbering the user's own changes to the default configuration. So my question is, if my application adds a new configurable parameter, what's the best way to aid discoverability of the setting and allow the user (developer) to override it as nicely as possible given the following constraints:   * I actually don't have a canonical default config in the application per se, it's more of a 'cascading filesystem'-like affair - the config template is stored in `default/config.json` and when the user wishes to edit the configuration, it's copied to `user/config.json`. If a user config is found it is used - there is no automatic overriding of a subset of keys, the whole new file is used and that's that. If there's no user config the default config is used. When a user wishes to edit the config they run a command to 'generate' it for them (which simply copies the `config.json` file from the `default` to the `user` directory).   * There is no UI for the configuration options as it's not appropriate to the userbase (think of my software as a library or something, the users are developers, the config is done in the user/config.json file).   * Due to my software being library-like there's no simple way to, on updating of the software, run some tasks automatically (so any ideas of look at the current config, compare to template config, add ing missing keys) aren't appropriate. The only solution I can think of right now is to say \"there's a new config setting `X`\" in release notes, but this doesn't seem ideal to me. If you want any more information let me know. The above specifics are not actually 100% true to my situation, but they represent the problem equally well with lower complexity. If you do want specifics, however, I can explain the exact setup. * * * Further clarification of the type of configuration I mean: think of the Atom code editor. There appears to be a default 'template' config file somewhere, but as soon as a configuration option is edited `~/.atom/config.cson` is generated and the setting goes in there. From now on is Atom is updated and gets a new configuration key, this file cannot be overwritten by Atom without a lot of effort to ensure that the addition/modification of the key does not clobber. In Atom's case, because there is a GUI for editing settings, they can get away with just adding the UI for the new setting into the UI to aid 'discoverability' of the new setting. I don't have that luxury. * * * Clarification of my constraints and what I'm actually looking for: The software I'm writing is actually a package for a larger system. This larger system is what provides the configuration, and the way it works is kinda fixed - I just do a `config('some.key')` kinda call and it knows to look to see if the user has a config clone and if so use it, otherwise use the default config which is part of my package. Now, while I _could_ make my application edit the user's configuration files (there is a convention about where they're stored), it's generally not done, so I'd like to live with the constraints of the system I'm using if possible. And it's not just about discoverability either, one large concern is that the addition of a configuration key won't actually work as soon as the user has their own copy of the original template. Adding the key to the template won't make a difference as that file is never read. As such, I think this is actually quite a big flaw in the design of the configuration cascading system and thus needs to be taken up with my upstream. So, thinking about it, based on my constraints, I don't think there's going to be a good solution save for either editing the user's configuration or using a new config file every time there are updates to the default configuration. Even the release notes idea from above isn't doable as, if the user does not follow the advice, suddenly I have a config key with no value (user-defined _or_ default). * * * So the new question is this: what is the general way to solve the problem of having a default configuration in template config files and allowing a user to make user-specific version of these in order to override the defaults? A per- key cascade (rather than per-file cascade) where the user only specifies their overrides? In this case, what happens if a configuration value is an array - do we replace or append to the default (or, more realistically, how does the user specify whether they wish to replace or append to)? It seems like configuration is kinda hard, so how is it solved in the wild?"}
{"_id": "254438", "title": "Multithreading: am I doing it wrong?", "text": "I'm working on an application that plays music. During playback, often things need to happen on separate threads because they need to happen simultaneously. For example, the notes of a chord need to be heard together, so each one is assigned its own thread to be played in. (Edit to clarify: calling `note.play()` freezes the thread until the note is done playing, and this is why I need three separate threads to have three notes heard at the same time.) This kind of behavior creates many threads during playback of a piece of music. For example, consider a piece of music with a short melody and short accompanying chord progression. The entire melody can be played on a single thread, but the progression needs three threads to play, since each of its chords contains three notes. So the pseudo-code for playing a progression looks like this:               void playProgression(Progression prog){         for(Chord chord : prog)             for(Note note : chord)                 runOnNewThread( func(){ note.play(); } );     }      So assuming the progression has 4 chords, and we play it twice, than we are opening `3 notes * 4 chords * 2 times` = 24 threads. And this is just for playing it once. Actually, it works fine in practice. I don't notice any noticeable latency, or bugs resulting from this. But I wanted to ask if this is correct practice, or if I'm doing something fundamentally wrong. Is it reasonable to create so many threads each time the user pushes a button? If not, how can I do it differently?"}
{"_id": "152378", "title": "Is gettext appropriate for internationalizing user help documentation?", "text": "On my project, we have po files to internationalize/translate various labels, error messages, button-text etc. We also have separate po files for the entirety of our help documentation, which is included in the product. Is this an appropriate use of gettext - putting entire documents in po files as opposed to just labels and messages? The format has been made all the more complicated because sometimes (for tooltips or \"what's this\" icons) only a small part of the help doc is needed, resulting in single phrases/paragraphs being entries in the po file, which are then concatenated together when the user views the help... making the actual act of translation challenging. Is there a better way to internationalize end user help documentation?"}
{"_id": "121187", "title": "Use open-source programs in your company?", "text": "Is there any cons of making your employees use open-source programs in your company? I am planning to start a bussiness and I wonder why companies usually work with proprietary software, as _Microsoft Word_ to quote the most famous one. Why do not they use _Open Office_ (or _Libre Office_ ) etc.? From my point of view, you can save a lot of money and help the open-source community by, for instance, giving them part of your benefits in form of donations. I do not know any (medium-big) company that does this. Probably you could give me some examples, just to prove that this model of open-source usage/collaboration ~~works~~ rocks."}
{"_id": "254430", "title": "How can I set \"no subprocess\" for Python IDLE other than shortcut", "text": "I have been able to get my favorite Python tool, Python iDLE, to work by starting it with a windows shortcut to IDLE.BAT with a -n (no subprocess) at the end of the TARGET string. Is there a different/better way to do it so I don't need to use a windows shortcut?"}
{"_id": "121188", "title": "How to Implement Restricted Access to Application Features", "text": "I'm currently developing a web application, that provides some ' ** _service_** ' to the user. The user will have to select a ' ** _plan_** ' according to which she/he will be allowed to perform application specific actions but up to a limit defined by the plan.   A Plan will also limit access to certain features, which will not be available at all for some plans.      As an **example** : say there are 3 **plans** , 2 **actions** throughout the application   * users in plan-1 can perform action-1 3 times, and they can't perform action-2 at all   * users in plan-2 can perform action-1 10 times, action-2 5 times   * users in plan-3 can perform action-1 20 times, action-2 10 times So I am looking for the best way to get this done, and my main concerns besides implementing it, are the following(in no particular order)   * **maintainability/changeability** : the number of plans, and type of features/actions **will** change in the final product   * **industry standard/best practice** : for future readiness   * **efficiency** : of course, I want fast code!! I have never done anything like this before, so I have **no clue** about how do I go about implementing these functionalities. **Any tips/guides/patterns/resources/examples?**   I've read a little about ACL, RBAC, are they the patterns that I need to follow?   Really, any sort of feedback will help."}
{"_id": "80136", "title": "What is good (neat) architecture in programming?", "text": "When I build a simple website, e.g. a contact book where I can add, delete and update contacts, I create an `index.php` file where a user, if he's not logged in, is requested to enter a password and if he enters the right password, he's assigned a session and can do certain things with the contacts. I have two files:   1. The first (`contacts.php`) is for the HTML code to be shown. Above the HTML code I include the second file and create the class.   2. The second (`contacts_class.php`) contains all methods for adding, deleting and updating. I think that's ok, but when it comes to implement a big project, how should I do it? Do I have to create folders for every page and put files in them (like above, HTML and class), and how should I do it? What is a good and neat architecture for building large projects that every other programmer would understand perfectly?"}
{"_id": "254436", "title": "What is the \"best practice\" for converting an external API's data structure?", "text": "When an API's data structure does not fit well with an angular app, I am trying to determine the best-practice in my specific design and implementation for converting it to a usable structure. I was doing this on an 'as needed' basis within the app controllers/directives, which quickly lead to spaghetti code. Now I'm thinking this belongs in the service/factory which interacts with the API. Are there drawbacks or benefits to the Factory pattern over a more service oriented architecture when it comes to handling data structure conversion?"}
{"_id": "48501", "title": "Databases and the CI server", "text": "I have a CI server (Hudson) which merrily builds, runs unit tests and deploys to the development environment but I'd now like to get it running the integration tests. The integration tests will hit a database and that database will be consistently being changed to contain the data relevant to the test in question. This however leads to a problem - how do I make sure the database is not being splatted with data for one test and then that data being override by a second project before the first set of tests complete? I am current using the \"hope\" method, which is not working out too badly at the moment, but mostly due to the fact that we only have a small number of integration tests set up on CI. As I see it I have the following options:   * Test-local (in memory) databases    I'm not sure if any in-memory databases handle all the scaryness of Oracles triggers and packages etc, and anything less I don't feel would be a worth while test.   * CI Executor-local databases   A fair amount of work would be needed to set this up and keep 'em up to date, but defiantly an option (most of the work is already done to keep the current CI database up-to-date).   * Single \"integration test\" executor   Likely the easiest to implement, but would mean the integration tests could fall quite far behind.   * Locking the database (or set of tables) I'm sure I've missed some ways (please add them). How do you run database- based integration tests on the CI server? What issues have you had and what method do you recommend? (Note: While I use Hudson, I'm happy to accept answers for any CI server, the ideas I'm sure will be portable, even if the details are not). Cheers,        Mlk"}
{"_id": "211978", "title": "Layer style applied, but intuition is different", "text": "Currently, I'm developing an architecture for a system of the following kind: There are a couple of existing applications (front end) with which one can define UML profiles capturing some specific domain aspects. Since the tools are proprietary the produced models are not exchangeable by default. On the other hand there are a couple of tools which can analyze the produced frontend models (back end). These also have their own mechanisms (which are different from the frontends) to represent the domain aspects. Since this would produce m*n model transformations with m frontends and n backends, I chose to introduce an exchange model which captures all relevant information from the frontends and nevertheless allows the backend to have enough information for analysis. This approach results in only m+n transformations. My bird-eye view on the architecture: ![Architecture Overview](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uCyfx.jpg) Things go like that: Transformation is possible between frontend model<->exchange model and exchange model<->backend model. Analysis tasks are triggered in the frontend and are delegated to the backend, where they are executed. At the first glance, it looked for me like a layered style, but the more I thought about it, the intuition of the problem is not to make different layers exchangeable, where the layers achieve separation of concerns and focus on portability. It is rather to introduce an intermediate layer, which decouples the two others and targets mainly at extendability. Another point is that the highest abstraction is not found on the highest layer but on the intermediate layer, i.e. the exchange format should be the core of the architecture where frontends and backends can be attached to. It should not need to know anything about its attached frontends or backends. This also means that the backend layer must know how to transform the exchange format into its own model representation, which is a upward usage not allowed in the layered style. This boils down to the **questions** :   1. Do you know some architectural style which is similar to the one I depicted and also follows its intuition?   2. Why isn't this a good example for layered style (apart from the upward usage)?   3. Since the application is mainly model-driven, are there some specific architectural patterns/styles for systems of this kind? Thanks for help in advance! EDIT: Actually I am concerned with layers, because the coarse vision of this architecture is embedded in an existing project and is communicated there as \"layers\". But from an architectural point of view, it doesn't fit the style. The problem lies between the documentation and the communication of the architecture. If most of the stakeholders talk about a layered architecture and I introduce the layered view into it, although it isn't applied correctly, wouldn't this confuse all stakeholders, who have the right understanding of a layered architecture? The goal is to document the views of the style which is really applied to have a correct basis for communicating the architecture."}
{"_id": "237491", "title": "Authorization and Authentication using multiple types of authentication in MVC", "text": "Currently I am managing a team where we're building a new SaaS application. The way it is currently structured is that we have a solution that has our business logic and data, and a solution that holds our website (and related projects) In our current user base, there are clients that use different types of authentication:   * username/password using the aspnet membership architecture   * Homegrown SOAP web services that allow a developer to connect via SSO   * SAML Clients may have different settings for logging in, but users within the clients log in the same way. The big challenge with our legacy system is that these are somewhat 'hacked' together and very hard to manage. I want to make sure we are much more scalable for the future. I've looked into claims-based authentication using the MVC framework and understand that pretty well, so I'm confident our team can build the framework to support it. My challenge is with the STS (identity server), so I have a few questions:   1. Fundamentally, am I going in the right direction?    2. What system owns the knowledge of where a user should be authenticated? I would suspect the STS because that would mean the claims-based system can truly not worry about authentication or authorization   3. I've looked into OpenAM, OpenIDM and IdentityServer for the STS, but cannot really figure out how to plug them in. Are these even STS systems?   4. I am willing to spend money on a solution as well, is there any other solutions I should be looking into?"}
{"_id": "252873", "title": "Writing a superset of a programming language as a transcompiler", "text": "My idea is to write a superset of C# (but question is not language-specific), so that it source-to-source compiles (transcompiles) to C# itself (fall- through switch clauses, default method parameters etc., nothing impossible in C#). First idea was to parse it, make syntax trees, abstract trees etc. but it seems as a bit of an overkill to me, mostly because large portions of code will remain the same. **My question:** Is there a simpler way to do this? One of my ideas was to search for tokens that need modifying (e.g. `switch` in case of fall-through) and then rewrite the code (add `goto case NEXT_CASE` where needed) but is there a better and cleaner way to do this?"}
{"_id": "175688", "title": "Issues with the intended behavior of a Service layer?", "text": "This analysis makes sense, and states anything that avoids code duplication and simplifies maintenance speaks for a service layer. What is the technical behavior?   1. When a service client references a service, does it do so at runtime, or does it happen at compile time?    2. When I change something in the service layer code, will this change be automatically taken into account in all it's clients, or do they need to be individually recompiled?    3. How does this make sense from a testing point of view - I have working code, based on some code from a service, but if that service changes, my code might break?!"}
{"_id": "175685", "title": "What to do when issue-tracker is down?", "text": "It has happened in our team that our issue-tracker is down. Happens about once a week now (yes, wow), and there's not really much we can do to get it back up, since it's hosted by our client in a different timezone. It sometimes takes several hours for it to be operative again. In the meanwhile, we can't really tell which issues we were working on, and in case we do, we cannot update those issues, as in moving them through the workflow, logging used hours, checking the issue's description, leaving comments, and so on. So the question is: how can we, as a team, work in the meanwhile so that when the issue-tracker is up again, we have the least possible hassle updating it with what we've been working?"}
{"_id": "7245", "title": "Why no client-side HTML include tag?", "text": "I had a question posed to me the other day by another programmer. I remember (a very long time ago) wondering the very same. **Why was a browser-side include tag never considered? Or was it?** Specifically with a tag that instructed the browser to include additional HTML from other sources. e.g. `<include src=\"http://server/foo/bar.html\">`. Many folks will make javascript calls and fill `innerHTML` to accomplish the same, when the same outside a the javascript engine could be accomplished by the browser. It would have been painful to have nested `<HTML>`s `<BODY>`s (i.e.) but we have to consider that aspect anywhere anyway."}
{"_id": "44662", "title": "Python web frameworks comparisons", "text": "I recently asked a question on SO about Python web frameworks: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4909306/python-web-frameworks-vs-java-web- frameworks-how-is-web-development-in-python-do I want to learn one just for fun but it also has to be able to help me deliver a proper working application. I am looking for a framework with lots of features, powerful, mature, with large community, good documentation, books etc. I need something that will help me be more productive in developing my app and not waste time figuring out how to do a certain thing in the framework or how to write workaround around the limitations of the framework. I was thinking one of the following: django, zope, turbogears, pylons. Off course the war is raging out there and there are other alternatives but seems Django is at the top... or is it just hype? I am interested in pros and cons of each. What was the best feature you think the framework has? What is the thing it lacks? What could have been done differently. Help me chose one to learn for starters."}
{"_id": "119652", "title": "Learning the GO programming language and its prospects", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are the chances of Google's Go becoming a mainstream language? Recently I've started experimenting with The GO programming language by Google. Its a programmer-friendly language having the simplicity of Python. I was wondering whether companies other than Google would also start using Go for development, and if they do , what would be the prospects of being a Go programmer?"}
{"_id": "44666", "title": "What is the motivation that makes you to stick with current job?", "text": "There are lot of people who are still working in the same company for more than 10 years. What is the motivation that makes you to stick with current job ?"}
{"_id": "44669", "title": "Employers paying for fresh graduates for MS Degree?", "text": "Is this still an option nowadays (aside from working for govt) that in private business a company will help pay for some/all of an MS degree? What is the likelihood of a company paying for a fresh grad to get an MS degree w them helping to pay for it?"}
{"_id": "198284", "title": "Why is 0 false?", "text": "This question may sound dumb, but why does `0` evaluates to `false` and any other [integer] value to `true` is most of programming languages? # String comparison Since the question seems a little bit too simple, I will explain myself a little bit more: first of all, it may seem evident to any programmer, but why wouldn't there be a programming language - there may actually be, but not any I used - where `0` evaluates to `true` and all the other [integer] values to `false`? That one remark may seem random, but I have a few examples where it may have been a good idea. First of all, let's take the example of strings three-way comparison, I will take C's `strcmp` as example: any programmer trying C as his first language may be tempted to write the following code:               if (strcmp(str1, str2)) { // Do something... }      Since `strcmp` returns `0` which evaluates to `false` when the strings are equal, what the beginning programmer tried to do fails miserably and he generally does not understand why at first. Had `0` evaluated to `true` instead, this function could have been used in its most simple expression - the one above - when comparing for equality, and the proper checks for `-1` and `1` would have been done only when needed. We would have considered the return type as `bool` (in our minds I mean) most of the time. Moreover, let's introduce a new type, `sign`, that just takes values `-1`, `0` and `1`. That can be pretty handy. Imagine there is a spaceship operator in C++ and we want it for `std::string` (well, there already is the `compare` function, but spaceship operator is more fun). The declaration would currently be the following one:               sign operator<=>(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs);      Had `0` been evaluated to `true`, the spaceship operator wouldn't even exist, and we could have declared `operator==` that way:               sign operator==(const std::string& lhs, const std::string& rhs);      This `operator==` would have handled three-way comparison at once, and could still be used to perform the following check while still being able to check which string is lexicographically superior to the other when needed:               if (str1 == str2) { // Do something... }      # Old errors handling We now have exceptions, so this part only applies to the old languages where no such thing exist (C for example). If we look at C's standard library (and POSIX one too), we can see for sure that maaaaany functions return `0` when successful and any integer otherwise. I have sadly seen some people do this kind of things:               #define TRUE 0     // ...     if (some_function() == TRUE)     {         // Here, TRUE would mean success...         // Do something     }      If we think about how we think in programming, we often have the following reasoning pattern:               Do something     Did it work?     Yes ->         That's ok, one case to handle     No ->         Why? Many cases to handle      If we think about it again, it would have made sense to put the only neutral value, `0`, to `yes` (and that's how C's functions work), while all the other values can be there to solve the many cases of the `no`. However, in all the programming languages I know (except maybe some experimental esotheric languages), that `yes` evaluates to `false` in an `if` condition, while all the `no` cases evaluate to `true`. There are many situations when \"it works\" represents one case while \"it does not work\" represents many probable causes. If we think about it that way, having `0` evaluate to `true` and the rest to `false` would have made much more sense. # Conclusion My conclusion is essentially my original question: why did we design languages where `0` is `false` and the other values are `true`, taking in account my few examples above and maybe some more I did not think of? **Follow-up:** It's nice to see there are many answers with many ideas and as many possible reasons for it to be like that. I love how passionate you seem to be about it. I originaly asked this question out of boredom, but since you seem so passionate, I decided to go a little further and ask about the rationale behind the Boolean choice for 0 and 1 on Math.SE :)"}
{"_id": "139007", "title": "Evolutionary behavioural programming resources", "text": "A while ago I made Conway's Game of Life. I'd like to make something similar (in C++), where each cell would exhibit behaviours such as:   * Movement   * Reproduction   * Killing of other cells (moving onto another cell, for example) Over time, the cells would 'learn', and I'd (hopefully) end up with a set of behaviours that are beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole, rather than the individual cell. I'm 100% sure that this isn't new, but I don't know:   1. What technical terms cover what it is I'm trying to do (what keywords cover my aim such that I can search for other implementations),    2. Resources, preferably online, although dead-tree style is also good, which would be beneficial reading for this type of programming.    3. How I should implement this (#2 would help with this); I can modify my cells to do some things (moving, for example), but I'm not sure how I should implement the learning; should I be using a genetic algorithm or is some other type of evolutionary algorithm better suited?"}
{"_id": "139006", "title": "How should I setup a UI for editing a binary tree?", "text": "I need to allow the user to create an binary tree. I have a Backbone Model populating properly from the database, the problem I am stuck on is how do I setup the ui elements in a way that is fairly easy to use? The general idea is I want to create a boolean expression that contains logic and tokens. The tokens will be replaced later at runtime with appropriate model data when the expression is evaluated. You end up with a final expression like this:               ((({Claim.State})=(TX))||(({Claim.PolicyState})!=(UT)))      Ie, Evaluate to true if the State = TX or the Policy State is not UT Each expression can be a terminating node, and will have a value, or will have no value, and the left and right will point to the next respective expressions and an Operator The database structure looks something like this:   1. State Check: Left: **2** Right: **3** Operator: OR   2. State is TX: Left: **4** Right **5** Operator: Equals   3. State not UT: Left: **6** Right **7** : Operator: Not   4. Claim State: Left: nil Right: nil Value: {Claim.State}   5. Texas Literal: Left: nil Right: nil Value: \"TX\"   6. Policy State: Left: nil Right: nil Value: {Claim.PolicyState}   7. Utah Literal: Left: nil Right: nil Value: \"UT\" I am imaging something like for the Above expression, making a panel with 3 select lists, and a Label above it:               ----------------------------------------------------------------      Name: |State Check|                     [.] Value [0] Expression                 Left (Edit/New)   Operator Right (Edit/New)      Expression: [ State is TX ]   [ Or ]   [ State is not UT ]      (Save)     ----------------------------------------------------------------      At this point I'm stuck. What should happen when say, the user wants to edit the left hand value? Do I open a new popup window to rerender the same form, just starting with **2** instead of **1** for the starting expression key? Should I replace the existing form with the new values, and somehow keep track of where the user is in reference to the starting expression? Maybe slide a new editor panel down below the current? What do you guys think? I'm really stuck on what to do."}
{"_id": "163709", "title": "Deploying a very simple application", "text": "I have a very simple working console application written in C++ linked with a light static library. It is just for testing purposes. Now that the coding part is done, I would like to know the process of actually deploying the program. I wrote a very basic CMakeLists.txt that create makefiles or VS projects to build the sources. I also have a program that calls the static library in order to make some google tests. To me, the distribution of this application goes like this: >   * to developers : the src directory with the CMakeLists.txt file (multi- > platform distribution) with a README.txt and an INSTALL.txt >   * to users : the executable and a README.txt >   * git repo : everything mentioned above plus the sources for testing and > the gtest external lib > A this point : considering the complexity of my application, am I doing it right? Is there any reference that would formalize this deployment process so I can get better and go further ? Say I would like to add dynamic libraries that can be updated, external libraries like boost : how should I package this to deploy it in a professional way?"}
{"_id": "139000", "title": "What programming language would be the best fit for small browser games?", "text": "I want to make small web apps containing little games (multi-user dungeons, tower defense games, and roguelikes) or talent calculators for MMOs etc. After some research I have had people say that ASP.NET MVC would be perfect for these tasks. After looking at it I am unsure as to whether or not this is the right path to to achieve these goals. Which technology would be best to create small, web based browser games?"}
{"_id": "54443", "title": "Are there software options (preferabbly .NET) for doing distance and speed analysis of footballers moving on video?", "text": "Editing Question for Clarity Thanks for feedback so far, very insightful. I'm not sure how far along this part of the software community is, and what if any libraries exist for me to leverage from. Heres what I'm trying to do. Problem: Take an existing video of a game of rugby league. The Rugby League field is 100 metres long, 70 metres wide, and has white line markings every 10 metres running along the width of the field, as well as along the sidelines. Each side has 13 players on the field. Players on each team have identical jerseys that normally constrast strongly against background colours (green/brown field colour) and the referee's colour (usually yellow) and the designated water runner (orange). All players have a unique number in thick white lettering on their backs for identification. Video is taken with a high definition camera. Currently only one camera is used (2D) and existing video does not contain a foreground object of fixed spatial dimensions (as suggested in one answer for comparision measurements, however I could add this to future filming sessions if it is worthwhile). The player's do not run in a straight line 50% of the time but will go sideways on on a diagonal to the play the ball. The distance measured always starts from the spot of the previous \"tackle\", which ends where the player stops forward movement. It is not always possible to determine the players number from the video (facing other direction, sunlight, others standing in the way of the camera). But this isn't important as the software could allow for manual inputting of unknown \"runs\" at a later point after analysis. Determine the distance between two points (i.e. where the player started his \"run\" and where he finished it). I'm guessing that this would be quite doable if I manually marked the start and end point in the video. But how would I use landmarks in the background to determine the distance (assuming the person taking the video has kept it from jerking around). Question: Do software packages or libraries exist that are specialised enough to assist with writing analysis software to determine a sports persons distance travelled based on video taken of the performance?"}
{"_id": "168132", "title": "How can I implement an EPUB reader in JavaScript?", "text": "I'm wondering if I can create an EPUB (free and open e-book standard) reader in JavaScript. The basic requirements would be:   1. Server parts of the EPUB reader from a server API.    2. Read the EPUB data in JavaScript.    3. Render it on page.    4. Provide some extra functionality, like text highlights or page notes.  I have no information about how I could do this. I'm willing to try a prototype project. What are the steps that I could take towards implementing such a thing?"}
{"_id": "163701", "title": "Does software testing methodology rely on flawed data?", "text": "It\u2019s a well-known fact in software engineering that the cost of fixing a bug increases exponentially the later in development that bug is discovered. This is supported by data published in _Code Complete_ and adapted in numerous other publications. However, it turns out that this data never existed. The data cited by _Code Complete_ apparently does not show such a cost / development time correlation, and similar published tables only showed the correlation in some special cases and a flat curve in others (i.e. no increase in cost). **Is there any independent data to corroborate or refute this?** And if true (i.e. if there simply is no data to support this exponentially higher cost for late discovered bugs), **how does this impact software development methodology?**"}
{"_id": "168134", "title": "Which order to define getters and setters in?", "text": "Is there a best practice for the order to define getters and setters in? There seems to be two practices:   * getter/setter pairs   * first getters, then setters (or the other way around) To illuminate the difference here is a Java example of getter/setter pairs:               public class Foo {         private int var1,         var2,         var3;              public int getVar1() {         return var1;         }              public void setVar1(int var1) {         this.var1 = var1;         }              public int getVar2() {         return var2;         }              public void setVar2(int var2) {         this.var2 = var2;         }              public int getVar3() {         return var3;         }              public void setVar3(int var3) {         this.var3 = var3;         }     }      And here is a Java example of first getters, then setters:               public class Foo {         private int var1,         var2,         var3;              public int getVar1() {         return var1;         }              public int getVar2() {         return var2;         }              public int getVar3() {         return var3;         }              public void setVar1(int var1) {         this.var1 = var1;         }              public void setVar2(int var2) {         this.var2 = var2;         }              public void setVar3(int var3) {         this.var3 = var3;         }     }      I think the latter type of ordering is clearer both in code and in class diagrams but I do not know if that is enough to rule out the other type of ordering."}
{"_id": "161410", "title": "How are new[] and malloc implemented in Windows?", "text": "So when you call malloc or new [] from your C/C++ application, how does the CRT translate it into Windows API calls?"}
{"_id": "161418", "title": "How to explain to my customer that the hosting provider is terrible, security-wise?", "text": "As a freelance developer, I sometimes have to access the administration panels of hosting providers of my customers. It is an astonishingly frightening experience. Below are some points I noticed when accessing recently a not-so- unpopular hosting provider based in UK which has the word \"secure\" mentioned in large on the home page:   * The default administrative account is created with a **terrible password: five lowercase and digits only characters** , no uppercase, no symbols.   * The password is displayed in several locations in the administration panel, which is a good sign that it's **saved in plain text** in the database.   * This administrative account is used to access _everything_ : FTP, MySQL and the administration panel itself (including personal information, invoices, etc.).   * It is impossible to create additional accounts, which forces the customer to **give the same administrative password to any freelancers who work on the project** (giving them unlimited access to everything).   * The **MySQL database can be accessed from anywhere** , not just locally. This behavior cannot be changed.   * There is **no audit**.   * Nothing helps or invites the customer to do **regular backups**.   * The hosting uses **PHP 5.2.4, a version released on August 30 th, 2007** and cannot be upgraded to a more recent version. For those who are unfamiliar with PHP, the language has frequent updates due to lots of security issues discovered regularly, and running a website in 2012 even with the version released in 2011 is a very bad idea. My experience with other well-known hosting companies in UK, USA and France is similar. Some are slightly better, security-wise, but too many are doing everything they can to enforce worst practices. Then, they claim being secure and easy to use, which gives the feeling that the customer can rely on the hosting provider for everything related to security. * * * What should be the professional response from a developer to the customer regarding such hosting companies? As a developer who have a duty to inform the less technologically knowledgeable customers about the risks they encounter, what should I do?   * Saying shortly that the hosting provider sucks because it's not secure is not a solution: if the hosting provider is not unpopular, the customer will trust the large hosting company, rather than some freelance developer.   * Explaining in details every aspect of security and risk management wouldn't help neither, since it would be too long and boring for the customers to read. Spending hours reconfiguring stuff would be frightening for them too."}
{"_id": "129076", "title": "GO instead of C/C++ with cgo", "text": "Is it possible to replace C and C++ with Go + cgo and interface frameworks such as Qt or DirectX with Go? Any potential pitfalls I should be aware of? UPDATE: I see that my question was not precise enough. Of course I expected problems with Go concepts that aren't available in C/C++ e.g. goroutines. What I really wanted to know was if you could use Go to replace standard C++ functionality. I hope I can convey my idea: I thought of Go as a \"scripting language\" to leverage C/C++ libraries with a new language. I'd like to know:   * Can you register Go methods as C/C++ callbacks ?   * Can I supply Go variables as parameters to C/C++ functions ?   * Are their pointers compatible ? Go runs on a native Vm, so I guessed there might be an abstraction layer over the memory that invalidates C/C++ pointers Have you ever used cgo or know about its abilities ?"}
{"_id": "121724", "title": "Scalable solution for website polling", "text": "I'm looking to add push notifications to one of my iOS apps. The app is a client for a website which doesn't offer push notifications. What I've come up with so far:   * App sends a message to home server when transitioning to background, asking the server to start polling the website for the logged in user.    * The home server starts a new process to poll for that user. Polling happens every so many seconds / minutes.   * When the user returns to the iOS app, the app sends a message to the home server to stop polling.   * The home server kills the process polling for the user.   * Repeat. The problem is that this soon becomes stupid: 100s of users means 100s of different processes. It's just not scalable in the slighest. What I've written so far is in PHP, using CURL to do the polling and I started with PHP a few days ago, so maybe I'm missing something obvious that could help me with this. Some advice would be great."}
{"_id": "121727", "title": "Business/Development Liaison Wanting To Enhance Understanding In Programming", "text": "I lead software development for a team of of about 20 devs and we're primarily a .net/sql server shop. We've recently created a new role in our organization for a more business like role to assist in prioritization of development and this business liaison has asked me if there are any books or resources he could use to better understand software concepts in a meaningful way. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "178302", "title": "Why can't we write nested shorthand functions in Clojure?", "text": "I tried to evaluate a Clojure expression with nested shorthand functions today, and it wouldn't let me. The expression was:               (#(+ % (#(+ % (* % %)) %)) 5) ; sorry for the eye bleed      The output was:               IllegalStateException Nested #()s are not allowed  clojure.lang.LispReader$FnReader.invoke (LispReader.java:630)     ...and a bunch of other garbage"}
{"_id": "121721", "title": "When should I use static variables with primitive types?", "text": "Recently I came across the question NSString: Why use static over literal? and in the comments arrived a new question. In Objective-C there some \"special\" types that are just maps to C primitives. Like the `NSInteger`.               #if __LP64__ || (TARGET_OS_EMBEDDED && !TARGET_OS_IPHONE) || TARGET_OS_WIN32 || NS_BUILD_32_LIKE_64     typedef long NSInteger;     #else     typedef int NSInteger;     #endif      I know how to use the `static` keywords for objects but I don't understand the implications on C primitive types. When should I use a `static NSInteger x` instead of `NSInteger x`? What happens with the memory in both cases?"}
{"_id": "178307", "title": "Has the syntax of any programming language been usability tested?", "text": "Before being release to the public, has the syntax of any programming language undergone usability testing? If so, what kinds of testing was performed, what were the results, and what impact did the testing results have on the design of the language?"}
{"_id": "121722", "title": "CakePHP pair programming practise", "text": "We are on the stage of planning a CakePHP project. It is a relatively a big project for us, as a developer+project manager, I want to hire someone to work with me. But what I really want is to spend less time on actual coding, without losing control of the code quality. What I want to do is that I will design all the functions of the project in CakePHP, at least all the model's functions, and leave the implementation part to the coder who I am going to hire. But my worry is still if I am going to lose control of the code quality using this approach? is it feasible to do so or it is going to turn this project to a chaos. Thank you all in advanced for reading my question and give me answers."}
{"_id": "14931", "title": "Should you fix preexisting defects while working on something else?", "text": "Conundrum: During the course of working on a new feature or fixing a defect, you find a legacy problem in code. What should you do? Fix it and risk altering the behavior of the code. It has either been working up until now by some fluke, or else the defect has not been detected or worth anyone's time to report. Should you leave it alone and allow the problem to make the code harder to work with later? Fixing the problem will only add to the time of your original task and force you to regression test. Few will appreciate the work. Fixing it, however, seems right somehow. Code with fewer problems is easier to refactor and build upon. I've been finding myself in this situation time and time again as we work to modernize a web application. I can't tell if I'm being obsessive or honorable when I go off-tangent working on these old bugs. How do you handle these situations? Thanks, Corey"}
{"_id": "97880", "title": "In MVC should a model handle validation?", "text": "I am trying to re-architect a web application I developed to use the MVC pattern, but I'm not sure if validation should be handled in the model or not. For example, I'm setting up one of my models like this:               class AM_Products extends AM_Object      {         public function save( $new_data = array() )          {             // Save code         }     }      **First Question:** So I'm wondering if my save method should call a validation function on $new_data or assume that the data has already been validated? Also, if it were to offer validation, I'm thinking some of the model code to define data types would look like this:               class AM_Products extends AM_Object     {         protected function init() // Called by __construct in AM_Object         {             // This would match up to the database column `age`             register_property( 'age', 'Age', array( 'type' => 'int', 'min' => 10, 'max' => 30 ) );          }     }      **Second Question:** Every child class of AM_Object would run register_property for each column in the database of that specific object. I'm not sure if this is a good way of doing it or not. **Third Question:** If validation should be handled by the model, should it return an error message or an error code and have the view use the code to display an appropriate message?"}
{"_id": "252294", "title": "Why is there no WSDL type support for Web Api?", "text": "So I am just getting started with .Net WebApi and one thing that I am noticing straight away is that there is no Contract defining how the Api looks and should be consumed (Request/Responses from each Action), this is usually in the form of a WSDL for WCF/Soap. It seems to me like this is something that would be very valuable and make life a lot easier for consumers of your Api. Is there a reason there isn't one? Is there a programming paradime or principle that I am unaware of? Is there a way I could create one?"}
{"_id": "8749", "title": "Should all programmers learn at least one very-high-level language?", "text": "One mandatory course I took in uni was about functional and logical programming languages (Haskell and Prolog). It was mildly interesting, and most I talked to showed even less interest to the course (or even to learning any very-high-level languages, for that matter). The general consensus was that it is enough to know the common languages such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc. But are these kinds of languages underestimated? Should all programmers learn at least one very-high-level language, even though he or she may never have any practical use of it?"}
{"_id": "8748", "title": "Can increased usage of higher and higher programming languages lead to a deficit of programmers with computer architecture knowledge?", "text": "Quote from Wikipedia of the article \"High-level programming language\": > A high-level programming language is a programming language with strong > abstraction from the details of the computer. In comparison to low-level > programming languages, it may use natural language elements, be easier to > use, or be more portable across platforms. Such languages hide the details > of CPU operations such as memory access models and management of scope. I.e., as the level of programming language increases, the further away the programmer goes from the hardware on which the program runs. Now I do not know the statistics of language usages across levels, but I would suspect that the higher level languages more and more are replacing the lower level languages. If so, can this lead to a deficit of programmers with computer architecture knowledge? Would this be a problem for the industry?"}
{"_id": "111072", "title": "Version Control Workflow (Subversion)", "text": "I've been learning how to use subversion and would just like someone to clarify whether or not my understanding is correct?   1. Create a master repository at a given location (be it on a webserver or local).   2. Add/import files into said repository   3. Checkout a copy of the repository to work on (or specific files) to a working directory.   4. Change/work/add certain files.   5. Commit changes back to the master repository (With a note explaining changes, though changed files are noted, right?)   6. Happy days... Assuming this is correct, I have a few questions. **When working in a team, what happens when several people are working on one project and change the same files in different ways in one day?** **Surely when these changes are commit, they will overwrite each other?** **How should one go about testing their changes before commiting back to the master repo?** **Using PHP for my example, should the 'working' directory be in my xampp folder so I can test before commiting. Or should there be two \"master repo's\" on a webserver - one for testing and one for production?** Apologies for the novice questions - there don't seem to be many tutorials or documentation that cover the basics - I understand the concept of source control for the sake of reverting, tracking changes and what not, but maybe need some clarification on how teams can use it effectively. If the idea is that one person should only ever be working on a single file at a time that just seems a bit... odd. If you're working with an MVC architecture, I can see the need for common views and controllers to be needed to work on by several people."}
{"_id": "8741", "title": "How much control can I expect to have over my work environment?", "text": "Currently I'm a student, but I'm about to go look for a job next semester, and I'm a bit worried that the jobs I'll get will have me stuck with a table that is too high, screen that is too low, and a chair that barely supports my back. This is pretty important to me since I already experienced various computer use pains due to a bad setting, and I really don't want this to be an issue when I apply to jobs. So I was wondering, how much control can I expect to have in the work place over the furniture/equipment I use? I assume that it's not a big deal to plug in your own mouse/keyboard, but what about bringing your own chair, and maybe screen(s)? I'm guessing that the desk is usually hard/impossible to modify, but is it completely unheard of? And would the work environment ever be a deal breaker for you?"}
{"_id": "252299", "title": "OnClickListener good practice", "text": "Which one of the ways has better performance, or is a good programming practice, making the holder activity extend `OnClickListener` and make a `Switch()` clause for `getItemId()` or making one `OnClickListener` for each one of the buttons or widgets that need it or making separated classes in the same (or another) package that implements `OnClickListener` and instance them in the activity?"}
{"_id": "95037", "title": "Can an object oriented program be seen as a Finite State Machine?", "text": "This might be a philosophical/fundamental question, but I just want to clarify it. In my understanding a Finite State Machine is a way of modeling a system in which the system's output will not only depend on the current inputs, but also the current state of the system. Additionally, as the name suggests it, a finite state machine can be segmented in a finite N number of states with its respective state and behavior. If this is correct, shouldn't every single object with data and function members be a state in our object oriented model, making any object oriented design a finite state machine? If that is not the interpretation of a FSM in object design, what exactly people mean when they implement a FSM in software? am I missing something? Thanks"}
{"_id": "44082", "title": "Interviewing consultants", "text": "I've interviewed a number of candidates for salaried positions. I was recently informed that we are hiring a consultant for a few months to help us develop a native iPhone application. We are a .NET shop and none of us have any experience with iPhone development. I've also heard rumors that we are planning to hire more consultants in the future to help develop on other various platforms. How should I interview these consultants, considering that I have no experience with this type of development? Without regards to platform specific questions, what are the things I need to keep in mind when interviewing consultants? Normally when I interview candidates, I'll ask questions that I know the answer to. I would never ask a candidate something that I don't know how to answer. Since this is a different situation, what do I need to ask in order to make sure they are subject matter experts in their respective fields? Is it appropriate to ask specific questions that we'll need to eventually solve during the interview?"}
{"_id": "119241", "title": "generic programming- where did it originate?", "text": "Im trying to work out if generic programming was a functional programming feature which was then introduced into Java, C++ and C# or did the latter copy it from the functional programming languages like Haskell, Lisp, OCaml etc? Google is giving me lots on what generic programming is, but not where it originated. All I can see is that Ada implemented it early on. Would you class it as a functional programming technique?"}
{"_id": "123761", "title": "Algorithm for searching the neighbors neighbor of a directed graph", "text": "Is there an algorithm to search a directed graph (tree) for its neighbors neighbor? My current brute-force solution works as follows:               for each node n:        for each child c of n           for each parent p of c              if (p != n)                insert edge (p,n)      I am dealing with ca. 700.000 nodes each having between 1 to 1000 edges and currently I am facing too long running times: which is mainly due to the reason I am executing this algorithm on a graph database, since it would require too much memory."}
{"_id": "235255", "title": "Client/server model where the server rejects connections from *newer* clients", "text": "I'm using a piece of commercial software where the server will reject any attempt to connect to it from a _newer_ client. In other words, you can use version 8 of the client to connect to a v10.0 server, but not version 10.1 of the client. Obviously, this software is what it is. But why would it be designed that way? Why would clients not be backwards compatible? What benefits (if any) does this arrangement have? This setup just seems very counter-intuitive to me, and I want to try and understand it. (The software happens to be a database, but I don't think it matters to the question.)"}
{"_id": "238714", "title": "Designing javascript chart library", "text": "I started coding a chart library on top of d3js: My chart library. I read Javascript API reusability and Towards reusable charts. However, I am NOT really following the suggestions because I am not really convinced about them. This is how my library can be used to create a bubble chart:                   var chart = new XYBubbleChart();         chart.data = [{\"xValue\":200,\"yValue\":300},{\"xValue\":400,\"yValue\":200},{\"xValue\":100,\"yValue\":310}];  //set data         chart.dataKey.x = \"xValue\";         chart.dataKey.y = \"yValue\";         chart.elementId = \"#chart\";         chart.createChart();      Here are my questions:   1. It does not use chaining. Is it a big issue?   2. Every property and function is exposed publicly. (Example: width, height are exposed in Chart.js). OOP is all about abstraction and hiding, but I don't really see the point right now. I think exposing everything gives flexibility to change property and functionality inside subclasses and objects without writing a lot of code. What could be pitfalls of such exposure?   3. I have implemented functions like: zooming, \"showing info boxes when data point is clicked\" as \"abilities\". (example: XYZoomingAbility.js). Basically, such \"abilities\" accept \"chart\" object, play around with public variables of \"chart\" to add functionality. What this allows me to do is to add an ability by writing:              activateZoomAbility(chartObject);      My goal is to separate \"visualization\" from \"interactivity\". I want \"interactivity\" like: zooming to be plugged into the chart rather than built inside the chart. Like, I don't want my bubble chart to know anything about \"zooming\". However, I do want zoomable bubble chart. What is the best way to do this?   4. How to test and what to test? I have written mixed tests: jasmine and actual html files so that I can test manually on browser."}
{"_id": "45044", "title": "Recommended order for learning design patterns?", "text": "I can't help but notice the amount of design patterns that are out there. Does anyone have suggestions on an order I should learn them in? Or should I pick and choose them at random? The only one I know, so far, is singleton."}
{"_id": "69288", "title": "Strategy for designing a plugin API", "text": "I am working on an application for which a rich plugin API is crucial. What is the best process for creating an API that is intuitive and easy to learn?"}
{"_id": "255477", "title": "How much WinDbg I should know?", "text": "I have started learning WinDbg, and it seems to be big world. I wonder how much WinDbg I should know to be able to use in practical world. Secondly, please suggest good material to understand WinDbg."}
{"_id": "255479", "title": "QlineEdit: No such file or directory", "text": "I have a problem. I have QT 5.3.1 and Ubuntu 14.04. For example:               #include <QWidget>     #include <QHBoxLayout>     #include <QVBoxLayout>     #include <QPushButton>     #include <QLabel>     #include <QPixmap>     #include <QImage>     #include <QComboBox>     #include <QFileDialog>     #include <QlineEdit>     #include <QLabel>     #include <QFile>     #include <QIODevice>     #include <QSlider>     #include <QMessageBox>      Works well. The problem is the following line:               #include <QlineEdit>      Compilator return error: QlineEdit: No such file or directory. How do I fix this?"}
{"_id": "252124", "title": "Processor architectures for testing C/C++ portability", "text": "Currently I'm working on a C/C++ code-base which is fairly portable, it can compile on most Unix like systems as well as MS-Windows (MSVC), using various popular compilers. Previously I've found testing on different OS's and architectures can help find obscure bugs or bad assumptions. I worry with the dominance of x86/amd64 our code-base may unknowingly become less portable. Besides testing on a big-endian system (to find obvious errors with big/little endian), are there some architectures which have characteristics making them better for stress-testing software portability? Examples of possible differences.   * different endian.   * different behavior when threading.   * behavior of stack memory.   * size of primitive types (char, short, int, long, float... etc).   * alignment/padding of structs (which might hide errors).   * difference in optimizations made by the compiler. Are there some architectures which have more significant differences to x86/amd64, making them better candidates for exposing code portability issues? (and have C/C++ compilers and libraries - libc, libstdc++). Asking because its a sizable time-investment to setup a new system, even if its emulated. * * * _in case its not clear what I mean by processor-architectures, eg (x86, amd64, ia64, mips, risc, arm, m68k, ppc, itanium)_ * * * _Note, I'm not proposing this as a primary way to discover bugs, we run multiple static analysis tools and tests, but in the past we have found errors in code because of differences in less common platforms (SGI, SPARC, Solaris, BSD's etc. However some of these systems are fading out of use)_"}
{"_id": "245696", "title": "In an enterprise setting, does one apply BDD principles alongside of, or instead of, \"traditional\" unit testing?", "text": "I have a problem visualising how the gap is closed between coarse-grained, n-tier boundary, high level, automated acceptance testing and lower level, task/sub-task scope Unit Testing. My motivation is to be able to take any unit test in my system and be able to follow backwards, through coverage, which scenario(s) make use of that unit test. I am familiar with the ideas of `BDD`: An extension of `TDD` and writing scenarios at the high level solution design level in the `Gerkin` format, and driving these scenarios using tools such as `JBehave` and `Cucumber`. Equally, I am familiar with the humble unit test at the utility or task level, and using `xUnit` to test through the various paths of the function. Where I begin to come unstuck, then, is when I try to imagine these two disciplines applied together in an enterprise setting. Perhaps I am going wrong because you tend to use one approach or the other? In an attempt to articulate my thoughts so far, let's assert that I am right to believe that both are used. In an `agile` world, `user stories` are broken down into `tasks` and `sub- tasks`, and in an enterprise setting, where the problems are large and the number of developers per `story` are many, those tasks and sub-tasks are distributed amongst a team of people with specialist problem solving skills. Some developers, for example, may specialise in mid-tier Development, develop a `controller` layer and continue to work downwards. Others may specialise in UI development and work from a `controller` layer upwards. Developers may therefore share implementation of a single string of tasks which, when glued back together again, will implement the `story`. In this case, it seems to me that cycles of `TDD` at the task and sub-task level is still necessary, to ensure that the efforts of these developers collaborate correctly within one layer and from one layer to the next (mocking collaborators). Working in this way implies a certain amount of high level solution design up- front, so contracts between layers are agreed and respected. Perhaps this is articulated as a `sequence diagram` and perhaps this emerges during the `task` breakdown session for the `story`. Yet, on the other hand, we have the value of defining the `BDD` acceptance tests at a higher level to configure that all of the blocks work together as expected - a form of super Integration Test, I suppose. I suppose the answer I am looking for here, aside of the simpler yes/no to the question of \"both\", is an explanation/worked example of how I and a team of developers start out with a single n-tier scenario and end up with an implementation in an enterprise setting, where we've been able to break the tasks up into layers and share them amongst ourselves and work in parallel to turn the `BDD` scenario test from red to green, all the while ensuring that the the code we write is only written because the scenario calls for it, and at a fine grained level the code we have written is appropriately unit tested following cycles of `TDD` at the task and sub-task level as we go. If, of course that is _correct_?"}
{"_id": "245697", "title": "Transitioning from Java & C to C++", "text": "I learned Java and I'm pretty competent programming in it. I also learned C recently. I looked at a comparison between Java and C++ and I like C++'s features like operator overloading and its speed. So, C++ is an OOP language, but it also has all the things java doesn't have and C does, like pointers and memory allocation. Do I need to change something in my OOP design to consider pointers and memory allocation? If so, what do I need to change? If not, why not?"}
{"_id": "245694", "title": "Licensing code from my personal project to my company via an open-source license", "text": "I'm currently working on a certain problem for my company (i.e. where I work for hire and don't own the code I produce in any way). It appears, that in one of my past (or, who knows, maybe still present) personal projects there are a few useful source code files that should help with the problem I'm working on. Neither that personal project nor the company project are open source, and they are not going to become so in foreseeable future. I would like to import that (small) part of my personal project into the company's source tree. But since I'm not yet calling my project RIP, I'd like to give them the code in the way that I retain my copyright over the code. And, of course, they would need to have the copyright over the code as well - luring them into a trap is definitely not my intention. In that regard I would like to give them any right I can - to modify, run, distribute, use in other projects etc., but not to deprive me of the same rights. And I don't care if that (again, small) part of my project becomes publicly available eventually. The solution I currently have for this is:   1. Put the copyright information along with the license into every source code file I'm about to import.   2. Commit this to my Git repository (hosted privately).   3. Import the specific files and commit them their repository (hosted as GitHub private repository). The licensing text I'm using is based on MIT license, but slightly modified (I added the third paragraph), here it is:               # Copyright (c) 2013 Real Developer Name     #     # Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy     # of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to deal     # in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights     # to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell     # copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is     # furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:     #      # The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in     # all copies or substantial portions of the Software.     #     # The above exclusively applies to files containing this copyright notice, and     # does not apply for the rest of the software package containing these files.     #     # THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR     # IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,     # FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE     # AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER     # LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,     # OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN     # THE SOFTWARE.      So, the questions are:   1. Most importantly, will this measure protect both parties from the possible legal issues?   2. Is the fragment I added (the third paragraph) necessary and/or useful? Can it be improved?   3. Is it a generally good idea to give your own code to your company to speed up development (assuming that my and their projects will never ever compete)?"}
{"_id": "28306", "title": "Can I test effectively javascript functions with a PHP unit-testing framework?", "text": "If I want to unit-test some of my javascript functions, would it be more efficient (and doable) to use the already installed PHP unit-testing framework, or should I use a javascript unit-testing framework? **EDIT:** It seems I have to clarify things a bit. I'm using javascript for form validation. It seems that some logic doesn't work as I want it to be, and I thought to myself that would be a good point to begin to use unit-testing (something that came to my scope only recently). I already began to use SimpleTest on a little project of mine, but never to test logic that is generated client-side. Now I know that SimpleTest have the possibility to emulate a browser for example. But I was wondering what other method would they be to unit-test my form validation. While I was searching for idea, I realized that there is also unit-testing framework for javascript, but after a bit of searching on some of the SE sites, I didn't find anything about use of PHP and Javascript Framework together, so I wondered how common such a situation it was, and how do other people manage in such an environment."}
{"_id": "148106", "title": "initial Class design: access modifiers and no-arg constructors", "text": "Context: Student working through Class design in personal/side project for Summer. I've never written anything implemented by others or had to maintain code. Trying to maximize encapsulation and imagining what would make code easy to maintain. Concept: Tight/Loose Class design where Tight and Loose refer to access modifiers and constructors. Tight: initially, everything, including setters, is private and a no-arg constructor is not provided (only a full constructor). Loose: not Tight Exceptions: the obvious like toString Reasoning: If code, at the very beginning, is tight, then it should be guaranteed that changes, with respect to access/creation, should never damage existing implementations. The loosening of code happens incrementally and must be thought through, justified, and safe (validated). Benefit: Existing implementing code should not break if changes are made later. Cost: Takes more time to create. Since this is my own thinking, I hope to get feedback as to whether I should push to work this way. Good idea or bad idea?"}
{"_id": "212233", "title": "Is it possible to build a custom email client for Gmail using Java APIs?", "text": "Is it possible to build a custom email client for Gmail using Java APIs? Or only Google can do that?"}
{"_id": "151050", "title": "Efficient Bus Loading", "text": "This is something I did for a bus travel company a long time ago, and I was never happy with the results. I was thinking about that old project recently and thought I'd revisit that problem. ## Problem: Bus travel company has several buses with different passenger capacities (e.g. 15 50-passenger buses, 25 30-passenger buses ... etc). They specialized in offering transportation to very large groups (300+ passengers per group). Since each group needs to travel together they needed to manage their fleet efficiently to reduce waste. For instance, 88 passengers are better served by three 30-passenger buses (2 empty seats) than by two 50-passenger buses (12 empty seats). Another example, 75 passengers would be better served by one 50-passenger bus and one 30-passenger bus, a mix of types. What's a good algorithm to do this?"}
{"_id": "164160", "title": "How to start a high school Java/Android development club for 13-17 year olds", "text": "My wife is a high school maths teacher, and is considering starting a programming club for 13-17 years olds who show an interest. Their interest seems to be around Apps and Android which I have little experience of. The kids would be (presumably) interested in programming, and have a fairly high level of computing knowledge. We would provide them with resources and some knowledge, but hopefully a lot would be self guided. I'm hoping stack overflow'ers can provide some tips or starting points. Specific things I think I'll need are;   * A development Environment; Currently I'm looking towards Java and Android, developed in Eclipse, probably installed on donated older hardware   * Some initial direction; There seem to be a plethora or 'start android' tutorials, so some recommendations for good ones are valuable, as are recommended paper books    * A Target; Some final project they should be shooting for   * A Route; This is where I'm most stuck, how to lead them through the required Java concepts and learning they would need Some related questions already out there   Language+IDE for teaching high school students?   Teaching \"web design/development\" to high-school home-school group. Good sources?   How can I bootstrap a software development community at my school?"}
{"_id": "164168", "title": "Optimizing hash lookup & memory performance in Go", "text": "As an exercise, I'm implementing HashLife in Go. In brief, HashLife works by memoizing nodes in a quadtree so that once a given node's value in the future has been calculated, it can just be looked up instead of being re-calculated. So eg. if you have a node at the 8x8 level, you remember it by its four children (each at the 2x2 level). So next time you see an 8x8 node, when you calculate the next generation, you first check if you've already seen a node with those same four children. This is extended up through all levels of the quadtree, which gives you some pretty amazing optimizations if eg. you're 10 levels above the leaves. Unsurprisingly, it looks like the perfmance crux of this is the lookup of nodes by child-node values. Currently I have a hashmap of               {&upper_left_node,&upper_right_node,&lower_left_node,&lower_right_node} -> node      So my lookup function is this:               func FindNode(ul, ur, ll, lr *Node) *Node {             var node *Node             var ok bool             nc := NodeChildren{ul, ur, ll, lr}             node, ok = NodeMap[nc]             if ok {                     return node             }             node = &Node{ul, ur, ll, lr, 0, ul.Level + 1, nil}             NodeMap[nc] = node             return node     }      What I'm trying to figure out is if the \"nc := NodeChildren...\" line causes a memory allocation each time the function is called. If it does, can I/should I move the declaration to the global scope and just modify the values each time this function is called? Or is there a more efficient way to do this? Any advice/feedback would be welcome. (even coding style nits; this is literally the first thing I've written in Go so I'd love any feedback)"}
{"_id": "207191", "title": "How should I deal with problems with completed stories in agile", "text": "I am new to Agile and scrum and want to ask few things. Suppose I havetwo user stories `1, 2` Suppose I finished `story 1` in sprint 1 but while doing `sprint 2` I did something which breaks something so that my things in `user story 1` broken and I need to spend more time on that again. What do I need to do for that case?"}
{"_id": "114244", "title": "How to define the seams between the domain layer and a database full of stored procedures?", "text": "We have a legacy database full of stored procedures. These stored procedures are somewhat CRUD-categorized but upon inspection of some procedures, they are not \"simple\" as they might update, delete, whatever other records in other tables. So to my mind (correct me if I'm wrong) it would seem that using an ORM would be pretty difficult since   1. I can't access the tables directly: I must use a stored procedure   2. The stored procedures would not map to CRUD I'm leaning toward defining repositories to isolate the domain layer from the database but I fear that I would need to define a lot of infrastructure (caching, unit of work and the like) that I get for \"free\" in a ORM. Any insights?"}
{"_id": "114243", "title": "Which Resource Would Be Best for Learning C# / .Net?", "text": "I'm a PHP / Java / Objective-C programmer, looking to finally learn some MS technologies, to increase my marketability, etc. I am looking at these two books, can anyone experienced in the field suggest one over the other, or another book that'd be good for learning C# / .Net, etc? What impressed me about \"Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform\" thumbing through it at the bookstore, was that they explained a whole lot of the inner workings and paradigms of MS, not just the language. I haven't had a chance to look through the other one, and probably won't get a chance. Here are the two I'm considering: http://www.amazon.com/2010-NET-Platform-Andrew-Troelsen/dp/1430225491/ http://www.amazon.com/Professional-4-0-NET-Wrox-Programmer/dp/0470502258/ I know this is a very specific question, but I feel it can greatly benefit others like me, trying to get into some MS tech."}
{"_id": "220738", "title": "Does a GPL Bison grammar infect my application?", "text": "I am thinking about using a GPL Bison grammar for my own compiler. Will the grammar \"infect\" my parser such that it needs to be open source? The grammar - in terms of - the input of bison is GPL."}
{"_id": "165418", "title": "Can I use new BSD licensed library/code in commercial closed source project?", "text": "I've found freetype-gl library I want to use. It has new BSD license and I'd like to use it in my closed source commercial project. Can I do it?"}
{"_id": "254984", "title": "On concatenating adjacent string literals", "text": "C and C++ compiles adjacent string literals as a single string literal. For example this:               \"Some text...\" \"and more text\"      is equivalent to:               \"Some text...and more text\"      In other languages like C# or Java this is a syntax error (which is perfectly fine BTW). What is the rationale/historical reason for C and C++ to do this?"}
{"_id": "190901", "title": "Class of problems solvable by sed or stream editors", "text": "I've came across a question transform this text with sed [sed only] and it got me wondering what class of problems is solvable by stream editors or programs/computational models with similar constraints. For E.g Regular expressions can solve problems that require fixed/const amount of memory (Can solve all problems that have a Deterministic Finite state automa) My question is what are the computational limits/constraints of sed in particular and any stream editor in general and what class/classes of problems can be solved by it? (after mapping it some text alphabet set if need be)"}
{"_id": "118597", "title": "Analyzing a programming language", "text": "In SICP, the authors state (Section 1.1) that there are three basic \"mechanisms\" of programming languages: >   * **primitive expressions** , which represent the simplest entities the > language is concerned with > >   * **means of combination** , by which compound elements are built from > simpler ones > >   * **means of abstraction** , by which compound elements can be named and > manipulated as units > > How can I analyze a mainstream programming language (Java, for example) in terms of these elements or mechanisms?"}
{"_id": "160423", "title": "Justification for bidirectional relationship", "text": "I typically try and avoid bidirectional relationships at all costs. Recently I've been trying to follow a more domain centric design philosophy and I'm looking for advice in the best way to solve a specific problem. I am implementing a basic 2d grid. There are 3 basic classes, Item, Tile (has a list of Items), and World (has a 2d array of Tiles). I am struggling with where to put the move() method which moves an item from one tile to a neighboring tile. My initial inclination would be to place the move method in the Item class since it is the item that is actually moving. However, that would create a circular dependency. In the past I always worked with dumb objects in which case the move() method was in a higher layer (some kind of WorldManager or MoveManager) which knows about both tiles and items. I'm interested in what proposals others might have that can avoid the circular dependency while maintaining the domain-centric philosophy."}
{"_id": "242973", "title": "Website File and Folder Structure", "text": "I am having a problem learning how proper website structure should be. And by that I mean how to code the pages and how folder structure should be. Currently I am navigating around my website using GET variables in PHP when you want go to another page, so I am always loading the index.php file. And I would load the page I wanted like so:               $page = \"error\";          if(isset($_GET[\"page\"]) AND file_exists(\"pages/\".$_GET[\"page\"].\".php\")) {              $page = $_GET[\"page\"];          } elseif(!isset($_GET[\"page\"])) {              $page = \"home\";          }      And this:               <div id=\"page\">         <?php              include(\"pages/\".$page.\".php\");         ?>     </div>      The reason I am doing this is because it makes making new pages a lot easier as I don't have to link style sheets and javascript in every file like so:               <head>         <title>             Website Name         </title>              <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato:300,400' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>         <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"css/style.css\" type=\"text/css\">         <link rel=\"shortcut icon\" href=\"favicon.png\"/>              <script src=\"//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>         <script src=\"//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.10.4/jquery-ui.min.js\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script>          </head>      There is a lot of problems doing it this way as URLs don't look normal (\"?page=apanel/app\") if I am trying to access a page from inside a folder inside the pages folder to prevent clutter. Obviously this is not the only way to go about it and I can't find the proper way to do it because I'm sure websites don't link style sheets in every file as that would be very bad if you changed a file name or needed to add another file you would have to change it in every file. If anyone could tell me how it is actually done or point me towards a tutorial that would be great. Thanks for your time :)"}
{"_id": "117918", "title": "Automated web tests depending on developer code", "text": "When QAs write automated selenium tests to test a multi-layered website (e.g. testing a web app which is on mvs design, spring and database) should the tests make use of existing classes and frameworks written by developers or should we write simplified classes to serve the test? The downside of relying of frameworks developed by devs, is if there is a logical error in the framework it will be present in the tests. a typical example is a class that fetches some links form a database and some framework printing them on the webpage. If the tests rely on the framework to define the expected results and then verify them against the output on the webpage, then if the logic in the framework is incorrect, then the defined expected results will also be incorrect and there is a risk that the tests will pass even though the results are wrong. In my opinion, the automated system tests written by QA should be independet on the underlying framework where as the automated unit tests should rely on the underlying framework. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "207443", "title": "Methods to secure user log-in's", "text": "I guess this question has been asked before, but I wish to have fresh answers/ideas - Problem details: Let's say there's a system which allows users to participate in a survey. Users will sign on to it using SSO (single sign on), or another way like user/password. AND, Let's assume this system is REALLY GOOD, everybody love it and there are tons of scammers who would like to cheat by logging in more than once, stealing identities.. etc. The big question: What would be the best method to use authenticating the users? Possible answers, I have brought so far:   1. Using social security id (or any other \"government\" official ID number)   2. Phone number (less intimidating.. but also less secure)   3. Email + one of the above. And here's a question about emails: If I am using SSO (login with email/facebook), can I determine that the accounts entered are being actively used?   4. Cookies/flash/storage/... can be used in combination with another, stronger identification method, but, since log-in's are not anonymous, browser storage/cookies are not the right method anyway. Any idea will be appreciated ! :)"}
{"_id": "117914", "title": "Are there any tools that allow you to track and manage test cases and test execution?", "text": "For the bugs or issues, there are now many good issues trackers available which allows status and tracking issues and also allows you to organize it to manage specific releases. I am looking for test case tools should be able to support listing of functionality and test cases with possible linkage to them, allows test suits or test plans (as group/ hierarchies) to organize them. Some of the potential usage could be to identify list of key test cases that must be executed if particular functionality or modules are affected. Also Additional parameters to support related to system of execution. It would be best if result of execution of tests can be recorded with necessary comments. Web interface and possible email notifications could be essential. Please note that i am _NOT_ looking at test automation systems like cruise control etc. but more as a system for testing management. I am more keen to see a system that allows visualization of Traceability matrix. Open source projects are most appreciated, though please also suggest if there is commercial software. Are there any tools that allow you to track and manage test cases and test execution?"}
{"_id": "190192", "title": "Is a predefined key enough security when performing HTTP requests between two secure servers?", "text": "I have an AdWords script that regularly transfers sensitive data to my server using a POST HTTP request. For security I have a predefined 32 character randomized string that is verified by my server before it accepts the data. **Is this secure?** I don't know too much about the HTTP protocol, but I know that the data is being sent unencrypted. Is it probable/possible for somebody to access the data during the request? From what I've understood, the HTTPS protocol is most useful when on an untrusted network where it's easy for anybody to spy on your packets. In my case, data is being sent from Google's servers to my host's servers (DreamHost in this case). Would it be prudent of me to upgrade to HTTPS, or would this be pointless? Are there any other security pitfalls I should be aware of? I will accept the first answer that clears up my situation."}
{"_id": "253494", "title": "CAPTCHA blocking for my scraping script?", "text": "I am working on a scraping project which involves getting web data and parsing them for further use. I have been working using PHP and CURL to make scraping scripts which crawls web data and I make use of either PHP Dom or Simple HTML DOM Parser library for these kinds of projects. On a recent project I encountered some challenges; initially I found the target website blocked my server IP such that the server could not make any successful requests to the site. Understanding these issues as common I bought a set of private proxies and tried to make request calls using them. Though this could get successful response, I noticed the script is getting some kind of blocks after 2-3 continuous requests. On printing and checking the response I could see a pop-up asking for CAPTCHA validation. I could not see any captcha characters to be entered and it also shows an error \u201cinput error: invalid referrer\u201d. On examining the source I could see some Google recaptcha scripts within. I\u2019m stuck at this point and I m not able to execute my script. My script is used for gathering data and it needs to go through a large number of pages periodically over the site. But in the current scenario I am not able to proceed with my script. I could see there are some options to overcome these captcha issues and scraping these kinds of sites too are common. I have been checking my script performance and responses over last two months. I could see during first month I was able to execute very large number of requests from a single IP and I was able to get results. Later I get an IP block and used private proxies which could get me some results. Later I am facing now with the captcha trouble. I would appreciate any help or suggestions in this regard. (Often in this kind of questions I used to get a first comment as, \u2018Have you asked for prior permission from the target?\u2019 .I haven\u2019t ,but I know there are many sites doing so to get the details out of sites and target sites may not often give access to them. I respect the legality and scraping etiquettes but I would like to know at what point I stuck and how could I overcome that! ) I could provide any supporting information if needed."}
{"_id": "114799", "title": "What can a web developer learn from working in IT support?", "text": "I'm a senior studying CS and slated to graduate in about a year. I'm planning to become a web developer, but I have an opportunity to spend more time working in an IT support role. That seems like a detour from my chosen career path as a web/application developer. Is this true, or are there valuable skills I could pick up from a few years in IT?"}
{"_id": "148146", "title": "Open source code with no license... can I fork it?", "text": "A few years ago somebody created a bunch of really awesome and quite popular shell scripts. They don't work in the latest version of Mac OS X, because a filepath has changed. All you need to do is edit the file path (in four different places) to make them work again. The code is posted on a private website without any source control, the author hasn't updated them in almost a year, and this bug is fairly long standing now. It is clearly open source, and intended to be used/modified/whatever, but he hasn't released it under any license. I want to fix the bug, and post it on GitHub, preferably under a public-domain style OSS license. I wonder what the legal ramifications might be? The code is fairly simple (under 300 lines), but I couldn't rewrite it without reading every line of his code first. At the very least it needs to be moved to a website that will not vanish at any time (there is a tilde in the URL... university account?), and the bug needs to be fixed since many of the target users don't know how to go in and fix it. I have sent an email to the author, but my experience is when simple bugfixes aren't being applied to popular project, emails will never receive any response. For the purpose of this question, lets assume he will not reply to my email."}
{"_id": "126846", "title": "Why does everybody write to-do comments in capital letters?", "text": "I'm doing the same. When there is something \"to-do\" in my code, I write `//TODO ...`. But I'm curious to know when this started and if there is a reason for writing \"to-dos\" in all capital letters?"}
{"_id": "114794", "title": "Does business logic really belong on the server?", "text": "A typical stack for a web application is a database, a server with server-side code, and a user with a browser with HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Before extensive AJAX, MVC in which the controller was the server-side code rulled. A server had to route answer requests for Dynamic web pages (i.e. templated html solutions like JSP and ASP). The server to coordinate the calls to the database and decide which dynamic page to use to answer the page request. The result of all of this is that server ended up containing the business logic, even though business logic isn't strongly tied to the idea of serving pages. Now that we are moving to \"Web 2.0\" a server servers static pages that use JavaScript to fill themselves and change what they are presenting. The can be in the JavaScript. The JavaScript often implements a RESTful service meaning that it is specifying database query. So the server is left to the roles of serving actual files and answering AJAX calls. And answering AJAX calls is merely session management and providing security. And really, what a user should even be able to see is data that should be specified in the database. So from there, should the server be relegated to the role of a dumb intermediary that only occasionally does something like send out an email or fire off a webservice? Could business logic all live in JavaScript (when it is not secret) or live in stored procedures when it is? Will it make sense to maybe even combine servers and databases or make ERP solutions like SAP function as servers?"}
{"_id": "118629", "title": "strcpy memcpy reason for parameter order", "text": "Answering a question about order of parameters it struck me that strcpy (and family) are the wrong way round. Copy should be src -> destination. Is there a historical or architectural reason for the dest,src order in these 'C' functions? Something to do with optimization of the stack on the PDP-8 or something?"}
{"_id": "195995", "title": "How should I implement code review in this situation?", "text": "My question is about how to put code review into practice in a workplace where nobody else has asked for it, I've never done it before, and I'm not entirely sure if it's worthwhile for this type of programming. I'm a contractor on an assignment that mostly involves tools engineering, data analysis, fixing code when someone's Excel template changes break a macro, etc. It's total cowboy coding: Requests are more \"do what you need to do to hack together something that works ASAP, we need it in production tomorrow morning and we're only going to need it for a couple months\" than \"make a well-structured application that will be easy to maintain and develop under all foreseeable circumstances.\" The software engineering team is me and one other guy whom I supervise. We don't currently follow any kind of software development methodology beyond \"make something that fulfills the functional requirements\", and neither of us have ever worked anywhere that had any code review or design principles. Everything we make is either VBA or C# desktop apps, and each of us is usually working on a separate assignment rather than collaboratively building the same program. There is no version control system in place and we don't have server access to install any such system. What I'm trying to figure out is, given that the work is very ad hoc, what kind of code review, if any, should I put in place? Or is it even necessary for the kind of work we're doing?"}
{"_id": "253454", "title": "What does \"context-free\" mean in the term \"context-free grammar\"?", "text": "Given the amount of material that tries to explain what a context-free grammar (CFG) is, I found it surprising that very few (in my sample, less than 1 in 20) give an explanation on why such grammars are called \"context-free\". And, to my mind, none succeeds in doing so. My question is, why are context-free grammars called context-free? What is \"the context\"? I had an intuition that the context could be other language constructs surrounding the currently analyzed construct, but that seems not to be the case. Could anyone provide a precise explanation?"}
{"_id": "220778", "title": "Why is a click event triggered only after mouse click and release?", "text": "Every click event on the web works on mouse click and release. Is there a way to do a action on a click event before mouse release??"}
{"_id": "220777", "title": "Good guidelines and practices for mandatory code review", "text": "We are trying out mandatory code review on each commit -- nothing gets into master that hasn't been validated by at least 1 person not the author -- for a couple of sprints. We have buy in from both developers and management (which is an amazing situation to be in) and we want to get some of the benefits that it is known for:   * obvious bug reduction   * more awareness of changes happening around the project   * the \"I know someone is going to look at this so I won't be lazy\"/anti-cowboy effect   * increased consistency within/across projects But we're introducing something that is _known_ to reduce velocity, and if done wrong could create a stupid bureaucratic step in the commit pipeline that doesn't do anything but take up time. Things that I'm concerned about:   * reviews devolving into just nit picking   * (hyperbolically) people opening up huge architectural issues as part of a two line commit review.   * I don't want to bias answers with other things. While we're all reasonable people and we'll be doing a lot of self analysis, we could definitely use some battle-won insight into what kinds of things we should be trying to accomplish in a review session to really make reviews work for us. What are some guidelines and policies that you have found to work?"}
{"_id": "213125", "title": "Returning multiple values in Javascript", "text": "Often I am writing a function that returns multiple values, such as a pair of coordinates:               function get_coords() {       return ???;     }      If I was using a language like Python, I would use a tuple:               return (x, y)      Or, in an OOP language like Java, I would create a custom coordinate class:               class Coordinates {       public int x;       public int y;            public Coordinates(x, y) {         this.x = x;         this.y = y;       }     }      Then return like this:               return new Coordinates(x, y);      **On to JavaScript.** In JavaScript, we have the option of returning a simple object:               return {x: x, y: y}      or a Java-like approach, with a custom object:               return new coordinates(x, y)      Are there any reasons to use one above the other?"}
{"_id": "149895", "title": "Why was ASCII needed?", "text": "With an encoding such as EBCDIC being in existence already (and being 8 bit to boot), what was the need to invent yet another encoding and a 7 bit one at that? Why was ASCII invented and what problems with EBCDIC did supposed to solve?"}
{"_id": "149897", "title": "How to keep motivation in hobbyist programming projects?", "text": "There is already a couple of questions here about motivation, but they are related to programming as a job, teamwork and so on. I have been noticing, that in the past few years my motivation to code hobby projects is decreasing. It was already decreasing about something like 8 years ago, then it got better about 4 years ago, now it is starting to get bad again. Since I do not work, lack of motivation in a job isn't a problem. The projects I am interested in developing are a couple of computer games, and a ORM library for php. I want to program those things, but I feel like I lost the energy to do them. The symptoms are stuff like: unable to concentrate, coding for about 30 minutes then leave the project to do other stuff, loss of pleasure in doing the whole thing, among others. This thing bothers me, because it is (or used to be) something that make me feel happy and I don't wanna lose the good feeling of doing something that I like."}
{"_id": "245523", "title": "Responsibility for delegation of stories in agile", "text": "I've recently worked on a project where the Team lead was commenting he needed to figure out which stories we are going to be working on in a scrum. It was my understanding that stories are prioritized and perhaps a number of stories are added to a sprint from that list. At this stage during our scrum the developers each pick a story they are going to implement and off they go. I suppose if a number of stories have dependencies them the team lead might help facilitate the story priority within the sprint itself but not actually dictate which developer does which? None of us are juniors in the team and we all have equal knowledge about the domain. Our experience of particular facets of the layers i.e. UI, database, infrastructure vary but not dramatically so. So my main question is as to the role of a Team lead (and other developers I guess) within a sprint itself and delegation of stories. If it helps, the project was a MVC .NET application with some database backing. Our team consisted of 4 developers, 1 tester and a Project manager."}
{"_id": "61167", "title": "From Programmer to System Admin?", "text": "I know this sounds like a weird question, but do you think it's possible to go from a Programmer Job to a System Admin job? I mean the pros:   * You're a programmer, so you know scripting pretty well (for Cron Jobs/Bash Scripts)   * You usually know your way around a Unix System   * You could prolly debug stuff that isn't working.   * Most programmers are familiar with Computer Hardware   * You have a Degree which you worked hard for, and your familiar with setting up different software systems So do you think it's possible to go from a Programmer Job to a System Admin job? or probably not."}
{"_id": "48882", "title": "what is a proper way to register eventHandler", "text": "I was showing some of my code to a junior programer, and he asked me why am I registering functions for event handling like this:               button1.Click += new RoutedEventHandler(button1_Click);      and not like this:               button1.Click += button1_Click;      The only thing I could say was: because you just write `+=` and press tab two times... What is the difference between those two metods (if there is a difference)?"}
{"_id": "213549", "title": "Can REST, Ajax and jQuery work well together?", "text": "I'm trying to use REST (usign spring MVC) as my Ajax backend but got some problems when using it with jQuery. REST best pratices recommend using HTTP status code, e.g. 200, 403, 401, etc, and I have no problem with a 200 status code, jQuery's ajax method have a done(data) callback that let me read the reponse in json format. But when I need to return some error in json format along with the status code, I got stucked. The fail(jqXHR, textStatus) callback doesn't seem to support json in the response. So if I return JSON from the serverside, it will be put in jqXHR.reponseText and treated as plaintext instead. So my question is, is REST good for Ajax? Why does jQuery treat the data differently in case of non-200 status code?"}
{"_id": "48886", "title": "Patent in Europe", "text": "I'd like to build and sell/or free a software based on ffmpeg and some other mp3 library lgpl, So I know in U.s.a. there's a patent and royalty problem, But if I live in Europe I'd like to know if I can create software with mp3 encoder/decoder and mpeg decoder/encoder should I pay royalty? Or can someone (mp3/mpeg creator) put me in front a Court?"}
{"_id": "151949", "title": "displaying multi-section html documents - best practices", "text": "I work at a research organization and we publish a lot of large-ish documents, usually organized in sections. What I want to know is how best to present these multi-section documents on our website. Presently, what I do is load the entire document as a single page, with each section as its own div. Then I show and hide divs as needed via a table of contents and \"next\" and \"prev\" buttons. The advantages to this are mainly: 1) that you can move between sections very quickly, 2) it produces consistent analytics (when a page is loaded, I know a report is being read). The disadvantages, however, are real:   * Readers can't take advantage of browser back/forward buttons to move between sections.   * It's complicated to create direct links to individual sections (I can do it with javascript but it's not easy for other people to grab and share).    * For long reports, you have to wait for the full report to load before you can move around (and that can include hordes of images and charts). Do other people have thoughts on better ways to organize this? Here's an example of the current system: http://massbudget.org/825"}
{"_id": "151942", "title": "Is Microsoft Prism alive and active?", "text": "I've been doing a lot of reading these last two days on Microsoft Prism, but the thing I'm still not very sure of is what does the future look like for it? I know that version 4.1 was just released a few months ago, but besides Microsoft's own documentation, I haven't found many blog posts written in the last year on the subject, most of what I find is 2009-2010. It definitely looks interesting but the learning curve seems to be a bit steep and I wouldn't want to embark if it's going to become obsolete in the near future. Anyone has any insight on this?"}
{"_id": "151940", "title": "Suggestions for a CMS markup language for PHP", "text": "As a learning experience, and as project, I am attempting to write a CMS module for ZF2. One of the functionality I would like to have is the possibility of adding dynamic contents in the pages by calling PHP functions in the view scripts. However, I do not want to give the users freedom in writing PHP code directly inside the page content, but rather implement custom view helpers (or widgets) to handle logic. For example: calling `partial`, `partialLoop`, `url`, etc. specifying arguments and all. I liked the idea of extending Markdown but this would get complicated when trying to add custom CSS class to elements, etc. Then I had the idea of simply doing a `preg_replace` on some patterns. For example, the string :               ### partialLoop:['partials/display.phtml',[{id:'p1',price:4.99},{id:'p2',price:12.34}]] ###      would be replaced by               <?php echo $this->partialLoop('partials/display.phtml', array(array('id'=>'p1','price'=>4.99),array('id'=>'p2','price'=>12.34))) ?>      Obviously, there would be some caching done so the page content is not rendered everytime. Does this sound good? If not, what would be a good way of doing this? Or is there a project already being developed for doing this? (I'd like to avoid heavy third party libs and something fairly or fully compatible with ZF2 would be nice.) Thanks."}
{"_id": "151941", "title": "dvcs - is \"clone to branch\" a common workflow?", "text": "I was recently discussing dvcs with a coworker, because our office is beginning to consider switching from TFS (we're a MS shop). In the process, I got very confused because he said that although he uses Mercurial, he hadn't heard of a \"branch\" or \"checkout\" command, and these terms were unfamiliar to him. After wondering how it was possible that he didn't know about them and explaining how dvcs branches work \"in place\" on your local files, he was quite confused. He explained that, similar to how TFS works, when he wants to create a \"branch\" he does it by cloning, so he has an entire copy of his repo. This seemed really strange to me, but the benefit, which I have to concede, is that you can look at or work on two branches simultaneously because the files are separate. In searching this site to see if this has been asked before I saw a comment that many online resources promote this \"clone to branch\" methodology, to the poster's dismay. Is this actually common in the dvcs community? And what are some of the pros and cons of going this way? I would never do it since I have no need to see multiple branches at once, switching is fast, and I don't need all the clones filling up my disk."}
{"_id": "253983", "title": "Storing and presenting custom table data", "text": "I have a web site upon which I want to provide users the ability to create tables of data. These tables will come from a predefined list of table definitions of which I will be adding to myself. This list will likely grown into the hundreds. The table definitions will be created as Java classes. They will define how many columns there are and their data types (string, numerical, boolean, pick from list). It will also predefine some columns as automatically calculated form other columns. The number of rows will be limited but this could range from 10 to 10000. Additionally I will give users an option to create a custom table type where they set the number of rows and columns and the column types (string, numerical, boolean, pick from list - no formulas). The tables must be sortable on certain columns (with secondary sort columns depending on the first). The data sorting will (probably) be done by the application rather than the database as it will include different logic in different table definitions. I might include a simple text search but not a filter. The table data may be updated but I expect this to be infrequent (days apart, mostly never). What I can't decide on is the best way to store this information. I am using a relation db (postgres). Since each row will be made up of various different column types I can't store the data in separate database rows with relevant field types for each column. On the web side I want the users to be able to view paged data. Users that don't have JavaScript enabled can put up with a basic table of paged data without sort options. Users with JavaScript enabled should have options to sort data. _Storage_ **Option 1** Create an XML doc containing all the data and store in one row of the database. This will be easy to read and write but means the entire web table must be loaded into memory even if only delivering a few rows to the browser. **Option 2** Create XML fragment for each row and store in separate database rows. Since data will be sorted by the application the order must either be calculated when the first page is displayed and then for further pages only the required rows returned, or when data is updated a predefined index is created for each sort option. The predefined index seems like the better option as it won't change often but will be read numerous times. _Delivery of data to the browser_ **Option 1** For JS enabled browsers get all the data using AJAX/JSON. The response would be cached on the browser and using JS populate a table with data. Further trips to the server shouldn't be required unless the data is updated (only detected when page is refresh using a last updated time embedded in the page). Subsequent visits to the page should use the cached copy of the data. **Option 2** Embed paged data in html. If JS is enabled then further updates using AJAX. I don't want to use HTML 5 offline storage to support older browsers. I think I have to go for both Option 2s to accommodate non JS browsers and to minimize the memory usage. Are there any other possible solutions?"}
{"_id": "65397", "title": "Can symbolic AI 'learn' a data model?", "text": "Perceptrons, a simple form of supervised machine learning, must be trained with a set of known good inputs before they can \"learn\" by adjusting internal weights assigned to inputs, based on the accuracy of its results. Similarly, we know that reinforcement learning and unsupervised neural networks are able to learn without any known model of the problem; they can be designed to collect information about an environment only by interacting with it. Can symbolic AI be used to design a system that can achieve this \"naive learning,\" or is this a property exclusive to certain soft computing techniques?"}
{"_id": "150091", "title": "How to become a super user (programming)?", "text": "You try a new tool and it does not work. You google the problem and if you are lucky a random answer says you need to edit some weird configuration file and place it in a specific directory you don't know. You try but during the process things go wrong. Either because you don't understand the steps listed in the answer or because the solution is not exactly the same situation as yours. I can't be the only who is puzzled/annoyed when I am in these kind of situations. I find these problems a lot more scarier than when I don't understand a particularly algorithm. Often I can end up using 10 hours trying to get something to work without getting anything done. After that I just give up. I like programming but I really hate these moments when you need to integrate with a tool and you end up in situations as described. Often I don't even want to try new tools because I am afraid of this happening. My question is: Is there a way to get better at this? Is there a faster way to learn all this without just practicing? I have thought about getting books about unix and begin using the shell for every day use but I am not sure it is worth it."}
{"_id": "206715", "title": "How should I go about developing some basic C/C++ knowledge so that I can grok the concepts written in some Classic software programming books?", "text": "I know Java and JavaScript pretty well. I have never really worked on C/C++. But at this stage of my career I feel that the fact that I do not have adequate knowledge on C/C++ syntax(especially pointers *), I am missing out vital parts on reading some classic books in the field of software programming. Here are some of the books that I would like to read and understand thoroughly but unable to comprehend the example code as I do not know the C/C++ syntax:   1. Advanced Programming in the Unix environment where C is used.   2. GoF book where examples are in C++/Smalltalk .    3. Algorithm Design Manual by Steven Skienna where again C is used. I do not intend to work on C/C++ projects. So I do not want to spend a whole lot of time learning the intricacies of these languages but I would like to at least have some working knowledge so that I can understand at least 80% of the examples in those books. I do not want to miss out on the essence of these classic books. What should I do about this?"}
{"_id": "56151", "title": "Best way for a technical manager to stay up to date on technology", "text": "My manager asked for a list of technical blogs he should follow to stay current on technology. His problem is he keeps hearing terms that he hasn't heard of (i.e. NoSql, sharding, agure, sevice bus, etc.) and he would prefer to at least have a fighting chance of knowing something about them without having to be reactive and looking them up. Also I think he wants to have a big picture of all the emerging technologies and where they fit in together instead of just learning about each thing in isolation. He asked about blogs but I'm thinking print magazines may also help. What should I answer him?"}
{"_id": "56159", "title": "Do you use your personal laptop for work?", "text": "We're trying to get our company to let us use our own personal laptops for client work. We've agreed that any code/data will be encrypted using something like TrueCrypt, in case a laptop is stolen or lost. However, the company is still skeptical and not sure they want to allow us to use our personal machines for development. They would rather buy us laptops... but we want to use MacBook Pros and they don't want to pay for them. Even if they did buy us laptops, we would stil have the issue of needing to encrypt the code/data in case of theft/loss. Do you use your own laptop for work? What are the arguments for/against this? * * * **UPDATE:** Thanks for all the responses, its given us a lot to think about. This was originally brought up because we were asking for a \"personal loan\" to buy new laptops for ourselves, and then we threw in there that we would use these laptops for work too - since right now we use our personal laptops occasionally, e.g. at client site or weekend support."}
{"_id": "166146", "title": "Is agile about development or management?", "text": "On a debate over what Scrum is all about, I found that perhaps I totally misunderstood the agile thing. It appears to me that Scrum (which is certainly considered an Agile process) is all about managing features and sprints and roles and stuff with nothing to do with TDD, pair programming, CI, refactoring and other developer centric techniques and practices that I though (until now) are the heart of agile. Now I am facing a difficulty ! 1) Is Scrum agnostic to whether developers do agile practices? 2) Can you implement Scrum in a team that does not utilize automated tests? does not perform refactoring or does not adhere to the agile programming practices?"}
{"_id": "199198", "title": "Agile MVP (Most Valuable Player/Programmer)", "text": "Recently I've been involved in an agile project (using scrum) where management came up with the idea that the team would nominate a developer 'MVP' as well as a QA 'MVP' at the end of each sprint, voted on by the team. The MVP then gets a small monetary reward and free lunch as well as a trophy to display on his desk. We've had two sprints so far with this reward system in place. The good I see from this is the following:   * More bugs have been fixed (which is what upper management wants to see, a number change in the direction they want)   * The MVP from each 'team' gets recognized and gets a self esteem boost (or is it an ego boost?) I've noticed a few what I would consider bad sides to doing such a thing (at least from a developer standpoint):   * There are a few developers who are so concerned with the number that the quality of bug fixes has gone down. Fixes in one area are causing regressions in another.   * There are a few developers who are cherry picking 'easier/quicker' bugs to boost their bug count. Could be good of bad here I guess.   * Higher priority (which a lot of the time correlates to 'harder/longer to fix') defects actually become lower priority.   * Blocking defects are not addressed in a timely manner, as usually they take longer and require more coordination with QA.   * The team aspect within the Dev team has been lost. The team aspect of Dev and QA working together as one hasn't improved either, but hasn't really changed too much from before.   * Work beyond bug fixes, or working towards THAT number, isn't easily recognizable/tracked. I do believe that each of the 'bad' above can be addressed to some degree, depending on how the team handles each. My question is, then, has anyone successfully pulled anything like this off, where you recognize an MVP per sprint? If so, what do you think contributed to that success?"}
{"_id": "57280", "title": "On contract work, obligations to said contract, and looking out for yourself\u2026", "text": "Without boring you all with details, my last two contract assignments were cut short; I was given 3 days notice on one, and 4 weeks notice on the other. Neither of these were due to performance \u2013 they both basically came down budget issues. On my second contract, I got the feeling that I may not have been a great place to stay for the duration of my contract. Because of money/time spent getting me in the door, and the possible negative effect of my employer/recruiter, I decided to stay at least for a few months (and start looking several weeks before the end of my supposedly \u201cextendable\u201d contract). These experiences have left me a little wary of contract work. It seems that if I land a bad contract, that my recruiter would take a hit (reputation or otherwise) if I quickly found another job. But on the other hand, the client company won\u2019t think twice of ending the contract early for any reason. I know that the counter argument to this is \u201cmaybe your recruiter shouldn\u2019t have put you into a crappy assignment\u201d\u2026 either way, it seems that since I am relying on him to provide me with work, that I should try to not damage his reputation with client companies. I\u2019m basically brand new to contracting (these were my first two contracts) so these concerns are new to me. **TLDR:** Is contract work, by its very nature, largely unstable? Am I worried too much about my recruiter? Should I be quicker to start looking for a new job even after just weeks at a new company (when the environment seems unstable)? If so, do I look through my recruiter or just find another position by any means necessary?"}
{"_id": "194118", "title": "Choosing between Qt/C++ and .NET/C#", "text": "I have a desktop project I've been working on for a couple months that I want to run on Windows and Mac. When I started the project, I started writing it in Qt 4.8 in C++. Development has gone fine and the application runs fairly well on both Windows and Mac like I hoped. I would say it's about 40% complete at this point. For a little background information, the application is a variation of an email client. But I am thinking about abandoning what I've done so far in C++/Qt and purchasing a license for Xamarin Studio and writing the application in C#. There are a few reasons I am strongly considering this:   * I want to release mobile versions of this application too, and with C# a lot of the backend code could be reused on all platforms.   * I want to publish this app on the Apple **and** Windows stores. I know that you publish Qt Apps on the Apple Store but I have not read or been able to find anything about anyone publishing Qt Apps to the Windows Store. Not to mention, Qt 4.8 has no built in support for Metro UI (I would have to use Qt 5.0, which would mean rewriting a large part of the code anyway).   * Having worked in both C# and C++ for many years, overall I am \"happier\" developing in C#. However, I have a few reasons the stay the course:   * As I mentioned above, I am about 40% complete in the first incarnation of this project.   * A large portion of my program rests upon Lua, for which I'm able to use the native Lua libraries quite easily in C++, and I'm not sure how well the Lua implementations I've seen for Mono/C# work.   * Maintaining two separate UI code for the desktop app (hence, in Qt I can `#include <QtCore>` on Windows and Mac, but in C# I'd have to `using System.Windows.Forms` on Windows and 'using MonoMac.' on Mac) Honestly, at this point I'm inclined to start over in C#, using what I have in C++ as a guide and delay my release for about a month (about how long it'll take me to catch up considering other responsibilities in my life). I was looking for some input from people who have been in a similar situation. And I'm particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has used C# to publish apps on the Windows and Mac stores. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "252732", "title": "Sense of unit tests without TDD", "text": "We have new (quite big) project starting, that we planned to develop using TDD. The idea of TDD failed (many business and non-business reasons), but right now we have a conversation - should we write unit tests anyway, or not. My friend says that there is no (or close to zero) sense in writing unit tests without TDD, we should focus only on integration tests. I believe the opposite, that there is still some sense in writing plain unit tests, just to make code more futureproof. What do you think? Added: I think that this is not a duplicate of >>this question<< \\- I understand difference between UT and TDD. My question is **not about differences** , but **about sense** of writing Unit Tests without TDD."}
{"_id": "199196", "title": "Why are nested loops considered bad practice?", "text": "My lecturer mentioned today that it was possible to \"label\" loops in Java so that you could refer to them when dealing with nested loops. So I went home and looked up the feature as I didn't know about it and many places where this feature was explained it was followed by a warning, discouraging nested loops. I don't really understand why? Is it because it affects the readability of the code? Or is it something more \"technical\"?"}
{"_id": "210161", "title": "Should I commit my generated parser to source control?", "text": "I'm using a parser generator to build a compiler. Should I commit the source files produced by the parser generator? I want to commit them to avoid a dependency on the parser generator during the build process and tests. However, if I commit them, it is tempting never to update the parser generator for fear of backwards-incompatible changes. Are there other advantages or disadvantages that I have not thought of? References:   * Do I check generated code in to source control or not?   * What Part of Your Project Should be in Source Code Control?"}
{"_id": "210166", "title": "Beautiful user interface vs. more and more technical features?", "text": "I will understand if you find this is more a discussion than a technical question and if you close the topic (then, where would be an appropriate place to discuss about that? thank you in advance). The question : how do you decide between improving the user interface with a great design or adding more and more technical features? I would like to meet people interested in Windows coding beautiful user interfaces in order to improve an existing (very powerful but not good- looking) open-source project, which has a lot of potentiality! I know this is probably not the appropriate place for such a question, but maybe you would know a better place?"}
{"_id": "51873", "title": "Why is it so hard to find anything on MS site?", "text": "I have always had this question in my mind and I would really be happy to get an explanation for this. Is it only me or do you also feel the same way that it's hard to find anything on MS site. For example, every time I need to download .NET framework I have to Google it. You never know what you can download, no category for downloads. You are simply left to a search field. You never know if you downloaded the latest version of the file. The tragically true is that you have to rely on their competitor Google to find anything on their site. I know that they are a big company.   * **But is it really that hard to have an organized way to publish information?**"}
{"_id": "16260", "title": "Why is there no generic implementation of OrderedDictionary in .net?", "text": "Why did Microsoft not provide generic implementation of OrderedDictionary? There are a few custom implementations I've seen, including: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/GenericOrderedDictionary.aspx But why did Microsoft not include it in the base .net library? Surely they had a reason for not building a generic.... but what is it? Prior to posting this message, I did see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2629027/no-generic-implementation-of- ordereddictionary But that just confirms that it does not exist. Not **why** it does not exist. Thanks"}
{"_id": "16261", "title": "How is coding on a 13\" MacBook Pro?", "text": "I've been working on a 15\" machine for years, but recently I was tempted by the 13\" MacBook Pro. Because I'm often on the road, I was looking mostly for a lightweight machine, considering I've external screens almost in every place where I work. Is there anybody who's working on a 13\" MacBook Pro that would give me a tip? Is it your best friend or you're gonna throw it out the window? Outside my world made of code and IDEs, I really don't care about apple rumors: should I wait because a new version of the MacBook Pro is gonna be released? Your help is appreciated, thanks."}
{"_id": "210168", "title": "Can AspectJ or AOP in general be used to test exception handling?", "text": "I'm reading a book's chapter (\"Controlled Exception Test\" in \"Testing Object- Oriented Testing\") about testing exception handling in a running system (not at unit level). The conclusion is that it is hard to automatically trigger an exception at a given layer in the system other then simulate a cause for an exception. Wouldn't usage of AspectJ or any other AOP approach solve the problem? With AOP I can create an aspect that will throw an expected exception and attach it to the method called before exception handling."}
{"_id": "251587", "title": "Should the commit history be used to convey critical information to developers?", "text": "Recently a conversation came up during a meeting regarding the rollback of a third-party SDK from the latest version and it was noted that the fact it shouldn't be used was already in the commit history. Other developers argued that this was a bad practice and there should have been something either in the source file (i.e. `// Don't upgrade SDK Version x.y.z, see ticket 1234`) or in a project level `README` file. The others argued that since the commit history is part of the project documentation that it is an acceptable location for such information since we should all be reading it anyway. As such, should the commit history be used to convey critical information to other developers or should such information be duplicated to another location such as a project `README` or comments in the relevant source file?"}
{"_id": "251585", "title": "Avoiding Double POST", "text": "We are implementing a RESTful webservice that will allow client applications to POST documents to it and it will store the document returning a unique identifier in the response. The clients will mostly be Spring MVC applications, but do not have to be. The two client applications that we are currently working on have various JSPs which contains HTML forms that will contain file elements and other attributes. So a user will submit a form via POST to a Spring Controller in the client application. The Controller will read the bytes from the file and then POST them to the RESTful service, receive the unique identifier back, and store the unique identifier along with the other information from the form in the database. As each client can have multiple JSPs with widely varying attributes in the forms, we don't see a way to just POST directly to the RESTful web service. Is there a clean way to avoid the double POST? I could see the possibility of having a reusable pop-up window that takes care of POSTing the document to the RESTful web service and then holding the unique document id either in the session or a hidden field on the parent form. I can see two downsides to this: 1) the user may not like having the extra step of going to the pop-up and 2) the document could be orphaned if the user does not submit the parent page. EDIT / CLARIFICATION: the issue is not that a POST is being sent twice to the same resource, but rather avoiding have both a POST from JSP to Controller within the client application and then a second POST of the same data from the client application to the REST resource."}
{"_id": "251584", "title": "Haskell syntax for type definitions: why the equality sign?", "text": "I am a bit confused by the choice of Haskell syntax for type definitions, like in               data Foo = Bar      Namely: does the equality sign here really mean an equality in some subtle sense, or is it just a random notation choice? For example, in               foo x y = bar y x      the equality is really an equality: if this line is present, `foo a b` and `bar b a` can be used more or less interchangeably in the program. However, `data Foo` and `Bar` probably cannot be used interchangeably after `data Foo = Bar`. Whenever i resume my attempts to learn Haskell, i am a bit confused by this IMO counter-intuitive syntax and need to look up the documentation to recall the formats of the LHS and the RHS. Are there any alternative syntaxes for type definitions by any chance?"}
{"_id": "149230", "title": "Means for (legit) cross-site scripting", "text": "Are there good means for allowing scripts from two or more domains to collaborate in the same browser page? I want to create an extensible platform, where I provide the model and some views, but also allowing third parties to create their own views as well. The idea is that all model manipulation will be done through its API, and only the model will communicate to the (main) server, but users will be allowed to include scripts from other domains that also use that API (those scripts might \"call home\" if they want to though). I know many sites already do that, for instance when they use a CDN to provide libraries like jQuery. However, I also recall reading that those libraries had to be \"tweaked\" somehow so they won't be mistaken by XSS attacks, though I couldn't find more info on the subject. I have only superficial knowledge of how browsers isolate contents for different domains, and to what extent that isolation occurs, so some pointers in that direction would be very welcome. I'm also aware of the method of using iframes to load \"less-than-trusted\" contents, and it seems that communication between the main page and its iframes is quite straightforward. I'd rather not use that method, but will do if there are good security benefits of doing so. However, I'm unsure if that's the case, since the iframe can call arbitrary methods on the parent page... ( _Edit_ : from what I understood of Florian Margaine's comment, the method in the linked question only works for same-origin iframes, is that correct? In that case, I can see the security benefits now) Can anyone with experience on the subject tell me how it works? These are the only options I know of, other suggestions are welcome too. I'd also like to note that, while there must be some level of trust between the user and the third party providing the script (since its very purpose is manipulating the model owned by that user), each user will be free to choose extensions at his leisure (i.e. the available scripts won't be restricted to ones I previously evaluated and endorsed), so any means to mitigate security problems to the users are also welcome. **Edit:** Let me clarify the question a bit. The goal here is not to make HTTP requests to other domains, merely to have a better control of what the different scripts do to the same page. From what I understood so far of the same origin policy, **different pages** can not communicate to each other unless they come from the same domain, but scripts **in the same page but coming from different domains** can do whatever they want. Is that correct? (if it is, then I guess my question is moot...)"}
{"_id": "105071", "title": "Development platform for .NET development?", "text": "I'm currently in discussions with my boss about getting a new pc since my old one is getting ... old... I am the only \"real\" developer in the company (it's not a software company) and as such they haven't really bought any pc's with these kind of specs before. So, I made a list, because building my own, is cheaper than buying finished. http://www.prisjakt.no/product_list.php?do=lista&k=10529 And he thought it was kind of overkill. And I can admit, I may have gone a bit far on some choices (the raided SSD's for example), but I though it was better to go out high, then come down a bit during discussions. But what would you say is a comfortable platform to do .NET development on? I currently use Visual studio 2010, local SQL Server 2008 R2 (Developer Edition), 1-3 local VM's for doing testing, and I use Windows 7 Enterprise x64 as OS. I myself don't feel that this list is very overkill, not to mention that it's very future proof. I put on 240Gb of system-disk, and 4Tb of storage, so I won't run out of space anytime soon. It's a i7 quadcore, 16Gb memory... It's not the bare minimum, but it's not very exaggerated? 10000 NOK is about $1900 USD."}
{"_id": "149232", "title": "What is the acceptable error margin when estimating a project duration?", "text": "The company where I work is aiming to have a 10% maximum error margin.They expect analysts to not miss the estimate by more or less than 10%. I don't know what to think about it, since I got nothing to compare it to. What could be a good baseline to measure if we are estimating too wrong, for more or less? How much (in %) do you think is _okay_ to to miss?"}
{"_id": "117263", "title": "How you would name a .NET port of a Java project?", "text": "Assuming that a Java project is called \"bar\" or \"jBar\". How would you name a .NET port (in C#):   * NBar    * dotBar   * BarNet    * Bar-sharp"}
{"_id": "250184", "title": "How can I fetch data from more than one web services simultaneously in PHP?", "text": "I have 3 web services that are providing me data for my hotel booking engine. It is taking too long if I run them sequentially. Therefore I wanted to run them using threads, but I am not sure if php threading will support this and if it is safe, since all 3 processes that will handle the web service will read and write into shared tables. Can anyone advise me on how should I proceed?"}
{"_id": "250186", "title": "Outsourcing functionality from Django view to C/C++", "text": "I'm developing a Django project that basically boils down to:   1. A user submits a form.   2. The Django view parses the form and compiles a representation of that form which is readable by some other 'function'. By 'function', I mean some kind of executable/callable where the Django view may be agnostic about what language that 'function' was written in, or even what hardware it runs on.   3. The Django view passes the compiled form into the 'function'.   4. The 'function' performs its business on the input, then outputs some data in a format readable by the Django view.   5. The Django view reads the output of the 'function' and renders the data to a format that is consumable by the user. In my specific case, the 'function' is a large numerical computation not suitable for plain-vanilla Python. Furthermore, this 'function' has already been developed in C++11 and Python can talk to the compiled binary via os.system and file IO. **My question then is:** _why should I not just use os.system orsubprocess from the Django view_ rather than a) redevelop the 'function' using one of ctypes | swig | Boost.Python | pyrex | cython; b) learn how to write Python extensions and re-write the 'function' accordingly? I have also considered turning the 'function' into a daemon, but I am not experienced enough with daemons to be able to gauge what the consequences of such a design would be. **Are there undesirable/undefined behaviours that would arise from using os.system/subprocess as described above for a Django project that was operating under load?** Is there something else I am missing that is super obvious to everyone else? There is also this related question. But with the scarcity of details in both the OP's use case and in the answers, I am cautious not to fall for my own fallacious confirmation bias."}
{"_id": "107503", "title": "Is it common to separate back-end and front-end into two positions on web development projects?", "text": "At a web startup, is it more common to have an engineer working the front-end AND back-end of the feature (basically in charge of the whole feature)? Or have engineers separated between the back-end and front-end? Which ones are more beneficial and for what situations? The downside, I've noticed, regarding having one engineer in charge of the whole feature is that the person might only be particularly strong in either frontend or backend development but not both, thus sometimes having a decrease in speed and quality. Having frontend and backend developers on one feature increase the speed of the feature and the quality AND it encourages collaboration. But I am concerned about having 2 engineers working on one feature which may be a poor use of resources since the 1 engineer can be placed on another feature to work on. What is the common/best practice for allocation backend/frontend engineering resources at a small early-stage startup? And then how will it change as it grows?"}
{"_id": "221914", "title": "What does Scrum say about tech demos?", "text": "I'm sometimes suppsed to demo work and I wonder if the Scrum methods have specified something about how demos should be done? I've done quick demos and I've been asked to demo on-the fly while it's not realistic to expect that programming always moves only forward. SO I'd like to know if you can tell me since I follow Scrum, if there is anything there that can improve my technical demos? For instance how often and when a demo should be done?"}
{"_id": "113569", "title": "Is it true that what you learn as a CS undergrad will be out of date by the time you graduate?", "text": "I've heard this statement thrown around a few time by technology/science pundits on the web. Does it have any merit? What exactly do they mean?"}
{"_id": "107508", "title": "Teaching C++ to first time high school students: Where to draw the line?", "text": "I will be mentoring a team of high school students for the FIRST Robotics Competition, most teams here develop[ their robot software using C++. For many of the students on the team this will be their first introduction to programming. I wouldn't have chosen C++ for teaching programming to high schoolers (e.g. Python or Javascript would have been easier I think) but the choice is set. I want to teach them proper C++ (i.e. avoid a mixed C/C++ dialect, i.e. C+) but I don't want to scare them either with needless complexity. For that matter:   * Should I start using STL from day one, esp. `vector` or just stick with standard arrays? Arrays are easier to introduce but the pointer errors may be harder to catch.   * For I/O, should I stick to `cout`, etc. or do you think `printf` would be easier to learn?   * Are there any online resources for C++ that are suitable to use for such young learners? Thanks! **EDIT** : Thanks for so many excellent answers. In addition to _Accelerated C++_ , which is suggested by many people, I have found that _C++ For Everyone_ is an excellent text."}
{"_id": "205557", "title": "What are the benefits of being proficient in multiple programming languages?", "text": "I have a friend who refuses to learn any other language than Perl. How do I convince him that he can not go through his entire life with only 1 language? What are some arguments to open his mind up to new languages? What are the benefits of learning multiple programming languages?"}
{"_id": "153545", "title": "Are there any standards for preparing a user manual of electronic device?  ", "text": "Are there any standards for preparing a user manual of electronic device? I am trying to prepare a manual for a device. However, I could not find any format. If I find, I will take this as guide for me. If there is no standard, what should be in the manual or what should not be in?"}
{"_id": "153547", "title": "Should a software developer get a yearly equipment budget?", "text": "I am looking at a new position with a new company. I have talked to some people in the past (in general, not at this company) that they had been given a yearly budget to buy new computer stuff to keep up to date. Now why I feel this question is worth asking here is that Joel comes right out and says an employer should pay for the best equipment money can buy... within reason of course. From The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code > ### 9\\. Do you use the best tools money can buy? > > Writing code in a compiled language is one of the last things that still > can't be done instantly on a garden variety home computer... > > **Top notch development teams don't torture their programmers.** Even minor > frustrations caused by using underpowered tools add up, making programmers > grumpy and unhappy. And a grumpy programmer is an unproductive programmer... Does anyone know if the industry has such a standard to offer an allowance or budget? I have never worked for a company like this, but I am thinking I should toss this in the ring for negotiations. Seems reasonable. How do bigger companies like MS, Google, and Apple handle this? If you say yes, give a range... I have been told numbers from $5k to $10k. Seems high to me, but hey I would gladly take it."}
{"_id": "81741", "title": "Starting again on desktop development", "text": "Years back I did a lot of programming in Delphi (mostly scientific). For the last few years I have been doing development work based on web technologies. I need to turn a couple of applications quickly for the desktop. I have looked at Qt and the learning curve seems a bit steep. Is going back to Delphi (say with Delphi XE) recommended? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Cost is not an issue."}
{"_id": "81740", "title": "Do large mercurial repositories suffer from a \"push race\"?", "text": "Reading a few \"Why a DVCS is better\" answers to several question on Programmers.SE they all seem to say that in general, DVCS is better since you don't have a commit race in large projects, IE commit, out of date so update, commit, out of date again, commit, still out of date, etc. DVCS limit this with the concept of the push. However in very large projects wouldn't there be a \"push race\", especially at the end of the day? I know in Git this is somewhat remedied by the constant branching for everything, but in Mercurial you don't branch, you create a new head. Problem I see   1. User attempts to push   2. Out of date (mercurial won't let you push if your local repo is out of date), so you pull and merge your local changes   3. User attempts to push again but while they were merging someone else pushed, so they are out of date again   4. Pull and merge again   5. Still out of date   6. Repeat Sound familiar? Is this an actual problem with very large and popular mercurial repos? What about inside a company when everyone does their final push of the day?"}
{"_id": "81743", "title": "Do some programmers know some secrets that we others don't?", "text": "I will not bother you with details of my discussion so I will present it in the form of a short instance. A java guy has been following articles and publications of a famous programmer (a kind of Martin Fowler of my country). He says that he is sharing some secrets which other famous programmers don't share. I never believe that there are some secrets like wizards in the programming area. But some programmers who are not good yet in this area think that other famous programmers are success because they know some secrets that we don't. I totally disagree with this and I discussed it with someone and finally he said to me you are 2 years in this area and he (java guy) is 20 years professional programmer so he knows better than you. I wanted to be sure that I am not wrong. That's why I wanted to know this."}
{"_id": "153543", "title": "How to properly document functionality in an agile project?", "text": "So recently, we've just finished the first phase of our project. We used agile with fortnightly sprints. And whilst the application turned out well, we're now turning our eyes on some of the maintenance tasks. One maintenance task is that all of our documentation appears in the form of specs. These specs describe 1 or more stories and generally are a body of work which a few devs could knock over in a week. For development, that works really well - every two weeks, the devs get handed a spec and it's a nice discrete chunk of work that they can just do. From a documentation point of view, this has become a mess. The problem with writing specs that are focused on delivering just-in-time requirements to developers is we haven't placed much emphasis on the big picture. Specs come from all different angles - it could be describing a standard function, it could describing parts of a workflow, it could be describing a particular screen... And now, we have business rules about our application scattered across 120 documents. Looking for any document for a particular business rule or function in particular is quite hard because you don't know which document has this information, and making a change request is equally hard because once again, we are unsure about which spec to make the change. So we have maybe a couple of weeks of lull before it's back to specing out functionality for the next phase but in this time, I'd like to re-visit our processes. I think the way we have worked so far in terms of delivering fortnightly specs works well. But we also need a way to manage our documentation so that our business rules for a given function / workflow are easy to locate / change. I have two ideas. One is we compile all of our specs into a series of master specs broken by a few broad functional areas. The specs describe the sprint, the master spec describe the system. The only problem I can see is 1) Our existing 120 specs are not all neatly defined into broad functional areas. Some will require breaking up, merging etc. which will take a lot of time. 2) We'll be writing specs and updating master specs in each new sprint. Seems like double the work, and then do the devs look at the spec or the master spec? My other suggestion is to concede that our documentation is too big of a mess, and manage that mess going forward. So we go through each spec, assign like keywords to it, and then when we want to search for a function, we search for that keyword. Problems I can see 1) Still the problem of business rules scattered everywhere, keywords just make it easier to find it. anyway, if anyone has any decent ideas or any experience to share about how best to manage documentation, would really appreciate it."}
{"_id": "64449", "title": "Can a function be too short?", "text": "Whenever I find myself writing the same logic more than once, I usually stick it in a function so there is only one place in my application I have to maintain that logic. A side effect is that I sometimes end up with one or two line functions such as:               function conditionMet(){        return x == condition;     }      OR               function runCallback(callback){        if($.isFunction(callback))          callback();     }      Is this lazy or a bad practice? I only ask because this results in a greater number of function calls for very tiny pieces of logic."}
{"_id": "210784", "title": "What is the preferred object to store this type of data structure", "text": "I was in a conversation with someone who codes for me. He was frustrated with my approach to a particular problem. I am entirely self taught and very pragmatic - I am not a professional developer instead I sometimes write code to get something done and then pass it on to him to clean it up - make it robust etc. We are reading in large txt files that use sgml tags to mark boundaries between individual documents that are related to one another.               <opentagfor txt file>     <document>     <maybe some attribute tags of the document>     the     document     could be a uuencoded     could be html     or something else     can tell what type by the attribute tags     </document>     <anotherdocument>     <maybe some attribute tags of the another document>     the     document itself     could be a uuencoded     could be html     or something else     can tell what type by the attribute tags     </anotherdocument>      .      .      .           <closetagfor txt file>      The individual documents get consumed downstream. Sometimes they get written out to a file structure for indexing, other times some of their content is extracted and saved as 'data'. So my approach was to create a dictionary of dictionaries.                document_dictionary = {document_position_index:{attribute-tag-1:value1,attribute-tag-2:value2,document:the\\n    document itself\\n    could be a uuencoded\\n    could be html\\n   or something else \\n  can tell what type by the attribute tags}, . . .}      document_position_index is the index position of the document in the original txt source file - has no relevant meaning at all. now if I want to do something with the documents I can do things like               for document in document_dictionary         if document['some-attribute-tag'] == someValue:             do something      The problem is this bad coding (specifically using an integer (document_position_index)) was frustrating to my developer. He said that it is bad form. I still after Googling for a while do not understand. So I would appreciate either a better explanation then I got from him or some pointer to the right direction. Is this the type of question that should be asked here?"}
{"_id": "152636", "title": "Making Modular, Reusable and Loosely Coupled MVC Components", "text": "I am building MVC3 application and need some general guidelines on how to manage complex client side interaction between my components. Here is my definition of one component in general way: Component which has it's own controller, model and view. All of the component's logic is placed inside these three parts and component is sort of \"standalone\", it contains it's own form, data needed for interaction, updates itself with Ajax and so on. Beside this internal logic and behavior of the component, it needs to be able to \"Talk\" to the outside world. By this I mean it should provide data and events (sort of) so when this component gets embedded in pages can notify other components which then can update based on the current state and data. I have an idea to use client ViewModel (in java-script) which would hookup all relevant components on page and control interaction between them. This would make components reusable, modular - independent of the context in which they are used. How would you do this, I am a bit stuck as I do not know if this is a good approach and there is a technical possibility to achieve this using java- script/jquery. The confusing part is about update via Ajax, how to ensure that component is properly linked to ViewModel when component is Ajax updated (or even worse removed or dynamically added). Also, how should this ViewModel be constructed and which technicalities to use here and in components to work as synergy??? On the web, I have found the various examples of the similar approach, but they are oversimplified (even for dummies) or over specific and do not provide valuable resource or general solution for this kind of implementation. If you have some serious examples it would be, also, very helpful. Note: My aim is to make interactions between many components on the same page simpler and more robust and elegant."}
{"_id": "210783", "title": "What are examples of automating BDD specifications through the UI layer?", "text": "I understand it is better **to automate BDD specifications below the user interface** whenever possible. For example and quoting from Gojko Adzic's book: _Specification by Example_ : > Don't check business logic through the user interface My question is then: **_What are the specific use cases when using the UI layer does make sense in the context of BDD?_**"}
{"_id": "210781", "title": "ActiveX, OLE, COM explanation or informative links", "text": "I've been programming a lot with C# on Visual Studio and many minor/other languages, but I'm having a really hard time to get the grasp of ActiveX, OLE, COM interfaces. All I got is that they're like dll, you can write something in a language and make it work on another. Searching here but found nothing, searched on google but I found only hardcore explanation of people assuming it's the easiest thing in the world and building explanation on the assumption you already know what they are, giving just a line or two of explanation about them. I really need to know what's better now (as I've seen on wikipedia ActiveX it's the evolution of both COM and OLE which are older standards...) and a full blown explanation of them, possibly with code in it. In C# and Visual studio it's all much easier. You can create dll and include them in your project without much effort... Please explain here or paste links here with all the explanations you know/can find... Thanks"}
{"_id": "9081", "title": "Any experience with Mono on production servers?", "text": "I am curios to use .NET for some web applications (e.g. ASP.NET MVC 2). However my budget is limited so I would like to use Mono on Linux. I have never used Mono before, and I haven't read about any bigger sites that is using Mono+Linux on the server in production. What's your experience using Mono on Linux in production? How is the performance and stability compared to .NET on Windows Server? Is there any popular sites that is using it in production? Any articles available online were they share their experiences?"}
{"_id": "223455", "title": "Quick algorithm to find matches between two arrays", "text": "I'm faced with the following problem: I have an array which is produced by the parsing of a yaml file which contains patterns in the following structure.               \"Programming books\"         Title:               a list of titles         Author:     \"Art Books\"         Title:               foo               bar         Author:               Mrs. Foo               Mr. Bar         Year:      the program is supposed to be given random input and find if there is a book with that particular Title,Author and Year. So far I'm using the following                foreach book_type,values from config{            tag_match = 0            foreach tag from values{                 tag_no = values.length()                 foreach value from tag{                      if value in input                           tag_match++                 }           }           if tag_match == values.length()                /* tag the book matched continue matching*/      }      The program is not supposed to receive many matching lines bu it is supposed to receive a huge amount of data. So far it has to do book_type.length() * tag.length() * value.length() iterations for each line of input, is there a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "223456", "title": "Where to place configuration files sources", "text": "I am developing a C# windows service application, which have different configuration files for development, for production system, for test system, like:               Dev.config     Test.config     Prod.config      Now we are using SVN version control system, and configuration files stored in projects directories:               -trunk       -MyFooService         -Configs           Dev.config           Test.config           Prod.config       -MyFooService2         -Configs           Dev.config           Test.config           Prod.config      Prior publishing service to production you should get respective configuration file from that folders. How do you think, it is correct? Or configuration files should be placed in another repository? Or in another folder or should not be placed in VCS? Or may be it will be better to place files like that:               -trunk       -src         -MyFooService         -MyFooService2       -configs         -MyFooService           -Configs             Dev.config             Test.config             Prod.config         -MyFooService2           -Configs             Dev.config             Test.config             Prod.config"}
{"_id": "157044", "title": "Post-hoc testing in TDD recommended?", "text": "I have a personal project that doesn't have robust testing. I had a bit of TDD going on at the beginning, but it quickly became counterproductive as the project details changed dramatically over time. So a lot of previously written tests have become useless. Now that the project solidified a bit, I dont' think big changes are likely. Should I go back and rewrite those tests for old functionalities or just start fresh and write tests for new functionalities only?"}
{"_id": "157046", "title": "What is needed to become a Software Engineer?", "text": "I obtained a BSc CS & Applied Mathematics November last year and started working as a Software Developer in December. I'm currently working for a very solid company and I'm part of a small core development team, developing big software. I absolutely love software development and would someday like to become a (Senior) Software Engineer, Systems Analyst or Solutions Architect (not 100% sure about all the senior titles). My questions is - what experience do I need to obtain to achieve this? What is the necessary/desired career path? What type of courses do I need to attend to gain the needed knowledge?"}
{"_id": "116139", "title": "What are the pros and cons of the MVVM architecture?", "text": "In class today we were introduced to the MVVM architecture for Silverlight/WinPhone/WPF; it looks nice for big projects, but what are your thoughts on MVVM? What are the pros and cons? I want to get more into the architecture so that I know when I should use it."}
{"_id": "199443", "title": "what is the transferability of changes in terms of a GPL license", "text": "I have a program that is offered to the public on the web as a GPL program. This is a hobby type project that i stated 3.5 years ago and i have had one collaborator for most of that duration who has contributed some code me and my collaborator both like to see the program develop as it's both our hobbies. A person has adopted its game board to a play against the computer program. He wrote his own engine and his game he plays on the board uses a different set of rules. I think both me and my collaborator are ok with a more permissive licence grant. I've told the the derived work author that code he modifies he can add his copyright, and any java files that are all his code he can have sole copyright. I can grant a more permissive grant. But if i do what would his right of transferability be. By granting him a modification of gpl and he makes his code open source, could he in turn give the same grant to anyone else or does he not have a right of transferability? The first question (that would cause the second to be not applicable) is: would GPL work for what i'm doing to promote my brand and allow others somewhat permissive use. The secondary question is would my lack of enforcement or accepting modifications of terms be inherited by any users of his work. My open source software is in a hobby area, chess. Understanding the open source licences helps me be persuasive and helps with communication as the eventual adapters of code begin."}
{"_id": "90654", "title": "How do you control code quality on your team?", "text": "Here is my situation. After almost 2 years I was able to convince my boss to use TDD, version control, coding standards for the entire team and a MVC framework for our web projects. I was finally there. It should be heaven but it's ending up like hell. I prepared some material about MVC and code samples showing common unit tests. Showed to the team, explained how things should be done and got their support. It seemed all fine, after all, team members were very experienced. I also made sure that the members had time to do things. At first, writing tests can take a very long time. So I tried to make them comfortable with \"losing\" this time without any manager asking them to do things quickly and dirty. After 15 days I was doing the first review of the code. And the result was not good. I found business logic on controllers and on views and the tests folder were almost empty How do you deal with these kind of things? Do you recommend any tools that can help me on code review or this is something that I have to do manually? I'm using PHP with Zend Framework."}
{"_id": "199446", "title": "How to design a good receipt number", "text": "I am developing a web application, this application will need to generate receipt number for every confirmed transaction. What is a good receipt number? I think a receipt number should not be just a running number generated by database, but it should have some meaning beyond just a unique running number. Here is what I have come up with so far,               Format: EYY-ddd-XXXXXXX     Example output: E13-146-0000001      Where: `E` : It is just a to signify this receipt number was generated by my system. This value is always `E`. `YY` : Is the current year the receipt was generated, so in this case it is `13` `ddd` : Is the day of the year, `146` is May 26 (in 2013). `XXXXXXX` : Is a 7 digit running number, up to 9,999,999 So my system can generate up to 10 million unique receipt numbers daily until 2099. What do you think? Is this sensible? Any suggestion is appreciated. **Update** Judging from the comments so far, it looks like there is no specific 'pattern' or 'best practices' for receipt number. My intention in asking the question is to know whether there is specific best practises in generating the number that I should know about. Looks like I am free to use whatever pattern I feel sensible. Other requirements   * As short as possible (that is why I didnt go for YYYYMMdd-XXXXXXX)   * Somewhat not to obvious (YYYMMdd is way to obvious).   * Should be fixed length. (Easier to detect if customer entered invalid receipt number)   * Can generate fairly large numbers (10 million a day seems sensible, though I doubt my system will be that popular)   * Can be made into QR code (so staff can scan and verify the number is valid)   * Someone mentions about **error detection code like ISBN** , seems good but I havent read it yet."}
{"_id": "90653", "title": "View Source - is the Viewable markup important to you?", "text": "I just read a very compelling blog post from Scott Hanselman where he quoted colleague Erik Meijer as follows: > JavaScript is an assembly language. The JavaScript + HTML generate is like a > .NET assembly. The browser can execute it, but no human should really care > what\u2019s there. - Erik Meijer He goes on to give examples of how some of today's biggest sites (the one he shows is from Google+, but cites also Bing, Facebook, etc.) are producing sites where when you do a \"View Source\", you will see a lot of tight \"minified javascript\". Essentially, unreadable on the surface. Simply put, you cannot go into a site and look at their source and see a pretty formatted version of the markup. My question to you is similar to what Hanselman asks: is that important to you? If it works, is that good enough? In my opinion, YES - results are what matters - Google is an example of that. But I must admit, as a developer, it is nice to have the ability to, once in a while, look at the source and get ideas and examples from sites I admire. Your thoughts?..."}
{"_id": "162138", "title": "Issue when Return Message is a collection of objects (Sequence Diagram)", "text": "I have a sequence diagram for the following operation. The Activity class uses method present in ActivityBL class. The method is: GetActivities(ActivitySearch objt) The result message is a collection of Activity objects. (Colletion in C#). How do we represent the return message in the sequence diagram? At present, I am listing it as message containing only one Activity object. How to represent it as a collection? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9Sja7.gif)"}
{"_id": "198312", "title": "What is the name of a grammar which can change its tokenizer in mid parse?", "text": "I was creating a language and discovered that my language tokenizer would have to change depending where in the parse it is. I.e. `abc[1]` would be parsed as 4 tokens (`abc`, `[`, `1`, `]`), where as `{ abc[1] }` would be parsed as 3 (`{`, `abc[1]`, `}`). Is a grammar that would change its tokenizer mid parse defined somewhere? Does a grammar even define such a thing or is it irrelevant to the grammar and is just not really done on a parser level?"}
{"_id": "168273", "title": "About anonymous objects", "text": "In Java particularly Android development, is there any difference between declaring an object like               SomeObject object = new SomeObject();     someField.setObject(object);      compared to an anonymous object (not sure if that's what is called)               someField.setObject(new SomeObject());      performance wise? Or improvements in memory. Thanks."}
{"_id": "71814", "title": "How do \"You Ain't Gonna Need it\" and \"Now is better than never\" play together?", "text": "I often find myself embracing \"now is better than never\" when I'm advancing the DRYness of a design. Typically, I find that I need to cultivate an understanding of the One Authoritative Location for a piece of knowledge in the context of a system of other pieces of knowledge. Thus, I tend to design the system 'now.' Conversely, this practice causes me to build fairly far in advance, despite a reasonable chance that I ain't Gonna Need It. How do these two patterns square up? What practices do you use to ensure that they play nice? How do you teach them together without creating confusion?"}
{"_id": "168279", "title": "Passing variables from PHP to C++", "text": "I need to call a program from PHP and pass some vars and/or sets of key-value pairs to it. How do I pass these vars, through arguments to the called function? `exec(\"/path/to/program flag1 flag2 [key1=A,key2=B]\");` Or is there a better method to achieve this? Somebody suggested to me to write them into a txt file and pass the path to it to as an argument instead, `exec(\"/path/to/program path_to_txt_file);` but I\u2019m not to excited about this method."}
{"_id": "132309", "title": "Why are cons lists associated with functional programming?", "text": "I have noticed that most functional languages employ a singly-linked list (a \"cons\" list) as their most fundamental list types. Examples include CLisp, Haskell and F#. This is different to mainstream languages, where the native list types are arrays. Why is that? For CLisp (being dynamically typed) I get the idea that the cons is general enough to also be the base of lists, trees, etc. This might be a tiny reason. For statically typed languages, though, I can't find a good reasoning, I can even find counter-arguments:   * Functional style encourages immutability, so the linked list's ease of insertion is less of an advantage,   * Functional style encourages immutability, so also data sharing; an array is easier to share \"partially\" than a linked list,   * You could do pattern matching on a regular array just as well, and even better (you could easily fold from right to left for example),   * On top of that you get random access for free,   * And (a practical advantage) if the language is statically typed, you can employ a regular memory layout and get a speed boost from the cache. So why prefer linked lists?"}
{"_id": "254205", "title": "Do first-class methods exist?", "text": "Okay, I know first-class functions are cool, closures even better, etc. But is there any language with first-class methods? In my mind, I see a first-class method as an \"object\" that has both a function pointer and a pointer to a specific instance of the class/object, but the implementation doesn't matter. I just want to know if there is _any_ language that uses them. And as a bonus, how were they implemented?"}
{"_id": "58266", "title": "How agile methodologies can be applied in a typical \" services \" company?", "text": "My company is a custom software services company for external clientes, which means our typical project is one in which the contract already states the full budget of the project. Our typical project starts by defining requirements (improving the proposal high-level requirements), then we code the project, test it and ship it. We have an acceptance phase were the client tests the software and in that phase we can usually implement small changes asked by the client, or we charge extra for change requests. In some projects we have intermediate releases so the clients can check the progress of the project and give feedback on it. In summary: something like waterfall... I've followed the \"agile\" movement for a bit now and I always see it being a good match for a \"product\" company, or a company building software for an internal client. But are there good stories / advantages on using agile methods in my kind of company/projects? What are your experiences, what do you think about this?"}
{"_id": "104855", "title": "What do people in IT consulting firms do?", "text": "What do people in IT consulting firms do? Ok I can guess they _consult_ , provide answers to questions, but exactly what kind of questions do they answer that it is even possible people will pay enough for them to sustain their company expenses?"}
{"_id": "190120", "title": "Should I use Dependency Injection or static factories?", "text": "When designing a system I am often faced with the problem of having a bunch of modules (logging, database acces, etc) being used by the other modules. The question is, how do I go about providing these components to other components. Two answers seem possible dependency injection or using the factory pattern. However both seem wrong:   * Factories make testing a pain and don't allow easy swapping of implementations. They also don't make dependencies apparent (e.g. you're examining a method, oblivious to the fact that it calls a method that calls a method that calls a method that uses a database).   * Dependecy injection massively swells constructor argument lists and it smears some aspects all over your code. Typical situation is where constructors of more than half classes look like this `(....., LoggingProvider l, DbSessionProvider db, ExceptionFactory d, UserSession sess, Descriptions d)` Here's a typical situation I have a problem with: I have exception classes, which use error descriptions loaded from the database, using a query which has parameter of user language setting, which is in user session object. So to create a new Exception I need a description, which requires a database session and the user session. So I'm doomed to dragging all these objects across all my methods just in case I might need to throw an exception. How do I tackle such a problem??"}
{"_id": "211789", "title": "Why we use virtual and override keywords in c#", "text": "Can anyone explain me what's the point of overriding base class implementations (if its not abstract), because it's not ethical move to modify features of the parent class according to the wishes of derived classes. The best way is to make the base classes abstract and carry on the inheritance chain. Whereas when designing a class hierarchy initially we gather or elicit all the essential requirements/features that should be belonged to a base class. Therefore, in a middle of a project we do not need to change base class implementations. According to my knowledge, base class implementation should be a constant. Thus, under this aspect, there's no real use of \"override\" keyword in c#. If it's not so please explain me with an example."}
{"_id": "211780", "title": "Future of a ServiceStack based Solution in the Context of Licensing", "text": "I just want someone to clarify the following questions as Demis Bellot had announced a couple of weeks ago that ServiceStack would go commercial. Refer link below. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12tfvoackvnx1xzd04cfrirpvybu1nje54 (Please note that when I say ServiceStack or SS I refer to all associated SS libraries such as ServiceStack.Text, etc.)   1. If I have a solution already developed using ServiceStack today will I have to purchase a license once SS goes commercial even if I don't upgrade the SS binaries to the commercial release version?   2. Will previous versions of SS (prior to commercial licensing) always be opensource and use the same license as before?   3. If I fork SS today (prior to commercial licensing) on Github, would it be illegal to maintain that after SS goes commercial?   4. If the answer to question 2 is yes, then would I still be able to fork a previous version after SS goes commercial without worrying about the commercial license (all the while maintaining and releasing the source to the public)?"}
{"_id": "211783", "title": "Is MultiTasking in a development environment worthwhile?", "text": "If we get assigned to do multiple works simultaneosly, is it good for growth for a developer? If there is a development project and if you are assigned to work on a maintenance project as well, is it good for the growth or will it inhibit the progress?"}
{"_id": "37812", "title": "Saving critical data in (third party) databases", "text": "How do you save important(privacy-wise) user data like SSN, Credit Card Numbers and Addresses in databases? **Scenario:**   Only data which needs to be available is saved. For eg, SSN is saved because the app uses the SSN to identify a particular record. or credit card details are saved to make 1-click transactions possible.Some such data can be encrypted and saved, but some data needs to be available in plain text(eg. for full text search). The app uses third party hosting. **Questions:**   How secure is such data in plain text(or otherwise) on third party hosts like HostGator or App Engine? Do you save such data on third party hosts(and is this practice recommended)? Do you store it in plain text or do you encrypt such data? Should only those companies who have the resources to have their own servers proceed to build such apps?"}
{"_id": "142760", "title": "How to represent a Rubik's Cube in a data structure", "text": "If I am attempting to simulate a Rubik's Cube, how would you create a data structure to store the cube's state in memory, with X number of tiles per side? Things to consider:   * the cube can be of any size   * it is a Rubik's cube, so layers can be rotated"}
{"_id": "142768", "title": "In Search of Automatic ORM with REST interface", "text": "I have this wish that so far Google hasn't been able to fulfill. I want to find a package (ideally in PHP, because I know PHP, but I guess that's not a hard requirement) that you point at a database, it builds an ORM based on what it finds there, and exposes a REST interface over the web. Everything I've found in my searches requires a bunch of code--like, it wants you to build the classes for it, but it'll handle the REST request routing. Or it does database and relational stuff just fine, but you have to build your own methods for all the CRUD actions. That's dumb. REST is well defined. If I wanted to re-invent the wheel, I totally could, but I don't want to. Isn't there somebody who's built a one- shot super-simple auto-RESTing web service package?"}
{"_id": "142769", "title": "Should injecting dependencies be done in the ctor or per method?", "text": "Consider:               public class CtorInjectionExample     {         public CtorInjectionExample(ISomeRepository SomeRepositoryIn, IOtherRepository OtherRepositoryIn)         {             this._someRepository = SomeRepositoryIn;             this._otherRepository = OtherRepositoryIn;         }              public void SomeMethod()         {             //use this._someRepository         }              public void OtherMethod()         {             //use this._otherRepository         }     }      against:               public class MethodInjectionExample     {         public MethodInjectionExample()         {         }              public void SomeMethod(ISomeRepository SomeRepositoryIn)         {             //use SomeRepositoryIn         }              public void OtherMethod(IOtherRepository OtherRepositoryIn)         {             //use OtherRepositoryIn         }     }      While Ctor injection makes extension difficult (any code calling the ctor will need updating when new dependencies are added), and method level injection seems to remain more encapsulated from the class level dependency and I can't find any other arguments for/against these approaches. Is there a definitive approach to take for injection? (N.B. I have searched for information on this and tried to make this question objective.)"}
{"_id": "132359", "title": "Is something like coderunner possible on PC?", "text": "I'd give my firstborn's left arm for something like this http://krillapps.com/coderunner/ Yes, I know, executing unknown code may be hazardous to your health, but I'm quite capable of reading some code before I run it"}
{"_id": "91017", "title": "Concurrent development w/o central design?", "text": "I've got a team of developers which are trying to write specifications/tests concurrently for different (and sometimes adjacent) parts of the system. Typically, the person writing the specification/test is **not** the developer who will write the implementation and make the specification/test pass. Here's the problem we're having: the person _receiving_ the specification/test for which an implementation hasn't yet been written isn't familiar enough with the design of the system's many objects to know: _Do I solve this problem (the specification/test) with an existing object(s), or do I create (for the first time) the dependencies which will allow the system to pass this specification/test?_ Not all of the developers on the project have the domain knowledge to make these decisions _well_ , and we're colliding so far as disparate designs and objects created in relative isolation begin to conflict and duplicate each other. What is the solution(s) to this problem? Is it simply inescapable that every developer in the project must know (or be prepared to ask) the system's objects? Feel free to provide what you think are obvious answers."}
{"_id": "132351", "title": "To go for scjp 6(now ocp jp 6) or oca jp 7?", "text": "I have been preparing for scjp 6 since 2 weeks. Now I came to know about the OCA JP 7 and OCP JP 7 exams. Should I start preparing for OCA JP 7 or go ahead with OCP JP 6(formaly scjp 6)? Also I am currently referring SCJP 6 by Sierra and Bates."}
{"_id": "91018", "title": "How long can it take for a screen to appear before it's considered a performance issue?", "text": "I am involved with the development of a Windows application that has various screens. One of them takes ten seconds to appear with no spinner or other indication that the screen is loading. I consider this a serious performance issue but I seem to be the only one who is concerned. Am I being overzealous? What is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a screen to appear?"}
{"_id": "91019", "title": "Where should the description about branches in a VCS be stored?", "text": "If you maintain many branches in your favorite version control system it is essential understand which branch for which indented. In SVN you can put _README_ on same level as trunk/branches/features dirs. How about DVCS? You can maintain _ChangeLog_. But with this approach it is hard get breif view that done in all branches (if you maintain different long lived releases changelogs between them they can be slightly different). In open source project info about branches usually can be found on project wiki, so stored separately from VCS. I think this is bad thing. When you clone project you also need aceess to wikis."}
{"_id": "6542", "title": "Does LaTeX have a future outside of CS?", "text": "_with emphasis on outside of cs science students & staff_ In the \"good ol' days\" LaTeX was **it** ; mainly because of two reasons, first - it gave such a better quality document that nothing else came close, and second - there was pretty much nothing else as a valid alternative. _I'm talking 1985-1995 here._ And because of that, a major part of technical (or medicine, biochems., ... which have a logical way of thinking in them) users (people in general, in those professions) used it for their documents. It wasn't too hard to learn, and gave excellent results. Nowadays, however, _things are a changin_ , as old Dylan would put it. MS Word** for example as the most common one, is giving _quite a nice_ result, with a much higher gain/pain ratio. For most people, it is _good enough_. If one wants to create a document for which there is no LaTeX template, pros start to weight even more on Word's side. So, the question is this - do you think /and why - argument it/ LaTeX & co. has a future outside of cs sciences world (which users are inclined towards programming, and therefore usually take in LaTeX structure naturally, or at least with much less effort) given the recent trends? ** insert your favourite word processor; MS Word was taken just as an example p.s. This was inspired by one other question that came about recently, but also with the trend I noticed recently, but which has been going for a while now (past few years) that even technical magazines, which used to demand articles in TeX, now ask for them in .doc format (or ...)."}
{"_id": "222325", "title": "Why it is `(cons 1 (cons 2 (cons 3 nil)))` and not `(cons 3 (cons 2 (cons 1 nil)))` for [1,2,3]?", "text": "Is there any special reason that to construct list in Scheme you use               (cons 1 (cons 2 (cons 3 nil)))      instead of               (cons 3 (cons 2 (cons 1 nil)))      ? While the first seems more obvious because it **reads** in the right order, the second is the one which actually **reduces** in the right order. Also, it seems more natural to construct a list starting with nil and adding elements to it, not the opposite. I've also found the latter has properties such as being very curry friendly: `(cons 1)` nicely becomes `a function that appends 1 to a list`."}
{"_id": "27560", "title": "What defines a good developer from an employer\u2019s perspective?", "text": "Suppose the company who the developer starts at is a cooperative, team of 10-15 members. The company follows SDLC.   * **What qualities do you think an employer seeks in a developer?**   * **You are welcome to explain why the quality is important from employer\u2019s point of view.** Here are some examples:   * Analytic / Logical / Critical / Questioning / Methodical   * Team player   * Responsible    * Social   * Problem solver"}
{"_id": "27564", "title": "What features would you like to have in PHP?", "text": "Since it's the holiday season now and everybody's making wishes, I wonder - which language features you would wish PHP would have added? I am interested in some practical suggestions/wishes for the language. By practical I mean:   1. Something that can be practically done (not: \"I wish PHP would guess what my code means and fix bugs for me\" or \"I wish any code would execute under 5ms\")   2. Something that doesn't require changing PHP into another language (not: \"I wish they'd drop $ signs and use space instead of braces\" or \"I wish PHP were compiled, statically typed and had # in it's name\")   3. Something that would not require breaking all the existing code (not: \"Let's rename 500 functions and change parameter order for them\")   4. Something that _does_ change the language or some interesting aspect of it (not: \"I wish there was extension to support for XYZ protocol\" or \"I wish bug #12345 were finally fixed\")   5. Something that is more than a rant (not: \"I wish PHP wouldn't suck so badly\") Anybody has any good wishes? Mod edit: Stanislav Malyshev is a core PHP developer."}
{"_id": "216786", "title": "Architecture design with MyBatis mappers", "text": "I am creating rest web service for providing data. I am using Spring MVC for handling rest requests, and MyBatis for data access. Application should be designed in the way that it should be easy to change the data access implementation (for example to hibernate or something else) and it has to be fast (so I am trying to avoid unnecessary overcomplication of design). Now my question is about the general design of layers. I would normally use DAO interface and then different implementations for different data access strategies, but MyBatis uses interfaces to access the data. So I can think of 2 possible models but I am not sure which one is better or if there is any other nice way:   1. Controller layer - uses Service layer interfaces     * services are then implemented for each data access stretegy - for example for mybatis:     * service implementation uses Mapper classes to access data and do whatever it needs to do with them and sends them to controller layer   2. Controller layer - uses Service layer - service layer uses DAO interfaces     * DAOs are then implemented for each data access strategy - for example for mybatis:     * DAO class uses mapper interface to access data and sends them to service layer, service layer then do whatever it needs to do with them and sends them to controller layer I prefer the first strategy as it seems to be less complicated, but then I would have to write all of the service code for another data access again. What do you think? Thank You"}
{"_id": "156395", "title": "Lending epub files for limited time to users", "text": "I am looking for components to build a digital library who lends people epub (ebooks) for about a week. It's like a digital version of the offline old public library. Now I have found several flash (pdf) file streaming solutions. But that would require an active internet link. And like the public library, you are able to take your books to the beach or pool on holiday abroad where you have no connection. So streaming is no option. The other file restriction method I have found was DRM, but that would require a really expensive license of Adobe Content Server 4 which is not suitable for my little hobby project. But it seems that adobe content server and Adobe Digital Editions is the only option at the moment. Or are there open source alternatives?"}
{"_id": "225068", "title": "Create ASP.NET input forms from XSD?", "text": "I have several types of XML document. The format of (i.e. the elements in) each document type is defined in an XSD. Is there a convenient way to create HTML elements (or ASP.NET controls) on an ASP.NET form, to display/edit the elements in (contents of) an XML document, given the XML document and/or the document's XSD definition as input? Within the XML/XSD:   * Complex (i.e. parent) elements may contain sub-elements   * Simple elements are of type 'string', 'integer', 'list of string values', etc.: which should map to corresponding HTML input elements   * Elements are documented (labelled) using `<xs:annotation>` in the XSD (these would be suitable HTML `<label>` elements for the corresponding `<input>` elements).   * Each element is required, not required, and/or there may be several of them, specified using `minOccurs` and `maxOccurs` in the XSD As well as generating the ASP.NET form, when the user posts the completed form, the software should read the returned data and pack it into an XML document. How to do this? I can write software to parse the XSD and generate the forms myself but that seems like a lot of code to write in-house and maintain."}
{"_id": "188536", "title": "Is there a proper way to create a file format?", "text": "I'm building a proprietary file format for an application I wrote in C# .NET to store save information and perhaps down the line project assets. Is there a standard on how to do this in any way? I was simply going to `Serialize` my objects into binary and create a header that would tell me how to parse the file. Is this a bad approach?"}
{"_id": "147682", "title": "Apply vs. Ok buttons", "text": "Often when configuring settings, applications have both an \"Apply\" and an \"Ok\" button. Should the \"Ok\" button always perform the \"Apply\" before closing the window out? Are there pros and cons to doing this?"}
{"_id": "185326", "title": "Why do I need unit tests for testing repository methods?", "text": "I need to play devils advocate on this question a bit because I cannot defend it well because of lack of experience. Here is the deal, I get _conceptually_ the differences between unit testing and integration testing. When specifically focusing in on persistence methods and the repository, a unit test would use a mock possibly via a framework like Moq to assert that say an order searched for was returned as expected. Let's say I have built the following unit test:               [TestMethod]     public void GetOrderByIDTest()     {        //Uses Moq for dependency for getting order to make sure         //ID I set up in 'Arrange' is same one returned to test in 'Assertion'     }      So if I set up `OrderIdExpected = 5` and my mock object returns `5` as the ID my test will pass. I get it. I _unit tested_ the code to make sure what my code preforms returns the expected object and ID and not something else. The argument I will get is this: > \"Why not just skip the unit tests and do integration tests? It's testing the > database stored procedure **and** your code together that's important. It > seems like too much extra work to have unit tests and integration tests when > ultimately I want to know if the database calls and the code work. I know > the tests take longer, but they have to be run and tested regardless so it > seems pointless to me to have both. Just test against what matters.\" I could defend it with a text book definition like: \"Well that's an _integration test_ and we need to test the code separately as a unit test and, yada, yada, yada...\" This is a case where a purist explanation of practices vs. reality is loosing out. I run into this sometimes and if I can't defend the reasoning behind unit testing code that ultimately relies on external dependencies, than I can't make a case for it. Any help on this question is greatly appreciated, thanks!"}
{"_id": "147681", "title": "Command line merge conflict tools", "text": "I sometimes prefer to work in a terminal. I use git, and sometimes have merge conflicts. Are there any merge-conflict-resolution tools that work in a command-line only environment?"}
{"_id": "156024", "title": "Drawing shapes dynamically on an image through web browser", "text": "We have a scenario where we create floor plans of locations when we visit. The floor plan is finally shown on the web. It's come to the point now where we want to show floor plans but have a key with various items on them, when an item on the key is clicked, the image should highlight all the areas of the floorplan that have that specific item. I guess we're looking for some sort of open standard javascript lib to deal with SVG (has to work pre IE9 so pure SVG wont cut it) and the floor plans have to be able to be created through a .net application to be deployed on the web. I'd rather stay away from flash if at all possible to be honest. Below are a few conceptual images of what we're trying to achieve. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/gUBpc.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pGbCh.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ectLN.png)"}
{"_id": "156026", "title": "In-memory DB to perform intersects on set slices", "text": "I have a specific programming need where I need to efficiently store large sorted sets in memory, query them for ranges, and intersect them against other sets that are also queried for ranged. I am looking at Redis, but I can't see a range slice command. MongoDB can only use 1 index, so it has to perform row-level scans, whereas I wish to process using columns that are intersected. I'm also looking at Counchbase, but can't easily determine from the documentation if it is suited to this. I know it uses Memcached, which is AFAIK not suited to this usage. Could anyone share potential solutions for this specific problem? **EDIT** For example, I need to perform the following: Get the IDs of all cars where the price is between 2000 and 3000, and intersect that will all cars where the engine capacity is between 3000 and 4000."}
{"_id": "186598", "title": "var args constructors/methods vs lists", "text": "In the long debate of using arrays vs lists in the public API of Java classes, I tend to prefer lists in most situations. However, I also found convenient to use var arguments in many constructors and methods, which require declaring an argument of the method (the last one) as an array (implicitly adding \"...\" before the parameter name). Since in many of these methods I do want to provide a programmer the possibility to _either_ explicitly list the arguments (with var args) or use a pre-defined collection when invoking the method, I often end up defining a constructor or method with var arguments, and an overloaded version that accepts a list instead of the var args array. For example:               public void myMethod(X ...items) {           myMethod(Arrays.asList(items));     }            private void myMethod(List<X> items) {           ...       }        I know that in theory I do not need to overload the method replacing the var args array with a list if I want the programmer to send a collection of objects. He could just send an array. The reason I often do this is because most (if not all) of the methods in my API use lists instead of arrays, and it is a bit weird that for one or two methods requirying collection of objects, the programmer needs to work with arrays (in cases when the var args are not convenient). So I provide an overloaded version working with list for consistency. However, since this is a recurrent problem, I have the uncomfortable feeling of being writing boilerplate code too often. I would like to receive feedback if my motivation of keeping my interface consistent (accepting var arrays or lists, but not forcing the programmer to work with arrays if not really required) is valid enough to keep writing overloaded versions using lists for most of my methods requirying var arguments. I would like to highlight that I know that for certain methods arrays could be more convenient than lists. My question concerns situations where the only motivation for declaring the last argument of the method as an array is because in certain scenarios using var arguments can be convinient. **UPDATE** Thanks for your feedback. My conclusions at the moment are the following:   * Reduce the usage of var args as much as possible.   * Continue adding an overloaded version of the method with var args, such as the array argument is replaced by a list (or an `Iterable`, as @Kevin pointed out), in cases where it can be useful to have the choice to invoke the method with either var args or with a collection.   * Stop using Java as soon as possible :) (I already knew that one)"}
{"_id": "156022", "title": "Shouldn't storage classes be taught early in a C class or book?", "text": "Shouldn't storage classes be taught early in a C class or book? I notice that a lot of books, even some of the better ones, covert it toward and end of the book and some books just add it as an appendix. I would teach it together with variables. This is so foundational and I think unfortunately many do not make it that far in a book. Now that auto has a different meaning (vs being optional) it may confuse people that didn't realize it has always been there. for example: C Programming: A Modern Approach 18.2 Storage Classes 401 Properties of Variables 401 The auto Storage Class 402 The static Storage Class 403 The extern Storage Class 404 The register Storage Class 405 The Storage Class of a Function 406 Summary 407 @DeadMG, I fear I didn't state my question properly. Everyone always uses storage classes. Every single variable in a C program has a storage class. The thing is that some of the keywords were made optional because, for example, `int i; = auto int i;` The reason I ask is because I've seen code so bad where variables are declared at the top of a program to be made available to a function and not lose its value when it goes out of scope but only one function needed it. Then, by default the variable's storage class is \"extern\" int i; but they may not know since extern is assumed by the compiler. What they should have done is to declare it in the function that needed it as static, static int varToKeepValue; that way you achieve the desired goal of preserving the variable's value when the function goes out of scope throughout the execution of the program, while also making the code more readable. btw: I'm interested in this, please email me your thoughts if this question gets closed. On another note: you have a very odd approach... keep learners ignorant? I think is because they don't have that information that the language is not used properly. It's not like not letting kids run with knives. My approach is, learn the language inside and out that will let you use it properly."}
{"_id": "196406", "title": "What capabilities of Adobe Flash are not present in the WinRT API?", "text": "As from March 2013, Microsoft allows Adobe Flash content to play by default on its immersive Internet Explorer 10: http://redmondmag.com/articles/2013/03/11/new-ie-10-flash-policy.aspx When asked about Silverlight, Microsoft says > Silverlight will not be supported in immersive Internet Explorer 10 since > these capabilities are superseded by the new WinRT API. Does this mean that there are capabilities of Adobe Flash not present in the WinRT API that forced Microsoft to allow Flash? What are these capabilities?"}
{"_id": "156029", "title": "How does Github calculate language percentage in a repo?", "text": "I have a repo with Ruby and PHP code in it. Github says my repo is 74.8% PHP and 25.2% Ruby I do not understand how this can be. When I compare the 2 languages in my project:               # Count how many files:          # Ruby     ls | grep \".*\\.rb\" | wc -l     # returns 10          #PHP     ls | grep \".*\\.php\" | wc -l     # returns 1               # Count how many lines, words, chars:          # Ruby     cat *.rb | wc     # returns 229, 812, 5303          # PHP     cat *.php | wc     # returns 102, 473, 2760      Ruby always seems to have more. Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "186592", "title": "Environment Variables and Visual Studio 2012", "text": "I have a problem with Visual Studio 2012 and Environment Variables under Windows 7. I added a variable called `{LIBS}` with the value `C:/libs/`. In `C:/libs/` are folders containing C++ libraries. So far, so good. I added the paths to the project's settings (linker etc.), like `{$LIBS}boost` to include the boost libraries. I expected that I would now be able to use something like this               #include \"boost/someboostfile\"      but this does not work, I have to use the absolute path               #include \"../../boost/someboostfile      but this is what I do not want to do. Is there anything I'm doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "222352", "title": "How to avoid binary dependency on size change", "text": "class A { public: int i; }; // A.h and defined in project libA.vcxproj (libA.dll)      I'm using class A in multiple places at various projects as below. Apporoximately 100 projects.               include \"A.h\"     class UseA { public: A *a; UseA(){ a = new A(); } ~UseA() {delete a;} }      My problem is whenever I add a member variable to class A I will have to build all the projects (~100) as the size of the class A has been changed and building 100 project is time consuming. How to avoid building so many projects on size change of a single class? Also I have many classes like class A defined in libA.vcxproj."}
{"_id": "216252", "title": "When is it appropriate to use colour in a command-line application?", "text": "Currently I have a command-line application in C called `btcwatch`. It has a `-C` option that it can receive as an argument that compares the current price of Bitcoin with a price that was stored beforehand with `-S`. Example output with this option is:               $ btcwatch -vC  # -v = verbose     buy: UP $ 32.000000 USD (100.000000 -> 132.000000)     sell: UP $ 16.000000 USD (100.000000 -> 116.000000)      The dilemma is whether to use colour for the `UP` or `DOWN` string (green and red, respectively). Most command-line applications I know of (apart from git) stay away from colour in their output. In my desire for `btcwatch` to look and be quite \"standard\" (use of `getopt`, Makefiles, etc), I'm not sure if colour would look out of place in this situation."}
{"_id": "216250", "title": "is it possible to use shopify for just their shopping cart component or should I just roll my own", "text": "I'm working on an e-commerce site and am a rails developer; due to the nature of the items, I am managing them in their own database so I'm really looking for something that is only for the shopping cart aspect (there are things like heavy nesting and integration with other pieces of the app that would be very difficult to reproduce). It seems like there are two ways that I can go. (1) One way is rolling my own shopping cart and using something like Stripe (which I have been evaluating and am working fine with it). This literally could be as easy as creating an orders table and a line items table and a lot of front-end. (2) Or I could try to integrate into a third-party shopping cart like Shopify. I am not really sure if I can just use the shopify shopping cart or whether there is any advantage to this. If I already have most of my app done, would shopify (or another shopping cart app) provide any significant benefit (it clearly could)? Or would the integration be too much of a headache? Like for example, when a user 'adds to order' on my site, can I post to shopify and associate it with that user? thx"}
{"_id": "29177", "title": "The Programmers Bill of Responsibilities", "text": "So, we've all heard of The Programmers Bill of Rights and XP has a similar concept. It's a common complaint these days that we hear a lot about people's rights but not so much about their responsibilities, so what should be on the programmers bill of responsibilities. That is things that they should do, which they may find unpalatable, but that which separate programmers acting professionally and responsibly, from those who do not. I'm primarily interested in the unpalatable ones and the ones which tend not to happen. That is the ones that programmers tend to shirk and avoid, rather than the ones which 90% of programmers actually want to do (such as always refactor and use source control). So, **what should be on the Programmers Bill of Responsibilities?**"}
{"_id": "29170", "title": "Do you actually write 'clean code'?", "text": "I have seen some programmers tweaking their code over and over again not only to make it 'work good', but also to make it 'look good'. IMO, 'clean code' is actually a compliment indicating your code is elegant, perfectly understandable and maintainable. And the difference comes out when you have to choose between an aesthetically appealing code vs. code that's stressful to look at. So, how many of you actually write 'clean code'? Is it a good practice? What are the other benefits or drawbacks of this?"}
{"_id": "216255", "title": "Find all lines segments intersections", "text": "I have a collection of lines segments, represented by an array. Ex: [3,7,13,6,9] is 4 line segments: [(3,7)(7,13)] , [(7,13)(13,6)] , [(13,6)(6,9)] , ([6,9)(9,3)] ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vv0FK.png) I want to find all the lines segments intersections(not including the common point), is there any better way of doing it rather than brute force(Checking all the options with O(N^2))?"}
{"_id": "74946", "title": "What is the best way to lead a team of 4-5 students for a summer project?", "text": "We're a bunch(4-5) of 3nd year college students about to begin our 3 months summer vacation and we would like to get going on a project. We want to make a game with XNA, it doesn't have to be big or something but we have 3 months so I'm not sure how big it can get. I plan on being the \"team leader\" because I have the most experience with C#/XNA and I'd like to learn how to be a team leader, this could be good training. So how should I proceed with this ? Whats the best way of leading a small team when you've never done it before ?"}
{"_id": "136292", "title": "What is Pseudocode?", "text": "I've seen a lot of mentions of Pseudocode lately, on this site and others. But I don't get it:   * **What is Pseudocode?** For example, the Wikipedia article below says _\"It uses the structural conventions of a programming language, but is intended for human reading rather than machine reading.\"_ Does this mean that it **_isn't_** actually used to make programs?   * **Why is it used?**   * **How is it used?**   * **Is it considered a Programming Language?** See the above Wikipedia quote.   * **Is it commonly known/used?**   * **Anything else...** I honestly don't know where to start with this. I have Googled it and I've seen the Wikipedia article on the topic, but I still don't fully understand what it is."}
{"_id": "34540", "title": "Object model design: collections on classes", "text": "Consider Train.Passengers, what type would you use for Passengers where passengers are not supposed to be added or removed by the consuming code? I'm using .NET Framework, so this discussion would suit .NET, but it could apply to a number of modern languages/frameworks. In the .NET Framework, the `List<Person>` is not supposed to be publicly exposed. There's `Collection<Person>` and `ICollection<Person>` and guidance, which I tend to agree with, is to return the closest concrete type down the inheritance tree, so that'd be `Collection<Person>` since it is already an `ICollection<Person>`. But Collection has read/write semantics and so possibly it should be a `ReadOnlyCollection<Person>`, but its arguably common sense not to alter the contents of a collection that you don't have intimate knowledge about so is it necessary? And it requires extra work internally and can be a pain with (de)serialization. At the extreme ends I could just return `Person[]` (since LINQ now provides much of the benefits that previously would have been afforded by a more specified collection) or even build a strongly-typed PersonCollection or ReadOnlyPersonCollection! What do you do?"}
{"_id": "144081", "title": "I just started a job with Scrum and something seems to be missing. I am new to Scrum", "text": "The code is a complete mess of a combination of classic ASP/ASP.NET. The scrum consist of us patching up the big mess or making additions to it. We are all too busy doing that to start a rewrite so I am wondering.. Where is the part in Scrum where the developers can have the power to say that enough is enough and demand that they are given time to start the big rewrite? We seem in an endless loop of just patching old code with 'Stories'. So things are being run by the non-technical people who seem to have no desire to push for a rewrite because they don't understand how bad the codebase has gotten.. So who is in charge of making this big rewrite change happen? The developers? The Scrum Master? The current strategy is just to find time and do it ourselves without the higher-ups involved since they are mostly to blame for the current mess we are in.. `<-` insert rant about non-technical people telling technical people what to do here `->`."}
{"_id": "144080", "title": "How to pass around a debug flag variable?", "text": "I need to generate debug output in a java appliation that cannot be debugged by placing break points and traces. I've thus far been placing the debug flag as a static variable in one of the classes and then accessing it from all other classes. But this I suspect will eventually cause massive issues later on. What's the best way to do this?"}
{"_id": "76892", "title": "Univeristy Projects and Uniqueness", "text": "I am in the process of trying to identify a suitable project for my final year at university. How important is it that the project be unique? I really want to do a project with the Kinect and am eagerly awaiting the official SDK. As yet I am struggling for an idea. However, I have looked at kinecthacks.com to see what other people have been working on, and a few of these ideas interest me. Would you think it is ethical to take one of these ideas and implement yourself? Obviously one would try to implement additional functionality on top of what is already there? Thanks."}
{"_id": "72731", "title": "Is it good to publish the software and development technologies?", "text": "I did some research on developers in my area. I was mainly interested in their products and the kind of tools they used in building them. I want to make this information public, but I was just wondering if it is a good idea. What I mean is, if the developer used Apache, MySQL and PHP and I made this public, does it make it easier for people to hack their product?"}
{"_id": "144089", "title": "Different callbacks for error or error as first argument?", "text": "We (and the JS SO chat room) had a talk with @rlemon some days ago about his Little-XHR library about error handling. Basically, we wanted to decide which error handling pattern should be used:               xhr.get({         // Some parameters, and then         success: function(data) {},         failure: function(data) {}     })      Or:               xhr.get({         // Some parameters, and then         callback: function(err, data) {}     })      One is more jQuery-like, while the other is more Node-like. Some say that the first pattern makes you think more about handling error. I think the opposite, since you may forget the other callback function, while the argument is always there on the second pattern. Any opinion/advantage/drawback about both these patterns?"}
{"_id": "105818", "title": "How do you change how intellij auto formats code?", "text": "IntelliJ does some odd formatting with Javascript code and I am trying to figure out how to get it to stop formatting this way. Whenever I chain jQuery functions together, it over indents the auto created code such as this:               $('#something').focus(function() {         /* Do some stuff */     }).blur(function() {             /* this is where the cursor and closing braces end up */             })      I want it to look like this:               $('#something').focus(function() {         /* Do some stuff */     }).blur(function() {         /* cursor and closing braces indented normally */     });      How do I change this?"}
{"_id": "194926", "title": "How to implement session state in a backend web application?", "text": "When using a non-MVC service-oriented/Interactor pattern approach to decoupled system architecture, how is session state implemented? I've been thinking of building the frontend of an application using MVC (PHP/Ruby etc.), and send messages to a command-line backend which is the actual application. Since I want the offline application to be completely in control of functionality I would imagine using an offline session management system to work best, which at login issues an ID that is thereafter sent to the application on every request. The ID would be stored in a cookie on the client-side, just like a regular session cookie. Since the frontend works through HTTP requests anyway it makes little sense to do it any other way to me. Are there any better alternatives to this method that I should consider? I would prefer to keep the actual system completely decoupled from the web UI and also plan on implementing a desktop UI aswell, so the Interactor pattern seems to be the best way to achieve this to me. What I'm explicitly trying to avoid is the \"do everything in our MVC framework! (and be stuck forever)\" that seems to be popular nowadays."}
{"_id": "177536", "title": "Algorithm to optimize grouping", "text": "I would like to know if there's a known algorithm or best practice way to do the following: I have a collection with a subcollection, for example:               R1 R2 R3     -- -- --     M  M  M     N  N     L  L        A      What i need is an algorithm to get the following result:               R1, R2: M N L     R2: A     R3: M      This is -not- what i want, it has more repeating values for R than the above:               R1, R2, R3: M     R1, R2: N L     R2: A      I need to group in way that i get the most optimized groups of R. The least amount of groups of R the better so i get the largest sub collections. Another example (with the most obvious result):               R1 R2 R3     -- -- --     M  M  A     V  V  B     L  L  C      Should result in:               R1, R2: M V L     R3: A B C      I need to do this in LINQ/C#. Any solutions? Tips? Links?"}
{"_id": "224248", "title": "Why can't we use unique identifier as combination of email and password?", "text": "For prevent email conflicts for authentication system we can surely choose email and password combination as unique identifier. What can prevent me to built authentication system by treating unique identifier as combination of email and password ? What is wrong with this design ?"}
{"_id": "180749", "title": "What data structure could a word processor use to map the user's caret position/text selection to its internal representation of the document?", "text": "Word processors (e.g. Microsoft Word) display documents to the user as styled text. The user can select a part of this text and apply styles to it, and edit the text. The word processor must (I guess) have an internal representation of the document that indicates which bits of the text displayed to the user should be styled differently. But the user doesn't interact with this internal representation. They interact with the text, by using the caret and selecting portions of it. What data structure might the word processor use to efficiently map the text with which the user interacts to its internal model of the document?"}
{"_id": "180745", "title": "Motivation and pitfalls (?) of the auto keyword in C++11", "text": "I was recently wondering why the keyword `auto` was chosen in C++11 to mark a variable whose type must be inferred by the compiler, like in               auto x = 1;      Since   1. `var` seems more common in other programming languages (e.g. C#, Scala, JavaScript), and   2. As far as I understand the new semantics of `auto` breaks backward compatibility (it was rarely used but had a different meaning in previous revisions of C++, see e.g. here) I wanted to ask if there was a special reason for choosing `auto` (in favour of `var` or any other keyword). Was there any specific discussion about this issue before the C++11 standard was released? Also, are there any possible incompatibilities we should watch out for when recompiling legacy C++ code with a C++11 compiler?"}
{"_id": "55347", "title": "Using my own code in freelance projects", "text": "I have been into freelance business for more than 2 years. While doing projects for other people, I've build a compilation of common tasks that I implement in projects and put them into code. It's kind of a library with some functions that I can reuse without having to rewrite the same thing dozen times. I'm talking about accessing Access databases, downloading information from FTP and similar stuff. Is this acceptable from a legal point of view? What's the difference in reusing the old code and rewriting it from the scratch (using you own brain again, therefore the exact same logic)? I do not hold any copyright to it, of course, and provide the source code for these classes to my clients."}
{"_id": "55343", "title": "Windows Hibernate API", "text": "Is it possible to programmatically trigger the Windows's Hibernate without actually Hibernating, just to take snapshot of the OS at regular intervals? So that the system can return to the previously saved state in case of any failure. This is much like System Restore, which backups system files; but the idea is to backup the complete OS's active state."}
{"_id": "131115", "title": "Pushing for greater automated testing on a QA team", "text": "I'm a junior developer joining a QA team at my company. The QA team I had been interacting with while working as a developer was very solid and the business had been very good about encouraging and funding good, solid automated testing techniques and hiring people who were good at it. However, this new team I am joining looks like it might be a little more reactive in nature, blending some of the testing responsibilities (as I understand them) with ops work and not doing a lot of proactive regression testing. I'm hoping dearly that I am wrong, but the fact is I could be right as well. Does anyone have any good advice for promoting automated testing? Bear in mind that I'm not a manager or lead, and also not even an experienced tester. But on some level, it feels like some of these principles should fall into common sense. Am I wrong for thinking that? If not, what should I do?"}
{"_id": "144336", "title": "Getting overwhelmed after starting a new project", "text": "I started a project (a Windows based timetable program that helps you stay organised with your subjects and assignments). The problem is that I'm not sure how I should manage this project and what order to build things. I.e. Should I build all the different interface elements then write the code or should I make an interface, code it, make another interface then code that? So my question is; how do I split up this longish project into small, ordered pieces to complete; and how should I order this?"}
{"_id": "144335", "title": "Designing an API on top with Java RMI and Rest APIs", "text": "I'm working on the backend of a java web application. We have a document repository (Fedora Commons specifically) where we house xml files. I want to abstract the API of the repository internally so that we aren't tightly coupled to one product. I'd also like to give the flexibility of connecting to to a repository via Java RMI or REST APIs. I was hoping to get advice or resources on how to implement something like this. My thought it that I'd have some abstract repository class that had methods like getRecord, updateRecord, and deleteRecord. In the constructor I would pass the URI for the repository and the API method and port. This would allow some flexibility in the future so that if the REST api became more practical, but allow the flexibility or using RMI which could (should?) have better performance. Am I over thinking this or am I on the right path?"}
{"_id": "209735", "title": "Mixing Angular and ASP.NET MVC/Web api?", "text": "I come from using ASP.NET MVC/Web API and now I am starting to use Angular but I am not clear on the proper way to mix them. Once I am using Angular does the MVC sever side concepts still provide any value ? Or should I strictly be using Web API purely to get data for the angular HTTP calls ? Is there maybe a more stripped down starting point I should use if the VS template is adding a lot of stuff I don't need ? I like the idea of a strict divide of server side = pure data and client side = pure HTML processing Any tips you have for a ASP.NET MVC guy transitioning to Angular would be helpful"}
{"_id": "209736", "title": "Working with Multiple XML Schema Classes in C#", "text": "I'm working with a data import process in C#, which takes a zip file filled with XML files and saves specific data points into a database. This is accomplished by loading the XML data into classes compiled from the schema. The import logic retrieves the data by digging down into the right classes and fields. The XML schema is defined by a different company, and the schema changes every one to years when an updated version of their software is released. What my company would like to do is be able to import different versions of the schema so that we could support older files. There is also debate on whether this change is worth the effort. My plan to accomplish this would be to determine which schema to use at the beginning of an import, and then use different interfacing classes to get the data from the XML and pass it back to the import classes, which would then save the values to the database. There are over 200 classes generated based on the schema, but we only need to access data in about half of them. Are there other ways to approach supporting multiple XML schemas that may be easier?"}
{"_id": "100365", "title": "Standard/Proper way of counting lines of code?", "text": "How should I count the lines of code in a project? In C++ for example, should I count the lines of the header files with my class definition? Should I count the header of a (non standard) library I am linking against? In Qt (or any other GUI framework), should I count the lines of the form's design? Should I count the Makefile too? I ask because it is a simple way to measure the size of the project and/or effort involved. Even though a GUI file is not code _per se_ the programmer might have spent hours doing it. **EDIT** Most of you did not understand the question and/or are assuming that I want to use the magical number of LOC as the ONE AND ONLY metric to rate a project or even a day of work. I consider a negative LOC day a very nice day. It means I've somehow managed to understand and model the problem better and more efficiently. Comments like \"Why do you need this\" are not interesting. Like it or not, the number is out there, Wikipedia says Windows XP is rated at 45M LOC, Linux 2.6.35 at 13.5M, I could go on. Maybe I could have asked better. Anyway, my original intent was to know how those numbers in Wikipedia were calculated and not the subjective nature of them. I found this in a MSDN blog, very useful as it shows how VS2008 does it: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KKXGQ.png)"}
{"_id": "221149", "title": "Build times for small incremental changes to C# Web Applications", "text": "I have recently been moving away from ASP.NET Websites in favor of Web Applications. More specifically I have recently been picking up MVC as an alternative to developing ASP.NET Forms websites. Something that I find highly frustrating is the constant build->change->re- build process when testing small changes to compiled code. I find myself 'bundling' several changes between builds just to avoid waiting 20-25 seconds for Visual Studio to crunch it's way through the compilation process. I created a clean MVC 4 project from the VS template and timed the build after making a single line code change, it took 19 seconds. When making a change in the code-behind in an ASP.NET website I've always found that the page is seemingly re-compiled on the fly when you next hit the page. This would seem to me to be a better environment for web development rather than VS forcing an entire rebuild after every small code change. In the past I have enjoyed the luxury of making a change, hitting refresh in the browser, and waiting 1-2 seconds for my result. Is this achievable with web applications built using Visual Studio?"}
{"_id": "151550", "title": "HTTP PHP Authentication and Android", "text": "I am working on a website for which I hope to have an application for as well. Because of this, I am creating PHP API's which will go into my Database and serve specific data based on the method/function called. I want to protect these API's from misuse however, and I plan on implementing Authentication Digest to do so. However one of the OS's I want to support is Android. And I know that a malicious user would be able to reverse engineer the Android app and figure out my authentication scheme. I am left wondering:   1. Is there a better way to protect these API's from misuse?   2. Is there a way to prevent a malicious user from reverse engineering the app and potentially seeing the source code for it, enabling them to see my authentication scheme?   3. If none of these are preventable, then is my only option to have a Username/Password cred specifically for the Android app, and when eventually hacked, change the creds and issue an update for the app?"}
{"_id": "145680", "title": "Diving into microcontroller programming", "text": "I just got a batch of LED matrix modules from Sure Electronics (http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=1120) and a driver board (http://www.sureelectronics.net/goods.php?id=972). I've got it wired up, and connected to my Mac. I found the right drivers, and I'm now able to send text to the displays using the virtual COM port, as per the documentation from Sure Electronic's website:               start with \"0xFE,0x47 (G) 0x01,0x01\" followed by 16 characters - display the 16 characters in the first row     start with \"0xFE,0x47 (G) 0x01,0x02\" followed by 16 characters - display the 16 characters in the second row      The plan is to hook it all up to a Raspberry Pi (when I eventually get one) and use it all to display information from a web service. However, this setup is not optimal. The driver board requires some initialization each time it is powered up, in order to be available via USB. Also, I'd like more control over the display of characters (this setup, for instance, does not support non-ASCII characters, or text scrolling). Heavy googling has led me to believe that I need to go deeper into the HT1632 chip on the driver board. The documentation from Sure Electronics is sparse. The goal would be to be able to address each LED pixel individually from my code running on my computer (as in a 2D array of booleans, for example). I'm totally new to micro programming, so I have no idea where to start. What do I need to do in order to program it? Can I even modify the code of the driver board, or do I need another kind of driver board? And how do I automate the boot up sequence, so that the board is automatically USB enabled? Also, I'm mostly a Java/Web developer guy, so I would like to avoid as much C programming as possible. If anyone with experience with this kind of programming could point me in the right direction to start, I would be grateful."}
{"_id": "187243", "title": "Does the lack of states on HTTP make the protocol unfit for modern applications?", "text": "I changed from PHP to ASP.NET, now I\u2019m working with webforms in a somewhat large company. I given some though and research to back my impressions on ASP.NET webforms and I came to the conclusion that Webforms is an attempt to make web applications easier to write for those who came from the \"desktop programming\" world. But before shunning WebForms I decided to analyze the needs of the software we write and bumped on the issue of maintaining application states on the Web. I understand that HTTP is a stateless protocol, and ASP.NET tries to simulate states with session variables , hiddenfields and viewstates, it is in my understanding also that all of the above cited have flaws and are not perfect ways to keep the state in my application, But I also understand the need to keep a state on my app. Which raises the questions, is the HTTP really fit for this type of job (making applications that require state)? Are the tools currently available to webdevelopers enough? Are the new tools available with HTML5 effective at the job or are they just workarounds for the limitations to HTTP. I love developing for the web, and I\u2019m much more familiar with the web than with the desktop, I just been wondering about this HTTP statelessness thing for some time and i want to understand if I\u2019m missing some point or if I\u2019m right on my notions."}
{"_id": "145682", "title": "is it possible for the author to trademark the name of an open-source application?", "text": "I would like to know if the name of an open-source application can be trademarked by the original author and what it means when it comes to distributing it through major linux distros, that is, will they accept this kind of software?"}
{"_id": "180293", "title": "How to efficiently store IP addresses?", "text": "**Background**   I have a requirement where I need to remove a few nodes in a network based upon a command given by the user. To keep the nodes from transmitting or receiving data I thought of changing its IP address to some other address. Before I change the address I want to save the node's IP so that I can re- assign the original IP back to the node after the simulated network outage is over. My problem is how to efficiently save the nodes' IP addresses. Should I use a linked list or a hash table?"}
{"_id": "110956", "title": "What programs emit C++ code and pass it to mainstream compilers?", "text": "I suspect there're programs that instead of emitting machine code instead emit C++ code and then start a mainstream C++ compiler to compile it to machine code. I can't find any notable examples except MIDL which emits some rather primitive code. What are notable examples of such systems?"}
{"_id": "180296", "title": "Storing Dynamic SQL in text files vs inline code", "text": "Our Architecture team is proposing a framework that would see our SQL queries moved from coded strings within our applications, into a file based system where we would invoke them with function calls. Our application makes heavy use of SQL queries ranging from the mundane, to very complex. This is a .NET solution. The idea is that each query would be written to text files, and we would be able to tag fields, joins, and conditions with attributes. When calling our SQL functions, we could pass arguments to toggle these attributes on/off based on our business logic, allowing for only the portions of the SQL we need to be executed. Although I like the idea of abstracting away our SQL, I am skeptical that this system will result in any tangible benefits. The major driver of this is our past experience where many coders created some massively bungled dynamic SQL functions which were impossible to understand. The idea is that this will make it easier to define your queries, will make all queries more easily testable, and clearly define the business logic involved. I am unsure if this will survive the test of reality. I\u2019d like to get some feedback on the pros/cons of this approach. Also, before anyone suggests it, the Entity Framework was rejected due to questionable support from our database provider (Teradata)."}
{"_id": "187245", "title": "Calculating local results from global values using SQL and PHP", "text": "I have an interesting problem for you all. I have a partial solution but I feel you guys can come up with an efficient solution. What I have a SQL table with following structure: StockId <\\- a unique ID for the share StockHolderId <\\- a unique ID for the share holder StockPrice <\\- The price of the stock - if this is a request to purchase this is kept -1 BuyingorSelling <\\- value of 1 means the holder wants to buy, value 2 means he is selling StockQuality <\\- a special record that stores a value calculated based on some complex computation. The values are 1, 2, or 3 based on let us say bad, neutral, good. What I want to do is to find out who all can give me the stock I want to buy and who can purchase the ones I got. I want the person who gives a good quality stock (local value) at cheapest price (global value) to be my best selling match and the person who can buy most (semi global) of my stocks to be my best buying match. The formula to rank the seller is 0.5 * price + 0.3 * availability + 0.2 * quality. How would you go about it? Any ideas? I have created a table that joins with itself to get info of every match and then grouping but how can I acquire the price value to be cheapest?"}
{"_id": "61206", "title": "Objective-C Categories and Sprawling Classes", "text": "The generally accepted programming practices I've come across tend to advise against big, sprawling classes. Does using Objective-C categories change the conventional wisdom somehow? Is it more acceptable to have bigger classes if each \"subclass\" or set of tasks is in its own category? In my own experience, I've found that where I might've in the past tried to split classes, I now sometimes find it easier and rather maintainable to just split categories, but am I setting myself up for future maintenance hell (or other kinds of hell) by doing this?"}
{"_id": "181167", "title": "Licence all code?", "text": "Should every piece of code put online have a licence with it, or should it explicitly mentioned that it is in the public domain? I'm writing a simple python script that will take a project euler problem number and save a file with the question text as comment. As I was creating the directory and initializing git I added a licence file, which got me thinking is it even necessary to put a licence for something so simple. So, should every project no matter how trivial have it's licence explicitly mentioned or is it just overkill to put a licence with such small scripts? What is the recommended practice here?"}
{"_id": "141301", "title": "Data Structures usage and motivational aspects", "text": "For long student life I was always wondering why there are so many of them yet there seems to be lack of usage at all in many of them. The opinion didn't really change when I got a job. We have brilliant books on what they are and their complexities, but I never encounter resources which would actually give a good hint of practical usage. I perfectly understand that I have to look at problem , analyse required operations, look for data structure that does them efficiently. However in practice I never do that, not because of human laziness syndrome, but because when it comes to work I acknowledge time priority over self-development. Over time I thought that when I would be better developer I will automatically use more of them - that didn't happen at all or maybe I just didn't. Then I found that the colleagues usually in the same plate as me - knowing more or less some three of data structures and being totally happy about it and refusing to discuss this matter further with me, coming back to conversations about 'cool new languages' 'libraries that do jobs for you' and the joy to work under scrumban etc. I am stuck with ArrayLists, Arrays and SortedMap , which no matter what I do always suffice or either I tweak them to be capable of fulfilling my task. Yes, it might be inefficient but do we really have to care if Intel increases performance over years no matter if we improve our skills? Does new Xeon or IBM machines really care what we use? What if I like build things, but I am not particularly excited whether it is n log(n) or just n? Over twenty years the processing power increased enormously, which gives us freedom of not being critical about which one to use? On top of that new more optimized languages appear which support multiple cores more efficiently. To be more specific: I would like to find motivational material on complex real areas/cases of possible effective usages of data structures. I would be really grateful if you would provide relevant resources. There is similar question ,but in the end the links again mostly describe or do dumb example(vehicles, students or holy grail quest - yes, very relevant) them and people keep referring to the \"scenario decides the data structure to use\". I want to know these complex scenarios to be able to identify similarities to my scenario and then use them. The complex scenarios where it really matters and not necessarily of quantitive nature. It seems that data structures only concern is efficiency and nothing else? There seems to be no particular convenience for developer in use one over another. (only when I found scientific resources on why exactly simple carbohydrates are evil I stopped eating sugar and candies completely replacing it with less harmful fruits - I hope you can see the analogy)"}
{"_id": "184532", "title": "Implementing the command pattern in a RESTful API", "text": "I'm in the process of designing an HTTP API, hopefully making it as RESTful as possible. There are some actions which functionality spreads over a few resources, and sometime needs to be undone. I thought to myself, this sounds like a command pattern, but how can I model it into a resource? I will introduce a new resource named XXAction, like DepositAction, which will be created through something like this               POST /card/{card-id}/account/{account-id}/Deposit     AmountToDeposit=100, different parameters...      this will actually create a new DepositAction and activate it's Do/Execute method. In this case, returning a 201 Created HTTP status means the action has been executed successfully. Later if a client wishes to look at the action details he can               GET /action/{action-id}      Update/PUT should be blocked I guess, because it is not relevant here. And in order to Undo the action, I thought of using               DELETE /action/{action-id}      which will actually call the Undo method of the relevant object, and change it's status. Let's say I'm happy with only one Do-Undo, I don't need to Redo. **Is this approach ok?** **Are there any pitfalls, reasons not to use it?** **Is this understood from the POV of the clients?**"}
{"_id": "141309", "title": "How to speak to a computer", "text": "I am a self-taught, novice programmer. The language I chose was Objective-C, so that I can write Apple applications and software. I have learned the hard way that Objective-C has a steep learning curve, but I have forced myself to look at it over and over until I get it right. I feel I am completing one major step, and that is becoming very comfortable with the syntax. Now as I enter the next big step - finding out what is possible with a computer programming language - I am thinking that all software is just developed within the confines of:   * classes   * loops   * booleans   * IF/OR statements   * variables   * etc.  Is that a true assessment? When thinking of software in my head do I just need to learn to convert it all to the above? Right? Sorry if this question sounds funny, but I am just learning how to take the language in and talk (what I think is) the language of a computer. Is there a good book or tutorial that helps illustrate how to \"speak as a computer would\"?"}
{"_id": "195168", "title": "Should I Do Calculations in T-SQL or Program?", "text": "I am creating a stored procedure that is logging some data. The data ultimately needs to end up in 2 tables. The incoming data is coming from a JSON string containing 15 parameters, and the data is then logged to the database using the stored procedure I'm writing. I would like to send the data into 1 stored procedure and INSERT it into both tables. The first table is a raw data logging table. It will be used for debug and troubleshooting. The second table will be used for report generation. This table requires some simple mathematical calculations to be done on incoming data. For example: `DECLARE @Table2Fld3 DECIMAL = @IncomingFld9 - @IncomingFld4;` I'll have about 8 of these calculations to do to compute the values for table 2, then I'll do an INSERT to save the data. So my question is, is it a good practice to do these calculations in the T-SQL? Or would it be better for me to create 2 separate stored procedures and do the calculations in my code? One trade-off I see is that if I do it all in the code then I have to create 2 database connections. **EDIT** I should elaborate on the \"2 database connections\" comment. The application in question is a windows service that establishes multi-threaded server/client communication. The logging system is asynchronous to the server/client communication. Using that existing system, in order for me to target multiple stored procedures, it would require 2 calls to the logger which would spin up 2 connections to the database."}
{"_id": "233866", "title": "Why are inheritance and interfaces restricted to instance members?", "text": "Disclaimer: I think the rules are almost the same in most OO languages, but since I'm most familiar with C# I'll be relating to this specific language. I think that the use of attributes and reflection could be largely reduced if static members would apply the same principles as OO instances. Static properties and methods can be \"overridden\" by decedents by using the new keyword, but they cannot be forced to implement one via an interface, neither can the 'base' keyword be used (only explicitly naming the base type is supported). To make things worse, the members cannot be referenced via an instance, but have to always be specifically qualified with the exact type. Constructors also have limited \"inheritance\" support, one can choose which base constructor is called, but you cannot force an object to support a constructor that takes certain parameters by defining it in an interface. The best hint I could find to answer this question so far is this one on stack overflow (answering a different question). In his answer J\u00f6rg points out three principals that apply to Object Orientation:   * messaging,   * local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and   * extreme late-binding of all things. Now I fully understand that if you want to pass on a state-full class from one method to another as an object, these principles make sense. However in my opinion the principle of inheritance, overriding base methods with alternative or additional functionality, could also be beneficial to stateless business logic. One example where forcing an object to implement a certain constructor would be helpful is with de-serialization. For example where the constructor should accept an XML node. In C# it is dynamically implementable using reflection, but having compile-time errors and avoiding the reflection boilerplate would add lots of value! Static method/member interfaces would be helpful in situations where some aspects of a value are type specific, without any relation to the instance. For example a class could have a DisplayName, Unit, Weight, Factor or other aspects that are the same across all instances of the specific type, regardless of the instance value. Attributes (or Annotation) can be used to exploit these without the need to create an instance, however, there again it's extra boilerplate code and no way to enforce their implementation with compile-time errors. I admit there are many simple ways to work around these points, I'm not looking for workarounds. Returning a static value in an instance-property is quite common, and it is not that much overhead to create an instance of an object just to read out the type-specific aspects, but I'd like to know the rationale background on why static things have been systematically excluded. I have heard about \"the virtual stack\" before, but don't really know how it works technically (and cannot find any simple explanation on the net). Are the reasons of technical or philosophical nature? * * * Edit: elaborating on static interfaces: An example of how I think a static interface could provide a strongly typed, compiletime checked, alternative to reflection:               public staticInterface MyStaticInterface     {         constructor(XmlNode node);         string DisplayName { get; }         int Weight { get; }     }      The usage:               public void FillNodesToolBox()      {         MyStaticInterface[] nodes =              assembly.GetTypes().Where(t => t.Implements<MyStaticInterface>());              for (int i = nodes.Length - 1; i >= 0 ; i--)         {             Console.WriteLine(string.Concat(                 nodes[i].DisplayName, \" (\", nodes[i].Weight.ToString(), \")\"));         }     }      Looking back, this actually looks like making my Type object inherit from System.Type, adding some properties to it, which is different than a static member... `string.Empty != typeof(string).Emty` (the latter will not compile). Maybe I'm starting to find the answer, but it feels like I'm walking in a paradoxical circle, it doesn't quite 'snap' yet...."}
{"_id": "195119", "title": "Teaching `class`es and objects in C++ to university students", "text": "To learn `class`es and objects at my university, students are required to develop a simple game (nine-mens morris or something similar) using Java. Java is used because of its libraries and tool support. What is the counterpart for C++. * * * _Background_ : I am a researcher at a university working with drones. The programming language for the research group is naturally C++. However, like most universities the introductory language of choice where I work is Java. The problem is when the students join the research group, it is hard work to \"unlearn\" Java for C++. IMHO, it hurts more than it helps. I want to propose teaching C++ instead; but I need to offer an alternative for learning `class`es and objects."}
{"_id": "77767", "title": "Simple, permanent queue system with pub/sub for Node.js?", "text": "> Highly related Nodejs: many clients requests through one socket I'm investigating a robust message passing system for this application of mine. The easyest solution would be Redis pub/sub (it's simple, effective and I'd also use Redis for caching) but as I understand it, publishing is a \"one shot\" operation only to actually subscribed clients. Whoever subscribes after the publishing, does not get the message. I'd like to be able to \"stash\" unreceived messages for a while, so if I reconnect to the channel I'd get back the messages I've not received. I know that systems like ActiveMQ with the ack and permament queue mechanism would solve this issue easily, but I'm wondering if there could be a simpler solution/approach. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "165350", "title": "Webservice Return Generic Result Type or Purposed Result Type", "text": "I'm building a webservice which returns JSON / XML / SOAP at the moment.. and I'm not entirely sure which approach for returning results is best. The Client Consuming the Services will generally be Web Applications / Mobile Web Applications. But could be from various WordPress and other social media Plugin type systems. Which would be a better return value? A generic \"transfer\" type structure, which carries Generic properties or a purposed type with distinct properties:               class GenericTransferObject{         public string returnVal;         public string returnType;     }      VS               class PurposedTransferObject_1{       public string Property1;     }          //and then building additional \"types\" for additional values     class PurposedTransferObject_2 {       public string PropertyA;       public string PropertyB;     }      Now, this would be the serialized and returned from a web service call via some client technology, JQuery in this example. SO if I called: /GetDaysInWeek/ I would either get back: {\"returnType\": \"DaysInWeek\", \"returnVal\": \"365\" } OR {\"DaysInWeek\": \"365\"} And then it would go from there. On the one hand there's flexibilty with the 1st example. I can add \"returnTypes\" without needing to adjust the client other than referencing an additional \"index\".. but if I had to add a property, now i'm changing a structure definition.. Is there an obvious choice in this situation?"}
{"_id": "20466", "title": "Code formatting SQL queries", "text": "Should I break SQL queries in different lines? For example in the project I am working on, we have a query that is taking 1600 columns! 1600 + tab chars. I wrote queries like this:                  \"SELECT bla , bla2 , bla FROM bla \" .           \"WHERE bla=333 AND bla=2\" .            \"ORDER BY nfdfsd ...\";      But they demanded me to put them in one line and said that my style is bad formatting. Why it is bad practice?"}
{"_id": "201716", "title": "Formatting SQL statements", "text": "In recent years I've developed a habit of formatting SQL `SELECT` queries like so:               SELECT         fieldNames     FROM         sources         JOIN tableSource ON col1 = col2         JOIN (             SELECT                 fieldNames             FROM                 otherSources          ) AS subQuery ON subQuery.foo = col2     WHERE         someField = somePredicate      So you see my pattern: each keyword is on its own line and that keyword's fields are indented by 1 tab-stop and the pattern is used recursively for sub- queries. This works well for all of my `SELECT` queries, as it maximizes readability though at the cost of vertical space; but it doesn't work for things like `INSERT` and `UPDATE` which have radically different syntax.               INSERT INTO tableName            (  col1,   col2,   col3,   col4,   col5,   col6,   col7,   col8  )     VALUES ( 'col1', 'col2', 'col3', 'col4', 'col5', 'col6', 'col7', 'col8' ),     VALUES ( 'col1', 'col2', 'col3', 'col4', 'col5', 'col6', 'col7', 'col8' )          UPDATE tableName     SET         col1 = 'col1',         col2 = 'col2',         col3 = 'col3',         // etc     WHERE         someField = somePredicate      As you can see, they aren't as pretty, and when you're dealing with tables with a lot of columns they quickly become unweildly. Is there a better way to format `INSERT` and `UPDATE`? And what about `CREATE` statements and other operations?"}
{"_id": "165354", "title": "How to integrate technical line/functional manager into Scrum team?", "text": "We have recently had a new line manager start to manage our Scrum team. He is immensely experienced in our field but is relatively inexperienced at Agile/Scrum. He has extensive technical expertise in embedded software (the team's domain) that would go to waste if not utilised properly. However, the team is wary of making a line manager part of the Scrum team. The general consensus is that the line manager should not be part of the Scrum team at all. There are a number of issues that may crop up, e.g. the team may start \"reporting\" to the manager (i.e. a daily status update!), the manager may start to micro-manage team members etc etc. As it currently stands, he has already said that he feels like an outsider within the team. We really want to make use of his technical skills, we'd be foolish if we didn't because we are a relatively inexperienced and young team of twenty somethings. What would be the best approach to integrate a senior \"technical\" line manager in a Scrum team and make him feel like he _is_ part of the team?"}
{"_id": "165356", "title": "Equivalent of SOLID principles for functional programming", "text": "I've found the SOLID principles quite useful when thinking about object- oriented design. Is there a similar / equivalent set of language-agnostic principles tailored for functional programming?"}
{"_id": "165359", "title": "Test Driven Development Code Order", "text": "I am developing my first project using test driven development. I am using Zend Framework and PHPUnit. Currently my project is at 100% code coverage but I am not sure I understand in what order I am supposed to write my code. Am I supposed to write my test FIRST with what my objects are expected to do, or write my objects and then test them? I've been working on completing a controller/model and then writing a test for it but I am not sure if this is what TDD is about. Any advice? For example, I wrote my Auth plugin and my Auth controller and tested that they work properly in my browser; then I sat down to write the tests for them which proved that there were some logical errors in the code that did work in the browser."}
{"_id": "98466", "title": "Rendering trillions of \"atoms\" instead of polygons?", "text": "I just saw a video about what the publishers call the \"next major step after the invention of 3D\". According to the person speaking in it, they use a huge amount of _atoms_ grouped into _clouds_ instead of polygons, to reach a level of _unlimited detail_. They tried their best to make the video understandable for persons with no knowledge of any rendering techniques, and therefore or for other purposes **left out all details of how their engine works.** The level of detail in their video does look quite impressive to me.   * How is it possible to render scenes using custom atoms instead of polygons on current hardware? (Speed, memory-wise)   * If this is real, why has nobody else even thought about it so far? I'm, as an OpenGL developer, really baffled by this and would really like to hear what experts have to say. Therefore I also don't want this to look like a cheap advert and will include the link to the video only if requested, in the comments section."}
{"_id": "75722", "title": "How do I demonstrate my web development experience?", "text": "Web designers generally need to have a decent portfolio of websites to demonstrate their ability. It seems web developers should have a similar portfolio, but any portfolio website a web developer might put together might never be as flashy as a web designer's, whose main goal is to show off good design. Is it necessary to have a list of websites I can point to when talking about my experience? Or are there other ways to demonstrate my experience, like perhaps a blog that talks about the concepts I'm interested in?"}
{"_id": "75723", "title": "Mixed licencing for an application", "text": "I'm currently writing an application which I am thinking of open sourcing once I'm out of beta. However, I would like to maintain ownership of the icons and other graphics (they're actually the work of someone else that I'm paying to do). Does the GPL allow this kind of mixed licencing? Or is it all or nothing? Are there alternative licences which allow the source code to be released while not allowing images to be modified or reused?"}
{"_id": "205731", "title": "Should we mock entities and value objects when doing DDD?", "text": "After reading a few articles about **Newable** vs **Injectable** objects and how these concepts relate to DDD's services, entities and value objects, I was left with some doubts about using newables in my code especially in my unit tests. Main candidates for newables were Entities and Value objects meaning that instead of injecting these dependencies into other objects one should just `new` an instance of these objects and use them directly in the code. However, good DDD practices advocate assigning responsibilities to entities and value objects if they were deemed appropriate. So the entities and value objects will end having some serious business logic in them. Now if a service operates on an entity or a value object should I mock the entity or value object and pass the mock to the service (mocking will require an `interface` for the value objects or entities which seems to be advocated against) ? Or should I just `new` an entity/value object and pass a concrete implementation to the service and thus violating the unit testing principle of testing only one unit?"}
{"_id": "205730", "title": "Looking to create a custom, graphical editor for a data model using HTML5 and SVG", "text": "I need to create a graphical editor for our data model that works in an HTML5 compliant browser. I am looking for a proper library/framework to build on. The model is stored as xml, but that should be largely irrelevant for the front-end technology. To be more concrete, I am looking to build a kind of diagram editor to create boxes and lines. Each box will have a set of editable properties and a set of relationships to other boxes represented as lines of various kinds (think UML class diagram, but a bit more complex). It must be possible to edit each box's properties through the editor. I require a kind of toolbar from which users can select new boxes to create. Lastly, I would like an automated layout engine, but the user should be able to override through drag and drop. Eclipse GEF is a good example of the kind of framework that I am looking for. It provides a tool palette, layout managers, drag and drop support, and an MVC architecture. However, I need this to work in a browser, not as a Java-based RCP app. There are plenty of excellent JS libraries out there for displaying data (like d3 and jqplot). And I have started prototyping in d3. It is a powerful and flexible library, but also low-level. It seems to me that I would need to implement my own toolbar and drag-and-drop capabilities for example. This is something that Eclipse GEF provides out of the box. Do I need to implement all this functionality myself or does there exist a library or framework that is more appropriate for my goal?"}
{"_id": "157968", "title": "How to manage a copyright notice in an open source project?", "text": "I'm working on, and adding to, a GitHub-hosted project that includes this LICENCE.md (apparently the MIT licence verbatim):               Copyright (c) 2012 [Acme Corp]          Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy     of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to deal     in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights     to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell     copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is     furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:          The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in     all copies or substantial portions of the Software.      I've made changes, improvements etc (say 10% of the code, in ballpark figures) and publish the code to my own GitHub fork. What should I do with this copyright notice? I'd like to update it (eg, just to add the name of my own organisation), but it says not to. How are these things normally managed? Add a separate copyright file?"}
{"_id": "4654", "title": "Does hybrid hard drive improve programming experience?", "text": "I'm tired of how luggish my developments PC is. It's Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM, Seagate ST3500320AS HDD - not the top model, but quite a decent one. Typically I open several copies of Visual Studio 2008, lots of tabs in Firefox, Outlook, MSDN, plus the programs I debug are quite huge, plus whatever Windows thinks it can't live without so I end up with Task Manager showing something like 2,5 GB pagefile usage. All the software above becomes luggish to such extent that it's really annoying. Something like I click on a menubar in Visual Studio - and instead of just opening the menu it works the harddisk for say 10 seconds. I'd like to have some magic \"don't make me think\" solution - so that it is installed once and then the lugs disappear or at least decrease significantly. It should not be very expensive - something like the current price of a hybrid drive. Will a hybrid drive magically help overcome my problem once and for all? Do you have experience using hybrid drives for similar purposes?"}
{"_id": "138738", "title": "What's the Best Way to Release a Small Open Source JavaScript Library?", "text": "I wrote a nice little open source CoffeeScript color library called color. I think it's handy, and I believe other people would find it useful. What's the best approach for letting the world know about it?"}
{"_id": "138739", "title": "Converting ANTLR AST to Java bytecode using ASM", "text": "I am currently trying to write my own compiler, targeting the JVM. I have completed the parsing step using Java classes generated by ANTLR, and have an AST of the source code to work from (An ANTLR \"CommonTree\", specifically). I am using ASM to simplify the generating of the bytecode. **Could anyone give a broad overview of how to convert this AST to bytecode?** My current strategy is to explore down the tree, generating different code depending on the current node (using \"Tree.getType()\"). The problem is that I can only recognise tokens from my lexer this way, rather than more complex patterns from the parser. **Is there something I am missing, or am I simply approaching this wrong?**"}
{"_id": "138736", "title": "Software development project inception phase", "text": "Currently our team develops Web Applications and now we are going to Windows Forms applications. I have created the inception phase for our Windows Forms project structure. eg:               ApplicationSolution          --> Security Project(Login Authentication)                    a. Users will be registered with different applications in our application database.                eg: ProjectApplicationId|ProjectName        | UserId                    1                   |ProjectApplication1| user                    2                   |ProjectApplication2| user                    b. Execute Application (Start)               c. On Security dialog, application automatically get the userid of the user and see all the application it is registered using System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent()                eg: Prototype                   Welcome User! Please Choose Appliations you are registered on below:                                      ProjectApplication1 <--this will be a dropdown                                      ProjectApplication2                   Password: [*********************]                   [Access Application Button]               d. User selects the application with its password              e. If the password is incorrect (application.exit()) else execute Selected Application                   eg: ProjectApplication1 is selected then execute ProjectApplication1          --> ProjectApplication1          --> ProjectApplication2          --> Many to come ++                  if ProjectApplications has been closed then restart security Application.      My questions on this use case:   1. Is my use case possible?   2. Can you give me any recommendations ?  Currently we use setup and deployment to create installer in each Windows Forms application."}
{"_id": "130242", "title": "Polymorphism confusion", "text": "I have read once in a book about exception where \"an object of type Exception can be an instance of any subclassof Exception\". I kinda get it, but there's still confusion can anyone clarify me the meaning of this?"}
{"_id": "97347", "title": "What should I learn, practice to grasp or follow the fashion of the Web UI development?", "text": "I am not totally a Web UI developer, indeed I am doing some work about deployment. But I have interests in the fantastic effects of some great website. I know a little about javascript, jquery, extJS, Ajax or Flex are doing this kind of fantastic work. What bothers me:   1. Is there other techniques doing this kind of work?    2. Which should I dig deep in?    3. How can I effectively improve the techniques in that?"}
{"_id": "183983", "title": "Arguments for and against backwards compatibility for new iOS projects", "text": "At the time of writing, iOS 6 has been available for about 3 months. In the proposal-phase of a new iOS project, the client asks for backwards compatibility of the app involved, all the way back to iOS 4.0. With the current timeline this app is scheduled to be launched in september 2013, close to the probable release of the next iOS version (most likely 7.0). My gut tells me it's ridiculous to support iOS 4.0, and senseless to support iOS 5.0 for this project. By september 2013 the majority of all app-savvy iOS users will either own an iOS-6-only device (like iPhone 5, iPad 4/mini) or will have upgraded to the latest iOS version. In addition to the statistics, I have the feeling that the people left on prior iOS versions will probably not be on the prowl for the latest and greatest apps anyway, therefore not of interest to the client. However, these are guesses at best, and _I'm having difficulty backing up my guesses with solid references by authoritative sources_. Do you know of authoritative sources (like Apple or major app studios) voicing their opinion on backwards compatibility **for iOS** and could you provide one or more links? I'll award the most authoritative question with the 'correct answer' check mark."}
{"_id": "183982", "title": "Considerations on which Java version to run in Production", "text": "Some people run the bleeding edge of technologies - updating the day that something is updated. In production, this isn't as appropriate. Researching about if the current (Java 7) version is ready for production produces a significant amount of old material that might not be correct anymore (at the time of this writing Java 7 has been out for a year and a half which seems plenty long). What considerations do I need to make to determine if it is appropriate to upgrade the production environment to a later version of Java?"}
{"_id": "220237", "title": "Service method, bean as an argument and mandatory attributes", "text": "There is a service:               createUser(User user)      where you can create a new user, with so many attributes (`name`, `address` lines...). Now, some user attributes are mandatory. Other attributes are not mandatory (like `nickname` or `image`). The problem is that, from the outside, you can't tell the difference (in compile time). You can't force yourself to set only mandatory fields; moreover, the list of mandatory fields can change in the future and your code will stop working (while still compiling). So we can   * `createUser(int userId, String username...)` \\- explode the bean properties and don't use bean as an argument. Now every change will be reflected in the API, but method signatures may become huge. Also, when overloading methods for various combinations of mandatory fields with non-mandatory - that can be a mess, too.   * use multiple beans, and have methods like (given names are just illustrative) `createUser(UserCoreData user)`, `createUser(UserFull user)` but that still would not help much.   * or have service for storing mandatory User data and then having additional services for storing additional, non-mandatory data.   * (EDITED) or to split `User` into logical components (ie smaller beans) `Address`, `DateFrom`... and use those in service methods. Is there a pragmatical way to describe service method and its arguments in case like this? (in Java)."}
{"_id": "51116", "title": "What did your college do right and what could they improve upon?", "text": "Whether you learned from a University, or mentor, or what have you (I'm mainly more concerned with University/Equivalent), what did the institution do right? And what do you think they could've improved upon when learning your programming skills? I'm curious how everyone felt their institution did as far as teaching them how to become a good programmer."}
{"_id": "220230", "title": "What is the real responsibility of a class?", "text": "I keep wondering if it is legitimate to use verbs that are based on nouns in OOP.   I came across this brilliant article, though I still disagree with the point it makes. To explain the problem a bit more, the article states that there shouldn't be, for instance, a `FileWriter` class, but since writing is an **action** it should be a **method** of the class `File`. You'll get to realize that it's often language dependent since a Ruby programmer would likely be against the use of a `FileWriter` class (Ruby uses method `File.open` to access a file), whereas a Java programmer wouldn't. My personal (and yes, very humble) point of view is that doing so would break the Single Responsibility principle. When I programmed in PHP (because PHP is obviously the best language for OOP, right?), I would often use this kind of framework:               <?php          // This is just an example that I just made on the fly, may contain errors          class User extends Record {              protected $name;              public function __construct($name) {             $this->name = $name;         }          }          class UserDataHandler extends DataHandler /* knows the pdo object */ {              public function find($id) {              $query = $this->db->prepare('SELECT ' . $this->getFields . ' FROM users WHERE\u00a0id = :id');              $query->bindParam(':id', $id, PDO::PARAM_INT);              $query->setFetchMode( PDO::FETCH_CLASS, 'user');              $query->execute();              return $query->fetch( PDO::FETCH_CLASS );         }               }          ?>      It is my understanding that the suffix DataHandler doesn't add anything relevant; but the point is that the single responsibility principle dictates us that an object used as a model containing data (may it be called a Record) shouldn't also have the responsibility of doing SQL queries and DataBase access. This somehow invalidates the ActionRecord pattern used for instance by Ruby on Rails. I came across this C# code (yay, fourth object language used in this post) just the other day:               byte[] bytes = Encoding.Default.GetBytes(myString);     myString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(bytes);      And I gotta say that it doesn't make much sense to me that an `Encoding` or `Charset` class actually _encodes_ strings. It should merely be a representation of what an encoding really is. Thus, I would tend to think that:   * It is not a `File` class responsibility to open, read or save files.   * It is not a `Xml` class responsibility to serialize itself.   * It is not a `User` class responsibility to query a database.   * etc. However, if we extrapolate these ideas, why would `Object` have a `toString` class? It's not a Car's or a Dog's responsibility to convert itself to a string, now is it? I understand that from a pragmatic point of view, getting rid of the `toString` method for the beauty of following a strict SOLID form, that makes code more maintainable by making it useless, is not an acceptable option. I also understand that there may not be an exact answer (which would more be an _essay_ than a serious answer) to this, or that it may be opinion-based. Nevertheless I would still like to know if my approach actually follows what the single-responsibility principle really is. What's a class's responsibility?"}
{"_id": "128478", "title": "When to Stop Debug", "text": "I've read the article about fixing bug in this post What process do you normally use when attempting to debug a problem/issue/bug with your software?. One of the answer which I noted is \"take a rest\" when you have spent too long to try to fix the bug. I believe it is a good idea too. But sometime I am in a tight deadline when some mysterious bug appears. When this is happened I tend to think to rewrite the code rather than spending more time to fix the bug. My question is, when will you think it is better to rewrite the code rather than fix it? Or what criteria can we use to determine whether to keep fix the bug or rewrite the code?"}
{"_id": "51112", "title": "Is Prolog professionally useful?", "text": "I learned Prolog many years ago in University. During my professional life, I have never needed to use Prolog. Have I missed something special? As far as I remember Prolog requires completely different mindset comparing to prominent programming languages. **Is Prolog really ever used to implement something professionally useful?**"}
{"_id": "104066", "title": "Single Line Statements & Good Practices", "text": "I have recently acquired a habit which I know many of you may frown upon, but which, in the end, helps me keeping an eye on global code structure rather than on the structure of a single, (sometimes) repetitive method: grouping a number of statements in a single line, like this:               textBox1.Text = \"Something!\"; textBox2.Text = \"Another thing!\"; textBox3.Text = \"Yet another thing!\";      as opposed to               textBox1.Text = \"Something!\";     textBox2.Text = \"Another thing!\";     textBox3.Text = \"Yet another thing!\";      I use to do that for repetitive tasks to maintain overall code \"beauty\" and to help me tracking program structure easily, but I admit it may not be a good practice. I actually use it a lot, so I would like to know what are your thoughts on this. Also, do you think that anyone which would ever have to maintain my code have problems with this approach?"}
{"_id": "101016", "title": "TAOCP online resource", "text": "I am a CS student, and am really astonished that I didn't know about Donald Knuth and his TAoCP. Now that I do, I really look forward to diving into it. Would going for the entire volume 4 be a good idea? Also, is there a place online where I can read up (especially, the algorithms and DS part) ? thanks, Yati"}
{"_id": "220239", "title": "Building an application around a theoretical currency", "text": "I'm currently doing an application design that involves sale of service. The application will ultimately be used internationally and will need to adjust prices based on user location. Is it a good idea to store / work with all prices in an absolute unit? For example - credits. And I can specify conversion rules like 1 credit = 1 USD. What scenarios would I need to be careful about if I do this (and should I be doing this)? One thing I can think of is problems during auditing if I change my conversion rules periodically. In which case I'll need to start storing conversion rules by date and the conversion process will also require the time of transaction to give the correct amount in any currency for that time. Am I complicating this too much?"}
{"_id": "93322", "title": "generating a class dynamically from types that are fetched at runtime", "text": "is doing the following possible in C# (or in any other language) **1.** I am fetching data from a database. At run time i can compute the no. of columns and data types of the columns fetched. **2.** Next i want to \"generate\" a class with these data types as fields. I also want to store all the records that i fetch in a collection.               The problem is that i wanna do both step **1** and **2** at runt ime      is this possible ? I am using C# currently but i can shift to something else if i need to."}
{"_id": "246402", "title": "Connection Pooling", "text": "As an example, I am using PostgreSQL with an application-layer connection pool, such a a JDBC connection pool. The specific JDBC connection pool is not important. My question is more about the actual caching of the database connection. Connections to the database are created by supplying a data source (with credentials) to a JDBC driver, which presumably acts as bridge to a ODBC- compliant driver, which takes the standard set of commands and translates them to database specific formats. On top of a JDBC driver, an application can use a connection pool, which alleviates overhead/latency in creating and closing database connections. These connections are stored in a pool in an \"array\" if you will. Each connection is set to \"not in use\". When the connection is needed, the connect pool marks the connection as \"in use\" and gives it to the thread in an application which requested a connection. When the thread is finished with it, it then return the connection to the pool where another thread in a multi-threaded program can use it. After being idle for n amount of time, the connection is removed from the pool to free resources. Now while the connection is in the pool, does the tcp connection itself to the database remain live? In other words, when a thread retrieves a connection from the pool, the configuration of the PostgreSQL JDBC driver (authentication credentials) is cached and the bridge to the ODBC driver is cached, so a lot of work is already done in terms of taking the standard sql command and translating it to the specific database command. But does the database connection pool also cache the TCP connection, that is, keep the TCP connection alive and open to the database while the connection is still in the pool?"}
{"_id": "122619", "title": "Tools to ensure clients expectations are met", "text": "I was in an interview recently and was asked if I use any tools to ensure a clients expectations for a project are met. I couldn't really think of any actual tools apart from stuff like JIRA to ensure bugs/feature requests are kept track off. Has anyone else been asked this? What would have been a good answer to give? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "246405", "title": "Do you rotate agile team members?", "text": "I've got long standing developers in my sprint team. They know the domain, they've been with the company 5+ years and as a team we have a pretty good burn down rate. There are other sprint teams, some with equally knowledgeable developers and others with newer developers who are trying to get up to speed. My manager is worried that all our eggs are in one basket and wants to rotate out one or two knowledgeable developers in exchange for the some new guys. I can see their point but can also see the problems that go with that - I'm sure there are others but these are just a few off the top of my head.   1. New developer will have a much lower work rate   2. New developer will bring down the work rate of at least one experienced person as they constantly ask questions.   3. New developer leaves the team at the end to join another team - hopefully he'll remember what he did with us.   4. New developer leaves the company - wow we wasted a whole bunch of time. I might like to add that the organisation is struggling with agile. It was a traditional waterfall development company and still thinks in big releases and items that are \"expected\" to be in the release. If you've been in a similar situation to this I'd love to know you experiences - does rotating out the team members work? Would pair programming or other methods be a better route to take?"}
{"_id": "246408", "title": "Handing Off A Unity Project", "text": "I have someone who wants me to develop a game for them. I do not intend to continue developing the game after its first release (he wants me to develop it for commercial use). To make the project easy, I was thinking of using the Unity game engine. I am going to say right now, I am a kid heading into college, he wants to pay me, but I don't want to be paid, and this is for his own personal business endeavor, I am afraid if I hand off this project to a more established professional, even if I use source control, he will disregard it, throw it away, and the part I am most afraid of tell him I did a cruddy or lazy job (because I used Unity). What are your opinions on this situation, and the use of Unity in this way?"}
{"_id": "157964", "title": "SVN command line client: checkout refused when LDAP password changed \u201csvn: OPTIONS of\u201d (repo) \u201cauthorization failed\u201d (but works in TortoiseSVN)", "text": "When using the command line/terminal svn client, a colleague is getting \"svn: OPTIONS of \" [repo] \"...authorization failed\" error message when they attempt to checkout the repo to be their local working copy. They used to be able to do this but have recently had to change their password (periodic routine security policy). And it stopped working. NOTE: The svn check command does ask for a password everytime (which they supply - i.e. their new one.) BUT strangely they have no problem with Tortoise SVN, it works on that. They supply their usual login and new password and it works. Our setup is a virtualised CentOS Linux machine with several Linux user accounts where development takes place and the SVN central repo is on a separate server, authentication is using our LDAP login (i.e. the same corporate login used to login to our Windows machines). We login as Linux users to our development server from our Windows machines, using standard terminal SSH tools, e.g. PuTTY or MobaXTerm or CygWin. When I change my password I don't get the same problem, I am able to checkout. I have seen many questions about this error message from searching various forums on google but none have provided me with a solution as yet. One of the solutions I found suggests to clear or remove a local cache containing authentication, in a .subversion folder, we tried this but still the same problem. Also tried checking out to another folder. So it seems we have clean out any trace of cached passwords but yet it still rejects. Could there be another place on our CentOS Linux machine that caches the login What is meant by OPTIONS (could it be a setting somewhere on our development machine or on the SVN repo server?) Could it be a HTTP Proxy cache of my colleague's credentials stored somewhere - so we need to clear that when a password is changed? (Mistakenly posted on superuser.com (which is about users), so closed it there and moved it here)"}
{"_id": "101", "title": "Should certain math classes be required for a Computer Science degree?", "text": "For a Computer Science (CS) degree at many colleges and universities, certain math courses are **required** : Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Discrete Mathematics are few examples. However, since I've started working in the real world as a software developer, I have yet to truly use _some_ the knowledge I had at once acquired from taking those classes. _Discrete Math might be the only exception_. My questions: **Should these math classes be required to obtain a computer science degree? Or would they be better served as electives?** I'm challenging even that the certain math classes even help with required CS classes. For example, I never used linear algebra outside of the math class itself. I hear it's used in Computer Graphics, but I never took those classes-- yet linear algebra was _required_ for a CS degree. I personally think it could be better served as an elective rather than requirement because it's more specific to a branch of CS rather than general CS. From a Slashdot post CS Profs Debate Role of Math In CS Education: > _'For too long, we have taught computer science as an academic discipline > (as though all of our students will go on to get PhDs and then become CS > faculty members) even though for most of us, our students are overwhelmingly > seeking careers in which they apply computer science.'_"}
{"_id": "104", "title": "Business trying to make technical decisions", "text": "We've often run across scenarios where the business will promise a client a new feature. The business will promise that the feature be implemented in a specific way. These technical details promised by the business are usually poor. Unfortunately, client is now set and want this feature to be implemented in the way described by the business. In the end, the business just wants this feature to be completed without regard to quality and maintainability. Is there a good way to push back? How can we explain to the business that providing technical details before the requirements have been gathered is a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "74235", "title": "Introducing functional programming into your development environment", "text": "This is a long story but I will try to summarize it as best I can. We are a .NET shop that writes software for a variety of different types of funds. For example, we write health claims management software, pension management software, 401(k) software and some other financial-type things. Now we are entering a new realm: derivatives and quantitative analytics type of work, which seems very exciting. This is something that is coming down in the next 8-12 months I've been told. Now, I have learned some functional programming on my own, mainly just superficial glances at various languages via this book but never really dug deep into it. Now, since we are a .NET shop I was thinking F# might be a good choice, because we could potentially leverage some .NET libraries and existing knowledge possibly. My question is, where to start? I am having an exceedingly difficult time trying to figure out if I should go with Haskell, Erlang, Scala, F#, etc. They all seem very interesting and capable and quite frankly this might be a good chance to break out being so Microsoft dependent. Has anyone had a similar situation? If so, what was your experience making the jump to functional and what did you choose and why? I know this is kind of a big question but I don't know any developers that are using functional methods right now so I have nowhere else to turn other than Googling incessantly and finding flame wars everywhere on the best functional language."}
{"_id": "74234", "title": "How to justify framework upgrades", "text": "I am looking at how to justify changes to those who control budgets. For example if we have Enterprise Library 4 on some systems and the latest version is 5, is it worth upgrading? How do you justify it? Is it best to continually try to keep frameworks that systems use up to date. Or is it better to do a major lift every x years?"}
{"_id": "74236", "title": "Start reading Ruby (on Rails) code", "text": "I'm an experienced developer which quite some experience in meta programming. I just found my way to Ruby and want to understand more of Rails (and related) project internals. Even if I understand the high level concepts, it's hard to get an overview of those projects. I wonder how other people approach that problem? How would you for example approach the Mongoid source code to get a good understanding of it's internals?"}
{"_id": "185665", "title": "Software Requirement Specification documentation by professionals", "text": "I just wanted to know what is the significance of SRS(Software Requirement Specification) in programming? and what are the techniques used in preparation of an SRS .. also who writes the SRS.. is it the programmers?"}
{"_id": "185660", "title": "Is the average number of bugs per loc the same for different programming languages?", "text": "I have been told that the average number of bugs/defects per line of code is \"constant\" for different programming languages. 10 KLOC of Ruby would have the same number of bugs as 10 KLOC of c++. The argument is usually used to promote the use of expressive languages (think python/ruby over c++/assembly) since the number of lines to describe the same functionality would be smaller. Does anybody know where this claim comes from? Does higher-level languages lead to fewer bugs?"}
{"_id": "135742", "title": "What is the advantage of implementing a composite design pattern?", "text": "Apparently, a composite design pattern represents individual entities and collective entities in the same manner. What is the advantage to this? For instance, if I subclass a class, why would I want to treat objects of both classes in the same way? For instance, if 'tuna' is a subclass of 'fish', why would I want to have the same implementations for methods of objects in both classes?"}
{"_id": "200524", "title": "Application of Implementing 3 Stacks in single array [Need]", "text": "Well there is lot of discussion about implementing 3 [ or 2 stacks ] in a single array. [Interview question] but whats the **real need or application** for implementing stacks like that? can't we allot memory as 3 separate stacks [array] itself?. anyway we are alloting array[size * 3] in that single array. some links that discuss some: use-an-array-to-implement-three-stack how-to-implement-3-stack-in-a-single-array-efficiently"}
{"_id": "200522", "title": "How to deal with database connections in a Python library module", "text": "I have created a library in Python that contains functions for accessing a database. This is a wrapper library around a third party application database, written due to the fact that the third party application does not offer a decent API. Now I originally let each function open a database connection for the duration of the function call which was OK, until my program logic used nested calls to the functions where I would then be calling a particular function a few thousand times. This wasn't very performant. Profiling this showed that the overhead was in the database connection setup - once per function call. So I moved the open connection from within the function(s) to the module itself, so that the database connection would be opened when the library module was imported. This gave me an acceptable performance. Now I have two questions regarding this. Firstly, do I need to be concerned that I am no longer explicitly closing the database connection and how could I do it explicitly with this set-up? Secondly, does what I have done fall anywhere close to the realm of good practice and how might I otherwise approach this?"}
{"_id": "85436", "title": "How far to go with typedef'ing primitive types like int", "text": "Do you bother typedef'ing most of your number types like this? Or do you just use \"int\" in most places? It might be more important in my current project with is client / server based and the types have to match when transmitted through the wire as binary data - but I just wondered how far people go with this generally:               types.h:          typedef int16_t Version;     typedef int32_t PacketLength;     typedef int32_t Identity;     typedef int32_t CabinetNumber;     typedef int64_t Time64;     typedef int64_t RFID;     typedef int64_t NetworkAddress;     typedef int64_t PathfinderAddress;     typedef int16_t PathfinderPan;     typedef int16_t PathfinderChannel;     typedef int64_t HandsetSerialNumber;     typedef int16_t PinNumber;     typedef int16_t LoggingInterval;     typedef int16_t DelayMinutes;     typedef int16_t ReminderDelayMinutes;     typedef int16_t EscalationDelayMinutes;     typedef float CalibrationOffset;     typedef float AnalogValue;     typedef int8_t PathfinderEtrx;     typedef int8_t DampingFactor;     typedef int8_t RankNumber;     typedef int8_t SlavePort;     typedef int8_t EventLevel;     typedef int8_t Percent;     typedef int8_t SensorNumber;     typedef int8_t RoleCode;     typedef int8_t Hour;     typedef int8_t Minute;     typedef int8_t Second;     typedef int8_t Day;     typedef int8_t Month;     typedef int16_t Year;     typedef int8_t EscalationLevel;      It seems logical to try and make sure the same type is always used for a particular thing to avoid overflows, but I do often see code where \"int\" has just been used pretty much everywhere instead. The typedef'ing often does lead to code that looks a bit like this though:               DoSomething(EscalationLevel escalationLevel)     {         ...     }      Which then makes me think which bit is actually describing the parameter - the parameters type or the parameters name?! Thanks."}
{"_id": "85434", "title": "Will it cost me a lot if I chose ASP.NET and IIS?", "text": "I intend to build a type of online social network in ASP.NET. I am going to host it under IIS server. The database that I am going to use is SQL Server. The site will accept a maximum 500,000 users. It will be in one language and it's targeted to people who live in countries which its main language is the language that this site will be built in. I expect the number of users who will use the application every day will be between 30,000 and 34,000. so in average it may be 2000 online users per hour. I can afford to buy Visual Studio Professional but I do not know If I will be able to afford the cost of IIS/ SQL server, etc (any other MS fees). I do not know how to calculate the cost and, with these estimates, determine how many servers I need. Waiting help from experts."}
{"_id": "138190", "title": "Why do Java's Iterator and ListIterator point between elements?", "text": "The Javadoc for ListIterator says: > A `ListIterator` has no current element; its cursor position always lies > between the element that would be returned by a call to `previous()` and the > element that would be returned by a call to `next()`. Why was Java's `ListIterator` implemented to point between elements rather than at a current element? It seems that this makes client code less readable when it has to repeatedly call `getNext()`, `getPrevious()`, so I assume there must be a good reason for the choice. As a side note, I just wrote a little library called peekable-arraylist that extends `ArrayList`, `Iterator`, and `ListIterator` that provides a `peekAtNext()` and `peekAtPrevious()` methods implemented like:                 @Override public synchronized T peekAtNext() {          T t = next();          previous();          return t;       }"}
{"_id": "204067", "title": "Hardware that accelerates pointer dereferencing?", "text": "Most modern languages make a heavy use of pointers / references: a typical OOP language uses VMT lookups, a typical functional language builds key data structures out of pointers, etc. Even typical C code often sports things like `foo->bar->baz`. It is well-known that dereferencing a pointer is cache-unfriendly, unless the pointer happens to point very near some just-accessed location and hits the same cache line. Is there, or has there been, hardware that tries to address this problem? It's not currently widely deployed; why? Hitting L1 or even L2 cache is so much faster than hitting RAM on current hardware that the goal of making pointer dereferencing reap some of the caching benefits seems worthy."}
{"_id": "204064", "title": "Levels of user permissions in a RESTful API", "text": "Let's say I have a company that ranks the cutest cats on the internet. **I offer a resource at`/cats/`** which provides users with the latest, cutest adorable cats. Users can either get just the top 3 cats if they haven't paid at all or registered. The top 10 cats if they paid 337 dollars and are logged in, and the top 100 cats if they paid 1337 dollars and are logged in. I have a 'user identifier' when making the request. In short, **consumers of`/cats/` get a different number of cats based on their 'user ranking'**. I do have a user identifier on the consuming end, but I have no explicit representation of the user level on the consuming end. **I'd like to inform users they can upgrade their subscription** when making the request. That is, I need to distinguish between _3 cats since I only offer 3 cats_ and _3 cats because that's what the user level allowed_. What is the best practice for distinguishing limiting the resource because the consumer does not have sufficient priviledges and limiting it because that's what the consumer has? **How does the client know if they can upgrade their ranking?** That is, they only got a limited resource because _they_ don't have permissions. What is the best practice here? Note, this is a gross simplification of the actual case. Also, just to clarify - reading is appreciated. * * * Update: ### Here are options we've considered:   * Storing the user permissions objects once on the client, querying for it only when account login or upgrade is performed.   * Passing `null` values in JSON indicating it exists, but an actual _nothing_ was transfered. So 10 cats for a user with 3 cats could be `[\"Garfield\",\"Sylvester\",\"Puss in Boots\",null*7]`   * Passing a resource permission pair `{cats:[\"Whiskers\",\"Fluffy\",\"Socks\"],authCount:3}` I'd like to do this right the first time to deliver the cutest cats in the best way possible and we'd and we'd like"}
{"_id": "204060", "title": "Revokable BSD - What are the implications?", "text": "While examining alternatives to Exim/Dovecot for a dedicated mail server, I came across the lamson project, a python-based MTA. I also found the following fork of the project: https://github.com/moggers87/salmon Quoting from the docs at the fork: > Salmon is a fork of Lamson. In the summer of 2012 (2012-07-13 to be exact), > Lamson was relicenced under a BSD variant that was revokable. The two > clauses that were of most concern: > >   1. Contributors agree that any contributions are owned by the copyright > holder and that contributors have absolutely no rights to their > contributions. > >   2. The copyright holder reserves the right to revoke this license on > anyone who uses this copyrighted work at any time for any reason. > > > > I read that to mean that I could make a contribution but then have said work > denied to me because Mr. Shaw didn't like the colour of my socks. So I went > and found the latest version that was available under the GNU GPL version 3. > > Salmon is an anagram of Lamson, if you hadn't worked it out already. I am familiar with the BSD license but have never seen it modified in this way. I am curious what the implications of this kind of license would be for other developers using the code, especially in paid commercial projects (thinking something like subscription-based webapps here). Assuming the license were revoked, could the user be liable for monetary damages, or would a scenario like this be equivalent to a cease-and-desist, in which case whatever functionality the library was providing would have to be reimplemented? **To Clarify** : Usual caveats with regard to answers are assumed. I ask out of curiosity only and have no intentions on acting or assuming legal risk via the advice posted."}
{"_id": "87366", "title": "Are there any valid reasons for disallowing characters and limiting the length of passwords?", "text": "I've come across quite a few sites that either limit the length they allow passwords to be and/or disallow certain characters. That's limiting to me as I want to widen and lengthen the search space of my password. It also gives me an uncomfortable sense that they might not be hashing. Are there _good_ reasons for either setting an upper length or excluding characters in passwords?"}
{"_id": "138198", "title": "What criteria could be used to rank popular blog posts?", "text": "I am building a service that finds popular posts from several blogs. What criteria could I use to define what the most popular posts are? For example, I track Facebook and Twitter share counts for every post of every blog and I rank the blog posts for their share counts. But that isn't the best solution because some bloggers can increase their sharing counts with fraudulent shares. What would be a better set of critera to rank what the most popular posts are?"}
{"_id": "88485", "title": "Is it a bad idea to list every function/method argument on a new line and why?", "text": "I work with someone who, every time they call a function they put the arguments on a new line e.g.               aFunction(         byte1,         short1,         int1,          int2,         int3,         int4,         int5     ) ;      I find this very annoying as it means the code isn't very compact, so I have to scan up and down more to actually make any sense of the logic. I'm interested to know whether this is actually bad practice and if so, how can I persuade them not to do it?"}
{"_id": "41342", "title": "How do you explain orthogonality to a non-technical person?", "text": "In _The Pragmatic Programmer_ this term is introduced and \"linearly independency\" is used as an example for orthogonality. How do you explain the same thing to a non-technical person and why independency is a good thing to have? Are there \"real-life\" (i.e. non-geek) examples for this concept?"}
{"_id": "70186", "title": "So what happens with closed-source law?", "text": "Lets say Alice Co. writes a program, and Bob Co. hires a contractor to copy it, and put it on their platform? What is the general legal recourse in these cases? I say general, because most of us are programmers, not lawyers, and we all understand we're not asking for qualified legal advice. But generally. What happens? Do you take them to court? What considerations should be taken? What gives you ground to stand on, and others nothing to stand on?"}
{"_id": "128902", "title": "Basis of definitions", "text": "Let us suppose we have a set of functions which characterise something: in the OO world methods characterising a type. In mathematics these are propositions and we have two kinds: axioms and lemmas. Axioms are assumptions, lemmas are easily derived from them. In C++ axioms are pure virtual functions. Here's the problem: there's more than one way to axiomatise a system. Given a set of propositions or methods, a subset of the propositions which is necessary and sufficient to derive all the others is called a basis. So too, for methods or functions, we have a desired set which must be defined, and typically every one has one or more definitions in terms of the others, and we require the programmer to provide instance definitions which are sufficient to allow all the others to be defined, and, if there is an overspecification, then it is consistent. Let me give an example (in Felix, Haskell code would be similar):               class Eq[t] {       virtual fun ==(x:t,y:t):bool => eq(x,y);       virtual fun eq(x:t, y:t)=> x == y;       virtual fun != (x:t,y:t):bool => not (x == y);       axiom reflex(x:t): x == x;       axiom sym(x:t, y:t): (x == y) == (y == x);       axiom trans(x:t, y:t, z:t): implies(x == y and y == z, x == z);     }      Here it is clear: the programmer must define either == or eq or both. If both are defined, the definitions must be equivalent. Failing to define one doesn't cause a compiler error, it causes an infinite loop at run time. Defining both inequivalently doesn't cause an error either, it is just inconsistent. Note the axioms specified constrain the semantics of any definition. Given a definition of == either directly or via a definition of eq, then != is defined automatically, although the programmer might replace the default with something more efficient, clearly such an overspecification has to be consistent. Please note, == could also be defined in terms of !=, but we didn't do that. A characterisation of a partial or total order is more complex. It is much more demanding since there is a combinatorial explosion of possible bases. There is an reason to desire overspecification: performance. There also another reason: choice and convenience. So here, there are several questions: one is how to check semantics are obeyed and I am not looking for an answer here (way too hard!). The other question is: How can we specify, and check, that an instance provides at least a basis? And a much harder question: how can we provide _several_ default definitions which depend on the basis chosen?"}
{"_id": "232484", "title": "IOS app updates that don't require App Store submission", "text": "Some apps, I've noticed that developers are able to update their software without submitting them to the App Store. For example, Game of War will occasionally tell you that an update is available and to restart your device. You can then watch the progress bar carefully and see that updates are being pushed to the app. I'm assuming they are using XML to change certain attributes and their location on the server. That's a guess but I don't know. They are able to make significant feature changes to the game, like adding hyperlinks to map locations, push sales promotions, add certain events etc. These methods don't require compilation, as that would obviously require resubmitting the app. What technologies allow this? Are they all server side changes with XML objects being updated on the client? What is apple's policy in the developer terms?"}
{"_id": "232487", "title": "Difference between Optimization and Scalability?", "text": "If I quote a paragraph from Wikipedia about _Optimization_ : > In computer science, program optimization or software optimization is the > process of modifying a software system to make some aspect of it work more > efficiently or use fewer resources. In general, a computer program may be > optimized so that it executes more rapidly, or is capable of operating with > less memory storage or other resources, or draw less power. And about _Scalabilty_ : > Application scalability refers to the improved performance of running > applications on a scaled-up version of the system. What's the difference? They both end up improving the performance of the system. Are they the same, if so, why are their names different?"}
{"_id": "203388", "title": "How do I know when should I package my classes in Ruby?", "text": "In Ruby, I'm creating a small game development framework. Just some personal project - a very small group of friends helping. Now I am in need of handling geometric concepts. Rectangles, Circles, Polygons, Vectors, Lines, etc. So I made a class for each of these. I'm stuck deciding whether I should package such classes in a module, such as `Geometry`. So I'd access them like `Geometry::Rectangle`, or just `Rectangle` if I `include` the module. Now then, my question isn't about this specific scenario. I'd like to know, **when is it suitable to package similar classes into one module in Ruby?** What factors should I consider? Amount of classes? Usage frequency? Complexity?"}
{"_id": "203387", "title": "Why do we use networking libraries instead of plain NSURLRequests and NSURLConnection ?", "text": "in iOS development, I have often seen people creating a networking module to interact with their APIs. This module generally sits on top of a networking framework like MKNetWorkKit or AFNetWorking. In most of the cases, It's all about sending GET,POST request and parsing the response which is in most cases JSON. What extra practical benefits that these libraries provide that an iOS developer should be leveraging which the plain Cocoa Networking APIs lack ? I can understand RESTKit as one exception where it takes care of the conversion of JSON to native objects and also interfaces with Core Data but what about others ?"}
{"_id": "203384", "title": "Implementing MVC pattern in SWT application", "text": "I am developing an SWT application (it's basically an Eclipse plugin, so I need to use SWT). Currently my design is as follows:   * Model: In model, I have POJOs which represents the actual fields in views.   * View: It is a dumb layer, it contains just UI and contains no logic (not even event handlers)   * Controller: It acts as a mediator b/w those two layers. Also it is responsible for creating view layer, handling events etc. Basically I have created all of the controls in view as a static like this `public static Button btnLogin` and in controller I have a code like this:               public void createLoginView(Composite comp) {         LoginFormView.createView(comp);  //This createView method is in view layer ie LoginFormView         LoginFormView.btnLogin.addSelectionListener(new SelectionListener() {             //Code goes here         });       }      Similalrly I have done for other views and controls. So that in main class and other classes I am calling just `createLoginView` of controller. I am doing similar thing for other views. So my question, is what I am doing is correct? Is this design good? Or I should have followed any other approach. Since I am new to SWT and Eclipse plugin development (basically I am Java EE developer having 4+ years of exp). Any tips/pointers would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "232488", "title": "UX designers working one Sprint ahead", "text": "Our UX designers usually have a story in Sprint X that the developers will implement in Sprint X+1 (The UX designers and the devs/testers are on one team). I think this makes sense because if you don't have screen mockups and clear specifications you can't really estimate the work during Sprint Planning. However in Scrum you are only supposed to have user stories that provide value to the user. In our case the UX design stories don't provide such value (they are more like a backlog grooming activity). Also usually Scrum coaches don't recommend having complete specifications before the start of the Sprint, a recommendation which I find hard to understand. So do you see any disadvantages in our approach? It seems to work for us, but it goes somewhat against Scrum principles."}
{"_id": "203380", "title": "Why, in WPF, do we set an object to Stretch via its Alignment properties instead of Width/Height?", "text": "In WPF's XAML, we can tell an element to fill its container like this:               <Button HorizontalAlignment=\"Stretch\" VerticalAlignment=\"Stretch\" />      Why is it that when we set an element to Stretch, we do it via the HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment properties? Why did the WPF design team decide to take this approach over having `Width=\"Stretch\"` and `Height=\"Stretch\"`? I presume it was a calculated decision, and I'm curious about the reasoning. CSS, among other technologies, follows the convention that stretching is done via the width and height properties, and that alignment affects positioning _exclusively_. This seems intuitive enough: stretching the element is manipulating its width and height, after all! Using the corresponding alignment property to stretch an element seems counter-intuitive and unusual in comparison. This makes me think they didn't just pick this option for no reason: they made a calculated decision and had reasons behind it. Width and Height use the double data type, which would ordinarily mean assigning it a string would be silly. However, WPF's Window objects can take `Width=\"Auto\"`, which gets treated as `double.NaN`. Couldn't `Width=\"Stretch\"` be stored as `double.PositiveInfinity` or some other value?"}
{"_id": "123569", "title": "Entity Framework vs. Linq to SQL?", "text": "I'm a little bit confused about these two terms \"Linq to SQL\" and \"Entity Framework\". I have the general idea that both of them somehow allow you to refer to database tables as .net objects or something of the sort, but please explain to me the difference between these two terms."}
{"_id": "123561", "title": "How can I  define and measure simplicity in code?", "text": "There are many answers in my previous question about simplicity relating to readability that helped me see my definition and understanding of simplicity in code was, quite possibly, incorrect. How can I define simplicity in code? What software measurements and metrics are available to measure code simplicity?"}
{"_id": "123560", "title": "Use case notation for login", "text": "When a login is needed in a system to perfom any action. How do you express that in a Use Case Diagram? I have a system that will allow employees to perform sells. They must be logged in, but once they are, it is not necesary to log again until the session ends (typical login). I do not know how can I express that that login is compulsory, but only once."}
{"_id": "123562", "title": "Event subscription from nested classes", "text": "Is it OK to have a nested class raise an event and for the parent class that subscribes to that event subsequently raise another event, which it's parent class has subscribed to - thus passing the original event up the class hierarchy? It may be easy to explain like this... _We have..._               Class A     Class B     Class C      _Operation..._   1. Class C raises an event   2. Class B subscribes to that event, on notification it raises another event   3. Class A subscribes to Class B event, on notification it does something So the original event occurred in **Class C** and **Class A** is dealing with it. Using this method means I require event handlers in the middle class (Class B) whose only function is to pass along the notification - this seems a little smelly to me."}
{"_id": "47480", "title": "Sequence Diagrams", "text": "I recently read the book 'UML Distilled' and found the sequence diagrams very useful. My question is that can we show 'data flow' as well on a sequence diagram? This is my first time on sequence diagrams. Nice to see some examples if any."}
{"_id": "253336", "title": "1 class model or 3 class models? 1 for each - UI, Hardware API Library, and Database", "text": "I've always used one class model in all 3 area's of my projects. User Interface, Hardware API (for data collection), Database (entity database context). Every new project only seems to grow in size, which means it gets hard to change the class model because everything uses it. It was suggested to me by seasoned programmer to split up my class model and use a different one for each part of my project. Then convert the data between models with passing data back and forth between the different parts. Which means if one of the models change that you only have to change the code in that section and change the \"converters\". Is this a general practice? It's definitely more work initially but I am wondering if it will save me time in the future. EDIT: I changed data model to class model as suggested in the comments. Though what I am specifically talking about is data modeled in classes in my application."}
{"_id": "229083", "title": "'Game loop' in a non-game application?", "text": "In real-time games, there is always a game loop that runs every few milliseconds, updates the game with new data and repaints the entire screen. Is this something that is seen in other types of applications, other than games? A 'constant-update-loop'? For example, imagine an application like MSPaint. The user can draw lines on the screen with the mouse. The line that is being drawn is displayed on the screen as it is being drawn. Please imagine this line is actually made of a lot of smaller lines, each 2 pixels long. It would make sense to store each of these small lines in a List. But as I said, the line that is being drawn (the large line, made out of lots of small lines) is displayed as it is being drawn. This means that a repaint of the screen would be necessary to display the new small line that was added the previous moment. But - please correct me if I'm mistaken - it would be difficult to repaint only the specific part of the screen where the new small line was drawn. If so, a repaint of the entire screen would be necessary. Thus it would make sense to use an 'update loop' to constantly repaint the entire screen, and constantly iterate over the list of lines and draw these lines over and over again - like in games. Is this approach existent in non-game applications, and specifically in 'drawing' applications? Thanks"}
{"_id": "159623", "title": "Make use of design patterns in C?", "text": "Design patterns are useful for object oriented languages. But how can a **non-object-oriented** language such as **C** make of use them?"}
{"_id": "171090", "title": "Can data classes contain methods for validation?", "text": "OK, say I have a data class for a user:               public class User {     private String firstName;     private String lastName;     private long personCode;     private Date birthDate;     private Gender gender;     private String email;     private String password;      Now let's say I want to validate email, whether names are not empty, whether birth date is in normal range, etc. Can I put that validation method in this class together with data? Or should it be in UserManager which in my case handles the lists of these users?"}
{"_id": "164991", "title": "License for Opensource project", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Licensing for hosted open source and 3rd party libraries I am newbie in the open source community world. I am planning to develop a open source project, hosted on github. The project would be using other open source components like- NHibernate, FNH, Log4net, CommonLibrary, Autofac, Quartz.Net Scheduler etc etc My questions are:   1. Would there be any restrictions on using above OSS components? for   example: I plan to use MIT license, but Quartz.Net Scheduler uses   Apache license, would there be any restrictions?   2. How do I get a license for my own project? Do I need to register my project somewhere?   3. What is the best practice to mention credits to the OSS compoenents used? Many thanks,"}
{"_id": "202383", "title": "Should we design programs to randomly kill themselves?", "text": "In a nutshell, should we design death into our programs, processes, and threads at a low level, for the good of the overall system? Failures happen. Processes die. We plan for disaster and occasionally recover from it. But we rarely design and implement unpredictable program death. We hope that our services' uptimes are as long as we care to keep them running. A macro-example of this concept is Netflix's Chaos Monkey, which randomly terminates AWS instances in some scenarios. They claim that this has helped them discover problems and build more redundant systems. What I'm talking about is lower level. The idea is for traditionally long- running processes to randomly exit. This should force redundancy into the design and ultimately produce more resilient systems. Does this concept already have a name? Is it already being used in the industry? ### EDIT Based on the comments and answers, I'm afraid I wasn't clear in my question. For clarity:   * yes, I do mean randomly,   * yes, I do mean in production, and   * no, not just for testing. To explain, I'd like to draw an analogy to multicellular organisms. In nature, organisms consist of many cells. The cells fork themselves to create redundancy, and they eventually die. But there should always be enough cells of the right kinds for the organism to function. This highly redundant system also facilitates healing when injured. The cells die so the organism lives. Incorporating random death into a program would force the greater system to adopt redundancy strategies to remain viable. Would these same strategies help the system remain stable in the face of other kinds of unpredictable failure? And, if anyone has tried this, what is it called? I'd like to read more about it if it already exists."}
{"_id": "171095", "title": "Which would be the best platform to develop websites to be used with very slow connections without sacrificing too much the design?", "text": "How can we give dial-up users in some remote places or less developed countries, a good experience while using dynamic websites."}
{"_id": "37176", "title": "Why is Visual Basic easier to learn than Java for COBOL developers?", "text": "A friend of mine came from a VMS/COBOL background and we gave her some VB6 to do - she absolutely ran with it. Next we ran her through some Java stuff and it didn't click at all. What's similar about COBOL and VB6 (but not Java) that would make this possible?"}
{"_id": "212030", "title": "Is there a better way to organize my module tests that avoids an explosion of new source files?", "text": "I've got a neat (so I thought) way of having each of my modules produce a unit-test executable if compiled with the `-DTESTMODULE` flag. This flag guards a `main()` function that can access all static data and functions in the module, without #including a C file. From the README:                 -- Modules --     The various modules were written and tested separately before being      coupled together to achieve the necessary basic functionality.     Each module retains its unit-test, its main() function, guarded     by #ifdef TESTMODULE. `make test` will compile and execute all the      unit tests, producing copious output, but importantly exitting with      an appropriate success or failure code, so the `make test` command will      fail if any of the tests fail.              Module TOC         __________          test   obj     src    header structures CONSTANTS     ----   ---     ---     ---   --------------------     m      m.o     m.c     m.h   mfile mtab TABSZ     s      s.o     s.c     s.h   stack STACKSEGSZ     v      v.o     v.c     v.h   saverec_            f.o     f.c     f.h    file     ob    ob.o    ob.c    ob.h   object     ar    ar.o    ar.c    ar.h    array     st    st.o    st.c    st.h    string     di    di.o    di.c    di.h   dichead dictionary     nm    nm.o    nm.c    nm.h    name     gc    gc.o    gc.c    gc.h    garbage collector     itp          itp.c   itp.h   context       osunix.o osunix.c osunix.h  unix-dependent functions      It's compile by a tricky bit of makefile,               m:m.c ob.h ob.o err.o $(CORE) itp.o $(OP)             cc $(CFLAGS) -DTESTMODULE $(LDLIBS) -o $@ $< err.o     ob.o s.o ar.o st.o v.o di.o gc.o nm.o itp.o $(OP) f.o      where the module is compiled with its own C file plus every other object file _except itself_. But it's creating difficulties for the kindly programmer who offered to write the Autotools files for me. So the obvious way to make it \"less weird\" would be to bust-out all the `main` functions into separate source files. But, but ... Do I gotta?"}
{"_id": "37170", "title": "I'm a student learning C++ and I've recently found out about Ruby. Would learning (some of) Ruby help me with C++ or would it just confuse me?", "text": "As the title says, I'm a student that will be starting my second year of C++ very soon. I've discovered Ruby, however. While I've heard much buzz about the language before, I've disregarded it because I always thought it wasn't something that would be useful. However, I've found a number of FANTASTIC tutorials on ruby and am interested in learning it (probably because it seems so straightforward).   1. Would playing around with ruby be a good or bad idea? I understand that there's not such thing as bad knowledge, but I'm afraid that Ruby will only confuse me when dealing with C++.   2. How different from C++ is it? I've read it's based on C in some way.    3. I've read some posts on here that Ruby and C++ can hold hands once in a while. How flexible is this relationship? Is it rarely that this would work?   4. How useful is Ruby in the real world? I'm not specifically asking about jobs- I'm more interested in what sort of applications may come from this language. Any specific examples worth looking at?"}
{"_id": "226308", "title": "Techniques to avoid entangling git merges when working on an extensive change", "text": "I am absolutely miserable when I get in a situation where I have to merge other developers' changes into mine. When using `git` and working on a really extensive change, that happens a lot. When I start working on a change, I make a new local branch and start working in it. The intent is to push my changes to the remote from it once I am done. The concept seems wonderful if it weren't for one pesky complication: other people are making changes to the same files as you are in the meantime. I am looking for a set of techniques and policies to minimize my exposure to having to reconcile my changes with those of other people who have pushed their change to the same file after I pulled it from the remote, since there is no such thing as locking in git. For example, will pulling from remote into my local branch on a daily basis reduce this exposure overall? Are there other tricks and techniques? Also, if you have a set of git commands that you run to sync up regularly, please share. **I am literally in a situation where I spend more time syncing my changes to other people's than writing code -- and I think this is not an efficient model.** It is either that I am doing something wrong or we are doing something wrong as a team. I am miserable because of it and it seriously affects my quality of life. I understand and acknowledge the benefits of git and I love being able to switch branches so easily. But I feel that the exposure it leaves to merging is an elephant in the room many in the community refuse to or are kindof dogmatically discouraged to discuss."}
{"_id": "84476", "title": "Does AJAX need to use a server-side language such as PHP/ASP.NET/Java to access a database?", "text": "Does AJAX need to use a server-side language such as PHP/ASP.NET/Java to access a database? Or some sort of web service tied to these languages? Or is AJAX able to communicate directly with the database?"}
{"_id": "84477", "title": "How do I know my data is relational or object oriented in nature?", "text": "Just read these lines- >   * If your data is object in nature, then use object stores (\"NoSQL\"). > They'll be much faster than a relational database. > >   * If your data is relational in nature, the overhead of a relational > database is worth it. > > from- http://seldo.com/weblog/2011/06/15/orm_is_an_antipattern So, how do I know whether my data is relational in nature or object-oriented?"}
{"_id": "132835", "title": "Is there a specific purpose for heterogeneous lists?", "text": "Coming from a C# and Java background, I'm used to my lists being homogeneous, and that makes sense to me. When I started picking up Lisp, I noticed that the lists can be heterogeneous. When I started screwing around with the `dynamic` keyword in C#, I noticed that, as of C# 4.0, there can be heterogeneous lists as well: `List<dynamic> heterogeneousList` My question is what is the point? It seems like a heterogeneous list will have much more overhead when doing processing and that if you need to store different types in one place you may need a different data structure. Is my naivety rearing its ugly face or are there truly times when it is useful to have a heterogeneous list?"}
{"_id": "84479", "title": "What is an Enterprise/Automated Deployment tool?", "text": "**What is an Enterprise/Automated Deployment tool, and how would it be used?** Examples would be a plus, but please don't turn this into a list. What are the key factors that should be evaluated when looking at such a tool?"}
{"_id": "185118", "title": "Does javascript support numerically indexed arrays with a more optimized algorithm than an associative array?", "text": "I know that Python, Perl, Java, Lua and obviously C (as it's the only array that's in ANSI standard afaik) support faster looking of numerically indexed arrays than doing a hash lookup or anything like that. Does Javascript also? As an example in code of what I mean, in the case of Perl:               for(i=0;i<10;i++)     {       # Do something     }      is slower than:               for (1..9)     {       # do something else     }      or:               @var = (1,2,3)     foreach(@var)     {       print $_; # look I'm fancy     }      and faster than:               foreach my $key (keys %hash)      {       print $_; # Look I'm fancy     }      and in python, given the following:               class thisClass:       def methodOne(i):         return i+1          thisDict = {        'number': 1     }      These two operations are similar in speed because both involve a hash lookup into a same-widthed hash:               thisObject = new thisClass     i  = thisObject.methodOne(1)      and:               i = 1+thisDict['1'];      Both of these kinds of lookups are slower than this:               thisTuple = (1,)     i = thisTuple[0]+1      While this:               thisArray = [1,2]          for i in thisArray:      print i      is iterated faster than:               thisTuple = (1,2)          for i in thisTuple:       print i      by which I mean lists iterate faster than tuples. Does Javascript support numerically indexed arrays differently than associatinve arrays? I don't believe Javascript supports more than arrays and associative arrays, but if it does how do they compare to the two speed wise?"}
{"_id": "83129", "title": "From Freelance to Software Company", "text": "So I've been teaching and doing freelance work for years. I make great money and I love what i do. However, recently I that I have more personal project ideas than I can work on. I have tons of software ideas that I would love to give attention to. I've made up my mind, I'm going to stop freelancing at the end of the summer and put all my energy into starting a small software company. I was wondering if anyone else has gone down this same path and if so, if you have any advice for me regarding this career change?"}
{"_id": "202039", "title": "Wouldn't Layer Supertype pattern corrupt our domain model?", "text": "a) To my knowledge Domain Objects should for the most part be oblivious to technical aspects of a design. Since I view class inheritance as being a technical solution, wouldn't introducing a Layer Supertype pattern into our domain corrupt it? b) If you disagree, please elaborate why Thanks"}
{"_id": "202038", "title": "Are there any benefits to removing unused references in a VS project?", "text": "Are there any benefits to removing unused references in a VS project (such as can be done using Resharper), or will VS automatically take care of that when building/deploying?"}
{"_id": "202037", "title": "Array Multiplication and Division", "text": "I came across a question that (eventually) landed me wondering about array arithmetic. I'm thinking specifically in Ruby, but I think the concepts are language independent. So, addition and subtraction are defined, in Ruby, as such:               [1,6,8,3,6] + [5,6,7] == [1,6,8,3,6,5,6,7] # All the elements of the first, then all the elements of the second     [1,6,8,3,6] - [5,6,7] == [1,8,3] # From the first, remove anything found in the second      and array * scalar is defined:               [1,2,3] * 2 == [1,2,3,1,2,3]      **But** What, conceptually, should the following be? None of these are (as far as I can find) defined:   * Array x Array: `[1,2,3] * [1,2,3] #=> ?`   * Array / Scalar: `[1,2,3,4,5] / 2 #=> ?`   * Array / Scalar: `[1,2,3,4,5] % 2 #=> ?`   * Array / Array: `[1,2,3,4,5] / [1,2] #=> ?`   * Array / Array: `[1,2,3,4,5] % [1,2] #=> ?` I've found some mathematical descriptions of these operations for set theory, but I couldn't really follow them, and sets don't have duplicates (arrays do). Edit: Note, I do **not** mean vector (matrix) arithmetic, which is completely defined. Edit2: If this is the wrong stack exchange, tell me which is the right one and I'll move it. Edit 3: Add mod operators to the list. Edit 4: I figure `array / scalar` is derivable from `array * scalar`:               a * b = c      => a = b / c          [1,2,3] * 3 = [1,2,3]+[1,2,3]+[1,2,3] = [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3]     => [1,2,3] = [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3] / 3      Which, given that programmer's division ignore the remained and has modulus:               [1,2,3,4,5] / 2 = [[1,2], [3,4]]     [1,2,3,4,5] % 2 = [5]      Except that these are pretty clearly non-reversible operations (not that modulus ever is), which is non-ideal. Edit: I asked a question over on Math that led me to Multisets. I think maybe extensible arrays are \"multisets\", but I'm not sure yet."}
{"_id": "86184", "title": "Finding a new programming language for web development?", "text": "I'm wondering if there are any _less-biased_ resources that give good, _specific overviews_ of programming languages and their intended goals. I would like to learn a new language, but visiting the sites of each language isn't working. Each one talks about how great it is without much mention of it's weaknesses or specific goals. > Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on > simplicity and productivity. > > Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and > integrate your systems more effectively. Having been a PHP developer for years, Vic Cherubini sums up my plight well: > I knew PHP well, had my own framework, and could work quickly to get > something up and running. > > I programmed like this throughout the MVC revolution. I got better and > better jobs (read: better paying, better title) as a PHP developer, but all > along the way realizing that the code I wrote on my own time was great, and > the code I worked with at work was horrible. Like, worse than horrible. > Atrocious. OS Commerce level bad. Having side projects kept me sane, because > the code I worked with at work made me miserable. > > This is why I'm retiring from PHP for my side projects and new programming > ventures. I'm spent with PHP. Exhausted, if you will. I've reached a level > where I think I'm at the top with it as a language and if I don't move on to > a new language soon, I'll be done completely with programming and I do not > want that. Languages I've looked at include JavaScript (for node.js), Ruby, Python, & Erlang. I've even thought about Scala or C++. **The problem is figuring out which ones are built to handle my needs the best.** So where can I go to skip the hype and get real information about the maturity of a platform, the size of the community, and the strengths & weaknesses of that language. If I know these then picking a language to continue my web development should be easy. **Update** I just don't want to get 4 months down the road with some language and find it sucks because each thread has 4MB of overhead, or the max concurrent connections is 999, there is no package to do \"X\" feature, or support is being phased out for a new language branch."}
{"_id": "40561", "title": "Is BSD license compatible with Apache?", "text": "Can I develop a BSD-licensed software that extends an Apache-licensed software (and vice-versa)?"}
{"_id": "40567", "title": "Is this code bad enough to warrant a rewrite?", "text": "This is a web application for payment processing. I've been here maintaining it for nearly two years now, so I have a good idea of the problems with the system. About a half a year after starting here I started a rewrite in php/mysql that ended up not getting used (not because of good reasons like \"it hasn't been tested\" or \"how do we know if it will be stable?\" but \"php/mysql are not microsoft and are therefore bad\" and \"we have to buy a license for mysql / we'll have to share our source code if we use it / no shops use anything but microsoft products\" - those were thoroughly entertaining conversations. This ended up being a fully functional throwaway prototype. I wasn't happy with the end result (mostly with how the HTML was coupled with code, it would have been hell for a web designer to work with), but it worked and at least I gained complete insight on the input/processing/output of the entire system. The current system we are using works, but is fragile and difficult to add features to without breaking something else or requiring lots of manual fixes down the line. But is it bad enough to need a rewrite in order to move forward and meet the requirements and features new potential clients? I think so. Here's a list of code smell:   * Originally designed in Visual Basic in 2003 or earlier, no major design changes since   * No classes or any kind of object-oriented design   * 3700 line Module1.vb file   * Manual deployment of executables and aspx files   * Complete mess of HTML designed in 2003, under-utilized stylesheets   * New clients were created by copying and renaming pages and functions   * Copied function names, e.g. function1, function2, function3   * Highly coupled with SQL Server   * Redundant database connection->command->reader blocks   * Highly coupled with our current payment processor   * Lots of functions with 6 parameters (many byref because there are no classes)   * No unit testing, have to debug from the start of the application to the finish every time   * No consideration for security   * Coding style is completely inconsistant, save for what VB does   * Settings (including passwords) are hardcoded in compiled files (besides those I've moved to web.config)   * Comments are either dead code (found everywhere, sometimes up to 50 lines), stating the obvious, or non-existant   * Extremely fragile - during revisions, changing code in one place affects stability elsewhere.    * I fixed a byref parameter of one function to not always be empty (so it would actually put a value into the variable it was supposed to be getting, but who could tell if it was used or not?) only to have a block of code with an obvious flaw (that had been there for over 5 years) suddenly start working.   * No test objects - all test data is retrieved from live databases or copies of live databases   * No thought to database table design - tables contain useless and redundant data.    * Code highly coupled with database tables/field names/types/procedures   * Warning 279 Maximum number of warnings has been exceeded.   * No separation of debug code and production code besides if statements (had a huge error with this at the end of 2009)   * Many, many redudant SQL queries to update rows with session data   * Javascript file is completely undocumented and has functions and have useless and redundant names (e.g. testFun, validate1, 1a, 2, 2b, 2c, and so on)   * External documentation is just an overview. I've written decent documentation since then."}
{"_id": "40564", "title": "How can I debug a JSP?", "text": "I'm trying to edit a JSP for a project and I'm getting a NullPointerException somewhere in the JSP when it's requested from my server. My web server (JBoss) is reporting the exception, but it's giving me a bogus line number. It's reporting that the exception happened on line 702, but my JSP is only 146 lines long, so I'm unable to identify which line is choking. What are some good techniques to debug errors in JSPs? I'm using IntelliJ 9 Ultimate as my IDE. Thanks"}
{"_id": "219353", "title": "Where does the tradition of shell prompts in code snippets come from?", "text": "Most code samples I see that demonstrate shell code preface each command with `$`. Having a prefix makes sense, but I'm confused as to why `$` is used in particular. Some other symbol, like `!`, that can be copied and pasted into a prompt without affecting the command's execution makes far more sense to me. So where does this notation come from?"}
{"_id": "207605", "title": "Can we call final field as object's constant?", "text": "We call `static final` fields as `constant`, rather I should say `Class constant`. So can we call just `final` fields as `Object's constant`? Is it right to say this?               Edited ::      Consider the following code :               class JustFinal     {         final int a=20;         final int b;              JustFinal(int x, int y){             //a=x;             b=y;         }              public static void main(String arg[])         {             JustFinal jf = new JustFinal(100,200);         }     }      In the above code field `a` will have a same value for all the object instances and field `b` can have a different value for a different object instance. Shouldn't we call the `final field a` as `CONSTANT` and `final field b` as `OBJECT's CONSTANT`?"}
{"_id": "47695", "title": "What ASP.NET MVC can do and Ruby on Rails can't?", "text": "ASP.NET MVC and Rails have similar area of use, are built around same architecture, both frameworks are relatively new and open source. So as a Rails programmer I'd like to know, what ASP.NET MVC can do and Ruby on Rails can't, and visa versa?"}
{"_id": "212785", "title": "Obscurity of Lisp in collaborative projects", "text": "I'm playing with the idea of learning Scheme but I have a few misgivings. From what I understand Lisp makes heavy use of macros that allow programmers to drastically change the language itself. I understand why that's useful, but how does this affect collaborative projects? How much confusion can this cause if other developers implement obscure macros, with or without documentation? Are there well defined guidelines for avoiding this confusion or are there language features that help avoid it? I ask because my current job is C++ and we have to use an in house framework. Our senior developer has tried to extend C++ to make it as Java-ish as possible. We have to spatter our code with obscure macros to make everything a smartpointer (in house of course, not the standard library kind) and homebrew exceptions etc. As a result, everything we write turns into a heaping mess and when these magic macros break we have no idea how to fix them. Obviously job security comes into play, but let's forget about politics and assume everyone is here for the right reason. From what I've read, the C preprocessor is very primitive compared to Lisp. So would a situation like this be 1000 times worse in Lisp or would it be better somehow?"}
{"_id": "236330", "title": "How to make C++ template stack work with basic data types and compound variables?", "text": "Templates are nice for similar algorithms of different data types. Say I make a template stack of a basic data type...               Stack<int> stck(10);     stck.Push(5);      I'd pop it...               int x = stck.Pop();      x would be 5. If I call pop again, there are no items, so I have the method just return 0 for null. It could be something else, but whatever. But now, if I change the template type to a compound variable (a structure type - say, RECT), and the stack is empty, it can't return 0. It expects a RECT type, but I don't have any left. How do I make this work for basic data types and compound variables? Exceptions?"}
{"_id": "14401", "title": "Is it a bad decision to release code that is not open source", "text": "I work for a company that owns several closed source software. One of our software is used to service clients and generate income so it has commercial value to us (and it pays my salary). I've talked about open sourcing the code, but the option of open sourcing under something like the MIT or GPL or any other open source license that allows competitors to install it and offer it to our clients for cheaper has met clear resistance. What about showing the code but not under an open source license? The arguments I've been getting against this is that this move will confuse clients and developers and will get us more bad publicity than any good thing. The developer of PAINT.NET used to release his code and got a lot of flack when he started reminding competitors that the code is only for educational purposes and isn't really open source. I've also been told that open sourcing for the sake of open sourcing doesn't make sense, bla bla bla, and that unless I have a plan for how that's going to bring more revenue, it's not for us. Well, honestly I don't have a plan, but I thought why not try. Of course I can't say if this will help us or hurt us. I don't want to take the responsibility for a move that might hurt a company that's doing well and get people laid off. As I said, an open source license does not look like an option, so it's between closed source or showing the code but still under a normal copyright license. But as I said there's resistance to showing the code because of the worry that competitors will use our code to create their own. Does anyone know of any facts that can help with this decision, whether in favor or against showing the code."}
{"_id": "207608", "title": "When making responsive design how many versions of account for?", "text": "I am learning how to make responsive layouts for sites and web applications. It's said we need to use media queries to find out the width(resolution) and then select the layout(wireframe) for that screen. I would like to know how many layouts(wireframe) should I make for?   Please advice as per your experience. For example:   * 960x    * 480x    * 800x"}
{"_id": "76406", "title": "Directly modifying superglobals", "text": "I've seen people (who generally write good code) directly alter the `$_POST` array with code like this:               // Add some value that wasn't actually posted     $_POST['last_activity'] = time();          // Alter an existing post value     $_POST['name'] = trim($_POST['name']);          // Our pretend function     // Pass the entire $_POST array as data to work with in the function     // The function update_record() will read only the values we actually need     update_record($_POST);          // ...That sure was easier than creating a new array      //  with only the $_POST values we actually need.      It makes sense that `update_record()` should not access $_POST directly, so we can pass other arrays of data to it for instance, but surely this is lazy, bad design, or possibly just wrong? However, we are still passing a valid array to `update_record()`, so why create a new one? This is not the point of the question, just an example of usage. However, I have heard plenty of people say that this should not be done with `$_REQUEST` data, and it's bad practice. But why? Looks harmless enough. Examples:   * Setting a default `$_GET` (or post) value that doesn't really exist   * Adding `$_POST` values that weren't actually posted after a form submission   * Directly sanitizing or filtering the `$_GET` array values _or keys_ very early in the script (fallback sanitation... why not?)   * Setting a `$_POST` value manually before form submission to populate an input with a default value (when the input reads `$_POST` for it's default value; I have done this)   * Making up your own `$_SERVER` values? Sure, hey why not?   * How about the others, like `$_COOKIE` and `$_SESSION`? Of course we have to modify those directly right? Then why not the others? Should direct modification of superglobals **_never_** be done, or is it OK to do in **_some_** instances?"}
{"_id": "234888", "title": "Is secretive systems development really possible?", "text": "> An agency wants to develop a highly secret computer system using public > contractors. So they hire different companies to implement different > components of the system. When all the components are put together the > system is functional, but each component on it's own does not reveal the > true nature of the system. Often the nature of the system is controversial, > illegal or dangerous. That scenario has been played out many times in movies and books, but is it really possible to build such a computer system in the real-world without at least one company knowing the nature of the system. As an example, in the movie Batman: The Dark Knight. Batman uses contractors to build a spy network that allows him to use mobile phones as sonar devices. He claims in the movie that no one knows the nature of the system, because it was out sourced to many different parties. Sounds good in science fiction, but in the real world can systems been engineered this way. While I know parts of a system can easily be outsourced. Could an agency build a large complex computer system using contractors without anyone knowing the nature of the system?"}
{"_id": "234883", "title": "Is it really possible to have libraries not depend on other libraries?", "text": "I often see the advice that you should try to make each library independent. And yet in reality I can never seem to achieve this. Is this BS advice or is it actually possibly in any realistic way? Example: I write a 2D Vector library, I then use that to make a 2D collision library. I then build a 2D physics library that uses both the 2D Vector Library and the 2D Collision library. Am I seriously expected to figure out a way to make the physics library not depend on the other 2 libraries? Likely I'll eventually want to be able to serialize/deserialize the physics and collision data which will mean I'll want to make them further depend on some serialization library. Another example: I have a string library with lots of string functions (think `endsWith(str, ending)` and `startsWith(str, start)` or whatever. I then write a templating library that uses my string library. I rarely seem to be able to write a new library that doesn't use other libraries. I could write interfaces and then write adaptors for all of those to attempt to decouple one library from another but it's unlikely to be performant and often the models of the different libraries mean that even if I could decouple with an interface trying to use a different library than the one originally decoupled will end up being impossible or massively non-performant. So, is that original advice BS or is there some way to actually apply the advice in the real world?"}
{"_id": "171636", "title": "Selling software instead of on-demand work", "text": "Doing on-demand work stresses me out and is not good for my back. What tips could you offer if you have experience in spotting needs and writing custom software to suit ?"}
{"_id": "238478", "title": "Planning poker with visually impaired colleague", "text": "At the office we just got a new colleague who is visually impaired. I'm in charge of organizing the planning poker sessions and the new colleague must participate as a member of the team. We have these nice sets of poker cards with planning poker numbers on them, but that doesn't help of course for our new colleague. Until now we fixed this problem by just naming the estimates, letting the new colleague say their estimate right after the rest had put down their card, then the rest flips their card and I name the estimates in a row. **My question(s):** Is there any one who has experience with this kind of situation and have a better solution? Is there such a thing as Braille poker cards? The current solution does work, but I think this can be improved for us all by for example Braille poker cards."}
{"_id": "238472", "title": "How to insert/update a large amount of data into mysql using php", "text": "I have an excel sheet which has a large amount of data. I am using php to insert the data into mysql server. I have two problems 1) I have to update a row if the id already exists, else insert the data. 2) BIG PROBLEM : I have more than 40,000 rows and the time out on the sql server which is set by the admin is 60 seconds. When i run the update/insert query it will take more than 60 seconds, and because of this there will be a timeout. So the whole process will fail. Is there a way I can do this ? Currently I am checking the student id if it exists, then update otherwise insert. This I feel is taking a lot of time and causing the server to time out. Also I have this field in the mysql stating the last time the data was updated(last_update). I was thinking of using this date, and if it is past a particular date(ie last time i ran the program) then only those rows should be updated. Will this help in anyway ? And what is the query i can run so as to check this date in the mysql database, that if it is past a particular date only those rows need to be updated and not everything else. (Please help me with an example query for the above!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)"}
{"_id": "238471", "title": "What types of programming require practical category theory?", "text": "Category theory has applications in theoretical computer science and obviously is central to abstract mathematics. I have heard that it also has direct practical applications in programming and software development. What type of programming is practical category theory necessary for? What do programmers use category theory to accomplish? Please note my use of \"necessary\" and \"require\" in this post. I realize that in some sense most programmers will benefit from having experience in different types of theories, but I am looking for direct applications where the usage of category theory is essential, i.e. if you didn't know category theory, you probably couldn't do it. Also, I'd like to clarify that by \"what type of programming,\" I am hoping less for a broad answer like \"functional programming,\" and more for specific applications like \"writing bank software\" or \"making operating systems.\""}
{"_id": "238476", "title": "What is the best way to track database changes across a large team", "text": "What is the best way to track any change made to the SQL Server database before moving to production in case of a large team ? We have used excel sheets but quite often things get missed which come out with SQL compare only during moving changes to production?"}
{"_id": "242899", "title": "How should I refactor switch statements like this (Switching on type) to be more OO?", "text": "I'm seeing some code like this in our code base, and want to refactor it: (Typescript psuedocode follows):               class EntityManager{          private findEntityForServerObject(entityType:string, serverObject:any):IEntity {              var existingEntity:IEntity = null;              switch(entityType) {           case Types.UserSetting:                 existingEntity = this.getUserSettingByUserIdAndSettingName(serverObject.user_id, serverObject.setting_name);                     break;                  case Types.Bar:                 existingEntity = this.getBarByUserIdAndId(serverObject.user_id, serverObject.id);                 break;                  //Lots more case statements here...         }         return existingEntity;      }           }      The downsides of switching on type are self-explanatory. Normally, when switching behavior based on type, I try to push the behavior into subclasses so that I can reduce this to a single method call, and let polymorphism take care of the rest. However, the following two things are giving me pause: 1) I don't want to couple the serverObject with the class that is storing all of these objects. It doesn't know where to look for entities of a certain type. And unfortunately, the identity of a type of ServerObject varies with the type of ServerObject. (So sometimes it's just an ID, other times it's a combination of an id and a uniquely identifying string, etc). And this behavior doesn't belong down there on those subclasses. It is the responsibility of the EntityManager and its delegates. 2) In this case, I can't modify the ServerObject classes since they're plain old data objects. It should be mentioned that I've got other instances of the above method that take a parameter like \"IEntity\" and proceed to do almost the same thing (but slightly modify the name of the methods they're calling to get the identity of the entity). So, we might have:                       case Types.Bar:                 existingEntity = this.getBarByUserIdAndId(entity.getUserId(), entity.getId());                 break;      So in that case, I _can_ change the entity interface and subclasses, but this isn't behavior that belongs in that class. So, I _think_ that points me to some sort of map. So eventually I will call:               private findEntityForServerObject(entityType:string, serverObject:any):IEntity {              return aMapOfSomeSort[entityType].findByServerObject(serverObject);          }          private findEntityForEntity(someEntity:IEntity):IEntity {         return aMapOfSomeSort[someEntity.entityType].findByEntity(someEntity);     }      Which means I need to register some sort of strategy classes/functions at runtime with this map. And again, I darn well better remember to register one for each my my types, or I'll get a runtime exception. Is there a better way to refactor this? I feel like I'm missing something really obvious here."}
{"_id": "170324", "title": "It's hard to judge how good your own product is. Is there a name for this issue?", "text": "I was just talking to my partner about how hard it is to personally judge how good your product is after a while because you use it so often. You literally spend hours on your computer doing nothing but work on this \"consumer facing\" application, and you start to feel a little fatigue of using it over and over and over, at least a hundred times a day. You get scared this fatigue may mean the product you are building may have the same effect on the users and might mean you are doing something wrong. Is there a name for this in product development? For the fact that as a designer+ programmer+everything else, your product might not suck as much as you think simply because you spend way too much time with it, or a variation of this?"}
{"_id": "170328", "title": "How do global cancel/exit commands work in bash?", "text": "As I have done multiple times before, I've written bash scripts, and just general commands that go nowhere. They just blink the little command line cursor at me for infinity until I control+C the command. When I do cancel the command, what exactly is going on when I do this? Am I somehow stopping and killing the current PID I'm working on? Does it jump to a different run-level and execute something to terminate the command? On a slightly different note, I've never been able to figure out how to set up something like this in a script or program I've worked on. Since I mostly program in Ruby, can I setup something like a certain key press stops the program? Every time I've looked into doing something similar, I always end up getting hung up when it comes to user input, whether that is a loop waiting for a condition, or something like this:               def Break()       user_break = gets.strip     end          def Main()     Function1()     Break()     Function2()     Break()     [...]     end      It seems and is incredibly bulky, and definitely isn't easily scaled up or down."}
{"_id": "242894", "title": "Callbacks: when to return value, and when to modify parameter?", "text": "When writing a callback, when is best to have the callback return a value, and when is it best to have the callback modify a parameter? Is there a difference? For example, if we wanted to grab a list of dependencies, when would you do this:               function GetDependencies(){         return [{\"Dep1\" : 1.1},                  {\"Dept2\": 1.2},                  {\"Dep3\" : 1.3}];     }      And when would you do this?               function RegisterDependencies(register){         register.add(\"Dep1\", 1.1);         register.add(\"Dep2\", 1.2);         register.add(\"Dep3\", 1.3);     }"}
{"_id": "225650", "title": "How to deliver 3 different parameters to class in one method (2 of 3 are optional)", "text": "I need your help how to implement it nice and well. It's quite a simple problem. I can solve it but I need help on how to do that better. My class has logic working using three parameters. It gets them from another class. The problem is:   1. the first parameter is enum (it's required)   2. the second parameter is another enum (it's optional - there is possibility that this parameter doesn't exist)   3. the third parameter is vector of other enums (it's optional - there is possibility that this parameter doesn't exist). How to handle these parameters to my class? Any ideas? I'd like to get these parameters in one method, e.g. `updateParameters(...)`. Maybe I should have overloaded methods for every possibility, but it's not nice I guess. I can't get some container with parameters because I have different types."}
{"_id": "213782", "title": "C++ control reaches end of non-void function", "text": "I have a function, which looks something like this:               ClassA& ClassB::Check(int x){         //some calculations in a loop, if a condition is met, a reference to a ClassA object is given     }      I'm getting the \"control reaches end of non-void function\" error. As far as I understand, this is because, the function wont always return something, am I right? The function is getting the mouse coordinates and checking witch objects was selected. If something was selected, then do stuff, otherwise do nothing. What would be the best option to solve this? Should I create and return an object with some kind of flag to check against?"}
{"_id": "38358", "title": "Improving programming and math skills at home", "text": "Apologies if this sounds like a blog. I'm currently completing tertiary eduction in order to be accepted into a CS course at university, and I would like to know what options are available to me to improve my knowledge of programming and mathematics at home. I did not finish high-school, and have a pretty basic understanding of mathematics though I've never struggled with it. I'm not sure what level of mathematics I am at, suffice to say I would struggle with solving complex algebraic equations. I've never had any formal education in programming, but I've been doing it since I knew what it was. I'd say that I have OK practical knowledge, but next to no understanding of anything advanced. To improve my mathematics knowledge, I need a list of topics which should be covered, starting from the level of an average 16/17 year old. I'd also need to know which topics to cover before others. My first thought is to buy a highschool maths textbook to start with. I'm not sure what I should be doing to improve my programming knowledge, but I sure know that I am far, far off from answering questions such as: \"Using only line drawing primives, construct a wireframe 3d car demo where the player can drive the car.\" (to use an example from a pretty out-there job application task). I'm not sure what I am expecting in the way of answers, perhaps just advice from people who have been in similar situations. I've got a year before I enter the CS course and I want to come in with all guns blazing. Thanks."}
{"_id": "246834", "title": "Should ALL divs float left?", "text": "I'm designing within an application that I inherited. I have done a lot of work to \"consolidate\" the CSS which was extremely overworked through much copying and pasting without a lot of strategy behind it. One curious thing I found was to style ALL divs as:               <style>     div{ float: left; }     </style>      Do any other applications do this? I would be \"unfloating\" divs all the time because the majority of my use of divs is in fact a division of content, forcing a new line for items like cell phones and tablets. In my practices, I will style a div float-left if I specifically need it to do that."}
{"_id": "229337", "title": "should I store common data between two tables in a third separate table in my database?", "text": "If I have 2 tables in my database, let's say for instance 'buyers' and 'sellers' but I collect a common set of data for both for instance telephone number, email address, address etc. Is it better practice to have one common table for 'contact_details' with a reference to the table and row that the contact details are for, or as they are seperate entities are they better off in seperate tables entirely?"}
{"_id": "223320", "title": "Advertisements & GPL", "text": "I'm planning on providing some GPL software to visitors after they interact with an advertisement. This advertisement will generate revenue for our company, so this would fall under commercial usage. I understand the GPL requires us to either provide the source or a written promise to provide the source upon request when distributing the software commercially. I'd like to know if providing a link to the the software creator's website, with instructions on getting the source, would be sufficient to satisfy this clause in the GPL?"}
{"_id": "88964", "title": "Java: legal issues related to writing a commercial app in Java", "text": "I developed scientific software for use in my own scientific research. I am considering porting it to another language such as Java, and releasing a closed-source, commercial version of it for sale. I have been looking into Java, but I have some questions about the legal issues related to licensing Java for a commercial application, and the people who answer the phone at Oracle tell me that they do not talk to developers. I have carefully read the JDK license agreement here. But I still have questions. Does anyone reading this have any experience releasing commercial, closed-source, applications running on Java? If so, can you send me some links to information about the legal issues? My own web searches keep coming up with the same stuff. My understanding is that I would have to redistribute Java 6 with my application, and that my application would have to check to see if Java is installed in the end user's computer, and then install Java if it is not installed, or if a newer version of Java needs to be installed. Many of these end user computers might be in large organizations which might not have purchased Oracle licenses. Can my commercial application distribute the Java platform for free in this way without paying a fee to Oracle? Or are there fees or other restrictions involved? Can you please post a link to any information on the web about this? From what I have read, the only fees seem to be related to the commercial features of Java, which are limited to tools for optomizing large enterprise applications. But I would like to hear from other developers, and to read the information that you might link to on the web in your replies, if you are willing. Alternatively, I would consider writing my application in C++ or in c#.net instead."}
{"_id": "38356", "title": "Game-dev-oriented Code Kata?", "text": "(I ask here because gamedev.stackexchange.net isn't as exposed to programmers as this site) Code Kata are good programming exercises ( see Code Kata ). I think the provided exercices are good for general problem solving. Now I'm mostly interested into all that is specific to game developpement and similar typical constraints. I mean not the low level stuff (like manipulating texture bits, that's too specific) but more like buffered event systems implementation or similar systems used in typical games. Maybe basic fast collision. Is there a list of game-dev-oriented code kata somewhere?"}
{"_id": "234774", "title": "Does functional programming add complexity in code?", "text": "For the entire past year I've been written Scala code (coming from a Java background). I really liked how you could create simpler and cleaner code, with vals, case classes, map/filter/lambda functions, implicits and the type inference. I've used it mostly for an Akka-based application. This year I'm on a Scala project with a new team, who really like functional programming. They heavily use Scalaz, and the code is filled everywhere with applicatives, context bounds, reader/writer/state monad, even the main method is \"wrapped\" in an I/O monad. Their reasoning is that this makes the compiler \"work for us\" in asserting that the code is correct, and each function is free from side effects. Even so, from my point of view all this syntax really gets in the way of the business logic. For instance, a type of \"MyBusinessObject\" is fine, as well are types like \"List[MyBusinessObject]\", \"Option[MyBusinessObject]\" or even \"Future[MyBusinessObject]\". They all have a clear meaning and purpose. On the other hand, code like:               def method[M[_]: Applicative] = {       case (a, b) => (ca[M](a) |@| cb[M](b)) {         case t @ (ra, rb) =>           if (ra.result && rb.result) t.right           else t.left       }     }      does it add complexity to the program, or is it just me that I'm not used to this way of programming?"}
{"_id": "246832", "title": "Large csv's to html report", "text": "I am working on a web front end + front end services. I receive good sized csv files (10k lines). My service processes them and condenses them into one larger csv file (up to 300k lines). This larger file will be turned into an html/pdf report after some extrapolation. My questions are:   1. Taking 17,000 files and turning them into 1 takes FOREVER (18 hours last time I tried it). The current process is to take a line of the csv, parse it to see if it exists in my master array, and either create a new entry or add the data to an existing entry in the array. Is there a better way to do this? It seems the last item would take exponentially longer than the first.   2. Once this large file is created, parsing it seems to take quite a while as well. Should I move away from writing to a csv output and go with JSON for speed of data massaging? or even a lightweight db?"}
{"_id": "228063", "title": "What is Component Oriented Programming, and how is it different from OOP?", "text": "What exactly is Component Oriented Programming, and how is it different from Object Oriented Programming? Thanks"}
{"_id": "228067", "title": "Where do put INotifyPropertyChanged Interface in Model or ViewModel", "text": "I am new to MVVM pattern I have a window which has 3 text boxes namely Name,Address,Description ,a save button and a listview which displays the above fields Name,Address,Description respectively .When the save button is clicked I want to save the fields into database as well as show the record in the listview as well. Where do I put INotifyPropertyChanged interface Model or in ViewModel or in both place?"}
{"_id": "228069", "title": "Call the database every time, or create an object in memory, and if so, how and how often to update?", "text": "I'm creating an app in javascript/nodejs and using neo4j as database. Let's say I have an entity `User` in my database. It has a bunch of properties, like `boxes_collected` and `places_visited`, which keep updating independently of one another throughout the course of running my app. So far I have functions that talk to the database to update these properties directly. But it's getting a bit messy and I'm thinking of making a single high level object/class that handles everything in a much cleaner, nicer, and eloquent way. Here's a tiny version of my \"model\" to better explain what I mean: Suppose I have a function like this               function UpdateUserValue_plants(number) {// update database}      But then if were to create a `User` object and incorporate the above into it,               var User = function User(plants, other...) {         this.plants= plants;     }          User.prototype.updateValue_plants = function(number) {         this.plants += number; // first update the model itself     }      Then when am I supposed to update the database? And wouldn't I be doing the updatation twice that way: first the object's property, _then_ the database? Is there an elegant solution to this?"}
{"_id": "155627", "title": "Something confusing about Single Responsibility Principle", "text": "1) > In fact if two responsibilities are always expected to change at the same > time you arguably should not separate them into different classes as this > would lead, to quote Martin, to a \"smell of Needless Complexity\". The same > is the case for responsibilities that never change - the behavior is > invariant, and there is no need to split it. I assume even if non-related responsibilities are always expected to change for the same reason ( or if they never change ), we still shouldn't put them in the same class, since this would still violate high cohesion principle? 2) I've found two quite different definitions for SRP: > Single Responsibility Principle says that a subsystem, module, class, or > even a function, should not have more than one reason to change. and > There should never be more than one reason for a class to change Doesn't the latter definition narrow **SRP** to a class level? If so, isn't first quote wrong by claiming that **SRP** can also be applied at subsystem, module and function levels? thank you"}
{"_id": "82455", "title": "Code Plagiarism: How hard or how easy to detect this?", "text": "Suppose you want to develop an application, in midst of development you find out that one similar application already exists, highly recognized and used. It's a cross platform application but it's unknown whether this application is open source or not. However you decide to reverse engineer it without taking care of its license and eventually you succeed in it. And now you are using some portion of it for your application, which in some manner improvement of the application and -being based on same idea and targeting some platforms that the original application also covers- comes into straight competition of it. Can original developer detect that you plagiarized the original code? If yes how?"}
{"_id": "82456", "title": "Super user powers in development environment?", "text": "Is it too much to ask for when I ask the IT department to give my development team an environment where we can use whatever software that we can download without having to have security check those tools? Of course, the software can be checked by security before deploying to Test, and the development environment can be on a VLAN that is not accessible from outside. This would greatly aid us by allowing us to use whatever open-source testing tools that we want. I'm asking because we have such tight restrictions on the software approval process, and I hear of other teams that have an environment where they can configure their local server however they want and they can use whatever tools they want. What's the norm out there? Thank you for any comments!"}
{"_id": "82451", "title": "Code formatting : Laying out functions based on call hierarchy within a class file?", "text": "A suggestion from Bob Martin's \"Clean code\" has me scratching my head.. \"If once function calls another, they should be vertically close and the caller should be above the callee\" So far, I've been more or less sticking close to the .Net guidelines, which group class members by type (properties, ctors, functions) and visibility (public / prot. / private). The tip seems like trouble at first.. but it \"just might work\". I personally have encountered cases where I liked this layout - easier to drill down when you're in the right call chain. The idea behind the tip seems sound but other scenarios like \"let me look at the public interface of this class\" might get worse. Maybe Uncle Bob is banking on the small classes and IDE support for viewing types... Has anyone tried this out for an extended period ? Update: Seems like a code-snippet is in order               class SomeType()     {       /// fields, ctors, et. all       public void Method1()   { // calls HelperMethod1 and HelperMethod2 }       private void HelperMethod1 { // calls HelperMethod3 }       private void HelperMethod3 {}       private void HelperMethod2 {}            public void Method2 () { // and so on... }          }"}
{"_id": "155621", "title": "How do you get past the Analysis to Paralysis when working on a new project?", "text": "I've been struggling with how to get my project going. I've got an old software package that is in need of desparate rewrite. I haven't compiled the source code since 2004. It still sells, it's stable but does require the \u201cRun this program in compatibility mode for:\u201d on a lot of the newer windows systems. It's also one of those hard coded 640 X 480 screen resolution programs. Yuck! I can't seem to get started with this rewrite. I'm constantly fiddling around with different things. I'll play around with different fluid layouts for a while. Then I start looking at how the main menu should work and look. I quickly find out that there's this thing called \"Cool Bars\" and I'll spend hours playing with that. Then I start thinking about stuff like \"Oh I need to make sure that the screen sizes are preserved so when the application gets relaunched it remebers how the screens were positioned.\" Which leads to what happens if they have two monitors? Which leads to what happens if they have a quad screen? Yikes it's got to stop. I have always been a slow starter. I think about stuff long and hard up front. This has always plagued me. Once I get my mind made up though bam... I'm off and running. I'm looking for advice from some other one-person software companies that can help someone like me get off to a quicker start? ### Success Thanks to everyone for your motivation. I finally have a plan in place. I wish I could split the vote between @haylem and @Thorbj\u00f8rnRavnAndersen. I went to download.com and filtered the downloads by my software category. I sorted by \"Editors Pick\" and downloaded a couple of the highest rated programs. On the second hit I found the final piece of inspiration I needed. I love yellow sticky notes. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/086P7.jpg)"}
{"_id": "155620", "title": "EJB Lifecycle and Relation to WARs", "text": "I've been reading up on EJBs (3.x) and _believe_ I understand the basics. This question is a \"call for confirmation\" that I have interpreted the Java EE docs correctly and that I understand these fundamental concepts:   * An EJB is to an App Container as a Web App (WAR) is to a Web Container   * Just like you deploy a WAR to a Web Container, and that container manages your WAR's life cycle, you deploy an EJB to an App Container, and the container manages your EJB's life cycle   * When the App Container fires up and deploys an EJB, it is given a unique \"identifier\" and URL that can be used by JNDI to look up the EJB from another tier (like the web tier)   * So, when your web app wants to invoke one of your EJB's methods, it looks the EJB up using some kind of service locator (JNDI) and invoke the method that way Am I on-track or way off-base here? Please correct me & clarify for me if any of these are incorrect. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "19385", "title": "Starting a career in quantitative finance", "text": "I've been reading John Hull book (Options, Futures and Other Derivatives) mostly on curiosity. I've read other books about financial markets in the past (like Elder's Trading for Living and the novel Reminiscences of a Stock Operator). But I'm really hooked by the John Hull book. My background is mostly scientific computing: number crunching, visualization and image processing. Mostly in C++, with some C, Fortran, Python, Ruby here and there. I've been thinking on moving on to quantitative finance - I'd like to do that. What would be the best way to start? Any tips?"}
{"_id": "155628", "title": "What is the difference between Single Responsibility Principle and Separation of Concerns", "text": "a)What is the difference between **SRP** and **SoC**? Perhaps that **SRP** is applied at class level, while **SoC** can be applied at _system_ , _subsystem_ , _module_ , _class_ or _function_ levels. b) If answer to _a)_ is yes, is then _SoC_ applied at _class level_ a synonym for **SRP**? thank you"}
{"_id": "131874", "title": "How useful is it to double major in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science?", "text": "I'm halfway through a double major in both and love the subjects equally as much, I'm just starting to really dislike the people in Electrical Engineering so much so that I kind of want to stop taking the classes in EE. Are there any jobs that would require or be especially helpful to have both majors completed?"}
{"_id": "131877", "title": "How to name a private method in a language which doesn't support privacy?", "text": "What's the coding standard for naming a private method in a language which does not have the private modifier? Specifically, I am talking about Javascript. Below I've placed an underscore at the end of my private method's name, but a colleague told me that underscore is usually for class fields.               var MyClass = Class.create({         initialize: function() {             alert('constructor');         },         publicMethod: function() {             alert('i am public');         },         privateMethod_: function() {             alert('i am private');         }     });"}
{"_id": "131872", "title": "Has anyone used functional testing tools to grade student lab exercises?", "text": "I'm working on classes that cover software tools and languages. Obviously the classes are going to be more valuable if the students actually **do** some of what they're supposed to be learning, so I'm planning to incorporate lab work. Has anyone used automated functional testing tools to grade lab assignments? Lab 1 is to install Apache, so the testing server looks to see that your lab machine is listening on port 80, and responds with the default index page. Lab 2 is to create a page that takes `?name=MyName` and responds \"Hello, MyName!\", so the testing server GETs `?name=random` and expects \"Hello, random!\". If you haven't used them this way yourself, what tools **might** be a good candidate?"}
{"_id": "214061", "title": "Where in computer science education does \"reuse and integration\" find comprehensive coverage?", "text": "**This intro is only my naive attempt at a mile-high snapshot helping me to position my question.** Any user trying to answer my question, that tries to nail down one aspect of programming, will have to overcome my naive understanding, simply because of my idiosyncratic education. So here I'm placing my subject in the array of topics outlining programming and software activities:   1. Fundamentals of programming (software design patterns, idioms, models)   2. Code reuse and integration (libraries, frameworks, apis)   3. Continual development (documentation, commenting, version control)   4. Maintenance best practices (systems administration) * * * I'm interested to focus my programming skills on code reuse and integration topics. This topic may certainly begin with software programming languages and the differences between functional and object-oriented programming. However, what I wish to focus on _in detail and at some length are the variety of uses of libraries, frameworks, and apis._ My programming education comes from what I can readily find on the internet and in books. Earlier this year I enrolled in a class on fundamentals at Coursera, Programming Languages, by professor Daniel Grossman, which attempts to prepare students for programming in any language. Reuse was mentioned only as a property of functions and object. _You can start your search for 'reuse and integration' in fundamentals and not get close._ Since I started learning some Ruby, php I've put together a better understanding of 'reuse and integration', but its all cobbled and patchwork. Published materials are mostly #1 and then some idiosyncratic mix of #2-4. _You can read a lot of books and still not understand how all of these abstractions fit together._ I've even participated in a discussion here at p.se on the pedagogical problem of cargo-cult programmer students who \" _...copy-paste code from previous, similar-looking assignments..._ \" While my own answer to this reflects my appreciation for the OP's concern, and yet my imagination can't help envying these students who can draw with such ease from previous projects _just a little bit._ I've not read the book or participated in a class or heard a discussion which attempts to survey the reuse and integration paradigms in their totality. Where in computer science education does \u201creuse and integration\u201d find comprehensive coverage?"}
{"_id": "215332", "title": "Software attribution / design credits", "text": "We just completed developing a web app for a client. And like I usually do, I added developed by \"My Company\" at the footer at a very small insignificant size. I sent the client an End user license stating some of the following in summary               you can't resell, redistribute, etc without our notice     ...     you can't remove the attribution or design credits      the client got back to me and complained, telling me now that he was also developing for someone, and that 'I can't add my attribution' without his/her consent, but? Although I sign a NDA within summary states that I cannot disclose the software to anyone else. There was no agreement before the project that am not to add design credits or attribution. I know every software I install have that, and so is every products from companies, mostly technological products. How does this work (adding design credits)?"}
{"_id": "227831", "title": "What is the shortcoming of custom factory comparing to generic factory", "text": "I have a factory method as given below               public class AutomobileFactory     {         Dictionary<string, ICar> internalFactory = new Dictionary<string, ICar>();         public AutomobileFactory()         {             internalFactory.Add(\"fiat\",new Fiat());             internalFactory.Add(\"ford\", new Ford());         }              public ICar Create(string carType)         {             return internalFactory[carType];         }     }      It is a very humble code. Now, I referred Factory pattern with generics. But I am not able to understand what extra this generic approach can offer. **QUESTION** What is the shortcoming of the above given factory when compared to the generic factory?"}
{"_id": "97146", "title": "How would an algorithm that splits/sorts numbers into three groups to make them equally large work?", "text": "I have to write an algorithm to split/sort numbers into three groups to make them equally large. To be more specific: I have three groups, let's call them **A** , **B** and **C**. Then I have a lot of numbers. Each number has assigned a group to which it belongs, but the thing is, that one number could belong to one of two or one of three groups (to one of them, but we don't know exactly to which one). Sample data:               Number | Group      1      | A (this number HAVE TO be in group A)      2      | A      3      | B      4      | C      5      | AC (this number can be in group A or C)      6      | BC (can be in group B or C)      7      | A      8      | B      9      | ABC (can be in group A, B or C)      ...       One of the correct results of this sample can be:               A: 1, 2, 7      B: 3, 8, 9      C: 4, 5, 6       It doesn't matter which group is chosen if there were multiple groups assigned to one number (it would be best if it is chosen randomly). The goal is to split those numbers to make each group equally large (or as close to it as possible). My question is: How would you write algorithm to achieve the desired result? Pseudo code or verbal description is enough."}
{"_id": "88385", "title": "Paradigms fit for UI programming", "text": "This is a more specific question (or actually two, but they are related) coming from the comments of OOP technology death where someone stated that OOP is not the right paradigm for GUI programming. Reading the comments there and here I still have the feeling there are things to learn: which programming paradigms are considered good fits and why are they better than others (perhaps with examples to illustrate?) _I removed the tk-example from the title and question_"}
{"_id": "97140", "title": "Are there good places to link people to for software licenses \"in plain english\" similar to how Creative Commons does?", "text": "If you click the cc-wiki link at the bottom of this site, you get a nice plain-english description of what you are and are not allowed to do. The legal stuff is there too, but as someone looking to use a library, I don't want legalese, I want a list of what I can and cannot do. Does a similar resource exist for software license, such as MIT, BSD-3clause, BSD-4clause, BSL, GPLv2, GPLv3, etc?"}
{"_id": "173165", "title": "As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform SW integration testing?", "text": "As per IEEE 12207, who has to perform Software integration testing (SOIPL): SW Testing team or SW Development team?"}
{"_id": "173167", "title": "How have Guava unit tests been generated automatically?", "text": "Guava has unit test cases automatically generated: > Guava has staggering numbers of unit tests: as of July 2012, the guava-tests > package includes over 286,000 individual test cases. Most of these are > **automatically** generated, not written by hand, but Guava's test coverage > is extremely thorough, especially for com.google.common.collect. How they were generated? What techniques and technologies were used to design and generate them?"}
{"_id": "82989", "title": "Strange names for revisions?", "text": "I'm working at a company that has a strange policy. They can't stick to a single name for a software revision. For some reason they have branches, versions, releases and perhaps another term. They never explain what these mean. What is the standard way to separate out different revisions to be less confusing?"}
{"_id": "46126", "title": "Is software development a field suitable for people who have unconventional methods of solving problems?", "text": "I tend to think very independently, often coming up with unconventional, sometimes unorthodox, ways of solving problems. I do not like to listen to authority, such as having to write code a certain way or following strict guidelines and formats. Would the software engineering field be tough for someone like me? If not, what fields of computer science do allow for that?"}
{"_id": "177671", "title": "Order of executions in C++ streams", "text": "It is obvious that first cout prints 7 7 but why the second one prints 8 8 7 ? Why not 7 8 8? How does such constructions work in c++?               int ink(int *x){          *x += 1;          return *x;     }                    int main(){         int *a;         int b = 6;              a = &b;              cout << ++b << \" \" << b << endl;            cout << b << \" \" << ink(a) << \" \" << b;              return 0;      }"}
{"_id": "177675", "title": "Questioning pythonic type checking", "text": "I've seen countless times the following approach suggested for \"taking in a collection of objects and doing X if X is a Y and ignoring the object otherwise\"               def quackAllDucks(ducks):       for duck in ducks:         try:           duck.quack(\"QUACK\")         except AttributeError:           #Not a duck, can't quack, don't worry about it           pass      The alternative implementation below always gets flak for the performance hit caused by type checking               def quackAllDucks(ducks):       for duck in ducks:         if hasattr(duck,\"quack\"):           duck.quack(\"QUACK\")      However, it seems to me that in 99% of scenarios you would want to use the second solution because of the following:   * If the user gets the parameters wrong then they will not be treated like a duck and there will be no indication. A lot of time will be wasted debugging why there is no quacking going on until the user finally realizes his silly mistake. The second solution would throw a stack trace as soon the user tried to quack.   * If the user has any bugs in their quack() method which cause an AttributeError then those bugs will be silently swallowed. Once again time will be wasted digging for the bug when the second solution would simply give a stack trace showing the immediate issue. In fact, it seems to me that the only time you would ever want to use the first method is when:   * The block of code in question is in an extremely performance critical section of your application. Following the principal of \"avoid premature optimization\" you would only realize this of course, after you had implemented the safer approach and found it to be a bottleneck.   * There are many types of quacking objects out there and you are only interested in quacking objects that quack with a very specific set of arguments (this seems to be a very rare case to me). Given this, why is it that so many people prefer the first approach over the second approach? What is it that I am missing? Also, I realize there are other solutions (such as using abcs) but these are the two solutions I seem to see most often for the basic case."}
{"_id": "191455", "title": "What is a good design for a container, assignment and items", "text": "------------- 1    * -------------- *       1 --------         | Container |--------| Assignment |-----------| User |         -------------        --------------           --------               ^                     ^               |                     |           ----------            -------------           |        |            |           |     ---------- ----------  ---------- ---------------     | Flight | | Dinner |  | Booking| | Reservation |     ---------- ----------  ---------- ---------------      This problem is one that I've stumbled upon in several different occasions but never found an elegant solution for: In my system model (in rails), which maps to the database, I need to have `Users` that can be added to `Containers` through `Assignments`. Now, there can be many things that can be containers:   * A `Flight` is a `Container`. It can hold `Users`. In such a case the concrete `Assignment` is a `Booking`.   * A `Dinner` is a `Container`. It can hold `Users`. In such a case the concrete `Assignment` is a `Reservation`.   * And many more. You get my point. So I have Abstract notions of `Container` and `Assignment`. `Containers` hold `Assignments` and I also have concrete implementations of them, with each concrete implementation of `Container` matching a concrete implementation of `Assignment`. The straight forward design is as above. My main problem with it is that it doesn't express the relation between each concrete container and the concrete assignment. Any ideas how to better design this?"}
{"_id": "191457", "title": "Web developer to software engineer", "text": "I'm currently a web developer building web apps in PHP and Javascript. I really enjoy the programming aspect more so than the front end design side of things. I would to like to start to focus my attention on this with the aim to becoming a software engineer in next couple of years. So my first thought was to go and learn C++ but is this the best thing to start? In the future I would like to work on developing things such as operating systems and native applications. When I look at at engineering jobs at say, Google, Facebook, Apple, they all appear to ask for **C/C++ AND OR JAVA**. Currently, I know none of these, but I am familiar with generic programming concepts such as loops, functions, oop etc. Also, out of C/C++ and JAVA which is the more probably chance of it getting me ahead in my career? My problem would be that while learning say 'C++' what would I use it for? I currently have no use for it but really would like a career as a serious engineer rather than just web based stuff. I have a mac and PC running linux and would like to start with some example projects and tutorials to just get a good understanding of the language"}
{"_id": "191450", "title": "How to interact with C++ API through http commands?", "text": "I have a C++ API, I want to send commands through http to run any c++ method from this API. I'm using libmicrohttpd. What steps should I follow to do such a work?"}
{"_id": "80589", "title": "Contract review for international contracting", "text": "I am intending to work as an independent contractor, writing software for a client based in another country. My work will be provided electronically so I won't need to relocate. However, there is a legal dilemma, as I see it:   1. If the draft contract stipulates that governing law is the law of the country where the client is based, I will find it very difficult to find a lawyer willing to review the contract. (This has been my experience.)   2. If the draft contract stipulates that governing law is the law of my country, the client will face the same problem: _they_ will find it very difficult to find a lawyer willing to review the contract. Right?   3. _There is no realistic third option_. The contract has to stipulate a choice of law - anything else would be ridiculous. Let me go into more detail on why option 1 is difficult:   * Lawyers in my country, who know only my country's law, will simply throw up their hands and say \"Can't help you - unless you get the stipulated law changed\".   * Expatriate lawyers from the client's country, working in this country, even if they are from the right state or province, will probably be too busy working for corporate clients to be interested in my (from their perspective) petty little contract review.   * So, it looks like my only option remaining is... hire a lawyer based in the client's country? And interact with them by phone/VOIP, email and fax? Is this possible? Will it even be _legal_ for them to take on me as a client? How can I get a recommendation? Is there anything I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "195528", "title": "Security comparison between xmlHttpRequest and HttpRequest", "text": "Is there a difference between HttpRequest and xmlHttpRequest in terms of security? Is one more secure than the other? Is it more secure to send important data such as passwords via HttpRequest than via xmlHttpRequest ? Is data packing in both done the same way?"}
{"_id": "195524", "title": "Load Balancing for Listeners", "text": "How should we load balance listeners to a 3rd party service? e.g. We need to read gtalk messages via XMPP Listener and build an application using the interactions of the user with a chatbot. In such a case, how would we ensure that we can have XMPP listeners on multiple servers and we load balance the messages between the listeners? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "80582", "title": "Should you ever release something that you yourself could hack?", "text": "Being the creator of a program, you are probably in a better position than anyone to be aware of security vulnerabilities and potential hacks. If you know of a vulnerability in a system you wrote, is that a sign that increased security MUST be added before release, or should this be evaluated on a case by case basis to determine the severity of the security gap?"}
{"_id": "245810", "title": "Why are data constructors with the same name disallowed in different type constructors?", "text": "The following declaration gives an error:               type Vec2d = (Float, Float)     type Vec3d = (Float, Float, Float)     -- Rect x y defines a rectangle spanning from (0,0) to (x,y)     data Obj2d = Rect Float Float                | Translate Vec2d Obj2d     -- Cuboid x y z defines a cuboid spanning from (0,0,0) to (x,y,z)     data Obj3d = Cuboid Float Float Float                | Translate Vec3d Obj3d      namely `Multiple declarations of 'Translate'`. Now, I wonder why this limitation was introduced? If the limitation were not there, one could write `Translate (1, 1) Rect 2 2` and `Translate (1, 2, 3) Cuboid 1 1 1`, which sounds natural. I don't (immediately) see how this could result in a parsing problem bidding to disallow using the same name, the type could be inferred by the argument (`Rect 2 2` is an `Obj2d`, `Cuboid 1 1 1` is an `Obj3d`). I'm sure there is a good reason the language designers chose to disallow using the same name for data constructors of different types, but I'd like to learn: why, when it's not obviously necessary? (And type disambiguation is the bread-and-butter business of Haskell!)"}
{"_id": "12005", "title": "Why are cyclic imports considered so evil?", "text": "Seriously, what's the big deal about having a few cycles in one's import graph? I see it as a lesser evil than having super fine grained imports that make keeping track of where to look for what code an absolute nightmare."}
{"_id": "153702", "title": "Can the Turing machine be classified?", "text": "Can the Turing machine be classified e.g. as a Mealy machine? Why not? Can a Turing machine be input to another Turing machine without complication like halting problems? Thanks"}
{"_id": "64600", "title": "My experiences are server side programming and database management, I want to learn C++, where do I start?", "text": "The title is the topic, since I'm mainly a web developer,my hacking ability is limited to those loose type languages like PHP and Javascript. But I want to be more capable programmer. I saw Hip Hop PHP made by Facebook and realized that C++ is a must, I mean they reduced the CPU usage by 50% and added 1.8% performance improvement. So I made up my mind that I need to get serious in C++ language. Can you please show me where to start, some friendly tutorials. because I read some tutorials in C++ and noticed that it's very different from PHP."}
{"_id": "81185", "title": "What are good HTML 5 and PHP 5 books to get?", "text": "I am looking for beginner books into PHP 5 (Maybe with a bit into MySQL?) and HTML 5. I started self-teaching myself PHP although it has become a problem as the tutorials online are either outdated or just crap. I also managed to start learning with very little HTML knowledge so I am looking to brush up on my HTML knowledge and get more into PHP. I also am unsure weather I should be looking into XHTML or HTML5, or both so an answer to that would be splendid. I just want to become more self-sufficient and less reliant on other for my programming needs. I've searched Google for books but I'm just not sure which one is the \"best\" for me and makes for good practice and habits which brings me here."}
{"_id": "81184", "title": "Is the reason why everyone complains about flash app performance due to the fact that most flash apps are built with the flex framework?", "text": "Do you think flash performance is bad mainly due to the fact that most people build flash applications using the flex framework? As opposed to the problem having everything to do with the lower level flash system. What percent of flash apps are built with flex?"}
{"_id": "81183", "title": "Would it be harmful to have a company that frequently has security blunders on your resume?", "text": "I'm about to take a position with a certain group that hasn't been getting very good press about their computer security. Even if my job doesn't really pertain to that sort of work, am I still in danger of my resume being thrown in the trash for being associated with them?"}
{"_id": "120139", "title": "What resources about business should an internal IT department programmer be familiar with", "text": "I am developer / analyst in an internal IT department at a medium sized business. I have to deal with business people all the time and many of the things I create can have profound impacts on the business. I am starting to regret not taking any business classes in college because I don't understand the first thing about running a business so I don't always understand what people are wanting, the best I can do is \"think through it\". Does anyone have suggested methods of learning this stuff, maybe some resources. And please don't just say to ask people who work here. I have tried that before and I get no where."}
{"_id": "159369", "title": "Is Entity framework reliable enough to use in a Corporate Project? Should I use Entity?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is Entity framework reliable enough to use in a Corporate Project? Should I > use Entity? I'm a junior developer who's just completed a project using Entity framework. Unfortunately I was chewed out by one of the Senior Developers at my work citing that I should have used ADO.net and that Entity Framework quote: \"Is not reliable or feasible in a corporate application\". Although I think this is mostly exaggeration - are there any truth to his claims? If so, what are the facts / sources (and will this change with the release of Entity Framework 5)? If not - what can I use to justify my position that Entity is as reliable as ADO.net."}
{"_id": "121688", "title": "Best practice for processing a list of items", "text": "I have a list of objects that need to be processed in some way. That way may not be correct for an item and thus raise an exception. In pseudo-code, it would look like:               proccessItems (list)       error = new empty list       for item in list:           try:           process_item(item)         catch Whatever, err:           error.append(err)       return error      Is there a pattern for doing this sort of things? Are there any anti-patterns to avoid? A better code (exception not used for control flow), but still following the same logic would be:               proccessItems (list)       error = new empty list       for item in list:           ret = process_item(item)         if null != ret            error.append(ret)       return error"}
{"_id": "63057", "title": "If a new feature is implemented and there is a bug, should QA reject that feature or accept it and file a new bug?", "text": "At work, we use a bug tracker called Pivotal Tracker (www.pivotaltracker.com) that allows engineers to file features and bugs. If a feature or bug fix is delivered, it is QA's job to accept or reject it accordingly. If an engineer implements a new feature that has a bug in it, should QA accept that feature and file the bug separately, or should QA reject that feature and report the bug in a comment? Potential advantage of rejecting the feature: Better chances of engineers noticing and fixing the bug before releasing the code Potential advantage of filing a separate bug: It allows engineers to better assess how many bugs there have been (if that is really useful)"}
{"_id": "125308", "title": "What does CR mean in version numbers?", "text": "Hibernate has CR postfix in their releases for the 4.0 version of hibernate, for example 4.0.0.CR7. What does the CR part mean? When would I use this kind of release numbering?"}
{"_id": "9245", "title": "Postmortem scripts that run in case of your untimely death?", "text": "Do you know of any interesting real life stories where programmers have written scripts that executed in case of their deaths? Do you have any scripts that would run in case of your untimely death? If you were to write a such script, what would it be? If you have already written one for yourself, what does that script already do?"}
{"_id": "235917", "title": "Looking for a certain datatype if it exists", "text": "I'm looking for the kind of a certain datatypes. The main idea of this datatype is to describe a productionline containing several steps. Each step should be represented as a \"vertex\" containing an object of any type. Then for every \"vertex\" there are possible \"subproductionlines\" joining the line. So it could look something like:                                 O   ->   O   ->   |                    #   subproductionline                                         |                    #   joiningpoint     O   ->   O   ->   O   ->   O   ->   O   ->   O   ->   O  # main productionline                                         |                    #   joiningpoint              O   ->   O   ->   O   ->   |                    #   subproductionline                                |                             #   joiningpoint                       O   ->   |                             #subsubproductionline      Does anyone of you know such a datatype? If I were to code such a datatype... I see there two options of doing this:   * A datatype as an Array (main productionline) containing Arrays (containing as first element the containing data of each vertex) and the rest of elements containing subproductionlines as recursive this datatype or   * A datatype as an Array containing the data stored in the vertex. Last element is either the element, where this subproductionline is joining, or a specific element representing the end of a main productionline, if it is one. What do yout think is the better solution? The programming language I think of using for is c / c++."}
{"_id": "40350", "title": "Who designed exceptions?", "text": "Where did exceptions and exception handling come from? I like how .NET uses it, I like how C++ supports it (but libraries unfortunately use return code or is written in C instead). I know its pretty much standard in all new languages, but who designed it first or where did it come from? Is C++ the first language to use it? I don't know of any other that is older."}
{"_id": "176070", "title": "Which design better when use foreign key instead of a string to store a list of id", "text": "I'm building online examination system. I have designed to table, `Question` and `GeneralExam`. The table `GeneralExam` contains info about the exam like name, description, duration,... Now I would like to design table `GeneralQuestion`, it will contain the ids of questions belongs to a general exam. Currently, I have two ideas to design GeneralQuestion table:   1. It will have two columns: general_exam_id, question_id.   2. It will have two columns: general_exam_id,   list_question_ids (string/text). I would like to know which designing is better, or pros and cons of each designing. I'm using Postgresql database."}
{"_id": "247418", "title": "How are composite tables generally handled when there is no ORM tool available?", "text": "I am developing a Windows Runtime Component (C#) to be used in an HTML/JS frontend for a Windows Store App. Now, one of the requests is to have a database on the local system to store metadata about files that will be downloaded. After looking everywhere I have started using SQLite combined with the sqlite-net wrapper library. This seems to be widely regarded as the best option but it is a serious hassle for me to get working. Perhaps my biggest problem with it is that it cannot map collection types to composite tables. This lead to me writing my own SQL queries for the entire database structure but this quickly turned out to be a very inconvenient solution. To clarify, this is the situation I'm referring to:               class School {         string Name { get; set; }         List<Person> Students { get; set; }     }          class Person {         int Id { get; set; }         string Name { get; set; }     }      For such a small example you could surely write the SQL queries for the three tables yourself but in the actual situation I have an object that holds several collections which in turn also hold collections several levels down. Maybe I am spoiled by Entity Framework but it is hard to believe that either everyone uses basic models that only hold the (very) limited set of types supported by sqlite-net or everybody writes his own wrapper around it to account for models with some more complexity. How are these situations handled generally? Am I overlooking some very easy solution?"}
{"_id": "149134", "title": "How to specify a functional requirement?", "text": "I have this requirement:               The application must allow the Administrator to edit, create and delete Users.      Now, I have heard that each action must go in a functional requirement, and my question is: What of the following statements would be the more appropriate(if any): 1:               The application must allow the Administrator to edit, create and delete Users.      2:               The application must allow the Administrator to edit Users.     The application must allow the Administrator to create Users.     The application must allow the Administrator to delete Users."}
{"_id": "149139", "title": "What is .NET framework backward compatibility?", "text": "We develop a windows application in .NET 4 with a database of MySQL. When we are about to deploy that application, we install the .NET 4 framework in our client, then when installing the .NET Connector for MySQL, it requires a .NET framework 3.5. But the .NET 4 is already installed. Wasn't .NET framework backward compatible? We end up installing two .NET framework (3.5 & 4) which isn't small in disk size. What exactly does backward compatibility means?"}
{"_id": "49572", "title": "Is it a bad practice to have an interface to define constants?", "text": "I am writing a set of junit test classes in java. There are several constants, for example strings that I will need in different test classes. I am thinking about an interface that defines them and every test class would implement it. The benefits I see there are:   * easy access to constants: \"MY_CONSTANT\" instead of \"ThatClass.MY_CONSTANT\"   * each constant defined only once Is this approach rather a good or bad practice? I feel like abusing the concept of interfaces a little bit. You can answer generally about interfaces/constants, but also about unit tests if there is something special about it."}
{"_id": "247414", "title": "What kind of exception to ask for out of range arguments?", "text": "What type of exception should I throw? I have a console class which describes rectangle of cells which a user can index by passing in a coordinate:               width, height = 80, 25     console = Console.new(width, height)          x, y = 2, 5     point_on_screen = Point.new(x, y)     console[point_on_screen] = 'a'      I am now wondering what types of exception to throw when an index occurs out of bounds . That is, outside of the (constant!) domains x:[0, width] and y:[0, height]. I could throw a `RangeError` or an `ArgumentError` *.   1. Does it matter which type of exception to throw as long as the error message is useful?   2. Should I use the same exception type for both the construction of the console and the indexing? Are the two really semantically different? * returning a kind of out of bounds object is possibly a better option - something like a Null Object Pattern - but not what I am wondering about here. ### ArgumentError One option is to throw an `ArgumentError` because the argument is obviously wrong, dimensions can never be non-negative. This is what I throw in example 1, because we ought to know in advance that the dimensions should be non- negative. Example 1:               console = Console new(-3, 4) # Argument error      ### RangeError Another option is to throw a `RangeError` because the argument is out of the valid range. I use these for indexing. The argument is always out of range if x < 0, but if x \u2265 0 then it depends on the width of the console if the x is in the domain. Example 2:               console = Console.new(20, 40)     pt = Point.new(-3, 4)     Console[pt] # RangeError"}
{"_id": "21601", "title": "How to support a product built with agile development?", "text": "Two of the functions our company provides our customers are:   * Our Development team of ~10 employees creates software products for businesses in a particular industry. The software is used on hundreds of our customers' computers. Although the product is, for most customers, off-the-shell, larger customers drive its development, so it's somewhere between shrinkwrap software and custom software.   * Our Support team of ~25 employees provides technical support for both our own software and a few other software products for which we are the vendor. Our Development team recently switched to Scrum for their development methodology, and while I support this change, I worry that our Support team is going to have more trouble in the future. With a quicker release cycle, our customers will have features and products in production which Support isn't even aware of until the customer calls. We've never been particularly good at getting documentation and information from Development to Support, but I fear Scrum will just exacerbate the problem. What are good references on how companies reconcile Development's desire to release frequently with Support's desire to have full documentation and support information before customers see the product? How should a company structure their release and change management when using agile methods? EDIT: What I'm interested are specifics on how companies structure themselves to deal with these issues. Does the scrum team push releases to customers? Does the software have to go through a release/change management team who will not deploy until Support has been given documentation and brought up to speed? How do you get releases to customers quickly yet still keep everyone informed of changes and new features?"}
{"_id": "45479", "title": "What are some good practices before checking in source code?", "text": "My team uses Team Foundation Server for source control, and today I fixed some bugs and smoke test application before I checked it in but I forgot to comment some code. (This code made the UI a little bit strange.) I want to know what good practices there are before checking code in - I don't want to make this kind of mistake again."}
{"_id": "154287", "title": "Use my own GPL licensed code in a commercial product", "text": "I am developing a software project in Java/Swing licensed under GPL v3. Later, I want to create a Android application which uses the algorithms of the Java/Swing application. This Android app will be a commercial product (sold on Google Play Store). Is this a problem, when I use my OWN GPL code in a commercial SW developed by me?"}
{"_id": "69186", "title": "Is quitting the only reasonable response to this situation?", "text": "I read an interesting article, _10 reasons for quitting IT_. I quote a part of this text: > \"This misunderstanding of both duty and technology does one thing: It makes > your job impossible. When the powers-that-be begin to micromanage your > department for you, every single bad element is exacerbated. You know your > job and you know you know your job. Management does not know your job, but > they don\u2019t know they don\u2019t know your job. It\u2019s all a vicious Mobius strip of > stress.\" This is exactly what is going on on my project at the moment. The client, that is, the one that pays, wants to be everything. He wants to play every possible role in the project. He even wants a detailed technical explanation even though he doesn't know a single thing about programming. And when something doesn't work he blames it on someone else. Has anybody had some similar experience? Any advice on how to deal with these situations?"}
{"_id": "69181", "title": "Does work experience gained while waiting to join a company, count?", "text": "My cousin has got his offer letter from a software company (he got placed while in his final year of engineering), but the company has said that he'll have to wait for an unknown number of months before he can start working. In the meantime, he's decided to work at some other company because he does not want to while away his time. If he works in some other software company (thru one of his Dad's contacts), will his experience count? Will it be worth it for him?"}
{"_id": "154280", "title": "how to change the sequence used in planning poker", "text": "Is it possible to change the used sequence in Planning Poker, for some stories, it is thought that when the stories gets larger it contains more uncertainty but stories have nearly exact time estimations and these estimations don't drop into two bounds defined by Fibonacci series."}
{"_id": "254668", "title": "Good practice to pass this information through URL parameter", "text": "Basically, let's suppose an application that manage some user's meetings.   I have a filtering zone on a page that aims to specify the category of items I need to specifically return. Supposing two kind of filters:   * Retrieving **my actual meetings** (meetings currently occurring or planned in the near future)    * Retrieving **my past meetings** (meetings that are already past)  I think of passing a kind of url parameter like this: `www.myapp.com?me=actual`   or   `www.app.com?me=past` Indeed, I can't have both `actual` and `past` in the same call since it would not be appropriate for the listing. So in my server side, I would handle through a simple conditional the passed value to filter the query. Is it right enough to pass a `string` like this (`past` or `actual`) or is there a better practice to handle this case? Note that by default, meaning without filtering, all meetings are returned."}
{"_id": "44789", "title": "Building general programming skills?", "text": "I currently am quite new to programming, I've had exposure to a few languages (C#, PHP, JavaScript, VB, and some others) and I'm quite new to OOP. I was just wondering what is the best way to build up general programming/problem solving skills without being language specific? I was thinking maybe of something like Project Euler but more geared towards newbies? Thanks! Edit: I am looking at getting into Game Scripting/Programming, I'm already in Games but in a different discipline :)"}
{"_id": "168078", "title": "Is a 64-bit Laptop going to be a problem for \"Metro\" apps?", "text": "I'm looking at a sample Windows 8 C# \"Metro\" style app (bingPushpin). When I 2-click MainPage.xaml, it gives me, \"Design view is unavailable for x64 and ARM target platforms.\" My Acer Aspire laptop is, indeed, 64-bit. Is this going to continue to be a problem for me, or is there a workaround? If the former, can anybody recommend a Windows 8 dev machine (laptop)?"}
{"_id": "168076", "title": "Functions returning pointers", "text": "C++ noob here. I have a very basic question about a construct I found in the C++ book I am reading.               // class declaration     class CStr {       char sData[256];      public:       char* get(void);     };          // implementation of the function     char* CStr::get(void) {       return sData;     }      So the `Cstr::get` function is obviously meant to return a character pointer, but the function is passing what looks like the value (`return sData`). Does C++ know to return the address of the returned object? My guess would have been that the function definition would be `return &sData`."}
{"_id": "254660", "title": "Calculate which quantity packages to use based on quantity of bookings", "text": "In my app, many appointments can be booked for activities. Each activity has many price packages with a price and a quantity. On showing the cart, I need to work out what combination of packages to use to get the user the best prices and allow all the appointments to be accounted for. There is not always a quantity 1 package. Is there a common pattern to apply to this? Here is where I got to before I realised how hard this was going to be:               cost = 0     i = appointments.count     activity.packages.order(:quantity => :asc).each do |package|              if i >= package.quantity &&  i.modulo(package.quantity) == 0                             cost = cost + (package.price * i/package.quantity )          i = i - i/package.quantity        end       end     if i > 0        raise \"error: packages do not cover number of children.\"     end       That's in ruby(rails). So the problem I didn't see until I wrote the above is, what if there are 8 appointments, and packages for 4 & 5 - it will use the 5 package, then the last 3 won't fit in a 4 package and it will fail. EDIT: More detail So the structure is               activities has_many packages     packages:        quantity: integer      price: float      So a package defines a price for a bundle of appointments for an activity. So for example, sailing lessons are $500 for 5 or $430 for 4. If the user orders 8 sailing lessons, the app needs to work out that it should use two of the quantity 4 packages = $860 If the user order 9 sailing lessons, the app should work out they need 1 Quantity 5 package, and one quantity 4 package. etc"}
{"_id": "44780", "title": "Using branches for a mini project or module of project: Good practice?", "text": "In my repo I have 3 closely related mini projects: 1 server and 2 clients. They are all quite small (<3 files each). Since they are so small and so closely related I just dropped them in folders in one single repo. However now that I know I can't clone a single directory in my VCS of choice (Mercurial), I'm considering splitting them up. However I'm confused about general best practice: Is it okay to put different small projects in different branches, or should they all go in different repos? I'm currently leaning towards branching since I can't easily splice out the file history of the different projects but then your using a feature in a way it wasn't meant to be used."}
{"_id": "168072", "title": "Should I be looking for developers with specific skill sets or generalists that need to learn?", "text": "Thanks to the great help of this site and SO, I've been able to make a prototype of a software I want to sell but unfortunately although the prototype works I think my code quality is very low. I didn't use much OOP or design patterns so although my code is understandable to me, I think a normal developer would faint if they had to read it. So I wanted to hire a developer to make it a bit more better quality and improve some of my implementations of API's that I may have not done correctly. I'm having problems hiring a developer though. I have met 2 developers and had them read my software specs.The problem is, they lacked my business's domain knowledge(which is completely understandable and no biggie) but they also lacked knowledge of the underlying tech systems I used such as Hadoop, Hbase, Cuda, etc..I spent alot of time explaining map/reduce, bigtables and other technologies I used. I thought it was common knowledge because of my interactions with people on this site but the people I met with mentioned they never had to deal with these things so they didn't know it. My question is, for software projects that are hiring contractor developers is it a danger if the developer does not have experience with the underlying technologies? or can a general developer who is accomplished in another area realistically pick up new technologies? I did a very very quick back of envelope calculation and I think the upfront costs would be similar if I hire a student or developer with no experience in my technologies who will work many hours versus hiring a highly experienced developer who charges double but finishes in half the time but what other risks should I be considering or worried about? Also, should if I do hire a generalist, should I be paying for the time it takes them to learn hadoop or cuda if they are contractors(seems to make business sense but not sure how fair it is to them if they do not use the skill again). I'm a bit confused so any suggestions would be great."}
{"_id": "125412", "title": "How can you use an LGPLv2.1 licenced AS3 library in a proprietary Flex app without \"giving away the farm\"?", "text": "Consider a Flex (actually AIR) application that is considered proprietary, but needs to use an LGPLv2.1 AS3 library, so that it is considered a \"work that uses the Library\" according to the license text and is thus required to be distributed according to the terms of Section 6 of the LGPL. What provision in AS3 or Flex is there for using a \"suitable shared library mechanism\" (Section 6b) to create the executable to use the library, allowing the end user to replace the library (somehow) and debug the new lib's use, thus not requiring that all the source for the proprietary app to be supplied (Section 6a,c,d,e) for recompiling/relinking? I've already had a false start with RSL's, because replacing the RSL causes \"Flex Error #1001: Digest mismatch with RSL\"."}
{"_id": "168071", "title": "Should I implement slugs with my already fairly long URLs?", "text": "I'm considering implementing slugs in my blog. My blog uses MongoDB. One of the side-effects of using MongoDB is that it uses relatively long hex string IDs. Example before: http://lastyearswishes.com/blog/view/5070f025d1f1a5760fdfafac after: http://lastyearswishes.com/blog/view/5070f025d1f1a5760fdfafac/improvements-on- barelymvc Of course, that's a relatively short title.. I have some longer ones, but intend to limit the maximum character limit for slugs to something reasonable. At what point does a URL become so long that it hurts SEO instead of improves it? In this case, should I leave my URLs alone, or add slugs?"}
{"_id": "158707", "title": "UML Receptions and AcceptEventActions", "text": "What shall be the relationship between the receptions of a class (was classifier before Aadaam correction) and the AcceptEventActions in the activity describing the behavior of its instances? I understand the former is related to signals reception of the type while the latter is related to runtime ReceiveSignalEvent events of the class instances (objects). But it is not totally clear to me how to express consistency among these constructs. I am defining a set of M2M and M2T Transformations (by means of QVT and MOFM2T). However independently of what I am trying to do I am curious to know what is the correct syntax for such models."}
{"_id": "158706", "title": "Using account (login) password in generated PDF?", "text": "Ever since I heard about programming, I was told that any password (especially the one used on login) should be stored in database using any kind of one-way hashing algorithm, and never ever as plain string. So, it can't be read directly from database, using any method. Today I noticed that my bank (country department of Citi Group) is using my account (login) password to password-protect PDFs generated at the end of each month. I'm curious: Are they breaching one of the most important security issue and are storing passwords in plain text in DB? Or is there any way to use hashed password from DB to password-protect generated PDF? As far as my limited knowledge tells me, this isn't possible. And to use in PDF the same password as on login, it has to be actually read from DB upon PDF generation, which leads to a conclusion, that it is being stored there as plain text string. This is a general question, on concepts of programming, not related to any particular language or technique, so I assume, it should be asked here, not in StackOverflow."}
{"_id": "98836", "title": "Any good planning tool or method for managing several competing projects?", "text": "I look for a tool or a \"best practice\" whose focus is on managing how the current staff of programmers can get assigned and re-assigned to different projects depending on changing priorities. Progress on projects should be tracked, too. Our department is not faced with a single, overly complex project (for which I'd know several good tools to manage it), but with a seemingly ever increasing stack of new project requests of small to moderate size. Most projects can be completed by a single programmer within 1 to 4 weeks, and only some rare beasts might take several months. It does happen that work on a project is interrupted because a more important job pops up. Usually a programmer is working on several projects at once (at example, one short-term, one medium-term, and one long-term project, or helping out at someone else's project because of his special knowledge). Most projects are done by a single programmer of the pool. I speak of a team of less than 10 programmers. Since most project requests are unrelated to each other, the order in which they are done is mostly decided arbitrarily or by how loud the request is shouted. The requests come from different in-house departments and are dictated by internal demand and not with a pareto optimum in mind. Needless to say this leads to constant discussions about why a certain project needs to be done first. I know that there is a management problem behind it, but my question is not about how to change the way the company works, but about a tool whichs helps to improve coordination and communication \"in the meantime\". What I am looking for is a tool that can visualize the current assignments, give projections about how long a programmers is already booked up by projects, reflects how changing an assignment change the timeplan of projects etc. Its purpose is less about self-coordination of the team, but more to provide a high-level view that can be communicated to and is easily understandable by other departments. It should provide a solid foundation for discussing priorities and for deciding the order of projects. The ability to track time boundaries (like \"must be finished Oct 1st latest\") and cost factors would be a bonus. Can a ticketing system fit the bill or is Microsoft Project the answer? Has anyone got any experience with such a situation and can suggest a good solution?"}
{"_id": "149688", "title": "What is the use of Spring's init-method and destroy-method?", "text": "While learning Spring framework, I found that Spring framework provides `init- method` and `destroy-methods` which can be used to initialize some properties or to do housekeeping stuff. We can do all those things in the bean's constructor so why do Spring provides these things and in the real world what is the actual use of these two things?"}
{"_id": "255399", "title": "Common techniques to integrate social media login to a website that requires account registration", "text": "I have developed websites where users would register with a username of their choice and an entry would be created in a database table that holds their username and some sort of salted password. They would then use this account to interact with the services that the site provides. Now I am interested in providing the ability to sign up an account using facebook, twitter, and basically anything else that might be popular. However, I don't know how to integrate the login workflow into my system. I have read the docs for `Facebook Login` but am still not sure how I would integrate it with my user-account design. This is how my own registration workflow works   1. Choose username/password   2. Create an entry in the \"users\" table   3. Authenticate by checking the username and see if the password matches With facebook login, they would ideally simply click a button that says \"login with facebook\" and they would authenticate with their facebook credentials. However, I don't know where I would go about creating a user to associate with their facebook identity. So my question is... What is a common way to use facebook (or other social media such as twitter or linkedin) to register an account into the system? I would like to manage all users uniformly, so no matter how they choose to register an account, they would all be handled in a single `users` table where I could do queries and associations without having to worry about how the account was created or how they logged in."}
{"_id": "45783", "title": "When writing specs BDD-style, should you use \"should\", or should you not?", "text": "I realize this is somewhat subjective, but I can't find a good case for one or the other : > it \"should do something\"   >  it \"does something\" Proponents of the should style mention that it forces you to actually question what it is you are trying to achieve, while detractors find it just redundant. Is there a consensus on this, or is it purely a matter of style ?"}
{"_id": "211543", "title": "Defining and overriding open and closed intervals", "text": "I have been considering the following situation as part of documenting and interface (`A`) and an implementation (`B`) of that interface. The interface `A` contains methods which involve the following two arguments:   1. A _percentage_ , passed as an integer.   2. A _name_ , passed as a string. The valid values for the _percentage_ are the closed range [0, 100]. No matter how you implement the interface, it is an error to allow a value outside this range as an input. The _name_ , as defined in the interface, allows any string containing [1, 100] characters. I want to document the interface in such a way that it neither _requires_ nor _disallows_ an implementation to support a _name_ with more than 100 characters. Clearly the valid range for _percentage_ is a closed, inclusive interval. **How would you refer to a range like I defined above for the number of characters in _name_?** I can't refer to the interval as right-open, because the implementation might not support values with more than 100 characters."}
{"_id": "211541", "title": "Installation from RPM, instead of making source code?", "text": "I am trying to deploy a _Redis_ server in Linux. The _Redis_ official site provides source code to download, so I have to use ' _make_ ' to install Radis. The ' _make_ ' works, but my problem is how can I use **rpm** file to install it? Because of policy, I must obey the policy of software installation for this specific environment. The policy also bother me to install other software by making source code. What is your opinion? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "211547", "title": "Problem solving skills and job interviews", "text": "Probably few of you are interviewing wannabe programmers. I'm 28, never worked as a programmer, but spent few months learning C and solving problems. I loved it so much that I do it every day just because I can, now and started studying CS at local university. Now I'd like to try make living from it and am trying some job interview questions I find on the internet. Some are obvious for me, but some scare me and take me long time to find a solution.   * When you do job interviews, how long you wait for someone to come up with solution? - - Does freezing for some time on problems that take 5-line code disqualify me as a programmer?   * Do you even consider people like me when browsing CV's?   * If you do interview someone like me, what do you ask that person?   * What are your expectations when you meet interviewee like me?"}
{"_id": "95185", "title": "collabrative Embedded C/C++ programming projects", "text": "This is a generic question.....I am looking to join group or groups of Software Engineers who are working collaboratively on C and C++ programming projects. My goal is to become a contributor to hone and keep my skills sharp. My background comes from developing Embedded C programs which were used to verify/validate hardware designs."}
{"_id": "226521", "title": "Why is it hard to make a Java program 'appear native'?", "text": "Most Java applications don't look the same as C/C++ applications. Swing might have been designed on purpose to have a distincitve look, but based on what I've read, SWT for example tried to 'look native', and doesn't completley succeed. My question is: Why is it hard for the developers of the Java language to design a GUI system that copies _exactly_ the look of native GUIs? What's different in native GUIs? Isn't it only a matter of designing buttons that look like 'native' buttons? Or does it go deeper than that?"}
{"_id": "53723", "title": "How can I measure my experience as a hobbyist?", "text": "If you have a job programming with a language then it's safe to say that the number of years at a job is the number of years of experience you have. But a hobbyist doesn't always program with the same regularity as a professional. How can I measure my experience as a hobbyist, for example, on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9? Is it effectively equivalent to work experience, or does it need to be qualified in some way?"}
{"_id": "226520", "title": "Is it bad practice to follow up a call to a terminating function with exit()?", "text": "I'm currently working on a php frontend. Specifically, the authentication process. I'll spare everyone the exact details of the decision tree, but it includes a lot of checks and about half of them branch to a call to `do_logon()` which generates the login page and then calls `exit` to stop processing further. Currently, I follow up each of those calls with _another_ `exit` statement in the branch itself:               if($db->authenticate($user,$password)) {          ... continue processing checks...     } else {         $message='Invalid password';         do_logon($message,true);         exit;     }      Despite knowing that that final `exit` will never actually be called because `do_logon` ends on an `exit`. My reasoning is that while _I_ know that `do_logon` will always exit, other people who may wind up working on this codebase may not, or if I'm asked to maintain this code half a decade from now I might not remember, so adding the superfluous exit statement doesn't alter the code flow but does make it clear that processing will stop there, but am I overlooking something?"}
{"_id": "112943", "title": "Required technical knowledge for developing high-level to high-level language translators", "text": "I have seen a tool (Shed Skin) to translate one high-level language to another high-level language. Apart from knowing those languages what are the other areas of technical knowledge required to develop this kind of translators?"}
{"_id": "176692", "title": "Why should a class be anything other than \"abstract\" or \"final/sealed\"?", "text": "After 10+ years of java/c# programming, I find myself creating either:   * **abstract classes** : contract not meant to be instantiated as-is.   * **final/sealed classes** : implementation not meant to serve as base class to something else. I can't think of any situation where a simple \"class\" (i.e. neither abstract nor final/sealed) would be \"wise programming\". Why should a class be anything other than \"abstract\" or \"final/sealed\" ? **EDIT** This great article explains my concerns far better than I can."}
{"_id": "223415", "title": "How to create a Python interview question to write a method", "text": "If I'm giving an interview coding question in Java, I can specify the most of the question just by giving a method signature. (Made-up example follows.)               public class Table {       public String identifier;       public int seatCount;     }          public static List<String> tablesWithEnoughSeats(List<Table> tables, int minSeats)      If the candidate prefers Python, how do I present the problem for them? The Python method signature doesn't specify the data type. Is there some standard Python way of doing this? If I look at Python coding challenges online, they tend to specify the requirements as taking certain input to produce certain output. I don't want the candidate to waste their time writing code to parse an input file. (My example has just String and int, but the actual interview problem might contain more complex data.) What's the best way to express the parameter constraints so that the candidate can implement the algorithm I'm interested in without doing a bunch of plumbing?"}
{"_id": "236545", "title": "Observing multiple observables at once / Network of chained observers", "text": "## Quick example:   * HM observes CM   * SM observes CM   * HSM observes HM and SM, but wants to be updated only after both have their new value derived from CM. ## More detail: (this is still a made-up example, but the closest and simplest I can come up with) `class ColorModel`:   * can store any RGB color.   * observable by a ColorObserverInterface object. `class HueModel implements ColorModelObserverInterface`   * can store the hue value derived from an RGB color.   * observes a ColorModel object to update its hue value.   * observable by a HueObserverInterface object.   * observers are notified only if the hue has actually changed. `class SaturationModel implements ColorObserverInterface`   * can store the saturation value derived from an RGB color.   * observes a ColorModel object to update its saturation value.   * observable by a SaturationObserverInterface.   * observers are notified only if the saturation has actually changed. `class HueSaturationMonitor implements HueObserverInterface, SaturationObserverInterface`   * display a point whose x-coordinate represents the hue, and the y-coordinate represents the saturation.   * observes a HueObserver object and a SaturationObserver object. ## Problems:   * Whenever the color in ColorModel changes, up to two updates are triggered on the HueSaturationMonitor object.   * in case that the new color has the same saturation as before, only the hue update triggers - and vice versa.   * The order in which the two updates trigger depends on the subscription order of the two observers on the ColorModel.   * There is going to be an intermediate state when the x-coordinate of the HueSaturationMonitor is already on the new value, while the y-coordinate is still on the old value, because only one of the two updates has triggered yet. For the sake of the example, let's assume that any such intermediate state of the HueSaturationMonitor is undesirable, and we want to switch directly to the final x/y position.   * The HueSaturationMonitor can only function correctly if both HueModel and SaturationModel are subscribed to the same ColorModel. There is no way to enforce that from within the HueSaturationModel. ## Question: How can I organize interdependent observers, without depending too much on the order in which they are subscribed to each other? How could I delay a trigger until all sources are updated? ## Why is this not a duplicate? There are other questions that deal with multiple observers and observables plugged together to form a network. This network can be drawn as a directed graph. The distinctive feature of this question is in the nature and topology of this network / the graph:   * The HueSaturationMonitor observes two observables, and its behavior depends on the combined values of both observables. Most other questions have observers that observe only one thing, or where the values from the two observables don't need to be combined.   * The directed graph we are dealing with is acyclic, BUT if you ignore the direction then it becomes cyclic. This is part of the challenge in this question. The directed graph represents a partially ordered set, but not a tree.   * The directed graph contains directed chains with length > 1, which means there is a two-level dependency. E.g. HSM observes HS observes CM. Some of these characteristics appear in other questions too, but it is their combination that is relevant and that causes the problem I want to solve."}
{"_id": "237510", "title": "Which Computer Vision / Image Processing technique would solve light imbalance in images?", "text": "Given a colour image whose light intensity is dim at the edges and bright in the middle, such as **[dim bright dim]** , which computer vision technique would be recommended to correct this imbalance? While I believe Histogram Equalisation could help, I've read that it also introduces an unrealistic look to an image by exaggerating the blue channel. I consider implementing an image processor for this task."}
{"_id": "13061", "title": "What do you think of this new if-then syntax", "text": "I was just thinking of something that would be really cool to have in my if- elif-else controls.               if condition:         stuff()     elif condition:         otherstuff()     then:         stuff_that_applies_to_both()     else:         stuff_that_doesnt_aply_to_either()      So basically a `then` will be run when any of the conditions are run EXCEPT the else condition. Do you think this is useful? It's similar to the try- except-else of python. I think some of you are nitpicking a very preliminary implementation. The `then` block would be just like the `else` block in a `try-except` block in python. The real reason I suggest this is for situations like this.               m = {}     if condition == '1':         m['condition'] = condition     elif condition2 == '3':         m['condition2'] = condition2     elif condition3 == 'False':         m['condition3'] = True     then:         run_test_that_relies_on_one_of_the_conditions_being_true()          return m      The `then` block is scoped to the first if just like the `else` is. So nesting works fine. And if you need to run a method before the if statements, that really has nothing to do with this use case."}
{"_id": "237513", "title": "What, in reference to DDD, is a bounded context?", "text": "When working through the book \"Implementing Domain Driven Design\" by Vaughn Vernon, I have been unable to gain a good grasp on what a bounded context actually is. The book defines a bounded context as \"a conceptual boundary where a domain model is applicable. It provides Ubiquitous Language that is spoken by the team and expressed in its carefully designed software model\" (the \"Guide to this Book\" prefacing section). This definition would make it sound as though a bounded context is the model and language of a subdomain, where that subdomain may happen to be the core domain (which seems like it ought to be referred to as a \"core subdomain\", but that is another discussion...). This still leaves some ambiguity as to what a bounded context provides. Is it a grouping of one or more subdomains? If only one subdomain corresponds to a bounded context, what is the bounded context actually telling us? Chapter 3 of the same book, however, refers to the integration techniques between bounded contexts. This, however, would seem to imply that the bounded contexts are actually software systems or artefacts of some variety. Martin Fowler briefly discusses the idea of a bounded context (http://martinfowler.com/bliki/BoundedContext.html), but does not really clarify the issue. At the end of the day, what _is_ a bounded context? Is it a grouping of subdomains? The model and language for a subdomain? The implementation of a subdomain? Without these answers, it seems rather difficult to understand how to decompose a real-life problem space into bounded contexts."}
{"_id": "193521", "title": "How to make support for bindings for a scripting language", "text": "### Main I'm making a scripting language using C++. I plan to use it with a simple test game editor. But I have to make a support for bindings to call game engine's nodes' methods to update positions, rotations, etc. What are the main approaches for this? The game engine I plan to use also supports lua, so maybe I can also use this fact. ### Details The problem I have faced lies in the fact of how can I call library C++ object methods within a script. English is not my native language and the lack of knowledge in that sphere prevents me from making a good query on the topic. So I don't know what to search. Google shows me information on how to make bindings to some scripting languages not the fundamentals by search phrases like \"how to make bindings support to a scripting language\", \"scripting bindings\". At this time I came up to the following things. I have to inherit all objects that will be used in script from a service class, ex. CLangObject. With its help I can identify the object's type within a C++ library objects' methods. Then I have to define the most general pointer to method types. I have also define a callback service class to pass it to a byte machine when C++ library method returns value. The game engine I want to use has bindning to lua, so maybe I can use its LuaObject and LuaCallback classes. At this time I don't know if this approach will lead to a normal result."}
{"_id": "237519", "title": "What happened to VM based deployments?", "text": "Watched some MountainWest RubyConf 2014 talks and noticed an interesting theme. Many dynamic programming environments back in the old days used to be self-contained VM images, e.g. SmallTalk, GemStone/S. One could checkpoint, modify, and ship these images wholesale and have it up and running with very little effort. Fast forward to now and I'm still using Make files to configure and install binaries. What happened?"}
{"_id": "118814", "title": "Learning the Theory Behind Programming", "text": "I'm interested in books that would introduce / explain the theory behind programming and programming languages. My logic is that by truly understanding the theory behind programming it will only take a few weeks to pick up new languages and implement some simple software. As far as the type of books I'm looking for they would be similar to SICP. I've done some research on this site and also on stack overflow. I know there are some large threads about books which discuss software architecture but I'm looking for information specific to programming. I have an okay understanding of Python which I've received from an into CS class on programming but I need to advance my knowledge. Thanks"}
{"_id": "118818", "title": "Why are people so strongly opposed to #region tags in methods?", "text": "I hear a lot about keeping methods short and I've heard a lot of programmers say that using #region tags within a method is a sure sign that it is too long and should be refactored into multiple methods. However, it seems to me that there are many cases where separating code with #region tags within a method is the superior solution to refactoring into multiple methods. Suppose we have a method whose computation can be separated into three rather distinct phases. Furthermore, each of these stages is only relevant to the computation for _this_ method, and so extracting them into new methods gains us no code reuse. What, then, are the benefits of extracting each phase into it's own method? As far as I can tell, all we gain is some readability and a separate variable scope for each phase (which will help prevent modifications of a particular phase from accidentally breaking another phase). However, both of these can be achieved without extracting each phase into its own method. Region tags allow us to collapse the code into a form which is just as readable (with the added benefit that we no longer have to leave our place in this file should we decide to expand and examine the code), and simply wrapping each phase in `{}` creates its own scope to work with. The benefit to doing it this way is that we don't pollute the class level scope with three methods which are actually only relevant to the inner workings of a fourth method. Immediately refactoring a long method into a series of short methods seems to me to be the code-reuse equivalent to premature optimization; you are introducing extra complexity in order to address a problem which in many cases never arises. You can always extract one of the phases into its own method later should the opportunity for code reuse arise. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "158118", "title": "I cannot understand the application of oops How can I develop the understanding of application of oops?", "text": "I am struggling hard to learn the application of Object Oriented Programming since last 2 years. I am a developer in PHP technology, I am aware of almost all the basics of OOPS, but still cannot find out the way to apply those concepts over a procedural programming. I do it in very orthodox way, but I don't know why I am coding it in that way. I never have reasoning to justify my oops applications, which has inferred me that I am worst in OOPS, Please help me guys to learn to think over the application of OOPS."}
{"_id": "255536", "title": "ZeroMQ and Majordomo protocol", "text": "I am learning ZeroMQ and came across the Majordomo Protocol. I am wondering if I'm understanding this correctly, is the use case the same as.. for example.. the Microsoft Azure AppFabric service? Would I use Majordomo if I wanted to create an AppFabric-like servie bus? Or would I do Pub/Sub+Request/Reply? If you are not familiar, azure service bus is a way to connect applications to services (or applications to applications, etc) -- at least for the purposes of this discussion: ![Azure AppFabric Service Bus](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PY6xJ.jpg) Does it seem like this is a Majordomo protocol use case, or am I looking at a different pattern here (the bottom \"direct-connection\" line notwithstanding). How would eventing work (a worker initiated message)? \\-- (EDIT) Thanks Adam. Distilling the question down to its essence, if I were to implement the Azure AppFabric messaging protocol with ZeroMQ, would I be using the Majordomo protocol, or would another pattern be more appropriate? Also as reference, link to ZMQ Majordomo: http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:7"}
{"_id": "255537", "title": "Storing last polled database timestamp unix", "text": "I have a Unix script which is called by a scheduler (CTRL M) every 3 seconds. The script queries an external database(not belonging to my application and therefore I can only query it) to check for new records. Currently it stores the last run timestamp in a local table and on the next poll queries the external database for all records > timestamp. Now I want to avoid updating and querying this local table. The only option I see is to store and read this timestamp in a file.However chances of the file getting corrupted or overriden are higher than data in a database. Google had lot of java options but I need this in a script. Is there any better way to store the timestamp or better design for the functionality as a whole?"}
{"_id": "54184", "title": "want to learn more about implementation of object oriented design in web application using asp.net c#", "text": "Can some one guide me about How can i have complete grasp for object oriented design. basically i am looking for a book about that or any good website you people can share . bottom line is that i want to develop a web application for my learning from start to finish which is completely object oriented in asp.net c#."}
{"_id": "94551", "title": "What's a good naming convention for generic types in C#?", "text": "I decided to ask this question here instead of on stack overflow because it is rather subjective. In C#, typically I see generic types with very poor names. Specifically, \"T\" is commonly used but is not a meaningful name by itself. For example:               class Fruit<T>     {         T fruit;     }      While this is the typical approach, would anyone recommend against this? And if so, what would a reasonable naming convention be for generic types in the context of C# for generic functions and classes? In my previous example, let's assume that generic type `T` must always be a type of fruit, such as `Apple` or `Orange`. The type `T` needs to make it obvious that it's a type of fruit, so maybe a better name would be `FruitType`, so we end up with:               class Fruit<FruitType>     {         FruitType fruit;     }      This is just to give you guys an idea of what I'm looking for. What's an acceptable \"rule of thumb\" for this issue?"}
{"_id": "256137", "title": "How to run a function and load Viewbag on every page load?", "text": "Here is my issue. On my _Layout, I have a help button that shows up on every page in my MVC application. Is there a way to assign the Viewbag with my simple model without having to put in every ActionResult method throughout my application? A global method?               public ActionResult Index()     {        var query = db.OnlineHelp.Where(a => a.PageUrl == Request.RawUrl).FirstOrDefault();        ViewBag.htmlraw = query.PageContent     }      and on my _Layout.chtml               @Html.Raw(@ViewBag.htmlraw)      The Request.RawUrl tracks the user and depending on the page, the database is queried and returns the result such as /Home/Index"}
{"_id": "189633", "title": "What \"sublicense\" actually means?", "text": "First, it is clear that the right to sublicense doesn't give you the right to relicense. Let's say we have a library with MIT license(1 file), someone adds some features to the library but puts them under GPL(in the same 1 file). Or if someone wants to sublicense they have to separate the code? If someone wants to use the library, how are the licenses handled?   Let's say that the developer uses only the features under the MIT license even if in the file there are some features under GPL.   Does he have to GPL his application because of the GPL licensed code?   Does he have to remove the GPL code in order to be free of the GPL restrictions or he can just use the library under MIT permissions/restrictions as long as he doesn't use the GPL code?"}
{"_id": "94554", "title": "Strategy for securing paid Data as a Service API", "text": "When creating a webservice/api that is intended to be used by javascript/flash/mobile clients, what is a good method for making sure that a paying client's credentials are not stolen and reused. To clarify further, lets say I want to charge $1 for every 10,000 requests against my API. If someone wants to farm my data for free, they would just need to find another client app that already uses my API and construct requests using the credentials of the paying customer. I don't see any way that I can \"hide\" what is going on the client, someone will always be able to easily reverse engineer the \"auth\" scheme. So what are good ways to mitigate abuse? EDIT More in depth example of the scenario... Lets say my data service is bus schedules. The purpose of the services is for developers to write apps consuming the data. There's nothing personal about the data, it is the same for everyone. The intention is for the developer to write javascript/flash/mobile apps **directly against** the api (I'm aware of cross domain restrictions). But the developer has to pay when users of his app make requests against the bus schedule api. How do I keep another developer going to the original developer's site and just lifting the credentials that are used by his browser to talk to the bus schedule api, and writing his own app using those credentials?"}
{"_id": "143169", "title": "How do you maintain focus when a particular aspect of programming takes 10+ seconds to complete?", "text": "I have a very difficult time focusing on what I'm doing (programming-wise) when something (compilation, startup time, etc.) takes more than just a few seconds. Anecdotally it seems that threshold is about 10 seconds (and I recall reading about study that said the same thing, though I can't find it now). So what typically happens is I make a change and then run the program to test it. That takes about 30 seconds, so I start reading something else, and before I know it 20 minutes have passed, and then it takes (if I'm lucky!) another 10+ minutes to deal with the context switch to getting back into programming. It's not an exaggeration to say that some things that should take me minutes literally take hours to complete. I'm very curious about what other programmers do to combat this tendency (or if I'm unique and they don't have this tendency?). Suggestions of any type at all are welcome - anything from \"sit on your hands after hitting the compile button\", to mental tricks, to \"if it takes 30 seconds to start up something to test a change, then something's wrong with your development process!\""}
{"_id": "156621", "title": "Which is the correct licence?", "text": "So I found this very interesting library in Google Code site. It turns out it is advertised as \"LGPL\", which is good enough for me. However, in the README file of the library the author contradicts himself saying it is not available for commercial purposes. I'm guessing that when you sign up to create your project in Google Code you can only choose open source licenses. Open source licenses allow selling software, offering commercial support, etc. So my guess is that either the author confused the word \"commercial\" with \"proprietary\", or that he just wanted a good place to host his software even violating GoogleCode standards... The thing is, if I want to use the library, which licence should I consider the software to be under? I've already asked the author by email but he has not replied. Thanks very much."}
{"_id": "252625", "title": "Managing 'done' but not releasable code in TFS", "text": "I am working in an organisation with 11 scrum teams developing on the same code base. Currently, all development is done in trunk, and at the end of a sprint everything MUST be releasable, or it must be backed out (an arduous process) as a release is cut. My opinion is that while work in a sprint is (ideally) 'done' at the end of the sprint, this doesn't necessarily mean ready for release. You may be at a point where you do not have a Minimum Viable Product to release, but have some stories complete. If a story is not done, or the story is only part of a larger feature, it should be easy to keep this separate from the release ready code. At the moment it is all backed out, the release cut is taken, then it is checked back in. A huge waste of time! We use continuous integration, which is the main argument for everyone developing on trunk. Occasionally teams use a team branch, but this is currently frowned upon. I've been considering simply having a 'dev' and 'release' branch, and pushing features to release when they are an MVP, or having a branch for each story or feature, but this is very admin heavy in TFS. Have other people dealt with similar issues in the past, and what are your thoughts on the best way forward? Unfortunately, we are tied to TFS in the short term."}
{"_id": "143163", "title": "Essential management tools for a small/medium software development shop", "text": "I've recently started work with an organisation that is rapidly expanding and is recruiting or growing several development teams (including two web-based products and a data warehouse/BI team). They are basically working to agile methodologies but haven't formalised a standard way of working yet. Despite the fact that it is early days, I've been surprised by the lack of tools being used to manage the development processes (e.g. no issue tracker, no tool to manage the product backlog etc.) Although it's not my primary responsibility, I'd like to help them out with some recommendations on the most important tools they should get in place. What are the 3-5 top priority tools to establish for management of a good development shop? Why are they necessary? How do they improve the software development process, and how do I justify them to my bosses?"}
{"_id": "143160", "title": "What is this algorithm for converting strings into numbers called?", "text": "I've been doing some work in Parsec recently, and for my toy language I wanted multi-based fractional numbers to be expressible. After digging around in Parsec's source a bit, I found their implementation of a floating-point number parser, and copied it to make the needed modifications. So I understand what this code does, and vaguely why (I haven't worked out the math fully yet, but I think I get the gist). But where did it come from? This seems like a pretty clever way to turn strings into floats and ints, is there a name for this algorithm? Or is it just something basic that's a hole in my knowledge? Did the folks behind Parsec devise it? Here's the code, first for integers:               number' :: Integer -> Parser Integer                                             number' base =          do { digits <- many1 ( oneOf ( sigilRange base ))            ; let n = foldl (\\x d -> base * x + toInteger (convertDigit base d)) 0 digits            ; seq n (return n)            }      So the basic idea here is that `digits` contains the string representing the whole number part, ie `\"192\"`. The `foldl` converts each digit individually into a number, then adds that to the running total multiplied by the base, which means that by the end each digit has been multiplied by the correct factor (in aggregate) to position it. The fractional part is even more interesting:               fraction' :: Integer -> Parser Double     fraction' base =         do { digits <- many1 ( oneOf ( sigilRange base ))            ; let base' = fromIntegral base            ; let f = foldr (\\d x -> (x + fromIntegral (convertDigit base d))/base') 0.0 digits            ; seq f (return f)      Same general idea, but now a `foldr` and using repeated division. I don't quite understand why you add first and then divide for the fraction, but multiply first then add for the whole. I know it works, just haven't sorted out why. Anyway, I feel dumb not working it out myself, it's very simple and clever looking at it. Is there a name for this algorithm? Maybe the imperative version using a loop would be more familiar?"}
{"_id": "221195", "title": "What HTTP verb is appropriate for an api route that restarts an application the server?", "text": "I got asked to do a code review of a very simple one-route web service that when hit would simply restart an application on the system. The developer had coded this up as a POST which strikes me as odd. Now I realize that this is not really the type of thing that HTTP is all about - you can't even query state - but is there a more appropriate HTTP verb? My intuition is that since this is mostly idempotent and creates no new resources it should be a PUT."}
{"_id": "216011", "title": "Restful WebAPI VS Regular Controllers", "text": "I'm doing some R&D on what seems like a very confusing topic, I've also read quite a few of the other SO questions, but I feel my question might be unique enough to warrant me asking. We've never developed an app using pure WebAPI. **We're trying to write a SPA style app, where the back end is fully decoupled from the front end code** Assuming our service does not know anything about who is accessing/consuming it: WebAPI seems like the logical route to serve data, as opposed to using the standard MVC controllers, and serving our data via an action result and converting it to JSON. This to me at least seems like an MC design... which seems odd, and not what MVC was meant for. (look mom... no view) What would be considered normal convention in terms of performing action(y) calls? _My sense is that my understanding of WebAPI is incorrect._ The way I perceive WebAPI, is that its meant to be used in a CRUD sense, but what if I want to do something like: \"InitialiseMonthEndPayment\".... Would I need to create a WebAPI controller, called InitialiseMonthEndPaymentController, and then perform a POST... Seems a bit weird, as opposed to a MVC controller where i can just add a new action on the MonthEnd controller called InitialisePayment. Or does this require a mindset shift in terms of design? Any further links on this topic will be really useful, as my fear is we implement something that might be weird an could turn into a coding/maintenance concern later on?"}
{"_id": "216015", "title": "Looking for a very subtle unit testing example", "text": "In the context of Continuous Integration, I need to **teach** unit testing to a 20-people audience of programmers. Everything will be all right, but I am still trying to find the perfect unit testing example. More than writing tests like a robot, I want to show that unit testing can help prevent very subtle errors. I am thinking of the following **scenario** to happen when doing a live TDD demo:   * the test cases would already be written,   * we would have to write methods together,   * most of us would naturally have forgotten to handle a specific case for a method,   * everyone would then be surprised, when seeing that all tests don't pass,   * the failing test would make us think more and realize that we forgot an important case. My question will probably finish as \"too broad\" or \"not clear what you are asking\", but we never know, one of you might have a great idea. Your answer can use Java and JUnit, though any other language will be fine since only the idea will matter."}
{"_id": "216016", "title": "Layering Design Pattern in Java clean code style", "text": "As a Java developer, I am developing trying to use the clean code rules. But in my team we are facing a concrete problem: We have a business layer offering a service called \"createObject\", this service makes a lot of operation which can result to problem. E.g: parentObjectDontExist, objectAlreadyExist, dontHaveAuthorizationToCreate, operationFailed... and we want the UI using this service to display different information messages depending which error occurred. In old java dev, we should have create all signed exception type and throw it in createObject. As Clean code says, it is forbidden to use Exception for business logic AND signed exceptions are evil... Why not...But i don't know how to solved this problem and i don't want to use return code. How do you do? Thanks for youre experience return."}
{"_id": "236614", "title": "Git alternative to a shelveset in TFS", "text": "I use git for my personal projects, so I have never run into any issues with Git, however I had a discussion at work today and its something that I haven't thought about. In TFS you can store your changeset into a shelveset, this shelveset can be viewed by other developers, say for a peer review. From what I understand in github you are working on your local copy of the repo (possibly with custom branches for different features) and then comes a point for a peer review. How would you go about sharing a specific changes on your local repo with someone else?"}
{"_id": "209743", "title": "Strong Name signing order for dependant projects", "text": "I have two project A(.EXE) and B(.DLL) in the solution. A references B. If I delay sign both and send them for full signing. Will A be able to load B after ? Or do I have to get B fully signed first, and then add a binary reference to that in Project A, delay sign A and send for full signing ?"}
{"_id": "161622", "title": "Naming convention for main arguments", "text": "I recently started using arguments in my main program (here written in `C++` but could be any programming language)               #include <iostream>          int main(int argn, char* argv[]) {         // do stuff depending on argv[1], argv[2], etc.     }      For now I am using mostly random naming conventions like `-t` for testing, `-d` for debugging, `-l` for printing logs e.g. There is no need for adding `-`, it is just that most shell parameters are named that way. I also use `--` for second parameters. Is there any established naming conventions for main arguments ?"}
{"_id": "27600", "title": "How do you unit test Application and UI code?", "text": "I love writing unit tests and agree they are an excellent way to test code, prevent regressions, etc. However, I find myself unable to write them much as the vast majority of the code I work on day-in and day-out is application code that displays a UI to the user. Is there a good way of unit testing application code? What are the best practices here? I am not looking for a specific answer such as a framework, etc. But rather, in general, how do you approach this problem?"}
{"_id": "227787", "title": "copyleft licensing question", "text": "I'm writing an app and referring to some open source, source code (copyleft licensed.) I am not using the original source code because it's for a completely different operating system using a different language, and as far as I am aware, no-one has ported that source into the language I am using nor my target operating system. Am I still covered by the original copyleft license?"}
{"_id": "179849", "title": "Alternative Web model", "text": "One of the problems web apps have against native apps, especially on the mobile front, is the constant need to re-download each web page on request. Ultimately, this leads to slower performance. Why if web apps only download new pages if they're actually needed, not because they're simply requested. For example: perhaps the server can store a web page version in a cookie. Every slight change to the page on the server-side changes the version number. Now instead of the browser requesting a new page each time, why not just check the version number and have the server send the page if they're different? If the page similar, the user can just use a cached page. I'm sure browsers doesn't necessarily have to change to accommodate changes to this, correct?"}
{"_id": "191405", "title": "Converting Business Process Maps into Software", "text": "I am fairly new to web application development. I have defined my problem domain through talking to various stakeholders and putting a process map together - basically a flow chart showing the different steps and processes that the web application must be able to recreate. The problem I am having is that I'm struggling to map this process into application design and code. I was wondering if there are any best practices or development methods that help map a business process into an application design? I have briefly read up about Domain Driven Development and that seems like it may be a good approach. To clarify, I am after a methodology or design principle that will help turn the business process into code. For example, I COULD just map every box in the process map to an identically named class in my code. Thus translating the business process into a domain model (i.e. object orientated) in my code. But is this the best way to do it?"}
{"_id": "238865", "title": "A license like the LGPL, but compatible with JavaScript", "text": "I have written a library that is quite extensive and has taken up a lot of my time, so I would like to license it properly. The LGPL seems to have many of the things I want, but does not work with Javascript or other interpreted languages. Here are the things I want my license to say:   * My library can be used in commercial application (either web or desktop applications).   * My library can be used in open source applications (again, any platform is fine).   * You may not redistribute my unmodified library in any form, except for when the javascript is downloaded to the client's browser.   * I would like to remain as the copyright owner.   * If possible, I would like users of my library to be able to use other libraries under any license (though this is less important). I am fine with distributing source of my library, and I'll have to since it's JS, the thing I don't want is others distributing my unmodified library and saying it is purely their work. I am ok with people modifying and redistributing the library, though I would rather they submitted their work to me and I would give them credit. If they do modify and redistribute the library, they must give me partial credit. I have also thought about using the MIT license, but it clearly states that people could redistribute my library unmodified, which is the most important thing to me, to make that impossible. I sincerely apologize if an identical question has been asked on this network, I have done several days' research and have not found one (this is the closest I've gotten, but the answer didn't help me). Also, IANAL so if any of this is legally contradictory or impossible, please explain rather than just stating that it is impossible."}
{"_id": "238867", "title": "Looping Exhaustive Test Cases - A Good Practice?", "text": "Sometimes we have code like this:               private static final List<Goat> INEDIBLE_GOATS = [GOAT_A, GOAT_B, GOAT_C]           void eatGoat(Goat goat) {        if(INEDIBLE_GOATS.contains(goat)) {            throw new CantEatGoatException();        }        ...     }      Should it best tested (along with whatever tests for the actual eating) as:               for(Goat goat: INEDIBLE_GOATS) {        // forgive abuse of syntax        assertThrows(CantEatGoatException, eatGoat(goat));     }      Or more like?               assertThrows(CantEatGoatException, eatGoat(GOAT_A));      Should tests verify each and every sort of inedible goat? Or should they test a representative goat from the list and trust that it works for the other goats?"}
{"_id": "25596", "title": "Should I use a single platform for common services or modularize them?", "text": "I am designing a suite of web applications that have the same base functionality. That is, they all will know how to create and operate on widgets. The differences will be in their target audience and how a user will interact with a widget. Essentially, if these applications were developed independently, there would be _a lot_ of duplicated effort. To simplify this I have thought of two solutions. I would like all of your feedback on the pros and cons for each solution, and which you would prefer.   1. \"Platform\" -- The idea is that there is an independent service layer, a la web services. It wouldn't be a web service, but simply a back-end for all the applications. The platform would talk to the applications via messaging or object serialization. I would want to write the platform with Java, but the intention would be that the applications could be written with any web framework such as Rails, Django, Flex, or just something in Java. The platform would abstract the database, so all interaction with the back-end would be done via the platform. One potential problem with this is that updating the platform will entail taking down all the applications. But at least all the applications will be consistent in regards with the back-end. I like how this is cut horizontally, and that the application really only has to focus on the front-end, rather then worrying about how to organize the back-end.   2. \"Modules\" -- The idea is that I just write everything with Java and develop modules which would live in their own jars. Each module would represent a Guice module and each application would just include the modules they want, and create their own Injectors. This approach would make each application completely independent from each other, aside of sharing a common database. So, theoretically, it would be much easier to deploy an application in a different environment with out worrying about the platform. I would be stuck in one language environment, Java. Although, JRuby and Jython would be available. So maybe that isn't much of a concern. Also, I foresee it being easier to customize an application with out effecting the platform. The one con is that if I update a module, I would want to redeploy each application using that module. This would be easy with continuous integration, though. Thank you for your time. * * * In regards to Gary's answer, I've decided to take a hybrid approach. I'm going to develop a platform, which will be the access point for the web applications to data and services. I will then modularize the platform, but all the modules will remain under a single repository with a parent POM. While I could just keep them all in a single JAR, I would like the classpath separation for development purposes, to make me/others think before requiring a module to depend on another."}
{"_id": "154916", "title": "How to model the components of a non Information System?", "text": "I am working on a kernel-related project (specifically related to the TCP/IP stack of the kernel). I need to build some models to describe the functionality and components of my system. Initially I thought about using a Class Diagram, as it can describe the general architecture of my system. But it doesn't make sense since my code is VERY structured (written in standard C). I also thought about DFDs: they'd describe the processes of my system, and how the data is flowing. But they contain something which doesn't really fit in: data-storages. I have no databases here (at all). For the functionality, other team members suggested using Activity and Sequence diagrams, which is kinda okay with me, but what about the system components? So basically my question is: If I want to describe the components of my system, what do you suggest as a meaningful diagram ? Again, the project is a research low-level systems-oriented project with almost no user-interface at all."}
{"_id": "154912", "title": "2D Image Creator for a video game", "text": "I need to make a few images for an arcade video game I'm making in Java. As of right now, I have drawings that animate, but there are two problems.   1. The drawings are horrible, and as a result, the game won't get enough attention.   2. It's a pain to have to change each coordinate for the drawing, as the drawings are fairly complex. I'd like to use images. I feel they could solve my problem. They would look better than the drawings, and it would only have an x and a y coordinate, rather than the many coordinates I need for each drawing. So, in a sense, I have two questions.   1. Would images actually help? Would they solve my 2 problems? I just want to clarify.   2. How would I make these images. I don't think I can copy them off of the internet because I plan on publishing this game. So, is there any software where you can make your own images? (It has to be in an image type that Java can support. I'm working with java).  It also, as stated by the header, needs to be a 2D image; not 3D"}
{"_id": "221304", "title": "What is the name of the functional argument in fold", "text": "In the higher order function fold/reduce what is the name, if any, of the functional argument? I am working on a monadic tabular processing library where rows are folded to produce simple analyses (like finding the minimum, maximum, average of a column). I am therefore looking for a sound name for the argument of the `fold` function and any name which is well-established in the ML community (or Haskell or Common Lisp as second and third candidates) would be interesting. A name like `f` is common in the description of `fold` functions, it is however undescriptive and a noun would be better suited."}
{"_id": "154911", "title": "How does having assets saved on a secondary domain(s) reduce the load time of the website?", "text": "I went for an interview yesterday where I was asked this question: \"How does having assets (images/videos) stored on a secondary domain (assets.example.com) reduce the load time of example.com?\" To that I answered that by having the code \"call\" those assets from a secondary website it reduces the traffic that is coming to the main domain and therefore only applying bandwidth to the main domain vs having to also serve bandwidth to request assets. Is that correct? Also, If i am correct, would you say it makes sense to start new websites with this in mind or do you prefer having it done after large traffic rates are achieved?"}
{"_id": "92256", "title": "Advantages and Disadvantages of Forced Code Reformat", "text": "I'm currently working at a place that may be looking at forcing developers to use an automated code formatter on version control check-in. I'm looking for developers opinions on the advantages and disadvantages of doing this ... how you think it would help or hinder developers. My specific case involves Java/JSPs, but I think the question could apply to any language."}
{"_id": "95206", "title": "Is it possible to successfully transition out of being embedded software engineer?", "text": "I'm a recent college graduate, and I'm mainly involved in high-level programming (e.g., Java, C#, and Python). I've received an offer form a good company for an embedded software engineer position, where I'd be programming devices with C, handling interrupts, and so forth. If I take this job and decide to go back into high-level software development later on, will I be at a disadvantage? Are there development practices specific to embedded development that will sour me to high-level development gigs? In a nutshell, if I'm mainly interested in high-level development, would this just be a very long diversion with very little benefit?"}
{"_id": "95200", "title": "Bypass HR to get an interview", "text": "I recently sent in an application for a position that I am qualified for and received this response: \"We regret to inform you that your current qualifications do not match those needed for our current openings. We will retain your resume and if a position opens that closely matches your skill set, we will contact you at that time.\" The position listed required technical skills A, B, C, D, and E with nice-to-haves of X and Y. I listed in my resume and cover letter that I had experience with A through E as well as X. I don't have any experience with Y. This leads me to believe that I am qualified for the position and the Human Resources representative (who does not appear to be a part of the company) is wrong. I asked for a clarification of what qualifications I was missing, but have yet to receive a response. I did a good bit of research about the company and the developers I would be working with and I think it would be a great place to work. I don't want to take no for an answer so easily. I am thinking about directly contacting the development lead (via Twitter) at the company and asking him to look at my resume. He does not know who I am. Is this a good idea?"}
{"_id": "66570", "title": "What are the organizational benefits of TDD over functional development backed by unit tests?", "text": "I've heard of TDD as an organizational development paradigm, where all developers are asked to let testing drive development, and I've also heard of organizations who don't embrace TDD so long as unit test coverage reaches close to 90 percent for the application. One thing I never hear is why an organization would set a standard for TDD specifically when it is an individual development discipline."}
{"_id": "187297", "title": "Sell code using dynamically linked Open Source GPL code?", "text": "I am really confused. The GPL states that if you start with GPL code, and modify that code, that you must release your code with modifications free of charge also under a GPL. But what if you simply use the existing GPL code without modifications as a library? Can you then write software to interface with that code, unchanged, that is closed source?"}
{"_id": "189172", "title": "Open source licenses (specifically GPL) & gamemaker's source format", "text": "Now with gamemaker studio source files are no longer stored in a proprietary format - instead they are stored as simple XML files containing all data. Now I am wondering, can projects created with gamemaker be licensed using an open source license - especially wondering about the GPL and BSD/APACHE families? And if so how to? The biggest objection I see is that all files are generated by gamemaker - and regenarated each time gamemaker saves/loads. The main problem with this is that GM will remove any \"unrecognized\" data from the xml (so any comments). Including copyright notices.   A second problem is that gamemaker typically creates a few dozen files, basically for each function a separate file is created. A typical generated xml looks as following:               <!--This Document is generated by GameMaker, if you edit it by hand then you do so at your own risk!-->     <object>       <spriteName>&lt;undefined&gt;</spriteName>       <solid>0</solid>       <visible>-1</visible>       <depth>0</depth>       <persistent>0</persistent>       <parentName>&lt;undefined&gt;</parentName>       <maskName>&lt;undefined&gt;</maskName>       <events>         <event eventtype=\"0\" enumb=\"0\">           <action>             <libid>1</libid>             <id>603</id>             <kind>7</kind>             <userelative>0</userelative>             <isquestion>0</isquestion>             <useapplyto>-1</useapplyto>             <exetype>2</exetype>             <functionname></functionname>             <codestring></codestring>             <whoName>self</whoName>             <relative>0</relative>             <isnot>0</isnot>             <arguments>               <argument>                 <kind>1</kind>                 <string>xml = FS_xml_open(\"C:\\Users\\user\\Documents\\filesystem\\student.xml\");          </string>               </argument>             </arguments>           </action>         </event>         <event eventtype=\"9\" enumb=\"13\">           <action>             <libid>1</libid>             <id>603</id>             <kind>7</kind>             <userelative>0</userelative>             <isquestion>0</isquestion>             <useapplyto>-1</useapplyto>             <exetype>2</exetype>             <functionname></functionname>             <codestring></codestring>             <whoName>self</whoName>             <relative>0</relative>             <isnot>0</isnot>             <arguments>               <argument>                 <kind>1</kind>                 <string>var root_elem = FS_xml_root_element(xml);     show_message(\"start with root element: \" + FS_xml_get_elem_name(xml, root_elem));     xml_test_display_func(xml, root_elem, \"\");     </string>               </argument>             </arguments>           </action>         </event>       </events>       <PhysicsObject>0</PhysicsObject>       <PhysicsObjectSensor>0</PhysicsObjectSensor>       <PhysicsObjectShape>0</PhysicsObjectShape>       <PhysicsObjectDensity>0.5</PhysicsObjectDensity>       <PhysicsObjectRestitution>0.100000001490116</PhysicsObjectRestitution>       <PhysicsObjectGroup>0</PhysicsObjectGroup>       <PhysicsObjectLinearDamping>0.100000001490116</PhysicsObjectLinearDamping>       <PhysicsObjectAngularDamping>0.100000001490116</PhysicsObjectAngularDamping>       <PhysicsObjectFriction>0.200000002980232</PhysicsObjectFriction>       <PhysicsObjectAwake>-1</PhysicsObjectAwake>       <PhysicsObjectKinematic>0</PhysicsObjectKinematic>       <PhysicsShapePoints/>     </object>      (where you can see that the amount of non-generated actual code programmed corresponds to 4 lines). Adding something like `<!-- copyright 2013 ....... >` to each file does not work as the notice will simply get replaced the moment gamemaker \"saves\". Is using a central COPYRIGHT notice file \"enough\" for open source formats? Can that be used with GPL/APACHE? If it is incompatible, what would cause this?"}
{"_id": "149911", "title": "WCF Service in an N-tier Application", "text": "Is it recommended to use a WCF Service Library in developing an N-Tier Windows Application? Also is it better to use the VS wizards to create the DataTables and DataSets? And if so should I add all of my tables to 1 dataset or have a dataset for each table? This is all new to me and I want to learn it the right way."}
{"_id": "216905", "title": "Alternatives for saving data with jquery", "text": "I am not sure if this question is considered too broad, but I would like to reach out to my fellow programmers to see what alternatives are out there for saving data using jquery. I have a content management system that generates an set of HTML pages called an IETM (Interactive Electronic Technical Manual). The HTML pages are written in HTML and uses jquery. The ITEM is meant to be light weight, portable and run on most modern browsers. I am looking for a way to save data. I have considered cookies and sqlite. Are there any other alternatives for saving data using jquery?"}
{"_id": "52806", "title": "Does your company have architectural principles? Which ones?", "text": "Does your company have architectural principles that are written and agreed upon? How did they come about? How do you manage ownership and acceptance of these principles? Are they helping you or hinder you?"}
{"_id": "22643", "title": "What's the idea behind defining rectangles with two points?", "text": "It's not that this doesn't make sense, but it just works out awkward 99% of the time. Often in 2D graphics rectangles are initialized, stored and manipulated as a pair of points. In no particular language,               class Rect:        p1, p2: point      It makes more sense to define a rectangle as two x values and two y values, like this:               class Rect        xleft, xright: int        ytop, ybottom: int      With two points, if at some place in the source code you want to make use of the y value of the top, you'd have to say rect.p1.y (hmmm, stop and think, is it p1 or p2) but with the four values as plain data members, it's clear and direct: rect.ytop (no thinking required!) The use of two points means that in dealing with the vertical, you have to tangle the horizontal; there's an extraneous relation between indepenent elements. How did this two-point idea come about and why does it persists? Does it have some benefit over bare x and y coordinates? ADDED NOTE: This question is in the context of X-Y aligned rectangles, such as in windows managers and GUI toolkits, not in the context of arbitrary shapes in drawing and painting app."}
{"_id": "22642", "title": "What is wrong with Java's generics?", "text": "I have seen several times on this site posts that decry Java's implementation of generics. Now, I can honestly say that I have not had any issues with using them. However, I have not attempted to make a generic class myself. So, what are your issues with Java's generic support?"}
{"_id": "111556", "title": "Refactoring or upgrading databases to handle new features", "text": "Several responses to a database schema question, suggested an additional table to normalize a database for a feature that is not part of the current requirements (A UserDepartment table to allow for a many-to-many relationship between employees/users and different departments they may belong to.). Not against normalization. Seems like when it comes to database design, there is a strong push to include features that they're 'sure' someone will want in the future. Is it so difficult to add tables/fields to the database to accomodate features that there is a tendancy to over-engineer? Wouldn't they be refactored or upgraded just like the rest of the app if needed? Redoing things is never fun, but moving data from one table to a new one can be done. Just not sure where this line of thinking will end. Edit: There is so much of an aversion to this, I wonder how many projects end up not adding a feature that requires a drastic database change or are non- normalized approaches taken like adding a DepartmentID2 field instead of a new table. The need for multiple departments for an employee is a common domain problem. I just haven't noticed many database schemas that are littered with many-to-many relationships."}
{"_id": "60933", "title": "How to organize a MST when one node disappear?", "text": "I'm doing my research and stuck with a question: I am having a minimum spanning tree (prim algorithm), now one node in my tree gets deleted, I wonder if there is a way i can re-organize my tree such that the optimality still maintains? I'm looking for some suggestions here and I will appreciate your help. Thank you! Note: All edge weights are 1 (unit graph)"}
{"_id": "214501", "title": "Dependency injection with Finite State Machines and the Interface Segregation Principle", "text": "I am trying to figure out what is the best way to setup a FSM and also keep my interfaces clean and use an IOC container to use DI. Let's just visit the Head First design pattern textbook example of the gumball machine.               interface IState     {         InsertQuarter();         EjectQuarter();         TurnCrank();         Dispense();     }      Is the best practice to just thrown an exception for an invalid state? Why add the state if it's not even applicable? I guess that is the portion where I am confused. I could see this simple example getting more complex. My other related question is, how do I perform DI to these states? Should a state machine and states should be registered in my IOC container? Let's suppose I have an Order Service and an Inventory Service that have a dependency on a `StageOrderState`. What might this object model look like? I'm having a hard time digesting how to actually inject the dependencies in to these states. My guess is that I _could_ register the states and pass the container around to the states."}
{"_id": "75525", "title": "Mac Dev Team, suggestions for an remote windows testing environment?", "text": "Alright, so my situation is as follows:   * 1 Front End Developer   * 2 Back End Developers   * 1 QA Tester We all currently have Virtual Machines, or Second PC's set up with our windows environments to test. Now, the real issue is our Windows Environments expire. We're now running into points where randomly parts of our team forget to set up their refreshed environments, and we lose a few hours of productivity. **What I'm hoping to accomplish?** I'm looking to try and set up an external environment that we can all remote to and test on. Something that's separate and external. The only people that really need the environment regularly would be the Front End, and QA parts of the team. They'd also be working on the same section. Anyone have a suggestion for this setup? Has anyone accomplished something similar? Anyone have a suggestion for a better method behind consolidating these Windows Environments? **Clarifying:** by 'windows environments' I mean a local machine running a copy of windows to test on, not a Windows Server where we would deploy code."}
{"_id": "65212", "title": "Feedback on setting up a \"Programmer Dojo\" -- suggestions?", "text": "Looking for a case study, or operational plan for setting up a \"programmer/hacker dojo\" in the United States. Here's an example of one, **hackerdojo.com**; it's possible this info is on their site, but I have been unable to find it. * * * **UPDATE (1):**   * **Wikipedia** \\- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_Dojo   * **WSJ** \\- Techies Get to Work at Hacker Dojo (2011/03/10)   * **venturebeat** \\- Hacker Dojo, finally a hangout where coders can go 24/7 (2009/08/13) * * * **UPDATE (2):**   * Learning Space Matrix - Microsoft Corporation (MS Word Doc, Google Preview)   * **KEYWORDS:** Community Centric Working Space"}
{"_id": "150114", "title": "Two git repositories, one project", "text": "I am building an app using Code Igniter, it is being based on CI-Bonfire. I am pulling in the dev branch of CI-Bonfire using git, I want the entire project to be git controlled as well, but I want to be able to just pull the latest changes from the dev branch of CI-Bonfire, but push my entire app to a different repository. All changes that I make to the files that come from bonfire will be config changes, so all pulls will be able to merge automatically. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "150115", "title": "Why would one ever want to use a synchronized method in Enum?", "text": "I stumbled upon this question and a couple of other along the same lines. While we know creation of enum is thread safe and `enums` are by birth singletons . It kind of confuses me that why would any one want to have a `synchronized` method with in an `enum`. Yes I am fully aware that methods in an `enum` are not thread safe but then what? They must **not** try to change the state of an enum any way . If we are not concerned about change of state of an enum then why would we ever like a method in an enum to be thread safe."}
{"_id": "209432", "title": "How to properly use Hibernate", "text": "I am new to Hibernate so my question could be seen as a very straight forward one, also I will try not to be too generic (as I am always told off because of that), although as with all architectural question it is hard to avoid that... I never know where to ask these questions. I have setup a webapp using Spring + Hibernate. My architecture uses a series of Controllers which make use of Services that ultimately call DAO methods to obtain my domain objects. I also have a GenericDAO which implements all the basic data access methods (findAll, findById, save, delete, update...) which I extend for my concrete Dao so I only have to implement specific data access methods. So a request to view all users will have this flow: the proper controller is called through request mapping, which feeds the view with the result from calling `userService.getAllUsers()` which at the same time makes a call to `userDao.findAll()`. This is all nice and I think I'm doing it properly enough. My question relates to relationships among domain objects, so let's say users have accounts and for one view I want to show the user's details plus his list of accounts. I never found out what's the best way to gather the accounts object list. Should I mark the relationship as Eager? Should I make a call like this:               user.accountList = accountService.findAccountsByUser(userId);      if that's the case then what's the point of specifying the relationship in the first place? Or maybe I am missing some other way here? What happens with Many to Many relationships? Am I forced to create a domain object called UserAccount (assuming an account can be associated to several users) that maps the relations between the two?"}
{"_id": "209433", "title": "Is it required to differentiate between js framework and js library?", "text": "While searching through many javascript libraries/frameworks, I observed that the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. So, conceptually is it important to distinguish between framework and library? Do people seriously make their decisions based on whether it is a library or framework? Would a user like to browse two separate areas - libraries and frameworks while looking for a solution?"}
{"_id": "209431", "title": "Making a decentralized system utilizing JavaScript/HTML5?", "text": "I am interested in decentralized systems, and am currently considering building one myself. I am considering using JavaScript and HTML5, simply because it makes it very easy to use the system (they just have to go to a website). Some thoughts:   * I may or may not use another decentralized network for storage, and even if I do, I probably want to cache stuff on the client. If I do not, I **need** to store stuff on the client, since the information will then be distributed on **my** network. Is any of the HTML5 storage models good for this? I've read somewhere that they have a size limit.   * When using JavaScript in the browser, my understanding is that I have to use WebSockets instead of regular sockets. Doesn't this force me to use WebSocket in my \"protocol spec\"?"}
{"_id": "209437", "title": "Can a method that must be overridden be considered private?", "text": "Suppose I have a class `C` with a method `f()` which is meant to be used only within `C`'s implementation, but which should be overridden by `C`'s subclasses. Is it reasonable, or \"pythonic\", to consider it private, i.e. to name it `_f()` rather than `f()`? In other words would you distinguish the interface provided to subclasses from the interface provided to code outside the inheritance hierarchy?"}
{"_id": "386", "title": "Why shouldn't a new software product try to compete on price?", "text": "I know about how the economies of scale work, and how a bigger competitor could beat you in price, if they wanted. But there doesn't seem to be anything better to compete at when entering a market in software (without being dishonest); a new product often won't be as good as an established one as far as features go. Plus, older popular products are usually priced higher just \"because they can,\" and it's not likely they'll change just to crush a smaller company, so it seems tempting just to set a low price."}
{"_id": "209438", "title": "Best practice for handling variable values outside of source code?", "text": "I am trying to get my head wrapped around OOP after programming in more procedural languages for a number of years. My question: What is the best practice for handling variable values outside of source code? For example, I have file directory values and regex patterns that may need to be manually changed from time to time. I would like to avoid changing these values directly in the source code. I am thinking of creating a text file that will hold key/value pairs. I would then create an object to set these values so that they can be referenced by any methods in my code. Is this the right approach or am I violating any OOP principles? Thanks"}
{"_id": "209439", "title": "Pre-Interview Screening Questions", "text": "I need to hire a senior software developer. I've switched to a new recruiter and he's asked for about 3 questions to ask each candidate on the phone that he'll send the answers to when I see the CV to help me screen out the obvious bad ones. I quite like the idea of not having to phone screen people who just cannot code but I'm struggling to be honest. The notion of quickfire hire/no hire questions intrigues and worries me in equal measure. I reckon it's possible to come up with some useful ones but most of the questions I ask in an interview are open ended, language agnostic and based on cultural fit. Now, the recruiter has told me that the candidate wont be able to google the answers since they'll be asked immediately before he sends the CV but I clearly don't want to ask questions that are 'googleable',..I don't care if they routinely google those sorts of questions. In fact, I'd rather they did! So, if you were in my position what questions would you ask? For what it's worth, the primary platform is .Net, C#, Sql Server et al along with the normal slew of legacy technologies. **Edit** Just to be super clear... knowing whether the candidate knows what the volatile keyword does in C# or how they would create a regex that validates UK postcodes would be pointless information. That's classic google fodder. I want something that demonstrates a deeper understanding than that. I considered simple 'what is polymorhism' type questions or 'explain the difference between an 'HTTP PUT vs POST' but these seem pretty straight forward for a senior. I'm looking for something to help support the decision to interview a senior."}
{"_id": "114457", "title": "Two factor authentication using time base key generator on smartphones", "text": "I recently enabled two factor authentication for my Google account. One of the ways of getting the second factor (the key that I have) is to install an Android app on my phone that displays a key for a short duration of time. What does it take to create a web server solution paired with a smartphone solution? I am using Windows and .NET on the server side and would be interested in both Android and iPhone apps. Are there existing libraries out there or do I need to start from scratch? Where is some starting documentation and explanations of the techniques used?"}
{"_id": "114453", "title": "Do exceptions basically exist to prevent a system from crashing?", "text": "Second of all, I was wondering if anyone knew what the difference was between exceptions (in the realm of exception control flow) and Exceptions (such as used in Java). But are they there to basically protect the system from crashing by terminating the user program?"}
{"_id": "104268", "title": "What are the disadvantages of using/writting a .Net Custom Membership Provider?", "text": "Recently, I posted the following question on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7197337/using-asp-net-membership-provider- with-an-existing-user-database As you may notice, I ended up answering my own question stating that it looked like writting/implementing a \"Custom Membership Provider\" was the way to go. Literally, a few minutes later, I stumble across this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7222306/simple-login-attempt-counter-using- mvc-3-and-ajax/7222407#7222407 I try to answer and get a comment back that .Net Membership provider is \"terrible on many levels\". I'll admit, this is the first time I'm using Membership provider but it sure looked slick to me. I haven't seen anything that backs up the \"terrible\" claim so before I implement something \"terrible\", I was hoping to get some feedback from the community."}
{"_id": "104264", "title": "practical way to learn C?", "text": "I want to dig into C and normally when I want to learn a new language I think of a simple/attainable project goal that has some practical purpose (make use of an api, automate a task, etc...) I'm having a harder time coming up with one for C mainly because everything I read points to the fact that C's primary use currently is in embedded systems and more complex software projects like operating systems. Does this point me to the fact that I don't need to learn it or that I just need to be a bit more convoluted in my learning strategy? References to practical learning resources? (tutorial/how to that produces an end result that has some purpose/benifit)"}
{"_id": "214970", "title": "Best Way to Handle Meta Information in a SQL Database", "text": "I've got a database where I want to store `user` information and `user_meta` information. The reason behind setting it up in this way was because the `user_meta` side may change over time and I would like to do this without disrupting the master `user` table. If possible, I would like some advice on how to best set up this meta data table. I can either set it as below:               +----+---------+----------+--------------------+     | id | user_id | key      | value              |     +----+---------+----------+--------------------+     | 1  | 1       | email    | test@testemail.com |     | 2  | 1       | name     | user name          |     | 3  | 1       | address  | test address       |     ...      Or, I can set it as below:               +----+---------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------+     | id | user_id | email              | name               | address      |     +----+---------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------+     | 1  | 1       | test@testemail.com | user name          | test address |      Obviously, the top verison is more flexible, but the bottom version is space saving and perhaps more efficient, returning all the data as a single record. Which is the best way to go about this?   Or, am I going about this completely wrong and there's another way I've not thought of?"}
{"_id": "165623", "title": "How to organize unit/integration test in BDD", "text": "So finally after reading a lot, I have understood that the difference between BDD and TDD is between T & B. But coming from basic TDD background, what I used to was,   1. first write unittest for database models   2. write test for views (at this point start with integration test as well, along with unittests)   3. write more integration tests for testing UI stuff.  What would be a correct way to approach BDD. Say I have a simple blog application.               Given : When a user logs in.      He should be shown list of all his posts.       But for this, I need a model with a row user, another row blog posts.   So how do we go about writing tests?   when do we create fixtures? When do we write integration (selenium) tests?"}
{"_id": "98113", "title": "When you create an open source project, how to know who's participating and if his version is good?", "text": "my friend has developed a CAD program in C, here it is http://web2coders.jrcw3.com/ i have convinced him to go open source, but we have some concerns:   * if you upload a project to sourceforge or github would you be able to know who's participating and if his version is good?    * if you have many versions being developed by other programmers, how to know which is the best version, which has too many bugs and so on, do you have to read every version or is there a faster way? I really hope that this question will not be closed, because i have asked it in other places and no one answered, so stackoverflow is my last chance to get an answer"}
{"_id": "98111", "title": "Legality/Ethics of crawling a site to basically copy its database?", "text": "A potential freelance client wants a copy of all the phone numbers in an entire country of several million people in CSV format for their telemarketing system. They have sent me a link to an online phone number lookup service. There are also ways to list the phone numbers of a given region, 30 numbers at a time, with a next link at the bottom of the page to go to the next 30. I could write a spider to crawl the site and basically copy their database, but is this kosher, legal or ethical? Someone else I asked said it depends on the terms of service, but the site doesn't have a terms of service. What do you guys think?"}
{"_id": "167663", "title": "Basics of ERP for dummies", "text": "A situation has arisen where (if I don't scream and run away) I will be involved in an ERP system. This project will be using OpenERP specifically. My background is entirely science/engineering/music/games/art/whatever. I've never set foot in the realm of business systems or anything describable with the word \"enterprise\". What is a good introduction to the whole ERP concept, OpenERP and business systems in general suitable for those with flat zero experience in that world? The ideal intro would explain, from no assumptions, what the main ideas are, terminology, they style of work and thinking of people in that world, and maybe some concrete suggestions how one can tinker around with a copy of OpenERP to gain basic familiarity."}
{"_id": "2192", "title": "What can slow a developer down?", "text": "What things tend to slow a developer down? Please try to refrain from posting answers that:   * are slow now but useful in the feature. (TDD, Refactoring, ...)   * list a distraction."}
{"_id": "167661", "title": "Concept of Address Space", "text": "I have searched the idea of address space that is `The set of all legal addresses in memory for a given application. The address space represents the amount of memory available to a program.` I am unable to find that how this concept is implemented? And how it works with operating system? Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "110202", "title": "State machines vs threads", "text": "Alan Cox once said \"A Computer is a state machine. Threads are for people who can't program state machines\".   Since asking Alan directly is not an option for humble me, I'd rather ask here: how does one achieve multi-threading functionality in high-level language, such as Java, using only one thread and state machine? For example, what if there are 2 activities to perform (doing calculations and doing I/O) and one activity can block?   Is using \"state-machine only\" way viable alternative to multi-threading in high-level languages?"}
{"_id": "209389", "title": "Timeline of a programmer in terms of languages?", "text": "> **Alan Perlis once said: \"A language that doesn't affect the way you think > about programming, is not worth knowing\".** I am not proud of the fact that I started programming with scripting languages first( _php_ ,then _javascript_ and now learning _python_ ). I dont have any experience in _c,c++,java,.net,c#,objective-c_. Programming is such a vast field,it would take an eternity to get down to all aspect of it. I cant go back in time.But there are lot of people who would benefit from this question. **MyQuestion** :-If anybody had the option of going back in time,Which programming languages chronologically should that programmer shoot for? The obvious answers might be opinion and purpose/requirement based,But keeping in mind the limited time we have,which languages we shouldnt miss out for to get thorough understanding of programming. **Difference in opinion is OK,just looking for the approximate chronology.** Hope I am clear and not misunderstood."}
{"_id": "209386", "title": "What types of specification documents exist in app lifecycle?", "text": "Developers in large companies usually have multiple specification documents that they write at each phase of the software in question. I've heard of some of them and would like someone to tell me of all specs documents that exist. For example, I've heard of estimation doc (written before project starts), high-level specs, low-level specs and implementation specs. Are there more of them? Can you sort them as they appear in the lifecycle of some application? Note: the reason for this question is that I have to delegate some project to another person and I would have to write all these specs docs. Somehow, I don't think that writing low-level specs is always the best solution (if I am wrong, let me know) so that is why I asked this question."}
{"_id": "209382", "title": "Why is float the default in the majority of languages?", "text": "In programming languages, for represent numbers you have (mainly) two types: `Int(s)` and `floats`. The us of `Int` is very easy. However floats cause a lot of unexpected surprises: http://anh.cs.luc.edu/python/hands-on/3.1/handsonHtml/float.html I wonder why is not used a decimal-based type make more sense as the default for literals and normal math? Where normal math is more precise?"}
{"_id": "57671", "title": "Is it better to learn html, javascript, php, then mysql if you want to start your own site?", "text": "Is it better to learn html, javascript, php, then mysql if you want to start your site? Is it better to learn it in that order or not?"}
{"_id": "57674", "title": "As a young student aspiring to have a career as a programmer, how should I feel about open source software?", "text": "Every once in a while on some technology websites a headline like this will pop up: http://www.osor.eu/news/nl-moving-to-open-source-would-save- government-one-to-four-billion My initial thought about government and organizations moving to open source software is that tons of programmers would lose their jobs and the industry would shrink. At the same time the proliferation and use of open source software seems to be greatly encouraged in many programming communities. Is my thinking that the full embrace of open source software everywhere will hurt the software industry a misconception? If it is not, then why do so many programmers love open source software?"}
{"_id": "141859", "title": "What difference with Android when iOS is not open?", "text": "My question may seem silly, but, I've read in many Android books that the better part of Android is Android is open, and iOS is closed. But, from a programmer viewpoint, who cares about this point? Programmers just care about the platform: is it easy to program in, easy to have help in the network, etc. They don't care about whether the platform is open or closed. One book had additional information, but I don't understand it much. Since iOS is not open, I\u2019d be able to share my work with others only if Apple allowed it. So, if you write an app, and need to share, you must have Apple's permission, but not Android's? Please help me understand this point. I'm preparing for a presentation on Android. And I don't know if I should put this point into my presentation."}
{"_id": "141858", "title": "What is classic object oriented programming?", "text": "I heard the phrase _classic object oriented programming_. Is it different from present object oriented programming, like classic ASP and ASP.net?"}
{"_id": "141854", "title": "Design patterns - do you use them?", "text": "Being an IT student, I was recently given some overview about design patterns by one of our teachers. I understood what they are for, but some aspects still keep bugging me. Are they really used by the majority of programmers? Speaking of experience, I've had some troubles while programming, things I could not solve for a while, but Google and some hours of research solved my problem. If somewhere in the web I find a way to solve my problem, is this a design pattern? Am I using it? And also, do you (programmers) find yourself looking for patterns (where am I supposed to look, by the way?) when you start the development? If so, this is certainly a habit that I must start to embrace. UPDATE: I think when I ask if programmers do use them, I'm asking if when you have a problem to solve you think \"Oh, I should use that pattern\"."}
{"_id": "250398", "title": "Proper program design for submitting a form", "text": "I have been stuck wondering what the best solution to the problem below: I am developing a form like GUI with quite a few places for input. Currently, I am storing each UI element in an ArrayList representing each modular component of the form (Seperate layouts containing UI elements relevant to one another) I then pass these ArrayLists into a new class that will then handle gathering the data entered by the user after a submit button has been clicked. I feel as though this method of passing the UI elements by ArrayList is not very good practice. If anyone has any better suggestions, I would love to hear them, as I feel this method is somewhat unclean."}
{"_id": "102951", "title": "How do I make up for a lack of feedback as a solo developer?", "text": "As a newly self-employed software developer, my concern is that I am not getting the stream of feedback I have received in the past when working in groups. (I do have feedback (mostly positive) from my customers, and I do spend a fair amount of time on self-improvement.) What should I be doing to fill the gaps? Any other one-person software shops out there? How do you stay connected and avoid becoming too enamored of your own work? Am I worrying about this too much? Thanks for your comments."}
{"_id": "102955", "title": "Formal requirements analysis", "text": "I've been doing a Requirements Analysis module in my university. We've covered all kinds of formal requirements stuff, like UML, Use Case Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams and Contracts. I have to ask- are any of these things of any value whatsoever in the real world? The only Use Case Diagrams I've ever seen could be summed up in a vastly more succint and understandable way in plain English- or even code in a reasonable language of your choice- and the same goes for the other things I've mentioned."}
{"_id": "102957", "title": "Diagramming large and complex application code", "text": "I tried creating a flow chart of a function that I use in my program, but there are a lot of conditional statements in between every process and the diagrams are getting more confusing. Is there a another language or markup other than flow charts that can be employed for large codebases with high complexity?"}
{"_id": "102958", "title": "Post-Project Meeting a Waste of Time?", "text": "At my place of employment, we've had some serious growing pains. We went from a development team of 3 to 10, and the company itself has grow 30% in the past year. By most measurements, we're doing well. Unfortunately, the quality of our software has suffered. In a meeting today with my division's manager, I proposed a project team meeting a day or two after the product has launched. We could discuss budget concerns, scope, what went wrong, and what went right. Ideally, learning from our mistakes. We build sites/apps for other people, so our time is either billable on non-billable. A meeting like this would fall under the latter. My manager shot it down almost immediately: \"That time isn't billable. It'll make us get behind on another project because we waste time at the end of that one talking about it.\" I was so caught off guard by this logic that I didn't even bother fighting him on it. So my question: I see the value is post-project meetings, but he doesn't. Is there **documented** proof of post-project meetings helping save time and money in the long (or short) run? Intuitively I think it will/would, but he clearly is more worried about a small amount of un-billable time from the 5 people that would need to be there."}
{"_id": "143987", "title": "Scrum: What if the Product Owner has tasks?", "text": "I have just started working with a team that has picked up some aspects of Scrum (two week timeboxing) but not others (the team does not currently agree to all estimates or to the number of points in a sprint, but I'll change this soon.) The product owner is also a technical resource (scientist) with some development background. Is it appropriate to have the product owner's tasks (which mostly involve research) mixed in with the team's tasks (some of which are research and some development)."}
{"_id": "113152", "title": "Data Grid for Web Application", "text": "Are there any good Data Grid libraries that allow the user to view and edit data from a database? My boss asked me to research possible Data Grid resources to supplement our web application and I thought I'd ask here. I know we could make one in-house, but we'd like to have a professional looking one without expending too much time and work. We are looking for a web based Data Grid, preferably written in Java that is free or open-source. JDeveloper looks promising, however, it has quite a bit of overhead and quite a steep learning curve. The web application that this would supplement is not large enough to warrant the time it would take to simply learn JDeveloper. The grid viewer should be able to:   * allow users to view tables   * allow users to edit rows inline   * allow sorting by columns   * pages rows   * associate tables If there are any suggestions of possible Data Grids that allow have this criteria, it would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "251625", "title": "Are there technical limitations or language features that prevent my Python script from being as fast as an equivalent C++ program?", "text": "I'm a long-time Python user. A few years ago, I started learning C++ to see what it could offer in terms of speed. During this time, I would continue to use Python as a tool for prototyping. This, it seemed, was a good system: agile development with Python, fast execution in C++. Recently, I've been using Python more and more again, and learning how to avoid all of the pitfalls and anti-patterns that I was quick to use in my earlier years with the language. It's my understanding that using certain features (list comprehensions, enumerations, etc.) can increase performance. But are there technical limitations or language features that prevent my Python script from being as fast as an equivalent C++ program?"}
{"_id": "113154", "title": "Books having graded collection of programming problems", "text": "I am looking for a book with **graded** (i.e from low to high level of difficulty) collection of programming problems. The problems I am interested in are Algorithm/Data Structure problems, since this is the genre of problems asked in ACM ICPC, Topcoder, CodeJam, Facebook puzzles, and majority of interviews, I suppose. I do know of various collections on web but none of them are graded so it is daunting for a beginner to get started. I am looking for something that starts from the very beginning and goes up to Topcoder level, for instance."}
{"_id": "210080", "title": "Checking for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in Perl web applications", "text": "I'm putting together some notes for a dev team on how to write secure Perl code - especially taking into account the current OWASP top 10 web application vulnerabilities. For cross-site scripting I've included information on ensuring that all output to the browser is checked and escaped where necessary, but I'm looking for more automated mechanisms that would mean a developer doesn't have to think about every output statement and, potentially, miss one. Perl's 'taint' function sounds like it should be a help because it distrusts all user input, but it doesn't complain on tainted data being output to the browser. Apart from checking all output statements individually (probably by calling a generic sanitizing function) does anyone have any ideas on how Perl can help with this with existing libraries or techniques?"}
{"_id": "167086", "title": "Built-in Context-and-Input-to-Output-Hashing in Compilers", "text": "Why doesn't (open source) compilers contain builtin funtionality for (shared) caching and reuse-fetching (using SHA1-hash of compiler-version, build-flags, target-platform and inputs) of executable output objects (ELF or COFF) similar to what `ccache` does and `scons`? Many large software projects would benefit enormously in required build-disk- space and -time if this was present in, say GCC."}
{"_id": "167087", "title": "Is it okay for programmers to be given the task of outlining database requirements?", "text": "In my current job, dba's and programmers are divided in tasks. Any code that needs to be written in procedures dba's write, and programmers do only application code. The strange thing is that whenever a task needs to be defined/specced, programmers get the task, and we have to define all the procedures needed and what they should return. Is this a common practice in software development? Are programmers generally the ones tasked with building requirements for the database side?"}
{"_id": "199768", "title": "Task-based authorization for user stories", "text": "My understanding is that the first step of defining user stories is to define roles. The problem with role-based systems is that this form of authorization is often too coarse-grained. Hence, people created task-based authorization where roles are still used to lump tasks into groups (see for example rhino security . At least that's my understanding. How do I write user stories for task based authorization? Any feedback would be very much appreciated. Many thanks!"}
{"_id": "191154", "title": "Is it possible to offer an affiliate program for your iOS or Android app?", "text": "Independent of the App Store or Google Play, is there a way to track where new downloads or paying customers came from? For example, if an app advertises my app in theirs - is there a way for me to find out which users actually downloaded it? And then pay that app owner a commission? On the web this is done via a tracking URL which places a cookie on a users machine. If they signup within a designated timeframe, they are 'tracked to' whomever had their affiliate code in the URL they clicked and that person would receive commissions. How could this be done with native mobile apps, while not violating Apple/Google rules?"}
{"_id": "57095", "title": "What do you call one element in an enumeration?", "text": "The following C# code defines an enumeration.               enum MyEnum             {                 alpha,                 beta,                 gamma,                 delta             }      As a whole it is called an enumeration. What do you call each item? For example, what do you call the object that is beta?"}
{"_id": "194307", "title": "Integration testing in en example - confused", "text": "I know that integration testing means integrating unit tested moduls and testing for interface errors etc. But in real world examples, I am kinda lost. Here is an example of our system: Back end (Java).   Front end (Flex). Back end is processind data heavily and we have a lot of tests for weekly automated regression. But is it a system test? I think so, but on the other hand, it is just back end part testing. Or should I say it is system testing only when UI part is involved as well? But again, with testing UI we cannot test the logic in data processing."}
{"_id": "194305", "title": "Node.JS or Scala for mobile and web apps", "text": "I am coming from a php background with some python as well. I want to start working on a different language for both web and mobile development. I am also interested in real time apps dealing with games. I am looking at node.js because I can use tools like titanium and/or phone gap to have my apps ported and compiled to native java code, or in a way that makes it runnable on mobile (web views). I like this path because I can use existing JS knowledge to build apps. I am also looking at scala. I have done some C# as well as tinkered with Java about 5 years ago. And I do like that I can use scala to make native android apps. But unlike node/js which can be made to also work on other mobile os's, this only works on android. In a way, that doesn't really bother me. But scala seems like it would have much better performance for gaming that JS compiled to android. But I do not know how well. Ine the end I want to focus on socket and REST based web apps for API's that users can have access to, as well as some mobile development. I want to get towards games and interactive apps. The question is, what features of Scala would benefit me over the node/js side of things for making real time applications on web or mobile? I was looking at using frameworks like lift or play for web. Node also makes real time easy with socket.io and node handles much of that in the background. This is why I think node could be a great choice. So I was hoping someone could give some insight on features in Node, that would have some benefit over scala. I don't really want to hear 'this is better cause its webscale or related things. I was hoping for more facts about features that would benefit what I want to do. I already understand why node is good. I just dont know much of anything about scala. Or how they may compare for what I want to accomplish."}
{"_id": "194309", "title": "Database Facade to wrap our existing queries?", "text": "We have a very big application written in C++ using the MFC framework (millions of code lines). No need to say that it's a legacy system, but it's also heavily maintained and updated. This application lacks a lot of architecture. For example, we have a lot of classes that do queries directly to the database, which creates a lot of difficulty for unit testing. I have read the book Working Effectively With Legacy Code, and one of the most important things to do first is to create some kind of architecture so we can separate the GUI from the logic and from the database. My idea to go towards this is to create something like a database facade. There will be 2 goals for this:   1. Encapsulate all the calls to the database behind this facade.   2. Be able to test the facade in batch to detect errors in the SQL very fast. The database facade itself will be implementing an IDatabaseXXXX interface so it could be easily mocked in the unit tests. The second goal will be to be able to run all the functions in the facade in batch to test if there are errors in the SQL queries. I don't count them as unit tests and would be running them only once per day. My main concern about doing this is that I don't know if there is an existing framework or library to take care of this abstraction. As far as I know, there are some on other platforms like .NET, but it seems that for C++ or MFC, there are not a lot of options. Like I said, the application is very big and the change will be done slowly, mostly when new queries are added to the software. I think it is a good thing to add that we also have a LOT of recordsets (one for almost each object). For the moment, I don't know how to deal with them, so I kept them on the side and decided to deal with the regular SQL queries. But if you have suggestions to deal with recordsets, I will be glad to hear them. So my main question is: Is this whole idea of database facade worth trying? Is there any library of framework to help me in this adventure? If there are C++/MFC programmers out there, how do you deal with the abstraction of the query to the database? Thanks! _**EDIT_** Some people on the chat suggest looking up at repository pattern which I knew from the world of MVC 3. Any suggestion or tutorial about the repository pattern in C++? Most of what I found is in the .NET world."}
{"_id": "210333", "title": "How to insert a database layer in PHP", "text": "I maintain and add features on a freelance basis to a website written in PHP. The application was started in PHP4 by a junior programmer back in 2006, and features some very insecure and unmaintainable ways of doing things, which I am trying to correct as time goes on. If the client agrees, one of the first things I would like to do is add in a proper database layer of some sort. The current database access looks like this:               if (!function_exists('my_query')) {     function my_query($query) {              if ($query=='disabled') return false;              global $last_insert_id,$dbconn,$dbase;                   $result=mysql_query($query,$dbconn) or die('ERROR: '.mysql_error($dbconn).'<br />'.$query);         $last_insert_id=mysql_insert_id($dbconn);         return $result;     }     }      There is also a function to make arrays from the data returned.               if (!function_exists('spawnarray')) {     function spawnarray($result)     {         $i = 0;         if ($result != \"\") {             if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {                 while($result_obj[$i] = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {                     $sp_result[$i]=$result_obj[$i];                     $i++;                 }                 return $sp_result;             }         }     }     }      These two functions are basically the database layer, and SQL queries are constructed on the fly for them all over the place. So my question is, how can I start to introduce database abstraction in to the mix? I would like to move to PDO for security and ease of use reasons, but maybe there is a better way to go? I have already moved the project to Composer for some of its dependencies (Some are dead projects, which is a different issue) so maybe an ORM like Doctrine would be the way to go? That might mean moving the website to OOP in one go though: a daunting prospect, and a sure no-go from the client."}
{"_id": "210330", "title": "Optimize database interaction through VPN", "text": "I have to develop a batch procedure with VB.NET. This simple procedure is going to read some data from a MS SQL database, execute some elaborations and the write the results on another Oracle SQL database located to a remote network reached via VPN. The VPN is \"always on\", we do not need a client to manage the connection because it is created firewall-by-firewall. The data that I have to write are atomic, so I have to use a transaction. Can you tell me what happen if the VPN connection fall down when a transaction is open and the COMMIT was not executed? Do you have some suggestion/best practice to follow to avoid this scenario?"}
{"_id": "221892", "title": "Should I use a list or an array?", "text": "I'm working on a windows form to calculate UPC for item numbers. I successfully create one that will handle one item number/UPC at a time, now I want to expand and do it for multiple item numbers/UPCs. I have started and tried using a list, but I keep getting stuck. I created a helper class:               public class Codes     {         private string incrementedNumber;         private string checkDigit;         private string wholeNumber;         private string wholeCodeNumber;         private string itemNumber;              public Codes(string itemNumber, string incrementedNumber, string checkDigit, string wholeNumber, string wholeCodeNumber)         {             this.incrementedNumber = incrementedNumber;             this.checkDigit = checkDigit;             this.wholeNumber = wholeNumber;             this.wholeCodeNumber = wholeCodeNumber;             this.itemNumber = itemNumber;         }              public string ItemNumber         {             get { return itemNumber; }             set { itemNumber = value; }         }              public string IncrementedNumber         {              get { return incrementedNumber; }             set { incrementedNumber = value; }          }              public string CheckDigit         {             get { return checkDigit; }             set { checkDigit = value; }         }              public string WholeNumber         {             get { return wholeNumber; }             set { wholeNumber = value; }         }              public string WholeCodeNumber         {             get { return wholeCodeNumber; }             set { wholeCodeNumber = value; }         }          }      Then I got started on my code, but the issue is that the process is incremental, meaning I get the item number from a gridview via checkboxes and put them in the list. Then I get the last UPC from the database, strip the checkdigit, then increment the number by one and put it in the list. Then I calculate the checkdigit for the new number and put that in the list. And here I already get an Out of Memory Exception. Here is the code I have so far:               List<Codes> ItemNumberList = new List<Codes>();                   private void buttonSearch2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             //Fill the datasets             this.immasterTableAdapter.FillByWildcard(this.alereDataSet.immaster, (textBox5.Text));             this.upccodeTableAdapter.FillByWildcard(this.hangtagDataSet.upccode, (textBox5.Text));             this.uPCTableAdapter.Fill(this.uPCDataSet.UPC);             string searchFor = textBox5.Text;             int results = 0;             DataRow[] returnedRows;             returnedRows = uPCDataSet.Tables[\"UPC\"].Select(\"ItemNumber = '\" + searchFor + \"2'\");             results = returnedRows.Length;             if (results > 0)             {                 MessageBox.Show(\"This item number already exists!\");                 textBox5.Clear();                 //clearGrids();             }             else             {                 //textBox4.Text = dataGridView1.Rows[0].Cells[1].Value.ToString();                 MessageBox.Show(\"Item number is unique.\");             }         }              public void checkMarks()         {                  for (int i = 0; i < dataGridView7.Rows.Count; i++)             {                 if ((bool)dataGridView7.Rows[i].Cells[3].FormattedValue)                 {                     {                         ItemNumberList.Add(new Codes(dataGridView7.Rows[i].Cells[0].Value.ToString(), \"\", \"\", \"\", \"\"));                     }                 }             }         }              public void multiValue1()         {             _value = uPCDataSet.UPC.Rows[uPCDataSet.UPC.Rows.Count - 1][\"UPCNumber\"].ToString();//get last UPC from database             _UPCNumber = _value.Substring(0, 11);//strip out the check-digit             _UPCNumberInc = Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumber);//convert the value to a number                  for (int i = 0; i < ItemNumberList.Count; i++)             {                 _UPCNumberInc = _UPCNumberInc + 1;                 _UPCNumberIncrement = Convert.ToString(_UPCNumberInc);//assign the incremented value to a new variable                 ItemNumberList.Add(new Codes(\"\", _UPCNumberIncrement, \"\", \"\", \"\"));//**here I get the OutOfMemoreyException**             }                  for (int i = 0; i < ItemNumberList.Count; i++)             {                 long chkDigitOdd;                 long chkDigitEven;                 long chkDigitSubtotal;                 chkDigitOdd = Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(0, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(2, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(4, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(6, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(8, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(10, 1));                 chkDigitOdd = (3 * chkDigitOdd);                 chkDigitEven = Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(1, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(3, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(5, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(7, 1)) + Convert.ToInt64(_UPCNumberIncrement.Substring(9, 1));                 chkDigitSubtotal = (300 - (chkDigitEven + chkDigitOdd));                 _chkDigit = chkDigitSubtotal.ToString();                 _chkDigit = _chkDigit.Substring(_chkDigit.Length - 1, 1);                 ItemNumberList.Add(new Codes(\"\", \"\",_chkDigit, \"\", \"\"));             }      Is this the right way to go about it, using a list, or should I be looking at a different way?"}
{"_id": "210339", "title": "Geographically Distributed (Data & App) Architecture", "text": "Is there any design patterns (or best practices) for implementing a geographically distributed system (mostly a database)? Description: There is a network of warehouses and a central office. Now I want every warehouse replicates it's data to the central office and the central office replicates just that portion of data related to that warehouse (when it's modified). This I can call a \"filtered replication\". Our database here is SQL Server 2008 R2. Should I go with another database? How about NoSQL databases? This is a .NET based solution. So far I have learnt about Web Synchronization for Merge Replication and I am investigating it; but I did not learnt how to implement filtered replication yet. I am not sure how NoSQL fits for an e-commerce problem (I think I need to use a combination of NoSQL+RDBMS if I should go that way) but I am investigating RavenDB and MongoDB. Any insight would help a lot; Thanks;"}
{"_id": "105607", "title": "\"Anything can go wrong will go wrong\" - Murphy's Law. so is it necessary to test all the conditional, exception cases?", "text": "If \"Anything can go wrong will go wrong\" is true, we need to test all the conditionals and exceptional cases in my code. But sometimes it's hard to find all of them since many of them are corner cases, which are hard to test. How can I go about finding corner cases better or avoiding the issue?"}
{"_id": "105603", "title": "Are there minimum quality standards for .NET applications?", "text": "Does Microsoft require third party .NET applications to meet any minimum standards for things like application security or code quality?"}
{"_id": "9761", "title": "How to visualize code?", "text": "I've mostly only had to read my own code. As such, I've had no need to visualize the code as I already know how each and every class and module communicate with one another. But the few times I've had to read someone else's code - let us now assume we are talking about at least one larger module which contains several internal classes - I've almost always found myself wishing _\"This would have been so much easier to understand if I could just visualize it!\"_ **So what are the common methods or tools for enabling this? Which do you use, and why do you prefer them over the others?** I've heard stuff like UML, module and class diagrams, but I imagine there are more. Furthermore, any of these is most likely better than anything I can devise on my own. **EDIT:** For those who answer with \"Use pen and paper and just draw it\": This isn't very helpful unless you explain this further. What _exactly_ am I supposed to draw? A box for each class? Should I include the public methods? What about its fields? How should I draw connections that explain how one class uses another? What about modules? What if the language isn't object- oriented but functional or logical, or even just imperative (C, for instance)? What about global variables and functions? Is there an already-standardized way of drawing this, or do I need to think up of a method of my own? You get the drift."}
{"_id": "223792", "title": "Why separate class CommandHandler with Handle() instead of handling method in Command itself", "text": "I have a part of CQRS pattern implemented using S#arp Architecture like this:               public class MyCommand     {         public CustomerId { get; set; }              // some other fields     }          public class MyCommandHandler<MyCommand> : ICommandHandler<MyCommand, CommandResult>     {         Handle(MyCommand command)         {             // some code for saving Customer entity                  return CommandResult.Success;         }     }      I wonder why not just have class `Command` containing both data **and** handling method? Is it a kind of testability benefit, where you need to test command handling logic separately from command properties? Or is it some frequent business requirement, where you need to have one command handled by different implementations of `ICommandHandler<MyCommand, CommandResult>`?"}
{"_id": "207436", "title": "When should I start using frameworks?", "text": "I'm little confused with the motive and need for frameworks. At what stage should I use frameworks? For example, if I want to use some CSS framework, should I learn CSS at pro or advanced level to use it?"}
{"_id": "223796", "title": "Solutions for giving feedback to students on their code?", "text": "I will be a TA for a course that teaches Haskell this semester and the professor and I are trying to come up with a solution that lets us do entirely electronic submissions. We would like students to be able to upload files (we have a system we could use that puts uploaded files into an FTP server) and then receive grading/feedback on those files. Is anybody aware of good solutions for code review that keep the submissions and feedback confidential?"}
{"_id": "187461", "title": "When to apply corrections on data gathered from a server", "text": "I have an program that collects data from other servers. I don\u2019t have access to these servers so I can\u2019t change anything. The servers can give incorrect data, I can solve the problem but I\u2019m a little bit stuck on \u201cwhen to do the correction\u201d. I download the data from the server, the data gets processed and stored on the hard-drive. When the same data is needed an there is no change, then I use the old data. So this is basically caching. There are 2 places where I could apply the correction.   * When I receive the data from the other servers;   * After I cache the data. So right before I use it. When I apply the correction on the downloaded data directly, then the server doesn\u2019t need to do much calculations. It\u2019s only corrected once. When I apply the correction after I took it from the cache or when isn\u2019t cached after I cache the data. Then I need more CPU power. But this gives me the advantage to access the original data at all time. I could fall back when I made a mistake and apply a correct correction. So the question is, when should I apply the correction? And why should I do it that way."}
{"_id": "187464", "title": "Generic file parser design in Java using the Strategy pattern", "text": "I am working on a product in which the responsibility of one of the modules is to parse XML files and dump the required content in a database. Even though the present requirement is only to parse XML files, I want to design my parsing module in a fashion that I can support any kind of files in the future. The reason for this approach is that we are building this product for a specific client but plan to sell it to other clients in the near future. All the systems in the ecosystem for the current client produce and consume XML files but this may not be the case for other clients. **What have I tried so far? (The Present)** I have the following design in mind which is based on the Strategy pattern. I have quickly written down the code in eclipse to convey my design so it would be great if other aspects such as proper way of handling exceptions are ignored for now. **Parser :** The strategy interface that exposes a parse method.                public interface Parser<T> {             public T parse(String inputFile);         }      *The reason for using a generic parameter is to allow any return type as well as ensure type safety at compile time. **ProductDataXmlParser** A concrete class for parsing a product.xml file that contains product related information. (using XMLBeans)               public class ProductDataXmlParser implements Parser<ProductDataTYPE> {              public ProductDataTYPE parse(String inputFile) {             ProductDataTYPE productDataDoc = null;                 File inputXMLFile = new File(inputFile);                  try {                 productDataDoc = ProductDataDocument.Factory.parse(inputXMLFile);             } catch(XmlException e) {                 System.out.println(\"XmlException while parsing file : \"+inputXMLFile);             } catch(IOException e) {                       System.out.println(\"IOException while parsing file : \"+inputXMLFile);             }             return productDataDoc.getProductData();         }     }       **where** : ProductDataTYPE and ProductDataDocument are XMlBean POJO classes generated using an xsd and the scomp command. **The future** If I have a product.txt file to be parsed in the future, I can define my own POJO called ProductData that will hold the required contents of the file. I can then create a concrete class called ProductDataFlatFileParser that implements the Parser interface and have the parse method populate the ProductData POJO for me after parsing the file. Does this design make sense? Are there any obvious flaws in this design? As the design stands, I am allowing the concrete classes to define the algorithm to parse a file and letting the concrete class decide where to populate the data. The design seems to be more dependent on the domain objects rather than the file formats. Is this a bad thing? Any inputs on how I can improve my design will be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "187465", "title": "Domain Driven Design with an EAV database model", "text": "How can one apply DDD to a EAV database model? Consider this EAV database model: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yVT7q.png) How am I supposed to build a domain model if all my entities and their attributes will be stored in the database? **UPDATE** To help clarify the question I'll give an example. If I'm building a **Store** that is going to sell some **Products** then I'll have 2 entities in my domain model corresponding to them. Now my `Product` entity will normally have a fixed number of attributes (ex: `Product_name`, `sku`, `weight`, etc...). However, in a EAV model entities have a variable number of attributes. How should I write a model for `Product` if each concrete instance of it will have a different number of attributes?"}
{"_id": "112205", "title": "Does C# experience translate well to C++?", "text": "My programming classes in school were C++, but I ended up working a job doing C# for the last few years. If there was a position that required say 1 or 2 years experience in C++, would my experience in C# be worthy of consideration? How effective could I be in such a position? So do I need to start out as an entry-level C++ programmer to gain the necessary experience?"}
{"_id": "146855", "title": "Which style is better to check and log the error?", "text": "I have read some code and here are two ways to check and log the error in cpp code that repeats in my project many times. Which way is better? 1.               bool AClass::myMethod()     {          if (!SomeCondition())          {              Warning(\"AClass::myMethod: your description\");              return false;          }         doSomthing();         return true;     }      2.               bool AClass::myMethod()     {         if (SomeCondition())         {             doSomething();         }         else         {             Warning(\"AClass::myMethod\uff1a your description\");             return false;         }         return true;     }"}
{"_id": "146851", "title": "Real world usage of DelayQueue", "text": "What would be a real world usage of DelayQueue, what common problem it was designed to solve?"}
{"_id": "59945", "title": "Antonym to \"cross-functional team\"", "text": "What is a widespread antonym to \"cross-functional team\"?"}
{"_id": "137198", "title": "Why would I need a Git Repository?", "text": "I'm a beginning developer setting up a project in Xcode 4.3 and I'm wondering under what circumstances I would need to check the \"Create local git repository for this project\" box. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "137190", "title": "What Use Cases are Appropriate for JScript.NET?", "text": "In this Stack Overflow question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9471332 I learned that Jscript is not dead after all. Yay! But what is JScript.NET good for? According to this article, you can use it to provide C# with an Eval function. That's neat, but it seems like kind of an edge case. If you were after first-class scripting capability, doesn't PowerShell fit the bill?"}
{"_id": "137193", "title": "Scrum: Handling lack of motivation", "text": "According to this, \"Scrum highly relies on a highly motivated, closely collaborating, cross-functional and self-organized teams.\" So how do you handle co-workers who may not be as motivated to take ownership of the code? How do you get someone interested in taking ownership?"}
{"_id": "189943", "title": "Are there any practical uses of allowing recursive inclusion of a file?", "text": "I am currently implementing NASM-like preprocessor for my assembler, and I am wondering what is the correct way of handling recursively included files. From what I see, there are two ways to deal with it without hanging the preprocessor or even the OS:   1. Set maximum include depth.   2. Disallow including a file recursively (not to be confused with disallowing including a file _twice_ ). Also, as far as I can see, the second approach does essentially the same job, but produces nicer error messages. Compare output of Clang, when compiling file containing `#include \"main.cpp\"` only:               In file included from main.cpp:1:     [ repeated many times ]     In file included from main.cpp:1:     main.cpp:1:10: error: #include nested too deeply     #include \"main.cpp\"      with this (current way of handling this in my preprocessor; input is similar to above, does `%include \"1.mov.asm\"` at line 6):               In file /home/griwes/projects/reaverasm/tests/1.mov.asm in line 6:     Error: file `/home/griwes/projects/reaverasm/tests/1.mov.asm` included recursively.      The approach disallowing recursive inclusion produces - IMHO - more readable output. The question is: **is there any preprocessor technique that would be killed by disallowing recursive inclusion?** This question is language-agnostic, so feel free to give examples from any languages."}
{"_id": "197652", "title": "Exclude the zero in the given data in Haskell", "text": "I have a list of integers. Also, I have a function which returns True when the element is non-zero, and returns False when the element is zero (let's call it FUNCTION1). So, how to define another function (using FUNCTION1), which will give us a new list and only include the non-empty elements? For example, we have [1,2,3,0,6,0], and we want [1,2,3,6]"}
{"_id": "147182", "title": "Good ways to jump to a particular state in a yielding stateful function?", "text": "I'm working on some embedded code using C. Various pieces of functionality need non-blocking stateful functions, which are mostly implemented using a switch on various states. For example, a modem connection manager (pseudo- code):               void manage_connection(void) {         static states state = IDLE;         switch (state) {             case IDLE:                 if (connection_requested()) state = BACKOFF;                 break;             case BACKOFF:                 if (random_delay_timeout()) {                     do_connect();                     state = CONNECTED;                 }                 break;             case CONNECTED:                 result = send_data();                 if (result == DATA_SENT) {                     state = IDLE;                 } else if (result == ERROR) {                     // Go straight to backoff state and connect ASAP                     state = BACKOFF;                 }                 break;         }     }      State machines are nasty at the best of times, so I've started to move to a different paradigm using coroutine-style functions, using a \"yield\" statement. Of course, C doesn't provide a \"yield\" statement, but I'm using protothreads to achieve this. Protothreads is great, and gives me exactly what I want to implement the above non-blocking state machine in a structured-programming style. The above function roughly translates to (pseudo-code):               void manage_connection(void) {         WAIT_UNTIL(connection_requested()); // or, while(!condition) yield;         WAIT_UNTIL(random_delay_timeout());         do_connect();         WAIT_UNTIL((result = send_data()));              if (result == DATA_SENT) {             // RESTART starts from top. It is part of the protothreads API.             RESTART();         } else if (result == ERROR) {             // This is the part which doesn't translate so well.             // Could use an ugly goto:             goto backoff;             // Or similar alternatives, none of which scale well:             // - Set a flag to skip the states I don't want, and RESTART();             // - Use while loops or other control logic to branch appropriately.         }     }      As you can see, the protothreads version is, on the whole, much clearer & simpler in terms of the flow of logic (once you learn how protothreads work, and look past some very minor boilerplate which I haven't included in the example). But jumping to a particular state in a state machine is a common pattern that I'm come across, which the state machine version handles elegantly, but the procedural version does not. Of course, that's why the procedural version is less bug-prone and clearer -- because you _can't_ jump all over the place on a whim (except for goto, which I'd like to avoid for the usual reasons). However, when you have a good reason to want to jump, it adds significant bug- prone lack of clarity to what is otherwise a very straightforward function. Obviously there are plenty ways to achieve the necessary functionality, but none of them scale well to more than a few states. Bear in mind this is the simplest possible example -- my real-world functions fill half a screen. What are some ways to solve this problem in a way that doesn't muddy the otherwise-lucid flow of logic?"}
{"_id": "136826", "title": "Is there any scenario where it's useful to keep mutable properties cached in domain objects for anything else than informational purposes?", "text": "Usually in a domain model, you'll have objects, and those objects will have properties that are mutable and properties that are immutable - for instance, a instance id/name will be immutable, while some other properties (specially properties that depend on relationships with other objects) can vary in the lifetime of an object So, in the usual scenario where multiple clients are accessing the same data store, your ORM tool will usually model columns as properties and relationships as lists, in the mutual understanding that any mutable property might be outdated in the client - that is, they only represent caches of the values of the properties. However, in many circumstances, one wants to do an operation that might require the actual state of the mutable properties, otherwise the operation might fail or produce data corruption, so in those cases you'll attempt a lock in the row in question, and if the row has already changed then you cancel or abort. In any case, the operation is done off the client application. At some point I have to ask a question (oddly enough, its turning out to be surprising hard!), so I guess the question would be: **is there any scenario where it's useful to keep mutable properties cached in domain objects for anything else than informational purposes?** After all, if there are relationships that we care for, say we want to traverse the neighbours of some object, we'll want to do that with their real (not cached) states, which would involve a database transaction, or some other means to do the process atomically (maybe map reduce?)."}
{"_id": "142356", "title": "To reorganize code, what to choose between library and service?", "text": "I want to reorganize a large application with lot of code duplication into multiple components. Plus, some code is also duplicated over other applications. The common set of functionality that can be taken out of main application is clearly defined. Now, do I write a library or do I write a service for this functionality; so that all such applications continue to work and there is only one code-base (of common functionality) to maintain ?"}
{"_id": "147187", "title": "Looking for good testing in multithreaded C or C++ open source projects", "text": "I have read a lot about the importance of unit testing, and testing in general. In particular I have read about TDD which, in theory, seems like a good way to ensure effective test coverage for a project. However, when I look at open source projects, or code that is available as open source, I am having difficulty finding good examples of testing in real projects that I can learn from. In particular I haven't seen much in the way of unit testing (at least not that I can understand). For example I just downloaded the source code for the Java HotSpot JVM. I thought it would be very useful for me to look at and learn from because a JVM (written in C or C++) will have to deal with many complex issues associated with multithreading and low-level system interaction. Which are the very same things that I'm having difficulty in figuring out how to develop unit tests for. But unfortunately it seems like the amount of code written specifically for testing is quite limited. There is a `test` directory but it looks like it contains examples of code that can be used to test various different bugs, rather than any formal regression tests or unit tests. So my question is are there examples of open source projects that use unit testing that I could look at to learn from? Something like a JVM is perfect for me because it is more complex than the project that I am working on, but would face many of the same issues associated with thread interaction and memory management."}
{"_id": "132398", "title": "Apple's new compiler", "text": "I heard that Apple is going to replace the GNU compiler built into Xcode with a new compiler. What is the new compiler and what type of changes can we expect to see?"}
{"_id": "189949", "title": "Is there a way to use gcc as a library?", "text": "Anyone knows a solution that works something like this:               #include <stdio.h>     #include <gcc.h> /* This .h is what I'm looking for. */          int main (void) {         /* variables declaration (...) */              /* The following line is supposed to be equivalent to:          *     $ gcc main.c -o main */         results = gcc_compile_and_link(\"main.c\", \"main\");              /* Now I want to use the warnings and errors to do something.          * For instance, I'll print them to the console: */         printf(\"warnings:\\n\");         for (i=0; i<results.warns_len; i++)             printf(\"%s\\n\", results.warings[i].msg);         printf(\"errors\\n\");         for (i=0; i<results.errs_len; i++)             printf(\"%s\\n\", results.errors[i].msg);              /* free memory and finalize (...) */         return 0;     }      I know I can run the command \"gcc main.c -o main\" in a fork and parse the output... but I was looking for something more ' _reliable_ ' like the example above."}
{"_id": "211060", "title": "Update strategy for a software framework once it has been deployed", "text": "I need to update a software framework once it has been deployed. The framework we are creating is made up of .NET 4.0 libraries (in Visual Studio). This common set of code libraries will be available for 2 .NET Windows services, a standalone .NET application, and a .NET MVC 4 website. (The services will run on a single server, and the standalone application will be used by a select few individuals.) We are in the early stages of the project, and the big questions that have come up are:   * What happens when we have to make a change to 1 or more of the framework files?    * How do we deploy patches and/or updates to each part that relies on the framework?   * What considerations can we make early on to make the update/patching process easier later on? This is the first time our small team has tackled a problem like this and we're not sure what the best practices are. **edit** We have 4 software pieces that rely on the framework: 2 services, 1 app, 1 website. Once this all hits production, there are already upgrades and updates planned. The updates will require changes to the framework files and the programs. My question was intended to refer to that later process of redeploying the upgrades. Once we're in production, and we've coded the updates/upgrades to the framework files, the applications, and the website, deploying those updates will need to happen as quickly as possible. What do we need to do to streamline that process?"}
{"_id": "211067", "title": "How secure is this way of authenticating an ASP .NET Web API - creating your own tokens?", "text": "http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/630986/Cross-Platform-Authentication-With- ASP-NET-Web-API#_rating The above link shows exactly how I want to go about authenticating against an ASP .NET Web API. It looks very easy but how safe is it in practice? It involves creating your own encrypted token by stringing together the user's user ID and the IP address of the client being authenticated. Then authenticating that string variable using some kind of encrypting technology. Then upon each subsequent request that is sent to the API by the same user, the API will check if the token is valid (it comes from the same client that authenticated, it has not timed out, etc.). The token will be checked by decrypting the token and checking that the client ID that comes out of the decryption is the same as that of the requester's IP."}
{"_id": "157232", "title": "How do you follow the single responsibility principle in classes responsible for behaviour?", "text": "I have many classes in my application responsible for behaviour- views, controllers, models, network- often the state of one class or system depends on another and I'm finding that classes that are primarily responsible for the behaviour for one system inevitably become dependees or dependers of other systems or classes. I've tried passing in interfaces of dependencies from the constructor of the system all the way to the class the depends on it and registering for events on it but this gets extremely complex and crazy and definitely violates OCP and SRP at least. I'm considering making an event system that all event dispatching and listening classes would be coupled to, providing a layer of indirection for classes that require interaction with classes from other systems however in the worst case behavioural classes could be responsible for the behaviour of a class, handling events, and dispatching events- so that definitely also violates the SRP even though I'm pretty sure it would follow the OCP. Is there a better solution out there? Am I applying these principles correctly? I'm very hesitant to use an event system as it will require most classes to be extremely tightly coupled with it."}
{"_id": "211069", "title": "Does an in-code enumeration provide a stronger domain model than a static table?", "text": "Does an in-code enumeration provide a stronger domain model than a static database table? As an example, say I have an `Marble` entity, with a `Color` attribute. The color attribute has a finite set of possible values--say red, green, blue. Say the database team recommends having a static `S_ValidColors` table, to the effect of:               -----------------------     | ColorId | ColorName |     -----------------------     |    0    |    Red    |     -----------------------     |    1    |   Green   |     -----------------------     |    2    |    Blue   |     -----------------------      Whereas I'm thinking more along the lines of (this is just a sketch for the general concept):               public class Color {         public static const Color Red = Color(0);         public static const Color Green = Color(1);         public static const Color Blue = Color(2);              private Color(uint typeCode) {             ...         }         ...     }      Aside from the question of which is better (which probably depends on any number of other factors not represented here), is this a question that touches how strong the domain model is? Is one way more anemic than the other?"}
{"_id": "33474", "title": "Interacting with clients using project management systems", "text": "I work in web development, that involves a lot of smaller custom projects rather than one large product. Requirements and specifications are always coming from outside the company. We've setup a ticket tracking system (Active Collab, which is rubbish compared to redmine btw) and given access to clients so they can submit issues. The idea being that less time is taken up with long phone conversations and emails. I think it can work really well if done right. However I'm not so sure it's always a good thing. Feature requests have gone up a lot on some projects. The system also needs to be friendly to non- developers while having the many features that developers use. Developers' tickets do not always map 1-to-1 with the tickets clients will create. So the requirements and broader tickets need to be separated from the more specific developer (specification) related tickets. Perhaps we could use two systems, one for clients to submit their requirements or describe a bug, and one for developers to create tickets like `implement method x in class y`. Maybe this can be achieved by structuring tickets into more appropriate categories or creating sub-tickets under a feature request ticket. I've briefly looked into Pivotal Tracker and it has a fundamentally different workflow. **tl;dr** How do you keep technical tickets (developer jargon) separate from client tickets (layperson language)."}
{"_id": "137443", "title": "PHP to SharePoint roadmap", "text": "I'm a PHP developer with familiarity with Rails and a focus on MVC development. My company is moving more and more to SharePoint and I feel I need to learn to build application within the SharePoint system. I have some brief introduction to C# but that's about it. I've used some SharePoint Designer and the web interface but not that heavily (most of my \"development\" so far for SharePoint has been html/css/javascript page manipulation in SPDesigner). What, and in what order should I be learning to eventually develop applications for SharePoint? Also, any good resources for each step?"}
{"_id": "225156", "title": "Scaling up Git to Team Usage", "text": "For the last 3 years I have used git on an almost daily basis for all my pet projects and at work for small projects that were not in the global SVN repository. My workflow is quite similar to the famous git branching model from http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model to sum it up:   * I work in branches, one branch for one feature (I.e. not mixing up the bugfix with the new feature, etc.)   * I commit really really often, often just 2-5 lines, biggest commits are usually new functions etc. I heavily use the interactive committing tool to semantically organize my commits (i.e. while fixing an import declaration and something in a function, I tend to split that up in two commits when the changes are not related).   * Finally I tended to use `git merge` with the `--no-ff` option, because I kind of like the visual branch-history graph in gitk.   * Never really used rebasing (except for fixups) _Of course this workflow never had to face merge conflicts as serious as teams working on the same codebase face._ Now I have read here and there, that some projects are very concerned about keeping a \"fast-forward\" history. **Why is this important? What is your choice in that respect?** I can imagine that a 'linear' history is easier to handle when looking at histories, but: It is also valuable to have the true history in my opinion. The linear history without fast-forwards is more similar to SVN histories maybe, but my git commits are usually a lot smaller than the average SVN commit, these are - I think - more comparable to a branch-merge in git (at least my usage). Working without `-no-ff` would kind of \"clutter\" the history in master (This is my concern about fast forward merges)."}
{"_id": "37996", "title": "Bringing code to an interview?", "text": "Is bringing printed code or code on a USB to an interview a good idea? If so, what kind of code should I bring. Should I avoid big projects and just show small snippets which show off my skills?"}
{"_id": "108114", "title": "Suggest a good programming language to learn that is not OOP and definitely not in C style syntax", "text": "My first programming language in school was C. Then I learnt C++ and Java and got stuck with Java for 2 yrs. I was so addicted to java and OOP at first. I started making Java applications and became fully thorough in OOP. Now I would like to learn different languages. My mind is full of C style syntax. Sometimes in my dreams, I see camelCase words and paranthesis and braces and dots. Even JavaScript uses C like syntax. I want to get adapt to different languages so that I won't find difficulty when I get a job that requires me to program in different syntax and different paradigm.. I do not know what functional, logical, hybrid paradigms mean. So I am asking here. Suggest me a different language (and some good book on it if possible) to learn.."}
{"_id": "181444", "title": "Past If statements Arrays, loops... Now what?", "text": "I gave up on programming a little over a year ago when I kept hitting this wall. I am revisiting the subject because I want to create basic Android application. But I feel that my limited knowledge will not suffice. Here is my problem. I have read a few books and watched video tutorials on C#/Java, followed examples, then finished the book. In the end they always seem to leave me dumbfounded as to what to do next. What a mean is they teach you from your basic \"hello world\" application all the way up to if's and arrays then seemingly expect you to know how to go out into the world of coding and create anything. Am I missing something here? I know these are the building blocks of all programs but books that I read never really show me what to do next. The easy answer I suppose would be to 'start coding', but where? I read \"Head First Java\" for example; up to the part were they tell you take everything you have learned and create a dog racing game.... \"try not to cheat and look at the source code provided, you should be able to do this by now\" _ that's not an exact quote but basically that's what I was told....... Half an hour ago they were just explaining how to do arrays, then without any theory I am meant to create a working game? The reason I ask this is because I fear that this is all I am supposed to know to at least start coding, yet it feels like I have been given a small toolbox and been told to build a skyscraper. Thank you for any advice"}
{"_id": "170120", "title": "How should I implement the repository pattern for complex object models?", "text": "Our data model has almost 200 classes that can be separated out into about a dozen functional areas. It would have been nice to use domains, but the separation isn't that clean and we can't change it. We're redesigning our DAL to use Entity Framework and most of the recommendations that I've seen suggest using a Repository pattern. However, none of the samples really deal with complex object models. Some implementations that I've found suggest the use of a repository-per-entity. This seems ridiculous and un-maintainable for large, complex models. Is it really necessary to create a UnitOfWork for each operation, and a Repository for each entity? I could end up with thousands of classes. I know this is unreasonable, but I've found very little guidance implementing Repository, Unit Of Work, and Entity Framework over complex models and realistic business applications."}
{"_id": "234574", "title": "What is the benefit of Continuous Integration over make?", "text": "We are evaluating and setting up Continuous Integration for our PHP project. Each of the Continuous Integration tools has their own proprietary \"build language\" which will run many commands and check the return status of these commands. Here is an example of a `.travis.yml` configuration:               language: php          php:       - \"5.3\"       - \"5.4\"       - \"5.5\"          script: phpunit test          notifications:       email:         - sourcespeak@phor.net      A Jenkins configuration will be in XML and is too long to paste here. Here is an example of a `circle.yml` configuration:               dependencies:       override:         - bundle install:             timeout: 240             environment:               foo: bar               foo2: bar2             pwd:               test_dir      **My question is: what is the benefit of using all these popular, proprietary configurations languages for CI instead of using a Makefile to set up your test environment and have whatever CI server just run`make test`?**"}
{"_id": "220851", "title": "Are there metrics, like in other professions, that can be used to measure whether a programmer is considered experienced?", "text": "Driving instructors (at leas in Germany) often mention 100.000 km driven as a reference point where a driver is considered experienced. Is there a similar number for programmers? For example, how many lines of code does the average junior/senior developer have written when starting their job? Also: after how many lines in a specific language does one usually become an expert of that language? Of course, there are many other factors, that make up who is a good programmer and who is not, however I feel like the number of lines of code could be a pretty good indicator of hands on experience. ## Update: Originally, I asked for a number of lines of code. Of course I am aware, that it makes a big difference, what quality of code was written, in what fields etc. I would not consider any person, that has driven over 100.000km, a good driver either. And I am still convinced, that everybody needs a certain time of experience, to become a great programmer. Though hours was not the measure I was looking for, the number of hours in the answer of suhit was essentially what I wanted. A more clear version of my original question might be: After how many lines of code has a dedicated programmer, who constantly challenges himself, likely acquired enough knowledge and skill to be considered experienced?"}
{"_id": "225151", "title": "Is it good approach to open a keyboard at Actvity start where only one EditTextbox is present", "text": "I am working with _Forgot password_ , where I have single EditTextBox and a single submit button. So whenever I am opening this _Forgot password_ page, my keyboard is opened at the start of this page. In my mind there is a question that it is not a smart choice to open a keyboard at the start of the _Forgot password_ Activity."}
{"_id": "170129", "title": "Complex string matching with fuzzywuzzy", "text": "I'm attempting to write a process that matches obscure strings to a single 'master string' for further processing. I have a lot of data that looks something like this:               Basketball     Basket Ball     Football     BasketBallR     BBall     BBall - r     FootB      ...and so on. These need to be mapped to a master record like so:               Basketball       = Basket Ball, BBall     Basketball - R   = BasketBallR, BBall - r      I also have instances of data resembling this format:               Football -r     FootBall - r-g/H,Q,HH      These situations need to be separated into different categories before being mapped. For example `FootBall - r-g/H,Q,HH` should be:               Football - r     Football - g     Football - H     Football - Q     Football - HH      At this point, it still needs to be mapped to a master record... I've tried several different combinations of fuzzywuzzy matching methods, Levenshtein Distance measurements, regex, etc. and can't seem to find a reliable method to logically associate different naming styles of a single item with a master name. I'm throwing my hands up in desperation. Are there any existing python resources than can help sort out my problem? Are there other options? Can anybody point out an obvious option that I might have overlooked? Basically, any suggestion, solution, resource or alternative method is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "22079", "title": "High performance computing and interconnects", "text": "High performance computing means different things to different people. From a pure programming perspective what I gather is that these are loads of individual machines connected by extremely fast interconnect not necessarily based on usual TCP/IP. My question is on the interconnect side of things: How do you make interconnects faster without changing your socket based code much?"}
{"_id": "3033", "title": "Do you apply a code of conduct on accepting jobs, projects or requirements?", "text": "**When writing software for yourself, your company or third parties, do you always consider certain principles, values, standards, or rules of behavior that guide the decisions, procedures and systems in a way that contributes to the welfare of its key stakeholders, and respects the rights of all constituents affected by its operations?** And can this code of conduct sometimes be overruled by business requirements, lack of technical skills or other friction during the development process? Some random examples in order of severity. (yes that is controversial) :   * Do you accept known bugs as a risk for the end-user?   * When writing applications, do you always give the end user the chance for a complete de-install?   * Do you always secure and encrypt private data delivered end-users in your web application?   * Do you alwask ask the end-user before submitting his entered data to the server?   * Did you ever wrote an application that sends unwanted e-mails?   * Did you ever work on harvesting or scraping projects only for the benefit of the business?   * Did you ever write software that is legal but moraly controversial, like for weapons industry.   * Did you ever wrote software that ( can intentionally) or is be used for criminal activities It would be nice if you can get a good case with explanation on your moral and ethical decisions. note: _Since ethics and law are quite local and cultural dependent, it would be interesting if you add the location of the \"crime scene\" with it_."}
{"_id": "30345", "title": "How have you found, refined and maintained your coding style?", "text": "Recently, I've been switching between several projects and development environments. The expectations for coding style in each is different. Now, my question is three part, the first, just of curiosity:   1. How did you define and find your coding style?   2. How do you keep augmenting and improving it?   3. How do you maintain it? (From mental notes, keeping a document, using a tool like StyleCop etc.)"}
{"_id": "229537", "title": "\"All software has an expiration date by which time it must be rewritten from scratch.\"", "text": "I stumbled upon a discussion between senior engineers and people from non- technical backgrounds and this seems to be a strongly held belief in some places. I'm of the opinion that such a situation is purely down to incompetence on the side of the developers and project managers, those involved in creating the original system and those struggling to modify it now. Especial those who intersect both these groups. Am I wrong? If so why? If not, how can I convince developers twice my age that they need to change their approach to software development to overcome this problem and that rewriting the system from scratch every 2-3 years is not just an unavoidable fact of life. Are there books or influential programmers I can quote on this issue?"}
{"_id": "144983", "title": "What does Bucket mean?", "text": "I found in legacy code a class which name is BucketService. Because english is not my native language I was trying to translate that, but it doesn't make sense. I found few termins like bucket sorting and so on, but I still don't get it. Actually this word is used quite frequently in programming I would be helpfull for some simple explanation of that word"}
{"_id": "76171", "title": "Is there any risk of web browsers spying away localhost applications on an Internet-connected PC?", "text": "Despite what it _might_ look like this is a serious question. After that story with Android OS and Chrome browser submitting to Google the details of the WiFi access points they see in the neighborhood which has nothing even remotely to do with their main function I'm inclined to expect everything. But the specific question I have today concerns the following matter. The situation. I'm developing a web application running on a locally installed web server. Naturally I'm testing and debugging it on the same development machine in various browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. The development machine has a permanent connection to the Internet. Now. Is there any situation or circumstance when any of those browsers would take it upon itself to send the opened web pages from `http://localhost:port/*` to its company or any other third party? For now I seriously suspect if there is a browser crash or an OS crash the browser would submit a report perhaps with the content of my HTML, CSS and JavaScript. What if a browser would submit pages used actively and opened over a prolonged period of time just out of the company's curiosity - what is this nasty programmer working on? Can you confirm that hypothesis? Are you aware of any other situations when a browser would sent out a local resource details? How safe is it to develop on a machine with a permanent Internet connection?"}
{"_id": "150348", "title": "What are some ways to maintain codebases written in two languages that implement the same logic?", "text": "I have a logic intensive algorithm that I need to code in two languages (actually I finished it in one language satisfactorily and am about to start coding in the other language). By logic intensive I mean the algorithm is non trivial, needs careful understanding and, importantly, could be having bugs (due to complexity and carelessness, you know) that would have to be patched in the future. Also, I want to make sure that when this code changes hands, eventually, it must not overwhelm the new programmers. Given this scenario, what are some ways that would help maintain the codebases and keep they in sync? By ways I mean software tools, best practices etc. FYI the two languages are C++ and Java. C++ for Windows/Linux and Java for \"everything else\" including Android."}
{"_id": "232801", "title": "Data structures VS Classes and what happens if they merge?", "text": "Alright so I've learned this: **Classes** have public methods that perform operations on the class's data and they hide away their implementations. **Data structures** on the other hand, completely expose their implementation through properties (getters and setters) and don't usually have methods. So my question is, let's say that I have customer data structure that looks like this:               public class Customer     {        public string FirstName { get ; set; }        public string LastName { get ; set; }        public List<Offer> Offers { get ; set; }     }      I would assume this to be a **data structure**. but what if later during the project, I realize that I need to add some business logic to my customer data structure? Like a method to add new offers because there's more logic in doing so than just adding it to the list? It seems to me that this logic would belong inside of the data structure. What happens then? Does the data structure turn in to a class? Or into some kind of third object type that I'm unaware of? Is this **bad design**?"}
{"_id": "232802", "title": "Does Serialization preclude the use of Dependency Injection?", "text": "Simple question: I understand that Serialization in C# requires default constructors. This would eliminate the possibility of using Constructor injected DI (which is generally the favored style of DI, in my reading[citation needed]). So is it really an either-or situation, or am I missing something? (Side question): Do IoC containers side-step this tradeoff somehow?"}
{"_id": "20021", "title": "Have you ever hated a framework/programming language/platform but you eventually became curious in learning?", "text": "Little background: I've always been kind of a Microsoft hater. A while ago just the fact of learning a something like C# scared me. I was only interested in opensource project and programming languages. Wasn't impressed with vista(actually I hated vista), so I went back to XP Pro. I had to use Windows because some software I use/used wasn't available for linux. Then came windows 7 and before even trying/using it I already judge it to be a 'insert insult here'. I kept hearing really good stuff about it so I removed XP and install windows 7. After using it just for maybe 2, 3 days I started to really like it. Now I like it a lot actually. It even has these small features that may feel irrelevant to someone (like being able to arrange the windows' in the taskbar) which are very useful to me (I used to open programs in a specific order, even close some and reopen just to rearrange them). Actual question: Now I think more and more about learning .NET and C#. I also seen PowerShell which looks tempting. Call me an idiot but I kind of feel weird about this. It almost feels like I'm betraying someone. Have you ever been in a similar situation?"}
{"_id": "170698", "title": "Does Dropbox use a cronjob to sync up?", "text": "I was looking into lipsync on a Dropbox clone. I was looking at the diagram on how it works here. It shows that a cronjob is used to keep files in sync between client and server. Does that mean that every sec/min/hour, a cronjob runs and checks to see if there is a difference between client and server? Is that how Dropbox does it? If it does use a cronjob, what happens when you are in the middle of syncing and another cronjob runs? Does rsync (or additional libs) know how to handle this?"}
{"_id": "103776", "title": "why are all the functional programming tutorials so mathy?", "text": "I've been trying to learn functional programming and most tutorials I have found use math as examples for the more complicated constructs (even the simple ones in some cases). Why is this? I would imagine something easier could be used. Its making it difficult to learn. Background Info: I have been writing software for 12 years. I understand some of the concepts such as closures, functions as first class citizens, and generics. I may be having problems with higher-order functions at some advanced level, but I would like to believe I have a basic grasp. Monads are biting me in the butt, and at this point I haven't gotten past that (I'm sure I will eventually, because I'm persistent)."}
{"_id": "153692", "title": "What's the best way to manage list item sort order with Drag & Drop UI?", "text": "I have a list of Students that I should display to user on a web page in tabular format.   The items are stored in DB along with SortOrder information. On the web page, user can rearrange the list order by dragging and dropping the items to their desired sort order, similar to this post. Below is a screenshot of my test page.   ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iPuhT.jpg) In the above example, each row has sort order info attached to it. When I drop John Doe (Student Id 10) above the Student Id 1 row, the list order should now be: 2, 10, 1, 8, 11. What's the optimistic (less resource hungry) way to store and update Sort Order information? My only idea for now is, for every change in the list's sort order, every object's SortOrder value should be updated, which in my opinion is very resource hungry. Just FYI: I might have at most 25 rows in my table."}
{"_id": "170691", "title": "Aggregate root & Repository dilemma", "text": "I am in a big dilemma here. I have a League, Team and Player entities. I have created a repo for the league only as a Team cannot exists without a League. At first I had bounded the players only with the team but then I realised I would have a problem with free agents so I also bounded the players to the league. Then I was wondering if a player could exists without a League or a Team and I am totally confused to that question. So would you make a player repository or include them in the league repo? Thanks"}
{"_id": "170695", "title": "What is the need for 'discoverability' in a REST API when the clients are not advanced enough to make use of it anyway?", "text": "The various talks I have watched and tutorials I scanned on REST seem to stress something called 'discoverability'. To my limited understanding, the term seems to mean that a client should be able to go to `http://URL` \\- and automatically get a list of things it can do. What I am having trouble understanding - is that 'software clients' are not human beings. They are just programs that do not have the intuitive knowledge to understand what exactly to do with the links provided. Only people can go to a website and make sense of the text and links presented and act on it. So what is the point of discoverability, when the client code that accesses such discoverable URLs cannot actually do anything with it, unless the human developer of the client actually experiments with the resources presented? This looks like the exact same thing as defining the set of available functions in a Documentation manual, just from a different direction and actually involving more work for the developer. Why is this second approach of pre-defining what can be done in a document external to the actual REST resources, considered inferior?"}
{"_id": "170694", "title": "Why error codes are negated?", "text": "Very often I see in C code negation of returned error codes, e.g. `return -EINVAL` instead of `return EINVAL`. Why used negation?"}
{"_id": "111961", "title": "Do simple accessors and mutators benefit from commented block headers?", "text": "**Short Question**   Is it necessary to add the function header comments for **simple** accessors and mutators? **Example**               u8   OBJ_get_state_x(void) {return obj.state_x;}       void OBJ_set_state_x(u8 x) {obj.state_x = x;}      **Addition Thoughts**   The object (OBJ) overall contains very minimal logic (if any). Its sole purpose is to maintain the state of a system. Additional modules (such as IO, COMM, DISPLAY, etc...) all know _what_ the object is and contain all of the business logic required to drive the states in OBJ. I would _like_ to keep all of the accessors / mutators on a single line to make the file a bit more readable and just put a generic block header above all of them. I just don't know if this is a common (or good) practice. Note that all of the ranges are the bound by their type. If there is a special state that has a range of 0 to 3, I create an typedef'ed enum to use as the type (thus forcing the range and making the code more readable IMO)."}
{"_id": "111962", "title": "Is having trouble with data structures common for beginners?", "text": "I'm taking my second course on Java. We are getting into data structures. I have done an assignment on a linked list, and now a stack. I had a hard time with the linked list. The stack gave me a little trouble, but was much easier. Should I be worried about having a hard time with these algorithms and data structures? I just feel like I didn't really grasp it."}
{"_id": "175469", "title": "What is the correlation between programming language and experience/skills of their users?", "text": "I'm sure there is such a correlation, because   * experience and skill leads good programmers to picking languages that are better for them, in which they're more productive, and   * working in a language forms how programmers think and influences their methods and skills. Is there any research or some statistical data of this phenomenon? Perhaps this is not a purely academic question. For example, if someone is starting a new project, it could be worth considering a language (among other criteria of course) for which there is a higher chance of finding or attracting experienced programmers. **Update:** Please don't fixate on the last paragraph. It's not my intention to choose a language based on this criterion, and I know there are other far more important ones. My interested is mostly academic. It comes from the (subjective) observation and I wonder if someone has researched it a bit. Also, I'm talking about a _correlation_ , not about a rule. Sure there are both great and terrible programmers in every language. Just that in general it seems to me there is a correlation."}
{"_id": "216739", "title": "Web application / Domain model integration using JSON capable DTOs", "text": "I'm a bit confused about architectural choices for the web- applications/java/python world. For c/c++ world the available (open source) choices to implement web applications is pretty limited to zero, involving java or python the choices explode to a,- hard to sort out -, mess of available _'frameworks'_ and application approaches. I want to sort out a clean MVC model, where the **M** stands for a fully blown (POCO, POJO driven) domain model (according M.Fowler's EAA pattern) using a mature OO language (Java,C++) for implementation. The background is: I have a system with certain hardware components (that introduce system immanent active behavior) and a configuration database for system meta and HW-components configuration data (these are even usually self contained, since the HW-components are capable to persist their configuration data anyway).   For realization of the configuration/status data exchange protocol with the HW-components we have chosen the Google Protobuf format, which works well for the directly wired communication with these components.   This protocol is already used successfully with a Java based GUI application via TCP/IP connection to the main system controlling HW-component. This application has some drawbacks and design flaws for historical reasons. Now we want to develop an abstract model (domain model) for configuration and monitoring those HW-components, that represents a more use case oriented view to the overall system behavior. I have the feeling that a plain Java class model would fit best for this (c++ implementation seems to have too much implementation/integration overhead with viable language-bridge interfaces). Google Protobuf message definitions could still serve well to describe DTO objects used to interact with a domain model API. But integrating Google Protobuf messages client side for e.g. data binding in the current view doesn't seem to be a good choice. I'm thinking about some extra serialization features, e.g. for JSON based data exchange with the views/controllers.   Most lightweight solutions seem to involve a python based presentation layer using WSGI or JSON based data transfer (I'm at least not sure to be fully informed about this). Can someone give good advice about best practices or easy to integrate frameworks for such case? **UPDATE:**   According to my recent research and comments of colleagues I've noticed that using Java (and some JVM) might not be the preferable choice for integration with python on a limited linux system as we have (running on ARM9 with hard to discuss memory and MCU costs), but C/C++ modules would do well for this (since this forms the native interface to python extensions, doesn't it?).   E.g. a pyramid based solution seems to provide a lightweight framework, that allows to integrate a domain model using an appropriate python facade. Protobuf also provides python class generation support, does someone have experience with integrating protobuf messages as DTO's with python? I can imagine to provide a domain model from an appropriate C/C++ API (though I still think it's more efforts and higher skill requirements for the involved developers to do with these languages). Still I'm searching for a good approach that supports such architecture. I'll appreciate any pointers!"}
{"_id": "186418", "title": "In Java, should private helpers go above or below public methods?", "text": "I've noticed that a coworker and I have opposite practices regarding the ordering of methods in our Java classes. One of us begins a class with its major public methods, and then put all of the private helpers afterwards. The other one of us makes sure that public methods are at the very end. Clearly, this is just a style issue and there is no right answer. However, before we decide that this matter is just another Yooks vs Zooks fight and just pick one or the other arbitrarily, I was wondering if perhaps there was a standard Java style guide recommendation or some practical reason why one approach is better than the other."}
{"_id": "115269", "title": "I am not a good programmer (in logic), how should I fix it?", "text": "Ok, so here is my problem: I work for a big company, some how landed a job (frankly because the interview was easy). It's not that I don't know my stuff, I am pretty good at understanding java, it's libraries etc. But, when ever I try to solve some logic problem, I find it really hard to come up with a solution. For example, `conversion of decimal to roman`, when I saw the solution, I find that it's a simple problem. _But I was not able to implement it after 1-2hrs of trying out!_ I feel I am dumb and not worth being a software engineer. Puzzle solving abilities should come natively to a great programer. But when I try to solve some puzzles, I am not able to find a solution and I just google it up!....and I hate that! When given a problem (like implement xyz feature) at work, I am fairly pretty quick at it and am respect at my work place for that, but I am not at all proud about it. Because when I try to solve any mathematically or logic wise challenging problem, I fumble. I still feel I love what I am doing (as an engineer) but feel really sad that I am not able to solve some tough logic problems which I friends come up with. I feel demoralized :( > TL;DR: I understand stuff from a practical viewpoint (implementing features > in our product) but when trying to work on problem from say ProjectEuler, I > SUCK badly! And I need to _Sharpen_ my brain! So, my questions are:   1. How should I go about fixing it? Should I start with solving (and forcing my self to) project euler problems? _Even if it takes hours for me to solve some basic problems_?    2. Or should I go back to basics and study some basic math?   3. I don't really find puzzle solving fun. But I want to make it fun for my self! And I think if I understand them in a better manner, I will like it! PS: I was never educated in CS (my undergrad was electrial). But that's not an excuse to be a sucky developer. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "225324", "title": "Is it a good idea to collect anonymous usage statistics in a free program?", "text": "I'm the main author of a multiplatform free software/open source GUI program. Although the program gets thousands of direct downloads per month, I have no idea of the number of people regularly using it. It is also included in some Unix distributions and download sites making the counting harder. It would be interesting for me to know   * How many people use it? Should I bother continuing development?   * Which features of the program (dialogs, import filters, etc) do people most use? This would focus development. I'm considering some form of anonymous feedback (with the user opting-in), where the program sends monthly reports of the time since installation (whole months), the number of times each dialog is used, number of files opened, the version number and platform. The user would be asked the first time this is sent and there would be an option to disable it. I think I would only do this after the first week of usage, to exclude one-off users. Is doing this a good and ethical idea? I'm in the EU, so it's possible that data protection laws may apply."}
{"_id": "180155", "title": "What if I forgot to include someone elses copyright info in old commit?", "text": "Assume I have a public source code repository. Am I violating copyright laws if there's any old commit where I have not yet added all copyright info for _other_ people's open source code? Details: Consider this theoretical scenario:   1. I copy-paste _someone else's_ open source code files into a repository.   2. I commit.   3. I prefix copyright and licensing info at the top of the above-mentioned files.   4. I commit.   5. Many months passes, many people fork various versions of the master branch. Now, many months later, I realize that there are files in commit no. 1 with no copyright info. Do I have to squash the two above-mentioned commits, and rebase the whole repository? (Although it's been published! Everyone would be annoyed?) Or does it suffice that the current repo version provides all needed copyright info? Rephrased, for Git: If the HEAD of all Git branches, and all \"published\" Git tags, contain all required copyright and licensing info, do you think that suffice? And it'd be other people's responsibilities if they check out other commits and redistribute? Or am I the culprit, and will be thrown in prison?"}
{"_id": "35262", "title": "Skeptic in a Scrum Team", "text": "My company has recently switched to an Agile way of working and as a part of it we've started using SCRUM. While I'm very comfortable with it and feel that this way is superior to a traditional one, some of my teammates don't share the same opinion. In fact they are very skeptical about \"all that agile stuff\", and don't take it seriously. As an example, one of the teammates is always late on the meetings, and doesn't really care about it. The management IMO tries not to notice this (maybe because it's new, and it takes time for the people to get used to it). My question is, how to address this issue while not raising a conflict inside the team?"}
{"_id": "180152", "title": "DDD and filtering", "text": "I am developing an app in ddd maner. So I have a complex domain model. Suppose I have a Fare object and Airline. Each Airline should contain several or much more Fares. My UI should represent Model (only small part of complex model) as a list of Airline, when the user select the Airline, I must show the list of Fares. User can filtering the Fares (by travel time, cost, etc.). What is the appropriate place for filtering Fares and Airlines? I am assuming that I should do it in ViewModel. Like: My domain model has wrapped with Service Layer -> UI works with ViewModel -> ViewModel obtain data from Service Layer filtering it and create DTO objects for UI. Or I'm wrong?"}
{"_id": "180151", "title": "How does a competition like Rails Rumble Work?", "text": "I am not sure weather it is a proper question to ask out here but it is really bothering for a while. As the official website writes: > The Rails Rumble is a distributed programming competition where teams of one > to four people, from all over the world, have 48 hours to build an > innovative web application, with Ruby on Rails or another Rack-based Ruby > web framework. After the 48 hours are up, a panel of expert judges will pick > the top ten winners. One thing I don't get is how judges make sure that the app was made in the given time constraint. The quality of apps is so magnificent that I am really skeptical that such elegant apps could be made within 48hrs, even if you have planned it straight out on paper."}
{"_id": "132672", "title": "Closest to \u201cMathematica Graphics[]\" drawing environment for Python", "text": "Being only familiar with Mathematica and its Graphics, I have now to learn to draw Graphics using Python for a server. Mostly conditional combination of simple shape. **What would be a package for Python that make drawing Graphics as close as possible as the Mathematica Graphics environment ?** For Example, I would need to do such thing as in : http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/1010/2d-gaussian-distribution- of-squares-coordinates#comment2475_1010"}
{"_id": "132670", "title": "How can I provide a limited warranty for a software product?", "text": "Software, unlike most physical products you can buy, is sold with as few warranties as the vendor can get away with. As a developer, this seems very reasonable considering the quality of almost all software I've ever used - Think anything from unintuitive idioms, via undocumented features, irreproducibility, missing handling of concurrency, double escaping of user input, and floating point numbers where decimals would avoid long-term build- up of errors, to plain crashing bugs where the production database is corrupted and the equivalent of several hirings in the affected company are wasted on recovery and reactionary implementation of safety measures. It's a bit like building skyscrapers out of straw and nitroglycerin, hoping it will survive until the time when it's someone else's problem or it's replaced entirely. In such a situation, I hypothesize that a company which trusts their software enough to provide even minor warranties for damages incurred would (if their software was up to the task) gain an enormous advantage in _user trust_ , and could put Google, Microsoft and Apple to shame for quality software and hoarding of money and talent. I'm not familiar with the current status of software verification and requirements gathering research, so I don't know whether this possibility is just around the corner or whether we are hacking at the mountain with toothpicks. Certainly the existence of any serious company or organization at all providing such warranties or even working on guidelines for warranties would be extremely interesting to follow, as both a developer and user. Therefore: Are there any **international guidelines** for providing software warranties? Examples:   * If all the tests succeed, as long as the system stays in a defined state, the warranty covers the cost of recovery in case of data loss.   * As long as [some widely recognized set of security guidelines] are followed, the data handled by the system will not be readable by third parties. The warranty could cover anything from the price of the software to the legal costs of handling privacy-related lawsuits or more."}
{"_id": "101738", "title": "OCR - starting point", "text": "I really am a starter with OCR, and would like to implement an OCR system. Any pointers on where I can find the introductory material, with the programming kept in mind, like what algorithms or data representation models do I need to master? I found Tesseract, on Google Code, an open-source project, but before I dive in to the code, I'd like to have the concepts under my belt. thanks in advance, Yati"}
{"_id": "188702", "title": "Randomness of wrapped RNG", "text": "_There are plenty of questions around regarding random number generation, but I couldn't find anything that exactly matched my question. Apologies if I missed one._ Most random number generators in software tend to have flat distribution - in the given range, any number is as likely to come next as any other (more or less). This is obviously the intention, because anything other than a flat distribution isn't entirely random because some numbers are more likely than others. However, there are times when a flat distribution is not desirable. For example, when building a game, it is often necessary to model real-world scenarios, many of which have a normal (bell-curve) distribution. If a \"good\" PRNG (such as an existing RNG from a popular programming language's main library) is fed into a simple equation, such as the equation for a bell curve, or a sine wave, or some other distribution, how far can we assume that the resulting PRNG is also \"good\"? Most of the tests for PRNGs test whether the system is purely random, so they won't work on this system. Is it just a matter of counting outputs over a long time and seeing how well they fit the desired distribution, or is there a simpler (eg. analytical or algebraic) way to check this? Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "136319", "title": "What's the difference between implementing an Interface explicitly or implicitly?", "text": "In Visual Studio I can right-click on an interface and choose to Implement Interface, or Implement Interface Explicitly. ![Visual Studio Screenshot](http://i.stack.imgur.com/x4Rx6.png)               public class Test : ITest     {         public string Id // Generated by Implement Interface         {             get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }         }              string ITest.Id // Generated by Implement Interface Explicitly         {             get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }         }     }      The only difference I see between the two is that the Interface name is added to the interface properties and methods when they're created if you choose to Implement Interface Explicitly. I find it makes the code a bit more readable since I can see where that method/property comes from, however does this make any difference in how the class is used or compiled? And does it really matter if I implement my interfaces implicitly or explicitly?"}
{"_id": "132679", "title": "Is coupling with strings \"looser\" than with class methods?", "text": "I'm starting a school group project in Java, using Swing. It's a straightforward GUI on Database desktop app. The professor gave us the code from last year's project so we could see how he does things. My initial impression is that the code is far more complicated than it ought to be, but I imagine programmers often think this when looking at code they didn't just write. I'm hoping to find reasons why his system is good or bad. (I asked the professor and he said I'd see later on why it's better, which doesn't satisfy me.) Basically, to avoid any coupling between his persistable objects, models (business logic), and views, everything is done with strings. The persistable objects that get stored in the database are hashtables of strings, and the models and views \"subscribe\" to each other, providing string keys for the \"events\" they subscribe to. When an event is triggered, the view or model sends a string to all of its subscribers who decide what to do for that event. For instance, in one of the views action listener methods (I believe this just sets the bicycleMakeField on the persistable object):                   else if(evt.getSource() == bicycleMakeField)         {             myRegistry.updateSubscribers(\"BicycleMake\", bicycleMakeField.getText());         }      That call eventually gets to this method in the Vehicle model:               public void stateChangeRequest(String key, Object value) {                      ... bunch of else ifs ...              else         if (key.equals(\"BicycleMake\") == true)         {                     ... do stuff ...      The professor says that this way of doing stuff is more extensible and maintainable than having the view simply call a method on a business logic object. He says there is no coupling between the views and models because they don't know of each others' existence. I think this is a worse kind of coupling, because the view and model have to use the same strings in order to work. If you remove a view or model, or make a typo in a string, you get no compile errors. It also makes the code a whole lot longer than I think it needs to be. I want to discuss this with him, but he uses his industry experience to counter any argument that I, the inexperienced student, might make. Is there some advantage to his approach that I'm missing? * * * To clarify, I want to compare the above approach, with having the view be obviously coupled to the model. For instance, you could pass the vehicle model object to the view, and then to change the \"make\" of the vehicle, do this:               vehicle.make = bicycleMakeField.getText();      This would reduce 15 lines of code that are currently ONLY used to set the make of the vehicle in one place, to a single readable line of code. (And since this kind of operation is done hundreds of times throughout the app, I think it would be a big win for readability as well as safety.) * * * **Update** My team leader and I restructured the framework the way we wanted to do it using static typing, informed the professor, and ended up giving him a demo. He's generous enough to let us use our framework as long as we don't ask him for help, and if we can keep the rest of our team up to speed -- which seems fair to us."}
{"_id": "188701", "title": "Study a project to be able to maintain it in future", "text": "I've joined as a fresher (trainee) a software company developing for Windows Store. I don't know much about C#. My company has started Windows Store development recently. They didn't do .Net development before, that's why my company got an Senior .Net employee to complete the project. Whenever he completes the project he will leave the company. I will have to maintain the project after him. So I need to study the project flow and analyze the project to be able to maintain errors in future. Can you suggest how to start to analyze the project and what to pay attention on?"}
{"_id": "111131", "title": "What are some good ways for an employer to support developer education?", "text": "My current employer pays for certification fees and college classes (provided that you earn an 'A'), but I'm looking for other things to suggest to them. Very few of us have time to take advantage of the college classes, and the material covered in certification exams isn't always the most practical information. (Code Access Security, anyone?) Maybe a book allowance? Some incentive to work on an open source project? In what kinds of creative ways does your employer provide for your continuing developer education? ### See Also > How to Keep Your Developer Team Educated"}
{"_id": "87912", "title": "Should I be paid for time spent learning a framework?", "text": "To give light to the situation: I am currently one of two programmers working in a small startup software company. Part of my job requires me to learn a Web development framework that I am not currently familiar with. I get paid by the hour. So the question is: Is it wholly ethical to spend multiple hours of the day reading through documentation and tutorials and be paid for this time where I am not actively developing for our product? Or should the bulk of this learning be done at home, or otherwise off hours, to allow for more full-on development of our application during the work day?"}
{"_id": "109244", "title": "Moving from TFS to Distributed SCM", "text": "I am currently playing with the idea of pitching DSCM to management in my company. We currently use the full vertical TFS stack (SCM, Bug Tracking, Project Management etc.) - however I want to specifically target the source control (as I don't think retraining QA with something like Redmine would be achievable). Probably the biggest issue here is re-training a very large amount of developers to use the new SCM (and this includes the distributed train of thought) - which is probably not feasible at all. There needs to be some form of skills migration with the new system: this is where GIT fails horribly, as that would take months to catch on (and we are not a little startup shop - this is a very large company with real commitments). The next issue is the fact that we currently require check-ins to be associated with a real bug or task (work item) - I doubt management would bite if we couldn't control this. Ideally the developer machines should be zero- configuration, i.e. it should prevent 'illegal' pushes even if you just have the bare-bones SCM client installed. Being able to update TFS work items would also be a big plus - even if I had to write custom code, but once again this should be controlled by the central repository and not on developer machines. I know that in the long run DSCM alleviates many of the problems that we are facing day-to-day, but we can't afford the time of developers having merge issues or such. For example, my first GIT merge took me a good 2 days to figure out, because I was so used to the TFS mindset. This isn't acceptable when real deadlines are taken into consideration. Tooling is a big concern: it's incredibly easy to push in a merge marked-up file directly back into source control; which would result in a build failure - TFS doesn't allow you to do anything silly like this. Finally, having 'nice things' to show would probably help the pitch. We have a review process, showing off GitHub FI Commit Comments would be a strong example of why this stuff could be better - however, as stated, GIT is probably really the wrong route to go. **TLDR;** I have found most DSCMs to be tools and not frameworks (e.g. GIT is designed to be this); allowing you to easily shoot yourself in the foot - TFS is a framework and that is something valuable in the company. Has anyone ever tackled these types of issues when migrating to DSCM? What DSCM platforms did you use? What challenges did you face? Do you have any ideas on how this process could be streamlined and almost made painless?"}
{"_id": "109249", "title": "General checklist before releasing software", "text": "I'm currently building a tool that my company intends to sell. I'm the sole developer on the project and it is being developed outside our normal code base and to a certain extent outside our normal process. I'm trying to put together a checklist of items to check before I deem the software ready to release for testing. These are the items that I've come up with so far:   * Is code commented appropriately?   * Does the code adhere to the defined Company Standards?   * Is there error handling in place?   * Is there appropriate security?   * Is there appropriate logging?   * Is localisation required?   * Have release notes and any accompanying documentation been produced?   * Has all testing and debugging code been removed?   * Has sensitive data been such as passwords and licence keys been removed?   * Has performance been checked? Any memory leaks? Can anybody suggest items that could be added to this list and explain why you would think it would be useful? My goal is to have a template checklist that I can then customise on a project by project basis."}
{"_id": "181825", "title": "Fast compression in C++ and decompression in C#", "text": "### Overview I am working on a client-server application. The client is written in C++ (working on Windows, planning to support Linux) and the server is a .NET RESTful service. I need to HTTP POST some data to the server. The data is a unicode `string` that I need to compress using any fast compression algorithm (needs to be light on CPU). On the server I need to decompress raw bytes and get a string. ### Problem I cannot decompress raw bytes and I end up with decompressor's output buffers stay intact. ### I tried I have tried using Google Snappy, there is only a C/C++ version and any .NET ports don't appear to be finished. I also checked LZ4, where compression/decompression works in a _single_ language, but when I try to use _both_ \\- I cannot decompress data correctly (the decompressed bytes are set to 0s). ### Question Has anyone tried using a fast C/C++ compression and C# decompression? Any recommendations? Client application shall not use more than 5% of CPU - that's a vague requirement I have. I plan to try gzip and maybe deflate, but I am not sure if I can configure compression levels there or whether it will work in both C/C++ and C#. Client collects some near real time data into a small buffer, when that buffer gets full it shall be compressed and POSTed. The whole OS process shall take less than 5% of the machine's CPU. A buffer is roughly posted 2 times a second which creates a traffic of about 2Kb/sec."}
{"_id": "194686", "title": "Why does Scala use the '_' operator for package import instead of '*' as in Java?", "text": "In my opinion, one of the greatest things about Scala is its interoperability with Java and its similar syntax. One thing that I found strange is the use of the `_` operator for package wilcard imports instead of the `*` operator that is used in Java. Is there a technical reason for using `_` instead of `*`? If not, then why was this change done?"}
{"_id": "194687", "title": "How the Compatibility View in IE works behind the scenes", "text": "When I remote connect to my work PC, in IE10, the juniper remote client service which is basically a plugin executed in the browser does not run. I need to turn on compatibility view to see it. My question is what exactly is happening behind the scenes in compatibility view such that such a large number of compatibility problems can be fixed with it? What did they do...make a list of deprecated APIs that was running ok in ie8 but deprecated in ie10 and then on clicking compatibility view, those APIs are supported again?"}
{"_id": "177478", "title": "Unit test and Code Coverage of Ant build scripts", "text": "In our development environment We have more and more build scripts for ant to perform the build tasks for several different build jobs. These build scripts sometimes become large and do a lot of things and basically is source code in and of itself. So in a \"TDD-world\" we should have unit tests and coverage reports for the source code. I found AntUnit and BuildFileTest.java for doing unit tests. But it would also be interesting to know the code coverage of those unit tests. I have been searching google, but have not found anything. Does anyone know of a code coverage tool for Ant build scripts?"}
{"_id": "206824", "title": "Java class to enforce an implementation of super classes' public methods", "text": "I have the following :               public Class A {              public void methodA() {             ....         }              public void methodB() {             ....         }          }      I don't have control over Class A. I would like to create subclasses of Class A with a restriction that it must override methodA() (super.methodA() call must run the implementation of Class A). is it possible? is so, how?"}
{"_id": "177474", "title": "MATLAB: Best fitness vs mean fitness, initial range", "text": "1. Based on the example of Rastrigin's function. At the plot function, if I chose 'best fitness', on the same graph 'mean fitness' will also be plotted. I understand well about 'best fitness' whereby it plots the best function value in each generation versus iteration number. It will reach value zero after some times. I don't understand about 'mean fitness'in the graph plotted. What do those 'mean fitness' values mean? How does the 'mean fitness' graph help to understand Rastrigin's function?   2. What are the meaning of the term initial population, initial score and initial range? I wish to have a better understanding of these terms.   3. The default value for initial range is `[0,1]`. Does it mean that `0` is the lower bound (`lb`) and `1` is the upper bound (`ub`)? Do these values interfere with the `lb` and `ub` values I set in the constraints?   4. I try to better understand about `lb` and `ub`. If my `lb` is `0` and `ub` is `5`, does it mean that my final point values will be within 0 and 5?   5. If I know the `lb` and `ub` for my problem is between `0` and `5`, do I just set the initial range as `[0,5]` at all times and may I assume that this is the best option for initial range, and I need not try it with any other values?"}
{"_id": "177472", "title": "Will C# merge with native C++ compiler?", "text": "According to this post : http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/MS-working-on-a-same-compiler-for- C-AND-C--Not-in-incubation-but-for-production- How much truth is in this post? Should it be taken seriously by hardcore C++ programmers (game devs etc)?? Edit : There's another purpose to this question... Will C# be backward compatible with C++?"}
{"_id": "218080", "title": "Should I make up my own HTTP status codes? (a la Twitter 420: Enhance Your Calm)", "text": "I'm currently implementing an HTTP API, my first ever. I've been spending a lot of time looking at the Wikipedia page for HTTP status codes, because I'm determined to implement the right codes for the right situations. Listed on that page is a code with number 420, which is a custom code that Twitter used to use for rate limiting. There is already a code for rate limiting, though. It's 429. This led me to wonder why they would set a custom one, when there is already a use case. Is that just being cute? And if so, then which circumstances would make it acceptable to return a different status code, and what, if any problems may clients have with it? I read somewhere that Mozilla doesn't implement the joke `418: I\u2019m a teapot` response, which makes me think that clients choose which status codes they implement. If that's true, then I can imagine Twitter's funny little enhance your calm code being problematic. Unless I'm mistaken, and we can appropriate any code number to mean whatever we like, and that only convention dictates that 404 means not found, and 429 means take it easy."}
{"_id": "22076", "title": "Automation Testers vs Developers", "text": "What are the differences between automation testers and developers?"}
{"_id": "232460", "title": "Do threads delete themselves?", "text": "Let's say I was working on a Swing application. Most of it is run on the EDT using `SwingUtilities.invokeLater()` inside the `main` method, because I heard (please correct me if I'm wrong) that that's what you need to do with Swing. However, some parts of it shouldn't run on the EDT. These parts are parts that take long to complete (I assume that this is because long tasks on the EDT will interfere with GUI stuff the EDT should be doing, and thus these kinds of tasks should be run on parallel, on a different thread. Is this assumption correct?) To do this, when I need to perform a task that takes long to complete and thus can't be run on the EDT like the rest of the program, I create a new thread and run that task inside it. **My question is:** When the `run()` method of that new thread finishes, aka the thread finished it's job. Does it delete itself? Or does it keep existing in the memory?"}
{"_id": "218087", "title": "Is curl something that's not expected to be installed on servers", "text": "Is curl something that's not expected to be installed on servers? I'm working for a small development shop and 99% of the problems that I'm having is regarding curl. Most of the projects that I'm working on involves calling a web API. Most web API's suggests using curl by default since you have to pass in a POST data in the request. Every time I complain to my senior that the server that I'm working on doesn't have curl installed the excuse that I'm always getting is that curl is not needed you can always use `file_get_contents`. So the question: is curl something that's not expected to be installed on servers that runs PHP, should I always develop using `file_get_contents` and not curl? Are there any advantages of using `file_get_contents` over curl or vise versa? If it helps, the context here is wordpress plugins, shopify apps, drupal modules and other bits of code that a lot of people can install."}
{"_id": "236673", "title": "Design and relationship of a cursor and its referred object", "text": "I need to implement a Cursor class to perform operations on a Document object, which is implemented internally as a simple list of rows. The Cursor class must have methods such as moving around the Document, add lines, remove lines, insert text in a given position etc. The problem I have is relative to the details of the design. To me, it seems that the cursor _must_ know the implementation details of the referred class. In C++, these classes must be friend classes, but I don't like it for obvious reasons (encapsulation etc.). I can't envision an interface for the Document class to keep its implementation private that also doesn't defeat the purpose of a Cursor class, that is, I end up having the interface of the Cursor on the Document class itself. Is leaking Document implementation details mandatory when implementing a Cursor? If not, what should the Document interface be?"}
{"_id": "128840", "title": "Is documentation a User Story?", "text": "We need to do some user documentation for a product we have been working on for the past few sprints. We are now starting a new project in the next sprint and the PO is making the documentation for the product produced previously a User story for this sprint. I am just wondering your opinion on this approach. Personally, I don't agree that documentation is a User Story within Scrum because it doesn't produce any code. EDIT: Thanks for your opinions guys. I had it in the back of my head that a sprint was to implement an increment of working software, but your views have changed my outlook. Thank you for all your answers."}
{"_id": "146018", "title": "How do you estimate the time required for a \"research phase\" in agile development?", "text": "In the context of agile development, what is the appropriate amount of learning that an engineer should engage in before implementing a solution to a problem? If an engineer knows she is too ignorant of a given topic (say, compression) to start implementing, she goes and learns what she thinks she _needs_ to know, and then implements a solution. Clearly a deeper understanding of said topic _could_ result in a better implementation, but at the cost of agility. On the flip side if an engineer learns too little about a topic, there is a danger she will implement a significantly insufficient / broken implementation that negatively affects customers in the immediate or near future. Towards which end of this scale, if any, do guiding principles of agile lead an engineer? Or does agile leave this as a sliding scale, where the answer may be different in any given situation? ### Update: To be clear, I'm asking specifically what agile has to say, not what you think the right amount of learning should be. The former has a specific answer, the latter is subjective and not appropriate for Programmers ### Update 2: I rephrased the question title as a question, but my question remains the same (note the lack of change anywhere but this section and the title). Most of the answers, while insightful, did not answer the question (But they were appreciated! :) I'm looking to understand not when/how inside agile development research happens, but moreover how to estimate a \"good\" amount of time to spend learning a topic in the research phase before moving on to implementing a solution. I understand that in some cases, not a lot of research is required, and in some cases developers are faced with a topic even the senior-most developer knows little to nothing about, so the answer to this question includes an element of scalability to meet both situations."}
{"_id": "121094", "title": "Use the latest technology or use a mature technology as a developer?", "text": "I would like to develop an application for a group of people to use. I have decided to develop using python, but I am thinking of using python 2.X or python 3.X. If I use python 2.X, I need to upgrade it for the future... But it is more mature, and has many tools and libraries. If I develop using 3.X, I don't need to think of future integration, but currenttly it doesn't have many libraries, even a python to executable is not ready for all platforms. Also, one of the considerations is that it is a brand new application, so I don't have the history burden to maintain the old libraries. Any recommendation on this dilemma? More information about this application:   * Native application    * Time for maintenance: 5 years+    * Library/Tools must need: don't have idea, yet.   * Must need feature that in 2.X: Convert to an executable for both Windows and Mac OS X"}
{"_id": "230983", "title": "Is it ok for services to reference one another?", "text": "I have a service that needs information implemented by another service in the same layer. Is it good practice for one service to take a dependency on another service in the same layer?"}
{"_id": "230986", "title": "What negative consequences can arise from this language design rule?", "text": "_Clarification: the rule is meant to prevent accessing variables that are not declared yet._ _Clarification 2: the rule mandates that the compiler follows calls to functions which are defined in the same scope as the call and happen before the actual definition (forward referencing) - making the compiler much alike an interpreter._ I'm thinking about a fictional programming language that behaves similar to JavaScript when declaring functions: that is, when using the `function` keyword to create named functions, they get \"hoisted\" to the top of the scope and can be used anywhere where their name is visible. For example, the following is legal:               f();     function f() { console.log(\"f called\") };      However, there is a potential problem: what if the function `f` uses a variable `x`, that is defined _after_ the call, like here:               f();     var x = 1;     function f() { console.log(x); }      In case of JavaScript, this is also legal, because variables are hoisted as well - the program gets essentially transformed into something like this:               var x;     function f() { console.log(x); }          f();     x = 1;      And therefore just prints `undefined`. **In my fictional language, variables wouldn't get hoisted** , which means that the example before would produce an error. The rule concerns how this error is generated: > Functions are visible for the entire block in which they are defined, but it > is illegal to call a function that accesses a variable declared after the > call. **This means that each time the compiler for this language would encounter a function call, it would have to check if the function is defined in the current scope, and if it is, check if it accesses variables in the current scope that are declared after the call.** The reason for this rule is that it makes no sense to access variables before they are declared. Hoisting the variables to the top of their scopes like JavaScript does is a hack that only leaves room for error! This is why I believe it must not be done, but such situations should be detected and treated as errors (because they are, you're referencing something that doesn't chronologically exist yet). **_I'm looking for reasons why this is a bad rule, i.e. results in complications or inconsistencies._** The reason I suspect that the rule is a bad one is that it does not exist in the Scala language. Scala solved this problem with a much more general rule: > The scope of a name introduced by a declaration or definition is the whole > statement sequence containing the binding. However, there is a restriction > on forward references in blocks: In a statement sequence `s[1]...s[n]` > making up a block, if a simple name in `s[i]` refers to an entity defined by > `s[j]` where `j >= i`, then for all `s[k]` between and including `s[i]` and > `s[j]`, > >   * `s[k]` cannot be a variable definition. >   * If `s[k]` is a value definition, it must be `lazy`. > **UPDATE:** For the time being I have adopted Scala's approach. This approach is a more general version of my rule: it will catch all illegal accesses, but also some that are not - this is a tradeoff that I'm willing to make since I think that my rule may be too complicated or even impossible to implement. Here's the rephrased/explained rule from Scala: Variables cannot be forward-referenced, but lazy values, functions defined with def (which are just syntax sugar for lambdas assigned to (lazy) values, might even remove them as Doval suggested), classes, and modules can. The restriction is that between the reference and the declaration (inclusive), there must be no variable definitions, because they might be altered by the entity being referenced before they are introduced to the program."}
{"_id": "230985", "title": "Convert to Object Oriented Programming", "text": "I am currently working on a project that is fairly small for the time being. There was a recent change to implement 3-tier architecture, such that the code is now split up appropriately to data access, business logic and user interface tiers. However, there is no use of objects outside of creating them to ultimately call a data access method. At a very basic level, pretty much everything we do is:                   Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load             Dim dt As New DataTable             dt = objBl.GetSomething             'Assign to Grid             'Format Grid         End Sub      I want to implement something more like:               Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load         Dim lstSomeObject As New List(Of SomeObject)         'Populate list of objects by calls to business layer         DataGridView1.DataSource = lstSomeObject         'Format Grid     End Sub      Ultimately, not much different. But instead of us having to pass thirty variables through to get a resultant data table that is used once, we could create an object (and lists of objects) and pass these around instead. I have a couple years experience working in such an environment, but zero experience in converting to such an environment. Frankly, I am at a loss as to how to do this. Do I create a separate entities project for this, and then does everything reference this? Or do I force our current objects to store both the properites and methods for each object type (this way feels counter-intuitive to me)? Or something else entirely? I have searched around most of the weekend and have not found anything overly helpful."}
{"_id": "231057", "title": "Exceptions: Why throw early, why catch late?", "text": "There are many well-known best practices about exception handling in isolation. I also know the do and don'ts very well, but I search for a best practices or patterns in larger environments, especially when to rethrow and when to catch exceptions. Moreover I'm always confused if I read: \"throw early, catch late\". Why should I throw early and catch late, if at a low-level-Layer a NPE is thrown? And why should I catch it at a higher layer? It doesn't make sense for me to catch a low-level exception at a higher level, like business layer. It violates concerns of each layer. Imagine the following situation: I have a service which calculates a figure. To calculate the figure the service accesses a repository to get raw data and some other services to prepare calculation. If something went wrong at the data retrieval layer, why should I throw a DataRetrievalException to higher level? In contrast I would prefer to wrap the exception into a meaningful exception. ### Why throw early, why catch late?"}
{"_id": "231054", "title": "What exactly is Virtual Machine Bytecode?", "text": "I want to work on a very simple compiler for a very simple language. The compiler will compile the code to some basic bytecode. Later, a virtual machine program will run the bytecode, and execute the program. I have several questions about what bytecode actually is:   * Does bytecode have to be of binary form, aka composed of only 1 and 0 sequences? Or can it include more kinds of numbers, and even words?   * **How exactly, most commonly, is the bytecode of a program composed?** One idea I had for what the bytecode will contain and how it will be composed, using my compiler, is: The compiler will scan the developer's code, and convert each command to some bytecode equivalent. For example, the command `print` will be converted to `1` in the bytecode. Later, when the VM runs the bytecode, each element in the bytecode will be converted to some execution in the program. For example, if the VM scans the bytecode and comes acorss `1`, it will print something. Is this approach common? Is it valid? What is the most common approach to how and what the bytecode composes?"}
{"_id": "139696", "title": "CQRS and cache invalidation (while load balancing)", "text": "I'm slowly trying to migrate our web application to use CQRS principals. In particular, I have separated \"write\" and \"read\" interfaces into commands and queries. I have implemented a \"reader\" class that can read some data from the DB. I have also implemented a decorator for this reader that caches the data to avoid any unnecessary roundtrips to the DB. At the moment this decorator is caching per-request. I'd like to cache this data for a longer duration - eg for a sliding 5 minute window. However, the problem is that a command that updates the data should invalidate the cache once the write occurs, and I'd like to capture that notion explicitly in our domain model. Specifically, here is the \"read\" interface (c#):               public interface IRoleLister     {         IList<DomainRole> Fetch(OtuIdentity otuIdentity);         IList<DomainRole> FetchForAuthenticatedId(int userId);     }      And here is the write interface:               public interface ICanChangeDomainRoles     {         void AddRoleToUser(int userId, DomainRole domainRole);         void RemoveRoleFromUser(int userId, DomainRole domainRole);     }      I realize that some variant of the observer pattern would probably be applicable, but I'm not sure how to capture that in the domain model. I also have identified another problem - namely cache key naming. In the IRoleLister I want to cache IList<DomainRole> by user (eg typeof(IList<DomainRole>) + \":userid\" as the key) but in ICanChangeDomainRoles I don't know the key name. My thoughts are that the Observer should in someway be responsible for this. (Or perhaps some other interface? How do I capture that concept in my domain). Finally, I realize that some form of distributed cache would help, but that seems like an implementation detail - I want to capture the invalidation/notification/observer concept in my domain model. Any pointers would be appreciated"}
{"_id": "140602", "title": "what is message passing in OO?", "text": "I've been studying OO programming, primarily in C++, C# and Java. I thought I had a good grasp on it with my understanding of encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism (as well as reading a lot of questions on this site). One thing that seems to popup up here and there is the concept of \"message passing\". Apparently, this is something that is not used whilst OO programming in today's mainstream languages, but is supported by Smalltalk. My questions are:   * What is message passing? (Can someone give a practical example?)   * Is there any support for this \"message passing\" in C++, C# or Java?"}
{"_id": "131328", "title": "Visualizing a CUP grammar", "text": "I am implementing a grammar in CUP, and it would often be helpful to see everything at a glance. This could also be useful in finding errors quickly. Are there any programs out there that will visualize grammar in the CUP syntax? Or can you think of a very easy way of doing it (for instance, convert the grammar to another format that program X can read)."}
{"_id": "182422", "title": "Shared Cache - Invalidation Best Practice", "text": "I'd like to know what would be a better approach to invalidate/update cache objects. **Prerequisites**     * Having remote memcached server (serving as cache for multiple applications)   * All servers are hosted by azure (affinity regions, same data centers)   * Cache object size ranges from 200 bytes up to a 50 kilobytes     **Approach 1 (store in cache asap)**     1. Object A is created -> store in database and store in cache   2. Object A requested by client -> check cache for existence, otherwise fetch from database and store in cache   3. Object A gets updated -> store in database, store in cache Approach 1 seems to be more straightforward. If something is created, put in the cache asap. Regardless of someone will need it.    **Approach 2 (lazy cache store)**     1. Object A is created -> store in database   2. Object A requested by client -> check cache for existence, otherwise fetch from database and store in cache   3. Object A gets updated -> store in database, delete key in cache Approach 2 seems to be more memory-aware. In this approach only requested items go to cache.    **Question 1:** In mind of performance, what would be a better approach? Memory nor CPU do not count yet.      **Question 2:** Are my thoughts a kind of premature optimization?      **Question 3:** Any other thoughts? Other approaches?"}
{"_id": "124128", "title": "Ordered enumeration: IEnumerable or Array (in C#)?", "text": "Typical context: I make an extension method for a collection which considers that the elements are ordered. The function starts at the beginning, at index 0, and the order has significance. Examples: Grouping by sequence or Indexes of an item. However, I'm always stumped as to what to extend: `IEnumerable<T>` or `T[]`. My rationale was clarity of purpose: An array has a notion of ordering, whereas an IEnumerable is implemented by many generic collections, not all of which have a notion of order:   * Dictionary - unordered   * HashSet - unordered   * LinkedList - ordered   * List - ordered   * Queue - ordered   * SortedDictionary - sorted (not original order)   * SortedList - sorted (not original order)   * SortedSet - sorted (not original order)   * Stack - reversed As well as any other implementation which might or might not be ordered. Also, I'm not certain if the enumerator is reset if an enumeration is not completed, so if that's a worry, then who knows at what point the enumeration would start? Enumerating an array would always start at the beginning. So to me, it makes more sense to extend a `T[]`. But am I correct in thinking that? Am I worrying too much? What's the proper approach for ensuring \"ordered\" enumeration?"}
{"_id": "124129", "title": "Algorithm for the shrinking of pixel art", "text": "This is something I've been wondering about for a while - are there any algorithms out there to scale pixel art down? I'm sure we all know about the upscale versions on the Wikipedia page on Image Scaling. I would have thought something like nearest neighbour resampling to get the colour pattern right, and then redrawing the outline, or high-contrast areas, over the top. Is there anything out there or am I going to have to learn how to do this myself? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "124127", "title": "Getting started with build tools", "text": "I am on my final year on CS, working on my first significant project, so I thought its about time to learn and use build tools. I have read about Maven mainly and heard about Ant. I would like to know your opinion about which I should learn to use for a project that will be developed only by one person, keeping in mind the learning curve, and the functionality that will be useful in this case."}
{"_id": "235003", "title": "Why do projects opt to stay on an older version of the .NET Framework?", "text": "Why do projects opt to stay on an older framework version of the .NET Framework? For example, staying on .NET Framework version 3.5 which was released in 2007 instead of upgrading to the latest 4.5.1 version? Jon Skeet's Noda Time also targets .NET 3.5. Why?"}
{"_id": "125654", "title": "when to load partial views", "text": "When creating a website, when should you load partial view and when should you do a complete page refresh? I was looking at github's site and noticed that pretty much the only place they do partial loading is in a project's folder area. I could see a couple places where they could have but didn't(tab navigation: feed, your actions, ...). But, Google plus does partial loads for search, and clicking on any of the header navigation buttons (pictures, games, circles, ...). Why would you not do partial loading if the main container stays the same and the content is the only thing that is changing?"}
{"_id": "125657", "title": "Is there something like Diaspora written in PHP?", "text": "I am looking for an open source social networking platform. Diaspora is perfect, except it is not written in PHP. Is there a project like Diaspora written in PHP?"}
{"_id": "125656", "title": "Software Development - Project, 1 Programmer - What if hit by bus?", "text": "The company I am currently working for has me developing a bunch of internal mission critical software. I have one other person that works for me but he's more of a testing guy and not really a developer. The company is concerned about some of these projects and what happens if I am hit by a bus. How does the company pick back up after something like that when there is only one person that knows the code base. One person that knows the current status of the project. I explained that with my documentation and with the documentation with in the code that they would really only need to hire another programmer that understands the languages that were used and that they could be up to speed pretty quickly. They suggested an outside firm that might be \"kept up to date\" on a monthly basis that could \"take over\" in the event something happened. I just don't see how this could be helpful beyond paying someone for the sake of paying them. Worse I envision a day a month being wasted discussing the project with this consulting firm. I see how this could be helpful I just don't see it as anymore helpful than hiring a programmer after my untimely demise. Thoughts? Similar situation and how its currently being handled where you work?"}
{"_id": "125651", "title": "What are the business benefits of Ruby/Rails to tell a client?", "text": "I'm programming Ruby. I'm programming Rails. It's zen, it makes fun and it's cool. But what are the real technical and foremost business advantages of Rails, I can tell a client? I know the implementation details should be aligned on the requirements of a project. But if I'm honest, if someone says: \"Hey, why not using a wordpress and a little bit customized template? It's much cheaper!\", I don't have enough good arguments for Rails. Especially for smaller and mid-scale projects. So, what do you tell your clients, when you think they should use Ruby/Rails?"}
{"_id": "140848", "title": "Why was Java chosen for Android?", "text": "Why was Java chosen for Android, instead of something like C++? While I certainly am no expert, I have heard that Java uses quite a lot of memory and I would presume that low memory usage would be quite important on mobile devices. Is there any real advantage to using Java instead of a language like C++ on a mobile device?"}
{"_id": "121573", "title": "How do you avoid name similarities between your classes and the native ones?", "text": "I just ran into an \"interesting problem\", which I would like your opinion about: I am developing a system and for many reasons (meaning: abstraction, technology independence, etc) we create our own types for exchanging information. For instance: if there is a method which is called SendEmail and is invoked by the business logic, it way have a parameter of type OurCompany.EMailMessage, which is an object which is completely technology independent and contains only \"business relevant data\" (for instance, no information abut head encoding). Inside the SendEmail function, we get this information from our EMailMEssage object and create a MailMessage (this one is technolgy specific) object so it can be sent over the network. As you can already notice, our class has a very similar name to the \"native\" language class. The problem is: this is exactly what they are, email messages, so it is hard to find another meaningful name for them. Do you have this problem often? How do you manage it? Edit: @mgkrebbs just commented about using fully qualified names. This is our current approach, but a little bit too verbose, IMHO. I would like something cleaner, if possible."}
{"_id": "173573", "title": "History of Associative Array?", "text": "In quite a lot of modern scripting languages (e.g. Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, Lua, JavaScript), associative arrays are supported as a primitive or first- class data type (with various names like map, dictionary, hash, etc.) in a very convenient syntax, making convenient data-driven paradigms possible. Which language first adopted such a design? And how has this design evolved?"}
{"_id": "173570", "title": "Filling array with numbers from given range so that sum of adjacent numbers is square number", "text": "**Problem:** Fill all the cells using distinct numbers from <1,25> set, so that sum of two adjacent cells is a square number. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ejYiD.png) (source: http://grymat.im.pwr.wroc.pl/etap1/zad1etp1213.pdf; numbers 20 and 13 have been given) I've already solved this problem analytically and now I would like to approach it using an algorithm. **I would like to know how should I approach these kind of problems in general (not a solution, just a point for me to start).**"}
{"_id": "173575", "title": "What is a thread pool?", "text": "In an interview question a guy was asked to \"implement a threadpool\"... I've been reading on wikipedia for \"threadpool\" but I still can't figure out what should a guy do to solve this question (possibly because I didn't quite understand what a threadpool is in simple terms). Can someone explain me in plain english what a threadpool is and how would one answer this question?"}
{"_id": "184705", "title": "Good idea to move logic out of SQL statements?", "text": "I'll preface this question by saying that I am very new to professional software dev. I work on a team that takes data in from other groups in my company and turns this data into reports usable by business execs. In the process of transferring and parsing data we have some SQL statements that do a lot of processing of the data. Nearly every `SELECT` uses `TRIM`, `SUBSTR`, `CAST` etc extensively to reduce fields to the proper size and format. Additionally there are a lot of special cases that are accounted for by using `CASE` statements within `SELECT`'s. The Teradata server software that we use emits remarkably cryptic error messages. As a result we do a lot of guesswork about what data is breaking which SQL statement. **My question is:** would it be a good idea to reduce these somewhat complex SQL statements to a less complex form that omits the processing and special case handling, and instead do this work in an external script or program? Does this make any sense?"}
{"_id": "184701", "title": "Is the number of bugs in a section of code proportional to the # of lines ? The square of the # of lines ?", "text": "Are there any studies that aggregate data over a wide population of contributed code, that establish a correlation between amount of code written in a commit and the # of bugs discovered in that code ? It'd be hard to do in github without knowing whether a change was due to new functionality or a bug, but you could determine a relation between lines of code per commit and how much thrashing eventually goes on in that code."}
{"_id": "201886", "title": "Is a CPU a computer?", "text": "I read that a computer is made up of the CPU and the memory. I also read that the CPU itself contains a cache which is memory. So if the CPU itself contains the memory, isn't the CPU a computer? Please clarify, thanks. EDIT: I read here: http://www.dwightsilverman.com/future.htm it says: > A processor is, itself, a computer, and they now are small enough that they > are embedded in everything from car engines to toasters. Although these > processors are relatively dumb, designed to do just one thing, smarter > processors that are more versatile also are finding their way into tiny > places."}
{"_id": "201880", "title": "What were the Design Patterns of the procedural programming era?", "text": "Similar: How was programming done 20 years ago? OOP is quite fashionable nowadays, having its roots in Simula 67 in the 1960s, and later made popular by Smalltalk and C++. We have DRY, SOLID, many books about design patterns in the object-oriented world. _But what were the main principles in programming prior to the OOP paradigm wide adoption? And what were the major design patterns?_"}
{"_id": "135951", "title": "What is a good non-technical example of a cumulative error?", "text": "I'm working on a report which needs to explain in non-technical terms the effects of a cumulative error, and why it is of importance to use absolute calculations. Definition of 'cumulative error' from dictionary.com: > an error that gradually increases in degree or significance during a series > of measurements or calculations; an error that grows during observation Ideally I could give **a real world example** so they grasp the concept of it without knowing about the specifics. The first one I though of is 'Chinese whispers' which is pretty well known, but I wouldn't exactly classify it as 'real world'. Does anybody know of better examples?"}
{"_id": "205505", "title": "Why do CSV file formats normally use quoting instead of escaping?", "text": "There are a lot of variants of the CSV \"standard\" (or lack thereof). I've never personally see any that use an escape character (like `\\`) instead of surrounding each field with double quotes. Instead of `foo,bar,\"foo,bar\"` it would be `foo,bar,foo\\,bar`. This would be handy for situations where a file needs to manually inspected or edited by hand. When counting commas to find the right field, it seems that it would be easier to tell which ones were not field separators if they escaped instead of quoted. I don't see how it would make a difference from a parsing perspective, though. Why quote instead of escape?"}
{"_id": "245716", "title": "Full Text Indexing Strategy for MS Excel Documents", "text": "### Background As part of a broader application that allows users to search thousands of MS Office documents on a private network, I need to index and make searchable Microsoft Excel files. My basic approach for all document types is this:   1. Loop through the raw directories I have been given,   2. Upload the document to a network share   3. Extract some searchable text from content of the document.   4. Create a new MS SQL record with the name of the document, URL of it's location, and searchable content.   5. Use MS SQL's `Full Text` indexing on the \"content\" column so that end-users can search key words or phrases via a user interface. ### Problem/Question I am not sure of the most optimum approach for extracting searchable text from Excel docs. My initial thought is to loop through the doc: cell-by-cell and pull out all text and then concatenate that text together into the SQL record, but that seems to be a bad strategy as there could be several cells that are exact duplicates, cells that are only numeric, and generally other types of noise. Is there an established design pattern or strategy for case? Absent that, I welcome and appreciate any suggestions (as will future Stack Exchange users facing the same problem)."}
{"_id": "128150", "title": "Is this the correct approach to an OOP design structure in php?", "text": "I'm converting a procedural based site to an OOP design to allow more easily manageable code in the future and so far have created the following structure:               /classes     /templates     index.php      With these classes:               ConnectDB     Games     System     User     User   -Moderator     User   -Administrator      In the index.php file I have code that detects if any `$_GET` values are posted to determine on which page content to build (it's early so there's only one example and no default):               function __autoload($className) {         require \"classes/\".strtolower($className).\".class.php\";     }          $db = new Connect;     $db->connect();          $user = new User();          if(isset($_GET['gameId']))     {                System::buildGame($gameId);     }      This then runs the BuildGame function in the system class which looks like the following and then uses gets in the Game Class to return values, such as `$game->getTitle()` in the template file `template/play.php`:               function buildGame($gameId){              $game = new Game($gameId);         $game->setRatio(900, 600);              require 'templates/play.php';     }      I also have .htaccess so that actual game page url works instead of passing the parameters to index.php Are there any major errors of how I'm setting this up or do I have the general idea of OOP correct?"}
{"_id": "214227", "title": "Reconstructing a tree from depth information", "text": "I have a data structure that describes a tree. Nodes are ordered, with \"depth\" information, and knowing the order and the depth the tree can be reconstructed. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it so I'm hoping this small example will illustrate it               node #1, depth 0 // parent: none     node #2, depth 1 // parent: #1     node #3, depth 1 // parent: #1     node #4, depth 2 // parent: #3     node #5, depth 1 // parent: #1     node #6, depth 2 // parent: #5      (I added parent information in there for clarification. That's not part of the data structure.) I'm trying to write an algorithm (in JS, if that's any help) that will iterate over each node and build a tree out of the data. I'm fairly recursion is the way to go but beyond that I'm not sure where to start. Any suggestions? Edit: The way I see it, I have four cases:   1. Node has depth 0 (initial case)    2. Node has same depth as previous   3. Node has greater depth as previous (should only be previous.depth+1)   4. Node has less depth than previous Here's my pseudo-JS-code so far:               process (nodes, 0);     process = function(nodes, i) {       cur = nodes[i], prev = nodes[i-1]       if cur.depth = 0 then cur.parent = null  // case #1       else if cur.depth == prev.depth then cur.parent = prev.parent // case #2       else if cur.depth > prev.depth then cur.parent = prev // case #3       else // case #4... here's where I'm stuck.       if i <= nodes.length then process (nodes, i+1)     }"}
{"_id": "205079", "title": "What is the difference/ advantage of doing double assignment?", "text": "Is there any advantage / is it a bad practice in Java to do the below               x = x = 5      I saw it in one of my peers code and I was surprised why he would do double assignment? Is this something that is same as `x = 5` or if `x = x= 5` makes a difference?"}
{"_id": "128156", "title": "Overcome clumsiness in writing code", "text": "I believe this is a little related with this question: How to be a zero-bug programmer?. But I believe this is more regarding clumsiness in programming because I know it is impossible to become a zero bug programmer. Often, I write a very buggy code caused by my own clumsiness. For example in writing a currency rate conversion function, a trivial function. I can code the function that running well given the correct value. But sometime I just forgot to validate some unexpected-but-reasonable values. So are there any ways for clumsy programmer like me to write and test the code more thoroughly? **Additional** I see a lot of people suggesting to write unit test or using TDD approach. But writing unit-test not always goes well because of clumsiness isn't it? I don't because I once tried to write unit-test, but still often bumps with bugs."}
{"_id": "249534", "title": "What techniques should I use when implementing infinite scrolling on a website?", "text": "I am currently working on a website which implements infinite scrolling on it's search page (the results themselves coming from Elastic search) and, unsurprisingly, the more you scroll the slower things get. This is especially prominent on mobile devices, and in particular lower cost devices (which most people use). We have put a lot of work into making the site responsive on mobile devices from an HTML/CSS perspective, but inevitably as you add more items to the DOM, things slow down. I see that sites like Twitter and Facebook do a good job at avoiding this problem, but how? I am guessing it is some form of DOM garbage collection, and items are loaded not just as you scroll down, but up also, and items not in view are GC'd? Adding to the complexity, we are using the headroom.js library to have the menu needed to alter the search options always available by just scrolling up slightly, and we notice that this action gets slower and more jarred as you scroll down and have more search results to scroll through. Each search result consists of not just text, but an image also. Also, the search results are refreshed without a reload of the page, we use two way binding provided by AngularJS for this purpose (pushing search results into, and popping them out of an array which ng-repeat uses to populate the view), but I suspect that users of other libraries (such as Ember.js) face the same problem. Can somebody elaborate on how we should be approaching this? We have the infinite scrolling aspect (loading more items into the DOM as you scroll) nailed, but on lower end smart phones, things slow down quickly so I am guessing there another aspect to this problem which we have missed. I assume the trick is to only load items into the DOM that the user can see while keeping the scrollbar as is, and responding to scroll events to load the items the user was expecting to see, but how would we go about this? Are there any libraries available for this purpose? Thanks"}
{"_id": "170905", "title": "Is there a recommended order to take the Oracle Java EE certification exams?", "text": "I recently passed the Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE 6 Programmer examination. Now, my boss would like me to take \"the next step\" to broaden my competence. I tried to explain that there is no equivalent Java EE 6 Programmer examination, but a number of different exams, such as Web Services, Web Components, and Enterprise JavaBeans. Is there a recommended path to follow for the various Oracle certifications in the Enterprise Edition of Java? Is it logical to take some exams prior to taking others because the content builds upon previous knowledge or are they all independent?"}
{"_id": "84396", "title": "How many questions are appropriate to ask as an intern?", "text": "So, I just started an internship, and I'm worried that I'm asking too many questions. My mentor assigns me projects and helps me learn all the company's technologies and methodologies. However, there's so much new material for me to learn while doing this project that I have a lot of questions. I generally ask questions over instant messages or E-mail (those are the primary modes of communication for my company). I'm trying to be careful not to ask too many questions: I don't want to come off as annoying or dumb. How many questions are appropriate to ask? Once an hour? More? Less? Keep in mind, my mentor is also a fellow programmer who has his own responsibilities."}
{"_id": "249538", "title": "How Jetbrain Phpstorm IDE is working without installed java?", "text": "As far as I know Jetbrains PHPStorm is programmed in Java but while I don't have Java installed in my Windows 7 PC, PHPstorm is installed and working without any problem. How It's done?"}
{"_id": "204453", "title": "Advantage of Solr over other DBs?", "text": "As far as I know, Apache Solr Lucene project is a web-app which is used for rich text searching. I just wanted to know:   * Why can't I use MySQL for that and just for rich text searching, why we use Solr?    * When all the other things can be performed using any DB ?"}
{"_id": "118376", "title": "Functional or non-functional requirement?", "text": "I'm wondering about functional or non-functional requirements. I have found lot of different definitions for those terms and I can't assign some of my requirement to proper category. I'm wondering about requirements that aren't connected with some action or have some additional conditions, for example:   1. On the list of selected devices, device can be repeated.   2. Database must contain at least 100 items   3. Currency of some value must be in USD dollar.   4. Device must have a name and power consumption value in Watts. are those requirements functional or non-functional ?"}
{"_id": "204458", "title": "REST API concepts", "text": "I have three questions about REST API design that I'm hoping someone can shed some light on. I've searched relentlessly for many hours but haven't found answers to my questions anywhere (maybe I just don't know what to search for?). **Question 1** My first question has to do with actions/RPC. I've been developing a REST API for a while and I'm used to thinking of things in terms of collections and resources. However, I've come across a couple cases where the paradigm doesn't seem to apply and I'm wondering if there is a way to reconcile this with the REST paradigm. Specifically, I have a case where modifying a resource causes an email to be generated. However, at a later point the user can specifically indicate that they want to resend the email that was sent earlier. When resending the email no resource is modified. No state is changed. It's simply an action that needs to occur. The action is tied to the specific resource type. Is it appropriate to mix some sort of action call with a resource URI (e.g. `/collection/123?action=resendEmail`)? Would it be better to specify the action and pass the resource id to it (e.g. `/collection/resendEmail?id=123`)? Is this the wrong way to be going about it? Traditionally (at least with HTTP) the action being performed is the request method (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE), but those don't really allow for custom actions with a resource. **Question 2** I use the querystring portion of the URL to filter the set of resources returned when querying a collection (e.g. `/collection?someField=someval`). Within my API controller I then determine what kind of comparison it is going to do with that field and value. I've found this really doesn't work. I need a way to allow the API user to specify the type of comparison they want to perform. The best idea I've come up with so far is to allow the API user to specify it as an appendage to the field name (e.g. `/collection?someField:gte=someval` \\- to indicate that it should return resources where `someField` is greater than or equal to (>=) whatever `someval` is. Is this a good idea? A bad idea? If so, why? Is there a better way to allow the user to specify the type of comparison to perform with the given field and value? **Question 3** I often see URI's that look something like `/person/123/dogs` to get the `person`s `dogs`. I generally have avoided something like that because in the end I figure that by creating a URI like that you are actually just accessing a `dogs` collection filtered by a specific `person` ID. It would be equivalent to `/dogs?person=123`. Is there ever really a good reason for a REST URI to be more than two levels deep (`/collection/resource_id`)?"}
{"_id": "33082", "title": "How to program for constraints/rules", "text": "First the background, during interviews in the past, many times I have been asked to design some or other variation of card game as programming puzzle, and I have tried to design it in OO way, but I have never been satisfied with my solutions. However it was not until recently that I realized that I had been approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Specifically I was trying to solve the problem by modeling individual card as an object. Problem with this is individual cards don't have any non-trivial intrinsic behavior and therefore are not suitable (or primary) candidate as objects. What is interesting and important about cards are rules and constraints, such as there could be only four suits, or only thirteen cards in each suit. Of course, then there are any number of rules for games. So my questions are   1. Are there any idioms/constructs/patterns to program for rules & constraints.    2. How many in 1 can be applied in conjunction with OO paradigm."}
{"_id": "236917", "title": "Rewriting code under BSD license", "text": "I am currently studding OpengGL with OpenGL Supebible 5th edition. I've found interested for me some C++ code that is distributed with the book (see also on google code). That code is under New BSD License. I am writing my software on C# with SharpGL wrapper and I'd like to know following things:   1. Can I rewrite that C++ to C#? **edid:** I'am interesting in using such things like GLBatch, GLShaderManager and some other thing from GLTools. Problem is that library is on C++, but I use C#.   2. How do I have to mark my source code if I put it somewhere like to my github account?    3. What disclaimer should be? Original disclaimer looks like:               /* GLShaderManager.h          Copyright (c) 2009, Richard S. Wright Jr.     All rights reserved.          Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,      are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:          Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list      of conditions and the following disclaimer.          Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list      of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other      materials provided with the distribution.          Neither the name of Richard S. Wright Jr. nor the names of other contributors may be used      to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior      written permission.          THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY      EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES      OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT      SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,      INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED      TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR      BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN      CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN      ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.     */      **Edit:** Should my copyright looks like after rewriting something like that?               Copyright (c) 2014, My Name          Copyright (c) 2009, Richard S. Wright Jr.     All rights reserved.          Redistribution..................."}
{"_id": "236916", "title": "Commercial use for embedded system", "text": "I am developing a embedded system (computer + os + programs) to sell it to a company. I am confused about the licensing and the softwares I wanted to use to develop the system.So I want to know if I can use these programs free of charge and without distributing the source code for commercial use.I wanted to use:   * A linux distro o custom linux build:I thought Arch Linux   * A Web Server + PHP + MySQL: I thought XAMMP,they says that is free of charge for commercial use but I don't know if the components are also.   * A QT backend and frontend,but I don't know if I can use the LGPL version for commercial use or I need to use the Commercial License.   * jQuery (I saw that if I maintain the notice,I can use it) Thanks for your response"}
{"_id": "236914", "title": "Prevent 3D model from being copied", "text": "So I have been messing around with thingiview since I wanted to have a 3D viewer for the models on my site. It works great and everything except one problem. It's nothing wrong with thingiview, it is the fact that since the model is loaded into the browser, that means the model could also be copied. So my question is, is there a way to prevent a 3D model file that is loaded into thingiview, which uses three.js from being copied freely. The only idea I can come up with that is copy proof is to have snapshots generated and then the user could just view the snapshots, but that sucks compared to being able to actually view the file. So any ideas?"}
{"_id": "18886", "title": "What discipline does Computer Science belong to?", "text": "Is Computer Science science, applied mathematics, engineering, art, philosophy? \"Other\"? To provide background, here is Steven Wartik's blog posting for Scientific American titled \"I'm not a real scientist, and that's okay.\" The article covers some good topics for this question, but it leaves open more than it answers. **If you can think of the discipline, how would computer science fit into its definition?** Should the discipline for Computer Science be based on what _programmers_ do, or what _academics_ do? What kind of answers do you get from people who've seemed to think deeply about this? What reasons do they give?"}
{"_id": "246211", "title": "Algorithm for percentage without knowing total number", "text": "Suppose there are `n` lines for a hotline. Whenever a customer calls the hotline, the call is forwarded to one of the `n` lines. And I want to assign percentage of calling to each of the n lines. Suppose there are two lines and one line is assigned 60% and other is 40%, the total number of calls is 10 so the first line would receive 6 calls and second will get 4 calls. I know the percentage of calling to each line in advance but the problem is that I don't know the number of calls that would be received in a day. **How can I distribute the number of calls without knowing the total calls?**"}
{"_id": "122009", "title": "Developing a feature which sole purpose to be taken out?", "text": "What is the name of the pattern in which individual contributors (programmers/designers) developed an artifact for the sole purpose is to serve as a diversion so that **_management can remove that feature in the final product_**? This is a folklore I heard from an ex-colleague who used to work at a large game development company. At that company, it is well known that middle management is pressurized to \"give inputs\" and \"make changes\" to the product otherwise they risk being seen as not contributing to the project. This situation have delayed many projects because of these superfluous \"management inputs\". In one project at the above company, the artists and developers created a supernumerary animated character that appears in every cutscene and sticks out like a sore thumb. They designed it in such a way that it can be easily removed before the game is shipped (this was when games were still sold in physical media and not a downloadable product). Obviously the management then voted to remove the animation. On the positive side, _management didn't introduced any unnecessary changes that would have delayed the project_ because they have shown that they provided constructive inputs to the product. This **_process pattern_** has a name among game programmers that work in corporates, but I forgot what was the actual name. I believe it's duck- _something_. Anybody can help pointing out the name and perhaps some rather credible reference to how the pattern develops?."}
{"_id": "246218", "title": "Is there a known standard data structure which is a hash table that resolves collisions using a binary tree?", "text": "Is there a known standard data structure which is a hash table that resolves collisions using a binary tree? If so what is the name of this data structure? I imagine such a structure would be useful as it should reduce the worst case search time down to O(log(n)) compared to O(n) in a hash table, and the best case would still be O(1)."}
{"_id": "122002", "title": "Why do we need URIs for XML namespaces?", "text": "I am trying to figure out why we need URIs for XML namespaces and I cannot find a purpose for that. Can anyone brighten me a little showing their use on a concrete example? **EDIT:** Ok so for instance: I have this from w3schools               <root     xmlns:h=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/\"      xmlns:f=\"http://www.w3schools.com/furniture\">           <h:table>        <h:tr>          <h:td>Apples</h:td>          <h:td>Bananas</h:td>        </h:tr>      </h:table>           <f:table>        <f:name>African Coffee Table</f:name>        <f:width>80</f:width>        <f:length>120</f:length>      </f:table>           </root>      So what should `http://www.w3schools.com/furniture` hold ?"}
{"_id": "216216", "title": "UML class diagram - can aggregated object be part of two aggregated classes?", "text": "Some sources say that aggregation means that the class owns the object and shares reference. Lets assume an example where a company class holds a list of cars but departments of that company has list of cars used by them.               class Department     {        list<Car> listOfCars;     }          class Company     {        list<Car> listOfCars;        //initialization of the list     }      So in UML class diagram, I would do it like this. But I assume this is not allowed because it would imply that both company and department own the objects..               [COMPANY]<>------[CAR]     [DEPARTMENT]<>---|        //imagine this goes up to the car class"}
{"_id": "237068", "title": "Is retaining intermediate objects as member fields a good idea in this case?", "text": "I'm currently writing a series of classes in java that are meant to translate a regular expression (written with the formal definition, not language- specific shortcuts) into a deterministic finite automaton. To make the DFA, it first converts the regex to postfix, then to a syntax tree, then to an NFA, then finally to the DFA, which is then minimized. Should I keep a reference to each intermediary object as a member of the object it was used to create? e.g. A reference to the syntax tree in the NFA, and a reference to the NFA in the DFA? They're not publicly accessible, so are they just unnecessarily bloating the classes and the program?"}
{"_id": "252424", "title": "Quantifying the advantages of a modern version control system", "text": "I've worked as a team lead/developer in a large financial enterprise environment for the better part of three years. Our production release process is a nightmare because it revolves around Clearcase. We have a change management group who executes all releases and who will only allow code into production that was taken from it. One of the first things I did when joining was to set my team up with Git. Everyone agreed that Clearcase was awful and was impractical for handling day- to-day source control matters. So we set up a sort of \"unofficial\" repository on my local machine and I wrote a script to sync our git and Clearcase repos around release time. Word of this spread to other teams and several have adopted the same process. Using git in an \"unofficial\" manner for day-to-day activities and \"officially\" using Clearcase for releases. I've become sort of the go to guy for any issues with Git. So I have a meeting this week with the SVP in change of infrastructure who specifically wants me to explain to her the merits of Git. Word apparently got to her of my frequent rants on Clearcase. If she accepts my arguments, I will have a real shot at helping my employer rid themselves of this abomination. My experience with executives tells me they a) want extremely terse explanations for everything b) are only interested in facts that involve dollar figures To a developer I can explain the merits of Git over Clearcase (or ANY other version control system over Clearcase for that matter), but I'm drawing a blank on how to do this to a technical executive without a technical background (she has an MBA and did her undergrad in geography). I feel any argument I make to her is either going to sound like technical gibberish or that I'm evangelizing my personal preferences. What I'm trying to find are concrete facts demonstrating developers work more effectively with Git, or ANY modern source control system. I think that the fact the other teams have started using Git internally is a meaningful sign, but it's still not strong enough because it can still be dismissed as personal preference. What I really need is something powerful enough to break through the \"This process has worked for 20 years, why should we change it?\" argument."}
{"_id": "206", "title": "Are there areas where TDD provides a high ROI and other areas where the ROI is so low that it is not worth following?", "text": "Test driven development. I get it, like it. But writing tests does require overhead. So should TDD be used universally throughout the code base, or are there areas where TDD provides a high ROI and other areas where the ROI is so low that it is not worth following."}
{"_id": "87281", "title": "Do you know any studies on relation of productivity of a programmer and the workstation used?", "text": "I was wondering if there are any studies (formal or not-so-formal) that show correlation between a developer productivity and the workstation used to develop software. It is often heard as argument that the high spec workstations increase the productivity (or the low spec machines impact productivity to the greater extent). To me it sound reasonable, however I'd like to verify the statement with some studies if such exists. Can you help me with that?"}
{"_id": "213979", "title": "What process do typical (the majority) of high level language compilers use when changing a source-code's variable name to a machine code name?", "text": "Do long (very long) variable names slow down the compilation of source code? I'm aware that the length of variables has 0% impact on interpretation as the compiler changes them to machine code which is always the same length. But my question is, does the speed at which the compiler vary depending on the length of variables? For example, if I have a variable name which is a million characters long, surely the compiler would struggle as for it to recognise the variable **is** a variable, it would need to read the entire thing first which would surely take longer depending on its size? To clarify, what process do typical (the majority) of high level language compilers use when changing a source-code's variable name to a machine code name? Do they find the start of the variable working from the left and then find the end working from the right, do they read through the entire variable name (one character at a time) until the end is found or do they not even look at the variable name at all and just know that the code requires a variable of type int (for example) and assign it a machine-level name instantly and then completely ignore any user-defined variable names? Note that I am a complete novice (still a student) so excuse my ignorance if I get my terms mixed up."}
{"_id": "36108", "title": "How to motivate team for knowledge sharing sessions", "text": "I work in a team with wide range of expertise and experience. I have been trying to introduce weekly knowledge sharing sessions. Sessions of 30-60 min length where everybody gets a chance to present something and talk about it. This will contribute in improving presentational and language skills. However, the team is not motivated towards this, either the attendance is too low or none. How to get a team work towards such an idea?"}
{"_id": "146447", "title": "Sequence diagram should consist of View objects, DB objects, etc.?", "text": "I read many articles, and saw a lot of images and I can't answer the question whether objects of View classes or DB classes should be contained on the sequence diagram or it should be more generalized?"}
{"_id": "36105", "title": "Should I create inner class here or leave as is?", "text": "Folks, I have two separate classes. One of them makes http requests/receives response to/from a server and the second one converts received JSON objects into my models (separate classes). I'm thinking it would be an idea to include this class for data converting as an inner class of my first class. Wouldn't my first class be extra big because of it and I need to leave everything as is or this is a good common practice to behave like that?"}
{"_id": "146442", "title": "Where are the next-next-generation editors?", "text": "I was reading an old Coding Horror article about indentation, when I read this: > Or, maybe you're using a next-next-generation editor that treats code as > \"data\" and the layout (including whitespace) as a \"view\", making all these > concerns largely irrelevant. Exactly what next-next-generation editors was Jeff Atwood referring to?"}
{"_id": "69018", "title": "How do you ascertain the quality of a potential employer's code before you take a position?", "text": "In my experience before you start working for a company you have no opportunity to look at the code-base (I've asked and for reasons of confidentiality everyone has always said no, I think that is fair), so during the interview process what do you think are the most important questions to ask to find out what kind of state the code is in (after all, if it's a dog, then you are going to be on of the poor unfortunates who has to walk it every day)? **UPDATE:** A check-list: Ask;   * What _they_ think of the codebase. And when you do, pay close attention to facial expressions and the time it takes for them to respond. [Anon]   * What is the company's CMM level [DPD] (and if you hear Level 5 run the other way [Doug T])   * What lifecycle they use [DPD] (And if you do hear \"Agile\", that's when you start asking some penetrating questions to try to figure out if by \"Agile\" they mean \"Agile or \"cowboy coding\" [Carson63000])   * What tools they use to asses code quality? [DPD]   * What tools they use for development? [DPD] (Look for refactoring tools and continuous build servers)   * What source code (version control) system they use, and a good follow up is to ask why they use it. [Zachary K].   * What are their testing procedures like? [Karl Bielefeldt] (Look especially for teams that use mocking frameworks and place an emphasis on thorough automated unit testing through established frameworks like NUnit / JUnit; don't be put off by teams that don't use test driven development TDD, but be wary if they don't consider testing to be integral to and the cornerstone of solid software development. Look for teams with dedicated testers.)   * What kinds of assignments are given to new developers? To experienced developers? [Karl Bielefeldt]   * How many people work on a project? [Karl Bielefeldt]   * Is refactoring allowed? Encouraged? [Karl Bielefeldt]   * What quality-related process or architecture changes are under consideration or have been made recently? [Karl Bielefeldt]   * How much autonomy do individuals have over their modules? [Karl Bielefeldt]   * Will you be developing newer projects (greenfield development) or legacy projects (brownfield development)? (Greenfield development is generally more fun and has less problems as you aren't cleaning up with someone else's mistakes).   * Is the employee turnover rate is high in the organization or the team? (This often indicates lower quality of code) [M.Sameer]   * Some programming problems of your own; but avoid seeming like a jerk. [Sparky]   * How do the developers collaborate and how is knowledge shared amongst the team? (This should match your personality; I would say a mixture of solo and pair work is probably best, with the ratio matching your social needs)   * How close their database is to 3rd Normal Form (3NF), and if it deviates where and why? (If they say \"3NF???\", leave. If not, and there might be good reasons for it not, then find out what they are). **NOTE:** I've accepted Anon's answer because after about a week the community thinks that it is the best one - I think this suggests that it is just something that you somehow need to develop a sixth-sense for. But, I think everyone has had something valuable to say."}
{"_id": "84530", "title": "How does freelance job operate?", "text": "I want to find a freelance job, but I've never done any freelance work before. I want to know what the process involves. Can you please answer the following questions?   1. If the programmer finds a suitable freelance job, how can they apply, and how will the future employer evaluate the programmer's abilities?   2. How does the programmer deliver their work?   3. How does the programmer receive money? What if the employer and the employee are in different countries? How do they pay?   4. Do you really read the agreement when signing an account on a freelance website?   5. Any pitfalls? Under what circumstances will the employer not pay after the work is done?"}
{"_id": "84532", "title": "Multi MVC processing vs Single MVC process", "text": "I've worked fairly extensively with the MVC framework cakephp, however I'm finding that I would rather have my pages driven by the multiple MVC than by just one MVC. My reason is primarily to maintain an a more DRY principle. In CakePHP MVC: you call a URL which calls a single MVC, which then calls the layout. What I want is: you call a URL, it processes a layout, which then calls multiple MVC's per component/block of html on the page. When you compare JavaScript components, AJAX, and server side HTML rendering, it seems the most consistent method for building pages is through blocks of components or HTML views. That way, the view block could be situated either on the server or the client. This is technically my ONLY disagreement with the MVC model. Outside of this, IMHO MVC rocks! My question is: What other RAD frameworks follow the same principles as MVC but are driven rather by the View side of MVC? I've looked at Django and Ruby on Rails, yet they seems to be more Controller driven. Lift/Scala appears to be somewhat of a good fit, but i'm interested to see what others exist."}
{"_id": "18771", "title": "Education vs. Experience", "text": "I'm going through a rough time. I'm a CS student at UIUC, which I hear is one of the top schools for CS. I love computers and programming. I've been pretty much doing it my whole life. I'm a freshmen now (junior in actuality, but I was premed before I switched to CS-long story). I'm finding the cirriculum pretty hard and challenging, but of course this way you learn so much. Due to the challenging nature of this program, especially at this school, I dont always get the top scores, while others seem to have no problem. I get discouraged quickly, and say to myself something like \"whatever, I know even if I dont finish this program, I will find a way to make it on my own\". Of course, I only say this to make myself feel better about my situation. But I really want to graduate from here and get this degree, but I find myself losing more and more motivation by the day. For those of you that graduated with a CS degree, any tips on how to get through this? Also, what are the benefits of a CS degree? I heard that I wont even use half the stuff I learn here. Why cant I just learn programming on my own by reading books. Most companies love experience. What does it come down to at the end? Of course I would love having this degree, but getting through it is gonna be a challenge."}
{"_id": "87133", "title": "We're Subversion Geeks and we want to know the benefits of Mercurial", "text": "Having read I'm a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS. I have a related follow up question. I read that question and read the recommended links and videos and I see the benefits but I don't see the overall mindshift people are talking about. Our team is of 8-10 developers that work on one large code base consisting of 60 projects. We use Subversion and have a main trunk. When a developer starts a new Fogbugz case they create a svn branch, do the work on the branch and when they're done they merge back to the trunk. Occasionally they may stay on the branch for an extended time and merge the trunk to the branch to pick up the changes. When I watched Linus talk about people creating a branch and never doing it again, that's not us at all. We create probably 50-100 branches a week without issue. The biggest challenge is the merging but we've gotten pretty good at that as well. I tend to merge by fogbugz case & checkin rather than the entire root of the branch. We never work remotely and we never make branches off of branches. If you're the only one working in that section of the code base then the merge to the trunk goes smoothly. If someone else had modified the same section of code then the merge can get messy and you might need to do some surgery. Conflicts are conflicts, I don't see how any system could get it right most of the time unless if was smart enough to understand the code. After creating a branch the following checkout of 60k+ files takes some time but that would be an issue with any source control system we'd use. Is there some benefit of any DVCS that we're not seeing that would be of great help to us?"}
{"_id": "203222", "title": "Questions to ask to ensure someone understands programming? (and iOS)", "text": "So, I've been tutoring my friend for 2 years. Most people learn programming on their own in 3-6 months, (sans algorithms). It's confusing 'cause he'll run anywhere I tell him to, understands how to read C and C++ honestly better than the average college student, and he'll modify and repeat anything I do... but for the love of god he doesn't move on to new things and he still has test anxiety. I've recently realized he's copied and toyed with existing, but not once gained an understanding of why. I was under the impression he was learning fast because he could write it, but when you say \"Make a function that takes an NSString\" and he says \"How?\" and I say \"The same way you make ANY function that takes any parameter, NSString is just a type like int\" and all I hear is \"No, it's an NSString, it's a special thing.\" and we get into an arguing match 'cause I'm like \"It's just a class like any other class, you've used them for months now\" and blah... I've subconsciously avoided comprehension questions because of this. Anyway, if you have him copy a program and say \"Just initialize it\" \"Where?\" \"I don't care, didLoad or initWithCoder or Awake from nib, anywhere it gets initialized\" and \"No, it has to be exactly where you had it!\" \"No it doesn't!\" I'm sick of this, but he won't give up. So I'm done avoiding these yelling matches and becoming a sadist from now on. I would like some help in finding questions to ask him that force him to understand what he's doing. I'd like some help and any resources I can find. CQuestions looked like a good site, but now I need some iPhone stuff. For example: *What do properties do? How are they changed? How do you change the name of the getter? *Why are Booleans inefficent? What advantage does int have over a boolean and how does the bit-shift operator help? *What does Copy do to a string? *What's the difference between a view controller and a uiview? *Write a program from memory that displays blah on screen, and flashes each view one by one. From beginner up to intermediate, hobbyist with some algebra at most. I'm just looking for resources to work with. I left in backstory so you know to \"twist\" the questions so he doesn't know he's supposed to init a variable here or there, but has to figure it out, and learn why it goes \"here\" or that \"anywhere is fine as long as it's\". Sample programs, anything. I'm relatively open about this because, being a programmer, I seriously doubt he's the only one who has this issue. I'd like to know how others have overcome similar. What made things \"click\"? for you? Did you have a hard time finding answers on Google, and how did you learn a better way to find what you were looking for? (He's so exact, he'll search for how to write a checkers program with color X and Y inside a uiview, as his search string, instead of breaking it up into components, I need help with that too, and believe it is related). This type of problem has to remind one of us of someone they know. So, Exercises to force them to think? Ways we overcame this thing in the past? I greatly appreciate any help."}
{"_id": "41554", "title": "What do you do when a client requires Rich Text Editing on their website?", "text": "As we all know by now, XSS attacks are dangerous and really easy to pull off. Various frameworks make it easy to encode HTML, like ASP.NET MVC does: > `<%= Html.Encode(\"string\"); %>` But what happens when your client requires that they be able to upload their content directly from a Microsoft Word document? Here's the scenario: People can copy and paste content from Microsoft word into a WYSIWYG editor (in this case tinyMCE), and then that information is posted to a web page. The website is public, but only members of that organization will have access to post information to a webpage. What is the best way to handle this requirement? Currently there is no checking done on what the client posts (since only 'trusted' users can post), but I'm not particularly happy with that and would like to lock it down further in case an account is hacked. The platform in question is ASP.NET MVC. The only conceptual method that I'm aware of that meets these requirements is to whitelist HTML tags and let those pass through. Is there another way? If not, is the best way to let them store it in the Database in any form, but only display it properly encoded and stripped of bad tags? > **NB** : The questions differ in that he only assumes there's one way. I'm > also asking the following questions:   >  1\\. Is there a better way that doesn't rely on HTML Whitelists?   >  2\\. Is there a better way that relies on a different view engine?   >  3\\. Is there a WYSIWYG editor that includes the ability to whitelist on the > fly?   >  4\\. Should I even worry about this since it will only be for 'private > posting' (Much in the same way that a private blog allows HTML From the > author, but since only he can post, it's not an issue)?   > **Edit #2** : > If suggesting a WYSIWYG editor, it must be free (as in speech, or as in > beer). **Update** : All of the suggestions thus far revolve around a specific Rich Text Editor to use: Only provide an editor as a suggestion if it allows for sanitization of HTML tags; and it fulfills the requirement of accepting pasted documents from a WYSIWYG Editor like Microsoft Word. There are three methods that I know of: 1\\. Not allow HTML. 2\\. Allow HTML, but sanitize it 3\\. Find a Rich Text Editor that sanitizes and allows HTML. The previous questions remain (1-4 above). * * * ### Related Question > Preventing Cross Site Scripting (XSS)"}
{"_id": "83620", "title": "Should strategy objects have state?", "text": "I have an application object that needs to validate some data. The particular validation algorithm isn't known until runtime, so I pass a validation object to it, using the strategy pattern. The application might need to reuse the validation object; for example, it might need to perform two validations simultaneously. So ideally, the validation object wouldn't contain any state; it would be purely an algorithm. But what if the validation algorithm itself needs some state? For example, it might need to keep a list of validation errors. What's a good approach in this situation? It seems like overkill to create a factory just for this specific validation object. (Assume this is in a language like Java or PHP.)"}
{"_id": "252398", "title": "Will hosting documents on AWS reduce our load?", "text": "Due to partnerships, we are required to host our website through our partner company. However, we had an idea that perhaps we could offload the document storage to an AWS document server. The thinking is that we could serve the html from our server, and serve any large document files from the AWS server, which would greatly reduce our bandwidth load. Having never used AWS, can I simply provide a relatively secure AWS URL to the browser which will pull the document from AWS and bypass our web server altogether?"}
{"_id": "252393", "title": "Micro-services and data replication", "text": "I am building a new application and was reading about micro-services architecture. The architecture itself makes lot of sense from a development, deployment and life cycle management point of view. However one issue that came up was with regards to how to handle master data. For example, I have 2 apps - say Sales app and a Ticketing app. Assume that both of these apps are built as own micro-services. However both of these apps, when deployed (assuming that they are deployed separately say Sales uses MongoDB and Ticketing uses MariaDB), would need to have access to the same master data instances e.g. Accounts, Products. This would mean that there would be a owner app for a given master data entity (e.g. for Accounts it might be the Sales app) and an interested party (e.g. Ticketing app would need to have information about Accounts). There are multiple ways in which this can be achieved: \\- Data replication from master to interested party \\- Synchronous read from interested party to master (sync dependency is not recommended by the micro-services architecture paradigm) \\- Own centralized repository Also even within Accounts, there can be a core part which is common for both Sales and Ticketing (e.g. account name, address etc.). However some aspects of the Account might ONLY be relevant for Sales and others ONLY relevant for Ticketing. Any thoughts / best-practices / opinions regarding any of the above mentioned options ?"}
{"_id": "129407", "title": "Best Version Control Habits For Solo Developer?", "text": "I'm a sole developer at my work and while I understand the benefits of VCS; I find it hard to stick to good practices. At the moment I'm using git to develop mostly web apps (which will never be open sourced due to my work). My current workflow is make lots of changes to the development site, test, revise, test, be happy and commit changes, and then push the commit to the live site (so if I'm working on a big new change; I may only commit once a week; but my IDE has a good undo history for uncommitted stuff). Basically, I'm only using git when switching between machines (e.g., work dev computer to home dev computer or to live machine), but during the day I don't really see the benefit. This leads me to have long laundry lists of changes (and I have trouble finding good msg for each commit; and whenever I'm in a rush - I tend to leave crappy messages like 'misc changes to admin and templates'). How often should I be committing? Should each one-line change get a commit? Should I commit before any test (e.g., at least for syntax/compiling errors and then have to totally undo it; as the idea didn't work or the message is a lie)? Should I make sure I commit each morning/afternoon before I stop working for dinner while its still fresh? What I am missing out on by having bad VCS habits?"}
{"_id": "137833", "title": "What to look for in Startup employees", "text": "I am an engineer but don't have a computer science background. I am proficient with Python, Django, use Mongo and know a bit of C++ / C#. Dabble with NGinx here and there. My weekend project, a nifty webapp, just saw explosive growth. And am looking to expand the team. What should I look for in potential hires beyond the obvious (code samples etc) ? Should I hire someone who wears many hats and bigger pay or break it up into smaller roles?"}
{"_id": "137830", "title": "Jumping around to work on different features when you get stuck, is it a source of project failures?", "text": "On personal projects (or work), if one gets stuck on a problem, or waiting to figure out a solution to the problem, if you jump to another section of your code, don't you think it will be a good reason your application will be buggy or worse yet never get completed? Assuming you are not using git and code each feature to a specific branch, things can get out of hand since you have 3 different features you are working on, and you have unresolved issues in each. So when you get done to work, you get stressed out because you have these hanging issues and half-baked code lingering about. What's the best way to avoid this problem? (if you have it) I'm guessing using something like git and creating a branch per feature is the safest way to avoid this bad habit. Any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "137834", "title": "Should use of VSS be a dealbreaker in an employment offer?", "text": "I've been reading some of the horror stories about VSS recently, and it seems like a poor choice for anyone to continue to use. This is sort of a two-part question:   * Are there any objectively good reasons to use VSS?   * If not, should it be a dealbreaker for employment? I only have personal experience with one company presently using VSS (in my pre-developer days, so I didn't use it), and the culture there was extremely reactionary and adverse to change. I don't want to project my experience with this company on other organizations if there are legitimate reasons for using VSS these days, but I can't think of any reason other than being stuck in a rut that a place would use VSS 7+ years after support was dropped when it seems that there are relatively painless migration options."}
{"_id": "66731", "title": "Testing activities carried out in an OO development project", "text": "Does anyone know the testing activities carried out in an Object-Oriented development project that uses an incremental approach to development and delivery?"}
{"_id": "191766", "title": "What kind of JavaScript design pattern is that?", "text": "In our workplace we use simple ajax library for getting page data and submitting changes to server ,on certain occasions we do need to change the forms fields values ,now we know that fields can be of any type (dropdown , textbox and radiobuttons etc) and one of the most annoying and tedious task I find was remembering various fields id so could do the manipulation (the task can exceed for few days,so I had to keep the ids in notepad) ,then I made this design pattern for easy working with the fields.                function FormFieldsManager() {                 var FormMgr = {                     txtGradeName: function (txt) {                         if (txt) {                             $('#txtGradeName').val(txt);                         }                         else {                             return $('#txtGradeName').val();                         }                     },                     txtGradeDesc: function (txt) {                         if (txt) {                             $('#txtGradeDesc').text(txt);                         }                         else {                             return $('#txtGradeDesc').text();                         }                     },                     ddStatus: function (txt) {                         if (txt) {                             if (isNaN(txt)) {                                 $(\"#ddStatus\").val(txt);                             }                             else {                                 $(\"#ddStatus\")[0].selectedIndex = txt;                             }                         }                         else {                             return $('#ddStatus :selected').val();//selected value: A                         }                     }                 };             return FormMgr;             };      In order to use that function,I just call the method and I could navigate the form fields and I get full JavaScript intellisense.               var form = FormFieldsManager();     form.txtGradeName('Software Developer');//to set the field value     form.txtGradeName();//to get the field value      **So my questions are,**   1. What specific design pattern is this?   2. What suggestion for improvement you guys can give? **PS:** I like to call it jsPageObject :)"}
{"_id": "194146", "title": "How does API design differ from general web application development design?", "text": "If I was working on a web application designing and writing an API how does that differ from a general web application development? What things would I need to consider and take into account? Are there any standard processes to follow when creating an API that could be used by thousands of clients?"}
{"_id": "159988", "title": "How to select drawing system when requirements not yet known?", "text": "We're developping an application for 2D data processing and display. At the moment data is displayed by converting each point to a color depending on intensity, so in rather low level code. This works well. A new feature is displaying a grid and a bunch of lines that can be moved with the mouse on that image. As usual when new technologies are going to be picked, I made a little demo to test some things out: using the current data plot, a line is drawn on top that can be moved up/down with the mouse, and at the same time there is text displaying the cursor coordinates. I tried some different ways: using a Canvas, using a somehwat lower level DrawingContext and using the low level WriteableBitmapEx api. To me, there was no real difference in ease of coding nor display speed. Yes the Canvas option had a couple of lines less code than the others, while I had the impression the lower level options were somewhat faster to display. But no huge differenes making me pick one immediately. So the problem now is: I have no idea how to select the most suitable system for the job, but it is a very important decision to make since the graphical part of the app will likely continue to grow. Needless to say it would be a small disaster if we pick A now, and in one year we figure out B would have been way better. Normally I'd select the fastest or most convenient option, or look at future requirements and use the system that seems to fit best, but in this case there is simply not enough difference, and future requirements are not exactly known: for now we think it's sufficient if we can draw lines, circles and some text, and update speed is not that important. However the application is in it's early stage, so is the underlying hardware and there are less than 100 customers. That however, might change rapidly. And so can requirements. Question is simple: what to do? Some options I've been thinkig about:   * pick one that 'feels' best (WriteableBitmapEx but probably just because I have an affinity with lowlevel stuff)   * pick the one with the least amount of code (Canvas, also seems very easy on the UI level with effects and mouse events and what not)   * make a more extensive demo so differences become more clear pick one, but put everything behind an interface so the implementation can be swapped later (might be quite some work)"}
{"_id": "108875", "title": "How do you study for MCPD?", "text": "my employer is encouraging us and even require us to take MCPD and get certified. They offer online ebook and practice exam from measureup.com but I get bored and tired when I read those self-paced training kit and stray away to do something else. I like the way Zed's \"learning python the hard way\" teach. Is there some similar book like Zed's? How do you guys study for MCPD?"}
{"_id": "210406", "title": "Storing a drawn graph information in database for web application", "text": "Well while developing a web application that allow users to draw graphs (flow charts, ER diagram , UML, .... etc) the information of drawn items and their relation to each other and position on canvas is expressed as JSON object The question is: 1- is saving such graph in database as raw (json object text) is enough (in one field of a table) 2- or is it always required to break down the json object into logical pieces and store them into a well built database structure! option 1- other than making devilopers life easier it will eleminate the need of recreating json object from small bits and pieces of information when the user open a graph he have built and saved long time ago option 2- will have fine grain details in proper structure but will cost kind of heavy processing while opening a saved graph from Database which way is correct way to go ?"}
{"_id": "89951", "title": "Why do ruby and python seem to have more community contribution than PHP?", "text": "In a recent blog post by Roy Osherove, it is pointed out that his switch from primarily .Net development to ruby development has seen a huge difference in community involvement and really enjoys it. The quote that spawns this question is : > there is no master overlord that dictates what you will or won\u2019t work with. I don't spend a great deal of time working with php, but I do spend about the same amount of time working with ruby. From the time that I spend working and communicating with people who work with both technologies it seems like Ruby has the feeling Roy describes much more than PHP does. I don't deal with Python a great deal, but those I know who do all say it has a similar community feeling. This strikes me as odd since every ruby and python programmer I know tend to have learned php somewhere along the way but they have no similar feeling about the php community. I understand there are justifiable complaints with earlier versions of php, but people were still able to use it to build some very large sites and many companies use it. What separates these communities that ruby and python seem to have such a different vibe compared to php? (This question could be subjective but I'm hoping there is a solid impartial answer to explain the difference)"}
{"_id": "233367", "title": "What is Google's intention to fund Firefox while developing Chrome?", "text": "My understanding is that Google funded Mozilla Firefox although it develops its own Chrome browser. This looks redundant. What is the motivation for Google doing this? Another potentially related question: Why did Google not unify Google Video with Youtube when it acquired Youtube?"}
{"_id": "233366", "title": "What is the traditional way to maintain extensibility in a database-driven application like this?", "text": "I'm working on a simple application for a game in Java that allows a user to record whether they have collected a given item and how much experience it contains. This will work for multiple item types (weapons, armor) and each will have its own tab with a list of all items that qualify under it. Making changes as new types are added is not such a big deal (if a clothing slot is added, for instance), but new items are added to the game all the time in biweekly patches, and I'm not sure what the traditional/customary way to make sure the application is user-extensible without requiring me to would be. Whether that would be adding a configuration menu that allows users to add news items (new rows to the local SQLite database) or a text file with something similar, but I'm certain there's a well-accepted way to do this that I'm not aware of. I'm new to databases and ignorant of the solution, so what's the professional/futureproof way to do this?"}
{"_id": "108878", "title": "Is it useful to learn CVS before learning SVN?", "text": "Is it useful to learn CVS before learning SVN? Does much of that knowledge carry over to SVN or are they too different?"}
{"_id": "233360", "title": "Trying to understand what Travis CI does and when it should be used", "text": "I am very new to Git and I am planning to contribute to some open-source project on GitHub after discovering a small error in it. Upon forking it and fixing the error, I purposed a pull request and I noticed this showing up: > Failed \u2014 The Travis CI build failed Looking into the details I discovered it was caused by `Could not find .travis.yml`, which made perfect sense since I had not signed in to Travis Cl with and add .travis.yml to the repository. This is my first time hearing about Travis CI. And it sounds pretty cool so in order to learn more about it, I looked it up on Wikipedia. > Travis CI is a hosted, distributed continuous integration service used to > build and test projects hosted at GitHub. Travis CI automatically detects > when a commit has been made and pushed to a GitHub repository that is using > Travis CI, and each time this happens, it will try to **build the project > and run tests**. This includes commits to all branches, not just to the > master branch. My current understanding of Travis CI is that what it does is automatically pushing the project upon `git commit -am \"..\"` and I don't quite understand some part of it.   1. By **building the project and run tests** , what tests is it going to run? And how is it going to \"build\" the project? (like compiling it to binary?)   2. It states that \"This includes commits to all branches\" - but what if I don't want to commit to all branches?   3. Is it alright if I don't use Travis Cl at all? Under what circumstances is it best to use it (or it must be used)?"}
{"_id": "76233", "title": "Static analysis config and convenience scripts in source control", "text": "1) Should static analysis tool config be placed in source control? This config is not needed to compile/run software and some developers can have different preferences (even within coding convention). On the other hand placing such config in source control and declaring static analysis tool as \"official part of project\" can encourage everybody to test his code and help keep it very consistent. This question is mostly about open source because in commercial projects you will establish strict workflow anyway. 2) Should convenience scripts (generating documentation, running analysis, running tests, deploying, generating installer) be placed in source control? Theses scripts have to be cross-platform and may not work well on every system. People may just use IDE to accomplish some of these tasks. But requiring everybody to write his own boilerplate seems somewhat stupid to me. This question is mostly about interpreted languages because when working with compiled languages this is usually achieved using build tool which is not needed to build program in dynamic languages."}
{"_id": "229274", "title": "How to define constants with PECL hidef?", "text": "I've recently convinced the team that we could upgrade from php5.4 to 5.5 -- but, unfortunately, it seems I overlooked that php-apc is no longer supported in php 5.5 -- which is fine and dandy, but we could use a replacement for apc_define_constants() Thus, I've heard about the wonders of hidef -- but, I cannot seem to find any documentation for it, anywhere -- I got it installed, after a bit of kajiggering, but I'm not sure what to do next... How could I go about unwrapping the various functions included in the pecl hidef package ? Or, at the very least, how can I use it to define constants?"}
{"_id": "76230", "title": "Taking a course in ASP.NET", "text": "Soon, I'm going to take a course in ASP.NET. But \"unfortunately\" the course is based on ASP.NET 3.5 using Murach ASP.NET 3.5 as textbook. I'm a bit concern since the current latest version is ASP.NET 4.0. There's a chance that the course will upgrade to 4.0 next semester, should I do it now or wait until next semester for version 4.0? My long term goal is to get a MCPD WEb developer cert. Thanks"}
{"_id": "229272", "title": "Sending e-mails without using an e-mail server", "text": "JavaMail sends e-mails using an e-mail server, typically through the SMTP interface of an e-mail provider. Is it necessary to use an e-mail server to send e-mails? I have a web site that will send e-mails and if possible I'd like to send the e-mails directly from the web site code without using an e-mail server. The JavaMail FAQ says that an e-mail server is required. Is there a way to send e-mails without using an e-mail server, either with JavaMail or another API?"}
{"_id": "8045", "title": "Learning about design", "text": "How do you improve your ability to design your applications? Where do you get your design ideas from? (I am asking about code design - not about a specific language and not about visual appeal). When I started programming, I found Design Patterns to be very helpful. These days I mainly poke around open source projects to see what other people did whenever I need to solve similar problems. What do you do?"}
{"_id": "229270", "title": "Make a change that is ignored by future merges", "text": "I have a git repository, and I'd like to make a \"debug\" branch. In the \"debug\" branch, I'd like to add a line:               debug = true;      But I want to make sure that any merges back to master ignore that change. Is there any way to set that up in way that doesn't require me to manually handle all future merges?"}
{"_id": "229271", "title": "Our flavor of Scrum", "text": "In my organization we almost never finish all the stories in the Sprint, and most of the stories are finished about 80%. One reason for this, is that many times testers don't have enough time to test all the stories, and developers don't want to test. Another reason is that the teams are usually too optimistic so they commit to more than they can complete, and no one really cares about that, so they continue to do it each Sprint. Usually testing, bug fixes and last polishes remain on the task board after the Sprint is over. The R&D manager believes that its not that bad to leave some bugs unfixed or to skip some non critical implementation, because then he can have usability test for the new features faster. Nevertheless I think he would be happy if the team could finish all the testing and bug fixes, but if not that's completely okay for him as well, because there are always some stabilization (hardening) sprints at the end in which the smaller stuff will be taken care of. I'd like to ask you, what do you think about this development method (which is not pure Scrum, but a more flexible/weak version of it). Thank you."}
{"_id": "123068", "title": "Rapid code analysis", "text": "I have recently moved to a new company where I am tasked (in part) with evaluating the existing code base and coming up with patterns and best practices. Our development team consists of around 20 programmers and we have nearly as many projects. The bulk of the code is done in C# and SQL (Stored Procedures). Naturally, I speak to the guys writing the code. However, I need to read through the code to get a proper idea of what is going on. Given the number of projects, it is extremely time consuming; especially if you're simply trying to get a high-level view of what is going on. At the moment I am using Enterprise Architect to import the classes into class diagrams. This helps to an extent, but I guess something like a flow diagram would be more useful. I suspect team leads deal with this same problem often when it comes to code reviews. How do you manage to speed-up code analysis?"}
{"_id": "219675", "title": "Validating time-limited HMACs", "text": "I'm exploring using HMAC style secret-key authentication with timestamp expiry, but am struggling to get my head around how you validate the timestamp portion. On the client side you would do:               my_hmac = hmac(my_secret, my_values)      Where you would have a `timestamp` field in `my_values`. On the server (where you also know `my_secret`) you would attempt to rebuild the HMACd string with the request parameters:               my_hmac_to_compare = hmac(my_secret, my_values_from_http_request)      Is it simply a case of embedding the timestamp as a parameter so it's hashed in to the HMAC string and then ensuring the timestamp is within N minutes of when we process the request? I have odd visions of having to iterate over 5 minutes worth of timestamps, rebuilding the HMAC string on the server attempting to find the needle-in-the- haystack that will generate the correct HMAC string. **Bonus question:** Is there a consensus on how you would initially transfer the secret key to a client from a server? It obviously becomes \"dirty\" after it goes over the wire, but in a user facing application you can't have someone pasting in an extensive secret key, especially if it's a mobile client."}
{"_id": "219674", "title": "how do you style content when querying a data structure nested n-levels deep?", "text": "This question has come up while writing a simple text adventure game where your character has an inventory, which can include containers that also have things in them. I want a clean way to style the inventory output, like so:               You are carrying:         a bag containing:             a ring         a backpack containing:             a loaf of bread      Currently I just include the formatting in the result returned by the query, all in one shot. For example,               DoInventoryCommand():         result = QueryInventory(...recursively checks inventory adding multiples of tabs depending on nesting level...)         print(result)      What I would like is a cleaner separation between content and presentation so that the query would just return a data structure that a separate pass could style. But how should the styling pass handle the n-levels deep data structure? Just for example, how would a styling tool like CSS handle it? Do you need to procedurally generate the CSS once you have the data structure?"}
{"_id": "126659", "title": "Generating presentation elements with Javascript vs PHP", "text": "What are the pros and cons of generating dynamic pages with javascript vs doing it in PHP? As an example, I want to display certain records from some database in a table and I'm considering the following approaches:   1. Use Javascript to get some response in JSON from some PHP page, then dynamically build the table in Javascript.   2. Write some PHP in the page which will make the query and iterate through the result set echoing the table markup. What are the pros and cons of each approach?"}
{"_id": "226536", "title": "Query Language for Java Code Analysis", "text": "I want to write a refactoring tool for the Java programming language. For this reason I need to do structural queries against the abstract syntax tree. Given this AST how do I get answers to the following statements:   * Get superclasses of an object.   * Give me the expression where I call a method x() on type XClass   * Is method x() is called without arguments (check overloading)   * Is method x() called anywhere in the execution path of object of type XClass (eg. is close() called anywhere)"}
{"_id": "126657", "title": "How should HTML data formats be applied in everyday situations?", "text": "Given Google's shift towards a stronger focus on page markup data, how do the data formats used in Schema.org work alongside those for Microformats? How do these (and other specs) compliment each other and which should be used in preference in different situations? **Edit:** It seems from established content on the subject that opinion seems to be divided between those who believe Schema.org is doom, hellfire and brimstone and those who think it will ultimately be a good thing either way regardless of uptake. Both articles agree at least that the different formats can coexist happily without causing search engines undue grief. The question about how the different options might be used in specific cases still remains though."}
{"_id": "126652", "title": "Should unit test expected results be hardcoded?", "text": "Should the expected results of a unit test be hardcoded, or can they be dependant on initialised variables? Do hardcoded or calculated results increase the risk of introducing errors in the unit test? Are there other factors I haven't considered? For instance, which of these two is a more reliable format?               [TestMethod]     public void GetPath_Hardcoded()     {         MyClass target = new MyClass(\"fields\", \"that later\", \"determine\", \"a folder\");         string expected = \"C:\\\\Output Folder\\\\fields\\\\that later\\\\determine\\\\a folder\";         string actual = target.GetPath();         Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual,             \"GetPath should return a full directory path based on its fields.\");     }          [TestMethod]     public void GetPath_Softcoded()     {         MyClass target = new MyClass(\"fields\", \"that later\", \"determine\", \"a folder\");         string expected = \"C:\\\\Output Folder\\\\\" + string.Join(\"\\\\\", target.Field1, target.Field2, target.Field3, target.Field4);         string actual = target.GetPath();         Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual,             \"GetPath should return a full directory path based on its fields.\");     }      **EDIT 1:** In response to DXM's answer, is option 3 a preferred solution?               [TestMethod]     public void GetPath_Option3()     {         string field1 = \"fields\";         string field2 = \"that later\";         string field3 = \"determine\";         string field4 = \"a folder\";         MyClass target = new MyClass(field1, field2, field3, field4);         string expected = \"C:\\\\Output Folder\\\\\" + string.Join(\"\\\\\", field1, field2, field3, field4);         string actual = target.GetPath();         Assert.AreEqual(expected, actual,             \"GetPath should return a full directory path based on its fields.\");     }"}
{"_id": "152870", "title": "Exit interview - what is and isn't OK", "text": "There's a lot of questions about hiring interviews, but the same cannot be said about exit interviews. As I'm going to embark on a new challenge in the near future, I'm going to go through an exit interview. My question is - **what should you say in an exit interview and what should you avoid?** For privacy reasons, and because this question doesn't only apply to me, I'm not going to give specifics. I'll get started - I think it's OK to complain about:   * infrastructure (i.e. hardware used)   * overtime (if it's regular)   * unreasonable deadlines But not about:   * management :)   * remuneration These are just off-the-top-of-my-head examples. My opinion is that you shouldn't burn any bridges when you leave, especially if the company you're leaving is really OK, but also remaining silent over existing issues defeats the purpose of the feedback - maybe some of the suggestions or complaints will be considered and fixed. I hope this is the right place to ask this :)"}
{"_id": "158161", "title": "UML representation of specific factory pattern", "text": "I have to create an UML class diagram from the following example code (Perl). I don't think that the standard factory pattern match in my case or I don't understand it correctly. I don't have `AbstractFactory` and `ConcreteFactory` but a single `Factory`. What does this example looks like in UML class diagram? **Edit** : This is only a very flat and simple example. The real application has many \"Types\" with totally different workflows. The class diagramm is to get an overview over the hole structure. Not realy for internal workflow like sequence diagrams does.               package Module::Factory;     sub new { bless { type => $_[1] }, $_[0]; }     sub create {         my( $self, $name ) = @_;         my $object = \"Module::Types::$self->{type}\"->new( $name );         return( $object );     }          package Module::Types::Test1;     sub new { bless { name => $_[1] }, $_[0]; }     sub test {         my( $self ) = @_;         say \"Hello, $self->{name}.\";         return( $self );     }          package Module::Types::Test2;     sub new { bless { name => $_[1] }, $_[0]; }     sub test {         my( $self ) = @_;         say \"Bye, $self->{name}.\";         return( $self );     }          # even more Module::Types::TestN packages...          package main;     foreach my $type ( qw( Test1 Test2 ) ) {         my $factory = Module::Factory->new( $type );         foreach my $name ( qw( World John Peter ) ) {             my $object = $factory->create( $name );             $object->test();         }     }"}
{"_id": "214749", "title": "AJAX event, prevents other page actions", "text": "Here's a fairly average scenario, using JSF as an example, but this same concept I have observed in ASP.NET, Apache Wicket, and other frameworks with ajax capabilities.               <h:inputText id=\"text1\" value=\"#{myBacker.myBean.myStringVar}\" styleClass=\"goodCSS\">         <f:ajax event=\"change\" listener=\"#{myBacker.text1ChangeEventMethod}\" update=\"someOtherField\" />     </h:inputText>          <h:selectBooleanCheckbox id=\"check1\" value=\"#{myBacker.myBean.myBoolVar}\" />      Let's suppose that the 'text1ChangeEventListener' is essential to 'someOtherField' and perhaps toggles its disabled attribute, or changes its available options, based on the value of 'myStringVar.' The particulars aren't important, let's just accept that for some reason we need an ajax call when the 'text1' value is changed. So Jane User is working her way down the form. She arrives at the 'text1' field and types some value. The cursor focus is still in the text field, as she moves her mouse to the 'check1' box and clicks. It appears to her that nothing has happened. She clicks again, and this time the checkbox highlights and the icon indicating a selection appears in the box. Jane has to do several entries in the form today, and sees this happen every time, and it becomes very frustrating for her. Likewise, Jeff Admin is also perusing this form, and begins to type in 'text1.' He then realizes he doesn't really want to enter this data, and so moves his mouse to the \"cancel\" button elsewhere on the page, and clicks. Nothing seems to happen. Jeff clicks again, and after confirming he really does want to cancel, is returned to the home page. Jeff scratches his head. The problem is simply that the first thing the system does after 'text1' looses focus is run the listener and perform the ajax operation. It may only take a fraction of a second, but still, you can click other buttons all you want, but until that ajax has finished, everything else is ignored. I've spent the morning searching and reading, and it seems no one else has even noticed this. I could find not one article, blog, past question here or at SO, or anyting that addresses this obvious and glaring deficiency in ajax. So first of all, am I truly alone in thinking this is a big problem? Second, does anyone have a solution?"}
{"_id": "214744", "title": "Configurable tables in sql database", "text": "I have the following tables in my database: Config Table:               ======================================     Start_Range | End Range | Config_id           10           |        15        |      1     ======================================      Available_UserIDs               ==========================      ID | UserID | Used_YN   |                1 |   10      |        t          |       1 |   11      |        f          |       1 |   12      |        f          |       1 |   13      |        f          |       1 |   14      |        f          |       1 |   15      |        f          |     ==========================          Users         ==========================          UserId | FName | LName  |                      10     | John    |    Doe    |         ==========================      This is used in a reservation system of sorts... which lets an administrator specify a range of numbers that will be assigned to users in the config table. Once the range has been defined, the system then populates the Available_userIDs table with all the numbers in between the range, and sets the Used_YN flag to false As users sign up, they grab the next user_id number that's not in use... and reserve it. Then the system adds a record to the Users table. Once the admin has specified a range, it is possible that they can change it. For example, they can start with 10-15... and then when the range is used up, they should be able to specify another range like 16 - 99. I've put a unique constraint on the Available_UserIDs table, as well as on the Users table - to ensure that UserIds can't be duplicated. My questions are as follows:   1. What's the best way to prevent the admins from using a range that's already in use? I thought of the following options:  \\-- check either the Users table to see if the start range or ending range numbers are being used. If they are, assume that all the numbers in between are in use too, and reject the range. \\-- let them specify whatever they want, try to populate the Available_UserIDs table. If there are duplicates, just ignore that specific error message from the database and continue on.   2. How do I find gaps in the number ranges? For example, if they specify 10-15, and then 20-25, it'd be nice to be able to somehow suggest on my web page that 16-19 is currently available. I found this article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1312101/how-to-find-a-gap-in-running-counter-with-sql But it only seems to return the first available number... so in my example above, it would only return the number 16.  I'm sure there's a simpler way to do things that I'm overlooking!"}
{"_id": "231659", "title": "Virtual machine for a high level programming language vs an operating system", "text": "It struck me recently that a virtual machine for a high level programming language is very much like an OS. It manages resources, e.g. stack, heap, etc. similar to how an operating system manages resources and if the programming language supports threads then the virtual machine also does time-sharing and context switching similar to how an operating system does it. How far can this analogy be taken? Why is that we don't have a bare-metal implementation of the JVM? It seems like all the pieces are there so what exactly is the reason such things are not more prevalent?"}
{"_id": "150354", "title": "How would one build a relational database on a key-value store, a-la Berkeley DB's SQL interface?", "text": "I've been checking out Berkeley DB and was impressed to find that it supported a SQL interface that is \"nearly identical\" to SQLite. http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17076_02/html/bdb- sql/dbsqlbasics.html#identicalusage I'm very curious, at a high-level, how this kind of interface might have been architected. For instance:   * since values are \"transparent\", how do you efficiently query and sort by value   * how are limits and offsets performed efficiently on large result sets   * how would the keys be structured and serialized for good average-case performance"}
{"_id": "155184", "title": "Implementing `let` without using a macro", "text": "I'm learning Lisp, and I've just gotten to `let`, which I don't quite understand (the implementation of). A common definition for it is given in terms of `lambda` as a macro. However, nowhere have I seen that `let` **must** be implemented as a macro or in terms of `lambda`. Is it possible to define `let` without using a macro or `lambda`? I know it can be implemented as a primitive, but I want to know whether it can be implemented **in Lisp** without creating a macro -- by creating a special form or a function."}
{"_id": "154852", "title": "Should programmers prefer making wide libraries or thin libraries?", "text": "For classes and functions, it is clear cut: each should do only one thing. For libraries though, this is less clear. If you have a library with collections, it might have multiple collections. It might have useful functions like sorting, which aren't strictly collection based but users would expect. Each of these results in a 'wider' library. On the other side is having a library for the specific collection type and/or with little built-in functionality. If you want a queue, it gives you a queue. If you want to sort that list, then the library lets you do that yourself. What is the best practice here (if any)? I can see arguments for each side."}
{"_id": "181788", "title": "Behavior Driven Development and Unit Testing in Python", "text": "We might be interested in starting to incorporate a unit test suite to our project, which is coded in Python (and it uses Redis, PostgreSQL and some third-party libraries, if that bears into the solution). The benefits we want to achieve are:   1. Once the project is up to speed, we want to be able to specify new behavior quickly and efficiently, to help improve communication and team productivity. Read: **We want BDD, but have already started coding without it**.   2. Excellent textual support (i.e. the tests can be read almost as natural text), so as to make it **easier to write and read tests**.   3. Ability to **automatically run tests** (at the very least, to be able to include the running in a Bash script or something like that). We use Windows and Linux for development, and Linux servers, so Linux support is our primary requirement.   4. **Integration with github**. I don't know if it is possible, but I've seen some projects in github which have a \"Passing\" or \"Failing\" status on them and it would be great to have that for our project. What are good tools / libraries that can help us do this, and, most importantly, what are good ways to incorporate BDD into a Python project? Thank you very much! Any suggestions are appreciated."}
{"_id": "244846", "title": "Combinatorial explosion of interfaces: How many is too many?", "text": "I'm a relative newcomer to OOP, and I'm having a bit of trouble creating good designs when it comes to interfaces. Consider a class A with N public methods. There are a number of other classes, B, C, ..., each of which interacts with A in a different way, that is, accesses some subset (<= N) of A's methods. The maximum degree of encapsulation is achieved by implementing an interface of A for each other class, i.e. `AInterfaceForB`, `AInterfaceForC`, etc. However, if B, C, ... etc. also interact with A and with each other, then there will be a combinatorial explosion of interfaces (a maximum of n(n-1), to be precise), and the benefit of encapsulation becomes outweighed by a code- bloat. **What is the best practice in this scenario?** Is the whole idea of restricting access to a class's public functions in different ways for other different classes just silly altogether? One could imagine a language that explicitly allows for this sort of encapsulation (e.g. instead of declaring a function public, one could specify exactly which classes it is visible to); Since this is not a feature of C++, maybe it's misguided to try to do it through the back door with interaces?"}
{"_id": "244840", "title": "What should a domain object's validation cover?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out how to do validation of domain objects that need external resources, such as data mappers/dao Firstly here's my code               class User     {         const  INVALID_ID = 1;         const  INVALID_NAME = 2;         const  INVALID_EMAIL = 4;         int    getID();         void   setID(Int i);         string getName();         void   setName(String s);         string getEmail();         void   setEmail(String s);         int    getErrorsForInsert(); // returns a bitmask for INVALID_* constants         int    getErrorsForUpdate();     }      My worries are about the uniqueness of the email, checking it would require the storage layer. Reading others' code seems that two solutions are equally accepted: both perform the unique validation in data mapper but some set an error state to the DO `user.addError(User.INVALID_EMAIL)` while others prefer to throw a totally different type of exception that covers only persistence, like:               UserStorageException     {        const  INVALID_EMAIL = 1;        const  INVALID_CITY = 2;     }      What are the pros and cons of these solutions?"}
{"_id": "207835", "title": "Is it OK to return HTML from a JSON API?", "text": "On my current project I am responsible for the implementation of a service which involves the consumption of newly created RESTful APIs, documented as solely supporting JSON. The client consistently makes requests with the accept header of 'application/json' and content-type of 'application/json'. However some endpoints send a response with a content-type of HTML, even a HTML body. To me this is clearly the wrong approach and can never be justified. Throughout the project this same practice has been applied across two different vendors and two different services. I found myself having to justify why the services needed to be changed. The vendors stated that the client should cope with this and even my REST library of choice has been questioned (RestEasy) because it doesn't cope with this by default 'out the box'. This has been a major point of frustration. I can't find many references to back up my argument, I assume this is because the point is mute as it's so obvious. The question is am I missing something? I'm I being pedantic about this? Is it OK to have a JSON API that doesn't have a content-type of application/json in this scenario? References would be appreciated. How do you resolve this situation from a commercial point of view?"}
{"_id": "212598", "title": "Drawing a biggest possible circle inside a polygon - JSXGRAPH", "text": "I manage to create a circle inside triangle with this code, but circle inside other polygons are not maximum size:               var p1 = board.create(\"point\", [0.0, 2.0]);     var p2 = board.create(\"point\", [2.0, 1.0]);          //var pol = board.create(\"regularpolygon\", [p1, p2, 3]);     var pol = board.create(\"regularpolygon\", [p1, p2, 4]);     //var pol = board.create(\"regularpolygon\", [p1, p2, 5]);          board.create(\"incircle\", pol.vertices);      What is the easiest way to draw a maximum circle inside square and pentagon? How about smallest circle around the polygon?"}
{"_id": "28886", "title": "What do you use to manage servers you SSH to in OS X?", "text": "Coming from Windows, I used Putty a lot since it could store a list of hosts I often connect to, provide me with an easy to use double click and then spawn a terminal. Is there a preferred solution for OSX?"}
{"_id": "28885", "title": "What false ideas are there that puts people off using threads?", "text": "Implementing threading in a program is hard, yes, however why is it that some people will not implement them even when there is an obvious need for it. An example: Program has to load a dataset from a database, the thing to do would be to make the connection and get the data from the database in a worker thread and then load it into the GUI, leaving the GUI thread responsive for the user. But no, I've talked to people whom seem to think that threads are evil and bad and whatnot and one should avoid them at all costs. I've even heard that some class instructor advised against to use of threads and therefore did not want cover their use. WHAT??? With the hardware going into multi-core, I think that we need to understand threads better and not be afraid to use them. I find it a fascinating subject personally. So what are things you've heard about threading that are false?"}
{"_id": "140033", "title": "How to structure process description documentation?", "text": "I'm writing a document describing process improvement recommendations. I have some best practices I've learned so far. I use those practices most of the time. But I suppose there are other ways to approach the task of writing formal process description document. So, how do you usually structure your documentation? As you could already find out, I'm especially interested in structuring formal process description documents which are usually created by QA and sometimes Project Managers. What sections should it contain? My documents usually contain following sections:   1. Content   2. Goal    3. Scope   4. Terms and abbreviations   5. Inputs   6. Process description   7. Artifacts   8. Outputs What else should there be? Did I forget something? Are there other approaches for structuring formal documents? Link to best practices descriptions are greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "208828", "title": "Passing an object into a method which changes the object, is it a common (anti-) pattern?", "text": "I am reading about common code smells in Martin Fowler's Refactoring book. In that context, I was wondering about a pattern I am seeing in a code base, and wether one could objectively consider it an anti-pattern. The pattern is one where a object is passed as an argument to one or more methods, all of which change the object's state, but none of which return the object. So it is relying on the pass by reference nature of (in this case) C#/.NET.               var something = new Thing();     // ...     Foo(something);     int result = Bar(something, 42);     Baz(something);      I find that (especially when methods are not named appropriately) I need to look into such methods to understand if the object's state has changed. It makes code comprehension more complex, since I need to track multiple levels of the call-stack. I'd like to propose to improve such code to return another (cloned) object with the new state, or anything that is needed to change the object at the call-site.               var something1 =  new Thing();     // ...          // Let's return a new instance of Thing     var something2 = Foo(something1);          // Let's use out param to 'return' other info about the operation     int result;     var something3 = Bar(something2, out result);          // If necessary, let's capture and make explicit complex changes     var changes = Baz(something3)     something3.Apply(changes);      To me it seems the first pattern is chosen on the assumptions   * that it is less work, or requires less lines of code   * that it allows us to both change the object, **and** return some other piece of information   * that it is more efficient since we have less instances of `Thing`. I illustrate an alternative, but to propose it, one needs to have arguments against the original solution. What, if any, arguments can be made to make the case that the original solution is an anti-pattern? And what, if anything, is wrong with my alternative solution?"}
{"_id": "158293", "title": "What is the term for this type of refactoring", "text": "I am sure there is a term for the following bit of refactoring, but I can't remember it and my Google-fu is failing me! The refactor moves if statements to where they are going to have most impact, for example changing this               $test = someFunctionThatReturnsABool();     for($x = 0; $x < 10000; $x++) {         if ($test) {              echo $x;          }     }      To this               $test = someFunctionThatReturnsABool();     if ($test) {         for($x = 0; $x < 10000; $x++) {             echo $x;          }     }"}
{"_id": "241360", "title": "What happens differently when you add a task Asynchronously on GAE?", "text": "Google's doc on async tasks assumes knowledge of the difference between regular and asynchronously added tasks. > `add_async(task, transactional=False, rpc=None)`   >  Asynchronously add a Task or a list of Tasks to this Queue. How is adding tasks asynchronously different to adding them regularly. I.e. what is the difference between using `add(task, transactional=False)` and `add_async(task, transactional=False, rpc=None)` I've heard that adding tasks regularly **blocks** certain things. Any explanation of what it blocks and how, and how **async** tasks don't block would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "241361", "title": "What algorithms would suit image colour summarization?", "text": "I would like to analyse a set of hundreds of thousands of product images (clothing, electronic goods etc) and retrieve the dominant colours in each. I'm only interested in the top 3 or 4 colours. The aim is to achieve a degree of certainty that x image is mostly red or image y is mostly orange and blue. The images are likely to be colour jpegs of reasonable quality and approximately 100kb in size. I would like to use C# and the solution should run on a Linux server, preferably using open source libraries. What image processing algorithms or techniques might help me achieve this?"}
{"_id": "214295", "title": "Why aren't web frameworks simple, elegant and fun like programming languages?", "text": "When I think of pretty much any programming language - like C, C++, PHP, SQL, JavaScript, Python, ActionScript, Haskell, Lua, Lisp, Java, etc - I'm like awesome I would love to develop a computer application using any of those languages. But when I think of web frameworks(I do mostly PHP) - like Cake, CI, Symfony, Laravel, Zend, Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, Rails, Django, etc - I'm like god no. Why aren't there web frameworks that provide me with simple, fun and powerful constructs like a programming language?"}
{"_id": "69680", "title": "Inspiration resources for desktop UI design", "text": "For desktop application, does anyone has a good website showcasing best desktop application UI? Looking for some inspiration for my application. There are a lot of website for Web application ... i can't find any for desktop application."}
{"_id": "81574", "title": "What's the best approach to Facebook integration?", "text": "I have a new site/app going live next week (or somewhere close). I know there will be a relatively small (15,000?) very dedicated group of people on Facebook who will be very likely to be interested in the site, so I know I need Facebook integration of some kind. I won't be doing Facebook logins or pulling/posting to profiles yet, but I plan to... The question:   * Do I just do a Facebook \"Page\" for now? This is faster/easier to set up and seems a little less buggy.. and then migrate to a Facebook App later? or   * Do I create a \"Facebook App\" (with the api key/id/secret, etc.) now even if I'm doing nothing but using the \"like\" button. This means I don't have any migration later and I can use the javascript api to log \"like\" button clicks to Google Analytics, etc. Thoughts? Experiences? Is there a migration process to move your old Page users to your new \"App\"? What's the advantages / disadvantages of each."}
{"_id": "69685", "title": "What's the canonical retort to \u201cYou can't submit a patch to this open source project because you're not a committer\u201d?", "text": "Some projects only allow committers to submit patches because they wish to keep their IP \"clean.\" not only can non-committers not submit patches, but committers are forbidden from looking at your code lest they become tainted by intellectual property of unknown provenance. instead, you are invited to start a discussion on their listserv or submit a ticket, and then the committers will decide if your feature is worthy."}
{"_id": "154588", "title": "Are there any good use-cases for variable variables?", "text": "Today I encountered this little PHP gem called variable variables.               $literal = \"Hello\";     $vv = \"literal\";     echo $$vv; // => prints \"Hello\"      Are there actually any real use-cases for this language feature?"}
{"_id": "89224", "title": "What's the best approach to develop a cross-browser JavaScript app?", "text": "As one of my summer projects I'd like to build an AJAX program on my own. Not too big. I'm new to the whole matter, however I have general knowledge in programming and a good understanding of the Web workflow. As for W3C standards, is it wrong sticking to them as if they were a _platform_? Is it a good idea to code having a single platform in mind (i.e. Firefox 3 + Win7) and make it cross-browser _after the initial code is finished_? In general, to what extent is browser compatibility a problem these days?"}
{"_id": "43308", "title": "Methods of learning / teaching programming", "text": "When I was in school, I had a difficult time getting into programming because of a catch-22 in the learning process:   1. I didn't know how to write anything because I didn't know what keywords and commands meant. For example (as a student, I would think), \"what does this `using namespace std;` thing do anyway?   2. I didn't know what keywords and commands meant because I hadn't written anything. This basically led me to spending countless long night cursing the compiler as I made minor tweaks to my assignments until they would compile (and hopefully perform whatever operation they were supposed to). Is there a teaching/learning method that anyone uses that gets around this catch-22? I am trying to make this non-argumentative, which is why I don't want to know the 'best' method, but rather which methods exist."}
{"_id": "245143", "title": "Adding a minimum rectangle overlap threshold", "text": "I have a function that works perfectly for detecting whether or not r1 overlaps with r2:               boolean overlaps( Rectangle r1, Rectangle r2 ) {         return r1.x < r2.x + r2.width && r1.x + r1.width > r2.x &&             r1.y < r2.y + r2.height && r1.y + r1.height > r2.y;     }      But now I would like to add a minimum threshold so that it would return true if r1 overlaps r2 by at least a given length. Here's what I have so far but haven't had any luck:               boolean overlaps( Rectangle r1, Rectangle r2, float threshold ) {         return r1.x < r2.x + r2.width && r1.x + r1.width > r2.x + threshold &&             r1.y < r2.y + r2.height && r1.y + r1.height > r2.y + threshold;     }"}
{"_id": "96429", "title": "Getters and Setters in Functional Languages", "text": "One of the tenets of Functional Programming is the use of Pure Functions. A Pure function is one that is side-effect free and referentially transparent. **Getters** are not referentially transparent - if a Setter is called between calls to the Getter, the Getter's return value changes even though its parameters have not (typically no parameters) **Setters** produce side-effects - Calling a Setter typically manipulates a value that is not its return value (in fact, traditionally a setter returns nothing) I know in Scala we just kind accept the fact we are meshing together two paradigms (functional and object oriented) and use getters/setters as we would in a language like Java. In a language like Haskell (which I'm not fluent with, but I'm told holds truer to a \"Pure\" functional language) I'm just curious, how you would model properties on objects such that Getters are referentially transparent and Setters are side-effect free? Would the solution be to pass back a copy of the object the setter was invoked on as the setter's return value, and this copy contains the change to the property value?"}
{"_id": "19029", "title": "Is it worth learning either GWT or Vaadin?", "text": "I consider myself a decent java/web developer. In my career I have always used servlets and ejb's with a web front end, most recently incoporating jquery and ajax. I can see the theoretical benefit of using GWT or Vaadin: it is my understanding they convert Java code to the required JavaScript/HTML. So the developer gets the benefit of cross browser compatibility and compile time error checking (of web GUI elements). My question is threefold:   1. Are there any other benefits I am missing that would be gained using Vaadin or GWT?   2. I am actually quite confident and productive using HTML and JavaScript - so will I actually see any benefit? Or will it just make my knowledge of these areas redundant (as they are handled by GWT/Vaadin)?    3. Will the end result be that I can create enterprise scale data driven websites in a reasonably short time? I can however already do this, and I have not wasted any time learning GWT/Vaadin."}
{"_id": "19028", "title": "Developing a team of programmers", "text": "So, I have a web application that I need to build. The application will be done in a LAMP environment. I'm being given the resources to bring in 2 other programmers to work on my team. I have team lead and architecture experience before, so taking charge isn't a problem. The roadblock that I am experience is that I am currently living in a developing country. They have plenty of Software Engineer programs at universities, but no training/classes on really anything relating to LAMP. It is all C++/Java. So, I have a set of resumes I've culled as experience programmers that seem intelligent sitting in front of me. They come from various backgrounds, which include a couple Java developers, an old-school C++/MFC type guy, some C# devs, and a whole bunch of young out of school C++/Java developers. I'm honestly already leaning one way on which skillset I think would mold the easiest to web dev, but as I am not an application developer (exposure in school, but that was a while ago), I though I might open it up and ask you guys: Which skillset of these do you think would lead into the easiest transition to web development? I'm especially curious to hear from anyone who moved from application side over to web development."}
{"_id": "250751", "title": "C# Single Instance of a Form", "text": "I have 3 forms. Form 1 has information inserted into Form 2. After clicking a button on Form 2 to get to Form 3; on Form 3 I pull data and put it on Form 2. The problem with this is that I don't know how to get a single instance of Form 2 so that I can keep the data from Form 1 after pulling data from Form 3. This is a WinForms application. Any help would be much appreciated. I have looked into the Singleton way of doing it but everything I research seems too confusing to follow. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "116346", "title": "Get 100 highest numbers from an infinite list", "text": "One of my friend was asked this interview question - > \"There is a constant flow of numbers coming in from some infinite list of > numbers out of which you need to maintain a datastructure as to return the > top 100 highest numbers at any given point of time. Assume all the numbers > are whole numbers only.\" This is simple, you need to keep a sorted list in descending order and keep a track on lowest number in that list. If new number obtained is greater than that lowest number then you have to remove that lowest number and insert the new number in sorted list as required. Then question was extended - > \"Can you make sure that the Order for insertion should be O(1)? Is it > possible?\" As far as I knew, even if you add a new number to list and sort it again using any sort algorithm, it would by best be O(logn) for quicksort (I think). So my friend told it was not possible. But he was not convinced, he asked to maintain any other data structure rather than a list. I thought of balanced Binary tree, but even there you will not get the insertion with order of 1. So the same question I have too now. Wanted to know if there is any such data structure which can do insertion in Order of 1 for above problem or it is not possible at all."}
{"_id": "56876", "title": "How do you know a company is worth-working at or not?", "text": "I'm leaving my current company, and I'm looking for a better place to work. But this time I'm confused. I don't want to walk in and out in six months again. I want to find a company which I can work in long-term, and this trouble me much... There is a problem, in my city, there's a lot of small companies (30-50 employees), so finding employee's feedback on Internet is nearly impossible. So I need to find it myself. So, I want to ask that, when you walk in an interview of a completely new company, what do you look at the job description? look at the company itself? look at its current employees? what do you ask your interviewer? How do you determine a company is worth-working for or not?"}
{"_id": "94379", "title": "Open source project, should I post \"... will give you licenses to ...\" or not?", "text": "I have just accepted the second developer into an open source project. I'm not going to say which it is, for obvious reasons ( _read the rest of this question_.) The project is a C# / .NET projectl A while ago I contacted JetBrains, authors of ReSharper, dotCover, and TeamCity. Since I am the leader of the open source project, I got \"open source\" licenses for ReSharper, dotCover, and TeamCity. The important part is that the licenses I got for the project, for those products, are for **all** members of my project, not just me. The question is this:   * When advertising that the project requires more people (it does), should I mention the licenses involved? On one had, I feel that mentioning the licenses might make people not really interested in the project apply for it, because they would get those licenses, and thus be people more interested in the licenses than the project, i.e. \"noise\". On the other hand, the licenses could be a bonus, an ... \"upshot\" ... and thus might make more people interested in my project, in other words I might attract people that could be a bonus to the project, that weren't aware of it before. So... Should I advertise the licenses involved? Or not? * * * **Edit** : Ok, it's late at night (in my small corner of the world) and having re-read my question, le me make it clear what my question really is about: **Does anyone have any experience, or knowledge, or barring that, thoughts, about what difference it would make if I openly posted that becoming a member of my project would give them licenses for products X and Y, as opposed to not mentioning it until they're already members?**"}
{"_id": "56872", "title": "Question about college vs. university in Canada", "text": "So I read a post on here asking about college vs. university and the consensus seemed to be that University was worth it. My question is, does that by extension make college worthless? \\---the details-- I'm at a point in my life where I want a change of careers, I've always done web-dev on the side and now I want to program as a career. My 2 options are a computer programming diploma at humber, seneca (or similar) or computer science at UofT. I can get into both courses (as I was formerly a student at UofT) but the University route is far more costly and will take 4 years instead of 2. I realize that in a perfect world the university option would be better (the general concensus in the other threads I read), but the extra money and time would be very difficult to reconcile since during this time we will need to rely solely on my wife's income. If university is the only possible option there is a chance I might need to scrap this dream all together since it might not be doable. If taking the 4 years in university isn't possible for me, is there any point in getting the college diploma? The college diploma has some Java and even Android specific courses so I could see the potential career path, but the previous threads have me discouraged on that option. I don't want to spend two years to end up with nothing."}
{"_id": "246584", "title": "Compiler warnings and errors", "text": "I come from a C# background before my existing role. I am developing a VB.NET app. The code I inherited had option strict set to off and all other directives set to 'None'. I have recently switched option strict on and corrected all the errors. It will take me about one day to correct all the warnings. I am trying to decide whether this is time well spent. The application is mature and is working very well. What is the guidance for setting option strict to ON and correcting warnings. I assume that you should not ignore them. However, I read online today (I think it was on here) were one questioner said he/she never bothers with warnings. Surely this is wrong?"}
{"_id": "60268", "title": "Advantages & Disadvantages of using Class Diagrams", "text": "Any and all advantages/disadvantages would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "60262", "title": "IT Research & Development project and team organization", "text": "I have seen a lot of different project organizations in different tertiary sector businesses, but I have never felt that IT R&D projects were well organized. I understand that R&D projects need flexibility, and less time-constraints to give free rein to innovation. My guess is R&D projects organization needs to be revised at a certain stage. What is your experience about IT R&D organizations/methodologies - especially planning and resource management?   * Do you or your boss plan them from the beginning?   * Do you or your boss ask for time reports?   * When do you think it's time for a R&D project to enter a \"standard\" project organization stage?   * Omitting time limit, when do you think its time to get things done even if the goal is not totally reached?   * Omitting time limit, when do you think its time to give up if the goal is not reached? Both last ones are subjectives, I know :/"}
{"_id": "177578", "title": "Did a bunch of wrong work, should I keep it?", "text": "I have forked a repo and branched that clone to code a story, and because I didn't understand the problem, wrote code that isn't solving my task at hand, but may prove useful later. Should I:   1. Delete it, and don't worry about it. Then commit without the extra code.   2. Make yet another branch for just that work, commit it, but don't post a pull request on it.   3. Just commit it with the existing code, and worry about the extra \"fluff\" later. I was thinking #2. If I understand correctly, I could just keep the extra code on a branch I never use on my clone, and dig it up later if something comes up that may benefit from using it."}
{"_id": "121967", "title": "How to determine the right amount of up front design?", "text": "Software developers occasionally are called upon to write fairly complex bits of software under tight deadlines. Often, it seems like the quickest thing to do is to simply start coding, and solve the problems as they arise. However, this approach can come back to bite you--often costing time or money in the long run! How do we determine the right amount of up front design work? If your work environment actively discourages you from thinking about things up front, how do you handle that? How can we manage risk if we eschew up-front thinking (by choice or under duress) and figure out the problems as they arise? Does the amount of up front design depend entirely on the size or complexity of the task, or is it based on something else?"}
{"_id": "235039", "title": "What is the difference between use case, user requirements and user stories?", "text": "I'm wondering what the difference is, and at what stage these different terms are used within the Agile/Scrum methodology? `use case`, `user requirements` and `user stories` Am I right in thinking they start off in the requirement elicitation stage as `use cases` then become the `user requirements`, which are pretty much the same as the `user stories` used in the `products backlog`? Trying to write a university report and haven't been able to find anything defining all of these terms in the same place, which has made it difficult to understand the differences. Are some of these terms even required within an Agile approach?"}
{"_id": "64306", "title": "Should each unit test be able to be run independently of other tests?", "text": "Say you have tests for two methods of a class. The first method gathers data from another tier and puts it into some sort of storage independent of the runtime (such as a SQL table), so all of the data handled by this test is hardcoded into the test. The second method is responsible for taking data from where the first method left it and transforming it in some way (calculation, moving certain parts elsewhere, etc.). Now this second method could have hardcoded inputs like the first one, or it could be assumed that the two tests would be run sequentially and it could pick up where the 1st test left off, taking the data that was really stored by the first test. If you went with the second option, you would really have a good idea that the two methods play well together, however, if the 1st test failed, all tests after it would fail, taking away testing benefit of helping to isolate bugs more quickly. If you went with the first option, each method would be isolated and tested independently, but you would never really know that they can really work together properly. Which is the better option here? Is there some sort of alternative like having a single test for each isolated method with hardcoding, and then bigger tests that contain both methods in one?"}
{"_id": "235031", "title": "Minified version of JavaScript library under LGPL used on a site without copyright notice", "text": "On this site hackfind.com the autor put minified version of my library without any copyright notice. Is this violation of the LGPL. Note that using on a site is not a copy."}
{"_id": "235033", "title": "What process will you use to clarify functional requirements and to gather non-functional requirements?", "text": "I am confused with what's the different between clarify and gather. I know using interview, observe or questionnaire can to elicit the requirement we want, but how to clarify the functional requirement?"}
{"_id": "59101", "title": "Should I switch from deprecated library?", "text": "For example, some library (in my case it's ruby gem) became deprecated. And my app is using this library. It's ok and I have not any problems with how it works. When should I switch from deprecated open-source library to something new? Or should I at all?"}
{"_id": "154327", "title": "What could be the best way to generalize data from Facebook and Twitter?", "text": "I am not sure if this is the best subsite to ask this question, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit on the normal or facebook SO page... I've been asked to make a general API for connecting to several Social Media platforms (at the moment Facebook and Twitter). I have already realised both of them seperately. Meaning I retrieve the data I need from both Facebook and Twitter and hold the data in it's own dataclass. In my case a list of FacebookTimelineItems and a list of TwitterTimelineItems. now the hard part is taking the parts that are used in both (username, id, message and such) and make 1 general class that is eventually passed on to who/whatever sent the call to my API. these are two pics of the data classes I have: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/703/facebookdata.png/ http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/twitterdata.png/ probably not 100% correct but it gives an idea what it looks like. Now I've been having several idea about how to go about and generalize the two, which is harder then I thought at first.   1. Create an interface (TimelineItem) and let the other classes extend that one. this way I'll always be sure I have a class that contains at least the basic info I need. downside is that deserializing the JSON seems to be a nightmare.   2. Use the two dataclasses I have and combine them into a new class afterwards, then pass that one back to whoever requested it. This would probably work but I get the idea it's not the best way to tackle this problem, and is pretty dodgy IF I get it working.  Or, in case of the other two being nearly impossible. Keep the two seperated in the front end, and go sit in the corner crying because I've just figured out you can't lump together facebook and twitter... Note: I don't have to make the front end part (view), I just make sure the Model is nicely filled with data :) I hope I placed this in the right section, if I didn't I apologise and would like to know where I should go with my question. Thanks in advance for any replied/ideas/opinions on this."}
{"_id": "81395", "title": "What is the best/easiest way to get my degree, already being an experienced developer?", "text": "I have been an active professional software developer (mostly utilizing .NET) for the past five years and, without being too full of myself, I would say I'm a very competent developer. I stay intimately up to date with the latest tools, the industry, and modern standards/practices. I work for a fairly high- level IT company and I swing just fine with the rest of them. I am even up to date on the latest team dynamic methodologies and feel like I have good leadership/management/people skills. However, I never got my degree. I learned and am learning everything I know on my own from hundreds of books and experiences. I ran my own software company for a while until it took a big hit from the economy a year or so ago. It took a LONG time and A LOT of applications, but I finally found the job I have now. Like an idiot I dropped out of college to forgo paying more tuition and I started my company and as life goes, I now wish I had stayed and got the degree. I have student loans that are in default and I'm working my hind end off to pay off those debts now that I am making a fair amount of money again. I have hit too many ceilings without this degree. For one, I will never make as much as someone with the same level of knowledge and experience, but also has a degree. Also, the amount of effort it took to get a job in the industry without a degree was exhausting and depressing. Now I am wondering what the best way for me to go about getting my degree is?   1. Are there online schools that would offer this degree?   2. Would an online school even be a good choice?   3. Would my knowledge and experience in the industry help me finish schooling faster/cheaper?   4. Have any of you ever found yourself in a similar position? If so, how did you overcome all the barriers put in front of you?   5. Have any of you ever had student loans in default and tried to go back to school later? How did you deal with that and how did it affect you?"}
{"_id": "81392", "title": "Capitalization of hierarchical constants", "text": "If constants are structured hierarchically, do the \"folders\" also need to be capitalized? Take for example a Javascript object that needs to store constants for a video player. Is the convention to capitalize the \"folders\"?               PLAYER = {      VIDEO: {       WIDTH: 640,       HEIGHT: 480       ENCODING: 'h264'      },      AUDIO: {       BITRATE: 128       ENCODING: 'mp3'      }      };          // usage:     alert('The player's video width is: ' + PLAYER.VIDEO.WIDTH);      Or only capitalize the leaf nodes?               player = {      video: {       WIDTH: 640,         HEIGHT: 480,       ENCODING: 'h264'      },      audio: {       BITRATE: 128,       ENCODING: 'mp3'      }     };          // usage:     alert('The player's video width is: ' + player.video.WIDTH);"}
{"_id": "64015", "title": "What is a programmer's role in error-checking text content?", "text": "As a primarily web-based programmer, a lot of my projects involve significant amounts of text content. In my previous job, I frequently worked with a project manager notorious for his unwillingness to proof-read, or to even use basic spell-check software. I regularly corrected the text content he provided for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, as I felt that the website represented both the company and myself, and I was not willing to let his laziness contribute to a negative user experience. However, text content was limited, and was almost exclusively legal disclaimers and technical instructions related to the product. At my current job, we have a much larger emphasis on text content. However, we also have a much higher standard of quality and proof-reading. All printed content from our department uses the AP Stylebook standards, and I believe that standard should be extended to our web-based content as well. I fully expect that my previous problems with low-quality text content, and lack of basic proofreading, will not be repeated here. However, I have gotten into the habit of proofreading every bit of text content I publish. I am considering studying the AP Stylebook to make sure that I know what the expected conventions are. Is this going beyond my responsibility as a programmer? Should I be sticking to only the most basic of errors (e.g. spelling, punctuation, etc.) instead of trying to expand to AP Stylebook conventions? Or should I just leave all proofreading tasks to the people who give me the content to publish?"}
{"_id": "154323", "title": "Environment naming standards in software development?", "text": "My project is currently suffering from environment naming issues. Different people have different assumptions as to what environments should be named or what the names designate, and it's causing confusion when discussing them. I've done a bit of research and I haven't found any standards out there. The terms include \"Local\", \"Sand\", \"Dev\", \"Test\", \"User\", \"QA\", \"Staging\" and \"Prod\" (plus a few more that different people have asked about) I'm not looking for just opinions, though if there's one out there that \"everyone\" has I'll take it - I'm trying to find definitions advanced by some sort of authority, even if it's unofficial. Here's the environments we currently use:   1. **Environment on the developer's PC**   2. **Shared Environment where developers directly upload code to self-test**   3. **Shared Environment where standards and functionality are tested by QA people**   4. **Shared Environment where completed and QA-checked code is approved by project requesters**   5. **Environment that mirrors the final environment as a final check and to prepare for deployment**   6. **Final Environment where code is in use** I know what _I'd_ call them, but is there some sort of standard on this? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "154322", "title": "Is this a good use for ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem?", "text": "I have an application that, among other things, imports documents, then emails necessary parties to let them know that a document has been imported. It turns out that determining whom to email, then performing the emailing, is what's taking the longest. I was thinking of doing something like this:               var document = ImportDocument();     ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(s => SendEmail(document.Id));     return document;      ... similar to DelayedJob in Rails, if that helps. Does that make sense in this context? What would you do?"}
{"_id": "64018", "title": "Is \"send us a page with code\" a typical interview requirement?", "text": "Recently I was asked to show \"a page with code\" for a job interview. Being mainly a back-end programmer, and that's the position I applied for, I first said to the person I was talking to exactly that: PHP is executed at the server and therefore not visible by just giving a \"page\". However, following their desire, I sent links to the pages I've worked on before. Obviously they couldn't see anything except for the HTML, CSS, JS... They said it was not enough, they could not see the PHP. Understanding that they probably just wanted to know my skills and/or interest I sent them my Stack Overflow profile. Among all my questions and answers, most of them with code, certainly the PHP is there. But it seems this is not what they wanted. Well, I don't have any code put together that I can simply publish for someone to see. And I would never do it for the code I have deployed, obviously. So my question is/are: What does \"send us a page with code\" mean? What should I send? Is this a typical interview requirement?"}
{"_id": "250804", "title": "Why to declare a String (as final) and then use it?", "text": "In a typical spring mvc validator class, while inserting an errorCode value in the Errors object, what difference does it make between using a String (`props.somefield.req`) like so               errors.rejectValue(\"elementId\", \"props.somefield.req\");      verses a declared static final String ?               private static final String SOMFIELD_REQ = \"props.somefield.req\"; ...     errors.rejectValue(\"elementId\", SOMFIELD_REQ);      Does it improve the performance even in a slightest way? I have read a few questions on stack overflow (String and final, Does it make sense to define a final String in Java?) but no one got around to answering this questions update question."}
{"_id": "228500", "title": "Data retrieval and indexing", "text": "I have around 800,000 rows of data stored in the boost shared memory from the database. The data are in the form:               Id        Color        Length          Size          1        1                 2            4     2        3                 4            5     3        2                 2            0     4        1                 2            4......and so on      The Colors can be the value from 1-12 the length 1-4 and the size 1-5. The Id,Length,Color,Size are stored in seperate vector of 800,000 size in the shared memory. So there is Id vector for Id, Color vector for Color and so on. I want to filter the data before I perform some computation. So I want data for which Color is 1 and length is 2 and Size 4 i.e row 1 and 4 in above case. Is there any efficient way to filter the data without using for loop and going through all the 800,000 images and checking the condition? Right now I am just using mysql statement to get the Ids of the data which satisify the condition.               \"select Id from features_table where Color=1 and Length=2 and Size =4\"      But is there a faster way to do this? Or should I stick to this method? I am looking for a faster method so I am not sure whether fetching the Ids from the database will increase the execution time of the algorithm. What are the other options that I can consider in this case? I read about Hash table, B-Tree, Binary Search tree and I am confused which is suitable for this case. Will kd-tree be helpful in this case? Because many images may have the same combination of color,length and size. I am not sure if kd-tree is the right thing to do. I read about FLANN in opencv used for kd-tree. Is there any example or resources which may be helpful in this case? Or are there any built in c++ libraries?"}
{"_id": "218663", "title": "Searching in a large dataset", "text": "I am working on a model of social interactions in mice. I have mice and boxes and a simulation that outputs which mouse stays in which box during which time period. The problem is how to obtain, in the end and from this, the meetings of two mice which were in the same box in an overlapping period. Right now I have a MySQL database where the simulation directly inserts each stay result. And then another tool,written in Scala, just retrieves all stay result, in portions of a few hundred, loops through them and for each asks the database which stays were overlapping with it, and inserts each pair into the database, like this: `box`,`id1`, `res_id1`, `id2`, `res_id2`, `from`, `to`, `dt`, `typ` This means that mice id1 and id2 were in the box \"box\" in the interval between \"from\" and \"to\" with duration \"dt\" and the meetings was of type \"typ\". There could be four types of meetings depending on when each mouse was in the box (e.g. when the one entered and exited relative to the other). \"res_id1\" and \"res_id2\" tell which stay results were used to generate the meeting result. Obviously, this is very inefficient. What would be a better way of doing it? I am not constrained to using a RDMS, but I though this would be the easiest as I am reading and further analysing the data in R afterwards. Would it make sense to output the stays in a text file and then use Hadoop to generate the meetings somehow? Or anything else? For the duration of an approximately one quarter of one trial of the simulation I generate around 1.5 million stay results."}
{"_id": "81398", "title": "How do you explain NP-Completeness/Unsolvability to a non-technical supervisor?", "text": "You fix problems. You can do the _impossible_. Co-workers come to you with a wide range of questions and problems they want you to solve; which can usually be done with some simple custom program or script. Most things are fairly simple, and they are amazed at how you can take ten minutes of your time to write a little script that saves them hundreds of hours of work in a given year. People come to you with a problem and, having seen your past work, expect that you'll be able to take care of even the _impossible_ in short order. But every now and again, the problem they want you to solve is one of those ones that give programmers a headache - they're NP-Complete or otherwise computationally unsolvable. It could be an automated scheduling program, warehouse packing sorter, a system that predicts the company's stock price three years in advance, what have you. If you tell them it's **impossible** , it sounds like you're just trying to get out of doing the work, or they think that **impossible** means _impossible_ (as in \"kind of hard, but I could do it in a few hours\"). Likewise, you can't just point them to the CS theory section of your bookcase and tell them to read up on it. How do you explain to a non-technical co-worker (or supervisor) that some task they want you to complete is literally **impossible** not merely the same-old _impossible_ that you successfully deal with every day? _[Note: Offering a compromise (i.e. offering a near-optimal, not perfectly optimal, solution) or giving them what they really need, not what they think they want, is generally what I end up doing; but my question is about explaining why what they are precisely asking for isn't feasible without resorting to using highly technical terms, hand-waving, or \"losing\" that help ticket.]_"}
{"_id": "191790", "title": "Pros/Cons for getter and setters of collections", "text": "I'm creating a model where one element can contain other elements. I'm currently writing the interface to the model, and I'm not sure which is the best of the two options: **Option 1**               interface Container {       List<Element> getElements(); // returns an unmodifiable list.       void addElement(Element e);       void removeElement(Element e);     }      **Option 2**               interface Container {       List<Element> getElements(); // returns an unmodifiable list.       void setElements(List<Element> elements);     }      What are the pros/cons of each option? Furthermore, are there \"accepted\" naming conventions in these cases, like using `children` instead of `elements`?"}
{"_id": "191796", "title": "What's a good developer workflow for teams? (VM based)", "text": "I normally work by myself as a freelancer, and the setup I use has worked pretty well for me so far. I'm not sure if it's the optimal setup for a team though. I develop on Windows, and I setup a Linux VM on my local machine, running the same OS/stack as our production machines (CentOS, Nginx, PHP-FPM). I setup Samba, and map my webroot to a drive in Windows. Locally, I setup host shortcuts such as `http://someproject.local/`. To share with the team, I use my IP address or an internal DNS name such as `http://brandon/someproject`. I was thinking a possible change to this workflow would be to move the VMs onto one of our internal virtualization servers. One of the sysadmins could spin up a new one based on a VM image and that way all devs are using the same setup. Also means everything is backed up properly. Another one I've read about would be a single dev VM, where each dev gets a folder full of projects they map to their local drive, and any other dev could see the project by going to `http://thedevbox/developer_name/project_name`. I dislike this approach though, as I would not be able to play around with the server stack if I wanted/needed too. What setups to you use at your job?"}
{"_id": "191794", "title": "Which iOS developer account should I sign up for", "text": "I am currently working on an app for a local hospital. The hospital wants a rough version of my app to test on their employees before committing to full application development. I am currently enrolled in the iOS developer program but I don't know if I can use this account to push a rough draft to about 40 different devices, I'm afraid the app may get rejected. I have no experience with the enterprise program and I don't want to spend an additional $300 unless its absolutely necessary."}
{"_id": "148458", "title": "Manage query strings in JDBC methods", "text": "I am trying to find out which is the best practice when organising the `PreparedStatement` strings in a application which uses JDBC to connect to the database. Usually this is the way I retrieve the data from the database:               PreparedStatement select = null;     String prepQuery = \"SELECT * FROM user JOIN details ON user.id = details.user_id WHERE details.email = ? AND details.password = ?\";     select = con.prepareStatement(prepQuery);     select.setString(1, email);     select.setString(2, pass);     ResultSet result = select.executeQuery();     // Handle the result.      This is a method which retrieves a user entity using the email and a password. For all my methods this is how I save the query strings. The first drawback which comes to mind is that this is quite messy and difficult to manage if I'm changing the SQL provider (Maybe if I would place all the queries in a Constants file would be a better solution). Furthermore JPA offers tools like `@NamedQuery` which is said to improve the performance of the application. Is there a best practice when it comes to organising the query strings in an application using JDBC. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "148459", "title": "When should one consider learning a framework?", "text": "I have recently started to learn PHP and while reading through a bunch of different articles and questions posted on Stack Exchange I noticed everyone recommends learning a framework. While I am up for the task and already selected Zend as the framework I will start learning at some point, I have only just scratched the surface when it comes to PHP and from what I know one should have some experience in a language before learning a framework. I want to learn the language the right way since I want to get a job as a PHP developer (I already know HTML, CSS, Javascript). At the moment my knowledge of PHP is limited to it's syntax, OOP, cookies, sessions and form validation. I have also developed a blog which contains a search panel, login system and a forum. What I want to know is how much experience with core PHP should I have before starting to learn Zend? In what parts of PHP should I concentrate my efforts to become a good developer? I remember when I started learning Javascript I didn't pay enought attention to the language itself and went directly to jQuery, something that didn't go very well for me on the long run I don't want to make the same mistake again. I have found a similar question here but it didn't seem to answer my question."}
{"_id": "215165", "title": "REST partial bad request", "text": "I'm implementing a REST method that allows you to post a list of items. If all data is correct I obviously return a 201 and if all data is incorrect a 400. What would be an appropriate response code if some items are correct and others are not?"}
{"_id": "195483", "title": "how to expose certain tables of an internal database on a public site", "text": "I have an internal database at my work. At the moment we are using excel to import data, but this is very error prone, so I would like to replace this with some javascript based application which exposes some of the data in lookup tables in dropdown menus, for our customers to fill in, on a public website. So my internal database lives on an internal server not viewable by the public. How should I go about building an application that communicates with the internal database, and only exposes certain tables? Is some middleware like Django, that rather than using an SQL database uses some other way of getting the lookup values (I have a REST interface set up on the main database). (To clarify, I am looking for a server side technology that I can put on a public facing server, that will communicate with the internal server)."}
{"_id": "195480", "title": "What is the best approach for overriding fields in a database?", "text": "I have a database that contains projects and each project contains many samples. I want a project level threshold value, to trigger highlighting when a field on the sample is above this threshold. I also want to be able to override the threshold at the individual sample level. So I can see two ways to implement this:   1. keep the threshold field (only) on the sample, and trigger this to get filled in when the project is saved.    2. have both sample and project level threshold fields, and only use the sample field when it is relevant (there seems to be some redundancy with this model, though it more accurately represents the situation)? Are there advantages / problems with either approach?"}
{"_id": "152868", "title": "Does groovy call partial application 'currying'?", "text": "Groovy has a concept that it calls 'currying'. Here's an example from their wiki: `def divide = { a, b -> a / b }` `def halver = divide.rcurry(2)` `assert halver(8) == 4` My understanding of what's going on here is that the right hand argument of `divide` is being bound to the value 2. This seems like a form of partial application. The term currying is usually used to mean transforming a function that takes a series of arguments into a function that only takes one argument and returns another function. For example here is the type of the `curry` function in Haskell: `curry :: ((a, b) -> c) -> (a -> (b -> c))` For people who haven't used Haskell `a`, `b` and `c` are all generic parameters. `curry` takes a function with two arguments, and returns a function that takes `a` and returns a function from `b` to `c`. I've added an extra pair of brackets to the type to make this more clear. Have I misunderstood what's going on in the groovy example or is it merely misnamed partial application? Or does it in fact do both: that is to say convert `divide` into a curried function and then partially apply `2` to this new function."}
{"_id": "161812", "title": "Is it ever too early to learn a new language?", "text": "Personal context: I've been learning C++ formally the last 6 months at university. Prior to this I dabbled in JavaScript for a year. Now I am considering learning Python during a month off school. By splitting my focus early in the learning process am I degrading the efficiency of my learning? Should I spend the month off continuing in C++? Or is it never too early to learn a new language?"}
{"_id": "161811", "title": "Is it worth converting a Django project to Rails?", "text": "I have a project I shelved a while back- it was essentially a working web app built in django but I stopped working on it to work on something else. I plan on starting it up again in my spare time, but I'm wondering if it's worth converting a django project with about 5kloc to Rails. I'm considering this because I've been told that it'll be easier for other people to work on and easier to work on myself. I don't have any ruby or rails experience: is it worth learning ruby, rails and then converting my django project to Rails? I understand it's a bit of a loaded / language war kind of question but would appreciate any input."}
{"_id": "166842", "title": "How to learn programming from very basic level to advanced level?", "text": "I know many programming languages ,skills and concepts in very basic, such as PHP, Java, Object-oriented technology. Using PHP, I can build a simple website with CRUD, login function. Using Java, I can make an basic swing csv/plain text editor in which user can switch between 2 different views. In term of object-oriented Technology, I clearly understand what encapsulation, inheritance and Polymorphism are I want to know more about programming. Sometimes I \"google\" some of the topics I am interested at , the more I see on the internet, the more I feel I am a small potato in the world ( indeed I am ). The codings/concepts are difficult to understand. I lacks confidence right now so I am asking this question :( What is the best way to learn programming to advanced level? Just buy a book and read it page to page? Thanks for any helps"}
{"_id": "216538", "title": "Looking for monotonically increasing (integer) hash function", "text": "I'm looking for a `HashFunction(X,Y: Integer): Integer` that is monotonically increasing on X, then Y. So:   HashFunction(x1,y1) > HashFunction(x2,y2) if x1>x2   HashFunction(x,y1) > HashFunction(x,y2) if y1>y2 Does such an animal exist? Background: This question arises from a comment on   How to create single integer index value based on two integers where first is unlimited?"}
{"_id": "162546", "title": "Why the overhead when allocating objects/arrays in Java?", "text": "How many bytes an array occupies in Java? Assume It's a 64bit machine and also assume there are N elements in an array, so all these elements would take up 2*N, 4*N or 8*N bytes for different types of array. And a lecture in Coursera says that it would occupy 2*N+24, 4*N+24 or 8*N+24 bytes for a N element array and the 24 bytes is called overhead, but didn't explain why the overhead is needed. Also objects have overheads, which is 16 bytes. What exactly are these overheads? What are these 24/16 bytes composed of? Also, do these overheads only exist in Java? How about C, C++ and Python?"}
{"_id": "45627", "title": "How to refactor while keeping accuracy and redundancy?", "text": "Before I ask this question I will preface it with our environment. My team consists of 3 programmers working on multiple different projects. Due to this, our use of testing is mostly limited to very general black box testing. Take the following assumptions also:   * Unit Tests will eventually be written but I'm under **_strict orders to refactor first_**   * Ignore common **Test-Driven Development** techniques when given this environment, my time is limited.   * I understand that if this were done **_correctly_** , our team would actually **_save_** money in the long-term by building Unit-Tests before hand. I'm about to refactor a fairly large portion of the code that is critical. While I believe my code will accurately work when done and after our black box testing, I realize that there will be new data that the new code might not be able to handle. What I wanted to know is how to keep old code that functions 98% of the time so that we can call those subroutines in case the new code doesn't work properly. Right now I'm thinking of separating the old code in a separate class file and adding a variable to our config that will tell the program which code to use. Is there a better way to handle this? NOTE: We do use revision control and we have archived builds so the client could always revert to a previous build, but I would like to see if there is a decent way of doing this besides reverting. I want this so they can use the other new functionality delivered in the new build. Edit: While I agree I will need to write Unit Tests for this, I don't believe I will capture everything with them. I'm looking for ways to easily be able to revert to the old, functional code should anything happen. While I know this is a poor practice, I'm planning on removing this code after our team can guarantee that the new code works to the same standards as the old."}
{"_id": "53088", "title": "Multiple classes in a single .cs file - good or bad?", "text": "Is it advisable to create multiple classes within a .cs file or should each .cs file have an individual class? For example:               public class Items     {         public class Animal         {         }              public class Person         {         }              public class Object         {         }     }      Dodging the fact for a minute that this is a poor example of good architecture, is having more than a single class in a .cs file a code smell?"}
{"_id": "7951", "title": "What's a good \"toolset\" of languages, frameworks, and anything else I need as an entry developer?", "text": "I'm a student of computer science but I am only taking entry level web development classes. I'm looking for some out-of-class reading, tutorials, and other ways of learning but I'm not sure what I should start in. What is a good set of programming languages (different paradigms?), frameworks, suggested projects, and maybe even some open-source communities that I should start to look at and start learning? Also, maybe even some books or blogs on development processes in the professional world. I'm looking to start getting in to professional development around the end of college. I understand practicing it will be the best way to learn anything but if I don't know what I should practice, I'm lost at that. :)"}
{"_id": "7959", "title": "The project is almost complete, what can I do to retain interest and not lose focus?", "text": "So I find every project I get involved in, the start is great and I am all gun-ho lets do some coding. Next thing you know, the project is nearing completion, we are refining, testing, revising, waxing the car if you will and I just cannot retain focus. I get to this point and I cannot stop thinking about how to maintain and get the job done. Any comments on how to retain focus as project nears end and you cannot wait for next project?"}
{"_id": "53086", "title": "Are #regions an antipattern or code smell?", "text": "In C# code it allows the #region/#endregion keywords to made areas of code collapsible in the editor. Whenever I am doing this though I find it is to hide large chunks of code that could probably be refactored into other classes or methods. For example I have seen methods that contain 500 lines of code with 3 or 4 regions just to make it manageable. So is judicious use of regions a sign of trouble? It seems to be to me."}
{"_id": "42163", "title": "Do you store mysql exports in your version control tool for reverting to in event of error?", "text": "We run an internal web server with in-house software to run a manufacturing line. When new product features are to be added, either or both of the following occur:   1. changes to the in-house server software may be required to support these - these are for significant changes in functionality, being code drive.   2. changes to the MySQL database for new entries for the part numbers, these are for smaller changes, configurations, changes to already existing values and parameters -- such changes don't require code changes. Ideally we'd want our changes to be here rather than in item 1. Item 1 is version controlled in Subversion, so previous revisions can be referred to for rolling back to in the event of problems introduced in the latest revision. But what about changes to the MySQL database? We have quality processes to ensure that such changes are error-free but there is always a chance that errors can pass through, e.g. mistake in data entry or faults with the code that uses the MySQL corrupting the database etc. We have a automated backup every 6 hours but what if we want more manual defined checkpoints in between these intervals, we could use the same backup system but I wondered if folks here used other methods to store previous states of databases, e.g. exporting the database as a plain text SQL dump -- at least with this method it would be possible to see diffs e.g. in Beyond Compare for trouble shooting. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "212954", "title": "In DOM, why is childNodes defined in the Node interface if only some node types can have childNodes?", "text": "In DOM, why is `childNodes` defined in the `Node` interface if only some node types such as `Element`, `Document` and `DocumentFragement`, can have `childNodes`? Is this considered a good design? In what cases this is admissible? I mean, isn't this like defining a **radius** on an interface Shape even though we know that not every Shape has a radius?"}
{"_id": "198165", "title": "Naming functions that retrieve a value", "text": "I have this personal rule to start all function/method names with a verb. My verb of choice for functions or methods that get a value based on some data structure or object is _get_. I'm wondering if that's a good idea. The good thing about _get_ is that it doesn't really say anything about _how_ that value is being retrieved, just get it. Something like _calculate_ (apart from being awfully long) may be too much information. This applies to both functions and methods, i.e.:               float get_magnitude(Vector2d vector)     {         return sqrt(pow(vector.x, 2), pow(vector.y, 2));     }      or               float Vector2d::get_magnitude() const     {         return sqrt(pow(x, 2), pow(y, 2));     }      On the other hand, I sometimes end up with getter methods for read-only properties. It may make sense to use a more meaningful verb for anything that doesn't just return some property, and may not run in linear time. Is there a case to be made for either approach or is it just a matter of taste?"}
{"_id": "198164", "title": "Is it a good idea to put declaration of protocols for delegates in a private category interface?", "text": "I have a View Controller or a View that implements `delegate` and `dataSource` methods of `UITableView`. These methods are not going to be used outside this class. So is it a good idea to make the declaration of the `UITableViewDataSource` and `UITableViewDelegate` inside the .m file with a private category? _For example_ : Instead of doing this: **MyViewController.h**               @interface MyViewController:UIViewController<UITableViewDataSource,UITableViewDelegate>     {}     @end      I put the declaration in the private category inside as there is no need for other objects to know whether my View Controller uses a TableView or not. **MyViewController.m**               @interface MyViewController()<UITableViewDataSource,UITableViewDelegate>     @end      and Implementation in the .m file being the same in both the cases."}
{"_id": "12279", "title": "Is having your own website important?", "text": "How necessary or important is it? I try to keep a running list of blogs or sites to follow, but a lot of the time I pull up someone's profile and notice _there isn't anything there_. Is it really important? I understand are different levels of programming (from C/C++ system programmers to Rails and even Haskell and J) and not everyone works in a language easily worked with for web based applications. Not everything is web- centric, however with the advent of _many_ popular and sometimes free services I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a majority of programmers to have a personal site."}
{"_id": "52685", "title": "If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed?", "text": "Per the Linux kernel coding style document: > The answer to that is that if you need more than 3 levels of indentation, > you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program. What can I deduce from this quote? On top of the fact that too long methods are hard to maintain, are they hard or impossible to optimize for the compiler? I don't really understand if this quote encourages better coding practice or is really a mathematical / algorithmic sort of truth. I also read in some C++ optimizing guide that \"dividing up a program into more functions improves its design\" is frequently taught in CS courses, but it should be not done too much, since it can turn into a lot of JMP calls (even if the compiler can inline some methods by itself)."}
{"_id": "52681", "title": "Can it be useful to build an application starting with the GUI?", "text": "The trend in application design and development seems to be starting with the \"guts\": the domain, then data access, then infrastructure, etc. The GUI seems to usually come later in the process. I wonder if it could ever be useful to build the GUI first... My rationale is that by building at least a prototype GUI, you gain a better idea of what needs to happen behind the scenes, and so are in a better position to start work on the domain and supporting code. I can see an issue with this practice in that if the supporting code is not yet written, there won't be much for the GUI layer to actually do. Perhaps building mock objects or throwaway classes (somewhat like is done in unit testing) would provide just enough of a foundation to build the GUI on initially. Might this be a feasible idea for a real project? Maybe we could add GDD (GUI Driven Development) to the acronym stable..."}
{"_id": "97482", "title": "Role of linking, object files and executables", "text": "1. For a C or assembly program that does not require any other library, will linking be necessary? In other words, will conversion from C to Assembly and/or from Assembly to an object file be enough without being followed by linking?  If linking is still needed, what will it do, given that there is just one object file which doesn't need a library to link to?   2. Relatedly, how different are object files and executable files, given that in Linux, both have file format ELF?  Are object files those ELF files that are not runnable? Are there some executable files that can be linked to object files? If yes, does it mean dynamical linking of executables to shared libraries?"}
{"_id": "10523", "title": "What are the best tactics for practicing touch typing?", "text": "I've been practicing typing over the past little while, and I'm wondering if there's any tricks to getting further. I started out at ~40 wpm back when I was typing with 6 fingers. It took a little while to learn to use 10 (about a week or so where I was at the ~20 wpm range), but I improved quickly, and I'm now typing at ~65 wpm. That's pretty good, but I seem to have hit a wall there (going from ~40 to ~20 and back up to ~65 took about 3 months of on-and-off practice, but this was 5 months ago and I haven't improved at all since then in terms of accuracy or speed). So far I've been using Klavaro exclusively. Is there anything special you have to practice in order to get into the 80-90wpm range, are there any specific tools I'd need, or does it just take longer to improve at that level? (I'm using a qwerty keyboard, and I don't want to switch to dvorak, but I think I should still be able to crack 80wpm, at least)."}
{"_id": "53552", "title": "If you spot a software bug and fix it, do you tell the client?", "text": "I spotted a bug today in a web application that I develop and maintain for a client. I let the client know that I had spotted a problem and after a short time I fixed it and reported back the full details to them. In cases like these do you always tell your client? Even though it would be possible to fix the problem and tell no one?"}
{"_id": "90132", "title": "Encompassing term for software and data in a system", "text": "I am writing up a description/guide/wiki of an \"open source software framework for the easy integration and utilization of datasets, algorithms, tools, and computing resources\". I feel like software integration framework sounds concise and to the point, but I want to emphasize that it can also independently integrate and process standalone data (i.e. data meaning something like columns of numbers in a text file, even if that particular example isn't technically correct). Also might as well take the chance to learn some new software development nomenclature. So I ask - is there some term that encompasses both data and software in software architecture?"}
{"_id": "152240", "title": "How do I completely-self-study Computer Science?", "text": "Being a completely self taught programmer, I would like it if I could better myself by self-learning the computer science course taught to a typical CS grad. Finding different resources on internet has been easy, there is of course **MIT open course ware** , and there are Coursera courses from Stanford and other universities. There are numerous other open resources scattered around the Internet and some good books that are repeatedly recommended. I have been learning a lot, but my study is heavily fragmented, which really bugs me. I would love If somewhere, I could find a path I should follow and a stack I should limit myself to, so that I can be sure about what **_essential_** parts of computer science I have studied, and then systematically approach those I haven't. The problem with Wikipedia is it doesn't tell you what's essential but insists on being a complete reference. **MIT open course ware** for Computer science and Electrical Engg. has a huge list of courses also not telling you what courses are essential and what optional as per person's interest/requirement. I found no mention of an order in which one should study different subjects. What I would love is to create a list that I can follow, like this dummy one               SUBJECTS                                                        DONE          Introduction to Computer Science                                  *     Introduction to Algorithms                                        *     Discrete Mathematics                        Adv. Discrete Mathematics     Data structures                                                   *     Adv. Algorithms     ...      As you can clearly see, I have little idea of what specific subjects computer science consists of. It would be hugely helpful, even if someone pointed out essential courses from MIT Course ware ( + essential subjects not present at MIT OCW) in a recommended order of study. I'll list the Posts I already went through (and I didn't get what I was looking for there) Computer science curriculum for non-CS major? \\- top answer says it isn't worth studying cse How can a self-taught programmer learn more about Computer Science? \\- points to MIT OCW Studying computer science - what am I getting myself into? Overview of computer science, programming"}
{"_id": "121036", "title": "My Cassandra consultant left me and now I'm thinking about reverting to mysql", "text": "I run a middle size community and some time ago I started to develop social capabilities such as follow, status update, wall etc. For some reason i thought that Cassandra was the right tool for the job so I looked online for a Cassandra developer and I found a very talented one. Unluckily in the midst of the development the dev left (too much jobs) and so I'm here with a very nice class, a very nice demo, but a lot of fears that I won't be able to handle basic things such as compaction, scaling etc. My biggest fear is to go online with all this coolness and then having a site inaccessible for hours or days. The mysql consultant (very talented too) keeps saying me that I should stick with Mysql which I know rather well and in case something's wrong we can manage. In that case I should take the class made for cassandra and abstract it for Mysql. My question is this: Should I find another dev/consultant and stick with Cassandra because for social things it is definitely the best tool for the job, or should I listen to the Mysql consultant and revert to Mysql? About 15k login each day Average 20 actions per user Avg 6 followers x user (These are current statistics, but of course I'd like to increase them as much as possible.)"}
{"_id": "121032", "title": "Piece of code for interview debugging abilities test?", "text": "May be someone has a piece of code, that would work as a test for debugging abilities? We will give ability to use Visual Studio, so it should be hardly solvable by doing manual tracing and show us, that candidate is really good at debugging."}
{"_id": "54683", "title": "What things should be considered in the license etc when you're using some open source projects/ tools in your application", "text": "**What things should be considered in the license etc when you're using some open source projects/ tools** in your application(in my case, specifically a web application/website) ? What are the terms & conditions to look for in the license and in what ways can they impact my future business in technological, financial or any other domains ? In my case I am using several open source tools like some of the Google open source products, some from Apache and several others like that."}
{"_id": "142112", "title": "How to build a good service layer in ASP.NET?", "text": "I have looked through some questions, technologies for building a good service layer but I have some questions regarding this that I need help with. First some information of what I have for requirements. We currently have a number of web applications that talk to each other in a spiderweb looking way (all talking to each other in a confusing way via webservices and database data).   * We want to change this so that all applications go through a service layer where we can work more with cache and encapsulate common functionality and more.    * We want this layer to also have a Web API so that 3rd party clients can consume information from the service.  The problem I see is that if we build the service layer with say MVC4 Web API don't we need to communicate between the application using the webAPI meaning we have to construct URLs and consume JSON/Xml. That does not sound too effective. I assume a better method would be working with entities and WCF to communicate between the application but then we might loose the Web API magic? So the question is if there is a way to consume a service layer as both a Web API (JSON/XML) and as a more backend service layer with entities. If we are forced to use 2 different service layers we might have to duplicate some functionality and other bad things. Hope the question is clear enough and please ask if you need any more information."}
{"_id": "54685", "title": "When should I use the XML data type in SQL Server?", "text": "When should I use the XML data type in Microsoft SQL Server?"}
{"_id": "223801", "title": "Build number when supporting previous version", "text": "I am developing and maintaining a web-based application that's used internally at my job. I am the only developer and so I'm not really using branches; everything happens on the trunk. I do tag releases in Git with the date and time, and I'm starting to transition to using a build number instead of date/time. In the production instance of the app (which is just a tag on the trunk), a bug has been discovered that needs to be fixed ASAP. In the meantime, I've been developing new features, but they're not ready to be distributed. Fixing the bug is easy: check out the tag into a new branch, fix, publish. However, in such a situation, **what should the fix's build number be**? If I follow the existing build strategy of incrementing a serial number, my build numbers will be, e.g.               1234: production     1235: development (with new features)     1236: production fix (doesn't have new features)      which doesn't seem to make sense. Alternately, incrementing the production tag's build number would lead to, e.g.               1234: production     1235: development (new features)     1235: production fix      which defeats the purpose of build numbers (uniquely identify a particular build). Using Git's revision ID is another option, but they're not exactly readable."}
{"_id": "21475", "title": "What would you change about Java if you have a chance?", "text": "After reading this post about C#, it is very interesting to hear what you consider wrong with Java and what would you like to change? I bet on \"call to super|this must be first statement in constructor\"."}
{"_id": "26842", "title": "Best way to work easily with a database in remote programs?", "text": "In Database 101 you learned never to distribute the sensitive database password along with your program, since all a person has to do is reverse engineer the program, find where you actually need the original password for authentication, then echo/print that line. However when you have multiple remote programs that need to talk to a central database, what do you do? My hackish solutions used to involve PHP, tons of `GET` variables, and JSON. I would make a request to the server with a set mode and parameters, then parse the JSON output. It was buggy, not entirely secure (only slowed an attacker down) since I didn't have any registration mechanism, hard to scale, and made all existing ORM's useless. Besides, it was attempting to reinvent SSH or SSL, not something that's too terribly smart. What's the alternative though? What other options are out there that can provide security for the database while making it easy on me?"}
{"_id": "26844", "title": "Is How the Company Makes Its Money One of The Most Important Determining Factors in their work environment, culture, etc", "text": "This is a viewpoint I've started to realize recently about some companies that I have worked for. They had their own software product that they developed in- house but most of the focus was on building an in-person sales team to push their product to businesses throughout the country. I figure that companies that are exclusively \"online\", meaning that their revenue source comes from online transactions where there is no \"face\" of the company to the customer would have a different work culture. Just curious if anyone has worked for both types of companies and notices a difference. I myself am hoping to get more into contract programming and figure that companies that don't have to employ a sales-force and things like that would be more focused on technology and maybe even willing to be flexible on partial telecommute, etc"}
{"_id": "26847", "title": "Best way to transport response data from an AJAX request?", "text": "Some possibilities are JSON, XML, HTML and/or Javascript fragments. The democratic answer to this question is \"it depends on the situation,\" but I am looking for why one may be better than the others."}
{"_id": "243188", "title": "does class reference itself static anti pattern in prism", "text": "I have an application and my desing approach look like this:               class Manager     {         public int State;              static Manager _instance = null;         public static Manager Instance         {             get { return _instance; }             set             {                 if (_instance == value)                     return;                 _instance = value;             }         }              public Manager()         {             State = 0;             Instance=this;         }     }     class Module1     {         public void GetState()         {             Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State);         }     }     class Module2     {         public void GetState()         {             Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State);         }     }     class Module3     {         public void GetState()         {             Console.WriteLine(Manager.Instance.State);         }     }      Manager class already registered in Bootstrapper like :                protected override void ConfigureContainer()      {            base.ConfigureContainer();            Container.RegisterType<Manager>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager());      }      protected override void InitializeModules()      {           Manager man= Container.Resolve<Manager>();      }      Question is do I need to define my manager object as static in its field to be able to reach its state? Or this is anti pattern or bad for performance?"}
{"_id": "26848", "title": "How to deal with project managers who micromanage?", "text": "Perhaps I'm just naive, but when I try to decipher the wall of tasks I'm targeted to do over the course of a week, I just can't help but think whoever builds the project schedule needs to get some remedial training on basic project management. For example, I am assigned 13 tasks today, the shortest lasting .13 days (default time metric in Microsoft Project), and the longest lasting .75 days. I can't help but think that it is blatant micromanagement scheduling projects in sub 10 minute intervals. The effects of management are becoming evident in slipped tasks, resource assignment exceeding capacity by a factor of two at some points in time, and spending more time clearing tasks and figuring out what comes next than actually doing work. How can I convince the project manager to create tasks with larger duration and to see the larger picture? ![Micromanagement == insane schedules?](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pV1TT.jpg)"}
{"_id": "250758", "title": "Word for author, of an add, edit, or delete?", "text": "Supposing I have an SQL table named `websiteArticle` containing articles filed by date under various categories. It has field names `id`, `category`, `date`, `subject`, `body`. As a matter of best practice, I also include `created` which is automatically filled in by the database with the date/time the article was inserted into the table. Also I include in `modified` (date/time) and `modifiedBy` (the `id` from `websiteUser`) which are filled in by the application. I like that, except that sometimes I also have a field for `deleted` which is a date/time that is filled in rather than deleting the record entirely. For brevity I don't want a separate `deletedBy` field. Also it is not needed since we do have a more detailed log in place. However, I do want to log the user who deleted it for convenience, overwriting the reference to the user who modified it. I could replace `modifiedBy` with `user` and update it in whenever the record is `created`, `modified` or `deleted`. Unfortunately `user` is ambiguous, as it could be the assigned `user`, and the record could have been modified by a different `user`. So I have date/time fields `created`, `modified`, `deleted`. I'm wondering what would be the appropriate field name for the user responsible for the same. Something like `author`, except that seems to only apply to `created`. Is there a less ambiguous word that works for all three? I searched the dictionary but didn't turn up any better results."}
{"_id": "187703", "title": "Why Android created emulator rather simulator?", "text": "**From** http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4544588/difference-between-iphone- simulator-and-android-emulator The difference between emulators and simulators is that emulators mimic the software and hardware environments found on actual devices. Simulators, on the other hand, only mimic the software environment; they otherwise have access to all of the host system's hardware resources such as disk space, memory and processor speed. Apple always harps on the importance of device testing because iPhone Simulator does not emulate an iPhone processor, disk drive, memory constraints and whatnot. You hardly ever get memory warnings unless your Mac is struggling to manage resources itself, unless you simulate (again) memory warnings from the Simulator's menu item. Though android emulator emulates the ARM processors and certain hardware, it still doesn't do a good job of matching the CPU performance. Being an emulator it can match Memory consumption well, it can emulate certain simple devices well but fails when the devices gets complicated for example mobile GPU and HW media decoders. And as the emulation logic works on translating each ARM instruction to X86 instruction and executing its a performance hog and by design not cycle accurate. **My Question:** Why Android created emulator rather simulator?"}
{"_id": "187702", "title": "How do I convince my boss (and other devs) to use/consider Unobtrusive JavaScript", "text": "I'm pretty new in our develepors team. I need some strong arguments and/or \"pitfall\" examples, so my boss will finally understand the advantages of Unobtrusive JavaScript, so that he, and the rest of the team, stops doing things like this:               <input type=\"button\" class=\"bow-chicka-wow-wow\"             onclick=\"send_some_ajax(); return false;\" value=\"click me...\" />      and               <script type=\"text/javascript\">          function send_some_ajax()     {       // bunch of code ... BUT using jQuery !!!     }     </script>      I suggested using a pretty common pattern:               <button id=\"ajaxer\" type=\"button\">click me...</button>      and               <script type=\"text/javascript\">          // since #ajaxer is also delivered via ajax, I bind events to document      //  -> not the best practice but it's not the point....          $(document).on('click', '#ajaxer', function(ev) {     var $elem = $(this);     ev.preventDefault();          });      The reason why my boss (and others) do not want to use this approach is that the Event-Inspection in FireBug (or Chrome Dev Tools) isn't simple anymore, e.g. with               <input type=\"text\" name=\"somename\" id=\"someid\" onchange=\"performChange()\">      he can immediately see what function executes on change-event and jump right to it in a **_huge JS file full of spaghetti-code_**. In the case of Unobtrusive JavaScript the only thing he would see is:               <input type=\"text\" name=\"somename\" id=\"someid\" />      and he has no idea whether some events, if any, were bound to this element and which function will be triggered. I was looking for a solution and found it:               $(document).data('events') // or .. $(document).data('events').click      but, this \"approach\" caused it to take \"too long ...\" to find out which function fires on which event, so I was told to stop bind events like that. I'm asking you for some examples or strong advantages or any other kind of suggestions for \"Why we should use UJS\" **UPDATE:** suggestion to \"change the job\" is not an ideal solution. **UPDATE 2:** Ok, _I've not only suggested to use jQuery event-binding, **I did so**._ After I wrote all Event-Delegation, the Boss came to me and asked me, why am I doing event delegation with different approach and approach he **_dind't know_** I mentioned some obvious benefits, like - There are 15 input-fields and all of then have an `onchange` event (not only, some of them have also `onkeyup`) So it's more pragmatic to write this kind of event-delegation ones for ALL input- fields, instead of doing it 15 times, especially if all of the HTML will be rendered with PHP's echo -> `echo '... <input type=\"text\" id=\"someid\" ... />...'`"}
{"_id": "96999", "title": "What's the opposite colour to \"green\" for a native thread?", "text": "Simulated threads are known as \"green threads\" in programming-language-wonk speak. They are compared to \"native threads\" as provided by the operating system, but is there an analogous colour for native threads, and what is it?"}
{"_id": "96994", "title": "How to significantly improve Java performance?", "text": "The team over at LMAX have a presentation about how they were able to do 100k TPS at less than 1 ms of latency. They have backed up that presentation with a blog, technical paper (PDF) and the source code itself. Recently, Martin Fowler published an excellent paper on the LMAX architecture and mentions that they are now able to handle six million orders per second and highlights a few of the steps that the team took to go up another order of magnitude in performance. > So far I've explained that the key to the speed of the Business Logic > Processor is doing everything sequentially, in-memory. Just doing this (and > nothing really stupid) allows developers to write code that can process 10K > TPS. > > They then found that concentrating on the simple elements of good code could > bring this up into the 100K TPS range. This just needs well-factored code > and small methods - essentially this allows Hotspot to do a better job of > optimizing and for CPUs to be more efficient in caching the code as it's > running. > > It took a bit more cleverness to go up another order of magnitude. There are > several things that the LMAX team found helpful to get there. One was to > write custom implementations of the Java collections that were designed to > be cache-friendly and careful with garbage. > > Another technique to reach that top level of performance is putting > attention into performance testing. I've long noticed that people talk a lot > about techniques to improve performance, but the one thing that really makes > a difference is to test it Fowler mentioned that there are several things that were found, but he only mentioned a couple. Are there other architectures, libraries, techniques or \"things\" that are helpful to reach such levels of performance?"}
{"_id": "160031", "title": "Best method to implement a filtered search", "text": "I would like to ask you, your opinion when it comes to implement a filtered search form. Let's imagine the following case:   * 1 Big table with lots of columns   * It might be important to say that this SQL Server You need to implement a form to search data in this table, and in this form you'll have several check boxes that allow you to costumize this search. Now my question here is which one of the following should be the best way to implement the search?   1. Create a stored procedure with a query inside. This stored procedure will check if the parameters are given by the application and in the case they are not given a wildcard will be putted in the query.   2. Create a dynamic query, that is built accordingly to what is given by the application. I am asking this because I know that SQL Server creates an execution plan when the stored procedure is created, in order to optimize its performance, however by creating a dynamic query inside of the stored procedure will we sacrifice the optimization gained by the execution plan? Please tell me what would be the best approach in your oppinion."}
{"_id": "149493", "title": "What's the difference between a marshaller and a serializer?", "text": "...and unmarshalling/deserializing? Wikipedia's explanation leaves me none- the-wiser! I'm a Java programmer, in case the terminology is used differently in different languages."}
{"_id": "229664", "title": "Offload traces into shared memory", "text": "There is a task to trace thread execution activity for posthumous analysis with minimum impact on latency/performance. Stack trace might be not enough to understand the reason of crash. Initially I was going to allocate some memory block for every thread and put circular buffer into it. So there wouldn\u2019t be any data races and I can read contents of these buffers in core dump. But this is not really convenient first of all because sometimes core dump is not available (process is running on machine which I don\u2019t have much access). Keeping everything the same but logging trace messages into shared memory would be slightly better because those buffers will not be lost with application crash and other application (which reads shared buffers - let\u2019s call it trace-server) can provide access to traces after main application crash. Is it a good idea? Although I think it will work but do you think it's feasible to go into all these troubles? Have you seen anybody doing this?"}
{"_id": "209960", "title": "Identity and Access Control in Web API vs WCF", "text": "Our team is looking to introduce Web API, MVC/ASP.NET implementation in our SOA. I am having a hard time trying to wrap my head around the identity and access control it has compared to WCF. WCF has **Windows, X.509, UserName, and WS-Trust** (probably more, but this is what I am familiar with), MVC's Web API seems to only have web application based identity and access control built into it: **Web Forms, Windows, and WS- Federation**. Has anyone made Web APIs using MVC that implements the protocols that WCF has? Should this even be done / am I trying to use Web API in a way it shouldn't be?"}
{"_id": "209962", "title": "Avoiding boilerplate in PHP classes", "text": "I am working on a PHP code and as it grows getting more and more tired of repeating the same standard pattern again and again and again:               class BolerPlate     {         protected $property1;         protected $property2;         ...              public function __construct ($property1, $property2, ...)         {             $this->property1 = $property1;             $this->property2 = $property2;             ...         }     }      So I am re-typing here each property name 4 (!) times just to get the standard setup! In each class! It doesn't look elegant nor DRY to me. And re-typing the same names creates more bug opportunities. I wonder if there is any more elegant way or best practices to get the same setup with a code easier on the eyes :) EDIT. What I have in mind is some sort of factory method where I can supply the list of properties only once each. Or using variable variables and iterate over all properties?"}
{"_id": "255939", "title": "Apache-2.0 CLA incompatible with outbound MIT/BSD/GPLv2 license?", "text": "A few open source projects currently collect Apache-2.0 Contributor License Agreements, but distribute the software under a license such as MIT, BSD, or GPLv2. According to the following chart (from David Wheeler), these licenses are incompatible with the Apache-2.0 License. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DRGMY.png) The FSF explains why Apache-2.0 is incompatible with GPLv2: > Please note that this license is not compatible with GPL version 2, because > it has some requirements that are not in that GPL version. These include > certain patent termination and indemnification provisions. By the same logic, Apache-2.0 is incompatible with permissive licenses such as MIT and BSD, which also lack these patent clauses. The Apache-2.0 CLA is not identical to the Apache-2.0 License, but the patent termination clause appears to be equivalent modulo the roles Contributor->Project versus Project->User. A CLA defines an \"inbound\" license giving certain permissions to the project. If the CLA terms match the outbound license, then it merely formalizes what Red Hat counsel, Richard Fontana, calls \"inbound=outbound\". If the CLA grants _more_ privileges to the project than appear in the outbound license (e.g., Apache-2.0 inbound, GPLv3 outbound), then it becomes a \"maximalist\" CLA, which are considered harmful by folks like Fontana and Bradley Kuhn, due to the asymmetric relationship between project leadership and contributors. But my question is about projects doing the opposite, distributing the software under a license that is _more permissive_ than the CLA. I have been assured that corporate lawyers looked over the CLAs, but I have been unable to get an explanation for why they believe it is okay to combine with the outbound license. **Is anyone aware of a legal theory under which a CLA defining an inbound license that is incompatible with the outbound license would be acceptable?** I think the project may be taking on liability by distributing under terms that they do not have permission for (according to the CLA). Using no CLA at all would be safer for the project due to the \"inbound=outbound\" convention, which could be made explicit via a DCO."}
{"_id": "58563", "title": "Best practice for validating XML messages", "text": "Two systems are communicating via XML messages on a message queue and any received message must be validated for structure, content and business logic before being processed. An XML schema offers validation on structure and content with data type restriction, required fields, choice structures and the like. But this of course only gets me half way there. In a system I am currently working on, we do the remaining validation by deserializing the message to an object structure and validating context with a dedicated code library. The problem is that first of all the validation is in two different places and it overlaps a bit since some validation can be done in both ways, and secondly maintaining the validation code can become tedious. Is there a better way to do this, any best practices or tools out there?"}
{"_id": "24565", "title": "How often should a manager meet with his subordinate who is a team leader?", "text": "Ours is a software concern and we have a team structured like so: manager->team leads->team members. We are following the agile programming model and trying to develop a product in a collaborative fashion. We have daily morning meetings with team members and their team leads to discuss progress and issues. When it comes to TL->Manager, most of the time they do not have items to discuss on a daily basis since TL goals would be for weekly plan and such. Most of the time, we just discuss about resources and it is less technical. I just want suggestions on how the manager & team lead interaction should be and whether the current system we have is fine. Please share your thoughts or ideas."}
{"_id": "24567", "title": "How do I assess whether my expectations to the interviewees are adequate?", "text": "Our company is hiring C++ developers and we have to estimate applicants skills based on resumes and (usually) code samples. I find it problematic to decide whether I'm realistic in my assessments. For example, there was a guy who stated two software development jobs, 5 years of experience total. He claimed that he worked in a project for porting some operating system to new hardware and one of his duties was \"fixing bugs in the operating system\". Then I open the sample and see the following:                char buffer[someSize];      strncpy( buffer, someString, someSize );      obviously this code will not null-terminate the destination once the string is of length equal to or greater than `someSize` and the program might run into undefined behavior. Now my thought goes like this: \"that guy claims he fixed bugs in the operating system code and now he can't properly use a simplest C runtime function... WTF???\" and this motivates me to write a feedback to our HR that he can only qualify for a position right above the entry level. What bothers me I can't get rid of a feeling that I'm being too harsh and demanding. How can I decide if my expectations are realistic or not in such situations?"}
{"_id": "62112", "title": "How do you name \"javascript:\" prefix in inline event handlers?", "text": "In the following code:               <a onclick=\"javascript:alert()\">      how do you name the `javascript:` part? Protocol, pseudo-protocol, scheme, label, prefix? I am only trying to figure out a common name for it, not technically correct term based on what it actually is at the end. So when I say for example \"javascript protocol\" most people would be able understand what I mean. (I need to use this in a documentation)"}
{"_id": "256073", "title": "How to efficiently sort a recursively defined Stack?", "text": "I am trying to implement a recursively defined Stack. Is there any efficient method apart from copying the elements from Stack in array, sorting them and again pushing them on stack? (I know C/C++, Java)               //Stack definition:     Stack     {         E element;         Stack topOfSubStack;     }"}
{"_id": "256071", "title": "SEO Friendly URL In Website", "text": "I want to develop a website in CodeIgniter framework in which I can access any webpage via slug. For example just like WordPress and Magento we can access category page by `www.sitename.com/category_type/category_detailpage` And also we can access that Category_detail directly just by adding its slug after main URI `www.sitename.com/category_detailpage`. How I have to design schema of slug table in database if you have any case study Project Code for this Slug Directory in CodeIgniter then please let me know. I want to manage whole websites slug in only one table. But I haven't clear idea about how I can manage category / subcategory / detailpage in only one table and then how can I access it using slug only? I wants to make my own custom framework in codeigniter so that I can access any page via slug only whether it's category page subcategory page or any single page. How can I achieve that?"}
{"_id": "256078", "title": "Drag and drop model for modelica", "text": "**Is there any way to connect`Modelica` with `JaamSim`?** As I want an open source GUI with drag and drop option for simulation with `Modelica` running in back-end. _I have already tried`SimForge` but there is no drag and drop option in it whereas `JaamSim` has drag and drop option but it doesn't runs Modelica for back-end processing._ I am basically looking for a open source GUI built using JAVA."}
{"_id": "34338", "title": "objects, classes, types", "text": "How does an object oriented programmer understand the word \"type\"? I'm not aware of there being a type theory for object oriented programming because whenever someone mentions type theory it is always in the context of some kind of functional programming language so what does \"type\" mean in the object oriented context?"}
{"_id": "237304", "title": "Persisting type in Java - should I be using flags?", "text": "Is there some specific piece of advice around persist values that indicate type? Specifically I want to know if I should persist a flag/state indicating the type in persistence or not. I get the feeling I'm forgetting/not understanding some core concept of OO or data modelling. Something that's been on my mind for the last while is to consider when to use flags and when not to, and intermixing this idea of recreating objects of some certain type out of persistence. The reason for my concern over flags is that in the software I often create (in-house created corporate software developed with Java), these flags become pieces of information which are hard to maintain and which subsequent developers need to be aware of in order to maintain them (perhaps creating code bloat). So, when I persist my `foo`, should I persist with it some flag that indicates whether it is a `foobar` or a `foobo`? Is there specific advice about this, some gap in my OO-foo or data modelling that I'm forgetting?"}
{"_id": "252984", "title": "How can a statically typed language support duck typing?", "text": "I understand what dynamic and static type systems are, and what duck typing is. But I don't understand how you can have a static language that supports duck typing. To my understanding only a dynamically typed language can support duck typing. This answer from StackOverflow explains that _\"Duck typing is something that is completely orthogonal to static, dynamic, weak, or strong typing.\"_ It gives an example from C++ for duck typing in a statically typed language, but I'm not a C++ programmer and I don't understand it. I'd like an explanation of how it's possible for a static language to support duck typing."}
{"_id": "144619", "title": "What is the best approach to studying TAOCP ", "text": "I have a question what is the best way to study 4 volumes of The Art of computer programming and Hacker delight by Henry S. Warren ? Is there any website that focus on study group that uses TAOCP? I am familiar with C/C++. What are the best books to prepare for the TAOCP? And what is the best way to create a Demo portfolio to ensure employers that I am well versed in TAOCP?"}
{"_id": "237303", "title": "Claim based authorization for application framework?", "text": "I am developing a framework that makes common data management tasks easier for a couple of future applications built on top of it, including document management, data versioning, retention, locking etc. I am currently using .NET, SQL Server and EF Code First. One of the requirements is the ability to flexibly manage access control to the data. It should be easy to declare rules like > \"If a user belongs to a project X, he should be able to access and modify > documents related to this project.\" During my research I came across **claim based access control** which seems to provide the necessary flexibility. I am a bit stunned however by the apparent complexity and not sure if using this would be overkill.   1. As far as I understand, claim based access control is usually used to retrieve the authorization information from an external provider. Does it still make sense to use this if the application manages the access control itself, i.e. the authorization rules are in the same database as the application data? I feel like setting up an external service just for authorization is definitely overkill for our applications.   2. I have found a lot of examples on how to retrieve the authorization with Windows Identity Framework (WIF), but not many on how to implement the authorization and storing of authorization rules.   How difficult would it be to implement something like this with WIF? Are there already any available providers that already use SQL Server to store the authorization information? Or anything in WIF I can simply extend to make this happen? All I found are examples using the application config file. I hope my questions are not too broad. I am rather new to the whole topic claim based access control and trying to determine if it is applicable for my scenario and if so, where to start. **Update** : I tried to narrow the scope of the question down a bit. If this is still considered too broad, I will split it up further. I think however that both questions are closely related and that it makes sense to ask and answer them together."}
{"_id": "144614", "title": "What's the best way to review a code before it's committed to the trunk? (SVN)", "text": "What's the best way to review a code before it's committed to the SVN trunk? One idea that I am thinking of is to having the developer to commit his code to a branch and then reviewing his code while merging the branch revisions into the trunk. Is this a good practice? If not, what else could be done to review a code before it's committed to the trunk?"}
{"_id": "143647", "title": "How to set-up a simple subversion workflow", "text": "I am trying to set-up a simple SVN workflow at home. I am new to subversion (and programming) so I have been reading the official PDF documentations but still not sure about how to set-up my repository. I am working mainly with python, bash and rsl (Renderman Shading Language) So I already have a /dev structure on my disk as this: ![/dev structure](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Zy9no.png)   * http://imageshack.us/f/708/devstructure.png/ And I have a /site structure that links to my /dev folder: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/i82P0.png)   * http://imageshack.us/f/651/sitestructure.png/ So obviously starting to use SVN will change this approach that I already have in place. The question is when I am setting-up my SVN repository for the work I do in my /dev folder: **Will I set-up a separate repository for each different programming platform?** and **Where exactly I should be placing my repository?** Thanks."}
{"_id": "179495", "title": "Can publicly accessible code be closed source?", "text": "Is it possible, legally, for code to be publicly available online, but have copyright protection?"}
{"_id": "175773", "title": "Play 2 with Scala or Java?", "text": "I want to develop a big personal project using Play 2 Framework. I am expert with Java language but it seems, with the few articles I read that Play 2 works perfectly and especially with Scala. I've never worked with Scala but I already learned concept as closures, functional programming etc... Learning it would be interesting. I am really motivated for but I wonder if there are some people who have started coding with Play2/Java and have changed for Play2/Scala that could explain their major concrete advantages."}
{"_id": "144611", "title": "BSD Software license usage", "text": "We are a company and we want to use 30% of the BSD opensource software to plug and play it with our source code, can we do that. Further this program will not be distributed and only will be accessed by our clients using our own software. Is it possible for us to do the above without any restrictions. Kindly give me feedback on the above soon as possible."}
{"_id": "179490", "title": "What are some non-MS languages that can write xlsx (Excel 2007+) documents efficiently?", "text": "Unfortunately, Excel format is required for the project I am working on. I have no problems getting the data I need in objects and arrays, and currently PHPExcel is doing handling the document generation. It works, but it's slow and loopy. Was wondering if there is a more efficient server language to generate Excel documents (not CSVs). This is a pure Linux environment so I need to stay away from .NET. I am open to any programming language that does it cleanly and efficiently."}
{"_id": "222009", "title": "Interacting with multiple localized webservices", "text": "I'm having trouble managing multiple web services that each have a slightly different list of supported languages For example, say we support English, Chinese, and French in our web service using the typical ISO language and country codes and we call out to two different services, **A** and **B**. If someone comes in with a Spanish locale, we fall back to English which is fine and dandy since everyone supports English. However, **A** only supports English and Chinese so when a customer comes in with French, we need to know to fall back to English for that request (while still using French internally). **B** , on the other hand, does support all three but splits Chinese into two: Traditional and Simplified. It would be nice to perform that same split internally (more specific is usually better), but **A** only recognizes the non-split code so we'd have to keep track of both anyway. Right now we have a separate database table with a list of mappings from one combination to the other for each webservice we call, but that's definitely not scalable. Soon we will need to add another mapping table for a service we discovered has weird behavior for Indonesian (instead of falling back to a sane working default, they give us a pretty little 404) and I'd like to see if there's a better strategy out there than multiple mapping tables."}
{"_id": "35063", "title": "How do you update your production codebase/database schema without causing downtime?", "text": "What are some techniques for updating a production server's code base / database schema without causing any downtime?"}
{"_id": "197242", "title": "Best practice to sort then reverse, or write \"backwards\" comparator?", "text": "I wrote a comparator for a custom class of mine and when I ran my code I realised the output of my list of these objects was in the reverse order as to what I wanted. It was \"ascending\" as opposed to \"descending\". This was because I stuck to the spec of compare where a return value of less than 0 means the other object is less than this and so on. To fix this I called the reverse method on my list, but I could've also changed the compare method so that it returns greater than 0 where the other object is less than this. What is seen as the standard for this case and why?"}
{"_id": "197241", "title": "Writing a Compiler Compiler - Insight on Use and Features", "text": "> This is part of a series of questions which focuses on the sister project to > the Abstraction Project, which aims to abstract the concepts used in > language design in the form of a framework. The sister project is called > OILexer, which aims to construct a parser from grammar files, without the > use of code injection on matches. > > Some other pages associated to these questions, related to structural > typing, can be viewed here, and ease of use, found here. The meta-topic > associated to an inquiry about the framework and the proper place to post > can be found here. I'm getting to the point where I'm about to start extracting the parse tree out of a given grammar, followed by a Recursive Descent parser which uses DFA to discern forward paths (similar to ANTLR 4's LL(*)), so I figured I'd open it up to get insight. ### In a parser compiler, what kinds of features are ideal? So far here is a brief overview of what's implemented:   1. Templates   2. Look ahead prediction, knowing what's valid at a given point.   3. Rule 'Deliteralization' taking the literals within rules and resolving which token they're from.   4. Nondeterministic Automata   5. Deterministic Automata    6. Simple lexical state machine for token recognition   7. Token automation methods:      * Scan - useful for comments: Comment := \"/*\" Scan(\"*/\");     * Subtract - Useful for Identifiers: Identifier := Subtract(IdentifierBody, Keywords);        * Ensures the identifier doesn't accept keywords.     * Encode - Encodes an automation as a series X count of base N transitions.        * UnicodeEscape := \"\\\\u\" BaseEncode(IdentifierCharNoEscape, 16, 4);          * Makes a unicode escape in hexadecimal, with hex 4-transitions. The difference between this and: [0-9A-Fa-f]{4} is the resulted automation with Encode limits the allowed set of hexadecimal values to the scope of IdentifierCharNoEscape. So if you give it \\u005c, the encode version will not accept the value. Things like this have a serious caveat: Use sparingly. The resulted automation could be quite complex. What isn't implemented is CST generation, I need to adjust the Deterministic automations to carry over the proper context to get this working. For anyone interested, I've uploaded a pretty printed of the **original form of the T *y\u266f project**. Each file should link to every other file, I started to link in the individual rules to follow them, but it would've taken far too long (would've been simpler to automate!) If more context is needed, please post accordingly. **Edit 5-14-2013** : I've written code to create GraphViz graphs for the state machines within a given language. Here is a GraphViz digraph of the AssemblyPart. The members linked in the language description should have a rulename.txt in their relative folder with the digraph for that rule. Some of the language description has changed since I posted the example, this is due to simplifying things about the grammar. Here's an interesting graphviz image."}
{"_id": "165120", "title": "Separation versus Segregation", "text": "The term \"segregation\" is used in the CQRS pattern. What's the difference between segregation versus separation in this case?"}
{"_id": "188144", "title": "Condition coverage for If(A && B) - measuring the input or code exercised?", "text": "I have been studying condition coverage for last few days. In a book \"The Art of Software Testing\" they highlight that it does not assure decision coverage, because for example > IF(A && B) `A=True, B=false` and `A=False,B=True` satisfies the condition coverage but the decision is always `False`. I wonder, how can this satisfy the coverage? The `True` value of `B` will actually never be tested because of short circuiting so how it can satisfy the coverage?"}
{"_id": "197245", "title": "Naming the project containing only interfaces", "text": "I've extracted interfaces from my repository classes, like ICustomerRepository, IProductRepository and so on. The project which contains the repositories is named X.DataAccessLayer. Should I call the project with the interfaces X.DataAccessLayerInterfaces, or what is better? And I definitely have to keep the interfaces in a separate project (I have 2 projects with implementations of these interfaces)."}
{"_id": "145645", "title": "Do records showing the daily work of programmers exist?", "text": "Are there screencasts on the Internet showing screens of programmers that decided to record their daily work and show their programming style? I'm interested in seeing how other programmers effectively use tools like an editor with various features, debugger, looking for bugs, profiler etc. Maybe such \"crazy programmers\" exist that record everything they do and in the evening they realize that they did great mental job very efficiently and have the record, can additionally comment their intents which they still remember and share their effective hacks and coding style with other programmers. Is there such a resource for learning (doesn't matter if free or payable)? One particular portal or company which is focusing on this particular type of training and is leading in this area is sufficient for the answer."}
{"_id": "143399", "title": "Learning functional programming", "text": "This question is similar to Choosing a functional programming language. I want to learn functional programming but I am having troubles choosing the right programming language. At the university I studied Haskell for 2 months, so I have a basic idea of what a functional language is. I have read a lot that functional programming change your way of think. I started to take a look to Clojure, which I like for several reasons(code as data, JVM, etc). What stops me from continue learning Clojure is that it is not a pure functional language and I am afraid of ending up using imperative/OO style. Should I learn Haskell or keep on learning Clojure? Thanks in advance P.D: I am open to any other language."}
{"_id": "221103", "title": "What is the significance of the output of Function Point analysis", "text": "I am a beginner in Software Engineering principles. This question have only academic significance. I read about Function Point analysis.We will be getting an integer value as output for Function Point analysis. What all things can be inferred from that output? I know that it is an estimation technique. But couldn't understand how to read that output"}
{"_id": "67895", "title": "How should I design a PHP class autoloader?", "text": "I have a fairly simple folder structure where the main classes are in a folder, and any classes used by those classes are in a subfolder with the same name as that class.               /exampleClass.php     /exampleClass/usedByExampleClass.php      I am trying to come up with a simple autoloader for this naming convention. So far, my idea is to use underscores in the class name wherever there might be a forward slash in the class path. This way I can simply replace all underscores with forward slashes in the autoloader, and load the class file. This means that the class name found in file:               /exampleClass/usedByExampleClass.php      would be:               exampleClass_usedByExampleClass      These class names end up being very long however, and I would like to shorten them while still having a simple autoloader for this folder structure. Any ideas or thoughts on how to achieve both short class names and a simple autoloader for this folder structure?"}
{"_id": "143391", "title": "Teaching programming (languages) in central/northern Europe", "text": "I hope this question is not going to be off-topic; in case you think there'd be a better place to ask it, please let me know. Anyway, I'm currently doing my PhD working in bioinformatics. I would, however, like to turn away from academia eventually and instead go into teaching programming or, preferably, programming languages (e.g. Perl, which feels like my \"mother tongue\"...) - not as a school teacher, but with a company (in Germany or Scandinavia). It'll take me another one to one and a half years to complete my PhD, so I would like to know how I could/should use that time to raise my chances of getting into the profession I'd be interested in. Are there any Perl certificates I should aim to obtain, for example? In case there's anything that comes to mind when reading this, please let me know. Thanks a lot in advance!"}
{"_id": "143393", "title": "XML: Multiple roots + text content outside the root. Does anyone do it?", "text": "I have another one of those \"is it done in XML\" questions (my last one about xml comments hasn't been answered if anyone has a good explanation) I was just wondering if anyone, anywhere would:   1. Use multiple `root` elements in an XML document   2. Put text content outside of a `root` element W3C discourages these practices, Javascript's `DOMParser` doesn't even allow these cases, and I can't think of one sane reason to do either of these things. However, I know how bizarre some implementations of XML have been, so I wouldn't be surprised. Does anyone have any real world examples where this would be done? I will also accept an answer that specifies if other mainstream parsers allow doing either of these."}
{"_id": "129368", "title": "How can I license networked applications?", "text": "I have five applications residing on servers. Some of these applications are socket (C/C++) based, others are web based (Java, PHP). I need to give licenses to these applications on the basis of the number of users that can access, the type of functionalities and type of users. What kind of business model should I use? I have a few in mind:   1. Create a java webservice that will be mounted on a license data, and all the servers will communicate with it when a user logs in any of the above applications.   2. Do a socket based server.   3. Mount a lisence file on each server and make each one communicate with its file individually and act as the license rules. If you have other solutions please shoot."}
{"_id": "130439", "title": "Agile unified process vs. agile lifecycle process", "text": "I wanted to know the difference between agile lifecycle and agile unified process(AUP). I do understand that AUP is a modified version of RUP using agile methodology. Can you please elaborate on the differences between the two"}
{"_id": "126350", "title": "Long File Extensions: Why Not", "text": "I'm finishing up my app for iPad, and the file extension (used mostly so that Mail and Dropbox know what program to open the files in) is 12 characters long. The only file extension that is anywhere near as long is `tax2010`. Why is there so little variation on this topic, and **what kind of problems can I expect by using a long file extension for my app?** These files will be mailed, copied, and shared*. In all tests, it works perfectly. * I hope."}
{"_id": "187201", "title": "Codeigniter modular separation with Phing", "text": "I am thinking of managing a product source I am doing using Codeigniter + HMVC. Right now my folder structure is something like this:               application       |-modules           |-module1           |  |--controllers           |  |--models           |  |--views           |-module2           |  |--controllers           |  |--models           |  |--views     assets       |-themes          |-default            |-module1            |  |-- module1 theme files            |-module2            |  |-- module2 theme files      I am thinking of cleaning this up and making the modules self contained at development time, like this               application      |-- this will only contain the core files ()      |--modules (an empty directory OR core modules)     modules       |-module1       |  |-controllers       |  |-models       |  |-themes       |  |  |-default       |  |  |  |-module1 default theme files       |  |-assets       |  |  |-css (css files for just this module)       |  |  |-js (js files just for this module)       |-module2       |--//same as above      And then use Phing to build the project during which, the modules will be copied to respective folders, css files and js files will be minified (SCSS compiled) and images copied to respective folders. This looks great for deploying changes, but I think it will just increase development time, as every time I make any changes, I will have to build even to see it in development. Have any one used this approach to development using CI? or even better? I want to keep my core core more trackable and separate the modules for better version controlling, as I will be able to add those modules to the project as sub projects."}
{"_id": "114085", "title": "working on open source project is bad from a programmer view?", "text": "I am working in a software company where we are mostly working on websites which are based on open source like dotnetnuke or `nopcommerce` or any other and i am totally bored with all this as there is no scope for doing something new as most of the code is already done in these open source i know the open source are good for company as they save their time and earn more money but working on open source project is bad from a programmer view ? i learn some good things from these open source also...like entity framework from `nopcommerce` 1.9"}
{"_id": "253167", "title": "How come centralized source control solutions don't do branching in place", "text": "With centralized source control like Perforce and SVN, when they create a branch, they create a whole new directory. However, git and other distributed source control solutions, in my experience, are able to update the branch in place as it were. That is, they apply the differences between the two branches to the files. This seems to me to be the far superior option as it saves huge amount of duplication for large projects, quicker to switch branches etc... What is the reason for this? I can't see any reason why there being a centralized authority affects the clients ability to diff the two branches and modify the changes."}
{"_id": "240729", "title": "How to handle asynchronous calls in an offline application", "text": "I'm using an offline application's javascript API and I'd like to know if I can use deferred objects to handle the callbacks. The API calls do not use HTTP, the calls are to and from the applications local database. The only way I've been able to display information is by using 'setTimeout' on subsequent calls, which I know, is terrible! So I have a long list of callbacks and timeouts.               var jsObj = {};     var anotherObj = {};          //first async call     methodName(\"arg1\", jsObj, callback);          function callback(result){            jsObj[\"data\"] = result;          }          //second async call     setTimeout(function(){methodName(\"arg1\", anotherObj, callback2);}, 200);          function callback2(result){            jsObj[\"data\"] = result;          }          //wait     setTimeout(function(){            $(\"#content\").html(JSON.stringify(jsObj));          },300);      Is there anyway to refactor this? Any advice is appreciated. I've looked at the following post, but I'm not sure it would work. I'm aware I can create custom deferred objects (jQuery), but altering the API to use this or any other method of promise objects seems unrealistic."}
{"_id": "253163", "title": "How do you guard against hidden overflows", "text": "consider the following:               (i+j)/2      i and j are both 32 bit integers and the result should also be. But in the little equation, there's a hidden overflow, i+j could become larger then a 32 bit integer even though the result would always be a 32 bit integer.               public class Sum{          public static void main(String []args){             int i = 2147483647;             int j = 2147483647;                                    System.out.println((i + j)/2);          }     }      Gives me -1 as a result. How do you guard against situations that can overflow but are not always obvious. Is there a pattern that describes this? (apart from declaring everything long) I'm looking for a general answer, the java example is just to provide an example, my Delphi does the same."}
{"_id": "253161", "title": "Doesn't an event bus affect global state?", "text": "\"Minimize mutable global state\" is a more or less accepted program design principle. The reason often cited is that having global state can affect two components that don't are seemingly unrelated. In other words, a component mutating global state would have no idea who else it is effecting since it doesn't know what other component has a dependency on that global state. Tangentially, a pattern that is often recommended for building decoupled software is the event bus pattern where a component capable of generating events broadcasts it over a bus and components interested in certain events subscribe on the same bus to receive said events. My question is - doesn't the argument that holds for global state hold in the case of event bus too? After all, when broadcasting an event, I have no idea who else I am breaking since I have no way to know what other components are listening for it. Further, just as in the case with global state, reading the code might not make the dependencies of components on a certain even clear at the site of broadcast either. The only difference between the two that I can think of is that an event is a _transient_ state versus global state in the form of static variables or shared objects, that might be persistent."}
{"_id": "16", "title": "Do dynamic typed languages deserve all the criticism?", "text": "I have read a few articles on Internet about programming language choice in the enterprise. Recently many dynamic typed languages have been popular, i.e. Ruby, Python, PHP and Erlang. But many enterprises still stay with static typed languages like C, C++, C# and Java. And yes, one of the benefits of static typed languages is that programming errors are caught earlier, at compile time, rather than at run time. But there are also advantages with dynamic typed languages. (more on Wikipedia) The main reason why enterprises don't start to use languages like Erlang, Ruby and Python, seem to be the fact that they are dynamic typed. That also seem to be the main reason why people on StackOverflow decide against Erlang. See Why did you decide \"against\" Erlang. However, there seem to be a strong criticism against dynamic typing in the enterprises, but I don't really get it why it is **that** strong. Really, why is there so much criticism against dynamic typing in the enterprises? Does it really affect the cost of projects that much, or what? But maybe I'm wrong."}
{"_id": "18", "title": "Which (programming) specialities are needed in a good web development team?", "text": "At first glance, I'd say a good programming team needs to understand the following matters:   * The details of the core language / framework   * HTML, (asynchronous) javascript   * SQL / data model   * Usability / UI design   * Security   * Project management. If this team is not complete: what is needed?"}
{"_id": "150837", "title": "Maybe monad vs exceptions", "text": "I wonder what are the advantages of `Maybe` monad over exceptions? It looks like `Maybe` is just explicit (and rather space-consuming) way of `try..catch` syntax. **update** Please note that I'm intentionally _not_ mentioning Haskell."}
{"_id": "73610", "title": "How to teach your users/customers to send better error descriptions", "text": "I often have to deal with customers or users which are reporting errors in applications. Most of the time their content is something useless as   * ERROR!!!   * x does not work without much more information. For resolving the issue I have to request every single detail of them, which often is more time consuming than fixing the issue itself. Other send information in formats which are not ideal, like screenshots (of data records, **not** of errors) although they could send a link (we have access to the systems) and so on. How do you tell your users/customers to describe the problems with more details so that the whole process could be easier for both sides? ### edit This question is more about the social skills, than how to achieve programmatic collection of logs and error information. I'm aware of the fact that this should be part of good software design."}
{"_id": "73611", "title": "How to avoid being overwhelmed when doing code review?", "text": "I'm pretty new to code review, and I feel often overwhelmed by incoming changes. I mean when there are serious code changes, coming from several developers I tend to accept everything without reviewing the whole, especially when I have lots of stuff to finish up. What are the techniques to help in being efficient in this area ?"}
{"_id": "73617", "title": "Does compliance to WCAG 1 AA prevent the use of Javascript?", "text": "I have read the WCAG documentation and I am confused. Does compliance to WCAG 1 AA preclude the use of Javascript?"}
{"_id": "92199", "title": "Punishing users for insecure passwords", "text": "I'm thinking about limiting the rights of users who choose insecure passwords (insecurity of a password being determined by length, how many types of characters (upper/lower case, numbers, symbols, etc.) are used, and whether it can be located in a rainbow table) to limit how much damage their account can do if compromised. I don't have an application for this idea yet, but say I'm writing a forum or something: Users who use 1234 as a password might have to fill out a captcha before posting, or be subject to rigorous anti-spam measures such as timeouts or Bayesian filters rejecting their content. If this forum is very hierarchical, allowing for \"promotion\" to moderators or whatever by some means, this would either stop them from gaining privileges at all or telling them they have privileges, but not letting them exercise them without a change to a more secure password. Of course this couldn't be the only measure of security, but it might go well next to otherwise good security practices. What do you think? Is this just overdoing it, stealing focus away from more important security practices, or is it a good way to limit risk and encourage users to use safer passwords (and hopefully convince people you are using good security practices)?"}
{"_id": "187903", "title": "how easy is html/css?", "text": "many people say that html/css is something easy, it looks easy at first sight but when i worked on some projects i noticed that :   * same value works differently depending on other properties and on the targeted element.   * we need to know default values that browser affect to every property in every element.   * we can't be sure how the page will be rendered until we test, even if we are experts.   * we can't say we really know html/css until we know the algorithm used by the rendering engine and it's a huge responsibility for the engine to work with such complicated recursive layout. shortly, i have worked on desktop & web development for about 3 years and i have never seen such complicated thing to learn (html/css) **question :** Is html/css really hard to master ?"}
{"_id": "74044", "title": "Best approach for bidding a project", "text": "We basicly have project that always turn around the same pattern. But, it sometime happens that we have project that go absolutly at the opposite of what we usualy do. It become now more difficult to bid and give this bidding to a potential client. In harder case, there's sometime things which look _very_ difficult to do and we just don't have an idea of how much time it could take... We also (for sure) want to take as less possible time to bid this knowing that we should maybe never get the project. So, my questions are;   * On what you base your time?    * What are the factors to consider (I know it's a bit hard as you don't see the base informations).    * Is there any tools that can help? To wrap it all, is there a better way to do it and if yes, what is this way?"}
{"_id": "165781", "title": "Should coding standards be enforced by the continuous integration server?", "text": "Should coding standards/style be enforced by the continuous integration server running static analysis tools (ex. PMD, StyleCop/FxCop) and failing the build if the standards are not followed? What types of rules should not be used to fail the build?"}
{"_id": "32593", "title": "Value of Internationalization in the iPhone App store?", "text": "I have several iOS/iPhone apps that have been continually selling in small amounts in over 2 dozen different countries, even though the app UIs and all the store descriptions are only in English. In a few countries where English is not the official or native language, a few apps are selling far better than is proportionate for those country's population size compared with the U.S. So why Internationalize apps? What kind of increase, if any, in sales might a typical app see if it is Internationalized into given local languages? Which major languages might be likely to see the greatest improvement in app sales or downloads due to a localized app description?"}
{"_id": "198986", "title": "Maturity User Guide, Documentation and Ease-of-learning PHP-framework", "text": "I'm at the very start of a longtime running project with continual development. Because of that I'm hoping to make a good decision in which Framework will be right for this. Previously I've worked with Codeigniter. A plusside is the huge community with a great User Guide. A few of the downsides are the backwards compatibility with PHP4 which holds it back and (therefor) the lack of OOP. Because of that, I'm considering the use of a Framework like Kohana or Yii. I'm writing 'considering' because I'm not sure that the User Guide, Documentation is sufficient for us. My question is not to start a blog-like upside / downside comparison. My question is whether or not you have experienced drawbacks from a more or less imcomplete User Guide, Documentation like Kohana or Yii."}
{"_id": "196112", "title": "In functional programming, are local mutable variables with no side effects still considered \"bad practice\"?", "text": "Is having mutable local variables in a function that are only used internally, (e.g. the function has no side effects, at least not intentionally) still considered \"non functional\"? e.g. in the \"Functional programming with Scala\" course style check considers any `var` usage as bad My question, if the function has no side effects, is writing imperative style code still discouraged? e.g. instead of using tail recursion with the accumulator pattern, what's wrong with doing a local for loop and creating a _local_ mutable `ListBuffer` and adding to it, as long as the input is not changed? If the answer is \"yes, they are always discouraged, even if there is no side effects\" then what is the reason?"}
{"_id": "98631", "title": "Design flaws and dealing with humiliation from it", "text": "Have you always been fundamentally correct in the software designs you proposed? When you give out some design that was fundamentally wrong, you tend to lose the respect of your fellow team members. No matter what you do after that you end up being crosschecked for everything thing you propose after that incident. This is especially worse when you are new to a team and they don't know your past where you have had some good success stories. Maybe the reason you gave a bad design was because of lack of experience or knowledge or both in that area. How have you who have faced such a situation dealt with it? Is this like a one time thing in your career or does it happen on and off? Does one put this behind or does one in such a situation need to look for a new line of work? Some honest feedback please... Thank you."}
{"_id": "221514", "title": "Is using os.environ to store the value of command line switches pythonic?", "text": "I write CLI-executable Python 3 scripts regularly to do data compilation and some maintenance tasks, and try to adhere to PEP 8 and the Google Python Style Guide when doing so. Google's guide says to avoid using global variables, while PEP 8 offers naming conventions but doesn't really encourage or discourage use of them, so I don't use them. However, I've lately found myself using a \"verbose\" option/switch a lot along with a \"`printv`\" function to use while debugging. It usually looks like this:               def printv(opts, msg, **kwargs):         if opts.verbose: print(msg, **kwargs)      As incredibly lazy as I am, I'd like to make it so I don't need to pass the `opts` argument (which is an `OptionParser` object) to `printv`. The simplest method would be to use a global variable, sure. Another thought I had would be to set a \"VERBOSE\" variable in `os.environ`, since the switch is, conceptually, making a change to the execution environment. Obviously it's counter-intuitive, but is it pythonic?"}
{"_id": "107906", "title": "PHP vs C# performance", "text": "I have a application that is part console application written in C# and part PHP web application. The console application connects to multiple serial devices and reads data pertaining to moisture and temperature in a Grain Dryer. [The application] then stores the information in a MySQL database. The PHP reads the MySQL database and displays the information to the user (simple). I have also written a PHP script to email / sms the user if one of the temperatures of moistures reaches alarm levels (alarm levels are read off the device and stored in the MySQL database). Currently, I post to the PHP page with each \"update\" from the device (10 seconds) and check each value against it's limits. If an alarm is required I send it off and update the database indicating an alarm has been sent. This looks like (pseudo code)               IF moisture IS GREATER THAN moisture_high_critical_limit THEN       IF moisture_high_critical_alarm_has_been_sent IS FALSE THEN         SEND_ALARM();         moisture_high_critical_alarm_has_been_sent = TRUE;       END IF     ELSE IF moisture IS GREATER THAN moisture_high_warning_limit THEN       IF moisture_high_warning_alarm_has_been_sent IS FALSE THEN         SEND_ALARM();         moisture_high_warning_alarm_has_been_sent = TRUE;       END IF     ELSE IF moisture IS LESS THAN moisture_low_critical_limit THEN       IF moisture_low_critical_alarm_has_been_sent IS FALSE THEN         SEND_ALARM();         moisture_low_critical_alarm_has_been_sent = TRUE;       END IF     ELSE IF moisture IS LESS THAN moisture_low_warning_limit THEN       IF moisture_low_warning_alarm_has_been_sent IS FALSE THEN         SEND_ALARM();         moisture_low_warning_alarm_has_been_sent = TRUE;       END IF     END IF      _**The above IF statement is repeated for every temperature and moisture reading from the device, which can be quite a few._** Should this type of processing be happening in my Console application? Then if a Alarm notification is required post to the page only to send the email / SMS? Processing this information in the console application will reduce my total number of handshakes with the MySQL Database. But if the MySQL Database is hosted locally will this have much impact? I will eventually benchmark both (if it seems the doing the processing in the console application is in fact the right approach), however there is a lot of code to port over so I thought I'd come here and ask first."}
{"_id": "220640", "title": "Factory Pattern and/or Dependency Injection?", "text": "I understand the concept and can use both the Factory Pattern and Dependency Injection, however they seem a little at odds with each other conceptually. Is it a case of using one over the other? Or can they be used in conjunction with each other? If using DI would you hard code the creation of classes within a Factory? Wouldn't this defeat the point of DI? As the factory is dependant on the existence of the classes it creates, and thus would need them passed to the factory at runtime when using DI. Or would you pass the classes that the factory is meant to create to the factory is meant to create? If so wouldn't that defeat the point of building a factory in the first place? As the Injector would basically be doing all the work of the factory. Thank you very much for your attention, I look forward to your insights."}
{"_id": "220648", "title": "Comparison between ATAM method and analysis tools provided by ADLs", "text": "This is one of my assignment for this semester. And just to be clear, this question is not about the answer to my assignment as I have already finished it, it is more about the sanity of the question I am confused because as I know from the textbook, ATAM is a software architecture evaluation process which has multiple phases and steps. On the other hand, \"analysis tools\" provided by ADLs is just a sub-set of the evaluation process. More over, each ADL provides different set of tools for analyzing the architecture. I think that comparing between the two concepts is somehow weird and just confusing. I mean it is like comparing the whole computer and the graphic card itself. They have some relationships but they are not in the same scale. The graphic card is meant to be used by the computer to process graphical stuff. Each graphic card has its own characteristics and functionalities, some are better than another. Without the graphic card, the computer can still run, but without the computer the graphic card is nothing In short, my question is \"Is it possible to do that kind of comparison? \""}
{"_id": "165872", "title": "What are MPEG I, P and B frames?", "text": "I was recently going over MPEG articles and videos to understand how it works. I understand what I, P and B frames do but I do not understand how the prediction is calculated.   Assume that I want to record a video of a ball falling from the sky to the ground and then bouncing a couple of times before finally coming to a halt.   Also, I am not clear with the concept of the 16x16 macroblock. Please tell me:   * how prediction is calulated  * what is macroblock and how it helps in MPEG encoding     My references:   * MPEG Prediction * Video on MPEG conversion"}
{"_id": "165876", "title": "User Acceptance Testing Defect Classification when developing for an outside client", "text": "I am involved in a large development project in which we (a very small start up) are developing for an outside client (a very large company). We recently received their first output from UAT testing of a fairly small iteration, which listed 12 'defects', triaged into three categories : Low, Medium and High. The issue we have is around whether everything in this list should be recorded as a 'defect' - some of the issues they found would be better described as refinements, or even 'nice-to-haves', and some we think are not defects at all. They client's QA lead says that it is standard for them to label every issues they identify as a defect, however, we are a bit uncomfortable about this. Whilst the relationship is good, we don't see a huge problem with this, but we are concerned that, if the relationship suffers in the future, these lists of 'defects' could prove costly for us. We don't want to come across as being difficult, or taking things too personally here, and we are happy to make all of the changes identified, however we are a bit concerned especially as there is a uneven power balance at play in our relationship. Are we being paranoid here? Or could we be setting ourselves up for problems down the line by agreeing to this classification?"}
{"_id": "166783", "title": "Dealing with selfish team member(s)", "text": "My team is facing a difficult quandary, a couple of team members are essentially selfish (not to be confused with dominant!) and are cherry-picking stories/tasks that will give them the most recognition within the company (at sprint reviews etc. when all the stakeholders are present). These team members are very good at what they do and are fully aware of what they are doing. When we first started using agile about a year ago, I can say I was quite selfish too (coming from a very individual-focused past). I took ownership of certain stories and didn't involve anyone else in it, which in hindsight wasn't the right thing to do and I learnt from that experience almost immediately. We are a young team of very ambitious twenty somethings so I can understand the selfishness to some extent (after all everyone should be ambitious!). But the level to which this selfishness has reached of late has started to bother me and a few others within my team. The way I see it, agile/scrum is all about the **_team_** and not individuals. We should be looking out for each other and helping each other improve. I made this quite clear during our last retrospective, that we should be fair and give everyone a chance. I'll wait and see what comes out of it in the next few sprints. In the meantime, what are some of the troubles that you have faced with selfish members and how did you overcome them?"}
{"_id": "166780", "title": "Event Aggregator.. not getting a response, how to determine completion?", "text": "I'm rewriting a vehicle tracking application, a google maps based thing.. The users are able to search for a vehicle by typing a few characters of the vehicles \"callsign\". My application is based around a sort of \"event bus\" within Backbone.. when a search occurs I send a message on the bus saying something like \"does anyone match this?\".. If a marker matches the search term it responds with a sort of \"yes, I match!\".. My challenge arises when no-one matches, I get no response.. it feels a little hacky to \"wait a little while\" and check if a response has been recieved.. The application is based around Backbone.js and using the Event Aggregator pattern described in the answer to this question on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7708195/access-function-in-one-view-from- another-in-backbone-js Is there a well defined design pattern that might assist me here? Sending a request for a response and not getting any responses?"}
{"_id": "142935", "title": "How to change documentation expectations from \"risk management\" to a \"project risk\"", "text": "We are trying to introduce some agile concepts to the business folks but one of our biggest hurdles is their expectations for documentation - the quantity, the authorship/ownership of the documents, the lifecycle of the documents, the timing of the authorship, and the material that should be documented. The business folks are very much in a traditional mindset. For them, documentation is a risk management tool. What can we do to help them view documentation as a risk and a requirement? We've tried indicating in the project timelines how much extra time is spent on documentation. Their response is it helps them estimate project costs and reduces risk. We respond with empirical evidence showing it hasn't worked to date. They respond with \"that's IT's fault for reasons x, y, z\" and then introduce more documentation to account for IT's failings. And then it spirals on and on until the baggage is un-bearable. Regarding authorship, we've tried to convince the business that IT doesn't want or need certain documents and that the business is capable of producing them without IT if they feel it's needed. So they will produce something, and then hold us accountable for its contents even though it is (from our perspective) un-related to us and un-vetted by us. So when we try to vet their documents, we get sucked in and then the questions of ownership and maintenance rear their ugly heads. From everything I've read, this is a no-win situation. Is there any advice or thoughts to help us transform their expectations of documentation to light- weight, just-in-time/just good enough documents? If needed, find more background in my previous question."}
{"_id": "227918", "title": "Java - Use polymorphism or bounded type parameters", "text": "Suppose I have this class hierarchy...               public abstract class Animal {         public abstract void eat();         public abstract void talk();     }     class Dog extends Animal {         @Override         public void eat() {         }              @Override         public void talk() {         }     }          class Cat extends Animal {         @Override         public void eat() {         }              @Override         public void talk() {         }     }      And then I have....               public static <T extends Animal> void addAnimal(T animal) {         animal.eat();         animal.talk();     }          public static void addAnimalPoly(Animal animal) {         animal.eat();         animal.talk();     }      What's the difference when using bounded type parameters or polymorphism? And when to use one or the other?"}
{"_id": "56795", "title": "Improve address lookup usability and accuracy?", "text": "In my application,I have a feature like this: The user wants to add a new address to the database. Before adding the address, he needs to perform a search(using input parameters like country,city,street etc) and when the list comes up, he will manually check if the address he wants to add is present or not. If present, he will not add the address. Is there a way to make this process better. maybe somehow eliminate a step, avoid need for manual verification etc."}
{"_id": "227915", "title": "Zend 'Page Tile' view helper", "text": "I've created a ZF2 view helper `PageTitle` (extending `Zend\\View\\Helper\\AbstractHelper`). As the name of the helper suggests , it is responsible for rendering the page title for each action view script. So within _each action view script_ (not layout) I would call :                echo $this->pageTitle('My Page Title', 'some-icon-class-name');      This would render the required HTML output                <div class=\"page-title\">        <h1><span class=\"some-icon-class-name\"></span> My Page Title</h1>      </div>      The plugin also contains another view helper (`button`) within it; its job is to render zero or more form button elements. My trouble comes when I need to pass these _page specific_ buttons/links. My current solution is to provide an array of 'buttons' as a third parameter.               $this->pageTitle('My Page Title', 'some-icon-class-name', array(       'button label 1' => array(         'attributes' => array(           'class' => array('some-class-name', 'another-class'),           'data-foo' => 'bar',         ),      )));      (Above is just an example of what I have tried to demonstrate the issue. This is in fact numerous buttons, each with several 'attributes' each) I think the above approach is messy, certainly within the view. It also defeats the purpose of even having a view helper as I will need to provided this config again each time I need to reuse the page header (some pages may use other views as children). Some solutions I have considered. **Create a page title service factory, per page** Each factory will create a new `PageTitle` plugin and inject the 'button' config into it. This is then registered ti the view plugin manager under a unique plugin name. So, as an example, I would change the call in my view to:               echo $this->mySpecificPageTitle(); // no args as pre-constructed      The downside here is that I then need to create allot of factories (just so I can provide very slightly varied arguments). **Provided a 'service' name to the plugin** (this is similar to the navigation view helper) then then helper calls this service and it returns the required configuration. For example:               echo $this->pageTitle('My Page Title', 'some-icon-class-name', 'MyButtonService');      So within the helper:               $buttonConfig = $serviceManager->get('MyButtonService');      This however again means that I would need to create a factory for each 'MyButtonService' I need."}
{"_id": "227911", "title": "Git Repository Setup", "text": "I am moving my companys source control from TFS to GIT. We have TFS currently defined as.   * Project Collection /      * / Client A        * / Product A       * / Product B       * / Product C     * / Client B        * / Product D       * / Product E       * / Product F What is the best way to do this in Git? I have thought about the following:   * Repository (Client A)      * Branch (Product A)     * Branch (Product B)     * Branch (Product C)   * Repository (Client B)      * Branch (Product D)     * Branch (Product E)     * Branch (Product F) What do you think is the best approach as the design is slightly different?"}
{"_id": "227913", "title": "Storing simple / flexible pricing logic in the database", "text": "I am working on a pricing algorithm where I want to generalize the calculation of certain components/charges. There are 3 components to the charges. > 1 - a basic/core charge, 2- a handling charge (may have many number of > these), 3- tax components (may have many varieties of these as well). I am wondering if I can store an algorithm like below in a database and use this for calculating the charges every time.. Or is there a better way of handling such pricing in a flexible way? >   * **Step 1:** _Step1Result_ = Sum(value of component1, value of > component2, value of component4) (Let us say the freight charges are the sum > of a few core charges) >   * **Step 2** : _Step2Result_ = Step1Result * .01 (let us say some handling > charge is about 1 percent on the step 1 result) >   * **Step 3** : _Step3Result_ = Step1Result * .103 (let us say some tax on > step 1 result is 10.3 percent) >   * **Step 4** : _Step4Result_ = Step3Result * .0203 (let us say some > special tax surcharge as 2.03 percent) >   * **Total** : _TotalResult_ = step1result + step2result + step3result + > step4result > [Edit] Adding a sample of a logistics freight service which is what we are working on now.   * A Parcel booked may get transported from location A to Location E via C,D and E.   * So the base freight charge is calculated as the cost of transportation between A to B, B to C, C to E.    * The parcel may be unloaded from one vehicle at location D and loaded to another vehicle for which loading/unloading charges may have to be added. This may be a percentage of the transportation charge or an absolute value. There may be additional charges which may be added in the future as well   * Then we may have some other premium facility charges   * We have taxes which will have to be computed not on the entire cost but one tax may go to basic freight charge and the other may go to the other charges and another set will be on the total cost. Now I need a flexible logic so that the calculation is configurable pricing logic for the user. If someone has worked on such a generic algorithm, pls give an idea. Please note that I have searched for such stuff in SO as well as google and unable to come up with a concrete one yet. If I missed something, please feel free to point out. Basically I would like to store the formula and workout the price with it. This logic is going to be implemented in C# and Sql Server."}
{"_id": "25761", "title": "A good guide on choosing the point scale to use with Agile/SCRUM?", "text": "We're using Pivotal Tracker for our project, which lets us choose from these three point scales:               0,1,2,3     0,2,4,8     0,1,3,5,8      And I'm looking for a resource to help guide our decision. (After using 0,1,2,3 for two iterations, we can see where one of the others would be a lot more useful or meaningful.)"}
{"_id": "25762", "title": "How to encourage a non-programmer to learn programming?", "text": "Learning programming for the first time may be boring, especially reading a book with boring examples. **Is there other way to learn non-programmers programming?** For example involve them in a simple game project that is fun."}
{"_id": "186893", "title": "Management wants an API in purchased software", "text": "My company wants to purchase new software for our General Ledger. We want to be able to interface it with various other sytems, all purchased. Nothing is custom built. The software our Accountants like does not have any APIs. However it does allow for imports and exports through various file formats. The imports (which are most import to us) can be triggered by an import file being placed in a folder. A \"steering committee\" that is involved in this purchasing decision is made up of people who are not either IT people or programmers. They're lawyers, a chief executives, a compliance officer and a few others in similar roles. They are fixated on this software having an API, or APIs, I don't which is more proper. It seems to me that with the import and export functionality we can do what we need to do. Since we don't write our own software we couldn't code to an API. But, I don't have enough experience to really know what an API might offer that the software in question couldn't deliver. I chair the steering committee and would like us not to get side tracked by something that I suspect is irrelevant. Can anyone help me to understand what I might be missing, or rather how an API would be advantageous?"}
{"_id": "253833", "title": "How to name a clamp function that only clamps from one side?", "text": "Clamp() is a function that ensures that provided variable is in provided range. You can find such function in .NET, in Unity, and probably anywhere. While it is useful, I often need to clamp my value from one side only. For example, to ensure that float is always non-negative or always positive (like radius value from inspector). I used names ClampFromAbove() and ClampFromBelow(), but I wonder if such names is good or even grammatically valid in programming-English. Also, it probably make sense to distinguish non-negative case too. How'd you name such function? Something like EnsureNonNegative()? My intention is creating pair of extension methods and use them like this:               var normalizedRadius = originalRadius.ClampFromBelow(0.0001);     var distance = someVector.Magnitude.ClampFromAbove(maxDistance);"}
{"_id": "21869", "title": "What are the set of skills that every programmer graduating from college should have?", "text": "We had a guest lecturer at our school he went on a tangent regarding those graduating and not being upto the skill level he expects ie. knowledge of one big-time compiled languague like Java, C++ or C#, one scripting language like Python or Ruby, one web framework. What are some other skills that you guys think should be absolutely critical to graduating student?"}
{"_id": "98094", "title": "How are multiplayer games designed?", "text": "If each player has their own avatar, that can move, jump, and do actions to entities in the world (let's say, boxes). How is it handled? Is clients sending commands to the server and getting the current state of the world in response a viable design?"}
{"_id": "64975", "title": "Designing the perfect range literal", "text": "I've been thinking on how I would go about designing the \"perfect\" range literal if I were to do design a language. For you that don't know know a range literal in a statement that represents a range of values, like 1-4. They're most commonly used in for/foreach loops There seems to a couple of issues one should take into account   * Support for inclusive and exclusive ranges, tacking on +1 or -1 to endpoints seems a bit fugly and errorprone.   * Support for stepping, so you can make a range of even or odd numbers for instance   * Readability, it should be readily apparent what the range literal describes   * Unambiguity, it should be perfectly unambigious what the range literal describes   * The default should probably be from inclusive to exclusive since that's what's used in most cases for looping over arrays etc. Anyways, one example of range literal I've seen is Ruby which is in the form of 1..3 for an exclusive (on the end) range and 1...3 for inclusive (on the end). You can also do 1..10.step(5). After careful consideration I found however a couple of things I didn't like about that approach (from my limited knowledge of ruby)   1. You can only describe inclusive and exclusive for the end. While describing most scenarios it does seem a little inconsistent.    2. Varying by just an additional . seems like a recipe for making it hard to see whether a range is inclusive or exclusive. I don't know about you but dot's tend to become something of a blur :)   3. Adding method like notation for ranges seems to mix the notion of a literal with that of a class which seems a bit inconsistent (even if ranges get compiled to a class) Anyways, after pondering different alternatives. I came up with this   * **[5..1]** 5,4,3,2,1   * **[1..5[** 1,2,3,4   * **]1..5]** 2,3,4,5    * [ **0..5..20]** 0,5,10,15,20 and so forth. I like it because [ normally denonates a set and this kinda fits into that, even though this in contrast to a set would be ordered. One thing I'm a bit torn about though is making the exclusive/inclusive indicators mandatory or not, ie if you write just 1..5 the default would be 1,2,3,4 since it's the most common case with arrays etc. It's easier and more readable, but less specific and if you had to write [1..5[ you learn early about how they work. So what do you think, did I cover most bases, overlook something? would you make the [] mandatory? Would you design range literals differently in your programming language? **Candidates**   * bracket style: **[0..10[** , with step: **[0..5..20[**   * interval notation: **[0..10)** with step: **[0..5..20)**   * exclamation for exlusive. 0..!10, with step: **0..5..!20**     * with different step. 0..!20, 5     * however, that would make the default * _0..10'_ inclusive-inclusive   * wordy: [0 to !20 by 5] I must say that my favorite aestically so far is **0..!10** and **0..5..!20** , I just wish the default **0..10** to inclusive-exclusive would be more logical"}
{"_id": "153872", "title": "Naming library which generates a JSON-req to a REST-API?", "text": "How would you call a library which generates a JSON-req to a REST-API so that you just work on object-level for creating a request? Many company wants to define it as an SDK, but is it a suitable definition for this simple task?"}
{"_id": "153878", "title": "How Does The Maybe Monad Relate To The Option Type?", "text": "I was doing a presentation on F# and was discussing the Option type when someone in the audience asked me if the Option type is F#'s implementation of the maybe monad. I know that's not the case but I did want to ask how the two concepts are related. I mean it seems to me that an option type might be the result of the operation of a maybe monad but I'm not even sure of that. Would someone elucidate the relationship between the maybe monad and the option type in those functional languages which support it?"}
{"_id": "153879", "title": "Instantiate proper class based on some input", "text": "I'm attempting to understand how \"switch as a code smell\" applies when the proper code path is determined by some observable piece of data. My Webapp object sets an internal \"host\" object based on the hostname of the current request. Each Host subclass corresponds to one possible hostname and application configuration: WwwHost, ApiHost, etc. What is an OOP way for a host subclass to accept responsibility for a specific hostname, and for Webapp to get an instance of the appropriate subclass? Currently, the hostname check and Host instantiation exists within the Webapp object. I could move the test into a static method within the Host subclasses, but I would still need to explicitly list those subclasses in Webapp unless I restructure further. It seems like any solution will require new subclasses to be added to some centralized list."}
{"_id": "203024", "title": "Why not have a High Level Language based OS? Are Low Level Languages more efficient?", "text": "Without being presumptuous, I would like you to consider the possibility of this. Most OS today are based on pretty low level languages (mainly C/C++) Even the new ones such as Android uses JNI & underlying implementation is in C In fact, (this is a personal observation) many programs written in C run a lot faster than their high level counterparts (eg: Transmission (a bittorrent client on Ubuntu) is a whole lot faster than Vuze(Java) or Deluge(Python)). Even python compilers are written in C, although PyPy is an exception. So is there a particular reason for this? Why is it that all our so called \"High Level Languages\" with the great \"OOP\" concepts can't be used in making a solid OS? So I have 2 questions basically.   1. Why are applications written in low level languages more efficient than their HLL counterparts? Do low level languages perform better for the simple reason that they are low level and are translated to machine code easier?   2. Why do we not have a full fledged OS based entirely on a High Level Language?"}
{"_id": "167782", "title": ".Net C# Remote Method Invocation (RMI) (Client/Server communication)", "text": "What exactly is **C#** version of **Java RMI**? I want to invoke the methods of client from the server, ping the client from server etc. How the server and client communication is done with c#?"}
{"_id": "167784", "title": "Internal Mutation of Persistent Data Structures", "text": "To clarify, when I mean use the terms _persistent_ and _immutable_ on a data structure, I mean that:   1. The state of the data structure remains unchanged for its lifetime. It always holds the same data, and the same operations always produce the same results.   2. The data structure allows `Add`, `Remove`, and similar methods that return new objects of its kind, modified as instructed, that may or may not share some of the data of the original object. However, while a data structure may seem to the user as persistent, it may do other things under the hood. To be sure, all data structures are, internally, at least somewhere, based on mutable storage. If I were to base a persistent vector on an array, and copy it whenever `Add` is invoked, it would still be persistent, as long as I modify only locally created arrays. However, sometimes, you can greatly increase performance by mutating a data structure under the hood. In more, say, insidious, dangerous, and destructive ways. Ways that might leave the abstraction untouched, not letting the user know anything has changed about the data structure, but being critical in the implementation level. For example, let's say that we have a class called `ArrayVector` implemented using an array. Whenever you invoke `Add`, you get a `ArrayVector` build on top of a newly allocated array that has an additional item. A sequence of such updates will involve `n` array copies and allocations. Here is an illustration: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ywLvk.png) However, let's say we implement a lazy mechanism that stores all sorts of updates -- such as `Add`, `Set`, and others in a queue. In this case, each update requires constant time (adding an item to a queue), and no array allocation is involved. When a user tries to get an item in the array, all the queued modifications are applied under the hood, requiring a single array allocation and copy (since we know exactly what data the final array will hold, and how big it will be). Future get operations will be performed on an empty cache, so they will take a single operation. But in order to implement this, we need to 'switch' or mutate the internal array to the new one, and empty the cache -- a very dangerous action. However, considering that in many circumstances (most updates are going to occur in sequence, after all), this can save a lot of time and memory, it might be worth it -- you will need to ensure exclusive access to the internal state, of course. This isn't a question about the efficacy of such a data structure. It's a more general question. Is it ever acceptable to mutate the internal state of a supposedly _persistent_ or _immutable_ object in destructive and dangerous ways? Does performance justify it? Would you still be able to call it immutable? Oh, and could you implement this sort of laziness _without_ mutating the data structure in the specified fashion?"}
{"_id": "116626", "title": "How do I do TDD when expected behaviour is to be changed?", "text": "I've been doing TDD with a project I'm working on, and I have quite a large number of tests. I have quite a few automated tests around restrictions enforced in code, making sure things that shouldn't be allowed aren't allowed. Now I've been told that due to changes in our licensing model, some of those restrictions need to be removed. Since I've done the entire project using TDD, I'm not sure how to make a change like this also using the TDD mindset. **So, my question is:** Do I make the back end changes and see what tests break, or do I try to find the tests that enforce the behaviour, and change those first? My concern is that if there are operations A, B, C and D where a check is done to disallow the behaviour, and I have equivalent tests TestA, TestB, TestC, and TestD (possibly in different places) no matter which half I change first, I may miss one or two spots and end up with incorrect behaviour, but still have all the tests pass (e.g. what if I miss TestD?)"}
{"_id": "61345", "title": "Block elements vs inline elements in HTML: why the distinction?", "text": "The distinction between block and inline elements always seemed strange to me. The whole difference is that a block element takes up the entire width thus forcing a line break before and after the element, and an inline element only takes up as much as the content. Why not just have one type of element- an inline element where you can also apply custom height/width, and use that? You want line breaks? Insert a `<br />`, or maybe add a special tag in the CSS for that behavior. The way it's now, I don't see it solving any problem, and instead it only forces a property that in my opinion should be decided by a designer. So why the two types?"}
{"_id": "249954", "title": "Team workload algorithm", "text": "**TL;DR** This questions is about which algorithm(s) can be used for a certain use-case explained below. * * * Imagine this situation in a project management system (Agile-based):               Developers     - John     - Suzy          Testers     - John     - Katy      So John is in both teams. Let's say there are also two simultaneous projects:               Project 1     - Task 1 (2 hours) - Testers     - Another task (4 hours) - Developers     - Last task (2 hours) - Suzy          Project 2     - Some task (4 hours) - John     - Another task (2 hours) - Testers     - Also a task (4 hours) - Katy      Let's say available hours are defined for each person:               John: 8 hours     Katy: 4 hours     Suzy: 10 hours      Now I want to calculate the optimal workload for each person / team. This is being complicated by the fact that persons can be in more than one team and the fact that tasks can be assigned to both teams and individuals. A useful outcome of this could be the following example stats:               John: 150% workload     Katy: 150% workload     Suzy: 60% workload      This can be used for fine-tuning the amount of tasks within one sprint to fit a certain time period. * * * Does anyone know an algorithm that is made for this kind of problem?"}
{"_id": "141349", "title": "Mulitple processes aware of each other", "text": "Hope you can help me with this, I've searched a lot and I got really confused of what to do here. I'm building a program in C and I need to run it multiple time as I need. So it's going to be like below, process 1 handle all rows on DB table test where process_flag=1   process 2 handle all rows on DB table test where process_flag=2   process 3 handle all rows on DB table test where process_flag=3   and so on How can I make the processes aware of each other, so if process 3 goes down then processes 2 & 3 start working on process_flag=3?"}
{"_id": "249957", "title": "VB.NET - Serial Key Generating (Encryption, Hashing, Encoding?) Algorithm", "text": "I am trying to create a basic licensing system where I take a unique ID from the client computer, and I get this Hexadecimal string (hyphens removed e.g. \"84-18-CE-....\"): > > \"8418CFEE73FA22E6AB0760C73A496497C6C347DA88A9F63B95FE1E1D6A350AA1D7D3A9EE870795AECC3C109AA8B4A78C\" It's only encoded into this format to make the ID longer. Basically what I've been trying to do (without success), is to create some routine that can transform this string into a 25-character long (minus the dashes) string like the one below: **`\"H8G02-J8293-L02O9-S920Q-F8D9X\"`** _(An alpha-numeric key with numbers or letters in no particular pattern, preferably letter,number, letter or vice versa)_ I just can't figure out how I could then validate this key, so that I could extract the untransformed Hex string we began with.   * Note that the original Hex string will not always be the same length. Also, a routine that will convert ANY string into such a format (alpha-numeric, caps-only) will be acceptable.   * I just realized that perhaps this isn't possible (to shorten the string down to 25 characters, and still retain the information (silly, I know). I will now accept anything that will allow me to create a 25-character OR LONGER string, from which I can select 25 characters."}
{"_id": "199352", "title": "Scala string interpolator: ad-hoc feature of general construct?", "text": "In Scala 2.10 a new **string interpolator** feature has been added (see here). For example               val name = \"James\"     println(s\"Hello, $name\") // Hello, James      What is not clear to me is whether this feature is an ad-hoc addition or whether it is syntactic sugar for some other, more general construct. The only thing I can think of is that the compiler turns a string literal like               s\"Hello, $name\"      into an expression like               \"Hello, \" + name      but still, this seems to me a very special treatment of string literals (see also the related question on XML literals). Or is this a particular application of some more general Scala construct? **EDIT** Thanks for the feedback. I had read the whole article but probably my summary was not accurate enough, making the point of my question unclear. Thanks to J\u00f6rg for the good summary. What puzzles me is that the compiler expands a special string literal into an expression that contains names defined **inside** the string itself. The resulting expression must be re-compiled to check that the names of the arguments used to call the `StringContext` instance are defined in the current lexical scope. This looks like some kind of pre-processing to me (first pass: expand special literals, second pass: compile) because the value of the token `s\"Hello, $name\"` is preprocessed and expanded into a whole sub-tree of the syntax tree. This expansion is built-in into the compiler: as far as I know it cannot be defined in terms of the language itself by means of more primitive features taking the string literal **as it is** as input because the names defined inside the string must be extracted and interpreted as variables from the lexical scope. For example, (as far as I understand) no Scala method can be called with the string \"Hello, $name\" and find out that there is a variable `name` in the lexical scope of the expression where the method has been called. Therefore, it is the compiler that has to write out               StringContext(\"Hello \").s(name)      and then re-compile the result, check that the variable `name` exists, and generate a proper method call. Summarizing, I find this reference to a variable in the lexical scope from within a string literal very strange, it seems something is happening on a different level of the language. I do not know how to explain this in a better way."}
{"_id": "167431", "title": "Status of stack based languages", "text": "I have recently become curious about Factor, which, as far as I understand, is the most practical stack-based language around. Forth seems not to be used much these days - I think it is because it was meant to be used on its own, instead of inside an operating system, although ports of course exist. It is also pretty low level. Joy is essentially dead, as the author stated that it does not make sense to mantain it in spite of adopting Factor. The fact is that Factor itself does not seem much developed today. The GitHub repository does not seem very active, and a lot of stuff languishes in `unmantained`. So, are there any other languages of this type that are more actively mantained? Are any in production use?"}
{"_id": "222739", "title": "Why does DrRacket IDE considers some identifiers as \"symbols\" and some as \"keywords\"? What is the difference?", "text": "Why does DrRacket (kind of Scheme) IDE highlights some of the identifiers as \"keywords\" (for example `define`, `lambda`, `send*`), and the others as \"symbols\" (user defined identifiers, `+`, `-`, `abs`, `send`, `send+`, etc.)? I am particularly confused by the difference between `send*` and `send+`. For reference, here are the beginnings of their definitions:               (define-syntax (send* stx) ...          (define-syntax (send+ stx) ...      (It is possible that I do not use the terms \"identifier\", \"symbol\", and \"keyword\" completely correctly, but this is how some of them seem to be used in DrRacket preferences.) Unless this is a bug, it must be explained by the language \"semantics\", so I decided to ask here."}
{"_id": "199356", "title": "When to store values in constants/finals", "text": "This might seem like an odd question, but I'm worried that I'm putting too many things as constants/finals at the top of my java class. I've started to put every value that is in my program into a constant (At least the ones that influence it's overall effect). The reason I'm doing it is because then it's easy to find the values and change them latter, even if they are only used once, it's easier to find them at the top. Is this a bad or good practice, I really have no idea. Here's an example:               private static final Color COLOR_SELECTED = Color.BLUE;     private static final Color COLOR_ALTERNATE_ONE = Color.WHITE;     private static final Color COLOR_ALTERNATE_TWO = new Color(240, 240 , 240);     private static final Color TEXT_COLOR = Color.black;"}
{"_id": "186277", "title": "Should the variable be named Id or ID?", "text": "This is a bit pedantic, but I've seen some people use `Id` as in:               private int userId;     public int getUserId();      and others use:               private int userID;     public int getUserID();      Is one of these a better name than the other? Why? I've seen this done very inconsistently in large projects. If I were to set a standard which would most people be familiar with? Which is the conventional standard?"}
{"_id": "222732", "title": "Java web application folder structure", "text": "As a beginner to J2EE, I have recently started developing my own project from scratch using the Core of J2EE : Servlets & Jsps. I could not evaluate whether my project folder structure is right or not. Here is my project folder structure. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pmpU9.png) Before asking question, I admit that I could not answer or neither justify if somebody asks me, why this type of folder structure. The question: Is it a good sign to put my jsps outside of web-inf. If not, why is it so? If yes why? Is there any standard folder structure convention for a J2EE web application, I know maven has brought up some standards but still, we can customize as per the requirement I believe. I have done a bit of googling and found the two references 1 2 where in the answers are not on the same page, from which I couldn't draw any conclusion. What are the points to be considered while laying out the folder structure for a J2EE web application, importantly where should the Jsps, static content should go into & why?"}
{"_id": "209197", "title": "Sorting with continous input", "text": "I'm designing (not writing, yet) a task scheduler system for a complex video game. The rest of the program passes it objects containing a function and some metadata including an estimation of how much time is left before the data is needed (which can change, of course). The scheduler is responsible for prioritizing these tasks and calling the function. The algorithm I've designed for this problem is pretty simple; it just sorts its list of task objects, pops one off the top, calls it, and repeats. Of course it's actually more complex than that (has to handle situations where things just can't get done on time, telling other parts of the code that their task just got bumped down the list...), but that's the gist of it. I'd like some advice on the subject of how I'm going to sort that list. This loop will, obviously, be running constantly while the program is running. I'm thinking I'll use a slight modification of a bubble sort algorithm, running one pass on each iteration. The list won't be properly sorted for the first few cycles, but since the list will likely be very small when the program is started I expect it will be able to reliably get things into position as fast as they come in. Has anyone done this before, and how did it work? Are there better ways I could do this?"}
{"_id": "232210", "title": "When not to move a \"C style\" code to \"C++ or Object Oriented\" code?", "text": "**Context** I am (part of team A) developing a piece of functionality which depends on new APIs provided by team B. Old APIs (also provided by Team B) are there and this is how they are being used in our code...               int someFunction() {      //-- lots of code here      oldAPI.func1();      //-- lots of code again      if (something)          oldAPI.func2();      else oldAPI.func3();      //lots of code      // ans so on      }      We needed to complete it quickly,So I just modify the existing flow to use newAPI and tested it with some placeholder calls. Soon after I completed... Team B informed us that they will take more time. Now I have two options... _Option 1_ : Wait for Team B to complete; push your code along/after them _Option 2_ : Make your code support both old and new; based on a configuration. if we choose option 2; there are two approaches... _Approach 1_ : Modularize your code; and use polymorphism in your code.                class API_BASE {virtual funct1(),func2(),func3()};      class API_OLD : API_BASE {funct1(),func2(),func3()};      class API_NEW : API_BASE {funct1(),func2(),func3()};      _Approach 2_ : use plain conditional logic               if (newAvailable)         useNew();     else          useOld();      **Questions**   1. If possibilities of supporting multiple flow in future is very less(say 15%); but u need to support them for some time (say few months), would you modify a code written in procedural way to support OOPs? I see benefit of maintainability, readability and easy to extend code. But what is the smart way?   2. In legacy lode base... what is the ideal time to refactor code? You touch one file once in a year and move to other. Provide I have time... should I refactor an stable/running code, or should I do it when there is a real need to refactoring (how to define that I dont know)   3. In big software companies... team works in there own boundaries. If team A completes his job, it wants to push to production sooner and announce to world (mgmt, team b) etc that we are done. Until we have everything ready (i.e. A's part and B's Part), for end user (QA/Customer) there is no change is functionality. Is this a good way of thinking? should I concentrate more on my part, and let mgmt worry about bigger picture?"}
{"_id": "25188", "title": "Why are private variables described in the publicly accessible header file?", "text": "OK, so hopefully this is a subjective enough question for Programmers, but here goes. I am continuously broadening my knowledge of languages and software engineering practices... and I've run into something that just makes no sense to me whatsoever. In C++, class declarations include `private:` methods and parameters in the header file, which, theoretically, is what you pass to the user to include if you make them a lib. In Objective-C, `@interface`s do pretty much the same thing, forcing you to list your private members (at least, there's a way to get private methods in the implementation file). From what I can tell, Java and C# allow you to provide an interface/protocol which can declare all the publicly accessible properties/methods and gives the coder the ability to hide _all_ implementation details in the implementation file. Why? Encapsulation is one of the main principles of OOP, why do C++ and Obj-C lack this basic ability? Is there some kind of best-practices work-around for Obj-C or C++ that hides _all_ implementation? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "181068", "title": "How to create an auto-grader in and for Python", "text": "I'm trying to create an auto-grader for one of my beginning programming courses for python. From my online search, I've come to know that it is effectively a unit test framework that tests the student's code rather than production code but I'm not really sure how to structure the flow of the program. Can anyone please provide a strategy for submission of code by students and automating the whole process of marking? For instance, how would the student code be submitted and then stored/structured on disk, how would the grades be stored/reported? I'm only looking for a broad strategy and will try on my own to fill in the blanks. (I asked this on stockoverflow.com initially but it's considered as off-topic and I was suggested to ask here.)"}
{"_id": "104765", "title": "Can one truly develop a programming style?", "text": "I started teaching myself programming half a year ago, and I've noticed I keep using a few basic techniques over and over again, is this the onset of a style or just ignorance of variation?"}
{"_id": "104760", "title": "Is an assocative array ordered?", "text": "An associative array has many common similar names, hash, keymap, map, table, index. It's a map of keys and values but I cannot find a reputable definition of the phrase which tells me whether a map has to have order to be an associative array.   * What is a reputable definition of the term \"Associative array\"?   * Is an associative array ordereded? Personally I've always believed they have to be ordered because in JavaScript we claim Objects are not associative arrays because Objects are un-ordered maps of keys and values. However I may have been quoting that without a reference or a source."}
{"_id": "113050", "title": "Can I make more money freelancing in Android, or Web development?", "text": "**Is freelancing in Android development or Web development the better choice to achieve a ~300$ income\\month?** It is too hard for me to do both. I'm currently studying CS in college and this is my second year. Financially, I'm 100% depending on my parents and this is really uncomfortable for me. My goal is to make at least 300$ a month with freelancing in programming. The problem is, I don't know where to start. I have a solid background in Java and have a basic knowledge of C, PHP, Javascript, Ruby, Prolog, CSS, HTML. I think my options are to go do Web development or Android development. I've already tried both of them (made a basic app for Android and a simple blog). It's kinda hard for me to do the both at the same time. Ultimately my question is, which one should I continue to work with to achieve the desired income\\month? I really love doing both of them so I'm asking you guys to give me some helpful advice. Thank you for your time. EDIT: Sorry for being off topic but I didn't knew where to ask. There are many experts on this site so it seemed logical to ask it here. Feel free to delete this post and sorry for braking the rules."}
{"_id": "105412", "title": "What is the senior web developer's role in the team?", "text": "With a team of 3 other web developers i have the title as lead web developer for a year now. This is my first job as a lead. I'm pretty set on what my roles are from management. I'm curious what other senior level developers do. I primarily curious as to what others people responsibilities are as the lead/senior developer in other organizations; as I've only encountered working in a small/medium company. (a) What would one expect out of a senior / lead web developer of an organization (regardless of size)? (b) Is there a difference between web development leader and senior web developer? I reviewed some threads and there was just one that discussed when you should call yourself a senior developer but doesn't comprehensively discuss the roles of what a senior developer should do with his/her team."}
{"_id": "58974", "title": "In this slow job market, I have no choice to take a job that uses VB.NET and is going to use C#. Advice?", "text": "I really don't want to do VB.NET, but I need a job and I need a job fast. The two positions I am looking at both have existing apps in VB.NET, but are looking to convert them to C# and do new development in C#, but as well all know, sometimes this doesn't happen for a while and you get stuck with the main language. My background is in C# and after looking at VB.NET, my head is hurting. Any advice as I tackle a job like this. As I said, I preferably want stick with C#, but today, one may have no choice, so I have to just take what I get. I am looking for advice on this for those who have experienced it, are experiencing it, and those who have not."}
{"_id": "105418", "title": "Easy to customize .NET CMS with ecommerce facility", "text": "I have tried DNN and nopCommerce. After going through their source-code, I realized they are not that easy to customize and need a fair amount of time to their documentation before any changes can be made. Also, they are pretty huge, as they cover up every single aspect of a CMS, from Page to Catalogue to Menu to SEO and so on. My requirements are pretty simple; i just need the backend to add products and categories along with store handling functions. Other things like pages and menu's need not come under CMS. _**So, Is there any simple .NET CMS that can help me speed up the development process, or should I develop my own or use one of the two mentioned above ??_**"}
{"_id": "159691", "title": "Unwritten rules of rewriting another team member's code", "text": "We are practicing collective code ownership. To my understanding this means that any developer can change any line of code to add functionality, to refactor, fix bugs or improve designs. But what about a complete rewriting of code from a developer who is still in the team? Should I ask him first? What is the best practice?"}
{"_id": "134846", "title": "PHP Aspect Oriented Design", "text": "This is a continuation of this Code Review question. What was taken away from that post, and other aspect oriented design is it is hard to debug. To counter that, I implemented the ability to turn tracing of the design patterns on. Turning trace on works like:               //This can be added anywhere in the code     Run::setAdapterTrace(true);     Run::setFilterTrace(true);     Run::setObserverTrace(true);          //Execute the functon     echo Run::goForARun(8);      In the actual log with the trace turned on, it outputs like so:                   adapter 2012-02-12 21:46:19 {\"type\":\"closure\",\"object\":\"static\",\"call_class\":\"\\/public_html\\/examples\\/design\\/ClosureDesigns.php\",\"class\":\"Run\",\"method\":\"goForARun\",\"call_method\":\"goForARun\",\"trace\":\"Run::goForARun\",\"start_line\":68,\"end_line\":70}          filter 2012-02-12 22:05:15 {\"type\":\"closure\",\"event\":\"return\",\"object\":\"static\",\"class\":\"run_filter\",\"method\":\"\\/home\\/prodigyview\\/public_html\\/examples\\/design\\/ClosureDesigns.php\",\"trace\":\"Run::goForARun\",\"start_line\":51,\"end_line\":58}          observer 2012-02-12 22:05:15 {\"type\":\"closure\",\"object\":\"static\",\"class\":\"run_observer\",\"method\":\"\\/home\\/prodigyview\\/public_html\\/public\\/examples\\/design\\/ClosureDesigns.php\",\"trace\":\"Run::goForARun\",\"start_line\":61,\"end_line\":63}      When the information is broken down, the data translates to:   * Called by an adapter or filter or observer   * The function called was a closure    * The location of the closure   * Class:method the adapter was implemented on   * The Trace of where the method was called from    * Start Line and End Line The code has been proven to work in production environments and features various examples of to implement, so the proof of concept is there. It is not DI and accomplishes things that DI cannot. I wouldn't call the code boilerplate but I would call it bloated. In summary, the weaknesses are bloated code and a learning curve in exchange for aspect oriented functionality. Beyond the normal fear of something new and different, what are other weakness in this implementation of aspect oriented design, if any? PS: More examples of AOP here: https://github.com/ProdigyView/ProdigyView/tree/master/examples/design"}
{"_id": "134847", "title": "Versioning Within a Platform", "text": "I work with a few different web platforms, and my actual projects are typically quite small, and live within those platforms. The project files are scattered throughout the platform tree, which makes versioning a little awkward. I've been keeping one repository per platform, which gets out of hand quite fast... The biggest problem I've had is with Eclipse + SVN, and the size of the project keeps growing, despite working with a fairly static platform/library, and only a handful of files for the given project at a time. In order for the project to work, I need them within the platform tree. I'm wanting to move entirely to Git soon, so I'm just figuring out how I can keep the projects separate, yet keep the development environment working efficiently. I've been looking into some sort of file sync (rsync, but real time?), since the solution makes sense in my head. I'll keep projects out of the tree, and use a file sync to ensure they are copied in real time. This keeps the projects we work on very small and quick, and keeps the actual platform working properly. However, I've been having troubles finding the correct software to make this work properly. Any suggestions in this area would also be appreciated... Am I looking at this the wrong way? What are some other possible solutions? It seems like a common problem, yet I can't find much information on how to solve it. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "134845", "title": "Available options for classifying words in text?", "text": "I am researching ways to classify words in text and I'm wondering what options there are and which are best suited to this job. I'm mostly interested in keywords which are most often nouns. So far I know I could use a Bayes classifier, blacklist, or whitelist. However, I haven't had the best of luck with each of these so far. I started with a whitelist using the words provided by wordnet and moby to attempt to spot each noun. However, many words were missed as not existing in the database, or not being nouns. Next I tried building a blacklist to match everything except known stop-words, verbs, and such. However, It would take a long investment of time to build a list large enough to handle the 200,000 known English (let alone other languages) words. In addition, keeping that many words in memory for comparison is not practical for performance on commodity hardware. Using I have had luck with a bayes classifier matching spam and sentiment, but I'm not sure how to use it to tell nouns (or keywords) from other words since there are so many similarities between all the groups of words. Last, I tried using regex to spot keywords based on proper nouns and names since they are always capitalized in English. The problem is that many keywords are not capitalized resulting in lacking results. **What other options exist for classifying keywords? What other design patterns could I use with the options above for better results?**"}
{"_id": "134843", "title": "How can I design an application so that it works well with a database selected by the customer?", "text": "I want to write an ASP.NET 4.0 application with IBM DB2 Express-C as its back- end. One thing that worries me, is hosting this application on a remote server. I don't know any hosting provider who provides ASP.NET DB2 hosting in the same price range as of SQL Server. I also want to allow the customer to select the database of their choice from this list:   1. SQL Sever   2. Oracle   3. DB2   4. PostgreSQL   5. Firebird There are the same hosting worries with Oracle and Firebird. Hosting issues aside, I want to know how to design an application so it is agnostic to the kind of RDBMS used and will work with any of the above mentioned ones. Are there any such applications around?"}
{"_id": "106691", "title": "Best option for PDF viewer embedded in web app", "text": "I have a web app that needs to be able to display a PDF. It needs to allow the user to page through the PDF, and my application needs to be able to know which page is currently being viewed, because other aspects of the web app will change based on the current page. Ideally it would not be dependent on the client having Adobe Reader but I could probably support that dependency. What are my best options for this? My application stack consists of ASP.NET 4 along with optionally Silverlight 5. Also, I could use something that is client-side based as well using JavaScript / HTML if such a thing exists. I found ComponentOne's offering for this and that seems like the leading candidate at this point, but I want to know if there are other options I should consider. Edit: Per Fosco's comment, converting the PDF to another format (such as HTML) might be an option, as long as I could tie back parts of the converted document to the original PDF page #s. Another note: this has to run entirely on our servers. It would not be acceptable to use a third-party service to view the PDFs."}
{"_id": "146134", "title": "Appropriate programming language to design music software", "text": "I want to design a software for my musical instrument which is a rhythmic one (there is no melody). All I want these software to do is :   1. make the user able to compose music    2. play what user has composed  for that purpose I need to record diffrent sounds of that instrument and match each sign with the appropriate sound . Which programming language is adequate for this purpose ?"}
{"_id": "83424", "title": "Is absence of generic OrderedDictionary class in .NET framework really a design flaw?", "text": "I was absolutly sure that I need one (and some SO users too), but it turns out that my case was easily refactored with simple `List<object>`, and more I think about it I am no so sure anymore that one is needed and generics classes for collection managment are sufficient, I am just curious :) btw. there is a similar question, but that question assumes that such class is needed, and only one comment suggest that maybe is not needed. [EDIT] oh f*, I was ment to write OrderedDictionary not SortedDictionary, sorry folks, edited my post"}
{"_id": "83428", "title": "Creating Deal for Percentage of App Sales", "text": "I have a business partner who wants to do a deal where I will get a percentage of the profits from app sales. I like the deal and want to do it. In our business agreement I want to put some language that defines what happens as the project moves forward - for example, what if he wants app updates that I don't think are necessary? What if he wants to work with a different developer in the future, but wants to use the code that I developed?"}
{"_id": "146138", "title": "Should OO design, or database design, drive the coding of my @Entity classes?", "text": "I have two classes that I want related to each other in an JEE application using JPA2. In an OO world, I would say that a Chatroom has an attribute List messages. In the relational world composition doesn't exist like this. If I weren't involving a database at all, I would definitely code these two things as a composition the messages inside of the Chatroom. But since I'm using ORM with the JPA2 spec I've decided to try to create the @Entity objects as written below with the fact that they'll be mapped to the database in mind. My question is: Should I be doing this? Is it appropriate to break out the @Entity classes to support what feels like the more relational approach? Or should I just design from an OO perspective, and try to ignore the fact that there's an ORM driving it from below? Right now I'm driving my design from the database side, but should I be doing it the other way? Are there implications I'm missing about doing it this way?               package org.janp.castlerock;          import javax.persistence.Entity;     import javax.persistence.Id;          @Entity     public class Chatroom {         private String name;              @Id         public String getName() {             return name;         }              public void setName(String name) {             this.name = name;         }     }                    package org.janp.castlerock;          import java.util.Date;          import javax.persistence.Entity;     import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;     import javax.persistence.GenerationType;     import javax.persistence.Id;     import javax.persistence.JoinColumn;     import javax.persistence.ManyToOne;     import javax.persistence.Temporal;     import javax.persistence.TemporalType;          @Entity     public class Message {         private int id;         private Chatroom chatroom;         private Date timestamp;         private String text;              @Id         @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)         public int getId() {             return id;         }         public void setId(int id) {             this.id = id;         }              @Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)         public Date getTimestamp() {             return timestamp;         }         public void setTimestamp(Date timestamp) {             this.timestamp = timestamp;         }              public String getText() {             return text;         }         public void setText(String text) {             this.text = text;         }              @ManyToOne         @JoinColumn(name=\"name\")         public Chatroom getChatroom() {             return chatroom;         }         public void setChatroom(Chatroom chatroom) {             this.chatroom = chatroom;         }     }"}
{"_id": "210274", "title": "Does Lisp still have any special feature which has NOT been adopted by other programming languages?", "text": "Does Lisp still have any special feature which has NOT been adopted by other programming languages? By Lisp, I mean all the Lisp programming languages as a whole. I've been told how amazing Lisp is and know that many languages have been inspired by Lisp. But does Lisp still have any exclusive design feature that just cannot be done in any other language? The reason I asked the question is that recently, being an amateur programmer myself, I began to learn Clojure just for fun, and the result is that I found lots of Lisp-related posts and comments, saying but one thing: \"Lisp is unique\", but other modern programming languages have already adopted and stolen lots of ideas from Lisp, like conditionals, recursion, and the function as a first-class citizen. And even metaprogramming can be done by many languages. Did I miss out something and is \"Lisp still different\"? Or I'm lucky because other modern languages have stolen all the good parts from Lisp so that it's not necessary to dig into the parentheses Lisp world, and \"Lisp was different\"."}
{"_id": "133318", "title": "What can I put in my software development blog to make it a good showcase of me?", "text": "I have been itching to write a software development blog for some time now. The best advice I've received about blog writing is \"Write the blog you would have want to read\". Its good advice but its only half the story, Once you write a blog it becomes your showcase on the Internet, it is bound to come up on any search conducted by a future colleague or employer. It can be a good thing or it can do some serious damage. So if there are any hiring managers out there, can you give me a few pointers on what it is in a blog that give you a good impression about candidate and/or the kind of stuff that causes you to throw the candidate's resume to the nearest bean? Does a blog have to come up with a clever piece of code every week? (Don\u2019t think I can manage it) Is it OK to blog more then not about development methods to improved quality and productivity (have a lot of ideas about that). Can I blog about stuff I did not try first hand but seems noteworthy?"}
{"_id": "210272", "title": "In reality, a developer also administers DBMS and system?", "text": "I really don't know where else to ask. So here it goes.   I'm working at a very tiny company that makes ERP software and websites.   1 developer with + 10 years experience.   2 developers with + 3years experience.   3 developers with + 1 year experience.      That's it.   No team, no DBA, no system admin.   There is no one around here who has expertise in web development, so I happened to be in charge of web development. But I've only got 3 years experience ! as a developer !.      I know in a small company, you are asked to do lots of different things but is it too much, if I have to do sysadmin, database architecture, software design and development ? Oh plus I'm asked to do all that across different platforms.   I am currently working with JSP, ASP, MSSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Windows Server, and Linux.   In database, I do from writing queries to backup & recovery.   Server setup, system crash recovery, DB & Server migration also.   Plush HTML, Javascript and CSS :)   Number of projects that I'm in charge of : 5   I'm not an expert at all of them !   I have to search the Internet, read tutorials and ask questions in StackOverflow to get all that done !      So I ask you, is this normal ?   Is this a normal practice ?   Will I face the same situation whichever small company I go ?   I'm working in South Korea.   How is it in your country ?      **P.S** Thank you all for your opinion. I was going to upvote all of you because all of you helped me see it in a different way, but apparently you need 15 reputation to upvote :("}
{"_id": "251476", "title": "Encapsulation: Separate functions for separate variables, or return a table? [PHP]", "text": "I have been making a website with PHP and I have a few classes, so far none of them really follow encapsulation rules of OOP. Lets say I have a user class like so:               class User{         public $username;         public $uid;         public $date;         public $location;         public $bio;         public $avatar;             public function __construct($user, $uidOr){             $this->username = $user;             $this->uidOr = $uidOr;         } .              public function getUser(){             if($this->uidOr){                 $which = \"uid\";             } else { $which = \"username\"; }      // /\\ I know the above is bad             $getUserInfoQuery = new Database();             $getUserInfoQuery->fetchAll(\"users\", array($which, $this->username));                  foreach ($getUserInfoQuery->result as $value) {                 $this->username = $value['username'];                 $this->uid = $value['uid'];                 $this->date = $value['date'];                 $this->location = $value['location'];                 $this->bio = $value['bio'];                 $this->avatar = $value['avatarurl'];             }         }     }      That obviously is terrible practise of OOP, right? Should I be adding functions like getUserUsername(); which return the username of the user object or should I make a function which returns a table of information. What would be best? Thanks! PS: sorry for my bad code, im new to OOP."}
{"_id": "216800", "title": "Is it considered bad practice to access a returned array by a key straight away?", "text": "I couldn't think of a good way to word the title, sorry. But what I mean is, is it considered bad practice to do:               print get_array()[2]      over:               output=get_array()     print output[2]      (where get_array() is a function that returns an array, if that wasn't clear). Which method is better? Why?"}
{"_id": "210278", "title": "Is rewriting some Java code to C++ using JNI to improve performance a good idea?", "text": "I've tried rewriting some Java functions in C++ and called them using JNI. I observed that it takes longer time to execute the native C++ functions as compared to Java functions, due to the JNI overhead. As it is widely believed that C++ has certain advantages over Java, I wanted to know whether rewriting some Java code to C++, with a view to improve overall performance of the Java application, a good idea? If yes, then what parts of the application should be rewritten and how can a Java application use it?"}
{"_id": "112014", "title": "Is there a way to become a remote T-SQL developer?", "text": "I have noticed that most SQL job vacancies are not adapted for remote (telecommute) work as Java or .NET jobs are. I'd like to know if there is a way to work in remote mode in T-SQL programming direction? And if that is impossible, why is that?"}
{"_id": "194530", "title": "Should I use a CMS for a new large application with a lot of common features (login, profile edit, blog etc)?", "text": "I'm currently planning a new ASP.NET MVC3 project which will be quite bespoke. However, there will be a lot of common features (login, profile edit, blog etc). Initially I was planning on building this all from scratch, however I'm tempted by CMS so that I'm not reinventing the wheel, and don't waste time building standard features which will need a lot of testing. I've been looking into using Orchard Project CMS, and installed this the other night so that I could have a play around. The CMS seems great, however it seems restrictive in terms of wanting to add new sections. I was hoping that the CMS would basically be an ASP.NET MVC3 solution, with login features etc, which I can then build on. However I feel bound to having to write \"widgets\" for my application. I understand CMS's are great for simple blog sites etc, but would it seems too restrictive to be able to build a social network for example. Is there such a thing as an open-source MVC3 solution with pre-built login functionality etc, which isn't bound by an interface? Or if I'm planning to build a large application, are CMS's the wrong path to take?"}
{"_id": "83399", "title": "Why isn't html, css and js used for desktop apps", "text": "html, css and js can be used to build beautiful(and useful) ui's (specially with html5 and css3) and lots of people already know them. Though its still way beyond my reach, but how difficult can it be to bring the whole web app thing to desktop apps (we already develop apps on our local servers before hosting them). According to me, its a nice simple idea which will bring a boom in desktop apps, plus given that these apps will already be sharing so much code with web apps, they might be able to offer better connectivity. Why isn't it being done?"}
{"_id": "194532", "title": "Design for multiple type return", "text": "I am working in C++ and I have this problem.               class Container {        Container(int which_type_to_use_a_b_or_c);             A & getData(A & prototype);        B & getData(B & prototype);        C & getData(C & prototype);          private:        A a;        B b;        C c;        int type_used;          }      Only one of the A,B or C datatypes is actually used in a class Container instantiation. The constructor flag decides which one to use. When it's time to get a reference to the internal object, I need a getData routine which returns the reference of the different type. In order to disambiguate, I pass a \"prototype\" A() B() or C(). I don't really like this pattern, but I am unable to find anything better due to my limited palette in c++. Do you have any other approach available? please note that templating Container over A, B or C is not an option due to other constraints."}
{"_id": "194534", "title": "Spring - Confusion over configuration?", "text": "Somewhere I read Spring offers convenience over configuration. But Spring folks are bringing in so much changes over the configuration , that I am now really getting confused to use the xml configuration or the annotation. I would like anyone to suggest a surefire methodology or rule of thumb in using xml and annotations. * * * Examples at SO to show that many beginners like me are getting confused over the configuration.   * link-1 > I don't seem to grasp the functionality behind `<context:annotation-config>` > and `<context:component-scan>`. > > From what I've read they seem to handle different annotations (@Required, > @Autowired etc vs @Component, @Repository, @Service etc) but also from what > I've read they register the same bean post processor classes. > > To confuse me even more, there is an `annotation-config` attribute on > `<context:component-scan>`...   * link 2 > I still have the component scan tag: >   >     >     <context:component-scan base- > package=\"com.mycompany.maventestwebapp\" /> >   > > but I have also another tag (that look like have similar task), this one: >   >     >     <annotation-driven /> >   > > What is the difference between these two tags? An other \"strange\" thing is > that the previous example (that don't use the annotation-driven tag) is very > similar to the project create by STS using the Spring MVC Template project > but if I delete the annotation-driven tag from its configuration file the > project don't run and give me the following error: **HTTP Status 404 -**... Spring 3.2 no longer need cglib for proxying , but lower versions uses cglib. A quote from the springsource blog > In order to generate such proxies, Spring uses a third party library called > cglib. Unfortunately, this project is not active anymore. In Spring 3.2, it > is very likely that Spring will be using Javassist instead by default. Are these enough to suggest that Spring is Confusion over configuration ?"}
{"_id": "83394", "title": "Need licensing recommendations for in-house written software", "text": "Currently I do a lot of development on my free time to improve my productivity at work. I've got around 50 man hours of unpaid work into a few pieces of software, but I'd rather not have them end up on work computers until they're licensed to prevent redistribution without my permission. Of course, I'm not charging them or anything. I just want to make sure I'm protected legally in the event they decide to try and package it and sell it as their own. I made sure before starting that I didn't sign any agreement that they own everything I work on for the remainder of the time I spend at this company. I would like an in-house licensing solution. IANAL, so writing a license wouldn't be the best thing I could do. Are there any free, copy-pastable, licensing solutions (copy-pastable in the way the GPL is copy-pastable) that explicitly prevent redistribution without my permission?"}
{"_id": "83395", "title": "UberSVN vs VisualSVN Server - Any experiences?", "text": "I'm looking at UberSVN as a possible replacement to our existing source control package, VisualSVN Server. There are a lot of UI benefits for the decision, including having the integrated web UI, administration portal and collaboration features. The concern I have is what difficulties I'll face in migrating from VisualSVN to UberSVN and whether there could be any impact to our repositories. Any experience or recommendations would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "198400", "title": "Returning a boolean when success or failure is the sole concern", "text": "I often find myself returning a boolean from a method, that's used in multiple locations, in order to contain all the logic around that method in a single place. All the (internal) calling method needs to know is whether the operation was successful, or not. I'm using Python but the question isn't necessarily specific to that language. There are only two options I can think of   1. Raise an exception, though the circumstances are not exceptional, and remember to catch that exception in every place the function is called   2. Return a boolean as I'm doing. This is a _really_ simple example that demonstrates what I'm talking about.               import os          class DoSomething(object):              def remove_file(self, filename):                  try:                 os.remove(filename)             except OSError:                 return False                  return True              def process_file(self, filename):                  do_something()                  if remove_file(filename):                 do_something_else()      Although it's functional, I really dislike this manner of doing something, it \"smells\", and can sometimes result in a lot of nested ifs. But, I can't think of a simpler way. I could turn to a more LBYL philosophy and use `os.path.exists(filename)` prior to attempting deletion but there's no guarantees the file won't have been locked in the meantime (it's unlikely but possible) and I still have to determine whether the deletion has been successful or not. Is this an \"acceptable\" design and if not what would be a better way of designing this?"}
{"_id": "71561", "title": "Java and JVM license", "text": "Does Java license allow other companies to create their own versions of Java language or just implement it accurately? Same question about JVM. I heard about Sun suing Microsoft for changing their .NET version of Java implementation and Java for Google Android, but I just can't grasp the whole concept as a totality."}
{"_id": "198404", "title": "How to modularize and package a client-side Javascript library today?", "text": "I've been catching up with the modern client-side JS ecosystem and reading up on CommonJS and AMD (incl. associated tools - browserify, requirejs, onejs, jam, dozens of others). If I'm writing a Javascript library, how do I modularize/package it such that it can be most broadly accessible (ideally by users who swear by CommonJS, AMD, and especially neither)? Popular libraries like jQuery seem to just use old-school file concatenation for building itself and dynamically detect whether it should write to an `exports` or the global context. I'm currently doing the same thing, but the main downside is that if I (unlike jQuery) depend on a few libraries, it's nice to not have to ask users to manually pre-include the transitive set. (Though I currently just have two dependencies.) And of course global namespace pollution. Or perhaps it's cleanest to generate multiple versions of my library, for each context? I'm also wondering about packaging and publishing. There are several systems, but I believe the major one is bower, which is easy to deal with since all it does is fetch. However, I'm wondering if I should also be targeting other package systems like component (which requires CommonJS). Are there other relevant aspects I should be aware of? Are there any good example projects to follow for all of this?"}
{"_id": "198407", "title": "Find the count of each word in a string", "text": "I am in a search of a better performant algorithm to implement a program, to find the count of each word in a sentence i.e.., a String in the programming sense. I know my algorithm is too basic and Noob. Here's my algorithm.   1. Read the String.    2. Tokenize the String with the delimiter, put each token in a list(ArrayList).    3. Iterate the generated list, in each iteration compare the current string with every other string of the list, if it matches increase the count of this string.   4. For each iteration, put the String and its count in a map.   5. Iterate the map and display, with key as string and value as its count. What is the best approach than this?"}
{"_id": "233164", "title": "How do searches fit into a RESTful interface?", "text": "When designing a RESTful interface, the semantics of the request types are deemed vital to the design.   * **GET** \\- List collection or retrieve element   * **PUT** \\- Replace collection or element   * **POST** \\- Create collection or element   * **DELETE** \\- Well, erm, delete collection or element However, this doesn't seem to cover the concept of \"search\". E.g. in designing a suite of web services that support a Job Search site you might have the following requirements:   * Get individual Job Advert      * **GET** to `domain/Job/{id}/`   * Create Job Advert      * **POST** to `domain/Job/`   * Update Job Advert      * **PUT** to `domain/Job/`   * Delete Job Advert      * **DELETE** to `domain/Job/` \"Get All Jobs\" is also simple:   * **GET** to `domain/Jobs/` However, how does the job \"search\" fall into this structure? You _could_ claim it's a variation of \"list collection\" and implement as:   * **GET** to `domain/Jobs/` However, searches _can_ be complex and it's entirely possible to produce a search that generates a long GET string. That is, referencing a SO question here, there are issues using GET strings longer than about 2000 characters. An example might be in a faceted search - continuing the \"job\" example. I may allow for searching on facets - \"Technology\", \"Job Title\", \"Discipline\" as well as free-text keywords, age of job, location and salary. With a fluid user interface and a large number of technologies and job titles, it is feasible that a search could encompass a large number of facet choices. Tweak this example to CVs, rather than jobs, bring in even more facets, and you can very easily imagine a search with a hundred facets selected, or even just 40 facets each of which are 50 characters long (e.g. Job Titles, University Names, Employer Names). In that situation it might be desirable to move a PUT or POST in order to ensure that the search data will get correctly sent. E.g.:   * **POST** to `domain/Jobs/` But semantically that's an instruction to create a collection. You _could_ also say you'll express this as the creation of a search:   * **POST** to `domain/Jobs/Search/` or (as suggested by burninggramma below)   * **POST** to `domain/JobSearch/` Semantically it may seem to make sense, but you're not actually creating anything, you're making a request for data. So, semantically it's a **GET** , but **GET** isn't guaranteed to support what you need. So, the question is - Trying to keep as true to RESTful design as possible, whilst ensuring that I'm keeping within the limitations of HTTP, what is the most appropriate design for a search?"}
{"_id": "71568", "title": "How to become an excellent applications programmer, coming from low-level background?", "text": "Most of my career has been working on numerical algorithms, image processing, calibrating science data, making LEDs blink... very little at the level of whole apps and sophisticated GUIs. Though I have written some apps, by today's (or 10 years ago') standards, these were toys, simple demo wrappers around the number-crunching black boxes I'm good at making. Looking around, I see little demand for low-level numbers/pixels skills, interfacing directly with hardware and such; it's all desktop machine apps, smart phone apps, web apps. I'm interested mostly in desktop apps to be used by technically intelligent people - scientists, engineers, doctors etc - since I've already spent plenty time in such environments. So maybe it's time to become expert at this type of software development. Besides reading, reading and more reading (of course) and dabbling in hobby pet projects, what are the most effective ways for an experience non-apps developer to begin developing this particular kind of expertise? Which books, sites, and blogs are especially informative for learning whole-apps level design?"}
{"_id": "233166", "title": "Factory Method vs. Factory Method design pattern", "text": "I am currently studying design patterns from the book (which, although I didn't try anything else, I find excellent) Head First Design Patterns. I'm confused about two concepts: The **Factory Method** , and the **Factory Method Design Pattern**. I was trying to understand what each one means, and I came to some conclusion. I'd like to know if my definitions are exact. * * * **The Factory Method** is a method that is meant to do one thing: Create an object of a specific supertype and return it. It may or may not take a parameter, and may or may not 'decide' using `if` statements what kind of concrete object to create. For example, this is a factory method:               public Hat createHat(String hatColor){              Hat hat;              if (hatColor.equals(\"red\")) hat = new RedHat();         else if (hatColor.equals(\"blue\")) hat = new BlueHat();         else if (hatColor.equals(\"green\")) hat = new GreenHat();         else hat = new DefaultHat();              return hat;          }      * * * **The Factory Method _Design Pattern_** is **named after** the Factory Method. This pattern provides a specific way to encapsulate object creation from the client. It works like so: The pattern is a system of two classes, the **Creator** and the **ConcreteCreator**. The Creator is an `abstract` class, and the ConcreteCreator is a subclass of that class. **The job of the ConcreteCreator** \\- create an object and return it **using a factory method**. It only has to contain this one method. **The job of the Creator** \\- manipulate and use the object received from it's subclass, the ConcreteCreator, and usually return it to the client. It is done like so: The Creator contains an `abstract` method, it's signature something like `SupertypeObject createObject()`. Whenever it needs an object of type `SupertypeObject`, it calls `createObject()`. Thing is, `createObject()` is as I said `abstract`. It's the ConcreteCreator's job to implement this method. This way, the implementation of `createObject()` is hidden from the Creator. It doesn't know what **concrete** object it gets, but it knows for sure that it's of type `SypertypeObject`. This way, a client can use the `Creator` object to create objects of some supertype, but the concrete objects created will depend on the subclass. Thus declaring `ShoeFactory factory = new CaliforniaStyleShoesFactory()`, will make the `factory` produce california style shoes, while `ShoeFactory factory = new NYStyleShoesFactory()` will make the `factory` produce NY style shoes. Since the implementation of creating the concrete objects depends on the ConcreteCreator. Code to demonstrate:               Class Client(){              public static void main(String[] args){                  ShoeFactory factory;             Shoe shoe;                  factory = new NYStyleShoeFactory();             shoe = factory.makeShoe();             System.out.println(shoe.getDescription()); // \"A NY style shoe\".                  // ShoeFactory's makeShoe() invokes createShoe() in the subclass, receives a Shoe             // (doesn't know the concrete type of the Shoe. Depends on the subclass) and             // does manipulations on it.             // Returns the Shoe to the client.                  factory = new CaliforniaStyleShoeFactory():             shoe = factory.makeShoe();             System.out.println(shoe.getDescription()); // \"A California style shoe\".          }          }      * * * Is my understanding of the two concepts accurate? Thanks"}
{"_id": "18578", "title": "PMP certificate. How did you achieve it? How was the preparation?", "text": "Getting a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification can be rigorous. Did you attempt it? How was your preparation process? Was there any hiccups filling out PMP project experience details? Currently, I am going thru PMbok guide. Looks like full of theory to me!! And I have read it at least twice !!"}
{"_id": "18579", "title": "Is LINQ to SQL dead?", "text": "Is there any reason to keep using Linq to SQL, or is it better to move to ORM techniques like EF, NHibernate etc. We are using Linq to SQL in a new large enterprise application that will exist for a long time. The motivation for this new enterprise application is that the application was ordinary written in Visual Basic and since Microsoft stopped the support we where forced to rewrite the application. It\u2019s seems that we are already there but this time with our DAL (Data Access Layer). I have already read this article, but it only compare to EF's weakness."}
{"_id": "15124", "title": "Application / Code reviews for lone programmers?", "text": "Are there any services that 'for a reasonable price' will give and provide good and technical advice on applications. On a lot of projects, I'm usually the only developer, and sometimes, I think some of my work needs to be improved for efficiency, better MVC interactions, etc. It would be great if there was a professional service that actually can and will do such reviews"}
{"_id": "205986", "title": "What does \"(say)\" mean in this Java method in Hadoop The Definitive Guide?", "text": "What does \"(say)\" mean in this Java method? > Since `Mapper` and `Reducer` are separate classes, the type parameters have > different scopes, and the actual type argument of `KEYIN` (say) in the > `Mapper` may be different from the type of the type parameter of the same > name (`KEYIN`) in the `Reducer`. For instance, in the maximum temperature > example from earlier chapters, `KEYIN` in replaced by `longWritaeble` for > the `Mapper` and by `Text` for the `Reducer`. From Hadoop The Definitive Guide, by Tom White, page 224 (scanned version of the page at 223 and 224)."}
{"_id": "205987", "title": "BlazeDS: Server DTO method naming convention", "text": "I have the following field in Flex:               [Bindable] public var zIndex:uint;      And I was trying to create the methods to process the calls in Java and I ran into a problem.               1. public int getZIndex(); // Does not work.     2. public int getzIndex(); // Works.      I thought that the letter following the `get`/`set` was supposed to be capitalized? Is there a reason for this? I couldn't find any documentation. I found an answer on StackOverflow that states that the first one is the correct way to name an accessor/mutator."}
{"_id": "15128", "title": "Pros and cons for open or close sourcing niche type products", "text": "One of the products I developed, is really a niche type application (2 or 3 other competitors in the market). Although for the most part, I'm the lone user of these applications, I'm thinking of selling the app right now. My question is:   * Because of the small market share and that it's a niche project would you advise I open or close my application?"}
{"_id": "39544", "title": "Teaching \"web design/development\" to high-school home-school group. Good sources?", "text": "I may soon begin teaching a \"web design and development\" class for a home- school co-op group. **Any suggestions for \"course\" material?** My first thought was to work through the Opera Web Standards Curriculum, but am interested in hearing about possible alternatives or suggestions that better cover the \"very basics\" of getting started with designing and developing web pages. Not necessarily looking for topics, so much as existing resources. Thanks so much for your input!"}
{"_id": "39541", "title": "Can Software Engineers become certified Professional Engineers (PE)?", "text": "Does anyone know if a Software Engineer can become a certified Professional Engineer or PE for short? I know that my buddies who are Mechanical, Electrical, or Civil Engineers were able to become PEs by taking an exam. Does such an exam exist in Software Engineering?"}
{"_id": "31710", "title": "Should developers be involved in testing phases?", "text": "we are using a classical V-shaped development process. We then have requirements, architecture, design, implementation, integration tests, system tests and acceptance.   Testers are preparing test cases during the first phases of the project. The issue is that, due to resources issues (*), test phases are too long and are often shortened due to time constraints (you know project managers... ;)). Developers are doing their unit-tests as they should. So my question is simple: should developers be involved in the tests phases and isn't it too 'dangerous'. I'm afraid it will give the project managers a false feeling of better quality as the work has been done but would the added man.days be of any value? I'm not really confident of developers doing tests (no offense here but we all know it's quite hard to break in a few clicks what you have made in severals days). Thanks for sharing your thoughts. (*) For obscure reasons, increasing the number of testers is not an option as of today. (Just upfront, it's not a duplicate of Should programmers help testers in designing tests? which talks about test preparation and not test execution, where we avoid the implication of developers)"}
{"_id": "107128", "title": "How can I best implement 'cache until further notice' with memcache in multiple tiers?", "text": "**the term \"client\" used here is not referring to client's browser, but client server** **Before cache workflow**               1. client make a HTTP request -->     2. server process -->     3. store parsed results into memcache for next use (cache indefinitely) -->     4. return results to client -->     5. client get the result, store into client's local memcache with TTL      **After cache workflow**               1. another client make a HTTP request -->     2. memcache found return memcache results to client -->     3. client get the result, store into client's local memcache with TTL      _TTL = time to live_ Is possible for me to know when the data was updated,   and to expire relevant memcache(s) accordingly. However, the pitfalls on client site cache TTL   1. Any data update before the TTL is not pick-up by client memcache.   2. In reverse manner, where there is no update, client memcache still expire after the TTL   3. First request (or concurrent requests) after cache TTL will get throttle as it need to repeat the _\"Before cache workflow\"_ In the event where client require several HTTP requests on a single web page,   it could be very bad in performance. Ideal solution should be client to cache indefinitely until **further notice**. Here are the three proposals about **futher notice** **Proposal 1 :** Make use on HTTP header (current implementation)               1. client sent HTTP request last modified time header     2. server check if last data modified time=last cache time return status 304     3. client based on header to decide further processing          GOOD?     ----     - save some parsing for client     - lesser data transfer          BAD?     ----     - fire a HTTP request is still slow     - server end still need to process lots of requests      **Proposal 2 :** Consistently issue a HTTP request to check all data group last modified time               1. client fire a HTTP request     2. server to return last modified time for all data group     3. client compare local last cache time with the result     4. if data group last cache time < server last modified time         then request again for that data group only          GOOD?     ----     - only fetch what is no up-to-date     - less requests for server          BAD?     ----     - every web page require a HTTP request      **Proposal 3 :** Tell client when new data is available (Push)                1. when server end notice there is a change on a data group      2. notify clients on the changes      3. help clients to fetch again data      4. then reset client local memcache after data is parsed          GOOD?     ----     - let the cache act/behave like a true cache          BAD?     ----     - encourage race condition      My preference is on proposal 3,   and something like Gearman could be ideal   Where there is a change, Gearman server to sent the task to multiple clients (workers). Am I crazy?   (I know my first question is a bit crazy)"}
{"_id": "31719", "title": "Should a developer know the inner workings of the computers' hardware?", "text": "I'm not talking just how memory is assigned and memory management (things that you can learn from C for example) but rather the hardware aspect and how each component of the computer hardware works internally and how they communicate with each other. How many of you know all of this?"}
{"_id": "77926", "title": "How do you write tests for code that depends on concrete external implementations that can't be mocked?", "text": "Background: I am thinking of trying to introduce the concept of unit tests to my co-workers by creating some for a module I have been working on; the requirements of it recently changed and require some more abstractions/interactions so it seems like a good way to develop a suite of tests that will \"prove\" it works without having to manually poke around the application. The issue, however, is that the module relies on unmockable external factors namely PDFs and XSL. Basically I read XML from the database and apply an XSL transformation to it, then convert it to a PDF using a library called ABCPDF. This PDF is then merged with another PDF based on a static template. I know that I can test the XML and make sure the values are correct, but many of the potential bugs and issues are related to the actual display of the finished document - e.g. minutiae like how long text strings are wrapped, where certain HTML areas are located in relation to the document, etc. Is it even possible to test these things (I realize these are probably integration tests or.. the third kind of test whose name I forget [not Acceptance tests, the other kind], and not **unit** tests) since I can't, to my knowledge, mock out a PDF easily short of creating it then reading it back or creating an HTML string (i.e. transformed XML) and parsing it by hand to check for the presence of certain table cells in relation to other table cells. In a situation like this should I just focus on unit tests to make sure the information is correct and that I can _create_ the PDF, or merge them, or whatever and resort to manual testing for the actual display issues?"}
{"_id": "142252", "title": "Is it better to spend resources on a skilled team or good process practice?", "text": "Which one of these is of more importance? Skilled team or good process practice? When I say skilled, I mean logical, creative members with good coding and testing skills. Good process would be the development methodology, like agile, scrum, etc"}
{"_id": "142253", "title": "How to detect if an app was already installed before", "text": "How do software applications keep track of whether the user already installed the application before in it's Windows system? Say you install app X, trial version, remove it, then re install it, and when you run it again it detects you had already installed it before. If you uninstall and clean all registry information it shouldn't know you had already installed it before... Disclaimer: I'm not trying to \"hack\" any application, just thinking about how this is implemented."}
{"_id": "142258", "title": "Why could citing bug IDs in patch notes be considered a bad practice?", "text": "Based on a comment and subsequent upvotes from Bug reopen vs. new: > Citing bug IDs in patch notes is just.. very unfriendly. \u2013 Krelp It appears at least some people feel that referencing bug IDs in patch notes is not a good idea. I'm a fairly inexperienced developer, so I'm wondering why that's the case."}
{"_id": "229707", "title": "How can I improve quality on SQL reports?", "text": "I've recently ran into some issues where some reports were not generating the proper results. We already have a QA department that reviews the reports and then our business owners review them as well; this hasn't prevented the issue. I'm trying to figure out a decent way to have a test harness to ensure reports are giving me the desired result. So far, I've thought about having a static snapshot of the database (point-in- time), I would then   1. run the report sprocs (stored procedures) against my data with defined parameters   2. save off the output   3. write testing sprocs that call the reporting sprocs with my define parameters   4. Verify the results matched using the EXCEPT keyword. Can you please offer some suggestions and alternatives?"}
{"_id": "225285", "title": "NDA's in interviews", "text": "I have interviews scheduled for two, large, respectable, somewhat competing, American companies. One of them (the one for which the interview takes place first) has asked that I bring a signed NDA to the interview. I'm not a specialist - more of a general Java server kind of guy with years of experience - but I don't have any conflict of interest between my previous employers and either of these two and have not been in a similar situation before. However, I am worried that signing the NDA for the first employer might pose a problem should things go well with the second and I decide to go there. Is this a reasonable fear? If so, what can I do?"}
{"_id": "72206", "title": "graph data structure in Java (or Python)", "text": "**does Java have graphs as an intergrated data structure**? How about Python? I was assigned to write a program, that solves the TSP (travelling salesman problem) via the GRASP (greedy randomized adaptive search procedure). I'm just familiarizing myself with GRASP, and I would like to have a good working data structure for graphs, that includes **plotting the graph** and the option to assign special colour to edges (so I can colour the final solution: cheapest hamiltonian path). I'm gonna have a presentation, explaining my final solution, whence the need for plotting the graph. Also, it would be desirable to have the option to **generate a random graph on n vertices** , so I have some easily accessible examples. I was really hoping this has been done by someone before, so I don't start from scratch. I'm a mathematician (or atleast trying to be), so please, no fancy programmer slang. thank you"}
{"_id": "183588", "title": "Can a common interface be defined for Cartesian and Polar coordinate data?", "text": "I'm rewriting a set of file readers that a former-colleague of mine created that read raw-point data of XYZ (Cartesian) coordinates or RTZ (Polar) coordinates. Currently the data is stored directly in the reader, making everything rely on the state of those objects. I'd like to separate the reader from the collected data it reads by creating some data objects. Each of the coordinate systems is nearly identical from a purely data-driven point of view.               Cartesian Coordinates       X (List of doubles)        Y (List of doubles)        Z (Multidimensional array of doubles at [X,Y])          Polar Coordinates       R (List of doubles)       T (List of doubles)       Z (Multidimensional array of doubles at [R,T])      I'm trying to determine if I can, in good conscience, define a common interface for both of these. The data is the same, even though what it represents is subtly different. Each has two opposing axes of a 3D coordinate system, and a table of Z values at various combinations of those axes. But an X coordinate doesn't necessarily map to R. And I'm not sure what I would call the properties on a common interface - `Axis1`, `Axis2`, and `Z`? Or am I trying to consolidate something here that really needs to remain separate? Should there be a separate (albeit similar) interface for each data object representing coordinates from each system?"}
{"_id": "225281", "title": "How to test a function that updates the password in database?", "text": "I have a test database with few user accounts. I don't want to break any tests. If I am writing a function that updates password for user in db and one that reads the password. Should I ideally reset the password to the previous one, once I am done testing update function ? I have never written unit tests before, so I am little confused."}
{"_id": "173354", "title": "What is Declarative UI?", "text": "I keep seeing this term being thrown around in blogs about frameworks. While I understand the difference between declarative and imperative programming, how does this apply specifically to UI? Why does there appear to be a special term for it? Are these different 'things'? If so, what is the alternative to Declarative UI and why would I want to use it?"}
{"_id": "137764", "title": "How to check or assess debugging skills of a person?", "text": "What kind of skills determine a person that is capable of debugging code with ease? Some time ago my friend carried out an interview with a relatively good programmer. The programmer got hired. He could write good code, understood the frameworks and design patterns. The thing he was missing was - debugging skills. He could not debug at all and finding problems with his or someone else's code was huge pain for him. Since then we are thinking about how we can assess or estimate a person's debugging skills. So the first question is: what skills determine if a person can effectively debug software? And the second: how to test those skills during the interview?"}
{"_id": "184129", "title": "Is there a design pattern to solve this problem?", "text": "I've been struggling with a design so I figured I'd ask here and see if anyone's able to help :) **High level overview** I'm designing an app to gamify exercise by creating mini competitions (ex. Who can lose the most weight in 3 months or bike the most miles in a month). Users can create competitions (calling them races for now) and they need to be able to specify constraints - participants have to be in a certain age range, over a certain weight, maximum number of participants in a race, etc. **My Objects** RaceParticipant - for brevity, the only pertinent property is int Age. Race:               public class Race     {         public virtual int RaceId { get; set; }         public virtual string RaceName { get; set; }         public virtual int RaceTypeId { get; set; }         public virtual TrainingType RaceType { get; set; }         public virtual IEnumerable<RaceParticipant> RaceParticipants { get; set; }         public virtual IEnumerable<RaceConstraint> RaceConstraints { get; set; }     }      RaceConstraint abstract class:               public abstract class RaceConstraint     {         public string DisplayText { get; set; }         public string ValidationText { get; set; }         public virtual bool PassesConstraint(Race race, RaceParticipant participant);      }      RaceConstraint implementation MaxNumberOfParticipants:               public class MaxNumberOfParticipants : RaceConstraint     {         public int MaximumNumberOfParticipants { get; set; }              public MaxNumberOfParticipants()         {             DisplayText = \"Maximum number of racers\";             ValidationText = \"This race has reached the maximum number of racers.\";         }              public override bool PassesConstraint(Race race, RaceParticipant participant)          {             bool result = false;             if (race.RaceParticipants.Count() <= MaximumNumberOfParticipants)             {                 result = true;             }             return result;         }     }      RaceConstraint implementation AgeRange:               public class AgeRange : RaceConstraint     {         public int MinimumAge { get; set; }         public int MaximumAge { get; set; }              public AgeRange()         {             DisplayText = \"Age range of racers\";             ValidationText = string.Format(\"Racers must be between the ages of {0} and {1}.\", MinimumAge, MaximumAge);         }              public override bool PassesConstraint(Race race, RaceParticipant participant)         {             bool result = false;             if (MinimumAge <= participant.Age && participant.Age <= MaximumAge)             {                 result = true;             }             return result;         }     }      **The question** My question is where to store MinimumAge, MaximumAge, and MaximumNumberOfParticipants. I'm using Entity Framework code-first so I know I don't need to worry about the schema directly, but I do need to think about which properties to add to EF and which object they'll be connected to. Currently EF would make a separate table for each implementation of RaceConstraint which seems like overkill and I definitely don't want DisplayText and ValidationText stored in the db for each instance. I thought about moving MinimumAge, MaximumAge, and MaximumNumberOfParticipants to properties of Race because each race will have values for these, but that feels like Race and RaceConstraint would be too coupled. I'd like to be able to add a RaceConstraint in the future as requirements change without having to add a property to Race and therefor add a column to the Race db table. I think I'm going to have to make a container object for RaceConstraint that holds a collection of all possible RaceConstraints. Would it make sense to put these properties in that object and then remove IEnumerable RaceConstraints from Race and instead add a property for the RaceConstraintContainer? Or maybe I'm way over thinking this and there's a design pattern I can follow. I'm sure I'm not the first person to come across this scenario! Thanks in advance. **UPDATE** After mulling this over for a few days and trying out each of the answers, I think @maple_shaft really nailed the problem of EF getting in the way of OO design. I think I found a compromise somewhere in the middle. I added properties like MinimumAge, MaximumAge, and MaximumNumberOfParticipants to the Race object because from a database perspective, these are all very related and each race will have entries for each of these. I changed the abstract class RaceConstraint to an interface that just requires bool PassesConstraint(). I made better use of DisplayText by making it a data annotation of the properties in race (ex. [Display(Name = \"Maximum number of racers\")]) since I really only wanted it for labels in the UI. I moved the text from ValidationText to an exception message if a PassesConstraint() fails. Finally, I made a RaceManager class to hold a List of RaceConstraints and handle adding users by checking each RaceConstraint. This class will also handle removing users, determining winners, etc. I think this will work well from an MVC standpoint too because I'm not passing models to the view that have methods. The Race class will really just be there to hold EF data and will make for a clean model to use for adding or updating races from a view. Thanks for the help everyone!"}
{"_id": "177841", "title": "How to handle notifications to several partial views of the same model?", "text": "I am working on refactoring an old simulation of a Turing machine. The application uses a class that contains the state and the logic of program execution, and several panels to display the tape representation and show the state, messages, and the GUI controls (start, stop, program listing, ...). I would like to refactor it using the MVC architecture that was not used originaly: the Frame is the only way to get access to the different panels and there is also a strong coupling between the \"engine\" class and the GUI updates in the way of `frame.displayPanel.state.setText(\"halted\");` or `frame.outputPanel.messages.append(\"some thing\");` It looks to me that I should put the state related code into an observable model class and make the different panels observers. My problem is that the java Observable class only provides a global notification to the Observers, while I would prefer not to refresh every Observers everytime, but only when the part that specificaly observe has changed.   * I am thinking of implementing myself several vectors of listeners (for the state / position, for the output messages, ...) but I feel like reinventing the wheel.   * I though also about adding some flags that the observers could check like `isNewMessageAvailable()`, `hasTapeMoved()`, etc but it sounds also approximative design. BTW, is it ok to keep the fetch / execute loop into the model or should I move it in another place? We can think in a theorical ideal way as I am completely revamping this small application."}
{"_id": "219298", "title": "What are the data structures behind a spreadsheet?", "text": "I would like to understand how a spreadsheet (a group of named or otherwise identified cells containing values or formulas referencing other cells) is solved. I have tried looking at existing projects, but there was so much going on with the GUI, serialization, events, etc. that I couldn't find the spreadsheet. At its simplest how does it work?"}
{"_id": "177846", "title": "Grouping classes by subject or dependencies?", "text": "Our project consists of user application and server application. The server application prepares data files that the user application consumes. Because the data is huge, it is stored in custom format. So the project includes many classes related to reading and writing the data. The user application does not need the writing side, so we don't want to have the code there both because it might run on resource-limited devices and because it prolongs compilation (C++ is not known for having fast compilers). So say I have two classes (I have tens of such pairs):   * `DataReader`   * `DataWriter` These classes both operate on the same thing, the serialized data. But the first is only needed in the user application and the second is only needed in the server application. Would you suggest keeping such classes   * Together; in say      * `common/data/DataReader`     * `common/data/DataWriter`   * Separate like      * `userapp/data/DataReader`     * `serverapp/data/DataWriter` With this goes the compilation. The common stuff lives in `common` and is compiled into a library linked to both. So the first option further splits into two:   * Together in `common/data` and linked to `common.a` or   * Together in `common/data` directory, but each linked to the target that needs it. Now each has it's advantages and disadvantages:   * They are closely related, so it makes sense to keep them together. But      * having both in one library makes that library larger and compile longer     * compiling each separately means directory layout does not correspond to project layout, which is rather confusing and complicates the build scripts   * Keeping them separate makes the build structure more logical and avoids unnecessary work for the compiler, but when updating them, components far apart need to be modified (both applications are maintained by the same team, so it's not like someone wouldn't be aware of the other part) We currently have mixture between the approaches (some classes are separate, others not and the common library contains a lot of stuff that should be in the individual projects), which I would like to clean up. Is there any usual recommendation for such situation? Or some useful experience with similar cases?"}
{"_id": "177845", "title": "Using which technique does facebook and pininterest show images?", "text": "If anybody has ever noticed that when you open a image in Facebook something like this happens:- suppose you are at your homepage on Facebook:- the URL is https://www.facebook.com/ now if you open a image it gets opened in new modal like window and URL changes to:- https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151125374887397&set=a.338008237396.161268.36922302396&type=1&theater As far as I know in any common case a modal overlay would have kept the url in the address bar the same , My question is how does facebook / pintrest achieve this behaviour of not re-loading the whole page but still achieving the change in the address bar. Is there any jquery or javascript plugin for this?"}
{"_id": "177844", "title": "Is there such a thing as a specification-code framework?", "text": "I've been googling for a while and can't fathom why this doesn't exist yet. By a specification-code workflow I mean a system which links code to it's specification. For example I could be looking at a repository and highlight a specific revision and it would give me the related spec. I could also reverse this process and select a spec and it would show me all the related code changes and issues. I'm looking for this so I can mine a current system for ideas for my uni FYP of a software development suite harnessing existing systems."}
{"_id": "224778", "title": "TDD - Making assertions about C# Expression trees", "text": "How would you unit test the PerformUpdate method in the sample below? This is a (very) simplified version of some code that performs updates against a database where the schema is dynamic and represented by the fields collection. EDIT: If it is not clear what I am asking, I would like to know how different developers would approach testing\\mocking this code from a TDD perspective. For example, what tests would you write, what would you mock, how would you verify method calls are made with the right arguments?               public interface IUnitOfWork     {         IEfRepository<Field> Fields { get; }     }          public class UpdateService     {         private IUnitOfWork unitOfWork;              private IDataUpdater dataService;              public Activity PerformUpdate(App app, IDictionary<string, object> data)         {             var fields = this.unitOfWork.Fields.FindWhere(o => o.App.Identifier == app.Identifier);             var activity = this.dataService.PerformUpdate(fields, data);                  return activity;         }     }"}
{"_id": "224779", "title": "How to determine the better design?", "text": "What do I need to consider to determine which design I choose when I have the following scenario? There are two cases to considerer;   * Given T a generic class, I have to do something with multiple T's (Iterating each one of them).   * In other cases, with the same T, I have to process just once. In both cases, independent of what is T and how I'll need to process it, the class that comprises T will behave exactly the same way, therefore, I don't need to worry about implementation details. There are 2 possible solutions, and I don't know what directions should I follow to decide between them.   * Always consider as a List, this is for sake of simplicity, since there are no difference between a List of T and only T.      * Use inheritance; the first child class will receive a List of T and work with it, the second, a single T and work with it. Are there some good pratices or some article to help to decide such cases? I'm looking for something like this article, or your experience as well. * * * **UPDATE:** The class I'm design is not T, but its composer."}
{"_id": "228259", "title": "Better sticking with MDI or learning WPF?", "text": "I have a personal project I'm going to start working on soon. It will be database driven and have various screens that the operator may want to use. First thing I thought of was an MDI interface would be perfect for what I want. I work with Then I started investigating WPF - partly because one of the controls I want to use is a WPF control. I haven't worked with WPF much at all, and I'm wondering whether or not it's worth the effort to try and learn it instead of going with WinForms and MDI? In my current situation I use WinForms and MDI for my day job. There's a possibility I may work with WPF in the future, but if that happens I'd have time to learn on the job. Am I better off just sticking with what I know to get my project off the ground, or is WPF a much better improvement that it's worth going that route? If so, what exactly are the advantages I may find from WPF?"}
{"_id": "133863", "title": "Why don't mobile platforms support generational garbage collection?", "text": "Both Windows Phone/Xbox and Android lack support for generational garbage collection. This is frustrating for a lot of programmers. There seems to be a legitimate engineering reason to it, but I can't figure it out. Current phones have more memory and probably better CPUs than the desktops/laptops running .NET 1.1 with generational GC back in 2001, and I can't think of any reasons that ARM processors would be worse at generational GC than x86 would. There's also less need for multitasking on phones and consoles, so there's relatively more free heap space. So what gives? **Edit:** A few points to clarify:   * These platforms use garbage collection for apps exclusively, so my question isn't about why GC isn't supported; my question is about why _generational_ garbage collection isn't.   * The reason that people are frustrated about the lack of generational GC is that non-genrational GC is extremely inefficient. (That means that battery life isn't the reason.)   * I do believe that there's an honest technical reason for the lack of generational GC support. This isn't a rhetorical question."}
{"_id": "228250", "title": "Alternative to SIP, voice communication in Android", "text": "Is it exists any alternative to SIP protocol? I want implement voice & video chat option in my application. I don't want use SIP, because I need only simple communication without call for landlines etc. It seems to me, it maybe doing with sockets, and audio records, but I'm not sure. I care about the fact that many people (for example 1000) could simultaneously carry on a conversation. Is it possible on regular server? Is it at all possible without a server? Best regards."}
{"_id": "224774", "title": "Should I convert the whole project to UTF-8?", "text": "I am working on a highly customized shop software, based on a open-source one, written in PHP and usual web techniques (CSS, HTML, JS). I did a lot of customization in the past months/years and developed specific, individual features which are necessary to be successful at our branch. The shop and the project files are encoded in ISO-8859-1 (company is located in Germany). Now we want to spread out and use the shop system in different countries (e.g. Sweden, Poland, Great Britain) and customize it to the domestic needs. But I am afraid that I could encounter some encoding problems afterwards, so my question is: Is it wise to change the encoding of the whole project and the environment to UTF-8 before I prepare the shop for \"multi-shop\" usage or should I leave the source at it is and handle (possible) encoding problems for each country as they approach afterwards?"}
{"_id": "224776", "title": "How to get local device time corresponding to NTP server timestamp?", "text": "So, I'm trying to use an NTP server to help me synchronize an app across two Android devices (to have them perform some action at the exact same time, give or take < 20 ms). I'm using the SNTP client code here as provided from the StackOverflow post here and it works just fine. The problem is that at the exact instant that the NTP server gets its timestamp, I need to know what time it is locally on my device (so not the time that the device received the returned timestamp, but the actual device time that corresponds to the timestamp from the NTP server). This would mean I'd have a sort of \"snapshot\" with two different timestamps (one device, one NTP server) that took place at the \"exact\" same time. I am having a very hard time figuring this out and am starting to think it's not possible at all (which sort of makes sense). My best effort has been to try and assume that the local device time that corresponds to the time returned by the NTP server would be halfway through the roundtrip request- response time, but even the obvious error there is made even worse the longer the NTP request takes, so that's solution's simply not good enough. How can I move forward with this on Android?"}
{"_id": "132193", "title": "Object-oriented design question", "text": "I am using a class through a dll to which I do not have direct control. So in effect, I am only a client of this class. The class represents a form that can be printed, sent to clients and tracked in the system. I need to calculate two types of dates after which, if the form is received it is considered late. Rather than simply calculate the late dates in the method where I am already handling the form, I want to extract the algorithm for calculating the late dates in a separate class as it is complicated and can be subject to change for administrative reasons. Since I cannot modify the original class. I came up with these possible solutions: (For reference the code is in C# 4/.Net 4.) A- Create a FormLateDateCalculator class that has methods to return a late date for a given form. B- Create a FormLateDate class that takes a form in it's constructor and has a property for each type of late date. C- Create two extension methods on the Form class that calculate the late dates. While all three of these methods work (and I am sure there are others), I would like to know which is the best in regards to object-oriented design and why?"}
{"_id": "131423", "title": "Approaches against code base becoming uniformly slow", "text": "We are working on a moderately-sized C++ code base (10Mloc) which through our optimization efforts is becoming uniformly slow. This code base is a set of libraries which we combine to put them to work. When the general framework of how these libraries communicate was developed there was some emphasis on performance and later on, when more parts where added, the general framework wasn't changed much. Optimization was done when needed and as our hardware evolved. This made expensive early decision apparent only much later. We are now at a point where further optimizations are much more expensive since they would require rewriting large parts of the code base. We find ourselves approaching an undesirable local minimum since we know that in principle the code should be able to run much faster. Are there any successful methodologies which help to decide what turns to take over the evolution of a code base towards a globally optimally performing solution which aren't easily confused by easy optimization opportunities? ### EDIT To answer the question how we currently profile: We really only have 2 different scenarios how this code can be used, both embarrassingly parallel. Profiling is done both with wall clock time averaged over a large sample of inputs and more detailed runs (instruction costs, branch mispredictions and caching issues). This works well since we run exclusively on our extremely homogeneous machines (a cluster of a couple thousand identical machines). Since we usually keep all our machines busy most of the time running faster means we can look at additional new stuff. The issue is of course that when new input variations show up, they might get a late-comer penalty since we removed most obvious micro-inefficiencies for the other use cases, thus possibly narrowing down the number of \"optimally running\" scenarios. The current answers rightly suggest to separate data and algorithms so this becomes easier to adjust."}
{"_id": "206989", "title": "Subclassing to change default settings?", "text": "I have a class called `Timeline`. I want to allow several defaults in my code, such as a `Timeline` with a `Start` event (The details are not needed. All that matters is that I have a class, and I want to be able to have a few different default setting). Here are the options I thought of: 1) Following a GUI/Swing inspired idea, I might want to subclass the `Timeline` class and, in its constructor, use the public functions to set the default. Then, I could later just instantiate those objects instead of the superclass 2) A factory class could have functions like \"getTimeLineWithExplosion\" and set everything up. Which of those two is the better idea? Is there a design pattern better than both of them? PS: This is implemented in Java, but could easily be in another language."}
{"_id": "241163", "title": "Large invoice database structure and rendering", "text": "Our client has a MS SQL database that has 1 million customer invoice records in it. Using the database, our client wants its customers to be able to log into a frontend web site and then be able to view, modify and download their company\u2019s invoices. Given the size of the database and the large number of customers who may log into the web site at any time, we are concerned about data base engine performance and web page invoice rendering performance. The 1 million invoice database is for just 90 days sales, so we will remove invoices over 90 days old from the database. Most of the invoices have multiple line items. We can easily convert our invoices into various data formats so for example it is easy for us to convert to and from SQL to XML with related schema and XSLT. Any data conversion would be done on another server so as not to burden the web interface server. We have tentatively decided to run the web site on a .NET Framework IIS web server using MS SQL on MS Azure.   1. How would you suggest we structure our database for best performance? For example, should we put all the invoices of all customers located within the same 5 digit or 6 digit zip codes into the same table? Or could we set up a separate home directory for each customer on IIS and place each customer\u2019s invoices in each customer\u2019s home directory in XML format?   2. And secondly what would you suggest would be the best method to render customer invoices on a web page and allow customers to modify for best performance? The ADO.net XML Data Set looks intriguing to us as a method, but we have never used it."}
{"_id": "241166", "title": "Is it normal needing time to understand code I wrote recently", "text": "By recently I mean some weeks ago. I am trying to continue a project I left 2 weeks ago and I need time to understand some functions I wrote (not copied from somewhere) and it takes me time. Normally I don't need to because my functions, methods etc. are black boxes but when I need to change something it's really hard. Does this mean I write bad code? I am still in school and I am the only who writes/uses the code so I don't have feedback, but I am afraid that if it is difficult for me to understand it, it would be 10 times more difficult for someone else. What should I do? I write a lot of comments but most of the time are useless when reviewing. Do you have any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "224481", "title": "detect if a combination of string objects from an array matches against any commands", "text": "Please be patient and read my current scenario. My question is below. My application takes in speech input and is successfully able to group words that match together to form either one word or a group of words - called phrases; be it a `name`, an `action`, a `pet`, or a `time` frame. I have a master list of the phrases that are allowed and are stored in their respective arrays. So I have the following arrays `validNamesArray`, `validActionsArray`, `validPetsArray`, and a `validTimeFramesArray`. A new array of phrases is returned each and every time the user stops speaking.               NSArray *phrasesBeingFedIn = @[@\"CHARLIE\", @\"EAT\", @\"AT TEN O CLOCK\",                                      @\"CAT\",                                      @\"DOG\", \"URINATE\",                                      @\"CHILDREN\", @\"ITS TIME TO\", @\"PLAY\"];      Knowing that its ok to have the following combination to create a command:               COMMAND 1: NAME + ACTION + TIME FRAME     COMMAND 2: PET + ACTION      COMMAND n: n + n, .. + n          //In the example above, only the groups of phrases 'Charlie eat at ten o clock' and 'dog urinate'     //would be valid commands, the phrase 'cat' would not qualify any of the commands     //and will therefor be ignored      **Question** What is the best way for me to parse through the phrases being fed in and determine which combination phrases will satisfy my list of commands? **POSSIBLE solution I've come up with** One way is to step through the array and have if and else statements that check the phrases ahead and see if they satisfy any valid command patterns from the list, however my solution is not dynamic, I would have to add a new set of if and else statements for every single new command permutation I create. My solution is not efficient. Any ideas on how I could go about creating something like this that will work and is dynamic no matter if I add a new command sequence of phrase combination?"}
{"_id": "159514", "title": "eXtreme Programming (XP) Methodology Testing", "text": "I am about to undertake a project for university, and given the project scope I have decided to use XP/agile methodology. I have began with developing a use case diagram; gathering user stories for the first couple features. I am in the process of helping the customer develop the acceptance test and my question is: _can the user stories for each feature be used as a user acceptance test?_"}
{"_id": "180584", "title": "Algorithms to Determine How Much A Factor Contributes to A Total Value", "text": "Lets say that I have hundreds/thousands of objects(entries) in a database and each object contains 10 attributes. I have a way to quantitatively measure each attribute where a higher number implies that the object is better in that area. I also have a final price associated with that object. Is there any way to programatically (through maybe an algorithm) determine an approximation of how much each attribute contributes to the total cost? In essence, I want to be able to estimate the average total cost = a*attribute1+b*attribute2+.....+j*attribute10 by solving for a,b,...,j I realize that this might be more of a statistics question than a programming question, but I am more interested in the implementation of this through programming than a fully statistics explanation. Is this something more suited for scipy? numpy? some statistics framework?"}
{"_id": "239150", "title": "Is Resque appropriate for an evented application?", "text": "As the title says, is Resque appropriate for an evented application that requires a decent amount of speed? I'm working on a server application that emulates the default Minecraft server, and I was wondering whether Resque would be more of a hinderance or a help for managing events (such as firing an event when a certain network packet is received), or whether it would be better to use a synchronous approach (i.e, Wisper). Example - let's say the `:player_move` packet is received. In this packet we have an x, a y, z. We should then notify the `WorldController` that `player` has moved to x y and z. The `WorldController` then does it's own thing - such as notifying appropriate players in an area around the actor. However I don't want to manually hard code that the `:player_move` packet maps to `WorldController#move_player`, so I am currently using Wisper to publish a `:player_moved` event. This is great, however the events are handled synchronously, and there is no guarantee of order - This is something I'd like to have, so I could implement cancellation of events. Obviously the pros and cons of Resque over Wisper is that: **Pros**   1. Tried and tested (no need to roll your own with Wisper)   2. Asynchronous processing   3. No need to write large amounts of boilerplate to tie each subscriber to each publisher.   4. Guaranteed ordering of jobs (and the ability to cancel jobs) **Cons**   1. Slower (likely, due to having to interface with a database)   2. Reliance on Redis as a cache (not that that's really a con)   3. No guarantees of if or when something will occur (nature of threading)   4. Memory usage (process splitting) Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "239151", "title": "Adapter Pattern: Design Patterns", "text": "So far as I know, there are two forms of the Adapter Pattern: the class adapter and the object adapter. Could someone please explain to me the following limitation of the class adapter and why it is not a limitation of the object adapter:   * a class adapter is not suitable when we want to adapt a class and all of its subclasses. I guess the following is considered a limitation of the object adapter:   * with an object adapter it is harder to override Adaptee behaviour than with a class adapter. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "239156", "title": "Buyer vs Seller on UML Model", "text": "I'm modeling an Online Classified System where, naturally, who sells also can buy and vice-versa. The question is: should I have two different Actors, Buyer and Seller or I could have, say, an actor Client capable either buy and sell? How do you approach this Model? Cheers,"}
{"_id": "239157", "title": "Polling vs events pros and cons in JavaScript", "text": "I'm bit of a novice to JavaScript so I've been wondering on positive and negative sides of using polling compared to using events in JavaScript? When does one use one or the other? By polling I consider any effect that is triggered on something that repeats itself usually using `setTimeout`. But also for example:               function render() {        Bloop.renderComponent(box, document.body);        requestAnimationFrame(render);     }      Is also polling since `requestAnimationFrame(render)` which is called before each frame is called. Basically anything that fits this definition"}
{"_id": "234302", "title": "db data to template: where to escape strings", "text": "I have an applications that queries a database, then renders a asciidoc template with data from the db, and converts the asciidoc to pdf. Now in the data there are certain characters that need to be escaped in order to not the mess up the formatting of the pdf. I have two options on where to do this:   * **Option A** : in or near the code that does the db query. Plus: escaping done only once. Minus: db code needs to know about the output syntax.   * **Option B** : in the template. Plus: escaping done where the formatting syntax belongs. Minus: Escaping possibly done more then once. I am leaning towards Option B, but I would be interested in what others think would be the best thing to do."}
{"_id": "239158", "title": "I am making 4-5x more story points than average, but producing bugs at half the rate. Graphs say it's 2x more bugs, how to deal with that?", "text": "So it is generally accepted that top tier programmers can produce an order of magnitude more/better code than their more average peers. It's also generally accepted that the rate of errors made in code is **relatively constant** for programmers. Instead, it tends to be impacted by the processes used when writing the code and after the code is written. (As I understand it) Humans tend to make mistakes at a fairly constant rate - better programmers just notice more of them and are quicker to fix them.   * Note that both of above assertions come from Code Complete by Steve McConnell - so it's not a matter of differing perspectives. So I've started to see this recently in my code. I can hammer out about 4-5x the amount of code as many of my peers (measured by story points estimated by the team), with higher quality (based on performance metrics and number of changes made after check-in). But I still make mistakes. Between better unit tests, a better understanding of what the code is doing, and a better eye for issues when doing code reviews I'm not producing 4-5x the number of bugs. But I'm still producing about _twice_ as many bugs found by QA as other developers on my team. As you might imagine, this causes some problems with non-technical folks doing metric measurements (read: my boss). I've tried to point out that I'm producing bugs at half the rate of my peers (and fix twice as many), but it's a hard sell when there's graphs saying I produce twice as many bugs. So, how to deal with the fact that increased productivity will lead to an increased number of bugs?"}
{"_id": "170712", "title": "DDD Model Design and Repository Persistence Performance Considerations", "text": "So I have been reading about DDD for some time and trying to figure out the best approach on several issues. I tend to agree that I should design my model in a persistent agnostic manner. And that repositories should load and persist my models in valid states. But are these approaches realistic practically? I mean its normal for a model to hold a reference to a collection of another type. Persisting that model should mean persist the entire collection. Fine. But do I really need to load the entire collection every time I load the model? Probably not. So I can have specialized repositories. Some that load maybe a subset of the object graph via DTOs and others that load the entire object graph. But when do I use which? If I have DTOs, what's stopping client code from directly calling them and completely bypassing the model? I can have mappers and factories to create my models from DTOs maybe? But depending on the design of my models that might not always work. Or it might not allow my models to be created in a valid state. **EDIT 1:** Aside from lazy/eager loading and using a DI framework to inject repositories in my models, what is another approach? What's the correct approach here?"}
{"_id": "170713", "title": "ASP.NET MVC Portable Areas - Can they communicate and be used as a plugin-like architecture?", "text": "I'll get straight to the point: I was wondering if there is a common pattern to use portable areas as a components of a plugin-like architecture. Example: We've got 3 plugins (portable areas) packaged and distributed via NuGet feed. Each of them is following the standard MVC structure (has it own Models, Views and Controllers). Lets say login form, header and footer. What I was wondering if there is a way to make them communicate. For example: when user logs on, login plugin executes it own logic, logs the user and then it updates the state of the header plugin with changes it state accordingly. **Edit** : _Dealing with client side calls_ Another thing that I did not mention in the original post is that I wanted to expose the plugin features via controllers to be consumed via JavaScript as well. Lets say I have all architecture in place and all plugins registered themselves with the system properly (routes, dependencies ...etc) For example if I click the \"Change color\" feature of one \"Colors picker\" plugin it calls action method of another plugin (Image plugin lets say) and loads image of requested color. Of course everything should be done via Ajax without resubmitting the entire page that hosts the components. You think it is a doable scenario in the solutions you've proposed here? Thanks in advance for all the answers."}
{"_id": "73551", "title": "How to find a job that is using the tools I like (and keeping the payroll at a high level)", "text": "I have been a software developer for years now. I have been working in big companies using their own standard and tools. I have always been able to use some of my favourite tools, like Intellij as my main java IDE, but it can not be always the case. I have also been forced to use some crappy tools (bloatwares source versionning, broken quality insurance application, ...) and frameworks I would happily have replaced by another. What can I do to find a 'perfect' mission, where using my tools will be the norm, or at least not forbidden? Or even better, how can I find a job using a non mainstream framework? I don't want to sacrifice the payroll for my tools of choice, so joining a cheap start-up won't be a solution. I'm not looking for a job offer, but more on tips used by the lucky developers that have found a perfect matching job."}
{"_id": "167170", "title": "Ruby: how to step through ruby code", "text": "I'm trying to learn how to step through Ruby code (written by more experienced programmers) in order to improve my knowledge of Ruby. Problem is that I don't really know how to do it well. Googling the topic brought me to an about.com page on Ruby; I thought a higher quality more comprehensive answer should belong on StackOverflow, so if anyone can write an answer (with an example) for it, showing how a beginner can step through code to learn as much as possible about it, it'd be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "77073", "title": "PE License vs IEEE CSPD Certification", "text": "I am a working software engineer in the state of Pennsylvania with ~5 years experience. I have a BS in Computer Engineering, however I feel that I need to obtain either a PE License or IEEE CSDP Certification to solidify my status as a professional. Does anyone have an opinion on this matter? PE License (Computer Engineering) IEEE CSDP Certification"}
{"_id": "86272", "title": "Low latency technologies for c++, c# and java?", "text": "I've been reading job descriptions and many mention 'low latency'. However, I wondered if someone could clarify what type of technologies this would refer to? One of the adverts mentioned 'ACE' which I googled to find out was some CISCO telephony technology. If you were hiring someone for a low latency role, what would you use as a checklist for ensuring they knew about low latency programming? I'm using this to learn more about low latency programming myself."}
{"_id": "86273", "title": "Should senior programmers be required to take on and mentor a junior developer?", "text": "In a shop that is intended to be tight-knit and supportive, should it be part of the culture that senior developers are paired with junior developers as mentors? Or should this mentoring be something that is more organic and spontaneous, i.e. not required, but allowed to develop without artificial encouragement?"}
{"_id": "132735", "title": "Maintaining referential integrity between a mobile client and a server", "text": "So I have a relatively simple system. A **mobile client creates records in a sqlite database that I would like to have synced to a remote SQL server (that is shared with other mobile clients)**. So when I create a new record in the phone's sqlite table, I then push that change to my remote service through a RESTful API. The problem I'm having, is **how do I order the primary keys so that there isn't collisions in the data** (i.e. a record in the phone has the same primary key as a completely different record on the server). **What is the usual \"best practice for referencing the record on the client, and for referencing the same record on the server?**"}
{"_id": "132730", "title": "Source Control: Roles and Responsibilities - Best Practices", "text": "I'm looking for \"Best Practices\" concerning roles and responsibilities, specifically who is responsible for merges from development branches to trunk (or main). Basically I'm looking for ammunition to help my cause. Let me describe what I'm facing. I am the lead developer (owner) of a particular application. Our company recently moved from VSS (where I was the administrator of the VSS database in which my application was stored) to TFS (where I only have permissions on development branches created by our \"operations\" team). In previous jobs, I was a TFS Admin, so I know my way around TFS and MSBuild. I don't have an issue with the branching and merging strategy being used (main branch, with bug/project development branches created as needed, merged back to main then promoted to a release branch). The issues I have are:   1. I cannot create my own branches. I must create a TFS task to have an \"operations\" team member create the branch for me.   2. I cannot merge from Main to my development branch. I must create a TFS task to have an \"operations\" team member perform the merge, and then hope he doesn't \"step on\" any of my teams changes since the \"ops guy\" may or may not be a developer and certainly has little to no knowledge of the code he is merging.   3. I cannot merge from development to Main. Again I must create a TFS task to have the \"ops guy\" perform the merge, hoping that he does it correctly. Then I have to create another TFS task to merge back to my branch so that I can resolve any issues which have occured by having a non-developer merge to Main.   4. I cannot create or edit MSBuild scripts. Again I have to work with the \"ops\" team which is new to MSBuild so only the most basic build tasks can be performed. (Forget about anything complex, or heaven-forbid a custom task).   5. I cannot execute an MSBuild script. Again only the \"ops\" team can do this.   6. To top all of this off, typically it is an \"off-shore\" resource which performs the requested tasks, so even if I create the task to (branch/merge/build) in the early morning, it probably won't be completed until that evening. Now I have no issue with the \"operations\" team maintaining the release branches. As all they are doing is (basically) taking the latest version from Main and promoting it to the release branch; so as long as \"Main\" is stable and ready, the release branch will be good. My opinion is that technical leads (such as I) should be responsible for maintaining the trunk (\"Main\") and any merging to/from the development branches. The team lead should also have the ability to generate MS Build scripts to build and deploy to the Integration test environment. Can anyone direct me to a Best Practices document that'll help me prove my case? All my searching has turned up only Best Practices concerning the techniques of branching and merging, and no mention of WHO should be performing said branching/merging."}
{"_id": "185290", "title": "Requirement specifications with annotations?", "text": "I'm curoious if there are any templates using annotations such as ambigous, needs update and so on. Industrial or Academic does not matter. If there are, are there any way tools available that use these annotations to show that \"22% of the requirements are tagged ambigous\" and so on? Bonus points for Academic papers on this topic (or a nearly related topic)"}
{"_id": "103923", "title": "CSS remote contract", "text": "I am signing a contract with someone remote in another country in regards with creating a new style sheet for their website. In our agreement the client pays 1/3 of the money first as deposit and the rest will be paid when I show the completed project online to him. Now my question is, since I know CSS is viewable online and there is no way to encode it, apart from the fact that I need to trust him, is there any way that I can protect my work from being stolen before the final payment? How do theme developers usually work remotely? I would appreciate if you please share your experiences with me"}
{"_id": "87892", "title": "What are the most important languages to localize for on the App Store?", "text": "It's obvious that to gain more customers on any given platform, one of the most important steps to take would be to localize your software into many languages: as many as possible, ideally. However, with independently developed apps, it tends to be difficult to localize into many different languages, due to not having the budget and / or time to do so. My question is **if I were to localize my apps into languages other than English on the iOS App Store, which languages should I prioritize?** (Maybe the top three or four most important.) (Also, let's pretend this is a generic app that won't cater more to one language demographic than another.)"}
{"_id": "105302", "title": "How to improve enterprise level application that consists of only static methods", "text": "I am new in a enterprise level application project and discovered that 99% of everything I've seen in code is static methods, static properties. The application at hand is a distributed app consisting of about a handful of WCF services that communicate through a business layer with a data access layer. The data access component is a singleton. There are transactions and MSMQ queues and multiple parties calling the WCF Services to notify the DB of changes, updates made in a seperate system and so forth. First time running a little test project I got a thread related exception using EntLib5 Logging, telling me that some code was called from an unsynchronized code block. I am curious to know how one should go about and improve an almost-all-static design. >   * Are there advantages to the current approach? >   * What are the disadvantages? >   * Where would you start (besides starting over) and improve all this mess? > Thanks for your opinions!"}
{"_id": "181984", "title": "Is this statement from Knuth's fundamental algorithms still applicable today?", "text": "> In a sense, 10! (ten factorial) represents an approximate dividing line > between things which are practical to compute and things which are not. This is from Knuth's TAOCP Fundamental Algorithms book (1973). Is this still a valid statement or has computing power rendered it obsolete ?"}
{"_id": "124083", "title": "How can I integrate and store sessions in my database, as opposed to storing them in a cookie and file system?", "text": "I've never worked with sessions in a database before, and I'm a little unclear on how they work. I have a user class already designed which stores user information: username, password, email etc. I also have a session class which uses the user ID to store a session cookie in the user's browser so that when they return to the application, a method is invoked to check if:               isset($_SESSION['id']){ $this->userId=$_SESSION['id']}      then take the user to the admin page. I've been reading that using the database is a more secure method of handling sessions, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this concept. So say I wanted to store the session info in the database, and have access to that info so that if the user clicked on a link to their profile page, for example, I could use the session info to get their user info. How could I achieve this? Does it even make sense to use this approach?"}
{"_id": "199659", "title": "How to store an object state/data for later processing?", "text": "What do you think would be the most effective solution to maintain an object status through a life cycle? The goal to be able to be continue from any state any time. During the life cycle likely to have human interactions over a variety of interface. For example, an order which needs to be approved by a few people. Or a data supply process that can requires many people to approve or edit? In my mind some solutions:   * When called a function serializes the object and saves it in a database.   * All steps of the process would be saved to somewhere (database, csv, xml, etc.), so it can always be recreated based on this.   * Possibly a mixture of the two methods? Any good methods for the problem?"}
{"_id": "177151", "title": "NLP - Queries using semantic wildcards in full text searching, maybe with Lucene?", "text": "Let's say I have a big corpus (for example in english or an arbitrary language), and I want to perform some semantic search on it. For example I have the query: \"Be careful: [art] armada of [sg] is coming to [do sg]!\" And the corpus contains the following sentence: \"Be careful: an armada of alien ships is coming to destroy our planet!\" It can be seen that my query string could contain \"semantic placeholders\", such as: [art] - some placeholder for articles (for example a / an in English) [sg], [do sg] - some placeholders for NPs and VPs (subjects and predicates) I would like to develop a library which would be capable to handle these queries efficiently. I suspect that some kind of POS-tagging would be necessary for parsing the text, but because I don't want to fully reimplement an already existing full-text search engine to make it work, I'm considering that how could I integrate this behaviour into a search engine like Lucene? I know there are SpanQueries which could behave similarly in some cases, but as I can see, Lucene doesn't do any semantic stuff with stored texts. It is possible to implement a behavior like this? Or do I have to write an own search engine?"}
{"_id": "177150", "title": "What are the best practices and strategies for transferring an outsourced software development project in-house?", "text": "What are the best methods of knowledge transfer? What kinds of documentation should be expected? What activities should take place before and after handover, both by the external party and ourselves?"}
{"_id": "124088", "title": "Is it better to target iOS 5 and ARC or an earlier version with MRC?", "text": "I personally don't know much about iOS 5, but it seems like with automatic reference counting (ARC), you get rid of much of the memory management issues of the previous operating systems. So is it better to target iOS5 (and create apps that can only run on the newest iOS devices), or is it better for her to target iOS 4 or even iOS 3, so she understands the fundamentals of memory management in Objective-C? Are there any important aspects of iOS development that she might miss out on by jumping into iOS 5?"}
{"_id": "177155", "title": "What are some books that explain low level stuff like com interfaces, dll injection etc?", "text": "What are some books that explain low level stuff like com interfaces, dll injection etc? Basically low level windows programming. Searching on amazon gives me hacking books/10+ year old books which is not what i want. Thanks."}
{"_id": "134256", "title": "What is the difference between a software process model and software engineering methods (methodology)?", "text": "I'm an academic guy, who is now venturing into the software engineering world, puzzled by the fact that many terms seem to overlap each other. I'm reading some books and cannot quite distinguish/correlate a software process model from software engineering methods. For instance, in _Software Engineering_ Ian Sommerville defines a software process model as: > A simplified representation of a software process, presented from a specific > perspective. And software methodology ( _software engineering methods_ ) as: > Structured approaches to software development which include system models, > notations, rules, design advice and process guidance. However, Wikipedia defines _software development methodology_ like this: > A software development methodology or system development methodology in > software engineering is a framework that is used to structure, plan, and > control the process of developing an information system. In my opinion, Sommerville's definition of a software process model can enter on the scope of the Wikipedia definition. Can anyone enlighten me on this issue? An example would rock, e.g, `A` is a software process model and `B` is a software engineering methods (methodology)."}
{"_id": "130770", "title": "What Are the Cons of Publishing Beta Software in Android Market?", "text": "I've spent some time developing a little Android app to scratch my own itch. I'm considering publishing the current version as a beta in Android Market. Pros for publishing it now would be the potential to get feedback. It would also be a way to gauge interest in the app which could effect whether to develop it further at all. What would be the cons of publishing beta in Android Market?"}
{"_id": "130771", "title": "Is the MIT license suitable for an open source library that is only used in unit testing scenarios?", "text": "Some time ago I developed a small project for use in unit testing scenario's and published it on Codeplex. Back then I choose the GPL license but I didn't really understand it. Today I changed it to MIT, because it's a much simpler license that I can understand. I like to be recognized as the copyright holder, but I want everybody to be able to use the library without worrying about license issues. I think MIT covers both, but not 100% sure. ' _Virality_ ' is not an issue for this project. Would this license (MIT) in any way prevent a person to use my library for the unit testing of a closed-source commercial or private project? In this regard, is my recent change to MIT a change for the better?"}
{"_id": "230634", "title": "How to really understand programming?", "text": "I have started to learn to program. I am interested in it and dont mind how long it takes to learn. But I am using books to start out and I find that there are some things I get and some things I have no idea. I can understand the code when I see an example but I feel completely lost if I were to go out and do something on my own. I have barely any experience: maybe 20 or so hours, which I understand is absolutely nothing.   * When does everything come together?   * What are some best ways to learn that anyone else has found?   * Are there any good projects people have done that have been a great learning experience?"}
{"_id": "78083", "title": "What do you need to master a language and its technology?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  how to really master a programming language Let say about Java(just a sample, you can talk about C#, PHP, C++ ... it's just similar) and 10 (ten) levels, 1 is newbie and 10 is master. How can you identify someone at which level based on his knowledge? I do not tend to compare languages, I do tend to know what indicate a master or a newbie in a language _and its (language's) based technology_. Yeah, I know there aren't on earth a language stand alone, it always come with a technology with it. Let say in Java, you can memorize all of its keyword and syntax in just few days, but to _know_ it (I mean do something with it effectively), you must read the Oracle (Sun) javadoc many many times (I'm not mention the 3rd party product yet)."}
{"_id": "165380", "title": "How can I  really master a programming language?", "text": "I know that learning a language, you can simply buy a book, follow the examples, and whenever possible try the exercises. But what I'm really looking is how to master the language once you've learned it. Now I know that experience is one major factor, but what about learning the internals of the language, what is the underlying structure, etc. There are articles out there saying read this book, read that book, make this game and that game. But to me this doesn't mean to master a language. I want to be able to read other people's code and understand it, no matter how hard that is. To understand when to use a function and when another, etc etc. The list could go on and on but I believe I've made the point. :) And finally, take whatever language as an example if needed, though best would be if C was taken as an example."}
{"_id": "130776", "title": "How can I develop a Package Manager for Embedded Systems?", "text": "I need to develop/use a package manager for an embedded Linux system with the following properties:   * A master fully controls which packages need to be installed (the slave has no possibility to ask the master anything)   * Download speed on the device is slow that not just everything from the master distribution can be download to the target   * Upgrading/Downgrading of packages must be possible   * It should be possible to replace the package manager on the system itself   * Possibility to replace the operating system itself   * It's easily to recover from failures (power loss, ...), especially relevant when considering the two points above   * Locks on the slave which have to be deleted manually are by no means allowed   * If a new (meta?) package replaces an old (meta) package and there are some unneeded packages left, they're removed, to save space on the device   * Define some form of order or dependency to install packages   * Perhaps some form of a recovery system is need (how to detect that it is needed, how to boot it, ...) Some points are just repeating other points, and some points are not necessarily something the package manager itself has to do. I started to copy ideas from dpkg (especially how it install files and renames them later to reduce the time frame where something bad can happen) and use the deb format for packages itself (not using all of the fields). I'm not sure myself, if this questions belongs to Programmers, but instead asking for a solution or anything like that, I'm more interested if other programmers faced the same problem and if there are any notable resources how this kind of problem is solved. Personally it happened to me too many times that embedded devices could be almost destroyed by a software update without any possibility (without special hardware) for recovery. Some links that may be relevant for others are the following ones:   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_management_systems   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipkg I could as well provide a pseudo code alike description for what I intend to do."}
{"_id": "228599", "title": "In python, do we have class encapsulation at the level of the object?", "text": "I was bitten by using the `is` operator when i should have been using `==`. Am aware that the former tests for equality of the objects' identities and that the latter tests for equality of the objects' contents. Using `is`, i thought, also implicitly tests for the equality of the contents. For example `if a is b` is true, then the contents must be the same. This was the working assumption and i believe that it's still true. But what was discovered, and should have been known, is that if `if a is b` is false, then the contents of a and b may or may not be the same. Example (Python 3.3.3):               class Food:         def favourite_restaurant(self):             return \"the foo diner\"               if __name__ == '__main__':              fr = \"the juice bar\"         print('%r  is  %r: %r' % (fr, 'the juice bar', (fr is 'the juice bar')))         print('%r  ==  %r: %r' % (fr, 'the juice bar', (fr == 'the juice bar')))              f = Food()         result = f.favourite_restaurant()         print('%r  is  %r: %r' % (result, 'the foo diner', (result is 'the foo diner')))         print('%r  ==  %r: %r' % (result, 'the foo diner', (result == 'the foo diner')))      The first print block says:               'the juice bar'  is  'the juice bar': True     'the juice bar'  ==  'the juice bar': True      The second print block says:               result: 'the foo diner'     'the foo diner'  is  'the foo diner': False     'the foo diner'  ==  'the foo diner': True      It seems that objects instantiated within the instance of a class have their own group of ids, separate from objects outside the class. My understanding that encapsulation in python is really a matter for 'consenting adults'. Do we actually have encapsulation at some lower level?"}
{"_id": "244532", "title": "Is there an imperative language with a Haskell-like type system?", "text": "I've tried to learn Haskell a few times over the last few years, and, maybe because I know mainly scripting languages, the functional-ness of it has always bothered me (monads seem like a huge mess for doing lots of I/O). However, I think it's type system is _perfect_. Reading through a guide to Haskell's types and typeclasses (like this), I don't really see a reason why they would require a functional language, and furthermore, they seem like they would be perfect for an industry-grade object-oriented language (like Java). This all begs the question: **has anyone ever taken Haskell's typing system and made a imperative, OOP language with it?** If so, I want to use it."}
{"_id": "244534", "title": "Javascript Rookie Question: Define Variables Inline", "text": "I'm proficient with HTML and CSS but I'm still pretty shaky when it comes to Javascript. That said, I've been able to build a site using the Internet Archive Book Reader, which relies on reader.js Here's a copy of one of my versions of reader.js https://gist.github.com/dylan-k/ed4efed2384e221d46cc It's a good site, but I find I have to repeat things a lot. Basically, I have one copy of reader.js for every page/book featured on the site. It seems there must be a better way. I re-use the script, making copies, just so that I can change lines `28`, `80`, `83`, `84`. Is there a way I could include just one copy of reader.js and then use a `<script>` tag to define these 4 lines for the individual pages?"}
{"_id": "244535", "title": "How does session middleware generally verify browser sessions?", "text": "I've been using session middleware to build web apps for years: from PHP's built-in session handling layer to node's connect session middleware. However, I've never tried (or needed) to roll my own session handling layer. How would one go about it? What sort of checks are necessary to provide at least some modicum of security against HTTP session highjacking? I figure setting a cookie with a token to keep track of the session, and then perhaps some check to see that the originating IP address of the session doesn't change and that the client browser software remains consistent. Hoping to hear about current best-practices..."}
{"_id": "230539", "title": "Estimating time remaining in a queue with multiple workers", "text": "I've been trying to figure out a way of calculating the estimated time remaining for an item in a queue when there are multiple workers processing items from the single queue. A client submits a job to the queue, but since processing can take some time I wanted to give an estimate of feedback. I know   * Number of items in the queue   * Position in queue   * Length of time an item takes to process*   * How many workers are running   * When each worker last completed a job I don't know   * How far along processing the worker is, only when it starts and ends** *Processing time is the 90th percentile processing time of past jobs within a reasonable time range. Not completely accurate but tends to overestimate slightly and is accurate enough for my needs.   **Workers are calling an external service so the best estimate of progress is time taken With a single worker I can use a function such as               estimated_seconds_remaining = (         (position_in_queue + 1) * average_processing_time_seconds     ) - (         average_processing_time_seconds - time_since_worker_last_finished_seconds     )      `(position_in_queue + 1) * average_processing_time_seconds` gives me the time it will take to process all the items in the queue plus the one that is currently being processed, then taking away `average_processing_time_seconds - time_since_worker_last_finished_seconds` gives me the estimated time remaining to process the current queue item. This works fairly well, and is accurate enough for reporting back since the variation in processing times is quite small. But, in production I'll be running multiple workers, so multiple workers will be processing items from the same queue. There will most likely be 3 or 4 workers running, but could be upwards of 10 at times. The simplest option is just modifying my formula so               estimated_seconds_remaining = (         (position_in_queue + 1)/number_of_workers * average_processing_time_seconds     ) - (         average_processing_time_seconds/number_of_workers - time_since_worker_last_finished_seconds     )      But this gives inaccurate and erratic predictions, since the estimates are being re-calculated every second to update the display the times jump up and down depending on when the workers all finish their jobs. Is there a simple way, with the information I have, to calculate a reasonably accurate prediction of the time remaining before an item from the queue is processed?"}
{"_id": "230538", "title": "What is the absolute minimum set of instructions required to build a Turing complete processor", "text": "I have a general idea of how the processor handles instructions but spend my time working in mostly high level languages. Maybe somebody who works closer to the iron can provide some valuable insight. Assuming that programming languages are basically very high level abstractions of a processor's instruction set, what is the most basic set of instructions necessary to create a turing complete machine? _Note: I don't know anything about the diversity of hardware architectures but -- for the sake of simplicity -- lets assume it's a typical processor with an ALU (if necessary) and instruction stack._ *"}
{"_id": "185741", "title": "Node.js API Architecture", "text": "I am currently working on a web app and want to design the interface between nodejs / mongoose and the backbone app. A short description of the app: A user signs up to the application and gets a user account where he can create an organization (e.g. footballclub). Within these organizations you can set up projects. Within these projects you can define tasks you could assign to somebody) I want to have a RESTful api for the app. My problem is: A user could have more than one organization, if i have an api for projects like GET /projects/   POST /projects/   GET /projects/:id   PUT /projects/:id   DELETE /projects/:id How do i determine to which organization the project belongs? Do i add a parameter to the api or do i send an extra field containing the id of the organization? Any help is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "159383", "title": "Is it common for business analysts (or other non-development team members) to have stories tracked alongside developers?", "text": "We're using JIRA with Greenhopper, and currently our business analyst has tasks for their analysis which will eventually lead to new stories placed in the backlog, running alongside the stories for the current sprint, and it feels kind of messy - especially because they don't overlap the workflow for the development stories. Is it common for this to be the case? Should it be? It feels like the analysis ought to be an external process that feeds in to the product backlog, not something that tags along the sprint backlog, but I am new to scrum. I consulted the scrum guide and didn't see anything explicit, and while we don't really have a Product Owner (although at times I would say our manager fills that role, other times so does the business analyst), I guess I could also phrase the question as: Should Product Owners track their tasks next to the stories that the development team works on?"}
{"_id": "178827", "title": "What does \"polyadic\" mean in the context of functional programming and type systems?", "text": "And how does it (or does not) correspond to \"polymorphic\"? Occasionally I see this notion like in: Implement and represent polyadic operations. I checked Wiktionary but it only gives a general meaning, not specific to functional programming."}
{"_id": "86859", "title": "C++ IDE and tools with Clang integration", "text": "Recently I've read this blog about Google integrating Clang parser into their code analysis tools This is something in which C++ is at least a decade behind other languages like Java, but now that llvm-clang is almost C++ iso-ready, I think its possible for C++ code analysis tools to begin using the C++ parser effectively, since it has been designed from the ground up precisely for this I'm wondering if there are existing open source or known commercial projects taking this path, integrating with Clang to provide higher-level analysis tools?"}
{"_id": "233789", "title": "Best practice to return a long string in a stub", "text": "I have some methods im trying to test which use a StreamReader dependency that i mock using Rhino mocks. But it is a large xmlFile. In the spirit of unit testing im trying to keep away from using a test file in my test project. On the other hand copy-pasting 100 lines of xml into my test class seems sort of ugly. What is the best practice when returning large strings using a stub."}
{"_id": "11721", "title": "Is \"Computer Science != Software Engineering\" an excuse to teach programming poorly?", "text": "We've all heard it; whenever there's a discussion about CS grads having poor development skills someone eventually says, > Computer science isn't software engineering. The problem that I see is that programming and software development _are_ taught in CS courses. They're just commonly taught poorly. If it's being taught, then why not teach it right the first time? * So I would like to see what the opinions are on 2 questions:   1. Is the CS != SE argument a copout or excuse for not properly teaching programming skills.   2. Regardless of your answer to question 1; if you were in the almighty position of making such a decision: would you force an emphasis on proper teaching of programming in CS courses? *. I have a suspicion, based on anecdotal evidence I obtained throughout my education, that most academics in the field haven't had to write code to be maintained and haven't maintained code, and as a result don't have the knowledge/skills to teach it effectively."}
{"_id": "86850", "title": "A colourblind member of our team", "text": "My team relies a lot on colour within our code to outline features that need to be worked on (we colour lines of code that need attention). We have a close friend who is colourblind and wants to join our team. What can we do to highlight what needs work without using colour? We have about 25 people on the team that are all accustomed to the line colouring system and we have found it to be most efficient."}
{"_id": "165763", "title": "Is a coding standard even needed any more?", "text": "I know that it's been proven that a coding standard helps enormously. However, there are many different tools and IDEs that will format to whatever standard the programmer prefers. So long as the code's neat/commented (and not a spaghetti mess), I don't see the need for a coding standard. Are there any arguments for the development of a coding standard (we don't have one, but I was looking into creating one)?"}
{"_id": "86852", "title": "What is this called?", "text": "I'm hoping there's a book or something out there for me to get... If I have a class that has Collection as an instance variable, what is that method of coding called? A design pattern? If so, where can I find more information on it? As I've been working with this mentor, he's really helped me understand my programming weakness and that weakness is thinking in terms of collections or relationships between objects. It just seems so difficult for me right now and I need to read to become smarter. My mentor is a great guy, but I'm starting to feel like I need to learn more on my own.               public class Evaluation     {         private List<Criterion> criterion = null;              public Evaluation()         {             criterion = new List<Criterion>();         }     }"}
{"_id": "81801", "title": "Am I Unit Testing or Integration Testing my Stored Procedures?", "text": "I have had many occasions recently where I have needed to maintain complex stored procedures and functions. These were broken already, usually in fairly subtle ways - there were very few occasions where you would call the SP with valid parameters and it just plain didn't work. My solution was to evolve a framwork that executes the stored procedures inside a transaction, after initializing the database to the initial conditions I needed, then testing for the expected result, also within the same transaction. The transaction was rolled back at the end of the test. This has worked very well. But some would call this \"integration testing\" since it involves integrating with the database. I call it unit testing, since I tested individual components and individual test cases for those components, and since I completely controlled the initial state of the database. But where should the line be drawn? Is this integration testing or unit testing? Is there a practical reason why this sort of test is a bad idea? If this is \"only\" integration testing, does anyone have suggestions on how to do actual \"unit tests\" on these stored procedures?"}
{"_id": "190815", "title": "Would it be possible to publish my code on an official site with a third-party library?", "text": "I'm building a rather large and extensive wrapper in Delphi for an email system called Mandrill. There are wrappers for this API in many other languages, but not for Delphi. So, I'm hoping to produce the first full wrapper. The problem is, I'm utilizing a third-party JSON parser called superobject. I'm afraid that if I complete this wrapper, I won't be able to provide my code for Mandrill to share, because of this third-party library. If I do complete this wrapper, is there any chance that Mandrill will be able to legally publish it on their site, based on the fact that I'm using superobject? Or would I need to parse my own JSON to be applicable? PS - I mean this question in a general concept, not necessarily for my precise scenario, but in general, if I use a third-party library, can I legally post it with my code on another third-party's site?"}
{"_id": "233948", "title": "Entities optional relations: separate classes or single class?", "text": "Lets focus on a domain object that is related to **more** other (different!) entities. Sometimes we need one relation and sometimes the other. Let's be agile and say: we don't know in a front how many other relations there will be. In other words: we have object **A** that is related one-to-one to **B** and one-to-many to **C** and again one-to-one to **D** and so on. Now, when developing the presentation tier, it often needs a lot of data to display; like table of **A** with **B** , or on other place one **A** with many **C** and so on. How we gonna model these relationships? Here is an example: `Competition`. Sometimes it comes and needs to be used with e.g. `Venue`. Sometimes with e.g. `List<Event>`. Since you care about performances, let's also say that the related objects (`Venue` and list of `Event`s) come from the single input/repository method/finder method/one SQL join (however you call it) - and that they can be _injected_ into `Competition` using some mapping tool. This way we express the actual relationship between the entities. Question: should we keep both relations/references in the `Competition` class and ignore the other when one is used, or we should make many separate classes - one for each relation? (It doesn't matter if it is 1-1 relation or 1-many, the question is the same.) In other words, should we have: **[A]** Everything in the single class. Getter methods do represents relationships. It's on us to fill the object if relation is needed.               class Competition {         ... competition data...              private Venue venue;         public Venue getVenue() {             return venue;         }              private List<Event> events;         public List<Event> getEvents() {             return events;         }     }      But then, when your application method return a `Competition` you don't know what relations are populated and you have to figure that out by looking the application methods code or by method name (e.g. `findCompetitionWithEvents...()`). **[B]** For each relationship we have a type or interface. One way to do so, without interfaces for the simplicity of this example, is:               class CompetitionVenue extends Competition {         private Venue venue;         public Venue getVenue() {             return venue;         }     }      and               class CompetitionEvents extends Competition {         private List<Event> events;         public List<Event> getEvents() {             return events;         }     }      Now the type speaks by itself what relationship is returned and therefore application method that returns it guarantees that relation exists. But then each relationship would have its own class or interface; EDIT: **[C]** Each relationship is represented using a generic class like `Tuple<Competition, List<Event>>` and `Competition` does not have the getter for list of events?"}
{"_id": "140496", "title": "Can you/should you develop components for ASP.NET MVC?", "text": "Following from the previous question I've started to wonder - is it possible to implement \"Components\" in ASP.NET MVC (latest version)? And should you? Let's clarify what I mean with a \"component\". With that I mean a \"control\" (aka \"widget\"), similar to those that ASP.NET webforms is built upon. A gridview might be a good example. In webforms I can place on my form a datasource component (one line of code), a gridview component (another line of code) and bind them together (specify an attribute on the gridview). In the codebehind file I fill the datasource with data (a few lines of DB-querying code), and I'm all set. At this point the gridview is a fully functional standalone component. I can open the form, and I'll see all the data. I can sort it by clicking on the column headers; it is split into several pages; I can drag the column headers around and rearrange columns; I can turn on \"grouping\" mode; etc. And I don't need to write another line of code for any of it. The gridview, as a component, already has all the code tucked away in its classes and assemblies. I just place it on the form, initialize it, and it Just Works. At some times (like sorting or navigation to a different page) it will also perform ajax callbacks to the server, but those too will be handled internally, with my code having no knowledge at all about it. And then there are also events that I can attach if I want to get notified when something happens. In MVC I cannot see a way of doing this cleanly. Sure, there are the partial views, but those only handle half of the problem - they render the initial HTML. Some more can be achieved with client-side Javascript (like column re- arranging), but when the grid needs to do an ajax callback (say, to fetch the next page of data), my code will have to get involved and process that request. At best I guess I can provide some helper methods to process it, but I'll have to write the code that calls them, and also provide a controller method with signature matching the arguments of that callback. I guess that I could make some hacks with global events or special routes or something, but that just seems... hackish. Unelegant. Perhaps this is not the MVC way? Although I've completed one project in it, I'm still far from being an MVC expert. But then what is? In the intranet application that we're building there are dozens upon dozens of such grids. Naturally I want them all to have a unified look & behavior, and I don't want to repeat the same code all over the place. So what's the \"MVC\" approach to this problem?"}
{"_id": "233946", "title": "Can we consider a clients interaction with a web server to be stateful if the web server maintains state via session variables or cookies?", "text": "A little confused with the notion of stateful/stateless architectures. Forgive me if I'm unclear. Questions: Can we consider a clients interaction with a web server to be stateful if the web server maintains state via session variables or cookies? What if we assume that any change to this information comes from the client side any way and doesn't depend on other users?   * What about amazon's web store? Although state may change and not be reflected automatically to the client... if the client attempts to operate on stale data, the system recognizes this and acts appropriately. Is this purely stateless still? Or somewhere in between?   * What if we added a layer of java script that constantly polled the server every second to keep the client side updated? At an abstract level wouldn't this be considered stateful because the client will continuously have an updated state? Definitions/Models I'm trying to work with: Stateless architecture of websites: HTTP is a stateless protocol. The client makes an HTTP web request. The server calculates/processes the request and returns back to the client the appropriate information which the current state of the website. While the client has that information, the website can change state and these changes won't be reflected back to the client side until the client makes another web request. Stateful architecture: The client can simply operate assuming that any data that is seen represents the actual state of the server."}
{"_id": "233940", "title": "When getting a list of files to process, should I store them to a list of string, or a list of Stream?", "text": "for a list of files, coming from a list like from a file dialog is it better to store the list as a list of strings or should I convert each file to opened Streams stored in a List? For example                       List<string> files = new List<string>();                  List<FileStream> fileStreams = new List<FileStream>();                  foreach (Stream f in fileStreams)             {                 //process stream             }                  **VS**                  foreach (string s in files)             {                 //open filestream                 FileStream fs = new FileStream(s, FileMode.Open);                      //process             }"}
{"_id": "205201", "title": "Why aren't plain-text markup languages (like LaTeX or Markdown) more popular in the software development process?", "text": "I'm currently an intern at a government contractor and am getting the (obnoxiously unavoidable) feeling that Word is the de-facto standard in the software development process. Its binary format makes it very difficult to collaborate on documents in the way I am used to collaborating on a code base. The use of plain text markup (with such languages as LaTeX, Markdown, ReStructured Text, _etc._ ) allows for a diff-friendly document that works well with the normal workflow of a developer. As for comments where the language doesn't support them (eg Markdown), there are many existing solutions that allow collaborative comments on code bases (eg GitHub, Bitbucket) that could _easily_ be applied to other plain-text files containing markup. I understand the need to cooperate with technologically illiterate management necessitates some sort of graphical interface to everything, but such interfaces exist for most of these formats. (For example, LaTeX has a 'fork' of sorts called LyX that puts a graphical front-end to a plain-text, LaTeX- like syntax. This file, even though primarily graphical in its editing, is _still_ diff-friendly. (Inception comment: it also has Word-style comments.)) Many of these solutions could yet be used instead of Word, and the vast majority are free or open-source. However, we use Word even for our own internal documentation that nobody else sees. We work with text for a significant chunk of our career---why is documentation so special?"}
{"_id": "205202", "title": "Multiple Data Types for Single Variable in C", "text": "I am trying to implement basic cons, car and cdr of SCHEME in C. I have made a simple program that allows me to cons two integers as shown in the main program. However, I want my program to be able to cons a 'consed object' with a digit as well as cons a 'consed object' with another 'consed object' as shows below:   * (cons 2 3)   * (cons 2 (cons 2 3))   * (cons (cons 2 3) (cons 2 3)) Since the limitation arises because the data in the struct is of type int, is it possible to have a variable accept multiple data types in C? If yes, how? If not, is there another way to deal with this issue? Here is my code:               #include <stdio.h>     #include <string.h>          typedef struct cons_object {     int data;     struct node* next;     } cons_object;          cons_object* cons(int x, int y )     {     cons_object* car = NULL;     cons_object* cdr = NULL;     car = malloc(sizeof(struct cons_object));     cdr = malloc(sizeof(struct cons_object));     car->data = x;     car->next = cdr;     cdr->data = y;     cdr->next = NULL;     return car; /*returns the pointer car*/     }          int car(cons_object* list) /*takes in a consed object*/     {     cons_object* car = list;     int y;     y = car->data;     return y;     }          int cdr(cons_object* list)     {     cons_object* cdr = list;     cdr = cdr->next;     int z;     z= cdr->data;     return z;          }          int main ()     {     int y = car (cons(33,42));     printf(\"%d\\n\",y);     int z = cdr (cons(3,4));     printf(\"%d\\n\",z);     return 0;          }"}
{"_id": "236272", "title": "MVC: \"User\" model gets big and crowded. Should methods that do CRUD operations on one-to-many relationship data be in different models?", "text": "In most MVC web projects there is a User class. Many times a user has something else in a one-to-many relationship, i.e. orders. If we have a user class that has many orders, should methods that add, edit or delete orders for a user be placed in the user class, or in a separate Order class? i.e. 1.               user.add_order(order_name)   //Instance method      vs 2.               Order.add_order_for_user(user_id, order_name)   //Static method      or alternatively, 3.               order = new Order(user_id,order_name)     order.save()      (Also, in the case of option 3, should this be combined with option 1 and put in that method)? My main issue with option 1 is that the user model tends to get huge in terms of size. Does this violate SRP? For instance, in one of my projects a user has many \"things\" like friended users, feeds, uploaded files, warnings, punishments, and the list goes on. I'm basically adding CRUD methods for all those \"things\" that a particular user has many of, in the User class itself. Is this a bad thing, and should I spread out the CRUD methods to different classes? However, one of the advantages for option 1 is that I can control logic in those CRUD methods using the attributes of the current user object, without having to query the user. For instance, if I have a method \"add_file\" I can check to see if the user's total file space used (an attribute of User) is less than a max without having do do another query."}
{"_id": "236277", "title": "Categorize tasks/bugs by risk of changes", "text": "The project I'm currently working on has an issue: bugs and tasks are often assigned to people who are too new or too inexperienced and their work ends up producing more bugs down the road. The problem is that parts of our software are much more \"dangerous\" to work on than others due to code quality issues. I've been trying to combat this issue by estimating the risk associated with tasks and paying close attention to which developers get assigned which tasks. We use JIRA so I started labeling issues to keep track of this estimation. I've noticed that I've ended up using several metrics to categorize a bug/task:   * How clear/straightforward it is. E.g. whether it's something that will need a lot of design work or just a simple UI bug fix.   * How maintainable the affected area of the code is. Is it a well-designed area or a big ball of mud.   * How much of the program I think will be affected by the required change. My labels are kind of messy since I didn't have a clear idea when I started what the possible categories would be and I still don't. I'm thinking about requesting a new field be added (something like \"Risk\") so that we can require an estimate before assigning the work to someone. Has anyone dealt with this sort of thing before?"}
{"_id": "173438", "title": "Commercial product using a GPL OS", "text": "we are planning to create a commercial product. The product consists of some MCUs and a small computer (we are developing on a Raspberry Pi at the moment). The computer needs an operating system as we would like keep things like WLAN and booting as simple as possible. We created some software that runs on this computer (node.js application). The most operating systems like Arch Linux are licensed under the GPL. The product we would sell contains the computer with pre-installed OS and software. This system operates as a central access point to MCU devices and is able to control them. We use other's software in our product. We do not modify their source code. The product (the computer part) consists of a computer, an OS and software we create.   1. How does the use of an OS affect our own code (licence)?   2. Is there a possibility of avoiding GPL for our own code? eg. shipping the software separated?   3. Are there any effects to other components of our product, eg. the MCU part?   4. The node.js application delivers a WebApp to the client where it is executed. Are there any effects (As we would like to sell parts of the code as an additional App on the App Stores)? I know we make use of the work of the community and i respect this. The problem is: The software alone is kind of useless without the MCU devices. I do not expect a legal advice."}
{"_id": "234172", "title": "How do statically typed languages handle test discovery?", "text": "I come from a Python background, so I'm used to pretty automatic test discovery. For example, the `py.test` library automatically locates any files which begin with `test`, finds classes whose names start with `Test` inside of the those files, and then calls all the functions whose names start with `test_` in those classes. This type of test discovery is enabled by Python's deep support for reflection and dynamism. These features are often absent in statically typed languages, because they're difficult to make integrate with the type system. Therefore, I'm interested in hearing about what approaches statically typed languages use to make test discovery simpler?"}
{"_id": "173436", "title": "How can I improve my application's memory use?", "text": "I am writing a C# application, and can see the memory usage increasing as the running time of the application increases. Are there any tools or techniques I could monitor my application's memory use, identify memory leaks and generally improve my application's memory use?"}
{"_id": "176407", "title": "Looking for terminology for the relation of a subject and a predicate", "text": "While writing some predicates for collection filtering I have stumbled over the choice of the right words for the relation of the subject and the predicate (English is a foreign language for me). What I ended up writing was \"Subjects **matching** this predicate...\" This seems to be incorrect, since predicates are functions and not regular expressions. But saying \"Subjects for which this predicate returns true...\" sounds awkward to me as well.. So what would be the correct term?"}
{"_id": "176403", "title": "Random List of numbers in C", "text": "I have just started a C programming course and so far have only done the basics like `printf`, read a little on variables etc on the course book. The teacher has tasked us with writing a program that will take a value entered by the user, this will be the number of students in the class (25 at the moment but can be variable). It will then list the number of students randomly and place them in 3 columns. The purpose is to sort students into groups of 3 randomly, then display on the screen in columns. Now my question is not for the code that defeats the object of me attempting the exercise, but how to structure it. I can see that using an array can be used to display the list, but really after some pointers on how best to approach the problem in blocks, then I can attempt to program each block."}
{"_id": "246974", "title": "Repository Pattern: Doctrine2 vs Microsoft Entity Framework?", "text": "I have been using Symfony2 with Doctrine2 for some years. I have recently started using Microsoft's Entity Framework with MVC5. From my Symfony2 experience I understand that a repository's job is only to retrieve and return objects, no additional operations like Saving. Now every examples I have seen for EF has a method Save/Update as part of the repository. For symfony I have been creating manager classes as follows:               interface IManager     {         function getClassName() ;         IRepository getRepository() ;         function Save(object);         function Update();     }      So I pass around the manager, if I need to retrieve objects I call the repository directly. If I need to save I call the manager's save method. Is a repository supposed to support save/update? What do you think of my IManager class, should I also use it for EF?"}
{"_id": "246785", "title": "Is it a good idea to return a default value if a field in a query cannot be found?", "text": "At the place I work we are using a SafeReader class that wraps an IDataReader. One of the 'features' is that if the field you are trying to access wasn't in the query then it just returns a default value. So I am working with some code that is already in place, but apparently never fully worked as it accesses fields that aren't returned from the stored proc it's calling but it didn't throw any exceptions since the SafeReader kindly returned default values. I personally don't like this because it means that when there are mistakes in the code (someone forgets to include a field in the query, or perhaps a misspelling) then it's harder to catch. My question is whether this violates any general 'best practices' of development or object oriented programming ideals? Or does this seem perfectly reasonable?"}
{"_id": "122900", "title": "How managers choose programming languages", "text": "It's not a secret to anyone that managers can and often will impose the programming language that will be used for a project. Being a programmer myself, I have never been able to understand this. But now I think I do: I've just had a revelation when Joel Spolsky said on the podcast that they should use QuickBooks because \"every accountant in the world knows it\". This struck me as being very similar to \"chose Java because every programmer in the world knows it\". Now that I've seen the same issue from another perspective,I don't know much about accounting, but I do know something about programming, I'm wondering how a programmer can help make sure the right programming language is chosen for a project?"}
{"_id": "70318", "title": "How should a programmer get what they need/want from a systems administrator?", "text": "In what ways would people recommend a programmer communicate the need for newer, more up to date libraries to system administrators. At our organization the programmers often do many system administration tasks such as system updates, installation of software, management of software, recovery of specific systems after failures, etc. Programmers are currently limited by the age of some of the systems available and would like newer OSes and subsequently libraries available to them. What is a good way to communicate these desires to the SAs who are, in the end, in charge of deciding what OSes to install. Edited to simplify the whole question. Thanks."}
{"_id": "70312", "title": "What have my fellow Delphi programmers done to make Eclipse/Java more like Delphi?", "text": "I am a veteran Delphi programmer working on my first real Android app. I am using Eclipse and Java as my development environment. The thing I miss the most of course is Delphi's VCL components and the associated IDE tools for design-time editing and code creation. Fortunately I am finding Eclipse to be one hell of an IDE with it's lush context sensitive help, deep auto-complete and code wizard facilities, and other niceties. This is a huge double treat since it is **free**. However, here is an example of something in the Eclipse/Java environment that will give a Delphi programmer pause. I will use the simple case of adding an \"on-click\" code stub for an OK button. **DELPHI**   * Drop button on a form   * Double-click button on form and fill in the code that will fire when the button is clicked **ECLIPSE**   * Drop button on layout in the graphical XML file editor   * Add the View.OnClickListener interface to the containing class's \"implements\" list if not there already. ( _Command+1 on Macs, Ctrl + 1 on PCs I believe_ ).   * Use Eclipse to automatically add the code stub for unimplemented methods needed to support the View.OnClickListener interface, thus creating the event handler function stub.   * Find the stub and fill it in. However, if you have more than one possible click event source then you will need to inspect the View parameter to see which View element triggered the OnClick() event, thus requiring a case statement to handle multiple click event sources. **NOTE: I am relatively new to Eclipse/Java so if there is a much easier way of doing this please let me know.** Now that work flow isn't all that terrible, but again, that's just the simplest of use cases. Ratchet up the amount of extra work and thinking for a more complex component (aka widget) and the large number of properties/events it might have. It won't be long before you miss dearly the Delphi intelligent property editor and other designers. Eclipse tries to cover this ground by having an extensive list of properties in the menu that pops up when you right-click over a component/widget in the XML graphical layout editor. That's a huge and welcome assist but it's just not even close to the convenience of the Delphi IDE. Let me be very clear. I absolutely am not ranting nor do I want to start a Delphi vs. Java ideology discussion. Android/Eclipse/Java is what it is and there is a lot that impresses me. What I want to know is what other Delphi programmers that made the switch to the Eclipse/Java IDE have done to make things more Delphi like, and not just to make component/widget event code creation easier but any programming task. For example:   * Clever tips/tricks   * Eclipse plugins you found   * other ideas? Any great blog posts or web resources on the topic are appreciated too. \\-- roschler"}
{"_id": "256067", "title": "Are macros values, data types, identifiers, variables, constants, or ...?", "text": "Macros exist in many programming languages, for example, C.   1. A data type is a set of values with operations on the values. Are macros values, or data types?   2. Are macros identifiers, variables, or constants?   3. Are macros something not belonging to a programming language, and something that will be translated to the programming language in the preprocessing step of compilation? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "42986", "title": "If we can do functional programming with Python, do we need a specific functional programming language?", "text": "Using generators and lambda, we can do functional programming with Python. You can also achieve the same thing with Ruby. So the question is: why do we need specific functional programming languages such as Erlang, Haskell, and Scheme? Is there anything different that these specific functional programming languages provide? Why can't we just use Python for functional programming?"}
{"_id": "135857", "title": "Calculate statistics for web application", "text": "I'm planning to add a couple of usage statistics to my web application. Some common things like: registered users, amount of comments/posts, etc. over time (last 24 hours / last week / last month / last year) which I want to display graphically to all admins.   I know that I can retrieve all information from database queries, but I have a bad feeling going over \"old data\" over and over again. Example: _Yesterday, I requested the amount of users who registered for an account the last year. Admin XYZ requests the same statistic today._ A simple select-all-users-reg-date-last-year query would be redundant and cause much database traffic, right? **What is the best approach of calculating statistical data like this?**"}
{"_id": "42983", "title": "Why is Reflector such an essential utility?", "text": "Reading the brouhaha surrounding Reflector going paid got me thinking about the product and its uses. Many people seem to consider it an essential tool. I have to admit, I haven't used Reflector in years. I mean, there's documentation for both the .Net APIs and the third party components I use. In the past, whenever a colleague pulled Reflector out of his tool belt, I got the sense he was headed into the weeds. Reading all the passion around Reflector is leading me to question if I'm really missing something here. Why do you need something like Reflector so often that you consider it an essential tool? I can see it being needed on very rare occasions, but not enough to be considered an essential tool. Please enlighten me."}
{"_id": "135859", "title": "What is the easiest way of viewing an RGB byte array as an image?", "text": "I have a byte array stored in a file. I want the quickest, easiest way of viewing the image whether it is writing code or using a utility or web page."}
{"_id": "255741", "title": "Machine code JITs and the Execution Disable bit", "text": "How is runtime-generated machine-code (such as the output of a JIT), actually executed by the CPU if the CPU/OS has an Execution Disable bit? As far as I know, many modern processors and Operating Systems include support for an NX bit, (including Intel and ARM), which prevents machine code that is stored at any address _other_ than the code section of a compiled binary from being executed. Clearly, this is a nice security advantage, because it prevents shell-code injection attacks. But how do JIT engines, like LLVM, which dynamically generate machine-code, get around this?"}
{"_id": "208244", "title": "Is handwriting out code an efficient way to learn a programming language?", "text": "In my C++ intro class last semester, all of our tests were paper/pencil and we had to write out code with a pen or pencil in order to answer questions. It seemed counterintuitive at the time, but also made sure students knew the answer down to the last semi-colon. Given that handwriting notes is an essential practice in learning other topics both in the class room and at home, how productive is handwriting code examples and documentation?"}
{"_id": "208245", "title": "Semantic Versioning and splitting apart a library, providing a bundled build", "text": "I've got a nice, fairly popular JavaScript library that is following Semantic Versioning. The current library has a few dependency libraries, which are available either as separate downloads or as part of a single bundled download. I see a need to head down this path further. I want to extract additional, smaller libraries out of the one larger library. Each of these extracted libraries would be available as separate files, or inside of the one bundled build, again. If I go down this path of extracting the libraries, and providing a bundled version of the final code, does this require a full version change in semantic versioning? Would I have to bump from 1.x to 2.x? My first thought it no: I will not change any public API, so I don't have to change the major version number. But then I wonder... well, I am restructuring a lot of things, even though the final API for the bundled version would be the same. Is there a clear answer from semver on something like this? Do I need to bump first, second or third dot? Or something else?"}
{"_id": "843", "title": "Why should we NOT do frequent deployment in PROD or to test server?", "text": "I was instructed by my project manager that frequent deployment in PROD or to test server should be avoided. But I don't understand why? We roll our testing copy to PROD on every sprint end but suddenly client would ask a simple change to the existing application which would require a re-deployment. When every thing was well tested and QA approved. why should we avoid frequent deployment? How it was done universally?"}
{"_id": "79744", "title": "What are the best practices for rapid prototyping using exclusively HTML/CSS/JS", "text": "I'm developing a **prototype** of a web application. I want to only use HTML, CSS and Javascript. I prefer to use my text editor and not having to learn (or pay, for that matter) a new tool like Axure. What would be, to your mind, the best practices? To me there are many qualities for a good prototype:   * Quickly developed   * Easy to improve   * Fair fidelity as regards UX (this disqualifies tools like Omnigraffle or PowerPoint that are more dedicated to wireframing) I trying to learn as quickly as possible, but I would like to know, based on your experience, on how you managed to be both quick and agile. Reference:   * http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/prototyping-with"}
{"_id": "208248", "title": "Navigating Code in Visual Studio", "text": "OK, so my class file is getting rather large, and that's a code smell. But until I can refactor it out, I need to get a handle on it. Primary options:   1. Code Regions.   2. Splitting into partial classes. I have never really liked code regions. They take time to write, and it seems I am always folding/unfolding the regions to find something. I like the partial class idea. Say for example, all public and private properties go into a partial class when they become too many. Does this make sense? The bottom line is that I just need to be able to find methods and properties rapidly, ie navigate code. So, really what I am asking is what is the best way to navigate code?"}
{"_id": "848", "title": "Computer Science: Arts or Science?", "text": "Various colleges and universities may offer a degree in Computer Science either as an Arts or a Science. What differences are there between the two? Would recruiters and those who conduct interviews favor one over the other? _(Bachelor of Arts vs Bachelor of Sciences etc...)_ **Update** \\- Just wanted to add this link to Joel Spolsky's site to give a better frame of reference: BA or BS in Computer Science"}
{"_id": "134103", "title": "Github-like \"pull requests\" without Github", "text": "I work as an analyst for a financial institution, which, due to data sensitivity, will not store any data in the cloud. However, I'm having some success getting my team to use Git for code management. I was wondering whether there was any way to implement Github-like pull requests in our own server. The specific feature I'm interested in is the ability to submit a changeset _for comments_ , without actually having it merged into a given branch. I like the workflow of (1) submit changes, (2) have changes reviewed and commented on, and (3) either accept the commit or reject it. Can this be implemented (even better, can this be _easily_ implemented) on our own servers?"}
{"_id": "134102", "title": "Synchronizing local and remote cache in distributed caching", "text": "With a distributed cache, a subset of the cache is kept locally while the rest is held remotely.   * In a **get** operation, if the entry is not available locally, the remote cache will be used and and the entry is added to local cache.   * In a **put** operation, both the local cache and remote cache are updated. Other nodes in the cluster also need to be notified to invalidate their local cache as well. What's a simplest way to achieve this if you **implemented it yourself** , assuming that nodes are not aware of each other. **Edit** My current implementation goes like this:   * Each cache entry contains a time stamp.   * Put operation will update local cache and remote cache   * Get operation will try local cache then remote cache   * A background thread on each node will check remote cache periodically for each entry in local cache. If the timestamp on remote is newer overwrite the local. If entry is not found in remote, delete it from local."}
{"_id": "138682", "title": "API access question", "text": "**FIRST, THE SCENARIO** We have an internal system that is effectively split into 2 very separate parts across 2 sub-domains, our back-end administrative system for internal access only we will call this admin.example.com and our public-facing interface for customers via our website - lets call this www.example.com/customers We have built a series of APIs with PHP in the back-end system for the public interface to access, the APIs are split into multiple files based around the type of activity that is being performed and are also used in the admin interface, these are held in admin.example.com/apis/activity_api.php we have no problems here. We also have API keys that are in-use, 1 for the front-end and one for the back-end so we can determine access levels without thinking about it. **SECOND, THE ISSUE** Now you know the structure of the application here is the issue, we are using jQuery AJAX to call the APIs but I don't like placing the API keys here as they are publicly visible and anyone with a little programming knowledge will be able to pull a huge range of data, at the same time we need to use them. Note that the issue is only in the public interface. What I am thinking of doing is calling a connecting script in PHP with AJAX that is stored locally on our public facing server, this would do a few things   1. Check the referrer, if it comes from example.com/customers/ or www.example.com/customers/ it continues, if not the request is killed with an unauthorized error   2. Gets the variables posted by the AJAX requests   3. Restructures the variables for the API (e.g. receives `$_GET['request']` then reconstructs as `$_GET['req']`)   4. Adds the API key that is held as a variable within the PHP to the string   5. Uses `file_get_contents()` to make the actual request to the API, this would in turn populate the connecting PHP script with the required returned API data to the site My questions are   1. Have I missed anything in this concept?    2. Are there any flaws that haven't been thought about?    3. Are there any compelling reasons why this type of structure should not be used?  I appreciate the input! **WHAT I HAVE DONE** I really want to thank you guys for your help and comments on this, you have pointed out what I missed and that was the purpose of posting the question in the first place. You also helped me spot the obvious weaknesses. I have just written an algorithm that has taken into account HMAC principles. As with anything in this space there is room for unauthorized access but I believe my algorithm minimizes it. The basic process we're going with is as follows   1. 2 keys have been created, a private and public key   2. The public key is hashed first    3. A base calculation is carried out on part of the current time stamp   4. 2 random keys for the get request are generated that will be used to transport the access keys, to determine the request keys a mathematical calculation is carried out on the base calculation in step 3, the result is then split into 2 parts, the 2 parts are verified as unique and converted to the final values, 1 part belongs to the public access key and the other to the private access key key   5. 9 unique public values, plus the private access key issued are then taken, they are re-ordered based on a final calculation on the base value in step 3 creating a \"signature\" so to speak   6. The signature is then hashed and assigned to the private get key generated in step 4 On a quick calculation and basic testing, each request will be valid for approximately 27 seconds (give or take a few milliseconds) - enough time to process everything needed but not enough for much more. As the calculations are fairly basic the server load hasn't gone up an inch - I have only tested with 10 connections per second for 5 minutes however, I am going to run a series of load tests on it over the next 24-hours that will range from 20 request per second to 400 requests per second and compare with load test results taken last week. So what my new algorithm does in a nutshell is disguises the public and private keys by hashing both - however after time the public access key will be obvious unless I assign an algorithm to randomize it, it assigns both access keys random get request keys and has a short validity time based on the request. It doesn't need to store any data in cookies or sessions. In addition, with exception to the login API, all requests are going via a PHP connector that requires the user to be logged in. I spent more time explaining what I'm doing than actually creating it! Thanks again for your help guys, it helped me open my eyes a bit more and reminded me about what I had forgotten."}
{"_id": "138683", "title": "DCVS and Bug Database", "text": "I am considering implementing the following policy and would like to run it by the community before implementing it: All mercurial commits must have a bug id corresponding to our bug reporting database. All commits immediately preceding a push for a new feature must have a bug id (it's a new feature but the id is still a \"bug id\" in the database) This will do several things. First, it will ensure that an entry is always put into the bug database for all code changes. Second, it will provide a diff of each change made for each bug fix. This would also simplify commenting in the mercurial commits and put most details about the commit into the bug report. Do you know of any reasons why this would be a bad idea? Also, do you think I should make some additions to this policy?"}
{"_id": "204552", "title": "Why don't companies ship multiple modules within a mobile app? Are there concerns about tight coupling?", "text": "**Preface:** My question does _not_ exclusively pertain to Google and it doesn't exclusively pertain to iOS. I'm only using Google and iOS as examples because they are familiar to many. I could have just as easily used 'Company X', apps 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', and 'E', and 'Android', but I wanted to keep my question rooted in the real world with a tangible example. * * * In the iOS app store, Google has many apps. At a glance, I can see 'Google Search', 'Google+', 'Google Maps', 'Google Earth', and 'Gmail'. But I wonder - **Why didn't Google simply create a 'Google' app which can provide all of the functionality that these five apps provide?** The black menu bar at the top of each Google webpage makes this possible on the web; so why don't they make this possible by way of a menu button at the bottom of one \"global\" Google app?   * Is Google concerned about tight coupling between the apps?   * Is Google concerned about tight coupling between the _teams_ that develop the apps?   * Is Google concerned about app size?   * Is Google concerned about the memory footprint or CPU load that such a monolithic app might incur when it is loaded? * * * [Not a rant. Merely playing devil's advocate.] In spite of many advantages, some iOS critics say that multiple pages of apps leave the iPhone and the iPad feeling \"cluttered\". This is particularly relevant to my question because it seems a bit much to expect a user to know about (and manage) so many Google mobile offerings. From a product standpoint, and arguably a usability standpoint, it seems like it would be wise to ship a single app. * * * ![Google's Black Menu Bar](http://i.stack.imgur.com/q2h8Z.jpg) * * * If you're curious, I own an iPhone and a Nexus 7; so I'm not wedded to either of the two major mobile platforms. And I have a real problem to solve here - Whether to bundle multiple apps inside of one large app, or to distribute separate bits of functionality in multiple apps. * * * **EDIT:** In response, to @MichaelT's comment   * While there is indeed a 2GB size limit for apps, the size of your sandbox is only limited by the remaining capacity on the device."}
{"_id": "204550", "title": "How can I improve this design so that I don't need to dynamically scan classes at runtime?", "text": "I'm in the middle of a redesign on the part of my current project that deals with user permissions and authorization. I have an interface named `IUserPermissions` that encapsulates this information. One part of a user's permissions are the **Roles** which they are a member of. I'm trying _not_ to violate the Open/Closed Principle by adding every possible role to `IUserPermissions` as a property like this:               interface IUserPermissions {         bool IsAdmin { get; set; }         bool IsDeveloper { get; set; }         // Many more...Yuck.     }      I feel that having an interface like this would suit the OCP better:               interface IUserPermissions {         ICollection<IRole> Roles { get; }         bool IsInRole<T>() where T : IRole;  /* (For convenience; Would probably be                                                  implemented as an extension method) */     }     interface IRole {         string Name { get; }     }     public class AdminRole : IRole {         public string Name { get { return \"Admin\"; } }     }      Where I'm falling down is how to _implement_ something like this. I'm using the ASP.NET Roles API as the backing store, meaning I'll be given a `string[]` of role names for the user. My `IUserPermissions` implementation would have to start with this collection of strings and somehow work _backwards_ , then instantiate a bunch of appropriate `IRole`s to populate the `Roles` property. This could be done by scanning the assembly for `IRoles` with a parameterless constructor, instantiating them, and reading their `Name` property, but...ugh. How can I fix this design so that I don't _have_ to do this?"}
{"_id": "134108", "title": "Sharing knowledge in activity-based working", "text": "My workplace will soon be shifting to the concept of 'activity based working', which moves from the idea of IT teams, BA teams, PM teams, etc to project- based work where people from across all facets of IT and the business involved on a project sit and work together. As a result, you wouldn't be sitting with your normal team colleagues on a day-to-day basis and sharing knowledge in that sort of organic way with the rest of your dev team won't really be happening. What ways would you recommend to help preserve that team collaboration and knowledge sharing when people will not physically be co-existing alongside their teammates any longer? Not to mention preserving that 'geek spirit' (bad term perhaps) that sees devs encouraging and coaching each other to find better designs and solutions. I've already thought about online collaboration tools such as Trello or Mingle, plus wikis or software such as Confluence to help collaboration and discussion. But I'd be interested to hear peoples opinions on what else could be done, or their own experiences with this approach to day-to-day work."}
{"_id": "184910", "title": "Does reading code and reading about code help in self -development?", "text": "As my profile will tell you, I am in my second year of a 4-year Software Engineering program. (Long post, skip to the end for the short version) * * * First, a little background. I started coding in C++ about 5 years ago. Ever since then, I was sure that I wanted a life in code :) In my last 2 semesters, I wrote quite a bit of code which included about 30-40 algorithmic problems along with some basic AI code each semester, all of this other than my coursework which also was somewhat code intensive. For the past 2-3 months though, I have not written any code. I have been reading others' code, reading about code, finding bugs in code, exploring libraries, going through documentation, exploring different languages and spending considerable time on SO, but i have _not written any code_. Either due to a lack of motivation or gasp, _interest_ , I am not sure. Now, I am feeling even worse, as none of this is stuff that I can write on a CV (internship season is round the corner in my college, which is critical for getting a job next year). Plus, I also think I havent developed my skills as much as i should have in the past few years. * * *   * So, essentially, is reading about code rather than coding actually helping me develop ?    * Is there any way it can help me in my current short-term career prospects ?"}
{"_id": "133450", "title": "Recommended Java source code reading", "text": "Like every author needs to read a lot of classical literature to develop his own style, and like every chess player read and analyze former champions games before, I think also every programmer needs to read a lot of high quality code. When it comes to Java source code, what are your recommendations as \"reading\". Which open source projects, libraries in the past you found yet easier to grasp and easy to read but also very good examples of what \"high quality\" code looks like?"}
{"_id": "202894", "title": "How should I architect a personal schedule manager that runs 24/7?", "text": "I've developed an ADHD management system for myself that's attempting to change multiple habits at once. I know this is counter to conventional wisdom, but I've tried the conventional for years & am now trying it my way. (just wanted to say that to try and prevent it from distracting people from the actual question) Anyway, I'd like to write something to run on a remote server that monitors me, helps me build/avoid certain habits, etc. What this amounts to is a system that:   * runs 24/7    * may have multiple independent tasks to run at once    * may have tasks that require other tasks to run first    * lets tasks be scheduled by specific time, recurrence (ie. \"run every 5 mins\"), or interval (ie. \"run from 2pm to 3pm\")  My first naive attempt at this was just a single PHP script scheduled to run every minute by cron (language was chosen in order to use a certain library, but no longer necessary). The logic behind when to run this or that portion of code got hairy pretty quick. So my question is how should I approach this from here? I'm not tied to any one language, though I'm partial to python/javascript. Thoughts:   * Could be done as a set of scripts that include a scheduling mechanism with one script per bit of logic...but the idea just feels wrong to me.   * Building it as a daemon could be helpful, but still unsure what to do about dozens of if-else statements for detecting the current time"}
{"_id": "44008", "title": "How do I let programmers know something useful?", "text": "Quite often I go through pain to discover how to do something useful, in this case how to get PHP running on Google App Engine without the 'resin.jar too big' problem, but I have nowhere to let people know. In this particular case, the web answers were incomplete, outdated or plain wrong. I could create a blog, but it's overkill. I just want let programmers know a quick solution/approach. I'm not sure it's the done thing to ask a question and then answer it. In short, it'd be nice to be able to just dump a sort of combined question/answer/snippet, then let others comment as usual, shoot it down, like it, whatever. How do the rest of you approach this? Cheers, Shane"}
{"_id": "256069", "title": "JMeter API testing", "text": "We usually test the web apis using jmeter by writing test scripts. Is there a way to create a software which will automatically generate test scripts for testing ? Jmeter will be used as a backend for testing. And the software which we will create will be in the frontend, as an interface."}
{"_id": "236894", "title": "Making applications build system-aware", "text": "Build systems for web applications are great: they give dependency management, code minification, and the ability to use tech like SASS or CoffeeScript that require pre-processing. However, I find actually using build systems to be ugly and annoying... you need to make sure developers have the build tools installed, that the versions they have installed are compatible with your configurations, and that any dependencies of the build tools(SASS compiler, jsmin, etc) are met. Getting a new developer onboarded now requires a suite of tools to be installed on their local system. We can fight this by using virtualization: a system like Vagrant can allow the setup of developer systems to be codified. There's a clear series of steps to create a developer environment with all dependencies, or a machine image that's already set up and can simply be installed and run. **My goal is to make the build system non-intrusive. I would like developers to not even necessarily have to be aware of the build system in order to hack on a project. This might be unrealistic.** With Vagrant, you might accomplish this by having a \"watch\" service of your build system automatically run and re-build the files whenever they change. That's good, but what about a local-system developer who doesn't want to run Vagrant? They have to remember to run a separate process whenever they sit down to develop. One approach I've not seen is to make the application build system aware. It seems to violate a separation of concerns, however with modern web development it seems we are already tightly coupled to our build systems: without running the build script, will you be able to run your web app and see anything meaningful? Will your static assets be in place? Is there a compelling reason **not** to have your application look at its build status and rebuild itself when necessary, when in development mode? When running the development server, the application could be build-system aware and build its assets if needed. This doesn't get away from the dependency requirements on the developer system. I don't have a concrete idea of what I'm looking for yet, but I feel like build systems for web apps aren't quite \"worked out\" yet. I hope to can have a good brainstorm here."}
{"_id": "236892", "title": "Different scoring algorithms for different competition elements", "text": "I am creating a scoring system for a competition that is somewhat obscure, but it resembles the Olympics in terms of its high-level structure. Therefore, I will ask my question in terms of an abstracted, fictional version of the Olympics, since everyone can relate to that to some degree. Assume the following hierarchy of classes and score rollups:   * Event class has one or more Sports (e.g., the 2012 Olympics has Decathlon, IndividualMedley, etc.) and one or more EventScores (one EventScore per Team per Event calculated by adding up the team's SportScores for a particular Event)   * Sport class has one or more Elements (e.g., Decathlon has Shotput, Javelin, etc.) and one or more SportScores (one SportScore per Team per Sport calculated by adding up the team's ElementScores for a particular Sport)   * Element class has one or more Rounds (e.g., Shotput has Throw1, Throw2, etc.) and one or more ElementScores (one ElementScore per Team per Element calculated by adding up the team's RoundScores for a particular Element) The scoring algorithm (let's call it the CalculateRoundScore() method) of a particular RoundScore depends on the Element to which the Round belongs. Examples:   * Shotput element: CalculateRoundScore(double ThrowDuration, double ThrowDistance, double GruntVolume) { algorithm; }   * Javelin element: CalculateRoundScore(double ThrowDuration, double ThrowDistance, double GruntVolume) { algorithm (different from Shotput algorithm even though parameters are the same, which would seem to eliminate overloading as a viable option); }   * 100MeterDash element: CalculateRoundScore(double Time, bool FalseStart) { algorithm; } Although I am seeking general architecture guidance, here are some of my specific questions:   * How do I associate different CalculateRoundScore methods to different Elements?   * Should I use interfaces, inheritance, overloading, or some other approach?   * In which class(es) should the various CalculateRoundScore methods be located? Conceptually, I can imagine each Element being an ICalculateRoundScore interface. However, that only makes sense if I create a different class for each different element, which doesn't seem right. It feels like I need some kind of a lookup in which the Round class picks its particular CalculateRoundScore method depending on the Element to which it belongs, but I'm not sure what would be the correct object-oriented way to do this."}
{"_id": "246397", "title": "In Java, why use bit hacks when non-bitwise technique it is more readable?", "text": "Is there any legitimate use for bit manipulation hacks in higher-level languages such as Java? I can see them being useful in speed-sensitive low-level and computation- intensive programs, e.g. graphics processing or crypto functions. I guess that's why all collections of them are in C. However, getting to think about them in terms of higher-level design I cannot think of any point where I would, for example, write the following in a Java program:               r = y ^ ((x ^ y) & -(x < y));      rather than:               r = (x < y) ? x : y;      The first line looks more like an obfuscation than an improvement. And most applications have different kinds of bottlenecks - most commonly networks or disc access, so much so that any potential improvement gained by using a bitwise hack would be so tiny that it is completely ignorable. This line of thought was provoked by a recent SO question in which someone was asked about a bitwise hack in Java during a interview. I agree as much as anyone that it's always better to write faster code, but considering that it becomes much less readable, especially by someone not familiar with bit hacks, is there any kind of application in which it is legitimately worth it? This question is not about bitwise _operators_ in general, but more specifically about bitwise _hacks_ , and even more specifically about bitwise hacks _in Java_. By _bitwise hack_ I mean a manipulation that has a trivial and/or obvious implementation, but which can be done slightly faster/better with some clever bitwise manipulation -- which in most cases makes it _near-unreadable_ to someone not used to bitwise hacks. * * * There are similar looking questions: Importance of bitwise thinking and What are bit operators good for? The answers in these questions talk about bit manipulations in general, which yes, have a lot of clear and useful applications; especially in _other_ languages like C. While this may seem similar, my question was about having them _versus_ using the non-bitwise technique in Java. In the other questions this is not addressed at all."}
{"_id": "164257", "title": "Defining formula through user interface in user form", "text": "I am a student and developing a simple assignment - windows form application in visual studio 2010. The application is suppose to construct formulas as per user requirement. The process: It has to pick data from columns of Microsoft Access database and the user should be able to pick the data by column name like we do in a drop down menu. and create reusable formulas in it ( configure it once and can change it again). followings are column titles from database that can be picked for example. e.g Col -1 : Marks in Maths Col -2 : Total Marks in Maths Col -3 : Marks in science Col -4 : Total marks in science Finally we should be able to construct any formula in the UI like (Col 1 + Col 3 ) / ( col 2 + col 4) = Formula 1 once this is formula is set saved and a name is assigned to it by user. he/she can use the formula and results shall appear in a window below. i.e He would be able to calculate his desired figures (formula) by only manipulating underlying data on the UI layer....choose the data for a period and apply the formula and get the answer Problem: It looks like I have to create an app where rules are set through UI....... this means no stored procedures are required in SQL.... please suggest the right approach."}
{"_id": "175709", "title": "Shared Development Space", "text": "Currently the company I work in gives each developer their own development virtual machine. On this machine (Windows 7) they install the entire stack of the product (minus database) this stack is normally spread amongst multiple machines of differing OS (although moving towards windows 2008 and 2008r2) So when a developer has a new project they are likely to be updating only a small piece of their stack and as such the rest of it can become out of date with the latest production code. The isolation from others means some issues won't be found until the code goes into shared test environments/production. I'm suggesting a move from functional testing on these isolated machines to plugging machines into a shared environment. The goal being to move towards a deployment thats closer to production in mechanism and server type. Developers would still make code changes on their Win7 vm and run unit/component testing locally but for functionally testing they would leverage a shared enviornment. Does anyone else use a shared development environment like this? Are there many reasons against this sort of sandbox environment? The biggest drawback is a move away from only checking in code when you've done local functional testing to checking in after static testing. I'm hoping an intelligent git branching strategy can take care of this for us."}
{"_id": "179489", "title": "What's the point of the Prototype design pattern?", "text": "So I'm learning about design patterns in school. Many of them are silly little ideas, but nevertheless solve some recurring problems(singleton, adapters, asynchronous polling, ect). But today I was told about the so called 'Prototype' design pattern. I must be missing something, because I don't see any benefits from it. I've seen people online say it's faster than using \"new\"' but this is doesn't make any sense, since at some point, regardless how the new object is created, memory needs to be allocated for it ect. Furthermore, doesn't this pattern run in the same circles as the 'chicken or egg' problem? By this I mean, since the prototype pattern essentially is just cloning objects, at some point the original object must be created itself (ie, not cloned). So this would mean, that I would need to have an existing copy of every object that I would ever want to clone already ready to clone? Seems stupid to me. Can anyone explain what the use of this pattern is? Original post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13887704/whats-the-point-of- the-prototype-design-pattern"}
{"_id": "175176", "title": "Is having 'Util' classes a cause for concern?", "text": "I sometimes create 'Util' classes which primarily serve to hold methods and values that don't really seem to belong elsewhere. But every time I create one of these classes, I think \"uh-oh, I'm gonna regret this later ...\", because I read somewhere that it's bad. But on the other hand, there seem to be two compelling (at least for me) cases for them:   1. implementation secrets that are used in multiple classes within a package   2. providing useful functionality to augment a class, without cluttering its interface Am I on the way to destruction? What you say !! Should I refactor?"}
{"_id": "175173", "title": "Finding co-maintainers for open source projects", "text": "I have a number of open-source projects that have gotten some significant usage and would like to find co-maintainers so that I am not a bottleneck when it comes to maintenance and support requests and to get other perspectives on how the project should evolve. Where should I look for co-maintainers, what should I look for in a co- maintainer, and how should I go about bringing them up to speed on the code and maintainer responsibilities?"}
{"_id": "179488", "title": "Why is multithreading often preferred for improving performance?", "text": "I have a question, it's about why programmers seems to love concurrency and multi-threaded programs in general. I'm considering 2 main approaches here:   * an async approach basically based on signals, or just an async approach as called by many papers and languages like the new C# 5.0 for example, and a \"companion thread\" that manages the policy of your pipeline   * a concurrent approach or multi-threading approach I will just say that I'm thinking about the hardware here and the worst case scenario, and I have tested this 2 paradigms myself, the async paradigm is a winner at the point that I don't get why people 90% of the time talk about multi-threading when they want to speed up things or make a good use of their resources. I have tested multi-threaded programs and async program on an old machine with an Intel quad-core that doesn't offer a memory controller inside the CPU, the memory is managed entirely by the motherboard, well in this case performances are horrible with a multi-threaded application, even a relatively low number of threads like 3-4-5 can be a problem, the application is unresponsive and is just slow and unpleasant. A good async approach is, on the other hand, probably not faster but it's not worst either, my application just waits for the result and doesn't hangs, it's responsive and there is a much better scaling going on. I have also discovered that a context change in the threading world it's not that cheap in real world scenario, it's in fact quite expensive especially when you have more than 2 threads that need to cycle and swap among each other to be computed. On modern CPUs the situation it's not really that different, the memory controller it's integrated but my point is that an x86 CPUs is basically a serial machine and the memory controller works the same way as with the old machine with an external memory controller on the motherboard. The context switch is still a relevant cost in my application and the fact that the memory controller it's integrated or that the newer CPU have more than 2 core it's not bargain for me. For what i have experienced the concurrent approach is good in theory but not that good in practice, with the memory model imposed by the hardware, it's hard to make a good use of this paradigm, also it introduces a lot of issues ranging from the use of my data structures to the join of multiple threads. Also both paradigms do not offer any security abut when the task or the job will be done in a certain point in time, making them really similar from a functional point of view. According to the X86 memory model, why the majority of people suggest to use concurrency with C++ and not just an async approach ? Also why not considering the worst case scenario of a computer where the context switch is probably more expensive than the computation itself ?"}
{"_id": "71041", "title": "Loops in real-life problems", "text": "I'm learning C as my first programming language. I'm confused on how do loops work in real-life. In programming every function has a reason. example - if/else statements are used if we have conditions. Nesting if/else statements are used if we have conditions inside a condition(more condition). I am going to try my best answering this using a real-life problem. I tend to understand better using Facebook as an example. Let's say a user is signing up for Facebook. We don't want users signing up of age less than 13 years old. If users age is less than 13, it should terminate the sign up page and give a reason saying \"Sorry, you're too young\". Do we use if/else statement behind situation? Please correct me if I'm wrong. Now, Loops are used for shortening up the program/application. What's the real-life analogy behind this? Using Facebook as an example. Can 'News Feed' be a strong example of using Loops?"}
{"_id": "237336", "title": "Writing a PHP wrapper for Javascript to safely access REST API", "text": "I am looking for signposting help to secure my API keys when accessing a database over REST API from Javascript on a webpage. I have read that in order to secure the API key I need to create a wrapper in PHP that will basically insert the API key into the request to allow the JS on webpage to access the database. Question:   1. Do I understand the concept correctly - re API keys and PHP?   2. Where can I get more info on the wrapper, maybe a tut or something? Thank you for your help. Regards, Nix"}
{"_id": "178525", "title": "Creating an in-house single source software development team", "text": "Our company wants to create a single department for all software development efforts (rather than having software development managed by each business unit). Business units would then \"outsource\" their software needs to this department. What would you setup as concerns/expectations that must be cleared before doing this? For example:   * Need agreement between units on how much actual time (FTE) is allocated to each unit   * Need agreement on scheduling of staff   * need agreement on request procedure if extra time is required by one party   * etc... Have you been in a situation like this as a manager of one unit destined to use this? If so, what were problems you experienced? What would you have or did implement? Same if you were the manager of the shared team. Please assume, for discussion, that the people concerned know that you can't swap devs in and out on a whim. I don't want to know the disadvantages of this approach; I know them. I want to anticipate issues and know how to mitigate the fallout."}
{"_id": "178521", "title": "How do bug reports factor in to a sprint?", "text": "I've been reading up on Scrum recently. From my understanding, a meeting is held before the sprint starts, to decide what gets moved from the product backlog to the upcoming sprint backlog. Once a feature is completed in the current sprint, it will go into the \"Ready to QA\" bucket, and it's at this point that I'm getting confused. Do bug reports go back into the product backlog? I assume they can't go back into the sprint backlog as we've already decided what work will be done for this cycle? What happens when QA finds a bug? Where does it go?"}
{"_id": "162943", "title": "What is faster and preferable way for variable assignment in ruby?", "text": "I am a RoR developer and want to clarify some doubt about ruby variable assignment. In ruby we have two ways for variable assignment.               str, arr, num = \"Hi\", [1, 2], 3      and               str = \"Hi\"     arr = [1, 2]     num = 3      I know that the first way will go slower than second way but, I want to know that as per ruby language, which way is preferable and performance reliable?"}
{"_id": "207116", "title": "Does \"cc\", \"vv\", \"^^\" have a special meaning in code?", "text": "Occasionally in code at GitHub I see tags \"cc\", \"vv\" and \"^^\". Do these have any special meaning? Example:               // cc MaxTemperatureMapper Mapper for maximum temperature example     // vv MaxTemperatureMapper     import java.io.IOException;          import org.apache.hadoop.io.IntWritable;     import org.apache.hadoop.io.LongWritable;     import org.apache.hadoop.io.Text;     import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.Mapper;          public class MaxTemperatureMapper       extends Mapper<LongWritable, Text, Text, IntWritable> {          {snip}          }     // ^^ MaxTemperatureMapper      From https://github.com/tomwhite/hadoop- book/blob/master/ch02/src/main/java/MaxTemperatureMapper.java"}
{"_id": "143654", "title": "Checking preconditions or not", "text": "I've been wanting to find a solid answer to the question of whether or not to have runtime checks to validate input for the purposes of ensuring a client has stuck to their end of the agreement in design by contract. For example, consider a simple class constructor:               class Foo     {     public:       Foo( BarHandle bar )       {         FooHandle handle = GetFooHandle( bar );         if( handle == NULL ) {           throw std::exception( \"invalid FooHandle\" );         }       }     };      I would argue in this case that a user should not attempt to construct a `Foo` without a valid `BarHandle`. It doesn't seem right to verify that `bar` is valid inside of `Foo`'s constructor. If I simply document that `Foo`'s constructor requires a _valid_ `BarHandle`, isn't that enough? Is this a proper way to enforce my precondition in design by contract? So far, everything I've read has mixed opinions on this. It seems like 50% of people would say to verify that `bar` is valid, the other 50% would say that I shouldn't do it, for example consider a case where the user verifies their `BarHandle` is correct, but a second (and unnecessary) check is also being done inside of `Foo`'s constructor."}
{"_id": "14315", "title": "Which comments instantly ring alarm bells when a programmer says them?", "text": "Similar to my question about easily spotted warning signs in code I think sometimes comments programmers make can tell you quite a lot (of not good things) about them in a short period of time. The scariest I've heard recently (from a senior) is: > I could use source control, but it'd slow me down Also, although not in the same category when I see something listed at the top of someone's CV and I ask them about it: > Oh, I didn't really use that but I was just in the same room as people using > it. Duh! Then why is it featured prominently on your CV??? Finally I quite often interview people with what looks like an excellent set of skills on paper. Sometimes these are excellent developers, but some of them when asked about a topic will rattle through a dictionary definition like a machine gun (and probably a better definition than I would be able to say if put on the spot like that). Then when asked to explain even really, really simple things to do with that topic are totally unable to (usually coming up with something totally wrong, followed by a repeat of the dictionary definition). I suspect that these are developers who have been in teams where they're not treated well and so have had no opportunity to act independently - which results in their learning being very superficial. What other things have you heard that tell you that a programmer is, er, let's try and think of a nice way of saying this...still taking the first steps towards being great?"}
{"_id": "246021", "title": "Trivially Sortable Encoding for Arbitrary-Precision Decimals", "text": "I'm looking for a reasonably(*) space-efficient way to encode arbitrary- precision decimals (e.g. BigDecimal), such that when sorting the bit-pattern of the encodings lexicographically, the numbers will be sorted numerically. This is related to this Stackoverflow question. One simple/naive approach to this would be to convert the number to some IEEE- like representation with some 8-byte exponent (which is what RR in the NTL does?), but obviously this is quite an inefficient(*) representation. Is there perhaps some other approach to this? Are there any optimizations possible for arbitrary-precision Integers? The encoding need not support any other operations than sorting (and, if possible, decoding the number again). (*) By reasonably speace-efficient I don't mean cramming bits together into bytes like IEEE-754 does. I just don't want to have any unnecessarily large fields that will remain mostly empty in a large number of situations (as would be the case with an 8-byte exponent). The motive for this is that the (encoded) number will later on be processed by this scheme, which takes a few milliseconds per byte to run. The runtime-efficiency of the encoding/decoding on the other hand isn't much of an issue (anything less than 10 ms for 128 bytes of data will still be overshadowed by the runtime of the OPE scheme liked above). (Also note, this should be a decimal representation, so there are to precision-issues due to \"binary stuff\".)"}
{"_id": "87077", "title": "How can a code editor effectively hint at code nesting level - without using indentation?", "text": "I've written an XML text editor that provides 2 view options for the same XML text, one indented (virtually), the other left-justified. The motivation for the left-justified view is to help users 'see' the whitespace characters they're using for indentation of plain-text or XPath code without interference from indentation that is an automated side-effect of the XML context. I want to provide visual clues (in the non-editable part of the editor) for the left-justified mode that will help the user, but without getting too elaborate. I tried just using connecting lines, but that seemed too busy. The best I've come up with so far is shown in a mocked up screenshot of the editor below, but I'm seeking better/simpler alternatives (that don't require too much code). ![code editor nesting level indication](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Bqdo5.png) **[Edit]** Taking the heatmap idea (from: @jimp) I get this and 3 alternatives - labelled a, b and c: ![Initial ideas](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EHDZ2.png) ### The following section describes the accepted answer as a proposal, bringing together ideas from a number of other answers and comments. As this question is now community wiki, please feel free to update this. * * * ## NestView The name for this idea which provides a visual method to improve the readability of nested code without using indentation. ### Contour Lines The name for the differently shaded lines within the NestView ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/w9K2Q.png) The image above shows the NestView used to help visualise an XML snippet. Though XML is used for this illustration, any other code syntax that uses nesting could have been used for this illustration. ## An Overview:   1. The contour lines are shaded (as in a heatmap) to convey nesting level   2. The contour lines are angled to show when a nesting level is being either opened or closed.   3. A contour line links the start of a nesting level to the corresponding end.   4. The combined width of contour lines give a visual impression of nesting level, in addition to the heatmap.   5. The width of the NestView may be manually resizable, but should not change as the code changes. Contour lines can either be compressed or truncated to keep acheive this.   6. Blank lines are sometimes used code to break up text into more digestable chunks. Such lines could trigger special behaviour in the NestView. For example the heatmap could be reset or a background color contour line used, or both.   7. One or more contour lines associated with the currently selected code can be highlighted. The contour line associated with the selected code level would be emphasized the most, but other contour lines could also 'light up' in addition to help highlight the containing nested group    8. Different behaviors (such as code folding or code selection) can be associated with clicking/double-clicking on a Contour Line.   9. Different parts of a contour line (leading, middle or trailing edge) may have different dynamic behaviors associated.   10. Tooltips can be shown on a mouse hover event over a contour line   11. The NestView is updated continously as the code is edited. Where nesting is not well-balanced assumptions can be made where the nesting level should end, but the associated temporary contour lines must be highlighted in some way as a warning.   12. Drag and drop behaviors of Contour Lines can be supported. Behaviour may vary according to the part of the contour line being dragged.   13. Features commonly found in the left margin such as line numbering and colour highlighting for errors and change state could overlay the NestView. ## Additional Functionality The proposal addresses a range of additional issues - many are outside the scope of the original question, but a useful side-effect. ### Visually linking the start and end of a nested region The contour lines connect the start and end of each nested level ### Highlighting the context of the currently selected line As code is selected, the associated nest-level in the NestView can be highlighted ### Differentiating between code regions at the same nesting level In the case of XML different hues could be used for different namespaces. Programming languages (such as c#) support named regions that could be used in a similar way. ### Dividing areas within a nesting area into different visual blocks Extra lines are often inserted into code to aid readability. Such empty lines could be used to reset the saturation level of the NestView's contour lines. ### Multi-Column Code View Code without indentation makes the use of a multi-column view more effective because word-wrap or horizontal scrolling is less likely to be required. In this view, once code has reach the bottom of one column, it flows into the next one: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OnuKX.png) ### Usage beyond merely providing a visual aid As proposed in the overview, the NestView _could_ provide a range of editing and selection features which would be broadly in line with what is expected from a TreeView control. The key difference is that a typical TreeView node has 2 parts: an expander and the node icon. A NestView contour line can have as many as 3 parts: an _opener_ (sloping), a _connector_ (vertical) and a _close_ (sloping). * * * ### On Indentation The NestView presented alongside non-indented code complements, but is unlikely to replace, the conventional indented code view. It's likely that any solutions adopting a NestView, will provide a method to switch seamlessly between indented and non-indented code views without affecting any of the code text itself - including whitespace characters. One technique for the indented view would be 'Virtual Formatting' - where a dynamic left-margin is used in lieu of tab or space characters. The same nesting-level data used to dynamically render the NestView could also used for the more conventional-looking indented view. **Printing** Indentation will be important for the readability of printed code. Here, the absence of tab/space characters and a dynamic left-margin means that the text can wrap at the right-margin and still maintain the integrity of the indented view. Line numbers can be used as visual markers that indicate where code is word-wrapped and also the exact position of indentation: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/2s2mb.png) ### Screen Real-Estate: Flat Vs Indented Addressing the question of whether the NestView uses up valuable screen real- estate: Contour lines work well with a width the same as the code editor's character width. A NestView width of 12 character widths can therefore accommodate 12 levels of nesting before contour lines are truncated/compressed. If an indented view uses 3 character-widths for each nesting level then space is saved until nesting reaches 4 levels of nesting, after this nesting level the flat view has a space-saving advantage that increases with each nesting level. _Note: A minimum indentation of 4 character widths is often recommended for code, however XML often manages with less. Also, Virtual Formatting permits less indentation to be used because there's no risk of alignment issues_ A comparison of the 2 views is shown below: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/N23MY.png) Based on the above, its probably fair to conclude that view style choice will be based on factors other than screen real-estate. The one exception is where screen space is at a premium, for example on a Netbook/Tablet or when multiple code windows are open. In these cases, the resizable NestView would seem to be a clear winner. ### Use Cases Examples of real-world examples where NestView may be a useful option:   1. Where screen real-estate is at a premium a. On devices such as tablets, notepads and smartphones b. When showing code on websites c. When multiple code windows need to be visible on the desktop simultaneously   2. Where consistent whitespace indentation of text within code is a priority   3. For reviewing deeply nested code. For example where sub-languages (e.g. Linq in C# or XPath in XSLT) might cause high levels of nesting. ### Accessibility Resizing and color options must be provided to aid those with visual impairments, and also to suit environmental conditions and personal preferences: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PQJiK.png) ### Compatability of edited code with other systems A solution incorporating a NestView option should ideally be capable of stripping leading tab and space characters (identified as only having a formatting role) from imported code. Then, once stripped, the code could be rendered neatly in both the left-justified and indented views without change. For many users relying on systems such as merging and diff tools that are not whitespace-aware this will be a major concern (if not a complete show- stopper). * * * ## Other Works: ### Visualisation of Overlapping Markup Published research by Wendell Piez, dated from 2004, addresses the issue of the visualisation of overlapping markup, specifically LMNL. This includes SVG graphics with significant similarities to the NestView proposal, as such, they are acknowledged here. The visual differences are clear in the images (below), the key functional distinction is that NestView is intended only for well-nested XML or code, whereas Wendell Piez's graphics are designed to represent overlapped nesting. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6YpG7.png) _The graphics above were reproduced - with kind permission - from_ http://www.piez.org Sources:   1. Towards Hermenutic Markup   2. Half-steps toward LMNL"}
{"_id": "122279", "title": "Is there any reason to use VARCHAR sizes rounded to a 128/256/4096 byte offset?", "text": "In database schema's, I often notice VARCHAR sizes are rounded to the byte offsets 128/256 or 4096. I've done it before as well, and the idea behind it was probably something with efficiency. However, is there still a valid reason to do so nowadays? I often use '50', '100' or '200' as VARCHAR sizes these days, as they are more natural and typically also shown in validation checks to the user."}
{"_id": "246024", "title": "How can I rewrite this linked-list manipulation as tail-recursive?", "text": "This is an interview question I was once asked, and now I ask many of my interviewees. I have yet to see anyone come up with a tail-recursive solution during the interview. Given a liked list, I'd like to swap every pair of nodes as follows: **input** : `a-b-c-d-e-f-g` **output** : `b-a-d-c-f-e-g` If there's an odd number of nodes then the last node is tacked on as-is. This should be done in-place. Implement the method: `Node* SwapTo(Node* start)` I'm using this Node definition:               class Node {         public:             char data;             Node* next;     };      Here's the unoptimized recursive solution:               Node* SwapTwo(Node* start) {         if (!start) {             return start;         }              Node* second = start->next;         if (!second) {             return start;         }              Node* third = second->next;         second->next = start;         start->next = SwapTwo(third);         return second;     }      What is the tail-recursive solution?"}
{"_id": "87070", "title": "How to run developer team meetings?", "text": "Our team of 10 developers meet weekly. The meetings are rather boring and not particularly useful. What format/agenda do you utilize to have good meetings? We meet weekly in the conference room with pizza provided. The format is we go around the room and list the status of various tasks we are working on and discuss tasks for the next week. Managers will provide an overview of upcoming projects and priorities for the coming months and year ahead. **Update** The goal of these meeting is more or less - general team building, to share the knowledge of what everyone is working on, and to keep everyone aware of shifting company initiatives. It is not to formally 'hand out' work assignments (that is done via other means)."}
{"_id": "94928", "title": "create site with Codeigniter without database support", "text": "What approach could You suggest, If I don't have mysql or other database support on webhost, but I need to store data ( textual information ) for website somewhere. It's informative site for school - approx 20 to 50 visitors per day, 6 to 7 categories with 3 to 5 subcategories. Would xml files be normal ?"}
{"_id": "252999", "title": "Is a try-catch-finally clause appropriate for production code?", "text": "While browsing around on SO, I came across an answer that suggested using a `try-catch-finally` clause to fix the problem he was having. (A rare bug that sometimes happened to his users). Someone commented that it was a valid solution, but he said it was not recommended for production code. > Is this true? Why is it not recommended for production code? It seems perfectly valid to me if it is used for catching exceptions. In this context it was for an app and users are very discouraged from continuing if the app just crashes seemingly randomly. > He also mentioned that it could fail at anytime. Is this true as well?"}
{"_id": "122270", "title": "Creating A Library That Requires Other Libraries (PHP)", "text": "Let's says that I am creating a PHP library that is using PHP 5.3 and namespaces and my library requires another library to work (this case it is the sfYaml library). I am trying to think of the best way to include this library. Is it considered good/acceptable practice to include the third party libraries directly in my code (assuming the license allows which sfYaml does) or is it better to not include the third party libraries and just have the user make sure the libraries are somewhere on their system and have them configure the path? I mean that only issue I have had in the past with including that third party libraries in my libraries is that if the user also has the same library for their project, there would be issues with including it twice however now with PHP 5.3 and namespace, that is not an issue. I am just try to think if there are any other issues with including third party libraries directly in my code (with having them namespaced under my main namespace)."}
{"_id": "94923", "title": "What methods exist for handling DB Change Management?", "text": "I recently began working with version control in my web-development using subversion. This works great for managing the files I develop but does nothing for the changes I sometimes need to make to the databases. To my knowledge the server I'm working on doesn't have any DB management systems in place and I likely wouldn't be able to get them to install anything. What options are there for managing DB's in this kind of environment?"}
{"_id": "83986", "title": "Going about increasing salary during performance review", "text": "I'm currently facing a dilemma with an upcoming performance review. When I started with my company around 1 year ago I tried to be as honest as possible in my perception of my programming skill set and knowledge. I based my perceived skills on my coding ability relative to those I consider to be good programmers and developers. So the salary I was provided I was happy with at the time. I have no problem with that as I believe honesty is important when going for a job and while in it. Also, I believe that once I'm in the job if I'm better than what I have given the employer to believe then my performance will reflect that. At the same another developer was hired. We were both hired to work on the same project doing the same task set. A few months back I found out that this person was on substantially more than me wage wise. Now during the project I have come to realise that this person is well below me in programming skills and even business knowledge. I have had to help him out numerous times with programming tasks, review his code and offer better solutions, and explain concepts about the project we are working on. Even though we both started at the same time. How can I go about increasing my salary (during the review) to be at least comparable with this person without directly mentioning their name or that I know what they are on. If I justify it based on the work I have done, what if they don't offer me a comparative package. Is it fair that I want more or am I being greedy?"}
{"_id": "173360", "title": "Can I trust the Basic schedule equation?", "text": "I've been reading Steve McConnell's demystifying the black art of estimating book, and he gives an equation for estimating nominal schedule based on Person-months of effort:               ScheduleInMonths = 3.0 x EffortInMonths ^ (1/3)      Per the book, this is very accurate (within 25%), although the 3.0 factor above varies depending on your organization (typically between 2 and 4). It is supposedly easy to use historical projects in your organization to derive an appropriate factor for your use. I am trying to reconcile the equation against Agile methods, using 2-6 week cycles which are often mini-projects that have a working deliverable at the end. If I have a team of 5 developers over 4 weeks (1 month), then EffortInMonths = 5 Person Months. The algorithm then outputs a schedule of 3.0 x 5^(1/3) = 5 months. 5 months is much more than 25% different than 1 month. If I lower the 3.0 factor to 0.6, then the algorthim works (outputs a schedule of approx 1 month). The lowest possible factor mentioned in the book through is 2.0. Whats going on here? I want to trust this equation for estimating a \"traditional\" non-agile project, but I cannot trust it when it does not reconcile with my (agile) experience. Can someone help me understand?"}
{"_id": "66923", "title": "User interface design tool", "text": "Are there any applications that can help me design a user interface in conceptual way?"}
{"_id": "171668", "title": "How do I put YAML code in GitHub MarkDown?", "text": "Following YAML snippet that I'm trying to place in my markdown formatted readme:               ```      libraries:       - name: numpy          version: \"1.6.1\"        ```      Tried the above with both no and 2 trailing spaces at the end of each line. Both turn out on a single line. Obviously I want them on 3 separate lines in my README.md. How? edit: note tried adding 'yaml' as the optional lang parameter but no dice either."}
{"_id": "238361", "title": "Send mapped data from server-side code to client-side code", "text": "I'm developing a application based on two technologies: ASP.net (SharePoint) and JavaScript. I use server-side code for retrieve data from database and manipulate it whereas I use client-side code for build front-end(I'm using JSON format). I have very problem with this \"architecture\" because ASP.net is strong-type whereas JavaScript is less-type. My data \"jumps\" from front-end to back-and and vice versa. How can I have my model class in client-side code too?"}
{"_id": "238364", "title": "Unit-based architecture", "text": "This is probably a damn fool question, for which I apologise, but I can't seem to get the google syntax right to find an answer. Imagine a Property, like this:               private int _type     public int Type     {         get { return _type; }         set          {             _type = value;             //raise an event in your chosen language or tech             CallAFunction();         }     }      Now, imagine that CallAFunction does some sort of fairly serious heavy lifting in your application, interacting with the database via a repository. It doesn't seem unreasonable to want a unit test for this, to make absolutely sure that Type gets set to whatever you put in and to check that doing so raises the expected event. However, setting the property with a test will call CallAFunction() which means that you're no longer really testing a \"unit\" of code as such, and perhaps more importantly that a very simple test for this very simple property might well require more elaborate preparation, including repository mocking, which seems huge overkill. In some cases you could split these apart by having CallAFunction raised via the event. But that's not always the case (I'm using WPF, and the events bubble up to non-testable XAML). What's the best way to split these two interdependent things apart?"}
{"_id": "254903", "title": "Is there a clever way to calculate a mode of an online series without storing the series?", "text": "My program's aim is to determine the correct time zone offset (GMT+k) as a series of numbers are fed to it. eg: -4 +11 1 -4 -4 So, here -4 (the mode of the series) is the correct value. But this requires storing the series then analyzing it and I do not have enough storage (RAM and FLASH) for this. The running average can be calculated easily by storing the list size and the sum. Is there a similar case for finding the mode?"}
{"_id": "254905", "title": "Parameterized Java Types (Generics)", "text": "Consider this \"legacy\" code:               public interface IPersistentCollection {         IPersistentCollection cons(Object o);     }      Genericized in Java, it could become something like this:               public interface IPersistentCollection<T> {         IPersistentCollection<T> cons(T o);     }      Clearly adding a new item to a mutable Java collection shouldn't change the type of the existing collection. But unlike the Java collections, cons() returns a completely new, immutable collection, leaving the old collection unchanged, opening the possibility that it could meaningfully take on a different type than the original collection had.   1. Obviously, you should be able to cons an object of type Ford to a collection of Cars and get a collection of Cars back (covariance). I think this is covered by the above generic example.   2. If Car and Train both extended a Vehicle class, it would be handy to be able to cons a Train to a collection of Cars and get a collection of Vehicles back (contravariance). How would I even write that? I thought by declaring new bounded type variables, S and E for \"Vehicle\" and \"Train\" in this example:              // Illegal because of <S super T>     <S super T, E extends S> IPersistentCollection<S> cons(E o);          // Simpler, but still Illegal because java disallows <S super T>     <S super T> IPersistentCollection<S> cons(S o);        3. If we want to assume that the programmer knows what they are doing, you should be allowed to cons something totally unrelated to a collection and get a collection of Objects back. I think this is the extreme case of contravariance, but I'm not sure there is even a name for it (\"Dynamic Language\" maybe?). I think that if #2 were legal, it would cover cases #1 and #3. My questions are: A. To what degree is it possible to do #2 in Java? B. Is #2 possible/easier in other languages? Scala? Haskell? ML? C. In theory, a type system that preferred the most specific version of S in example 2 could handle a definition like this. What book can I read about type systems without a PHD in math? Is \"Types and Programming Languages\" by Pierce the best place to start? Sample code would be appreciated. If I'm using terms like covariance and contravariance incorrectly, I would appreciate being politely corrected."}
{"_id": "188152", "title": "Do I have to include the license of a third party library imported as a DLL?", "text": "I have code using a third party library, QrCode.Net, in the form of a `dll` file. The library is licensed under the MIT License. Do I have to include the license in my project if I did not use or modify the source code? * * * Full license text: > ## The MIT License (MIT) > > Copyright (c) 2011 George Mamaladze > > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy > of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to > deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the > rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or > sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is > furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING > FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS > IN THE SOFTWARE."}
{"_id": "245613", "title": "Why doesn't C++ allow you to take the address of a constructor?", "text": "Is there a specific reason that this would break the language conceptually or a specific reason that this is technically infeasible in some cases? ~~The usage would be with new operator.~~ **Edit:** I'm going to give up hope on getting my \"new operator\" and \"operator new\" straight and be direct. The point of the question is: why are constructors _special_? Keep in mind of course that language specifications tell us what is legal, but not necessarily moral. What is legal is typically informed by what is logically consistent with the rest of the language, what is simple and concise, and what is feasible for compilers to implement. The possible rationale of the standards committee in weighing these factors are deliberate and interesting -- hence the question."}
{"_id": "213891", "title": "Why use in-memory database for integration testing?", "text": "I'm really confused when I see a lot of in-memory database implementation used for testing, because I also heard a lot from integration testing best practices that the environment running the test should resemble as closely as possible the production environment, including operating system, library, database engine, etc. What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "167720", "title": "Language Design: Are languages like Python and CoffeeScript really more comprehensible?", "text": "The \" **Verbally Readable !== Quicker Comprehension** \" argument on http://ryanflorence.com/2011/case-against-coffeescript/ is really potent and interesting. I and I'm sure others would be very interested in evidence arguing against this. There's clear evidence for this and I believe it. People _naturally_ think in images, not words, so we should be designing languages that aren't similar to human language like English, French, whatever. Being \"readable\" is quicker **comprehension**. Most articles on Wikipedia are not readable as they are long, boring, dry, sluggish and very very wordy. Because Wikipedia documents a ton of info, it is not especially helpful when compared to sites with more practical, useful and relevant info. Languages like Python and CoffeScript are \"verbally readable\" in that they are closer to English syntax. Having programmed firstly and mainly in Python, I'm not so sure this is really a good thing. The second interesting argument is that CoffeeScript is an intermediator, a step between two ends, which may increase the chance of bugs. While CoffeeScript has other practical benefits, this question specifically requests evidence showing support for the counter-case of language \"readability\""}
{"_id": "245616", "title": "Dynamically add/remove components to/from panel", "text": "I'm in a little planning phase of my java/swing project. Here is a picture:   ![Panel](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EzVm3.png) It is a main panel containing several sub panels depending on the selected date in the top center. I want to browse those sub panels using the blue arrows (next day and previous day). As you can imagine one sub panel can be in more than one - I would say - \"page\". My MVC structure looks like this: Each sub panel is represented by one class - let's call it subClassModel - so every model gets one subClassView (one of the fife panels in the picture) as observer. One subClassController will handle the interaction between these two classes and additionally the interaction to the mainController (e.g. create new subClassModel). I hope my questions are not too broad but I'll give it a try:   * First: Is there any pattern for this kind of problem. I haven't found any because I cannot find a proper name.   * How should I handle all SubClassView's and SubClassModel's. I thought of storing them in the SubClassController in a `HashMap<SubClassModel, SubClassView>`. So I have every model and view available even though they are filtered out by the date.   * Should I use `panel.add(SubClassView)` / `panel.remove(SubClassView)` or either removeAll and add all wanted view in a loop?   * Should I store all SubClassViews in the controller anyway? Or is it better to create the SubClassViews on every date change?   * ...       I know that I didn't add code to this question, because there isn't really relevant code. I want to settle this questions before I mould it into code."}
{"_id": "245614", "title": "Would you get better performances by coding an application in C, then compile to JavaScript?", "text": "I am writing an interpreter for a functional programming language that is going to run in the browser. Needless to say, performance is the one and only concern in this application. Emscripten is an LLVM\u2192JavaScript compiler which claims to produce programs that run only 2~3 times slower than native. It is really surprising, considering actual JavaScript applications tend to run 7 to 10 times slower than native, according to the Computer Benchmarks Game. And those are exactly the types of application I am worried about. So, said that, would it be profitable to code my application in C, and then compile it to JavaScript using asm.js, or is there something I am missing?"}
{"_id": "245618", "title": "Need overview of concepts and tools to translate a DSL to regular expressions", "text": "I'm looking for a little guidance. Until this morning, this was all over my head. After spending today researching Wikipedia, StackOverflow, etc., I'd say I've got my nose above the water. I'm tasked with researching a project that, as I understand it, would involve reverse-engineering a domain-specific language that is basically a type of regular expression syntax and translating that into conventional (meaning, Perl-like) regular expressions. I'm hoping someone can fill in the gaps in my understanding, so let me explain what I've got and my understanding, thus far. Regarding the DSL, it basically has two components to it. One is grep-like regular expressions, more or less. The other component consists of what you could call macros. These macros are used when you want to find Social Security numbers, credit card numbers and so forth in the text being analyzed. The DSL is a simpler way for the end-user to specify matching text and exceptions. (Honestly, it's still pretty complicated to use -- but easier than regular expressions.) The DSL is used to write \"rules,\" a rule being a one-line statement describing target text. What I want to do is, taking a rule as input, translate that rule into a conventional regular expression where possible. If a macro doesn't break down into a single regular expression, I will translate the macro into one or more RE's, or any kind of text processing code needed. My largest point of ignorance is the \"translating.\" Here's my first question: will that involve what's called \"parsing\"? (As you can guess, I'm a self- taught programmer.) Would I be using a tool like ANTLR or PyParsing, or something like that? (I just found out about these tools today, during my research.) I'm guessing yes, but I'd appreciate confirmation. How much do I have to learn? I'm not going to need to get the \"Dragon book,\" right? I am not writing a DSL, but if I'm reverse-engineering one, then I'm guessing I will more or less need to learn how to create a DSL in the first place (since how else would I know how to do the parsing). Yes? What do I need to get under my belt? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I've parsed configuration files; I've written a simple YAML to Java Bean code generator; I've written a simple HTML-stripper; I know a bit about regular expressions and text processing; but this particular endeavor is more sophisticated than anything I've done before. It seems doable, but as a sanity check please tell me if, in my ignorance, I've miscalculated and what I'm describing actually needs 4 years of being a computer science major to accomplish. Can anyone point me in the right direction or give me some pointers? Thanks."}
{"_id": "213898", "title": "Is it reasonable to insist on reproducing every defect before diagnosing and fixing it?", "text": "I work for a software product company. We have large enterprise customers who implement our product and we provide support to them. For example, if there is a defect, we provide patches, etc. In other words, It is a fairly typical setup. Recently, a ticket was issued and assigned to me regarding an exception found by a customer in a log file that has to do with concurrent database access in a clustered implementation of our product. So this customer's specific configuration may well be critical in the occurrence of this bug. All we got from the customer was their log file. The approach I proposed to my team was to attempt to reproduce the bug in a configuration setup similar to that of the customer and get a comparable log. However, they disagree with my approach saying that I don't need to reproduce the bug as it's overly time-consuming and will require simulating a server cluster on VMs. My team suggests I simply \"follow the code\" to see where the thread- and/or transaction-unsafe code is and put in the change working off of a simple local development, which is not a cluster implementation like the environment from which the occurrence of the bug originates. To me, working out of an abstract blueprint (program code) rather than a tangible, visible manifestation (runtime reproduction) seems difficult, so I wanted to ask a general question: Is it reasonable to insist on reproducing every defect and debug it before diagnosing and fixing it? Or: If I am a senior developer, should I be able to read multithreaded code and create a mental picture of what it does in all use case scenarios rather than require to run the application, test different use case scenarios hands-on, and step through the code line by line? Or am I a poor developer for demanding that kind of work environment? Is debugging for sissies? In my opinion, any fix submitted in response to an incident ticket should be tested in an environment simulated to be as close to the original environment as possible. How else can you know that it will really remedy the issue? It is like releasing a new model of a vehicle without crash testing it with a dummy to demonstrate that the air bags indeed work. Last but not least, if you agree with me: How should I talk with my team to convince them that my approach is reasonable, conservative and more bulletproof?"}
{"_id": "218715", "title": "How does a chess engine decide what move to make?", "text": "I'm writing a simple chess engine in LISP. I actually know how the engine decide the move, it evaluates and reads some opening books. But that's not what i mean. This is my design.               57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64     49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56     41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48     33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40     25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32     17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24     09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16     01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08      I looked at more complicated solutions but i came out with what i believe is the simplest one. Say the bishop is on the square 23, it could move 4 possible moves, (to 16 or 14 or 32 or 30), so it moves -7 or +7 or +9 or -9. I create an array               (make-array '(8 8) :initial-contents     '((R B N Q K B N R)      (P P P P P P P P)     (NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL)     (NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL)     (NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL)     (NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL NIL)               (P P P P P P P P))               (R B N Q K B N R)))      And move the pieces from index to index. My question is, i cannot simply tell the bishop to move +7 or whatever, if it's an open diagonal. I need to tell it to move +9 * 1 or +9 * 2 etc. and you bishop have to decide which one to go to. I cannot write a condition and a loop for every possible square"}
{"_id": "218714", "title": "PHP SplFixedArray How To Deal With billions of indexes?", "text": "I've built a flatfile db system that will work like mini-noSQL system and it split db to smaller files, and I did a SplFixedArray wrapper for it with a method for searching usage built on preg_grep. Everything working very good till now, but if the array became more than billions of indexes how to handle it? When searching it, it will iterate over the small files then get the matches and put it in a temporary fixedArray so, what if it found very large matches? How the noSQL dbms do that? NOTE: If you wonder why I do that without a real noSQL solution, I'll say because I want to know more."}
{"_id": "110300", "title": "Point and click synonym replacement in text area with Javascript", "text": "I am trying to create a site that will allow you to type a sentence or passage of text, then click on words to bring up a list of synonyms (from an online API) and possibly authorized abbreviations from a list that I provide. Once clicked, it would replace that word with the word that was clicked on. It would function kind of like After the Deadline or a Javascript based spell checker. Are there any libraries set up to make something like this easy, or what kind of Javascript do I need to be looking at? Are there any tutorials or examples for this kind of thing? I am aware that the source code for After the Deadline is available, but I only need a small portion of their technology, not all of the actual grammar and spelling check technology."}
{"_id": "47723", "title": "What's the best license for my website?", "text": "I have developed a unique website but do not have a lot of fund to protect it with trademark or patents. I'm looking for suggestions so that when my supervisor gets my codes, some laws restrict anyone from copying it and claim their work. I'm in the middle of thinking, making the application a commercial one or never allowing it to be copied at all. What kind of steps am I required to take in order to make full measurements so my applications are fully- protected? I've come across a few, one under my consideration is MIT license. Some say we can have a mixture of both commercial and MIT. I would also like to be able to distribute some functions so it can be modified by others but I'd still retain the ownership. Last but not least, it's confusing when I think of protecting the whole website, and protecting codes by codes in division. How should we go about this? Thanks. N.B I have to pass it over to the supervisor as this is a Uni project. I need this to be done within 2 weeks. So time to get my App protected is a factor here."}
{"_id": "212418", "title": "How can I consolidate data from a group of remote SQL Server instances?", "text": "I work for a company whose point-of-sale service uses IIS servers tied to static IP addresses at each of our stores. My boss wants a better real-time stat tracker than what the point-of-sale service provides. I would like to connect to these servers from a central location and retrieve the data. If possible, I'd like to be able to do so from Python, PHP, or Ruby. What are some recommended approaches for doing so."}
{"_id": "48806", "title": "How long was Microsoft working on .NET before they released it?", "text": "With the whole CLI, CTS, CLS, etc., not only did they release a powerful platform/infrastructure, but they released all the specs that describe it etc. It supports potentially infinite myriad languages, platforms, etc. This seems like an insane amount of work, even for a behemoth like Microsoft - especially since it turns out they did a damn good job. How long were they working on this before releasing it (.NET 1.0)?"}
{"_id": "48808", "title": "Developer Compensation System", "text": "Joel wrote excellent articles on developer compensation system used at Fogcreek. As a team lead and business owner, I would like to design a system that would work best for my team _and_ my business, a system that is perceived as just and fair and transparent, a system that is easy to understand and implement **_but_** difficult to game. And here's the catch: I have no experience in managing a team before, and I don't know what works and what doesn't. How to motivate a team of software developers to bring out their full potential? Or more specifically, what do you think about the \"ladder\" Joel talks about in the aforementioned articles?"}
{"_id": "195916", "title": "HTML code in Java class", "text": "A conceptual question, I tried to google but couldn't find any definitive answers, so here it goes: Is it a good practice to write Java methods to return HTML strings that will be returned to the display/presentation layer? Example:               public string getTextField(){         return \"<input type=\\\"text\\\"/>\";     }"}
{"_id": "195910", "title": "Invalidate cache over multiple applications", "text": "We have a suite of applications including a website, a client application and multiple windows services. All these applications work on the same dataset and use an in-memory cache. Of course, this setup fails when one of the applications does something that invalidates the cache. I'm looking for a solution that will allow me to invalidate the cache across the applications. We have some ideas, but I'm sure the collective minds of the internet can give us a better solution. Some details:   * this is a legacy application, which means we would like to keep the changes as non-invasive as possible   * We're hesitant to introduce another moving piece to the solution. So using an external cache is out."}
{"_id": "195912", "title": "Is this over-abstraction? (And is there a name for it?)", "text": "I work on a large Django application that uses CouchDB as a database and couchdbkit for mapping CouchDB documents to objects in Python, similar to Django's default ORM. It has dozens of model classes and a hundred or two CouchDB views. The application allows users to register a \"domain\", which gives them a unique URL containing the domain name that gives them access to a project whose data has no overlap with the data of other domains. Each document that is part of a domain has its `domain` property set to that domain's name. As far as relationships between the documents go, all domains are effectively mutually exclusive subsets of the data, except for a few edge cases (some users can be members of more than one domain, and there are some administrative reports that include all domains, etc.). The code is full of explicit references to the domain name, and I'm wondering if it would be worth the added complexity to abstract this out. I'd also like to know if there's a name for the sort of bound property approach I'm taking here. Basically, I have something like this in mind: ## Before in models.py               class User(Document):         domain = StringProperty()               class Group(Document):         domain = StringProperty()         name = StringProperty()         user_ids = StringListProperty()              # method that returns related document set         def users(self):             return [User.get(id) for id in self.user_ids]              # method that queries a couch view optimized for a specific lookup         @classmethod         def by_name(cls, domain, name):             # the view method is provided by couchdbkit and handles             # wrapping json CouchDB results as Python objects, and              # can take various parameters modifying behavior             return cls.view('groups/by_name', key=[domain, name])              # method that creates a related document         def get_new_user(self):             user = User(domain=self.domain)             user.save()             self.user_ids.append(user._id)             return user      in views.py:               from models import User, Group          # there are tons of views like this, (request, domain, ...)     def create_new_user_in_group(request, domain, group_name):         group = Group.by_name(domain, group_name)[0]         user = User(domain=domain)         user.save()         group.user_ids.append(user._id)         group.save()      in group/by_name/map.js:               function (doc) {         if (doc.doc_type == \"Group\") {             emit([doc.domain, doc.name], null);         }     }      ## After models.py               class DomainDocument(Document):         domain = StringProperty()              @classmethod         def domain_view(cls, *args, **kwargs):             kwargs['key'] = [cls.domain.default] + kwargs['key']             return super(DomainDocument, cls).view(*args, **kwargs)              @classmethod         def get(cls, *args, **kwargs, validate_domain=True):             ret = super(DomainDocument, cls).get(*args, **kwargs)                  if validate_domain and ret.domain != cls.domain.default:                 raise Exception()                  return ret              def models(self):             # a mapping of all models in the application. accessing one returns the equivalent of                  class BoundUser(User):                 domain = StringProperty(default=self.domain)               class User(DomainDocument):         pass          class Group(DomainDocument):         name = StringProperty()         user_ids = StringListProperty()              def users(self):             return [self.models.User.get(id) for id in self.user_ids]              @classmethod         def by_name(cls, name):             return cls.domain_view('groups/by_name', key=[name])              def get_new_user(self):             user = self.models.User()             user.save()      views.py               @domain_view  # decorator that sets request.models to the same sort of object that is returned by DomainDocument.models and removes the domain argument from the URL router     def create_new_user_in_group(request, group_name):         group = request.models.Group.by_name(group_name)         user = request.models.User()         user.save()         group.user_ids.append(user._id)         group.save()      (Might be better to leave the abstraction leaky here in order to avoid having to deal with a couchapp-style //! include of a wrapper for emit that prepends doc.domain to the key or some other similar solution.)               function (doc) {         if (doc.doc_type == \"Group\") {             emit([doc.name], null);         }     }      ## Pros and Cons So what are the pros and cons of this? Pros:   * DRYer   * prevents you from creating related documents but forgetting to set the domain.   * prevents you from accidentally writing a django view -> couch view execution path that leads to a security breach   * doesn't prevent you from accessing underlying self.domain and normal Document.view() method   * potentially gets rid of the need for a lot of sanity checks verifying whether two documents whose domains we expect to be equal are. Cons:   * adds some complexity   * hides what's really happening   * requires no model modules to have classes with the same name, or you would need to add sub-attributes to self.models for modules. However, requiring project-wide unique class names for models should actually be fine because they correspond to the doc_type property couchdbkit uses to decide which class to instantiate them as, which should be unique.   * removes explicit dependency documentation (from group.models import Group)"}
{"_id": "110747", "title": "License placement curiosities", "text": "Ruby gems have `LICENSE` file with the license text in each gem. Cocoa[Touch] open source frameworks (say ShareKit, StackKit, etc.) have license at the very beginning of each file (.h and .m). I am not sure about .NET or other interpreted languages (except ruby), but I'm pretty sure there are own choices at hand. I am wondering what are the reasons behind placing license into open source software source packages like this. Why not `LICENSE` file everywhere or at the beginning of every source file?"}
{"_id": "110746", "title": "Unicode Explanation Required", "text": "Can someone explain what this means? > Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to > 10FFFFhex. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode"}
{"_id": "171124", "title": "Storing and analyzing rock climbing difficulty", "text": "I'm working on a WordPress plugin to manage rock climbing data, and I need to think of a way to store rock climbing grades from all of the different systems in a unified way. There are many different systems, all of which have some numerical system. A comparison of all the systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)#Comparison_tables Is there some unified way that I can store and analyze these, or do I just need to assign numbers to them all and call it a day? My current plan is to save the score type and then assign each score a numerical value, which I can then use to compare and graph them."}
{"_id": "50835", "title": "Is it better to have publicly viewable FOSS code even if it is not your best work compared to none at all for employment?", "text": "I have a number of foss tools I have written and have released but under aliases. I guess I am worried that the code is not my absolute best and is not the most robust code around. So I have always thought it was best to keep it hidden and away from my name. Though I now am wondering if having any code at all puts you about those who have none in this competitive job market? My code is not bad, it works and works well. But lets just say every circumstance may not be handled in a robust way. Some parts are well written while others are hacked together. So is it better to have something while it may not be your absolute best rather than nothing?"}
{"_id": "127932", "title": "Why is BASIC bad?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Do you think that exposure to BASIC can mutilate your mind? BASIC, and related dialects, have long been branded \"bad\". I've seen it said by some of the best programmers I know, professors at Stanford, and even one of the most brilliant computer scientists: > It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have > had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally > mutilated beyond hope of regeneration - Edsger W. Dijkstra Now, I think that quote may have been taken slightly out of context, and was meant to be something of an exaggeration, but at the same time, anyone who says something along those lines clearly does not like BASIC. When I started programming a while back, I started with BASIC and I don't consider myself a bad programmer, and I know of many good programmers who also started with BASIC. Now, the obvious reason for dislike is that it teaches bad habits, skills, and methodologies. I'm just wondering why people say that, and if it's even correct to say that. In my opinion, any programmer who is bounded by their language is a bad programmer, and that even if BASIC was somehow the boogeyman everyone made it out to be, it still shouldn't significantly hamper someone's \"programming life\". tl;dr - Why do people consider BASIC a bad programming language (especially for beginners) and why do people say it teaches bad skills? What is the \"mental mutilation\" that Dijkstra speaks of?"}
{"_id": "110740", "title": "How exactly do we go from Binary/Hex to Assembly Instruction sets?", "text": "So i've been trying to learn some Embedded/Assembly programming for a bit here lately, as well as going far as trying to learn the lowest level (gates and such). One thing puzzles me though....is how do we \"get\" instruction sets. I understand somewhat how gates/TTL and such works, but I don't see how we get from that to mov,add,clr etc...? It's probably a stupid question....but I mean I think back to the first micro- processors/controllers and think....how exactly did they design an instruction set and make it work? edit: I guess for Clarity, pretend im talking about the first microprocessor, how did they go from Binary to actually creating an Instruction Set?"}
{"_id": "171128", "title": "Author's work and copyright. in UI design", "text": "Typical situation in UI design: you do design of some UI and, say, came up with some bright new idea like \"ribbon\" or \"kinetic scroll past end\". What would be the strategy about such thing? Register patent, don't like it, but anyway would like to ask: how long it takes to do all this stuff and how much it will cost in average? If to forget about patents, will the idea have something like \"prior art\" status or some such if someone will try to patent this in future? All this about project / product published by solo developer."}
{"_id": "171129", "title": "Is Java free/open source or not?", "text": "On November 13, 2006, Sun released much of Java as free and open source software, (FOSS), under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). **On May 8, 2007, Sun finished the process** , making all of Java's core code available under free software/open-source distribution terms, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright. **OpenJDK** (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open source implementation of the Java programming language. It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006. The implementation is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) with a linking exception. Why there are still people that say Java is not open source or free as in free speech ? Am I missing something? Is Java still privative ?"}
{"_id": "117775", "title": "Tailoring your resume for a career switch within programming", "text": "I am currently interested in job prospects outside of my own area of programming. Specifically, I'm a web developer but want to make the transition to desktop application programming. How should I tailor my resume to show that I am capable of this type of software development when I have had no prior experience with it? This question can also be generalized for any other programmer making a leap to a different area (for example a programmer mostly experienced in finance software that wants to go into embedded systems programming). In short, I've used HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and Javascript at work. For a short while I also used ColdFusion. I'm very familiar with OOP concepts and frameworks. In the meantime I've moonlighted for over 3 years on my personal hobby projects in C# and C++. I know it's bad focusing too much on the tools than their application as a metric to measure your abilities, but for making a transition in my career, would emphasizing knowledge in these tools be good idea to put on your resume? Problem is that a lot of jobs put programming languages as strict job requirements (see here). My resume currently shows 5 years of web development experience. I know general programming concepts well enough, and at this point my experience counts much more than my degree. _I want to know how I can make a potential employer of a software company look at my resume with cautious optimism, and not instantly reject it when it shows I have 5 years web experience with PHP and zero desktop software experience._"}
{"_id": "96380", "title": "Is writing your own Data Access / Data Mapping Layer a \"good\" idea?", "text": "We're currently in a situation where we have a choice between using an out-of- the-box object-relational mapper or rolling our own We have a legacy application (ASP.NET + SQL Server) where the data-layer & business-layer are unfortunately mashed together. The system isn't particularly complicated in terms of it's data access. It reads data from a large group (35-40) of inter-related tables, manipulates it in memory & saves it back to some other tables in a summary format. We now have opportunity for some refactoring and are looking at candidate technologies to use to seperate & properly structure our Data Access. Whatever technology we decide on we would like to:   * have POCO objects in our Domain Model which are Persistence Ignorant   * have an abstraction layer to allow us to Unit Test our domain model objects against a mocked up underlying datasource There's obviously lots of stuff out there on this already in terms of Patterns & Frameworks etc. Personally I'm pushing for using EF in conjunction with the ADO.NET Unit Testable Repository Generator / POCO Entity Generator. It satisfies all of our requirements, can be easily bundled inside a Repo/UnitOfWork Pattern and our DB Structure is reasonably mature (having already undergone a refactor) such that we won't be making daily changes to the model. However others in the group are suggesting architecting/rolling our own D.A.L. completely from scratch. (Custom DataMappers, DataContexts, Repository, Interfaces everywhere, Dependency Injection overkill to create concrete objects, Custom LINQ-to-Underlying Query Translation, Custom Caching Implementations, Custom FetchPlan Implementations...) the the list goes on and to be frank is strikes me as madness. Some of the arguments been thrown about are \"Well at least we'll be in control of our own code\" or \"Oh I've used L2S/EF in a previous project and it was nothing but headaches\". (Although I've used both in Production before and found any issues to be few and far between, and very manageable) So do any of your uber-experienced devs/architects out there have any words of wisdom that might help me steer this product away from what seems to me like it's going to be a complete disaster. I can't help but think that any _benefit_ gained by dodging EF issues, will be lost just as quickly by attempting to re-invent the wheel."}
{"_id": "96383", "title": "Is onError handler better than exceptions?", "text": "I understand that exception in program means that something unpredictable happened (but not so bad to unavoidably crash the application!). The try- catch-finally sequence makes me sad because the program is harder to read (one more level of curly brackets) and harder to understand (jump from anywhere to catch in case of exception happened, it is deprecated GOTO). Since we have OOP, I suggest to create proxy class which in case of exception consumes it silently, returns some default value and fires onError event. So if we propagate exception, we have onError call instead, and the two disadvantages mentioned above are solved. See the example in C#: **Standard exception attitude**                 class Computer {         // let's say we need to propagate exception and decide what to do lately         public int divide(int a, int b) {           int result = a / b;           return result;         }       }            class Program {         public static void Main() {           Computer c = new Computer();           try {             Console.WriteLine(c.divide(1, 0));           }           catch(ArithmeticException e) {             // we are teleported here from the middle of Computer.divide method!             // do something           }         }       } // three levels of brackets (without namespace) in such trivial example??      **onError handler attitude**                 class ProxyComputer {         private Computer c = new Computer();         // it is not virtual, can not be overriden         public int divide(int a, int b) {           // alas, exceptions are standard, but we can stop them in this class           try {             return c.divide(a, b);           }           catch(ArithmeticException e) {             this.onError(e);           }         }              protected virtual void onError(Exception e) {           // do nothing         }       }            class MoreStrictComputer : ProxyComputer {         protected override void onError(Exception e) {           // mail to IT department, revert all transactions etc.           Console.WriteLine(\"I can't seem to do that\");         }       }            class Program {         public static void Main() {           ProxyComputer pc = new ProxyComputer();           MoreStrictComputer msc = new MoreStrictComputer();           // fires onError instead of exception           Console.WriteLine(pc.divide(1, 0)); // no problem           Console.WriteLine(msc.divide(1, 0)); // this time it won't be so easy         }       } // only two levels of brackets      Often I see empty (or trivial) catch blocks. This means programmers often consider exception as no problem situation, but with standard exception attitude, they still have to bother with try-catch. The second attitude makes it optional. **So the question is:** Which solution would you prefer? Is this some kind of pattern or am I missing something? **Edit** As Paul Equis suggests, `throw e;` should be default onError behavior, not do-nothing silence swalowing."}
{"_id": "96386", "title": "What is a Bootstrapper in programming?", "text": "I sometimes see the term \"Bootstrapper\". I saw it last when creating some learning exercises for Prism. I stumbled upon `UnityBootstrapper` class. My question is: when would you call a class a \"Bootstrapper\"? Why? What does it say about the class?"}
{"_id": "88896", "title": "Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?", "text": "In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are _unwilling_ to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for \"teaching\" a coworker who is merely _ignorant_ of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good _problem- solving skills_ , something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of `static`), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing `System.Exception`... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively _seek_ positive change. I'm not going to say _resistant_ to change, because **I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached** , and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely _not_ going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a \"mentor\" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, **without creating an adversarial situation?** Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies _weren't_ successful and would be better to avoid? * * * ## Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit:   * This coworker is only my \"senior\" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it.   * I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other na\u00efve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as \"leads\" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart.   * I'm **not** asking people how to _get my way, come hell or high water_. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a **social** , **cooperative** method of driving change.   * The mention of _\"...global variables... no tests... throwing`System.Exception`\"_ was intended to demonstrate that _the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic_. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either **answer the question that I actually asked** or move on. _P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences._"}
{"_id": "82293", "title": "Arguments for storing binary asociations in a single field vs. in a mapping table?", "text": "When do you draw the line between relational tables, and fields holding multiple values of a particular type. Let me illustrate in an example below where a PokeMaster can be associated to multiple pokemon of unknown number.               TablePokeMasters         PokeMasterId         PokeMasterName          TablePokeMastersToPokemon <- Side question, what is a good naming convention for a linking table?         PokeMasterId         PokemonId          TablePokemon         LinkId         PokemonId         PokemonName      Vs               Table PokeMasters         PokeMasterId         PokeMasterName         PokeMasterPokemon (ex: Picachu, Charizard, Blastoise) <- parse this in code      Is the second method ever preferred over the first one where there is an unknown number of relationships from one table to another? The only value I can see in the second method is a smaller number of tables, and it is easier to see the relationships right inside of one table, instead of building queries to see the relationships."}
{"_id": "161370", "title": "Using Bit Torrent for internal release management", "text": "We currently abuse our version control system and use it... pretty much as an FTP to store big release binaries (4+ GB). We are seeking to move away from this horrendous practice which has and continues to devolve and take more and more of IT's resources while crippling the integration and release processes. A solution for this would be using P2P file sharing to distribute these release images/binaries, mixing file servers and some key user machines as seeds. So my question comes in two parts:   1. Have any of you resorted to setting up BitTorrent in your intranet to distribute release images/binaries?, if not, what do you think about this idea (which was not actually mine BTW, but I think it is great)   2. Is there open source web-based software for handling publishing of BitTorrent trackers?, so that when there is a new release it can be searchable and display its availability with regards to seeds and leeches? (...you know what I'm referring to) Edit: The intranet is global (e.g. USA, China, Germany, Mexico). Regular FTP could work but it is not as cost-effective."}
{"_id": "193457", "title": "Ambiguous use of \"Controller\" in MVC", "text": "I have heard two separate uses for the term _controller_ when speaking of the _Model View Controller_ methodology.   1. An intermediary section of code that communicates between the Model and View, tying them together.   2. The module that deals with input, similarly to how the view deals with output. For starters, **which definition is correct?** I have read more that use the first definition than the second, with the second being the first one I learned. In addition, it seems to me that both of those things are useful - indeed, when I've used MVC-like designs, I've used both of those things in some way (even if I only ever called one of them the controller). **Should MVC really be defined in a way that includes both of these things?** That would mean that the architecture contains the model, an input module, an output module, and an intermediate module to connect them all, and that just makes sense to me."}
{"_id": "193455", "title": "How can you provide a public writeable API and not get spammed?", "text": "So say you had a site like StackExchange. Now imagine you created a machine- writeable API capable of posting questions and comments and doing everything your browser can do. Of course, about 5 minutes after launching, you'd have so much spam that you would probably have ran out of room on your database servers and will have been permanently blacklisted from every search engine(except for maybe Ask :) ) So, how can you avoid that spam, while allowing a machine to actually use your API(and/or have automation involved? Is it possible in this day and age? I'd expect there is a human moderator at the end of it, but how do you cut down on the majority of spam to measures capable of being handled by human moderators?"}
{"_id": "161378", "title": "Freelance Web Developer tools", "text": "I'm thinking of freelancing and building web sites in my free time. I have experience in C#/ASP.NET, JavaScript/jQuery as well as HTML/CSS and SQL. Thus, I feel like I have sufficient web technologies knowledge to go down this path. What I'm unsure of is if there are any tools which can be used to simplify the life of a freelance web dev. As an example, I once designed an e-commerce website from scratch as a University project, which took around 3 months of hard work to accomplish. The finished product was not even hosted, and I didn't delve into any security aspects. I never even hosted a website or database before! What concerns me is that there are millions of sites out there which can for example be used to create an e-commerce site in minutes. Without having to bother with databases, security and other issues. You don't even need to know how to code in server-side technologies to get these sites up and running. Do professional web developers actually use these tools? If a client had to request an e-commerce site (for example), how would a pro go about developing it? I hear a lot about CMS systems like Joomla and Wordpress, but I think my main problem is that I don't know much about the available tools (other than Visual Studio) and I wouldn't know where to get started. Can anyone guide me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "206793", "title": "How do you put a price on your source code?", "text": "I was asked to sell the source code (along with existing users) of small utility app I created years ago. I've investigated how to put a price on the source code but so far haven't come up with a good solution. I've searched the net, but haven't found anything useful. Then I came across a few others who also sold their source code with users, but their prices seem unrealistically high. For example, one person calculated price per user at about $200. He had 80 users and ended up selling the source with users for $30k. How did he come up with this price? Can I find a good price with this formula: > (number of users x app price) + (app price x num of new users in one year) ? If this is a good formula, how do you price source that doesn't yet have users?"}
{"_id": "19278", "title": "Is what someone publishes on the Internet fair game when considering them for employment as a programmer?", "text": "(Originally posted on Stack Overflow but closed there and more relevant for here) So we first interviewed a guy for a technical role and he was pretty good. Before the second interview we googled him and found his MySpace page which could, to put it mildly, be regarded as inappropriate. Just to be clear there was no doubt that it was his page (name, photos, matching biographical information and so on). The content was entirely personal and in no way related to his professional abilities or attitude. Is it fair to consider this when thinking about whether to offer them a job? In most situations my response would be what goes on in someone's private life is their own doing. However for anyone technical who professes (implicitly or explicitly) to understand the Internet and the possibilities it offers, is posting things in a way which can so obviously be discovered a significant error of judgement? EDIT: Clarification - essentially it was a fairly graphic commentary on porn (but of, shall we say, a non-academic nature). I'm actually more interested in the general concept than the specific incident as it's something we're likely to see more in the future as people put more and more of themselves on-line. My concerns are not primarily about him and how he feels about such things (he's white, straight, male and about the last possible victim of discrimination on the planet in that sense), more how it reflects on the company that a very simple search (basically his name) returns these things and that clients may also do it. We work in a relatively conservative industry."}
{"_id": "161777", "title": "Why the programmer with Ph.D is a bad candidate for the employer?", "text": "I have found this comic pic on Steve Hanov's blog: ![enter image description here](http://stevehanov.ca/blog/resume_comic.png) The most of the points are true obviously. What I can't comprehend is, why _having Ph.D is considered as a \"bad thing\"_? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/k5jlX.jpg) Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "19274", "title": "How do you deal with boring repetitive tasks and activities?", "text": "When you encounter in your work some boring, repetitive (possibly not- programming) task how do you deal with it? Do you try to automate it immediately? Do you postpone automation till you encounter the task twice? Do you try to delegate it? Do you try to find something interesting in it? What do you do to make the work more joyful? Learn deeper to make it more interesting? Learn deeper immediately or when you need it regularly?"}
{"_id": "19273", "title": "Is Oberon really \"a better Pascal\"?", "text": "Reading Niklaus Wirth, one can notice that despite some popularity of Pascal, he is not glad that Oberon (as a \"polished\" successor of Pascal and Modula) didn't get much popularity. I never did anything in Oberon, but reading the page Oberon For Pascal Developers I really did not like many of the changes as a Delphi/pascal developer, for example   * forcing the reserved words to be always uppercase   * making the language case-sensitive   * getting rid of enumeration types  What do you think about Oberon, is it really \"a better Pascal\" from your point of view?"}
{"_id": "97382", "title": "Oracle Java SE Certification", "text": "* Which exam(s) should be given for Java certification from Oracle.   * is Oracle 1Z0-851 exam old SCJP ?   * Recommend book which covers Oracle 1Z0-851 exam?"}
{"_id": "158315", "title": "What does value propagation mean?", "text": "This may be a stupid question but I am working on an algorithm which calculates intervals for variables in some given constraints. For example there is a function called propagateValues and its description is               `Propagate value ranges for the given constraints`      What exactly is meant by value propagation ? The algorithm I am working is basically trying to simplify sets of constraints by doing a range/interval analysis before querying the solver for a feasible solution (to make solving constraint sets more efficient)"}
{"_id": "158311", "title": "easiest way for push notifications", "text": "I wanted to implement real time push notification to one of the apps written in RoR. I don't have any experience with nodejs, nowjs, express or socketio. What would be the easiest way to implement the realtime push notification system?"}
{"_id": "97385", "title": "where is there a good description of the use of the word 'scope' in computer science?", "text": "Where is there a good description of the use of the word 'scope' in computer science? In this post of a question about the Java final reserved word one responder implies that scope is textual so each iteration of a `for` loop causes a scope to be resumed as current. Another responder implies scope is time dependent so each iteration is a new scope. In those contexts, it was possible to understand what scope meant even though different people use the word differently but sometimes when I am reading a programming book I am not sure what scope means. What are good qualifiers for the word 'scope'? I suggest 'textual' is one. Can you think of others? Should a qualifier almost always be used or is there a general understanding about contexts that help one perfectly infer the the intended meaning? How is the word 'scope' used when speaking of objects (and object oriented programming) and what qualifiers might be necessary?"}
{"_id": "214155", "title": "Inject specific classes or not", "text": "I have a TableSqlBuilder interface which has a method getCreateTableSql. This interface is used in some other class as follows:               function createTable( $tableDefinition ) {         $sql = $this->tableSqlBuilder->getCreateTableSql( $tableDefinition );         $this->db->execute( $sql );     }      The TableSqlBuilder interface has multiple implementations, such as SQLiteTableSqlBuilder and MySQLTableSqlBuilder. SQLiteTableSqlBuilder originally created all SQL itself, and had methods to create SQL for an index or for a field. It turned own that the functionality of these methods was needed on its own at other places, so it has been split off into a SQLiteFieldSqlBuilder and a SQLiteIndexSqlBuilder. These classes are instantiated by SQLiteTableSqlBuilder - they are thus not injected, and SQLiteTableSqlBuilder depends on these concrete classes. I'm unsure if this should be changed to have these field and index sql builders injected. On the one hand this gives more flexibility. It also allows mocking out this behaviour in tests. Then again, the binding and flexibility is currently the same as before the code was split of into new classes. When going with the injection approach, the accepted types could be FieldSqlBuilder and IndexSqlBuilder, both interfaces implemented by the current concrete classes. This however means one can happily end up with a MySqlIndexBuilder in a SQLiteTableBuilder, which is clearly to be avoided. Could also just type hint against the concrete class, pretending it is an interface, which gets rid of the dependency as long as the construction happens outside of the table sql builder. Do you think these collaborators should be injected, or is it a valid exception where it is better to not go all the way?"}
{"_id": "142196", "title": "I Want To Program!", "text": "I am highly interested in learning how to program but I am unsure whether I want to lean towards web developing or software programming. Or does computer programming cover both in a nut shell? Where should or how should I start?"}
{"_id": "250104", "title": "URLs with variable query strings and cache", "text": "I am developing a media server, the basic functionality is to serve an image, which is done the following way               /media/:id      where :id is the id of the image. You may want to ask for a specific size, with some rules I will provide. Eg:               /media/:id/50x50     /media/:id?witdh=50&height=50      Question: Which option do you think is better? I believe the second one to be more RESTful and beautiful, but we will be using a CDN and varnish for cache, so if we get               /media/:id?width=50&height=50      or               /media/:id?height=50&width=50      we will have 2 hits when we should have 1 Any advice?"}
{"_id": "140085", "title": "As a Europe-based company, is it possible to write a custom iPad application for a customer?", "text": "Our customer wants us to write a custom application for him that he can use on a handful of iPads in his company. This application is probably only useful for this one customer (maybe for two or three more in the future, but only after additional customization). I read that if the customer subscribes to Apple's Volume Purchasing Program, we are able to provide him with a custom B2B application. This, however, seems to be restricted to US developers (or customers? or both?). What are the alternatives for Europe-based (or, more generally, non-US) software developers and their local customers?"}
{"_id": "250106", "title": "HTML - Alternative for ID when ID is only unique within a certain scope?", "text": "So I feel like this should be a common question but I can't find the answer. Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology. Assumptions:   * IDs are supposed to be unique across the document.   * Class attributes are meant for CSS and should not be used in JS selectors.   * Name attributes are not appropriate ID replacements since they don't work the same on all elements and the html 5 spec changed them (removed from certain elements I think). So given something like: The page has multiple of the same widget. Each widget has a unique ID. I need to be able to reference widget sub-elements like `$(\"#widgetID relativeID\")`. So that relative IDs are unique within widgets but may be duplicated outside this scope. I had been using name for this but it seems this isn't the correct way What is?"}
{"_id": "119743", "title": "Is anyone teaching the application of ethics to programming?", "text": "Ethical questions come up more and more in the news, and can be core to a software developers' life. On several occasions this year I was asked for advice that amounts to answering ethical questions, in a computer programming context, and I was surprised to see how much fretting and trouble questions which I consider trivial can lead to. Are there any courses or programs specializing in teaching what is expected of an ethical programmer? Has anyone put together a formal curriculum anywhere?"}
{"_id": "250101", "title": "should Product owner be in product management team", "text": "Should the product owner ideally be as part of the product management team? How does one handle the internal stakeholding if the product owner is outside the product management team? We had problems since the product owner was not part of the product management team and there were lot of conflicts."}
{"_id": "215822", "title": "Does it make sense to generate java classes from class diagram?", "text": "As we do design & analysis before development, wouldn't be convenient to be able to generate Java classes from a class diagram?   This would promote more exhaustive design and better codes, right? It's strange that why Google returns tons of tools to generate class diagram from Java classes but not the other way around."}
{"_id": "225609", "title": "A pattern to \"atomically\" update a pair of objects", "text": "Is there a standard pattern in OOP to kind of \"atomically\" update a pair of objects, like a pair of bank accounts on a transaction? I would like to have somehow a single public method exposed that does it all at once, but can only come up with ways of doing it by making _two_ calls of public methods to update objects separately. I am currently experimenting with _Racket_ , but i would appreciate examples in any language, or a description of a standard pattern. * * * Here is an example of what i have experimented in _Ruby_ (with which i am more comfortable than with _Racket_ ). I am not concerned with locking here, just with class interface.               class Account       def initialize(total)         @total = total       end            def total         @total       end            def transfer_to(another, sum:)         change_total_by(-sum)         another.change_total_by(sum)       end            protected              def change_total_by(sum)           @total += sum         end          end          a = Account.new(10)     b = Account.new(20)     a.transfer_to(b, sum: 5)     print \"New a.total = #{ a.total },\\nnew b.total = #{ b.total }\"      This works using `protected` instead of `private`."}
{"_id": "253442", "title": "Drawback of using static method", "text": "For methods that **never access instance variable or static variable** and they act just like a function (name-spaced) and they are deterministic base on only the input arguments , I want to ask, are there any consideration if I change all of them to static method? I keep hearing people saying it static method is poor, but I am looking for some real code example on my above case."}
{"_id": "215827", "title": "Operating systems theory -- using minimum number of semaphores", "text": "This situation is prone to deadlock of processes in an operating system and I'd like to solve it with the minimum of semaphores. Basically there are three cooperating processes that all read data from the same input device. Each process, when it gets the input device, must read two consecutive data. I want to use mutual exclusion to do this. Semaphores should be used to synchronize:               P1:                     P2:                     P3:     input(a1,a2)            input (b1,b2)           input(c1,c2)     Y=a1+c1                 W=b2+c2                 Z=a2+b1     Print (X)               X=Z-Y+W      The declaration and initialization that I think would work here are: `semaphore s=1` `sa1 = 0, sa2 = 0, sb1 = 0, sb2 = 0, sc1 = 0, sc2 = 0` I'm sure that any kernel programmers that happen on this can knock this out in a minute or 2. Diagram of cooperating Processes and one input device: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zQyu7.png) It seems like `P1` and `P2` would start something like: `wait(s)` `input (a1/b1, a2/b2)` `signal(s)`"}
{"_id": "82834", "title": "Why SQL numeric precision is specified as the number of digits?", "text": "I understand that this might be a loaded question. For example, in Sql Server 2008, doing `DECLARE @someNum NUMERIC(10);` means that the range of the variable will be limited by 10 digits. In other languages such as C, Java, etc. the standards for representing whole and fractional numbers are different. The range of the values is being sliced by multiples of bytes, and this is understandable, due to the way hardware works. A language could provide something that most hardware does not yet support, such as a 256-bit integer type, which will work fast on a 64-bit computer, if it is implemented correctly. The numeric types in the databases seem to be not tied to underlying hardware. I understand that the values might need to be null-ablle, which can cost a bit or two, but why such arbitrary precision that does not seem to optimize storage or calculation speed? Perhaps databases do not need to perform numeric computations often. Perhaps digit width of a column is a natural extension of character width. Perhaps SQL was supposed to be a non-programmers language (because it sounds like English :) )? Perhaps history took a weird turn, such as one that allowed the inferior VHS format to prosper. Please help me understand this."}
{"_id": "150670", "title": "Transaction Design Pattern for MVC and location of responsibility?", "text": "I'm designing a pretty standard Spring MVC application, and I'm trying to figure out where the responsibility for transaction management should lie. I've been reading Java Transaction Design Strategies, and the one that I think best suits is the Server Delegate one, where the controller is what manages the transactions, and the services and DAOs are oblivious to the transactions. Somehow, this doesn't feel right. My gut feeling is that the services are the ones that should control the transactions, but I have cases where a controller may call several services to perform an action. How have you handled Transactions in MVC applications before, and where do you consider the best place for handling the transactions is?"}
{"_id": "82831", "title": "uploading MS Access databases to the web", "text": "I found an easy system for uploading searchable MS Access databases to the web - it's called Caspio Online (http://www.caspio.com/). However, I would rather not pay a monthly fee just to upload databases to our website. Does anyone know of an open source alternative that will allow me to upload a MS Access 2007 Database to a website, and then build a web form that will search it? The easier the implementation, the better :)"}
{"_id": "234784", "title": "What makes a good interview question for a junior applicant?", "text": "We had a debate a few days ago at work about some question we ask during interviews. We are in the on-going process of hiring \"junior\" C++ developers which is kind-of new to the company (we used to hire only experienced programmers, but those are hard to find in our geographical area). For more experienced applicants, we usually ask C++ questions, some code reading exercises and inheritance, cast, const-correctness, static questions. The goal being to check if the applicant has enough experience with the language (if somebody claims he has 6 years of experience with C++ but can't write a `const` getter, then something is wrong for instance). But for \"junior\" applicants, those kind of questions don't seem relevant: obviously junior people can't possibly know about all the features of a language, and it is expected of them that they will need some learning time. I thought of asking a question like: \"Say you are a given a list of millions of integers. Write some function that computes the average of the numbers.\" Obviously the main goal of this question isn't to get a perfect solution but to see how the applicant think. First he should ask about the list:   * How are the numbers organized ?   * Are they sorted ?   * Where do the numbers come from ? A file ? Some network socket ?   * Do we know the count of items beforehand ? Then I expect him/her to raise several problems:   * The sum of the integers will likely overflow.   * Do we need an exact average or something close-enough will do ?   * What if the list is empty ?   * ...and so on. Obviously, if the applicant doesn't know what classes, functions to use I tell him/her: he/she could get that information on the Internet in a real situation anyway. Now, some of my coworkers think that is a terrible question because it is vague and open, claiming that \"junior\" applicants are stressed during interviews and can't think properly, making the test moot. I can see their point, but I still don't agree. So my questions are: is this kind of question acceptable for testing \"junior\" applicants ? What makes a good \"junior\" interview question ?"}
{"_id": "186035", "title": "Who first coined the term Higher Order Function and/or First Class Citizen?", "text": "I've come to understand that long before Haskell, O'Caml or LISP, higher order functions were an academic research subject and in mathematics, Sch\u00f6nfinkel (in 1967) and Haskell Curry (in 1968) already applied techniques such as currying, but that was before it was available in any programming language. Scheme, according to Wikipedia, was the first language to introduce proper higher-order functions as first-class citizens, but is there anybody we can attribute the original idea to? Maybe Alonzo Church, who invented lambda calculus in the 1930's? More specifically, who coined the following definition, which I saw in various paraphrases around in several books and online resources? > A function is considered to be of higher order when it takes another > function as an argument or when it returns a function. Any function not > taking functions as arguments or as return types is called a first order > function."}
{"_id": "161998", "title": "Comparison of my own Insertion Sort versus the standard algorithm", "text": "I come from a background of making MVC websites and HTML5 applications, and have recently decided to dive into the sort of stuff i wasn't taught at university, namely the things most people would learn on a computer science course. I've been reading a book on algorithms, and the first one it mentions was the Insertion Sort. I didn't really understand it the first time, but I understood the goal, so I had a crack at coming up with my own solution before reading more into the proper solution to see how close I got. I got pretty close, and here is my function in C#:                   int[] SortNumbersTomsVersion(int[] numbersIn)         {             int[] output = new int[numbersIn.Count()];                  for (var i = 0; i < numbersIn.Count(); i++)              {                 int cardsLowerThan = 0;                      for (var n = 0; n < numbersIn.Count(); n++)                  {                     if (numbersIn[n] < numbersIn[i])                      {                         cardsLowerThan++;                     }                 }                 output[cardsLowerThan] = numbersIn[i];             }             return output;         }      The concept of it is that, i start off with a group of numbers. Then, for each number, I compare it to all of the other numbers in the array, to see how many others are lower in value. It then takes the resulting count, and places the current number into an output array at that index. The algorithm goes through all the numbers until they are all at the same location. My question is, _what makes the original better than my solution_? for reference, here is the accepted algorithm outside of a function:                   int temp, k;         for (int i = 1; i < array_size; i++)          {             temp = array[i];             k = i - 1;             while (k >= 0 && array[k] > temp)              {                 array[k + 1] = array[k];                 k--;             }             array[k + 1] = temp;         }"}
{"_id": "234787", "title": "Fighting technical debt as the \"lowest developer\"?", "text": "Let's say you work for a company and what you do is develop software for them. You have no idea of the big picture or maybe slight. What you do have are tasks assigned to you via issue tracking system. You're given tasks, you make them work the way the task describes them, you send them back. Like adding 2 integers:               function add(a,b){return a + b;}      But later, as the project goes forward, you notice that as `add` becomes more complex, you realize that it should have needed some form of architecture, more than just a function that adds parameters and returns a value. However, you didn't know that. In the first place, all they needed was that simple `add`. You didn't expect add to become so complex. The project progresses with more features, which you didn't expect to have in the first place. And in the end, you keep piling up hacks and layer upon layer of functions to avoid breaking/rewriting the existing code. How do you deal with these situations? How do you fight technical debt as \"the lowest developer\"? **Clarification:**   * You're the \"implementer\", the lowest in the hierarchy.    * You see the problem, but have no say with the matter.   * I'm not quantifying technical debt or looking for tools.   * Regarding the third \"duplicate\"     * Refactoring & Rewrite - You are locked to your tasks. You are not paid to do extra.     * Architecture Overview - You know the overall system, but no idea of the architecture.     * Code Freeze - Not your call. You're not management.     * Modularization - No idea of architecture. Modules change as requirements change.     * Automated Tests - None exists."}
{"_id": "195285", "title": "How to deal with management staff (company owner) that downplays the impact of specs changes?", "text": "I work in a small web development company (3 programmers) for a while. During the last year the company had hard times (less projects) and a few co-workers were fired, including our Production Manager. Having this person out of our team mean to us that we have to deal more and more with the company bosses (owners). It's them who meet the clients and discuss about upcoming projects (custom web app for example) We had a meeting with the boss this week about a particular project for which he wants the specs to change (add a few features). I understand that in the real world specs **always** change during a project (I'm in this business for almost 10 years, I already figured that). What I am having hard time with is when the boss keeps trying to **minimize the complexity, the impacts of the new specs** because in his mind those changes are not that hard and should not take a lot more time (especially because he already signed a contract with our client for a fixed amount of money). With one programmer co-worker we joked about that, saying that it's not by adding two wings on a car that you will make plane, it has major impact on the whole design of the vehicle, time required is not the same, so is the same with software. Any idea how we should handle that kind of attitude from a boss? Is it possible to make him change his minding in that kind of situation ?"}
{"_id": "2541", "title": "How do I constructively and professionally deal with anger when I'm on the job?", "text": "What do you do when something makes you angry while programming? I usually Slap the mouse Hard on my desk and go get a coffee or anything, just to calm down"}
{"_id": "167235", "title": "How can I estimate the entropy of a password?", "text": "Having read various resources about password strength I'm trying to create an algorithm that will provide a rough estimation of how much entropy a password has. I'm trying to create an algorithm that's as comprehensive as possible. At this point I only have pseudocode, but the algorithm covers the following:   * password length   * repeated characters   * patterns (logical)   * different character spaces (LC, UC, Numeric, Special, Extended)   * dictionary attacks It does NOT cover the following, and SHOULD cover it WELL (though not perfectly):   * ordering (passwords can be strictly ordered by output of this algorithm)   * patterns (spatial) Can anyone provide some insight on what this algorithm might be weak to? Specifically, can anyone think of situations where feeding a password to the algorithm would **OVERESTIMATE** its strength? Underestimations are less of an issue. # The algorithm:               // the password to test     password = ?     length = length(password)          // unique character counts from password (duplicates discarded)     uqlca = number of unique lowercase alphabetic characters in password     uquca = number of uppercase alphabetic characters     uqd   = number of unique digits     uqsp  = number of unique special characters (anything with a key on the keyboard)     uqxc  = number of unique special special characters (alt codes, extended-ascii stuff)          // algorithm parameters, total sizes of alphabet spaces     Nlca = total possible number of lowercase letters (26)     Nuca = total uppercase letters (26)     Nd   = total digits (10)     Nsp  = total special characters (32 or something)     Nxc  = total extended ascii characters that dont fit into other categorys (idk, 50?)          // algorithm parameters, pw strength growth rates as percentages (per character)     flca = entropy growth factor for lowercase letters (.25 is probably a good value)     fuca = EGF for uppercase letters (.4 is probably good)     fd   = EGF for digits (.4 is probably good)     fsp  = EGF for special chars (.5 is probably good)     fxc  = EGF for extended ascii chars (.75 is probably good)          // repetition factors.  few unique letters == low factor, many unique == high     rflca = (1 - (1 - flca) ^ uqlca)     rfuca = (1 - (1 - fuca) ^ uquca)     rfd   = (1 - (1 - fd  ) ^ uqd  )     rfsp  = (1 - (1 - fsp ) ^ uqsp )     rfxc  = (1 - (1 - fxc ) ^ uqxc )          // digit strengths     strength =     ( rflca * Nlca +        rfuca * Nuca +       rfd   * Nd   +       rfsp  * Nsp  +       rfxc  * Nxc    ) ^ length          entropybits = log_base_2(strength)      A few inputs and their desired and actual entropy_bits outputs:               INPUT           DESIRED        ACTUAL     aaa             very pathetic  8.1     aaaaaaaaa       pathetic       24.7     abcdefghi       weak           31.2     H0ley$Mol3y_    strong         72.2     s^fU\u00ac5\u00fc;y34G<   wtf            88.9     [a^36]*         pathetic       97.2     [a^20]A[a^15]*  strong         146.8     xkcd1**         medium         79.3     xkcd2**         wtf            160.5          * these 2 passwords use shortened notation, where [a^N] expands to N a's.     ** xkcd1 = \"Tr0ub4dor&3\", xkcd2 = \"correct horse battery staple\"      The algorithm does realize (correctly) that increasing the alphabet size (even by one digit) vastly strengthens long passwords, as shown by the difference in entropy_bits for the 6th and 7th passwords, which both consist of 36 a's, but the second's 21st a is capitalized. However, they do not account for the fact that having a password of 36 a's is not a good idea, it's easily broken with a weak password cracker (and anyone who watches you type it will see it) and the algorithm doesn't reflect that. It does, however, reflect the fact that xkcd1 is a weak password compared to xkcd2, despite having greater complexity density (is this even a thing?). How can I improve this algorithm? # Addendum 1 Dictionary attacks and pattern based attacks seem to be the big thing, so I'll take a stab at addressing those. I could perform a comprehensive search through the password for words from a word list and replace words with tokens unique to the words they represent. Word-tokens would then be treated as characters and have their own weight system, and would add their own weights to the password. I'd need a few new algorithm parameters (I'll call them lw, Nw ~= 2^11, fw ~= .5, and rfw) and I'd factor the weight into the password as I would any of the other weights. This word search could be specially modified to match both lowercase and uppercase letters as well as common character substitutions, like that of E with 3. If I didn't add extra weight to such matched words, the algorithm would underestimate their strength by a bit or two per word, which is OK. Otherwise, a general rule would be, for each non-perfect character match, give the word a bonus bit. I could then perform simple pattern checks, such as searches for runs of repeated characters and derivative tests (take the difference between each character), which would identify patterns such as 'aaaaa' and '12345', and replace each detected pattern with a pattern token, unique to the pattern and length. The algorithmic parameters (specifically, entropy per pattern) could be generated on the fly based on the pattern. At this point, I'd take the length of the password. Each word token and pattern token would count as one character; each token would replace the characters they symbolically represented. I made up some sort of pattern notation, but it includes the pattern length l, the pattern order o, and the base element b. This information could be used to compute some arbitrary weight for each pattern. I'd do something better in actual code. # Modified Example:               Password:          1234kitty$$$$$herpderp     Tokenized:         1 2 3 4 k i t t y $ $ $ $ $ h e r p d e r p     Words Filtered:    1 2 3 4 @W5783 $ $ $ $ $ @W9001 @W9002     Patterns Filtered: @P[l=4,o=1,b='1'] @W5783 @P[l=5,o=0,b='$'] @W9001 @W9002          Breakdown:         3 small, unique words and 2 patterns     Entropy:           about 45 bits, as per modified algorithm          Password:          correcthorsebatterystaple     Tokenized:         c o r r e c t h o r s e b a t t e r y s t a p l e     Words Filtered:    @W6783 @W7923 @W1535 @W2285          Breakdown:         4 small, unique words and no patterns     Entropy:           43 bits, as per modified algorithm      The exact semantics of how entropy is calculated from patterns is up for discussion. I was thinking something like:               entropy(b) * l * (o + 1) // o will be either zero or one      The modified algorithm would find flaws with and reduce the strength of each password in the original table, with the exception of `s^fU\u00ac5\u00fc;y34G<`, which contains no words or patterns."}
{"_id": "87320", "title": "What php programmer should know?", "text": "I've dig the database here and didn't found any answer for my question. What is a standard for a php programmer to know? I mean, literally, what group of language functions, mechanisms, variables should person know to consider oneself a (good) php programmer? (I know 'being good' is beyond language syntax, still I'm considering syntax of plain php only) To give an example what I mean:   * functions to control http sessions, cookies   * functions to control connection with databases   * functions to control file handling   * functions to control xml etc.. I omit phrases like 'security' or 'patterns' or 'framework' intentionally as it applies to every programming language. Hope I made myself clear, any input appreciated :) **EDIT 1:** > **Note:** > > Michael J.V. is right claiming that databases are independent from language, > so to put my question more precisely and emphasise differences: > > Practises or security, are some ideas to implement (there is no 'Pattern' > object with 'Decorator()' method, is there?) while using databases means > knowing a mysqli and a set of its methods. **EDIT 2:** It all came to me after some interview task: > Count seconds, days, months, years elapsed since date input till now. So I had opened the php docs to check date functions. After I had done tasks the interviewer told me he wasn't satisfied with my actions since datetime() is something everyone should know. That's why I'm asking all this. What everybody should know.."}
{"_id": "96657", "title": "New to programming, where do I start?", "text": "So ... I'm a sysadmin. There are a number of instances where scripting would come in handy(mostly user management ... creating groups, assigning permissions, deleting expired accounts, etc), and I'd like to make a fullblown program. But I don't even know where to start. **Edit** A lot of comments made sense along the lines of \"learn what you want to learn.\" So ... I need to figure out what I want to learn.   A: Is there no such thing as a \"beginner\" or \"building block\" language? It wouldn't be any easier to learn C# and move into C++ than it would to just go straight into C++?   B: How do I choose what to learn? I'd like to write a game for my first real project, if that helps narrow it down. (aside from \"Hello world\" ;) ) There are so many languages out there I don't know where to begin. I don't even know the real difference between C#/C/C++.   C: Once I _have_ picked a language, what's the best way to start learning it?"}
{"_id": "11440", "title": "Being a good mentor", "text": "If you had a student or junior developer who was competent but just had no real world experience how do you think it would be best to mentor them or what information could you give them that would ease their transition from newbieness into leetness?"}
{"_id": "191349", "title": "In TDD, if I write a test case that passes without modifying production code, what does that mean?", "text": "These are Robert C. Martin's rules for TDD:   * You are not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a failing unit test pass.    * You are not allowed to write any more of a unit test than is sufficient to fail; and compilation failures are failures.    * You are not allowed to write any more production code than is sufficient to pass the one failing unit test. When I write a test that seems worthwhile but passes without changing production code:   1. Does that mean I did something wrong?   2. Should I avoid writing such tests in the future if it can be helped?   3. Should I leave that test there or remove it? * * * **Note:** I was _trying_ to ask this question here: Can I start with a passing unit test? But I wasn't able to articulate the question well enough until now."}
{"_id": "96650", "title": "The importance of using Configuration Management tools in a Software project for controlling the changes", "text": "Can we control the changes on a special artifact while our configuration management tool doesn't work properly? Can we do it ourselves?"}
{"_id": "191344", "title": "How to use MVC in practice", "text": "I'm very confused. I can't even begin to understand how MVC would be implemented outside of web development. This might seem like too general a question, but how would one apply MVC. I have the following general questions:   1. Are M, V, and C all meant to be one class each, or many. If many, how would that work.    2. Most classes I've made previously have had their data inside them, not in a separate class. How would this work with MVC? 1) For instance, lets say you have a class where you take care of a virtual dog. I would think that you would make a Dog class with, for example, a \"bark\" command that would play a sound along with a name variable and a coat_color variable. I know this is very simple, but how would this fit inside MVC? It seems that you would end up with MC and V, where the information (model) AND the controls were in the Dog class, which would maybe access swing, or whatever library, to update the view. 2) Or, what about a program like sims (simplified version) where each person would have their own information... would you put all that info in another class? Sorry if these are all based on giant misconceptions, but I'm pretty confused. Right now I'm using Java, if that matters for MVC..."}
{"_id": "57205", "title": "Moment to release an app to the App Store", "text": "Is there a good moment to release an app? Is there a bad moment to release an app? For example, maybe Spring/Summer won't get as many sales as the Fall/ Winter. In the sense that kids getting out of school will be spending less time in front of the screen, more time hanging out outside, etc. Any opinions on the matter?"}
{"_id": "201222", "title": "Big project layout : adding new feature on multiple sub-projects", "text": "I want to know how to manage a big project with many components with version control management system. In my current project there are 4 major parts.   1. Web   2. Server   3. Admin console   4. Platform.  The web and server part uses 2 libraries that I wrote. In total there are 5 git repositories and 1 mercurial repository. The project build script is in Platform repository. It automates the whole building process. The problem is when I add a new feature that affects multiple components I have to create branch for each of the affected repo. Implement the feature. Merge it back. My gut feeling is \"something is wrong\". So should I create a single repo and put all the components there? I think branching will be easier in that case. Or I just do what I am doing right now. In that case how do I solve this problem of creating branch on each repository?"}
{"_id": "97521", "title": "Should I expect recent grads to be familiar with basic programming concepts?", "text": "It seems there's a HUGE discrepancy between what I expect someone who's studied programming for a few years at university, and what one actually knows. I don't feel like I'm asking overcomplicated questions in interviews. Some of my usual questions are :   * What's the difference between a reference type and a value type?  If it seems the interviewee doesn't really understand his own answer, or if he doesn't know the terminology I'm using, I get into more details by asking him to explain me what happens when I write int i=0; in a method, what about object o=0, object o = new MyClass(), etc... Basically, I do everything I can to trick the interviewee into telling me about the callstack, the heap etc, and I try to stay into language-agnostics concepts. If the interviewee tells me he did a lot of C, or C++, or c#, I dive deeper into the specific language, and possibly into the implementation details. If needed, I ask the interviewee what a callstack is, or where arguments passed to a function in the imperative language of his choice are stored. most of the interviewees have just no idea about what a callstack is, let alone boxing considerations, etc.   * What's the difference between an abstract class and an interface. In which cases should you use one over the other ?  Usually, I also ask them to imagine a design of a small library with a use case aiming at using some inheritance and some abstract factories Most of the interviewee have just no idea of what inheritance real purpose might be. They usually know some keywords (virtual, override, etc), but don't really know when to use them, let alone explaining what a virtual-table is. Even-though I screen CVs beforehand, even for people with 5 years of experience in real life projects involving complex architectures, I would say less than 25% of all my interviewees can answer those two questions properly. And when I say properly, I don't mean 'in-depth'... just to have an approximate idea of what the concept is. Regarding juniors, I'm fine with hiring someone who doesn't know how to organize his time very well, or someone who's not used to industrial build processes for example, but I have the feeling that if one hasn't heard the word \"callstack\" after a few years of studying Computer Science, he's either stupid, or unmotivated, or chose his university very unwisely. Do you think I'm too extremist here ? Is it common to learn these basic concepts after you've completed university ? Do you know of people who weren't familiar with these, and became very good software engineers after a few years ? And do you think my company might have an issue in attracting talented people, or do you experience the same kind of issues with in your own hiring process? * * * Edit. regarding the \"immediate type\" thing, it was just a literal translation from French to English, as we usually do our interviews in French. I've fixed it in my question. But still, I think you all understand perfectly what I meant, which kind of makes my point, doesn't it?"}
{"_id": "97528", "title": "difference between passing a value vs passing a function as a parameter in scala", "text": "I often hear that scala has a ability to pass function as a parameter to another function. I would like to know the difference between passing a value as a parameter vs passing function itself as the parameter. How the latter approach brings advantage to the programming. If functions are passed as the parameter how the object references are being created since functions are not tied to any objects."}
{"_id": "190432", "title": "Aspergers Programmer and Learning Difficulties. Best way to overcome them?", "text": "I have Aspergers Syndrome, and a effect of Aspergers for me is that I can find it difficult to understand concepts from reading material unless I have some idea or mental visualization about what it is I'm reading - which is often not possible because most the time we read something because we don't know about it in the first place. But, I have to be able to grasp something visually in my head to understand it. I've been programming for a long time (although I stopped programming for 12 months to being charged with a Computer Hacking offence). I've picked up a lot along the way, but also forgot a lot of concepts I don't use often. When it comes to re-learning the material again I have to start from scratch and face the same learning challenge. I tend to find video training courses are easier for me to grasp. Although a lot of video training courses on programming languages don't go into great detail on certain concepts it makes it easier to understand a concept when I pick up a reference manual or an advanced topic book. One thing I find difficult about learning from articles online, or even from the MSDN reference, is that whilst reading there will be a number of topics in the article that I don't understand so I have to pause reading, go to Google, learn the things I don't understand from the previous article, then go back to the previous article. The thing with this approach though is you tend to get stuck in a sort of dependency hell where you're constantly going to Google and other articles before you start traversing back to the original. I have a nasty problem with pride. It's like everything I learn I want to learn the absolute correct way, and if it's not I don't want to know how to do it at all - again the problem with this is there is no way of knowing if something is correct if you don't know about it in the first place, but it limits me to only learning from credible sources. I fear from learning something the wrong way, or learning bad practices that will get me mocked as a developer. Again this is all part of my Aspergers and not something I can completely control. I will often start a project, and if there is something I need to learn, I will pause it to learn how to do something and come back. The problem is I rarely come back to the project because I'm stuck in a cycle of learning. Again, it's the whole pride thing again. I hate copy and pasting other programmers work without fully understanding what it is their work is doing and if there is any way I can improve on it. Having never worked in the commercial industry I have no idea how it works in the work place. I'm not confident to work in a commercial environment, even though numerous friends who are programmers have said I'm more than capable. Infact, these friends consult me constantly for help on programming topics - yet they work in the commercial environment. But again, I feel this is the Aspergers. I'm trying to find a method of working and learning that boosts productivity and get out of this cycle. Any advice from other programmers or programmers with Aspergers?"}
{"_id": "153096", "title": "Best design to create dynamic set of questions(controls ) in silverlight web application?", "text": "I have around 15 templates (this will grow) and each template will have around 10-15 questions. Each question can have answers in different format like text box, list box, dropdown, radio button etc. I need to show one template in a page, at a time based on the input I am getting. What would be the best design approach for this?   1. Put questions data in database and Create dynamic control?    2. Putting in xml and display using xslt?    3. Creating static set of templates? Or any other approach? I don't have too much time to do this. I am going to use Silverlight for this."}
{"_id": "153094", "title": "Gerrit, git and reviewing whole branch", "text": "I'm now learning Gerrit (which is the first code review tool I use). Gerrit requires a reviewed change to consist of a single commit. My feature branch has about 10 commits. The gerrit-prefered way is to squash those 10 commits into a single one. However this way if the commit will be merged into the target branch, the internal history of that feature branch will be lost. For example, I won't be able to use `git-bisect` to bisect into those commits. Am I right? I am a little bit worried about this state of things. What is the rationale for this choice? Is there any way of doing this in Gerrit without losing history?"}
{"_id": "64196", "title": "\"Don't cross the streams\" Database access objects independant of the Data tier in an N-Tier architecture?", "text": "I'm adding functionality to our website which performs long-running processes asynchronously using MSMQ. Doing this ansynch, however means we need to notify users when their requests are completed. Using the command pattern, I created an interface* called INotify and composed that into the message class, so the message processing class can simply call GiveNotice() on the message's INotify object. The first implementation, EmailNotify, was more difficult than expected, as I was surprised to discover MailMessage isn't serializable, but got it going. Now I'm working on a new concrete notifier, DBNotify, which will call a SP of some sort and update a status in the main transactional database. I'm tripped up in that I would like to reuse the DAL architecture we've already created, but INotify is a member of the Model project, which is more fundamental than the DAL. Our hierarchy looks like this: Common > Model > DAL > BAL Here's more detail about our particular n-tiers. Bear in mind, I inherited this, so I'm not looking for suggestions on improving it; I'm wondering how to \"break the rules.\" Common is responsible for all \"utility\" functions which are used many places in the application, things like accessing configuration settings, parsing strings, non-business related functionality. Model is the repository of business objects, what some folks call data transfer objects, collections of getters and setters. I've added some \"smarts\" at this layer, but only business rules internal to that object, such as \"An item's name must begin with an alphanumeric character.\" DAL is the data access layer, in theory, all that happens here is model objects are moved into and out of the database. BAL is the Business layer; it encapsulates business rules that govern the interaction of objects (i.e. \"A form must have at least two items.\"). So the INotify interface is defined an abstraction to allow the method of notification to vary independently (i.e. email, TXT, twitter, etc) from the message processing. I have created it at the Model tier, which is independent of the DAL tier, so I can't reuse that code without creating a circular dependency. Has anyone else dealt with a business object whose purpose is to interact with a database, and how do you situate that in your N-tier architecture? Before you tell me to use Linq to Sql, great thanks. This is not a technical question (how do I do this), it's a design question (how should I do this). I think the answer is dependency injection, but I haven't ever used it."}
{"_id": "64191", "title": "`trigger_error` vs `throw Exception` in the context of PHP's magic methods", "text": "I'm having a debate with a colleague over the correct usage (if any) of `trigger_error` in the context of magic methods. Firstly, I think that `trigger_error` should be avoided _except_ for this one case. Say we have a class with one method `foo()`               class A {         public function foo() {             echo 'bar';         }     }      Now say we want to provide the exact same interface but use a magic method to catch all method calls               class B {         public function __call($method, $args) {             switch (strtolower($method)) {             case 'foo':                 echo 'bar';                 break;             }         }     }          $a = new A;     $b = new B;          $a->foo(); //bar     $b->foo(); //bar      Both classes are the same in the way they respond to `foo()` but differ when calling an invalid method.               $a->doesntexist(); //Error     $b->doesntexist(); //Does nothing      My argument is that magic methods should call `trigger_error` when a unknown method is caught               class B {         public function __call($method, $args) {             switch (strtolower($method)) {             case 'foo':                 echo 'bar';                 break;             default:                 $class = get_class($this);                 $trace = debug_backtrace();                 $file = $trace[0]['file'];                 $line = $trace[0]['line'];                 trigger_error(\"Call to undefined method $class::$method() in $file on line $line\", E_USER_ERROR);                 break;             }         }     }      So that both classes behave (almost) identically               $a->badMethod(); //Call to undefined method A::badMethod() in [..] on line 28     $b->badMethod(); //Call to undefined method B::badMethod() in [..] on line 32      My use-case is an ActiveRecord implementation. I use `__call` to catch and handle methods that essentially do the same thing but have modifiers such as `Distinct` or `Ignore`, e.g.               selectDistinct()     selectDistinctColumn($column, ..)     selectAll()     selectOne()     select()      or               insert()     replace()     insertIgnore()     replaceIgnore()      Methods like `where()`, `from()`, `groupBy()`, etc. are hard-coded. My argument is highlighted when you accidentally call `insret()`. If my active record implementation hardcoded all of the methods then it would be an error. As with any good abstraction, the user should be unaware of the implementation details and rely solely on the interface. Why should the implementation that uses magic methods behave any differently? Both should be an error."}
{"_id": "64193", "title": "What reading is recommended for an experienced Java/SQL Developer moving to Apache/Tomcat, Postgres, Hibernate", "text": "I am taking over management and development of a website developed in Java using Hibernate and Postgres, running on Apache/Tomcat. I am an experienced Java developer, and have experience in Ruby on Rails, and am expert in Oracle SQL. What is the best documentation for me to read?"}
{"_id": "64192", "title": "Which job opportunity is better? The one with the most learning potential or the most teaching potential?", "text": "I have a little over 10 years of development experience. For the past few years, I've mostly been working solo and although it has its perks, I feel as if it has been limiting my growth. I'm looking to pick up a contract job to get back into a team environment. I've been weighing a couple of opportunities: Company A is using the latest tools (.NET 4, VS 2010, ASP.NET MVC). The interview was fairly technical and I definitely felt rusty and didn't do as well as I had hoped. But I did get the offer. Their development process seems pretty mature. I felt like I could be the \"dumbest person in the room\" at this job, which I think can be a good thing, from a personal growth standpoint. Company B is a step behind platform wise (VS 2008, .NET 3.5, ASP.NET WebForms). After working with MVC, I find WebForms pretty painful. I also got the sense they have a fair amount of technical debt and they're still working on figuring out a good development process. But at least they're aware of it and working on it. That's an area of interest of mine and I feel like I could come in and provide some good ideas both in terms of development process and paying off technical debt. So these seem like two opposing kinds of jobs: one where I have more of an opportunity to learn technically, and one where I might have a better opportunity to come in and effect change. TL;DR - Which job situation is a better: the one with the biggest opportunity to be a student, or the one with the biggest opportunity to be an agent of change?"}
{"_id": "211252", "title": "Fields vs method arguments", "text": "I just started writing some new class and it occurred to me that I was adding a lot of method arguments that are not strictly needed. This is following a habit to avoid having state in classes that is specific to some method call, rather than being general configuration or dependencies of the class. Doing so means that a lot of methods that could have no arguments end up with one, two or three. I'd like to hear your opinions on what you think of this tradeoff, and how you go about deciding which approach to take in what situation? Since code is often easier to understand than English when describing code, I created a little gist that has both variants in it: https://gist.github.com/JeroenDeDauw/6525656"}
{"_id": "211250", "title": "Distributing a proprietary application together with GPL software", "text": "First, there are many similar questions here, but I found none with direct answers about this _specific_ scenario. If you find a duplicate, please be kind enough to link to the specific answer(s). Also, to avoid question being too broad, consider this specific scenario only. Assume a proprietary Linux application, which links against LGPL libraries dynamically, and does not link against GPL libraries. It also executes GPL'ed binaries from the file system through standard OS APIs though, to perform some actions. Then assume a customized mainstream Linux distribution, with visible trademarked logos etc removed. Then assume a self-contained product, which includes hardware, let's say Raspberry Pi with a bootable SD card with this customized OS. Then it has the proprietary software, which ultimately needs to start when device is switched on. **How to distribute this combination legally?** More specifically, I see (at least) three separate concerns:   1. _In general, how to distribute just the customized Linux distro legally?_ For example, are there tools, or which distros have tools, to download all used default source packages, ready to be included with distribution or archived locally? I think it's sometimes thought, that if you distribute a derivative of a mainstream Linux distro, you do not need to distribute the sources of default packages yourself, or that you can just point to the distro source repositories if someone asks for them, but I'm not sure if this is legally valid way to fulfill GPL obligations.   2. _How to legally include the proprietary software with the distribution?_ For example, is it ok to have the proprietary software already installed in the above mentioned SD? Is it ok to have it uninstalled on the same media, and prompt user for it's installation on first boot? Is it required to have it on separate media or downloaded from the net, and installed from that? What are the limits of \"certainly OK\" and \"certainly not OK\", is there any consensus or even legal precedent?   3. _Is executing GPL programs with hard-coded command strings from a proprietary application OK?_ My understanding is, this is OK and does not create a derived work. But if this is an issue, would working around it be as simple as creating an LGPL-licensed wrapper? Or just having the commands in modifiable configuration file (a good idea anyway, regardless of licensing issues)? **Note** : Except for the techincal aspects of first bullet point, I understand that answers here are not any kind of legal counsel, but answers need to be backed up somehow, this site is not for opinion polls."}
{"_id": "64198", "title": "How can I get better at knowing how to write code right off the bat?", "text": "I have been programming for around 3-4 years now (completed my degree in CS where we were taught the Java programming language). Now my question is: > Do many people find it a difficult task knowing how to write code from off > the bat? What I mean by this is that when I approach a task I would normally look on google to find examples of pre-existing programs to which I would cut and pick sections that would be of use to create my programs rather that think totally logically, knowing what I would need to use from the class libraries to puzzle together to reach my end goal. An example of this is say I was creating an animated GUI. Now for that GUI to work I would usually look at other examples on google and piece together code to reach my desired effect, rather than going to the class libraries and working out exactly what I need to piece together a working program as the libraries can be quite daunting in knowing where to start to find sections that would be useful to you! Just wondering if many others do the same as me or if I'm a minority? Don't know if others find it hard but sometimes I just get confused in knowing what classes I would need or what would be the best way to approach a task."}
{"_id": "17136", "title": "How is your working time distributed between coding and thinking?", "text": "...in percentage. For example 60/40 or 90/10 or 100/0. My hypothesis is that the bigger the proportion of time you spend thinking the smaller your code can be as a result (and the less time will be needed to write it down). Think more, write less, in other words. Do you think it is true? As a side note, I think in typical software companies thinking is not part of the culture anyway: you are usually supposed to be sitting there at your computer _typing_ something. You will almost definitely be noticed by your managers if you wander about with a blank look thinking over your next steps with your code. Too bad."}
{"_id": "156405", "title": "Starting C++ Programming (for a C# Developer)", "text": "I am a C# developer. I am planning to learn C++. (I hope I will be able to leverage the OOP concepts from C#] I have a Windows 7 machine.   1. What are the tools that I need to install for C++ development?   2. Are there any good tutorials for switching over to C++ for a C# developer?"}
{"_id": "102528", "title": "What is more standard shortening for \"regular expression\", \"regex\" or \"regexp\"?", "text": "I want to know what is more standard way to call regular expression in short way. I have seen both, regex and regexp. Google says regex has almost 2 as much hits that regexp, but it depends on way I search it (when I add \"regular expression\" after the word, \"regex\" becomes \"regex regular expression\", the result is differend). And on stackexchange there is regex tag. :) What is more proper way to shorten it? Perhaps it does not matter. :) But thanks for answer."}
{"_id": "209123", "title": "When should use of database be preferred over parsing data from a text file?", "text": "I was making a Python program to measure the growth of codereview.SE. My approach was to get the \"Site stats\" shown on the front page and store them on my hard drive. I plan to do this once every day. So far I have made enough to get the stats and append them to a text file. The python script can be viewed on github. The format I am using is the following               22-08-2013          questions 9073     answers 15326     answered 88     users 26102     visitors/day 7407          22-08-2013          questions 9073     answers 15326     answered 88     users 26102     visitors/day 7407      I just ran the script twice to get the format I would be using in the file. Initially this seemed good to me because I would be storing it myself and the format would be the same so it would be easily parsed but not I am not sure. It seems that using a database should be a better here because that way retrieving data should be easier. Just a note, I have never used any database and have no knowledge of SQL, MySQL or any other variants of RDBMS. So this brings me to the question. When should a database be preferred for storing the data over storing the data in a text file? Are there some pointers that I can look for when making decisions about whether I need a database or simple text files? PS: If better tags can be added please do so. I had some doubts about the tags which could be added."}
{"_id": "60431", "title": "Folder conventions", "text": "is there a resource out there that defines programming folder conventions (e.g. the 'bin' folder)? I googled some but didn't find much. Any relevant discussion on the matter is encouraged. **EDIT** : I'm primarily interested in source management, and I'm not really targeting a specific language (I was hoping to get a reference that might include what's common in the big languages [C, C++, C#, PHP, Python, etc]). Sorry, I didn't mean it to be overly vague."}
{"_id": "102523", "title": "PBI vs User Story", "text": "Recently an item has been added to the Product Backlog by product owner which says \"When I go to login page from x page, I see an error. I want that error to be removed\". It seems to me that this is not a use case, and shouldn't be a PBI (Product Backlog Item). However, when I discussed it, scrum master told me that user stories are not PBIs and, a PBI could be a bug report, a task, a user story, anything, and literally any item that should be addressed first. I'm not sure about this. Also I can't find a good definition of PBI on the web. So, my question is, what sort of **things** can get into the Product Backlog as items? Does a product backlog item maps to a user story? Are they the same?"}
{"_id": "235208", "title": "Is there a convention for using Yeoman in the context of a larger web framework?", "text": "I've found Yeoman extremely useful for building out prototypes locally and static mockups that I can share with a team. However, it seems that including its directory structure within the context of a larger framework like Rails, Django, .NET, would be extremely cumbersome, and I can't picture what an efficient workflow might be. There are scads of tutorials that refer to Yeoman and Front End Workflow, but for collaborative development within a larger team environment there seems to be little out there. How to use Yeoman within a framework that is not simply providing a restful API? How to integrate Yeoman within the workflow of a team?"}
{"_id": "251278", "title": "How to handle duplicate files in version control", "text": "Right now we use a very simple system for version control. We have a completely flat master repository for our entire product line. As our codebase grows and we add more products to the product line, this starts to present some serious drawbacks. We'd like to move away from this, especially with out flat style, but there are seemingly fundamental problems with a structured approach, so it'd be great to hear how other people handle these common situations:   1. Your code's got multiple duplicate files in separate locations. For example, you have:              ./somedir/source1.c     ./someotherdir/source1.c      All instances of `source1.c` are the same, so when someone changes `source1.c`, they shouldn't have to make the same change to every `source1.c` in each location where it exists. This is kind of where a flat system works, but it means the structure (with `somedir` and `someotherdir` have to be created to create the correct file structure.   1. On the other hand, if you have something like this:              ./somedir/config     ./someotherdir/config      where both instances of config are unique, and they only share a filename. This presents a big problem in a flat system, you end up doing something like keeping them in a flat repository with unique names, and then renaming them as you recreate the product structure. It seems like this is where a structured file system would make things easier, because there would be no inherent relationship between `./somedir/config` and `./someotherdir/config`. Maybe I am approaching this with a fundamentally bad idea of standard idioms, but as I'm sure you are all aware, when you are making big changes to an existing codebase, it has to be more of a transition than a throw-everything- away-and-start-over situation."}
{"_id": "148391", "title": "Are there advantages to agile practices other than having a working build between sprints?", "text": "I recently became interested in agile practices in software development and I since have seen a lot of articles point out that these practices allow for reduced overall costs. The logic behind that usually goes like this: if your requirements change, you can reflect this change in the next sprint backlog and this will lead to reduced cost, because designing the new feature and implementing it is close together in terms of time, so the cost goes down, according to the famous rule that the later you need to make a change to your requirements the more expensive it will be to satisfy that requirement. But mid to big software projects are complex. A sudden change to requirements does not mean you won't have to touch other parts of your system in order to satisfy that requirement. In a lot of cases the architecture will need to be modified very significantly, which will also mean you'll need to re-implement all the features that relied on the older architecture. So the whole point of reduced costs kinda goes away here. Of course if a new requirement calls for a new independent part of the system, that's not a problem, the old architecture just grows, it doesn't need to be rethought and reimplemented. And the opposite. If you are using waterfall and you suddenly realize that a new requirement has to be introduced, you can go and change your design. If it requires that existing architecture is altered, you redesign it. If it does not really mess with it but just introduces a new part of the system, then you go and do all the work, no problem here. With that said, it seems to me like the only advantage agile development has is working feature complete builds between sprints, and for a lot of people and prjects this is not critical. In addition, agile seems like it results in bad software architecture overall, because features kinda get slapped one onto another, agile teams only care that a feature works, not how it works. This seems like that when systems grow in complexity with time, agile development practices actually increase chaos in the overall product architecture, thus eventually resulting in higher costs, since it will be increasingly more difficult to introduce changes, whereas waterfall allows you to perfect your architecture before you release anything. Can somebody please point me as to where I'm going wrong here, because obviously a lot of people use agile in production environments, so I must be wrong somewhere."}
{"_id": "251274", "title": "Can GC.SuppressFinalize cause performance problems?", "text": "I'm being asked to implement IDisposable on objects that are 100% managed resources, which contain no streams, and no large resources. I understand the importance of properly disposing of large resources and unmanaged resources, but what about the other side of the equation? For an object that doesn't benefit from implementing IDisposable (small fully managed objects), what negative impact can GC.SuppressFinalize have, if any?"}
{"_id": "251277", "title": "What should I do and know before I start writing C?", "text": "I have a college degree in CS, and learned about Java and OCaml. Java was used as introduction, and in most CS classed, except the theoretical ones. OCaml was part of learning a different programming paradigm. Since OCaml wasn't a successful entry in my CV, I became a better Java programmer. Also, most jobs are for Java programmers. Later on I learned Golang. I know about the simplifications provided by Java, i.e. garbage collection. I also know, that C doesn't do garbage collection and you have to know when to allocate and when to free the memory. But during my education I was never taught to think in this kind of way. We never learned algorithms in the aspect of memory. I feel like I missed something. So my question is, how deep do I have to dig, before I can start writing passable C code, without having myself put obstacles in my way, because of my own crufty code and deep misunderstanding of relevant issues?"}
{"_id": "9554", "title": "How do people manage to write and maintain extremely complex and hard to read code?", "text": "Reading SQLite source code is IMO mission impossible. Yet it is a usable piece of quite complex software (it's a full-blown embedded database after all) that can be downloaded, compiled and used from others code and it is constantly updated. How do people manage to write and maintain such extremely complex and hard to read code?"}
{"_id": "153327", "title": "Handling (many) multiple projects in Git in an enterprise environment", "text": "One of the advantages of older version control systems such as CVS and SVN in enterprise development is that anyone can connect to source control and see all the projects that the company has. This can make it easier to get a high level view of what kid of development is happening outside your sprint and also keeps everything in one place and easy to find. However, distributed version control systems (Git, specifically) use the repository as their base unit. They work best with one project (or several closely related projects) per repository. This makes repository management more difficult in most enterprise environments where it is not unusual to have more than 25-50 projects to support. As far as I have been able to determine, you have to keep a list somewhere else of all the repos you have. There is software available, like GitHub, that help, but that still is an extra step beyond a single connection string and listing the contents of the repository. What is the best way to deal with the complexity of multiple repositories?"}
{"_id": "153328", "title": "When working with contractors/interns how protective should one be of your codebase?", "text": "We're considering hiring a contractor or intern to work with us on our iOS project but this causes me to get really paranoid that we're giving somebody who doesn't work for the company access to our precious codebase. I mean, I could just give them access to the classes I'd like them to work on but that seems rude and it would make it more difficult for them to develop what we need them to. How paranoid should one be about people running off with their entire application?"}
{"_id": "148642", "title": "Testing a file that relies heavily on a static array", "text": "I have a .c file that basically manages its own little database of people. There are add, remove, edit and search functions among some others. It has a static array which it uses to store the data. What is a good way to go about unit testing a file like this? Because the array is static I can't put in my own data. Should I employ some trickery and make a function that passes out a pointer to the array that gets compiled out in the production version? Should I just test the functions as is and make the data they way I want it via a series of adds and removes? What is the best way to test a file like this?"}
{"_id": "148644", "title": "Heavy use of static methods in a Java EE web application?", "text": "Generally I am asking if this is a norm. The application architecture includes spring and the zk framework. I personally can't help but think this introduces a number of problems. I mean...this is a lot of non synchronized functionality. On top of that we are using an Apache project that, through my browsing of source, appears to use a singleton which has methods that are not thread safe. Changed in a newer version however we are not free to migrate the library at this time. My real question is, is there a justifiable reason for using a large quantity of static methods in a JavaEE application? I was an ASP.NET dev before this and never encountered this. Instincts dictate this is bad architecture but I am unfamiliar with the stack. There are other warning signs such as a lack of conventional generic convention use. Is this the norm? What is foreign in one platform may not be in another."}
{"_id": "99295", "title": "How do I store the OAuth v1 consumer key and secret for an open source desktop Twitter client without revealing it to the user?", "text": "I want to make a thick-client, desktop, open source twitter client. I happen to be using .NET as my language and Twitterizer as my OAuth/Twitter wrapper, and my app will likely be released as open source. To get an OAuth token, four pieces of information are required:   1. Access Token (twitter user name)   2. Access Secret (twitter password)   3. Consumer Key   4. Consumer Secret The second two pieces of information are not to be shared, like a PGP private key. However, due to the way the OAuth authorization flow is designed, these need to be on the native app. Even if the application was not open source, and the consumer key/secret were encrypted, a reasonably skilled user could gain access to the consumer key/secret pair. So my question is, how do I get around this problem? What is the proper strategy for a desktop Twitter client to protect its consumer key and secret?"}
{"_id": "198646", "title": "What is the difference between implementation and realization in Mythical Man Month?", "text": "In Fred Brook's Mythical Man Month chapter 4 (Aristocracy, Democracy, and System Design) page 49, he says: > As Blaauw points out, the total creative effort involves three distinct > phase: architecture, implementation, and realization ... > > implementer has plenty to do ... designing module boundaries, table > structures, pass or phase breakdowns, algorithms, and all kinds of tools > > ...Meanwhile, on the realization level there is much to be done also. > Programming has a technology, too. If the machine is a new one, much work > must be done on subroutine convention, supervisory techniques, searching and > sorting algorithm. What is the difference between implementation and realization? To me, architecture is related more with specification descriptions or diagrams, whereas implementation is programming/coding which looks like the same as realization."}
{"_id": "125926", "title": "What is \"Problem Domain\"", "text": "I have to document my program for a school project and we have section called \"problem domain\" but I have no idea what to discuss in this section. So the question is: What should be discussed in the problem domain?"}
{"_id": "210704", "title": "Mapping variable inputs to user interface elements", "text": "# Background Developing a system for creating eBooks. The data is highly normalized. The eBook designs are packaged as \"themes.\" The themes can be configured with options for: fonts, colours, some layout, and thematic elements (such as squares for bullet lists could become circles, hexagons, or arrows). The options are tightly coupled to the theme. For example, one theme might only allow the user to select certain fonts, while another theme might not have any thematic elements at all, while all themes might provide options for changing the page number layout, theme colours, and content for the header/footer. Creating eBooks is one example of the general class of problem: > The output depends on configurable options; the available options depend on > a particular constraint set. # Problem When a new constraint set (e.g., eBook theme) is created by a developer, the configurable options must be exposed as user interface elements. The user interface elements could be mapped to the options using a descriptive language, or XML. For example:               <group id=\u201dpage-number\u201d>       <group id=\u201dtext-attribute\u201d>         <string name=\u201dUserInputPage\u201d default=\u201d# / ##\u201d id=\u201dui-page\u201d />         <colour name=\u201dUserColourPrimary\u201d id=\u201dui-colour-primary\u201d />         <select name=\u201dUserSelectBullet\u201d id=\u201dui-bullet\u201d>           <option id=\u201dui-select-square\u201d />           <option id=\u201dui-select-circle\u201d />         </select>         <integer name=\"UserRandomSeed\" min=\"1\" max=\"50\" id=\"ui-random-seed\" />       </group>     </group>     <text language=\"en\">       <!-- Tab name -->       <ref id=\u201dpage-number\u201d>Page Number</text>       <!-- Group name -->       <ref id=\u201dtext-attribute\u201d>Text Attributes</text>       <!-- Display name for select options -->       <ref id=\u201dui-select-square\u201d>Square</text>       <ref id=\u201dui-select-circle\u201d>Circle</text>     </text>      The underlying theme implementation (whether PHP, Lua, Java, or C++) would define, expose, and use variables such as:               UserInputPage     UserColourPrimary     UserSelectBullet      Using XSLT, it would be reasonably trivial to convert the above map into sensible UI widgets that correspond to the variable definition in the XML. By creating this map, developers need not explicitly create the user interface, nor worry about either its layout or menu structure. The developer creates a map of the software's input variables and the computer automatically generates the UI. The UI, in this case will be XHTML, but could be XUL or any other representation. # Comparison Frameworks such as JavaServer Faces are similar to this idea; JSF and ADF issues include:   * Too complex with too much overhead.   * Often tied to specific implementation languages.   * The inputs are bound too closely to their final representation. For example:               <h:inputText value=\"#{helloBean.name}\" ... />     <af:selectOneRadio value=\"#{bindings.x.hints.inputValue} layout=\"vertical\" />      Vertical \"selectOneRadio\" radio button inputs should not be hard-coded throughout the application. Instead, the final UI representation should be based on intelligent defaults. In the XML example from the problem section, the UI should generate two radio buttons because there are two inputs in the `select` item. Three items would generate a drop-down. One item would create a checkbox. Similarly, the `<string>` could generate any of:   * input in HTML;   * JTextField in Java; or   * QLineEdit using QT4. Also similarly, the `<integer>` could generate a slider or a simple input field. Validation would be performed elsewhere. With HTML, the final look and feel of the item would be driven by CSS, just as with JSF. # Related Somewhat related:   * Development Approach: User Interface In or Domain Model Out?   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface_markup_language # Question What approach would you take to create such a variable map definition that can then generate UI code?"}
{"_id": "254174", "title": "Configure Jenkins and Tomcat using Puppet on Vagrant", "text": "I'm playing with setting up my first `Spring` \\+ `jenkins` \\+ `Tomcat` CI dev environment. For now it's just a test/fun phase, but in the near future I'll be starting new project with my coworkers. That's the reason that I want development environment virtualized and exactly te same on every development machine, as well as on production server. I choosen to use `Vagrant` and to try to write `puppet` scripts that not only install everything, but also configure everything so each of us will have the same `jenkins` plugins, same `jenkins` and `tomcat` login and password, and literally after calling `vagrant up` we are ready to work. What I managed to do so far is installation of stuff needed and port forwarding. My `vagrantfile` looks like this (comments stripped):               VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION = \"2\"          Vagrant.configure(VAGRANTFILE_API_VERSION) do |config|            config.vm.box = \"precise32\"       config.vm.box_url = \"http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box\"            config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 80, host: 8090       config.vm.network :forwarded_port, guest: 8080, host: 8091            config.vm.network :private_network, ip: \"192.168.33.10\"                   config.vm.provision :puppet do |puppet|           puppet.manifests_path = \"puppet/\"           puppet.manifest_file  = \"default.pp\"           puppet.options = ['--verbose']         end          end      And this is my `puppet` file:               Exec { path => [ \"/bin/\", \"/sbin/\" , \"/usr/bin/\", \"/usr/sbin/\" ] }          class system-update {       exec { 'apt-get update':         command => 'apt-get update',       }            $sysPackages = [ \"build-essential\" ]       package { $sysPackages:         ensure => \"installed\",         require => Exec['apt-get update'],       }     }          class tomcat {       package { \"tomcat\":         ensure  => present,         require => Class[\"system-update\"],       }            service { \"tomcat\":         ensure  => \"running\",         require => Package[\"tomcat\"],       }          }          class jenkins {       package { \"jenkins\":         ensure => present,         require => Class[\"system-update\"],       }            service { \"jenkins\":         ensure => \"running\",         require => Package[\"jenkins\"],       }     }          include system-update     include tomcat     include jenkins      Now, when I hit `vagrant provision` and go to `http://localhost:8091/` I can see `jenkins` running, so above script works good. Next step is configurating `jenkins` and `tomcat` by extending above `puppet` scripts. I'm pretty green when it comes to CI. After wandering around web I've found few tutorials about `jenkins` configuration (here's one of them). I really want to move configuration presented in this tutorial to `puppet` file, so when I spread my `vagrantfile` and `puppet` file between my coworkers, I will be sure that everyone has exactly te same setup. Unfortunately I'm also green about using `puppet`, I don't know how to do this. Any help will be apreciated."}
{"_id": "254177", "title": "Tokenizing Text Held in a Rope Data Structure", "text": "I am building a text editor which makes use of a Ragel based tokenizer to support syntax highlighting. I am considering the use of a rope data structure to support efficient modifications and undo/redo operations. Is there a standard approach for tokenizing or searching text contained in this type of data structure? Some characters can cause the tokenizer to consume the rest of the stream."}
{"_id": "125920", "title": "Static methods on a web context", "text": "What happens when concurrent requests call the same static Java method running on an application server? Say that a method run takes 2 seconds and receives 100 calls in a given second. The method itself wouldn't read/write outer state. Could it be better to let it be an instance method instead?"}
{"_id": "48024", "title": "Curating projects of deceased friends", "text": "A very good friend of mine, and an avid programmer, recently passed away. He left nearly 40 projects on BitBucket. Most of them are public, but a few of them are marked as private. I've decided to take on curation duties for the projects rather than leave his work to disappear. If you have been in the same situation, what did you do? Did you open-source everything? Continue development? Delete it all? I'm very interested to hear other people's experiences. There are a few reasons why some of the projects are marked as private (private projects on BitBucket are visible only to invited users and the original creator):   * One of them is an iOS web app that was free in the app store. I've had to remove the app from the store as I'm shutting down his web sites as a favour to his widow. However, I've already made the app public under the GPL v3 (he was a big GPL supporter).   * One of them contains proprietary code. It can't be open-sourced.   * Others are very much work-in-progress. I don't know if he intended to make them into hosted, paid services or if he wanted to give the code away under an open-source licence when they were finished. Here's a list of the private projects:   * Some kind of living cell simulator that uses SBML along with Runge-Kutta and Euler algorithms to do... something. There's a fair amount of code here but I don't know what it does or how far along it is. No docs.   * An accountacy application; it seems to have a solid DB design behind it but there's little code on top of that.   * A website whose purpose is to suggest good restaurants. Built on yii. Seems to have a lot of code but I'd need to set up a WAMP stack to see how far along it is.   * A website intended to host memorials to people who suffered from the same problem he was. Built on Joomla. I'm not sure how much of the code is just Joomla and how much is custom; again, I'd need to get Joomla running to find out. I'd just introduced him to Mercurial and BitBucket. All of the private projects are single commits of codebases he wasn't using version control with/was previously using SVN. I don't have the SVN repositories so I can't see the commit logs."}
{"_id": "48023", "title": "Dealing with inflexible programmers", "text": "Sometimes programmers who work on a project for long time get inflexible, and it becomes difficult to reason with them. Even if we do manage to convince them, they can be unlikely to implement our suggestions. For instance, I recently joined a project where the build & release process is too complicated and has unnecessary roadblocks. I suggested that we get rid of some of the development overhead (like filling a few spreadsheets) just by integrating defect management and version control tools (both are IBM-Rational tools so integration can be a very easy one-off effort). Also, if we use tools like Maven & Ant (the project involves Java and some COTS products) build & release can be simplified which should reduce manual errors & intervention. I managed to convince others and I'm ready to put in the effort to develop a proof of concept. But the \u2018Senior\u2019 developer is not willing, possibly because the current process makes him more valuable. How do we handle this situation without developing friction in the team?"}
{"_id": "156311", "title": "Windows Physical Direct Memory Mapping", "text": "I'm a bit disappointed there is almost no discussion of this no matter where I look so I guess I'll have to ask. I'm writing a cross platform memory bench marking application which requires direct physical address mapping rather than virtual addressing. **EDIT** The solution would look something like the Linux/Unix system calls:               int fd = open(\"/dev/mem\", O_RDONLY);     mmap(NULL, len, PROT_READ, MAP_SHARED, fd, PHYSICAL_ADDRESS_OFFSET);      which will require the kernel to either give you a virtual page mapping to the desired physical address or return that it failed. This does require supervisor privileges but that is ok. I have seen a lot of information about shared memory and memory mapped files but all of these reside on disc and are thus not really useful when I'm trying to make a system dependent read. It is very similar to writing an IO driver although I do no need write permissions to the physical address. This site gives an example of how to do it on a driver level using the Windows Driver Kit: NT Insider: Sharing Memory between drivers and applications This solution would probably require Visual Studio which currently I do not have access to. (I have downloaded the WDK api but it complained about my use of GCC for Windows). I'm traditionally a Linux programmer so I'm hoping there might be something really simple I'm missing. Thanks in advance if you know something I don't!"}
{"_id": "99745", "title": "How did Git and Mercurial develop so similarly at the same time?", "text": "Git and Mercurial follow similar models and have similar terminology. Mercurial's initial release was was only 12 days after Git's. How did these two projects, in initial development at the same time, end up so similar? Does anyone know the history?"}
{"_id": "167909", "title": "What algorithms can I use to detect if articles or posts are duplicates?", "text": "I'm trying to detect if an article or forum post is a duplicate entry within the database. I've given this some thought, coming to the conclusion that someone who duplicate content will do so using one of the three (in descending difficult to detect):   1. simple copy paste the whole text   2. copy and paste parts of text merging it with their own   3. copy an article from an external site and masquerade as their own **Prepping Text For Analysis** Basically any anomalies; the goal is to make the text as \"pure\" as possible. For more accurate results, the text is \"standardized\" by:   1. Stripping duplicate white spaces and trimming leading and trailing.   2. Newlines are standardized to \\n.    3. HTML tags are removed.    4. Using a RegEx called Daring Fireball URLs are stripped.    5. I use BB code in my application so that goes to.   6. (\u00e4)ccented and foreign (besides Enlgish) are converted to their non foreign form. I store information about each article in (1) statistics table and in (2) keywords table. **(1) Statistics Table** The following statistics are stored about the textual content (much like this post)   1. text length   2. letter count   3. word count   4. sentence count   5. average words per sentence   6. automated readability index   7. gunning fog score _For European languages Coleman-Liau and Automated Readability Index should be used as they do not use syllable counting, so should produce a reasonably accurate score._ **(2) Keywords Table** The keywords are generated by excluding a huge list of stop words (common words), e.g., 'the', 'a', 'of', 'to', etc, etc. **Sample Data**   * text_length, 3963   * letter_count, 3052   * word_count, 684   * sentence_count, 33   * word_per_sentence, 21   * gunning_fog, 11.5   * auto_read_index, 9.9   * keyword 1, killed   * keyword 2, officers   * keyword 3, police It should be noted that once an article gets updated all of the above statistics are regenerated and could be completely different values. How could I use the above information to detect if an article that's being published for the first time, is already existing within the database? * * * I'm aware anything I'll design will not be perfect, the biggest risk being (1) Content that is not a duplicate will be flagged as duplicate (2) The system allows the duplicate content through. So the algorithm should generate a risk assessment number from 0 being no duplicate risk 5 being possible duplicate and 10 being duplicate. Anything above 5 then there's a good possibility that the content is duplicate. In this case the content could be flagged and linked to the article's that are possible duplicates and a human could decide whether to delete or allow. As I said before I'm storing keywords for the whole article, however I wonder if I could do the same on paragraph basis; this would also mean further separating my data in the DB but it would also make it easier for detecting (2) in my initial post. I'm thinking weighted average between the statistics, but in what order and what would be the consequences..."}
{"_id": "186663", "title": "What is a \"Business Intelligence\" Developer?", "text": "What traits / skills does the Business Intelligence Developer role expect over a traditional Web Developer role?"}
{"_id": "167906", "title": "unit/integration testing web service proxy client", "text": "I'm rewriting a PHP client/proxy library that provides an interface to a SOAP- based .Net webservice, and in the process I want to add some unit and integration tests so future modifications are less risky. The work the library I'm working on performs is to marshall the calls to the web service and do a little reorganizing of the responses to present a slightly more -object-oriented interface to the underlying service. Since this library is little else than a thin layer on top of web service calls, my basic assumption is that I'll really be writing integration tests more than unit tests - for example, I don't see any reason to mock away the web service - the work that's performed by the code I'm working on is very light; it's almost passing the response from the service right back to its consumer. Most of the calls are basic CRUD operations: CreateRole(), CreateUser(), DeleteUser(), FindUser(), &ct. I'll be starting from a known database state - the system I'm using for these tests is isolated for testing purposes, so the results will be more or less predictable. My question is this: is it natural to use web service calls to confirm the results of operations within the tests and to reset the state of the application within the scope of each test? Here's an example: One test might be createUserReturnsValidUserId() and might go like this:               public function createUserReturnsValidUserId() {        // we're assuming a global connection to the service        $newUserId = $client->CreateUser(\"user1\");        assertNotNull($newUserId);        assertNotNull($client->FindUser($newUserId);        $client->deleteUser($newUserId);     }      So I'm creating a user, making sure I get an ID back and that it represents a user in the system, and then cleaning up after myself (so that later tests don't rely on the success or failure of this test w/r/t the number of users in the system, for example). However this still seems pretty fragile - lots of dependencies and opportunities for tests to fail and effect the results of later tests, which I definitely want to avoid. Am I missing some options of ways to decouple these tests from the system under test, or is this really the best I can do? I think this is a fairly general unit/integration testing question, but if it matters I'm using PHPUnit for the testing framework."}
{"_id": "186667", "title": "Usefulness of pre and post order traversal of binary trees", "text": "This may be very naive, but I was wondering, it the context of binary trees (plain, sorted and balanced), of all the traversal types:   * depth-first pre-order   * depth-first in-order   * depth-first post-order   * breadth-first what's the actual utility of pre and post-order ones? I mean, is there some type and/or configuration of binary tree in which pre and/or post-order traversal would give an(some) advantage(s) over the other two? AFAICS, there are certain types and configuration of binary trees for which in-order and breadth-first might give a certain advantage:   * for a balanced binary tree any depth-first traversal will use less memory storage space as compared to breadth first (eg. for balanced binary tree of 6 or 7 nodes, height is 2 so any depth-first traversal will need to store a max of 2 nodes at any given time, while last level has 3 or 4 nodes so breadth-first traversal would need to store up to 3 or 4 nodes at some point). In this case using in-order traversal uses the least amount of memory and visits the nodes in their natural order.   * for a non-balanced binary tree, if it's close to the worst-case insertion scenario, traversing it breadth-first would use less memory as compared to any of the depth-first traversals. So in this case breadth-first offers an advantage. In-order traversal has the again the advantage of visiting values in their natural order. However I can't think of a situation where pre and post-traversal would give an advantage over the other two."}
{"_id": "186666", "title": "How can I scale spring application context?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that need to be dynamically scaled on demand according to the need. My question is about scaling spring context. My web application has a classical multi module core (service, persistence, domain), which use use by client application (webapp, api). The user end application could be clustered, database too, but I don't know how to proceed with spring context. I plan to use Scala Akka actors on Spring service, but I can't be persuaded by the solution of using one context exposed by actors. All of the rest of the application is built with event driven techniques (Spring events are produced by the service layer). I already built different webapps by user profile to scale according to user role (Eg. admin, enduser), however the only thing is Spring Context for business operations. **Question:** Do I have to merge in one single context shared by all client applications or should I initialize one context per application? > ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/0ysv7.png](http://i.stack.imgur.com/0ysv7.png)"}
{"_id": "63165", "title": "Is there a way to play the role of Javascript with any other language like C#?", "text": "Is there a way to play the role of Javascript with any other language like C#? One way came up in my head is, having silverlight installed, using C# instead of Javascript for all the client side scripting (Though C# is not a scripting language). Is it possible? I am not talking about something like GWT(Java) or Script#(C#). Probably the question can be stated as- \"With silverlight installed, can I do everything supported by Javascript(like DOM manipulation etc) with C#?\" Hope it's clearer."}
{"_id": "216700", "title": "Making Agile and DevOps methodology compatible with PCI requirements", "text": "Would like to hear from those working in a PCI compliance environment and is practicing agile development and devops methodology, how you maintain compliance with PCI requirements. Specifically, what do you do to address:   * separation of duties between development/test and production   * alignment of continuous integration / deployment and change control   * alignment of agile stories to requirement documentation"}
{"_id": "57972", "title": "Does SCRUM usually involve massive overtime?", "text": "I would like to know if overtime is normal for sprints, or if it is an abuse of this methodology. I feel naive and spineless doing all-nighters if I don't have to. * * * Question is SCRUM specific. Compare methodologies."}
{"_id": "198398", "title": "Who gets source code access with agpl", "text": "After reading for what seems days on the specifics of GPLv3 and more specifically AGPLv3, I have one question as far as distributing and to whom. If I create a web app (server and client) for a client. They pay me, I hand over all source and ownership. The web app is currently only accessible to employees and contractors; but for the sake of argument, it could be anyone since it's on the internet. The AGPLv3 code is not modified (in this case iText), it is used to generate a PDF from other text (and all this [could] happen in its own project/dll completely separated from the main web app). To who does the source have to be released and shared with:   1. Employees   2. Any user of the app   3. Any non-employee user (clause for distribution within an organization's employees)"}
{"_id": "142095", "title": "Model View Presenter for WebForms and Winforms", "text": "I have a windows forms project using the Model View Presenter pattern and would like to build a web forms project on top of the same MVP structure. The windows forms project knows nothing of ASP.Net Membership and just communicates via the presenter to the model and then to the business layer to do user log on/validation. In the web forms project I have created custom classes that inherit from the built in membership and role provider classes so that I can use the existing user and roles tables as well as integrate nicely with the ASP.Net login controls. However, currently I have had to reference the business layer directly in the custom membership class to validate users, so if I follow MVP, the membership code shouldn't be in the view with references to business layer, it should be in the model but that means referencing System.Web.Security in the model. Is there a way to still use ASP.Net membership with MVP where the webforms and winforms projects are built on top of the same MVP structure? I think I need to pass in the dependency on membership to the presenter and then to the model but can't quite see a clean way to do this. One of the commonly mentioned benefits of MVP is that it allows for building different UI's on top of the same presenters, models, etc. However, in practice, does this really work well or is it best to implement MVP separately per UI technology? Also in relation to the web forms project, is Session state something that the view can just deal with or does this need wrapping with a custom class and interface and passing to the presenter to maintain?"}
{"_id": "195149", "title": "Web revisioning and the Accept-Datetime header", "text": "I have been in the process of generating documentation for an upcoming project. One of the features of the data available in this project is that it will be revisioned (or at least large parts of it will be). I came across the (as I understand it, very new) \"Accept-Datetime\" HTTP header. This looks absolutely perfect for enabling access to revisioned data using existing interfaces. My question is this. Which return type should be used for:   1. A date received that is before the initial data date (I am thinking maybe 404 with body error description)?   2. Data that is requested using the header, but that does not support versioning (This is the really sticky one for me. Not sure whether an error, or just the normal data is better) Edit: For the moment, in the second case, I am tentatively putting code 406 - Not Accepted"}
{"_id": "112653", "title": "Is there a practical guide to Team Software Process?", "text": "I have seen the Carnegie Mellon site covering TSP. I am looking for a practical, non-academic guide to application of TSP in the real world. I would really like to know, how does TSP reduce bugs?"}
{"_id": "176360", "title": "Python 3.1 books still directly applicable to learning Python 2.7?", "text": "I need to learn Python (v2.7) for my job, and looking for the best intro book for professional programmers. I found (via amazon) that \"The Quick Python Book\" is the best, but it's for Python 3.1 I know there's a lot of similarities in 2.7 and 3.1, and somewhere read that you can mostly use 3.1 syntax in 2.7 as a good \"future practice\". Can someone with experience please verify that a book for learning Python3 would still be directly applicable for 2.7? Thank you very much. edit: \"The Quick Python Book\" is for 3.1"}
{"_id": "142092", "title": "How do I prevent useless content load on the page in responsive design?", "text": "In responsive design, elements are hidden in the page with `@media` queries and `display: none` in CSS. Ok. In my design however browsers that have less than `800px` in width should avoid loading some content at all. When accessed with on a device with more than 800px of screen, the page loads fully. In mobile devices or even on desktop with less than `800px` of width some content is hidden. I want to make the page load faster for low-resolution devices and avoid loading chunks of content that the user will never see. How can I go about this?"}
{"_id": "163262", "title": "Bug severity classification issues", "text": "In a book I have, there is a following classification of defect:   1. Critical : A defect receives a \u201ccritical\u201d severity level if one or more critical system functionalities are impaired by a defect with is impaired and there is no workaround.   2. High: A defect receives a \u201chigh\u201d severity level if some fundamental system functionalities are impaired but a workaround exists.   3. Medium: A defect receives a \u201cmedium\u201d severity level if no critical functionality is impaired and a workaround exists for the defect.   4. Low: A defect receives a \u201clow\u201d severity level if the problem involves a cosmetic feature of the system. To be honest, I do not get it.. For example point 2. What if fundamental but not critical feature is impaired and there is NOT a workaround. The same for point 3: what if no critical functionality is affected but there is no workaround? E.g. optional field in the registration form does not work. No workaround but barely an issue."}
{"_id": "186406", "title": "In good Scrum, when and how should the ideation and story writing occur?", "text": "It seems like most of the Scrum articles and books that I've read as well as the lectures I've heard have very little to say about the process of creating the items on the backlog. How should a team on a medium or large project (i.e. more than a few team members) go about creating and detailing the items on the backlog? When and how should the ideation and story writing occur? Who should be involved and when? When should team members (other than the product owner, of course) join the process? How much of the team is needed? Note that I am not asking about how a small group would create a user story or other backlog item from ideas. I'm asking more about when and how this ideation and story writing should occur and who should be involved. How can we be more Agile in the ideating/story writing stages?"}
{"_id": "195144", "title": "Should website frontends be rendered in client-side or server-side?", "text": "I've been talking to a colleague that comes from `AS3` to the `HTML` world. He has created a small website (there are apparently no dynamic contents) following the no-flash rules for his very first time, and as if you own a hammer you tend to hammer everything, he decided to create a framework in `JavaScript`, so he could do all \"the `AS3` way\", with frames, pure X-Y coordinates animation and so, to animate contents. The page would be fully loaded at first, load the vast amount of JS at first and then the page would be accessible without changing url. Views would turn into class methods (where the class represents a section, and the method stands for a view) which append text to a variable that is then added to a div. He defends this situation with many reasons:   * Websites with a high amount of users do this to prevent server overloading.   * It is easier to create new sections.   * It is easier to translate, as translations, texts and almost everything is loaded from a `JSON`.   * You can expand more sections directly from a `JSON` file.   * Everything is smooth, as you don't move to another page. Now, here comes the PHP-loyal developer, which defends the opposite side. I say that views should be split into smaller files but contained in `.php` or even `.html` files, with the business logic in a controller and the view logic in these files. This releases the client, as it can disable `JavaScript` and still show the content without a matter. Of course your server needs to make calculations, but it's just rendering files. Some benefits could be:   * You don't need to load the whole website at first. Webpages loaded faster.   * Your urls are always clean and (in case you did so) friendly, without plugins and working seamlessly in old browsers, as you move to another page.   * Views are kept in independent files, so it is easier to work with them in a team.   * Views are regular `html` files, instead of calls to methods appending strings, so editing them is just natural.   * You still need `PHP` (or any other language) to load data from a server (NodeJS not considered here) And, of course, here comes the real question. **Should views be rendered on client or server side?**"}
{"_id": "198397", "title": "Would Task-based programming in C++ require new language standard features?", "text": "So I saw this video on Youtube with all these C++ masters on GoingNative 2012 : Interactive panel where everybody could ask the questions. This is the video I was talking about: GoingNative 2012 - Day 1 - Interactive Panel: The importance of being native And at time 0:24:00 someone put a very interesting question: > We've been doing concurrent programming for some time using pthreads, using > windows threads, and so on and I'm so happy that C++ and C caught up with > concurrent programming, but it seems to me like it's already behind by five > years or ten years because right now we have we have all these powerful > multicores and the programming of these multicores really should not be > based on threads, it should be task-based [...] and Microsoft has the _PPL > library_ and so on and this is totally not reflecting in the C++ standard. > [...] The only thing I'm afraid of is that the standard could be locked into > threads and sort of make it very difficult to move to _Task-Based > Programming_... Now I'm quite new to these concepts and I'm a little confused. What is actually _Task-Based Programming_. Does this term refer to the same thing that _Lock-Free Programming_ refers to? Are these two equivalent terms or are there any links between them?"}
{"_id": "79098", "title": "Do you allow presentation layer code to be deployed outside of a build cycle?", "text": "For any standard web project you will have server-side code, server pages, JavaScript and CSS files as your code assets. It's pretty standard practice for server-side code to have a test suite and a scripted build process to compile/package/deploy code. Builds usually go on a schedule after code has been tested and validated in a QA environment. On the flip side, we frequently have a requirements to be able to push presentation layer code assets at will. Since they don't require compilation or restarts, this is feasible, but I'm of the mind that this code is coupled to the server-side code and is equally likely to destroy the whole site if it's broken. Therefore, it should never be pushed outside of a build cycle. What is considered best practice for this?"}
{"_id": "196481", "title": "Shift bytes through a fixed sized buffer", "text": "I'm writing an `InputStream` that processes data streams containing \"trailer\" data. That is, the final **_n_** bytes of the stream is a piece of data that must be handled separately and shouldn't be returned from the `read` methods. My class will maintain an internal byte array of length **_n_** and read data into this byte array from the underlying stream. Data will then be popped from the front of the buffer to service the requests to `read`. Implementing the `int read()` method is simple enough - I just call the same method on the underlying stream, shift my byte array by 1 and pop the result to the caller. Implementing `int read(byte[] b)` is more challenging as it requires shifting a large number of bytes through my **_n_** -byte buffer, whilst popping and collating the bytes from the front. Essentially a \"sliding window\" buffer, always containing the last **_n_** bytes from my underlying stream. I get the feeling I'm re-inventing the wheel if I start coding this from scratch. Can anyone suggest if I've overlooked an existing `InputStream` or `Queue` implementation that would be well suited to this task?"}
{"_id": "59533", "title": "Database in the cloud?", "text": "Some of my recent clients are asking for remote connections to the office server, for standalone work, etc, in winForm applications. Since the concept of the web is remote connection to a server both of data and resources, it should be possible to place both of this in cloud and have the winForm apps connect to it as if web Apps. As any one tested this, is working like this? Is it fast enough? Is it secure? What is the best cloud host for this type of work ?"}
{"_id": "115381", "title": "Deploy multiple emails to email providers, but without showing favouritism", "text": "We are currently developing a new email deployment system. We have the system currently configured so that it reads a record from the database and loads the email content and deploys it to the target. Now we want to move this over to multiple threads. That is easily done, except we then hit the email providers returning SMTP codes referring to \"Too many connections\", or \"Deferred connection\". The solution to this is to have a thread open up a connection to the email provider and deploy _n_ emails and then disconnect. We have currently configured the application so that it will support these _session_ based email deployments. The problem is this, the database table has multiple email addresses in and they aren't grouped by email provider because that will show favouritism. We need to be able to retrieve a set number of, i.e. Hotmail, emails (@hotmail.com, @hotmail.co.uk, @live.co.uk) so that we are reducing the number of connections to Hotmail and reducing the risks of getting the \"Too many connections\" error. We are at the point now where we have gone round and round in circles trying to get a solution, so I thought I'd throw it out there and see if anyone has any ideas? **EDIT** I would like to stress that this application is not used for spamming purposes."}
{"_id": "109433", "title": "Fast algorithm to search a sorted array of floats to find the pair of floats bracketing an input value", "text": "I have an array of floats, sorted from smallest to largest, and need to be able to pick out the nearest float greater than or less than a passed input value. This input value is not necessarily present as a value in the array. A naive approach would be to do a simple linear search through the array. That might look like this:               void FindClosestFloatsInArray( float input, std::vector<float> array,                                     float *min_out, float *max_out )     {         assert( input >= array[0] && input < array[ array.size()-1 ] );         for( int i = 1; i < array.size(); i++ )         {             if ( array[i] >= input )             {                 *min = array[i-1];                 *max = array[i];             }         }     }      But obviously as the array gets larger, this will become slower and slower. Does anyone have an idea about an algorithm that would let me find this data more optimally? I've already switched to a binary search, which has improved matters somewhat, but it's still a lot slower than I'd like, and since I'm not actually looking for a specific value that exists in the array, it can never terminate early. More information: The floating point values in the array are not necessarily distributed evenly (that is, the array could consist of the values \"1.f, 2.f, 3.f, 4.f, 100.f, 1200.f, 1203.f, 1400.f\". I'm doing this operation hundreds of thousands of times, but I can do any amount of pre-processing on the array of floats, if it'll improve the lookup time. I absolutely can change to use something other than a vector to store them, if that'll help."}
{"_id": "109432", "title": "What is the standard /an acceptable period of time to support a particular version of software?", "text": "Let's say version 2.4.x of Software Package X was released 2 years ago, and was sold up until about 6 months ago. Version 3.1.0 is now out (which fixes a lot of the issues with version 2.4.x), and is the only version actively being sold. In this case, the software is being sold to large businesses, not individuals, so the maintenance effort required is substantial. For how long should the company offer support for version 2.4.x?"}
{"_id": "79091", "title": "How do web services for downloading ringtones work?", "text": "I am interested in knowing more about how ringtone download web services work. I do web programming in java, and i would like to make a web service that sends a ringtone to the user's mobile phone when the user sends a SMS to the web service.   * Is anyone familiar with this type of service?   * What do I need to be able to create somethig like that?   * Does the ringtone system get some profit for each SMS, or does the mobile company get all of it?"}
{"_id": "109435", "title": "how could I draw the database transaction commit in the sequence diagram", "text": "How could I draw the database transaction commit in the sequence diagram? EDIT I want to draw in sequence diagram database transaction commit/rollback process"}
{"_id": "194433", "title": "Is this a Proper \"Rule\" for Identifying the \"Big O\" Notation of an Algorithm?", "text": "I've been learning more about Big O Notation and how to calculate it based on how an algorithm is written. I came across an interesting set of \"rules\" for calculating an algorithms Big O notation and I wanted to see if I'm on the right track or way off. **Big O Notation: N**               function(n) {         For(var a = 0; i <= n; i++) { // It's N because it's just a single loop             // Do stuff         }     }      **Big O Notation: N 2**               function(n, b) {         For(var a = 0; a <= n; a++) {             For(var c = 0; i <= b; c++) { // It's N squared because it's two nested loops                 // Do stuff             }         }     }      **Big O Notation: 2N**               function(n, b) {         For(var a = 0; a <= n; a++) {             // Do stuff         }         For(var c = 0; i <= b; c++) { // It's 2N the loops are outside each other             // Do stuff         }     }      **Big O Notation: NLogN**               function(n) {         n.sort(); // The NLogN comes from the sort?         For(var a = 0; i <= n; i++) {             // Do stuff         }     }      Are my examples and the subsequent notation correct? Are there additional notations I should be aware of?"}
{"_id": "194439", "title": "In plain English, what is a database index most similar to?", "text": "**Setup** : Suppose you are teaching an introduction to Databases class, the students are CS students that have a working knowledge of tree structures, how they can speed up searches, and have probably implemented a few in their lifetime. **Question** : How would you describe the way in which a database uses indexes to search a table for a set of keys? What structure is a database index most similar to? **Bonus** : How does someone write a SQL query where clause to take advantage of the searching capability of the index they design on a given table? Answers should correspond to all database products as a whole. I'm looking for general tips which allow faster searching on all databases. Plain english descriptions please, no code, Big O searching descriptions are fine. This question might be too specific for this site, I considered asking on StackExchange but since I'm requesting a plain english description of a broad concept I thought this site would be Ok."}
{"_id": "255227", "title": "Meaning of MIT license", "text": "Suppose I use this ActionScript API released under MIT license to build a software: http://www.cove.org/ape/docs/api/   1. Can I sell that software?   2. Do I need to give the source code of my software away?   3. Is anyone receiving my software permitted to resell the software?"}
{"_id": "149512", "title": "How to implement a system to hide spammed user content?", "text": "I'm trying to work out a good way to manage user submitted content and create a method to determine when spammed/poor content should be hidden. The aim is to create comment voting similar to youtubes like/dislike comments and if the score is good show the comments, else they're invisible. **Approach** My thought is to do this via the comments table, you could create two columns rateup, ratedown. For each rate up the comment gets the **rateup** colulmn is: rateup = rateup + 1 and the same for the **ratedown** : ratedown = ratedown + 1 You can then put a clause into your database query to only select comments if their rateup ratio is greater than a number, say -5:               WHERE (rateup - ratedown) > -5       but this would need a lot of voting up and down if a user posts many spam/poor content posts over the site? To strengthen the approach I could add the same two columns to the user table and also update these columns to give an overlal view of the users combined content submission ratio and then display comments like so:               WHERE ((comment.rateup - comment.ratedown) > -5 ) && ((user.rateup - user.ratedown) > -5 )      **Issues** Would this approach lead to instances of users creating mass fake accounts to attack good users and ruin their reputation? What other methods could I use to help hide spammed/poor content without moderators having to manually go through everything?"}
{"_id": "255220", "title": "Does Play framework approach necessarily leads to confuse code?", "text": "I want to start a new project and I just got in touch with Play framework, which has a ruby on rails -like approach that called my attention. I am not an expert in rails, but I think that the productivity in these frameworks are great. I am following some tutorials but I am wondering: Play has the Model, which is used to populate the view but also used to perform DB queries. I find that somehow awkward, but I noticed that rails has also this approach. I wonder if using the same entity for Object Relational Mapping and to populate the view may cause troubles. Here are two examples I can think of:   * My view required only a name and an ID from a big entity   * My view requires information from different entities For the second case, I suppose I would be able to perform a join. But it seems somehow messy: joins in my controller, DB entities being used to populate views. Am I missing some point here? I mean, these frameworks seem great and I would like to use them, but I wonder if my code wound turn into an spaghetti code. It seems to be on the opposing direction of I learned about separation of concerns. If I separate in a layered architecture (models for my views, business logic layer and DAO layers), should I keep using play or should I move to something different like Spring?"}
{"_id": "147573", "title": "How can Scrum be adapted to an academic environment?", "text": "I'm currently working with a professor at my university to develop new curricula for the Software Engineering and Capstone Design courses offered in my college. Up until recently, both courses used the waterfall model exclusively, and thus students spent a majority of their time writing lengthy reports. After much pressure from me, my professor decided to include Scrum in the Software Engineering curriculum this past semester. The first half of the semester was still waterfall-esque, with students writing 40-page design reports and software specification documents. Mid- semester, all teams were required to release a demo of their applications. At that point, the course switched to Scrum, with two 3-week sprints. We are now trying to figure out how to eliminate waterfall altogether and create an exclusively Scrum-based curriculum. Unfortunately, we encountered a few incompatibilities between Scrum and the students:   * Daily Scrum meetings are nearly impossible for students. Even during the class itself, it's inconvenient for students to hold Scrum meetings since the professor is usually lecturing.   * Estimating points/hours is difficult, since students are inexperienced and therefore can't accurately predict how long something will take.   * Scrum works best with full-time, co-located developers, but students are neither. At most, students dedicate 15-20 hours per week to the course, and organizing work meetings can be extremely difficult. Teams can have up to 10 students (and there's always one or two slackers).   * Professors crave documentation! I haven't heard of any Scrum reports\u2014just the backlogs and burndown charts (which I'm not sure will be enough to appease the academics).   * Students often assume that agile means \"Jump right in and start coding without looking back\". This leads to some of the most horrible code imaginable. Therefore, I'm looking for a way to enforce proper design without requiring a 50-page document or a pile of UML diagrams. Given these problems, how do you think my professor and I can adapt Scrum to function in an academic environment (and should we even bother with Scrum in the first place)? Also, is there still value to teaching the waterfall model? Thanks in advance for any feedback!"}
{"_id": "144008", "title": "Difference between \"String\" and \"string\" in .NET and which is best?", "text": "In the .NET Framework, at least in the C# language, we have two \"versions\" of the string type:   * \"string\"   * \"String\" It appears that they are interchangeable, but are they really? If they are not interchangeable, is it generally better to use one instead of the other, and under what circumstances?"}
{"_id": "143058", "title": "Is it safe to install TortoiseSVN on production servers?", "text": "Small shop, few production servers, no test or development servers, all Win2k3 WEB based. There is a need to keep versioned files on one of the machines. Is TortoiseSVN safe against exploitability, does it need extra hardening? Any known license problems, incompatibilities?"}
{"_id": "144001", "title": "Right approach to convert a word document that contains forms in a web app", "text": "I would know if someone can suggest a good approach to convert a word document that contains forms in a web app, specifically in an application built with WaveMaker.(but I'm curious also with a general approach not strictly dependent on the technology that I have mentioned). For example, if I have a page in a word document, that maps the fields of a user entity, what could be my \"programmer approach\" to convert it without much use of copy-paste, but with a dynamic methodology ?"}
{"_id": "143052", "title": "Separating model from UI", "text": "I have a Swing application with a custom TreeModel that can refer to domain instances. I'm wondering what changes I could make if I consider moving to a web interface later on. Would a pluggable model be considered as good design? What would you do?"}
{"_id": "26650", "title": "Where can I start learning to build web applications in C#", "text": "So far I've written web sites in PHP, except for a pet project of mine written in Python. I'd like to start learning C# for use on the web, but I have no idea where to start. I know nothing of .Net. Are there any good tutorials or online books etc. which give a brief intro to the .Net environment (specifically C#, and specifically for the web)? I'm not even sure what I need to install. Visual Studio I guess, but what else? Anything special, or will VS do the trick?"}
{"_id": "201698", "title": "How can I reduce my problem into Max flow problem?", "text": "I am trying to reduce my problem to a max flow problem so I can run the max flow algorithm on this problem. But there are some things that I am missing while transforming my problem. My problem is:   * there are classes with a maximum capacity   * there are students and their wish-list that includes 5 classes that they want    * students can select at most 5 classes. And the goal is:   * to maximize number of classes that students enroll. ![Image](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sjYPF.jpg) If I put students and classes as vertices (please see image above), then put a source node `s` that has an edge to each student and a sink node `t` that has an edge to each classes, what will be the edge costs?   * edge cost between classes and sink node t or   * edge cost between source node s and and students  Are the following assumptions correct?   I think the edge between students and classes cost should be 1. Because a student can only enroll once to a class in a term. I think edge cost between classes and the sink node `t` will be the maximum capacity of a class. I don't have an idea about edge costs between source node `s` and students nodes. And at the end, after arranging, do we just need to run max flow algorithm?"}
{"_id": "26656", "title": "Java devs: why not use Groovy?", "text": "OK, so there are quite a few people using Java these days. But as the language nears two decades of age, it isn't exactly the coolest option out there. Many of us are excited about dynamic languages with some functional features like Ruby or Python, even though we spend our days using Java. So why is it that the adoption of Groovy has been so slow? It seems that Groovy offers much of the benefits of Ruby and Python, but it is far easier to transition a Java shop to Groovy. Even if performance were the concern, it seems that many would want to use Groovy for testing the production Java code. Or use Groovy/Grails for internal apps in which performance concerns are minimal. Or for writing one-off scripts to generate code. Yet Groovy languishes outside of Tiobe's top 50 languages, for reasons that are unclear to me. I have been using Groovy and Grails professionally for about four months, and it has been an excellent experience, such that I hate to think about going back to the Java/Spring/Hibernate model. Does anyone have any sense on why we are not seeing more significant migration from Java to Groovy? Note that I'm not asking why Java developers are still using Java for new projects. My question is: Why is it that most Java Developers are still not using Groovy _at all._ **Edit:** I am assuming that all good developers see the utility of dynamic typing and higher order functions _for some programming tasks._ (Even if it is deemed inappropriate for production code.)"}
{"_id": "66261", "title": "How to speed up PHP powered websites?", "text": "Many people are talking about somethings like accelerator, opcode, etc to speed up a website's performance. To be honest I do not know how to make any PHP website perform well and when do I need to use such things and what if I use them will that cost me a lot? I generally like websites to perform well with excellent and quick load time for the user (I know the load time has other factors such as the internet speed but what I care about here is the performance of the PHP code itself how to make it perform better). So, could you tell me about all the ways to speed up any PHP website and whether they are possible and easy to implement or not?"}
{"_id": "187133", "title": "Many small classes vs. logical (but) intricate inheritance", "text": "I'm wondering what is better in terms of good OOP desing, clean code, flexibility and avoiding code smells in the future. Image situation, where you have a lot of very similar objects you need to represent as classes. These classes are without any specific functionality, just data classes and are different just by name (and context) Example:               Class A     {       String name;       string description;     }          Class B     {       String name;       String count;       String description;     }          Class C     {       String name;       String count;       String description;       String imageUrl;     }          Class D     {       String name;       String count;     }          Class E     {       String name;       String count;       String imageUrl;       String age;     }      Would it be better to keep them in separate classes, to get \"better\" readability, but wit many code repetitions, or would it be better to use inheritance to be more DRY? By using inheritance, you will end up with something like this, but class names will lost it contextual meaning (because of the is-a, not has-a):               Class A     {       String name;       String description;     }          Class B : A     {       String count;     }          Class C : B     {       String imageUrl;     }          Class D : C     {       String age;     }      I know inheritance is not and should not be used for code reuse, but I don't see any other possible way how to reduce code repetition in such case."}
{"_id": "68852", "title": "Naming of types, classes and exceptions sometimes go wrong", "text": "Just started working as System Developer and dislikes the labeling of a home made exception: `HumanErrorException`. In my view, there is no such thing as a human error in a computer based system - just users who don't do as developer expected. So the real label for the exception would be `DeveloperNotTakingUserBehaviourSeriouslyException`, but I thing there will be a fight when i relabel :) Have you ever seen a wrong labeled exception (type, class or method) around? If you did, what did you do with it?"}
{"_id": "68854", "title": "What is the use-case to use C++ friend class?", "text": "I am trying to understand C++ friend. When is the good use case to use friend? I suppose if we want to let another class have access to another classes attributes, why don't we just make it as public or inherit from that class instead? Thank you for your help."}
{"_id": "1474", "title": "About the book \"Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams\"", "text": "I've read Peopleware in 2009. It was one of the best book I ever read. But this book is a little old. I'd like to know, in your opinion, what is and what is not relevant in this book?"}
{"_id": "150801", "title": "Separate Pages Separate Loads?", "text": "Working on two formats throughout our website - PC and mobile. Each request will have a check who the client is. Then, two methods seem optional:   1. Render the page accordingly.   2. Redirect to a parallel site Is there a difference in server load (i.e. maybe 2 has less load because requests are actually pointed at different pages)? Whereas, it seems having a single page would be easier to maintain."}
{"_id": "253301", "title": "How often do you refactor or restructure your code in long term projects?", "text": "As developers we are always eager to learn new things and better ourselves at what we do. You've all had moments when you look at your old code and get that feeling: > \" _WTH, I can't believe I used to write code like this_ \" Well, when it comes to long term projects that you're working on, what do you do when you look at your old code? You probably have learnt new techniques that you didn't use when you started the project. So you probably are very eager to refactor or restructure, or swap out modules in your project. But when is the right time to do this, and how often do you do this? Also, there are risks involved if you do some major refactoring. There's also budget constraints so you may have the urge to make changes but your project manager won't give you the time to do so. How do people approach such situations?"}
{"_id": "157958", "title": "What pitfalls are inherent in using partial classes?", "text": "Over at this question in the comments I mentioned that I heard that partial classes are best avoided if possible. What if any is the reason for this sentiment? Or If this is an invalid sentiment, how are the perceived detriments overcome?"}
{"_id": "77277", "title": "Subversion Tools To Help With Branching and Merging", "text": "Our shop is about to release a major rewrite of our application. And, we are going to need to do bug fixes on versions out in the field while developing new features for the next version. Frankly, I'm a bit overwhelmed by the thought of trying to manage it all with the command line. Are there any really good Subversion clients that help manage branching and merging? We have Windows and Linux computers available to us; so either platform is fine. If there aren't any good tools that help idiot-proof branching and merging, what are the best tips you have for managing multiple branches?"}
{"_id": "131196", "title": "Is there a personalizable programming language you can use to convert to others?", "text": "Is there a programming language in which you can set your own syntax configurations and it would convert the code to a language you choose? For instance, you would choose specific configurations like \"Python's indexed blocks\", `[a,b,c]` initializes arrays, `^` for exponentiation and others. A script would convert it to your choice language's equivalent."}
{"_id": "131194", "title": "Dual licensing with GPL library", "text": "I have a question concerning derivative works of GPL'ed software. Imagine the following situation: A company writes a software (A) using a library (B) which is released under the terms of the GPL. Now of course, software (A) has to be released under a compatible license to the GPL. But what about dual-licensing? If software (A) is released under two licenses, GPL and a commercial one, is this in violation with the terms of library (B)? To rephrase the question, does the GPL force exclusivity for derivative works?"}
{"_id": "199933", "title": "Creating an interface of interfaces", "text": "**Background:** We have a class that both listens on a socket and sets values on itself based on what it reads off the socket. I believe that adheres to SRP. To adhere to ISP we created one interface for socket stuff (eg. `StartListening`, `StopListening`) and another interface which contains read only fields for the values read off the socket and modified our class to implement both. The idea was that we pass `ISocketStuff` (not its real name) to code that needs to start/stop listening and we pass `ISocketValues` to places that need to know the values. **The Question:** I was reviewing a co-worker's code and he had something like: `public interface ISocketStuffAndValues : ISocketStuff, ISocketValues {};` And he was passing it to a constructor. This felt wrong, but I couldn't think of any reason not to do this. It was to work around a thorny design issue, he could have just passed in `ISocketValues`, but he wanted to do it that and I couldn't tell him why it was a poor choice. So, is it a poor choice? What reasons could I have given for just passing in `ISocketValues` and not creating `ISocketStuffAndValues`?"}
{"_id": "199936", "title": "best (web) architecture for my project", "text": "So I'm not sure if this is really the right place to ask or even the right question but I want to give it a try. Requirements: We should have a database & webservice (or something similar) which runs in OUR office, clients cann access the application via the internet (\"wohooo\"). Clients must be able to create orders in a simple mask. There is a basic mask (which all clients have), but the mask can also have some client-specific stuff. When they created the order, a label with a barcode (which contains the order number) is printed locally (and automatically) at their office on a label-printer. They take the label and put it on a sample, which they then send us (on the real post-way). We get the sample, scan the barcode on the label and the order appears in our \"administration-screen\". We then have every information we need about the order (and the sample). Surely we also need a backend where our staffmembers can edit the client-specific mask and add some fields (for specific-clients) and other master-data. * * * All in all this doesn't sound too complex. The only thing which stands out a little, may be the automatic print of labels at their place I guess. Because of this reason it may not be possible to use a \"server-side only\" architecture (like jsf or spring with jsp and so on), because you have to have access directly on their local printers. So I thought a good way is maybe to use spring (with Hybernate, JavaBeans (JEE)) together with JavaFX which would allow to access local printers and so on. I thought we could just make a webinstaller/webstart for the application, which installs the JavaFX clients for the clients. The JavaFX client could then communicate with the webserver (spring) and insert the order there, get all required information like the order-number for printing the label and so on. For the backend in our office I could also imagine to use JavaFX... So where's my question? Well its simple: Is this a good way to do it? Are these fitting technologies for doing it? Or is it already to complicated and this could be accomplished in a much easier way? If so what do you suggest? Naturally I also want to lay a big focus on easy extensibility and maintainibility."}
{"_id": "199939", "title": "Making Simple IF Statements Shorter", "text": "If we assume we have this little snippet of code:               string str = \"checked\";     bool test1;          if (str == \"checked\")     {         test1 = true;     }     else     {         test1 = false;     }      Is it bad practice to change a simple statement like this to the following?:               bool test2 = (str == \"checked\");      Because they work exactly the same, and work as required, so I can't imagine how it would be. However, as a young, inexperienced programmer I am not aware of whether such a thing is frowned upon or not. Can anyone tell me, if this is NOT ok, why not? The following test program:               using System;          public class Test     {              public static void Main()         {             string str = \"checked\";                  bool test1;                  if (str == \"checked\")             {                 test1 = true;             }             else             {                 test1 = false;             }                  bool test2 = (str == \"checked\");                  bool test3 = (str != \"checked\");                  Console.WriteLine(test1.ToString());             Console.WriteLine(test2.ToString());             Console.WriteLine(test3.ToString());         }     }      Outputs:               True     True     False      Any insight etc is appreciated."}
{"_id": "24798", "title": "As a programmer, what paths should I take concerning education?", "text": "After a burst of ranting about homework, the applicability of the classes I'm taking, and my computer science teacher, I have some questions concerning education for my career path as a developer. I taught myself everything I know about programming. I've been thinking lately about the advantages of teaching myself vs. learning from a teacher. I feel I might miss some things I would normally learn. I might learn some concepts wrong, or something. After all, computer science eduction has been around longer than I have. The problem is, I'm not learning anything new about computer science in my programming class. I put the computer programming 2 course on my schedule (it was labeled as Computer Science when I signed up for it). It turns out that it's just learning C++ and of course OOP. In fact, the CP2 students are in the same classroom at the same time as the CP2 students, except the CP1 course is a half-year class instead of full year. I thought we'd do something like data structures (other than arrays), or something I'm less experienced in. The teacher had me change my schedule to CP1, but he \"lets me loose\" to work on projects with the CP2 students while he teaches the CP1 students. I usually end up helping the CP2 students with build errors and things like that after I'm done. I certainly don't mind helping them, but I'm not learning anything new, and I likely won't, seeing that AFAIK linked lists will be the most advanced concept taught (for the CP2 students; The class ends this semester for CP1, including me). Frankly, I'm not interested in copying source code from paper to screen, which is 90% of what the CP2 students do. I want to be learning something computer science related. I'd hate to sit around waiting for my options to catch up. I want to take classes not offered by my high school, like discrete mathematics, algorithms and data structures, or something like that. So my question is, where can I take classes which aren't offered by my high school? Can I take college classes? (keep in mind there isn't any concurrent, AP, or distance-ed classes concerning computer science offered by my high school besides the CP1/CP2 class I'm in). Do you know any online classes I could take? Thanks, Danny Shields P.S: I talk about my programming experience on my StackExchange profile if it helps."}
{"_id": "24793", "title": "Is it acceptable to work around Apache's .htaccess nonsense in another language?", "text": "I'm getting sick of all of Apache's quirks, and I'm considering starting to avoid `.htaccess` as much as I can in favor of writing actual, predictable code. It would be easy and straightforward to emulate things like file security and rewrites, and control precisely what is and isn't inherited between directories without having to use strange, obtuse directives. Would there be any downsides to this? I'm talking about replacing, for example, this:               # .htaccess     RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} blah     RewriteRule ^(.*)$        /test$1 [R=301,L]      with something like this:               # PHP, in a header file     if(strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'blah') !== false)         redirect(301, '/test' . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);      To repeat the question, **what would be the downsides of implementing functionality in PHP which is traditionally handled by`.htaccess`?**"}
{"_id": "197162", "title": "Modify then sell another person's code", "text": "I am working, with a co-author, on a data modeling toolbox that will someday be sold. Part of the functionality is the extremely common PCA, which we are doing in a more robust way. Thus, we need a PCA function that has the usual algorithm with some modifications. For non-commercial peer-review academic research, I could easily find PCA code that is already written, modify it to suit my needs and use it, citing the author in my research. My co-author insists that in this commercial venture, it is entirely appropriate to do the same thing. We can take another author's copyrighted code (ex \"Copyright (c) 1997 by blah blah blah\", not necessarily a GNU license), modify it to suit our needs, and distribute it with the toolbox we are selling. He says that as long as we cite the original author, it's entirely acceptable. I'm just as strenuously insisting this is not legal, but have been unable to find straightforward documentation. Can someone point me to unambiguous documentation of this?"}
{"_id": "186400", "title": "What is a good measure of testing/tester efficiency?", "text": "I am about to participate in a discussion with management regarding measuring our testing efficiency as a QA organization. The main reason behind this is that half of our team is contracted out and our business would like to provide some metrics of how effective/efficient we are, so that we have basis data on which to negotiate contract parameters with the service agreement of our contractors. I have poked around a little and most of the opinion I have found on this subject revolves around developer efficiency: lines of code, story points delivered, defects introduced, etc. But what about testers? Our testing is mostly requirements based, and a mix of manual, semi-automated, and automated testing (not because we haven't gotten around to automating everything, but because some things are not automatable in our test system)."}
{"_id": "221497", "title": "MongoDB: Is this a good schema design?", "text": "I'm working on a Meteor app which lets users create events and assign them crew members. I've played around with MongoDB before and made some experiences along the way, where for instance my first attempt went overboard with embedded objects and quickly became sluggish and hard to maintain. Several people therefore suggested to try a more traditional design approach and that's what I've done this time. I've split my collections up with manual refs in mind, **Events**               _id : ObjectID,     propA: \"Some prop\",     propB: \"Some other prop\",     employees: [         {employee_id: ObjectID, crew_id: ObjectID},         {employee_id: ObjectID, crew_id: ObjectID},     ]      **Employees**               _id : ObjectID,     propA: \"Some prop\",     crew_id: ObjectID      **Crews**               _id : ObjectID,     propA: \"Some prop\"      The reasoning is that the events collection will become quite substantial during the applications life cycle and thus I consider duplication to be a bad thing. Another noteworthy feature is that an employee must belong to a certain crew, but on an actual event can work in any crew. Intially I was quite happy with this design, but I have however found some problems which has lead me here. 1) When listing an event I have to manually join refs in order to show the actual properties of the employees and crews (such as name), it's a bit tedious but what worries me most is performance: Rather then running one query I have to run three (first get the event, then loop trough the employee array and then join employee with the Employee collection and finally join the crew with the Crew collection). 2) My biggest problem so far though is what I believe is known as deep querying. Before adding an employee to an event I have to know if he/she is already assigned, thus requiring to query the Events collection for an Event with a given ID and also find check if the given Employee ID exists in the employee array. So far I've been unable to do this in a single query. So my question boils down to this. Is my design fine as it is or should I change it given my use cases? Or alternatively, if I keep my current design how should I tackle problem 1 and 2 (that is, manual joins and refs are fine. But is performance a real possible showstopper down the line?)."}
{"_id": "221494", "title": "Pointers for transitioning from SOAP to REST based services", "text": "We currently have a SOAP based web service which is being used by various teams as the primary data source. We eventually want to transition to REST based services. We are reluctant to do this now as the clients would have to do changes. What can we do to make this transition smooth?"}
{"_id": "221495", "title": "Is it possible to protect json api scraping using random tokens?", "text": "I have built a restful json api for an online store using Laravel. I now wish to create an AngularJS app to run the front-end web application. Product prices for my store need to update every second, so Angular needs to get the product json from the server once per second to update the html. I wish to somehow do something to protect this publicly accessible json data from being stolen by scrapers / bots repetitively hitting my api to steal my product and pricing data. My thoughts: Each json api response contains a random use-once token (i am aware about doing stuff to stop collisions). This random token is injected via AngularJS into a hidden field within the html page. Angularjs reads the hidden token prior to re-requesting the api and uses this in the header of the next get request. A json response is only provided with the correct token in the header. Once the token is used, it expires, and any attempt to re-use the expired token, results in that IP address being locked out for a period of time or flagged to administrator to investigate. Is there a better way of doing the above? Are there any kind of actual available solutions to my problem? Considering that I am paying for the product pricing feed in the first place, I really don't want some schmuck getting it from me for free just because I exposed an api! Whilst I understand that there is probably no way of being 99% certain that somebody could find a way of scraping my json, there must be something relatively simple I can do to protect my json feed from dumb bots / scrapers simply using curl to steal data."}
{"_id": "95395", "title": "What skills to master to become a better ASP.net developer?", "text": "I've been an ASP.net web developer for about 2.5 years now. I would describe my technical training before that as being \"classical\" C++. It seemed like it took an eternity to get up to speed with ASP.net. I kept wanting to think of programming in VB.net and C#.net as if it were C++ programming, which of course, it isn't. Even my supervisor admitted that at the beginning he had doubts about \"keeping me on board\", but I made it. I've now been working on a project of my own for about a year. Here are some concepts and technologies I've picked up some skill with along the way.   * class inheritance   * separation of concerns   * LINQ   * SQL   * Session State   * JavaScript   * jQuery   * AJAX   * CSS The first two that I mentioned are essential for keeping the code organized. LINQ is very nice to have to avoid having to write `for` loops over and over. JavaScript seems to have become the backbone of web programming in spite of its shortcomings and jQuery seems to couple it very tightly with CSS. I've been making a big effort to learn to write better JavaScript; mainly by reading on Douglas Crockford's web site. I would like to know, from more experienced web developers, besides what I mentioned here, what are the most important tools to have in your toolbox to write great web applications?"}
{"_id": "221490", "title": "Which design pattern is more suitable for logging?", "text": "I should log some events in a program but as far as I know it would be better to keep the logging code outside the program because it is not about the real functionality of the program. So may you tell me if I should keep it completely out of code and only use Observers and Listeners to log the events? Or I can add a line of code like the following wherever I need to log something:               MyGloriousLogger.getXXXLogger().Log(LogPlace, new LogObject(z1, z2, z3, z4, ..., z99));      Do I make a mistake to use Observer design pattern? I need another design pattern? Or I should stop thinking about design patterns? PS1. If I want to log using only listeners and observers I will certainly need to add and improve the observers and listeners of the program. PS2. I certainly know that there are different libraries for logging in Java and I'm using java.utils.logging but I need to have a wrapper for it to log my special objects."}
{"_id": "35639", "title": "Would a language which doesn't allow comments yield more readable code?", "text": "Just out of curiosity, I started wondering whether a language which doesn't allow comments would yield more readable code as you would have be forced to write self-commenting code. Then again, you could write just as bad code as before because you just don't care. But what's your opinion?"}
{"_id": "114161", "title": "How can I automate production deployments without experiencing extreme anxiety?", "text": "At our shop we use SVN for source control and CruiseControl for CI on handling automatic builds and deployments to our development, test, and integration environments. This all works smoothly however due to hardware and resource constraints our integration environment is not a 2 server load balanced environment like our production environment. While everything else is equal that would be the only difference between our integration and production environments (although a big one!) Theoretically the difference is a slightly different configuration of our app servers and the deploy script merely would have to drop the build artifacts into two servers instead of just the one, but why am I so nervous to automate our production deployments?! I am generally not a control freak but I always feel the insatiable need to deploy production to production manually. I have heard from colleagues that this is generally a **Really BAD Thing\u2122** but they failed to make a case against it. I know that when I do it manually I can SEE that I am physically copying the correct files, I am physically shutting down the app servers and ensuring they closed successfully, I am physically starting the servers back up and then physically inspecting the logs to make sure it started up okay and the deployment was successful. It gives me a peace of mind. What are arguments against this OR arguments for automatic scripted production deployment?"}
{"_id": "130571", "title": "What is the point of the string.Empty property", "text": "Why was the property `string foo = string.Empty` included in the BCL? It seems more verbose and no clearer than just using an empty string (`string foo = \"\"`)"}
{"_id": "93636", "title": "Is Programming generally an overtime exempt field?", "text": "My manager told me that the industry doesn't pay overtime for programmers. Is this true?"}
{"_id": "32948", "title": "Developing Salesforce apps in Ruby on Rails", "text": "I want to build a web app that uses Salesforce.com data, and I want to build it fast. I'm a .NET developer (WPF, C#, ASP.NET MVC). I understand Ruby and RoR fairly well, but I haven't delivered any Rails apps. I'm wondering, is Ruby on Rails a suitable tool for rapidly building Salesforce apps, or is it better for the \"traditional\" web2.0 stuff like Groupon and Twitter? In other words, would using RoR help me achieve my fast (e.g., three months) goal over using .NET, which I already know?"}
{"_id": "202690", "title": "Query something and return the reason if nothing has been found", "text": "Assume I have a Query - as in CQS that is supposed to return a single value. Let's assume that the case that no value is found is not exceptional, so no exception will be thrown in this case. Instead, `null` is returned. However, if no value has been found, I need to act according to the _reason_ why no value has been found. Assuming that the Query knows the reason, **how would I communicate it to the caller of the Query?** A simple solution would be not return the value directly but a container object that contains the value and the reason:               public class QueryResult     {         public TValue Value { get; private set; }         public TReason ReasonForNoValue { get; private set; }     }      But that feels clumsy, because if a value is found, `ReasonForNoValue` makes no sense and if no value has been found, `Value` makes no sense. What other options do I have to communicate the reason? What do you think of one event per reason? For reference: This is going to be implemented in C#."}
{"_id": "181479", "title": "Could Ruby on Rails have been created in another language?", "text": "Could Ruby on Rails have been created in another language like PHP, or are there some functions in the Ruby language that make the difference?"}
{"_id": "23683", "title": "Organizing uncommented, dirty code?", "text": "I would like to ask you some questions about dirty code. There are some beginners who coded on a medium project. The code is a very huge ball of mud. They are not advanced programmers. They just know how to use keyboard an a little about java. They just wrote code with 12 000 lines in their main class, though, 6 000 lines belongs to NetBeans itself. My job is to analyze the code and suggest a good way to maintain the code. My idea is to scrap the project and start a new one with OOP methodology. Recently I collected some notes and ideas about the problem, from this site and some others. Now, I have the followings questions:   1. Should we repair the code, and change it to a OOP? We are now debugging it.   2. The code has no comments, no documentation, no particular style of programming, and so forth. Changing it is really expensive and time consuming. What do we can do about this?   3. How can I teach them to follow all the rules (commenting, OOP, good code quality, etc.)?   4. The code is erroneous and error prone. What can we do? Testing? We almost write two or three A4 papers for correction, but it seems endless. I should have to say that I am new with them. I think I have broken the rules about adding people too late to the project, as well. Do you think I have to leave them?"}
{"_id": "189662", "title": "Looking to build a 2 java applications. should it be web-based application or standalone application?", "text": "The first application (web-based) will be located at site1 and once the information is processed, it will be sent to the second application(web-based) located at site2. Application2 needs to be able to do the same thing as application1. Because of this, there has to be a way to share the database to keep data in sync. I wanted to go web-based for these two applications, but the issue arises, what if the internet is down? If application1 goes down due to a blackout or lost of internet, application2 should still be able to do what it needs to. I was thinking the database/server will be on Amazon EC2. Even if I go with a standalone application for site1 and site2, it still needs some sort of internet connection to talk to a shared database/server right, possiblity through tcp connection? Because of this, I dont see why it shouldn't just be a web-based applicatin then. This the disagreement I'm having with my team. I want to know the pros and cons of making these two application either being a stand-alone or web-based."}
{"_id": "189663", "title": "python random with a skew", "text": "I am trying to create a very simple evolution algorithm for a creature simulator, what I would like to have is, both creatures have a trait and a dominance level, both noted by ints. their child's trait will be a random number between creature A's trait and creature B's trait then skewed to the more dominant. So if A has a trait of 5 and dominance of 2 and B has a trait of 10 and a dominance of 7, the skew will be -5 so it skews more towards B. Their child is more likely to have a trait of 8 than 6. Is there a good way to do this? I visualise it ending up like this: A5-6--7---8----9-----10B I can't figure out how much the skew should be until I am able to test the results, so for the time being it's kind of arbitrary. Thank you everyone for taking the time to help me."}
{"_id": "189668", "title": "LGPL 2.1 vs LGPL 3.0 Advantages and Disadvantages", "text": "From what I've read, LGPL 3.0 allows you to use the license together with other licenses, more permissive about that(Not even sure about that).   From https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility it says that it is not compatible with GPLv2, while LGPL 2.1 is compatible with it. That's a bit contrary to the thing I've read... So, do you know what the real advantages and disadvantages of LGPL 3.0 over LGPL 2.1 are?   One disadvantage would be that it is not compatible with GPLv2."}
{"_id": "221720", "title": "Is it normal to write all logs into a single file?", "text": "Our teamlead said that many files much worse than a single, despite of we are working on a big project. He argued that our customers could more easily send logs to us if there will be just a single file. To understand our log-file he wants to develope our own log-analyzer which will analyze a single log-file separating it to many"}
{"_id": "60881", "title": "Why do I find it so hard to share my work?", "text": "I've done some application out there, coding is not the problem. But when it comes to deploying / communicating / sharing with buds and friends, I'm like stuck. I feel I'm gonna be humiliated because there are bugs, people will not use it ... I'm sure I'm not the only one in this situation. I can't describe it well but ... Here's an example. You made a todo list manager web application, you use it for some time now. You think it's nice, it does the work - for you. But you just don't got the strenght to email your friend or your work buddies, because they will look at you differently, like \"he's the guy with ambition that did a not so good application\" ..."}
{"_id": "83780", "title": "How fast can Go go?", "text": "Go is one of the few languages that are supposed to run 'close to the metal', i. e. it's compiled, statically typed and executes code natively, without a VM. This should give it a speed advantage over Java, C# and the like. It seems, however, that it's behind Java (see the Programming Language Shootout) I'm assuming that less mature compilers are hugely responsible for this, but are there any other reasons? Is there anything inherent in Go's design that would prevent it from running faster than, say, Java? I have a very unsophisticated view of runtime models, but it seems that at least in principle it should be able to run faster than Java, thanks to native code execution."}
{"_id": "183909", "title": "How do you compress ASCII strings into smaller bytes?", "text": "I'm working with an embedded device with a unique protocol that sends messages to other devices and I'm making an application that parses the sent packets. Each packet carries 8 bytes. The protocol is defined as where first byte is header and remaining 7 bytes is the data. They are trying to pass a particular ID string but the ID string is 8 characters long (ASCII) so it won't fit in 7 bytes. What my colleague told me is that they're going to turn the 8 ascii bytes of original string into integer (decimal) and send me 4 bytes of it. They told me I should be able to get the original string from the 4 bytes. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around on this. So if you have an ID string like \"IO123456\", that's 0x49 0x4f 0x31 0x32 0x33 0x34 0x35 0x36 in ASCII.. How on earth can you compress that in 4 bytes by turning it into an integer and I can get the original string from it? Am I missing something or is my colleague mistaken? I understand this is a really bizzare question but this seriously does not make any sense to me."}
{"_id": "221729", "title": "How to abstract transition between Views?", "text": "Our team is developing an application using WPF with MVVM. We want to make ViewModels reusable. With this intention we want to abstract the transition logic between Views (ViewModels, we use ViewModel-first approach with Caliburn.Micro) so the other application can override it. For instance, we have App1 and App2. Firstly, we developed App1 and it has FooViewModel which creates FunViewModel when user clicks a Next button. But, developing App2 we want to get to NotFunViewModel instead of FunViewModel when user makes a click on a Next button. How to accomplish such a task? The solution has to be universal and safe in accordance to types (in compile-time)."}
{"_id": "131691", "title": "Should one bind data with Eval on aspx or override ItemDataBound in code-behind?", "text": "For data bound controls (Repeater, ListView, GridView, etc.), what's the preferred way of binding data? I've seen it where people use Eval() directly on the aspx/ascx inside the data bound control to pull the data field, but to me, it just seems so...inelegant. It seems particularly inelegant when the data needs to be manipulated so you wind up with shim methods like `<%# FormatMyData(DataBinder.Eval(Container.DataItem, \"DataField\")) %>` inside your control. Personally, I prefer to put in Literal controls (or other appropriate controls) and attach to the OnItemDataBound event for the control and populate all the data to their appropriate fields in the code-behind. Are there any advantages of doing one over the other? I prefer the latter, because to me it makes sense to compartmentalize the data binding logic and the presentation layer. But maybe that's just me."}
{"_id": "25686", "title": "Can being funny hurt your promotion opportunities?", "text": "I have always been an outgoing guy, who likes to make jokes and be funny. Although this is apparent to everyone I meet, whether it be at a party or just participating in a conversation. It's just who I am. Now when I was in ninth grade in a new school, where nobody knew who I was. I was trying to make friends like any other freshman would in a new school - high school no less. So in class I would joke around talk to people trying to make friends; I used the skills I had cracking jokes making people laugh etc. Now when the end of the first semester rolled around our school was in the habit of highlighting the students that made it to the honor roll in front of the entire school in the gym. No they had two levels of of recognition honor roll and high honor roll. Now the usual suspects go up and claim their two minutes of fame. Then high honor roll came around, my name was called out utter silience hit my friends' faces wondering how I managed to achieve this when i am always joking around and just didn't see me as intellectual person at all. Regardless of whether or not my report card read like someone screaming for dear life (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA). I was always well liked and enjoyed surprising people, when they would underestimate me; I relished it in. I always enjoyed shocking people, and making them eat their words. Something I always lived with. Now after graduating I have title which designates me some respect depending on which social circles you hang in (heres looking at you designers). I am afraid that my outgoing nature is going to cost me a promotion, or management not seeing the entire person I am. It has burnt me in the past while in university working for people who only saw the light hearted joking I put forward, and putting other people in positions that I was better qualified for. As a programmer, I know my work will speak for itself but they might see the joking as irresponsible or ignorant. He lack responsibility, all the things associated with people who make jokes. Should I stifle myself so people see how I truly am? Or continue to wait for the opportunity to shock them, that don't always present themselves, since there is no honor roll at the end of the semester. Please and thank you, xoxo Gossip Girl (just kidding)"}
{"_id": "253315", "title": "Does it make sense to license source code snippets by CC-BY(-SA)", "text": "If I want to put random source code snippets in a publicly accessible git repository, does it make sense to license by CC-BY(-SA) given that CC-BY licenses are generally not recommended for software? To me there is a difference between a full software project where CC-BY clearly isn't appropriate and small random source code files. CC-BY seems like a simple license where GPL is over the top. The main reason that I ask is that I may take code from StackOverflow (modified or not) which I believe is licensed as CC-BY-SA. Sometimes it would be convenient for me to put it all in one place so I can easily access and find it in the future. While I may be being overly-paranoid, I would like to adhere to the StackExchange CC-BY-SA license. Licensing everything I put there as CC-BY-SA is simple and seems appropriate for snippets (of course code taken from other sources, say with GPL/BSD or whatever will retain their original license if required). Finally can I combine CC-BY-SA with GPL?"}
{"_id": "253317", "title": "Does this Relational Database Model make sense?", "text": "Here is a flat version of my datamodel. It is sensor readings for various data acquisition equipment. ![0](http://i1295.photobucket.com/albums/b628/colnewman26/Work%20Screen%20Shots/RobinDataModel_zpsdfc40151.png~original) http://i1295.photobucket.com/albums/b628/colnewman26/Work%20Screen%20Shots/RobinDataModel_zpsdfc40151.png~original Here is my Relational Database model. Does this make sense. ![1](http://i1295.photobucket.com/albums/b628/colnewman26/RobinDataModel_zps847d94b5.png~original) http://i1295.photobucket.com/albums/b628/colnewman26/RobinDataModel_zps847d94b5.png~original If not what you suggest?"}
{"_id": "205041", "title": "Is it mandatory to obtain a licence for distributing software uses bundled Mono runtime?", "text": "My software composed of an EXE and dependent class library dlls, built on Windows using visual studio C# Compiler. I've been able to run it directly on Mac OS X using _mono myApp.exe_ without rebuilding. Now, for the deployment, I've successfully made mono bundle using **mkbundle** with _\\--deps_ option for all dependent class library assemblies. But I did **NOT** use _\\--static_ option. So my application dynamically links to mono and glib. Wrapped it inside mac APP bundle, then copied the needed libmono- _[XYZ]_.dylib , and all other dependent native libs from _Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework_ into that bundle, changing each dylib id and install name to be the copy insde the bundle rather than original in Mono.framework directory. Tested the _M_ bundle in a mono free machine. the bundle worked perfectly. **My question** is, do I still need to obtain a license from Xamarin to distribute my application to end users under my proprietary license, provided that all mono native runtime libraries are in the App bundle and the user can update/replace them as per LGPL license of mono runtime? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "140651", "title": "Automating release management and CI on python projects under mercurial VCS", "text": "I have a set of Python projects which are under the mercurial VCS. I would like to automate the following tasks:   * Run the test suite for every commit (CI).   * Make a source distribution for every commit, which has a tag in mercurial. This is regarded as a new release.   * Copy the distribution to a special repository. There is _Jenkins_ as a proposal for similar questions, but I'm not sure if it can handle the release management like intended."}
{"_id": "23974", "title": "Error handling, creating time line, need help defining what aspects of the environment need tracking", "text": "For my final year project, I'm working on a script that will run your python program and provide a time line of events(so far working on assignments) and create a story of what happened(the changes in the variables). Based on what Exception is thrown, you can choose to use the library made available by me to help figure out what happened and how it happened. (Hopefully I explained this much better than I did on stack overflow) My question to you, besides the variables, when an error occurs/exception you cant handle occurs, what would you look through in order to try and fix the problem? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "214835", "title": "What Do I Need To Know About Servers In a Web Development Role?", "text": "I know that may sound a little vague, so I'll try and explain a little further... After being self employed developer for many years I'm now in search of a commercial web developer role. My only experience with servers and hosting is uploading through FTP and playing around with CPanel/WHM a little. The role's I'm going for are web development PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS type roles, but in recent interviews I've been asked questions about setting up things on the server, that I had no idea what was being said... which wasn't ideal! Without knowing more than I do, it's hard to explain what exactly I'm looking to learn, but it's basically just the server elements I should know as a web developer? If you're a web developer, do you have any dealing with the server apart from uploading files, and if so, what? Are things like Subversion(SVN) and version control systems often set up by the web development team, could that be what they were talking about?"}
{"_id": "27263", "title": "How much to \"automatically\" do?", "text": "I'm reading Code Complete 2, and I'm at the chapter where it says to (paraphrasing) \"avoid programming through the interface.\" Why is it bad to program \"through\" the interface? A more concrete example: if I have a method of a class that submits a funny picture, what's wrong with it logging me in also? Should I simply provide more \"helper\" methods that do it automatically? Would it be preferred to break it up into:   * set_login(username, password)   * login()   * submit_picture(funny_picture)   * easy_submit(funny_picture) # where it will log in (if not already) and submit"}
{"_id": "27260", "title": "What to do when time estimation goes wrong?", "text": "Let\u2019s say you estimated time for a case to be 3 days. In day two you notice that the case is growing and new scenarios are popping up which were not counted when the time estimation where done. The new finding leads to 2 days extra (total 5 days). This is a typical problem that you will face sooner or later as developer.   * Which strategy can be used when you are going to notify project leader the new time of delivery?   * Often you get the question why? How do you motivate the new time of delivery? The fact is that many projects don\u2019t put much time on analysis & design during SDLC. **EDIT:** In very complex projects no matter how much reasonable time you put on Analysis & Design there are always surprises since the business rules are too complex. However in such cases I believe the project leader must be aware of the complexity and have right attitude when unexpected surprises comes up. The question is how to tackle project leaders who don\u2019t understand the complexity."}
{"_id": "194007", "title": "What is the difference between \"Syntax\" and \"Syntactic Sugar\"", "text": "## Background The Wikipedia page on Syntactic Sugar states: > In computer science, syntactic sugar is syntax within a programming language > that is designed to make things easier to read or to express. It makes the > language \"sweeter\" for humans to use: things can be expressed more clearly, > more concisely, or in an alternative style that some may prefer. I don't really understand what the difference is between Syntactic Sugar and Syntax. I appreciate the point that the sugary version can be clearer, more concise, perhaps boil off some boilerplate. But I feel at some level, all the syntax is essentially doing that to form an abstraction over what the code gets compiled down to. From the same Wikipedia page: > Language processors, including compilers, static analyzers, and the like, > often expand sugared constructs into more fundamental constructs before > processing, a process sometimes called \"desugaring\". As a thought exercise, if I take \"often\" in this statement to mean \"always\": If the difference were just whether the compiler \"desugars\" the syntax before moving to a next stage, how might a coder who does not know the innards of the compiler know (or care) what is Sugar'd Syntax or not? A very much related question on this site \"Rigorous Definition of Syntactic Sugar?\" has an answer which commences: > IMHO I don't think you can have a definition for syntactic sugar, because > the phrase is BS and is likely to be used by people that talk about \"real > programmers\" using \"real tools\" on \"real operating systems\" Which might indicate to me that perhaps there isn't a huge difference to the coder using the language? Perhaps the difference is only perceptible to the compiler writer? Though there may be instances in which it's helpful for the coder using the language to know what's under the hood of the Syntactic Sugar? (But perhaps in reality any discourse on the subject tends to use the term as flame bait?) ## The heart of the question So... the short version of the question:   * Is there a real difference between Syntax and Syntactic Sugar?   * Who does it matter to? ## Extra Food for Thought Bonus on topic contradiction: On the Wikipedia page an example is given: > For instance, in the C language the `a[i]` notation is syntactic sugar for > `*(a + i)` Whereas another answer on the above linked question talks about the same example: > Now consider `a[i] == *(a + i)`. Think about any C program that uses arrays > in any substantive way. And summarizes that: > The `[]` notation facilitates this abstraction. It's not syntactic sugar. The opposite conclusion for the same example!"}
{"_id": "61282", "title": "Google Chrome Extension Development for Dummies?", "text": "I want to get started writing extensions for Google Chrome. I am a long time C, C++, Delphi, etc. developer for many years with some Java skills. I believe Chrome extensions are written in C++ but perhaps some people have figured out how to do development in other languages via alternate methods. [UPDATE: NPAPI plug-ins are written in C++. Generic Chrome extensions use HTML, CSS, and JS as pointed out in the comments and replies below.] Is there a book that covers developing Google Chrome extensions for those new to the field but are experienced programmers? Any other resources? I'd be most grateful for resources that cut out most of the ambient learning material and go straight to the heart of the matter with good samples along the way. Some tips on developing using development tools that run on the MS-Windows platform would be great too. \\-- roschler"}
{"_id": "27264", "title": "Naming conventions: camelCase versus underscore_case ? what are your thoughts about it?", "text": "I've been using underscore_case for about 2 years and I recently switched to camelCase because of the new job (been using the later one for about 2 months and I still think underscore_case is better suited for large projects where there are alot of programmers involved, mainly because the code is easier to read). Now everybody at work uses camelCase because (so they say) the code looks more elegant . What are you're thoughts about camelCase or underscore_case p.s. please excuse my bad english **Edit** Some update first:   * platform used is PHP (but I'm not expecting strict PHP platform related answers , anybody can share their thoughts on which would be the best to use , that's why I came here in the first place)   * I use camelCase just as everibody else in the team (just as most of you recomend)   * we use Zend Framework which also recommends camelCase Some examples (related to PHP) :   * Codeigniter framework recommends underscore_case , and honestly the code is easier to read .   * ZF recomends camelCase and I'm not the only one who thinks ZF code is a tad harder to follow through. So my question would be rephrased: > Let's take a case where you have the platform Foo which doesn't recommend > any naming conventions and it's the team leader's choice to pick one. You > are that team leader, why would you pick camelCase or why underscore_case? p.s. thanks everybody for the prompt answers so far"}
{"_id": "25532", "title": "Why are some saying that Java will be the new COBOL?", "text": "I heard the news about Java and the JCP/Apache. What I don't understand is, why does this have to affect the Java market ? Sure, the license has changed and maybe it's moving to a be a bit more closed source but why would people think /it's/will be/ the new COBOL?"}
{"_id": "142876", "title": "Terms for different types of development", "text": "I'm trying to figure out the right terminology for the different types of software development Right now, the only development term I know is \"web development\", but I've also done a lot of Java and C# development for desktop applications. Obviously this isn't web development, but I'd like to be able to group these under a single term that is widely known and accepted within the industry. Would the term for applications on the desktop be \"desktop development\"?"}
{"_id": "229926", "title": "How to encapsulate method parameters in Java?", "text": "An HTTP query can be parametrized to a list of pairs like `name=value` that can be encapsulated in general as `Map<String, String>` since an HTTP GET query is string pairs. I could need something for any combination of objects and primitives. A varargs method for example `update(String s1...)` could be written in general as `update(Map<String, String>)` where the key is the name and the value is the data. Therefore I wonder if it could be good to use a definition as `Map<K, V>` instead of writing a custom object in this case wrapping the specific 3 parameters to a class in their specific types which can't be reused whereas a `Map<K, V>` can be used to encapsulate any 2-tuples when we must write a pair like `Integer i` or `int i` or `int i=0`. But I think it will only work for classes and not for primitive types, so the primitive types must be boxed in their objects so I must also box an `int` to an `Integer` for this to also work with primitive types. Is there a better way than `Map<K, V>`to encapsulate method parameters when we must select a list of unknown length and unknown types where the types could be primitives or objects? So instead of being specific about types and their values in the method, can I use a `Map<K, V>` instead of a list of named pairs such as `String s, int i, Object o...`"}
{"_id": "223384", "title": "Phenotropic Program Design", "text": "I recently ran across an idea put forth by Jaron Lanier called \"phenotropic programming.\" The idea is to use 'surface' interfaces instead of single point interfaces in computer programs utilizing statistics to winnow out minor errors that would typically cause a \"classical\" program to catastrophically crash. The two-line description is here: > According to Jaron, the 'real difference between the current idea of > software, which is protocol adherence, and the idea [he is] discussing, > pattern recognition, has to do with the kinds of errors we're creating' and > if 'we don't find a different way of thinking about and creating software, > we will not be writing programs bigger than about 10 million lines of code > no matter how fast our processors become.' The slightly longer explanation is here. And the even longer explanation is here. So, the question, looking past the obvious robot-overlord connotations that people tend to pick out, how would one actually design and write a \"phenotropic program?\""}
{"_id": "142873", "title": "What software development model has worked best for software teams with heavy dependancy on hardware teams?", "text": "There are a number of competing best practices for software development. From what I have found, many teams have benefited from **Agile** practices in some cases. However, in some other cases, using the **Unified Process** has been championed by large companies like IBM. The common themes that I find seemed to work well for teams that mainly develop software. I am interested to know what has worked best for people who have worked in shops where there is a team on the other side that produce the hardware that your software is running on. For example, one team puts together a crate with several custom hardware on it; while you need to develop the software that would run on those crates. I can't find a development model (agile, spiral ...) that works best in this case. Any wisdom is this area will be well appreciated."}
{"_id": "142870", "title": "Can the overuse of custom taglibs disrupt the outsourcing of html designers?", "text": "Yesterday me and a friend were talking about the overuse of custom taglibs. We create taglibs for everything. We create taglibs in order to wrap jQuery UI elements (tabs, button, etc), and other plugins elements as well. We often wrap them together in a single component. We use taglibs in a point that we almost have no pure html within the body tag. Our question is: **is this a healthy habit?** Imagine two situations: 1) We hire an html designer and have the cost of a month for him to learn all this stuff. 2) We want to outsource the html development but no company would get our taglib library to learn, OR it become more expensive. We love taglibs as its been a lovely shortcut for javascipt development as we write it only once. What would be the best practices in this sense, and what would you suggest? We are looking for a future-proof solution (or an argument that agrees with ours)."}
{"_id": "139242", "title": "What parts of Code Complete haven't stood the test of time?", "text": "I was looking at Code Complete on the shelf, thinking, \"Outside of the Mythical Man Month, this may be one of the few mass market Software Engineering books to stand the test of time.\" For this reason, I'm thinking of jumping in to reread it. I'm curious - has anyone else given it a second look recently? I so, did you see anything he got very wrong? This isn't an attack, and not a request for a book review - I am more interested in which ideas have changed over the years. And please - no comment about, \"Demarco/Spewak/Zachman stood the test of time...\" I am specifically interested in Code Complete because of the breadth of ground it covers, and breadth of impact it had in the field."}
{"_id": "139241", "title": "Where can I find simple, but well-written programs to learn from?", "text": "I've tried a few times to look at the source code for various things from github or other sites, in javascript, C#, PHP, etc. I'm never able to understand the programs as a whole though. I can sort of piece together what a specific snippet of code does, but I quickly lose the context of what I'm looking at and how it fits in. I want to be able to improve, but everything I've tried learning from so far has been too big. Where can I find well-written, but not very complex source code to look at? edit: Sorry, to be more specific, I'm hoping for javascript/php/C#."}
{"_id": "196105", "title": "Testing multi-threaded race conditions", "text": "Reading the comments to this answer, specifically: > Just because you can't write a test doesn't mean it's not broken. Undefined > behaviour which usually happens to work as expected (C and C++ are full of > that), race conditions, potential reordering due to a weak memory model... \u2013 > **_CodesInChaos** 7 hours ago_ > @CodesInChaos if it cant be reproduced then the code written to 'fix' cant > be tested either. And putting untested code into live is a worse crime in my > opinion \u2013 **_RhysW** 5 hours ago_ ...has me wondering if there are any good general ways to consistently trigger very infrequently occurring in production problems caused by race conditions in test case."}
{"_id": "139244", "title": "Establish/meet deadlines when I am constantly working with unfamiliar platforms and frameworks", "text": "I work for a product development organization that is in online advertising. The assignments I receive are almost always on platforms or tools that I have never worked on before. At first it was android. Then node.js, then windows phone, then debian packaging, then python, hadoop, ganglia, reverse engineering, geo PostgreSQL, and the list goes on. I am happy to be able to learn so much while on the job. The problem I keep running into is meeting deadlines. Often times it is not clear what is needed to be done to accomplish a certain task. I would need to set up the relevant SDK, run intobeginning issues, read online, pore through documentation, research online for every single item of work in that platform. Sometimes I am given deadlines, sometimes I create those deadlines. I find it very hard to meet deadlines a lot of times. One becomes faster at doing something the second time around but I never work on some language or framework for longer than a week or two. And this is very stressful and painful to deal with. I get all the flak and public shaming that comes with missing deadlines. I suspect this cannot be normal. It cannot be possible to deliver 7 windows aphone apps not knowing a single thing about c# in a week. But I managed to do it one-day after the deadline. All I have a lot of times is google search to guide me. Often there is little to no documentation on the tool I am customizing. I sometimes get stuck on something sometimes for hours or even days. This takes a toll on my health and I am no longer able to burn the midnight oil for every task. This causes a lot of mental anguish and depression. In this situation, Am I correct in thinking any deadline I provide is a shot in the dark? Is this normal? Does every single work item for you involve learning something completely new every time? I am not sure if it is fair to say I am a poor performer for not being able to meet deadlines on tasks involving a tool I don't know anything about. How do I handle this?"}
{"_id": "166628", "title": "From where is a DES key generated?", "text": "GOing over a lecture on DES   I got most of it except WHERE DOES DES KEY COME FROM?   Does an authority give you the key or what?   Simple language please"}
{"_id": "227892", "title": "Parsing Razor-style Templates", "text": "I want to build a template engine (ITT not another template engine...) based on Razor. I've been at it for quite a long time not getting anywhere and quite frankly I'm at my limit. I've tried rolling my own, I've tried generating using ANTLR and I reckon I just need someone to tell me if I have to bite the bullet and do this the hard way. To be honest I've been trying to do this as simple as possible. '@' denotes the start of a special statement. A statement could be:   * an identifier of a variable   * an identifier of a function call. Parens must be balanced, and handle strings.   * the start of one of Java's logic constructs (if, for, while/do)   * a single line statement that yields a output value @( )   * a multi line block of statements @{ } The part which is killing me: everything within {} is treated as code UNLESS:   * it is escaped with @:. The line is treated as text   * a html tag is found . Everything from that point on is treated as text So, now we have issues as the '<' token now has context. It could either LT or the start of a HTML tag. It does not help either that a tag could also have attributes, and each attribute could also have special statements in them. Then, I also need to balance brackets and string quotes as well. There is also the added complexity of the lack of terminating sentinels (unlike say, php, which has tags). It seems impossible to parse these as alternating CODE - RAW - CODE - RAW tokens, so that the end result is simply me combining pieces of tokens into a Java class and let the Java compiler handle syntax. I'm just about to double down and reimplement the Java grammar and parse everything. Something which I am not keen on doing... :( Anyway, let me know if there's any easier ways to approach this, or how you would attempt this exercise. Regards, Daryl"}
{"_id": "56614", "title": "Are there any surveys on to what degree developers like or hate scrum?", "text": "Background: During a conference an analyst pointed out in a tweet that developers hate scrum. Myself and another person responded that this was not the case, and started discussing different scenarios on why developers would dislike scrum. One of the scenarios where that lazy developers are not able to hide in a scrum project. They are constantly challenged by the team to contribute. This discussion resulted in a blog post and video http://elsewhat.com/2010/05/20/lazy-developers-hate-agile-and%C2%A0scrum/ I've gotten three comments which I've tried to answer in a neutral way, but they comments do point out that there are some people who loathe scrum (and I am always 100% certain they are not lazy developers). **Question** **Have there ever been a survey among developers on to what degree developers like or hate scrum ?**"}
{"_id": "227895", "title": "iOS chat application design, sending/relaying the message over to the end user", "text": "I have a design question. Let us say you were tasked with building a chat application, specifically for iOS (iOS Chat Application). For simplicity let us say you can only chat with one person at a time (no group chat functionality). How then can you achieve sending a message directly to an end user from phone A to phone B? Obviously there is a web service layer with some API calls. One of the API calls available will be `startChat()`. After starting a chat, when you send a message, you make another async call, let us call it `sendMessage()` and pass in a string with your message. Once it goes to the web service layer, the message gets stored in a database. Here is where I am currently stuck. After the message gets sent to the web service layer, how do we then achieve sending/relaying the message over to the end user? Should the web server send out a message to the end user and notify them, or should each client call a `receiveMessage()` method periodically, and if the server side has some info for them it can then respond with that info? Finally, how can we handle the case in which the user you are trying to send a message to is offline? How can we make sure the end user gets the packet when he moves back to an area with signal?"}
{"_id": "166462", "title": "When is a Use Case layer needed?", "text": "In his blog post The Clean Architecture Uncle Bob suggests a 4-layer architecture. I understand the separation between business rules, interfaces and infrastructure, but I wonder if/when it's necessary to have separate layers for domain objects and use cases. What added value will it bring, compared to just having the uses cases as \"domain services\" in the domain layer? The only useful info I've found on the web about a use case layer is an article by Martin Fowler, who seems to contradict Uncle Bob about its necessity: > At some point I may run into the problems, and then I'll make a Use Case > Controller - but only then. And even when I do that I rarely consider the > Use Case Controllers to occupy a separate layer in the system architecture. Edit: I stumbled upon a video of Uncle Bob's Architecture: The Lost Years keynote, in which he explains this architecture in depth. Very informative."}
{"_id": "57564", "title": "Why is there no Git client for Android?", "text": "Since there is a pure Java implementation of basic Git features called JGit, which also has a couple of heavy-duty users (Gerrit), I can't help to wonder: why hasn't someone implemented a basic Git client for Android yet? Anyone know any reason which would make this impossible (apart from time)?"}
{"_id": "109378", "title": "Should we adopt an agile methodology when rewriting an existing application from scratch?", "text": "I work for a small product based company. We are about to re-write our existing product from scratch. We are planing to adopt Agile methodology for our development. Now my question is as we have all the requirements even before start of project (as we are re-writing the existing product), is it worth to dive into Agile world? Isn't agile more useful when you don't have all the requirement upfront and you get your requirement in phases? Secondly, let's say if we jump into Agile, whats the best practice to design database? Let's say in our first iteration we just create a login system (user can login, logout etc). Do we just need to create Users table without worrying about other tables? And other tables would be evolved as our product would progress?"}
{"_id": "8236", "title": "How do I find a qualified web designer in my area?", "text": "I just sent out emails to five local web design companies to my area asking to take drawings to HTML/CSS/jQuery. None of the ones who accepted the deal seem suitable to myself. Others rejected the offer because they wanted to 'provide an end-to-end solution' or are 'booked till June'. The local companies did not seem suitable to myself because my review process is this: goto their website, do a view-source. I'll see really weird things (contact us forms that go nowhere), really old things (mm_menu.js), and portfolios that are non-existent (aren't on the site, don't link anywhere, or otherwise). The company would like to hire as locally as they can rather than out-source to another country. **Answers I'm looking for**   * Processes you use when searching for someone   * How you qualify their aptitude for the project   * Anything that you think I'm doing wrong, or should be doing also. **Answers I'm not looking for:**   1. \"Hello sir please contact me we do everything for 10 dolla.\"   2. My bud's great at this stuff, call him.   3. example.com is the best for this."}
{"_id": "136376", "title": "Is mootools alternative of jquery + backbone / spine / sprouteCore", "text": "I was a full time java developer, now I'm also working with JavaScript and Android. A couple of years back when I started learning JavaScript, the first library I tried was jQuery. But it made my life harder, and after sometime I started writing fairly large a JavaScript app. It wasn't coming together for me using jQuery. I had huge a code base without much of a structure. Method blocks updating HTML blocks using selectors. Then I tried MooTools and obviously as a Java developer it appealed to me a lot. And I was able to write managable web apps having huge code base. As per my understanding MooTools is not considered a preferred way to write JavaScript because it mimics conventional OO over default prototype-based OO language. So now to really understand Javascript and desire of walking with the world, I decided to try other approaches, so again I turned back to jQuery, and realise that only jQueryis not enough. So started looking at current trending frameworks like backbone, spine, ember.js, sprouteCore. Strangely I found that these frameworks mimic conventional OO like MooTools only by having constructors and creating a object of class and reusing this class object to create instance objects. So   * Am I missing something?    * Is MooTools really wrong?    * MooTools project is very alive and releases new versions/features, but I don't see many people talking about it on internet, also there are no comparisons vs backbone/spine etc."}
{"_id": "231975", "title": "Preparing for an interview slightly outside my skillset", "text": "I have 4 years of experience in web development, so: PHP, javascript, Mysql, HTML, CSS, the usuals. I have an interview soon for a position involving c#, wpf and other desktop programming languages. Its a junior position, which I perceive as: someone willing to learn, junior to no knowledge and fast learner. I have very limited experience in c# and wpf but no knowledge of some other requirements. In the initial round of interviews which were conducted via video, so not face to face, I was honest, I told them I am keen to learn, but have limited and no experience in what they offer but I do have transferable skills. Surprisingly to me they offered a face to face interview considering how honest I was about I didn't atm meet much of the desired requirements. What would have lead them to offer me a face to face interview? How should I approach this interview without sounding to repetitive and begging whilst being honest but confident?"}
{"_id": "223656", "title": "Is a development environment required for small projects?", "text": "I won a bid on Elance and was had a request to fix some css and html issues with a WordPress site. How do I make changes to the document without working on the live site? Do you set up a development environment for every job you get? This would be time consuming on a job that pays very little. I was offered access to the wp-admin and the cpanel but any changes would affect the live site immediately. What is the best practice for changing and updating sites for clients? Any advice on how to develop on a site that you do not have the full install on is helpful."}
{"_id": "52035", "title": "Recruiting programmers- going beyong the code", "text": "I'm recruiting coders. The first step is to carry out a test to cut out the \"chafe\", but do I just make a decision based on the fact that the shortlisted candidates are the best in the world at coding? What should I look out for that would guarantee that the persons i finally hire are not only the best coders but also are the best fit for my company. What should the tests exactly measure?"}
{"_id": "250664", "title": "Technical reasons to prefer coding business logic to support Unicode (when not required)", "text": "I have a legacy application in which the UI and business logic are already reasonably well-separated. There is a proposal to separate them even further, turning the core application into a \"service\" (without UI) and writing a kind of \"UI Server\" as part of it to which various UIs (potentially in various languages, and for various different devices and operators) can connect to get/set the data to drive the application via those UIs. On the surface, this seems to make a nice separation between the business logic, which is currently completely ignorant of the possibility of Unicode, and the UI, which is going to need to get very familiar with Unicode to support multiple languages in the UI(s). Now this application essentially monitors a production process, and has very little (if any) traffic directly from UI to database via the business layer. It strikes me that the \"natural language\" of this process might as well be Chemistry or Mathematics, and so internally I should stick to the language that best describes it, so long as I can translate from that language into anything any UI requires (which I believe should be possible). This leads me to prefer (the simplicity and familiarity and least work path of) retaining old-fashioned 8-bit chars over moving to Unicode. Are there any technical reasons to reject keeping the business logic part of an application ignorant of Unicode like this? And even if the \"natural language\" of the system were \"English-without-too-many-strings-or-dates\" rather than Chemistry, would that make a difference?"}
{"_id": "26137", "title": "How common is prototyping as the first stage of development?", "text": "I've been taking some software design courses in the past few semesters, and while I see the benefit in a lot of the formalism, I feel like it doesn't tell me anything about the program itself:   * You can't tell how the program is going to operate from the Use Case spec, even though it discusses what the program can do.   * You can't tell anything about the user experience from the requirements document, even though it can include quality requirements.   * Sequence diagrams are a good description of how the software works as the call stack, but are very limited, and give a highly partial view of the overall system.   * Class diagrams are great for describing how the system is built, but are utterly useless in helping you figure out what the software needs to be.  Where in all this formalism is the bottom line: how the program looks, operates, and what experience it gives? Doesn't it make more sense to design off of that? Isn't it better to figure out how the program should work via a prototype and strive to implement it for real? I know that I'm probably suffering from being taught engineering by theoreticians, but I need to ask, do they do this in the industry? How do people figure out what the program actually is, not what it should conform to? Do people prototype a lot, or do they mostly use the formal tools like UML and I just didn't get the hang of using them yet?"}
{"_id": "250666", "title": "Is there a way to write this fold neater in Haskell?", "text": "I have the following small function that uses foldr to find the largest second number of a 2-tuple:               listMax :: [(Int,Int)] -> Int     listMax = snd . foldr (\\(_,freq1) (_,freq2) -> (0,max freq1 freq2)) (0,0)      My question pertains to the body of the lambda:               (0,max freq1 freq2)      I had to make it into a tuple with a dummy head so that it matches it's own input for the fold. To me though, it looks ugly and makes it harder to read. Is this the standard way of dealing with this situation, or is there a idiomatic way around this?"}
{"_id": "204791", "title": "Is it legitimate to ask co-workers to use specific browser in an intranet website?", "text": "I developed an intranet (local network) `ASP.NET` web project for my co- workers. In the development process I used `Chrome` and `Firefox` and didn't test much with `Internet Explorer`. The website works well with `Firefox` and `Chrome` and with `IE` it had major bugs. **Is it legitimate to ask the users to use`Chrome` or `Firefox`?** They are all co-workers (around 15 users). I don't want to spend time fixing the bugs for `IE`, some might be related to stuff I can't fix myself (`jQuery` things), if I wanted to be compatible with all browsers, I would have to make a major re-design,"}
{"_id": "188", "title": "When should I care about performance?", "text": "For the longest time in places like Java's IRC channel, SO, and other places I've been told something along the lines of \"Worry about how the code looks and its readability/understandability now, and performance later if absolutely necessary\". So for the longest time, I haven't really been OCD about performance for my small desktop or web apps, just removing the obviously inefficient. Most responses are \"What about scalability?\". Thats a legitimate point, but if my app was only built to parse, say, files 10,000 lines long, should I make my code a mess for the small percentage of people that are going to shove in a 1,000,000 line file? My main question is when should I trade the easy but somewhat inefficient ways of doing tasks for big giant complicated beasts that do things extremely quickly but destroy any possible ways of upgrading and make the code excessively difficult and prone to rewriting anyway by the next developer?"}
{"_id": "227766", "title": "Changing method signature for implementing classes in PHP", "text": "Is there any decent work around to PHP's lack of Generics that allow static code inspection to detect type consistency? I have an abstract class, that I want to sub-class and also enforce that one of the methods changes from taking a parameter of one type, to taking a parameter which is a sub-class of that parameter.               abstract class AbstractProcessor {         abstract function processItem(Item $item);     }          class WoodProcessor extends AbstractProcessor {         function processItem(WoodItem $item){}     }      This is not allowed in PHP because it's changing the methods signature which is not allowed. With Java style generics you could do something like:               abstract class AbstractProcessor<T> {         abstract function processItem(T $item);     }          class WoodProcessor extends AbstractProcessor<WoodItem> {         function processItem(WoodItem $item);     }      But obviously PHP doesn't support those. Google for this problem, people suggest using instanceof to check errors at run-time e.g.               class WoodProcessor extends AbstractProcessor {         function processItem(Item $item){             if (!($item instanceof WoodItem)) {                 throw new \\InvalidArgumentException(\"item of class \".get_class($item).\" is not a WoodItem\");             }          }     }      But that only works at runtime, it doesn't allow you to inspect your code for errors using static analysis - so is there any sensible way of handling this in PHP? A more complete example of the problem is:               class StoneItem extends Item{}     class WoodItem extends Item{}          class WoodProcessedItem extends ProcessedItem {         function __construct(WoodItem $woodItem){}     }          class StoneProcessedItem extends ProcessedItem{         function __construct(StoneItem $stoneItem){}     }          abstract class AbstractProcessor {              /**          * @return ProcessedItem          */         abstract function processItem(Item $item);              function processAndBoxItem(Box $box, Item $item) {            $processedItem = $this->processItem($item);            $box->insertItem($item);         }              //Lots of other functions that can call processItem     }               class WoodProcessor extends AbstractProcessor {         function processItem(Item $item) {             return new ProcessedWoodItem($item); //This has an inspection error         }     }          class StoneProcessor extends AbstractProcessor {         function processItem(Item $item) {             return new ProcessedStoneItem($item);//This has an inspection error         }     }      Because I'm passing in just an `Item` to `new ProcessedWoodItem($item)` and it expects a WoodItem as the parameter, the code inspection suggests there is an error."}
{"_id": "204799", "title": "Am I slow or is this normal?", "text": "I am currently in high school and I discovered programming 3 years ago but I am still not \"good\" and it is difficult for me some times to understand, especially about data structures, bytes etc... Moreover, when I program I waste most of my time not creating but searching my syntax error, commas and all those things. I am very slow. I would love to be an expert is programming but I feel like I am too \"dumb\" to go threw those difficulties. At the same time, I feel passionated about Technology, Computers and Coding... So, is it normal to be slow as I am even 3 years after discovering development or Am I just not made for this? Does anybody experienced the same feelings? Would it become better with college?"}
{"_id": "141523", "title": "How to work on my personal ideas during the weekend?", "text": "I'm working full time 5 days a week, mostly between 10 and 14 hours a day. In the end of the day I'm very tired and just wanna take a shower, hang out and go to sleep. I have a lot of ideas that I want to implement and someday sell maybe through an online software business. I have my weekends free. However, when I get to the weekend I can't even imagine myself turn on the computer. But I really want to make my ideas happen, and I can't leave my job right now to devote myself only to my ideas. What do you say? Do you find some method helpful? Do you use some technique? Thanks"}
{"_id": "113247", "title": "Prevalence of \"back end\" programmer roles in ASP.NET (MVC) projects?", "text": "First, unless anyone has better definitions, let's define \"back end\" and \"front end\" according to their usage here: Is it common to separate back-end and front-end into two positions on web development projects?. How common is it to find programmers exclusively assigned to back end or front end roles on a team? What's the scope of their responsibilities?"}
{"_id": "185886", "title": "We are spending more time implementing functional test than implementing the system itself, is this normal?", "text": "Basically, we have three main projects, two of them are web services, and the other is a web application. While I'm satisfied with covering as much as we can of our web services with functional test (all three projects have their proper unit tests), functional tests for the web application are taking a lot of developer time to get implemented (and by a lot I mean two times, or some times more, the time that takes to implement the functionality being tested with unit test included) The manager policy is to test every single functionality we add, even if is not business critical (i.e a new C.R.U.D). I do agree with testing all of the web services functionality, because is hard to manually test them, and also, this tests run fast and doesn't take to much to implement. So, what's the value in spending more time writing functional test, than writing system code, unit test and fixing QA tikets? Is this normal? shouldn't we be writing functional test only for critical functionality and let QA to do regression tests over no critical functionality? Note: we are not developing medical software or NASA software or nothing that critical. Note2: sorry my bad English!"}
{"_id": "187958", "title": "Apache License and patents", "text": "I am trying to understand how Apache License affects patents. In regards to the Apache website http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 section 3, am I right to say for the first part that it is saying the licensee is allowed to do pretty much anything with the patent? In the latter part, is it saying that if a licensor decides to sue someone who is infringing over their patent they will lose all their patents or is it talking about the licensee? I'm not a lawyer and this is all very confusing =("}
{"_id": "182354", "title": "Reasons for removal of function types in Java 8", "text": "I have been trying to understand why the JDK 8 Lambda Expert Group (EG) decided not to include a new function type into the Java programming language. Going over the mailing list I found a thread with the discussion about removal of function types. Many of the statements are ambiguous to me, maybe because of the lack of context and in some cases because of my limited knowledge on the implementation of type systems. However, there are a couple of questions that I believe I can safely formulate in this site to help me understand better what they meant. I know I could ask the questions in the mailing list, but the thread is old and all decisions are already made, so chances are that I will be ignored, above all seeing that these guys are already getting delayed with their plans. In his answer to support the removal of function types and endorse the use of SAM types, Brian Goetz says: > No reification. There was a long thread about how useful it would be for > function types to be reified. Without reification, function types are > hobbled. I couldn't find the thread he mentions. Now, I can understand that the introduction of a structural function type may imply certain complications in the Java mostly nominal type system, what I cannot understand is how parametrized SAM types are different in terms of reification. Aren't they both subject to the same reification problems? Does anyone understands how function types are different than parametrized SAM types in terms of reification? In another comment Goetz says: > There are two basic approaches to typing: nominal and structural. The > identity of a nominal is based on its name; the identity of a structural > type is based on what it is composed of (such as \"tuple of int, int\" or > \"function from int to float\".) Most languages pick mostly nominal or mostly > structural; there are not a lot of languages that successfully mix nominal > and structural typing except \"around the edges.\" Java is almost entirely > nominal (with a few exceptions: arrays are a structural type, but at the > bottom there is always a nominal element type; generics have a mix of > nominal and structural too, and this is in fact part of the source of many > of people's complaints about generics.) Grafting a structural type system > (function types) onto Java's nominal type system means new complexity and > edge cases. Is the benefit of function types worth this? Those of you with experience in the implementation of type systems. Do you know any examples of these complexities or edge cases that he mentions here? Honestly I get confused by these allegations when I consider that a programming language like Scala, which is entirely based on the JVM, has support for structural types like functions and tuples, even with the reification problems of the underlying platform. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that a function type should be better than the SAM types. I just want to understand why they took this decision."}
{"_id": "182353", "title": "Using xml datatype to store a \"shopping cart\"", "text": "For my final project in school we have to develop an online shop. This shop should have a cart where items can be placed whether or not you are logged in. If you log out the cart shouldn't empty and should still be shown. So my question is would it make sense to store the cart as xml in the database(ms sql server)? There is potentially a (relatively)fair amount of data that should be kept, is it possible that this could deliver any performance benefits or am I way off base?"}
{"_id": "37467", "title": "The MsC gray zone: How to deal with the \"too unexperienced on engineering/too under-qualified for research\" situation?", "text": "Last year I've got a MsC degree on CS. On the beginning of the MsC course, I was keen on moving on with research and go for a PhD. However, as the months passed, I started to feel the urge to write software that people would, well, _actually use_. The programming bug had bitten me, again. So, I decided that before deciding on getting a PhD degree, I would spend some time on the \"real world\", working as a software developer. Sadly, most companies here in Brazil are \"services\" companies that seem to be stuck on the 80s when it comes to software development. I have to fend off pushy managers, less-than-competent coworkers and outrageous software requirements (why does everyone seem to need a 50k Oracle license and a behemoth Websphere AS for their CRUD applications?) on a daily basis, and even though I still love software development, the situation is starting to touch a nerve. And, mind you, I'm already lucky for getting a job at a place that isn't a plain software sweatshop. Sure, there are better places around here or I could always try my luck abroad, but then I hit the proverbial brick wall: > Sorry, you're too unexperienced as a developer and too under-qualified as a > researcher I've already heard this, and variations of, multiple times. Research position recruiters look for die-hard, publication-ridden, rockstar PhDs, while development position recruiters look for die-hard, experience-ridden, rockstar programmers. To most, my MsC degree seems like a minor bump on my CV (and an outright waste of time for some). Applying for abroad positions is even harder, since the employer would have to deal of the hassle of a VISA process, which I understand that, sometimes, is too much. Now I'm feeling I've reached a dead-end. I'm certain that development (and not research) is my thing, so should I just dismiss my MsC (or play it as a \"trump card\") and play the \"big fish on a small pond\" role while I gather some experience and contribute on some open-source projects as a plus? Is there a better way to handle this?"}
{"_id": "187956", "title": "How important is understanding the coding behind sorts?", "text": "First off, if this is in the wrong place I apologise. I wasn't too sure on which of the Stack Exchange sites to ask it. I am studying Software Development at university, on a one year conversion course. My main programming language is Java. We have just finished studying searches and sorts. Focussing on the latter in particular, I had a hard time working through the intricacy of the code. Some, like an insertion sort, were obvious enough. Others, like the merge sort, I found extremely tricky to get my head around. I understand totally _how_ they work, I just wouldn't want to _implement_ my own. I've been told most programmers don't create their own sorts/searches as the built in methods in Java are more reliable and generally faster. However, it's considered good practice to know these sorts. When I look at a sort like the merge sort, or binary sort, I think to myself that I could never have come up with such solutions. They are too intricate and complicated. This brings me to my question. Do most programmers use sorts like people use simple Maths formulae, e.g. the area of a triangle or circle, where you apply it almost mesmerically? As a programmer would you put any real effort into trying to develop new, or more efficient sorts? Or if you knew a sort was needed would you simply know which was better through the bigOh notation and then just copy and paste the same thing in, without ever really thinking about the coding behind it? Note: if this question is not fit for Q&A (I did look at the FAQ and I think it is), please advise me where I could post. Thank you."}
{"_id": "187955", "title": "spotting graph cycles - simple explanation", "text": "could some please help me understand how to find cycles in graphs in laymans terms? I have read other questions, such as This one and also some of the wikipedia pages, but they seem to descend rather quickly into mathematical jargon. I have a model of the graph in java, modelling nodes, and 'in' and 'out' edges - and the model knows nodes only connected in one direction, this allows me to find the leaf nodes as a starting point, my plan was to walk back up the graph from each of these leaf nodes, for each \"walk\", keeping a list of all the other nodes I've found on my route. If I see something already in the list at any point, I'll know I've found a cycle in the graph. This however feels a little simplistic. I'm sure this is a solved problem, it would just be nice if it could be explained in simple terms. -ace"}
{"_id": "249902", "title": "Does this kind of programming language exist?", "text": "I'm thinking about creating my own pet programming language, and I have been wondering if similar language already exists. The basic idea is that the language itself would be dynamically typed with strong metaprogramming capabilities (think Ruby). But instead of running it directly, it would be interpreted/expanded into another language, that would be statically typed, with static data structure and minimal dynamic dispatch (think C). This would then be compiled to machine code. The expansion could happen before running the program or during it's deployment, and all necessary libraries would be part of it, instead of each library being expanded separately. Before I start working on it, I would like to know if anything like that already exists. So I can either inspire myself or drop it, because it would be useless work."}
{"_id": "249903", "title": "How specific should be an interface about its implementation details?", "text": "Perhaps I should have picked a better title, but anyway... Basically what to do with two or more implementations that have the same public interface, but they are meant for slightly different purposes having a slightly different behavior? For example let's say a proxy class that uses the same public interface of the original class but with important changes in its behavior.               interface MyTest     {         getSomething() : MySomething;     }          interface MyTestImmutable (extends MyTest ?)     {         // same interface, but in this case the following method         // is supposed to return a clone of the stored MySomething instance         getSomething() : MySomething;     }      Thanks"}
{"_id": "75107", "title": "Astronomy and Cosmology Computing?", "text": "I'm wondering if there is any course in University or anywhere else or probably company that has a department for Astronomy and Cosmology related computer science (I know NASA will need one). I would like to know how much demand or popularity of this field of programming. Where else will this field being used?"}
{"_id": "3440", "title": "How do you avoid being a \"blowhard\"?", "text": "When I'm passionate about something (particularly programming) I find it really easy come off like the guy Peter G. was talking about in Dealing with the \u201cprogramming blowhard\u201d. So what techniques do you use to 1) Identify when you are indeed a blowhard? 2) Communicate something \"important\" without seeming self important? Specific example help like When giving criticism ask \"have you considered what happens when XXX changes\" instead of \"never take dependencies on implementation details\" When giving advice \"showing with code is better than talking\" or use a reference."}
{"_id": "138118", "title": "What security is used by default in WSHttpBinding (service side) or the WCF Test client (client side)?", "text": "I recently moved a service from BasicHttpBinding to WSHttpBinding (i.e. soap 1.1 -> soap 1.2). In WCF, using WSHttpBinding() makes it start using some default security settings. I presume the same default security settings are also used by the WCF Test Client since the client and server can continue talking after switching to the 'secured' WSHttpBinding. In fiddler, I've confirmed this security setup since I can witness a more complex security handshakes from the previously dead-simple request-response i.e. **Before:** (BasicHttpBinding)   1. [HttpRequest ] (Soap Request In Clear) [HttpResponse] (Soap Response In Clear) **After:** (WSHttpBinding)   1. [HttpRequest ] RequestSecurityToken [HttpResponse] RequestSecurityTokenResponse   2. [HttpRequest ] RequestSecurityToken [HttpResponse] RequestSecurityTokenResponse   3. [HttpRequest ] RequestSecurityTokenResponse  [HttpResponse] RequestSecurityTokenResponseCollection   4. [HttpRequest ] EncryptedData  [HttpResponse] EncryptedData   5. [HttpRequest ] EncryptedData **(actual application level request)** [HttpResponse] EncryptedData **(actual application level response)** So I can safely assume security is being applied. Now to the questions: **Question 1: What are the security settings?** I never told WCF of any membership provider. In fact I don't have any table (SQL or XML) of any usernames <-> passwords. So what kind of authentication is happening? Although WCF Test Client can authenticate as above, SoapUI doesn't pick up these Microsoft .NET defaults and has issues. SoapUI attempts clear text communications and then the server responds with an incorrect security token error. **Question 2: What is the most commonly practiced security model for SOAP 1.2?** Is it via certificates or username passwords or digest or **_** ? How are those credentials stored (SQL/XML?) and configured on the WCF server side?"}
{"_id": "199252", "title": "Strengthening code with possibly useless exception handling", "text": "Is it a good practice to implement useless exception handling, just in case another part of the code is not coded correctly? ## Basic example A simple one, so I don't loose everybody :). Let's say I'm writing an app that will display a person's information (name, address, etc.), the data being extracted from a database. Let's say I'm the one coding the UI part, and someone else is writing the DB query code. Now imagine that the specifications of your app say that if the person's information is incomplete (let's say, the name is missing in the database), the person coding the query should handle this by returning \"NA\" for the missing field. What if the query is poorly coded and doesn't handle this case? What if the guy who wrote the query handles you an incomplete result, and when you try to display the informations, everything crashes, because your code isn't prepared to display empty stuff? This example is very basic. I believe most of you will say \"it's not your problem, you're not responsible for this crash\". But, it's still your part of the code which is crashing. ## Another example Let's say now I'm the one writing the query. The specifications don't say the same as above, but that the guy writing the \"insert\" query should make sure all the fields are complete when adding a person to the database to avoid inserting incomplete information. Should I protect my \"select\" query to make sure I give the UI guy complete informations? ## The questions What if the specifications don't explicitly say \"this guy is the one in charge of handling this situation\"? What if a third person implements another query (similar to the first one, but on another DB) and uses your UI code to display it, but doesn't handle this case in his code? **Should I do what's necessary to prevent a possible crash, even if I'm not the one supposed to handle the bad case?** I'm not looking for an answer like \"(s)he's the one responsible for the crash\", as I'm not solving a conflict here, I'd like to know, should I protect my code against situations it's not my responsibility to handle? Here, a simple \"if empty do something\" would suffice. In general, this question tackles redundant exception handling. I'm asking it because when I work alone on a project, I may code 2-3 times a similar exception handling in successive functions, \"just in case\" I did something wrong and let a bad case come through."}
{"_id": "138115", "title": "What are the advantages to using SQL query builders?", "text": "Are there any advantages to using a query builder, rather than using raw SQL? E.g.               $q->select('*')       ->from('posts')       ->innerJoin('terms', 'post_id')       ->where(...)      vs:               SELECT * FROM posts WHERE ...      I see that many frameworks use these kind of abstraction layers, but I fail to understand the benefits."}
{"_id": "167578", "title": "Good Practices of writing release notes", "text": "At the delivery of every version of software we have to write a release note. For example, here are some of the terms I add when I write a release note:   * Release Date   * Bug Solved Is that enough, or is there anything else?"}
{"_id": "133123", "title": "How could I make automatic tests for GUI?", "text": "How can I check automatically what is seen and what not? Or at least, how can I organize some partly automatic tests? IDE: Eclipse (could use also IntelliJ Idea if necessary) Testing tool: Junit (again, could use something else if advised, but better if it is free) Application OS: Android Developer's OS: Linux (could change for MAC or Windows(reluctantly)) Language: Java All the work goes in the external device. No emulator. The application is a user wrapper for the firmware TV player, called as external activity. So, 70% of the code is for GUI. (The other 30% speak to servers and provides info to the GUI) Before I programmed the testing function myself, not using any tools. Now I have a tool at hand. But I can't imagine how could I test the UI, with the tool or without it. (Strictly said, with the Internet connections I have problems too, but I'll leave them probably for the other question.) The answer needn't be too platform-dependent, the principles and ideas will help, too. Of course, it is good to check, is some element in another and checked or not. Some regression checks would be nice for that. But I should also be sure that the element mentioned is not cut by some other elements and winks as I ordered by animation. The advices here: Is there a tool to test Java UI? won't help - there are only tools, not principles, and none of the tools could help in my situation."}
{"_id": "220080", "title": "Is it possible to check a client side application identity from server side?", "text": "Assume there is a web service which is visible publicly but it must be just responsive to a specific client application. Is there any mechanism to check client side application identity to prevent disallowed application to access the service? For instance, I have a web service which is called by my iOS application. I want to prevent others from calling my web service. Regarding the fact that others can decompile my client application and create another one which is working the same as mine, I think the only way to avoid unwanted access to the service is to check application identity on server to ensure the request comes from my own application. Is there any robust and secure way to do that?"}
{"_id": "219025", "title": "Naming convention for higher order functions?", "text": "Is there a naming convention for higher order functions? That is, functions which return other functions. An example in Javascript:               function onlyDivisibleBy(div) { // <-- higher order function       return function (n) {         return n % div === 0;       }     }          var arr = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9];          arr.filter(onlyDivisibleBy(3)); // [0, 3, 6, 9]     arr.filter(onlyDivisibleBy(5)); // [0, 5]      I've tended to write it as above: that is, optimising for legibility at the invocation point (I'd read the last lines above as \"filter the array to get items only divisible by 5\"), however at the definition point away from the context in which it's used, it's not so easy to understand what this function does from its name."}
{"_id": "14152", "title": "Best process for product development and maintenance by a small team?", "text": "I'm going to be managing projects for a very small (2-5) senior developer team. They develop a subscription based web application. It has been in use for many years so at this point the work involves:   1. Developing new features and updates to existing features   2. Developing in-house tools and reports   3. Fixing bugs   4. Investigating customer service issues Production releases are sometimes determined by customer obligations, sometimes by competitive advantage, but for the most part are not time- critical. I'd like to have regular production releases to keep the product fresh -- once every 2 months or so. Since the team is so small, the developers themselves will have to be involved in designing, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Since we do not have a dedicated maintenance team I see the major challenge being development and planning disrupted by bug fixing and customer service issues. They can distract us during new feature development and disrupt the release schedule. My initial thought is to do the following:   1. Hire a junior programmer to buffer the senior developers from maintenance tasks. In between maintenance tasks this person can assist the senior devs.   2. Adopt a scrum style approach where we have a series of sprints leading up to a production release. This will allow us to keep the stakeholders in the loop and allow us to reflect and improve our process with each sprint.   3. Shortly following the release, which is when most bugs surface, the team can focus on design for the next release with the expectation that each one will likely get pulled into bug fixing. I'd love to hear your thoughts and lessons learned."}
{"_id": "156951", "title": "Multi-threaded application design", "text": "I'm currently planning a Windows service. It will be a multi-threaded application which will continuously check for database records and process them. My first thoughts were to set a number of max available threads and create new thread for each process. This works OK but since I'm creating a new thread for every new process I fear that its overhead will multiply if there are lots of records to process. My question is, is this a good design or would you recommend any other solutions? Here's what the application will do basically:   1. Check for available number of threads   2. If there are available threads check the database for records to process.   3. If there are records to process select top 100 of them   4. Create a new process   5. Call a web service for each record and update the record according to web service call result (This call+update usually take around 500ms so process will be live for about 50 seconds)   6. Continue to step 1 This is currently what I am doing:               timer1.Tick += Tick();          private void Tick()     {         //do some text logging         //do some TextBox updating     }          int MaxThreads = 10          while(true)     {         if(ThreadCount < MaxThreads)         {             new Thread(() => Process()).Start();             ThreadCount++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(10000);         }     }          private void Process()     {         //call ws         //update records              ThreadCount--;     }"}
{"_id": "106157", "title": "How to release project under public domain?", "text": "I'm currently working on project, which is going to demonstrate how widgets can be done with Context Framework. I will also publish the source code. In this case I want to give users as much freedom as possible, so that they can freely copy-paste, modify and also relicense whatever code they reuse. So, how do I mention that in the project? Are the some ready-made licences etc. that are suitable for this?"}
{"_id": "102647", "title": "Dealing with multiple business requirement streams without compromising team size", "text": "A business has five discrete streams of business requirements to be implemented in software. There is a team of ten developers. A \"naiive\" organisational solution is to split the team into five \"teams\" of two (one per requirements stream). But I feel this compromises the integrity of the team (making teamwork more difficult, causing silo effects, making communication harder etc). Has anyone any insight into how best organise a developer team like this to deliver against multiple requirement streams? Is it workable to have fewer development teams than there are requirements streams?"}
{"_id": "110537", "title": "A description for a changing-wording-of-a-website framework", "text": "I have built a Ruby gem, which allows programmer (or whoever) to change wording on their Rails website. When the edit mode is activated, every text on the website will have an edit icon. User can click on that edit icon and change the corresponding text immediately. It works with text, attributes of any element, select element, and string in Javascript. Now I don't know how to describe it succinctly. Right now the description is \"WhowishWord facilitates the process of changing wording of a website\". I think the description is bad and vague. Maybe there is a regular keyword for this kind of task (changing wording) that I do not know. Could someone help me, please?"}
{"_id": "70885", "title": "What a Site Needs To Be Considered a WebApp?", "text": "I've been looking at the Chrome Store and I started to think about developing some nice stuff to publish there, since I have a machine installed with Chromium and I see the WebApp market a lot better than the platform-specific one. But what a site really needs and how it should be designed to be considered a WebApp?"}
{"_id": "232407", "title": "Is there an anti pattern for historically grown software?", "text": "Is there an anti pattern that describes a historically grown software system where multiple developers just added new features to the system but no one really kept an eye on the overall architecture nor were refactorings ever done? I think this happens when management/customer asks for new feature constantly and no one ever refactors anything but just adds on to what other developers haven done before. A reason could also be that the developer is just overwhelmed with the software system and does not really understand how it currently works and then just adds/glues his code at the very end (instead of refactoring the code and changing it.) So over time it's getting harder and harder to maintain the system. (I wonder if there are pictures for these kind of anti pattern to make this more clear to none programming folks - like a car that was built by just adding more and more features without thinking of the overall design. Like someone has the need to tow trailers while riding backwards and then an engineer just welds a tow bar to the front of the car. Job done. But now the cowl doesn't open anymore.)"}
{"_id": "232400", "title": "Is there a software license \"for personal use only\" and against any derivative work", "text": "I want to release an npm (NodeJS) module that will be a development dependency for extensions built for my product (will be used in testing). I don't want this module to be used in any released derivative work (commercial or free, open or closed source). Is there an existing suitable license that I can use?"}
{"_id": "37285", "title": "Programming languages that improve your programming skill in general?", "text": "What languages would you suggest a programmer to learn, not because they will have a lot of use of the language (but they may have), but because it will improve one's programming skill in general and let one think in a different (and possibly better) way?"}
{"_id": "18304", "title": "Starting as a developer what are the possible career steps?", "text": "I would like to know what kind of **jobs/roles** one could expect on their career path if they start as a developer. I also want to know **how many years** you'll be expected to stay in the same role until you progress to the next level. The career path is of course, based on how good you do your job, the company etc. but assume a normal person who balances life and family with career. Some examples of roles that I have in may head: developer, senior developer, architect, project manager etc."}
{"_id": "108425", "title": "Using SVN along with WAMP", "text": "I would like to run SVN server on my local machine along with WAMP. All SVN server binaries include Apache. Whereas I don't need Apache as I'm already running WAMP. Please let me know if there are any installs available that includes only the SVN server. If there are none available, shall I go ahead with what's available? And how would I do that without breaking anything. PS: I tried CollabNet and VisualSVNServer. Both includes Apache."}
{"_id": "108424", "title": "Legal issues with an NDA that I do not want to sign", "text": "I've been given a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to sign by my current employer that I do not want to sign. It is incredibly open ended and I feel that it should have been a condition of my initial employment agreement, which I signed three weeks ago. The document contains very many definitions in the form of \"including but not limited to,\" and \"directly or indirectly.\" As well, it states that:   * I agree that any breach of the contract would inflict irreparable harm on the company (I agree that a breach may result in harm to the company but not necessarily irreparable harm).   * Should the document be amended any time in the future and I refuse to sign the amendment that I would be in violation of its terms.   * Everything I develop while under the company's employment is its property (neglecting to say whether what I develop on my own time, distinctly from my work, is my own).   * After my employment ends at the company I would be required to continue my duties there to assist in the perfection of its software, that I would not be allowed to perform any duties directly or indirectly related to my duties there for one year after my employment at the company ends (would I not be allowed to engineer software for a year?).   * Should the company decide to prosecute me for breach of contract that I agree not to defend myself, and that all terms in the document would be transferred to any company which purchases the one I work for without my consent. In short, they would legally own me for life and could absolutely destroy me for any reason they deemed fit. Are there any legal arguments that I could use to defend myself against signing the contract? For example, the fact that the NDA was not part of my initial employment agreement or that the document is intentionally abstract and vague to allow them to fill in the blanks any way they please? The company hosts the entirety of its source code on a site which employs a publicly accessible SCM and greatly embraces open source software -- the chances that I would ever come in contact with information that could legally be considered a \"trade secret\" or \"confidential information\" is very slim, so why would I need to sign the NDA? I do not believe that many of the employees there actually took the time to understand the NDA before they signed it, and know for a fact that a few of them did not. Are the terms of this agreement commonplace among the software engineering community?"}
{"_id": "238162", "title": "Writing in C for Performance?", "text": "I know I have quite frequently heard that C typically has a performance advantage over C++. I didn't really think anything else of it until I realized that MSVC doesn't even seem to support the newest standard of C, but the newest it supports it C99 (as far as I know). I was planning on writing a library with some code to render in OpenGL so I could reuse it. I was planning to write the library in C since any performance increase is welcome when it comes to graphics. But would it really be worth it? The code using the library would likely be written in C++ and I prefer to code in C++ generally. However, if it would produce even a small difference in performance, I would likely go with C. It may also be noted that this library would be something that I would make to work across Windows/OS X/Linux, and I would likely compile everything natively (MSVC for Windows, Clang or GCC for OS X, and GCC for Linux...or possibly Intel's compilers for everything). I've looked around and I've found some benchmarks and such, but everything I've seen has dealt with GCC rather than MSVC and Clang. Also, the benchmarks don't mention the standards of the languages used. Anyone have any thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "108428", "title": "Explicit or implicit looping?", "text": "Why or when is \"explicit\" preferred when implicit solutions often are more readable and less code? It says \"explicit is better than implicit\" when for example an implicit loop is better than an explicit loop isn't it?               for every in all:       every.updated = True      The above looks implicit to me and better than an explicit counter since a counter is another thing that can go wrong and why not leave to the compiler or other environment instead of requirement an explicit counter variable:                 for(int i=0, i<a.length, i++)     ...      And there are languages where all looping is \"implicit\" - what does it mean and when is it preferred? And not explicitly setting a value to `null`or `None` or likewise seems better to me and I want to rewrite code when I \"solve\" a requirement by explicitly setting `return null` or `String name = null` since I think being explicit about what should be null and None should have a more clear solution such as only use a variable if it's needed and if I write return null somewhere I'm probably doing it wrong. When I was writing Java I found myself writing `return null` and declaring values as null at some places and I didn't like it and could rewrite it even though the case where I put `return null` was reached only in case of error. I asked the guru at work whether we ever should declare a variable to null, isn't defaults much better? I'd be glad to know your thoughts about this. An example where it _is_ better to be explicit I can think of is declaring a list and explicitly declaring what type is in the list is better than just a list of objects e.g. it's preferred to declare `ArrayList<ArrayList>` instead of just an ArrayList if we know that it's a list of lists."}
{"_id": "238165", "title": "How to take things step by step", "text": "This is about the third time I've had to write software to control a cellular modem. For those unfamiliar with the process, you have a sequence of steps you have to take. Each step takes a certain amount of time, and there's a few responses you should receive in that amount of time. There are also some responses you can receive at any time, regardless of the step you are on. Based on the response you have to go to another stage in the process. If it times out, you have to go to a different stage. In some cases, steps are attempted multiple times before going to another stage. These have to be non-blocking functions, which I can run as a task on a single threaded machine. So the main program would be calling this `modemTask()` a few hundred times a second, it checks whether it needs to do something, then performs a function if needed, and exits. In the past I've written this as a simple `switch` based state machine, with enumerated stages, somewhat like the following:               switch(stage){        case Power:           powerOn();                 // Turn the modem on           nextstage = ResetCmd;      // Go perform a reset           attemptsLeft = 5;          // Send the reset command up to five times           break;        case ResetCmd;           modem.write(\"ATZ\\n\");      // ATZ - reset           attemptsLeft--;            // Use one of our attempts           nextstage = ResetReply;    // Next wait for a response (should be OK)           timeout = millis() + 5000; // Wait for up to 5 seconds each attempt           break;        case ResetReply;           if(receivedResponse() == OK)     // Success           {              nextStage = NetworkAttachCmd; // Attach to the cellular network           } elseif(receivedResponse() == ERROR || timeout < millis())           {        // If we get an error or timeout, reattempt if we can, power on if we can't              if(attemptsLeft > 0)              {                 nextStage = ResetCmd;              } else {                 nextStage = Power;              }           }            break;        case NetworkAttachCmd:        ...     }     stage = nextstage;               // Assign stage indirectly for debug purposes - nice to know where we came from at this point      It's difficult to keep track of the whole flow of the system, inserting an additional step requires changes to the steps before and after, and it just seems like there should be an easier way. The largest one I've had to design had fewer than 60 stages, so it's not unmanageable, but I can't help but think that there's a better strategy or pattern for this type of work. While I use a few `#define` for most timeouts and attempts, it would be a bit nicer if this weren't embedded in the state machine. Perhaps a structure of some sort could be made to hold each state, but since the responses vary it seems just as complicated. Most steps will have a simple \"OK\" but some contain status and data that have to be acted on, where the stage will change based on the exact response."}
{"_id": "33909", "title": "Why is testing MVC Views frowned upon?", "text": "I'm currently setting the groundwork for an ASP.Net MVC application and I'm looking into what sort of unit-tests I should be prepared to write. I've seen in multiple places people essentially saying 'don't bother testing your views, there's no logic and it's trivial and will be covered by an integration test'. I don't understand how this has become the accepted wisdom. Integration tests serve an entirely different purpose than unit tests. If I break something, I don't want to know a half-hour later when my integration tests break, I want to know immediately. **Sample Scenario :** Lets say we're dealing with a standard CRUD app with a Customer entity. The customer has a name and an address. At each level of testing, I want to verify that the Customer retrieval logic gets both the name and the address properly. To unit-test the repository, I write an integration test to hit the database. To unit-test the business rules, I mock out the repository, feed the business rules appropriate data, and verify my expected results are returned. **What I'd like to do :** To unit-test the UI, I mock out the business rules, setup my expected customer instance, render the view, and verify that the view contains the appropriate values for the instance I specified. **What I'm stuck doing :** To unit-test the repository, I write an integration test, setup an appropriate login, create the required data in the database, open a browser, navigate to the customer, and verify the resulting page contains the appropriate values for the instance I specified. I realize that there is overlap between the two scenarios discussed above, but the key difference it time and effort required to setup and execute the tests. If I (or another dev) removes the address field from the view, I don't want to wait for the integration test to discover this. I want is discovered and flagged in a unit-test that gets multiple times daily. I get the feeling that I'm just not grasping some key concept. Can someone explain why wanting immediate test feedback on the validity of an MVC view is a bad thing? (or if not bad, then not the expected way to get said feedback)"}
{"_id": "208655", "title": "Is \"pass by value\" synonymous with \"functional programming\"", "text": "Is \"pass by value\" synonymous with \"functional programming\" ?   1. Are there any iterative programming languages that are (largely) \"pass by value\"?   2. Are there any functional programming languages that are (largely) \"pass by reference\"? Thanks."}
{"_id": "38022", "title": "How does compiler handle exceptions that are implicit? Looking for design strategies", "text": "Throughout the function handleException, the exception encountered is implicit. How does the compiler handle such implicit passing of exceptions? [For e.g. in C++ methods, **this** pointer is passed to account for the current object. My question is how does a compiler handle exceptions internally - handleException has no arguments.]                void handleException()      {        try {          throw;        }        catch (MyException& e) {          ...code to handle MyException...        }        catch (YourException& e) {          ...code to handle YourException...        }      }           void f()      {        try {          ...something that might throw...        }        catch (...) {          handleException();        }      }"}
{"_id": "208656", "title": "Java Heap Allocation Faster than C++", "text": "I already posted this question on SO and it did ok. It was unfortunately closed though(only needs one vote to reopen) but someone suggested I post it on here as it is a better fit so the following is literally a copy paste of the question * * * I was reading the comments on this answer and I saw this quote. > Object instantiation and object-oriented features are blazing fast to use > (faster than C++ in many cases) because they're designed in from the > beginning. and Collections are fast. Standard Java beats standard C/C++ in > this area, even for most optimized C code. One user (with really high rep I might add) boldly defended this claim, stating that   1. heap allocation in java is better than C++'s    2. and added this statement defending the collections in java  > And Java collections are fast compared to C++ collections due largely to the > different memory subsystem. So my question is can any of this really be true, and if so why is java's heap allocation so much faster."}
{"_id": "208659", "title": "What popular program is used to develop GUI in C++?", "text": "I'm asking this question because my creativity can only go so far with console programs in C++. I need to know what program/software the majority of c++ software developers out there use develop GUI in C++. I'm heading into College in a couple weeks and want to major in Computer programming and I really would like that head start. Thanks."}
{"_id": "33901", "title": "Testing for Non Programmers", "text": "I would like to get my younger brother, who can't program, to test some code I am writing from requirements I provide him in documentation. Is there a way to get him going quickly? Ideas? Please and thank you."}
{"_id": "76488", "title": "What is Zend's relationship with PHP?", "text": "What exactly is Zend's relationship to PHP? I don't mean the framework but the company itself. Are they the gatekeepers or guardians of sort? I've just been reading up on PHP, and other than requiring knowledge of C to extend it you apparently need to learn the Zend APIs. But when you first start out with PHP you don't need to know anything \"Zend\", and the same goes for non-Zend frameworks like Cake and CodeIgniter. So I'm confused and curious about when knowing things Zend begins to matter in using PHP."}
{"_id": "76489", "title": "Oracle owns Java but Google is using Java?", "text": "Ok, I don't get it. What does \"Oracle owns Java\" mean? Google is definitely using Java in Google App Engine, does that mean that Google have to pay Oracle for doing so?"}
{"_id": "187785", "title": "Peer programming and experience sharing", "text": "There was a mention in the Java Posse Podcast about how teams should be divided up into pairs. However, there was a mention from the lady on the podcast that: \"Pairs should be mixed up [sic]\" (an encouragement for diversity) I understand the benefits of pair programming, but what benefit is there to intentionally mix people up. To me it would seem that it would be better to take a genetic algorithm like approach to find optimal groups to generate pairs. An example: Let's say you have a tax developer and a front end developer how would either of these guys benefit from the intentional mixing of peer groups? Why did her assertion go unchallenged? (I got the sense that she was advising that it should go cross groups and development tiers)"}
{"_id": "76481", "title": "How do I succeed as a lead developer?", "text": "I have become the lead developer in a particular project, but I'm having difficulty focusing on the big picture and making sure all pieces of the project are covered. What should I keep in mind when managing this project? How can I make sure everything gets handled the way it should?"}
{"_id": "238295", "title": "Scrum Daily meeting: Punctuality over Full team presence?", "text": "My understanding is that a Daily Scrum meeting should be very quick, hosted in a friendly way and that it requires all the team members present. Because it is objective is to have everyone up to date with what everybody else is doing. I like Scrum Daily Meetings that are held like that. In my latest project our Daily Scrums are more like a Status Update meeting. Although the position is that we are holding Scrums and practicing proper Agile. We are a distributed team, in 2 different countries, and the people that is in the same Country are not in the same office. As consequence we have virtual Scrums. The problem is that our meetings always start on time, many people calls before the actual start time, so they actually start at the very first second of the meeting. Without any tolerance for small delays. For example the last time we were on the phone and the person coordinating the meeting checked if everyone was on, and we said one of our team members was not on yet but he was calling. And I was told to start sharing without waiting for my team member. Also everyone has a lot of meetings, and sometimes they are back to back with the Scrum meeting, so it is understandable if they arrive during the first or second minute of the meeting. Is that the normal for teams practicing Daily Scrums? It is the first time that happens to me. I can not find any bibliography directly about it. Although the presence of all team members is stressed, it is stressed also that the meetings should always start at the same time. But I imagine there can be a small delay tolerance. I even read on a blog someone suggesting that the Scrum Master can place penalties if someone arrives \"5 seconds\" late. I thought the Scrums were supposed to be friendly, and having a penalty like that seems counter productive. What is the recommended approach in a situation like this?"}
{"_id": "83219", "title": "How would one start a website with robust and scaleable hosting?", "text": "This question is about hardware and hosting, and how to \"bootstrap\" them. If you built a really great website, how could you have it hosted at low cost but so that it reassures customers that their data is safe and available. As an example, what if I have a web application I developed for small companies to use for their accounting, a replacement for Quickbooks. Aside from getting a bunch of money from VCs or Angels, how would you be able to host this so that you could guarantee your customers that their data won't be lost, and the site will always be up so that they can always get to their data?"}
{"_id": "83214", "title": "Is Haskell good at teaching fundamentals of mathematics?", "text": "I'm involved in teaching mathematics to classes with requirements such as AS and A level Mathematics specification. Class books normally provide examples of computer software applied to mathematics tasks, but they are normally based on software applications like mathlab, mathematica or derive. Even when a _real_ programming language is used, it is normally old fashoned language like Pascal. And this is really sad in my opinion. Because, Haskell is famous for his feeling with mathematics, and because I'm interested in it as well, I'd like to ask whether Haskell is a good choice as extension exercise method for students of a first year university class. Typical subjects are functions, caclulus, limits, but also linear algebra for example. I've intermediate knowledge experience in programming (c#, ruby, powershell, javascript, tex) and also have already approached functional programming with XSLT. Answers will be upvoted responsibly. Verbose answers including also some basic examples of Haskell code applied to mathematics, such as linear algebra (e.g. vectorial space), polynomials, solving linear equations are much appreciated and targeted as the wanted one."}
{"_id": "148064", "title": "Dynamically load and call delegates based on source data", "text": "Assume I have a stream of records that need to have some computation. Records will have a combination of these functions run `Sum`, `Aggregate`, `Sum over the last 90 seconds`, or `ignore`. A data record looks like this:               Date;Data;ID      **Question** Assuming that ID is an `int` of some kind, and that int corresponds to a matrix of some delegates to run, how should I use C# to dynamically build that launch map? I'm sure this idea exists... it is used in Windows Forms which has many delegates/events, most of which will never actually be invoked in a real application. The sample below includes a few delegates I want to run (sum, count, and print) but I don't know how to make the quantity of delegates fire based on the source data. (say print the evens, and sum the odds in this sample)               using System;     using System.Threading;     using System.Collections.Generic;     internal static class TestThreadpool     {              delegate int TestDelegate(int  parameter);              private static void Main()         {             try             {                 // this approach works is void is returned.                 //ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(PrintOut), \"Hello\");                      int c = 0;                 int w = 0;                 ThreadPool.GetMaxThreads(out w, out c);                 bool rrr =ThreadPool.SetMinThreads(w, c);                 Console.WriteLine(rrr);                      // perhaps the above needs time to set up6                 Thread.Sleep(1000);                      DateTime ttt = DateTime.UtcNow;                 TestDelegate d = new TestDelegate(PrintOut);                      List<IAsyncResult> arDict = new List<IAsyncResult>();                      int count = 1000000;                      for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)                 {                     IAsyncResult ar = d.BeginInvoke(i, new AsyncCallback(Callback), d);                     arDict.Add(ar);                 }                      for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)                 {                     int result = d.EndInvoke(arDict[i]);                 }                           // Give the callback time to execute - otherwise the app                 // may terminate before it is called                 //Thread.Sleep(1000);                      var res = DateTime.UtcNow - ttt;                 Console.WriteLine(\"Main program done----- Total time --> \" + res.TotalMilliseconds);             }             catch (Exception e)             {                 Console.WriteLine(e);             }                  Console.ReadKey(true);         }                   static int PrintOut(int parameter)         {             // Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId + \" Delegate PRINTOUT waited and printed this:\"+parameter);             var tmp = parameter * parameter;             return tmp;         }              static int Sum(int parameter)         {             Thread.Sleep(5000); // Pretend to do some math... maybe save a summary to disk on a separate thread             return parameter;         }              static int Count(int parameter)         {             Thread.Sleep(5000); // Pretend to do some math... maybe save a summary to disk on a separate thread             return parameter;         }              static void Callback(IAsyncResult ar)         {             TestDelegate d = (TestDelegate)ar.AsyncState;            //Console.WriteLine(\"Callback is delayed and returned\") ;//d.EndInvoke(ar));         }          }"}
{"_id": "147036", "title": "Is it a responsibility of the software developer to understand what the customer meant with his request?", "text": "Kind of a yes / no question and why? **Is it the responsibility of the software developer to understand what the customer meant with his/her request or is it the responsibility of the customer to properly explain his/her request to the developer?** The situation at work is currently \"the customer already explained us, what he wants. It's your responsibility to understand the request, not ask more questions\". While English is not my strong suite, all the requests are written in obscure English with misplaced words and hard to understand sentences, some requests assume previous understanding of the system on my part. I'm the 3rd or 4th developer of the system (the last developers quit the job) and that might be the reason the customer expects some understanding on the developers side. The system itself is quite messy both in the UI and source code level. This looks like monkey coding to me - code and hope you get the request right, while not actually understanding the request. I'm actually thinking about quitting the job, but haven't yet, given I'm not sure about who's right and who's wrong."}
{"_id": "147033", "title": "When should I use parallelism?", "text": "After asking this question, I got to realize that parallelism may not always be good. So far I can see that parallelism (under c#) is   * A little complicated code-wise   * Will probably insert some concurrency complications   * Will not always be faster I am looking inside parallelism because I want to make existing and new applications work faster, but now I see that it is no silver bullet. When should I use it? are there any best practices? Is it just a waste of time in most cases? Is it suitable for a specific kind of applications? I am looking forward for your insights on this matter."}
{"_id": "242816", "title": "How can Swift be so much faster than Objective-C in these comparisons?", "text": "Apple launched its new programming language Swift at WWDC14. In the presentation, they made some performance comparisons between Objective-C and Python. The following is a picture of one of their slides, of a comparison of those three languages performing some complex object sort: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wcdXk.jpg) There was an even more incredible graph about a performance comparison using the RC4 encryption algorithm. Obviously this is a marketing talk, and they didn't go into detail on how this was implemented in each. I leaves me wondering though:   1. How can a new programming language be so much faster?    2. Are the Objective-C results caused by a bad compiler or is there something less efficient in Objective-C than Swift?    3. How would you explain a 40% performance increase? I understand that garbage collection/automated reference control might produce some additional overhead, but this much?"}
{"_id": "89073", "title": "Why is using 'final' on a class really so bad?", "text": "I am refactoring a PHP OOP legacy website. I am so tempted to start using 'final' on classes to \"`make it explicit that the class is currently not extended by anything`\". This might save lots of time if I come to a class and I am wondering if I can rename/delete/modify a `protected` property or method. If I _really_ want to extend a class I can just remove the final keyword to _unlock it_ for extending. I.e If I come to a class that has no child classes I can record that knowledge by marking the class a final. The next time I come to it I would not have to re-search the codebase to see if it has children. Thus saving time during refactorings. It all seems like a sensible time saving idea.... but I have often read that classes should only be made 'final' on rare/special occasions. Have you ever treated `final` liberally and had bad experiences or is this 'fear of final' just a myth. Maybe it screws up Mock object creation or has other side effects that I am not thinking of. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "103067", "title": "Avoid ELSE when setting a variable?", "text": "Which of these styles do people prefer?               string mystring = \"defaultvalue\";     if (condition)        mystring = \"othervalue\";      VS               string mystring = null;     if (condtion)        mystring = \"othervalue\";     else        mystring = \"defaultvalue\";      VS               mystring = condition? \"othervalue\" : \"defaultvalue\";"}
{"_id": "55854", "title": "Interview Questions in OOP", "text": "I faced the below interview questions in OOP under PHP language. Kindly clear my clarifications regarding this. I am very confused. As i am a beginner to OOP i got too confused. Could anyone clarify these things clearly?   1. **Difference between Abstract class and interface.** Interviewer : Let us consider abstract class contains three abstract methods such as a,b,c and interface contains three methods a,b,c. In this case these do the same functionality. Then why are going for abstract and why are we going for interface. Me : ?   2. **static keyword.** Interviewer: We call static method without creating object by using scope resolution operator in PHP. As well as we can able to call concrete methods also. Then what is need of static keyword there? Me : ....   3. **final keyword.** Interviewer: Give me any scenario of using final keyword. Me : For db connection related method Interviewer: Other than that? Me: ...   4. **Constructor.** Interviewer: What is the use of constructor? Me : There is no need for object to access this. It will call automatically when the class calls. Interviewer: Other than that? Me : .... Thanks in advance..."}
{"_id": "142443", "title": "Why Aren't There New Versions of C?", "text": "While many other languages have rapid development, such as Python, which has come out with a whole new version in the past few years, or to use a framework, Rails, which evolves super-fast (A book that was published in early 2011 is now obsolete), it seems that there are no updates for C. Why is this?"}
{"_id": "213708", "title": "Overcoming slow problem solving due to increased knowledge of what might go wrong", "text": "This has been troubling me for some time, and I'd really appreciate the input of other professionals. Short background: I started programming when my parents bought me my first computer in 1988 (at age 14, I'm 39 now). I followed a couple of other career paths before finally becoming a professional programmer in 1997. Late bloomer, perhaps, but that's how it was. I'm still happy with my choice, I love programming, and I consider myself good at what I do. Lately, I've been noticing that the more experience I gain, the longer it takes me to complete projects, or certain tasks in a project. I'm not going senile yet. It's just that I've seen so many different ways in which things can go wrong. And the potential pitfalls and gotchas that I know about and remember are just getting more and more. Trivial example: it used to be just \"okay, write a file here\". Now I'm worrying about permissions, locking, concurrency, atomic operations, indirection/frameworks, different file systems, number of files in a directory, predictable temp file names, the quality of randomness in my PRNG, power shortages in the middle of any operation, an understandable API for what I'm doing, proper documentation, etc etc etc. In short, the problems have long since moved from \"how do I do this\" to \"what's the best/safest way of doing it\". The upshot is that it takes me longer to finish a project than a novice. My version may be rock solid, and as impenetrable as I know how to make it, but it takes longer. The \"create file\" example above was just that, an example. Real tasks are obviously more complex, but less suited for a generic question like this one. I hope you understand where I'm going with this. I have no problem coming up with efficient algorithms, I love math, I enjoy complex subjects, I have no difficulties with concentration. I think I do have a problem with experience, and consequently with a fear of errors (intrinsic or extrinsic). I spend almost two hours a day reading up on new developments, new techniques, languages, platforms, security vulnerabilities, and so on. The conundrum is that the more knowledge I gain, the slower I am in completing projects. How do you deal with this?"}
{"_id": "15681", "title": ".NET silverlight development tools", "text": "What tools are necessary when developing efficiently with Silverlight 4? VS 2010 is a gimme, but what version? Is Pro enough? Premium? What about Expression Blend/Web/Both? When considering VS 2010, premium comes with an MSDN subscription but it's at the high end of the budget. It makes sense if Expression comes with it though. It's for a one man development show, making an LOB app that will integrate video/audo and mic/webcam equipment."}
{"_id": "213702", "title": "How does aggregation work when databases are involved?", "text": "So I'm reading a book on Design Patterns (Design Patterns Explained 2nd Edition), and all throughout the book it says to \"favor aggregation over inheritance\". I'm trying to wrap my head around trying to design something, and I feel so stupid. So conceptually, I have `Recruiters`. I figured these recruiters can be an abstract class, because I have a couple different types of recruiters... full time and part time. The thing is, I want each recruiter to be able to have references to other recruiters because they might work together and need to share and combine information. Each Recruiter would have one or more `Regions` that they oversee, perhaps sharing it with other Recruiters. All the region is a conceptual aggregate of `SubRegions`. The SubRegions define places that fall along certain geographical boundaries. These contain some numerical statistic information about recruitments for that SubRegion as a whole. The Subregions consist of `Recruitments`, which contains detailed information about particular recruiting events for a SubRegion. They also contain other statistical information that makes sense to be under Recruitments(because they're very specific to the Recruitment), but not under SubRegions. Every time some information from the recruitment is updated, it needs to create a new record of that transaction so I can keep a history of how the numbers are adjusting. Now, I want all of these to be able to be stored in a database. I am very naive when it comes to database design and structuring, especially when it comes to dealing with abstract classes and interfaces which are new to me. Everything in the database is going to be linked in some way, among different tables. Say, the Recruiters are going to be a table, and there is going to be a Region table, a SubRegion table, and a Recruitment table. Where do I need to put the logic, and how do I put it, such that I can make sure I can save everything out to the database, keyed together nicely, but loosely coupled in the code?"}
{"_id": "149411", "title": "Is it safe to use CamelCased file names?", "text": "I'm developing a simple CMS which I'd like to make it open source. For the file structure, do you think it's safe to use names like:               AppData     FileUploads      instead of               app-data     file-uploads      ? Because I heard some servers have problems with the camelCase."}
{"_id": "136400", "title": "If I use multiple third party components, using several different open source licenses, how should I attribute them?", "text": "I'm developing a Java application that utilizes several third party open source libraries. I'm adding a section to my app's \"About\" dialog that lists the components and their license notices. For those that use the same license, do I have to repeat the same license text for each one? For example, I use several components that are all released under the Apache 2 license. Do I have to list the Apache 2 license terms for each one, or just say \"Foo, Bar, and Baz are used under the terms of the Apache 2 License\" and list the actual terms once? Thanks. Just want to do the right thing."}
{"_id": "136402", "title": "In integration testing, do you use the data access objects for setup and validation or a different data access method?", "text": "When writing integration tests for business logic objects and data access objects, what makes the most sense to use for setup and validation? In my case, I'm using an ORM in the implementation of my data access interface that will be used in production, and I plumb that ORM implementation together with the business logic objects for integration testing. Given that the ORM implementation is tested separately using INSERT and SELECT statements for setup and validation, is it best for integration testing setup and validation to use the ORM implementation of the data access interface, to use the ORM directly, to use those INSERT and SELECT statements, or to do something else, **_edit: and why?_** The ORM in this case is NHibernate, the ORM implementation of the data access interface is a simple pass-through to NHibernate's LINQ provider that also provides simple pagination and sorting mechanisms. I'm curious to know what you think, either generally or with this specific scenario. _**edit:_** I'm not looking to know what DAO I should connect to the BL objects. That _clearly_ should be the same DAO that will be used in production. The question is about the mechanism used to put data into the database to set up the test _before_ the business logic function is tested. Presumably, the same mechanism would be used to poll the database _after_ the business logic function is tested. Here's some very high-level pseudo-code to demonstrate what I mean:               MyIntegrationTest()     {         Foo fooBefore = GenerateFooForTesting();         SomehowInsertIntoDatabase(foo); // What should be used here and why?              // Plumb things together; actually done using IoC, not hard-coded.         DaoFactory realDaoFactory = GetRealDaoFactory();         BizFactory realBizFactory = GetRealBizFactory();         realBizFactory.DaoFactory = realDaoFactory;              BusinessLogicObject biz = realBizFactory.BuildBusinessLogicObject();         biz.DoBusinessWithFooById(fooBefore.Id);              Foo fooAfter = SomehowGetFooFromDatabase(fooBefore.Id); // Same question.              Assert.AreEqual(5, fooAfter.SomethingThatShouldBeFiveAfterBusinessIsDone);     }"}
{"_id": "6442", "title": "Language-agnostic libs every programmer should consider learning?", "text": "Assuming the language provides it, what are some things to do or libs to use that every programmer should know? My list would be   * Regular Expressions   * Named Pipes   * standard IO (std in/out/error)   * Executing outside executables (like imagemagik and your own scripts)   * How to grab an http page as a string (mostly for updates and grabbing configs from servers) I have a similar questions about tools. Also i am looking for specific answers. i dont want answers that can be done in different ways (such as learn how to synchronize threads). I know how to do the above in 3+ languages. There always seems to be things programmers dont know how to do which can make their lives easier. For the longest time i didnt know what regular expression was (although i did hear of it) and I was surprised how many people who tried to make a toolchain or complex app and did not know how to (or that you could) get the stdout from an exe they launched (they checked for errors in a very weird way or just didnt and hope it produce the expected results). What do you think useful, not well known and should be something every senior (or starting out) programmer should know?"}
{"_id": "109775", "title": "Can a candidate be judged by asking to write a complex program on \"paper\"?", "text": "Sometime back in an interview, I was asked to write following program: * * * _In a keypad of a mobile phone, there is a mapping between number and characters. e.g. 0 & 1 corresponds to nothing; 2 corresponds to 'a','b','c'; 3 corresponds to 'd','e','f'; ...; 9 corresponds to 'w','x','y','z'_. _User should input any number (e.g. 23, 389423, 927348923747293) and I should store all the combinations of these character mapping into some data structure. For example, if user enters \"23\" then possible character combinations are_ : > ad, ae, af, bd, be, bf, cd, ce, cf _or if user enters, \"4676972\" then it can be_ , > gmpmwpa, gmpmwpb, ..., hnroxrc, ..., iosozrc * * * Interviewer told that people have written code for this within 20-30 mins!! Also he insisted I have to **write on paper**. If I am writing a code then my tendency is as of I am writing production code, even though it may not be expected from me. So, I always try to think all the aspects like, _optimization, readability, maintainability, extensible_ and so on. Considering all these, I felt that I should be writing on PC and it needs decent 2 hours. Finally after 25 mins, I was able to come up with just the concept and some shattered pieces of code (not to mention of my rejection). My question is not the answer for the above program. I want to know that **is this a right way to judge the caliber of a person** ? Am I wrong / too slow in the estimates ? Am I too idealistic ?"}
{"_id": "173258", "title": "How should I handle a redirect to an identity provider during a web api data request", "text": "# Scenario I have a single-page web app consisting purely of html, css, and javascript. After initial load and during use, it updates various views with data from one or more RESTful apis via ajax calls. The api calls return data in a json format. Each web api may be hosted on independent domains. # Question During the ajax callout, if my authorization token is not deemed valid by the web api, the web api will redirect me (302) to the identity provider for that particular api. Since this is an ajax callout for data and not necessarily for display, i need to find a way to display the identity provider's authentication page. It seems that I should trap that redirect, and open up another view to display the identity provider's login page. Once the oauth series of redirects is complete, i need to grab the token and retrigger my ajax data call with the token attached. Is this a valid approach, and if so are there any examples showing the ajax handling of the redirects?"}
{"_id": "15350", "title": "Why do websites restrict the number & choice of characters in a password?", "text": "Registering on an insurance company's website right now, and my password is 16 characters long, using a nice variety of letters, numbers, special characters, etc. However, here's their list of restrictions: > Note your password: > >   * must be between 6 and 12 characters >   * must not contain spaces, special/international characters >   * must not contain your user name, first name or last name >   * is case-sensitive >   * should contain at least 1 number and 1 letter > I can understand minimum 6 characters, not allowing parts of your name, being case-sensitive, and needing at least 1 number and letter. The part I don't get is restricting your choice of characters you can use, and having an upper bound. Why do websites do this? The only thing I can think of it they don't know the basics of hashing a password, which would secure it better than anything, and get rid of any security concerns. If I choose to type `DELETE FROM users WHERE 1=1` as my password, I should be allowed to. PHP's MD5 hash of it becomes `fe5d54132b51b7d65ab89b739b600b4b` which I don't think will harm anything."}
{"_id": "173257", "title": "How to write good code with new stuff?", "text": "I always try to write easily readable code that is well structured. I face a particular problem when I am messing around with something new. I keep changing the code, structure and so many other things. In the end, I look at the code and am annoyed at how complicated it became when I was trying to do something so simple. Once I've completed something, I refactor it heavily so that it's cleaner. This occurs after completion most of the time and it is annoying because the bigger the code the more annoying it is the rewrite it. I am curious to know how people deal with such agony, especially on big projects shared between many people ?"}
{"_id": "87468", "title": "How do you cope with change in open source frameworks that you use for your projects?", "text": "It may be a personal quirk of mine, but I like keeping code in living projects up to date - including the libraries/frameworks that they use. Part of it is that I believe a web app is more secure if it is fully patched and up to date. Part of it is just a touch of obsessive compulsiveness on my part. Over the past seven months, we have done a major rewrite of our software. We dropped the Xaraya framework, which was slow and essentially dead as a product, and converted to Cake PHP. (We chose Cake because it gave us the chance to do a very rapid rewrite of our software, and enough of a performance boost over Xaraya to make it worth our while.) We implemented unit testing with SimpleTest, and followed all the file and database naming conventions, etc. Cake is now being updated to 2.0. And, there doesn't seem to be a viable migration path for an upgrade. The naming conventions for files have radically changed, and they dropped SimpleTest in favor of PHPUnit. This is pretty much going to force us to stay on the 1.3 branch because, unless there is some sort of conversion tool, it's not going to be possible to update Cake and then gradually improve our legacy code to reap the benefits of the new Cake framework. So, as usual, we are going to end up with an old framework in our Subversion repository and just patch it ourselves as needed. And this is what gets me every time. So many open source products don't make it easy enough to keep projects based on them up to date. When the devs start playing with a new shiny toy, a few critical patches will be done to older branches, but most of their focus is going to be on the new code base. How do you deal with radical changes in the open source projects that you use? And, if you are developing an open source product, do you keep upgrade paths in mind when you develop new versions?"}
{"_id": "173253", "title": "Type of AI to tackle this problem?", "text": "I posted this on stackoverflow but want to get your recommendations as well as a user on overflow recommended I post it here. I'm going to say from the beginning that I am not a programmer, I have a cursory knowledge of different types of AI and am just a businessman building a web app. Anyways, the web app I am investing in to develop is for a hobby of mine. There are many part manufacturers, product manufacturers, upgrade and addon manufacturers etc. for hardware/products in this hobby's industry. Currently, I am in the process of building a crowd sourced platform for people who are knowledgeable to go in and mark up compatibility between those parts as its not always clear cut if they are for example: Manufacturer A makes a \"A\" class product, and manufacturer B makes upgrade/part that generally goes with class \"A\" products, but is for one reason or another not compatible with Manufacturer A's particular \"A\" class product. However, a good chunk (>60%-70%) of the products/parts in the database can have their compatibility inferenced by their properties, For example: Part 1 is type \"A\" with \"X\" mm receiver and part 2 is also Type \"A\" with \"X\" mm interface and thus the two parts are compatible.. or Part 1 is a 8mm gear, thus all bushings of 8mm from any manufacturer is compatible with part 1. Further more, all gears can only have compatibility relationships in the database with bushing and gear boxes, but there can be no meaningful compatibility between a gear and a rail, or receiver since those parts don't interface. Now what I want is an AI to be able to learn from the decisions of the crowdsourced platform community and be able to inference compatibility for new parts/products based on their tagged attributes, what type of part they are etc. What would be the best form of AI to tackle this? I was thinking a Expert System, but explicitly engineering all of the knowledge rules would be daunting because of the complex relations between literally tens of thousands of parts, hundreds of part types and many manufacturers. Would a ANN (neural network) be ideal to learn from the many inputs/decisions of the crowdsource platform users? Any help/input is much appreciated."}
{"_id": "173251", "title": "How to better integrate a unix development environment into Windows", "text": "I'm mostly a Windows user but I do most of my development (essentially web development) using unix tools and software. I've been going back and forth between using a dedicated lubuntu virtual machine on Virtualbox and using some tools directly in windows (msgit, python, django), but none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory. I'd like to hear of ways other devs use to better integrate a unix workflow into windows. For instance tighter integration between a linux and vm and windows. The vagrant demo showed how a VM could work off of a windows project folder and I found that nice. I'd like to hear of other tools and tips that would help mimic the workflow one can find on OS X (of course I understand that it cannot be as tightly integrated on Windows as it doesn't have the same unix underpinnings). PS: I have tried cygwin as well EDIT for clarifications about What I find lacking (thanks to axblount for pointing that out) : unix tools like msys et al do not work as well as their native unic counterparts. Many scripts, installers require further configuration or do not work at all. For instance getting virtualenvwrapper to work is not very straightforward. virtualbox: ideally I would like to use windows software (photoshop, sublime text 2) seamlessly with linux. I mostly use a FTP client atm to move over files edited on the windows side which is a tedious process. **SUMMARY:** It seems there are no established solutions. As a temporary solution I will probably try to use the native versions of frameworks and libraries through the windows command line when possible and switch to a tool like vagrant for incompatible programs. **MORE INFO FROM REPLIES AND COMMENTS:** The case-sensitivy issue seems to work against windows as pointed out by @GlenPeterson"}
{"_id": "206558", "title": "Why does the US government disallow dynamic languages for secure projects?", "text": "I know some people that are currently working on a project for the US military (low security level, non-combat human resources type data). An initial state of the project code was submitted to the military for review, and they ran the program through some sort of security analyzer tool. It returned a report of known security issues in the code and required changes that needed to be implemented before delivery of the final product. One of the items that needed to be resolved was removal of part of the project that was written in Ruby as it is a dynamic language. What is the background/reason for not allowing a dynamic language to be used in a secure setting? Is this the government being slow to adopt new technologies? Or do dynamic languages pose an additional security risk compared to static languages (ala C++ or Java)?"}
{"_id": "206552", "title": "How do I output an error when I'm determining how to output an error?", "text": "I've written an API which can be configured to signal errors in different ways (return values, debugging messages, or exceptions). I've got a check in place when the API is first initialized to see what type of error handling the client is requesting - what should I do when they request an undefined error handling type? This is kind of similar to \"Where do I log the error that I can't write to the logfile?\" Do I go with the idiom of the language, do I fatal? Do I throw an exception, even though if they aren't asking for exception handling they probably haven't wrapped the call in a try/catch? The language I'm writing doesn't have an ENUM type so it can't be a type error."}
{"_id": "233464", "title": "Reason for (post/pre) increment operator in Java or C#", "text": "Recently, I've stumbled across question about predicting the output of code which heavily uses post/pre increment operators on integers. I am experienced C programmer, so I felt like at home, but people made statements that Java just blindly copied that from C (or C++), and that this is an useless feature in Java. That being said, I am not able to find good reason for that (especially with keeping in mind the difference betwen post/pre forms) in Java (or C#), because it's not like you will manipulate arrays and use them as strings in Java. Also, it was long ago when I last looked into bytecode, so I don't know if there's a `INC` operation, but I don't see any reason why this               for(int i = 0; i < n; i += 1)      could be less effective than               for(int i = 0; i < n; i++)      Is there any particular part of the language where this is really useful, or is this just a feature to bring C programmers in town?"}
{"_id": "233465", "title": "is there a way to leave notificationManager and alarmManger alive even when the app is closed?", "text": "how would you recommend for me to design an android app where i want it to 1) send location update every 10 minutes 2) to show push notification I want both actions be available even when the app is closed. Here i might ask for your explanation what \"closed\" states an app can be in? a) removed from recent tasks stack - close the whole process including its services ? b) forces closed - close the whole process including its services ? c) other? I was using 1) alarm manager that sends a pending intent to a broadcast receiver. 2) notification manager I have tried to register all manager using ApplicationContext instead of Current-Activity context. Now both actions work even after user remove the app from the \"recent tasks\" stack. but I'm not sure about the \"closed\" states so I might be missing something."}
{"_id": "228355", "title": "Software Licence Agreement: Does our spec abide by the licence", "text": "Can you determine if this Open Source Winforms UI Library licence allows companies to use this code in a commercial software application? > The MIT License (MIT) > > Copyright (c) 2011 Sven Walter, http://github.com/viperneo > > **Permission is hereby granted** , free of charge, to any person obtaining a > copy of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), > **to deal in the Software without restriction** , including without > limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, > sublicense, **and/or sell copies of the Software** , and to permit persons > to whom the Software is furnished to do so, **subject to the following > conditions** : > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER > LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING > FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS > IN THE SOFTWARE. Licence can be found here I can see that it gives permission to use the code in commercial products but it is subject to conditions. We intend to use the UI (a Windows 8 looking interface) in a simple application that will convert Civil Engineering survey files from one format to another which maybe sold commercially in the future. Those in the know, do our intentions fall within the lines of the license rules?"}
{"_id": "234116", "title": "Model-View-Controller: Does the user interact with the View or with the Controller?", "text": "I have recently learned about the MVC design pattern. I'm learning from the Head First Design Pattern book. According to this book (if I understand correctly): **The Model** is most of the application logic and data. **The View** is basically the GUI that represents the Model visually to the user. **The Controller** is responsible to 'mediate', and act as a 'middleman' between the View and the Model. The View reports to the Controller that the user made an action, and the Controller translates it to method calls on the Model. **However, a lot of places on the web contradict what I understand from that book. They claim that generally the user interacts with the Controller, not the View.** Which one is true or more common? Does the user interact with the Controller directly, or with the View directly? Are both approaches acceptable? Which is more common?"}
{"_id": "103682", "title": "What is the best way to exchange files via authenticated web service?", "text": "I'm not so much looking for code (although if you want to link to tutorials it would be appreciated) as I am trying to get an idea of what people in the know are doing. Our system is written in PHP. As part of an Electronic Medical Record System, I need to be able to **securely** exchange documents (Word, PDF, etc.) with business partners. I also need to transmit identifying information with the documents (patient name, medical record number, etc.) If I Google exchanging files in a web service, I am given a bunch of information about a variety of methods. But, what's not easy to see is how old the information is, how commonly the methods are used, and if there is something out there that if I just knew what I was looking for, would blow my socks off. TLDR - If you were going to use a web service to exchange files, and your system was written in PHP, how would you go about doing it, and why?"}
{"_id": "170509", "title": "I want to sell my software along with it's source code. Is there a licence restricts anything but in-house changes?", "text": "Is there a license that:   * Allows the client to make in-house changes to the tool/source code if need be.   * Prohibits to redistribute the source code outside the company.   * Prohibits to sell derivative work or services. Basically prohibits anything, but to make customizations for personal use- case."}
{"_id": "234112", "title": "Is it okay to user other open source libraries when building your own or should that be avoided?", "text": "Seems like an odd question, but I've been questioning this myself for some time now.   I've been told that, if you're working on a open source library/project, you should avoid adding dependencies for other external, open sourced, libraries because that'll make the software, that uses your libraries, become heavier with all the dependencies, inside dependencies, etc... But sometimes I'm a little on the fence about that. Do I really need to reinvent the wheel just to keep my library away from external dependencies?   For example, I'm currently building an `Objective-C` project that will be open sourced on Github and I need to use a `XML` parser to get data from \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 XML files. Apple's OS X already has a built-in API for `XML` parsing, but I'm not very fond of the way it works, it needs a lot of background processing and workarounds to get the data I really need, so I was thinking about using another `XML` parser to do a much cleaner job in terms of making my life easier, as the developer, but also by making the code a lot more legible for other developers.      What are your thoughts on this? Thank you."}
{"_id": "170502", "title": "Event system architecture for networking when performance is concerned", "text": "How should I design a system for an action game (think in Golden Axe) where events can happen remotely? I'm using TCP for this because the client is in flash. There's so many options, I can make a binary protocol (I don't like this idea, I found it to be too hard to mantain) but I was also thinking that passing jsons through clients and server can be slow (Is that a exaggerated concern?). What about the internal architecture for the server? And for the client? I'm really lost, If it's a question that is too big, please indicate me some material so I can formulate a better question next time."}
{"_id": "170500", "title": "What is the difference of delegator and dispatcher?", "text": "What is the difference of delegator and dispatcher? I am not quite sure of either concept."}
{"_id": "127959", "title": "How do existential types differ from interfaces?", "text": "Given the existential type               T = \u2203X.{op\u2081:X, op\u2082:X\u2192boolean}      and this generic Java interface:               interface T<X> {         X op\u2081();         boolean op\u2082(X something);     }      What are the fundamental differences between the existential type and the Java interface? Obviously there are syntactical differences, and Java's object-orientation (which also includes details such as hidden `this` parameters etc.). I'm not so much interested in these as in conceptual and semantic differences \u2014 though if someone would like to shed light on some finer points (such as the notational difference between `T` vs. `T<X>`), that would be appreciated too."}
{"_id": "222829", "title": "Unique and primary keys on a database (mysql)", "text": "I'm having quite some doubts here... If I have a table related to **username/password login** how can I assure there won't be any more matches of the **same username and password in the same table** using sql? For example:               >username: username     >password: password      ^this user just signed up. So the following conditions apply: > **1\u00ba there can't be any more users named \"username\"** > > 2\u00ba most surely there can't be any more users named \"username\" **AND with the > same password** so how exactly should I put the keynames in the database? The id is primary, should I put **username AND password** as **_unique_** to form an unique pair and avoid another identical insertion?"}
{"_id": "229919", "title": "Would this be a correct way to use the Repository pattern in ASP .NET MVC application implementing Entity Framework?", "text": "This ASP .NET MVC application implements Entity Framework. I've declared the repositories in the DbContext like this:               public class CompanyDbContext : DbContext     {             // constructor goes here                  public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; }             public DbSet<Order> Orders { get; set; }             public DbSet<CustomerOrder> CustomerOrders { get; set; }                  private IGeneralEntityRepository<Customer> customersRepository;             private IGeneralEntityRepository<Order> ordersRepository;                  // ...................     }      This way we can declare and initialise CompanyDbContext within a controller and then access the repositories using the CompanyDbContext instance. Is this correct? Or should I create a separate \"Unit Of Work\" class to access the repositories?"}
{"_id": "127951", "title": "Are there any languages that allow the static context of a method call to be available at runtime?", "text": "Is it possible for a method to know the type of the method it is called under? So for example in the following object orientated psuedo code:               Instance io = new InstanceSubclass();     io.doStuff();      Is there a language that allows `doStuff()` to know that it was called as an `Instance`? The question arose out of the fact the Java does not provide any kind of support for interface name clashes, for example if you create a class that implements interfaces A and B that both have a method signature such as `void doWork()` would it be possible for the body of `doWork()` to do something similar to the following :               public void doWork() {         Class<?> context = getMethodCallContext();         if(context == InterfaceA.class) {             doAsInterfaceA();         }         else if(context == InterfaceB.class) {             doAsInterfaceB();         }         else {             // Shenanigans and error handling         }     }      I am not planning to write any code that takes advantage of this feature as to do so reeks of an anti-pattern waiting to happen, I only want to know if it CAN be done, if so which languages permit it?"}
{"_id": "231195", "title": "Why does Rails do config in code?", "text": "According to the Pragmatic Programmers, code should be for abstractions, while configuration and details should live in metadata. Rails seems to diverge dramatically from this pattern. Much config is done in code files such as `application.rb`, `routes.rb` and the various `environment.rb` files, while other types of config is done in yaml files (e.g. `database.yml`). What is the thinking behind this design decision?"}
{"_id": "229911", "title": "If a variable containing a function gave the function's return instead of a reference to the function, what would an array of functions return?", "text": "I'm creating a prototype scripting language similar to something like Javascript. In my language, every single reference to a variable is actually a function call (a getter function), whether it has parentheses or not. So for example, if do this:               var foo = 3;     var bar = foo;      What really happens is foo.set() is called on the first line, which creates a new getter function. In the second line, the newly created getter function for foo is called, which looks like this:               foo.get()     {         return 3;     }      I can also assign a function to a variable, in which case that function BECOMES the getter function.               var foo =      {         return 4+5;     }     var bar = foo; // bar is now equal to the number 9, NOT the function that foo contains      So what I'm working on now is what an array of functions should return. For example:               function func1     {         return 1;     }     function func2     {         return 2;     }          var foo = new array();     foo.push(func1);     foo.push(func2);          var bar = foo; //what does bar contain? [func1, func2] or [1, 2]?      A reference to a single function runs that function and gives the return of the function. So I'm trying to decide if a reference to an array of functions should also run those functions, or if it would be more advantageous to just return the array of functions. In other words, would the getter function for foo look like this:               foo.get()     {         return [func1.reference, func2.reference]; //would return [func1, func2]     }      Or like this:               foo.get()     {         return [func1(), func2()]; //would return [1, 2]     }      Specifically, I'm asking if anyone knows if there are problems or solutions that one method or the other would create? Are there any established rules of good programming language design that apply here?"}
{"_id": "88301", "title": "What constitutes \"commercial purposes\"?", "text": "I'm looking at this license. It says that I can use it for \"non-commercial purposes\". What does that mean? I see in Stack Exchange, under Network Profile there is that graph that tracks your points across your Stack Exchange accounts. It uses a control called HighCharts which have a paid and Creative Commons licensed version. So would Stack Overflow constitute a commercial site? We don't pay to use this site, but obviously the site makes money from ads, etc. Then again, there's a lot of sites that have ads who won't necessarily make a profit, it may only be subsiding their costs. But even then, you could argue that even if it is only subsiding their costs, a lot of IT companies run at a loss in order to build a big enough customer base. So where is the line here? Is it any website on the internet? Is it any website that has ads? Is it any website that turns over a profit?"}
{"_id": "73960", "title": "Does language endorsement by different platforms (Android, iOS) hurt app development?", "text": "Developing iOS or OSX based applications typically requires knowledge of Objective C, since XCode is highly tailored to this language. Android, on the other hand, has chosen Java as it's preferred language for app development. Now, I know other programming languages can be used to develop applications on either platform, but lets be honest, it's a lot easier (and encouraged) to develop apps using these \"native languages.\" As a new app developer, it seems like it would be much easier if there was a common language and development environment for developing applications on all the major platforms. This thought is probably too idealistic for a programming discussion, and I wouldn't be surprised if the SE vultures flew in to close this topic. But, here's my question. Do you think that language endorsement creates unreasonable barriers to entry for new programmers, or do you think it's beneficial in some way (if so, why) for these platforms to use completely different development environments and languages for app development?"}
{"_id": "159490", "title": "How to learn elegantly handling mistakes?", "text": "One of the things I've noticed as a junior developer is that the people I respect and admire the most are those that can own up to their mistakes and clearly/logically come up with a great way to resolve them. Frankly, I aspire to have that skill - but I don't already have it. With this in mind - what are some of the things you do when you make a mistake? How do you communicate with your manager or user base and do you have any particular points to make the process of resolving the issue go easier for all involved?"}
{"_id": "218866", "title": "How does the Scrum Master participate in Daily Stand-Ups?", "text": "We have a professional Scrum Master consultant [*] who recently joined our project. Unfortunately, we don't know her name (she never introduced herself to us, she just came in one day and said \"we are having a daily stand-up\"), and she doesn't seem to do much else except chair a daily stand up meeting - when I half-jokingly asked her to also give daily feedback in the meeting, she was quite affronted, saying it's the Scrum Master's job to \"facilitate, not participate\". This seems fairly anti-Agile (having worked on other agile projects, where the teams were self directed), which is supposed to be egalitarian, but I am not sure about how it works in the Scrum Methodology. I suspect she doesn't do much all day, and that's the reason for her defensiveness on this issue. Does the Scrum Master take part in the \"yesterday, today, impediments\" spiel during the stand-up meeting, or is their role to just chair (\"facilitate\") the meeting? [*] We weren't actually told what her job is, we just assume, since she calls herself the Scrum Master"}
{"_id": "141064", "title": "How to minimize the data loss when laying off a programmer?", "text": "I was just laid off and it was the standard process that is used in the US: call the person to talk to personnel, and remove access to the network while that is going on, then have someone help pack, always have someone with the person until they are escorted from the property. That is supposed to keep an unhappy developer from deleting or damaging software or data: to mimimize data loss. However, it still results in a lot of data loss, as all of the work the programmer was working on is dropped: software not checked in is possibly lost, documents not finished are lost, releases in process are slowed down or stopped, and a huge amount of knowledge could be lost. It seems the potential data loss is more than offset by the actual data loss. How can all losses, both potential and actual, be mimimized?"}
{"_id": "224523", "title": "Is there already a \"Binder\" data-structure?", "text": "I was thinking of a data structure that I cannot describe better than with the word \"book\", or more exactly \"binder\". I was wondering if this had already been implemented in libraries like Boost or others. ### Principle It's a data structure that allows constant-time random access and amortized constant time insertion/deletion (as long as the sequence of those are performed on indexes not too far away from each other). It consists of two stacks \"left\" and \"right\" representing the state of a binder that would be open on a particular page. Inserting and deleting elements near this page is pretty fast since it consists in pushing/popping the pages to/from the left stack, and flipping some pages if necessary. Of course in the worst case one would have to flip from the first page to the last page (fill one stack with the other), for example if the user inserts something at the beginning and then something at the end. Here is a very rudimentary implementation in C++:               #include <iostream>     #include <vector>          using namespace std;          template<class T>     class Book {              vector<T> left, right;          public:              inline size_t size()         {             return left.size() + right.size();         }              void push(T t)         {             insert(size(),t);         }              T& get(size_t i)         {             if (i < left.size())                  return left[i];             else return right[right.size()-i+left.size()-1];         }              void insert(size_t i, T t)         {             reposition(i-1);             left.push_back(t);         }              void remove(size_t i)         {             reposition(i);             left.pop_back();         }          protected:              void reposition(size_t i)             // puts the element at position i on the top of the left stack         {             while (i < left.size()-1)             {                 right.push_back(left.back());                 left.pop_back();             }             while (right.size() >= size()-i)             {                 left.push_back(right.back());                 right.pop_back();             }         }          };          int main()     {         Book<int> b;         for (int i = 0; i < 15; i++)             b.push(i);              b.insert(5,42);         b.remove(10);              int i = 0;         while (i < b.size())         {             if (b.get(i)%2 != 0)                  b.remove(i);             else i++;         }              for (int i = 0; i < b.size(); i++)         {             cout << b.get(i) << \" \";         }         cout << endl;         return 0;     }      Note: A possible nice optimizations would be to have the two stacks in reverse order, to allow a memcpy of the whole portion to be moved from on stack to the other instead of moving elements one by one (memcpy is usually much faster). ### Use So a good use case of this DS would be an algorithm that runs through a sequence of elements and can, for each index, add new elements or remove old elements near this index. A particular case of this is filtering an array of elements. All you need to do is to iterate over all the indexes and simply call binder.remove(i) if the element at index i is to be removed. An efficient (and optimal) way to do it, given an array of elements, would usually be to allocate another array of the same size, and copy only the elements that we want to save. It is easy to see that this does the same amount of operations than our Binder implementation (if it starts on the first page), the main difference being that Binder allows a simpler algorithm hiding the dirty details of implementation. (And we don't end up with a different object.) Things get even messier to implement when we need to handle deletion of close elements or a mix of deletion and addition, while with the Binder DS it is all encapsulated and the algorithm stays very simple. So the Binder DS can be seen as an array (or \"vector\" in the sense of C++) which allows efficiently working on its content by including a working buffer, so one never has to allocate extra space by hand (so it helps reduce dynamic memory allocations). It makes the whole mutation processes transparent. ### Conclusion I haven't time-tested it against more conventional algorithms, but I expect it would be a little slower in element access than a plain vector because of the higher complexity of having two buffers instead of one. Do you think this is a good idea of a data structure, and it would prove efficient? Has it already been done, and in which library? Do you have a better alternative to propose?"}
{"_id": "255141", "title": "OOP and Data Structures in C++?", "text": "Is it a must to study Object Oriented Programming before going into Data Structures in the C++ language or can I begin with lists, stacks ,queues,sorting ......etc and does Object Oriented Programming have a relation with data structures?"}
{"_id": "87965", "title": "Best practice in setting return value (use else or?)", "text": "Whenever you want to return a value from a method, but whatever you return depends on some other value, you typically use branching:               int calculateSomething() {       if (a == b) {         return x;       } else {         return y;       }     }      Another way to write this is:               int calculateSomething() {       if (a == b) {         return x;       }       return y;     }      Is there any reason to avoid one or the other? Both allow adding \"else if\"-clauses without problems. Both typically generate compiler errors if you add anything at the bottom. Note: I couldn't find any duplicates, although multiple questions exist about whether the accompanying curly braces should be on their own line. So let's not get into that."}
{"_id": "224526", "title": "Is possible to create and download a video file via JavaScript, only on the client side?", "text": "Is possible to create and download a video file only on the client side? Suppose that we have an animated canvas like in this **JSFIDDLE**. Please see this snippet:               ...     var stop = false;     setTimeout(function () {         stop = true;     }, 1860);     ...     if (!stop) { requestAnimationFrame( draw, 10 ); }      So, my animation duration is `1860ms`. We can generate text files for download, I know that we can generate images from canvas, but is possible to render and download a video file? Would adding sound possible?"}
{"_id": "225833", "title": "Finding next free IP in a network", "text": "I have an IP network and want to automatically find a free IP address to provision a new server. Due to frequent server additions/removals the used IPs might be quite fragmented over the whole address space. To effectively check if an IP is free I have to ping and ask the DNS system, which is considered expensive. So I want to minimise these lookups and store some information about used/free addresses in a relational database. This should give me good candidates and I only have to do a few such lookups. The question is how to do so in a most simple and efficient way that SQL can handle? One first idea was to generate all possible addresses and store them in the database. Used ones just get the use column set to true. Then just make a SQL query that returns like the first 10 addresses where the use value is false. Looks fairly simple to get a new address. But this approach could become a problem for big networks. Also I have to generate and remove unused addresses for every network change. If I only store the used addresses I don't see how to make a query that returns me free addresses. I have to retrieve the whole list and implement the logic on the client. But I was hoping I could off-load that to the database server. Are there any better alternatives? Scan for free addresses regularly and only store a few ones? Sort the list of used addresses, maybe in a tree like structure where the non-leafs hold some information about free addresses in their child segment? These solutions seem rather complicated to me. I would prefer a simple algorithm without any extra running scanners/generators, and then in the worst case I have to fall back to some other method. Is there anything SQL can provide me with? Like give me the smallest free element in a sorted list of integers? Cheers."}
{"_id": "225837", "title": "should this code be structured into an event capture and a method or put the functionality in the event capturing", "text": "I have adopted some jQuery code that has like 20 event-captures that look like this                 // used on menu#edit       $('.show-headers-only-toggle').on('click',function(){         arc_eh.menu_edit.show_headers_only_toggle.call(this);       });      that call a method that does the functionality. This is the only place that this method is called. I want to put the functionality after the event like this since I think there's no reason to have this other method. The argument for having it in a method is that I'm polluting this space and the event handling is like a router and this is a controller. I feel like this is bikeshedding and we're not using a framework so it's just simpler to have all in place. Who do you feel is wrong in this? I feel they are bikeshedding this.                 // used on menu#edit       $('.show-headers-only-toggle').on('click',function(){         var action=$(this).attr('arc-action');         // this would just be what is in the function above         if(action=='hide-items'){           $('.menu-item-admin').hide();           $(this).text('show items');           $(this).attr('arc-action','show-items');         }else{           $(this).text('show headers only');           $('.menu-item-admin').show();           $(this).attr('arc-action','hide-items');         }       });"}
{"_id": "245894", "title": "Database design - Store state or compute state every time?", "text": "Let's say I have a relational database application and a \"user\" object and a \"message\" object. Now I want to show the number of unread messages to this user. What's the best way to archive this? Do I introduce a field in the user and count it up if the user receives a message and decrease the count if he reads one? Or do I execute a query every time to compute the number of messages for the user that are flagged as unread? I think the first approach is more complicated and error prone, but will perform better than the second approach. How is this normally done or what's the better approach?"}
{"_id": "43754", "title": "Enumerators vs. returning", "text": "I've been reading over the Enumerable module in Ruby, and it contains a few methods that follow the pattern of               enum.foo(n) {|obj| block } \u2192 nil     enum.foo(n) \u2192 an_enumerator      Which is to say, they seem to return an iterator when chained and nothing otherwise. What's the reasoning behind taking this approach instead of just returning a sequence? (I'm asking about general reasoning for this approach, not necessarily just its use in Ruby)"}
{"_id": "43752", "title": "Where do I begin when dealing with my first corporate client?", "text": "I recently developed a desktop client that automates much of the work involved during online research. I developed this tool in 2-3 hours, and it has reduced an hour's worth of work to about 5 minutes. The softwas has had some visibility, and some higher-ups in the organization are excited about the time and effort it's saving. Now, it s that the company is interested in distributing the software to every salesperson in the company, perhaps wanting to even buy it from me. I've never been in the situation of potentially selling my software to a corporate client. I've only worked on personal projects or developed in-house software for my employer. I have no idea what a fair price is, or even what a fair model for payment is (e.g., is it normal to accept a bulk payment in exchange for delivery of a static software application, or to sign a contract to further develop and maintain that application over a period of time, or what?). I just don't have the experience that would give me a basis for knowing how to approach this situation. How I can get this knowledge so as to make informed choices moving forward?"}
{"_id": "81106", "title": "Code documentation: Public vs. Non-Public?", "text": "I'm one of those developers that has the mindset that the code written should be self-explanatory and read like a book. HOWEVER, when developing library code for other people to use I try to put as much documentation in the header files as possible; which brings up the question: Is documenting methods that are non-Public even worth the time? They won't be using them directly, in fact, they can't. At the same time if I distribute the raw code (albeit, reluctantly) those non-Public methods will be visible and may need explaining. Just looking for some standards and practices that you all see or use in your travels."}
{"_id": "154176", "title": "Mobile Compatibility: traditional website look vs native application ?", "text": "I have a question related to mobile compatible websites, I have seen two type of websites One in which they adopt traditional website look and adjust website according to mobile screen, if they have lot of information which can not be adjust according to screen then they expand the height of page, so that user can scroll the page to see more information... In the second approach they used native application look means use navigation- bar, tab-bar, tool-bar, scroll-view just like in native applications. Height and width of page adjust according to screen size, if they have more information then they use scroll-view etc... My question is: which approach is better then other, in which approach you feel more comfortable to use website."}
{"_id": "201029", "title": "In what situations will Windows-based authentication for my ASP.NET MVC web application fail to allow users from accessing the web application?", "text": "My requirements are:   1. To build an ASP.NET MVC web application to use Windows-based authentication, since all the users which will be accessing the application are our internal employees, and they have username and password on our company's Active Directory. So, as I understand, the Windows authentication inside ASP.NET MVC is valid:   1. If an employee accesses the web application inside our company intranet then he will be able to login to the MVC application automatically (without the need to enter a username and password).   2. If the user logs in to the application using VPN from outside the company intranet, then he still can access the application automatically without the need to enter username and password.   3. But what happens if the user accesses the ASP.NET MVC web application using an operating system other than Windows such as Linux? Will Windows-based authentication work from inside or outside the company intranet?   4. What will happen if a user accesses the web application from outside the company network using his personal PC using Windows operating system?"}
{"_id": "201021", "title": "Extend the class or create an instance?", "text": "I'm reading Pro PHP and jQuery and want to rebuild the example. The author is creating a database connection class:               class DB_Connect {          protected $db;          protected function __construct($dbo = NULL){          if (is_object($db)) {               $this->db = $db;          }          else {               // Constants are defined in /sys/config/db-cred.inc.php               $dsn = \"mysql:host=\" . DB_HOST . \";dbname=\" . DB_NAME;               try {                   $this->db = new PDO($dsn, DB_USER, DB_PASS);               }               catch (Exception $e) {                   die ($e->getMessage());               }          }     }       This class is then extended by the application's main class, in order to get access to the database object. Why is this done that way? Couldn't we rather create an instance of `DB_Connect` in the main class? What are the benefits of that approach?"}
{"_id": "201020", "title": "Responsibility to reproduce bugs", "text": "I'm developing a program using a library made by another programmer (he works in the same company). Recently I discovered a leak in the library, which happens under certain network conditions after a few hours of running. I filed a bug with description of conditions to make this leak happen. That developer answered that \"this is not enough\", \"it's not his responsibility to reproduce bugs\" and I have to create unit test to reproduce this bug, otherwise he doesn't do anything.   1. Is he right?    2. What I can do in this situation? Creating unit test is impossible, because it depends on some random network timings."}
{"_id": "201023", "title": "Should I provide client libraries in some select languages along with the APIs themselves?", "text": "Say I have created a web service based on RESTful APIs. Does it make sense to also provide users with a client library for the API in some select languages which are likely to be the most used ones? By client library, I mean a thin wrapper around all the API calls, so that the users can call methods in their language and get objects in their language, which they can manipulate easily. If I do not provide a client, users will create their own versions of the clients, and will have to bother with creating their own versions of the data model objects, and also have to deal with decisions like which HTTP library to use. If I do provide a client, there is first the question of which languages do I support. Moreover, it might become difficult to maintain consistency between the API and the client libs. Also, there is the argument that the API is redundant if I provide a client library. I can simply provide the client library alone. Then I need to maintain the API contract at only one place instead of two. I am a bit under pressure to provide the client library because many of the users are apprehensive about using the API (most likely because they'll have to write this library themselves if they are to use the API). Which is the best way to go? Are there other pros and cons I am missing? Appreciate any advice/anecdotes."}
{"_id": "212895", "title": "Multilevel Queue Scheduling (MQS) with Round Robin", "text": "I'm trying to use MQS to create a Gantt chart of 5 processes (P1-P5) as well as their waiting, response, and turnaround times (and averages of those metrics) within a CPU task schedule. Here's the basic table of arrival times and bursts: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iyZJx.jpg) Here's my actual work version after ticking off the finished processes. The time quantum for each time slice is (2 queues) TQ1=4 and TQ2=3. Note that I'm doing MQS and NOT MLFQ: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7KNh8.jpg) It just doesn't feel like I'm doing MQS right here, I know this gets a little complex but maybe someone can point out where I'm going totally wrong."}
{"_id": "212891", "title": "How to validate (and group) User Listings in Marketplace", "text": "I am building a hobby marketplace (comic books). Users are able to list comic books they own for trading with other members. The problem I'm running into is that I would like to standardize the listings so I can display multiple options per title. Like this: User 1 lists: \"Amazing Spider-man #4\" on site.com/amazing-spider-man-4 User 2 goes to list \"amazing spiderman 4\" -> direct him to place the listing on site.com/amazing-spider-man-4 instead. Then this starts to get a bit complex... so in a theoretical example, there could be numerous volumes of each series. i.e. Amazing spider-man #4 (released in 1965) and then again, due to a reboot another Amazing spider-man #4 (released in 1981) or whatever. Is the answer to this to create a database and populate it with all series titles, issue counts and volumes, and then require the user to select one of those before making a submission? Such a data-source does not exist with reliable \"volume\" information, so I'm not sure how I'd do it."}
{"_id": "162331", "title": "What is the right way to version control a password protected archive?", "text": "I'm working with a local file which I always extract from a password protected archive (RAR), do some modifications/additions to it and overwrite the old file inside the archive with the new file (I don't overwrite the archive. I overwrite the file inside it). The RAR is password protected for certain confidentiality reasons, and I need it to be that way. I considered using Git for version control, but from my first use of Git, it appears to be meant for files that are not archived. I wanted to version control my RAR file. But what if I decide to add more files to the RAR and then commit the RAR? Doesn't that ruin the point of having version control where you can also do a diff to compare versions etc.? Does it make sense to use a version control when I'm extracting files from the RAR to do modifications and then putting them back in the RAR and committing the RAR? Is version control the right way to do this or is there something better?"}
{"_id": "162335", "title": "What is the purpose of returning $this in PHP", "text": "function select($select = '*')         {             if( is_string($select) ) {                 $select = explode(',', $select) ;             }                  foreach($select as $s) {                 $s = trim($s) ;                      if($s != '') {                     $this->aSelect[] = $s ;                 }             }                  return $this ;         }      In PHP, what is meant by `return $this`."}
{"_id": "235440", "title": "Does subtype polymorphism distinguish between inheriting behavior, or inheriting an interface?", "text": "To provide some context, I've seen some comments lately that equate inheriting behavior from a supertype, with inheriting a pure interface with no behavior. But there are pretty significant, and different, consequences to each. e.g. Here's a sample base class, and a \"pure\" interface (pseudocode):               class FlyingBird {         void fly() {             change state due to flight         }     }          interface Flyable {         void fly();     }      Now Let's say I have Swan and Dove. I'll subclass Swan from FlyingBird, and have Dove implement Flyable.               Swan extends FlyingBird {         (no defnition for fly, because we inherit it from FlyingBird)     }          Dove implements Flyable {         void fly() {             ... must provide implementation for fly, because the interface only provides the signature         }      Now, I can call both swan.fly() and dove.fly(), but swan gets its implementation from FlyingBird. The idiom \"Favor composition over inheritance\" tells me to favor the Dove implementation over Swan, with some sort of injected implementation, but \"subtype polymorphism\" doesn't seem to make that distinction. The distinction is important, because, for example:   * There's a growing movement in OO to make classes \"final\" or \"non-extendable\" by default, because of the complexities of inheriting behavior without breaking the super-classes' semtantics. In other words, some people are suggesting that one form of subtype prototyping should be disabled by default. (I haven't heard anyone suggest getting rid of interfaces in Java.)   * \"Favor composition over inheritance\" differentiates sharing behavior through class inheritance vs. providing a common interface backed by a shared implementation. In other words, there are practical and important differences between inheriting behavior and just inheriting an interface. Does subtype polymorphism distinguish between inheriting behavior, or inheriting an interface?"}
{"_id": "235444", "title": "Entity/Collection change tracking by DbContext", "text": "Can someone explain me how entity changes and entity collection changes are tracked by DbContext in Entity Framework 6 where entities are POCO type (not derived from EntityObject)? I experimented with EF6 and observed that even though entities are POCO but not generating proxies (so no self tracking) but EntityState is updated in real time (so no snap shot based tracking). I am wondering how these POCO type entities are tracked in EF6?"}
{"_id": "17442", "title": "Is Clang/LLVM ready for prime time?", "text": "Clang is able to be used instead of gcc? What your experience on that? What disadvantages there are yet? Performance of compilation is very better than gcc but about performance of code generated when executing it? Are there good tools as front-end (IDE) to run on Linux or Windows? EDIT: I mean C compiler. C++ it's not so good yet."}
{"_id": "17444", "title": "What are some known/common development specialties?", "text": "In an answer that I posted to another question, I noted that there is likely to become more and more specialization in software development: there being experts or specialists for given type of programming. I'm wondering, what specialties are known to exist in reasonable quantities in the industry now (not academia), that are not technology specific (eg. for this discussion winforms isn't a specialty)? I'm also interested in the industry that such a specialist would have to work in if necessary."}
{"_id": "17447", "title": "Will Java be dead if the split into free/premium JVM happens?", "text": "According to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/06/oracle_dueling_jvms/ there is a possibility that Oracle really will ~~kill Java~~ split Java into _Free_ and _Premium_ JVMs. **My Questions**   1. Do you think this will happen?   2. Will this kill Java at the end? If you answer both questions with _Yes_ , what are you doing about it? Which language would you choose, and which platform will you use? **.NET/Mono**? Plain compiled languages like **Golang**? **Ruby**? And if you answer _No_ , why do you think Oracle will not harm Java and the community?"}
{"_id": "201554", "title": "Can >8bit per channel colours be seen as intended in the browser?", "text": "For, say, a subtle background gradient to a web page, what are the advantages and disadvantages of saving it as a 16bit/channel png? Are the colours represented by >8bits displayed in the intended detail in all browsers?"}
{"_id": "235993", "title": "Can I use MIT code within a MS-PL project?", "text": "I would like to modify and use code of a MIT project within a MS-PL project. Am I allowed to do that? I've already searched for it with Google and Bing, but I could not find anything like \"Yes (No) you can (not) use MIT code within a MS-PL project\". I am no jurist, so it is quite hard to interpret any license."}
{"_id": "254375", "title": "Which programming idiom to choose for this open source library?", "text": "I have an interesting question about which programming idiom is easier to use for beginner developers writing concrete file parsing classes. I'm developing an open source library, which one of the main functionality is to parse plain text files and get structured information from them. All of the files contains the same kind of information, but can be in different formats like XML, plain text (each of them is structured differently), etc. There are a common set of information pieces which is the same in all (e.g. player names, table names, some id numbers) There are formats which are very similar to each other, so it's possible to define a common Base class for them to facilitate concrete format parser implementations. So I can clearly define base classes like `SplittablePlainTextFormat`, `XMLFormat`, `SeparateSummaryFormat`, etc. Each of them hints the kind of structure they aim to parse. All of the concrete classes should have the same information pieces, no matter what. To be useful at all, this library needs to define at least 30-40 of these parsers. A couple of them are more important than others (obviously the more popular formats). Now my question is, which is the best programming idiom to choose to facilitate the development of these concrete classes? Let me explain: I think imperative programming is easy to follow even for beginners, because the flow is fixed, the statements just come one after another. Right now, I have this:               class SplittableBaseFormat:         def parse(self):             \"Parses the body of the hand history, but first parse header if not yet parsed.\"             if not self.header_parsed:                 self.parse_header()                  self._parse_table()             self._parse_players()             self._parse_button()             self._parse_hero()             self._parse_preflop()             self._parse_street('flop')             self._parse_street('turn')             self._parse_street('river')             self._parse_showdown()             self._parse_pot()             self._parse_board()             self._parse_winners()             self._parse_extra()                  self.parsed = True      So the concrete parser need to define these methods in order in any way they want. Easy to follow, but takes longer to implement each individual concrete parser. So what about declarative? In this case Base classes (like `SplittableFormat` and `XMLFormat`) would do the heavy lifting based on regex and line/node number declarations in the concrete class, and concrete classes have no code at all, just line numbers and regexes, maybe other kind of rules. Like this:               class SplittableFormat:         def parse_table():             \"Parses TABLE_REGEX and get information\"             # set attributes here              def parse_players():             \"parses PLAYER_REGEX and get information\"             # set attributes here               class SpecificFormat1(SplittableFormat):         TABLE_REGEX = re.compile('^(?P<table_name>.*) other info \\d* etc')         TABLE_LINE = 1         PLAYER_REGEX = re.compile('^Player \\d: (?P<player_name>.*) has (.*) in chips.')         PLAYER_LINE = 16               class SpecificFormat2(SplittableFormat):         TABLE_REGEX = re.compile(r'^Tournament #(\\d*) (?P<table_name>.*) other info2 \\d* etc')         TABLE_LINE = 2         PLAYER_REGEX = re.compile(r'^Seat \\d: (?P<player_name>.*) has a stack of (\\d*)')         PLAYER_LINE = 14      So if I want to make it possible for non-developers to write these classes the way to go seems to be the declarative way, however, I'm almost certain I can't eliminate the declarations of regexes, which clearly needs (senior :D) programmers, so should I care about this at all? Do you think it matters to choose one over another or doesn't matter at all? Maybe if somebody wants to work on this project, they will, if not, no matter which idiom I choose. Can I \"convert\" non-programmers to help developing these? What are your observations? Other considerations: Imperative will allow any kind of work; there is a simple flow, which they can follow but inside that, they can do whatever they want. It would be harder to force a common interface with imperative because of this arbitrary implementations. Declarative will be much more rigid, which is a bad thing, because formats might change over time without any notice. Declarative will be harder for me to develop and takes longer time. Imperative is already ready to release. I'm looking for answers about which idioms to use when, which is better for open source projects with different scenarios, which is better for wide range of developer skills. * * * TL; DR:   * Parsing different file formats (plain text, XML)   * They contains same kind of information   * Target audience: non-developers, beginners   * Regex probably cannot be avoided   * 30-40 concrete parser classes needed   * Facilitate coding these concrete classes   * Which idiom is better?"}
{"_id": "235997", "title": "Designing tables for recording rounds in a game", "text": "I'm working on website for the game of bridge and I am process to designing the table to store the bidding. Shortly about the bidding. 4 people at a table will bid clockwise until 3 players has passed so it could be many rotations of bidding with a one of the four to start the bidding like this:               North East South West     Pass  1H   Pass  1NT     Pass  3H   Pass  3NT     Pass  Pass Pass          North East South West                      1C     1S    Pass 3S    Pass     4S    Pass Pass  Pass      So obviously I need save each bid in sequence but I have a few options how to design this. Could have a table like this and just keep adding an entry per round needed: Round, NorthBid, EastBid, SouthBid, WestBid Or: Sequence Number, Who, Bid Might be some other alternatives but I would like to get some input on the best approach designing the table structure for data like this."}
{"_id": "200607", "title": "Need server suggestion to handle Twitter API", "text": "I am working on generating some statistics by using twitter trends and streaming API. ( I have adjusted keywords such that traffic I get from twitter daily is of max size 1GB) I was currently working on localhost using PHP/MySQL combination(batch input to db, also using Redis in middle). For testing purposes, everything is fine but my question is Would a normal hosting server be enough to handle the load(of stream data from twitter+ cron script for fetching trends + the user traffic)? I have heard that app engine also supports php now. Will it be able to support the computational power with PHP as backend? I have worked with nodejs, but due to some reasons, I want this to be in PHP if possible. Please suggest if this is possible with PHP, otherwise I'll have to move my code to nodejs."}
{"_id": "218138", "title": "Fastest way to check if two square 2D arrays are rotationally and reflectively distinct", "text": "The best idea I have so far is to rotate first array by {0, 90, 180, 270} degrees and reflect it horizontally or/and vertically. We basically get 16 variations [1] of first array and compare them with second array. if none of them matches the two arrays are rotationally and reflectively distinct. I am wondering if there is more optimal solution than this brute-force approach? [1]               0deg, no reflection     0deg, reflect over x     0deg, reflect over y     0deg, reflect over x and y     90deg, no reflection     ..."}
{"_id": "244767", "title": "If I have true i/o false or vice versa, is it an OBOE?", "text": "I often make the mistake of inverting my truth values in my code (e.g. in my if clauses). It gives me the same feeling as when making an OBOE (Off By One Error), even though it's technically not. Would you call it an OBOE, or better yet, is there a specific term for \"off by truth value\"-errors? My reasoning is that all possible values of a boolean are `true` and `false`. In other words, the possible values are contained in the array: `[true, false]`. If you access this array by index, you'll always be off by one\u2026 when selecting the wrong one. This becomes especially obvious when you calculate your index as: `index = someInt % 2`.   Now I understand that this usually not the case, but in my mind, it always feels like this. Almost got it, just off by one\u2026"}
{"_id": "178891", "title": "Interaction of a GUI-based App and Windows Service", "text": "I am working on personal project that will be designed to help manage my media library, specifically recordings created by Windows Media Center. So I am going to have the following parts to this application:   * A Windows Service that monitors the recording folder. Once a new recording is completed that meets specific criteria, it will call several 3rd party CLI Applications to remove the commercials and re-encode the video into a more hard-drive friendly format.   * A controller GUI to be able to modify settings of the service, specifically add new shows to watch for, and to modify parameters for the CLI Applications   * A standalone (GUI-based) desktop application that can perform many of the same functions as the windows service, expect manually on specific files instead of automatically based on specific criteria. (It should be mentioned that I have limited experience with an application of this complexity, and I have absolutely zero experience with Windows Services) Since the 1st and 3rd bullet share similar functionality, my design plan is to pull the common functionality into a separate library shared by both parts of the application, but these 2 components do not need to interact otherwise. The 2nd and 3rd bullets seem to share some common functionality, both will have a GUI, both will have to help define similar parameters (one to send to the service and the other to send directly to the CLI applications), so I can see some advantage to combining them into the same application. On the other hand, the standalone application (bullet #3) really does not need to interact with the service at all, except for possibly sharing a few common default parameters that can easily be put into an XML in a common location, so it seems to make more sense to just keep everything separate. The controller GUI (2nd bullet) is where I am stuck at the moment.   * Do I just roll this functionality (allow for user interaction with the service to update settings and criteria) into the standalone application? Or would it be a better design decision to keep them separate? Specifically, I'm worried about adding the complexity of communicating with the Windows Service to the standalone application when it doesn't need it.   * Is `WCF` the right approach to allow the controller GUI to interact with the Windows Service? Or is there a better alternative? At the moment, I don't envision a need for a significant amount of interaction, maybe just adding a new task once in a while and occasionally tweaking a parameter, but when something is changed, I do expect the windows service to immediately use the new settings."}
{"_id": "46707", "title": "What should come first: testing or code review?", "text": "I'm quite new to programming design patterns and life cycles and I was wondering, what should come first, code review or testing, regarding that those are done by separate people? From the one side, why bother reviewing code if nobody checked if it even works? From the other, some errors can be found early, if you do the review before testing. Which approach is recommended and why?"}
{"_id": "140350", "title": "Where do I start in regards to making a Gnome/Unity Form Application", "text": "Ok so I am familiar with developing Form and Console applications on Windows using Visual Studio .Net with C#, but where do I start when it comes to Linux distro's like Ubuntu, is there an equivalent? How would one go about matching what they can do in a Windows environment with .Net and C# in a Linux environment without .Net coding in something like Java or C/C++? I am aware of Eclipse, does eclipse have a form designer or do you have to code the design of any Gnome/Unity forms manually? Can I use eclipse to write the Linux equivalent of a console application, that you just double click on to run? I also know about Mono, but the idea is that I want to learn how to develop software without using anything in the Microsoft stack and am not sure where to start. What is the standard language/framework used to develop these types of applications on Linux? As I become more proficient with Visual Studio, C# and .Net, it has struck me that without these Microsoft tools, I am nothing. I am only capable of developing for the Microsoft OS and this scares me. This isn't some anti Microsoft thing, Microsoft makes some incredible Software/Hardware/Operating Systems/IDE's, but it is generally a bad idea to put all of your eggs in one basket so if I want to learn how to develop Terminal and Gnome/Unity form applications where in the world do I start? I have used Linux on and off for years, but Windows has been my primary OS. However I have watched Linux get better and better and as much as I love Windows 7, I am dubious about Windows 8 (I for one will sorely miss my start menu)! Obviously MS aren't going anywhere anytime soon and I could spend the the next couple of decades developing for .Net without any issues but just because you can get away with something doesn't always mean it's a good idea. Thanks"}
{"_id": "140353", "title": "Is having a single `IndexWriter` instance in Lucene a good idea?", "text": "I am trying to understand how Lucene should be used. From what I have read, creating an `IndexReader` is costly, so using a `Search Manager` shoulg be the right choice. However, a `SearchManager` should be produced by a `NRTManager`(which, by the way, should replace the `IndexWriter` for every add or delete operation performed). But in order to have a `NRTManager`, I should first have an `IndexWriter`, and here comes my problem. The documentation says:   * an IndexWriter is thread-safe   * the constructor of this class takes a `Directory` object, so it seems creating an instace should be costly(as in the case of an IndexReader)   * all changes are buffered and flushed periodically(so they seem to encourage using a single instance) but:   * the changes, although flushed will only be visible after `commit` or `close`   * after finished making updates(add/delete), the instance should be closed   * I also found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5374419/forgot-to-close-the-lucene-indexwriter-after-adding-documents-to-the-index where it is said that not closing a writer might ruin everything So what am I really supposed to do? Is having a single `IndexWriter` instance a good idea (make only `commit` and never `close` it)? **EDIT:** What is more, if I use `NRTManager`, how can I make a `commit`? Is it even possible?"}
{"_id": "101352", "title": "Is Functional Programming possible in Java?", "text": "I was browsing through the Amazon.com Bookstore and I came across the book \"Functional Programming for Java Developers\". I know some very basic Functional Programming and have been programming in Java for 3 years. I would like to know is Functional Programming even possible in Java?"}
{"_id": "101350", "title": "Are rollback and roll-forward transactions equivalent for fault tolerance?", "text": "I've been reading about systems that employ transactions to provide fault- tolerance -- SQLite, for instance, implements a journal that allows the database to be rolled back to a known state in case of a failure. Most of the systems I've been reading about write the _current_ state to the journal and use this to roll back when required. I have found far fewer examples where the _next_ state is journalled and used to complete the transaction after a failure. Are there some good examples out there of systems that employ roll-forward transactions? Are there reasons to choose a roll-forward design over one that rolls back?"}
{"_id": "101351", "title": "Do I need to deal with the situation where private methods are called through reflection?", "text": "When creating a library, must I ensure that the private methods must work as expected when called not by other methods of the same class, but **by another library through reflection**? For example, if a private method `private DoSomething(int number)` expects that:   * `number` is a positive non-zero integer, and:   * a private variable `string abc` is not null and not an empty string, and completely, ugly fails if those two conditions are not matched, must I handle those failures even if I know that all methods in the class **will** always\u00b9 assign a non-empty value to `abc` before calling `DoSomething`, and pass a positive non-zero integer to this method? In other words, **is the code which is not protected against unsafe calls through reflection can be considered as low quality code** , or it belongs to the caller who uses reflection to ensure that the call does not break anything? Note: my question covers only a standard set of libraries. This does not cover code which must be highly secure (i.e. when somebody may be interested by using reflection in order to make it behave unexpectedly or crash). * * * \u00b9 Because the class is correctly documented, because there are enough unit tests to be sure that any other developer will not break this method, etc."}
{"_id": "42089", "title": "What are the most common stumbling blocks when it comes to learning programming, in order of difficulty?", "text": "I seem to remember that linked lists, recursion, pointers, and memory management are all good examples of stumbling blocks - places where the aspiring programmer typically ends up spending significant time trying to understand a concept before moving on and improving, and many end up giving up and not improving. I'm looking for a complete/comprehensive list of these types of stumbling blocks, in rough estimated order of difficulty to learn, with the goal of making sure that an educational program for programmers is structured to properly guide students through them Is this information available somewhere? Ideally, the difficulty to learn will be measured in some sort of objective manner (ie, % of students which consistently fail to learn the concept) What sources are most appropriate for obtaining this information?"}
{"_id": "62368", "title": "How should you explain Design Patterns to people outside of Software World", "text": "I want to explain design patterns to my niece, but always struggle in doing so. It is largely due to my lack of clear understanding of design patterns. How do you suggest explaining patterns like MVC,Singleton,Factory,Repository etc in such simple terms that even kids of 10 years old can understand. I'm looking for examples which can ease in helping understanding patterns. Examples with toys,movies,music etc."}
{"_id": "256200", "title": "SXSSFWorkbook (.xlsx file) can\u2019t be viewed correctly on the mac", "text": "I had use `XSSFWorkbook` which was work fine in all device(even for MAC), But now i migrate on `SXSSFWorkbook`, So now i face one problem xlsx file not able to view on MAC In detail Question So how can i achieve this as like in `XSSFWorkbook`."}
{"_id": "256203", "title": "Is there any reason to override Equals for an Entity?", "text": "An entity has identity, which implies there should only be one object (e.g. a particular customer) in memory. As such, reference equality (which is what the base version of object.equals checks for) should be the only equality we care about. A value object on the other hand would need to overrride Equals as there may be many in memory. Are there any issues with the above reasoning? I just can't imagine why I would have two customer objects representing the same customer, and in any case where I did (e.g. took a clone to do something with it), I can't think of any circumstances where I would need to check if it was equal to the orginal object. Even in a distributed environment, any client process should only contain one object for a certain customer."}
{"_id": "256205", "title": "C program for Tree Traversal without Recursion", "text": "I want a detailed C program for Tree Traversal without Recursion. The program that involves recursion is too simple, I want to do the same thing without recursion. I know the algorithm but couldn't convert it into C code. Can you help me out here?"}
{"_id": "256204", "title": "Choosing between two very similar jobs", "text": "Right out of college, I joined a company A a couple of weeks back. They have a good product, and I get to work on it from the ground up. I have to work with PHP and get to experiment and implement neural networks. A week back, I got a call from another startup B that was looking for experienced guys in Computer Vision/Machine Learning field. I'd applied to them some time back, they liked my CV, gave me a thorough interview and offered me a job but at a lower salary than what they originally mentioned and slightly lower than what I get at A. Here I'd be working Java/C++ and core software technologies. These guys have a product out, and I'd be involved in optimization of this product before I'm evaluated and start work on their newer one. Can someone experienced help me with some thoughts..   1. Will it be hard to switch from scripting languages like PHP to Java/C++ later in my career?   2. How stable is the computer vision field?   3. The head of B told me I'd be working in a challenging field, which would be a career escalator... People had taken huge pay cuts to join their company... Should I take these at face value? Any more opinions/suggestions (except for-just make sure you dn't regret it later) are appreciated."}
{"_id": "256207", "title": "How to test API's using Jmeter", "text": "my question is...how to test API's,in particular restful API'S using Jmeter???I am kind of new in this field....and I was told that there are these test scripts which have to be written to check the API's and given to Jmeter to test it...but I am not sure which scripting language to use or how it is done...I know there are soft wares like rest assured n play work...but I am interested in Jmeter as the testing tool...can anyone be kind enough to clear my doubt or atleast give me a link to any tutorial??? thank you :)"}
{"_id": "256208", "title": "How can I run external code from Squeak environment?", "text": "As far as I know, the Squeak environment is quite isolated from the rest of the operating system. However, I'm looking for a way to execute external code, which will be written in a different language, from within it. We need this to connect to an old code base. Is this possible? Which options do I have?"}
{"_id": "246729", "title": "Why do programmers still use \"SAFE_DELETE\"?", "text": "If I had a dime for every time I've seen this macro in use, today I would be coding just for fun:               #define SAFE_DELETE(p) if ((p) != NULL) { delete (p); (p) = NULL; }      Why do programmers insist in keep using this macro when `delete` checks for null? Is is because it sets the pointer to null at the end? Then why not at least rewrite it and remove the redundant check:               #define SAFE_DELETE(p) { delete (p); (p) = NULL; }      Still, it doesn't seem like a good practice."}
{"_id": "237595", "title": "How to pick the testing values for parameterized tests for stateless functions?", "text": "When writing (parameterized) tests for stateless functions, _how do I determine the most ideal set of values to test with?_ I'm writing a class with mathematical functions in C#, and I want to write unit tests for them. Today I want to write this function (really!):               int Clamp(int value, int lowerBound, int upperBound)     {         // TODO: Implement.         return 0;     }      As good TDD practice dictates, I'm writing the unit tests first and the implementation later. I can write a parameterized test for this stateless function, but have to decide on the best set of values to test with. My current strategy for picking testing values is: For each parameter, I can pick values from the whole set of 32-bit signed integers. I'm not using randomly generated values as that would make the test non-repeatable. To test the corner cases, I pick -1, 0, 1, but also the \u22122147483648 (minimum 32-bit signed integer) and 2147483647 (maximum 32-bit signed integer). I would also need to pick a 'normal' value, for example, 42, to make sure I'm not only testing corner cases. Is one normal value enough? And a negative one, let's say -63. Did I miss any?               \u22122147483648, -63, -1, 0, 1, 42, 2147483647      If any of the three parameters can have any of just these seven values, I'll end up with _343 tests for one function_! Before I'm going to write 343 tests, I really have to ask: _Are these the right values to test with? In general, what strategy can I use to pick the most effective values to use?_"}
{"_id": "237543", "title": "How do I find average bits per symbol using huffman code?", "text": "I'm trying to write a program in c for Huffman coding, but I am stuck. For input I have:               Sample input:     4      // here I scan how many letters I have     A 00   // and for everyone I scan how they are coded in string down     B 10          C 01     D 11     001010010101001011010101010110011000 //this is a suboptimal huffman code      So first I have to decode this string, and to find out how many times every letter appear. And I already do that. But now I have to find out how many bits have every letter using huffman tree, and in the output I have to print the average bit per symbol. The output for this example here have to be:               Sample output     1.722      So now, how to find out how many bits have every letter with huffman coding?"}
{"_id": "125497", "title": "How far has process-i-fi-cation of SW engineering come in the past 10 years?", "text": "I read a UML book a long time ago (15 or so years ago) by the inventors which said something like \"software engineering should be like building a house\". Meaning architects produce blue prints, and specialized workers utilize various views of them to produce their part of the end result. When I read it, it seemed reasonable, but from my perspective - I don't think much progress has been made to that end. It might be that the goal was wrong, or unrealistic - I'm not sure..."}
{"_id": "125496", "title": "Observer pattern; knowing *what* changed?", "text": "I've created two abstract classes Subject and Observer that define a classic Observer pattern interface. I derive from them to implement the Observer pattern. An observer might look like this:               void MyClass::Update(Subject *subject)     {         if(subject == myService_)         {             DoSomething();         }         else if(subject == myOtherService_)         {             DoSomethingElse();         }     }      This is fine and it tells me _who_ changed something. However, it doesn't tell me _what_ changed. Sometimes this is ok because I'm just going to query the Subject for the latest data, but other times I need to know what exactly changed on the Subject. I notice in Java they have both a notifyObservers() method and a notifyObservers(Object arg) method to presumably specify details about what changed. In my case I need to know if one of a couple different actions happened on the subject and, if it's a particular action, to know an integer number related to that action. So my questions are:   1. what's the C++ way to pass a generic argument (as Java does)?    2. Is Observer even the best pattern? Perhaps some kind of event system? **UPDATE** I found this article which talks about templating the Observer pattern: Implementing a Subject/Observer pattern with templates. This made me wonder if you could template an argument. I found this stack overflow question which talks about templating the argument: Template based Subject Observer pattern - Should I use static_cast or dynamic_cast. However, the OP seems to have a problem that no one has answered. The other thing I could do is change the Update method to take an EventArg object as in:               void MyClass::Update(Subject *subject, EventArg arg)     {       ...      And then create subclasses of the EventArg for specific argument data, and then I guess cast it back to the specific subclass within the update method. **UPDATE 2** Also found an article, On creating an asynchronous message-based c++ framework; part 2 which discusses having the Subject communicate details about _what_ changed. I'm now seriously considering using Boost.Signals. Using my own observer pattern made sense when it was simple, but templating the type and an argument is starting to get complicated. And I may need the thread safety of Boost.Signals2. **UPDATE 3** I also found some interesting articles on the observer pattern: Generalizing Observer by Herb Sutter Implementing the Observer Pattern in C++ - Part 1 Experiences of Implementing the Observer Design Pattern (Part 2) Experiences of Implementing the Observer Design Pattern (Part 3) However, I've switched my implementation to using Boost.Signals which, while possibly tad bloated for my purposes, is successfully working. And probably any concerns of bloat or speed are irrelevant."}
{"_id": "118899", "title": "Is DDD-Lite a pattern language for dependency injection?", "text": "I stumbled upon Greg Young's talk _7 Reasons why DDD Projects Fail_ where he mentions something he calls DDD-Lite at 7:20. Summarizing, he basically says some use DDD as a pattern languages (entities, repositories, value objects, services, etc) without doing anything else related to DDD. He postulates 60% or more of domain models in .Net are DDD- Lite. He thinks DDD-Lite is basically building up a language around dependency injection, something you don't really need to do. He says either do DDD entirely or do something simpler. Otherwise he claims a person is putting forth all of this work in building good abstractions, but without any real benefits. I must admit I don't know as much about DDD as I would like, and have not tried to use it yet. I also haven't read Eric Evan's book either. I am _much more_ interested in Dependency Injection and many, many books and blogs on this subject use terms and reference concepts from Eric Evans' DDD book. This is where I've been exposed to DDD concepts. Books I've been reading that do this include:   * Dependency Injection in .NET    * Microsoft .Net: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise    * Brownfield Application Development in .NET If one wants to do Dependency Injection, what are simpler alternatives over doing \"DDD-Lite?\" It sounds like to me building good abstractions are quite useful regardless of if one is using concepts from DDD in a \"DDD-Lite\" way. (see Mark Seemann's blog posts: Interfaces are not abstractions, and Towards better abstractions). I have a hard time believing everyone doing Dependency Injection happens to also be doing (or needs to do) full fledged DDD. Did I somehow misunderstood Greg Young's argument about DDD-Lite?"}
{"_id": "118890", "title": "Getting a design company to embrace the benefits of good development", "text": "I know there are already various topics discussing what we can do to get managers to buy into good development practices, but I was wondering if there are any specific things we can do to explain to designers that Web Development is more than just turning their design into a website. I want to try and push them to design based on progressive enhancement, responsive design and ajax but I think there is a trend to stick to the print based design principles, which is understandable as it is their background, but is frustrating to a dev."}
{"_id": "125498", "title": "Cross-process asynchronous messages in .NET", "text": "(Asking this here instead of SO because I don't even know what technology to tag it with :)) My team is about to embark on a project to convert a large part of our code base to use asynchronous file I/O, as our file storage medium is increasingly being locate across a high-latency connection. We have some basic experience with asynchronous development, but this is on a larger scale than our previous work. At this point, I'm not even sure where to begin looking for technologies, patterns, or documentation on how to solve this problem. The basic setup we have to work within has client applications with a user interface that sends file requests off to some locally-running background process, which does the actual work of communicating with the file storage services to obtain data. (This \"proxy\" layer is needed because we have a number of client applications that need to share the file services, cached results, etc.) The design I have in my head would be for a client to submit a request to the service, which would in turn submit a request to the file storage services to begin an asynchronous I/O job. As progress was made downloading the file, the service would receive notifications, and would then fire off some kind of callback mechanism to the UI client to report process and/or completion. This means I need some sort of cross-process mechanism for executing callbacks. Previously we have use duplex WCF services to implement something similar to this, but I am unsure if it will work properly in our current case. In particular, we want to handle the case where a client submits a request, then exits while the retrieval was in process. The service needs to be able to detect that the client has terminated but _keep_ downloading the file; what I know about WCF duplex channels would imply that the client channel closing would terminate the service's channel as well. In addition, I would prefer not to require the client app to sit in some kind of spin-lock loop waiting for the async call to finish, but again, my research has led me to believe that the duplex callbacks only operate within the context of a single WCF call, so we would need to keep the calling thread around for the duration. What other mechanisms are there for registering and sending callback-style messages across process? The team would prefer a fully-managed solution, though I'm certainly open to unmanaged options if they are significantly better in some way."}
{"_id": "135461", "title": "How can I organize fast and comfortable solution compilation in VS 2010?", "text": "Most of programmers who are involved into development of more or less large project(s) know how annoying the process of compilation can be. There are some other things which are dependent on compilation, for example unit tests. TDD requires tests to execute fast, otherwise developers tend to run them rarely. The process of compilation of whole solution my team is working with takes about 5 minutes. Our Visual Studio solution consists of many projects, so we usually don't have to recompile all of them. Normally, this 'partial' compilation requires about 2 minutes. It's easy to calculate that compiling the solution 10 times we lose 20+ minutes! The situation is even worse when we have to rebuild whole solution often. For this reason I unload a lot of projects manually very often but it scarcely helps. **1\\. How can we accelerate the process of compilation?** **2\\. Can you recommend any Visual Studio [2010] extension which allows continuous background solution compilation?**"}
{"_id": "200047", "title": "Is it useful to use encapsulation in dynamic typed, interpreted programming language?", "text": "For what I know, encapsulation is useful because:   1. if you use directly an attribute and change its type in a static typed language you have to change all the code that uses the class. On the contrary, if you have declared getters and setters for that attribute you have not to do this   2. it hides the internal functioning of your class, useful if, for example, you're offering an API   3. it avoids that another class that inherits your class will overwrite attributes or methods My considerations about dynamic typed, interpreted programming language are:   1. since the types are dynamic there's no need to encapsulate your class for this reason   2. you can see the code of an interpreted language, so I think there's not a way to really hide your API   3. this could be a problem when this is unintended, but my opinion is that it should be better to make attention to unintended overwriting instead of limiting by default this possibility. Python is a good example: if you declare for example, the name of an attribute or method starting it with a double underscore, you can declare it also in a inherited class, but they are threated as two distinct variables even if they have the same name (thank you delnan) ~~a method name that starts with a \"_\" character raises a warning if overwritten by a method of an inheriting class.~~ Am I missing something important?"}
{"_id": "139764", "title": "Login into application at startup", "text": "Short version: I want \"Login on program startup\" checkbox like in Skype, for example, but don't know how to protect saved credentials securely. * * * I'm writing client application which, before doing actual requests to server, should be authorized by server. Authorization goes as follows: user fills in standard login dialog, data goes to server via HTTPS and, if it was correct, server sends credentials. However, entering password each time is disturbing and prevents starting application on system startup. I want to encrypt those credentials and save them on disk. I could not find appropriate encryption key, however. Key should be, obviously, user-specific (not system-wide!) and reasonably hard to fraud. For now I just use hash of some HDD info and username and fallback to hash of process environment, if WinAPI call fails (how bad is that?). I'm writing for Windows using C++/Qt, but any recommendation is welcomed. Thanks. * * *  **upd1** Ok, to make myself clear:   1. _Required encryption level_ is:   you cannot login by simply copying `credentials.dat` file from one computer to other (or one user folder to other);   2. Keeping _password_ secure (which is not stored by application) is user's responsibility.   3. I want to store not the password, but encrypted access token which is `user-id` and `public key` for encrypting communications with server. From your answers I've understood that my auth. system isn't okay. **I will** reconsider it. And yes, I have access to both, server- and client-side. For now, I want way to determine machine- and user-unique encryption key, which I can get from OS in runtime to decrypt/encrypt credentials (which is server's answer to email/password entered by user)."}
{"_id": "200041", "title": "Looking for meaningful, strong argument in favor of antivirus software on development machines", "text": "When forming opinions, it is a good practice to follow scholastic tradition - think as hard as you can _against_ the opinion you hold and try to find counter-arguments. However, no matter how hard I try, I just cannot find reasonable arguments in favor of antivirus (and related security measures) on development machines. Arguments against antivirus(AV) in development are plentiful:   1. It is not uncommon for 1 minute build to take 10 times longer with AV on   2. In a conference talk, IntelliJ developers claim AV software is #1 suspect when their IDE is sluggish   3. Unzipping comes with roughly 100 kb/s speed with AV on   4. AV renders Cygwin completely unusable (vim takes 1 minute to open a simple file)    5. AV blocks me from downloading useful files (JARs, DLLs) from colleagues' e-mails   6. I can't use multiple computers for development, since AV / security measures prevent me from unblocking ports   7. AV kills performance of programs with high file turnover, such as Maven or Ant Last, but not least - what does AV actually protect me from? I am not aware of my AV program ever stopping any security thread. If the reason is fear of disclosing NDA stuff - no AV can possibly prevent me from doing it if I set my mind to it. If the reason is fear of losing source code and/or documentation - there are distributed revision systems for this (there are at least 20 copies of our repo and we sync on daily basis). If the reason if fear of disclosing customer data - developers rarely work connected to real production databases, instead they are playing around in toy environments. Even if there are meaningful arguments in favor of having AV on development machines, they fall apart when faced with the ability to run a Virtual Machine in your paranoidly protected environment. Since I want to keep an open mind of the issue, could anyone present meaningful, strong argument in favor of Anti-virus software for developers?"}
{"_id": "200042", "title": "AMD based JavaScript Development for static websites", "text": "I'm have been doing some research into making code more testable and modular, but after reading alot about AMD based JavaScript, it doesn't appear to fit the needs of a static website. Is this assumption correct? Is AMD based development geared more toward highly interactive web applications that simple websites?"}
{"_id": "85177", "title": "Naming controllers and their methods", "text": "I currently use one controller per action. One of the problems\u2014sort of\u2014I encountered is when naming the methods of these controllers, which only have one.   Should I use a generic method name like `get()` or should I encapsulate all my controllers into one and name its methods after the action they do, e.g. `indexAction()`, `userListAction()`?"}
{"_id": "85175", "title": "What is the exact meaning of Platform independence?", "text": "What is the meaning of platform independence? I am taking the case of Java. Can I run a Java application on Linux that built on Windows platform? Or the reverse? Can I use a same (or exact) programming algorithm on both operating systems? In my view File Types are platform independent like Videos, Images, Documents etc."}
{"_id": "134730", "title": "How should I handle negative campaigns against my application?", "text": "I developed an app a few years back: while it's outdated and useless compared to what's available today, it was helpful for people when it was first released. I recently searched for my own name on Google, and came across a website that made the claim my app was malware that couldn't be uninstalled normally, and provided step-by-step instructions for removing it. This is, of course, not true and I'm pretty frustrated by the implication. How should I handle a situation like this? Should I confront the site owner, or handle it a different way?"}
{"_id": "164577", "title": "Finding Database issue for iphone app", "text": "I know this is a dumb question and it might not be \"conceptual\" but, as a self-starter I really want to know how to get connected to some sort of \"commercial database\"? I'm designing a local gas station utility app for iphone and ipad. I have absolutely no clue how to find a relevant database. For example, if I want to make an app for pizza ordering in the great Chicago area. How do I get info (price, menu, location, etc.) of those pizza stores scattered all over Chicago? Can any one shed some light on this for me?"}
{"_id": "203537", "title": "Multiple Object Instantiation", "text": "I am trying to get my head around object oriented programming as it pertains to web development (more specifically PHP). I understand inheritance and abstraction etc, and know all the \"buzz-words\" like encapsulation and single purpose and why I should be doing all this. But my knowledge is falling short with actually creating objects that relate to the data I have in my database, creating a single object that a representative of a single entity makes sense, but what are the best practises when creating 100, 1,000 or 10,000 objects of the same type. for instance, when trying to display a list of the items, ideally I would like to be consistent with the objects I use, but where exactly should I run the query/get the data to populate the object(s) as running 10,000 queries seems wasteful. As an example, say I have a database of cats, and I want a list of all black cats, do I need to set up a `FactoryObject` which grabs the data needed for each cat from my database, then passes that data into each individual `CatObject` and returns the results in a array/object - or should I pass each `CatObject` it's identifier and let it populate itself in a separate query."}
{"_id": "179590", "title": "design for interruptable operations", "text": "I couldn't find a better topic but here it is; 1) When user clicks a button, code starts t work, 2) When another button is clicked, it would stop doing whatever it does and start to run the second button's code, 3) Or with not user interaction, an electrical power down detected from a connected device, so our software would cancel the current event and start doing the power down procedure. How is this design mostly applied to code? I mean \"stop what you are doing\" part? If you would say events, event handlers etc. how do you bind a condition to the event? and how do you tell the program without using laddered if's to end it's process?               method1();     if (powerdown) return;     method2();      if (powerdown) return;      etc."}
{"_id": "203531", "title": "Best way to convert existing project to be open source in GitHub", "text": "I've been working on a personal closed source project for some time and would like to make it open source. I've never created my own open source project before so it will be a good learning experience. I have been using GitHub as source control, so once I've written some decent docs on how to use and develop for it etc, it should be as simple as switching the repo to be public right? I guess my main question is around licencing. I was thinking of going with Apache 2.0 licence just because it seems to be widely used. It requires the licence header to be attached to all the source files, but if I do that now then all the other commits in the past will have it missing. Does that mean some one could pull an earlier version and it wouldn't have a licence? Is it best to start a new repo with the initial commit containing all the code with licence headers? Or maybe is there some advanced Git functionality that allows me to apply the licence header to all existing commits some how? Cheers."}
{"_id": "161514", "title": "Some questions about ClearCase", "text": "I am a mercurial person. I even use it as an incremental backup tool. I used to use SVN and CVS. In a recent project, I had to to use clearcase and encountered lots of issues with it. For example, I could not figure out how to recursively include a whole tree of code without writing a script or using awk or find. Is there a way to accomplish this easier? I also believe (but not sure) that clearcase integrates issue/bug management with the code. I would not like to have the managing of my code revisioning tightly encumbered with the issues, any suggestions? My further questions are:   * Is clearcase in obsolence as a version control env? Is it likely that in the project I am working compelling me to use clearcase simply because it is a legacy project?   * It gives me an impression that it is obsolete, over-engineered and should be phased out. Is that the current situation with clearcase among programmers?   * Are there compelling reasons/features/functionality in clearcase that it is preferred over SVN, GIT or Mercurial?   * Perhaps, there is a whole ecosphere of reasons why the project is using clearcase and that I need to drop my mercurial mentality and spend time getting immersed in the clearcase ecosphere I have yet to discover?   * Is the lack of features in clearcase the reason for the lack of features in the clearcase GUIs?"}
{"_id": "179594", "title": "Is the copy/paste approach professionally viable when working with the Google Maps API?", "text": "I find that I understand much of the Javascript concepts used in the Google Maps API code, but then again there is quite a bit that is way over my head in syntax.      For example, the geocoder syntax seems to be of Ajax form, though I don't understand what is happening under the hood (especially with lines like `results[0].geometry.location`). I _am_ able to modify the body of `if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK)` for different purposes though.      So, being that I am able to take various code from the Developer's Guide and rework it to an extent for my own purposes, all the while not fully understanding what Google Maps is actually doing, does this make me a copy- paste programmer?      Is this a bad practice, or is this professionally viable? I am, of course, interested in learning as much as I can, but what if time-constraints outweigh the learning process?"}
{"_id": "134738", "title": "Java IDE written in pure Java?", "text": "Is there a Java IDE written in Java? I just got my year 9 DET laptop today at school, and there are all sorts of restrictions set in place. Somewhat annoyingly, you cannot run any executable other than the ones already installed on the system (for some reason they haven't disabled the use of Command Prompt, PowerShell, or strangely enough, regedit). They allow you to run Java executables, so I thought that would be the only way to be able to program on my crappy laptop at school (when I have finished all my work, naturally) :D **Edit:** By written in Java, I also mean that the executable, that is used to run the program, has the file extension \".jar\", thus running on the JVM. **Edit 2:** I tried the DrJava IDE, and it worked great, thanks (I can compile and execute programs)! Regarding running Eclipse as through the command line using the command \"java -jar \"C:/Users.../org.eclipse...\"\". This results in an error producing a log saying file, the main error is: > MESSAGE An error occurred while automatically activating bundle > org.eclipse.ui.workbench (182). How do I fix this error (I much perfer working with Eclipse than any other IDE)? **Edit 3:** Regarding my last edit, just disregard it :D. I fixed the problem by downloading the latest version of Eclipse."}
{"_id": "134739", "title": "Ruby Drag-n-Drop IDE and Ruby programming related", "text": "I am writing a small desktop GUI application using Ruby and Gtk2. I am using RubyMine 3 on Linux (Fedora). I created a simple class to create a Gtk Window but now I feel it takes more time to just keep adding code for a Button, Drop Down and TextBox etc. I need to write even more code if the DropDown needs to be populated at run-time. Is there any Ruby Gtk IDE which supports adding Controls with simple drag-n- drop? At least I can focus on the business logic instead of just defining position and sizes of controls. One more question. I subscribed to Ruby-Forum mailing list but it is often flooded with Spam. Which is the official Ruby forum? Recently NetBeans has withdrawn support for Ruby. Is it worth to learn Ruby seriously and use it in commercial environment or not?"}
{"_id": "161519", "title": "What is the best approach to getting to know a big system like a CMS or forum system which has no documentation?", "text": "_My problem_ is the following; I need to get to know a totally new system, for example Wordpress, Drupal, or a framework like Symfony, or maybe a big forum system like PhpBB.   Let's suppose it has no documentation at all, but the code is good. _What I end up doing is_ that I start at `index.php` and click the first include, so this takes me to the next file. But then it requests another file and that file request another, so at the end I even forget where I started and have no clue which was the previous request. So _my question_ is, is there a good way to do this ? Like drawing a chart of the application flow or something. When I want to get to know a new system, at first I would like to get the \" **big picture** \" about what comes after what, and what files do what part of the system, what function get called when, things like these. Basically all I want to do is able to write an Application flow like this when I start with a new system. Is there a nice way tot do this without taking too much time and confusion?   Are there any software or debugging tools for this?   Are there any chart types for this situation which I can apply here?   Can you suggest small tricks or tips how you get to know big systems and what are you looking first without digging into the code too deeply wasting too much time on not-really-important-parts?"}
{"_id": "203538", "title": "What to do when I just don't know what's wrong?", "text": "I'm a beginner programmer, self-teaching and I have a question. I have some code and I don't know why my code isn't doing what I want it to do. My question is; what do you do when you just don't know why/how your code is not working and you've spent ages at it? Start over, or keep going, or what? I'm talking about best practice here, best practice for inexperienced programmers."}
{"_id": "23146", "title": "Citations for inadvisability of globally unique password", "text": "I am having a disagreement with someone (a client) about the user identification/authentication process for a system. The nub of it is that they want each user to have a globally unique password (i.e. no two users can have the same password). I have wheeled out all the obvious arguments against this (it's a security vulnerability, it confuses identification with authentication, it's pointless, etc.) but they are insisting that there is nothing wrong with this approach. I have done various google searches looking for authoritative (or semi- authoritative , or even just independent) opinions on this, but can't find any (mainly it's just such an obvious faux pas that it doesn't seem worth warning against, as far as I can tell). Can anybody point me towards any such independent opinion, please? **[EDIT]**   Thanks for all your answers, but I already understand the problems with this proposed approach/requirement, and can even explain them to the client, but the client wont't accept them, hence my request for independent and/or authoritative sources. I'd also found the Daily WTF article, but it suffers from the problem that Jon Hopkins has pointed out - that this is such a self-evident WTF that it doesn't seem worth explaining **why**. And yes, the passwords are going to be salted and hashed. In which case global uniqueness might well be difficult to ensure, but that doesn't solve my problem - it just means that I have a requirement that the client won't budge on, that's not only ill-advised, but is also difficult to implement. And if I was in a position to say \"I'm not budging on salting and hashing\", then I'd be in a position to say \"I'm not implementing globally unique passwords\". Any pointers to independent and/or authoritative sources for why this is a **bad** idea still gratefully received...   **[/EDIT]**"}
{"_id": "129131", "title": "Learning on the Job: JavaScript, CoffeeScript, BackBone and jQuery", "text": "I have avoided JavaScript for as long as I could. I simply think that it is a very, very dirty scripting language. I have nothing against curly braces, I work with PHP almost every day, I'm fine with them. I think the biggest issue is that I'm pretty much self taught and started out with PHP. I've worked previously with jQuery, so that dealt pretty much with my JSfobia (as manipulating a few elements on a page did the trick for me, as well as the tons of pre-made plugins out there). Now I just have to take a step further. I've recently done some exploration, and I must say that I like the way that RoR looks like. And well - there is a similar way of writing JS - CoffeeScript. On top of that, there is an project coming up for me ( a week or so ) to develop an iPhone app, now I already know that I'll be storing data on the phone and then displaying it. Nothing too complicated yet, but these are new grounds for me. I will probably be working with PhoneGap to make it an app, since I don't really want to start messing in Objective-C (although I could, but without C/C++ knowledge it may take a lot more time than I'd want it to) So - this brings to my question. Is it okay if I start learning CoffeeScript with just basic understanding of JS, and start trying to use Backbone.js with jQuery/+jQuery Mobile for the project ? Open for any additional suggestions as well."}
{"_id": "121440", "title": "How to refactor code to some common code?", "text": "**Background** I'm working on an ongoing C# project. I'm not a C# programmer, primarily a C++ programmer. So I was assigned basically easy and refactoring tasks. The code is a mess. It's a huge project. As our customer demanded frequent releases with new features and bug fixes, all other developers were forced to take brute force approach while coding. The code is highly unmaintainable and all other developers agree with it. I'm not here to debate whether they did it right. As I'm refactoring, I'm wondering if I'm doing it in the right way as my refactored code seems complex! Here is my task as simple example. **Problem** There are six classes: `A`, `B`, `C`, `D`, `E` and `F`. All of the classes have a function `ExecJob()`. All six implementations are very similar. Basically, at first `A::ExecJob()` was written. Then a slightly different version was required which was implemented in `B::ExecJob()` by copy-paste- modification of `A::ExecJob()`. When another slightly different version was required, `C::ExecJob()` was written and so on. All six implementations have some common code, then some different lines of code, then again some common code and so on. Here is a simple example of the implementations:               A::ExecJob()     {         S1;         S2;         S3;         S4;         S5;     }          B::ExecJob()     {         S1;         S3;         S4;         S5;     }          C::ExecJob()     {         S1;         S3;         S4;     }      Where `SN` is a group of exact same statements. To make them common, I've created another class and moved the common code in a function. Using parameter to control which group of statements should be executed:               Base::CommonTask(param)     {         S1;         if (param.s2) S2;         S3;         S4;         if (param.s5) S5;     }          A::ExecJob() // A inherits Base     {         param.s2 = true;         param.s5 = true;         CommonTask(param);     }          B::ExecJob() // B inherits Base     {         param.s2 = false;         param.s5 = true;         CommonTask(param);     }          C::ExecJob() // C inherits Base     {         param.s2 = false;         param.s5 = false;         CommonTask(param);     }      **Note that, this example only employs three classes and oversimplified statements. In practice, the`CommonTask()` function looks very complex with all those parameter checking and there are many more statements. Also, in real code, there are several `CommonTask()`-looking functions.** Though all the implementations are sharing common code and `ExecJob()` functions are looking cuter, there exists two problems that are bothering me:   * For any change in `CommonTask()`, all six (and may be more in the future) features are needed to be tested.   * `CommonTask()` is already complex. It will get more complex over time. Am I doing it in the right way?"}
{"_id": "247233", "title": "Pointer indexing", "text": "I am currently reading a book titled \"Numerical Recipes in C\". In this book, the author details how certain algorithms inherently work better if we had indices starting with 1 (I don't entirely follow his argument and that isn't the point of this post), but C always indexes its arrays starting with 0. In order to get around this, he suggests simply decrementing the pointer after allocation, e.g.:               float *a = malloc(size);     a--;      This, he says, will effectively give you a pointer that has an index starting with 1, which will then be free'd with:               free(a + 1);      As far as I'm aware, though, this is undefined behavior by the C standard. This is apparently a highly reputable book within the HPC community, so I don't want to simply disregard what he's saying, but simply decrementing a pointer outside of the allocated range seems highly sketchy to me. Is this \"allowed\" behavior in C? I have tested it out using both gcc and icc, and both of those results appear to indicate that I'm worrying over nothing, but I want to be absolutely positive."}
{"_id": "247230", "title": "Python API: Extension Module or Pure Module", "text": "We have a C++ application, with C++ interfaces changing regularly during development. We also have a C API which is designed to be stable in spite of such changes; the C API is tighly focused on operations which client code might want to do. Now, we want to add a Python API to make it easy for outside clients (or our own team) to create scripts controlling the application. Given the volatility of the C++ code and the by-design stable nature of the C API, it makes sense to build the Python API over the C one. I know the way to do this is to provide an extension module (implemented in C++) which will be usable in Python and wrap the C API functions. What I am considering is whether I should make this extension module _the_ Python API (and thus make it as Pythonic as possible), or whether I should keep this an \"implementaion detail\" of the Python API and build a pure Python module on top of it, which would serve as the actual external API. The extension module would then be a very thing wrapper around the C functions, resigning on being nice Python code. I see the following pros and cons: **Python API is a C++ extension** This would be more efficient, as there are less intermediary layers. At the same time, it requires boilerplate code to provide Pythonic behaviour in C++, and the code is generally harder to write and maintain (reference counting, pointer tables etc.). **Python API is a module wrapping the C++ extension** This allows us to write Pythonic code in Python, which is easier and less error-prone. It would probably lead to a richer, more complete API as well, since adding functionality is easier and faster in Python than in C++. As a downside, there's runtime and memory overhead of the extra layer, as well as the need to maintain two separate bits of code for one thing. * * * My primary question is: are there any obvious upsides or downsides to some of the approaches that I failed to consider, especially ones that make one choice clearly superior to the other? Also, is there a widely accepted \"best practice\" for this type of thing? Or a \"checklist\" to help choose the correct approach for a particular situation?"}
{"_id": "219577", "title": "Do you track progress during a agile sprint (iteration)", "text": "We have recently adopted (or are trying) to adopt managing our projects in an Agile manner. During our first sprint I asked our Scrum master ( _who also happens to be our primary resident Agile go-to person_ ) if it was possible to see the progress of our sprint so we could identify if we were on schedule or not (an possible risk). They turned around and said you don't do that at a sprint level? I'm really new to agile but I thought it would be very beneficial to know if a sprint is on target or not. However perhaps this is too hard to do at this stage? If so, are there any suggestions/methods on how you could identify if a sprint is at risk?"}
{"_id": "54278", "title": "Is it easier to define and recognize poor application design than good application design?", "text": "A couple recent questions focused on \"well designed applications\" and \"poorly designed applications\". Looking at the responses it appears to me that it might be easier to recognize and define poor code and poorly designed applications than it is to define what good code and good/correct application design is. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "54276", "title": "What should be a fair amount of time in an interview before rejecting a candidate?", "text": "As a panelist for technical interviews, you often come across candidates who have all the requried educational qualifications, skill sets and experience level on resumes, but struggle to answer even the most basic questions. Ideally, technical interviews should try to check different aspects of a candidate and test them on various skills. So, if the candidate falters on one aspect, one should test the other ones before coming to a conclusion. But often, if a candidates falters on the first few questions, the red flag rises up pretty quickly. What in your opinion should be the bare minimum time spent with a candidate before making a fair accessment of his/her skills and suitability for the job?"}
{"_id": "59088", "title": "What is the formal definition of a meta package?", "text": "There are several examples of packaging where an application package is built, named, described, even licensed, but contains only setup code and dependencies -- it has no first-class runtime software of its own. I would call this \"meta- packaging\". This seems to be particularly popular in the open-source world, including examples like _kde-meta_ (Gentoo Portage), _Plone_ , and I'm sure lots of others. I can see how it's a useful practice, but despite it existing as a practice, I couldn't find a formal definition of either \"meta-packaging\" or \"meta-egg\" (Python) in searching the web. Is that not the correct term? If it is, is it such common-sense that it needs no formal definition? If not, what is the correct way to put it?"}
{"_id": "191936", "title": "Fast lookup hash map implementations", "text": "I'm in the process of implementing a programming language on top of LLVM. For my polymorphic system, I'm looking for suggestions for a ultra-fast dictionary. I am not concerned with insert time, as these maps are only written to a dozen times or so. But I'm looking for super fast lookup. I did some research on the open addressing dict implementation in Python, and it seems pretty fast (a few shifts and bitmasks in the best case). However, I want to do my research. Does anyone know of a super fast dictionary/hashmap implementation? In this case my data will most likely be pointers as keys and pointers as values. Or if it works out better, I could probably get by with integers as keys. Any papers or discussions on the subject would be great."}
{"_id": "237286", "title": "Why do C arrays not keep track of their length?", "text": "What was the reasoning behind not explicitly storing an array's length with an array in `C`? The way I see it, there are overwhelming reasons _to do so_ but not very many in support of the standard (C89). For instance:   1. Having length available in a buffer can prevent buffer overrun.   2. A Java-style `arr.length` is both clear and avoids the programmer from having to maintain many `int`s on the stack if dealing with several arrays   3. Function parameters become more cogent. But perhaps the most motivating reason, in my opinion, is that usually, no space is saved without keeping the length. I would venture to say that most uses of arrays involve dynamic allocation. True, there may be some cases where people use an array allocated on the stack, but that's just one function call* - the stack can handle 4 or 8 bytes extra. Since the heap manager has to track the free block size used up by the dynamically allocated array anyway, why not make that information usable (and add the additional rule, checked at compile time, that one can't manipulate the length explicitly unless one would like to shoot oneself in the foot). The only thing I can think of on the other side is that no length tracking may have made compilers simpler, but not _that_ much simpler. *Technically, one could write some kind of recursive function with an array with automatic storage, and in this (very elaborate) case storing the length may indeed result in effectively more space usage."}
{"_id": "1674", "title": "Suggestions for Programs to develop for learning", "text": "i wonder apart from those very simple hello world apps, what other programs should i try developing for learning. i am entering uni next year and wonder what kind of programs will be developed in that environment. this is not really a language specific thing, but if you want to know what i use currently mainly   * windows: C#/WPF - i studied java/vb etc in poly but i think C# is the way to go, maybe even F#   * web: PHP/MySQL, Zend Framework/Doctrine, + HTML/CSS/JS(jQuery) of course. looking to try google app engine with python too.  for now, i am thinking of   * todo lists   * apps that integrate with api eg. twitter/tumblr which i use   * text editor - i am currently trying to develop a text editor that uses markdown and generates html files for viewing (link to blog entry). not very pratical after i started developing it. cos when editing theres no formatting and in HTML format, i cannot edit directly    * blog software (for web)"}
{"_id": "220935", "title": "Does Abstract Factory Pattern scale?", "text": "I'm still trying to understand design patterns here, after learning the Abstract factory pattern , I realised that this pattern will not scale well. Take a look at the uml diagram of the abstract factory pattern ![uml diagram](http://s11.postimg.org/okmvliygj/Abstract_Factory.gif) If I have to create a new 'AbstractProductC', I will have to add an abstract method 'CreateProductC' in 'AbstractFactory' which effects the implementation of both ConcreateFactory1, ConcreateFactory2. My question here is, does Abstract Factory pattern scale at all (or) I'm I thinking in the wrong direction here ? thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "129795", "title": "How Do You Estimate Project Hours Using Pivotal Tracker If You Are a Services Firm?", "text": "I am new to Pivotal Tracker and trying to learn how best to use it for our business. We are an app development consulting services firm. As you guys know, clients want to have an idea of total time and cost before they sign any contract. How are you guys mapping your project on Pivotal to total hours and timelines? Any best practices? Pointers? Right now my team and I have broke the project into stories (love how Pivotal gets us thinking on a much lower level) and have roughly mapped out points to hours.   * 1 - 1 hour    * 2 - 2 hours    * 3 - 6 hours    * 5 - 10 hours Then we are basically thinking of 2 as a quarter day, 3 as 3/4 a day, and 5 as a full day or a bit longer. I then calculate how many 1s, 2s, 3s and 5s we have to get a rough estimate of total hours. Pivotal gives me an estimated completion date based on default velocity (I know this can change). I then report the rough total hours, cost, and due date to my client. I do understand that this is agile and iterative where things change, but when people hire you as a consultant they want costs up front."}
{"_id": "156592", "title": "Composition vs. Inheritance", "text": "Here's what is given:               public interface Request {}          // there are 20 subclasses of Request     public class CreateUserRequest implements Request {       @NotEmpty       public String userName;     }          // request processor is a thing that aimed to process requests     public interface RequestProcessor<TRequest extends Request> {       boolean processRequest(TRequest request);     }          public class ServiceFacade {       // 20 processors like this one       private final RequestProcessor<CreateUserRequest> createUserRequestProcessor;            public ServiceFacade(         RequestProcessor<CreateUserRequest> createUserRequestProcessor) {         this.createUserRequestProcessor = createUserRequestProcessor;       }            // 20 methods like this one       public boolean createUser(CreateUserRequest request) {         createUserRequestProcessor.processRequest(request);       }     }      An object implementing `RequestProcessor<T>` is aimed to process requests of type `T`. Moreover, it is responsible for handling all the related errors (like invalid request, DB access failure and so forth). So, the workflow for `CreateUserRequest` should look like this:               request     validate/throw     make sure user doesn't exist yet/throw     create user      As usual, other types of requests may require more steps to be performed. **As an illustration** : in case of `AddUserAsFriendRequest` we'll have to check that both users exist and that friend candidate has allowed others to add him as friend. Oh, and also, if one user adds more than 10 friends in a day, he's then limited to 1 friend per 2 hours for the rest of the day. **The question is** , which hierarchy/structure/approach should I use in order to be able to extend this functionality in both \"number of request types\" and \"request process workflow\". There are only 2 approaches I see. # Inheritance               public abstract class ValidatingRequestProcessor<TRequest extends Request>     implements RequestProcessor<TRequest> {       protected final Validator validator;            public ValidatingRequestProcessor(Validator validator) {         this.validator = validator;       }            public boolean processRequest(TRequest request) {         Set<ConstraintViolation<TRequest>> violations =            validator.validate(request);         if(!violations.isEmpty()) {           return false;         }              return processValidatedRequest(request);               }            protected abstract boolean processValidatedRequest(TRequest request);           }          public class CreateUserValidatingRequestProcessor     extends ValidatingRequestProcessor<CreateUserRequest> {       public CreateUserValidatingRequestProcessor(Validator validator) {         super(validator);       }            protected boolean processValidatedRequest(TRequest request) {         // request is valid, so I can try to create user here       }     }      and so forth here. In case of `N` \"logical steps\", I'm going to have `(N-1)` nested `extends` and `N` classes:               class A implements RequestProcessor {}     class B extends A {}     class C extends B {}     class D extends C {}     ...     class Z extends Y {}          RequestProcessor requestProcessor = new Z(); // TADA!      * * * # Composition               public class ChainingRequestProcessor<TRequest extends Request>     implements RequestProcessor<TRequest> {       private final RequestProcessor<TRequest> processorA;       private final RequestProcessor<TRequest> processorB;            public ChainingRequestProcessor(         RequestProcessor<TRequest> processorA,         RequestProcessor<TRequest> processorB) {               this.processorA = processorA;         this.processorB = processorB;       }            public boolean processRequest(TRequest request) {          return processorA.processRequest(request) &&           processorB.processRequest(request);       }     }          public RequestValidatorProcessor<TRequest extends Request>     implements RequestProcessor<TRequest> {       private final Validator validator;            public RequestValidatorProcessor(Validator validator) {         this.validator = validator;       }            public boolean processRequest(TRequest request) {          return !validator.validate(request).isEmpty();       }     }          public CreateUserProcessor     implements RequestProcessor<CreateUserRequest> {       public boolean processRequest(CreateUserRequest request) {          // not sure whether request is valid or not         // can try to create user here       }     }      and so forth. In case of `N` \"logical steps\" I'm just going to have `N` classes. So:               class A implements RequestProcessor {}     class B implements RequestProcessor {}     class C implements RequestProcessor {}     class D implements RequestProcessor {}     ...     class Z implements RequestProcessor {}          // just guess     RequestProcessor requestProcessor = new A(new B(), new C(new D())); // TADA!      * * * **Which approach is better for this task? Better means:**   * Easier to modify logic   * Easier to add logic   * Easier to test"}
{"_id": "245067", "title": "Are Data Warehouses bespoke products that are tailored towards the specific needs of one single organisation?", "text": "Are Data Warehouses bespoke projects that are developed to meet the needs of a specific organisation or can you buy off the shelf products that would meet the needs of many organisations? I am talking about a product that will integrate information from many different systems e.g. finance system, sales system, production system etc for management reporting. Different organisations have different systems that have different database designs. For example, organisation A may use finance system A, which has a completely different design to finance system B used by organisation B. Therefore I believe that Data Warehouse products are bespoke products and it is not possible to develop a product that could be used by many organisations e.g. organisation A and organisation B; that have the same types of systems e.g. Finance, Sales etc. Am I correct in this analysis?"}
{"_id": "252005", "title": "Should I use WCF, raw Sockets, or something else to send receive data from a command line app?", "text": "I have a command line app, that will be multi-threaded and serve inbound and outbound clients. It will send and receive Binary data structures generated by protobuf.net My question is, how should I go about having the clients send and receive data? Does my usage of protobuf.net mean that WCF is less relevant? or just certain serialization features?"}
{"_id": "156845", "title": "WCF service and security", "text": "Been building a WP7 app and now I need it to communicate to a WCF service I made to make changes to an SQL database. I am a little concerned about security as the user name and password for accessing the SQL database is in the App.Config. I have read in places that you can encrypt the user name and password in the config file. As the username and password is never exposed to the clients connected to the WCF service, would security in my situation be much of a problem? Just in case anyone suggests a method of security, I do not have SSL on my web server."}
{"_id": "156841", "title": "How much harder is it to learn Open GL ES 2.0 than 1.x", "text": "I have to learn open GL and get a basic open GL app built. Is it easier to learn open GL 1.x ES as apposed to 2.0 which uses shader language? Also is it advisable to learn 1.x before 2.0?"}
{"_id": "29999", "title": "Arguments againts checking-in binary files into SCMs", "text": "I work for a company that primarily builds Java applications and I'm trying to convince everybody to stop checking-in binary files (dependencies and final products) to SCM. They know it is a bad practice but they think that \"it works\" and it is not really a problem even when many people know about Maven and other tools for building besides Ant. Both PMs and programmers (around 50 people) are ready to listen to any argument against and even acknowledge that it is a waste of backup space but I want to be really convincing because the habit change would involve a lot of effort. What arguments do you use to support a change? **Edit:** Okay, it makes sense to make a distinction between files that almost do not change, like dependencies, and generated files. Even so, I'm interested in reasons against the latter."}
{"_id": "154991", "title": "How to convert a word document (.doc /.docx) to RTF format ?", "text": "I have a requirement for an application that takes Doc, Docx content (means whole document) and converts them to RTF content. I am trying but it does not convert document content to RTF content. But it just change the extension .doc/.docx to .rtf, not content of document."}
{"_id": "151312", "title": "How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?", "text": "I have just started my C++ lecture class. And the teacher has given us the following assignment. > Write a program that determines whether a number is even or odd. The logic I would use for the program is.   1. Get input `a`.   2. Store `a % 2` as `b`.   3. If `b` is 0, then `a` is even, else `a` is odd. The catch though, is that we have to write the program without the use of a `if-else` statement. I have been thinking on how to approach the problem for the past few hours, but I have no clue what to do. Any hints or suggestions?"}
{"_id": "126146", "title": "Strategy to use version control on a modular system", "text": "Let's suppose (for simplicity) that we have an application featuring client and server; is there a better idea to use one repository for both or a pair of separate repositories? Mixing them will probably make easier to track correlated changes and maintain correlated branches (i.e. protocol evolution), but on the other hand will make the individual development more cluttered..."}
{"_id": "164042", "title": "It is inconsiderate to place editor settings inside code files?", "text": "I know this is kind of a subjective question, but I'm curious if there's any good reason to place (or not place) editor settings inside code files. I'm thinking in `vi` modelines, but it is possible that this applies to other editors. In short, a `vi` modeline is a line inside a file that tells `vi` how to behave (indent with spaces or tabs, set tabwidth to X, autoindent by default or not, ...) that is placed inside a comment, so it won't affect the program/compiler when running. In a `.c` file it could be similar to               // vim: noai:ts=4:sw=4      On one hand, I think this shouldn't be inside the file, as it is an editor setting and so belongs to an editor configuration file or property. On the other hand, for projects involving developers outside one company (that are not imposed an editor/settings) or collaborators on github/bitbucket/... it is an easy way to avoid breaking the code style (tabs vs spaces for example), but only for the ones that use that editor though. I cannot see any powerful enough reason to decide for or against this practice, so I am in doubt of what to do."}
{"_id": "207098", "title": "Flat addressing vs. segmented addressing", "text": "Is flat addressing model generally superior to a segmented one? If so, why? If not, what instances would call for each over the other and why? My understanding of memory models surrounds the IA32/x86-64 Architecture. So if you give architecture specific examples, they will be most helpful if kept relevant to that."}
{"_id": "164044", "title": "What's the simplest way to provide a portable, locally running webservice server application?", "text": "We have a large website running that offers a JsonRpc web service. For offline demonstration purposes, I want to realize a portable, locally running webserver with a minimalistic feature replication of the live webservice, and bundle this together with Html files which do Ajax requests to it. This local server executable should have as little dependencies as possible. It's going to be run and presented by non-devs on non-dev Windows machines, so I would prefer having a simple executable plus the service code. The language would need to be .NET, PHP or Java. I'll need a small database behind which probably will be Sqlite. It's important to say that, for reasons I won't get into here, we cannot use the original web service code, but we have to rewrite it new for the local demo server. This is why I want to put minimal effort in the local server tech. An installer for distribution is not mandatory, it's okay to have a zip file with an executable in it which starts up the local webserver. **What would you recommend realizing these requirements?**"}
{"_id": "207093", "title": "Exceptions vs ErrorCodes when working with devices", "text": "Out team is at the cusp of a new project. One of the components at the boundary of the system is the component which interacts with a printer through an external COM component (referenced as a usual dll). The COM component returns integer codes if there were an error whilst command execution. Lets consider a concrete code.                 public class OperationException:Exception {         public int ErrorCode { get; private set; }         public string ErrorDescription { get; private set; }              public OperationException(int errorCode, string errorDescription) {             ErrorCode = errorCode;             ErrorDescription = errorDescription;         }     }          //The exception throwing way     public class Provider1:IFrProvider {         private readonly IDrvFR48 driver;              public string GetSerialNumber() {             //must read status before get SerialNumber             int resultCode = driver.ReadEcrStatus();             if (resultCode != 0) {                 throw new OperationException(resultCode, driver.ErrorDescription);             }             return driver.SerialNumber;         }     }          //The way of out parameters returning.     public class Provider2 : IFrProvider     {         private readonly IDrvFR48 driver;                    public string GetSerialNumber(out Result result) {             //must read status before get SerialNumber             int resultCode = driver.ReadEcrStatus();                        if (resultCode != 0) {                 result = new Result(resultCode, driver.ErrorDescription);                 return null;             }             result = new Result(0, null);             return driver.SerialNumber;         }     }          //The way of LastResult property setting.     public class Provider3 : IFrProvider     {         private readonly IDrvFR48 driver;              public Result LastResult {             get {                 return new Result(driver.ErrorCode, driver.ErrorDescription);             }         }                 public string GetSerialNumber() {             //must read status before get SerialNumber             if (driver.GetECRStatus() == 0)                 return driver.SerialNumber;             return null;         }     }          public class Result {         public int ResultCode { get; private set; }         public string Description { get; private set; }              public Result(int resultCode, string description) {             ResultCode = resultCode;             Description = description;         }     }          public class Caller {         public void CallProvider1() {             var provider = new Provider1();             try {                 string serialNumber = provider.GetSerialNumber();                 //success flow             }             catch (OperationException e) {                 if (e.ErrorCode == 123) {                     //handling logic                 }             }         }              public void CallProvider2() {             var provider = new Provider2();                  Result result;             string serialNumber = provider.GetSerialNumber(out result);             if (result.ResultCode == 123) {                 //error handling                }             //success flow         }              public void CallProvider3()         {             var provider = new Provider3();                  string serialNumber = provider.GetSerialNumber();             if (provider.LastResult.ResultCode == 123) {                                 //handling                            }             //success flow                         }     }      So we have three ways of error handling. The most specific thing in all this stuff is that each operation can fail, because it depends on a device. Our team think of using out parameters, because of unhandled exceptions propagation fear. The other reason, connected with the fear, is that we will have to cover all calls by try\\catch blocks to stop to be afraid, but such a code will be pretty ugly. What pros and cons do you see and what could you advice?"}
{"_id": "216988", "title": "Is there a difference between iterable and enumerable?", "text": "Many languages seem to have structures that are very similar called iterable or enumerable. These are structures that can be iterated or enumerated over, which seem to me extremely similar things. Are these words synonymous or is there a subtle semantic difference between iterable and enumerable which justifies the choice of term?"}
{"_id": "129863", "title": "DRY way to write Javadoc on overload methods", "text": "I want to write Javadoc in DRY way. But the oracle document about Javadoc says write same thing again in overload method comment. Can't I avoid repetition?"}
{"_id": "209213", "title": "Importance of diffing and merging for design specifications documentation", "text": "The context of this question is choosing tools for writing design specifications for software projects. These documents will be written and maintained by architects and developers, I'm not talking about marketing requirements. Some of them may be shared outside the team, but only in a processed, non-editable form (PDF, all the docs are assumed being able to be exported to this format). These are architecture documents, describing the structure of code components, implementation methods, protocols, data formats, etc. They take the form of text with diagrams and identifier names and the occasional code snippets, this isn't about API documentation that might be generated from source files. The docs will be under source control, fortunately nobody here needs to be educated about that. It's inevitable that versioning will arise over time: we do maintain old versions of the software. Issue tracking might not be adhered to as strictly for documentation as for code. **How important is it to be able to easily compare and merge such documents?** We have diverging opinions in the team, ranging from \u201cnobody ever merges documentation and if needed Word has a merge tool\u201d to \u201cmerging is crucial and `git merge` must work\u201d. Note \u201cWord has a merge tool\u201d is something that I quote but don't agree with, having had the painful experience of merging two bugfixes _that I had made_ to two copies of the same document I have a vague memory of a rule in some company (Google, perhaps, since it's so often cited) that \u201cif you can't merge it, it doesn't exist\u201d, but I'm unable to find it now. I'm looking for either well-reasoned arguments, or authoritative-looking (and preferably motivated) citations."}
{"_id": "114364", "title": "what are the mathematical formulas/concepts used in implementing Chart API (bar chart, pie chart etc.,)", "text": "Trying to implement chart API in Java. But I am unsure of the mathematical formulas/concepts used in drawing each of the chart type. Can someone specify the mathematical concepts to be known for drawing each sort of the chart."}
{"_id": "114367", "title": "AJAX driven \"page complete\" function? Am I doing it right?", "text": "This one might get me slaughtered, since I'm pretty sure it's bad coding practice, so here goes: I have an AJAX driven site which loads both content and javascript in one go using Mootools' `Request.HTML`. Since I have initialization scripts that need to be run to finish \"setting up\" the template, I include those in a function called `pageComplete()`, **on every page** Visiting one page to another causes the previous `pageComplete()` function to no longer apply, since a new one is defined. The javascript function that loads pages dynamically calls `pageComplete()` blindly when the AJAX call is completed and is loaded onto the page:               function loadPage(page, params) {         // page is a string, params is a javascript object         if (pageRequest && pageRequest.isRunning) pageRequest.cancel();         pageRequest = new Request.HTML({             url: '<?=APPLICATION_LINK?>' + page,             evalScripts: true,             onSuccess: function(tree, elements, html) {                 // Empty previous content and insert new content                 $('content').empty();                 $('content').innerHTML = html;                 pageComplete();                 pageRequest = null;             }         }).send('params='+JSON.encode(params));     }      So yes, if `pageComplete()` is not defined in one the pages, the _old_ `pageComplete()` is called, which could potentially be disastrous, but as of now, every single page has `pageComplete()` defined, even if it is empty. Good idea, bad idea?"}
{"_id": "114361", "title": "What is the difference in meaning between \"software\", \"program\", \"application\", and \"gadget\"?", "text": "It seems to be a naive question, but I was unable to find an explicit definition and difference in meaning of the words \"software\", \"program\", \"application\", and \"gadget\". What is the correct (at least theoretically) way to use each of these words?"}
{"_id": "114362", "title": "Which is most important to learn OOP first or to learn the OOP language you want to learn?", "text": "I face a problem nowadays, I have a really good book that explain OOP but it uses a language which I do not want to learn which is Java because my goal is to learn C#. And I don't know if I should understand OOP with Java at first and then learn C# or should I find any C# book even if the Java book is excellent in teaching OOP?"}
{"_id": "207326", "title": "Reference Passing Style Anti Pattern", "text": "I'm working on a legacy VB.Net code base. There are very few functions that return values, most of the code is in subs/void methods. The general strategy seems to be to pass everything in by reference, mutate it, and then observe the mutated state. There are some methods that have as many as a dozen parameters that are mutated in this fashion. I find it very difficult to reason about the code written in this way. It's also rather difficult to write tests to aid in refactoring. I'd like to know if there's a name for this, mainly in the hopes that I can find better ways of moving the application towards a better structure. EDIT I probably should have mentioned that calls tend to be limited to within their own multi-thousand line class files. Based on the answer below it looks like I need to use extract method to make the methods have meaningful names and to deal with the optional parameters. Once I've done this I can start using extract class to separate out functional unit. Fun times."}
{"_id": "207323", "title": "Can classes violate Single Responsibility if they delegate internal tasks?", "text": "I have two classes `Output` and `Timeline`, neither of which violate SR, but the two of them are linked together. So what I'd like to do is have a class called `Elco` (there's a reason behind the name) that has both of them as subclasses. For various reasons (this is just a simplified version) it's important that I don't violate the LoD (Law of Demeter). The issue is that technically `Elco` now has two responsibilities. It delegates those two responsibilities to two classes, which each have one responsibility. Is that not ok? Why? What's a better solution?"}
{"_id": "160740", "title": "Best approach for writing a chess engine?", "text": "I'm a chess enthusiast and a programmer. I recently decided to start making a chess engine using my chess and programming knowledge. So here's my question: What language (I'm familiar with Java, C++ and Python) and methodology should I adapt while writing a chess engine? A little guidance would be much appreciated. **Edit:** So I decided to make it in JavaScript. I download this Chess UI from github and now I'm all set! My first step would be to write legal moves for it. So can anybody point me in the right direction? (I'm new to jQuery but have alot of programming experience). P.S: I'm not trying to make a very efficient engine (I know its way too difficult), I just want to get familiar with the process and learn some new techniques along the way."}
{"_id": "111621", "title": "How to translate a German Desktop App into English one", "text": "I am working on a desktop application which is in German. And this isn't comfortable for me to see the words and go to Google translate to translate it. So I am looking to make extra effort for myself to try to translate the App into English using Google translate web service. But the Application doesn't use a Spring or AOP in order to make a single point of calling the web service. My question is there a way to create a new project to introduce spring with AOP in order to achieve this. or there is another way to achieve this ?"}
{"_id": "211051", "title": "Continuous integration and modifying existing UI automation tests", "text": "Our team is currently facing a situation where we are changing a feature that is in the product today. This feature has Selenium automation tests associated with it. We are performing a fairly major overhaul of the system, including its UI. We expect this work to take quite a few sprints. During this time, other teams may do work that would affect the feature as it exists today. For this reason, we want the existing automation tests for the feature to remain intact so that they can detect issues. Of course, we will need to write automation for the feature as it will be after our changes are done. The most efficient way for us to do this from a Dev/QA perspective would be to modify the existing test cases in a separate branch (testing locally) and then merge those changes in when the feature is ready. That way the existing automation continues to function and we don't have to do extra work duplicating each test. However, this separate branch doesn't fit well with the principles of continuous integration (which our organization likes to adhere to). Is our only CI-compliant option to do the extra overhead of duplicating the tests for modification?"}
{"_id": "95821", "title": "Algorithm visualization app/plugin", "text": "I am looking for an application (or and IDE plugin) that I can use in order to test some algorithms I implement.   Mainly metaheuristics used in TSP, VRP and other optimization problems. I have already checked some common suggestions on the net, but they're rather too simple for example Zest. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "133223", "title": "A decent git branching model for products that should accompany the version of another, third-party product (and pros and cons of one proposal)", "text": "**Note:** _My question is focused in my specific problem (which involves Liferay) but I hope it can be useful for anyone who needs to maintain various versions of a same project on git._ I work on a company which writes a lot of plugins for Liferay Portal. These plugins (portlets, themes etc.) are usually reusable and, of course, should be updated for new versions of the portal. However, it is usual to have to migrate, let us say, a portlet to a new version of Liferay _and_ to maintain its previous version. Also, frequently we have to create very specific customizations for some clients, which does not make sense to be added to the \"main version\". These requisites complicate our work but, fortunately, we can assume some simplifications. For example, the plugins are frequently updated by only one programmer at a time. It is very rare to have two or more features being added to a plugin at the same time. Now, we are migrating to Gitorious. We are trying to conceive a branching model for such a scenario. # My model What I proposed was:   1. Each plugin would have its own repository in Gitorious inside a project. For example, a portlet for displaying kittens would have a `kittens-portlet` repository inside the `liferay-portlets` project.   2. When creating a new plugin, create it at a branch named according to the Liferay version (for example, `lf5.2`).   3. Each time a update is made on the plugin, the update is approved and deployed in production, tag the plugin with a version (for example, `lf5.2v1`, `lf5.2v2` etc.)*   4. Every time a plugin should be ported to a new version of Liferay, we branch the most recent version (creating, for example, the branch `lf6.0`).   5. Once in production, the head of the new branch will receive a tag such as `lf6.0v1`.   6. Every time we have to customize a plugin in a client-specific way, we create a branch with the name of the client (for example, we would create a branch `lf5.2clientcorp` for our client \"ClientCorp Inc.\") This is an unusual model: it would have no `master` and a lot of not-merging branches. This is how I _suppose_ a repository with such model would look like: ![How I suppose my branches would work.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IQ6jZ.png) A friend found this system rather complex and error-prone. He suggested the excellent and popular Vincent Driessen model, which I found still harder to manage and discipline-demander. It is great (and tested!) of course but seems too complex to our situation. # My friend's model Then he suggested another model: we would have a repository for each plugin in a Liferay version (so we would start creating a `kittens-lf5.2-portlet` and then a `kittens-lf6.0-portlet`), each one with a `master` branch and a `develop` branch. The `master` would be always ready for deployment. (Or it could be the other way around, `master` and `stable`, as suggested by Steve Losh). This is very simple, but I did not like this system:   1. it could result in an awful lot of repositories in a project, making Gitorious hard to browse.    2. The name of the directory of the project is relevant. If someone clone the repository to a `kittens-lf6.0-portlet` dir and generate the WAR with ant (as usual), the WAR name will be `kittens-lf6.0-portlet` as well. Old versions of this portlet (named `kittens-portlet` for example) would be considered as different (and probably missing) portlets in a upgraded portal. A bit of care can avoid it but I would prefer to avoid it.   3. The different versions of the same plugin would be maintained apart. I break my heart :(   4. `kittens-lf6.0-portlet` is a ugly name for a repository, I think. I suspect the two last points - which are the two more subjective ones, too - are the main reason for my unwillingness. Nonetheless, all four objections stand. OTOH, my own proposal seems strange to myself and I wonder if there is hidden bugs on it. OT3rdH git is so powerful and flexible that I think I should feel no shame on exploring its possibilities. So, I ask:   1. What would be the best model? My proposal? My friend's model? The now traditional Vincent Driessen system?   2. What other branching model would you suggest?   3. If you think my model is bad, why do you think so? I would love to learn what are the drawbacks and blind spots. * Actually, I would prefer to tag the commit with a version such as `v1` but apparently a tag in git is not scoped in the branch - that is, I could not have a 1 `v1` tag in `lf5.2` and another one in `lf6.0` \\- so I have to name the branch. Is it correct BTW?"}
{"_id": "92830", "title": "How to know if two images are the same?", "text": "I have over 10000 images which about 2000 are duplicates in other formats (as in JPEG, PNG, GIF). Both of these numbers are increasing every day. I need to delete those duplicates and for that I must know how to find them first. My first thought was to check an images pixels and find other pictures that have the same colored pixels in the same coordinates. But this option doesn't always work. Let's say I search for a duplicate. As for the searchable object I choose a 8 bit PNG file. It'll find all duplicates of that image, but only the 8 bit PNG, sometimes 8bit GIF and rarely JPEG (because of the images algorithmic I suppose?). My second thought was to duplicate all of those images and recolor them in a strict two color palette (let's say black&white) and do the same scan as stated above. Yet again the JPEG image is not 100% similar to the PNG or GIF format (the same reason as above?). The third thought was to _decrease_ the percentage on how much does the image needs to be familiar and _increase_ how much the colors can vary, resulting in unwanted image removal... Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "133222", "title": "How to start team programming", "text": "I work in a small (7 developer) development team and we all work on our own projects. Some of the barriers to team work are the languages and platforms we work on (.NET vs mainframe RPG programming) but other barriers are just that we're all so busy we haven't taken the time to take a step back and organize teams. Me and two other .NET developers are taking initiative to starting a small team but we're all a little stuck on what to do. We're starting with sharing knowledge on the products we work on so we can back each other up but we eventually want to tackle projects as a team instead of individually. What advice would you give a group of guys like us trying to start up team work?"}
{"_id": "148027", "title": "Algorithm which suggests synonyms based on some term?", "text": "Is there an algorithm which I can use in order to generate synonyms for some term (word) in respect of a spam. I am writing a simple spam filter. For example, I set that the app must omit a word \"viagra\" and press a button which saves this term into a filter database. A script automatically creates synonyms of this word, such as: v.i.a.g.r.a, via_gra, via-gra, and similar. Or I filter a curse, and it generates all the tricks people use to have their curses appear in their comments."}
{"_id": "148024", "title": "Should these concerns be separated into separate objects?", "text": "I have objects which implement the interface `BroadcastInterface`, which represents a message that is to be broadcast to all users of a particular group. It has a setter and getter method for the `Subject` and `Body` properties, and an `addRecipientRole()` method, which takes a given role and finds the contact token (e.g., an email address) for each user in the role and stores it. It then has a `getContactTokens()` method. `BroadcastInterface` objects are passed to an object that implements `BroadcasterInterface`. These objects are responsible for broadcasting a passed `BroadcastInterface` object. For example, an `EmailBroadcaster` implementation of the `BroadcasterInterface` will take `EmailBroadcast` objects and use the mailer services to email them out. Now, depending on what `BroadcasterInterface` implementation is used to broadcast, a different implementation of `BroadcastInterface` is used by client code. The Single Responsibility Principle seems to suggest that I should have a separate `BroadcastFactory` object, for creating `BroadcastInterface` objects, depending on what `BroadcasterInterface` implementation is used, as creating the `BroadcastInterface` object is a different responsibility to broadcasting them. _But_ the class used for creating `BroadcastInterface` objects depends on what implementation of `BroadcasterInterface` is used to broadcast them. I think, because the knowledge of what method is used to send the broadcasts should only be configured once, the `BroadcasterInterface` object should be responsible for providing new `BroadcastInterface` objects. **Does the responsibility of \u201ccreating and broadcasting objects that implement the`BroadcastInterface` interface\u201d violate the Single Responsibility Principle?** (Because the contact token for sending the broadcast out to the users will differ depending on the way it is broadcasted, I need different broadcast classes\u2014though client code will not be able to tell the difference.)"}
{"_id": "118709", "title": "What is the difference between being an IT in investment bank and a professional IT company?", "text": "Suppose there are two positions:   1. IT in investment bank: developer for the infrastructure or the platform   2. a famous IT company: embedded developer, linux As far as I understand, since in the investment bank not everyone will have the chance to work for the core trading system, most people just do the same job as they do in a normal IT company. And some of the tasks can even be outsourced. But in a professional IT company, you will have more chance to practice your coding skill and enhance your professional knowledge. So there are many choices when you want to change your job while the IT in invest bank not. Is this correct?"}
{"_id": "118708", "title": "What are the dangers of setting an unlimited database transaction life timeout?", "text": "We have a process that may last between a few seconds and a few minutes. As such, we may update just a few records or thousands of them. The process can be committed only when everything has been done correctly. Recently we have begun having problems when attempting to commit transaction as they were marked as \"rollbackOnly\". I've discovered that in fact the transaction had been marked \"rollbackOnly\" because it had timed out a bit earlier (not clear to see in the log files as our application server is Websphere and its transaction manager just gives a one-line warning), and as such it could not be committed. Of course it makes sense that you cannot commit a transaction that has timed out. The problem is in fact that we never set the transaction timeout in transaction definitions, and that in that case the value of the timeout is the one set at the application server level (see Websphere's transaction settings, the paragraph on \"Total transaction lifetime timeout\"). That value is 2 minutes and sometimes we exceed it. Now, that explains the setting (and in case somebody encounters a \"rollbackOnly\" transaction, I've provided here a possible explanation). I'm tempted to increase the timeout, but **I've also seen in the documentation that the timeout can be set to 0, meaning there is no timeout**. As such, my question is: **what are the dangers of setting an unlimited transaction life timeout** ? Note that I'm aware of programmatic/database solutions to my problem like for example working on temporary tables, and reversing data from temporary tables to the real tables when we know everything has been done right (using PL/SQL for example). I'm just curious about the transaction timeout thing."}
{"_id": "195890", "title": "Naming a class that does Importing and exporting of data", "text": "I've been thinking about creating a class that handles importing and exporting of data, and I feel that naming it FooImporterExporter might look too long, I wan't to see if there's a name convention that I could use to name it. These are some of the names I think would be appropriate:   * `FooProcessor`   * `FooPorter` / `FooPort` \\- ( as Import/Export comes from trading goods in a Port )   * `FooTrader`"}
{"_id": "220039", "title": "Meaning of directories names", "text": "I was looking for a _dictionary_ where are described the meanings and purposes of each directory name used in softwares file trees.   I can't find anything except for the Linux FHS, but that is restricted to GNU/Linux OS. So I would like to ask you something to understand the meaning of the following folders:               /controllers     /models     /vendor     /src         This is what I've understood so far:   * **`/controllers`** ~~is where I should put the files that have the purpose of _control_ other files. For example in controllers I could have a PHP file that load a file to call MySQL queries, then one that parse the queries to structure an array, and then one that calls the template manager.~~   * **`/models`** I've no idea of what is intended for...   * **`/vendor`** is where are located external dependencies needed by the software.   * **`/src`** is where the source files are located.    My doubts are:   1. What is the **`/models`** folder?    2. If for example I include in my project, Mustache.php, I will have Mustache located in **`/src/Mustache`**.   But it also adds some dependencies in the **`/vendor`** folder.   The problem is, in my project, even **Mustache** is a \"vendor\" thing (I guess), so shouldn't it moved to **`/vendor`**?   3. If I'm writing in PHP, HTML, JS and CSS. Every file I use for the production will be also the source file, so why shouldn't I put everything in the **`/src`** folder and keep out maybe only the minified `.js`, `.css` and `.html`?"}
{"_id": "195896", "title": "Puzzle solving: Minimum number of steps to achieve a goal", "text": "I have been doing some programming contest problems, and I have noticed that many of them involve something along the lines of \"get the minimum number of steps necessary to achieve a certain goal\". Examples:   * Given the position of a knight and certain pawns in a chessboard, what is the minimum number of jumps the knight has to do to kill all the pawns?   * Given a parking lot with disordered cars labeled alphabetically, a \"move\" is the process of taking a car and inserting it elsewhere. What is the minimum number of moves to get this parking lot ordered? So, many puzzles seem to share this structure: given a scenario, some rules, and a set of \"operations\", determine the least amount of operations to achieve a specific goal. There's a twist in some of these puzzles though - sometimes, the puzzles will also ask if it is impossible to achieve. I have discovered that I am particularly terrible with this kind of puzzles. In fact, I don't think I have ever solved them in an elegant way ever. I'm not sure how to \"test all cases\", \"pick the shortest one\" or \"determine it is impossible\". Can you advice me here? For the sake of the question, we can base ourselves on the chess puzzle: # Example Problem We got a chessboard. Each square is labeled with a number (which represents the position), from 1 to 64. **(Possible) Input**               2 8 31 13      This means \"two pawns, on positions 8 and 31. The knight is on position 13.\" **Output**               2      Two steps. From position `13`, the knight can jump to `8`, and from `8`, it can jump to `31`. * * * # The Question How can I approach this kind of problem? I solved the chess one by generating a list of all possible steps and then I picked the shortest one. But that was very slow."}
{"_id": "51358", "title": "Developer productivity Cobol versus C#", "text": "We are doing a cost benefit analysis on a migration project. It would be nice to be able to say that future changes will be x percent cheaper due to the migration. Does anyone have any experience or know of any study that shows what benefit we could expect?"}
{"_id": "220037", "title": "Bucketing model by time", "text": "I have a model which has timestamped entities. Now I want to do bucketing - \"buckets\" of entities which can be reasoned about a single entity. Also I want to be able to access related entities from a bucket and get a bucket of those entities. My main concerns are an implementation of bucketing itself and architecture of code behind this.   1. Should I create a separate model for bucketed data, or should I implement tools to work with the existing model?   2. As I already have a metamodel with all the subclasses and relations I'd like to be able to easily add bucketing on top. I have been thinking about subclassing all the entity classes to create a bucket-entity class which would extend their common bucket functionality with traits."}
{"_id": "245400", "title": "Is storing pointer (of new'd object) in static collection from object constructor a common idiom in C++", "text": "In code I am reviewing a common approach I see to storing objects (eg a socket client object), is use a static container to hold the objects. The objects are created by some helper function, eg like this:               create_client(params) {       ...       client* cl = new client(...);       return cl;     }      The thing that confused me at first was function called like this:               if (!create_client (...))        //generate error message      ie a copy of the pointer just seems to be thrown away. But on investigation I see this in the client constructor:               client::client(...) {         ...         coll[id] = this;     }      Where coll is a map of id to a pointer to the object. But anyway, just a collection. coll is static (not sure if that is relevant). Is there a name for this idiom? Is it good practice?"}
{"_id": "149998", "title": "First dedicated IDE?", "text": "What was the first program that was created as a dedicated IDE? That is, purpose built for coding, rather than simply allowing integration as part of its expansion options. This is opposed to a text editor that has generic plugin/add-in/shell features that are were not dedicated to development work. The features I am thinking about that would qualify an editor as an IDE:   * Code highlighting   * Integrated compiler invocation (with error reporting)   * Code navigation features   * (optionally) integrated debugger Sub question - what was the first Visual IDE? (by which I mean with an integrated GUI designer)."}
{"_id": "127234", "title": "How To Handle Previously Uploaded Files", "text": "I'm new to PHP and MySQL and I've only seen posts related to this on Zend and ASP so I'm looking for some advice to point me in the right direction for a LAMP project. I'm putting together a webform for a project of mine that logged in users will access to upload a submission. Each user will reuse previously uploaded files for each submission. At the bottom of the form the user can upload multiple files. Images, spreadsheets, and pdf's, etc. but I would like to give them access to files they have uploaded before rather than having to resubmit all new files for each submission. My question is what is your advice on accomplishing this? I figure I could have each user create a library of files that they could access from the form in some way. Maybe a list of files with checkboxes to select previously uploaded files? I haven't found much here or on Google so I'm not sure if there is a standard way to handle something like this. Note that the users will only be reusing only their own images, not those of the community. If it makes a difference I'm storing the images in MySQL as BLOB's. Thanks for any advice and information."}
{"_id": "149997", "title": "Best practice for creating views in spring and hibernate web application", "text": "Hi I am currently developing a web application in Spring and Hibernate where i have several different tables. The Delivery table for example is mapped many- to-one with the Customer table and the Product table. I am wondering what the best practice is for creating a view function where I display all the columns related to each delivery but exclude the different IDs. I can think of two ways of doing this:   1. Create a DTO (data transfer object) with all the columns I wish to display and then in the controller I create a new instance of it and set the different values with setters and services in a for-loop for each Delivery ID. this is the method used in this example. Here is part of the controller code from it:              @RequestMapping(value = \"/list\", method = RequestMethod.GET)     public String getRecords(Model model) {      logger.debug(\"Received request to show records page\");           // Retrieve all persons      List<Person> persons = personService.getAll();           // Prepare model object      List<PersonDTO> personsDTO = new ArrayList<PersonDTO>();           for (Person person: persons) {       // Create new data transfer object       PersonDTO dto = new PersonDTO();             dto.setId(person.getId());        dto.setFirstName(person.getFirstName());        dto.setLastName(person.getLastName());        dto.setMoney(person.getMoney());        dto.setCreditCards(creditCardService.getAll(person.getId()));            // Add to model list         personsDTO.add(dto);         }           // Add to model      model.addAttribute(\"persons\", personsDTO);           // This will resolve to /WEB-INF/jsp/records.jsp      return \"records\";      }           1. the second way I am considering is to create an HQL query that Joins the relevant tables and then displaying that. I'm not sure exactly how to do this yet.  So which of the alternatives is the better way to go? Are there any others that I haven't thought about? Thank you for the advice, D"}
{"_id": "149992", "title": "Licensing doubts", "text": "I am quite new to programming and I am now creating my own program as part of my Master Thesis. My program is done in Java and uses several third-party libraries. These libraries come with different licenses, mainly:   * LGPL 2.1   * GPL 2 + GPL Linking exception   * Apache version 2   * BSD I have actually not touched the source code of these libraries, but use them in my program and in some cases create classes that extend classes in those libraries. If I decide to make my program publicly available (probably for free) what kind of licence could I use? I have read much about license compatibility (Apache vs GPL vs whatever), derivative works discussions and I am very confused. Comments and explanations would be very helpful."}
{"_id": "215988", "title": "Is it viable to make a port from a C++ application to Java through LLVM", "text": "how viable is it to port a C++ application to Java bytecode using LLVM (I guess LLJVM)? The thing is that we currently have a process written in C++ but a new client has made mandatory to been able to run the program in a multiplatform way, **using** the Java Virtual Machine with obviously no native code (no JNI). The idea is to be able to take the generated jar and copy then to different systems (Linux, Win, 32 bits - 64 bits) and it should just work. Looking around looks like it is possible to compile C++ to LLVM IR code and then that code to java bytecode. There is no need of the generated code to be readable. I have test a bit with similar things using emscripten, this takes C++ code and compile it to JavaScript. The result is valid JS but totally unreadable (looks like assambler).   * Does anybody done a port of an application from C++ to Java bytecode using this tecnique?   * What problems could we face?   * Is a valid approach for production code? To make more clear my point after some comments, maybe port is not well used, I do not expect readable source code as a result, just java bytecode, so it is not a 'port' which will be developed for anymore, just that the target plattform must be the java JVM not the native assamblear. Note: I am aware that currently we have some non standard C++ and close source libraries, we are looking to removing this non standard code and all close source libraries and use Free Libre Open Source Software, so lets suppose all code is standard C++ code with all code available at compile time. Note2: It is not an option to write portable C++ code and then compile it to the desired target platform, the compiled program must be multiplatform, thus the use of JVM . Note3: Right now we are not looking into similar solutions applied to Python or other language base, but i would also like to heard about it. With this I mean that our target executable must be java bytecode but if there are options to compile C++ to valid python compiled code I would also like to hear about them."}
{"_id": "110287", "title": "Implementing a DAO for entity framework", "text": "Could anybody help me to find a good tutorial about how can I implement DAO pattern and also tools that help me to create this classes in automated way."}
{"_id": "215984", "title": "\"Bad apple\" algorithm, or process crashes shared sandbox", "text": "I'm looking for an algorithm to handle the following problem, which I'm (for now) calling the \"bad apple\" algorithm. ### The problem   * I've got N processes running in M sandboxes, where N >> M.   * It's impractical to give each process its own sandbox.   * At least one of those processes is badly-behaved, and is bringing down the entire sandbox, thus killing all of the other processes in the same sandbox. If it was a single badly-behaved process, then I could use a simple bisection to put half of the processes in one sandbox, and half in another sandbox, until I found the miscreant. ### The question If _more than one_ process is badly-behaved -- including the possibility that they're _all_ badly-behaved -- does this naive algorithm \"work\"? Is it guaranteed to work within some sensible bounds? ### Simplifications For the sake of argument, let's assume that a bad process brings down its sandbox instantaneously, and a good process never does."}
{"_id": "151865", "title": "How do you keep released binaries under version control?", "text": "How do you keep released binaries under version control? This allows to track which stuffs are changed between each release. I mean to separate the released binaries from source repository. The released binaries are either built from Continuous Integration software or manually compiled."}
{"_id": "151867", "title": "What does it mean to do a \"null check\" in C or C++?", "text": "I have been learning C++ and I am having a hard time understanding null. In particular, the tutorials I have read mention doing a \"null check\", but I am not sure what that means or why it's necessary.   * What exactly is null?   * What does it mean to \"check for null\"?   * Do I always need to check for null? Any code examples would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "160239", "title": "Does continuous integration involve automatic merging between branches?", "text": "When setting up a continous integration environment, does it always entail having the build server pull code and merge between branches? Or is it something you NEVER want to do because you are depending on an automatic merge would usually ends up having issues (and requires manual intervention)."}
{"_id": "155344", "title": "Shoring up deficiencies in a \"home grown\" programmer?", "text": "I started out by teaching myself BASIC on a Vic 20, and in college (mid 80's) I had Fortran, Pascal, limited C, machine and assembler (With a smattering of COBOL) as part of a computer science minor in college. I didn't touch programming from approx 1989 to 1999. At that point, I was lucky enough to get hired as a Clipper programmer. Took me about 6 months to learn most of it, and by now (13 yrs) I'm pretty expert in it. I have also picked up Cold Fusion, some C#, some ASP, SQL, etc. I know programming structures, but in most modern languages I'm missing the esoterics, and I know my code could be much tighter. The problem is that I've learned what I needed to, to get the job done. This results in a lot of gaps in practical knowledge. I am also missing out on a TON of theory. Things like SRP, Refactoring, etc are alien terms. (Although I grok the intent after a short read). In addition, I am in the position now of teaching junior programmers the company and our software, and I don't want to pass on the knowledge gaps. I know this is somewhat of a subjective question and may be closed, but how do you go back and pick up what you've missed?"}
{"_id": "150190", "title": "How to optimise an sentiment analysis algorithm for larger data sets?", "text": "I am a noob to sentiment analysis and found a good resource for Bayesian Opinion Mining and a way to make it self improving. I was wondering though, if the optimum analysis is dependent upon the supplied data set and since self improvement would mean adding known patterns to the data set (my understanding), wouldn't the application become too overloaded with huge data set over due course of time with more and more patterns getting added to the data set every day ? What should be the proper approach to make the application scalable (if I am using the right term at the right place) ?"}
{"_id": "82314", "title": "GPL: terms of license", "text": "I'd like to use the VLC's DLL in one of my programs. VLC is under the GPL license. Do I have to redistribute all the sources under GPL or can I redistribute only the modified sources of VLC under these terms while redistributing the rest of my program in the license I want? Thank you, S\u00e9bastien **Edit** : And what if I only use the DLL of VLC in case they are installed on the user's computer ?"}
{"_id": "150196", "title": "DDD identifying aggregate root", "text": "I am designing the a web application using domain driven design.I have following scenario: Each applicationGroup can have one Application and each application can have multiple configuration.I am trying figuring out which one will be aggregate object... which one will be aggregate roots and why?"}
{"_id": "65294", "title": "Emotional attachment to code", "text": "As an employee of a company, when you write code do you feel like you have an attachment to it? Do you feel that you have some ownership of the code? Or do you write it completely detached from it without any concern about what happens to it after you've moved onto something else? EDIT: I'm not talking about writing bad code and then running..."}
{"_id": "82311", "title": "Clarification needed for various architect terms and their roles", "text": "After going through many SO questions and answers on \"Architects\" , I am now basically confused with the various terms and their roles. Could any one please explain the terms clearly and their roles               A) Technical Architect          B) Solution Architect          C) Domain Architect          D) Enterprise Architect           E) Project Architect          F) Systems Architect          G) Software Architect          H) Design Architect      Thanks"}
{"_id": "195762", "title": "How do you keep logins organized between multiple developers?", "text": "I've worked at several places with 2-10 developers and each place has struggled in the area of tracking if the company has an account on a given web site or service. We're always left wondering...   * What's the username   * What's the password (Obviously you don't want to store this, I'm not looking for something that does)   * What's the account number   * Who created this   * When was it created   * What email is our account registered under **What do you guys use to track this kind of thing between multiple developers?** I've setup at least a dozen accounts for the company I currently work for and I don't have any documentation to show the next guy what's been done. Ideally I'm looking for a web solution that will be locked down within our VPN."}
{"_id": "195763", "title": "Protocol for closing a socket connection", "text": "I'm rolling my own application protocol on top of TCP. I'm using Linux and C. I'm wondering whether there is an advisable sequence to closing a socket connection. The client will always initiate the close by sending a specially-formed string; say, \"CLOSE\". I'd like to receive some kind of acknowledgement from the server that it has seen my CLOSE request, so perhaps it needs to send back a special string like \"CLOSE_OK\". I've also seen both the close() and shutdown() system calls, but am not sure how to use them. For instance, should the client, after receiving \"CLOSE_OK\", do a shutdown(OUTPUT) and then wait to receive a zero-length string? And should the server, after sending \"CLOSE_OK\", issue close() and then consider the socket to be dead? I'm hoping there's a \"best practice\" on this subject that I haven't found yet... Thanks, Chap"}
{"_id": "155348", "title": "Why does Scheme r5rs have no module system", "text": "With all the controversy surrounding scheme r6rs, I stuck with r5rs and I am wondering why the designers decided to not implement a module system. How does one organize code in this?"}
{"_id": "200017", "title": "Mongodb array vs object", "text": "New with Mongodb, and I'm not sure what implications or benefits there are between the use of an array vs an object. So..   1. As above what are the implications and benefits between the use of arrays and objects?   2. For example my case. The idea is to store a document with a \"capture\" time, and a 2000 slots of \"packet\" counters. I used object to store to packets see this , but apparently it seems better off to use arrays. What kind of considerations should one make to determine whether an array or object is more suitable (with example)?"}
{"_id": "206051", "title": "General way for getting graphics for open source project", "text": "I'm in process of making an open source application for Windows. In the end I would require an icons for my app and its gui. I'm huge fan of Tango styled icons, but its pack doesn't provide all icons I need. Gnome project seems to provide ones for more mature projects that run on linux. What is the general way, procedure for getting help in graphic assets for open source project?"}
{"_id": "206050", "title": "random unique pair numbers from two range", "text": "I want to write a function that return random unique pair numbers every time call it from a range until resetting it. Something like this:               function randomUniquePairs($ranges, $reset = false){        if ($reset === false){           // some code for reseting        }        /*          some code for creating random unique pair numbers        */        return $result;       }           randomUniquePairs(range(1,10), range(1,20));     /*       this function returns for example:        array(2,9)     */     randomUniquePairs(range(1,10), range(1,20));     /*       this function returns for example:        array(5,19)     */          randomUniquePairs(range(1,10), range(1,20));     /*       this function returns for example:        array(5,9)     */      //this function returns random unique pairs until we pass reset paramer true      I tried two approaches: **Approach 1**   My first attempt was to make an array of all of possible pairs then select from them randomly, but it is very inefficient, because if ranges are so wide, it consumes a lot of memory. the code:                 class a {         private $asqar;              function __construct() ($range) {                  // cycle for ranges             foreach ($range[0] as  $v1) {                 foreach ($range[1] as $v2) {                     $asqar[] =  array(                         $v1,                         $v2,                     );                 }             }         }              function randomUniquePairs($reset = false){                  if ($reset === true){                $this->asgar = array();             }                  $rndKey = array_rand($this->asgar);             $result = $this->asqar[$rndkey];             unset($this->asqar[$rndkey]);             return $result;         }     }          $c = new a(range(1,10), range(1,20));     $c->randomUniquePairs();      **Approach 2**   My second attempt was to write a function that produce a pair from these ranges, then store it in a variable, every time that function calls after producing a pair , it checks if this pair produced before call function recursively, it continues until it produce a unique pair. Here's the code:               class a{               private $__uniqueVariables = array();              public function randomUniquePairs($range, $reset = false) {                  if ($reset === true){            $this->__uniqueVariables = array();         }              // cycle for each value         foreach ($range as $value) {                  // shuffle             shuffle($value);                  // selected id             $selectedId[] = $value[0];         }              // check for selected variable         if (in_array($rndUnqNum, $this->__uniqueVariables)) {                  // return for try again             return $this->uniqueVariable($range);         }              // added to current unique variables         $this->__uniqueVariables[] = $rndUnqNum;              // return         return $rndUnqNum;     }          }      but this second approach has an issue that sometimes throw `Fatal error: Maximum function nesting level of '100' reached`. I'm looking for a better approach to my algorithm."}
{"_id": "214582", "title": "Web programming, standard way to deal with a response that takes time to complete", "text": "With normal form submission I use the pattern Post / Redirect / Get, when processing the forms. I have a database application built with Django. I want to allow the users to select a number of items from the database, then launch a computationally intensive task based on those items. I expect the task to take between 10 minutes and 2 hours to complete. Is there a standard approach to dealing with requests like this (i.e. that don't return immediately)? Ideally there would be some way to display the progress."}
{"_id": "214587", "title": "Empty interface to combine multiple interfaces", "text": "Suppose you have two interfaces:               interface Readable {         public void read();     }          interface Writable {         public void write();     }      In some cases the implementing objects can only support one of these but in a lot of cases the implementations will support both interfaces. The people who use the interfaces will have to do something like:               // can't write to it without explicit casting     Readable myObject = new MyObject();          // can't read from it without explicit casting     Writable myObject = new MyObject();          // tight coupling to actual implementation     MyObject myObject = new MyObject();      None of these options is terribly convenient, even more so when considering that you want this as a method parameter. One solution would be to declare a wrapping interface:               interface TheWholeShabam extends Readable, Writable {}      But this has one specific problem: all implementations that support both Readable and Writable **have** to implement TheWholeShabam if they want to be compatible with people using the interface. Even though it offers nothing apart from the guaranteed presence of both interfaces. Is there a clean solution to this problem or should I go for the wrapper interface? **UPDATE** It is in fact often necessary to have an object that is both readable and writable so simply seperating the concerns in the arguments is not always a clean solution. **UPDATE2** (extracted as answer so it's easier to comment on) **UPDATE3** Please beware that the primary usecase for this is **not** streams (although they too must be supported). Streams make a very specific distinction between input and output and there is a clear separation of responsibilities. Rather, think of something like a bytebuffer where you need one object you can write to and read from, one object that has a very specific state attached to it. These objects exist because they are very useful for some things like asynchronous I/O, encodings,... **UPDATE4** One of the first things I tried was the same as the suggestion given below (check the accepted answer) but it proved to be too fragile. Suppose you have a class that has to return the type:               public <RW extends Readable & Writable> RW getItAll();      If you call this method, the generic RW is determined by the variable receiving the object, so you need a way to describe this var.               MyObject myObject = someInstance.getItAll();      This would work but once again ties it to an implementation and may actually throw classcastexceptions at runtime (depending on what is returned). Additionally if you want a class variable of the type RW, you need to define the generic at the class level."}
{"_id": "210002", "title": "Tool for programmers team", "text": "I'm looking for a tool for team of programmers. Generally we are split in two groups, we are building two applications on the same framework and in the same moment we are building the framework. I'm looking for a tool, which can make better our communication. The problem to solve is, one team solved a problem in first application and give some code to framework, but the other team doesn't know about this and invents a wheel. The documentation doesn't solve the problem. I'm thinking about a blog on Wordpress -- you solved a problem, so you should give a post: add some tags, description, file names etc."}
{"_id": "117101", "title": "Can code be the documentation in open source developer tools? How frequently is it?", "text": "It's understandable that after a big development effort, some OSS authors deem reasonable that the project users should make an effort too in order to get started. Can the source code effectively be the project's documentation? Does it need to be structured in a particular way in order to achieve this? And how often is this approach taken? Of course this only would be feasible if the project is aimed to developers, and written in the same targeted language of the application (e.g. you can't understand the V8 engine only knowing JavaScript)."}
{"_id": "16189", "title": "What made object oriented programming successful?", "text": "What is that feature according to you that has made object oriented programming so much successful ?   1. Message Passing   2. Inheritance   3. Polymorphism   4. Encapsulation Or some other feature that you may like to introduce. Also I would like to know that what is the connection between Abstract Data type and Object Oriented programming?"}
{"_id": "193643", "title": "Customer Requirements Contains Equations that Cancel to Nothing", "text": "I have a project where the customer requirement specifies a report and contains mathematical equations for the contents of some of the columns on that report. One of the columns on this report is a running total which starts at a opening value, and which 'should' remain at that opening value all the way down the report because the other stuff balances out. I.e. if something had gone missing, the value would change and the customer would see that there is a problem. The reason I quoted the 'should' in that last paragraph is because the spec defines an equation for this column, and I can mathematically prove that it cancels out to 'the value from the previous row'. In other words, the value will never ever change from the opening value. So my options are:   * Implement the equation as spec'd, I suspect the interpreter will not resolve the equation so there will be a performance hit   * Do some cancelling out, and implement the column value as 'value from the previous row'   * Send the question back up the chain to the customer and risk missing the deadline because of several days lost to bureaucracy and impromptu math 101 lessons to explain the difference between \"yeah, it'll never change, it's there just in case\" and \"it. will. never. change.\"  I've pretty much decided what I'm going to do, but I thought it was an interesting question. What do you think is the professional thing to do?"}
{"_id": "105130", "title": "Are By-Design \"Bugs\" a Bad Sign?", "text": "Is it a bad sign if users submit bug reports for things that are by design? Does it typically mean that the application is confusing or unclear, or should I just chalk it up to a one-off user mistake unless specifically stated? (I don't actually have any such reports. This is a purely hypothetical question about whether or not the existence of by-design \"bugs\" is a bad thing.)"}
{"_id": "255845", "title": "Angularjs Business Logic mixing", "text": "## Scenario Last night I asked this question on StackOverflow. Although now I have a solution and I can move forward with the development, it feels partially answered because I have more questions now than before. The proposed solution creates an ugly effect. Now '$scope.item' wraps the $resource in '$scope.item.item' So i should change every bindings path in the document. ### From               <span ng-bind=\"item.price\"></span>      ### To               <span ng-bind=\"item.item.price\"></span>      This is not aceptable to me, feels bad practice. then I thought of this solution ### Item constructor               var Item = function Item(item) {         // mixing         angular.extend(this, item);     };      This solved the last problem but generated new one. Now `$scope.item` not contain the `$resource` methods. (eg `$scope.item.update()`) due `__proto__` chaged from `Resourse` to `Item` ### Item constructor v2               var Item = function Item(item) {         this.api = item; // Resource         // mixing         angular.extend(this, item);     };      Now to invoke the old '$scope.item.update()' needs to be changed to '$scope.item.api.update()'. This feels bad practice too. At this point I fear it is a XY problem. ## The Goal > Join the business logic to the data in angulay way. ## The Question Is \"The Goal\" itself an \"Angular Way\"? 'Angular Way' remains obscure to me. Maybe I should think of a different design."}
{"_id": "149374", "title": "Testing thread safety", "text": "Say you have a function `f` that is or contains a critical section. How would you unit test that only one thread can run it at once, that it doesn't have race conditions, and that it doesn't cause a deadlock, etc...?"}
{"_id": "166357", "title": "How does a \"Variables introduce state\"?", "text": "I was reading the \"C++ Coding Standards\" and this line was there: > Variables introduce state, and you should have to deal with as little state > as possible, with lifetimes as short as possible. Doesn't anything that mutates eventually manipulate state? What does \"you should have to deal with little state as possible\" mean? In an impure language such as C++, isn't state management really what you are doing? And what are other ways to \"deal with as little state as possible\" other than limiting variable lifetime?"}
{"_id": "255841", "title": "graphs with multiple series in javascript", "text": "I'm looking for a graphing tool that allows you to plot multiple series with 2 vertical axis, and with different graph types (at least that is how I would describe it in excel). I've never looked at graphing before, though have a reasonable knowledge of javascript. Where is a good place to start? Here is an example of the type of graph that I'm hoping to produce. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IUCmR.png)"}
{"_id": "149379", "title": "Is there a more modern program than lex or yacc, which does not require JVM?", "text": "Is there a \"modern\" bison and flex equivalent which does not require the JVM or .NET or similar \"heavy\" runtimes? Thanks for comments, edit: By modern, I mean for example Antlr and another one in Java I saw but forgot the name of. (I know that for instance Antlr has a C target, but I am toying with the idea of embedding the compiler generator _inside my own program_ and Java would be very impractical for me.)"}
{"_id": "193649", "title": "Mapping a legacy database to ORM using wrapper classes", "text": "I want to use an ORM with a legacy database, but I don't want to expose some of the underlying data types. For example, some of the columns are nullable doubles or floats and I want my domain model to use non nullable decimals. It seems to be impossible to have Entity Framework automagically cast between these types, and maybe for good reasons. I also want to be able to use enums and so far I have not found any method that don't look like ugly hacks to make this possible. My idea is simply to use wrappers, where I have table-like classes mapped to the database but wrap them in \"real\" domain classes for use in code. My question is simply if you have any thoughts about this approach or if you have any tips. I have no experience in mapping a legacy database to an ORM so any comments or suggestions are appreciated. Note: I've only looked at Entity Framework so I have no knowledge about the capabilities of other ORMs, such as NHibernate."}
{"_id": "116850", "title": "How many questions are on the 70-511 exam?", "text": "I'm preparing to take the Windows Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 exam, but I'm not sure how many questions are on it. I know the exam should only take 90 minutes or so, but how many questions would I have to answer? 50? 100? More?"}
{"_id": "10927", "title": "FromXYZ vs Overloaded Method", "text": "I'm trying to think of the cleanest way to implement a couple of methods that open a file. Consider the following method signatures:               public static DomainObject Load(Uri urlToFile)     {         /* downloads file and calls Load(savedToFilename) */     }          public static DomainObject Load(string filename)      {          /* creates filestream and calls Load(stream) */     }          public static DomainObject Load(Stream stream)      {          /* does actual loading */      }      I'm trying to implement some concepts from Clean Code, specifically: > When constructors are overloaded, use static factory methods with names that > describe the arguments. For example, > > _Complex fulcrumPoint = Complex.FromRealNumber(23.0);_ > > is generally better than > > _Complex fulcrumPoint = new Complex(23.0);_ Now, I know I do not have overloaded constructors, per se (I refactored away from that), but I think the principle is the same. So that implies that my Load methods be refactored to something like:               public static DomainObject FromURI(Uri urlToFile);     public static DomainObject FromFile(string filename);     public static DomainObject FromStream(Stream stream);      But, tbh, I think it's more intuitive to use what I've already got. From a consumer's perspective it feels like Open will take whatever source I happen to have whereas the other method requires me to think first about what my source is and then wonder if there is a specific method for that. So I ask, from your more experienced viewpoint, which is better and why?"}
{"_id": "93872", "title": "Handling Coding Standards at Work (I'm not the boss)", "text": "I work on a small team, around 10 devs. We have no coding standards at all. There are certain things that have become the norm but some ways of doing things are completely disparate. My big one is indentation. Some use tabs, some use spaces, some use a different number of spaces, which creates a huge problem. I often end up with conflicts when I merge because someone used their IDE to auto format and they use a different character to indent than I do. I don't care which we use I just want us all to use the same one. Or else I'll open a file and some lines have curly brackets on the same line as the condition while others have them on the next line. Again, I don't mind which one so long as they are all the same. I've brought up the issue of standards to my direct manager, one on one and in group meetings, and he is not overly concerned about it (there are several others who share the same view as myself). I brought up my specific concern about indentation characters and he thought a better solution would be to, \"create some kind of script that could convert all that when we push/pull from the repo.\" I suspect that he doesn't want to change and this solution seems overly complicated and prone to maintenance issues down the road (also, this addresses only one manifestation of a larger issue). Have any of you run into a similar situation at work? If so, how did you handle it? What would be some good points to help sell my boss on standards? Would starting a grass roots movement to create coding standards, among those of us who are interested, be a good idea? Am I being too particular, should I just let it go? Thank you all for your time. **Note:** Thanks everyone for the great feedback so far! To be clear, I don't want to dictate One Style To Rule Them All. I'm willing to concede my preferred way of doing something in favor of what suits everyone the best. I want consistency and I want this to be a democracy. I want it to be a group decision that everyone agrees on. True, not everyone will get their way, but I'm hoping that everyone will be mature enough to compromise for the betterment of the group. **Note 2:** Some people are getting caught up in the two examples I gave above. I'm more after the heart of the matter. It manifests itself with many examples: naming conventions, huge functions that should be broken up, should something go in a util or service, should something be a constant or injected, should we all use different versions of a dependency or the same, should an interface be used for this case, how should unit tests be set up, what should be unit tested, (Java specific) should we use annotations or external config. I could go on."}
{"_id": "57019", "title": "Fastest way to document software architecture and design", "text": "We are a small team of 5 developers and I'm looking for some great advices about how to document the software architecture and design. I'm going for the sweet spot, where the time invested pays off. I don't want to use more time documenting than necessary. I'll quickly give you my thoughts. What are the diagrams I should made? I'm thinking an overall diagram showing the various applications and services. And then some sequence diagrams showing the most important or complicated processes. About the code it self, I really don't see much value in describing or making diagrams for the code outside the .cs files them self. About text documents, I'm a bit uncertain about when to put down on paper. Most developers don't like to either write or read long documents."}
{"_id": "194383", "title": "Using absolute paths for build dependencies", "text": "Currently we are using Source Safe and have started migration to Subversion. All of our external SDK's(> 500 MB) are held in Source Safe right now, and I am looking for ways to move them from VSS to a repository. We have C++ (mostly), C# (many), Java (few) projects. Hundreds of projects, all running on Windows. I looked at a couple of dependency managers but I'm not satisfied:   * NuGet - good for .Net but painful for C++   * Ivy - not look in depth, but doesn't seem acceptable for C++ **First question: what else should I check? It should be easy to use for a front-end developer. Best case is a simple build within the IDE.** * * * Currently I am inclined to this solution: Allocate some rarely used drive, like S: and declare it as 'DEV HOME'. Then place externals here:               S:\\SDK\\boost\\1.30\\...     S:\\SDK\\boost\\1.45\\...     S:\\SDK\\oracle\\agile_9.0.0.0\\...     S:\\SDK\\IBM\\lotus_8.0\\...     S:\\SDK\\IBM\\lotus_9.0\\...     S:\\Tools\\NuGet\\nuget.exe     S:\\Tools\\clr\\gacutil.exe      Autobuild machine will hold mastercopy of this 'DEV HOME'. Every developer should copy necessary SDKs from autobuild machine to local and create a 'fake' disk with **subst**. I can't find any big problems with this solution:   * Branches. Projects in different branches contain references to different versions of SDK (boost for example)   * Version of external component will not change too frequently, so there will not be hundreds of, say, boost versions.   * Easy for developers to setup.    * Absolute paths supported by any tool. Minor problems:   * Personally for me it is not beautiful solution.   * Disk (S:) can be busy   * Can't be done in Linux (but currently we're not interested in it)  **Second question: what problems can you see with this solution?**"}
{"_id": "93879", "title": "Parallel teams and scrum/agile", "text": "My company has grown seriously over the last years. Until a few years ago we could work with 1 agile team and everything went quite smooth. Now we have multiple teams, all working agile and things go less smoothly as we would hoped. One of the main [psychological] problems is how to organize the working methods in the teams.   * If every team has its own way of working (its own type of Excel sheets where the progress is kept, its own way of calculating capacity, ...) the teams seem to drift apart and seem to compete rather than cooperate on things (developing similar code in parallel)   * If all teams use the same methodologies and work flow procedures, then again we have two alternatives:      * 'Forcing' the methodologies by management seems incorrect since management does not clearly know how agile/scrum methodologies should work (only the actual teams know this)     * Letting teams making suggestions for improvements and them 'forcing' this onto other teams might improve the competition rather than the cooperation (teams will refuse to use the methodology because it comes from another team).  Does anyone have any experience with multiple teams working together in an agile/scrum way? How do promote the teams working together without making them 'blaming eachother' for things that don't work?"}
{"_id": "107987", "title": "What other languages, beside Transact SQL, state that 22/7 is equal to 3?", "text": "I was using Microsoft SQL Query Analyzer the other day and wrote a very simple select statement:               SELECT 22/7 as [PI Equiv]      I was suprized that the result was 3, when I was expecting to see 3.1428571. Even if you declare the output to be `Numeric(18,7)`, you still get 3.0000000.               DECLARE @Answer Numeric(18,7)     SET @Answer = 22/7     SELECT @Answer as [PI Equiv]          RESULT = 3.0000000      What other languages return integer values when the dividend and divisor are both integers?"}
{"_id": "150732", "title": "Strategy/algorithm to divide fair teams based on history", "text": "We are a group of people playing floorball together on a regular basis. Every session starts with the daunting task of dividing teams... So what would be better than an application to pick teams automatically? So, given a history of team-combinations and results, and a list of people showing up for this particular session, what would be a good strategy to find the optimal teams? By optimal, I mean teams as equal as possible. Any ideas? Edit: To make it clear, the data that I have to base the picking on, would be something like this:               [{ team1: [\"playerA\", \"playerB\", \"playerC\"],        team2: [\"playerD\", \"playerE\", \"playerF\"],        goals_team1: 10,        goals_team2:  8       },      { team1: [\"playerD\", \"playerB\", \"playerC\"],        team2: [\"playerA\", \"playerE\", \"playerG\"],        goals_team1:  2,        goals_team2:  5      },      { team1: [\"playerD\", \"playerB\", \"playerF\"],        team2: [\"playerA\", \"playerE\", \"playerC\"],        goals_team1:  4,        goals_team2:  2      }]"}
{"_id": "207076", "title": "Solving point in interval queries", "text": "There are n intervals given by starting (a[1], a[2], ..., a[n]) and ending points (b[1], b[2], ..., b[n]) and m queries of the form: given an integer x find the indices of the intervals which contain x. This can be written as S(x) = {k | 1 <= k <= n and a[k] <= x <= b[k]}. What is the fastest algorithm/data-structure (please, if possible, give references to implementation/documentation) to solve these queries? I'm positive that interval trees should solve the problem, but I'm not really sure on how should I approach the returning of the results. Until now, I could produce the following methods, but all seem quite slow.   * Naive approach: for each query go through all the intervals and see if the point is in the respective interval   * Sort the intervals by their starting point (and then ending point) and binary search for a lower bound on the starting point, then iterate to right checking the condition."}
{"_id": "211717", "title": "Partitioning code into assemblies for the sake of logical seperation", "text": "I've started working at this company, and the software is managed in a Visual Studio solution that includes hundreds of projects (C++ and C#). After poking around the solution for couple of weeks, I started wondering why there are so many projects. Not only does it slows down VS considerably, but a rebuild can take up to an hour. Since a visual studio project corresponds to a physical deployment unit (be it a .NET dll, a C++ lib or an exe), there are reasons why you'd want code partitioned across projects. Some of those reasons can be found in this article. In my particular case, none of the reasons in that article stood. There are roughly 5 processes running across tiers, maybe a few dynamically loaded assemblies used for a plug-in model, and some infrastructure which is rarely changed. I don't see any need for more than ~50 VS projects for this solution, and I believe that merging them will increase productivity and will allow for a shorter feedback loop. When I tried to suggest this to the software manager, his response was that they are trying to have **as many dlls as possible** so that when they plan to ship a new feature, **QA can test just the behavior of the modified dlls** without having to worry that something else was effected. He said that since a dll was not changed, it will behave the same. For this to work they aim for high granularity of deployment units. Does this make sense to anyone? I don't see the difference in the effect on behavior between editing a single line in a project that has a single huge dll, and editing the same line in a project that includes hundreds of dlls. **EDIT** I'm looking for an answer on using assemblies/project as means for separating logical concerns and its effect on the testing effort. I would even go as far as saying that many assemblies that could give you more testing scenarios because of versioning incompatibilities. So my distilled question is: When will you partition your code across projects/assemblies instead of namespaces in the same assembly, given that there are no runtime constraints, and why? **EDIT 2** I guess I'm looking for something like this article. However, I'm reluctant to post this as an answer and accept before I see if there are different opinions in the community."}
{"_id": "16454", "title": "Rails Document Conversion Suggestion?", "text": "I am currently learning rails, day to day, and I get more attached. I would like to use Rails to build a Web app with similar functionality like Scribd or Docstoc. What components/gems/plugins/libraries in Rails or Ruby could be used to create a web app with similar functionallity ? The web app should be have the   * Epub coversion to image(jpeg) as well as pdf   * PDF conversion to image (jpeg) as well as epub   * PDF to Epub I would just like suggestions on the libraries or plugins, etc... to use to obtain the above functionalities using Rails, and what makes them special."}
{"_id": "158505", "title": "Fast extraction to text file from oracle database", "text": "I have to extract around 3 million records from two different databases for further processing. Currently, I execute the queries via SQL*Plus and spool the results to a plain text file. This queries take around 10 minutes each (it's faster on one of the databases) but im looking to improve those times. I found this tool: http://www.iri.com/products/FACT that's supposed to do exactly what I need. Do you know about any other open source tool that I can use to help me improve the extraction times, or maybe a better technique than just spooling to a text file?"}
{"_id": "105688", "title": "What is the object-oriented thought process?", "text": "I've been studying OOP in conjunction with Zend's MVC implementation for the past few months. I'm pretty new to programming, generally, but I feel strongly that I should learn things the 'right' way, which for me means to make sure I understand _why_ things are done the way they are. I.e., I have found that in learning how to do something (anything, say music), the best way to learn how to do something is to know why it's done that way in the first place. Anyway, I have been struggling very hard with understanding how to develop my own business models (i.e., the M of MVC), and I have decided it's not because I don't understand OOP in general, because I've studied it for several months and I don't think the concepts are very difficult to grasp. I find the examples I've studied very intuitive, actually. The problem for me, I think, lies in the process of translating my own problems into object oriented solutions. The examples in books (that I've read so far) are too obvious, so the process of translating the problem into objects isn't very difficult. What I think I might be missing is a high-level abstracted process. Some kind of list of steps or questions that every object-oriented solution must answer on the highest level. If you had to describe such a process in no more than five steps, what would they be and why? What is the most effective process in translating any problem into an object-oriented solution?"}
{"_id": "158500", "title": "Multiple readers on FIFO", "text": "I've asked a question here before about multiple writers on a FIFO, and I know now that the write is thread safe as long as I write less than the PIPE_BIF, here is the link for that limit. What about read? what if have two(or more) readers in multiple threads for reading from the same fifo, do I need locks here? or all I need is to read less than the PIPE_BUF? BTW, I'm talking about Linux FIFO, And I'm using C."}
{"_id": "232101", "title": "How does the GNU General Public License (GPL) conform to the Open Source Initiative's (OSI) Open Source Definition (OSD)?", "text": "From the OSI's OSD: >   1. Free Redistribution > > > The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the > software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing > programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a > royalty or other fee for such sale. and >   3. Derived Works > > > The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them > to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original > software. If the license is GPL then point 3 would suggest that derived works must be distributed under the GPL too, which is the intention of such a 'viral' license. Taken together with point 1 though there seems to be a contradiction, as the GPL specifically restricts you from selling the software. As the OSI lists the GPL as OpenSource I must be missing something. Can anyone explain? EDIT: The FAQ section of the OSI site seems to speak to this issue but I am still unsure about their answer. I think this should mean that you can use GPL code in software that you sell as long as you also provide on request the new source code. However section 9 says: >   9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software > > > The license must not place restrictions on other software that is > distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must > not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be > open-source software. Is the distinction here that derived software must be under the same license (point 3) but 'packaged with' is ok to be under a different license? I'm not quite sure what \"distributed on the same medium\" means."}
{"_id": "105681", "title": "Should we rewrite it from scratch", "text": "At work, we have a software written in PL/SQL - Oracle Forms 10g, which runs the software as a Java Applet. My Company bought the software and we have to develop the software, but we feel that Oracle Forms 10g Technology with Java applet is out of date. It's a technology from the past decade and we must move the software to a different platform (ie. Web or some other platform). Is this a good or bad idea? And why?"}
{"_id": "124954", "title": "Collection providing lookup by one of several keys", "text": "What do you call a collection in which each item may be looked up by **one** of multiple keys? A partial, simplified definition in C# might be:               class MyDataStructure<TKey1, TKey2, TValue> {         private List<TValue> _values;         //map keys to indices         private Dictionary<TKey1, int> _keys1;         private Dictionary<TKey2, int> _keys2;              public TValue GetByKey1(TKey1 key) ...         public TValue GetByKey2(TKey2 key) ...     }      There's `MultiKeyMap` in Java, but that seems to lookup items based on a combination of keys, not by **each key individually**. Does what I've described have a well-established name? ### EDIT If there's not an established name, feel free to offer a new one. Or state your preference for one of these:   1. ChoiceKeyDictionary   2. AlternateKeyDictionary   3. DualKeyDictionary"}
{"_id": "199090", "title": "Is it a bad practice to modify code strictly for testing purposes", "text": "I have a debate with a programmer colleague about whether it is a good or bad practice to modify a working piece of code only to make it testable (via unit tests for example). My opinion is that it is OK, within the limits of maintaining good object oriented and software engineering practices of course (not \"making everything public\", etc). My colleague's opinion is that modifying code (which works) only for testing purposes is wrong. Just a simple example, think of this piece of code that is used by some component (written in C#):               public void DoSomethingOnAllTypes()     {         var types = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetTypes();              foreach (var currentType in types)         {             // do something with this type (e.g: read it's attributes, process, etc).         }     }      I have suggested that this code can be modified to call out another method that will do the actual work:               public void DoSomething(Assembly asm)     {         // not relying on Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly() anymore...     }      This method takes in an Assembly object to work on, making it possible to pass your own Assembly to do the testing on. My colleague didn't think this is a good practice. What is considered a good and common practice ?"}
{"_id": "64525", "title": "What would your DB Schema look like if you are building a Reddit/Digg-like site?", "text": "Just found out something rather interesting about Reddit's database schema: > The way we\u2019ve changed is we use an \u201copen schema\u201d. Sometimes it\u2019s called > \u201centity attribute value\u201d. It\u2019s basically a large key value store. We have > two types of tables for every data type. There is a \u201cthing\u201d table, and then > a \u201cdata\u201d table. Everything in Reddit is comprised of what we call things: > users, links, comments, sub-Reddit\u2019s, awards. > > Everything on Reddit is a thing. The schema for those elements look the > same. It looks like this top table here: ups, downs, a type, a creation > date, some properties that are fundamental across all of the objects in > Reddit. > > Then we have what\u2019s called the \u201cdata\u201d table, which is basically this huge > table with three columns: the thing idea we\u2019re talking about is the left- > most column, then a key, and a value. For example, these two links would be > represented by two links in a thing table, and then one row in the data > table for every value on that link. There would be a key for title, and a > value for that title for that link; and a key for URL and a key for the > author, and then a key for how many spam votes that are on it. Source: http://thinkvitamin.com/code/steve-huffman-on-lessons-learned-at- reddit/ So I started looking around to see what other similar sites are doing. Could not find anything about Digg. SO is doing something more traditional with a Users, Posts, Comments, Badges and Votes table. DotNetKicks and DotNetShout do similar (tradional) things. So I wanted to ask the SO community, if you were designing a site like Reddit or Digg or even SO (basically any social voting sites) using ASP.NET MVC and SQL Server, what would you do? How would you design it?"}
{"_id": "153425", "title": ".Net Application & Database Modularity/Reuse", "text": "I'm looking for some guidance on how to architect an app with regards to modularity, separation of concerns and re-usability. I'm working on an application (ASP.Net, C#) that has distinctly generic chunks of functionality, that I'd love to be able to lift out, all layers, into re- usable components. This means the module handles the database schema, data access, API, everything so that the next time I want to use it I can just register the module and hook into it. Developing modules of re-usable functionality is a no-brainer, but what is really confusing me is what to do when it comes to handling a core re-usable database schema that serves the module's functionality. In an ideal world, I would register a module and it would ensure that the associated database schema exists in the DB, by creating the schema if it didn't already. I would code my dependent functionality on the assumption that the tables exist calling the module's functionality through the DLL, agnostic of the database layer. Kind of like Enterprise Library's Caching/Logging Application Block, which can create a DB schema in the target DB to use as a data store. My Questions is: What do you think is the best way to achieve this, firstly, in terms design architecture, and secondly solution structure. What patterns/frameworks do you know that exist & support this kind of thing? My thoughts so far: I mostly use Entity Framework and SQL Server DB Projects. I thought about a 'black box' approach to modules of functionality. I could use use a code-first approach in EF4, and use the ObjectContext to create a database when the module is initialized. However this means that all of the entities that my module encapsulates would be disconnected from the rest of the application because they belonged to an abstracted ObjectContext. Further - Creating appropriate indexes and references between domain entities and the module's entities would be impossible to do practically. I've thought of adopting Enterprise Library and creating my own Application Blocks. I'm not sure how this would play nice with Entity Framework (if at all) though. I like the idea of building on proven patterns & practices to encapsulate established, reusable functionality. I thought of abandoning Entity Framework for the Module, and just creating a separate DB schema for the module with its own set of stored procedures & ADO.Net. Then deploying the script at run-time if interrogation shows that it doesn't exist. But once again, for developing functionality outside of the module, I would want to use Entity Framework and I would have to use the module separately, disconnected from the domain ObjectContext. Has anyone had experience developing these sorts of full-stack modules? What advice can you offer? Am I biting off more than I can chew?"}
{"_id": "250315", "title": "I need a JavaScript runtime environment", "text": "I'm reading books on JavaScript programming, and I need an environment like Python's IDLE to type JavaScript commands into and then see the results like you would in IDLE. Is there an environment where you can do such a thing?"}
{"_id": "250314", "title": "Zend framework 2 authentication - only storing the user ID in session", "text": "I've just put together my first app using Zend_Authenticate. According to some tutorials I've read they store the user's \"email\" column. Is this recommended? I've read to store the ID only, then on each request fetch the user by ID. That way, only the ID is stored in the session. Is this recommended with Zend too? Anyway here is my handling of user login, I'd appreciate any feedback. Basically I'm authenticating. If that passed, I then store the ID in auth storage and a custom flash message. The script then redirects to the homepage (upon which the login form will be replaced with a user panel - e.g. \"Welcome back John\" - and my flash message will display. Below is my loginAction method:               public function loginAction()     {       $form = new LoginForm();            $form->get('submit')->setValue('Login');            $request = $this->getRequest();            if ($request->isPost()) {                // check the users credentials and authenticate           $this->getAuthService()             ->getAdapter()             ->setIdentity($request->getPost('email'))             ->setCredential($request->getPost('password'));                $result = $this->getAuthService()->authenticate();                if ($result->isValid()) {                  // set the user id in storage             $resultRow = $this->getAuthService()->getAdapter()->getResultRowObject();             $this->getAuthService()->getStorage()->write($resultRow->id);                  // set flash messenger             $this->flashMessenger()->addMessage('You are now logged in');                  // redirect to the home page             return $this->redirect()->toUrl('/');           }            }              return new ViewModel(array(           'form' => $form,         ));       }          }"}
{"_id": "153429", "title": "How to handle estimates for programmers joining the team?", "text": "Iteration has already started, new programmer joins the team, task X has already been estimated to be 30 hours by a different developer. What is the best practice in this situation?   * new developer runs with the given estimate (the idea being that any discrepancy will be corrected for when velocity is calculated?)   * new developer re-estimates task? (if so, what if it's significantly higher and no longer fits in the iteration?)   * throw our hands up and go back to waterfall?   * something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "154439", "title": "Quality of Code in unit tests?", "text": "When writing unit tests, is it worth spending the extra time to make the code have good quality and readability? When writing tests I often break the Law of Demeter, for faster writing and to avoid using so many variables. Technically, unit tests are not reused directly - they are strictly bound to the code so I do not see any reason for spending much time on them; they only need to be functional."}
{"_id": "69738", "title": "How much code does one have to derive from another source before the license rules are applicable?", "text": "In an attempt to not re-invent the wheel, I've been working on a CMS's text- sanitization layer. I found that SimplePie had a really good one in use with it's RSS feed, but it had a lot of features that I didn't need (such as image cache-ing, making relative urls absolute, etc.) so the actual amount of code that I'm using that's more-or-less a direct copy of SimplePie's code, is maybe 20-30% of the original `SimplePie_Sanitize` class code. My question is, since it's not exactly a direct copy (agree'd there are parts that are, and parts that aren't as I had to bring it up to PHP 5.3.6 spec and what-not), how much of the code _has_ to be a direct copy for the BSD license (which SimplePie uses) to apply? Keep in mind I'm going to be adding some of my own things into the code as well to help prevent XSS attacks so the class will eventually may only be 50% original, and 50% of the copied (or at least, the 20-30% that's left of it). With that: **is a simple 'THIS HAS CODE FROM THIS PROJECT' disclaimer enough, or do I have to apply the BSD license to the _entire_ code file?**"}
{"_id": "63557", "title": "How could dependency injection be integrated into the language?", "text": "I've been thinking a bit on how dependency injection could be better integrated directly into a C# like language. I've come up with a potential solution I'd like to hear your opinion on. I haven't used many dependency injection frameworks so there might be something I'm overlooking Anyways, the idea is the be able to declare properties as \"injectable\" using a keyword. When an object is instantiated and that property is not initialized through the constructor or object initializer it requests an instance of that property type from some global service. Similarily you register handlers for different types to that service so that you can instantiate the injected property type. The upside of using this kind of architecture IMO is that it's fairly flexible and easy to use. The downside is that there might be some overhead of doing the callout to the singleton each time you initiate a class that has injection. Then again that's only an issue for classes that get's instantiated frequently in a high performance solution so it shouldn't be much of an issue. Perhaps you could use some kind of factory in those instances. Thought, issues, questions, better ideas? **Code**               public class SomeClass     {            public SomeClass()       {          //implicit behavior if Animal is not set in constructor or initializer         this.Animal =  GlobalInjector.Get(this,typeof(Mammal))            }            public injectable Mammal Animal         {        get;        set;       }     }                GlobalInjector.Register(typeof(Mammal), () => return new Mammal(someParameter));"}
{"_id": "63558", "title": "I need quick start to Java, Apache, and Java web based apps to use JasperReports", "text": "Sorry, it is **NOT** duplicated question, just read it please, I'm totally new to Java world, I'm a .NET developer, and I have a good exprience in ASP.NET. Now I have a task to make a demo for JasperReport, I need **QUICK** start to Java and Java web application on Apache and then I will figure out how to use _JasperReport_. Thank you very much people,"}
{"_id": "102163", "title": "Naming conventions and organization of packages", "text": "I've been programming in Java, C#, Python and AS3 most of the time and in all of these languages there are _packages_ (or something like that). The problem I found is with the naming convention, or even with the organization of the packages. I need someone to tell me WHY is this: `com.company.app.type.Object` or `org.authorname.project.type.Object` better than this: `app.feature.Object` or `app.module.Object` * * * Another example: Why this:               com      +--company          +--app              +--events              |   |--FeatureOneEventA              |   |--FeatureOneEventB              |   |--FeatureOneEventC              |   |--FeatureTwoEventA              |   |--FeatureTwoEventB              |                 +--models              |   |--FeatureOne              |   |--FeatureTwo              |                 +--services                  |--FeatureOneServiceA                  |--FeatureTwoServiceA                  |--FeatureTwoServiceB      Is \"better\" than this:                company       +--app           +--feature               +--one               |   |--Model               |   |               |   +--events               |   |   |--EventA               |   |   |--EventB               |   |   |--EventC               |   |               |   +--services               |       |--ServiceA               |                 +--two                   |--Model                   |                   +--events                   |   |--EventA                   |   |--EventB                   |                   +--services                       |--ServiceA                       |--ServiceB      In the first one you have all organized by \"types of objects\", but the \"features\" are all mixed, but in the second one, the organization is by \"feature\" and each one has their own objects; so, you can see one feature well separated from another. So, can anyone tell me why a lot of companies and programmers prefer the first? PS: Sorry for my poor English"}
{"_id": "166975", "title": "Document-oriented vs Column-oriented database fit", "text": "I have a data-intensive application that desperately needs a database make- over. The general data model: There are records with RIDs, grouped together by group IDs (GID). The records have arbitrary data fields, (maybe 5-15) with a few of them mandatory and the rest optional, and thus sparse. The general use model: There are LOTS and LOTS of Writes. Millions to Billions of records are stored. Very often, they are associated with new GIDs, but sometimes, they are associated with existing GIDs. There aren't as many reads, but when they happen, they need to be pretty fast or at least constant speed regardless of the database size. And when the reads happen, it will need to retrieve all the records/RIDs with a certain GID. I don't have a need to search by the record field values. Primarily, I will need to query by the GID and maybe RID. What database implementation should I use? I did some initial research between document-oriented and column-oriented databases and it seems the document-oriented ones are a good fit, model-wise. I could store all the records together under the same document key using the GID. But I don't really have any use for their ability to search the document contents itself. I like the simplicity and scalability of column-oriented databases like Cassandra, but how should I model my data in this paradigm for optimal performance? Should my key be the GID and should I create a column for each record/RID? (there maybe thousands or hundreds of thousands of records in a group/GID). Or should my key be the RID and ensure each row has a column for the GID value? What results in faster writes and reads under this model?"}
{"_id": "166976", "title": "How to organise projects with dependencies on BitBucket?", "text": "Both Mercurial and BitBucket make one fundamental assumption: 1 repo = 1 project. If I have a project that has a dependency (a library) which is shared by many projects, this assumption gets in the way. Now it is no longer possible to have a separate BitBucket page for each project while still being able to commit atomic revisions to multiple projects. If I put all the projects into one repo, they all become one \u201cproject\u201d on BitBucket. If I put them in separate repos, it is no longer possible to know which version of the library project was in use at revision X of a dependent project. How is this situation normally solved on BitBucket, or is there explicitly no support for this common scenario?"}
{"_id": "22940", "title": "How competitive are Software Engineering startup jobs?", "text": "Background: I've worked in a quantitative financial consulting position for the past 4-5 years (financial modeling with Matlab, VBA, Excel mostly). I have a degree in Computer Science (BA) and Math (BA). I'm want to join a startup company to realign my career with my passion: technology. I lack the official \"software development\" (SDLC) experience but have very much programmed for work and personally (Python, PHP, C++, etc). Question: How competitive are software engineering positions in startup companies? Will I be hard pressed to find someone who will hire me not having \"official\" software development experience? Does anyone have any tips for me in achieving my goal?"}
{"_id": "49232", "title": "Random number generation algorithm for human brains?", "text": "Are you aware of, or have you devised, any practical, simple-to-learn \"in- head\" algorithms that let humans generate (somewhat \"true\") random numbers? By \"in-head\" I mean.. preferably without any external tools or devices. Also, a high output (many random numbers per minute) is desirable. Asked this on SO but it didn't get much interest. Maybe this is better suited for programmers."}
{"_id": "166978", "title": "What is the motivation behind TypeScript?", "text": "We had JavaScript, then we had Flash, then we had Silverlight and then HTML5 ownd them all. So what is the motivation behind TypeScript? What problems are going to be tackled and what improvements do we get with TypeScript? http://www.typescriptlang.org/"}
{"_id": "223714", "title": "Is there any specific reason to use \"else if\" clause?", "text": "We all use if ..else if.. else. But still I'm confused as to why we use **else if**. Where **if** does the same thing as **else if**. So why are we using **else if**? Any specific reasons behind this? Is there any algorithm where it's mandatory to use **else if**?"}
{"_id": "94067", "title": "How to organize a set of syntax highlighting classes?", "text": "I am creating a set of syntax highlighters for an application. The languages include:   * HTML (specifically HTML5)   * JavaScript   * PHP   * CSS (specifically CSS3) The problem lies in the way the classes need to be organized. Since this is a Qt application, each language has its own class which derives from QSyntaxHighlighter. Each class overrides `highlightBlock()` which is responsible for coloring the supplied block of text. JavaScript code can be contained in `.js` files as well as inside `<script></script>` tags. Similarly CSS styles can be contained in `.css` files as well as inside `<style></style>` HTML tags. To top it all off, HTML content can be found in both `.html` and `.php` files. Each language has its own file extension and therefore requires its own class. **However,** since certain languages can be embedded within one another, there needs to be a way to avoid duplicating code. In other words, it makes no sense having the JavaScript parsing code inside the HTML highlighting class _and_ the JavaScript highlighting class. What would be an ideal way of organizing the code? Here are some options that come to mind:   * **Abstract the parsing code completely.** This option would involve removing the parsing code for each language from the syntax highlighting class for that language. Then the parsing code could easily invoke other parsers as necessary. This option sounds good but would be very complex.   * **Use inheritance.** This option doesn't sound like a good idea, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. In this case, I would have a `PHP_SyntaxHighlighter` class that derives from `HTML_SyntaxHighlighter` which in turn derives from both `JS_SyntaxHighlighter` and `CSS_SyntaxHighlighter`. The idea is that the container classes (like HTML) could invoke the overridden method in the base class when necessary. This option involves multiple inheritance and therefore will not work with Qt - thus, it's not really a true option.   * **Create instances of the other classes and invoke the`highlightBlock()` function.** This option would involve constructing instances of other classes and then invoking their syntax highlighting function for the given language. This is probably quite difficult to implement as well and would involve a lot of hacking. So these are the options I'm looking at. I welcome any suggestions, pointers, or tips for organizing these classes."}
{"_id": "94065", "title": "How to go about building a website that allows users to deposit/transfer money?", "text": "Can someone help me understand the process one would have to go through to set up a website, like a job board, that allows users to deposit money into their account and then use it to buy/sell stuff? Is it possible to use Paypal as Escrow the same way Ebay does?"}
{"_id": "116271", "title": "How well will a C++ app communicating through Apache handle traffic? ", "text": "I'm writing an online game that has to run in a web browser and I'm worried about whether my server-side architecture will be able to handle the load. I'm designing for 1000-2000 simultaneous clients. Each client will need to query the server once every 2 seconds - so 500-1000 transactions per second is my design goal. My game server communicates with Apache via FastCGI. I'm actually running Apache on Windows for the moment. All this will run on a dedicated \"dual-core\" server. The game server application itself is written in C++ and the transactions are pretty simple and fairly low bandwidth (maybe 2k data per) so I'm not too worried about the game server piece. My client is written in Javascript and uses XMLHTTP to communicate with the server. So am I smoking something to think I can get 500 to 1000 transactions per second? If so, what number might I expect?"}
{"_id": "94060", "title": "What is the best way to study and become involved in software engineering process work?", "text": "This might sound rather strange for someone who just graduated with an undergraduate degree in software engineering, but I'm extremely interested in the process and people side of software engineering. (You should see some of the looks I've gotten during interviews when asked about my professional interests and strengths, which were then followed by questions and interesting discussions on these topics which often surprise interviewers.) The people side includes customer-facing (requirements, acceptance testing) and organizational-facing (management and leadership). A look over my transcript and my answers to questions here pretty much shows this. I've had these interests well before I graduated: I took extra classes in the process-oriented track, as well as minoring in business management (focusing on organizational behavior and leadership classes) and communication (focusing on group and technical communication). A few examples of what I'm interested in:   * process models and methodologies   * process and software quality   * measurements and metrics   * project management   * organizational behavior   * organizational communication   * leadership   * software development life cycle   * software engineering as a profession I also consider myself well-read on these topics. I've read several of the major books - McConnell's Rapid Development, Software Project Survival Guide, Software Estimation, Professional Software Development, Boehm's Software Engineering Economics, Kan's Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering, Brooks's Mythical Man Month, DeMarco & Lister's Peopleware. I'm also well-read on the entire SDLC, from Weigers' Software Requirements through McConnell's Code Complete and have practical experience in design, construction, and maintenance. Don't get me wrong - I think the technical side is fun. I'm into architecture, design, and programming, but I'm more interested in working with the people- oriented side of software development. However, there aren't that many opportunities as an entry-level software engineer (even with 2 years of co-op and summer employment experience in the field). Now, I'm not really sure where I should go next. I currently have a very nice job in the sector that I've always wanted to be in, doing development work. This includes both continuing to develop existing software as well as some new software development coming down the pipeline in the near future. I'm also planning on sitting for the IEEE Certified Software Development Professional in about 2 years and perhaps self-studying for the PMI's Certified Associate in Project Management before I qualify for the Project Management Professional. My personal question is: how \"on track\" am I? However, I also have much more widely pertinent questions that would apply to any early-career software engineers who want to go into project management/process management: * * *   * Until the opportunities to become a leader present themselves, what can an entry-level/early professional software engineer do at work? Is there anything in particular that can be done, other than seek out and/or wait for opportunities to present themselves?   * What kinds of material can be self-studied, especially in terms of these topics or related topics that would help prepare for when one enters these positions?   * In terms of continuing education, what kinds of graduate programs would focus on these topics? Not necessarily specific universities, but would this typically be engineering programs, business programs, or some kind of multidisciplinary programs? How would one go about finding universities with programs that offer this kind of education?   * Where is the current state-of-the-art in this research? This is both in terms of publications and where key players are located (universities, organizations, conferences, and so on)?"}
{"_id": "94068", "title": "How can a Silverlight app talk to another app on a Mac?", "text": "Is there any way that a Silverlight out-of-browser app can communicate with another app (for example an Objective-C app) installed on a Mac? Any help or suggestion will be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "102481", "title": "Is distributing patches in compliance with the GPL?", "text": "I'm designing a distro and some of the software packages included are maintained in such a way that my source repository doesn't actually include the source code, but they are included as an `svn:externals` property or a list of read-only repository URLs and are checked into the source tree before building. Sometimes, the software requires a patch or two in order to build or work properly. These patches _are_ included in the source tree and are automatically applied but not included in the end result. The repository is public and anyone can get the patches, which are maintained regularly. My question is, is any of this setup violating the GPL? I really want to distribute under the GPL or compatible license, but I'm not really well-versed in legalese. Would I have to host repository snapshots once I publish in order to be in full compliance, or could I just host the patches?"}
{"_id": "162073", "title": "How do you support your code post employment end?", "text": "What is the process for leaving a company (or even a group/division) in terms of code support? Is it best to handle all questions? Do you give the remaining developers access to yourself as a future resource? If so, is there a way to not give full access? I've experienced first hand where answers about the general software arthitecture from the initial developer would be invaluable. I understand that if serious assistance is needed, than it becomes a typical case of employment negotiation as a support contract. However, should serious assistance be required, what steps can you make to ease that process of contacting you? I was thinking of doing something like making a (YOUR_NAME)_codesupport @ (YOUR_FAVORITE_EMAIL_CLIENT).com address. **My Situation Specifics:** I'm a co-op student, and as such bounce around companies on 4-month stints. This means introducing myself to a lot of new code bases, as well as leaving a fair share of orphaned code behind when I leave a company. I feel bad if I leave junk code around."}
{"_id": "102487", "title": "Are There Realistic/Useful Solutions for Source Control for Ladder Logic Programs", "text": "Version control for ladder logic (LL) programs for programmable logic controllers (PLCs) seems to be virtually non-existent. It may be because LL is a visual language and tends to be stored in binary files, or it may be because source code control hasn't \"caught on\" in process control engineering circles - or perhaps my Google-Fu is weak tonight. Do you know of any realistic and useful solutions for version control for such systems? Definitions:   * realistic = changes to the programs are tracked by user and subject to reversion and merges   * useful = the system integrates with visual LL designers, is not limited to LL from a single PLC manufacturer, and does not cost a ridiculous amount of money? Note: I have heard of people using SVN or Mercurial et al to track the binary files, but I don't think the diff/merge capabilities would display readable differences. ADDENDUM: At first we only had to support Allen-Bradley PLCs. Now we also have Siemens and MicroLogix PLCs. Still searching for a viable solution..."}
{"_id": "102488", "title": "backup visual studio folder and sql database", "text": "I like to backup things every night or say every week. I'm sure there's a more efficient way than emailing the solution folder and database files to myself! I don't have team foundation or any commercial products like that. I'm looking for a freeware."}
{"_id": "108624", "title": "Java and .NET: Why different sorting algorithms are used by default?", "text": "Just wondering why `Java` and `.NET Framework` uses different sorting algorithm by default. **In Java** `Array.Sort()` uses Merge Sort algorithm by default and as Wikipedia.com says: > In Java, the Arrays.sort() methods use merge sort or a tuned quicksort > depending on the datatypes and for implementation efficiency switch to > insertion sort when fewer than seven array elements are being sorted **In .NET Framework** `Array.Sort/List.Sort()` uses Quick Sort as default sorting algorithm (MSDN): > List.Sort() uses Array.Sort, which uses the QuickSort algorithm. This > implementation performs an unstable sort; that is, if two elements are > equal, their order might not be preserved. In contrast, a stable sort > preserves the order of elements that are equal. By looking at the great \"Comparison of algorithms\" table we can see that both algorithms has pretty different behaviour from Worst Case and Memory Usage perspectives: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fslGh.png) Both `Java` and `.NET` are great Frameworks for Enterprise Solutions development, both has platforms for embedded development. So why they are using different sorting algorithm by default, any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "71919", "title": "Can I integrate software under Creative Common for commercial gain?", "text": "As the question says on the tin: Can I integrate software under Creative Common for commercial gain? I want to use Creative Common software (e.g., http://thrivingkings.com/apprise/) for some big clients."}
{"_id": "39247", "title": "Getting Involved?", "text": "I've been sitting at my computer for about an hour and a half, browsing around and trying to find something worthwhile to do that I'd enjoy. The fact that I'm here shows you that I didn't come up with anything. Anyways, I was wondering about good ways to get involved with open source projects and/or contributing to stuff, without being an expert in whichever language(s) being used, if that's even possible. If it helps, I'm looking for web-based projects especially, so...yeah. Any suggestions would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "61530", "title": "Open Source - First Project", "text": "I am a fairly novice programmer - 6 months into an internship. I have decided to sign up to an Open Source project to learn new skills, and I have been accepted onto one. It seems the project is quite early in its life. They accept beginner programmers and I have explained that I am one. Obviously as this is my first contribution, I don't want to annoy anybody ont he project. As such, what things do I need to be aware of? Any specific etiquette I should be aware of? Will I need any specific software? I have VS2010 which is okay for C#, but what about source control? Is that managed through the Codeplex site? Thanks."}
{"_id": "198055", "title": "Unit Tests for Database Abstraction Layer", "text": "I previously asked this question about creating an algorithm for joining records from multiple databases, and since then, I have built a rudimentary version of it (which doesn't allow for inter database table associations to keep it simple for the moment), and now I am trying to test it. So far, I have tested doing joins, custom columns, where and having clauses, order by's, and limits, and they seem to all work perfectly. But, most of my applications that do database queries are quite simple, with just a few joins, a couple of custom columns, and a few other bits and pieces of information, so I was wondering if there was a nice series of really complex queries i could pass through it to ensure that it can really do everything that would be needed by 99% of applications? I know its a bit broad, but even just a handful of complicated queries would be fantastic to test it out."}
{"_id": "190609", "title": "Source control system for binary files", "text": "At work we have a legacy system written in Visual FoxPRO. Everything in foxpro is a table, even forms, so basically if you open a form file with a text editor you don't learn much. Does anyone know about a tool for source control, that support merging and managing binary files? For now I'm converting what I can convert to text, use a text tool like to merge changes, and replace them manually, to get the team work in one version, then upload the stuff to a TFS server. I know it is not genius... please advise"}
{"_id": "190600", "title": "How are Scala Traits implemented in the JVM?", "text": "I have been reading about traits in Scala. They are pretty amazing. I am curious how they extend a class without actually resulting in multiple inheritance. I know that the JVM doesn't support multiple inheritance, so I am wondering how these extensions work. Is the language just providing syntactic sugar for composition? Or is the code within a trait duplicated in each class that uses it?"}
{"_id": "222726", "title": "Preferring Database Normalization vs. Schema Transparency?", "text": "A new requirement has surfaced on an old codebase, that basically enables direct (internal) communication between two formerly not-directly related classes of users (stored in different tables with completely different schema and, sadly, the code is barely OO-aware, much less designed, so there's no parent class). Since we're out to hang a bag on this old setup that never considered this functionality, there's no guarantee that there are no PK collisions -- given the dataset in use, it's practically guaranteed that there ARE. So, the solution seems obvious: ~~kill it with fire and rewrite the whole mess~~ A mapping table. I've gotten two directions for the possible ways to implement the map, but I'm not a DBA, so I'm uncertain if there are any pros and cons I've missed. For the sake of clarifying the abstraction, consider three groups of disparate user data: Professors, Administration, Students (No, this isn't a homework assignment. Promise!) **Mapping 1** (professor_id, admin_id, and student_id are foreign keys to their respective tables)               | mailing_id (KEY) | professor_id | admin_id | student_id |      -------------------------------------------------------     | 1001             |     NULL     |    87    |  NULL      |     | 1002             |     123      |   NULL   |  NULL      |     | 1003             |     NULL     |   NULL   |  123       |      The +/- to this approach seem pretty heavy on the cons:   * Two \"wasted\" fields per row   * Violates 2NF   * Vulnerable to insert/update anomalies (a row with only 0-1 field set NULL, e.g.)  The pros are not without their own merits, though:   * The mapping can be accomplished with a single lookup   * Easily determine the \"source\" data for a given user from the mailing_id Truth be told, in my gut, I don't like this idea at all. **Mapping 2** (assume MSG_* are defined constants, enum types, or another suitable identifier)               | mailing_id (KEY)  | user_type (UNIQUE1) | internal_id (UNIQUE2)|      ------------------------------------------------------------------     | 1001              | MSG_ADMIN          | 87                    |     | 1002              | MSG_PROF           | 123                   |     | 1003              | MSG_STUDENT        | 123                   |      With this setup, and a unique composite index of {user_type, internal_id} things become much cleaner, 3NF is maintained, and the application code doesn't have to check for I/U anomalies. On the downside, there's a bit of a loss of transparency in determining the user source tables that has to be handled outside of the DB, basically amounting to an application-level mapping of user_type values to tables. Right now, I'm (rather strongly) leaning toward this 2nd mapping, since the downside is rather minor. **BUT** I'm painfully aware of my own limitations, and am sure I've probably missed advantages or stumbling blocks in both directions, so I turn to wiser minds than mine."}
{"_id": "113737", "title": "Adapting to a team environment after developing alone for years", "text": "I have almost 5 years of experience as a web developer, and feel that I should be mid-level by now, but when I walk the walk I think I'm still pretty \"junior\" at it. Here's what I think is the problem: For most of my career, I seldom had any real guidance by a more senior developer and zero experience with developer teams, so I sort of had to hack my way through a lot of solutions, and do everything cut-and-dried. In practice, there was no time to waste as the only guy responsible for writing or maintaining the code. Because of this, I have no formal knowledge of the actual software development _process_ and eventually realized that coding is only a small part of the process. I would greatly enjoy working with a developer team with solid experience, but I am afraid it would be a very bumpy ride trying to adjust with the knowledge base that is required for development processes. As a programmer who has flied solo most of his career, what can I do to prepare to \"settle in\" a job working with a larger team (at least 5) of seasoned pros? Edit: To that end I haven't passed a lot of the technical tests given out by the \"big shot\" companies that thrive on their software and developers. By big I don't mean like Google, but reasonably successful in the geographic area."}
{"_id": "53245", "title": "How to deal with queries that do not return full entities in Domain Driven Design?", "text": "In my application, I have a listing of information that is deducted from a query that combines information from several entities. In itself, a very common situation. Now, the corresponding repository method should return a list that contains items of an appropriate type. Clearly, choosing an entity is not appropriate because the information we're dealing with spans across multiple entities. I guess the same applies when querying partial entities. Creating a new entity doesn't make sense either because it would only muddle the model. I was thinking in the direction of something like creating a DTO in the application layer because the particular query really is there to satisfy an application requirement and not a business requirement. This essentially leads to introducing the notion of application specific repositories and a dependency on the application layer from those specific repositories. Somehow this doesn't feel right. Is there a more appropriate approach/pattern I could use here?"}
{"_id": "108192", "title": "Guess if a time is AM or PM", "text": "I'm currently in the process of writing a human date parser. By human date, I mean it should be able to interpret strings as \"tomorrow at 2\" and return a valid date depending on the current time. The issue I'm facing is the automatic detection of missing AM/PM token. For example, if I receive an email that says \"Lets meet tomorrow at 2\", I know that 2 is likely to be, in fact, 2 PM. On the other hand, if the email said \"Lets meet tomorrow at 11\", 11 is more likely to be 11AM. I guess most of the time, a simple comparison should do the trick. If the number is bigger than a certain limit _n_ , we can suppose that the time is AM. If the number is smaller, then it is probably PM. In the sample above, 2 was more likely to be PM, and 11 was AM. I know that a common work day is about 9AM-6PM, so numbers lower than 6 or bigger or greater than 9 are fine. We can easily guess for those. But what do I do with 7 and 8? So the exact question I have is, where do I put this exact limit? When numbers approach 7~8, the limit becomes more ambiguous. I tried to search for previous documentation on this problem but couldn't find any. Is there any kind of convention about this? Also, in my opinion, the locale and/or timezone could influence this limit. By the way, I'm not interested by non-definitive answers such as \"In my opinion, 7 is afternoon\" or \"For me, 8 is morning\". I'm really interested in documentation that could help me draw a definitive line. Hope the description of the problem is understandable enough."}
{"_id": "128981", "title": "Is it important/essential to learn software development methodologies for beginners?", "text": "I'm a student and I've been programming for not very long. Particularly, I'm learning CodeIgniter framework - The book I'm reading is \"Professional CodeIgniter\". In the book, the author mentioned Agile Methodologies ( and I find it somewhat little bit difficult to understand ). I want to know if it is essential to learn the methodology first before starting to produce software or should I learn coding to be good at it first?"}
{"_id": "37913", "title": "What are some good interview questions for nontechnical recruiters to ask?", "text": "I've been given the opportunity to provide a question bank for nontechnical recruiters to ask candidates. However, all of my favorite interview questions require somebody who knows the subject matter to properly evaluate the answer (eg. how would you design X, How do you feel about Y). I'll probably need to have a combination C#/.Net questions and more general programming questions, and the tricky part is they all need to have answers that the recruiters can confirm without understanding them. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "91111", "title": "Is there a scalable multi-site strategy with codeigniter?", "text": "I've been looking for a efficient and secure way of enabling multi-site capabilities to codeigniter for a while. These two(one & two) articles I found pretty interesting, but they don't seem to offer a scalable way of doing it. Of the two, John Dennis Pedrie's(link two) method seemed to be more thought out for our purposes. However, say you have 100, 500, or 1000 separate sites, is this method still the best to go? Ie. would having 500 separate db config files in a folder and updating them with php be the best way to go? Another method I can see being useful is a database of config options. Update the DB and you could have another site come online. However that would require storing all the database usernames and passwords in cleartext. Can't see that going over well. Any answers, advice, tips, or interesting thoughts?"}
{"_id": "91113", "title": "Understand scripting language", "text": "Quoted from Wikipedia: > A scripting language, script language or extension language is a programming > language that **allows control of one or more applications** and **makes the > compiler of the language part of the language runtime** , and as a result, > **enables code to be generated dynamically**. \"Scripts\" are distinct from > the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different > language and are often created or at least modified by the end-user. Scripts > are often interpreted from source code or bytecode, whereas the application > is typically first compiled to native machine code.   1. I was wondering what \"enables code to be generated dynamically\" means? Isn't code in a scripting language written before it gets run, so how is it generated dynamically?   2. By definition, is a scripting language always an interpreted language? Conversely, is an interpreted language always a scripting language? They seem to be very close related, or even the same thing.   3. How is a language non-scripting? Thanks and regards!"}
{"_id": "115772", "title": "Model independency in MVC and most efficient way to do method calls", "text": "**TLDR:** Are models supposed to be application-dependant and totally worthless when starting a new application, or are you supposed to design models independently so that they act as stand-alone classes/libraries? (This would make little sense with a framework such as CodeIgniter where you extend the `CI_Model` which obviously won't be there in your Kohana project.) I've also read several similar questions to some of my points here, but this is the main point which I have not found an answer to. I've been using CodeIgniter for quite a while which introduced me to the MVC pattern. Even though it took a while to get into it has paid off the more I've read, reflected and inspired myself about it, however there is something that has always been constantly annoying me; how to properly put together a valid, efficient and working composition of objects. Considering the three different workareas of the MVC structure I use (controller, model and library - yes, I said library, for independent class inclusion), I've had a hard time deciding whether the model should act as an independent class itself or only act as a structure to the application as the so-called 'black box', 'business model' or 'fat model'. I do keep my controllers 'skinny' and try to do so because all documentation I've read have tried to point that out, but since the controller is application-specific and not independent (in such a way that I could just take it from the application and apply it to another totally different application), I've come in confusion if the model is supposed to act in a similar fashion, simply being a pair of organized 'fat' classes being tied to the main application, losing all their worth if moved to a totally new project. And exactly this is the core of my problem and I really need to get a crystal- clear definition about this. To help you further understand what I mean I can give a few examples: I'm making an application with PHP at the moment where I have a model called `users.php`. Within this class I have methods working against the 'users' table, such as this:               /**          * Runs the login credentials against the database          * @param string - username          * @param string - password          * @return user_id / false          * */         public function verifyLogin($username, $password) {                  $password = $this->_hashPassword($password);                  $this->db->where('username', $username);             $this->db->where('password', $password);             $this->db->where('activated', 1);             $this->db->where('deleted', 0);                  $query = $this->db->get(DB_PREFIX.'users');                  if ($query->num_rows() > 0) {                 $r = $query->result_array();                 return $r[0]['id']; // User ID             }              }      The model is loaded into the framework and I call this method from the controller like this:               $this->users->verifyLogin($_POST['login_username'], $_POST['login_password']);      The way I used to call it before was `$this->users->verifyLogin();`, letting the model simply take the `$_POST` variables and figuring it all out by itself. I just changed this as I would assume that controlling all input and output should go through the controller, virtually leaving the model 'actually fully encapsulated' even to me as the author of the code. This shows the connection between my Controller and my Model, but what if I decided to use an independent library, say a Validation class I had made? Where would I implement this stand-alone class? Let's pretend this is a snippet of my application where I use my poorly designed validation class to give me an exception:               require_once('validator-class.php');          $val = new Validator($_POST['login_username']);          try {     $val->max_length(16)         ->min_length(4)         ->alpha_numeric();     }      Would I put this code into the controller or the model for best effect? If the model would be application-dependant, it would make most sense to delegate/call the methods of the library class from within the model and then very easily just call the model in a more simplified fashion such as a `save()` method where everything would be taken care of behind the scenes. I've come to wonder if the controller is supposed to be used as a 'main area' for connecting the dots, being the place where I would call the methods of every class, delegate them to the model etc. while keeping the model 100 % outside-class-clean, only relying on itself solely and surely. But then again, if the model is supposed to be application-dependant, this would make little sense as I would not take the model with me to a new project and should instead just do all the calling and messy procedures within the encapsulated class. I must apologize for the long explanation, but I struggle with even using the MVC pattern with this question in mind to the extent I'm seriously considering just letting go and moving back to the hard, pure PHP. Some help would be very appreciated. Also, a few tips on documenting class methods would be very welcome as a bonus. Thanks a great deal!"}
{"_id": "115775", "title": "Industry jobs in artificial intelligence", "text": "As a relatively new computer science student, I am trying to find my niche within this broader field. My main goal is not academia but, well, a job. As such, I want to choose a specialization or two that will provide two benefits: 1\\. Interests me. I will find the work to be engaging and enjoyable. 2\\. I can actually get a job doing it. My more rational brain is encouraging me to do something like database work or web development, seeing as there will likely be an ongoing need for that type of work. On the other hand, I am finding myself attracted to things like artificial intelligence and machine learning, as they both seem really fascinating. I could see myself doing some really exciting things in that area. However, I often get the impression that it's more of an academic thing than something with actual industry demand. (Though that's just my immediate perception.) Do you think an AI specialization is likely to open up sufficient job prospects. Although it seems interesting, I'm the kinda person who is fine with doing work that isn't necessarily that interesting, and I'm more concerned with job availability and security, at this point in time. Your thoughts are appreciated...thank you!"}
{"_id": "186144", "title": "Distributed SCRUM team issues: The work environment", "text": "One interesting issue appeared for me today. In a distributed SCRUM team when do you start enforcing an unitary work environment in terms of code format, IDE plugins (checkstyle & co), VCS, CI? The team is in an exploratory phase and thegoal is not production quality code but rather proof-of-concept. Isn't it an overhead to enforce some common coding rules \"a priori\" - before the team members decide which are really relevant for their future work? Using this kind of tools is for sure a huge benefit because they act as an heuristic to minimize the technical debt but enforcing rules as \"no trailng spaces\" that really break the Jenkins build seems for me an overkill for a phase that should be focused rather on ice-beaking than on creating production code. Mention 1: the prototypes create will be thrown away Mention 2: although I wish that everything should be done right from the beginning - I m totally aware that it is not 100% possible."}
{"_id": "137111", "title": "Where's a good place to learn how to develop a schedule/appointment system in C#?", "text": "Not a job/task schedule, but actual appointment system people can use to create recurring events. It should support many recurrence patterns such as 1st Monday of each month, every Tues/Thurs, a specific date, etc. Everywhere I search I find many example of C# job schedulers but not any appointment systems. I've been programming as a hobby for quite some time but have never tackled an appointment system before (I have attempted a couple times, but gave up and moved on to other things). What are some good websites to find tutorials covering this? Or, are there any good books on the subject?"}
{"_id": "254341", "title": "Finding \"spare time\" in a day from within a list of events", "text": "I have a list of events which is always sorted chronologically. The start time is always followed by the end time. Times are strings formatted as 'HHmmss'.               // list of events          var events = [         '010000',  // start         '013000',  // end...         '053000',         '060000',         '161500',         '184500']          // desired output          var spares = [         '000000',  // start         '010000',  // end...         '013000',         '053000',         '060000',         '161500',         '184500',         '235959']      How can I programmatically create a new list of \"spare time\" from `000000` to `235959`? PS I'm trying to do this in Javascript, but any conceptual answer or pseudo code would be helpful too."}
{"_id": "157857", "title": "Programming Language Parser (in Java) - What would be a better design alternative for a special case?", "text": "### Background I'm currently designing my own programming language as a research project. I have most of the grammar done and written down as context-free grammar, and it should be working as is. - Now I'm working on the actual compiler that should translate the language into `x86 binary assembly code`, more specifically, I am working on the `parser` (the front end). The language's syntax is, for the most part, very similar to Java/C/C++. The parser, which constructs an intermediate representation out of source code, works as follows: The grammar is built as a big tree in which the actual source code only determines the leaves; Each syntactic variable (or nonterminal) has it's own class, and each of these classes has a `static get(byte[] source, int offset)` method which returns a new leaf (node), or `null` if the source code syntax does not fit this nonterminal structure. I am using a variation of `predictive parsing`, by the way. For the nonterminal `DataType`, I have chosen the following grammatical structure:               DataType:         PrimitiveDataType      |  ArrayDataType      |  ComplexDataType          ArrayDataType:         DataType []      Did I mention this language is object-oriented? So the problem here is that when `DataType`'s `get` method is called, it first checks whether the following is a primitive data type, `PrimitiveDataType`'s `get` method is called. Assuming we have an array, this would return `null`, so it continues on to check whether it's an `ArrayDataType`, by calling it's `get` method. ### Problem Arrays may be created of any data type, including arrays themselves (which would look like `Type[][]`). So what `ArrayDataType`'s `get` method would do is again call `DataType`'s `get` method to figure out what type the array is of. Unfortunately, this is where my parser implementation would fail because this behavior results in a loop! ### Question Would there be any _good/better_ design alternatives to this?"}
{"_id": "68957", "title": "C# Coding Standard - Position of Attribute in relation to Target", "text": "I had thought that this was one of the few _solved problems_ in C# coding standards / style; `Attributes` always appear on the line above the thing to which they are applied _a la_               [SomeClassAttribute]     class SomeClass     {        [SomeFieldAttribute]        bool someField;             [SomeEnumAttribute]        SomeEnum        {           SomeValue        }             [SomeMethodAttribute]        void SomeMethod()         {         }     }      But recently I've started to see `Attributes` in-line with the thing to which they are applied:               [SomeClassAttribute] class SomeClass     {        [SomeFieldAttribute] bool someField;             [SomeEnumAttribute] SomeEnum        {           SomeValue        }             [SomeMethodAttribute] void SomeMethod()         {         }     }      For example on the Microsoft website and in the FileHelpers open source project. Is this just _laziness_ on the part of the author of example code, or something that people actually use on a day to day basis, and if so why?"}
{"_id": "68951", "title": "Ideal way to define a table or grid in XML?", "text": "## HTML               <table border=\"1\" width=\"400\">       <tr>         <th>Month</th>         <th>Savings</th>       </tr>       <tr>         <td>January</td>         <td>$100</td>       </tr>       <tr>         <td>February</td>         <td>$80</td>       </tr>     </table>      ## XAML               <Grid>         <Grid.RowDefinitions>             <RowDefinition Height=\"Auto\" />             <RowDefinition Height=\"Auto\" />             <RowDefinition Height=\"*\" />             <RowDefinition Height=\"28\" />         </Grid.RowDefinitions>         <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>             <ColumnDefinition Width=\"Auto\" />             <ColumnDefinition Width=\"200\" />         </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>         <Label Grid.Row=\"0\" Grid.Column=\"0\" Content=\"Name:\"/>         <Label Grid.Row=\"1\" Grid.Column=\"0\" Content=\"E-Mail:\"/>         <Label Grid.Row=\"2\" Grid.Column=\"0\" Content=\"Comment:\"/>         <TextBox Grid.Column=\"1\" Grid.Row=\"0\" Margin=\"3\" />         <TextBox Grid.Column=\"1\" Grid.Row=\"1\" Margin=\"3\" />         <TextBox Grid.Column=\"1\" Grid.Row=\"2\" Margin=\"3\" />         <Button Grid.Column=\"1\" Grid.Row=\"3\" HorizontalAlignment=\"Right\"                  MinWidth=\"80\" Margin=\"3\" Content=\"Send\"  />     </Grid>      In HTML, there's some ambiguity on how you set the width of a column. You have to specify it on the th/td, but there are multiple of those within the same column. WPF solves this problem by introducing \"definitions\", but then you have to explicitly specify which cell you want to insert each element in to, adding a lot of extra markup. Also, what happens if you miss a cell, or try to put two elements into the same cell? What about something like this?               <grid>         <coldefs>             <coldef width=\"150\" />             <coldef width=\"100\" />         </coldefs>         <rowdefs>             <rowdef height=\"50\" />             <remainingrowdef height=\"auto\" />         </rowdef>              <cell>Month</cell>         <cell>Savings</cell>         <cell>January</cell>         <cell>$100</cell>         <cell>February</cell>         <cell>$80</cell>     </grid>      Where the cells just fill left to right, top to bottom? Pros/cons? Other options? * * * Better yet, you can specify the fill order too! Just add an extra argument `<grid fill_order=\"left-right,top-bottom\">`"}
{"_id": "132547", "title": "Convince someone that an app cannot be done", "text": "I am profoundly disturbed by a request that asks me to develop an iPad app to measure the actual size of an object using camera. It is simply not practical. Translating 2D object into 3D is never easy. I either need extra hardware, or have to make a lot of assumptions (which will almost never hold true). Regardless I will need time. However, the person who requested me to develop the app is adamant of his vision. And he tries to show that he is right by listing a number of existing apps that do similar jobs. He does not realize that all the apps he refers to has a rating lower than three stars, which means they probably do not do their job. How can I convince this person that such an app simply cannot be done in a practical, single developer fashion? Is there a PhD thesis I can use as my defense?"}
{"_id": "188473", "title": "Should I use abstract or virtual methods?", "text": "If we assume that it is not desirable for the base class to be a pure interface class, and using the 2 examples from below, which is a better approach, using the abstract or virtual method class definition?   * The advantage of \"abstract\" version is that it is probably looks cleaner and forces the derived class to give a hopefully meaningful implementation.   * The advantage of the \"virtual\" version is that it can be easily pulled in by other modules and used for testing without adding a bunch of underlying framework like the abstract version requires. Abstract Version:               public abstract class AbstractVersion     {         public abstract ReturnType Method1();                 public abstract ReturnType Method2();                  .                  .         public abstract ReturnType MethodN();              //////////////////////////////////////////////         // Other class implementation stuff is here         //////////////////////////////////////////////     }      Virtual Version:               public class VirtualVersion     {         public virtual ReturnType Method1()         {             return ReturnType.NotImplemented;         }              public virtual ReturnType Method2()         {             return ReturnType.NotImplemented;         }                  .                  .         public virtual ReturnType MethodN()         {             return ReturnType.NotImplemented;         }              //////////////////////////////////////////////         // Other class implementation stuff is here         //////////////////////////////////////////////     }"}
{"_id": "142532", "title": "Why not write all tests at once when doing TDD?", "text": "The Red - Green - Refactor cycle for TDD is well established and accepted. We write **one** failing unit test and make it pass as simply as possible. What are the benefits to this approach over writing **many** failing unit tests for a class and make them all pass in one go. The test suite still protects you against writing incorrect code or making mistakes in the refactoring stage, so what's the harm? Sometimes it's easier to write all the tests for a class (or module) first as a form of 'brain dump' to quickly write down all the expected behavior in one go."}
{"_id": "109578", "title": "Using Cucumber with Page objects", "text": "We are using Cucumber in our application, but previously used Selenium. Cucumber is far better than Selenium, but it may seems to be complicated since has to write gherkin, step definitions may be page objects. We are using Celerity with Jruby. The flow is: 'gherkin' calls 'Step definition' calls 'Page objects'. On one hand, every QA tester writing Cucumber tests will have to be familiar with Ruby in order to use page objects, but on the other hand we can avoid code duplication and repeatedly broken tests. What are the pros and cons of using page objects with Cucumber? Should we stop worrying about duplicate code in tests and stick with using step definitions instead of page objects?"}
{"_id": "109572", "title": "Can I create a desktop Python GUI application and run it as a web app?", "text": "I'm working on a project where multiple (several hundred perhaps) users will need to run an application remotely. We thought that running a web app would be the best course of action to go. (Note: when I say web app I mean a program where a user can type in a URL that will then allow the user to run the application we're working on remotely without any installations or limited installations to the browser they're using) My problem is not knowing where to start in creating a web app. The way that I see it (and correct me if I'm wrong), there are two types of web apps out there. A Rich Internet Application which: > has many of the characteristics of desktop application software, typically > delivered either by way of a site-specific browser, via a browser plug-in, > independent sandboxes, extensive use of Javascript, or virtual machines. wiki or a 'regular' web app similar to gmail. I'm very familiar with Python and desktop GUI development using wxPython. Is it possible to write a program in Python, and then run it as a webapp? If so, How?"}
{"_id": "106561", "title": "Managing references in open source .NET project?", "text": "What is the best practice for managing references in a .NET open source project? I'm writing a small library that will use Json.NET. Should I check the Json.NET DLL straight into source control?"}
{"_id": "67381", "title": "Is it common/correct using MVVM to expect multiple views and corresponding view-models for a particular model?", "text": "Consider a somewhat contrived model that goes something like:               class Player     {         public int Health;         public int Ammo;         public Weapon CurrentWeapon;         public PhysicalState State         {             get             {                 if (this.speed <= 0.1)                     return PhysicalSpeed.Standing;                 /* and so-on for Strafe_left, Running, etc. */             }         }     }      In the expected visual for such a game it is known that the heads-up display (HUD) will display things like Health and Ammo, whereas the avatar will show the weapon and the animation based on the physical state. So, assuming you have a HUD_View and a Player_View that draw the HUD and the player respectively, is it correct, within the confines of MVVM to have 2 view-models for the Player model, that are only ever intended to expose a subset of information in the model or is it expected that the model will be split in two as well? Is there anything that I'm missing? Can someone point me to, or provide a more concrete example of the correct solution (even if my thinking is correct, so that I might solidify my understanding here)?"}
{"_id": "150211", "title": "Objective-C message passing related queries", "text": "I am learning objective-C after having good knowledge of C/C++. I have 2 questions:   1. Are Obj-C message passing and C++ vtable, two different ways of implementing polymorphism or Are they two very different concepts which I have misinterpreted into different implementations of same concept?   2. I read following line from this pdf http://www.gnustep.org/resources/documentation/ObjectivCBook.pdf > Polymorphism takes a pluralistic point of view and notes that several > classes can each have a method with the same name. Argument overloading > takes the point of the view of the method name and notes that it can have > different effects depending on what kind of object it applies to In essence both do what we want from them i.e. calling method according to the object. What is the difference then?"}
{"_id": "156101", "title": "Should I expose IObservable<T> on my interfaces?", "text": "My colleague and I have dispute. We are writing a .NET application that processes massive amounts of data. It receives data elements, groups subsets of them into blocks according to some criterion and processes those blocks. Let's say we have data items of type `Foo` arriving some source (from the network, for example) one by one. We wish to gather **subsets** of related objects of type `Foo`, construct an object of type `Bar` from each such subset and process objects of type `Bar`. One of us suggested the following design. Its main theme is exposing IObservable objects directly from the interfaces of our components.               // ********* Interfaces **********     interface IFooSource     {         // this is the event-stream of objects of type Foo         IObservable<Foo> FooArrivals { get; }     }          interface IBarSource     {         // this is the event-stream of objects of type Bar         IObservable<Bar> BarArrivals { get; }     }          / ********* Implementations *********     class FooSource : IFooSource     {         // Here we put logic that receives Foo objects from the network and publishes them to the FooArrivals event stream.     }          class FooSubsetsToBarConverter : IBarSource     {         IFooSource fooSource;              IObservable<Bar> BarArrivals         {             get             {                 // Do some fancy Rx operators on fooSource.FooArrivals, like Buffer, Window, Join and others and return IObservable<Bar>             }         }     }          // this class will subscribe to the bar source and do processing     class BarsProcessor     {         BarsProcessor(IBarSource barSource);         void Subscribe();      }          // ******************* Main ************************     class Program     {         public static void Main(string[] args)         {             var fooSource = FooSourceFactory.Create();             var barsProcessor = BarsProcessorFactory.Create(fooSource) // this will create FooSubsetToBarConverter and BarsProcessor                  barsProcessor.Subscribe();             fooSource.Run(); // this enters a loop of listening for Foo objects from the network and notifying about their arrival.         }     }      The other suggested another design that its main theme is using our own publisher/subscriber interfaces and using Rx inside the implementations only when needed.               //********** interfaces *********          interface IPublisher<T>     {         void Subscribe(ISubscriber<T> subscriber);     }          interface ISubscriber<T>     {         Action<T> Callback { get; }     }               //********** implementations *********          class FooSource : IPublisher<Foo>     {         public void Subscribe(ISubscriber<Foo> subscriber) { /* ...  */ }              // here we put logic that receives Foo objects from some source (the network?) publishes them to the registered subscribers     }          class FooSubsetsToBarConverter  : ISubscriber<Foo>, IPublisher<Bar>     {         void Callback(Foo foo)         {             // here we put logic that aggregates Foo objects and publishes Bars when we have received a subset of Foos that match our criteria             // maybe we use Rx here internally.         }              public void Subscribe(ISubscriber<Bar> subscriber) { /* ...  */ }     }          class BarsProcessor : ISubscriber<Bar>     {         void Callback(Bar bar)         {             // here we put code that processes Bar objects         }     }          //********** program *********     class Program     {         public static void Main(string[] args)         {             var fooSource = fooSourceFactory.Create();             var barsProcessor = barsProcessorFactory.Create(fooSource) // this will create BarsProcessor and perform all the necessary subscriptions                  fooSource.Run();  // this enters a loop of listening for Foo objects from the network and notifying about their arrival.         }     }      Which one do you think is better? Exposing IObservable and making our components create new event streams from Rx operators, or defining our own publisher/subscriber interfaces and using Rx internally if needed? Here are some things to consider about the designs:   * In the first design the consumer of our interfaces has the whole power of Rx at his/her fingertips and can perform any Rx operators. One of us claims this is an advantage and the other claims that this is a drawback.   * The second design allows us to use any publisher/subscriber architecture under the hood. The first design ties us to Rx.   * If we wish to use the power of Rx, it requires more work in the second design because we need to translate the custom publisher/subscriber implementation to Rx and back. It requires writing glue code for every class that wishes to do some event processing."}
{"_id": "67382", "title": "What is a good pattern for combined caching and reinitialization?", "text": "I have a situation where I have three requirements:   1. **Lazy initialization** \\- don't create the collection until asked for it   2. **Caching** \\- keep the collection in memory on the object   3. **Reinitialization** \\- be able to reinitialize the collection when desired, instead of simply getting the existing results. This is simply an optimization inside a single class - it is not loading anything from a database and ideally I'd like just a good method design pattern for this, not a multiple-class design. Usually for lazy initialization I'd have this:               Collection getCollection() {         if (collection != null) {              // generate and set collection         }         return collection;     }      But now I'm having trouble deciding on the best way to provide for reinitialization of a fresh collection and getting that collection. A `fresh` boolean parameter would work, but adding a parameter to a getter doesn't seem to feel right (maybe that's the Java in me talking -- I could be convinced)."}
{"_id": "156106", "title": "Are scheduled job servers the right choice for a time sensitive game engine?", "text": "I am currently architecting and designing an exciting new web application that will be entering into some areas that I have very little experience in, game development. The application is not necessarily a game, but there are some very time sensitive tasks and scheduled jobs that a server will need to run to perform game related activities (Eg. New match up starts at noon every day for a 12 day tournament, updating scoreboards at 5pm every day, etc...) In the past I have typically used cron jobs with the Quartz Scheduler running within a web application server, but I know that this isn't likely a scalable solution for the truly massive userbase that management is telling me to expect (Granted they are management and are probably highly optimistic about this) and also for how important the role of these tasks are in this web application. The other important thing I want to consider is that I want to avoid SPOF (Single Point Of Failure). If the primary job server goes down, another job server should be able to successfully run the job in its place. I suppose this can be done appropriately record locking and database transactions. My question is if scheduled jobs like CRON running on a web application server are a wise design choice given the time sensitive game tasks of this application, or is there something more appropriate for running a scalable game engine parallel to the web application servers?"}
{"_id": "156104", "title": "How to maintain Motivation and enthusiasm once you have figured out the solution needed", "text": "I am currently undertaking a software project on my own time. When I first got the project I put in many hours working out how to do the \"tricky\" parts of the solution. I spent many hours googling and reading up on classes available on MSDN that I could use for the project. I was madly excited and passionate about doing this work. However once, I got a working samples of how I could get around the \"tricky\" parts and got to the part where all that I needed to do was \"grunt\" work to finish the project, I lost all interest and desire to work on he project. Suddenly instead of looking forward to sitting down and working on this project it became a chore and a major hassle to motivate myself. I am now fast approaching the deadline and I am getting the work done now, but it is under very high pressure as I have left it almost too close to the deadline! I will manage to get it done but it will involve several all- nighters. (BTW I completely despise doing these all-nighters and would love to eliminate these by maintaining my motivation and working at the project continuously.) So my questions are is this normal? Does everyone else notice such spikes and troughs in their enthusiasm for projects? Anyone more experienced have any advice on how to keep the motivation going? Or am I just not designed to work on a full project lifecycle, should i and people like me being doing an R&D type role where I can do the fun figuring out part of the projects and leave it for someone else to finish the \"les interesting/mundane\" coding?"}
{"_id": "143480", "title": "Equivalent of #map in ruby in golang", "text": "I'm playing with Go and run into something I'm unable to find in Google, although there is certainly something that exists: I'm using the following struct:               type Syntax struct {       name string       extensions *regexp.Regexp     }          type Scanner struct {       classifier * bayesian.Classifier       save_file string       name_to_syntax  map[string] *Syntax       extensions_to_syntax  map[*regexp.Regexp] *Syntax     }      I'd like to perform the following using Go and I'm quoting ruby because it's how I'd do that using ruby:               test_regexpes = my_scanner.extensions_to_syntax.keys      My goal is to get an array of *regexp.Regexp . Any idea on how to do that in a simple way ? Thank you !"}
{"_id": "156109", "title": "How can test users access an unpublished iOS app?", "text": "I am considering outsourcing the development of an iOS app to various independent developers. I will have have various testers of the app. We all work for separate companies. Some of these testers will be customers, who I would like feedback from. As there are multiple developers involved I expect there to be a new release on a daily basis. How can this be done? Would each of the testers need to buy some sort of license to avoid having to go through the app approval process? Is there any smooth way to do this so that it will not be a hassle for our friendly customers, who are willing to test our app?"}
{"_id": "186493", "title": "Senior team members want to move query-relevant persistent data from DB to cache. Does this make sense?", "text": "I am a young engineer recently employed at a small company that sells products to the general public. We use Ruby On Rails and MySQL. Our database has a lot of customer data, but a great deal more of \"static\" persistent data. This data is so rarely changed that some of the more senior engineers have begun to talk about moving it to a cache data store. One of the touted benefits of this plan is that it would make deployments easier, since we would no longer have to bootstrap the database; instead, a lot of data would have permanent IDs, and we could just backup the cache and deploy the backup. My query is related to the operational aspects of running the site once the change is done, not the change itself. We have persistent data that is used for database queries in response to user activities, which is used on a day basis. Putting it in a cache would remove our abilities to run SQL queries, instead querying the cache from RoR code. I don't have enough experience to judge if this is a good plan or not, but it smells funny to me. Has anyone ever seen a situation similar to this, or have experience in this area? I'm looking for reassurance that this is not a crazy idea."}
{"_id": "196524", "title": "Handling subscriptions, balances and pricing plan changes", "text": "**Preamble**   My aim is to create reusable code for multiple projects (and also publish it on github) to manage subscriptions. I know about stripe and recurring billing providers, but that's not what this module is aiming for. It should just be a wrapper/helper for calculating account balance, easy notifications to renew a subscription, and handle price calculations. There are countries you can't use recurring billing because of the providers or payment possibilities having poor or no support for it or are too expensive (micropayments). And there are people that don't want to use recurring billing but pay their bill manually / avingg an invoice at the end of the year. So please don't suggest paypal recurring billing, recurly or similar services. **Situation**   Let's say you have a model that can subscribe to a subscription plan (e.g. `User`). This model has a field that stores the identifier of a subscription plan it is currently subscribed to. So, on every plan change, the change is recorded. There is a model (e.g. `SubscriptionPlanChanges`) with the following fields recording the mentioned changes:   * `subscriber` relating to the subscribing model (`User` in this case)   * `from_plan` defining the plan identifier the model had before change   * `to_plan` defining the plan identifier the model has selected now   * `created_at` is a date-time field storing the change   * `valid_until` stores the date until the actual subscription is valid    * `paid_at` is also a date-time field that defines if (and when) subscription was paid Of course, that layout is discussable. **Question of account balance**   When a User changes his/her subscription plan, I need to compare the plan fields, get the pricings, and calculate the deduction for the new plan based on the current plan's `valid_until` and its price. Say: You subscribed for a year of plan A but after 6 months, you upgrade to plan B, so you get a deduction of half the paid price for the 6 months of plan A. What I am wondering: If a user e.g. switches to the free plan, he has a credit which can be deducted if the user wants to switch again. Would you cache that value in an additional field, or calculate through all the records related to that user every time? Would you add/change something about the table layout? **Question of easy comprehensibility**   When the end of a subscription period arrives, the user gets notified and has the possiblity to renew his subscription by paying again. The easiest way would be to just update `paid_at` and `valid_until` with new subscription options. However, I am not sure if you store every data someone might need, like a payment/subscription history. Another option would be to create an additional record for this, where `from_plan` and `to_plan` are having the same identifier (thus symbolizing \"no change\"). But wouldn't that interfer with calculating the account balance in some way? If someone could point me into the right direction about the logics handling such subscriptions, I'd appreciate it very much. * * * **UPDATE**   Thanks for the help by now. I think my question was too vague so I'll try to be more precisely by using less abstraction. Unfortunately, I could not solve my problem yet. _Case A_   `User` can select `Subscription Plan A`. This currently stores a `SubscriptionPlanChange` to keep track of it. After e.g. 5 months, `User` upgrades his subscription to `Subscription Plan B`. So he pays the price for his new subscription, deducting the price of plan a for the unused 7 months. _Case B_   After 3 months, `User` rolls back to his `Subscription Plan A`. He does not have to pay but receives a balance for it so that, at the end of the subscription, he gets that balance deducted for his new subscription. _Case C_   `User` can select a subscription plan for a sub-service that has independent subscription plans. Same `Case A` and `Case B` can apply for that sub-service subscription. `_Case D_` User cancels one of his subscriptions. This results in a top up of his balance. My question (currently, at least) mainly depends on how to store that data properly so I can reproduce a history of subscriptions for business analysis and calculate balances, get outstanding payments based on the subscriptions etc. I am also not sure if the balance should be stored in e.g. the users model itself, or if it is not stored but can be calculated any time based on the stored data / history. Some things to note, although I don't think that they should introduce problems:   * It does not have to be a `User`, it could be anything, that's why the `Subscriber` is polymorphic   * `Plans` do not necessarily have to be plans, but could be e.g. `Magazines` like mentioned. That's what I've described with _Case C_ and _Case D_."}
{"_id": "186497", "title": "Are side-effects in Array's \"every\", or \"some\" bad?", "text": "I've always been taught that having side-effects in an `if` condition are bad. What I mean is;               if (conditionThenHandle()) {         // do effectively nothing     }      ... as opposed to;               if (condition()) {         handle();     }      ... and I understand that, and my collegues are happy because I don't do it, and we all go home at 17:00 on a Friday and everyone has a merry weekend. Now, ECMAScript5 introduced methods like `every()` and `some()` to `Array`, and I find them very useful. They're cleaner than `for (;;;)`'s, give you another scope, _and_ make the element accessible by a variable. However when validating input, I more-often-than-not find myself using `every`/`some` in the condition to validate the input, then use `every`/`some` _again_ in the body to convert the input into a usable model;               if (input.every(function (that) {         return typeof that === \"number\";     })) {         input.every(function (that) {             // Model.findById(that); etc         }     } else {         return;     }      ... when what I _want_ to be doing is;               if (!input.every(function (that) {         var res = typeof that === \"number\";              if (res) {             // Model.findById(that); etc.         }              return res;     })) {         return;     }      ... which gives me side-effects in an `if`, condition, which is bad. In comparison, this is the code would look with with an old `for (;;;)`;               for (var i=0;i<input.length;i++) {         var curr = input[i];              if (typeof curr === \"number\") {             return;         }              // Model.findById(curr); etc.     }      * * * My questions are:   1. Is this definitely a bad practice?   2. Am I (mis|ab)using `some` and `every` ( _should_ I be using a `for(;;;)` for this?)   3. Is there a better approach?"}
{"_id": "214024", "title": "Etiquette for editing someone's pull request", "text": "I own a repository on GitHub to which someone sent a pull request with one single commit. I only want to implement his solution partially, and use about half of the code changes the user made. What should I do in this situation? **Make a branch of his version, then go back and copy and paste the \"old\" code that I want to preserve from the original version into a second commit.** This may make the diff between commits look larger than it really is, and throw off things like `git blame`. **Copy and paste the code I want to keep from his commit into a new, different commit**. This means that he does not receive credit for his valuable contribution to the code. **Same as the above, copy some of his code into a new commit, but change the author of the commit to him instead of me**. He technically didn't write the _exact_ code that was committed, so I'm not sure if this is frowned upon. But at least he gets attribution for those lines that are used."}
{"_id": "65116", "title": "Structured programming versus OO programming", "text": "I am making a presentation that shows the differences between structural and object oriented programming and I want to illustrate **why** people need OOP with an example where applying OOP concepts will make coding much easier so that the audience really feel that they need OOP . Any Ideas ??"}
{"_id": "216514", "title": "Console keyboard input OOP", "text": "I am trying to build a very simple console-based game with a focus on using OOP instead of procedural programming because I intend to build up on that code for more complex projects. I am wondering if there is a design pattern that nicely handles this use case: >   * There is a `Player` class with a `MakeMove()` method interacting with > the board game. > The `MakeMove()` method has to somehow get the user input yet I do not want to code it into the `Player` class as this would reduce cohesion and augment coupling. I was thinking of maybe having some controller class handle the sequence of events and thus the calls to keyboard input. However, that controller class would need to be able to handle differently the subclasses of `Player` (e.g. the `AI` class does not require keyboard input). Thoughts ?"}
{"_id": "82495", "title": "Alternative approaches to usual software solutions", "text": "I am creating a service to be exposed on the internet. One of those things you would normally say \"Web 2.0\", but that I want to expose as a SOAP webservice, with desktop clients. I know that it may sound a little bit outdated, but despite the apparent \"uncool\" factor, is there any real reason why this approach shouldn't work? Yes, I will buy a VPS for this thing, it's an experiment for now - but who knows the future. I am just wondering, well, what you think of it :) Andrea"}
{"_id": "136390", "title": "Creating Unit Tests on a CRUD layer of an Application, how can I make the tests independent?", "text": "So I'm trying to make my Unit Tests as by-the-book as possible, but it becomes troublesome when I'm testing some simple Add/Delete methods. For the add method, I basically have to create a dummy object and add it, then after the test is successful, I have to delete the dummy object. And for the delete test, I obviously have to create a dummy object so that I can delete it. As you can see if one test fails, the other will fail too, as they're both kinda needed. Same with a system where you would need to write a test that \"Cancels an Order\"...well some dummy order would be needed to cancel first, doesn't this go against the guidelines of unit testing? How are cases like this meant to be handled?"}
{"_id": "136391", "title": "A progressive plan from vb6 to .net, sound?", "text": "We are about to start a new project using an existing SQL DB, but this project is going to need to reuse a number of core features from an existing vb6 app that uses the same database. The approach I would like to try: Have the existing vb6 application be the entry point, but immediately call a .net class to present the main screen and menu. If the user needs to use a feature/form that is in vb6 then raise an event to vb6 to load that form and hide the .net side of it until it's done. The alternative: Opposite of the above, create a .net exe to be the entry point and call a vb6 dll whenever I need a vb6 feature/form. Because of initialization that goes on in the vb6 app that makes various features usable, it would be much less painful for me to try the first approach. Moreover, there is some functionality that is very tightly coupled to the forms in the vb6 app and is vital to the application, but I will not be able to immediately port it to .net in the first phase. I realize this is not the ideal approach but unfortunately there are real world concerns that make taking the idealistic approach near (if not entirely) impossible. So my question is: are any specific pitfalls I should be aware of in doing this?"}
{"_id": "214020", "title": "When to use repository pattern", "text": "I have read recently that it is not good practice to use the repository pattern in conjunction with an ORM. From my understanding this is because the abstraction they provide over the SQL database is too leaky to be contained by the pattern. I have a couple of questions about this:   1. What do you do if you want to switch out ORMs? You would have ORM specific code in your application if you do not contain it in a repository.   2. Is the repository pattern still valid when not using an ORM and you are using ADO.NET for data access and populating object data yourself?   3. If you use an ORM but not the repository pattern where do you keep commonly used queries? Would it be wise to represent each query as a class and have some sort of query factory to create instances?"}
{"_id": "115197", "title": "How do I handle projects in which my project manager is the same as the client?", "text": "I am a freelance worker taking on a new project with a company I'm already familiar with. My boss (the company owner) previously gave me a website project to work at while he also assigns a project manager to review the progress. But with my latest project, the setup here is a little different. My boss assigned to me this project as well. He's only in the office two days out of a week. After the first meeting with the client, I wondered who was the PM since I wasn't introduced to him/her. When I told my boss that in most cases, I'd rather report to the PM because it's easier and more accessible, that's when he informed me there that **_my PM is the same person as the client!_** I was a bit shocked. I didn't want to tell him right out that I find something very wrong with that arrangement, but I'm stuck with this project for now. So I end up being in direct contact with the client once a week, which is good in a few cases, but am responsible for meeting him for extended periods while my boss only sits in for a few minutes. Especially for a project of a scope which will last for a few months, I feel like I'm doing the job of both a project manager and programmer. I didn't quote him for the project- the PM/client sent the quote to my boss, and my boss is handling my payouts based on that.** He also controls the schedule for the project. So I'm trying to tread carefully with completing the goals so I don't get short-changed. **My biggest concern, though, is the lack of good communication.** The PM/client is not very technically inclined, sometimes states goals that are subtly different from what I perceive, and asks for things that are beyond the means of the tools I'm working with. My boss is better at explaining the situation in a broad sense, but like I said he's not always available, and pretty slow at responding online. Basically, there's a lack of a dedicated PM and there is sparse communication among me, my boss and the PM/client. How would I track my own progress and ensure better performance, and avoid misinterpreting the tasks for the project? I want to stay on a good pace with the communication I receive without feeling stuck or overwhelmed. I prefer face to face contact. Everyone else in the office updates their progress by discussing with PMs working in the office on a daily basis, and their projects go more smoothly. My boss isn't interested in having one of them work on this project because he says it'll take a lot of time away from their current work. I want to force in more communication in this project but my boss isn't doing much to help. _[Edit]_ Well, here's an update. What ended up happening is that our client was demanding other features that turned out to be out of scope, and the CMS that we had to use didn't permit addition of these features so easily. My boss and I struck out some of his demands in the essence of time and budget, and last week the client/PM ended up being dissatisfied and cancelled the project indefinitely. In the future I will stay away from such arrangements with the client doubling as a PM. I think it gives someone far too much control over the direction of a project."}
{"_id": "115190", "title": "When do I need web services?", "text": "Are there any general guidelines to understand when I should consider using (as a eat-your-own-dogfood) and providing web services, and when I shouldn't worry about them? Or, any reading materials you can point me to? My project is in PHP but I don't mind if it's language agnostic."}
{"_id": "105912", "title": "Can you change code distributed under the MIT license, and re-distribute it under the GPL license?", "text": "Is it possible to alter the code of the Chili plugin, which had its latest release on July 2008, and it is licensed under the MIT license, to then license it under GPL? As far I can see, there is no restriction about the new code being licensed under the same license. Is it really so, or is there a minimum number of changes? In my case, I would change the jQuery plugin in normal Javascript code that is executed in a CMS. This essentially means that, among other things:   * The code will not use the \"ChiliBook\" namespace.    * The function will not be invoked as `$($element).chili()`, but as `GlobalObject.ChiliHighlighter.process($jquery_element)`, where \"GlobalObject\" is a JavaScript object used from the CMS.   * The code will allow other modules to alter the `GlobalObject.ChiliHighlighter` object to add functions that are optionally called from `GlobalObject.ChiliHighlighter.process()` when they are defined. As alternative, as the repository I am using allows me to include code not licensed under GPL 2 or higher license when the code is not maintained anymore, could the plugin be considered not maintained anymore, as its last version was released three years ago?"}
{"_id": "115199", "title": "Is there a standard, formal name for an object or class that behaves as if it is a given object?", "text": "I have an app in Django that expects to get a record with the fields email, first_name, and last_name. However, sometimes I want to be able to send it something that isn't actually a record but behaves like one (in that it has the necessary fields as attributes), like so:               class FakeRecord(object):         def __init__(self, email, first_name=None, last_name=None):             self.email = email             self.first_name = first_name             self.last_name = last_name      I'm wondering if there is a standard name for this kind of object or if `FakeRecord` works as the name for this class. More generally, is there a name for a class that stands in for or behaves similarly to another class? Is there a standard implementation/design pattern? ## Further clarification For the purposes of my app, basically I have a utility function that sends an email to a recipient. The recipient can be any Django record so long as it has an email address, a first name, and a last name. However, sometimes the app sends a one-off mailing to some given e-mail address that doesn't have a record. In those cases, I simply create a FakeRecord with the email address (and first name/last name if available), and send that in instead. Since the utility function itself doesn't do anything with the record other than retrieving the attributes, none of the other db functionality of a Django record object is needed."}
{"_id": "39", "title": "What's your favourite quote about programming?", "text": "What's your favourite quote about programming? **One quote per answer** , and please check for duplicates before posting!"}
{"_id": "38", "title": "How much effort should be put in each part of a waterfall project?", "text": "Where waterfall commonly includes:   1. Requirements   2. Functional design   3. Technical design   4. Build   5. Test   6. Review   7. (Deploy) And iterations across this list. If I forgot a step, let me know."}
{"_id": "175570", "title": "How to manage product backlog/user stories", "text": "We're about to start a new project using Agile (using TFS), and I have a couple of \"good practice\" questions regarding the product backlog:- When we first start adding users stories, is it a good idea to put them in (say) a \"Backlog\" iteration, or just leave their iteration blank? Obviously when the time comes to start work on a US it would be moved into the appropriate iteration backlog. When breaking an epic down into smaller USs, would I simply close the original epic, as it's no longer required? Or should I create the new USs as children of the epic? (it's then someone's responsibility to close the epic once all child USs have been completed). Lastly, should the product backlog list all USs regardless of status, or only those that have not been started (i.e in my proposed \"Backlog\" iteration)? I realise these questions aren't life-or-death, but it would be nice to know how other people manage their product backlogs so we can organise things properly from the start."}
{"_id": "194600", "title": "How does a USB device whether know to draw 500mA, 1A or 2.1A from a computer USB port?", "text": "I'm having some issues with my Nexus 7 drawing just 500mA from a USB port able to supply 2.1A (test with my iPad). Details in **this question**. However, there is a comment posted \" _The Nexus obviously detects the 'data' pin connected, and assumes it is not permitted to draw more than 500mA (which is the proper USB spec)._ \" That got me thinking, how does a device really know how much it's allowed to draw from the USB port? It can't be just via wiring of the D+/D- pins because then you wouldn't be able to communicate over the USB port (eg. Sync'ing or transferring over the USB port). The iPhone and iPad clearly are able to draw higher power from the USB port even during a sync/data operation. So I was thinking, the power it might be officially dictated within the USB comm. protocol itself, perhaps some packet/header. So, **_how does a USB device know whether to draw 500mA, 1A or 2.1A from a computer USB port?_** Does the answer change if the USB port is on a \"dumb\" wall charger? Or is it a wild west where each device/charger does it's own thing for high current situations?"}
{"_id": "50299", "title": "How to solve conflicts with another programmer", "text": "I've read this question, but I think it doesn't really applies in my case. I have issues working with another developer in my company and I'm not sure how to fix them when there is no team lead to help mediate or buffer our relations. Two months ago I was hired as a senior web developer. It's small company ( about 30 people ). The programming team is consisted by me and another programmer. This programmer is in a junior role, although he does not report to me. Ever since my first day, we've been clashing in various points. For example, he's refused to use a test server and a project management tool that I proposed to everybody and to which my boss agreed. He has also refused to compromise during discussions of best practices and coding standards. He is convinced that his way is the only true way to do things and doesn't take my arguments into consideration. He is even insisting that we are not a team and that I should just work on my projects and not bother him. He's also complaining about me to our boss. I'm passionate about improving our work environment and workflows. I try not force my opinions on others and always ask everybody what they think about it. Every new idea that I bring to the table is discussed and generally everyone works together to come up with a good compromise, except him. He's always negative and rejecting my proposals outright. I criticized his code shortly after starting at this company and that's a way to kill of a healthy relation. How can I approach resolving our issues?"}
{"_id": "34098", "title": "Newbie, deciding Python or Erlang", "text": "I'm a Administrator (unix, Linux and some windows apps such as Exchange) by experience and have never worked on any programming language besides C# and scripting on Bash and lately on powershell. I'm starting out as a service provider and using multiple network/server monitoring tools based on open source (nagios, opennms etc) in order to monitor them. At this moment, being inspired by a design that I came up with, to do more than what is available with the open source at this time, I would like to start programming and test some of these ideas. The requirement is that a server software that captures a stream of data and store them in a database(CouchDB or MongoDB preferably) and the client side (agent installed on a server) would be sending this stream of data on a schedule of every 10 minutes or so. For these two core ideas, I have been reading about Python and Erlang besides ruby. I do plan to use either Amazon or Rackspace where the server platform would run. This gives me the scalability needed when we have more customers with many servers. For that reason alone, I thought Erlang was a better fit(I could be totally wrong, new to this game) and I understand that Erlang has limited support in some ways compared to Ruby or Python. But also I'm totally new to the programming realm of things and any advise would be appreciated grately. Jo"}
{"_id": "50294", "title": "What are the most commonly used enterprise Java technologies, and what would you want a non technical audience to understand about them?", "text": "I have been asked to give a presentation to a non-technical audience on what Java technologies are currently being used in the enterprise world. The goal is to give this non-technical audience the background they need to understand what engineers are talking about. It's part of a broader series of talks that I'm giving. I'm primarily a .NET and C++ dev, so I thought I'd try to get some input from some Java devs. What technologies do you use? What Java related acronyms would you like to be able to use around non-coders? What would you like non-coders to understand about them?"}
{"_id": "114820", "title": "When to use JavaScript instead of Ruby in web development?", "text": "Right now I am developing web applications with ruby-on-rails. Sometimes I am having a hard time deciding which language to chose to solve my problems. The difference between HTML,CSS and the programming languages is pretty clear. But when do I have to take JavaScript instead of Ruby (besides client-server difference)? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "180662", "title": "Are there any programming languages that follow a minimalist development approach?", "text": "I find it that when languages are considered the same as commercial software, there is always a constant need to add new features to justify new releases. Can there be or are there languages where version 1.0 is the final version? Of course bug fixes are exempt from this, but the feature set always remains the same? This way every feature in the language fits together nicely and not seem like they are bolted on after the fact with obsolete features still around because of backwards compatibility. I assume some academic languages are like this? But are there commercially successful languages that follows this idea? The accompanying library is also free to get new features too, but the language always remains constant. One example I can give is, one of my favourite languages C#, which I use pretty often, more and more features are being added every release. To take advantages of these, I have to drop actual tasks in hand, and spend considerable time learning these instead of being able to pick up trivial concepts and combine those myself to solve more complex problems with ease. So I guess I am looking for a minimalist approach where everything is consistent, makes sense, and is as orthogonal as possible."}
{"_id": "225902", "title": "Working with shader code", "text": "I am starting my first project in OpenGL/GLSL and I was wondering, how do you work with code of shaders? Because it needs to be const char and syntax higlighting shows everything in the same color (as string) and so its difficult to navigate in code.               const char *shader = ...\"void main()\\n\"...;      Do you edit the code and then add quotation marks or do you just write it with quotation marks from the start? Thanks edit: using VS2012"}
{"_id": "225903", "title": "When should a database table use timestamps?", "text": "First a note, I thought maybe this question belonged in the database exchange, but I think it is more broadly related to a programming solution as a whole than to databases. Will move to database exchange if people think thats the best one. I was wondering when a database table should have a created and updated timestamp added? The first obvious answer is that if any business logic needs to know when something was updated (like a transaction completion date etc) then it must go in. But what about non business logic cases? For example I can think of scenarios where it would be really useful to know the date time that rows changed to help with fault finding e.g. some business logic is failing and looking at the related database rows its possible to identify that one row is being update before another row which is causing the error. With this use case, it would make sense to give every table an update and create timestamp (except for maybe the most trivial enum tables that wouldn't be updated by any part of the application). Giving every table a timestamp is surely a great way to quickly bog down a database (although could be wrong). So when should a database table use create and update timestamps?"}
{"_id": "133706", "title": "What's the best way to build a factory using NInject?", "text": "I am pretty comfortable with dependency injection using NInject in MVC3. While working in an MVC3 application, I developed a custom Controller Creation Factory using NInject, so any controller that is created will have dependencies injected in it through this Controller Factory. Now I am starting to develop a windows application, I want to use Application wide Dependency Injection. i.e. Every object must be created through NInject, so as to ease Unit Testing. Please guide me to ensure that every object created must be though the NInject Factory only. For example, if on any windows form on `Button_Click` event I write:               TestClass testClass = new TestClass()      and `TestClass` has any dependency on, say, `ITest` then it must be automatically resolved. I know I can use:               Ikernel kernel = new StandardKenel()     //AddBinding()     TestClass testClass = kenel.get<TestClass>();      But I find it tedious to do this every time I want to create an object. It also the forces developer to create the object in a particular way. Can it be made better? Can I have a central repository for object creation and then every object creation will automatically use that repository?"}
{"_id": "225908", "title": "Refactoring - Utility classes behavior under a common interface", "text": "I was suggested to put my question here, so I'm doing so ;) I need a common interface which represents some specific behavior:               public interface Contract(){        public void methodA();        public void methodB();        // and so on...     }      The problem is, that in order to fulfill this behavior, implementation can be totally stateless - it can have a private constructor and expose only static methods:               public class MyUtilityClass /*implements Contract*/{        private MyUtilityClass(){}        public static void methodA(){           // some implementation here...        }        public static void methodB(){           // some implementation here...        }     }      I have many such classes, with different behavior, so I want to refactor them and handle under a common interface. Because I cannot implement `Contract` by means of static methods, is the only solution to convert `MyUtilityClass` to a singleton which implements the interface in order to achieve my goal? Or maybe would you suggest something else? For example _Template method_ and _Strategy_ which can by injected depending on a specific situation? What would you propose?"}
{"_id": "72583", "title": "Is there an Auto Generator for DataContracts?", "text": "Is there a tool out there that can quickly and simply generate a DataContract from either XML or JSON? Doing it manually can be a real pain."}
{"_id": "189788", "title": "Convert letters to numbers", "text": "I have the following problem. Given A=1, B=2 , ... , Z =26 I need an algorithm that given a letter combination, like the column order in excel, returns me the number/ AA=27 AB=28 ABC? Thanks a lot This is my algorithm so far, I dont like the switch inside the for. Any help is appreciate it, I will write it later in c#               Given A=1, B=2, Z=26. AB=27, ABC?     Variable = ABC     Positions =  Variable.Length -1     Int  result= 0     FOR (i=0; i<= Positions; i++)     {          Letter=Variable[i];         Switch(Letter)         Case A:             LetterValue=1          result=+ result+26*(LetterValue)^i     }"}
{"_id": "34759", "title": "Am I wrong to disagree with A Gentle Introduction to symfony's template best practices?", "text": "I am currently learning symfony and going through the book _A Gentle Introduction to symfony_ and came across this section in \"Chapter 4: The Basics of Page Creation\" on creating templates (or views): \"If you need to execute some PHP code in the template, you should avoid using the usual PHP syntax, as shown in Listing 4-4. Instead, write your templates using the PHP alternative syntax, as shown in Listing 4-5, to keep the code understandable for non-PHP programmers.\" **Listing 4-4 - The Usual PHP Syntax, Good for Actions, But Bad for Templates**               <p>Hello, world!</p>     <?php     if ($test) {        echo \"<p>\".time().\"</p>\";     }      ?>       (The ironic thing about this is that the echo statement would look even better if time was a variable declared in the controller because then you could just embed the variable in the string instead of concatenating) **Listing 4-5 - The Alternative PHP Syntax, Good for Templates**               <p>Hello, world!</p>      <?php if ($test): ?>         <p><?php echo time(); ?>     </p><?php endif; ?>      I fail to see how listing 4-5 makes the code \"understandable for non-PHP programmers\", and its readability is shaky at best. 4-4 looks much more readable to me. Are there any programmers who are using symfony that write their templates like those in 4-4 rather than 4-5? Are there reasons I should use one over the other? There is the very slim chance that somewhere down the road someone less technical could be editing it the template, but how does 4-5 actually make it more understandable to them?"}
{"_id": "67923", "title": "Coaxing requirements out of business people?", "text": "**What methods seem to work best to coax requirements out of non-tech business people?** I am working with a team that\u2019s trying to get a spec together for a project. Every time we have met and it comes down to expectations for the next meeting, we ask for the business people to bring back their requirements. They usually respond something like this: \u201cWell, do you think you guys could whip up a prototype so we can see what we like next week\u2026you know, not with any data or anything since it\u2019s a prototype, just the functionality.\u201d This is a 6 month plus project so that is obviously infeasible (we would have to develop the entire thing!), and we don\u2019t even know what to prototype without some sort of spec. Frankly, I think like most people, they have some idea of what they want, they just are not thinking about it in the focused sort of way necessary to gather true requirements. As an alternative to simply telling them, \u201cgive us what you want or we can\u2019t/won\u2019t do any work\u201d (we do want them to be happy with the results), are there ways to help them decide what they want? For example, we could tell them: \u201cDraw out some screens (in Powerpoint, on a napkin, whatever) that show the UI you would like with all of the data you want to see and a description of the functionality in the margins. From this, we will polish it up and build the backend based on this set of behavior requirements.\u201d OR \u201cDon\u2019t worry about how it will look right now (the number 1 hang up). Just give us a list of all the data you want about each thing the program keeps track of. So for \u201cCustomer\u201d you might list: name, address, phone number, orders, etc. It does not have to be a perfect database structure, but we can work something out from this and get an idea of what you are looking for\u201d **Do either of these alternative approaches to get business people focused on what they want make sense? Are there alternatives that you have seen in action?**"}
{"_id": "131015", "title": "When and why should one create classes at runtime?", "text": "I have read many articles on the creation of dynamic types and classes at run time. For example, the `TypeBuilder` class in C# lets one create dynamic types. Python has this type function by which one can create dynamic classes. I have certainly good information on how I should create a class at run time, but I don't find enough information on why I should do this. What is a scenario where one would be forced to create types at runtime?"}
{"_id": "144274", "title": "What's the difference between recursion and corecursion?", "text": "What's the difference between these?   * Recursion   * Corecursion On Wikipedia, there is little information and no clear code explaining these terms. What are some very simple examples explaining these terms? How is corecursion the dual of recursion? Are there any classic corecusive algorithms?"}
{"_id": "221023", "title": "Aggregate Boundary repository/service design", "text": "I am trying to apply DDD to the design of a Release Management system. ## **Domain Entities**   * `Project`: The project/product/system.   * `ProjectEnvironment`: The environments (Test, Staging, Prod) that exist for this project. Each project has its own defined environments.   * `ProjectVersion`: A specific version of the project. This would be associated with a deployment package. ![Class diagram of entities](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rJhEW.png) ## **Aggregate Boundary** From this I would have `Project` be the aggregate root and `ProjectEnvironment` and `ProjectVersion` be aggregates of `Project`. Neither of these can exist without `Project`. ## **Repository** I would then only have a `ProjectRepository` which would provide persisted `Projects` with all the included `ProjectVersion` and `ProjectEnvironment` aggregates (and consequently can only be accessed through their respective `Project`). ## **Questions**   1. Should there be a `VersionRepository` and a `EnvironmentRepository`? A `GetVersionById()` method on the `ProductRepository` sounds wrong. But then wouldn't supplying multiple repositories threaten the aggregate boundary?   2. Should there be a 'ProjectService' which would handle and validate the aggregates using the three repositories? In order to safeguard against invalid data, client code would only be able to reference the 'ProjectService'."}
{"_id": "224050", "title": "Can you apply the same lexer rules to all programming languages?", "text": "I'm trying to understand the theory behind a lexer with the purpose of building one (just for my own fun and experience and to compensate for not taking proper CS courses :)). What I have yet to understand is if lexer theory is the same no matter what language you are analyzing? Is it just about splitting white space then try to figure out what each text represents or is it more than that? In other words, does the generation of tokens depend on the language being analyzed or is it just about white space? Can you apply the same lexer rules to all programming languages? For example if I have a lexer that tokenizes Java code can I use it for Python or not, since whitespace in Python has other meaning? For example, I found a nice Python project (Pygments) which seems to provide a working core that allows you to later plugin rules for each of your favorite language (what are the keywords, the comments etc)."}
{"_id": "224052", "title": "Continuous Delivery: Kanban, SCRUM, or other?", "text": "I was wondering if there was an SDLC (software development lifecycle) or methodology (Kanban, SCRUM, waterfall, otherwise, etc.) that was particularly well-suited for continuous delivery systems, and why? I'm sure each methodology has pros/cons that make it suited for certain _components_ of CD, but there must be one that incorporates principles/values that make it better geared for CD..."}
{"_id": "4107", "title": "Do you write titles in code comments?", "text": "I was browsing some old code that I wrote (first year in the university) and noticed that I used to write comment titles preceeding various parts of the code. Stuff like (this is from a Monopoly game):               /*Board initialization*/     ...code...          /*Player initialization*/     ...code...          /*Game logic starts here*/     /*Displaying current situation*/     ...code...          /*Executing move*/     ...code...          /*Handle special event*/     ...code...          /*Commit changes, switch to next player*/     ...code...      This might be redundant, and arguably unnecessary if the code is really super clear, but as I scanned through the file it surprised me how strongly I felt like I know what's going on even though I hardly looked at the actual code. I can definitely see this as being fitting in certain circumstances, so I wonder- do you do this? Do you think it's a good idea? Or is it too much?"}
{"_id": "50120", "title": "Best practices for using namespaces in C++", "text": "I have read Uncle Bob's Clean Code a few months ago, and it has had a profound impact on the way I write code. Even if it seemed like he was repeating things that every programmer should know, putting them all together and putting them into practice does result in much cleaner code. In particular, I found breaking up large functions into many tiny functions, and breaking up large classes into many tiny classes to be incredibly useful. Now for the question. The book's examples are all in Java, while I have been working in C++ for the past several years. How would the ideas in _Clean Code_ extend to the use of namespaces, which do not exist in Java? (Yes, I know about the Java packages, but it is not really the same.) Does it make sense to apply the idea of creating many tiny entities, each with a clearly define responsibility, to namespaces? Should a small group of related classes always be wrapped in a namespace? Is this the way to manage the complexity of having lots of tiny classes, or would the cost of managing lots of namespaces be prohibitive? Edit: My question is answered in this Wikipedia entry about Package Principles."}
{"_id": "209678", "title": "Why does division and multiplication by 2 use the shift operator rather than division operator?", "text": "While looking at the code in C for division/multiplication by 2, it is found that shift operator is used rather than division operator. What is the advantage of using shift over division operator?"}
{"_id": "107211", "title": "Difference between these 3 manager roles", "text": "Roles:   * Development Manager   * Program Manager   * Project Manager I have read a bit and independently I understand them well enough. However when you combine them, it seems to me that some responsibilities overlap and it becomes uncertain who is responsible for what. Does anyone have a clear way of defining how each role differentiate from the other? Or mainly which tasks are exclusive to each one? I want to avoid overlapping of responsibilities. I know there are other similar questions on the matter, but none exactly the same... Thanks EDIT: This 2 questions help a little, but still can't quite place each role when pushed together: What is the difference between a Program Manager and a Project Manager? The Written Roles of Software Development Manager"}
{"_id": "151450", "title": "How popular is ITIL in the rest of the world?", "text": "I am sorry if this question is not 100% Programming wise, I just didn't know where to ask. Consider yourself lucky if you don't know what ITIL is. You can understand from my tone I don't like it - I find ITIL the complete opposite of how IT Company should work, being too bureaucratic and complicated. In Germany, where I work, it seems to be very popular, and I have been asked in several job interviews if I know ITIL. Do you know popular is it in the rest of the world? Should I worry about ITIL or I can snub it? I must also ask my European colleagues - Why do you think is ITIL so popular? Is there a strong **empirical** evidence that ITIL does work?   By empirical, I mean not personal experiences of the kind \"We are a company that is working with ITIL...\". I can hardly imagine a multi-million dollar company like Apple or Google work with ITIL, but I can also hardly see how it can benefit small companies..."}
{"_id": "251533", "title": "Do VMs use one stack for everything?", "text": "Most VMs have a \"call stack\" to keep track of where to return from each function that was called. This is often simply regarded as \"the stack\". However often a stack is needed for operations that aren't related to function calling, such as performing arithmetic. My question is: is the same stack (i.e. the call stack) used also for these kinds of operations? Or do operations such as performing arithmetic use a different stack? (I'm talking about most VMs)."}
{"_id": "66034", "title": "Light-weight visual requirements tool (combination of mockups and use cases)", "text": "For my team, mockups are the primary artifact for development and the requirements process. We use balsamiq mockups for confluence. We also write use-cases to point out the workflow and for adding information such as how the system will respond to an action, UX requirements and other references. It's not ideal, because the documents are separate. We're looking for a tool that's entirely mockup-based, with structured contextual texts to the side for requirements, system response, etc. (note: I know I can add annotations, what I'm looking for is structured entry and structured presentation of requirements). It should also visualize the flow and states of pages in the form of a storyboard. Does such a tool exist and could you recommend one to me? Thanks! Rolf"}
{"_id": "151456", "title": "A completely free and open programming language", "text": "With Oracle vs Google trial, it seems that Java is not entirely Open and free (as free software) as I expected. Although there exists completely free/open JVM, it's hard to know what is a copyright infringement with Java, and what is not. So I'd like to know if there is a completely Open and free language with open and free IDE (Eclipse-like) out there, Object Oriented if possible, and able to make window-based applications for the main OSs (Linux, Mac, Windows)."}
{"_id": "151458", "title": "today's multi-device world for web development", "text": "With the huge explosion of mobile devices and addition of HTML5/CSS3, there seems to be a shift towards \"responsive\" designs (i.e., adapting to smaller screen sizes) which seems to be achieved using CSS3's Media Queries. My question is, given the current need of adapting to both desktop and mobile, is it common practice to actually organize two versions of your website (one for desktop and one for mobile)? Or is there just one version with different css files for targeting different devices and screens? Handling just cross-browser (ie6, ff3, opera9, etc...) HTML4/5, CSS2/3 was already hard enough, but now we're expected to handle cross-device (phone, tablet, etc...) as well, so my assumption is company's would create a separate project for mobile and redirect based on the user agent, but this is just a guess."}
{"_id": "188788", "title": "Programming vs Engineering", "text": "I am in high school at the moment and soon reaching stages where I would have to make choices. To introduce, I love programming. I had started learning programming a year ago and have some experience with ActionScript3 and Java + (the web languages like html CSS JavaScript. But php I have found a bit hard to understand). Other subjects which I absolutely love are mathematics, physics and chemistry. The professions related with these subjects that really interest me are engineering (piping engineer, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer etc.). People say to me that I should choose the profession based on my interests. But I have absolutely no preference of one over another. My choice really depends on the demand of these professions in future. So my questions are -   * Is the demand of programming going to degrade in future due to a excessive number of programmers in future? Or is it going to remain a profession in high demand.   * Is engineering going to lose its demand? Almost everybody seems to be going for the profession of an engineer these days and it is scary to think what will happen of the world with the number of engineers there are.   * Which profession is likely to remain well paid in future too?"}
{"_id": "130940", "title": "Development setup for TDD. Is it correct?", "text": "This is how my team has it's development environment set up:   1. Each team member has a local development environment on their own computer, where they check out the code from a shared repository.   2. Every developer work in their local development environment, once they finished writing the code they commit back.   3. The code is then checked out to a staging/testing server with the same environment setup   4. If everything is OK, it will be pushed to a production server. We're trying to integrate unit testing and BDD (behavior driven development) into this setup and we'd like to use a continuous integration server (Jenkins) too. My question is where should we install this and where should we test the code?   1. Install the full testing stack for each developer: TDD tools + BDD tools + Jenkins?   2. Install the test tools only on the staging/testing server and only test code here once each developer made his/her code commit? How is your setup?"}
{"_id": "130947", "title": "How to quickly try out Java code?", "text": "When I'm coding in Python and I want to try something out, I open IDLE of Python on the command line and am able to quickly try something out. Is there a similar way I could do that for Java? I have heard about Java \"shells\" (e.g. http://www.beanshell.org/). Has anyone tried them?"}
{"_id": "187366", "title": "Implementing a Service Layer with MVC4 while honoring Single Responsibility", "text": "I'm trying to learn some best practices while I ramp up on MVC4. I have a solution with three projects:   1. Web: MVC stuff   2. Core: Data Model   3. Tests: Testing classes I'm now trying to add:   1. Services: Business Logic This will take logic such as \"GetFilteredItems()\" from my controllers and place them into a Service project, which depends on Core, and upon which Web depends. Nothing to do with HTTP requests. As I'm beginning to do this, I want to honor single responsibility and create one class per method. My questions: 1) Is this a good approach? 2) Say I need a GetFilteredItems method that takes an ID and returns a List. What's the convention here in terms of naming classes and methods? I can't have a class SampleClass with a method SampleClass() that returns something, right?"}
{"_id": "77407", "title": "programming on handheld devices", "text": "This is a little vague. But I've tried to put the things to the point. As much as the handhelds (smartphones, tablets) are becoming extremely popular every passing day, What I wonder is, why there are no great programming tools for them? With great processing power of these devices, I don't think there's any problem in running compilers or even small scale IDEs on them. It is perfectly acceptable that conventional programming languages are very difficult to write with an onscreen small keyboard. I'd never want to write java on my Android. But are there any special tools or languages that are being developed in this direction? For exaple, I had an android application for BrainF**k that worked fine with limited number of symbols (though the language itself is boring enough for not using it). What in general is the scope of this area and direction of the research if any? Thank You. EDIT Note that I mean programming ON mobile devices. Not FOR mobile devices."}
{"_id": "73184", "title": "Centralised Integration framework", "text": "We are looking to centralise our Integration in our company and I'm wondering what sort of solutions other have for this and what the best way to approach it would be. At the moment we have different types on integration running different lanuages, different frameworks on different servers so we are looking to move them all to a single framework to make it easier to manage. Some of the current Integration includes:   * SQL Server scheduled tasks (on 3 or 4 servers)   * SQL Server Integration services (on 2 or 3 servers)   * Console applications (.NET on 2 Servers)   * Windows Services (.NET on 2 servers) What we are after is:   * 1 server that manages all integration jobs scheduling (so this only needs to be setup once and we always know where to find it)   * A job monitor that displays the history of jobs run (Much like the SQL Server Job Activity monitor)   * Jobs might need to run custom .NET code, here some sort of API might be used to allow for more flexibility over SQL Server Integration Services"}
{"_id": "77404", "title": "Reading recommendations on development of web applications", "text": "For a programmer/cs student that wishes to dive into web development and freelancing... what are some good books/publications/portals/blogs? Please take into consideration also that I'm used to developing websites by googling my each step to find an example. I'm interested in technologies like php, javascript, jquery, ajax.. And maybe later: ruby and ror. It would be great if there would exist a book (or a collection of books) on web development that would cover the whole process of development, plus different techniques, principles, examples.. etc."}
{"_id": "77403", "title": "Is it acceptable practice to give an object a pointer to \u201cthe world\u201d?", "text": "I often find myself in situations where objects need to communicate between each other. For example, a button might need to talk to various textboxes. Would it be proper to simply construct each widget with a pointer to the container for all of them? Would it be better to give it a pointer to a resource container map where the object can locate another object by string or something? This area has always been very vague to me. I could easily implement everything I want to do if I just constructed objects with pointers to containers of every other object, but that seems wrong. In the case of a widget, would it actually just be more proper if the widget knew nothing about the outside world and instead its action listeners were constructed with resource access? Thanks I understand that it is a bad idea but what are some solutions in these situations eg: good design patterns for gui oriented software? If a button's click needs to write a file, how can that be done in a clean way? Action Listeners? But where do they get created and by what?"}
{"_id": "77409", "title": "How much web-design work should a web programmer commit?", "text": "I'm creating a website for a friend of mine, and the plan is to eventually solicit outside sources to take care of the overall design. So it's got me wondering, how much design should I be covering now? I'm primarily driven to just code the logic for the website and get everything _functional_ before I care too much about how it actually looks. My thoughts so far have been, I'll try to organize the code and create an effective skeleton to be drawn in. What's your thoughts? Is usability and functionality my only two concerns, or should I also be playing a preemptive role in the design decisions? How is this work typically split up in the industry?"}
{"_id": "73189", "title": "Proving Yourself", "text": "I guess it isn't that common but occasionally there are some software developers who didn't actually go to college and just spent their teens hacking away at pet projects and learned enough to work out of high school. My question is if you were hiring a candidate how would you determine if someone who didn't go to a university but is claiming to be (more than)proficient and fully able to develop software just as well as a student with a degree? What do you look for? What would you want to see from this person that would put them at or above the level of a college grad when it comes to hiring?"}
{"_id": "228884", "title": "How to deal with a dev who asks too many questions", "text": "I've recently stepped in to a managing position which of course involves overseeing other people's work, and guiding juniors. There's this guy who won't stop asking questions, and many times it's really basic stuff - which eats a lot of my time and breaks my in-the-zone mode. I tried the easy-going approach of sending him a link with \"Let me Google that for you\", but he only got excited about the joke, and didn't get the clue. Other times I'm just telling him I'm busy, and that he should go and research it himself. The thing is, when I wasn't in the office he did a decent job on his own, so most of what he's assigned with he can handle. The question is how can I make him filter the issues he comes to me with? I realize that I'm the professional authority he should be addressing when he needs help, I only wish he would do it on non-trivial matters."}
{"_id": "3967", "title": "Is the jRails Project something I should use?", "text": "The jRails project is a drop in replacement for the Prototype/scriptalicious helpers already a part of the Rails framework. Are your experiences with this project positive? Does it do what it says on the tin? Is it still being maintained or is this a bad choice if I want to do jQuery with RoR?"}
{"_id": "143507", "title": "OOP - Composition, Components and Composites Example?", "text": "I've been reading a bit about OOP in relation to Composition, Components and Composites. I believe I understand the fundamental principle (not sure). Can someone please provide a code example of a person or car (both have many properties) using Composition, Components and Composites? I think seeing it in code would clear up the confusion I have regarding this pattern. Preferably in Java or PHP."}
{"_id": "218639", "title": "Ensuring transactional consistency with DDD", "text": "I am starting out with DDD and understand that aggregate roots are used to ensure transnational consistency. We should not modify multiple aggregates in one application service. I would like to know however how to deal with the following situation. I have an aggregate root called Products. There is also an aggregate root called Group. Both have Id's, and can be edited independently. Multiple Products can point to the same Group. I have an application service that can change a product's group: `ProductService.ChangeProductGroup(string productId, string groupId)`   1. Check group exists   2. Get product from repository   3. Set its group   4. Write the product back to repository I also have an application service where the group can be deleted: `GroupService.DeleteGroup(string groupId)` 1\\. Get products from repository whose groupId is set to provided groupId, ensure count is 0 or abort 2\\. Delete group from groups repository 3\\. Save changes My question is the following scenario, what would happen if: In the ProductService.ChangeProductGroup, we check the group exists (it does), then just after this check a separate user deletes the productGroup (via the other GroupService.DeleteGroup). In this case we set a reference to a product which has just been deleted? Is this a flaw in my design in that i should use a different domain design (adding additional elements if necessary), or would i have to use transactions?"}
{"_id": "165092", "title": "How can I get my progress reviewed as a solo junior developer", "text": "I am currently working for a 2 person company, as the solo primary developer. My boss gets the clients, mocks up some png design templates and hands them over to me. This system has been working fine and i'm really enjoying it. The types of projects I work on are for small - medium sized businesses and they usually want a CMS system. Developed from scratch i'll build a customised backend for the client to add/edit/remove categories, tags, products etc and then output them to the front end according to the design template handed to me. As time has gone on, the projects have increased in complexity, with shopping cart / ordering features and other common e-commerce type features. Again, this system has been working fine and i'm really enjoying it. My issue is my personal development as a programmer. I spend a lot of my spare time reading programming blogs, checking through stackexchange, reading suggested programming books (currently on 'The Pragmatic Programmer', really good so far), doing brain exercises (lumosity.com and khanacademy math problems), doing lots of physical exercise and other personal development type activities. I can't help but feel though, that I'm missing out on feedback, critique. My boss is great and never holds back on praise in regards to my work, but he unfortunately is either to busy to check my code, or to be honest, I don't think it's one of his specialties and so can't provide feedback. I want to know what i'm doing wrong and what i'm doing right. Should I be putting that much logic in the controller, am I modulating my code enough etc. So what I have done is developed a little 'Family Budgeting' app and tried to do it as cleanly and effectively as I currently know how. What i'm wanting to know is, is there somewhere I can submit this app, and have some seasoned developers provide feedback. It's not just a subsection of my code like 'codereview.stackexchange' appears to require, it's my entire workflow that I want critiqued. I know this is a lot to ask, and I expect the main advice given will be to look for a job within a team, which is certainly something I will look into later down the track, but for now I want to persist with my current employment situation, but just don't want to develop too many bad habits. Let me know if I can provide any further information to help clarify, or if this isn't the right place for this type of question I apologise in advance. Didn't want to use reddit as I felt this community fosters more well thought out responses."}
{"_id": "212775", "title": "Can I Put My Past Company's Project in my Resume?", "text": "I am building my resume now but I am unsure if I am allowed to put my past company's project in the Project's section of my resume. I am not planning on disclosing proprietary details, just the name and the description of the project (if the name doesn't count as proprietary). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "75809", "title": "How do I convince my team to use smaller classes/methods?", "text": "Disclaimer: I'm a newcomer (this is my third day of work), and most of my teammates are more experienced than me. When I look at our code, I see some code smells and bad engineering practices, like the following:   * Somewhat inconsistent naming guidelines   * Properties not marked as readonly when possible   * Large classes - I noticed a utility class that consisted of hundreds of extension methods (for many types). It was more than 2500 lines long!   * Large methods - I'm trying to refactor a method which is 150 lines long. The latter two seem to be a real problem. I want to convince my teammates to use smaller classes and methods. But should I do that? If yes, then how? My team got a mentor from the main team (we're a satellite team). Should I go to him first? * * * **UPDATE** : Since some responses asked about the project, please know that it's a working project. And IMHO, huge classes/methods of that size are always bad. Anyways, I never want to piss my team off. That's why I asked - Should I do that, and if yes, then how I do that gently? **UPDATE** : I decided to do something based on accepted answer: because I'm newcomer, so I see everything in \"fresh eyes\" I will take note on all code smells that I found (position, why it bad, how can we do it better,...), but at the moment, I just try hard to gather respects from my team: write \"better code\", know people, know why did we do that... When the time is right, I will try to ask my team about some new code-policies (naming guidelines, smaller classes, smaller methods,...), and if possible, refactor some old code. It should work, IMHO. Thank you."}
{"_id": "75807", "title": "Best practice to prevent potential paying customers from creating many trial accounts", "text": "I have an idea for a web app, and I want to make it a freemium service. Those who sign up will have the ability to create 3 pieces of content for free and will be required to pay a premium to obtain the ability to create further content. Provided that the two account types will have identical behaviors except for the quantity of content, what is the best way to prevent these users from circumventing my pricing plan and creating tonnes of trial accounts? Have you thought about this before? What do you do on your web app? I could monitor email addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, etc., but all of these are easily circumventable. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "75800", "title": "which input sanitization function is better?", "text": "apparently, some of our websites have been hacked by a hack bot. The reason: bad input sanitzation. Our boss is giving us this file to put on all our servers to secure them: http://pastebin.com/0gJ19TQG Personally, i just do this on my personal websites: `filter_var(mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['Nom']), FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);`. So you tell me, which one is better and why?"}
{"_id": "73238", "title": "Can you prototype a complex system change?", "text": "I'm currently in the process of redesigning parts of a large and complex application server to allow it to be distributed across multiple machines. I've been asked to provide a prototype of the redesign in a relatively short time period. I don't think it's possible to create a prototype of this; the changes are in existing code, and the changes are at such a low level that the system can only be in one of two states: working or not working. There's no middle ground. The changes have to be implemented all at once, because they all rely on each other. There's no way to partially implement all of the changes, the system won't work unless they're all fully implemented. At this point, I'm unsure of what to do. I know that it's hard for others to tell without knowing every detail, but on a generic level, am I right in that something like this can't be prototyped? Is there some way to prototype things like this that I don't know about?"}
{"_id": "212771", "title": "REST Relationships Besides Parent/Child", "text": "This would seem to be a pretty basic question, but I can't seem to find appropraite guidelines for it. What is the \"restful\" way of `POST`ing a relationship between two entities that are not necessarily parent/child. As an example, consider customers and orders. One could create a customer with a `POST` to `/customer`. However, what is the best way to create the order? One example would be a `POST` to `/customer/123/order`, but what if the order isn't assigned to a customer directly, and could exist on its own (in the case of a web-cart that allows for \"anonymous\" checkout)? Is the right way, then, to do `POST /order?customerId=123` Further, consider the case that an order can be submitted separately from payments (let's say we are invoicing a customer). You could create the order (per either of the methods above), but how would we make the payment? `POST /order/123/payment` or `POST /payment?orderId=123` (if we assume that a payment can be made for something other than an order, and one might want to get information about an order/payment without knowing the specific customer)."}
{"_id": "73236", "title": "Are certifications through O'Reilly worthwhile?", "text": "Other than being able to put \"I know Python\" on a resume, are the certifications from O'Reilly School of Technology (they are issued by the University of Illinois) any good for obtaining employment? I am interested in learning many of the topics covered by these programs and since they are fairly well-priced, I was thinking of going this route. However, I don't really want to do it if it's about as worthwhile as a degree from University of Phoenix. Does anyone know what effect these certs may have on obtaining employment vs not obtaining a certification, but learning on your own?"}
{"_id": "73237", "title": "The need for source control software - Team Foundation Server? or something different?", "text": "Recently, Here at the company, more than one programmer was appointed in charge for a LightSwitch(C#) software development project and immediately there was a need of some sort of source control/sync. We have never used Team Foundation Server but we'd gladly use it if it's worth it.   * Is it the right tool to use for   synchronising code between   programmers?   * Does it have the needed features?   * Do you have any other tool in mind? (I have used TortoiseSVN but   it was too simple and 'texty' if you know what I mean, we need a   professional tool)   * What other features does Team Foundation has that we can use? (if you did not understand any of the above please ask me to clarify further)"}
{"_id": "73232", "title": "Seeking LOC counter with estmated cost to write those LOCs", "text": "I had one (Linux only) and I lost it. I'd like another, either Windows or Linux will do. Please _don't_ turn this into a \"such estimates are useless\" discussion. I need ... something, anything ... to show that s/w development is not free. Even a wild guess is better than nothing. The last one I used said something like X lines of code - the average US programmer would take Y months to do that at a salary of $Z. Again, please don't tell me why I don't want it - because I do. Apologies for trying to fend off the noise before it even starts. Thanks in advance for any help."}
{"_id": "230905", "title": "Scrum: how to integrate work done by an overachieving developer out of band?", "text": "We have a \"typical\" SCRUM team and we commit to work for a sprint, and also maintain a backlog. Recently we have run into a problem of trying to integrate/handle the work of an overachieving developer doing out of band work (choosing to work outside of the normal working hours/sprint). To give an example, if the team takes in 50 points of work, let's say that they will complete all that work within the SCRUM framework by the end of the sprint and they and the company is happy. One of the team members decides to work on their own, on a backlog item, on their own free time. They do not check in this work, but instead save it (we use TFS and it is in a shelveset). How to handle this? A few of the problems ..   * During the next sprint this team members says the programming work is 99% done and just needs code review and testing. How do you deal with this in the SCRUM and agile methodology?   * Other developers complain about not being involved in design decisions related to these stories, since the work was done out of band.   * Our product owner is tempted to pull in this \"free\" work and the overachieving members is likely doing this on purpose in order to get more features into the product that the team otherwise would not be able to accomplish in the sprint(s). There is a view that this is breaking the \"process\". Obviously QA, UI and documentation work still need to be done on this work. I see a lot of discussion about not forcing a SCRUM team to work overtime, but what about a member of the team working above and beyond the expectations put forth during planning and execution of sprints? I would hesitate to reign this person in and say you cannot work extra (cautioning on burn out of course), but at the same time it seems to be causing some issues with certain members of the team (but not all). How to integrate work done by an overachieving member into the SCRUM and agile process for software development?"}
{"_id": "230909", "title": "How using tab affects commands like diff", "text": "In the page at http://pear.php.net/manual/en/standards.indenting.php, it is advised to use space instead of tab as it causes issue with diff, patches. Here is the excerpt from the page. > Use an indent of 4 spaces, with no tabs. This helps to avoid problems with > diffs, patches, SVN history and annotations. So, my question is if we are using tabs everywhere, how it is going to affect these commands?"}
{"_id": "140593", "title": "How to make hardware sizing sheet?", "text": "We build some software platform, and now we need to make hardware sizing sheet for the server-side piece of this software. So, I should prepare some mathematical model that, for example, given the number of concurrent users, can predict the number of physical servers or storage capacity or network bandwidth. How to make such model?"}
{"_id": "181205", "title": "When forking an dual-licensed permissive/GPL project, can I drop one of the licenses?", "text": "Consider an existing project that is dual-licensed GPL + either MIT or BSD. Since it's dual-licensed, when I fork, can I pick one license in the fork? Or do my forked files need to continue to be dual-licensed? It sure would be simpler to track only one license."}
{"_id": "55575", "title": "Was it necessary to build this site in ASP.NET?", "text": "From what I'm told, the whole StackOverflow/StackExchange 'stack' is based on Microsoft's ASP.NET. SO and the SE sites are probably the most complex that I visit on a regular basis. There's a lot going on in every page - lots of different boxes, pulling data from different places and changing dynamically and responding to user interaction. And the sites work very smoothly, despite the high traffic. My question is, could this have been achieved using a different platform/framework? Does ASP.NET lend itself to more complex projects where other web frameworks would strain and falter? Or is the choice pretty incidental?"}
{"_id": "32754", "title": "How to avoid to be employed by companies which are candidates to DailyWTF stories?", "text": "I'm reading The Daily WTF archives and especially those stories about IT- related companies which have a completely wrong approach of software development, the job of a developer, etc. Some stories are totally horrible: a company don't have a local network for security reasons, another one has a source control server which can only be accessed by the manager, etc. Add to it all those stories about managers who don't know anything about their work and make stupid decisions without listening to anybody. The thing is that I don't see how to know if you will be employed by such company during an interview. Of course, sometimes, an interviewer tells weird things which gives you an idea that something goes very wrong with the company (in my case, the last manager said I should work 100% of my time through Remote Desktop, connected to on an old and slooooow machine, because _\"it avoids several people to modify the same source code\"_ ; maybe I should explain him what SVN is). But in most cases, you will be unable to get enough information during the interview to get the exact image of a company. So how to avoid being employed by this sort of companies?   * I thought about asking to see some documents like **documentation guide** or **code style guidelines**. The problem is that I live in France, and here, most of the companies don't have those documents at all, and in the rare cases where those documents exist, they are outdated, poorly written, never used, or do force you to make things that don't make any sense.   * I also thought about asking to see **how programmers actually work**. But seeing that they have dual screens or \"late-modern-artsy-fartsy furnishings\" doesn't mean that they don't have people making weird decisions, making it impossible to work there. Have you been in such situations? What have you tried? Have it worked?"}
{"_id": "140596", "title": "DDD and validation of aggregate root", "text": "Suppose an aggregate root : MailConfiguration (wrapping an AddressPart object). The AddressPart object is a simple immutable value object with some fields like senderAdress, recipentAddress (to make example simple). As being an invariant object, AddressPart should logically wrap its own Validator (by the way of external a kind of AddressValidator for respecting Single Responsibility Principle) I read some articles that claimed an aggregateRoot must validate its 'children'. However, if we follow this principle, one could create an AddressPart with an uncohesive/invalid state. What are your opinion? Should I move the collaborator AddressValidator(used in constructor so in order to validate immediately the cohesion of an AddressPart) from AddressPart and assign it to aggregateRoot (MailConfiguration) ?"}
{"_id": "32756", "title": "Dependency injection: what belongs in the constructor?", "text": "I'm evaluating my current PHP practices in an effort to write more testable code. Generally speaking, I'm fishing for opinions on what types of actions belong in the constructor. Should I limit things to dependency injection? If I do have some data to populate, should that happen via a factory rather than as constructor arguments? (Here, I'm thinking about my `User` class that takes a user ID and populates user data from the database during construction, which obviously needs to change in some way.) I've heard it said that \"initialization\" methods are bad, but I'm sure that depends on what exactly is being done during initialization. At the risk of getting too specific, I'll also piggyback a more detailed example onto my question. For a previous project, I built a FormField class (which handled field value setting, validation, and output as HTML) and a Model class to contain these fields and do a bit of magic to ease working with fields. FormField had some prebuilt subclasses, e.g. FormText (`<input type=\"text\">`) and FormSelect (`<select>`). Model would be subclassed so that a specific implementation (say, a Widget) had its own fields, such as a name and date of manufacture:               class Widget extends Model {         public function __construct( $data = null ) {             $this->name = new FormField('length=20&label=Name:');             $this->manufactured = new FormDate;                  parent::__construct( $data ); // set above fields using incoming array         }     }      Now, this does violate some rules that I have read, such as \"avoid `new` in the constructor,\" but to my eyes this does not seem untestable. These are properties of the object, not some black box data generator reading from an external source. Unit tests would progressively build up to any test of Widget-specific functionality, so I could be confident that the underlying FormFields were working correctly during the Widget test. In theory I could provide the Model with a FieldFactory() which could supply custom field objects, but I don't believe I would gain anything from this approach. Is this a poor assumption?"}
{"_id": "140594", "title": "New Job Over Budget", "text": "I recently started a new job as a contract developer, and my non-developer boss of about two weeks ago gave me the task to re-create an app from another language and developer that he will reuse with multiple clients (replacing the front-end), that I estimated would take longer than his estimate of 12 hours. Two weeks later, I'm 230% over-budget. I admit this was my 2nd web app, I had been a wordpress developer in the past, so I am somewhat new to code igniter, but not shabby php by any means. My boss hired me knowing this and I was clear that it would take longer than his 12 hours. He's seen me in the office on task for 2 weeks, he should be somewhat prepared for this bill. Do I expect the full amount of hours, or do I filter against how much of learned? Can I bill for research as a developer?"}
{"_id": "101110", "title": "Which framework should a ruby beginner start with: rails or sinatra?", "text": "What is the best framework for start: rails or sinatra? I heard that sinatra is more flexible but rails has a lot of documentation and tutorials. What's your choice?"}
{"_id": "165540", "title": "Is it okay to rollback code if your client refuses to pay you?", "text": "A friend of mine did some contracting work to add localization support to an existing mobile app. He was not contracted to add any other features or fix any already existing bugs. He has finished his work, but the client refuses to pay him because of an already existing bug that he hasn't fixed. The only card my friend has left is to rollback the server code to the state it was before he began working, which will probably break the mobile app and hopefully force the client's hand. Is this legal? Is there a better way to handle the situation?"}
{"_id": "101114", "title": "Is it practical to use Twitter for service logs?", "text": "Recently my boss suggested that we post logs of our service that is hosted on Windows Azure into twitter. His idea is that it's conveniently readable and if Azure cloud fails logs persist. He also said, _lots of people do this_ , I Googled and couldn't find any data about this. Currenly my concerns are the following. First, perhaps twitter is not very convenient for logging something that can happen very frequently (for example, when our service role starts each instance writes tens of records over several minutes). Second, even if twitter EULA allows such use at this moment it might be changed in future to cut off tweets that occur too often to be human- originated. Is it practical to post service logs on twitter? What to consider if we implement this?"}
{"_id": "181209", "title": "WCF hardware requirement", "text": "I read the hardware requirements of WCF in a book and two of them are the following ones:   * A DVD-ROM drive   * A 1024 \u00d7 768 or higher resolution display with 256 colors or more Why is there a requirement for the screen resolution, or to have a DVD drive? Perhaps, this requirement is necessary for Visual Studio to work. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "101117", "title": "Is C++0x Compatible with C?", "text": "I have heard that there will be a lot of changes done in C++ because of the new standard (C++0x). My question is: What are the major changes, and will C++0x be compatible with C++ 98 and **C** ?"}
{"_id": "198905", "title": "Chosing a parser for a code beautifier", "text": "I'm in the planning stage of making a code beautifier (similar to AStyle or Uncrustify) - originally I was going to just contribute to one of those projects, but reviewing their source led me to the conclusion that I have different design goals and that their source is written in a way that makes it difficult for an outsider to easily contribute. AStyle, for example, instead of building some sort of AST, uses over 100 state variables such as `isInComment`, `foundClassHeader`, `isLineReady`, etc. I'm deciding between using scanner and parser generators (such as flex and bison) and writing my own parsing system. Which would be a better approach? I've been through a compilers class in university, so I do have some experience with scanning and parsing theory. Below are the advantages I've thought of for each: **Generators**   * Arguably simpler/faster to develop   * Possibly more optimized than my initial stab at a custom parser, though a custom one might leave more room for improvement **Custom parser**   * Arguably easier to debug   * _Programmers_ seems to prefer custom lexers and parsers in past questions - \"Anyone who wants a decent lexer doesn't use Lex\"   * Fewer dependencies   * Could possibly allow for \"fuzzier\" parsing - since I'm just developing a beautifier, the parser wouldn't need to be nearly as strict or detailed as one for a compiler    * Parallelization - flex and bison (or what I've seen of them) use global state. If I want to parse multiple files at once (in separate threads), a custom solution would be simpler to compartmentalize"}
{"_id": "170989", "title": "Established coding standards for pl/pgsql code", "text": "I need to standardize coding practices for project that compromises, among others, of pl/pgsql database, that has some amount of nontrivial code. I look for:   * Code formatting guidelines, especially inside procedures.    * Guidelines on what constructs are considered unsafe (if any)    * Naming conventions.    * Code documentation conventions (if this is practiced)  Any hints to documents that define good practices in pl/pgsql code? If not I'm looking for hints to practices that you consider good. There is related question regarding TSQL: Can anyone recommend coding standards for TSQL?, which is relevant to psql as well, but I need more information on stored procedures. Other related questions:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1070275/what-indenting-style-do-you-use-in-sql-server-stored-procedures"}
{"_id": "246522", "title": "using this in a constructor, why does it work?", "text": "I got two classes.   * busiObj(created from ancient flat files)   * key(provides means to tell busiObjs apart) key has a c'tor that takes a busiObj               public key(busiObj foo)     {         bar = foo.someThing;         [...]     }      I want to create the key in the c'tor of the busiObj               public busiObj(...)     {         myKey = new key(this);         [...]     }      However: Why on earth does it work?   I firmly expected the compiler to throw something like:   \"You cannot reference an object that is currently being made, duh\". So: How is it that I can reference an object while it is still being constructed?"}
{"_id": "56000", "title": "User directory - framework", "text": "I'ld like to create a very basic directory where user can enter their social network profiles and pick a username. From that data a little website gets generated. The sign in process should be managed via Twitter or Facebook. Where do I start with this? Are there any frameworks, api's or something like that available? Thanks, Bob"}
{"_id": "170983", "title": "Google App Engine: How to be notified when APIs change or become available?", "text": "I am thinking about writing a GAE app but am a little hesitant because the EULA gives Google full rights to change their APIs anytime they want, for any reason. Obviously, they'd be out of business quick if they just 'upped and refactored their entire APIs, so I have to imagine they have some kind of notification system, perhaps even an RSS feed, etc. to notify developers well in advance of looming changes, or new features coming out in future releases. However, for the life of me I can't seem to find any trace of the existence of such a notification system. Perhaps the Google forums is the only place to get such updates? I guess I'm asking any battle-worn GAE veterans for re-assurance that there are reliable ways of getting notifications about policy or API changes from Google such that I could react and make the necessary app changes without production breaking or impacting any clients."}
{"_id": "170982", "title": "Facebook Java API", "text": "I'd like to write a program in java (not a servlet, not jsp, not a webapp) which allows me to do simple things, such as connecting to a FB account and retrieve the status or posts on the wall. I know facebook no longer supports official JavaAPI, so I was wondering what are the best (and most simple, being the program very basic) unofficial api out there. If possible, i would also like some example-code. searching through the web, I've read that you need two secret keys to create a facebook application, and I have not a fb account. Is it indispensable to have an account? thank you everyone"}
{"_id": "98254", "title": "I don't want to patent my business software, but I don't want to get ripped off later", "text": "I feel patents are innovation killers, but I don't want something I've written and put a private licence on end up being patented 3 years later by some troll. What's a good compromise here? Or, am I actually not at risk? _I understand most of the members on the site aren't lawyers._"}
{"_id": "56009", "title": "ISO, Six Sigma, SEI-CMM, etc., in Fortune 500 companies", "text": "Do large corporations and product companies follow any standard quality models/processes at all?   For example, I have seen that many large organizations have proprietary processes in IT and software development. Back in the days (even before Motorola's Iridium project,) I remember many IT companies scampering for SEI- CMM certification. Do any of the Fortune 500 company try to adopt these quality processes? In my limited experience I have not seen them undergoing audits for adherence to processes. Most of the audits are either financial, or issues pertaining to legalities. Am I just being ignorant, or is this true? If true, how stringently do the companies adhere to the processes?"}
{"_id": "25475", "title": "Long Keywords like `function` and `namespace`", "text": "In many English-based programming languages like C++ and JavaScript, there exist long keywords like `function`, `namespace`, `exception` (in OCaml languages) and such. Do you think shorter keywords like `func` should replace them? Why or why not? What about replacing them with digraph operators? The long keywords we will be mainly talking about, but not limited to, are mainly from curly-brace imperative languages: `function`, `namespace`, `implements`, `instanceof` and `synchronized` (I always misspell that). You should also show the examples from your favourite programming language."}
{"_id": "186966", "title": "A question regarding linked list vs vector insert/remove results comparison", "text": "I was reading this blog post: http://kjellkod.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/why- you-should-never-ever-ever-use-linked-list-in-your-code-again/ and I found there a code to run: http://ideone.com/62Emz I've compiled it using gcc 4.7.2 with `g++ -std=c++11` on my old laptop with T5450 cpu with two cores with 32 Kbytes L1 cache each and 2 Megabytes of (common?) L2 cache and I have got this results:               ********** Times in microseconds**********     Elements ADD (List, Vector)     ERASE(List, Vector)     100,     , 0, 0,                0, 0     200,     , 0, 0,                15625, 0     500,     , 0, 0,                0, 0     1000,    , 15625, 0,            0, 15625     4000,    , 109375, 140625,              46875, 31250     10000,   , 750000, 875000,              312500, 187500     20000,   , 2968750, 3468750,            1296875, 781250     40000,   , 12000000, 13843750,          5359375, 3156250     Exiting test,. the whole measuring took 45375 milliseconds (45seconds or 0 minut     es)      Which actually says an opposite, at least for `ADD` operation comparing to what author of that blog post says. List is faster for `ADD` than Vector. What conclusions should I make from my results? Does it proof anything? What should I think or understand?"}
{"_id": "186968", "title": "Detecting misusage of delete[] vs. delete at compile time", "text": "I'd like to know if it's possible to detect the `delete` error commented below at compile time? Especially, I'd like to hear about g++ compiler.               ClassTypeA *abc_ptr = new ClassTypeA[100];       abc_ptr[10].data_ = 1;       delete abc_ptr; // error, should be delete []        Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "85377", "title": "Acceptance tests done first...how can this be accomplished?", "text": "The basic gist of most Agile methods is that a feature is not \"done\" until it's been developed, tested, and in many cases released. This is supposed to happen in quick turnaround chunks of time such as \"Sprints\" in the Scrum process. A common part of Agile is also TDD, which states that tests are done first. My team works on a GUI program that does a lot of specific drawing and such. In order to provide tests, the testing team needs to be able to work with something that at least attempts to perform the things they are trying to test. We've found no way around this problem. I can very much see where they are coming from because if I was trying to write software that targeted some basically mysterious interface I'd have a very hard time. Although we have behavior fairly well specified, the exact process of interacting with various UI elements when it comes to automation seems to be too unique to a feature to allow testers to write automated scripts to drive something that does not exist. Even if we could, a lot of things end up turning up later as having been missing from the specification. One thing we considered doing was having the testers write test \"scripts\" that are more like a set of steps that must be performed, as described from a use- case perspective, so that they can be \"automated\" by a human being. This can then be performed by the developer(s) writing the feature and/or verified by someone else. When the testers later get an opportunity they automate the \"script\" for regression purposes mainly. This didn't end up catching on in the team though. The testing part of the team is actually falling behind us by quite a margin. This is one reason why the apparently extra time of developing a \"script\" for a human being to perform just did not happen....they're under a crunch to keep up with us developers. If we waited for them, we'd get nothing done. It's not their fault really, they're a bottle neck but they're doing what they should be and working as fast as possible. The process itself seems to be set up against them. Very often we end up having to go back a month or more in what we've done to fix bugs that the testers have finally gotten to checking. It's an ugly truth that I'd like to do something about. So what do other teams do to solve this fail cascade? How can we get testers ahead of us and how can we make it so that there's actually time for them to write tests for the features we do in a sprint without making us sit and twiddle our thumbs in the meantime? As it's currently going, in order to get a feature \"done\", using agile definitions, would be to have developers work for 1 week, then testers work the second week, and developers hopefully being able to fix all the bugs they come up with in the last couple days. That's just not going to happen, even if I agreed it was a reasonable solution. I need better ideas..."}
{"_id": "198903", "title": "Branching library behavior based on 3rd party library existence", "text": "Someone proposed to me this pattern which I have never heard of before and can't find any information on it. The basic idea is, when building a library for other developers to use; if the developer includes my library along with a 3rd party library the behavior of the API calls to my library changes. An example:   1. I have a library/API for inserting, getting, updating, deleting on a database.   2. Developer includes a 3rd party database encryption library.   3. My library/API changes to require a \"unencrypt(password)\" call to be made before inserting, getting, updating, deleting. Is this a safe practice? Is there anything else out there like it? What advantages and disadvantages are there to this pattern?"}
{"_id": "85372", "title": "Should you answer programming interview questions with library?", "text": "Some questions can be answered easily by using specific language library. For example Java has Set, Maps, and List. Is it possible to answer those coding questions during interview by using these library or should we go more with a traditional down to earth approach, making it a C- kind of answer?"}
{"_id": "130053", "title": "Does long term programming affect writing in a native spoken languages?", "text": "So, I am getting some years under my belt in long term programming. I have noticed, however, when the frequency and duration started increasing in my coding sessions that when I actually went to write a paper, email, document, or anything else that required writing more than a few sentences that my writing quallity appeared to suffer. I started forgetting the basic rules and vocabulary of written English. I am now going back for my Masters and find that writing papers does not come as easy as it used to. I remember thinking to myself how my Creative Writing class back in my freshman year of college helped a great deal in writing for my other classes. Hate to say it, but it feels like I could use a refresher. Also, my hand writing has especially not got any better! I feel inclined to say it's a side-effect of long term programming but want know any if real studies have been done or just from personal experience from programmers."}
{"_id": "130052", "title": "How to store personal information properly?", "text": "It's not about security or something. There is a table to record user information, like username, password, postcode and so on, one record per person. There is also a table called post to record the posts the users posted. It's very easy to set a relation to identify the user who posted the post. But think of this situation, how to store the posts that has been read by a user? If use many-to-many relation, the table will increase to very huge size. What's more, there's a lot things to record, I just take one of them for example. I call this personal information. The problem is how should I store it properly?"}
{"_id": "85378", "title": "What kind of research study would cause you to change your software practices?", "text": "Software development today isn't evidence-based. That is, we don't really choose technologies and practices based on the outcome of research studies the way (we hope!) they do in, say, medicine. As an example, there was a study published in early 2011 in the Journal of the American Medical Association that suggested removing lymph nodes of breast cancer patients does not improve survival rates, which had an immediate impact on surgical practice. Imagine you found yourself reading a paper about a software engineering study which suggested that a software practice or technology that you currently use did not actually have the benefit you thought it did: i.e., this study was in contradiction with your personal experience. Assuming that the paper was published in a reputable venue that you trusted, what properties would the study need to have for you to actually change your practices based on the result?"}
{"_id": "130056", "title": "Time complexity of a nested loop where the inner value is decreased in every step", "text": "I have problems to give the right time complexity in O notation for the following loop:               k := 0     for i := 0 to N        for j := k to M          // something        k = k + 1      Where N = M. Without the modified starting value of j of the inner value this would be of course O(N * M), but with the decreasing running time of the inner loop in every step of the outer loop I am quite confused. How can this be approached?"}
{"_id": "135660", "title": "IRC Bot permission structure, best approach?", "text": "I'm making an IRC bot in PHP. And I've come to the point when I need to determine how would user permissions/accesses would look in the database (and in the application in general). Here are the requirements:   * There are global and local permissions, global are for all channels, while local are channel specfiic.   * There are permissions such as \"root\", \"bot_admin\" \"glob_op\" \"op on #channel\", in this example, each is weaker than the last (root is strongest, meaning that no one can take actions against root).   * I haven't completely decided on exactly how many permissions are there, and the bot will be extensible, so there needs to be an option of expanding. Some approaches I had in mind:   * Assign each permission level a number (1, 2, 4, 8, 16) and add them together to form the access level of a specific user (even adding all of the numbers until `n-1`, they would still be lower than `n`). As for expanding, I could leave gaps (1, 16, 256, etc) and fill it in later. I don't think it's a very good one, as it would be hard to maintain and read later on, even if I use constants to make it more readable.   * Have each permission in its own boolean column. That seems just silly, and there's no easy way of determining the power relations between each role. So what say you? Have a better approach I can take?"}
{"_id": "200201", "title": "Is \"regular\" a technical term for a grammar?", "text": "Reading the Go language specs, I read in the intro: \"The grammar is compact and regular, allowing for easy analysis by automatic tools such as integrated development environments.\" Is the word \"regular\" here a technical term, or should it be interpreted just as a vague English word?"}
{"_id": "139168", "title": "What quality level in the commit history can/should I expect/enforce?", "text": "I worked as a lone developer for a long time. During this time, I developed a way of formulating and ordering commit messages: Refactor first, describe exactly the reason for the commit in the message, link to the issue tracker, ... There is even a script to create several sorts of change log (public, company-internal, developer) from the commit history. This way I always know, when and why the code in the codebase changed to the state it is now. With the advent of interactive rebase and commit reordering, I can easily make sure that history (and, thus, documentation) looks exactly the way I want it to be. Bad code doesn't even get into the history. So, every commit has its well-defined purpose. It took me years to evolve this practice, which I consider a good one. (Is it?) However, applying this to someone else's code changes (i.e., rewriting the history of someone else's changes) is, for me, a painfully time-consuming task. I have tried this in order to identify unnecessary or even faulty changes. The total size of the patch in question is slightly too big to be reviewed as a single unit, and there are a few questionable code changes. In fact, it turns out that I cannot afford to control the code base as a \"dictator\". It just costs too much time. So I'd like to lose some control while maintaining a good quality of the code. Currently, I just don't see how to achieve this. \"How clean\" should the history of a project be? Which format and granularity for the commits should I require? Should I ask the developer to reformat history (e.g., to split a commit), even if it would require education on how to split a commit after the fact? Should I teach developers to work on feature branches? Can commit templates help? How frequently should the changes by the others be reviewed?"}
{"_id": "135666", "title": "What is a software maintenance retainer contract?", "text": "I'm a one man software start up and need to consider a software maintenance retainer contract for a client. What is this, in simple terms? How could it benefit me or my client?"}
{"_id": "139161", "title": "The false element in a Logical operation", "text": "I wish to know if there's some way to know which is the elemnet of a logic operation is false?   Example.               if( String.IsNullOrEmpty(obj1) || (String.IsNullOrEmpty(obj2) )        throw(\"...............\");       How can I kown which one of those is the empty one?"}
{"_id": "87200", "title": "How do I get away from PHP in the web industry?", "text": "I'm just looking for some tips on getting away from using PHP for web development. I'm self-employed but it seems like all of the work I find deals with PHP. I'm not complaining about the work -- just the poor choice of a language that is incredibly popular. I'd love to do my web development in Python, Perl, C#, or even a fun and fancy functional language. There's the old saying that you don't tell a carpenter what kind of a hammer to use. At the same time, you do tell them what kind of material to build your house out of and how much you're willing to spend. The problem I am running in to is that I don't know how to get out of this spiral. I can't just turn down work because then I wouldn't have any. I really don't want to go work for another company -- and even if I did, I'd probably still be stuck using something I don't enjoy. I'm hoping someone has \"been there\" before and might have some good ideas on how to get out of this situation. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "204186", "title": "calling test methods within other test methods", "text": "To test a method that returns a clone of the object it is called on, i need to re-run the test suite on the newly created object if i am to ensure that full functionality is retained, i found my instinct was to clone the object then call all other test methods in sequence i order to reduce code duplication. However that approach now smells to me and i can't pinpoint why. Is there a better way to test this kind of functionality?"}
{"_id": "204183", "title": "Is there value denoting a key as \"Primary\"?", "text": "Question: Is there value in denoting a key as \"Primary\"? This question is not about the definition of a primary key. It is not about the fact primary's aren't nullable. It is not about implementations such as MySQL which automatically perform clustered index voodoo behind the scenes on primary keys. **NOTE** : The question is not about the benefits of auto-number-ID surrogates over natural keys. Suppose a table has 3 candidate keys. All non-nullable. All immutable. I find no value denoting a key as \"secondary\" or \"tertiary\". I don't find the concept of precedence useful when dealing with multiple keys. I find the same logic against \"secondary\" and \"tertiary\" flags applies to the \"primary\" flag. I even feel the word \"candidate\" is not useful for a key. It implies the candidate is not as important as the key that won the primary election. I don't feel precedence has any place in describing keys. The attributes of the key itself (unique, non-nullable, etc) should be sufficient. Would the relational model be missing anything if we did not have the \"primary\" attribute to describe 1 of a table's keys?"}
{"_id": "204182", "title": "What does the term Virtualization encompass?", "text": "I have seen on a number of resumes the term \"virtualization.\" While every resume is unique, what does the broader term or skill of \"virtualization\" mean or imply? I feel that the ability to install virtual machines is not the only thing that this means. I have installed VMs and in my experience it was mostly following instructions. Is there something else to it that I'm missing, like actually _programming_ virtual machines? Is there an implied IT expertise on the issue, or relevant programming knowledge?"}
{"_id": "128537", "title": "How would you explain HTTP to a lay person", "text": "I got this question in one of the interviews I took. I started by explaining that it is like a set of rules that should be followed while moving resources around, but I did not feel convinced. Is there any other analogy or take on this question ?"}
{"_id": "134532", "title": "Does contributing to open source projects to boost a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 make sense?", "text": "I've only worked on commercial projects, and I'm having a hard time trying to find a project that interests me. I'm looking at a new job soon, and I'm thinking about contributing to a few open source projects in the short term so that I can add them to my r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Is having open source projects on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 important? If so, would trying to contribute to several in a few months look too much like trying to boost my r\u00e9sum\u00e9?"}
{"_id": "185430", "title": "How safe are hidden AJAX requests that fake performance?", "text": "## What is a hidden AJAX request? I've noticed an increase in the usage of hidden AJAX requests designed to make a user's action appear to happen immediately. I'll refer to this type of AJAX request as non-blocking. It's an AJAX request made without the user being aware it's happening, it's performed in the background and it's operation is silent ( _there is no verbose to indicate a successful completion of the AJAX call_ ). The goal is to make the operation appear that it has happen immediately when it really has not finished. Here are examples of non-blocking AJAX request;   * User clicks delete on a collection of emails. The items disappear immediately from their inbox, and they can continue with other operations. Meanwhile, an AJAX request is processing the deletion of the items in the background.   * User fills out a form for new records. Clicks save. The new item appears in the list immediately. The user can continue to add new records. To clarify, here are examples of blocking AJAX request;   * User clicks delete on a collection of emails. An hourglass cursor appears. The AJAX request is made, and when it responds the hourglass cursor is turned off. The user has to wait a second for the operation to complete.   * User fills out a form for new records. Clicks save. The form turns grey with an AJAX loader animating. A message is shown \"Your data was saved\", and the new record appears in the list. The difference between the two above scenarios is that a non-blocking AJAX setup does not provide feedback of an operating performing, and a blocking AJAX setup does. ## The Risk Of Hidden AJAX Requests The biggest risk of this style of AJAX request is that the web application could be in a completely different state when the AJAX request fails. For example, a non-blocking example;   * User selects a bunch of emails. Clicks the delete button. The operation appears to happen immediately (the items just disappear from the list). The user then clicks the compose button and starts typing a new email. It's at this time that the JavaScript code discovers the AJAX request failed. The script could show an error message, but it really is pointless at this time. Alternately, a blocking example;   * User selects a bunch of emails. Clicks the delete button. Sees an hour glass, but the operation fails. They get an error message saying \"error. blah blah blah\". They are returned back to the list of emails, and they still have the emails they wanted to delete selected. They could attempt to delete them again. There are also other technical risks for performing non-blocking AJAX requests. The user could close the browser, could navigate to another website and they could navigate to another location in the current web that makes the context of any error response meaningless. ## So Why Is It Becoming So Popular? Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.. etc.. all these large domains are increasingly using non-blocking AJAX requests to make operations _appear_ that they are performed instantly. I've also seen an increase in form editors that have _no save or submit button_. As soon as you leave a field or press enter. The value is saved. There is no _your profile has been updated_ message or saving step. AJAX requests are not a certainty, and shouldn't be treated as successful until they have completed, but so many major web applications are operating just like that. Are these websites that use non-blocking AJAX calls to simulate responsive applications taking an unnecessary risk at the cost of appearing fast? Is this a design pattern that we should all be following in order to remain competitive?"}
{"_id": "205583", "title": "Performance of a Skip-List algorithm", "text": "Here is a simple code for a randomized skip-list:               Coin_Side flip()     {         if ( random() % 2 == 0 )             return HEADS;         else             return TAILS;     }      Note: random() returns an integer that uses a modulus of the form M = 2^B. Then, what is the expected performance of the skip list algorithm? So we have: (ax mod M) mod 2 = (ax mod 2^B) mod 2 = (ax mod 2) mod 2^B I can see than ((ax mod 2) == 0) will be true if ax is even. Then, by adding mod 2^B, we will skip more values in the skip-list. We would have only the even numbers that are multiples of 2^B. So would that make the algorithm better or worse?"}
{"_id": "205580", "title": "Why doesn't libxml2 support XPath 2.0?", "text": "Libxml2 is the faster, stable and most popular \"open DOM engine\"... And the \"XML C parser and toolkit of Gnome\". The initial release of Libxml2 was September 1999, 13 years ago. XPath v1.0 was also released at 1999. XPath v2.0 became a recommendation on January 2007, 6 years ago. We can suppose that the Libxml2 community have time and people to develop a XPath2... So, _what is the problem?_ **Why doesn't libxml2 (or a \"libxml2 fork\" or an \"experimental lib\"!) support XPath 2.0?** Some raised hypotheses to discussion at answers,   1. Because Libxml2 community (and Gnome community) dislikes and have no motivation to develop something to XPath2 or xQuery.  1.1. XPath2 needs (by mathematical proof) a very heavy parser, much slower, etc. that is not suitable to real-world Libxml2 applications. 1.2. Other \"ideologic\" dislikes/motivations.   2. Because it is written with C, and for XPath2 is better to develop with C++.   3. Because the above hypothesis of \"Libxml2 community have time and people\" is false.   4. Because XPath2 became stable in 2010 with its \"Second Edition\" release, and ~2.5 years is not (?) enough time."}
{"_id": "256189", "title": "how to work in team and organize tasks in web development", "text": "My problem is that i used to work as a freelancer web developer. Now i work in a company and have a small team. I'm responsible for organizing this team to work in a project. I have no idea about organizing tasks or putting plan for a team. Can any one tell me how to do that."}
{"_id": "253213", "title": "How to ensure the success of processes after a deadlock exception occurs?", "text": "No matter the programming language is and whatever the database is, the concept should be the same: I have 2 threads, each locking some database entities and inserting new data in database.   Let's suppose the fact that those threads run simultanously may cause deadlock exceptions. Obviously, the main action we can do first of all is to analyse the code deeply to find a good alternative avoiding any deadlocks.   But sometimes, we really can't avoid them. Should I catch the exception and retry the concerned process?   At first glance, it would be acceptable, but...what if those conflicting processes are replayed at the same time, other deadlocks again (the snake biting its tail)? What is a good way to ensure that the processes eventually succeed?"}
{"_id": "218582", "title": "Term to describe keyword followed by statement block", "text": "Is there a general term to describe a keyword followed by a statement block? E.G.               if() {statement block}     while() {statement block}     try{statement block}     finally{statement block}      Or even something made up: `controlScope{statement block}`"}
{"_id": "71273", "title": "Is not being paid for training normal?", "text": "I'm a recent college graduate, and I recently had a interview with a company for an entry-level programming job. The company told me that they require two months of unpaid training for all entry level programmers. The reason given was that since they are providing free training, there wouldn't be any compensation. Is this normal? **Update** For other junior developers looking at this: Don't go for these type of scams. This was my first interview. I interviewed with 10 other companies around the area and got about 9 job offers from them. I worked for a fortune 50 company for 9 months with good pay and recently found a better opportunity for even better pay and better work. I guess moral is to be patient and have confidence in yourself."}
{"_id": "236999", "title": "Domain security involving domain logic", "text": "Together with my application's domain logic I am trying to outline the security model. I am stuck with a requirement that prevents me from considering security just a cross-cutting concern over my domain logic. Here follows my situation. A user in my system can potentially be allowed to create a certain kind of objects, say, 'filters'. I introduce a permission called 'CREATE_FILTER', and a user is either allowed to create filters or not, depending on whether the admin assigned such a permission to this user, or not. Ok. Now consider a more complex requirement when the number of filters a user can create is limited. So, e.g. the admin should be able to set max number of filters any user is allowed to create, or even more complex, to assign max numbers individually to users, say value of 3 to User1, 5 to User2 and so on. So, the security system, in order to authorize filter creation to a user, is not sufficient to check whether a user has such a permission assigned, but has to analyze the domain model in a complex way in order to look how many filters there are already created by the user to make the decision. To make things more complex, we can imagine that the max limit will depend on the amount of money user has on their account, or something. I want to conceptually separate (at least in my mind), whether such a complicated security logic purely pertains to security (which will of course depend on the domain model) or is this already a full-fledged part of the domain logic itself? Does it make sense to keep a 'permission' concept, when assigning/removing permissions does not help much (since it's domain state on which depends authorization decision rather than assigned permissions)? Would it be a way to go, say, to have a complicated permission concept which not simply allows an action by a mere fact of its existence but would rather involve some complex decision making logic?"}
{"_id": "252696", "title": "Debugging memory corruption", "text": "First off, I do realize this is not a perfect q&a style question with an absolute answer, but I can't think of any wording to make it work better. I don't think there is an absolute solution to this and this is one of the reasons why I'm posting it here instead of stackoverflow . Over the last month I have been rewriting a fairly old piece of server code (mmorpg) to be more modern and easier to extend/mod. I started with the network portion and implemented a 3rd party library (libevent) to handle stuff for me. With all the refactoring and code changes I introduced memory corruption somewhere and I have been struggling to find out where it happens. I can't seem to reliably reproduce it on my dev/test environment, even when implementing primitive bots to simulate some load I dont get crashes anymore (I fixed a libevent issue which caused some stuff) I have tried so far: Valgrinding the hell out of it - No invalid writes until the thing crashes (which may take 1+ day in production.. or just an hour) which is really baffling me, surely at some point it would access invalid memory and not overwrite stuff by chance? (Is there a way to \"spread out\" the address range?) Code-Analysis tools, namely coverity and cppcheck. While they did point out some.. nastiness and edge cases in the code there was nothing serious. Recording the process until it crashes with gdb (via undodb) and then working my way backwards. This /sounds/ like it should be doable, but I either end up crashing gdb by using the auto-complete feature or I end up in some internal libevent structure where I get lost since there's too many possible branches (one corruption causing another and so on). I guess it would be nice if I could see what a pointer originally belongs to/where it was allocated, that would eliminate most of the branching-issues. I cant run valgrind with undodb though, and I the normal gdb record is unusably slow (if that even works in combination with valgrind). Code review! By myself (thoroughly) and having some friends look over my code, though I doubt it was thorough enough. I was thinking about maybe hiring a dev to do some code review/debugging with me, but I cant afford to put too much money in it and I wouldn't know where to look for someone who'd be willing to work for little-to-no money if he doesnt find the issue or anyone qualified at all. I should also note: I usually get consistent backtraces. There are a few places where the crash happens, mostly related to the socket class becoming corrupted somehow. Be it an invalid pointer pointing to something which isnt a socket or the socket class itself becoming overwritten (partially?) with gibberish. Although I suspect it's crashing there the most since that's one of the mostly used parts, so it's the first corrupted memory which gets used. All in all this issue has had me busy for nearly 2 month (on and off, more of a hobby project) and is really frustrating me to the point where I become grumpy IRL and think about just giving up. I just cant think about what else I am supposed to do to find the issue. Are there any useful techniques I missed? How do you guys deal with that? (It cant be that common since there isn't much information about this.. or I'm just really blind) Edit: Some specs in case it matters: Using c++(11) via gcc 4.7 (version supplied by debian wheezy) The codebase is around 150k lines Edit in response to david.pfx post: (sorry for the slow response) > Are you keeping careful records of crashes, to look for patterns? Yes, I still have dumps of the recent crashes lying around > Are the few places really similar? In what way? Well, in the most recent version (they seem to change whenever I add/remove code or change related structures) it would always get caught in an item timer method. Basically an item has a specific time after which it expires and it sends updated info to the client. The invalid socket pointer would be in the (still valid as far as I can tell) Player class, mostly related to that. I am also experiencing loads of crashes in the cleanup phase, after the normal shutdown where it's destroying all the static classes that havent been explicitly destroyed (__run_exit_handlers in the backtrace). Mostly involving std::map of one class, guessing that's just the first thing that comes up though. > What does the corrupt data look like? Zeros? Ascii? Patterns? I havent found any patterns yet, seems somewhat random to me. It's hard to tell since I don't know where the corruption started. > Is it heap-related? It's entirely heap-related (I enabled gcc's stack guard and that didnt catch anything) > Does the corruption happen after a free()? You're gonna have to elaborate a bit on that one. Do you mean having pointers of already free'd objects lying around? I'm setting every reference to null once the object gets destroyed, so unless I missed something somewhere, no. That should show up in valgrind though which it didnt. > Is there something distinctive about the network traffic (buffer size, > recovery cycle)? The network traffic consists of raw data. So char arrays, (u)intX_t or packed (to remove padding) structs for more complex things, each packet has a header consisting of an id and the packet size itself which is validated against the expected size. They are around 10-60bytes with the biggest (internal 'bootup' packet, fired once at startup) having a size of a few mb > Lots and lots of production asserts. Crash early and predictably before the > damage propagates. I once had a crash related to std::map corruption, each entity has a map of it's \"view\", each entity that can see it and vice versa is in that. I added a 200byte buffer infront and after, filled it with 0x33 and checked it before each access. The corruption just magically vanished, I must've moved something around which made it corrupt something else. > Strategic logging, so you know accurately what was happening just before. > Add to the logging as you get closer to an answer. It works.. to an extend. > In desperation, can you save state and auto-restart? I can think of a few > pieces of production software that do that. I somewhat do that. The software consists of a main \"cache\" process and some other worker ones which all access the cache to get and save stuff. So per crash I dont lose much progress, it still disconnects all the users and so on, it's definitely not a solution. > Concurrency: threading, race conditions, etc There's a mysql thread to do \"async\" queries, that's all untouched though and only shares information to the database class via functions with all lock. > Interrupts There's an interrupt timer to prevent it from locking up that just aborts if it didnt complete a cycle for 30seconds, that code should be safe though if (!tics) { abort(); } else tics = 0; tics is \"volatile int tics = 0;\" which is increased each time a cycle is completed. Old code too. > events/callbacks/exceptions: corrupting state or the stack unpredictably Lots of callbacks are being used (async network io, timers), but they shouldn't do anything bad. > Unusual data: unsual input data/timing/state I've had a few edge cases related to that. Disconnecting a socket while packets are still being processed resulted in accessing a nullptr and such, but those have been easy to spot so far since every reference gets cleaned up right after telling the class itself it's done. (Destruction itself is handled by a loop deleting all the destroyed objects each cycle) > Dependency on an asynchronous external process. Care to elaborate? This is somewhat the case, the cache process mentioned above. Only thing I could imagine off the top of my head would be it not finishing quick enough and using garbage data, but that's not the case since that's using network too. Same packet model."}
{"_id": "37580", "title": "Good abbreviations for XML ... things", "text": "I've never been very good at maintaining a coherent bunch of variable names for interfacing with XML files because I never name the variables in my interfaces the same way across my source. There are Elements, Attributes, Documents, NodeLists, Nodes, DocumentFragments and other stuff. What's a good scheme for keeping track of this stuff as variables? Is there a standard in regard to Hungarian notation? Do you even put anything signifying that the data is actually XML, is this bad practice? Also, what is the difference between the way you name your constants (signifying Namespaces, Elements and Attribute Names) and your variables (signifying Namespaces, Elements, Attributes, Nodes, Node Lists and Documents)"}
{"_id": "37587", "title": "Groovy/Grails course content", "text": "Some Java developers have asked if I could give them a 2-day primer on Grails development. I'm assuming they're familiar with:   * Java language and libraries   * Java web development, e.g. Servlets, JSPs   * Spring   * Hibernate   * Client-side development, CSS, HTML, JavaScript I'm further assuming they have no experience with Groovy or Grails. AFAIK, the app that they'll be building is a new project, so there's no need to cover topics like using GORM with a legacy database. I'm trying to decide how I should structure the course, e.g. what topics to cover and how much time to spend on each. I reckon about 1/2 - 3/4 days on Groovy and the rest of the time on Grails would be adequate. I'll probably use the Groovy console to demonstrate the Groovy language concepts and a simple Grails app for explaining the conventions and structure of a Grails project. If anyone has a list of Groovy/Grails topics that I should cover, or even an outline of a similar course that they've given/taken, I'd be very grateful. Naturally, I will credit for any resources that I use during the course."}
{"_id": "236995", "title": "Why do C# developers newline opening brackets?", "text": "I've spent most of the last several years working mainly with C# and SQL. Every programmer I've worked with over that time was in the habit of placing the opening brace of a function or control flow statement on a new line. So ...               public void MyFunction(string myArgument)     {          //do stuff     }          if(myBoolean == true)     {         //do something     }     else     {         //do something else     }      I have always been struck by how ugly and space wasteful this is, especially in if/else statements. And I know alternatives exist in later versions of C#, like:               if(myBoolean == true)         //do something on one line of code      But hardly anyone used them. Everyone did the curly-brace-on-newline thing. Then I got back into doing JavaScript after a long absence. In my memory, JavaScript developers used to do the exact same curly-brace-newline thing but with all the fancy new libraries and stuff, most developers put the opening brace after the declaration:               function MyJavaScriptFunction() {         //do something     }      You can see the sense in this, because since using closures and function pointers has become popular in JavaScript, it saves a lot of space and makes things more readable. So I wondered why it wasn't seen as the done thing in C#. In fact, if you try the above construct in Visual Studio 2013, it actually reformats it for you, putting the opening brace on a new line! Now, I just saw this question on Code Review SE: http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/48035/questions-responses-let- me-tell-you-about-you In which I learned that in Java, a language I'm not overly familiar with, it's considered de-rigour to open your curly braces right after the declaration, in modern JavaScript fashion. I had always understood that C# was originally modelled after Java, and kept to a lot of the same basal coding standards. But in this instance, it seems not. So I presume there must be a good reason: what is the reason? Why do C# developers (and Visual Studio) enforce opening curly brackets on a new line?"}
{"_id": "33004", "title": "Should I know more than one implementation of version control?", "text": "I'm using Windows and am comfortable with SVN (well, TortoiseSVN) because it's dead simple. It works for me. However, because it's been working so well, I haven't any reason to try anything else. Should I bother learning a different system, for example, Mercurial or Git?"}
{"_id": "123356", "title": "Giving away sensitive information about previous employers during interview", "text": "When you are being interviewed by potential future employers, it is of course of benefit to both parties to discuss what your previous job entailed (ie, what you have been doing for the last few years). What if the technology (and the ideas behind the technology) that you have been working on is sensitive and confidential? I'm working on some really cool stuff at the moment, things that would impress an interviewer, that could demonstrate my passion and understanding, but at the same time I can't just come out and explain the nature of it without disclosing too much about my current employer. On the other hand, if I keep it vague without explaining the subtleties, it just seems as though I am working on fairly basic applications. The key is in the middle ground- the way the applications are constructed- which makes what I currently do both special and difficult. But even acknowledging this middle ground gives away vital information about how my employer competes. Hope that made some sense. What should I do in an interview? Is there like a 2-way NDA for interviews so I can just launch into an in-depth explanation of my past experience, or do I need to be deliberately vague and apologise for not being able to go into detail?"}
{"_id": "252694", "title": "How to use Option Type Pattern in a language that doesn't support generics?", "text": "I've been interested to start using the ~~Null Object /~~ Option Type approach for replacing my old habits of null-checking multiple parts of my code. But, from the many examples I saw out there, it seems it's a pattern used in conjunction with generics. Great for C#, Java, Haxe and a bunch of others I'm sure. _NOT_ so great for **ActionScript 3.0** (which is what I was intending to use it for). So, am I under the wrong impression that this won't be possible / worthwhile in a language that doesn't support Generics? Or is there a way to pull it off without them? **NOTE:** It seems the \" _Null Object_ \" pattern shown in **this PatternCraft tutorial** doesn't quite resemble the way _Option Type_ was described in some of the other discussions in this stackexchange site. His way looks more like a factory class that spits out a **_Null???_** derivative of some base-class. I was hoping there could be a way to create Null-Objects without needing to write a dedicated class for every single case scenarios where a null-check would typically be used. * * * **EDIT: My apologies, I didn't realize \"Null Object\" and \"Option Type\" were two completely different beasts. For the sake of keeping the answers and feedback relevant to the question though, I only changed the title (was originally`How to use Null Object / Option Type Pattern in a language that doesn't support generics?`).**"}
{"_id": "232671", "title": "NoSQL design - Storing project assignments", "text": "I currently have a planning tool using SQL tables that are sort of setup like this:   * Date table (Contains dates & indicates if that day is a weekend / holiday etc)   * Employee (Simple data)   * Project (Simple data)   * Assignments (Associates the three tables, key date + employee id + project id) I have one SQL query that, for a specific month/year, a joined list of employees + dates + assignment, e.g. 01/01/2014 employee_1 project_1. In case of no assignments, it returned the date anyway, as this makes it the most manageable on the front-end. I was toying around with node.js & mongodb for the first time today, and was wondering if my setup is something that could translate well to NoSQL. I really like the idea of using the JSON notation all the way, but I figure that this might be one of those cases where I'm better off with a RDBMS?"}
{"_id": "232676", "title": "What are the drawbacks of not declaring a class-method static?", "text": "On the 'Interfaces' trail on the Oracle website, we are presented with the following scenario: > Imagine a futuristic society where computer-controlled robotic cars > transport passengers through city streets without a human operator. > Automobile manufacturers write software (Java, of course) that operates the > automobile\u2014stop, start, accelerate, turn left, and so forth. Another > industrial group, electronic guidance instrument manufacturers, make > computer systems that receive GPS (Global Positioning System) position data > and wireless transmission of traffic conditions and use that information to > drive the car. > > The auto manufacturers must publish an industry-standard interface that > spells out in detail what methods can be invoked to make the car move (any > car, from any manufacturer). The guidance manufacturers can then write > software that invokes the methods described in the interface to command the > car. Neither industrial group needs to know how the other group's software > is implemented. In fact, each group considers its software highly > proprietary and reserves the right to modify it at any time, as long as it > continues to adhere to the published interface. > (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/IandI/createinterface.html) So we create an interface like this:               public interface OperateCar {             // constant declarations, if any             // method signatures             // An enum with values RIGHT, LEFT        int turn(Direction direction,                 double radius,                 double startSpeed,                 double endSpeed);        int changeLanes(Direction direction,                        double startSpeed,                        double endSpeed);        int signalTurn(Direction direction,                       boolean signalOn);        int getRadarFront(double distanceToCar,                          double speedOfCar);        int getRadarRear(double distanceToCar,                         double speedOfCar);              ......        // more method signatures     }      and implement it as:               public class OperateBMW760i implements OperateCar {              // the OperateCar method signatures, with implementation --         // for example:         int signalTurn(Direction direction, boolean signalOn) {            // code to turn BMW's LEFT turn indicator lights on            // code to turn BMW's LEFT turn indicator lights off            // code to turn BMW's RIGHT turn indicator lights on            // code to turn BMW's RIGHT turn indicator lights off         }              // other members, as needed -- for example, helper classes not          // visible to clients of the interface     }      So far so good. Now suppose that, in addition, each car manufacturer is required to create a prototype car, and suppose that, for some reason, we wish to keep track of these prototype cars. One solution is to add a new method to the `OperateCar` interface:               public OperateCar getPrototype();      Then each implementing class could implement this method by returning its prototype car. But there's a problem with this: the prototype car has nothing to do with any instantiation of the implementing class; instead, it belongs to the class itself. In other words, if we didn't have the interface, we'd automatically declare this method as `static`. But we can't do that here, because Java interfaces don't allow static methods. What are the problems associated with not declaring a class-method static? Is it OK in this case just to leave out the `static` keyword so that the code compiles? Or are the drawbacks so great that it's better to look for another solution?"}
{"_id": "232675", "title": "Sprint pressure causes quality issues?", "text": "The burn down chart displays a clear deadline and the progress towards the deadline. When the progress is slow and the completion of the committed work is at risk, people start to get sloppy on design and code reviews and on the depth of testing. Quality suffers. The question is whether in your organization you were successful to maintain high quality standards regardless of the time remaining to the end of the Sprint. Another question is whether perhaps it is best to drop the burn down chart to somewhat reduce the pressure or even move from Scrum or Kanban or other agile methodology that doesn't mandates iterations."}
{"_id": "86555", "title": "Do I own copyright of program I made in own time?", "text": "I created a software package that aids electrical engineers with common calculations used on site (substations to be specific). I created the package in my own time, without being asked and without guidance. The package is now widely used within my company and I intend to distribute it nationally. Do I own the copyright? My contract does state that all work produced is theirs, but this was outside of work and outside of my 'scope of work'. My company is mainly a civil and construction company and had no influence in the creation of the program. **From comments:** This is the paragraph \"During the course of your service, you will disclose to the company all information, formulae, processes, inventions or improvements which you have learned, discovered or evolved during the course of your service or in connection with the business of the company and will sign any necessary documents to enable the company to obtain patent protection whether still in the company service or not. \" They are taking it seriously and have got their lawyers. UPDATE::::::::::::::: email just received Dave, As you know we've been pursuing the request you and your patent attorney raised earlier this year, paraphrased below: ... a patent attorney, who has advised me to seek official clarification from _{redacted}_ over the IP and copyright ownerships before I launch the company. In effect, they will produce a legal contract which states all IP and copyrights are owned by my self in exchange for free copies of _{redacted}_ for all MUS engineers. The free offer doesn\u2019t extend to partner companies. This review process has taken longer than hoped as we are obliged to review our contractual position with the _{redacted}_ and also with our employer _{redacted}_. However, _{redacted}_ are willing to release all IP an copyrights on the condition that we continue to use _{redacted}_ for our _{redacted}_ engineers and receive a 15% royalty on the profits derived from the sale of _{redacted}_ licences over a term to be agreed. I am more than happy to discuss this proposal with you at a mutually convenient time, and we can use your legal advisors or ours to draft a IP transfer agreement. Kind regards, _{redacted}_"}
{"_id": "133086", "title": "Node.JS testing with Jasmine, databases, and pre-existing code", "text": "I've recently built the start of a core system which is likely going turn into a monster product. I'm building the system with node.js, and decided after I got a small base built, that It'd be a great idea to start using some sort of automated test suite to test the application. I decided to use jasmine, as it seems pretty solid and has a lot of features for stubbing spying and mocking methods and classes. The application has a lot of external data stores and api access (kestrel, mysql, mongodb, facebook, and more). My issue is, I've got a good amount of code written that I want to start testing - as it represents the underpinnings of the application. What are the best practices for testing methods/classes that access external APIs that I may or may not have control over? As an example, I have a data structure that fetches a bunch of data from a MySQL database. I want to test the method that retrieves the data; and I'm not sure how to go about it. I could test the `fetch` method which is supposed to return an array of objects, but to isolate the method from the database, I need to define my own fixture data. So what I end up doing is stubbing the mysql execution, and returning a static dataset. So, I end up writing a function that returns the dataset that makes my test pass. That doesn't seem to actually test the code, other than verifying a method is being called. I know this is kind of abstract and vague, it seems that the idea of testing is very much abstract though, so hopefully someone has some experience and can guide me in the right direction. Any advice, or reading I can do is more than welcomed. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "159904", "title": "How long does one have to wait to consider design change in code?", "text": "I had a few days ago. I was having trouble with threads. Had lots of questions asked on StackOverflow and honestly for the first time I did not get the answer I was looking for. Finally, I decided to do a huge re-design of my system code and magically within a few hours I found a solution. So my question is, is it normal to often do a re-design if I get stuck with a problem or should I push on hard till I find a solution? Mind you this is the first time I was stuck for this long on a piece of code."}
{"_id": "86550", "title": "Team Software Development using Ruby on Rails", "text": "I used to work alone on small to medium sized programming projects before and **have no experience working in a team environment**. Currently, there will be 3 of us in an in-house software development team that is tasked to develop a number of software for an academic institution. We have decided to use the web for the majority of the projects and are planning to choose Ruby on Rails for this and I would like to ask for your inputs, advices and approaches with regards to software development as a team using the RoR web framework. One thing that has really confounded me is how you divide the programming tasks of a project if there are 3 of you that are really doing the coding. It\u2019s obvious that we as developers approach a problem in a modular way and finish it one after another. If the project consists of 3 modules, should each one of us focus on each of those modules? Would it be faster that way? How about if the 3 of us would focus on one module first (that\u2019s what I really prefer). Is using a distributed version control system such as Git the answer to this type of problem? Please don\u2019t forget to put your tips and experiences with regards to team software development. Cheers!"}
{"_id": "206388", "title": "Storing menu items with user permissions", "text": "I'm creating a menu system in PHP and MySQL. I will have several different menus and each menu will have a set of menu items connected to it. On the site, I also have different user permissions, some users can see all menu items and some items are hidden from some users. I'm curious on how I could handle the permissions in a clean way that will allow for more types of users in the future to be easily added. What I have thus far is something like this:               -------------------     |Menus     -------------------     |id| |display name|     -------------------          ----------------------------------------------------------     |Menu items     ----------------------------------------------------------     |id| |menu_id| |label| |link| |parent| |sort| |permission|     ----------------------------------------------------------      I'm thinking that the `permission` column could either be a comma separated string that I can match against the current user's permission id. It could also be a reference to some other table that defines all possible combinations of the currently existing permissions. One solution could also be to simply store multiple menu items where the only difference is the permission although this would lead to duplicate storage and perhaps a pain to administer. I'd love to hear some thought on how to structure this and what could be considered clean, dynamic and crappy. Thanks."}
{"_id": "226025", "title": "Testing vs Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY)", "text": "Why is repeating yourself by writing tests so highly encouraged? It seems that tests basically express the same thing as the code, and hence is a duplicate (in concept, not implementation) of the code. Wouldn't the ultimate target of DRY include elimination of all test code?"}
{"_id": "132970", "title": "How to infer my Assumptions I based my time estimate on?", "text": "In an answer on how to make time estimates it is said to write down all your assumptions you made when estimating a project. Seems like a good plan. Problem is, by assuming I already made an ass out of myself without realizing it. Assumptions are those evil things that like to stay hidden, things I took for granted. So when reviewing my estimate, what techniques can I apply to discover the assumptions I based my time estimate on?"}
{"_id": "132971", "title": "Factory design pattern - getting the types from a table", "text": "I've implemented a generic factory as described here I need to register elements to the factory hard-code like this:               Factory.Register(1, typeof(MyClass));      this factory will have to be correlated with a simple domain data type table [id,Display], in this case id 1 is related to MyClass. I was thinking to add a column to that table with the qualified type, so I can simply retrieve the id to types. table will be [id,Display, typeName] and I will use the factory like this:               Factory.Register(id, Type.GetType(typeName));      I tried it and it's working ok. **is this a good design?** **are there any security flaws?** **is there a better way to do things?**"}
{"_id": "137255", "title": "Is there a problem with writing an in-memory DAL for testing the BLL/ViewModels?", "text": "Mocking the DAL/Repository that I pass to the BLL/ViewModels for testing purposes is not much different than creating an in-memory DAL. Right now I'm using an in-memory DAL in a new project instead of mocking it and it's working very well so far (even easier than setting up the mocks I'd say). Since I haven't seen this done in online/book examples I thought I'd ask. Is there a problem with writing an in-memory DAL for testing the BLL/ViewModels? On my architecture all components share a common library with all the relevant interfaces. Things are late bound which allows me to swap any component for another of the same interface."}
{"_id": "83009", "title": "What happened to Borland Delphi?", "text": "I have the impression that Delphi isn't very popular anymore. But now at work I had to make some changes to an old Delphi program that we are still using. I used Borland Developer Studio 2006 and it was very pleasant and intuitive to work with, even though I had practically no previous exposure to it. Is Delphi still widely-used and I am simply not aware of it or are there other reasons for its decline?"}
{"_id": "154247", "title": "Experience of Python's \u201cPEP-302 New Import Hooks\u201d", "text": "I'm one of the developers of Ruby (CRuby). We are working on Ruby 2.0 release (planned to release 2012/Feb). Python has \"PEP302: New Import Hooks\" (2003): > This PEP proposes to add a new set of import hooks that offer better > customization of the Python import mechanism. Contrary to the current > **import** hook, a new-style hook can be injected into the existing scheme, > allowing for a finer grained control of how modules are found and how they > are loaded. We are considering introducing a feature similar to PEP302 into Ruby 2.0 (CRuby 2.0). I want to make a proposal which can persuade Matz. Currently, CRuby can load scripts from only file systems in a standard way. If you have any experience or consideration about PEP 302, please share. Example:   1. It's a great spec. No need to change it.   2. It is almost good, but it has this problem...   3. If I could go back to 2003, then I would change the spec to... I'm sorry if such a question is not suitable for here. I posted here because I'm not sure that I can ask this question at python-dev (of course, the list is not for cruby development). This post is moved from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11188229/experience-of-pythons-pep-302-new- import-hooks."}
{"_id": "71494", "title": "Why use partial classes?", "text": "In my understanding, the `partial` keyword does nothing but allow a class to be split between several source files. Is there any reason to do this other than for code organization? I've seen it used for that in generated UI classes. It seems a poor reason to create a whole keyword. If a class is big enough to require multiple files, it probably is doing too much. I thought that perhaps you could use it to partially define a class for another programmer somewhere to complete, but it would be better to make an abstract class."}
{"_id": "215080", "title": "Is implementing an interface defined in a subpackage an anti-pattern?", "text": "Let's say I have the following:               package me.my.pkg;     public interface Something {         /* ... couple of methods go here ... */     }      and:               package me.my;     import me.my.pkg.Something;     public class SomeClass implements Something {         /* ... implementation of Something goes here ... */         /* ... some more method implementations go here too ... */     }      That is, _the class implementing an interface lives closer to the package hierarchy root than does the interface it implements_ but they both belong in the same package hierarchy. The reason for this in the particular case I have in mind is that there is a previously-existing package that groups functionality which the `Something` interface logically belongs to, and the logical (as in both \"the one you'd expect\" and \"the one where it needs to go given the current architecture\") implementation class exists previously and lives one level \"up\" from the logical placement of the interface. _The implementing class does not logically belong anywhere under me.my.pkg._ In my particular case, the class in question implements several interfaces, but that feels like it doesn't make any (or at least no significant) difference here. **I can't decide if this is an acceptable pattern or not. Is it or is it not, and why?**"}
{"_id": "178951", "title": "How do I express subtle relationships in my data?", "text": "\"A\" is related to \"B\" and \"C\". How do I show that \"B\" and \"C\" might, by this context, be related as well? ### Example: Here are a few headlines about a recent Broadway play:   1. David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross, Starring Al Pacino, Opens on Broadway   2. Al Pacino in 'Glengarry Glen Ross': What did the critics think?   3. Al Pacino earns lackluster reviews for Broadway turn   4. Theater Review: Glengarry Glen Ross Is Selling Its Stars Hard   5. Glengarry Glen Ross; Hey, Who Killed the Klieg Lights? ### Problem: Running a fuzzy-string match over these records will establish some relationships, but not others, even though a human reader could pick them out from context in much larger datasets. How do I find the relationship that suggests #3 is related to #4? Both of them can be easily connected to #1, but not to each other. Is there a (Googlable) name for this kind of data or structure? What kind of algorithm am I looking for? ### Goal: Given 1,000 headlines, a system that automatically suggests that these 5 items are all _probably_ about the same thing. To be honest, it's been so long since I've programmed I'm at a loss how to properly articulate this problem. (I don't know what I don't know, if that makes sense). This is a personal project and I'm writing it in Python. Thanks in advance for any help, advice, and pointers!"}
{"_id": "202176", "title": "What is the difference between Microsoft.Web.Helpers and System.Web.Helpers?", "text": "What is the difference between Microsoft.Web.Helpers and System.Web.Helpers? Did one take the place of the other (same thing, different version/name), or are they separate things. If so, how do they differ? What is the raison d'etre of each, and are there scenarios where you might use both of them?"}
{"_id": "14728", "title": "Would you show your production code to candidates at the interview?", "text": "I have seen this happen multiple times: The candidate likes the company, succeeds at the interview. Then comes to work and at the end of the first day he is sure the codebase/project is not what he would like to spend time with. So he leaves quickly. I think that introducing candidates to the codebase at the interview could potentially solve this problem. Maybe even better: mixing this with interview questions like \"how would you improve this part of the code?\" This way, it would be obvious if the candidate is a \"good fit for the codebase\". Have you seen this approach applied anywhere? Would you show your own codebase to the candidates at the interview: if they asked/as part of the interview process?"}
{"_id": "47954", "title": "Do you contribute to open-source software?", "text": "Recently John Resig (creator of the jQuery library) wrote on his twitter that \"When it comes to hiring, I'll take a Github commit log over a resume any day.\". As much as I respect that (motivating developers to give back to the community), it also puzzles me, as not all of us have the opportunity to do so, for a number of reasons (family, employer agreements, etc). How would you make a case for the non-contributor developer? Do you think that developers that do not contribute to open-source software are doomed from certain kinds of organizations?"}
{"_id": "254080", "title": "Do you think asking to sign contributor license agreement for a open source project creates a resistance for contributors?", "text": "I am working on a open-source project which is backed by an organization. Organization pays a team to make this open-source project. This project will be licensed with GPLv3. We are debating on having a CLA for contributors. Do you think mandating a CLA will reduce the number of contributors? I have observed that people have no issues in signing a CLA when the project is really popular. So do you think CLA will create a resistance to contribute?"}
{"_id": "14720", "title": "If you were the manager of a team of 25 developers, how would you motivate them?", "text": "Imagine yourself hired by a new startup backed with few millions coming from venture capitalists. Your mission: `organize the development of the next killer app`. 25 developers is too much to take care of each individually, so **what decision(s) you would make to motivate them?** _I will appreciate any answers from stock options to free cookies ;)_ Of course the trick here (unless you are really a manager of a such startup), is put yourself in the shoes of one of those programmers. EDIT: it's an imaginary context. The purpose of this story is to stimulate your wishes. I want to capture what motivates developers."}
{"_id": "14727", "title": "When programming: How much time is spend navigating/scrolling and how much typing?", "text": "When your programming you often have to go and look at other pieces of code for reference, search for something etc. I'm looking for some numbers on the ratio of time spend actually typing the code(coding) and the time spend going back and forth between other parts of the system, not even counting browsing the internet, reading documentation. Ofcourse this depends on a large number of factors, probably also on your IDE, programming language etc. I just need some rough estimates, or researches on the subject. Background: I want to investigate how much network latency is tolerable for a programmer to work on virtual machines (if any)."}
{"_id": "175852", "title": "Open Source Projects & ITAR/EAR", "text": "What's the story on contributing to open source projects with respect to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR)? From how the laws read it seems like just working on open source SW could put you in violation of export control laws. Is there any precedence on this? Has there been any court cases involving this?"}
{"_id": "216043", "title": "Managing large downloadable content on mobile devices", "text": "This is a general question of how to best manage large downloadable content on mobile devices. Lets consider a situation whereby a mobile app needs to download a number of very large content items, like HD videos, that are over 500MB but under 2GB. Now, lets assume this content delivery system should be scalable. Would it be a fair assumption that:   * A reputable cloud service would be needed - if so, what is a reliable and cost effective cloud service for mobile devices based on anyone's experience?   * Large content downloads should only be attempted over a wifi connection, so the end user doesn't incur large costs, e.g. when travelling.   * Downloads should carry on in the background if possible, as the user won't want to wait in an app for long periods. If the downloads don't finish, or the OS quits the app, all downloads should carry on when the app is next activated? Are there any other pitfalls anyone may have experienced when managing large content on mobile devices? Thanks."}
{"_id": "175856", "title": "How to test Java web applications", "text": "So far I haven't been testing or learning how to test my java web applications. If you do, what are the tools you need, and is it really necessary to test a web application if doesn't need scaling or it won't be handling big traffics and multi transactions? What things should I test and what approaches should I take to ensure my application works correctly?"}
{"_id": "76728", "title": "algorithm from scientific paper", "text": "In my application I want to use a mixture of several algorithms described in some recently published scientific papers. But I have some legal questions. **Q1** If an algorithm was published in a scientific paper, and the authors were affiliated with academia not some private company, can it be protected by a patent at the same time? I read somewhere that it is not possible to obtain a patent for something that was described in details in a publicly available source. **Q2** If I use some algorithm described in a paper do I **have** to give credit in \"legal\" or \"about\" sections in my program or is it just voluntary and would be simply nice of me? It is **not** that I don't want to give credit. It is rather that I don't want to reveal what the program is based on internally and would like to hold copy- cats off for as long as possible."}
{"_id": "76721", "title": "How should one effectively use time at software conferences?", "text": "Microsoft (through the Student Insider program) has generously flown me out to Microsoft TechEd North America 2011. It seems like the website suggests that one should just make a schedule of the interesting talks, and that's that. However, it seems like several people don't spend much time in the talks and spend the time \"networking\" (the people kind, not the software kind) instead. How should one maximize the effectiveness of their time at software conferences?"}
{"_id": "76723", "title": "Why does my employer want a list of my past & present side projects?", "text": "I work in Delaware and live in PA. The law in Delaware is clear: My side programming projects are my property and not my employer's, unless I do something on the side that's very similar to the paid work. (See DE code chapter 19 section 805 here: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/decode/19/8/805). Nevertheless my employer doesn't want to provide me with a piece of paper recognizing my right to my own side projects or even the legitimacy of that DE statute. Still they wanted a list of all my projects before I started, which is perhaps 20 total. Since then I've put out over 10 iOS apps that I wrote in the evenings. What are they up to? What are my options?"}
{"_id": "171577", "title": "Writing algorithm on 2D data set in plain english", "text": "I have started an introductory Java class and the material is absolutely _horrendous_ and I have to get excellent grades to be accepted into the master's degree, hence my very beginner question: In my assignment I have to write algorithms (no pseudo-code yet) to solve a board game (Sudoku). Essentially, the notes say that an algorithm is specification of the input(s), the output(s) and the treatments applied to the input to get the output. My question lies on the wording of algorithms because I could probably code it but I can't seem to put it on paper in a coherent way. The game has a 9x9 board and one of the algorithms to write has to find the solution by looking at 3 squares (either horizontal or vertical) and see if one of the three sub-squares match the number you are looking for. If none match then the number you are looking to place is in one of the other 2 set of 3 sub-squares (see image to get a better idea). **Note:** The task is not to write a complete solver. Only an algorithm to solve the particular case I have described. I really can't get my head around how to formulate the solution into the terms described above or maybe it's just too simple, here's what I was thinking: **Input:** A 2-dimensional set of data of size 9 by 9 to be solved and a number to search for. **Ouput:** A 2-dimensional set of data of size 9 by 9 either solved or partially solved. **Treatment:** Scan each set of 3x9 and 9x3 squares. For each line or column of a 3x3 square check if the number matches a line (or column). If it does then move to the next line (or column). If not then proceed to the next 3x3 square in the same line (or column). Rinse and repeat. Does that make sense as an algorithm written in plain english ? I'm not looking for an answer to the algorithm per se but rather on the formulation of algorithms in plain english. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LWV1I.png) **Note** : Apparently this isn't clear: this is not about solving for all possible solutions. This is about solving only this very particular set of rules. I did not make the assignment. In any case, this is not even remotely relevant as this is not the focus of my question."}
{"_id": "171571", "title": "How to deploy a single website to multiple physical servers ?", "text": "I want to deploy my website to multiple physical servers. Is there possible methods to save files and setting (and also the user input), on all physical servers, so that servers do the following jobs:   1. Servers used as a network, speeding up the process giving a robust thing to the end user.   2. Data to be stored on all the servers' hard drivers, and   3. Every server have the internet connection from different provider, so for example      1. if any of the internet providers gets down, or     2. there occur any hardware or power failure, the website still runs, without a break and without any data loss. Does anyone know about some online course or some comprehensive tutorials about this topic ?"}
{"_id": "171573", "title": "Is this paragraph in Code Complete 2 backwards, or am I misunderstanding it?", "text": "In chapter 13, when talking about pointers, there is a paragraph: > Sometimes, however, you would like to have the semantics of pass by > reference\u2014that is, that the passed object should not be altered\u2014with the > implementation of pass by value\u2014that is, passing the actual object rather > than a copy. It seems like the author made a mistake and mixed the two up. Is this true, or am I not understanding what he's saying correctly?"}
{"_id": "18116", "title": "Is online freelance work viable by American standards?", "text": "I've always been curious about trying out online freelance sites... it would be nice to work from home, feel independent, get to choose what I want to work on, get to work on different technologies, lose the PHB, etc. However I never really gave them a chance because I'm used to American rates and assumed that I would be competing with people from India, Russia, China, etc. that would severely undercut me, and it wouldn't be viable for me. Am I correct in this assumption or should I give it a shot? What kind of hourly rate would I be able to expect on short-term programming work?"}
{"_id": "238738", "title": "Standardized Programming Languages", "text": "Is there an organization similar to W3C that creates standards for programming languages? If so, are there any programming languages, like browsers would using W3C standards, that implement these standards? I have done my own research and I have been unsuccessful thus far hence the question. The answers and most of the comments so far are very useful but essentially I'm looking for a language or list of languages that have an open and reliable licensing system. I think W3C has been the most successful at this up until now with HTML so I am looking for a language that has a similar licensing structure. Java has certain specifications like the EE servlet specification which has providers like Tomcat implement it but then at the end of the day that is still an Oracle owned standard isn't it?"}
{"_id": "230126", "title": "When should I pass setting-like value as class' variable and when as an assoc. array?", "text": "Following my other question, is there a general rule of thumb, when we should pass a setting-like value, that controls class' behavior (for example displayed texts) as as class' constant or variable, one-by-one, and when it is better to \"pack\" them to one associative array? Or is it just a choice of the developer? For example -- is this approach better (PHP code):               class SomeClass     {         public $errorIncorrectProtocol = 'Please, don't use GET protocol in this context!';         public $errorMissingId = 'The ID can't be empty or equal zero...';     }      than this one:               class SomeClass     {         public $errorMessages = array         (             'IncorrectProtocol'=>'Please, don't use GET protocol in this context!',             'MissingId'=>'The ID can't be empty or equal zero...'         );     }      and if yes -- then, why?"}
{"_id": "242997", "title": "How to use ORM in MVC?", "text": "If I want to use ORM in MVC system Which is/are correct?   1. Use ORM object to replace Model   2. Encapsulate ORM inside the Model   3. Use ORM outside the Model, use ORM to access DB, and then use one instance to store one record of data.   4. Other better practise Please give me some example"}
{"_id": "242993", "title": "Design for an interface implementation that provides additional functionality", "text": "There is a design problem that I came upon while implementing an interface: Let's say there is a `Device` interface that promises to provide functionalities `PerformA()` and `GetB()`. This interface will be implemented for multiple models of a device. What happens if one model has an additional functionality `CheckC()` which doesn't have equivalents in other implementations? I came up with different solutions, none of which seems to comply with interface design guidelines:   * To add `CheckC()` method to the interface and leave one of its implementations empty:               interface ISomeDevice     {         void PerformA();         int GetB();         bool CheckC();     }          class DeviceModel1 : ISomeDevice     {         public void PerformA() { // do stuff }         public int GetB() { return 1; }         public bool CheckC() {             bool res;             // assign res a value based on some validation             return res;         }     }          class DeviceModel2 : ISomeDevice     {         public void PerformA() { // do stuff }         public int GetB() { return 1; }         public bool CheckC() {             return true; // without checking anything         }     }      This solution seems incorrect as a class implements an interface without **truly** implementing all the demanded methods.   * To leave out `CheckC()` method from the interface and to use explicit cast in order to call it:               interface ISomeDevice     {         void PerformA();         int GetB();     }          class DeviceModel1 : ISomeDevice     {         public void PerformA() { // do stuff }         public int GetB() { return 1; }         public bool CheckC() {             bool res;             // assign res a value based on some validation             return res;         }     }          class DeviceModel2 : ISomeDevice     {         public void PerformA() { // do stuff }         public int GetB() { return 1; }     }          class DeviceManager     {         private ISomeDevice myDevice;         public void ManageDevice(bool newDeviceModel)         {             myDevice = (newDeviceModel) ? new DeviceModel1() : new DeviceModel2();             myDevice.PerformA();             int b = myDevice.GetB();             if (newDeviceModel)             {                 DeviceModel1 newDevice = myDevice as DeviceModel1;                 bool c = newDevice.CheckC();             }         }     }      This solution seems to make the interface inconsistent.   * For the device that supports `CheckC()`: to add the logic of `CheckC()` into the logic of another method that is present in the interface. This solution is not always possible. So, what is the correct design to be used in such cases? Maybe creating an interface should be abandoned altogether in favor of another design?"}
{"_id": "238735", "title": "Do markup languages \u200b\u200bhave the equivalent concept of `semantics` that you can find in C or C++?", "text": "Maybe I miss something, but do the so called markup languages have the equivalent concept of `semantics` that you can find in C or C++? Judging from how you parse the language, you don't really have too many options, there isn't too much context, you just parse your tokens and apply them to the source code. I'm tempted to say that not only semantics doesn't exist in this case, but this only happens in markup languages: am I right?"}
{"_id": "234631", "title": "OO Design when using communication", "text": "I have 2 applications one is written in C++ and one is written in Java. the applications communicate by passing byte arrays which represent a serialized object. each communication object represent a Command and holds the command id and the associated data. I will use an example to describe my problem. Let's say I have 3 components. one is responsible for the data storage and file system, one is responsible for presenting UI , and one is responsible for security and authorizing users. One way to access a specific component is by having one entry point that will do a switch case on all the possible commands ids. pseudo:                   switch(commandId)     {     case SAVE_FILE:     DATASTORAGE::Save();     break;     case LOAD_FILE:      DATASTORAGE::Load();      break;     case AUTHORIZE:      SECURITY_CONTROLLER::authorize();      break;     case DENY_ACCESS:      SECURITY_CONTROLLER::denyAccess();      ...     }      In this case if I need to change the security controller, I need to change this main entry point. so instead I added an extra field to the communication object, that holds the id of the component that need to process the command. In this case if I want to preform authorize I will do the following:               communicationObject.commandId = AUTHORIZE;     communicationObject.target = SECURITY_CONTROLLER_ID;      And the main will switch case on the possible targets and pass the command id to the specfic component which is responsible for that command.                  switch(target)     {     case SECURITY_CONTROLLER_ID:     SECURITY_CONTROLLER::Process(commandId);     break;     case DATASTORAGE_ID:      DATASTORAGE::Process(commandId);           ...     }      I also don't like this new design since it requires that the sender will know the inner structure of the receiver. on the other hand, if I had direct access to the other application classes (not using byte [] for communication) then the second option will be mapped to something like: SECURITY_CONTROLLER::Authorize(); while the first option will be mapped to something like Main.AUTHORIZE(), which is definitely not the way to go! what is the best approach in this case?"}
{"_id": "234632", "title": "How to design modular \"screen configurator\" for database application", "text": "I am currently working with a product that is effectively a glorified CRUD application. (It is a C# .NET 4.0 desktop application backed by an Oracle 11gR2 database.) The client program presents a list of \"screens\" that the user can open; each presents a view of some data and a number of buttons used to perform operations on the data. Currently, these screens are configurable to the extent of deciding what data to show on the screen and what each of the buttons should do. However, what I would like to do is to make each control a \"module\" and allow the user doing the configuration to drag and drop these modules into a wireframe to create a customised screen on-the-fly. For example, I would like a \"grid\" module (we effectively already have this as a WPF control) such that I could have as many \"grids\" on a screen as I like, and each could have a different configuration - e.g. what fields are shown, and which fields are editable. Further, each grid could be linked so that selecting an item in one grid would cause related data to load in another grid. How do I approach this design?"}
{"_id": "234633", "title": "Intermittent flickering on mouse move", "text": "We have an internal website that is written in javascript and jquery and is only used in with ie8. Everything is fine but after a certain time, screen flickering starts to occur when the mouse transitions between certain elements (which can be annoying for the users). I can't really put any code up because there is quite a lot but I just wondered if anyone might know what initiate this strange problem or have ever had similar issues!?!? The script makes 4 ajax calls on page load which dynamically loads content and is also within an iFrame. I have looked into a few possible sources, i.e, Memory issues/leaks, jquery/modal, timers, iFrames, but I just don't understand why it is not consistent?"}
{"_id": "5540", "title": "How should code in version control be stored?", "text": "How should code in version control be stored? **Developer friendly**? so that programmer can quickly take the latest and able to run from his editor without doing many changes? (like config files pointing to dev DB..etc) or Should it be **production friendly**? source should be in a manner which is easy to deploy on production environment and when developer takes the latest, he should perform changes as per his development needs."}
{"_id": "234639", "title": "Best approach for a server configuration data collection and reporting solution from a legacy script?", "text": "I have a project which involves collecting config data from windows servers in our (very large) server estate. My manager wants me to collect over 150 data items across all configuration areas including network config data, disks, registry values, BIOS version, dll versions, you name it. The server support team currently use a nasty vbScript script which is massive, messy and has been passed around and grown organically over time. The script is currently used to collect the data and produce a very basic flat HTML report with a column for each of the 150+ items it collects data for. My job is to tranform it into a proper software solution with new bells and whistles, a website, reports etc. The idea is a sys admin will go to an intranet website, puts the server name in and presses the go button, the solution collects the data and pushes it into the DB for reporting later. My manager wants the solution to collect the data, some of it referencing known desired values (e.g. RAID card drivers for ABC model servers is at v1.2.5.1) to see if they are correct or up to date, store it in a SQL database, and then use the front end web site for producing reports. In the reports, he wants it to be able to compare two datasets; for example, one for server ABC123 and one for server DEF987 in one report, highlighting any differences between the two. It gets messy pretty quick as some data will be collected for on some servers but not others (domain controllers wont have data collected about exchange services running status). There are many miscellanous items which don't fit into a data model area and don't really have a home ... it's a mess. I'm ok with collecting the data (using .Net), but I'm at a loss as to where the best place is to do such things as store and lookup/compare items to good known values (XML, DB?). Should I do it as part of the data collection phase and then push it into the DB. Or should I marry it all up as part of the reporting data? I'm going with a data warehouse (de-normalised) schema for the DB. There will probably be about 20 tables which the data will need to be pulled from, so I have no real idea what the best way to compare the dataset from one server data collection, with another, with such a massive set of fields to compare. What do you guys think my best options are for approaching this project and the architecure of the solution?"}
{"_id": "225594", "title": "How do you go from intermediate to expert?", "text": "Some would say: write a lot of code. That's certaintly true, writing a lot of code has helped me. I seen see the pitfalls. I refactor. I read. I've read countless books and I acknowledge design patterns. However, when it comes to actually using them in real life they escape me. I see code littered with fancy features and elegant solutions and I wonder: gee, why didn't I think of that? How does one go from intermediate to expert? What things should you be reading daily? How can you improve your skill? Your apt for problem solving? Ultimately, how can you bridge the gap from good to great?"}
{"_id": "72914", "title": "Will a copyrighted code get into public domain once its copyright expires?", "text": "Since source code license is protected through the Copyright Law (Berne Convention to be precise), and all copyrighted material will be in public domain for certain number of years, depending on which country.   1. Will a copyrighted source code, closed or open source, be in public domain once its copyright expires?   2. For closed source, can I ask the company for the closed source code once it got expired (just assuming based on what I've understood so far :-) )?   3. Assuming question 1 is true, how can I prevent a source code from getting into public domain once the copyright expires, if it's possible?"}
{"_id": "174898", "title": "How can I best manage making open source code releases from my company's confidential research code?", "text": "My company (let's call them Acme Technology) has a library of approximately one thousand source files that originally came from its Acme Labs research group, incubated in a development group for a couple years, and has more recently been provided to a handful of customers under non-disclosure. Acme is getting ready to release perhaps 75% of the code to the open source community. The other 25% would be released later, but for now, is either not ready for customer use or contains code related to future innovations they need to keep out of the hands of competitors. The code is presently formatted with #ifdefs that permit the same code base to work with the pre-production platforms that will be available to university researchers and a much wider range of commercial customers once it goes to open source, while at the same time being available for experimentation and prototyping and forward compatibility testing with the future platform. Keeping a single code base is considered essential for the economics (and sanity) of my group who would have a tough time maintaining two copies in parallel. Files in our current base look something like this:               > // Copyright 2012 (C) Acme Technology, All Rights Reserved.     > // Very large, often varied and restrictive copyright license in English and French,     > // sometimes also embedded in make files and shell scripts with varied      > // comment styles.      >      >      >   ... Usual header stuff...     >     > void initTechnologyLibrary() {     >     nuiInterface(on);     > #ifdef  UNDER_RESEARCH     >     holographicVisualization(on);     > #endif     > }      And we would like to convert them to something like:               > // GPL Copyright (C) Acme Technology Labs 2012, Some rights reserved.     > // Acme appreciates your interest in its technology, please contact xyz@acme.com      > // for technical support, and www.acme.com/emergingTech for updates and RSS feed.     >      >   ... Usual header stuff...     >     > void initTechnologyLibrary() {     >     nuiInterface(on);     > }      Is there a tool, parse library, or popular script that can replace the copyright and strip out not just #ifdefs, but variations like #if defined(UNDER_RESEARCH), etc.? The code is presently in Git and would likely be hosted somewhere that uses Git. Would there be a way to safely link repositories together so we can efficiently reintegrate our improvements with the open source versions? Advice about other pitfalls is welcome."}
{"_id": "228147", "title": "Proxy to redirect DNS during development", "text": "I am using Genymotion to test an app. The app is basically a browser that connects to my website. I do not have the app's source. I do the development and testing of the website in a domain like this: dev.mywebsite.com The app connects to mywebsite.com. Genymotion allows me to use an HTTP proxy. My question is, is there any software for windows or linux that would work as a proxy and redirect all requests to mywebsite.com to dev.mywebsite.com ?"}
{"_id": "174897", "title": "When a function is called in Javascript, is there then an easy way to find where a function is declared in?", "text": "It would be great if some IDE offered the way to right mouse click when a function is called and have the immediate option to jump to the function when it is defined. Is this possible in Javascript? Maybe I've just been oblivious - is there a name for this technique?"}
{"_id": "228142", "title": "How to implement DDD in a distributed application with NHibernate?", "text": "I have an ASP.NET MVC web site working in this way: (In the controller)               var user = _applicationService.GetUserById(1);     user.ChangeEmail(\"mynemail@somewhere.com\");     user.ChangeAddress(\"my new street\", \"21\");      (In a HttpModule)               void EndRequest(){         if (HttpContext.Error is null){             _sessionFactory.GetCurrentSession.Transaction.Commit();          }      This way is possible because the session factory is built in the web site application start. Is posible to call multiple domain methods and call commit once in the end of the request. But in a distributed application isn't posible to use domain objects directly, instead a WCF service must receive a DTO. Now my question is: how you design the methods `ChangeEmail` and `ChangeAddress` for a distributed scenario? Each one must be a distinct operation in the Web service? If so, then when a user changes his email AND his address must be necesary to call two times to the service. Or instead I must model a web service like this:               var userDTO = _wcfService.GetUserDTOById(1);     userDTO.Email = \"mynewemail@somewhere.com\";     userDTO.Street = \"My new street\";     userDTO.StreetNumber = \"21\";     _wcfService.PersistChanges(userDTO)"}
{"_id": "142186", "title": "What should I think about when switching from Python to Java?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Java dev learning Python: what concepts do I need to wrap my head around? I was a Java developer in the early 2000s, switched to Python in 2008 and now I am working in Java again. How has Java changed since the early 2000s? What are the major updates besides generics? Is there anything special you think I should keep in mind when going back to a Java environment? I used to work with EJB 1.0, I didn't work with EJB 2.0 and now we have JPA instead. I'm comfortable programming in Java and my new job with Java is much better than my Python job even though Python is my favorite language the tools and others things about my Java job makes it much better. I found when I searched jobs that demand for Java developer was much greater than demand for Python programmers - do you have a similar experience?"}
{"_id": "132021", "title": "When to stop writing user stories, and start coding?", "text": "When discovering stories for the first sprint, how do you know when to stop writing and move forward? I've asked a few people I know, and basically the response I've gotten is, it depends on the context the project exists in and how timeboxed the overall project is as well. Is there any standard way for knowing when to stop writing user stories, and if so, what is the basis for this, and how does it apply to future sprints?"}
{"_id": "5898", "title": "How do you keep your unit tests working when refactoring?", "text": "In another question, it was revealed that one of the pains with TDD is keeping the testing suite in sync with the codebase during and after refactoring. Now, I'm a big fan of refactoring. I'm not going to give it up to do TDD. But I've also experienced the problems of tests written in such a way that minor refactoring leads to lots of test failures. How do you avoid breaking tests when refactoring?   * Do you write the tests 'better'? If so, what should you look for?    * Do you avoid certain types of refactoring?    * Are there test-refactoring tools? **Edit:** I wrote a new question that asked what I meant to ask (but kept this one as an interesting variant)."}
{"_id": "207929", "title": "What is beautiful code?", "text": "I often read that developers must write beautiful code, but for a beginner as I am it remains obscure of what is beautiful code and how do you recognize it? The corollary question is: **How to write beautiful code and what are some practical habits to improve your code's quality?** , what should I care about to make the code I write beautiful (and what shoud I learn)."}
{"_id": "155103", "title": "Does connection pooling work fine to execute 60 DB queries to load a page?", "text": "We use Linq2Sql in an ASP.NET application. Unfortunately the eager-loading in Linq2Sql isn't as powerful as in Entity Framework, so a lot of the data has to be lazy loaded as needed. Taking connection pooling into account, is it OK for a web page to execute 60 queries to load a page? Executing a single big query probably won't be much better, as those 60 queries will all those connection pooled connections and not open a new connection each time (which I realize is slow). Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "87782", "title": "How to document business rules", "text": "I am wondering what would be the formal and the most commonly practiced method of documenting business rules? Also how do you document the UI specifications of development artifacts (e.g. Documenting form fields and how buttons behave on form, info text .. etc)"}
{"_id": "87780", "title": "Lost my touch with markup, move into new resources or refresh with old?", "text": "I haven't touched XHTML/CSS for many months now. I'm no where near efficient coding as I used to be. Creating more complex things is taking me a lot of time lately. What should I do to brush up on my skills? Just work a bunch of tutorials? Go through some old documentation before moving into HTML5 and CSS3?"}
{"_id": "155109", "title": "Parallelism implies concurrency but not the other way round right?", "text": "I often read that parallelism and concurrency are different things. Very often the answerers/commenters go as far as writing that they're two entirely different things. Yet in my view they're related but I'd like some clarification on that. For example if I'm on a multi-core CPU and manage to divide the computation into _x_ smaller computation (say using fork/join) each running in its own thread, I'll have a program that is both doing parallel computation (because supposedly at any point in time several threads are going to run on several cores) **and** being concurrent right? While if I'm simply using, say, Java and dealing with UI events and repaints on the Event Dispatch Thread plus running the only thread I created myself, I'll have a program that is concurrent (EDT + GC thread + my main thread etc.) but not parallel. I'd like to know if I'm getting this right and if parallelism (on a \"single but multi-cores\" system) always implies concurrency or not? Also, are multi-threaded programs running on multi-cores CPU but where the different threads are doing totally different computation considered to be using \"parallelism\"?"}
{"_id": "87788", "title": "Training a 'replacement', how to enforce standards?", "text": "Not sure that this is the right stack exchange site to ask this of, but here goes... **Scope** * * * I work for a small company that employs a few hundred people. The development team for the company is small and works out of visual foxpro. A specific department in the company hired me in as a 'lone gunman' to fix and enhance a pre-existing invoicing system. I've successfully taken an Access application that suffered from a lot of risks and limitations and converted it into a C# application driven off of a SQL server backend. I have recently obtained my undergraduate and am no expert by any means. To help make up for that I've felt that earning microsoft certifications will force me to understand more about .net and how it functions. So, after giving my notice with 9 months in advance, 3 months ago a replacement finally showed up. Their role is to learn what I have been designing to an attempt to **support** the applications designed in **C#**. * * * **The Replacement** Fresh out of college with no real-world work experience, the first instinct for anything involving data was and still is listboxes... any time data is mentioned the list box is the control of choice for the replacement. This has gotten to the point, no matter how many times I discuss other controls, where I've seen 5 listboxes on a single form. Classroom experience was almost all C++ console development. So, an example of where I have concern is in a winforms application: Users need to key Reasons into a table to select from later. Given that I know that a strongly typed data set exists, I can just drag the data source from the toolbox and it would create all of this for me. I realize this is a simple example but using databinding is the key. For the past few months now we have been talking about the strongly typed dataset, how to use it and where it interacts with other controls. Data sets, how they work in relation to binding sources, adapters and data grid views. After handing this project off I expected questions about how to implement these since for me this is the way to do it. What happened next simply floors me: An instance of an adapter from the strongly typed dataset was created in the activate event of the form, a table was created and filled with data. Then, a loop was made to manually add rows to a **listbox** from this table. Finally, a variable was kept to do lookups to figure out what ID the record was for updates if required. How do they modify records you ask? That was my first question too. You won't believe how simple it is, all you do it double click and they type into a **pop-up prompt** the new value to change it to. As a data entry operator, all the modal popups would drive me absolutely insane. The final solution exceeds 100 lines of code that must be maintained. So my concern is that none of this is sinking in... the department is only allowed 20 hours a week of their time. Up until last week, we've only been given 4-5 hours a week if I'm lucky. The past week or so, I've been lucky to get 10. * * * **Question** **WHAT DO I DO?!** I have 4 weeks left until I leave and they fully 'support' this application. I love this job and the opportunity it has given me but it's time for me to spread my wings and find something new. I am in no way, shape or form convinced that they are ready to take over. I do feel that the replacement has the technical ability to 'figure it out' but instead of learning they just write code to do all of this stuff manually. If the replacement wants to code differently in the end, as long as it works I'm fine with that as horrifiying at it looks. However to support what I have designed they **MUST** to understand how it works and how I have used controls and the framework to make 'magic' happen. This project has about 40 forms, a database with over 30 some odd tables, triggers and stored procedures. It relates labor to invoices to contracts to projections... it's not as simple as it was three years ago when I began this project and the department is now in a position where they cannot survive without it. How in the world can I accomplish any of the following?:   * Enforce standards or understanding in constent design when the department manager keeps telling them they can do it however they want to   * Find a way to engage the replacement in active learning of the framework and system design that support must be given for   * Gracefully inform sr. management that 5-9 hours a week is simply not enough time to learn about the department, pre-existing processes, applications that need to be supported AND determine where potential enhancements to the system go... Yes I know this is a wall of text, thanks for reading through me but I simply don't know what I should be doing. For me, this job is a monster of a reference and things would look extremely bad if I left and things fell apart. How do I handle this?"}
{"_id": "206693", "title": "I have to compromise: DRY, or Command-Query-Separation?", "text": "I was recently refactoring a method that was both a command and a query method. After separating it into a one command method and one query method, I found that there are now multiple places in the code where I am calling the command then getting the value from the query, which seems like a violation of the DRY principle. But if I were to wrap that common code into a method, that method would be both command and a query. Is this acceptable?"}
{"_id": "213139", "title": "New nodes joining distributed genetic algorithm", "text": "I'm sort of torn on what to do for implementation of my distributed genetic algorithm problem. I would like to be able to have nodes join and part at will and not take down the whole system. But this introduces the problem of mismatch of generations. Often times a genetic algorithm simulation is capped by a certain amount of generations and if I have a node that is on 75 out of 100 generations and a brand new node joins the cluster I'm not sure if I should fake it and start at 75 and copy one of the other nodes as a starting point or have it start out at 0 and potentially have the results delayed until the end of execution of the new node. I was hoping someone had some input on what they could see as problems in addition to a long wait time with this new node if I start at 0, I am struggling to think of what could go wrong in both approaches other than that."}
{"_id": "206695", "title": "Do I have to release source code because I'm using JavaFX?", "text": "I'm using JavaFX for gui of my app. Its license is GPL+Linking Exception. GPL requires me to release my source code. But what's the linking exception?? (I'm just using it as a library. Not modifying or using its source code.)"}
{"_id": "200153", "title": "Copyright notices: What if I change my surname? What if someone else has the exact same name?", "text": "I'm adding copyright notices to all my source code files:               Copyright (C) 2013 My-First-Name My-Surname        1. But what if someone else is also named _My-First-Name My-Surname_? What does courts think about that? How would they know who is the real author? Is there something I can/should do about this situation? (So they'd know for sure)   2. What if I change my surname. Then, how do other people know that I'm still the copyright holder? Is there something I can/should do, to avoid trouble with copyright, after I've changed my name? **An example** of when the above could be of interest: Someone gets married and change his/her surname and moves to a new address. Then, even if s/he has submitted his/her source code to the U.S. Copyright Office, that was done using his/her old name and address. Now s/he however has a new name and address. But there is perhaps other people that have the old name (but not also the old address). (In my country, for any first + middle + surname, there are usually many people with that full name.) Apparently people think this is a weird question, but I've read about rather many very decisions made in courts, e.g. someone suing for hot coffee and winning millions of dollars."}
{"_id": "213131", "title": "Specifying the format in which I want to get a response through POST", "text": "It's a good practice to let a client specify the format in Web REST API:               GET /api/items/123.csv      However, not only `GET` can return some answer, but `POST` also can do               Status: 201 Created          {       mgs: \"Your item has created successfully\",       href: \"/example.com/items/123\"     }      How should `URI` look like for a `POST` (`PUT` or whatever, but not `GET`) request which returns a response so that a client can specify the format they want the response to be in? Like this?:               POST /api/items/.csv       Or suppose there is an error when a client sends a POST request and the server must inform the client about it:               Status: 400 Bad Request     {       mgs: \"this is a bad request\",       devMessage: \"it's bad because ....\"       friendlyMessage: \"something bad happened...\"     }      What format should it respond in, why and how do I specify it as a client? P.S. - I'm aware about REST - Tradeoffs between content negotiation via Accept header versus extensions"}
{"_id": "225042", "title": "Why does java.util.Calendar use static factory methods?", "text": "It is considered better to have a separate factory class than having static methods in same class. See this question. But the standard API uses both approaches. Separate factory:               DatatypeFactory.newInstance().newXMLGregorianCalendar(...)      Static methods in same class:               Calendar.getInstance(...)      Why is this? In what case would having static methods be better than having a separate factory?"}
{"_id": "34630", "title": "Contract Programming - Deposit % and Payment Methods? Any advice is appreciated", "text": "I'm pretty new to doing contract work and finally landed a decent paying project. The guy actually offered to put down a deposit and I'm just wondering what percentage I should consider asking for. I was thinking around 25% since its not a terribly large project (only about 20 hours). Also, I can't use PayPal (have had a terrible experience with them freezing funds for no good reason) so I'm wondering if anyone can suggest other methods for the client to send the deposit / payment. I want to make it as easy as possible for them.. thanks for any advice"}
{"_id": "239063", "title": "How to unit test without mocks and not be tied to a concrete implementations of an interface", "text": "I consider myself to be a 'mockist' on the 'mockist' vs 'classicist' debate, but I am trying to understand the other point of view. Imagine I have this class, where a concrete instance of `IDependency` is injected by an IoC container. `IDependency` does not access a remote resource like a database or web service (in which case I would definately mock it), it is just another class containing some business logic.               public class UnitUnderTest     {         public UnitUnderTest ( IDependency dependency )         {         }     }      Using this pattern, I am free to change the concrete implementation of `IDependency` by changing the class injected by the IoC container. I am not _tied_ to any particular implementation. If I was to test this class without mocking `IDependency`, wouldn't I have to instantiate my _real_ `IDependency` to pass in to the constructor?               public class My_Unit_Test()     {         IDependency concreteDependency = new ConcreteDependency();         var unitUnderTest = new UnitUnderTest(concreteDependency);     }      In this example, if I write a replacement to `ConcreteDependency`, I would have to not only change my IoC container configuration, but all of my unit tests that use `ConcreteDependency`. Or.. do I use the same IoC container within my unit tests (which seems like it goes against the idea of testing things in isolation)?"}
{"_id": "231655", "title": "Keeping documentation / manuals up-to-date in a rapidly changing project", "text": "### Background I work on a relatively large project (~570 KLOC) in a relatively small team (formerly 5 developers, now 2). Large amounts of code can appear and then vanish in months; for example, a few years ago an investment bank launched a new stock exchange, then shut it down 7 months later\u2014thousands of LOC were written to support that exchange's interface, then deleted. To help operations and support teams as well as new developers, we have an internal wiki (a modified DokuWiki, if it matters) with things like retrospective specs (we're writing specs as we go, unfortunately) and what various settings, flags, and status codes mean and do. ### Problem Due to the fast pace of development, however, much of our wiki content becomes obsolete in months, if not weeks. And it's not as simple as updating a single wiki section about whatever component is being changed; with numerous interlocking components, changing one thing, like a setting in the algorithmic trading component, might require looking through a hundred references to this setting and/or component in the wiki, many whose sections may need updating. The main issue, I believe, is a motivational one. Developers know that whatever they write has a good chance of becoming obsolete soon, so it's rarely worth it (nor is it practical) to go searching throuh the wiki to update all relevant pieces, especially when 2 or 3 days later there might be a request to change, say, the format of a setting, or even its functionality. This leads to distrust of the wiki\u2014even amongst ourselves, we're never sure whether what we're reading indeed describes the latest functionality. And that, I feel, ultimately feeds a vicious cycle akin to the broken windows theory: the perception of disorder demotivates any action to bring back order. ### Idea My idea was to migrate the wiki to something more like Stack Exchange\u2014for example customizing Question2Answer. For two reasons:   1. I hope that putting all information in Q&A form encourages documentation to be written with the thought in mind, \"What question am I trying to answer? Who am I trying to help?\" This is unrelated to this post, though.   2. More importantly, my idea is to use tags\u2014a tag for each component, each setting, each business term, etc.\u2014so that it's _easier_ to find _posts_ that need updating, rather than going through every instance of a keyword\u2014and keyword searches are context-less already, on their own. ### Question Before I go through with this idea, though, I thought I might benefit from advice if anyone else has worked in such a context. I'm open to all ideas and alternatives! _How do you keep highly cross-referenced documentation up-to-date in a rapidly changing project?_"}
{"_id": "231656", "title": "LLVM case: is the success due to the algorithms?", "text": "I'm not sure if this is a subjective question, I hope not but I'm not proficient with LLVM so I'm just wondering: how come it's become so popular and so widespread used in the industry? Were the optimization algorithms used in gcc/icc/msvc just worse than the LLVM ones? Is it possible that a university project managed to outperform such known and long-standing compilers? I know that LLVM is modular, but can then a design be the cause of that much success? I can't understand the real reasons behind that, this is also probably related to a subjective question like \"is the success of a software always related to a new or semi-new algorithm that speeds something up?\" but I'd like to get objective reasons to my first question if possible"}
{"_id": "179832", "title": "TFS SQL Deployment Data Script", "text": "We are using TFS and SQL Server 2005 (looking to upgrade to SQL Server 2012 if that makes a difference). We store our database schema in a Visual Studio Database project (VS 2010). When code is released to live we currently use the Visual Studio Database Project to build a script for all our schema changes. The problem we have been getting is having to alter or add to that script to add/fix data for the deployment. For example if we add a new non-nullable column to an existing table we need to populate that column with data during the insert. Other times we may want to create new records in transactional tables (e.g. assign specific users to a new security access). Do Visual Studio Database Projects have a way to store these scripts that only need to be run once and somehow include them in the build? Does it know which scripts need to be run (for example if we are inserting default data we don't want to do that again a second time)? OR Is there a better way to manage these scripts?"}
{"_id": "173048", "title": "Patterns to refactor common code in multi-platform software", "text": "I have a Django application and a PyQt application that share a lot of code. A big chunk of the PyQt application are copied verbatim from the Django application's views. As this is a game, I have already an engine.py module that I'm sharing among the two applications, but I was wondering how to restructure the middle layer (what in Django corresponds to the largest part of the views minus the return HttpResponse part) into its own component. In the web application the components are those of a classic Django application (with the only exception that I don't make any use of models):   * the game engine   * the url dispatcher   * the template   * the views My PyQt application is divided into:   * the game engine   * the UI definition where I declare the UI components and react to the events (basically this takes the place of the template and the url dispatcher in the Django app)   * the controller where I instantiate the window object and reproduce the methods that map the views in the Django app"}
{"_id": "173046", "title": "I need some help creating a non-binary tree (or some other data structure that will better solve my problem)", "text": "I have about ten lists of numbers and some strings. Each list has about <= 30K lines. Each line on a list has a distinct number. I need to build an efficient way of finding all the lines in each list that has the same 'control' number (or key for dB guys) and comparing what is in their string parts. I am writing this in Java. Let me give an actual example of what I am trying to do..... I have ten lists each containing about 30K records. Each record looks like 901234(key)- 1.0987(float)-kadfnfj(Description String)-01/01/01(date) and all lists have similar records some keys may be available in some lists but not guaranteed!.. I want to find a way to search through all lists for one particular key and compare the attendant float value. Due to the size of the lists, i am worried about the memory usage and due to the number of records, I am worried about the efficiency of the data structure used. I have thought about using trees but my brain cells are about burnt now. I need some help."}
{"_id": "173044", "title": "Are there well-known PowerShell coding conventions?", "text": "Are there any well-defined conventions when programming in PowerShell? For example, in scripts which are to be maintained long-term, do we need to:   * Use the real cmdlet name or alias?   * Specify the cmdlet parameter name in full or only partially (`dir -Recurse` versus `dir -r`)   * When specifying string arguments for cmdlets do you enclose them in quotes (`New-Object 'System.Int32'` versus `New-Object System.Int32`   * When writing functions and filters do you specify the types of parameters?   * Do you write cmdlets in the (official) correct case?   * For keywords like `BEGIN...PROCESS...END` do you write them in uppercase only? It seems that MSDN lack coding conventions document for PowerShell, while such document exist for example for C#."}
{"_id": "173043", "title": "Why Does F# Contain Both Modules and Namespaces?", "text": "I've been assuming that F# includes the module keyword in addition to the namespace keyword due to backwards compatibility with OCaml. Is this the only reason for the inclusion of the module keyword or are there other reasons module was included?"}
{"_id": "173041", "title": "What are the PHP web server architecture components and the purpose of each one of them?", "text": "Given below is an image of a basic PHP web server architecture: ![PHP web server architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/2H0eh.gif) Would someone please explain the several components available and how they interact?   I'm more concerned of how the **PHP Core** operates and relates to the other components, so feel free to elaborate on this point specifically. This Diagram was taken from here."}
{"_id": "205999", "title": "When to use REST to handle requests vs using AJAX to handle requests", "text": "On my web page, if I wish to display dynamic dropdowns (e.g city names based on country selected), I can do it using AJAX. But I can also do it using a REST call. So which should I use? My problem is I really don't get the difference between REST and any other HTTP browser request.(a.k.a a form submit). I have looked at the formal definitions of REST and it seems identical to a HTTP request. So how is REST inherently different from AJAX?"}
{"_id": "215647", "title": "Organization standards for large programs", "text": "I'm the only software developer at the company where I work. I was hired straight out of college, and I've been working here for several years. When I started, eveeryone was managing their own data as they saw fit (lots of filing cabinets). Until recently, I've only been tasked with small standalone projects to help with simple workflows. In the beginning of the year I was asked to make a replacement for their HR software. I used SQL Server, Entity Framework, WPF, along with MVVM and Repository/Unit of work patterns. It was a huge hit. I was very happy with how it went, and it was a very solid program. As such, my employer asked me to expand this program into a corporate dashboard that tracks all of their various corporate data domains (People, Salary, Vehicles/Assets, Statistics, etc.) I use integrated authentication, and due to the initial HR build, I can map users to people in positions, so I know who is who when they open the program, and I can show each person a customized dashboard given their work functions. My concern is that I've never worked on such a large project. I'm planning, meeting with end users, developing, documenting, testing and deploying it on my own. I'm part way through the second addition, and I'm seeing that my code is getting disorganized. It's still programmed well, I'm just struggling with the organization of namespaces, classes and the database model. Are there any good guidelines to follow that will help me keep everything straight? As I have it now, I have folders for Data, Repositories/Unit of Work, Views, View Models, XAML Resources and Miscellaneous Utilities. Should I make parent folders for each data domain? Should I make separate EF models per domain instead of the one I have for the entire database? Are there any standards out there for organizing large programs that span multiple data domains? I would appreciate any suggestions."}
{"_id": "39122", "title": "What tools can be used to facilitate code reviews after commits?", "text": "I've been evaluating a number of code review tools (mostly free ones), but they all seem to be aimed at reviewing patches before they are committed. This wouldn't really fit within our workflow with Subversion, so I've been looking for alternatives that better support reviewing committed revisions instead of just diffs. Any recommendations? I would prefer free or inexpensive tools."}
{"_id": "195786", "title": "Why is C so high in TIOBE index of popularity, while C++ is just under here too, but not as popular?", "text": "I can't get my head around this. If C is so much used, but C is not C++, can someone explain to me the most important reasons that makes C more used than C++ ? Where is all this C code written for ? Is this about the industrial sector which heavily rely on imperative programming but can't support the cost of implementing or tuning C++ compilers ? Are there that many kernel hackers ? Is tiobe relevant ? I never stumbled into any article or post commenting or explaining how singular tiobe's ranking is, and what it actually says about what the industry likes, and what it can tell about what the industry actually uses, to pinpoint the industry real needs. It's hard to explain. I just find it odd many companies want C#, php, java jobs, and not C or C++ jobs (just relating my unemployment and my interviews here) even if those C/C++ jobs are crap. I would take those instead. Or does this mean language hype plays a strong role here ?"}
{"_id": "109937", "title": "What is a manifest and when is it appropriate to use one?", "text": "I hear the usage of manifests in various ways but never have had the need\u2014to my knowledge\u2014to use one. What are they and how are they used? EDIT: I'm curious about manifests in general with any language."}
{"_id": "191713", "title": "Why should I use the function migration in codeigniter?", "text": "What is wrong with using database tables with phpmyadmin or mysql? What are the benefits, if I'll use 'migration'?"}
{"_id": "195408", "title": "Can we create a program that writes out its source code?", "text": "Can we create a program that print out its source code what if we (or the program itself) compile than the new program would have the **same exact functionality** what the original program has? So somehow it would reproduce himself in perfect clones that can reproduce too.   The program **shouldn't use any external files** othervise it would be realy easy to implement: we just need to create a program that reads a file than writes it out, than copy and paste the source code to the external file.   My first attempt was to write a program that has a print function than copy- paste the source code to this print function, but this program can reproduce himeself for only once, and doesn't have the same functionality because the second program cant print out the source code."}
{"_id": "109931", "title": "Why should you prevent a search engine from indexing your development server?", "text": "I've heard that you shouldn't let search engines index your development server. The reasons given were:   * Duplicate content penalties   * Customers making purchases from an unsecured domain (if eCommerce) These issues may seem relatively minor and I'm not sure it would be enough to convince someone to put in the effort to lock down the server. Aren't there broader security concerns? What should be secured and why?"}
{"_id": "88179", "title": "C: What is a good source to teach standard/basic code conventions to someone newly learning the language?", "text": "I'm tutoring someone who can be described as a rank newcomer in C. Understandably, she does not know much about coding conventions generally practiced, and hence all her programs tend to use single letter vars, mismatched spacing/indentation and the like, making it very difficult to read/debug her endeavors. My question is, is there a link/set of guidelines and examples which she can use for adopting basic code conventions ? It should not be too arcane as to scare her off, yet inclusive enough to have the basics covered (so that no one woulc wince looking at the code). Any suggestions ?"}
{"_id": "84841", "title": "To be strict or pragmatic?", "text": "I'm beginning to realize that developing software is (amongst others) a process of constantly asking yourself questions. Questions regarding quality of code, separation of concerns, minimizing dependencies, ... But the main question is: how far can you go without ending up in a mental hospital? I'm applying for a new job. Yesterday I was with a possible future employer who wanted to test my programming capablities. One of the exercises was: explain what this code does. I went through some code of the application (winforms in vb.net) that they develop (it's an administrative application for a hospital). This gave me the opportunity to actually see how they approach things and it was rather disappointing. Some examples:   * I saw somewhere: Call [insert name of subroutine here] -> I was struck: isn't that something from VB6?   * They have a separate datalayer, using ado.net, but one method I had to examine returns a dataset to the calling layer. So separate datalayer or not, the application is tied to ado.net (which could also never be a problem if they never switch to another data access approach).   * That dataset is read as-is, so it still is a data-centric approach (of course, one can argue how much logic/behaviour you can put in classes like \"Patient\" or \"LabAnalysisRequest\".   * I also believe to have seen the construction of an sql query by string concatenation.   * They use stored procedures (which, to me, means: scattering of logic)   * no mention of views/controllers: it's all form driven   * The most ugly thing I saw was:                   If TestEnvironment.IsTesting then            someVar = [some hard coded value]         else            someVar = [some dynamically retrieved value]         end if         [remainder of the function here]      It's all so different from what I learned in school: (persistence agnostic) domain layer, persistence layer, presentation layer, unit testing, ... So I rephrase my question: how fundamental or dogmatic should one be? To what extent should a programmer stick to his or her principles or just write code that does the job?"}
{"_id": "97778", "title": "What to do when your work colleague doesn't understand the design trying to be maintained", "text": "A software project that I am working on involves me and another programmer. The project involved an engine backend with an MVC front end. Initially I did alot of the work on the project and so setup some simple design methodologies mainly surrounding abstraction and template strategy. For quite a while I have been off the engine backend and working on the website. However I have still maintained an interest in the engine as I was informed that I might be back on it at some point. The project is under a very tight deadline so we are all rushing like made to get it finished on both the front end and back end. I don't consider myself to be a great programmer and so I never try and enforce any particular design or set of methodologies on people as I'm not always sure I'm right and like to have other people offer their opinions to try and come up with better solutions. However I have noticed changes being made to this engine code that is really starting to irk me. When I confronted the developer to suggest he do the work another way he said he didn't see the point as there seemed little benefit considering the tight deadlines. I had to try and explain that the haack he had put in could mean further development after release and I didn't think it was fair to make others pick up the slack when we could fix it now. I spent about 30mins going through what I had done and at the end of it he asked me to pretty much write the code so he could just copy it. The basis of what was I had initialy setup was:   * An abstract class x   * An abstract factory class to create concrete instances of x What had happened was he had put a couple of if statements that could easily have been put as virtual/abstrace methods on the abstract class and then implemented accordingly as the new change followed the same principle of other methods on the abstract class already. This seems trivial to me, however he couldn't even grasp this even when I showed him the classes involved. Now my question is:   1. Is this unfair to assume he should have grasped this concept. I realise that we are on tight deadlines but I thought it was trivial. The programmer is supposed to be at least an intermediate level.   2. This has happened in a number of places and I have constantly tried to get him to change but he doesn't seem to. Should I just ignore it?   3. Should I raise this issue elsewhere, or just suck it and when I'm put back on the project just go around changing all these things. His part of the project is not going to be finished which is why I will have to go back on and help him out. I really don't want too, as he has taken a project with not great, but ok architecture and really put in alot of messy code that more than often didn't follow what was trying to be achieved. If the question is too vague or ranty, please let me know and I'll try and edit accordingly. EDITED: The project is expected to continue after the initial deadline as there is already follow up work planned and work that we did not fit in and has been agreed to be implemented later."}
{"_id": "161892", "title": "How to visually document interactive user interfaces for fast consumption", "text": "I'm writing documentation for some interactive Ajax user interface but instead of writing everything in words I would rather provide diagrams that are faster consumed than whole paragraphs of text. I did provide page navigation flow diagram but that's very high level before you drill down to individual pages and their inner workings. ## Example Suppose I have to document a typical search panel:   * is collapsed by default and can be expanded on click   * has basic search fields that provide basic search criteria over my model entity   * has advanced fields as well that show when one clicks a particular link which expands search with additional fields   * has two actions Search and Reset that are pretty much self explanatory, but have particular behaviours attached to them I know you will say that this already is documentation, but it's usually not this simple and trivial. Search panel is just an example. I can see that most of my interfaces (or interface components) need two types of documentation:   1. **properties** related to contained controls (i.e. drop down field with these and those values of which that particular one is selected by default)   2. **actions and behaviours** that describe what happens when user interacts with controls related to those properties ### What would be the best diagram or documentation format to describe these kind of interactive interfaces so that it's easy and quick to consume by implementers?"}
{"_id": "88173", "title": "do asp.net mvc tools let you make sites faster than php frameworks", "text": "I generally use cakephp but after watching some MS videos of MVC3 it seemed to go fairly quick. I understand the intellisens in VS2010 works classes and for databases. It seems like once you know the editor and framework basics this would be very handy. My question is, do things like intellisense actually speed things up noticeably?"}
{"_id": "141427", "title": "Too much to learn, dealing with overwhelming varieties of technologies", "text": "I am about to graduate, and I am already working as a web developer in our library IT department. When I look at job postings I am absolutely overwhelmed by the sheer variety of technologies out there. Some companies care about math + algorithms + data structures. Some care about experiences in technology stack XYZ. SQL, css, html, frameworks, javascript, design patterns etc.. etc... etc... At some point I realized I just need to start at mastering a foundation to become employable at a better place and go from there. But the skill-set to get me in the doors varies and I just don't have time to learn everything. How do you deal with this issue? What is the essential stack to become employable? Say in php or ror arena. Perhaps a smarter move would be to move to a technology stack with less variety like .net?"}
{"_id": "153620", "title": "Should I pay my developers for bugs fixes for a project or work that's still in progress?", "text": "We are working with a group of developers on a project. The project is still in progress (not completed) and these developers charge us for time spent on fixing bugs on codes that were not written valid in the first place. I understand that we should pay for changes/new requests if any, but not bugs fixes for a work in progress. We also understand that once the assignment is being deployed to the live site, we may be liable for bugs fixes that may arise after a support period is being exhausted. The question now is, is it appropriate for such charges to be levied upon us while the project is still in progress?"}
{"_id": "215475", "title": "How can I correct html for missing closing tags in c# ?", "text": "I have html stored in database received from text editors and because of some mistakes in the code the html is not valid, it is missing some closing tags. and due to this I am not able to process this html for some other operations like generating pdfs. So I need to write some code in c# that can check for tags that are missing closing tags and insert a closing tag at the correct place."}
{"_id": "159286", "title": "Is this RabbitMQ / sockjs pub/sub connection setup a comet solution? ", "text": "My company is attempting to set up a pub/sub connection using RabbitMQ and sockjs, on Windows servers. I have two questions:   1. My supervisor is calling this setup a comet solution, I was wondering if that is the right terminology?   2. Is there a better solution stack for having a data server asynchronously ship data to a client without the client requesting data (besides the initial subscription)?"}
{"_id": "120076", "title": "Can all code be represented as a series of Map / Filter / Reduce operations?", "text": "I have recently been refactoring large chunks of code and replacing them with Linq queries. Removing the language bias - Linq is essentially a set of Map / Filter and Reduce operations that operate on a sequence of data. This got me thinking, how far would I theoretically be able to take this. Would I be able to rewrite the whole code base into a series (or even a single) of Map / Filter and Reduce operations. Unfortunately I get paid to do useful stuff, so I haven't been able to experiment much further, but I can't think of any code structure that couldn't be re structured as such. Side effected code can be dealt with via monads.. Even output is essentially mapping memory addresses to screen addresses. Is there anything that couldn't be (theoretically) rewritten as a Linq query?"}
{"_id": "64727", "title": "Windows Azure vs Amazon EC2 vs Google App Engine", "text": "From a developer point of view which platform would you consider for a large social web application? If you could provide some details on what you consider to be the strengths of which alternative it would be great."}
{"_id": "159283", "title": "MVVM, DDD, and WPF Layered Application Project Structure Guidance", "text": "I am trying to setup my application's structure in VS and I want to \"try\" and future proof it to a reasonable level. This application will be a WPF re-write of an old Winform app that had followed no conventions. No Layers, Tiers, Acronyms, etc... It is a fairly largish Enterprise Application. I planned to use Linq To SQL as my DB's are and will most likely always be MS SQL. Also I have an existing skill set with it. I want to follow MVVM and DDD the best I can but I get confused on the structure of my application when combining these. Let me try and illustrate with some examples. When I follow MVVM my folder structure may look like this:               Views     Models     ViewModels     Helpers      but how does that fit into a simplistic DDD layered approach where my Project Structure might resemble this:               MyApp.UI     MyApp.Domain     MyApp.Data      Do I put the `Models` in the Domain layer or do I have 3 versions of say `Person`? This leads to another question of where would I put my Repository and mappings of DB Object to Domain Object? I would assume Data... `Views` I get would go in UI but would `ViewModels` also? Finally, where would I be embedding my Business Logic? I found the following on CodePlex,DDD Example ,and it has been some help but seems to be for a Web App though that may not matter and is my ignorance shining through. Don't get me wrong, I know I can have as many folders and call them whatever I want. I am trying to figure out where to place things so that this will be scale-able, not what those places necessarily are called. The heart of my question might be shown like this.   I have `tblPerson` object generated by `*.dbml`. This is obvious and would belong in my \"Data\" layer.   Now I would have Model, DTO, Domain Model, or whatever it's called in a seperate Layer(project?) called `Person`. I would need a `Mapper` for `Person` to `tblPerson` that I'm not sure where to put.   Then, I'll have a ViewModel for, say, `EditPerson` that would have it's own properties that it pulls from `Person` but possibly more as well.   Finally I'd have a View that was bound to that ViewModel.... To be clear that paragraph is FILLED with my assumptions and guesses and I am hoping someone will help clear the air for me or offer there insights so that 6 months to a year from now I am not kicking myself more than I need to."}
{"_id": "215470", "title": "Safest way (i.e. HTTPS, POST, PGP) to send decryption keys through the web?", "text": "I am in the final stages of development for my Revit plugin. This plugin is programmed in C#, and distributed via a DLL. One of the DLLs is an encrypted SQLite database (with proprietary data) that is in the form of a DLL. Currently, in development stages, the decryption key for the SQLite database is hardcoded in my main DLL (the program's DLL). For distribution, since DLLs are easily decompilable, I am in need of a new method to decrypt the DLL. My solution is to send our decryption keys from our servers securely to the host's computer. I was looking in POST, thinking it was more secure than GET, but upon research, it appears it's similarly insecure, only more \"obscure\" than GET. I also looked into HTTPS, but Hostgator requires extra money for HTTPS use. I am in need of some advice - are there any custom solutions I can do to implement this?"}
{"_id": "100768", "title": "How can I be most productive in Visual Studio when limited to small screen space?", "text": "I'm a student, and I do a lot of code on a small (12.5\", 1366x768) laptop screen that I carry from class to class. Most programming environments are designed with the idea that someone has large screen size available, because most programmers do in fact have access to large screens. However, large screens are difficult to carry to class all day, and my previous laptop (15\", 1920x1200) often got left in the dorm just because it was so friggin heavy. I'm pretty much locked in to Visual Studio at this point; no program I've ever used is as productive for the kind of code I work with (after installing Whole Tomato's Visual Assist and Jared Par's VsVim, of course :) ) (I've seen other questions about small screens but they all pretty much go with \"leave Visual Studio\" -- which is hard given some of the kinds of development I've been doing...."}
{"_id": "152574", "title": "Considerations for accepting contributed code to an Open Source project", "text": "I\u2019m working on a \"for fun\" project in my spare time. I may end up making it Open Source and this makes me wonder what I need to think about if someone cares enough to contribute to it.   * Do I need to have some sort of legal mumbo jumbo about \u201cif you give me yer code, it accepts the same license as the project, bla bla bla\u201d (what is the norm here?)    * Is there a way to check contributed code to make sure it is not plagiarized or would that liability fall on the contributer?    * Are there any other gotchas, standard/common practices I should follow, recommendations, things I need to think about?"}
{"_id": "152571", "title": "Mercurial release management. Rejecting changes that fail testing", "text": "Researching distributed source control management (specifically mercurial). My question is more or less **what is the best practice for rejecting entire sets of code that fail testing?** **Example:** A team is working on a hello world program. They have testers and a scheduled release coming up with specific features planned.               Upcoming Release:        Add feature A        Add feature B        Add feature C      So, the developers make their clones for their features, do the work and merge them into a QA repo for the testers to scrutinize. Let's say the testers report back that \"Feature B is incomplete and in fact dangerous\", and they would like to retest A and C. ![Repo Doodle](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DteiT.png) **End example.** What's the best way to do all this so that feature B can easily be removed and you end up with a new repo that contains only feature A and C merged together? Recreate the test repo? Back out B? Other magic?"}
{"_id": "21169", "title": "Ergonomics of Apple keyboard for long programming hours", "text": "I am programming with an apple keyboard (the one all aluminium with flat keys). it's quite some time I observed I occasionally mistype, and I feel pain in my hands. Is it the keyboard's fault, or am I just getting old ? Does any of you have experience with hours of programming with the apple keyboard ?"}
{"_id": "241505", "title": "How do OSes work on multiple CPUs?", "text": "Assumption: \"OS es (atleast in some part) should be written in assembly.Assembly programs are CPU specefic.\" If so how can one os run on different CPUs ? For example: how is that I can load Ubuntu on different systems having different CPUs (like intel i3,i5,i7, amd a8,a6,etc) from the same bootable disk?   1. Does the disk contain seporate assembly programs for each CPU?   2. Are these CPUs 'similar' enough to run the same assembly program?   3. Is my assumption wrong?   4. Something else.... Thanks for responding.   1. I tried to find out in what way are the CPUs that I mentioned 'similar'. I came across the concepts of Instruction Set Architecture and Microarchitecture of CPUs.A CPU will understand a program if it is combatible with its ISA. Even if CPUs are 'wired up' differently (different microarchitecture) , as long as the ISA implemented on top is same ,the program will work. ARM and x86 have different ISA ( that why there are 2 windows 8 versions, right?). And if an app program is written in an HLL with compilers for both platforms we will saved from wasting time writing 2 programs. Did I understand anything wrong?   2. Are there programs that can take a compiled program as input and produce a program executable on another CPU as output? Is it possible? (Virtualisation?)   3. 32 bit windows programs do install on 64 bit windows ,dont they? Arent 64 bit CPUs 'differerent' from 32 bit CPUs? They do get seporate OS versions, right?   4. Is this backward combatibility achieved using programes mentioned in (3) ?"}
{"_id": "236566", "title": "Are multi-line comments a critical facility in a modern language?", "text": "I'm trying to convince the designers of a language that multi-line comments with an arbitrary start and end are important, and should be included. Currently there is only a \"comment-to-end-of-line\" primitive. Their line of argumentation reminds me of what some say about why you should use spaces instead of tabs. Basically that editor features can pick up the slack and remove the requirement for a different construct. _(So if you wanted to comment out more than one line, you'd select what you wanted and run a macro of some kind...to add or remove a to-end-of-line comment to each line. I just read thatthis feature exists in Visual Studio, despite C/C++ offering a multiline comment.)_ Other suggestions about removing blocks of code from execution wind up being things like \"cut the code out, try it, and use the redo queue\". I think this is not a very easy way to keep track of \"invisible\" information you might want back, and redo queues are quick to lose information the moment you hit even a stray key on accident. So this does not sway me. I can live with the space vs. tab thing and putting that on the editor, and it's now pervasive. But to me this is different, and I'm dissatisfied with these answers. For me, being able to comment out code with just a start and end marker like `/*` and `*/` is extremely useful. Passing the buck to editor magic doesn't let you position your starts and ends arbitrarily _(how would you comment out the middle of a line if all you had was`//`?)_ And I also don't like leaning that much on editor features. Sorry to ask a question with overtones of an opinion poll, or about something subjective. But what I'm looking for are any more objective arguments I am not thinking of, which could provide more ammunition backing this feature I think is important. _(Or I guess I could accept a powerful argument favoring NOT having a multi-line comment format, which overrides my strong desire to have it... I'm not putting high odds on that, though.)_"}
{"_id": "219960", "title": "Thoughts on refactoring a generic DAO", "text": "I have designed a generic DAO in Java and am having confusion about whether to refactor it to different design or not. **PS** Don't say to use already existing 3rd person framework. I know there are some present but I am learning Java and design patterns so I need all the practice I can get. If there's any confusion then please ask and I'll clarify. **The current Architecture** * * * **DAOFactory.java**   * Contains the `abstract` methods for creation of `DAODelete`, `DAOUpdate` and 2 other interfaces to be implemented by concrete implementation classes   * `public` Class method for creating the concrete Factories for producing the concrete implementaton of the interfaces mentioned before. **DAORead.java**               public abstract <T> T getPojoForPrimarKey(Connection con,             TableName tableName, String primaryKey) throws SQLException;      Similarly in my other interfaces I have generic methods.   * Here `Connection` is passed by the service layer and closed there for transaction management.    * `TableName` is a enum that I am using to have a switch case in lower layer of DAO for calling Table Specific functions. Also using an enum is helping me in type checking. **OracleRead.java**               @Override         public <T> T getPojoForPrimarKey(Connection con, TableName tableName,                 String primaryKey) throws SQLException {             T currentPojo = null;             PreparedStatement ps = null;             ResultSet rs = null;             try {                 String queryString = OracleSpecifics.queryString(tableName,                         primaryKey, QueryType.READ);                 ps = con.prepareStatement(queryString);                 rs = ps.executeQuery();                 if (rs.next()) {                     currentPojo = OracleSpecifics.getPojoFromResultSet(tableName, rs);                 }             } finally {                 DAOFactory.closeAll(ps, rs);             }             return currentPojo;         }      This is how I have implemented the `deleteFrom` function from the interface in concrete class. Here `OracleSpecifics` is the lower layer of DAO that I was talking about. It basically contains `switch` cases to check for specific Table. **OracleSpecifics.java**               // These functions call table-specific functions         @SuppressWarnings(\"unchecked\")         static <T> T getPojoFromResultSet(TableName tableName, ResultSet rs)                 throws SQLException {                  switch (tableName) {             case ASEEM_MASTER:             case ASEEM_MASTER_TEMP:                 return (T) SpecAseemMaster.getPojo(rs);             case AUTHENTICATE_TABLE:                 return (T) SpecAseemRole.getPojo(rs);             default:                 return null;             }         }      Here `SpecAseemMaster` and `SpecAseemRole` are Table Specific (specifically schema specific) layer producing the required fields **SpecAseemRole.java**               public static AuthenticationDetails getPojo(ResultSet rs)                 throws SQLException {             AuthenticationDetails cur = new AuthenticationDetails();             cur.setUserName(rs.getString(1));             cur.setPassWord(rs.getString(2));             cur.setRole(rs.getString(3));             return cur;         }      * * * **In service layer** The type by which the DAO's method is called is the Pojo representing the schema's data fields. e.g.               myFactory.getDAORead().<AuthenticationDetails> getPojoForPrimarKey(con, CUR_TABLE, primaryKey);      Here `AuthenticationDetails` is my Pojo aka DTO for communicating between my Controller and service layer (in Model). * * * **Please Note** that I am giving just a overview in the simplest way. There are 4 interfaces in the abstract DAOs containing total of 8 `abstract` methods implemented by 4 concrete classes. All these generic classes depend on a lower layer in DAO for getting specific queries, `PreparedStatement`s etc. which further calls functions in auxiliary utility class's functions depending on the `tableName` passed down this hierarchy. The bottom layer is schema- specific. **My Confusion about refactoring**   * I am satisfied with the upper layers of DAO but I think that at the the lower level specifically at the `OracleSpecific` the things which should have strong coupling has weak coupling. e.g. there are different methods for getting `PreparedStatement` for insert and update. Each of these in turn have `switch` case for calling the functions in lower utility class.    * **Although** the `schema-specific` methods are tied together in different utility classes the method call themselves in `OracleSpecifics.java` do not have any coupling.   * I am thinking whether I should change the enum `TableName` to contain a _specific state_. The state I am thinking for the schema-specific lowest level utility classes.   * These `specific states` contained in enums can be used to change the state of DAO and the DAO can then call the specific functions based on an interface implemented by all such states. Thus depending on the state the behavior can change automatically.   * Is this design decision correct or would it be meaningless?   * Any other thing that I might have overlooked?    * Any thoughts about the design itself?   * Would I lose type safety introduced by generics due to this change?"}
{"_id": "236564", "title": "What is a web API? (Application Programming Interface)", "text": "What is a web Application Programming Interface? Many common sites provide APIs. Why are they needed, and what function do they provide? How does one access a web API?"}
{"_id": "219962", "title": "Best way to re-platform MS access application to java application", "text": "I have a requirement where MS Access application needs to be re-platformed to java application.The MS access app has about 45,000 records and 53 columns with SQL connectivity.These record data need to be edited,data used to send email with pdf report attachment.Report is designed using SQL reporting services.I need to create UI to call the reporting service and generate reports.The customer wants all the 45000 records to be loaded in the single stretch in the datatable. Can anyone please suggest which is the best way to mimic this in java.Do i need to go with swing app or a web app."}
{"_id": "176134", "title": "How to TDD test that objects are being added to a collection if the collection is private?", "text": "Assume that I planned to write a class that worked something like this:               public class GameCharacter {         private Collection<CharacterEffect> _collection;              public void Add(CharacterEffect e) { ... }         public void Remove(CharacterEffect e) { ... }         public void Contains(CharacterEffect e) { ... }     }      When added an effect does something to the character and is then added to the _collection. When it is removed the effect reverts the change to the character and is removed from the _collection. **It's easy to test if the effect was applied to the character, but how do I test that the effect was added to _collection?** What test could I write to start constructing this class. I could write a test where _Contains_ would return true for a certain effect being in _collection, but I can't arrange a case where that function would return true because I haven't implemented the _Add_ method that is needed to place things in _collection. Ok, so since _Contains_ is dependent on having _Add_ working, then why don't I try to create _Add_ first. Well for my first test I need to try and figure out if the effect was added to the _collection. How would I do that? The only way to see if an effect is in _collection is with the _Contains_ function. The only way that I could think to test this would be to use a _FakeCollection_ that Mocks the Add, Remove, and Contains of a real collection, but I don't want _collection being affected by outside sources. I don't want to add a _setEffects(Collection effects)_ function, because I do not want the class to have that functionality. The one thing that I am thinking could work is this:               public class GameCharacter<C extends Collection> {         private Collection<CharacterEffect> _collection;              public GameCharacter() {             _collection = new C<CharacterEffect>();         }     }      But, that is just silly making me declare what some private data structures type is on every declaration of the character. **Is there a way for me to test this without breaking TDD principles while still allowing me to keep my collection private?**"}
{"_id": "176135", "title": "Sending files via HTTP to web service", "text": "I am bit frustrated at the lack of information about this online. Here is the issue: I am in charge of creating a iOS application which sends sound data back and forth between the server and the app. The Audio is in small files and thus does not need to be streamed over, but rather it can be sent. Right now, I am using a TCP server I wrote to handle applications like this. However, I want to keep the system as simple as possible and writing your own server and client sockets can get a bit complex and leaves room for crashes. Overall it slows down development because I need to account for packet structure and other things. My question is, can I write an ASPX or PHP web service that lets me pass the files back and forth through GET or POST?"}
{"_id": "236568", "title": "Practical Primes In P", "text": "Or rather, practically _applying_ PRIMES in P. I've heard a lot about \"PRIMES in P\", or the \"AKS algorithm\". It is, to oversimplify slightly, a very fast way of finding prime numbers. However, while I've tried reading the original paper (the revised \"V3\" seems to have vanished from the internet), it's a bit above my comprehension. I've also tried using Google to find practical implementations of the algorithm, but they too are incomprehensible (which is to say, they're all written in comment-free C++). Can someone produce a hobbyist/freshman-level explanation of how to implement the AKS algorithm? Or am I misinterpreting exactly what it it does and is for?"}
{"_id": "236569", "title": "Entity Framework - Loading Related Entities Explicitly", "text": "I have been using Entity Framework for a few years. I have flip-flopped between calling out to repositories in my business logic or using lazy loading to retrieve data as I work my way through the code. The problem with the first approach is that a single business object can end up relying on a lot of repositories (in the case of repository per table). The resulting logic is heavily mixed with calls out to the data layer, which makes it harder to test (lots of mocks). The problem with the second approach is that lazy loading leads to surprises sometimes. Novices call out to the database within loops without realizing it. Even using `Include` requires a lot of care. Too many `Include`s and the generated query can be very slow. So I was getting a little frustrated. A few weeks ago, I discovered the newer `DbEntityEntry<TEntity>` classes in Entity Framework. This allowed me to load related entities explicitly and check if they were already loaded. This led to a hybrid approach where I pass a single root object and a \"loader\" class. Before accessing a navigation property, I would ask the loader to load it. If the object was already loaded, it would just do nothing. Since it didn't cost anything, I just called it every time I referenced a navigation property. I have added this class to an existing open source project for anyone wanting to see it: https://github.com/jehugaleahsa/TestMvcApplication/blob/master/DataModeling/EntityLoader.cs. A co-worker pointed out this class really only solved some problems. Just like lazy-loading, it meant either using `Include`s or dealing with multiple database hits within a loop. Then the other day I had another idea: I could grab the related entities for a collection of entities. For instance, getting all of the roles for a list of users. This way, I can grab the all of the related entities in a single database hit outside of a loop. I ended up with this class: https://github.com/jehugaleahsa/TestMvcApplication/blob/master/DataModeling/EntityCollectionLoader.cs. This class dynamically builds a query based on the entities. Under the hood, it builds a join that filters the related entities by the main entities' primary keys. Both loader classes provide methods that return an `IQueryable<TRelated>` to allow for further filtering, sorting, etc. The problem with these methods is that it is impossible to know whether the related entities have already been loaded, so they always result in a database hit. This is still useful for doing multiple `Include`s in a single query. My business objects now just accept a loader factory in their constructors. The business object method getting called just takes the top-level object(s). So, I really only have a single dependency on my data layer. This dependency is hidden behind an interface. I am wondering what the drawbacks are to this approach. It still mixes calls to the data layer object, throughout, except now I can navigate to the results from the top-level object's navigation properties. Plus it is a single dependency that is easily mocked out (everything becomes a no-op). It can be used right along with lazy-loading so it won't be a disaster if you forget to call `Load` first. At first I was concerned that I would be building queries in my business layer, but I realized I was just saying `Load(u => u.Role)` and then immediately accessing `user.Role`. The loader class and Entity Framework are dealing with how to populate the navigation property. Am I missing something? This seems like a really awesome compromise between pure lazy-loading and eager-loading."}
{"_id": "176130", "title": "Moving between sites using SAML", "text": "I'm tasked with developing an SSO system, and was guided towards using the SAML spec. After some research I think understand the interaction between a Service Provider and an ID Provider and how a user's identity is confirmed. But what happens when I redirect the user to **another** Service Provider? How do I ascertain the user's identity there? Do I send his SAML assertion tokens along with the redirect request? Or does the second Service Provider need to contact the ID Provider all over again?"}
{"_id": "240457", "title": "What language is better for working with databases?", "text": "I am going to develop a software that works with different databases and I'm considering whether to use .NET languages or C++. I've known that .NET features LINQ and ADO.NET but are there features like that in the native C++? Which one works better, faster with databases?"}
{"_id": "70612", "title": "Why are structs/arrays zero based?", "text": "How was it decided that if you have an array/struct or anything similiar in a programming language it should be zero-based? Wouldn't it have been easier if it was 1-based. Afer all, when we are taught to count, we start with one."}
{"_id": "162276", "title": "How would a new language look if it was designed from scratch to be easy to TDD?", "text": "With the some most common languages (Java, C#, Java, etc) it sometimes seems that you are working at odds with the language when you want to fully TDD your code. For example, in Java and C# you will want to mock any dependencies of your classes and most mocking frameworks will recommend that you mock interfaces not classes. This often means that you have many interfaces with a single implementation (this effect is even more noticeable because TDD will force you to write a larger number of smaller classes). Solutions that let you mock concrete classes properly do things like alter the compiler or override class loaders etc, which is pretty nasty. So what would a language look like if it was designed from scratch to be great to TDD with? Possibly some way language level way of describing dependencies (rather than passing interfaces to a constructor) and being able to separate the interface of a class without doing so explicitly?"}
{"_id": "240459", "title": "Automated Testing Using Virtual Machines", "text": "I am working on making a system for the automated testing of student assignments. The biggest hurdle I am facing right now is figuring out how to sandbox the testing of the code yet still get and process the results of the test. I need to run it on a VM as there is no guarantee the code will not be malicious. I would like to have a process similar to the following:   1. Student submits assignment   2. VM is created and is given the source code submitted by the student   3. VM runs the tests on the source code   4. VM returns results of the test back to the host operating system   5. Results are processed Steps 2 and 4 are the ones I am looking for a good solution for. I am not sure what would be a good way automate the passing of files to the VM and the passing of results back from the VM. It seems like this is a problem that might have a solution already and I would rather not reinvent the wheel."}
{"_id": "162275", "title": "How can I ensure a portion of my project's code remains in all derivative works?", "text": "I had an idea for a website. After much coding and thinking out the idea, I've got it to a decent stage. If I were someone else, potentially a more commercially-minded person, I might want to sell it, or slather it with ads. However, I've fallen somewhat in love with open-source, and I'd like to host the project on GitHub and give it a nice open-source license. However, the project seems to be getting better all the time and, in fact, I think that it'll quickly grow to be fairly popular. So I want to put ads on it that benefit charity. How can I ensure that one small text advertisement benefiting charity remains in all derivative works? Are there any licenses that would let me do this? p.s. My other requirement for a license is that it gives me attribution (in the same form as the MIT license would be fine) [EDIT] I've decided to just let it be Apache licensed. I'm hoping that people will just leave charity-benefiting ads in."}
{"_id": "162272", "title": "Why are there proxy processes between clients and logic processes in C/S application?", "text": "In real world networking software following c/s model, there are always proxy server processes between clients and server processes dealing with business logic, why we need proxy to isolate the logic part and clients? What's the benifit of this architecture?"}
{"_id": "153195", "title": "How to render RSS feed in a desktop RSS reader?", "text": "Consider one feed like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/codinghorror It has the entire content inside the description tag of the feed, so you don't need to access the website to read the post. Now I have the problem of creating an interface for a feed like this on a desktop client. What's the best way to render the text in a pleasant way to the user? My first thought was to parse the entire HTML as if I was a web browser, but that looks really hard to do in a satisfying way. Are there any better (faster) alternatives? Rephrasing: how a desktop rss client such as feeddamon parses the input to display it nicely? Does it have a web browser inside it?"}
{"_id": "49749", "title": "UML: Going from Use Case to Class Diagram", "text": "In simple steps how can one make the transition from a Use Case diagram to a Class diagram?"}
{"_id": "125510", "title": "What happens between sprints?", "text": "I'm working on a project loosely following the scrum model. We're doing two week sprints. Something I'm not clear on (and don't have a book to consult) is exactly what is supposed to happen between sprints: there should be some \"wrap\" process, where the product gets built and delivered, but:   * how long does this typically take?   * should the whole team be involved?   * does it strictly have to finish before developers start working on the next sprint items?   * is this when code review and testing take place? There are three developers, adding up to about 1 FTE. So the sprints are indeed very short."}
{"_id": "190049", "title": "Program to verify all words in a crossword puzzle are valid", "text": "I have my own solution and wanted to check it against something online but couldn't find any examples. How would you solve this one. (I can post my code if necessary). I just want to see if someone has a better approach that I didn't think of or if my code misses any edge cases. This is for practice for a programming interview. I've written it in Java so I'd prefer to see other code in Java but any language would be fine- or even just an english explanation of what you'd do if you don't want to actually code it (but I'd prefer code since you might not realize certain things that you'd realize once you started coding). The grid is represented by a 2d array."}
{"_id": "149762", "title": "Working on someone else's code", "text": "I have hardly a year's experience in coding. After I started working, most of the time I would be working on someone else's code, either adding new features over the existing ones or modifying the existing features. The guy who has written the actual code doesn't work in my company any more. I am having a hard time understanding his code and doing my tasks. Whenever I tried modifying the code, I have in some way messed with the working features. What all should I keep in mind, while working over someone else's code?"}
{"_id": "190044", "title": "Longest subsequence without string", "text": "Does there exist a dynamic programming algorithm to find the longest subsequence in a string X that does not contain Y as substring? Just that this problem seems so similar to other DP string algorithms such as longest common subsequence and string. It must be able to handle occurrences of Y that overlap. It seems that this might be a 2-state DP problem, with the state [s_pos, t_pos] being the longest subsequence of string S starting at s_pos that does not have sting T[t_pos..M] as a substring. N is the length of string S and M is the length of string T. However, my transitions are not correct: it does not get the case where S=`aaabc` and T=`aabc`. The problem is in the _else_ statement - I don't know how to transition if the characters are equal. **Actually I feel that the if branch is wrong... anyone know what could be wrong?** It even fails the case S=`aaab` and T=`aab`. I can explain why it fails: assuming I call solve(0, 0). solve(0, 0) calls solve(1, 1). solve(1, 1) calls solve(2, 2). Since s[2] != t[2], it restarts the search from solve(3, 0). However, aab is a substring and it never checks this or considers this case...               int solve(int s_pos, int t_pos)     {         if (s_pos >= N || t_pos >= M) return 0;         if (t_pos == M - 1 && s[s_pos] == t[t_pos]) return 0;         int ret = 0;         if (s[s_pos] != t[t_pos])         {             int tmp = solve(s_pos + 1, 0);             ret = max(ret, tmp + 1);         }         else         {             for (int i = s_pos + 1; i < N; i++)             {                 int tmp = solve(i, t_pos + 1);                 if (tmp != 0)                 {                     ret = max(ret, 1 + tmp);                 }             }         }         return ret;     }"}
{"_id": "41925", "title": "How do I inject test objects when the real objects are created dynamically?", "text": "I want to make a class testable using dependency injection. But the class creates multiple objects at runtime, and passes different values to their constructor. Here's a simplified example:               public abstract class Validator {         private ErrorList errors;              public abstract void validate();              public void addError(String text) {             errors.add(                 new ValidationError(text));         }              public int getNumErrors() {             return errors.count()         }     }          public class AgeValidator extends Validator {         public void validate() {             addError(\"first name invalid\");             addError(\"last name invalid\");         }     }      (There are many other subclasses of Validator.) What's the best way to change this, so I can inject a fake object instead of ValidationError? I can create an AbstractValidationErrorFactory, and inject the factory instead. This would work, but it seems like I'll end up creating tons of little factories and factory interfaces, for every dependency of this sort. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "238813", "title": "Search substring using suffix array (and LCP)", "text": "I'm searching for a best way to improve suffix array run time using LCP. My text (about 2 500 000 chars) seems like: 0ricco0eric0america0polo0.... My thoughs:               SA=suffixArray     char=firstChar(input)     s = suffix array index of a first value char           currentWord is area (string) in the text from 0 to next 0 where the substring is found, hence: for founded substring icco would be currentWord ricco          repeat         if pattern in text[SA[s]:SA[s]+len(input)]             break         s+=1     results.append(currentWord)          repeat         if lcp[s]>=len(input)             results.append(currentWord)             s+=1         else:              break      Is this a correct way? Or could you give me an advice how it should be?"}
{"_id": "10614", "title": "How to learn from open source", "text": "I see this problem quite often. I like a certain value proposition of an open- source project. I try out the basic tutorials. Great. It works! But if I move on to more complex problems, I spend hours of doing research, debugging, frustrations, etc. What are your strategies to keep motivation in open-source going? What is the reward of open-source after success of basic tutorials? What \"success\" of open-source did you experience?"}
{"_id": "90202", "title": "How to protect intellectual property when oursourcing software development?", "text": "I'm a small company needing to outsource software development. I've written both functional and technical specifications for GUI developers and back-end (C or PHP) developers to implement my software application. I'm a little nervous handing over copies of these documents to request bids from numerous companies. Looking for recommendations to protect my work while outsourcing. What's the conventional wisdom? Is there generic NDA someone could send me a link to. How do others handle this situation. What would the outsource companies expect, or not expect, from me?"}
{"_id": "90203", "title": "Why is + so bad for concatenation?", "text": "Everybody keeps saying that one of JavaScript's problems is using `+` [example] for string concatenation. Some say the problem is not using `+`, it's type coercion [see the comments from the previous example]. But strongly- typed languages use + for concatenation and coerce types without any problem. For example, in C#:               int number = 1;     MyObject obj = new MyObject();          var result = \"Hello\" + number + obj;     // is equivalent to     string result = \"hello\" + number.ToString() + obj.ToString();      So why is it that string concatenation in JavaScript is such a big problem?"}
{"_id": "96914", "title": "New sequential testing framework with the same rigor as xUnit?", "text": "Looking for books (published or upcoming) and frameworks (preferably free/open-source) for sequential tests. My understanding of sequential tests is that it is very similar to a Workflow System, with the following elements:   * A collection of Setup/Exercise/Verify routine-sets (suites) - same as in xUnit      * Optionally, a routine-set may also contain:        * Teardown - which marks the end of the sequential test, after which the entire software state will be unrolled to the beginning.       * Undo - which rolls back just a single operation, back to before the \"Setup\" of the current routine-set.       * If a programmer provides an Undo, the programmer vouches for the correctness of that Unfo. (Assertions can be used, though it is best not to use any unreliable Undo.) If programmer is not certain, don't provide an Undo.   * Each routine-set must _either_ provide a StartUp, or one or more \"preceding step(s)\" - the new part for sequential tests      * A StartUp basically re-initializes the entire software state in a guaranteed way.     * The \"preceding steps\" are references to other routine-sets.   * **Unlike unit testing, sequential tests are allowed to pass on objects to the next step, in a carefully-controlled way.** **Example:**   * Routine A      * Create an empty \"readme.txt\". (stop the test if it already exist; preconditions not met.)     * Verify \"readme.txt\" exists.     * Undo function: Delete \"readme.txt\" if it exists.    * Routine B,      * `follows` routine A     * Open file \"readme.txt\" for writing (erase previous content) *  Related: Are scenario tests groups of sequential unit tests? * * * Dear all, sorry the question was lost in the midst of an unexpected machine failure; so this was recovered from a previous autosave draft. Since that crash I had extended the idea a little bit, and I'll need several days to clean it up and update this question. * * * The keywords are:   * `Initial` [new] (initializes the whole world)   * `Setup` (checks for pre-conditions are met for the beginning of one step, and create temporary objects that help with this one step - these temporary objects will cease when this one step finishes. You may call these \"local\" objects)   * `Exercise`   * `Verify` (assertions that the step has been successful)   * `Undo` [new] This optional method, if provided, means that there is a way to fully revert the world state to before this step. If one is provided, the programmer vouches for the correctness of that Undo. If unsure, don't provide one.   * `Final` [new] Wraps up the whole world for disposal. After that, Initial can be called again to re-initialize a second new world.   * `Follows` [new] this defines how steps can be chained together.      * Each test step that is not an `Initial` step must have one or more `Follows` statement. Each statement can include one or more peer steps - those peer steps need to happen first before this step can be invoked. **Now the gist. Once you specify all those rules, the sequential test execution engine enumerates ALL of possible sequencing of those sets of steps.** It enumerates all paths from `Initial` to `Final`, using whatever intermediate steps that allows a path to be formed. It will also warn you about loops and other potential problems, and let you choose how to deal with those loops."}
{"_id": "96915", "title": "Using Git in Enterprise environment", "text": "Git is an excellent version control system. If we exclude the fact that, it doesn't have an excellent GUI support, it's really good and fast. But the source controls like Clearcase has large support for enterprise customers. Companies are investing huge amount for source control servers and licesense. Of late most of the large companies like Google are adopting Git over other version control system. But this company has a strong open source group which consistently provide development and support for the tool (They might even have a custom version of Git of their own). At the same time, large companies are not really bothering about adopting open source projects and making them relevant to them.   * Is Git really a reliable tool for enterprise environment, especially on Windows Platform?   * The support is in question for Git as it's an open source product.   * Are there any company that provides solutions and support? How are the server costs compared to other version controls like Clear-case?"}
{"_id": "96911", "title": "Are ads within average Android applications profitable?", "text": "I presume this question is acceptable here-- because it's a part of software development but not specific to programming. If it's better suited for another area, could someone kindly help move me? I know ads can be profitable for some incredibly popular applications, but how do average applications fare? I am about to release an application and I think it will be pretty popular, but it's not the next Angry Birds. I guess there will be a few thousand users. Would a few thousand users that use the application about 15~20 minutes once or twice a day net any actual profits? What are you experiences with ads like? What kinds of numbers do we need to net anything worthwhile? Thanks~"}
{"_id": "163631", "title": "Has \"Not everyone can be a programmer\" been studied?", "text": "An old adage that many programmers stick to is \"It takes a certain type of mind to learn programming, and not everyone can do it.\" Now I'm sure that we all have our own trove of anecdotal evidence, but has this been studied scientifically?"}
{"_id": "246884", "title": "How can I close my Open Source project and what is required from me in order to make it closed source?", "text": "Let's say I wanted to close my \"GPL v 2.0 (or similar)\" licensed project, to which I'm the only contributor, and make it closed source.   * Do I still need to make the existing \"GPL v 2.0 (or similar)\" licensed code available after closing the project or can I refuse giving out the source code for old revisions that was previously \"GPL v 2.0 (or similar)\" licensed?   * Can I theoretically keep the the code \"GPL v 2.0 (or similar)\" licensed even after removing the public source code or do I have to distribute the source code if I'm using a \"GPL v 2.0 (or similar)\" license?"}
{"_id": "62449", "title": "Suggestions for finding code to review, that is for CodeReview.SE ", "text": "Looking for suggestions on finding code to review, or to be more clear, code on SE sites with excepted working code -- to suggest be posted to CodeReview.SE for optimization. The source of this question was another question I posted on CodeReview.SE.meta Growing Code Review, One Idea... :-) In which I got this reply: * * * > Sure, you can, as long as people are clear what code review is for -- > essentially, functioning, working code that needs to be improved in some > subjective, perhaps even aesthetic, way. > > If the code is in any way broken or does not work, that is not the purpose > of Code Review. > > Jeff Atwood * * * If anyone has suggestions on how to improve this question, just comment."}
{"_id": "13142", "title": "How do you keep emails short but complete?", "text": "I'm the odd kind of developer that likes writing and explaining - emails, specs, you name it. I enjoy helping people understand things deeply. I hate ping-pong communications where groups go through 30 or 40 emails, phone calls and meetings because 25% of the group misunderstood the previous dashed-off email in which the writer only half-explained their position, or was in a hurry and miswrote a critical word or left out a negative or two. This trait is great for documentation, but my emails are long, so people simply don't read them. A couple strategies I've used are formatting long emails as attached Word documents to encourage people to view them as documentation (works surprisingly well sometimes), or trying to use more bullet points instead of free paragraphs. These strategies increase readership, but the content is still long. Of course I want to yell and scream that complex technical topics require a lot of exposition and clarification, but that doesn't help anyone. Obviously there are tradeoffs that can be made, but I have a hard time justifying making statements that aren't clear or that will result in a million questions, misunderstandings, or added \"terms and conditions\" later on. How do you keep your communications short but complete?"}
{"_id": "13143", "title": "JavaScript for a non-programmer", "text": "2 years ago I starded learning AS3 in order to get hired at a web design company. A few months later, I ditched it, because I discovered that I'm better at design; so now I'm a web designer. Recently, I decided that knowing JavaScript would be nice and helpful, so i started with Essential JavaScript Training from Lynda.com. Untill today, I was under the impression that my knowledge of programming was somewhat basic. What happened today...? I learned (through trial and error) that variables are only valid in the functions that they're defined in. This turned my world upside down. I was like: \"that makes sense now...\" thinkin of the all the headaches that the lack of this specific piece of knowledge gave me. How could I have missed such a fundamental thing while learning AS3 (and now JS)? I didn't. And I remember reading a at least three books on AS3, but none of them taught me about programming. So what I want to ask you, is if you could recommend me a good JavaScript book from which i can learn programming, too, besides syntax. Thanks! And sorry for my bad english :)"}
{"_id": "120925", "title": "Unix as opposed to Windows (Java and C++)", "text": "Firstly I should explain the background. I am interested in high frequency trading programming roles. After looking at many job specs it is very clear that there is a big demand for programmers who have programmed Java and C++ on Unix as opposed to Windows. My question is what are the differences a High Freq programmer would come across? It cannot be something in the language itself because syntactically they do not differ over OS? Therefore I thought it must be something which the programming language has to interface, resources etc? Could anyone please help me out as I am trying to improve my C++/Java on Unix, in order to aim for this type of career? ps I'm guessing part of this answer lies with the socket infrastructure on Unix?"}
{"_id": "120927", "title": "Java code generation from class diagram", "text": "I'm on the way developing a Java application where user can provide a class diagram and get the corresponding Java code. I don't know how can I let the user interactively _draw_ a class diagram in Java. I am currently getting the required parameters like attributes, functions directly from the user, and then I render a class diagram for him. I show the class diagram on a jdialog.But when it comes to multiple class diagrams, it screws me. Is there a better way to do this? This is an example of a class diagram, I need to generate this from a Java program, given the values and relationship. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MgwsJ.jpg)"}
{"_id": "175447", "title": "What is the pattern behind respond_to / respond_with in Rails?", "text": "Is there a specific name to this? For me it looks like a view router, or a presenter router (I would name it like that) but maybe there is a better name and explication."}
{"_id": "175442", "title": "Is using something other than XML advisable for my configuration file?", "text": "I have a small tool I'm designing which would require a configuration file of some sort. The configuration file in my case is really more of a database, but it needs to be lightweight, and if needed the end-user should find it easily editable. However, it also will contain a lot of things in it. (depending on certain factors, could be 1Mb or more) I've decided I'd rather use plain ol' text, rather than trying to use SQLite or some such. However, with using text, I also have to deal with the variety of formats. So far, my options are   * XML   * JSON   * Custom format The data in my file is quite simple consisting for the most part of key-value type things. So, a custom format wouldn't be that difficult... but I'd rather not have to worry about writing the support for it. I've never seen JSON used for configuration files. And XML would bloat the file size substantially I think. (I also just has a dislike of XML in general). What should I do in this case? Factors to consider:   * This configuration file can be uploaded to a web service(so size matters)   * Users must be able to edit it by hand if necessary(ease of editing and reading matters)   * Must be able to generate and process automatically (speed doesn't matter a lot, but not excessively slow)    * The \"keys\" and \"values\" are plain strings, but must be escaped because they can contain anything. (unicode and escaping has to work easily)    * **Multiple** configuration files. Basically, each config file is tied to one \"project\""}
{"_id": "254507", "title": "Help identify terminology for pattern substituion?", "text": "This is a badly titled question...maybe a moderator can make it better. Nearly two decades ago, I took a computer graphics class as an undergraduate. We got to do whatever we wanted for a final project as long as it demonstrated what we learned about CG. So, I read a book (I can't think of the name at all) that described a methodology to generate fractal images starting with a simple shape and mutating it using substitution. It described abstract fractals and tree/flower fractals. I do recall implementing the Sierpinski Triangle in one of my sample imputs as well as a 3D tree. The input to the program was basically a series of arbitrary symbols defined by the program. `-----=` might represent a rose. Then you apply some substitutions for a given pattern. `--= > -+=---=` might represent a longer rose with thorns. So, applying that pattern to the initial string you get `----+=---=`. Finally you loop over this string `N` number of times to create some desired effect. The book itself offered a ton of inputs with sample pictures, but no actual source code. The implementation was completely left up to the developer. I would like to know if somebody can help me with the terminology for this technique and bonus points for the name of the book (or a book) that described this process?"}
{"_id": "254501", "title": "When are request headers read by ASP.NET code", "text": "I've got an issue with my MVC 4 website where iOS Safari is automatically sending the DNT header with the first request to the site. Here's my question on StackOverflow. Even though the iPhone has the DNT setting turned off, it still sends this header. So, my hack to fix this is to create an ActionFilter that will remove that header if it exists. My first attempt was to just add my custom ActionFilter to the FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters method. That did not work (though I didn't have Fiddler in front of my at the time to see what was really going on). As long as my browser (iOS Safari) stays open, it will always remember me, but I want it to remember me between browser sessions. So my next thought is to try adding the removal of that header inside either the Application_BeginRequest, or Session_Start methods in Global.asax file. Here's a handy site that showed what methods were available in the Global.asax file and what order they process in. That leads to my question, at what point in the process of processing a request, do the headers (specifically the DNT header) get analyzed that are used by Forms Authentication [session/cookie]? It would seem that by the time the request gets to my ActionResult method, that the DNT header has already been read and \"processed\". I want to be able to strip it out at the earliest possible moment. Btw, I'm not at my home computer right now which is where my code is. I'm not going to be able to start working on this until the wife goes to bed (11:00pm) so I want to make sure I have all my eggs in a row before I start working so I can get as much accomplished as quickly as possible. I need to have a big production release tonight, and I'd LIKE to get this fixed as well... Thanks for any help/input if you're able... Edit: Any other suggestions for either this question, or the one that I have referenced/linked above on StackOverflow?"}
{"_id": "118919", "title": "How important is the Acid3 Test anymore and what should replace it?", "text": "For a long while the default guide to latest standards support for browsers was the Acid 3 Test. I've just run this on Windows 7 (x64) for Chrome 15.0, Firefox 7.0, Safari 5.1 and IE 9.0 and they all score 100. Some of the animations could be smoother but on the whole there's not much to differentiate them. I've then looked at the scores for html5test.com which show much wider variation:   * 343/450 : Chrome 15.0    * 298/450 : Firefox 7.0   * 293/450 : Safari 5.1    * 141/450 : IE 9.0 Are there other tests that are a useful measure for browser feature support? What minimum score on the HTML5 test is a 'good' score? How important is the HTML5 test score and can it really test all the new features properly? Is it a good replacement for the Acid 3 test? Are the modern browsers now compliant enough that the end user can remain ignorant of the level of standards support?"}
{"_id": "255675", "title": "Is there a way to run javascript on a present webpage", "text": "I don't have programming background. I have started learning javascript recently. I'm wondering if there is a way to run javascript on a webpage ? for example I would like to write a javascript on this webpage which runs through all the questions posted in past 1 hour and does something. Is it even possible ?"}
{"_id": "176868", "title": "What camera to choose for using with JMF (Java Media Framework)", "text": "For the past 2-3 weeks I've been searching for different ways to implement custom video streaming and in more general video capturing and manipulating, going through DVR-cards, Video Capture Cards and stuff like that. Somehow JMF was able to stay out of my sight for all this time, but since I find out about it I'm more and more sure that this is a comfortable level for me to start playing around with video and stuff. One major topic that occurs to me while searching for more info was the presence of many posts where people were complaining about the fact that any particular camera ( most of the time I think they mean web cameras) doesn't work with JMF. Even though there are a lot of different cameras (not necessarily a web cam) that are not that expensive I want to play it safe and buy one that is proven to work well with the JMF. Also due to lack of experience maybe this is irrelevant but since I'll buy the camera mostly for learning and experimenting I want to have the maximum freedom possible to mess with different features, options and so on."}
{"_id": "255671", "title": "Why friend in C++ should be in the header file?", "text": "Friend function/class, FriendOfX for some arbitrary class X is an implementation detail of class X. Why in C++ we have to declare them in the header file? Are there any compelling reasons to make this contract (between X and FriendOfX) explicit? I understand there could be valid reasons to make this contract explicit but in some cases I would not want my client using interface class X to know about FriendOfX since FriendOfX happens to handle certain collaboration aspects of interface class X which are implementation specific"}
{"_id": "176862", "title": "Quality Assurance tools discrepancies", "text": "It is a bit ironic, yesterday I answered a question related to this topic that was marked to be good and today I'm the one who asks. These are my thoughts and a question:   Also let's agree on the terms: QA is a set of activities that defines and implements processes during SW development. The common tool is the process audit. However, my colleague at work agrees with the opinion that reviews and inspections are also quality assurance tools, although most sources classify them as quality control.   I would say both sides are partially right: during inspections, we evaluate a physical product (clearly QC) but we see it as a white box so we can check its compliance with set processes (QA). Do you think it is the reason of the dichotomy among the authors? I know it is more like an academic question but it deserves the answer :)"}
{"_id": "255678", "title": "How to tell the View to create a cookie?", "text": "I have a `LoginService` class with `loginUser($email, $password, $remember = false)` method in the application layer of my model layer. Now, if `$remember` is `true` it needs to create a persistent user login cookie on the client's browser, but since that is the responsibility of the View, what is a good way of reaching the view through the controller to let it know it should create the cookie for it?"}
{"_id": "176864", "title": "PHP frameworks - should I use them?", "text": "First of all let me explain who I am: I am a PHP Developer working for a company developing their CMS which handles online stores, data feeds and other content like blogs. I have been programming for 6 years and 4 of those have been in PHP. (I used to be a C# developer). My question is regarding PHP frameworks. I see so many jobs asking for zend, cakephp and other MVC types of frameworks. However, even as an experienced developer I have never used a PHP framework. Should I start learning? If so where do I even start as there are so many. I am about to re-write so much of my work's CMS and I'm wondering whether I could help myself a lot by using a framework. What do people think? Considering I will be re-writing a lot of the online store stuff... I am experienced in OO and I have used the .NET framework in the past. Thanks in advance for the replies."}
{"_id": "20342", "title": "Minimal Refresh(F5) Web App Development", "text": "Although questions similar to this one has already been asked and I can perhaps assemble the answer for myself by reading already posted materials. Still I am going ahead with the question, cause I feel it has elements of new flavor and I would like to see the views of others on how to tackle this. I have developed several Web Applications of various scale. In some of them, I was only Developer, in another I led small teams and was part of a big team in another. Most of these were developed using PHP. One of them used Kohana Framework, the rest were all developed using Raw PHP. The main difficulty that I faced in regards to speedy development was, whenever a small change was done to fix a bug or modify a feature, I had to refresh my web browser, go through several pages until I reached the page which included the fix. I would like to know, what should be the development approach so that I can test out my code without having to, or at least minimize the number of refreshes required to test out changes in code. Although, the concepts maybe applicable for developments of any nature, for this question, let us stick to PHP and it's framework."}
{"_id": "155927", "title": "The benefits of using RAII in C++", "text": "Suppose I'm a teacher and I want to explain to my students what are the benefits of using RAII in C++: I need a very good example, full of details, but that is easy to understand.   Which approach would you use?"}
{"_id": "20344", "title": "How do you educate your customers?", "text": "Customers need some education because they think different. Customers think:   * changes are not a problem in any time of the project   * details are not important (exceptions even less)   * time does not cost money (they have a fix price agreed)   * one sentence in the specification can be extended/read freely to fit the actual needs - and this does not affect the contract. (here we see often the \"common sense\" discussion - example: \"Of course we need a invoice management screen when we talk about accounting managment - this is common sense!\")   * the list goes on... The main problem is that customer (no matter if external or internal/department) do not want or can not understand. It took me many years to understand software creation process and I am still learning, so how can they in just a few months. What is your experience, what is the best approach to educate customers?"}
{"_id": "155921", "title": "Play or Lift: which one is more explicit?", "text": "I am going to investigate web development with Scala, and the choice is between learning Lift or Play: probably I will not have enough time to try both, at least at first. Now, many comparisons between the two are available on the internet, but I would like to know how do they compare with respect to being explicit and involving less magic. Let me explain what I mean by example. I have used, to various degrees, CakePHP, symfony2, Django and Grails. I feel a very clear distinction between Django and symfony2, which are very explicit about what you are doing, and Grails and CakePHP, which try to do their best to guess what you are trying to achieve and often feel \"magical\". Let me give some examples comparing Django and Grails.   * In Django, views are functions that take a request as input and return a response. You can instantiate explicitly an instance of `HttpResponse` and populate its body with a string, or you can use shortcut functions to leverage the template system. In any case the return value from your view always has the same type. In contrast, the `render` method from Grails is highly polymorphic. You can throw a context at it and it will try to render a template which is found by convention using that context. Or you can pass it a pair of a template path and a context and that will work too. Or a string. Or XML. Grails tries hard to make sense of whatever you return from your controller.   * In the Django ORM, each model class has a static attribute representing the manager for that class. That manager exposes a fluent interface to build querysets. In Grails, you can have a similar functionality by composing detached criteria. Still, the most common way to query objects seems to be the use of runtime-generated methods like `FindUserByEmailNotNull` or `FindPostByDateGreaterThan`. I will not go further, but my point is that in Django-like frameworks you have control over the whole flow of the request/response process, while in Grails- like ones I feel I only have to feel the blanks and the framework will manage the rest of the flow for me. This is not to criticize Grails or CakePHP; which type you prefer is mainly a matter of preference. In fact, I happen to like some aspects of Grails, but I feel more comfortable with a framework which does less for me. Back to the point of the question: which one among Play and Lift is more explicit about what you do and which one tries to simplify more what you have to do with a layer of \"magic\"?"}
{"_id": "155923", "title": "Multiplayer Game Listen Servers: Ensuring Integrity", "text": "I'm making a simple multiplayer game of Tic Tac Toe in Python using Bridge (its an RPC service built over a message queue - RabbitMQ) and I'd like to structure it so that the client and the server are just one file. When a user runs the game, he is offered a choice to either create a game or join an existing game. So when a user creates a game, the program will create the game and also join him as a player to the game. This is basically a listen server (as opposed to a dedicated server) - a familiar concept in multiplayer games. I came across a really interesting question while trying to make this - **how can I ensure that the player hosting the game doesn't tamper with it (or atleast make it difficult)**? The player hosting the game has access to the array used to store the board etc., and these must be stored in the process' virtual memory, so it seems like this is impossible. On the other hand, many multiplayer games use this model for LAN games."}
{"_id": "94457", "title": "Recursion -- is it \"divide and conquer\" or \"code reuse\"", "text": "_**Recursion_** \\-- as we all know -- is one of those problems -- that wrapping your head around feels like achieving a \"milestone\" in your programming voyage. But when it comes to actually using it in real world problems -- knowing the mechanics of recursion is NOT enough -- one must also understand the nature of the problems where recursion is the most suitable solution. So my question is this...   * what are the \"problem patterns\" that call for the solution of recursion   * is recursion a form of \"divide & conquer\" strategy or a form of \"code reuse\" -- or, is a design pattern in its own right   * can you give us an example of a real world problem where recursion comes to mind as an immediate solution _**\\-- UPDATE --_** a lot of answers are referring to \"real problems\" as tree traversing, of factorial, etc. I would prefer \"the REAL real problems\" -- let me give you an example... We had a LARGE chuck of text (about 30 MB of text as a linked list of `structs`), and we needed to make an index of it for full text searching. We needed keep the entire index in the memory and re-index the text every 10 minutes. Every 10 minutes we'd compare the entire text (two linked lists, line by line) with a newly generated chunk of text -- to see what line was changed -- and then we would re-index only that line -- that way we could avoid having to re- index the ENTIRE text. Remember -- we needed to find the diff points between two 30 MB linked lists. One of my colleagues came up with a fantastic program which used HEAVY recursion to compare the lines -- and then collect the positions where the chucks differed in an array -- yes i know it sounds puzzling -- how could recursion help here -- but it did. The point is -- how could he see that this problem could be solved smartly with heavy use of recursion?"}
{"_id": "62192", "title": "DDD + POCO does this makes sense?", "text": "DDD promotes rich domain models with behavior in it, POCO naked objects without any objects in it. **Is it possible to have them both combined?** I have a Multi Layer Solution   * Core - has POCO Entieties, interfaces for Repositories and Services   * Data - Repository implementations   * Service - Service Implementations   * Infra - IoC Locator/registrar, viewmodels, (could be merged to webui)    * WebUI - asp.net mvc presentation layer I was saying that I use DDD but recently I've been told that I'm not because my Entities don't have behavior, **is this true?**"}
{"_id": "62197", "title": "So I've gotten the hang of iOS app development, but how do I become a great app developer?", "text": "I've spent the past 2 years teaching myself and taking classes on object oriented programming. I have done quite a bit of Java programming, and lately I've been spending a lot of time doing objective-c. I really enjoy programming, but one thing that I have noticed (with some frustration) is that I'm not amazing at finding elegant solutions to problems. I'm beginning to notice that it isn't enough to just solve a problem, but that the way you approach and implement a solution says a lot about you as a developer and depth of your knowledge and understanding. Being that I am looking to make a career out of iOS development (I'm still in college), I want to be sure that I am doing everything I can to learn elegance, as opposed to just getting it done. Case in point: For one of my first programming projects for school (this was a long time ago!), we needed to populate arrays with tons of information. I went through and added each element line by line just hard coding the index! When the TA came by he laughed at me and was like: \"Why didn't you just use a for- loop?\" and I thought to myself, well who cares? It works doesn't it? **My Question to iOS devs out there:** What are some things that I can study/try to implement to increase the elegancy of my design habits? What are examples of things that are often done in the app development world by rookies that just shouldn't be done? Instead of just being able to throw a quick and dirty hack job of a solution together, I want to be able to consistently come up with awesome ways to solve problems! And I've realized that those types of solutions don't always come quickly to me. Is this skill something that can only be acquired through experience and doing it wrong tons of times before you realize that there is a better way? Are there any areas that you can recommend I try to cover and make a point of understanding? While I am happy that I can keep up with many of the q's posted to sites like this, I get frustrated when I see some that are just in a whole different universe! I want to close the gap, and so I am throwing this out there to any who may be interested/able to help. Thanks!!"}
{"_id": "155929", "title": "Java Phones: How to set up JTAPI?", "text": "I want to use JTAPI (1.4 - latest) to create an app that will call my phone whenever I need it to. I downloaded JSR043 (JTAPI specification) and have been reading the API docs and it seems pretty straight forward with respect to _how to code JTAPI_. However I seriously doubt that getting a Java app on my laptop to call my cell phone doesn't require some 3rd party or middle man service provider and possibly other entities/configurations as well. So I ask: besides using the JTAPI in my Java code, what do I need to install or set up to have a Java app that calls my phone? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "94450", "title": "Are there any special advantages of SQL Server with Visual Studio?", "text": "I have seen the forum dba.StackExchange, but this question involves Visual Studio as well, therefore I wanted to post this question here. One of my old application was built on VS-2008 and MySQL back-end. After three years, I don't have any major issues with it and the database performance is also good. I am scaling this application to a WPF application and want to know whether SQL Server has any added advantages when used with VS-2010, other than that it is from Microsoft, over MySQL? In most scenarios, I notice query execution in MySQL is faster as compared to SQL Server."}
{"_id": "237389", "title": "Web Application that is independent of web server software", "text": "# Scenario I haven't faced this requirement before, so I'm not confident with my solution. Our team drew up a plan to design a web application using a basic HAT stack for a project with a 4 month development time. We presented it to the client, who added two big new requirements. The requirements were:   * The application must be runnable on any web server (IIS, Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd, etc...)   * The application must be able to work with any database (MySQL, MongoDB, etc...) His reasoning is that he has no control over the environments where the web application will be installed on. He plans on re-selling our solution to other customers. We pushed back to the client saying that this would increase development time, but he has already committed to his clients. However, he said he is willing to put as much money into it to get it done. ## Possible Solution? The only solution I could think of was building the application in Perl CGI script as that seems the most universal, then having a variety of database adapters to plugin into an ORM, which is customized through a config file. ## Question   * What alternatives are there to creating a web application where we have no control over what modules, etc.. are installed in the web server?   * Is this even possible?"}
{"_id": "255825", "title": "Version control workflow for semi-bespoke software", "text": "I have a web app product (PHP, MySQL) for which I offer a bespoking service. That is, you can buy the main product, which is quite extensive, and then have it customised however you like. This might include new features, adjusting fundamentally how existing features work, disabling features, making changes which require a different database schema, etc. I want to find a sensible way of managing a large number of different releases of the product in version control such that I can make changes to the core and pull changes out to the releases as required, and also make changes to a release independently. Sometimes I might want to pull a change from release back into the core. My instinct was to use Git, and have the releases as branches. It is possible to pick specific commits to merge back into the trunk, so I think this could work. However everywhere I have looked suggests that it is a bad idea to have permanently separate code in branches. The suggestion is to use a single codebase and have all the differences in features configurable, so that each release can behave separately. This sounds fine for software which is sold in multiple editions, which have different features enabled, but I think it would be a complete mess for my software. I'm looking for a good development workflow for a setup like this, which may or may not be based on version control."}
{"_id": "142249", "title": "What is the best approach for Single Sign On Application Development that is lightweight?", "text": "What is the best approach for Single Sign On Application Development that is lightweight? By lightweight I mean not too much javascript. I know stackexchange does use single sign-on. Basically is the login credential stored as cookie? Or combination of IP-Address and other specific information about the logged in user?"}
{"_id": "237380", "title": "Can we still consider that Moore's law still holds true regarding the consequence on CPU speed?", "text": "Moore's law is an empirical law and in simple terms states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. One of the consequences of Moore's law is that CPU performance doubles every 18 Months. I've seen 'Why is Moore's Law seen as an absolute truth?' and although curious does not answer my question. Currently we are partly achieving that by making multi core CPU's. **Can we still consider that speed of CPU's doubles every 18 months?** Multi-core CPU's can be looked at just as distributed computing. A \"good old\" single threaded sofware/algorithm won't be able to take full advantage of such CPU as before and It's not true that all algorithms are paralelizable with speed gain."}
{"_id": "168623", "title": "Criteria for selecting timeout value?", "text": "Situation: a piece of software reads frames of data from a file in a seperate thread and puts it on a queue, emptied by another thread. That second thread periodically checks on the queue and fails rather gracefully, by showing an error message stating the read timed out, if no data is available within a certain amount of time. Initially this timeout was set to 200mSec. There was no real reasoning behind that constant though, but it worked fine. We measured on a couple of machines and for large data frames, larger than what would be used by customers, a read took like 20mSec whith no other load on the machine. However one customer now gets timeout errors now and then (on the second try all is fine, probably the file is in cache or the virus scanner leaves it alone). The programmers are like 'well, yeah, but that customer's machine is full of cruft, virus scanners, tons of unneeded background processes etc'. Of course the customer is like 'hey this should just work, shouldn't it'? While the programers have a point, since the software is heavy enough to validate the need for a dedicated machine, that does not make the customer happy. Increasing the timeout to 2 seconds, for example, solves the problem. But I'd like to make a proper decision now instead of just randomly pick some magic constant that is probably ok in 99% of cases. What criteria should be used for that? We could just pick a large number, but that feels wrong. (and then we end up with a program that has the horrible bahaviour of hanging when trying to read from a disconnected drive for instance, whereas we'd rather make it show an error right away). Or we could make the timeout value a user setting, but then we need to ducument it clearly and even then not all customers are tech savy enough to really understand what it does. Or we could try and wait until another customer reports timeouts and increase the value again. And again. Until we find something ok for 99.99% of the cases.. Any good practice for this type of situation?"}
{"_id": "149177", "title": "DDD: Developing the Domain Model alone", "text": "In DDD examples it seems the common method for developing the domain model is to sit with domain experts and iterate over versions of the model, say on a whiteboard, continually modifying it and changing it until presumably an agreement is made on how the model looks. On my project I've spent a couple of days with a domain expert, discussing the domain, and now I want to lock myself away and produce a draft model based on my understanding, rather than producing the model collaboratively with the domain expert. He could then review it, and I could update it according to our subsequent discussions. Has anyone else worked like this, or does anyone think its a good / bad idea? I think maybe I just find it easier to think creatively when alone."}
{"_id": "243101", "title": "Problem in working with async and await?", "text": "I am trying to upload files to Azure Blob Storage and after successful upload adding the filename to a list for my further operation. When i am doing synchronous it works fine but when i am doing async the error occured. Error : Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute.               foreach(var file in files)     {        // .....        await blockBlob.UploadFromStreamAsync(fs);        listOfMovedLabelFiles.Add(fileName);     }     if (listOfMovedLabelFiles.Count > 0) // error point     {         // my code for further operation     }      Is there any way to wait till all the async operations get completed."}
{"_id": "240423", "title": "Is adding support for another operation system a minor version or a patch?", "text": "Let's say I use Semantic Versioning for a my project. I'm developing it under FooOS, but the language uses virtual machine(either interpreted language or bytecode based) so any operation system can run it. The thing is, the project interacts heavily with OS-managed things(e.g. pipes, processes, the file system) so if you try running it under a different operation system - BarOS - it gets so buggy and so many things don't work that the project is practically useless. Now, at some point I want to make my project work for BarOS, and I want to release a version just to add that support. The question is - does that count as a _minor version_ or as a _patch_? It seems like it's a patch:   * All I do is fixing all the bugs that appear when running the project under BarOS.   * Users of my project shouldn't notice any change in functionality, since they are using FooOS in the first place.   * For BarOS users my whole project is new - but getting new users is not something that should result in a version increment. But even with all that reasoning, it just doesn't seem right to label a release as big as new OS support as a patch..."}
{"_id": "255821", "title": "Defining error codes", "text": "We are designing an error-handling framework for a cryptographic library written in C. The approach we are taking is that relatively few errors are propagated back to the user since on most occasions he cannot do anything about them (notable exception: parameter validation errors. Of course we tell the user if a call succeeded. We'd also create log entries for fault investigation.) In short, just because we have an error condition somewhere inside the library it does not mean that we need a public (user-facing) error code for it. Also, from past experience we think that a significant portion of error conditions that require error codes pertain to very narrow areas of code, it is often the case that a particular error is only returned from (or set by) one function. Therefore we would like to define error codes at the lowest possible level. For example, if only one function can return/set a particular error code we would define that code in the .h file where the function prototype is declared. However, in such case we might get error code conflicts - the same error code value for different errors. Can someone please propose an elegant approach to avoid such conflicts? Or at the very least an automated mechanism to check for such conflicts (which can then be fixed by hand)?"}
{"_id": "161702", "title": "Dealing with API and error messages", "text": "We are in the process of constructing an API (using WCF). So far I noticed 2 ways in which methods could go wrong due to problems with the parameters sent.   1. wrong format, for example we have a string date parameter which should be in a certain format, if it's in a different format the method cannot continue.   2. if a method role is to do something identified by an ID, but that ID does not exist in the application (DB) First we thought throwing an exception, but I realize now that this is not truly an \"exceptional\" situation, these kind of things is pretty common. Right now we deal with it in the following way: We have an abstract class which is called APIResponse. it has a boolean success variable, and an array of messages for the API's client. Each group of methods has a corresponding implementation of this class and that will be the returned object. **is this kind of approach ok?**"}
{"_id": "161705", "title": "Is there a limit on how many global consts are used before an application is considered bad programming?", "text": "Basically, I develop websites, some large with many crud operations, etc... However I've gotten into the habit of storing re-usable data as a constant in my PHP applications I currently have 44 constants defined in one application. These range from:   * Database config   * Home page for admin and guest   * url slug names   * declaring development mode   * declaring maintenance mode   * a few directory shortcuts ( instead of writing /admin/templates/images ill use const ADM_IMAGES )   * session names   * cookie names   * random things like MAX_IMAGE_SIZE, THUMB_SIZE and MAX_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS I don't have any problems using all these constants... It's kind of helpful having all these in my application. I just wanted to know if its a 'good practise' to use them in this excess If not, how else could this data be encapsulated to be useful AND easy enough to reach in my application? Also bearing readability in mind."}
{"_id": "161704", "title": "How to explain that sample size does not influence project length", "text": "We have big enterprise projects they normally involve copying data from a source database to a destination database and then setting up a number of additional applications that sync this data etc. The last project contained 250,000 items (rows of data). The next project will only contain 4,000 items. Project managers / business people believe the project should be 1/10 the time to complete because its only a fraction of the size of the last project. What is a good **analogy** I can use to explain that writing code to transfer data from one system to another takes the same amount regardless of the number items - writing it for 1 item or for 100,000,000 will take roughly the same amount of time from a programming point of view."}
{"_id": "29540", "title": "Alternative methods for maintaining JavaScript source", "text": "I'm looking for other options for maintaining my personal JavaScript namespace. The problem I'm having boils down code _Organization_ Vs. _Performance_. I would simply LOVE to be able to separate major sections of my code into a more \"traditional\" style. But I haven't because if I were to do that I would probably quadruple the amount of HTTP requests I send out. Essentially I am including two different js files. `jQUery/jQueryUI/my namespace` in one and my implementation in the other. Great for performance in my web-apps... but looking at my JavaScript source makes me scared, confused, and horrified all at the same time. What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "156478", "title": "Rails application - how to optimize/reduce database calls when iterating over a collection", "text": "What's the best way to optimize a Rails app where you need to pull info from the database for a collection of items? For example, if I am building an online forum system... I would have a number of `Posts` and the posts would have_many `:recommendations` and `:comments` and `:favorites`. When I display the posts in my view, I might need to display this info - like a count of how many comments there are, and whether or not my current user has favorited/recommended the post. I was playing around with this and it seems there are a huge number of DB queries being executed! First I'm grabbing my collection of posts - then, iterating through each one, I am going to the comments table, the favorites table, etc... to get counts or see if records exist for that particular post. So for every post I have, I'm executing 3 separate queries! **Is there a more efficient way to get this data, or are tons of queries like this normal for a scenario like I describe?**"}
{"_id": "191874", "title": "Exception Handling in Java web application", "text": "I know exception handling is a topic often discussed in the world of Java. I've read a few threads on here and SO as well. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2169339/exception-handling-in-a-java-web- application I find myself identifying with principles such as _Do not suppress or ignore exceptions_ , _Do not catch top-level exceptions_ , and avoid anti-patterns like _Log and Throw_. http://today.java.net/article/2006/04/04/exception-handling- antipatterns#throwingException http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/11/19/exceptions.html?page=2 **Question #1, is there a different standard of practice when it comes to web applications?** For example, is it a legitimate use case to catch `Exception` for logging purposes and then throw it up the stack?               function void xyz() throws Exception {         try {         } catch (Exception e) {             LOG.error(\"ERROR: \" + e);             throw e;         }     }          function void otherFuncA() throws Exception {         xyz();     }          function void otherFuncB() {         try {             xyz();         } catch (Exception e) {             LOG.error(\"ERROR: \" + e);             throw e;         }     }      I am finding it very hard to accept as a practice because it is generating so much unnecessary code (see `otherFuncA` and `otherFuncB`), affecting the function calls all through the different layers (DAO, Service, Controller, etc.) **Question #2, do I lose information about an error (let's say what caused a`NullPointerException`) if I let unexpected, unchecked exceptions float up to the Controller layer and then, and ONLY then, handle it there (catch `Exception` and throw stack trace)? As opposed to logging immediately, and re- throwing (seen above).**   Of course, I will still check for specific exception types where applicable. I seem to find the stack trace is often a better indicator of what went wrong vs. which specific field was causing an error... I am really interested in input from more experienced developers and what best practices/reasoning guide your exception handling."}
{"_id": "250744", "title": "How do I visualise the feature space partitioning in random forest?", "text": "I am learning about random forest and found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdnIqGbqiYs&list=UUb9svouAi1XHRqlOs8LXbBg very useful. The first 8 minutes explain how to visualise how the feature space is partitioned as the tree is populated during training. In the video however, the partitioning is only explained with respect to two feature vectors throughout the entire tree. It was pretty easy to understand how the feature space is partitioned for two features, as the feature space plots feature 1 vs feature 2. However if I have multiple features selected at random to be used in any node of a given tree, how do I visualise the feature space and how it is partitioned? For example if one branch contains 5 nodes, with 5 features being selected before reaching the leaf node, how is the feature space partitioned to include all 5 features?"}
{"_id": "109680", "title": "Writing java doc comments for unit test cases", "text": "In my opinion, the unit test cases itself serve as a documentation for the code. My company wants me to write detailed java doc comments on top of unit test cases. Is it necessary to do so? Do you write comments like that ?"}
{"_id": "174799", "title": "System testing - making sure the system conforms to specification. Validation?", "text": "After weeks of research I have nearly completed my thesis, yet I am unable to clear up my confusion contained in all previous threads here (and in many books): During system testing, we check the system function against system analysis (functional system design) - but that would fit to a definition of verification according to many books. But I follow ISO12207, which considers all testing as validation (making sure work product meets requirement for intended use). **How can I justify that unit testing or system testing is validation, even though when I check it against specification? Which fullfils the definiton of verification?** When testing that e.g. \"Save button\" works, is it validation? This picture shows my understanding of V&V, so different from many other sources, including ISTQB etc. ![This is my understanding of V&V - picture taken from the net](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7I040.gif) Essential problem I have is that a book using the same picture also states on another place that: > test activities in the area of validation are usability, alpha and beta > testing. For verification, testable system requirements are defined whose > correct implementation can be tested through system tests. Isn't that the opposite of what the picture says? Most books present the following picture, where validation is just making sure that customer needs are satisfied. Mind you that according to ISO, validation activity is testing. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/0Enyb.gif)"}
{"_id": "178231", "title": "how to properly credit authors of MIT license program", "text": "Although I have found similar questions on this site they were not what I was looking for. I have modified the source code of an MIT licensed project, and I have added new classes to it as well. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that it is legal to add my copyright notice above the license and remove the other one. But how should I attribute the contribution of the previous authors? Should I use a separate file? There are also some html files with no license or copyright notice in them which I also modified. Do I have to handle them differently? My question is different than this question in that I have also modified some of the files of the project I am extending."}
{"_id": "178230", "title": "NoSQL as file meta database", "text": "I am trying to implement a virtual file system structure in front of an object storage (Openstack). For availability reasons we initially chose Cassandra, however while designing file system data model, it looked like a tree structure similar to a relational model. Here is the dilemma for availability and partition tolerance we need NoSQL, but our data model is relational. The intended file system must be able to handle filtered search based on date, name etc. as fast as possible. So what path should i take? Stick to relational with some indexing mechanism backed by 3 rd tools like Apache Solr or dig deeper into NoSQL and find a suitable model and database satisfying the model? P.S: Currently from NoSQL Cassandra or MongoDB are choices proposed by my colleagues."}
{"_id": "111180", "title": "For user defined data, is it better to use a table of tables or dynamically created tables?", "text": "In an application that allows users to define their own tables and columns (details of that are not the focus of this question, but imagine a tool that lets users create their own forms and automatically handles storage, just to get the idea) is it better to store each table and column they create in a \"table\" table and a \"column\" table, or to dynamically create tables and columns? This \"one table to rule them all\" question is somewhat related, but in that case the \"table\" table is more clearly a bad idea. In this case, if you don't go that route then all your queries will have to be dynamically generated. Even though the argument \"don't write yet another application designer tool for non-programmers, so you can keep adding features until you are basically having users develop in a crummy version of, say, Visual Studio, using your custom crummy language\" is pretty reasonable, I've had a lot of projects with some version of the user defined tables requirement and this question is about _how_ to implement it. _Whether_ to implement it is another question, but probably too specific to particular applications to be a good question here."}
{"_id": "92119", "title": "Hiring Developers - Securing Source Code", "text": "I have a popular web-based app, and now suddenly my main developer has disappeared. Although I've found other great developers but I don't want to distribute the source code to everyone. Is there any way I can have them work on it while keeping the source code safe? Thanks"}
{"_id": "221222", "title": "Design pattern for configuring objects", "text": "### Context In a Cocoa application I am developing, I need to load a data model that is defined in plist files. So, I have something like:               root (Array)     ---- item (Dictionary)     -------- name : \"objects\" (string)     -------- prefab : \"object\" (string)     -------- children : (Array)     ...     ---- item (Dictionary)     -------- name : \"actions\" (string)     -------- prefab : \"action\" (string)     -------- children : (Array)      So, the previous data model is loaded in the code to become an object representation using the language's primitives (arrays, dictionaries, strings, ... etc). No custom classes here. When I load that model, I know that an item in the table view can have children if the \"prefab\" key is set. When \"add child\" is pressed, I go to the prefabs (some other plist) and fetch that prefab's structure. e.g:               root (Array)     ---- item (Dictionary)     -------- name : \"object\" (string)     -------- parameters : (dictionary)     ------------ key \"object_id\" : value \"\"     ------------ key \"x_position\" : value 0     ...      As you can see, from the prefab in the first model, I can go to the second plist and fetch a structure that is defined in a plist. All loaded using a plist library, without any subclass creation whatsoever. There is a single prefab factory class that contains the prefab structures, and instantiates and initializes the object from the prefab with the configuration data. ### Problem I hope you see the grave danger in this design. The model contains both user generated data as well as configuration data!! _EEEEK!!!_ ... Sheesh, that's so bad... The problem haunted me when I started exporting the model after the user of the app interacted with the model though the UI. The exported model would contain the configuration data (such as the prefab key), which makes the exported data rigid and un-upgradable. If I were to change the prefab key in later version of the app, to something else, and you load an old model, that model will load the old configurations with it, in our case, referencing the old prefab. ## Question I need help find a proper design pattern that clicks with this data driven design that I have, by providing the configuration data from a separate file, and somehow, linking it with the data model."}
{"_id": "50727", "title": "What are typical responsibilities and achievements recorded on a CV, for a programming job?", "text": "I'm brushing up my CV/resume and trying to think of responsibilities and achievements from my past jobs and projects. It seems there aren't many, but probably there're some that I just don't identify as worth mentioning to a employer. What kind of responsibilities and achievements does your job include and which of them do you list on your CV/resume?"}
{"_id": "221229", "title": "Javascript Use of Window Object through alternate means", "text": "Disregard your usual paradigms for a mere moment here.... I've seen a few sites who have used the following logic:               a=[];     b=a[\"sort\"];     c=(b)();     c[\"alert\"](1); // intended output: Alert displaying \"1\"...      supposedly to access (I'm guessing here) the primitive of the sort function to gain access to the window object, and then using that to access \"alert\"... I've tried executing this ages ago, and it worked a charm... But some twelve months or so later, I tried to run it again... and it's failed to execute, and given the following error:               TypeError: can't convert undefined to object      My question is, why wouldn't this logic work? It seems quite sound... Or is it? And yes, I know that I could just do `alert(1)` and be done with it, but I'm trying to get an understanding of alternate ways of coding... I work in IT security and I know certain people have ways of using XSS to find alternative ways to perform generic functions to compromise systems..."}
{"_id": "105275", "title": "Where to start fixing a complex bug?", "text": "I'm trying to solve a complex bug in our codebase , but the problem seems to be coming from a lot of places to the point that i dont know what to change first . do you have any procedure or guidelines todo in such a situation ?"}
{"_id": "148963", "title": "Capitalization convention in assembly?", "text": "Is there any convention on what to capitalize in (x86) assembly? For example, which one of these 'looks best'? (Or maybe none of them do?)               [BITS 32]     %define MACRO 1     MyLabel:         MOV EAX, 2      versus               [bits 32]     %define macro 1     MY_LABEL:         mov eax, 2      versus               [Bits 32]     %define MACRO 1     MyLabel:         mov EAX, 1      versus all the other possibilities?"}
{"_id": "66637", "title": "How do I go about releasing my application as open source?", "text": "I have created my own forum on ASP.NET MVC 3 and Razor. It's a decent forum with, say, version 1 functionality. I plan to work on other features as well after my release of this version. 1) What site apart from Codeplex can I post my application on as open source? 2) What are the guidelines I need to follow before posting my application regarding my code etc? 3) I want my application to be used by others, so do I have to worry about anything like making a documentation about my code, etc?"}
{"_id": "66634", "title": "Where's the unix philosophy community?", "text": "I am trying to implement my computer system following the unix philosophy i.e. I want to edit files, read/send email, store data and browse the web, all using tools that comply with the unix philosophy. Others have defined the unix philosophy better than I, but suffice it to say that I mean tools that \"do one thing well\", work with unix pipes and can be easily scripted. I'm looking at tools like ed, edbrowser, nmh and uzbl. However, I wonder where like-minded people on the internet 'hang out' (e.g. a wiki or forum)? Is there any internet community, or linux distribution community, that has a large group of people who also wish to implement all their work through unix philosophy tools? Any suggestions would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "66639", "title": "How to adopt agile methodology for developing firmware/embedded-systems-software?", "text": "I've always wondered how to apply agile methods really are in large complex embedded system software (100+ engineers). Firmware development has some unique characteristics that make it difficult to do agile (ie. Hardware is not available until late in the dev cycle; Once product is released, can't easily update firmware; etc...) The norm in this kind of development is thick documentation and grueling peer reviews. You can't get a simple code fix like renaming a variable without 2-3 signatures. (I exaggerate a little but this is typical. Additionally, a lot of people do take shortcuts and the Project Managers even approve them especially in the face of hard market deadlines.) I would like to hear any tips or guidelines on how to adopt agile methodology for firmware development projects."}
{"_id": "189231", "title": "Is NoSQL a good fit for a graphing app, and how can I compare different NoSql Servers?", "text": "I am traditionally a MsSQL or MySQL developer - I have been prototyping a new application that involves storing data from many targets. I have seen that the app appears to get slow after scaling to 10k targets after inputting around 300k results for each (64 bit ints) - especially once I start trying to average and/or graph a few targets at once. Once the app is deployed I will need to add around 1k targets a month and store one data point from each for each and every minute for approx 2 years. I have never used NoSql, but from reading, it sounds like a good fit - create a document for each target and keep adding fields for each target. So, I was just wondering, is NoSQL the way to go for this project or should I be sticking with traditional SQL - and/or can anyone offer any advice? And the second part - If NoSQL is a solution can anyone recommend a fair comparison as I am getting lost in biased reviews that seem to say each solution is superior!?"}
{"_id": "111457", "title": "Offensive programming / coding", "text": "Last time I heard about \"offensive programming/coding\". I am not sure what it exactly mean. Why it is better, from defensive programming? Can someone give me some examples or answers?"}
{"_id": "189234", "title": "What industry/programming is right for a careful coder?", "text": "My approach to programming is very deliberative. I spend a lot of time planning and designing before I code, even for the most basic tasks. I always try to make my code very simple, design everything very elegantly, and always to leave space for flexible changes later on. Some might say I think too much about what else could happen. I wonder, what industry and what tasks would be best suited to someone who works the way I do? Are there jobs out there that require high precision without a lot of schedule pressure, and if so, where should one look for them?"}
{"_id": "8368", "title": "Is .NET WCF worth the effort?", "text": "Maybe it's me, but I've never encountered nearly as many problems, annoying challenges, indirect error messages and general frustrations with any other technology as I have with WCF. What are the ACTUAL benefits? Not the MS Press Release benefits of 'a unified architecture for something something that's not going to work anyway.' And are those benefits worth the annoying frustrations? I'm normally a big MS fanboy over here, but I just can't get behind WCF."}
{"_id": "61366", "title": "Why do we write mock objects when writing unit test cases?", "text": "We are currently writing unit test cases in our project . The implementations for database methods exist and is working fine . In this case why do we need to write mock objects ? Is there any specific reason ? Why can't I test the DAO implemntation directly?"}
{"_id": "119662", "title": "Does unit testing lead to premature generalization (specifically in the context of C++)?", "text": "### Preliminary notes I'll not go into the distinction of the different kinds of test there are, there are already a few questions on these sites regarding that. I'll take what's there and that says: _unit testing in the sense of \"testing the smallest isolatable unit of an application\"_ from which this question actually derives ### The isolation problem What is _the smallest isolatable unit_ of a program. Well, as I see it, it (highly?) depends on what language you are coding in. Micheal Feathers talks about the concept of a _seam_ : [WEwLC, p31] > A seam is a place where you can alter behavior in your program without > editing in that place. And without going into the details, I understand a seam -- in the context of unit testing -- to be a place in a program where your \"test\" can interface with your \"unit\". ### Examples Unit test -- especially in C++ -- require from the code under test to add _more seams_ that would be strictly called for for a given problem. Example:   * Adding a virtual interface where non-virtual implementation would have been sufficient   * Splitting -- generalizing(?) -- a (smallish) class further \"just\" to facilitate adding a test.   * Splitting a single-executable project into seemingly \"independent\" libs, \"just\" to facilitate compiling them independently for the tests. ### The question I'll try a few versions that hopefully ask about the same point:   * Is the way that Unit Tests require one to structure an application's code \"only\" beneficial for the unit tests or is it actually beneficial to the applications structure.   * Is the code generalization that is needed to make it unit-testable useful for anything _but_ the unit tests?   * Does adding unit tests force one to generalize unnecessarily?    * Is the shape unit tests force on code \"always\" also a good shape for the code in general as seen from the problem domain? I remember a rule of thumb that said don't generalize until you need to / until there's a second place that uses the code. With Unit Tests, there's _always_ a second place that uses the code -- namely the unit test. So is this reason enough to generalize?"}
{"_id": "236280", "title": "options for data analytics for time series store", "text": "I'm building an Internet of Things solution that has a number of real time feeds. I need to make a couple of design decisions with regards to the data store and reporting and looking for input. I have two deployment models, local where a small Linux server captures multiple streams usually a new data point each second and record length is small, basically a fixed format message of about 20 bytes. The other model is cloud based where the transaction rate will be much higher, up to 1000 data points a second. Concentrating on the local model first, my prototype uses SQLite under MONO and works fine in a traditional RDMS manner. However I'm aware that RDBMS isn't optimal for time series systems and possibly a NOSQL solution might be better. I'm having a re-think on the SQL approach due to my real time analytics requirement. I want to be able to easily report on SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE, MEAN, SD, MIN, MAX on potentially each of the time series datasets, basically have the system recalculate these for each new data point. Although I haven't done any performance testing, I can see if I have a year or more data the dataset size is going to be pretty large (20 bytes / second over a year is 600MB and I could have up to 30 different time series datasets) and won't be great for real time calculation of averages etc. in normal SQL. I also want to keep the size / cost of the server low so won't be able to add gobs of CPU or memory but disk space should be OK. The other option I have is that my system can store the delta (changes) to the real time feeds instead of the regular data point, which will save about 80% of the disk space. However I don't know of an easy way to do set calculations like running averages if I am storing deltas (as far as I know not possible with standard SQL statements but I could be wrong). Given my use case above I have 3 questions: 1) Should I seriously consider a NOSQL data store? Do you have any suggestions on the advantages of a NOSQL store for this model? 2) How I can best do real time set calculations like average without a lot of complexity or hardware? I have platform options of either MONO or NODE on Linux or Windows. 3) How to do efficient real time set calculations (especially averages which will be the majority of calculations) on either SQLite or a NOSQL DB when I'm storing deltas?"}
{"_id": "119668", "title": "Abstract exception super type", "text": "If throwing `System.Exception` is considered so bad, why wasn't `Exception` made `abstract` in the first place? That way, it would not be possible to call:               throw new Exception(\"Error occurred.\");      This would enforce using derived exceptions to provide more details about the error that occurred. For example, when I want to provide a custom exception hierarchy for a library, I usually declare an abstract base class for my exceptions:               public abstract class CustomExceptionBase : Exception     {         /* some stuff here */     }      And then some derived exception with a more specific purpose:               public class DerivedCustomException : CustomExceptionBase     {         /* some more specific stuff here */     }      Then when calling any library method, one could have this generic try/catch block to directly catch any error coming from the library:               try     {         /* library calls here */     }     catch (CustomExceptionBase ex)     {         /* exception handling */     }      Is this a good practice? Would it be good if `Exception` was made abstract? EDIT : My point here is that even if an exception class is marked `abstract`, you can still catch it in a catch-all block. Making it abstract is only a way to forbid programmers to throw a \"super-wide\" exception. Usually, when you voluntarily throw an exception, you should know what type it is and why it happened. Thus enforcing to throw a more specific exception type."}
{"_id": "110583", "title": "Software license restricting commercial usage like CC BY-NC-SA", "text": "I want to distribute my software under license like Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - Share Alike license, i.e.   * Redistribution of source code and binaries is freely.   * Modified version of program have to be distributed under the same license. Attribution to original project should be supplied to.   * Restrict any kind of commercial usage. However CC does not recommend to use their licenses for software. Is there this kind of software license I could apply? Better if public license, but as far as I know US laws says that only EULA could restrict usage of received copy?"}
{"_id": "221598", "title": "Benefits of using config files over making many small classes?", "text": "My friend and I are building a mobile game and ran into the following design problem: We will have many different types of units all with different stats and abilities. However, all unit types should have a few commonalities (for example, they would all have a totalhealth attribute). We were trying to decide what the best way of representing these units would be. My friend suggested simply making a new class for each unit type. I feel that having hundreds of different classes feels wrong, but can't quite figure out what's so bad about it. My alternative is to put the unit type information into either configuration files or a database (which will also solve the issue of enforcing every unit type to have a few common attributes with a schema). And then have a master unit class to instantiate types of units from the db. What is the proper way of architecturing this?"}
{"_id": "254623", "title": "Pitfalls of combining dependant traits and exceptions in same file as interface in php", "text": "What are the potential pitfalls of combining related class like objects (interfaces, traits, custom exceptions) in the same source file? For code reuse and only loading what I need I always separate out full class's into separate files. But interfaces, traits, and extended exceptions don't seem to need that same level of granularity. I have been trained that all classes and class like objects (interfaces, extended exceptions, etc.) should be given their own source files. But now I am starting to work with traits and after getting advice about combining traits and interfaces, to have the ability to have something along the lines of multiple inheritance, I am combining the interface and the trait in the same source file. That way the only way to access traits is to implement the corresponding interface. Once the class calls the autoloader to get the source for the interface it also loads the trait. Not all classes that implement the interface will use the trait for functionality, but most will, and those that don't will just not _use_ the trait. I also will use extended Exceptions for an interface along the lines of PDOException. These are exceptions only thrown by classes that extend or implement a class. So now my **Stackable.php** interface file looks like:               interface Stackable{       public function add($content);       public function _registerParent($parent);       public function _checkLoop($child);     }          trait StackableTrait{       private $containter_contents = array();       private $container_parent = NULL;            public function add($content){         if(is_a($content, \"Stackable\")){            $content->_registerParent($this); //prevents adding twice and creating loops.         }elseif(!is_string($content)){            $this->_checkLoop($content);         }         return $this->container_contents[] = $content;       }       public function _registerParent($parent){         if(empty($this->container_parent)){           $this->container_parent = $parent;           return;         }         throw new StackableException(\"Object has already been added to a parent\");       }       public function _checkLoop($child){         if(in_array($child,$this->container_contents,TRUE){           throw new StackableException(\"Object has already been added to a parent\");         }elseif(!empty($this->container_parent)){           $this->container_parent->_checkLoop($child);         }       }     }          class StackableException extends Exception{}      As you can see all of the contents of the file are interrelated, any class that wants to use the StackableTrait will need to also implement the interface so the class checking in the trait functions will work. And only things using _StackableTrait_ or implementing _Stackable_ will have access to throw _StackableException_."}
{"_id": "221592", "title": "What kind of transform is this?", "text": "I have a function that linearly \"remaps\" a value from a given interval to an other interval? The function remaps a value from a given interval [oldMin, oldMax] to another interval [newMin, newMax] using this formula:               newVal = newMin + (newMax - newMin) * (oldVal - oldMin) / (oldMax - oldMin)      If it helps identify what type of transform it is, the above formula is just a reformulation of the following equation. All I did was re-arrange the terms to express `newVal` on the left hand side of the equation so it is a function of all the other parameters: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/wukZX.png) Is there a standard name for the remapping transformation?"}
{"_id": "216107", "title": "What is the advantage of a programmers VM apart from portability", "text": "I can understand the benefits of Java running on a JVM. Portability. Nice simple reason. But I have always been puzzled as to why Microsoft brought out their own version of a JVM - .NET. C# is supposed to be a fine language (haven't used myself) but could Microsoft have launched product to use native. ie to generate an exe? My colleague is learning F#. The reason it has to be a language which runs on .NET is because the Microsoft Lync API which will be used is only available on .NET. ie there is no C API for Lync. A cynical view may be that the reason is vendor lockin. F# will only run on a Microsoft platform (or C# for that matter) and so program is locked in. But maybe I am missing some other benefit of a VM platform?"}
{"_id": "242762", "title": "Mechanics of reasoning during programming interviews", "text": "This is not the usual \"I don't want to write code during an interview\", in this question the assumption is that   * I need to write code during an interview (think about the level of rewriting the quicksort or mergesort from scratch)   * I know how the algorithm work or I have a basic idea of how I should start working from there, i.e. I don't remember the algorithm by heart I noticed that even on a whiteboard, I **always** end up writing bugged code or code that doesn't compile. If there's a typo, whatever I usually live with that.. but when there's a crash due to some uncaught particular case I end up losing confidence in my skills. I realize that perhaps interviewers might want to look at how I write code and/or how I solve problems rather than proof-compiling my whiteboard code, but I'd like to ask **how should I approach the above problem in mental terms, i.e. what mental steps should I follow when writing code for an interview with the two bullet points above**. There must be a unique and agreed series of steps I should follow to avoid getting stuck/caught into particular exception cases (limit cases) that might end up wasting my time and my energies rather than focusing on the overall algorithm for the general case. I hope I made my point clear"}
{"_id": "242760", "title": "Can I, as author and copyright holder, relicense my code under a more liberal license after it has been published under a more restrictive license?", "text": "Say, for example I published my code under GPL. A month after release, I decide evil corporations (`*`cough`*`) are allowed to use my code after all, because it's so brilliant and bug-free. Can I just relicense my own code, or have I locked myself out of the right to do so?"}
{"_id": "242766", "title": "Synthetic database records", "text": "Assume we are getting some statistics from a customer which we analyse and we send our comments to the customer. Now, the customer tells us that the statistic they computed between January and March are based on a wrong methodology and sends us corrected series. We want perform analysis with the wrong and with the correct set of data, which are huge and only differ from January to March, so that we want to avoid data duplication. Therefore, we need something like _synthetic database records_ implementing the following logic:               synthetic[1] = wrong_data     synthetic[2] = correct_data between Januar and March, wrong_data otherwise      With this, we can easily perform our analyses on synthetic records. Should such synthetic records be implemented in the application logic or on the side of the database? What are common pitfalls of such an implementation?"}
{"_id": "242764", "title": "Serialized values or separate table, which is more efficient?", "text": "I have a Rails model `email_condition_string` with a `word` column in it. Now I have another model called `request_creation_email_config` with the following columns   1. admin_filter_group:references    2. vendor_service:references    3. email_condition_string:references `email_condition_string` has many `request_creation_email_config` and `request_creation_email_config` belongs to `email_condition_string`. Instead of this model a colleague of mine is suggesting that storing the word inside the same model as comma separated values is more efficient than storing it as a separate model. Is that all right?"}
{"_id": "212309", "title": "How do I test a file reader?", "text": "I am working on a project with a few file formats. Some formats are specified by .xsds, others by documentation on their respective websites, and some are custom in-house formats that have no documentation. Mwahahahaha. **What's the problem?** I would like to test my file readers, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing this. The flow of the application is as such:               file.___  ===> read by FileReader.java ===> which creates a Model object      where the `FileReader` interface is               public interface FileReader {         public Model read(String filename);     }      The `Model` has a number of attributes that are populated when the file is read. It looks something like               public class Model {         List<String> as;         List<String> bs;         boolean isAPain = true;         // ...     }      **What have I tried?** My only idea was to create file \"generators\" for each file format. These generators are basically builders which take in a few variables (eg. number of comments to generate in a file), and output a sample file which I then read in and compare the resulting `Model` with the variables I used to initially generate the file. This has a few problems, though:   * The files that it generates don't _look_ like real files. The generator is in no way aware of context.   * It's hard to recognize if the generator has generated for edge cases since I'm the one manually setting the variables. This method is barely better than me creating a dozen sample files. Are there any better ways to do this? EDIT: Changed unit to integration since that's what I actually mean. EDIT2: Here is an example of the edge cases I mentioned. Each file represents a graph made up of vertices and edges. These vertices and edges can be attached in different ways, so:               v1 -- e1 --> v2 <-- e2 -- v3      is different from               v1 -- e1 --> v2 -- e2 --> v3      in that the direction of the edges matter. I'm not sure if this is in the scope of the question, but it's hard to think up all of the pertinent edge cases when I manually set the number of vertices, number of edges, and just generate the connections randomly."}
{"_id": "245236", "title": "Is heap fragmentation a problem in bare-metal arm with g++?", "text": "I am converting a project from C to mixed C/C++. It is going quite nice, and the new features are really lightening the work. The platform is an ARM SAM4, compiler is arm-none-eabi-g++. This is not a safety-related equipment, but still could be left running for months and is not supposed to restart sporadically. The original C project has managed quite nicely to solve problems without a single `malloc` call, allocating statically all needed data. For example, arrays with unknown size are allocated to the maximum expected size. Now I am considering can I get away with using `new`. For example, all STL containers hold their content in the heap. Just adding a new element to a `vector` can cause de-allocation of a whole region of the heap and allocation of another one. Will there be fragmentation issues? Related: What is memory fragmentation?"}
{"_id": "127007", "title": "File system layout for multiple build targets", "text": "I am seeking some ideas for how to build and install software with some parameters. These including target OS, target platform CPU details, debugging variant, etc. Some parts of the install are shared, such as documentation and many platform independent files, others are not, such as 64 and 32 bit libraries when these are separated and not together in a multi-arch library. On big networked platforms one often has multiple computers sharing some large server space, so there is actually cause to have even Windows and Unix binaries on the same disk. My product has already fixed an install philosophy of $INSTALL_ROOT/genericname/version/ so that multiple versions can coexist. The question is: how to manage the layout of all the other stuff?"}
{"_id": "234789", "title": "Container/Item pattern without `friend`", "text": "I have a class `Container` containing objects of type `Item`. They are different classes, and especially they have no common base class (e.g. a `Container` does not itself have a `Container`).:               class Container     {         public ICollection<Item> Items { get { /* ... */ } }     }          class Item     {         public Container Container { get { /* ... */ } }     }      I\u2019d like to enforce that each `Item` needs to have exactly one `Container`, and I\u2019d like to make sure there never can be an inconsistent situation such that e.g. `i.Container.Items.Contains(i)` returns false. This could be done by e.g. adding a method `Container.AddItem` that sets the `Item`\u2019s `Container` property accordingly or by having a `Item.SetContainer` method that takes care of `Container.Items`. Example:               class Item     {         private Container container;         public Container Container         {            get            {               return container;            }            set            {                if (container != null)                    container.Items.Remove(this);                container = value;                if (value != null)                    value.Items.Add(this);            }         }     }      This could be easily done with the concept of a \u201cfriend\u201d, but I\u2019m using C# that does not have friends, and thus this example code won\u2019t compile. However, it of course would compile if `Container.Items` had a public setter, but this again would allow inconsistencies: A \u201cuser\u201d of the classes would need to know not to use the setter of `Container.Items`, but `Item.Container` instead. After searching for quite some time, I feel there is no way to enforce this restriction that seems to be so trivial. (Using `internal` might be a work- around, but no solution.) Is there an elegant way to enforce this one-container-per-item rule without the concept of \u201cfriend\u201d?"}
{"_id": "181864", "title": "How will the new development of Java influence its interoperability with languages like Scala and Clojure?", "text": "As far as I understand, both Scala and Clojure have been designed as new languages that   1. depend on the JVM, and   2. easily integrate with Java code, in the sense that they allow to use Java classes inside Scala and Clojure code. Starting with Java 8 (and maybe even more strongly with subsequent versions of Java), there will be changes in the semantics of the Java language. I wanted to ask how these changes will impact the interoperability between Java and Scala / Clojure and what the consequences will be. For example, since lambdas in Java 8 are not objects (see e.g. here), Scala and Clojure might have to deal with Java values that are not objects. Would this be a problem? I can think of the following scenarios:   1. The Scala or Clojure language will be extended to adapt to the new Java semantics (to handle the new non-object values) and support interoperability with Java.   2. The Scala or Clojure language will **not** be extended. This would only be possible if the new Java features like function values can be mapped to existing concepts. E.g., in Scala even a function is an object, so I guess Java functions would again be wrapped into some kind of objects when they become visible to Scala.   3. The Scala or Clojure language will continue to support interoperability up to Java 6 or 7, without following latest Java's development. This would require that older versions of Java be still supported (at least by OpenJDK or another project), so that these languages can be based on a more conservative / stable branch of Java. Summarizing: can we expect that the future development of Java will have an impact on languages like Scala and Clojure to maintain interoperability with Java? Is there some (link to) ongoing discussion on this topic already? **Note** I can imagine that Scala, Clojure, and other JVM-based languages won't have any major problems updating their implementation to newer versions of the JVM (and that new JVM features will make this implementation even easier). My question focuses on features of Java as a language and whether / how other JVM-language will be able to \"see\" / use these new features, not on whether JVM-based languages will run on the latest JVM's."}
{"_id": "250432", "title": "Javascript function should call python logic in django web development without additional triiger", "text": "I have been trying to solve this problem for sometime now. This is regarding django web development. I have an **HTML page** which has a **Javascript** function to upload an image file from the users local computer. After that file has been uploaded on to the HTML template, I want to use the uploaded image file for further processing. I am calling my python logic from `views.py` for processing the image before rendering the processed information on to another HTML page. My problem is that I want my `upload function()` to call my python logic.(There should be no additional trigger to call the python logic. i.e `somefunction`() within the `upload function()` which can directly call my python logic without having to use any button click or anything else.) Can I somehow call the Python logic from javascript function (the one which uploads the image)? or should I save the uploaded file to my local computer and use its path to process the image information? I googled and found that both of these are challenging tasks. There is no direct method to do it since one is client side scripting while the other is server side. Also, javascript does not have input output facilities (for writing/saving the uploaded image to local disk that too without a trigger). What should be done in such a case? Should I write my upload function also in python then?(I don't want that to happen). Please help. Thanks in advance :)"}
{"_id": "165705", "title": "Is there a better way to handle data abstraction in this example?", "text": "I'm building an application that retrieves Sharepoint list data via a web service `SPlists.Lists`. To create an instance of the web service, I have the following class:                  class SharepointServiceCreator        {                  public SPlists.Lists createService()             {                 listsService.Url = \"http://wss/sites/SPLists/_vti_bin/lists.asmx\";                 listsService.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;                 SPlists.Lists listsService=new SPlists.Lists();             }             }      I'm concerned that this isn't good OOP abstraction, though, because in order to create this service elsewhere in my application, I would need the following code:               class someClass     {      public void someMethod()      {       SharepointServiceCreator s=new SharepointServiceCreator()       SPlists.Lists listService=s.createService()      }     }      Having to use declare the instance of `listService` in `someMethod` as type `SPlists.Lists` seems wrong, because it means that `someClass` needs to know about how `SharepointServiceCreator` is implemented. Or is this ok?"}
{"_id": "165704", "title": "What branch of computing involves object recognition in images?", "text": "Several applications of this is text recognition (OCR), face recognition (biometrics), camera guided missiles (targetting systems). Each involves analyzing images and making out some object of interest. **Is there a term that describes this branch of programming?**"}
{"_id": "165701", "title": "Working with vectors and transformations", "text": "I am going to write an graphical 2D application that allows user to create polygons and transform them through transformation such as rotation an so on. I was hoping someone can give pro and cons arguments for the different choices I got in my mind. (Its all in Java btw!) a). Represent vectors by filling matrices with 'real' numbers. This means making a matrix datas tructure that supports multiplication, transposing etc b). Make a own vector class, such that I can make a matrix class that support those vectors."}
{"_id": "197820", "title": "Arithmetic coding issue", "text": "Since a few days I am fighting my way through implementing arithmetic coding. I found a really great source of information which made me understand how it should work. Long story short, it implements arithmetic coding on integers using two registers: HIGH and LOW. Those register store a fraction, ex.               HIGH = 98765 //means 0.98765(9)     LOW = 91234 // means 0.91234(0)      Then comes magic, when the most significant numbers match (in this case it would be 9s) they are printed out. It's all clear to me. However, when we take the following example                                        HIGH    LOW    RANGE   CUMULATIVE OUTPUT          Initial state           99999  00000   100000     Encode B (0.2-0.3)      29999  20000     Shift out 2             99999  00000   100000    .2     Encode I (0.5-0.6)      59999  50000             .2     Shift out 5             99999  00000   100000    .25     Encode L (0.6-0.8)      79999  60000   20000     .25 //here starts problems     Encode L (0.6-0.8)      75999  72000             .25 //how possible?     Shift out 7             59999  20000   40000     .257     Encode SPACE (0.0-0.1)  23999  20000             .257     Shift out 2             39999  00000   40000     .2572     Encode G (0.4-0.5)      19999  16000             .2572     Shift out 1             99999  60000   40000     .25721     Encode A (0.1-0.2)      67999  64000             .25721     Shift out 6             79999  40000   40000     .257216     Encode T (0.9-1.0)      79999  76000             .257216     Shift out 7             99999  60000   40000     .2572167     Encode E (0.3-0.4)      75999  72000             .2572167     Shift out 7             59999  20000   40000     .25721677     Encode S (0.8-0.9)      55999  52000             .25721677     Shift out 5             59999  20000             .257216775     Shift out 2                                      .2572167752     Shift out 0                                      .25721677520      I really don't know how the marked lines are achieved on computers, on paper it's easy, since:               /*          range, HIGH, LOw - integer         symbol->high, symbol->low - real     */     HIGH = HIGH - (range - symbol->high*range)     LOW = LOW + range*symbol->low      But on computers? The real-number inaccuracy comes in and my intervals are much different.               [0; 99999)  100000  b   [0.2; 0.3)     [20000; 29999)  100000  ===> 2     [0; 99999)  100000  i   [0.5; 0.6)     [50000; 59998)  100000  ===> 5 //inaccuracy     [0; 99989)  99990   l   [0.6; 0.8)     [59993; 79990)  19998   l   [0.6; 0.8)     [71991; 75990)  19998   ===> 7     [19910; 59909)  40000       [0; 0.1)     [19910; 23908)  3999    g   [0.4; 0.5)     [21509; 21908)  3999    ===> 2     [15090; 19089)  3999    ===> 1     [50900; 90899)  40000   a   [0.1; 0.2)     [54900; 58898)  40000   ===> 5     [49000; 88989)  39990   t   [0.9; 1)     [84991; 88988)  39990   ===> 8     [49910; 89889)  39980   e   [0.3; 0.4)     [61904; 65900)  39980   ===> 6     [19040; 59009)  39970   s   [0.8; 0.9)     [51016; 55011)  39970   ===> 5     zakodowano: 257215865      I would appreciate any help."}
{"_id": "215923", "title": "Preventing possible burnout in a junior dev, or perhaps I'm not doing enough?", "text": "I'm a software developer with 5 years experience over 3 companies. Within the last year a junior (brand new to the industry) has started at my current employer. I believe he is an excellent developer, who always delivers and is skilled as solving complex problems. However I'm slightly concerned that he is possibly applying himself _too much_ for the following reasons:   * He begins work approximately 2 hours before most (and is expected)   * In his free time he has developed an application that was clearly **months** worth of work that is specific to our employer I and the team are completely greatful for all he is doing, and is clearly an asset to our team. However I'm worried that this is **_not sustainable_**. I can almost see that he has the same enthusiasm that I had when I began coding for work, however over the years I've realised that extra curricular work not only doesn't progress your career, but eats into your all important free time. The question I'm asking is: **Should I advise him to take things a bit more slowly? Or perhaps I need to learn from him and do more for my employer out of hours?**"}
{"_id": "220175", "title": "How should I specify locations where clients can resolve authorization problems in a REST API?", "text": "I'm working through an API design where a user's authentication will be verified by the presence of a valid forms authentication ticket in a session cookie. However, there are additional levels of access that can exist for particular resource URLs. When attempting to access those, it seems like returning a 401 would be the most appropriate response. However, generally we handle 401s by redirecting to a sign-in page. That would not be a valid course of action for clients on certain resources, where there's an additional step required (e.g., email validation, signing up for a particular role). **Is there a standard way to communicate where to go next when responding with a 401?** I'm tempted to include something in the Location header, but that seems only appropriate for 302s after a POST. I'm also reluctant to use URLs to specify where to go, since clients may not be restricted to browsers. **Any good examples or standards docs I can refer to on this?**"}
{"_id": "190834", "title": "How do I perform some actions in my Java program whenever a particular network interface comes up?", "text": "I wanted to perform some actions in my Java program whenever a particular interface comes up (network interface ppp0 e.g.). However I figured out it was way too clumsy to keep polling the interface to verify its status. After finding out `if-up.local` file in Linux, now I can run a bash script whenever the interface comes up. Works fine, however considering my running Java program, how can I make this script interact with my Java code? I am considering the following options:   1. Write a listening socket and from this script send message to this Java socket.   2. Invoke a C program, and through JNI run my java code. I am looking for intuitive and less resource intensive approach."}
{"_id": "101300", "title": "Unit testing vs Integration Testing", "text": "What is the difference between unit testing and integration testing when it come to web development (where 90-95% of the code relies on a database)? One thing I here all the time is that unit testing should not deal with databases and integration testing should. The issue I have with this is that to me that means the only difference between unit testing and integration testing is the data source and if that is the case, you are testing the same functionality. If the functionality that is tested is the same, why even bother with unit testing and always test against a database?"}
{"_id": "190836", "title": "Approach to submitting forms from a multi-platform native/hybrid app with unstable internet connection", "text": "Sorry for the long question, but I want to be sure to define my problem clearly. For my thesis (in aerospace engineering, so not much programming experience) I want to develop a (prototype) mobile application which will facilitate the reporting of safety related events in African aviation. Although the content of my thesis focuses on the more technical and sociological aspects of safety (management) I decided to include some practical design for demonstrative purposes. Considering the criteria I will present below, my first guess is to develop a mobile app using PhoneGap or something similar. But life can't be that simple, so I'll need more than just this single framework. My question to you is, what a convenient and effective approach would be to satisfy the following description? Quite simply this is what I envision (in layman's terms):   * A user (pilot, ground crew, etc.) experiences or notices a safety related event   * The user fills out a form (Air Safety Report) about the event on his/her phone   * Additional information (pictures/videos) are attached   * Once a stable internet connection comes available (we're in Africa) the report/form is submitted to a server. Important considerations here are:   * The limited availability of internet -> I need a native/self-contained solution/app so the reporter does not have wait with reporting, and which stores data and submits once possible.   * I don't want - nor should - exclude potential users (for multiple reasons) -> The app should be available on as many platforms as possible (especially BlackBerry and Symbian are still very popular in Africa!).   * I am doing this as a form of development aid and want it to be cheaply available -> open source preferably. Altogether, the following criteria can be defined: It should   * be open-source   * support multiple-platforms   * allow file attachments (pictures mainly)   * be self contained/native   * support/allow web services   * provide geolocation and date/time support (automate report whereabouts)   * allow camera use for direct attachment (optional, but preferable)   * identify an internet connection and submit the data once possible   * store data until submission Besides PhoneGap (which doesn't support image library browsing? -> apparently is possible, see supporting documentation), I have considered the following frameworks:   * Mobl (not tested for all major platforms, no date/time support?)   * QuickConnect (does not support BlackBerry and Symbian)   * Rhodes (meets my requirements as for as I can see)   * Appspresso (doesn't support BB and Symbian, no date picker) I've read the following thread on stackoverflow:   * how can I send the form data from a native jquery mobile app to a remote server?   * Phonegap - Choose Image From Gallery"}
{"_id": "98018", "title": "How do you update live web sites with code changes?", "text": "I know this is a very basic question. If someone could humor me and tell me how they would handle this, I'd be greatful. I decided to post this because I am about to install SynchToy to remedy the issue below, and I feel a bit unprofessional using a \"Toy\" but I can't think of a better way. Many times I find when I am in this situation, I am missing some painfully obvious way to do things - this comes from being the only developer in the company.   * ASP.NET web application developed on my computer at work   * Solution has 2 projects:      * Website (files)     * WebsiteLib (C#/dll)   * Using a Git repository   * Deployed on a GoGrid 2008R2 web server Deployment:   1. Make code changes.   2. Push to Git.   3. Remote desktop to server.   4. Pull from Git.   5. Overwrite the live files by dragging/dropping with windows explorer. In Step 5 I delete all the files from the website root.. this can't be a good thing to do. That's why I am about to install SynchToy... **UPDATE:** THANKS for all the useful responses. I can't pick which one to mark answer - between using a web deployment - it looks like I have several useful suggesitons:   1. Web Project = whole site packaged into a single DLL - downside for me I can't push simple updates - being a lone developer in a company of 50, this remains something that is simpler at times.   2. Pulling straight from SCM into web root of site - i originally didn't do this out of fear that my SCM hidden directory might end up being exposed, but the answers here helped me get over that (although i still don't like having one more thing to worry about forgetting to make sure is still true over time)   3. Using a web farm, and systematically deploying to nodes - this is the ideal solution for zero downtime, which is actually something I care about since the site is essentially a real time revenue source for my company - i might have a hard time convincing them to double the cost of the servers though. \\--> finally, the re-enforcement of the basic principal that there needs to be a single click deployment for the site OR ELSE THERE SOMETHING WRONG is probably the most useful thing I got out of the answers. **UPDATE 2:** I thought I come back to this and update with the actual solution that's been in place for many months now and is working perfectly (for my single web server solution). The process I use is:   1. Make code changes   2. Push to Git   3. Remote desktop to server   4. Pull from Git   5. Run the following batch script: cd C:\\Users\\Administrator %systemroot%\\system32\\inetsrv\\appcmd.exe stop site \"/site.name:Default Web Site\" robocopy Documents\\code\\da\\1\\work\\Tree\\LendingTreeWebSite1 c:\\inetpub\\wwwroot /E /XF connectionsconfig Web.config %systemroot%\\system32\\inetsrv\\appcmd.exe start site \"/site.name:Default Web Site\" As you can see this brings the site down, uses robocopy to intelligently copy the files that have changed then brings the site back up. It typically runs in less than 2 seconds. Since peak traffic on this site is about 2 requests per second, missing 4 requests per site update is acceptable. Sine I've gotten more proficient with Git I've found that the first four steps above being a \"manual process\" is also acceptable, although I'm sure I could roll the whole thing into a single click if I wanted to. The documentation for AppCmd.exe is here. The documentation for Robocopy is here."}
{"_id": "150756", "title": "Concurrency with listeners and upload: is this solution sound?", "text": "I'm working on an Android app. We have listeners for position data and camera capture which is timed on a background thread (not a service). The timer thread dictates when the image is captured and also when the data is cached in a local sqlite db. So, my question is how to properly store the location data as it comes in based on the listeners and pull that data so that the database can be updated as the camera capture is executed. I can't put the location data into the database as it arrives because it is processed more frequently than the camera images and the camera images are what dominates the architecture at the moment. (Location data is supplement). However I need the location data to get a rough location of the where the image is captured. My first thought was to have singleton store the location data. And have a semaphore on the getInstance method so if the database update is happening (after an image is captured) we don't have an error. The location data can wait for the database update or it can be lost for that particular event it doesn't really matter. What are you thoughts? Am I on the right track? (And is this the right sub- site or would this be better on stackoverflow?)"}
{"_id": "167701", "title": "Recent programming language for AI?", "text": "For a few decades the programming language of choice for AI was either Prolog or LISP, and a few more others that are not so well known. Most of them were designed before the 70's. Changes happens a lot on many other domains specific languages, but in the AI domain it hadn't surfaced so much as in the web specific languages or scripting etc. Are there recent programming languages that were intended to change the game in the AI and learn from the insufficiencies of former languages?"}
{"_id": "167700", "title": "Does reading fiction improve one's ability to read technical material?", "text": "Does any know of a study or personally witnessed any change, or lack of change, in technical reading skills after spending a good deal of time reading fiction?"}
{"_id": "167707", "title": "Handling bugs, quirks, or annoyances in vendor-supplied headers", "text": "If the header file supplied by a vendor of something with whom one's code must interact is deficient in some way, in what cases is it better to:   1. Work around the header's deficiencies in the main code    2. Copy the header file to the local project and fix it    3. Fix the header file in the spot where it's stored as a vendor-supplied tool    4. Fix the header file in the central spot, but also make a local copy and try to always have the two match    5. Do something else  As an example, the header file supplied by ST Micro for the STM320LF series contains the lines:               typedef struct     {       __IO uint32_t MODER;       __IO uint16_t OTYPER;       uint16_t RESERVED0;       ....       __IO uint16_t BSRRL; /* BSRR register is split to 2 * 16-bit fields BSRRL */       __IO uint16_t BSRRH; /* BSRR register is split to 2 * 16-bit fields BSRRH */       ....         } GPIO_TypeDef;      In the hardware, and in the hardware documentation, BSRR is described as a single 32-bit register. About 98% of the time one wants to write to BSRR, one will only be interested in writing the upper half or the lower half; it is thus convenient to be able to use BSSRH and BSSRL as a means of writing half the register. On the other hand, there are occasions when it is necessary that the entire 32-bit register be written as a single atomic operation. The \"optimal\" way to write it (setting aside white-spacing issues) would be:               typedef struct     {       __IO uint32_t MODER;       __IO uint16_t OTYPER;       uint16_t RESERVED0;       ....       union // Allow BSRR access as 32-bit register or two 16-bit registers       {         __IO uint32_t BSRR; // 32-bit BSSR register as a whole         struct { __IO uint16_t BSRRL, BSRRH; };// Two 16-bit parts       };       ....         } GPIO_TypeDef;      If the struct were defined that way, code could use BSRR when necessary to write all 32 bits, or BSRRH/BSRRL when writing 16 bits. Given that the header isn't that way, would better practice be to use the header as-is, but apply an icky typecast in the main code writing what would be idiomatically written as `thePort->BSRR = 0x12345678;` as `*((uint32_t)&(thePort->BSSRH)) = 0x12345678;`, or would be be better to use a patched header file? If the latter, where should the patched file me stored and how should it be managed? **Edit** In this vendor's data file, I/O device registers are defined by using structure definitions like the above with macro definitions like `#define GPIOB (*((struct GPIO_TypeDef*)GPIO_BASE + 0x100))`. Because `GPIOA`, `GPIOB` etc. are defined as macros rather than identifiers, any macro substitution of `GPIO_TypeDef` which goes into effect after the structure is defined would affect future uses of that type but also apply to `GPIOA`, `GPIOB`, etc. Thus, my present inclination would be to define my own project-wide header file which `#include`s the vendor's file, and then defines my own structure and macro-substitutes my structure's name for the vendor's. That would allow code to be written to use the registers in the normal idiomatic fashion while using the vendor-supplied definitions for just about everything else, and while providing a clear patch-point."}
{"_id": "209264", "title": "Does the order of learning matter in web development?", "text": "I have many things to learn: CSS, HTML, C#, **JavaScript** , ASP.NET, SQL Now does the order matter here? For example, is it better to learn C# before HTML or the reverse could be better?"}
{"_id": "118130", "title": "what is the object oriented counterpart to haskell / coq", "text": "I have detailed information on the latest developments in functional programming. I think haskell is quite an advanced and high level programming language. With coq and agda this gets even more complex and advanced. With \"advanced\" and \"high level\" I mean many distinct features, that can only be found in the respective languages. Like for haskell   * everything is pure and lazy per default    * support for advanced concepts like GADTs, Monads, Functors, etc. For coq / agda   * a dependent type system  And both haskell and coq are used in academics, a good sign that they are 'state-of-the art'. However I have no clue what comparable developments in object oriented programming are. What are some of the latest developments in object oriented programming? What would be a state-of-the-art OOP language counterpart to haskell / coq? (I even search for advanced programming language on google, but I found mostly haskell related information. The only language I could think of is D 2.0. Scala is for me mainly a java compatible version of haskell.)"}
{"_id": "96145", "title": "Is it possible to write a generalized string reverse function that works for all localisations and string types?", "text": "I was just watching the Jon Skeet (with Tony the Pony) presentation from Dev- Days Although \"write a string reverse function\" is coding interview 101 - I'm not sure that it's actually possible to write a general string reverse function, certainly not one that works in all localisations and all string types. Apart from detecting if the input string is ascii, UTF8, UTF16 (fixed and variable length) etc.   There is the 'apply accent to next character' (U+0301) code that Jon highlighted. Then there are ligatures that may or may not be displayed, or encoded as double characters. Seems that \"reverse a string\" is actually one of the harder computer science tasks!"}
{"_id": "118136", "title": "Should I accept to write unsecure code if my employer requests me to do so?", "text": "My employer asked me to implement a feature that would require storing passwords in clear text in a database (or using an obscure encrypt/decrypt function stored in a binary, which is a bit better, but also insecure). I replied that I was willing to implement such a feature, provided that customers were acknowledged of security implications when using it. When discussing this problem with colleagues, someone told me that, as a software engineer, we are personally responsible (in the legal sense) for security problems that we introduce in our products. I looked into my contract, but did not found anything related to a similar case. From a legal point of view, should I refuse to implement such a feature? Is it true that my employer could take me to court if a customer experiences damage due to this feature, even if he was aware of security concerns as well? * * * _EDIT:_ I understand this question can only be answered reliably from a lawyer. The same is true for licensing questions: people here give their understanding and their experience, sometimes after having consulted a lawyer, with no guarantee it applies in another jurisdiction. But licensing is explicitly accepted as a topic here, see What kind of questions can I ask here?. I believe other programmers may have the same issue, and other may have been confronted to this situation before, and may have consulted a lawyer for that."}
{"_id": "104459", "title": "What determines when a computer is considered a \"client\"?", "text": "In web development the terms _\"server\"_ and _\"client\"_ are often refered to when discussing how pages are requested on the web. It is also used exstensively when talking about PC, phone, tablets, etc. The question that came to my mind was what qualified a computer to be considered a client? I took a look at this article from wikipedia and noticed that clients are considered _service requesters_ whereas Servers are considered _service providers_. If this is true couldn't all computers that request a service in a sense be considered a client? The stereotype I noticed is that a client computer is usually synonymous with a \"consumer\" computer, but according to wikipedia this is not entirely accurate. Any idea on how to draw the line in this common scenario?"}
{"_id": "141958", "title": "How to refactor a Python \u201cgod class\u201d?", "text": "# Problem I\u2019m working on a Python project whose main class is a bit \u201cGod Object\u201d. There are _so_ friggin\u2019 many attributes and methods! I want to refactor the class. ## So Far\u2026 For the first step, I want to do something relatively simple; but when I tried the most straightforward approach, it broke some tests and existing examples. Basically, the class has a loooong list of attributes\u2014but I can clearly look over them and think, _\u201cThese 5 attributes are related\u2026These 8 are also related\u2026and then there\u2019s the rest.\u201d_ ### **getattr** I basically just wanted to group the related attributes into a dict-like helper class. I had a feeling `__getattr__` would be ideal for the job. So I moved the attributes to a separate class, and, sure enough, `__getattr__` worked its magic perfectly well\u2026 At _first_. But then I tried running one of the examples. The example subclass tries to set one of these attributes directly (at the _class level_ ). But since the attribute was no longer \u201cphysically located\u201d in the parent class, I got an error saying that the attribute did not exist. ### @property I then read up about the `@property` decorator. But then I also read that it creates problems for subclasses that want to do `self.x = blah` when `x` is a property of the parent class. # Desired   * Have all client code continue to work using `self.whatever`, even if the parent\u2019s `whatever` property is not \u201cphysically located\u201d in the class (or instance) itself.   * Group related attributes into dict-like containers.    * Reduce the extreme noisiness of the code in the main class.  For example, I **don\u2019t** simply want to change this:               larry = 2     curly = 'abcd'     moe   = self.doh()      Into this:               larry = something_else('larry')     curly = something_else('curly')     moe   = yet_another_thing.moe()      \u2026because that\u2019s still noisy. Although that successfully makes a simply attribute into something that can manage the data, the original had 3 variables and the tweaked version still has 3 variables. However, I would be fine with something like this:               stooges = Stooges()      And if a lookup for `self.larry` fails, something would check `stooges` and see if `larry` is there. (But it must also work if a subclass tries to do `larry = 'blah'` at the class level.) # Summary   * Want to replace related groups of attributes in a parent class with a single attribute that stores all the data elsewhere   * Want to work with existing client code that uses (e.g.) `larry = 'blah'` at the class level   * Want to continue to allow subclasses to extend, override, and modify these refactored attributes without knowing anything has changed    Is this possible? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?"}
{"_id": "84514", "title": "Why does C dominate in the embedded software market?", "text": "Almost everyone will now say the blessing: **performance**! Okay, **C** does allow to write athletic code. But there are other languages that can do so, after all! And the optimising power of modern compilers is awesome. Does **C** have some advantages that no other language has? Or there's simply no need for more flexible instruments in the domain?"}
{"_id": "247060", "title": "Will this \"wireless\" syntax for my framework make for good code structure / design?", "text": "I'm at the point where I'm getting into the freelance development of some complex web apps, and I would like to develop a light weight framework for my personal use, but I'd like to get some advice from more experienced programmers first about one aspect of my big-picture design for the framework. It's heavily prototype / OOP based. The framework is set up to know how to handle each prototype, and to know that certain objects for example, a `socketIO` construct, can utilize other specific objects, the `IP` of a `server` for example, and also the `socketPort` of that `server`. It facilitates this practice with the programmer's own functionality as well, helping to keep all code decoupled, object oriented, and \"wireless\". The outcome of this is code that looks \"wireless\" -- What I mean by that, is instead of passing data as function parameters, the framework's objects know which objects to look for and read from. The developer can pass an object in as the parameter, but if he doesn't the framework will search for it and find it if it exists within the appropriate scope. **Is what I have described a good programming practice/design?** I like the code structure that it helps me to achieve more quickly, but it's important to me that I don't spend time on something that is broken (a bad model). _I want to know if this practice where the data isn't visually passed around / transferred is an acceptable approach to development._ My concern is that the communication between related objects \"behind the scenes\" may confuse programmers who aren't privy to the design of the framework. * * * Here's some \"mock\" client side engine code that would work after the completion of the this framework that I'm currently calling Air JS. It's commented to explain itself, because it's my blueprint, of sorts, so feel free to skim through it without bothering with every detail.               App.Engine = new engine({              /*               Air JS's Engine Model          ---------------------              When developing web apps, the engine          gets complex quickly, both on the          client and server side. Without a          framework promoting the use of good          JS OOP coding patterns, the code can          very quickly become a tangled mess!              By utilizing object prototypes, Air         JS accesses relevant objects and will          find things like IPs, Ports,          extensions, and other information         relevant to a specific task, without         the developer needing to manually          connect things. For example, when          creating a socket.IO connection, if         a server object exists that owns a         socketPort object, Air will find the         port! No strings attached.               */              Server : new server({              /*              The server constructor allows all          relevant server information to be          gathered into one place. Sky JS          objects such as:                  socketIO object             AJAX object              that utilize server information          will dynamically locate and utilize         the information \"wireless\", without         the need to be passed in.              */                  location : new location({                      url     : new URL(\"www.website.com\"),                 IP      : new IP(\"1.2.3.4.5\"),                 ports   : new portList({                          default     : new defaultPort(\"8080\"),                     socket      : new socketPort(\"4545\")                      }),                 paths   : new pathList({                          app         : \"App\",                     login       : \"Login\",                     register    : \"Register\",                     getData     : \"Get\"                      });                  }),                  auth : new authentication({                      username    : new username(App.Client.Username),                 password    : new password(App.Client.Password)                  }),              }),              \"Socket\" : new socketIO({                  open : new socketListener(\"open\", function(){                      // handle event                  }),              }),              /*               The socketIO object expects an object          containing socketListeners as its first          parameter.              The SocketIO object accepts a server object,         portList, socketPort, or port string / int          as its second parameter:                  App             Server             App.Engine             App.Engine.Server             App.Engine.Server.ports             App.Engine.Server.ports.socket                  \"4545\"              4545              This is an example of how Air.JS works          \"wireless\" -- If the relevant object exists         within the same engine, it will be found,          without the developer passing the object or         information in as a parameter. This is called         wireless association in Air JS.              Wireless association will be discussed later         on in this program, and is the primary proponent         of the clean, de-coupled code that Air JS         promotes.              In this situation, the relevant object is a         socketPort. If a server object exists that          owns a portList containing a socketPort,          it will grab the port.              If there are multiple server objects, the          framework will choose the first one that owns          a portList and / or a socketPort.              If no socketList object is found in a server          object, the framework will search the main          scope of the server object. If no socketPort          object is found in a server object, or no          server object is found in the engine object,          the framework will check for a socket object          in the engine object's main scope.               Ultimately,          if no socketObject exists, and the developer          does not provide the port via parameters, an         error will be thrown, pointing to the missing          data.               */          });          App.init();      The functionality demonstrated here are object prototypes assigned within the framework, as shortcuts. For programmer models of new engine pieces/components, the framework would facilitate the use of objects that \"know\" certain prototypes. For example, the user creates the prototype `Car` and lists `carDoor` as one of its related objects, so a `Car` instance will look for any `carDoor`s, without the developer feeding it a `carDoor` through parameters."}
{"_id": "141951", "title": "\"Invalid operation\" status code in a HATEOAS REST API", "text": "In a HATEOAS API links are returned which represent possible state transitions. A conforming client should just be retrieving and following those links, but if a non-conforming client is constructing URIs rather than following the supplied links what would be the most appropriate status code/response to return?   * 400 would work, together with some information in the response body - this is what we're currently doing   * 403 I guess would be wrong, as it implies that the request could never work - but potentially the link may be available in the future   * 404 sounds plausible - at this point in time the resource doesn't exist What do people think? I know that conditional requests can handle requests based on stale responses (resulting in e.g. 412s), but this is a slightly different situation. Update: OK, I see now that the correct response for these types of invalid operations would be a 404. How about where the syntax of a request is correct, it's going to a valid resource but it's somehow violating a business rule. Here's a couple of contrived examples:   1. Let's say the client can provide two numbers which must be within 20% of each other, but otherwise could be any number.   2. Let's say the client can provide a number which goes through some calculation the result of which indicates that the original number provided was incorrect. Is 400 is the correct response for these?"}
{"_id": "251747", "title": "Should I separate a web api from the webserver?", "text": "Lets say I'm building a site similar to this or Quora (or some arbitrary blog- like site). I need a real-time component that will be using web-sockets/long- polling to notify the user of new posts, questions, etc. depending on what page the user is viewing. That real time component will essentially be the site's API implemented in something like Twisted or Java NIO, and the site's web server will be sitting in front of say Flask or Pyramid. Should the API and webpages be served by the same component or is it best to keep them separate? (I'm asking _both_ logically and physically)"}
{"_id": "211500", "title": "What is the downside of returning a string instead of a void function or throwing an exception?", "text": "Say I have a method that inserts a record into the database. I don't need to know the newly-inserted ID or anything else. I have two options:   1. `public void Insert()`   2. `public string Insert()` In the first: if an insert is successful, the calling code will continue. If it fails, an exception with the details will be returned and the calling code will handle it in the catch. In the second: the calling code will interrogate the return string for specific words to see whether or not it was successful. Which option is better and why?"}
{"_id": "251742", "title": "Is there a reason to define type aliases in any program", "text": "I have started to learn c++ for some time ago. It is a big subject and I am not very use to it yet. Thus is this question asked more of curiosity, than something else. In the book that I read to now learn there is a discussion about portability. I agree that the discussion comes quite earky for someone in the beginning of their learning period, but when reading I came to Think about something. What I wonder is: is there ever is a reason to define custom type to use instead of the fundamental builtin types? For example, would it be useful to define a type `int_c` as in \"int custom\"? The reason I think about this is since some code may be compiled for example both a 32-bit compiler and a 64-bit compiler. It seems as if it would be easier since if you change platform and all the integers are defined as `int_c` instead of `int`, since the latter would require changing type in every place an int is used? However, I also know that `<cstdint>` contains definitions of different integer as `int64_t`. However I have not heard of a header with floating Point types. So to conclude: Is there a reason to define custom integers or floats like `int_c` or `double_c` Or int other case what is the best apporach?"}
{"_id": "193566", "title": "What should be in my model and what should be in my controler?", "text": "We are writing a system with a sort of quasi-MVC structure (it was never stated as that, but that's what it is). I'm building up a full knowledge of the system and the controller will have to make calls to me to update it; they system itself is something similar to a graph. We need to have a sense of a path between multiple nodes, and a way to identify the original node. I receive connections between two nodes in my original graph building, so knowledge of the full path, and the origin node, is not read in directly but obviously can be inferred once I finish building the graph. My instinct was to write a basic path tracing sort of logic into my model. Every new edge we would infer the path's that exist and any original input nodes by tracing the path forward and backwards as appropriate. Tracing the path forward or backward does require a bit more knowledge of a system the connection between edges and nodes are a little more complicated then just edge 1 connect node A to B. My question is, would doing this still be within the realm of the model? If I do all this path tracing, determining input nodes, identifying paths etc am I doing too much work which I should really be storing in the controller for easier modification later? I need to have some tracing capability to build the original graph before the controller is even initialized, but of course I could have the controller provide methods I call to do path tracing and the like an use the controller implementation when building the graph. I don't _think_ the logic for the graph itself will change, only the way we use it for tasking, and doing things in the model makes it easier because the model can modify it's quasi-immutable objects directly while I'm not allowing the controller to do that without calls to the model (package scope variables)."}
{"_id": "82507", "title": "Productivity comparision FileNet versus WebSphere Process Server", "text": "On one project we are looking at where to implement workflows. Does anyone have experience with both FileNet and WPS (or know of any studies), that could say anything about the amount of effort required to create a workflow in the 2 products?"}
{"_id": "82502", "title": "How to start learning J2EE, especially JPA", "text": "I am trying to start learning the `J2EE` part of `Java`. But I don't know where to start. I am familier with `Core Java` and mainly, I want to learn `JPA` and basics of `Hibernate` and `Spring Framework`. The main reason for this is I am working on a project which is using all these things. And most of the code is being developed by some senior guys and I have to make some modifications in that. So basically I need to understand their code. Can someone give me a sort of roadmap, like which things I need to know beforehand and in what sequence should I go? Any reference material, like links, books?"}
{"_id": "161283", "title": "What are the benefits of prefixing function parameter names with p*?", "text": "I often see projects (in Java projects and teams using Eclipse) that prefix function parameters with `p`. For example               public void filter (Result pResult) ...      I personally don't see any benefit in this, but would like to know what the reasoning is. The best explanation I've heard yet is that it is to distinguish the name of identical named fields.I have my issues with that explanation but I can understand the point."}
{"_id": "199685", "title": "How can degree of order in a list be measured?", "text": "The following questions gave me food for thought:   * Efficient way to shuffle objects   * I'd like to write an \"ultimate shuffle\" algorithm to sort my mp3 collection When you sort a list - you always have a base-line(numbers, alphabet, ...) which tell you how to order the list. **Question** : When you shuffle a set - how would you measure \"degree of order\"? For example: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 is ordered, even if completely differently than 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. And 9 8 7 6 1 2 3 4 5 also has some order (if you look at it in chunks: 9 8 7 6 and 1 2 3 4 5). Another example could be 9 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. How can you determine if one listing is **_less_** or **_more_** ordered than another. **Note** : since there has been some confusion about the goal of this question - I would like to specify, that I'm _not_ looking for a method to measure randomness. 1234 is just a random set of 4 digits as 4213, but it seems to me that 1234 is _more_ ordered than 4213. The comment about \"Kolmogorov complexity\" by user61852, or the answer by Mathew Foscarini which mentions measuring the deviation between neighboring numbers in a sequence, are the types of answers I am looking for. I'm not sure if the measure entropy approach in the comment by MichaelT helps identify order in a list - if the comments could be elaborated into answers that would be great."}
{"_id": "199684", "title": "How can I maintain a SQL schema upgrade that goes out to our users on a regular basis?", "text": "I work on a project that uses a SQL database as a back end, and a desktop app as a front end. We do releases on a regular basis, and as part of a release, our client needs to update their SQL server. Our business requires that we are upgradable from version 1.x to 1.y, and the way we've been doing it so far is by following a simple pattern for dozens/hundreds of tables:   * IF NOT EXISTS (XXX) CREATE TABLE/VIEW YYY ...   * ALTER TABLE (XXX) ADD COLUMN (WWW) ...   * CREATE INDEX (ZZZ) on table XXX (if needed)   * So on... The problem I see with this is that the steps laid out above are all laid out in a one-for-one relationship with the table that's being created. This is fine for simpler databases that have no constraints, but becomes a pain when foreign keys/triggers/anything complex becomes involved. I was wondering if there was a pattern out there that could help me clean this up and make modifications to my script easier. I was thinking something along the lines of following these steps for every table in the database:   * perform cleanup from any \"old\" version   * create/update all tables/columns (without constraints)   * create/update all views based on tables   * create/update all foreign keys / constraints   * create/update all indexes   * create/update all triggers   * ... I use a tool to merge all of the SQL files in my repository into one, but the rhyme/reason to which file gets merged at what point is becoming unclear - often I just give up and hack something in that says \"include file X directly before/after file Y\". It's becoming unmaintainable (I can still fix problems, but I want to be able to hand off this responsibility). It's this last annoyance that I want to be able to avoid. I want to be able to create a new table by just dropping a script with the content \"CREATE TABLE X...\" in a \"Tables\" directory and call it done. Are there any patterns out there that can help me? I'm really looking for some sort of ammunition that I can use when I propose this to my colleagues by saying \"see - there IS a solution to this cluster* and THIS is how other companies address it.\""}
{"_id": "93932", "title": "Should I be helping and explaining?", "text": "This is more of a philosophical question, I suppose, but it seems quite well suited to here, to me. I'm a 20-year-old, second year software engineering student, with a good history in development, working for a software development/consultancy when I'm not studying etc etc etc All through my first year I found myself helping and explaining things to my peers when it came to programming and general software development stuff - data structures, common/important algorithms and the like. I can think of one or two pros to what I'm doing but I feel like I shouldn't have been helping, in case I end up confusing people or passing on bad practices. It bugged me at the time, but I never thought to ask. So: **should I be helping?** Thanks"}
{"_id": "191058", "title": "Programming style in Perl", "text": "I work in Java so basically I use OOP paradigm during coding. I am about to start working in Perl and I was wondering what is the paradigm that Perl developers follow. In wiki it mentions that it supports many paradigms but I am not sure I understand this since it is a scripting language. So my question is: Are the object oriented patterns I'm familiar with in Java idiomatic in Perl, or will I need significant change to my design style to write effective Perl? Note: This is not a question to critique Perl. I actually have to work in Perl and would like to understand how the current way I program will change."}
{"_id": "191059", "title": "What are the reasons for rebuild and redeployment libraries?", "text": "It's difficult to understand the meaning of the question from the topic's name. Here is what I mean. I'm watching Uncle Bob's Clean Code Episodes. In many episodes where he is talking about SOLID principles he mentions the problem of rebuild and redeployment caused by code changing. He says that bad architecture causes frequent rebuilds and redeployments. But I have a couple of questions:   1. Why frequent rebuilds and redeployments is bad?   2. Can you enumerate causes of rebuilds and redeployments of dll's?   3. Is there any difference between different languages according to the second question?   4. What causes rebuild and redeployment of dll's in C#? The second question (and the most common) is based on dll's coupling. What should I change in one of two coupled dll's so then I have to rebuild and redeploy the other?"}
{"_id": "117312", "title": "Micro vs Monolithic Server architecture", "text": "We are currently working on our new product/project, it is a client-server application directed towards certain specific industrial/service enterprises. We are building a server (C Language and Linux Only) running a custom protocol on top of TCP with a Java front-end. We are about 20% into the coding work and are faced with a situation having to choose between Micro or Monolithic Kernel Architecture. I am aware that Micro vs. Monolithic is usually in relation to kernel architecture, but we are specifically talking about servers. **Why a custom server and not something existing?**   * Our UI needs are significant and very dynamic, thus Web/Web-browser based solutions were not appropriate.   * The statistical processing is significant at the client end and therefore, again, browsers were of little help. (Of course, we could do the processing at the server end and pass on the processed data to the client but that would imply lot of load on the server and wastage of client resources).   * Moreover, with atleast three technologies (JS/HTML/CSS) to manage even a single event makes the whole experience like sweeping the house in the midst of a desert storm - you sweep it n-times, the dust accumulates n+1 times. **What about Micro and Monolithic Server? What are you talking?** Consider the following (hypothetical) client request:               request-id: 123     request-service: HistoricDataSets     request-message: Fetch all records upto the year 2010      On receving such request, a server, typically, does (we are ignoring concurrency techniques like thread and forks for simplicity):   * Parse the request string   * Identify the action (Fetch `HistoricDataSets LIMIT Year (2010)` in our case)   * Interact with the persistance layer (Oracle, lets say, in our example) and fetch the data.   * Format the data as per the protocol. Ex:  response-id: 123   success: true   response-text: DataSets   * Respond to the client with the thus formatted data. This is what we are calling a **Monolithic Server** (akin to a monolithic kernel where all OS workings are done in the kernel space). Consider the same request again, on receipt, this time the server (we have assumed only shared memory as IPC, again for simplicity):   * Puts the request into the shared memory for the `Parser` process   * The `Parser` parses the string, identifies the task and directs the `Executioner` process to execute the tasks.   * The `Executioner` then passes the data to `Fomatter` process which, after formatting the data into a protocol string, returns to the server.   * The server dispatches it to the client (response). Of course, instead of `Parser`, `Executioner` and `Formatter` it could have been a single but separate process. This is what we are calling a **Micro Server** (akin to a micro kernel doing barely minimum that is required). The server effectively is only listening and responding whereas all steps are taken care of by different process(es). * * * Which one to pick? We are confused! While monolithic servers are tried and tested (most HTTP-Web Servers?) and easier to program and can handle concurrency quite well. Micro servers, prima facie, seem swift and in line with UNIX principle of one program to do one task, but are also complicated to develop, esp. keeping concurrency in mind. **Question(s)**   \\- What are (possibly could be) the pros and cons of each approach?   \\- When to use which? (It could also be interpreted as a general question: When to use IPC?)   \\- If Micro kernel is chosen, then what functions need to be a part of core- server and what not? **Similar/Related questions**   * Dangers of huge monolithic application   * External Vs Embedded browser (Tangential)    * Advice for converting Monolithic app into multithreaded (Tangential) * * * **Some information that may be helpful:**   * Our prospective customers can be divided into two categories:      * Large: About 1,700 - 2,000 requests per minute      * Small: About 650 - 700 requests per minute    * Data volume per request cycle (request and the subsequent response) can be assumed to be normally distributed with mean ~ 1.20 MB and worse case about 250-300 MB.   * The product concept is relatively new but has the capability of impacting the core operations, therefore we expect the customer budgets to be flexible only post a certain lag (9-12 months) post deployment, this limits the amount of hardware the client will be willing to commit esp. the small ones.   * Each customer will have his own client-server stack. The server will be running on the customer's hardware managed by the customer's team, while clients will be deployed on the machines of the functional employees   * Remote updates for both client and server application is a must   * Real time `PUSH` services by the server may be 'highly' desired if the product clicks!"}
{"_id": "117318", "title": "How to maintain a demo version of an application?", "text": "I need to be able to demo our production application to prospective clients. The way I have it setup today is simple. The demo application is an exact duplicate of the production system, except that the data in the database is obfuscated to protect our current clients' data. This works great because it doesn't require any application changes. Boss dropped a potential BOMBSHELL today and said that the demo system needs to contain a special link and that **ONLY** shows up on demo. He went on to explain that in the future there may be much bigger differences between the demo and production apps (e.g. an entire area of functionality). What do I do now? Some things I have thought about doing:   * Maintain a different branch in subversion specific to the demo system   * Create an installation package that has the changes for demo, then revert and build a production installation package   * Modularize the application (no idea how)   * Say: \"Screw you! I will not do it!\" (LOL)   * Use some sort of conditional logic in the app to determine if it is a demo or a production app. E.g. (if the URL contains 'demo' then show else hide). If you haven't guessed by now, this is a web application Anyways, I have no experience in this scenario as to which one is better or if none of these are any good. Anyone have an answer, strategy, something!?"}
{"_id": "97235", "title": "Teaching Programming: drawbacks of using unit tests in problem statement for assignments?", "text": "I am experimenting with marking assignments for a programming course using unit tests. Is it likely to harm the learning process if I publish some of the tests I use as part of the problem statement? I figure that reading the code will be good practice and provide a more accurate problem statement than I can deliver in words... but I'd like to hear about any drawbacks. I would change the exact numbers that I expect to put in and get out of the tests, and the assignments are more about testing introductory OO concepts than whether they correctly approximate Pi, i.e. I'm not concerned that showing some possible answers would give away too much."}
{"_id": "196884", "title": "Python web application frontend for equipment diagnostics and interaction", "text": "My goal is to have a Python application that runs a web server which hosts the user interface, and based on interactions from a user in their browser, long running tasks get kicked off and through some process, feed status information back to the web server and subsequently back to the browser. The application will not need to be used by more than 1 person at a time, and if 2 or more users are accessing the URL, the state should essentially be shared across all instances. That is, each user does _not_ have unique login session. The main purpose of the application will be to maintain a list of devices it discovers automatically on the network, and poll those devices every 30-60 seconds and update the UI if it is being used. In addition, the user can select one or more of those devices and issue commands or upgrade their software. In the instance of the software upgrade, I would like to have it responsive enough where I could show real time progress bars for each device showing what % of the firmware has been uploaded. My initial thought is something like web.py or Cherrypy for the GUI, now I'm just stuck on the best method to kick off those processes from the web server and how to feed the info back. I was thinking of having some daemon listen for commands on a socket which the web app would send, and it would use sockets to pass state back and forth between the daemon and the web. Then I still need to get that information smoothly from web to client so I was thinking of websockets for that. I'm just looking for recommendations on some good practices for having the web interface communicate back and forth between the actual workers and then how to get the data from worker to web server to client browser. The driving forces behind using the browser based approach is that the system itself must run on low cost hardware running Linux on x86 (not arm) with small amounts of memory. It could be a GUI app which we VNC into a machine to use but the headless method seemed better to me. I'm not 100% tied to this idea if anyone can suggest better alternatives."}
{"_id": "208151", "title": "Unused dependencies and constructor injection", "text": "I have a class that has 3 dependencies. WritabbleDBConnection, ReadOnlyDBConnection and a QueryFilter utility object. I want to do constructor Injection so my class would look something like this.               class PersonDataAccessObject {              public function __construct($dbWrite, $dbRead, $queryFilter) {             // sets to local vars         }              public function A() {} // uses $dbRead              public function B() {} // uses $dbWrite          }      This object would most likely be instantiated in a static factory, which knows how to retrieve the DB connections. The problem I see is every time I build this object I need to pass all 3 dependencies although possibly only one of the will be used for the operations I will need to do. I don't like hiding my dependencies inside a service locator class, since I want to keep my dependencies explicit. Are there any solutions for this? Or do I have to live with unused instances?"}
{"_id": "99050", "title": "Which deployment technologies makes sense in Continuous Deployment?", "text": "In my understanding a major point in Continuous Deployment is (well, obviously I guess) that deployment is automatically done as a part of the building process. Conceptually it is easy to understand how the deployment can be done when the target is a website. However it appears hard/impossible to continuously deploy when it is a desktop application deployed via an msi-installer (sorry for my tech background being mainly a Microsoft one)? Are there deployment technologies that cannot be used when continuously deploying? Or rather: Which deployment technologies makes sense in continues deployment?"}
{"_id": "99058", "title": "Why do interfaces require methods over members?", "text": "...As this forces us to create getters and setters, which in practice are often totally extraneous? Is there any good language-design reason why interfaces in most (all?) languages do not allow member fields to help fulfill the interface spec? In most extant languages, members are treated fundamentally differently from methods, but does this HAVE to be the case? In a theoretical language, couldn't we have an interface that (a) specified a zero-args method as getter, but accepted a readable member as its implementor, and (b) specified a single- arg method as a setter, but accepted a writable member field as its implementor, given a language that supported specifying direct access control on variables when they are declared? A prototypal language allowing multiple inheritance (to address the very valid point some respondents have made), would be ideal for something like this. Please inform me if something like this already exists."}
{"_id": "199534", "title": "Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous AST representation", "text": "**What are the reasons to choose a homogeneous vs. a heterogeneous AST representation for implementing a complex domain-specific programming language?** Just to be very clear about what I'm asking, here is some extra background: By homogeneous, I mean a tree constructed of nodes which are a single _generic type_. For example, I think this question is really language independent, but using a C++-like struct for illustration, I'd consider this a minimal homogeneous abstract syntax tree node:               struct Node {       int tag;       void *data;            Node *first_child;       Node *next_sibling;     };      By heterogeneous, I mean a tree constructed of nodes which are multiple _individual types_ (e.g. one for each grammar production). For example, I don't want to assume a particular language, but again using C++-like structs for illustration, I'd consider these types part of a hierarchy used to build a heterogenous abstract syntax tree tree:               struct Node {};          struct Integer_Node : Node {       int value;     };          struct Plus_Node : Node {       Node *right;       Node *left;     };          struct If_Statement : Node {       Node *Condition;       Node *Then_Expression;       Node *Else_Expression;       };          // ... more types, depending on the language ...      Over the years, I've implemented several small, special-purpose compilers, usually in a very ad-hoc way. I've never used much of a real \"AST\" because usually syntax-direct translation has been good enough. Now I'm in the process of designing and implemented a new, much more complex language, where I will be building an AST and then walking over it with multiple passes for verification, semantic analysis, and so forth. For example, it seems that using a homogeneous scheme reduces the amount of code up front, but I wonder if a heterogeneous scheme will pay off better in the long run for reasons I'm not considering. On the other hand, the heterogeneous scheme seems like it allows benefiting from the compiler's static type checking, virtual method dispatch, etc, but I wonder if any of that is really very useful when developing semantic passes and so forth. _Basically, I'm hoping to gain some insight from those who may have some real experience here. I've read many compiler books and have a moderate amount of basic compiler-writing experience, but I haven't seen this particular dichotomy addressed in any literature I can get my hands on._"}
{"_id": "199530", "title": "Saving user profiles in SQL database", "text": "So, I got a table _UserProfiles_ in my database, that, similar to C#'s Settings file, holds a property with the appropriate datatype and the specified setting in the profile. Now each time I add a new setting, I need to update the database, the model and end up rewriting the queries. I've then thought about changing the table to only contain two columns: _Key_ and _Value_ with a varchar datatype to store the users settings... But what is considered to be best practice in such design-questions? Is this approach advisable (for example because it needs custom parsing from string to the needed datatype)?"}
{"_id": "199031", "title": "Algorithm for Cyclical Sequence Alignment", "text": "Let's say we have 3 cyclic sequences, each of them of length n and containing every number from the interval 1..n once. The goal is to align the sequences in order to maximize the number of matches between the sequences. By a match I mean a column that contains 3 identical values. Since the sequences are cyclical, we can move each sequence cyclically by any number of positions (so 1->2->3 may become 2->3->1 and 3->1->2 but not 1->3->2). Example:   1 5 4 3 2   1 3 2 4 5   2 1 5 4 3 The answer should be 3 and the corresponding alignment is shown below (fives, threes and twos are matched). 1 5 4 3 2   4 5 1 3 2   1 5 4 3 2 A simple quadratic algorithm I came up with is: for i in 1..n:       align the sequences so that column (i, i, i) is created       count the number of matches       if larger than current maximum, then set new maximum  Unfortunately the sequences may have length 1000000 and thus my approach is not fast enough. I would appreciate I someone could suggest a subquadratic (linear, loglinear?) algorithm for this problem."}
{"_id": "63459", "title": "Beginning to think functionally", "text": "I've recently gotten into learning about functional programming. I've been coding in Scala most of this past year and am just now starting to fully grasp the power of a functional language. I want to build a data-driven website from scratch using functional techniques. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how to start thinking about this. I've done this many times over using standard Java OO techniques. I usually think about the end product, build my object model off of that, then build my DB CRUD layer, then my services layer (business logic), then my web/ui layer. My question is: how can I reason about/design a large, data-driven web application in a functional manner? EDIT: Good points made so far. How about this: In a data-driven web application (database, MVC, HTML forms, etc.) where does it make sense to use FP? I'm still working on getting a good understanding of exactly what FP is, so please bear with me in my questions."}
{"_id": "199037", "title": "Using a Finite State Machine for access management?", "text": "My intranet site uses LDAP and Active Directory to authenticate users. There are 2 kinds of Users: Managers and Employees. They are differentiated by having membership in a particular AD group. In an effort to improve my code I'm trying to use (hopefully appropriately) formal design patterns. I _think_ perhaps a Finite State Machine might work here. But I'm not sure which of the following models (or some other entirely) would be best:   1. 2 transitions with simple conditions `Unlogged --- auth==TRUE---> Employee ---group==TRUE---> Manager`   2. 1 transition with a compound condition `Unlogged --- auth==TRUE && group==FALSE---> Employee` `Unlogged --- auth==TRUE && group==TRUE---> Manager` The first feels cleaner. The second is closer to what should actually be happening. Am I on the right track? Would a different design pattern entirely be better?"}
{"_id": "37033", "title": "what does the term bandwith mean?", "text": "I am a pure internet product so i don't have any it degree or training so i am quit confused about bandwith. is it the memory resource server or processor resource or database server load? If i use sqlite database instead of mysql server for small projects, will it speed up my site performance (since sqlite file will be used only by me)"}
{"_id": "198481", "title": "Why can't an xml comment contain two hyphens", "text": "I was applying markdown comments in the xml comments of a config file when the XmlParser reported that two hyphens (`--`) are not allowed in xml comments. Checking the XML Specification, it appears that xml comment isn't designed to contain two hyphens for compatibility reasons with SGML parsers. Why do SGML parsers disallow double hyphens in comments?"}
{"_id": "105494", "title": "What should I expect from a technical evaluation for C++?", "text": "I have been asked to go for a technical test/evaluation for a job as a junior developer, mainly using C++. This is my first test/evaluation, and it is 2 hours long. My C++ is a bit rusty as I have been doing projects recently on PHP. This is a UK company, however im guessing technical testing of candidates will be pretty much the same everywhere. What should I expect in one of these tests?"}
{"_id": "105496", "title": "Document management system frameworks?", "text": "I'm working on an enterprise LOB software. The next piece that will be added to the system is document management. Most entities throughout the system will have documents attached to them. I clearly see the need to organize, search, share, upload and scan documents. I was wondering if a document management system with the following requirements exists:   1. Not a monster (not Sharepoint, etc)   2. Easily embeddable, my environment is .NET Silverlight   3. No royalties. Preferably just pay for it once and use it as custom controls, etc. I bet such an animal exists as I don't want to reinvent the wheel.. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "102143", "title": "Is there a minimum team size required to see a benefit from Agile?", "text": "I work at a company that has repeatedly cut the sizes of its development team, to the point that previous 10-man teams are now down to one developer per product (and a couple of testers shared between 5 products). We used to be fairly process heavy, having been a spin off from a larger company, and inherited its multi-stage waterfall process. It has come down from the executive team that we are not releasing software fast enough, and that this is likely the fault of the process (which may be a contributor, although the 90% loss of manpower probably didn't help). There has been a push for us to move to an Agile process to avoid spending time writing design documents, etc. I guess I'm just curious as to whether a switch to Agile will help with single-person teams. It was my understanding that a lot of the benefits come from higher visibility and more communication between team members, but I know what I'm doing and so does my manager. I already do TDD since we have no one to test the product anyway. **TL;DR version:** I guess what I'm really asking is, can you implement Agile with single-person 'teams', and do you see any benefits from it, or is it usually something that's more effective for larger teams?"}
{"_id": "196987", "title": "Please tell me I'm not alone (can't program on paper)", "text": "So I went to a job interview today. Long story short, the interviewers were delighted with my knowledge and experience, they were practically showing me to my new desk. Needless to say, what delighted them was a factual and unexaggerated description of things that I've actually worked on. But then suddenly, as I was getting ready to leave, one of the interviewers says to me: \"Well, I know that this is probably too easy for someone with your experience, but because of protocol, we need you to complete a simple test\". No problem I thought... After this I get handed a piece of paper, a pencil (seriously wtf? who uses these primitive devices anymore?) and instructions telling me to code a function returning a Fibonacci number and another doing that with recursion. God I hate math. I distinctly remember doing this precise exercise on 3rd semester of college. I probably nailed it back then, but not so much today. It took me about 40 minutes and I got close, but the functions didn't work. Ironically, I knew exactly why they were wrong and what erroneous result was being returned, but I just couldn't figure out how to fix them. Something about having to scratch graphite marks off a paper, just made me really, really nervous. Or perhaps it's that I'm self-conscious about having my math skills evaluated. I can't calculate a tip with a waiter watching because I'm slow with numbers, and it makes me feel embarrassed. All of this got me thinking about this Coding Horror article. Apparently, 199 out of 200 applicants pretend to know how to code, but actually can't. I think there's something else going on here. I mean, none of you are going to hire me, I've no reason to lie to you when I tell you that I've coded much more complex things. And yet I couldn't code a simple function, not under those conditions. Has anyone else experienced this?"}
{"_id": "191201", "title": "Derived Class Method Naming", "text": "I'm having a hard time coming up with a good naming convention for methods in derived classes that serve the same purpose as the methods in the base class. For example, if both the base class, and the derived class, need to initialize:               public class Foo()     {         public void Initialize()         {             // base class initialization code here             InitializeDerived();         }              // force derived classes to implement their own initialize method         protected abstract void InitializeDerived();     }          public class Bar() : Foo     {         protected override void InitializeDerived()         {             // initialization code here         }     }      InitializeDerived() seems clunky. The only other option I can think of is to make the base class Initialize() method virtual. Then the derived class could override it, using the same name, and call the base class Initialize() method first. Is there a better way? A better naming convention? ** EDIT ** This may be a better example, because constructors won't solve the problem here. In this example, we have a rules engine where the client code polymorphically calls Process() on each rule:               public class RuleBase()     {         public void Process()         {             // base class processing code here             ProcessDerived();         }              // force derived classes to implement their own process method         protected abstract void ProcessDerived();     }          public class RuleValidateHeight() : RuleBase     {         protected override void ProcessDerived()         {             // derived class processing code here         }     }      The consuming code:               foreach (Rule rule in rules)     {         rule.Process()     }"}
{"_id": "197599", "title": "Why would I use Angular?", "text": "From the basic Angular tutorial, it seems like all it does is fetch some JSON from an API and display it. Also, there's its double binding magic. But why would I use it instead of a backend solution (like Rails) that builds the view in the backend and serves it to the user, with everything in place already? What are the use cases?"}
{"_id": "112098", "title": "In C++, how much programmer time is spent doing memory management", "text": "People who are used to garbage collected languages are often scared of C++'s memory management. There are tools, like `auto_ptr` and `shared_ptr` which will handle many of the memory management tasks for you. Lots of C++ libraries predate those tools, and have their own way to handle the memory management tasks. **How much time do you spend on memory management tasks?** I suspect that it is highly dependent on the set of libraries you use, so please say which ones your answer applies to, and if they make it better or worse."}
{"_id": "223523", "title": "A hint to create a db schema", "text": "I need to realize a database in this mode:               TABLE restaurant      with \"classic\" fields of a place: address, street number, phone, website, etc etc etc. I need to indicate also the days of opening // closing. E.g. From Monday to wednesday close, saturday only evening and sunday lunch + evening. So, I did think at another table with 14 rows:               ID_RESTAURANT  MONDAY_LUNCH MONDAY_EVENING [...] SUNDAY_EVENING         12         0             0                    1         And \"finally\" every restaurant has his own cooking (\"international\", \"chinese\", \"japan\") Another table with a column for every cooking? Finally, several services. \"Conditioned Air\", \"Credit Card\", \"Animals permitted\" \"children addicted\" etc etc. Another table with a column for every \"service\"?               ID_RESTAURANT    CONDITIONED    CREDIT_CARD     ANIMALS         12              1              1              0         13              0              1              1      I hope that I'm clear. Thank you very much!"}
{"_id": "197591", "title": "Best way to auto login in web application", "text": "This question could be titled \"Place password hash and salt in query string?\" as well to be less subjective, but the point remains the same: I want to create kind of a launcher application for my web application, which should allow the user to specify his credentials to auto login into my web application. Now since plaintext is almost always awful, I thought about passing the password hash and salt as a querystring to my application to perform an auto login. Something like: http://myapp.com/login/?autologin=true&passwordhash=foo&salt=bar But I wonder if there is any better or more secure way instead of doing this?"}
{"_id": "197590", "title": "subclass of immutable object not immutable, can this work?", "text": "So I'm finishing up refactoring some code to remove a number of previously- mutable objects and add a better generic processing for all the classes in the domain. Just as I thought I was finishing I eralized that there is one sub- class that has some additional state. The additional state is a link to other classes that are used as part of the logic for knowing when new domain objects will be created, deleted, or modified. However, this sub-class is only created at bootup, or when someone runs a command to re-read and update to new configuration files. I know that this object will _always_ be created before any of the other objects in my domain that are dependent on it are, such that anyone pointing to this object are all gaurenteed to point to the same instance. I effectively have the Memorization pattern by an accident of how the structure is created. I could refactor away the mutability; but it would require a bit of work modifying bootup logic that I would prefer to avoid. Or I could change the has and equals methods to ignore this one set of mutable values so my model will treat this object exactly like it's immutable parent and trust that my knowledge of the method it is constructed prevent me from aliasing issues when I do try to use it's mutable traits. So how 'wrong' is it to bend my contract for thie class this way be?"}
{"_id": "211149", "title": "Layer Encapsulation without Model Overload?", "text": "I'm starting a new project, so it's time to re-evaluate how I do things. In the recent past I have created a 3 layer/tier project (UI, Domain, Data) with each tier with it's own separate model. The the DAL has it's data entities consumed by the Domain layer, which mapped them to domain models which were consumed by the UI which mapped them to ViewModels. This did allow for some differentiation at each level (especially UI) but the mapping was overwhelmingly tedious (Automapper helped a little) and the Domain and Data layers were basically 1:1, with the UI view models being the most useful. I'm trying to figure out how to simplify for my next project and I could use some suggestions."}
{"_id": "67220", "title": "How many programmers makes a company small / medium sized / large?", "text": "I am a freelancer so I really don't know what you guys put behind the words when you say \"working in a **small** company is X different compared to a **medium sized** one, and Y to a **large company** \". Could you please tell me (roughly) what are the boundaries between these categories ? I am asking specifically for how many programmers ( _IT-related workers_ *) in a company instead of how many workers because:   1. To avoid the \"this is not a programming related question\" spam; and   2. Because I (logically) care about the differences related to programming, a company with 100 workers, only 2 of which are related to IT inherits the just-a-few-programmers working environment, and is obviously smaller compared to a company of 10 workers who are all programmers. Smaller by the classification given on this site, for different situations binded to the size of the team(s). * _I suppose project managers, QA, team leaders, etc. also goes under the countable people._ **Thanks**."}
{"_id": "67226", "title": "Why doesn't Mono implement WPF?", "text": "I haven't been able to find a reasonable justification of Mono team not working on WPF. What could be the possible reason? Especially when they've already implemented Silverlight."}
{"_id": "243227", "title": "Legality of modifying and distributing the JRE", "text": "I see that Google App Engine apps run on a so-called secured sandbox JRE; that is, a JRE that Google modified and that makes changes to certain JRE types. This is how GAE prevents developers from writing apps that can do things like:   * Access the local file system via `File`   * Make remote JDBC calls   * Use JNDI   * Lots of other restrictions We have a similar need where we have an app that developers will be able to write plugins for. These plugins will need to utilize an API (a JAR) that we distribute with our app. We cannot afford for plugins to do certain things, particularly on the end user's file system, and need to modify the `File` class in a similar manner that GAE does. **Long back-story short, this means we'll need to ship our app with a custom, modified JRE.** My question: **is this legal to do** , or did Google likely pay Oracle some fee to modify/distribute their own JRE for app engine?"}
{"_id": "108018", "title": "When doing up a quote, do I see my client in person, or send it via email?", "text": "Client need something done, I need to write up a quote, how do I approach it? If you have any general strategy on this issue would also be appreciated. This is to build a website/database for a few grand."}
{"_id": "108019", "title": "*Code owner* system: is it an efficient way?", "text": "There is a new developer in our team. An agile methodology is in use at our company. But the developer has another experience: he considers that particular parts of the code must be assigned to particular developers. So if one developer had created a program procedure or module it would be considered normal that all changes of the procedure/module would be made by him only. On the plus side, supposedly with the proposed approach we save common development time, because each developer knows his part of the code well and makes fixes fast. The downside is that developers don't know the system entirely. Do you think the approach will work well for a medium size system (development of a social network site)?"}
{"_id": "220950", "title": "Where to store the private key?", "text": "Say I want some parts of my software to be encrypted. For example, the credentials for a database, etc. I need to store those values somewhere, but doing so in cleartext would make it easy for an attacker to gain unauthorised access. However, if I encrypt some cleartext, then where do I store the key? Anything that software has access to, a determined attacker would have access to, no matter what level of obfuscation:   * Say the key is protected by the filesystem's security model; but what about (malicious) superusers, or platforms that don't provide such fidelity?   * Or the key is hardcoded into software binaries, but it could always be decompiled and what about open source software or interpreted code?   * If the key is generated, such an algorithm would need to be deterministic (presumably) and then the same problem applies to the seed.   * etc. Cryptography is only as strong as the weakest link in its chain and this seems like a pretty loose one! Presuming it's the right tool for the job (humour me), then how can one secure such information robustly? * * * Regarding the right tool for the job: Probably, in -- for example -- the case of service access (DBs, authentication servers, etc.), you would restrict access at this tier with a service account, maybe with some service-level auditing, etc. and so having the credentials in cleartext isn't such a worry. To me, however, that still seems inadequate: I don't want anyone poking around where they shouldn't be!"}
{"_id": "234437", "title": "BSD/MIT license changes when copy/pasting a function from another BSD/MIT licensed package", "text": "I frequently find myself wanting to use some small function from another library but end up not doing because it's not worth pulling another dependency. Considering BSD/MIT licenses, if I just copy/paste a function from another package, what would be the legal requirement when licensing my code? Also, as matter of _netiquette_ , what would be the preferable way to give credit to the original author? I understand this depends on the specific circumstances of each situation. The safe way would be to always ask the upstream author what does he want, but, sometimes, this happens so frequently that having a a default proposition for the upstream author can make the interaction smoother."}
{"_id": "157465", "title": "Extending GPL code will make the new code GPL too?", "text": "I am currently adding some functionality to a popular open source project. It written in C and in Every file GPL license text is embedded. The functionality I am adding is not supported by the project. So you can say its some sort of extending. My code gets compiled when the main project is compiled. My code is inside the main project and its integrated heavily. Let me explain more thoroughly. Basically I know of two types of linking.   1. My _program_ uses mysql c api. so I link my c code with `libmysqlclient`. Here I am **using** `libmysqlclient`   2. My _code_ adds hash-table functionality on `libmysqlclient` so user can access fields by column name. My project is of second type. Should it be GPL? What about the first scenario (I am curious)?"}
{"_id": "234438", "title": "How should I populate a list of database-sourced models?", "text": "I have a model which sources its data from a MySQL database using a `load()` public method. If I have a collection of models, I have to loop through each model and call its `load()` method individually; meaning multiple queries are executed which is slow and inefficient. Should I have something like a `populate()` method on my model that is called from a controller (MVC) and fills the model with data so that the MySQL queries are as few and efficient as possible? Or is there a better way to do this? I'm worried that if I load model data from outside the model, I'm leaving proper encapsulation behind, and bloating my code with nearly-the- same-but-not-quite copypasta."}
{"_id": "109943", "title": "Combining getters and setters", "text": "JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, combine 'getters' and 'setters' in the programming interface for example:                $('element').css({'color','blue'});      will set the color or                $('element').css();      will get the css for an element. Is there a name for such a pattern and is it a good practice to use in applications?"}
{"_id": "109941", "title": "Best practices for generating new identifiers for persistent objects?", "text": "In a typical scenario, an object that needs to be persisted in the database will be created in application code without an identifier, and later saved to a table in the database. Some database construct, such as an identity column, will generate a new identifier, typically an integer that's unique for all of the rows of that table. This identifier can then be returned to application code and then treated as a key.               CREATE TABLE Users (         UserId int IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, DisplayName nvarchar(max),          UserName nvarchar(50), [Password] nvarchar(50))     GO          INSERT INTO Users (DisplayName, UserName, [Password])          VALUES ('Joe Shmo', 'jshmo', 'pw1')     SELECT @@IDENTITY      Another common scenario is for the identifier to be GUID:               CREATE TABLE Users (         UserId uniqueidentifier NOT NULL, DisplayName nvarchar(max),          UserName nvarchar(50), [Password] nvarchar(50))     GO          DECLARE @id uniqueidentifier = NEWID()     INSERT INTO Users (UserId, DisplayName, UserName, [Password])          VALUES (@id, 'Joe Shmo', 'jshmo', 'pw1')     SELECT @id      This second way provides the following advantage: the GUID can be generated in application code, which can then be used as a key for application caching/referencing purposes before the object is ever saved. However, there is a cost associated with using GUIDs in size and, especially look-up costs. These may be trivial when the table is small, but can become a major factor when the table is massive. Are there any best practices, or techniques for the cases where an identifier unique to the object type needs to be generated in application code, but cannot be a GUID for whatever reason? One thought was to have a another table generating identifier wrapped by an identifier service which application code could call."}
{"_id": "109947", "title": "Do you know of any encryption techniques used to validate url redirection", "text": "I'm adding a click-tracking feature on my website to track click-thrus for my advertisers. So, on my site, instead of having a _direct link_ , I link to my _re-direct page_ passing the destination url as an argument. This re-direct page then tracks the click thru and then 301 re-directs the user to the correct external url. I want to prevent 3rd partys from harnessing this system to make it re-direct to arbitrary urls. I'd like the code that creates the links to: Create `special token` using ( `destination url` \\+ `secret` ) Then, pass the `destination url` \\+ `special token` arguments as query string parameters to my _re-direct page_ in public. Upon receiving the arguments the re-direct page will do a check: Given ( `destination url` \\+ `special token` \\+ `secret` ), `destination url` is either:   * good - re-direct it to destination   * bad - do not re-direct it to destination and it should _not_ be possible for Doctor Evil to: Create `secret` using ( `known valid destination url` \\+ `its special token` ) * * * Ideally the `re-direct` page would not have to do any url-specific look-ups on data to validate the parameters - it should just be able to tell from 'the two params given + the secret + the known algorithm'. I'm not very knowledgeable about encryption so was wondering what kind of method one would use to create and validate the parameters given the shared secret. I'm sure this is a common technique but I have no idea what its called - thus its difficult to learn more about it. Any help is appreciated."}
{"_id": "147445", "title": "How does one interface C++ with the web (at Google, for example)?", "text": "Google is well known for the ridiculous amount of C++ they've coded over the years. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a large part of Google's core search engine is written in C++, isn't it? How does one take a program written in C++ and interface it with a website? Note: I'm not looking for how Google in particular does this, just how it might be done in general."}
{"_id": "91300", "title": "Why do my java programs run faster in eclipse than in BlueJ?", "text": "I've been programming for about 2 years, and so far Java is all I know. When I made the switch from BlueJ to eclipse I noticed my old projects ran much faster. What would be the reason for this, as far as I knew the executing of java byte code is handled by the JVM and I still had the same JVM after I switched. Other than that does eclipse have had a different compiler? That's the only other thing I could think of. **Edit:** I timed it, the average runtime for, we'll call it A(100), in blueJ was 1 Minutes; 8 Seconds; 846 Milliseconds. In eclipse A(100) only took 8 Seconds; 459 Milliseconds. I've also noticed the increase for all my other programs too. I haven't measured those yet but the difference is definitely noticeable. A() is a function that does alot of computation than prints of a chart of information based on what it found, fyi."}
{"_id": "79251", "title": "What open source C# projects exemplify separation of concerns and good solution structure?", "text": "I'm looking for something showing best practices in N-tier enterprise application design with focus on code re-use and scalability. Possibly using DDD or CQRS methodology. Don't really care about UI, as that's already well understood."}
{"_id": "72280", "title": "Is it wrong to copy ideas from other languages?", "text": "In the making of a programming language, is it wrong to copy features and ideas from other programming languages? If it is not a problem, why not? Is it possible to license and copyright these things?"}
{"_id": "103434", "title": "Tutorial for getting started with bare bone rails", "text": "I am trying to pick up Rails, but there are a ton of things that it does that it's not under my control and that's scary (http://blog.zawodny.com/2011/06/13/i-actually-tried-learning-rails/). Is there a tutorial where it explains only the exact things you need to do in order to pick up the framework? (specs, controllers and views)"}
{"_id": "42", "title": "How do I cope with a manager who\u2019s always interfering in what I do, but doesn\u2019t really understand it?", "text": "We've all had them, managers who have either come from sales or last looked at code 10 or more years ago but think they know how to write code. What can I do to give the impression that I'm grateful for his intervention, but keep it as short as possible so I can get on with my work? Or, should I be engaging more with the manager to educate him/her with modern coding techniques and practices? After all, a manager who understands these will be able to talk sensibly to clients and more senior management when discussing the project and its timescales."}
{"_id": "131933", "title": "Can JavaScript be used as a general scripting language?", "text": "I've used JavaScript and some frameworks (jQuery, Prototype, some node.js) for client-side web programming, but never on the desktop, where I do most of my scripting work in either Python or Bash. But IMHO, JavaScript would make a great scripting language if used outside of the browser. Has anyone tried this? Can JavaScript be an adequate replacement for Python/Perl/Bash for quick and dirty scripting tasks?"}
{"_id": "79226", "title": "Team Foundation Server - Deployments", "text": "We currently have 5 developers working on quite large Silverlight application. We have 3 servers:   * Test   * User acceptance server   * Production Each person works on something completely different and rarely do they run into each other's code. When they do, they just merge it while checking in their changes. The biggest problem we have currently is following scenario:   1. One person works on some module and it's finished but we don't want it to be released yet.    2. Second person works on some bug fixes etc. those need to be released. Both people checked in their code. Now how do we select/pick changes we would like to keep in a specific build. **Is there a way of creating custom build based on specific check-ins? Can we revert some changes?** I have previous experience in git/hg and I only just started using TFS for this project. What I used to do in Git was to create a new branch per feature and each person would work on their branch. If a person was working on general bug, they would then check it in to the master branch and other people would just pull it to make sure they are up to date. When the feature was finished we would then merge the branch into the master branch. TFS seems to be very fragile and every time I tried doing something with it I either ended up losing some changes I made or ending up with many hours trying to fix some random issues I created by doing simple tasks such as check it or get latest. **Are there any tutorials (more hands on) available?**"}
{"_id": "131938", "title": "How to stop the development spec from changing in mid development?", "text": "**Problem** : It seems with almost every development effort I'm involved in, no matter how much time is spent planning prior to starting development, there is always a large amount of changes required either midway or towards the end of the project. These are sometimes big changes which require alot of re- development. I don't work for clients who pay money, this is an in-house development team on in-house development websites. So, it's not like I can charge for it or anything. And at the end of the day, we have to try to hit deadlines. **Questions** : What are some of the best ways you guys have found to minimize and prevent spec changes from cropping up midway or after development?"}
{"_id": "186755", "title": "Applying DRY to an inheritance hierarchy", "text": "I'm working on refactoring a legacy application where I implemented the State pattern successfully as shown in the following diagram: ![State Pattern UML](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ceQNx.png) As you see there is a common behavior between the 3 states, so I decided to extract the common method `Refund()` to a parent abstract class `RefundableState` where I implemented it: ![Refactoring for common operations](http://i.stack.imgur.com/j4SAX.png) Refactoring further I notice that the `Ship()` method is common between the 2 states `Cancelled` and `NewOrder`, so I go for another round of extracting the common behavior to another parent class `ShippableState`: ![Refactoring problem!!](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QHbLO.png) Now I need my `Cancelled` state to extend 2 classes and in the same time I can't group the `Refund()` and `Ship()` function together as not all state permit the 2 actions. How can I fix this? **Notes:**   * This question is mainly about applying **DRY** and refactoring not about how to implement the state pattern.   * I'm using PHP 5.3, but I'm open to answers in any other languages."}
{"_id": "111841", "title": "How do we handle Categories in database schema and model classes", "text": "I am trying to develop an ecommerce solution but stuck on the categories management issue and don't know how to proceed further. See, A category will have a parent category, which in-return can also point to another parent and so on, until the root category is reached. I tried to design the following database schema, **Please tell me if that's right ?** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/kew7U.jpg) OR **Is there any tutorial on categories and parent categories that can help me understand this scenario better ?**"}
{"_id": "103483", "title": "DB centric iPhone app question", "text": "The iPhone app i have an idea for deals with processing of the data stored as part of Oracle database at work. It'll be an interface to a dynamic set of data that is updated tens of thousands of time a day. Each time you look, results are likely to be different. That being said, the company i work for does not have an enterprise appstore, which (as i understand it) means that i would have to publish my app onto the regular appstore with some kind of access key. > Q1. Is this a common practice, given no company specific app store exists? I wonder if any of the cocoa API allows for east access and synchronization with Oracle databases. > Q2. If you know of one and can point me in the right direction, i'd be very > grateful. Is there anything else i should know when dealing with such a problem? Security is obviously a concern, the data will likely be of absolutely no interest to an outsider, but then again, we do want to be as prudent as we can be. Please let me know"}
{"_id": "185219", "title": "Is it a basic principle, or highly desirable, to have class methods that return \"$this\" rather than a value?", "text": "I've really just begun to learn OOP. I started about a year ago and have written probably 15,000 lines of it. But I wrote it all with hardly any experience looking at other people's OOP. Most of my class functions return a value or make a change to the class properties and return true/false. Some of the ones that return a value also save that value into a class property (after first checking if the class property is already set, which can avoid a database call). Now I'm doing a lot of digging in Magento/Zend and I notice a lot of their class methods return \"$this\". As I understand it, unlike in regular functions, class methods that return $this act by reference not by value, so that you get back the same object you started with rather than a copy. Is returning `$this` something that I should be doing much more of? Does it make the code easier to maintain and use? Is returning `$this` necessary in order to chain class methods?"}
{"_id": "181905", "title": "Finding occurrences of a useful words and phrases in strings", "text": "I am building an app that analyzes posts by people by pulling their Tweets and Facebook posts. I need to process all the posts and find _useful_ phrases. What I mean by useful is that, any word or phrase that is a noun/adjective/verb that would represent a discrete object or an idea, or in other words, I am looking for keywords. For example, if someone has posted those three posts (in a very simple sense): `i am a big fan of progressive metal music! it is fantastic!` `Look what I've found: a new Progressive Metal band!` `a good genre in music is progressive metal` Analyzing those simple examples, I need to extract `progressive metal` and `music` with the highest occurrence rank. But if I pass the occurrences of words simply, I'll be getting `a`, `is`, `I` as the most common words. If I get away with the propositions, then I'll be getting single words such as `progressive`, `metal`, `music`. What I really need is to get phrases such as `progressive metal`, or `progressive metal music`, which together actually make sense. As a word, `progressive` and `metal` have other meanings, but the phrase `progressive metal` defines a musical genre, which has nothing to do with the single words themselves. Iteratively searching occurrence of every possible phrase in all the posts (e.g. first search `i` in all posts, then `i am`, then `i am a` etc.) is computationally extremely expensive and is not an option. I've looked at some similar questions: Available options for classifying words in text? Language parsing to find important words But both are overkills, solving (or trying to solve) more general problems. My problem is more specific and I'm thinking of a simpler solution that doesn't involve NLP. An idea one might come up with is to compare the posts against a valid word/phrase list, but people might be talking about a brand related name, or a specific event, that are not available in a dictionary, such as `Twitter API`, or `death of Michael Jackson`. I am currently evaluating posts against the user's Facebook likes, which makes a good dictionary of valid phrases about the user, but it fails when we are on Twitter, without the notion of \"likes\", hence, no valid dictionary. Is there any simple way of checking occurrence of val\u0131d terms in a large array of sentences? (not necessarily grammatically correct) UPDATE: It's an iOS app so I'm in Objective-C, to keep in mind in library recommendations."}
{"_id": "188620", "title": "How to make my web app restful", "text": "I have a web application which I want to make RESTful. Here is the structure of the app:   1. Top level has a bunch of search screens, they are basically tabs which search different parts of database with different parameters.   2. After the search is done we display search results in a new tab, inside this tab is a table with a list of results.   3. From the list of results we can drill down to individual details for each row (they also open in a new tab)   4. Inside the details there are further additional details (and some sub-searches relevant to the the item). These additional details are also open in a new tab. So, now I want to make this app RESTful - the goal is for people to share their searches and screens easily, have simpler URLs, get rid of some information stored in session.   * Is this feasible for the design we have to make it RESTful?   * The main difficulty I see is that we have multiple tabs with different searches and details, how do I reflect it in the URL?    * Also, the search could be quite complex - users can enter 50 different filters and could enter multiple ids - up to a thousand at the same time. What would be a preferred solution in this case? If this is not quite works, then is there a way to have several tabs that correspond to different URLs in one URL?"}
{"_id": "188623", "title": "What kind of abstraction/SoC should I use here?", "text": "I am starting a new project, and I want to follow the separation of concerns pattern, and I have been reading on the topic, and now I am in doubt of how I should go about this. * * * **Here is how I thought I should go about it:**   * Application/Presentation Layer uses the Business Layer. Works with the entity _interfaces_.   * The Business Layer uses the Data Access Layer (repositories, models/entities). Works with the entity _interfaces_.   * The Data Access layer works with the Database, and is using an OR/M solution - the solution itself may change. Works with the entity implementations, but returns _interfaces_ to the business layer. The business layer would get a specific repository implementation injected. The repository would return entities in the form of Interfaces, so the business layer would not care what kind of OR/M we use. If we decided to switch from using e.g LLBLGen to NHibernate, we would do the following:   1. Code a new set of entity classes to be used with NHibernate, because the entities we have were generated by LLBLGen.   2. Create a new repository implementation that worked with the new entities + framework.   3. Switch out the repository implementation being injected into the business layer with the new one - the repository works with interfaces, so business layer could remain unchanged. The main point of interest _(pain)_ here, apart from having to modify the generated entities to implement our model interfaces, is that we have to create **entirely new entities** just because we are switching frameworks. The same would be necessary if we switched out the datasource to something the OR/M didn't support. This is the way I've been doing it (because hey, _auto-generating your entities is how you get all the ladies, right?)_ , but then I came across this excellent article! * * * **Here is how I think I should go about it now**   * Entities are stored in a separate namespace/project - `MyProject.Model`   * Application/Presentation Layer uses the entities in `MyProject.Model` to display stuff. Uses Business Layer to retrieve/save them.   * Business Layer also uses entities in `MyProject.Model`. Uses a repository from Data Access Layer that gets injected, depending on what OR/M we are using   * Data Access Layer uses the OR/M frameworks with **code-first** , so we can work with `MyProject.Model` regardless of what OR/M, or even Data Source we are using. * * * Pro's and con's for solution 1:   * Pro: Can use Database-First to auto-generate entities. Timesaver!   * Pro: Works with interfaces for entities   * Con: Works with interfaces for entities (this may be too much abstraction?)   * Con: Have to use an entirely new set of entities to implement a new OR/M or Data Source. They need to be modified to conform to my interfaces, chances are they can't because of how they do relationship-management. Pro's and con's for solution 2:   * Pro: Write entities/models once, use for any DAL implementation   * Pro: No need to use interfaces for entities   * Con/Pro: Stuck with code-first for every OR/M. On the other hand, gives you full-flex on how you want them to look.   * Con: Some framework (e.g EF) are simply easier to get rolling with when using DB First. I had more pros and cons before, but I lost them again.. * * * Conclusion: What solution would you pick, and why? Or do you have an even better solution? Please don't close as \"not a question\", because I really need an answer. Thank you."}
{"_id": "188627", "title": "Storage Client Library 2.0 - Why is the API not as intuitive to use as 1.7?", "text": "I am migrating to using the new Storage Client Library for my Azure Table Storage. **Querying with the previous _Storage Client Library 1.7_ namespace:**               var orders = serviceContext                      .CreateQuery<Order>(tableName)                      .AsTableServiceQuery<Order>()                      .Where(e => e.PartitionKey == partitionKey && e.RowKey == rowKey)      **Querying with the new _Storage Client Library 2.0_ classes:**               string partitionKeyFilter = TableQuery.GenerateFilterCondition(\"PartitionKey\", QueryComparisons.Equal, partitionKey);     string rowKeyFilter = TableQuery.GenerateFilterCondition(\"RowKey\", QueryComparisons.Equal, rowKey);     string combinedFilter = TableQuery.CombineFilters(partitionKeyFilter, TableOperators.And, rowKeyFilter);          var query = new TableQuery<Order>().Where(combinedFilter);     var orders = table.ExecuteQuery<Order>(query);      Please correct me if I'm wrong, but 1.7 is cleaner, uses strongly-typed entities, implements the IQueryable interface and utilizes the full power of LINQ. Version 2.0 makes me feel like I'm working with ADO.NET Datasets again. Am I completely missing the plot here? I understand that there have been major performance improvements, but version 2.0 feels like a downgrade of an API. Why isn't there a `IQueryable<T>` interface for 2.0?"}
{"_id": "188626", "title": "Mock up class object", "text": "For example I have class `ItemDownloader` which has method `downloadItem`. This method creates instance of another class - `Download` to perform actual downloading. Question is: I want to test `ItemDownloader` in isolation, so I will probably mock up `Download`. How should I do it? P.S.: Question is more about design than implementation, I can certainly mock up class object in languages like Smalltalk or Objective-C, or use Prototype pattern in C++. But as I understand there is better solution."}
{"_id": "196316", "title": "What exactly is DevOps Engineering?", "text": "If someone were to work as a DevOps Engineer, what sort of things would he/she do on a daily basis and what would their responsibilities entail?"}
{"_id": "87817", "title": "difference between Visual Studio and RADs?", "text": "What is the main difference between a Rapid Application Development tool like MonoDev and Visual Studio, is an RAD more focused on one thing? I'm looking to make a web application, are there advantages to using a Web Based Rapid Application Development Tool as opposed to Visual Studio with the .NET framework 3.5 support?"}
{"_id": "30889", "title": "Information Technology -> Specialization of Computer Science?", "text": "My friend said to me \"IT is a specialization of Computer Science\". I said it isn't. Is he correct? Can someone clarify the difference between IT and CS? I know they are related but according to me calling IT a specialization of CS doesn't make sense."}
{"_id": "156730", "title": "Starting on a large project, should I split it into more concise parts?", "text": "Background: Currently an intern at a company and working on repurposing older programs (still in use, but for different departments) for use in testing new hardware. The new hardware is different in terms of register layout and firmware interface from the older iterations of hardware. I have been given free reign on how to setup this project as it is to be used for the new hardware exclusively. Currently there is a single .c file and 5 different header files that make up the program. The .c file is currently over 10000 lines long and comprises EVERY single function in use of main(). My question is, should I split the code into more recognizable chunks of .c files? It is currently only a mild annoyance to go through and find the methods I need, but it is time-consuming and I do have deadlines. What are the benefits and tradeoffs of doing so now, rather than later? I aim to finish re-purposing the program by next week (this is heavy optimism, it will most likely take two weeks), so is it more efficient to start culling and moving around code now, or will I benefit more from just attempting to force my way through as is?"}
{"_id": "206908", "title": "metro style on windows and android", "text": "I want to develop a rather simple app using windows 8 metro style for GUI. But i need this app to have the same appearance, GUI, for both platforms, so that end users that uses it both on PC and a mobile device to have the same visual experience and a flawless navigation. So, does anyone have knowledge of a Java framework or library to satisfy these needs? Or maybe a method to create a web-based app using HTML, PHP, JScript etc. (maybe something using a local server, on the same machine, because a web server is out of discussion, at least for the moment)? Any idea, method, technology related to the subject is also helpful. And if what you are thinking at can be used for IOS too, the better."}
{"_id": "210826", "title": "What are appropriate metaphors for the pieces of a word processor?", "text": "A word processor is a complicated creature of many layers and pieces, but it represents a relatively simple concept: a piece of paper with writing on it. This leads to the problem of having many abstractions without enough intuitive names to describe those abstractions. Not everything can be a document. The solution to this sort of problem is usually finding powerful metaphors that make life easier. Here are some of the abstractions for a document that need intuitive names:   1. The data structure that breaks up plain text into meaningful pieces such as chapters, sections, headings, and various kinds of emphasis. This is the most abstract document because it avoids all rendering information like fonts, colors, underlines, or alignments.   2. The data structure that provides text with rendering information such as fonts, colors, sizes, alignments. This also represents a document, but at a level that is closer to the printed page. It probably uses an instance of the first kind of document to help generate the content.   3. The data structure that arranges glyphs into lines of text. This document can be given the number of a desired paragraph, a position within that paragraph, and a maximum width in pixels, and it produces a data structure that represents a line of text ready to draw. It makes sense to base this document abstraction upon an instance of the previous document abstraction because they both represent documents at different stages in the rendering process.   4. The final data structure stores lines of text in their relative positions on the screen or page. It is capable of drawing an entire screen of text, inserting figures, and making columns. It knows which part of the document is currently visible, handles scrolling or dividing the document into pages for printing. This document abstraction is the very closest to the paper, but does that make it most worthy to be called document, or is the most abstract layer the true document since it is what the user is truly editing? All four concepts are documents in their own way, but I can't call them all documents; that would be confusing. What is the proper metaphor to use here? Something that intuitively reflects the complexity of the task better than a document? On top of all that, there are three different ways to represent a position within a paragraph.   1. Measured in characters from the start of the paragraph   2. Measured as a line number starting from the first line of the paragraph and then measured in characters from the start of the line   3. Measured in pixels as the paragraph is rendered on the screen These three representations are all positions, but things become confusing if I call them all positions. I need a simple way to distinguish them, something that fits well with the improved metaphor that I'll use to distinguish the four kinds of document. I have looked into typography in search of good metaphors, but nothing jumps out at me. I have also considered a metaphor from constructing a building. The first kind of document could be a Blueprint, the second kind could be a Foundation. Unfortunately #3 and #4 aren't clear, and it doesn't seem to help with the issue of paragraph positions."}
{"_id": "206904", "title": "Any good, easy to learn from books or tutorials for learning assembly?", "text": "I've been a developer since 2009 and I've learnt a lot of languages since, but I've always wanted to understand and be able to code in the lowest level language so I can directly (or at least very close to directly) speak to machines through my code. There was a point in time when someone showed me how to do an if statement in assembly, but out of all the books that I got, I could never really understand where/how to start learning to code in assembler. any help please? I'm obsessed with learning this! PS: if you have any software suggestions, I use ubuntu and am looking to convert to backtrack soon, so it would be preferred if you could give me something that'll be easily installed on debian linux, otherwise don't sweat it, give me the name of the windows software and I'll find an equivalent myself"}
{"_id": "140147", "title": "How to break the \"php is a bad language\" paradigm?", "text": "PHP is not a bad language (or at least not as bad as some may suggest). I had teachers that didn't even know PHP was object oriented until I told them. I've had clients that immediately distrust us when we say we are PHP developers and question us for not using chic languages and frameworks such as Django or RoR, or \"enterprise and solid\" languages such as Java and ASP.NET. Facebook is built on PHP. There are plenty of solid projects that power the web like Joomla and Drupal that are used in the enterprise and governments. There are frameworks and libraries that have some of the best architectures I've seen across all languages (Symfony 2, Doctrine). PHP has the best documentation I've seen and a big community of professionals. PHP has advanced OO features such as reflection, interfaces, let alone that PHP now supports horizontal reuse natively and cleanly through traits. There are bad programmers and script kiddies that give PHP a bad reputation, but power the PHP community at the same time, and because it is so easy to get stuff done PHP you can often do things the wrong way, granted, but why blame the language?. Now, to boil this down to an actual answerable question: **what would be a good and solid and short and sweet argument to avoid being frowned upon and stop prejudice in one fell swoop and defend your honor when you say you are a PHP developer?**. (free cookie with teh whipped cream to those with empirical evidence of convincing someone \u2014client or other\u2014 on the spot) P.S.: We use Symfony, and the code ends being beautiful and maintainable P.P.S.: Facebook **is** written in PHP, compiled to C++ via HipHop and deployed on Hadoop. Here: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/exclusive-a- behind-the-scenes-look-at-facebook-release-engineering/1/"}
{"_id": "177225", "title": "Best setup/workflow for distributed team to integrated DSVC with fragmented huge .NET site?", "text": "So we have a team with 2 developers one manager. The dev server sits in a home office and the live server sits in a rack somewhere handled by the larger part of my company. We have freedom to do as we please but I want to incorporate Kiln DSVC and FogBugz for us with some standard procedures to make sense of our decisions/designs/goals. Our main product is web-based training through our .NET site with many videos etc, and we also do mobile apps for multiple platforms. Our code-base is a 15 yr old fragmented mess. The approach has been rogue .asp/.aspx pages with some class management implemented in the last 6 years. We still mix our html/vb/js all on the same file when we add a feature/page to our site. We do not separate the business logic from the rest of the code. Wiring anything up in VS for Intelli-sense or testing or any other benefit is more frustrating than it is worth, because of having to manually rejigger everything back to one file. How do other teams approach this? I noticed when I did wire everything up for VS it wants to make a class for all functions. Do people normally compile DLLs for page-specific functions that won't be reusable? What approaches make sense for getting our practices under control while still being able to fix old anti-patterns and outdated code and still moving towards a logical structure for future devs to build on?"}
{"_id": "177223", "title": "Is the output of Eclipse's incremental java compiler used in production? Or is it simply to support Eclipse's features?", "text": "I'm new to Java and Eclipse. One of my most recent discoveries was how Eclipse comes shipped with its own java compiler (ejc) for doing incremental builds. Eclipse seems to by default output incrementally built class files to the projRoot/bin folder. I've noticed too that many projects come with ant files to build the project that uses the java compiler built into the system for doing the production builds. Coming from a Windows/Visual Studio world where Visual Studio is invoking the compiler for both production and debugging, I'm used to the IDE having a more intimate relationship with the command-line compiler. I'm used to the project _being_ the make file. So my mental model is a little off. Is whats produced by Eclipse ever used in production? Or is it typically only used to support Eclipse's features (ie its intellisense/incremental building/etc)? Is it typical that for the final \"release\" build of a project, that ant, maven, or another tool is used to do the full build from the command line? Mostly I'm looking for the general convention in the Eclipse/Java community. I realize that there may be some outliers out there who DO use ecj in production, but is this generally frowned upon? Or is this normal/accepted practice?"}
{"_id": "177229", "title": "Why are tools like git-svn that allow git to integrate with svn useful?", "text": "I have read these related questions:   * I'm a Subversion geek, why should I consider or not consider Mercurial or Git or any other DVCS?   * git for personal (one-man) projects. Overkill? ...and I understand why git is useful. What I don't understand is why tools like git-svn that allow git to integrate with svn are useful. When, for example, a team is working with svn, or any other centralised SCM, why would a member of the team opt to use git-svn? Are there any practical advantages for a developer that has to synchronize with a centralized repository?"}
{"_id": "109056", "title": "Automating Unit Test Creation", "text": "What are some strategies that could be used to automate the creation of unit test cases? What aspects would you need to look at in each class to be able to generate at least a decent test case skeleton? I realize a comprehensive automatic solution isn't practical, but I'd like to speed up the test creation a little at least by creating a skeleton. I'm not looking for code examples, just perhaps some suggestions for where to start or examples of where something like this has been done so that I can see how they approached it and what might be possible. I'm particularly interested in methods for creating unit test skeletons in PHP, which doesn't provide all of the tools that other languages afford, like complete type hinting, for example."}
{"_id": "107395", "title": "Estimate of each localization's prospects on Mac App Store", "text": "I write utility programs (converters, compression tools, etc.) with simple UI\u2019s, which I put for sale of for free download on the Mac App Store. I write these programs in English, and usually add a French localization (which I do myself). By comparing the distribution of sales per country between a localized app and nonlocalized one, I can estimate how much the French localization boosts my sales. (The apps themselves are pretty generic and not country-specific, which makes the comparison possible.) For example, on nonlocalized app A, my sales in France are 2.5% of all sales, while on localized app B, sales in France amount to 10%. This means _localization increased my overall revenue by 8.4%_.[1] My question is: **does someone have an estimate of how much localization is worth for each language?** (according to this metric, i.e. potential added revenue) This would be a great help to prioritize new localizations (which I cannot do myself). * * * [1] And not, that's not 8.5%."}
{"_id": "107396", "title": "Should \"tags\" be an nvarchar field in a table, or should it be another table altogether?", "text": "I am building a photography website and I want to allow the user to put tags on their photos for easy searching. But I'm not sure if I want the tags to be an nvarchar field in each picture and then search for that tag in each record or if I want to pull them out and create a separate table of tags and tagIds and then have a look up table, so I can just search the database for that ID. So, what I'm asking is which would be better efficiency-wise and scalability- wise. The database will have over 3-4000 pictures."}
{"_id": "194817", "title": "Why validate XML?", "text": "I am looking for an explanation on just why XML needs to be validated. I have been testing DTD's and Schema's for the past month and recently tried to find out why I am doing this. I know it makes the XML better and more Semantic but what are the overall benefits of validating XML?"}
{"_id": "194816", "title": "How to find local maxima in matrices?", "text": "I need to develop an algorithm for finding all the local maxima in a **two- dimensional array** : how to search for local maxima in the the most efficient way? Are there algorithms about it? Moreover, the algorithm should be able to handle even the \"flat\" peaks, that is it should find the central coordinates of each peak. Here's an example with a one-dimensional array: some consecutive elements have the same peak value, so the algorithm should return the central location.                                      |       flat peak       |                            |-----------------------|     array = [...  0.8  0.9  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  1.0  0.9  0.8  ...]                                        |                                 desired result      How to handle the problem of the flat peaks in a two-dimensional array? In the flat peaks, the neighbor elements are equal to each other and form a single local maximum, so I would like to get the central coordinates of this neighborhood."}
{"_id": "32654", "title": "Why does it take so long to finalize the HTML 5 spec?", "text": "I was reading this and one sentence caught my eye (emphasis mine): > So Ian Hickson, XHTML\u2019s biggest critic, fathered HTML 5, an action-oriented > toddler specification that _won\u2019t reach adulthood until 2022_ , although > some of it can be used today. Is that true? Is that really the HTML 5 development cycle? Why is it taking so long? What makes it so difficult to get right that it won't be final until 11 years from now?"}
{"_id": "139558", "title": "Becoming a Better Bug-Fixer", "text": "I love being a programmer. There, I said it. However, with that said, I've realized lately that I really can't _stand_ bug-fixing. At all. In fact, while I'm developing something, my productivity is extremely high. Even when writing unit-tests and doing self testing of my development, I'm generally really productive. I can focus well, and I can get tasks done. However, when QA time comes around and I'm working on fixing bugs, my inspiration takes a massive nosedive. I have to force myself with pretty extreme measures (you know, high BPM music, excessive amounts of caffeine, etc.) to get _anything_ done. My job is usually involved with stepping into an existing massive project and adding new features or fixing bugs, so I can't exactly tell my employer that I need a couple weeks to write unit tests for all of their code :) In addition, the server technology that we often use is very prohibitive to both unit and integration testing, as it has quite a few Java classloader issues. I'm not completely against bug-fixing, sometimes it can be fun, but it's _not fun at all_ when you have to make minor changes and wait 30 seconds to 3 minutes to be able to see if they worked or not (due to the way the system works). How can I improve my productivity and motivation when bugfixing? Is this something that most programmers deal with?"}
{"_id": "205286", "title": "Design tips for a program with GUI's for basic, intermediate, advanced & expert users", "text": "I've been asked to develop a program with four interchangeable GUI's so that users can switch from basic to intermediate to advanced to expert mode seamlessly and at will. I have a good understanding on how to separate the GUI from the business logic. That's taken care of. My question is exclusively about how to organize, design, implement the GUI part for this particular requirement. If any of you can help with information from languages/frameworks other than C#/NET, it will be appreciated just the same."}
{"_id": "240610", "title": "Extract all related class type aliasing and enum into one file or not", "text": "I have many models in my project, and some other classes just need the **class declaration** and pointer type aliasing. It does not need to know the **class definition** , so I don't want to include the model header file. I extract all the model's declaration into one file to let every classes reference one file. model_forward.h               class Cat;     typedef std::shared_ptr<Cat> CatPointerType;     typedef std::shared_ptr<const Cat> CatConstPointerType;          class Dog;     typedef std::shared_ptr<Dog> DogPointerType;     typedef std::shared_ptr<const Dog> DogConstPointerType;               class Fish;     typedef std::shared_ptr<Fish> FishPointerType;     typedef std::shared_ptr<const Fish> FishConstPointerType;          enum CatType{RED_CAT, YELLOW_CAT, GREEN_CAT, PURPLE_CAT}          enum DogType{HATE_CAT_DOG, HUSKY, GOLDEN_RETRIEVER}          enum FishType{SHARK, OCTOPUS, SALMON}      Is it acceptable practice? Should I make every unit, which needs a **class declaration** , depends on one file? Does it cause high coupling? Or I should put these `pointer` type aliasing and `enum` definition inside the class back? `cat.h`               class Cat     {         typedef std::shared_ptr<Cat> PointerType;         typedef std::shared_ptr<const Cat> ConstPointerType;              enum Type{RED_CAT, YELLOW_CAT, GREEN_CAT, PURPLE_CAT}         ...     };      `dog.h`               class Dog     {         typedef std::shared_ptr<Dog> PointerType;         typedef std::shared_ptr<const Dog> ConstPointerType;              enum Type{HATE_CAT_DOG, HUSKY, GOLDEN_RETRIEVER}         ...     }      fish.h               class Fish     { ... };      Any suggestion will be helpful."}
{"_id": "240613", "title": "Does anybody recognize this scheduling problem? Is there an algorithm for it?", "text": "Consider the following problem: * * * **Description** : There are n jobs J1...Jn with cycle times C1....Cn. Find a _time quanta_ and a scheduling table considering that:   * any element of the table contains at most one job   * the job handler will process an element at a time, i.e. execute the job (if any) then, after _time quanta_ passes, moves to the next element.   * the job handler will loop-back, i.e. after the last element it will continue with the first.   * the ciclicity must be maintained, i.e. the distance between any two consecutive (including loop-back) occurances of job Jk (k = 1,n) must be equal to Ck / _time quanta_.   * the table must be as short as possible. **Example** :   * J1 \\- 4 seconds ciclicity   * J2 \\- 6 seconds ciclicity   * J3 \\- 8 seconds ciclicity **Example solution** : time quanta = 1s               0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 seconds     +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+     |J1|J2|J3|  |J1|  |  |J2|J1|  |J3|  |J1|J2|  |  |J1|  |J3|J2|J1|  |  |  |     +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+      * * * My feeling is that this belongs to the family of scheduling problems and that it may be a special case of a more general problem. **Is this so?** I tried to search for it online but didn't find anything that looks similar. Since I don't have any experience with scheduling problems I'm not even sure what to search for. From what I see:   * the total duration of the schedluing table should be the smallest common multiple of C1...Cn.   * the time quanta should be at least GCD(C1,...,Cn) / n. - This is not necessarly the optimal solution. This leads me to believe that there is a straight forward solution and not one involving dynamic programming. **Is this so?** Can somebody point me to some resources, maybe even an algorithm, for this problem? I'm also curious about variations where there the jobs can be distributed between more than one scheduling tables. * * * GCD = Greatest Common Divider **Edit** : I'm not asking how to schedule N jobs with given cycle times; I'm sure there are more dynamic ways to do this as some suggested. My problem is \" _Find a time quanta and a scheduling table considering that:[...]_ \". It's even possible that it may have it's roots in some parts of mathematics."}
{"_id": "180367", "title": "How to handle timezone for dates?", "text": "With a YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS date I always store the UTC time. When I pull to display I translate timezones with built-in PHP functions and classes. I believe that is one correct way to do it and it makes sense to me. May I handle YYYY-MM-DD the same way?"}
{"_id": "247041", "title": "Can a version of Python's shelve module that knows when its entries have been modified be written in any programming language?", "text": "`shelve` is a Python module that makes it easy to persist a Python dictionary to disk (under the right conditions). The documentation for shelve gives this example to demonstrate one of the pitfalls of using a shelf:               import shelve          d = shelve.open(filename)          # ...snip...          # as d was opened WITHOUT writeback=True, beware:     d['xx'] = range(4)  # this works as expected, but...     d['xx'].append(5)   # *this doesn't!* -- d['xx'] is STILL range(4)!      The documentation explains: > Because of Python semantics, a shelf cannot know when a mutable persistent- > dictionary entry is modified. By default modified objects are written only > when assigned to the shelf (see Example). To say that shelves behave this way \"because of Python semantics\" seems to me to be measuring Python via a high bar! It would be hard to for shelve to know whether any object contained in a shelf has a reference to something which has been mutated (or a reference to something that has a reference to something that has been mutated). Can this be done in any programming language?"}
{"_id": "125759", "title": "Pattern for a web application", "text": "I'm developing a web application for a university project. My professor wants we to use a multi-tier architecture (Client, Web, Business and Data tiers) with EJB. For the Web and Business I have chosen to use the MVC pattern. Anyway, little by little, I build the tiers in this way: the View (JSP and Servlet) ALWAYS forwards any request from the client to the Controller (Session Beans), which checks if the user can see the page, and if he can it sends to the Servlet the right data (taken from the Entities). Since the MVC pattern provides an interaction between Model and View, I think that I don't use it (my View interacts only with the Controller). So I'm asking: which is the name for the pattern I'm using? Or is it still the MVC?"}
{"_id": "128588", "title": "Who's responsible for a master / slave switch?", "text": "We are introducing a master / slave replication schema in our web application. At certain scenarios we would prefer to explicitly direct reads to a slave and writes to the master, which to me is an obvious advantage of the schema. Instinctually, I'd prefer for the switch to happen somewhere in the ORM, we use Doctrine and it offers a neat solution. But that's not really a solution for us, because we don't have a very practical way of distinguishing when a read is in reality a write (such as in update scenarios). The next best thing would be to delegate the responsibillity for the switch to the controller and / or some custom libraries that in a cliche MVC approach could be considered as supercharged models. Although this is a very practical solution and probably the one that would require less time, I somehow fear there's something very important I'm missing and it will come back and bite me hard. There are vague time constraints, and management support to feveresly refactor, but for this specific scenario we mostly agree that we should go with the practical approach, even if it means limit ourselves only where we've identifed the database as a major bottleneck. To add to the confusion, I can't really say I'm experienced in replication schemes, when the issue was first discussed I thought a better solution would be to adopt a multi-master scheme, but when I started researching how easy those fail and how robust their implementation should be, it stopped feeling reasonable. Help?"}
{"_id": "128589", "title": "How to handle large numbers?", "text": "Well, I've just started doing puzzles and it's so annoying to see puzzles which are easy to do but also need to handle very large numbers. That's the problem. Say I have to deal with numbers like 10 ^ 6 / 2147483647 / etc. Need to do arithmetic operations on! However, I feel that these shouldn't be handled in brute force way but the math theorems/ statements just don't click in my mind at times. How could I possible handle such puzzles (shouldn't use external lib)"}
{"_id": "247046", "title": "Continuations, coroutines, and tail-call optimization", "text": "I am trying to learn continuations and use them to implement coroutines in Scheme. I have two procedures (coroutines) `a` and `b`, and I switch between them in the following way:               ;; c is a continuation.     (define (a c)        ...        ;; Switch to the other coroutine.        (call/cc c)        ...               (define (b c)        ...        ;; Switch to the other coroutine.        (call/cc c)        ...      I start the execution with               (a b)      I have tested a small example and, indeed, the execution switches back and forth between the two procedures until one of the two terminates without calling the continuation it was given as an argument. I have two questions:   1. Is my example an appropriate / idiomatic implementation of coroutines using continuations?   2. Is tail-call optimization mandatory for implementing coroutines with continuations? In my solution, switching too often between the two coroutines might cause a stack overflow if Scheme did not provide TCO. Are there other solutions that do not require TCO? **EDIT** Basile's comment seems to be sufficient to answer my question. The background of the question is that I would like this approach to implement coroutines in Python, where I do not have TCO."}
{"_id": "125753", "title": "Does object-orientation really affect algorithm performance?", "text": "Object orientation has helped me a lot in implementing many algorithms. However, object-oriented languages sometimes guide you in \"straightforward\" approach and I doubt if this approach is always a good thing. OO is really helpful in coding algorithms fast and easily. But could this OOP be a disadvantage for software based on performance i.e. how fast does the programm executes? For example, storing graph nodes in a data structure seems \"straightforward\" in the first place, but if Node objects contain many attributes and methods, could this lead to a slow algorithm? In other words, could many references between many different objects, or using many methods from many classes, result in a \"heavy\" implementation?"}
{"_id": "128586", "title": "Programmer-Tester-Ratio", "text": "Are there any substantiated recommendations how many testers a team should have per programmer? I'm more interested in opinions referring to an old- school development approach (no agile stuff) and larger projects. Sources are welcome."}
{"_id": "128585", "title": "Computation Program Not Running at 100% CPU Utilization", "text": "I have a program which has a GUI and performs some very heavy mathematical computations for a couple of minutes and then outputs a result. When I try to directly interface it through its DLL's, it runs fine, but it doesn't run at 100% CPU usage like the GUI does. Why is this? I understand the reason why computational heavy program might not run at 100% is due to I/O that it might be doing but this program doesn't do any, not even a single printf(). Files are being generated at the end of execution in both the GUI and DLL versions of the program. The interface program makes mulitple calls to the DLL during execution as well. It is written in C, compiled using VS2008 CL compiler running in Release mode. Running on Intel i5 CPU with 4GB RAM (60% utilization average, never above 70%). When I set affinity to the process to one CPU (in this case, 1/4 \"CPU's\", 2 cores with 2 threads each), the GUI uses 100% of that dedicated CPU for about 2 min. My interfacing application uses anywhere from 60-80% CPU for about 5 minutes. I use Window's Performance Tab upon performing `CTRL`+`SHFT`+`ESC`. \\---EDIT--- I found that database calls (there are a few specific ones) are being preempted a lot for extended periods of time (usually 5 times slower). Using Process Explorer I was able to find out that each program uses exactly the same amount of CPU time -> leading to my conclusion about preemption. For anyone that doesn't know about this tool, download Process Explorer from SysInternals, very useful. \\---EDIT--- I found that the GUI opens a single static connection to the database. While my interface doesn't do that, leading to opening and closing the connection thousands of times. Opening it once for the lifetime brought the CPU up to 100%."}
{"_id": "231269", "title": "What are the problems of bringing C++-like const into a language?", "text": "I am interested in the idea of C++-like `const` not that particular execution (like casting away `const`). Take for example C# -- it lacks C++-like const, and the reason for it is the the usual -- people and time. Here additionally it seems the C# team looked at the C++ execution of `const`, marketing CLR and had enough at this point (see why there is no const member method in c# and const parameter ; thank you Svick). Be if **we** move further than that, is anything else? Is there something deeper? Take for example multi-inheritance -- it is usually seen as hard to grasp (for the user) and thus not added to the language (like diamond problem). Is there something in **NATURE** of `const` that pose a problem that it is better for language to avoid it? Something like deciding if `const` should be deep or shallow (having `const` container does it mean I cannot add new element or alter existing elements as well; what if elements are of reference type)? **UPDATE** : while I mention C#, and thus making a historical perspective I am interested in the nature of potential problems of `const` to the language. _This is not a challenge of the languages. Please ignore such factors as current trends or popularity -- I am interested only in technical issues -- thank you._"}
{"_id": "231262", "title": "Is the microsoft C compiler (cl.exe) a compiler driver or a compiler?", "text": "`gcc`and `clang` are both known to be compiler drivers. As such, the `gcc` executable does not compile anything itself. Rather, it calls the compiler (`cc1`), assembler (`as`) and linker (`ld`) with the right flags as needed. Is this setup true also for the Microsoft C compiler, `cl.exe`? Is there actually some other executable that does the compilation? I assume that at least the assembling and linking are done by separate executables, since I know that `ml.exe` (known as MASM) and `link.exe` exist as separate executables, so `cl.exe` probably calls them."}
{"_id": "77617", "title": "Best practices for recovering usernames", "text": "I've seen a lot of information on best practices for dealing with lost password on websites, but what about usernames? Is there a standard way of dealing with this? My basic idea is to ask for the users email and send the username to that email. I'm wondering if something more secure along the lines of password recovery (hint questions, etc) is in order."}
{"_id": "204880", "title": "Handling large web based processes", "text": "I am working on a new function for a ASP.NET MVC website. The execution time is quite long at present so I am considering options. The function takes an excel spreadsheet, uploads it to the web server. It then needs to select all of the rows and using Entity Framework insert the rows in to a database. Each row matches the required entity model. Currently at only 50000 rows, this process takes a while and I would assume the row count will grow in the future. I have a few options for processing here and I am wondering if there is a better way to handle it. The two ideas I have just now are 1) Pass the work off to a service, which on completion emails the user. The obvious upside being the user doesn't need to keep that browser window open. 2) Add a progress bar and have the service pass updates back to jquery/javacript to do visual updates. I will attempt to reduce the time, possibly moving the queries away from relying on Entity Framework. Sometimes stored procedures are a lot faster than Linq To Entities but with that aside, the process may still take more than a few seconds, which I don't really want to burden the user with. Can anyone think of other/better ways to handle long running processes on a web application? Are there any best practice schools of thought on handling these situations?"}
{"_id": "141238", "title": "javascript - would you consider 'prototype' to be the same as 'parent'", "text": "I'm learning javascript. I see that with an object, I can use .prototype, is it fair to say that, in a class/tree hierarchy I am effectively using the 'parent' (or 'ancestor' perhaps) by doing that? Can a class only have 1 prototype at a time as in Ruby? Call it Personal Homework that I set myself."}
{"_id": "141231", "title": "What conventions or frameworks exist for MVVM in Perl?", "text": "We're using Catalyst to render lots of webforms in what will become a large application. I don't like the way all the form data is confusingly into a big hash in the Controller, before being passed to the template. It seems jumbled up and messy for the template. I'm sure there are real disadvantages that I haven't described properly... Are there? One solution is to just decide on a convention for the hash, e.g.:               {       defaults => {         type => ['a', 'b', 'c']       },       input => {         type => 'a'       },       output => {         message => \"2 widgets found of type a\",         widgets => [ 'foo', 'bar' ]       }     }      Another way is to store the page/form data as attributes in a class (a ViewModel?), and pass a whole object to the template, which it could use like this:               <p class=\"message\">[% model.message %]<p>          [% FOREACH widget IN model.widgets %]      Which way is more flexible for large applications? Are there any other solutions or existing Catalyst-compatible frameworks?"}
{"_id": "182077", "title": "Is it possible to use python as a shell replacement?", "text": "Recently I was looking at python's `shutil` and `subprocess` etc... And I started wondering: wouldn't it be ok to use python instead of e.g. bash? What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "238604", "title": "How are the skills used in typical interview questions applied in the real job?", "text": "For SQL and C# app dev jobs, the interviewers usually ask questions about tree,graph and linked list traversals using pure C and pointers. In the 3 years I've spent in my job, I've never had to actually > find the path to the 1st node to the right of a given node which is a > multiple of the given node for example I can see that these skills might be used in jobs where you need to write compilers, drivers and work on the OS kernel. Other than those, where else are these skills used?"}
{"_id": "200411", "title": "mvc pattern - splitting model into data-access and business logic layers", "text": "I've had a chance to try it out and I like it very much. I'm thinking of using it in all of my future projects. I'd like to hear some critique and opinions about it. I've done a little research on the subject and I'm not sure I've seen this approach around, but I'm pretty sure that it must have been tried by some more experienced people and I'd like to avoid any pitfalls that come with it The idea is that model is split into: 1\\. db access layer (dal) 2\\. business logic layer (bll)   1. so db access layer contains (ideally) no logic at all other then db access logic - prepared queries that are supplied with parameters, when called, and which return results from db, if needed (in case of SELECT queries). these classes are not tested (if no logic is inserted into them), since they don't contain any if/for/while/throw... commands   2. business logic layer which contains actual logic of the app. controllers do not see dal and only call bll which in turn calls dal when needed. bll needs to be tested (i use unit testing) and since it is kept separate from the db access, when read-only functionality is being tested, db access can be mocked using dependency injection (create mock class alternative for every dal class with all the same methods, load them via the factory method when requested from bll and depending on whether the call came from testing environment or not load either mock or 'real' class. of course in case of write functionality (DELETE, INSERT), testing would have to include db calls, so in that case 'real' class would be called, rather then mock, but this can still be very useful if system has more read then write db calls Benefits of this approach:   1. code separation - it keeps your business logic clean of db access code which improves readability, especially in big methods that need to make several calls to db. it makes it easier to maintain code and also allows you to encapsulate db access logic, which can be called from a numer of blls which also makes it easier to maintain   2. it makes it easier to switch databases at any point, which is not something that happens often, but if it does happen, it's not an easy thing to do, everybody who had to do it at some point know what i'm talking about   3. when testing bll with mock classes, it makes tests run faster since no calls to db are made. this is not too significant, but can help when you are tweaking some functionality intensively and testing it along the way. at the same time it makes it much easier to test performance of 'pure logic' detached from db calls drawbacks:   1. more cluttering because of adding whole new layer of classes to the system   2. slightly lower performance due to the added dependancy injection which takes time to resolve   3. while mock classes do nice work, they do have to be created and maintained so there is added bureaucracy to the whole system Am I missing anything? Do you prefer system that I described or good ol' fashion 3 layer mvc and why? I'm no guru, I'm still exploring various architectures, but I like this one very much and would love to hear what my more experienced colleagues have to say about it"}
{"_id": "205426", "title": "Writing map of data to XML according to a format which is user-defined", "text": "I need to write a map of string data to an XML document. The XML document has a specific format. An entry key determines where in the XML document the value will be written to. See below for an example (pseudo-code where appropriate);               map = {\"document_id\": \"123\"; \"document_type\": \"type_A\"}      Produces an XML file like this;               <document>         <document_id>123</document_id>         <document_type>type_A</document_type>     </document>      I need the format of the target XML document (and where the map data is written to in it) to be user-configurable. For example;               <node name=\"document\">         <node name=\"document_id\">${document_id}</node>         <node name=\"document_type\">${document_type}</node>     </node>      I feel like my proposed solution would be complex and a re-invention of the wheel. I figure there must be some established way to do this but after searching the internet I can't seem to find it. Can anyone offer suggestions on how I may achieve what I want to do?"}
{"_id": "238601", "title": "Accessing a remote server from desktop application", "text": "Web applications (.jsp / Java) have the advantage that they can be run from any client browser by putting a single URL into the address bar, and off you go. However, the average web application is slow, clunky, and maintaining the code behind it is hell on earth. Conversely, a typical desktop application (Java / c#) can have a slick interface, snappy response, and the code behind it is often much neater, compartmentalised, and often a pleasure to work with. Is there a way or technique to connect to a remote server through a Java / c# desktop application, that can be distributed to any Windows computer, that doesn't first require the computer to connect to the remote server through a VPN, as a separate user procedure? (Usernames /passwords / connection details will obviously need to be stored in a config file associated with the application). The remote server would be hosting a 'communal'(?) SQLServer database, and I suppose, possibly some files."}
{"_id": "184994", "title": "Programming interview question on Trees", "text": "I was asked this interview question at a top internet website company recently. Certain empty glasses of water are arranged in the following order ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/g0TS4.jpg) > When you pour liquid into the 1st glass if it's full, then the extra liquid > would be flown into the glasses 2 and 3 in equal quantities. When glass 2 is > full, the extra liquid would be flown into 4 and 5 and so on. Given an N > liters of liquid and maximum capacity of each glass is 1 litre, give the > amount of liquid present in any glass if you empty N liters of liquid by > pouring into glass by filling out the function getWaterInBucket(int N, int > X) where X is the glass number. So for example if I want have 4 liters at > the beginning and I want to find the water in glass 3 the function is > getWaterInBucket(4, 3) How do I solve this programmatically? I basically tried to find a math solution(e.g Pascals triangle) to it. The interviewer said not to because it'd get tough quickly(damn). So I said let me consider it to be a tree so I can add a parameter like this getWaterInBucket(BTree root, int N, int X) and then try some recursive solution for each level , he said that you can't add parameters(damn).All this led me to think that I missed something obvious, some trick, did I? It seemed like he was more confused about how to solve it than I was, which is never good in an interview."}
{"_id": "38431", "title": "What can I do to advance my knowledge as a supplement to a Software Engineering course?", "text": "I studied in a technical school and learned programming, among other subjects related to IT and gained the title of IT Technician. I decided to follow programming as my career choice and began a stage at a local company in order to learn more and pursue a programming career. So during this stage I developed in C#, VB.NET and VB6, but I was developing in VB.NET for the most part. I concluded this stage 1 year later, and although I was technically better, I felt a bit lost in programming bases and theory. I could program simple things, get some pages done and learn on my own but I still felt like what I knew was poorly backed by the lack of some Algorithmics. I got a job in a consulting company and I develop web applications in ASP.NET MVC 1. I feel like I've learned a lot while working here but I would like to learn a lot more in correct programming manners and upgrade my capability of developing algorithms. I will study Software Engineering but I can only attend the course during the next year. During this year, I would like to do something at home, like doing some projects that could get me better at programming and logic and read some good books on the area. What exercises, projects and/or books do you people recommend? I'm all in for good advice."}
{"_id": "249475", "title": "Trying to come up with a mapping convention for C# objects", "text": "_so this is C# but it could apply to any OO language where different sets of objects exist across different layers of an application._ We have been trying to come up with a convention within the team for where to put the code when mapping objects in one layer to objects in another layer. For example; mapping a Data Transfer Object to a Service Object that is used by a WCF service, or something of the like. I have the following methods that I have seen being used and am trying to decide which would be preferred by someone new looking at the code, and which of these fits best with the natural C# idioms. These examples use AutoMapper to map an object **Foo** to an object **Bar** , but it applies to any mapping framework, or just manually creating Bar from Foo with an object initialiser. Both these objects represent the same data, but they are in different assemblies: 1) Constructor on **Bar**               public class Bar     {         public Bar(Foo foo)         {             Mapper.Map(foo, this);         }     }      2) Factory method on **Bar**               public class Bar     {         public static Bar CreateFrom(Foo foo)         {             return Mapper.Map<Bar>(foo);         }     }      3) Method on **Foo** to return **Bar**               public class Foo     {         public Bar GetBar()         {             return Mapper.Map<Bar>(this);         }     }      4) Explicit type conversion operator on **Foo** so it can be casted to **Bar**               public class Foo     {         public static explicit operator Bar(Foo foo)         {             return Mapper.Map<Bar>(foo);         }     }      5) Some implementation of the factory pattern               public class BarFactory : IFactory<Bar>     {         public Bar Create(Foo foo)         {             return Mapper.Map<Bar>(foo);         }     }      6) Just doing it in the piece code you need it in                   public void SomeMethod()         {             Foo foo = fooRepository.GetFoo();                  //I need it to be bar now...             Bar bar = Mapper.Map<Bar>(foo);              }      **Disclaimer:** I wish I hadn't used AutoMapper in this example. Just imagine \"AutoMapper\" here reads \"IMappingProvider\" or \"IObjectConverter\" or something"}
{"_id": "249478", "title": "Weight based mapping algorithm", "text": "I am writing automatic assignment of tasks to the users. Every user has a weight (integer) and tasks should be distributed to the users according to their weights. For example I have 10 tasks and User A with weight 5, User B with weight 3 and User C with weight 2. Mapping function should assign User A with 5 task, B with 3 tasks, C with 2. This example is very straightforward, but it is not that easy when it comes to 34 users and 230 tasks for example. Is there any known algorithm i should look for?"}
{"_id": "38439", "title": "What are the most common programming mistakes PHP programmers make in Java?", "text": "I am more practiced in PHP than in Java, and when I use Java I find myself looking at it from a PHP perspective. This can cause trouble, so I'd like to know, what are the most common programming mistakes PHP programmers make in Java?"}
{"_id": "70065", "title": "MS-Access to Sharepoint conversion?", "text": "I do some volunteer work with a non-profit organization on the side occasionally. My main area of expertise is ASP.NET, C#, and SQL. They currently rely heavily on an Access database for their day to day operations. One of their technology guys has been looking into Sharepoint as a migration point for their Access database, to better support multiple locations. I am, regrettably, mostly unfamiliar with Sharepoint. Though, what I have heard does not seem to promote Sharepoint's use as a database. The base of my question is, what are the challenges of migrating or even making the two systems coexist? And is it even a good idea?"}
{"_id": "70063", "title": "What Impact Do Scripting Languages Have on Junior Programmers?", "text": "I had a discussion with one of my teachers the other day. We debated the impact that simpler **scripting languages** (like Python or Ruby) have on junior programmers. He argued that scripting languages engender sloppy coding techniques because beginners don't understand what is going on \"under the hood\". He also cited other examples of how scripting languages often cause the programmer to neglect concerns about efficiency, memory management, operational complexity, etc. I argued that lower level languages might be too much for some people and they might give up before they develop a passion for programming. When I started learning my first programming language (C), I got to pointers and gave up because the concepts were too hard (in my defense, I was only 14 years old). If it wasn't for Java, I might not have become a programmer! If I had started with a simpler language and then dug deep, I feel I wouldn't have given up and I would have learned just as much as I have starting with C. The class ended before either side was fully explored. * * * To this point, I have been preaching that beginners should start with scripting languages and then dig deep; but after that discussion, I began wondering if this was erroneous thinking. > So, what impact do scripting languages have on junior programmers?"}
{"_id": "138601", "title": "What technology is needed to create a live video streaming service?", "text": "I am curious as to what technology is needed to create a service such as stageit.com and livestream.com. What hardware and software is involved, besides a camera and microphone, from the broadcaster's computer to a viewer's computer?"}
{"_id": "138603", "title": "Approach for housekeeping production data", "text": "If you are going write a set of program to housekeep the production data, how can you ensure your program will work correctly? We cannot housekeep the data based on their creation time. We would delete the data only if it has a generation date older than 6 months. But the generation date is not equal to the timestamp of the file, instead we query the database for relavent generation date. If we implement a logic to compare the generation date and today's date, who can be sure of the logic won't fail on some special occasion? Maybe I am expressing too much concern over this, but when it comes to delete of production data, one needs to be cautious."}
{"_id": "138605", "title": "Standard way to generate HTML prototypes?", "text": "I used to get PSD files and generate HTML prototypes from them which are supposed to be exact replica of these PSDs. The process I follow is simplest one generate **plain HTML pages** for each PSD.      But I have seen some of the prototypes being generated from **server-side includes** (like PHP pages). Benefit of using server side includes is that you don't have to repeat header, footers and side panels for each page. But in this case, anyone who want to run pages needs to setup the server and then execute these pages on server. I want to know, what are some recommended practices to generate prototypes? Or what are the steps followed generally in case of big projects?"}
{"_id": "134184", "title": "Indexing a database", "text": "I am not so familiar with databases and now I am trying to understand the indexing mechanism. From what I know, in a RDBMS, indexing on a column makes searching by that column faster. This is also true for the triple stores, only there indices assume you will search(for example) mostly by the subject, then by object and so on. I am not sure about RDBMS, but on triple stores you can define more than one index, letting the store choose the best index for each query(hopefully I understood this right). Naturally, the following question appears: Why shouldn't I add all the possible indexes to a triple store, and extending to a RDBMS, why not make indexes on each column(assuming I am not too lazy)?"}
{"_id": "210947", "title": "In Python, what is the proper testing structure for packages containing packages?", "text": "Which is the preferred test package structure for packages containing subpackages: ### Tests in Subpackages?               a/       __init__.py       b.py       c/         __init__.py         cc.py         test/           __init__.py           test_cc.py       d.py       test/         __init__.py         test_b.py         test_d.py      This structure suggests that each subpackage is a cohesive unit that can be tested (and possibly later released) by itself. ### Subpackages in Tests?               a/       __init__.py       b.py       c/         __init__.py         cc.py       d.py       test/         __init__.py         test_b.py         test_c/           __init__.py           test_cc.py         test_d.py      This structure does a better job of keeping the tests in one place, but makes it a little harder to run the tests for a particular subpackage. ### Something else?"}
{"_id": "231844", "title": "Event sourcing with a read store - normal relational tables too?", "text": "I will be implementing Event Sourcing for the first time on a hobby project and I have what could be a really simple question: should the event store be the only storage area if you have a denormalized read store? Or do many systems keep their normal relational table structure _in addition to_ the event store (and read store)? I understand there may be hybrids in a brownfields application.. but what about greenfields? I ask because all event sourcing articles / questions relate directly to the event store. Not a single one refers to any relational table structure. I am concerned that Eventual Consistency now effects the Read Store and one half of the Write store if I was to fire off messages to have the event data persisted to relational tables after the event store had been written to. This assumes that I were to allow for distributed messages at the point where the event store has been written to and the relational tables are updated. Can anyone clarify this for me? I have read this question but it doesn't quite address what I am asking."}
{"_id": "231846", "title": "How to unit test hiccup template generating function?", "text": "How do I unit test a function that takes a list of maps and returns an HTML table with the same data in Clojure/Hiccup?"}
{"_id": "236816", "title": "Sending emails from server side", "text": "I need to read some of your opinions. I'm developing a desktop app (.net/winform) to keep data in one place. This is used by several clients and the data is stored in MS SQL Server (client-server arch.) One of the feature is to be able to send notifications via email when conditions met. I've never did something like this so I can't figure out the best way to implement this. Mails are sent on a daily basis. They don't have attachments nor heavy content. Just plain text.   * Send mails directly from SQL? Stored Procedure?   * Make a separate app to handle this? (Running on serverside).   * Use a schedule task? (Windows Server)   * Use a 3rd party app? Hope anyone know what is the best way to do this. Thanks for you time & answers."}
{"_id": "236817", "title": "Dalvik + Java licensing question", "text": "This is a licensing question about the Dalvik and J2SE core libraries. In particular the license governing `java.util.concurrent.SynchronousQueue`. The license header of the class in the JDK source states that it is GPLv2 only (see grepcode). However, the same file in the Dalvik core libraries seems to be governed by the Apache 2 license only (see android source). How is this possible? I didn't think you could take GPLv2 source and re- license it as Apache 2. (It's obvious they did: a comment above the Java Doc even says \"removed link to collections framework docs\"!) I'm asking because I have a GPLv3 project and would like to include a derivative work of some source from the core libraries (either Dalvik or J2SE) but publish it under GPLv3. I thought I could do this with Apache 2, but not GPLv2. I know that the J2SE class source is itself derivative work from public domain source, but the changes from the original are substantial. (The original is available at gee.cs.oswego.edu if you are interested.) Therefore the android source really is just a copy of the J2SE source, but published under Apache 2 instead of GPLv2. Is Google really allowed to do this?"}
{"_id": "236810", "title": "Is it safe to generate client nonces using random number generator?", "text": "I am making HTTP calls on the client side and the server expects me to supply a client nonce. It needs to be 4 bytes long. I am planning to use this combination:               base64(parts of the MAC address + random bits generated by RNG)      Given that the protocol is created by experts (thus its security is not to be questioned), is my nonce calculation acceptable in your view ?"}
{"_id": "165675", "title": "How do tight timelines and scheduling pressure affect TCO and delivery time?", "text": "A friend's father, who is a software engineering manager, said, emphatically, \"The number one cause of scheduling overruns is scheduling pressure.\" Where does the research stand? Is a moderate amount of scheduling pressure invigorating, or is the manager I mentioned right or wrong, or is it a matter of \"the more scheduling pressure you have, the longer the delivery time and the more TCO?\" Is it one of those things where ideally software engineering would work without scheduling pressure but practically we have to work with constraints of real-world situations? Any links to software engineering literature would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "70393", "title": "How does one build skills to be a successful software entrepreneur?", "text": "I'm a mid-to-senior level SDET, and I currently have no managerial experience (although I hope to pick some up in about 5 years). At some point in the distant future (say, 10\u201315 years from now), I'd like to start my own tech startup. Due to a number of personal commitments, I can't really spend my free time planning for this, which is why it's more of a long-term goal, for when I have more time, flexibility, and financial stability. How does one build skills to be a successful software entrepreneur? What types of education programs should I be looking into?"}
{"_id": "237141", "title": "Determine how two images should be combined to produce the original image", "text": "Suppose I have two similar images as follows Image 1 (base) ![img1](http://i.imgur.com/aOj6zjnl.png) Image 2 (target) ![img2](http://i.imgur.com/Dsr2Qvc.png) The second image is basically a variation of the first image, except with a green oval slapped on top (indeed, I used image1 as the base to produce image2). To save space, I realize that instead of storing two separate images, I simply need to store the difference and then record the offset in, say, a text file. So I would go and arbitrarily crop out that oval that I want, and I've effectively shaved off 2 KB in total because my images are solid colors so it's nicely compressed. ![img3](http://i.imgur.com/MHF4sAl.png) This is (or was?) a common technique used in various applications such as games to push down filesize, especially if you have a single image with dozens of variations, but those variations cover maybe 10% of the entire image, so there's a lot of redundant data. And if you're working with full 32bpp with lots and lots of color everywhere, that can add up quite quickly. **Problem** The problem I'm interested in is this: given the base image (image 1) and the cropped variation, merge them together in such a way that you end up with the original image (image 2) **Ideas** If the cropped variation preserved its position by simply removing all the redundant pixels, then the problem is already solved. However, that isn't always the case. My approach is largely based on the fact that the target image is derived from the base image. For the above examples, the difference is a single green oval. Because I sloppily cropped out the oval without making any effort to isolate it from the background, I happen to have given myself a way to determine whether the cropped image \"fits\" in place. So for example, if I were to randomly place the cropped image somewhere in the middle, I might get something like this ![pic4](http://i.imgur.com/KlqU5Az.png) Now when you compare it to the base image, you can see that the red and blue rectangles are slightly off by a lot, and it is obviously visually incorrect. If I didn't know anything about the surrounding pixels (for example, if the cropped variation was simply the green oval), then it would be impossible to reproduce the target image without going in there manually. I can indirectly quantify how \"close\" my candidate image is to the target image by taking the sum of the differences between all pixels between the candidate image and the base image: the only pixels that should be different are the ones that make up the variation; the rest of the surrounding pixels that just happened to be in the rectangle should be exactly the same as the base image and should contribute a difference of 0. **Basic Solution** A brute-force approach would basically compute the sum of all pixel differences of every possible position that the cropped image can be placed, and then return all the positions that minimize this sum. For sufficiently complex images, the chances that there will be multiple results is pretty small compared to simple images. At some point I realized that I only have to consider the pixels inside the cropped image's rectangle, because those are the only pixels in the candidate image that changes compared to the base image, so this avoids some unnecessary computation. **Improvements?** My idea seems kind of slow. Well, it'll likely take less than a minute for images of size 1280x960 or 1920x1080p, and it's still a lot faster than doing it by hand. Can my approach be improved? For example, do I really need to try every possible combination? It would be interesting to see if there were other ways to approach the problem as well."}
{"_id": "237140", "title": "Dependency injection for request variables in a web application", "text": "I'm working a PHP 5.5/MySQL web application. If a class depends partly on some global GET and POST variables for its members, should I just refer to them directly from within the class, or should I have them as arguments in the constructor or some other initiating function?               class myclass {       protected $id;       public function __construct() {         $this->id = (int)$_GET['id'];       }     }     $myclass = new myclass();      Or               class myclass {       protected $id;       public function __construct($id) {         $this->id = (int)$id;       }     }     $myclass = new myclass($_GET['id']);      How do MVC frameworks handle this issue?"}
{"_id": "36029", "title": "Pointer ownership tips", "text": "In some libraries I've seen, a lot of emphasis is put into change of ownership of pointers, like for example a class method that allocates and returns a pointer to an object while relinquishing its ownership to the caller. My question is: how would you design if you had to code something with the constraint that no pointer ownership gets transferred, ever ?"}
{"_id": "85501", "title": "project management for rookie", "text": "I'm new at the field of computer programming and I chose to learn it at the University, but I have some problems with project management, usually before I write any code I start to plan it on the paper, and when I'm finished I begin to code, but I understood that usualy I write only 20-30 percent from my planning, and I change my code a lot, can somebody recommend me a good book or blog about commong pitfalls and troubles with software planning and management."}
{"_id": "220241", "title": "Sorting an array of numbers with decimal places", "text": "Suppose I have an array of float values in the following format:               { 1.34, 1.15, 1.1, 1.2, 1.26, 1.10, 1.20, 1.17 }      Suppose they have been provided by user input (or some other mechanism), where the user takes \"1.1\" to actually mean \"1.01\" - meaning that it is separate from \"1.10\". Using a standard sorting algorithm (bubble sort, quick sort, or some framework specific sort) is going to result in an array which should look similar to the following:               { 1.1, 1.10, 1.15, 1.17, 1.2, 1.20, 1.26, 1.34 }      However, the required output array would be the following:               { 1.1, 1.2, 1.10, 1.15, 1.17, 1.20, 1.26, 1.34 }      I'm thinking that the way to do this would be to iterate through the array before sorting and:   * check whether the value of has N decimal places   * if so, elevate to M (N + 1) decimal places - add a leading 0? This would lead to two arrays, one containing values with N or M number decimal places (raw user input) and one containing all values with M number decimal places (\"sanitised\" user input). Which would mean that sorting the array containing values with M decimal places would provide the required result. Are there any other ways to do this? I'm looking for faster algorithms, or those with a lower overhead. I see this as being a common problem domain, and I'm going to guess that there are a multitude of ways to fix this. What are some of the other algorithms that can be used to attain the required result."}
{"_id": "128058", "title": "Is it worth learning C++ in depth JUST for a career in low latency trading?", "text": "I am interested in ultra high frequency trading and Java is the language I know best. I was always under the impression I would have to perfect my C++ skills in order to work within the ultra high frequency domain (no pun intended) because a lot of job specs seemed to ask for this. Elsewhere on the internet i have seen people comment that Java is actually preferred because you can find Java developers much easier. However, I thought this a bad argument because in terms of ultra high frequency, you need to grab an order as soon as possible and designing your system based upon the ease of finding programmers isn't going to achieve what you need in terms of latency. So, would you say I would be best off concentrating on Java, or is it unavoidable to specialise in C++ in order to get into this career?"}
{"_id": "128059", "title": "Do platform independence and different paradigms deter newcomers?", "text": "I'm only 18, and as such my initial ventures into programming were the usual 2000s-dominating high-level, paradigm-saturated affairs, complete with obsession with platform independence and 'good' design patterns. However, I also toyed around with other things. Things like a BBC Micro emulator, GAS and NASM assembly language, and completely UNIX-centric non- portable C code. After playing with these, I came to the conclusion that most of these modern design patterns, 'pure' paradigms, and obsession with platform independence are a real distraction from actually writing fun code. Sure, these things are no doubt important when writing real systems. Yes, coding being 'fun' is probably a minor concern for suits, but isn't the 'fun' factor of coding what drove the best coders around, some of who then did make a lot of money, no doubt pleasing suits? Being my age, I can't comment on the '80s. Despite that, I'll guess that there was far less debate about language-choice, platform-choice, and programming paradigms on PCs in those days. I know you could get language ROMs for things like the BBC Micro, but didn't everyone just code in BASIC and ASM regardless? I guess there was also wars about 'Spectrum vs C64', but I'll also guess that people in reality got whatever their budget allowed. As a side note, this is why I don't think the Raspberry Pi will take off. It's not a lack of hardware that's the problem for young people today; it's the wavering stack of complexity to do basic things that were a lot simpler in the olden days. I didn't really miss the dynamic heap and language-level OOP when I was messing around on the BBC emulator, I actually felt a little freed up. Obviously that feeling wouldn't scale for a program of modern proportions, but for a small little game is was more satisfying. **Too Long to Read:** Anyway, this is what epitomizes the point I'm trying to make: from what I remember, you can draw a line on a BBC Micro with one line of code, maybe two. To do the same using C++ with the WinAPI and DirectX is a joke, the same applies to OpenGL and any portable windowing API too, albeit to a lesser extent. Even on stuff like XNA there's considerable framework stuff to sift through to do trivial stuff. Packaging is harder too; from what I gather from the old PCs, you just copied your end-result onto a tape, and let someone else run it on the same platform. Now you have to mess around with endless DLL- incompatbilities, installing missing runtimes, dealing with abstractions that aren't fast enough underneath on certain setups etc. Has modern trains-of-thought regarding programming made an impenetrable barrier of entry for beginners?"}
{"_id": "79699", "title": "Scala - learning by doing", "text": "coming from the PHP-framework symfony (with Apache/MySQL) I would like to dive into the Scala programming language. I already followed a few tutorials and had a look at Lift and Play. Java isn't a stranger to me either. However the past showed that it's easiest to learn things by just doing them. Currently we have a little - mostly ajax-driven - application build on symfony at my company. My idea is to just build a little project similar to this one which might gets into production in the future. The app should feature:   * High scalability and performance   * a backend-server   * web-interface   * and a GUI-client There are plenty of questions arising when I think of this. First of all: Whats the best way to accomplish a easy to maintain, structured base for it? Would it be best to establish a socket based communication between pure-scala server/client and accessing that data via Lift or is building a Lift-app serving as a server and connecting the gui-client (via REST?) the better way? Furthermore I wounder which database to choose. I'm familiar with (My)SQL but feel like a fool beeing confronted with all these things like NoSQL, MongoDB and more. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "241170", "title": "Minimal set of critical database operations", "text": "In designing the data layer code for an application, I'm trying to determine if there is a minimal set of database operations (both single and combined) that are essential for proper application function (i.e. the database is left in an expected state after every data access call). Is there a way to determine the minimal set of database operations (functions, transactions, etc.) that are critical for an application to function correctly? How do I find it? Thanks very much!"}
{"_id": "203140", "title": "Sync csv file using nodejs", "text": "There is a remote csv file that gets updated every second or so. I need to download it(on a Windows machine) _ONCE_ and always sync local file with the remote one. Obviously, downloading the whole file every time is not an option. I need to download only the changes.(something like rsync, rdiff-backup) I searched quite a bit but could not find how I can do this. I am sort of new to nodejs and am using this app as an opportunity to expand my nodejs skills. Also, I am planning to use nodejs and to package it using node-webkit(https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit)"}
{"_id": "203142", "title": "s expression representation for c", "text": "Experimenting with various lisps lately (clojure especially) i have wondered if there are any s expression based representations of (subsets) of c, so you could use lisp/closure to write macros and then convert the s-expression c tree to pure c. I am not asking for a to-c-compilers of lisp/scheme/clojure but more of using lisps to transform a c syntax tree. Little background to why i am asking this question: i find myself to really enjoy certain clojure macros like the threading macros `->` `doto` etc. And i feel that they would be great in a non FP environment as well."}
{"_id": "203146", "title": "Dependency Injection Confusion", "text": "I think I have a decent grasp of what Dependency Inversion principle (DIP) is, my confusion is more around dependency injection. My understanding is the whole point of DI is to decouple parts of an application, to allow changes in one part without effecting another, assuming the interface does not change. For examples sake, we have this               public class MyClass(IMyInterface interface)     {        public MyClass        {           interface.DoSomething();        }     }          public interface IMyInterface     {         void DoSomething();     }      How is this               var iocContainer = new UnityContainer();     iocContainer.Resolve<MyClass>();      better practice than doing this               //if multiple implementations are possible, could use a factory here.          IMyInterface interface = new InterfaceImplementation();     var myClass  = new MyClass(interface);      It may be I am missing a very important point, but I am failing to see what is gained. I am aware that using an IOC container I can easily handle an objects life cycle, which is a +1 but I don't think that is core to what IOC is about. _Edit_ Here is an expanded example:               void Main()     {         IRepository repository = new AddRepository();         var maths = new PointlessMaths(repository,5);         Console.WriteLine(maths.Result);     }          public interface IRepository     {         int DoSomething(int id);         }          public class AddRepository : IRepository     {         public int DoSomething(int id)         {             return id + 1;         }     }          public class SubtractRepository : IRepository     {         public int DoSomething(int id)         {             return id - 1;         }     }          public class PointlessMaths     {         public int Result {get;set;}         public PointlessMaths(IRepository repository, int id)         {             Result = repository.DoSomething(id);                 }     }"}
{"_id": "203148", "title": "How can I figure out whether developers at a company are passionate?", "text": "I've read the question \"How can I tell in an interview if a programmer is passionate about programming?\". Now I'm struggling with the reverse: I'll have an interview at a company. How can I figure out that my (probably) future colleagues are passionate or not?"}
{"_id": "203149", "title": "How do I get my programs to communicate with each other", "text": "I'm basically just getting started with programming. The problem I have with progressing is that I have a hard time learning stuff just for the sake of knowing them - I do better when there's a problem to be solved or a task to be completed so I can learn 'on the job'. So I'm interested in starting some interesting project. I know the basics of Python, Java, Matlab and some C++ aswell and I know enough about microcontrollers to make LED blink etc. The type of stuff I'm looking for is for example scraping some weather forecast site (with Python) and outputting the chance of rain to a LCD display, or a program that makes chrome open and log in to facebook if I say \"HAL, time for facebook\", or more generally, a program that reads serial/USB input, looks for certain sequences and sends instructions to some other program if it finds one. Do you open some kind of shared stream in which one program reads and one writes? What do I need to read up on to do accomplish this myself? I have no experience with linux or the linux terminal, but looking over peoples shoulders makes me suspect that's what people use. Is that correct?"}
{"_id": "225990", "title": "Unit testing methods with logical dependencies on other classes", "text": "Suppose I have an interface declaring the following method signature:               SearchResults SearchProducts(string type, string filter, string anotherFilter);      Inside a concrete implementation of this, I instantiate a helper class (call it `QueryBuilder`), built to ease the construction of strongly-typed search queries for the _specific_ search library I'm using. I want to unit test `SearchProducts` (ideally by mocking the query builder), which means I need to decouple the method from `QueryBuilder`. How do I do this appropriately when the two things are _logically coupled_? That is to say:   * It's not appropriate to pass an `IQueryBuilder` into the method as the implementation of `IQueryBuilder` is tightly coupled to the implementer of `ISearchProducts`, i.e. the types of the return values of `QueryBuilder`'s methods are specific to the library being used in the concrete `SearchService`.   * It's not appropriate to pass an instance of `IQueryBuilder` into the `SearchService` constructor (via DI or directly) as the _logical_ scope of the query builder instance is local to the `SearchProducts` method call - it is instantiated in the method, its state is manipulated by adding sub-queries and a complete \"query\" is extracted _for this`SearchProducts` call_). So, given the above, what's the appropriate way of handling this? It sounds like a case for a factory; however the implementation of this factory would be trivial and it seems a little contrived to define a factory interface and add a constructor parameter just for the sake of testability. Is this indicative of a fundamental flaw in the design of my search interface? How do I decouple these things appropriately such that I can test both the search service and the query builder implementations in isolation?"}
{"_id": "146276", "title": "Should software developers be skilled at software design?", "text": "There is an analysis and design phase of the software development life cycle. Should software developers be skilled enough for carrying out the work performed during this phase, such as drawing workflow diagrams, data flow diagrams, ERDs, UML, and other models? I have seen some cases where developers can code very well given a clear understanding of what is required. However, when they are asked to design a system, they stagger at times."}
{"_id": "39742", "title": "When is a feature considered a \"First class citizen\" in a programming language/platform?", "text": "I have seen many times statements like- \"Please make this feature a first class citizen in so and so language/platform\". For example, it is said about enums in C#/.net. So, when is a feature considered a \"First class citizen\" in a programming language/platform?"}
{"_id": "256179", "title": "The advantage of using __attribute__((aligned( )))", "text": "I found in more than one SIMD program the instruction `__attribute__((aligned(16)))` . When I looked for an explanation I found > The keyword **attribute** allows you to specify special attributes of > variables or structure fields. Apparently variables have attributes. Are these attributes language-specific? what attributes can a variable have? where are these attributes stored? Regarding the subject of aligned(16), I found this it > causes the compiler to allocate [a variable] on a 16-byte boundary But is it mandatory for SIMD variables ( **m128i for example) to be aligned on a 16 bytes? If yes, I suppose this is the reason why we use __attribute** ((aligned(16))) like so:               int a[16] __attribute__((aligned(16))) = {  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7, 8,  9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 };          __vector signed int *va = (__vector signed int *) a;"}
{"_id": "27798", "title": "What should be the maximum length of a function?", "text": "What should be the maximum length of a function? And are there cases which are an exception to this?"}
{"_id": "83903", "title": "how to work with web designer?", "text": "I started my first professional project recently and have hired a web designer to do the layout. My question is how can I sync the work with the designer? Currently our process goes like this:   1. the designer creates a template   2. sends it to me by mail   3. I view, edit & agree   4. the designer codes the html and sends it to me back by mail and so on for each page The problem is, sometimes I get very disappointing html and am forced to have the designer redo alot of work. Is there a way to create a network so that I can monitor his work and provide comments while the work is on-going? I know this is a silly question but I am sure a mechanism for this must exist. :D"}
{"_id": "202818", "title": "Should we persist with an employee still writing bad code after many years?", "text": "I am putting this question to C++ programmers because: a) Only a C++ programmer can judge the technical merits of the examples; b) Only a programmer will have a feel for the temperament of another programmer who writes code like this. HR and the directors are aware there is a problem simply because they see evidence in the field. It's my call whether we give the programmer in question more time. Many of the errors are at a very basic level - my question (to programmers) is whether someone who professes to be a senior C++ developer should be given a benefit of a doubt based on samples of their current code. Non-programmers - even people outside C++ programming - can't make any judgement on this. For background, I've been assigned the task of managing developers for a well- established company. They have a single developer who specialises in all their C++ coding (since forever), but the quality of the work is abysmal. Code reviews and testing have revealed many problems, one of the worst being memory leaks. The developer has _never_ tested his code for leaks, and I discovered that the applications could leak many MBs with only a minute of use. User's were reporting huge slowdowns, and his take was, \"it's nothing to do with me - if they quit and restart, it's all good again.\" I've given him tools to detect and trace the leaks, and sat down with him for many hours to demonstrate how the tools are used, where the problems occur, and what to do to fix them. We're 6 months down the track, and I assigned him to write a new module. I reviewed it before it was integrated into our larger code base, and was dismayed to discover the same bad coding as before. The part that I find incomprehensible is that some of the coding is worse than amateurish. For example, he wanted a class (Foo) that could populate an object of another class (Bar). He decided that Foo would hold a reference to Bar, e.g.:               class Foo {     public:         Foo(Bar& bar) : m_bar(bar) {}     private:         Bar& m_bar;     };      But (for other reasons) he also needed a default constructor for Foo and, rather than question his initial design, he wrote this gem:               Foo::Foo() : m_bar(*(new Bar)) {}      So every time the default constructor is called, a Bar is leaked. To make matters worse, Foo allocates memory from the heap for 2 other objects, but he didn't write a destructor or copy constructor. So every allocation of Foo actually leaks 3 different objects, and you can imagine what happened when a Foo was copied. And - it only gets better - he repeated the same pattern on three other classes, so it isn't a one-off slip. The whole concept is wrong on so many levels. I would feel more understanding if this came from a total novice. But this guy has been doing this for many years and has had very focussed training and advice over the past few months. I realise he has been working without mentoring or peer reviews most of that time, but I'm beginning to feel he can't change. So my question is, would you persist with someone who is writing such obviously bad code?"}
{"_id": "202815", "title": "How to save during real-time collaboration", "text": "I want multiple users to edit same document. Problem I'm facing is when a new user joins, he might see an outdated document. How do I make sure that new users get most recent changes? Some solutions I thought of:   * Save on every change. I don't like this solution because it will slow things down on UI and put load on db.   * When new user joins, trigger save on all other clients. After other clients saved, load document. With this there can be inconsistency still.  Any other suggestions would be helpful. **UPDATE:** After looking into suggested solution, Google Realtime API, I found out that:   1. Users of your app must have Google Drive and give you access to their drive. This could at best present awkward UI flow or prevent users who don't have Google Drive from using realtime feature.    2. All the sharing settings that are done on your side, have to be replicated for Google document."}
{"_id": "12949", "title": "Intellectual Property cost", "text": "If a piece of bespoke software was developed by a company and the Intellectual Property was retained by the company that wrote it, but now the client of the software company wants to get that source code (and its IP) how much should it cost them? How would you calculate a fair cost for the purchase of that source and IP? **UPDATE** : Just to add, the software in question is of no use to anyone else (for any legitimate purpose) as it ties in directly with the business processes of one company. It is not something that can be subsequently sub- licensed or installed outside the company in question. There are links of to third party services (but these were existing services that the bespoke software had to integrate with in the first place)."}
{"_id": "70930", "title": "If I post my source code on a public site, does that automatically make it open source or do I still preserve my rights?", "text": "This is a weird question but here is why: If I write some JavaScript application, or Perl/Python/PHP cli script, anyone can see the source code. I can even host my code on a public hosting site, like github for example. It will be the same: Anyone can see the code. But will that make my code open source?"}
{"_id": "123498", "title": "Session Variables and Proper Implementation", "text": "Is there any other reason for using session variables besides keeping the values longer than the current request? For instance, is it advisable to use session data when storing information in a file on the file system to prevent one user from writing data to the file of another user? I understand what a session variable is, but I'm not for sure how to properly implement it."}
{"_id": "218798", "title": "What is the limit on REST API resource levels", "text": "When designing a REST API, how deep should the resources levels go? For example; If I have the following database tables:   * Companies: ID, Name   * Employees: ID, Name, CompanyID   * Tasks: ID, Name, EmployeeID When exposing these through a REST API, it might look something like this (id is optional):   * Companies: GET /api/companies/{id}   * Employees: GET /api/employees/{id}   * Tasks: GET /api/tasks/{id} Lets say I want to retrieve all the employees working at company 1. I could do something like this: GET /api/companies/1/employees, right? Performing a GET on /api/employees would be useless, because you don't want to return all the employees stored in the database. Should the /api/employees resource only be used in this case for retrieving individual data about a specific employee? What if I want to get the tasks associated with an employee? Should the URL be: GET /api/companies/1/employees/123/tasks or GET /api/employees/123/tasks. If you don't want clients to have access to certain resources, without knowing its parent, how do you design your resources? If I'm not being clear enough, or have to many questions, please let me know."}
{"_id": "37775", "title": "Advantages of HTML applications in a Windows intranet", "text": "I'm preparing a presentation for my team that lists the various technologies we could use today for our business applications. We have been historically building HTML applications (ASP and ASP.net) for the last decade and as part of the introduction I wanted to explain why we moved from Windows applications to HTML. Our environment is:   * Business applications (OLTP mainly)   * Intranet   * Windows clients only   * Complete control on the clients' configuration (OS version/browser version/deployment of plugins...) The only reason I could find is that in the late 90s, deploying a windows client application could end up in a mess (many different versions deployed, dll hell...). Web servers allowed deploying the application once and have all the clients updated simultaneously. The price to pay was a big loss in user friendliness and responsiveness and complexity added to the development job. There are alternatives today (ClickOnce, Silverlight...) but a lot of my colleagues are now totally committed to HTML and the technologies that come along (Javascript/Ajax/Jquery/Css...). I'm totally convinced HTML is great for Internet applications. My question is: at that time (late 90s), were there other reasons to move to HTML in a Windows intranet environment than just fixing deployment issues? (because it was trendy is not a valid answer...) Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "37773", "title": "Closest file match?", "text": "I am looking for a way to compare a set of files against a given file with each comparison giving me a \"closeness\" metric. I should then be able to order based upon the metric to find the closest file. I considered using diff, but afaik this only provides a yes or no on whether a particular line matches, which is too large a scale for my purposes as for my purposes a word change in a line of text is closer than a completely different line whereas diff returns no-match for both cases. Would I be able to use a soundex effectively on a 100 or more line file or is there a better algorithm? Also is there a metric which would provide a positive match if the lines which were similar were on drastically different line numbers? Thanks"}
{"_id": "6974", "title": "What's the worst programming book you've ever read?", "text": "What's the worst programming-related or technical book you've ever read? This can be any book which one way or another can be connected to programming, as long as it's not fiction."}
{"_id": "30741", "title": "What are the alternatives to fixed-price or time-and-materials contracts for software development?", "text": "Proponents of agile methodologies suggest approaches such as multi-stage contracts, target cost contracts, target schedule contracts, shared benefit contracts, and variable scope contracts. Are there other options available, and are there any case studies or informed discussions of these various approaches?"}
{"_id": "252669", "title": "Things developers do before the coding phase", "text": "I'm a new software developer, and in my internship my boss asked me to develop an application that allows him to manage his inventory. Something small but, for me, very enriching. The application is running, he found some bugs and problems but I fixed them. This is not the problem. My problem is that when I was working on the application, I didn't know what I was doing, so everything was in disorder. The project took me 2 months and another developer said that he could do it in a month or less. This surprised me, so I want to know: **How does a professional developer plan a project before starting development?**"}
{"_id": "30742", "title": "How can you plan long range resources and budgets when using Agile methodology?", "text": "Agile does not encourage a lot of up-front design. This is good from a requirements management and software development standpoint, and allows the project to adapt to changing business needs. However, how does one do any long range planning of resources if you don't really know what you're going to build when you start? Oh sure, you have a conceptual model of what you're going to build, but you don't have any measurable detail from which to gague how many resources you will need to complete the project, or how much it will cost. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about long range planning in an agile environment?"}
{"_id": "12499", "title": "Is a yobibit really a meaningful unit?", "text": "Wikipedia helpfully explains: > The yobibit is a multiple of the bit, a unit of digital information storage, > prefixed by the standards-based multiplier yobi (symbol Yi), a binary prefix > meaning 2^80. The unit symbol of the yobibit is Yibit or Yib.1[2] 1 yobibit > = 2^80 bits = 1208925819614629174706176 bits = 1024 zebibits[3] The zebi and > yobi prefixes were originally not part of the system of binary prefixes, but > were added by the International Electrotechnical Commission in August > 2005.[4] Now, what in the world actually takes up 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bits? The information content of the known universe? I guess this is forward thinking -- maybe astrophyics or nanotech, or even DNA analysis really will require these orders of magnitude. How far off do you think all this is? Are these really meaningful units?"}
{"_id": "76570", "title": "Questions for a peer code review", "text": "I am in the process of creating a short check-list for peer code reviews. So far I have come up with the following...   1. Is there a unit test?   2. Is there a integration test?   3. Do you understand the code you are reviewing?   4. Is it easy to maintain (simple,robust)?   5. Does the code not duplicatie existing functionality ? (Don't reinvent the wheel)   6. Does the code follow (my company's) naming conventions? (variable names,test class names etc)   7. Are all functions, methods and classes documented? (Summary,parameters,comments etc) What do you think of this list? Did I miss something? Is there any standard?"}
{"_id": "237859", "title": "Using different DB Connections for different user groups in a web framework", "text": "Database designers building enterprise systems usually assign different sets of privileges to different users of DBMS. They can be as granular as needed. However, in my experience, web frameworks usually use a single connection to a DBMS, and the privileges are assigned and enforced at the framework level, through some sort of access control scheme. The database connection used by the framework has full privileges on the database, because it may need to create or delete tables, when extensions are installed or removed, for example. Sometimes there are vulnerable extensions of a framework that may allow SQL Injection attacks. These extensions are often developed by third parties, and not by the framework developers. My question is: **What is the efficacy of providing multiple DB connections with varying privileges for different user groups of a web framework - as a security measure?** For example, the connection for a system administrator may allow for creating and deleting tables, but the connection for a public user may only allow for reading certain tables. This would not be a replacement for the Access Control scheme in the framework, but as an added measure against SQL Injection. Is this a good idea, or completely unnecessary? Please explain."}
{"_id": "123141", "title": "Given a set of VLSI chips, how do I determine which are good?", "text": "I have the following problem: > Given `n` chips [note: these are VLSI chips] out of which majority of chips > are good, we need to find one good chip. The only test that we can apply is > on a pair of chips that answers if both chips are good or both are bad. The > second part is to find a good chip if some tests might produce a wrong > result. Also, the results are systematic meaning that if a pair gives wrong > result, it will always give the wrong result. I have solved the first problem using divide and conquer approach where I reduce the problem set to at least half every time. This can be done by simply performing tests on n/2 distinct pairs every time and keeping those pairs that answer a YES (i.e. both good or bad). I am unable to solve the second part of the problem. A wrong result means that even if two chips are good or bad, the test might answer a NO. Also note that the percentage of wrong tests is very low. How can I go about solving this problem?"}
{"_id": "123146", "title": "Designing a plugin-based architecture - what is a protocol service supposed to provide to a plugin?", "text": "I'm starting a hobby project and I'm in the middle of designing its architecture. I would like to make my program plugin-based (never done anything like that before), to make it extensible. Now I'm trying to grasp how such an architecture is created conceptually. Now, this wikipedia article about Plugins says that the host application is supposed to provide a protocol service (among other things) to establish how data is exchanged with the plugin. I don't really understand this tidbit, what does that mean? What kind of data actually needs to be exchanged? **EDIT:** Just to be clear, I'm not looking for implementation specifics, but for a clear explanation of the mechanism, that the wikipedia article presents. As it stands now, I have no idea what the purpose of a protocol in a plugin- based application is. I figured, the plugin could just fetch relevant data from outside the application on its own and present it to the user, without directly involving the application. What would be the purpose of establishing a protocol for data exchange? It's a desktop application, which will be written mainly in Java, thus object- oriented. The application at its core mainly provides an interface for plugins to register itself in the application and a plugin-manager, which interacts with the plugin."}
{"_id": "123144", "title": "Using C++ but not using the language's specific features, should switch to C?", "text": "I'm developing a NES emulator as a hobby, in my free time. I use C++ because is the language I use mostly, know mostly and like mostly. But now that I made some advance into the project I realize I'm not using almost any specific features of C++, and could have done it in plain C and getting the same result. I don't use templates, operator overloading, polymorphism, inheritance. So what would you say? should I stay in C++ or rewrite it in C? I won't do this to gain in performance, it could come as a side effect, but the idea is _why should I use C++ if I don't need it?_ The only features of C++ I'm using is classes to encapsulate data and methods, but that can be done as well with structs and functions, I'm using new and delete, but could as well use malloc and free, and I'm using inheritance just for callbacks, which could be achieved with pointers to functions. Remember, it's a hobby project, I have no deadlines, so the overhead time and work that would require a re-write are not a problem, might be fun as well. So, the question is C or C++?"}
{"_id": "237851", "title": "Is \"poaching\" an acceptable way to get open-source volunteers?", "text": "It is well known that tech companies frequently try to recruit employees from competitors. However, is it common for open-source projects to seek potential volunteers from companies in similar industries? For example, suppose there is an open-source video editing project that really wants to take off. If they were to actively look for volunteers, it would seem that connecting with people from companies like Adobe or Sony would be a good choice. I've been at my current job for almost two years, and I frequently get e-mails from recruiters for similar companies. However, neither I nor anyone else I know have received invitations to participate in an open-source project. This tells me such a practice is uncommon. I know there are legal and ethical issues when it comes to \"poaching\" employees, but the difference is that the engineer would merely be writing open-source code in their personal time as opposed to leaving their job. So my questions are:   1. Is it common for open-source project coordinators to recruit developers from companies that make similar software?   2. If so, are there any ethical issues in doing so?"}
{"_id": "206245", "title": "Does it look bad to take a break between programming jobs?", "text": "I've been working the same software development job for a few years now but the culture (or lack of proper culture) of the place has finally gotten to me and I have given my notice. To be brief: The bosses created an environment/culture where developers had no incentive to produce quality work. And not only that, any attempts to improve things were actively dismissed by several layers of management. Eventually this became very stressful. I felt like I was fighting someone at every corner just to get things done properly instead of hacking it together like we've always done. Because of this it seems like I haven't learned anything new there for a long time. And now I worry that my skills are becoming less and less relevant on the job market. So, my current plan is to take 3 months off to shake off the stress and to do some major nerding. The idea is to start two or three small projects to learn and apply new technologies/patterns/tools/etc... Essentially, to do everything I didn't have the chance to at my previous job. **The question:** Am I shooting myself in the foot if I take a 3 month break between jobs? Is it always bad to have a break between jobs even if that time is spent improving your skillset? *** UPDATE *** I ended up taking 9 months off. Finding work near home turned out to be harder than I expected, but nobody seemed to even notice the long break in my CV. When I eventually expanded my search to nearby cities as well I quickly found something interesting. The best part is that this new place is happy to let me work from home half of the time :)"}
{"_id": "206243", "title": "Javascript idioms this that vs this self", "text": "I've been writing JavaScript for a bit and have now seen code using the idiom               var that = this;      and               var self = this;      Used to gain access to `this` through closure scope. At this point `var self = this` seems somewhat more common. My question is which of these two idioms is truly the convention? Since they do exactly the same thing, are there advantages/disadvantages to either?"}
{"_id": "159717", "title": "Monkey Hunter algorithm - Interview question", "text": "Question asked in an Interview: You are a hunter in the forest. A monkey is in the trees, but you don't know where and you can't see it. You can shoot at the trees, you have unlimited ammunition. Immediately after you shoot at a tree, if the monkey was in the tree, he falls and you win. If the monkey was not in the tree, he jumps (randomly) to an adjacent tree (he has to). Find an algorithm to get the monkey in the fewest shots possible. **SOLUTION:** The correct answer according to me was in the comments, credit to @rtperson: > You could eliminate this possibility by shooting each tree twice as you > sweep left, giving you a worst case of O(2n). EDIT: ...that is, a worst case > of O(2n-1). You don't need to shoot the last tree twice."}
{"_id": "86745", "title": "What Languages are mostly understood \"intuitively\" and could benefit from a more formal learning approach?", "text": "In a presentation, i stumbled upon the Statement \"JavaScript is a Language everybody uses, yet nearly noone seems to find it neccessary to learn how it works\". And indeed, not many of the programmers i know could explain javascript's prototype concept, or why functions need to be 'bound' to this. CSS seems to be another example of this behaviour: everyone knows how to put a 'class' to an element, and to write a style `.myclass { ... }`, but only a few even know of margin-collapse. My question is: are there more of those languages, technologies, concepts, that are so prevalent that we dont even notice them as something worth learning while we use them?"}
{"_id": "86743", "title": "Is there an agile project management technique for developing innovative software systems?", "text": "I am involved with the development of innovative software. The development is innovative since we don't know how to develop it and what algorithm should we use to implement and nobody else did it before. The process consists of several stages of studying books/papers, suggesting algorithms, writing prototypes and comparing the result with actual data. We hope that after some iteration, we converge to a valid software system. Is there any project management software for these types of projects?"}
{"_id": "126519", "title": "Where should date formatting take place in an MVC pattern?", "text": "Suppose that you want to show a user list, on a web application having to handle custom date formats (depending on current selected interface language). Several locations for applying the date format seem possible. Which one would you use, and why?   * At model, for example doing a `DATE_FORMAT(user.birthdate, '%d/%m/%Y')` for date fields (supposing we have a MySQL DB).   * At controller level, for example (supposing we use PHP):              $users = UserModel::getUsers();     // loops through results before display to format dates.     // in the $users structure, we have to know which fields are dates or not     $users = MagicFunctionFormattingDates($users);          $view = new View('someTemplate');     $view->assign('users', $users);        * At view level, for example (supposing we use a template language such as Smarty):              {foreach key=keyitem item=row from=$users}       <tr>       {foreach key=keyfield item=field from=$row.fields}          {* Here $field should be an Object or associative array             holding its 'type' (is it a date or something else) *}          <td>{MagicFunctionForFormatting field=$field}</td>       {/foreach}       </tr>     {/endforeach}      A similar and related question goes for sumbitting dates (e.g. on a user registration form). Where should the date conversion take place:   * In the controller processing and validating the form, before calling the model?   * In the model?"}
{"_id": "126513", "title": "Form screenshot for legal proof of clicking one of the checkboxes?", "text": "We got a request from one of our customers, and since I've never encountered such a request before, I don't even know where to start looking. Our customer is a network of colleges, and we're building them a site. On that site, among other things, will be a form which potential applicants can fill out in order to get more info about the studies in one of the colleges. After a user fills out this form - including giving their email and/or phone number - the relevant college then contacts them with the relevant info. Now, for legal reasons, the client is asking that this form also have a checkbox that the potential applicant checks to indicate that they agree to get promotional material from these colleges. That's of course no problem. But here comes the weird part of the request: The details of each filled out form have to be be saved in a reliable method. Apparently, saving the form values in a database - a column indicating if the user agreed or didn't agree - isn't enough, because a DB could be changed after the users has sent the form. Our client claims that other college portals create a screenshot of the filled-out form, and save it somewhere in a dedicated folder, in a manner that is easily found, such as giving the file a name that includes the user's name, and the date and time. My question is as follows: have you heard of using screenshots as a method of proving a user has actually filled out a form? Are there other methods that are are considered reliable?"}
{"_id": "214669", "title": "Is the license of gifmerge compatible with GPLv3?", "text": "My doubt arises from this sentence in the gifmerge distribution conditions: \"This software may be freely copied, modified and redistributed without fee provided that this copyright notice is preserved intact on all copies and modified copies.\" Especially the \"without fee\" part is the one thet puzzle me. Can some expert dispel my doubt? http://www.the-labs.com/GIFMerge/"}
{"_id": "229426", "title": "Private apps for iOS and Android", "text": "Is it possible to develop _private apps_ for iOS (iPhone/iPad) and Android? With \"private apps\" I mean apps that do _not_ appear on the public app store, but can be downloaded and used only by selected clients."}
{"_id": "245034", "title": "What questions needs to be asked when gathering the initial requirements of a mobile application from a client?", "text": "Talking generally abount **mobile application development** , I am looking for a list of appropriate questions to ask when visiting the client to get the initial requirements, i.e. what they suppose the application would be at the end. Let's assume that the mobile application idea is something very new for (our) clients and they do not much about what it can do, and how it does them, the only thing they know is they want a mobile application, installed on their phones, and should do what they want. Let's say I am a freelance mobile application developer and I want to get to know what the client thinks and get all the possible aspects that would affect pricing. What I really want is a list of questions, like:   * What is the platforms.   * How long do you expect us to deliver the project.   * etc Of course the list should not/ need not be long. Since the applications that a freelance developer develops is not so complicated, and the poeple who order them do not go through lots of details(since they are not technical enough)."}
{"_id": "245035", "title": "Why are most functional programming languages also interpreted languages?", "text": "Functional/non-functional and interpreted/compiled are two different categorizations, yet it seems that there are a lot of overlaps in the programming languages that fall under those categories. Is this a coincidence?"}
{"_id": "229423", "title": "Why chaining matters (Python & SQLite3)?", "text": "Why does               cursor = connection.cursor()     cursor.execute(\"...     return cursor.fetchall()      return the expected non-empty result whereas               connection.cursor().execute(\"...     return connection.cursor().fetchall()      returns an empty list the SQLite3-command being identical in both cases? EDIT 2014-02-19: Added the last \"...fetchall()\"-line to code samples."}
{"_id": "245033", "title": "If I use LGPL-licensed images in my open-source software project, do I have to use the LGPL for the whole project?", "text": "...or, can I license things separately within the project (i.e. images=LGPL, code=GPL). I've been confused about this for a little while now and I can't seem to find a clear answer."}
{"_id": "245031", "title": "UI Field validation in MVP pattern", "text": "I want to validate the details provided by the user before taking them into the processing. My UIs have Text boxes, Combos mainly and, there are some fields that user must provide a data, in some fields only certain type of data may be accepted like texts, Dates/times, numbers etc. When it comes to date/ time we should check whether the provided data is in the valid range. My question are **Q1. Where to do validation in MVP pattern?** My options are   1. Implement validation as a service available to Presenters. (Through DI for ex.)   2. Do the validation in the UI itself in a event like KeyPress.   3. Presenter itself handles the validation. **Q2. How to do the validation.** My options are i. All controllers like text boxes in the View are encapsulated in properties (Getters / Setters)               public string Age     {         get { return txtAge.Text; }         set { txtAge.Text = value; }     }      ii. UI fires the event Validate(sender, e) iii. Presenter listen and hook it up to the handler which then invokes Validate() method iv. In Validate() method it'll detect the controller raised the event (sender) and read the corresponding property to get the value in the controller. v. Then it will check the type against the type in the model and decide the validity and then alert the user The problem here is that I may have to expose all controllers through string properties as other wise it will give exceptions when the user enters an invalid type."}
{"_id": "244927", "title": "Using AngjularJS with Twitter Bootstrap", "text": "I want to refactor an OLD legacy application and give it a new feel... so, I want to use Twitter Boostrap for the UI... I've also been playing around a lot with AngularJS... is it common place to use them in conjunction with one another? Is it even the correct question to ask? I've done about an hour's worth of \"googling\" on the subject and I see a lot of people using the CSS- portion of bootstrap with Angular, however, do I gain anything (or lose anything) by also including the bootstrap .js portion, as well? Thanks."}
{"_id": "185779", "title": "Would md5 hashes allow detection of synced files?", "text": "We have to develop our own file management system in Java web application. We need to sync files between our main server and client severs and find out whether all the client server has all the latest version of files. Our files are in pdf, doc and xls format they changes every now and then as and when it is required. What we are thinking of using MD5 checksum to find out hashcode of files on Main server and store it in database. Same would be there in Client Servers database. After comparing records on database we would come to know whether client servers are synced or not. Please suggest if there are any better ways to do the same."}
{"_id": "136930", "title": "Places to store basic data", "text": "I am using PHP. I'm building a fully modular CMS, which is destined for the public. Some people might view this as a framework, but I intend to write a set of extensions for it, extensions that will make it a CMS :P Because it's completely modular I have a problem figuring out how to load extensions. Practically I need to get the list of active extensions, so I can load them inside my base class. I load them by reading some file headers, which contain a \"dependency\" field. That field decides the order in which I have to instantiate the objects. The problem is that when the CMS starts I have no database interface, because that's an extension too, so I can't store the active extensions list in the database :) You might ask how are extensions activated in the first place. Well - in the administration interface, which is an extension as well (obviously on first install of the CMS there will be some extensions active by default). Could writing that list inside a text file be a solution? The problem is that a lot of hosts are not very nice with scripts when they write files. And since this CMS is public I might have a problem here?"}
{"_id": "208940", "title": "Calculate transfer time while accounting for loss of conductivity and speed over circuits", "text": "So based on my limited understand of how computers work I derived the following question. As you transfer things over circuits the circuits heat up. As they heat up they lose conductivity and ultimately slow down. So how do you calculate the approximate time of transfer for a large amount of files if you take into account for the loss of speed do to drop in conductivity over the wires? To clarify I am talking specifically about local devices, such as HDD to HDD on the same desktop. Also is this even a relative topic? I have noticed slowdown in older drives but I think that was due to the drive itself and not the circuits. This would be useful on older systems though."}
{"_id": "136938", "title": "Shouldn't MVC be MCV?", "text": "The model is defined first, then the controllers are fired based on the user request, and they will generate the views (the output). So it should be M->C->V, right?"}
{"_id": "212492", "title": ".NET BCL Change Analysis - Uses Beyond Sating Curiosity", "text": "> This is part of a series of questions which focuses on the Abstraction > Project, which aims to abstract the concepts used in language design in the > form of a framework. There is a sister project to Abstraction called > OILexer, which aims to construct a parser from grammar files, without the > use of code injection on matches. > > Some other pages associated to these questions, related to structural > typing, can be viewed here, and ease of use, found here, a question on > writing the compiler compiler can be found here. The meta-topic associated > to an inquiry about the framework and the proper place to post can be found > here. > > One of the steps into this process was building my own ECMA-335 Metadata > parser. Since I tend to build tools to build tools, I recently decided to do > an analytical top-down on the .NET Base Class Libraries. The future goal > will be utilizing it to construct libraries which represent the BCL to aid > in rapid code generation (more on that later if someone cares.) I wanted to get a basic idea of the overall versions of libraries within the .NET BCL, so I analyzed the Framework folder stored locally. Doing this per framework version should reflect the end-user's system: right now I'm targeting myself. The first step in this goal is to construct a class which conceptualizes a multi-versioned library and pulls in each iteration as needed. The next step is pulling in all the types from each version and comparing the individual lists of types (oddly more work than it should be.) The result is a fairly straight forward view of the BCL which breaks down the version a library was introduced, and displays which version new types were introduced, grouped by namespace. This **should** be an exhaustive list which excludes types which were introduced with the library itself. You can assume that if it isn't listed, it was there from the library's inception. The view is very simple: `+Type` means it was added, `-Type` means it was removed `Type->Assembly` means it was relocated at that version. The objective side of this is: if it's accurate, it gives you a basic breakdown of when a type was introduced, useful for determining the lowest version of .NET needed for a given piece of functionality. The next step is member analysis which will make the first step look easy (mostly due to method signature comparison, since each parameter type will have to be reversioned and looked up.) I'm curious if this analysis could later be used for an automated tool which could determine the lowest common framework version for an assembly as a whole (software being written by the compiler framework I'm writing, that is)? Insight welcome. > PS: To those wondering why I don't use Reflection, attempt using > Type.GetType(string) on any of these: >   >   >     Microsoft.Win32.Registry, mscorlib, Version=1.0.3300.0, Culture=neutral, > PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 >     Microsoft.Win32.Registry, mscorlib, Version=1.0.5000.0, Culture=neutral, > PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 >     Microsoft.Win32.Registry, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, > PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 >   > > It won't fail, but you also won't get what you would expect, even trying to > load the 2.0 mscorlib by filename yields the 4.0 assembly. **Edit** : I should add this analysis purely focuses on the publicly exposed elements. The rationale for this is you shouldn't ever focus on the dependencies of the internal structure of the BCL since it can change without warning. If you're writing a code generator and the expressions you synthesize rely on these types, your system is likely to be fragile as glass if something changes in the framework, like a patch that updates the 2.0 version's internal structure. Due to how .NET binds its members in Common Intermediate Language, this is a very real likelihood."}
{"_id": "212493", "title": "Is spying on tested class bad practice?", "text": "I am working on a project where class internal calls are usual but the results are many times simple values. Example ( **not real code** ):               public boolean findError(Set<Thing1> set1, Set<Thing2> set2) {       if (!checkFirstCondition(set1, set2)) {         return false;       }       if (!checkSecondCondition(set1, set2)) {         return false;       }       return true;     }      Writing unit tests for this type of code is really hard as I just want to test the condition system and not the implementation of the actual conditions. (I do that in separate tests.) In fact it would be better if I passed functions that implement the conditions and in tests I simply provide some mock. The issue with this approach is the noisiness: _we use generics a lot_. A working solution; however, is to make the tested object a _spy_ and mock out the calls to the internal functions.               systemUnderTest = Mockito.spy(systemUnderTest);     doReturn(true).when(systemUnderTest).checkFirstCondition(....);      The concern here is that the SUT's implementation is effectively changed and it may be problematic to keep the tests in sync with the implementation. Is this true? Is there best practice to avoid this havoc of internal method calls? Note that we are talking about parts of an algorithm, so breaking it out to several classes may not be a desired decision."}
{"_id": "28964", "title": "Challenges for the experienced coder to learn functional programming?", "text": "What are the challenges that an experienced programmer with the usual C++/UNIX background would face when trying to learn functional programming? The main motive for learning is to gain a fresh perspective, perhaps that'd help write better code. This is debatable though. Should Haskell be the introductory language or Prolog or Lisp or F#?"}
{"_id": "219444", "title": "Consequences of \"na\u00efve\" vs \"naive\"?", "text": "While using IE autocorrect \"naive\" got transformed to \"na\u00efve\"! My regional settings are Au English, from a Unicode search point of view the two are nothing alike. I am not even sure whether there are other characters that are being replaced, but from a programmers point of view what are the consequences and remedies in such cases? In SQL is there a way to return results containing both \"na\u00efve\" and \"naive\"? (without hardcoding or explicit programming of course). Are there other instances of automatic transliteration that one should be aware of? Or is there a method to handle such sameness of characters in other languages? e.g. umlats in German and lack/inclusion of vowels in Arabic script based words. Thanks for any observations on this matter"}
{"_id": "212497", "title": "Java desktop application using MVC + Hibernate", "text": "I'm developing a Java desktop application. I'm planning to use MVC architecture described at Oracle site: Java SE Application Design With MVC. I need to store data in database so I decide to use Hibernate as it is very simple but there is any tutorial that use Swing+MVC+Hibernate. It is possible to use them together?"}
{"_id": "213361", "title": "Checking a record is due based on the 'occuring' field", "text": "I have records that have dates against them and an occurring field that contains `none`,`yearly` and `monthly`               id    status    note   date        last_updated   occurring     1     open      ---    01/01/2011  01/02/2010     yearly     2     open      ---    05/05/2011  03/05/2011     monthly     3     open      ---    06/06/2011  05/06/2011     none      Now I need to be able to check if a record is due (the date set has passed) which works perfect if `occurring` is set to none but I'm unsure of how to approach it when it's set to yearly or monthly (IE: This day in the year/month has passed) So with the above records, if I had a method on the record called `due?` providing the status is 'open' it needs to return `true` every year when it's passed that date if it's not been updated within the year yet. I apologise if this is confusing but it's melting my brain just trying to think of it, let alone put it into words."}
{"_id": "241203", "title": "Where to store global enterprise properties?", "text": "I'm faced with a crowd of java applications, which need different global enterprise wide properties for operation, for example: hostname of the central RDBMS, hostname and location of the central self-service portal, host location of central LDAP, host location of central mail server etc. Formally we build each application with a properties file, where all this properties are definied. But that's a very bad solution, because if the hostname of the mail server changes, we need to change the properties files for each application and deploy all applications again. Our idea is to centralize this properties, so that each application can ask for each property at runtime, for example:   1. Idea: Put the properties file to an easy accessible file share. So if we need to change a property, each application uses the new properties.   2. Idea: Put the properties to database. Main disadvantage: we need a dependency to database client libraries for each application.   3. Idea: Put all applications into one big application server, that provides system properties for each application. Main disadvantage: needs deployment of each application to one application server. But that isn't a realistic scenario.   4. Idea: Webservice that provides global enterprise wide properties. Main disadvantage: not very secure, because some properties are passwords or user credentials. What other alternatives are recommended? What is state of the art?"}
{"_id": "194873", "title": "Coping with test code becoming too complex", "text": "Our test automation team writes tons of automation tests for our WEB application, but it seems to me that their code is becoming way too complex and warrants that someone will test it as well. Is there a best practice for writing these automation tests? I'll appreciate any answer with concrete inputs from someone who experienced this problem. If it matters - we are using jSystem for automating our WEB application tests - if there are frameworks which simplify life - I'd like to hear about them."}
{"_id": "253635", "title": "In the days of modern computing, in 'typical business apps' - why does performance matter?", "text": "This may seem like an odd question to some of you. I'm a hobbyist Java programmer. I have developed several games, an AI program that creates music, another program for painting, and similar stuff. This is to tell you that I have an experience in programming, but not in professional development of business applications. I see a lot of talk on this site about performance. People often debate what would be the most efficient algorithm in C# to perform a task, or why Python is slow and Java is faster, etc. What I'm trying to understand is: **why does this matter?** There are specific areas of computing where I see why performance matters: games, where tens of thousands of computations are happening every second in a constant-update loop, or low level systems which other programs rely on, such as OSs and VMs, etc. But for the normal, typical high-level business app, why does performance matter? I can understand why it used to matter, decades ago. Computers were _much_ slower and had much less memory, so you had to think carefully about these things. But today, we have so much memory to spare and computers are so fast: does it **actually** matter if a particular Java algorithm is O(n^2)? Will it actually make a difference for the end users of this typical business app? When you press a GUI button in a typical business app, and behind the scenes it invokes an O(n^2) algorithm, in these days of modern computing - **do you actually feel the inefficiency?** My question is split in two:   1. In practice, today does performance matter in a typical normal business program?   2. If it does, **please give me real-world examples of places in such an application, where performance and optimizations are important.**"}
{"_id": "158393", "title": "Developing an iOS app for a single device - licensing issue", "text": "I'm developing an iOS app for a museum as a freelancer. It's a very simple video player, to be installed on a single iPad that will be part of a permanent exhibition, basically acting as a kiosk. It turns out the iPad is the ideal device for that if you're looking for a small and affordable touchscreen. The problem is: as far as I can tell, none of the Apple Developer Program options available will allow me to distribute an app like that. The relevant options are (from the link above): > **iOS Developer Program ($99/year)** Select this program if you would like > to distribute apps on the App Store as an individual, sole proprietor, > company, organization, government entity or educational institution. > > **iOS Developer Enterprise Program ($299/year)** Select this program if you > would like to develop proprietary apps for internal distribution within your > company, organization, government entity or educational institution. The regular program requires distribution through the App Store. The Enterprise version is for internal distribution within _my own organization_. Neither is the case here! It seems like I'm doomed to violate Apple's terms of service (and I can think of at least two ways of doing that: jailbreaking, or changing the iPad's date so it won't know the provisioning profile expired). Is that really so, or did I get the descriptions wrong? Has anyone here been in a similar situation?"}
{"_id": "238506", "title": "How exactly to use the MVC design pattern", "text": "I have read the documentation on the apple's developer website which refer following guidelines >   * A view class shouldn't depend on a model class (although this may be > unavoidable with some custom views). >   * A view class shouldn't have to depend on a mediating controller class. >   * A model class shouldn't depend on anything other than other model > classes. >   * A mediating controller class shouldn\u2019t depend on a model class > (although, like views, this may be necessary if it's a custom controller > class). >   * A mediating controller class shouldn't depend on view classes or on > coordinating controller classes. >   * A coordinating controller class depends on classes of all MVC role > types. > Consider this scenario: I have a view controller class called `EmployeeViewController`. I have some minor components of which are some are programmatically created and some are created through `xib`. What exactly I am doing is creating all the subviews inside the `EmployeeViewController` class and adding them to the `EmployeeViewController`'s view, e.g. `[self.view addSubView:\u2026]` Is it a better option for me to create a seperate `UIView` Subclass which consists of all the components and initialize it once and add it in the `EmployeeViewController`? What exactly is the correct way to implement MVC? Am I supposed to create separate components for view and controller or should I stack subviews inside the `EmployeeViewController`?"}
{"_id": "43267", "title": "One large project or a few small ones?", "text": "Personally I'd prefer to work on one project at a time, maintaining absolute focus on that. I find I'm at my most productive in this situation, however it's not always the way things happen in the real world. Do you prefer working on one large project, and being totally focused on that, or be working on say 3-4 small projects at once which may even be developed using different languages?"}
{"_id": "43261", "title": "Unit testing code paths", "text": "When unit testing using expectations, you define a set of method calls and corresponding results for those calls. These define the path through the method that you want to test. I have read that unit tests should not duplicate the code. But when you define these expectations, isn't that duplicating the code, or at least the process? How do you know when you're duplicating functionality under test?"}
{"_id": "174916", "title": "Should the number of developers be considered when estimating a task?", "text": "I am pretty inexperienced with working in agile projects but I have tried it a few times and I always run into this problem when estimating a task. Do we bring into the estimate the number of developers that will work on the task? Let me explain: Task A is estimated to one time unit and developer 1 will work on it. Task B is also estimated to one time unit and developer 2 and 3 will work on it together. I.e. if developer 1 begins to work on task A at the same time developer 2 and 3 begins to work on task B they will all finish at the same time according to the estimate. Should the estimate for task B be twice of that for task A or the same? The problem as I see it is that when a task is received and estimated, it is not always possible to know how many people will work on it. And if you assumed that two developers would work on the task for one time unit but it turns out that only one developer will actually do it, this will not automatically mean that that developer will work on it for two time units. Is there any standard practice for this?"}
{"_id": "92139", "title": "Branching an application setup/installer across versions?", "text": "I am wondering whether I should branch our installer script/project-file (we use InnoSetup) with each application release or whether I should keep one in installer script that generates the setup for all versions and branches. ## Background We use branches (\"maintenance versions\") heavily as our features are very customer driven and we often first implement a bugfix in a specific customer version to keep things stable. (Yes. Not optimal. But it's also what the customers like. As little code-changes as possible to take no risk with their expensive hardware lying idle because of regressions.) So our branches/versions would look like this               v150.6 - \"150\" branch installed with customer X      v151.7 - \"151\" branch installed with customer Y, Z, A and B     ...     v156.3 - \"156\" branch installed with customer C and D     vCurrent - Development of new features - will produce a v157 eventually      I have now checked in our setup script into version control and it already has seen quite a few bugfixes and tweaks. At the moment, when a new v151.n+1 maintenance version is built, the automated build scripts take the setup script checked into v151 branch and create a setup with this. So obviously, a v151.8 version would have a bit an outdated installer, although \"95%\" of all fixes to the installer would be applicable to all old releases. _I am therefore considering adjusting our automated build scripts to always use the setup script from the vCurrent branch: - also for the setups of newly created maintenance versions of old branches._ What is your take on this. **Should a setup/installer script be** \"tightly bound\" to a sourcecode version, or should the lifecycle of setup logic be more independent from the actual code-version/binaries being installed, so that fixes to the setup logic can be used across a range of different (maintenance) versions?"}
{"_id": "69961", "title": "Company namespace in web applications", "text": "Most (good) namespace conventions require a company name scoped namespace. **eg** `CompanyName.ComponentName.x.y.z` How well does this translate over to web applications? In many websites, the company is referred to by the website name (eg, Facebook, MySpace). Does this convolute namespaces, making them appear as if they can only apply to a single project? **For example** , let's pretend a company creates _WebsiteA_ (.com), and is henceforth referred to as ' _WebsiteA_ '. _WebsiteA_ creates a reusable authentication component for their project. They namespace it as such: `WebsiteA.Auth.x.y.z` A year later, _WebsiteA_ creates a new website, _WebsiteB_ , and decide to use their previously created `WebsiteA.Auth` component. Does this obscure the namespace? Should the company have used an alias separate from their website name as their CompanyName in their namespacing? Afterall, `WebsiteA.Auth` isn't coupled directly to _WebsiteA_.com, and `WebsiteA` is now more of a project of the company, rather than the entire company."}
{"_id": "96303", "title": "Should I build my own CMS or rely on a pre-built one?", "text": "> **Related** : As a beginning programmer, should I favor building my own > libraries over using 3rd-party libraries? As an intermediate to advanced level PHP web-developer and a young one at that (15yrs.), should I build an entirely new CMS for my website or rely on pre- made software such as WordPress or Drupal? I don't exactly feel that WordPress is powerful/scalable enough to be able to handle what I'm trying to do and after tinkering with Drupal quite a bit over the last few days it just doesn't seem up to par for my liking and also isn't well documented so I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to do certain simple tasks. I would _love_ to use something such as ExpressionEngine, but I don't have the money to dish out for a commercial license which is currently at around $300, so that's a no-go. I originally started coding my site as a temporary system so my users could purchase upgrades and other things such as in-game currency until I could get a new website up, but after I started on it I quickly realized that I needed to make it scalable, so from then on I coded with the thought of making it a full-functioning website in mind. It only took a couple of days but all of the basics are there (register, login, account modifications, etc.) and I believe it would be a great start for a private CMS. The last thing I want to add is if I were to build my own CMS, should I make use of a PHP framework such as CodeIgniter, which I have quite a bit of experience with? Maybe others developers could clue me in as to what I may be getting myself into."}
{"_id": "96302", "title": "To check-in small chunks and frequently, or to check-in large chunks but infrequently", "text": "Which approach is better when working with a source control software like TFS or VSS? I have experienced different approaches and I can't tell which one is better. Should we let developers decide upon it? Or should a team has a unique strategy for check-in check-out operations?"}
{"_id": "89148", "title": "Should SCRUM be used for a project with only one person working on it?", "text": "At our company we have a team working on 3 different projects at the same time, where typically only one or two people are involved in each project. Project work often involves mastering new technologies and or solving bugs, both leading to tasks which are very hard to estimate. In this situation, the management still insists on using SCRUM and does not allow allocating a safety buffer at the end of the sprint for unexpected situations. The stand-up meeting happens for the whole team, although pretty much everyone works on unrelated software components or different software projects all together.   * I was wondering if someone have seen SCRUM working well for a project with a single developer and fuzzy tasks, and how you made the process work well?   * How to estimate tasks which involved research/mastering new technologies (this involves learning new programming languages, platforms, and development tools)?   * Has anyone succeeded in convincing management not to use SCRUM for particular projects, and if yes, which arguments were most successful? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "201732", "title": "In startups does one get an adequate feedback on his performance? Or does a \"bang\" come unexpected?", "text": "I started working for a start-up company. Generally the pace is very fast and have a lot of expectations. This is different for me since I used to work for a big company with a lot of structure and the pace was not that high.   From discussions with other collegues (not within the new company of course), my conclusion is that it is easy to lose your job in a start-up. I guess this makes some sense since the company \"struggles\" to survive.   What I would like to know is if in general, if indeed this is the case and it is easy to get laid off, is one usually warned if he is up to the expectations or not in order for him to improve? Or there is no such warnings?   Well if they are not satisfied do they tell you? Would it be possible to not be satisfied and hide it? And then just let you go?   Is constant/adequate feedback of employee's performance part of a start up's mentality?   I am looking for advice from colleagues with more experience on this.   Any input/advice is highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "103375", "title": "How should I document a Python script?", "text": "I have a couple of Python modules that are meant to be run as scripts. How should I write the docstrings at the module and function level to make it clear how to run and use the module?"}
{"_id": "19149", "title": "Is .NET experience information overload?", "text": "It used to be that, if you wanted to develop an N-Tier app in .NET you built your UI with Winforms or WebForms, your BLL with standard C#/VB.NET/{.NET Language}, your DAL with ADO.NET and maybe throw in some remoting. Now you've got, WPF, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, WCF, WCF Data Services, WCF RIA Services, WF, EF, P&P App Blocks and more. That's just _some_ of your options if you want to build an N-Tier Application using .NET, and - maybe I'm just not that smart but - few of these are easy to learn well. _And_ these are only products from Microsoft. Nevermind the other myriad tools & technologies (other ORMs, UI frameworks like PRISM, AOP frameworks etc. etc. ad nauseum). Is it freedom of choice, is it information overload, or is it normal and I'm just slow/dumb?"}
{"_id": "170213", "title": "Directly copying third-party API", "text": "I'm currently planning on implementing API for HgLab and the obvious role model for me here is GitHub. My API obviously won't be an _exact_ copy due to inherent differences between Mercurial and Git and due to different tasks GitHub and HgLab solve, but similarity will be quite clear. How ethical of me will it be to copy their API to a significant extent? Is the API design copyrightable?"}
{"_id": "170211", "title": "PHP - Data Access Layer", "text": "I am currently reviewing a code base and noticed that a majority of the calls (along with DB connections) are just buried inside the PHP scripts. I would have assumed that like other languages they would have developed some sort of data access layer (Like I would do in .Net or Java) for all of the communication to the DB (or implemented MVC, etc). Is this still a common pattern in PHP or is there alternative methodologies/patterns for this technology? I am just trying to understand why the subs would have developed it this way. Any insight/info on how experienced developers design an approach data access in PHP would be very much appreciated."}
{"_id": "60345", "title": "how to get more and better contribute in github?", "text": "I have use github for a while, but my project is only one developer -- myself. I want to get some contribute from others, and some of my friends said they can give me some patch, but we all don't know how to use github as a tool for us. And I know that github will also help project get more contribute from the open source community. So, my question is   1. how to get contribute in github?   2. how to get more and better contribute from opensource community?"}
{"_id": "116428", "title": "Help me classify this type of software architecture", "text": "I read some books about software architecture as we are using it in our project but I can't classify the architecture properly. It's some kind of Enterprise Architecture, but what exactly... SOA, ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), Message Bus, Event Driven SOA, there are so many terms in Enterprise software.... The system is based on custom XML messages exchanges between services. (it's not SOAP, nor any other XML based standard, just plain XML). These messages represent notifications (state changes) that are applied to the Domain model, (it's not like CRUD when you serialize the whole domain object, and pass it to service for persistence). The system is centralized, and system participants use different programming languages and frameworks (c++, c#, java). Also, messages are not processed at the moment they are received as they are stored first and the treatment begins on demand. **It's called SOA+EDA -:)**"}
{"_id": "116429", "title": "Why it is important to include definition of success/failure in specification?", "text": "I've read Steve McConnell's \"Code Complete\" and one of items in checklist for requirements is: \"Is the definition of success included? Of failure?\". Why is this important? Can you write any examples of those definitions? Can anybody provide examples of good requirements specification?"}
{"_id": "52252", "title": "Which to choose, procedural programming or object - oriented programming?", "text": "I want to build a website that runs e-commerce (C2C), thus I want to ask which programming approach is more appropriate and advanced in terms of website's functionality?"}
{"_id": "116420", "title": "Domain model for education", "text": "Are there any domain models already created for education industry? For example we have Prima IBCS for insurance. I was looking for something along similar lines."}
{"_id": "43190", "title": "What is your most unusual javascript concept you've ever seen?", "text": "I've learned javascript at school but since I'm working with it and study about it every day, I've found very particular aspect of javascript that I didn't know about. Which at first, was very hard to understand for me and finally, I found it very usefull and easy to implement. And in the final, it gives to my code some kind of \"beauty\". An example I've once seen:               function getter( input )     {         result = {             foo1 : 'bar1',             foo2 : 'bar2',             foo3 : 'bar3'         }[input] || input || \"default\";              return result;     }      **Do you guys have other examples of particular use you make of Javascript ?** Thank you **PS:** I use the term _particular use_ because it might be unusual for any Javascript beginner. I believe this question is most likely to belong to the community wiki."}
{"_id": "235178", "title": "JSON - Ruby objects key naming", "text": "Ruby object has method/property:               def tentakles_count       8     end      JavaScript object has key/property:               { justEnough: true }      Now, when JavaScript gets serialised ruby object via XHR or WebSocket, developer has to use alien naming convention to access `tentacles_count`. The same goes for Ruby, when it gets json object POSTed, developer has to use alien naming convention to access `justEnough`. What would you do to deal with this little imperfection without going too crazy?"}
{"_id": "235170", "title": "DDD - Domain Driven Design, which development order should be applied?", "text": "1 - Design my entities, ie (in python):               class Account:         def __init__(name, author):             self.name = name             self.email = email      2 - Design my repositories: (as interface)               class AccountRepository:         def add(self, account):             \"\"\" @type account Account \"\"\"             pass              def find_by_name(self, name):             pass              def find_by_email(self, email):             pass              # remove, and others...      Now, I can go two ways: **A:** Design and implement my domain services:               class SignUpService:         def __init__(self, account_repository):             \"\"\" @type account_repository AccountRepository \"\"\"             self._account_repository = account_repository              def create_account(self, username, email):             account = Account(username, email)             self._account_repository.add(account)              # other methods that uses the account_repository      **B:** Implement my Repositories Strategies:               class MongodbAccountRepository(AccountRepository):         def __init__(self, mongodb_database):             self._mongodb_database = mongodb_database              def add(self, account):             account_data = account.__dict__             self._mongodb_database.accounts.insert(account_data)              # and the other methods      Which is the correct order? and why? 1, 2, A, B or 1, 2, B, A? Thank you so much!"}
{"_id": "235171", "title": "Assert Message in Unit Tests", "text": "I've just begun reading \"The Art Of Unit Testing\" by Roy Osherove, and while I'm mostly finding the material very helpful, he makes a statement about not using messages in your Assert statements. > \"Please never, _ever_ , use this parameter. Just make sure your test name > explains what's supposed to happen.\" My question is, in you experience do you find this advice to be good or bad? If you use assert messages in your unit tests, what information do you use it to capture beyond what a well named unit test could give you in the first place?"}
{"_id": "235175", "title": "Are closures considered impure functional style?", "text": "I have a few related questions on closures: Are closures considered impure in functional programming? It seems one can generally avoid closures by passing values directly to a function. Therefore should closures be avoided where possible? If they are impure, and I am correct in stating that they can be avoided, why do so many functional programming languages support closures? **Edit:** I'm adding a little more context to help explain why I am confused about this. I read on wikipedia that one of the criteria for a pure function is that \"The function always evaluates the same result value given the same **argument value(s)**.\" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_function Suppose               f: x -> x + y      `f(3)` will not always give the same result. `f(3)` depends on the value of `y` which is not an argument of `f`. Thus `f` is not a pure function. Since all closures rely on values which are not arguments, how is it possible for any closure to be pure? Yes, in theory the closed value could be constant but there is no way of knowing that just by looking that the source code of the function itself. Where this leads me to is that the same function may be pure in one situation but impure in another. One cannot _always_ determine if a function is pure or not by studying its source code. Rather, one may have to consider it in context of its environment at the point when it is being called before such distinction can be made. Am I thinking about this correctly?"}
{"_id": "150541", "title": "Versioning and client upgrade strategy for web applications", "text": "I'm writing a web app and am wondering about future upgrades and how upgrading the webapp will affect the user experience. In particular, I was wondering how a company like Google approaches this problem. For example, I have seen several examples where a particular google app will ask the user if they want to upgrade to 'the new google docs', or similar. This is the experience I would like to provide, but I'm not sure how to go about it. If it matter, I'm writing an app that uses backbone.js and has a heavy JS client side component. I have seen several discussions talking about versioning the REST component or the WebServices component, but none that discuss the actual client-side code or backend components (of course, the backend may not matter much if it is all behind a versioned webservice) I'm interested in how they achieve this, from an application standpoint and from a (presumably) backend DB standpoint. So it seems like there are several issues.   * Where in the web root do the versioned applications live?   * How do you serve multiple versions to different users?   * How do you version the backend datastore?   * Since I'm using backbone, I am particularly interested in to design the router for this type of app. If the various versions live in a subdir, how do I create a proper router? There are probably some other considerations as well. Any advice would be welcome."}
{"_id": "150540", "title": "how to compare two large sets of data using PL/SQL?", "text": "I have two different tables in two separate databases with around 1.5 million records each. (BTW: im working on oracle databases) The objective is to check if every record present in table A is also present in table B. Since the tables exist in different databases, I think I cannot calculate the \"difference\" between the two of them, so what im currently doing is selecting the column I need from each database and storing all the rows on separate text files. Then, I load the content of one of the files on a dictionary (using python) and then iterate the other file checking if every line is present on the dictionary. I would like to make this more simple, perhaps directly on a stored procedure in the database. My main concerns are:   1. I don't know if PL/SQL associative arrays are as efficient as the dictionary (im assuming python dictionaries have constant lookup time)   2. The fact that tables exist on different databases makes me think that it would be impossible to \"reach\" the contents of table B if the stored procedure is on the database of table A, or viceversa. Thanks in advance for any suggestion!"}
{"_id": "155710", "title": "ORM and component-based architecture", "text": "I have joined an ongoing project, where the team calls their architecture \"component-based\". The lowest level is one big database. The data access (via ORM) and business layers are **combined** in various components. E.g., there's a component for handling bank accounts, one for generating invoices, etc. So every component contains the data access to only a part of the schema. My issue is the coupling of data access and business logic in such a structure, because while such a partition makes sense for business logic, it complicates data access. From my point of view the separation of the data access layer into various components seems counterproductive, because it denies us the relational mapping capabilities of the ORM. E.g., when I want to query all invoices for one customer I have to identify the customer with the \"customers\" component and then make another call to the \"invoices\" component to get the invoices for this customer. The entity Customer can't have an Orders property, because Orders are mapped in a different component. Does anybody have some advice? Have I overlooked something?"}
{"_id": "65644", "title": "Suggestions wanted on dealing with hyper territorial team", "text": "I have just started a new job and all is not well in neverland. I had high hopes for this company, but when I arrived, I walked into a team that I am having a hard time working with... The two existing developers on this project are having a hard time accepting any suggestions or changes to the code that they spent the last few months writing. It seems like a political minefield and so far their way of dealing with a new team member has been to avoid explaining as much as possible. example: this is a rewrite of an existing system and apparently I don't need to know anything about the old system because they have already reviewed it and know what needs to be done. I don't want to make this a long rant, but there are other issues including micro-management, assigning only trivial bug fixes, and an unwillingness to consider any suggestion, idea, or minor code change that is a departure from how it is currently written. Example: I had a bug fix to make sure a search screen truncated names longer than 25 characters. One of the existing developers made the comment that I need to talk to them before I start so he can show me how the existing string truncate is done, LOL. If I check in code without consulting them first then \"the team\" decides that it needs to be reworked. HOW do I deal with this? Has anyone out there ever overcome similar issues? Is this just a lost cause??? P.S. I'm not a junior level or incompetent programmer. I'm no rock star, but I've got as much experience and knowledge as the rest of my team, so I don't think that is the underlying issue."}
{"_id": "150549", "title": "Stuck due to \"knowing too much\"", "text": "Note more discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4037794 I have a relatively simple development task, but every time I try to attack it, I end up spiraling in deep thoughts - how could it extending the future, what are the 2nd generation clients going to need, how does it affect \"non functional\" aspects (e.g. Performance, authorization...), how would it best be architectured to allow change... I remember myself a while ago, younger and, perhaps, more eager. The \"me\" I was then wouldn't have given a thought about all that - he would've gone ahead and wrote something, then rewrote it, then rewrote it again (and again...). The \"me\" today is more hesitant, more careful. I find it much easier today to sit and plan and instruct other people on how to do things than to actually go ahead and do them myself - not because I don't like to code - the opposite, I love to! - but because every time I sit at the keyboard, I end up in that same annoying place. Is this wrong? Is this a natural evolution, or did I drive myself into a rut? Fair disclosure - in the past I was a developer, today my job title is a \"system architect\". Good luck figuring what it means - but that's the title. * * * Wow. I honestly didn't expect this question to generate that many responses. I'll try to sum it up. Reasons:   1. Analysis paralysis / Over engineering / gold plating / (any other \"too much thinking up-front can hurt you\").   2. Too much experience for the given task.   3. Not focusing on what's important.   4. Not enough experience (and realizing that). Solutions (not matched to reasons):   1. Testing first.   2. Start coding (+ for fun)   3. One to throw away (+ one API to throw away).   4. Set time constraints.   5. Strip away the fluff, stay with the stuff.   6. Make flexible code (kinda opposite to \"one to throw away\", no?). Thanks to everyone - I think the major benefit here was to realize that I'm not alone in this experience. I have, actually, already started coding and some of the too-big things have fallen off, naturally. Since this question is closed, I'll accept the answer with most votes as of today. When/if it changes - I'll try to follow."}
{"_id": "150548", "title": "New application development - Use existing database or create a new one?", "text": "A Client has a huge Windows Application running on a Database. This client wants you to develop an \"Express\" version of this application, including only, let's say, 20% of its features. This Express version must be a Web Application, opened on the WWW. You have 2 choices:   * Use the same Database to develop the web application   * Create a new database to the web application, including only the necessary tables and objects and use some synchronization mechanism to keep the databases up to date. The client prefers the 2nd option, because: Security: If they have a separated Database for the web app, they will not \"expose\" the huge Windows App Database on the internet. Performance: The windows application has some huge process that they run at night and \"lock\" the database for a couple of minutes. So, creating a separated DB would ensure better performance to the web application. I prefer the 1st option, because: Integrity: If we have different databases, we won't be able to create Foreign Keys between them. Avoid Sync: If we have different databases, we would have to create a synchronization mechanism, which is very prone to failures. Maintenance: Maintenance will be easier if we have only one database. No change will need to be replicated. Can you help me decide which way to follow, and why?"}
{"_id": "81293", "title": "Encouraging software engineers to track time", "text": "How can I encourage my coworkers to track the time they spend resolving issues and implementing features? We have software to do this, but they just don't enter the numbers. I want the team to get better at providing project estimates by comparing our past estimates to actual time spent. I suspect that my coworkers don't see the personal benefit, since they're not often involved in project scheduling."}
{"_id": "69342", "title": "How to show someone of the power of model-view-controller design pattern?", "text": "I've been working with a friend on a project that we've taken over, and I've realized that we have a big problem implementing the model-view-controller design pattern due to the way that the project has been set up. The project is currently split up into the following three sections (.proj files in Visual Studio):   1. Model classes.   2. Controller classes (business layer logic).   3. View classes. Visual Studio isn't letting me create cyclic references (quite understandbly) between two of these three sub-projects. This means that the controller classes can have a relationship with the view classes, but the view classes can't have a relationship with the controller classes! The result of this is that as soon as the controller displays a view, the rest of the controlling logic has to go in the view class! So I've proposed that we merge all three sub-projects together (to avoid the cyclic references of visual studio). This means that we can create all the relationships between the three types of classes that the model-view- controller design paradigm requires. Ultimately, it will be we can place the controlling logic in the rightful place of the controllers, taking it out of the view classes. The problem is I'm having a hard time convincing my friend about this. He thinks that having these separate boundaries between the sub-projects means that there's safety that we won't ever do things like put controlling or viewing code in the model (as the model sub-project is currently only ever referred to and doesn't refer to the controller or the view). I was wondering if anyone could come up with some ways that I could really get my point across about how important this design pattern is, and how limiting it would be to go against it, and continue putting controller logic in the view classes? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "240552", "title": "Is there a difference in resource allocation & efficiency between a web app and a compiled one?", "text": "I'm a web developer. I feel like I develop less resource-intensive functionality often times, because I have this feeling that if I ask too much of the web app (animation, calculation, connections, etc), it will get lagged for users with slower computers. I've been curious for a while now about just how much difference there is in the capability (resource allocation) of a web (interpreted) app vs a compiled one. Also, I've heard that interpreted (JS, for example) programs are very inefficient and resource-hungry in comparison to compiled ones (C++, for example). Google's V8 JS Engine is said to make JS faster, but I still see people talk about JS being much less efficient than C++. * * * The reason that I ask this question is to separate fact from biased opinion.   * Is there a difference in available CPU & RAM between a web app and a compiled one?    * Is there a large efficiency difference between a program written in (an interpreted language) JS versus one written in (a compiled language) C++? * * * Edit: I realize that we are comparing apples and oranges here. There are some really well-defined aspects of choosing between C++ (anything compiled) and JavaScript (web) when developing a client application, and this is one side aspect of that decision that I would not want to be misinformed about if it were to come up at any point in my career."}
{"_id": "154046", "title": "How does team development work?", "text": "This is a pretty generic question but one I've been wondering about for a while: is there a standardized, generally accepted, or even just systematic way that people write code as a group? For example, in a project written in C++, does one developer write one class, which he passes off to the next developer with a quick explanation of what each method does?"}
{"_id": "240559", "title": "license and copyright assignment", "text": "I'm currently working on a wordpress plugin. My client gives me a specs doc (a powerpoint presentation, if you can call that a specs doc), and I code the requested functionality. Every time I send him code every file containing code starts with these lines:               Author: My Name     Copyright: The_client's_company.com     License: MIT Expat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expat_License)      My intention being giving my client complete right to relicense and distribute the code under any other license (as the TOS of the freelancing website requires, plus I know he intends to sell it under a proprietary license), but at the same time giving myself the right to expand and redistribute the plugin under MIT license if I wish to (not that I do). The reason is I am paid only 10USD/hour (this is my first gig) so I want to at least keep the right to reuse parts of the code in other projects or expand it if I want to start a similar project myself when I finish the contract (unlikely, but who knows...) or show it to potential employers. The contract we agreed upon doesn't include any licensing specifications but I've informed him on the emails we've interchanged that although all my work is licensed by default as MIT I'm giving my clients the copyright of the code I produce so they can relicense it at will before distribution. Is this the correct way of achieving that?"}
{"_id": "118031", "title": "Are Blocks Second-Class Citizens in Objective-C (vs. Ruby)?", "text": "Feeling slightly witty the other day, I wrote an `eachWithIndex:` method in a `NSArray` category. It has a typedef like this:               typedef void (^processItem)(id item, int index);      and the method looks like this:               - (void)eachWithIndex:(processItem)block {         for (int i=0; i<self.count; i++) {             id item = [self objectAtIndex:i];             block(item, i);         }     }      However, if my block contains a `return` at any point, it doesn't jump out of the calling method (nor the block). Consider this code in Ruby:               def blah         %w{one two three}.each_with_index {|thing, i| puts \"#{i}=#{thing}\"; return \"hello!\" if i==1 }         puts \"blah does more stuff\"     end      when `i` reaches one, the `blah` method will end. This does not happen in Obj-C, and I feel that it should. Are blocks more integrated into Ruby than Objective-C?"}
{"_id": "148310", "title": "What should I consider when deciding if I should use a web service backend instead of traditional MVC?", "text": "We're trying to decide what architecture to use for an upcoming web application that will eventually have a mobile portion as well. The core of the project is a social networking web application, and the mobile portion will most likely have a limited subset of the web functionality. The two options we are looking at is either a **complete web service back end** , or using a **traditional MVC framework** for the web application and then developing web services on the side for the mobile application later. Some arguments for web-service-only route is that it would be \"simpler\", as we would just have to create 1 web service as opposed to creating both a web service for the mobile portion, and additional database functions/calls for the web application. Using this method, the web application will fetch data from the web services using javascript, which would then generate the html page (sounds kind of like what a traditional MVC framework does, but this way would require everything to be done in javascript). I'm not feeling good about the idea of using web services only because it doesn't make sense to me, but I am having trouble clarifying my issues with it. So what should I consider when trying to determine if we should use a complete web-service backend for our project instead of traditional MVC with web services only available when needed for the mobile portion of the app? I'm looking for a comprehensive answer to this question, not many answers each containing one piece of the answer."}
{"_id": "148313", "title": "What is the most space efficient way to implement a graph data structure?", "text": "I typically implement graphs as doubly linked lists but this is fairly space inefficient in my experience as I need k pointers/references for k neighbors so for an undirected graph I'd have ~2k neighbor links within the lists if my math is right. Is there a better way of saving space? I know that some of the links can be made singular if the graph is directed but is there a way to do a better job of this?"}
{"_id": "148315", "title": "Can/Should I put my Git repository on a non-dev machine and keep it synced with the non-version control server?", "text": "I volunteer for a website, and well, basically, we don't have version control. We're working to change that, but because of several things, including the fact that I haven't worked with source control before, that's not happening for some time. In the meantime, I'd like to move my working files into source control (probably Git) for the obvious benefits. Here's the thing: there are hundreds of thousands of files on the web server that are user-generated that I don't really want on my dev machine because, well, I pay for my own equipment (it is volunteer after all, so it's not like I can expense a new hard drive) and my dev machine is also my everyday computer and I'd rather not clog it up with a lot of stuff that doesn't need to be here. I do, however, have an empty system sitting around that is perfectly willing to store all of that data. In all likelihood, that system is probably going to host an entire local copy of the site anyway as a backup. So, and I hope this isn't an entirely crazy idea, I'm thinking about putting the Git repository on that machine. I'm not intending to develop on that machine, however. So,   * Is putting your Git repository on a different computer than your dev machine a really bad idea? It should be technically feasible as it's on the same network, and I don't think my IDE will have any problem connecting to it, but that doesn't mean it's a terrible idea. Putting the repository on my dev machine isn't out of the question, but it'd be preferable to put it on the empty one.   * (And I hope that this is related enough to keep in the same question) Because there are other people working on the site, changes are going to happen to the remote site that aren't going to go through source control. Since I'd prefer the two to stay synced, could I create a Git repository on the server, pull and merge changes into my local, and then just upload the changes through FTP? Doing any real version control on the server isn't feasible at the moment (as I said, it's being worked on), but a repository that we don't touch is a different matter. Would this be a feasible plan at all?"}
{"_id": "148317", "title": "What do I need to do to NOT steal \"Hello World\" code with a GPL license?", "text": "In the project, I found a file, `math.c`, with a big GPL header and ...               //------------------------------------------------------------------------------     /// Returns the minimum value between two integers.     /// \\param a  First integer to compare.     /// \\param b  Second integer to compare.     //------------------------------------------------------------------------------     unsigned int min(unsigned int a, unsigned int b)     {         if (a < b) {             return a;         }         else {             return b;         }     }      OK, cool so I need to get min value and ... **_this file_**!? So I need to open the whole project because of it? Or do I need to reinvent mathematics? I don't believe it's just insane, so the question is: when we can just remove the GPL header? Must I _be a weirdo and do it_?:               unsigned int min(             unsigned int     JEIOfuihFHIYEFHyigHUEFGEGEJEIOFJOIGHE,     unsigned int hyrthrtRERG            ) {  if     (JEIOfuihFHIYEFHyigHUEFGEGEJEIOFJOIGHE     < hyrthrtRERG            ) {  return JEIOfuihFHIYEFHyigHUEFGEGEJEIOFJOIGHE;  }     else {return hyrthrtRERG            ;    } }      Seriously, do they want me to write code like the above?"}
{"_id": "118039", "title": "Benefit of using static inner builder class", "text": "During the course of writing the code guidelines for a company I found myself recommending using the Builder pattern from Effective Java, instead of telescopic constructors. However, after thinking about it a bit more, surely a more elegant solution is to just remove the builder class and the also remove the extra constructors with optional arguments. So just have the one constructor with required parameters, normal getters/setters, and comment the code. When implementing just create a new instance of yr object then set values. My original thinking was the benefit came from removing the confusion as to what paramters were optional and what were required; however the true benefit comes from using method chaining/fluent interface. The builder pattern has benefits when you make lots of new instances as the ide can do the leg work and also if there are many (15+) optional parameters. However, is it worth the extra time coding the static inner class, would you recommend using the builder, or is it a waste of time ?"}
{"_id": "214558", "title": "Can a beginner in programming start learning game development?", "text": "I'm very new to programming and I'm using Java. I got interested to learn programming because I want to create games. I love playing computer games and I know that game developers make money. I told myself that instead of just playing why not create my own game and probably make some money. I read some articles about game development using java and I learned about JMonkey. I just installed it in my Ubuntu PC. Should I learn first the basics of Java or I can start learning JMonkey and Java at the same time? I know that JMonkey is game engine built using Java and it provides libraries to help developers create Java games efficiently but its kinda advanced for a dummy like me."}
{"_id": "152947", "title": "Should you exercise TDD on prototype applications?", "text": "I'm developing an iOS app, which is a prototype for a customer. They're expecting it to not be of production standard and are happy for a few rough edges here and there. Since this is my first commercial venture into iOS / Objective C (I'm an android developer that is trying to cross-train into iOS), my primary focus has been learning the Objective C language and how to develop the app, and I have not invested any time into learning how TDD can be applied in this environment. My question is, even for prototypes, should you still try to apply TDD and create unit tests?"}
{"_id": "152945", "title": "Is WCF suitable for writing an application which is shared among applications?", "text": "I have developed and deployed few ASP.NET applications. Sometimes I want to stop the users from either inserting or updating a record when:   1. Maintenance is going on.   2. Stop operations due to payment delay. In one of my recent application I have implemented this feature to first check the database operations for locked status. If any of the above condition fulfils, database operations like insert and update are not carried out. I now need this feature in all the old applications and the future applications I build. I want to know whether WCF is suitable in this scenario as I want to share methods or an independent locking application among various other applications. Is WCF appropriate for this type of scenario?"}
{"_id": "161914", "title": "Is there any better approach to shortest path finding within a (vehicular) traffic network?", "text": "Dear fellow programmers, We're developing software which simulates vehicular traffic. Part of the process called \"assignment\" is concerned with assigning vehicles to their routes and has to use some kind of shortest-path-finding algorithm. Traditionally, people do this with Dijkstra's, and certain scientific literature seems to indicate that A* and other alternatives don't give any significant improvement, perhaps due to the nature of the graph. Hence, we're using Dijkstra's as well. A small problem arose in that, if you treat traffic links (spans of roads between intersections) as edges and intersections as nodes, you can't get a classic uni-directional graph: when approaching an intersection, where you can turn frequently depends on where you're coming from, whereas in a traditional graph you can take any edge from a node. We resolved this problem quite easily by representing a link-intersection pair (call it \"lath\") as a node. Since you'd need to traverse a link to get to any subsequent \"lath\", or point of choice, an edge would then be defined as this traversal, and you get a typical graph. The results then are stored in a simple table, N x N, where N is the number of \"laths.\" Here's the (unavoidable?) drawback. If a typical network for our simulation can have, say, 2000 intersections, it will have somewhere around 6000 links, i.e. N = 3V. Obviously, if counted in terms of intersections (V), we're now up to O(log(3V)*(3V + E)). You might argue that 3 (or 9) is a constant factor, but from the practical standpoint, it does slow things down quite a bit, and increases storage space to 3V x 3V. Does anyone have any idea how we can restructure this to improve performance? Not necessarily any alternative algorithm, perhaps reshape the data structures to fit a graph in some other way?"}
{"_id": "161911", "title": "Would this be considered dependency injection?", "text": "Would this be considered dependency injection, or delegation or object collaboration? https://gist.github.com/3428071"}
{"_id": "205901", "title": "Does non-virtual-by-default lead us to composition-over-inheritance?", "text": "There are some design guidelines about testable code in \u201cThe Art of Unit Testing\u201d. The first one is \u201cMake methods virtual by default\u201d. I\u2019m curious to know your idea about non-virtual-by-default behavior in C#. I\u2019ve read about Hejlsberg opinions but I think one the most important reasons could be that it may lead us to \u201ccomposition over inheritance\u201d principal. Could \u201ccomposition over inheritance\u201d be one of those reasons which make non- virtual-by-default preferred over virtual-by-default? **UPDATE** Regarding this subject, please consider test-driven point of view; where we want to write testable code. While we are encouraged to make all members virtual by default (at the mentioned book), we can follow \"composition over inheritance\" and keep going non-virtual-by-default. Isn't it better?"}
{"_id": "20472", "title": "Google App Engine -- should we use it?", "text": "I'm considering using Google App Engine for an online matchmaking (and possibly ranking, not sure) of users in a (currently hypothetical) RTS game. However, I just read this bad review, which has made me nervous. Which problems have they solved (or are planning to solve), which might be an issue for me, and are there any alternatives?"}
{"_id": "106620", "title": "What are the current problems involved in software engineering programming patterns?", "text": "can someone suggest me the current problems in software engineering and the research links for it? i have some knowledge on MVVM being a pattern but i would like to know more about others and also current problems as to why people go for the patterns and how they help and what are still current problems involved and the research involved in this field any help is greatly appreciated, Thank you"}
{"_id": "191525", "title": "Strategy while coding", "text": "I read in one of the article \"45 minutes of coding and 15 min of resting\". I started implementing this, Initially for smaller task, I felt very nice, but as tricky and complicated tasks came,I was not able to finish the task in 45 min and it started putting pressure upon me and I stressed out. what would you suggest me on this strategy, Is this good one to apply? or are there any other good ones?"}
{"_id": "95540", "title": "How to evaluate how well one knows functional programming", "text": "I've been wondering how to determine if I _know_ functional programming. By know I mean in a Journeyman sense, not a master, but competent enough to do the work. I like languages w/ query/data shaping constructs built in, but is knowing the ins and outs of maps, filters, and aggregates in the form of `Linq`, `Sql`, and `Reactive Extensions` sufficient to claim that one knows functional programming? Or are additional specific concepts and skills required? Edit: I've been working in OO and languages that identify primarily as OO langs for 15 years. As I'm not in an env that is self-identified as functional, there's little to measure against. Is avoiding immutable state and knowing how to use `fold` all there is?"}
{"_id": "16802", "title": "Anyone who has taken 70-515 TS: Web Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 exam?", "text": "I'm planning to take 70-515 exam and I can't find any training kit for it from MS press at the moment. Therefore, I'm reading the book for 70-562 which covers framework 3.5. I would like to know if someone has taken 70-515 exam and knows if 70-562 training kit can be helpful for the exam 70-515. Are there any resources someone might like to suggest which can help me pass this exam? I would really appreciate any help."}
{"_id": "195236", "title": "Exception handling class: static or object-oriented?", "text": "I am working in a windows service (using VB.Net) for internal use of my department. When ever a certain type of exception (`FooException` for now on) is captured, I follow the same logic:   * Log the exception   * Send an email to someone. In order to reuse code and not to copy-paste the same lines in every `catch FooException` block I have created a `FooExceptionHandler` method inside my `ExceptionHandling` class. So I ended up with a code like this:               FooExceptionHandler(fooException)     {        //log the exception        try        {           //send email        }        catch SmtpException        {           //log  the smtp exception        }     }      My question is about how to organize the code. Should this be a static method? Should all the exception handling class be static? Should it be a singleton? Should it be object-oriented? If the object-oriented case is the best way, should I create a new object in every catch block or is it better to have a class variable?"}
{"_id": "86820", "title": "A question on choosing the next programming language between C/C++ and other languages", "text": "I am a java developer (web app and standalone applications) who knows JavaScript, HTML, CSS and has mostly worked on Web applications. I have no knowledge of C/C++ or any other lower level languages. I feel like I should strengthen my CS basics by learning a fundamental language. Should it be C or C++? I am also inclined to learn Objective-C. Does it need basics of C or C++? Or should I go for new languages like Python, Google's Go etc. I know this is a cliche question asked very frequently, but I can use some help here."}
{"_id": "12133", "title": "Would you use UML if it kept stakeholders from requesting changes frequently?", "text": "As much as programmers hate to document their code/system and draw UML (especially, Sequencing, Activity and State machine diagrams) **or other diagramming notation** , would you agree to do it if it kept managers from requesting a \"minor change\" every couple of weeks? IOW, would you put together visual models to document the system if it helped you demonstrate to managers what the effect of changes are and why it takes so long to implement them? (Edited to help programmers understand what type of answer I'm looking for.) 2nd edit: Restating my question again, \"Would you be willing to use some diagramming notation, against your better nature as a programmer, if it helped you manage change requests?\" This question isn't asking if there might be something wrong with the process. It's a given that there's something wrong with the process. Would you be willing to do more work to improve it?"}
{"_id": "236487", "title": "Improving ZooKeeper to increase availability", "text": "Running Apache ZooKeeper (this applies to PAXOS style system just as well) with 2 members - which is not recommended - does not make sense, because if either   * member1 goes down   * member2 goes down   * there's a network partition between member1 and member2 , ZooKeeper will declare business hours to be over, as there's no single sub cluster with a clear majority of members (in this case: > 1). So running ZooKeeper on 2 members makes it less available than running a single member. Why can't the majority constraint be relaxed so that when the there's a **sub cluster of exactly 50% of members, it is considered the active sub cluster if it contains the eldest member**? (Eldest as of the just before the partition happened, i.e. when the cluster was member-complete) Who's eldest is information ZooKeeper already keeps track of, so implementation looks easy. That way, we don't run into the dreaded split-brain scenario, and the ZooKeeper cluster could stay up in 2 of the 3 cases above, improving availability, especially when running 2 members only. Anything speaking against this?"}
{"_id": "110242", "title": "Algorithm Vs Design", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is it essential to learn algorithms to be a real programmer? This question is, perhaps, related mostly to **web developers** who, like myself, code enterprise applications and use high level languages like **Java, C#** mostly. Due to nature of enterprise web-apps, which essentially do **CRUD** operations, and since we rely heavily on libraries that the language provide, **what is the significance of learning algorithms?** I know the web is filled with articles profoundly stating that \"code is algorithm\", but when was the last time anyone wrote _quicksort_ algorithm in such an application? I see far more benefits in learning Design patterns and anti-patterns, which are used a lot."}
{"_id": "235821", "title": "How can I create a set of random numbers based on a total and number of objects?", "text": "For example with:   Total population = 400000   Number of villages = 800   The average population is 500 How can I randomize the amount of people in each village using a specified deviation (eg +-50) so that it equals the total population? I came up with a solution using this normal distribution class   Basically I created a normal distribution and used the Probability Density Function to determine the amount of villages at each discrete level (until the population total was hit). This is something I wrote quickly to demonstrate:                NormalDist dist = new NormalDist(500.0, 50.0);      int popX = 500;      int numberOfPopXVillages = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor(dist.PDF(popX) * 800)); ;      int totalSum = 0;      do      {          Console.WriteLine(numberOfPopXVillages);          totalSum += popX * numberOfPopXVillages;          totalSum += (1000 - popX) * numberOfPopXVillages;          ++popX;          numberOfPopXVillages = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Floor(dist.PDF(popX) * 800));      } while (numberOfPopXVillages >= 5);      Console.WriteLine(totalSum);      The total sum here is 400000. The algorithm isn't perfect but I'll keep working on it. Thanks everyone."}
{"_id": "90072", "title": "Sending Whole Data Object As Argument Or Just Required Fields?", "text": "Let's say I have a class that just stores data:               ClassData         Field1         Field2         Field3      Now let's say I have a function that uses Field1 and Field2:               public void DoStuff(string field1, string field2){         if(field1 == \"something\"){              //Do something         }         if(field2 == \"somethingElse\"){             //Do something else         }     }      vs               public void DoStuff(ClassData data){         if(data.field1 == \"something\"){              //Do something         }         if(data.field2 == \"somethingElse\"){             //Do something else         }     }      It seems like this is a type of \"more art than science\" type thing, but I have a few thoughts also. Passing specific fields shows you the required information right from the get-go, which can make it easier to read and understand the function. Sending just the data object does have advantages because it makes the code look cleaner. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm missing pros and cons for both and would be interested in hearing what you think. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "235828", "title": "Naming convention for classes that represents different versions of the same thing", "text": "Let's imagine I have an abstract class named `ProtocolA` that represents the basic operations to work with the protocol **A**. Such protocol is in version 1, but new revisions are expected in the future. Version 2 is coming. How should I name the classes that implements that abstract class for each version? `ProtocolA1` and `ProtocolA2`? Cheers."}
{"_id": "121173", "title": "what to do with your bin directory", "text": "To get off my noob status i am following the Learn python the hard way course. I really like it but at one point it says make a bin directory. In all games and other programs i saw to a bin directory but what does it do?"}
{"_id": "121176", "title": "Avoiding bloated Domain Objects", "text": "We're trying to move data from our bloated Service layer into our Domain layer using a DDD approach. We currently have a lot of business logic in our services, which is spread out all over the place and doesn't benefit from inheritance. We have a central Domain class which is the focus of most of our work - a Trade. The Trade object will know how to price itself, how to estimate risk, validate itself, etc. We can then replace conditionals with polymorphism. Eg: SimpleTrade will price itself one way, but ComplexTrade will price itself another. However, we are worried that this will bloat the Trade class(s). It really should be in charge of its own processing but the class size is going to increase exponentially as more features are added. So we have choices:   1. Put processing logic in Trade class. Processing logic is now polymorphic based on the type of the trade, but Trade class is now has multiple responsibilites (pricing, risk, etc) and is large   2. Put processing logic into other class such as TradePricingService. No longer polymorphic with the Trade inheritance tree, but classes are smaller and easier to test.  What would be the suggested approach?"}
{"_id": "236733", "title": "How can I handle Bots in a site that creates a database item every page", "text": "I have an eCommerce platform that creates a basket as soon as the user lands on the site if they don't already have one (from session or cookies). It then stores the basket information in session and in cookies to remember what the user has added to their basket for a month. The problem is if they aren't capable of having a session or cookies, such as a bot, then it creates a basket every time they visit a page. This means a bot crawling through the website can easily create hundreds of baskets. One of the options we're exploring is changing our code so that a basket is only created when a user adds an item, and so far it seems the best option, but it's also the most time consuming option as a lot of the code base assumes a basket exists at all times. That would need to be changed so that it checks for a basket and handles a basket not existing. We'd like to find a less intensive solution if possible. Another option we've explored is periodically clearing out the table in the database of all old baskets to help mitigate the issue. However this is just mitigating, and not solving the issue. I'd like to solve the problem if I can. How can I identify if the user is incapable of having a session and cookies so that I can stop the basket from being created? Or is there a better way of dealing with bots in this instance?"}
{"_id": "212963", "title": "Design Issue: Service layer/ trying to maintain RESTful architecture", "text": "I'm trying to design a web-application - and after doing a lot of reading on REST + design patterns, I'm at a loss on how to handle my requirements. I think I may be getting caught-up in all the design-patterns, but at the same time want to produce a well-architect-ed design. I have 2 major business-objects, `Customer` and `Order`, with a _Has Many_ relationship. Currently, I have no service layer, and the REST API is in the BL:               GET Customers                         GET Orders     GET Customers/id                      GET Orders/id     POST Customers                        POST Orders     PUT Customers/id                      PUT Orders/id     DELETE Customers/id                   DELETE Orders/id      But things become hard to design when I have to architect for legacy means of user-data input, and well as for the future:   * **Now:** Users upload an **Excel .xlsx** file containing Customer, Order information, which I parse, extract, create `Customer`/`Order` business-objects for, and perform validations. In order to have a pleasant User-experience, I don't save these objects right away, I return them to the User (along with any errors from the verifications) so they may make any needed changes before finally submitting them. (this 2-step submission just adverts the requirement of correcting sources of any validation errors directly in the Excel file).   * **Future:** Customer/Order data will be maintained, and uploaded, through a web service/platform. I don't know how to handle these requirements gracefully, and intelligently. Is this a case where I need to expose a Service Layer that publishes an interface for the soon-to-be-legacy Excel-upload, as well as an interface for the web service? Any design help would be appreciated, as I'm rather new to this type of development and rather not make a major architectural mistake that will come back to bite me later.. Thanks in advance. **edited as comments suggest**"}
{"_id": "236734", "title": "A new i/o library: a good idea or a really bad one?", "text": "For a long time I worked almost exclusively with input/output streams in java. However a few years ago I started exploring async I/O as well (e.g. running on jboss netty). However when working in the async I/O world, I could not reuse any of my sync utilities. I also had to start on a rather large library of new I/O utilities and wasn't sure whether to aim for blocking or non-blocking. As things go...I wrote an API on top of the existing I/O which supports both blocking and non-blocking and the utilities are written against that. However because I/O is such a pervasive thing, I am unsure whether it is a wise thing to do. As an example take a Base64 encoder. Yes apache has a sync I/O version and yes java 8 finally has an async encoder. But I needed an encoder that could do both. Same for quoted-printable, deflate,... and of course it should work for sockets (regular & ssl), files,... in single-threaded and multithreaded situations,... I needed utilities to chain together I/O sources, use delimiter-based or fixed-length I/O wrappers,... I needed protocol handlers for http, ftp,... Many of these problems can be expressed in a blocking-neutral fashion or -given enough thought- could support both async and sync, allowing wide reusability. In short: is it wise to introduce an abstraction on top of I/O, forcing basically every library that uses it (directly or indirectly) to use it as well? **UPDATE** At the core are the ReadableByteContainer and WritableByteContainer that -to the discerning eye- will look like a cross between stream I/O and channel I/O.               public interface ReadableByteContainer extends Closeable {         public int read(byte [] bytes);         public int read(byte [] bytes, int offset, int length);     }          public interface WritableByteContainer extends Closeable {         public int write(byte [] bytes);         public int write(byte [] bytes, int offset, int length);         public void flush();     }      One of the utils built on it is the \"Transcoder\" api:               public interface ByteTranscoder {         public void transcode(ReadableByteContainer in, WritableByteContainer out);         public void flush(WritableByteContainer out);     }      which allows you to do something like:               ByteContainer container = IOUtils.newByteContainer();     container = IOUtils.wrap(         container,         TranscoderUtils.wrapOutput(container, new Base64Encoder())     );     container.write(\"test\".getBytes());     System.out.println(new String(IOUtils.toBytes(container)));      This code will output the base64 encoded bytes of \"test\". The thing is, the Base64Encoder is capable of encoding the data in an asynchronous manner, it won't block if the output container reports that no data was written nor will it block if the input container reports that no data is available. You can continue the transcoding by calling \"transcode()\" again. This works both in a jboss netty context where you get the content piece by asynchronous piece and in the streaming world where everything blocks until it can read/write."}
{"_id": "212969", "title": "Client-server application design issue", "text": "I have a collection of clients on server's side. And there are some objects that need to work with that collection - adding and removing clients, sending message to them, updating connection settings and so on. They should perform these actions simultaneously, so mutex or another synchronization primitive is required. I want to share one instance of collection between these objects, but all of them require access to private fields of collection. I hope that code sample makes it more clear[C++]:               class Collection     {         std::vector< Client* > clients;         Mutex mLock;         ...     }          class ClientNotifier     {         void sendMessage()         {              mLock.lock();              // loop over clients and send message to each of them         }     }          class ConnectionSettingsUpdater     {         void changeSettings( const std::string& name )         {             mLock.lock();             // if client with this name is inside collection, change its settings         }     }      As you can see, all these classes require direct access to Collection's private fields. Can you give me an advice about how to implement such behaviour correctly, i.e. keeping Collection's interface simple without it knowing about its users?"}
{"_id": "21730", "title": "How can I move a library inside a project's source tree and compiling static binaries?", "text": "How can I move a library inside a project's source tree and compiling static binaries? I want to use a particular tool that utilizes ANCIENT binaries without upgrading it's API usage. This way I can use the old libraries inside the single binary without wrecking the local host environment. I am on nix with netbeans/eclipse/code::blocks. I don't have a problem reading, just looking for a starting point. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "142012", "title": "Using an AGPL 3.0-licensed library for extra functionality in an iOS app", "text": "I am building an iOS application, and I am planning to incorporate an AGPL 3.0-licensed library to it to provide some _extra (non-essential) functionality_. I\u2019ve got a couple of questions regarding this:   1. Do I understand it right that this still obliges me to publish the source of my app open? If yes, does it have to be open to the general public, or only to those who have downloaded the app?   2. Does this allow me to distribute the app for a fee?"}
{"_id": "149041", "title": "How is encapsulation used for safety?", "text": "I am learning OOP. I have studied much about encapsulation but the more I read the more I became confused. I understand we hide (by making private) data and expose it to user of class (other developers) as properties or methods. I also understand by encapsulation we hide details. In an article (http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial/CSharp/lesson19) I read: **Abstract from article** When designing an object, you must think about how others could use it. In a best-case scenario any program using the object would be well designed and the code would never change. However, the reality is that programs do change often and in a team environment many people touch the same code at one time or another. Therefore, it is beneficial to consider what could go wrong as well as the pristine image of how the object _should_ be used. In the case of the BankAccount object, examine the situation where code outside of your object could access a decimal Amount field or a string CustomerName field. At the point of time that the code is written, everything would work well. However, later in the development cycle, you realize that the BankAccount object should keep track of an int CustomerID rather than string CustomerName because you don't want to duplicate relationships between information (or some other valid reason to alter the definition of internal state). Such changes cause a **rippling effect** in your code because it was built to use the BankAccount class, as originally designed (with CustomerName being a string), and you must now change code that accesses that state throughout your entire application. The object-oriented principle of Encapsulation helps avoid such problems, allowing you to hide internal state and abstract access to it though type members such as methods, properties, and indexers. Encapsulation helps you reduce coupling between objects and increases the maintainability of your code. **Question** How will encapsulation help when making changes in code and from its rippling effects. For a data member, if I change its type from int to float, (even if I am exposing this using property) I will need to change variable type where I am using already using this code. Kindly guide me how encapsulation will help with such changes. Thanks for this help and guidance."}
{"_id": "48310", "title": "Strategies for porting application from Win32 API to GTK+", "text": "I have a legacy application written in C, using the raw Win32 API. The general level of abstraction is low and raw dependency on <windows.h> is common. I would like to port this application to GTK+. There are any kind of guidelines or best practices on how to do this? I've previously ported a MFC application to Qt, but the application was very abstracted - it draw it's own set of widgets, for example - and initial porting was very straightforward. I've been thinking at first using Winelib to build a native Linux executable and then trying to slowly refactor it into a GTK+ app. Does some one have best practices or previous experiences to share about this?"}
{"_id": "48312", "title": "What are the best tools to help work with large ant files", "text": "I just started working at a company that has a very large ant build file that imports lots of other large/small ant files. Needless to say it's giving me a headache trying to figure out what is going on. What are the best tools out there for:   * Getting some kind of concise answer on what is happening   * Visualizing the various targets   * Seeing performance on tasks Can be multiple tools. Any other tips/suggestions?"}
{"_id": "62875", "title": "Is C a regular language?", "text": "Are C or C++ regular languages? If not, under which category do we place the programming languages like C/C++, perl, Python?"}
{"_id": "251943", "title": "Executing ajax calls in setTimeout after set intervals?", "text": "We develop an application involving a lot of ajax. Such as showing users notifications, updating what they see via ajax while they are on the web page. This update is due to the actions of other users in the application.   1. In the code base we are generating a query inside setTimeout function of javascript. This makes an ajax call.    2. Every call is a separate query to the database.   3. There are many calls on the same page. So we run queries against the database after 15 seconds, no matter if something changes or not. Will this approach work if we are expecting high traffic?"}
{"_id": "254714", "title": "Does this function do one thing only?", "text": "Is the following method considered to be doing one thing only? I'm wondering about that since it takes an optional argument.               public function findErrors($name = null)     {         if ($name) {             return isset($this->errors[$name]) ? $this->errors[$name] : [];         }              return $this->errors ?: [];     }      If not, would it be better / matter to have it separated like the following:               public function findErrors()     {         return $this->errors ?: [];     }          public function findErrorsOf($name)     {         return isset($this->errors[$name]) ? $this->errors[$name] : [];     }"}
{"_id": "254716", "title": "What should my redirect URL be for OAuth2.0 in Azure if my application is a local windows application?", "text": "I am setting up OAuth2.0 on Azure. I am at the stage where I have been allowed access to the application and a Code has been returned in my redirect URL. My application is a local windows application. When i type my OAuth endpoint address in the browser with the client ID, i successfully get redirected to my redirect URL, and the AuthCode is attached to the URL. Problem: When I have tried doing webrequests and similar strategies (in my C# code, not the brwoser) using my OAuth2.0 endpoint address, I cant seem to get the REDIRECTED url in my C# code. I have seeing some stuff about changing my redirect URL in azure to localhost and listening for a return, but I feel like that brings more variables into the equation. any advice?"}
{"_id": "251947", "title": "Java-Like 'throws'-information in method signature C#", "text": "From Java I know that the signatures of methods that can throw exceptions contain a `throws` block, that contains the Exception(s) that might be thrown.   In C# there is no such thing and it is also not common practice to include such info in the XML-Header.   Is there a generally accepted way of drawing attention to potential exceptions or a place to commonly denote them?"}
{"_id": "168189", "title": "How should compound words be handled when coding? Is there a definitive list of compound words?", "text": "**QUESTION:** How should you handle compound words when programming? Are there any good lists available online for developers of generally accepted technology-related compound words? I can see how this is highly ambiguous, so should I just use common-sense? **EXAMPLE:** I would be inclined to do this: _filename_ **NOT** _FileName_ **or** _login_ **NOT** _LogIn_ However, the microsoft documentation indicates that _filename_ is not compound. So I wonder, is there a more definitive source? See also, this english.stackexchange discussion  on _filename_. Under the section \"Capitalization Rules for Compound Words and Common Terms\" located here: Microsoft .NET Capitalization Conventions only offers a limited introduction into the topic, and leaves it up to the developer to use their intuition with the rest."}
{"_id": "152051", "title": "Create new variable or make multiple chained calls?", "text": "What is the best way to get this attributes, thinking in performance and code quality? Using chained calls:                   name = this.product.getStock().getItems().get(index).getName();         id = this.product.getStock().getItems().get(index).getId();      Creating new variable:                   final item = this.product.getStock().getItems().get(index);         name = item.getName();         it = item.getId();      I prefer the second way, to let the code cleaner. But I would like to see some opinions about it. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "126950", "title": "Books about learning programming with C++ as a first language", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Recommended books on C++ Is there a canonical book on learning programming with C++ as a first language? I have toyed with Java and Python but when my laptop broke I couldn't program anymore. That was months ago and between now and then I have decided my real first language should be C++. Now my question is what book I should read. Is there a book out there that is both a good introduction to programming for a first time programmer and recommended for learning C++ as a first language?"}
{"_id": "152055", "title": "Jack of all trades, master of none", "text": "I've got a question similar to this one: Is constantly looking for code examples a sign of a bad developer? though not entirely. I got off college 2 years ago and I'm currently struggling with a University study. Most likely I'll have to drop out and start working within the next couple of months. Now here's the pickle. I have no speciality what so ever. When I got out of college I had worked with **C** , **C++** and **Java**. I had had an internship at NEC-Philips and got familiar with **C# (.NET)** and I taught myself how it worked. After college I started working with **PHP, HTML, SQL, MySQL, Javascript** and **Jquery**. I'm currently teaching myself **Ruby on Rails** and thus **Ruby**. At my university I also got familiar with **MATLAB**. As you can see I've got a broad scope of languages and frameworks I'm familiar with, but none I know inside-out. So I guess this kinda applies to me: _\"Jack of all trades, master of none.\"._ I've been looking for jobs and I've noticed that most of them require some years of experience with a certain language and some specifications that apply to that language. My question is: **How do I pick a speciality? And how do I know if I'll actually enjoy it?** As I've worked with loads of languages how would I be able to tell this is right for me? I don't like being tied down to a specific role and I quite like being a generalist. But in order to make more money I would need a specialisation. How would I pick something that goes against my nature? Thanks in advance, Rope."}
{"_id": "68762", "title": "Self-updating application - philosophy", "text": "This is a philosophical question. Given a hypothetical desktop application, and a desire to provide automatic updates (rather than forcing people to go to a website, check for an update, download an update, install), which of the two is more of a \"best practice\" approach?   1. Like iTunes, it checks to see if there is a new version and prompts the user to download the new version. If so, it downloads a full install executable (in this case, a Windows Installer file (.msi)) that installs the full version (not just an upgrade to the previous version - too much to manage if there are multiple versions out there). So, let's say, it's version 10.1.1 - whether you are installing fresh or upgrading, you use the same file. After it downloads, it instructs the user to close the application and run the install file themselves.   2. Similar to the other one, it checks for a new version and prompts user to download it, but instead of just downloading an executable and prompting the user to run it, it actually runs it for them - shutting down the program they have open, acquiring the necessary security to install files. Issues with #2: many issues around closing down program, since the program can open other programs (Outlook and Excel), or what if the user was in the middle of something. Also around security, you need local administrator access to install, what if you don't have it? In later versions of Windows, you cannot just override the person's security. Issues with #1: some people believe this will be too hard, too much effort for the end-user. I would strongly prefer to go with #1 because it will save 80-120 hours on my project, and is simpler to implement and maintain. However, we have people who feel strongly on all sides. What is a best practice for this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "96898", "title": "What is the industry term for those \"earn credit by affiliates\" programs in iPhone/Android/etc games?", "text": "In iPhone, Android, and other gaming platforms you can sometimes earn credit by installing other games, going to someones website, even signing up for a credit card. For iPhone, for example, there are entire networks set up for this kind of affiliate marketing. What is the industry term for this?"}
{"_id": "169854", "title": "Licensing a project", "text": "Can someone clarify the following things for me ? Let's say I want to build a website and add publicity to it so I can make money out of my work.   I would use Html5 for the interface and C# with ASP.NET for the background programming.   I would use Visual Studio as my IDE and SQL server as a database. This is just an example on the top of my head but I don't know where to start for the licenses. Do I need one :   * For VisualStudio and SQLServer only ?   * For VisualStudio, SQLServer and pay some kind of rights for Asp.net ?   * The whole package.. Both VisualStudio, SQlServer plus rights for Asp.net AND C# ? I know this question is a little vague but I really don't know where to start and the opinion of someone with experience int this might give me just the help I need to get started."}
{"_id": "157664", "title": "Domain Model Examples Website Similar to Databaseanswers.org", "text": "When I was trying to understand database design databaseanswers.org was phenomenal. Now I'm trying to understand the Spring Framework and I'd like to know if there are any sites out there that have domain models already created that I could use as a basis for learning Spring."}
{"_id": "149594", "title": "How were Fortran's original control structures insufficient?", "text": "In my Programming Language Concepts class it was mentioned in passing that Fortran's original control structures were insufficient. It was alluded that they were too similar to machine instructions for the IBM 704. Was this the case? What exactly made them insufficient?"}
{"_id": "169859", "title": "MVC and delegation", "text": "I am a beginning iOS programmer and use the Model-View-Controller model as a design pattern: my model doesn't know anything about my view (in order to make it compatible with any view), my view doesn't know anything about my model so they interact via my controller. A very usual way for a view to interact with the controller is through delegation: when the user interacts with the app, my view will notify my controller, which can call some methods of my model and update my view, if necessary. However, would it make sense to also make my controller the delegate of my model? I'm not convinced this is the way to go. It could be handy for my model to notify my controller of some process being finished, for example, or to ask for extra input of the user if it doesn't have enough information to complete the task. The downside of this, though, is that my controller would be the delegate for both my controller and my model, so there wouldn't be really a proper way to notify my model of changes in my view, and vice versa. (correct me if I'm wrong.) Conclusion: I don't really think it's a good idea to to have my controller to be the delegate of my model, but just being the delegate of my view would be fine. Is this the way most MVC models handle? Or is there a way to have the controller be the delegate of both the controller and the model, with proper communication between them? Like I said, I'm a beginner, so I want to do such stuff the right way immediately, rather than spending loads of hours on models that won't work anyway. :)"}
{"_id": "13265", "title": "Is a programmer supposed to be self-sufficient?", "text": "At my current workplace, we don't have any testers, the rationale for that from the management being: \"if we had testers, you wouldn't test your own code at all\". This kind of thinking seems to be detrimental to product quality, as while I do test my own code, there are a lot of things that I will miss just for the fact that I know the system inside out and don't know how to use it \"wrong\". Black box testing doesn't really work as I subconsciously avoid the pitfalls that a dedicated tester would fall into. A lot of my time goes into fixing bugs that have slid into production code and found by the end user. The system in question is large but is developed solely by me. This has also caused some managemental duties to fall on my lap, such as defining schedules and working on specifications. Should these kind of tasks be my responsibility? I see myself strictly as a programmer and nothing else. And if these are my responsibility, to what extent? When is a project so large that it requires testers? Should a programmer have to refine the specification, worry about management of the project or even provide customer support? ### Note Some might have got the impression that I am against widening my responsibilities - that is not the case, I'm eager to get a role that involves more management duties, but currently it is not in my job description. Until I'm officially employed as such or the additional duties start showing in my paycheck, I'm going to think of myself as 'just' a programmer. Unfortunately, as a junior developer, shifting to managerial duties is not going to happen very soon. Excellent answers so far, keep them coming if you have something to add or personal experiences to share!"}
{"_id": "167982", "title": "Web Crawler for Learning Topics on Wikipedia", "text": "When I want to learn a vast topic on Wikipedia, I don't know where to start. For instance say I want to learn about Binary Stars, I then have to know other things linked on that pages and linked pages on all the linked pages and so on for the **specified number of levels**. I want to write a web crawler like HTTracker or something similar, that will display a hierachy of the links on a certain page and the links on those linked pages. **I wish to use as much prewritten code as possible.** Here is an example: **Pretending we are bending the rules by grabbing links from only the first sentence of each page** The example archives and \"processes\" _two levels deep_ The page is Ternary operation ## The First Level In mathematics a ternary operation is an N-ary operation ## The Second Level ### Under Mathmatics: Mathematics (from Greek \u03bc\u03ac\u03b8\u03b7\u03bc\u03b1 m\u00e1th\u0113ma, \u201cknowledge, study, learning\u201d) is the abstract study of topics encompassing quantity, structure, space, change and others; it has no generally accepted definition. ### Under N-ary In logic,mathematics, and computer science, the arity i/\u02c8\u00e6r\u0268ti/ of a function or operation is the number of arguments or operands that the function takes ### Under Operation In its simplest meaning in mathematics and logic, an operation is an action or procedure which produces a new value from one or more input values ## \\------------------------------------------------------------------------- I need some way to determine what order to approach all these wiki pages to learn the concept ( in this case ternary operations )... Following along with this example, one way to show the path to read would a printout flowout like so: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1fLex.png) This shows that the first sentence of the Mathematics page doesn't link to the first sentence of pages linked on ternary page two levels deep. (Please tell me how I should explain this ) ---> In other words, the child node of the top pages first sentence, ternary_operation, does not have any child nodes that reference the children of the top pages other children nodes- N-ary and operation. Thus it is safe to read this first. Since N-ary has a link to operations we should read the operation page second and finally read the N-ary page last. Again, **I wish to use as much prewritten code as possible** , and was wondering what language to use and what would be the simplest way to go about doing this if there isn't already something out there?"}
{"_id": "193964", "title": "Banking Applications need Auto save?", "text": "We are developing a banking application. It's internal project of the bank. The application has to capture huge data to process. So auto save is recommended approach to capture? How to perform validations in case of auto save? And on jsp unload saving the data is correct approach? Which is best way of saving form data in case of auto save? If any network errors occur, how to handle, mean giving end user the data is not saved? I think it's just a feasible solution. Please suggest me optimal solution."}
{"_id": "45097", "title": "Writing code vs using drag & drop tools", "text": "If you drag & drop, you're letting the editor to build code for you. Surely that means you're not really programming. You're building an application that has no proper code logic, correct? I drag simple controls on a web form in .NET, but surely you cannot rely 100% on building an app that way? Though some tutorial books in .NET have you dragging and dropping all over the place. An example, reading from a database using ASP.NET. You can drop SQL controls onto the markup, or you can program the retrieval in the code behind. I prefer the code behind as you have proper control imho. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "193969", "title": "How to decide the token expiry time in REST web service", "text": "I am working on creating a REST ws exposing few API's. A token is required for each API call. I am confused about the expiry time to be set for the token. Security+Performance wise what is the ideal expiry time for token (if there is one)?"}
{"_id": "203809", "title": "Model-View-Controller: who caches the data?", "text": "I am building a GUI to interface an embedded device to a PC host. The GUI provides control over the device parameters and displays some feedback from it. The GUI also has to emulate some of the device functionality and present it to the user. I have been advised to use a Model-View-Controller pattern, so that if the device does not acknowledge some command, the the user knows about the ineffectiveness of his actions. Trouble is, I cannot decide which component(s) should cache data. Example: when a value is printed on the screen, the view clearly has to know it. However, the model also has to know it, as it uses it to calculate other values. Furthermore, the controller also has to know it as, for example, the value change could be proportional to a logarithm of the user action. How do I pull this off properly?"}
{"_id": "243319", "title": "Access Token Verification", "text": "I have spent quite a few days reading up on Oauth and token based security measures for REST API's and I am currently looking at implementing an Oauth based authentication approach almost exactly like the one described in this post (OAuth alternative for a 2 party system). From what I understand, the token is to be verified upon each request to the resource server. This means the resource server would need to retrieve the token from a datastore to verify the clients token. Given this would have to happen upon every request I am concerned about the speed implications of hitting a datastore like MySQL or NoSQL upon every request just to verify the token. Is this the standard way to verify tokens by having them stored in a RDBMS or NoSQL database and retrieved upon each request? Or is it a suitable solution to have them cached (baring in mind that we are talking millions of users)?"}
{"_id": "243318", "title": "Why Beta versions have so many bugs?", "text": "When I worked in Microsoft on MSE antivirus, we had several stages of pre- release: Alpha, Beta, RC. The biggest difference between these stages were bug fixes. Each time we fixed more bugs, and usually updated some minor features. Apple works in the same way. Look here: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-how-to-create-a-bootable-usb- installer-for-os-x-yosemite/ They released a beta of Yosemite OS, but the beta is full of bugs. Why do these big companies work like this? Isn't it better to release a beta version that was tested very thoroughly but one that just doesn't provide all the features that the final version will provide?"}
{"_id": "209849", "title": "Is it a good idea to use a kitchen-sink server for various services?", "text": "My (new) development team is setting up its software development environment. I won't describe the whole scenario, since that's another, much-maligned question. Anyway, we're going to have services such as source control (mercurial), a wiki, an issue tracker, a file/document server, DNS and possibly other things. My question: Is it a good idea to put as many as possible as these on a single 'kitchen-sink' server machine? Or is it better to spread them out as much as money, power and server room space allows? **Notes:**   * I know that some things have to go on a different server, like continuous/periodic building, with a lot of crunching involved. I'm talking about the (theoretically) lighter stuff.   * Our team has 4 people, expected to grow to maybe double that within the next couple of years.    * We're not going to be 'hammering' services, as far as I can tell.   * The expected hardware for the server is a plain vanilla PC, ~ $1,000 at most, maybe with an SSD."}
{"_id": "168450", "title": "What is the proper way to create a cross-fade effect?", "text": "When creating an image slider, using a cross fade is one of more popular effects. Various sliders use differing techniques to create such an effect. Major techniques I've found so far are:   * **Method 1:** Use an overlay and underlay `<div>` and fade in and out each other's `visibility`.    * **Method 2:** Create a `<div>` matching the exact size of the slider during initialization, play with its `z-index` property, and then fade each other. Using `method-1`, it needs creating two unneeded and over exploited block elements most commonly a `div`. First the background property is applied to the underlayed-div then the overlayed-div is faded out and subsequently changed in z-index property to be positioned lower that other one. Using `method-2`, it creates only one extra div and now container's background is changed and the overlay div is faded out. Implementing this effect now limits the transition effect that can be build (but _this is not the question in hand_ ). The reason why I believe this could be better is because extra elements will always have to be added to give the effect. Due to this reason, creating effects like that of `nivo-slider` requires creating 12 to 15+ divs to give the effect. Adding up to number of elements to create the element does not seem to be the right way. Are the methods I mentioned above used so much, because there aren't any other ways? There has to be better ways that to create the cross-fade effect. So my question is simple, _Is there a better way to create this effect?_ If yes, What are they?"}
{"_id": "163401", "title": "How to use DI and DI containers", "text": "I am building a small PHP mvc framework (yes, yet another one), mostly for learning purposes, and I am trying to do it the right way, so I'd like to use a DI container, but I am not asking which one to use but rather how to use one. Without going into too much detail, the mvc is divided into modules which have controllers which render views for actions. This is how a request is processed:   * a Main object instantiates a Request object, and a Router, and injects the Request into the Router to figure out which module was called.   * then it instantiates the Module object and sends the Request to that   * the Module creates a ModuleRouter and sends the Request to figure out the controller and action   * it then creates the Controller and the ViewRenderer, and injects the ViewRenderer into the Controller (so that the controller can send data to the view)   * the ViewRenderer needs to know which module, controller and action were called to figure out the path to the view scripts, so the Module has to figure out this and inject it to the ViewRenderer   * the Module then calls the action method on the controller and calls the render method on the ViewRenderer For now, I do not have any DI container set up, but what I do have are a bunch of initX() methods that create the required component if it is not already there. For instance, the Module has the initViewRenderer() method. These init methods get called right before that component is needed, not before, and if the component was already set it will not initialize it. This allows for the components to be switched, but it does not require manually setting them if they are not there. Now, I'd like to do this by implementing a DI container, but still keep the manual configuration to a bare minimum, so if the directory structure and naming convention is followed, everything should work, without even touching the config. If I use the DI container, do I then inject it into everything (the container would inject itself when creating a component), so that other components can use it? When do I register components with the DI? Can a component register other components with the DI during run-time? Do I create a 'common' config and use that? How do I then figure out on the fly which components I need and how they need to be set up? If Main uses Router which uses Request, Main then needs to use the container to get Module (or does the module need to be found and set beforehand? How?) Module uses Router but needs to figure out the settings for the ViewRenderer and the Controller on the fly, not in advance, so my DI container can't be setting those on the Module before the module figures out the controller and action... What if the controller needs some other service? Do I inject the container into every controller? If I start doing that, I might just inject it into everything... Basically I am looking for the best practices when dealing with stuff like this. I know what DI is and what DI containers do, but I am looking for guidance to using them in real life, and not some isolated examples on the net. Sorry for the lengthy post and many thanks in advance. EDIT: after reading a bit more, it seems that injection the container itself into objects and making them use the container to find stuff is actually service location, not dependency injection. So my latest idea is to use factories for the stuff that should be dynamically acquired based on something (like getting controllers based on what the router says), and the container would be injected into the factories where it would be used more like a service locator. The non dynamic components would be registered beforehand, and those components would be built by the container and returned fully operational, with all their dependencies filled. So the flow would look like this:   * get Main from the container, Main is injected with Request, Router and ModuleFactory which uses the container to find modules. This is all pre-configured   * Main uses ModuleFactory to create the Module, injected with ModuleRouter, Request, ControllerFactory and ViewRenderer.   * Module uses ControllerFactory to create a Controller, injected with any service that it depends on, and then the Module calls the action on the controller, and sends the result to the ViewRenderer to render the view. Am I getting anywhere with this?"}
{"_id": "243310", "title": "How can you predict the time it will take for two processes in two different machines in a cluster to communicate?", "text": "I am trying to develop a computing application which needs a lot of memory (>500gb). Buying a single machine for that is overly expensive. I can, though, buy ~100 small instances on Digital Ocean or similar, divide the memory in blocks and use TCP to emulate shared memory between the instances. Now, my question is: how can I measure/predict the time it will take for two processes in two different machines like that to share information, in comparison to IPC and shared memory? Are there rules of thumb? I don't want exact values, but knowing more or less how much faster one is would be very helpful in visualising the feasibility of this approach."}
{"_id": "2879", "title": "Is ICCP certification valuable for a programming career?", "text": "In looking at various professional societies the AITP lead me indirectly to the ICCP Certified Computer Programmer certification (and others from the ICCP). I had never heard of this program, but both the AITP and, more significantly to me, ACM have members on the ICCP board. Is anyone familiar with this certification? The webpage isn't confidence inspiring to be honest, but looking at it the program seems aimed at those in the Fortune 1000 internal software world. Anyone ICCP certified in some way? Does it make a positive different for a career in software development?"}
{"_id": "209840", "title": "Example(s) of \"A subscript ([ ]) expression that does not evaluate to an array\" in C", "text": "I think I have never seen a [] that doesn't mean array in C. Background:   I was reading about l-values and r-values here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/bkbs2cds.aspx and there it says so. I am curious."}
{"_id": "168458", "title": "Reusable VS clean code - where's the balance?", "text": "Let's say I have a data model for a blog posts and have two use-cases of that model - getting all blogposts and getting only blogposts which were written by specific author. There are basically two ways how I can realize that. **1st model**               class Articles {              public function getPosts() {             return $this->connection->find()                 ->sort(array('creation_time' => -1));         }              public function getPostsByAuthor( $authorUid ) {             return $this->connection->find(array('author_uid' => $authorUid))                 ->sort(array('creation_time' => -1));         }     }      **1st usage** (presenter/controller)               if ( $GET['author_uid'] ) {         $posts = $articles->getPostsByAuthor($GET['author_uid']);     } else {         $posts = $articles->getPosts();     }      **2nd one**               class Articles {              public function getPosts( $authorUid = NULL ) {             $query = array();                  if( $authorUid !== NULL ) {                 $query = array('author_uid' => $authorUid);             }                  return $this->connection->find($query)                 ->sort(array('creation_time' => -1));         }          }      **2nd usage** (presenter/controller)               $posts = $articles->getPosts( $_GET['author_uid'] );      To sum up (dis)advantages: 1) cleaner code 2) more reusable code Which one do you think is better and why? Is there any kind of compromise between those two?"}
{"_id": "243314", "title": "Generic log analyzer that produces reports", "text": "About 600 customers use our application. We have very detailed logs for everything that happens in the application, from changes in the data model, memory and CPU/GPU usage to clicks on the UI elements. We want to be able to parse the logs coming from these customers and analyze them to understand how users use our application and what happens internally in the application. Is there a log analyzer that can produce such reports automatically?"}
{"_id": "154022", "title": "How do you find partners for open source projects?", "text": "I've created a few open-source projects in the past, and had some success. The process was generally the following: I'd start alone, create something that works, promote it, and finally (maybe) get some contributions. I have less that to contribute to open-source now, but I still have ideas and can still code :) So I wonder if there is a place or a way to meet people (online), discuss ideas and design, and then start working together on the project? The reason I'm thinking about an online way to do this, with strangers, is that while I do have programmer friends, we only very rarely have the same needs and interests at the same time. It seems to me that it would be easier to find such in match in the online global community. Any insight?"}
{"_id": "151629", "title": "Is a project without license public domain?", "text": "If a project has no a license or has unknown authors, is it public domain?"}
{"_id": "54349", "title": "'Situations gone wrong' for web apps", "text": "I know there's some decent material floating around relating to more specific areas, but wanted to get some opinions from people who have had bad experiences in the past. I have a project where I can have a say on the design of a B2C web app, which has some external API interfaces. UX is crucial as is speed. Not sure what technology will be used at this stage. In designing this application, I want to make sure obvious features are not left out (i.e. ones that make maintenance/development easier). So can you guys tell me about 'situations gone wrong' that could have been avoided had more consideration taken place? Am looking to gather feedback in general, so don't worry if your example is industry/technology specific - so long as it pertains to web. Thanks for reading, I look forward to your responses!"}
{"_id": "160668", "title": "How to get started with this project?", "text": "I recently finished my C++ programming class, and I'll start school in september. There is a limited online Parking spot registration and it always gets filled very quickly. I would like to create a code that will quickly access the page and register for me. The question is, how is this feasible? I guess I could use python, or Javascript, but I have no idea how to go on from my C++ class. What should I learn/do to program this code? EDIT: I posted this question on other forums also and I've been receiving a lot of answers like this: you need to use the library ... Sorry if I'm a noob, but I've never used library and I have trouble understanding it. Is it like #include like the library will give me access to many functions by doing #inlude?"}
{"_id": "195005", "title": "How to determine most challenging test-cases to test any algorithm?", "text": "While solving any problem, we write algorithms. Some efficient, some not, some work, some fail. But sometimes we end up writing something which is mostly a success when we do a dry test run, perhaps, the way we frame the test data is prejudiced, but the algorithm fails in some other cases. For some algorithms , the nature of data can be diverse and magnitude large, for example like the problem: > Find the maximum subsequence sum of an array of integers which contains both > positive and negative numbers and return the starting and ending indices > within the array. Can anyone tell me is there any specific and generic thumb rule by which we can design the most stringent of test cases to test the correctness of algorithms like this one ?"}
{"_id": "164753", "title": "How to build MVC Views that work with polymorphic domain model design?", "text": "This is more of a \"how would you do it\" type of question. The application I'm working on is an ASP.NET MVC4 app using Razor syntax. I've got a nice domain model which has a few polymorphic classes, awesome to work with in the code, but I have a few questions regarding the MVC front-end. Views are easy to build for normal classes, but when it comes to the polymorphic ones I'm stuck on deciding how to implement them. The one (ugly) option is to build a page which handles the base type (eg. IContract) and has a bunch of if statements to check if we passed in a IServiceContract or ISupplyContract instance. Not pretty and very nasty to maintain. The other option is to build a view for each of these IContract child classes, breaking DRY principles completely. Don't like doing this for obvious reasons. Another option (also not great) is to split the view into chunks with partials and build partial views for each of the child types that are loaded into the main view for the base type, then deciding to show or hide the partial in a single if statement in the partial. Also messy. I've also been thinking about building a master page with sections for the fields that only occur in subclasses and to build views for each subclass referencing the master page. This looks like the least problematic solution? It will allow for fairly simple maintenance and it doesn't involve code duplication. What are your thoughts? Am I missing something obvious that will make our lives easier? Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "164752", "title": "Resurrecting a 5,000 line test plan that is a decade old", "text": "I am currently building a test plan for the system I am working on. The plan is 5,000 lines long and about 10 years old. The structure is like this:               1. test title        precondition: some W needs to be set up, X needs to be completed        action: do some Y        postcondition: message saying Z is displayed     2. ...      What is this type of testing called ? Is it useful ? It isn't automated.. the tests would have to be handed to some unlucky person to run through and then the results would have to be given to development. It doesn't seem efficient. Is it worth modernising this method of testing (removing tests for removed features, updating tests where different postconditions happen, ...) or would a whole different approach be more appropriate ? We plan to start unit tests but the software requires so much work to actually get 'units' to test - there are no units at present ! Thank you."}
{"_id": "79011", "title": "Industry switch to space technologies", "text": "I'm a CS grad and have been programming for past 5 years. I like it. As an experienced programmer I'd like to transition more towards the Space industry. **What skills** do you think a programmer would already have/ need to get to make that transition? Also **why** these particular skills and **how** do you see them relating to the Space industry?"}
{"_id": "195002", "title": "Thinking pragmatically about scalability", "text": "I was recently asked as an exercise to design a scalable graph. My first intuition was how to seperate the graph and distribute it (sharding,consistent hashing..etc) Turns out my thinking was on the wrong line, I know what scalability is, but it seems it is a bit hard to think about it pragmatically. What is the pragmatic way of thinking about scalability. I know I need high- availability, replication, fault tolerance, but what are some of the common patterns/paradigms needed to implement these key points?"}
{"_id": "143764", "title": "Why do we need to put private members in headers?", "text": "Private variables are a way to hide complexity and implementation details to the user of a class. This is a rather nice feature. But I do not understand why in c++ we need to put them in the header of a class. I see two annoying downsides to this:   * It clutters the header from the user   * It force recompilation of all client libraries whenever the internals are modified Is there a conceptual reason behind this requirement? Is it only to ease the work off the compiler?"}
{"_id": "115307", "title": "Starting point for learning natural language processing in Java", "text": "Currently I am a high school student and new to the natural language processing field. I am trying to write a Java program that can provide answers that can be understood by humans to the questions that are in natural language. I have looked at Java documentation and Lynda.com site but I am afraid that I am jumping in further than I can reach. I am learning very quickly so I might be going into the deep end. For example I know that I can use the `split` function for minimal parsing but I am unsure where to move past to get actions that I require and I am not getting in enough hours per day to sit down and read all the vasts amount of information. It would be great if there was an entry point for a student like myself that I can take one section at a time. What would be an ideal starting point in terms of CS topics (and documentation) to get myself immersed in this topic?"}
{"_id": "175635", "title": "Is it Considered Good SQL practice to use GUID to link multiple tables to same Id field?", "text": "I want to link several tables to a **many-to-many** (m2m) table. One table would be called **location** and this table would always be on one side of the m2m table. But I will have a list of several tables for example:   * Cards   * Photographs   * Illustrations   * Vectors Would using GUID's between these tables to link it to a single column in another table be considered 'Good Practice'? Will Mysql let me to have it automatically cascade updates and delete? If so, would multiple cascades lead to an issues? ![Diagram example of proposed structure](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BR6LX.jpg) ## UPDATE I've read that GUID (a hex number) Generally takes up more space in a database and slows queries down. However I could still generate 'unique' ids by just having the table initial's as part of the id so that the table card's id would be c0001, and then Illustrations be I001. Regardless of this change, the questions still stands."}
{"_id": "178008", "title": "What are the advantages of the delegate pattern over the observer pattern?", "text": "In the **delegate pattern** , only one object can directly listen to another object's events. In the **observer pattern** , any number of objects can listen to a particular object's events. When designing a class that needs to notify other object(s) of events, why would you ever use the delegate pattern over the observer pattern? I see the observer pattern as more flexible. You may only have one observer now, but a future design may require multiple observers."}
{"_id": "109632", "title": "Collective term for shaking device and using accelerometer of a device", "text": "Does anyone know what the collective term for shaking a device to achieve something or using the accelerometer of a device to do something is? Is it haptic technology?"}
{"_id": "178004", "title": "What math skills are required to learn machine learning?", "text": "I am interested in taking this online course on machine learning. As it stands my math is very elementary, and I am basically learning math from scratch on khan academy. Programming-wise I have a decent amount of experience, and a good overall understanding. My question is, what math skills are required for me to be able to effectively understand and utilize machine learning?"}
{"_id": "148881", "title": "How do you handle / what do you charge for documentation, training, warranty, changes in scope etc\u2026", "text": "I am working with a client right now that wants me to sign a contact with a warranty for a year for no additional charge. As well as any reasonable changes he wants during the contract that are outside of the guidelines for no additional charge while not affecting deadlines. And lastly documentation and training for all staff for no additional charge. Red flags are going everywhere in this contract and I wanted to hear from professionals how you guys handle / what you charge for documentation, training, warranty, changes in scope etc..."}
{"_id": "148883", "title": "Reducing complexity of our custom framework", "text": "At our company, we have a custom software application using our own framework. The framework was built in approximately 2002 or 2003, long before I showed up at the company. Majority of the functions in the framework are solid so we still use them as we've never had any issues with them, I'm talking about the database functions and functions to grab get/post parameters and escape data, etc. It used to be just me working on the projects so I never had any issues with the code-base, however we now have up to 6 developers who started working on the framework recently so things have become more complicated. In our current framework have it set up such as:               /cms/     /cms/modules/     /cms/modules/filemanager/     /cms/modules/filemanager/index.php     /cms/modules/pages/     /cms/modules/pages/index.php     /cms/...      Now inside each index file of each module we have the following:               require_once '../../config.php';     require_once '../../database_functions.php';     require_once '../../url_functions.php';      I am finding it more and more difficult to maintain the changes now and now that certain modules are interacting with other modules it is just getting crazy to maintain this among all of our development team. It used to be very simple but now our page module actually integrates other modules into the main module, into placeholders basically so one can put any content from individual modules into the page. The issue comes when we make a change to our gallery module and now I need to make changes on the front-end (html output), the gallery module itself, the database and then debug all the errors that come about in other modules that are currently using the data from the gallery module. It becomes a chain reaction of changes basically. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to streamline things or a better way to control the maintenance of our application? We are still using a very structured way of coding using straight scripting and functions rather than OOP, as I am used to coding in C and I don't like to complicate anything more than necessary. * * * Aside from these issues, we don't use anything like versions in our software right now, we've distributed great work and clients love the software we give out, we just don't have versions on them and no builds or anything, which is probably a big mistake in itself. Any ideas or suggestions or even a link out to somewhere that can help us figure out how to better structure our development process (if that's an issue) would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "148882", "title": "Fuzzy search for a sub-string without tokens", "text": "Let's say I have the following lines:               Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, (tag) consectetur adipiscing elit.     Phasellus congue nisi vel lorem dignissim tristique. (tag)     Etiam vulputate lacus nec velit lobortis ut adipiscing mauris condimentum. (tag )     Vestibulum quis nulla id nisi ultricies placerat. (teg)     In tempus vulputate ante, quis suscipit nunc euismod in. (teg )     Phasellus iaculis diam in felis pellentesque tristique. (ta g)     (tag Praesent vestibulum sollicitudin velit, non mollis lacus scelerisque in.     Nunc ac erat enim, at lobortis libero. (interesting)      There's supposed to be a tag in each line enclosed in parenthesis. But as you can see the data is very dirty and there's extra spaces inside tags, missing parents, misspelled tags, etc. How would I identify the lines containing \"(tag)\" or something similar? The output I would expect in the example is to retrieve all lines, except for the last. I need to compare a long string to a shorter sub-string, so something like Levenshtein distance wont work (or will it?). Tokenized techniques seem to rigid, because although I might tokenize everything in parenthesis, what happens when a parenthesis is missing?"}
{"_id": "148884", "title": "How to make a recurring event? Such as an entry in a agenda", "text": "I have an entity (model) called Notification, shown to Users of the system. So far, Notifications were created and showed instantly to users when they were enabled, and hidden when disabled or deleted. Also, Users can close/cancel the Notification so they don't see it anymore and that action is persisted in a collection (database table) of Notifications viewed by Users. The system must now implement repetitions of those Notifications, like agendas or calendars in which entries can be repeated daily, weekly, monthly, etc. and also send a email to the User the day before the Notification instance date. Conceptually how it is implemented? How about calculation of repetition? So far, I've been thinking of persisting three new properties on the Notification entity, one for the type of repetition (daily, weekly, etc.), one for the start date(time) and another for the end date(time) and a new collection (database table) where I save \"instances\" of those Notifications (not instances like class instance, but a more generic concept of a single occurrence of something), with properties like notification id and start and end date(time) of that instance. That way Notifications themselves wouldn't be presented to Users, but the instances of those Notifications. Then, I thought of a scheduled task (cronjob) that runs couple of times a day, generating instances from Notifications collection calculating when those repetitions should happen and also sending email when calculated instance date is tomorrow. Not sure if this is the best way and I'd like to hear recommendations. I started to implement it that way and so far it seems easy, but I'm about to start with the logic of the scheduled task (the hardest part) and I wonder if it will be very complex to calculate the date of the instances based on repetition specification (daily seems easy, add a day to the date value, but how about each third friday of the month?)."}
{"_id": "106937", "title": "Where can I learn more about Low Level Programming", "text": "So First of all, I did Graduate from a University with a B.S. in Computer Science, and while I feel I got a multitude of programming experience.....I really missed out on the SUPER low level stuff. I know C pretty well as well as C++, but I basically know no assembly. I don't really know what things like Stack traces are......and for that matter I don't really understand the Stack, Stack Overflow or Buffer overflow or anything like that. Basically anything on the low end spectrum (which I really need to learn). Also I find Hacking/Cracking interesting (from an Educational point) that utilize these low level things (Like Stack Overflow). Where would I learn about things like this? What would be a good way to start?"}
{"_id": "106935", "title": "How should one handle \"free projects\"? Should one accept them or not?", "text": "Ok, as a software engineer, I feel that my skills are valuable in other contexts, for instance, a friend came to me and asked me to setup a website for her research and I did it for free. At first I thought it would put my name out there and give me something to work with and hone my skills in my spare time... But I couldn't stop thinking that I was wasting my time with an unpaid job. Now, a second friend comes to me with the same story: \"Could you do it for me? I will put your name there, you know, it will get tons of views... Yadda Yadda...\" How do you handle this? Do you charge for services in your spare time, even if we are talking about friends? If so, how would you charge for it, for instance, as a consultant?"}
{"_id": "129081", "title": "Which code snippet would you rather come across?", "text": "I was just taking a look at CodeIgniters encryption class and found the following function:               function sha1($str)     {         if ( ! function_exists('sha1'))         {             if ( ! function_exists('mhash'))             {                 // use CI implementation                 require_once(BASEPATH.'libraries/Sha1'.EXT);                 $SH = new CI_SHA;                 return $SH->generate($str);             }             else             {                 // use alternate built in function                 return bin2hex(mhash(MHASH_SHA1, $str));             }         }         else         {             // use built in function             return sha1($str);         }     }      If I was writing this function I would do so like this:               function sha1($str)     {         // use built in function         if(function_exists('sha1'))             return sha1($str);              // use alternate built in function         if(function_exists('mhash'))             return bin2hex(mhash(MHASH_SHA1, $str));              // use CI implementation         require_once(BASEPATH.'libraries/Sha1'.EXT);         $SH = new CI_SHA;         return $SH->generate($str);     }      Which is better and why?"}
{"_id": "53948", "title": "How do you keep your basic skills from atrophy?", "text": "I've been programming for about 10 years, and I've started to migrate to more of a project management position. I still do coding, but less often now. One of the things that I think is holding me back in my career is that I can't \"let go\". I think I fear letting hard-won programming skills atrophy while I sit in meetings and annotate requirements. (Not to mention I don't trust people to write requirements who don't understand the code.) I can't just read books and magazines about coding. I'm involved in some open source projects in my free time, and stackoverflow and friends help a bit, because I get the opportunity to help people solve their programming problems without micromanaging, but neither of these are terribly structured, so it's tempting to work first on the problems I can solve easily. I guess what I'd like to find is a structured set of exercises (don't care what language or environment) that\u2026   * \u2026I can do periodically   * \u2026has some kind of time requirement so I can tell if I've been goofing off   * \u2026has some kind of scoring so I can tell if I'm making mistakes Is there such a thing? What would you do to keep your skills fresh?"}
{"_id": "67757", "title": "Vector operations: vec1.dot(vec2) vs vec1 * vec2 vs dot(vec1, vec2)", "text": "What's your preferred way to implement/use vector operations?   * vec1.dot(vec2)      * allows to reuse vec1 but is hard to read for longer equations   * dot(vec1, vec2)      * A friend of mine prefers this as \"dot\" isn't a property of vector   * vec1 * vec2      * probably looks best, but not possible in all languages (e.g. Java)"}
{"_id": "156536", "title": "Moving from PHP to Python - framework considerations", "text": "As a long time PHP developer, I am now starting to explore the Python world. I have narrowed the choice of framework down to Django and Pyramid, probably no big surprise there. I have played a bit both both frameworks. I really like Djangos admin, and the fact that everything is already integrated. My concern with Django, however, is that it appears more difficult to break out of doing things the way that they want you to. For a large complex site, that could be problematic down the road. Is this a valid concern? What really caught my eye is that the community for Django seems MUCH larger. Let alone the massive number of docs and tutorials for Django (couldnt fine much for Pyramid outside the official docs?). Of biggest concern is the sheer number of apps that have been built specifically for Django: south, tastypie, multi-tenancy, registration, etc. Am I right to assume that these apps are (mostly?) Django specific, and that they cant be used in Pyramid? Where are the Pyramid specific apps? Or, will they interoperate just fine?"}
{"_id": "156537", "title": "CSRF Protection with codeigniter", "text": "I have very little knowledge in application security. I have often seen to protect your application from csrf attacks developers use tokens and pass these tokens with request to validate. I want to know if i just validate the request is coming from my server and rejects all requests coming from any other server how can it be unsafe?"}
{"_id": "67759", "title": "Use of the Visitor pattern and possible over engineering", "text": "I am developing a small application in .NET and am thinking of using XML to save the object model. My first thought was to separate the model and the generation of XML by using the Visitor pattern. The class would walk the object hierarchy and create the XML. But then I thought about the Extreme Programming method and the \"you ain't gonna need it\" (YAGNI) principle. I don't envisage needing to create another Visitor to output the data in some other way (it's a simple app) I just want to use a human readable format to save the application's data. Should I use the Visitor pattern or am I just over engineering the solution?"}
{"_id": "156531", "title": "Structure of a single page app", "text": "I'm looking to develop a one page app, and will likely be using node.js for my server side coding. I'm trying to get some advice regards the client-side coding. While i realise that something like backbone.js would really help me, since im very new to development the learning curve is very high for me. So i'm going to be using something like dust.js for my client side templating. Currently i'm creating some mockup screens (there are 4 in total) that are being built in just plain html/css. When i come to doing the client side and server coding, is it better for me to combine all my presentation code into one html file, or into multiple files and then call them separately, considering it's a one page app that i am creating?"}
{"_id": "188352", "title": "How to choose between lightweight or heavyweight framework for web application", "text": "In my current role as a software developer in a **Java/Spring/Hibernate/JSF** shop, I am sometimes asked to develop large-scale web apps with many interfacing systems and/or large databases _as well as_ small-scale web apps with low traffic and/or simple databases. To accommodate this variation, I would like to have 2 technology stacks to choose from, depending on the type of application I'm asked to develop. I think this would benefit us because I think our technology stack that I mentioned above is a bit over-engineered or cumbersome for small, simple CRUD applications. If, for example, I have chosen **Spring Framework** for my large-scale apps and **Play! Framework** for my small-scale apps, how do I choose which one to use for a given application? In other words, how can I tell if a proposed web application qualifies for a heavy framework like Spring or could stand to benefit more from a lightweight, agile framework like Play? Can someone give me some rough checkpoints to help me decide which type of framework to use (heavy or light)? If you use this two-framework approach, please tell me what criteria you use to decide which framework is the best fit for a given web application."}
{"_id": "126255", "title": "Does the syntax of programming languages depend upon their implementation?", "text": "Although, my question may be entirely irrelevant, but I have sensed a pattern between most programming languages and their official implementations. **Interpreted** (byte-interpreted?) languages like Python , Lua etc. usually have an extremely lenient and easy syntax and are generally type-less or do not require the developer to explicitly write variable types in source code; **Compiled** languages like C , C++ , Pascal etc. usually have a strict syntax, generally have types and mostly require more code / development time Languages whose official implementations are **JIT-Compiled** like Java / C# usually are a unique compromise between the above two with some of the best features of both. Some of the more modern compiled programming languages like D and Vala (and the GNU GJC implementation of Java) are perhaps an exception to this rule and resemble the Syntax and features of JIT-Compiled languages like Java and C#. My first question is, is this really relevant? Or is this just a coincidence that most interpreted languages have easy syntax , JIT-Compiled ones have a moderate syntax and features etc. Secondly, if this is not a coincidence, then why is it so? Like, for example, can some features only be implemented in a programming language if you are, say, JIT-Compiling it?"}
{"_id": "126256", "title": "Should I change author name in class file if I make more than 80% changes?", "text": "I am refactoring existing set of java test classes for automated UI tests. At times I end up in making massive changes in class file or completely revamping it. This makes me think that when I am rewriting entire class then should I change author name in comment section to mine? Am I being greedy? or is it going to be useful for one to see my name and ask me in case of doubts?"}
{"_id": "151080", "title": "Are More Comments Better in High-Turnover Environments?", "text": "I was talking with a colleague today. We work on code for two different projects. In my case, I'm the only person working on my code; in her case, multiple people work on the same codebase, including co-op students who come and go fairly regularly (between every 8-12 months). She said that she is liberal with her comments, putting them all over the place. Her reasoning is that it helps her remember where things are and what things do since much of the code wasn't written by her and could be changed by someone other than her. Meanwhile, I try to minimize the comments in my code, putting them in only in places with a unobvious workaround or bug. However, I have a better understanding of my code overall, and have more direct control over it. My opinion in that comments should be minimal and the code should tell most of the story, but her reasoning makes sense too. Are there any flaws in her reasoning? It may clutter the code but it ultimately could be quite helpful if there are many people working on it in the short- to medium-run."}
{"_id": "61758", "title": "Which framework for HTML5 mobile web app?", "text": "I used to be an iPhone app developer. Now there are frequent enquires on cross-platform mobile app. So I look for a web based solution and find Sencha Touch. Are there more options? What's your experience and comment on these frameworks? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "61759", "title": "Which GOF design patterns are already implemented as first-class language features in C#?", "text": "(This question was closed on Stack Overflow due to being \"too broad\" and \"not a real question\" so maybe it's more appropriate here?) Inspired by this question. We know events are a language-level implementation of the Observer pattern. Are there other design patterns implemented as language features in C#? I want to keep this question C#-specific because there are lots of design patterns implemented in other languages, and I want to keep this focused. I'm not looking for pattern implementations in the BCL (such as decorator in many WCF classes or Factory Method in `WebClient`), but _language-level_ patterns. So far I'm aware of observer (`event`) and iterator (`foreach` in combination with many BCL classes and interfaces). There are probably other obvious ones I'm missing."}
{"_id": "161132", "title": "front end development test - html/css/jquery/javascript", "text": "We are continually revamping our front end developer test that we do in-house after a candidate has passed an online test. The online test has questions such as:   * How does a for loop start?   * What is the correct way to write a JavaScript array?   * Write the css selector for the 3rd list item within an ordered list with the id \"myList\"   * For var shoppingList = [\"milk\", \"dumplings\", \"bread\"]; - how would you return dumplings into a variable named groceryItem?   * FizzBuzz So we cover the basics, and try to get an insight into their knowledge. But, in house, we really want to test their problem solving skills, their logic approach, etc. And I don't think we've found a good way to do that for front end developers. For UI guys, it's easier - we give them a design challenge and a white board and see if they ask for more information, how they approach the problem, etc. But we haven't found a way to replicate this approach with web developers (for the record, I am one of the web developers on the team) Thoughts on how to approach?"}
{"_id": "61751", "title": "Light bulb for prolonged computer use", "text": "I would like a recommendation on choosing which light-bulb type (e.g. CFL) and color temperature is best for prolonged computer usage. I am also in a field where color consistency is important so if a specific lamp temperature is useful, I would like to know as well."}
{"_id": "150973", "title": "What are the alternatives to \"overriding a method\" when using composition instead of inheritance?", "text": "If we should favor composition over inheritance, the data part of it is clear, at least for me. What I don't have a clear solution to is how overwriting methods, or simply implementing them if they are defined in a pure virtual form, should be implemented. An obvious way is to wrap the instance representing the base-class into the instance representing the sub-class. But the major downsides of this are that if you have say 10 methods, and you want to override a single one, you still have to delegate every other methods anyway. And if there were several layers of inheritance, you have now several layers of wrapping, which becomes less and less efficient. Also, this only solve the problem of the object \"client\"; when another object calls the top wrapper, things happen like in inheritance. But when a method of the deepest instance, the base class, calls it's own methods that have been wrapped and modified, the wrapping has no effect: the call is performed by it's own method, instead of by the highest wrapper. One extreme alternative that would solve those problems would be to have one instance per method. You only wrap methods that you want to overwrite, so there is no pointless delegation. But now you end up with an incredible amount of classes and object instance, which will have a negative effect on memory usage, and this will require a lot more coding too. So, are there alternatives (preferably alternatives that can be used in _Java_ ), that:   * Do not result in many levels of pointless delegation without any changes.   * Make sure that not only the client of an object, but also all the code of the object itself, is aware of which implementation of method should be called.   * Does not result in an explosion of classes and instances.   * Ideally puts the extra memory overhead that is required at the \"class\"/\"particular composition\" level (static if you will), rather than having every object pay the memory overhead of composition. My feeling tells me that the instance representing the base class should be at the \"top\" of the stack/layers so it receives calls directly, and can process them directly too if they are not overwritten. But I don't know how to do it that way. [EDIT] It seems that many people reading this question think that I am debating if I should use Composition or Inheritance, and that \"guiding\" me to the one or the other will solve my problem. This is not the case. I always use inheritance when I can, for the simple fact that composition requires more coding, and also more memory. No need to convince me that inheritance is not evil. I have a very good reason to want to use composition. I want to create a system that model domain objects that can \"change nature\" over time. That is they can both gain and loose functionality/properties over time, as a result of some actions. This is a lot more natural when modeled as composition. If the components that can be dynamically added and removed where composed only of properties, it would be easy. In fact I have already found 14 different possible designs that support that case, with varying compromise on code complexity, memory usage, and speed. The real problem comes when all those components need to be aware of each other, and talk to each other. This is not required when they are just \"beans\" (in the Java sense). I want to know if there are any, and hopefully several, ways of allowing the components to talk to each other, and more specifically how to have several components _of the same type_ , where one serves as base- class and the others progressively override some of it's methods. I can see two ways to simulate the overriding present in inheritance. The first is to have a base component, and all overriding components are built as wrapper on top of another component of the same type. Like that, you can choose at runtime which hierarchy of components you want. This is like pipes and filters. But the problem is that with inheritance, not only can the derived class call methods of the base class, but it works the other way around too. A base class can declare a pure virtual method, which is implemented by the sub-class, and the base class can call this method. I don't see how to accomplish that using whole component wrapping. Also, if we have N inheritance/wrapping layers, then calls to method of the base component then gets N level of delegation, even if the method was not overwritten by any of the wrapping components. The other alternative, like I said in \"One extreme alternative ...\", is to do it like above, but forcing each component to contain _a single method_. In that case we solve the problem of the base-class not seeing/calling the methods of the derived classes, for all methods, except it's own method. So it works now correctly for all cases except for recursion. But the price we pay in memory consumption is high, at least in Java. And Java isn't \"functional\", so there is a lot of syntax overhead to turn every object method into an individual object. If there any better alternatives then the two mentioned above, I would like to know about it."}
{"_id": "150975", "title": "How broad should a computer science/engineering student go?", "text": "I have less than 2 years of college left and I still don't know what to focus on. But this is not about me, this is about being a future developer. I realize that questions like \"Which language should I learn next?\" are not really popular, but I think my question is broader than that. I often see people write things like \"You have to learn many different things. Being a developer is not about learning one programming language / technology and then doing that for the rest of your life\". Well, sure, but it's impossible to really learn everything thoroughly. Does that mean that one should just learn the basics of everything and then learn some things more thoroughly AFTER getting a particular job? I mean, the best way to learn programming is by actually programming stuff... But projects take time. Does an average developer really switch between (for example) being a web developer, doing artificial intelligence and machine learning related stuff and programming close to the hardware? I mean, I know a lot of different things, but I don't feel proficient in any of those things. If I want to find a job as a web developer (that's just an example) after I finish college, shouldn't I do some web related project (maybe using something I still don't know) rather than try to learn functional programming? So, the question is: How broad should a computer science student's field of focus be? One programming language is surely far too narrow, but what is too broad?"}
{"_id": "129559", "title": "How to structure a trainee program?", "text": "At my company we are thinking about starting a trainee program for software developers. We are thinking about attracting people with a CS degree, but little or no experience (or people with relevant experience but no degree). I'm wondering what the trainee program should offer and how to structure it. We want the trainees to be real members of our development team, but use a higher level of supervision, peer review, pair programming etc. We should also provide some amount of lecturing/mentoring and provide some required reading. I'm thinking the program should contain a plan for two years, but I'm not sure. Trainee programs are not common for software developers in my country. So what elements would you include? How do you suggest we structure the mentoring? What principles and practices should we focus on, and how should we draw up the \"curriculum\"? PS: Our current team consists of four highly skilled agile developers. We mostly do .NET and practice TDD."}
{"_id": "73717", "title": "Minimum billable time unit - industry standard for contract programming?", "text": "We're a client that recently hired a contract programming company for some fairly focused work (essentially writing 'scripts' to extend the functionality of a third-party enterprise application). We're trying to evaluate their performance on and the value of some work they did for us, but we're a little new to using contract programmers and could use some help:   1. If you were hiring a company as a contractor to do computer program development for you, and the minimum billing time unit was not mentioned in the contract, would you expect to be billed in whole-hour increments (so that a phone call of 5 minutes is billed as 1 hour)?   2. What is industry standard practice for the minimum billable time unit in contract programming work?   3. If you hired a contracting company that had two employees, would you expect each person's time to be broken out and rounded up to the minimum billable time unit? Let's say the senior guy worked with the junior guy for 15 minutes, and the junior guy worked 4:15 that day. Would you take exception to a bill for 1 hour (senior guy) plus 5 hours (junior guy), or would you expect a bill for just 5 hours? You may find my follow-up question about key contract points interesting."}
{"_id": "73715", "title": "What sort of role does \"language cultural history\" play with a platform?", "text": "I recently stumbled accross this article from a few years ago. It argues that significant differences in the culture surrounding VB and C#, not the actual differences in the language, contribute to C# coders being generally more talented than VB coders. Obviously, that caused a lot of flame wars and the question of whether C#ers or VBers are the dumber will never be answered. That being said, the writers claim that the culture surrounding a particular platform contributes to the quality of the team could still be plausible. For example, even though Java is more efficient to develop apps with at the moment, a team of Google Go developers would seem likely to be of a higher caliber on average than a team of Java developers, since to learn Go, a developer probably has to be a super-early adopter and a frontier-hacking whiz. So, in a nutshell, **how does the culture surronding one platform or another affect the quality of the average developer on that platform, if at all?**"}
{"_id": "32490", "title": "Writing programs without graphical IDE", "text": "I am not sure if this is even possible but I have watched a few videos with programming examples where it seems like the program is being written in some kind of command prompt rather than a nice graphical IDE. Im just curious as to what might be going on in these videos. Is it possible to write a program without an IDE? heres two examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSY9cWjO8o( @ 6 min) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKTZoB2Vjuk (@ 5 min) Could anyone explain how this is done? Thank you all for the great feedback!"}
{"_id": "74722", "title": "Scaling Up applications", "text": "What should I consider when taking an application (web) from a few users to hundreds or thousands? Basically, what should I be considering when thinking about escalating?"}
{"_id": "8445", "title": "How did you become a const correctness convert?", "text": "After 15 years of C++, I've still haven't learn to love using const. I understand it's use, but I've never actually been in situation where being const correct would have avoided the problem I was facing. So how did you come to love benefits of consts?"}
{"_id": "196255", "title": "Multi-Threaded JavaScript?", "text": "I know, I know--it isn't possible presently BUT my question is this: Would it be possible to write a browser plug in for the major browsers that _enables_ true, multi-threaded JavaScript? It just seems like this would be possible and, if so, it would take the web (not to mention JavaScript) to new heights. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "253398", "title": "The Observer pattern using the pulling mechanism", "text": "I was wondering about the following implementation of               public void update(Observable obs, Object arg)      while i want to send to all of my observer and update using `notifyObserver()` i and passing a references to `this` the observer can use the `getters` from the subject to pull the information he wants. what is the `arg` argument on the update method meant for?"}
{"_id": "78873", "title": "Use controller in view in MVC", "text": "I have a problem convincing my team mates why we shouldn't use (directly reference) the controller in the view when developing components in the spirit of MVC. I have invoked decoupling and natural intuition, but still those arguments didn't get through. They say, in their defense, that this is a normal compromise. What arguments are convincing? Or they are right? How can the practice of using the controller in the view could affect a project on the long run?"}
{"_id": "78872", "title": "Does a project typically get built or designed (graphically) first?", "text": "Say you are going to build a fairly large website. Would all the pages be designed before they are built, or would all the pages be built and functional before they are graphically designed? I am a programmer and a graphic designer. When build a new website I usually have a rough outline of all the pages I am going to need and how they are going to work. I then usually start to build the pages, as I build the pages I tend to design the graphical interface at the same time. I am starting to think this is bad because each page ends up looking good, but not uniform. Or even if they _appear_ uniform they really aren't. For example, on **page A** and **page B** the heading looks the same but on **page A** it has a `50px margin` while on **page B** it has a `50px padding`. The styling for the heading on **page A** is defined in one `CSS` file and the styling for the heading on **page B** is defined in another. Over time it can become a giant mess. I need a new approach. There are many ways I have learned to keep this kind of thing from happening in code (DRY). I don't really know how to apply them in this area though. Or maybe I just don't currently have the discipline. One idea is, after the project outline is complete, create graphical designs of how all the pages will look before I build any. Then I should be able to design the styles before building the pages so I won't be introducing duplicate style definitions as I build. The problem is, before I design a page with HTML/CSS, I design it in Photoshop. However, they don't always workout exactly the way I designed them in Photoshop. Sometimes I have to make adjustments to get it to look right on the page. Sometimes the adjustments needed differ from page to page. I don't see how I can plan this ahead of time. What's the normal workflow for something like this?"}
{"_id": "253391", "title": "Dealing with class optional dependencies", "text": "I am wondering how are you guys handling an optional class properties. Let's say I have a product that can bud doesn't have to have a `color` property. Is that really the best way of doing that? Should I use null object pattern? Should I use strategy pattern maybe? Should I maybe use a decorator pattern here so I'll have `Product` and `ProductWithColor`? What if another property will be added and become optional?               <?php          class Product     {         private $id;         private $title;              /**          * @var string|null          */         private $color;              function __construct($id, $title, array $color = null)         {             $this->id              = $id;             $this->title           = $title;             $this->color           = $color;         }     }"}
{"_id": "253393", "title": "OpenGL FrameBufferExternal Two Different Target", "text": "Im trying to use framebuffer objects to render into textures. In my code below, I have a framebufferobject with 2 textures and one depth buffer attached to it. My aim is to render a colored cube with front and back face culled for two textures. Later I will use these as inputs into fragment shader program named in my code \"shaderProgramFinal\". However I could not been able to render both back culled and front culled version at the two textures. They either become back culled or front face culled version simultaneously. I want frontTex contain back culled and backTex contain front culled version. Can anyone help me where Im wrong in my code below?               #include <GL/glew.h>     #include <GLFW/glfw3.h>     #include <stdlib.h>     #include <stdio.h>     #include \"Shader.hpp\"     #include \"ShaderProgram.hpp\"     #include <math.h>     #include <glm/glm.hpp>     #include <glm/gtc/matrix_transform.hpp>     #include <glm/gtc/type_ptr.hpp>     #include <glm/gtx/euler_angles.hpp>          #define screenSizeX 500     #define screenSizeY 500          GLFWwindow* window;          static void error_callback(int error, const char* description){fputs(description, stderr);}          void glSetup(){     glfwInit();     glfwSetErrorCallback(error_callback);     glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT, GL_TRUE);     glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR,4);     glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR,0);     glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_PROFILE,GLFW_OPENGL_CORE_PROFILE);     glfwWindowHint(GLFW_RESIZABLE,GL_FALSE);     window = glfwCreateWindow(screenSizeX, screenSizeY, \"Graphics World\", NULL, NULL);     glfwMakeContextCurrent(window);     glewExperimental = GL_TRUE;     glewInit();     printf (\"Renderer: %s\\n\", glGetString (GL_RENDERER));     printf (\"OpenGL version supported %s\\n\", glGetString (GL_VERSION));     glEnable (GL_DEPTH_TEST);     glDepthFunc (GL_LESS);     }          void shaderSetup(Shader* vertexShader, Shader* fragmentShader, ShaderProgram* shaderProgram){     vertexShader->loadFromFile(\"myVert.S\");     vertexShader->compile();     fragmentShader->loadFromFile(\"myFrag.S\");     fragmentShader->compile();     shaderProgram->attachShader(*vertexShader);     shaderProgram->attachShader(*fragmentShader);     shaderProgram->linkProgram();     shaderProgram->addAttribute(\"Position\");     shaderProgram->addAttribute(\"ColorC\");     shaderProgram->addUniform(\"rotateMatrixX\");     shaderProgram->addUniform(\"rotateMatrixY\");     shaderProgram->addUniform(\"rotateMatrixZ\");     }          void shaderSetupFinal(Shader* vertexShader, Shader* fragmentShader, ShaderProgram* shaderProgram){     vertexShader->loadFromFile(\"myVertFinal.S\");     vertexShader->compile();     fragmentShader->loadFromFile(\"myFragFinal.S\");     fragmentShader->compile();     shaderProgram->attachShader(*vertexShader);     shaderProgram->attachShader(*fragmentShader);     shaderProgram->linkProgram();     shaderProgram->addAttribute(\"Position\");     }          int main(void)     {     glSetup();          Shader vertexShader(GL_VERTEX_SHADER);     Shader fragmentShader(GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER);     ShaderProgram* shaderProgram = new ShaderProgram();     shaderSetup(&vertexShader, &fragmentShader, shaderProgram);          Shader vertexShaderFinal(GL_VERTEX_SHADER);     Shader fragmentShaderFinal(GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER);     ShaderProgram* shaderProgramFinal = new ShaderProgram();     shaderSetupFinal(&vertexShaderFinal, &fragmentShaderFinal, shaderProgramFinal);          float vertices[] = {     -0.5f,  0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, //Green0     -0.5f, -0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, //Black1      0.5f, -0.5f, -0.5f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, //Red2      0.5f,  0.5f, -0.5f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, //Yellow3     -0.5f,  0.5f, 0.5f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, //Cyan4     -0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, //Blue5      0.5f, -0.5f, 0.5f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, //Magenta6      0.5f,  0.5f, 0.5f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f //White7     };          GLuint elements[] = {     2,0,3,     2,1,0,     6,4,5,     6,7,4,     3,4,7,     3,0,4,     2,6,5,     2,5,1,     2,3,7,     2,7,6,     1,5,4,     1,4,0     };          float verticesFinal[] = {     -1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f,      1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f,      1.0f,  1.0f, 0.0f,     -1.0f,  1.0f, 0.0f     };          GLuint elementsFinal[] = {     0,1,3,     1,2,3     };          GLuint VAO, VBO, EBO, backTex, frontTex, frameBuffer, renderBuffer, VAOFinal, VBOFinal, EBOFinal;          glGenVertexArrays(1, &VAO);     glBindVertexArray(VAO);          glGenBuffers(1, &VBO);     glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, VBO);     glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(vertices), vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);     glEnableVertexAttribArray(shaderProgram->attribute(\"Position\"));     glVertexAttribPointer (shaderProgram->attribute(\"Position\"), 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 6*sizeof(GLfloat), NULL);     glEnableVertexAttribArray(shaderProgram->attribute(\"ColorC\"));     glVertexAttribPointer (shaderProgram->attribute(\"ColorC\"), 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 6*sizeof(GLfloat),  (void*)(3 * sizeof(GLfloat)));          glGenBuffers(1, &EBO);     glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, EBO);     glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(elements), elements, GL_STATIC_DRAW);          glGenTextures(1, &backTex);     glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, backTex);     glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_BORDER);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_BORDER);     glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, screenSizeX, screenSizeY, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_FLOAT, NULL);     glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0);          glGenTextures(1, &frontTex);     glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, frontTex);     glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_BORDER);     glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_BORDER);     glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, GL_RGBA, screenSizeX, screenSizeY, 0, GL_RGBA, GL_FLOAT, NULL);     glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0);          glGenFramebuffersEXT(1, &frameBuffer);     glGenRenderbuffersEXT(1, &renderBuffer);     glBindFramebufferEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, frameBuffer);     glFramebufferTexture2DEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0_EXT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, backTex, 0);     glFramebufferTexture2DEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT1_EXT, GL_TEXTURE_2D, frontTex, 0);          glBindRenderbufferEXT(GL_RENDERBUFFER_EXT, renderBuffer);     glRenderbufferStorageEXT(GL_RENDERBUFFER_EXT, GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT, screenSizeX, screenSizeY);     glFramebufferRenderbufferEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT_EXT, GL_RENDERBUFFER_EXT, renderBuffer);     GLenum status = glCheckFramebufferStatus(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT);     if(status != GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE) cout << \"Frame buffer yokki!\\n\";     glBindFramebufferEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, 0);          glGenVertexArrays(1, &VAOFinal);     glBindVertexArray(VAOFinal);          glGenBuffers(1, &VBOFinal);     glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, VBOFinal);     glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(verticesFinal), verticesFinal, GL_STATIC_DRAW);     glEnableVertexAttribArray(shaderProgramFinal->attribute(\"Position\"));     glVertexAttribPointer(shaderProgramFinal->attribute(\"Position\"), 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 3*sizeof(GLfloat), NULL);          glGenBuffers(1, &EBOFinal);     glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, EBOFinal);     glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(elementsFinal), elementsFinal, GL_STATIC_DRAW);          while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(window))     {         double mouseX, mouseY;         glfwGetCursorPos(window, &mouseX, &mouseY);         mouseX -= screenSizeX/2;         mouseY -= screenSizeY/2;              shaderProgram->use();         glBindVertexArray(VAO);         glUniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram->uniform(\"rotateMatrixX\"), 1, GL_FALSE,       glm::value_ptr(glm::eulerAngleX((float)(mouseY/25.0))));         glUniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram->uniform(\"rotateMatrixY\"), 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(glm::eulerAngleY((float)(-mouseX/25.0))));         glUniformMatrix4fv(shaderProgram->uniform(\"rotateMatrixZ\"), 1, GL_FALSE, glm::value_ptr(glm::eulerAngleY((float)(0.0/50.0))));              glBindFramebufferEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, frameBuffer);         glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, backTex);         glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, frontTex);              glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0);         glDrawBuffer(GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0_EXT);         glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT );         glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE);         glCullFace(GL_FRONT);         glDrawElements (GL_TRIANGLES, 36, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, 0);         glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE);              glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE1);         glDrawBuffer(GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT1_EXT);         glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT );         glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE);         glCullFace(GL_BACK);         glDrawElements (GL_TRIANGLES, 36, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, 0);         glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE);              glBindFramebufferEXT(GL_FRAMEBUFFER_EXT, 0);              shaderProgram->disable();              shaderProgramFinal->use();         glBindVertexArray(VAOFinal);         glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE);         glCullFace(GL_BACK);         glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT );         glDrawElements (GL_TRIANGLES, 6, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, 0);         glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE);         shaderProgramFinal->disable();              glfwSwapBuffers(window);         glfwPollEvents();     }          glfwDestroyWindow(window);     glfwTerminate();     exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);     }"}
{"_id": "119147", "title": "Any good resources for a non-technical guy to learn software project management?", "text": "There are many resources on general project management, but are there any specifically for non-technical people for software project management, covering topics such as requirements gathering, use cases and general architecture?"}
{"_id": "119141", "title": "Are some languages or language features better for testing?", "text": "I am, and like being, a VB.net coder. I have a couple of largish programs in c# that I must maintain and I don't really like writing C# code while developing. It isn't horrible but I much prefer the VB.net environment for development. However recently I have started writing all my tests in C#. I started doing this so I could use all the great tools, such as the mock libraries, available in C#. But even after I found Teleriks extremely capable justmock free edition for VB.net I have found I still write almost all my tests in C# (now using the C# version of JustMock BTW). Even when I don't need these testing tools I find that I just like C# better for writing tests. I think I like VB.net for general coding while solving problems as I write because: 1\\. Like the sugary sweetness of things like XML Literals. Plus LINQ just seem easier and more expressive in VB. 2\\. Don't need worry about the syntax nearly as much (casing, line terminators etc.) I can focus on my ideas. (The extra verbosity is handled by #3 below and coderush and other IDE tools) 3\\. Think the tight integration with IDE of Visual Studio and VB.net (background compiling for example) is just the bees knees. (Though C# is getting much better.) But for tests I am not thinking about the big picture or really solving problems. Each test method is independent and the succinctness of C# just reinforces and aids this fact. I initially found this surprising because I always thought a scripting type language would be better for writing tests. But after actually writing many thousands of them I don't see any benefits in using a scripting language. In fact I find Option Strict and Explicit being true (which turns of the scripty nature of vb) even more helpful in the test projects. But maybe I am wrong and there are languages even more suited to writing tests? Would something like IronPython be good for writing test? Maybe BOO with its macros? I wouldn't think so but might a functional language bring anything to the table? More simply, are there language features that aid in writing good tests? And if so what language has the greatest numbers of these desirable features?"}
{"_id": "115872", "title": "Why do I have to choose between \"management\" and \"technical\" tracks in my career?", "text": "I was recently laid off, and although I found a new gig I'm a bit frustrated with how career tracks work in the land of software development. I really love doing a bit of everything: coding, testing, architect(ing), leadership/management, customer contact, requirements gathering, staff development, etc. Software companies, however, want me to fit into a niche: I'm either a coder, a tester, or a manager. When I try to explain to them that I'm best when I'm doing all of those at once, they seem very confused. I'm sympathetic to their interests, but at the same time frustrated that the industry works this way. Any advice? Do I just need to get with the program, so to speak?"}
{"_id": "115870", "title": "Getting Organizational Support in a 'Non-Programming' Position", "text": "I've been in my current position in a non-IT unit for about a year. I was hired mostly to do content management and simple web master type tasks. Due to a mix of diminishing IT support and expanded unit/productivity expectations, as well as my own motivation to acquire new skills, I have slowly taken on what I would describe as a front-end web developer role. Nothing I would describe as 'mission critical', but certainly things you wouldn't hire a non- programmer to do. I only took a few CS classes in college and although I do some freelance web designing and developing, I'm growing concerned about getting in over my head without the appropriate grounding. I would like to ideally have IT support, guidance, code review, programmer-level pay, etc. Unfortunately, I'm finding that organizational and semantic divisions really won't allow me to be a 'programmer', since I don't work for an IT-related unit. Management is roughly aware of the issue, but I don't feel they are taking it seriously, so I'm planning on addressing it with them. When I do, I want them to hear the: \"I'm a motivated employee looking to take on more responsibility\" instead of \"I have limited and untrustworthy skills, I need IT's help!\" What suggestions do you have for me to address (to management) the issue and articulate a solution?"}
{"_id": "115876", "title": "C Language - K&R 1st vs 2nd Edition?", "text": "I'm planning to buy a book to learn C Language. Many say K&R is a must-have book for C programmers so I chose it. I see that there are two editions. What are the differences between them?"}
{"_id": "221418", "title": "Typed search over complex model. Possible CQRS / NoSQL solution", "text": "Given the following relational model: ![database model](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Xl8nl.jpg) I need to implement a typed search for hotels, which should be able to query on name, city, country, category, hoteltype, roomprice, customtype, room custom type and roomtype or any combination of these criteria. At the moment I'm doing this though Entity Framework, dynamically constructing a query over the Hotel-entity (IQueryable). This is fine as currently there is very little data. However, this isn't very scalable and when there is a lot of data this will become very slow as it's a query over 10 tables. Note that I only need to load the hotel-data, not the entire graph. I'm thinking of ways to improve the scalability of this part. I have been looking into CQRS and maybe NoSQL solutions. One approach I had in mind is having this model on the write side (to enforce consistency) and having a different model on the read side. On write, I would then update the read-model (viewmodel). However, since this is already a more or less complex model in terms of relations, I see a few problems with that:   * Updating metadata (such as category, roomtype, hoteltype) would require me to update all of the hotels or rooms in the read-model. This could be quite slow or impossible once there's a lot of data.   * Suppose I use a document database such as MongoDB and save a hotel with all the related items denormalized, won't the query over that table still be slow as it has to search inside each document, or is still still quite fast in NoSQL? To summarize a few questions:   * Is denormalizing this model the right approach and what would be the best way?   * Will NoSQL be faster?   * Are there any better approaches I can follow or ways to break up the relationship and flatten the hierarchy while still being able to do a typed search?   * Ideally some fields should also support fuzzy search, what would be the best way to achieve that?"}
{"_id": "221419", "title": "How are I/O port addresses and data sent?", "text": "First of all, I'd like to say this is a hardware-level question, which is very closely related to the \"in\" and \"out\" command in x86 assembly. I have searched for quite some time, but I still haven't found how they send the addresses and the data. Does the 8086 first send the address, then the data? If so, how does the receiver know if the 8086 is sending a 16-bit address or an 8-bit address? Aside from that, I'd also like to learn how the 8255 works, and how it accepts specific ports such as \"port 60H\". Thanks for reading! :D"}
{"_id": "221416", "title": "How to refactor out static members of basic classes", "text": "Currently I am working on C++ project, which can be classified as \"legacy\" project. A lot of poor written code was committed because of lack of experience and under the pressure of deadlines. When I try to fix bugs I eventually make the new one. Recently I got some more free time and I want to make this project better. To be exact I want to begin using TDD. However, it turned out not so easy. I faced the problem that I can't write test for any class. Singletons are everywhere. Even basic classes uses static members. For instance, in project we widely use \"Numeric\" class (which is wrapper for decNumber C library for decimal computation). This class has static member to keep a context (precision, rounding mode, etc.). It is obvious that I need to refactor this class to avoid static fields. Immediately I thought about dependency injection and a factory pattern. The factory will keep the single context, every user class should create Numeric instances only using that factory. But the code is going to be messy because the factory should be injected in every class which wants to construct \"Numeric\" instance. Which pattern I can use for this case? Which one makes me sure that every instance of \"Numeric\" class uses single shared state? P.S.: There are significant parallels with this question - Dependency injection ; good practices to reduce boilerplate code."}
{"_id": "145359", "title": "Which revision control system to use for 2 semester capstone course?", "text": "For CS undergraduate students working on a 2-semester capstone course without any prior exposure to revision control systems, what would be a good one to use? Desirable qualities would be easy to use (ie this should be a tool they can use rather than spend a lot of time fighting it) and still be relevant for subsequent professional work once they graduate (doesn't have to mean it has to be the same tool later on as long as the concepts survive). Easy to install and maintain for the person who does this. Not sure if I am missing anything else important. I am aware of subversion (centralized), git (distributed) and mercurial(also distributed?) - but don't know enough about any of them to have an informed opinion. Are there others I should consider? This will be on a predominantly Windows environment. EDIT: I am really interested in the **pedagocial** aspect of teaching/learning these systems, not so much from the perspective of an already experienced software developer."}
{"_id": "92326", "title": "How can an amateur programmer get past their boundaries when formal educational resources are not available?", "text": "I have been programming for 5 years since middle school. I have learnt pretty much all the basics of programming and went through C/C++ and Java language. However, the college in my country is not really offering me the knowledge that will help me improve on in my programming career. Therefore, I have to self-educate myself. Lately, I have been picking up native windows api and give it a try on making window application according to what I have in mind. However, I failed constantly and found myself lacking knowledge in all directions: Low-level machine (system, arch, asm, etc.), Windows internals (kernel, system, etc.), Networking (TCP/IP etc.), Designing skills, Graphics programming, and many more of those advance topics. Therefore, right now I'm at the edge of deciding whether to continue with windows development, or to dig deep into low-level machine structure, or to dropout all of that and go for internet-oriented programming, or to do any other available options. Ideally, I would want to know all of them (I really love all of the topics in programming) and would want to deeply understand every one of them. However, I don't know where to start. So any guideline from professional programmer of how should I continue my learning path? And what would be the best resources?"}
{"_id": "117434", "title": "what are callback frameworks?", "text": "I am reading Effective Java and it has the following sentence. > The disadvantages of wrapper classes are few. One caveat is that wrapper > classes are not suited for use in callback frameworks, wherein objects pass > selfreferences to other objects for subsequent invocations (\u201ccallbacks\u201d). Now what is a callback framework ? Can you point me to an example of call back framework ?"}
{"_id": "117433", "title": "Clarification about Event Producer in StreamInsight", "text": "I need a small clarification about streamInsight, I know by doc's that StreamInsight can handle multiple concurrent Events. But will the event producer be a separate function, for ex: I need to watch a folder for new Files becoz all my sensors il write readings every day in a new file in particular drive. **Method 1: FileSystemWatcher:** These is the traditional approach where we write a service using FileSystemWatcher to watch a folder for new files,etc.. Upon receiving event from FileSystemWatcher il perform some operations on these files. **How to do these using streamInsight???** I came know that using IObservable i can push events to StreamInsight. But is there anything to watch folder is sreamInsight like FileSystemWatcher. OR In order to raise events to streamInsight do we need to use FileSystemWacther? Any suggestion regarding these is highly appreciated. Thank in Advance"}
{"_id": "104390", "title": "Is there a way to visualize an ASP.NET MVC project, ie class diagram but with the web pages too?", "text": "Maybe I'm looking for a dependency visualizer/matrix. I'm not sure. I'm just trying to wrap my head around an existing and large web app, and I like pretty pictures. I know of Autodiagrammer but I don't think it would show the master page/subpage relationships. Is such a thing even possible?"}
{"_id": "223308", "title": "Question about Visual C++ Properties", "text": "Could someone explain this line: > In more complicated contexts, such as \"+=\", a **rewrite** is performed by > doing both get and put. Taken from: MSDN - Property What do they mean by rewrite?Is it a compile-time rewrite or does it induce run-time overhead?As far as I know in release mode properties are compiled to the same thing, so they must have the same performance as getters/setters, right?"}
{"_id": "149861", "title": "Scrum Board for a distributed team", "text": "I am looking for recommendations on a digital Scrum Board which can be shared over the internet. I imagine something like a big tablet on which you can draw and which remote users can access, too. I dislike Scrum software because I think one major benefit of a Scrum Board is its physical presence. It should be hard to ignore. The best solution would be two big tablets on which you can draw and which can be synchronized. Has anyone got product recommendations for something like this? Or would you rather use a software? Kind regards, Falcon"}
{"_id": "189008", "title": "What makes a series of machine instructions an actual process/thread in memory?", "text": "Every instruction comes from main memory/RAM. In a bootloader, at least on Intel and IBM PC firmware and designations, you have BIOS jump to a memory address to begin fetching instructions for whatever purpose, usually to load a kernel, when or where does the instance of a process begin? The hardware stacks are limited, but does using them constitute for a process or thread? My point simply is what makes something a \"thread\" or \"process\", as to opposed to just more bytes from memory? Where is the line drawn in this situation?"}
{"_id": "223302", "title": "Return values for CRUD methods?", "text": "I'm writing a basic web API in Java that does what almost all others do: take input, validate it, then do CRUD operations on the DB. I've written several APIs before, and I've pretty much already figured out what constitutes a good response back to the client. However, like most APIs, there are several layers of objects invoked between the front-door client API object and the code that actually executes queries against the database. I've always struggled to know what those database interaction objects should return back to the functions calling them. I imagine that on errors I'll be throwing exceptions and catching them farther up the call stack. However, what do I return on successes? Here's what I've used before:   1. Create - Return a boolean telling whether the create was successful or not   2. Read - Return the object requested   3. Update - Return a boolean telling whether the update was successful or not   4. Delete - Return a boolean telling whether the delete was successful or not I feel comfortable with the Read and Delete returns, because I can't think of what else you'd return in those situations. However, I have no idea what the best practice would be for return values from create and update functions. Should I return a new object with the updated values? Should I modify the object that was passed in? Should I just return a boolean value denoting success or failure?"}
{"_id": "189005", "title": "Index independent character comparison within text blocks", "text": "I have the following task: developing a program where there is a block of sample text which should be typed by user. Any typos the user does during the test are registered. Basically, I can compare each typed char with the sample char based on caret index position of the input, but there is one significant flaw in such a \"naive\" approach. If the user typed mistakenly more letters than a whole string has, or inserted more white spaces between the string than should be, then the rest of the comparisons will be wrong because of the index offsets added by the additional wrong insertions. I have thought of designing some kind of parser where each string (or even a char ) is tokenized and the comparisons are made \"char-wise\" and not \"index- wise,\" but that seems to me like an overkill for such a task. I would like to get a reference to possibly existing algorithms which can be helpful in solving this kind of problem."}
{"_id": "223305", "title": "Framework in which views are defined in the database - design flaw or reasonable?", "text": "I'm working with a framework where the fields displayed on each web page are defined in the application database. Administrators can add new fields to pages or hide/completely delete old fields. The logic for each page is in a Java class - sometimes there's a one-to-one relationship between a page and a class, sometimes several pages use the same class. **The issue** This framework design creates a hidden dependency between the page data in the database and the logic in the Java class. If a new field is added to a page, the matching Java class must provide that field - or the page will break. The Java code has no compile-time knowledge of how the page is configured in the database (each customer database may have different configurations), which increases brittleness. A typical solution has been to SELECT * from one or more database tables, allowing a degree of configuration as to which fields can be displayed. This leads to database-centric Java code with plenty of embedded SQL and little object-oriented design or domain models. **Solution plans** We've introduced a three-tier MVC-like architecture (controller -> service -> repository) with object-oriented models to the framework. It limits the ability to add fields to the pages without changing the underlying code. However, the change makes it possible to program in an object-oriented way and create domain models. Next up, we're planning to do something about the dependency between the database and code. My long-term plan would be to move the page definitions from the database into the code (your standard HTML&JS views), limiting configurability but reducing brittleness. Any incompatibilities between the pages and Java would then become compiler errors when building the application instead of runtime errors. **Question(s)**   1. Do you consider the framework practice of defining the view in the database and the controller in the code as sound design or something that should be addressed?   2. If you think the situation should be addressed, does my long-term plan seem reasonable? **Edit:** In addition to defining the layout, the view definitions in the database define which fields are expected to exist - \"get field 'foobar' from the controller and show it here\". The views themselves don't really contain logic. The Java classes backing up the views typically contain thousands of rows of UI and business logic."}
{"_id": "189000", "title": "Technology for C#, Windows, 2D game development?", "text": "I need a nudge in the right direction from someone more experienced in windows game development. I want to write simple C# 2D windows game for fun (think something like old Sim City or Civilization). I used to write simple windows games before, but I was out of the loop from game development for a long time. What would be good technology to start quickly these days? Quick google search, shows DirectX, Managed DirectX, XNA, but I do not know enough about those to make a choice. To make this question more constructive, can someone explain what options are available, and what would be their strong and weak points?"}
{"_id": "225893", "title": "Are classes with only a single method a problem?", "text": "I am currently working on a software project that performs compression and indexing on video surveillance footage. The compression works by splitting background and foreground objects, then saving the background as a static image, and the foreground as a sprite. Recently, I have embarked on reviewing some of the classes that I have designed for the project. I noticed that there are many classes that only have a single public method. Some of these classes are:   * VideoCompressor (with a `compress` method that takes in an input video of type `RawVideo` and returns an output video of type `CompressedVideo`).   * VideoSplitter (with a `split` method that takes in an input video of type `RawVideo` and returns a vector of 2 output videos, each of type `RawVideo`).   * VideoIndexer (with an `index` method that takes in an input video of type `RawVideo` and returns a video index of type `VideoIndex`). I find myself instantiating each class just to make calls like `VideoCompressor.compress(...)`, `VideoSplitter.split(...)`, `VideoIndexer.index(...)`. On the surface, I do think the class names are sufficiently descriptive of their intended function, and they are actually nouns. Correspondingly, their methods are also verbs. Is this actually a problem?"}
{"_id": "56690", "title": "What development tools would you recommend for developing .NET apps in Mono that would give me the same productivity boost as Resharper?", "text": "Aside from using IDEs such as MonoDevelop, what combination of tools do you use in Mono development to give you the same productivity boost that one would normally gain by using R# in VS2010? EDIT: I'm trying to kick the R# habit and switch to Mono development in Linux, but it's hard to kick the habit of using VS2010 + R#, and I need alternative tools to break that habit."}
{"_id": "103102", "title": "What tools do PHP Developers use?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What would you consider best practice workflow tools for web application > (PHP) development? I start my new job next week as a PHP Developer which is my dream job but it's going to be object-orientated which I've only done in Java whilst at university. My question is regarding PHP tools - what are the best IDE's (I use notepad++), what versioning packages work best and bug trackers etc, so I was just wondering what tools the PHP developers out there use in their working lives."}
{"_id": "156362", "title": "Does Sublime's \"minimap\" improve productivity?", "text": "I'm a pretty big fan of Sublime. One of my favorite features is the ability to scroll through your file by using the compressed image of your text on the upper right hand corner (minimap). My gut feeling is this does positive things for productivity: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SkFIc.png) Does having this minimap to scroll through actually improve productivity? P.S. - Side question: Did Sublime invent this idea, or did they take it from another text editor?"}
{"_id": "60802", "title": "If you use MFC how did find it best to learn the concepts?", "text": "I'm currently working with C++ MFC applications in Visual Studio 2008. I have spent most of my time up to this point working with Java Swing development which seems to be not quite as involved as win32 or MFC are. I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of little parameters and specifications that go into creating even a simple element like a status bar or menu bar. I've spent a bit of time working through the MSDN library on the matter but it doesn't seem to explain why many of these parameters and such are needed to set up these elements. I always find that I'm able to wrap my head around things and remember them if I understand why I'm doing it. If you program using MFC (or a similar framework) what did you find helpful in the learning process? Do you recommend any website, books, or other references? Any and all advice is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "60800", "title": "ASP.NET coding style", "text": "I am trying to improve the speed of my coding and I was wondering what tips the pros have. Currently I tend to code about 5-10 lines of code then test and repeat. Is that typical? Or is it better to code larger blocks of code then test. I am always worried of coding a lot than realizing all the code I wrote was wrong and would have to retype."}
{"_id": "253972", "title": "Vaadin Calendar events not shown if overnight", "text": "In my vaadin project there is the possibility to create events that are shown by the calendar. It does works, except when the event is overnight, let's say the night from 23th to 24th, and the calendar shows as only day the 24th. In this case the part of the event that belongs to the 24th is supposed to be shown, but it is not. When I switch to weekly view, the event is shown properly. Here is the function where I get the data and use a container for the calendar:               /* Fill Calendar from database */     void updateData() {          final BeanItemContainer<TypeReservationEvent> container =                 new BeanItemContainer<TypeReservationEvent>(TypeReservationEvent.class);         Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>();         parameters.put(\"roomParent\",chosenRoom);         String query = \"SELECT DISTINCT res FROM EntityReservation res, EntityRoom r, EntityTable rt WHERE res.tableId = rt.id \"                 + \"AND rt.roomParent =:roomParent\";         reservationList = facade.list(query, parameters);         for(EntityReservation rt : reservationList) {                 container.addBean(new TypeReservationEvent(rt));         }         container.sort(new Object[]{\"start\"}, new boolean[]{true});         cal.setContainerDataSource(container, \"caption\",                 \"description\", \"start\", \"end\", \"styleName\");              // Force calendar to refresh         if(selectCalViewType.getValue() == chooseWeeklyView) {             setViewType(calViewType.DAILY);             setViewType(calViewType.WEEKLY);         } else if (selectCalViewType.getValue() == chooseDailyView) {             setViewType(calViewType.WEEKLY);             setViewType(calViewType.DAILY);         }     }      TIA"}
{"_id": "150022", "title": "How to improve my loop logic in programming?", "text": "I know how to do simple loops but I don't know what's going on when many loops are working together. For example:               for (i=0; i <= 9; i++){          document.write(linebreak);            for (m=0; m <= 9; m++){          document.write(i);         }     }      Is there a way I can learn loops inside out?"}
{"_id": "253976", "title": "Interface (contract), Generics (universality), and extension methods (ease of use). Is it a right design?", "text": "I'm trying to design a simple conversion framework based on these requirements:   1. All developers should follow a predefined set of rules to convert from the source entity to the target entity   2. Some overall policies should be able to be applied in a central place, without interference with developers' code   3. Both the creation of converters and usage of converter classes should be easy To solve these problems in C# language, A thought came to my mind. I'm writing it here, though it doesn't compile at all. But let's assume that C# compiles this code: I'll create a generic interface called `IConverter`               public interface IConverter<TSource, TTarget>         where TSource : class, new()         where TTarget : class, new()     {         TTarget Convert(TSource source);              List<TTarget> Convert(List<TSource> sourceItems);     }      Developers would implement this interface to create converters. For example:               public class PhoneToCommunicationChannelConverter : IConverter<Phone, CommunicationChannle>     {         public CommunicationChannel Convert(Phone phone)         {             // conversion logic         }              public List<CommunicationChannel> Convert(List<Phone> phones)         {             // conversion logic         }     }      And to make the usage of this conversion class easier, imagine that we add `static` and `this` keywords to methods to turn them into **Extension Methods** , and use them this way:               List<Phone> phones = GetPhones();     List<CommunicationChannel> channels = phones.Convert();      However, this doesn't even compile. With those requirements, I can think of some other designs, but they each lack an aspect. Either the implementation would become more difficult or chaotic and out of control, or the usage would become truly hard. Is this design right at all? What alternatives I might have to achieve those requirements?"}
{"_id": "150021", "title": "Governance models for multi-institution open source projects", "text": "I'm working on an open source project that has full time professional developers from several universities, plus a couple of other organisations. The product has something like a dozen deployments, various variations, plugins, related components etc. Generally development so far has been driven by institutions \"scratching their own itch\", but with an effort to merge improvements back to a central code base. As it's starting to mature, I'm interested in possible models of open source governance to follow. (So this question isn't \"what are some good things to do\", it's specifically \"what existing, tested models are worth looking at and possibly following\") Specific aspects that such models might cover:   * How decisions about big-impact changes are made (and what happens if someone makes big changes without discussing them first)   * Who manages the product's public image (product marketing, for want of a better term)   * Who represents the product in any comparisons with \"competing\" products   * Whether enhancements become \"core\", \"plugins\", \"related products\" etc   * Whether and how roadmaps are created and published   * How variations on the product are handled (in this case, versions for different academic disciplines)   * Expectations and obligations of participants in the project   * Expectations and obligations of the institutions for which those developers work We'll be looking for something as lightweight and informal as practical."}
{"_id": "220450", "title": "Should I write an interface API before an implementation?", "text": "I've been delving into more \"organized\" programming recently and I've been learning that I should be programming to an interface, not an implementation. With that in mind, would it be better to \"sketch\" out a project in interfaces before writing the implementation for it where possible? And if this is the case, in the case of using 3rd party libraries (ie Lidgren), should I be wrapping those in interfaces as well and resolve them through IOC containers, or is it OK to expose them to the interfaces?"}
{"_id": "240634", "title": "Moving back end from Parse.com to Amazon Web Services", "text": "I'm looking for insight from someone who has used at least AWS (if not also Parse.com). My iOS app currently uses Parse.com for these purposes: 1) to store user data (by translating between JSON and core data) 2) to run javascript functions to update my database with data from the web 3) for easy Facebook authentication, which is the basis for user accounts I am now eligible for a massive hosting credit from AWS, so I am trying to assess the difficulty of switching (not to mention new concerns about Parse.com's quality). From what I've read, it seems AWS offers a variety of hosting options. However, in reference to (1), I have not seen any specific mention of JSON tables, and that's the only kind of database I'm familiar with. So I'm looking for better understanding of which AWS database options would most closely approximate Parse.com's JSON-based database. And I'm also interested in any comments about (2) and (3)---what AWS features would provide the nearest substitutes. Thank you"}
{"_id": "159881", "title": "What is Curiosity's packet structure?", "text": "For NASA's Interplanetary Network, what does a packet look like? It's obviously a form of redundant protocol, stored at the receiver and with built back up. Is there any documentation on the packet structure or the communication protocol, which has to span 14 minute communications?"}
{"_id": "75455", "title": "Application vs middleware development in android", "text": "I have 1 year and 6 months of experience on Android. All of my experience has been into application development. Recently I have got offers from two companies. One is offering me a profile to work on application layer and other is offering a profile on Android middleware. Can you guide me which would be better? Is middleware development better than application layer development from the career perspective in terms of money and other opportunities? I am really in a big dilemma. Any help would be appreciated. Also if someone can tell me as to who will earn more-a five year application layer guy or a middleware guy? Thanks a lot in advance."}
{"_id": "204718", "title": "How do I introduce clean code?", "text": "My team has about 18 members and the code is generally good, using TDD and good specifications makes for working code. But I think they abuse comments in favor of writing cleaner, more readable code. I would like to introduce them to the concept and I'm wondering how can I do that on a larger scale without sitting with each and every one of them on their code and explaining how it could be improved. This is different from the suggested duplicate because I believe I already know how to write clean code. What I'm looking for is how do I introduce _my team_ to writing clean code?"}
{"_id": "209548", "title": "best way to store data from ajax call", "text": "I am writing a web-application in which I am retrieving data's from server through `AJAX` requests and the generate `HTML` content dynamically. I have some data to load, generate HTML from it and `append` into my web page. Now I was thinking on two solutions: 1) Do AJAX call, generate HTML from response, set `display: none` to it when I need, and when I'll need it later, set `display: block;` instead and `hide()` other content I don't need to display (always dynamically generated). 2) Save AJAX response into `variables`, remove HTML generated before, re- generate from `variable` when I'll need it later. I don't know if I explained it well, but I would like to know which is best practice in terms of client/server performance."}
{"_id": "197786", "title": "Qt solutions have been re-licensed, can I use the src directly now", "text": "I have a commercial application that uses a Qt Solutions component. Until recently, this component was licensed under the LGPL license, so I was forced to use the component in the form of a shared library. According to this post http://qt.digia.com/Product/Qt-Add-Ons/Qt-Solutions-Archive/, the Qt solutions have been re-licensed with the BSD license reproduced below. My question is, can I mow use the source code directly in my application or do I still need to create a shared library? (the appropriate copyright notices will be reproduced regardless) BSD lisence: > * * * > > This sofware uses Qt Solutions component which is covered by the following > license: > > Copyright (C) 2013 Digia Plc and/or its subsidiary(-ies). > > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > >   * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. > >   * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright > notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the > documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. > >   * Neither the name of Digia Plc and its Subsidiary(-ies) nor the names of > its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from > this software without specific prior written permission. > > > > ** THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS > IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, > THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR > PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR > CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, > EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, > PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; > OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, > WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR > OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF > ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. > > * * *"}
{"_id": "165934", "title": "Why is there a large discrepancy between the stackoverflow tag frequency and the TIOBE Index?", "text": "By recently looking at the TIOBE Programming Community Index (Sep 2012) I noticed the following order:   1. C   2. Java   3. Objective-C   4. C++   5. C#   6. PHP When looking at the tag frequencies of stackoverflow however, the situation is as follows:   1. C#   2. Java   3. PHP   4. JS   5. Android   6. jquery (JS)   7. iphone (Objective-C)   8. C++ (Java takes the lead when accounting for Android tagged posts w/o a Java tag). JavaScript also likely has surpassed PHP in total numbers of programmers? I realize the tag-frequencies may not be the best indicator, but it is likely a sufficient measure nonetheless. What am I missing that explains this discrepancy, especially for `ANSI C` and `JavaScript` ( #11 in the TIOBE index)? **Links** :   * Wikipedia TIOBE index   * The Transparent Language Popularity Index   * Jobs Tractor language trends   * Github top languages   * Langpop"}
{"_id": "196929", "title": "Can/should the Single Responsibility Principle be applied to new code?", "text": "The principle is defined as modules having _one reason to change_. My question is, surely these reasons to change are not known until the code actually starts to change?? Pretty much every piece of code has numerous reasons why it _could_ possibly change but surely attempting to anticipate all of these and design your code with this in mind would end up with very poor code. Isn't it a better idea to only really start to apply SRP when requests to change the code start coming in? More specifically, when a piece of code has changed more than once for more than one reason, thus proving it has more than one reason to change. It sounds very anti-Agile to attempt to guess reasons for change. An example would be a piece of code which prints a document. A request comes in to change it to print to PDF and then a second request is made to change it to apply some different formatting to the document. At this point you have proof of more than a single reason to change (and violation of SRP) and should make the appropriate refactoring."}
{"_id": "75189", "title": "Why avoid Java Inheritance \"Extends\"", "text": "Good day! Jame Gosling said \u201cYou should avoid implementation inheritance whenever possible.\u201d and instead, use interface inheritance. But why? How can we avoid inheriting the structure of an object using the keyword \"extends\", and at the same time make our code Object Oriented? Could someone please give an Object Oriented example illustrating this concept in a scenario like \"ordering a book in a bookstore?\" Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "223957", "title": "Little and Big endian confusion", "text": "Just to make sure if I understand this correctly. Is this right that little endian processors read the memory addresses from highest to the lowest address and where as a big endian processors suppose to read them from lowest to the highest address? The confusion came when I thought that is it true that little endian processors read the data itself in the reserve order and not just the memory or anyway both? I have read enough about how the data is laid out in the memory and I just want to know how does the data is interpreted by both kinds of processors?"}
{"_id": "182200", "title": "Are silly examples bad way to learn OOP?", "text": "Some tutorials give silly examples to teach OOP, for example: Car _class_ and myCar _object_ , etc. Is that way considered bad in learning OOP assuming that these examples not applied to real programming problems?"}
{"_id": "209099", "title": "Is it *ever* okay to catch StackOverflowError in Java?", "text": "I used to think that it's not, but yesterday I had to do it. It's an application that uses Akka (an actor system implementation for the JVM) to process asynchronous jobs. One of the actors performs some PDF manipulation, and because the library is buggy, it dies with a `StackOverflowError` every now and then. The second aspect is that Akka is configured to shutdown its whole actor system if any JVM fatal error (e.g. StackOverflowError) is caught. The third aspect is that this actor system is embedded inside a web app (for WTF-ish, legacy, reasons), so when the actor system is shut down, the web app is not. The net effect is that on a `StackOverflowError` our job processing application becomes just an empty web app. As a quick fix I had to catch the `StackOverflowError` being thrown, so that the thread pool of the actor system isn't torn down. This lead me to think that maybe it's sometimes okay to catch such errors especially in contexts like this? When there's a thread pool processing arbitrary tasks? Unlike an `OutOfMemoryError` I can't imagine how a `StackOverflowError` can leave an application in an inconsistent state. The stack is cleared after such an error, so computation can go on normally. But maybe I'm missing something important. Also, let it be noted that I'm all for fixing the error in the first place (as a matter of fact I have already fixed an SOE in this same app a few days ago), but I really don't know when this kind of situation might arise. Why would it be better to restart the JVM process instead of catching the `StackOverflowError`, mark that job as failed, and continue with my business? Is there any compelling reason to never catch SOEs? Except \"best practices\", which is a vague term that tells me nothing."}
{"_id": "164668", "title": "What is an efficient algorithm for randomly assigning a pool of objects to a parent using specific rules", "text": "I need some expert answers to help me determine the most efficient algorithm in this scenario. Consider the following data structures:               type B { A parent; }          type A {        set<B> children;        integer minimumChildrenAllowed;        integer maximumChildrenAllowed;     }      I have a situation where I need to fetch all the orphan children (there could be hundreds of thousands of these) and assign them RANDOMLY to A type parents based on the following rules.   1. At the end of the job, there _should_ be no orphans left   2. At the end of the job, no object A should have less children than its predesignated minimum.   3. At the end of the job, no object A should have more children than its predesignated maximum.   4. If we run out of A objects then we should create a new A with default values for minimum and maximum and assign remaining orphans to these objects.   5. The distribution of children should be as evenly distributed as possible.   6. There may already be some children assigned to A before the job starts. I was toying with how to do this but I am afraid that I would just end up looping across the parents sorted from smallest to largest, and then grab an orphan for each parent. I was wondering if there is a more efficient way to handle this? **EDIT:**   * Expanding upon the criteria for even distribution of children, we should attempt to avoid a situation where any one A has 2 or more children than any other A unless they started that way. For example, if A1 has 4 children, and A2 and A3 have 1 child each and there are 2 orphans, then A2 and A3 should each be assigned an orphan making an even distribution of 4, 3, and 3 children for each A.   * Yes I understand we could end up where there is one orphan left and an A that has not met its minimum. This exception case will be handled by a separate algorithm that will try to evenly split an A into two objects and assign the remaining orphans amongst them. **EDIT: 2** Ok, I misunderstood the requirements in my situation. The data model for A shows minimum and maximum property but in fact this should be a global setting for every A. In essence it is a missed requirement that requires the data model to be refactored later. All A will have the same minimum and maximum now. This actually changes things significantly! Sorry for the confusion."}
{"_id": "196050", "title": "Repetitive Drawing in Javascript & Canvas", "text": "Creating an HTML5 page using canvas and javascript to draw a set number of musical staves on the page, spaced a pre-determined amount in between. What I have is re-drawn on top of the canvas 10 times, and what I really need is something that's spaced out apart every time the loop is drawn. I tried to create a JSFiddle, but it doesn't draw anything (which I'm sure is user-error), so here's the js file:               window.onload = function(){          var canvas = document.getElementById('sheetmusic');         c = canvas.getContext('2d');          c.fillStyle = 'white';     c.fillRect(0,0, canvas.width, canvas.height);          //  Draw staves     for (var i=0; i<10; i++){         c.strokeStyle = 'black';         c.beginPath();         c.moveTo(0,10);         c.lineTo(canvas.width,10);         c.stroke();         c.moveTo(0,20);         c.lineTo(canvas.width,20);         c.stroke();         c.moveTo(0,30);         c.lineTo(canvas.width,30);         c.stroke();         c.moveTo(0,40);         c.lineTo(canvas.width,40);         c.stroke();         c.moveTo(0,50);         c.lineTo(canvas.width,50);         c.stroke();         // staff whitespace         c.fillStyle = 'white';         c.fillRect(0,52, canvas.width, 50);         }     };      I'm just not certain how to append `i` from my `loop` into the `height` attribute of my `stroke`."}
{"_id": "209092", "title": "How do I distribute my scientific software with as few dependencies as possible?", "text": "As part of my research, I write a lot of Python and MATLAB code that never needs to be distributed to anyone else. Even if I need to distribute my software, Python and MATLAB, both being interpreted, make sharing it relatively simple. Now I am writing some software in C++ that I'd like to distribute. I have a handle on how to compile the software on my own machine, but what I don't have an understanding of is what needs to be done in order to give other people the software. First, more about my project: I'm writing some code to compute and display visualizations. The project is graph-based, and so I am using the LEMON graph library. I'm exploring VTK and OpenGL implementations for the purpose of displaying the visualization. I'd like to write Python and MATLAB bindings for users of those environments to be able to use my software, and I'd like to produce Windows and Linux versions (I haven't thought about OS X yet...). So, let's take the LEMON graph library as an example. It is a bunch of headers along with a small shared object. On my development system, I compile the library with CMake and link it with my project. Now say I want to give my software to someone running on Windows. I want them to be able to download an installer, click a button or two, and have everything taken care of. I don't want them to worry about installing the LEMON library, or OpenGL. They shouldn't have to knowingly compile anything. Is this possible? I have a feeling it is, but I come up short when searching for references. I have a vague idea that if I compile a binary on Windows I should be able to distribute that binary to anyone running a Windows OS. But what about the libraries I use? I'm guessing I need to statically link them on Windows, and that will take care of the dependency issue there. But in the back of my mind I have read that statically linking is not good practice (or is this just on Linux?) As you can tell, I'm somewhat lost. I'd appreciate a nudge in the right direction, and some references to read if you happen to know of any!"}
{"_id": "209096", "title": "Do you encourage to keep login credential in keystore?", "text": "When developing login module for a web application, do you suggest to keep the username and password in a keystore? Lets assume the keystore was kept in a very safe place in web server."}
{"_id": "209097", "title": "Algorithm to pick user", "text": "I need an algorithm for picking a user. Users are identified by letter {A, B, C, ...} and are ranked by number {1, 2, 3, ...}. Rank is the degree of likelihood to be picked, so a rank 2 user is twice as likely to be picked over a rank 1 user, and rank 4 is four times as likely, etc. So let's say four users are {A, B, C, D}, with rank {1, 1, 5, 2} respectively. A user table might store rank:                  USER   RANK           A   1           B   1           C   5           D   2      How do I pick a user based on rank? My first idea for an algorithm is to add up all the ranks 1 + 1 + 5 + 2 to obtain a sum of 9. Then assign subranges from 1 to 9 to each user, where subrange size is user rank. So A has range [1, 1], B has range [2, 2], C has range [3, 7] (5 possibilities due to rank being 5), and D has range [8, 9]. The table becomes this:                  USER   RANK  RANGE           A   1     [1, 1]           B   1     [2, 2]           C   5     [3, 7]           D   2     [8, 9]      Then calculate a random value from 1 to 9, and find the user whose range contains that value. So if the random value is 4, user C is picked because 4 falls within range [3, 7]. This achieves fairness based on rank. If you repeat picking randomly this way, on the average, users will be chosen fairly, and no user will be starved. However, it feels sloppy, because to add or remove users, I have to recalculate all the ranges. Here is removing user C (recalculate range of user D):                  USER   RANK  RANGE           A   1     [1, 1]           B   1     [2, 2]           D   2     [3, 4]      And here is changing user A to have rank 2 (recalculate range of B and D):                  USER   RANK  RANGE           A   2     [1, 2]           B   1     [3, 3]           D   2     [4, 5]      What is the best algorithm to pick a user? Surely recalculating ranges for every user add, delete, or update is suboptimal. Is there a well-known function or algorithm that can help? * * * UPDATE: @rwong got me thinking about grouping people by rank, then picking rank instead of picking user. With **one** person in each rank, you turn the random-shaped ranges into a very linearly-growing ranges (one dot is one chance to be picked):               Rank 1:  *     Rank 2:  * *     Rank 3:  * * *     Rank 4:  * * * *     Rank 5:  * * * * *      Works great for exactly one person per rank, but it falls apart when you have lots of people at rank 1, where their chances should increase by the number of people within that rank, possibly overtaking the chances of higher ranks. Now we're back to an irregular shape, and must pick from it. A friend pointed me to Rejection sampling. This seems to be a great solution where you pick a random x and y coordinate, see if it falls within the shape, and if so, we now picked rank. Then pick a random person within that rank. To show this solution, here is the shape with multiple people inside each rank. For rank 2, there are 5 people, so that's 2 x 5 = 10 chances:               User count   Rank   Chances(graph)       Chances(number)     5            1      * * * * *            5     5            2      * * * * * * * * * *  10     1            3      * * *                3     0            4                           0     1            5      * * * * *            5      The algorithm is to pick a random row (like picking an x coordinate), and pick a random value from 1 to max(chances) (like picking a y coordinate). See if that is less than or equal to the number of chances at that rank. If not repeat until you have a valid rank and chance. This takes care of distribution probability. Now that you have chosen a valid rank, at that point you simply pick a random person within that rank. Done! The beauty is, to add or remove someone, you increment or decrement the user count column, and assign a new Changes(number). Two small very simple updates. The memory complexity and time complexity of add/remove/update user and also complexity to pick a user is nothing, like O(1). We grouped user by rank, and captured user count in each rank, then calculate chances for that rank, and used a simple looping algorithm to pick random rows and chance values until we get a hit, and finally pick a random person at that rank."}
{"_id": "104643", "title": "Java: would you use an EnumSet in this case?", "text": "I have this weird scenario in which some Java property is used to build and HQL query, and the type of the field is `Boolean`, i.e. it is boxed. I wondered why because I don't really like to think of booleans as having three possible values, `true`, `false`, and `null`. I recently found out the `null` value actually has semantics in this system. The semantics are: `true` means \"only unviewed\", `false` means \"only viewed\", and null means \"all\". So, if null, the field is ignored when building the HQL query, so that the end result contains both unviewed and viewed results. In my opinion this is a case where an enum should be used. Something like this:               enum ViewStatus {       VIEWED, UNVIEWED;     }      My dilemma now is what to use for the third case that should represent the union of these two constants? The two options are:   1. Introduce a third enum constant, `ALL`.              enum ViewStatus {       VIEWED, UNVIEWED, ALL;     }        2. Use an `EnumSet`. `EnumSet` pretty much exists specifically for this purpose, but... it seems like just two much overhead. Especially when reading the values in the part of the code that builds the HQL. So, what are your thoughts? Shall I go with a third enum constant and refactor to `EnumSet` when need arises? Thanks! ### Update I'll go for an `EnumSet` because I want to introduce methods on that enum that wouldn't make sense to be called on `ALL`. For example `ViewStatus.isViewed()`."}
{"_id": "104645", "title": "How do you avoid second-system effect?", "text": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect > The second-system effect refers to the tendency of small, elegant, and > successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their > successors When starting work on a follow-up project that will share the same codebase as the previous project, how do you control the second system effect? How do you stop yourself going overboard on rewriting flaky systems? How do you restrict \"wouldn't it be cool if...\" new features? I find one of the biggest factors is complacency from familiarity with the codebase. It can be very easy to add new features by \"hacking\" together systems that you know inside and out. However the short-term gains are outweighed by the spaghettification of code a few iterations of this approach can produce. How can you coerce programmers to design and implement features properly, when the \"quick hack\" solution is so tantilising?"}
{"_id": "105515", "title": "Are there revision repositories which implement commenting on revisions other than a fixed single commit message?", "text": "Sangdol asked: Why can\u2019t I edit and SVN commit message? There are good reasons to maintain individual records \u2018as is\u2019 for historical purposes. However, there is an arguably objective hazard in not limiting the spread and use of misleading, and dangerous data. Aside: Certainly, sometimes, one should just suck up they\u2019ve made an error. That aside, er aside, it appears clearly beneficial to have some mechanism for recording and sharing the best possible information. It also seems clearly beneficial to have some mechanism for correcting \u2018bad data\u2019 and informing others of \u2018hazardous data\u2019. In the Sangdol thread l0b0, comments: > You're right. There is a fundamentally flawed design assumption in all VCSes > I've ever seen: A commit has one commit message, which is immutable. As Alex > says, we should \"allow multiple versions of the commit message\". To keep the question less subjective, your answers should be an objectively better practice than the \u2018Moses Principle\u2019 of, \u201cGet it right first time, we\u2019re carving this puppy in stone\u201d, and address the ability to handle one or more problems along the lines of (I\u2019m willing to update and alter this list if there are better suggestions): Suppose I discover that a commit message I entered a month ago is misleading, confusing, and downright wrong. Shouldn't I be able to added a correcting notation that will be seen by everyone who sees the incorrect message? (I agree the original message should be easily available unmodified and the change itself should be tracked and timestamped. But I disagree that this constitutes \"changing history\".) \u2013 David Schwartz comment from the Sangdol question."}
{"_id": "58833", "title": "How to price a programming consulations for IT company?", "text": "It's not very rare programming question, but it's about a work of a freelance programmer and I think you can help me so maybe it's ok to pust it here? So one dev-company asked me for doing a programming consultation. It's should be like this that the company can call me and ask questions and gets answers how to do this, how to do that and so on. I never did this kind of work and I think what is the best way to deal with this kind of cooperation. Should i charge per hour? It can be short questions, by phone or e-mail and it can be not easy to calcuate and take a grip on the time and cost. Or should I charge per consultation? And if something will be not-worth mentioning and there will be more short questions but plenty of them? Or should i charge montly? Did you do some kind of \"programming consultations\"? Heck i don't even know what is the right name for this kind of job. Do you know any sites or keywords that could help me get more info on the topic of this kind of cooperation ?"}
{"_id": "176416", "title": "is there anything else like WPF can run in Linux and Mac", "text": "I am looking for anything else has the same `WPF` functionality (animation, 3D,...) but can work in other platforms (Linux, Mac,...) something powerful, fast to develop with, can create my own custom styling on the basic component"}
{"_id": "134968", "title": "Number of combinations", "text": "How to go about getting the number of combination ( C(5,4) ) without using recursion in C? Is there any other method or inbuilt library to do this?"}
{"_id": "200852", "title": "How to implement a distributed proxy with quotas?", "text": "I'm in the process of developing a scalable proxy (Linux/C/C++, Nginx modules or custom HTTP server) handling incoming HTTP requests, and re-routing them to others locations based on parameters included in the incoming request itself (IP, time for example) or external factors (hence the use of an Nginx module able to retrieve the external factors). However, the tricky part is regarding quotas. For example, I wish I could block proxying requests originating from an IP when it's daily allowance quota is over. Implementing quotas is not hard. However, having quotas work in a distributed environment (where ideally everything is shared-nothing) is far from trivial. Indeed, the quota state must be shared to all distributed processes so that they can know whether they should proceed or not. Having a central quota handler means using locks. This makes me think that the performances will drop very quickly. Locking the quotas status every time a proxying request is being handled doesn't look like the solution to me. Any hints ?"}
{"_id": "127857", "title": "How to choose the right web development language for my app without much programming experience?", "text": "I have my own idea for a web application, and I am not a programmer. The application will work similar to Facebook and Twitter, profiles and feeds. I have learned some computer science theory, all the way up to OOP, but have no practical experience. Without any experience, is there a way I can evaluate the different language and platform choices available to me? What kind of things should I be looking at? Ease of setup? How many followers it has? How can I evaluate whether a language will have the capabilities I need?"}
{"_id": "134962", "title": "What can I do to help users create self-service reports?", "text": "I work using Reporting Services 2008 and I'm constantly creating ad-hoc reports. We'd like to use PowerPivot on Sharepoint but we're stuck on Sharepoint 2007. Using easy reporting software like Tableau Server would be fantastic but we can't afford it SSRS Report Builder hasn't proved to be very helpful, unfortunately. I've been trying to think of ways to leverage Excel / PowerPivot or any other (free or inexpensive) tool. We just need to be able to provide more data to users so they can analyze on their own. This is an area our IT team as a whole needs to improve. We use SSRS 2008 and SQL Server 2008. We also don't have a data warehouse, it's in the works..."}
{"_id": "185802", "title": "git: having separate folder for development, why?", "text": "until now I was using dropbox as my main vcs (it is not, but for a single dev does the job pretty decent). However I decided to give git a go and see if it fits my needs. Today I was reading this tutorial and at some point it says: > One of the things you should get used to is doing development in a separate > area, not where you're serving your files from, for obvious reasons I am doing development in django, and I can't find these \"obvious reasons\". Why can't I just use my project's folder to serve files to github? I would be happy if someone clarified this for me now that I am new to git."}
{"_id": "185803", "title": "Differences in If... Else... statement", "text": "When I first started to learn programming I remember having an argument with my teacher about If Else statements. I was arguing that:                if {           ...      } else if {           ...      } ...      is basically the same as:                if {           ...      else {           if {                ...           } else {                if {                     ...                } else {                     ...                }           }      }       but he said they were completely different. After a while of arguing I accepted they are different. Now, over the years I have come back to this and looked over them to see the apparent major difference but for the life of me I cannot see it. Can someone please clarify why exactly they are different (apart from the obvious nesting)"}
{"_id": "36556", "title": "MS Sql server internals/troubleshooting courses?", "text": "We have been working with Microsoft on a ticket we opened due to one of our queries being much slower on MS Sql server 2k8 enterprise vs sql 2k5 standard. The engineers we are working with have incredible tools and knowledge of the internals of sql server. Is there any course I could take to get me this knowledge?"}
{"_id": "146074", "title": "Any recognized convention for repository changelogs?", "text": "We use TortoiseSVN, but we have no bug tracking system. I know, lame, but beyond my control. There were times when svn wasn't in daily use. Now I've had succeeded in pressing for using it regularly, with proper merging, branching, tagging etc. As you could expect, the number of revisions increased in result, which makes browsing repository log a bit troublesome now. I thought about utilizing some convention based on keywords (\"[bugfix]\", \"[feature]\", \"[refactored]\", \"[minor]\", \"[merged-from-trunk]\"... :) so as to make it more searchable. It feels like reinventing the wheel, though. Is there any established convention for that? Or is my approach wrong from the beginning? Any better, alternative solution?"}
{"_id": "185805", "title": "How can I get assembly from an EXE?", "text": "Pretty much my only question is the title. Other then that I want to see the code behind small EXEs but I know it's hard to get it to convert to something like c or c++ so why not get assembly."}
{"_id": "36559", "title": "Qualifying 'happiness' in software development?", "text": "It occurred to me today that often the real goal of questions asked on sites such as this one (where the questions tend to be more open-ended than say, SO) is for the OP to become happier upon achieving the result. We often excuse this by saying our desire is to be more productive or release a better product, but if you continue to look down this path you can determine that the OP seeks greater productivity or product-quality because those are important to his/her 'happiness'. With that in-mind I ask **this** : Have their been efforts to study software development from this perspective? In other words, what practises increase happiness in those who develop software as a career, and who, if anyone, has researched this specifically? As I mentioned above, they may include strategies that increase productivity or improve product quality, but by no means should they be limited to just those."}
{"_id": "139820", "title": "Resources for learning common algorithms by Lisp", "text": "Many books about algorithms and data structures are coded by imperative languages. Is there any book that can show functional programming languages can do the same thing or do them better? In particular I am interested in sorting, searching, data structures and graph."}
{"_id": "229193", "title": "How do I authenticate users from facebook/twitter?", "text": "I need to build a site for a mobile app that allows users to sign in with facebook/twitter or sign up as a new user (traditional username/password). No matter which method the user chooses, they should remain login until they choose to logout. While signing up as a new user is straight forward, using username/password as authentication, I have no idea how I can authentication users who signs up with facebook/twitter. I think there's an access token returned when user gives access to our app, but is this token permanent? Can we reliably store it in our database for authentication? Any advice is appreciated."}
{"_id": "34952", "title": "Which paradigm to use for writing chess engine?", "text": "If you were going to write a chess game engine, what programming paradigm would you use (OOP, procedural, etc) and why whould you choose it ? By chess engine, I mean the portion of a program that evaluates the current board and decides the computer's next move. I'm asking because I thought it might be fun to write a chess engine. Then it occured to me that I could use it as a project for learning functional programming. Then it occured to me that some problems aren't well suited to the functional paradigm. Then it occured to me that this might be good discussion fodder."}
{"_id": "100611", "title": "best approach to learning for an undergrad operating systems course?", "text": "what is the best approach to learning for an undergrad operating systems course in order to understand the concepts and get a good grade in the exam? I know that some courses can be mastered through diligently reading the textbook or attending lectures while for others the concepts can only be understood by doing hands on projects. Is there a general studying approach that should be adopted for this type of a course? I know this may be subjective but I am looking for personal experiences/study methods by those who have taken similar courses to see if there is one particular method that worked well for the majority."}
{"_id": "194279", "title": "Which .NET technology would work as an improvement for this client/server application?", "text": "I am helping a friend with his rewrite of his .NET application, currently using WinForms + sockets, which is a client/server program that currently has on average ~120 concurrent users (sending messages, using the chat). The client will grow and eventually must be able to handle a several thousand concurrent users. A thread is created per user but this is not scalable due to hardware limitations (the server broke when stress-testing more users), not to mention the research I've done on the topic points to this being a bad practice. Speaking of research, I've gathered the following possibilities for this rewrite:   1. Using asynchronous threads with a thread pool of 8 or so threads (will this be able to handle 8,000 users?) or   2. Using WCF (this seems like the more .NET approach and more intuitive with its callbacks instead of using loops) I'm leaning more towards WCF right now. Before anyone asks, I have mentioned how this could be a web application instead, but he said no. Edit (answers to questions): The threads currently read from the socket (the packet) and parse it (simple string parsing) and depending on the type payload, executes another function. The functions executed are not very resource-intensive."}
{"_id": "194275", "title": "Git: rebasing and keeping current to a remote branch - accepted practices?", "text": "When developing on a long-running branch (here defined as living longer than one release), what's the most accepted practice(s) to keeping the branch current with its origin while keeping the history relatively clean prior to merging back? As an example, consider the origin branch (`m`) and a (topic) branch (`t`) with the following history graph:                A[1]--------F[2]--H[3]--J[4] (m)       \\           \\     \\        B----C-D-E--G-----I-----K (t)          [1] - Release 1.0     [2] - Release 2.0     [3] - Hotfix 2.1     [4] - Hotfix 2.2      In branch `t` I've been merging from master (`m`) periodically to keep my topic branch up to date, but there are many small commits between `B` and `K` that I'd like to squash with a rebase. I'm concerned if I squash those commits that I will change the hash of the merged commits from master and create problems for others when I merge my branch back into master for Release 3.0. If I `rebase -i` the topic branch, I expect the graph would look like this:                A---------F---H---J (m)       \\        B-----------------K (t)      where `K` contains all the squashed commits between `B` and `K` including the merged changes from master (`F` and `H`). If I then merge `t` back to master `m` I'm wondering if there likely be conflicts from `F` and `H`. The graph should look like this then:                A---------F---H---J---L (m)       \\                   /        B-----------------K   (t)      `t` can now be deleted because it's no longer used. I'd like to keep the history of where `t` was branched from, so rebasing `B` onto `J` would lose that information and probably solve my problem but the graph would look like:                A---------F---H---J---K' (m)      Is this a valid concern? What is the commonly-accepted practice to keep one's feature branch current with its origin while keeping a relatively clean history? _Note: the example here is simplified, there are actually hundreds of commits from the branch point to HEAD on the topic branch - over 300 - many of which could be squashed out of existence_"}
{"_id": "210428", "title": "Is try-finally expensive", "text": "In case of code where you have to do a resource cleanup before exiting a function, is there a major performance difference between these 2 ways of doing it.   1. Cleaning the resource before every return statement              void func()     {         login();              bool ret = dosomething();         if(ret == false)         {             logout();             return;         }              ret = dosomethingelse();         if(ret == false)         {             logout();             return;         }              dootherstuff();              logout();     }        2. Cleaning the resource in a finally block              void func()     {         login();              try         {             bool ret = dosomething();             if(ret == false)                 return;                  ret = dosomethingelse();             if(ret == false)                 return;                  dootherstuff();              }         finally         {             logout();         }     }      I did some basic tests in sample programs and there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. I so much prefer the `finally` way of doing this - but I was wondering if it will cause any performance hit in a big project."}
{"_id": "18439", "title": "Why is CATALINA_HOME named that way and other interesting program names", "text": "I work with open source software a lot and keep coming across weird and funny names for executables, variables, constants and etc. Currently I am wondering why CATALINA_HOME environment variable was named that way? I did a quick search on google with but nothing relative came up. My only guess is that it is named after the island of the shore of south California. On the related note, very often I find amusing and clever names used in open source programs. One of my favorites are **slapd** and **slurpd** executables of OpenLDAP suite. What are your favorite/noteworthy variable/executable names that you have seen in your programming career? Do you think it is OK to name your variables/executables this way, or would you rather see boring but clear names? PS. This is not really a programming question but I think it somewhat fits in here, according to faq."}
{"_id": "71606", "title": "General knowledge about building businesses applications for (small) businesses?", "text": "How can one a software developer learn about how to provide business solution? including but not limited to, implement business applications in decent software architectural style? CRM, ERP, MDM, SOA etc... are they really strictly reserved for _enterprise_? Where to learn about their...   * common features   * software / data architecture of such system in general   * complexity involved   * latest trend   * no silver bullets, then what are the options?   * popular open source projects that one can build on?   * commercial option if money is not an issue? I searched on Safari Books Online and most of the books are manual for how to customize Vendor X's CRM / ERP for your needs, or wordy and boring written for business students (not for software dev's) Any good resource to learn those listed above? Or is working at a software firm that writes that kind of software the only way to learn the in and out's of writing business application? **update:** bold assumption - large enterprises would go with a vendor like SAP without thinking of building one themselves. Thanks."}
{"_id": "33458", "title": "Microsoft Terminology: .NET C++ vs. traditional C++", "text": "I've recently been working with a team that's using both .NET C++ and pre-.NET C++. I fully understand the technical differences between the two technologies. However, I sometimes feel like I'm floundering when it comes to the terminology used to differentiate the two. Example: Say we have two projects:   **ProjectA** contains \"C++\" code that builds a .NET assembly DLL.   **ProjectB** contains Visual C++ code that builds a traditional native Windows DLL. What is the best way to succinctly and terminologically draw a distinction between the two projects? Again, I'm not asking for an in-depth technical description of the differences between the two technologies. I'm just looking for names and labels. This is how, today, I might try to make the distinction when talking to someone: _\"ProjectA is a managed .NET C++ project\"_   and   _\"ProjectB is an unmanaged native C++ DLL project.\"_ However I am not at all certain that this terminology is ideal, or even correct. Please describe what you feel the ideal language to use in this situation (or similar situations) might be. Feel free to motivate your answer."}
{"_id": "15605", "title": "How useful are employment tests when interviewing candidates and predicting success?", "text": "When pre-screening candidates for a position prior to the first face-to-face interview, how useful are technical tests in filtering out poor candidates and possibly predicting their ability to succeed in the position? While some of the personality based ones might not say much, is there benefit to sending a technical test (e.g. on Java or C#) prior to a face-to-face interview or even a phone screen? Also, do these tests ever falsely identify a strong candidate as one that is likely a poor fit for the position?"}
{"_id": "138888", "title": "What is the purpose of whitelisting in Phonegap? Is there a way around it?", "text": "I am using the new phonegap 1.5.0 (which is confusingly renamed cordova despite no mention of the rename on the phonegap site), and I'm finding that the white-listing feature on iOS is quite restrictive. I understand that having a whitelist is more secure in that it only allows trusted domains, but what if you want to load urls that have been loaded dynamically? You don't know exactly which domain will be loading, so you can't put it on the whitelist. An example use-case would be ad-serving and opening privacy policies. Why is the whitelist mandatory, and is there a way around it?"}
{"_id": "30188", "title": "Database design and performance impact", "text": "I have a database design issue that I'm not quite sure how to approach, nor if the benefits out weigh the costs. I'm hoping some P.SE members can give some feedback on my suggested design, as well as any similar experiences they may have came across. As it goes, I am building an application that has large reporting demands. Speed is an important issue, as there will be peak usages throughout the year. This application/database has a multiple-level, many-to-many relationship. eg               object a     object b     object c     object d          object b has relationship to object a     object c has relationship to object b, a     object d has relationship to object c, b, a      Theoretically, this could go on for unlimited levels, though logic dictates it could only go so far. My idea here, to speed up reporting, would be to create a `syndicate` table that acts as a global many-to-many join table. In this table (with the given example), one might see:               +----------+-----------+---------+     | child_id | parent_id | type_id |     +----------+-----------+---------+     |    b     |     a     |    1    |     |    c     |     b     |    2    |     |    c     |     a     |    3    |     |    d     |     c     |    4    |     |    d     |     b     |    5    |     |    d     |     a     |    6    |     +----------+-----------+---------+      Where a, b, c and d would translate to their respective ID's in their respective tables. So, for ease of reporting all of a which exist on object d, one could query               SELECT * FROM `syndicates` ... JOINS TO child and parent tables ... WHERE parent_id=a and type_id=6;      rather than having a query with a join to each level up the chain. # The Problem This table grows exponentially, and in a given year, could easily grow past 20,000 records for one client. Given multiple clients over multiple years, this table will VERY quickly explode to millions of records and beyond. Now, the database will, in time, be partitioned across multiple servers, but I would like (as most would) to keep the number of servers as low as possible while still offering flexibility. Also writes and updates would be exponentially longer (though possibly not noticeable to the end user) as there would be multiple inserts/updates/scans on this table to keep it in sync. Am I going in the right direction here, or am I way off track. What would you do in a similar situation? This solution seems overly complex, but allows the greatest flexibility and fastest read-operations. _Sidenote 1_ \\- This structure allows me to add new levels to the tree easily. _Sidenote 2_ \\- The database querying for this database is done through an ORM framework."}
{"_id": "251096", "title": "Should we test the values of objects returned from the methods being unit tested?", "text": "Being new to unit testing I would like to know if I am supposed to test the values of objects returned from methods when doing unit testing. As an example, consider the following classes:               public class Person     {         public int Id { get; set }         public int Age { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public Pet Pet { get; set; }     }          public class Pet     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public int Age { get; set; }         public Breed Breed { get; set; }     }      And a method with the following declaration:               public Person GetPerson(int id) { ... }      I am now curious if I am supposed to create a test that checks to see if the various properties of the Person are correct (GetPerson_PersonFound_PersonHasCorrectName() and so on)? I suspect that I, under normal circumstances, should? All depends on the requirements? If those properties should be tested, am I then supposed to dig into Pet and check those properties as well? What about going even further, down into Breed? Can add up to quite a few tests quite quickly."}
{"_id": "233752", "title": "What to expect as a programmer in a bank?", "text": "After three phone interviews, I got this offer in a large bank as a Java programmer. I have no prior experience in financial institutions (only two years as a regular Java dev), so I'm a little bit scared and concerned about whether my skills are right for this role. The main thing that bothers me is math. During all of those interviews we never touched the topic of mathematics, but I know that this position is related to financial instruments like derivatives. How much math should I expect on the assumption that no trading is involved, but rather, accounting? How can I prepare better for this job? I was searching Google for some Java financial programming tutorials/books but no luck here - maybe you can recommend something? I'm really interested in the stock market but never tried this theoretical approach. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "171327", "title": "Making sure users have a modern web browser", "text": "We have several users running on old hardware and old browsers. What would be the best way to get them to upgrade to a newer web browser, without nagging users with a newer web browser."}
{"_id": "225817", "title": "Can we say that Java or C# have unified inheritance trees?", "text": "Can we say that Java or C# are OO languages with a unified inheritance tree/unified type system? By unified inheritance tree/unified type system I mean that every class derives implicitly or explicitly from one single type? Are there any object oriented language that do not follow that concept?"}
{"_id": "226477", "title": "Creating a online database creator", "text": "I've been thinking of creating an online database creator (think DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, Intuit Quickbase, etc.). I've been thinking of a couple solutions:   1. Have 4 database tables: **Tables** , **Rows** , **Columns** , **Items**. To create a database as a user, you'd go to the \"Add New Table\" page, give a name and type to as many columns as you want, then save. Then you'd be taken to a page which displayed a list of rows that had items inside that corresponded with the columns. The problem with this approach is I can't figure out how to link the item with both the row and the column.   2. Create an actual database table for each user, and when they insert a new column ( or field), it would just a database INSERT. Cons: I think this would be slow and expensive (correct?), not to mention would make a feature like how DabbleDB did relationships between tables very hard to implement. So what is the best way to build this? Or is there a better way than even the two I've mentioned."}
{"_id": "112119", "title": "What electronic user-story-mapping tools can you recommend?", "text": "Agile software development relies heavily on a work item type called **user stories**. For example, you have a backlog full of user stories and you can select a few of them to work on during the next sprint. But where and how do you find user stories to put into the backlog? There is a popular technique for doing that called **story mapping**. Jeff Patton invented it and here is the definitive guide on how to do it. The question is, what electronic tools are out there that support Patton's story-mapping technique? I've done a bit of research, found Pivotal and Rally plug-ins (but I'm not a customer of either) and I'm currently experimenting with SilverStories. What other tools are out there? What have you used? What do you (not) recommend? Why? **UPDATE:** Some people who wrote comments seem to lean towards an answer that applying this technique is simply impossible with an electronic tool and we should just accept that. Can't someone write it up as an answer? **UPDATE** (to clarify the question in light of Alex Feinman's comment): the question is about identifying options for story-mapping. Since Jeff Patton's technique can obviously be done on a white-board with stickies, the question focuses on additional options that might be provided with electronic tools. (Premature) commitment to any particular tool or class of tools is not the point of this question."}
{"_id": "115465", "title": "What are the typical naming conventions for OO C public and private functions?", "text": "**Short Question**   Is there a typical way to name 'public' and 'private' members of an OO C project? **Background**   I fully understand that public and private members do not _really_ exist in the C language. However, like most C programmers, I still treat members as public or private to maintain the OO design. In addition to the typical OO methods I have found my self following a pattern (see example below) that makes it easier for me to distinguish which methods are _meant_ for the outside world vs the private members that may have fewer checks / are more efficient etc... Does a standard or best practice exist for such a thing or is my example below a good way to approach this? **Example Header**               #ifndef _MODULE_X_H_     #define _MODULE_X_H_          bool MOD_X_get_variable_x(void);     void MOD_X_set_variable_x(bool);          #endif /* _MODULE_X_H_ */      **Example Source**               // Module Identifier: MOD_X      #include \"module_x.h\"          // Private prototypes     static void mod_x_do_something_cool(void);     static void mod_x_do_something_else_cool(void);          // Private Variables     static bool var_x;          // Public Functions - Note the upper case module identifier     bool MOD_X_get_variable_x(void)      {return var_x;}     void MOD_X_set_variable_x(bool input){var_x = input;}          // Private Functions  - Note the lower case module identifier     void mod_x_do_something_cool(void){          // Some incredibly cool sub routine      }          void mod_x_do_something_else_cool(void){          // Another incredibly cool sub routine      }"}
{"_id": "115466", "title": "If a language changes quickly, is this considered a good thing?", "text": "I have seen some languages that change quickly (I mean they are improved every year for example) and some others that are improved slowly. My question, if a language changes quickly is this a good thing or a bad thing for the programmer? Do programmers like to learn new thing in the language or do they prefer to stick with what they already know?"}
{"_id": "229628", "title": "HTTP API that wraps any Python-Scrapy spider", "text": "I have to write an HTTP API that wraps any Scrapy spider, it should accept Requests, execute them in Scrapy, and return data extracted by the spider and lets the user reuse the same code to extract interactively. Scrapy supports crawling in batch mode very well, i.e. a long running process starting from seed requests, extracting and following links and exporting data. How should I go about doing this ? What are the technologies involved ? Where can I learn those ? Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "229627", "title": "How to manage focus for a small set of simple widgets", "text": "I'm developing a set of simple widgets for a small (128x128) display. For example I'd like to have a main screen with an overlay menu which I can use to toggle visibilty of main screen elements. Each option would be an icon with a box around it while it is selected. Button (left, up, right, down, enter) events should be given to the widget that has \"focus\". Focus is a simple thing to understand when _using_ a GUI, but I'm having trouble implementing this. Can you suggest a simple concept for managing focus and input events? I have these simple ideas:   * Only one widget can have focus, so I need a single pointer to that widget.   * When this widget gets some kind of \"cycle\" input (as in \"highlight the next item in this list\"), the focus is given to a different widget.   * a widget must have a way of telling the application which widget the focus is given to next.   * if a widget cannot give a \"next focus\" hint, the application must be able to figure out where the focus should go. Widgets are currently structured like this:   * A widget can have a parent, which is passed to the constructor. Widgets are created statically, as I want to avoid dynamic memory allocation (I only have 16kB of RAM and I'd like to have control over that).   * widgets have siblings, implemented as an intrusive linked list (they have a `next` member). A parent has a pointer to the head of its list of children. Input events are arguments to the widgets `buttonEvent` methods which can accept or ignore that event. If it ignores the event, it can pass the event to its parent. **My Questions:**   1. How can I manage focus for these widgets?    2. Am I making this too complicated?"}
{"_id": "229620", "title": "How to get around the Circular Reference issue with JSON and Entity", "text": "I have been experimenting with creating a website that leverages MVC with JSON for my presentation layer and Entity framework for data model/database. My Issue comes into play with serializing my Model objects into JSON. I am using the code first method to create my database. When doing the code first method a one to many relationship (parent/child) requires the child to have a reference back to the parent. (Example code my be a typo but you get the picture)               class parent     {        public List<child> Children{get;set;}        public int Id{get;set;}          }     class child     {         public int ParentId{get;set;}         [ForeignKey(\"ParentId\")]         public parent MyParent{get;set;}         public string name{get;set;}      }      When returning a \"parent\" object via a JsonResult a circular reference error is thrown because \"child\" has a property of class parent. I have tried the ScriptIgnore attribute but I lose the ability to look at the child objects. I will need to display information in a parent child view at some point. I have tried to make base classes for both parent and child that do not have a circular reference. Unfortunately when I attempt to send the baseParent and baseChild these are read by the JSON Parser as their derived classes (I am pretty sure this concept is escaping me).               Base.baseParent basep = (Base.baseParent)parent;     return Json(basep, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);      The one solution I have come up with is to create \"View\" Models. I create simple versions of the database models that do not include the reference to the parent class. These view models each have method to return the Database Version and a constructor that takes the database model as a parameter (viewmodel.name = databasemodel.name). This method seems forced although it works. NOTE:I am posting here because I think this is more discussion worthy. I could leverage a different design pattern to over come this issue or it could be as simple as using a different attribute on my model. In my searching I have not seen a good method to overcome this problem. My end goal would be to have a nice MVC application that heavily leverages JSON for communicating with the server and displaying data. While maintaining a consistant model across layers (or as best as I can come up with)."}
{"_id": "229623", "title": "Sorting lists (global vs local)", "text": "In my application users have lists. They can either add a new item to their list or add an item from a previous list. The set of all items I'll call G (global) (each user's global list is their own). G = { a1, a2, a3,...,an} After (or during) a user has created a list they can sort it. This has been no problem. The problem happens when try to apply an items order globally. For example, if list one has m items: L1 = {b1, b2, b3,...,bm} And the user changes the order of b1 from 1 to 9 in L1. Then when the user saves the list I'd like its global order to change as well. But I'm not sure what to change it to. Here's how I'm doing this now. Take our list L1: L1 = { **b 1**, b2, b3,...,bm} Move b1: L1 = {b2, b3, **b 1**,...,bm} Find out the global index of b3 (say 41), add one (42) and that's b1's index. Then find all other items that have a global index greater than or equal to 42 and add one. What's the best (or at least better) way to do this?"}
{"_id": "229622", "title": "Coming up with a valid ranking algorithm for articles", "text": "I'm creating a website which will publish one or more articles a week. I'd like to be able to rank the articles based on popularity. In order to do this, I need a formula to calculate a score for each article. This formula should reward popular articles (those that receive many views), while also bringing new articles closer to the top in order to keep the content fresh and interesting. The website doesn't support voting on the articles. The readers will be able to comment and I can have the site track the amount of unique views the article gets. * * * # My attempt I have come up with a way to calculate a score for each article but I'm not sure if it's the right way to do it, or if it will work at all. This formula calculates the score:               score = unique_views / ( hours_since_release * 4 )      The formula keeps articles with many views afloat, while also making sure that they'll eventually subside to leave space for new articles. I wrote a small program to test this formula. **Here is the output of one run.** This script generates between 0 and 2 articles every day, and simulates their score as time progresses. When an article is created, it chooses a random number (`M`) between 100 and 1000, representing its popularity. Every \"day\", the script adds a random number of views between 0 and `M` to each article. The actual views shown in the output (`V`) are the result of this formula:               view_count = ( 10 * log10( view_count ) ) ^ 2      I used this to make sure the view count doesn't keep growing forever. Instead, its growth will slow down as time goes, as it might in real life. The values `A` and `S` in the output represent respectively the age in days of the article and its score, based on the formula shown above. This formula causes some interesting behavior: if you look at the game **Tomb Raider: Anniversary** , it spawns with a big `M`number, which means it's going to be very popular. It gets to the top on the first day, goes down in the next 2 days and then comes back to the top for 3 days in a row due to the amount of views it gets. This seems to be the behavior I'm looking for, but I'm not sure if it will work in practice, or even if this is the right approach at all. You can find the source of my rough prototype here if you'd like to run it yourself. * * * Here comes the question: **How can you come up with and test ranking algorithms so that they satisfy the conditions of the problem, using the available variables?** Secondary question: _Is my ranking algorithm appropriate, and would it work in the situation I described?_ * * * EDIT: From the links in _maythesource.com_ 's answer, I just realized there's also the issue of score gaming. Would only considering _unique_ visits somehow prevent gaming, or is it a weak countermeasure?"}
{"_id": "240875", "title": "Should you use PHP to render the html page or use javascript frameworks? Server-side page rendering or client-side page rendering?", "text": "This may be a inappropriate question, but I'm really need help demystifying this. Suppose we want to create web application like reddit or Gmail. The way I understood it from my research is that there are two ways to approach this problem. 1) Web application like reddit can be created using PHP only. HTML for the front-end will be rendered by PHP on the server and application logic will also be written in PHP on the back-end side. With this method, web application would not feel \"real-time\" since for any changes you would need to refresh the page. 2) Create RESTful backend in PHP and use JavaScript frameworks like backbone.js to create single page web application and manipulate the HTML on the front-end. Front-end written in javascript would send requests to back-end which would only return JSON packages (no HTML). On the front-end, Javascript should decide how to manipulate the front-end based on the JSON packages returned from the back-end. With this method, web applications would be real- time. What is the advantage of using method 2 over method 1? I read that Gmail is implemented using method 2. Why did they use javascript frameworks to create the front-end, if they could send HTML rendered on the back-end side and make AJAX calls to check for notifications? Is it generally better to use method 2 over method 1? Server-side page rendering or client-side page rendering? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "137687", "title": "Why is subclassing too much bad (and hence why should we use prototypes to do away with it)?", "text": "I was reading up on design patterns, and I read that the prototype design pattern does away with excessive subclassing. Why is subclassing bad? What advantage would using a prototype bring about over subclassing?"}
{"_id": "137686", "title": "How useful is a project log or diary?", "text": "I want to know how difficult/useful it is to keep a project log or diary. I'm worried that keeping track of what I did will eat up too much time..."}
{"_id": "146924", "title": "Class fields/variables. Keep single reference point at class level or pass to individual methods?", "text": "Often I see a class where a value is injected into a method or even a constructor. That value is then used by several methods within that class and a reference is simply passed through to each method that requires it. To me this seems like a code smell, although I could very well just be a pedant. Unless a variable is only required once within the scope of a single method, I would usually have a class level field that is initialised by the method that receives the value. Any other methods would then reference this field if needed. This seems to be a lot cleaner to me. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "184048", "title": "Shorter release cycle with DVCS", "text": "Does the choice of using a DVCS over a CVCS actually make for shorter release cycles? If so, what makes software release cycles shorter and what are the arguments for this?   1. Related to pull request? Does easier submission of patches play a role here?   2. Related to people factor? Are project teams that use CVCS act more conservative with release schedules?   3. Any other factors?"}
{"_id": "146927", "title": "Class Design -- Multiple Calls from One Method or One Call from Multiple Methods?", "text": "I've been working on some code recently that interfaces with a CMS we use and it's presented me with a question on class design that I think is applicable in a number of situations. Essentially, what I am doing is extracting information from the CMS and transforming this information into objects that I can use programatically for other purposes. This consists of two steps:   1. Retrieve the data from the CMS (we have a DAL that I use, so this is essentially just specifying what data from the CMS I want--no connection logic or anything like that)   2. Map the parsed data to my own [C#] objects There are basically two ways I can approach this: **One call from multiple methods**               public void MainMethodWhereIDoStuff()     {         IEnumerable<MyObject> myObjects = GetMyObjects();         // Do other stuff with myObjects     }          private static IEnumerable<MyObject> GetMyObjects()     {         IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = GetCmsDataItems();         List<MyObject> mappedObjects = new List<MyObject>();         // do stuff to map the CmsDataItems to MyObjects         return mappedObjects;     }          private static IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> GetCmsDataItems()     {         List<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = new List<CmsDataItem>();         // do stuff to get the CmsDataItems I want         return cmsDataItems;     }      **Multiple calls from one method**               public void MainMethodWhereIDoStuff()     {         IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> cmsDataItems = GetCmsDataItems();         IEnumerable<MyObject> myObjects = GetMyObjects(cmsDataItems);         // do stuff with myObjects     }          private static IEnumerable<MyObject> GetMyObjects(IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> itemsToMap)     {         // ...     }          private static IEnumerable<CmsDataItem> GetCmsDataItems()     {         // ...     }      I am tempted to say that the latter is better than the former, as GetMyObjects does not depend on GetCmsDataItems, and it is explicit in the calling method the steps that are executed to retrieve the objects (I'm concerned that the first approach is kind of an object-oriented version of spaghetti code). On the other hand, the two helper methods are never going to be used outside of the class, so I'm not sure if it really matters whether one depends on the other. Furthermore, I like the fact that in the first approach the objects can be retrieved from one line-- most likely anyone working with the main method doesn't care how the objects are retrieved, they just need to retrieve the objects, and the \"daisy chained\" helper methods hide the exact steps needed to retrieve them (in practice, I actually have a few more methods but am still able to retrieve the object collection I want in one line). Is one of these methods right and the other wrong? Or is it simply a matter of preference or context dependent?"}
{"_id": "146929", "title": "Generate analog signal from Windows 7", "text": "I want to output an analog signal from my Windows 7 computer. The wave will be a combination of about 5 frequencies, with a maximum of 28 MHz. It won't be a problem to generate the wave data with C++, but I am not sure how to output the wave dynamically (as it is being generated). I am sure an audio port is not set up to output 28 MHz, but is there some way to bypass the sound card and interface directly with the port? If not, what would be the easiest way to output a high frequency analog signal with C++?"}
{"_id": "184047", "title": "How do you handle multiple users editing the same piece of data in a webapp?", "text": "There's a project I'm working on that is looking to produce a web application that will manage a task list between multiple users. This is a master task list whose task items get distributed by an authorized user. Each user has his/her own account to login and view the tasks they are assigned; it is possible for multiple users to have a single task in-common. I am trying to leave details of the project out of this as I'm grappling more with the overall concept of how to handle the following situations, but if it helps, I'm using Java, EclipseLink, and GWT with RequestFactory implemented. The database is PostgreSQL. So the conceptual problems I am attempting to reconcile are the following:   1. If a single task that is common to multiple users changes in any way e.g. task completed, deleted, etc., the task list of all the users who have this task will be updated. What design patterns are there that assist in implementing this function?      * Some patterns I have looked at are Observer and Mediator - are there others that should be considered over these?   2. Say there are two users changing the same task at the same time.      * First, should I allow that situation to happen or should I put a lock on it until one or the other person is done making changes?      * Second, if I don't put a lock on it, how do I reconcile whose changes to accept? This involves the situation in 1 because user 1 could submit the data and before user 2 receives the updated data, he/she may have gone ahead and submitted his/her's changes. I am really looking for any guiding points, advice, or tips you can provide on how to properly sync data between multiple instances of this web app. I would very much appreciate it!"}
{"_id": "215501", "title": "how to improve design ability", "text": "I recently went on a couple of interviews and all of them asked a one or two design questions, like how you would design a chess, monopoly, and so on. I didn't do good on those since I am a college student and lack of the experience of implementing big and complex systems. I figure the only way to improve my design capability is to read lots of others' code and try to implement myself. Therefore, for those companies that ask these questions, what are their real goals in this? I figure most of college grads start off working in a team guided by a senior leader in their first jobs. They might not have lots of design experience fresh out of colleges. Anyone could give pointers about how to practice those skills? Thank you very much"}
{"_id": "184043", "title": "Documentation Generation - FiM++", "text": "_This is a question I originally asked on Stack Overflow, but as a conceptual design question as opposed to a technical issue, I believe it may be more appropriate, or possibly have alternate parallel value, on this board._ The structure of a FiM++ program requires that it end with the closing of a letter and the code author's name in a specific manner.               Dear Princess Celestia and Stack Exchange and String: A Sample:         ...     Your faithful student, Southpaw Hare!      According to the language specification, the keyword \"Your faithful student,\" (including the comma but not the following space) is used as an end tag for class definitions, and the following name is a comment with no syntactical effect. The fact that the author is automatically included (if not strictly required) in every file makes me wonder if it can be used as a form of interpretable documentation akin to Java Docs. In other words, that other programs or editors would be able to parse out this name and use it in some manner.   1. What is the requirement of such internal comment-based documentation? Is there anything in this particular type of syntax that would cause problems?   2. Is the keyword sufficient to fit with the theme? It occurs to me that the lack of ability to use \"Your faithful students,\" for a plural form (or possibly \"Yours faithful,\" or \"Yours truly,\" for an ambiguous version) would make listing multiple authors look awkward and unnatural (and looking like a natural human-written letter is one of the core design paradigms).   3. If creating a Java Docs methodology was considered, then what other features should be included? For one, a date seems common. Including some form of date comment at the top of the letter would probably look natural and not defy the design paradigm. Since the language is new, unfamiliar to most, and honestly quite silly, here are a few resources to consider: Original Release Announcement October Followup"}
{"_id": "180978", "title": "TDD and test automation in applications heavily dependent on databases and user input", "text": "Recently I have been reading online about eXtreme programming and agile practices. I wish to adapt them. However most of my code is all in PHP which is the normal CRUD type web applications. Moreover I user web framework like CodeIgniter, which also abstracts a lot of the core features. To sum up, how can I implement the test driven development into applications which are heavily dependent on databases and user input, particularly in the test automation part? ### I would now ask this question targeting my current project I am working on an college forum web application. It has the basic social network features and also includes XMPP server on its stack. The following components constitute my application stack:   1. Apache web server with mod_php enabled.   2. PHP as a back-end language.(CodeIgniter framework)    3. MySql database.   4. Openfire server for XMPP.   5. HTML, CSS, jQuery and Strophe(for XMPP) on front end, and   6. A Python middleware for XMPP. Currently I am working without any testing or build cycle. I use SVN as the version control system. And I wish to include TDD and CI into the development process. I already have some code in the project. What strategies and best practices should I adopt for implementing TDD and CI in this kind of project? PS: We are a team of three people working on a self project as such we dont have any other person who influences the design(apart from the end users). ### This is what I did to start implementing I refactored the login function which was taking the username and password passed from the front end and then applies sanity checks, checks for valid username, then for valid password, If yes it sets the session cookie and redirects the user to a page based on his role. I broke the above function into three one to take username and password and check if they are correct, another to set the cookies and the last one that takes the values from front end and applies sanity checks, calls the other two functions and then redirects. I could write test for only the first function. Is that enough?"}
{"_id": "224406", "title": "Kanban: How to choose work item size", "text": "Starting with Kanban, I'm not sure about how granular my work items should be. While you find lots of concrete recommendations about how to choose the WIP, most of the Kanban tutorials I've read stay quite vague about the size of a work item (= a card on the board). For planning and estimation, people often recommend to keep the size of an item small, say 2-16 hours. Does the same apply for Kanban? Is there always a 1:1 mapping from my plan to the board? If there's no best practice or general recommendation, which factors would influence my choice of work item granularity?"}
{"_id": "51", "title": "What demands should be placed on source repository / versioning tools?", "text": "And do you know a tool which meets those demands?"}
{"_id": "180972", "title": "Designing entities to be self-manageable", "text": "Although this is a gamedev project, the question is about general OOP practices, so I believe it goes here. Here's the problem: (note: I will call any equivalent of real-world physical objects \"entities\" from now on; e.g. a rock in the game is an entity) A specific class:               class Character     {     public/private CharacterInventory Inventory;     public/private CharacterStats Stats;     public/private CharacterEquipment Equipment;     }      Inventory functionality is self-contained in the CharacterInventory class. Same goes for stats. My aim is to make each character in my game a self- manageable entity. What do I mean by this? To put it plainly, I want to design the base Character class so that in the end I get an object that reacts in its entirety even when the smallest change occurs, in any of its components. To make things clearer, here's an example: when an item that changes the strength of the character gets equipped, the CharacterEquipment component of Character gets updated. At the same time, the Character will call the Stats object to change the strength attribute. I've thought about doing this using events. Character subscribes to Equipment's OnEquip event, and in its handler, tells the Stats component do do its job. I believe this is an elegant enough solution; my issue however lies somewhere else. I've got two ways in which I can update the character's inventory. First, by making the inventory (and any other component) private and providing a public method inside of Character, that does the work of calling the appropriate update method in the inventory. Like so:               Character chara = new Character();     chara.AddItemToInventory(SomeItem);      The 2nd way is by making the components public and accessing them like:               Character chara = new Character();     chara.Inventory.AddItem(SomeItem);      To me, both ways seem roughly equivalent in terms of readability. But the 2nd way seems like it's breaking the whole \"self-manageable\" idea. Basically, I'm invading the \"private\" space of the character. By going with the 2nd way, I can hook to the inventory events from some other place, but then again, this breaks the main idea even further. However, going the 1st way, I get the impression of writing duplicated code; even though it's not! I think the impression is given to me by the fact that Character.AddItemToInventory(...) and CharacterInventory.AddItem(...) share enough naming similarities to suggest duplicated code. To be sincere, I'd go the first way, even though it seems to me like an extra layer of code. Then again, to make the character a self-manageable object, an extra layer of _security_ is essential. But I'd like to hear from people more experienced than me. Are there any advantages to the 2nd way? Any severe disadvantages? I just can't get over the impression that I'm writing extra, unnecessary code."}
{"_id": "157345", "title": "Why are the arguments for substring functions mismatched?", "text": "In many languages, the substring function works like this: substring(startIndex, endIndex) returns the substring from startIndex until endIndex-1 (if you view startIndex and endIndex as 0-based) / from startIndex+1 to endIndex (1-based) This is confusing. I understand that the two parameters can be interpreted as \"startIndex\" and \"length of the substring\", but in my opinion that is still confusing and even in this case, startIndex is 0-based while length is 1-based. Why not stick to one convention for both the function arguments? and why do newer languages like ruby and python continue to stick to this standard?"}
{"_id": "157343", "title": "How to determine whether Design Pattern is implemented correctly?", "text": "I am successfully able to scale all my old applications which were not using documented Design Patterns. Whatever pattern it is I don't know. To a large extent, I only felt a need to use simple OOP concepts. The Design Patterns concept is complex and hard to understand. When implemented, how to determine whether the implementation is correct and the application possess real loose coupling?"}
{"_id": "47528", "title": "What do update versions really mean?", "text": "A lot of software updates follow the scheme of v0.1 to v0.2 to v2.6.5.6. What do these \"updates\" to software really mean? Is there an industry standard always followed or do programmers pretty much keep raising the update # or adding more decimals?"}
{"_id": "200462", "title": "What is the pronunciation of $ / $. in jquery", "text": "When you are reading jQuery code aloud and you get to anything that uses `$`, do you pronounce that as \"dollar sign\", \"jQuery\", \"jQuery selector\". Is there some other pronunciational shorthand for the `$.` syntax (as in `$.each`)? Or is it just as simple as saying \"dollar sign dot ... \"?. I ask because since `$` is an alias of `jQuery`, I wonder if its pronunciation carries over."}
{"_id": "189830", "title": "System evolution approach: gradual or cataclysmic?", "text": "When working on established systems, I've often found ways to improve a user interface to maximize user efficiency (example: legacy app maintenance screen doesn't allow multi-line operations where doing so could save the user hours per week over the \"edit one line at a time\" existing method). The challenge I encounter is that a GUI improvement is something that I can't apply universally to a system without a more sizable programming effort (an effort that management is unlikely to approve). I then struggle with the decision to either try and add the improvement in one screen, or give up on it until the mythical project is someday approved. Not doing it means the system is not enabling users to be most efficient, and this bothers me, as if I have purposely allowed a speed throttle on them that they don't deserve. But doing it means that now there is some inconsistency in the system GUI. Not all the screens will work the same way, which can create potential confusion. Given your knowledge and experience, what is the best practice here? Consistency or efficiency? **Update** Thank you everyone for your answers. I have upvoted all your thoughtful responses. I am familiar with the Spolsky article Robert Harvey links to. The change I refer to is less risky than the whole rewrite of the Netscape example it refers to, but the article is pertinent and always a good read. This question was spurred by a time when I found a way to make it possible for users to process items for invoicing faster, so it could be argued that it improved revenue efficiency, however, as many of you ascertained, it was not critical. The stakeholders succumbed to the decision-consequence gap, and as they were not the ones having to do the data entry were more than happy to let the users languish with the inefficient GUI. However, the craftsman in me wants continuous improvement, and as Justin Cave says, if you do nothing, your system is not evolving, it is stagnating. In some other cases I've done what is suggested in the responses and tried a grassroots approach, having users push for change through their stakeholder representatives. I found that approval for incremental changes that broke consistency have depended on accessibility to end-users, a willing stakeholder in the change request meetings and strangely enough, IT leaders that either cared very much or not at all about the application in question. Those that cared empathized with the end-user's pain and those that didn't were comfortable leaving the decision to subordinates that did. The moderately concerned would glom onto the consistency principle which is arguably laudable but to which rigid adherence without a plan for change means stagnation."}
{"_id": "67414", "title": "Do I need to upgrade log4j to slf4j", "text": "We are reviewing our JEE web application for some planned refactoring and one of the suggestions is to replace `log4j` with `logback` or `slf4j` The team is not clear on whether we should do this - because currently we want to follow _if it ain't broke, don't fix_ in this area. **Edit:** I'm not asking for a comparison of the logging frameworks, but whether it is a valuable _refactoring_ element to change the framework when we're quite happy with log4j"}
{"_id": "144568", "title": "force recompilation of war file including its Jar dependencies", "text": "I have a project A (a webapp), depending on project B (B.jar) and this one depending on project C (C.jar). I would like to create a maven goal named \"Rebuild War\", that clean all compiled code for these 3 projects and rebuild the whole in order to obtain a fresh War file. I tried mvn clean package on project A, but I noticed that B and C are not recompiled. Indeed, B.jar and C.jar that are contained in local repository don't have a changing creation date. Is there an adapted maven command for this requirement ?"}
{"_id": "183773", "title": "What does this mean: Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>>", "text": "In ASP.Net MVC, in the razor view, you can type this kind of code:               @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name)      (in this case, it creates a textbox for the field Name of the object which is defined as the type of the model) Now when i see the definition of the EditorFor method, it is this:               EditorFor<TModel, TValue>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> html, Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>> expression);      So i tried implementing that kind of method myself, but i realy don't see what this means **`Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>>`** Who can explain to me what an expression is, and the Func, and the Expression of type Func? The explanations i found where all so abstract it didn't give me a clue...."}
{"_id": "159419", "title": "I'm at a crossroads with programming and theory", "text": "I bought \"Beginning C++ Through Game Programming\" yesterday to start learning about C++ and programming. I'm going on hour 33, and I can't seem to put this book down. I was talking to a friend who's more experienced, and he suggested that I should now spend my time learning about algorithm design and data structures because languages come and go but in depth knowledge of theory (as in not just knowing about all the different types of algorithms, but being able to create my own) will be everlasting and more beneficial. I guess what I'm asking is this: Should I focus more on learning more C++ and buying more books or should I instead buy a book on algorithms and focus more on that? (Yes, I know I can do both and I plan to, but I'm asking which should receive more attention) P.S. - I've been looking into Financial Engineering for college and apparently C++ is the dominant language, but as my friend said, \"languages come and go\" so would I be wasting my time by trying to master C++?"}
{"_id": "100551", "title": "Will this referral code scheme work?", "text": "I'm thinking of implementing the following referral code scheme to sell my software:   * Anybody can obtain a referral code. They just provide an email and I send them the code.   * With that they can recommend the software to their friend, etc.   * Each time someone buy a license using a referral code, I give 10% of this license to the referrer   * They can do that as many times as they want What do you think? Can you see any potential problem with this scheme? Do you think it will work?"}
{"_id": "137533", "title": "Type mocking frameworks does not change coding practices from testability point?", "text": "Many people recommend that we should code against interfaces and avoid statics for testability. Interfaces are not just for testability, they are sometimes a requirement. But sometimes we introduce new interfaces in application only for testability. If type mocking frameworks help us to isolate dependent types, then why should we use interfaces just for the sake of testability? Also, why should we avoid static members?"}
{"_id": "159411", "title": "Create code editor auto-suggest (like IntelliSense)", "text": "If one would to write auto-suggest for an IDE/code editor (like IntelliSense), does one generally need to write a parser for any language that should be supported, or do compilers/runtimes provide these things? Neither the PHP or Python binaries seem to support just parsing files and generating some kind of raw output. Eclipse seems to roll their own parser, but is this the only way to do it? Using the \"native\" parser would be awesome on so many levels :)"}
{"_id": "150153", "title": "With entity framework - who needs a DAL", "text": "On EF4 actions on entities are actually done via the Business Element layer (BE). Why do I need the Data Access (DAL) on another layer?"}
{"_id": "108204", "title": "The business and architecture challenge behind creating effective user stories", "text": "A friend of mine in another department had a problem and came to me with a question that I wasn't sure how to help him with. He recently became promoted to architect and he was put in charge of design and leading a team of developers that are of questionable quality and little to no experience with following a project plan. This team got in the habit of starting development as soon as possible before business needs were even evaluated, and then hacking the software to pieces when requirements finally became clear near the end of the deadline. Because of this they have tried formulating design standards in the past but never bothered following them later in the project when the heat was turned up. He aims to change this and asked me about the best way to handle these challenges. My perspective is that the project is doomed before they start because management sets a tight deadline before the requirements are clearly known or understood. Dithering from the client exacerbates the problem further. I told him that Agile was MADE for these kinds of problems, formulate user stories based on the customer requirements as you are aware of them now, and then as more user stories or as they change just add to the backlog and readjust your sprint plan accordingly. But then I got thinking about what really is the best way to handle this? The client has no way of knowing exactly what they want from the software now, but they know they want it and are willing to pay for it and they want at least some kind of working release by a specific date. They are given a quote with a breakdown of what will be delivered (it is a guess for both vendor and client), price is agreed upon. When formulating the quote a deadline of some kind must exist even though it is soft at this point. User stories aren't even known and certainly not tasks and the ability to provide a reasonable estimation either. How do you approach this challenge? When this quote is taken and agreed upon is it normal to use the rough deliverables as outlined in the quote as a basis for formulating your user stories? Further do you have any advice on how to \"keep the design patterns and documents alive\" throughout the project as requirements change drastically? **EDIT:** It seems many people assume that the client involved should be the one to provide the user stories as if it were a given. I don't have any personal experience with a client willing to put this kind of effort into being involved with the development process. Due to this, it seems to make sense that because of their lack of input into the development process, they are not a very good stakeholder for the project itself. The stakeholders at this point become the business analysts and application managers who are supposed to squeeze whatever trickle of information they can get from the client and turn it into usable information for the developers. This is clearly not working though so perhaps the ONLY way that Agile or Kanban can work is to have direct client involvement in user stories or else the project is doomed to failure?"}
{"_id": "170059", "title": "good literature for teaching object oriented thinking in C", "text": "Quite often C is the primary platform for the development. And when things are large scale, I have seen partitioning of the system as different _objects_ is quite a natural thing. Some or many of the object orientated analysis and design principles are used here very well. This is not a debate question about whether or not C is a good candidate for object oriented programming or not. This is also NOT a question how to do OO in C. You can refer to this question and there are probably many such citations. As far as I am concerned, I have learned some of this things while working with many open source and commercial projects. (libjpeg, ffmpeg, Gstreamer which is based on GObject). I can probably extend a few references that explains some of these concepts such as   1. Event Helix article   2. Linux Mag article   3. one of my answers which links Schreiner's reference   Schreiner is definitely one of the only reference I know. However, there are few things/ approaches that I don't quite like about it. At times, this books gears more towards theoretically being closure to OO_ness_ rather than being useful. But, definitely, this is perhaps the most giant leap of all reference I have found. Unfortunately, when we induct younger folks, it seems too hard to make them learn all of it the hard way. Usually, when we say it's C, a general reaction is to throw away all of the \"Object thinking\". Looking for help extending above references from those who have been in the similar areas of work. > **Are there any good formal literature that explains how Object thinking can > be made to use while you are working in C?** I have seen tons of book on general \"object oriented paradigms\" but they all focus on advanced languages mostly not in C. You see most C books - but most focus only on the syntax and the obfuscated corners of C and that's it. There are hardly ANY good reference, specially books or any systematic (I mean formal) literature on how to apply OO in C. This is very surprising given that so many large scale open source projects use C which are truly using this very well; but we hardly see any good formal literature on this subject."}
{"_id": "170058", "title": "Best Creational Pattern for loggers in a multi-threaded system?", "text": "This is a follow up question on my past questions : Concurrency pattern of logger in multithreaded application As suggested by others, I am putting this question separately. As the learning from the last question. In a multi-threaded environment, the logger should be made thread safe and probably asynchronous (where in messages are queued while a background thread does writing releasing the requesting object thread). The logger could be signleton or it can be a per-group logger which is a generalization of the above. Now, the question that arise is how does logger should be assigned to the object? There are two options I can think of: **1\\. Object requesting for the logger:** Should each of the object call some global API such as `get_logger()`? Such an API returns \"the\" singleton or the group logger. However, I feel this involves assumption about the Application environment to implement the logger -which I think is some kind of coupling. If the same object needs to be used by other application - this new application also need to implement such a method. **2\\. Assign logger through some known API** The other alternative approach is to create a kind of virtual class which is implemented by application based on App's own structure and assign the object sometime in the constructor. This is more generalized method. Unfortunately, when there are so many objects - and rather a tree of objects passing on the logger objects to each level is quite messy. > My question is there a better way to do this? If you need to pick any one of > the above, which approach is would you pick and why? Other questions remain open about how to configure them:   1. How do objects' names or ID are assigned so that will be used for printing on the log messages (as the module names)   2. How do these objects find the appropriate properties (such as log levels, and other such parameters)  In the first approach, the central API needs to deal with all this varieties. In the second approach - there needs to be additional work. Hence, I want to understand from the real experience of people, as to how to write logger effectively in such an environment."}
{"_id": "79352", "title": "Is there a need for a reporting system in PHP?", "text": "I have designed a reporting system to be used in our enterprise level application.   I am able to open source it as this is not our business, and we can gain improved code by contributing it to the community.   My question, is there all ready a reporting system written in PHP, written for php 5.3 by the latest standards etc? Some features of the current version:   1. 100% MVC separation   2. Good framework to manipulate query results, before, during and after fetching   3. easily apply pagination to report   4. Extremely easy to apply numerous filters to reports   5. System, once is learned, can be easily extended (has hookups almost to anything)   6. easily re factored   7. statistical functionality. (Will also be happy to hear what other features I need to add)."}
{"_id": "136484", "title": "Continuous Integration : which frequency?", "text": "I've always launched builds after each commit, but on this new project, the architects just asked me to change the frequency to \"one build every 15 minutes\", and I just can't understand why that would be a good reason vs \"building on each commit\". First off, some details :   * Objective-C (iOS 5) project   * 10 developpers   * each build actually takes ~1 min, and includes build and unit testing.   * the integration server is a Mac Mini, so computing power isn't really a problem here      * we use Jenkins with the XCode plugin My arguments were that if you build at each commit, you can see right now what went wrong, and correct directly your errors, without bothering the other devs too often. Plus our tester is less bothered by UT errors this way. His arguments were that devs will be flooded by \"build error\" mails (which is not completely true, as Jenkins can be configured to send a mail only for the first broken build), and that metrics can't be done properly if the frequency of builds is too high. So, what's your opinion on this ?"}
{"_id": "170052", "title": "starting project with growth in mind.", "text": "I have an idea for a web application and have some good people keen to get involved. I will be doing most of the code at the start and have a few years experience with some quite large projects. I have nearly 0 budget. What view should I take with regard to data storage / database? Get the project running quickly and inexpensively, then re-evaluate if it is a success? Does anyone have experience with this and advice?"}
{"_id": "177589", "title": "Is it reasonable to require passwords when users sign into my application through social media accounts?", "text": "I've built an application that requires users to authenticate with one or more social media accounts from either Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. **Edit** Once the user has signed in, an 'identity' for them is maintained in the system, to which all content they create is associated. A user can associate one account from each of the supported providers with this identity. I'm concerned about how to protect potential users from connecting the wrong account to their identity in our application. **/Edit** There are two main scenarios that could happen:   * User has multiple accounts on one of the three providers, and is not logged into the one s/he desires.   * User comes to a public or shared computer, in which the previous user left themselves logged into one of the three providers. While I haven't encountered many examples of this myself, I'm considering requiring users to password authenticate with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn whenever they are signing into our application. Is that a reasonable approach, or are there reasons why many other sites and applications don't challenge users to provide a user name and password when authorizing applications to access their social media accounts? Thanks in advance! **Edit** A clarification, I'm not intending to store anyone's user name and password. Rather, when a user clicks the button to sign in, with Facebook as an example, I'm considering showing an \"Is this you?\" type window. The idea is that a user would respond to the challenge by either signing into Facebook on the account fetched from the oauth hash, or would sign into the correct account and the oauth callback would run with the new oauth hash data."}
{"_id": "177581", "title": "Code review process when using GIT as a repository?", "text": "What is the best process for code review when using GIT? We have an external GIT provider (Unfuddle) and have caps on resource usage - so we can't have dedicated remote repositories for every dev. Current process:   * We have a GIT server with a `master` branch to which everyone commits    * Devs work off the local `master` mirror or a local feature branch    * Devs push to server's `master` branch   * Devs request code review on last commit Problem:   * Any bug in code review are already in master by the time it's caught.    * Worse, usually someone has burnt a few hours trying to figure out what happened... So, we would like   * To do code review BEFORE delivery into the 'master'.    * Have a process that works with a global team (no _over the shoulder_ reviews!)   * something that doesn't require an individual dev to be at his desk/machine to be powered up so someone else can remote in (remove human dependency, devs go home at different timezones) We use TortoiseGIT for a visual representation of a list of files changed, diff'ing files etc. Some of us drop into a GIT shell when the GUI isn't enough, but ideally we'd like the workflow to be simple and GUI based (I want the tool to lift any burden, not my devs)."}
{"_id": "232937", "title": "TDD verifying dependency method invoked correctly", "text": "I am trying to follow TDD in my proj but I can't get my head around how to verify I am calling a dependency correctly or even if I should be trying to verify it. Here's the requirement: Write an AddSalesOrderTask class that is responsible for adding an order to an ERP system. The class can take any dependencies needed but must have an Execute method signature like this:               public class AddSalesOrderTask {                  public override bool Execute(OrderData input) {           throw new NotImplementedException();       }     }      The AddSalesOrderTask.Execute method needs to map OrderData to ERPSalesOrder and then call IERPClient.AddSalesOrder. I have an interface to access the ERP service like so:               public interface IERPClient {         void AddSalesOrder(ERPSalesOrder order);     }      How do I verify that the mapping is done and then passed into the client? Should I be testing both operations in this method? To make this testable my first thought was to introduce an IMapper interface and pass it as a dependency to AddSalesOrderTask:               public interface IMapper<in TFrom, in TTo> {         void Map(TFrom source, TTo destination);     }      Following TDD would this be a good first test?                   private AddSalesOrderTask _testObj;              [Fake, UsedImplicitly]         private IERPClient _client;              [Fake, UsedImplicitly]         private IMapper<Order, SalesOrder> _mapper;              [TestInitialize]         public void MyTestInitialize() {                     Fake.InitializeFixture(this);             _testObj = new AddSalesOrderTask();         }              [TestMethod]         public void Execute_MappedSalesOrderAddedToERP() {                  // Arrange             var input = new OrderData();             var salesOrder = new SalesOrder();                  // Act             _testObj.Execute(input);                  // Assert                         A.CallTo(() => _mapper.Map(context.Order, salesOrder))                 .MustHaveHappened();             A.CallTo(() => _client.AddSalesOrder(salesOrder))                 .MustHaveHappened();         }      Am I thinking about this correctly?"}
{"_id": "132473", "title": "how to communicate clearly and make sure the team is on task", "text": "I'm just doing a course in communication where we code a server and write design documents. Most of the server is already coded, and from the information given in the assignment we just try to fill in the blanks. I'm not really the team leader, but my two teammates are very passive. We often interpret the assignment differently, and I don't understand their thinking very well which frustrates everyone. I try to explain to them my point of view and acknowledge theirs, but after awhile they just give in to me. I want them to understand me, not give in. Teammate A seems to look defeated after we argue, and he gets emotional when frustrated. Should I be more gentle? We all code together. Sometimes I get lost while coding and after a few hours I have no idea what my teammates have done. I ask them what they are doing from time to time but I don't want to be too controlling. Also I'm confused as to which parts should be mine and which parts are my teammates. If a functionality that they need to code ends up having to use my function and change my function a bit, do I have to code the part that will be in my function?"}
{"_id": "185394", "title": "What is the current state of SECD and SKI machine use and research?", "text": "I'm doing some independent research/study with a professor who's a very functional guy. The goal is to examine more of what's happening behind the scenes with functional languages than we normally would during the course of the class I'm also taking with him (in which we're writing interpreters). The independent course will go beyond the interpreter level and look at how we might translate some of the concepts to a hardware machine. Specifically, my professor mentioned two books, _Functional Programming: Application and Implementation_ by Peter Henderson -- which covers the _SECD machine_ (an idealized machine for functional computing), and _The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages_ by Simon Peyton Jones -- which covers the _SKI machine_ (and of course _combinators_ ). From the poking around I've done, these two books seem pretty legendary in the functional programming world -- which is great (I still think K&R is one of the best _C_ books). But, both books are also more than 30 years old. I'm curious if there has been any further research or instructive literature produced regarding these topics. It would also be interesting to know if any of these concepts are making their way into modern compilers and close-to-the- kernel interpreters."}
{"_id": "185395", "title": "Branches/decision count in an example", "text": "Having read SO, just found this question:               if (x > y)          print (x)     else if (x < y)          print (y)     else          print (x,y)      **How many branches and decisions are there?** It mentiones there should be 3 decision and 5 branches, yet I cannot see how. For me I can only imagine 4 branches (2 Ifs with two possible results). Original question here"}
{"_id": "241043", "title": "Minimize travel distance of n people to n locations", "text": "The problem: Given the coordinates of N people on a regular 2-dimensional plane and N target points-of-interest (POI) on the same plane, determine the set of pairs of people and POIs that minimize the sum of straight-line distances between the locations in each pair. No two people can go to the same POI, and all POIs must be covered. In other words, if I have 5 trucks that need to go to 5 locations and trucks are interchangeable, where do I send the trucks so that the least amount of fuel is used (assuming fuel use is proportional to distance traveled)? Discussion: Brute force would take N factorial. Is there a better way? This would seem to be a pretty common operations research problem, but my google-fu is insufficient."}
{"_id": "103609", "title": "Is a partially familiar scripting language desirable?", "text": "Given that a program (under development) needs a scripting language, and that for various reasons it's not possible to use an off-the-shelf one as is, I'm considering basing it on the syntax and some of the semantics of JavaScript, being something pretty much everyone is familiar with, including using the .js file extension so that e.g. editors will know how to syntax highlight scripts. It's necessary to make _some_ changes anyway, for certain technical reasons. It strikes me as reasonable to make some other changes that most people would consider improvements. For example, eliminating the 'semicolons are optional' rule that sometimes trips people up, and making a block within a function a new lexical contour. But I'm not certain this is what most people actually want. So of the following options:   1. Stick as close to JavaScript as I possibly can, even aspects of it that everyone agrees are mistakes in and of themselves, deviating only when technical considerations make it absolutely necessary. (There is no question of being able to use existing JavaScript code in any case, I'm talking purely about the benefits of familiarity from the user's viewpoint.)   2. Go with the plan currently under consideration, make something that looks pretty much like JavaScript but differs in various regards.   3. All or nothing, if I can't use actual JavaScript, create a new scripting language that is visibly completely different (e.g. not C-style syntax) so there's no possibility of confusing it with JavaScript. Which option would generally be considered preferable? Is there a fourth option I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "103606", "title": "Can I develop GUI in MonoTouch and MonoDroid with a shared .NET backend?", "text": "Is it possible to create a shared backend logic using .NET and have the respective GUI front ends in MonoTouch and MonoDroid?"}
{"_id": "234196", "title": "Unit Testing a method that contains two output type parameters", "text": "I was following a book Art of Unit Testing, This book says that You must not have any logic in Your asserts as this reduces readability of test, or I may be testing too many things at a time. Suppose there is a method with signature as below:               public int DoSomething(int variable1, out string variable2, out float variable3)     {     ...     }      How should I test this method, as I have to assert on return value, variable2, variable3 ??? * * * Sample Test method that tests all of these three concerns:                   public void DosSomethingTest(){             //add code for arrange             int expectedvalue=12;             string expectedVariable1=\"I am expected\";             string expectedVariable3=15.9;             string actualVariable1, actualVariable3;             var sut=new Foo();             int actualValue=sut.DoSomething(15, out actualVariable1, out actualVariable3);                  //this is where I am testing 3 concerns in one test. Is there a better way?              if(actualValue==expectedvalue){                 if(expectedVariable1==actualVariable1){                     if(expectedVariable3!=actualVariable3){                         Assert.Fail(\"Unexpected variable2 returned\");//pseudo code                     }                 }                 else{                     Assert.Fail(\"Unexpected variable1 returned\");//pseudo code                 }             }             else{                 Assert.Fail(\"Unexpected Value returned\");//pseudo code             }         }      ## Approach 2 * * * Seperate Test methods that tests concerns separately:                   public void DosSomething_Passing15_Returns12Test(){             //add code for arrange             int expectedvalue=12;             string expectedVariable1=\"I am expected\";             string expectedVariable3=15.9;             string actualVariable1, actualVariable3;             var sut=new Foo();             int actualValue=sut.DoSomething(15, out actualVariable1, out actualVariable3);                  Assert.IsTrue(actualValue, expectedvalue);         }              public void DosSomething_Passing15_ReturnsExpectedVariable1Test(){             //add code for arrange             int expectedvalue=12;             string expectedVariable1=\"I am expected\";             string expectedVariable3=15.9;             string actualVariable1, actualVariable3;             var sut=new Foo();             int actualValue=sut.DoSomething(15, out actualVariable1, out actualVariable3);                  Assert.IsTrue(actualVariable1, expectedVariable1);         }              public void DosSomething_Passing15_ReturnsExpectedVariable2Test(){             //add code for arrange             int expectedvalue=12;             string expectedVariable1=\"I am expected\";             string expectedVariable3=15.9;             string actualVariable1, actualVariable3;             var sut=new Foo();             int actualValue=sut.DoSomething(15, out actualVariable1, out actualVariable3);                  Assert.IsTrue(actualVariable3, expectedVariable3);         }      Isn't approach 2 adhering to \"Tests should not test more than one concern\"? ## Conclusion * * * If redesigning of SUT is possible:   1. There should ideally be no out parameter instead an aggregate class should be evaluated in Asserts.    2. If there are unrelated out parameters then SUT method should be refactored into multiple methods, then those new methods should have their own Test methods and they will then test only one concern. If redesigning of SUT is not possible then as per the answer there will be three Asserts"}
{"_id": "234191", "title": "Schemaless NoSQL RESTful design?", "text": "In a recent project; I used MongoDB with MongoEngine (an ORM/ODM for Python). This allowed me to specify schema in a central \"Model\". My new project I am hosting on Windows Azure; and there is no non-SQL based ORM/ODM wrapper for it in Python. How would you recommend I proceed:   * Engineer my own Python ORM/ODM for Windows Azure   * Or should I not worry about complicated backend business-logic\u2014to reduce computation and transport overhead\u2014and just write routes like this:              POST /api/u_speced/<noun>/create -d {'type': 'schema', **(JSON_schema)}     \u2192 {'created': true}     PUT /api/u_speced/<noun>/add -d {'type': 'data', **(JSON validated against JSON_schema)}     \u2192  {'id': <id>}     GET /api/u_speced/<noun>/<id>     \u2192  {JSON representation of record}"}
{"_id": "241049", "title": "How to properly handle conditional dependencies in a factory?", "text": "Let's say you have a string `$action` run-time, that specifies which type of `$object` needs to be created: `$dbobject`, `$memcacheobject`, `$fileobject`, `$xmlobject`, etc. Assume also, that creation of an object is non-trivial and a `$factory` is required. Obviously, different object types depend on different things, one on PDO, another on Memcache and so on. So how should I create an object in this conditions? I'm left with a few options:   1. Create a `switch ($action) {}` _outside_ of a factory in order to call different subclasses of my factory, which will call it's type of object, for example: `case 'db': $obj = new DBFactory($dbh); break;`. This is clearly bad, since this switch have to be present everywhere where the object is needed.   2. Have a `switch ($action) {}` _inside_ some sort of a factory factory, which will do the code in #1. What should then the parent factory depend on, everything it _might_ create? Since it _might_ need database and memcache, in order to follow dependency injection rules you need to supply parent factory with _both_ pdo and memcache instances, _even if it won't use them_. That also sounds pretty bad. Another problem is that if I create another object type that depends on something new, then I have to add it's dependencies all over the code where theese factories are instantiated, which is a horizontal change which I should in fact be avoiding. That tells me there is some concept for this problem I don't see right now, therefore the question. What I'm trying to point out is that even if only the `$fileobject` is needed, which does not depend on anything, the code that parses `$action` still needs all dependencies (which is an overkill) or it will instantiace some of them (which is against DI) or needs to reach out to global state/use singletons/registry, which is also considered a bad practice. What would then be a good practice in this situation?"}
{"_id": "234192", "title": "Algorithm for base-conversion in C?", "text": "I put in this code which does what it's supposed to do, but perhaps there is a better or more general approach? I'm converting a 4-digit base 10 number e.g. \"11\" to base 16 e.g. \"17\" (which gets written out on the display as 11 when called with 17 because the function takes bits as argument).                   int hex1 = perhapsprime / 1000;         int hex2 = (perhapsprime - hex1*1000) / 100;         int hex3 = (perhapsprime - hex2*100 -hex1*1000) / 10;         int hex4 = perhapsprime - hex3*10 - hex2*100 - hex1*1000;         int test = 16*16*16*hex1+16*16*hex2+16*hex3+hex4;      The integer \"test\" will have the correct value after this code was run, but is there a more efficient way to do it? ## Update 140330 09:43 CET I settled for the following that appears to be able to convert any number of digits to BCD:               int tbcd(int v) {         int total = 0;         int resultbase = 1;         while(v > 0) {             total += resultbase * (v % 10);             resultbase *= 16;             v /= 10;         }         return total;     }"}
{"_id": "67945", "title": "Programming languages differences and efficiency, does it matter?", "text": "I am fairly new to programming, I have studied in computer science for 3 years at college, but as you know, school is only 2% of what really makes one a fully-fledged programmer. I have a lot of trouble understanding why people say language x is more efficient that language y. I only understand when it comes to pre-compiled vs runtime compiled. I understand defining data types like a constant in code is bound to be faster than letting the computer/language figure it out(like php or ruby), but when it comes to using C or Java what is it that makes C faster? Aren't they both going to be compiled into machine language in the most efficient way possible? To me, it seems as if the only difference between using a language like C or Java is; a higher level language like java would be easier to organise and write/maintain large applications with classes and inheritance. But I feel as if it should really make no difference when once it is compiled. Can someone explain? btw i only know higher level languages like php, java, ruby, vb, c#. Maybe that's why it is hard for me to imagine? the next language i want to explore is most probably C"}
{"_id": "188017", "title": "Automation Approaches: Events/Triggers/Cron", "text": "It has been my experience, when building websites, that most of the logic of a system is executed when user input is accepted, be it via POSTs, GETs etc. I would like to know what processes or methodologies exist in Python (leaning towards using Python), PHP, and Ruby that allow web applications to perform tasks automatically without user input. For instance performing tasks at a certain time or condition or event. I have no experience with, and little understanding of, triggers, events, or cron, and all of the articles I ran across on google during my searches assumed a high familiarity with those concepts. I simply desire a description of ways one could go about handling non-reactive processes in a web application."}
{"_id": "230470", "title": "How to organise intermodule integration in a modular project?", "text": "I'm currently writing my own PHP Framework (yes, another one) for studying purposes. I'll actually try to use it as my graduation dissertation. After two failed attempts, I've finally found a way to develop it in a modular architecture, like Zend and Symfony. I have some loosely coupled modules that can work apart from each other, but their usability would be better if I stick them together. Now I'm wondering the best way of integrate them. I'm not willing to put a module as requirement for the other, because this breaks the modular design. My first idea was to create a different module that requires the other two and put them to work together. This would work fine when I have just two modules, but when I have a module that can be integrated with two or more modules I get lost. Should I create one module for each possible integration? Or should I create just one module and put all integrations I could have there? Am I clear? If not, I'll try to explain it better. ### Edit: A practical example. My Data Access Layer implements the **Table Row Gateway** pattern. I have a `TableGatewayInterface` and a default implementation `TableGateway`. Imagine now that I want a table with a cache for the last queries. I can achive this with the **Decorator** pattern, creating a `CachedTableGateway` that depends on `TableGateway` and a cache component, let's say `CacheInterface`. I don't need the cache, but it could be useful. Should I embed this decorated implementation into the original package, creating a requirement to the cache component? Or should I create an \"integration package\" that requires both cache and table gateway?"}
{"_id": "230476", "title": "Avoiding pitfalls of a naturally recursive relationship between tables", "text": "I'm developing a system to manage \"cases\". There will eventually be many different \"kinds\" of cases, so I've started with a \"CaseTemplate\" table that can be used to define what a case looks like and, via satellite tables, define the specific characteristics for a particluar kind of case. One such characteristic is phases. A case may move through a series of phases, but the phases depend on the kind of case. So, naturally, I created a CasePhases table with a many to one relationship with the CaseTemplate table (since each template may define its own phases). But then I hit a snag... which phase should a case start in? My first thought was that I could just define the \"StartingPhase\" in the CaseTemplate table using a foreign key, but that creates a recursive relationship between the CaseTemplate and CasePhases tables. I suppose I could make the StartingPhase field nullable and just not assign a value at first (updating the record later when the phases for the CaseTemplate have been defined, and using business logic to ensure that a CaseTemplate has defined a StartingPhase). Or I could add an \"IsStartingPhase\" field to the CasePhases table (with some business logic to enforce that a Template may have only one phase set as a Starting Phase). Both have some advantages and disadvantages, but neither strike me as particularly elegant or perferable over the other. I've got to believe that this is not an uncommon scenario. Are there any best pratices for handling this database relationship, maybe some terminology I'm missing? I'm looking for an explanation of the problem domain I'm dealing with and perhaps some approaches I've not considered. I'm using a relational database (SQL Server), so solutions using \"exotic\" technologies probably won't work in my environment."}
{"_id": "230477", "title": "Naming convention for List in xsd schema", "text": "What is the best way to name a List in XSD schema?               <xs:element name=\"CurrentEmployee\" type=\"Employee\" minOccurs=\"0\" maxOccurs=\"unbounded\" />      Currently I have a list of Current Employees as specified in my schema above. But when the Java classes are generated , I access the list of employees as               List<Employee> emps =  req.getCurrentEmployee();      which gives a wrong impression that we are retrieving a single employee. If I make my schema as \"CurrentEmployees\" , Java code would look good but when we look at the XML data , each row will be displayed as `\"<CurrentEmployees ...\".` So I can't decide between CurrentEmployees vs CurrentEmployee. Any suggestion for getting this naming convention correct?"}
{"_id": "188011", "title": "Any resources or books to build VNC client", "text": "I am very interested in network programming and I want to build a VNC client for fun and for learning purposes. I have been Googling for resources about VNC client and server, but most of time, resources found were about how to use VNC not how to build or how it actually works in business layer so I can get an idea about how it could be simulated. Please suggest me any documentation / articles / resources related to this. Thanks in advance. It is my first post on Programmers Stackexchange site so please forgive me if this question is not appropriate for topic of this site."}
{"_id": "230479", "title": "Using interfaces as part of encapsulation", "text": "I'm creating interfaces for a number of our existing classes for mocking reasons. Many of these classes also have package scope methods as an attempt to give some level of encapsulation by ensuring only the controller can modify some of their state. I had thought I could use this change to try to get cleaner encapsulation as well. My question is two fold. First, is it considered viable to use interfaces for encapsulation? I could make certain methods not in my interface that are available in the class. or I could have my IBar method have a getFoo method that returns an IFoo, but my bar class overrides getFoo to return a Bar. The problem is that anyone could easily cast my Ixxx to the actual class, so is it really considered a worthwhile encapsulation? My second question has to do with my model. I would want my model to have some getAllFoo sort of methods that return IFoo objects. however, I want my controller to have a way to fetch the actuall Foo implementation (ie, know that my IFoo is of type Foo) so that it has access to methods not in the interface. What is considered the cleanest way to ensure my controller has access to the full class but other classes only see the interface? I asume just casting the interface to it's concrete class would be considered rather sloppy?"}
{"_id": "101608", "title": "Is it a good idea to use Header(\"Content-Type [...]\"); in the core file of a CMS?", "text": "I have been working on content management systems for about 7 years. 2 years ago created my own. Currently building a newew, better and bigger version. However, fell into dilemma. I have a core file, that gets included to all pages. Core file makes sure of adding functions, config, mysql connection etc. I also have added `Header(\"Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8\");` on the top of the code in the core file. Recently I had to make a xml-generator, with `Header(\"content-type: text/xml; charset=UTF-8\");`. First, of course I couldn't get the xml working, because I forgot about my content-type setting in the core file.. Later I just added the content-type: text/xml after the core file include..   Basically everything works, but I wish polish this project to the finest. **So I'm thinking now, is adding the \"content-type: text/html\" in the core file, a good idea?** I had an idea, to include the core file like this: `include($rootpath . 'inc/core.php?content-type=xml');`, then in the core file, the header will be set based on the `$_GET['content-type']`.. Is that a good solution?"}
{"_id": "181736", "title": "How can I create and manage permissions more dynamically?", "text": "I want to implement a security system into my web-based Intranet application which allows security administrators to 'fine-tune' exactly what type of access a user/role has to an object. For example, an ACL-based solution might allow a receptionist access to `Create`, `Read` and `Update` an appointment but not `Delete` it, similarly I might be able to let user Bob only `Read` or `Comment` on a company memo, but not `Create`, `Update` or `Delete` them. However, how would I go about allowing a receptionist only to make appointments within opening hours? How would I restrict appointments to dates from today to one month from now? What about Bob - how would I let him `Create` a memo after he had gained enough 'respect' points (a bit like on here). Crucially, how can I keep these values dynamic (opening hours, date restrictions, respect points, some new constraint) so that I don't hard-code them into the application? Can anyone recommend a method (or framework, book to read etc) so that I can let the administrator create and manage these roles and their constraints rather than the programmer? The existing ACL and role-based systems I've seen don't seem to offer any way to deal with constraints - you either have access or you don't! Thanks"}
{"_id": "181730", "title": "Do You Still Need Indexing After Database Normalization", "text": "After you have done a good normalization, do you still need to index the table? How is this going to affect the performance? Will it even affect the performance in some way after a good normalization? Which columns are usually indexed if you already have the primary key and the foreign key? It's seems like it's already effective to normalize a database. But, I might have skipped how indexing affects the database. Is this only effective when queries are used? How does this work/perform and make a database better?"}
{"_id": "101607", "title": "Why do websites have to ask language and country when the browser can tell them that?", "text": "So, why do websites have to ask (spoken) language and country when the browser can tell them that? Edit: Specifically, I mean why not use the accept-language section in the http header, set by the language settings in the browser, not based on the IP address. This question focuses the websites that put up a wall, forcing the user to select a language before using the website, that should instead make available an easily accessible setting. Edit: This is a user experience question, focused on the point that the user should have set the language settings in the browser when they first set up their computer (if the user is smart enough, or can ask someone smart enough)."}
{"_id": "204543", "title": "Creating documents from snippets", "text": "From time to time I create whole documents (e.g. XML or proprietary) programmatically. If it easy enough, I just write something like               stringbuilder.append(\"<blah>\");     stringbuilder.append(\"<blubb>\");     stringbuilder.append(someValue);     stringbuilder.append(\"</blubb>\");     stringbuilder.append(\"</blah>\");      But what if the document schema gets more complex? How would one describe it? What if it is not well structured like XML, but has an arbitrary format? Right now I thought about an abstract description of the format that just needs to get the blanks filled. What if I also have to parse such a document? But this seems to be a recurring problem to me. So: Is there some \"pattern\" to solve that?"}
{"_id": "124630", "title": "Is there an expiration date for well regarded, but old books on programming?", "text": "After reading a question about books every programmer should read, I wonder if the following should be considered obsolete:   * Code complete: 1st edition in 1993; 2nd edition in May, 2004   * Introduction to algorithms (Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein): 1st edition in 1990; 2nd edition in September, 2001; 3rd edition in 2009   * The Pragmatic Programmer: October, 1999   * Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: 1st edition in 1984; 2nd edition in September, 1996   * The C Programming Language: 1st edition in 1978; 2nd edition in April, 1988 All these books seem very old. Isn't there a difference between modern computing and what was current when those book were written? For example, my 61-year-old teacher explains things very nicely but forgets to take into account all that has been done between when he began to teach 25 years ago and now. Isn't the same true for those books? Aren't there any more modern books that teach principles and technologies that are closer to current practice? Or do you consider them to be useful and relevant even today?"}
{"_id": "124637", "title": "Can you successfully keep managing when you are forced back into development?", "text": "For about eight months I managed a development team doing a re-write of a web based application. During this time, I was focused on many aspects of the project that did not involve directly writing code, even though by trade that's what I started out as. Recently the number of developers assigned to the project has dropped and I am now forced to drop back into a developer/management role. Since that time I have found that it's very difficult to focus on a feature and get it completed while at the same time trying to stay ahead of the other developers and make sure that we're keeping on track. My questions is this: can you successfully keep managing a project when you are forced back into development?"}
{"_id": "164598", "title": "Non-mathematical Project Euler (or similar)?", "text": "I checked the post (Where can I find programming puzzles and challenges?) where there's a lot of programming challenges and such, but after checking several of them, they all seem to be about algorithms and mathematics. Is there a similar site for purely logic/functionality-based challenges? For example:               - Retrieve data using a web service     - Generate output X from a CSV file     - Protect this code against SQL injection     - Make this code more secure     - What is wrong with this code (where the error is in logic, not syntax)     - Make this loop more efficient      Does a challenge site like that exist? Especially one that provides hints and/or correct solutions. That would be a very helpful learning site."}
{"_id": "128932", "title": "Using alternative MVC framework", "text": "I am new to ASP.NET MVC and EF. I read about open source implementations of MVC pattern like Spring, FubuMVC, Castle etc. I want to know how flexible these alternatives are when compared with ASP.NET MVC. Which one is widely used and whose help is easily available on the NET?"}
{"_id": "128930", "title": "cost trade-offs for deploying changes to prod, stored procs vs. LINQ ", "text": "Some context for thisi question: it is not about development time over the _entire_ iteration of development, but just the stage of deploying changes from dev to prod environment. \"LINQ\" here really means LINQ, ORM, or C# where T-SQL would otherwise be used. And here \"stored procs\" is just a general term that encompasses database objects which include stored procs, functions, and views. Question was just phrased as \"LINQ\", \"stored procs\" since the two are commonly compared in questions. To narrow the scope of the discussion we can assume web applications. Now finally the question is, What are the _trade-offs_ in the cost of deployment (from dev to prod) between the two approaches? Some say it's easier to rollback Db schema changes than rollback changes across C# files in a solution. Others say it's easier to version or source control C# code than Db schema objects. If you make changes to LINQ queries, you'll most likely need to recompile the app to push the changes to prod. If you make changes to database schema, then that may require having a T-SQL script run in order to sync the changes to prod. As with many decisions with programming, the chosen solution may be context- sensitive. e.g. for data structures some situations may call for a hash map, and for others, it may be best to use a stack. Each has its own advantages/disadvantages."}
{"_id": "184960", "title": "How to communicate inefficiency before it's implemented?", "text": "This is a problem I come across pretty often. Basically we are using an application to make art content. Often times this requires writing custom tools for it. Sometimes you run into parts of the application where doing something is not directly supported in the UI, which means it will either be a little more involved or communicating this to the software company that makes this software so they can address it in the future. But I see some of the more experienced people suggesting to use methods that are extremely inefficient. For example let's say you want to access the value of the last item in a 10M item array. Let's say it's not directly doable. So you could write some code that would be inconvenient in this case because you just want it directly doable in the app. But instead of this, they suggest you to let's say create a spare property for each item in the array, that will basically store the same thing, and then by using a built-in tool which will go through each element and set the value of ALL these new properties to the last item read. So it will be like:               for i=0 to array.Length:         new_property[0..array.Length - 1] = array[i];      So this will indeed give you the last item when the operation is done, but it will be extremely slow. How can you communicate this to the people suggesting these methods? Because they think it's quite reasonable and since they have more experience and this is mainly an art application, it shouldn't involve more work for us/them."}
{"_id": "128939", "title": "Any changes/improvement for LINQ 2010 vs LINQ 2008", "text": "I'm VB.NET user and now learning LINQ. The book I'm reading now focus on LINQ 2008 VB.NET. I want to know whether there are changes/improvement in LINQ 2010? p/s: I'm reading this book: Pro LINQ Language Integrated Query in VB 2008"}
{"_id": "135170", "title": "The Joel Test's equivalent for measuring a programmer", "text": "I understand that to measure a project or code, we can use _The Joel Test_ , but is there any simple standard test (like The Joel Test) that is able to measure and filter how good a programmer is? My plan is to have this test as a quick filter first before going to a more detail test."}
{"_id": "139457", "title": "What does facebook's new photo tagging patent mean for developers?", "text": "This is a re-post of Blueplastic's question from SO, which was closed. I think this is a excellent question and I would like to hear what people thinks. To expand this further, look at the patent that Yahoo is suing Facebook for: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-meet-the-10-patents-yahoo-is-using-to-sue- facebook/ Some of these patent are so broad and I wouldn't be surprised that many developers could inadvertently developed their application to function in such a way. I understand that patent is supposed to protect intellectual property and promote innovation. However, it seems that if certain popular techniques are patented, it will become a hindrance to innovation.   * What if there is a patent on URL shortening?   * What if there is a patent on WYSIWYG editor?   * What if GO4 patented their design patterns? I am not a lawyer so these items may not be patent-able, but that's also part of the question I guess. **Edit** Anothe excellent article discussing the issue: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-baio-yahoo-patent-lie/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6052154/what-does-facebooks-new-photo- tagging-patent-mean-for-developers > Yesterday it was published that Facebook has gotten a patent for tagging > people in pictures: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/05/17/facebook- > patent-photo-tagging/ > > What does this mean for other developers? > > So, if I want to make a web-based photo sharing application where I want to > let users tag their friends, does it mean that I have to give Facebook > royalties? > > I believe iPhoto and Picasa also have people tagging features. Do they now > also have to give Facebook royalties?"}
{"_id": "139450", "title": "Is obscuring/obfuscating public-facing database ids really a \"best practice\"?", "text": "I've heard people lecture here and there on the internet that it's best practice to obscure public facing database ids in web applications. I suppose they mainly mean in forms and in urls, but I've never read anything more than a mouthful on the subject. **EDIT** : Of course, now that I ask this, I find some resources on the subject:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2374538/obscuring-database-ids   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1895685/should-i-obscure-primary-key-values   * http://joshua.schachter.org/2007/01/autoincrement.html These links satisfied some of my curiosity, but the SO posts don't have many votes and aren't necessarily centered around the topic in this context so I'm not sure what to make of it, and some of them claim that the third link is bogus. I'll leave the rest of my post intact: * * * I understand the differences between obscurity and security, as well as how the two can work together, but I can't imagine why this would be necessary. Is there any truth to this, is it just paranoia, or is it just totally bogus altogether? I can think of ways to do it, but of course it adds a lot of complexity to the application code. Under what circumstances would this be useful? If this _is_ something people frequently do, how is it usually deployed? Hashing the identifiers? Something else? It seems like a lot of work for not much extra security. I'm not looking for real solutions, I just want to get an idea of how/why people would do this in the real world. Is this really considered a \"best practice\" or is it merely a micro- optimization of little value? **NOTE** : I think a few folks might have gotten the wrong idea: I'm not suggesting that difficult-to-guess ids would be the _only_ security mechanism, obviously there would have be the usual access checks. Let's assume those are in place, and that simply knowing the id or hashed id of a record is not enough to grant access."}
{"_id": "199810", "title": "Do I infringe copyright if I turn a book into a program?", "text": "Suppose I own a copy of a physics book containing _original_ research. Suppose that this book is licensed under a non-free license. If I use the formulas and concepts explained in that book in my program, am I infringing the book's copyright? In my opinion the answer is no because I'm copying ideas, not text, and ideas can't be copyrighted. Though, I must say that in order to use the formulas, I'm forced to copy parts of the text, hence the question. **Update:** I have no problems crediting the author and citing the book; my aim is to have freedom to choice the license I want for my software, without being limited by the book's license."}
{"_id": "201973", "title": "Is this an open source license?", "text": "I have been messing with code in The Unix Archive and have found that most of the code references a (non existent) license, however, this is in the root of the mirrors and apparently covers all of the code (typed from a PDF, so excuse the typos): (source pdf is here > The following copyright notice applies to the source code files for which > the license is granted. > > Copyright(c) Caldera International Inc. 2001-20012. All rights reserved > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > > Redistributions of source code and documentation must retain the above > copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer. > > Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in teh docuemtnation > and/or other materials provided iwth the distribution. > > All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must > display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software > developed or owned by Caldera International, inc. > > Neither the name of Caldera International, Inc. nor the names of other > contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived form this > software without specific prior written permission. > > USE OF THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED FOR UNDER THIS LICENSE BY CALDERA > INTERNATIONAL, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS ''AS IN'' AND NAY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED > WARANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF > MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO > EVENT SHALL CALDERA INTERNATIONAL, INC. BE LIABLE OFR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, > INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLRARAY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT > NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, > DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY > OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING > NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, > EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. Is this an open source license? It kind of seems to be very BSD-ish, with the exclusion of the clause \"all advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: this product includes software developed or owned by Caldera International, Inc\" Does that clause prevent this from being an open source license?"}
{"_id": "201972", "title": "How to overcome programming by coincidence?", "text": "In the book The Pragmatic Programmer, the writers mention the _programming by coincidence_ concept. It explains what it is, why it is caused, what are the dangers you may encounter and it compares with a landmine field in a war. > Do you ever watch old black-and-white war movies? The weary soldier advances > cautiously out of the brush. There\u2019s a clearing ahead: are there any land > mines, or is it safe to cross? There aren\u2019t any indications that it\u2019s a > minefield\u2014no signs, barbed wire, or craters. The soldier pokes the ground > ahead of him with his bayonet and winces, expecting an explosion. There > isn\u2019t one. So he proceeds painstakingly through the field for a while, > prodding and poking as he goes. Eventually, convinced that the field is > safe, he straightens up and marches proudly forward, only to be blown to > pieces. > > The soldier\u2019s initial probes for mines revealed nothing, but this was merely > lucky. He was led to a false conclusion\u2014with disastrous results. > > As developers, we also work in minefields. There are hundreds of traps just > waiting to catch us each day. Remembering the soldier\u2019s tale, we should be > wary of drawing false conclusions. We should avoid programming by > coincidence\u2014relying on luck and accidental successes\u2014in favor of programming > deliberately... But I am not really satisfied on the way they describe the \"how to overcome it\" issue. Yeah, you have to think ahead before writing the code, but how to practice that? The only thing I can think is by adding features to existing Open source projects, where you must have knowledge on both the \"what I am doing now\" and the \"How the other pieces of code are working\", and it is not that applicable when you are writing your own projects. EDIT: a summary from your posts:   * Dont guess your next move, prove it is correct   * Unit test and refactor much as possible, when neccessary   * Add features-complile-test often   * If you cant explain the code to a noob you re probably programming by coincidence. Btw, it is hard to accept an answer, it is really hard. All answers are really great :)"}
{"_id": "201979", "title": "What stops HTML5 and JS apps to perform as good as native apps?", "text": "From what I understand,   * HTML is a mark-up language, so is the content of XAML, XIB and whatever Android uses and other native UI development frameworks.   * JavaScript is a programming language used along with it to handle client side scripting which will include things like event handling, client side validations and anything else C#,Java,Objective-C or C++ do in various such frameworks.   * There are MVC/MVVM patterns available in form frameworks like Sencha's, Angular etc.   * We have localStorage in form of both sqlite and key-value store as other frameworks have and you have API specification for almost everything that it missing.   * Whenever a native UI frameworks has to render UI , it has to parse a similar the markup and render the UI. **Question break-down**   * What stops from doing the same in HTML and JS itself ?   * Instead of having a web-control or browser as a layer in between why can't HTML(along with CSS) and JS be made to perform the same way ?   * Even if there is a layer,so does .net runtime and JVM are in other cases where C++,C are not being used.    * So Lets take the case of Android, like Dalvik, why Can't Chromium be another option(along with dalvik and NDK) where HTML does what android markup does and JavaScript is used to do what Java does ? So the Question is, Even if current implementations aren't as good, but theoretically is it possible to get HTML5 based applications to work as other native apps specially on mobile ?"}
{"_id": "198065", "title": "What algorithms are there for picking colors for plot lines on graphs?", "text": "I'm interested in **what algorithms or rules I can programmatically implement to generate RGB or HSV colors for plotlines** to keep them visually distinct from the neighbors. I know that in professional mapmaking, there are algorithms or rules that make sure that no two adjacent countries on a map are the same color. I can also think of Microsoft office Excel as picking good tints/shades for plot lines (red, then blue, then purple/orange). Here's an example of what I'm talking about - I need to generate colors for 12 lines on a black background. The colors here I've hardcoded by hand using web- safe RGB color codes. The problem arises when these lines overlap - it's hard to tell if one is looking at purple, slighly darker purple or violet. **I'm looking for a better algorithm to produce colors for plotlines like these.** ![Multiple plot lines color example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/5zi6d.png) Here's an example using Flot plotting library for jQuery, it has nice succession of colors for graphs: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pv2c7.png)"}
{"_id": "221088", "title": "Creative Commons 3 vs Common Public Attribution License Version 1.0 for my PHP Script", "text": "I am currently working on an open source PHP script and trying to adopt an attribution license. The ones that I found are CC 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ and CPAL 1.0: http://opensource.org/licenses/CPAL-1.0 They seems very similar to me. What's the difference, pros and cons? What I want is:   1. Allow use for free and commercial work, modify it to suit their needs if required, but can not redistribute it as a new product or with a different name (no sublicensing?). EDIT: I am bit confused about CPAL license on this, what does it allow and disallow?   2. Copyright info in the source codes can not be removed   3. Copyright attribution on the frontend and backend (admin panel) can not be removed. But I will adopt dual licensing model by adding commercial license to allow removing them with a fee (only the frontend and backend, not the copyright info in the source codes).   4. Any plugins or themes created for this script doesn't need to adopt my license as long as the main source codes are not modified, it can be any license(commercial, MIT, GPL, CC, CPAL) adopted by the authors. I think that's basically it. I am also open to suggestions for other kinds of license types and why"}
{"_id": "236130", "title": "Can I use a package visible constructor for creation?", "text": "I need a class where this can be done:               // user program     elder_tales.Player p = elder_tales.generate_player();     elder_tales.level_up_player( p );      but not:               // user program     elder_tales.Player p = new ...whatever     p.set_stats();     p.set_server();     p.calculate_experience()     elder_tales.level_up_player( p )      Basically, I want the package to do the instantiating while not allowing the user to do their own instantiating; because instances of type Player are constructed in a complex manner, I decided not to put too much strain on the user to create them with a public constructor."}
{"_id": "256092", "title": "Choose license and business model for Android app", "text": "Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question. I'm starting to develop an Android application, but I would like to choose a license and a business model before to write any code. My requirements are the following:   * Make the app open source (completely or partially)    * Sell the app for a small price on Google Play I see essentially two alternatives to choose from:   1. Let's say I want a single paid binary on Google Play and I let the (advanced) users build the app for itself, if they want (or maybe take the app from F-Droid or similar third party stores). In this case, which open source license should I use? I'm not sure whether the GPL license allows me to sell the binary.   2. Let's say I want to provide, on Google Play, a basic version of the app for free and a _pro_ version for a small fee. The basic version would be open source, but what about the pro version? Open or closed source? Feel free to suggest an additional model!"}
{"_id": "236138", "title": "How to measure team productivity over time using consistent story sizes?", "text": "How do I measure team productivity over time using consistent story sizes? To take a simple example, if I can do a story every two days, then I can do five stories in a two-week sprint. By definition (as one story is two days), I will continue to complete five stories per sprint forever. In order to demonstrate improvement over time, I would need a new measurement, for example, value, right?"}
{"_id": "10172", "title": "How to retain student/intern programmers? ", "text": "We have a small team in our department and typically employ 1-3 students/interns. The problem we have is retention. We like to hire a student that will stick around as part of the team for more than just a summer quarter. The problem is though the last 4 students we hired, up front we discussed this with them and they all ended up leaving earlier than we would have liked. The relationships all ended in a good fashion, the students either obtained teaching assistant or research positions within the university, or went on to bigger and better things. This is all understandable and we do not hold it against them for doing what is best for them. But my perspective is different as I worked within our department for 2 years during undergraduate at which point I was brought on full time upon graduation. How can we retain students? We give them hardware they need/want, we provide them with problems to solve in anyway they see fit (within reason). All in all to me this type of job for a student programmer is so flexible and awesome I cannot see how anyone would want to leave. Thoughts ?"}
{"_id": "200592", "title": "Same constructor signature with different semantics?", "text": "Occasionally, I'm confronted with the problem that I have to provide some constructors in order to initialize objects with different sets of data. These sets can be mathematically transformed into each other, for example:                       public Element(int x, int y, int width, int height)             {                 setValues(width, height, x, y);             }                  public Element(int RectTop, int RectLeft, int RectRight, int RectBottom)             {                 setValues(RectRight - RectLeft, Math.Abs(RectBottom - RectTop), RectLeft, -RectTop);             }      With such an desired overloading, which actually isn't any because of the same signatures, it is probable that the wrong constructor is invoked, e.g. you provide the Rect-Values and the first constructor is invoked. Assuming, we would have different types, we could achieve it by swapping types with good knowledge that this is a bad practice. But that's simply not the case in this easy example with four times int type. Can you think of some elegant alternatives to achieve the desired behavior that we have the convenience of overloading, but with the same signature?"}
{"_id": "135799", "title": "Best example for mixins in .NET", "text": "I want to present the concept of mixins and their implementation in .NET. The way they work in .NET is you add extension methods on an interface and decorate classes with said interface. What would be the best examples for this pattern (other than linq)?"}
{"_id": "208365", "title": "Techniques to Enable Dynamic Query / Calculation at Runtime", "text": "I'm working on a C# project which provides users an on-demand method of importing data from various formats and then performs mail-merge-like actions to complete a template. The process works for basic data types. However, I need to add the ability to perform calculations on the existing data (which is not present in the source) so the results can be placed on the output. **Example 1** :   _Date range_ \\-- if there is data in both the start date and end date fields then the output should contain the two dates separated by \" - \". If only one is present then just that date is output. **Example 2** :   _Conditionals_ \\-- if data in field X meets criteria Y then output Z. **Example 3** :   Format text before conversion to number and format output as currency.   Source Field: \"000059975\"   Desired Output: \"$599.75\"   _Note that the text version of the number was of fixed length and included both whole and partial units of currency (dollars and cents in this case)._ I understand how to perform these actions in code; however, all configuration of the data sources and the \"calculated\" fields must be done at runtime via strings. All data, once imported, is placed in a DataTable, so any solution will have access to the capabilities thereof in C# 4. Some ideas I've considered so far:   * lambda functions with a regex replace   * direct C# expressions   * scripting language (e.g., SQL / JavaScript / Python) processing   * A DSL (though I have no experience with designing/implementing such) I've not successfully identified a way to implement any of the above possibilities. Note also that while this is an internal business application which will largely be used by a small group of IT staff, I'd prefer to stick with a solution which limits the possibility of arbitrary code execution. What techniques exist to address this need?"}
{"_id": "208366", "title": "MyListActivity, MyCursorAdapter, MyViewHolder -- nested classes or not?", "text": "I am using several activities based on the `ListActivity`. All of them display information from different SQLite queries, and all of them use the `ViewHolder` optimization. The cursor adapter have to be specialized, and the view holder is also special for the purpose. Therefore, they are defined as `private class`es inside the `MyListActivity` definition. Not having too much experience with Java, my question is whether the chosen approach is correct. Possibly the non-nested classes (i.e. flat, separate *.java file) is not better for reasons unknown to me. What are the pros and cons of nested/flat approaches? To be more specific, here is the code skeleton:               public class MyListActivity extends ListActivity             implements LoaderManager.LoaderCallbacks<Cursor> {              private MyCursorAdapter myAdapter;              @Override         public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {             ...             initLoaderAndSetListAdapter();         }              private static class MyViewHolder {             public TextView code;             public CharArrayBuffer codeBuffer = new CharArrayBuffer(20);             ...         }              private class MyCursorAdapter extends CursorAdapter {                  private final LayoutInflater mInflater;             private final int mLayout;                  public MyCursorAdapter(Context context, Cursor c, int flags) {                 super(context, c, flags);                 mLayout = R.layout.the_specific_view_for_the_list_item;                 mInflater = (LayoutInflater)                         context.getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);             }                  @Override             public View newView(Context context, Cursor cursor, ViewGroup parent) {                 View v = mInflater.inflate(mLayout, parent, false);                 MyViewHolder holder = new MyViewHolder();                 holder.code = (TextView) v.findViewById(R.id.code);                 v.setTag(holder);                 return v;             }                  @Override             public void bindView(View view, Context context, Cursor cursor) {                 MyViewHolder holder = (MyViewHolder) view.getTag();                 cursor.copyStringToBuffer(1, holder.codeBuffer);  // COLUMN_CODE                 ...                 holder.code.setText(holder.codeBuffer.data, 0, holder.codeBuffer.sizeCopied);                 ...             }         }              private void initLoaderAndSetListAdapter() {             getLoaderManager().initLoader(0, null, this);             myAdapter = new MyCursorAdapter(this, null, 0);             setListAdapter(myAdapter);         }              @Override         public Loader<Cursor> onCreateLoader(int id, Bundle args) {             Uri uri = ... set the uri based on situation... ;             String[] projection = { ... };             CursorLoader cursorLoader = new CursorLoader(this,                     uri, projection,                     null, null,                     orderingInfo);             return cursorLoader;         }              @Override         public void onLoadFinished(Loader<Cursor> loader, Cursor data) {             myAdapter.swapCursor(data);         }              @Override         public void onLoaderReset(Loader<Cursor> loader) {             myAdapter.swapCursor(null);         }     }      The question is specific to the described situation that I meet repeatedly. Please, do not consider it as general _nested classes or not_."}
{"_id": "208361", "title": "difference between accounting and potential methods in Amortized Analysis", "text": "I was going through the Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al.In the chapter titled Amortized Analysis,the difference between accounting and potential methods is given like this > The accounting method overcharges some operations early in the sequence, > storing the overcharge as \u201cprepaid credit\u201d on specific objects in the data > structure. ... > > The potential method maintains the credit as the \u201cpotential energy\u201d of the > data structure as a whole instead of associating the credit with individual > objects within the data structure. I tried to understand this using the example of resizable array which doubles its size when there is no space to insert an element.What I couldn't understand was the following sentence > storing the overcharge as \u201cprepaid credit\u201d on specific objects in the data > structure Using Accounting method: ci = the charge for the i-th operation c'i = amortized cost of the i-th operation Si = array size after the i-th operation bi = balance of credit after the i-th operation               i   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10     si  1  2  4  4  8  8  8  8 16 16     ci  1  2  3  1  5  1  1  1  9  1     c'i 3  3  3  3  3  3  3  3  3  3     bi  2  3  3  5  3  5  7  9  3  5      what exactly does \"storing on specific objects in the data structure\" mean here? In potential method ,if I use phi to be 2n-m where n = number of currebt elements in the array ,and m=array size                               n     m    phi     empty            0     0    0      add first elem   1     1    1     add secondelem   2     2    2     add third elem   3     4    2     add fourth elem  4     4    4     add fifth  elem  5     8    2      In this ,what does it mean by \"...the \u201cpotential energy\u201d of the data structure as a whole instead of associating the credit with individual objects within the data structure.\""}
{"_id": "255026", "title": "Possible design patterns for base function with possible additions", "text": "I have various interfaces i have to implement. Let's assume ITypeA, ITypeB. They have following methods:               ITypeA       Connect       Disconnect       GetData       SetData       ClearData          ITypeB       Connect       Disconnect       GetData       SetData       Start       Pause       Stop      They have some base functionality: `Connect`, `Disconnect`, `GetData` and `SetData`. If I want to add ITypeC in the future, it will have these base functionality too. I want to access to the base functionality and if there is additional functionality, I want to get this too. What design patterns are available that are capable of this situations? I found one here: Extension Interface. In this, you create a base interface and multiple extension interfaces that are implementing the additional functions. In the base interface you can ask for the available extension interfaces of the component. But this approach seems complicated: I have to create interfaces for each type, factories for the interfaces, I need some tables to save what Interface belongs to what Factory... What is the basic solution for this problem? Extension Interfaces? Are there any other possible alternatives for my problem?"}
{"_id": "230062", "title": "Is using a global to maintain the currently logged in user bad practice?", "text": "I'm doing some android development in a relatively inexperienced group, and all of the data used by our application is managed in a database. There are several instances where we'll need to pull info from the database using the identifying information/PK of the user who is currently logged in. Because the only info from the user that is important is the PK (IE we don't need an entire class to represent the types of users or any associated data), and because this ID is important throughout the scope of the application and will not change once it is defined, we considered storing the ID/PK of the user in a global on successful login. Is the use of a global variable in a circumstance like this bad practice? Is there a better way to handle it?"}
{"_id": "219264", "title": "How to compare features of two curves?", "text": "I need to compare two curves f(x) and g(x). They are in the same x range (say -30 to 30). f(x) may have some sharp peaks or smooth peaks and valleys. g(x) may have the same peaks and valleys. If so I want a measure on how well these features coincide without visual inspection. I have tried to solve this problem in the following way.   1. Normalize both functions by dividing each data point by the total area of the function. Now the area of the normalized function is 1.0   2. At each x get the minimum value out of f(x) and g(x). This will give me a new function that is basically the overlapping area between f(x) and g(x).   3. When I integrate the resulting function of step 2 I get the total overlapping area out of 1.0 However this does not tell me whether the peaks and valleys coincide or not. I am not sure if this can be done but if someone knows a method I would appreciate your help. ==EDIT== For clarification I have included an image. ![Sample curves](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JafS4.jpg) The difference between the two curves (black and blue) may not be the same but will have complementing shapes. Background: The functions are projected density of states (PDOS) of atomic orbitals of a compound. So I have states for s,p,d orbitals. I want to determine whether the material has s-p, p-d or d-d hybridizations (orbital mixing). The only data I have is the PDOS. If say the PDOS of s orbital (function f(x)) has the peaks and valleys as at the same energies (x values) of the PDOS of p orbital (function g(x)) then there is s-p mixing in that material."}
{"_id": "184818", "title": "pair programming and teaching", "text": "Pair programming is seen as a helpful teaching strategy - in fact, compared to singleton work, almost a magic bullet:   * better learner satisfaction   * higher exam scores   * for longer - later exams continue to show higher scores   * better results in later work that relies on the pair learning Are there pitfalls to the strategy? When is pair programming most efficient for learning and when is it best avoided?"}
{"_id": "134223", "title": "Should I use non-standard tags in a HTML page for highlighting words?", "text": "I would like to know if it's a good practice or legal to use non-standard tags in an HTML page for certain custom purposes. For example: > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nullam consequat, > felis sit amet suscipit laoreet, nisi arcu accumsan arcu, vel pulvinar odio > magna suscipit mi. I want to highlight \"consectetur adipiscing elit\" as important and \"nisi arcu accumsan arcu\" as highlighted. So in the HTML I would put: > Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, <important>consectetur adipiscing > elit</important>. Nullam consequat, felis sit amet suscipit laoreet, > <highlighted>nisi arcu accumsan arcu</highlighted>, vel pulvinar odio magna > suscipit mi. and in the CSS:               important {      background: red      color: white;     }          highlighted {      background: yellow;      color: black;     }      However, since these are not valid HTML tags, is this ok?"}
{"_id": "184814", "title": "should I be putting database connections into a class library?", "text": "This might be a stupid question but I've never created a class library before The reason I don't want to be connecting to a database through the class library is error handling.. should I just leave the errors to throw back to whatever code is using the class library? should I handle it there? or should I just leave it completely and take the whole database object out of the library, creating it seperately/ copying and pasting every time I want to use it. This is a small project with only 12 classes, all under 200 lines and is only going to be used on in house company applications. I'm probably going to be the only one using it to develop with unless I leave and someone needs to make changes to the applications. It's c# if that makes even the slightest difference?"}
{"_id": "202991", "title": "What operating systems use both a Render thread and a UI thread?", "text": "Microsoft employees commonly describe Windows 8 as having both a Render thread and UI thread. Typically they say the Render thread performs animations and the UI thread handles most other operations: parsing, layout, applying templates, data binding, input processing, most app callbacks, etc. > Animations can be calculated from beginning to end when they are created. > Sometimes the changes to the property being animated don\u2019t affect rest of > the objects in a scene. These are called independent animations and they are > run on the **composition thread instead of the UI thread**. This guarantees > that they remain smooth because the composition thread is updated at a > consistent cadence... Is this a common architecture or unique to Windows 8? What about Windows Phone 8? Android? iOS?"}
{"_id": "202992", "title": "Randomization of biomes", "text": "You know how in Minecraft, the World is ever-expanding and all the biomes are randomized? My generalized question is: In relation to a space simulation that is also ever-expanding as the player moves about the world, how would one go about programming this randomization in Java? My real question is: Could I get a simplified example broken down into these example classes:   * astroids (This would include how many astroids there are, their positioning in space, their size, how often the larger astroids occur, how close they are to each other, the limitations of how many of the large asteroids can be in one field, how often astroid fields are generated, etc.)   * star-types (size, color, type, how often they occur, where hey occur, etc.)   * inhabitable-planets (size, positioning, how often they're generated, where they are generated, etc.) This would be very helpful currently since I wish to make a simplified version of such a program."}
{"_id": "80944", "title": "Any tips on getting hired as a software project manager straight out of college?", "text": "I graduated with a BS in compsci last September, and I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to find a job as a project manager ever since. I fell in love with software engineering (the formal practice behind it all, not just coding) in school, and I've dedicated the last 3-4 years of my life to learning everything I can about project management and gaining experience. I've managed several projects (with teams around 12 people) while in school, and I worked with my university's software engineering research lab. My r\u00e9sum\u00e9 is also decent - I worked as a programmer before I went to school (I'm 27 now), and I did Google Summer of Code for 3 summers. I also have general \"people management\" experience via working as the photo editor for my university's newspaper for 2 years. My first problem with the job hunt is not getting enough interviews. I use careers.stackoverflow.com, which is awesome because I usually get contacted by non-HR people who know what they're talking about, but there's just not enough companies using it for me to get interviews on a regular basis. I've also tried sites like monster.com, and in a fit of desperation, I sent out no less than 60 applications to project management positions. I've gotten 3 automated rejection letters and that's it. At least careers.stackoverflow gets me a phone interview with 8/10 places I apply to. But the main (and extremely frustrating) problem is the matter of experience. I've successfully managed projects from start to finish (in my software engineering classes we had real customers come in with a real software need and we built it for them), but I've never had to deal with budgets and money (I know this is why HR people immediately turn me away). Most of these positions require 5+ years PM experience, and I've seen absurd things like 12+ years required. Interviews are also maddening. I've had so many places who absolutely loved me and I made it to the final round of interviews, and I left thinking things went extremely well and they'd consider me. However, when I check in with them a week later, they tell me \"We really liked you and your qualifications are excellent, but we're hoping to find someone with more experience.\" The bad interviews I can understand - like the PM position that would have had me managing developers both locally and overseas - I had 3 interviews with them and the ENTIRE interview process was them asking me CS brainteasers and having me waste time on things like writing quicksort on paper or writing binary search trees. Even when I tried steering the discussion towards more relevant PM stuff, they gave me some vague generic replies and went back to the \"We want to be Google/MS\" crap. But when I have a GOOD interview, they say my \"qualifications are excellent\" but they want \"more experience\"...that makes me want to tear my hair out. What else can I DO? While I'm aiming for technically-involved PM positions (not just crunching budget numbers), I really don't want a straight development job because I like creating software from the very high-level vs. spending a lot of time debugging memory leaks. In fact, I can't even GET development positions that I'm qualified for because I make the mistake of telling them that my future career goals are as PM (which usually results in them saying something like \"Well we already have PMs and this position isn't really set up to get you there.\" - which I take to mean \"No, that's my job, stay away.\") My apologies on the long rant, but I'm seriously hellbent on getting hired as a PM since it's both my career goal and the passion that keeps me awake at night. Any suggestions on what the heck else I can do? I'm currently writing a blog where I talk about my philosophies about software engineering, and I'm writing up specs for an iOS app which I will design, code, and show employers, but this takes an awful lot of time that I don't have."}
{"_id": "202995", "title": "Is it evil to model JSON responses to classes when they are mostly smilar?", "text": "Here's the problem : While implementing a C# wrapper for an online API (Discogs) I've been faced to a dilemma : quite often the responses returned have mostly similar members and while modeling these responses to classes, some questions surfaces on which way to go would be the best. Example : Querying for a 'release' or a 'master' will return an object that contains an array of 'artist', however these 'artists' do not exactly have the same members. Currently I decided to represent these 'artists' as a single 'Artist' class, against having respective 'ReleaseArtist' and 'MasterArtist' classes which soon becomes very confusing even though another problem arises : when a category (master or release) does not return these members, they will be null. Though it might sound confusing as well I find it less confusing than the former situation as I've tackled the problem by simply not showing null members when visualizing these objects. Is this the right approach to follow ? An example of these differences :               public class Artist     {         public List<Alias> Aliases { get; set; }         public string DataQuality { get; set; }         public List<Image> Images { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public List<string> NameVariations { get; set; }         public string Profile { get; set; }         public string Realname { get; set; }         public string ReleasesUrl { get; set; }         public string ResourceUrl { get; set; }         public string Uri { get; set; }         public List<string> Urls { get; set; }     }          public class ReleaseArtist     {         public string Join { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public string Anv { get; set; }         public string Tracks { get; set; }         public string Role { get; set; }         public string ResourceUrl { get; set; }         public int Id { get; set; }     }      Edit : I decided to keep things as simple as they can be : separated. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/y7Ggj.png) There are few weird names but it'll always be less confusing than the previous situations."}
{"_id": "133799", "title": "Need suggestion for Mutiple Windows application design", "text": "This was previously posted in StackOverflow, I just moved to here... I am using VS2008, MVVM, WPF, Prism to make a mutiple window CRM Application. I am using `MidWinow` in my `MainWindow`, I want   1. Any `ViewModel` would able to make request to `MainWindow` to create/add/close `MidChildWindow`, `ChildWindow`(from WPF Toolkit), `Window` (the Window type).   2. `ViewModel` can get the `DialogResult` from the `ChildWindow` its excutes.   3. `MainWindow` have control on all opened window types. Here is my current approach: I made `Dictionary` of each of the windows type and stores them into MainWindow class. For 1, i.e in a `CustomerInformationView`, its `CustomerInformationViewModel` can execute `EditCommand` and use `EventAggregator` to tell MainWindow to open a new `ChildWindow`. CustomerInformationViewModel:               CustomerEditView ceView = new CustomerEditView ();     CustomerEditViewModel ceViewModel = CustomerEditViewModel ();     ceView.DataContext = ceViewModel;     ChildWindow cWindow = new ChildWindow();     cWindow.Content = ceView;     MainWindow.EvntAggregator.GetEvent<NewWindowEvent>().Publish(new WindowEventArgs(ceViewModel.ViewModeGUID, cWindow ));     cWindow.Show();      Notice that all my `ViewModel` will generates a `Guid` for help identifies the `ChildWindow` from `MainWindow`'s dictionary. Since I will only be using 1 View 1 ViewModel for every Window. For 2. In `CustomerInformationViewModel` I can get `DialogResult` by `OnClosing` event from `ChildWindow`, in `CustomerEditViewModel` can use `Guid` to tell MainWindow to close the ChildWindow. Here is little question and problems: Is it good idea to use Guid here? Or should I use HashKey from ChildWindow? My `MainWindows` contains windows reference collections. So whenever window close, it will get notifies to remove from the collection by `OnClosing` event. But all the Windows itself doesn't know about its associated Guid, so when I remove it, I have to search for every KeyValuePair to compares... I still kind of feel wrong associate ViewModel's Guid for ChildWindow, it would make more sense if ChildWindow has it own ID then ViewModel associate with it... But most important, is there any better approach on this design? How can I improve this better?"}
{"_id": "85711", "title": "Avoiding Object Oriented Pitfalls, Migrating from C, What Worked for You?", "text": "I've been programming in procedural languages for quite some time now, and my first reaction to a problem is to start breaking it down into tasks to perform rather than to consider the different entities (objects) that exist and their relationships. I have had a university course in OOP, and understand the fundamentals of encapsulation, data abstraction, polymorphism, modularity and inheritance. I read Learning to think in the Object Oriented Way and Learning object oriented thinking, and will be looking at some of the books pointed to in those answers. I think that several of my medium to large sized projects will benefit from effective use of OOP but as a novice I would like to avoid time consuming, common errors. Based on your experiences, what are these pitfalls and what are reasonable ways around them? If you could explain why they are pitfalls, and how your suggestion is effective in addressing the issue it'd be appreciated. I'm thinking along the lines of something like \"Is it common to have a fair number of observer and modifier methods and use private variables or are there techniques for consolidating/reducing them?\" I'm not worried about using C++ as a pure OO language, if there are good reasons to mix methods. (Reminiscent of the reasons to use GOTOs, albeit sparingly.) Thank you!"}
{"_id": "133793", "title": "What is a good strategy for testing UserControls?", "text": "A UserControl cannot be dragged-dropped onto a winform. Instead, I must compile the assembly add it to my toolbox, then I can drag it onto a Form. Doing this toolbox approach just to test out a control and then \"tweak\" it repeatedly is quite cumbersome. Right now, I plan to simply have this toolbox item pointing to a bin/debug assembly which will be repeatedly re-built. I imagine this will come with it's own set of problems. So what is a good strategy for testing UserControls?"}
{"_id": "164510", "title": "Resources for popular domain models", "text": "I have come across many situations where I had to build a system for a library or a clinic or other popular domains.   The thing is a domain model for a library was probably done 1000 times already with different level of details of course. Here is an example. Is there a popular website or community where one can find ready made domain models for popular systems?   The whole purpose I'm trying to achieve is to quickly get a grasp of the domain I'm modelling and customise it to my needs. Re-inventing the wheel seems really absurd when the same system might have been modelled properly previously. **Note**   I know Google might sound like the perfect source, but it will better if there is a repository out there that people can post there models, so that others can share them."}
{"_id": "164512", "title": "May I remove ads from feed in my news reader app?", "text": "I'm creating a News Reader app for Tablets and PCs. My app is fetching data from news sources by **RSS feed** of websites (in the server-side). But some of these sites are showing some advertising banners at the end of each article. Should I remove those banners from the feed? Am I legally/ethically allowed to do this? And what about If I want to put some other ads in my application? (Right at the end of each article) I mean, If I want to have my own advertising service... _Update:_ And what if I **use feed for content titles and summaries** , but use **other thing** , like Readability API **to show full article** , and then put my own ads below content? (Readability gets the HTML page, and gives you a clean page without any ads and such.)"}
{"_id": "164517", "title": "Domain Models (PHP)", "text": "I have been programming in PHP for several years and have, in the past, adopted methods of my own to handle data within my applications. I have built my own MVC, in the past, and have a reasonable understanding of `OOP` within php but I know my implementation needs some serious work. In the past I have used an `is-a` relationship between a model and a database table. I now know after doing some research that this is not really the best way forward. As far as I understand it I should create models that don't really care about the underlying database (or whatever storage mechanism is to be used) but only care about their actions and their data. From this I have established that I can create models of lets say for example a Person an this person object could have some Children (human children) that are also Person objects held in an array (with addPerson and removePerson methods, accepting a Person object). I could then create a PersonMapper that I could use to get a Person with a specific 'id', or to save a Person. This could then lookup the relationship data in a lookup table and create the associated child objects for the Person that has been requested (if there are any) and likewise save the data in the lookup table on the save command. This is now pushing the limits to my knowledge..... What if I wanted to model a building with different levels and different rooms within those levels? What if I wanted to place some items in those rooms? Would I create a class for building, level, room and item with the following structure. building can have 1 or many level objects held in an array level can have 1 or many room objects held in an array room can have 1 or many item objects held in an array and mappers for each class with higher level mappers using the child mappers to populate the arrays (either on request of the top level object or lazy load on request) This seems to tightly couple the different objects albeit in one direction (ie. a floor does not need to be in a building but a building can have levels) Is this the correct way to go about things? Within the view I am wanting to show a building with an option to select a level and then show the level with an option to select a room etc.. but I may also want to show a tree like structure of items in the building and what level and room they are in. I hope this makes sense. I am just struggling with the concept of nesting objects within each other when the general concept of oop seems to be to separate things. If someone can help it would be really useful. Many thanks"}
{"_id": "170877", "title": "help for choosing an encryption method for a database column", "text": "I'm storing some phone numbers in the database which should kept totally secret (they're supposed to access via web). BTW, because of the position of these people, I need to prevent any chance for leak of their numbers. So, the only solution I could thinking of is Encryption. As the database could contains bunch of data, I won't encrypt the database entirely. Also, I actually prefer to use different key for each person to encrypt their phone numbers, so in the case of leaking one key, the other phone numbers should be safe at least. The problem is that other people also need to send SMS messages via the application through a web-interface and also some more privileged persons need to see these numbers, so I also need to make these numbers visible to the other privileged persons by the way. I'm wondering of something like a public-key/private-key structure, but it's too much for just encrypting a phone number per person, and also there would be a problem for new users, because the previous numbers didn't encrypted with their public-keys. So, is there any solution you might recommend to me? maybe I should to revise or update the structure of how I'm trying to do that, huh?"}
{"_id": "170876", "title": "Access functions from user control without events?", "text": "On some generic functions, it seems that accessing a function on mainform directly from the usercontrol is easier than raising an event. For example: A function on main form that displays one desired usercontrol centered and tweaked. Making this function static, or access this function by reference from the user control to its parent, rather then raising an event, seems very convenient. Like this:               usercontrol_A uc_a = new usercontrol_A();     MainForm mainform_functions = (MainForm)Parent;     mainform_functions.DisplayControl(uc_a);      Raising an event seems more complex in such cases - I need to declare all new userControl_B's events (which also includes initiating usercontrol_C and displaying it) inside the event that shows (and initiates) userControl_B:                 userControl_A.ShowUserControl_B+= (s,e) =>      {      usercontrol_B uc_b = new usercontrol_B();   DisplayControl(uc_b);         uc_b.show_uc_c += (s2,e2) => {usercontrol_C uc_c = new usercontrol_C(); DisplayControl(uc_c); }      }         _too much clutter here_. That's hard to code and to read later. (In addition, passing parameters to another usercontrol is a nightmare like this - I need to save the parameter artificially on the sender usercontrol class and then cast it back later inside the event) **What is your opinion? Is it a completely \"prohibited\" to code like this, at least on generic functions like I mentioned? Isn't clearer code that needs some small tweaking for reuse preferable?**"}
{"_id": "234997", "title": "What's the difference of an object being final and an object being immutable in java?", "text": "final String str = \"do not change me\";     str = \"why not?\"; //it will result in compile time error saying that final fields can not be re-assigned once created i.e. the reference cannot be changed          String str1 = \"hello world\";           System.out.println(str1.replaceAll(\"h\", \"q\"));         str1 = str1.replaceAll(\"h\", \"q\");         System.out.println(str1);  //An immutable object on the other hand means that, there is no way for you to change the object or its contents other than changing the reference.      Is the above understanding of definition of a **final** object and **immutable** object correct?"}
{"_id": "170871", "title": "Is server validation necessary with client-side validators?", "text": "I recently created a .net web app that used over 200 custom validators on one page. I wrote code for both `ClientValidationFunction` and `OnServerValidate` which results in a ton of repetitive code. My sql statements are parameterized, I have functions that pull data from input fields and validates them before passing to the sql statements or stored procedures. And the javascript validates the fields before the page submits. So essentially the data is clean and valid before it even hits the `OnServerValidate` and clean after it anyways due to the aforementioned steps. This makes me question, is `OnServerValidate` really needed when I validate on the clientside? **Edit:** My `OnServerValidate`s do simple things like making sure a skip pattern is enforced or that a short appears in a text (which is enforced anyways with my code that pulls data from text fields into parameters i.e. GetShort()). And these are being place in patient surveys, which most of the time are filled out by staff members. So it seems like if I didn't have the `OnServerValidate` for these basic checks and just client side the following situations are:   1. A user turns off javascript and cannot submit the form, which is expected as buttons are javascript driven for postbacks.   2. A user forces a post. Which if this occurs my `OnServerValidate` would do jack to stop whatever they are trying to do since it is just looking at skip patterns, or would it? Situation 2 is where I am getting lost. It seems like the user forcing a post is more than likely not to be caught by these simple `OnServerValidate`s"}
{"_id": "70217", "title": "Protecting yourself from intellectual theft", "text": "I have been working on a project for about 6 months and it is finally _done_. Done meaning the bones of the software, all the servers are in place, the beta testing is ready to begin and in the real world. The project No Free Time is ready to get a **real name** _(scary right)_. Domains need to be bought... you get the idea. Where to go now though, when developing a for profit piece of software like a webapp there are a lot of issues and I do not even know square one. There are intellectual property concerns, there are trade marks, there is lawyer stuff. All of those things are expensive and probably don't need to happen at once. Is that the first step, and which of those steps are the most important. How do you get a webapp or piece of software off the ground safely? How do you begin to establish and protect your software/website/intellectual property, what are the cheap first steps, what steps can be postponed, and what must absolutely be completed before your software touches the public?"}
{"_id": "70213", "title": "Teaching programming, quickly to those adults that haven't programmed", "text": "I want to be very specific in my question to avoid duplicate question. Hopefully this is adequate. I am working with non-programmers on a project. They are adult and in IT but they may not have the math background or any programming or heavy computer experience. What are the quickest ways to teach them programming concepts. Just the concepts so that they quickly get programming (as much as they can). Let's say that you have 2 weeks to understand X programming language oriented technology. And these are adults not students. What are some of the best ways for them to understand some of those concepts? What are some solid techniques that really help a non-programmer get the big picture quickly? And I was trying to avoid talking about specific language implementations. **Notes:** I see two major hurdles with non-programmers, (1) They don't understand what a computer really is. To them, it may seem like a magical device. (2) They don't have the time to hack out or even learn programming. There are just some concepts like recursion or understanding data structures that may take at least one all-nighter. They don't have the time to debug and test out a solution. I have worked with people and gone through a programming task (editing properties) and gone through that task step-by-step and asked them to repeat those steps exactly. This works but once they miss a step, then they can't recover. Basically, they aren't understanding what is going on."}
{"_id": "237268", "title": "In event sourcing, is it ok to introduce a dependency in my message class?", "text": "Following Martin Fowler's explanation on event sourcing, I have a message class that looks something like this:               ShippingEvent     {         Process(Ship ship) {}     }      However, in my case, I need to talk to another component in the `Process` method. More specific, I need to access a repository to get some basic data. Is it ok to add this repository to the method, i.e.:               ShippingEvent     {         Process(Ship ship, IBasicDataRepository repo) {}     }      I could put it in the constructor of my message too, of course. However, I can't pass in the basic data, because the repo will be called multiple times with different parameters, depending on what's in the \u00b4ship\u00b4 object. So is it ok to introduce external dependencies in the event/message class or is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "222452", "title": "Scrum is methodology or framework?", "text": "I am confuse about scrum .it is methodology or Framework?. I want to use scrum for development but i want to develop scrum tool but i am confuse scrum is methodology or framework?"}
{"_id": "237261", "title": "Algorithm for indexing strings in \"list\"", "text": "Imagine I have file called `strings.dat`. Inside this file there is alot of string, for example: one million. **String are sorted**. Now I want to find specified string, so I can write method like this:               public long FindByName (string text)     {       // ...     }      This method can return to me a position within a file where this string occurs. But iterating through lots of data is not efficient. I can do some indexing system, like an `Dictionary<char, long>` which tells about at what position within file is placed first string with its value starting from given char. Example: if I got 5 strings: hello   hello2   world   world2   Zzz So my dictionary will be like:   h 0   w 2   z 4 But it's not efficient if I will have 1000 string with \"d\" char as first letter, and 10 million with \"r\" letter. Do you know any good algorithms do ahieve what Im asking for?"}
{"_id": "178649", "title": "Switching CSS to use asset pipeline in Rails?", "text": "I have a lot of legacy CSS files from what was a Rails 2.x app that got upgraded to Rails 3.2.8, and I want to switch over to using the Rails asset pipeline for stylesheets. The issue is, the CSS stuff is messy in terms of huge lines of code, duplicate file names, and unorganized folder structure. After looking through individual pages, and trying to add individual stylesheets and folders into the asset pipeline and spending some cycles debugging, I realized there's probably a better approach. Is there a way to test to make sure the old CSS matches up with the asset pipeline CSS? What are some good tools for testing and debugging CSS?"}
{"_id": "202668", "title": "How to convert a Bazaar repository to GIT repository?", "text": "We have a large bazaar repository and we want to convert it to a git repository. The bazaar repository contains the folders of each of the interns. Any documentation/code prepared by interns is committed in their directory so there are a huge number of commits. What steps should be performed to securely convert the bazaar repository to a git repository so that we do not lose any commit information. We firstly need to create a backup of the existing bazaar repository and then convert it. Edit: I followed this link: http://librelist.com/browser//cville/2010/2/9/migrate-repository-bzr-to-git/ It's working fine on my system with Ubuntu. But when I try to run it on the actual server it gives me EOF error and crashes               Starting export of 1036 revisions ...     fatal: EOF in data (1825 bytes remaining)     fast-import: dumping crash report to .git/fast_import_crash_11804      Edit 2: I also tried it on a new CentOS system and received the following error               fatal: ambiguous argument 'HEAD': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.     Use '--' to separate paths from revisions"}
{"_id": "71161", "title": "What benefit do I get from good methodology?", "text": "One of my friends has worked for nearly 10 years, asked me why he needs to learn new things such as unit-testing, MVC, Multi-tier architecture (he creates 3-tier application but designs like 2-tier), Object-oriented programming or etc? He has worked for a decade without unit-testing, uses code-behind and structure programming and it works for him. He can deliver product to customer and he has a high income. What benefit will he see from those methodologies?"}
{"_id": "162822", "title": "What was the first consumer-oriented hardware/software solution?", "text": "We all know the story of the personal computer as a consumer-oriented product. But I just thought that real end user solution should have appeared before that time. So a product that was probably expensive, but allowed using it as a service charging for it, for example computer-terminal for transport time- table access or game machine. On the other site, the video terminals as we know them appeared not so long ago. So if there was something like this, this could be hardware/software most likely offering no interactivity, but probably printing some information based on user actions."}
{"_id": "202666", "title": "Is acoustic fingerprinting too broad for one audio file only?", "text": "We were looking for some topics related to audio analysis and found acoustic fingerprinting. As it is, it seems like the most famous application for it is for identification of music. Enter our manager, who requested us to research and possible find an algorithm or existing code that we can use for this very simple approach (like it's easy, source codes don't show up like mushrooms):   1. Always-on app for listening   2. Compare the audio patterns to a single audio file (assume sound is a simple beep or beep-beep)   3. If sound is detected, send notification to server With a flow this simple, do you think acoustic fingerprinting is a broad approach to use? Should we stop and take another approach? Where to best start? We haven't started anything yet (on the development side) on this regard, so I want to get other opinion if this is pursuit is worth it or moot."}
{"_id": "162826", "title": "Actions and Controllers managing strategy in MVC apps", "text": "Can anyone name any usefull strategy/architectural pattern for allocating actions between different controllers when using MVC pattern for developing web application? I am now developing web app using asp.net Mvc3 framework and still can't figure out how to manage actions and controllers. One approach is to create single action controller for each url, but it's not the best choice since to much controllers have to be created. Should I list all available urls that are supported by me web app, devide them into groups and create separate controller for each group or act in any different manner? It seems like I will become face to face with some kind of mess with no consistent approach in managing actions and controllers."}
{"_id": "133246", "title": "How do I best go about updating my programming skills?", "text": "I have worked in a highly specialized position for 10 years which involves RPG, CLP programming on an AS400, mainly to supplement a poorly written EDI app. My company does not hire enough people so I have also been wearing other hats up to and including help desk. The job is so demanding and frustrating that I am ashamed to say I have lost some of my skills in other programming languages and I have not had time nor the money to pay for any refresher courses. In fact I would not even know where to start. What is the easiest way for a person like me to transition from doing something I hate to something more fun or at least a change of pace.. like Web Development? I am looking at taking a training course and eventually getting an MCPD certification..would this do it? Also, do you really have to have some hands on experience with these languages to get certified or would 10 years of programming in another language suffice? Any advice would be helpful as I am extremely unhappy with my current professional life."}
{"_id": "207017", "title": "Can certain expectations of behavior be part of an interface's contract?", "text": "Given the following code:               public interface IUserDataProvider {                 ICollection<SomeClass> getSomeClassRecordsForUser(int idUser);     }      Is it possible to define (via documentation) an expectation that any implementing class returns null instead of an empty collection (or vice versa) when no records are found? I realize interfaces do not have explicit control over how they are implemented, but considering that interfaces are said to define a contract, I'm wondering how far the jurisdiction of that contract can rightfully extend. Thanks in advance for your responses."}
{"_id": "207014", "title": "Organizing a git repository with several projects sharing code", "text": "I have several small projects running on different embedded hardware, and about 50% of their code is identical (typically some drivers, their operating system, and some libraries). I want to merge those small projects into a single git repository so that it becomes easier to centrally maintain them, for example to update a driver. However, when modifying the code shared between the different projects, let's say a driver, I don't want to have to test it on every hardware platform before pushing to the git repo. It would not scale at all as to test the code for a given project I have to test it on a specific per-project hardware and if necessary correct the project-specific bugs which could be introduced by the modification of the shared code. It is a lot better to delay the testing of the shared-code modification on a given project the next time I want to modify this project. At the moment, here is the solution I came with: the directory structure would be as such: > >                      . >                      |--shared_code >                      |--projects >                         |--projectA >                         |--projectB   >                         |--projectC >   I would create a git branch per project, which would only represent until which commit the code was tested for a given project. Hence I would push code only to the master branch, and merge the code from the master branch to a project branch once it has been tested on this platform. Like this a project branch would always be in a stable (tested) state. The master branch would be unstable for most of the projects. git structure: > >                                                  master >                                                    | >       commits: 1 <-- 2 <-- 3 <-- 4 <-- 5 <-- 6 <-- 7 >                      ^     ^                       ^ >                      |     |                       | >       branches:      A     B                       C >   Is this the correct way to solve this problem? Is there a better solution?"}
{"_id": "5466", "title": "Do good project managers need a programming background?", "text": "Sometimes I can't stand it when project managers ask me to estimate time to complete for various tasks. An estimate is a guess, and guesses can be wrong. Generally, bad requirements and documentation will lead to bad guesses. So I often wonder if the project managers were ever in my shoes trying to guess at how long task X and Y will take, and how difficult it is to assign a number to it based on what little is known and collected from the client. My question then is: **Do good project managers need to have a programming background?** Or maybe the question should be, **do good project managers need to have been a _good_ programmer before?** Is there any correlation?"}
{"_id": "14212", "title": "Is Apple getting out of the general purpose development platform business?", "text": "I've been doing general ANSI C/Console C++/Java/Web development on Mac hardware for about ten years. I make no claims of objective superiority over other platforms, it just satisfies my personal tastes. With the success of the iPhone and the related App store there was some speculation that Apple would get out of the general purpose computer market, and become a closed software ecosystem, focusing on consumer appliances. I pooh-poohed the speculation at the time, but this week Apple announced that a) they were opening an App store for the Mac, b) Java applications would not be eligible for the App store, c) the Apple JVM was being deprecated and might not be available for future releases of OS X. I'm not a Java developer per se, but I work in a research lab that occasionally writes Java applications, and also depends on tools written Java. This has the potential to be a huge pain in the butt for us. As of now, there is no other JVM for OS X that we can point our end users to. Soy Latte and OpenJDK might be appropriate for developers, but the complexity of the installation makes them inappropriate for end users. Eventually I expect Oracle/SUN will produce a replacement JVM for OS X. More worrisome to me is that Apple used to specifically advertise that it was an excellent platform for scientific development, because they supported all major language platforms. Is the deprecation of their JVM a sign that this market no longer interests them?"}
{"_id": "246380", "title": "Should we call Web API from MVC application in same solution?", "text": "I am working on a project in MVC that has mobile application so one thing is clear that we have to use Web API so it can used in mobile application. After creating API when we started to develop Web site we are confused and had discussion on whether to use API or directly access to the Business object. And we ended up after having opinion form more experienced developer to consume Web API instead of using Business object directly. I'm having confusion regarding to this solution structure. 1) Why we should use Web API and make HTTP request (which is time consuming) to get or put data instead of business object directly which is in same solution. 2) After having arguments they said what if client wants to host API and web on different cloud server and apply scaling only on API or may be he want to have different url for accessing API and Web (which is some what logical). So in that case should we call Web API from MVC application in same solution? 3) If we're hosting API and Web on different hosting so it means our Web will use WebClient and have HTTP call on each navigation. Is it right? 4) If we'll business object form both API and Web hosting on different server then if something change in BL will need to update build on both server. 5) Or we should create only one project for API and can add views or html pages to develop Web interface so in that way we can directly call API from ajax. As per my knowledge #5 is the best solution or API is only for 3rd party access. If we have DB, EF, data layer and business layer in same solution then we should not use API to make HTTP calls and directly access business object. (correct me if I'm wrong)API is needed when mobile application or desktop or any one want to access application so we can have same repository and data layer. In my scenario I've to create API as we also have mobile application, and in project API side we called business layer (separate project) and business layer communicate to data access layer (separate project). So my question is if we host our API and web to different servers then calling API which is a HTTP request may take longer rather than using method from business layer as we create the project and we've .dll of business layer. In API controller we just convert out put of our business to json format. I've searched on internet but didn't get convincing answer. I've found a blog http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2013/07/01/on-the-coexistence-of-asp- net-mvc-and-webapi.aspx discussing same point but again in that blog my question is why we need to consider scenario #3? Update: We can have different API project and MVC project and we can call API from web using jvascript or can use MVVM pattern."}
{"_id": "175340", "title": "Becoming an expert vs boredom", "text": "I am a college student, and I love to program, period. I code all kinds of things in different kinds of languages. Although I enjoy programming, I have an extremely hard time sticking to one project for a long time. I attribute this shortcoming to my high level of curiosity, exploring different technologies, languages, libraries, etc. What would be best? Should I settle down more and spend time on becoming an expert in one or two programming fields, or should I be more of a jack of all trades, trying out all kinds of new technologies, languages, programming methods, etc.? I'm guessing that somewhere in the middle would be best. I'm always amazed at how many developers are able to create one or two projects, and develop on them for years. What techniques do you guys employ to help you stay focused on a project?"}
{"_id": "175346", "title": "How do you coordinate with co-workers to give a balanced interview?", "text": "My company has been conducting a lot of interviews lately for candidates with various experience levels, ranging from interns to senior candidates. We put our candidates through five 45 minute interview sessions where we try to ask a range of questions. One person always asks the same questions that test logic and communication. The rest typically split time between a whiteboard coding question and a discussion of previous projects, technologies the interviewee has worked with, and what he/she is looking for a job. Generally, we know the range of questions that other people on the loop will ask. Sometimes we switch things up and end up having redundancies. Today, 3 interviewers asked tree-related questions. Other times, we've all honed in on the same project on a resume and have had the interviewee talk about it with everyone. I think a smooth interview process would help us learn more about the candidate while giving the impression to the candidate that we have our act together as a team. **How do you coordinate with others in the interview loop to give a balanced interview?**"}
{"_id": "175348", "title": "What should I aware of , when preparing a document of website for later maintenance use?", "text": "The development team has finished a website and my duty is to prepare a document so that other programmers can maintain the website with ease. I have no experience in this and would like to ask what should be mentioned (document structure) in that report? So far my idea is only to prepare a ERD diagarm for the database and flow chart for each function. Any other suggestions, eg. what cookies stored?"}
{"_id": "246101", "title": "What to consider when choosing a framework for a development team?", "text": "As I'm finishing a web development course with a few friends with whom I have worked in many projects we're aiming to begin a professional team of developers. Functions are well defined between programmers, analysts and designers, and the team shouldn't get to a much larger number than six members. To quicken development and keep each developer's work from overlapping with others', an MVC framework has been considered by the group. The front-end developers shouldn't mind which one is chosen since it's all based around web standards for them, but me and the other programmers have been considering a few options. Since the question is getting really verbose, I'll just summarize what I would like more experient developers' opinions on:   * What should be considered when choosing a web framework? For small projects, performance shouldn't be a killer factor, but would it still be reasonable to remove Ruby/Python systems from the competition?   * Is being able to work on more than one programming language, or more than one framework in a given language something important?   * Should the learning of one or more frameworks be done in group, or on each developer's own, and then gather opinions on them?"}
{"_id": "252558", "title": "In C++11 can Auto be used to get around mis-casting of void * parameters in functions?", "text": "If I have a generic function that takes a void* as a parameter, can Auto in C++11 help stop any bad casting of that parameter? For instance, we may have an event system that sends events and a pointer to some data that is relevant for the event it sends.               void EventClass::SendEvent (eventTypeEnum eventType, void* eventData)     {       int* castEventData = static_cast<int*> (eventData);            //.. Do something       }      In the above example, one eventType could be sent with eventData as a float* and another as a pointer to a structure. The static_cast there will be mis- casting and causing problems. Is there a way auto could be used to avoid this issue. Please note, this is just an example (not a great one though sorry) to help me understand the possibilities of auto and not an actual issue I have."}
{"_id": "123844", "title": "How to parallelize a sequential algorithm?", "text": "What thought process should one follow to convert a sequential algorithm to a parallel one ? Are there any specific code pattern that can be parallelized. Some patterns that I normally use are:   * Looking for loops that can parallelized.   * Try to break algo in some form of Map-reduce format.   * Looking for producer-consumer pattern."}
{"_id": "36612", "title": "What kind of innovative non-cash financial benefits do I offer to my developers to retain them along with a competitive salary?", "text": "Stock options don't make much sense, since the company's private. [It still does, if you are a facebook of sorts AND the regulatory system permits sites like secondmarket, but I digress.] I could think of some:   1. Health benefits to parents and parents-in-laws   2. Sponsoring a fuel-saving bike to drive to office    3. Gift cards for occasions like completion of 1, 3, 5 years of service I really could do with more suggestions here. **EDIT:** Thanks everyone for the response. To summarize, here are the additional things my HR could do:   1. Matching contribution to employee retirement fund provided the employee contributes   2. Funding continuing education, professional courses etc.   3. Company subscription to ACM, IEEE, Safari Books etc.    4. Meal vouchers   5. Membership to gyms   6. Hosting a recreation room at office   7. Spot bonuses    8. Time off for code spikes in recognition of individual contribution    9. Sabbaticals"}
{"_id": "232163", "title": "How to design to allow for future logic revision?", "text": "The typical programming designing method that I've come to use goes like this:               1. ID the problem and what's required     2. Make your program do something simple     3. Test it     4. Make your program do a little bit more     5. Repeat 2 until all the micro problems are solved by the program as a whole      Basically, incremental design. So, all the pieces can be split apart and each micro problem is solved by a micro problem function; does a great job with cohesion and reduces coupling. Then, sometime in the future, the program comes across a problem that is just like the problem it is built on, but requires a little extra. So, I'd say add the functionality to the program, to make up for it. If, when you're adding that functionality, the already established working logic has to be edited to make the new functionality work, it suddenly seems like you're messing with something you shouldn't. So, is there a designing method where every program developed with it can be added onto without compromising working logic? Example:               word = yes,no,\"maybe,so\"          oldCSVSplit(word, \",\") -> {\"yes\", \"no\", \"\\\"maybe\", \"so\\\"\"}     newCSVSplit(word, \",\") -> {\"yes\", \"no\", \"maybe,so\"};      The oldCSVSplit function does what it should, split on \",\". Then, sometime in the future, commas inside quotes must be ignored to properly get entries. Adding the functionality to ignore single/double quotes would severely alter the logic, with more ifs and checks and even a stack for keeping track of starting quotes. Is such a scenario avoidable? What method can make such additions painless and less compromising to working logic?"}
{"_id": "232164", "title": "Database design grouping many tables with their common fields", "text": "Is this a valid DB design? A user can create an organization, link as many offices to it, have an inventories that host items linked to organization or office, have clients for his business etc.               | users |   |taxonomy|   |settings|     |-------|   |--------|   |--------|     | id    |   | id     |   | tax_id |     | login |   | user_id|   | title  |     | etc.. |   | parent |   | value  |                 | type   |   | name   |                              | type   |      I have 3 tables:   1. **Users** contain all people, be they \"users\" or ,\"clients\", since the 2 types are people, _even though client does not have access to the app_ \\- yet he is a human and he use exact same fields as app user (name,dob,address,phone number,ss number etc.) and the fields client doesn't use (login,password) should not hurt anyway.   2. **Taxonomy** is a bigger deal, since basically everything a user can create inside the website is in defined in this table. Type is limited to values of \"organization, office, service, inventory, blog\".   3. **Settings** is where the extended information about the above definitions are kept in. For example \"office taxonomy has 3 other rows in settings title: address, opening_hour, closing_hour, etc.\" so whenever I fetch an office I pivot it around its settings to construct office complete table - \"pivot in code not sql\" So basically taxonomy and settings are the DEFINITION of the environment that the user creates for himself, there are a lot more tables that contain elements like table \"blog_posts\" that contains posts for the taxonomy Post, or \"encounters\" for the encounters of user/client inside the taxonomy \"office\". etc... The reason i came up with such schema was   1. Laziness (why create a table for each taxonomy when i can group them all?)    2. I'm not sure about the exact fields for most of my inventory, and I like to keep my options open. This DB is working fine for me _for now_. Is this a valid way to design DB? Is there any pattern that acts like this one, or is there something I didnt account for and will haunt me in the very near future if I continue using this schema?"}
{"_id": "242684", "title": "Handling Types for Real and Complex Matrices in a BLAS Wrapper", "text": "I come from a C background and I'm now learning OOP with C++. _As an exercise_ (so please don't just say \"this already exists\"), I want to implement a wrapper for BLAS that will let the user write matrix algebra in an intuitive way (e.g. similar to MATLAB) e.g.: A = B*C*D.Inverse() + E.Transpose(); My problem is how to go about dealing with real (R) and complex (C) matrices, because of C++'s \"curse\" of letting you do the same thing in N different ways. I **do** have a clear idea of what it should look like to the user: s/he should be able to define the two separately, but operations would return a type depending on the types of the operands (R*R = R, C*C = C, R*C = C*R = C). Additionally R can be cast into C and vice versa (just by setting the imaginary parts to 0). I have considered the following options:   * As a real number is a special case of a complex number, inherit `CMatrix` from `RMatrix`. I quickly dismissed this as the two would have to return different types for the same getter function.   * Inherit `RMatrix` and `CMatrix` from `Matrix`. However, I can't really think of any common code that would go into `Matrix` (because of the different return types).   * Templates. Declare `Matrix<T>` and declare the getter function as `T Get(int i, int j)`, and operator functions as `Matrix *(Matrix RHS)`. Then specialize `Matrix<double>` and `Matrix<complex>`, and overload the functions.   * Then I couldn't really see what I would gain with templates, so why not just define `RMatrix` and `CMatrix` separately from each other, and then overload functions as necessary? Although this last option makes sense to me, there's an annoying voice inside my head saying this is not elegant, because the two are clearly related. Perhaps I'm missing an appropriate design pattern? So I guess what I'm looking for is either absolution for doing this, or advice on how to do better."}
{"_id": "238208", "title": ".properties files in regular src folder okay?", "text": "I work on a Java project with a suggested structure (separate src folders for java files and resource files). After moving the message / text related properties files to that folder, the externalize strings mechanism in Eclipse does not work as before. Usually when hovering over the key string in a getString(\"\") call, the tooltip showed the content of the properties file with the default locale. That has been extremely helpful for me personally. It seems as if that feature only works if the properties file is in the same source folder as the Java code that manages the BUNDLE_NAME stuff. Can I make a strong case for moving the properties file back to the src- folder, or should they be kept separate from the java source files? Anything else that I can try to get the feature to work again with the new structure?"}
{"_id": "254863", "title": "import existing pdf using TCPDF library", "text": "I'm trying to import an existing pdf file to digitaly sign it using TCPDF library > $pdf = new TCPDF_IMPORT; $pdf -> importPDF('example.pdf'); when I do so I get somthing like this ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Vn0xD.png) So, what is the best way to import a pdf under TCPDF"}
{"_id": "254861", "title": "What specifically does expressive power refer to?", "text": "Expressive Power is defined by Wikipedia as: > .. the breadth of ideas that can be represented and communicated in that > language. Does \"ideas\" refer to the things (operations, structures, algorithms, etc.?) we can communicate _to the machine_? Or does it refer to the \"human\" concepts that can be captured and communicated with the language to other humans? How is expressive power assessed and measured? For instance, if we took a language like JavaScript and imposed a weird restriction on variable names, such as _variable must be an 8-digit number preceded by an underscore, matching`/^_[0-9]{8}$/`_, would we lose expressive power? Or would that _only_ be absurd and annoying? * * * **To clarify:** Is expressive power measured by the _general_ ideas inherent to the language:   * integers and strings   * loops   * conditionals Or the number of _specific_ , unique ideas that the language can represent:   * the integers 1, 2 ... 2^32   * strings containing \"what does the fox say?\" and \"wha pah pah pah pah pah pow\"   * for each _frog_ in _my collection of frogs_   * if _frog_ is _green or something_ then _do something_"}
{"_id": "238200", "title": "Can I create a query which allows me to do this?", "text": "I have a table which stores user information, one column stores their ID. I had implemented four different attributes in the same table which stored a bit indicating which file operations that user could perform (read, create, update, delete). Thankfully, I realized that was terrible implementation and instead created four different tables with one column (the userID) which indicated which actions they could perform. It's really about me being annoyed by the over- whelming number of zeros. It does save on space, even if it's negligible. However, this database is also queried by an application in an OOP language, and one of the objects frequently created is a User. This class naturally stores which file operations the User can perform. In the old implementation, these (boolean-valued) object fields could be quickly populated from the user table, but not now. Now I'm confused on how I should populate these object fields. I feel like I should be able to perform a single query telling me which permission tables the user belongs to, but cannot find the write syntax (if it even exists). So my question is: is there a way to perform a single query to figure out which tables (which only consist of a single column) a value occurs in? Or do I have to query each table independently to fill these object fields?"}
{"_id": "238207", "title": "Storing a single read/writeable value for a web service", "text": "I'm writing a web service for some physical visualizations of data we are collecting and showing as part of a project we are running locally http://tenisonroad.com/ Some of the visualizations will be screen based and some will be physical (e.g. page 25 of this presentation from Resonate 2014). One thing my web service will do is signal to the visualizations when to change dataset. To do that I have a single integer, `DemoDataSetsDwellTime`. I started off in SQL thinking to add this value amoung my existing table declarations, e.g.               CREATE TABLE ActiveDemoDwells      (secondsDwell INT NOT NULL)      But this seems wrong - why make a table that is only ever going to store one single number, one single record. So then I thought of using application settings in the Web.config file               [Route(\"api/getdemodwelltime/\")]     [AcceptVerbs(\"GET\", \"POST\")]     public int GetDemoDwellTime()     {         return Int32.Parse(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[\"DemoDataSetsDwellTimes\"]);     }      with corresponding entry               <appSettings>       <add key=\"DemoDataSetsDwellTimes\" value=\"20\"/>     </appSettings>      But I have realised (from this answer) that the settings file should not really be used for writeable data, it is more suited / intended for read-only settings. So finally I thought about using a simple flat file, i.e. something like this               [Route(\"api/getdemodwelltime/\")]     [AcceptVerbs(\"GET\", \"POST\")]     public int GetDemoDwellTime()     {         var lines = File.ReadAllLines(\"settings.txt\");         var dwellTimeLine = lines.TakeWhile(line => line.StartsWith(\"dwellTime=\")).FirstOrDefault();         int result;         return (dwellTimeLine != null && Int32.TryParse(dwellTimeLine.Remove(0, \"dwellTime=\".Length), out result)) ? result : -1;     }      But that may get in a mess in the (unlikely) event that get and set methods are called simultaneously (I think, I'm not sure how web servers manage local file system access). So, which of these is the 'correct' approach, or is there another solution that I have overlooked?   1. Store the single readable and writeable value in its own table in a database,   2. Store it as an application setting in the Web.config file, or   3. Store it in a flat file."}
{"_id": "238206", "title": "Diagram to express parallelism in a process workflow", "text": "I'm modelling part of a software architecture on which several processes run as a workflow. The architecture involves data parallelism, where a certain serial process produces N pieces of data which need to be distributed to N processes that must run in parallel. I'm looking for a good way of expressing parallelism in a diagram. The objective of this diagram is to be informative and will be included in a paper about the system architecture. It does not need to be a formal model or strictly follow UML. I've drawn 3 ways of representing the parallelism, one of which (2) basically follows the UML 2.0 Activity Diagram. I would like to know which one, if any, will more clearly convey the parallelism. What other information this sort of diagram should include? ![Parallelism diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Rkc7U.png)"}
{"_id": "252083", "title": "What is a good way to structure my UI classes?", "text": "So, I have a program which has a swing GUI. (Java - duh!) I really, really don't think the way I'm structuring my classes now is good, so I am reorganizing from the ground up to follow best practices. **Classes:** **UI** \\- The big daddy. It's intended usage is to first create the containing JFrame, call for the construction of all of the subcomponents of the UI, then add them in a border layout to the JFrame (would it be wise to structure this as a singleton? After all, I don't want two UI's?) **RightPanel** , **LeftPanel** , **BottomPanel** , **TopPanel** , **CenterPanel**. Different panels of UI subcomponents. I have a class for each of these panels. **Menu** \\- The menubar. A seperate class just to keep menu duties seperated from the rest of the UI code. I'm not quite sure how to structure these, within relation to each other. A few possible options I have thought about, (just what I've come up with, there is probably a better way to do all of this):   * Make all classes an inner class of UI. I don't like this option for obvious code bloat reasons.   * Make each class independent of UI. Possibly even make each class a singleton, since I'd only ever need one UI along with all of it's components.   * The millions of better ideas that haven't even crossed my mind. What is a good way to do this? I'm by no means an expert on design patterns yet. I'm still trying to get an exceptionally solid grasp on OOP concenpts. _(Unnecessary additional concerns):_ Additionally, I obviously need a way for my program to interact with the UI, updating displayed information on multiple components from one event, and for buttons within different subcomponents to dispatch to a handler, sending data along on it's way and possibly even modifying other UI stuff. If you could devise an efficient way to structure this I'd love you even more"}
{"_id": "29912", "title": "Real world pitfalls of introducing F# into a large codebase and engineering team", "text": "I'm CTO of a software firm with a large existing codebase (all C#) and a sizable engineering team. I can see how certain parts of the code would be far easier to write in F#, resulting in faster development time, fewer bugs, easier parallel implementations, etc., basically overall productivity gains for my team. However, I can also see several productivity pitfalls of introducing F#, namely: 1) Everyone has to learn F#, and it's not as trivial as switching from, say, Java to C#. Team members that have not learned F# will be unable to work on F# parts of the codebase. 2) The pool of hireable F# programmers, as of now (Dec 2010) is non-existent. Search various software engineer resume databases for \"F#\", way less than 1% of resumes contain the keyword. 3) Community support as of now (Dec 2010) is less available. You can google almost any problem in C# and find someone that has already dealt with it, not so with F#. Third party tool support (NUnit, Resharper etc) is also sketchy. I realize that this is a bit Catch-22, i.e. if people like me don't use F# then the community and tools will never materialize, etc. But, I've got a company to run, and I can be cutting edge but not bleeding edge. Any other pitfalls I'm not considering? Or anyone care to rebut the pitfalls I've mentioned? I think this is an important discussion and would love to hear your counter-arguments in this public forum that may do a lot to increase F# adoption by industry. Thanks."}
{"_id": "40336", "title": "Why do programming books have such wacky cover art?", "text": "All the O'reilly titles, and numerous other programming books usually have a typified icon for their covert art. Sometimes it's minstrels, or medieval figures, and sometimes its camels and strange animals. This is, however, a consistent phenomenon. Why do you think programming books have such weird (interesting) motifs for cover art?"}
{"_id": "218615", "title": "Interpreter or virtual machine that does not execute bytecode", "text": "The developers of the Dart language tell that there is a virtual machine that executes statements written in Dart language. What is the difference between an interpreter and a virtual machine that executes a language? Until now the virtual machines that I knew, like Java Virtual Machine, Common Language Runtime, and Dalvik all execute bytecode that has been previously compiled from a programming language. How does it work a virual machine that executes directly a programming language?"}
{"_id": "129714", "title": "How to manage github issues for (priority, etc)?", "text": "I'm new to github, and am looking for advice on how to manage issues. I'm used to having priority and other ordering options but see that none exist. How do others manages issues during the lifecycle of a bug/feature? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "137948", "title": "Should a one person team use a process model?", "text": "I am about to start work on my biggest project yet (about 6 months full time work). For previous projects as they were only short I never intentionally used a model, I may have done but I didn't set out to do it. So... Before I start this project would it be advised to try and use some model? And if it is then what do you think would be useful to a 1 person team?"}
{"_id": "83713", "title": "Webcam software for both Windows and Linux \u2013 possible?", "text": "my visually impaired sister uses a webcam with DIY stand as a digital magnifier to read printed texts. We wanted to initiate a project to create a software - in fact only a modified webcam viewer (like Cheese in Linux). Is it possible to have one SW for both platforms (Windows and Linux) = almost the same code, same filters and GUI, and just use the video stream using some standard protocol? Because most people use Win, but we would like to support Linux primarily. I am not sure if this is possible in windows. We need the software to take the video stream and apply some color and other effects like those described in this article. The idea is to maintain only one application (best would be open-source) with a small differences for both platforms. For the GUI, the GTK seems to be optimal as it is accessible for ScreenReader SW. Such app would not only help the visually impaired but also the elderly people. So, is this possible or is this idea really stupid? thanks :-D"}
{"_id": "118788", "title": "Is using nested try-catch blocks an anti-pattern?", "text": "Is this an antipattern? It is an acceptable practice?                   try {             //do something         } catch (Exception e) {              try {                 //do something in the same line, but being less ambitious             } catch (Exception ex) {                 try {                     //Do the minimum acceptable                 } catch (Exception e1) {                     //More try catches?                 }             }         }"}
{"_id": "126720", "title": "Tool for large scale graph analysis", "text": "What are the best tools / frameworks / libraries available to implement and run algorithms on graphs? In particular I need a tool that can load a set of nodes, edges and values assigned to these edges and then allows me to perform operations on them. I already found R but I'm wondering if there is a more \"programmer friendly\" tool available?"}
{"_id": "126723", "title": "A free game-development language?", "text": "So, I'm trying to teach my much younger cousin a little bit about programming. My initial thought was something like Scratch or Alice, but there were a few downsides to that.   * Everyone seems to be really in to game programming and developing video games (because everyone loves playing video games, and as far as playing video games goes, playing your own can be the most rewarding) - but neither Alice nor Scratch seem to cater to game development   * Alice and Scratch seem too childish, while I'm sure my cousin would enjoy dabbling in it, I think he'd quickly bore of it   * I want a language that can be used to develop really cool stuff that will impress his friends. I remember writing BASIC back in the day and inviting all my friends over and showing off my creation, and I just feel like Alice and Scratch just don't appeal in the same way   * I want a language that requires my cousin to write code. Now, this isn't just because I think typing code out is good preparation for other programming languages, but it's because it gives him an opportunity to actually practice typing, and maybe get used to some of the slightly more esoteric characters on the keyboard Now, that's why I don't want to choose Alice or Scratch. I also don't want to pick a language like C or Java, or even Python or Ruby for that matter. My cousin has already imparted to me that he enjoys playing video games and wants to make his own, and that he enjoys using computers. In my opinion, even a simple language like Python or Ruby simply takes too long to build cool stuff. Ideally, he'd sit down, spend around a day or two (or maybe even up to a week, but hopefully less than that) and have a working, 2-dimensional game. I'm not saying you can't do it in Python or Ruby, but I'm just saying it would be difficult for a first-time programmer. Plus, I don't want to bog him down with all the computer science stuff, as that can come later. I just want to help him create the spark, and then let him carry on with the rest of the fire. I've looked at languages like Lua, and while it seems common in game programming, I'm not sure if it's the best pick - but if you guys think otherwise, please let me know. I've also looked at a language like Blitz and it looks really promising (plus, I tried it out a few years ago, and it was really quite nice). The downside is that I have to pay, something I'm definitively against. I've looked at SmallBasic, which seems promising and I'll continue looking at. But I haven't done much (in fact, I'm running the installer as I type this, so I'll report my thoughts on it shortly). UPDATE: I gave SmallBasic a quick try and it seems intriguing, but it also seems quite different compared to some other languages - that's not a bad thing, but it just is an unusual. Out of the things I've looked at, Blitz is still my favorite, but I refuse to go there because of the cost. But basically, what do you guys think of what I've said so far, and the languages I've looked at and do you know of any other, good alternatives? * * * UPDATE: Here's what I've chosen to do... I've realized that while I would love to help my cousin, I can't be with him all the time, and I can't help him every time he needs help. So, I wanted to choose something that has a good documentation, a good community, and a good book he can follow. Anyways, I've chosen Python and Pygame. Python is a language I'm fairly familiar with, plus I know there is a pretty good (and pretty large) community around Python. Furthermore, I know that the Python documentation is fairly complete and easy to navigate. Pygame also has an excellent documentation and set of tutorials. I'm also having him use/follow _Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python_ , which seems like a very good book, I bought him a hard copy as a Christmas present, plus I know that his monitor isn't huge, and it would be inconvenient to constantly swap back between the text and the editor. I think it should go well! EDIT: I don't want to imply that my choice is final or that it is correct. I just think it's the best fit for this situation. I think each person looking to teach someone younger should browse the selection and find the best solution for the individual person, considering things like age, skill level, and interest."}
{"_id": "195819", "title": "Dynamically change of UI on value changes in list box", "text": "I have a list box with several elements, let it be web servers (tomcat, iis etc). For each list box value, UI must have different views. For example, if we choose IIS, user name and password fields appear. If we choose tomcat, some additional fields appear depending on user OS - IP and port for linux and path for windows. My current approach is the following: \\- I created two enums. The first one for different OS (windows, linux, mac os x. The second one for servers: iis, nginx, tomcat etc. \\- I have a method that returns the OS enum value. \\- When user makes a choice, I determine it and basing on this choice I check user's OS. And after it I determine what UI elements to hide/add. Here's some sort of pseudo-code for what I have:               //OS enum     public enum OS {         WINDOWS, LINUX, MAC_OS_X;     }          //Servers enum     public enum SERVERS {         TOMCAT, IIS, NGINX;     }          //Server Listbox Handler     private void chooseServer() {             //...get value from list box             switch(server) {                 case TOMCAT:                     changeUI(getOS()); //getOS() returns OS enum value                     break;                 case IIS:                     //IIS is for windows only                     changeUI(OS.WINDOWS);                      break;                 case NGNIX:                     //Temporary support only linux                     changeUI(OS.LINUX);                     break;             }         }          //UI changes here     private void changeUI(OS os) {             switch (os) {                 case WINDOWS:                     userNameField.setEnabled(true);                     userPasswordField.setEnabled(true);                     ipField.setVisible(false);                     portField.setVisible(false);                     serverPathField.setVisible(true);                     break;                 case LINUX:                     userNameField.setEnabled(true);                     userPasswordField.setEnabled(true);                     ipField.setVisible(true);                     portField.setVisible(true);                     serverPathField.setVisible(false);                     break;                 case MAC_OS_X:                     userNameField.setEnabled(false);                     userPasswordField.setEnabled(false);                     ipField.setVisible(false);                     portField.setVisible(false);                     serverPathField.setVisible(false);                     break;             }         }      I don't like the moment when other OS or new servers will be added. These switch operators will grow more and become more complicated, I don't speak about maintainability of this code. Are there any standard approaches (patterns) for such tasks that help to avoid switch/if...else grow and to make code more generic, expandable, readable and supportable? * * * I tried to implement Adapter pattern suggested by Neil and ran at some obscure moment. Here's some pseudo-code:               public abstract class EditorAdapter {         protected boolean firstInit = true;         public abstract void adapt(Panel panel);     }          //--------          public class IISWindowsEditorAdapter extends EditorAdapter {         @Override         public void adapt(Panel panel) {             if(firstInit) {                 firstInit = false;                      panel.add(userNameField);                 //add other elements             }         }     }          //--------          public class TomcatEditorAdapter extends EditorAdapter {         private OS os = getOS();              @Override         public void adapt(Panel panel) {             if(firstInit) {                 firstInit = false;                      if(OS == OS.LINUX) {                     panel.add(userNameField);                     //add other elements                 } else if (OS == OS.WINDOWS) {                     //add elements                 } //... else if             }         }     }          //--------          public class Editor extends DialogEditor { //extends Dialog with protected Panel field (subPanel)         public Editor() {             initialize();         }              public void initialize() {             //...             main.add(createPanel()); //protected VerticalPanel main;             //...         }              public void createPanel() {             //listBox initialization             commonPanel.add(listBox); //panel with common elements             listBox.addClickHandler(new ChangeHandler() {                 @Override                 public void onChange(ChangeEvent event) {                     selectServer();                 });             }             //... add other common elements         }              private void selectServer() {             //... get selection             switch(server) {                 //Here something should be done in order to control different layouts.                 //At the moment, each choice adds more elements in addition to existing ones                 //As a variant, one can create class fields for each adapter and manipulate with them using lazy initialization                 case IIS:                     new WindowsEditorAdapter().adapt(subpanel);                     break;                 case TOMCAT:                     new TomcatEditorAdapter().adapt(subpanel);                     break;             }         }     }      The problem is that I have several tables/panels in my Editor that at the end are added to main panel. In general, it looks like:   * we open a dialog   * choose web-server   * some elements change inside the dialog according to our choice (and some choices are affected with OS user is using). That's why first UI initialization with adapter doesn't work here. At least I didn't catch how to implement this adapter for logic above."}
{"_id": "175962", "title": "Question on refactoring and code design", "text": "Suppose, I have a class with a constant static final field. Then I want in certain situations that field to be different. It still can be final, because it should be initialized in constructor. My question is, what strategy I should use:   1. add this field value into the constructor   2. create 2 subclasses, replace original field usage with some protected method and override it in subclasses   3. Or create some composite class that will held instance of my class inside and somehow change that value? Which approach should I use and why?"}
{"_id": "8283", "title": "Best (worst) logically impossible task assigned to you?", "text": "What was a project or spec that got put on your desk that could not possibly be done? How did you explain the dilemma to the \"requester\"? More importantly, did they understand after you explained the fundamental issue?"}
{"_id": "175960", "title": "Central Exception Handler", "text": "Recently I've been thinking about a general ExceptionHandler, that I could initialize once in my app context and inject it everywhere. The idea that it will have quite simple interface with just `public void handle(Exception ex)`, and then according to exception type it should decide what to do, maybe just log it, or show an alert message to the user, or maybe kill the whole app. The question is, what is the prettiest way to write such handler without lots of `instanceof`s? Unfortunately googling gives me only the default exception handler for `RuntimeException` that was introduced in Java 5. My first idea is to create an enum, that will have Class field for exception type and it will return the appropriate execution point, for example a concrete exception handler that also implements the interface `public void handle(Exception ex)`, but with the required casting already. **UPD** @alex I thought about this option and there was a reason I didn't felt ok with it. Suppouse we have code that uses jcifs to acces a file. Simple copy to local storage will require three exception wraps: _SMBException_ , _MalformedUrlException_ and _IOException_. If I don't use Java 7 catching them may result in repeating three times _CenralExceptionHandler.handle(e);_ which is not that readable. Anyway, when I think about it, it's my fault that I can't use Java 7, so maybe your suggestion is the best. But I'm still in doubts."}
{"_id": "195813", "title": "Generating random math expression", "text": "I have this idea running around in my head, to generate and evaluate random mathematical expressions. So, I decided to give it a shot and elaborate an algorithm, before coding it to test it. ## Example: Here are some example expressions I want to generate randomly:               4 + 2                           [easy]     3 * 6 - 7 + 2                   [medium]     6 * 2 + (5 - 3) * 3 - 8         [hard]     (3 + 4) + 7 * 2 - 1 - 9         [hard]     5 - 2 + 4 * (8 - (5 + 1)) + 9   [harder]     (8 - 1 + 3) * 6 - ((3 + 7) * 2) [harder]      The _easy_ and _medium_ ones are pretty straight-forward. Random `int`s separated by random operators, nothing crazy here. But I'm having some trouble getting started with something that could create one of the _hard_ and _harder_ examples. I'm not even sure a single algorithm could give me the last two. ## What I am considering: I can't say I _tried_ those ideas, because I didn't really want to waste much time going in a direction that had no chance of working in the first place. But still, I thought of a couple solutions:   * Using trees   * Using regular expressions   * Using a crazy \"for-type\" loop (surely the worst) ## What I'm looking for: I'd like to know which way you believe is the best to go, between the solutions I considered, and your own ideas. If you see a good way to start, I'd appreciate a lead in the right direction, e.g. with the beginning of the algorithm, or a general structure of it. Also note that I will have to evaluate those expressions. This can be done either after the expression is generated, or during its creation. If you take that in consideration in your answer, that's great. I'm not looking for anything language-related, but for the record, I'm thinking of implementing it in Objective-C, as that's the language I'm most working with recently. Those examples did not include the `:` operator, as I only want to manipulate `int`s, and this operator adds many verifications. If your answer gives a solution handling this one, that's great. If my question needs any clarification, please ask in the comments. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "123266", "title": "Which questions a Software Developer/Sr. Software Developer (non-DBA, non-Database Enigneer) should be able to answer about databases?", "text": "I am a Java developer and most of my experience is on Java. But sometimes I have face some database related questions in the interviews. Hence I wanted to ask that from the interview point of view, which questions a Software Developer/Sr. Software Developer (non-DBA, non-Database Enigneer) should be able to answer about databases? I know that this is a very subjective question with no definite answer. But I have come across a similar question about J2EE with some really great answers. Hence some constructive suggestions like specific topics, areas, questions, even links to resources will be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "238522", "title": "What are some effective ways of making scrum more dynamic earlier in a sprint?", "text": "My team does 2-week sprints, and the trend we've identified (which we want to move away from) is that our daily standup scrums are relatively straightforward early in the sprint, but then transform into a more frantic scramble toward the end. The first week developers are heads down in coding, analysts are developing test plans and answering developer questions, and testers are refining existing tests and identifying areas to test (but not necessarily testing just yet since there isn't as much out there actually ready to test). Blockers and scope creep tend to emerge into the second week, and then as we see how close we're getting to the end, we force ourselves to make tough choices and be more communicative. How can we \"spread the wealth\" and increase the overall \"tempo\" (I guess?) of our scrums from the beginning of the sprint to the end?"}
{"_id": "123268", "title": "What to search/research to learn more about this way of coding Java?", "text": "What should I search/research if I'm looking for how to get started with translating database tables to Java code? For instance, if I have a one-many relationship in the database and I want to translate that to java code...what is that process called? I'm really looking for just plain Java code example and not any tools at the moment."}
{"_id": "245484", "title": "How to list open source license owner", "text": "I am releasing software developed in a university under the Apache 2.0 license. I would like advice on who to list as the license owner. Would I list only my boss who co-authored the software and maintains the code base, or both my boss and the institution, or just the institution? I'm inclined to put my bosses name and institution, but I wanted to find out of that was an acceptable practice. Also do you know if multiple individuals are ever listed as license owners?"}
{"_id": "70329", "title": "Relearning programming - how is my approach?", "text": "I want to preface this question by saying that I've read a ton of questions on Programmers leading up to this one. I was/am particularly affected by the assertion that PHP as a language suffers because of poor coding and the leeway it provides. I have been coding PHP for a long time - I learned a lot as an apprentice to a senior, but have been mostly restricted to web development. I have enough knowledge to quickly respond to challenges and to provide web-based solutions that are secure. I am getting slightly more familiar with MVC and OOP in general, but it isn't a strong point for me. My fear is that I fall into the category of people that give PHP a bad rep - not for vanity purposes, but because I'd really like to be the best programmer/developer possible. I have a penchant for learning and I think it is time to \"graduate\" to a more in depth understanding of programming and development in general, so I can improve my skills and _become a better programmer._ I think this starts with learning a new language and building a hobby project with some expertise found in literature - books like Code Complete, Clean Code, and references on algorithms. I'd like to integrate their best practices and advice. There are some community college courses as well, but my concern is that I may be beyond some of the classes - they are very introductory. I'm looking for suggestions and tips to attain my goal. I would love to get feedback from the community so I can learn more and (hopefully) be great. Edit: I'm considering Python or Ruby to dive into, but I _think_ a non- scripting language would help me out more. If you have a suggestion there, please include it in your answer :)"}
{"_id": "237131", "title": "Versioning Strategy for Service Interfaces JAR", "text": "I'm building a service oriented architecture composed (mostly) of Java-based services, each of which is a Maven project (in an individual repository) with two submodules: common, and server. The `common` module contains the service's interfaces that clients can include in their project to make service calls. The `server` submodule contains the code that actually powers the service. I'm now trying to figure out an appropriate versioning strategy for the interfaces, such that each interface change results in a new common jar, but changes to the server (so long as they don't impact the contract of the interfaces) receive the same common jar. I know this is pretty simple to do manually (simply increment the server version and don't touch the common one), but this project will be built and deployed by a CI server, and I'd like to come up with a strategy for automatically versioning these. The only thing I have been able to come up with so far is to have the CI server `md5` the service interfaces."}
{"_id": "171049", "title": "MVC Can the model know ANYTHING about the view?", "text": "I'm working on a game, and without getting into any details I am using MVC \"patterns\", \"rules\" or whatever you want to call it to make the game. The view includes everything needed to draw things on the screen, the controller passes input to the model. And the Model contains game logic. Here's my problem, the game is being made for mobile devices that vary in screen sizes. I feel my model needs to know the view size so it can appropriately adjust for it. I've thought about it for a while I could put all the adjustments in the view, but it just seems inefficient to translate the model positioning to the view's needed positioning every time. If the model knows the size it only needed to adjust itself once. So my question is can I pass the view size to the model without 'breaking' MVC? I feel personally they are still decoupled this way because a size is just a number, I could still change the view any time as long as it has a size. But I wanted to get a community response on this because I haven't seen many discussions of MVC being used in a game. (And to be clear I don't want an answer of why I shouldn't use it in a game, but do I break MVC by letting it know the view's size) EDIT - More details on the game's needs and why I wanted to pass the view. Some objects positions need to be set relative to the edge of the screen (such as UI elements) so that they appear relatively in the same place. Sprite sizes are not stretched if the window size is wider such as an IPhone 5 screen. They will just be placed relatively to the screen edge. .If I gave it to the view to handle this, I will need a flag saying that this element is positioned say x number of pixels from TOP BOTTOM RIGHT LEFT. Then allow the view to draw it with that information. Its acceptable, I just wanted to know if there was a better way while still being MVC because it seems this way will be repeating a logic over and over, where as if I knew the view size in the model, I could convert all the relative positions into absolute positions in one run, but with this I have to convert on every update to the screen."}
{"_id": "117632", "title": "How should I go about learning Python for website development?", "text": "I want to learn about developing websites with Python; how should I go about this? I am not new to programming, as I have knowledge in C#, ASP.NET, HTML, and CSS. What resources should I explore? I had a brief look at Python documentation and Dive Into Python a while ago, although the one I read was a newer version hosted at a .org website which appears to be down right now. Therefore I am aware of some Python syntax, operators, lists, etc. The main thing is that I want to learn about developing websites, and at the same time learn Python overall; I don't want to start back at the documentation or other stuff. **NOTE: You can assume I have zero knowledge in Python since what I know isn't that great.**"}
{"_id": "207901", "title": "Finding all points that are located in one line in 2D coordinate system", "text": "I have an array of points. Each point has two members - x and y. I want to get any 3 points and check, are they located in single line in 2D coordinate system. For example - 1x2, 2x3, 5x6: ![Image](http://i.stack.imgur.com/CvUsI.png) If yes, I want to search for another point in my array which is located in that line (line has no start and no end). And so on, while I didn't check all remained points. Then, I want to check next combination of 3 points and repeat while all 3-points permutations are no checked. For every of that permutations I want to tell how many points are located in single line (0 - if these 3 points are no located in single line, 3 - if they are, 4 - if they are and that's other point which also is located in that line, etc.). Is there any effective algorithm that can do it in complexity equal or less than O(n3)?"}
{"_id": "163880", "title": "Penalization of under performing employees, how to avoid this?", "text": "My company's management wants to deduct from the salary of under performing employees. I'm a member of the Core Strategy committee and they want my opinion also. I believe that the throughput from an employee depends on a lot of things such as the particular work assigned to them, other members of his/her team, other reasons etc. Such penalizations will be demoralizing to the people. How can I convince my management not to do so?"}
{"_id": "163886", "title": "How can we distribute a client app to other non-US businesses?", "text": "I'm working on an app which acts as a client for our web service. We sell this service to businesses, and we want to distribute the app to their employees for free. The app will be customised for each client. If we were in the US, my understanding is that we'd ask them to enrol in the volume purchasing program, and submit a version of our app for each business, for enterprise distribution at the free price point However, the businesses aren't all in the US, so they can't enrol in the VPP. They have thousands of employees, so promo codes won't be sufficient. What are our alternatives?"}
{"_id": "207906", "title": "How to call something that can be both a user and a usergroup?", "text": "My idea is, to create an abstract class / interface which can be extended into a user, and into a usergroup. There actually is a good reason for there being this interface connecting the groups with the users as the only differences between a user and a group is that you can login as a user and you can't as a group, and that a group can contain multiple users or groups. Permissions and stuff are handled without taking notice of it being a user or a group."}
{"_id": "117635", "title": "How can I design test cases to cover code based on random events?", "text": "For example, if the code generates a random int from 0-10, and takes a different branch on each outcome, how can one design a test suite to guarantee 100% statement coverage in such code? In Java, the code might be something like:               int i = new Random().nextInt(10);     switch(i)     {         //11 case statements     }"}
{"_id": "117638", "title": "University teaches DOS-style C++, how to deal with it", "text": "I had been programming for many years but wanted a diploma to make myself more employable. Having already been through university once, I didn't choose a full 5 year computer science major but a shorter, more practically-oriented _software engineering_ program. I expected that it might focus more on concrete skills than on theory, but still had this idea that universities and professors like things to be correct, formal, academic. It's still science, right? Wrong - I was surprised by how sloppy many IT courses were. In an introductory course on C++ we were tested on clich\u00e9s like \"why are globals bad\" and \"why are constants good\", after just writing 1-2 programs. Random anecdotes without proper context. Handouts contained `system(pause/cls)`, `getch` and headers like `conio.h` and `iodos.h`. One of the tasks was to print \"ASCII characters\" from 32 to **255** , with a screenshot showing such a table printed using the Windows-1252 code page, but without mentioning encoding at all. **Question** : when a university/professor seems to be using inferior and/or outdated tools and methods, and the content being taught is borderline incorrect, how do you deal with it constructively and respectfully, if at all? Some answers point out that you should look beyond the programming since it is just a tool for learning about topics such as data structures and algorithms. I agree with this idea, but in this case there wasn't really any such plan behind the poor style. Most courses would simply teach another \"tool\" without much background theory or any \"big picture\". It often felt like they were quickly put together just for the sake of offering such a course. * * * I stuck with it and finally graduated. Quality remained pretty low throughout (with a few great exceptions), and several other students have been complaining about it. As expected I have learned much more from personal projects and part-time jobs than from school, _however_ the process of finishing school and the label \"software student\" seem mysteriously useful in themselves!"}
{"_id": "161031", "title": "Best way to load application settings", "text": "A simple way to keep the settings of a Java application is represented by a text file with \".properties\" extension containing the identifier of each setting associated with a specific value (this value may be a number, string, date, etc..). C# uses a similar approach, but the text file must be named \"App.config\". In both cases, in source code you must initialize a specific class for reading settings: this class has a method that returns the value (as string) associated with the specified setting identifier.               // Java example     Properties config = new Properties();     config.load(...);     String valueStr = config.getProperty(\"listening-port\");     // ...          // C# example     NameValueCollection setting = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings;     string valueStr = setting[\"listening-port\"];     // ...      In both cases we should parse strings loaded from the configuration file and assign the \u200b\u200bconverted values to the related typed objects (parsing errors could occur during this phase). After the parsing step, we must check that the setting values \u200b\u200bbelong to a specific domain of validity: for example, the maximum size of a queue should be a positive value, some values \u200b\u200bmay be related (example: min < max), and so on. Suppose that the application should load the settings as soon as it starts: in other words, the first operation performed by the application is to load the settings. Any invalid values for the settings \u200b\u200bmust be replaced automatically with default values\u200b\u200b: if this happens to a group of related settings, those settings are all set with default values. The easiest way to perform these operations is to create a method that first parses all the settings, then checks the loaded values \u200b\u200band finally sets any default values\u200b\u200b. However maintenance is difficult if you use this approach: as the number of settings increases while developing the application, it becomes increasingly difficult to update the code. In order to solve this problem, I had thought of using the _Template Method_ pattern, as follows.               public abstract class Setting     {         protected abstract bool TryParseValues();              protected abstract bool CheckValues();              public abstract void SetDefaultValues();              /// <summary>         /// Template Method         /// </summary>         public bool TrySetValuesOrDefault()         {             if (!TryParseValues() || !CheckValues())             {                 // parsing error or domain error                 SetDefaultValues();                 return false;             }             return true;         }     }          public class RangeSetting : Setting     {         private string minStr, maxStr;         private byte min, max;              public RangeSetting(string minStr, maxStr)         {             this.minStr = minStr;             this.maxStr = maxStr;         }              protected override bool TryParseValues()         {             return (byte.TryParse(minStr, out min)                 && byte.TryParse(maxStr, out max));         }              protected override bool CheckValues()         {             return (0 < min && min < max);         }              public override void SetDefaultValues()         {             min = 5;             max = 10;         }     }      The problem is that in this way we need to create a new class for each setting, even for a single value. Are there other solutions to this kind of problem? In summary:   1. Easy maintenance: for example, the addition of one or more parameters.   2. Extensibility: a first version of the application could read a single configuration file, but later versions may give the possibility of a multi-user setup (admin sets up a basic configuration, users can set only certain settings, etc..).   3. Object oriented design."}
{"_id": "88991", "title": "Abstract Base Class with Interfaces as Behaviors?", "text": "I need to design a class hierarchy for my C# project. Basically, class' functionalities are similar to WinForms classes so let's take WinForms toolkit as an example. (However, I can't use WinForms or WPF.) There are some core properties and functionalities that every class needs to provide. Dimensions, position, color, visibility (true/false), Draw method, etc. I need design advice I have used a design with an abstract base class and interfaces that are not really types but more like behaviors. Is this a good design? If not, what would be a better design. The code looks like this:               abstract class Control     {         public int Width { get; set; }              public int Height { get; set; }              public int BackColor { get; set; }              public int X { get; set; }              public int Y { get; set; }              public int BorderWidth { get; set; }              public int BorderColor { get; set; }              public bool Visible { get; set; }              public Rectangle ClipRectange { get; protected set; }              abstract public void Draw();     }      Some Controls can contain other Controls, some can be only contained (as children) so I'm thinking of making two interfaces for these functionalities:               interface IChild     {         IContainer Parent { get; set; }     }          internal interface IContainer     {         void AddChild<T>(T child) where T : IChild;         void RemoveChild<T>(T child) where T : IChild;         IChild GetChild(int index);     }      WinForms controls display text so this also goes into interface:               interface ITextHolder     {         string Text { get; set; }         int TextPositionX { get; set; }         int TextPositionY { get; set; }         int TextWidth { get; }         int TextHeight { get; }              void DrawText();     }      Some Controls can be docked inside their parent Control so:               enum Docking     {          None, Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Fill     }          interface IDockable     {         Docking Dock { get; set; }     }      ...and now let's create some concrete classes:               class Panel : Control, IDockable, IContainer, IChild {}     class Label : Control, IDockable, IChild, ITextHolder {}     class Button : Control, IChild, ITextHolder, IDockable {}     class Window : Control, IContainer, IDockable {}      The first \"problem\" I can think of here is that the interfaces are basically set in stone once they get published. But let's assume I will be able to make my interfaces good enough to avoid need of making changes to them in the future. Another issue I see in this design is that every of these classes would need to implement it's interfaces and duplication of code will quickly occur. For example in Label and Button the DrawText() method derives from the ITextHolder interface or in every class derived from IContainer management of children. My solution for this issue is to implement this \"duplicated\" functionalities in dedicated adapters and forward calls to them. So both Label and Button would have a TextHolderAdapter member that would be called inside methods inherited from the ITextHolder interface. I think this design should shield me from having to many common functionalities in the base class which could quickly get bloated with virtual methods and unnecessary \"noise code\". Changes of behavior would be accomplished by extending adapters and not Control-derived classes. I think this is called the \"Strategy\" pattern and although there are millions of questions and answers on that topic, I would like to ask you for your opinions as to what I take into consideration for this design and what flaws you can think of in my approach. I should add that there is an almost 100% chance that future requirements will call for new classes and new functionalities."}
{"_id": "82396", "title": "What issues lead people to use Japanese-specific encodings rather than Unicode?", "text": "At work I come across a lot of Japanese text files in Shift-JIS and other encodings. It causes many mojibake (unreadable character) problems for all computer users. Unicode was intended to solve this sort of problem by defining a single character set for all languages, and the UTF-8 serialization is recommended for use on the Internet. So why doesn't everybody switch from Japanese-specific encodings to UTF-8? What issues with or disadvantages of UTF-8 are holding people back? EDIT: The W3C lists some known problems with Unicode, could this be a reason too?"}
{"_id": "82392", "title": "Where is the problem with the output of web forms?", "text": "Most of you already know that the output of ASP.NET web forms is quite ugly when you compare it to the output of ASP.NET MVC. My question is what could the problems of that ASP.NET web forms' output cause to the end users? Is it the slow of browsing and the load time?, but do you think that could be a problem in today's high speed connections? I want to choose an easy way to develop websites and I find ASP.NET web forms to be easier than ASP.NET MVC and I wonder if the problems of the output (ugly HTML, etc) can be a real problem for me?"}
{"_id": "110178", "title": "Sun java Certification", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are your thoughts on the Oracle Master (old Sun Certified Java > Developer) Examination? I am graduate student.I do not have any work experience so I was thinking about taking Sun **Java** certification to boost my profile.It costs around 200$ I think.So I was wondering if the certification is worth taking and does it add value. Thank you"}
{"_id": "110176", "title": "application architecture with one or more PDFs", "text": "I am writing an iPad application. The main view of the application will be a PDF. I have made considerable progress in parsing out the contents of the PDF. The application will also have at least two \"side views\". These side views may or may not themselves be driven by PDF files. That is part of what I am trying to figure out. The main PDF will contain some hidden buttons which cause the side view to show certain things. For example, there might be a button over the name \"Lincoln\" that brings up a side view about Abe Lincoln, another one over the name \"Washington\" that brings up a side view about George Washington, and so on. The creation of these hidden buttons should be driven by data in the main PDF. I'm thinking this means annotations. Two questions: 1) Is there one type of annotation that I might prefer over another? Options I can see include actions, URIs, and maybe links -- but the last one could be complicated by the numerous internal links within the PDF. 2) Should I use PDFs for the side views? What are the arguments, pro and con? Considerations: A) Ease of moving the app to other platforms later   B) Pirating. I would prefer that someone who got my PDFs not be able to reproduce the app without some work. EDIT: answering the questions posed in an answer: By \"action\", I mean \"PDF action\". See section 12.6 of the [http://www.adobe.com/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html](PDF specification). The main view is a PDF because that's the format the content author is comfortable creating. But since this PDF will be embedded in the app, I have to assume that it could escape \"into the wild\"."}
{"_id": "110170", "title": "Company moving away from IBM Rational solution\u2026 any good alternatives?", "text": "We are moving away from IBM Rational products due to really high costs. I am trying to find alternative solutions that will roughly cover all the functionalities from IBM Rational product line. I included a listing of all products currently in use:   1. IBM Rational ClearCase MultiSite   2. IBM Rational ClearQuest   3. IBM Rational Performance Tester   4. IBM Rational Requistite Pro   5. IBM Rational SoDA   6. IBM Rational Purify for Linux and UNIX So far, I was told SVN / Team Foundation Server / Serena PVCS are decent alternatives but I suspect I may need more tools to cover almost everything provided by IBM. Any recommendations / feedback would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "155696", "title": "Dealing with Upgrade Lists", "text": "I'm curious to how others deal with upgrade lists and feature suggestions for developments (ie popular community driven websites) At the moment, when a user makes a suggestions for an upgrade/feature, we stick it on an 'unscheduled' list to be reviewed in the future when we start setting out the next set of schedule."}
{"_id": "155697", "title": "Is the structure used for these web pages a design pattern?", "text": "I want to know if the structure for an ASP.NET website I'm working on uses a design pattern for it's web pages. If it is a design pattern, what is it called? The web pages have the following structure: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yW8BF.png) UserDetails page (UserDetails.aspx) - includes UserDetailsController.ascx user control. UserDetailsController.ascx includes sub user controls like UserAccountDetails.ascx and UserLoginDetails.ascx etc Each sub user control contains a small amount of code/logic, the 'controller' user controls that host these sub user controls (i.e UserDetailsController.ascx) appear to call the business rules code and pass the data to the sub user controls. Is this a design pattern? What is it called?"}
{"_id": "16109", "title": "B.A Computer Science Vs B.S Inf Tech?", "text": "Would a recruiter prefer a B.A in Comp Science from a more prestigious university or a B.S in Inf Tech from just an average university? Would it matter for someone already established in the field with plenty of experience? The only difference in the B.A and B.S is essentially the mathematics. The B.S is geared for those going on to master's programs, although one isn't excluded from going on to a masters program with a BA, many do require more mathematics. Just for those curious, the information tech degree is typically geared more to real-world problems then the computer science and the quality of it will vary widely. Some inf tech programs are as in-depth as an ABET C.S degree, the information tech from Drexel looks extremely strong. The Management Information Systems is generally provided via the business school and is more of a traditional business degree. I'm not sure really how well versed the recruiters/g.p are in the actual differences in all of these programs. Some non ABET BS Comp Science may only require 1 or 2 Calculus versus the ABET certified programs."}
{"_id": "51933", "title": "Is fixing bugs made by other people a good approach?", "text": "Let's assume the situation where a team of four developers is building an application. During the testing phase, bugs are reported by users. Who should fix them? The person who committed the erroneous code, or anyone who is free? What is preferred approach in agile development (scrum)?"}
{"_id": "16105", "title": "Choosing the right programmer among a class of undergrads", "text": "I am a CS undergrad but I landed a programming job last year and I like it a lot. We are currently 3 programmer in the development section of the company and we have to work with pretty much anything were asked to do. We deal with many different languages and learn them as needed for some quick jobs etc etc. We want to hire a 4th programmer and I'm asked to suggest some students in my class, a year younger, since I failed a class. I don't really know any of these guys except my teammates which I wouldn't suggest. We don't really want to interview them all so I thought we could make a little challenge to help us choose who to interview. We're in need of someone who understand the business even though they're new to it, and likes to learn new stuff and code. Any idea on a programming challenge or a kind of letter saying why we should take them? TL;DR: We need a new undergrad programmer, we want the best to come to us without interviewing them all. Any challenge or test you could suggest?"}
{"_id": "196704", "title": "Issue tracking system by function/method", "text": "I often feel that it would be more convenient if, within an issue tracking system, each issue were attributed to a certain function/method. Then, we can easily list all the issues related to a certain function/method. Many issues can be clearly attributed to a certain function/method. At times, we may want to look at issues sorted by the posted/edited time or by importance, be many other times, we want to look through only the issues related to a certain function/method. Of course, the system can be designed to be able to also display them mixed. And there are some issues that do not belong to a particular function/method, but they can be grouped together in some generic group.   1. Is there such issue tracking system out there?   2. Is there any problem with such system. If so, what are the problems?"}
{"_id": "120762", "title": "What are the options for simple Ajax calls for a Java webapp?", "text": "I've got a very simple need and I don't know what are the options available. If I simplify, users see webpage like this server by a Java webapp server: > [-] red   >  [x] green   >  [-] blue   >  [-] yellow > > The selected color is green And then I want the user to be able to select the yellow color and have the part of the page containing the relevant text change to: > [-] red   >  [-] green   >  [-] blue   >  [x] yellow > > The selected color is yellow Basically I want something a bit more user friendly than simply using HTTP GET all the time. There shall be a lot of options the user can select from and this shall affect an (HTML formatted) text displayed on the page. And I want the user to see his change as soon as possible, without having the page to fully reload and without being redirected to another page. There shall be a client/server round-trip (the information to display depending on the options selected ain't available on the client-side so I cannot do it all in JavaScript in the browser). I'd like to use Ajax requests but I don't know which way to go:   * jQuery   * GWT   * something else What are my options and what would be the pros and cons of the various approach? P.S: I'm very familiar with Java (SCP since the last century and basically being a Java programmer for the last 12 years or so) but not familiar at all with JavaScript (though I did hack a few Ajaxy-calls years ago, way before great libraries existed)."}
{"_id": "153930", "title": "What are good technical questions to ask to determine the analytical skill of a programmer?", "text": "I am a non-technical recruiter and I want to lay out some initial interview questions, one of which is to determine the analytic skill of a person. We will soon launch our hiring process for programmers and we are mapping out what would be the best questions. I have read quite a few posts here that suggested on how to interview programmers but I haven't come across on what technical question to ask that non-technical recruiters can easily comprehend if the answer is good or bad."}
{"_id": "120760", "title": "Is JSF really ready to deliver high performance web applications?", "text": "I have heard a lot of good about JSF but as far as I know people also had lots of serious complains with this technology in the past, not aware of how much the situation has improved. We are considering JSF as a probable technology for a social network project. But we are not aware of the performance scores of JSF neither we could really come across any existing high performance website that had been using JSF. People complain about its performance scalability issues. We are still not very sure if we are doing the right thing by choosing jsf, and thus would like to hear from you all about this and take your inputs into consideration. Is it possible to configure JSF to satisfy the high performance needs of social networking service ? Also till what extent is it possible to survive with the current problems in JSF. What exactly are its problems ? * * * I am **not** worried about the development complexities with JSF what others usually complain about because as per my personal experience I believe that's not at all true, but I am more concerned about what performance and scalability issues. And please don't just abuse it on its old issues linked to previous versions. I just care about the present state whatever had been its past."}
{"_id": "215902", "title": "Is it okay to just add a page or two PHP page to add some functionality to a Drupal site?", "text": "I'm not familiar with Drupal, really. I can dig around the admin interface and navigate the directories and find the files that I need to just fine as well. What I'm _really_ not familiar with is adding modules or extending modules. The site currently takes an order and sets up recurring payments through Ubercart and uses Authorize.net as a gateway. Right now, when a payment fails, a single e-mail gets sent out to the admin. We'd like to extend it to send an e-mail to the user and let them change their payment information through another page on the site. Authorize has a service called Silent Post URL that basically just posts a carbon copy in XML to whatever URL you give it. We'd like to accept that XML, deserialize it, parse the data, send a notice to the user and give them the page for updating their information. So, I guess it'll be two PHP pages. One for the XML API call from Authorize.net, and then one for the page for the users' to update their payment information. Could I just create two simple pages each handling their own tasks, or should I check out properly extending a module? If it's appropriate for me to write up the pages and not have to hook them into the module, what would be the best way to handle setting up what needs to get done? (The most experience I've had with extending a PHP site has been hacking away at someone else' poorly constructed, custom framework, so if anyone has any good resources perhaps on PHP best practices that they could share through a PM or a comment, I'd appreciate It) (Also, I'm still getting the hang of Stack Exchange, so if this isn't appropriate please let me know. I'll delete it.)"}
{"_id": "120765", "title": "How strict are standard employer IP agreements about coding outside of work?", "text": "I'm in negotiations for a position with a large corporation and I'm reading their employment terms. In their IP/copyright section they state that anything that I do outside of work that is \"similar\" to what I perform on the job is also theirs. I understand that it's intentionally very vague to protect them, but I'm also a little nervous that it could be abused. The way I read it, anything I produce outside of work could be claimed as well, because it would fall under \"programming\". Is this relatively standard? Could I negotiate more specific terms (I have asked if I could get clarification)? Should I be worried that they could abuse this? I just don't want to be caught in a situation where come up with a (potentially) great idea outside of work and they swoop down and lay claim to it. **EDIT:** To help a bit, here is the parts in question: _\"In the event any 'work' is held not to be a work for hire, I hereby assign and irrevocably agree to assign all right, title, and interest in and to such 'work' to 'company'\"_ Where work is code, deliverables, designs, patents, etc. The next section does say: _\"if in the judgment of the 'company', any such 'work' does not relate to the business efforts or research and development efforts in which, during the period of my employment, the 'company' actually is engaged or reasonably would be expected to become engaged, this Agreement does not obligate me to assign such items.\"_ which basically says that I can keep the rights to software that I don't create for them at their discretion. I'm basically looking to see if this is a fairly standard contract and if this is a sort of thing that could be used to bite me in the tail in the future."}
{"_id": "82973", "title": "How would you assess a programmer's Github profile?", "text": "Lots of people in the open source community say they strongly consider a candidate's Github profile when hiring. I'm active on Github, with a few projects of my own and some contributions to others. But looking at my own profile as if I were an employer, I see a lot of noise: projects I cloned but never contributed to, etc. The projects and patches I'm proud of don't stand out. If you assess people's Github profiles, how do you do it? And as a developer, should I do anything differently - for example, delete cloned repos I'm not actively working on?"}
{"_id": "155521", "title": "What is the difference between Windows 8, WinRT, and Windows RT?", "text": "I just read that there will be two versions of Windows available: **Windows RT** and **Windows 8**. Could someone please describe what the differences between **Windows RT** and **Windows 8** are? And how these differences may affect developers creating apps for one or the other? Also, what is **WinRT**?"}
{"_id": "155523", "title": "How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?", "text": "## Background The longer I work on a project, the less clear it becomes. It's like I cannot seperate various classes/objects anymore in my head. Everything starts mixing up, and it's extremely hard to take it all apart again. I start putting functions in classes where they really don't belong, and make silly mistakes such as writing code that I later find was 100% obsolete; things are no longer clearly mappable in my head. It isn't until I take a step back for several hours (or days sometimes!) that I can actually see what's going on again, and be productive. I usually try to fight through this, I am so passionate about coding that I wouldn't for the life of me know what else I could be doing. This is when stuff can get really weird, I get so up in my head that I sort of lose touch with reality (to some extent) in that various actions, such as pouring a glass of water, no longer happen on a concious level. It happens on auto pilot, during which pretty much all of my concious concentration (is that even a thing?) is devoted to borderline pointless problem solving (trying to seperate elements of code). It feels like a losing battle. So I took an IQ test a while ago (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale I believe it was) and it turned out my Spatial Aptitude was quite low. I still got a decent **total** score, just above average, so I won't have to poke things with a stick for a living, but I am a little worried that this is such a handicap when writing/engineering computer programs that I won't ever be able to do it seriously or professionally. ## Question I am very much interested in what other people think of this... **Could a low spatial aptitude be the cause of the above described problems?** **How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?** Maybe I should be looking more along the lines of ADD or something similar, because I did get diagnosed with ADD at the age of 17 (5 years ago) but the medicine I received didn't seem to affect me that much so I never took it all that serious. As far as I know people are born with low/med/high spatial aptitude, so I think it's interesting to find out if the more fortunate are better programmers by birth right."}
{"_id": "82976", "title": "How to transfer files to production?", "text": "We are a group that started working on a fairly big website with an existing codebase. We have a test and a production server. Our idea is to have a test repository with a number of devs having push access to; and a blessed repository that only a few can push to. The blessed repo is supposed to be always stable and represent the latest production version. How can I automate the process of transferring the files into production? Is it bad to have the production files under version control? That way, pushing to the blessed repository would mean deployment. But, what happens when there are merge conflicts? Will the production server break until it is resolved?"}
{"_id": "155526", "title": "Are there any limitations to using WinRT instead of .Net?", "text": "From my understanding creating an application that runs on multiple architectures requires virtualization, and virtualization reduces performance since it creates a layer of abstraction. With Windows 8 supporting both Intel and ARM architectures should we expect slower performance with a WinRT app versus a .Net app running on an Intel device? Also, will WinRT support database connectivity and active directory access?"}
{"_id": "46193", "title": "Page Not Found: 404 - the best content to put in this page", "text": "Do you let me know what kind of content I should put in the error-page like \"404 page not found\"? **Example:** \"Unfortunately an error has occurred during the processing of your page request.\" \"Page Not Found! Check the URL\" \"Sorry an error has occurred! Please Try again.\" \"We're sorry, we couldn't find the page you requested.\" The content should be target user perspective. Means that target user should easily understand what's happening and what he should do?"}
{"_id": "119551", "title": "Releasing an open source project without getting embarrassed", "text": "I've been working by myself on a fairly large open source project for quite a while and it's nearing the point where I'd like to release it. However, I'm self-taught and I don't really know anyone who could adequately review my project. A few years ago, I had released a small bit of code which pretty much got ripped apart (in a critical sense) on the forum where I released it. Even though the code worked, the criticism was accurate but brutal. It prompted me to begin searching for best practices for everything and in the end I feel that it made me a much better developer. I've gone over everything in my project so many times trying to make it perfect that I've lost count. I believe in my project and think it has the potential to help a lot of people and I feel like I've done some cool things in interesting ways with it. Still, because I'm self-taught, I can't help but wonder what gaps exist in my self- education. The way my code was ripped apart last time isn't something I'd like to repeat. I think my two biggest fears with releasing my project that I've poured countless hours into are being absolutely embarrassed because I missed some patently obvious things because of my self-education or, worse, releasing it to the sound of crickets. Is there anyone who has been in a similar situation? I'm not afraid of constructive criticism, so long as it is constructive and not just a rant on how I screwed up. I know there is a code review site on StackExchange, but it's not really set up for large projects and I didn't feel like the community there is large enough yet to get good feedback if I were to post parts of my project piecemeal (I tried with one file). What can I do to give my project at least some measure of success without getting embarrassed or devestated in the process?"}
{"_id": "158584", "title": "Software Licensing Particulars", "text": "I have spent a lot of time examining the various (major) software licenses and ultimately have decided upon using the **MIT Licenses** for my open source projects, and the **Microsoft Reference License (MS-RSL)** for my proprietary projects. Not knowing much about IP law, I have three simple questions that I haven't been able to find answers to:   * At the top of each source file that I want to protect, I need to place a copy of the appropriate license (MIT/MS-RSL), yes?   * If so, then in this license notice, do I have to acknowledge that I am using the MIT or MS-RSL licenses? Or is it fine to just copy-n-paste the licenses in, as-is? In other words, do I need to say: `SOFTWARE LICENSE NOTICE - MIT LICENSE` or can I just write `SOFTWARE LICENSE NOTICE`?   * Is it \"okay\" (legally enforceable) to just place a link to a URL (where an EULA lives) instead of pasting in the same software license over and over again, at the top of every single source file? It would be nice to just have this: // SOFTWARE LICENSE NOTICE // This software and associated files is licensed. Please visit: // http://www.example.com/my-license/latest // for full details. That way, `http://www.example.com/my-license/latest` could always contain the latest license I want the source file(s) to be protected by. So if I switch from MIT to, say, APL, no code changes/rollouts are necessary. Is this legally-sound? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "116588", "title": "Deployment in development phase for Agile projects", "text": "I'd like to know the Agile stance on the following situation:   * A contractual, payable milestone states a working version must be installed and run at customer's location;   * Development is still ongoing, not all user stories and issues are addressed;   * A later deployment will be required My understanding was that the product owner would view the software in its development environment until final QA is done, and then (and not before) would it be deployed into the final production environment."}
{"_id": "240963", "title": "Ticket/Raffle DB schema", "text": "I'm working on a project that, when all boiled down, is essentially a raffle. The twist is that due to the way we've set the ticket value, a user may be casting 10,000+ tickets. Essentially, a user can chose to cast a certain number of tickets for any given raffle. At the end of a period of time, a winning ticket is chosen randomly. A users' likelihood of winning is proportional to the number of tickets he/she casts. My issue is that due to the volume of tickets, storing each ticket individually in the database seems out of the question, but in some way every ticket needs to be accounted for because it will affect the odds. My fallback option is storing \"batches\" of tickets per user, assuming that it's rare that a user casts a single ticket at once. What would be the best and most efficient solution for storing a high volume of tickets in the database?"}
{"_id": "240962", "title": "MVVM - Master Detail interaction scenarios - Implementing when MasterVm has partial data, and Detail has to pull whole entity", "text": "I primarily work with .Net WPF MVVM applications. I've used several frameworks, MVVM Light, Prism, etc, and I've been able to break the implementation of CRUD MVVM into three scenarios. **Scenario 1:** A web service returns a paged collection of small objects with no navigation properties, I whirl through these wrapping them with DetailVM's, because of other needed logic, and I place it in a ListCollectionView. My DetailVM's implement IEditableObject, now every Crud operation I want to do can be done through ListCollectionView, and I can keep my ListView in the UI in sync with the current CRUD operation. That is to say, if the user adds an item, it is immediately added to the ListCollectionView and reflected in the UI, and if they cancel the edit, it is removed. If they save the added item it stays in the list and is persisted to the server. This can all be done with two simple view models, and some data templates, thanks to IEditableObject and ListCollectionView. **2 & 3: These are more complex, because the initial call to the web service returns a list of reference dto containing a few simple properties like Name & Id.** **Scenario 2:** In the MasterViewModel call to the web service and load quick models. When an item is selected, a second call is made to the web service to retrieve the actual object and its object graph. This is then mapped and messaged (pub/sub) over to a separate detail view model. **Scenario 3:** On the MasterViewModel have a DetailViewModel property. This couples the view models together, which seems alright as they really can't work without each other. Managing the list becomes easier as things are all in the same spot, no messaging... It's still hard to achieve what is so simple with a ListCollectionView, but I can do it without messaging between view models. \\----- Summary ------ Scenario 1 = Easy to implement, works well requires minimal code. Scenario 2 & 3 = Harder to implement, becomes somewhat less clear where all the CRUD operations should be. Keeping items in the reference list in sync is harder. I only update the information in the list when an edit is successfully completed and saved back to the web service. Currently I keep all my crud operations in one view model. I have created a base view model for paged data, which I inherit into a CRUD view model base, and add in the commands for Add, Edit, Remove, & Cancel. So far this has been working well."}
{"_id": "240961", "title": "Best way to find whether a collection does or does not contain an element with a specific desired quality", "text": "It seems to be a very common thing to have to tell whether some list or set contains at least one object matching a given condition, yet my prior searching and reading have never found a satisfactory best practice or design pattern to speak of. In the situations I am thinking of, merely using \"contains\" is not sufficient, as the test we want to perform is not strictly based on the equals method of the class in question. Some things I have seen:               // for-each with break     private boolean doFoosHaveGoodQuality(List<Foo> candidates) {         boolean foundIt = false;         for (Foo item: candidates) {             if (<< item passes some test >>) {                 fountIt = true;                 break;             }         }         return foundIt;     }             // while-do with index counter     private boolean doFoosHaveGoodQuality(List<Foo> candidates) {         boolean foundIt = false;         int index = 0;         while(!fountIt && index < candidates.size() - 1) {             Foo item = candidates.get(index++);             if (<< item passes some test >>) {                 fountIt = true;             }         }         return foundIt;     }      Both of these get the job done and quit as soon as a success is found, possibly saving some time if we are lucky enough to have the desired item early in the list. However, both require looping the entire list in order to get a false result Another technique I've seen in some circumstances is that at the same time the original `List<Foo>` is generated (i.e. retrieved from database) to then simultaneously generate a `Map<FooKey, Foo>`. In this technique, `FooKey` is an additional (often inner) class holding only those attributes of a `Foo` that form the \"desired quality\" and overrides equals and hash code methods based on that. When you need to determine if there exists a desired Foo, you make a `new FooKey()` instance with exactly that you want, then call `hasKey()` on the map. Extra effort up front, but quick and easy at the moment you need it. I can't put a finger on it. Each idea works, yet each feels just a little hacky and inefficient."}
{"_id": "2226", "title": "How can I compensate for having gone to a JavaSchool?", "text": "In an earlier question, I asked for career advice for new software engineers who did well before and during college. But what about people who weren't fortunate enough to go to MIT or Yale, for whatever reason? What if you went to what Joel Spolsky calls a JavaSchool? What can/should JavaSchool alumni do to develop their skills and make up for the things they missed in college? (Or, was Joel wrong about those schools being disadvantageous?)"}
{"_id": "199015", "title": "Property proper naming to represent string starting with number", "text": "Looking at some camera metadata on Windows `File Properties` there are (along with a few more) two `Properties` named _Focal length_ and _35mm focal length_. I'm developing software that will make use of these two `Properties`. So far I have created a `Property` named `FocalLength` for the first, but I cannot seem to find a proper name for the other one. I have thought of `_35MmFocalLength` or `ThirtyFiveMmFocalLength`, but I think there might be a better suggestion. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "192044", "title": "Should Repositories return IQueryable?", "text": "I have been seeing a lot of projects that have repositories that return instances of `IQueryable`. This allows additional filters and sorting can be performed on the `IQueryable` by other code, which translates to different SQL being generated. I am curious where this pattern came from and whether it is a good idea. My biggest concern is that an `IQueryable` is a promise to hit the database some time later, when it is enumerated. This means that an error would be thrown outside of the repository. This could mean an Entity Framework exception is thrown in a different layer of the application. I have also run into issues with Multiple Active Result Sets (MARS) in the past (especially when using transactions) and this approach sounds like it would lead to this happening more often. I have always called `AsEnumerable` or `ToArray` at the end of each of my LINQ expressions to make sure the database is hit before leaving the repository code. I am wondering if returning `IQueryable` could be useful as a building block for a data layer. I have seen some pretty extravagant code with one repository calling another repository to build an even bigger `IQueryable`."}
{"_id": "240968", "title": "Should our team order Javascript class methods/properties consistently? If so, how?", "text": "As our team is growing I've noticed that different developers put their class methods in different orders. For instance:               var Foo = Backbone.Model.extend({         someVar: {},              initialize: function() {...},              fetch: function() {...},         handleFetchRepsonse: function() {...},              getFoo: function() {...},              render: function() {...},         renderFoo: function() {...},     });      vs.               var Foo = Backbone.Model.extend({         fetch: function() {...},         getFoo: function() {...},         handleFetchResponse: function() {...},         initialize: function() {...},         render: function() {...},         renderFoo: function() {...},         someVar: {},     });      It seems like it'd be more convenient if everyone used roughly the same criteria when they order their methods (if for no other reason than to make it easier to find stuff). However, I'm wondering if: A) that is even possible/realistic (or should I simply accept the fact that everyone is going to have a different order)? B) if so, what sort of ordering should that be (the only really consistent one I can think of is alphabetical, but that seems less than ideal)?"}
{"_id": "96512", "title": "B Tree compared to an R tree - Isn't it just a bunch of linked lists linked together?", "text": "I'm pretty familiar with a B Tree, mainly having to keep the databases well fed with electricity, air conditioning, and harddrive space. I associate with a double (doubl[ie,ey]?) linked list. Today, one of the developers at lunch mentioned a R tree. I hopped on Wikipedia and started reading. It sounded an awful like a taller B tree. Unfortunately, not having a deep math background makes it tough to understand what some of my coworkers are talking about. I was hoping if someone could clarify a few differences between a B tree and a R tree. I'll probably end up asking the guys anyways, but there is no guarantee that they will answer my question. More than likely they will start rambling about God knows what. . ."}
{"_id": "127626", "title": "C++ users proposals", "text": "I believe I have some good suggestions to improve the C++ language. Who should I contact to discuss this? Do I have the chance to be heard, especially if I'm not a renowned expert?"}
{"_id": "191221", "title": "Exposing a Disposing event", "text": "I'm implementing a .NET class which implements IDisposable. After being disposed, the object's state is invalid and so nobody should be accessing it, of course. There are some situations where two essentially independent systems have access to the same instance of this class. One essentially \"owns\" the object but the other is charged with interacting with the object in a persistent manner. If the \"owner\" opts to get rid of the object by calling Dispose on it, the other system needs to know about this because otherwise it may try to interact with an invalid object. It is not always convenient to have the owner inform the other system to stop using the object, because the owner itself may not know about this other system. I do have the class implementing an IsDisposed property, but there are situations where polling this would become impractical and it would be preferable for the \"non-owner\" to instead receive notification that the object is disposed. To this end I figured that implementing a Disposing event on the class would be a good solution, but this leads to some design questions:   * Is the instance considered to _already have been disposed_ at the time the event is raised? (My guess would be that it should be regarded as alive until the handlers finish.)   * How should the object react to further manipulation that occurs inside the event handlers? (My guess is react in the usual manner for a living object since it is still alive.)   * What if a handler itself calls Dispose on the object? (We could either explicitly ignore re-entrant calls or just assume that well-behaved handlers won't do this.)   * Should the Disposed event still be raised in the event of the object being finalized without having ever been explicitly disposed? (I can't think of a case off hand where such an event would actually be needed, and it definitely has the potential to cause problems.) I'm wondering if there is any established wisdom on how this pattern should be designed in general, or any examples I should be aware of where trouble is likely."}
{"_id": "201507", "title": "Best way to check for specific types", "text": "Normally I do this:               if (Animal is Dog)     {         Doc d = (Dog)Animal;         // d. etc..     }      else if (Animal is Cat)      {         Cat c = (Cat)Animal;         // c. ....     }      Is this a good way or are there better ways to implement this code above (performance, ...) ? Should it be like this?:               Dog d = Animal as Dog;          if (d != null;)     {         // d. etc..     }      else if (Animal is Cat)      {         Cat c = (Cat)Animal;         // c. ....     }      Or maybe like this?:               Dog d = Animal as Dog;     Cat c;          if (d != null;)     {         // d. etc..     }      else if ((c = Animal as Cat) != null)      {         // c. ....     }      Or maybe something else?"}
{"_id": "201505", "title": "Perform operations in the entry-script, or create a class which just instantiates and calls methods?", "text": "I'm building a **perl** application which does the following operations:   1. Copy a bunch of files (class **fileFetcher** )   2. Parse each file (class **fileParser** )   3. Store some data from each file in a database (class **dbHelper** ) Now, should I, in my **main.pl** (entry point of the script), construct an instance of **each of these** and call the appropriate methods? or is it better practice to have a separate \"Application\" class that does all the instantiations and method calls, and let the main script just have a call like `Application.run(args)`? The class, would exist just to instantiate and call methods on things, and doesn't seem right."}
{"_id": "97644", "title": "Two applicants, two different responses, what one would be correct?", "text": "During an interview for a C++ programmer position at ACME, two candidates are asked to create **a program that takes asks the user to type in two integers, and then prints out their sum.**   * The first programmer solves the task in 10 lines of code.   * The second programmer ends up with 10,000 lines of code. * * * This is because #2 did not go straight for the task, but started creating a huge set of infrastructure for solving it. First of all, he created a `CObject` base class, then went on to a `IInput` interface class, derived a `CInputSTD` class, created a library wrapping STL functionality to convert strings to numbers and vice versa. And still on he went, creating an event dispatcher system to lower coupling of each of the modules, and adding about 20 macros to his code. But that still wasn't enough, so on he went on and constructed a `COutputFormatter`, `CArithmeticOperation` base, `CAddable` derived from `CObject` and finally the `CAdditionManager`. To put everything together, he added `CModuleManager`, `CProgram`, `CProgramCalculator` and `CProgramAdder` classes. After that, there were only about 5 helper classes and a 500 line-long API header left to write. His whole code was well-documented, namespaced and cross-platform compatible. * * * Now to my serious questions:   * What is the best way to explain what exactly Programmer #2 did?   * What is bad about it compared to Programmer #1 's solution?   * How do you know if you spend too much time abstracting instead of writing actual functionality?   * Which programmer, in a real company and with the solution of Programmer #2 made a bit more sane (less classes, lines), is more likely to get the job? (given that they are equal in all other aspects)"}
{"_id": "122988", "title": "How do you create a software process for a project?", "text": "As I've written about in other questions here, the project that I'm working on now has no software process. That means no documentation (including hard copy requirements or specification), no source control, no bug database, bugs are \"fixed\" (hopefully) and new code is added at the same time, and no formal testers - we would fail the Joel Test so bad, it's not even funny. Yesterday, my manager asked me to write a document about how to begin to fix these shortcomings. Note that I'm just an intern, here for 6 months. I'll be leaving around Thanksgiving in November to return to school. However, I think that I can perhaps get this project moving in the right direction, but I'm not sure where to even begin. I'm currently using CiteSeer and Wikipedia to attempt to find some papers and such that describe software processes and implementing them, but any advice, personal experiences, or links to blogs, papers, wiki articles, or anything else would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "190574", "title": "Theory about software communications mixing up with other software causing an Apocalypse?", "text": "I can remember a very Very long time ago (pre Y2K) , reading an article by some \"expert\" that theorized that software communicating over the internet, especially video games could get mixed up with Military communications meaning that a user could inadvertently mobilize a B52 nuclear bomber with a click of his mouse on a video game. This theory sounds ridiculous enough as it would be very unlikely that packets of data from different software going to different Hosts on different ports could get mixed up. PLus the recipient would have a hard time interpreting the data that may only be understandable by the application it was meant to be read by. However I digress, does anyone know about this theory and if it had a name, and has anything like this happened in software. Apologies if this seems like a Networking question but since its ultimately about Application data then I felt it would suit this Stack site. Thanks Any other info would be welcome on similar theories or ideas."}
{"_id": "190576", "title": "Restrictions Calling DLLs Across Technologies?", "text": "I want to call a DLL in my programming language of 'choice'. The documentation surrounding this clearly states that it must be a 32-bit DLL written in C, C++ or Delphi. _But I wanted to call a DLL written in C#._ It goes on to mention that the default calling mode is **cdecl**. So my question is: why would this be the case? Is there any way to make it _think_ a C# DLL was written in C, C++ or Delphi?"}
{"_id": "120183", "title": "Quick and Good: ( Requirement -> Validation -> Design ) for self use?", "text": "How to casually do the required Software Engineering and designing? I am an inexperienced developer and face the following problem:   1. My company is a start up and has no fix Software engineering systems.   2. I am assigned tasks with not very clear and conflicting requirements.   3. I don't have to follow any designs or verify requirements officially. Problem:   1. I code all day and finally get stuck where requirement conflicts and I have to start over again.   2. I can-not spend a lot of time doing proper SRS or SDD. How should I:   1. **List out Requirements for myself. (Not an official document)**   2. **How to verify and validate the requirements?**   3. **How to visualize them?**   4. **How to design them with minimum effort? (As its going to be with me only)** I don't want to waste my time coding something that's gonna collapse according to requirement conflict or something! I don't want to compromise with quality but don't want to re-write everything on some change that I didn't expected. I imagine making a diagram for my thought process that will show me conflict in the diagram itself, then finally correcting the diagram - I decide my design and structure my code in terms of interfaces or something. And then finally start implementing my design. I am able to sense the lack of systematic approach, but don't know how to proceed! Update: > Please suggest me some tools that can ask me the questions and help me > aggregate important details. > > How can I have diagram that I talked about for requirement verification?"}
{"_id": "90916", "title": "Usefull skills from a computer science degree", "text": "I did my degree in physics and moved later into programming. I have two and a half years experience under my belt and like to think I write good code. I am, however, concerned that not doing a compsci degree has left holes in my knowledge. I would like to fill those up now since I know I want to be doing programming for the rest of my career. What skills/techniques did you learn in your compsci degree that one wouldn't pick up from on-the-job programming?"}
{"_id": "124777", "title": "Where can I find a legal \"permission to work on open source\" document?", "text": "One of the things I really like about my current job is that we developers are encouraged to make open source contributions. However, this encouragement has always been verbal. I've read some horror stories about developers having their open-source work legally claimed by their employer. I'd be more comfortable if we had something in writing from my employer saying that contributions are allowed and not owned by the company. Understanding that you are not lawyers, does anyone know where to find a boilerplate document to this effect?"}
{"_id": "235326", "title": "Is having coupled hosting in one platform better than having decoupled hosting?", "text": "Recently I have been thinking of converting some ideas into apps with couple of like minded friends. Our app will have an module, where users must include an instant messaging. The requirement for the IM right now is pretty basic:   * Send/receive messages(No MIME).   * View user status available/offline.   * Sent/delivered messages status. First we thought GAE(Google App Engine) would be a good choice with what is provides on free quota and we could start with it. But, after researching and researching and brain storming for some time, I came to realize following (This is according to my understanding):   * XMPP implementation in GAE cannot maintain session to have available/offline status. This logic must be implemented on our side.   * XMPP implementation in GAE cannot maintain sent/delivered messages status. This logic must be implemented on our side. Maintaining such statuses on our own will consume more API calls and our app might soon be throttled. And as an user I wouldn't want my messages to be delayed. So after further research, I came down to Openfire for back-end but, Openfire wouldn't completely solve our mobile needs. And after more research I came to know about ejabberd. There are quite a lot advantage of ejabberd over Openfire but, the main would be that major IM players like whatsapp and nimbuzz uses ejabberd. I am sure they must have modified it to fit there need. Since, we are not trying to solve the IM problem, the main focus of our app is on something else. This requires communication with back-end, which means we also have to deploy our web services somewhere. Since GAE mentions that \"Sockets are not supported on GAE\", we cannot have our ejabberd service running over there. It must be in IaaS(Infrastructure as a service) provider like EC2. Ofcourse Google has their own but, AWS offers cheaper price. Now here are some confusions and problems we are trying to solve:   1. To decrease complications, we want both the IM and WS to use same user database. Users will be assigned a random password during signup. The authentication with IM server should be done transparently without user noticing it (This is because our app uses some thirdparty like oauth providers to signup/login users). Is there any other alternative for this?   2. Considering that we want scalability in the future and I am sure, transitioning from GAE to AWS(Amazon Web Services) wouldn't be that easy (if we want it). Is it better to have both WS and IM running on the same platform? And why is it better? Is there any better alternatives?"}
{"_id": "27954", "title": "Is HTML 5 good enough for developers to switch from Flash?", "text": "Just curious, because many developers use Flash to do many things that HTML 4 (correct me if I'm wrong) or below cannot or had a hard time doing, like for example the rounded corners (Canvass) and that Video Thing and many more. I have not actually explored all of HTML5, so might as well learn it from you. thanks."}
{"_id": "17761", "title": "How can a software technologist best function in an engineering firm?", "text": "I am a recent Software Technologist community college graduate. I graduated with honors and I invest a lot of personal time studying computer science topics. I have been recently hired at an engineering firm. I am extremely interested in the company's area of work. It deals with a lot of level elements and I find it very rewarding. I am the only Software Technologist and I work directly with several Engineers that develop software. The company is very hierarchal and Engineers get big private desks and Technologists work in a separate smaller room and work very closely. I am the only Software Technologist in the group. I find it a bit strange that I am sitting beside technologist/technicians in fields other than software, but I am happy with my work and the Engineers stop by often to provide work or provide some background on the next big project. I am comfortable with this and I understand and respect the company structure. However, the company has done some reorganizing within the building and many people have been shifting around. People have been working where ever there is room. I have been temporarily moved into a room with the other software developers, all of whom are engineers. Today, an engineer (non software) popped in our office and pronounced that the company's boss had gone around and asked everyone where they were sitting. As the story goes the boss of the company asked one member where he was sitting and then laughed at him. The engineer proceeded to say \"he [the member that was laughed at] says he has more experience, but we're engineers, not common folk\". (Quoted as accurately as possible) He continued to boast a bit more. This was said in front of me and my peers. I vividly recall one Engineer laughing, I am not sure about the others. My boss was also in the room. I felt very degraded and I regret not saying anything. How would you take this situation? I really enjoy my work. As a software technologist, I feel extremely lucky to be working in an engineering environment. I feel betrayed by my software peers and my boss. Let me say first and foremost I understand that I am a junior employee and I will given a support role which includes jobs that senior developers do not want or have time for. I am very comfortable with this and I look at it as a great learning experience. However, I worry that if I stay with this company long enough they will eventually hire another engineer who will automatically trump me. If the engineers really feel that I am a \"common folk\", I do not want to work there. I recognize that they are Professional Engineers and they have put a lot of significant time into their degree, and I have a lot of respect for that. I have several questions:   1. What should I do about the overall disrespect and how should I handle it?   2. How do you feel knowing that your experience will mean very little to a company with respect to a newly minted engineer? (This is not an immediate concern but a long term concern. I am very interested in pursuing additional courses and education but I doubt I will be able to take time to upgrade to a degree.)   3. What should my long term goals be? (I really enjoy low level programming and working in instrumentation and electronics.) For clarification, an engineer has a Professional Engineering degree from a certified University. I am not sure about other Countries but in Canada you must be from a certified University to get a Engineering Degree. An Engineering degree ranges from Civil, Mechanical, Electrical-Software, etc. These people have a BEng (Bachelor of Engineering) opposed to a BA (Bachelor of Arts) or BSci (Bachelor of Science). A technologist is a graduate from a Community College which is a 3 year diploma program."}
{"_id": "52772", "title": "Is it possible to rate how predictable a program's behavior will be?", "text": "If so how, and what value would this rating have in understanding the code? For example, I would guess that programs using genetic or neutral algorithms would be less predictable than one calculating the sum of pi."}
{"_id": "17766", "title": "What are your thoughts on Periods/Full Stops in code comments?", "text": "I saw this asked in the SO Tavern, so I'm posting the question here. I thought it an interesting question. (Of course it doesn't belong on SO, but I think it's OK here.) Do you add periods (or, as the OP wrote, \"full stops\") in your code comments? To keep it relevant, _why_?"}
{"_id": "99394", "title": "What is the correct way of training a fresher?", "text": "I am a freshman hired in an IT company in India. A lot of my friends have also been placed with different companies. Some of them have been trained online, Some in Classroom, and still some others (me included) are being trained 'on- the-job', This leaves me pretty confused as to what method should the companies follow so that the fresher is 'up-to-the-mark'? WHat advantages does all these methods have over one another? I would be delighted to hear from Industry people. P.S. Please(if you want) write if you are working in an IT company, and the post if possible. It will help me formulate my opinion. Nothing sinister in this request, I promise!"}
{"_id": "215010", "title": "Is this high coupling?", "text": "# Question * * *    I'm currently working a on an assignment for school. The assignment is to create a puzzle/calculator program in which you learn how to work with different datastructures (such as Stacks). We have generate infix math strings suchs as \"1 + 2 * 3 - 4\" and then turn them in to postfix math strings such as \"1 2 + 3 * 4 -\".   In my book the author creates a special class for converting the infix notation to postfix. I was planning on using this but whilst I was about to implement it I was wondering if the following is what you would call \"high coupling\". I have read something about this (nothing that is taught in the book or anything) and was wondering about the aspect (since I still have to grasp it).      # Problem * * *    I have created a PuzzleGenerator class which generates the infix notation of the puzzle (or math string, whatever you want to call it) when it's instantiated. I was going to make a method getAnswer() in which I would instantiate the InToPost class (the class from the book) to convert the infix to postfox notation and then calculate the answer. But whilst doing this I thought: \"Is using the InToPost class inside this method a form a high coupling, and would it be better to place this in a different method?\" (such as a \"convertPostfixToInfix\" method, inside the PuzzleGenerator class) Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "153208", "title": "Go/Obj-C style interfaces with ability to extend compiled objects after initial release", "text": "I have a conceptual model for an object system which involves combining Go/Obj-C interfaces/protocols with being able to add virtual methods from any unit, not just the one which defines a class. The idea of this is to allow Ruby-ish open classes so you can take a minimalist approach to library development, and attach on small pieces of functionality as is actually needed by the whole program. Implementation of this involves a table of methods marked virtual in an RTTI table, which system functions are allowed to add to during module initialization. Upon typecasting an object to an interface, a Go-style lookup is done to create a vtable for that particular mapping and pass it off so you can have comparable performance to C/C++. In this case, methods may be added /afterwards/ which were not previously known and these new methods allow newer interfaces to be satisfied; while I like this idea because it seems like it would be very flexible (disregarding the potential for spaghetti code, which can happen with just about any model you use regardless). By wrapping the system calls for binding methods up in a set of clean C-compatible calls, one would also be able to integrate code with shared libraries and retain a decent amount of performance (Go does not do shared linking, and Objective-C does a dynamic lookup on each call.) Is there a valid use-case for this model that would make it worth the extra background plumbing? As much as this Dylan-style extensibility would be nice to have access to, I can't quite bring myself to a use case that would justify the overhead other than \"it could make some kinds of code more extensible in future scenarios.\""}
{"_id": "60684", "title": "Familiarizing with the Zend Framework in one week", "text": "You are conversant with the ZF? How would you go about getting familiar with it in one week? What would be your suggested schedule?"}
{"_id": "153204", "title": "What is the difference between class level attributes, Class constants and singleton methods?", "text": "What the difference given they all exist 'once per class'.   When should I use one over another, i.e. for what purpose?   I use Ruby."}
{"_id": "153202", "title": "Moving dozens of existing standalone retail sites to one central inventory database: what should I know going in?", "text": "This will be the first project of this scale that I have attempted, and the first time I have run a website at all (much less dozens) using an off-site database. In particular, I'd like to know:   1. what sort of optimizations I should read up on to make this run as smoothly as possible?   2. any pitfalls/gotchas wiser, more experienced folk are aware of I should be on the lookout for, and   3. what damage-control and preventative measures I should take against the nightmare scenario of the main server (hosting the database) having an outage, grinding over 100 websites to a halt (because they have no access to the product data)."}
{"_id": "254034", "title": "clone() only partially doable; how to react?", "text": "Suppose we have a class-hierarchy whose base class `B` requires a `clone()` method to be defined in its derivations. Whilst this works perfectly for most of them there is this one derivation `X` that holds an **optional** reference to a resource/object that can only be referenced from one instance of `X`. Whilst the rest of `X` can be cloned without problems this reference would have to be set to null/nil/nullptr. What is the correct way to handle this situation?   * `X::clone()` could throw an `UncloneableException`. Though this would be correct, it is not satisfying.    * Set the reference to null/nil/nullptr and leave no notice of it. The user of `X` has to know about `X`s \"particularities\".   * Require derivations of `B` to define `B::nearestClone()`: the user of `B` has to be aware that the return value might not be a 1:1 clone.   * Something else?"}
{"_id": "251040", "title": "Implementing state-driven agents within an Entity-Component-System approach", "text": "A state-driven agent is an agent that performs an action based on its current state. The logic can be implemented through the use of a D-FSM that changes state depending on the Agent's \"perception\" and \"stimuli\" and perform actions on entering, being in, and exiting a state. I'm trying to implement this type of design in a Entity-Component-System (ECS) architecture. My first thought was to implement an \"FSM\" component containing a current_state and a rulebook, a System that updates the FSM component current_state depending on its rulebook and a System that implements the actions of an Entity ( and modify its components accordingly ) depending on the state of the FSM component. I'm not sure this is a correct ECS implementation and that it can cleanly represent the enter_state/exit_state -> perform an action behaviour. So, how should SDA be implemented in a ECS architecture?"}
{"_id": "254037", "title": "Need to organize words based on their components, any other way aside from brute force?", "text": "I'm not sure if this process has a name. I have some words (about 9,000). They are in Japanese, but I'll try to explain this using English words. I want to categorize the words by the components (in English, letters). A B C act bar play This should create: A: play B: bar C: act Now, 'a' appears in all 3 words, but I want to make sure that each category (letter) has at least word. Now, it would make sense to delete a word after it's used, but there are a few cases where 2 letters make up one word and that's each letter's only word--so I'd like to account for that somehow. Is there an approach for solving this aside from brute force? Dynamic programming perhaps? Even a name for this process (if it exists) would be great."}
{"_id": "251046", "title": "Integrating a mobile website into a mobile app", "text": "I'm trying to redevelop a mobile website so we can integrate it into a mobile app that is being developed by another department, but still keep it functional on the web. The app has its own menu, so it's redundant to leave the menu on the mobile site. We considered simply removing the menu, headers and footers from the site, and provide the links to the pages to the other department so they can add them to the app menu. This obviously leaves our website menu-less. I've considered creating a new front page, that has a similar menu to the app, and loading the pages either in frames, or using jquery .load(), or ASP includes... Frames would give me the functionality I want that is most similar to the app opening pages in a browser using it's native menu, but frames are so... 1990's. What is best solution that uses modern standards?"}
{"_id": "191488", "title": "What situations are appropriate for C# to C interop?", "text": "Given that C# has the `unsafe` keyword, are there situations in which it would still be beneficial to interoperate with C libraries? I could see the need for very fast number crunching, graphical manipulation or matrix operations, using pre-existing C libraries. But is there a use case for writing greenfield DLL's in, say, C99, and interoperating with them from C#? I imagine that there might be edge cases where dropping down to C (in the sense that it is closer to the metal) would be the only way to get the needed performance characteristics."}
{"_id": "254039", "title": "Using json as database with EF, how can I link EF and the json file during DbContext initialization?", "text": "For a personal testing-project I am considering to create a SPA with the following technologies: ASP.NET MVC + EF + WebAPI + AngularJS. The project will make use of small amount of data, so I was thinking I could use just a .json file as storage. But I am not sure about how to proceed with the link between EF and the json file in the initialization of the DbContext. I found a stackoverflow related question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13899342/can-we-use-json-as-a-database I know the basics of edit files and store data inside. What I tried is to get the data from the json file in the initilizer method and create the objects one by one. This is more a doubt about how this works if I save/update an object in the dbcontext, do I need to go through all the elements and add/update it manually? Is it better to rewrite the complete file? According to this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7895335/append-data-to-a- json-file-with-php it is not a good practice to use json/XML for data wich will be manipulated. Anyone has experience with anything similar? Is this a really bad idea and I should use another kind of data-storage?"}
{"_id": "42767", "title": "Why do they name a program \u201cmogrify\u201d in Imagemagick?", "text": "I am not a native English speaker. Is there some trick in this name? What does it mean or imply? PS. I don't know whether this is the right SE site to post this question but if it is not could you indicate me?"}
{"_id": "46225", "title": "Getting that buzz back?", "text": "I have been working in development for a good company for a while now since graduating from university, I really enjoy it and have some great fun in the office and enjoy everything I am doing. But recently I have lost that old buzz, I cant bring myself to code outside of work, a while back I could be outside of work and come up with a nice idea and go away and develop that idea, but I feel that buzz has gone, I still love developing and technology but I just cant find the energy to do it when I am not at work. Has anyone else gone through a phase like this? What did you do to combat it and get that energy and buzz back? Maybe I need a new tehcnology, or a holiday!"}
{"_id": "198767", "title": "What to do as a Dev when for years their team has lacked product innovation, not used project mgmt methodologies, and kept bad Software Dev practices?", "text": "I am interested in knowing how to deal with a current software development process that has not been changed for years and will eventually lead to product and team failure. Yes, probably the easier way to solve this is changing jobs, but with this economy is easier said than done. However, if you have specific examples and have seen or been multiple times in same situation and think that the best solution to address these issues, is to leave the company, then please support your answer. The point is, this question really has an answer especially if multiple experts on the subject end up indicating that the best route to go is : route A. I know tons of developers have been or are in similar situations. This is one of the main reasons why companies go from being # 1 in their market to becoming last or even off the market. Hopefully the answers in this post will help other developers facing similar obstacles. In a small or large development team this usually happens:   * Some developers seem not to care and decide to go with the flow and prefer to leave code with lots of code smell the way it is and development process as is,   * Others get tired of no change and resign and move to another company,   * Others seem to be afraid to talk and prefer to stay quiet,   * At times very few developers or just one tries to speak up for improvement of product, and tells the team how important is to follow best coding practices and benefits of doing so for clients, users and team. These type of developers usually decide to stay with the team due to reasons such as company offers benefits that very few software companies offer, or the product has lots of potential, etc.  The product in our team is just a fraction of where the company gets its revenue from as it has an umbrella of products (this company is not a software/hardware company; therefore, no constant patent litigation, at least for now, which creates job instability). What I have learned so far during these years from other developers\u2019 experiences and my experience is that to really know a development team, it takes time, not days, nor weeks, but a few months. During the interview process if the team wants to hire you, or needs you; they make everything sound great, and they might tell you what you want to hear. However, the reality is different when you start working in that team and begin digging inside the code and moving towards the complete SDLC process. This is when as a developer, you start seeing the reality of the job you got into. This reality makes it difficult to want to move from one company to another because it is hard to know if the company you move to will be better or worse. Yes, you can read Glassdoor reviews etc.., but how many of those online reviews are real, and not from HR? What would be the best way to tackle the issues outlined below considering that manager from the beginning has always resisted to change, and previous developers have been doing the same for years?   * Lack of product Innovation for years: Product has lots of potential and brings good revenue to the company, but product looks like it was made 20 years ago. Some users have complained that product is not user friendly nor intuitive, and others have mentioned that are used to apps like Gmail and get frustrated when using the product because of not having similar features. The main issue here is that when you try as a developer to make changes to the product and start to move main elements of product around just a couple pixels away (to make it more user friendly, or intuitive), manager panics, and tells you to put it back where it was. If you try to add a feature that will benefit productivity for users, manager asks you to remove it because of \"users are used to doing the process the way it is etc..\" I think you got the point of the resistance to change, improvement and innovation (manager is not open to change, even when you as a developer provide strong arguments of benefits). Company has a few competitors in the field (the products of few of them are way more competitive), but somehow the company has maintained the current clients for years.   * Lack of project management coordination: As a result of this, some projects are delivered late, with bugs and some clients complain (clients report the bugs too), or budget is used too fast prior to delivering project etc.. I've provide them a few project coordination tips and the ideas are now being used regularly to track progress of projects and tasks to be done.   * Bad software Development Practices: Code smell is seen on most if not all files, no documentation, code redundancy, front end tier and back end mixed on same file, outdated development tools, no a real testing environment nor test tools (just copy and paste files from dev environment to production, and then test manually that things look good and release) . Most of the development tools I use for development and testing where unknown by team, as team only uses 2 IDEs for code development and source control is only available for development environment. Other developers have tried to use latest frameworks to improve current issues, but manager does not like it because of \"what if you leave, then who is going to maintain that code?, let\u2019s leave it the way it is\" Some of those developers already left and moved to another companies. In summary, I am sure similar situations happen to many developers in other companies but due to different circumstances, a developer might prefer to stay in the team than going to another company for reasons like (convenience of job, work flexibility, company benefits, or just because a better opportunity has not arrived). There is not perfect company that I know of, but how would you as a developer behave and approach all these issues in order to keep things positive and ultimately promote change for the improvement of product and betterment of the software development process (whether you have many years of development experience or just a few)? **I know this is post is long, but I preferred to give extra details to increase chances of getting more useful feedback.** _**Thanks a lot for your all your feedback and time_**"}
{"_id": "198766", "title": "Documenting reports for end-users", "text": "I have an application that has about a dozen reports that provide totals and summaries of data in the database based on date ranges given as parameters. The application is near the end of user testing. The end-users are saying that the numbers in the totals don't match what they expect based on test data they have entered. It seems like the developers and users interpret the data differently. How can I document the reports in a way that the users will be able to see which records are being counted,summed etc to get the totals, without overwhelming them with technical details? So far I have tried to write out the queries used in the reports in pseduo- code, but it seems too technical and I'm worried I'll just get the same 'The report doesn't produce the correct data.'..."}
{"_id": "210620", "title": "When to use embedded script language?", "text": "I already read some post about the **why** use embedded script language but I want to ask **when** to use it. I have implemented an Objective-C / Javascript binding framework which allow me to write Javascript to use any Objective-C classes and methods. I found it very useful for debugging purpose because I can check / modify the internal state of my app at runtime. But I also found I still prefer to write ObjC code instead of JS code when building my app for some reasons:   * Code completion. If I want to call some `UIKit` method froom JS, I often have to check the document for its name compare to just type first few letters and let Xcode complete it for me in ObjC.   * All the benefit of static typed language. ObjC is static typed and dynamic typed language so compiler can do lots type checking for me when possible.   * Performance?   * C binding to JS not ready yet (this required to parse header and generate code to expose C function, enum, struct, etc)   * More natural to write ObjC when dealing with ObjC methods. (e.g. in JS write code like `view.setEdit_animated(true, true)` compare to ObjC `[view setEdit:YES animated:YES]` But I feel I should write more JS code so I can take the benefit scripting language (e.g. replace methods with bug fixes at runtime) I am not sure which part of my app should be written in JS and which part should be written in ObjC. Any advice? Also any design pattern can be used for embedded script language?"}
{"_id": "198763", "title": "Is it completely impossible to have total separation without leakage of any kind in a design?", "text": "For the past week I have been attempting to write a proof-of-concept project using dependency injection, a service layer, unit of work pattern + repository. I am looking to design something that can easily be consumed by any type of application - be it a Windows desktop application, a CLI application, an ASP.NET MVC application, even an iOS application running Mono. Please, bear in mind that this is just for a proof-of-concept. Until now, I have written   * A Unit of Work + Unit of Work Factory for NHibernate and Entity Framework (2 OR/M frameworks for .NET)   * (Generic) repository. There is one repository per OR/M implementation, taking it's respective Unit of Work Factory as a constructor parameter. It needs this to grab the current unit of work (since it's implementation contains stuff necessary for each OR/M framework to function) This has accomplished:   * I can swap out implementations of the repository and Unit of Work factory with NHibernate and Entity Framework, and it will just work. This is good, except I haven't implemented a real application yet, only unit-tests. These are the problems/challenges I am facing:   * ~~Each application type (Desktop, CLI, ASP.NET MVC, iOS, Android, whatever) do not define a unit of work the same way. A desktop application (AFAIK) should have a Unit of Work per screen - a Web application should have a Unit of Work per request, etc. I don't know how I would share a single unit of work with all the repositories/services (see below) that needs it.~~ \\- Michael is right.   * I want all my logic to reside in a service layer. The service layer decides when a Unit of Work should commit. The idea is that whoever calls the service, knows what to pass to it, and knows what to expect as a result. If something goes wrong, the service logs it. If I had to do this on a per-application basis, DRY would be violated (right?). It seems that if I had to implement this totally separated design, the amount of code I got to reuse would not be as much as the amount of code I'd have to write in order to implement it in each application type, which would, in the end, most likely leak my IoC container into the application. Am I totally crazy for even attempting this? EDIT: The actual problem I am facing, is providing my service layer and repositories with the same instance of a Unit of Work, no matter what application type is being used."}
{"_id": "218493", "title": "Making an algorithm more efficient", "text": "I have a question about the efficiency of an algorithm: You have a list of x,y points Now I want to get all the points that are up to 5 units away from a reference x,y point How do you calculate it in the most efficient way? I just go over each point and calculate distance, and if that distance is less than 5, I add it to the answer If you know how this algorithm is called - I'd be happy if you post that too."}
{"_id": "20450", "title": "Courses for project management", "text": "My employer recently read the twelve steps to better code and wants me to write a protocol for how we should handle bugs and new features. We are a small company with just three programmers and we use OnTime from axosoft to administer our work. I am looking for a course in which best practices for bug tracking, work logging and project planning are taught. The only thing I have been able to find is axosoft's own six hour introductory course. Will that have enough depth? Please give recommendations!"}
{"_id": "53827", "title": "Convince developer to use IDE", "text": "There is a developer, lets call him John (currently on probationary period) in company(pretty small company approx. 10 persons, 3 developers, one of them works long in this company know business process around and can be consider as Team leader) who didn't want to use any IDE at all(he is using some text editor). Application this team working on is medium size Java application with Spring Hibernate technology stack and refactoring/adding new features to launch new version of that application in near future. John performance working without IDE on this application is lower then desirable, team leader's (lets call him Bill) assumption is this happens because John is not using IDE. Bill try to persuade John to use IDE, but this idea meets a lot of resistance and main reason is \"I want to be in total control of what I am doing, so I need to write all code by myself\". How can Bill convince John to try to use IDE? (considering the fact what Bill already protected John from company owner several complaints about John performance) Updated: Bill decide to try and convince John one more time if that attempt will be unsuccessful then he won't try to force John to use IDE and rather look at if features promised by John are delivered in time or not. Thanks for a lot of nice answers(Still can't decide which of them is best)."}
{"_id": "45754", "title": "Over a million COBOL programmers in the world?", "text": "I think I heard on a previous StackOverflow podcast that COBOL was used as the programming language for traffic lights (or something like that), so this got me interested. I did a quick Google search and found this little article: > Today, Cobol is everywhere, yet largely unheard of by millions of people who > interact with it daily when using the ATM, stopping at traffic lights or > buying a product online. > > The statistics on Cobol attest to its huge influence on the business world: > There are over 220 billion lines of Cobol in existence, a figure which > equates to about 80 per cent of the world\u2019s actively used code. **There over > a million Cobol programmers in the world.** There are 200 times as many > Cobol transactions that take place each day than Google searches. I didn't really trust the source seeing as how it's on some random PHPBB forum. So how accurate are these figures? Are there really **220 billion** lines of COBOL? I assume a few people/companies still use COBOL, _but how many?_"}
{"_id": "218490", "title": "How to handle multiple licenses in your code", "text": "So let\u2019s say I make a script/small app that has a ton of my own code, and only a small section of it is comprised of a utility from someone else (let\u2019s say a simple operation like sending files to the trash, or sending a notification), which uses a license, like MIT. Now, I want my script/app to be public domain (or MIT licensed, let\u2019s take two examples).   1. How do I make the distinction for this in my code? How do I exactly explain \u201cthis part of the code is encumbered by this license, and this other part is my license\u201d?   2. Every copy of it I distribute needs to include the license? That seems really idiotic/cumbersome, having to pass a dumb text file around.   3. Do I then have to include both files (theirs and mine)? Number 3 is my biggest doubt, how do I reliably and clearly point each portion of the code to each specific license? I won\u2019t go on a rant about this, but it is honestly the most stressful part of programming, to me, can\u2019t we just happily share code amongst peers? In the examples above, none of those apps are \u201cmission critical\u201d, but they are nice additions, and not including them because of the confusion/limitations it causes is a real shame."}
{"_id": "122857", "title": "How to load text files into memory-mapped files", "text": "I have a number of large text files that I need to manipulate in a highly performant manner. I've decided to look into using Memory Mapped files in C# (.NET 4). However, I can't find any examples of or guidance on how to read/write to a memory mapped file that, underneath, is bound to a text file. Can anyone shed some light on this and, possibly, provide me with some examples? If it helps, I\u2019ll be reading text in whole lines, then altering the line and replacing it with content that may be shorter or longer than the original. After all of the manipulations are done, I want to save it back to disk as a text file."}
{"_id": "62685", "title": "Why isn't OCaml more popular?", "text": "I've always heard that C is _the_ language of choice to use for embedded systems, or anything that needs to run at maximum speed. I never developed a fondness for C, mostly because I don't like pointer arithmetic and the language is barely a rung above assembler. On the other hand, ML languages are functional, garbage collected languages, and OCaml even has an object model, yet they have a reputation for being as fast as C. ML languages have the abstraction anyone could ask for to write high-level, concise code, yet it retains the speed necessary for writing high- performance applications. OCaml in particular can be used anywhere that C is traditionally used, such as for embedded devices, graphics drivers, operating systems, etc. By all rights, OCaml should have taken over the world by now, but hardly anyone heard of the language yet alone used it. This is a subjective question, but why have OCaml and ML other languages remained so obscure, while C and other languages became popular?"}
{"_id": "216667", "title": "Making a project open source on behalf of my organization", "text": "I am working on a tool which has been developed for the use in my organization. Recently the management decided to make this open source. This will be the first open source contribution from my company and by me . How can I make a project open source which will also show that this is from this organization? Is just naming it as orgName_toolName sufficient or is there any other practice that is followed? I am planning to make this available in Github."}
{"_id": "193883", "title": "where to use web services", "text": "I am discovering web services to implement in my ASP.Net website. I visited many sites about Why use webservices and read many articles and found out that web services are good when you have something that is used frequently without loading your page. I want to know some other example scenarios where web services are used. Whether i can use web services in sending an order form to database or it is just for textbox box auto completion like google and etc. **Note:** I know web services can be used from mobile, web or desktop applications. But My question is   **_When do I use web service in ASP.Net Application?_** Some articles I've read so far   * Codeplex   * How to create a Web service using Visual Studio.net   * w3school"}
{"_id": "193887", "title": "What does a node.js web application's setup look like on a real production server?", "text": "Being new to node js magic world, i'm wondering how does a web application's setup look like on a real production server? So far all tutorials, create the js file that is started from a console...and that's it. Anyone has created a real world web app that uses node js in the back end? Can you please describe how is it setup, and how reliable this infrastructure is ? I'm coming from the asp.net and php world that require heavy web servers...and can't have a clear idea about node stuff."}
{"_id": "78247", "title": "What to do when you have exhausted all avenues to fix a bug", "text": "I am a Junior Programmer(4 months career experience so far) working on a Cross Platform Mobile Application (1 person team - so its just myself). I have a bug in this program/app which is pretty large (30 different header files, each with their own cpp file too). I have been trying to track down exactly what is going on with the bug & also to fix it (even tried to use some hacks to just get it working) but of about a dozen or more solutions(ideas I have of whats causing the problem) I have come up with nothing has led me to track exactly what the bug is or fixed the bug. **Do you have any advice for a junior programmer of some broad techniques(go for a run, print all my code onto paper & go through it with a pen, etc.) I could use to assist me with this bug?** To give a little more context for my bug; it involves the cross platform API Mosync, when I perform a specific sequence of actions, the current screen does not redraw (& it appears) that the previously displayed screen is still receiving the pointer/key press events & not the current screen. Specific sequence:   \\- Menu Screen Displayed - click \"Show prev orders button\"   \\- Prev Orders Screen Displayed - click \"Load file\" then click menu button & open Delivery Screen   \\- Delivery Screen Displayed - click menu button & open Purchase Screen   \\- Purchase Screen Displayed - Error here, input to this screen is not displayed/reacted to, ListViews dont scroll, buttons dont react to clicks, ListView cells dont respond to clicks * * * I will take the advice on board, the bug is reproducable 100% following the same steps each time, although it still very difficult to figure out how pointer events are being transmitted & to what screen due to fact thats a part of the API I cant reach(or dont know how to). Also I would love to have a different pair of eyes go over my work & point out the bug, but as I said I am a team of 1, my boss directs me, he owns the company & has the ideas for an app but does not know c++ or any recent languages either (cobal? I think is all). Any advice on how to get a second pair of eyes without breaching/showing off the company's intellectual code/property? ...and no leaving this paid internship is not an option, the contract says if I leave before 6mnths of a 12mnth contract I maybe liable to pay 30% of my yearly salary"}
{"_id": "210990", "title": "Converting a DFA to an NFA", "text": "I have an assignment to convert various language descriptions into NFAs and DFAs. Having graduated with my CompSci B.S. years ago and not touching the topic until my M.S. program, I am racking my brain on one of the questions. I can easily construct a DFA, but the answer must be an NFA that is not also a DFA. _I am not looking for the answer to my homework_. I just need guidance on how to construct such a thing. The question basically states \"if a string contains pattern A, it must also contain pattern B\" where the order of the two is irrelevant. \u03bb is also acceptable. My DFA has two branches. Branch 1 looks for pattern A, then does not accept until it encounters pattern B. Branch 2 looks for pattern B, then accepts anything. I am not sure how to add nondeterministic behavior into this DFA to satisfy the requirements of the assignment. Googling it turns up debates about the complexity/memory tradeoffs of the two approaches, as well as theorems to prove it is possible. But no examples, and that is how I learn best."}
{"_id": "190683", "title": "What can be used in lieu of use cases to gather requirements?", "text": "I'm a programmer currently working in rounds of meetings along with BAs and PM to gather/describe modules and functionality of our case management system; after a few meetings I saw that using 'use cases' would be a very very good fit to document many of the things and functions discuessed and/or proposed for the new system. When I suggested we needed to create 'use cases' so that we don't forget what we said/concluded and also to have programers know what they should code, the leading BA mentioned don't like 'use cases'. What can be used to gather/document requirements when people supposed to write user requirements say they don't like 'use cases', or when you realize that they don't want to write 'use cases' to describe what the system should do? I'm trying to find out if there's a close or effective substitution to using 'use cases' to document system functionality/scenarios."}
{"_id": "190686", "title": "What is the difference between a principle and a best practice?", "text": "I recently read http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/02/17/principles-are- timeless-best-practices-are-fads/ and it resonated with me. I find the more experienced programmers/architects go against current best practices and their excuse is some best practices don't work with their problem domain. For example, I have just started to work for a new company as a programmer and my architect writes his nhibernate queries in the UI layer instead of writing it in a separate layer. A part of me shrieks knowing this because it sort of goes against everything I have been reading on the internet for the past 5 years but I'm willing enough to try this approach and weigh the pro's and con's. Who knows, maybe he's right. I do find him as a very component programmer. What separates a principle from a best practice (if anything)? How can you distinguish between the two, and how can you determine when it's appropriate to ignore either?"}
{"_id": "190687", "title": "A string is immutable, so why are they not all constants?", "text": "The `string` type is immutable. We can use the `const` keyword with `strings` in high level language like .NET. My understanding of 'const' means constant (it remains the same, we can't change the value). Are `strings` not always `constant` (IMO the term `constant` should not be applicable in the same context if the type has to be recreated each time it means for the values life time, it was constant)? In high level languages, specifically .NET (although I'd be interested in Java too), is this due to general memory management/tracking of objects or is there another reason?"}
{"_id": "176089", "title": "Agile product backlogs", "text": "We are starting an Agile project, and the product owner has made a start adding user stories to the product backlog (mostly epics at this stage). Who would be responsible for breaking down epics into smaller user stories - is it left to the product owner, or would you expect the rest of the team to be involved (bearing in mind they won't have any knowledge of the requirements or problem domain)?"}
{"_id": "190688", "title": "WCF Keep Alive: Whether to disable keepAliveEnabled", "text": "I have a WCF web service hosted in a load balanced environment. I do not need any WCF session related functionality in the service. **QUESTION** What are the scenarios in which performances will be best if   1. keepAliveEnabled = false   2. keepAliveEnabled = true **Reference** From Load Balancing > By default, the BasicHttpBinding sends a connection HTTP header in messages > with a Keep-Alive value, which enables clients to establish persistent > connections to the services that support them. This configuration offers > enhanced throughput because previously established connections can be reused > to send subsequent messages to the same server. However, connection reuse > may cause clients to become strongly associated to a specific server within > the load-balanced farm, which reduces the effectiveness of round-robin load > balancing. If this behavior is undesirable, HTTP Keep-Alive can be disabled > on the server using the KeepAliveEnabled property with a CustomBinding or > user-defined Binding."}
{"_id": "195062", "title": "Is it OK to have a method return different types based on a parameter?", "text": "I'm looking for a reference to clean coding styles that I can pass to a team member. In particular, the rule that a method should not change its return type based on an input parameter. If you need different output, use a different method. Example:               $invoice_items = getInvoiceItems();     $total         = getInvoiceItems( TRUE );      To me, this is bad coding style (and I'm not even talking about a parameter whose meaning can't be determined from the calling code). The above example should actually be:               $total = totalInvoiceItems();      ... where `totalInvoiceItems()` might call `getInvoiceItems()` to get the items it needs to total. Where would I find a reference to this (and possibly other important coding style rules)?"}
{"_id": "10233", "title": "Getting management to hire a new developer?", "text": "I've been working here for about 3 months now, and this company has been around since 2003. I've the only full time developer, and I don't know what happened to the part time guy who was doing work before I got hired, I haven't seen him since a month after I started, aside from a couple emails. Essentially, that makes me the only developer, trying to balance adding new features to our main product (subscription website service), developing an Android-based version of the product, handling client issues, working on migrating clients from old version to new version (and the headaches that will result from this), fixing issues with a signup service for out ISP side of things, and helping with tech support for the ISP side. Not to mention the massive overhaul I'm fairly certain the database needs, that will mean at least a few months' work. My bosses hired an intern to help me with the Android version, but the one boss randomly went to England until December, taking the intern with him. Any tips I can use on convincing management to hire somebody else? Even if just a second full time support guy to help with the phone calls?"}
{"_id": "195725", "title": "Why did Apple choose to design its programming language with future and past tense method names?", "text": "There are a lot of methods like this in iOS/Objective C:               - viewDidLoad     - viewWillAppear:     - applicationDidFinishLaunching      I've just been having a discussion with some colleagues about this design choice and why they would choose to be so verbose in preference of the more \"standard\" ways of event propagation for instance:               - onViewLoad     - onViewAboutToAppear     - onApplicationFinishLaunching      I didn't have an answer and rather put it down to just personal preference of the team designing the language. However, I'm wondering if there's more to it - whether this is a preferred option. Or whether the team just wanted to differentiate themselves from other languages, or from the norm. If anyone has any insight that would be very interesting. Thanks"}
{"_id": "156188", "title": "Initialize array in amortized constant time -- what is this trick called?", "text": "There is this data structure that trades performance of array access against the need to iterate over it when clearing it. You keep a generation counter with each entry, and also a global generation counter. The \"clear\" operation increases the generation counter. On each access, you compare local vs. global generation counters; if they differ, the value is treated as \"clean\". This has come up in this answer on Stack Overflow recently, but I don't remember if this trick has an official name. Does it? One use case is Dijkstra's algorithm if only a tiny subset of the nodes has to be relaxed, and if this has to be done repeatedly."}
{"_id": "216597", "title": "What is a byte stream actually?", "text": "Can anyone explain me what byte stream actually contains? Does it contain bytes (hex data) or binary data or english letters only? I am also confused about the term \"raw data\". If someone asked me to \"reverse the 4 byte data\", then what should I assume the data is hex code or binary code?"}
{"_id": "53424", "title": "Hot Topics in Computer Science & Certifications", "text": "I'm nearing the end of my education and in preparation for getting into the work place I thought it might be good to study up on some hot topics in the CS field. I've heard of things like Net Neutrality and Computer Human Interaction and others but never really until now spent much time studying these kinds of things in depth. I was hoping to get some input so I can focus on things that are more useful/practical in the field. Also as a side note what would be some good certifications to pursue that would really open up job opportunities. Just a little background in case its important: I have work experience as a webmaster and currently would like to pursue embedded programming or network programming of some sort."}
{"_id": "156182", "title": "Open source Projects which pays the developers?", "text": "Are there any Java open source projects that Pays the developers? I came across this from a book : Programming Interviews Exposed. Page #25 > Are open-source projects preferable? > > The vast majority of programming jobs have usually involved proprietary, > closed-source projects, which some programmers find objectionable. There\u2019s > been a small shift in favor of more open software development, which > provides more opportunities for people like yourself to participate in open- > source projects and **still be paid for that participation**."}
{"_id": "156181", "title": "Is there any reason to use varchar over text columns in a database?", "text": "Is `varchar` just a remnant from before `text` came around, or are there use cases where you would _want_ to use a `varchar`? (Or `char` for that matter..) (I use Postgres and MySQL (MyISAM) daily, so those are what I'm most interested in, but answers for other databases are of course welcome. ^_-)"}
{"_id": "186376", "title": "Criticizing your former employer in an interview", "text": "I'm a very junior developer fresh out of college, and in my first programming job. I'm pretty unhappy with my current company-the software engineering standards here are pretty shoddy-the code base is full of uncommented, undocumented source code, with whoppers like 664 line methods (with about 40 lines of commented out code) in our production code. I mentioned it to the boss and he doesn't care, and honestly at this point I don't either-I'm looking for a new job. When I interview next, how much should I mention this to a prospective employer? That my former (current?) company has shoddy engineering standards, coded by people who seemingly got their CS degrees mail order (well, I'd be a bit more diplomatic about it). I don't think that maintaining code with 10,000+ lines of zero comments or documentation is a good way to start a career and develop good habits. The question is, how do I tell this to future prospective employers? EDIT: I should mention that I have other, totally innocent reasons I can mentioned why I left/am looking for a new job, but don't know how much of the shoddy engineering I should mention."}
{"_id": "156185", "title": "Pending and Approval process", "text": "So let's say I have a DB table with 8 columns, one is a unique auto- incrementing used as ID. So I have a page that pulls in the info for each row based on query string ID. I want to give my users the ability to propose changes. Kinda like a wiki setup. So I was thinking I should just have another duplicate table or maybe database altogether (without the auto-incrementing column and maybe with a date edited column) that keeps all proposed changes in queue and then when I approve them, the script can move the row from the proposed DB to the real DB. Does this sound good or is there a better process for this?"}
{"_id": "21504", "title": "Conflict resolution between programmers", "text": "Sometimes, maybe during a code review or a design meeting arguments can get heated and it's easy to insult someone unintentionally. These things can in turn create a tense atmosphere in the workplace or in a team which will sooner or later harm the co-operation between colleagues. My question is: what are some good methods for resolving these tensions? What can you do - on a personal level - to help these issues?"}
{"_id": "223975", "title": "How do you move beyond code examples without a project?", "text": "I am currently learning Scala and I find a mental blog of how to proceed to a degree where I can use Scala daily beyond the normal examples. I just do not have a particular project in mind of what I can do. This is not really Scala specific in mind, just generally how do you get yourself proficient in a language via self learning without doing / having a project in your hand?"}
{"_id": "49856", "title": "Why is it better for a programmer to design the algorithm before starting to write the code?", "text": "Does an appropriate algorithm really help improve the quality and ultimately the efficiency of a program? Can we still produce a good quality program without the algorithm? Is an appropriate algorithm a MUST in modern programming?"}
{"_id": "118507", "title": "Why these attempts to water down Scala with Xtend and Kotlin?", "text": "So now Eclipse has offered Xtend and JetBrains is offering Kotlin - both of which seem to be watered down versions of Scala. My question is why? I've played with Scala a bit and it's not _that_ hard. Is this just a reaction to the inherent difficulty of the leap from imperative to functional or is there something else at work here? * * * EDIT: Apologies. Rereading the question as I originally posted it I can see where it sounds a bit like trolling. The way I phrased the question just seemed to be the best way to ask the question. I have seen blog postings to the effect \"Scala is too hard/Scala is too complex\" and also \"Kotlin is an attempt to do Scala but simpler\". I'll leave the phrasing as it was originally but I honestly wasn't trying to troll."}
{"_id": "49852", "title": "How to hire support people?", "text": "I manage a tech support team at a mid-sized software company. We are the last line of support, so issues that we can't fix need to be escalated to the development team. When I joined the company, our team wasn't capable of much beyond using a specific set of troubleshooting steps to solve known issues and escalating anything else to the developers. It's always been a goal of mine for our team to shoulder as much of the support burden as possible without ever bothering a developer. Over the past few years, I, along with several new hires I've made, have made pretty good progress in that direction. We've coded our own troubleshooting tools which now ship with several of our products. When users have never-before-seen issues, we analyze stack traces and troubleshoot down to the code level, and if we need to submit a bug, half the time we've already identified in the code where in the code the bug is and offered a patch to fix it. Here's the problem I've always had: finding support people capable of the work I've described above is **really** difficult. I've hired 3 people in the past 3 years, and I've probably looked at several thousand resumes and conducted several hundred phone screens to do so. I know it's pretty well accepted that hiring good people is tough in the tech industry, but it seems that support is especially difficult -- there are clearly thousands of people walking around calling themselves support analysts, but 99%+ of them seemingly aren't capable of anything beyond reading a script. I'm curious if anyone has experience recruiting the sort of folks I'm talking about, and if you have any suggestions to share. We've tried all sorts of things -- different job titles/descriptions, using headhunters, etc. And while we've managed to hire a few good folks, it's basically taken us a year to find an appropriate candidate for each opening we've had, and I can't help but wonder if there's something we could be doing differently."}
{"_id": "255344", "title": "Problems Initializing a Struct at Declare Time Using Char Pointer", "text": "I am trying to declare and initialize a struct using a char* pointer. Compiling the code below fails if I do anything but               thing things[] = {{3,300},{4,*text}};      Linux gives me a core dump when it tries to print               things[1].detail.text;       It works when I do the separate assignment               things[1].detail.text = text;               #include<stdio.h>     #include<stdlib.h>     #include<string.h>          int main()     {          char *text = \"ABC\";         char *text2;              typedef struct {             int counter;             union              {                 int number;                 char *text;                      } detail;         } thing;              thing one;         thing two;                 one.counter = 1;            one.detail.number = 100;              two.counter = 2;         two.detail.text = (char *)malloc(10 * sizeof(char));         strcpy(two.detail.text, text);              thing things[] = {{3,300},{4,*text}};         //things[1].detail.text = text;                printf(\"%d: %d\\n%d: %s\\n\", one.counter, one.detail.number, two.counter, two.detail.text);         printf(\"%d: %d\\n%d: %s\\n\", things[0].counter, things[0].detail.number, things[1].counter, things[1].detail.text);                   return 0;     }      Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "112468", "title": "I'm a contract developer and I think I'm about to get screwed", "text": "I do contract development on the side. You could say that I'm a contract developer? Considering I've only ever had one client I'd say that's not exactly the truth - more like I took a side job and needed some extra cash. It started out as a \"rebuild our website and we'll pay you $10k\" type project. Once that was complete (a bit over schedule, but certainly not over budget), the company hired me on as a \"long term support\" contractor. The contract is to go from March of this year, expiring on December 31st of this year - 10 months. Over which a payment is to be paid on the 30th of each month for a set amount. I've been fulfilling my end of the contract on all points - doing server maintenence, application and database changes, doing huge rush changes and pretty much just going above and beyond. Currently I'm in the middle of development of an iPhone mobile application (PhoneGap based) which is nearing completion (probably 3-4 weeks from submission). It has not been all peaches and flowers though. Each and every month when my paycheck comes due, there always seems to be an issue of sorts. These issues did not occur during the initial project, only during the support contract. The actual contract states that my check should be mailed out on the 30th of the month. I have received my check on time approximately once (on time being about 2-3 days within the 30th). I've received my paycheck as late as the 15th of the next month - over two weeks late. I've put up with it because I need the paycheck. There have been promises and promises of \"we'll send it out on time next time! I promise\" - only to receive it just as late the next month. When I ask about payment they give me a vibe like \"why are you only worried about money?\" - unfortunately I don't have the luxury of not worrying about money. The last straw was with my August payment, which should have been mailed on August 30th. I received it on September 12th. The reason for the delay? \"USPS is delaying it man! we sent it out on the 1st!\" is the reason I got. When I finally got the check in the mail, the postage on the envelope was marked September 10th - the date it was run through the postage machine. I've been outright lied to, at this point. I carry on working, because again - I need a paycheck. I orchestrated the move of our application to a new server, developed a bunch of new changes and continued work on the iPhone app. All told I probably went over my hourly allotment (I'm paid for 40 hours a month, I probably put in at least 50). On Saturday, the 1st, I gave the main contact at the company (a company of 3, by the way - this is not some big corporation) a ring and filled him in on the status of my work for the past two weeks. Unusually I hadn't heard from him since the middle of September. His response was \"oh... well, that is nice and uh.. good job. well, we've been talking within the company about things and we've certainly got some decisions ahead of us...\" - not verbatim but you get the idea (I hope?). I got out of this conversation that the site is not doing very well (which it's not) and they're considering pulling the plug. Crap, this contract is going to end early - there goes Christmas! Fine, that's alright, no problem. I'll get paid for the last months work and call it a day. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten last months check, and I'm getting dicked around now. \"Oh.. we had problems transferring funds, we'll try and mail it out tomorrow\" and \"I left a VM with the finance guy, but I can't get ahold of him\". So I'm getting the feeling I'm not getting paid for all the work I put in for September. This is obviously breach of contract, and I am pissed. Thinking irrationally, I considered changing all their passwords and holding their stuff hostage. Before I think it through (by the way, I am NOT going to do this, realized it would probably get me in trouble), I go and try some passwords for our various accounts. Google Apps? Oh, I'm no longer administrator here. Godaddy? Whoops, invalid password. Disqus? Nope, invalid password here too. Google Adsense / Analytics? Invalid password. Dedicated server account manager? Invalid password. Now, I have the servers root password - I just built the box last week and haven't had a chance to send the guy the root password. Wasn't in a rush, I manage the server and they never touch it. Now all of a sudden all the passwords except this one are changed; the writing is on the wall - I am out. Here's the conundrum. I have the root password, they do not. If I give them this password all the leverage I have is gone, out the door and out of my hands. During this argument of why am I not getting paid the guy sends me an email saying \"oh by the way, what's the root username and password to the server?\". Considering he knows absolutely nothing, I gave him an \"admin\" account which really has almost no rights. I still have exclusive access to the server, I just don't know where to go.   * I can hold their data hostage, but I'm almost positive this is the wrong thing to do. I'd consider it blackmail, regardless of whether or not I have gotten paid yet.    * I can \"break\" something on the server and give them the whole \"well, if you were paying me I could fix it!\" spiel. This works from a \"well he's not holding their stuff hostage\" point of view, but what stops them from hiring some one else to just fix the issue at hand? For all I know the guys nephew is a \"l33t hax0r\" and can figure it out for free.   * I can give in, document as much as I can and take him to small claims court. This is breach of contract, I'm not getting paid. I have a case, right?   * ???? Does anyone have any experience in this? What can I do? What are my options? I'm broke, I can't afford a lawyer and I can barely afford not getting this paycheck. My wife doesn't work (I work two jobs so she doesn't have to work - we have a 1 year old) and is already looking at getting a part time job to cover the bills. Long term we'll be fine, but this has pissed me off beyond belief! Help me out, I'm about to get screwed."}
{"_id": "149659", "title": "How do you keep track of complex business rules outside of code?", "text": "I'm interested in seeing how other people do this. Especially in situations where multiple different clients are using the same software base with slightly different business rules. What kind of practices do you use to document how everything is supposed to work or business rules. Basically so when a new developer comes on the team is easy access to see how things are supposed to work because there's obviously a difference between making something bug free and making something work properly. It would be really nice to have a go to resource rather than having to bring an architect or BSA into the conversation every time a question comes up on how something should be processed."}
{"_id": "255342", "title": "Git structure for java project", "text": "I know there are multiple posts on similar problems, so please be kind with me. I am asking for suggestions I have not thought of and for good advice. I have a java \"project\" that is structured in a server-client pattern. There are some classes that are common to both parts but most of it is either server (backend and control logic) or client (GUI). To not write one monolithic application (where the client depends on `JDBC` jars) I decided to split the project into multiple eclipse projects:   * `proj_server` (where `JDBC` is needed)   * `proj_client`   * `proj_common`   * `proj_test` In `proj_test` there is some code to test parts of the client/server. I setup eclipse such that both server and client depend on the common module. Now I use git to manage all these eclipse projects. My first thought was to manage all parts in separate repos as suggested by git. But I have the problem that I loose the relation of the different commits: Any modification in the `proj_common` will typically reflect some data type modification. This makes the new version incompatible with old commit in the other projects. I then thought of several possibilities:   1. Using of `git submodules`   2. Using of `git subtree`   3. Using of a single git repository that contains the modules together   4. Using different repositories and adding regularly tags to the commits to keep track of the relations The solution 1 has the problem that it is quite heavy to maintain. Especially if you want to check in multiple small modifications you have to go multiple times \"around the folders\" to `add`/`commit` and then pack it all in the main repository up. The `subtree` method might work well as far as I have read with a bunch of scripts to manage the git calls. The main disadvantage is that `subtree` fits perfectly if most work is done in the main repository and updates to the imported repos happen occasionally. If the updates happen merely in the subprojects the history of the main projects gets quite crumpled. On branching it might get complicated. The solution number 3 is my favourite solution so far as everything is kept tight and branching is done without any problem. The solution 4 is mainly what is done now, but no tag have been created yet (pre-alpha, thus no sense in creating tags). As the project grows this might get also very nasty and error-prone. What would you suggest? One of the given solutions or did I miss the one perfect solution? _Edit:_ I have found the following related posts: a, b, c and d. Unfortunately the big picture is not clear. In a (second answer!) and d the advice tends towards multiple repositories in different files. But they do not explicitly state how to manage the relationship of the different commits. That is you cannot go for the running configuration at Jan 10th 2013 for example without looking at the history explicitly for all subprojects. In b solution 3 is suggested. In c a comparision is made. They first had something like multiple manually managed projects but then migrated to solution 3. In all these Q&As the first two solutions were at most mentioned but not suggested by the answering persons. In the net you can find much about `git submodule` that tells you that you get quite much overhead by it (e.g. here or here). The problem is (as far as I can see) that in practice I will have not only one project with some reference to one or more libraries. In this case (hopefully) the library would not change regularly and the coding takes place in the \"main\" repository. In this case all the advances solutions (`subtree`, `submodules`, ...) might be very useful. In my case on the contrary I have only a dummy master repository that holds the four subprojects in sync. These subprojects themselves are under high development. So it is a critical part that the contribution to the different online (sub)projects is straight forward. Not much additional magic with git. In another site they suggest solution 1 but I am unsure what their main development goal is: The main repository or the imported library. I want to avoid getting into trouble and later have to migrate to another system. Thus I ask for advice of somebody who might have done similar things."}
{"_id": "142604", "title": "Continuous integration - build Debug and Release every time?", "text": "Is it standard practice when setting up a Continuous Integration server to build a Debug and Release version of each project? Most of the time developers code with a Debug mode project configuration set enabled and there could be different library path configurations, compiler defines, or other items configured differently between Debug/Release that would cause them to act differently. I configured my CI server to build both Debug & Release of each project and I'm wondering if I'm just overthinking it. My assumption is that I'll do this as long as I can get quick feedback and once that happens, then push the Release off to a nightly build perhaps. Is there a 'standard' way of approaching this?"}
{"_id": "149655", "title": "Choosing names for integration tests", "text": "With unit tests the domain is quite small, so it's easy. I used Osherove's `methodName_conditions_result()` scheme and found it very clear. But with integration tests I feel like it would make a very long name, and what do I put in place of `methodName`? How do I name integration test classes? Real world examples of integration test names are very welcome. I hope the answers will also help me to better understand these tests."}
{"_id": "130302", "title": "Word for red flags / warning signs?", "text": "When reading about best practices and code reviews, I have come across a word/phrase that people on forums have used to describe code that should be a warning sign that the programmer may have missed something or made a mistake. A sample sentence would have gone something like this: \"Often if you see a single if statement with 10 ands/ors, it is a **___ ____**, though in certain cases it can be correct.\" What is this word? I want to include this in a code review document I am writing."}
{"_id": "255348", "title": "How to join two tables in codeigniter", "text": "How to join two tables in codeigniter. I have two tables 1-class 2-membership And i want to join both one field to another Kindly provide code to join it. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "142603", "title": "Benchmarking CPU processing power", "text": "Provided that many tools for computers benchmarking are available already, I'd like to write my own, starting with processing power measurement. I'd like to write it in C under Linux, but other language alternatives are welcome. I thought starting from floating point operations per second, but it is just a hint. I also thought it'd be correct to keep track of CPU number of cores, RAM amount and the like, to more consistently associate results with CPU architecture. How would you proceed to the task of measuring CPU computing power? And on top of that: I would worry about a proper minimum workload induced by concurrently running services; is it correct to run benchmarking as a standalone (and possibly avulsed from the OS environment) process?"}
{"_id": "112463", "title": "Why do iterators in Python raise an exception?", "text": "Here's the syntax for iterators in Java (somewhat similar syntax in C#):               Iterator it = sequence.iterator();          while (it.hasNext()) {         System.out.println(it.next());     }      Which makes sense. Here's the equivalent syntax in Python:               it = iter(sequence)     while True:         try:             value = it.next()          except StopIteration:             break         print(value)      I thought Exceptions were supposed to be used only in, well, exceptional circumstances. Why does Python use exceptions to stop iteration?"}
{"_id": "105998", "title": "Client bankrupt, solution left fallow, what do you do?", "text": "Have you ever built a solution for a client and in the months to follow, the client goes bankrupt and so can't accept the work done? What do you do? Re-purpose the code, and \"put it out there\"? Leave the code alone and be thankful for the knowledge and expertise gained? Shop around elsewhere for a buyer? EDIT: It's an asp .net solution for use in a financial context"}
{"_id": "115115", "title": "Are there any jobs in the programming field that don't require you to sit at a desk all day?", "text": "I'm new in the field of programming. I really enjoy it as a career, but I'm not sure I can handle sitting at a desk for eight hours a day. I don't mind it for short stretches of time of course, but I can't do it day in and day out. Is there a field of programming that possibly has jobs that require less time spent at the desk?"}
{"_id": "144764", "title": "How can one best avoid writing bloated GUI code?", "text": "I find whenever I work with GUI code, the code tends to bloat faster then other kinds of code. It also seems harder to refactor. Whereas in other kinds of code I can refactor pretty easily -- I find I can decompose a larger class into smaller pieces of functionality -- with most GUI frameworks I'm often bound to a framework that requires my widget/control/whatever class to implement a lot more things more directly in the widget/control/whatever. Sometimes this is due to needing to either (a) inherit off of some base widget/control/thing or (b) need access to protected methods. I typically also have to, for example, respond to a large variety of inputs via signals/events/whatever from the framework to implement all the modes of interacting with the user. I might need in one GUI widget/control to handle a large variety of input/output that might include:   1. a right click/context menu    2. reacting to selections from the context menu -- which may be many    3. a special way to paint the GUI    4. react to keyboard input    5. buttons, checkboxes,    6. etc etc ... all the while manage the classes under the GUI representing business logic. A simple straight-forward GUI can have its code grow pretty quickly, even when seperating out buisiness logic and using MVC, I find GUI code is a big magnet for change. Is there any way to manage GUI code in a sane way and avoid letting it become a broken window? Or is a mass of random event handlers/overridden methods really the best we can do for GUI code?"}
{"_id": "115110", "title": "How can I prevent users from creating multiple accounts on a web site?", "text": "I'm building a site that needs to guarantee user reputation scores are accurate by preventing users from creating more than one account, at the cost of decreased user signups. So far, the only solutions I have thought of are allowing users to:   * Link to their (verified) PayPal account through PayPal Account Authentication   * Provide their PGP public key, and checking that the MSD (a metric of trustworthiness) is below a certain value Of course, even these methods aren't bulletproof, but are likely to make creating a sock-puppet account very difficult. Are there any others I haven't considered?"}
{"_id": "144767", "title": "What % of career programmers have a bachelor's degree in programming related fields?", "text": "I've been having a dispute with a friend over how many programmers working full time in software development actually have a 4 year degree. It seems like there's less full timers with degrees in this field than in others. Are there statistics anywhere?"}
{"_id": "187674", "title": "overworld vs on-screen 2d tile organization", "text": "I am developing a 2d game where the world is made up of tiles. I have an overworld and a \"current world\":   * the current world represent the current tiles on screen at any given time, currently this is in a 2d array (14x10 elements).   * the overworld is the entire world, currently 28x20 elements, which means there are four screens of tiles. Again these are planned to be stored in a 2d array I had originally thought to take the entire group of tiles and break them in to 'current world' sized 2d arrays that get passed to the current world object. This would mean however, having to work with a 4d array in the overworld level, which seems to be pretty ugly and more confusing to set up and play with later on. It would have looked something like:               tiles[overworldX][overworldY][currentWorldX][currentWorldY]      where \"tiles\" is the 4d array and:               tiles[overworldX][overworldY]      would get you a 2d array of the group of tiles that fit on a screen/current world. The only idea I can come up with to make this slightly better is to create a helper object that just wraps around a 2d array, breaking up a 4d array in to two 2d arrays, but in essence it is still a 4d array. Any suggestions on a better way to do this or perhaps a different data structure I can use? Or maybe keeping only a large group of 2d tiles for the overworld, then coming up with some fancy indexing/slicing algorithm that can pull out 'current world' sized parts?"}
{"_id": "254431", "title": "How does stock brokers implement limit / trailing stop loss sell logic?", "text": "Let's take Fidelity for example, one can set to sell a stock with a trailing stop lost of 2% of last price, or even more simpler, one can set a limited sell order at any given price. And it must have millions of such orders outstanding at any given time. On a high level, how did they implement logic so they can check all pending orders and fulfill them on a timely basis? (Or is that a core functionality brokers don't have to implement, but stock exchange have to provide? - in which case, my question will be, how does stock exchange implement such logic.) I assume you can simply check all orders repeatedly but that's very inefficient. For example -               while (true) {        foreach (user)           foreach (outstanding order in user)              if (should sell)                 sell;        wait(1)     }      Or, something like               while (true) {        foreach (stock)           foreach (order in stock with price = last)   // stored in a stock-to-order look up table              if (should sell)                 sell;        wait(1)     }      How would they sort or scale such an order among a large volume?"}
{"_id": "50219", "title": "Should you be an OOP expert if you're developing in ASP.NET?", "text": "Should you be an OOP expert if you're developing in ASP.NET?"}
{"_id": "92425", "title": "How do I find young developers to mentor?", "text": "I'm looking for a way to take my experiences (and the experiences of others), and provide a more active approach to an apprenticeship for CS college students or young developers. It seems to me that Programmers Stack Exchange does this to some degree in a passive fashion, but have you ever seen a program that actively seeks out these individuals and gives them an opportunity to pick your brain (besides your run of the mill internship)."}
{"_id": "187678", "title": "Algorithm for tracking progress of controller method running in background", "text": "I am using Codeigniter framework for PHP on Windows platform. **My problem is I am trying to track progress of a controller method running in background.** The controller extracts data from the database(MySQL) then does some processing and then stores the results again in the database. The complete aforesaid process can be considered as a single task. A new task can be assigned while another task is running. The newly assigned task will be added in a queue. So if I can track progress of the controller, I can show status for each of these tasks. Like I can show \"Pending\" status for tasks in the queue, \"In Progress\" for tasks running and \"Done\" for tasks that are completed. ## Main Issue: Now first thing I need **to find is an algorithm to track the progress of how much amount of execution the controller method has completed** and that means tracking how much amount of method has completed execution. For instance, this PHP script tracks progress of array being counted. Here the current state and state after total execution are known so it is possible to track its progress. But I am not able to devise anything analogous to it in my case. Maybe what I am trying to achieve is programmtically not possible. If its not possible then suggest me a workaround or a completely new approach. If some details are pending you can mention them. Sorry for my ignorance this is my first post here. I welcome you to point out my mistakes. **EDIT:** ### Database outline: The URL(s) and keyword(s) are first entered by user which are stored in a database table called **link_master** and **keyword_master** respectively. Then keywords are extracted from all the links present in this table and compared with keywords entered by user and their frequency is calculated which is the final result. And the results are stored in another table called **link_result**. Now sub-links are extracted from the domain links and stored in a table called **sub_link_master**. Now again the keywords are extracted from these sub-links and the corresponding results are stored in a table called **sub_link_result**. The number of records cannot be defined beforehand as the number of links on any web page can be different. Only the cardinality of *link_result* table can be known which will be equal to multiplication of number of keyword(s) and URL(s) . I insert multiple records at a time using this resource. ### Controller outline: The controller extracts keywords from a web page and also extracts keywords from all the links present on that page. There is a method called **crawlLink**. I used Rolling Curl to extract keywords and web page content. It has callback function which I used for extracting keywords alongwith generating results and extracting valid sub-links. There is a **insertResult** method which stores results for links and sub-links in the respective tables. Yes, the processing depends on the number of records. The more the number of records, the more time it takes to execute: Consider this scenario: Number of Domain Links = 1 Number of Keywords = 3 Number of Domain Links Result generated = 3 (3 x 1 as described in the question) Number of Sub Links generated = 41 Number of Sub Links Result = 117 (41 x 3 = 123 but some links are not valid or searchable) Approximate time taken for above process to complete = 55 seconds. The above result is for a single link. I want to track the progress of the above results getting stored in database. When all results are stored, the task is complete. If results are getting stored, the task is In Progress. I am not clear how can I track this progress."}
{"_id": "160146", "title": "Any requirements tool recommendation?", "text": "BAs in my company use Word, Excel and Visio for requirements definition reasonably well. What are the key advantages and disadvantages of using a requirements tool instead?"}
{"_id": "58764", "title": "What is the best way to learn how to develop drivers?", "text": "At some point in my career I would definitely like to get involved in some embedded programming. I was thinking that starting out with developing some drivers would be a good place to develop my abilities in the regard. I'm open to doing so on either windows or linux platform (eventually will want to probably attempt both). What tools would you recommend that I look into to get me started on this project? Any other resources that you have found to be helpful (i.e. books, websites, programs, etc)? Any advice/recommendations? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "66301", "title": "Conceptual Requirement and Scope", "text": "Appreciate your help with my questions   * What are conceptual requirements? How do they compare with stakeholder, business and functional requirements?   * what CASE tools can be used to capture conceptual requirements and scope?"}
{"_id": "160142", "title": "What Discrete Mathematics topics should the average computer science student know?", "text": "I know that Discrete Mathematics is a pretty broad topic that's used in a number of fields but I was just wondering what are some of the topics from it that you would expect an average computer science student to know? Here are the range of topics from the table of contents of a book titled \"Discrete Mathematics and it's Applications 6th edition\" by Kenneth H Rosen:               1 The Foundations: Logic and Proofs         1.1 Propositional Logic          1.2 Propositional Equivalences          1.3 Predicates and Quantifiers          1.4 Nested Quantifiers          1.5 Rules of Inference          1.6 Introduction to Proofs          1.7 Proof Methods and Strategy      2 Basic Structures: Sets, Functions, Sequences and Sums          2.1 Sets          2.2 Set Operations          2.3 Functions          2.4 Sequences and Summations      3 The Fundamentals: Algorithms, the Integers, and Matrices          3.1 Algorithms          3.2 The Growth of Functions          3.3 Complexity of Algorithms          3.4 The Integers and Division          3.5 Primes and Greatest Common Divisors          3.6 Integers and Algorithms          3.7 Applications of Number Theory          3.8 Matrices      4 Induction and Recursion          4.1 Mathematical Induction          4.2 Strong Induction and Well-Ordering          4.3 Recursive Definitions and Structural Induction          4.4 Recursive Algorithms          4.5 Program Correctness      5 Counting          5.1 The Basics of Counting          5.2 The Pigeonhole Principle          5.3 Permutations and Combinations          5.4 Binomial Coefficients          5.5 Generalized Permutations and Combinations          5.6 Generating Permutations and Combinations      6 Discrete Probability          6.1 An Introduction to Discrete Probability          6.2 Probability Theory          6.3 Bayes Theorem          6.4 Expected Value and Variance      7 Advanced Counting Techniques          7.1 Recurrence Relations          7.2 Solving Linear Recurrence Relations          7.3 Divide-and-Conquer Algorithms and Recurrence Relations          7.4 Generating Functions          7.5 Inclusion-Exclusion          7.6 Applications of Inclusion-Exclusion      8 Relations          8.1 Relations and Their Properties          8.2 n-ary Relations and Their Applications          8.3 Representing Relations          8.4 Closures of Relations          8.5 Equivalence Relations          8.6 Partial Orderings      9 Graphs          9.1 Graphs and Graph Models          9.2 Graph Terminology and Special Types of Graphs          9.3 Representing Graphs and Graph Isomorphism          9.4 Connectivity          9.5 Euler and Hamilton Paths          9.6 Shortest-Path Problems          9.7 Planar Graphs          9.8 Graph Coloring      10 Trees          10.1 Introduction to Trees          10.2 Applications of Trees          10.3 Tree Traversal          10.4 Spanning Trees          10.5 Minimum Spanning Trees      11 Boolean Algebra          11.1Boolean Functions          11.2 Representing Boolean Functions          11.3 Logic Gates          11.4 Minimization of Circuits      12 Modeling Computation          12.1 Languages and Grammars          12.2 Finite-State Machines with Output          12.3 Finite-State Machines with No Output          12.4 Language Recognition          12.5 Turing Machines      Appendixes          A.1 Axioms for the Real Numbers and the Positive Integers          A.2 Exponential and Logarithmic Functions          A.3 Pseudocode"}
{"_id": "66305", "title": "what is a dylib?", "text": "I am developing an iphone app and working through some sample code I saw, which uses libz.dylib. I did some research and found nothing enlightening, other than libz.dylib could be used for zip files, but other frameworks are prefered... I'm dealing with a pdf sample, so why use libz.dylib? In general, what are dylib? And why all the versions?"}
{"_id": "58769", "title": "How to structure reading of commands given at a(n interactive) CLI prompt?", "text": "Let's say I have a program called `theprogram` (the marketing team was on strike when the product was to be named). I start that program by typing, perhaps not surprisingly, the program name as a command into a command prompt. After that, I get into a loop (from the users standpoint, an interactive command-line prompt), where one command will be read from the user, and depending on what command was given, the program will execute some instructions. I have been doing something like the following (in C-like pseudocode):               main_loop{      in=read_input();      if(in==\"command 1\")       do_something();      else if(in==\"command 2\")       do_something_else();      ...     }      (In a real program, I would probably encapsulate more things into different procedures, this is just an example.) This works well for a small amount of commands, but let's say you have 100, 1000 or even 10 000 of them (the manual would be **huge!** ). It is clearly a bad idea to have 10 000 `if`s and `else if`s after each other, for instance, the program would be hard to read, hard to maintain, contain a lot of boilerplate code... Yeah, you don't want to do that, so what approach would you recommend me to use (I will probably never use 10 000 commands in a program, but the solution should, at least preferably, be able to scale to that kind of massive (?) problems. The solution doesn't have to allow for arguments to the commands)?"}
{"_id": "58768", "title": "As a consultant, how can I amaze my clients?", "text": "I am about to form a small consulting company and with a few friends and I am curious about how/what you do to amaze and create happy long lasting clients? This is of course besides the standard points like delivering on time, charge fair amount, deliver quality, and deliver what they really want. What other techniques do you use to amaze and create long lasting clients? (and to stand out compare to the competition) For example:   * Gifts?   * Happening and events?   * Night out at the pub?"}
{"_id": "24361", "title": "Method for integrating various version control systems or choosing one over others, due to mergers and acquisitions?", "text": "Companies acquire other companies that use different version control systems. Is there a common wisdom on how to integrate such systems together, for example using a Subverson-GIT bridge or even deciding on using just one tool over another - and how to migrate between systems? Do people use a set of criteria for such decision making, for example an equivalent to the \"Joel\" test on software development?"}
{"_id": "158800", "title": "Which mobile devices cover the widest spectrum for testing?", "text": "My company has decided to purchase a multitude of devices for browser testing our stages e.g. iPhones, Android, Windows and assorted tablets. They've tasked me with finding specific devices that cover largest common denominator of users and scenarios. We recently had a client that had us testing 10-20 different devices; each having their own oddities. Which android and windows phone would give us the largest spectrum of the market in terms of compatibility?"}
{"_id": "158802", "title": "How should common interfaces be shared across source control repositories?", "text": "I have code that represents the interface for a library that is used by a variety of **internal** clients. How should that interface code be exposed to these internal clients that live in different source control repositories? The interface should be relatively stable, but is in development (as is most of the internal clients) so keeping changes communicated is important, as is keeping breaking changes to a minimum. Normally, I would just directly reference them in the other modules but the separated nature makes that troublesome."}
{"_id": "164652", "title": "Dilemma for growing a project: Open source volunteer developers VS closed source paid / revshare developers?", "text": "I am trying to grow my project, and I am vaccillating between some examples. Some options seem to be: **1\\. open sourcing the project to draw volunteer developers.** _Pros_ This would mean anyone can try and make some money off the code that would motivate them to contribute back and grow the project. _Cons_ Existing bigger could easily copy and paste my work so far. They can also replicate without having access to the code, but that would take more time. I also thought of using AGPL license, but again, code can still be copied without redistribution. After all, enforcing a license costs a lot of money, and I cannot just say to a possible copycat that it seems you copied my code, show me what you got. **2\\. Keep the project closed source, but create some kind of a developer program where they get revshare** _Pros_ I keep the main rights for the project, but still generate interest by creating a developer program. Noone can copy code easily, just with some considerable effort, but make contributions easy as a breeze. I am also seeing many companies just open source a part of their projects, like Acquia does not open source its multisite setup, or github does not open source some of its core business. _Cons_ Less attention from open source committed devs. **Conclusion** So option 2 seems the most secure, but would love some feedback."}
{"_id": "238631", "title": "High Level design vs Low Level design?", "text": "Folks i am not sure what actually comes under HLD and what under LLD? . I did google but most of the answers are contradictory and theoritical. Say i need to design the login process in web application. considering this example, what will come under HLD and LLD including sequence and class diagram. My understanding Sequence and class diagram will come under LLD . Not sure what else will come under LLD? Really don't what will come under HLD here?"}
{"_id": "77332", "title": "Functional Programming -- Immutability", "text": "I am trying to understand dealing with immutable data in FP (specifically in F#, but other FP\u2019s are ok as well) and break the old habit of state-full thinking (OOP style). A part of the selected answer to the question here reiterated my search for any write-ups around problems that are solved by stateful representations in OOP with immutable ones in FP (For ex: A queue with Producers & Consumer). Any thoughts or links are welcome? Thanks in advance. **Edit** : To clarify the question a little more, how would immutable structures (ex: queue) be shared concurrently across multiple threads (ex: producer and consumer) in FP"}
{"_id": "72677", "title": "Is it bad to do more than one story at a time in scrum?", "text": "Scrum's definition says that it should be done one story at a time. But, if the team is big enough (say 6+), there are some times where taking just one story is kind of questionable, and it is even more if there are several small stories. So, sometimes in the team I'm currently working with, we might tackle two stories more often than not. Is this a bad thing?"}
{"_id": "91734", "title": "Does the source language matter for your first (few) compilers?", "text": "I've been very interested in writing compilers but have been scared off by the complexity of it. I've finally took the plunge and started writing my first compiler and the language I picked is Brainf*ck as I think that it would relatively easy to implement and I could implement the full language. This brings me to a question: does the source language matter? Should I be using a \"real-world\" language and just use a subset of the language (such as a subset of C/Java/etc.)? Is there any benefit to starting with a non-real world language (aka \"esoteric\")?"}
{"_id": "228807", "title": "How to determine if a message should be a command message or event message?", "text": "Two enterprise integration patterns are the command message and the event message. I am working on a system in which we use messaging not only for integration with other systems, but for internal communication between services. It's supposed to be an eventually consistent system, and services are supposed to be ignorant of each other (with exception to a couple special- purpose services). As such, we try to avoid things that feel like remote procedure calls (RPC or RPI). We have a bus and message-oriented middleware system, and all messages are broadcasted. We tend to name our messages as events, that is, as a phrase in the past perfect, e.g. `PurchaseOrderShipped`. However, the events are often added only when some other services needs to know about them, and in the beginning, often only one service cares. Moreover, sometimes that service emits an event as a result, which is listened to by the first service. Thus if I were to diagram the interaction, it would look much more like the diagram for the command message in the link above (or even the RPC diagram) than the one for the event message, though once again, this is not actually implemented with direct messaging but broadcast on a bus. Add to that the fact that I have recently seen some messages being added that are named as commands, that is, a phrase in the imperative, e.g. `BillShippedPurchaseOrder`. The odd thing is that the names of the messages and the way they flow are not changes by whether it is named as an event or as a command. So how does one determine whether something should be a command message or an event? Is this just a difference of semantics and naming, or is there an actual implementation difference between command and event messages? Given that all our messages are broadcast, does that mean than none of them are truly command messages?"}
{"_id": "228804", "title": "database design for Media company in SQL 2008", "text": "I have to make the report for one of the client. There are three sources from I will get all raw data, so eventually I will have to marry those all data from different sources and make one report. This is the first I am making database design from scratch so need some basic as well as advance help. Question is: All 3 sources that contain raw data doesn't have any unique column, do I need to put PRIMARY KEY on that or I can make report without PRIMARY KEY and Foreign KEY? In addition to this I don't have DIMTIME or DIMDATE table also. Do i need all this stuff to create database? NOTE:I have already merge these three sources based in date and country field and without Primary key. Thanks in Advance."}
{"_id": "73106", "title": "How productive is an excellent developer compared to an average one?", "text": "I believe that I read somewhere that Google has a rule of thumb that an excellent developer is around 300 times more productive than an average one. Does anyone have any rules of thumb used by large companies or maybe there are even some empirical studies on this?"}
{"_id": "77486", "title": "How do you make day to day work more fun?", "text": "I just read Flinging Fish for Fun and Profit, a short little essay on how Pike Place Market in Seattle turned to dwindling business into a success by making it fun. Obviously having fun at work is largely attitude, but I'm wondering what practical things can be done to have more fun with programming and related tasks? In Pike Place they were able to find more fun by chucking a fish across the market rather than carrying it. What do you do to make programming more fun? Edit: To be clear I'm not making the assumption programming inherently is not fun. But certainly there are tasks or times when it is tedious or trying (making long commits, dealing with cludgy tools). The fishmongers took the tedious but necessary task of moving fish from point A to point B and made it fun. How do you do the same?"}
{"_id": "228809", "title": "Rating Ecommerce Customers Formula", "text": "I'm developing a new extension for an ecommerce platform, that basically builds Customer Equity and Lifetime Value. Already got that. But I'm having some problems trying to figure out a formula to rate an ecommerce customer. I'm not looking for code, but rather for a formula. I'm pretty sure I already have all vars needed, like customer sales, average sales, profit, first order, last order, marketing spent on a specific customer, discounts spent on a specific customers, shipping costs, payment costs,number of returns he made, etc. What I'm missing is a formula to rank each customer. The basic Idea is that someone from customer support will see in customer's dashboard a summary and the customer rating. Like from 1-10 So he can have a better knowledge on how to deal with it. If it's a valuable customer or someone that gives the company a very low profit and is always returning things and stuff like that. My intention here is not to discuss the way we should treat customers. My first thoughts we something like: Get current profit, add project profit, check lifespan point..."}
{"_id": "165012", "title": "What does it mean \u201cyou can pick K to be whatever you want\u201d in Excess-N notation?", "text": "I prefer providing an example to explain the following paragraph: > However, since excess K representation using N bits has two parameters, K > and N, you can pick K to be whatever you want. You can have more positive > numbers than negative, not include zero, and so forth."}
{"_id": "65845", "title": "moving from Windows to Linux", "text": "I need to reconcile these 2 facts:   1. I don't feel comfortable working on Linux;   2. I need to develop software for Linux. Some background: I have a 10+ years of programming experience on Windows (almost exclusively C/C++, but some .NET as well), I was a user of FreeBSD at home for about 3 years or so (then had to go back to Windows), and I've never had much luck with Linux. And now I have to develop software for Linux. I need a plan. On Windows, you can get away with just knowing a programming language, an API you're coding against, your IDE (VisualStudio) and some very basic tools for troubleshooting (Depends, ProcessExplorer, DebugView, WinDbg). Everything else comes naturally. On Linux, it's a very different story. How the hell would I know what DLL (sorry, Shared Object) would load, if I link to it from Firefox plugin? What's the Linux equivalent of inserting __asm int 3/DebugBreak() in the source and running the program, and then letting the OS call a debugger? Why the hell release builds use something, called appLoader, while debug builds work somehow different? Worst of all: how to provision Linux development environment? So, taking into account that hatred is usually associated with not knowing enough, what would you recommend? I'm ok with Emacs and GCC. I need to educate myself as a Linux admin/user, and I need to learn proper troubleshooting tools (strace is cool, btw), equivalents to the ones I mentioned above. Do I need to do Linux from Scratch? Or do I need to just read some books (I've read \"UNIX programming environment\" by Kernighan and \"Advanced Programming...\" by Stevens, but I need to learn something more practical)? Or do I need to have some Linux distro on my home computer?"}
{"_id": "145490", "title": "Is there an open source version check library and web app?", "text": "I'm a developer for a cross platform (Win, MacOS, Linux) open source C++ application. I would like to have the program occasionally check for the latest version from our web site. Between the security, privacy, and cross platform network issues, I'd rather not roll our own solution. It seems like this is a common enough thing that there 'ought' to be a library/app which will do this. Unfortunately, the searches I've tried come up empty. Ideally, the web app would track requests and process the logs into some nice reports (number of users, what version, what platform, frequency of use, maybe even geographical info from IP address, etc.). While appropriately respecting privacy, etc. What pre-existing tools can help solve this problem? Edits: I am looking for a reporting tool, not a dependency checker. Our project has the challenge of keeping up with our users. Most do not join the mailing list. Our project has not been picked up by major distributions -- most of our users are Windows/MacOS anyway. When a new version comes out, we have no way of informing our users of its existence. Development is moving pretty fast, major features added every few months. We would like to provide the user with a way to check for an updated version. While we're at it, we would like to use these requests for some simple & anonymous usage tracking (X users running version Y with Z frequency, etc.). We do not need/want something that auto-updates or tracks dependencies on the system. We are not currently worried about update size -- when the user chooses to update, we expect them to download the complete latest version. We would like to keep this as simple as possible."}
{"_id": "196555", "title": "File storage for a blog component: database or filesystem?", "text": "I'm going to develop a fairly basic re-usable blog component, with simple CRUD operations using ASP.Net. Which method of storing blog posts would be best suited to the situation in terms of performance/maintainability?   * Create an XML file and store data in filesystem, filesize will not likely be any more than 50kb in size   * Store blog post data in DB, retrieve as needed Am I right in assuming that the asp.net runtime will cache the .xml files and only clear them/request a fresh copy when their contents are changed? Or do you have to explicitly add the file to the cache? If this is the case would this offer the best performance over storing the data in the database?"}
{"_id": "252872", "title": "Synchronizing a model over a distributed unreliable network", "text": "On my server I've a model that consists of several objects and attributes, which I persist on a relational database. All CRUD operations are supported. The very common and usual. I need to support several synchronization scenarios: I need to Synchronization between clients and server:   * Clients have a well defined subset of the model (based on permission)   * Clients should be able to perform any CRUD operation on the model, and eventually synchronize with the server.   * Clients don't always have connection with server   * Other clients may modify the model. These changes should arrive to client as soon as possible (ideally - near real time latency when network is on).   * I've a framework to send messages from server to client and vise verse (full duplex) when network is available. This seems to be very similar to our Microsoft Exchange is synchronizing the mail database (mail, folders, contacts, etc.) with Outlook clients, or - to certain extent, how centralized Source Version Control perform synchronization. I've a general idea (keep a version for each entity, maintain a log, implement a conflict resolution algorithm, using GUID for ID's, etc.) - not sure I'm covering all the details. Ideally - I'm looking for a library/framework/platform that does it all for me (me providing mean to send messages, and somehow define the model). One could thing that this is a common enough problem that has already been investigated and implemented. If a library doesn't exist, I'm looking for tips/papers/web sites/pointers."}
{"_id": "93779", "title": "Is there a process model similar to the waterfall process, but with more cycles?", "text": "In software engineering, what's the name of a development process like the waterfall model, but with more cycles? Does something like this exist? In my case, I developed the parts of my application separately and went through all the steps in the waterfall model (requirements, analysis, design, implementation, testing). At the end I put everything together. Is it wrong to call it waterfall process with 4 cycles?"}
{"_id": "181536", "title": "Are there any advantages of SASS over LESS?", "text": "I'm trying to do research on these css preprocessors. Are there any advantages of using sass over less as a css preprocessor? Factors that i'm looking for include community size, software project maturity, community size, etc. I know there was another question related to this; but it was not constructively written and closed."}
{"_id": "181534", "title": "Steps in converting a grammar to LL(1) Grammar", "text": "I have the following question:               Convert the following grammar into an LL(1) grammar which recognises the same     language (you may assume that the grammar is unambiguous).     A -> int     A -> int + A     A -> int - A     A -> A - (A)      What are the steps or rules I must follow to convert this grammar to ll(1)?"}
{"_id": "93770", "title": "When is a 'core' library a bad idea?", "text": "When developing software, I often have a centralised 'core' library containing handy code that can be shared and referenced by different projects. Examples:   * a set of functions to manipulate strings   * commonly used regular expressions   * common deployment code However some of my colleagues seem to be turning away from this approach. They have concerns such as the maintenance overhead of retesting code used by many projects once a bug is fixed. Now I'm reconsidering when I should be doing this. What are the issues that make using a 'core' library a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "65665", "title": "Do sites like goanimate, xtranormal, and animoto use Flash + ActionScript, OpenGL, or other technology?", "text": "What technology is used by sites like goanimate, xtranormal, and animoto? Especially the video compilation engine in the backend of animoto? Could HTML5 be used to do everything that's there?"}
{"_id": "111344", "title": "What is it called when you set properties on object initialization?", "text": "What is it called when you set properties on object initialization?               var customer = new Customer() {RequestID = request.ID, AddressID = 5};      Is it considered good practice?"}
{"_id": "189706", "title": "Starting consulting while employed - conflict of interest", "text": "First of all **I am not after legal advice**. This is a bit TL;DR but I have a summary at the bottom, I'm explaining it all so people can offer insightful advise. ### Situation I need to explain my present situation to explain why I've decided to go the route that I have. I have recently been asked to find another job, due to the local economy struggling. I haven't been sacked but the cause is due to my present employer no longer being able to afford to employ me full time. I looked for jobs for a while but there is very little around, particularly for the level that I'm at, and I don't want _just another job_ that I'm not going to find challenging or enjoy. My current position sees me work as an architect and software manager. The vast majority of work is internal, but I do a little external consulting for my employer. ### My decision I've decided to go out on my own as a consultant / contractor. I already have quite a fair bit of work lined up. But while I establish my business I need to make money to support my family. The eventual outcome is to monetize some products, but product development takes time. ### The issue My current employer has offered me part-time employment with them. They are primarily a retail operation although since my employment have moved extensively into web work (mainly CMS-based sites) and to a lesser extent, programming, which is where I come in. This is undertaken both on a consulting basis as well as several internal projects. There is also a very large IT support business. The software development is largely ancillary although there is a large focus on (basic) web development. **Software development will largely stop when I leave, if not completely** ## Conflict of Interest If I take up the part time role I need to have a contract written about conflict of interest. I will see a lawyer for legal advise however I need to know what to allow myself. ### TL;DR Working as a consultant as well as for a company doing software part time, I can think of the following areas to define in the contract to allow myself to operate:   * When I work for them, I am employed by them and will not publicise or disclose my own business details   * I will not, outside of work, pursue their clients offering services   * They will not own any right to anything I produce whilst I am not employed by them   * If an existing client approaches me from their own research then it is fair game   * If they have a client leaving then I am entitled to work for them, and to either approach them or have them approach me Can you think of any other areas to approach my lawyers with that I have missed? I want to allow my business to grow and flourish and to protect myself. Case in point - one client of theirs has told me they want me to do their work, and it was unsolicited."}
{"_id": "110437", "title": "What does long-term freelancing say about a developer's experience?", "text": "I have been interviewing candidates lately for a developer position requiring 10+ years experience and have come across a couple of CVs that I am not sure how to understand: I have interviewed a few of these people and so far have had no luck. What are people's experience with developers with about 10 years experience, but who from day one have been working as mostly project-based freelancers? Are there potential benefits or drawbacks to a software development firm in having that type of experience?"}
{"_id": "186448", "title": "C/C++ in applications that do not concern performance", "text": "C is the best language (or maybe the single language) suitable for operating systems, drivers, embedded systems etc. For more complex domains like computer graphics C++ is a better choice. But these applications have thorough performance requirements and they are only feasible to be built in C/C++. Now the question is, if the performance requirements can be achieved in another language, are there any technical reasons to choose C/C++?"}
{"_id": "130323", "title": "iOS Server: HTTP/Apache Drawbacks?", "text": "I'm looking to create a client/server application for iOS devices, where client is the iPhone/iPad and server is hosted either at home (Macbook w/ Apache) or online. I've seen many methods suggested in my googling, but the most common method seems to be HTTP POST and GET requests. I'd like to know if there are any limitations of using HTTP for a client/server-based iOS application before I get too involved with the implementation. Performance is not my first priority, as I'd only be sending small amounts of data at a time. Also, is using Apache HTTP Server a viable solution, or should I use a different tool on the server side? Pardon my inexperience in the area. Thanks in advance. I've also heard of Parse and Amazon EC2, can anyone vouch for either? **EDIT:** To clarify, the server would be a single computer/host for all clients, not one server per client. I'd also like the cheapest (if not free) solution available."}
{"_id": "130321", "title": "Can I use the database structure of an open source project?", "text": "I found a database structure for a CMS system and I want to copy it with the EF that this database is done in, is it OK to copy the database structure of open source software which is under GNU v2 lisence? I don't want the rest of the software only the database structure."}
{"_id": "153039", "title": "CodePlex and Google Code Concerns", "text": "I was wondering about the risks involved with hosting on Microsoft CodePlex and Google Code. Let's say I host a project on one of them and it ends up taking off and getting tons of downloads. I was wondering if it is possible (or maybe has already happened) for either Microsoft or Google to rebrand the project and turn it into closed-source? The reason I ask is because Microsoft and Google are multi-billion dollar companies and your average lawyer would have to be crazy to try and fight them."}
{"_id": "130328", "title": "Max. SMS length that will reach all users", "text": "I'm building a grants management system where we're trying to find a list of lost users using a number of different means. The first attempt is email but if we do not have an email address, we will try SMS. Just wondering, before we get our business guys to start thinking up SMS messages, is there a maximum length or something which I should stay within to reach every phone with SMS capability? Taking also in account that whilst we won't be sending an SMS to international numbers, a lot of the users will be from foreign countries and may have a foreign cell phone. Also, messages will only ever be in English."}
{"_id": "74684", "title": "An alternative to requiring red in TDD: reverting code change?", "text": "According to this answer to this question, a good reason for always starting with a failing test (\"Red\") is to make sure that the test is working and that the code that will be written is what makes the test passes. (my paraphrase) Since it appears to me that the ability to write a test before any code has been written is a kind of mental acumen that not everyone can do (I can't), would it be sufficient if I write the code first, then write the test, then revert my code change to see that the test will fail without the code change? Suppose that could be automated by some kind of IDE integration - would that be an alternate form of TDD? In development environments in which TDD is enforced by the IDE/Framework, does strict mechanical rule enforcement limits developer's options for optimizations? **An example** in which this might be useful: Suppose the module and its unit tests have already been completed and are both working correctly. Now, I want to introduce a refactoring which would improve the performance by an _unknown_ amount by reducing the number of _internal_ function calls, without any fundamental change in the _external_ behavior of the module. Because I don't know how much benefits I would get from that refactoring, I can't write a test for that. But without a failing test, I'm not allowed to modify the code. This seems a chicken-and-egg problem. If I am allowed to write a dummy test which simply captures the number of internal function calls in the old/new code, and then modify the code (in the name of \"refactoring\"), now I can update my test (if the refactoring is successful in reducing the number of internal calls) to assert that the number of internal calls should be reduced. **(Afterthought)** Although, this type of performance tests has a lesser importance than requirement unit tests:   * I would like to keep the benefit of the more efficient code if there is no change in functional requirement, and I do not want others to \"refactor away\" this benefit based on the assumption that no functional requirement would be broken.   * However, if there is a change in functional requirement, and if it's not possible to meet the current performance level, then the functional requirement should be met first. After that, a new performance target would be set from experimentation. (Disclaimer: I have never done strict-TDD (and am skeptical of it), although I have been doing test-soon-after-coding for several months.) **More afterthoughts**   * The code change in this question appear to be \"post-TDD development\", since it occurs well after all functional requirements had been met and all tests were in place. Therefore, as long as all of the original TDD unit tests continue to pass, this type of code change is considered \"tuning\"."}
{"_id": "23838", "title": "Programming language constructs for cache optimization?", "text": "Clearly optimizing cache usages is bound to improve my program efficiency. Surprisingly, I don't see too many programming languages actually having this sort of a feature. So here's my question:   1. What kind of language constructs have you seen that help improving cache usage?   2. How to innovate on cache usage since most systems won't easily reveal stuff like their L1 cache size easily? (Windows does have API or maybe /proc/cpuinfo on Linux, but I am looking for something simpler for the intermediate developer)"}
{"_id": "181285", "title": "Randomly Generate Points in a Spiral Motion using Javascript", "text": "So I have a javascript program that currently gets random points, it generates a random x,y,z value around the center point, within the radius `r`                 var maxArms = 3;       var i = 0;         var color = [];       for(var arm = 0; arm <= maxArms; arm++) {         var perArm = (numStars/maxArms);         var perPoint = Math.ceil((r/10)/5);         var actualPoints = ((r/10)/5);         perPoint = (perArm/(actualPoints+(actualPoints/4)));         var angle = 8;              for (var ra = 0; ra < 412; ra += 2) {             for (var p = 0; p < (580-ra); p++) {             var an = Math.random() * Math.PI * 2;             var pX = x(ra,angle) + ((Math.cos(an) * (Math.random()*512)) * (Math.random() > .5 ? 1 : -1)),                      pY = y(ra,angle) + ((Math.cos(an) * (Math.random()*512)) * (Math.random() > .5 ? 1 : -1)),                 pZ = Math.random() * ((r/2)-p) * (1 / ra) * (Math.random() > .5 ? 1 : -1),                     particle = new THREE.Vertex(                         new THREE.Vector3(pX, pZ, pY)                     );                 innerRing.vertices.push(particle);                      var h = Math.random() * (291 - 185) + 185,                     s = Math.random() * (66 - 34) + 34,                     v = Math.random() * (100 - 72) + 72;                 color[i] = new THREE.Color(0xffffff);                 color[i].setHSV(h / 360, s / 100, v / 100);                  i++;             }         }       }      Now I am trying to find a way rather than just randomly placing things anywhere within the radius, to spiral out the points, into a defined number of \"Spiral Arms\", I am sure this is going to require something with Sine and Cosine, but I have spent hours now looking to understand how to use these functions to do what I need and I am not sure how to do it. What I am looking for is I want a variable for the number of arms `numArms` and I want to have the function above take the number of arms, and create an equal number of points in each arm, and each arm arc out from the center point `0,0` in a spiral motion. Does that make sense? I have found other questions, and different answers with google about how to make a spiral, as well as how to find random points (as shown above) but nothing that can help me find random points around spiral arms, but once I have the points for the spiral I am not sure how to get the random x,y,z coordinates around the spiral. Also, if it is possible, to make it so towards the beginning of each arm there are more points than at the end of the arm. Yes I know my script is not properly optimized, but I am looking more for function at the moment. I have attached an image of what the currently generated with the code below, as well as a sample of a spiral galaxy, althought I do not want the center as huge as the second image. * * * **Edit** I have made some changes to the generation script, although rather sloppy, it starts out making stars come from the middle like a spiral, but it inevitably gets larger and no longer looks like a spiral, I have tried playing with all of the variables (`ra` and `angle`) but it does not make the spiral look any better, what can I do? Current Generation: http://i.stack.imgur.com/sfkh3.jpg Sample Generation: http://i.stack.imgur.com/RikVh.jpg"}
{"_id": "140511", "title": "What is the name of this tree?", "text": "It has a single root and each node has 0..N ordered sub-nodes . The keys represent a distinct set of paths. Two trees can only be merged if they share a common root. It needs to support, at minimum: insert, merge, enumerate paths. For this tree:               The      +--------+----------------+      |        |                |     cat      cow              dog      +        +--------+       +      |        |        |       |     drinks   jumps    moos    barks      +      |     milk      the paths would be:   * The cat drinks milk   * The cow jumps   * The cow moos   * The dog barks It's a bit like a trie. What is it?"}
{"_id": "140516", "title": "Criteria for a language to be considered \"object oriented\"", "text": "I had a discussion about OO programming today and by browsing the internet I found a lot of different specifications for object oriented languages.   * What are the requirements for a language to be object oriented? For myself an object oriented language must have classes, inheritance and encapsulation.   * Is C an object oriented language just because you can use structs and program with an object oriented design? Why/ why not? Are there any good sites/articles about this? And please, no Wikipedia links because I've already been there."}
{"_id": "181282", "title": "Object locking over Internet", "text": "I am building a tutoring application that can be used to draw objects and then one is able to drag them around. I would like to know what is the best thing to do when someone clicks on an object and starts to drag it. I was told I should \"lock\" it - prevent it from being grabbed by someone else at the same time and being able to drag it. But that would require sending a request to the server (and then to all other users connected to the tutoring session) to lock it which might take a bit of time (what if a teacher is in USA and student is in Africa on dialup)? I was also told I should loop until I see that the object was locked by me. This way, the user might not be able to grab and drag and object for several seconds (UX design problem). I proposed perhaps to only enable one to drag object you drew, but that seems short sided. Any suggestions? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "65829", "title": "If I open a port and add an exception to the Windows firewall, should I ask the user first?", "text": "I have an application running with admin rights, which in order to work, need add a port and register himself to the exceptions list of the Windows Firewall. the question is, is considered a bad practice do this without inform to the final user? or must be done asking to the final user about this ? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "65822", "title": "Pros and cons of JIT and AOT", "text": "In which respects \"Just In Time\" compilation is better than \"Ahead Of Time\" compilation? And vice versa. Is AOT same as direct native compilation?"}
{"_id": "65820", "title": "Scrum Newbie: Internal Stories", "text": "I am trying to implement Scrum and have some basic questions. I understand creating stories to implement end user functionality, but where does a \"meta- task\" like collecting requirements for the stories in the first place come from? Is this even before the story process begins? I guess I am struggling with the fact that a project starts up at some point, and then tasks like \"get requirements\" and \"create user stories\" are needed, but those are also part of the project and need to be captured somewhere. Do they fit into Scrum stories? Are they part of a sprint? It seems like they should be, but creating stories for them seems recursive...I hope that makes sense. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "233306", "title": "Create a subclass of model for class-based viewmodel creation", "text": "Is it justified to create a model subclass just for creation of appropriate viewmodel based on this class. Am I missing something? How to pass data about model into viewmodel?"}
{"_id": "205679", "title": "Any ASN.1 parsers written completely in managed code & safe from buffer overflows", "text": "ASN.1 is a data format used on HTTPS certificates, and various other critical pieces of infrastructure. I need to analyze some potentially hostile ASN.1 data, and want to ensure my code is safe from any programmer error. I think the best way to do this is to use a managed language that does not use unsafe code. Are there any managed implementations (C#) of an ASN.1 parser that is well tested and safe from buffer overflows. Even better if there was a way to detect such an overflow to begin with."}
{"_id": "253585", "title": "Is it an anti-pattern to use void* and enums to enable type-checking?", "text": "Say in a game engine, you have `Object`s that composited of different components. One of these is a `RenderComponent` which can be either a `Mesh`, a `Sprite` or a `Light`. Now, all these are vastly different classes with non-complatible interfaces, so deriving them all from `RenderComponent` makes little sense. Also, an `Object` can only have one `RenderComponent` at a time, so you saving three pointers in `Object`, two of which must always be `nullptr`, seems wasteful. So what I came up with is using `RenderComponent` to store a `void*` pointer and the type.               class RenderComponent{     public:         enum class RenderType{             Mesh, Sprite, Light         };              RenderType getType(){ return type_; }              Mesh* asMesh(){              if(type_ == RenderType::Mesh)                 return static_cast<Mesh*>(pointer_.get())              else                 return nullptr;          } /* the same stuff for Sprite and Light */              RenderComponent(unique_ptr<Mesh>&& pointer) :             pointer_(std::move(pointer)),             type_(RenderType::Mesh)         {} /* the same stuff for Sprite and Light */          private:         unique_ptr<void> pointer_;         RenderType type_;     }      It should work as intended, but I feel like this is an anti-pattern. I'm basically discarding all typesafe aspects of C++ and then reimplement them myself. This can't be right. So, is this an anti-pattern? What are common workarounds for this problem? Am I missing something obvious? Or is this a known, but (for good reason) only rarely used pattern?"}
{"_id": "253587", "title": "Using Twitter share and Facebook share", "text": "Hi I m trying to use **Social Plugins** in my website For a Tweet on Twitter   `<a id=\"twitter-link\" href=\"https://twitter.com/share\" class=\"twitter-share- button\" data-lang=\"en\" data-size=\"large\">Tweet</a>` I have included the above line my url is something like this   localhost:3000/#a=abc `to give it a faster response i used a location.hash instead of changing params so to avoid reloading the webpage` so when any user clicks on any image the url changes to localhost:3000/#a=def but the twitter share button tries to shares the url `localhost:3000/#a=abc` How can i solve this?   Thanks in advance!!"}
{"_id": "205670", "title": "Async function iterated calls", "text": "I'm new to using async calls in ajax. My problem is that I have two server \"tasks\": one that just checks if session is set (fast), and another that sets the session (slower). I want to check if the session is set and if not, set it. And I want to try X number of times (I'm unsure if I really need to but that, but that is another question). If I just do it with a \u201cwhile\u201d or a \u201cfor\u201d and not do think about that it is async, I will generate problems like to many calls, and it will not be check session then set session. I could to it on the server, but I do not want to send the request data if session is set, only if it is not set. Below is the way I'm trying to do it now, but I'm unsure if there is a better way of doing it? The code below just implements the idea and is not tested. The idea is that send the counter back and forth between checking and sending session in the success function. What I do not like about the code is that the set session really is just understandable in context of checkSession. If I in some time come back to the code and just want to setSession, I would have a magic number of X to make sure it does not check the session also. Is there a smoother way of doing this? If the code smells even worse, please tell me.               self.start = function() {         self.checkSession(0);     };     self.checkSession = function(count) {         server.CheckSession(function(returnValue){             if(returnValue == false && count < 4){                count++;                self.setSession(count);             }},function(err){});};     self.setSession = function(count) {           var sessionData = someData;           server.SetSession(sessionData, function(d){               self.checkSession(count);     }, function(err){});};"}
{"_id": "253580", "title": "Populate date to jList in netbeans (Java)", "text": "I created a jFrame using netbeans, Here is a screenshot on how i want the data to be added in to jList, From A to B. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LyTxa.png) Can you show me how i can do it?"}
{"_id": "205672", "title": "Use of Abstract Syntax Notation (ASN.1)", "text": "The problem of Electronic Data Interchange over networks is well known and understood. Today, the most common formats for data interchange are things like XML and JSON. There are various pros and cons of using one format over the other, and certain formats lend themselves better to certain data-sets. I've been programming for quite some time now, and I've only just NOW come across the **ASN.1 (Abstact Syntax Notation)** format, which is apparently used in certain Internet protocols such as LDAP, and is actually quite old (in Internet years). I read a bit about the format. Like JSON, it provides primitive data types (boolean, integer, etc.) and also sequence and set types. It's a bit different from JSON or XML in the sense that, while the notation itself is human readable, the encoding is usually not human readable (it is usually encoded in a binary format.) Is there some reason why this format is so rarely used? (Or am I totally wrong, and it is actually used often?) I've only just now heard of it for the first time, and I've never heard it come up in any of the various discussions I've read about the merits of JSON, YAML, XML or whatever interchange format. Is there some major drawback to ASN.1 that prevented it from being more widely used?"}
{"_id": "98702", "title": "Brainstorming questions to elicit features in new software version?", "text": "Because of a change in technologies, we are doing a major version change in our in-house enterprise software. I am going to be doing the usual of interviews, observations and brainstorming sessions. What general (and fun!) questions do you recommend/use in a first pass to elicit the discovery or remembrance of new functionality or changes to existing functionality? (Too much literature on requirements gathering tells you the easy part: how to get details on functionality. Nobody seems to have much on actually eliciting the function at first!) Examples:   1. You have a magic wand. You can wave it and change one thing about General Software v1.0. What would you change, how and why?   2. Have you used any software where you wished something in it was also in General Software v2.0?   3. What functionality is too complicated in General Software v1.0?"}
{"_id": "104560", "title": "Model-View-Controller and client-side concurrency responsibility", "text": "In a web application that has a significant ajax component, where is the best place for the client-side concurrency responsibility to lie? We're trying to use MVC on both the server application (LAMP stack) and the client application (ajax, mostly jQuery and unobtrusive js). On the server-side, our model throws an exception if it finds a concurrency conflict that it can't solve on it's own. Essentially, the model tracks a revision number and date/user of creation and update. If the object being saved is out of date (older revision than in the data store), it attempts a merge. If it fails, the controller handles the exception and initiates some kind of resolution workflow. The issue is with the client application; since ajax runs requests asynchronously, the model doesn't necessarily have the latest version of the data, but only the controller would know that--it is responsible for handling the queue/polling. The original idea was to pass all the updates fetched from the server directly to the javascript models for handling the concurrency-- problem being that the lack of exceptions in javascript limits us to making flow-control decisions in the model that way. Is it a bad idea to move the merging/model-conflict-resolution into the javascript controller? Is there a better way to handle this without the controller getting to far into model land? Flow of the page:   1. User loads page(ajax application) with initial models--the models are numerous and have many attributes.   2. Page polls server for updates every 10-15 seconds--this is for auto-save and getting updates from other users.   3. User edits models.   4. Any conflicts that arise after initial entry are resolved when the user clicks the \"save\" button at the bottom of the page."}
{"_id": "57689", "title": "Bare minimum on the Joel Test", "text": "From the Joel Test, of the 12, which do you think are the absolute must-haves to at least have a decently running software department/company? I realise there is no absolutely right answer. I'm just trying to get opinions of others out there. My own organization only manages a measly 5 of 12. If you check listings on Careers 2.0, most companies don't score a full 12 either but I'm sure they're doing fine. Does SO publish the stats for those anywhere? Or has anyone tried scrapping the results? Would be interesting to know which are practised the most. And whether because they are easier to implement or whether they actually have the most impact. Thanks. EDIT: These are the ones practised by my company and for the given reasons   1. Having source control. - Have to agree with one of the answers that that is the one I would not negotiate about.   2. Fix bugs before writing new code. - Matter of principle but not a must-have.   3. Have a spec. - In a small software house with tight margins, specs save life. But I could see it done away with in other companies without affect.   4. Candidates write code during an interview. - Saved us hiring the wrong candidate many many times over. This is the other non-negotiable must-have for me.    5. Hallway usability testing. - Easy for us. Our whole office is a hallway. It's really easy to grab people anytime. But that also means we don't have a quiet working environment for developers."}
{"_id": "207782", "title": "Should I make a variable readonly when I modify it, but I don't actually set it outside of the constructor?", "text": "## Background: I was writing some code. It looked something like this:               class X     {         private List<int> _myList = new List<int>();         public void MyMethod(int x)         {             _myList.Add(x);         }     }      R# suggested that I make `_myList` readonly. I wasn't so sure, as though I technically could make it readonly, I think it would be slightly confusing to do so, as I'm still modifying the list, just not reassigning it. So while I could make it readonly, I'm not sure if I should. ## Question: Should I make variables like this readonly? **Why?** If not, why does R# suggest this?"}
{"_id": "166096", "title": "Designing Algorithm Flowchart Application", "text": "I need to develop an GUI application in C# where users can freely add conditional/statement blocks on the algorithm flowchart like the one shown below. By freely, I mean users can add a block on wherever the arrows are. I'm having some problems brainstorming how to approach this problem, especially what to choose for my datastructure to store the blocks. I was thinking LinkedList since everything follows a linear fashion and every node always has a head and tail, but the If/Else block (b>a) has two branches (heads) to store, so this complicates things a little bit. How would a smart one approach problems like this? My apologies if this question isn't suited for Programmers stackexchange, but this is more of a conceptual problem rather than implementation problem so I figured this place was appropriate for the question. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FSS4W.png)"}
{"_id": "166094", "title": " Shortest Common Superstring: find shortest string that contains all given string fragments", "text": "Given some string fragments, I would like to find the shortest possible single string (\"output string\") that contains all the fragments. Fragments can overlap each other in the output string. Example: For the string fragments:               BCDA     AGF     ABC      The following output string contains all fragments, and was made by naive appending:               BCDAAGFABC      However this output string is better (shorter), as it employs overlaps:               ABCDAGF     ^     ABC      ^      BCDA         ^          AGF      I'm looking for algorithms for this problem. It's not absolutely important to find the strictly shortest output string, but the shorter the better. I'm looking for an algorithm better than the obvious naive one that would try appending all permutations of the input fragments and removing overlaps (which would appear to be NP-Complete). I've started work on a solution and it's proving quite interesting; I'd like to see what other people might come up with. I'll add my work-in-progress to this question in a while."}
{"_id": "250584", "title": "ASP.NET MVC - Dynamic Views with many similar controls", "text": "I have a main View which has several sections and a main dropdown at the top which defines how the rest of the view looks like. All these sections have some data that is visible all the time, and some that need to be hidden when certain values are chosen in the main dropdown. As of now, I have partial views for each section, and I am having lots of if/else statements in my view to show/hide the specifics, which is getting clumsier by the day."}
{"_id": "26271", "title": "Documenting higher-level concepts", "text": "I will be leaving my current project in a few days, and as part of securing my knowledge I have been asked to add comments to the code wherever I feel that can add value. The problem I am running into now is that the comments I want to write are not really suitable as comments, because they do not pertain to a single entity in the code (a few lines, a function, a class or even a file), but they are more about how two or more entities interact with each other or about a feature whose implementation is spread over multiple entities. So, how do you go about documenting the stuff that does not belong to a single entity but is important to know to understand the bigger picture? And also: Where do you document it? In the source file or in an external document? As an example, we have a client-server architecture in C (with the client and server both running on the same embedded device). To avoid flooding the server, the client has a mechanism to throttle the sending of similar requests to the server such that a request can only be sent if the previous one has been answered. The innards of this mechanism are spread over multiple functions. Where would you place the documentation of such a feature, especially if the file with the functionality also has some other, unrelated, functions? **Edit** : Extended the question a bit."}
{"_id": "250588", "title": "Web Service REST clarification", "text": "I'm new to web-service programming, and I'm unsure of a few things. I know that REST web-services can be used to interact with the system like this:   * to retrieve a user: GET /user?id=1   * to retrieve all users: GET /user   * to insert a user: PUT /user?{all user data} When I need to do an update action for some tables using a JSON object can this be done with a REST API or does it need to be some other interface? If is REST, what is the right method (GET, POST, DELETE, etc) to use? Is it correct to have two type of patterns in the same web-service?"}
{"_id": "141642", "title": "Some Insight on the Field of Knowledge Representations and Reasoning", "text": "I started following an MS in computer sciences after about two years of work for a software company. I worked primarily in data warehousing and business intelligence related software development during my previous occupation. There is a high chance for me to select a research in knowledge representations, ontologies and reasoning, as there are no other research available in any other interesting fields, such as pattern recognition and navigation. I developed an interest towards knowledge representation with what I learnt from the courses I am taking currently. But I do not have a deep understanding of it in terms of which areas such a field would have an impact in a real life scenario, and how it will help me when I am hunting for a job in the near future. Some thought about this would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "56085", "title": "When to do Code Review", "text": "We have recently moved to a scrum process and are working on tasks and user stories inside of sprints. We would like to do code reviews frequently to make them less daunting. We are thinking that doing them on a user story level but are unsure how to branch our code to account for this. We are using VS and TFS 2010 and we are a team of 6. We currently branch for features but are working on changing to branching for scrum. We do not currently use shelvesets and don't really want to implement if there are other techniques available. How do you recommend we implement code review per user story?"}
{"_id": "57353", "title": "I'm hoping to start an online supermarket and needs advice on open source shopping cart software and applications", "text": "I have been researching on both open source software and off-the-shelf software for an online supermarket project in Africa. I have now narrowed by search to X-cart and the PHP based PrestaShop shopping carts. My plan is to acquire an open source shopping cart either by purchasing or as a free open source cart and hire a local developer to customize it to our local needs. I have been doing the demo for x-cart for three weeks now and had thought it might work best for us but after going through the 600 page manual and I'm concerned with how far it can be localized. Yesterday I was looking at the possible Prestashop free open source cart and I seem to like the back-end. Didn't like the back-end for Magento much but from reviews conducted by third- parties they seem to recommend it. I'm now wondering whether I should have a developer start the whole project from scratch, or use an open source software such us PrestaShop or get x-cart which can then be customized? Note that my store will have thousands of products and services including groceries and so I want something that can handle up to 500,000 products and over. * * * Thanks guys for your thoughts and advice. I have indeed looked at the other shopping carts and from a store managers point of view i like PrestaShop back- end and the fact that more modules can be added. You have raised a red flag for me though about the capacity to host that many products. Whats the point then of marketing the software as 'Unlimited Products' when it really cant. Perhaps someone can refer me to a website that has that many products and is PrestaShop? I agree though it has to be customized. Am just worried about asking someone to start from scratch since i believe open source software have been worked on by many minds and been tested enough something that a scratch project may not have."}
{"_id": "176483", "title": "Is there any open source code analyzer for java which I can adopt my software metrics algorithm on it?", "text": "I am doing my masters dissertation and I have conducted a software metrics. I need to adopt my metrics on an open source tool. I have found PMD and check style on sourceforge.net but there is not adequate explanation about their codes. However, I couldn't to find their source code to customize them. I will be appreciated, if you introduce one open source tool for java which I can customize it's code."}
{"_id": "205650", "title": "Is this Java Compiler error message incorrect? (byte loss of precision)", "text": "The following IMHO valid java program doesn't compile because the Oracle 1.7 javac compiler thinks there's a possible loss of precision in lines 5 and 6. If you uncomment line 3 and comment out line 4, it compiles fine. Would someone explain why the compiler believes there is a loss of precision on the assignment to either byte `b2` or `b3`?               public class BUG {         public static void main( String[] args ) {             //final byte b1 = 9;             byte b1 = 9;             final byte b2 = -b1;    // fine if line 3 is uncommented and line 4 is commented             final byte b3 = 0 - b1; // fine if line 3 is uncommented and line 4 is commented         }     }      If my sample code is correct, then I'd like to report this as a bug but I can't find out where. Would someone explain what the compiler error message is saying in this case and why it's correct?"}
{"_id": "253566", "title": "Liability for software framework", "text": "If I ask money for a software product (php famework) instead of offering it for free, does it make me more liable for problems caused by my product?"}
{"_id": "75228", "title": "Recommend resources for development team leaders", "text": "I was recently made the team leader of a database (95% MS SQL Server, 5% misc- Oracle, Sybase, Access) development team that manages and develops a large number of databases in a corporate environment. I'm looking for resources (checklists, utilities, best practices, procedures, websites, books, etc) that will help me to implement fundamentals which have been lacking in this development group in the past, such as code reviews, cross training, documentation, enforcing standards, knowledge sharing, mentoring and so forth. Most of what I'm finding is general management skills resources, but I would like to find anything that might be specific to leading a team of developers. Corporate processes are \"standard\" waterfall type SDLC, so resources geared towards Agile are not nearly as relevant."}
{"_id": "249823", "title": "Minimizability or readability?", "text": "I am authoring a lot of plugins for the content management system that I am writing. I believe it to be of utmost importance that script files (especially if they're plugins) should load quickly, which leads to me to the question that I've asked today? **What's more important for plugins, minimizability or readability?** Let's imagine that we live in an ideal world where code is always perfect. Should a plugin (which being perfect, the author doesn't expect the end user to read) be designed so that it takes up as little space as possible, or so that it readable by the end user. For example, I'm writing a piece of code that spits out HTML and appends it to the body. I have replaced every instance of the tag 'div' with '!' and then used `String[replace](/\\!/g, 'div')` to save four characters (therefore bytes?) for each declaration of a div element. _NB,`[replace]` is also a declared variable so that when it is minified it will read something to the effect of `String[r](/\\!/g,'div')`_ Am I caring too much about download speed or should care a bit more about readability. (IMO, most minifying techniques are easily reverse-engineered, but is it bad practice?) * * * **Edit** Thanks for all the answers, you guys are great!"}
{"_id": "249825", "title": "What precisely do I/my company need to do \"make available/publish\" source code changes and satisfy GPL/LGPL", "text": "This seems like a basic question, but I have not found a definitive source. I need to modify the source for an LGPL application for my employer to plug a security hole. Longer term we will upgrade to a later version of this application, but for now, this is the quickest solution. (specifically: I will change a 2005-era version fork of Apache Tomcat'--jboss- web 2.0.1--to add allow \"httpOnly\" and 'secure' JSESSIONID cookie). **The question** What exactly must I/my company do to \"make available\" or \"publish\" the source code? Must it be accessible from the company's own website or github repository? Or can I have it on my own private github account and simply have the company link to it? thanks"}
{"_id": "249829", "title": "Encode Optimal Huffman code", "text": "I have given message encoded with non-optimal Huffman code. I need to decode the message and encode it again, but this time with optimal Huffman code, so after that I can find `average_number_of_bits_per_symbols = num_of_bits_in_message / num_of_characters_in_message`   **Example:** **_input:_**               6     A 11     B 10     C 01     D 0001     E 001     F 0000     101100000001000010001001100011000000010001010010000000100001000110001100011000000010000000000000100110001000100000000000000011011111010100100101011001010000111001010110000100000010010000000111010000001100100100001010001000100000000001      **_output:_**               2.469      Here is what I got from decoding:               // Third column is occurrence of the letter     A 11 5     B 10 19     C 01 12     D 0001 8     E 001 18     F 0000 19          BAFDFBEEBEBFEDCEFDFBEBEBEBFEFFFCEBEDFFFDBAABBBCECCBCCFABCCCBDFEEFDACFEBCEFBBEDFFE          num_of_characters: 81      So now I have to find optimal codes for these letters. I've tried tree like this one:               19      19     18     12      8     5       B      F      E      C      D     A        \\     /       \\     /      \\     /        0\\   /1       0\\   /1      0\\   /1          \\ /           \\ /          \\ /           \\             \\            /            \\             \\          /             \\            0\\        /1              \\             \\      /               \\             \\    /                \\             \\  /               0 \\             \\/                  \\            /                   \\          /                    \\        /1                     \\______/      And with this I will get:               A 111 => 3 * 5  = 15     D 110 => 3 * 8  = 24     C 101 => 3 * 12 = 36     E 100 => 3 * 18 = 54     F 01  => 2 * 19 = 38     B 00  => 2 * 19 = 38     num_of_bits     = 205          So 205 / 81 = 2.530 => which is not equal with the example output...      So what I am doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "75225", "title": "Is it a bad sign that I am often redesigning as I develop a project?", "text": "When I first started programming, I assumed that I would one day get to the point where I would start a project by sitting down and sketching a UML diagram of all the classes, then pretty much stick to that. I have now been programming for a couple years and it is not turning out that way. As I go through a project, I am often saying   * \"Hey, I need a class to do ___ _. I didn't think of that before.\"   * \"Wait, this function should really be in that class instead of this one. I'll move it over.\"   * \"This should actually be two classes instead of one. I'll split it up.\"   * \"I should make these three stand-alone classes all inherit from one abstract class.\"   * Etcetera, etcetera. Is it a bad sign that I am often redesigning like this as I go along? Does this mean I'm a poor programmer or is this normal?"}
{"_id": "250059", "title": "Passing notifications between programs written in different programming languages", "text": "I work in a team of people with experience in varied programming languages. Recently we were required to build a report when an order is placed in our system. Our ecommerce store runs on PHP and the program to send the report was written in Java. The major challenge we faced was setting up a way so that the Java process is triggered as soon as the order placed. In the same vein, we have plenty of programs written in Python, Scala etc that need to be coordinated and be aware of when to do a task X when task Y happens. As of now, our go to solutions to this problem is to setup a cron to routinely check whether a file or value in DB exists and THEN run (simple polling). I believe a task queue is a right way to solve this problem. However, I'm not sure how to setup one, and how will the Java process know that a task is waiting for it? Also, would a lot of change be required in my PHP program to put something in task queue? Thanks a lot!"}
{"_id": "209357", "title": "From a high level programming perspective, where does the 'different-paradigm' barrier between C# and F# really kick in?", "text": "I'm aware that they both use different programming paradigms, but from a high level perspective apart from differing syntax it seems most basic tasks can be achieved in similar fashion. I only say this because when I've previously touched functional programming languages such as Haskell, writing code for basics tasks was (at first) difficult, frustrating, and required a completely different mindset. For example the following took some time to get to grips with using recursive syntax:               loop :: Int -> IO ()     loop n = if 0 == n then return () else loop (n-1)      Where as an F# loop is recognisable and understandable almost immediately:               let list1 = [ 1; 5; 100; 450; 788 ]     for i in list1 do        printfn \"%d\" i      When C# programmers start learning F# they are advised to completely re-think their thought pattern (which was definitely required for Haskell), but I've now written several F# programs dealing with conditions, loops, data sets etc to perform practical tasks, and I'm wondering where the 'different-paradigm' barrier really kicks in?"}
{"_id": "203732", "title": "Dev environment different from testing environment", "text": "I'm working on a .net web app project where we develop on our personal machines, but our testing and production environments are in a corporate intranet. The problem is I run into bugs that only present in the testing/production environment, but not in dev. I find this makes it really difficult to track down the cause of the problem. Are there any tips/strategies to deal with this issue? **Please note I have no control or options when it comes to setting up new servers or modifying the test environment. I can only make changes to my local machine. I also do not have access to a company image file to image my PC."}
{"_id": "250051", "title": "More requirements in a single use case - correct?", "text": "I have been arguying with a developer who insists that 1 FR=1 UC. I think that is a non sense as there are requirements often describing situations arising from the same point - for this the use cases have alternate flows. For example: FR01 - User can log in FR02 - User's account will be locked after 3 incorrect passwords. FR03 - Logged user can log out I believe all these can be nicely captured within a single use case, describing the interaction between the user and the system. But maybe I am missing something? EDIT: According to the book \"Use Case Modeling\" from Bittner, Spence: > a use case contains a set of description of requirements, the requirements > are presented in the form of narrative rather than an itemized list... ...   So I would say definitely more requirements can be captured within a single use case."}
{"_id": "3277", "title": "I found free software project whose executables are spreading a virus. What is the correct couse of action?", "text": "Today I found a GPLed project on SourceForge whose executables are spreading a virus. This fact has been pointed out several times in reviews of the project and the infected executable is still available for download. Apparently, older executables are not infected, so the project itself does not seem to be made with malicious purpose in mind. There is no preferred way to contact developers and forums for the project are dead. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "182168", "title": "Why is the cyclomatic complexity equal to two for a simple Hello World?", "text": "I would have two questions related to cyclomatic complexity:   1. Can I use this metric for a whole app? I guess I cannot, as it would be incredibly large number, considering functions calling functions etc. Is it just for module/method/unit?   2. In Visual Studio, for starting app with just calling the `Main` method, the cyclomatic complexity value is 2. Why? There is just one possible way if I run the program - it ends."}
{"_id": "219103", "title": "How to implement loose coupling?", "text": "I want to implement loose coupling in a project. I know two examples of successful loose coupling designs:   1. On a Unix workstation, shell scripts realise a loose coupling between basic utilities. The loose coupling relies on the shell's ability to _blindly_ redirect data flows between utilities, without having any knowledge on the structure. Utilities agree on a common form to cooperate like a _pipe-separated format_ for sort, cut, paste, awk, etc., a svn dump or a _trivial dump_ of a normalised SGML document (with onsglmls).   2. On a Mac OS X system, Applescripts can be regarded as a loose coupling. In these two examples, I see that cooperating components agree on a common protocol to serialise and deserialise data that needs to be exchanged. Thus components depend on the serialisation protocol rather than on internal representation of data. Is the implementation of a stable communication protocol between application components a winning strategy to implement loose coupling (and good encapsulation)? To solve ties, I also ask what would be a nice name for the protocol artefacts: \u201cdata\u201d is a bit vague and there is a lot of them at various places in a software!"}
{"_id": "14052", "title": "Is there such a thing as a super programmer?", "text": "Have you come across a super programmer? What identifies him or her as such, compared to \"normal\" experienced/great programmers? Also. how do you deal with a person in your team who believes he is a super programmer? Both in case he actually is or if he isn't? **Edit** : Interesting inputs all round, thanks. A few things can be gleaned: A few definitions emerged. Disregarding too localised definitions (that identified the authors or their acquaintance as super programmers), I liked a couple definitions:   1. Thorbj\u00f8rn's definition: a person who does the equivalent of a good team consistently for a long time.   2. Free Electron, linked from Henry's answer. A very productive person, of exceptional abilities. The explanation is a good read. > A Free Electron can do anything when it comes to code. They can write a > complete application from scratch, learn a language in a weekend, and, most > importantly, they can dive into a tremendous pile of spaghetti code, make > sense of it, and actually getting it working. You can build an entire > businesses around a Free Electron. They\u2019re that good. Contrasting with the last definition, is the point linked to by James about the myth of the genius programmer (video). The same idea is expressed as egoless programming in rwong's comment. They present opposite opinions as whether to optimise for such a unique programmer or for a team. These definitions are definitely different, so I would appreciate it if you have an input as to which is better. Or add your own if you want of course, though it would help to say why it is different from those."}
{"_id": "219101", "title": "Visual Studio versions and Team Etiquette", "text": "I have a project on CodePlex that I have opened to basically anyone to join and help out on. I am mostly an enthusiast coder, although I have done some programming work as part of my job it has always been solo projects that my team uses for IT support. With my CodePlex project, I got my first new fork yesterday. I cloned it to see some of the changes and realized he had upgraded the package to VS 2012 from my 2010. What is team etiquette for Visual Studio in a team environment? I can see the benefit of using the latest and greatest, but forcing the hand of a team to upgrade seems a little off too. My assumption is this developer did not consider it. Is it considered good etiquette to maintain a standard, even if outdated like with VS 2010? Or is the best etiquette to use the latest stable Visual Studio, and those with out an upgrade can use the Express versions of the latest? Or is there a standard way to make a solution IDE agnostic between VS versions? * * * **Edit** A ton of great input. And the verdict seems to be there is no universal or established etiquette. That it really boils down to my own preferences for the project and what affect the change has on the project."}
{"_id": "219107", "title": "Dictionary of objects", "text": "I have a dictionary of Objects of a class Columns               Dictionary<double, Columns>      Columns is a class of columns, i.e. name, post code, etc, mobile phone. I would like to make Columns class as much open for extension as possible, so it will be no trouble to add more classes. I need to set few of the columns to be there always, and would like the user to be able to define which columns to display from the remaining, and also add custom columns. Each columns has to have a method getValue() My idea is to create an abstract class Column and derive specific columns from it. Make each child class implement the getValue() method by making it abstract what should force it to be overridden (am I correct?). I will define enum which will list all available column types. Finally, a class Columns would keep all the available columns in dictionary               Dictionary<enum, Column>      My question is: is my thinking process correct? Is there any room for improvement? Would it be a better idea to use interfaces? Finally, is this design going to be efficient and fast for rapidly changing values in columns, i.e. within a second I might have to update 50 different records in this dictionary."}
{"_id": "106054", "title": "how to create a new \"Custom Conditional Statement\" in programming language", "text": "Is it possible to create a new \"Custom Conditional Statement\" in java. Here i am planning to create a new custom component for the switch statement to give better performance. The custom Switch control which i am planning to create will have only integer operators: example:               int i = SOMEVALUE;     Switch(i)     {     Case 1:      //Some Statement     Break;     Case 2:      //Some Statement     Break;     Case 3:      //Some Statement     Break;     ....     ....     ....     Case 10000000:      //Some Statement     Break;     Default:     //Some Statement     Break;     }      According to my knowledge the Switch condition will check in a particular order. If the actual value of the \"i\" variable is 9999999 then it has to check the case for 9999999 times but if we check it with some algorithms similar to binary search then its performance will be improved. Am I Right ?? If right then why don't we add this functionality to our programming language ? So why don't we create a \"Custom Conditional Statement\" something like \"OrderedIntegerSwitch statement\" , in which the value passed inside that switch should be an integer."}
{"_id": "106057", "title": "Is it a good idea to use width and height properties with the < td > tag?", "text": "I am new to HTML and Im working on a self made project and I have to use < table > and < fieldset > tags in my html files. I need to set the width and height properties to the tables like               <td width=\"100\" height=\"200\" > </td> <!-- something like that -->      But Im afraid of these reason because as the Monitor size changes with the computers some have large screens and some have small screens like notebook pc's. The table dimensions looks small for the big screen computers and big to the small screen computers.How do I manage them. How do I fit it to all types of screen sizes. I mean when it goes to the right most part of the screen it jumps to the next line, if I use width property to the < td > tag? and also using Padding like these is a bad idea ?               < span style=\"padding-left:100\"> </span>      It looks exactly what i want on my browser. Does it look same on all types of monitor sizes? or does it vary? Is there any standard way to follow it? I love your answers but answer these original question too, does it matter to the monitor sizes using width and height properties in < td > tag ?"}
{"_id": "15736", "title": "What's the most important, useful or enlightening thing you learnt in the last 12 months?", "text": "A lot of people in the coding community talk about continuous improvement, deliberate practice and so-on - but when they talk about their current practices it's almost like they 'sprang fully formed from the loins of Zeus' because you don't hear about how their opinions changed over time or what they learnt recently. Every now and then though I go to a talk, or read a book, or talk to someone and they open up a bit more and I find that I learn a lot from these insights. So, if you had to pick **one** thing from the last 12 months that you learnt what would it be?"}
{"_id": "222648", "title": "git repo structure with post-receive hook", "text": "I plan to use git/gitolite to provide managed read/write access for approximately 30 developers and project managers to a shared SAN with the following file structure:                   base/          clients/           clientA/            dirA/              xxx-config.xml-app1              xxx-config.xml-app2            app1/              conf/              deploy/              app1.tgz            app2/            app3/            ...           clientB           ...      I can use gitolite to to configure R / RW access for different groups of devs. The files the developers need to read / modify are the xxx-config.xml-appX and the files in the conf/ and deploy/ folders. Further, whenever anything in conf/ or deploy/ are modified (via \"git push\"?), I need a git hook script to recreate the appX.tgz file containing all the new contents of the appX folder. I'm assuming each developer could do a \"git clone\" to their local computer and do periodic \"git fetch\" to refresh or \"git push\" whenever they make changes. The \"git hook\" requirement has me wondering whether I should have one git repo for each client folder: /base/clients/clientA, .../clientB, etc. or one repo for each clientX/appX folder. The following comes from the gitolite samples:                   repo    clientA           RW+     =   @clientA-grp           option hook.post-receive    =   deploy      If there is one repo for each client folder, how would the \"deploy\" script know which appX.tgz file needs to be recreated? Or would it just recreate them all indiscriminately? The second option clearly doesn't scale."}
{"_id": "232368", "title": "How to address, \"Is anyone even using this feature?\" questions", "text": "My team will regularly make code changes that break a unit or integration test for a feature hidden deep in the dark corners of our application. When the test breaks there is a frequent question, \"Who is even using this feature!?\". We generally un-break the code and make the test pass because, as developers, we cannot determine if a feature is still in use and still needed. How can my team and I effectively address obscure or seemingly strange features? I think what we want to know is if any customer is using them and if not can we remove the feature. With several hundred users and the nature of our app it would be hard to put a logging or reporting feature in our app to phone home whenever a 'feature' is used. I think that makes this a management process rather than a technical process."}
{"_id": "167329", "title": "Finding the best practice for a game simulating tool", "text": "I'm studying Java right now, and I'm thinking of this tool as my practice project. The game is \"League of Legends\" in case anyone knows it, I'm not actually simulating the game as in simulating game play, I'm just trying to create a tool that can compare different champions to each other based on their own abilities and items bought inside the game. The game basics are:   * Every player has a champion in a team of 5 players playing against another team.   * Each champion has a different set of abilities (usually 4) that s/he uses to do damage to opposing champions.   * Each champion gets stronger by buying different items, increasing the attack it deals or decreasing the damage received. What I want to do is to create a tool to be used outside the game enabling players to try out different builds for their champions and compare the figures against other champions they usually fight against. The goal is to enable players get a deeper understanding of the different item combinations (builds) that can be used during the games, instead of trying them out in real games which can be somehow very time consuming. What I'm stuck at is the best practice I should follow to make this possible using Java, I can't figure out which classes should inherit from which, should I make champions and items specs in the code or extracted from other files, specially that I'm talking about hundreds of items and champions to use in that tool. I'm self studying Java, and I don't have much practice at it, so I would really appreciate any broad guidelines regarding this, and sorry if my question doesn't fit here, I tried to follow the rules. English isn't my native language, so I'm really sorry if I wasn't clear enough, I would be more than happy to explain anything that's not understood."}
{"_id": "70768", "title": "Is there a clear leader amongst JVM-based languages?", "text": "What is the current status of these projects, and has any one (or two) emerged as a clear leader? To demonstrate my motives for asking this question, cast your mind back several years. Prototype and jQuery were going head-to-head with other players like MooTools fighting to survive as well. Fast forward to today, and the general consensus is that jQuery is the best general purpose JavaScript library. Has something similar happened in the last several years with these JVM-based languages? Have certain languages fallen into disrepair and abandonment? From what I've read, it seems that Scala is certainly well-prepped to become the favorite, but then again, nearly everything I've read is several years old. * * * I've done a bit more research - I had the idea to check out search volume through the years by using Google Trends. It seems that Jython and JRuby have relatively little interest while Groovy's volume is decreasing and Scala's volume is constant (at worst) or increasing slightly (at best). Is this an accurate assessment? * * * And yes, I'm referring to non-Java languages on the JVM such as Jython, JRuby, Groovy, Scala, Clojure, etc."}
{"_id": "167327", "title": "Is it a good practice to create a list of definitions for all symbols and words in a programming language?", "text": "After arriving at this point in Learning Python The Hard Way I am wondering if this is a good practice to create a list of symbols and define what they do as noted in bold below, for every programming language. This seems reasonable, and might be very useful to have when jumping between programming languages? Is this something that programmers do or is it just a waste of effort? > Exercise 22: What Do You Know So Far? There won't be any code in this > exercise or the next one, so there's no WYSS or Extra Credit either. In > fact, this exercise is like one giant Extra Credit. I'm going to have you do > a form of review what you have learned so far. > > **First, go back through every exercise you have done so far and write down > every word and symbol (another name for 'character') that you have used. > Make sure your list of symbols is complete.** > > **Next to each word or symbol, write its name and what it does. If you can't > find a name for a symbol in this book, then look for it online. If you do > not know what a word or symbol does, then go read about it again and try > using it in some code.** > > You may run into a few things you just can't find out or know, so just keep > those on the list and be ready to look them up when you find them. > > Once you have your list, spend a few days rewriting the list and double > checking that it's correct. This may get boring but push through and really > nail it down. > > Once you have memorized the list and what they do, then you should step it > up by writing out tables of symbols, their names, and what they do from > memory. When you hit some you can't recall from memory, go back and memorize > them again."}
{"_id": "70765", "title": "How is leaving on time perceived in software companies?", "text": "What are the consequences of leaving work on time in software companies? What's the professional way to deal with this? [Editorial addition] The question is about working standard hours and not putting in extra hours without being explicitly asked to. Is working extra hours a norm or an expected work attitude in software companies and/or for a software developer role? How is one going to be perceived by colleagues and peers if one only worked the standard hours specified by local laws or the contract?"}
{"_id": "233099", "title": "How to document the high-level structure of a Java program?", "text": "**Background:** My collaborators and I are writing an article for an academic journal. In the course of our research, we wrote a simulation program in Java. We want to make the simulation program freely available for others to use. We have decided on hosting the code on a GitHub repository. In order to make it easy for others to use, we want to write good documentation for our program, including:   * Javadocs for each class and method   * How to use the code   * Describing the high-level structure of the code My high-level question is: **Could you provide a good example of the words and diagrams that can be used to describe the high-level structure of a program?** This includes as sub-questions:   1. How do we show what classes are contained in which packages?   2. How do we show what packages depend on other packages?   3. How do we show how the objects/classes in the program work together?   4. We have tried to use domain-driven design principles in the design of my code. How do we show the correspondence between the objects in the domain and the particular source code files encoding these objects? (See my \"ubiquitous language\" description of the project below.) # What I have done so far ## Ubiquitous language We put a \"ubiquitous language\" description of the code in a file `ubiquitous- language.md`, contents below. The purpose of this project is to study how well a replenishment policy performs in a simple supply chain with a single facility, under different lead time models, report delays and demand models. In each period, the following events occur:   1. If a **shipment** is scheduled to arrive at the **facility** at the current period, then the inventory level of the facility is incremented by X units.   2. If the **schedule** indicates that the current period is a reporting period, then the **facility** submits a **report** to the **supplier**. The **supplier** may receive the **report** instantaneously, or with a delay of several weeks, as specified by the **schedule**.   3. If the **supplier** has received a **report** , then based on the **replenishment policy** , it will calculate a replenishment quantity of X units. A **shipment** of X units of the product will be scheduled to arrive after a lead time of l periods.   4. Customers arrive at the **facility** and demand X units of the product. Any unmet demand is lost. ## Source Code Structure We put an incomplete \"high-level\" description of the code in a file `structure.md`, contents below. ### Package Level Structure At the highest level, the source code is organized into three packages   * `com.gly.sfs` The main class with the `main` method resides in this package.   * `com.gly.sfs.model` The domain model classes reside in this package.   * `com.gly.sfs.util` Helper classes reside in this package."}
{"_id": "230218", "title": "Which one to choose: XML attribute or Sub node?", "text": "We want to export some data from our data base as XML. For example, a `Person` can have `age`, `name` and some other properties. We have two choices to define the XML format. Choice #1:               <Persons>        <Person>            <Age>16</Age>            <Name>Richard</Name>        </Person>        <Person>            <Age>34</Age>            <Name>Eric</Name>        </Person>        ...     </Persons>      Choice #2:               <Persons>        <Person Age=\"16\" Name=\"Richard\"/>        <Person Age=\"34\" Name=\"Eric\"/>        ...     </Persons>      So what's the difference between definition of sub node or attribute? And what's the benefit of each choice?"}
{"_id": "233092", "title": "When to use tools vs custom development?", "text": "To learn dependency injection in a current side-project, I am writing my own dependency injection container. But this has lead me to wonder, at what point is it worthwhile to use a third party product vs \"roll my own\"? What would be the kind of questions you would ask to figure this out?"}
{"_id": "208751", "title": "Maintaining code-style conventions for large projects", "text": "For a while I've been maintaining an ad-hoc script to check code style against our project's guidelines. I'm aware of AStyle/Uncrustify and have used them, but they are best for once- off code-style cleanups, but impractical to just run all code through some automatic process after every commit. To explain the issue a little more, yes - we have code-style documentation, but devs don't always follow exactly, and it's not really great to give them personal mail every time they make some tiny change that goes against some convention. So I took the approach to deal with this like compiler warnings, report inconsistencies but leave it up to the developer to resolve (some of you may be familiar with Python's pep8 style checker). Once every so often we do style cleanups. In general I'm very happy with the outcome (unlike most style checking tools), you get to get a lot of flexibility - so you can choose where to be strict and where to be relaxed about conventions (avoid too many false positives is important too). Currently I'm using Python and Pygments to parse C source code (some C++ also but mainly C) and then my own script to check the tokenized results meet our conventions. This works fairly well, I don't need the full AST you can get with GCC or Clang for example, simply knowing if text is a comment, string, punctuation, preprocessor... etc. is enough (what you would get from syntax highlighting, or a source tokenizer). But I did end up having to write quite a few utility functions for the source:   * extract the body of a block between brackets.   * find matching brackets.   * identify casts.   * inspecting whitespace around punctuation. ... nothing really advanced. The exact conventions are probably not so important, but for an example here are some checks:   * Placement of braces for 'if' statement checks broken into multiple lines.   * Placement of `break` in a `switch` statement.   * Spaces around operators, braces, function calls, after commas.   * Indentation for multi-line if statements.   * Indentation consistency. At this point I would be interested to move away from my own utility functions but still have a script which checks code-style, if there is something else well maintained solving similar problems. I'd be surprised if there is not some other people doing similar projects to maintain consistent source style in this way, so I'm interested to know of any alternatives available. # Question: Considering the workflow I have described, can anyone cite their experiences using a similar workflow, are there projects that already do this, I'm interested to see a precedent."}
{"_id": "208752", "title": "Is it good practice to create convenience delegate methods?", "text": "Suppose I have design like this:               class Corpus:         def something1(self):             pass         def something2(self):             pass         def serialize_to_stream(self, stream):             _CorpusJsonSerializer().serialize(self, stream)          class _CorpusJsonSerializer:         def serialize(self, corpus, stream):             .             .             .         .         .         .       I think that the serialization process should be in a separate class for various reasons. That makes the method `serialize_to_stream` in `Corpus` unnecessary. I would however like to have it there because I think it makes it easier for the users of the Corpus, because they do not have to know anything about another class `CorpusJsonSerializer`. Do you think it is reasonable? Or shall I just expose the `CorpusJsonSerializer` and let the user do the work?"}
{"_id": "177427", "title": "SOA in .NET 4.5 with MSMQ Durability", "text": "I have been doing some investigation regarding ASP.NET Web API. I have enjoyed using the WCF REST template to create new RESTful web services, and Web API seems to be a cleaner iteration on that. However, I like the flexibility of WCF in allowing http, TCP, MSMQ. This aspect seems to facilitate a distributed and scalable architecture. Is it correct for me to conclude that WCF would continue to be my best bet when it comes to fire-and-forget durable message queueing?"}
{"_id": "172886", "title": "What methodology to use for planning/developing a Language conversion project?", "text": "I am trying to help my friend by creating a part of his on-going project. What I'm going to do is create a Java parser to break up the Java code into operators, parameters etc to build XML representation. Next I want to create a code generator to convert the parsed java code to XML conforming to the schema I've created. Finally I want to use an XML style-sheet to transform the XML into another programming language type. Basically I just wanted some advice on which methodology/model I should use for planning and developing this project. Is there some benefit to using Agile etc for instance?"}
{"_id": "172883", "title": "How can I get non-programmer colleagues on board with bespoke software rather than Dynamics CRM + Sharepoint?", "text": "I am working with a company which designs and builds one-off machines. They have been 'dabbling' with hosted Dynamics CRM and Sharepoint (on different servers!) in an attempt to centralise their data and help colleagues collaborate more effectively across projects. They haven't used either system to their potential. Now we are looking at the engineering department who already use a form of version control software for the various CAD files (Autodesk Vault) however it is becoming increasingly necessary to implement more of a generic file version control system as they use many more files than can be managed in Vault (sometimes just photos or scans of paper documents), hence why they were looking at using Sharepoint. However... as the 'programmer' of the bunch, I can see several scenarios which don't seem to fit well with the Dynamics + Sharepoint approach; simple reports based on cross-table queries, exporting certain metrics as a spreadsheet, defining project hierarchies and many-many relationships, and as such I have been pushing for an in-house developed 'ECM' / 'ERP' software package (perhaps in .NET or php). Some colleagues seem to attach a greater value to the MS software (perhaps becuase it has a logo!) but don't see that it's just a framework, not a solution. Can anyone provide a good example of when custom software would actually be better than using Dynamics + Sharepoint and how do I relate that to non- technical staff?"}
{"_id": "113471", "title": "Can I start learning C# immediately?", "text": "I've got my BSc in Computer Science 4 years ago and I feel like I've forgotten everything I learnt. I still know the basics such as CPU, mohterboard, RAM, software, hardware, etc but I forgot how they work exactly. In general, I know what a programming language is and I have worked with Java when I was at Uni. To be honest I was just trying to solve the assignments in that time and now I've found I have some interest in programming and I chose C# because I can use it for web and for desktop applications. Now, I want to learn C#. Is there any prerequisites for that? I mean do I need to come back to all the materials that I did study on my BSc? Or can I srart learning immediately?"}
{"_id": "133001", "title": "SVN code review tool", "text": "I would like to do some code review on the SVN repository used by our team. For now, I've used Eclipse: show log on trunk, click on a revision and \"Compare\" to see the changes. The diff renders great, but the navigation isn't practical IMO. I'm looking for a tool that could enable code reviewing with \"diffs\", but with an **easy navigation in the changes**. For example, being able to **filter/exclude commits** based on their names/patterns, show commits of a user, **show changes since last tag** , maybe watch commits on sensitive files, etc... An Eclipse plugin would be the best, as I could still use functionalities such as Ctrl+click on methods/classes. But any suggestion in welcomed."}
{"_id": "83554", "title": "Formatting code a bad thing when using a VCS?", "text": "I almost always format my code before I commit to make sure it's done properly. Most of my team don't really care and don't always format their code properly (minor things that don't affect the code but affect readability when trying to maintain it). I recently installed the VS power tools that has an option \"Format on save\", and made a change to a file that wasn't formatted prior. The development VP just came to me and reprimanded me for formatting since it shows up in the merging tool as having almost the entire file changed, instead of just a line or two (so he can't see exactly what I modified easily), and told me to disable the format on save in the future. While I understand that concern, I find it difficult sometimes to sort through the code that is unformatted, and IMO it should be formatted properly all the time anyways. Note that I'm not just reformatting things on a whim., but as I write code I'll either use the power tool or hit the key command to format the text to make it easier to read, and in SVN this shows up as a modification. So I ask, is always formatting the code actually a bad thing? Are his concerns more valid than making sure the code is readable?"}
{"_id": "113479", "title": "Are there any real-world cases for C++ without exceptions?", "text": "In When to use C over C++, and C++ over C? there is a statement wrt. to code size / C++ exceptions: Jerry answers (among other points): > (...) it tends to be more difficult to produce truly tiny executables with > C++. For really small systems, you're rarely writing a lot of code anyway, > and the extra (...) to which I asked why that would be, to which Jerry responded: > the main thing is that C++ includes exception handling, which (at least > usually) adds some minimum to the executable size. Most compilers will let > you disable exception handling, but when you do the result isn't quite C++ > anymore. (...) which I do not really doubt on a technical real world level. * * * Therefore I'm interested (purely out of curiosity) to hear from **real world examples where a project chose C++ as a language and then chose to disable exceptions.** (Not just merely \"not use\" exceptions in user code, but disable them in the compiler, so that you can't throw or catch exceptions.) Why does a project chose to do so (still using C++ and not C, but no exceptions) - what are/were the (technical) reasons? * * * Addendum: For those wishing to elaborate on their answers, it would be nice to detail how the implications of no-exceptions are handled:   * STL collections (`vector`, ...) do not work properly (allocation failure cannot be reported)   * `new` can't throw   * Constructors cannot fail"}
{"_id": "85864", "title": "Solo .NET Programmer moving to a team", "text": "I've been a solo .NET programmer for a small startup for the last 8 years. I've put together some pretty decent software, and I always strived to better myself and conform to best practices, including source control (SVN/TFS). I worked very closely with a team of engineers of other disciplines, but when it came down to the software I was the only one programming. I love the craft of programming and love learning new things to sharpen my tools. In 2 weeks I will be starting a new job in a team of 20 .NET developers. My position will be mid-level, and I will be working under some programmers with incredibly impressive backgrounds. Again, the team aspect of development will be new to me, so I'm looking for some general \"new guy\" tips that will help me be as effective and easy to get along with as possible from the get-go. Anything goes, including high level tips, and small day-to-day things about communication."}
{"_id": "252410", "title": "Single Identity for Desktop and Web", "text": "I'm building a system has both a WPF desktop application as well as an Asp.net MVC application. I need a common user identity component so that user can log on to either one with the same credentials. Is ASP.NET Identity appropriate for this task? Has anyone used ASP.NET Identity with a WPF application? Are there any alternatives?"}
{"_id": "47485", "title": "Looking for statistics on automated testing, continuous integration and refactoring usage", "text": "Are there any credible sources of information on the adoption of agile techniques like automated testing, continuous integration and refactoring? Of those that are using unit testing, how many follow test first or test driven development. I'm trying to determine how widespread these practices are."}
{"_id": "147176", "title": "Do privacy concerns prevent us from accessing location-based user data?", "text": "Every time my team begins to explore the scenarios that are possible with mobile device location data, location data that is part of user data, or even location data that may be retrieved or inferred from IP address or browser cookies, we are stopped dead in our tracks by the risk of violating a user's privacy. It's frustrating, because working with location data creates whole new areas for providing a great user experience. I have taken a look at the Mobile Device Privacy Act, related online opinions, such as the ars technica article, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's recent Mobile User Privacy Bill of Rights, but there isn't really an authoritative (or even de facto) standard and opinions differ. Is it as simple as obtaining a user's permission to make use of location-based data and then safeguarding the data? I would like to know how others are addressing or even skirting this issue. Do you obtain user permission before utilizing location data? Are you just riding it out for now and waiting to see if a national law is passed?"}
{"_id": "47488", "title": "Are DDD Aggregates really a good idea in a Web Application?", "text": "I'm diving in to Domain Driven Design and some of the concepts i'm coming across make a lot of sense on the surface, but when I think about them more I have to wonder if that's really a good idea. The concept of Aggregates, for instance makes sense. You create small domains of ownership so that you don't have to deal with the entire domain model. However, when I think about this in the context of a web app, we're frequently hitting the database to pull back small subsets of data. For instance, a page may only list the number of orders, with links to click on to open the order and see its order id's. If i'm understanding Aggregates right, I would typically use the repository pattern to return an OrderAggregate that would contain the members `GetAll`, `GetByID`, `Delete`, and `Save`. Ok, that sounds good. But... If I call GetAll to list all my order's, it would seem to me that this pattern would require the entire list of aggregate information to be returned, complete orders, order lines, etc... When I only need a small subset of that information (just header information). Am I missing something? Or is there some level of optimization you would use here? I can't imagine that anyone would advocate returning entire aggregates of information when you don't need it. Certainly, one could create methods on your repository like `GetOrderHeaders`, but that seems to defeat the purpose of using a pattern like repository in the first place. Can anyone clarify this for me? **EDIT:** After a lot more research, I think the disconnect here is that a pure Repository pattern is different from what most people think of a Repository as being. Fowler defines a repository as a data store that uses collection semantics, and is generally kept in-memory. This means creating an entire object graph. Evans alters the Repository to include Aggregate Roots, and thus the repository is amputated to only support the objects in an Aggregate. Most people seem to think of repositories as glorified Data Access Objects, where you just create methods to get whatever data you want. That doesn't seem to be the intent as described in Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Still others think of a repository as a simple abstraction used primarily to make testing and mocking easier, or to decouple persistence from the rest of the system. I guess the answer is that this is a much more complex concept than I first thought it was."}
{"_id": "242916", "title": "What's the proper hand position for the movement keys in Vim?", "text": "I've recently started using Vim and am working to replace Notepad++ as my go- to. However, I'm running into an issue where I keep hitting u instead of i because my right hand is on HJKL instead of the usual JKL;. So, Vim users: Is there a preferred right hand positioning for the editor, or should I just get used to moving my hand back and forth for normal and insert modes?"}
{"_id": "112709", "title": "Maintaining a list of nodes with challenging requirements", "text": "This is a question regarding the design of a collection of ordered nodes which have some requirements that I am struggling to satisfy. In the problem area that I am dealing with we have routes which are an ordered collection of nodes. A route will be between 1000 and 25000 nodes. A node itself is a complex object. I need to be able to persist the nodes, ideally to a relational database (as the wider application is currently delivered using an architecture that uses a relational database for persistence). I have two separate requirements which present a difficultly in how to model the data.   1. I need to be able to insert nodes (or pointers to nodes) into the middle of the list and reorganise the list on the fly.   2. I need to be able to retrieve the list in it's correct sequential order with both an efficient index and the ability to random access. The only way I think that I can satisfy the first requirement is to model the data as a linked list where every node points to the next node in the list, which would allow the list to be edited and reorganised on the fly. The only way I think that I can satisfy the second requirement would be to sequentially order the list so each node has a reference to it's position in the list and order/access the list by the position. Is there any other method that I could use that can satisfy the two requirements or am I stuck with building a hybrid that employs both methods at various times depending on operational context and that keeps the two referencing types in synch?"}
{"_id": "89735", "title": "What are the different ways  for performing authorization in a web application other than role-based authorization?", "text": "The most common approach used for authorization which I know is role based authorization. Instead of directly storing the access rights against the user ids you create roles and store the access rights against them. Then assign the users the roles. Though I find the role based method quite flexible and easy to maintain I am still interested to know whether there are any better methods for storing authorization details. I am using Spring Security for securing JSF web applications. Along with solutions for Spring Security I would also appreciate general solutions (not specific to a particular security framework)."}
{"_id": "89736", "title": "Usage of \"Multi-Paradigm Languages\" in commercial applications", "text": "I am currently learning the two languages F-Sharp and Scala. These two languages are, in my opinion, both quite comprehensive to grasp. Nonetheless, what seems to make Scala and F-Sharp similar, is that both of them try to offer a conglomeration of programming paradigms (OO, functional), in order to solve real-world tasks and to make them applicable as general-purpose languages. While both languages seem to get the most attention in academia, there is comparable little mention of their usage in commercial software projects. Considering the different platform philosophies behind these two languages, which is -in your subjective opinion- more promising to become widely used for commercial purposes in the near future?"}
{"_id": "138924", "title": "What Are Some Advantages/Disadvantages of Using C over Assembly?", "text": "I'm currently studying engineering in Telecommunications and Electronics and we have migrated from assembler to C in microprocessor programming. I have doubts that this is a good idea. What are some advantages and disadvantages of C compared to assembly? The advantages/disadvantages I see are: **Advantages:**   * I can tell that C syntax is a lot easier to learn than Assembler syntax.   * C is easier to use for making more complex programs.   * Learning C is somehow more productive than learning assembler cause there is more developing stuff around C than Assembler. **Disadvantages:**   * Assembler is a lower level programming language than C,so this makes it a good for programming directly to hardware.   * Is a lot more flexible alluding you to work with memory,interrupts,micro-registers,etc."}
{"_id": "225511", "title": "WHere do I put my update class and handle request / response from HTTP web request?", "text": "I don't know how to organize my code. Right now I just dumped everything in MainPage for testing. But what is the proper way to handle getting data from REST web service in Windows Phone 8? I have multiple pages that need to utilize the data that is returned.                   /// <summary>     /// State information for our BeginGetResponse async call     /// </summary>     public class UpdateState     {         public HttpWebRequest AsyncRequest { get; set; }         public HttpWebResponse AsyncResponse { get; set; }     }               public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage     {         // Constructor         public MainPage()         {             InitializeComponent();                  // Sample code to localize the ApplicationBar             //BuildLocalizedApplicationBar();         }              private async void test()         {                  var handler = new HttpClientHandler();             if (handler.SupportsAutomaticDecompression)             {                 handler.AutomaticDecompression = DecompressionMethods.GZip |                                                  DecompressionMethods.Deflate;             }                  // form the URI             UriBuilder fullUri = new UriBuilder(\"http://test/GetData?\");             fullUri.Query = \"format=xml&param=test&dateFrom=20071225&dateTo=20080101\";                  var httpClient = new HttpClient(handler);             var str = await httpClient.GetStringAsync(fullUri.Uri);             string test = \"\";         }              private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)         {                       test();                            // form the URI             UriBuilder fullUri = new UriBuilder(\"http://test/GetData?\");             fullUri.Query = \"format=xml&param=test&dateFrom=20140124&dateTo=201425 \";                  // initialize a new WebRequest             HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(fullUri.Uri);                  // set up the state object for the async request             UpdateState state = new UpdateState();             state.AsyncRequest = request;                  // start the asynchronous request             request.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(HandleResponse),                 state);         }              /// <summary>         /// Handle the information returned from the async request         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"asyncResult\"></param>         private void HandleResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult)         {             // get the state information             UpdateState forecastState = (UpdateState)asyncResult.AsyncState;             HttpWebRequest forecastRequest = (HttpWebRequest)forecastState.AsyncRequest;                  // end the async request             forecastState.AsyncResponse = (HttpWebResponse)forecastRequest.EndGetResponse(asyncResult);                  Stream streamResult;                  string newCredit = \"\";             string newCityName = \"\";             int newHeight = 0;                  string XMLresult = string.Empty;                  try             {                      // get the stream containing the response from the async call                 string type = forecastState.AsyncResponse.ContentType;                  streamResult = forecastState.AsyncResponse.GetResponseStream();                      XMLresult = getXMLData(streamResult);                      // load the XML                 XElement xmlData = XElement.Parse(XMLresult);                      string t = \"\";                  }             catch (FormatException)             {                 // there was some kind of error processing the response from the web                 // additional error handling would normally be added here                 return;             }              }"}
{"_id": "228631", "title": "Etymology of \u201cthrow an exception\u201c", "text": "Why do we use the expression \u201cthrow an exception\u201c and not something like \u201cgenerate\u201c? Where was that term born and in which language?"}
{"_id": "110733", "title": "With ASP.NET MVC actions, should I use web services?", "text": "In ASP.NET Web Forms if you want to use jQuery and call a method directly, you should either implement a web service, or use Page Methods. Also you can use Generic Handlers (.ashx files). However, in ASP.NET MVC, a controller action (a method in nature) can be called directly from jQuery. What web services has to offer in ASP.NET MVC world? In other words, seems that I can fulfill of my requirements via MVC's clean URLs, controllers and actions. Should I bother using Web Services?"}
{"_id": "238046", "title": "Which version management design methodology to be used in a Dependent System nodes?", "text": "This is my first question so please indicate if my question is too vague and not understandable. My question is more related to High Level Design. We have a system (specifically an ATCA Chassis) configured in a Star Topology, having **Master Node (MN)** and other **sub-ordinate nodes(SN)**. All nodes are connected via Ethernet and shall run on Linux OS with other proprietary applications. I have to build a recovery Framework Design so that any software entity, whether its Linux, Ramdisk or application can be rollback to previous good versions if something bad happens. Thus I think of maintaining a State Version Matrix over MN, where each State(1,2....n) represents Good Kernel, Ramdisk and application versions for each SN. It may happen that one SN version can dependent on other SN's version. Please see following diagram:- ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dh1pv.jpg) So I am in dilemma whether to use Package Management Methodology used by Debian Distributions (Like Ubuntu) or GIT repository methodology; in order to do a Rollback to previous good versions on either one SN or on all the dependent SNs. The method should also be easier for upgrading SNs along with MNs. Some of the features which I am trying to achieve:- 1) Upgrade of even single software entity is achievable without hindering others. 2) Dependency checks must be done before applying rollback or upgrade on each of the SN 3) User Prompt should be given in case dependency fails.If User still go for rollback, all the SNs should get notification to rollback there own releases (if required). 4) The binaries should be distributed on SNs accordingly so that recovery process is faster; rather fetching every time from MN. 5) Release Patches from developer for bug fixes, feature enhancement can be applied on running system. 6) Each version can be easily tracked and distinguishable. Thanks"}
{"_id": "507", "title": "Why '42' is the preferred number when indicating something random?", "text": "I have seen this on the SO on many times. Whenever a question is vague and the question is asking some magical answer somebody or the other leaves a comment saying answer is 42. Even a book I am reading right now uses '42' as the number whenever it wants demonstrate some basic concept using an integer. So is there any history behind it or it is just a coincidence?"}
{"_id": "502", "title": "What's the first thing you write when trying out a new language?", "text": "I think everyone has their own program or set of features beyond \"Hello World!\", that they use when trying out a new language. Mine is a guessing game:               I'm thinking of a number 1-10, guess what it is!     Guess: 3     Nope, too low!     Guess: 7     Nope, too high!     Guess: 5     Yes, You win!     Play again (Y/N)? N      What do _you_ write?"}
{"_id": "500", "title": "When does pair programming work for you? When should you avoid it?", "text": "Rather than slavishly pair program all the time, we use pair programming selectively on our team. I think it works best in the following circumstances:   * Ramping up brand new team members on a project (instead of letting them wade through documentation or code on their own).   * Having junior and senior people work together (helps to show some of the skills and tricks of the more experienced developers, plus it allows the old dogs to learn new tricks sometimes).   * When someone is trying to track down a defect, it often helps to pair with a fresh set of eyes. When do you pair program and why? When do you avoid pair programming? Why?"}
{"_id": "501", "title": "What syntax element do you hate most in a programming language you use frequently?", "text": "No matter how much you love a programming language, there are always a few details in it that aren\u2019t quite as nice as they could be. In this question, I would like to specifically focus on **syntax elements.** In a programming language that you use frequently (perhaps your favourite programming language, or perhaps the one you are forced to use at work), which syntax element do you find most unreadable, unclear, inconvenient or unpleasant?"}
{"_id": "228637", "title": "Should accessible members of an internal class be internal too?", "text": "I'm designing a set of APIs for some applications I'm working on. I want to keep the code style consistent in all the classes I write but I've found that there are a few inconsistencies that I'm introducing and I don't know what the best way to resolve them is. My example here is specific to C# but this would apply to any language with similar mechanisms. There are a few classes that I need for implementation purposes that I don't necessarily want to expose in the API so I make them `internal` whereever needed. Generally what I would do is design the class as I normally would (e.g., make members `public`/`protected`/`private` where necessary) and change the visibility level of the class itself to `internal`. So I might have a few classes that look like this:               internal interface IMyItem     {         ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set);     }          internal class _SmallItem : IMyItem     {         private readonly /* parameters */;         public _SmallItem(/* small item parameters */) { /* ... */ }              public ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set) { /* ... */ }     }          internal abstract class _CompositeItem: IMyItem     {         private readonly /* parameters */;         public _CompositeItem(/* composite item parameters */) { /* ... */ }              public abstract object UsefulInformation { get; }         protected void HelperMethod(/* parameters */) { /* ... */ }     }          internal class _BigItem : _CompositeItem     {         private readonly /* parameters */;         public _BigItem(/* big item parameters */) { /* ... */ }              public override object UsefulInformation         {             get { /* ... */ }         }              public ItemSet AddTo(ItemSet set) { /* ... */ }     }      In another generated class (part of a parser/scanner), there is a structure that contains fields for all possible values it can represent. The class generated is `internal` too but I have control over the visibility of the members and decided to make them `internal` as well.               internal partial struct ValueType     {         internal string               String;         internal ItemSet              ItemSet;         internal IMyItem              MyItem;     }          internal class TokenValue     {         internal static int EQ(ItemSetScanner scanner) { /* ... */ }         internal static int NAME(ItemSetScanner scanner, string value) { /* ... */ }         internal static int VALUE(ItemSetScanner scanner, string value) { /* ... */ }         //...     }      To me, this feels odd because the first set of classes, I didn't necessarily have to make some members `public`, they very well could have been made `internal`. `internal` members of an `internal` type can only be accessed internally anyway so why make them `public`? I just don't like the idea that the way I write my classes _has_ to change drastically (i.e., change all uses of `public` to `internal`) just because the class is `internal`. Any thoughts on what I should do here? It makes sense to me that I might want to make some members of a class declared `public`, `internal`. But it's less clear to me when the class is declared `internal`."}
{"_id": "136568", "title": "Is it legal to release GPL version project into FreeBSD?", "text": "I could not differentiate between FreeBSD and GPL liecense. Can anyone tell me the in what respect these two liecense are different. Is it legal to use some source based on GPL license and release the new product as FreeBSD license? In particular, I have following scence: I would like to follow some of the implementation module of some implentation for my use. The implementation is standard algorithm implementation. So basically i am taking some reference to implement in my own way. I am not making use of verbatim copy, some module matches with the original one. The one which i am taking reference is in FreeGPL V3 license. The new product which i will release with FreeBSD license. Is it legal to do this or I should relase my product in FreeGPL license? [EDIT] Moreover, my case is, I am implementing some standard algorithm. Lets say here a data structure linked list. I think,whoever implements it, he/she will have same structure and similar kind of functions for search, delete and insert.Even the operations will be seen. I saw some code in internet and i got the influence of that of code my implementation which was so unavoidable. In this case how can a programmer can claim that the particular code is his own original code?"}
{"_id": "136567", "title": "What languages are used by professional mobile app designers?", "text": "I've recently done some Java programming for an android app (though my question is not android specific), and was wondering if what I was doing was just a lot less complicated, but generally the same as what a professional mobile app designer would do. I kind of asssumed that an app designer working for, say, the BBC would use an expensive software package, and maybe a different language. So my question is **what language would they be using?** Maybe they would use one that would work for both Android and iOS?"}
{"_id": "136565", "title": "What mathematics should I review & master before enrolling in CS program (early 40s student, 20 years dev exp, no degree)", "text": "I am in my early 40s and plan to enroll in university this fall to pursue a long-postponed CS degree. I have been working as a developer for almost 20 years, but have found further advancement at this stage of my career difficult without a degree. Plus, I've always wanted to get one, I have a hunger for learning, and I'd still have 20 years ahead of me after graduation before retirement. I started at a junior college out of high school, but only completed about 16 hours, so I'm basically starting from scratch. I'm excited, but apprehensive. In high school, I was very good at math - took Trig/Pre-calc, etc. and did well. I scored high in math on the ACT/SATs. However, 20 years of database- driven application development has not required any higher math, and I know I am quite rusty. **What specific topics/areas in mathematics do I need to review and master over the next 6 months to give me a fighting chance in Calc I (and beyond) come fall?** Your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time."}
{"_id": "136563", "title": "What is the optimal minimum time to work on tasks for a single project?", "text": "As I'm getting more organized, and getting more projects, I'm starting to wonder how to best manage time between them. Especially in regard to how I give estimates to the PHBs. So if the project is broken up into small tasks, say 2-3 hours each, then is it just as productive to work on one task per day as opposed to spending 6 hours a day and working through a good portion of 3 tasks. I realize that to a certain extent this depends on the project, but I also think that it might be better in general to work on components together so that things stay fresh in your mind. That said, it means pushing back other projects a week or two in order to devote 6 hours a day towards those tasks. Just trying to think this through, and thought I'd get some input."}
{"_id": "136561", "title": "What has research shown about the effectiveness of comments?", "text": "I have been arguing with a friend about the necessity of comments, and the efficiency of different comment styles. The argument ended quite fast, as we could not find any research - or essay - that support either claim. Has any serious research been conducted regarding the efficiency of different commenting styles? If so, what has it shown? I'm mainly interested with:   * Length (I think that comments longer than a tweet are never read)   * Type (I strongly favor comments that are actual code samples, explaining how to call a method)   * Location (As a separate line? at the end of the line?)"}
{"_id": "213440", "title": "Does functional programming ignore the benefits gained from the \"On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules\" (data hiding)?", "text": "There's a classic article named On the Criteria To Be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules that I just read for the first time. It makes perfect sense to me, and is probably one of those articles that OOP was based on. Its conclusion: > We have tried to demonstrate by these examples that it is almost always > incorrect to begin the decomposition of a system into modules on the basis > of a flowchart. ... Each module is then designed to hide such a decision > from the others In my uneducated and inexperienced opinion, functional programming takes the exact opposite advice of this article. My understanding is functional programming makes data flow idiomatic. Data gets passed from function to function, each function being intimately aware of the data and \"changing it\" along the way. And I think I've seen a Rich Hickey talk where he talks about how data hiding is overrated or unnecessary or something, but I can't remember for sure.   1. First I want to know if my assessment is correct. Does the FP paradigm and this article philosophically disagree?    2. Assuming they disagree, how does FP \"compensate\" for its lack of data hiding? Perhaps they sacrifice data hiding but gain X, Y and Z. I'd like to know the reasoning for why X, Y and Z are considered more beneficial than data hiding.    3. Or, assuming they disagree, perhaps FP feels that data hiding is bad. If so, why does it think data hiding is bad?   4. Assuming they agree, I'd like to know what FPs implementation of data hiding is. It's obvious to see this in OOP. You can have a `private` field that nobody outside the class can access. There's no obvious analogy of this to me in FP.   5. I feel there are other questions I should be asking but I don't know I should be asking. Feel free to answer those, too.  # Update I found this Neal Ford talk that has a very relevant slide in it. I'll embed the screenshot here: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/esjl0.png)"}
{"_id": "6526", "title": "Why do so many programmers absolutely hate object prevalence layers?", "text": "Prevalence is a simple technique to provide ACID properties to an in-memory object model based on binary serialization and write-ahead logging. It works like this:   * Start with a snapshot. Serialize the object model and write it to a file.   * Create a journal file. For every call into the object model, serialize the call and its arguments.   * When the journal gets too big, you're shutting down, or it's otherwise convenient, perform a checkpoint: write a new snapshot and truncate the journal.   * To roll back or recover from a crash or power hit, load the last snapshot and re-execute all the calls recorded in the journal. The precautions needed to make this work are:   * Don't let mutable object references escape or enter the prevalence layer. You need some sort of proxy or OID scheme, as if you were doing RPC. (This is such a common newbie mistake it's been nicknamed the 'baptism problem'.)   * All the logic reachable from a call must be completely deterministic, and must not perform business-logic-meaningful I/O or OS calls. Writing to a diagnostic log is probably OK, but getting the system time or launching an asynchronous delegate is generally not. This is so that the journal replays identically even if it's restored on a different machine or at a different time. (Most prevalence code provides an alternate time call to get the transaction timestamp.)   * Writer concurrency introduces ambiguity in journal interpretation, so it is prohibited. Is it because ...   * people developed a bad taste for them after trying to use one on a project that wasn't well suited* to it?    * Klaus Wuestefeld's strident advocacy turned people off?   * people who like the imperative programming model dislike separating I/O from calculation, preferring instead to interleave computation with I/O and threading calls?   * prevalence layers are so conceptually simple and so intimately bound to the characteristics of the framework they inhabit that they're usually custom-rolled for the project, which makes them too alien/nonstandard/risky?   * it's just too hard to keep straight what you have to be careful not to do?   * newbies' heads just seem to explode when faced with something that isn't the same kind of two-tier database-driven app they learned to write in school? ;) * * * *The entire data set fits in RAM, you don't need writer concurrency, and you don't need to do ad-hoc queries, reporting, or export to a data warehouse. With apologies to SQLite, prevalence is an improvement on save-files, not a replacement for Oracle."}
{"_id": "87703", "title": "What is the best way to keep track of the median?", "text": "I read a question in one book: Numbers are randomly generated and stored into an (expanding) array, How would you keep track of the median? There are two data structures can solve the problem. One is the balanced binary tree, the other is two heaps which keep trace of the biggest half and the smallest half of the elements. I think these two solutions has the same running time as O(n lg n), but I am not sure of my judgement. In your opinions, What is the best way to keep track of the median? \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014continue In this question\uff0cI think the heaps is the best way to keep track of the median. There are two heaps, the big heap and the small heap, which need not to be sequential. First, we calculate the mean value of the elements in the array. If the element is less than the mean value, we put the num to the small heap. On the contrary, we put the num to the big heap. If the number of the big heap is equal to the number of the small heap, the biggest one in the small heap and the smallest one in the big heap are the median. If the two heaps have different size, we just pop the root element from the heap with bigger size and push it to the root of the smaller size heap. For big heap, the root element is the smallest one, and for small heap, the root element is the biggest one. In this way, if the two heaps have the same size or a digital difference, we find the medium in the root. I think this solution has the running time as O(m*n), m means the times we adjust the unbalance heaps. Is this the best way to keep trace of the median?"}
{"_id": "77812", "title": "Under what conditions does it make sense to break code into many files, or merge them?", "text": "Just finished merging seven scripts into one, but got me thinking that I really don't have a formal logic for breaking scripts into pages, or why I'd merge them. Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "233541", "title": "How to implement a Weighted shuffle", "text": "I recently wrote some code that I thought very inefficient, but since it included only a few values, I accepted it. However, I'm still interested at a better algorithm for the following:   1. A list of X objects, each of them are assigned a \"weight\"   2. Sum up the weights   3. Generate a random number from 0 to the sum   4. Iterate through the objects, subtracting their weight from the sum until the sum is non-positive   5. Remove the object from the list, and then add it to the end of the new list Items 2,4, and 5 all take `n` time, and so it is an `O(n^2)` algorithm. Can this be improved? As an example of a weighted shuffle, an element has a greater chance at being at the front with a higher weight. Example (I'll generate random numbers to make it real): 6 objects with weights 6,5,4,3,2,1; Sum is 21 I picked 19: `19-6-5-4-3-2 = -1`, thus 2 goes in the first position, weights are now 6,5,4,3,1; Sum is 19 I picked 16: `16-6-5-4-3 = -2`, thus 3 goes in the second position, weights are now 6,5,4,1; Sum is 16 I picked 3: `3-6 = -3`, thus 6 goes in the third position, weights are now 5,4,1; Sum is 10 I picked 8: `8-5-4 = -1`, thus 4 goes in the fourth position, weights are now 5,1; Sum is 6 I picked 5: `5-5=0`, thus 5 goes in the fifth position, weights are now 1; Sum is 1 I picked 1: `1-1=0`, thus 1 goes in the last position, I have no more weights, I finish"}
{"_id": "31621", "title": "What is the best wrapping strategy?", "text": "I'm planning to integrate an external tool (ffmpeg in my particular case, but it could be anything, in fact, as lolng as its tasks are long running ones). This tool has a lot of command-line parameters. For now, I've done to simple things with it, already requiring me a good bunch of class writing, to embed all the information it can return to me. I now face the even more complex task of having to send it a bunch of parameters _and_ to handle possible errors. So, what is a best way for that ?   1. Create classes containing all possible options   2. Relying upon a reverse equivalent of commons-cli / CliBuilder / OptionParser   3. Directly write all options from user input   4. Obiwan Kenobi powers (or anything I don't even know about) Please notice I do it in an uncommon language (for the sake of me, don't ask me what it is, as it looks like a desperate and sterile union between CoffeeScript and lua), as a consequence, there can be no framework doing what I want in the language I use."}
{"_id": "72336", "title": "Is \"Hiring only the Best\" a really practical advice for normal desktop application programming?", "text": "For background, we are doing desktop engineering applications, with an AutoCAD like UI, something similar to etabs. One thing that really bugs me is, is there any need to hire the very best developers? For starters, we are experiencing great difficulties in recruitment; most resumes we see are either doing simple CRUD apps, or SharePoint customization which I don't think really involves a lot of hardcore programming. Even those whom we call for interview, most can't do Fibonacci sequence and a simple binary search, and we are gracious enough to give out hints and **spell out the problems explicitly** so that the candidates don't have to lookup a dictionary to check what does \"Fibonacci sequence\" mean. This got me thinking: Yes, we do need some level of programming aptitude when doing computational geometry/ linear programming stuff, and we do need some level of programming aptitude when designing the software architecture/ or deciding which software pattern to use, but beyond that, a lot of our code are just plumbing code ( I think), which can be done by someone with some familiarity with programming. Given that we really need programming talents now, and given that hiring superstar developers are very hard, I want to lower my standard and hire only the so-so ones, in direct contradiction to what Joel preaches. What do you think? Edit: You don't need to rewrite the whole computational geometry/linear programming libraries; all you need to do, as far as my application is concerned, is to be able to know how to cast the problems at hand into appropriate computational geometrical/linear programming terms and know when/how to use the existing libraries. So it's not as difficult as it seems."}
{"_id": "234011", "title": "How to distribute, one virtual token to each person in this world, and make sure nobody gets more than one?", "text": "How to distribute, one virtual token to each person in this world, and make sure nobody gets more than one? In other words, how to prevent a user from creating more than one user account in a site? What's this problem called? Is there any specific name to this problem? What are the solutions? Thanks."}
{"_id": "72333", "title": "Cross-library and cross-programming-environment support", "text": "Often people talk about cross-platform compatibility, but is it possible to write such \"universal code\" that would work both in browser, in desktop, on opengl, on webgl, and on html5 canvas-object? I'm thinking about writing a c-to-javascript compiler that would allow running desktop applications in browser. This utility would parse c/c++-code and generate javascript-code, and somehow replace all opengl-calls with webgl-calls. Something similar to Emscripten, but without assembly-like code (functions and statements would be converted one to one). Of course there will be some severe limitation on such c++ code. It will not support templates, dynamic polymorphism, etc. Also all libraries would have to be more or less substituted with javascript- implementations, so for example std-namespace will have to have javascript counterpart. Do you think this is worth the trouble? Or should we just optimize better desktop-application download and execution, and except users to press \"download\" on our site? Google earth seems to be pretty popular even though it has a mandatory installation-step."}
{"_id": "234016", "title": "How to choose data storage method for user generated data?", "text": "In a program I am writing, I have 3 different ways to store user generated data:               (a) XML Files for each object (.Net Serialization)     (b) SQL Database (MSSQL)     (c) Massive terrifying blob of data in 1 file (I'm against this one)      There is absolutely no theoretical difference in performance or file size in this (hypothetical) scenario, but which would be best to use? Is SQL overkill (Considering that there will be up to 2 million items in database), or the best option? Where does the line get drawn between BLOB, XML, and SQL? The index would either link to the filename (a GUID) or a SQL item id (a GUID), so there is not difference in search functionality. The XML is stored in multiple files and file size is not much of a concern, so you would not need to parse the entire thing to access a specific item (Just open a file stream to {GUID}.xml) **Edit:** I'm adding some more info to make it more clear what I'm asking. I am working on a program for a client who is in the perfume design industry. In all cases, the search index will be separate (Someone else's code that I don't dare touch), and will be indexed in memory. Random access of data isn't needed in this case, as people would be pulling up the full information for a single item. In a much more clear way of saying: If you do not need to access random data in a database, and XML is easier, is it ok to use that instead of an SQL file? **Edit II:** Either way, it will be installed on a large server, so, I am not concerned about the client having access to MSSQL or not having enough space for ~1KB extra per entry (If not using SQL). **Edit III:** I am only doing single select all queries (E.g. SELECT * FROM (DB) WHERE ID = (GUID)) Or (Xml.deserialize((GUID).xml))"}
{"_id": "234018", "title": "Dynamic git URL for Jenkins builds", "text": "We internally use GitHub Enterprise and Jenkins. If I push on the main repository it is automatically build without and the Commit is marked as correct (just as Travis does this). However, I want to be able to fork a repository and let the Jenkins build run. Is it possible to say Jenkins that he also runs any fork of the project when opening a PR on the main repo?"}
{"_id": "171211", "title": "Execute code every hour", "text": "I need to create a web service that executes every hour. It will be used to review data in a database and add alerts to a table in the same database if certain conditions are met/not met. What we currently have is: We have end devices that use Python to report to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) virtual server. The AWS server takes that information and stores it in a MySQL database. The AWS server is Linux running Django and Apache. I need to be able to have some python code run every hour that verifies the data that has been stored by the end devices. If certain conditions are not met then a record will be added to the `alerts` table in the database. We originally contracted to have the above setup created. I am new to Python, Django, and Apache. However, I have already made several changes to the Python code that sends and also receives the data from the end devices. I am a coder that is breaking into web programming. Does anyone have any recommendations on how I can do this?"}
{"_id": "177937", "title": "Which is more maintainable -- boolean assignment via if/else or boolean expression?", "text": "Which would be considered more maintainable?               if (a == b) c = true; else c = false;      or                c = (a == b);      I've tried looking in Code Complete, but can't find an answer. I think the first is more readable (you can literally read it out loud), which I also think makes it more maintainable. The second one certainly makes more sense and reduces code, but I'm not sure it's as maintainable for C# developers (I'd expect to see this idiom more in, for example, Python)."}
{"_id": "177936", "title": "Is having sensitive data in a PHP script secure?", "text": "I've heard that PHP is somewhat secure because Apache won't allow the download of raw PHP. Is this reliable, though? For example, if you wanted to password protect something, but didn't want to create a database, would something like `$pass = \"123454321\";` be safe? Bottom line, is it safe to assume that nobody has access to the actual .php file?"}
{"_id": "229811", "title": "Javascript design pattern with jQuery Widget factory", "text": "I am using the jQuery widget framework for creating some graphical elements on a webpage, and I have a conseptual question about the overall structure of the code. I have 3 classes A, B and C which all inherits from the same parent(pABC). They are all different, but have similar functionality. I also have to prototype classes(X, Y). These classes provide functionality that needs to be combined with A, B, C so that i get Ax, Ay, Bx, By, Cx, Cy. I want to do this with as little duplication as possible, so that if i change something in the X prototype it automatically gets changed in all of Ax, Ay, Bx, By, Cx and Cy. My intention is to do something like               $.widget(\"Ax\", $.A, $.extend(true, {}, X, { ... Specific code for the Ax ... }));     $.widget(\"Bx\", $.B, $.extend(true, {}, X, { ... Specific code for the Bx ... }));     $.widget(\"Cx\", $.C, $.extend(true, {}, X, { ... Specific code for the Cx ... }));               $.widget(\"Ay\", $.A, $.extend(true, {}, Y, { ... Specific code for the Ay ... }));     $.widget(\"By\", $.B, $.extend(true, {}, Y, { ... Specific code for the By ... }));     $.widget(\"Cy\", $.C, $.extend(true, {}, Y, { ... Specific code for the Cy ... }));      Is there a more efficient way to solve this problem? The problem is essentially that I have the classes A, B, C which is going to be combined with x, y to get Ax, Ay, Bx, By, Cx, Cy."}
{"_id": "229814", "title": "Why are scientific programming languages so weird?", "text": "It seems to me that programming languages meant for use in science and engineering are consistently _weird_ compared to general-purpose languages. Some examples off the top of my head:   * In Matlab, each function has to be placed in a separate file   * In R, <\\- is the assigment operator, as opposed to = in almost every other language   * Matlab, R, Julia and others are all 1-indexed   * Matlab uses % for comments, and not the standard # or // Of course, these languages all have several design features that _actually_ make them easier to use for scientific applications, such as more natural matrix notation. Still, they all inexplicably make all these bizarre choices which don't make anything easier and could easily have been avoided if the language designers had just chosen to do what 99% of other languages do. Is the reason vendor lock-in? A lack of contact with the wider software development community? Something else? I read this thread and didn't find the explanations satisfactory. Just because R were designed as a scientific language doesn't mean it _had_ to completely ignore conventions and use <\\- instead of =."}
{"_id": "229815", "title": "Use Of Exists clause in SQL", "text": "Just finished Stanford lecture on `SQL` (by Prof. Jennifer Widom). However I have developed a confusion regarding the use of `EXISTS` clause. I thought it is just like a condition and an expression so that if it's true, the above query proceeds (much like the Boolean `AND`). So having a slight doubt regarding this question: > Passenger = {pid, pname, Age}   >  Reservation = {pid, class, tid} and tables are populated with some data and following query is executed:               SELECT pid      FROM Reservation      WHERE class = 'AC' AND EXISTS          (SELECT * FROM Passenger WHERE age > 65 AND Passenger.pid = Reservation.pid)      Now the thing that is getting me troubled is that I thought that the use of `EXISTS` is simply that the above main query proceeds if the subquery returns something. So as the subquery was returning something, I expected the query to return all PID's where `class = 'AC'`. I didn't think that it was executed tuple by tuple. So how to remove this confusion?"}
{"_id": "100457", "title": "Can static and dynamically typed languages be seen as different tools for different types of jobs?", "text": "Yes, similar questions have been asked but always with the aim of finding out 'which one is better.' I'm asking because I came up as a dev primarily in JavaScript and don't really have any extensive experience writing in statically typed languages. In spite of this I definitely see value in learning C for handling demanding operations at lower levels of code (which I assume has a lot to do with static vs dynamic at the compiler level), but what I'm trying to wrap my head around is whether there are specific project contexts (maybe certain types of dynamic data-intensive operations?) involving things other than performance where it makes a lot more sense to go with Java or C# vs. something like Python."}
{"_id": "35819", "title": "Should software engineers also act as tech support?", "text": "Should a software engineer also act as technical support? That is, should a company allow their engineers to wear both the software engineer and technical support hats. It seems that it would remove the ability to write software if much of an engineer's time is taken up by technical support."}
{"_id": "131512", "title": "How can I simulate clicks for a mobile browser?", "text": "I am creating a web app. I was testing it on a mobile browser and noticed that `:active` pseudo class doesn't really work. How should I simulate clicks for a mobile browser? I'm specifically interested for Android and iPhone. I am using css sprites. I stumbled upon `ontouchstart` but don't know how to use that. Can anyone help me over it?"}
{"_id": "131510", "title": "Why do .NET shops seem to prefer Crystal Report over RDLC reports?", "text": "I am currently using RDLC reports. But when interviewing for .NET jobs, they frequently ask \"Have you worked with Crystal Reports?\". Why do they like Crystal Reports when Visual Studio already has RDLC reports integrated?"}
{"_id": "69538", "title": "Are outdated comments an urban myth?", "text": "I constantly see people making the claim that \"comments tend to become outdated.\" The thing is, I think I have seen maybe two or three outdated comments my entire career. Outdated information in separate documents happens all the time, but in my experience outdated comments in the code itself are exceedingly rare. Have I just been lucky in who I work with? Are certain industries more prone to this problem than others? Do you have _specific_ examples of recent outdated comments you've seen? Or are outdated comments more of a theoretical problem than an actual one?"}
{"_id": "204929", "title": "Where to Perform Authentication in REST API Server?", "text": "I am working on a set of REST APIs that needs to be secured so that only authenticated calls will be performed. There will be multiple web apps to service these APIs. Is there a best-practice approach as to where the authentication should occur? I have thought of two possible places.   1. Have each web app perform the authentication by using a shared authentication service. This seems to be in line with tools like Spring Security, which is configured at the web app level.   2. Protect each web app with a \"gateway\" for security. In this approach, the web app never receives unauthenticated calls. This seems to be the approach of Apache HTTP Server Authentication. With this approach, would you use Apache or nginx to protect it, or something else in between Apache/nginx and your web app? For additional reference, the authentication is similar to services like AWS that have a non-secret identifier combined with a shared secret key. I am also considering using HMAC. Also, we are writing the web services in Java using Spring. **Update:** To clarify, each request needs to be authenticated with the identifier and secret key. This is similar to how AWS REST requests work."}
{"_id": "224399", "title": "Product backlog- when do task hours get estimated?", "text": "I am wondering if when developing a product backlog do tasks have hours estimated for them. To confirm, i can talking about a product backlog here not a sprint backlog as I know it does have."}
{"_id": "204927", "title": "iOS In-App Purchases with dynamic content", "text": "I want to built an app that it will support In-App Purchases. In short, user will download the app (with some basic features), and he will have the ability to download extra layers (delivery content) with additional info (e.g. a recipe). I want the content of this layer (the recipe) to be dynamic, and be downloadable (through web services) from a server. What concerns me is, how i will secure the web services to be available, only to the users that have pay for the extra layer (using In-App Purchases)? Is this functionality possible to be implemented in Google Play?"}
{"_id": "154632", "title": "How do you convince the client their application's backend needs a rewrite?", "text": "I have been supporting a LOB winforms application for a client the last 3 years. The application is built with a simple monolithic architecture and uses .NET 2.0. The application is a core part of their operations and its longevity is paramount. It needs to evolve with their evolving business processes, as well as implement improved functionality etc....this brings me to believe that this application needs an overhaul of sorts on the back-end. The problem is changing a back-end is \"invisible\"...i.e. the user never actually sees it. It's a quality of the system that is changing (stability, maintainability, reliability, longevity), not some functional requirement that will be easily seen...i.e. the ROI is not obvious. There is a lot of new functionality to be added to the front-end as well (user experience). I am considering a strategy of changing the back-end over time...i.e. when making a change or adding a feature to the front-end, change those components in the back-end that are affected, eventually you get to everything. How do I convince the client that we need to rebuild the back-end?"}
{"_id": "159207", "title": "Using business objects in view models", "text": "When using reusable business objects, what is considered best practice when building view models? We use an object we call `Builder` to build our view models. One builder for each logical unit of views (orders, users etc), where each unit can contain a number of different view models (orders contains summary, order lines etc). A builder may pull data through one or more standard business objects in order to build a view model. What is considered the better practice when it comes to using business objects/models in view models? **Approach 1** Allow the use of business objects in the view model?               //Business object in some library     public class Order     {         public int OrderNum;         public int NumOrderLines;         //...     }          //Order builder in website     public class OrderBuilder     {         public OrderSummary BuildSummaryForOrder(int OrderNum)         {             Some.Business.Logic.Order obOrder = Some.Business.Logic.GetOrder(OrderNum);             //Any exception handling, additional logic, or whatever                  OrderSummary obModel = new OrderSummary();             obModel.Order = obOrder;                  return obModel;         }     }          //View model     public class OrderSummary     {         public Some.Business.Logic.Order Order;         //Other methods for additional logic based on the order         //and other properties     }      **Approach 2** Take only the necessary data from the business objects               //Business object in some library     public class Order     {         public int OrderNum;         public int NumOrderLines;         //...     }          //Order builder in website     public class OrderBuilder     {         public OrderSummary BuildSummaryForOrder(int OrderNum)         {             Some.Business.Logic.Order obOrder = Some.Business.Logic.GetOrder(OrderNum);             //Any exception handling, additional logic, or whatever                  OrderSummary obModel = new OrderSummary()             {                 OrderNum = obOrder.OrderNum,                 NumOrderLnes = obOrder.NumOrderLines,             }                  return obModel;         }     }          //View model     public class OrderSummary     {         public int OrderNum;         public int NumOrderLines         //Other methods for additional logic based on the order         //and other properties     }      I can see the benefits and drawbacks to both, but I wonder if there's an accepted approach? In approach 1, there's no duplication of code around the models, but it creates a dependency on the business logic. In approach 2, you take only the data needed for the view, but you duplicate code around models."}
{"_id": "159206", "title": "Strategy for writing a logic program", "text": "I have had a hard time learning logic programming thus far, and my request for outside resources on this site was met with some opprobrium, so perhaps this question better addresses both my needs and the requirements of this community: Is there a step-by-step approach to writing a problem in Prolog or related logic languages? For example, I initially found recursive functions difficult to create myself, though I could more or less understand those that I read, until the I learned the following approach (presented roughly and for example purposes only!):   1. Describe the base case, i.e. the smallest form of the problem.   2. Figure out how to combine the results of recursive cases, i.e. add numbers, cons elements, etc. Seeing that there were a few common patterns here helped immensely!   3. Figure out how to break the results of a larger recursive case up, i.e. cdr down list, subtract, etc. Again, seeing the limited number of common patters was key! So, a clear description of a related process for tackling a logic problem might be very useful."}
{"_id": "224392", "title": "Syntactic Sugar for old languages", "text": "I first learned about the existence of syntactic sugar languages, like CoffeeScript and SASS while working in Rails. This got me thinking... why do we not have well-known (if any at all) syntactic sugar for languages like C, C++ and Java? Imagine a language that reads like Python or Ruby that can be preprocessed to C, and then compiled to generate really fast code that also looks beautiful. For example, instead of:               #include <stdio.h>          int divide(int a, int b)     {         if(b != 0)             return a / b;              return 0;     }          int main()     {         int a, b;              scanf(\"%d\", &a);         scanf(\"%d\", &b);              printf(\"%d\", divide(a, b));              return 0;     }      Why not have:               include stdio.h          fn divide(int a, int b):       a/b if b != 0       ret 0          fn main:       int a, b            scanf '%d', a       scanf '%d', b            print '%d', divide(a,b)       ret 0      And have this preprocess down to the same C code above? Why stick to language implementations that are either fast _or_ easy to read when you could have both?"}
{"_id": "224393", "title": "How to avoid duplication of code related to shared entities in the repository pattern?", "text": "I'm building a repository for a large CRM schema that has a high number of relations between entities. Some of the entities are referenced by almost all entities, e.g. Person and Company. Where I have an aggregate root such as Order, that addresses Order Header, Order Lines etc. In the case where the Order is from a new Customer, I need to insert a Company and a Person record at the same time... so far so good. The difficulty is that this is the situation with very many **other** aggregate roots. I don't want to have a private method `insertPerson(IPerson)` in every single repository implementation. I have a Customer repository that already has public `InsertCustomer(ICustomer)` method, which persists a Company and a person record. But my reading indicates that repositories shouldn't depend on each other. If this is a case where it is okay for repositories to depend on each other, what is the best way to go about it? Should I inject the Customer Repository into the Order repository constuctor, pass it as a parameter to the methods that need it, or never commit this evil and duplicate the identical code in all repositories, in case those repositories need to specialise that code for their specific contexts?"}
{"_id": "241582", "title": "How to refactor my design, if it seems to require multiple inheritance?", "text": "Recently I made a question about Java classes implementing methods from two sources (kinda like multiple inheritance). However, it was pointed out that this sort of need may be a sign of a design flaw. Hence, it is probably better to address my current design rather than trying to simulate multiple inheritance. * * * Before tackling the actual problem, some background info about a particular mechanic in this framework: It is a simple game development framework. Several components allocate some memory (like pixel data), and it is necessary to get rid of it as soon as you don't need it. Sprites are an example of this. Anyway, I decided to implement something ala Manual-Reference-Counting from Objective-C. Certain classes, like Sprites, contain an internal counter, which is increased when you call `retain()`, and decreased on `release()`. Thus the `Resource` abstract class was created. Any subclass of this will obtain the `retain()` and `release()` implementations for free. When its count hits 0 (nobody is using this class), it will call the `destroy()` method. The subclass needs only to implement `destroy()`. This is because I don't want to rely on the Garbage Collector to get rid of unused pixel data. * * * Game objects are all subclasses of the Node class - which is the main construction block, as it provides info such as position, size, rotation, etc. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/97UIS.png) See, two classes are used often in my game. Sprites and Labels. Ah... but wait. Sprites contain pixel data, remember? And as such, they need to extend `Resource`. ![enter image description here](http://i.imgur.com/KwTcsLM.png) But this, of course, can't be done. Sprites ARE nodes, hence they must subclass `Node`. But heck, they are resources too. * * *   * **Why not making Resource an interface?**   * Because I'd have to re-implement `retain()` and `release()`. I am avoiding this in virtue of not writing the same code over and over (remember that there are multiple classes that need this memory-management system).   * **Why not composition?**   * Because I'd still have to implement methods in `Sprite` (and similar classes) that essentially call the methods of `Resource`. I'd still be writing the same code over and over! * * * What is your advice in this situation, then?"}
{"_id": "241583", "title": "What license is the GPL License licensed under?", "text": "The actual GPL License (that is, the _text_ that contains the words _\"The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed...\"_ ) is a document; I would assume therefore that it is under some sort of copyright? What license is this license licensed under? That is, if I were to include the body of the GPL License in my own projects (and perhaps create a derivative work) what limitations am I under?"}
{"_id": "130873", "title": "Practical programming test in interview for flex programmer", "text": "i'm looking for the best way to test a candidate for a position of flex programmer with a pracitical\\interactive test in front of a computer 45-60 minutes test. need to test flex basic knowledge, abillity to solve UI programming challenges and maybe some flex mobile. any ideas?"}
{"_id": "74895", "title": "Library planning", "text": "I have been searching all over the internet for exact answer for my question. I am hoping you can help me out. I wonder how professional programmers/coders planing their projects? Libraries, subpackages? For example when creating a user system, how do you aproach it? How do you decide your classes, functions, requirements, database structure, depencies... Here is a example of user system planning i tried. Am I doing it right? [planing] ## General   * User identity should be selectable (email, username etc.)   * Passwords: use sha1. mixed with salt   * email   * user meta (a placeholder for user profile)   * user group   * user access (group based)   * invitation   * referer   * register and last login dates   * .... ## Auth System ### Register   * Required fields:     * Username     * email     * password   * First Check     * Username, email, password fields are filled? [/planing] I am trying this aproach with planning. Is there a software to do a planning like this? What should I ask myself? what is the important questions that guide me to the end? Thank you for your advices that you will send."}
{"_id": "17566", "title": "What kind of things can you learn from a guy who only hacks existing code?", "text": "At my previous job I was the lead programmer and I worked with this guy who was a self-admitted hacker. We respected each other and had a great relationship. The company was much better off because we blended our talents. I would tend to look for an elegant, graceful solution that we could add to our code library. He would tend to find, tweak, and fit some strange piece of code into a solution. One of the most valuable lessons I learned from him was you don't always have to build the solution from scratch, there's a ton of code out there you can borrow from. What kind of things have you learned from a hacker? **Edit - Added My Definition of Hacker**   By hacker I mean someone who for the most part, cannot create something from scratch. However they are very good at morphing code that others have written."}
{"_id": "229571", "title": "Where should the ACL handler be called in a MVC architecture?", "text": "Thinking about Access Control Lists bound to a web MVC architecture, I have a doubt on where the verification should be done. Within Models? Controllers? FrontController? Imagine a multiple module web application (like a website). I have a public site and a restricted admin zone.   * All public site pages are acessible by anyone.    * The restricted admin area is only accessed by an authenticated user.    * There are some access levels for the users, such as root, admin and regular user. I gave this some thought during my lunch time today and some ideas came out. First, I needed to ask myself this question: > Is access control part of business logic? After some time, I figure out that the answer should be **no** for most cases. Normally, for the situation I described, the business logic of the public area is about the same of the restricted one. When is not exact the same, what I normally do is to create a superset of both business logic rules, that contains all logic needed. So, even if there are several modules in my application, I normally have only one model layer. Doing the ACL within my controllers leads to code duplication, since I'd have to check it everytime I'd need. Also, I'd get a high coupling between controllers and the ACL component. Thinking about putting it inside FrontController seems to be the right approach. In deed, my initial thought was to put the ACL handler as a dependency for the FrontController. This approach would have controller methods (actions) as **resources** of the ACL, creating roles for my users. Some pseudo-code (mixing Java, C#, PHP):               aclHandler = new DefaultAcl();     aclHandler.addRole('none'); // not authenticated     aclHandler.addRole('user');     aclHandler.addRole('admin', extend='user');     aclHandler.addRole('root', extend='admin');          aclHandler.addUser('john', 'root');     aclHandler.addUser('mary', 'admin');     aclHandler.addUser('jane', 'user');          aclHandler.addResource('admin.content.create'); // MODULE.CONTROLLER.ACTION     aclHandler.addResource('admin.content.view');     aclHandler.addResource('admin.content.edit');     aclHandler.addResource('admin.content.remove');          aclHandler.addResource('public.content.view');          aclHandler.allow('*', 'public.*');          aclHandler.deny('*', 'admin.*'); // deny from all     aclHandler.allow('user', 'admin.content.view'); // allow user to view content     aclHandler.allow('admin', 'admin.content.{edit,create}'); // allow admin to edit and create content     aclHandler.allow('root', '*'); // root can do anything      This way, my FrontController would have something like:               class DefaultFrontController implements FrontControllerInterface {         AclInterface acl {get};         User currentUser {get;set};         public DefaultFrontController(AclInterface acl, User user) {             this.acl = acl;             this.currentUser = user;             // ...         }              public void dispatch(ControllerRequest request, ControllerResponse response) {             try {                 this.acl.checkPrivileges(request.resource, this.currentUser);             } catch (AclException e) {                 this.forbiddenAccessCallback(request, response, this.acl, this.currentUser);                 return;             }                  // continue impl...         }     }          fc = new FrontController(aclHandler, new User(name='John', role='root'));     fc.dispatch(...);  // ...      This implementation makes an ACL component a mandatory parameter for the FrontController constructor, so, now it's part of its state. This could be a problem when I don't need an ACL, but can be overpassed by creating a mock implementation of ACL component, like `AllowFromAllAcl`, that would allow any users to do anything. Any ideas? Corrections? Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "220129", "title": "Is logging hours for software work a good idea?", "text": "An employer I'm interviewing for does this, I have never heard of anyone doing it before and honestly I don't like the idea of being micromanaged. How does the community feel about this?"}
{"_id": "111070", "title": "Zoom to Fit Points on Surface", "text": "I'm attempting to develop a piece of functionality using a 3rd party map control in an application that automatically pans/zooms the map surface to the best possible view given points on map. The map should be centered and zoomed in as close as possible without cutting out any points on the map. To determine the maps center point, I averaged all of the points on the map surface. This seems to be working fine, but there may be a better approach. The issue I'm running into is how to appropriately zoom in or out to accommodate all points on the map in the \"best\" possible view. I'm not very familiar with 3D techniques, so any terminology relating to this problem will probably be new to me. I'm not necessarily looking for a specific algorithm (though I certainly wouldn't turn one down). Mostly, I would like to understand the theory behind approaching such a problem so that I can implement it."}
{"_id": "244402", "title": "Message Queue: Which one is the best scenario?", "text": "I write a web crawler. The crawler has 2 steps:   1. get a html page   2. then parse the page I want to use message queue to improve performance and throughput. * * * I think 2 scenarios: ## scenario 1:                   structure:          urlProducer -> queue1 -> urlConsumer -> queue2 -> parserConsumer      urlProducer: get a target url and add it to queue1 urlConsumer: according to the job info, get the html page and add it to queue2 parserConsumer: according to the job info, parse the page ## scenario 2:                   structure:         urlProducer -> queue1 -> urlConsumer         parserProducer-> queue2 -> parserConsumer      urlProducer : get a target url and add it to queue1 urlConsumer: according to the job info, get the html page and write it to db parserProducer: get the html page from db and add it to queue2 parserConsumer: according to the job info, parse the page * * * There are multiple producers or consumers in each structure. scenario1 likes a chaining call. It's difficult to find the point of problem, when occurring errors. scenario2 decouples queue1 and queue2. It's easy to find the point of problem, when occurring errors. I'm not sure the notion is correct. Which one is the best scenario? Or other scenarios? Thanks~"}
{"_id": "254232", "title": "How do developers verify that software requirement changes in one system do not violate a requirement of downstream software systems?", "text": "In my work, I do requirements gathering, analysis and design of business solutions in addition to coding. There are multiple software systems and packages, and developers are expected to work on any of them, instead of being assigned to make changes to only 1 system or just a few systems. How developers ensure they have captured all of the necessary requirements and resolved any conflicting requirements? An example of this type of scenario: Bob the developer is asked to modify the problem ticket system for a hypothetical utility repair business. They contract with a local utility company to provide this service. The old system provides a mechanism for an external customer to create a ticket indicating a problem with utility service at a particular address. There is a scheduling system and an invoicing system that is dependent on this data. Bob's new project is to modify the ticket placement system to allow for multiple addresses to entered by a landlord or other end customer with multiple properties. The invoicing system bills per ticket, but should be modified to bill per address. What practices would help Bob discover that the invoicing system needs to be changed as well? How might Bob discover what other systems in his company might need to be changed in order to support the new changes\\business model? Let's say there is a documented specification for each system involved, but there are many systems and Bob is not familiar with all of them. End of example. We're often in this scenario, and we do have design reviews but management places ultimate responsibility for any defects (business process or software process) on the developer who is doing the design and the work. Some organizations seem to be better at this than others. How do they manage to detect and solve conflicting or incomplete requirements across software systems? We currently have a lot of tribal knowledge and just a few developers who understand the entire business and software chain. This seems highly ineffective and leads to problems at the requirements level."}
{"_id": "254233", "title": "Why do we need to include the .h while everything works when including only the .cpp file?", "text": "Why do we need to include both the `.h` and `.cpp` files , while we can make it works with making just a `.cpp` file and then including it . For example, Creating a `file.h` containing declarations, then creating a `file.cpp` containing definitions and including both on the `main.cpp`. Or, creating a `file.cpp` containing declaration/definitions ( no prototypes ) Including it on the `main.cpp`. Both worked for me , but still can't the difference since i do not have a background on the compiling and linking process ."}
{"_id": "218073", "title": "How to model an address type in DDD?", "text": "I have an `User` entity that has a `Set` of `Address` where `Address` is a value object:               class User{         ...         private Set<Address> addresses;         ...         public setAddresses(Set<Address> addresses){             //set all addresses as a batch         }         ...     }      A `User` can have a `home address` and a `work address`, so I should have something that acts as a look up in the database: **tbl_address_type**               ------------------------------------------------     |    address_type_id       | address_type      |     ------------------------------------------------     |            1             |      work         |     ------------------------------------------------     |            2             |      home         |     ------------------------------------------------      and correspondingly **tbl_address**               -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     |    address_id       |     address_description      |address_type_id|    user_id   |     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     |          1          |      123 main street         |      1        |      100     |     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     |          2          |      456 another street      |      1        |      100     |     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     |          3          |      789 long street         |      2        |      200     |     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     |          4          |      023 short street        |      2        |     200      |     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------        1. Should the address type be modeled as an Entity or Value type? and Why?   2. Is it OK for the `Address` Value object to hold a reference to the Entity `AdressType` (in case it was modeled as an entity)? Is this something feasible using Hibernate/NHibernate?   3. If a user can change his home address, should I expose a `User.updateHomeAddress(Address homeAddress)` function on the `User` entity itself? How can I enforce that the client passes a Home address and not a work address in this case? (a sample implementation is most welcomed)   4. If I want to get the User's home address via `User.getHomeAddress()` function, must I load the whole addresses array then loop it and check each for its type till I find the correct type then return it? Is there a more efficient way than this?"}
{"_id": "218075", "title": "Is there a certain way that I have to include a library and its license?", "text": "I know this may be a dumb question, but I'm only 15 so I don't really know how the legal part of it works. When I choose a .dll to be included in my project, Visual Studio only includes the .dll file with my project (of course) so I just copy the license and stick it in a folder called licenses. But now, I'm going to be making a program for a contest so I need to make sure I have the licenses done right or I'll get disqualified. So is there any specific location I have to keep the licenses in my project, is there a way for Visual Studio to automatically copy the license the way it does with .dll files and is there anything else I have to watch out for legally? PS: If it matters, the libraries I'm planning on using right now are WriteableBitmapEx and AvalonDock Thanks"}
{"_id": "218078", "title": "Unit testing to prove balanced tree", "text": "I've just built a self-balancing tree (red-black) in Java (language should be irrelevant for this question though), and I'm trying to come up with a good means of testing that it's properly balanced. I've tested all the basic tree operations, but I can't think of a way to test that it is indeed well and truly balanced. I've tried inserting a large dictionary of words, both pre-sorted and un-sorted. With a balanced tree, those should take roughly the same amount of time, but an unbalanced tree would take significantly longer on the already-sorted list. But I don't know how to go about testing for that in any reasonable, reproducible way. (I've tried doing millisecond tests on these, but there's no noticeable difference - probably because my source data is too small.) Is there a better way to be sure that the tree is really balanced? Say, by looking at the tree after it's created and seeing how deep it goes? (That is, without modifying the tree itself by adding a depth field to each node, which is just wasteful if you don't need it for anything other than testing.)"}
{"_id": "254239", "title": "Isolated Unit Tests and Fine Grained Failures", "text": "One of the reasons often given to write unit tests which mock out all dependencies and are thus completely isolated is to ensure that when a bug exists, only the unit tests for that bug will fail. (Obviously, an integration tests may fail as well). That way you can readily determine where the bug is. But I don't understand why this is a useful property. If my code were undergoing spontaneous failures, I could see why its useful to readily identify the failure point. But if I have a failing test its either because I just wrote the test or because I just modified the code under test. In either case, I already know which unit contains a bug. What is the useful in ensuring that a test only fails due to bugs in the unit under test? I don't see how it gives me any more precision in identifying the bug than I already had."}
{"_id": "46420", "title": "What are the pros (and cons) of using \u201cSign in with Twitter/Facebook\u201d for a new website?", "text": "Myself and a friend are looking to launch a little forum site. I\u2019m considering using the \u201cSign in with Facebook/Twitter\u201d APIs, possibly exclusively (a la e.g. Lanyrd), for user login. I haven\u2019t used either of these before, nor run a site with user logins at all. What are the pros (and cons) of these APIs? Specifically:   1. **What benefits do I get as a developer from using them?** What drawbacks are there?   2. Do end users actually like/dislike them?   3. Have you experienced any technical/logistical issues with these APIs specifically? Here are the pros and cons I\u2019ve got so far: ### Pros   * More convenient for the user (\u201cregister\u201d with two clicks, sign in with one)   * Possibly no need to maintain our own login system ###  Cons   * No control over our login process   * Exclude Facebook/Twitter users who are worried about us having some sort of access to their accounts   * Users\u2019 accounts on our site are compromised if their Facebook/Twitter accounts are compromised.   * And if we don\u2019t maintain our own alternative login system:      * Dependency on Facebook/Twitter for our login system     * Exclude non-Facebook/non-Twitter users from our site"}
{"_id": "46425", "title": "What are good requirements for a QA engineer?", "text": "We're hiring a QA person and I am supposed to come up with some interview questions. The truth is, I don't know much about what a good QA engineer should know, much less what good interview questions might involve. Does anyone have suggestions? Some information: The environment is two separate (but intertwined) web applications for the Microsoft stack (ASP.NET, SQL Server, IIS)."}
{"_id": "57333", "title": "Scriptable user-interfaces/frameworks for automated UI testing", "text": "I'm planning on using scripting for automated UI testing. Main application is written in c#, and I want it to be scriptable, so I can do everything end-user can do, but programmatically. I'll avoid opinion-based questions like \"What do you think of software that provides an interface for scripting, like VBA macros in Excel?\", or \"Can this be future of all programming, big and small?\" although some inside would be great. Here goes the question:   * Which is most suitable to the purpose of building such an interface for your own application, dll-based approach or by parsing own scripting language?"}
{"_id": "45195", "title": "What are the definitive guidelines for custom Error Handling in ASP.NET MVC 3?", "text": "The process of doing custom error handling in ASP.NET MVC (3 in this case) seems to be incredibly neglected. I've read through the various questions and answers here, on the web, help pages for various tools (like Elmah), but I feel like I've gone in a complete circle and still don't have the best solution. With your help, perhaps we can set a new standard approach for error handling. I'd like to keep things simple and not over-engineer this. Here are my goals: **For Server errors/exceptions:**   1. Display debugging information in dev   2. Display friendly error page in production   3. Log errors and email them to administrator in production   4. Return 500 HTTP Status Code **For 404 Not Found errors:**   1. Display friendly error page   2. Log errors and email them to administrator in production   3. Return 404 HTTP Status Code Is there a way to meet these goals with ASP.NET MVC?"}
{"_id": "246809", "title": "System state design composition", "text": "Consider the following Java code:               public class HumanStateImpl implements HumanState {         private boolean alive;         private Color skinColor;              // getters and setters, other state fields              @Override         public boolean isAlive() {             return alive;         }     }      Now imagine I want to have a class that represents `HandState`, and a corresponding `HandController`. **Is it better to inject the state objects of each level of state separately, or compose them into one most-specific state object?** If it depends, what does it depend on? To clarify what I mean, here is an implementation of both sides, respectively:               public class HandState {         private final Side handSide;         private boolean closed;     }          public class HandController {         private final HumanState humanState;         private final HandState handState;              public HandController(HumanState humanState, HandState handState) {             this.humanState = humanState;             this.handState = handState;         }     }      Versus:               public class HandState implements HumanState {         private final HumanState outerState;         private final Side handSide;              public HandState(HumanState outerState, Side handSide) {             this.outerState = outerState;             this.handSide = handSide;         }              @Override         public boolean isAlive() {             return outerState.isAlive();         }     }          public class HandController {         private final HandState handState;              public HandController(HandState handState) {             this.handState = handState;         }     }"}
{"_id": "246803", "title": "What defines the dimensionality of an array?", "text": "I know that when we speak about an array having 1, 2, or 4 dimensions, we mean arrays like this:               1: [0]     2: [0,0]     3: [0,0,0]     4: [0,0,0,0]     ...      Is the first 'axis' of an array the only thing that defines its dimensionality? Can an array with 4 dimensions be represented these ways?               [0, [0,0,0]]     [[0,0], [0,0]]      or does this fall under some other definition of dimensionality? Another option is that a 4-dimensional array would be of the form               [ [[ [0,..],[0,..] ], [ [0,..],[0,..] ]], [[ [0,..],[0,..] ], [ [0,..],[0,..] ]], [[ [0,..],[0,..] ], [ [0,..],[0,..] ]], [[ [0,..],[0,..] ], [ [0,..],[0,..] ]] ]      e.g.               [        [         [ [0,..],[0,..] ],          [ [0,..],[0,..] ]       ],        [         [ [0,..],[0,..] ],          [ [0,..],[0,..] ]       ],        [         [ [0,..],[0,..] ],          [ [0,..],[0,..] ]       ],        [         [ [0,..],[0,..] ],          [ [0,..],[0,..] ]       ]     ]      Is this just a nomenclature nuance that I'm bringing up? Is this definition relative to the field in which we are discussing (computation vs. physical systems)? * * * _(the thoughtscame from this question.)_"}
{"_id": "237659", "title": "When adding 7, 3, and 1 into a red-black tree, do I need to perform a right rotation?", "text": "If I add the following in this order into a red-black tree:               tree.Put(7)     tree.Put(3)     tree.Put(1)                   7                  3             /   rotate(3)      / \\            3    ----->        1   7           /          1      should I perform a right rotation after the insertion of `1` ? I am reading the algorithms bible but it the pseudocode doesn't indicate what to do."}
{"_id": "81939", "title": "using the presence of a value to control flow?", "text": "I have the following situation. I have a factory method that returns a matrix. This matrix can be calculated at two levels of accuracy: level1 and level2. In order to calculate the matrix, I need to pass a bunch of information to the factory method, and this information is nicely packed in another object Info. Info is passed to the factory method, and the matrix is returned. Info contains details that are needed for both levels of accuracy. a set of these details are used only by level1. If level2 is needed, info must contain additional data which are used to evaluate level2 accuracy. I have two strategies to perform the decision:   1. I pass the Info object to the factory method. If it finds the info for level2, it computes level2 accuracy. If it finds only info for level1, it computes level1.   2. you pass the factory method both the Info data and the requested accuracy level, then use only the Info contents useful for the appropriate level. There may be a case where level2 is requested, but Info does not contain any level2 information. In that case the program will throw an exception. Which option would you consider better ?"}
{"_id": "201833", "title": "Passing a Context around with dependency injection", "text": "In the project I'm working on, I'm using Guice and trying to do as much as possible with Dependency Injection. However, there's one little snag; many of my objects rely on an object `Context`. This is an immutable object but has some information which most of the other objects need to function properly. It never changes for classes that are all working within the same `Context`, but my application must be able to support different `Context`s at the same time, in the same scope. I can think of three ways to solve my problem:   1. Currently, I've found myself writing lots of code with AssistedInject, which almost always has methods like `Factory.create(Context c)`. All my code that depends on `Context` is being created in this manner, even if they are otherwise simple.   2. I'm starting to consider using `Provider`s, and changing every line of `factory.create(context)` to `obj = provider.get(); obj.setContext(c);` but I don't want to rely on my code to do both calls, I like that the compiler makes sure that every object has it's `context` and that the `context` cannot change (it never will).   3. My research pointed me to this thread: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16316719/guice-assisted-injection-deeper-down-the-dependency-hierarchy The idea of pairing each `Context` to a `childInjector` which has one line `bind(Context.class).toInstance(ContextFactory.makeInstance(args))`, but I'm not sure how to ensure that everything is using the correct child injector. This seems like it might be best, but other than that thread (which isn't my scenario) I'm not sure how to do it, or if it's right for my situation. Here's an sscce of what might be done by option 3:               public class GuiceChildTest {         public static void main(String... args) {             Injector inj = Guice.createInjector(new ParentModule());             Injector fooChildOne = inj.createChildInjector(new FooModule(new Foo(10)));             Injector fooChildTwo = inj.createChildInjector(new FooModule(new Foo(20)));                  Bar bar = fooChildOne.getInstance(Bar.class);             System.out.println(bar.baz());                  bar = fooChildTwo.getInstance(Bar.class);             System.out.println(bar.baz());         }              private static class ParentModule extends AbstractModule {             @Override             protected void configure() {             }         }              private static class Bar {             private MyInterface intf;             @Inject             public Bar(MyInterface in) {                 this.intf = in;             }                  public int baz() {                 return intf.doSomething();             }         }              private static class FooModule extends AbstractModule {             private Foo f;             public FooModule(Foo f) {                 this.f = f;             }                  @Override             protected void configure() {                 bind(MyInterface.class).toInstance(f);             }            }                 private static class Foo implements MyInterface {             private int i;             public Foo(int i) {                 this.i = i;             }             @Override             public int doSomething() {                 return i;             }         }              private static interface MyInterface {             int doSomething();         }     }"}
{"_id": "201830", "title": "Business issues in the issue tracker?", "text": "Most issue trackers are targeted towards developers. But when working in a small team that includes business people: does it makes sense for them to put non-dev issues inside the tracker? I must say I have never heard of that combination. In my full-time job the business things are done somewhere else. But in a startup where you have limited cash, why not put business todos and dev todos in the same tracker?"}
{"_id": "124461", "title": "What programming languages and skills are required in addition when building freelance platform with python?", "text": "I have a question about compatibility and co-integration of programming languages, databases, frameworks, libraries, different API and more (together referred as \u201citems\u201d). I have added a list of items that are planned to be used when building freelance platform/marketplaced, but I would like to know if I am missing anything, or if given combination could result in some compatibility issues. I\u2019ve done a research on mentioned items, but there is still a list of things that are not clear, so I would be grateful to get more information on the topic. Sorry, if I am bad with terminology, codenames, or missing any valuable points to get accurate answer \u2013 I will add any additional information, if asked for clarification in any part. Here is basic information to help answer the question: We are looking to build a freelance platform with a need of:   \\- high level of modularity and scalability;   \\- autonomous development, which is to be processed by semi/fully-independent task groups;   \\- ability to integrate/import a lot of third-party APIs (ie. Facebook connect).   Let\u2019s take oDesk for benchmarking (thus at least such functionality possibilities are needed), where some of them are:   \\- Business processes / work-flow (client \u2013 freelancer connection, client \u2013 consultant connection, etc.);   \\- User listing and detailed profiling (portfolios, completed projects, etc.);   \\- Semantic search;   \\- \u2026 (ie. at least full currently existing freelance platforms functionality). I\u2019ve developed a list of items that will be used in process of building the freelance platform, which is as follows: **Programming language (and framework): PHP (Zend) vs. Python (Django)**   Decision criteria: modularity (ease of updating individual modules | existing library of modules | ease of creating new modules) | availability of highly skilled work-force | development time | standardization (ease of autonomous development). Result was choosing Python v2.X/v3.X over PHP5.X. Decision was based on part of decision criteria (arguments for Python):   Possibility to update/edit certain module in most cases without a need to change other modules;   No huge hassle to create new modules from scratch (or at least does not take more time or resources as compared to the same result in php);   Approach of python developers seems to create more opportunities for autonomous development (person is developing in a way that others can develop their modules (or fragments of modules) separately, or take over the task quite easily from the point where this person ended \u2013 ie. updating).   Overall Python seems as a more long-run oriented solution, which does not create any big drawbacks in a short-run. **Database: MySQL vs. \u2026:**   Decision criteria: functionality | popularity | initial costs | overheads   MySQL was chosen over MsSQL, as it seems to have fully sufficient functionality (in free version) and can be upgraded to enterprise version when it will make financial sense in terms of bandwidth overheads over licensing fees. **Business processes: Apache ODE vs. Oracle BPEL vs. \u2026:**   Decision rules: python compatibility | modularity | customization | availability of highly skilled work-force   No clear decision here yet. Current front-runner seems to be Apache ODE, but adopting modules from one of python libraries, customizing them and creating new ones seems to be attractive option at the moment as well. **Front-end: HTML4/HTML5 + CSS2/CSS3 + AJAX;**   In the beginning there will be web-based UI only, afterwards we will also include desktop and mobile UI. I\u2019ve listed items that are currently considered in order to develop the platform, please refer to any of the points in decision making if You think that they are flawed, and if I should consider more, or different decision criteria, which could influence which item to pick, etc. **Other things under consideration**   1) Have I picked proper combination of items considering they will be used for developing freelance platform; (1.1) Am I missing any items that will be necessary (ie. programming language / framework / platform); 2) Is it reasonable to use django framework to save time on development and could it result in some major scalability issues; (2.1) What libraries should be considered using to acquire as many prebuilt modules for freelance platform as possible; 3) BPEL (ie. using Apache ODE) can be adopted for a variety of business processes (including client-freelancer connection), but wouldn\u2019t it result in great restrictions of what solutions can we offer; (3.1) Would it be better to consider developing our own modules in python to achieve needed result; (3.2) Or is there any python library that supports BPEL; 4) Is it possible to connect python with php in terms of using php libraries (example: http://code.google.com/p/php-excel/) when ones are not available in python;(4.1) If yes, what modules/platforms/solutions are needed for it; I will update any parts if needed as soon as I get feedback on it. Looking for Your answers. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "237657", "title": "Implementing Generic Routines", "text": "Is it possible to implement generic routines in any language (C#, Java, etc). By generic routines I mean, in specific event Handlers. Lets say, I have 2 Buttons and 2 text boxes. One Button, when pressed, takes the first text box text and converts to Uppercase and second button prints the length of the string in the other text box. Now, Can I have a function as               button(type, textbox) {     if(type==1)     /*Convert to upper case*/     else if(type==2)     /*Print the length*/     }      The type takes any button as input and further processes it. I want to implement this because of redundancy in my code and I want to make my code portable to other languages. So that I need to modify only the syntax to make it work. Is it feasible?"}
{"_id": "81937", "title": "Can I use \"user stories\" for process improvement tasks?", "text": "We currently use JIRA to track our development work. My management wants to format and categorize everything as \"User Stories,\" including non-software development related tasks. For example: \"As a test manager, can I perform testing of the application using only automated tests and no manual testing so that I can test the application as efficiently as possible? Acceptance Criteria: 1\\. Convert 50 existing manual tests to fully automated tests 2\\. Tests must execute in less than 1 hour\" I want to get a sense from the community if it makes sense to use \"user stories\" for work that supports the software development process, is not done by the programmers, and does not directly results in deliverable code. Or should this be handled/classified differently (for example, in JIRA)? Updated 6/7/2011 - Rephrased question to focus on \"user story\" term."}
{"_id": "201838", "title": "Building a web application that is almost completely rendered by Javascript, while back end only delivers Json. Do or don't?", "text": "As a programmer, and taking into account the overall \"funness\" of the process, I'm tempted to start a project in Sinatra where the back end's sole concern is the logic, and returning a Json API, and then writing a javascript application that would interact with that API for rendering the actual content to the user. I'm fairly new to programming and I've never done anything remotely like this before. What would be the pitfalls, advantages and disadvantages of completely separating logic from presentation in such a way? Any examples of this being done in the wild? One concern off the top of my head is how would search engines respond to a site whose content is almost entirely served as Json..."}
{"_id": "128744", "title": "T-SQL stored procs orders of magnitude faster than LINQ", "text": "According to answers I've seen on stackoverflow, stored procedures (and to a lesser extent db functions) tend to perform better vs. LINQ + ORM frameworks (e.g. Entity Framework). I want to determine if the performance difference is large enough to justify an increase in development time, assuming it takes more time to write equivalent, reasonably complex query operations in T-SQL vs. LINQ. In which scenarios is there an order-of-magnitude (or at least a very large constant factor) difference in running time, between a performance-optimized stored proc and its equivalent, performance-optimized LINQ counterpart? Or for scalar- or table- valued functions vs. the LINQ equivalent? Hopefully, it is not too difficult to see that this question follows the guidelines per the FAQ. It's not asking a subjective question like, \"which is better, T-SQL or LINQ?\". It's asking for a few specific scenarios (can give abstract or concrete examples) where there is a significant difference in performance. If that still doesn't make sense to you, and you still think this question is not constructive and should be closed, please leave an explanation why if you can."}
{"_id": "80044", "title": "Is Selling GPL licensed Software Effective?", "text": "Let us say that someone writes a piece of software and licenses it under the GPL. Then they go on to sell it. Will this be effective? Won't someone just buy it and redistribute at a lower price? Do any of you know GPL licensed software that is being sold? Also if you know of any instances where someone bought such software and redistributed at a lower price/free please share it here."}
{"_id": "163141", "title": "Is Flash disappearing?", "text": "http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cp-flash/all/all People don't use Flash anymore? Why?"}
{"_id": "163140", "title": "Are there similarities between operating system kernels and programming language kernels?", "text": "I know very little about Smalltalk but I noticed that there's a frequent mention of the \"kernel\". Dan Ingalls prime maintainer of several implementations of Smalltalk also worked on a Javascript environment called \"Lively Kernel\" and in Peter Siebel's book he kept mentionning the \"kernel\". I cannot help but think that it is no coincidence that the creators of Smalltalk used the name of a (central) part of operating systems to refer to a particular component of their language. Was it because Smalltalk intended to act as an operating system? Was it because theory behind programming languages and operating systems have a lot in common? What is the reason behind the common appelation of the two components?"}
{"_id": "254584", "title": "Error Handling Strategies in Multithreaded Environments", "text": "**TL;DR** What error generating and handling strategies do you use in Multithreaded code intended for use by others and why do you use them? If applicable, state what programming paradigm it's useful for. I'm more interested in imperative, concurrent environments but any in general will be useful. I'm writing a little concurrency library that's currently a pet/C++11 learning project but may be used internally by my work later. In terms of the domain it's more in the realm of DSP and media streaming but since this will be used in a game engine I need fairly strong error handling. My big block at the moment is not getting my head around the parallel code and data structures but how to do error handling and reporting. My main experience in large systems is games but I'm usually using libraries, not designing them. I'm just looking for different strategies and how they might be used in different situations as this is a rather big gap in my knowledge. My biggest area of concern is employing a strategy so that if the program can recover, it should. If it does recover, there should be a way to notify a user as to what's happened through some kind of mechanism. Already I have some some data structures that although they can recover, memory may be leaked if a destructor fails for example. Some Approaches:   * Handle exceptions for which you can safely recover from inside the library, but let fatal exceptions propagate to users of the library to indicate that object is now in an undefined state. It's my preferred approach in single threaded environments but this approach won't communicate bad state to other threads.   * When an exception occurs that would put a data structure in an unrecoverable state, tear down the data structure and set a flag to block any more operations over that data structure then raise a general exception to the end user. This is hard for lock-free algorithms.    * Forward an error state through parallel computations. Works well for Kahn process networks and other high level concurrency models. No so helpful if a primitive supporting the high level model has failed.    * Terminate the thread/task that caused the exception. Works well for thread local data/computation but not much of a solution for shared data. Just as a note, I know that a good library will probably use a mix of more than just what's listed above. I just don't have the experience to know what strategy is good where for any sufficiently large system."}
{"_id": "254482", "title": "Where to put business rules before deleting entity", "text": "I have a Windows Forms App which has two classes:               Public Class Account         Public Property Number as String         Public Property Invoices as List(Of Invoice)     End Class          Public Class AccountRepository         Public Sub Delete(account as Account)              ...db access code here...         End Sub     End Class      The business logic is that an `Account` can't be deleted while it still has `Invoices` associated with it. How and where should I do the validation? _Note I could also do it via table restrictions on db foreign keys._"}
{"_id": "128749", "title": "How to prove an application is built on a bad codebase?", "text": "I'm currently reviewing a system built by some developers that previously worked at my job. The system works pretty well from a user's point of view, but when delving into code review it's a utter mess. I'm more than convinced that the way the application is built won't hold up for future updates, let alone high increases in usage. The problem is that I know how bad it is, but my superiors don't. How can I prove it to my manager so he actually sees the problem and can be convinced to do minimal triage on the current codebase, and in the near future start a new line of development for the next version of the application?"}
{"_id": "163148", "title": "Best approach for utility class library using Visual Studio", "text": "I have a collection of classes that I commonly (but not always) use when developing WPF applications. The trouble I have is that if I want to use only a subset of the classes, I have three options:   1. **Distribute the entire DLL.** While this approach makes code maintenance easier, it does require distributing a large DLL for minimal code functionality.   2. **Copy the classes I need to the current application.** This approach solves the problem of not distributing unused code, but completely eliminates code maintenance.   3. **Maintain each class/feature in a separate project.** This solves both problems from above, but then I have dramatically increased the number of files that need to be distributed, and it bloats my VS solution with tiny projects. Ideally, I'd like a combination of 1 & 3: A single project that contains all of my utility classes but builds to a DLL containing only the classes that are used in the current application. Are there any other common approaches that I haven't considered? Is there any way to do what I want? Thank you."}
{"_id": "200126", "title": "Violation of the C definition?", "text": "The C standard states that any character in the machine's standard printing set will never be negative.But the following code:               char c=1234;     printf(\"%d\\t%c\",c,c);      gives a negative output and prints a strange character,meaning that the character is in machine's printing character set.Is the C standard being violated here?"}
{"_id": "139645", "title": "Is it a good idea to write requirements specifications by stories?", "text": "We're using agile methods in my current project at the moment, and we have heaps of stories like these:   * As an assistant, I want to pay a customer a refund so that they can get some money when they request it   * As a customer, I want to pay for a purchase so that I can receive my item. How we've done it so far is to pick the most important stories every sprint and elaborate it into a number of formal requirements specs (we group some of the stories that are similar together in the same spec). Depending on the story, it could just be a button on a screen or an entire workflow. The problem now is that because there's so many stories, it's not immediately clear, for any part of the system which stories relate to it. It works at the time of developers, every sprint the devs just get a spec outlining what they need to do and the changes they need to make. But in terms of maintaining this story list and for testing, its starting to get really hard tracking bugs and in general just maintaining the specs, because one piece of functionality in the screen might have been documented in a number of different places due to it being split by story. Is writing specs based on stories a good idea? Have we written the stories in the wrong way?"}
{"_id": "139643", "title": "How do you deal with lack of consensus on methodology and practices, without direction from management?", "text": "Until recently, I was the sole developer on several in-house projects. A few months ago, we added 0.4 of an FTE to our development team. It's nice not being alone on our projects, but it hasn't been easy. A bit of background: when I started in my position, there was no use of source control, issue tracking, or even testing. I implemented all of these practices myself, and the improvement in productivity has been noticed by multiple stakeholders. Our new 0.4FTE is basically 40% of the time of an employee in another department. He's a competent programmer, but collaboration has been difficult. Several months in, I'm still experiencing:   * Emailed source files rather than repositories being checked in to Git.   * Use of email and instant messaging instead of the issue tracker to discuss the project.   * Resistance to code reviews.   * Ego getting in the way of pair programming or early collaboration on components (i.e., I don't want to show you the source for this yet, it's ugly). Our department is weird. Our team lead has to divide his time between project management, system administration, and hardware installs/support. We got into probably the worst argument we've ever had over how I expected to interact with another developer vs. \"This is just how he is, you need to email in addition to submitting an issue, etc.\" My question is, how do you deal with this? I've tried various approaches; refusing to acknowledge issues without a ticket, refusing to look at code not checked in to our Git repo, but ultimately, I'm the de facto lead developer on this project, and like it or not, I shoot myself in the foot by being a stickler for process. At the same time, I'm driving myself crazy (to the point of looking for a new job) in the process of trying to deal with the lack of coherent (or at least, enforceable) guidelines. I've brought up the notion with colleagues outside our department that maybe it's just a bad fit, but sadly, we don't have much of an option at this point. Any ideas for ameliorating this situation would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "24460", "title": "What is a symbol in Ruby?", "text": "I'm totally new to the Ruby world, and I'm a bit confused with the concept of Symbols. What's the difference between Symbols and Variables? Why not just using variables? Thanks."}
{"_id": "203471", "title": "Why do most programming languages only support returning a single value from a function?", "text": "Is there a reason why functions in most(?) programming languages are designed to support any number of input parameters but only one return value? In most languages, it is possible to \"work around\" that limitation, e.g. by using out-parameters, returning pointers or by defining/returning structs/classes. But it seems strange that programming languages were not designed to support multiple return values in a more \"natural\" way. Is there an explanation for this?"}
{"_id": "134073", "title": "How does one request / handle personal or financial information?", "text": "I would like to create a budget app for Android. Obviously, to be competitive, I would need to allow users to get data from their bank. For [huge] security reasons, this stuff is not just freely given to any would be developer, but I know it can be done. There are budget apps that connected to users banks. My question is, what do I need to do to poll users bank data? Do I need to contact every bank that I wish my app to deal with? Do I need to write the app and present it the the bank(s)? Or am I just too ignorant to take on a challenge of this magnitude? I ask because I obviously don't know the standards that are needed here and would like to learn about them, even if it ends up that I cannot write the bank interface section of my app."}
{"_id": "10032", "title": "Dynamically vs Statically typed languages studies", "text": "Do there exist studies done on the effectiveness of statically vs dynamically typed languages? In particular:   * Measurements of programmer productivity   * Defect Rate Also including the effects of whether or not unit testing is employed. I've seen lots of discussion of the merits of either side but I'm wondering whether anyone has done a study on it. **Edit** Sadly, only one of the papers shown is actually a study and it does nothing but conclude that the language matters. This leads me to ponder: what if I proposed doing such a study with volunteers from this site?"}
{"_id": "247172", "title": "Are the required parameters of a function called dependencies?", "text": "I'm studying dependency injection and I want to know if required function parameters can be considered dependencies. I'd just like to make sure before I go around referring to them dependencies and that turns out to not be exactly accurate.               function doSomething(required){              if(required !== null){                  // do stuff              }          }      **Are the required parameters of a function called dependencies?**"}
{"_id": "247179", "title": "Mobile application: What should be the server authentication strategies?", "text": "I am developing an mobile application for the first time and have some confusions around it **What I plan to do?**   The `iPhone` application will have `Sign in with Google` where user will authenticate on client side (I don't plan to have server access unless needed) and the user details (id, email for example) will be send to backend server (planning to write RESTful APIs in Java). **What is the confusion then?**   1. Since multiple mobile devices would be hitting the APIs what would be CORS settings on the server? Would it allow **ALL** origins?   2. If the application authenticates on client side, how can backend makes sure that this is authenticated user only and no one is playing around with the system(by playing around with REST API)   3. The problem goes to next level when multiple providers are involved, example Facebook, Twitter  What are the recommendations, how should the system be designed in this case? Thanks P.S Sorry for not making it `programmatic` question."}
{"_id": "247178", "title": "Why does Haskell's built in max function run faster than mine?", "text": "I noticed that for some reason, Haskell's built in max function (which returns the greatest of two numbers) runs much faster than the one I wrote, even though they are essentially identical. From this site: http://www.haskell.org/onlinereport/standard-prelude.html, I found that the standard max function is defined as:                   max x y           | x <= y    =  y          | otherwise =  x      which is capable of executing               foldr max 0 [0..10000000]      in 7.6 seconds (my laptop is in super power saving mode) I wrote the exact same function though, and ran it, and               foldr myMax 0 [0..10000000]      took an average of 23.74 seconds The two functions look identical, except that the built-in max doesn't seem to have a type signature (unless its hidden somewhere.) Does anyone know what might be going on here? I seriously doubt that a built in function will run more than three times faster than an identical, user defined one. To me that would be very strange. (When I say that they're identical, I mean literally clones of each other. Just to test, I C&P'd it right out of the Prelude, and it's still significantly slower.) Edit: I thought about it more, and I think it might have something to do with the included functions being pre-compiled, where-as my functions are being interpreted via GHCI (Which would make sense then). I'll leave this up in case someone has a better answer, but I suspect this to be the cause. (One thing I realized that I don't understand though is why GHCI says that's it compiled my code after an edit, but then goes on the say that's it's interpreting it. You don't interpret compiled code do you?)"}
{"_id": "7375", "title": "When is it the right time to start applying for jobs?", "text": "I am a graduate student in CIS, had BS in EE. I will be graduating next spring. This means I still have one more semester before I graduate. I really don't want to start looking for jobs after I graduate. The problem is that I will be doing some heavy courses along with a project next semester. I really want to snag something this semester, but do you think employers would recruit candidates so early?"}
{"_id": "255180", "title": "The Definition of \"Strong Type Systems\"", "text": "I saw Martin Odersky's \"The Trouble with Types\" presenstaion. He divided programing-languages in two dimensions in the \"Type Systems Landscape\" chart; A \"Static/Dynamic\" dimension and A \"Strong/Weak\" one. I searched to find a definition for \"strong/weak type systems\" and its difference from \"static/dynamic\" type-systems that can explain why Python/Ruby have a \"strong type system\"? I've found something on Wikipedia, but it hasn't satisfied me. Now I want to know what's the \"strong/weak\"? and How Python has a strong type system (like as scala)? Is it about inheritance / composable / primitive types in a language or not? If 'no', What's the the concept and measurement-unit for these features (inheritance / compose / primitive / container / ...) in the type-systems?"}
{"_id": "255187", "title": "What is a good design pattern for generating an Excel (xlsx) file in code?", "text": "I occasionally have projects where I have to output some data as an Excel file (xlsx format). The process is usually:   1. User clicks some buttons in my application   2. My code runs a DB query and processes the results somehow   3. My code generates an *.xlsx file using either the Excel com interop libraries or some third-party library (e.g., Aspose.Cells) I can easily find code examples for how to do this online, but I am looking for a more robust way to do this. I'd like my code to follow some design principles to ensure that my code is maintainable and easily understandable. * * * Here is what my initial attempt to generate an xlsx file looked like:               var wb = new Workbook();     var ws = wb.Worksheets[0];     ws.Cells[0, 0].Value = \"Header\";     ws.Cells[1, 0].Value = \"Row 1\";     ws.Cells[2, 0].Value = \"Row 2\";     ws.Cells[3, 0].Value = \"Row 3\";     wb.Save(path);      Pros: Not much. It works, so that's good. Cons:   * Cell references are hardcoded, so I have magic numbers littered throughout my code.   * It's difficult to add or remove columns and rows without updating many cell references.   * I need to learn some third-party library. Some libraries are used like other libraries, but there can still be problems. I had a problem where the com interop libraries use 1-based cell referencing whereas Aspose.Cells uses 0-based cell referencing. * * * Here is one solution that addresses some of the cons I listed above. I wanted to treat a table of data as its own object that can be moved around and changed without digging into cell manipulation and disturbing other cell references. Here is some pseudocode:               var headers = new Block(new string[] { \"Col 1\", \"Col 2\", \"Col 3\" });     var body = new Block(new string[,]         {             { \"Row 1\", \"Row 1\", \"Row 1\" },             { \"Row 2\", \"Row 2\", \"Row 2\" },             { \"Row 3\", \"Row 3\", \"Row 3\" }         });          body.PutBelow(headers);      As a part of this solution, I'll have some BlockEngine object that takes a container of Blocks and performs the cell manipulations required to output the data as an *.xlsx file. A Block object can have formatting attached to it. Pros:   * This removes most of the magic numbers that my initial code had.   * This hides a lot of cell manipulation code, although cell manipulation is still required in the BlockEngine object that I mentioned.   * It's much easier to add and remove rows without effecting other parts of the spreadsheet. Cons:   * It's still difficult to add or remove columns. If I wanted to swap the position of columns two and three, I'd have to directly swap the cell contents. In this case that'd be eight edits, and thus eight opportunities to make a mistake.      * If I have any formatting in place for those two columns, I have to update that as well.   * This solution doesn't support horizontal block placement; I can only place one block below another. Sure I could have `tableRight.PutToRightOf(tableLeft)`, but that would cause problems if tableRight and tableLeft had different numbers of rows. To place tables, the engine would have to be aware of every other table. This seems unnecessarily complicated to me.   * I still need to learn third-party code, though through a layer of abstraction via Block objects and a BlockEngine the code will be less tightly-coupled to the third-party library than my initial attempt. If I wanted to support lots of different formatting options in a loosely-coupled way, I'd probably have to write a lot of code; my BlockEngine would be a huge mess. * * * Here is a solution that takes a different route. Here's the process:   1. I take my report data and generate an xml file in some format that I choose.   2. I then use an xsl transformation to convert the xml file to an Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheet file.   3. From there I simply convert the xml Spreadsheet to an xlsx file using a third party library. Pros:   * This solution requires almost no cell manipulation. You instead use xsl/xpath to do your manipulations. In order to swap two columns in a table, you move the whole columns in the xsl file unlike my other solutions which would require cell-swapping.   * While you still need a third-party library that can convert an Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheet to an xlsx file, that's about all you'll need the library for. The amount of code you need to write that would call into the third-party library is tiny.   * I think this solution is the easiest to understand and requires the least amount of code.      * The code that creates the data in my own xml format will be simple.      * The xsl file will be complicated only because the Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheet is complicated. However it's easy to check the output of the xsl file: just open the output in Excel and check for error messages.     * It's easy to generate sample Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheet files: just create a spreadsheet that looks like your desired xlsx file, and then save it as an Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheet. Cons:   * Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheets don't support certain features. You can't autofit column widths for instance. You can't include images in headers or footers. If you're going to export the resultant xlsx file to pdf, you can't set pdf bookmarks. (I hacked together a fix for this using cell comments.). You have to do this using your third-party library.   * Requires a library that supports Excel 2003 XML Spreadsheets.   * Uses an 11-year old MS Office file format. Note: I realize that xlsx files are actually zip files containing xml files, but the xml formatting seems too complicated for my purposes. * * * Finally, I've looked into solutions involving SSRS, but it seems too bloated for my purposes. * * * Back to my initial question, what is a good design-pattern for generating Excel files in code?. I can think of a few solutions, but none seem to stick out as ideal. Each has drawbacks."}
{"_id": "236309", "title": "Strategy for generating unique and secure identifiers for use in a \"sometimes offline\" web app", "text": "I have a web based project that allows users to work both online and offline and I'm looking for a way to generate unique ids for records on the client side. I'd like an approach that works while a user is offline (i.e. unable to talk to a server), is guaranteed to be unique, and is secure. By \"secure\", I'm specifically worried about clients submitting duplicate id's (maliciously or otherwise) and thereby wreaking havoc on data integrity. I've been doing some googling, hoping this was already a solved problem. I haven't found anything that's very definitive, especially in terms of approaches that are in use in production systems. I found some examples for systems where users will only access the data that they've created (e.g. a Todo list that's accessed on multiple devices, but only by the user who created it). Unfortunately, I need something a bit more sophisticated. I did find some really good ideas here, which are in line with how I was thinking things might work. Below is my proposed solution. ## Some Requirements   1. IDs should be globally unique (or at least unique within the system)   2. Generated on the client (i.e. via javascript in the browser)   3. Secure (as outlined above and otherwise)   4. Data can be viewed/edited by multiple users, including users who didn't author it   5. Doesn't cause significant performance issues for backend db's (such as MongoDB or CouchDB) ## Proposed Solution When users create an account, they would be given a uuid which was generated by the server and known to be unique within the system. This id must NOT be the same as the users authentication token. Let's call this id the users \"id token\". When a user creates a new record, they generate a new uuid in javascript (generated using window.crypto when available. See examples here). This id is concatenated with the \"id token\" the user received when they created their account. This new composite id (server side id token + client side uuid) is now the unique identifier for the record. When the user is online and submits this new record to the backend server, the server would:   1. Identify this as an \"insert\" action (i.e. not an update or a delete)   2. Validate both parts of the composite key are valid uuids   3. Validate that the provided \"id token\" part of the composite id is correct for the current user (i.e. it matches the id token the server assigned to the user when they created their account)   4. If everything is copasetic, insert the data into the db (being careful to do an insert and not an \"upsert\" so that if the id _does_ already exists it doesn't update an existing record by mistake) Queries, updates, and deletes wouldn't require any special logic. They would simply use the id for the record in the same manner as traditional applications. ## What are the advantages of this approach?   1. Client code can create new data while offline and know the id for that record immediately. I considered alternate approaches where a temporary id would be generated on the client which would later be swapped out for a \"final\" id when the system was online. However, this felt very brittle. Especially when you start thinking about creating child data with foreign keys that would also need to be updated. Not to mention dealing with urls that would change when the id changed.   2. By making ids a composite of a client generated value AND a server generated value, each user is effectively creating ids in a sandbox. This is intended to limit the damage that can be done by a malicious/rogue client. Also, any id collisions are on a per user basis, not global to the entire system.   3. Since a users id token is tied to their account, ids can only be generated in a users sandbox by clients that are authenticated (i.e. where the user successfully logged in). This is intended to keep malicious clients from creating bad ids for a user. Of course if a users auth token were stolen by a malicious client, they could do bad things. But, once an auth token has been stolen the account is compromised anyhow. In the event that this did happened, the damage done would be limited to the compromised account (not the entire system). ## Concerns Here are some of my concerns with this approach   1. Will this generate sufficiently unique ids for a large scale application? Is there any reason to think this will result in id collisions? Can javascript generate a sufficiently random uuid for this to work? It looks like window.crypto is fairly widely available and this project already requires reasonably modern browsers. (this question now has a separate SO question of its own)   2. Are there any loopholes that I'm missing which could allow a malicious user to compromise the system?   3. Is there reason to worry about DB performance when querying for a composite key made up of 2 uuids. How should this id be stored for best performance? Two separate fields or a single object field? Would there be a different \"best\" approach for Mongo vs Couch? I know that having a non-sequential primary key can cause notable performance issues when doing inserts. Would it be smarter to have an auto generated value for the primary key and store this id as a separate field? (this question now has a separate SO question of its own)   4. With this strategy, it would be easy to determine that a particular set of records was created by the same user (since they'd all share the same publicly visible id token). While I don't see any immediate issues with this, it's always better to not leak more info about internal details than is needed. Another possibility would be to hash the composite key, but that seems like it may be more trouble than it's worth.   5. In the event that there is an id collision for a user, there's not a simple way to recover. I suppose the client could generate a new id, but this seems like a lot of work for an edge case that really shouldn't ever happen. I'm intending to leave this unaddressed.   6. Only authenticated users can view and/or edit data. This is an acceptable limitation for my system. ## Conclusion Is above a reasonable plan? I realize some of this comes down to a judgement call based on a fuller understanding of the application in question."}
{"_id": "199656", "title": "Server-side vs Client-side web application Performance", "text": "I am an entry level programmer with only a few months of experience. Yesterday I was discussing with a colleague how we can improve the performance of a project we are working on together. The project is built with C# + Ext.NET + JS The plan was to move as many things as possible to client-side JavaScript instead of interacting with the server all the time. I thought this was a good idea, but couldn't help but wonder if there is a point where bringing everything to client-side starts making the web application slower. I understand that interacting with the server and reloading unnecessary data all the time is a waste of time in most cases, but I've also seen websites loaded with so much JS that the browser actually lags and the browsing the web application is just a pain. Is there a golden point? Are there certain 'rules'? How do you achieve maximum performance? Take Google Cloud apps, such as Docs for example, they're pretty fast for what they do, and they're web applications. That is some very good performance."}
{"_id": "70407", "title": "At what point should one consider using sql databases?", "text": "As the size of my data and the structures I use to hold it get larger and more complex, I start to wonder if I should learn to use sql databases. In the past, instead of unique tables, I would do something like the following:               'class Dog            String name            Toy[] toys            long  numberOfHairs            short numberOfFlees            etc.      Then I might have a sorted array based on numberOfFlees, a hash of names, a set of toys, etc. to suit my needs. This has worked fine for me with smaller projects, but at what point should I consider SQL. What will I lose and gain?"}
{"_id": "179723", "title": "Arithmetic Coding Questions", "text": "I have been reading up on arithmetic coding and, while I understand how it works, all the guides and instructions I've read start with something like: > Set up your intervals based upon the frequency of symbols in your data; > i.e., more likely symbols get proportionally larger intervals. My main query is, once I have encoded my data, presumably I also need to include this statistical model with the encoding, otherwise the compressed data can't be decoded. Is that correct? I don't see this mentioned anywhere -- the most I've seen is that you need to include the number of iterations (i.e., encoded symbols) -- but unless I'm missing something, this also seems necessary to me. If this is true, that will obviously add an overhead to the final output. At what point does this outweigh the benefits of compression (e.g., say if I'm trying to compress just a few thousand bits)? Will the choice of symbol size also make a significant difference (e.g., if I'm looking at 2-bit words, rather than full octets/whatever)?"}
{"_id": "161787", "title": "Build filter conditions for entities on client side", "text": "I have the requirement that users should be able to specify filter conditions for one kind of entity through a GUI on a thin client. These conditions must be   * convenient to generate, meaning the GUI should guide users as much as possible. They shouldn't have to write SQL or anything.   * stored with a time stamp, a user ID, a description, and whatnot...   * loaded and edited   * reusable by other users   * used for loading matching entities from the DB via an ORM framework. Ideally I could generate a predicate out of them - SQL or maybe an Expression, which the ORM can translate to SQL In my case users specify a condition for customers, for who invoices should be generated. There will be many different such \"customer selections\". I think the specification pattern might be a good match, but couldn't find any examples, where specifications are built through a GUI, serialized and stored/reloaded/edited via an app server and used to retrieve matching entities. Am I maybe overlooking the standard way to do such a thing? Colleagues have suggested to just build the SQL WHERE predicate on client side, but I don't like that. The client shouldn't know that much about persistence (column names...), and should only be allowed to use certain predicates, but not others. Also I'd have to parse these strings into separate predicates when I reload a condition to display them in a user friendly way."}
{"_id": "221121", "title": "Should the helper function in class be defined before the usage or after", "text": "I need to do the code review of fellow members. One of the member always defined the helper functions at the bottom and use them at top e,g               class Sample {          public function SendFile(){     file = $this-convertFile($file);     }          public function convertFile(){     //bla bla     }          }      I sometimes dont know if he has custom defined this function of it is inherited from base class or some builin php function . when i reach bottom then i find it was custom defined"}
{"_id": "161784", "title": "Understanding Indian culture", "text": "I have been put in charge of managing and leading a team of programmers based in India. I have a feeling there are some cultural issues to overcome, aside from the obvious English 2nd language ones. For example, from my past experience working with Indians, I sense a certain reluctance to ask questions or advice, even when requirements are not clear. More than once I have seen Indian developers say they understand the requirements when they really don't, then just make their own unilateral assumptions about how things should be, and plough ahead on that basis without consulting with anybody else, so that we only realize a week or two down the line that they've been developing something completely other than what we wanted. Is that a general cultural thing, or did I just see a bad sample? Have you managed or worked with Indian teams? What other advice could you offer as to how best to manage and otherwise relate to them?"}
{"_id": "125330", "title": "MVC JSon Request architecture", "text": "I am finding myself building up a whole bunch of JSON calls all through my application, which are basically actions spread across various controllers. I am considering creating a JSON Controller to keep all the JSON actions in one controller, so instead of;               Products/GetListJSON      I would call               JSON/Products      Might this have ramifications that I haven't considered? Can anyone think of any compelling reasons not to do this?"}
{"_id": "121653", "title": "Create my own database system", "text": "I need to learn how databases work in order to use them more efficiently, and my way of learning is by doing. I want to create my own database system. I am not referring to creating a pseudo-database that would use query to parse files; this would simply be a filesystem interface with a query language. I am talking about the actual structure of a database engine. And since what I have in mind is neither relational nor document-oriented (it's \"node-oriented\", if that even exists), I would need any resource to be as abstract and high-level as possible. So how would I go about creating that? What resources/tutorials/books can I read to understand? The language does not matter in the slightest. Ideally, the code would be pseudo-code to illustrate the concept, not tied to a particular language, but anything would do. I was not able to find anything on the matter on google (since I am so illiterate on the subject, maybe I am just not entering the right search). If such resources are not available, then I guess something about how to create a client would at least be a step in the right direction."}
{"_id": "121654", "title": "Can I use a JQuery plugin under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license in a commercial webapp?", "text": "if a JQuery plugin is released under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, can it be used as part of a closed source commercial web application which is not redistributed, just accessible on the web?"}
{"_id": "121657", "title": "How do you proactively guard against errors of omission?", "text": "I'll preface this with I don't know if anyone else who's been programming as long as I have actually has this problem, but at the very least, the answer might help someone with less xp. I just stared at this code for 5 minutes, thinking I was losing my mind that it didn't work:                   var usedNames = new HashSet<string>();         Func<string, string> l = (s) =>             {                 for (int i = 0; ; i++)                 {                     var next = (s + i).TrimEnd('0');                     if (!usedNames.Contains(next))                     {                         return next;                     }                 }             };      Finally I noticed I forgot to add the used name to the hash set. Similarly, I've spent minutes upon minutes over omitting context.SaveChanges(). I think I get so distracted by the details that I'm thinking about that some really small details become invisible to me - it's almost at the level of mental block. Are there tactics to prevent this? update: a side effect of asking this was fixing the error it would have for i > 9 (Thanks!)                   var usedNames = new HashSet<string>();         Func<string, string> name = (s) =>             {                 string result = s;                 if(usedNames.Contains(s))                     for (int i = 1; ; result = s + i++)                         if (!usedNames.Contains(result))                             break;                 usedNames.Add(result);                 return result;             };"}
{"_id": "164494", "title": "Sending an email with attachment from server side", "text": "I have to create a word document in a specific format and send it as attachment to some email addresses. I have a preview screen for the report which on approval has to be send in email. This is an ASP.NET MVC 3 application. I am left with a few options here.   1. I am creating the preview using html. I can convert this html into doc and send it, which would be a straight solution. But capturing the Response object's output is being a tough job.   2. I thought of using Mail merge functionality of MS word, where I'll be filling the placeholders of the doc template. But the problem is conceptually, it doesn't appear to be mail merge.   3. I have found someone suggesting to use RTF format and replace the placeholders with database values. Which is the right thing to do? What's the best solution here? Is there any other option than the three listed above?"}
{"_id": "164497", "title": "I have an MIS degree. How do I sell myself as a programmer?", "text": "So, I graduated with a BSBA in Management Information Systems with honors almost 2 years ago which is more of a business degree. As of right now, I do have a job title of \"Programmer\", but it's more of a report writing position in an arbitrary, proprietary language called PowerOn with the occasional interesting project using more mainstream technologies like .Net and Java. I am also somewhat isoloated being the only programmer in the workplace, which I beleive is a detriment to my career path. The only people I have to bounce ideas against are those on the various SE sites. I don't regret going MIS, but over the past couple of years I have discovered my passion for coding, even though I have been doing some form of coding profesionally and as an enthusiast for years. I do want to persue my Masters in CS (at a later time), but I am not sure if I necessarily _need_ a CS degree to get in with a team of programmers. In addition, I do have a number classes I have taken for different laguanges on the way (C++, Java, SQL, and VB.Net) I beleive my strength is in problem solving where code is just a tool to tackling to problem if needed. My question: **How do I best sell myself as a programmer? Should I continue pounding out reports and wait till I have my masters in CS? Or am I viable to be a programmer as I stand?**"}
{"_id": "249583", "title": "Why not apply Interface Segregation Principle to \"extreme\"", "text": "Providing that clients would typically consume just one method, though methods would be conceptually related, why not always apply the Interface Segregation Principle to the extreme and have [many] single-method interfaces? Is there an objective rule against this? Not something like \"oh it feels wrong\" or \"but you will have so many types, it's hard to read and manage\" but rather something logical and clear. (Still want to name contracts clearly, so functions are not a good fit?). Example:               IGeometryManager     {        Shape CreateTriangle();        Shape CreateCircle();        Shape CreateSquare();        Shape CreateEllipse();        Shape CreateCurve();        Shape CreateLine();        void RemoveAll();     }      Result:               ITriangleCreator     {        Shape CreateTriangle();     }          ICircleCreator     {        Shape CreateCircle();     }          ISquareCreator     {        Shape CreateSquare();     }          IEllipseCreator     {        Shape CreateEllipse();     }          ICurveCreator     {        Shape CreateCurve();     }          ILineCreator     {        Shape CreateLine();     }          IShapeRemover     {        void RemoveAll();     }      This is a relevant blog post, but I am not 100% persuaded by the authors logic: http://blog.ploeh.dk/2014/03/10/solid-the-next-step-is-functional"}
{"_id": "164492", "title": "Where do you use Java Channels?", "text": "I have only used Java Channels and BufferedOutputStream and the input counter part for reading and writing simple integers and some strings here and there to the file.   However I do not understand the use of all these classes when there is `java.util.Scanner` class that provides easy ways to read and write to the files.   Java veterans please tell me the use of Channels and Streams over Scanner."}
{"_id": "164493", "title": "What's the progress on Haskell records?", "text": "Recently I stumbled once again on the issues of Haskells records, in particular the uniqueness of field names (it's a pain ...) I already read A proposal for records in Haskell  from SPJ and Greg Morrisett but it's last update was 2003.   Another paper Lightweight Extensible Records for Haskell from SPJ and Mark Jones is even older: It's from a Haskell workshop in 1999. **Now I wonder if the process of giving Haskell new records made any progress.   Does anybody know something about it or can point me to some further reading ?**"}
{"_id": "211808", "title": "Which is the better: a <= b or a < b+1", "text": "For loops are usually inclusice, exclusive, meaning that you start at the bottom, and stops when you reach, but don't to the top. In Python:               for i in range(0,a):         print(i)      would print 0 through a-1. The same applies for Java:               for(int i = 0; i < a; i++){         System.out.println(i);     }      would also print 0 through a-1, allthough the syntax is somewhat clearer. So what if you want to print every number up to a, inclusive? Would you write               for(int i = 0; i <= a; i++){         System.out.println(i);     }      or               for(int i = 0; i < a + 1; i++){         System.out.println(i);     }      I guess the first makes the most sense, you're looping while i is less or equals to a, but the less than sign could easily be overlooked. The `a + 1` isn't that easy to miss, in my opinion. So my question is: Is there a better alternative of the two, and is there a convension for this thing? EDIT:   I just want to point out that i'm talking about integers here."}
{"_id": "249588", "title": "Interactive session with a command line program using Java?", "text": "I plan to write a website frontend for a free computer algebra system (Reduce, http://reduce-algebra.com/). On the webserver I have a Java virtual machine running, and Reduce is also installed. I can start the application via exec() in the Java file. But my question is the following: how can I emulate user inputs and how can I retrieve the outputs of the program? The main issue is that I want to log the whole session, not just call the program once, get the output, close it, and restart it again. I need a way that allows for interactive communication, i.e. a way to \"paste\" a command in the command line, and a way to \"copy\" the response back to the Java program."}
{"_id": "156969", "title": "Coding in 'core php' and separating logic from presentation", "text": "What are the various ways of acheiving this ? Can someone please guide me? I have to code a website for a friend (designer). The friend wants me to use core php and not any framework like codeigniter (something I really like and am comfortable with !) . I had a look at a couple of roll your own MVC frameworks guides, but am not sure if this is the ideal approach. Since any solution I might come up with may have various bugs/security issues. My goal is to use plain php , without the help of thirdparty frameworks, to code a site , where the logic is separate from the view . Thanks"}
{"_id": "119377", "title": "When can I be sure a directed graph is acyclic?", "text": "The definition for directed acyclic graph is this: \"there is no way to start at some vertex v and follow a sequence of edges that eventually loops back to v again.\" So far so good, but I am trying to find some premises that will be simpler to test and that will also guarantee the graph is acyclic. I came up with those premises, but they are pretty basic so I am sure other people figured it out in the past (or they are incorrect). The problem is I couldn't find anything related on books/online, hence why I decided to post this question. **Premise 1** : If all vertices of the graph have an incoming edge, then the graph can't be acyclic. Is this correct? **Premise 2** : Assume the graph in question does have one vertex with no incoming edges. In this case, in order to have a cycle, at least one of the other vertices would need to have two or more incoming edges. Is this correct?"}
{"_id": "189905", "title": "Should I / can I bundle node.js and mongod together with my application?", "text": "I'm working on a web application that runs on node.js and uses MongoDB. It's important to mention that I plan to release the application as commercial software. The way I wrote the installer, it asks the user to confirm the location of the node and mongod binaries (after autodetecting first). I figured I could skip this step altogether by bundling said binaries together with my application or making the installer download them, but there are a few issues I need to address:   1. First and foremost, the licensing issue. The friendly folks at 10gen (the company that develops MongoDB) answered an email I sent them and told me their license allows this, and from what I can figure out, this is the case with node.js too. Are there any problems I should keep an eye out for?   2. Is it worth (from the user's point of view) fetching ~20MB of extra data during installation just for the convenience of not having to manually install node.js and mongod (the MongoDB server binary)?   3. Should I expect any problems if I bundle the 32-bit binaries and the user installs the application on a 64-bit machine?"}
{"_id": "1025", "title": "What are the most over-saturated iPhone App category/markets?", "text": "I'm considering learning iPhone development and Objective C but don't want to avoid developing something for the most saturated markets and app categories. What categories should I avoid? Are there too many dating applications, or should I just stick to coming up with a creative game or two?"}
{"_id": "47414", "title": "How do these hotshot developers keep changing their technology base?", "text": "Yesterday I was watching a lynda.com iphone development video and this developer started telling about how he has worked on 17 different languages from the days of mainframes in assembly/Cobol to now on iPhone Objective-C. My question is how do these developers keep shifting to new technology, without fearing the loss of experience they already have about a particular technology. I am trying to shift to Java from PHP and market considers this as non- relevant experience. How do these guys do it without losing the pay and not being considered a fresher in a particular technology."}
{"_id": "5341", "title": "How do you deal when an error occurs on 1 instance of your website/program/app?", "text": "I've had a couple of times in the time I've working, moments when I get an error ocurring in just 1 computer and it often takes me hours or days to figure out because it is (or at least seems) an isolated incident as it is not being presented in any other instance of whatever I'm checking. How do you guys deal with this? I've often had to just change the computer per se (like formatting, or stuff like that) because I simply cannot replicat the issue."}
{"_id": "142313", "title": "Support multiple frameworks in a JavaScript library", "text": "I have a small JavaScript library that I've written that depends on prototype.js. I'm considering creating a new version that would use jQuery instead. The goal is to make it easier for users to install ( _choose which framework you use!_ ) while not making it harder for me to maintain. The main issue I see is that I would need to support two separate versions with overlapping functionality. If there is a bug, then I would need to fix it in two separate places. How can I support multiple different frameworks in a JavaScript library without having a maintenance nightmare?"}
{"_id": "232213", "title": "Should I always use \"is\" as prefix for boolean variables?", "text": "Should I always use `is` as prefix for boolean variables? What about booleans that indicate something in past? Should I write `isInitialized` or `wasInitialized`? Should I write for properties `IsManyMembers` or `HasManyMembers`? Is there any best practices? Or I should just write in accordance with English rules?"}
{"_id": "212902", "title": "OOP Objects, nested objects, and DAO's", "text": "Here's something I keep struggling to figure out the best solution to. I've had this problem while working with PHP and Java so it's a fundamental understanding of OOP issue. Examples are in PHP. Let's say I have a few object's here. Song, Artist, ArtistProfile, User. So in some instances I want the ArtistProfile and an array of User objects (subscribers) when I call the Artist (e.g. the artist's profile page), in other instances I only want the Artist info, like when viewing a page of the song. Should I be nesting one object as part of another or should I be creating more specific objects for different usages. Option 1: Nested               Class Song {        private $songId;        private $songName;        private $year;        private $Artist; //Artist object     }          Class Artist {        private $artistId;        private $name;        private $age;        private $subscriberArr; //Array of User objects which then have more nested objects such as a Role object, Profile object        private $profile; //Profile object which could also have more nested objects     }          Class User {        private $userId;        private $name;        private $age;        private $role; //Role object        private $profile; //UserProfile object     }      Option 2: Build more objects               Class Song {        private $songId;        private $songName;        private $year;        private $artistId;     }          Class Artist {        private $artistId;        private $age;        private $name;     }          Class User {        private $userId;        private $name;        private $age;        private $roleId;     }          Class SongWithArtist {        private $song; //Basic Song object        private $artist; //Basic Artist object     }          Class ArtistWithProfile {        private $artist; //Basic artist object        private $profile; //Profile object        private $subscriberArr; //UserDisplay object containing basic User object     }           Class UserWithProfile {}      Option 1 means wasting a lot of time/resources grabbing information I may not need for that page but easier to manage. Option 2 is messy and requires keeping track of which object is what but faster and far less db calls. Which is the 'correct' option and/or is there a 3rd correct option?"}
{"_id": "122306", "title": "Possibility Program for number of pieces", "text": "I would like to put a program together to calculate the number of 60' pieces would be needed from a list of shorter pieces. For example, I sell rebar cut to length from our standard length of 60'-0\". Now the length the customer requires are as follows:               343 pc @ 12.5'     35 pc @ 13'     10 pc @ 15'     63 pc @ 15.5'.......      There are 56 total lengths ranging from 12.5' to 30.58' The idea is to limit the amount of waste from the 60' piece. The input from the user would be:   * number of differnt lengths   * Length of piece to cut from    * count of different lengths The result would be the number of prime pieces needed to fulfill the order. What well-known algorithms exist that could help me solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "212389", "title": "Could ChromiumOS be re-written in Go from the ground up?", "text": "As Go seems able to performance match C and with Google obviously biased towards Go, I feel that it would be great way for Go to gain more traction. The way ChromiumOS/Chrome has jumped from an Ubuntu base to a Gentoo base, while they have the ability to avoid both and create exactly what they need from scratch, leads me to believe it could be something in the works. Time would of course be a factor, as would the lack of existing libraries as compared to C and Linux, but done in parallel whilst the current Linux based machines gain traction would mitigate any time to market issues for them. I'm a rank amateur when it comes to low-level programming though, are there any technical limitations in the language to prevent this from happening?"}
{"_id": "189401", "title": "How does a concurrent garbage collector deal with variables?", "text": "Let's say it is a concurrent mark-and-sweep garbage collector. When such GC handles constant pointers it just walks through them (starting from roots), and marks every encountered data block. Then sweeps everything unmarked. A client code should mark the data blocks it uses as roots. But what to do with variables? Here is a situation:   1. `V` is a variable, which stores a pointer to object `A`.   2. `Thread 1` reads `V` and suspends.   3. `Thread 2` modifies `V` and makes it point to object `B`.   4. The garbage collector runs its \"mark\" phase and encounters that `A` is no longer referenced, then deallocates it during the \"sweep\" phase.   5. `Thread 1` awakens and tries to use `A` (already read from `V` at step 2) by marking it as root. **And fails** , because `A` is no longer exists. So, how to handle this? The `Thread 2` can mark the replaced object `A` with a special do-not-remove flag (similar flag is used for newly allocated objects). But when this flag should be removed? Of course `Thread 1` could do that. But `Thread 2` knows nothing about `Thread 1`, and thus can not be sure that this will be done ever. This may lead to `A` will never be freed. And if GC will remove that flag, then nothing prevents `A` from being removed when GC runs for the second time... The on-the-fly mark-and-sweep garbage collector descriptions I've read just mention that the replaced object should be \"grayed\". But without any specifics. A link to a more detailed description of the solution would be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "207205", "title": "Is OAuth (2.0) is the right choice to make WCF WebService secure?", "text": "I have WCF webservice which serves to various mobile application. This was implemented with typical HTTPS/SSL. But there are some cases like Replay Attack needs to be considered in the security aspect. OAuth 2.0 looks like a viable solution for this problem (using nonce). And I can see some examples on web using DotnetOpenOAuth library to implement a server. Is OAuth is a right choice to use with WCF services? Is there any alternatives with .NET framework/Microsoft technologies to implement a secure WCF server?"}
{"_id": "250031", "title": "A newbie in python trying to learn", "text": "Am trying to learn how to program before i go to uni and i stumbled upon a question which i have been unable to do. In the function write code to input two integers m and n and calculate and display the sum of all the integers from m to n e.g. if 4 and 8 were entered (in either order) the sum to be calculated would be 4+5+6+7+8. The sum should be calculated using a loop to repeatedly add numbers to a total. You are not allowed to use a formula to calculate the result. i have been able to do the basic addition but to keep adding is where am stuck at like if enter a value for m = 6 and n = 9, it should print out as 6+7+8+9 and add the values All contributions will be greatly appreciated. thanks"}
{"_id": "28272", "title": "Two possible solutions to a problem, DB design", "text": "I saw the recent post about the person questioning his boss's solution (I believe my solution is better than my boss, so should I ignore him?) and decided to ask something similar but not as \"clashing\" as it sounded in the above link. To put it simply and more conceptually:   We have a web app that does phone billing for many different clients. The thing is, the person that started the project didn't consider that there are only 9999 possible phone extensions in our design (a bit naive, I know). We have come across a point where different clients's users will have to share the same `extension number`. In the DB level, the `extension number` is fixed as `unique` and the `Extensions` table has a foreign key to `Users`. The easiest solution as we saw was to remove this `unique` constraint and allow `extension numbers` to be duplicated because we can still check and validate to see which `Client` the `User` belongs to. However, the person that oversees my work believed it would cause future problems if we simply allowed for duplication. He suggested I create an intermediary table that links two tables together, namely `UserProfile` (which has a foreign key to User and `Client`) and the `Extension` table. Since my way seemed easier to do, I created a branch of the project to test if it works fine, which it does. Then I started implementing the other way and came across some complications, system-wide modifications, but I still think it's doable. The person that oversees my work is a sys admin that does some programming. I'm the full-time programmer, though without much experience (still young ;) ). It would be cool if I had some outside perspective on my dilemma? Thanks a lot guys."}
{"_id": "212384", "title": "Exposing domain models over API", "text": "I'm building a simple RESTful API for a web-based application I'm working on, and I'm wondering about the best way to go about exposing my domain models. Let's say I have a User class and I want to provide a JSON response with the various user properties. I obviously don't want to publicly expose every property of my model (things such as DateCreated, PasswordHash etc) due to security and bandwidth issues. I've read into Data Transfer Objects and I'm wondering if this is the way to go. If I'm right I could pass, for example, a User model to my User DTO and ensure said DTO only allows exposure of the User properties I choose (which would also help decouple my models from my public API). Is this solution appropriate or are there better ways to go about this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "212387", "title": "Maintaining good form while learning new technologies", "text": "I find that I have to learn new technologies fairly regularly as a contractor in order to keep competitive. However, I also find that (not only, but especially) in these circumstances, I tend to end up with really bad code flow and need to do a lot of rework in order to achieve a canonical solution. While I realise that there are those contract programmers out there have no problems with taking the money and running, I wish to maintain good relationships through a good codebase that is not only easy, but fun to maintain -- which ultimately translates into a more lucrative business for me in the long run, as architectural risks are kept minimal. However, I wonder if there are ways by which I could improve my ability to learn technologies _while at the same time_ getting structure closer to what is correct / canon, right from the start -- particularly given some poorly documented techs, or those that are documented in a fragmentary fashion. While there is no substitute for experience, I want to streamline this process, reducing the considerable refactoring time I suffer at present, as it is something I experience often."}
{"_id": "8677", "title": "Using High Level Abstractions", "text": "I'm not sure if I'm using the correct term, but would you program using High- level abstractions like Powerbuilder, or some CMS like MODx or DotNetNuke? I haven't dabbled in any of these yet. The reason I'm asking is that I kind of feel intimidated by the whole notion of using any abstraction over the languages I'm using. I'm thinking that my job might be over-simplified. While it may provide business solutions faster, I'd rather be coding straight from, in my case, .NET. Do/Would you use abstractions like these or prefer them over programming in lower level languages?"}
{"_id": "252129", "title": "Clarification about MVC Design pattern", "text": "I've been reading up on MVC and I had a doubt. The example where the Model, View and Controller are all individual classes whose objects are created and used to deploy the application in another class. A GUI I've designed treats the Model, View and Controller as separate classes and for the most part changes can be made to each without breaking the other .However these separate classes are referenced within the Controller (UI) class. I have no 4th class that calls and creates objects for the Model, View and Controller. Does my setup still follow the MVC design methodology? Thanks."}
{"_id": "209371", "title": "How to manage with less technical knowledge?", "text": "I've become a project manager in my company and here is what I've experienced till now: At first, I was trying to keep in shape technically with other developers of the team (about 15 developers) and read as much as I could so that I would know almost everything going on in the project, from architecture, up to syntax consistency. However, soon I realized that it's almost impossible for you **to know everything**. Therefore it's natural that you fall back in the technical race. Imagine how much work it requires for you to learn **Ext JS** , **Angular JS** , **BRE** , **WCF** , **Enterprise Library** for logging, **Asterisk** , etc. etc. all at the same time. Thus it seems to me that this is not the correct path. I think the formula is: The more people you have to manage, the less technical knowledge you can possess. However, there are problems in not knowing what's going on inside your team technically:   1. You might not understand and detect bottlenecks just the way you would do when you were developing   2. You might not decide which technology is better at performance and productivity   3. In case of a technical dispute in team, you might not be able to help   4. The more distance you get from code, the less you might understand developer's stress, pressures, and feelings (this is a big concern for me)   5. You might not be able to forecast and predict the time necessary to get a task done   6. You loose your passion when a developer talks with enthusiasm about a problem that has been solved, because you don't understand like 40 percent of what he talks about, and the less you know about something, the more boring it might become for you   7. Developers would find it harder to explain something to you and they need to speak less technically   8. Bad developers (rare but existing) might misuse your lesser technical knowledge and cause all sort of problems   9. ... This phenomenon probably occurs in any career and profession. However, since the world of development and computer in general is moving forward with more speed (comparing to say, car industry), thus in a short period of time like 6 months you feel that you've fallen back. Version after version, feature after feature, library after library, you got the idea. I saw these questions, and they contain good suggestions. How can I maintain my technical skills after becoming a project manager?   How much should my project manager know?   How much should my project manager know?   Should a manager (or CEO) in an IT company have an IT background to perform in the organization?   How can I convince management to deal with technical debt? However, they're based more on personal experience and advises, which is of course good, but might not help that much. Do we have a book, or a well-thought and researched essay on this subject, on how to manage a team of software developers, **with lesser technical knowledge** than team members? What points should I take into account to lead effectively and make the whole team achieve success?"}
{"_id": "250035", "title": "where exactly should python business logic be placed in django", "text": "I have just begun to learn Django/Python/Web Development. This problem has been troubling me for a while now. I am creating an application with multiple templates in Django. I have a views.py which is basically just rendering the responses to the respective templates and I have a models.py where I have structured my DB. In one of my templates, I need to upload an image (which I am able to do) and I need to run a logic which is based on the features of the uploaded image (not yet done). This logic involves a lot of heavy calculations. After performing the calculations, the logic should return some processed information (coordinates) to the template. I have been able to do all this actions successfully in a standalone python desktop application calling python files one after the other. However, since I now want to make this a web application I have begun using the Django framework. I have done a lot of searching but I am still not able to figure out where exactly should I place this Python file containing all the logic. Should I have another class based file `(logic.py)` and call it from the `view.py`? I googled and found that many developers are placing their business logic in their models.py in Django. However, I feel it is intuitively not right since model should exclusively communicate with the back end. Any help would be appreciated.Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "114555", "title": "Is there such a thing as a \"when\" statement?", "text": "Is there a language or language feature that can handle \"when\" cases? That is, whenever some condition becomes true, in any scope or context, that extra code could be specified to execute? Note that this is different from a simple `if`, which must be in a particular scope and explicitly written. This when clause would almost be like an `if` that applied to every case in the execution of the program after it."}
{"_id": "115223", "title": "What's the advange of JRuby (or any other language ported to JVM)? Why would one use it?", "text": "Let's say I really like Ruby and I know Java. What's the deal behind these J* and Iron* languages that allow you to use the syntax of a foreign language to compile them into JVM or .NET bytecode? Basically, what's the advantage? Is it just because you like the runtime of one language, but not the syntax? Please advise!"}
{"_id": "50946", "title": "Is ViewModel with more than one repository bad?", "text": "I'm working on a project with MVVM. Some ViewModels have more than one repository.   * **Is ViewModels with more than one repository bad?**   * **Please provide with why it's good/bad.**"}
{"_id": "203719", "title": "Are there strategies for discovering REST services using HATEOAS?", "text": "When building a REST service with the HATEOAS constraint, it's very easy to advertise the existence of resources through linking. You make a `GET` to the root of my site and I respond with the root document listing all the first- tier resources:               {         users: { href: \"/users\" }         questions { href: \"/questions\" }     }      Clients which understand how to read these `href` values could perform `GET` requests on those and discover all the current resources available in the application. This works well for basic lookup scenarios, but doesn't indicate whether a resource is queryable. For example, it may be reasonable to perform:               GET /users?surname=Smith      Are there any formats that could express this query ability with enough information that a client could form a coherent query without needed prior knowledge of the resource? Additionally, is there any way to express that a client is allowed to perform a `POST` to a given location with an expected location. For example, it could be expected that a client perform the following to create a new question resource:               POST /questions          {         title: \"Are there strategies for discovering REST services using HATEOAS?\",         body: \"When building a REST service with the HATEOAS constraint, it's very...\"     }      When using HTML as the format for human consumption, we can express a lot of this through use of forms and written prompts to allow a human to discover the operations they are allowed to perform on a service. Are there formats which are capable of similar things for clients?"}
{"_id": "118423", "title": "design of 'game engine' for small javascript games?", "text": "I'm making a group of two or three simple javascript games for fun. After someone finishes one game, they'll be presented with a harder or easier version of another game depending on whether the original game was won or lost. I have a high-level question about the design of things: So far I've created a class for one game type that manages the interaction with the UI and the state of the game itself. But for tracking how many of the subgames have been won, or for understanding whether the next game presented should be more or less difficult, are there arguments to be made for making a 'game engine' class? How does the engine communicate to the games? For instance, when a game is won, how is that information relayed to the engine? Is there a better or more common design? (If you want to see what I have so far, the games are slowly taking shape here: https://github.com/yosemitebandit/candela and can be viewed at http://yosemitebandit.com/candela)"}
{"_id": "126681", "title": "Automatically adding data from JSON to SQL", "text": "I'm really new to this sort of stuff; my background is in C# mainly. Could anyone point me in the right direction? I need to set a script to automatically parse some JSON into an SQL database whenever the data has been updated on the server. I look at this file first which returns the file location for the data and the last modified time stamp: http://us.battle.net/api/wow/auction/data/medivh. I've spent the last hour googling, but I can't find an adequate answer. To summarise, the script needs to run every 15 minutes or so, check if the timestamp changed and if so, and pull the new data and enter it into an SQL database. Do I need to use PHP to parse and insert the JSON data into the database? If so, how do I manage to run the PHP code every x minutes?"}
{"_id": "214978", "title": "Applications affected by memory performance", "text": "I'm writing a paper on the topic of applications affected more by memory performance than processor performance. I've got a lot written regarding the gap between the two, however I can't seem to find anything about the applications that might be affected more by memory performance than by processor speed. I suppose these are applications that make a large amount of memory references, but I have no idea what kind of applications would make such large number of references to make it stand out? Perhaps databases? Can you please give me any pointers on how to proceed, some links to papers? I'm really stuck."}
{"_id": "245726", "title": "Is the Java Integer cache a realization of the object pool pattern?", "text": "One of the best-known examples of a full-fledged object pool is the JDBC connection pool. Main reasons:   * objects in the pool are expensive to create and relate with external resources   * each object in the pool is served to at most one client a time   * objects in the pool need to be brought back to a clean state before being served again to a new client With the above in mind, can the Java Integer cache be regarded as a object pool realization? Here is why I doubt it:   * objects in the pool can be used by more than one client a time due to their immutability   * immutability also prevents pool objects from reaching a stale state   * there's no notion of a \"free\" object, ready to be allocated to a client"}
{"_id": "214971", "title": "Requring static class setter to be called before constructor, bad design?", "text": "I have a class, say `Foo,` and every instance of Foo will need and contain the same List object, `myList.` Since every class instance will share the same List Object, I thought it would be good to make `myList` static and use a static function to set `myList` before the constructor is called. I was wondering if this was bad, because this requires the setter to be called before the constructor? If the person doesn't, the program will crash. Alternative way would be passing `myList` every time."}
{"_id": "127376", "title": "Best Practice: strategy regarding Website Projects and versioning", "text": "What are the best practices and strategy for designing and developing a website? The key parts I want considered are:   * DLL deployment    * IIS publishing   * project versioning    * namespace Please answer these questions with recommended steps you take for your own web sites. A sample walk-trough** (Please correct it with yours.)   1. You make a web Application   2. You make an IIS version of it   3. Copy the same to the IIS Web Folder   4. Copy the exact \"Web Application\" DLL into the IIS version folder ( or Will you build the wesite DLL here with csc or choose another method )   5. Add each project separately to the repository   6. Will anyway having both cause any conflicts (web application and website)?   7. Do you make separated projects?   8. How do you ensure that build of website assembly is always updated?   9. How will you go for versioning of these and sync them?   10. Moving the website DLL from the web application couldn't be a good idea How do you deal with that?   1. The most important part of this question for me is the number of projects/solutions you make for a website project.   I guess that probably they are 1 or 2 solutions, and as a professional developer, you will make them subversioned.   2. Do you change the namespaces, or assemblies? Will each of them have separated core assemblies? Will you share? If you share, how will you deal with that?   I think conflicts will occur.   3. Do you use a project as a container of the other one? How will subversioning be? ### What I use VisualSVN is my subversioning choice.   I had 2 projects similar to the formula above; I made a web project with pages, and after that I made a clone of it in the IIS. I fixed some addresses and paths issues and copied also the DLL inside the IIS-Version of the site, but I really do not know this way as a completely practical method because of the conflicts I mentioned."}
{"_id": "120683", "title": "Examples of limitations in IT due to different bit length by design", "text": "I am teaching the course \"Introduction in Programming\" for the first-year students and would like to find interesting examples where the datatype size in bits, chosen by design, led to certain known restrictions or important values. Here are some examples:   1. Due to the fact that the Bell teleprinter used 7-bit-code (later accepted as ASCII) until now have we often to encode attachments in electronic messages to contain only 7 bit data.   2. Classical limitation of 32-bit address space leads to the 4Gb maximal RAM size available for 32-bit systems and 4Gb maximal file size in FAT32. Do you know some other interesting examples how the choice of the data type (and especially its binary length) influenced the modern IT world. **Added after some discussion in comments:** _I am not going to teach how to overcome limitations._ I just want them to know that 1 byte can hold the values from -127..0..+127 o 0..255, 2 bytes cover the range 0..65535 etc by proving examples they know from other sources, like the above-mentioned base64 encoding etc. We are just learning the basic datatypes and I am trying to find a good reference for \"how large\" these types are."}
{"_id": "244891", "title": "Simplifying data search using .NET", "text": "An example on the asp.net site has an example of using Linq to create a search feature on a Music album site using MVC. The code looks like this -               public ActionResult Index(string movieGenre, string searchString)     {         var GenreLst = new List<string>();              var GenreQry = from d in db.Movies                        orderby d.Genre                        select d.Genre;              GenreLst.AddRange(GenreQry.Distinct());         ViewBag.movieGenre = new SelectList(GenreLst);              var movies = from m in db.Movies                      select m;              if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))         {             movies = movies.Where(s => s.Title.Contains(searchString));         }              if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(movieGenre))         {             movies = movies.Where(x => x.Genre == movieGenre);         }              return View(movies);     }      I have seen similar examples in other tutorials and I have tried them in a real-world business app that I develop/maintain. In practice this pattern doesn't seem to scale well because as the search criteria expands I keep adding more and more conditions which looks and feels unpleasant/repetitive. How can I refactor this pattern? One idea I have is to create a column in every table that is \"searchable\" which could be a computed column that concatenates all the data from the different columns (SQL Server 2008). So instead of having movie genre and title it would be something like.               if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(searchString))     {         movies = movies.Where(s => s.SearchColumn.Contains(searchString));     }      What are the performance/design/architecture implications of doing this? I have also tried using procedures that use dynamic queries but then I have just moved the ugliness to the database. E.g.               CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[search_music]          @title as varchar(50),         @genre as varchar(50)     AS          -- set the variables to null if they are empty     IF @title = '' SET @title = null     IF @genre = '' SET @genre = null          SELECT m.*     FROM view_Music as m      WHERE          (title = @title OR @title IS NULL)         AND (genre LIKE '%' +  @genre + '%' OR @genre IS NULL)     ORDER BY Id desc     OPTION (RECOMPILE)      Any suggestions? Tips?"}
{"_id": "126977", "title": "Cross \"Machine\" Code?", "text": "Some languages (mostly ones made in the last 2 decades or so) can now not only run (after some compilation step or directly) on several platforms, but also can be compiled to run on several virtual machines. For example, take Scala. Pure Scala code can be either interpreted , compiled to run on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) or can be compiled to run using the .NET Framework. The benefits of platform-independence put aside, what exactly are the benefits of writing code that can compile on several virtual machines and runtimes?"}
{"_id": "163929", "title": "We are moving an Access based corporate front-end into a Web-based App", "text": "We have an enterprise application with a front end written in Microsoft Access 2003 that has evolved over the past 6 years. The back end data, and a fair amount of back-end logic is contained within several Microsoft SQL Server databases. This front end app consists of around 180 forms, and over 120,000 lines of code, and interacts with VB.Net DLLs that support various critical functions used by our sales force. The current system makes use of 3 monitors to display various information; the Access app uses COM+ to control Microsoft Outlook and Internet Explorer for various purposes. The Access front end sometimes occupies 2 screens, automatically resizing itself based on Windows API-reported screen dimensions. The app also uses a Google map to present data to our agents, and allows two-way interactivity with the map through COM+ connectivity to JavaScript contained in the Google map. At the urging of senior management, we are looking to completely rewrite this application using some web-based technology, such as ASP.Net or perhaps a LAMP stack (the thinking with the LAMP stack thing is \"free\" is pretty cheap). We want to move to a web-based app so we can eliminate the dependency on our physical location for hiring new sales force members. Currently, our main office is full to capacity, and we need to continue growing the company. Does anyone have any thoughts on what would be the best technology to use for a web-based app of this magnitude? Keeping in mind the app is dependent on back-end services on our existing infrastructure. The app handles financial data and personal customer data, among other things. [I've looked at Best practices for moving large MS Access application towards .Net? and read the answers, and most of the comments. Interesting reading, and has some valid points, but our C.O.O. and contracted Software Architect are pushing for a full web-based app, not a .Net Windows App]"}
{"_id": "12524", "title": "Should I learn java for mobile application development or will C# just do?", "text": "I'm looking forward to delving into the .NET framework but most mobile applications seem to be developed in Java. I'll most probably be targeting the less pricier phones like Nokia and motorolla not android or iphone OS. Can I do these stuffs in C#?"}
{"_id": "127080", "title": "At the end of my rope", "text": "I am a contractor to a big company. Currently, there are three developers on the project, myself included. The problem is the other 2 developers don't really get it. By \"it\" i mean the following:   * They don't understand the best practices for the technology we are using. After 6 months of me and others giving them examples there are terrible anti-patterns being used.   * They are \"copy and paste\" programmers that produce primarily spaghetti code.   * They _constantly_ break things, implementing changes but not doing a basic smoke test to see if all is good   * They refuse/rarely to ask for code-reviews.    * They refuse/rarely even do basic things like formatting code.   * No documentation on any classes (jsdocs)    * Afraid to delete code that doesn't do anything   * Leave commented code blocks everywhere even though we have version control. I find myself getting more and more frustrated as I format others code, fix bugs, discover functionality that is broken, and create abstractions to remove the spaghetti. I really don't know what to do. I try not to get to frustrated, but it's just a mess. I like these people as people, but I feel like the coding situation is so bad that I could move faster if they simply browsed the web all day. Would it be out of line to ask our manager to review the others svn commit access; commits can only be done after a review by someone who is knowledgeable in what we are doing? As a contractor, I'm not sure if that's the best move. Is there a subtle/not so subtle way of making it clear how many things I am fixing?"}
{"_id": "155220", "title": "Is programming too easy if compared to other fields?", "text": "I have been programming since some years and I won't say its a piece of cake but in this field, you know how to do things. You can always google up resources, tutorials. There are tons of already written code to help you with - frameworks, libraries but if you compare it to other innovation fields like \"Electronics\". Its not too easy to get started with, the community might not be too large on the internet, getting the things right plus lets not forget there is nothing to tell you where the error might be. I have wanted many times but not be able to get into, like, building some kind of robot because I don't know how to start. So my question is that, does programming tends to be easy compared rest of the fields or is it just my interest that makes it easy?"}
{"_id": "8093", "title": "What are good mathematical formulas to know for programming?", "text": "What are some somewhat common math formulas you learned that helped you write better algorithms and become a better programmer? Example: I learned about the ecludian distance formula: `sqrt((x1-x2)^2+(y1-y2)^2)` which helped me understand how to find like objects by comparing 2 factors."}
{"_id": "127087", "title": "Right license(s) for a freemium offer", "text": "I am currently working on a solution written in JavaScript. I plan to release two versions:   * For free: the lite one with base options, which is plug and play (it just works when loaded in the page)   * For a subscription fee: the full version that has more options and requires support I am wondering which license(s) would work for me. Here are my thoughts so far, feel free to correct me:   * MIT: I am concerned that somebody else might release new features on top of my solution, under a commercial license. It means that I wouldn't be able to add these same features to my own solution in the future.   * GPL: doesn't seem to work in my case, if I release the lite version under GPL then it means that I also need to release the full version for free.   * Dual licensing: I see that some frameworks or libraries offer dual licensing, but I am not sure how it works."}
{"_id": "12522", "title": "Best monitor for programming (eyes concerned)?", "text": "I currently need to buy a new monitor (my old one broke and I'm stuck with my laptops screen). What's a good choice for a monitor these days? I've been quite out of the loop. I'm mostly concerned with my eyes of course, and I need something that is good for reading text (programming obviously). With that said I don't really care about gaming and beautiful picture display... just text. Any studies done on this? What's the best monitor for reading text? I would prefer a brand name if possible."}
{"_id": "195601", "title": "Are Python sockets suitable for file synchronization?", "text": "I'm working in an organisation with limited funds. They can't afford a business account on Dropbox. However, they would find it useful to have all their files synchronized on local machines. I've recently looked at Python Sockets and it looks as though a custom script could achieve what they're looking for. I'm concerned that it may be too low- level because a library may exist that provides a lot of functionality and it would be a waste of resources to start from scratch. Is there a Python library/module that would provide what I'm looking for?"}
{"_id": "193298", "title": "What is the equivalent of Entity Framework in the world of Oracle shops?", "text": "Within the world of developers/firms specializing in building/deploying solutions built around software built/sold by Oracle (aka \"Oracle houses\"), **what ORM middleware is considered as the \"industry standard\"** (if any), based on your experience? We have limited experience on Oracle's stack, so would appreciate insights from folks who have more experience in it. This might impact our product roadmap."}
{"_id": "12528", "title": "Does it matter to you that a software is \"available source\" but not \"open source\"", "text": "You probably know the list of open source licenses officially approved by the OSI. Most notably I guess would be the GPL, MIT, [insert your favorite license here]. I recently ran into a project which although was open source (the creator made all source code available), was not officially open source under one of those official licenses.   * It released the source, but made no promise to release the source in the future.    * It allowed modification suggestions, but made no promises to accept patches and disallowed external distribution of externally-patched versions.    * It allowed the use of the software in commercial or paid projects, but disallowed the sale of the software itself.  I suppose it could be called \"available source\" not open source as we like to think of it. I can see why the management team of a company wouldn't want to do business with this software. They can't fork it, they can't sell it, they can't create their own version of the software and distribute it or sell it. But would it matter to you as part of a software engineering team who's just using this software? I can still get my work done with it, I can use it in a project for which I'm paid (but I can't sell the software itself, which I'm not in the business of doing anyway), and I can make changes to the code to make it behave differently for my needs (but I can't make those modifications public), and if I do want those modifications officially made available to others, the approval is up to the project itself and they choose whether to incorporate them in an official release or not. So we know that a company that wants to base its business on this \"available source\" software can't do that, but as someone from the software engineering team, would those differences matter to you or do they seem less relevant? Curious what others think of this."}
{"_id": "163927", "title": "Which language came first with parallel assignment?", "text": "When I discovered that python has parallel assignment I thought is pretty cool. Recently I discovered parallel assignment works also in ruby. For people that don't know it: `x,y = y,x` in ruby, python this swaps x and y values . Which language came first with parallel assignment, python? or was it other language?"}
{"_id": "8098", "title": "What do programmers have to know about business/management?", "text": "As I've implied through my other posts, I'm still fairly new to the workforce. During team meetings, I tend to be able to keep up with technical discussion, but when my project manager starts talking about how we've won a new contract, or we're involved in a new proposal bid, or... anything that's business rather than technical, really... I can get lost pretty quickly. What is the bare minimum all developers need to know about project management/business to function?"}
{"_id": "206150", "title": "Should validation rules be tested?", "text": "If I have a method taking input and giving output, it's a no-brainer that tests should be written. But what about things like validation rules? For example, I add a validation rule that a certain property must be at least 5 characters long. Should I then write a UI test to check for an error message when the form field is empty? Assume that the validation library itself works fine, **the only thing I do is add a one-liner to specify this rule**. I'm leaning towards no, because I'd only be duplicating the validation rules, and if the rules itself are set up incorrectly, the test will probably also be incorrect. However, I'd very much like to hear people's opinion and experience on this."}
{"_id": "243083", "title": "Estimating file transfer time over network?", "text": "I am transferring file from one server to another. So, to estimate the time it would take to transfer some GB's of file over the network, I am pinging to that IP and taking the average time. For ex: i ping to 172.26.26.36 I get the average round trip time to be x ms, since ping send 32 bytes of data each time. I estimate speed of network to be 2*32*8(bits)/x = y Mbps --> multiplication with 2 because its average round trip time. So transferring 5GB of data will take 5000/y seconds Am I correct in my method of estimating time. If you find any mistake or any other good method please share."}
{"_id": "213476", "title": "What code lays behind C++ exception?", "text": "In C and C++ you can return a single variable inside a function. Now in the case that variable is returning data, and not an error code, you can use exceptions. But how is that possible? If you data being returned is the data you tell your function to return, then there is practically no way for the function calling it to know it's success (because the return is used for data, and not an error code). Also, the ability for a exception to literally stop the function in the middle of the code to return the error. How do C++ compilers achieve this?"}
{"_id": "254734", "title": "Microchip XC8: How to pack code against an upper limit?", "text": "I have a project for a PIC16F1454 that needs some custom linking. Basically, I've separated my code into two parts that can be downloaded separately in the field and thus update (almost) all of the flash memory, including the bootloader. As part of the plan to avoid bricking itself, I have this structure:   * Lower, protected by hardware, not field-updateable:      * Startup and image-copy code, written in assembly   * Middle:      * Application space     * Also used to download new images   * Upper:      * Bootloader space And there's some code in various places that enforces that structure. The bootloader includes a USB stack, a main loop, and some helper functions that add up to slightly more than one page of flash, which causes some problems for the linker. For example, the help file says that this option is supposed to concatenate the entire list and put it against the specified upper limit (note the negative address):   * -L-pUSBCode=-1FFEh,USBConst,BootloaderCode,BootloaderConst But when I do that, all four psects overlap, with the usual, unintended consequences. I did this:   * -L-aBootloader=1400h-17FFh,1800h-1FFDh -L-dBootloader=2 -L-pUSBCode=Bootloader -L-pUSBConst=Bootloader -L-pBootloaderCode=Bootloader -L-pBootloaderConst=Bootloader which defines a class with 2-byte elements that crosses a page boundary at 1800h and puts all four psects in that class. While they didn't overlap, I got a big hole next to the page boundary, big enough for several of the helper functions to fit in. I could assign functions more granularly to more than four psects, and that would probably make things fit better, but I'd rather not make it any more complicated than I have to. Someone else (could be me after a few months) is probably going to modify it later, and I don't expect him to be intimately familiar with the details. How can I pack the entire bootloader section as tightly as possible into upper memory, accounting for the springboard to main() at 1FFEh-1FFFh, without requiring a future developer to change anything outside of the C source files?"}
{"_id": "86530", "title": "Learning computer architecture as a programmer", "text": "I typically run across gurus at SO and other places (instructors, book authors etc.) that would say something along the lines `\"This will cause alignment issues\"` or other low level tidbits. I want to learn about all these tidbits that are `relevant` to programming. Now usually when I see low level books (computer architecture books for example) they are too low level and geared towards people whose primary area of interest is computer architecture and not software design. Do you have recommendations for books that go through low-level stuff that is relevant to programmers?"}
{"_id": "255967", "title": "Do we need to install intel x86 Atom system image for all API levels?", "text": "I am new to Android development and just installed the new Android sdk with Eclipse and ADT bundle. From this question, I knew about installing Intel X86 system image. But, I have one confusion about installing intel x86 for which I couldn't find any solution on internet. In SDK manager, Intel x86 system image installation options are shown for each API level as in the picture. image is here (Since I have no privileges. Hope someone will correct it) So, my question is that, do we need to have intel x86 system image for all API levels? (I am making an application which will support from Android ICs to kitkat.)"}
{"_id": "255966", "title": "How to track session replication?", "text": "I am working on a huge web application designed long back. I have to configure it so as to make it work on a cluster. I have configured a tomcat cluster for this purpose. Now I know I need to make the objects being added to the session serializable. For that I want to know what is being stored in my sessions, when I log in. Additionally how do I know (log maybe) that session state is being replicated among the tomcat workers?"}
{"_id": "255961", "title": "Designing a simple file manager", "text": "I've been trying to come up with the best way to design my file manager for a project. I need to work with many file implementations and I have a File class made of 2 classes inside: Data and Descriptor. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/iHuyC.jpg) As you can see, I have many different implementations of the Data class, one for each file organization. All of the implementations use records to organize their information but the fields for each kind of file (users, transactions, etc...) have to be stored as metadata inside their respective descriptor file. So basically my problem is trying to access and updating the descriptor of each file. For example, while trying to search() inside the Users file from the Stacked class, I need the fields (username, name, last name, etc...) which are inside the Users Descriptor file, but I cant come up with a nice design for it. The only way I can think of is passing the Descriptor reference to each method (search, write, etc...) but I have a feeling that my solution would be bad design. Please note that I still have to keep adding more file organizations for different files, so I want to plan ahead and have a nice file manager to handle all the requests the best way possible, but currently this is what I've come up with."}
{"_id": "166255", "title": "Can Foswiki be used as a distributed Redmine replacement?", "text": "I am quite familiar with and love using `git`, among other reasons due to its distributed nature. Now I'd like to set up some similarly _distributed_ (FOSS) Project Management software with features similar to what Redmine offers, such as   * Issue & time tracking, milestones   * Gantt charts, calendar   * git integration, maybe some automatic linking of commits and issues   * Wiki (preferably with Mathjax support)   * Forum, news, notifications   * Multiple Projects However, I am looking for a solution that does not require a permanently accesible server, i.e. like in git, each user should have their own copy which can be easily synchronized with others. However it should be possible to not have a copy of every Project on every machine. Since trac uses multiple instances for multiple projects anyway, I was considering using that, but I neither know how well it adapts to simply `git`ing the database itself (which would be be easiest way to handle the distribution due to git being used anyway), nor does it include all of Redmine's feature. After checking http://www.wikimatrix.org for Wikis with integrated tracking system and RCS support, and filtering out seemingly stale project, the choices basically boil down to Foswiki, TWiki and Ikiwiki. The latter doesn't seem to offer as many usability features, and in the TWiki vs Foswiki issue I tend to the latter. Finally, there is Fossil, which starts from the other end by attempting to replace git entirely and tracking itself. I am however not too comfortable with the thought of replacing git, and Fossil's non-SCM features don't seem to be as developed. Are there crucial features of Project Management software like Redmine that Foswiki does not provide even with all the extensions available?"}
{"_id": "166256", "title": "How do I translate user input into a fictitious language?", "text": "For experimental reasons, I am trying to convert user input into a fictitious language. All of the translation can be 1:1. I would prefer if I could accomplish this with PHP. Should I use gettext and poedit? The fictitious language is not very large, I imagine I can do most of the translation 1:1 I have scoured the googles, but have only found dated code and localization."}
{"_id": "82582", "title": "Best way to break down overwhelming code into manageable chunks?", "text": "I'm continually becoming overwhelmed by large projects, once they reach a certain level of complexity. Once I reach a certain point in a project, my progress slows to a crawl and I find myself constantly retracing my steps and sorting out all kinds of confusion. I've gotten really good at refactoring due to this weakness of mine. And I always try to decompose my objects into smaller, more manageable ones. This weakness has also probably caused me to pay too much attention to designing things properly. I know if I can break my problems down into smaller ones, I'll be able to accomplish smoothly. One strategy that comes to mind is test-driven development. What else can I do?"}
{"_id": "161200", "title": "Algorithm Analysis: Frequencies of Execution", "text": "I am currently reading the Analysis of Algorithms section in Algorithms, 4th Edition and I'm trying to understand how the author calculated **(N^2)/2** and **(N^3)/6** _frequencies of execution_ in the code snippet below (here is the full code):               public class ThreeSum     {         public static int count(int[] a) {                 int N = a.length;                 int cnt = 0;                 for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) { // <---------------- 1                     for (int j = i+1; j < N; j++) { // <---------- N                         for (int k = j+1; k < N; k++) { // <------ N^2/2                             if (a[i] + a[j] + a[k] == 0) { // <--- N^3/6                                 cnt++;  // <---------------------- x                             }                         }                     }                 }                 return cnt;             }      }      Why divide N^2 by 2? Why divide N^3 by 6?"}
{"_id": "56249", "title": "If it was for you to chose Game Development vs Application Development, which will you chose?", "text": "Today I was asked if I want to do Game development or Application Development. I never thought to that I will ever do Games for a living. I will try it for a couple of weeks maybe but what are your thoughts on this topic? P.S. the apps or games will be for mobile devices."}
{"_id": "10804", "title": "Should Professional Development occur on company time?", "text": "As a first-time part-time software developer at a small consulting company, I'm struggling to organise time to further my own software development knowledge - whether that's reading a book, keeping up with the popular questions on StackOverflow, researching a technology we're using in-depth, or following the front page of Hacker News. I can see results borne from my self- allocated study time, but listing and demonstrating the skills and knowledge gained through Professional Development is difficult. The company does not have any defined PD policy, and there's a lot of pressure to get something deliverable done _now!_ when working for consultants. I've checked what my coworkers do, and they don't appear to allocate any time to self-improvement; they just work at the problems they're given, looking up specific MSDN references, code samples, and the like as they need them. I realise that PD policy is going to vary across companies of different size and culture, and a company like my own is probably a bit of an edge case. I'd love to hear views and experiences from more seasoned developers; especially those who have to make the PD policy choices in their team or company. I'd also like to learn about the more radical approaches to PD, even if they're completely out there; it's always interesting to see what other people are trying. Not quite a summary, but what I'm trying to ask:   * Is it common or recommended for companies to allocate PD time?   * Whose responsibility is it to ensure a developer's knowledge and skills are up to date?   * Should a part-time work schedule inspire a lower ratio of PD time : work?   * How can a developer show non-developer coworkers that reading blogs and books is net productive?    * Is reading blogs and books actually net productive? (references welcomed)   * Is writing blogs effective as a way of PD? (a recent theme on Hacker News) This is sort of a broad question because I don't know exactly which questions I need to ask here, so any thoughts on relevant issues I haven't addressed are very welcome."}
{"_id": "10807", "title": "Forgetting stuff I've done before and how do you fix this", "text": "I'm not sure if it's just me or if this is common in our field. The past year has been a bit intense for me. I've been learning a few different technologies to get some tasks done and sometimes I've had to completely focus on that one new technology I'm learning. What I noticed though when I go back to using everything together in the full project is that I forgot how to do things that I already knew how to do before I started focusing on learning that other new technology. Sometimes I find that I forget even simple things like the syntax for selecting a div in jquery, that I have to go back to old files to get a quick peek. Sometimes I could be coding something that I recognize I did before in another project, but can't quite remember which project it was for, so I have to go through several projects and look through the code to try and remember where I did that. What ways have you invented to prevent yourself from forgetting things you've done before, or to easily access code you've written in the past?"}
{"_id": "63986", "title": "Is it always wrong to optimize before profiling?", "text": "I see the mantra of \"profiling before optimization\" repeated again and again here, on SO, and elsewhere. Although I certainly use profiling tools, I'm only occasionally surprised by the results. It seems like, as often as not, the profiler is just giving the same information that you could reasonably deduce by knowing the likely execution path of your program, understanding how your architecture works, and having a good idea of what optimization techniques the compiler can employ for you. Because of this, I generally find that when I'm developing, I see areas of the code that I can sense are going to be bottlenecks (often times when writing the code I will think to myself \"hey, this is going to be a critical part of the code, and needs to be fast, but I will use a slower implementation first to prove the concept, then optimize it later\") and I just go ahead and optimize these areas before I bother doing much profiling. Is this really such a bad practice, or is it just the natural result of gaining experience doing optimization? **Edit** I just wanted to point out that I _do_ use profilers, I'm just wondering how bad it's considered to be to pick off the low hanging fruit first, rather than waiting for the profiler to prove something is slow. **Edit 2** Thanks for the insights so far everyone. People have posted a lot of good comments. I have to say that I still have mixed feelings about some of the advice here, but it's given me a lot of insight into why people make the statement."}
{"_id": "187854", "title": "How to deal with a Team Lead who dislikes Extreme Programming?", "text": "From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming Extreme Programming is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. My Team Lead dislikes Extreme Programming as   * May take more time to complete the project.   * Increases initial cost (20% or more).   * Constant interaction is tiresome.   * Unit tests is hard for database, distributed and GUI. Is there any evidence to support these claims about Extreme Programming or are these fabrications? What arguments can be made where Extreme Programming can actually be harmful to a team or project?"}
{"_id": "96725", "title": "Is there a way to update a client's database without seeing all his sensitive data?", "text": "A client has asked me to update his web app. At the last minute, he has expressed some concern about allowing me access to his database (and thus to sensitive client information), because this is the first time we have worked together and he doesn't know me. As far as I know, there is no way for me to work on this project without having full access to his database. I need to make updates to the database for one thing (adding columns, creating new tables etc). And I need to test the live app when I've updated it and I would be concerned not to have full database access. Is there a way I can work on his project without having access to his sensitive info? Many thanks"}
{"_id": "61856", "title": "What is the best way to work with DAL and BLL?", "text": "I'm currently refactoring my DLL and BLL and I need some advice on what is the best way to work with DAL and BLL. My current solution is like this:               // DAL class only consists of SQL queries and returns SQL result     class DAL {            public function isBrandInList($brand)       {         $sql =\"SELECT id FROM sl_label  WHERE name = '$brand'\";             $this->query($sql);           return $this->query_result;        }          }          // BLL will process data from DAL and return data to whatever function called the BLL function.     class BLL extends DAL {            public function isBrandInList($name)       {         $result = parent::isBrandInList($name);              if(mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {              while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {             return $row['status'];           }         } else {            return false;         }       }     }      I don't think this is the best way to work and my DAL file is getting over 1000 lines of code and has over 50 different classes. It's getting messy. My plan is to improve this and start using `MySQLi` / `PDO` and prepared statements. Can anyone tell me how I can improve the way I write my DAL and BLL? Should I create sub class in the DAL, e.g. one subclass for Person and one sub class for Brand? I've googled and looked at diffrent design patterns. Most of them are for .NET and they don't have any good examples. And maybe som links to some good articles? The ones I've found hasn't been the best. **UPDATE**   This is an example on how I do it today. The code below is just snippets and not the entire code.               //search.php       require_once('classes/search.class.php');         $search = new Search($_GET);       $result = $search->search();       echo $result;                //search.class.php     include('classes/bll.class.php');          class Search extends BLL {       private $store_term;            public function __construct($term) {         parent::__construct();         $this->get_search_term($term);           }          private function get_search_term($term) {}          public function search() {       if(!empty($this->store_term))         $result = $this->search_store();              return $result;     }          private function search_store() {        $result = parent::getStoresBySearch($this->store_term);       $html = 'Code for building html search result list here';       return $html;     }               //bll.class.php     class BLL extends DAL     {            public function __construct() {        parent::__construct();       }            public function getBrandsBySearch($term) {         $result = parent::getBrandsBySearch(mysql_real_escape_string($term));         return $result;       }     }          // dal.class.php     class DAL extends pdo {       public function __construct($cfg_file = 'sl.config') {         parent::__construct($this->dsn, $this->user, $this->pass);       }            public function getStoresBySearch($term)       {         $term = $term.'%';         $sql = \"SELECT bla bla bla\";         $sth = parent::prepare($sql);         $sth->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);         $sth->execute(array(':term'=>$term));         $result = $sth->fetchAll();             return $result;       }       }      I have a fealing that this might not be the best way to code?"}
{"_id": "117399", "title": "xpath vs DOM API", "text": "I just came up on xpath recently while writing a greasemonkey script and immediately fell in love. I haven't done any benchmarking yet (coming soon), but according to a couple sources that I read, xpath is faster than using the DOM API. After checking out the internals of a couple of libraries (Swizzle and jQuery), I noticed that neither use xpath, but use the DOM API. My question is: Is there something here that I'm not seeing as to why these libraries haven't changed to use xpath (or were first written using xpath rather than the DOM API), or is it just that xpath just hasn't quite caught on yet?"}
{"_id": "226045", "title": "wrap mysql API for gui use", "text": "Some time ago now, I've written a command-line tool, that connects to MySQL, and through a series of commands, does all sorts of good stuff. It was originally intended to be used by myself and, perhaps, by other developers.   Now, however, it's likely that non-devs will at some point be using this same tool, or at least a part of it. Given that many people sort of get nervous the moment you speak the forbidden words of death _terminal_ or _CLI_ , I've set about writing a rudimentary GUI using GTK+. For obvious reasons, I kept things nicely separated, and only made those functions that the GUI tool needs to support visible.   But here, I ran into trouble. My code uses an unknown number of prepared statements. So far, I have been passing those around from function to function. I don't want to do this in my GUI code, of course. (I know, it's bad enough that I am doing this in the CLI version, and I do want to re-write chunks of that code, too).   So far, I've come up with 3 ways of fixing this. Effectively, I find myself having to write a wrapper-API around those bits and bolts of the MySQL API that need to be exposed. But which is the best? What are the down/up-sides of each approach? Am I missing the obvious fourth approach? Here are the options I'm currently considering:   * write a simple header with typedefs, and some macro's (`MAKE_STMT(\"My query\")` sort of things, and prefix all types relating to the MySQL API with `DB_` or something.   I don't fancy this, simple because the GTK+ API is quite similar, and it tends to make code look, to my eye at least, a tad messy. It also doesn't really solve the issue, but rather masks it.   * Use a global hash table, or simple array in the mysql code, and allocate memory for each prepared statement I need, and return its offset/hash. I can then pass that around in my CLI/GUI code, and use a function like `execute_stmt(int offset, struct param_list *params);` which can then use the `offset`.   This is the approach that I'm likely going to use ATM, simply because this has to be the most straightforward way to keep db-related data out of the front- end code   * use `void *` in front-end code and macro's that cast & call the right functions at the right time. I'd hate to use this approach, but at least I can check for `NULL` pointers, and not leave error reporting/handling to the DB code, which doesn't know if the program is running in CLI or GUI mode (and I'd like to handle errors differently in both cases).   * Perhaps a last alternative, and this is what I'm currently doing, given I've not set about reworking the CLI code, is using separate .h files. Possibly expanding this further into 3 .c files: 1 for common functions, 1 for CLI specific code, and 1 for GUI code.   I'm probably bound to end up with something like this, but then the question remains: what is the best way to keep MySQL-related code as far away as possible from the UI code?"}
{"_id": "117395", "title": "How can I transition from being a freelance PHP developer to working for a company?", "text": "I've been a freelance web developer for about three years, mostly dealing with non-framework based PHP projects. I'm thinking of moving on to an employer-based job, but I'm not sure what will be expected of me or how to prepare for the transition. What technologies, concepts, and patterns should I be focusing on to ensure I don't crash and burn once I leave the life of freelancing? What can I do to prepare myself for developing as part of a team?"}
{"_id": "219385", "title": "Is SOA as a concept intended to function within code or between machines over a network?", "text": "As the question states: When implementing \"SOA\", is it a concept intended for communication between systems over a network or is it intended as a concept that operates within the language as a pattern?"}
{"_id": "9885", "title": "How much documentation is enough?", "text": "How much technical (for future developers) documentation is _enough_? Is there a ratio between hours coding and hours documenting that's appropriate? Papadimoulis argues that you should > produce the least amount of documentation needed to facilitate the most > understanding, Is that a good guideline, or are there specific things I should be creating?"}
{"_id": "158260", "title": "Is there any design pattern except MVC for web?", "text": "I want to know are there any design patterns for web besides MVC? I know there are design patterns as: Registry, Observer, Factory, ActiveRecord ,... and MVC a set of other design patterns and folder structure. Is there design pattern like MVC is a set of other design patterns? Edit : my programming language is PHP."}
{"_id": "52090", "title": "How do you make slides for programming talks?", "text": "I've given a few talks recently and I have not found a good way to make slides. Here are a few desirable characteristics for programming slides:   * They're slides. A standard emacs buffer won't do it.   * They have syntax highlighting for code.   * They support _basic_ formatting, like font size and color and bullets.   * No fancy animations needed. The only animation I desire is one-by-one appearance of bullets.   * EDIT: It should be easy to alt-tab back and forth from the terminal to the slides without destroying the presentation sequence/position. So far I have considered:   * Microsoft Office - out of the question for Linux users.   * OpenOffice.org - too much for my needs, code formatting/highlighting needs to be done externally and pasted in. On the plus side supports bullets, bullet-by-bullet animation, and font formatting. To my knowledge there's no way around the fact that alt-tab to the terminal destroys presentation mode and position.   * Emacs - Supports all the code formatting but I haven't found a _slides_ mode that lets me transition from one chunk to another.   * HTML5 - I once made slides using html5rocks as a template. It supports everything, but is too hard and time-consuming to \"throw together\" a few slides before a minor talk. Also the html5-only features may not work on the podium computer's installed browser. Any suggestions for programs/techniques for making code-centric presentations? EDIT: I think S5 and Latex are most in the spirit of what I'm looking for, but that's not to say the other suggestions (including not using slides at all) are \"wrong\"."}
{"_id": "96153", "title": "How to convince my boss to switch to OOP PHP?", "text": "We have been trying for months to convince my boss to switch to OOP php, but each time, he takes out his previous experience with programming and convinces us other wise. i need to talk like a boss to him, tell me how do i convince him? I need to make him understand the long term benefits and also financial benefits. One arguments he used today was that it was not optimum for performance, like each time you need to make a conection to the database, you need to create a new object each time. Please help me."}
{"_id": "158266", "title": "How much should I know before looking for an internship? (self-taught with math background)", "text": "The only formal education I received is 2.5 years as a major in pure maths with computer applications (sounds like an oxymoron, but basically it's pure maths with some courses on algorithms, discrete maths with some CS applications, and a little cryptography with number theory). I dropped out (due to personal, not academic reasons). I'm not even sure if an incomplete BS. Degree is worth mentioning in a resume. Since leaving school this year, I've been focusing on learning back-end web development (PHP, MySQL, CSS/HTML; I've only played with js). I spend all day waiting for the moment I can sit back at my computer and do what I love... whatever the pay, I'd jump at the opportunity of leaving my job and doing something related to web programming. My only concern is that, lacking a formal education / advisor, I've no idea what is expected of an intern. I've worked through all your basic \"standard\" tutorials (forms, building a MySQL database, queries, etc.). I'm now reading Code Complete, relational algebra, Wordpress code, learning the essentials of a low-level language (C, understanding pointers, memory, and so forth). I'm building my own WP theme framework from scratch (with reuse and readability in mind)... but watching the people here at SE, it's clear that I know very little. It's pretty intimidating. **Just how much is one supposed to know before considering a first internship? At what level should I be and how will I know when I'm there?** For what it's worth, judging by the \"Programmers' Competency Matrix\", this is where I'm at in the following categories:   * Computer Science: I know all level 0's and one level 1.   * Software Engineering: two level ones and one zero (well, sort of: I only know git, and not a whole lot).    * Programming: five level 1's, four level 2's, three level 3's, three 0's.   * Experience: three 0's, one level 1.   * Knowledge: five level 1's, one 0, one 3. So basically mostly `1`'s and `0`'s... low level indeed."}
{"_id": "105763", "title": "Have you ever found a bug you can't solve? What do you do in that case?", "text": "We're developing a hosted CMS, something like WordPress.com. When we were creating the **Image Gallery module** , we examined many jQuery libraries like **easySlider** , **jCarousel** , and **Nivo Slider**. But each of them had some kind'of weird bug across browsers. We almost put 2 days into finding where the bug was from. But we couldn't find the problem source. The most important reason could be that our system is now is complex. Here are the problems:   1. easySlider sliding were not transitional and was abrupt.   2. jCarousel were sliding images half to their width in IE.   3. Nivo Slider didn't hide the last-shown image, thus was not suitable for and image gallery with heterogeneous images. We just concluded that we need to find a library which can work without bug, and we searched and found one. But my question is, is it normal for large projects that the source of a bug cannot be found and instead, it's located with trial-and-error and you simply flee from the bug? Do you have such an experience?"}
{"_id": "105766", "title": "C++ to friend or not to friend", "text": "I have an object oriented programming with c++ course this semester at college and we were learning about friend functions. I instinctively dislike them for their ability to bypass the security that Encapsulation and Data hiding provide, I read a few articles on the internet and some people thought that it was a good idea with some legitimate uses. What would an OOPs expert say about friend fucntions in C++? Should I just skim over it or should I learn more about it?"}
{"_id": "120533", "title": "Is PHP suitable for downloading large amounts of data?", "text": "Is PHP suitable for downloading large amounts of data, usually via cron? Should I worry about the memory footprint when I am using PHP for downloading multiple zip files?"}
{"_id": "154571", "title": "Understanding hand written lexers", "text": "I am going to make a compiler for C (C99; I own the standards PDF), written in C (go figure) and looking up on how compilers work on Wikipedia has told me a lot. However, after reading up on lexers has confused me. The Wikipedia page states that: > the GNU Compiler Collection (gcc) uses hand-written lexers I have tried googling what a hand written lexer and have come up with nothing except for \"making a flowchart that describes how it should function\", however, isn't that how all software development should be done? So my question is: \"What is a hand written lexer?\""}
{"_id": "215737", "title": "How Python random shuffle works?", "text": "How shuffle from random works in Python? I ask because it works very fast. When I try to write shuffle it works 1 minute for 10^6 element, but Python shuffle does that in 8 sec?"}
{"_id": "60186", "title": "How to properly learn ASP.NET MVC", "text": "I have a question to ask and maybe some of you will think it's lame, but I hope someone will get me on the right track. So I've been programming for quite some time now. I started programming when I was about 13 or so on Delphi, but when I was about 17 or so I switched to C# and now I really like to program with it, mostly because it's syntax is very appealing to me, plus managed code is very good. So it all was good and fun but then I had some job openings that I of course took, but the problem with them is that they all are about web programming. And I had to learn PHP and MVC fundamentals. And I somewhat did while building applications using CI and Kohana framework. But I want to build websites using ASP.NET because I like C# much, much more than PHP. **TL;DR** I want to know ASP.NET MVC but I don't know where to start. What I want to start with is build some simple like CMS. But I don't know where to start. Do I use same logic as PHP? What do I use for DB connections? And also, if I plan to host something that is build with ASP.NET MVC3 on a hosting provider do I need to buy some kind of license?"}
{"_id": "124855", "title": "How do you include Support in your Sprint?", "text": "Our company moved to Scrum recently on a product that was almost coded by a single person (Joe). We have support to do with our exising customers that we try to integrate in our process. For now we tried the following approach:   * We do a rotation on a person in charge each week.   * The person in charge for the week may spend up to 8 hours on support. But we failed to have it work:   * Joe always does the support because he knows the code better, and it's always faster for him to do it than to explain it.   * We (the rest of us) tend to focus on what's on the Sprint board aka new stories instead of support tasks.   * Joe has too much work, he can't handle all the support by himself because he has to do things outside of the Sprint as well. Have you already faced similar situation? How did you manage to get out of it? Note: We can't dedicate a single person on the support right now. We hope to in the future."}
{"_id": "250211", "title": "What happens if I close an InputStream that is passed as an argument?", "text": "I have read that Java is pass-by-value, and I've been reading about it in this question at StackOverflow, but I'm still a bit confused, regarding the close() or shutdown() methods in various classes. What I want to know is, suppose that I do this:               public Constructor(){              if(isProceeding){             InputStream iStream = new InputStream();             processStuff(iStream);         }     }               public void processStuff(InputStream stream){         //do stuff         stream.close();     }      Does the iStream variable actually get closed in processStuff() method or a copy of it gets closed and iStream itself is still left open?"}
{"_id": "250212", "title": "Algorithm for rating books: Relative perception", "text": "So I am developing this application for rating books (think like IMDB for books) using relational database. **Problem statement :** Let's say book \" **A** \" deserves 8.5 in absolute sense. In case if A is the best book I have ever seen, I'll most probably rate it > 9.5 whereas for someone else, it might be just an average book, so he/they will rate it less (say around 8). Let's assume 4 such guys rate it 8. If there are 10 guys who are like me (who haven't ever read great literature) and they all rate it 9.5-10. This will effectively make it's cumulative rating greater than 9 (9.5*10 + 8*4) / 14 = 9.1 whereas we needed the result to be 8.5 ... How can I take care of(normalize) this bias due to incorrect perception of individuals. **MyProposedSolution :** Here's one of the ways how I think it could be solved. We can have a variable **Lit_coefficient** which tells us how much knowledge a user has about literature. If I rate \" **A** \"(the book) 9.5 and person \" **X** \" rates it 8, then he must have read books much better than \" **A** \" and thus his Lit_coefficient should be higher. And then we can normalize the ratings according to the Lit_coefficient of user. Could there be a better algorithm/solution for the same?"}
{"_id": "170168", "title": "Is it correct that Java Applets can do hardware acceleration while Flash can't?", "text": "I hope you can confirm or disprove whether I understand this correctly. I know for certain that Java Applets can have hardware acceleration and I wonder if this is the only known way to have graphics hardware acceleration in web pages or is there another way?"}
{"_id": "21209", "title": "Functional Programming - Does Knowing It Help Job Prospects?", "text": "The main language that I use at the moment is C# and I am the most comfortable with it. However, I have started dabbling in F# and Haskell and really enjoy those langauges. I would love to improve my skills in either of those languages over time since it truly is fun for me to use them (as opposed to Ruby, which is hyped as \"fun\", I just don't get where the fun is, but I digress...). My question is directed at those who have hired/interviewed for programming positions (junior/mid-level): if you see a functional programming language on a resume, does it affect your opinion (whether positive or negatively) of that candidate? My rationale for knowledge of functional programming affecting the view of a candidate is because it can show that the candidate can adapt to different methodologies and take a mulit-dimensional approach to problems rather than the \"same old OO approach\". (This may be off-base, please let me know if this assumption is as well!)"}
{"_id": "1849", "title": "How have you made unit testing more enjoyable?", "text": "If you've always loved unit testing, good for you! But for the unfortunate ones who weren't born with a liking for it, how have you managed to make this task more enjoyable ? This is not a \"what is the right way to unit test\" question. I simply want to know little personal tricks that reduce the boredom (dare I say) of writing unit tests."}
{"_id": "94385", "title": "Getting into JEE", "text": "I'm the author of this question from a couple of months ago: Java but no JEE experience I thought about just editing this question, because this a bit of a followup to it - but it's actually a different enough context to ask separately. Answers would cross over and the thread would get messy if I do that. Anyway, basically, in the past couple of months I've done a pretty intensive review of my JEE knowledge. Worked through a book, built apps from scratch, etc. At least in terms of a basic built-out-of-the-box Servlets/JSP CRUD app, I can say that I know how a JEE web application works now, how all the plumbing and configuration hooks up, etc. And I've got a much more comprehensive understanding of the JEE model in general than I had before. Here's my question: I'm hoping to go into JEE (probably web development, but preferably more the data-driven back end side of things) and am wondering if this knowledge is sufficient to start applying for work in the JEE space. I get conflicting reports: Some people say that good general programming skills + strong core Java are all that's needed, and others say that you actually need strong experience in the specific JEE-related frameworks and technologies for the given JEE roles. It's hard to get a good read on what's right - and I don't want to look ignorant for applying for things which I'm clearly not ready for. I have very strong core Java and almost a full decade of commercial programming experience, but really can't claim any of it as strong commercial JEE (only Swing, Applets, and lots and lots of core Java). **Note** : If it helps, I can mention I don't mind taking a job a notch below what can be expected with my overall level of commerical experience - to get into JEE. All this is mainly because the market for Applets and Swing development is pretty much dead at the moment, and I need to expand my Java ecosystem experience."}
{"_id": "90892", "title": "Cocoa Applications: Use custom preference dialog or system preference app?", "text": "When writing **_Cocoa Applications_** for **_MacOSX_** , you have the choice of either having a custom preference dialog, or using the **_Settings.app_** to manage your preferences. Functionality wise, there is no difference at all between the two (apart from the fact that preferences in the Settigns.app can be accessed when your app is not running). Which solution do you use and why?"}
{"_id": "167128", "title": "What is logical cohesion, and why is it bad or undesirable?", "text": "From the c2wiki page on coupling & cohesion: > Cohesion (interdependency within module) strength/level names : (from worse > to better, high cohesion is good) > >   * Coincidental Cohesion : (Worst) Module elements are unrelated >   * **Logical Cohesion : Elements perform similar activities as selected > from outside module, i.e. by a flag that selects operation to perform (see > also CommandObject). i.e. body of function is one huge if-else/switch on > operation flag** >   * Temporal Cohesion : operations related only by general time performed > (i.e. initialization() or FatalErrorShutdown?()) >   * Procedural Cohesion : Elements involved in different but sequential > activities, each on different data (usually could be trivially split into > multiple modules along linear sequence boundaries) >   * Communicational Cohesion : unrelated operations except need same data or > input >   * Sequential Cohesion : operations on same data in significant order; > output from one function is input to next (pipeline) >   * Informational Cohesion: a module performs a number of actions, each with > its own entry point, with independent code for each action, all performed on > the same data structure. Essentially an implementation of an abstract data > type. i.e. define structure of sales_region_table and its operators: > init_table(), update_table(), print_table() >   * Functional Cohesion : all elements contribute to a single, well-defined > task, i.e. a function that performs exactly one operation > get_engine_temperature(), add_sales_tax() > (emphasis mine). I don't fully understand the definition of logical cohesion. My questions are:   * **what is logical cohesion?**   * **Why does it get such a bad rap (2nd worst kind of cohesion)?**"}
{"_id": "167122", "title": "Is Intellisense faster in Visual Studio 2012 compared to Visual Studio 2010 for C++ projects?", "text": "We switched to VS2010 from VS2003 a few months ago, and there are many many improvements. But the speed of Intellisense is not one of them (although it does generate higher quality results, which is great). I read that Intellisense and the MSDN help system has been improved in VS2012. I'm curious if its actually faster? The only data I could find were graphs of an early release (VS2011). For the record, I am using a vanilla install of VS2010 with SP1 on Windows 7 SP1 (x64). No plugins or add-ins running. What I'm looking for specifically:   * Has the speed of intellisense auto-complete improved?    * Has the speed of F12 (GoTo definition) improved? The answers to these questions will help in determining if VS2012 is worth the money to upgrade at this time as the intellisense slowness would be the only major reason for upgrading. I'd also be interested in knowing if the help system has improved. I'm currently using MSDN help from VS2008SP1 because it has filtering and is faster."}
{"_id": "210818", "title": "How long is a typical modern microprocessor pipeline?", "text": "I learnt some about pipelining but those were 4-stage and 5-stage and I think that modern pipelining typical is much longer and more complicated in practice. How long are typical pipelines and how much can we expect them to increase and where is the point of reaching diminshing returns in performance gains for longer pipelines?"}
{"_id": "197514", "title": "Is RESTful API appropriate for services which are nearly computational in nature?", "text": "Is RESTful API appropriate for the following scenario?   * A time-limited token is obtained, which will last for one minute only   * Image is uploaded to a server   * Server performs some CPU-heavy image processing upon request, within the time limit   * The result is available for download, within the time limit   * When the token expires:      * The image, computation, result are all discarded / terminated, and any open connection will be closed.   * All other necessary aspects of web services, such as authentication / service authorization, quota, encryption etc., might still be necessary. Since the \"resource\" is only allowed to exist for less than one minute, does it still make sense to make \"resource\" the first-class citizen in this API? * * * **Update** I have found this link that talks about a REST API for job queueing in RabbitMQ. However it is an \"idea page\", so I'm not sure whether this is relevant or not."}
{"_id": "210812", "title": "Interview question \"What is virtual function\"", "text": "It was funny for me, and I'm interesting the reaction for this question of the community. It was interview for C++/Qt developer, and question was asked **\"What is virtual function\"**. Not something like \"how polymorphism in C++ works\" or \"how virtual functions works\" but what is. My first thought was to answer \"Virtual functions(methods) are methods that have word \"virtual\" before it's signature\", but I explained about how they works =) What do you think, is this a proper formed question? And what will you ask for that question? PS: I hope that this part of stackexchange are proper for this question"}
{"_id": "197519", "title": "Where should I store the files for python modules I install?", "text": "If I download a module for Python (such as alglib) and installing is simply a matter of running               python setup.py install      Where should I be keeping the files I download, or the files that get created after I run setup.py? Is there some neat folder in the python directory that people put these modules before running setup.py? Can I move the files around after running it? Can I delete them... or will that stop them working? I couldn't find any recommendation here: http://docs.python.org/2/install/ Also I am running windows and installed python through python(x,y)"}
{"_id": "157171", "title": "Java BufferedReader vs Separate Producer consumer thread", "text": "I have a very big file delimited by some sequence of characters '*L*I*N*E'. The file will be of the order of 250G. And each line comes around 600bytes to 1000 bytes. I will be performing the following operations on the file, Read the file line by line and for each line, I will be giving it to a parser which will do some calculation on the line and update some stats. The parser will take roughly 15 micros per line. As of now I am using the `BufferedReader` to read the lines and pass it over to the parser in a single thread. My question is if I have a separate reader thread which only reads the file and dump everything in a queue (in memory) and have my parser act on the in-memory queue(in a separate consumer thread), can I achieve better throughput? Nothing changes except that my parser acts on the inmemory data and another thread takes only IO operation(read the file and dump in a queue). It is a complex piece of software in which the above is one part, so I am trying to speed up the above part. Hence I can't able to post the actual code."}
{"_id": "68073", "title": "How do you convince coworkers/stakeholders to try new technologies?", "text": "I've got a coworker/manager/stakeholder who is very conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies. I completely understand why: we have a lot of internal expertise with Java, MySQL/Postgres, and so on, they're well- established, and there's lots of good support for them. But technology evolves, and sometimes newer technologies are better suited to today's tasks. It makes sense, for example, to do heavy numeric processing in something like Python+Numpy. Some kinds of simple web sites are faster and easier to implement in Ruby/Rails. Processing hundreds of gigabytes of logs a day is well suited to a Hadoop M-R architecture. But I often encounter a lot of resistance to bringing new technologies into the mix, even when I think there's a strong case for it. The resistance even goes down to minor details, like using a heavy JavaScript front-end and web services rather than server-side heavy JSP for a recent project. The most common objection is that because we don't have significant expertise in the technology, it won't be maintainable if I'm not available to do it myself. How do you work with people like this to overcome these kinds of objections?"}
{"_id": "157172", "title": "How important is an SSL certificate for a website?", "text": "I'm bootstrapping my own project, it has a registration/login area (via devise with RoR, properly hashed and salted of course). As I'm using subdomains and I need to access them with iframes (it's justified, really!) I'd need one of those expensive certificates that cover subdomains. As I'm doing this out of my own time and money, so I'm hesitant to drop a couple of hundreds on a certificate, plus a couple of hours delving into something I haven't tried before. I'm not storing any sensitive information besides the email address and the password. As far as I understand, the only vulnerability happens when a user logs or signs up from an unencrypted network (such as a coffee shop) and someone is listening the network. Am I being cheap? Is this something I should tackle before releasing into the wild. I probably should mention I have 25,000 users signed up to be notified when I launch, so I'm nervous about it."}
{"_id": "157174", "title": "Clients with multiple proxy and multithreading callbacks", "text": "I created a sessionful web service using WCF, and in particular I used the `NetTcpBinding` binding. In addition to methods to initiate and terminate a session, other methods allow the client to send to one or more tasks to be performed (the results are returned via callback, so the service is duplex), but they also allow you to know the status of the service. Assuming you activate the same service on multiple endpoints, and assuming that the client knows these endpoints (for example, it could maintain a `List` of endpoints), the client should connect with one or more replicas of the same service. The client periodically updates the status of the service, so when it needs to perform a new task (the task is submitted by the user via UI), it selects the service currently less loaded and sends the task to it. Periodically, the client also initiates a maintenance procedure in order to disconnect from one or more overloaded service and in order to connect with new services. I created a client proxy using the _svcutil_ tool. I wish each proxy can be used simultaneously by different threads, for example, in addition to the thread that submits the tasks using a proxy, there are also the following two threads which act periodically:   * a thread that periodically sends a request to the service in order to obtain the updated state;   * a thread that periodically selects a proxy to close and instantiates a new proxy to replace the closed one. To achieve these objectives, is it sufficient to create an array of proxies and manage their opening and closing in separate threads? I think I read that the proxy method calls are thread safe, so I would not need to perform a lock before requesting updates to the service. However, when the maintenance procedure (which is activated on its own thread) decides to close a proxy, should I perform a lock? Finally, each proxy is also associated with an object that implements the callback interface for the service: are the callbacks (invoked on the client) executed on different threads on the client? I would like to wrap the management of the proxy in one or more classes so that it can then easily manage within a WPF application."}
{"_id": "98986", "title": "How do you stop yourself from bringing work home?", "text": "Programming is a highly cerebral job, and one of the biggest problems I have is bringing my work home with me. It's so easy to do: whenever I get the chance to think, my mind naturally wanders to work-related matters. I find so many of the other things in my day rather mentally unstimulating and as they say, nature abhors a vacuum. Unfortunately, constantly thinking about work is stressing me out and I can't seem to just flip that switch at the end of the day. It's been causing me quite a bit of insomnia. To make matters worse, nearly all of my friends are co-workers, and many of our conversations do very little to make me forget about the week. They're fun people to be around generally, and once we've had our bitch-fest we all stop talking about work, but suffice it to say it does little to encourage me to forget about work-related matters. So what can I do to leave my programming projects behind me at the end of the day? Or failing that, what type of mentally stimulating activities couuld I do to occupy my non-work hours with (that are non-stressful and don't involve mind-altering drugs)?"}
{"_id": "94659", "title": "Why are people afraid to die()?", "text": "I have seen a lot of people (first comment) hating `die();` instead of `exit;` As the follow-up comments on that post note, `die` and `exit` are the same - the attitude appears to be one of perception, with some feeling that one name is more appropriate in certain contexts than others. But why does it matter? If they do the same thing, why should I care what name I use? Does death by any other name not smell as sweet?"}
{"_id": "116049", "title": "Is it worth using tool agnostic concepts in a development team?", "text": "We waste a lot of time using tool specific terms when we are all really talking about the same things. The problem is that person1 is familiar with toolset1, person2 with toolset2 etc. So each uses a set of terms that they are the most comfortable with and in the end, we end up talking at cross purposes. Has anyone come across this problem in your work place? How did you resolve it? I am asking specifically about development teams here."}
{"_id": "116040", "title": "Transitioning into a programming career from system administration", "text": "I have a bit of a unique story. I have some work experience in IT, which I've come to generally loathe, and about a year left on finishing my physics degree. I would like to pursue physics further but the career path is pretty grueling and I've decided against it. I know (or knew) the fundamentals of a good handful of languages: Java, C, C++, PHP, and am familiar with SQL. In my physics degree I've done some research that required a good deal of C++ programming, albeit in a format that is more procedural than OOP, as is common when scientists try to program. I'd like to convert my experiences to a career in some sort of lower level programming, embedded devices, drivers or scientific/mathematical programming and the like, as I don't particularly enjoy the idea of writing websites or other manner of CRUD applications for 50 hours a week. I've done enough LAMP stuff to know it doesn't really interest me. That said, I am flexible and have only a nebulous idea of what I want to do. So the question I pose is how to position myself well to start up such a career as a new grad in about a year or so? I certainly need to shore up some fundamentals as it has been a long while since I learned and am pretty rusty. Secondly, I don't have any sort of show-able portfolio as my physics research doesn't really lend itself to that, although perhaps there is an opportunity to parlay some of the stuff I've been doing into a more discreet project. Lastly, I am worried that my IT background on my resume will typecast me as a sysadmin type and not allow me to break into the more enjoyable, for me at least, world of programming. Thanks! TL;DR: Physics degree and IT work wants to convert to a career doing lower- level programming."}
{"_id": "235516", "title": "I want to draw class diagram, but I don't know how to put server and database inside?", "text": "I just started to draw class diagram, I think it is based on 3-tie architecture. I have mobile application, servers, database, and web interface. But I do not know if it should put the server in? I just want to write a high- level one."}
{"_id": "113670", "title": "Should the admin interface of a public-facing webapp be accessible externally?", "text": "I am working on an application right now that needs a way for employees to log in to the back-end of the public facing application for some basic reporting. If you were creating this, would you put the admin interface on the public side or on the intranet side? Update: It is the back-end of our eCommerce application. I am logging all of the transactions with the CC processor (NOT the sent data, just the response from the processor) and the processed transactions to aide in us being able to troubleshoot when a customer has a problem. Kind of a one-stop-shop instead of looking up in multiple places. They should be in the office when doing this. This is an ASP.NET MVC project if that matters."}
{"_id": "53324", "title": "Translating error messages from an external API?", "text": "If I am localizing a piece of software that uses an external API, how should I handle error messages that originate in this API? I do not control the API, I only consume it. The error responses are not very structured: some contain error codes, some contain verbose details in the text, others almost nothing. Some errors can be fixed by the user (incorrect configuration), some are caused by the external service (server overload), some could be caused by a bug in my software (of course, this would be very unlikely...). I would like to provide a smooth experience to my end-users, so they know what went wrong and what they can do to fix it. What is the best strategy to use here? _(This is a generalization ofa question from the WordPress Stack Exchange. I thought it would be worth re-asking here, because it is not limited to WordPress plugins.)_"}
{"_id": "148483", "title": "What is the proper way to pass the parameters into a MVC system?", "text": "I am trying to learn java servlet/jsp with the MVC concept and built the simplest MVC application. Now I want give more detail to it to enhance my understanding. If I would need to register a new row in a table in the database, how should we pass the various value of column into the system? For example, the user might want to register a new event in his planner and the detail of the event involves the 'where', 'when', 'who', 'detail', etc. Should pass all this long value from the servlet's parameter, i.e: the http link?               String accNo = request.getParameter(\"account_number\");     String a = request.getParameter(\"...\");     String b = request.getParameter(\"...\");     String c = request.getParameter(\"...\");     String d = request.getParameter(\"...\");      To illustrate my view that it is really unprofessional to show all the parameter on the link:               http://localhost:8080/domain1/servlet1?param1=55555555555555&param2=666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666&param3='Some random detail written by user.........................'      Is there other way to pass them?"}
{"_id": "90760", "title": "How do I demonstrate what I've learned outside of the workplace?", "text": "I consider myself a well-rounded developer. I read books, delve into technologies at home, go to developer meet-ups, frequent Stack Overflow, and so forth. But how do I show this to the prospective employer? If I read a book on Hibernate but we don't use it at work, how do I show it on my resume that I know Hibernate? Would having a side project that uses it and putting it on GitHub help? How do you all tackle this problem?"}
{"_id": "105283", "title": "How do I tell if a Company is really serious about Agile and Scrum?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Weeding out real agile from buzzword agile in an interview I went for an interview. The company really wants to take me on. However my sticking point is that I have not received clear information on whether they are using Agile and Scrum methodologies. I have arranged a telephone chat with the consultant there... what questions do I ask to test to see if they are really serious about agile and scrum? I was thinking:   * Can you build and release your software in one step?   * Do you use continuous integration? Can anybody give me advice to really get the truth out of them I will only get this one chance to quiz them. Regards, Pete"}
{"_id": "148489", "title": "How to develop front end (UI) for my Django website", "text": "I am learning Django and new to web development. Please excuse me if you find this question too dumb. So, I am creating a Facebook application using Django which I would like to host in Google App Engine. The project would be focusing on reading RSS/ Atom feeds of any website (That's all I can say now). I am sure enough to process the RSS/Atom files but I am worried about the front end (User Interface) part - \"The design part\". I don't know HTML/ CSS/ JavaScript (I can handle simple HTML stuff but that doesn't lead to any designing thing). First, I thought of using tools like dreamweaver or any equivalent software for designing UI but when I really started learning django and getting into it, It seems to be a \"not possible\" thing. So,   * How should I design the UI part of my site? Can't I use tools like dreamweaver?      * If NO, what's the best way for guy like me who doesn't know JavaScript/ CSS     * If YES, what's the best open source alternative to dreamweaver?     * Can Google App Engine handle all this suff?   * How people who deal with Django edit those template pages. The Django mentions the it will separate the logical (views) and design (templates) parts so that different departments in a company can handle separately. But Considering the fact that the Django's HTML pages are filled with \"tags\" which are no way related to HTML (designing), how UI people handle it?"}
{"_id": "148488", "title": "Documenting a programming language: Reference Manual", "text": "We are looking at revamping documentation across our product line. Part of that includes **reference manuals** for a **programming language** used as part of the system. When writing a reference manual for a programming language, what is the best way to structure it for maximum usability to those new to the language? What are the **key aspects** for each keyword documented?   * Syntax   * Description   * Arguments - if applicable   * Return values - if applicable   * Example of usage?   * Any others I'm missing? **Should concepts** (such as locking strategies, performance related details) be also documented in this reference manual, or is that a separate document? * * * This is for external consumption. We already have full doc sets (see: http://www.rocketsoftware.com/u2/resources/technical-resources). Working out what we should do different - I already have my ideas, but as always, I try not to rely solely my my opinion. Audience: Technical developers using our database(s) & tools to produce software across many industries."}
{"_id": "58353", "title": "Using ASP.NET 4 and Stored Procedures", "text": "How popular are **stored procedures** today, compared to 5 years ago? I ask this question because the book that I'm reading (an ASP.NET 4 book) has no stored procedures in it. Is it the ASP.NET 4 way now?"}
{"_id": "104967", "title": "Web application development security best practices", "text": "I am looking for the current, state of the art, coding standards for web development (mostly PHP). Since I do not want to reinvent the wheel I would like to reuse libraries written by people much clever than I am. I know about OWASP which is a wonderful source of best practices and brilliant information. Their web site is however quite unorganized when it comes to libraries.   * On the one hand there is OWASP ESAPI with pointers to libraries.   * On the other hand there is OWASP AntiSamy, which also has libraries. It in turn points to HTMLPurifier or the MS Anti-XSS library. I did not find any links between these different solutions. Is there currently a consensus on the most recommendable libraries to use in order to mitigate the major security risks? Thank you"}
{"_id": "147378", "title": "Does Parallel Inheritance Make for Good Code?", "text": "I'm writing a database interface in PHP and I have a base `dbTables` class, as well as a base `dbTableFields` class. `dbTables` has a function, `getFields()`, that instantiates `dbTableFields` objects, each of which carries essential data on each table field, and puts it into `dbTableFields->fields=array();` `dbTables` has several children. Now I've realized that the children need to use different versions of `getFields()`. But they only differ in one place: they need to instantiate `dbTableFields` children, rather than `dbTableFields` objects. I've solved this problem. I took advantage of PHP's ability to use variables to represent class names. All I had to do was, in `dbTables->getFields()` replace:               $this->fields = new dbTableFields();      with               $this->fields = new self::$field_model();      Where `self::$field_model = 'dbTableFields'; // string value for class` Now, in the child classes, I just have to override the `$field_model` property with the name of the appropriate `dbTableFields` descendents. Is this parallel inheritance scheme good form? Or am I creating an uncompromising mess? Is there some more-elegant and more maintainable method for achieving the same effect?"}
{"_id": "58359", "title": "Emphasize Some Comments - but not Dirty the Code", "text": "I'm having trouble structuring my comments at the moment. I have major sections of the code that, when scrolling through the document, I want to be able to see those stand out. Examples: > This is a normal comment: > >> int money = 100; //start out with 100 money - > This is a comment to emphasize a certain part of the code: > >> / ** _*_ ** _*_ **** Set up all the money **_*_ ** _*_ ****/ But I don't like that this isn't very clean. Is there a standard way of setting up this type of a comment?"}
{"_id": "147375", "title": "variable comparison without initialising", "text": "I am working with a project in VC++ which involves co-ordinate system having x,y,z axis.   I am trying to check for if a variable(Point with x,y,z values) is assigned on the coordinate system or its a default point(uninitialized) .   Since a coordinate system I cannot assign a default value to the variable to be either negative or positive or even zero since all these are valid values. My approach over here is to have a _Boolean variable_ associated with my _Point variable_. If the Boolean is set then Point assigned else not. Now I have to check for each and every statement where the value can be assigned and set the Boolean. Now I tried with this approach which is pretty bad and you may consider it as wrong. What I am doing here is taking an uninitialized float variable (since x,y,z members of Point are float) and comparing it with x,y,z members of Point variable.   Since in the case where Point is uninitialized both float variable and members of Point match and I can declare its uninitialized. I have tried to test this on different compilers and I get the result as expected.   Obvious I get a compiler warning for **uninitialized variable used for comparison** My question, Is the second approach really bad or is there any workarounds over this."}
{"_id": "147370", "title": "Let go yet again from another job, should I give up on programming?", "text": "I've been let go three times from three different jobs already in the past four years. The first job was doing seismic interpretation software in C++. It lasted nearly three months. The reasoning was that I had excellent C++ skills but I had serious communication issues. My second job was at a flash social games company. Again I lasted nearly three months, with the reasoning being that once again I had poor communication skills and was slow to pick up the pace. My last job was at a regular casual flash game company. I lasted 1 year and 9 months on this one. The reasoning for my dismissal this time being that they had to lay off staff due to the economy, so they picked two programmers. I was picked because even though I produced quality code, I could not finish it in a reasonable amount of time. My boss told me once more that he thought I was a good programmer and he wouldn't say no to rehiring me in the future if I managed to get some experience in IOS programming, given their interest in moving in that direction. My concern is that I somehow doubt if I'm even fit to be a programmer at all. Even though I can do some impressive stuff that few people can do (I was hired at my last job because I was able to create a pretty impressive 2D/3D demo in flash from scratch, even though they had already filled the role), it almost always takes me nearly twice as long as anybody else to achieve the same results. Even when I'm doing the simplest tasks, such as typical state machines for character behaviour in a 2D platform game, I feel like my brain somehow freezes for no particular reason. (It's been like that ever since I can remember for the past 12 years or so, but I thought it was something that happened to everyone.) I tried staying late pretty much every day, but still it wasn't enough for me to catch up. All of this was made worse by the stress that built up from knowing how slow I was, wondering if my boss was going to call me that day to give me the bad news. I'm naturally a very stressful person, so I recognize that stress in itself makes me even slower. I feel like I've lost all motivation and ambition to learn new things, and that I should just give up on programming and simply focus on doing simpler, less stressful things like working at a library or something, and just forget about having a career, because I simply cannot do anything else. Programming is all I know. So what I'm asking of you is a serious opinion on the matter, given the few details that I've given to you. I've already started looking for a new job, but I'm wondering if it's going to turn out the same. I know I have to be posititve about things, but how can you stay positive when you've failed so many times in such a short time?"}
{"_id": "20552", "title": "At what stage of an Open Source project should you invite contributions from the community?", "text": "I've been wondering about getting contributions to a new open source product my team will be developing. There's encouragement for us to get as much support from the wider community as we're able, but I can also see this absorbing a lot of time making sure that 3rd parties located outside our office are on track regards things like code quality. Also at the start of the project we're likely to have a lot of informal discussions within the core team regarding design of the system, spikes etc. and taking these online to allow community involvement will be time consuming and I can imagine could make the discussion less effective. There is a more human side to this which probably needs to be considered: allowing community involvement in the design process may also have its benefits regards perceived ownership of the project, and there's always a chance that early involvement could pick up on problems that the core team haven't noticed. So the question: at what stage of an Open Source project should you invite contributions from the community?"}
{"_id": "83117", "title": "How do I deal with analysis paralysis?", "text": "Very frequently, I am stuck when choosing the best design decision. Even for small details, such as function definitions, control flow, and variable names, I spend unusually long periods perusing the benefits and trade-offs of my choices. I feel like I am losing a lot of efficiency by spending my hours on insignificant details like these. Even though, I know in the back of my mind that I can change these things if my current design doesn't work out, I have trouble deciding firmly on one choice. What should I do to combat this problem?"}
{"_id": "193946", "title": "Implementing base-10 floating point division", "text": "I'm implementing floating-point arithmetic, for a micro-controller which does not support floating point numbers, in either hardware or software. (Software being \"written\" in a sort of electrical diagram program.) I've finished encoding/decoding from/to integers, adding, subtracting, and multiplication. My \"floats\" are represented as `C * 10^E`, where:   1. C, the coefficient, is a 32-bit signed integer in the range 100000000-999999999, or 0.      * (Nine digits of precision, plus the special case of zero.)   2. E, the exponent, is a 32-bit signed integer covering the whole 32-bit range.      * (Yes, it's overkill.) I chose round base-10 numbers to make the verification of the math easy. My strategy for the multiplication was to split up the two numbers `AaaBbbCcc` and `DddEeeFff` into three pieces each (millions, thousands, and ones) and compute the multiplication as               (ABC * 10^Y) * (DEF * 10^Z) =       ((AD * 10^12) +        ((AE + BD) * 10^9) +        ((AF + BE + CD) * 10^6) +        ((BF + CE) * 10^3) +        (CF * 10^0))       * 10^Y+Z      Each `*` and `+` representing a normal multiplication or addition, and 10^N being faked with me hard-coding in a 1000, 1000000, etc. Also note that this neither recurses or loops, and any answer cannot recurse or loop. I've got access to integer addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, modulo, cos/sin/tan/arccos/arcsin/arctan, absolute value, and square root. ### Main Question: I can/will eventually figure out how to do division with a similar approach of splitting the coefficients into smaller numbers which will be better for 32-bit division. I haven't done my algebra in a long time, so multiplication took me about a day and a half. Since I presume division to be more complicated conceptually, it would be super handy if somebody on SE could do the hard math for me. So, _how do I do this?_"}
{"_id": "99582", "title": "Is there a language more general than Lisp?", "text": "I've been programming for a long time, and writing in Lisp (well, mostly Scheme) for a little less. My experience in these languages (and other functional languages) has informed my ability to write clean code even with less powerful tools. Lisp-family languages have lovely facilities for implementing every abstraction in common use:   * S-expressions generalise structure.   * Macros generalise syntax.   * Continuations generalise flow control. But I'm dissatisfied. Somehow, I want more. Is there a language that's more general? More powerful? As great as Lisp is, I find it hard to believe no one has come up with anything (dare I say) better. I'm well aware that ordinarily a question like this ought to be closed for its argumentative nature. But there seems to be a broad consensus that Lisp represents the theoretical pinnacle of programming language design. I simply refuse to accept that without some kind of proof. Which I guess amounts to questioning whether the lambda calculus is in fact the ideal abstraction of computation."}
{"_id": "143874", "title": "Is the phrase \"never reinvent the wheel\" suitable for students?", "text": "I find myself constantly running into this expression \"don't reinvent the wheel\" or \"never reinvent the wheel\" when I ask some questions on SO. They tell you to use some frameworks or existing packages. I know where this attitude is coming from since it's unwise to waste time on something others have already solved. Or it that so? As a student, I find by using some code others wrote to solve my problem I can't learn as much as I'd like to, and I gain less insight. And sometimes I think that phrase is mainly for working programmers facing deadlines and not for students like me. Is it that bad to \"reinvent the wheel\"? Maybe I'm thinking it wrong? Maybe there is a way I can avoid reinventing the wheel and at the same time learn a lot?"}
{"_id": "115630", "title": "How does minecraft use a seed to generate a completely unique world?", "text": "In minecraft, before creating a world you have an option to input a seed. The algorithm takes the seed and creates a completely unique world. How does this work?"}
{"_id": "115632", "title": "Build a Platform API for public", "text": "I am looking for some advices, resources or articles about how to expose a Platform API to outside developers. My main concern is what is the standards or best approach to do that, basically I have a set of REST API services of the platform and need to understand how to address the following issus :   * API Hosting and Management in general (should we use online api management tools like apigee or mashrey?)   * Developer Keys, permissions   * Developer tools, documentations   * throttling   * Reporting   * Logging/Auditing   * Authentication and Authorization It is also great if you can point out to some articles that explain how Facebook or Twitter or Google are doing this, or abstract architecture and management best practices on how to open Platform API to the public users. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "99589", "title": "What is \"friend\" keyword used for?", "text": "Can you explain to me why the `friend` keyword is preferred for giving access rights to private data of class?"}
{"_id": "179043", "title": "UML Class diagrams with Java packages?", "text": "I am trying to model in UML 2.0 a Java servlet application that has three classes   * Servlet class; essentially a main class that acts as the controller   * DatabaseLogic; contains methods for database operations   * XMLBuilder; builds an XML from a query result string The classes use a variety of packages from the Java library. I am unsure how to model this in UML Do I have to create a package and show which libraries are used for each individual class or can I just have one large package in the diagram with all the libraries showing which classes have dependencies on which. As per this diagram ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/N05mW.png) This is my first time working with java properly (im a C++ guy) Apart from being a bit messy , is this a correct UML representation of the system I described? Does a Package in UML mean the same as a Package in Java?"}
{"_id": "148738", "title": "How to handle different web root running in iis on locahost vs. web server (iis7)", "text": "I have several websites that I help manage. When running on my local machine (under iis7), the websites run on under a folder on my machine d:\\WebRoot\\TheWebsiteName and run as htt://localhost/TheWebsiteName, but when they are deployed they run as http://www.TheWebsiteName.com (also running under iis7) Currently I am handling the path to the website resources (images, javascript, etc) via code. But I was wondering if there was a better way to handle this rather than writing specialized code in the website. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "148733", "title": "Multi-project multi-team Scrum", "text": "2 teams (A and B) in different geo locations are developing Project P. Both of the teams are also developing few other smaller projects: A has projects PA1 and PA2. B has PB1 and PB2. P is the only one common to the 2 teams. The Scrum design today:   * Each team has a PO, and they decide on the priorities together.   * One common Backlog that contains stories from project P and from PA1 and PA2. PB1 and PB2 are done off-scrum.   * Each team has its own sprint and SM. Team A picks stories from the backlog that are related to projects P, PA1 and PA2. Team B takes stories only related to P. The problem:   * I want to manage PB1 and PB2 in Scrum as well. Possible solutions:   * Add PB1 and PB2 to the same Backlog? - will complicate the backlog even more than now.   * Separate to 3 backlogs (P, PA1-2, PB1-2)? - There is a rule of \"one backlog per team\"... Should we break it? And is it even supported in TFS? Any idea how to solve the problem?"}
{"_id": "68694", "title": "Working code and user needs", "text": "Programmers, like myself, often is too worried about if their code is really going to work, rather than how to communicate with the users. Scared of throwing an exception at the user, we test with different scenarios in different environment like development, staging and production. But when it comes to deliver a simple line of information to the user - we fail. We try to convey a message that explains to us what is really meant rather than a message, in plain english, easily understood by the user. And even more - we use a very strict and formal language. We spend 1% or less of our time to think about who receives the message, and what they think of it when they do. I use phrases like **\"Not selected to the next step\"** instead of **\"We're sorry, but there where others with higher score than you who made it to the next step. But keep up the good work, we like to see you here again. Sometime soon it will be your turn\"** I dislike this attitude that I seem to be adapting. I'd like this behaviour of mine to change. How do I keep myself out of the rabbit hole?"}
{"_id": "68692", "title": "Database abstraction -- is it being overdone?", "text": "After being exposed to numerous database abstraction layers, I'm starting to wonder what the point is of every library inventing their own different paradigm to access data. Picking up a new DAL feels like learning a new language all over again, when usually all I want to do is just convince the layer to output an SQL query that I've already written in my head. And that's without even touching on readability after the fact:               # Exhibit A:  A typical DAL     rows = db(db.ips_x_users.ip_addr == '127.0.0.1')         .inner_join(db.ips_x_users.user_id == db.users.id)         .select(order=(db.ips_x_users.last_seen, 'desc'), limit=10)      ****               # Exhibit B:  Another typical DAL     rows = db.ips_x_users         .join(db.users, on=db.ips_x_users.user_id == db.users.id)         .filter(db.ips_x_users.ip_addr == '127.0.0.1')         .select(sort=~db.ips_x_users, limit=10)      ****               # Exhibit C:  A hypothetical DAL based on standard SQL syntax     rows = db('''SELECT * FROM ips_x_users                  INNER JOIN users ON                      (ips_x_users.user_id = users.id)                  WHERE ips_x_users.ip_addr = ip                  ORDER BY last_seen DESC LIMIT 10''', ip='127.0.0.1')      What's wrong with standard SQL syntax? It was created for a specific purpose, and it fits that purpose beautifully. Maybe it's just me, but I understand snippet C far more readily than the first two. The renamed keywords and syntax tricks are cute, but IMO, when it comes right down to it, they don't make retrieving rows any easier for the coder. This probably seemed like a long rant, but there **is** a real question here. Since every DAL seems to invent a new DSL for queries rather than just parsing tried-and-true SQL, there must either be benefits of using different syntax, or deficiencies in standard SQL syntax that I don't realize are there. Could anyone please point out what I'm overlooking here?"}
{"_id": "68690", "title": "Product demo and .net", "text": "I have question about using .Net 3.5 or 4.0 I know that .Net is more productive then Qt but i am afraid of problems when my client leave my product because he cant run e.g demo of my app with lack of appropriate framework version. I wish to ask experienced persons in that matter. Is that many users that doesn't have .net 3.5? It worth to make app in .Net 3.5 or better use Qt c++ because .net is not that much productive and more important is that every could run app coded in Qt ?"}
{"_id": "132226", "title": "How might the role of product owner go against the idea of open source, or work for it?", "text": "On a related questions about \"Finding and/or becoming an open source product owner\" -- the first comment to the question itself was \"the idea of a product owner goes against the idea of open source.\"   * Is this true, and if so, why?   * If not, what circumstances and/or context would it make sense for open source project to have a product owner role? I've attempt to find an example of this role at Mozilla.org \\-- but I've had no luck so far. (Just to be clear, I'm talking about a volunteer role, not a paid position at a non-profit.)"}
{"_id": "222254", "title": "Why is the copying instruction usually named MOV?", "text": "In quite many assemblers, a value copying instruction is usually named \"MOV\" and its description in manuals usually also contains \"move\" (however, other words can be used, like \"load\", \"store\", \"extract\", etc.) It's uncommon to find an ISA ) which doesn't follow this convention. On the other hand, in other contexts, \"move\" differs from \"copy\" in sense that source is destroyed (for example, \"mv\" vs. \"cp\" in Unix, Move[F6] in Norton Commander and clones, etc.) Assembler's \"move\" really has semantic \"copy\", keeping the source value intact. I've found that this has started at least since IBM 1401 (1959), but, IBM 360 used this word only for in-storage copying, but not for operations between registers and storage (which used \"load\" and \"store\"). But why it's still widely used and not replaced with \"copy\" or \"store\"?"}
{"_id": "106442", "title": "Why do some functional languages need software transactional memory?", "text": "Functional languages, by definition, should not maintain state variables. Why, then, do Haskell, Clojure, and others provide software transactional memory (STM) implementations? Is there a conflict between two approaches?"}
{"_id": "106440", "title": "Idea for a domain specific language or DLR port?", "text": "I have my undergraduate final year project coming up and am very interested in lexers, parsers, compilers and so on. I would like to use the DLR (.NET 4.0 dynamic language runtime) for my undergraduate final year project, but am struggling to find a reason to use it! A domain specific language would be an idea, but most of the domains I can think of have already been done. A possibility was a primarily semantic web focused triple store query language similar to SPARQL, but the domain is rather complicated and the query engine would take quite a while to write and optimise. I am also thinking about different programming paradigms, particularly higher level ones such as array/collection programming languages rather than scalar. A language which is less _specific_ in terms of the domain, but with which it is 'easier to process X, which is commonly used or dealt with in situation Y' would be interesting. Another approach would be to attempt to port an existing language (or at least part of it, time permitting) to the DLR. Preferably not APL or Perl - I'm not a masochist. **Edit:** To clarify, by 'Port' I mean host an existing language on the DLR, such as IronJS, IronPython, IronRuby, etc. Does anyone have any ideas for a domain specific language, preferably but not necessarily suitable for the DLR?"}
{"_id": "131953", "title": "How do you perform modeling in an Extreme Programming environment?", "text": "I know methodologies, like Extreme Programming (XP), which specifies its own specific practices for developing software. However, unlike Scrum where it focuses more on management aspects, XP specifies software practices that are required to be followed. From reading this article, these steps eliminate the explicit modeling phase using tools such as BPMN and UML. In another article from Martin Fowler, he further explains such discouragement. Personally, I prefer the model-driven methodologies I guess it's up to the preference of companies and people. One of Agile goal is to \"free developers from document works\". Methodology like XP seems to easily lead to under documentation. I think to achieve that goal, the solution is to implement the tool to help developer reduce the workload on writing document, not by writing less documents, by gathering information from existing diagrams and automatically generate reports (in RTF, PDF, HTML in the case of Enterprise Architect of Sparx System). Some software engineers also complain about drawing diagrams consuming their time. In my opinion, the solution is not to draw diagram, but using the tool. Modeling tools today support round-trip engineering, where you can synchronize between your code and your diagrams, thus eliminates the extra effort to manually correct the diagrams if the code base changes (specifically, class diagram). How does modeling fit into a team that is using Extreme Programming?"}
{"_id": "57802", "title": "Are there jobs which are oriented towards optimisation programming or assembly", "text": "3D engine programmers have to care a little about execution speed, but what about the programmers at ATI and nVidia ? How much do they need to optimize their driver applications ? Are there jobs out there who only purpose is execution speed and optimisation, or jobs for people to program only in assembly ? Please, no flame war about \"premature optimisation is the root of all evil\", I just want to know if such jobs exists, maybe in security ? In kernel programming ? Where ? Not at all ?"}
{"_id": "99636", "title": "Keeping an MVC model loosely coupled from the DB?", "text": "I like to keep my code testable and have decided to go with the Dependency- Injection strategy for my current MVC framework, which definitely has proven to be a great way to ensure loosely coupled code, testability and modularity. But as being far from a master at Design patterns, I have a hard time of figuring out a good way of keeping my Models as loosely coupled from the Database connector classes, as possible. **How can this done?**   As I haven't provided any physical code along with this question, I would really appreciate some logic/code examples or info that could point me into a direction to understand the above described issue."}
{"_id": "156225", "title": "test coverage reality", "text": "I am NOT doing test driven development and I write my test classes after the actual code is written. In my current project I have a test coverage (Line coverage) of 70% for 3000 lines of Java code. I am using JUnit, Mockito and Sonar for testing. But I feel that I am not actually covering and catching 70% of the problems that can occur. So my question is in theory is it possible to have a 100% Line coverage, but in reality it is meaningless because of low quality of the test code and maybe a 40% well written test code is much better than a bad 100% coverage? Or we can always say line coverage more or less gives the percentage of all covered issues?"}
{"_id": "57809", "title": "Python threading vs. multiprocessing: Should I learn one before the other?", "text": "I'm looking to dive into multithreading or multiprocessing in Python. Question: should I be learning one before the other (for any reason)? If so, which one and why? I've read the pro's and con's in SO questions like this, but I'm not really sure how they relate to the pedagogical value of learning one or the other first."}
{"_id": "99631", "title": "What level of threat does selling an app on an app store present to a non-US company?", "text": "Can anyone point me to an article or an informed discussion about US software patents affecting a non-US company who is selling their products on an American app store/marketplace? My company has several products on both Apple's App Store and Android's Marketplace, all of which are available for sale in the US. We are however based in Europe and have no assets registered in the US. Assuming we had a product worth enough to attract patent trolls, should we be worried? We have not researched any relevant patents we might be infringing because such research would be too expensive for us. Reading articles about US patent law it seems that being able to catch all potential patents is unlikely anyhow. I realise this site is frequented by programmers and not by lawyers, but a good external reference would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "156220", "title": "Ways to have a history of changes of database entries", "text": "What are ways to allow the versioning of database entries (data)? Think of the content-managment-systems abilities to revert back changes of articles. What are their pros/cons?"}
{"_id": "156221", "title": "How do game programmers design their classes to reuse in AI, network and play and pass mode?", "text": "For a two player game where, your opponent could be on the network, CPU itself or near you where you would play turn by turn on the same machine. How do people design classes for re-use ? I am in a similar situation and have no experience in making such complex games. But here is what I have thought, If I am a player object , I should only be interacting with the GameManager or GameEngine Singleton , from which I will get various notifications about the game status. I dont care where and who my opponent is, this GameManager depending upon the game mode, will interact with gameNetworkManager , or AI tell me what the opponent played. I am not sure about the scenario where we play and pass [turn by turn on same machine]. Hoping for a brief but clear explanation or at least a link to a similar resource.:)"}
{"_id": "198267", "title": "Why is the use of constructors discouraged when creating prototypes?", "text": "**Quick background:** In JavaScript, the constructor function for each object type has a `prototype` property. The `prototype` refers to an object that each constructed object uses as the next step up in its prototype chain. When you want one type to inherent from another type, you can set the `prototype` of the child type to a new instance of the parent type. For example:               var Parent = function() { /* constructor business */ }     Parent.prototype.parentProp = \"some parent property\";          var Child = function() { /* constructor business */ }     Child.prototype = /*** !! Some prototype object goes here !! ***/      My question asks about what code should go in the \"`Some prototype object goes here`\" spot in the above code. My first instinct is to construct an instance of the parent (i.e., `new Parent()`), but in a comment to an answer on Is this a safe way of copying one objects prototype to another?, one user writes: > No, do not use `new bar()` for the prototype object! (...which is an opinion I've seen in many SO answers and comments, but this is the only example I have on hand at the moment.) The other option is to use `Object.create(Parent.prototype)` as `Child.prototype`. As far as I know, this also creates a new `Parent` instance, but it does not run the `Parent` constructor. Can someone explain why running the constructor function should be avoided when generating a prototype object from a parent type? Is there some significant technical problem that arises (perhaps with multiple levels of inheritance)? Or is such a pattern a misuse of constructors that clashes with some prototypical best practice (e.g., running the constructor when creating a prototype violates some separation of concerns)?"}
{"_id": "168342", "title": "Data structures for storing finger/stylus movements in drawing application?", "text": "I have a general question about creating a drawing application, the language could be C++ or ObjectiveC with OpenGL. I would like to hear what are the best methods and practices for storing strokes data. _Think of the many iPad apps that allow you to draw with your finger (or a stylus) or any other similar function on a desktop app._ To summarize, the data structure must:   * be highly responsive to the movement   * store precise values (close in space / time)   * usable for rendering the strokes with complex textures (textures based on the dynamic of the stroke etc)    * exportable to a text file for saving/loading"}
{"_id": "168349", "title": "Of what significance is the solution to the game of checkers in AI research?", "text": "I have been doing some research into artificial intelligence and I came across a 2007 paper titled \"Checkers is Solved\" on the game of checkers being solved by AI techniques after more than 16 years of trial. A solution to the game is defined by the team as \"determining the final result in a game with no mistakes made by either player\". The search for a solution started back in 1989 and it was finally found in 2007. Of what importance is this to the field of AI?"}
{"_id": "79786", "title": "What appears in your mind if someone asks for a module for application?", "text": "Non-technical people tend to say the word module instead of feature. But I always get annoyed if someone tells me to write a module when what they really want is a feature. In my opinion a module is more than just a feature. A module has no strong dependencies to the application. The application works without the need for any modules. This is why I get angry if someone wants me to write a module because it is not easy to write modular applications. It requires architecting. A feature can be a module or not to be. So I always prefer to understand module as a feature if a non-programmer asks it of me. What do you understand if someone wants a module? What is module in programming terms?"}
{"_id": "109325", "title": "Should I include a selfdestruct-method to my applications?", "text": "I recently had a negative experience, where client bailed from the bill, but my middle-man already uploaded our software and design to the clients server. Client turned out be a known criminal, and of course he changed all possible passwords of the server. However, I can still access the admin-panel of the CMS. Sadly it turns out, that my software is very secure.. Tried to SQL-injection, fake the image- upload etc etc. However, I cannot hack my own software.. Anyways, I preparing to sue this person, so that is not the problem.. I'm just thinking now, that maybe there should be some backend selfdestruct-method. So, if similar case occur, I have the option to _kill_ the software. My own idea is to hide some function in the core files. Encode it with base64, so it wouldn't be obvious. So something like this:               eval(base64_decode('ZWNobyAnSGVsbG8gd29ybGQhJzs=')); // echo 'Hello world!';      And basically make a small script, that takes all the software's files, chmod's them to be sure and then deletes them.   My newer versions of the CMS, all have filemanagers that I could use for easier _hacking_. But what if the access to the admin-panel is limited. **To be very clear** , this is meant only for the development-stage software's, in my personal server or the clients server (last part being the ethically questionable.) So if my client should steal my software.. This wont be included inside a commercial-software.   **And to be even more clear** , we are talking about those _rare_ freelance jobs. I think its fairly logical, that contract-work doesn't need such methods. So we are talking about those jumprisk-clients, only in development mode -- when the project is ready, then obviously this would be a very very unethical _backdoor_ to have inside your software.   1. Ethically is this a good idea? (Keeping in mind, that obviously I will remove it, when project has been 100% and everything is paid for)   2. Have you guys ever had to _hack_ your own software, because of similar issues with the client(s)?   3. Any recommendations on this idea, code and method wise?   4. What may be the possible drawbacks or repercussions of selfdestruct-scripts? **My conclusion on this** Is a little bit sad, that all answers were targeted on the contracted cases. It was my fault really, that I didn't make it more clear in my question.. just thought, that it is fairly clear, that there is no point in the kill-switch.. when you are protected by the contract.   However, if you are doing a contract work.. then this should be stated in the contract -- this makes it legal, even inside the clients own server. However, having kill-switches inside my own personal server is really nobodies business (this is what I really wanted to know.) I decided to make the kill-switch script for my CMS. Mainly, because it seems an interesting challenge. But also, that I could use this for my non- contracted works where the client is a friend of a friend of a friend.. I probably wont use this on the clients server, but..for the cases, where the client or some middlemen have access to my server .. And my software gets stolen, or \"moved without my knowledge\", then I don't get paid and they cut the access to the software. I have read trough alot of topics here, where they recommend to send a warning and then take down the page. Well, I saw a problem in it, as when Im dealing with a person.. who will just copy it to somewhere else (maybe re-brand it and sell it) and tells me, that it has been taken down. And also, I wouldn't \"turn the site off\", but delete it. Though, I guess its still illegal to access my clients server and to delete it. Or at-least, access it trough backend and not from the FTP. For this I thank all of you, who answered."}
{"_id": "109324", "title": "What are the 'hot' topics in computer science?", "text": "I'm about to start my AQA EPQ - which is a 5000 word essay and presentation on a topic of your choice; I was looking for topics in which to research and report on. I believe this question is often asked by many university and sixth form students because often, chosen questions can lead to to many 'dead-ends'. I want to be able to go into depth with the topic and write-up a detailed report with a strong over-all conclusion. What topics within computer science are considered good topics to research and report on."}
{"_id": "79782", "title": "How do I pass data the object-oriented way in PHP?", "text": "I find that even when working with a MVC framework (e.g. CodeIgniter), I regularly resort to passing nested arrays rather than objects. This doesn't follow my understanding of object-oriented well. For example, if I were to port the code to Java then I wouldn't dream of passing arrays (or Vectors, or whatever) around like that. I was wondering if this is the appropriate way to handle data. Is there a reason why arrays are passed around like this in PHP, or why objects aren't used? What's the best way to pass data around?"}
{"_id": "109320", "title": "Functions with side-effects in Delphi/Pascal", "text": "What is the proper approach to functions that have side-effects in Delphi/Pascal? For example, I could have a boolean function `DeleteFile` that returns `True` if the file was deleted and `False` otherwise. How do I collect the return value? 1) The very explicit form would be:               if DeleteFile(MyFilePath) then     begin       IsMyFileDeleted := True;     end;     else     begin       IsMyFileDeleted := False;     end;      2) Less bulky would be:               IsMyFileDeleted := False;     if DeleteFile(MyFilePath) then     begin       IsMyFileDeleted := True;     end;      3) Or even shorter, but discouraged by JEDI \\- perhaps it is acceptable just to collect return values:               IsMyFileDeleted := False;     if DeleteFile(MyFilePath) then IsMyFileDeleted := True;      My problem with 2 and 3 is that I explicitly state something (`X := False`) that I may not know for sure. 4) I would rather not set the variable beforehand and have its value completely determined by the function:               IsMyFileDeleted := DeleteFile(MyFilePath);      Here the issue is that it is a bit misleading, because assigning a value to a boolean has a pretty serious side-effect. I'm not sure if this usage is desirable. Some argue that functions should never have side-effects, but I think some of Pascals internal functions violate that. 5) The alternative would be making it procedures with a result variable to be filled by the procedure:               DeleteFile(MyFilePath, IsMyFileDeleted);      That might go against the trend to keep parameter use to a minimum (Clean Code). 4 and 5 would be the only ways to collect a return value other than boolean, I suppose? Does that mean anything for boolean functions? Yes, there are many ways to do the same thing and maybe I'm just worried about nothing really, but I'm trying to develop a good style and I wonder if there are any best practices. For a beginner, many principles seem to be in conflict all the time."}
{"_id": "616", "title": "What do you do when you feel stuck on a project?", "text": "When I am in a code or design rut, I tend to find a non-dev coworker to discuss the problem with. It forces me to explain the problem in great detail and I'll usually find something I missed in the process. What are your \"unsticking\" methods?"}
{"_id": "29665", "title": "Should I use multivalued attributes in conceptual modelling?", "text": "My team and I have designed a simple, affordable conceptual modelling language as part or a larger research project. This language is aimed to end users with little or no training in information technologies. It allows them to create class models using basic constructs such as classes, attributes, associations, and the like. The language is working nicely, but we are considering whether we should add multivalued attributes to it. In the OO paradigm, attributes are usually considered to be single-valued, i.e. they can take a value on each instance of a class, or they can be null, but they can never take multiple simultaneous values. However, some situations in certain application domains call for multivalued attributes. For example, imagine a Garment class with a Colour attribute. That attribute may as well be multivalued, since garments can be multi-coloured: the shirt I'm wearing as type this is white and purple. However, very few approaches to OO conceptual modelling use multivalued attributes, and none of them are mainstream as far as I know. I seem to recall reading that multivalued attributes are not a good way to model things, but I can't recall a sound reason, and I can't think of one, and I refuse to accept this at face value. In addition, most of the work I know of about multivalued attributes is at the database level rather than at the conceptual modelling level. So, my question is: Do you think that multivalued attributes make sense in a conceptual modelling language? Can you point me to any books, papers or other sources that discuss this? Thank you."}
{"_id": "194721", "title": "Multi-user Configuration Settings design", "text": "I am designing a flexible and extensible way to store configuration settings for users. **Database Table Design:**               \u2554\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2557      \u2551 ConfigurationItemDefinition \u2551      \u2560\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2563      \u2551 ID                          \u2551      \u2551 Name                        \u2551      \u2551 Type                        \u2551      \u2551 DefaultValue (varchar)      \u2551      \u2551 ConfigurationItemAdapterID  \u2551      \u255a\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u255d                    |     \u2554\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2557     \u2551 ConfigurationItem             \u2551     \u2560\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2563     \u2551 ID                            \u2551     \u2551 UserID                        \u2551     \u2551 ConfigurationItemDefinitionID \u2551     \u2551 Value (varchar)               \u2551     \u255a\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u2550\u255d      **Explanation:** The `ConfigurationItemDefinition` table holds the definition for configuration settings. `Type` is the .NET type which the value would be parsed/serialized into when queried in the code. The `ConfigurationItem` table is where configuration values are set _for each user_. If there is no value explicitly set for a specific user for some configuration item definition, then the `DefaultValue` value from `ConfigurationItemDefinition` is used. `ConfigurationItemAdapterID` is determines what technique is to be used to 'get' and 'set' the configuration value. For example, an `int` value would use a basic Parse (from string -> int). A `CultureInfo` object would need to use a serialization adapter. The way in which configuration values are get and set is determined by the adapter (examples below). **C# Code** In C#, a setting would be acquired like this:               // This would use the Parse adapter     int timeout = someUser.GetConfigurationValue<int>(\"TimeoutValue\");           // This would use the Serialization adapter     CultureInfo cultureInfo = someUser.GetConfigurationValue<CultureInfo>(\"CultureInformation\");      And set like this:               // This would use the Parse adapter     someUser.SetConfigurationValue<bool>(\"IsLive\", true);      Please critique this design. Are there more standard ways of dealing with such a problem?"}
{"_id": "194720", "title": "Unit Testing and \"Fit\"", "text": "I am reading Cristopher Alexander's \"Notes on the Synthesis of Form\", and he is describing a solution to a problem as having good fit, when there is an absence of bad fit; we can't describe all of the qualities of good fit because it's too complex, but we can identify the bad qualities that stick out. The complexity of software means that we can't understand all the possible relationships - the qualities of good fit, but we can identify when code isn't doing what it's supposed to - the bad fit. I'm wondering then, is the purpose of unit tests to identify a \"bad fit\" in the solution?"}
{"_id": "194722", "title": "Keeping test and release version numbers in sync", "text": "I'm currently beta-testing an iPhone app. Right now I have sent out the first beta-test for my users and I have labeled that release as `1.0` for my testers. Now since the testers have tested the app we have discovered some bugs that I have fixed and I'm ready to send out a new beta-test for my users. Should I label the release as `1.0.1` then? Another question related to this is, when my testers have tested this `1.0.1` release and they do not find any bugs it would be a good time to release this version to the public in the App Store. What version number should I release this under in the App Store? First thought is that since it's the first release to the App Store it should have version number `1.0` but then it will be \"out of sync\" with the version that has been tested (`1.0.1`)."}
{"_id": "114945", "title": "How do I dual license?", "text": "I'd like to open source a project of mine under GPL v3. Additionally, I'd like to sell a license for those who wish to use the code in a proprietary application. How do I go about releasing my source code under GPL v3, while also reserving the right to release it under another license of my choosing? Do I still put the GPL header at the top of each of my source files? I'm rather new to the legal side of software."}
{"_id": "78782", "title": "Suggestion needed to create a website that makes podcasts", "text": "I going to create a project that has the following features:   * Create Audio and Video Podcast    * Create & Browse Podcast Hoster's Profile   * Manage Hoster's Profile ( add podcast , remove podcast , archive podcast )    * Paypal Payment implementation   * Secure User Login system   * Able to expose data as a webservice. Can anyone suggest me the better PHP framwork or CMS ( if required ) and a multimedia server for the same purpose. Any other suggestions are also welcome."}
{"_id": "55189", "title": "What are the best ways to professionally increase your online presence?", "text": "I've been hunting around the job market for a little bit now and I've been shocked by some of the things I'm seeing. Software developers who make themselves more \"known\" online are getting far more career opportunities and far better positions than people competing against them who are not as well \"known\" online. After doing some reading on the subject I realized that I actually shouldn't be so shocked by this. We are living in the most fast-paced era of mankind and employers want to be able to learn as much as they can about a potential employee before they hire them. The easier we as software developers make it for us to be found the better our chances of landing that dream job become. In some cases, employers are even finding us in favor of traditionally choosing to let us apply to them. So what are some of the best ways for me as a software developer to increase my online presence? I already hang around stack exchange sites such as programmers and stack overflow increasing my rep whenever I can. I maintain many open source projects as both a committer and project owner on Google Code and Github. I have a Twitter account, a website, and a blog. What else can I do to give myself a bigger online presence? Additionally, are there any good do's and don'ts for handling your web presence? Bashing your employer is an obvious don't but I'm interested in everything from the most basic to the most subtle suggestions to give myself a more appealing online presence. Thank you very much in advance for your time."}
{"_id": "222872", "title": "Why do some projects have getters and setters for public instance variables?", "text": "I was looking into an open-source game framework project written in Java. It has several classes that:   * Have public instance variables.   * Have getter/setters for such variables. Generally, I write getters/setters when I want to encapsulate some behavior that occurs when a property is modified. However, looking at the code, it literally goes something like this:               public class Test {         public int value;         public void setValue(x) {             value = x;         }         public void getValue() {             return value;         }     }      Then I thought about checking out the rest of the framework and see how do they modify such value, which may give me a hint on why did they do the above. From what I've seen, they do it like this:               object.value = 100;      Without using the getters/setters. So now I'm not sure what was the point of creating getters/setters. * * * So, my question is, is there a reason I would want to create getters/setters for a public value, if such getters/setters don't even implement any kind of special behaviour?"}
{"_id": "91960", "title": "Code mapping in .NET (or in general)", "text": "Does there exist a software solution of some form that has the ability to map out the actions of calling a function. So what I mean is, let's say that we have the following class.               public class Foo     {         public Foo()         {            if (this.SomeProperty)            {                DoSomething();            }         }              private void DoSomething()         {             var Bar = new Bar();             Bar.DoSomethingElse();         }     }          public class Bar     {         public void DoSomethingElse()         {             //call something else or whatever here.         }     }      Would there be something that would generate a flow chart (or some kind of map of sorts) of this if I were to say, what does creating a `Foo` do? I'm asking this because a large majority of our code base was written on the fly without any kinds of documentation, and I'm just trying to help map out some behavior and make sure that it is all understood."}
{"_id": "91961", "title": "What is a nicer way of describing the process of \"Idiot Proofing\" a piece of software", "text": "To me, Idiot Proofing just means making sure the user can't break a piece of software even if he tried. For instance, if a value is read from a text box, and is converted to a double, if the underlying software is idiot proof, it won't break if the user types in a non-double value. I recently wrote up a development schedule and one of the items was named \"Idiot proof UI\". The people I am building this software jokingly feigned offense to the term, but I can see where this term would actually make people upset. What's a nicer way to say this?"}
{"_id": "79433", "title": "Any guidelines for correcting others technical inaccuracies?", "text": "How often do you correct others when they say something that is inaccurate? For example I recently corrected someone when they kept referring to a forward slash as a backslash. He made the reference several times so I knew it wasn't a slip of the tongue. Furthermore, I wasn't trying to \" _Display my vast knowledge_ \" I just thought he might like to know. A couple of guys here write code in VB.NET, for some reason the non technical people in charge got the term VBN or VBN.NET in their heads and no one corrected them. So now thats what they call it. Everyone here knows what they mean when they say VBN though, so I guess theres no real harm. I personally love to learn so I gladly welcome most corrections, so I can learn whats right. I feel like other people just get annoyed when corrected. Should some fallacies be left alone or is it always OK to simply say: > Actually its called VB.NET, I think maybe you were confusing it with VPN. Or am I just being pedantic? Correcting mistakes in someones code is always fine, but are there any guidelines to correcting people outside of code reviews? Are there different rules I should follow in correcting Technical vs Non Technical people? I don't want to be an information hoarder, but I don't want to be an annoying pedant either."}
{"_id": "194893", "title": "Are there any statically-typed Web scripting languages?", "text": "There seems to be two major ways to set up a web server backend. You can use a LAMP stack, with the server-side code in something like PHP or Python (or Ruby or JavaScript, which don't start with a P.) These scripting languages tend to be dynamically typed, with all of the disadvantages in performance, correctness and maintainabilty that dynamically typed languages bring, but it's easy to update the server because all the page generation logic is stored in external scripts. The other major architecture style in wide use is ASP.NET, where the page generation logic is written in compiled code. This tends to use statically typed languages, so you get code that's had the benefit of a compiler, but all of the page generation logic is compiled into the server, which means if you need to change something, you have to take the server down and replace it with a new build. So that makes me wonder. Are there any server-side scripting languages that use static typing, for the best of both worlds?"}
{"_id": "144130", "title": "Testing loses its effectiveness if all programmers don't use them", "text": "Let's assume you are convinced that the extra time spent unit testing has merit and improves production. Does that still hold up when everyone working on the same code doesn't use them? This question makes me wonder if fixing tests that everyone doesn't use is a waste of time. If you correct a test so the new code will pass, you're assuming the new code is correct. The person updating the test better have a firm understanding of the reasoning behind the code change and decide if the test or the new code needs to be fixed. This much inconsistency in a team when it comes to testing is probably an indication of other problems as well. There is a certain amount of risk involved that someone else on the team will alter code that is covered by testing. Is this the point where testing becomes counter-productive?"}
{"_id": "194899", "title": "Design pattern for data privileges", "text": "I'm designing a financial system that should grant access to data based on roles and privileges. For example, a manager can see the financial transaction of users under his domain but not information regarding other transaction. Although it's possible to implement ad-hoc I was wondering if there are patterns or guidelines for implementing such instrumentation."}
{"_id": "107319", "title": "Space complexity of Iterative Deepening DFS", "text": "We read on Wikipedia > Iterative deepening depth-first search that > The space complexity of IDDFS is O(bd), where b is the branching factor and > d is the depth of shallowest goal. Wikipedia also gives some decent pseudocode for IDDFS; I pythonified it:               def IDDFS(root, goal):       depth = 0       solution = None       while not solution:         solution = DLS(root, goal, depth)         depth = depth + 1       return solution          def DLS(node, goal, depth):       print(\"DLS: node=%d, goal=%d, depth=%d\" % (node, goal, depth))       if depth >= 0:         if node == goal:           return node              for child in expand(node):           s = DLS(child, goal, depth-1)           if s:             return s            return None      So my question is, how does the space complexity include the branching factor? Does that assume that `expand(node)` takes up `O(b)` space? What if `expand` uses a generator that only takes constant space? In that case, would the space complexity still be a function of the branching factor? Are there situations where it is even possible for `expand` to be a constant-space generator?"}
{"_id": "180050", "title": "Do I have to learn html and javascript to create web applications?", "text": "I am an experienced Java programmer, and I want to create a complex web application requiring dynamic pages, drawings, etc (take SO as an example). Do I have to learn javascript/html in order to create such an application? It is not that I don't want to learn another language (I've done this before), but technology on the javascript environment seems to change so fast that when you finish learning one framework it is already obsolete. I have checked a number of java framework for web development (spring, play), but not deeply. So can these frameworks (or other possible java frameworks that I'm not aware of) be used without learning html/javascript? I also have some python experience. So if I can do the app in python it is also an option."}
{"_id": "187007", "title": "Handling error message for a Spring MVC login form", "text": "This can apply to many error handling scenarios, but I'm curious about how to do it in a login scenario. Given this Spring controller method:               @RequestMapping(value = \"/account/login\", method = RequestMethod.POST)     public String login(@RequestParam(\"username\") String aUsername,             @RequestParam(\"password\") String aPassword,             Model model)      {             try {                 accountService.login(aUsername, aPassword);              } catch (LoginException e) {                 // log e                 // add an error to request scope                 model.addAttribute(\"error\", e.getMessage);                 return \"login\"; // return to login page             }             // success, show profile             return \"redirect:profile\";         }      And a login.html form (I'm using thymeleaf, but just follow logic, similar to `jsp`):               <!-- This is saying, if ${error} is set, use it instead of the content of p, `No error` -->     <p th:if=\"${error}\" th:text=\"${error}\">No error</p>     <form method=\"post\" action=\"#\" th:action=\"@{/account/login}\">         Username: <input name=\"username\" type=\"text\" />         Password: <input name=\"password\" type=\"text\" />         <input name=\"login\" type=\"submit\" value=\"Login\" />      </form>      Is this how error handling is usually done in java web applications? Anywhere an error can happen, you branch out with different `if`s? Is there a cleaner, or more generic, way to do this?"}
{"_id": "187000", "title": "How do you unit test an encoder?", "text": "I have something like this:               public byte[] EncodeMyObject(MyObject obj)      I've been unit testing like this:               byte[] expectedResults = new byte[3]{ 0x01, 0x02, 0xFF };     Assert.IsEqual(expectedResults, EncodeMyObject(myObject));      EDIT: The two ways I've seen proposed are: 1) Using hardcoded expected values, like the above example. 2) Using a decoder to decode the encoded byte array and comparing the input/output objects. The problem I see with method 1 is that it is very brittle and requires a lot of hard coded values. The problem with method 2 is that testing the encoder depends on the decoder working correctly. If the encoder/decoder are broken equally (in the same place), then the tests could produce false positives. These may very well be the only ways to test this type of method. If that's the case then fine. I'm asking the question to see if there are any _better strategies_ for this type of testing. I can not reveal the internals of the particular encoder I am working on. I am asking in general how you would solve this type of problem, and I don't feel the internals are important. Assume that a given input object will always produce the same output byte array."}
{"_id": "151799", "title": "FxCop / Code Analysis with VS2010 Ultimate", "text": "I've getting some information about this, but I still can find a proper answer, I was asked recently in my company for this : \"run a fxcop analysis on that code and tell me the results\". Ok, I have VS2010 Ultimate which has code analysis, but before making any comment, I browse it on the internet cause I want to implement the best choice... So, let's say I'm gonna use the same rules on both analyzers:   * Should I recommend using one above the other?   * Should I say \"hey, thats kinda old, let's use code analysis!\"   * Should I get the same results on different computers? (for what I undersand, fxcop gives you some \"points\" and for what I've read, sometimes it gives you diff points on diff computers, I don't know about this with code analysis Thanks, any help would be appreciated"}
{"_id": "151791", "title": "Is it okay to have people with multiple roles in a Scrum team?", "text": "I'm evaluating some Agile-style methodologies for possible introduction to my team. With Scrum, is it allowable to have the same person perform multiple roles? We have a small team of four developers and a web designer; we don't really have a lead (I fulfill this role), QA testers or business analysts, and all of our development tasks come from the CIO. Automated testing is seen as a total waste of time, and everything focuses on speed and not quality. What will happen is the CIO will come up with a development task (whether a feature or a bug) and give it to a developer (not to the whole team, to an individual, often in private or out of the blue) who is then expected to get it completed. The CIO doesn't gather requirements beyond the initial idea (and this has bitten us before as we'll implement something only to find out that none of the end users can use the feature, because they weren't consulted or even informed about it before we developed it, and in a panic we'll be told to revert the change) but requires say in/approval of everything that we do. First things first, is a Scrum style something to consider to introduce some standards and practices? From reading, Scrum seems to rely on a bit more trust and communication and focuses more on project management than on development, which is something we are completely devoid of as we don't have any semblance of project management at present. Second, if it can work is it unreasonable for someone, let's say myself, to act as both ScrumMaster and a developer? Or for a developer to also be the Product Owner (although chances are this will be the CIO, who isn't a developer)? I realize the Scrum Master and the Product Owner should be different people but at the same time I don't think we have anyone who has the qualities of a Product Owner (chances are it would turn into a \"I need all these stories, I don't care how but get it done\" type of deal and/or any freeze would be unfrozen on a whim). It seems to me that I might need to pick and choose pieces of Scrum/XP/Lean to compensate for how things are done currently, as it's highly unlikely that the mentality can be changed; for instance Pair Programming would never fly (seen as a waste, you get half the tasks done if you need two people for everything), TDD would be a hard sell, but short cycles would be welcomed."}
{"_id": "131286", "title": "Is Usage Tracking esoteric or state of the art?", "text": "There are several products for tracking the usage of your application. I know at least 10 offers. They tell you which features were used more often than others. Thus, you can identify features that may not make into new versions. While with Google Analytics, or similar tools, this a standard tool for the web at the \"page-level\". I just wonder who is already using this analysis for desktop applications? Big companies like Microsoft of course do it, but do ISVs and small vendors (perhaps < 50 employees) use such tools? I currently don't know anybody, so I'm really curious about it: Is Usage Tracking esoteric or state of the art?"}
{"_id": "61442", "title": "OS knowledge when learning a computer programming language", "text": "I am curious, has the knowledge of the inner workings of an operating system helped you in understanding a computer programming language? It may have helped you figure out programming faster than someone with less knowledge of the underlying concepts of the Operating System?"}
{"_id": "24664", "title": "Testing of personal projects", "text": "I'm developing a web based personal project that will hopefully be used by thousands. Obviously prior to releasing it in the wild as Beta I was wondering, are there any communities out there that will test my web app and provide feedback? Free would be great, but I'm open to suggestions."}
{"_id": "24663", "title": "How to reconcile inner creativity with the corporate environment?", "text": "As programmers, many (most?) of us have an inner creative \"spark\". We love thinking of new, useful ways to accomplish tasks. Many of us have even dreamed a few ideas we thought could be viable businesses, or even change the way people go about their daily routine. However, many of us also work in a corporate environment where we are told which projects to work on and when to work on them. Personally, this can feel suffocating at times. If you have an idea you think could be world changing (or at least effect a lot of people), how do you get passionate about work that is dictated to you? Even if you don't have the next \"big idea\", many of us still want to unleash some inner creativity. How do you do this in an environment that seems to be counter-productive to that creativity?"}
{"_id": "64184", "title": "How do you organize a large data layer in a project?", "text": "I have a data layer that strictly interacts with the database and returns the result into a model. I have an asynchronous connection with the DB so sometimes I have to chain results where I have to do many queries. I have about 1000 lines of code in a single class and It's getting hard to manage. My question is, how do you re-factor/organize something like this? Do you break it up into multiple classes, maybe by functional area? Do you have one parent class that calls sub classes with the code in it? Ie if you have DataAccess.class with everything in it would you break it up like this: DataAccess_FunctionalAreaA_Insert.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaA_Update.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaA_Delete.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaA_Read.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaB_Insert.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaB_Update.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaB_Delete.class DataAccess_FunctionalAreaB_Read.class I would probably use namespaces to break up the above, but I wanted to illustrate how one might break it up. What would you do?"}
{"_id": "207446", "title": "Are Protected Auto-Cast Methods Ok?", "text": "I often have superclasses that contain a more abstracted form of a class as a member variable than my subclasses need. I find my code littered `((ClassName)variableName).methodName()`. Is the best way to solve this to create a protected/private method called something like `getVariableNameAsClass()`? It's not much shorter in letters, but an IDE can do that much faster than maneuvering around with the keys to add in parenthesis. Or is there a better solution? The reason I need to cast is because all of the subclasses of `Line` use an `Output` class, so I put the getters and setters that relate to the `Output` class in the base class. The issue is that an `AudioLine` uses and `AudioOutput`, and needs to define additional methods that use the more specific features. **So, here's my entire class design:** I have a `Line` class with two subclasses, `VideoLine` and `AudioLine`, which delegate some of their functionality to a internal `Output` class. `Output` class has a `AudioOutput` and `VideoOutput` subclass. I defined all the functionality for the `Line` class that relies only on methods from the `Output` class inside the `Line` class, in accordance with DRY. `Line`'s `AudioLine` and `VideoLine` both deligate additional functionality to `AudioOutput` and `VideoOutput`. Since they both set up the `Output` protected variable in their constructors (and therefor KNOW what subclass it contains), it seemed to make sense to caste it."}
{"_id": "165196", "title": "C# Role Provider for multiple applications", "text": "I'm making a custom RoleProvider that I would like to use across multiple applications in the same application pool. For the administration of roles (create new role, add users to role, etc..) I would like to create a master application that I could login to and set the roles for each additional application. So for example, I might have AppA and AppB in my organization, and I need to make an application called AppRoleManager that can set roles for AppA and AppB. I am having troubles implementing my custom RoleProvider because it uses an initialize method that gets the application name from the config file, but I need the application name to be a variable (i.e. \"AppA\" or \"AppB\") and passed as a parameter. I thought about just implementing the required methods, and then also having additional methods that pass application name as a parameter, but that seems clunky. i.e.               public override CreateRole(string roleName)     {       //uses the ApplicationName property of this, which is set in web.config       //creates role in db     }     public CreateRole(string ApplicationName, string roleName)     {       //creates role in db with specified params.     }      Also, I would prefer if people were prevented from calling CreateRole(string roleName) because the current instance of the class might have a different applicationName value than intended (what should i do here? throw NotImplementedException?). I tried just writing the class without inheriting RoleProvider. But it is required by the framework. Any general ideas on how to structure this project? I was thinking make a wrapper class that uses the role provider, and explicitly sets the application name before (and after) and calls to the provider something like this:               static class RoleProviderWrapper     {       public static CreateRole(string pApplicationName, string pRoleName)       {         Roles.Provider.ApplicationName = pApplicationName;         Roles.Provider.CreateRole(pRoleName);         Roles.Provider.ApplicationName = \"Generic\";       }     }      is this my best-bet?"}
{"_id": "165195", "title": "Possible to switch table at runtime using Entity Framework?", "text": "I have code to switch between databases when using EF, but now also need to allow the user to choose a particular table. (The tables all use the same schema but may have different names because of the way the client updates datasets). Is there a way to do this? And if it's done can it be done without being broken by updates being made to the Entity data model?"}
{"_id": "60401", "title": "What is the difference between an Engineer and a Technologist?", "text": "There are people who just love using the word Technologist in and around me. Sometimes I feel that the way I use to think as an Engineer while solving problems is quite different then the so-called Technologist view. What is the difference? Is this difference coming because of the work culture and kind of work IT firms do?"}
{"_id": "208136", "title": "How to do logging in console application", "text": "I have a simple console application that will be deployed as a scheduled job. Below is its pseudo code               Main(string[] args)     {         //get xml string from database         Reports reports = ReportsDB.GetReport(args[0].ToString());              //Generate xml file using xmwriter              //post the file to sftp site     }      I was wondering how to include logging functionality for this job. Also, will it be suffice to use a text writer to write to text file every time it is run or use libraries such as log4net **Edit** I should be able to log the execution of the job like start time, debug info, etc. that will be for my self."}
{"_id": "75925", "title": "How to manage database schema changes in open source project releases", "text": "I manage an open source PHP/MySQL web application used by a few K-12 schools and some colleges. I'm also the project's only developer. While it used to be little more than a source download of an application my employer hosts, I've worked over the last year to make it into a \"real\" open source project, with documentation, numbered releases, public changelogs, etc. I'm looking to improve the upgrade process, and one of the potentially painful areas (especially for IT expertise-starved schools) is in changes to the database schema between releases. They don't tend to happen often or be drastic changes but I would appreciate suggestions on the process. Currently, I maintain a base SQL install script to setup the database in a new install. This includes the complete schema for the current release; no further action is required for a new install. Changes that happen between releases are stored in `upgrade-$releasever.sql` scripts, and it's necessary to run all the upgrade scripts incrementally for any releases that were skipped. Shell scripts aren't a good fit, because many of our users operate on hosts without shell access. Due to other priorities, a complex PHP browser-based installer/upgrade script is unlikely to materialize. I would, however, like to do something with a browser-based PHP script to simplify the upgrades. Suggestions on how to approach it?"}
{"_id": "75922", "title": "Where can I find translations of OSI-approved licenses?", "text": "I'm looking for a site/page somewhere that has translations of common open- source licenses. In particular, I'm looking for translations for the MIT license. Is there a site or resource somewhere that has these translations?"}
{"_id": "178647", "title": "Implement service layer in MVC", "text": "We have a defined service layer hosted in WCF. We are now building a website that will need to use the services functionality. The website is being written in ASP.NET MVC 4 and I'm trying to decide how to reference the WCF service from the MVC app. It's a large complex website and it will be changing on a weekly basis. My first reaction is to abstract out the service references (About 7 services on this one WCF host) and create a service ref facade library with which the website interacts. But, I don't know exactly how to use the service facade in MVC. I'm starting to think the Models will be responsible for it because when the controller gets a model, that model should call the service (if needed) and return what the controller asked. I'm trying to avoid having the MVC app know details of the service references. So, I could have a model factory that creates whatever model the controllers need and they can use the service facade to accomplish it. Is this a good plan, or am I off track?"}
{"_id": "145266", "title": "Scrum for team split between two spoken languages", "text": "I have a team that without a single common language among all of the team members. The team is split across two locations (though the geography isn't the main issue). All team members in each location speak the same language and there are members in both locations that can speak both. I'd like to introduce scrum, but am struggling with the logistics of dealing with the language issue. This isn't an offshore team. All team members are employees of the company, but located in two different offices in different countries. Fortunately, we don't have any issues with timezones; language is the primary barrier. While the team could be split into two teams, given the size and skillset of the people in each location as well as other external factors, it is more desirable to integrate as a single team. I think it would be preferable to use video conferencing in order to have richer communication and help unite the team in being able to see each other and do the true stand-up approach. However, I am afraid this will be difficult to communicate between languages. Should bilingual members of the team translate verbally? Alternately, we could use instant message as recommended by the only reference I could find to language issues in distributed scrum. I'm concerned about the \"poorer\" communication and perhaps it is a poor introduction to the scrum concept. From people that have experience in dealing with language differences in a team, how did you address the problem and how well did it work for you?"}
{"_id": "35525", "title": "How do I deal with the need to know multiple programming languages?", "text": "I am a relatively young programmer. I am 23 and I have been programming professionally for about 5 years. As most programmers I started with C, learned some x86 assembly for fun and then I found C++ which turned out to be my greatest passion in the programming world. Programming with C and C++ forces you to learn platform specific APIs, libs and frameworks all of each requires constant study and experimentation. After some time I had to move on to Java and C# as the demand on my region is basically for these languages. With these languages I entered the world of web development and then I had to learn javascript. Developing for the .NET Framework was exciting at first but I constantly felt as I was getting tied up by Microsoft (and of course the .NET Framework was driving me away from Linux). For desktop development I could do pretty much everything I did with .NET using C++ with Qt but for web development I had to look for an alternative. Quickly I found Django and then I proceeded to learn Python so I could use Django. Nowadays I am learning iOS development with Objective-C. So far it was pretty much easy to learn all these languages (C++ trained me well) but I am worried that someday I won't be able to keep track of them all. Just to clarify. The only languages I learned cause I had to were C# and Java. All of the others I learned for fun, because I love programming and learning new things. Also I like to keep my skills sharp on desktop, web and mobile development. My question is: How do you keep track of multiple programming languages? (I mean, keep track of changes to these languages and keep your skills sharp) and: Is there such a thing as enough programming languages?"}
{"_id": "206992", "title": "Using source code under LGPL in .NET, converted from JAVA?", "text": "I found one JAVA project useful to our commercial software which is developed using C#. The JAVA project is under LGPL. My understanding is (please correct me if I am wrong) if I use one compiled LGPL library (for example, .dll in Windows), I don't even need to disclaim the license information. But if I need to make some modifications in the source code, I need to include the LGPL license, and make my modification part which uses the library also under LGPL. Since our software is in .NET, I clearly need to modify from the JAVA source code (starting by converting using Sharpen in Eclipse and then make some manual modification). So my question is, if I convert it to a C# project and compile as a library, and include the license when we are distributing it, is it enough? Do I need to make the source code of the whole new project available (upon request)?"}
{"_id": "204807", "title": "Does software reuse preclude process repeatability", "text": "## The Problem - Code Reuse I was thinking about this question on software delivery, and I kept coming back to the issue of repeatability and / or reproducibility. They matter, because if you don\u2019t repeat a project then it becomes more difficult to improve the process you used to build the project. Engineering involves constantly improving the processes involved with design and construction in order to produce higher quality projects. Software can rely heavily upon reuse due to its digital form. Instead of rewriting a module, we just call it again or copy it to the other system. Some examples are authentication / login or perhaps a logging function. There are many well known examples for those categories, and conventional wisdom is to reuse what exists instead of rolling your own. ## Comparisons to Other Disciplines ### Construction In contrast, construction of physical systems (buildings, bridges) is nowhere near as reusable. It\u2019s true that the blueprint of a house can be reused many times to build the same copy of the house, but the construction must be performed each time. Cut & paste doesn\u2019t work like that in the analog world. Bridge blueprints are less reusable that houses because site conditions will vary. Master builders are experts recognized for having designed and / or built tens, hundreds, or thousands of things in their area. For example, Frank Lloyd Wright, a world renowned architect and designer `designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 532 works`. Contrast that with Anders Hejlsberg who has designed \u201cjust\u201d five languages (Turbo Pascal; Delphi; J++; C#; Typescript). In many ways, it\u2019s an unfair comparison because the domains are different. But at a broad level, the quantifiable production from two very intelligent people is vastly different. ### Martial Arts Martial artists will say that mastery of a move comes only from thousands of repetitions. After a good portion of those repetitions have been put in, many martial artists are surprised at how a previously perceived to be complex kata or form has become simple. Instructors of those students will also notice how the motion becomes more fluid and purposeful as well as having an economy of motion. Likewise, experienced martial artists are able to pick up more complex katas more quickly than less experienced students. Experience from repetition has given them a framework or process that allows them to learn more quickly. ### Woodworking Woodworkers experience a similar transformation. Hobbyist woodworkers always refer back to their first project that required a lot of drawers. If they complete the project, they gain a new appreciation for the efficiencies that assembly lines produce. There are other benefits such as a better understanding of how to lay out the drawers parts on the sheet stock in order to maximize use of the wood. Compared to hobbyists, professional woodworkers are able to more quickly design, start, and construct items that they have made many times before. They also gain an ability to see inherent issues within someone else's design having made that mistake in their work. ## Does software reuse prevent software developers from becoming more proficient? In many ways, software design and construction is always new. We don\u2019t repeat past works, because if we can reuse a module, library, or system then we do. We\u2019ll preferentially extend an existing system before rewriting the entire thing from scratch. But repetition is what allows us to find efficiency in the design and the construction. Anyone who has practiced a sport or physical activity will tell you that repetition is the key to becoming a good practitioner. **My question:** Does software\u2019s ability to be reused prevent the necessary process improvement and efficiency that comes from repeating a project?"}
{"_id": "145268", "title": "How to get new team members up to date with the project?", "text": "We are about to hire 1-2 new engineers for the software team (consisting of 3 developers, 1 tester). What are the steps to integrate them into the team? My ideas are :   * read documentation (coding standards, documents in development methodologies we use)   * get them to read the existing code   * assign them some simple tasks   * at the end, make them responsible for the code part What else could we do? * * * The project is in a medical sector (ultrasound system), and is already 5 years going. We have yearly releases, and we are about to finish one release, when we want to add 1-2 engineers. The project is in the maintenance phase (refactoring legacy code, plus adding new features). Things are pretty much on schedule (more or less)."}
{"_id": "230820", "title": "Inputs and outputs to a method mixed in the UI", "text": "I am designing the front end of an WPF application using MVVM where basically all we are doing (for now) is calling a method with some inputs and displaying the outputs. There are two types of inputs, I will call them common inputs and specific inputs to simplify things. With the common inputs you have one instance, and all of the common inputs are used (this is non-trivial). Then we have a list of specific inputs, these are each paired with the common inputs and fed into the method (there are reasons they all need to run at the same time). What distinguishes them is that the same variables you input can also be outputs. Also, you don't have to fill in all of the inputs, there are some where you can pick a subset and whatever the user does not fill in will be calculated and fed back as an output. Which brings us to the problem, the UI will have a grid which at first will have columns for every input (the other columns will be bound but not visible) and rows for how many specific inputs are in the batch. The user will fill in the inputs they want and hit a big button. The method will be called and the outputs generated, they will bind into the output columns which would become visible. Also, getting results for some inputs might not be possible, in the method if we can't run at a certain position but we can run for a position sufficiently close the input will be overwritten. We need to save both the input and the output and display some sort of attention drawing behavior of the cells. The only way I can think of to do this is have three lists, your inputs your outputs and a list of a view model with all common properties and a few for visibility and if the input and output agree. This third list would be bound to the UI and its properties would be pulled into the input list before running the method and the output of the method pushed to it afterwards. I think this will solve the problems but I have a vague sense of discomfort about doing this. For one thing mixing input and output properties on the view model seems like we are duplicating the model but with the business logic scrambled together. Does anyone have a suggestion for a better design, or a reason why this plan is good/bad? Thank you,"}
{"_id": "165223", "title": "What should be the minimal design/scope documentation before development begins?", "text": "I am a junior developer working on my own in the programming aspect of projects. I am given a png file with 5-6 of the pages designed, most times in specific detail. From this I'm asked to develop the back end system needed to maintain the website, usually a cataloging system with products, tags and categories and match the front end to the design. I find myself in a pickle because when I make decisions based on assumptions about the flow of the website, due to a lack of outlining details, I get corrected and am required to rewrite the code to suit what was actually desired. This process happens multiple times throughout a project, often times on the same detail, until it's finally finished, with broken windows all through it. I understand that projects have scope creep, and can appreciate that I need to plan for this, but I feel that in this situation, I'm not receiving enough outlining details to effectively plan for the project, resulting in broken code and a stressed mind. What should be the **minimal** design/scope documentation I receive before I begin development?"}
{"_id": "130481", "title": "What to call pure JavaScript standalone (web)apps for which I've not written any server side code?", "text": "I've been writing a few tools as standalone webapps for which I have written no server side code and it strikes me that I'm not sure what people call such things. I like them because they can be distributed as a single file that anybody with a web browser can run. Typically all the funky stuff is done by calling AJAX web APIs like those provided by Stack Exchange, MediaWiki, Google, etc. The following terms all seem plausible but might also cover other things or not tell the whole story:   * client-only   * pure JavaScript   * standalone webapp   * web script   * web tool   * browser app **Is one of these terms or something else in common use for such apps / tools?** Here's links to some of my little tools on GitHub: travel-se-airport- tags.html, travel-se-1-or-2-answers.html, travel-se-stats.html There are some much more app-ish examples in the 10k Challenge..."}
{"_id": "101258", "title": "Why did Microsoft make parameters, local variables and private fields have the same name naming convention?", "text": "I asked this question quite some time ago: How do you name your private variables in C#? In one of the answers, I was pointed to Microsoft's MSDN page that shows that private variables/fields should be named like this:               private int myInteger;      But a parameter would be:               void SomeMethod(int myInteger)      and a local variable would be like this:               int myInteger;      So when you reference them like this               myInteger = 10;      you have no way of knowing which one you are talking about. I am now starting a new project and one of my co-workers is asking me why we don't do something to differentiate at least some of these. I am wondering the same thing. Why didn't Microsoft's standard keep these different?"}
{"_id": "55230", "title": "Observing MVC, can/should the Model be instantiated in the ViewController? Or where?", "text": "I'm writing an experimental iPhone app to learn about the MVC paradigm. I instantiate my Model class in the ViewController class. Is this stupid? I'm asking because storing the id of the Model class, and using it works where it's initialized, but referring to it later (in response to an interface action) crashes. Seemingly, the pointer address of my Model class instance changes, but how can that be? The code in question:               @interface Soundcheck_Tone_GeneratorViewController : UIViewController {              IBOutlet UIPickerView * frequencyWheel;     @public         Sinewave_Generation * sineGenerator;     }          @property(nonatomic,retain) Sinewave_Generation * sineGenerator;          @end          @implementation Soundcheck_Tone_GeneratorViewController          @synthesize sineGenerator;          - (void)viewDidLoad {         [super viewDidLoad];         [self setSineGenerator:[[Sinewave_Generation alloc] initWithFrequency:20.0]]; // using reference -> fine     }          // pickerView handling is omitted here...          - (void)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)thePickerView didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row inComponent:(NSInteger)component {          [[self sineGenerator] setFrequency:20.0]; // using reference -> crash     }          @end               // the Sinewave_Generation class... only to be thorough. Works fine so far.          @interface Sinewave_Generation : NSObject {                  AudioComponentInstance toneUnit;         @public             double frequency,theta;          }          @property double frequency;          - (Sinewave_Generation *) initWithFrequency: (int) f;          @end               @implementation Sinewave_Generation          @synthesize frequency;          - (Sinewave_Generation *) initWithFrequency: (int) f      {         self = [super init];              if ( self ) {             [self setFrequency: f];         }              return self;     }          @end"}
{"_id": "55231", "title": "Should marketing ecommerce departments have their own web developers?", "text": "I have seen examples of web design teams sitting under marketing with the development being done in IT. How do other IT depts and marketing ecom depts share the workload for web development in other companies citing any pros and cons for the different possible structures? Personally having any type of development resource sitting outside of IT just sounds like a bad idea."}
{"_id": "55232", "title": "Why would one overload the && and & operator?", "text": "The same question goes for | and ||. Why would one overload or 'use' the & and && operator? The only use i thought of are   * Bitwise Ands for int base types (but not float/decimals) using &   * logical short circuit for bools/functions that return bool. Using the && operator usually. I cant think of any classes that use those operators. Absolutely none. I know a class might support + (and not '-') which combine two strings together. I seen an object such as datetime overload '-' so two dates can be subtracted to make a timespan (obviously you cant add two dates) but i never seen &, &&, | and || used. Does anyone know of a use? In any language?"}
{"_id": "51758", "title": "What do DBAs do?", "text": "Yes, I know they administrate databases. I asked this question because I'd like to get a further insight into the kind of day-to-day duties a DBA might perform, and the real-world business problems they solve. For example:   * I optimized a 'products' query so that it ran 25% faster, which made the overall application faster. Is this a typical duty? Or is there more to being a DBA than simply making things faster? In what situations does DBA work involve planning and creativity?"}
{"_id": "224098", "title": "Avoid Initial AJAX Call for Loading Data", "text": "Here is the typical sequence of events when someone navigates to a page in my application:   * The user navigates to my application, including URL parameters and query strings.   * The server receives the request and generates the HTML   * On the client, AngularJS grabs any parameters and makes an AJAX call   * The resulting data is then bound Personally, I find it a bit wasteful that this requires two hits to the server. It leads to a delay between the HTML being returned and the inputs being populated. Am I missing something? Is there a way to avoid going back and forth the first time?"}
{"_id": "183835", "title": "Algorithm to denormalize database", "text": "I have built a QlikView script generator (QVS), that can be used to generate large script files for data imports from SQL Server to QlikView. QlikView does not like 'fully' normalised database structures (loops between several tables): for example, three tables `A`, `B`, `C` in SQL Server could have three PK/FK links; in QlikView it requires just two. So, I now have to 'denormalize', or remove the loops between tables... Currently I am creating an 'exclusion table', which I traverse with an quad- imbedded for-loop, to isolate and remove constraints in the DB structure before generating the script file. This seems to work, but takes WAY too long as the number of tables can be large. Is there another way that I can achieve what I want more economically?"}
{"_id": "224843", "title": "Namespace Extension for Dropbox-like Windows application", "text": "I'm interested (for learning purposes) in creating an Namespace Extension for Windows that is similar to Dropbox or SkyDrive. What I'd like to do is integrate directly with Windows Explorer like those services that appear as a \"connected drive\": ![Skydrive](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ujHrd.png) When clicking on the connected folder, I'll be interacting with my own site to determine what contents to display. I'm familiar with WebDAV, and I've actually created something similar to this with WebDAV but now I want to move away from \"mapping drives\". I want an installable application that, after initial setup like SkyDrive or Dropbox, would just appear as a connected drive and be authenticated as the user. I've never created a Namespace Extension but my research is pointing towards that being the way to go. Am I correct in this? Is it possible, with a Namespace Extension to create a new \"Folder\" object that, upon navigating in to, I can make calls to an API of mine that will determine the subfolders to display?"}
{"_id": "186843", "title": "Agile Development & Interaction with Developers", "text": "I have read in few blogs that as part of agile development , the product owner closely interact with developers to state their requirements and come up with a solution. However in case of a large project (in terms of number of applications involved) involving multiple systems , is this possible? Shouldn't the project have a business analyst / solution designer in order to capture the requirements properly and come up with a solution which states how the the requirement could be fulfilled and which systems must do what activity?"}
{"_id": "186842", "title": "Spurious wakeups explanation sounds like a bug that just isn't worth fixing, is that right?", "text": "According to the Wikipedia article on Spurious Wakeups > \"a thread might be awoken from its waiting state even though no thread > signaled the condition variable\". While I've know about this 'feature' I never knew what actually caused it until, in the same article > \"Spurious wakeups may sound strange, but on some multiprocessor systems, > making condition wakeup completely predictable might substantially slow all > condition variable operations.\" Sounds like a bug that just isn't worth fixing, is that right?"}
{"_id": "4546", "title": "When do you drop support for an old program version?", "text": ".NET 1.1. IE6. Java 1.1. All of these are old ancient versions of software that still for some reason exist in organizations that are too scared to upgrade, don't like change, or follow the \"If its not broken, don't fix it\" principle. But when do you drop support for such old versions of software? What determines when a platform is too old?"}
{"_id": "104153", "title": "Formatting 'Complex' Math", "text": "**Note:** by 'complex' math I mean an equation with many steps involved and a wide mix of operators. A programmer _should_ know the order that operators are evaluated in an equation. However it can be a royal pain to look at an equation such as:               result = value_1 + value_2 * value_1 + value_3 / value_4 % value_5;       One option is to write out the equation in multiple steps such as:               part1 = value_2 * value_1;     part1 += value_1;          part2 = value_4 % value_5;     part2 = value_3 / part2;          result = part1 + part2;      Another option is to format the original equation with parenthesis such as:               result = (value_1 + (value_2 * value_1)) + (value_3 / (value_4 % value_5));       When dealing with complex math in code, how do you typically format it to maximize readability?"}
{"_id": "128503", "title": "When is the right time to change programming language?", "text": "I was working as a Java Developer before and I have now finished my contract with my previous employer. But now, as I am looking for a new job, a lot of opportunities out there seem to not include Java as much as other languages. I really like Java and I have been using it since college. But it seems like I have to learn a new language so I can have a new job. When is the right time to consider changing the language I use?"}
{"_id": "148145", "title": "How to handle repetitive code dealing with object properties?", "text": "Every so often I run into a situation where I need to map a set of properties from one object to another object of a different, unrelated class. The set of properties is large enough to make typing out the code by hand tedious. Anti- DRY principle code like this is the result:               if (objectOfType1.getPropertyA() != null){objectOfType2.setSimilarlyNamedPropertyA(someMethod(objectOfType1.getPropertyA()));}     if (objectOfType1.getPropertyB() != null){objectOfType2.setSimilarlyNamedPropertyB(someMethod(objectOfType1.getPropertyB()));}     ...skipping some lines...     if (objectOfType1.getPropertyZ() != null){objectOfType2.setSimilarlyNamedPropertyZ(someMethod(objectOfType1.getPropertyZ()));}      Writing and even looking at code like this is a huge pet peeve, but I feel like using an introspection library like BeanUtils to avoid having a couple of methods like this would irritate my coworkers. I've taken to writing one-off scripts to generate code like this for me. How have other programmers addressed this problem? **Edit** : Here's the code translated to use reflection/introspection. Sure it's DRY, but it might make an enemy out of the next programmer on the project, and I can be just as productive generating code like above with a script. That said, if this is more common than I suspect, please fill me in:                   //Is this really a common technique to use when there's a simpler method?         String[] propertyNamePartsArr = {\"A\",\"B\", ...skipping some parts..., \"Z\"};         List<String> propertyNameParts = new ArrayList<String> (Arrays.asList(propertyNamePartsArr));              for (String propertyNamePart : propertyNameParts) {             try {                 Object originalValue = BeanUtils.getProperty(objectOfType1, \"property\" + propertyNamePart);                 if (originalValue != null) {                     BeanUtils.setProperty(objectOfType2, \"similarlyNamedProperty\" + propertyNamePart, someMethod(originalValue));                 }             } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {                 handleIllegalAccessException(e);             } catch (InvocationTargetException e) {                 handleInvocationTargetException(e);             } catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {                 handleNoSuchMethodException(e);             }         }"}
{"_id": "118626", "title": "Parameter order: size, count or the other way round", "text": "I hope this is the right forum for this ... Well, in C, the standard library uses usually `(void* buffer, int size)` when referring to some data buffer. I wonder if there is a rationale for this order instead of `(int size, void* buffer)`. I couldn't think of any good reason, and it seems to be an arbitrary choice, but I'm curious to here if there is some deeper meaning behind this order."}
{"_id": "200320", "title": "Solo developer vs. team developer : should I move on?", "text": "I work as a solo developer in a small company. There's more than enough work, but the same does not apply for money. Thus, I won't be seeing any new colleagues in the near future. I am responsible for absolutely everything that has do to with IT operations. This involves development and maintenance of software used in-house, development and maintenance of various websites which our clients use, website infrastructure, local network infrastructure including maintenance of several servers and in-house support to mention the most immediate things. I really enjoy 95% of what I do, and I've got a high degree of flexibility in my work. I get to decide what do when, and no one really tells me what do to except that I now and then sit down with my colleagues to create a roadmap for what I need to get done. I do consider myself to have a high work ethic and being above average focused on what I do, so things get done. However, I've come to the point where I really miss having other people around me who work with the same. Even though I need to get familiar with a wide range of technologies as I am a solo developer, I have the feeling that I am missing out one the \"knowledge sharing\" which other \"like minded\" people who work in bigger companies are taking part in. I don't really have anyone to discuss programming obstacles and design decisions with - and I am starting to miss that. Also, I'm worried about what future employers might think of this \"hermit\" who has been working on his own for too long to ever be able to take part in a team. However, on the other side, I'm thinking that I won't get my current degree of flexibility in a larger company. I'll be seeing a lot more strict deadlines, late hours and specialized areas of work. Also; I'm not sure if this idea of \"knowledge sharing\" will ever take take place? Has anyone else been in this situation? Is it a good idea seen from a career perspective and a personal development perspective? Should I consider moving on to a bigger place to (maybe) become a part of a larger group of developers and \"like minded\" people? In other words, will the grass be greener on the other side?"}
{"_id": "230721", "title": "Is it substandard if I have multiple tables in my database yet there's no relationship at all?", "text": "I have multiple tables in my database. Some tables have relationship to others and some don't have. My friend told me that it is not advisable to have a table that is not related to others. Is it substandard if I have multiple tables in my database yet there's no relationship at all? Are there guidelines concerning to database table relationships? And also, what are the guidelines in cascading tables? thanks."}
{"_id": "200324", "title": "Requirements Analysis Communication", "text": "How can I convert this requirement into one requirement: For columns where there are just numbers, numeric sorting will be used. For columns that have numbers and letters, alpha-numeric sorting will be used. For Date columns, time sorting will be used. All sorting will have ascending and descending properties."}
{"_id": "133404", "title": "What is the ideal length of a method?", "text": "In object-oriented programming, there is no exact rule on the maximum length of a method , but I still found these two qutes somewhat contradicting each other, so I would like to hear what you think. In _Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship_, Robert Martin says: > The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of > functions is that they should be smaller than that. Functions should not be > 100 lines long. Functions should hardly ever be 20 lines long. and he gives an example from Java code he sees from Kent Beck: > Every function in his program was just two, or three, or four lines long. > Each was transparently obvious. Each told a story. And each led you to the > next in a compelling order. That\u2019s how short your functions should be! This sounds great, but on the other hand, in _Code Complete_, Steve McConnell says something very different: > The routine should be allowed to grow organically up to 100-200 lines, > decades of evidence say that routines of such length no more error prone > then shorter routines. And he gives a reference to a study that says routines 65 lines or long are cheaper to develop. So while there are diverging opinions about the matter, is there a functional best-practice towards determining the ideal length of a method for you?"}
{"_id": "140720", "title": "How to setup users for desktop app with SQL Azure as backend?", "text": "I'm considering SQL Azure as DB for a new application I'm developing. The reason I want to go with Azure is because I don't want to have to maintain yet another database(s) and I want my users to be able to access the data from anywhere. The problem is that I'm not clear regarding how to users will connect. The application is a basic CRUD type of windows app. I've read that you need to add your IP to SQL Azure's firewall to connect to it, but I don't know if it's only for administration purposes only. Can anyone clarify if anyone (anywhere) can access the data with the proper credentials? Which of the following scenarios would work best (if at all)? A) Add each user to SQL Azure and have the app connect directly to Azure as if it was connecting to SQL Server B) Add an anonymous user SQL Azure and pass the real user's password/hash with every call so the Azure database can service the requests accordingly. C) Put a WCF service in between so that it handles the authentication stuff. The service will only serve the appropriate information to the user given his/her authentication and SQL Azure would be open to the service exclusively. D) - ideas are welcomed - This is confusing because all Azure examples I see are for websites. I have a hard time believing SQL Azure wouldn't handle the case of desktop apps connecting to it. So what's the best practice?"}
{"_id": "253269", "title": "Erlang function naming conventions", "text": "I understand the general Erlang conventions for functions are using snake case or camel case, but what about exported functions? For example, say I have a gen_server module that defines a check to see if a username is in use:   * I have a call along the lines of `handle_function(is_username_in_use, UserName)`.    * I also have an exported function named `is_username_in_use` that calls `gen_server:call/2`.  But internally I also define a method that checks a database. So I end up with something along the lines of `check_if_username_is_in_use_in_db` for internal use. It quickly gets out of hand, and I end up with uncomfortably long names. Is there a common convention used to name functions like these? I was thinking something along the lines of `is_username_in_use_internal`"}
{"_id": "135506", "title": "Percent or Pixels HTML/CSS", "text": "Coding a new website. Basically, for position elements using CSS I would use percents and figured that was the best thing to do since everyone's monitor was a different size. But I noticed a lot of big websites use pixels. I don't understand how you can use pixels to position things since we all have a different size screen?"}
{"_id": "181090", "title": "2 Years Work Experience, Should I treat it like im a College Graduate?", "text": "So I just got laid off from a company after 2 years, no fault of my own. It was a large, rather well known company that had been doing cuts for the entire year (almost 75% of our department was cut). I made it until the very end before they finally did a final budget cut. I realize this is probably skimming Career advice but I'm more concerned on the actual development side when looking for a job. When I'm looking for something, should I consider my 2 years as real experience? Or since it's so short, should I be looking like I just graduated college (since this was my first \"real\" job after college)."}
{"_id": "233568", "title": "Best practices in creating JavaScript styling API's: Balancing CSS and JavaScript", "text": "I have written a number of components for Durandal--DatePicker Widget, Tabs Widget, Radio Widget, etc. I'm having a little conceptual difficulty in how best to balance a styling API with CSS. For example, in the Tabs Widget, I set up default css classes for the various stylable features of the widget. Those default classes come with a default styling, of course. But they can be restyled, and through the Styling API, can be renamed as well. I use this pattern in all of the components. Now, if an end user (myself, for now) want fixed-width tab buttons, he only needs to adjust his CSS accordingly (e.g. min-width: 90px, width: 90px, etc.). But, initially, I felt compelled to include configuration properties called isTabsFixedWidth and fixedWidth. When the user passes in the configuration object, using JavaScript I modify the CSS according to properties set on that configuration object. Also, a function on the Tabs Widget called #setWidthPolicy(policy, [width]) is included. But this seems redundant to me. What are the best practices here? Is it necessary for all styling support to include support for raw CSS, support for configurable CSS through a configuration object, and support for modifying CSS dynamically through member functions? Does anyone have any recommendations here? Thank you."}
{"_id": "143111", "title": "Function parameter names", "text": "I just found the following code in our code base:               public String identifyArchitectureName(String platformName, String input) ...      In my opinion `input` is one of the most meaningless names for a variable that can be. Is it just me? I can just quietly change it, but should I address the fellow programmer that has done it?"}
{"_id": "203674", "title": "Should I be learning JavaScript before studying computer science?", "text": "So I've done a lot of research and found that Codecademy has been mentioned several times on other forums. I got stuck in and chose JavaScript through Codecademy most probably thinking it was 'Java' and I'm now slightly concerned that I have made a bad choice.. due to the fact that I see posts mentioning JavaScript teaches bad habits and so on... Should I stop and learn other languages offered on 'Codecademy'? Should I stop using codecademy altogether? Or finally should I just wait until I start my degree and pose as a blank canvas? All opinions wanted, thank you. P.s I'm not entirely certain what jobs I will be applying for in the future but to give some indication I don't believe it will be website development and more so on the game or application designing side of things"}
{"_id": "185571", "title": "Questions about Polymorphism", "text": "So I understand the importance of Polymorphism, including how vital it is. But something I don't quite understand is what about the `Constructor` and any inherited `Class` the initial `Base Class` may have. For example, I have a class to test some criteria- Level of account, Windows Version, and some other checks.               // Base Class     public class CheckInstalled : CheckUserLevel     {            public CheckInstalled()            {                  // Check verify the CheckUserLevel token is true, if it isn't throw an exception and close.                  if (!(_level == true))                  {                         // The above implementation would technically go here.                  }             }                  public virtual void IsInstalled()             {                  // Implementation of initial check of general software.             }     }      So that would in theory be the `Base Class` which will do a Generic check; but there are other applications I need to test if they are installed. So now I would create a `Class` for:   1. Sql   2. IIs   3. Dnn Or whatever you may need to ensure is checked. So for each of those `Classes` I'd inherit the `CheckInstalled Class`. In each one I'd have this:               public override void IsInstalled()     {           // Implementation to check for that specific Class Item is installed.     }      So I see how Polymorphism will really simplify and keep each one of these `Classes` separate. But will provide that flexibility for Object Orientation. **The root of my question, the`Base Class Constructor` contains that inherited token value. But do all other `Classes` that inherit the value? Essentially that `Base Class Constructor` consistently execute? Or does the `_level` token have to be called in each?** Hopefully that makes sense. If not please let me know and I'll try and rephrase it. * * * **Update:** The _level is invoked here:               class CheckUserLevel         {                  // Token Bool:             private bool _level = false;                  #region Constructor:                  protected CheckUserLevel()             {                      // Invoke Method On Creation:                 Elevate();                  }                  #endregion                  public void Elevate()             {                      // Get Identity:                 WindowsIdentity user = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();                      // Set Principal                 WindowsPrincipal role = new WindowsPrincipal(user);                      #region Test Operating System for UAC:                      if (Environment.OSVersion.Platform != PlatformID.Win32NT || Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major < 6)                 {                          // False:                     _level = false;                          // Todo: Exception/ Exception Log                      }                      #endregion                      else                 {                          #region Test Identity Not Null:                          if (user == null)                     {                              // False:                         _level = false;                              // Todo: \"Exception Log / Exception\"                          }                          #endregion                          else                     {                              #region Ensure Security Role:                              if (!(role.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator)))                         {                                  // False:                             _level = false;                                  // Todo: \"Exception Log / Exception\"                              }                              else                         {                                  // True:                             _level = true;                              }                              #endregion                               } // Nested Else 'Close'                      } // Initial Else 'Close'                  } // End of Class.              }      The separate class actually generates the boolean value; as anytime that class is invoked it will assign a value to it. I didn't want to expose too much with this class mostly because of its role in testing for Administration. The problem: > Several methods will require Administrative Permission; my thought was to > inherit on the base `CheckInstalled`. Which in it's creation will > automatically check the boolean state of `_level`. Then from that point; > this `CheckInstalled` can be inherited to other classes; then I can simply > `override IsInstalled` to bend to the desired task for that item. Is that a bad thought on my part?"}
{"_id": "185574", "title": "Server side JavaScript rendering", "text": "I have almost a 'best-practice' question that's been nagging at me for a while. When I use JavaScript libraries and APIs such as JQGrid or Google Maps, I tend to find myself creating server side libraries to render the JavaScript for me. For example I might have:               $map->setZoom(10);     $map->setDimensions(200,250);      in PHP, which would internally render the relevant JS when I call `$map->render();`, for example. This means I can easily generate JavaScript based on the state of my applications. I also find it easier to work with the data I already have in my controllers etc. Is this a suitable way of using common functionality within a JavaScript library or would it be better to write JS as standard?"}
{"_id": "146765", "title": "How do I link an domain object in memory to its database records without cluttering the domain with database concerns?", "text": "Your domain model contains a set of objects. I'm here presenting a side project, but I have a much more complicated work project falling to its knees because I didn't do a good separation of the database and the domain. In this case, the object is called a CyclingRecord. Following Onion Architecture, the domain objects know nothing of their persistence. However, each one of those objects corresponds to an entry in a datastore (potentially a database, potentially a file). The row ID is absolutely not part of the domain object and therefore has no business being stored in the domain object.               data CyclingRecord = CyclingRecord { date :: Day,                                          distance :: Float,                                          time :: Integer,                                          description :: Maybe String }      In a language that enforces strong immutability (such as Haskell and Clojure), identity and value are synonymous. Further, there is no reason why you could not record more than a single ride in a day. So, the entire record completely describes a ride. So, if I edit a record in the Domain, when I pass the edited objects back to the Database Infrastructure, how do I go about notifying the database that it needs to update a particular record instead of deleting an existing record? (the same idea would need to be extensible so that I can have an application potentially manipulate many records at once and then send them all back to the database. Offline operation or syncing or just avoiding excessive disk activity) Unless the correct answer is to actually make something like a unique identifier for each ride. Perhaps a UUID. Perhaps add a \"day counter\" to the record. Make it intrinsically part of a bike ride and then have the database depend on it instead of a separate row ID."}
{"_id": "230184", "title": "Do you have to rename the software when you fork a repo?", "text": "I forked a repo some time ago and created a few pull requests which went unanswered. Now, the software is MIT-licensed, and I kept the copyright notice there. Do I have to rename the software, or whoever forks a repo can keep referring to it by the same name? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "139331", "title": "How do I keep an eye on a remote freelancer?", "text": "I've been hiring several developers from different places around the world. It all goes well, but I see that some of them are abusing my polite overlooking too much lately. They are all hired for a full-day. However, I see that after 5 hours in a day, not much has been done. I am considering to develop a software that will take a screenshot of the computer screen every 1-5 minutes and upload it to my system. However, this is going to the extremes. How do people usually manage remote developers?"}
{"_id": "118628", "title": "Eliminating Dependencies vs Eliminating Redundancy", "text": "Upon my assignment to a project, I discovered that many message classes were received and then kept intact and passed around inside the receiving application. When these messages changed, code throughout the entire application had to be changed. Since this problem, I have gotten into the habit of converting messages to a new format upon reception. However, it feels like I am directly violating DRY (don't repeat yourself): I have these near-identical internal classes that I create from external messages. Where is the line between eliminating dependencies and eliminating redundancy? Should each module have their own data formats?"}
{"_id": "85581", "title": "How to start to gain experience of managing a project", "text": "There are some job requirements of project management experience for a programmer, such as: > the candidate has to have some experience managing a project, not > necessarily with subordinates, but rather having worked on a project all the > way from design down to test. I was wondering   1. what \"subordinates\" mean here?   2. if there are some books, webpages or elsewhere with both **general guideline** and **simple practical sample projects** to help one get some basics about the whole process of a project. I am particularly interested in projects for both Linux and Windows, in C, C++, Python, Java. I am considering to start by playing on my own, not eager to find a company yet. My major was not CS, so I might lack the basics."}
{"_id": "166754", "title": "Is a startup revolving around a web app still viable?", "text": "I have an idea for a startup that revolves around a web app. I plan to incorporate a mobile app in the future but, unlike something like instagram, users will be more likely to access with a desktop computer. I am learning Ruby On Rails currently but wonder if, starting in the 4th quarter of 2012, I am focusing on a technology (web development) that is becoming obsolete. Should I dump the idea for something that revolves around mobile technologies and spend my time learning something like iOS development instead?"}
{"_id": "200499", "title": "How to render graphical interface automatically (behind the scenes)", "text": "I am trying to write a program that shows images of a Java application's GUI automatically (ie, without someone building, running, and then taking screenshots of the interface). I know WindowBuilder is a GUI designer with a WYSIWYG editor but that isn't quite what I want. For example, if given the source code (or jar) of an application as input, which has 4 frames (windows), then my tool would output 4 images of the different frames. It only needs to work on primitive and simple interfaces. Any ideas on how to go about this? **EDIT:** I would like to build this into an Eclipse plug-in that provides information to the developer about the GUI. There are plenty of plug-ins for showing the call graph in various ways, it would be neat to show a graph of the frames."}
{"_id": "166750", "title": "Should an object know its own ID?", "text": "`obj.id` seems fairly common and also seems to fall within the range of something an object could know about itself. I find myself asking why should my object know its own id? It doesn't seem to have a reason to have it? One of the main reason for it existing is retrieve it, and so my **repositories** need to know it, and thus use it for database interaction. I also once encountered a problem where I wanted to serialize an object to JSON for a RESTful API where the id did not seem to fit in the payload, but only the URI and including it in the object made that more difficult. Should an object know it's own id? why or why not? _update_ : **Terms**   1. id: Identifier attribute on an object. in database terms, a surrogate key not a natural key.   2. Object: an Entity, or otherwise uniquely identifiable object within the system."}
{"_id": "200493", "title": "is there any way to copy the \"Work Item Type\" diagram in TFS?", "text": "I used the Process Editor (from TFS Power Tools) to update the **Workflow diagram** of a particular Work Item Type (viz., the \"Issue\" type). There are a dozen other projects on our server that share the Issue type, and I would like to port my changes to all of them. But unfortunately, while the Process Editor allows you to export/import Work Item Types to/from the server, it only includes the`.xml` (definition) file, which doesn't include the workflow diagram. (The diagram is stored in the`.wit` and the`.wit.diagram` files, which do not get imported with the`.xml`). Is there any way to copy the diagram to all the projects? (Note: I eventually intend to make similar changes to several of the work item types, so an automated solution to propagate these changes across all the projects would be much appreciated!) Running TFS 2010."}
{"_id": "195571", "title": "Is it possible to reach absolute zero bug state for large scale software?", "text": "I am talking about 20-30+ millions lines of code, software at the scale and complexity of Autodesk Maya for example. If you freeze the development as long as it needs to be, can you actually fix all the bugs until there is simply not a single bug, if such a thing could be verified by computers? What are the arguments for and against the existence of a bug-free system? Because there is some notion that every fix you make creates more bugs, but I don't think that's true. EDIT: By bugs I meant from the simplest typos in the UI, to more serious preventative bugs that has no workaround. For example a particular scripting function calculates normals incorrectly. Also even when there are workarounds, the problem still has to be fixed. So you could say you can do this particular thing manually instead of using the provided function but that function still has to be fixed."}
{"_id": "200495", "title": "What Specifications should a Programmer Seek in a Computer Purchase ? Or, What Computer should I buy?", "text": "I wish to acquire a new computer that is specially designed for programming. I would like to build it myself for the learning experience, but am willing to purchase it made as well. Basically I have downloaded so many files dedicated to programming that are so large that a) my computer is near capacity and b) my 4 year old computer is extremely slow. Specifically, I am into databases (Oracle/PostGreSQL, Mongo, Hadoop) and java, but love learning all possible languages."}
{"_id": "200494", "title": "Is there an equivalent term for Desktop Monitoring Recorder such as NVR or DVR?", "text": "Just like NVR (Network Video Recorder) and DVR (Digital Video Recorder), I was wondering if there's a term / acronym for Desktop Monitoring Recorder? Perhaps DMR? I can't find any standard terms for this type of system. I'm writing a system which is just like an NVR but records / monitors computer desktops instead. It's not a \"screen thief\" or \"desktop spy\" or any type of malware - it's a surveillance system, only for computers rather than cameras. In the end, it will do things such as primarily monitoring/recording screens, watching for mouse movement when the computer user shouldn't be there, and more. There are also other commands such as taking control of the screen, executing remote shutdown / restart, posting messages to the user's screen, and more. Is there a particular standard term or acronym for the recording software side of this?"}
{"_id": "204379", "title": "65.000.000.000 tests to run", "text": "I was asked about how to run a suite of 65.000.000.000 tests and I wonder if it is normal to have a project with such a huge amount of tests. Have you worked in projects with this characteristic?"}
{"_id": "204371", "title": "Tools that can catch \"fake coverage\"?", "text": "Hypothetical scenario: codebase is exercised by unit tests run by a TeamCity build-bot, that also uses the built-in dotCover tool to provide coverage metrics. The build will fail if less than X% of the code is covered. Unscrupulous developer running NCrunch (or a pre-tested commit in TC) sees that his next checkin will drop the coverage percentage below the threshold and break the build, because he didn't write good unit tests (TDD or otherwise). So, he writes a new test that runs some lines of code that NCrunch shows aren't covered, but makes no assertions about their behavior. Tests pass by default (because the executed code throws no exceptions), coverage stays above X%, and to find the problem, someone must discover the test, inspect it and see there are no assertions (or no meaningful assertions) made during its execution. Since we currently don't have a code review process, and it would be detrimental to productivity to perform reviews prior to every commit, I want this behavior to break the build. If the test runner runs a method marked with a [Test] attribute (we're using NUnit) and, upon completion, sees that the code has made no calls to NUnit's Assert methods, nor thrown the ExpectedException, TC should raise Cain. Ideally, the tool would be smart enough to also discover that all assertions will be true by definition, such as `Assert.AreEqual(1,1);`, and fail the build in a similar way. Is there something \"off-the-shelf\" that I can plug into TeamCity, or a way I can configure its built-in runners/coverage metrics to find this type of bad behavior, short of performing a custom static code analysis? Of course we'll find it _eventually_ , but in our environment (small in-house dev team) there may only be one or two developers familiar with the full codebase of a given application, and so this blatant end run around test quality checks may not happen until the guy responsible is long gone and someone else takes over primary ownership of the codebase."}
{"_id": "218462", "title": "Versioning and deploying dependent systems", "text": "I need some best practices or experiences of developer teams who had to treat the same issues I have at the moment =) Our company is developing a client software for years. The one and only dependency was to have an appropriate database. With each release (update) we also update (incremental) the database if necessary. The versioning schema is well-established and matches our ideology. Now we have started developing mobile applications (act as external client). Some preliminary remarks to our architecture: The interface between the mobile client and the database (same database as for the desktop client) is a RESTful webservice. The versioning of both clients are independent. One application is maintained by the desktop development team and the mobile part is maintained by another team. But I don't know how to handle the webservice. Should it be independent as well (own versioning) despite the fact that it's using a lot of shared libraries which are maintained by the desktop development team? How it works:   The mobile client synchronizes it's reference data with the webservice which interacts live with the database (read-only access to database). User data which are produced on the mobile application become also synchronized with the webservice but it's written to some persistent temporary tables. And an asynchronous job will be started to try the import to the database (could fail in case of locking issues, permissions, ....). If the import fails the same import procedure can also be started on the desktop client (they use the same library for importing from temporary tables to the specific ones) In general each of these three parts could change (e.g. bugfix, features, performance improvements) without affecting the other two. Therefore I need a strategy to deploy each by itself. Nevertheless most probably it will affect two of three. Where / when should i check if all three systems are compatible? How should I check this? Having a table in the database with every single possible combination of version which work together? If you don't understand my question because it's entirely ambiguous, please let me know. It's not that easy to describe =)"}
{"_id": "101929", "title": "Anyone experienced in Gaming/Gambling industry?", "text": "Are there any legal hassles when you work in these Casino kinds of industry? I'm offered a job and I like it owing to clever algorithms and multi-threaded enviornment. I'd like some advice on legal issues before taking the offer. *Ok I'm not going to sue any one of you for bad advice. I just wanted to know if people have any experience in such affairs. And I'm not looking for a lawyer's advise at all, I'm trying to know the gaming industry trends in general and what the programmers there have to say about their work when it comes to gamblings. And how would the lawyer know what goes inside the casino programming industry? *"}
{"_id": "71330", "title": "Changing OS parameters from Java source code", "text": "Can I design my program so that it will automatically change OS's hotkeys parameters? I mean, when installing a program, it will set the hotkey of OS so that if you press them, the program itself would run. (Linux/Windows)"}
{"_id": "245668", "title": "Where does `this` go in a x64 thiscall?", "text": "So I understand that `thiscall` doesn't really exist in x64 programming. However, I can't really find any definitive explanation as to _where_ the `this` pointer is put to be passed to the callee. Is a x64 `thiscall` like a true `cdecl` call, where `this` is put on to the 'stack' last (on both GCC and MSVC compilers)? **EDIT:** Running through GDB, it appears so. `rdi` held the `this` pointer and `rsi` held the one parameter that particular method had. Is this how it always works?"}
{"_id": "84189", "title": "What special considerations are needed when designing databases to hold financial records?", "text": "I hope this question isn't too broad. In the future I may need to add some accounting and financial-tracking systems to some applications (mostly web- based applications, but my questions pertains to desktop apps as well). Now, creating a simple record of financial transactions is theoretically easy. One database table with a few columns could do the job. Even MS Access, Excel, or even just a plain ASCII text file could be used to store transaction dates, account IDs, and dollar amounts. However, I feel that even a frequently backed-up SQL table with transactional integrity might not be robust enough for serious financial tracking. I hear terms like \"double-entry accounting\", and I get the feeling that most financial tracking apps (for example, Mint.com, or GnuCash) have a much more complicated data structure or process in place to make double-sure that everything adds up perfectly, exactly as it should, and that no data is ever lost or corrupted. My question is: **When designing an app to track financial transactions, what special design considerations should be made?** It seems like there could be so many potential issues... issues with rounding precision, parity checks, some kind of audit process, special backups, security/encryption, extra ways to protect data in the case of a crash mid data-entry.... I don't really know what I should be asking specifically, but I get the feeling that the programming industry has a set of best practices I know nothing about. What are they? **Edit:** It looks like I opened a bigger can of worms than I expected. To clarify, I'm thinking specifically of two types of apps:   1. \"Check registry\"-type apps like GnuCash or Quicken that maintain a record of an individuals transactions for their own use.   2. Apps that track invoicing/credit/or \"points\" for vendors and customers that deal with a company. I probably will not be doing any direct banking or (AFAIK) anything that has a ton of finance-related government regulations attached to it."}
{"_id": "123411", "title": "Linking a modular option to a program without creating a dependence", "text": "I would like to make my programs much less of a hassle to extend or create, I am imagining a scenario where the end user has a variety of check box options that affect how the program interacts. Something like in a word processor where you say underline, or bold, or to a game where you say, include this feature exclude that one. Just options in general. How does one create dynamic options that modify the programs behavior without making the program dependent on that feature should one decide to remove that option completely? And what is this type of programming called? Does one use global variables, (despite some languages suggesting otherwise) I guess maybe an alternative (metaphorical) way to form this question would be: How do I make my code look more like lego blocks and less like one of those wooden three dimensional puzzles? Example you can use: Deck of cards, options to remove all the jacks, or all the kings."}
{"_id": "232530", "title": "How can you design a application when you have not imagined completely how the app look like?", "text": "Here is the problem, an enthusiastic man wants to build an app, however he only knows roughly how the app should work. There are a lot of details he didn't know. How does he design his app? -Option1: Do not design, but just code the most important first & test to see how it goes then modify gradually. After the highest priority function finished, he can move to the next priority function. Bottom-up Approach. -Option2: Keep thinking until he realized all the details then design a complete app before actually coding. Top-down Approach. -Option3 Combine of both option1 &2, ie he can design some basic function first then start coding even he didn't realise all detail then modify accordingly. It's very hard to know all the details right at the beginning cos we are human & we can't predict the future. So i vote for option1 or 3. But it's kind of painful if you has to change ur code if you're missing the details. A lot of things has to be changed. My instructor in university say he always prefers top-down approach cos he believed it better. However, i think build a software just like u live a life, you never know in advanced what will happen in the future, so option1,3 could be the better one. What is your solution?"}
{"_id": "232535", "title": "Making a sldprt to PDB file converter?", "text": "I wanted to create a parser that can read a solidworks file and turn it into a protein data bank file. This has already been done in a program called DiamondCAD. http://www.zyvex.com/Research/DiamondCAD.html I waant to make a parser that can parse the data and then visualize it the same way as DiamondCAD. I have downloaded and opened solidworks files before and they make no sense to me with never before seen symbols and looks like ancient writing. Does anyone know how a sldprt. file is structured and how it can be parsed into a PDB file? (A software called VMD converts a PDB to Obj. file so it is proof of concept)"}
{"_id": "232537", "title": "Is Spring Source Tool suite required for J2EE application development?", "text": "I am following a tutorial. The guy keeps on adding different plug-ins such as subclipse, maven, spring source tool suite, etc after setting up jdk, eclipse, tomcat. While installing spring, he was saying that spring makes it difficult to debug the programme. That didn't make me happy. He also added, it's up to you if you want to install it. Since I am not familiar with it, I just want to know if it's alright to not to have spring at all? Is there really any use of having all those plug-ins?"}
{"_id": "180877", "title": "What is the lifecycle for loading a Linux Desktop Environment?", "text": "I'm looking into delving into a bit of custom OS work (and yes I understand that doing any development at the DE level or lower on an OS is extremely complex and not a light thing to undertake, curiosity is driving this though), I'm in the research phase right now, digging around and learning by example from the source code for projects like GNOME, KDE and XFCE. I can't seem to find a really good resource, or resources that describes how a \"desktop environment\" is initialized, instantiated and drawn to the screen of the user (i.e. it's lifecycle). I know that Xorg/X11 sits in there somewhere, acting as server and the users screen is the client, and your desktop sits on top of this client. A lot of resources just start talking about rearranging combinations of already developed window managers, apps and such in order to customize your desktop experience, but what I'm thinking is what If I wanted a stripped down OS that only consisted of a screen with three buttons that performed some actions and that was it? I don't need window management, applications, or other GUI items, just the ability to draw a desktop and three buttons... (hypothetical) My problem is at the distro level, how does a DE get registered as an available desktop environment, how is it strapped into the distros boot up, what happens after the login, what's run, what is the topography of a DE? By example, in Ubuntu you can have KDE, XFCE and GNOME installed on one distro and switch between them by logging out, changing the active DE and logging back in so how does the DE make the OS aware of its existence in the first place? I only really need high level here really, I want to do something fairly simple in that I want to make a DE available in a distro like Ubuntu Desktop (not openly, I mean just for myself) and initialize to an empty desktop (no taskbar, apps, window manager, etc...; just the most base state possible) in order to understand what's required to get a DE running. I don't need code specific answers (where's the challenge in that right?) but pointers to good resources on how this process works. I'll take a well formed textual answer over a chunk of code as I'm looking to understand how it all works, the path taken to get to a DE and not implementation specifics. The outcome of this will not technically be published (code-wise) but I'm looking at doing some blog posts that describe the process of learning all of this and writing the DE layer in order to get a \"Raw\" desktop up and running in a pre-existing/established OS like Ubuntu, Mint, Gentoo or another distro."}
{"_id": "180870", "title": "How to properly deal with ER and UML diagram management", "text": "When learning about these tools, I (naively) thought that mapping about the business space could be front loaded by doing it only once and refering to those diagrams for each project within a single business unit. However, I am finding that each situation is calling for it's own set of diagrams to properly communicate what's going on. I find that I am dealing with the same objects, but the relationships change. My first thought to these different situations was that these were sort of _disposable_ * diagrams as they only pertain to a very narrow scope within the business, but I quickly retracted that thought once I found myself scrambling to find the same ER diagram I disposed 3 months ago in a completely different situation. So now I am getting a sence that they are not disposable and should be kept, but I want to avoid just a stack of seemingly contradicting UML and ER diagrams so that someone behind me can make sense of it all. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "180873", "title": "Desktop framework with rich HTML/CSS interface and strange 'desktop native language support'", "text": "I'm not sure if what I'm after even exists or if it doe's im looking for the wrong thing. I'm after a framework/application/SDK that allows me to build a desktop application with a HTML/CSS/JavaScript based interface yet still allow for more complex OS interaction with a programming language such as Python (im also familiar with Ruby but as this is a hobby project I don't mind looking into other languages if needed). By complex OS interaction I mean more than simply saving files to the HDD, being able to use pythons libraries would be a big bonus. The closet thing I can find so far is tideSDK http://www.tidesdk.org but it doesn't seem to offer much past its own API for OS interaction."}
{"_id": "159824", "title": "Cross platform or web development with .NET", "text": "With iOS and Android soaring on mobile devices that become ever more pervasive, every other year being the 'year of Linux on the desktop' - which is somewhat snarky, but they are getting there -, OSX still holding its own, the time when one could simply say \"it runs on Windows, and if you're not using Windows, well, sucks to be you\". I'm a .NET developer, with the applications i'm developing being fairly service-oriented, so that I can easily expose the backend logic to different frontends cross platform. I'm really bad at user interfaces, but in the end, applications do need to end up with an end user. And to present the application to the end user, it needs a GUI. It was looking like XAML/WPF was the land of bounty, where they weren't quite there yet, but were aiming to make a cross platform presentation layer. Lately, it has been mighty quiet on the WPF front though. Silverlight is all but dead. I sort of half hope that the 'right thing' will be happening here, with some black magic, pixiedust and flying unicorns that poop rainbows transforming my code + XAML into HTML5/CSS3 applications, winforms, metro, or whatever other form I choose to build for. This might be a bit optimistic. So what presentation forms should I be looking in to? I would like to continue to use .NET as a primary ecosystem. Should I just be going asp.net + html5, and do the front end by hand in html5/js/css? Is there any framework that looks like it will hold the promise to be able to do something in a somewhat unified language?"}
{"_id": "180878", "title": "GPLv3 Project with BSD Library", "text": "I am working in a Python project that I want to release under the GPL3 license. This project has one file that uses the BSD lxml library . I really need to put reference of the BSD license in the file where I use the library? Or just the GPLv3 of my project covers the licenses restrictions. Library: http://lxml.de Licenses: https://github.com/lxml/lxml/blob/master/doc/licenses/BSD.txt http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt [Edit] I think we're misunderstanding I will not put the source code of the lxml library on my project. I will put the reference for functions of the library. If someone wants use my project, he needs to download separately the lxml library.               import lxml          # do stuff with lxml...     # do stuff     # my code      Only is necessary put the library license if I distribute the lxml source code with my project. Am I right?"}
{"_id": "159820", "title": "Generic way of handling exceptions in windows phone?", "text": "I mean what are some of the ways other programmers deal with exception for example, when an error occurs when accessing a web service for say. If an example cant be given for windows phone, give the closest you could."}
{"_id": "33293", "title": "Application name licensing issue", "text": "I started writing an application for Windows Phone marketplace, at the time only making sure that the name I gave it wasn't being used by any other app on the marketplace. I just found out that the same name is being used by a, seemingly popular, SourceForge project. Is this a problem? I haven't released my app yet so I could rename it, but I really like the name and would prefer not to unless it is an issue."}
{"_id": "234699", "title": "Segregating interfaces/concerns to a tree", "text": "When working with a single object there are a number of ways to segregate interfaces to it.   * Breaking it into smaller components that can be treated independently.   * Breaking it into simpler interfaces.  Both of these seem challenging to do with a tree. I think it would be nice to be able to do the following.               class Node : INodeData, INodePresentation { ... }          class Program     {         static void Main()         {             var node = new Node();             ManipulateNode(node);             PresentNode(node);         }              void ManipulateNode(INodeData nodeData)         {             foreach (INodeData child in nodeData.GetChildren())                  nodeData.AddVertices(...);             nodeData.Rotate(...);         }              void PresentNode(INodePresentation nodePresentation)         {             nodePresentation.Color = Color.Blue;             nodePresentation.Size = 15;             nodePresentation.Paint();             foreach (INodePresentation child in nodePresentation.GetChildren())                 PresentNode(child);         }     }      In this way different parts of the program could use the node according to a concise interface. But each interface I add will require more methods in the Node class which could be unmaintainable. It seems like the presentation and data should be defined in separate classes, but I can't think of a good way to do this while maintaining the ability to traverse the tree. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "226149", "title": "Tracking correct order details in commerce database when modifying 'products'", "text": "I am implementing an ecommerce database. This is slightly different than most as the 'products' that are for sale are for services provided. For example a user (vendor) of the system may define a service to 'wash your car'.               Table: Services     --------------------------------------------------     | ID (pk) |      Title       |    Description    |     --------------------------------------------------          1       Home Services      wash your car      I have omitted a number of columns, but should still be able to make my point. A client can then purchase the `Home Services`. So I have an `orders` table with a FK to the the `Services` table. Standard ecommerce stuff. The issue I have is what happens if the vendor decides to slightly update the description or even the title? This may have the affect of changing the entire service. For a normal commerce site, you'd add a discrete product. If this product changed, you would create a new product and discontinue the old one. With the packages, we need to allow updates as the description is the product and the sales pitch (maybe thats my problem though - maybe separate the two?) so I have to allow changes. For example they could change the description to 'wash your car and clean your house'. The obvious issue with this is that existing orders will still reference the same PK on the services table but the service is now different. I'm wondering what the best solution is to allow changes to be added, but maintain the correct data for existing orders. One solution I thought of is to not update the row, but add a new one and a version number               Table: Services     ------------------------------------------------------------------------------     | ID (pk) |      Title       |            Description             |  Version |     ------------------------------------------------------------------------------          1       Home Services     wash your car                           1          2       Home Services     wash your car and clear your house      2      We can now access the correct information for previous orders, and existing customers can purchase the new home services option. This feels like a sensible way to do it, but want to see if anyone knew of any other solutions? One other solution is to allow updates on the services table, but then for each order, save the description and title (similar to how sometimes in commerce schemas the final price is saved directly to the order). Issue I have with this is a lot of duplicate data being saved."}
{"_id": "41458", "title": "Interview advice - Google Developer Advocate position", "text": "Can this position (Developer Advocate) be considered as a Software Engineering position in terms of interview questions they will likely ask me? Anyone else been interviewed for this position? I am just trying to gauge what they'll ask me for Developer Advocate position. Thanks. **EDIT:** This is just the first phone interview."}
{"_id": "775", "title": "What is the ideal mix of senior to junior developers on a team?", "text": "On any team, you are going to have the need for more grizzled and grey developers and some young pups. Some reasons include:   * Money. There are often tasks that don't require the same level of experience to deliver, so it makes sense not to pay top dollar to have those tasks fulfilled.   * Energy. There's an energy and enthusiasm that new people can bring to a team that stops it from getting too stale and set in its ways. There's also calmness and wisdom that the more senior people can bring.   * Knowledge transfer and career growth. Both in terms of the project and skills, it's useful and often fun to teach people and to learn new stuff. It's satisfying to help \"bring on\" new team members. I realise there are some cutting edge projects where it may be important for there to be more senior people than junior, but in general, is there an ideal mix of experiences on a team, or is it totally dependent on the project?"}
{"_id": "159792", "title": "Can I distribute software that's using Microsoft's Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition? ", "text": "Am I within my rights to write and distribute software in compiled and source form using, in part, Microsoft's Visual Basic 2010 Express Edition? I have only the free, express version. If it has anything to do with this, the license I am using is the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license."}
{"_id": "159791", "title": "Is there a way to input values on a web site's text box using a database table values?", "text": "I have a table with username and passwords that I want to input in Hotmail's username and password box. Is there a way to actually program this? Are you allowed to manipulate text boxes of someone else's webpage? Not for illegal purposes, just to make my job easier and to not have to input values manually one by one. Hotmail is just an example."}
{"_id": "83325", "title": "What license is applicable for an app based on CodeIgniter?", "text": "I am trying to fork an application that is based on CodeIgniter. According to the GoogleCode page, the license is GPLv3. However, examining the license.txt file inside the root directory of the application is very clearly not GPL (it does not include the preamble etc.) and looks like a slightly modified version of the BSD License specifying that a copy of the license and all copyrights must be included with a changelog, as well as some indemnity clauses. The confusing part is that within several of the actual php files they include another license in the comments. This license is a verbatim copy of the 2-clause BSD license, but below this BSD license there is a series of @tags, and the @license one has a link to the GPL 2.0 so it is unclear to me what license applies to this application. Finally, I have found no mention anywhere that the project is dual/multi-licensed. Also, the project has not been under active development for over 2 years. Can anyone shed any light on this (or point me in the direction of resources that could)? Thanks."}
{"_id": "778", "title": "What's your favorite interview question?", "text": "What question have you found especially valuable in interviewing software developers? What is it about the question that has made it particularly useful? I'm looking for a particular question you like to ask, not just an interviewing approach like \"make them write code\"."}
{"_id": "48881", "title": "Release/Change management - best aproach", "text": "I asked this question an year ago in StackOverflow and never got a good answer. Since Programmers seems to be a better place to ask it, I'll give it a try... What is the better way to work with release management? More specifically what would be the best way to release packages? For example, assuming that you have a relatively stable system, a good quality assurance process (QA), etc. How do you prefer to release new versions? Let's assume that we are talking about a mid to large \"centralized\" web system (no clients), in-house development. This system can be considered \"vital\" for a corporate operations. I have a tendency to prefer to do this by releasing packets at regular intervals, not greater than 1 to 3 months. During this period, I will include into the package,fixes and improvements and make the implementation in production environment only once. But I've seen some people who prefer to place small changes in production, but with a greater frequency. The claim of these people is that by doing so, it is easier to identify bugs that have gone through the process of QA: in a package with 10 changes and another with only 1, it is much easier to know what caused the problem in the package with just one change... What is the opinion came from you?"}
{"_id": "73", "title": "How to manage scope creep?", "text": "We often receive last minute requests from the business asking for an extra feature to be implemented. The project manager is usually responsible for filtering out these requests as \"must haves\" or \"nice to have\", but there are cases where the business wants to squeeze all these features into a release. Is there a good way to say NO to the business? What steps can be taken to stop or minimize scope creep?"}
{"_id": "202235", "title": "Is there a standard way to structure a website", "text": "When I first taught myself how to make websites (html/css) I used exact pixel width and height for all div elements. I've also practiced making websites with nothing but percentage width and height. I can use either technique fairly easily, but I wanted to know is there a standard technique or structure to building the basic layout of a website? My recent favorite is to make my main div container an exact pixel width with auto height (centered on the page) and then have all divs inside set to a percentage width and auto height. This works just fine for me, but if there's a widely acknowledged standard to making a website from scratch I would love to know."}
{"_id": "202234", "title": "Is it a right thing to do, to use Node.JS as a TCP Server?", "text": "**Part I - The Story:** I have crafted a high performance TCP server in `C#` (based on _SocketAsyncEventArgs_) which works brilliantly (for my cause). I have more than 7000 clients, sending me a message every 30 sec - 1 min. In the past days I was studying **_Node.JS_** (for another, totally unrelated project) and I have learnt that _Node.JS_ could be used as a TCP server. So I thought: \"Heh...Let's see if it can compete with my 'state of the art' TCP server\". And it was astonishing how Node.JS was (is) more performant (in some cases far more performant) than that \"state of the art TCP server\" and was far simpler and used far less resources. **Part II - The Question:** Is it right to use Node.JS just for implementing a TCP server and not a web app? Does that considered as abusing Node.JS? And if anybody had did that what were the pros and cons in the long run? Note (an important one): I have not implemented the message parsing part in Node.JS yet. So I must find a performant way to implement heavy-lifting in an async manner."}
{"_id": "202237", "title": "Automated builds, build tools and Embedded systems", "text": "I come from an embedded world where we use C/C++ for programming, and use an IDE to generate a binary file, which is then programmed into a Hardware Board, which can then be tested. With this background, can someone point me to a sample workflow for automated builds, which has demonstrable advantages over the current workflow of -build(using IDE)->Flash into the hardware->test. In other words, is there a way I can benefit from the advantages of CI in the domain that I operate in?"}
{"_id": "219738", "title": "Evaluate all pair combinations in an array for a condition in n log n time complexity", "text": "Task - Consider an array of n elements. Count the number of pairs that satisfy condition X (sum of the two elements < an arbitrary number, k) . The basic approach I could think of would be O(n^2), where I evaluate all n*(n-1)/2 pairs. How can I solve the problem in a better time frame i.e., O(n log n) or less? The best approach so far was to sort the array, find where a+b smaller than k then add indice of a to solution. But the process still has to go through n-1 'b's to check for each of them. It's better but still doesn't improve the worst case. Also, this isn't homework. I came across this while preparing for a competition."}
{"_id": "219739", "title": "Are there established algorithms for spacing out objects of unequal size?", "text": "I'm working on visualizing a hierarchy. There will be clusters of objects, each cluster containing rectangles of fixed width but variable height. I'd like to arrange these within a rectangular space so as to have equal visual spacing between them, something like this: ![mockup](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SapuH.png) download bmml source - Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups Before I spend a day inventing the wheel, are there standard algorithms for this kind of distribution and space-filling? If the objects were all the same size, I'd just use a grid. I'll be using this algorithm at two levels: once to lay out the clusters, and again to lay out the objects within each cluster. The latter would look best if they were arranged within a roughly circular space, but if that complicates things excessively I'm OK with rectangular. I won't be showing relationships between these objects, so distance minimization is not necessary. There's a similar question (What would be the best way to fill \"space\" in an User Interface for irregular image sizes gallery?) about laying out rectangular images while eliminating or minimizing white space. In my case, I want to equalize white space, clusters will be circular, and some clusters will be much larger than others."}
{"_id": "208496", "title": "why is remainder of division, multiplied by divisor ? using operator %", "text": "I have started to learn Javascript. From book http://eloquentjavascript.net: > There is one more arithmetic operator which is probably less familiar to > you. The `%` symbol is used to represent the remainder operation. `X % Y` is > the remainder of dividing `X` by `Y`. For example `314 % 100` is `14`, `10 % > 3` is `1`, and `144 % 12` is `0`. Remainder has the same precedence as > multiplication and division. I don't understand, why it multiply the remainder fraction by divisor (after division). It is more complicated or less accurate.   10 / 3 = 3.3333 (a recurring decimal number). 10 % 3 = 1 (0.333 * 3 = 0.999 (not 1 ) What is purpose of this strange remainders ? Thanks"}
{"_id": "47855", "title": "What issues tend to arise when working with HL7 messages?", "text": "I'm testing a product for health care businesses, and we're working with HL7 messages. I saw people groaning on another question about the issues with HL7 but not mentioning specifics. Can someone give me some ideas of what issues or classes of problems we should specifically be looking for? We are using some well-used libraries for the parsing. If specifics about these or what we're doing would be helpful please let me know in the comments and I'll add to the question if I can."}
{"_id": "208498", "title": "Which programming languages are multi-platform, fast, and object-oriented with non-limiting low-level os access?", "text": "I've been a web developer for a few years, and I want to get into desktop program development. I'm looking for a language that will allow me to write programs which are:   * Multi-platform, supporting Windows, Mac, and Linux, either by default or with little work.   * Create programs which are fast.   * Is object oriented.   * Doesn't have any limitations in terms of what sort of programs can be built with it (e.g, can be used to access lower level operating system functions, e.g showing an icon in the taskbar or rebooting the computer)   * (Bonus but not necessary) Has some tool for GUI creation   * (Bonus but not necessary) Comes by default with tools for database access such as with MySQL or SQLite I'm on Linux, and would prefer not to use C# as there's no good IDE for it available on Linux. However if its the best choice, I may be convinced to switch for it. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "203788", "title": "Is it worthwile to learn/use Play framework (for Scala or Java) if I don't use the MVC in it", "text": "I prefer Single Page Application to server side generated HTML. I am sensible to the pitch of \"high productivity\" delivered by Play. Now if I don't use the HTML generation part, is it still valuable? Is it worthwile to learn it? For the controller (REST or other), business logic, persistence. Does it help generating unit tests? How do you use it? Thank you"}
{"_id": "219736", "title": "Intranet application platform decisions wamp vs node", "text": "I have a client/server java application with a firebirdsql backend. This is a pain because I have to install java and the client on every workstation, etc So it is now time to rewrite the application, and I am deciding what technology to use. My strengths are php/js/C# The application can be single user or multiuser (I don't however want to force the users to install a full multiuser database service if possible) It needs to work off-grid (some of the locations it will be used have no internet access) It will primarily be deployed on windows desktop pc's and accessed remotely via ipads/laptops. I would like to be able to run the whole app off a usb key, with no installation required. My initial thoughts are just a wamp stack, although I am not sure how easy it will be to bundle it into an easily deployable application. I also need to have a background task running \"aka cronjob\", and I am not sure how to trigger that from within the application itself short of writing a windows service. My second thought is to look at node+database (which database I am not sure, preferably embedded or standalone). The good thing i see here is that i can handle \"cronjob type\" tasks relatively easily. The bit where i am stuck is in the database choice. I have looked at sqlite, but the drivers don't seem all that robust. So 3 questions really.   1. what is a good embedded/standalone (non-server) relational databases that can be used with node.    2. has anyone got experience doing a similar project, and any issues they encountered with either node or wamp stacks   3. Are there better technology stacks I could use in this scenario I for one have found that WAMP performs terribly over the network but flies on localhost, and I haven't been able to determine the problem."}
{"_id": "222963", "title": "\u201c/*@null@*//*@out@*/\u201d\u00a0in C function declaration", "text": "In `alloc.h` of djbdns-1.05 there's the following code: > `extern /*@null@*//*@out@*/char *alloc();` My question is about the goofy-looking `/*@null@*//*@out*` \u201cdecorator.\u201d I assume this is \u201cjust a comment\u201d with some significance to djbdns's build system. But I can't find anything referencing it in other files. Anybody know what this is?"}
{"_id": "76645", "title": "Technical test for a senior developer", "text": "I have a dilemma. I have a candidate for a senior software developer position. The guy seems competent on a first talk with him and he answered the questions asked precisely and gave me proofs of his work. Moreover he has been highly recommended by some trusted colleagues. In this case I am tempted to skip the technical test HR requires as I need to fill the vacancy asap. Please share your experience. **EDIT:** Against a better judgement I have given the test. Top scores on almost all questions, even on subject that he did not boasted upon. But I had so support some irony from him when he saw the questions of the test - which were clearly not for a senior. So we made an offer. Thanks all for the insights."}
{"_id": "77991", "title": "Do testers have to look at source code?", "text": "How necessary is it for testers to do white-box testing in addition to black- box testing? As a developer, I see value in having a QA-minded person go through my code and look for weak points, but it also seems like if a non- technical tester is thorough and methodical enough, they can cover the application well. White box testing may reveal important test cases that wouldn't be obvious while looking only at the application from a user's perspective, but exclusively black-box testing might take less time, and significantly increases the number of people who are capable of doing the job. Also, a nontrivial amount of white box testing should be performed by the developer before it ever gets to the tester, am I right?"}
{"_id": "252199", "title": "How to best structure Git for our team", "text": "We're starting to develop many small web projects in our company, where mostly they will have one shared resource with some code pieces (SDKs, utilities and etc...) Our team is small (~5) but is growing and is expected to grow x2-x3 in several months. We're discussing what would be the right way to build our source control and came up with 2 main ideas:   1. Put all code in one repo which will be synced with Github. Everyone will have the copy of all projects and will have the shared resources folder as well - thus will be able to pull/push the shared code and the project code with only one action. Also, there will be no need to follow multiple repositories. On the other side, this might create confusion and errors - as all the code pulled/pushed even if working only on one project.   2. Put each project in its own repo and put the shared resources project in its own repo. Thus everyone who is working on a project will work only on that repo and won't have to push / pull other repos. This will create a more streamlined work - but will make everyone work with at least 2 repositories (shared resources and his project), which might create confusion. I would be glad to know if one of the options is a bad idea or if there is a better way. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "77992", "title": "Searching for job openings beyond those that just specific programming language?", "text": "I currently consider myself to be a X language programmer (just using a variable here since this isn't about the language), I've invested time into learning the platform and like working with it. The other day, something dawned on me a bit in that when I go to search for openings (say on a job search engine), I would normall just type in \"X language\" \"my city\" and look through those. However, I got to thinking that I also have experience working with cloud infrastructure, for example, and maybe there are companies out there that want someone with cloud experience but who aren't yet decided on a specific language / platform so they could have sort of \"open ended\" listings that don't mention \"X language\" even though they may be open to using it if they found the right developer who wanted to work on that platform. I've been trying this method of looking for openings and have found a few so far that seem to fit what I was thinking (that they didn't mention specific languages or did so in a way that seemed non-commital / open-ended), I'm just curious what other's experiences are as to whether there are a number of companies out there that may do this where they are looking for a developer who can build a specific application rather than necessarily having already decided (and listed) the platform they use. The current job I found was where the guy called me and I ended up influencing the platform we use (since it was a greenfield project) so it just makes me wonder sometimes if I am not being open enough when I search. **Clarification:** I think the reason that I am asking this is because when dealing with recruiters they tend to obsessively focus on the language first and foremost, so if I say that I have primary experience in X platform and they want Y then they usually just assume its not a fit and tell you that they will let you know when they have X jobs available"}
{"_id": "18011", "title": "Mary Poppendieck's Books on Lean Software Development: Which One Can You Recommend?", "text": "Has anyone read all three of Mary Poppendieck's books on Lean Software Development? She and her husband Tom wrote:   * in 2003: Lean Software Development   * in 2006: Implementing Lean Software Development   * in 2009: Leading Lean Software Development Mary and Tom Poppendieck are highly regarded _lean_ experts, so I should have probably read one of their books, but I haven't read any of them. Which one should I start with?"}
{"_id": "230006", "title": "Return compound structure from getter method in DTO", "text": "Suppose the following DTO class. Which of the two getters breaks encapsulation least?               class Foo         {         public:             /*Return the most primitive type. Caller do not need             to worry about what Array is*/             const RecType* dataBeginGet() const;             const RecType* dataEndGet() const;                  /*Return a reference to the Array.              Caller do not need to call two methods before iteration             */             const Array<RecType>& dataGet() const                 {return m_data;}              private:             Array<RecType> m_data;         };"}
{"_id": "108519", "title": "Setting up an Ethical Guidance Committee for the protection of developers?", "text": "While doing some contracting lately for a fairly large company that handles its IT internally (mainly with younger technical staff who don't have the experience to deal with hierarchy), I came across what must be a common situation with regard to the board level not really understanding the ethical considerations of some of the things that they require from the technical department. As an example, board level members seeing software which \"would be nice to incorporate into our platform\" without due consideration to licensing (\"well, why dont we just remove the licensing and ship it - who will know?\" etc) and sales people promising highly problematic features and deadlines that the technical team now must keep because the client is a large one. The standard issues in large companies... As a \"disposable\" contractor, I raised this with the director that brought me on board, and he asked me what the best way was to resolve said issues without causing major battles between the various people involved... So, one thing led to another and to my surprise I found that my suggestion of an internal advisory body from the pool of general employees was taken up by the board - and I was given the task of implementing it. The board have committed to having one representative from this committee at every board meeting (with special dispensation for confidential discussions allowed) for the next year, as a trial measure - the representative is to take note on current discussions and report back to the committee, and make advisory notes to the board. Has anyone else done this? What advice can people give? Is there anything to watch out for? My idea has gained wide support with the general employees of the company, with many people wanting to put themselves forward for it, so acceptance doesn't seem to be an issue."}
{"_id": "89674", "title": "CPOL License. Can I use it on my commercial application without distributing source code?", "text": "I'm considering using a project from http://www.codeproject.com that uses the CPOL license. Section 5e says: \"You may distribute the Executable Files and Source Code only under the terms of this License, and You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy of the Executable Files or Source Code You distribute and ensure that anyone receiving such Executable Files and Source Code agrees that the terms of this License apply to such Executable Files and/or Source Code. You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder. You may not sublicense the Work. You must keep intact all notices that refer to this License and to the disclaimer of warranties. You may not distribute the Executable Files or Source Code with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License.\" Is not clear to me if I should include their source code with my executable or not. Or even worse, if I should make my own source code available such as with GPL license. The reason why is not clear to me is because I'm not sure if by compiling their source code together with mine I'm \"distributing\" either their \"Source Code\" or \"Executable Files\"?"}
{"_id": "108513", "title": "How to transition a small team developing on a remote testserver from svn to git", "text": "At the company I work we use SVN. The SVN repository resides on the local server. When developing we commit the changes to SVN on the local server which transfers the changes via ftp to a testsite remote test server. The whole team uses the same testsite. We use a remote testserver so that we don't have to setup anything on our local machines. If developer A wants to see the changes of developer B on is local machine, he must simply update his working copy. Most of the time we are very happy with this approach:   * it's simple   * svn is nicely integrated in Netbeans Things that bother us are:   * the changes are transfered via ftp. When transferring a lot of files this can be quite slow   * we would like to have a repository \"in the cloud\" so we can develop not only from our office but from anywhere (and without have to setup a vpn) Is our workflow possible if we were to use github to host our repository? These things are important to us:   * we are not going to develop locally, we would still like to use a testsite on a testserver that is shared by the entire team   * because we do a lot of small changes pushing the changes to the testsite should be very easy   * we have a lot of small sites so the setup that a developer should do per site should be minimal"}
{"_id": "89672", "title": "Developing basic drawing tool involving lines, curves", "text": "I am developing a CAD - drawings to CNC machine code software. These CNC's have sort of a Instruction set which receive parameters,etc to do some blah blah job. I am quite comfortable with the CNC side; but am suddenly being asked to make a software which would let you \"draw\" plus will convert the drawing to the machines code. I am REALLY worried about the \"draw\" part. Shall i go for OpenGL development? or is there a more simplified way of doing things ? So to summarize, my problem : Creating a mini CAD platform (its all 2D and i dont need to bother with complex shapes apart from lines , some curves) But i have to provide the user with tools to make these \"simple drawings\" Please give me technical advice and a head start."}
{"_id": "207779", "title": "Convert Algebraic Expression directly into Binary Tree Structure (sans prefix / postfix)", "text": "I am looking all over internet to find a logic to convert an Algebraic Expression into a Binary Tree. I could only find ones where you first convert the algebra expression to postfix or prefix and then convert it to Binary Tree. I am just curious to know , if its possible. Any pointers to external links or logical answers to put me in the right direction ? * * * yes A Syntax Tree So this expression               A+(B-C)*D+E*F      should be translated into                             |-(+)-|                   |     |         |---(*)---|     |---(*)---|         |         |     |         |     |---(+)---|   D     E         F     |         |     |         |     A   |--( - )--|         |         |         B          C"}
{"_id": "207778", "title": "Is my application vulnerable to SQL injection if I don't specify each type in Doctrine2?", "text": "I thought Doctrine 2 DBAL prepared statements were safe from SQLi. But I found this confusing bit in the docs: > By default the Doctrine DBAL does no escaping. Escaping is a very tricky > business to do automatically, therefore there is none by default. When you > use the Doctrine DBAL as standalone, you have to take care of this yourself. What does that mean exactly? If someone tries to inject malicious code, will the query fail (as opposed to insert escaped) because the RDBMS protects me? Or I'm not protected at all? I'm using PostgreSQL as my RDBMS."}
{"_id": "38116", "title": "Is it possible to design a language that doesn't have syntax errors?", "text": "In other words, a language where every possible string is valid syntax? **EDIT** : This is a theoretical question.   I have no interest in _using_ such a language; I'm just asking whether it's possible."}
{"_id": "207773", "title": "Law of Demeter issues with complex class design", "text": "I've posted questions pertaining to this issue before, but they've all tackled different aspects of the problem (Just so you know that I'm not reposting the same question to get more answers). So, in a nutshell, here is my problem: I have a `Timeline` class, which has-a `Content` interface member variable. The Timeline manages WHEN the content gets activated. There is also a `Trigger` class, which gets a reference to the `Timeline` class and call the `Timeline`'s `play()` methods at certain times (like when the user hits spacebar). To organize the `Triggers` and the `Timeline` together, they're bound together in a class called `Cue` (which is the only class the rest of the program cares about). This leads me to a design problem, since this `Cue` class is used so often throughout my code, it would be a pain to change it later. Because of the Law of Demeter, should I not make getters and setters for the `timeline` and `triggers` member variables, and instead copy many of their functions into `Cue` (and just call the functions of the member variables in turn). That way, other classes won't know the inner workings of it?"}
{"_id": "229135", "title": "Is this a monad in Java? (part 2)", "text": "My first try was on stackoverflow. I'm picking up on the answer there to improve my monad: StackOverflow - Is this a monad in Java? My goal is to write an example of a monad. I'm not trying to solve the general case, just come up with one to see how it works. If I'm right, then I really like this pattern. I've already used it to rework some code I'm working on. So I hope it's right. I was pretty strict about the signatures & not taking shortcuts that OO allows. The (contrived) example is to provide semantics to represent a Friend relationship between two users. If there's an error, or the friendship is blocked, then processing stops. I have sample code that \"lifts\" Boolean, String and a custom Friend class into the monadic space, so I think that' a sign I'm on the right track. I've included the sample code lifting String into the monadic space. My question is, did I get the monad implementation right? Please call out the places where I jumped the rails!               public class FriendSpace<A> {              public boolean rejected = false;         public String errors = \"\";         public A original;              public interface Function<B, MA> {             MA apply(B b, MA a);         }              public FriendSpace<A> unit(A a) {             FriendSpace<A> that = new FriendSpace<A>();             that.original = a;             return that;         }              public <B> FriendSpace<A> bind(B b, Function<B, FriendSpace<A>> f) {             if (! errors.isEmpty()) {                 // we have errors; skip the rest                 return this;             }                  if (rejected) {                 // No means no                 return this;             }                  FriendSpace<A> next = f.apply(b, this);                  return next;         }              @SuppressWarnings(\"unchecked\")         public <B> FriendSpace<A> pipeline(B value,                FriendSpace.Function<B, FriendSpace<A>>... functions) {             FriendSpace<A> space = this;             for (FriendSpace.Function<B, FriendSpace<A>> f : functions) {                 space = space.bind(value, f);             }             return space;         }              // toString omitted to save space     }      And here's an example where the (arbitrary) input is a People class, and the (arbitrary) class representing the friendship state is String               public class People {              public People(String from, String to) {             this.from = from;             this.to = to;         }              public String from;         public String to;     }              @SuppressWarnings(\"unchecked\")         public static void main(String[] args) {             FriendSpace<String> proto = new FriendSpace<String>();                  People people0 = new People(\"Bob\", \"Fred\");             FriendSpace<String> space0 = proto.unit(\"\");             FriendSpace<String> friends0 = space0.pipeline(people0, VERIFY, INVITE, ACCEPT);             System.err.println(friends0);                  People people1 = new People(\"Bob\", \"Jenny\");             FriendSpace<String> space1 = proto.unit(\"\");             FriendSpace<String> friends1 = space1.pipeline(people1, VERIFY, INVITE, ACCEPT);             System.err.println(friends1);                  People people2 = new People(\"Fred\", \"Jenny\");             FriendSpace<String> space2 = proto.unit(\"\");             FriendSpace<String> friends2 = space2.pipeline(people2, VERIFY, INVITE, BLOCK);             System.err.println(friends2);                  People people3 = new People(\"Bob\", \"Tom\");             FriendSpace<String> space3 = proto.unit(\"\");             FriendSpace<String> friends3 = space3.pipeline(people3, VERIFY, INVITE, ACCEPT);             System.err.println(friends3);         }              public interface StringFunction extends FriendSpace.Function<People, FriendSpace<String>> {         }              static StringFunction VERIFY = new StringFunction() {             public FriendSpace<String> apply(People from, FriendSpace<String> to) {                 String KNOWN_USERS = \"Bob Fred Jenny\";                      if (! KNOWN_USERS.contains(from.from)) {                     to.errors += \"Unknown from: \" + from.from;                 }                      if (! KNOWN_USERS.contains(from.to)) {                     to.errors += \"Unknown to: \" + from.to;                 }                      return to;             }         };              static StringFunction INVITE = new StringFunction() {             public FriendSpace<String> apply(People from, FriendSpace<String> to) {                 // Jenny has blocked Bob                 if (\"Jenny\".equals(from.to) && \"Bob\".equals(from.from)) {                     to.errors = \"Jenny blocked Bob\";                 }                 return to;             }         };              static StringFunction ACCEPT = new StringFunction() {             public FriendSpace<String> apply(People from, FriendSpace<String> to) {                 // Good to go!                 to.original = \"YES\";                 return to;             }         };              static StringFunction BLOCK = new StringFunction() {             public FriendSpace<String> apply(People from, FriendSpace<String> to) {                 to.original = \"BLOCK\";                 to.rejected = true;                 return to;             }         };"}
{"_id": "225493", "title": "Console Application vs GUI?", "text": "I'm trying to develop a minimal MP3 player with some cool but light features. It is so simple that it doesn't matter if it is console application or not. Since my purpose is to consume the sources as small as possible which one should I pick? Extra info: I will be using a single textbox if it's going to be an application with GUI. Also, I am using VS 2010 C++"}
{"_id": "225496", "title": "Is it better expose a collection or an API to the collection?", "text": "Take for example the following:               public interface IManager     {            void AddItem(CollectionItem item);         void RemoveItem(CollectionItem item);     }          public interface IManagerCustomCollection     {         ManagerCollection Systems;     }      Is it usually more preferable to create a collection, and allow the consumer to operate directly on the collection?"}
{"_id": "174992", "title": "Set modified date = created date or null on record creation?", "text": "I've been following the convention of adding created and modified columns to most of my database tables. I also have been leaving the modified column as null on record creation and only setting a value on actual modification. The other alternative is to set the modified date to be equal to created date on record creation. I've been doing it the former way but I recent ran into one con which is seriously making me think of switching. I needed to set a database cache dependency to find out if any existing data has been changed or new data added. Instead of being able to do the following: `SELECT MAX(modified) FROM customer` I have to do this: `SELECT GREATEST(MAX(created), MAX(modified)) FROM customer` The negative being that it's a more complicated query and slower. Another thing is in file systems I believe they usually use the second convention of setting modified date = created date on creation. What are the pros and cons of the different methods? That is, what are the issues to consider? **UPDATE** I believe given the apparent trade-offs I'm going to go with modified = created strategy. In addition, I was curious how other web databases handled this and I noticed drupal seems to follow the convention of modified = created also."}
{"_id": "171741", "title": "Different ways of managing Java code documentation", "text": "What are good alternatives to inline Java documentation, i.e. can one have a separate docs file somehow mapped to a java source file? I have never liked huge comment sections littered in code, so was just looking for options. Are there any good tools available for such docs management?"}
{"_id": "238582", "title": "Should I omit the parameter \"e\" when using EventHandler<EventArgs>?", "text": "Whenever I am defining my own events, I use a pattern such as the following (which I _believe_ is how the MSDN recommends doing it):               public class MyEventClass     {         private bool _value; // Backing variable         public bool Value         {             get { return _value; }             set             {                 if (value != _value) // Only raise event if value is changed/different                 {                     _value = value;                     OnValueChanged(EventArgs.Empty);                 }             }         }              public event EventHandler ValueChanged; // Anything can subscribe to the event         protected void OnValueChanged(EventArgs e) // Only this and children can invoke event         {             if (ValueChanged != null)                 ValueChanged(this, e);         }     }      Thus, the client code just needs to subscribe to the event and it automagically works. However, it feels cumbersome to pass the `EventArgs e` parameter, in particular with a class that uses EventHandler to raise its events, since the base EventArgs has no data to it, only `EventArgs.Empty`. Would it be considered a faux pas to change it to this?               protected void OnValueChanged()     {         if (ValueChanged != null)             ValueChanged(this, EventArgs.Empty);     }"}
{"_id": "171747", "title": "Diminishing Returns on Additional Developers", "text": "Is there a term to describe the point at which adding more developers to a software project will provide diminishing returns? I realize that at a high level, it is more complicated that just a number of developers at which the project will be at productive capacity (ex/ state of the project, quality of the added developer), but I am trying to come up with a way to relate this to non-technical management through repetition. I'm basically looking for a term which invokes a strong mental image like \"terminal velocity\", except for Brook's Law."}
{"_id": "171744", "title": "What is the most effective order to learn SQL Server, LINQ, and Entity Framework?", "text": "I am trying to get some advice on what order I should learn about SQL Server, LINQ, and Entity Framework to be able to better work with ASP.NET Webforms and MVC. From what I've been able to learn so far, many recommend learning LINQ or Entity Framework before learning SQL Server. It also appears that many companies are looking for people with knowledge in LINQ-to-SQL and Entity Framework without mentioning SQL Server. However, my understanding is that LINQ-to-SQL and Entity Framework translate code into SQL Server queries, making this a poor approach. Is there a correct or best order in which to learn these technologies?"}
{"_id": "174997", "title": "Should I use C style in C++?", "text": "As I've been developing my position on how software should be developed at the company I work for, I've come to a certain conclusion that I'm not entirely sure of. It seems to me that if you are programming in C++, you should not use C style anything if it can be helped and you don't absolutely need the performance improvement. This way people are kept from doing things like pointer arithmetic or creating resources with new without any RAII, etc. If this idea was enforced, seeing a char* would possibly be a thing of the past. I'm wondering if this is a conclusion others have made? Or am I being too puritanical about this?"}
{"_id": "170295", "title": "How should I architect my Model and Data Access layer objects in my website?", "text": "I've been tasked with designing Data layer for a website at work, and I am very interested in architecture of code for the best flexibility, maintainability and readability. I am generally acutely aware of the value in completely separating out my actual Models from the Data Access layer, so that the Models are completely naive when it comes to Data Access. And in this case it's particularly useful to do this as the Models may be built from the Database or may be built from a Soap web service. So it seems to me to make sense to have Factories in my data access layer which create Model objects. So here's what I have so far (in my made-up pseudocode):               class DataAccess.ProductsFromXml extends DataAccess.ProductFactory {}     class DataAccess.ProductsFromDatabase extends DataAccess.ProductFactory {}      These then get used in the controller in a fashion similar to the following:               var xmlProductCreator = DataAccess.ProductsFromXml(xmlDataProvider);     var databaseProductCreator = DataAccess.ProductsFromXml(xmlDataProvider);          // Returns array of Product model objects     var XmlProducts = databaseProductCreator.Products();     // Returns array of Product model objects     var DbProducts = xmlProductCreator.Products();      So my question is, is this a good structure for my Data Access layer? Is it a good idea to use a Factory for building my Model objects from the data? Do you think I've misunderstood something? And are there any general patterns I should read up on for how to write my data access objects to create my Model objects?"}
{"_id": "132146", "title": "What are build team responsibilities from developer point of view?", "text": "Lets assume that you are working for a corporation doing a lot of IT development. What do you think should be build team responsibilities that performs 'services' for developers? What do you expect to be doing by yourselves and what tasks would you gladly pass?"}
{"_id": "5757", "title": "Is static universally \"evil\" for unit testing and if so why does resharper recommend it?", "text": "I have found that there are only 3 ways to unit test (mock/stub) dependencies that are static in C#.NET:   * Moles   * TypeMock   * JustMock Given that two of these are not free and one has not hit release 1.0, mocking static stuff is not too easy. Does that make static methods and such \"evil\" (in the unit testing sense)? And if so, why does resharper want me to make anything that can be static, static? (Assuming resharper is not also \"evil\".) **Clarification:** I am talking about the scenario when you want to unit test a method and that method calls a static method in a _different_ unit/class. By most definitions of unit testing, if you just let the method under test call the static method in the other unit/class then you are **not** unit testing, you are _integration_ testing. (Useful, but not a unit test.)"}
{"_id": "229062", "title": "Is java.util.prefs.Preferences appropriate for accessing changes in state that need to be immediately accessed during runtime?", "text": "In my application, I'm currently creating a single instance of a `UserPrefs` object at startup, then passing a reference to that object to multiple other objects through their constructors. I am doing this because it's important that multiple classes have immediate access to any real-time changes the user makes to their preferences during runtime. The problem is that passing this object to many different constructors seems messy to me, and I'd like to move away from this. So I'm interested in possibly using the `java.util.prefs.Preferences` API in each class that needs access to this information. But I get the sense that the `Preferences` API is more commonly used to simply save a snapshot of user preferences at application shutdown, then to load them back in during startup. So my question is: Would `java.util.prefs.Preferences` be appropriate in this situation? If not, is there some other way I can share preferences state in real-time across multiple classes?"}
{"_id": "170298", "title": "Persisting natural language processing parsed data", "text": "I've recently started experimenting with natural language processing (NLP) using Stanford's CoreNLP, and I'm wondering what are some of the standard ways to store NLP parsed data for something like a text mining application? One way I thought might be interesting is to store the children as an adjacency list and make good use of recursive queries (Postgres supports this and I've found it works really well). But I assume there are probably many standard ways to do this depending on what kind of analysis is being done that have been adopted by people working in the field over the years. So what are the standard persistence strategies for NLP parsed data and how are they used?"}
{"_id": "155021", "title": "Using mod_rewrite for a Virtual Filesystem vs. Real Filesystem", "text": "I started working in a department that uses a CMS in which the entire \"filesystem\" is like this:   1. create a named file or folder - this file is given a unique node (ex. 2345) as well as a default \"filename\" (ex. `/WelcomeToOurProductsPage`) and apply a template   2. assign one or more _aliases_ to the file for a URL redirect (ex. `/home-page-products` \\- can also be accessed by `/home-page-products.aspx`)   3. A new Rewrite command is written on the .htaccess file for _each and every alias_   4. Server accesses either `/WelcomeToOurProductsPage` or `/home-page-products` and redirects to something like `/template.aspx?tmp=2&node=2345` (here I'm guessing what it does - I only have front-end access for now - but I have enough clues to strongly assume)   5. Node 2345 grabs content stored in a SQL Db and applies it to the template. Note: There are no actual files being created on the filesystem. It's entirely virtual. This is probably a very common thing, but since I have never run across this kind of system before two months ago, I wanted to explain it in case it isn't common. I'm not a fan at all of ASP or closed-sourced systems, so it may be that this is common practice for ASP developers. My question, that has taken far too long to ask, is: what are the benefits of this kind of system, as opposed to creating an actual file hierarchy? Are there any drawbacks to having every single file server call redirected? To having the .htaccess file hold rewrite rules for _every single alias_?"}
{"_id": "225725", "title": "How best to format text files of statutes in HTML with specific IDs", "text": "I'm trying to find the best way to process about 20,000 lines of a statute in text format into HTML so that it can be displayed and manipulated in a granular fashion, i.e. by clause. The format is essentially a nested list like (a)(1)(A)(i)(II)(aa) and is fairly consistent. Each clause begins with a new line and is enclosed in parenthesis like above. The goal is for each clause to be enclosed in a paragraph tag with a unique id like p id=\"sec101a1AiI\" (sorry I can't figure out the code formatting). The point is to be able to refer to a specific clause later on. I've played with regular expressions but they don't seem to allow me to iterate through the entire statute and tag things in a unique fashion. I'm sure there are better options using a custom script but I don't know where to start looking for that. Any suggestions would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "155023", "title": "Design Pattern for Complex Data Modeling", "text": "I'm developing a program that has a SQL database as a backing store. As a very broad description, the program itself allows a user to generate records in any number of user-defined tables and make connections between them. As for specs:   1. Any record generated must be able to be connected to any other record in any other user table (excluding itself...the record, not the table). Yes, this creates a arbitrary user-generated relational map.   2. These \"connections\" are directional: Incoming, outgoing, and bi-directional.   3. The list of connections a record has is user ordered.    4. A record must \"know\" of connections made _from_ it to others as well as connections made _to_ it from others.    5. A record's field can also include aggregate information from it's connections (like obtaining average, sum, etc) that must be updated on change from another record it's connected to.   6. To conserve memory, only relevant information must be loaded at any one time (can't load the entire database in memory at load and go from there).   7. I cannot assume the backing store is local. Right now it is, but eventually this program will include syncing to a remote db.   8. I cannot depend on a specific implementation of a backing store. This means I cannot be certain the backing store is, in fact, relational. Thus all relational data is stored explicitly. The connections are kind of the point of this program, so there is a strong possibility that the number of connections made is very high, especially if the user is using the software as intended. Neither the user tables, connections or records are known at design time as they are user generated. I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to design the backing store and the object model to best fit these specs. In my first design attempt on this, I had one object managing all a table's records and connections. I attempted this first because it kept the memory footprint smaller (records and connections were simple dicts), but maintaining aggregate and link information between tables became....onerous (ie...a huge spaghettified mess). Tracing dependencies using this method almost became impossible. Instead, I've settled on a distributed smart graph where each record and connection is 'aware' of what's around it by managing it own data and connections to other records. Doing this increases my memory footprint but also let me create a faulting system so connections/records aren't loaded into memory until they're needed. It's also much easier to code: trace dependencies, eliminate cycling recursive updates, etc. My biggest problem is storing/loading the connections. I'm not happy with any of my current solutions/ideas so I wanted to ask and see if anybody else has any ideas of how this should be structured. Connections are fairly simple. They contain: fromRecordID, fromTableID, fromRecordOrder, toRecordID, toTableID, toRecordOrder. Here's what I've come up with so far:   1. Store all the connections in one big table. If I do this, either I load all connections at once (one big db call) or make a call every time a user table is loaded. The big issue here: the size of the connections table has the potential to be huge, and I'm afraid it would slow things down.   2. Store in separate tables all the outgoing connections for each user table. This is probably the worst idea I've had. Now my connections are 'spread out' over multiple tables (one for each user table), which means I have to load each table just to find all the incoming connections for a particular user table. I've avoided making \"one big ass table\", but I'm not sure the cost is worth it.   3. Store in separate tables all outgoing AND incoming connections for each user table (using a flag to distinguish between incoming vs outgoing). This is the idea I'm leaning towards, but it will essentially double the total storage for all the connections (as each connection will be stored in two tables). It also means I have to make sure connection information is kept in sync in both places (each 'from' connection has a corresponding 'to' connection in the appropriate table. This is obviously not ideal but it does mean that when I load a user table, I only need to load one 'connection' table and have all the information I need. This also presents a separate problem, that of connection object creation. Since each user table has a list of all connections, there are two opportunities for a connection object to be made. However, connections objects (designed to facilitate communication between records) should only be created once. This means I'll have to devise a common caching/factory object to make sure only one connection object is made per connection.  Does anybody have any ideas of a better way to do this? Once I've committed to a particular design pattern I'm pretty much stuck with it, so I want to make sure I've come up with the best one possible. I'll also note that my current backing store is SQLite. I've written the program to not depend on a specific backing store, though, by introducing an adapter layer to disassociate the data retrieval from the the rest of the program. So the backing store could be anything, even a simple text file. I use the backing store exclusively for storage and data retrieval, nothing else. I don't use any specific database/SQL relational features and I don't use the database to perform calculations (aggregate or otherwise). All of that is handled in program logic."}
{"_id": "252772", "title": "UML: Queue processor in a sequence diagram", "text": "Which is the appropriate way of representing a queue processor in a UML sequence diagram? I want to represent in the same diagram two systems that are loosely coupled through a queue. The first system, performs some actions and insert an action in a queue, the other system is always listening and when the event appears in the queue, it dequeues the event and processes it, generating new actions. They are both in the same diagram because it is to represent an integration use case that shows how both work together. Should I create a life line representing the queue? Should I represent the \"listening\" process as a loop box containing: a self- message with the label \"listen\", self-message for processing message and messages representing the sending of the outcome."}
{"_id": "205950", "title": "Can a webservice that uses JSON over POST be classified as RESTful?", "text": "Recently I have started using a new(to me) paradigm for web services. I use the controller to accept JSON strings sent over POST, process it and return JSON strings. GET, PUT, DELETE and other methods throw HTTP 405. This pattern is proving to be very efficient from the point of view of asynchronous web frameworks (vert.x and play to be particular), as well as from development effort point of view. What I am confused about is that this neither seems to be SOAP nor REST. I don't think it is even JSON-RPC, since I am using my own headers like: Request:               {       'requestId':<generated req Id>,       'token':<previously authenticated token>,       'action':<controller defined action>,       'parameters':[         <array of parameters>       ]          }      Response:               {       'result':'success/fail',       'payload':{          <payload>        }     }      EDIT: There is only one endpoint URL, something like https://my.domain.com/api Can anyone give any ideas about what this paradigm can be classified as?"}
{"_id": "225723", "title": "available methods change with object state", "text": "I'm programming a graph object which can be in either a mutable or immutable state. In both states, it has a `get` method, but only in the mutable state is the `set` method allowed. The transition occurs when one invokes a method `compress` which optimizes the storage of the graph. **How do I deal with the fact that some methods are legal in some states but not others?** I can think of two approaches. The blunt way is to use the state pattern. If you invoke `set` when the graph is mutable, it executes as normally; but, if you invoke `set` when the graph is immutable, an error is thrown. This looks ugly to me because an immutable object still has a `set` method. Alternatively, I can make a `graph` type with a `mutable_graph` sub-type; only the second one has a `set` method. The state change is effected by changing the type of the graph. However, this also looks ugly to me; for every implementation of `graph` (of which there are several), I now have to make two types instead of just one. EDIT: I'm using the state pattern and throwing an exception; if neither solution is especially preferable, this one involves writing the least code. Thanks for the advice!"}
{"_id": "205958", "title": "Throwing an exception for errors that can be fixed", "text": "Say I have a class like this:               public class MyObject     {         public List<string> MyCollection { get; set; }     }      And a method like this:               public void DoSomething(MyObject object)     {         if(object.MyCollection == null)         {             // MyCollection must not be null             // Should I...                  // a)             object.MyCollection = new List<string>();                  // b)             throw new ArgumentException(\"MyCollection can not be null\");         }     }      I do not have control over MyObject. Normally I'd just instantiate the collection in the constructor and be done with it. Should I just instantiate the collection in my method, or throw an exception?"}
{"_id": "213678", "title": "Best Practice - Loop Exit Via Iterator Modification", "text": "I had an interesting discussion with my boss today regarding exiting a loop before the terminal condition is met. He had a construct in some of his VB6 code that looked something like this:               Dim Termination As Int     Termination = 10          For Iterator1 = 1 To Termination         If Iterator1 = 5 Then             Iterator1 = Termination         End If     Next      I questioned this implementation, contending that an `Exit For` was the proper way to exit a loop prematurely based on a condition, like this:               For Iterator2 = 1 To 10         If Iterator2 = 5 Then             Exit For         End If     Next      I noted that in practice these probably both evaluate to the same machine language JMP opcode. My boss asserted that his implementation may be more efficient since it would have only one JMP, the one at the end of the loop, instead of two, one at the end and one in the middle for the `Exit For` statement. I prefer the second implementation for readability and semantics. Also, in the latest versions of Visual Studio for .Net if you add lines after the `Exit For` statement you'll be warned that there are unreachable lines in your code. However, you don't get this warning in VB6, which is where the debate started. So what's the best practice here? Is the first example better in VB6 or is the second example better in all situations? What are the advantages / disadvantages of each approach. **Edit** : Removed magic number from code example to enhance question clarity."}
{"_id": "218265", "title": "Is \"If a method is re-used without changes, put the method in a base class, else create an interface\" a good rule-of-thumb?", "text": "A colleague of mine came up with a rule-of-thumb for choosing between creating a base class or an interface. He says: > Imagine every new method that you are about to implement. For each of them, > consider this: **will this method be implemented by more than one class in > _exactly_ this form, without _any_ change?** If the answer is \"yes\", create > a base class. In every other situation, create an interface. For example: > Consider the classes `cat` and `dog`, which extend the class `mammal` and > have a single method `pet()`. We then add the class `alligator`, which > doesn't extend anything and has a single method `slither()`. > > Now, we want to add an `eat()` method to all of them. > > If the implementation of `eat()` method will be exactly the same for `cat`, > `dog` and `alligator`, we should create a base class (let's say, `animal`), > which implements this method. > > However, if it's implementation in `alligator` differs in the slightest way, > we should create an `IEat` interface and make `mammal` and `alligator` > implement it. He insists that this method covers all cases, but it seems like over- simplification to me. **Is it worth following this rule-of-thumb?**"}
{"_id": "218264", "title": "What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation?", "text": "# Background Tony Hoare's billion dollar mistake was the invention of `null`. Subsequently, a lot of code has become riddled with null pointer exceptions (segfaults) when software developers try to use (dereference) uninitialized variables. In 1989, Wirfs-Brock and Wikerson wrote: > Direct references to variables severely limit the ability of programmers to > re\ufb01ne existing classes. The programming conventions described here structure > the use of variables to promote reusable designs. We encourage users of all > object-oriented languages to follow these conventions. Additionally, we > strongly urge designers of object-oriented languages to consider the effects > of unrestricted variable references on reusability. # Problem A lot of software, especially in Java, but likely in C# and C++, often uses the following pattern:               public class SomeClass {       private String someAttribute;            public SomeClass() {         this.someAttribute = \"Some Value\";       }            public void someMethod() {         if( this.someAttribute.equals( \"Some Value\" ) ) {           // do something...         }       }            public void setAttribute( String s ) {         this.someAttribute = s;       }            public String getAttribute() {         return this.someAttribute;       }     }      Sometimes a band-aid solution is used by checking for `null` throughout the code base:                 public void someMethod() {         assert this.someAttribute != null;              if( this.someAttribute.equals( \"Some Value\" ) ) {           // do something...         }       }            public void anotherMethod() {         assert this.someAttribute != null;              if( this.someAttribute.equals( \"Some Default Value\" ) ) {           // do something...         }       }      The band-aid does not always avoid the null pointer problem: a race condition exists. The race condition is mitigated using:                 public void anotherMethod() {         String someAttribute = this.someAttribute;         assert someAttribute != null;              if( someAttribute.equals( \"Some Default Value\" ) ) {           // do something...         }       }      Yet that requires two statements (assignment to local copy and check for `null`) every time a class-scoped variable is used to ensure it is valid. # Self-Encapsulation Ken Auer's _Reusability Through Self-Encapsulation_ (Pattern Languages of Program Design, Addison Wesley, New York, pp. 505-516, 1994) advocated self- encapsulation combined with lazy initialization. The result, in Java, would resemble:               public class SomeClass {       private String someAttribute;            public SomeClass() {         setAttribute( \"Some Value\" );       }            public void someMethod() {         if( getAttribute().equals( \"Some Value\" ) ) {           // do something...         }       }            public void setAttribute( String s ) {         this.someAttribute = s;       }            public String getAttribute() {         String someAttribute = this.someAttribute;              if( someAttribute == null ) {           someAttribute = createDefaultValue();           setAttribute( someAttribute );         }              return someAttribute;       }            protected String createDefaultValue() { return \"Some Default Value\"; }     }      All duplicate checks for `null` are superfluous: `getAttribute()` ensures the value is never `null` at a single location within the containing class. Efficiency arguments should be fairly moot -- modern compilers and virtual machines can inline the code when possible. As long as variables are never referenced directly, this also allows for proper application of the Open-Closed Principle. # Question What are the disadvantages of self-encapsulation, if any? (Ideally, I would like to see references to studies that contrast the robustness of similarly complex systems that use and don't use self- encapsulation, as this strikes me as a fairly straightforward testable hypothesis.)"}
{"_id": "144855", "title": "Common test cases for XML schema validator", "text": "I just wrote my first SAX-based (Java) XML schema validator, where you pass it a schema URL (pointing to the `.xsd` file), and an XML instance, and it determines whether or not that instance is valid or not. I'm now looking to write several unit tests for the validator (TDD people, I _know_ , I know!) and was wondering what were some common reasons why XML fails validation. There are so many elements and attributes in this schema, I could literally write _thousands_ of test cases. I figured someone here might know of a way to simplify them all down to a manageable set."}
{"_id": "239185", "title": "How much functionality needed to create a new class?", "text": "Right now I am working on my own small project of a WPF file back up application. I have come to a point where I want to create a method that will copy files recursively from one place to another. This is not the first time that I ask myself the question: > Should this method be a part of an existing class, or should I store it in a > new class? What bothers me the most is that if I create a new class, it will most likely consist of solely this method, so it seems like a stretch to create a whole new type for just one action. On the other hand, I believe it is a good abstraction. Copying files doesn't have much to do with a WPF window. The example that I show here brings out a more general question. **How to balance between functionality/abstraction/readability to create code where OOP principles don't obscure common sense?** I am relatively new to programming, but I'd like to start following good coding practices as soon as possible, e.g. not implementing design patterns like crazy, because I have just read about them."}
{"_id": "47148", "title": "Getting into windows phone 7 development -- what is the cheapest way?", "text": "Probably it is necessary to have an actual device. But I'd rather not have to buy a phone with a contract. Is that possible?"}
{"_id": "231756", "title": "Advantages of contracts over assert statements", "text": "Today I stumbled upon the python package called PyContracts. However, python has the `assert` statement which seems to allow you to do exactly those things. What advantages do contracts have over assert statements?"}
{"_id": "87519", "title": "Remote Working & Relocation", "text": "Sorry if this question is a duplicate, I did some extensive searching and found nothing on quite the same topic (though a couple on partially- overlapping topics). Recently, whilst on holiday in Munich, Germany, I was taken aback by the sheer number of programming-related posts available in the city that I easily qualify for (both in terms of knowledge, and experience). The advertised working environments seemed good and the pay seemed to be at least as good as what I'd expect here in the UK. Probably 80% of the advertisements I saw on the underground were for IT-related jobs, and a good 60% of those I was easily qualified for. At the moment, I work as a freelancer mostly on web and small software projects, but seeing the vast availability of jobs in Munich versus my local area has me thinking about remote working. I'm unable to _relocate_ for a job for the next 3 years (my wife has a contract to continue being a doctor at her current hospital for that time) but would almost certainly be open to it after that (after all, my wife and I both love Munich). In the meanwhile, I would be _very_ interested in remote- working. So, my question is thus **do companies ever take on remote workers** (even with semi-frequent trips to the office) **from abroad, with a view to _later_ relocation?** And, if so, **how do you go about broaching the topic with a recruiter when getting in contact about a job posting?** Language isn't a barrier for me, here, as 90% of the jobs I've looked up in Munich don't require German speakers (seems they have a big recruiting market abroad). I'm also under no illusions about the disadvantages of remote working, but I'm more interested in the viability of the scenario rather than the intricacies (at least at this point). I'd really appreciate any contributions, especially from those who have experience with working in such a scenario!"}
{"_id": "231758", "title": "Would this interpreter be considered a Virtual Machine?", "text": "_(I reworded my question to make it more specific)._ Consider a programming language, that it's programs may only be run inside a specific program that serves as an interpreter. The interpreter scans each line of the source code and executes it as it is. **Would the interpreter be considered a virtual machine?** Conceptually, a VM is a program that other programs use as a platform to run inside of. Thus this interpreter suits the definition. But this interpreter only interprets plain-text source code into executions (and not bytecode)."}
{"_id": "155792", "title": "Future of WPF and free controls ?", "text": "I am willing to work on a personal project that I would like to release publicly. I am working with Silverlight and have experience with XAML, as it is my full-time job. It is enjoyably for me to create UIs in Blend and XAML. I am also a big fan of C# language. I don't know what I would do without LINQ now. Anyways, I was looking at using WPF for my personal project. It seems that a lot of the controls out on the web are pay for items. The only place I have found to have a significant number of free controls is the WPF extended framework on codeplex. I want to make a financial application and need a powerful datagrid type of control that will allow me to enter transaction data. I haven't found such control for free in the net. It doesn't seem like there is much free community libraries/controls out there for Microsoft products. So, I was wondering if WPF would be the right way for me to go. I couldn't find any information on WPF usage in Windows 8, which coming very soon. I don't know Microsoft's plans for this technology. Would it be a better idea to use something different for the UI instead of WPF?"}
{"_id": "155790", "title": "Default Ant target: help or jar?", "text": "What would you choose as the default Ant target?   In the context of a small visual tool with a user interface, open source. I was thinking about `jar` because the project's distributable is the jar file. But someone prefers to have `help` as the default target, to show the available targets. Or maybe another target? I doubt anyone would really care, but would be the \"least surprise\" choice?"}
{"_id": "155795", "title": "How to become a good team player?", "text": "I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. **Question:** What are some steps that I can take to begin \"integrating\" with everyone else? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "39243", "title": "Advice for nontraditional CS student?", "text": "I'm in a rather unique situation here. I am going to start school for computer science tomorrow (literally) at a local university in a BS program. However, I am starting as a **nontraditional** student. My background: > I already have the bachelor's and master's degrees in sociology, the latter > of which I gained during a PhD program that I left a half a year ago for > personal reasons (such as realizing the subject matter and the work involved > no longer held any meaning for me). After struggling for months to find > employment in this economy -- where years of graduate school and my > experience serving as a teaching assistant (and teaching classes) seem to > count for very little -- I decided to go back to school for CS. Between a > teaching gig at a local college, a part-time job at a local restaurant, and > a loan, I can afford this semester's tuition and my living expenses. I haven't been coding since an early age, like some CS students. Nearly ten years ago, I took a lot of advanced math and science in high school and a couple of programming classes, where I used Java and C++ -- and achieved a respectable level of performance, enough to make an A in each class. I can use a computer competently enough, but I can't do most of the nifty things that true computer nerds and geeks, hackers, etc. can do. I can do some stuff with HTML, but I'm just now learning about the uses of CSS -- nevermind JavaScript, PHP, XML, Ruby on Rails, etc. So far, I have been reading several threads on this site (as well as pages outside of here) that are geared towards college students in computer science. Thus, I am picking up a lot of general advice -- such as learning to write well, getting internships and independent projects, coding a lot, reading books, keeping current in the field, etc. I do, of course, plan to do all these things. I'm also trying to learn (re)learn HTML (specifically, XHTML) and add CSS, PHP, and MySQL to my repertoire. (Though, from what I've been reading and hearing from friends in technical fields, I should probably be focusing on HTML5 and CSS3.) I've also started reading a book about Python and playing around with coding some. I can tell right now it will be rough sailing for the next couple of years, but I'm going to do my best. I'm trying to glean as much advice as I can from the various sites I've found and from the threads already started here. Still, I have a few concerns that I was hoping some of you might be willing to address (for me and for any **other** nontraditional students that might be reading):   * Can you recommend any good ways to compensate for all those years **not** spend coding every chance I got? Or is it simply a matter of playing \"catch up\"?   * How can I balance the need to code with other responsibilities (schoolwork, jobs, etc.)? _Oh, how I fondly remember the days when all my tuition and expenses were paid for by scholarships and the like, haha!_   * One thing I feel like I probably **could** do is get accepted to a funded summer research program for undergraduates, doing research projects under professorial supervision. Would that look good to potential employers, you think?   * Because I already have degrees now, I could possibly go into the computer science department's MS program after taking some undergrad classes. The MS program has an emphasis on software development and includes a software engineering final project. Should I just try to go into that program once I've completed enough undergrad material?   * Do you have any other advice (outside of my own questions) that would be particularly relevant to nontraditional CS students who may have different situations than more traditional students? Any advice or input you could offer will be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for your time and consideration."}
{"_id": "200784", "title": "Which are the alternatives to using a stack to represent function call semantics?", "text": "We all know and love that function calls are usually implemented using the stack; there are frames, return addresses, parameters, the whole lot. However, the stack is an implementation detail: calling conventions may do different things (i.e. x86 fastcall uses (some) registers, MIPS and followers use register windows, and so on) and optimizations can do even other things (inlining, frame pointer omission, tail-call optimization..). Sure, the presence of convenient stack instruction on many machines (VMs like JVM and the CLR, but also real machines like x86 with their PUSH/POP etc.) make it convenient to use it for function calls, but in some cases it is possible to program in a way in which a call stack is not needed (I am thinking about Continuation Passing Style here, or Actors in a message passing system) So, I was beginning to wonder: is it possible to implement function call semantics without a stack, or better, using a different data structure (a queue, perhaps, or an associative map?)   Of course, I understand that a stack is very convenient (there is a reason why it is ubiquitous) but I recently bumped into an implementation that made me wonder.. Do any of you know if it has ever been done in any language/machine/virtual machine, and if so which are the striking differences and shortcomings? EDIT: My gut feelings are that different sub-computation approaches can use different data structures. For example, lambda calculus is not stack based (the idea of function application is captured by reductions) but I was looking at a real language/machine/example. That's why I am asking..."}
{"_id": "66422", "title": "Selling scripts/CMS modules on the internet", "text": "While it's almost impossible to apply for a freelance job without a sufficient portfolio/work experience, I see selling my scripts as a solution. Problem is, so far I've seen only one forum, where such trade is going on - DigitalPoint. Are there any more +/- trusted places to offer your scripts for sale?"}
{"_id": "130676", "title": "Starting a new project in python and qt. Where can I find a good code layout for build scaffolding?", "text": "I am in the process of starting a new project with python and Qt. The project starts from zero, and it may become a commercial application. While the programming of the code in itself is a task, another task I have to handle first is how to deploy a proper development layout (makefiles, packaging for release on multiple platforms, and so on). I am looking for an already deployed open-source software with commercial quality from which I can learn the best practices in order to organize a commercial application, or alternatively, a suggestion on good practices on this regard. I did my research and I am still open on this question. I want a decent example to know how this is done in an appropriate way. All the repos I found generally are either made by people who do not care about quality (it's just a bunch of really hacked up scripts) nor platform transferability, nor addressing the different phases (development, testing, deployment, installing). In alternative, they give you fully CI/IDE solutions that are unreachable by a single developer."}
{"_id": "206424", "title": "Breaking Up A Model Class - MVC", "text": "I am not sure whether there is a 'right' or 'wrong' answer to this one, but I was curious about the general consensus. I have a User model that currently performs user functions (such as retrieving user details from the database, inserting new users to the database, updating user details etc.) This leads to a fairly large class. Is there any accepted thought on the breaking up of models, when the model already relates to one kind of entity? Or are large classes permissible in this case? At the moment, the class will resemble something like this:                   <?php     class Users_Model     {              public function userExists($user_id)         {             //Code to check if user exists         }              public function fetchUser($user_id)         {             //code to fetch User object from ID...         }              protected function fetchUserPassword($user_id)         {             return $this->fetchUserValue($user_id, \"password\");         }              protected function fetchUserLowercaseUsername($user_id)         {             return $this->fetchUserValue($user_id, \"lower\");         }              private function fetchUserValue($user_id, $value)         {             //fetch a user value from the database         }                   public function logout()         {             //code to log user out         }              public function doesPasswordMatch($user_id, $password)         {             //checks if inputted password matches that which is on record...         }              public function createSession($user_id)         {             //creates sessions for DATABASE         }              private function createCookie($code, $user_id)         {             //create cookies for session         }          }     ?>      My concern was doing too many things (it was performing retrieval of user information from the database, and handling the database side of logging out and sessions for the user)."}
{"_id": "66421", "title": "Core competencies for software developers in the financial sector?", "text": "I have an interview coming up for a company operating in the financial markets. Other than generic skills like OOD, refactoring, testing and so on, what are the core areas that a financial software developer specifically needs? I can think of some obvious ones like rounding modes, differences between floating point data types etc. What other areas should I be brushing up on?"}
{"_id": "89820", "title": "Psychological problems - overcoming shyness and boredom?", "text": "I have been programing for about 11 months. I've learned some things,and evaded some. I know some advanced things and I don't know some basic stuff. I easily get bored with programing when I program in a programing language I know, but it's different when I program in a new language. I like to learn to program and not to make apps, but I'd like that to change. Also, I am not very consinstent. I start one thing and after a few days end with something that has nothing to do with the thing I started. I am also a loner and a shy person, so I try not to ask for help (stuborn?) and as time passes I lose my confidence and patience. When I visit sites that host open- source projects, I want to join some team, but it seems like everyone is using some language/tools I don't even know they existed. Is this lack of confidence or am I still a beginner? And as I said, I try to do stuff alone, which is very often completely demotivating. So can anyone tell me how to feel more confident, how to gain willpower to join some team? If you find this question to be misplaced, don't downvote me, just tell me how to erase it or how to send it to StackExchange."}
{"_id": "12645", "title": "How do you know when to stop adding features?", "text": "Some time ago I wrote a very small python script that periodically checked an xml feed for new entries, and alerted the user to new entries when present. I wrote this for myself, so it was essentially a console based program that anyone comfortable with a console interface could have used. After a while I decided it could be of more use to other people and began to tidy it up, sanitize inputs, remove bugs. It occurred to me that because I'd written the script I knew how to use it efficiently, accurately etc. Others might not, so I started adding a GUI. This started out as a simple menu, and then expanded to a more full GUI with both an interface and options menu. I then added stored user preferences and also storage for previously searched xml feeds to speed up repeat searches. I added logging to help debug the application in case things go wrong, brought the application up to the latest available stable python codebase for my chosen platform and improved dialog features. I've bugfixed and commented my code clearly, and yet I still have things I think can be done to improve the app before I make it available to alpha testers. It's a far far cry from my original 20-30 line script. What I anticipated would take me just an hour or two to go from proof of concept to an acceptable use program has taken 10-20 times that. (I'm still a noob, and stuff takes me a long time, but still....) How do you know when to stop adding/tweaking/fixing stuff and let your baby crawl out in the open?"}
{"_id": "82432", "title": "How does multitasking work", "text": "I am completely clueless about the inner workings of an operating system, but I can more or less guess the approximate behaviour of many functions. One thing that I am not able to figure out, though, is multitasking. In theory, the operating system manages time, according the CPU for small intervals to the various programs running. But it is not clear how this **really** works. Say the operating system wants to start my program. The machine code is loaded somewhere in RAM, starting at a certain address. I guess then a jump should be performed to that address, allowing my code to execute. But in this way, the OS cannot regain control until I jump back. Basically, I can imagine just two ways of making this work, but neither seems really suitable:   * The operating system could read the machine instructions I want to perform and emulate them instead of executing them directly. I am intentionally vague, since I do not know how this would work, but it seems like it would slow down the program considerably.   * Alternatively, the operating system could wait until I make a system call. In that moment it regains control and can check how long I have been running and do its timesharing stuff. This may work, but it seems unreliable, as I could make a long calculation which does not involve system calls and hang everything for a while. So, it seems neither mechanism would work very well. How is multitasking actually performed?"}
{"_id": "173670", "title": "How could a human factors degree help a computer scientist?", "text": "I'm wrapping up a masters in CS and already have half the credit hours needed for a degree in Human Factors. I just recently discovered how useful understanding about cognition can help someone that creates user interfaces and am thirsty for more knowledge in the area. For me, it seems that having both a masters in Human Factors and CS would be very marketable but would there be jobs out there that would allow me to apply both? Meaning what I would really like to do is take the requirements for some application, apply different Human Factors theories( GOMS, CE+ ) to developing the interface, maybe do cognitive walk through with users to optimize the UI, then develop the application. Do jobs out there exist like this? The reason I ask, is because I'm wondering if most places just want you to be either a Human Factors Expert or a Developer but not both."}
{"_id": "173671", "title": "Benchmarking ORM associations", "text": "I am trying to benchmark two cases of self referential many to many as described in datamapper associations. Both cases consist of an Item clss, which may require many other items. In both cases, I required the ruby benchmark library and source file, created two items and benchmarked require/unrequie functions as below:               Benchmark.bmbm do |x|       x.report(\"require:\")   { item_1.require_item item_2, 10 }       x.report(\"unrequire:\")   { item_1.unrequire_item item_2 }     end      To be clear, both functions are datamapper add/modify functions like:               componentMaps.create :component_id => item.id, :quantity => quantity     componentMaps.all(:component_id => item.id).destroy!      and               links_to_components.create :component_id => item.id, :quantity => quantity     links_to_components.all(:component_id => item.id).destroy!      The results are variable and in the range of 0.018001 to 0.022001 for require function in both cases, and 0.006 to 0.01 for unrequire function in both cases. This made me suspicious about the correctness of my test method. # Edit I went ahead and compared a \"get by primary key case\" to a \"finding first matching record case\" by:               (1..10000).each do |i|       Item.create :name => \"item_#{i}\"     end          Benchmark.bmbm do |x|       x.report(\"Get\") { item = Item.get 9712 }       x.report(\"First\") { item = Item.first :name => \"item_9712\" }     end      where the results were very different like 0 sec compared to 0.0312, as expected. This suggests that the benchmarking works. I wonder whether I benchmarked the two types of associations correctly, and whether a difference between 0.018 and 0.022 sec significant?"}
{"_id": "239231", "title": "How robust are Git commits when the power goes out?", "text": "One day I was using Git (I'm still using it) and the electricity went down while I was committing. When I (actually, the electricity) came back, the git repo was corrupt. I don't remember the exact name, but it was something like \"invalid refs\" or something like that. It's easy to guess that the commit was broken in the middle of the operation (I was committing through IntelliJ, which does the index additions automatically). It was also easy to guess that, actually, 'commit' is not as ACID as the DBMS operation with the same name. **Q** : Is there a way to ensure repo-altering operations respect atomicity? i.e. if the electricity goes down again, and I'm committing, I'd like my filesystem to not be in a corrupt state."}
{"_id": "231201", "title": "Should I use git for project files, other than the actual source?", "text": "I have a lot of small projects, and while their source code is backed up and tracked with git, I don't know what to do with the rest of the files associated with a project. These consist of small text files, some images, maybe a prototype or proof of concept, etc. They're not necessary to build or deploy, but I need them while working on the project. It's not really documentation, but rather todo lists, bugs to be fixed, a few screenshots, that sort of thing. As I said before, they're small projects so I don't think I should create a wiki/bugtracker for each one, especially since I'm the only developer :) I backup these, but I feel they could benefit from git as well (in another repository). I've sorted these files in three main folders, \"current\", \"abandoned\", and \"finished\". **Should I use git and just`git mv` the files when the project is finished or abandoned ? I'm a bit new to git, and I don't know how well tools \"like\" whole folders that move.** If you have a better way of keeping track of those files, I'm interested. It's probably too broad for a SE question, though."}
{"_id": "97039", "title": "Can you overuse delegates and events", "text": "I've just started getting to grips with event driven programming and I'm finding delegates and events to be very useful. Since starting to see the potential I've began using them all the time to solve problems such as updating displays between controls and calling stored procedures following updates etc. I'm starting to use them so frequently that I'm creating and subscribing to events more than I'm actually calling methods manually within the code. Are there any rules to follow in order to know when an event should be used or just a plain old simple function call? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "88233", "title": "How to handle the fear of future licensing issues of third-party products in software development?", "text": "The company I work for recently purchased some third party libraries from a very well-known, established vendor. There is some fear among management that the possibility exists that our license to use the software could be revoked somehow. The example I'm hearing is of something like a patent issue; i.e. the company we purchased the libraries from could be sued and legally lose the ability to distribute and provide the libraries. The big fear is that we get some sort of notice that we have to cease usage of the libraries entirely, and have some small time period to do so. As a result of this fear, our ability to use these libraries (which the company has spent money on...) is being limited, at the cost of many hours worth of development time. Specifically, we're having to develop lots of the features that the library already incorporates. Should we be limiting ourselves in this way? Is it possible for the perpetual license granted to us by the third party to be revoked in the case of something like a patent issue, and are there any examples of something like this happening? Most importantly, if this is something to legitimately be concerned about, how do people ever go about taking advantage third-party software while preparing for the possibility of losing that capability entirely? P.S. - I understand that this will venture into legal knowledge, and that none of the answers provided can be construed as legal advice in any fashion."}
{"_id": "198650", "title": "Production or Custom Test Data for Unit Testing?", "text": "I've recently had a little disagreement with fellow developers. We're transforming various ontologies from the original source format (Pica+, RDF, etc) into our data format and have several converters dedicated to exactly this task. The argument came whether or not we should use the full ontology- data file, or create a subset specifically used for testing. I argued the case for a subset: a custom-created file of all use-cases required to confirm the converters are running correctly. They argued that a production file is always up-to-date and any change in the production file will break the tests. True, I said, but if a change of production files is needed, then invariable the requirements are changed, therefore this is not a fault of using test data. They considered this a very weak argument and summarily decided against the use of a custom-created test-file. The question, as it boils down to, is whether or not to use the in-production file for testing our converters, or a subset of data. What are the pros- and cons? I'm very much in favor of using a test-file for converting, but I'm willing to assume that my premise is flawed. If I am correct, is there any way in which I can more eloquently and persuasively argue my case?"}
{"_id": "224455", "title": "How does one design his various architecture/business models?", "text": "I'm currently learning about various application design approaches and there's one thing I can't really get my head around. Let's say I have a physical device in my network, an IP surveillance camera. I need a model that represents 'IP surveillance cameras' to work with them in my application, which might look like this:               public class IPCamera {              public string     Token      { get; set; }         public IPAddress  IPAddress  { get; set; }         public string     RtspUri    { get; set; }          }      Now, if I want to store the IPCamera into a database (e.g. with Entity Framework), I need maybe another properties and thus, another model with:                  public int         Id         { get; set; }      Oh.. I want to access my application with via a WCF service. I can't use the object \"IPAddress\" here because it's not very serialization friendly, hence I need another model with a custom IP class that stores the IP address as string. And last, an Android clients wants to access my data. I design a RESTful API using WebApi2. The client isn't interested in the cameras RTSPUri, but wants to know about the current state (is online, is offline). I'm wondering: How to name all these models that they don't come in conflict? Should I design a model per each purpose/layer/service? And how to link/map them? With the adapter pattern?"}
{"_id": "215535", "title": "Regarding little endian and big endian conversion", "text": "I have a query regarding big endian and little endian. Basically the conversion is used to `reverse the byte order in memory` . When we need to do the conversion, do we need convert each and every data types?"}
{"_id": "154776", "title": "Missed question in technical phone interview and the follow up letter", "text": "I may have just bombed a C++ technical phone interview. The interviewer asked mostly about data structures and I was able to go into detail about each of the data structures he asked about. Score one for me I'm thinking. Wrong. Then he asks to join me on a collaboration website where he can see what I am typing. This was the same process as interview #1 which went well, not perfect, but well. So the question was: How do you reverse a linked list? he gave a function prototype similar to               Node *reverse(Node *head)      I struggled with this for about 10-15 minutes until the hour was up. I was able to get the general idea across but was not able to reverse the link list. My question is that after remembering the answer post interview do I mention this in the thank you letter, if I even should write one?"}
{"_id": "69477", "title": "How do you outsource website design?", "text": "I am planning to start a website. I am not good at designing. I am planning to outsource the designing part. How should I do it? Should I program first and then ask the designers to work on it? Or should I get a design from them and then work on it? What do you prefer?"}
{"_id": "80406", "title": "Test to confirm message with random component", "text": "I'm writing an authentication system which uses XML formatted messages between client/server. A successful username/password authentication needs to return a randomly generated session ID to the client:               <?xml version=\"1.0\"?>     <amhAPI>         <auth>             <sessionId>728c91ea-2ead-4fa9-93c5-3a8453174bea</sessionId>         </auth>     </amhAPI>      How do I write a unit test which can confirm the format of the success message, since I can't simply do a straight string match due to the random component?"}
{"_id": "240889", "title": "Where to implement thread-safety logic for my queue data structure?", "text": "I will immediately confess that I do _very_ little multithreading, so questions of style and organization in this domain a little fresh to me. I've written a data structure (in Python, if that matters) which implements a special kind of a queue. I'd like to use this queue to pass messages between threads. Currently, the only logic I have has nothing to do with threads, and simply implements the \"special sauce\" of organizing messages in this queue. I like having this queue as a data structure that has nothing to do with threads, just like any other data structure. However, I need to use mutexes, condition variables, etc. to implement the thread safety logic. The question is, where does this logic go? Do I write a class, say, `SpecialQueueConcurrent` derived from `SpecialQueue`? Do I write a class that wraps `SpecialQueue` instead of deriving from it? Do I provide an option to make it concurrent in the constructor? How is this usually done?"}
{"_id": "109890", "title": "Java/C# - When should AOT be considered if reverse engineering is a concern?", "text": "Long and short is really in the question title. For a language which compiles to an intermediate language like MSIL or Java byte-code, if there's concern about something like reverse engineering or hacking to disable security features, should AOT (ahead of time) compilation be considered rather than just obfuscation? Obviously, there's a bit of wiggle room in this question as there's no one answer I wouldn't imagine, but when would you start looking at performing an AOT compilation before distributing something versus sending it out obfuscated?    For anyone that stumbles across this and isn't familiar: Wikipedia Entry on AOT Compilers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOT_compiler Mono AOT Compiler feature: http://www.mono-project.com/AOT"}
{"_id": "19851", "title": "How to handle conflicts between developers in your team?", "text": "This is happening in every team. For some reasons, conflicts arise in the team and they affect the overall motivation and productivity. What is your recommended approach to solve that common problem? _Examples_ :   * one part of the team wants to implement dependency injection, the other part think it's a waste of time.   * some developers think the rest of the team is slowing down development (which explains why they are late on the schedule)   * personal incompatibilities between one or more developers   * one developer refuse to talk to another one (without apparent reason)"}
{"_id": "19856", "title": "Describe the best deployment environment you've worked with", "text": "The Joel Test includes the question: > Can you make a build in one step? Which is important, but I'm wondering, how streamlined have some of the _deployment_ processes been? All software from shrink-wrap to web applies: what's the best deployment environment you've worked with, and what steps were involved?"}
{"_id": "241424", "title": "Why do XML namespace URIs use the http scheme?", "text": "A XML namespace should be a URI, but it can use any URI scheme, including those that are not URLs. Then why do all widely used XML namespaces use the http scheme (e.g. `http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace`), considering that trying to use the URI as an URL by retrieving that document using the HTTP protocol is not guaranteed to do anything useful (and often doesn't)? I understand the usefulness of DNS domains in namespace names to help guarantee uniqueness. But that doesn't require the http scheme, there could be a separate scheme for that (something like `namespace:w3.org/XML/1998/namespace`). This would avoid the confusion between URIs and URLs, while maintaining domain-based uniqueness."}
{"_id": "241421", "title": "How can I make a universal construction more efficient?", "text": "A \"universal construction\" is a wrapper class for a sequential object that enables it to be linearized (a strong consistency condition for concurrent objects). For instance, here's an adapted wait-free construction, in Java, from [1], which presumes the existence of a wait-free queue that satisfies the interface `WFQ` (which only requires one-time consensus between threads) and assumes a `Sequential` interface:               public interface WFQ<T> // \"FIFO\" iteration     {         int enqueue(T t); // returns the sequence number of t         Iterable<T> iterateUntil(int max); // iterates until sequence max     }     public interface Sequential     {         // Apply an invocation (method + arguments)         // and get a response (return value + state)         Response apply(Invocation i);      }     public interface Factory<T> { T generate(); } // generate new default object     public interface Universal extends Sequential {}          public class SlowUniversal implements Universal     {         Factory<? extends Sequential> generator;         WFQ<Invocation> wfq = new WFQ<Invocation>();         Universal(Factory<? extends Sequential> g) { generator = g; }          public Response apply(Invocation i)         {             int max = wfq.enqueue(i);             Sequential s = generator.generate();             for(Invocation invoc : wfq.iterateUntil(max))                 s.apply(invoc);             return s.apply(i);         }     }      This implementation isn't very satisfying, however, since it presumes determinism of a `Sequential` and is really slow. I attempted to add memory recycling:               public interface WFQD<T> extends WFQ<T>         { T dequeue(int n); } // dequeues only when n is the tail, else assists other threads     public interface CopyableSequential extends Sequential { CopyableSequential copy(); }          public class RecyclingUniversal implements Universal     {         WFQD<CopyableSequential> wfqd = new WFQD<CopyableSequential>();         Universal(CopyableSequential init) { wfqd.enqueue(init); }          public Response apply(Invocation i)         {             int max = wfqd.enqueue(i);             CopyableSequential cs = null;             int ctr = max;             for(CopyableSequential csq : wfq.iterateUntil(max))                 if(--max == 0) cs = csq.copy();             wfqd.dequeue(max);             return cs.apply(i);         }     }      **Here are my specific questions regarding the extension:**   1. Does my implementation create a linearizable multi-threaded version of a `CopyableSequential`?   2. Is it possible extend memory recycling without extending the interface (perhaps my new methods trivialize the problem)?   3. My implementation only reduces memory when a thread returns, so can this be strengthened?   4. [1] provided an implementation for `WFQ<T>`, not `WFQD<T>` \\- one does exist, though, correct? [1] Herlihy and Shavit, _The Art of Multiprocessor Programming_."}
{"_id": "236404", "title": "What is \"using namespace\" pollution?", "text": "I was looking at the google coding guide [here] and they do not recommend that one use the `using namespace or`namespace:function` - if I did not misinterpret it. Does this apply to `std` as well? `cout<<` does not work without it. This book, recommends the same. So how do I go about using `cout<<` without `using namespace std;` or `std::cout<<` ? What is the recommended way? `std::cout<<`? Most c++ text books teach beginners with `using namespace std;` are they propagating poor coding practice?"}
{"_id": "87728", "title": "When is it OK to sacrifice the \"neatness\" of the design to get a project done?", "text": "When working on a product that needs to be done soon and work well, when is it OK to sacrifice maintainability and \"neatness\" of design in order to get the thing done and out the door quickly? And to what degree is it OK, especially when the techniques used to make it \"neat\" are new to me?"}
{"_id": "236409", "title": "Multi-Branch Retail System,how to control items quantity for various branches?", "text": "Currently I am developing Multi-Branch Retail software. All branches have the same set of items. However, each one has its own stock quantity. My question is, what is the best practice to apply in branch quantity control for items? I am currently thinking about the following design:               Item Table      ========     -Id      -Description          Branch Table      ========     -Id     -Description          Branch Quantities Table      ========     -Id      -ItemId (FK to Item Table)     -BranchId (Fk to Branch Table)     -Quantity (This contains the quantity for a specific item)           Is this a good design? or any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "241428", "title": "MVC Communication Pattern", "text": "This is kind of a follow up question to this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23743285/model-view-controller-and- callbacks, but I wanted to post it separately, because its kind of a different topic. I'm working on a multiplayer cardgame for the Android platform. I split the project into MVC which fits the needs pretty good, but I'm currently stuck because I can't figure out a good way to communicate between the different parts. I have everything setup and working with the controller being a big state machine, which is called over and over from the gameloop, and calls getter methods from the GUI and the android/network part to get the input. The input itself in the GUI and network is set by inputlisteners that set a local variable which I read in the getter method. So far so good, this is working. But my problem is, the controller has to check every input separately,so if I want to add an input I have to check in which states its valid and call the getter method from all these states. This is not good, and lets the code look pretty ugly, makes additions uncomfortable and adds redundance. So what I've got from the question I mentioned above is that some kind of command or event pattern will fit my needs. What I want to do is to create a shared and threadsafe queue in the controller and instead of calling all these getter methods, I just check the queue for new input and proceed it. On the other side, the GUI and network don't have all these getters, but instead create an event or command and send it to the controller through, for example, observer/observable. Now my problem: I can't figure out a way, for these commands/events to fit a common interface (which the queue can store) and still transport different kind of data (button clicks, cards that are played, the player id the command comes from, synchronization data etc.). If I design the communication as command pattern, I have to stick all the information that is needed to execute the command into it when its created, that's impossible because the GUI or network has no knowledge of all the things the controller needs to execute stuff that needs to be done when for example a card is played. I thought about getting this stuff into the command when executing it. But over all the different commands I have, I would need all the information the controller has, and thus give the command a reference to the controller which would make everything in it public, which is real bad design I guess. So, I could try some kind of event pattern. I have to transport data in the event. So, like the command, I would have an interface, which all events have in common, and can be stored in the shared queue. I could create a big enum with all the different events that a are possible, save one of these enums in the actual event, and build a big switch case for the events, to proceed different stuff for different events. The problem here: I have different data for all the events. But I need a common interface, to store the events in a queue. How do I get the specific data, if I can only access the event through the interface? Even if that wouldn't be a problem, I'm creating another big switch case, which looks ugly, and when i want to add a new event, I have to create the event itself, the case, the enum, and the method that's called with the data. I could of course check the event with the enum and cast it to its type, so I can call event type specific methods that give me the data I need, but that looks like bad design too."}
{"_id": "119924", "title": "Is there an alternative to the term \"calling object\"?", "text": "Let's suppose you've got a class defined (in pseudocode):               class Puppy {         // ...         string sound = \"Rawr!\";              void bark() {             print(sound);         }     }      And say, given a `Puppy` instance, you call it's `bark()` method:               int main() {            Puppy p;       p.bark();          }      Notice how `bark()` uses the member variable `sound`. In many contexts, I've seen folks describe `sound` as the member variable of the \"calling object.\" My question is, what's a better term to use than \"calling object?\" To me, the object is not doing any calling. We know that member functions are in a way just functions with an implicit `this` or `self` parameter. I've come up with \"receiving object,\" or \"message recipient,\" which makes sense if you're down with the \"messaging\" paradigm. Do any of you happy hackers have a term that you like to use? I feel it should mean \"the object upon which a method is called\" and TOUWAMIC just doesn't cut it. As for who the \"caller\" is, I would say that `main` instantiates a Puppy object and calls its `bark()` method."}
{"_id": "119923", "title": "How can I make an app using mobile's camera to detect words?", "text": "I am trying to make an app that will capture the video from the mobile's camera and detect in real time all the text that will be captured. I would like to make it in C# (for e.g. Windows Mobile) but I can also try to do it in Java (for e.g. Android). Can anyone help me how can I start with it?"}
{"_id": "159079", "title": "Can someone explain to me C#'s coding convention?", "text": "I recently started working with Unity3D and primarily scripting with C#. As, I normally program in Java, the differences aren't too great but I still referred to a crash course just to make sure I am on the right track. However, My biggest curiosity with C# is that is capitalises the first letter its method names (eg. java: getPrime() C#: GetPrime() aka: Pascal Case?). Is there a good reason for this? I understand from the crash course page that I read that apparently it's convention for .Net and I have no way of ever changing it, but I am curious to hear why it was done like this as opposed to the normal (relative?) camel case that, say, Java uses. Note: I understand that languages have their own coding conventions (python methods are all lower case which also applies in this question) but I've never really understood why it isn't formalised into a standard."}
{"_id": "215288", "title": "Why is there a 20 and not 21 in some versions of Planning Poker?", "text": "In Planning Poker, cards usually contain numbers of the Fibonacci sequence, which is 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55 etc. However, you can see on the Wikipedia page (and this has been confirmed to me by people that work at several positions where Planning Poker is applied) in some editions the cards stray away from Fibonacci sequence after 13. They lower 21 to 20 and then continue with 40 and 100. Is there some rationale on why these values have been changed, specifically 21 to 20? (Also note that some other cards are added, such as ? and 1/2, but these are easier for me to understand, compared to the 21 -> 20 shift.)"}
{"_id": "215285", "title": "Class design issue", "text": "I'm new to OOP and a lot of times I become stumped in situations similar to this example: Task: Generate an XML document that contains information about a person. Assume the information is readily available in a database. Here is an example of the structure:               <Person>         <Name>John Doe</Name>         <Age>21</Age>         <Address>             <Street>100 Main St.</Street>             <City>Sylvania</City>             <State>OH</State>         </Address>         <Relatives>             <Parents>                 <Mother>                     <Name>Jane Doe</Name>                 </Mother>                 <Father>                     <Name>John Doe Sr.</Name>                 </Father>             </Parents>             <Siblings>                 <Brother>                     <Name>Jeff Doe</Name>                 </Brother>                 <Brother>                     <Name>Steven Doe</Name>                 </Brother>             </Siblings>         </Relatives>     </Person>        * Ok lets create a class for each tag (ie: Person, Name, Age, Address) Lets assume each class is only responsible for itself and the elements directly contained    * Each class will know (have defined by default) the classes that are directly contained within them    * Each class will have a process() function that will add itself and its children to the XML document we are creating    * When a child is drawn, as in the previous line, we will have them call process() as well   * Now we are in a recursive loop where each object draws their children until all are drawn   * But what if only some of the tags need to be drawn, and the rest are optional? Some are optional based on if the data exists (if we have it, we must draw it), and some are optional based on the preferences of the user generating the document   * How do we make sure each object has the data it needs to draw itself and its children? We can pass down a massive array through every object, but that seems shitty doesn't it? We could have each object query the database for it, but that's a lot of queries, and how does it know what its query is?    * What if we want to get rid of a tag later? There is no way to reference them. I've been thinking about this for 20 hours now. I feel like I am misunderstanding a design principle or am just approaching this all wrong. How would you go about programming something like this? I suppose this problem could apply to any scenario where there are classes that create other classes, but the classes created need information to run. How do I get the information to them in a way that doesn't seem messy?"}
{"_id": "215280", "title": "How to Avoid a Busy Loop Inside a Function That Returns the Object That's Being Waited For", "text": "I have a function which has the same interface as Python's `input` builtin, but it works in a client-server environment. When it's called, the function, which runs in the server, sends a message to the client, asking it to get some input from the user. The user enters some stuff, or dismisses the prompt, and the result is passed back to the server, which passes it to the function. The function then returns the result. The function must work like Python's `input` [that's the spec], so it must block until it has the result. This is all working, but it uses a busy loop, which, in practice, could easily be spinning for many minutes. Currently, the function tells the client to get the input, passing an id. The client returns the result with the id. The server puts the result in a dictionary, with the id as the key. The function basically waits for that key to exist.               def input():              '''simplified example'''              key = unique_key()         tell_client_to_get_input(key)         while key not in dictionary: pass         return dictionary.pop(pin)      Using a callback would be the normal way to go, but the `input` function must block until the result is available, so I can't see how that could work. The spec can't change, as Python will be using the new `input` function for stuff like `help` and `pdb`, which provide their own little REPLs. I have a lot of flexibility in terms of how everything works overall, but just can't budge on the function acting exactly like Python's. Is there any way to return the result as soon as it's available, without the busy loop?"}
{"_id": "206713", "title": "How PHP manages memory in this case?", "text": "I have a **very** basic question, so sorry if this is not the place for it. If I have a file \"config.php\" with some configurations in some variables and in some page I include this file, each time the variables will be loaded again in the memory of the server? I think the answer is yes, but I'm not sure, I don't know to much of the PHP lifecycle. I don't know if I made myself clear, so here is an example. Suppose, I have the config.php file as:               <?php          $databaseConfig = array();          /* Sets the configurations inside the array */     ?>      Then my index.php page includes the file config.php. Each time the index is loaded the $databaseConfig array will be loaded into memory or just the first time and so when the page is requested again it doens't need to load it again? I really think that since PHP is stateless it will load again each time. Thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "135260", "title": "How to match responses from a server with their corresponding requests?", "text": "There is a server that responds to requests on a socket. The client has functions to emit requests and functions to handle responses from the server. The problem is that the request sending function and the response handling function are two unrelated functions. Given a server response X, how can I know whether it's a response to request X or some other request Y? I would like to make a construct that would ensure that response X is definitely the answer to request X and also to make a function requestX() that returns response X and not some other response Y. This question is mostly about the general programming approach and not about any specific language construct. Preferably, though, the answer would involve Ruby, TCP sockets, and PHP. My code so far:               require 'socket'          class TheConnection         def initialize(config)             @config = config         end         def send(s)             toConsole(\"--> #{s}\")             @conn.send \"#{s}\\n\", 0          end         def connect()             # Connect to the server             begin                 @conn = TCPSocket.open(@config['server'], @config['port'])             rescue Interrupt             rescue Exception => detail                 toConsole('Exception: ' + detail.message())                 print detail.backtrace.join('\\n')                 retry             end         end         def getSpecificAnswer(input)             send \"GET #{input}\"         end         def handle_server_input(s)             case s.strip                 when /^Hello. (.*)$/i                     toConsole \"[ Server says hello ]\"                     send \"Hello to you too! #{$1}\"                               else                     toConsole(s)             end         end         def main_loop()             while true                 ready = select([@conn, $stdin], nil, nil, nil)                 next if !ready                 for s in ready[0]                     if s == $stdin then                         return if $stdin.eof                         s = $stdin.gets                         send s                     elsif s == @conn then                         return if @conn.eof                         s = @conn.gets                         handle_server_input(s)                     end                 end             end         end         def toConsole(msg)             t = Time.new             puts t.strftime(\"[%H:%M:%S]\") + ' ' + msg         end     end     @config = Hash[         'server'=>'test.server.com',         'port'=>'2020'     ]     $conn = TheConnection.new(@config)     $conn.connect()     $conn.getSpecificAnswer('itemsX')          begin         $conn.main_loop()     rescue Interrupt     rescue Exception => detail         $conn.toConsole('Exception: ' + detail.message())         print detail.backtrace.join('\\n')         retry     end"}
{"_id": "162427", "title": "Relative Scoring system - How to solve this?", "text": "I am trying to assign scores to phone's specifications to calculate a final rating score for each phone. However, when I was scoring based on megapixels, I found that one of the phones 'A' has a 41MP camera. But all other phones have 8MP or less, which is pretty good for a phone. Right now, when I grade relatively wrt phone A (rating 5/5), all other phones get a score of 1 or 2 out of 5. I would like it to be a little more fair, as it was just one phone with a very high value. Could you suggest me the best way to go about solving this issue where the relative grading is more fair?"}
{"_id": "162424", "title": "How to deal with huge changes to a data specification?", "text": "We have a C program which uses a .h header file to describe the custom-made data structure we use. The data structure must follow the design in the functional specification. There is some diagram to describe the member of the data structures and it would be described a ANS.1 abstract syntax, and then the asn file would be compiled to a .h header file. In order to enhance our system, a request to change the functional specification was approved and a new specification was made. ( We jump from 2.10 to 2.12 as we had skipped the upgrade of 2.11 ) Comparing 2.10 to 2.12, a lot of new stuff were added and some old stuff were removed. We need to use a new .asn to compile a new .h header file in order to follow the specification. The problem is that, something useful were removed. For example some member of a data structure were removed and we have been using the member for logic in the program. The program can't even compiled with the new header file. The program have been up and running and we would like to avoid any major down time due to this upgrade. P.S. The specification is not only for our company, it is a standard for the file structure of the files sending between companeis within the whole industry. Say, if one declare to use 2.12 spec, and other party will treat the file with 2.12 standard and discard any files which doesn't follow the standard. P.S. Of course there is no option. The decision is made. However I am facing a problem that the c program was written by some other people and have complex logic. The program would be hugely damaged by the change of the header file. And I may have no idea some to restore peace and functionality to it. Any suggestion of how to check with each difference is appreciated."}
{"_id": "53664", "title": "Is there value in having technical authors in a software team?", "text": "During my 5 years in IT as a software developer, I've noticed that developers have a strong distaste towards doing any documentation. The act of taking screenshots and creating documentation seems to be a painful and time consuming experience. In one company I worked for, we had a technical documentation team with two technical authors and they developed all the user guides for our customers. In other companies where I've suggested hiring a technical author, I've been told they are not worth the money, but I'm a little unsure if that rings true. Is it better to have developers stop coding and take half a day to do screenshots and create the various guides or is it worth hiring someone who handles such tasks?"}
{"_id": "156303", "title": "Why does F# have an interactive mode but not C#?", "text": "F# comes out of the box with an interactive REPL. C# has nothing of the sort and is in fact kinda difficult to play around without setting up a full project (though LINQpad works and its also possible to do via powershell). Is there something fundamentally different about the languages that allows F# to have the interactive console but makes it difficult to implement it for C#? **Edit** Since many years later people are still coming to this question I should note that now there are many options. You can use powershell (pre- installed on every modern windows machine) to play with the .Net framework. Or you can use LINQpad to prototype arbitrary c# code. Or you can use ScriptCs or you can use an online jsfiddle-type environment like Complify.net or Jsil. Lots of options."}
{"_id": "41841", "title": "Recommendations for .NET components that handle and improve TIFF files", "text": "I am currently looking for a .NET component that fulfills the following requirements.   * TIFF files      * Extracting single pages as images     * Writing the images to new TIFFs   * Support for colored TIFFs/Images   * Improving the TIFF files (deskew is a must, despeckle etc optional)   * Royalty-free deployment on servers   * Fully architecture independent (only one assembly for x64/x86) I have found that Libtiff.Net is capable of handling the tiff files, but the API is still very complex and it cannot improve the files. For improvements, I am trying out AForge.NET(http://www.aforgenet.com/), but its filters require converting the images to specific pixel formats depending on the operation."}
{"_id": "230586", "title": "Speed difference between VM-based and compiled code", "text": "Not so long ago I was told by a senior academic that, these days, VM-based code could run nearly as fast as compiled code, but my own experience is that compiled code runs several orders of time faster. This is based on code attempting to do the same thing (processing a very large XML file) - in the case of the VM-based code (Groovy) I guess my code would complete in about two years (correct) whereas the C/C++ based alternative took about three hours. The algorithms were not quite the same - but that was because using C/C++ allowed me to manipulate the memory at a byte level using pointers. The Groovy code was easier to write as the language was much more expressive, but the price paid was slow execution. I don't claim to be the world's greatest coder so I would willingly accept that my code could have been improved: but what is the general view?"}
{"_id": "230582", "title": "How do I explain to my boss what a 'Virtual Machine' means?", "text": "Most probably my boss didn't write a single word on a keyboard in his entire life. He saw computers and he has a cell phone. He is a smart man. **How can I explain to him what a 'virtual machine' is?** (VM as in VMWare + virtual Box, not the VM as in Java, LLVM, .NET) One of the reasons for asking this is that I want to tell him that having a Linux VM to connect to internet with a Windows host is safer than connecting directly to Windows."}
{"_id": "90561", "title": "Co-worker renamed all of my queries", "text": "I don't know if I should be very irritated or what. I single handedly built over 300 queries for a large database, and developed a naming convention so I could find them later. No one else in my office even knows how to build a query, but I came in yesterday to find that all of them had been renamed. I am now having a very hard time finding things, and I am trying to figure out what to do. I spoke with the person responsible, and she just downplayed the whole thing. She said she renamed them so she can find them more easily. Unfortunately, I am the only one who knows how to build, edit, and maintain them, and the only reason she needed to find them was to test the queries. The new naming convention doesn't make sense at all, and I feel like we have taken a backwards step in the development process. What I'm trying to figure out is: 1) Am I overreacting? 2) What is the best way to handle this? I hate to mention this to my boss, but after speaking with my co-worker yesterday, I can already tell she feels like she did nothing wrong."}
{"_id": "160370", "title": "Order of subject and modifiers in variable names", "text": "I'm looking for experiences regarding the ordering of the subject and modifiers in variable names. A simple object `Shape` would have just a subject for the variable name, such as `Area`. A slightly more complex case `Sphere` which has a wall will have an `inner volume` and an `outer volume`, which is where my question comes into play. What's preferred between _Modifier-Subject_ or _Subject-Modifier_? As an example set:               class Containers_Modifier_Subject     {       AreaAdjustmentFactor       WallThickness       Height       Length       Width       AdjustedArea       SurfaceAreaInner       SurfaceAreaOuter       LongWallArea       ShortWallArea       TopArea       InnerVolume       OuterVolume     }          class Containers_Subject_Modifier     {       AreaAdjustmentFactor       WallThickness       Height       Length       Width       AreaAdjusted       AreaInnerSurface       AreaOuterSurface       AreaLongWall       AreaShortWall       AreaTop       VolumeInner       VolumeOuter     }      The trigger for my question comes from an object that is similar to the examples. There were enough variables in the object that only a portion displays in the code ahead / lookup window from the IDE. I want to make sure that any future developer is quickly led to the correct variable that they'll be looking for without having to scroll up and down through the lookup window. In my case, I was looking for the total area, but the area factor and adjusted area values had popped up first. Consistency in naming as a code standard is a given. Which naming approach has been:   * most maintainable?    * more easily understood?    * semantically correct?       * i.e. how well does the variable name match the business object and how well does the variable name flow into conversations about the problem being solved?   * conducive to being used with code lookup functionality like Intellisense or the various Eclipse based constructs?"}
{"_id": "160377", "title": "Should I represent special cases (like errors / exceptions) in UML diagrams?", "text": "Let's say you write a program that, when started, reads its configuration file to know which modules to start-up etc. If that configuration file is missing, an error will probably show up. This is an important situation that must always be handled. I read a statistic once which said that about 70 % of the code in a typical program is there to deal with corner cases (like check that file is not missing, catch an Exception, check that I don't divide by 0, check that a person's age is a positive number etc.). I don't believe this (i.e. the 70 % claim) to be very accurate, but then again, a lot of the code that I write contains a lot of `if`s that check for valid parameters and stuff like that. I doubt I'm the only one who does this. So that statistic does have some truth in it. If a big part of a program's code is represented by these checks, then shouldn't these cases be represented in UML diagrams ? (like sequence diagrams etc.). I can't remember if I ever saw such things. Should I include them in my diagrams ? Will that enlighten or disturb/confuse another programmer who looks at those diagrams ? Would the diagrams then become too big because of this ?"}
{"_id": "160379", "title": "What do you need from a client to create a site", "text": "I am trying to figure out what a programmers needs from a client to create a website. This is a complicated database driven site. How should the information look? Should I layout the pages in something like photoshop with annotations? Should it all just be written out. Is there a standard way to do this? I need to clearly explain to a programmer what i want my site to do. Help!"}
{"_id": "164862", "title": "Depending on fixed version of a library and ignore its updates", "text": "I was talking to a technical boss yesterday. Its about a project in C++ that depends on opencv and he wanted to include a specific opencv version into the svn and keep using this version ignoring any updates which I disagreed with.We had a heated discussion about that. His arguments:   1. Everything has to be delivered into one package and we can't ask the client to install external libraries.   2. We depend on a fixed version so that new updates of opencv won't screw our code.   3. We can't guarantee that within a version update, ex from 3.2.buildx to 3.2.buildy.   4. Buildy the function signatures won't change. My arguments:   1. True everything has to be delivered to the client as one package,but that's what build scripts are for. They download the external libraries and create a bundle.   2. Within updates of the same version 3.2.buildx to 3.2.buildy its impossible that a signature change, unless it is a really crappy framework, which isn't the case with opencv.   3. We deprive ourselves from new updates and features of that library.   4. If there's a bug in the version we took, and even if there's a bug fix later, we won't be able to get that fix.   5. Its simply ineffiecient and anti design to depend on a certain version/build of an external library as it makes our project difficult in the future to adopt to new changes. So I'd like to know what you guys think. Does it really make sense to include a specific version of external library in our svn and keep using it ignoring all updates?"}
{"_id": "164866", "title": "WINAPI beginner guidance question", "text": "I'm learning to develop windows applications using WINAPI and plain C.   Now I got a bit confused with all those handles and would like to ask if you guys could teach me some good practices to structure and handle controls and windows. Here's where I get confused: Using the IDs declared in the resources for each object, we can get their handles using GetDlgItem(). Now what if we don't know their parent, which is needed by this function. One example: We have the main window created at launch. Then we register two new window classes and create a window for each new class and we create a message function for each too. Now if inside one of the children windows I create a button and inside the other child window I create a text label. Now when we click the button inside of child window A the label in child window B shall be modified to whatever. The WM_COMMAND for the button is interpreted inside the message loop for child window A. Now what would be the best and more elegant way to access the text label inside the child window B? I am in the process of learning the WINAPI and just want to learn it right from the start instead of producing Hacked code that someday becomes unreadable and to later have to adapt to a new way of programing. * * * Is there really no one able to give me some advice?"}
{"_id": "164868", "title": "Testing controller logic that uses ISession directly", "text": "I have just read this blog post from Jimmy Bogard and was drawn to this comment. > Where this falls down is when a component doesn\u2019t support a given > layering/architecture. But even with NHibernate, I just use the ISession > directly in the controller action these days. Why make things complicated? I then commented on the post and ask this question:- ![my question to jimmy](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BCr01.jpg) My question here is what options would you have testing the controller logic **IF** you do not mock out the NHibernate ISession. I am curious what options we have if we utilise the ISession directly on the controller?"}
{"_id": "158677", "title": "Homework for strong C++ developers learning Java", "text": "I'm tasked with teaching an accelerated university special topics course in Java for programmers with many years of experience in C/C++. What sort of medium-length (1-2 hours max) assignments would you give, that would exercise the student's basic Java skills without seeming like an assignment one would give to someone learning Java as a first language? (The idea is to provoke thought about the difference between Java vs. C++ rather than insult the student with ridiculously simple programming in general.) To clarify, the entire course is not 1-2 hours -- it will be 4 hours on the first day and 7 hours on the second and third day, for two weeks, for a total number of contact hours of 36 hours. This is comparable to a standard college course's number of hours, just dramatically compressed."}
{"_id": "62563", "title": "Collaborative Programming Book Development?", "text": "> **Firstly:** If it works for open source projects why not books? **Collaborative writing** is not something new. What is rare however, is this in the field of programming. **The Important Aspects that need your valuable Inputs:**   * **Investment:** Would there be need for investment of any sort, other than _Time_ during the development stages?   * **Existing Platforms:** Are there any existing Platforms that best manage this? Such as online integrated version control, wiki, CMS?   * **Existing Projects:** Where can we find such projects to contribute to? (Assumes there many existing already)   * **Popularity:** Why don\u2019t we see much or any such works? (Referring specifically to the aspect of online collaborative programming book development. It\u2019s a given that in writing any book a lot of effort is involved with many indirect or credited contributors references editors etc.) ( I actually couldn\u2019t find much .WEBOOK doesn\u2019t do programming)   * **Programming Hurdles:** What are the hurdles when speaking about programming aspects that make this hard to achieve?   * **Extension to SE/SO:** Can something like this be added as an extension to SE/SO?The participants of the community already post their valuable answers to questions .Here they would be following more streamlined set of posts keeping with the style/vision.   * **Publicity:** Is it safe to assume SO/SE could best serve as a driving force bringing the correct light, interest of seasoned professionals who can contribute their wealth of knowledge?   * **Marketing:** Other than SO/SE what would be the best way to get publicity and talented people to contribute to this? Would GIT/source forge work as this is basically book writing? > **Lastly:** How do you think such a book would be received? * * * **Points of Interest**   1. **General Hurdles:** A great set of pitfalls, hurdles in general collaborative writing (Besides the technical ones mentioned in the wiki) Not wishing to discuss or mention those here I link directly to the answer.   2. **Trends:** Online Collaborative Writing: How Blogs and Wikis Are Changing the Academic Publishing Process   3. **Success steps:** Keys to a Successful Collaborative Writing Project   4. **Tips:** Useful Tips for Collaborative Writing with Google Docs and Google Sites * * * **My Interest on This:** Recently after my exposure to head first design patterns, I was hard pressed to find a head first type of book for Data structures and Algorithms and I had even looked up their forums (O\u2019Riley) and not much light was given to this topic despite many people asking for this. My only Bad Guess is no one was man (programmer /knowledgeable) enough to write on this in their style (no offence to any one). Which lead me to find this idea of collaborative writing and to my surprise I had found or hadn\u2019t found much in the area of programming. I believe such an Endeavour would only increase the value of a book published as great things can be achieved keeping in line with the imagery, speech, context, delivery method of the original book style from which this was inspired. I have read somewhere that _the true depth of a person\u2019s knowledge lies in how he explains a complex concept in layman\u2019s terms_."}
{"_id": "62560", "title": "C++ pigeonholing", "text": "I'm a EE major who has been working as a software engineer for the past 4 years. Nearly all of the programming that I do at work is in C++. Like a lot of other members here, I'm afraid of being pigeon-holed in a particular area in this industry. I'm thinking about changing jobs to a new area, such as web or mobile. But because I don't have a CS degree OR web/mobile experience, I'm concerned that prospective employers will have a problem with hiring me--especially since I would not be applying for an entry-level job. I read in another thread that C++ developers are seen as a cut above other devs. Is this true, and would it compensate for my lack of experience in the relevant technologies? What should someone in my position do to improve my chances?"}
{"_id": "58251", "title": "Extreme Programming Projects Failures", "text": "I searched the web for examples of extreme programming failure but I couldn't find any. I found success stories, but I want to learn about the \"other side of the coin\". So my question is only about projects that fail using XP. Why do they fail? I just want to hear some opinions about XP failures."}
{"_id": "120808", "title": "What are some common examples of a Parallelizable problem?", "text": "I was just wondering if there were some \"standard\" examples that everyone uses as a basis for explaining the nature of parallel problems. What are some well- known problems out there that can see great benefits from scalability (and multi-threaded programming)? * **EDIT: also, a little background or explanation as to _why_ it's parallelizable in nature would be of help! Thanks**"}
{"_id": "203885", "title": "Refactor working code for reuse or duplicate?", "text": "I have always avoided duplicating code regardless of the circumstance. For example, if I have a working piece of functionality that needs to be re-used by different entities, I always refactor to make this functionality available. Under no circumstance would I duplicate code. I am probably a little rigid when it comes to this but I really do not like duplicating code. I currently had a slight disagreement with our Team Lead who suggested that instead of refactoring, I should copy entire piece of functionality I require into a different class and then we can decide how best to refactor at a later date. This is even after confirming that my previous refactoring efforts did not break any of the unit tests. I further had this conversation today with my previous manager, and his mentor, who both sided with my Team Lead. Their argument is incurring technical debt is OK, and almost always preferable, especially if you are running into time constraints, which I understand. My counter argument was yes, we do not want to skip deadlines but one must always consider the cost of refactoring and this usually should be the first instinct, especially if we are simply moving functionality into a new location that renders it accessible to all. Proper unit test can also ensure that refactoring efforts do not break existing functionality. Also is it not always better to pay off the debt now rather than later? I can only imagine what this task will entail if all members of the team simply duplicated code. Suffices to say that we had to agree to disagree. In his book titled Clean Code, Robert Martins emphasis continuous refactor during development so I was surprised by the response of my previous manager. What are you opinions on this?"}
{"_id": "179022", "title": "How does one read RFCs and similar documents?", "text": "RFC: > Request for Comments (RFC) is a memorandum published by the Internet > Engineering Task Force (IETF) describing methods, behaviors, research, or > innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected > systems. At the end of this Intro to REST video, RFC2616 and RFC3986 are mentioned as further reading. After watching the video, I googled those documents and, as the title suggests, I'm not sure how to use them. Do I read them in their entirety and make notes or do I use them more as a reference for when I don't understand something or have a problem?"}
{"_id": "237754", "title": "Why does the regular expression metacharacter \\w include underscores?", "text": "In most, if not all implementations of regular expressions, the \\w metacharacter matches all alphanumeric characters plus the underscore. Historically speaking, why was the underscore character included in this character class? And why not include dashes too?"}
{"_id": "179026", "title": "Instruction vs data cache usage", "text": "Say I've got a cache memory where instruction and data have different cache memories (\"Harvard architecture\"). Which cache, instruction or data, is used most often? I mean \"most often\" as in time, not amount of data since data memory might be used \"more\" in terms of amount of data while instruction cache might be used \"more often\" especially depending on the program. Are there different answers a) in general and b) for a specific program?"}
{"_id": "237751", "title": "Why are background-colors not or rarely used for syntax highlighting?", "text": "I wonder why I rarely see any IDEs or other developers that use background colors for syntaxhighlighting. One of the first things when installing and configuring a new IDE is adjusting the colors so that for example comments have a decent light-grey background. This really helps me seeing where documentation is and where code is when scrolling down fast. The only time i saw something like that was in the Greenfoot Editor but that didn't look so well at least if you are doing some more complex work and there are more nested conditions and stuff. So why is it that background colors are rarely used; or does anyone have some good examples where they are used and how?"}
{"_id": "152326", "title": "What's better in terms of user experience - providing an email address or a link to my projects github account?", "text": "What's better in terms of user experience? Provide the user an email account where he can report bugs, or a link to the projects github issues page (which requires a github account but may be easier to submit bugs to)? **EDIT** The application is a Bash script hosted on github. The GNU Coding Standards suggests using an email address, which may or may not an appropriate solution. Target audience is the CLI power user."}
{"_id": "152325", "title": "Where to put code documentation?", "text": "I am currently using two systems to write code documentation (am using C++):   * Documentation about methods and class members are added next to the code, using the Doxygen format. On a server Doxygen is run on the sources so the output can be seen in a web browser   * Overview pages (describing a set of classes, the structure of the application, example code, ...) is added to a Wiki I personally think that this approach is easy because the documentation about members and classes is really close to the code, while the overview pages are really easy to edit in the Wiki (and it's also easy to add images, tables, ...). A web browser allows you to see both documentations. My co-worker now suggests to put everything in Doxygen, because we can then create one big help file with everything in it (using either Microsoft's HTML WorkShop or Qt Assistant). My concern is that editing Doxygen-style documentation is much harder (compared to Wiki), especially when you want to add tables, images, ... (or is there a 'preview' tool for Doxygen that doesn't require you to generate the code before you can see the result?) What do big open-source (or closed source) projects use to write their code documentation? Do they also split this up between Doxygen-style and a Wiki? Or do they use another system? What is the most appropriate way to expose the documentation? Via a Web server/browser, or via a big (several 100MB) help file? Which approach do you take when writing code documentation?"}
{"_id": "152320", "title": "Is there a phrase or word to describe an algorithim or program is complete in that given any value for its arguments there is a defined outcome?", "text": "Is there a phrase or word to describe an algorithim or programme is complete in that given any value for its arguments there is a defined outcome? i.e. all the ramifications have been considered whatever the context? A simple example would be the below function:               function returns string get_item_type(int type_no)     {       if(type_no < 10)         return \"hockey stick\"       else if (type_no < 20)         return \"bulldozer\"       else         return \"unknown\"     }      (excuse the dismal pseudo code) No matter what number is supplied all possibiblites are catered for. My question is: is there a word to fill the blank here:               \"get_item_type() is ______ complete\"      ? (The answer is not Turing Complete - that is something quite different - but I annoyingly always think of something as \"Turing Complete\" when I am thinking of the above)."}
{"_id": "176909", "title": "null values vs \"empty\" singleton for optional fields", "text": "First of all I'm developing a parser for an XML-based format for 3D graphics called XGL. But this question can be applied to any situation when you have fields in your class that are optional i.e. the value of this field can be missing. As I was taking a Scala course on coursera there was an interesting pattern when you create an abstract class with all the methods you need and then create a normal fully functional subclass and an \"empty\" singleton subclass that always returns `false` for `isEmpty` method and throws exceptions for the other ones. So my question is: is it better to just assign `null` if the optional field's value is missing or make a hierarchy described above and assign it an empty singleton implementation?"}
{"_id": "112838", "title": "What assumptions / disclaimers should be included with a software estimate?", "text": "I'm writing a lot of estimates lately and I'm finding that quite often, a client might argue scope, deliverables or (most often) cost. In an effort to ensure that the breadth of coverage (of client requirements and mutually understood scope) for the estimate is clear (and given most clients will view an estimate as a fixed quote from Moses himself), what common assumptions do you include with your estimates such that expectations are clearly set with clients and disagreements around what is being delivered or charged are minimised?"}
{"_id": "176906", "title": "Agile and different facet of software development", "text": "It is said that the Kanban methodology is suited for software maintenance and support areas, whereas Scrum is more suited for new product development. No process or methods are complete. Using the right one will help you succeed, but they will not guarantee success. Which agile approach is best suited for a project which is basically a re- platforming from one technology to another (say from Java to .NET)."}
{"_id": "48535", "title": "Modular Architecture for Processing Pipeline", "text": "I am trying to design the architecture of a system that I will be implementing in C++, and I was wondering if people could think of a good approach, or critique the approach that I have designed so far. First of all, the general problem is an image processing pipeline. It contains several stages, and the goal is to design a highly modular solution, so that any of the stages can be easily swapped out and replaced with a piece of custom code (so that the user can have a speed increase if s/he knows that a certain stage is constrained in a certain way in his or her problem). The current thinking is something like this:               struct output; /*Contains the output values from the pipeline.*/          class input_routines{         public:         virtual foo stage1(...){...}         virtual bar stage2(...){...}         virtual qux stage3(...){...}         ...     }          output pipeline(input_routines stages);      This would allow people to subclass input_routines and override whichever stage they wanted. That said, I've worked in systems like this before, and I find the subclassing and the default stuff tends to get messy, and can be difficult to use, so I'm not giddy about writing one myself. I was also thinking about a more STLish approach, where the different stages (there are 6 or 7) would be defaulted template parameters. Can anyone offer a critique of the pattern above, thoughts on the template approach, or any other architecture that comes to mind?"}
{"_id": "94711", "title": "Symbian Test Questions", "text": "So, I was in charge of filtering down job applicants at our company. We wanted to develop symbian app. But, there are no one here that know how to develop it. Therefore, we create job ads. Several applicant coming in. The question is, how do I test this candidate? I'm thinking to give some sort of test app. Something trivial and simple but required to have fundamental understanding of symbian. This will **be build at home** question. If they are able to create it Any recommended test question / application?"}
{"_id": "122403", "title": "Struggling with the Single Responsibility Principle", "text": "Consider this example: I have a website. It allows users to make posts (can be anything) and add tags that describe the post. In the code, I have two classes that represent the post and tags. Lets call these classes `Post` and `Tag`. `Post` takes care of creating posts, deleting posts, updating posts, etc. `Tag` takes care of creating tags, deleting tags, updating tags, etc. There is one operation that is missing. The linking of tags to posts. I am struggling with who should do this operation. It could fit equally well in either class. On one hand, the `Post` class could have a function that takes a `Tag` as a parameter, and then stores it in a list of tags. On the other hand, the `Tag` class could have a function that takes a `Post` as a parameter and links the `Tag` to the `Post`. The above is just an example of my problem. I am actually running into this with multiple classes that are all similar. It could fit equally well in both. Short of actually putting the functionality in both classes, what conventions or design styles exist to help me solve this problem. I am assuming there has to be something short of just picking one? Maybe putting it in both classes is the correct answer?"}
{"_id": "94713", "title": "Is Linux a neccessity for learning network?", "text": "I'm a web developer interested in learning network. I work on Windows platform. Many of my friends and colleagures believe that to learn netwrok, I should become familiar with Linux platform. Should I? I mean, can't I learn network and it's concepts thoroughly on Windows Server platform?"}
{"_id": "122405", "title": "How should I license code written for a startup without a contract?", "text": "I wrote a fair amount of code for a startup, but I haven't signed a contract before doing so. The only document that I signed with them does not mention the fact that I have to pass the rights on the code to them, and after a consulting with a lawyer it seems that I own the full rights. Now I want to preemptively correct this situation by giving them some sort of exclusive license. Is there an existing license for closed-source, exclusive use that is used in these cases or I simply write somewhere \"I grant exclusive license to use and modify this piece of code to FooBar-inc at the followings conditions: bla bla bla signed me, them\"?"}
{"_id": "39490", "title": "When is an application too customizable?", "text": "Say you are developing a desktop application, and you want the user to be able to customize menus, buttons, keymapping, and other commands and components. How much customization should be allowed? I like my environments to be pretty much infinately customizable. I also want the environment to have a good set of defaults so I can just tweak the settings I need rather than having to set up the whole thing. Does anyone have any user experience to point to to support or contradict my preference?"}
{"_id": "94716", "title": "Is Unit Testing the primary objective of MVC Pattern?", "text": "Recently in an interview, one of the questions was 'Why do we use MVC?\u2019 I just answered that it is much closer to how, many of the real world systems are! Explained the benefits it has when it comes to Maintainability, Scalability etc. But they were not convinced and finally told me that MVC is used mainly as it 'enables easy Unit Testing'. While I know theirs is a valid point, I still doubt if it is the major reason because (i) even if I decide not to write Unit Testcases, MVC is a probable choice (ii) Many GUI systems where Unit Testcases are there does not follow MVC. So the question is 'Is Unit Testing the primary objective of MVC Pattern?' **EDIT:** I assume that they might be mentioning ease of Test Driven Development/writing NUnit Testcases. This is because we canwrite testcases for the Model (Provided the View is exactly reflecting Model's state changes)-please correct me if I am wrong."}
{"_id": "94717", "title": "Infamous failure due to the lack of release process?", "text": "With my fellow engineers we are putting in place a release process in a team that formerly was made only of biologists. I am going to make a presentation to explain the process to them and explain what advantages it brings. I am looking for one example of a project that failed or got into real trouble due to the lack of release process. Are you aware of any ?"}
{"_id": "243063", "title": "Minimizing Average Pairwise Squared Euclidean Norm", "text": "I'm pretty new to programming and computer science, but I was wondering if there was any good way to approach the following problem: For a set of 2n points (not necessarily unique) in R^k (assume each entry is positive), I want an algorithm which will partition the set into n pairs such that the average Euclidean distance squared is minimized. EDIT: Edited for clarity."}
{"_id": "252828", "title": "Proper Query Object Pattern - NHibernate", "text": "I was looking to an alternative to Repository Pattern and I've read about \"Query object pattern\" (http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/2012/10/08/favor- query-objects-over-repositories/). However the implementation provided in the link above is not exactly what I was looking for - I look for something that can be easily injected, easily tested and easily extended/changed (only last point holds in the link-implementation). I thought a bit and I think \"I have invented\" solution. Suppose I have controller `BlogEntriesController` (i'm talking about `mvc asp` application with ORM) and I inject to constructor class:               public class BlogEntriesQueries     {         IRetrieveQuery<BlogEntryEntity> PageBlogEntries { get; set; }         IRetrieveQuery<BlogEntryEntity> ProposedBlogEntries { get; set; }         IAddQuery<BlogEntryEntity> CreateNewBlogEntry { get; set; }         ... etc..     }      where `IRetrieveQuery<T>` is smth like:               public interface IRetrieveQuery<TEntity> where TEntity : EntityBase          IQueryable<TEntity> CurrentQuery { get; }          IRetrieveQuery<TEntity> InvokeQuery(IRetrieveQuery<TEntity> subQuery);          IEnumerable<TEntity> GetQueryResults();     }      Then all the work I'd have to do is proper configuration of IoC container to inject queries into controller and proper calls in controller like: `_blogQueries.ProposedBlogEntries.GetQueryResults()` The question is - it is good solution - are there any drawbacks that I don't see? I think i'd get testability (don't even have to mock `ISession` in case of `NHibernate`) and it'd be easily extensible but I'm not an expert (especially at database applications) by any means."}
{"_id": "252827", "title": "On restricting commercial use for Mathematica / Matlab projects while requiring attribution", "text": "I want to share the code of a research project, for academic purposes, in Bitbucket and Matlab's FileExchange. The code is in both Matlab and Mathematica, and I want to restrict its use for commercial purposes. I don't know if I can use Affero GPL for this, as both Matlab and Mathematica are commercial software. This is the most direct response from the terms of GPLv3 that I've found: > **If a programming language interpreter has a license that is incompatible > with the GPL, can I run GPL-covered programs on it?** (#InterpreterIncompat) > > When the interpreter just interprets a language, the answer is yes. The > interpreted program, to the interpreter, is just data; the GPL doesn't > restrict what tools you process the program with. > > However, when the interpreter is extended to provide \u201cbindings\u201d to other > facilities (often, but not necessarily, libraries), the interpreted program > is effectively linked to the facilities it uses through these bindings. The > JNI or Java Native Interface is an example of such a facility; libraries > that are accessed in this way are linked dynamically with the Java programs > that call them. > > So if these facilities are released under a GPL-incompatible license, the > situation is like linking in any other way with a GPL-incompatible library. > Which implies that: > >   1. If you are writing code and releasing it under the GPL, you can state > an explicit exception giving permission to link it with those GPL- > incompatible facilities. > >   2. If you wrote and released the program under the GPL, and you designed > it specifically to work with those facilities, people can take that as an > implicit exception permitting them to link it with those facilities. But if > that is what you intend, it is better to say so explicitly. > >   3. You can't take someone else's GPL-covered code and use it that way, or > add such exceptions to it. Only the copyright holders of that code can add > the exception... > > What license is compatible with these requirements in Matlab / Mathematica?   * Allowing academic usage    * Requiring attribution for academic usage   * Restricting commercial usage (the program's output -processed images- should not be sold)"}
{"_id": "243069", "title": "Tournament bracket method to put distance between teammates", "text": "I am using a proper binary tree to simulate a tournament bracket. It's preferred any competitors in the bracket that are teammates don't meet each other until the later rounds. What is an efficient method in which I can ensure that teammates in the bracket have as much distance as possible from each other? Are there any other data structures besides a tree that would be better for this purpose? EDIT: There can be more than 2 teams represented in a bracket and there is no requirement to have an equal number of people from each team in a bracket. I intend to use this for individual sports where a person still has an affiliation with a team and we want to delay teammates facing each other until as late as possible."}
{"_id": "252822", "title": "Pulling results from postgresql with cursors", "text": "I'm writing an application in C++ using libpq as the interface to postgresql. I'm currently putting together a small library of helper functions to help deal with the conversion from C++ to C for an application to be used on either a PC or an ARM device (2GHz 2GB ram). With regards to pulling data from the database, I'm concerned as to whether I should pull all the results from the database at once, or use a cursor to read one or a few at a time. The returned result set could probably be in the hundreds and I'm assuming:   * if I pull all results, it'll be a memory hit for the application   * if I pull one tuple at a time via a cursor, it could be a heavy burden on the database server (currently localhost for development) I don't understand how I could obtain some suitable metrics to determine which would be best, so my questions are:   1. Is there a best practice when it comes to retrieving results from the database in the real world (all at once / a row at a time / a few rows at a time)   2. How would I determine some form of metrics to test efficiency? I'm guessing I'd have to take both application memory usage and database load into account along with response time.   3. If it is best to pull a few tuples at a time, how do I determine the optimal amount to pull at once?"}
{"_id": "168106", "title": "Questions about linking libraries in C", "text": "I am learning C (still very much a beginner) on Linux using the GCC compiler. I have noticed that some libraries, such as the library used with the `math.h` header, need to be linked in manually when included. I have been linking in the libraries using various flags of the form `-l[library-name]`, such as `-lm` for the above-mentioned math library. However, after switching from the command line and/or `Geany` to `Code::Blocks`, I noticed that `Code::Blocks` uses `g++` to compile the programs instead of the `gcc` that I am used to (even though the project is definitely specified as C). Also, `Code::Blocks` does not require the libraries to be manually linked in when compiling - libraries such as the math library _just work_. I have two questions: Firstly, is it \"bad\" to compile C programs with the `g++` compiler? So far it seems to work, but after all, C++ is not C and I am quite sure that the `g++` compiler is meant for C++. Secondly, is it the `g++` compiler that is doing the automatic linking of the libraries in `Code::Blocks`?"}
{"_id": "238176", "title": "Why would Square inheriting from Rectangle be problematic if we override the SetWidth and SetHeight methods?", "text": "If a Square is a type of Rectangle, than why can't a Square inherit from a Rectangle? Or why is it a bad design? I have heard people say: > If you made Square derive from Rectangle, then a Square should be usable > anywhere you expect a rectangle What is the problem here? And why would Square be usable anywhere you expect a rectangle? It would only be usable if we create the Square object, and if we override the SetWidth and SetHeight methods for Square than why would there be any issue? > If you had SetWidth and SetHeight methods on your Rectangle base class and > if your Rectangle reference pointed to a Square, then SetWidth and SetHeight > don't make sense because setting one would change the other to match it. In > this case Square fails the Liskov Substitution Test with Rectangle and the > abstraction of having Square inherit from Rectangle is a bad one. Can someone explain the above arguments? Again, if we over-ride SetWidth and SetHeight methods in Square, wouldn't it resolve this issue? I have also heard/read: > The real issue is that we are not modeling rectangles, but rather > \"reshapable rectangles\" i.e., rectangles whose width or height can be > modified after creation (and we still consider it to be the same object). If > we look at the rectangle class in this way, it is clear that a square is not > a \"reshapable rectangle\", because a square cannot be reshaped and still be a > square (in general). Mathematically, we don't see the problem because > mutability doesn't even make sense in a mathematical context Here I believe \"re-sizeable\" is the correct term. Rectangles are \"re-sizeable\" and so are squares. Am I missing something in the above argument? A square can be re-sized like any rectangle."}
{"_id": "254796", "title": "Database Handler and SQL injection prevention", "text": "I've written a `database` model class in PHP and have written a controller class that specifically validates the data before sending it to db. I'm getting criticism that I should handle the data in `database` model class rather than `controller` class. I wanted to write a generic db class which can be used anywhere for CRUD operations. Now can you guys please help me out in sorting this out? Whether I should validate the data in db model class or in db controller class?"}
{"_id": "44632", "title": "Formatting PHP, what works more efficiently?", "text": "I was just wondering what makes PHP work faster. I have a few methods that I always go and do, but that only improves the way I can read it, but how about the interpreter? ### Should I include the curly braces when there is only one statement to run?               if(...){         echo \"test\";     }     # Or..     if(...)         echo \"test\";     === Which should be used?      ### I have also found http://beta.phpformatter.com/, and I find the following settings to be good, but are they? > ### Indentation: > > Indentation style: `{K&R (One true brace style)}`   >  Indent with: `{Tabs}`   >  Starting indentation: `[1]`   >  Indentation: `[1]` > > ### Common: > > `[x]` Remove all comments   >  `[x]` Remove empty lines   >  `[x]` Align assignments statements nicely   >  `[ ]` Put a comment with the condition after if, while, for, foreach, > declare and catch statements > > ### Improvement: > > `[x]` Remove lines with just a semicolon (;)   >  `[x]` Make normal comments (//) from perl comments (#)   >  `[x]` Make long opening tag (<?php) from short one (<?) > > ### Brackets: > > `[x]` Space inside brackets`- ( )`   >  `[x]` Space inside empty brackets`- ( )`   >  `[x]` Space inside block brackets`- [ ]`   >  `[x]` Space inside empty block brackets`- [ ]` ### Tiny var names: often I go through my code and change `$var1` to `$a`, `$var2` to $b and so on. I do include comments at the start of the file to show to me what each letter(s) mean.. ### Final note: So am I doing the right thing with the curly braces and the settings?   Are there any great tips that help it run faster?"}
{"_id": "164285", "title": "Fitting it together, database, reporting, applications in C#", "text": "# Introduction ## Preamble I was hesitant to post this, since it's an application whose intricate details are defined elsewhere, and answers may not be helpful to others. Within the past few weeks (I was actually going to write a blog post about this after I finished) I've discovered that the barrier I'm encountering is one that's actually quite common for newer developers. This question is not so much about a specific thing as it is about piecing those things together. I've searched the internet far and wide, and found many tutorials on how to create applications that are _kind of_ similar to what I'm looking for. I've also looked at hiring another, more experienced, developer to help me along, but all I've gotten are unqualified candidates that don't have the experience necessary and won't take care of the client or project like I will. I'd rather have the project never transpire than to release a solution that is half- baked. I've asked professors at my school, but they've not turned up answers to my question. I'm an experienced developer, and I've written many applications that are -- very abstractly -- close to what I'm doing, but my experiences from those applications aren't giving me enough leverage to solve this particular problem. I just hope that posting this article isn't a mistake for me to write. ## Project Description I have a project I'm working on for a client that is a rewrite of an application, originally written in Foxpro 2.6 by someone before me, that performs some analysis (which, sadly, I'm not allowed to disclose as per of my employment contract) on financial data. One day, after a long talk between the client and I -- where he intimately described his frustrations with all the bugs I've been hacking out of this code for 6 months now -- he told me to just rewrite it and gave me a month to write a good 1/8 of this 65k LOC Foxpro monstrosity. this 65k line of code foxpro monstrosity. It'll take me a good 3 - 6 months to rewrite this software (I know things the original programmer did not, like inheritance) going as I am right now, but I'm quickly discovering that I'm going to need to use databases. Prior to this contract I didn't even know about foxpro, and so I've had to learn foxpro on the fly, write procedures and make modifications to the database. I've actually come to like it, and this project would be rewritten in Foxpro if it were still a supported language, because over the past few months, I've come to like the features of Foxpro that make it so easy to develop data-driven applications. I once perfomed an experiment, comparing C# to Foxpro. What took me 45 minutes in C# took me two in Foxpro, and I knew C# prior to Foxpro. I was hoping to leverage the power of C#, but it intimidates me that in foxpro, you can have one line of code and be using a database. Prior to this, I have never written any _serious_ database development _from scratch_. All the applications that I've written are in a different league. They are either completely data-naive or data-naive enough that I can get away with not using a database through serialization or by designing algorithms that work with the data in a manner that is stateless, so there is no need to worry about databases. I've come to realize, very quickly, that serialization and my efficacy with data structures has been my crutch all these years that's prevented me from adventuring into databases, and has consequently hindered my success in real- world programming. Sure, I've written some database stuff in Perl and Python, and I've done forms and worked with _relational_ databases and tables, I'm a wizard in Access and Excel (seriously) and can do just about anything, but it just feels unnatural writing SQL code in another language... I don't mind writing SQL, and I don't _It's that bridge between the database and the program code that drives me absolutely bonkers._ I hope I'm not the only one to think this, but it bothers me that I have to create statements like the following               string sSql =  \"SELECT * from tablename\"      When there's really no reason for that kind of unchecked language binding between two languages and two API's. Don't get my wrong, SQL is great, but I don't like the idea that, when executing commands on a SQL database, that one must intermix database and application software, and there's no database independence, which means that different versions of different databases can break code. This isn't very nice. The nicest thing about Foxpro is the cohesiveness between programming language and database. It's so easy, and Foxpro makes it easy, because the tool just fits the task. I can see why so many developers have created a career with this language, because it lowered the barrier of entry to data-driven applications that so many businesses need. It was wonderful. For my purposes today, with the demands and need for community support, extensibility, and language features, Foxpro isn't a solution that I feel would be the right tool for the job. I'm also worried about working too heavy with the database, because I've seen data-driven .NET applications have issues with database caches, running out of memory, and objects in the database not being collected. (Memory leaks) _And OH the queries._ * * * ## Which one, how, and why? There are a plethora of different ways that a database can be setup, I think I counted 5 or 6 different kinds of database applications alone that I can chose from. That is a great mountain for me to climb when I don't even know where to begin when it comes to writing data-driven applications. The problem isn't that I don't know SQL or that I don't know C#. I know both and have worked with both extensively. It's making them work together that's the problem, and it's something I've never done in C# before. ## Reports The client likes paper. The data needs to be printed out in a format that is extensible, layered, and easy to use. I have never done reporting before, and so this is a bit of a problem. From the data source comes crystal reports, and so there's a dependency on the database, from what I understand. ## Code reuse A large part of the design decision that I've gone through so far is to break the task of writing a piece of this software into routines and modular DLL's and so forth such that much of the code can be reused. For example, when I setup this database, I want to be able to reuse the same database code over and over again. I also want to make sure that when the day comes that another developer is here, that he/she will be able to pick up just where I left off. The quicker I develop these applications, the better off I am. ## Tasks & Goals In my project, I need to write routines that apply algorithms and look for predefined patterns in financial data. Additionally, I need to simulate trading based on predefined algorithms and data. Then I need to prepare reports on that data. Additionally, I need to have a way to change the code base for this application quickly and effectively, without hacking together some band-aid solution for a problem that really needs a trauma ward. ## Special Considerations The solution must be fast, run quickly on existing hardware, and not be too much of a pain to maintain and write. I understand that anything I write I'm married to -- I'm responsible for the things that I write because my reputation and livelihood is dependent on it. Do I really need a database? What about performance? Performance was such a big issue that I hand wrote a data structure that is capable of performing 2 billion operations, using a total of 4 gigs of memory in under 1/4 of a second using the standard core two duo processor. I could not find a similar, pre-written data structure in C# to perform this task. What setup do I use in terms of database? What about reporting? I'd prefer to have PDF's generated, but I'd like to be able to visually sketch those reports and then just have a ReportFactory of some sort, that when I pass some variables in, it just does that data. ## About Me I'm a lone developer for a small business in this area. This is the first time I've done this and I've never had the breadth and depth of my knowledge tested. I'm incredibly frustrated with this project because I feel incredibly overwhelmed with the task at hand. I'm looking for that entry level point where I can draw a line and say \"this is what I need to do\" ##  Conclusion I may have not been clear enough on my post. I'm still new to this whole thing, and I've been doing my best to contribute back to the community that I've leached so much knowledge from. I'd be glad to edit my post and add more information if possible. I'm looking for a big-picture solution or design process that helps me get off the ground in this world of data-driven applications, because I have a feeling that it's going to be concentric to my entire career as a programmer for some time. Specifically, if you didn't get it from the rest of the post (I may not have been clear enough) I really need some guidance as to where to go in terms of the design decisions for this project. Some things that'll be useful will be a pro/con list for the different kinds of database projects available in VS2010. I've tried, but generating that list has been as hard as solving the problem itself... **If you could walk a developer writing a data-driven application for the first time in C#, how would you do that? Where would you point them to?**"}
{"_id": "255449", "title": "Microsoft Platform Ready Test Tool - Select Primary Executable when they are on a different server", "text": "I am using the Microsoft Platform Ready Test Tool 4.1 and am trying to run through the SQL Server 2012 Data Platform Test My SQL Server 2012 is running on a Windows 2012 server, and all the prerequisite tests are passing. But then I come to step 1: Select Primary Executable(s) of Your Application, and get the following error Message:               You must identify your application's primary executable(s) in the below list.      If no executable is displayed below, you must browse and add your applications's primary      executable that makes the connection to SQL Server. If your application is IIS/PHP/COM+      based solution, then you must add the corresponding framework executable(s) that makes the connection to SQL Server.          So, my Application is a .Net 4.5 web Application that is running on a different VM from the SQL Server. So my question is then: How can i add the files needed? And which files am I supposed to add anyway?"}
{"_id": "164280", "title": "Is this the correct way to implement .NET MVC website structure?", "text": "I have recently seen a .NET MVC solution in which the markup in the `.aspx` views which appear to have a Controller as their model i.e the controller seems to be providing the data for the view, and the `.ascx` user controls they contain use a separate model. I'm new to MVC and I wanted to find out about a few things I'm not clear on. An example of how the code is implemented: `UserDetails.aspx` view has markup that shows it's using the `UserDetailsController.cs` as the model. It contains `RenderPartial(\"User_Details.ascx\", UserDetailsModel)` and passes it the `UserDetailsModel`. Is this the standard/correct way of implementing MVC? Or just one way to implement it? I also noticed that the classes used as Models appear to be Service classes that have `[DataMember]` and `[DataContract]` attributes on the class name and properties - what is the advantage of this implementation?"}
{"_id": "164283", "title": "Learning OO for a C Programmer", "text": "I've been programming professionally in C, and only C, for around 10 years in a variety of roles. As would be normal to expect, I understand the idioms of the language fairly well and beyond that also some of the design nuances - which APIs to make public, who calls what, who does what, what is supposed to reentrant and so on. I grew up reading 'Writing Solid Code', it's early C edition, not the one based on C++. However, I've never ever programmed in an OO language. Now, I want to migrate to writing applications for iPhone (maybe android), so want to learn to use Objective-C and use it with a degree of competence fitting a professional programmer. How do I wrap my head around the OO stuff? What would be your smallest reading list suggestion to me. Is there a book that carries some sort of relatively real world example OO design Objective-C? Besides, the reading what source code would you recommend me to go through. How to learn OO paradigm using Objective-C?"}
{"_id": "1782", "title": "Salvaging remains of dead web-application project: What to look for?", "text": "I don't know if this question is more on-topic here or on SO, so if I've missed site, I apologize. Anyway I was talking with a relative recently. She is working in a company which needed a website. They contracted another company which does web-apps and graphical design to make them a website, give source code and do maintenance. The site is supposed to give general economic propaganda about the company, to have a news section and to have a portal for associates where they will be able to get statistical information like amount of sales of their products and similar stuff. The last part was supposed to read data from the database used by the All-in-One program used by my relative's company. The project was supposed to last three to six months and use LAMP (or WAMP) AJAX and Python. Unfortunately six months passed almost four times since the start of the project and the only results are couple of mock-up images. Furthermore they seem to be in a mess. They are avoiding contact and are always complaining how developers keep quitting after just couple of months of work and that they can't make a stable project team (on a side-note, they did websites for several other companies on time, so they were capable of producing the result at one time). By now it is clear that the project will not be done any time soon and my relative's company is considering firing the contractors and taking whatever they did make and finding someone else to finish the work. Unfortunately, their IT guy didn't do any programming since PDP-11 era, so he won't be very helpful and it looks like it will be up to me to inspect whatever contractors did. I did some programming, but only a little bit of web programming, so my question is: What should I expect to find in the code-base and resources? The thing is that they I have reasons to suspect that they share code across different projects and may attempt to weasel out parts of it. I know that there will probably be a part with resources used by the site like images and so on and that there will probably be a database and some scripts. Also, if you think that this should be turned into community-wiki or general \"Failed Project: How to recover anything useful from it?\" discussion, please comment. Also, court is not a solution, because they are so efficient in my country that its decision would probably come in early 2020s."}
{"_id": "255446", "title": "How can I simplify the following Access Control system design?", "text": "I couldn't find a better title for this... I am trying to create an Access Control for my application and I am having serious trouble with building not an insane system, mainly for performance as this system will reside in an SQL database and will be used excessively throughout the app (every query will be using it for fetching data) So here is my scenario and my current design: My system has 3 modules and each has the general CRUD actions - list, view, update, create, delete; and sometimes has more specific actions like - user.view.creator, user.update.photo, user.update.metadata, storage.upload, storage.download etc. I want my system to have \"tasks\" or \"operations\" and they will be hierarchical, for example storage.view will have a child storage.download. This is for the operations. This part I have no problem implementing and designing. My biggest problem is designing the connection between a user and the tasks. Both RBAC and ACL doesn't fit my needs in this case, so I am trying to build my own. I cannot implement RBAC because in RBAC the roles are static but in my case the roles themselves are dependent of the resource and the group that this resource belongs to. For example, Group A's role photographer can only upload a photo from the storage, while the Group B's photographer can also delete the photo from the storage. Therefore, to keep things somewhat simple, I decided to add a new resource GROUP and every all the files, roles etc must BELONG to some group. On the other hand, the user just gets mapped to a group; they never BELONG to a group, they just access resources in groups. This makes perfect sense and works seamlessly and is not very complex - the queries are simpler, so I have space to cluster the databases etc. However, now here comes the problem that just doesn't fit in my current design. I have another resource, CLIENT. The problem is, in the one organization, a user can have different access to different clients. So for example, lets say I have Group A, that has Clients 1 to 25. A specific user that belongs to that group, can have something like:               Client 1 - Manager     Client 2 - Assistant     Client 3 - SomeOtherRole      And when he fetches a list of clients, the user will only see 3 clients. I really don't know what I should do to achieve this in the most performant way possible. My question is, how should I proceed with designing this part of my system? And a better question, how can I simplify this system?"}
{"_id": "1785", "title": "What should every programmer know about programming?", "text": "Please, **stay on technical issues** , avoid behavior, cultural, career or political issues."}
{"_id": "255444", "title": "Is it possible to build releases based on tags with a Continuous Integration system (such as Travis CI / Jenkins)", "text": "After reading and asking about how to deal with git, Github, branching, versioning and tagging, it looks like the best way to denote a new version of software, is by marking the last commit of a specific version with a specific tag. A structure like this can be assumed:   * Commit 1   * Commit 2: Tag 1.0.0   * Commit 3   * Commit 4   * Commit 5: Tag 1.1.0   * Commit 6: Tag 1.1.0 Where once version 2.0.0 is released, most likely a 1.1.x branch is created to maintain the 1.1 release for hotfixes, etc. Now I am wondering how it is possible to integrate this with a CI, like Travis for example. What I do know is that:   * A Continuous Integration system, like Travis CI, gets triggered on every _commit_ to any branch, and it is possible to enable/disable this per branch. I am struggling to figure out if it possible at all to start a build once you have _tagged_ a certain commit, can anyone explain me how this can work?"}
{"_id": "161428", "title": "Analyzing Memory Usage: Java vs C++ Negligible?", "text": "How does the memory usage of an integer object written in Java compare\\contrast with the memory usage of a integer object written in C++? Is the difference negligible? No difference? A big difference? I'm guessing it's the same because an int is an int regardless of the language (?) The reason why I asked this is because I was reading about the importance of knowing when a program's memory requirements will prevent the programmer from solving a given problem. What fascinated me is the amount of memory required for creating a single Java object. Take for example, an integer object. Correct me if I'm wrong but a Java integer object requires 24 bytes of memory:   * 4 bytes for its int instance variable   * 16 bytes of overhead (reference to the object's class, garbage collection info & synchronization info)   * 4 bytes of padding As another example, a Java array (which is implemented as an object) requires 48+bytes:   * 24 bytes of header info   * 16 bytes of object overhead   * 4 bytes for length   * 4 bytes for padding   * plus the memory needed to store the values  How do these memory usages compare with the same code written in C++? I used to be oblivious about the memory usage of the C++ and Java programs I wrote, but now that I'm beginning to learn about algorithms, I'm having a greater appreciation for the computer's resources."}
{"_id": "179684", "title": "Concept behind SHA-1 Checksum", "text": "What's the basis behind SHA-1 or SHA-2 or other Checksum algorithms? I read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-1#Data_Integrity But I am still wondering about an answer in a layman's language. Can I understand it as a very, very compressed code that can be translated back into original data? Let's say, I have a letter written in notepad. Then the whole of my 1 A4 page size data can be converted into something like this \"9b90417b6a186b6f314f0b679f439c89a3b0cdf5\". So whenever I want my original data back, I can convert this back into original data? I am very sure that I am wrong here, because it is weird how data that itself contains combination of letters and numbers can be represented by smaller set of letters and numbers. Illogical! Then, what's the basic?"}
{"_id": "179682", "title": "Does UX matter for enterprise software?", "text": "I've come to notice that a lot of software that companies use for managing things like time, expenses, setting up phone systems, etc is very non- intuitive from a user experience point of view. I know personally I waste a lot of time just trying to figure out how to navigate these systems, especially if I don't have a co-worker close by who I can bug to help me out. The help files are usually just as bad as the user interface itself. Are companies that complacent or are there just not any comparable enterprise products out there which do the job for these sorts of tasks? It seems that on the consumer side there is plenty of market opportunity for creating better user experiences, but how about for enterprise software? Obviously a certain level of slickness is not going to matter to a company, but when a better UX design translates to time saved, it's hard to argue against that. Edit: I'm not referring to in-house applications, but rather off the shelf systems from large software companies."}
{"_id": "179681", "title": "Chambers In A Castle Algorithm", "text": "**Problem Statement -** ![Problem Statement](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Weq4m.png) Given a NxM grid of 1s & 0s (1s mark walls, while 0s indicate empty chambers), the task is to identify the number of chambers & the size of the largest. And just to whet my curiosity, to find in which chamber, a cell belongs. It seems like an ad hoc problem, since the regular algorithms just don't fit in. I just can't get the logic for writing an algorithm for the problem. If you get it, pseudo-code would be of great help! Note - I have tried the regular grid search algorithms, but they don't suffice the problem requirements. Source - INOI Q Paper 2003"}
{"_id": "161421", "title": "Can I implement the readers and writers algorithm in OpenMP by replacing counting semaphores with another feature?", "text": "After reading about OpenMP and not finding functions to support semaphores, I did an internet search for OpenMP and the readers and writers problem, but found no suitable matches. Is there a general method for replacing counting semaphores in OpenMP with something that it supports? Or is there just a gap in the environment where it does not permit things that are asymmetrical like the third readers and writers problem shown on the following page? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readers-writers_problem#The_third_readers- writers_problem"}
{"_id": "112622", "title": "Designing an easily extensible XML driven OOP system", "text": "I've been working on a project that is very data-driven (a checkers board game with customizable rules; I'm using XML for the data storage). I need a design that is easy to extend as we add new features to the project via new XML tags. My XML schema looks like this for a win condition (checkers):               <game>        <winconditions>           <condition winner=\"Black\">              <Pieces color=\"Red\" number=\"0\" />           </condition>           <condition winner=\"Red\">              <Pieces color=\"Black\" number=\"0\" />           </condition>        </winconditions>     </game>      `<game>` is the root element. There are other major sections such as `<board>` which defines the size and shape of the board and placement of the pieces, and `<moves>` which defines how pieces move. The idea is to have several \"options\" that combine to form a \"condition\" - if all \"options\" are true, the \"condition\"'s evaluation returns a winner. Right now, the best strategy I have come up with is to create a package for the tag processing classes:               processors        pieces      And an interface to a win condition option:               public interface WinConditionOption {        void setParameters(HashMap<String, String> args);        boolean evaluate(GameState state);     }      The file processor, when it sees a tag inside the `<winconditions>` tag, uses reflection to look up the corresponding class and calls it using the interface. So the `Pieces` tag causes a `Pieces` object to be created and `setAttributes()` is called with the tag's attributes. When we check for a win, `evaluate()` is called with the current state of the game. `Pieces` would evaluate whether the number of pieces belonging to that player was a certain number, 0 in this case (no pieces left). Is this a good design? Is there a better way to do it and still be able to write minimal new code to add a new win option?"}
{"_id": "40821", "title": "learn the programming language for computing functions about integers", "text": "I know something about Pascal, Mathematica and Matlab, but I dont have any idea about C,C++,C# languages. I want to learn one of the languages that they they are fast and exact to compute some arithmetic functions for large numbers(for example larger than $10^3000$). I asked somebody and he said he used C++ and he said I computed this sequence in less than 10 min. I want to know C, C++, C# and visual kind of theses programs and know which is better for my goal. Let $f$ be an arithmetic function and A={k1,k2,...,kn} are integers in increasing order. Now I want to start with k1 and compare f(ki) with f(k1). If f(ki)>f(k1), put ki as k1. Now start with ki, and compare f(kj) with f(ki), for j>i. If f(kj)>f(ki), put kj as ki, and repeat this procedure. At the end we will have a sub sequence B={L1,...,Lm} of A by this property: f(L(i+1))>f(L(i)), for any 1<=i<=m-1 I have written a code for this program with Mathematica, and it take some hours to compute f of ki's or the set B for large numbers. For example, let f is the divisor function of integers. Do you know how to write the code for my purpose in Mathematica or Matlab. Mathematica is preferable."}
{"_id": "216166", "title": "Are there Any Concerns with Importing Document Files From a Competing Product?", "text": "I have a new product that serves the same purpose as my competitor's long- standing product. One thing I have considered doing is allowing my program to import document files created by their product in order to provide an easy way for users to migrate towards mine. Naturally, this would be done without the competitor's permission, as it goes against their interests. I've seen this done before with office suite software (e.g. Open Office and Apple Pages can import MS Word documents), but I'm wondering if there are any concerns, legal or ethical, with me doing this. I fully expect any answers will most likely fall under the \"I am not a lawyer\" clause, but it would be helpful to have a starting point for anything I would need to be aware of, or if I shouldn't need to worry."}
{"_id": "40829", "title": "What is platform independence? Are cross-platform and 'platform independence' same?", "text": "What is the platform independence really mean? What are the criterion to call a language platform independent ? Are cross-platform and 'platform independence' same? (This may be a question for self study, but i would like to hear from experts from Stack overflow. There are lots of definitions and views regarding it on interenet and some of them are confusing)"}
{"_id": "216163", "title": "Tree position terminology/naming", "text": "This is a naming things question. I am processing trees (XML documents), and there are often special rules applied to nodes based on structure. It's been very difficult coming up with concise naming conventions for some cases, namely for nodes in the first position among their siblings, along with some recursive relationship:   1. Given an arbitrary node, I want to describe its first child, and then that node's first child, and so on recursively.   2. Given another arbitrary node, I want to describe its parent if the parent is first among its siblings, and that parent's parent if it's first, and so on recursively. Is there existing terminology to describe these tree positions? How would you name a variable or function that captures one of these cases so that it's intuitive to an unfamiliar developer trying to understand an algorithm?"}
{"_id": "163489", "title": "Why does java.util.ArrayList allow to add null?", "text": "I wonder why java.util.ArrayList allows to add null. Is there any case where I would want to add null to an ArrayList? I am asking this question because in a project we had a bug where some code was adding nulls to the List and it was hard to spot where the bug was. Obviously a NullPointerException was thrown but not until another code tried to access the element. The problem was how to locate the code that added the null object. It would have been easier if the ArrayList throwed an exception in the code where the elements was being added."}
{"_id": "178376", "title": "How can I better manage far-reaching changes in my code?", "text": "In my work (writing scientific software in C++), I often get asked by the people who use the software to get their work done to add some functionality or change the way things are done and organized right now. Most of the time this is just a matter of adding a new class or a function and applying some glue to do the job, but from time to time, a seemingly simple change turns out to have far-reaching consequences that require me to redesign a substantial amount of existing code, which takes a lot of time and effort, and is difficult to evaluate in terms of time required. I don't think it has as much to do with inter-dependence of modules, as with changing requirements (admittedly, on a smaller scale). To provide an example, I was thinking about the recently-added multi-user functionality in Android. I don't know whether they planned to introduce it from the very beginning, but assuming they didn't, it seems hard to predict all the areas that will be affected by the change (apps preferences, themes, need to store account info somehow, etc...?), even though the concept seems simple enough, and the code is well-organized. How do you deal with such situations? Do you just jump in to code and then sort out the cruft later like I do? Or do you do a detailed analysis beforehand of what will be affected, what needs to be updated and how, and what has to be rewritten? If so, what tools (if any) and approaches do you use?"}
{"_id": "236743", "title": "Eventual consistency in Banking systems", "text": "I keep hearing people say Banking systems like ATM use Eventual consistency model for data synchronization, but I am wondering if it is true. Definitely the amount you withdraw might be delayed showing in your banking statement, but I assume they won't let the amount of your banking account inconsistent at any given time, right? Anyone working in the industry can confirm this?"}
{"_id": "231092", "title": "Is pattern-matching against types idiomatic or poor design?", "text": "It seems like F# code often pattern matches against types. Certainly               match opt with      | Some val -> Something(val)      | None -> Different()      seems common. But from an OOP perspective, that looks an awful lot like control-flow based on a runtime type check, which would typically be frowned on. To spell it out, in OOP you'd probably prefer to use overloading:               type T =          abstract member Route : unit -> unit          type Foo() =          interface T with             member this.Route() = printfn \"Go left\"          type Bar() =          interface T with             member this.Route() = printfn \"Go right\"      This is certainly more code. OTOH, it seems to my OOP-y mind to have structural advantages:   * extension to a new form of `T` is easy;    * I don't have to worry about finding duplication of the route-choosing control flow; and   * route choice is immutable in the sense that once I have a `Foo` in hand, I need never worry about `Bar.Route()`'s implementation Are there advantages to pattern-matching against types that I'm not seeing? Is it considered idiomatic or is it a capability that is not commonly used?"}
{"_id": "123755", "title": "Tools to help Agile team deliver value", "text": "My Agile team is following practices of XP like pair programming(J2EE), 45 work hours/week, TDD etc. Do you have any recommendations of open source tools (dev, test & build integration) and templates(user story, burndown charting) etc. for enabling my team to focus on business value delivery. I am the iteration manager and we have tried Hudson, Junit and Selenium."}
{"_id": "123753", "title": "Is it ethical to use personal code at work?", "text": "I am working on a side project at work where I find it beneficial to use some of my code that I have developed personally (outside of work) to speed my development. My side project is developing a C++ GUI application to let our power users run queries (built by me) against databases on several different platforms (DB2, Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL). In the past, I would usually just run these myself on request or build an Excel VBA application for them. Now that I have built several VBA applications for several different people, I find the need to build one central application that just reads in custom .sql files and executes against various databases. The application that I am building is in C++ and uses an LGPL cross-platform GUI toolkit. However, I have a lot of code that in my own libraries that I have built over the years on leisure, non-work related projects. Is it okay to use this code at work, thus saving me (and the company) time? If so, can I port any bug fixes and enhancements back to my personal library? There seems to be a line that I do not know when I am going to cross it. I just want to add that none of the personal code has anything to do with any business logic. They are just basic utility classes/wrappers."}
{"_id": "123750", "title": "Are there any best practices regarding the handover from architecture to development?", "text": "We are looking at improving the process for handing over tasks from architecture to development. At one end of the scale it there is no architecture guidance you risk getting chaos, with each developer doing things his way. At the other end of the scale where everything is specified, the specification takes longer than the development, and you risk having very boring development tasks. Has anyone found an optimal middle ground between these extremes? Which artifacts do you deliver to development? For example: modules, class structure, or sequence diagrams?"}
{"_id": "179970", "title": "Domain Model and Querying", "text": "I am new to DDD, having worked only in Transaction-Script apps with an anemic model, or just Big Balls of Mud, so please forgive any terminology I abuse. I am trying to understand the proper separation between the domain model and the repository. What is the proper way to construct a domain object that is coming from a database, assuming the (incredibly simplified) need to query for objects by status (returns `enumerable`), or by ID.   * Should a factory be building the objects, exposing methods for `GetByStatus()` and `GetByID()`, using a DIed repository?   * Should a repository be called directly, knowing how to build a domain model from the DTO?   * Should the domain model have a constructor for get by ID, using a DIed repoistory to load the initial state, using some other (?) method for the list? I am not really sure what the best way would be, and this question has an answer advocating each one (these are certainly mutuallu exclusive)."}
{"_id": "179974", "title": "Better php framework for shared hosting", "text": "I need to develop an app for booking appointments. This is going to be **hosted in a shared server**. So performance is the most important thing. I have used symfony2. I quite liked the framework. But seems to be heavy. Which framework would suit me considering my requirements? I have shortlisted three frameworks **yii, symfony2 and ZF2.** I am not asking which framework is better. **All the three are good frameworks**. I want to know which will suit my requirements. My first priority would be performance (I will be using AJAX wherever possible), second would be maintenance and development time and third community support. Or should I use my own handlers to separate views and logic and just use raw php?"}
{"_id": "123759", "title": "Branding websites aimed for mobile devices", "text": "I'm currently working on a website which is also supposed to be mobile optimized. My client has provided me with a layout of how the mobile version of how the website should look like. Making their design wish come true is no biggie, but making the design fit the screen is my issue. Right now I'm facing some issues regarding the width on the `<body>` tag of the site, as the design is measured to a width of `640px`, but that leaves a big gap on the right side of the screen on e.g. iPhones and Android phones. The website is being developed in ASP.NET and C#. We're only using 1 masterpage, thus the optimizing can be tricky. The design I've been provided with is a `.psd` file which I'm supposed to just slize up and take images etc. directly out of. Problem is all the navigation images, content dividing images etc. are all in specified widths and heights, thus I've put the width of `640px` on the `<body>` tag. So my question really is, what's the best way of fitting a design to a handheld screen? Should I forget all about pixels, em and inches and go all the way with % for both width, font-size etc? Or can I just \"copy/paste\" the provided design and some how force the screen resolutions on the phones to fit their zoom to the width of the 640px body width without leaving gaps of space in either sides of the screen?"}
{"_id": "95048", "title": "What is the difference between collation and character set?", "text": "I have a general question about databases. We usually use the term collation with databases. I would like to know how its different from character set. I guess collation is a subset of character set. If its true, what is the purpose multiple collation under a character set."}
{"_id": "178087", "title": "UML - Class Diagrams Order -> Products", "text": "I have a class diagram that is like this:               < Order > (1) CAN HAVE (M) < products >      But therefore `Order` has the following:               Order_Id     Customer_Id     Order_date_day     Order_date_month     Order_date_yeah      But I do not know how it would handle the Products? Because, I couldn't have `ProductID` because that would mean that each item in this class would have to have a separate instance for each product (E.g. someone ordered 100 products, but only placed 1 order). Could I have an `Product` object in class `Order`? If so, how do I represent that in UML?"}
{"_id": "95043", "title": "Best 3 people development team organization?", "text": "A developer of my company was promoted to a new possition that practically manages us developers, and he assigned to 3 people in our team(including me) some big proyects done in Java/Delphi/.NET, the point of being a team was so that each of us could manage each other's code in case that someone goes on vacation or leaves the company for any reason. Suggestions start on monday but i really have not found any solid information on how language agnostic teams work, nor how to manage one, although my idea was to advice a eclipse/maven/jenkins enviroment with TDD approach for java projects, but i do not know what is best for us in the other languages. Would you migrate the Delphi .Net applications to Java as well? Or would you learn both languages as well and just leave it as it is. I am sort of a java fanboy but i wouldn't mind learning other languages, but what i do think is that having one language has advantages like everyone knowing the same tools and less tools to master. I still do not know what to suggest besides what i said above, any advice on this sort of problems is appreciated."}
{"_id": "95047", "title": "What's the best way to prepare your design & code for those \"unknown unknown\" bugs from day one?", "text": "I am just wondering, is there any practical method or technique or even tricks to get avoid those \"unknown unknown\" bugs especially those nasty and random ones which are often emerge at the last minutes or at least to keep these things at a minimum level. I ask this because when you work on a new platform or use certain new technology for the first time, how do you justify your design and code are robust enough? Or these things can only be learned by time and mistakes? (I use C++ for most of my working time) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "185939", "title": "Last semester of college: while trying to get first web/mobile developer job", "text": "I am in the last year of my BS in Engineering - Information Technology degree. Some things I have noticed while looking for jobs is that larger older corporations want you to know java or c# for their existing enterprise level systems, while most high-tech, startup or mobile centric software companies want you to know the latest languages, technologies and have experience with open source stuff. The startup/mobile company appeals more to me. The companies usually seem to have more young people working for them and advertise how fun it is to work there. I was thinking about trying to get a developer position in either mobile or web development fields. My main problem is that I have no experience working just as a programmer. I have had an internship that dealt mainly with systems administration work, along with learning all of the corporate business side of things and helping the marketing team with their web page. Now in my last semester I am rushing to try to put together a portfolio. I have a wide variety of small projects in PHP, ROR, C#, along with hybrid type html/css/javascript mobile apps. None of these projects are what I consider to be completed and polished. I have a wide range of half done web apps. Would it be a bad idea to but unfinished projects in a portfolio on a resume? I am really tempted into getting more into iOS objective-c development but would it be to late at this point? I know that it is important to master something but I only have a few months until graduation, would it be better to just go back and finish a small php app or something similar? (that essentially isn't really anything but a personal project). I feel I have a good understanding of core principles but don't know how to best allocate my time. Any advice would be helpful, Thank You."}
{"_id": "115851", "title": "Is Perl still a useful, viable language?", "text": "I know it may have been asked before, but here goes nothing... Is Perl still something that would be considered useful? If someone was a new programmer (either completely new to programming or just a few month/years of experience) would Perl be something to be considered worthwhile to learn? Is Perl still used with frequency? Is it still popular? Or is Perl dying out compared to languages like Python, Ruby, PHP, ASP.NET, etc.? Basically it boils down to this:   * Is it still used/is it still used frequently? If yes, is it dying? If no, will it make a come back?   * Is it something that would be worth learning?   * How does it compare in demand to languages like Python in both popularity and usability/viability? Could languages like Python or Ruby be considered replacements for Perl? Also, will newer versions of Perl really bring a large improvement to the Perl community, and perhaps bring Perl back to centerstage compared to other languages? EDIT: Okay, I suppose here's a better, reworded question: Is Perl still growing, or is it \"dying\"? Is it still a language worth learning and using? What projects does it really \"shine\" in compared to other languages? What makes Perl a language to choose? Essentially: is Perl growing obsolete compared to other languages, and if so, do you expect that to change, or to continue? And thank you to everyone who has answered so far, the discussion has been really interesting!"}
{"_id": "196495", "title": "How can I test parts of my application against the output of third party application?", "text": "I have a fairly new C# application, approximately 6 months old, that we are now trying to incorporate testing into. (Should have been done from the start but I can't change the past) Parts of this application involve pushing some documents out to a folder. A third party application then picks these up, does its own work on them, and drops output files in another folder. My application waits for this to be done, picks up the outputs, then continues its work. This poses a problem when testing as I can't really install another version of the third party just for testing, nor can I mock it without ending up fully rewriting the third party application. How can I test these parts of my application? (Preferably with NUnit) Specifically, I'm asking about how to unit test my code against the output of the 3rd party tool. So it's a little bit different than another similar question, which involves isolating how code interfaces with a third party."}
{"_id": "232620", "title": "Is there any issue if ternary operator is used in super() method", "text": "I am using a ternary operator in super () method of my code. While the code went for review, I got a reply that > Strictly don\u2019t use ternary operators in the Super() calls. Is there any problem if we use ternary operators in the super() method?"}
{"_id": "151004", "title": "Are There Metrics For Cohesion And Coupling?", "text": "Is there a metric analogous to the McCabe Complexity measure to measure how cohesive a routine is and also how loosely (or tightly) coupled the routine is to other code in the same code base?"}
{"_id": "162994", "title": "Does Rhodes actually create a Native app or a Hybrid app", "text": "Rhodes claims to be able to build Native apps but I'm not sure or not if this means a native shell + embedded Web Browser like PhoneGap or does it create a true Native app like (I believe) Titanium does."}
{"_id": "162992", "title": "Distributed Transaction Framework across webservices", "text": "I am designing a new system that has one central web service and several site web services which are spread across the country and some overseas. It has some data that must be identical on all sites. So my plan is to maintain that data in the central web service and then \"sync\" the data to sites. This includes inserts, edits and deletes. I see a problem when deleting, if one site has used the record, then I need to undo the delete that has happened on the other servers. This lead me to idea that I need some sort of transaction system that can work across different web servers. Before I design one from scratch, I would like to know if anyone has come across this sort of problem and if there are any frame works or even design patterns that might aid me?"}
{"_id": "162991", "title": "DDD / Layers and legacy systems", "text": "I have to refactor a complex C# app (many dialogs, mixed logic and so on). There is a part managing the communication with special hardware equipments (sending commands and receive data via asynchronous c# callbacks). The code is \"spaghetti\" with mixed UI/Logic/Communication/etc and my task is to split the layers in a DDD sense. So, to which layer belongs a callback driver routine? The callbacks are creating \"bubbles\" in the system, up to the UI layer and because of this I cannot enforce the essential principle that any element of a layer depends only on other elements in the same layer or on elements of the layers \"beneath\" it."}
{"_id": "50577", "title": "Sell me on IoC containers, please", "text": "I've seen several recommend use of IoC containers in code. The motivation is simple. Take the following dependency injected code:               class UnitUnderTest     {         std::auto_ptr<Dependency> d_;     public:         UnitUnderTest(             std::auto_ptr<Dependency> d = std::auto_ptr<Dependency>(new ConcreteDependency)         ) : d_(d)         {         }     };               TEST(UnitUnderTest, Example)     {         std::auto_ptr<Dependency> dep(new MockDependency);         UnitUnderTest uut(dep);         //Test here     }      Into:               class UnitUnderTest     {         std::auto_ptr<Dependency> d_;     public:         UnitUnderTest()         {             d_.reset(static_cast<Dependency *>(IocContainer::Get(\"Dependency\")));         }     };               TEST(UnitUnderTest, Example)     {         UnitUnderTest uut;         //Test here     }          //Config for IOC container normally     <Dependency>ConcreteDependency</Dependency>          //Config for IOC container for testing     <Dependency>MockDependency</Dependency>      (The above is hypothetical C++ example of course) While I agree that this simplifies the interface of the class by removing the dependency constructor parameter, I think the cure is worse than the disease for a couple of reasons. First, and this is a big one for me, this makes your program dependent on an external configuration file. If you need single binary deployment, you simply cannot use these kinds of containers. The second issue is that the API is now weakly and worse, _stringly_ typed. The evidence (in this hypothetical example) is the string argument to the IoC container, and the cast on the result. So.. are there other benefits of using these kinds of containers or do I just disagree with those recommending the containers?"}
{"_id": "1257", "title": "How do you deal with teachers teaching the wrong stuff?", "text": "Today was my first university day, and my software engineering class left me with a bitter taste. The professor sure seems to know about design and design patterns and MVC and the like (it's going to be his topic), but when it comes to compiling and branch prediction he seems to be a little confused. At some point he started to explain us why object-oriented programs are slower than imperative programs because object-oriented programs are interpreted while programs written in a non-OO language like, say, C, are compiled to machine code. He then proceeded to explain how modern compilers, like C compilers, try to guess which branch in a condition will be executed most of the time, and puts the first instructions of these branches before the `if` block, and that's some kind of way of implementing instruction-level parallelism. He then told us that these compilers had to do educated guesses, but a JIT compiler, like modern Java JIT compilers, could profile your code and put the instructions of the most frequently used branch before the `if` block, without having to guess. This was inexact and confusing at best. It looked like a mashup of many things confused in ways so strange I can only be thankful it's not what the course is about. Students interrupted him a few times, asking rhetorically if he was talking about Java or OO in general (he agreed that he should have been more explicit about the distinction between the two, but still told several inaccuracies), but we remained silent while he went on with his explanations on branch prediction. So. How do you tell your professor he's not on the right track? Obviously, doing it in front of everybody is not a Good Thing\u2122. But waiting the end of the class to tell him might do some serious damage to the understanding of other students. I suspect we won't hear this kind of stuff again, and the rest of what he told us did make sense, so filing a complaint is certainly not an option (especially after just one class). He seems to be in position of teaching design patterns, but he really went off-road with his talk about compilers and that stuff."}
{"_id": "212268", "title": "Is Dependency Injection worth it outside of UnitTesting", "text": "Given a constructor that will never, ever, have to use any different implementations of several objects that it initializes, is it still practical to use DI? After all, we might still want to unit test. The class in question initializes a few other classes in its constructor and the classes it uses are pretty specific. It will never use another implementation. Are we justified in avoiding trying to program to an interface?"}
{"_id": "28331", "title": "Handling my antiquated coworker", "text": "I'm a fairly young programmer, and I work at a medium sized company's IT department. I have a coworker, and he is a really good Visual Basic 6 programmer. And I mean really good. Honestly. He can deliver working applications, containing very few bugs, in the time I need to get my first cup of coffee, and boot my machine. He is just that good. Thing is, we are working with a team, and his working style is completely antiquated. He doesn't believe in versioning software (if you just make sure your code is correct, you don't need all that nonsense). Doesn't believe in deployment (I can deliver a working executable. How that is deployed is for the sysadmins to figure out). Doesn't believe in abstraction. ('if you want to create a subroutine, go ahead, but don't call any subroutines from that subroutine. It gets messy that way, and the code is hard to follow. This way every one can follow every step on the way.' or 'yeah, sure you can use that library to do that for you, but that way you don't really understand what's going on') and certainly doesn't believe in OOP. (we work in VB.net) He is so good in what he does, he can deliver applications way faster than I can. But it just doesn't work in a team. Our other team member is quiet, and doesn't like to speak out, though he tends to agree. Our manager thinks I make valid points, but is not a programmer. I have a really hard time maintaining programs he has written, and it doesn't make for a good team atmosphere. What do you think is the best thing for me to do?"}
{"_id": "89883", "title": "How to \"neutralize\" those who write bad code on the team?", "text": "I always loved this article on JoelOnSoftware called \"Getting Things Done When You're Only a Grunt\" . I could especially relate when I was newbie (and still feel like I will ALWAYS be one). About #4, neutralizing the bozo's. What advice do you have for actually implementing this in real situations at work? It doesn't seem to be as easy (at least on our team) as simply logging a bug against someone's bad code. What works for all the rest of you out there?"}
{"_id": "212261", "title": "When will be safe to choose Multi-thread design without dead lock?", "text": "Sometime we really need to choose a multi-threaded design, because single- threading will block the UI or block another thread. But sometimes using multiple threads is just one of the choices, for example, you may able to replace multi-threading with timer. In that situation, you may want to avoid the effort of investigating the performance risk of using timer and directly go to the multi-threaded design. But as we know, threading has a lot of drawbacks:   1. Sync issue.   2. Debugging is tough for sync issue.   3. Deadlock issue. The #1 can always resolved by adding locks, and #3 is the hardest to resolve, it may need design level changes. So let's focus on when will be safe to choose multi-threaded design without having deadlock issues. I use the Following rules to judge it is safe or not:   * The component only has input data and entry function call interaction.   * Or the component only has output data and exit function call interaction.   * Or you have entry and exit data or function call, but you can make sure all the data that goes in can be handled asynchronously. (I cannot think out of case, because you almost always need to syncronized to push the data into an queue.) Does that make sense to you, any thought is welcome."}
{"_id": "22559", "title": "Are optional parameters helpful or a hindrance to application maintenance?", "text": "As stated in the title, are optional parameters, such as those used in C# helpful or are they a hindrance to application maintenance and should be avoided as they can make the code harder to understand?"}
{"_id": "245573", "title": "Live search/filter as you type in client approach", "text": "As an exercise for myself to practice my JavaScript \"skills\" I'm trying to write a client-side filter. It should be able to filter \"content blocks\" as the user types. By \"content block\", I mean a list of DomElements that each contain at least one text node - it is possible that they contain more, and even a different amount of text nodes, nested inside other nodes, etc. I've thought of 2 approaches:   1. On page initialization, scan all nodes and store all the text in some kind of Map or a tree.   2. Simply iterate over every item and check whether it has the string to search/filter for. One could add performance here by caching, only filtering the current remaining items if text is added, etc. Obviously, if the number of nodes is really big, option 1 will take a while to build the 'index' but it will perform faster once it is built. Option 2 however will be available right on page load since no initialization is performed. But of course it will take longer to search. So my question is: what is the best approach here? And how would one implement 'caching' and/or 'index'?"}
{"_id": "22552", "title": "Software on Budget and on time?", "text": "We've all (almost all) have heard about the horror stories as well as perhaps studied about them. Its easy to find stories of software that is over budget and late. I wanted to hear from developers the opposite story: **Question:**   * Do you know, or have worked on a project that was on budget and on time?   * What is the most valuable lesson you learned from it?"}
{"_id": "172850", "title": "How to apply verification and validation on the following example", "text": "I have been following verification and validation questions here with my colleagues, yet we are unable to see the slight differences, probably caused by language barrier in technical English. An example:   * **Requirement specification** User wants to control the lights in 4 rooms by remote command sent from the UI for each room separately.   * **Functional specification**     1. The UI will contain 4 checkboxes labelled according to rooms they control.     2. When a checkbox is checked, the signal is sent to corresponding light. A green dot appears next to the checkbox      3. When a checkbox is unchecked, the signal (turn off) is sent to corresponding light. A red dot appears next to the checkbox. Let me start with what I learned here: **Verification** , according to many great answers here, ensures that product reflects specified requirements - as functional spec is done by a producer based on requirements from customer, this one will be verified for completeness, correctness). Then design document will be checked against functional spec (it should design 4 checkboxes..), and the source code against design (is there a code for 4 checkboxes, functions to send the signals etc. - is it traceable to requirements). Okay, product is built and we need to test it, **validate**. Here comes our understanding trouble - **validation** should ensure the product meets requirements for its specific intended use which is basically business requirement (does it work? can I control the lights from the UI?) but testers will definitely work with the functional spec, making sure the checkboxes are there, working, labelled, etc. They are basically checking whether the requirements in functional spec were met in the final product, isn't that verification? (should not be, lets stick to ISO 12207 that only validation is the actual testing)"}
{"_id": "114298", "title": "Who invented pointers?", "text": "Pretty simple question, but something I haven't been able to find out. Who was the first person to describe the idea of a pointer? The abstract concept itself?"}
{"_id": "165424", "title": ".NET mulithreading and quad core processors", "text": "I have a single threaded application that runs on a machine with a quad core processor. The scheduled tasks that run VB.NET forms are too slow. I am new to multi threading and parallel computing. If you have a single threaded application that runs on a server with a multi core processor then does the application only ever use one of the processors? What happens if you have multiple scheduled tasks and multiple instances are in memory at the same time? I have read this question on Stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/607775/how-to-write-net-applications-that- utilize-multi-core-processors, but I am still not clear."}
{"_id": "114297", "title": "What does \"programming concepts\" mean?", "text": "I am recent graduate and I have applied for a job, but I'm stuck on how to answer one of the questions: > What programming technology, programming topics, and programming concepts > are you following at present? I am a little confused with this question as it's a bit vague. I know what programming technologies are\u2014C#, Java, .NET, etc\u2014but what are programming topics and concepts? I take it that programming topics are everything related to C# or related to programming in general? I'm not so sure what programming concepts are. How can I answer this question?"}
{"_id": "32418", "title": "How do you version/track changes to SQL tables?", "text": "When working in a team of developers, where everyone is making changes to local tables, and development tables, how do you keep all the changes in sync? A central log file where everyone keeps their sql changes? A wiki page to track alter table statements, individual .sql files that the devs can run to bring their local db's to the latest version? I've used some of these solutions, and I'm tyring to get a good solid solution together that works, so I'd appreciate your ideas."}
{"_id": "92905", "title": "What do you do when you have nothing to do?", "text": "Let's say that you are idling. There is no ongoing project and you are left nothing to do sometimes. Or there are probably some project is running but you can't proceed. So, you have nothing to do and you are bored. In these kind of situations, what are the things that you will normally do to kill the time? What I normally do is:   * Read some books. But it makes me sleepy sometimes, and I got bored easily on some books.   * Browse SE sites and trying to answer some questions. This will probably kill some minutes.   * browse for anything that is interested to read on (things like physics, how things works, biology etc)   * programming puzzles. I'm probably running out of topic or things to do. And it's in an office, so, watching, facebooking, or gaming is not a good idea."}
{"_id": "56168", "title": "Can Agile/Scrum be used by 1 or 2 developers?", "text": "Everything I've been reading and researching up to this point describes how Agile/Scrum works great with teams of about 4 to 6 members, maybe even more. In my current shop, we have about 8 developers or so, but given the nature of the volume of projects and the number of departments we support, we never have more than 1 or 2 folks assigned to a given project. Can I still use Agile/Scrum with a team of 1 or 2 developers? I'm working on making the pitch to my manager to start working with this methodology, but I need to be able to explain how to scale things back for a small developer crew, or convince them to make sure we get more members on a given project."}
{"_id": "114742", "title": "What can be done to stop losing resources and unify Mercurial and Git?", "text": "Both Mercurial and Git were created as a replacement for the same program and to solve the same problem which you can read about in Martin Beckett's answer to How did Git and Mercurial develop so similarly at the same time? question. These two tools are very similar and borrow from each other according to Scott Chacon in his Hg and Git: Can't we all just get along? presentation at PyCon 2010. I think we, the people, do waste huge amount of resources by having these two tools which do the same, yet operate differently. Is it possible to unify Mercurial and Git and stop wasting our resources? What actions should be taken?"}
{"_id": "114741", "title": "Is the cloud ready to replace core business systems?", "text": "Questions like this have been asked before (like here), but a lot can change in a year. My company is very interested in migrating core systems to the \"cloud\". Non- technical upper-management doesn't quite know what that means, but they are excited at the idea and have already started adopting cloud-based systems. Having gone through an ERP migration, and experiencing first-hand what a pain it is to deal with legacy systems, I'm really concerned that by going to the cloud, losing control of our data, we are going to begin a cycle of never- ending migration as cloud services come online and then blink out of existence. To say nothing of the technical demands of learning, programming, and keeping up with multiple non-stable APIs in order to get disparate cloud- based systems to talk with one another. I have other concerns such as privacy, uptime, data ownership, maintenance, etc. Is the cloud really ready for the prime time? If you were a business owner, would you choose to place your key, business-critical, systems on the cloud? As a programmer, do you trust the cloud and the companies providing those services to be reliable and have the longevity of a traditional software solution? If it is not ready now, when will it be, if ever?"}
{"_id": "114749", "title": "Does this licensing clause allow redistribution of this application?", "text": "As a software developer, I find a frequent need to create icons for my applications. Nothing has ever worked as well as IcoFX for this purpose. Unfortunately, the program is no longer free - but I still have the installer for an older version. My question is whether or not I can distribute copies of the installer. The license agreement contains the following pertinent clauses:               6. All redistributions of the Software's files must retain all         copyright notices and web site addresses that are         currently in place, and must include this list of         conditions without modification.          7. None of the Software's files may be redistributed for         profit or as part of another Software package without         express written permission of the Author.          10. The Author reserves his rights to modify this agreement          in the future.      The first two clauses would seem to suggest that I can legally distribute verbatim copies of the installer but the last clause has me confused. If the author modifies the agreement and removes the ability to distribute copies, does it apply to my copy that I downloaded a while back?"}
{"_id": "96020", "title": "What shall I include in a 10 week web technologies course?", "text": "In September I will be teaching a university module on web technologies. This session will be available to 1st year (freshman) students who don't necessarily have any programming knowledge or know how the web works. In the 2nd semester I will be teaching Flash, which is my specialism, so I know exactly what I am going to teach, but in the 1st semester I will be teaching them web standards technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery, PHP and MySQL. Where I need advice is how to proportion the emphasis for each part, and which parts of each technology to cover. Another real issue I'm struggling with is how much of the bad old ways should I teach them? Do they need to know about bold as well as strong, etc. UPDATE: based, on your feedback I will only be teaching the latest version of everything - CSS3, HTML5 etc. I'm not sure exactly how long the semester will be but I'm guessing about 10-12 weeks. Each session is a 2 hour lab. Obviously there's only so much I can cover in that time and it will be up to the students to go a research this stuff properly on W3 schools etc. My ideas so far were: Lesson 0 - Course intro and overview of the current tech landscape. What is out there, what will we be learning, what won't we. What is a web server, URL etc. Looking at different example websites and discussing how they work. Lesson 1 - HTML basics (head, body, title, img, table, a, lists, h1, strong etc) Lesson 2 - CSS for styling and layout - fonts, webfonts, float etc Lesson 3 - Intro to programming JS (variables, loops, conditionals, functions) Lesson 4 - more JS programming fundamentals, DOM manipulation Lesson 5 - jQuery - making things fly about and look cool Lesson 6 - XML and Ajax Lesson 7 - PHP basics - syntax, server-side principles Lesson 8 - PHP and MySQL - forms, logins, saving user info Lesson 9 - don't know Lesson 10 - don't know Please let me know if you think this is the right order, what have I missed, how to use any spare sessions etc. Thanks :) UPDATE BASED ON RESPONSES: Thanks for all your responses - some great stuff. To be absolutely clear, this is not a computer science course, it is a practical module on a creative technology course. The emphasis definitely has to be on making cool things work rather than understanding how the backbone of the internet works. That can come later, if the students are interested. At the end of the module I would like the students to be able to produce a web page or pages that does something cool, using some or all of the technologies I cover. Many of these topics are of course far beyond the scope of a 2 hour session, however I do not have the option of reducing the syllabus, I will just have to explain what the technology does and encourage the student to research it in their own time."}
{"_id": "35698", "title": "Are keyboard layouts inherently flawed for programmers?", "text": "Lately I've been noticing my keyboard usage more and more and how it affects my productivity. It brought to mind a question/problem that I believe has not been truly solved in the programming community (partially based on individual preferences). **Are all/most keyboard layouts inherently flawed for programmers?** What changes to your keyboard layout do you feel would increase your productivity most? _Edit_ Remember when answering that there are a number of different factors that could make a keyboard layout flawed. For instance, if you type as fast as you believe you need to, but hitting common keys is uncomfortable, said keyboard layout could be considered flawed."}
{"_id": "104313", "title": "Guidance choosing tools for developing cross-platform mobile app", "text": "I have no mobile application development experience, I don't even own a rich mobile device (I can send text messages with my cellphone :) I have strong web, .NET, and Java experience but am open to develop with any language / platform. I need to target at least iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices. I am seeking some guidance on the right set of tools for developing an application targeting these devices given my requirement. An easy deployment model would be a big plus. I have some notion of the difference between native apps and mobile apps on devices, and the later seems like it may be a good choice in terms of cross-platform support and easy deployment, but I do need access to some device information. I currently have a fairly simple Java Swing application which is backed by JSON web services. The application is launched automatically when a user logs into their computer via a login script (it's deployed on corporate-like network). The user is presented with some html formatted information, and they click a button to answer a question. That's about it! Core Requirements   * Must be able to get user identification information from the mobile device and send it to the server; the Swing client sends the Windows account and domain name.   * Would very much like to retrieve the local date and time of the mobile device and send it to the server   * Must be able to have the GUI workflow described previously: present content to user, user \"clicks\" a button to respond.   * Must be able to communicate with the JSON web service; if needed, could use some other data encoding, but just need to be able to communicate over HTTP (unless things are very different in the mobile world and I don't know what I'm talking about!) Nice to Have Requirements   * Render HTML fragments for the content (if not possible, could strip it down to plain text)   * Be able to \"click\" on a link to send an email someway for help / feedback   * \"Click\" link to a web site with information on how well the user is responding to their questions; could also build this into the app if it is a mobile app.   * Be able to build some kind of user options \"dialog\"   * Render small pictures along with the content; currently the pictures are just http resources. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "220722", "title": "Why user threads are mapped to Kernel threads", "text": "Since user threads are mapped to kernel threads, why don't we create all threads as kernel threads that is a process with **zero** user thread. Doesn't mapping of user thread to kernel thread create overhead?"}
{"_id": "247219", "title": "Does the MIT license allow me to make a product that's a front-end for another MIT-license product?", "text": "I've been struggling with timezones online for a few years now. Because I've had enough of it, I want to develop a Chrome extension that leverages moment.js so I can paste in a representation of a time and it will return the time in the user's current timezone. So this is basically a GUI front-end for moment.js. I would release this for free on the Chrome web store (and I'm surprised that such a Chrome extension does not exist yet). Does the MIT license allow this?"}
{"_id": "96028", "title": "How to charge freelance projects?", "text": "I am new freelancer mostly on web development and my first project used (X)HTML/CSS/PHP/MySQL/jQuery for a small custom social network like system with search engine/contact form ready/admin system. I charged this project on hourly basis about $10/h Again this was my first freelance job and i really think that the price was way too low. So how would you suggest to me to move on with the charges?"}
{"_id": "118674", "title": "Evaluating PHP namespaces", "text": "I'm at the pre-release stage of an open-source PHP project, one which I hope will be used by other developers in their own projects. The project doesn't currently support namespaces and I'm trying to evaluate if it should use namespaces or the PEAR naming convention of Dir_Subdir_Class, which seems to have all of the same technical benefits without some of the drawbacks. To be honest, it's not an easy choice. Some points of consideration against namespaces:   * One of the ways that my project is trying to differentiate itself by providing a simpler API than other similar projects. Because namespaces are new and also because they are more complicated than the PEAR naming convention, introducing them into the codebase will make my project less simple to use. By implementing them, I lose some differentiation in terms of ease-of-use.   * While I can see some benefits to namespaces, they don't seem to solve a problem that needs to be solved in a modern PHP product that uses the PEAR naming convention. Naming conflicts while using my project should be minimal if not non-existent.   * This article gives me some pause in adopting namespaces as their implementation has been less than stellar.   * I'm also hesitant to jump on a bandwagon that may not go anywhere. As namespaces are a new feature to PHP, I'm not convinced yet that they will become standard.   * Compatibility. Almost all of the PHP code that has ever been written does not use namespaces as it's a new feature. Other libraries would be incompatible without a conversion. Some points for using namespaces:   * Perception. If namespaces become standard and a best-practice, my project could quickly become viewed as unprofessional and obsolete without them.   * Competition. While some competing PHP projects are beginning to use namespaces in their latest versions, many have yet to make the leap. Doing so now could give my project a leg-up on other projects.   * Future work would be easier if I made the switch now before the project goes public rather than after, where I would have to support two versions of it for a while.   * I want to support best-practices and if namespaces become a best practice for PHP, my project should make use of them. From what I can tell, you must choose one way or the other; you can't do both. Are there any points that I haven't considered? Are there any objective signs (no flamewars, please) that point toward or against namespaces becoming the professional standard for PHP? I would appreciate any insight or resources that you would be willing to share as I need to make a decision soon."}
{"_id": "148113", "title": "What is a good way to represent a many-to-many relationship between two classes?", "text": "Let's say I have two object types, A and B. The relationship between them is many-to-many, but neither of them is the owner of the other. Both A and B instances need to be aware of the connection; it's not just one way. So, we can do this:               class A     {         ...              private: std::vector<B *> Bs;     }          class B     {         private: std::vector<A *> As;     }      _**My question is:_ where do I put the functions to create and destroy the connections?** Should it be A::Attach(B), which then updates A::Bs and B::As vectors? Or should it be B::Attach(A), which seems equally reasonable. Neither of those feels right. If I stop working with the code, and come back after a week, I'm sure I won't be able to recall if I should be doing A.Attach(B) or B.Attach(A). Perhaps it should be a function like this:               CreateConnection(A, B);      But making a global function seems undesirable also, given that it's a function specifically for working with only classes A and B. **Another question:** if I run into this problem/requirement often, can I somehow make a general solution for it? Perhaps a TwoWayConnection class that I can derive from or use within classes that share this type of relationship? What are some good ways to handle this situation... I know how to handle the one-to-many \"C owns D\" situation quite well, but this one is trickier. Edit: Just to make it more explicit, this question doesn't involve ownership issues. Both A and B are owned by some other object Z, and Z takes care of all ownership issues. I'm only interested in how to create/remove the many-to-many links between A and B."}
{"_id": "220728", "title": "Are types erased in Haskell?", "text": "Haskell has a notion of \u201cgeneric functions\u201d that has some apparent similarity with common lisp\u2014having neither experience with Haskell nor with common lisp, I might be very approximative here. This means that one can define a generic `to_string` facility to define a string representation for all types. Of course, the facility has to be defined in the special cases but there is a `to_string` function whose signature is `\u03b1 \u2192 string`. Are types erased in Haskell, as they are in OCaml? If yes, how does the implementation of \u201cgeneric functions\u201d in Haskell differ from that of common lisp, where types are dynamic, and thus not erased? I understand that implementation details are compiler specific, but there is probably provisions common to many or all implementations."}
{"_id": "253469", "title": "How do I test my code in Python other than by doing it by hand?", "text": "I am used to user testing in Java, and I also manually test each section of code I write, but now, I want to automate it. There is no GUI for this project, so user testing is not required and I can focus code testing. The fact is, I don't know how to test code other than by calling the methods by hand, passing different parameters to them, and check the return value. I suppose automation is a solution, but don't have a clue how to pass from manual testing to automated one. Are there tools which can create the relevant tests for me, or do I need to write tests manually? What can be automated? Here is an example of code I want to test. Do I need to transform it somehow in order for it to be unit tested?               def netInfoToSend(tm, our_or_ip_version, our_or_addr_len, our_op_ip, version_their_ips,                       num_their_ips, len_their_ips, their_ips):              cellNetInfopkt = struct.pack(\">I\", time.time())              #         Number of addresses    [1 byte]         # cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\"B\", num_their_ips)         #         Their OR's addresses    [variable]         print \"peerAddress\", peerAddress         print \"peerAddress type\", type(peerAddress)              cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\">B\", 4)         cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\">B\", 4)         cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\"B\" * len(peerAddress), *peerAddress)              cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\">B\", 1)              # Address format is a type/length/value         #         This OR's address     [variable]         cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\">B\", our_or_ip_version) # IPV4         cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\">B\", our_or_addr_len)         cellNetInfopkt += struct.pack(\"B\" * len(ownAddress), *ownAddress)              return cellNetInfopkt"}
{"_id": "253467", "title": "Is it a bad practice to keep database schema scripts (DDL) and manipulation (DML) scripts in different modules", "text": "we have a project structure like the following \"module-shared\" module depends on \"module-database\" module and some other modules depend on \"module-shared\" but no other module depends on \"module- database\". All the DML SQL scripts are stored in \"module-shared\" but DDL are stored in \"module-database\".   * The advantage of this design is that we don't have to release the database if changes are around DML in \"module- shared\" and use database integration tests to make sure they are still compatible.   * The disadvantage is that this creates some confusions on the versions. For example you can have \"module-shared\" 2.3.1 depends on \"module-database\" 1.4.2 and eventually we will forget which version is compatible with which. **Questions:** Would it be a better design if we have a \"module-database\" which contains both DDL and DML (and all other database operations if any) and module-shared contains everything it had except database operations? What's your experiences on having multi-tier architectures? do you always use modules to segregate tiers? Do you have experiences where you may have DAO and Services in the same module? If you do, where did you keep the DDL schema scripts? **_UPDATE:_** forget to mention that the DDL is versioned using database script versioning system such as flyway. So that all DDL changes are incremental Note: e.g. a module could be gradle module, maven module, etc. Note: I am trying my best to be not biased while asking this question. So please assume that I don't have any preference on either solution. :)"}
{"_id": "253462", "title": "Passing in config values to a method using SOLID principles", "text": "I have an email helper class that has a method that sends email:               private static class EmailHelper     {         public static void SendEmail(string from, string to, string subject, string message)         {             MailMessage msg = new MailMessage(from, to, subject, body);             var client = new SmtpClient(\"my.smpthost.com\"); //this will be moved to config.             client.Send(msg);         }     }      My smtp host string will be placed in my config file. Question is what's the recommended way to pass the smtp host to this method? Should I have a constructor in this class that takes in the smtp string? Or, should I pass the smtp as a 5th parameter? Or should this method directly read from the config? (I realize that there may be several different ways to do this, but I am trying to understand the recommended approach, or at least approaches that are NOT recommended, keeping in mind the SOLID principles.)"}
{"_id": "61139", "title": "Reducing work in progress - should anyone really pick up any task?", "text": "I'm in a Scrum environment, and we get feedback from the PO that all stories should be closed that are currently in progress before bringing in more stories. The goal is reducing WIP and getting stories accepted, which is a good goal. But would it really be wise to have, for instance, a DBA run a manual test script in order to close a particular story, when the part timer who does various \"grunt\" tasks will be available tomorrow? It seems this is the direction our PO wants to head in, but seems inefficient to me. What happens is that tomorrow the part timer is available, but there are no tasks for them, the only outstanding ones being \"above their pay grade\". So it seems like a tension between reducing WIP and yet having people work on things that \"make sense\". Do you find its better for the team to have anyone work on any task? Or do you keep work open longer in order to have certain people do what they do best?"}
{"_id": "192113", "title": "Do I check generated code in to source control or not?", "text": "I'm developing a .Net application that uses google protocol buffers. Historically the application used the approach, advocated by the protobuf-net team, of decorating the classes with attributes instead of using .proto files. I am now in the process of migrating part of the application's client to another technology and there is a strong desire to start using the .proto files as the authority so that the two technologies can inter-operate. My plan is to automatically generate the C# from the .proto, however, my question is should I check the resulting files back into source control? Note I expect the process of code generation to be fast. How do I choose appropriate approach for above case? What is considered the best practice?"}
{"_id": "151910", "title": "Can I use a child class variables in its parent class?", "text": "I am programming in Objective C, iOS. I create a `Class A` which is a parent class, and `Class B` inherits to `Class A`. Now I have `Class B` variables which I also need to use in `Class A`. And also one another `Class C`, `Class A` add in `Class C` (not inherits), and I want to use `Class B` variables in `Class C`. How can I access? I have created object also but not working, is that possible to access?"}
{"_id": "86444", "title": "Run On Sentences in Technical Writing", "text": "This is just a question to think about. When you write technical documentation and programming comments, do you ever find yourself writing run-on sentences in order to be more precise? Is packing more technical information into one sentence better than creating many little sentences each with a little bit of technical information? I know it's better to have lots of little classes in their own little files. Perhaps this doesn't apply to writing?"}
{"_id": "151919", "title": "Plan variable and call dependencies", "text": "I'd like to write down the design of my program to understand the dependencies and calls better. I know there are class diagrams which show inheritance and attribute variables. However I'd also like to document the input parameters to method functions and in particular which calls the methods function executes inside (e.g. on the input parameters). Also sometimes it might be useful to show how actual objects are connected (if there is a standard structure). This way I can have a better understanding of the modules and design before starting to program. Can you suggest a method to do this software design? It should be _one-to-one_ to programming code structure so that I really notice all quirks beforehand (instead of high-level design where thing are hard to implement without further work). Maybe some special diagram or tool or a combination? It is _static_ dependency and call design rather than time dependent execution monitoring. (I use Python if you have any specialized recommendations)."}
{"_id": "25023", "title": "What payoffs have you seen from taking care of technical debt?", "text": "This article on technical debt has some good points, including: > Working on the \"technical matters\" works best when it is driven by stories. > The code base is probably in need of work everywhere, but the payoff will be > received only where the code is going to be worked on for user-facing > reasons. If no stories are going to pass through some crufty area, working > on it is largely wasted. > > Therefore, I prefer the approach of taking stories as usual (but probably > fewer of them), and following the \"boy scout rule\" of leaving the campground > better than you found it. In other words, wherever the stories lead us, > let's write more tests, let's refactor more aggressively. > > This approach has at least these advantages: > >   * maintains \"best sensible\" flow of stories; >   * provides help from all team talent; >   * provides for whole team to learn how to keep code clean; >   * focuses improvement exactly where it is needed; >   * does not waste improvement that \"may\" be needed; > I've seen code quality have a very big effect on long-term productivity, so I am a believer that technical debt should be taken care of. I think the post above makes sense, but I'm not so sure about the last two points. I'm interested in finding out real experiences of benefits from cleaning technical debt, even if it was not related to user stories. **What positive benefits have you seen from cleaning up your code base and ridding yourself of technical debt? What methods did you use to get the work done?**"}
{"_id": "82262", "title": "Difference between Handler, Manager and Controller", "text": "Is there any difference between naming a class \"Handler\", \"Manager\" or \"Controller\"? IE: `PurchaseManager`, `PurchaseHandler`, `PurchaseController`. Do these suffices convey the same meaning or is there a clear difference between them? If there isn't a language-agnostic answer, consider Java as the language."}
{"_id": "98350", "title": "How do I understand an open source project code?", "text": "I open the source code and it's folder upon folder of infinite files each with infinite lines of code which doesn't make much sense to me because I dont have the context, and half of it uses functions imported from other files just to make it more confusing. Is there any simple way to know the structure of an open source application's code?"}
{"_id": "193483", "title": "How often is an average programmer expected to reach flow?", "text": "I have recently been reading about flow and, since I have experienced this state a few times, I wondered how often an average programmer is able to work in this very focused and balanced way. Do you know if there are any **empirical studies** on how often average programmers reach flow in their daily activity, and on how this can influence productivity? I am not asking for a mere list of references to the literature (although these would be interesting) but also for a short description of such studies, if any exist."}
{"_id": "221437", "title": "Concrete types - as described by Stroustrup - C++ Programming Language 4th ed", "text": "I'm having a hard time with this concept. What is Stroustrup getting at here? What is special about a class whose \"representation is part of its definition\"? What does a \"concrete type\" contrast with? (I assume it contrasts with \"abstract type\", but since, AFAIK, you can't even bring an instance of an abstract type into existence, it seems obvious you couldn't place _that_ on the stack, initialize it, etc.) Is there such a thing as a class I could instantiate that would NOT fit this description of a \"concrete class\"? Normally I find BS very easy to follow, but I'm missing the point here. > The basic idea of concrete classes is that they behave \u201cjust like built-in > types.\u201d For example, a complex number type and an infinite-precision integer > are much like built-in int, except of course that they have their own > semantics and sets of operations. Similarly, a vector and a string are much > like built-in arrays, except that they are better behaved (\u00a7 4.2, \u00a7 4.3.2, \u00a7 > 4.4.1). > > The defining characteristic of a concrete type is that its representation is > part of its definition. In many important cases, such as a vector, that > representation is only one or more pointers to more data stored elsewhere, > but it is present in each object of a concrete class.... In particular, it > allows us to > > \u2022 place objects of concrete types on the stack, in statically allocated > memory, and in other objects (\u00a7 6.4.2); > > \u2022 refer to objects directly (and not just through pointers or references); > > \u2022 initialize objects immediately and completely (e.g., using constructors; \u00a7 > 2.3.2); and > > \u2022 copy objects (\u00a7 3.3). > > Stroustrup, Bjarne (2013-07-10). The C++ Programming Language (4th Edition) > (Section 16.3 Concrete Classes; Kindle Locations 2373-2386). Pearson > Education. Kindle Edition."}
{"_id": "98358", "title": "Effective Strategies for Localization in .NET", "text": "I am developing the UI for a .NET MVC application that will require international localization of all content in the near future. I am very familiar with .NET in general but have never had a project that required such a significant focus on international accessibility. The projected is initially being done in English. What measures should I take at this point to make it easier to implement localization in the future?"}
{"_id": "193488", "title": "Is the following diagrams correct for RAD and Agile methodologies?", "text": "I do not know if this would be the right stack exchange site to ask this question but I have been researching on RAD (Rapid Application Development) and Agile methodologies and was trying to find their diagrams but if I google images this, it comes up with many different diagrams. So based on the images I drew my own diagrams on this. The RAD diagram is similar to the one shown in wikipedia here but only difference is I change the bottom circle from cutover to implementation. For Agile method, as it is same as waterfall method but only difference is you can jump back to previous steps, I basically drew up a waterfall diagram but changed the arrows to indicate that you can go back. My question is the below diagrams suitable for the intended methodologies? RAD: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4MejT.png) Agile: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/2Tlar.png) UPDATE: Waterfall Method: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xiA2v.png)"}
{"_id": "141746", "title": "Is application-specific data required for good unit testing?", "text": "I am writing unit tests for a fairly simple function that depends on a fairly complicated set of data. Essentially, the object I am manipulating represents a graph and this function determines whether to chart a line, bar, or pie chart based on the data that came back from the server. This is a simplified version, using jQuery:               setDefaultChartType: function (graphObject) {       var prop1 = graphObject.properties.key;       var numCols = 0;       $.each(graphObject.columns, function (colIndex, column) {         numCols++;       });            if ( numCols > 6 || ( prop1 > 1 && graphObject.data.length == 1) ) {         graphObject.setChartType(\"line\");       } else if ( numCols <=6 && prop1 == 1 ) {         graphObject.setChartType(\"bar\");       } else if ( numCols <=6 && prop1 > 1 ) {         graphObject.setChartType(\"pie\");       }     }      My question is, should I use mock data that is procured from the actual database? Or can I just fabricate data that fits the different cases? I'm afraid that fabricating data will not expose bugs arising from changes in the database, but on the other hand, it would require a lot more effort to keep the test data up-to-date that I'm not sure is necessary."}
{"_id": "64418", "title": "Things to take Control when Team not doing Well?", "text": "I'm working on an ERP Project where two Members(Freshers) in my team are not performing well (for small tasks). Their work is littered with bugs and other issues. As I'm a Team Lead in this Project, I end up having to write their code/tasks. This may be creating a heavy burden for me as I have to speed up things everyday to do my work and then theirs! > What would you do in this situation. Actually, I'm feeling comfortable in this position as I'm learning many things, but some times I cant tolerate this!"}
{"_id": "64414", "title": "What do you call the test suite developers run before checkin?", "text": "I'm working on a project where we're adding automated testing to an existing project. We're starting with a central component, and setting up both unit tests at the code module level, and tests that run on the whole component, albeit in the developer environment. The intent is that this test suite must pass before code check-in, and will be run by a continuous integration system on each development branch. What should we call this? Right now we're calling it \"dev unit tests\", but the pedantic side of me says that's not quite right, because it contains more than unit tests. And our vision is that this suite will grow over time to include full-product acceptance tests. Any input here? Or should we stop arguing about names and go write tests? ### Update Everyone, thanks for good discussion! I think the conclusion I'm coming to is that there's not really a \"common\" definition - each project/team comes up with names that make the most sense for that project, depending on the technologies (Java, C#, ruby, etc) and methodologies (old-skool waterfall, Scrum, XP, etc) in use."}
{"_id": "64416", "title": "Do Programmers sometimes intentionally over complicate code?", "text": "It seems alot of times on stackoverflow, that people (programmers especially) tend to over complicate a solution to a problem to where the solution is vastly much more complicated then the original problem? Im not an expert by any means, but alot of times I try to go with the simplest solution that works (and obviously this doesn't work EVERYWHERE) but i've had pretty good success with suggesting simple solutions on the job that people seem to overlook for MUCH more complicated solutions? Is this like a normal thing for programmers.....or am I just not thinking in the correct perpective."}
{"_id": "64412", "title": "How to handle a workaholic Supervisor who is your good friend?", "text": "The biggest trouble anyone can ever face... which is the root case of the issue which I have mentioned in my previous question. This man was one of my best colleague I have worked with 2 years back where he was not having any responsibility of a team lead. After 2 year, I got a chance to work in a similar project under his supervision. I knew him during my old project days and he is a WORKAHOLIC but never even came in my wildest dream that he will be the same after becoming a supervisor and ruin my and my colleagues sleep. How do I handle his behaviors such as:   1. He believes that, we should preach our code every day and thats our bread and butter.   2. He treats all his sub-ordinate as inferior and his idea/solution is the final. A strong valid and fighting point(which mostly I come up with) can only change his mind.    3. I feel so pity for my co-developers when he treats them like slaves who writes code for living.    4. He never encourages any co-workers, he is doubtful on everyones work... for him 100% output is 100xN% effort put by the developer.   5. He never consider anyone individuality or freedom to express... de-motivates to the hell.   6. Weekends are his favorite working days... sends mails, review comments etc which give added pressure to the peer group.   7. He never mind how long we burn the night lamp... but we should be in office next day at 8:30 sharp.   8. He is the only person I have seen who works for atleast 8 hrs when he takes vacation and he expects others to work even if you are in vacation or at home.   9. Developer who are favorite for him are always right.. rest everyone are wrong.   10. If he can work for 10 hrs, he expect every to work along with him. If he is not sleeping at 12, then why should the developer sleep... they should stay awake with him. The only per who was able to handle him and with minimal experience like I mentioned above behavior from him is me, just because he is a good friend of mine. My peers and I find no use of giving feedback for his behavior because he always say that I am verystern and no one can change my decision. How can I help him to change his approach of work... or am I wrong here?"}
{"_id": "194143", "title": "How to get a Web Application to communicate between users", "text": "I am developing a multipalyer web Application for Anti-Chess. It would be hosted on Google App Engine. I have a few questions: How do I get two different users who have opened the webapp on their browser to communicate moves with each other. P2P or through the server. If through the server, can I store some moves on it (specifically talking about GAE), to test bots later? How to implement this P2P/Server connection. As a developer I know jack about Networking. But I hav heard of things like Socket programming, HTTP request etc, what can/should I use. And where can I read up on that! If I don't go for GAE, would it cost me too much to get some server space and hosting capabilities? And people tell me that then deploying the application is tougher than on GAE. Is that so. Where can I read up on deploying the web Application on Servers. Where does the code for networking go? I will be using Django with python as the web framework, front-end would be HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Should I make a separate module for the networking methods and then introduce a method calls wherever needed in the game play? Someone suggested me on using Unity software for developing. Is it good, Does it make it simple to do work? Will it cover all the parts of the development, the front end and the back end and the deployment? Note: I am a first timer in web Application, I have coded games before, but always without GUI. And also with no multiplayer over the network capabilities!"}
{"_id": "194142", "title": "Can I convert ALL CAPS sections of an OSI license to regular case (and bold)?", "text": "**Update:** I've got a response from the FSF on this down in the answers From the answer to Can I remove all-caps and shorten the disclaimer on my License?, it appears that the APP CAPS sections of a software license are largely to provide extra legal ammo and increase the weight of those sections. On the flip side, ALL CAPS TEXT is more difficult to read in paragraph form. Furthermore, with formats like markdown, we can provide cleaner alternatives to all-caps \"bolding\" of text. So, I'd like to convert (for example) the warranty clause of the MIT license from:               THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR      IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,      FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE      AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER      LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,      OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE      SOFTWARE.      to (markdown):               **The software is provided \"as is\", without warranty of any kind, express or     implied, including but not limited to the warranties of marchantability,     fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the     authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other      liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from,      out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the      software.**      Is this legally murky territory? (particularly w/ GPL?)"}
{"_id": "117212", "title": "What is \"syntactic delegation\"", "text": "Steve Yegge mentions it in When Polymorphism Fails: > ... I think this implies that type is best represented via properties rather > than classes, because of the inherent inflexibility of classes. But in > \"traditional\" languages like C++ and Java, this makes code sharing a bit > harder, because of the lack of support for **syntactic delegation**. ... (emphasis added) A Google search turns up a State of the Onion address by Larry wall."}
{"_id": "117214", "title": "Proxied calls not working as expected", "text": "I have been modifying an application to have a cleaner client/server split to allow for load splitting and resource sharing etc. Everything is written to an interface so it was easy to add a remoting layer to the interface using a proxy. Everything worked fine. The next phase was to add a caching layer to the interface and again this worked fine and speed was improved but not as much as I would have expected. On inspection it became very clear what was going on. I feel sure that this behavior has been seen many times before and there is probably a design pattern to solve the problem but it eludes me and I'm not even sure how to describe it. It is easiest explained with an example. Let's imagine the interface is               interface IMyCode {         List<IThing> getLots( List<String> );         IThing getOne( String id );     }      The getLots() method calls getOne() and fills up the list before returning. The interface is implemented at the client which is proxied to a remoting client which then calls the remoting server which in turn calls the implementation at the server. At the client and the server layers there is also a cache. So we have :-               Client interface           |      Client cache           |      Remote client           |      Remote server           |       Server cache           |     Server interface      If we call getOne(\"A\") at the client interface, the call is passed to the client cache which faults. This then calls the remote client which passes the call to the remote server. This then calls the server cache which also faults and so the call is eventually passed to the server interface which actually gets the IThing. In turn the server cache is filled and finally the client cache also. If getOne(\"A\") is again called at the client interface the client cache has the data and it gets returned immediately. If a second client called getOne(\"B\") it would fill the server cache with \"B\" as well as it's own client cache. Then, when the first client calls getOne(\"B\") the client cache faults but the server cache has the data. This is all as one would expect and works well. Now lets call getLots( [ \"C\", \"D\" ] ). This works as you would expect by calling getOne() twice but there is a subtlety here. The call to getLots() cannot directly make use of the cache. Therefore the sequence is to call the client interface which in turn calls the remote client, then the remote server and eventually the server interface. This then calls getOne() to fill the list before returning. The problem is that the getOne() calls are being satisfied at the server when ideally they should be satisfied at the client. If you imagine that the client/server link is really slow then it becomes clear why the client call is more efficient than the server call once the client cache has the data. This example is contrived to illustrate the point. The more general problem is that you cannot just keep adding proxied layers to an interface and expect it to work as you would imagine. As soon as the call goes 'through' the proxy any subsequent calls are on the proxied side rather than 'self' side. Have I failed to learn or not learned something correctly? All this is implemented in Java and I haven't used EJBs. It seems that the example may be confusing. The problem is nothing to do with cache efficiencies. It is more to do with an illusion created by the use of proxies or AOP techniques in general. When you have an object whose class implements an interface there is an assumption that a call on that object might make further calls on that same object. For example,               public String getInternalString() {         return InetAddress.getLocalHost().toString();     }          public String getString() {         return getInternalString();     }      If you get an object and call getString() the result depends where the code is running. If you add a remoting proxy to the class then the result could be different for calls to getString() and getInternalString() on the same object. This is because the initial call gets 'deproxied' before the actual method is called. I find this not only confusing but I wonder how I can control this behavior especially as the use of the proxy may be by a third party. The concept is fine but the practice is certainly not what I expected. Have I missed the point somewhere?"}
{"_id": "210134", "title": "Is there any way to detect on a website if the mouse has not been moved for awhile?", "text": "I want an element to appear in case the website has not been used for a while and make it disappear after it is being used again. Is there any way to detect on a website if the mouse has not been moved for awhile?"}
{"_id": "147568", "title": "How to handle interview questions on programming style", "text": "As a C++-programmer in interviews I repeatedly found myself in situations were the interviewer wanted to probe my knowledge of good programming style. These typically were centered around basic knowledge of OOP. I know OOP is useful to encapsulate concepts and I use it daily. However, since a language like C++ allows many different styles and some C++ approaches like TMP or STL algorithms are not OOP at all (but rather more like functional programming) I find myself stuck on how to best \"sell\" my knowledge of other approaches as well without coming across as arrogant or as somebody without appreciation of the basics. I fear this emphasis on OOP of the askers comes from them being socialized in the 90s where OOP was believed to be the cure- all, but that is an arrogant standpoint to take. How would I make the best of questions like this?"}
{"_id": "105044", "title": "How do I communicate my role in a project to other team members?", "text": "Recently I worked on developing a new component with a coworker. I would say that our contributions were about a 80/20 split, myself having contributed 80% of the work toward the component. My coworker likes to spam the other developers in the department with information and updates about whatever he's been working on, including e-mails specifically discussing our new component. This behavior has resulted in my coworkers (including management) mistakenly believing that he is the primary and most authoritative contact for discussions about this component, despite the fact that he was the minority contributor. I feel that his constant updates have given him a higher profile than me with respect to this project. Can I recover from this, and if so, how do I do it? I don't think that out-spamming the spammer would be effective, nor do I like adding additional noise to my colleagues' inboxes. **EDIT:** Thanks for the answers so far, they are all really good. To help clarify the situation I'd like to follow up with some additional info about his communication. First of all, he typically does not tell me when he's about to send out an e-mail, much less run it by me for review before sending it out; I am unaware of these messages until they arrive in my inbox. Secondly, there has been more than one occasion where his communication contains information that is outright incorrect; he is not familiar with some of the code that he is discussing. I wouldn't mind him being the point of contact if it wasn't for the fact that he is essentially being given credit for the project because of it. Management is perceiving the situation as if he was the one who wrote the 80% and I wrote the 20%, when in reality it's the other way around."}
{"_id": "193733", "title": "A simple C library filling the gaps in standard (C, POSIX) libraries?", "text": "I'm looking for a C function library, which would contain a collection of _simple and plain_ utility functions \"missing\" from C or POSIX standards. I found this earlier question, but answers there list only full frameworks or libraries designed to replace/duplicate standard libraries instead of seamlessly fill the gaps. To give you an example of functions I'm often missing, and would like to find a lib with tested implementations:   * `afgets`, `afread`: read a line or entire file, like `fgets` and `fread`, except really reads all and returns a `malloc`ed buffer, in the spirit of GNU `asprintf`.   * A selection of string trimming functions   * `systemf`, `popenf`: Like `system` and `popen`, but take `printf`-like format string for command.   * `strjoin`: join multiple strings given as vararg/array (which is hard to do with `snprintf`)   * `struct timeval` arithmetic These are just examples of functions I often miss for quick stuff. Then some features I'd desire (not mandatory):   * Available on common Linux distros out-of-the-box, with man pages etc   * Works also on Windows/Visual C   * No extra dependencies, self-contained   * As usable as existing C lib functions in C++   * Preferably licensed under LGPL or BSD-like license, but GPL is ok too Stuff which I am _not_ looking for:   * A string library with its own string type   * A data structure library   * A framework library which has special initialization, maybe even event loop etc. So the question is, what is out there? Library name, homepage link, github link, duplicate question link... If you've made your own and have it at public repo, feel free to link to that too, if you dare expose it to many eyes."}
{"_id": "105041", "title": "Are the different available programming languages redundant?", "text": "Off course this do not apply to all languages. But I was wondering if some languages only exists due to the market culture of concurrence. For example, we all know that C is widely used for built in and light weight systems. And, as far as I know, no one bit them. But how about JAVA, C#, Ruby, PHP, ASP.NET, Python, Perl and son on? I know that PHP is much more light weight then ASP.NET and JAVA and some would say it is its differential, because you can deploy applications much faster. Others would say that, despite that, in the future, you'll realize that you'll need a more robust language. There are different cases, like in the twitter case, using SCALA. What would you say if, for example, tomorrow you wakeup in Garden of Eden, where everyone works together without competitors. Which programming languages would you merge or discontinue? My point is: Is there programming languages that exists only due to competition or all of them have very specific applications and cannot be thrown away or have their functionality merged? My question is somewhat equal to How big are the different programming \"worlds\"? but claiming another point."}
{"_id": "199478", "title": "Is there an equivalent to Build-Operate-Transfer for software development?", "text": "Is there an equivalent to Build-Operate-Transfer or Build-Lease-Transfer in software development? Does it even make any sense to operate such a project in software? Do you know of any projects in your experience that have been launched as such? Another way to put it is: for a large software system project, why wouldn't a company bid it out to third parties for them to build and operate for a period of time (i.e. the third party will be responsible for ongoing maintenance and operation of the system), until the concession is up? The third party recuperates expenses from software development through the running of the system; the original company might earn from residuals during this period, and then absorb income from the system once the concession is up. Does this even make any sense?"}
{"_id": "199479", "title": "Summarize changes (insertions and deletions) in Git", "text": "I want to look at how my code base has grown over time. GitHub has a nice `+/-` display along the list of checkins which gives a sense of this. Is there something similar I can use with my Google Code hosted repo or offline?"}
{"_id": "199477", "title": "Why does DataContractJsonSerializer not include generic like JavaScriptSerializer?", "text": "So the JavaScriptSerializer was deprecated in favor of the DataContractJsonSerializer.               var client = new WebClient();     var json = await client.DownloadStringTaskAsync(url); // http://example.com/api/people/1          // Deprecated, but clean looking and generally fits in nicely with      // other code in my app domain that makes use of generics     var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();     Person p = serializer.Deserialize<Person>(json);          // Now have to make use of ugly typeof to get the Type when I      // already know the Type at compile type. Why no Generic type T?     var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(Person));     Person p = serializer.ReadObject(json) as Person;      The JavaScriptSerializer is nice and allows you to deserialize using a type of T generic in the function name. Understandably, it's been deprecated for good reason, with the DataContractJsonSerializer, you can decorate your Type to be deserialized with various things so it isn't so brittle like the JavaScriptSerializer, for example               [DataMember(name = \"personName\")]     public string Name { get; set; }      Is there a particular reason why they decided to only allow users to pass in the Type?               Type type = typeof(Person);          var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(type);     Person p = serializer.ReadObject(json) as Person;      Why not this?               var serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer();     Person p = serializer.ReadObject<Person>(json);       They can still use reflection with the DataContract decorated attributes based on the `T` that I've specified on the `.ReadObject<T>(json)`"}
{"_id": "221927", "title": "Single responsibility vs procedural programming", "text": "Single responsibility (from SOLID) is like making me create classes with only one public method. But if it's so, it would be possible use static methods, and go back to procedural programming. What's the difference?"}
{"_id": "107572", "title": "What percentage of bugs should be stamped out before a project can be accepted as a stable release?", "text": "We have been working with a shopping cart for DotNetNuke, and have had endless problems with the developer's releases of their product. Every release fixes one thing but new bugs pop up elsewhere. I know that bugs are inevitable and that we cannot squash all of them at the time, but can someone please tell me what percentage of bugs should be stamped out before a product can be accepted as a stable release?"}
{"_id": "221925", "title": "How to Name Different Branches with Identical Functionality in Semantic Versioning", "text": "For a software, I have two different branches, that only differ in using different library versions of a package, that my software uses. The API of this library has changed between the versions in a non-compatible way. I am currently developping using both versions with the identical functionality in different branches, the only difference exists during building and loading of shared libraries. Should I release these packages with different version names using Semantic Versioning? In my opinion, yes, but what about the naming of these different versions? Currently I am using the \"normal\" numbering using the new version of the third-party library, e.g. 1.0.0, and a suffix for the version using the older third-party library, e.g. 1.0.0-json-c-0.10, see https://github.com/residuum/PuRestJson/releases"}
{"_id": "221921", "title": "Web Farm access to pool of resources", "text": "I am learning how to structure an application using a web farm (for high availability rather than load). I have a pool of resources in which one user can access one element in the resource pool at any time. My constraints/requirements are:   * No database (Well, I do have access to this third party product's database. But we have zero control because of support issues etc, so assume no database)   * Pessimistic locking strategy   * Supports access from one or more sources   * No third party dependencies, I want to be in control of the development My current thought process is to have an archecture similar to the following: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jIrbg.png) In the above, I would have a central \"lock server\" which would deal with the locking from one or more sources. I would then have one or more slave's which would effectively take a copy of all the transactions in the case of a fail over scenario. The lock server would be a first come, first serve approach. My question, given my contraints/requirements, is this the best design for this problem? _If I can improve the question, please drop me a comment, thanks_"}
{"_id": "105590", "title": "DRY with Dynamic SQL vs. prepared statements", "text": "When dealing with data, one finds that, essentially, the same code is repeated in various incarnations:               -- MySQL:     CREATE TABLE users (         id int NOT NULL auto_increment PRIMARY KEY,         name varchar(255) NOT NULL,         email varchar(255) NOT NULL,         UNIQUE KEY akUser (email)     )          // PHP     class User extends DBModel {         protected $id;         protected $name;         protected $email;              function __construct() {             $this->queries = array(                 'getById' => 'SELECT id, name, email FROM users WHERE id = :id',                 'addUser' => 'INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES (:name, :email)',                 'updateUser' => 'UPDATE users SET name = :name, email = :email WHERE id = :id',             );         }              public function loadById($id) {             $stmt = $this->getPreparedStatement('getById');             $stmt->bindValue(':id', $id);             $stmt->execute();             $stmt->setFetchMode(PDO::FETCH_INTO, $this);             return $stmt->fetch();         }         public function save() {             if ($this->id === NULL) {                 $this->add();             }             else {                 $this->update();             }         }         public function add() {             $stmt = $this->getPreparedStatement('addUser');             $stmt->bindValue(':name', $this->name);             $stmt->bindValue(':email', $this->email);             $stmt->execute();         }         public function update() {             $stmt = $this->getPreparedStatement('updateUser');             $stmt->bindValue(':name', $this->name);             $stmt->bindValue(':email', $this->email);             $stmt->bindValue(':id', $this-id);             $stmt->execute();         }     }      If you notice, the fields 'name' and 'email' each occur 7 times throughout PHP and MySQL. While this is not much of a problem with this small example, with large tables, and a large number of tables, this gets out of hand fairly quickly. _As a quick side-note: with PHP running as a web service, the application lifetime is very short. Many of the queries that get executed -- adding a user, for instance -- would get executed only once in the application lifetime, so prepared statements really don't offer much of an advantage. Even with connection sharing, the individual instances don't have access to the previously prepared statement (unless I'm missing something), so it would re- prepare the statement anyway._ With some basic database-level reflection (the results of which are either cached, or automatically generated before deployment), SQL statements can be created automatically, eliminating the need to code the basic SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements individually - cutting down on code considerably.               -- (table create statement, of course, stays the same)          class User {         protected $id;         protected $name;         protected $email;              public function getById($id) {             return MyDb::getById('Users', $id, $this);         }         public function save() {             return MyDb::save('Users', $this);         }     }      **My question** : is the duplication of code worth the few CPU cycles and more complex code & maintenance needs?"}
{"_id": "105591", "title": "How do you tackle really bizarre errors that keep you puzzled for more than 10 hours?", "text": "You know them, those errors that make NO sense. Where it seems like a gremlin just jumped deep inside your chips and messed up something. Do you take a walk, write stuff, call an uncle? I need help!!"}
{"_id": "236371", "title": "Do compiler-writers actually need to 'understand' machine code?", "text": "Might be kind of an odd question. A guy writing a C++ compiler (or whatever non-VM language): Does he need to be able to read/write raw machine language? How does that work? EDIT: I am specifically referring to compilers that compile to machine code, not to some other programming language."}
{"_id": "105597", "title": "Watermarking an image with the text given as input", "text": "I want to create a simple web app where I can drag an image in, and watermark the corner with the given text. Where should I start for something like this? I have knowledge in Java and Ruby."}
{"_id": "113823", "title": "Scalable distributed file system for blobs like images and other documents", "text": "Cassandra & HBase both do not efficiently support storage of blobs like images. Storing directly on HDFS stresses the Namenode because of huge number of files. Facebook uses Haystack for images and attachments storage, but this is not open source. So is Lustre a good choice for distributed blob storage? I have read that Amazon S3 is used by many, but this would cost money and personally, I would not like to rely on third party system. What are other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "107680", "title": "Reinventing the wheel because it doesn't exist", "text": "One of the languages I have to use at work is a very small, niche language called psl. One of the largest complaints I have about it as a language is that the libraries are very limited. While that's understandable for a small language developed by a couple of guys, it does cause me some dilemmas. Specifically, I find myself \"rewriting\" functions that are standard in other languages because they don't exist here. This is especially problematic when I'm attempting to write a function to solve a problem, and management doesn't want to spend the time to do so. They want me to use hard coded magic numbers instead, which I know will need to change multiple times over the life of the code. This doesn't quite fit the antipattern reinventing the wheel because it didn't exist here in the first place. What kind of anti pattern would this fit?"}
{"_id": "107687", "title": "What is the origin and meaning of the phrase \u201cLambda the ultimate?\u201d", "text": "I've been messing around with functional programming languages for a few years, and I keep encountering this phrase. For example, it is a chapter of \"The Little Schemer, which certainly predates the blog by this name. (No, the chapter doesn't help answer my question.) I understand what lambda means, the idea of an anonymous function is both simple and powerful, but I fail to understand what \"the ultimate\" means in this context. Places that I've seen this phrase:   1. The title of chapter 8 of The Little Schemer   2. A blog: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/   3. A series of \"Lambda the ultimate X\" papers: http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html I feel like I'm missing a reference here, can anyone help?"}
{"_id": "255110", "title": "Alternatives for Agile Scrum", "text": "We started following the Agile Scrum methodology and we have completed about 10 sprints. One observation I had is that not all in the team are taking up the responsibilities of completing the tasks and user stories by themselves and everytime they have to be instructed or allotted with some tasks. Also the estimate they are giving are not very agile. There is always a need for someone to look after all the user stories, their completion status, tasks that are yet to be done etc and allot them to team members who are not occupied. I also feel that we would be able to deliver faster if we had one person who would create tasks and assign them to people along with deadlines to complete them (project manager role). And this is what I feel is missing in Agile Scrum. Given that the team is not taking up tasks and not risking to take up tight estimates, what are the alternates that we can look for? Or, are there any provisions in Agile Scrum to fasten things?"}
{"_id": "102066", "title": "What is a recommended way to go about learning a .NET class on some regular interval?", "text": "Like anything in life, what you don't know doesn't help you and as a new developer, I know that the more I learn about the different .NET classes out there and their uses, the more I have in my toolbox. However, sort of like an ocean where you just not sure where to start, I thought I would asked the community, does anyone know:   * any recommendations on breaking down a .NET library per class (or smaller), where to start?   * A site that might do just that per article/blog Or any other recommendations on making it a regular (i.e. daily/weekly) practice to learn a new class in .NET? Which Library to start with...etc? **NOTE** : I read allot or regularly, but I thought an effort geared directly at learning about a new class and its uses on a regularly bases would help. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "24047", "title": "Help me catch up on what I've missed since Java 1.4.2", "text": "I am about to start my first professional career position as a software developer, and I'm likely going to be writing a lot of Java code. I don't know that much about what specifically I'll be writing, and besides, I have fairly broad interests when it comes to code anyway. For reasons not worth discussing, my last internship had me coding only for the Java 1.3 and 1.4 SDK's. Also, my university education has focused mainly on algorithms, data structures, and other theory, not language features or libraries. So, with the above in mind, what features, classes, etc. in the current version of Java (what number are we on now, anyway?) would be worth my time to read up on and why? What have I missed since 1.4.2 that makes your life as a programmer easier? Examples and stories of how you discovered a particular package or some such and put it to use would also be great."}
{"_id": "49341", "title": "Why freeware (closed-source) instead of open-source?", "text": "I'm wondering why some people release software as freeware, yet they don't release the source code. Why is that? I can think of some reasons, yet most of them don't make very much sense. Why would you want to keep the source closed but let the program be freely available (free of charge, not free as in freedom)?"}
{"_id": "236375", "title": "Advice for simple communication protocol (iPod and Arduino)", "text": "I connected iPod with Arduino using serial (UART) connection. Arduino sends 0-1023 number (so it's two bytes) as it's samples light sensor value. I'm asking about advice about simple and reliable communication protocol.   1. Do I need magic constants to start/stop communication.   2. Maybe I need sent data of small chunks. Now I have:               while (1)     {        data = getData() ;         // two bytes of 0-1024        Serial.write((data) & 0xFF)) ;         Serial.write((data) & 0x300)) ;      }      Any suggestion how to implement simple and reliable protocol ? Image of my device: http://cl.ly/image/051f370v3e0g Thanks"}
{"_id": "223400", "title": "When should I stop committing to master on new projects?", "text": "Whenever a new project starts, it usually makes sense to start by committing straight to master until you've got something \"stable\", and then you start working in branches. At least, this is how I normally do it. Is there a way to immediately start branches from second commit? Does it make sense to do it this way? Obviously, \"Initial Commit\" will always be on master, but after that, when will I know it's the right time to start making branches for new features?"}
{"_id": "78089", "title": "Is PHP a bad object oriented language?", "text": "I had a chance to have an interesting conversation with my co-workers. Most of them are flash action script or Java developers. We talked about how well php handles OOP. I said that PHP can handle almost every OOP stuff as of PHP 5.2 or 5.3. Am I wrong? I'm not trying to get yes/no answer, but I would like to hear more opinions from developers."}
{"_id": "223409", "title": "database replication or custom solution like creating enterprise \"bus\"", "text": "I'd like some input on how to keep databases that are running on different servers throughout our organization synchronized. We have a registration system of sorts, and when user \"John Doe\" registers on server 1, this registration information needs to be instantly available on server 2 and 3. Currently, our network administrators have set up postgresql replication to do this, and it seems to be working fine. When this solution is up and running full scale, we will have 2 databases being replicated to potentially 4 or 5 different servers. Two database because the registration information is saved into two different databases. One database is a CRM, the other is a reservation application. (BTW. This is all on a LAN, vs WAN) What I'm trying to figure out in my head is whether postgresql replication is the best way to do this or if we should be looking at a software solution. I saw one post here where someone was asking about ETL vs. REST API. REST may be a good option I guess. I'm not sure that it completely suits our needs ... I'll have to think about it some more.. But I'm also thinking about Enterprise integration software ... like iway or something like that where you would identify the source database, identify the taraget database... and then define the interval. The tool would then monitor the source database for changes every X minutes. Anytime there is a change, it would update the target databases. But I'm not sure I'm asking myself all the right questions to do a proper evaluation. Here are some I thought of so far:   1. How fresh does the data need to be on the servers? Has to be 'fairly' real-time... I would say within seconds.   2. What's the volume of information? several records could be created in the source database every few seconds.  What else should I be considering? Thanks."}
{"_id": "197496", "title": "What is the difference between a combinator and function chaining?", "text": "So from what I've read about combinators I can't quite tell how they're different from simply chaining function calls. I know I must be missing something but I'm not figuring out what I'm missing. I mean would g(f(x)) (where _f_ and _g_ are functions) effectively be a combinator if I gave it a different name?"}
{"_id": "98828", "title": "Empirical study on activity distribution of a programmer?", "text": "I am searching for some charts, tables and other empirical evidence on how a typical programmer's activities are distributed (per day, per project, etc). Example activities are programming, phone calls, reading documentation, writing documentation, fixing bugs, requirements engineering, tests, meetings, etc. In particular I am interested in the amount of time a programmer actually works on _executable_ stuff."}
{"_id": "98829", "title": "Sponsors and Advertisement in winform apps", "text": "In a new winform app that I am still preparing, I got the idea that I could by sponsored or have some kind of logos of companies that want to place they logos there. The application is for sports training and completion management, carrier management, etc. As any one seen something like this? How can it be done? How can I interest the companies to sponsor the app? UPDATE ----------------------------------------- I have canceled this one. I asked a coupled of client of mine that deal daily with sponsors, and they make you do stupid thing in your project. Dow it would be nice to have some extra cask to lower the price of the App, and be able to get more market. I will pass this one out. The only intromissions I like in my projects come from the people o actually use it every day."}
{"_id": "20965", "title": "things to think of when moving into C-land", "text": "**Hello**   Over the years have I made a programming journey from C in 1990 to Pascal, C++ with I programmed commercially, java VHDL, C# and now I'm taking a look on F#. In the spring I will go back to study embedded programming in C in a university course so before I do that I will refresh my knowledge in C.   I don't remember much of the C that I learnt and I think I am thankful for that for probably learned some bad habits back then. I have some questions to get me on the way.   **\\--edit--**   To clarify: I am thankful for tips that have been given regarding embedded programming but now I am more interested in relearning C in general. Sorry if my question was unclear,   1. Compiler, Debugger, IDE? As a microslave I was thinking about 2010 C++ Express, any alternatives?   2. Where do you find good libraries with code for C. I'm thinking something similar to Boost, POCO in C++   3. Source for procedural programming patterns and best practices. Where can you find good code learn from? Thanks in advance   Gorgen"}
{"_id": "137608", "title": "Reflection and the LGPL", "text": "Simply, If I use reflection to add methods or functionality to a class defined in a LGPL'd library I'm linking to, does that count as a modification to the existing library and would my reflective code have to be released under the LGPL?"}
{"_id": "204904", "title": "How to make sprint planning fun", "text": "Not only are our sprint planning meetings not fun, they're downright dreadful. The meetings are tedious, and boring, and take forever (a day, but it feels like a lot longer).   The developers complain about it, and dread upcoming plannings. Our routine is pretty standard (user story inserted into sprint backlog by priority >> story is taken apart to tasks >> tasks are estimated in hours >> repeat), and I can't figure out what we're doing wrong. How can we make the meetings more enjoyable? ... Some more details, in response to requests for more information: **Why are the backlog items not inserted and prioritized before sprint kickoff?** User stories are indeed prioritized; we have no idea how long they'll take until we break them down into tasks! From the (excellent) answers here, I see that maybe we shouldn't estimate tasks at all, only the user stories. The reason we estimate tasks (and not stories) is because we've been getting story-estimates terribly wrong -- but I guess that's the subject for an altogether different question. **Why are developers complaining?**   1. Meetings are long.   2. Meetings are monotonous. Story after story, task after task, struggling (yes, struggling) to estimate how long it will take and what it involves.   3. Estimating tasks makes user-story-estimation seem pointless.   4. The longer the meeting, the less focus in the room. The less focused colleagues are, the longer the meeting takes. A recursive hate-spiral develops. We've considered splitting the meeting into two days in order to keep people focused, but the developers wouldn't hear of it. One day of planning is bad enough; now we'll have _two_?! Part of our problem is that we go into very small detail (in order to get more accurate estimations). But when we estimate roughly, we go way off the mark! **To sum up the question:**   * What are we doing wrong?   * What additional ways are there to make the meeting generally more enjoyable?"}
{"_id": "137603", "title": "How does using #define for loop and condition bounds in C increase security?", "text": "My program uses the following define statements:               #define LOWEST_PATIENT_ID 10000     #define HIGHEST_PATIENT_ID 99999     #define LOWEST_CRITICAL_STATUS 1     #define HIGHEST_CRITICAL_STATUS 100      used in this type of code:               do{        scanf(\"%d\", &c_status);        }while((c_status<LOWEST_CRITICAL_STATUS)                ||(c_status>HIGHEST_CRITICAL_STATUS));      I'm unclear about how this is more secure. or is it the typedef statement that is secure?"}
{"_id": "190116", "title": "What sort of questions drive the decision as to whether similar code is separate or common?", "text": "I have come across the following problem many times in various guises in my programming career. As a simple example, consider the following: Let's say there is a method (B) that could differ depending on customer requirements. This could be for any number of reasons. Common sense tells you that as things are now, you should write them as a common method and add branching code in the future to handle any future edge cases.               Customer 1: A-->B-->C          Customer 2: A-->B-->C      However, your experience tells you that this particular bit of code is likely to change so it would be easier to have separate methods (B1 & B2) and change the logic for one customer rather than continually add branching code making method (B) non-generic.               Customer 1: A-->B1-->C          Customer 2: A-->B2-->C      Are there any rules of thumb that can be applied in such cases or does every case have to be taken on its merits? As an aside, I've come across plenty of people who staunchly advocate one approach over the other and I can see the merits of both. But surely there is some middle ground that can be reached based on reasoned arguments?"}
{"_id": "190112", "title": "How to do transaction management using Spring without Annotation?", "text": "I'm using Hibernate4.2 and Spring3.2 and I m doing transaction management using Spring without annotation (i.e. without `@Transactional`). How can I use Spring-transaction management without annotation and without any DaoSupport?"}
{"_id": "134357", "title": "Managing multiple versions of a web application using Git", "text": "We have a family of apps, all having the same base. Until now I've been developing this base, and the Git workflow was very simple:   * Development is done in `develop` branch   * New features are developed in `name-of-the-feature` branch   * Releases are made in `release-**` branch Until now, the code was the same for every app of the family. Let's say the base they share is now complete, and from now on the code will be different for every app. I'm not sure how should I deal with **git** and this **multiple apps** that have the same base.   * Should each one of them have its **own git project**?   * Should they be on the same project, but each one in its **own branch**? The point is: if I put them on separate projects, every modification done in the **base** of the app will have to me repeated in each of the apps. I'm not very familiar with **git** , but if I store each project in a **branch** , will be possible to merge the base modification with each app? Does anyone have experienced a situation like this? I'm not sure how to proceed. Thanks! **EDITED** When I said **version** I didn't mean like version numbers. They are actually different apps that share the same base."}
{"_id": "71861", "title": "Is developing games the best way to learn programming?", "text": "I heard recently an instructor mentinon that developing games was the best way to learn programming. Besides the fact that everything had to be created in code, he said you really get to fully experience and implement OOP into your programs. In other words everything you make in a game is a literal object both technically and in concept. Is it safe to make this assumption? Or are there always exceptions when learning programming? **note** it was geared towards .net / xna / c# development."}
{"_id": "104889", "title": "What is the difference between the Controller in MVC and ViewModel in MVVM?", "text": "I can't see the difference between MVC and MVVM clearly. I feel the Command in a ViewModel is just like the Action method in a Controller. And both the Controller and ViewModel will notify the View to refresh itself after modifying the state of the Model through Data Binding. What is the main difference between the two patterns?"}
{"_id": "203998", "title": "Why it is not recommended to post several defects in the same issue / ticket?", "text": "I am not sure if this is the place to ask the following conceptual question (Stackoverflow is definitely not). I saw this question in a multiple choice exam (single answer), similar to the ISTQB exams: > _Why it is not recommended to report several defects in the same issue / > ticket ?_ > > a. In order to keep the report concise and clear. > > b. Because the developers might fix only one bug. > > c. Because the testing group testers are rated by the amount of bugs they > find. > > d. Bugs management systems does not support this feature of multiple bugs. My sole opinion is that `a` is the correct answer. `b` \\- can't be it as the _fix-feedback-resolved-closed_ should avoid that case. `c` \\- Obviously wrong. `d` \\- Redmine / Trac plugins supports multiple fields. The answer according to the answer sheet is `b`. Can someone explain why ? Comments with opinion about answers are welcome."}
{"_id": "211770", "title": "Design pattern for locking asynchronous operations in Objective-C", "text": "I'm writing my first Objective-C Class. It's responsible for interaction with an HTTP SSO authentication service. The process requires multiple HTTP transactions in order to complete. The Class acts as a `NSURLConnectionDelegate` for its own `NSURLConnection` object. The `NSURLConnectionDelegate` object operates asynchronously. I need to disallow an authentication attempt when another is in progress. I have an idea of how to do that myself, but want to know of design patterns for this situation. My existing idea is to check an instance variable to see if an authentication is underway and if so simply not start another. However, I'm unsure how to communicate this back to the calling Class. My method presently returns void. Should I use an NSError and return that if another authentication attempt is underway?"}
{"_id": "204903", "title": "Design Question: Keep 1000 newest items; DB vs. application", "text": "I have a Qt application, which sends and receives messages. Messages are stored in a local MongoDB. The application has a message list window, which shows sent, received and all messages (depending on the view). For performance reasons the application has a QList, which holds QPairs of Mongo ID and the message itself, so more or less all messages are available in the application. We want to limit the no. of shown messages, because the view gets slower for 1000 and more messages. The simple approach was just to limit the no. of pairs stored in the QList. However, I'm not quite sure, if this is true. Recently I've read here ( **EDIT:** found it) a question which basically said \"Your application code won't be smarter/faster/better for stuff a DB is designed for (e.g. sorting, getting a subset, etc.)\". In addition keeping the QList in sync with the DB is causing us headaches and we have some corner cases like an very old message can be updated and then has to be displayed again. So the question is, would a DB-only approach (e.g. querying the DB for 1000 messages whenever the view has to be updated) be faster then storing the acutally shown messages in the QList and trying to keep them in sync."}
{"_id": "30103", "title": "Why no developer API in C++ for Google or Yahoo mail?", "text": "I was trying to do some C++ coding that can send files from my laptop to my webmail account. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that there is no easy way to do this. Look into these links:   1. GMAIL: http://code.google.com/apis/gmail/oauth/code.html   2. YAHOO: http://developer.yahoo.com/mail/ I am trying to understand why PHP or Python or Java support exist but no C++. No flame wars, I love all programming languages and their creators equally but I am curious to understand the logic behind such implementation choices."}
{"_id": "30101", "title": "Why exactly can't PHP have full unicode support?", "text": "Everybody knows, that PHP has problems with Unicode. Version 6 is effectively abandoned, because of Unicode implementation difficulties. But I wonder if anyone knows what are the **exact** reasons? Architecture/design problems, performance concerns, community problems (I bet not), something other?"}
{"_id": "86681", "title": "Should I use scaffolding or not in Ruby on Rails?", "text": "I'm learning Ruby on Rails for a new project of mine. I am referring the book 'Agile Web Development with Rails' which shows how to build a shopping cart and they use scaffolding. I'm pretty familiar with MVC architecture and have used several frameworks in PHP to build applications. I've never used scaffolding and I'm not sure if that's the best way to start building an application. Experienced users, please suggest if I should be using scaffolding or should I code manually."}
{"_id": "108285", "title": "MPL 1.1 and APL 2.0 License compatibility", "text": "I am working a project that is licensed under the MPL 1.1 and would like to incorporate some code that is licensed under the APL 2.0. I know in 2010 Mozilla announced they were updating the MPL to make it more \"Apache compatible\" among other things. I'm no lawyer. Exactly what part(s) of the MPL 1.1 don't jive with the APL 2.0 and vice versa? The project has very few of its original contributers still actively involved so I doubt I'd be able to contact all of them to get permission to change the license."}
{"_id": "78625", "title": "does correctly applying an open-source license require designating a copyright holder?", "text": "Let's say I want to initiate publication of some source code under an open- source license like Apache or MIT, but I know that I'm only the Creator of the source code in its initial form, and I'm unlikely to be the one who maintains it long term. I just want to get it out there and make sure it's free for others to use per one of these licenses. What do I need to do as far as copyright statement? Do I need to put my name or company down in order for the open-source license to apply? Is there a way that source code can be published anonymously, or without a designated \"owner\"? Alternatively, if I put my name or company down, can this ownership be reassigned later?"}
{"_id": "202123", "title": "What would be the best approach to make revisions of user content?", "text": "I have searched and could not find any information about it. What is the best approach to storing revisions? I have a website where the user can write a document which can be fairly long (200-300 lines). How do you determine when to make a revision? Is it not a scalable solution to make a new one whenever the save, because that would be useless to the user when the want to look back, and it would require quite a lot of space. You could use time and say for every 15 minute they are working on it there would be a revision, but that would sometimes be nothing or the whole document have completely changed. I could make a diff from the previous revision, and compare by line and look at how many percent of the lines have been changed. What are other doing revisions?"}
{"_id": "202122", "title": "NSException in init when having a custom designated initialiser?", "text": "I have a custom View Controller that is a subclass of UIViewController that requires a data object to be set up properly. Without this object, showing the VC doesn't make any sense. So I created a custom initialiser that requires this object to be passed as an parameter/argument. There is also no \"default\" data object, so there is no point for me to override the inherited init, and implement passing this default data object internally from init to custom init. Instead I am raising an exception that explains that you need to add an object in the designated custom initialiser instead of using the inherited init method. However, my colleagues object that I just should return nil in the overridden standard init. However they are not giving me any proper argument, they only tell me that this is the convention. Which is not an argument for me strictly speaking. I won't do things just because they are tradition. Why return nil and why raising a custom exception is wrong?"}
{"_id": "132385", "title": "What makes a language Turing-complete?", "text": "What is the minimal set of language features/structures that make it Turing- complete?"}
{"_id": "234268", "title": "Strategy for Website Talking to API on Same Server", "text": "I have a RESTful API that allows retrieval of data through requests such as `GET http://example.com/users/id/1` (Coded following this tutorial). The code igniter controller looks like this:               class Example_api extends REST_Controller {          function user_get()     {         $data = array('returned: '. $this->get('id'));         $this->response($data);     }      This API was written specifically for the reason that I should be able to access the same code logic from the web frontend as well as mobile apps etc. Now, the mobile app is easy to write but I want to find the strategy for using the API from the web site. The website is essentially sitting on the same server that offers this API and it does not seem right to me to make an HTTP request to the API from code and go through the network again. So, the question is, how do I use the API from the php code in the same site without going through the network."}
{"_id": "106766", "title": "Difference between templates in JavaScript and design patterns", "text": "What is the difference between templates and design patterns in JavaScript? I read about the template method design pattern and now I wonder how it relates to JavaScript templates (if at all)."}
{"_id": "91024", "title": "Where was \"async\" all these days?", "text": "It was started with C# 5's new keyword \"async\". And now I see this async programming everywhere from Javascript to C++, mostly from Microsoft. And from various discussions I came to know, this is a very useful technique to avoid threading yet keep CPU working while other things are fetched form hard disk or network. My question is, why such an important topic was ignored all these days? Or it's just a hype from Microsoft?"}
{"_id": "106760", "title": "Can you write an unambiguous specification in a natural language like English?", "text": "It seems to me that you cannot possibly write a software specification in English that is completely free of ambiguities, simply due to the informal nature of natural language - and therefore that a truly unambiguous specification must include code written in a formally specified language. Is this a known result or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "185312", "title": "Unit Test Friendly Domain Driven Design", "text": "Many of the readings I've done on DDD, both in books and online, seem to represent code that, often times, is difficult or impossible to unit test. For example, there are numerous samples with static factories, calls to concrete domain classes and static extension methods (in C# samples only). I find it frustrating and taxing to have to constantly re-evaluate the code to make it testable in my mind. Can anyone suggest material that demonstrates DDD code with 100% testability in mind (preferably in C#)? Also, to meander a bit: Is the fact that many of the code samples are not test-friendly a sign (smell) that DDD is becoming antiquated?"}
{"_id": "180798", "title": "what is the best way to ensure accountability in code checkins?", "text": "Note: after writing this I realize that this question is perhaps philosophical, but I'm interested in how the industry handles this scenario regardless. I have recently been working with a code base that is not yet as testable as it should be. I've seen some junior developers check in code that breaks use cases, which is usually identified by another developer a few days after the check-in. Assuming that we can't achieve code coverage yet, are there technical solutions for holding developers accountable for bad check-ins in addition to a non-technical approach; discussing the commit and having the dev address the issue in a new commit."}
{"_id": "185315", "title": "Name for a bug that disappears when someone else looks at it", "text": "Does anyone know of an existing name for a bug that disappears the moment you call someone over to look at it? It's a funny phenomenon, but it has happened from time to time that I'm working on a bug that consistently appears, but as soon as I call over a colleague to look at it with me, the buggy behavior stops and doesn't reappear. This is distinct from any of the other oddball bug names I've found, such as heisenbug or mandelbug, in that it's definitely there, even when attempting to study it, until it's shown to someone else. My coworker proposed the name \"Calvinbug\" for this phenomenon, after Calvin & Hobbes. Thoughts? And no, I'm not crazy. :)"}
{"_id": "180790", "title": "REST efficiency on count and sum methods", "text": "For example, if I have a Customer Transactions Table and I create a REST for it. The fields are: date, description, and total_amount. I am trying to figure out which one is much more efficient when you get the sum and the count of the transactions:   1. You create a REST for `/transactons` URI and it lists down all the transactions. Then, you `sum` all transactions using javascript and you `count` all transactions using javascript.   2. You create a REST for `/transactions/count` and `/transactions/sum` URI and lists down count and sum for all transactions. Then, get the count and sum using javascript. I'm wondering which one is a better way."}
{"_id": "190991", "title": "How is developing apps for Windows Phone 8 is different from Windows Phone 7.x?", "text": "What has changed with regards to the design patterns? Do both use the same development techniques? If I'm faced with the option of learning `Windows Phone 7` vs `Windows Phone 8` will learning windows phone 7 will qualify me for directly start development for windows phone 8?"}
{"_id": "23098", "title": "What's the best RESTful URL structure for a recursive resource?", "text": "I'm creating a RESTfull service for a tree-like resource structure and was wondering what the best URL structure would be? I have three requirements:   1. be able to get a collection of root resources    2. be able to get an individual resource    3. be able to get a collection of child resources My current thought is:               /rest/documents     /rest/documents/{id}     /rest/documents/{id}/documents      I was also thinking of going the singular / plural routes to denote lists or individual elements, but I know I'm going to have a resource that is the same plural as it is singular, so decided against this. Does anybody have any thoughts on the above? or have a different / better way of structuring this? Many thanks Matt"}
{"_id": "147650", "title": "When comparing a combination of String literals, is it convention to call .equals() on the literal?", "text": "There are benefits to each, and I understand the differences - but what is considered best / standard practice? Why? `\"myString\".equals(myStringVar)`   * Avoids a potential NPE and does not require a null check. (Good thing?)   * Cleaner to read since a null check is not required.   * If null is not an expected value, your program could be breaking without being any the wiser. `myStringVar.equals(\"myString\")`   * Requires a null check if null is an expected value. (Good thing?)   * Can clutter up compound conditionals with null checks.   * Allows for NPE to let us know if something has broken."}
{"_id": "147652", "title": "Do Java, J2EE and Java Web get better with time? It still looks problematic to me after months", "text": "I'm a little new to Java Web Development. JSF, JSP, Servlets, Hibernate etc... I have really a good understanding of OOP and C++. I have years of PHP and MySQL web development experience. I also have experience with C# and ASP.NET and I'm a software engineering student. I don't want to continue my career with PHP, since it is getting very popular, there are many people who use it and I can't really use my engineering knowledge fully with PHP. It is more basic. I need a more enterprise environment, Java EE is exactly like this. But... For these last weeks I was re-thinking about keeping up my progress with Java EE. I have these **problems listed below** , and I'd like to get your thoughts on those especially if you are an experienced Java EE developed. The most primitive question is, **do they get better with getting used to Java with time, as a developer? Do you, if you are experienced in Java EE, still deal with those kinds of problems after years?**        * There's always a \"version conflict\" between jars needs to be solved.   * You always get an error because of a missing or extra jar.   * There are so many jar files... That is really overwhelming. I'm using Hibernate, JSF and CXF in Tomcat and I have 100+ jar files in WEB-INF/lib. The two problems above I listed increases with jars count.   * Tomcat or Glassfish is not really enough for development. Especially Tomcat is worse. There are many problems. Let's say, Tomcat does not update wtpwebapps dir always. I sometimes copy-paste jars manually. Eclipse 80% of the time restarts Tomcat on saving .java files, and does not update in hot-replace mode, but sometimes do. (Yes using always in debug mode)   * There are many implementations. That's fine but setting up one of them takes at least hours, or days. Like Web Services. Which implementation? I just got an error because the latest Axis2 doesn't support Dynamic Web Module 3.0.   * Setting up the development environment takes hours. If I need to work on a different computer, I check out SVN repository and set up libraries in Build Path, server, and solve new dependency bugs which takes lots of time. I still have no idea how to deal with different paths of libraries on different computers (some paths are not relative like Axis2 project folder setting).   * The logging system of Tomcat or Glassfish still look complicated to me after months. I get tired of checking Console tab of Eclipse if there's an error/exception. Even half of the exceptions don't clearly describe the problem.   * There's no stability like Apache Web Server (or php binary in that sense) in Tomcat and Glassfish. You can very well easily crash the whole Web App Server with a tiny bug. (Even the app shouldn't get crashed. Just that request should be crashed.)   * I've used PHP for years and no bugs affected my development or production. But with just 5-6 month with java I got a few bugs that slowed me down. Even Eclipse has critical bugs in its core features. (i.e. Android Emulator does not deploy my .apk file and I need to kill adb.exe everytime after I start the emulator. This is not exactly Java EE but a good example. There were other Java EE bugs I run across.)   * There's always a support problem for new releases. (i. e. latest Eclipse does not support Hiberbate Tools.)   * There are many configuration files everywhere.   * Configuration files are really different. Even using just a logging system like log4j takes hours to understand its configuration and implementation into project system. Those are just popped from my mind. There are of course other problems. Every language does but Java seems to me has more than others. **So, do they get better with time for me as a developer? 2-3 years later, if I continue with Java and J2EE, will I be get rid of most of those annoying things because of being more experienced?**"}
{"_id": "186566", "title": "Should code-behind in WPF be considered part of the view?", "text": "I've read plenty of articles around different patterns in use with WPF and this is something I've yet to understand: **should a code-behind file be considered part of the view?** As a consequence, should code-behind files be allowed utilise knowledge of specific elements in the markup? I have a number of scenarios where the controls which are present in a view are influenced by data in the view model (eg a button for each list item). Currently, I handle these kinds of scenarios in the relevant code-behind file. To me, this feels like an implementation detail of the view and thus part of it; another view of the same view model might choose a list box of list items for example)."}
{"_id": "186568", "title": "Is a pair of two tightly coupled classes any better than a single, larger class?", "text": "I'm rewriting somebody else's code at the minute, and I came across two classes which reference each other directly and call methods on each other. Like so (example in C#):               class A {       B otherClass;       public A() {         this.otherClass = new B(this);       }       // Other methods here call methods on B     }          class B {       A otherClass;       public B(A otherClass) {         this.otherClass = otherClass;       }       // Other methods here call methods on A     }      Reading through his code and trying to understand it, I'm having to move between the two classes as they call each other. These classes are not independently reusable without using the other. I'm aware it's considered best practice to avoid circular references (and it's straight up not allowed between C# projects in Visual Studio), but is this, or could this be, in your experience any better than having a single - larger - class?"}
{"_id": "216203", "title": "How does the maintenance of OpenJDK work in practice?", "text": "Specifically, I would like to understand the difference between Oracle's JDK and OpenJDK in terms of bug fixes and other patches. Which branch gets fixes first and is Oracle in a habit of making patches that never make it to OpenJDK?"}
{"_id": "156073", "title": "Am I too young to burn out?", "text": "I feel like I have burned out, even though I am only out of college for 5 years. For the first 3 years of my career, things were going awesome. I was never anything special in school, but I felt special at my company. Looking back, I could tell that I made all the right moves:   * I actively tried to improve myself daily.   * I made a point of helping anyone I could.   * I made a point (and read books about) being a good team member.   * I had fun. After 3 years in a row as being rated as a top employee, I converted that political capital into choosing to work on an interesting, glamorous project with only 2 developers: me and a highly respected senior technical leader. I worked HARD on that project, and it came out a huge success. High in quality, low in bugs, no delays, etc. The senior tech lead got a major promotion and a GIGANTIC bonus. I got nothing. I was so disappointed that I just stopped caring. Over the last year, I have just kind of floated. During my first 4 years I felt energized after a 10 hour day. Now I can barely be bothered to work 6 hours a day. Any advice? I don't even know what I'm asking. I am just hoping smart people see this and drop me a few pieces of wisdom."}
{"_id": "156072", "title": "Database ERD design: 2 types user in one table", "text": "I have read this (Database design: 3 types of users, separate or one table?) I decided to put admin and normal user in one table since the attributes are similar:               fullname,     address,     phone,     email,     gender     ...      Then I want to draw ERD, suddenly my mind pop out a question. How to draw? Customer make appointment and admin approve appointment. now only two tables, and admin, customer in same table. Help."}
{"_id": "223459", "title": "Handling multiple login methods", "text": "Currently, I'm using Parse to handle my backend, and I have multiple ways to login -> via regular email/password and via linkedin. Parse has a specific method of logging in requiring username/password. If a user registers through linkedin, I hash a combination of his information as his password, and login through parse. (i.e. username: user's linkedin account / password: hashed version of user information). If a user registers through email, the user sets his own password, logs in through parse (i.e. username: user's email / password: user's predefined password). There's no way to retrieve a plain text version of the password, so what would be a good way to handle login through linkedin when the user has registered regularly (set his own password), and vice versa?"}
{"_id": "23327", "title": "Do you experiment with unconventional ways to use design patterns?", "text": "We stick to standard usages and best practices because they work and communicate intent well, but without trying new things we can't really grow. Have you ever tried something that seemed absurd but worked out really well? When it works, how do you avoid confusing other developers with non-standard usages? And what do you do when things go horribly wrong - refactor, start over, or just go with it?"}
{"_id": "136267", "title": "Creating a line of business application with Visual Studio Isolated Shell", "text": "I ask this to the pros out there - Is it feasible to build a new LOB(Line Of Business) application with VS Shell as an stand alone application. There are some points that I thought needs to changed, but I'm unaware how, like - There will be no document. Instead there will be windows with controls where people enter data. There will be no file menu(new,edit). Instead there will be a login box when the application opens(something like the SQL Server Management Studio). There should be floating windows which hosts the control and some kind of window management where these windows can be minimized(obviously inside the shell) These are some of the points which I thought of. Obviously there are many other points which needs to be changed and I ask you to populate the list. Also please point me out how to start with it, best practices and possibly any other tips which you think should be mentioned."}
{"_id": "136261", "title": "What is the best technology for a TRULY portable REST client", "text": "I develop a suite of productivity tools, for Mac, iOS and Windows. They all communicate with a sync server via a RESTful interface (using Protocol Buffers), but as we add new platforms, we realize the pain it is to recreate different versions of the same code just to communicate with the client, so we have thought of using a modular design:   * The backend client module would be the same for all clients, so that changes to the protocol can be easily ported to all clients   * Clients we need to support: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Web, possibly Windows Mobile The only way I can think of is via a JavaScript module that's shared across all clients and handles communications with the server, but perhaps that's even more work because of the integration required with the JavaScript interpreter. Maybe we might be better off writing a couple of backend modules instead of just one."}
{"_id": "136262", "title": "How to lead a development project without technical expertise", "text": "I have been a hands-on developer for my entire career and love working with code. I have always resented the team lead who has little or no expertise regarding a particular technology and yet insists on a certain implementation. Now I find myself on the other side of the looking glass. I am the lead developer of a fat client to be implemented in C#, however my expertise is in building Java web applications. While I know that I can leverage design patterns and OO paradigms in any language, I am lost when it comes to coding standards, project life cycle tools and release/distribution procedures. I have no doubt that I can pick up the basics within a month or two, but there are certain experiences one can only gather with time. What should I do, and how do I avoid becoming the project lead that I hated when I was developing?"}
{"_id": "74998", "title": "Which language is the most flexible for scraping websites?", "text": "I'm new to programming. I know a little python and a little objective c, and I've been going through tutorials for each. Then it occurred to me, I need to know which language is more flexible (python, obj c, something else) for screen scraping a website for content. What do I mean by \"flexible\"? Well, ideally, I need something that will be easy to refactor and tweak for similar projects. I'm trying to avoid doing a lot of re-writing (well, re- coding) if I wanted to switch some of the variables in the program (i.e., the website to be scraped, the content to fetch, etc). Anyways, if you could please give me your opinion, that would be great. Oh, and if you know any existing frameworks for the language you recommend, please share. (I know a little about Selenium and BeautifulSoup for python already)."}
{"_id": "109155", "title": "Local and cloud editions?", "text": "I have a .NET web server application I'm building that I plan to host at a .NET cloud hosting platform, like AppHarbor with SQL server. It will be used by multiple small groups of people to record and processes votes at an election (the current system is called TallyJ). I also need my users to be able to set up a self-contained edition on a single PC, or as a server on a PC with an ad hoc LAN that is **not** connected to the internet when it is being used. My current plan would be to use IIS Express and SQL CE for a local setup. With that, the local and hosted versions of code and SQL would be the same. Does this sound viable, or am I missing something? Do you have any suggestions for a better set of tools (but limited to C# and a relational database on the server/cloud)?"}
{"_id": "72740", "title": "How permissive should a language be about identifiers?", "text": "> This is a sister question to: Is it bad to use Unicode characters in > variable names? As is my wont, I'm working on a language project. The thought came to me that allowing multi-token identifiers might improve both readability and writability:               primary controller = new Data Interaction Controller();          # vs.          primary_controller = new DataInteractionController();      And whether or not you think that's a good idea*, it got me musing about how permissive a language ought to be about identifiers, and how much value there is in being so. It's obvious that allowing characters outside the usual `[0-9A-Za-z_]` has some advantages in terms of writability, readability, and proximity to the domain, but also that it can create maintenance nightmares. There seems to be a consensus (or at least a trend) that English is the language of programming. Does a Chinese programmer really need to be writing `\u7535\u5b50\u90ae\u4ef6\u5730\u5740` when `email_address` is the international preference? I hate to be Anglocentric when it comes to Unicode, or a stickler when it comes to other identifier restrictions, but is it really worth it to allow crazy variable names? **tl;dr: Is the cost of laxity higher than the potential benefit?** Why or why not? What experiences and evidence can you share in favour of or opposed to relaxed restrictions? Where do you think is the ideal on the continuum? * My argument in favour of allowing multi-token identifiers is that it introduces more sane points to break long lines of code, while still allowing names to be descriptive, _and_ avoiding `ExcessiveCamelCase` and `a_whole_lot_of_underscores`, both of which are detrimental to readability."}
{"_id": "177501", "title": "Why does Java allow to implement different interfaces, each containing a method with the same signature?", "text": "I recently found out that I can have two interfaces, one containing a method with the same signature as a method in the other interface. And I can have an interface or class that implements both of afore-mentioned interfaces. So the descendant class/interface implicitly implements two different methods as one method. Why is this allowed in Java? I can see numerous problems arising from this. Eclipse, for example, can only find out about implementations for one interface method, but for the second one it doesn't show any implementations at all. Also, I believe that there would be problems with automatic refactoring, like when you want to change the signature of the method in one of the interfaces and the IDE will be unable to correctly change that signature in all implementations (since they implement two different interfaces, and the IDE cannot tell which interface method the implementation is referring to.) Why don't just make a compiler error like 'interfaces method names clashes' or something like that?"}
{"_id": "177507", "title": "Representing complex object dependencies", "text": "I have several classes with a reasonably complex (but acyclic) dependency graph. All the dependencies are of the form: `class X` instance contains an attribute of `class Y`. All such attributes are set during initialization and never changed again. Each class' constructor has just a couple parameters, and each object knows the proper parameters to pass to the constructors of the objects it contains. `class Outer` is at the top of the dependency hierarchy, i.e., no class depends on it. Currently, the UI layer only creates an `Outer` instance; the parameters for `Outer` constructor are derived from the user input. Of course, `Outer` in the process of initialization, creates the objects it needs, which in turn create the objects they need, and so on. The new development is that the a user who knows the dependency graph may want to reach deep into it, and set the values of some of the arguments passed to constructors of the inner classes (essentially overriding the values used currently). How should I change the design to support this? I could keep the current approach where all the inner classes are created by the classes that need them. In this case, the information about \"user overrides\" would need to be passed to `Outer` class' constructor in some complex `user_overrides` structure. Perhaps `user_overrides` could be the full logical representation of the dependency graph, with the overrides attached to the appropriate edges. `Outer` class would pass `user_overrides` to every object it creates, and they would do the same. Each object, before initializing lower level objects, will find its location in that graph and check if the user requested an override to any of the constructor arguments. Alternatively, I could rewrite all the objects' constructors to take as parameters the full objects they require. Thus, the creation of all the inner objects would be moved outside the whole hierarchy, into a new controller layer that lies between `Outer` and UI layer. The controller layer would essentially traverse the dependency graph from the bottom, creating all the objects as it goes. The controller layer would have to ask the higher-level objects for parameter values for the lower-level objects whenever the relevant parameter isn't provided by the user. Neither approach looks terribly simple. Is there any other approach? Has this problem come up enough in the past to have a pattern that I can read about? I'm using Python, but I don't think it matters much at the design level."}
{"_id": "194919", "title": "Should a Biotech company invest in developing its own software?", "text": "Working in a Biotech company, there are many opportunities for automating the processing of information. There are also many software solutions e.g. LIM systems, ELN's etc. to fit those specific needs. What I have found and am continuously learning about is that these systems, despite doing their specific jobs very well, are isolated from one another. Typically, for one piece of information to get related to another piece of information in another system, some coordination between the users needs to occur via e-mail, word- of-mouth, etc. # The Problem Coordination and delivery of the information usually takes days or in some cases, a week or more to accomplish with what seems to me a high-potential to misinform and make non-tracked mistakes. # Possible Solution The role I have at this company is an experimental one to play around with the proposed solution of having a resource to develop software solutions to connect these isolated systems. We can use open-source libraries, external services, build it from scratch, etc. # The Question Since the Biotech company is not a software company, should such a company make such an invest in developing its own software solutions especially when there is nothing available on the market that fits their processes exactly? Are there systems out there that fit this kind of work? What experiences validate your answers? Thanks, in advance!"}
{"_id": "224297", "title": "Get subset of associative array. Which of these is more readable? Is there another reason to use one over the other (or a different method)", "text": "If I have an array that has more info than I need and I want to pull out a subset of its name value pairs I have come up with 2 methods. Both rely on this:                 $detailkeys=array(title,summary,subtitle,url,imgsrc,description);      The method I came up with on my own:                 foreach ($detailkeys as $keyname) {         $details[$keyname]=$data[$keyname];       }      The method I found online:                 // get just the desired parts of $data and put them in $details.       $details=array_intersect_key($data, array_flip($detailkeys));       The second method, with a decent comment, is what I chose, but wanted to see what anyone else had to say about it."}
{"_id": "135910", "title": "How to explain your non-programmer boss you need to refactor a whole site?", "text": "First of all, is not a programming matter, is a programmer afair. I'm the new web programmer in my company.   I'm here just for 2 weeks. And they want me to teach Wordpress, configure & install it, and things like that. But they have a intranet too to make all the compatibility stuff, tracking clients, ordering event, auto-emailing. Well, the intranet is very nice, and they spent 1 or 2 years with a programmer to do that. But the problem is: The intranet is great for the user (a bad UI experience but works well).   They have it from 4 or 5 years now. But if you go to the code, it is annoying. Seriously, it's really really really heavy, code duplicated, insecure. All works ok, but all is wrong in code view. Some points:   * The site keeps 4GB of disk space (without DB!)   * There where thousands of files, folders, with no order   * A lot of files are duplicated   * There were, at least, 20-40 files you have to configure to change the database source   * Some config files are in .ini, so i can download from anywhere   * The sites was coded for 4.0 or 3.x, miraculously it works on 5.x with some warnings.   * The site was coded without any kind of scalability, they just copy and paste files and keep working, no includes, nothing. For example: I see, at least 40 files called check_in.php in different folders. Functions called: paste() paste_2()... What points you will use to convince your boss to take care of that and refactor all the whole site? It's a pain in the ass. I know refactor all gonna be hard, but I think it's the better way to continue my work.   Because they want me to make modifications on that and I have to spent 3 hours just to understand from where comes that **** function called paste() and what exactly do. Ah, one more good point. There's no documentation at all."}
{"_id": "194917", "title": "How do I make my ASP.NET application take an action based on time?", "text": "I have an ASP.NET MVC4 application. Suppose that I wanted to execute some code (such as emailing a user) 2 days after a user has signed up. One way is to have code executed on every request which scans the database for users and their sign-up time and execute code based on that. This seems messy and it depends on people visiting the application frequently. Another way is to write a separate application that runs on the server 24/7 and performs the checking itself, perhaps scanning the database at 12:00am every day and performing its own code. What's the good way to go about this?"}
{"_id": "32996", "title": "Starting small custom development company, type of niches to target?", "text": "This is kind of a new years thing for me as I want to be more entrepreneurial going forward with programming and this is kind of a general question for anyone who may share the same ambitions as me. I have experience with web programming and, although I work full time for a company doing programming, I have some freelance programmers that I work with / employ for small projects. I want to see about taking things to the next level as far as building a small company doing custom development. I'm just not sure how to figure out what niches to target as far as what type of apps to build as demos, etc. I was thinking mobile (maybe Android or iPhone) but am just curious if anyone has any advice / resources. A lot of \"web development\" seems to end up being just using a CMS like Joomla or Wordpress, for smaller sites, so I want to figure a way to steer clear of this crowd and find some opportunity with companies / entrepreneurs who actually need real programming development done to build apps. Thanks for any advice"}
{"_id": "171836", "title": "On merging database records, constraint violation in the intermediate table of M2M", "text": "If you are merging two or more database records from table X, that have a many-to-many relationship with table Y, how should you solve the problem of records in intermediate table Z that would violate one or more constraints as a result of the merge? Do you simply discard them or break off the transaction?"}
{"_id": "55378", "title": "What counts as reinventing the wheel?", "text": "Do the following scenarios count as \"reinventing the wheel\" in your book?   * A solution exists, but not in the language you want to use, and existing solutions can't be interfaced with the language you want to use in a clean, idiomatic way.   * In principle you could get an existing library to do what you wanted with heavy modification, but you think it would probably be easier to just start from scratch.   * What you're writing has the same one-line description as stuff that's already been done, but you're targeting a different niche. For example, maybe your problem has been solved a zillion times before, but in a way that's inefficient for large datasets and your code works well for large datasets."}
{"_id": "144304", "title": "Text comparison algorithm using java-diff-utils", "text": "One of the features in our project is to implement a comparison algorithm between two versions of text and provide a % change between the two versions. While I was researching, I came across google java-diff-utils project. Has anyone used this for comparing text using java-diff-utils ? Using this utility, I can get a list of \"delta\" which I assume I can use it for the % of difference between two versions of the text? Is this a correct way of doing this? If you have done any text comparison algorithm using Java, could you give me some pointers?"}
{"_id": "144308", "title": "Dapper and object validation/business rules enforcement", "text": "This isn't really Dapper-specific, actually, as it relates to any XML- serializeable object.. but it came up when I was storing an object using Dapper. Anyways, say I have a user class. Normally, I'd do something like this:               class User     {         public string SIN {get; private set;}         public string DisplayName {get;set;}              public User(string sin)         {             if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(sin))                 throw new ArgumentException(\"SIN must be specified\");             this.SIN = sin;         }     }      Since a SIN is required, I'd just create a constructor with a sin parameter, and make it read-only. However, with a Dapper (and probably any other ORM), I need to provide a parameterless constructor, and make all properties writeable. So now I have this:               class User: IValidatableObject      {         public int Id { get; set; }         public string SIN { get; set; }         public string DisplayName { get; set; }              public IEnumerable<ValidationResult> Validate(ValidationContext validationContext)         {           // implementation         }     }      This seems.. can't really pick the word, a bad smell?   A) I'm allowing to change properties that should not be changed ever after an object has been created (SIN, userid) B) Now I have to implement IValidatableObject or something like that to test those properties before updating them to db. So how do you go about it ?"}
{"_id": "100336", "title": "Does having a funny or silly name hurt a project?", "text": "This question has been bothering me for a while. Let's take some of my projects as an example. In my projects I tend to prefix them with \"quack\". This means that you'll have project names like (disclosure: These are my actual projects) Quackbot, an IRC bot, and Quackedcube, which was a Rubik's Cube solver. At least when repeating to others, the name does sound strange and unprofessional. The only other example I can think of is the Bouncy Castle library for Java which handles all sorts of encryption related things. The name, though, sounds a little silly, and I've seen several comments to Stack Overflow answers that recommend it saying something like \"Would anyone really trust their commercial app to something called Bouncy Castle?\" In these two examples, would you say that the name will or has prevented adoption by people seriously looking for libraries for their commercial application? Is the success of Bouncy Castle an example of the rule or the exception? Would you use libraries or programs with silly, funny, or immature names?"}
{"_id": "100334", "title": "Using Backbone.js with ASP.Net MVC", "text": "I'm currently looking into the advantages of using Backbone.js, but I'll be using ASP.Net MVC as the main bulk of the site. My question is, is it worth blending the 2 together or am I making a rod for my own back? Should I just use an ASP.Net Web Forms site instead?"}
{"_id": "131121", "title": "Best practice to query data from MS SQL Server in C Sharp?", "text": "What is the best way to query data from a MS SQL Server in C Sharp? I know that it is not good practice to have an SQL query in the code. Is the best way to create a stored procedure and call it from C Sharp with parameters?               using (var conn = new SqlConnection(connStr))     using (var command = new SqlCommand(\"StoredProc\", conn) {                                 CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure }) {        conn.Open();        command.ExecuteNonQuery();        conn.Close();     }"}
{"_id": "92048", "title": "conciseness to speed ratio", "text": "In general, the more concise & flexible a language is the slower is the execution of programs written in this language. on the other side, the fast languages are mostly overly verbose, requiring you to write several lines just to output \"hello world\", which means harder development time and is more error prone. so the question is, is there any measurement of the conciseness to speed ratio?. if yes, how is it called and where can I find some information about it. thanks. **note:** one can create a language of single letter tokens, `p h` printing hello world, that's terseness. conciseness means -for our purpose- as defined here : > Giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but > comprehensive"}
{"_id": "110906", "title": "Does it makes sense to implement an event dispatching system that allows event bubbling for non GUI related objects?", "text": "Following up on this question of mine, where I wanted to know the general principles of implementing an event dispatching system that allows for events to bubble (and capturing I've come to learn); does such an implementation make any sense for non-GUI related objects? I'm asking, because I want to try and build a general purpose event dispatching framework in PHP (be it just for practice or for real use), but can't figure out whether event bubbling (or capturing) is in anyway useful in such an environment (not talking about PHP-GTK or similar environments here)."}
{"_id": "110901", "title": "Robust way to keep records of software releases?", "text": "We release a number of small plug-ins that go along with our software. Each plug-in allows our software to talk to a single manufactuer's hardware. I would like to devise a system for keeping track of plug-in releases. ## Example info that should be stored:   * Hardware manufacturer name   * 32-bit? 64-bit? both?   * What modes of operation does the hardware support?   * What versions of the manufacturer's driver have been tested with the plugin? ## Desirable properties of the system:   * Able to synchronize with version control software   * Stores data in human-readable text file (also good for differ tool)   * Free visual, spreadsheet-like editor available   * Able to do simple analysis like \"What is the oldest plug-in?\" I've got to imagine that someone else has tackled this problem already. Right now my best guess is XML/JSON with a visual editor, but I have been disappointed in the editors I've tried so far. I'd like to get input from some more experienced developers. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "110902", "title": "How is fundamental mathematics efficiently evaluated by programming languages?", "text": "As I get more and more involved with the theory behind programming, I find myself fascinated and dumbfounded by seemingly simple things.. I realize that my understanding of the majority of fundamental processes is justified through circular logic _**Q_** : How does this work? _**A_** : _Because it does!_ I hate this realization! I love knowledge, and on top of that I love learning, which leads me to my question (albeit it's a broad one). ## Question: > How are fundamental mathematical operators assessed with programming > languages? > > How have current methods been improved? # Example               var = 5 * 5;       My interpretation:               $num1 = 5; $num2 = 5; $num3 = 0;     while ($num2 > 0) {         $num3 = $num3 + $num1;         $num2 = $num2 - 1;     }     echo $num3;      This seems to be highly inefficient. With Higher factors, this method is very slow while the standard built in method is instantanious. How would you simulate multiplication without iterating addition?               var = 5 / 5;      How is this even done? I can't think of a way to literally split it 5 into 5 equal parts.               var = 5 ^ 5;       Iterations of iterations of addition? My interpretation:               $base = 5;     $mod = 5;     $num1 = $base;     while ($mod > 1) {              $num2 = 5; $num3 = 0;         while ($num2 > 0) {             $num3 = $num3 + $num1;             $num2 = $num2 - 1;         }         $num1 = $num3;         $mod -=1;     }     echo $num3;      Again, this is EXTREMELY inefficient, yet I can't think of another way to do this. This same question extends to all mathematical related functions that are handled automagically."}
{"_id": "221117", "title": "Why doesn't Java String have static string manipulation methods?", "text": "Why didn't **Java designers** create static versions of string manipulation methods in the `java.lang.String` class? The following methods are what I refer to, but the question can be extended to other non-static methods in the class as well.               concat(String)                        substring(int, int)     replace(char, char)                   toLowerCase()     replace(CharSequence, CharSequence)   toLowerCase(Locale)     replaceAll(String, String)            toString()     replaceFirst(String, String)          toUpperCase()     split(String)                         toUpperCase(Locale)     split(String, int)                    trim()     substring(int)      Having only non-static versions of these methods forces **explicit** null- checking anywhere such a method has to be called. For example, simply calling `example = example.trim()` would lead to _NullPointerException_ if `String example = null`. So the programmer has to do the following boilerplate null check:               if (example != null)         example = example.trim();     // OR:     example = (example==null) ? null : example.trim();     example = (example==null) ? null : example.substring(5);      I would imagine it would have been a lot more convenient if `String` had static versions of these methods (perhaps even _exclusively_ ), which would take the input string as the first argument:               example = String.trim(example);     example = String.replace(example, 'a', 'b');     example = String.substring(example, 5);      This would have led to cleaner code written by programmers which would have automatically taken care of null cases by simply returning null, rather than forcing programmers to explicitly handle null cases. The _returning of null_ makes sense to me since manipulating a _null_ string should result in a _null_ string, not an error. **Why didn't** Java designers think of this when they designed the `String` class in Java 1 or Java 2, or even add such a functionality in a later Java version?"}
{"_id": "145659", "title": "Why does iPhone and iPad apps have a Free version and a full version, instead of \"unlocking\" it through in-app purchase?", "text": "Many apps have a Free version and a Full version. How is it compared to, installing a single version, and use an in-app purchase of $0.99 or $1.99 to unlock to the program to make it a full version? It does have the advantage that the user doesn't have to go to the App Store and install the program one more time and thus making it easier for the users to purchase."}
{"_id": "92041", "title": "What constitutes competency in XML in the .NET world?", "text": "I see a lot of .NET job postings that list XML as a required skill. What should one be able to do in/with XML to have confidence that this requirement is satisfied? Modeling? Work with XPATH? Familiarity with serialization? What is specific to .NET?"}
{"_id": "187218", "title": "organising classes / folder structure for TDD-based development", "text": "Due to test-driven development, one ends up with many classes doing just one thing. It is quite a headache just to see **where** such classes would be placed inside the folder structure. First of all, is it considered a bad-pattern, to put related classes in the same file? Any suggestion on what one uses in actual-production environments?"}
{"_id": "181111", "title": "Why aren't there Dimension and Point interfaces?", "text": "I mean something along the lines of:               public interface Dimensioned {         int getWidth();         int getHeight();     }      and               public interface Positioned {         int getX();         int getY();     }      There are a **lot** of standard java classes that have exactly those methods-- notably `Component` and all of its subclasses as well as `Dimension` and `Point`. `Image` could implement `Dimensioned`.   Despite the widespread use of these methods, there's no uniform way of referring to them. Is this a conscious decision on the part of the language designers? In writing this question, I've noticed that it _is_ rather difficult to come up with good descriptive names for the interfaces. Even so, it feels like it would be useful to have them. I can't seem to find much information on the topic."}
{"_id": "22050", "title": "Textarea validation", "text": "I'm interested to hear what characters people permit in the various common fields of input forms (barring e-mail...) For example: **Textarea/Messages** : do you allow completely free text, or restrict to alphanumeric and punctuation? I've tried to go the second route, but you always find someone out there that likes using tilde's... **Full name** : do you allow anything, or do you use a regex? **Telephone numbers** : numbers only **Addresses** : alphanumeric, whitespace, hyphens **City/Town names** : alphabet, hyphens, whitespace [NB: edited as requested]"}
{"_id": "231347", "title": "Global variable vs. local-static variable for storing state", "text": "I am writing an application for my graduation coursework, in C, using GTK+ UI library. Sometimes I ask for user input, which I need to save for later use. The doubt comes on how to store this data. I didn't want to create global variables because I was told countless times not to use them. However, I need to interchange data between functions which don't call each other directly (because of slot-signal pattern, I don't have a function that's always accessible after the event loop starts), thus needing some independent storage. For this purpose I designed a getter-like function which reads similar to this:               char *store_data(char *data, int clear) {         static char *stored_data = NULL;              if(data == NULL) {             if(clear) {                 stored_data = NULL;             } else {                 return stored_data;             }         } else {             stored_data = data;         }              return NULL;     }      Is such a construct OK or should I simply use a global variable instead?"}
{"_id": "189322", "title": "Should I test inherited methods?", "text": "Suppose I have a class **Manager** derived from a base class **Employee** , and that Employee has a method **getEmail()** that is inherited by **Manager**. Should I test that the behaviour of a manager's **getEmail()** method is in fact the same as an employee's? At the time these tests are written the behaviour will be the same, but of course at some point in the future someone might override this method, change its behaviour, and therefore break my application. However it seems a bit strange to essentially test for the _absence_ of meddling code. (Note that testing **Manager::getEmail()** method does not improve code coverage (or indeed any other code quality metrics (?)) until **Manager::getEmail()** is created/overridden.) (If the answer is \"Yes\", some information about how to go about managing tests that are shared between base and derived classes would be useful.) An equivalent formulation of the question: If a derived class inherits a method from a base class, how do you express (test) whether you're expecting the inherited method to:   1. Behave in exactly the same way as the base does right now (if the behaviour of the base changes, the behaviour of the derived method doesn't);    2. Behave exactly the same way as the base for all time (if the behaviour of the base class changes, the behaviour of the derived class changes as well); or   3. Behave however it wants to (you don't care about the behaviour of this method because you never call it)."}
{"_id": "231344", "title": "Reasons for moving from pure JavaScript to a JavaScript library", "text": "Being aware of the direct benefits of libraries having things wrapped in a package, making daily work easier, my question is leaning more towards the fact that many features not implemented in HTML/DOM/CSS, has become available using these libraries. There is everything, from visual effects (13 a dozen) to more functional oriented, to choose from. As I see it today, 2014, with HTML5 and CSS3, more and more of these libraries seems to have played there role, as a kind of a bridge covering the gap between older browsers non capabilites and the new ones ability to handle it built in. Whats more, is that these libraries also seems to drop older browser support little by little. This gives me as a developer a hard decision, if to upgrade to next version with more functionality and lose old browser support, or stay on an older version with less functionality but with old browser support and the need of custom development to achieve new functionality. So my question is, is there anything else I might have missed, which could affect whether to implement a library as a base or use pure JavaScript and add a library when it is really needed?"}
{"_id": "141378", "title": "Strategy for restoring state via URL in web apps", "text": "This is a question about modern web apps, where a single page is loaded, and all subsequent navigation is done by XHR calls and modifying the DOM. We can use libraries that manipulate the hash string, which let us navigate by URL and support the back/forward buttons. But to use those libraries, we need to be able to move the UI from any one state to any other. **Is there a good strategy for moving between UI states, that also allows them to be restored from scratch when you load a new URL?** In a complex app, you might have a lot of different states. You don't want to reload the entire UI each time you change states. But you also don't want to require separate methods for moving from every state to every every state. Typically we need to:   * Restore a state from scratch, when you enter a new URL or hit Reload.   * Move from one state to another, when you use the Back/Forward buttons.   * Move from one state to another, when you perform an action within your app (like clicking a link).   * Move to certain states that shouldn't be added to the history, like ones that appear after form submissions.   * Move to some states that are built on the previous state, like a drill-down list. When you perform actions within your app, there's the additional question of which comes first:   * Do you change the URL, listen for the URL change, and change your state in response to it?   * Or do you change your state, then change the URL, but don't do anything in response? Does anyone have some experience to share on this topic?"}
{"_id": "184540", "title": "How can I clone an svn repository that changed layouts with git maintaining full history?", "text": "# Problem I want to clone an svn repo with git-svn. The problem is the subversion repository changed layouts at `r1235`. # Specifics From revision 1 to 1234, `foo` used the standard svn folder layout with:   * /trunk/src   * /tags/`version`/src At revision 1235, the author added `bar` to the repo. To do so they restructured the master repository making the folder layout look like this:   * /trunk/foo/src   * /trunk/bar/src   * /tags/`version`/foo/src   * /tags/`version`/bar/src # Goal I want a new git repository that has the history of `foo` as if it was never rearranged to include `bar`. # Relevant Documentation Working with non standard layouts is discussed in git-svn's documentation. If the entire history in unnecessary (or if I just want `bar`), I can get what I want from r1235 on:   * `git svn init --stdlayout http://path.to/repo`   * edit `repo/.git/config` adding `/foo` to relevant paths (or `/bar`) `               [svn-remote \"svn\"]        url = http://path.to/repo        fetch = trunk/foo:refs/remotes/trunk        branches = branches/*/foo:refs/remotes/*        tags = tags/*/foo:refs/remotes/tags/*      `   * `git svn fetch -r 1235:HEAD` # My attempts   * `git svn clone -r 1:1234 --stdlayout http://path.to/repo`   * edit `repo/.git/config` as above   * `git svn fetch -r 1235:HEAD` # Result The last command seems to succeed because `r1235` \\- `HEAD` get downloaded. However, `git log` only shows commits up to `1234`. The working directory also seems to be the old revision."}
{"_id": "209568", "title": "ASP.NET and windows applications", "text": "Currently I'm still learning ASP.NET. My goal is to build dynamic websites. However, I also want to be able to build some windows applications as well. So, is it easy to learn Windows forms or WPF after ASP.NET? or is the reverse easier? meaning to start with WPF then move to ASP.NET?"}
{"_id": "162133", "title": "Enterprise Integration: File Exchange vs Web Services", "text": "_TL;DR_ Sort of brainstorming: why integrating systems by means of exchanging loosely- structured files (as opposed to XML web services integration) is a bad idea? _TL Part_ We're offering an online solution for enterprise customers (big ones) and in implementing this we often need to integrate with their internal systems (HR databases, CRM and ERP systems, you know the drill). One of the most common integration point is that we need to have information about their employees in our internal databases. To that end, we're advocating information exchange via XML Web Services with either us calling their WS Endpoint on a regular basis and asking for changes since `timestamp` or them invoking _our_ WS and supplying all the information required. Enterprisey and buzzwordy enough, sure. Now, what we're offered is: every week we'll manually export our HR data into an Excel workbook, email it to you and expect this data to be where it belongs. Slightly better option: automatically exported Excel file is shared on a network drive accessible over VPN. Naturally, this is error-prone and doesn't scale, but that's the only cost- effective option for our customers. We need somehow to persuade them to switch over to Web Services, but since the final decision on whether our system will be implemented or not is made by someone without technical background we need to either present non-techincal arguments or present them in a way that's understandable by a mere mortal."}
{"_id": "205749", "title": "What should be an optimal team (in terms of roles) to write a big enterprise nice-quality framework?", "text": "I have a set of questions that bothering me, hopefully someone will be able to answer them here:   * What should be an optimal team (in terms of roles) to write a big enterprise nice-quality framework?   * What big frameworks could act as a good references in terms of documentation, architecture, quality of implementation etc?    * What is your assumptions about size of teams that developed this frameworks? Looking forward for answers. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "200515", "title": "Request - Reply vs Publish-subscribe", "text": "We are working on a integration between two large systems. **System A** is a database with employee data, and **System B** is an external system that is used for the daily contact with the customers (i.e meetings, locationdata,work order,work status, and so on). We will deploy a ESB in the middle. There are 3 instances of System A, and 1 instance of System B. This is due to legal restrictions and we cannot have all System A data in the same database. In System B we have 20-30 active contacts each day, where some of the data from System A is used continously. We need to update meeting, location, and work status in System B throughout the day. And have two proposed solutions for integrating these systems. **Solution A:** Publish-Subscribe - System A sends out update messages (This is based on HL7 ADT Standards) and the instance of System B picks up the data that is for them. This is done as broadcast and will generate 1000-10000 messages pr day. It will send information from System A on all employees, thus generating a message for every employee in System A (1,2,3). There is only a subset of employees from System A that is \"active\" and interesting for updates in System B. But messages will flow on ALL employees since data is updated by other systems aswell. **Soltion B:** System B ask for updated information through a request-reply solution. Will generate empty calls, but will only ask for the employees \"active\" in System B on given day. Comments on solutions? Pros - Cons? What is the most infrastructure \"heavy\" solution between these two? Hope there is someone out there who could give me som pointers :)"}
{"_id": "200512", "title": "Design pattern for maintaining different state(s) across browser tabs in a single session", "text": "I have an MVC 4 based web app. Where I provide 2 login types, 1. Employee and 2. Customer. With Customer login, I present a dashboard and other stuff, about his orders, etc. With Employee login, I allow the employee to search for his customers and provide the ability to carry out certain customer specific tasks. It is possible that, an employee after login can seach for a number of customers and fetch each of their details in multiple browser tab(s). I am having difficulty in maintaining state for each tab, if I put the unique identifier of the customer in session, as the next subsequent request will overwrite the session! To solve this, I have relied on a (dirty) viewbag based solution, where I set the customer number in viewbag in every view. Is there an elegant solution to solve this? a known design pattern?"}
{"_id": "200510", "title": "Evaluation order of the expressions", "text": "The C Programming Language by K & R states that C, like most languages, does not specify the order in which operands of an operator are evaluated. (The exceptions are &&,||,?: and ','). According to the book, the result of the statement :               printf(\"%d %d\\n\",++x,power(2,x));      depends on the compiler. But it itself says in the previous line,that I have quoted that it does not predict the order of evaluation,except ',' and others. So don't you think book is contradicting itself?"}
{"_id": "200511", "title": "How to securely implement auto-login", "text": "I've read many, many, _many_ posts on how \"you're probably storing passwords wrong\". They are always referring to storing passwords on a server into which a user is logging; they basically rehash (pun intended) ubiquitous advice like make sure to salt the passwords, etc. etc. However, I've never seen an article on best practises for storing passwords on a _client_ so that the client doesn't have to log in manually every time they want to log in; the \"remember me\" feature. Many pieces of software have this feature, from browsers to programs like Dropbox. I did read an old article recently about how Dropbox was storing an ID on your computer that you could just copy/paste to another computer and start Dropbox and be logged in as the device you got the ID from; no login, no nothing, and full access to the Dropbox account. This seems like a really stupid design, but I can't think of any better way to do it. I'm not even sure how to avoid storing something like a cookie in plain-text. If you encrypt it, where do you store the key to decrypt it? The only way I see to not introduce security vulnerabilities is to remove the autologin feature and make the user type their password every time they want to use a service, but that's a usability struggle and users are spoiled to expect not to have to do that. What can I read about locally storing credentials safely to implement the automatic login feature? If the principles are too simple for an entire article, what are they? The software in question should not depend on features not present on all platforms (like the \"keychain\" some linux distributions have)."}
{"_id": "141082", "title": "Do you sign contracts digitally or still on paper? And what do clients think?", "text": "We are all getting used to checking a box and putting our name in a text field to create a contract with an airline, a hosting company, or a software download. However, for some reason I am still asking clients to sign our contracts for website development on paper, and send me a scan. Few complain about this procedure, but I am personally thinking: what am I doing, doing this the old fashion way?! Signing contracts digitally would be faster, more convenient for clients and for me, and easier to store. So to me it appears to be time to start creating some contract agreement online that clients can read, then print their name, and mark a box \"I AGREE WITH THIS CONTRACT AND BY PRINTING MY NAME I AGREE TO SIGNING THIS\", or something like that. I would record their IP, browser data, and time of signing. If I really want to ensure their identity, I could link this to OpenID and require them to log in with their e-mail so that I can ensure that they are logged in on an existing e-mail account. Sounds OK to me. My question is: is this practice becoming a standard practice in professional IT services? Are you (as a professional) doing this? If you are, how do clients react? Any drawbacks doing this? EDIT: This question is _not_ about the legal aspects. It is about common practices among programmers and web-development companies, and what clients think of this."}
{"_id": "138766", "title": "In order traversal of M way Trees", "text": "If we have a 4 way tree such as the one shown below, and we do an in order traversal, what would the output of the in-order traversal be for an M-way tree? In which order would the nodes be visited? When would the value in the node be processed (upon first visit or upon second visit)? (As a concrete example, what would the step by step procedure for the in order traversal be for the example tree shown below?) ![screenshot](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Fpyk5.jpg)"}
{"_id": "141086", "title": "Why does ARM processors dominate Mobile platforms while x86 dominates Desktop/Server platforms", "text": "Almost all of the mobile phones, except the ones being produced by Intel, use ARM based processors while desktop/server industry is dominated x86 processors. What features does one provide over the other with regards to the domination they have in their respective sectors?"}
{"_id": "249734", "title": "Ensuring submitted hiscores are not fake", "text": "I have a small game that I would like to keep track og global hiscores for. The basic is simple: username and score is submitted to a server for storage and later polling. However how do I ensure that these scores aren't faked? Obviously, just accepting a submitted user+score blindly will allow people to telnet in their desired score. To combat this, I've thought up two approaches:   * Checksumming - In addition to the score and the username, the application sends a checksum of the two using an obscure algorithm and salt. If the same checksum doesn't add up, the server will reject it. However, how easy is it to reverse engineer the checksumming used, considering that this is an android application?   * Submitting the entire game - In addition to user+score, the steps taken to reach the score is also sent. The server then emulates the game to see if the steps result in the same score, and if not, rejects it. I consider this to be the safest, but for some types of games this can be very hard to do, as the factors are far too many. Is there a middle road? Are there any other methods worth considering? It's not like this is vital to national security or anything, but I would prefer if the users aren't left with _\"HackedYourGame: 999999999 points\"_ on top of the list."}
{"_id": "75713", "title": "database schema with unlimited hierarchical data that is modified a lot", "text": "I am trying to set up some sort of collaboration app/forum with unlimited threading; no difference between posts, threads, or forums. Any post can be answered an unlimited amount of time, and the same post can have several children, themselves having several children, and so on. Each post can also have several parents. The final result would look more like a mind-map than a forum, although usage as a regular forum would also be possible. How I see people using it: say a team discusses the making of a project website. After a few threads, the conversation splits in parallel conversations about coding & design. Then after a while, the two end nodes get linked. The conversation continues for a while...A third, unrelated conversation about bauhaus-style websites gets linked too, for reference...etc. I am trying right now to build a proof of concept, and I am at loss at what database design to choose. As I understand it, there is two possible patterns: adjacency list model, and nested set model. And as I understand it, the nested set is usually preferred. I have built an app based the on nested set model, and I know why it is more useful, in most cases. Something bothers me here though: since I intend to have a lot of users adding a lot of leafs on a lot of different nodes, and since the N.S.M. needs to move left or right a whole bunch of leaves each time a sibling is added, what would be my best database schema? I do not intend to release a fully optimized application yet, but I would still like to start on the right foot. Here are a few of my thoughts, I would like opinions on them:   * Leave a lot of space between nodes, so parents nodes would be numbered 0, 10000, 20000, etc. This is not an elegant solution, but might work   * Go back to the adjacency list model, and use a node_node table to link nodes. Less efficient in tree retrieval, but more efficient in adding/deleting nodes   * Ditch databases completely, and go back to file-based, with a mix of directories/xml to store data. I have never worked with filesystems to retrieve and search large amounts of data, I don't know how that would work out   * Is there any DB schema more adapted to my case that you know of? Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "75714", "title": "Is a compiled language preferred for web development or an interpreted one?", "text": "As you already know there are compiled and interpreted languages. From a performance point of view which is better when visiting a website? Will a website that was developed with a compiled langauge will load faster and performs actions faster as will? I want to reach to a point where I can unnderstand the steps required in both compiled/ interpreted site in order to bring them on stage! (in this case to the user browser)."}
{"_id": "4662", "title": "Java Vs .NET Vs Oracle(DBMS), Which technology is for Long Term Career?", "text": "I want to know about Which language is best for long term career and How? Which language should I choose among Java and .NET Platform or Should I choose Oracle like DBMS Language (SQL/PLSQL)? I am confused? Detailed answer would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "93315", "title": "What does Private Cloud mean?", "text": "I read through a few discussions in SE about Cloud Computing . From them, I understand cloud as \"computing / data-storage facility that is owned by a different entity; using hardware & software architecture that make it easily scalable on-demand, therefore support rentable-scalability models.\" Also, \"the owning entity has a big-size data center, where virtualisation concepts are put to use to cater to multiple different customers from same hardware\". Plus \"redundancy, security etc are assumed to be taken care by the provider. \" I read a discussion in SE about explaining Cloud Computing to grandmother. The 'garden vs supermarket', 'own-house vs hotel' examples suit perfectly. With this understanding, I am unable to visualise 'private cloud'. Frankly, 'private cloud' sounds like an oxymoron to me. (relate with 'private supermarket' , 'owned hotel' etc). Pardon my ignorance. So, what is 'private cloud' ?"}
{"_id": "122648", "title": "Is it reasonable to expect knowing the whole stack bottom up?", "text": "I am an Sr. developer/architect/Product Manager for embedded systems. The systems that I have had experience with have typically been small to medium size codebases - typically close to 25-30K LOC in C, using 8-16 and 32 bit low end microcontrollers. The systems have been entirely bootstrapped by our team - meaning right from the start-up code to the end application code has either been written by the team, or at the very least, is thoroughly understood and maintained by us. Now, if we were to start developing more complex systems with complex peripherals, such as USB OTG et al. (think, low end cell phones), there are libraries and stacks available commercially and from chip vendors that reduce the task to just calling the right APIs and being able to use those peripherals. Now, from a habit point of view, this does not give me and the team a comfortable feeling, not being able to comprehend the entire code tree, with virtual black boxes at the lower layers. Is it reasonable to devote, and reserve, time getting into the details of how the APIs are implemented, assuming that the same would also entail getting into details of relevant standards (again, for USB as an example)? Or, alternatively, should a thorough understanding of the top level usage of the APIs be sufficient? This of course assumes that the source codes to all libraries are available, which they are, in almost all cases. Edit: In partial response to @Abhi Beckert, the documentation is refreshingly very comprehensive and meticulously maintained, AFAIK and been able to judge. I have not had a long experience with the same. Edit2: Excellent advice, everyone! Let me add that the evaluation phase is being conducted by only 2 devs, including myself. Also, shims may be potentially expensive in a resource constrained embedded environment, but I will have a look."}
{"_id": "138494", "title": "How to measure external quality of software", "text": "For my thesis, I am doing research into the characteristics of Behavior Driven Development (BDD). One of the BDD claims is that by specifying the requirements in a ubiquitous language together with the customer, the software will score better on the external quality. Another claim of BDD is that it produces clean code with a high code coverage. In my experiment, I will perform a software project both in BDD and traditional style, so that in the end I have two end products. The second claim of BDD is easy verifiable, by checking the code against some quality metrics, like Lines of Code, Cyclomatic Complexity and Code Coverage. However, I cannot think of a good measurement for the first claim. Is there anybody out here who has done this already? Or maybe can propose an alternative experiment that can validate this claim?"}
{"_id": "135", "title": "As a software engineer, who should I be following on Twitter?", "text": "Who in the software engineering and software development fields uses Twitter to tweet about relevant happenings in the field?"}
{"_id": "134", "title": "Hourly or per project billing?", "text": "How do you bill your programming projects? Do you do it per hour? Per job? Please include what kind of project you are doing in the answer. (Mobile, Web, Desktop, etc... You can be more specific if you want.) BONUS: If you'd like to give specific amounts in your answer, you may. ;-)"}
{"_id": "246455", "title": "Scalable Job Handler", "text": "We have a job table that triggers a notification when a new job gets inserted. Clients that can handle such jobs may subscribe to those notifications. When a client receives a notification, he can \"lock\" the job, so no other client will try to process it. We have also take care of errors and if a job takes to long to process. **Problem:** A client can only handle X jobs at the same time. On heavy load, all clients are busy handling their jobs. And new jobs may not get handled right away. If the client is no longer busy, he may query the table to find jobs that have not been processed yet. But if all clients stay busy for a long time (they finish jobs but new jobs arrive at the same time), those old jobs will never be processed. **Idea:** After a client has processed Y jobs, he ignores all new jobs, and queries the table for the old ones. But I am not really comfortable with that idea. Any ideas by you? If you need more information don't hesitate to ask for them."}
{"_id": "246454", "title": "Structuring a storage system for a game", "text": "I am working on a **multiplayer** game, where a player has many storages to store items in. **Storage** Storage is the system that allows the user to deposit items, and take them back. Example of storage types:   * **Inventory** : Same as WoW inventory, you can add items, drop items, move items from slot to slot.   * **Bank** : Bank is what you can call, a super-inventory, which has around 300 items limit **per tab** Bank can have maximum of 10 tabs which will store items. total items allowed in the bank is 3000 _(10 tabs multiplied by 300 items per tab)_. How ever, in the bank, all items are stackable.   * **Equipment** : Equipment is the same as Inventory, just with sorted slots, i.e Helm, Body, Legs and there are total of 8 slots.   * **Chests and other** : Same as Bank just without tabs. **An item in-game** Each item has it's own item id. **Only certain** items can be stackable, unless the storage type is Bank or chest. I have created a system which will make it easier for me to manage storages, and there's the abstract class, that each storage type class will extend it:               public abstract class PlayerItemStorage {              private int size;              /**          * The items          */         private PlayerItem[] items;              /**          * Sometimes, by default, the storage items are id + 1, due to          * the client's interfaces. No exact explanation on it, but the only          * feature that doesn't do that is equipment and possible BoB          */         private boolean increasedItem = true;              public PlayerItemStorage(int storageSize) {             this.items = new PlayerItem[storageSize];             this.size = storageSize;         }              public PlayerItemStorage(PlayerItem[] items) {             this.items  = items;             this.size = items.length;         }              /**          * Resets the storage          */         public void resetStorage() {             this.items = new PlayerItem[this.size];         }              /**          * Gets the item list          * @return PlayerItem list          */         public PlayerItem[] getItems() {             return this.items;         }              /**          * Counts how many items there are with the same id.          * @param id Item id          * @return count          */         public int count(int id) {             int count = 0;             for (PlayerItem item : this.items) {                 if (this.getId(item) == id) {                     count++;                 }             }             return count;         }              /**          * Counts how many items there are in the inventory          * not including amount, just the item objects themself.          * @return amount          */         public int countItems() {             int count = 0;             for (PlayerItem item : this.items) {                 if (this.getId(item) > 0 && item.getAmount() > 0) {                     count++;                 }             }             return count;                }              /**          * Gets the length of the storage          * @return          */         public int getLength() {             return this.items.length;         }              /**          * Checks how many free slots the storage has          * @return          */         public int freeSlots() {             int slots = 0;             for (PlayerItem item : this.items) {                 if (this.getId(item) <= 0) {                     slots++;                 }             }                    return slots;         }              /**          * Finds an item id in the earliest slot.          * @param id Item ID          * @return Slot id          */         public int find(int id) {             for (int i = 0; i < this.items.length; i++) {                 PlayerItem item = this.items[i];                 if ( this.getId(item) == id && item.getAmount() > 0) {                     return i;                 }             }             return -1;               }              /**          * Gets the earliest free slot          * @return slot id          */         public int getFreeSlot() {             for (int i = 0; i < this.items.length; i++) {                 if (this.getId(i) <= 0) {                     return i;                 }             }             return -1;         }              /**          * Checks if item is existing in the given slot, with the given amount and           * item id.          * @param id Item ID          * @param amount Item Amount          * @param slot Slot id          * @return boolean          */         public boolean containsInSlot(int id, int amount, int slot) {             int found = 0;             if (this.items[slot].getAlpha() == id) {                 for (int i = 0; i < this.items.length; i++) {                     PlayerItem item = this.items[i];                     if (this.getId(item) == id) {                         if (item.getAmount() >= amount) {                             return true;                         } else {                             found++;                         }                     }                 }                 if (found >= amount) {                     return true;                 }                 return false;             }             return false;         }              /**          * Checks if item exists in the storage          */         public boolean contains(int id) {             for (PlayerItem item : this.items) {                 if (this.getId(item) == id) {                     return true;                 }             }             return false;         }              /**          * {@link #increasedItem}          * @param i Index          * @return real item id          */         private int getId(int i) {             if (this.increasedItem) {                 return this.items[i].getAlpha();             }             return this.items[i].getId();         }              /**          * {@link #increasedItem}          * @param item PlayerItem object          * @return real item id          */         private int getId(PlayerItem item) {             if (this.increasedItem) {                 return item.getAlpha();             }             return item.getId();             }              public abstract boolean add(int id, int amount);         public abstract boolean remove(int id, int amount, int fromSlot);     }      I also have a container class which is in charge to control all storages:               /**      * Container class for all storages of a player      * @author Ben      */     public class PlayerStorageContainer {              /**          * Player object (Client extends Player extends Entity)          */         public Player player;              /**          * boolCatach: If enabled, when removing/adding item to ALL of the storages,          * it will check if the action returned false, if yes it will stop right away and          * return false.          */         private boolean boolCatch;              /**          * All of the storages the player will contain          */         private Map<String, PlayerItemStorage> storages =                  new HashMap<String, PlayerItemStorage>();              public PlayerStorageContainer(Player p) {             this.player = p;             this.initializePlayerStorages();         }              /**          * Initializes the existing storage for player.          */         private void initializePlayerStorages() {             this.storages.put(\"inventory\", new Inventory(this.player));         }              /**          * Gets the required PlayerItemStorage implementation          * @param name Name of the implementing object          * @return The object that extends PlayerItemStorage          */         public PlayerItemStorage getStorage(String name) {             return this.storages.get(name);         }              /**          * Removes an item from ALL storages          * @param id        The Item ID          * @param amount    The amount of the item          * @return Returns a boolean if action was successful without any falses in the          * middle of the execution, will return always true if {!boolCatch}          */         public boolean remove(int id, int amount) {             for (PlayerItemStorage storage : this.storages.values()) {                 if (!storage.remove(id, amount) && this.boolCatch) {                     return false;                 }             }             return true;         }              /**          * Adds an item to ALL storages          * @param id        The Item ID          * @param amount    The amount of the item          * @return Returns a boolean if action was successful without any falses in the          * middle of the execution, will return always true if {!boolCatch}          */         public boolean add(int id, int amount) {             for (PlayerItemStorage storage : this.storages.values()) {                 if (!storage.add(id, amount) && this.boolCatch) {                     return false;                 }             }             return true;         }              /**          * Resets all storages          */         public void reset() {             for (PlayerItemStorage storage : this.storages.values()) {                 storage.resetStorage();             }         }              /**          * Toogles {@link PlayerItemContainer#boolCatch} for errors          * @param b          */         public void setErrorCatch(boolean b) {             this.boolCatch = b;         }     }      # The problem This system works fine for inventory, and equipment - however, this will be a problem and cause some big algorithm code duplicating for the bank type. Since bank type storage can have multiple tabs up to 10, we will either need to create class named Tab and make it implement PlayerItemStorage, and put the same algorithm over the two classes (Bank and Tab) or have one method in Bank, and then have a variable named \"focusedTab\" which will hold the selected tab id, and make the add method accept 3 arguements _(itemId, amount, tabId)_. But making it accept 3 arguments will make a problem, I'll have to either ignore the abstract method add, and make own method for it, or create 2 abstract adds method, one with 2 parameters, one with 3 which I find too messy. Did I design this whole thing incorrectly that I am having these problems? How can I design a proper structure for this whole storage feature so it works with all kind of storages I can think of? If you cannot understand the problem, you might find my code review thread helpful **Background about how the server handles items** When the client clicks on any item, in any game interface that supports item storage, it sends the slot id the player clicked on, due to security reasons. The server uses the slot id as the index of the PlayerItem[] array to get the information about the item."}
{"_id": "70291", "title": "What are the drawbacks to the ActiveRecord pattern?", "text": "I'm curious what are the drawbacks to using the ActiveRecord pattern for data access/business objects. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is that it violates the Single Responsibility Principle, but the AR pattern is common enough that this reason alone doesn't seem \"good enough\" to justify not using it (of course my view may be skewed since often none of the code I work with follows _any_ of the SOLID principles). Personally I am **not** a fan of ActiveRecord (with the exception of writing a Ruby on Rails application, where AR feels \"natural\") because it feels like the class is doing too much, and data access shouldn't be up to the class itself to handle. I prefer to use Repositories that return business objects. Most of the code I work with tends to use a variation of ActiveRecord, in the form of (I do not know why the method is a boolean):               public class Foo     {         // properties...              public Foo(int fooID)         {             this.fooID = fooID;         }              public bool Load()         {             // DB stuff here...             // map DataReader to properties...                  bool returnCode = false;             if (dr.HasRows)                 returnCode = true;                  return returnCode;         }     }      or sometimes the more \"traditional\" way of having a `public static Foo FindFooByID(int fooID)` method for the finders and something along the lines of `public void Save()` for saving/updating. I get that ActiveRecord is typically much simpler to implement and use, but it seems a little _too_ simple for complex applications and you could have a more robust architecture by encapsulating your data access logic in a Repository (not to mention having it easier to swap out data access strategies e.g. maybe you use Stored Procs + DataSets and want to switch to LINQ or something) So what are other drawbacks to this pattern that should be considered when deciding if ActiveRecord is the best candidate for the job?"}
{"_id": "146689", "title": "Building software frontend for hardware that does not yet exist", "text": "Our task is to build a software frontend to control a hardware device that does not yet exist. We should start development about half a year before the first prototype is available, the project is timeboxed to one year. It is yet unclear what the hardware and the embedded software will be capable of. There're no specified interfaces yet. This will have an impact on the design of the client software. There're only few things we really can build as long as the interfaces aren't specified in detail. Sure, you'll probably just say: _Write a mock_. But this isn't an easy task and a whole mock could turn out to be a whole project by itself. I'm thinking of writing an adapter layer in which I can plug in any device later on, as long as it has the promised capabilities. But I'd like to hear advice from you, on how to tackle such projects and avoid possible pitfalls. To what things should we pay special attention? How should we advance on such a project? **Additional information:** We're creating the software project SCRUM-like, but not traditional. We'll make a good deal of upfront design to establish a clear vision, in order to hit the desired targets and minimize the number of iterations. Also, we have a clear vision on what the hardware/embedded software is supposed to deliver, we just don't know how they're gonna go about it yet and if they can implement the functional requirements at all. We've started a document to collect the interfaces we'd like to have for the client software (because whoever specifies first, wins, _g_ ). We also have a rather clear vision of how the client should look like to deliver the best business value, but it is yet unclear if the hardware can support our concepts and it will probably take some time into the project before we know for sure. Yet, we should start development asap."}
{"_id": "125143", "title": "How can I find own replacement when the company wants someone far less experienced?", "text": "I told the company I work for that I want to phase myself out, but that I would stick around for a couple months before applying anywhere to help in the recruitment of my replacement. I offered this because I am the sole web developer and I didn't want to leave them helpless. The problem is, they want to hire someone very under qualified to avoid having to pay a high salary. As far as I'm concerned, it's their company and they can run it how they want. However, when it comes to me helping find and train someone before I go, I'm in a position where I don't know what to do. To give a little perspective, I built them a medium sized e-commerce system using an MVC framework; there's more to it, but I'll leave it at that. The candidates they are finding me to review are people who have never worked as a programmer, have made a couple really crappy static websites using a WYSIWYG program and are calling themselves web designers. I know these people have no chance at success. I have tried to explain it to the company, but they don't want to hear it; they think one of these people can be trained and be up and running at my level in about a year. The reality is, I don't think their site will last a year if they go this route. I think maybe they think I am just trying to make myself look good and the new candidates look bad for some reason, which is not the case at all. I would like to leave what I have worked hard on in capable hands. So what is the ethical and professional thing to do here? Just keep telling them that these candidates are no good until they actually find a decent one, up until its time for me to leave, at which point I leave them with no one? Or just accept that they are going to destroy themselves and do the best I can to pick the best out of the candidates and teach him/her what I can before I go? I really just want to do the right thing here, so I can leave on good terms. And if a year down the road they fail, I can have a clean conscience."}
{"_id": "146685", "title": "My potential customer has a very bad written English. Is that a red flag?", "text": "I am trying to start a freelancing career on oDesk. One of the potential employers offered me somewhat of a dream job: it's game development for an established company. The pay seems to be right (although it's too early for precise estimates). The company's website seems rather cool, and the game I would be working on appears to live and prosper. I also made a point to ask and was told that they are using an incomplete, custom-made VCS; that sounds both awesome and horrifying to me. My main objection is that I am a little bothered by the employer's writing style. Their vocabulary seems to be fine, but in some cases their grammar is poor, and typos are abundant. This _appears_ to be carelessness rather than a lack of linguistic ability. Don't get me wrong: when the job is right, I would communicate in l33t sp34k if that was the only way to get information across. I'm not a native English speaker myself, and when speaking casually, I don't really care about others' linguistic ability. What I am worried about is if I should take this as a red flag that things will go wrong in other areas of our relationship as well. On the other hand - they're game developers, and they are probably making a great game. A large part of me wants to go there - fast, so I'm inclined to ignore my objections and accept the job. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "246180", "title": "How could an expert system get some meaning from a sentence?", "text": "How could an expert system tell following scenarios apart? How could we include some meaning of a sentence, if at all?               A machine needs 1 day to produce x units, and,           we know that two machines like the first would need 1/2 day for x units.       However, if:               a truck transports a container from a to b in 1 day,            but two trucks won't transport the same container in half the time.      But how to establish a logical rule to exclude attaching a truth value to the second sentence? Hoe to process sentences that depict a process that can not be divided in pieces (that means, include the meaning of 'divisible'/'non- divisible'), and therefore, an expert system can't assign automatically a time value to a process that has to be performed. The enhanced expert system would then be able to avoid scheduling failures."}
{"_id": "246189", "title": "Continuous integration policy problems", "text": "Currently our model, with respect to SVN and automated build, looks like ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aiEY1.png) Which, as far as I know, wasn't the way SVN was meant to be used. But the process works okay from a technical standpoint. The goal is to be able to run these chains in parallel, with different people working on **new features** , others **fixing new bugs and regressions** , and somehow **responding to client feedback**. The difficulty comes in _explaining_ it, even to people who have been around for a while, and usually after someone messes it up and changes one of these steps to something that makes more sense to them ( _ie_ using the latest release build for internal testing and sending _archived_ releases to client QA). I didn't set the policy but I understand what it is, so I'm one of the people who has to explain/maintain it. Having done so many times over the last year, it seems like it doesn't meet the principle of least astonishment. How could we make this process more obvious/boring?"}
{"_id": "41397", "title": "Test code that will be changed soon", "text": "My question is whether I should test code that I know will be changed in a short time. I'm doing TDD in ruby, and I often meet with this question. I'm interested about best practices about this, pro and contra. Thanks. **Update** Clarification: My question is basically how do you compare the 'cost of writing a test' VS 'the fact that the code will change soon' and make decision."}
{"_id": "87330", "title": "Graphic card for parallel programming vs traditional methods", "text": "With a simple search in amazon one can see that the modern approach for parallel programming is to use your graphic card. However I am still a little bit skeptical about it. My last computer has an 8 core CPU which I need is enough for basic all my parallel needs, if I need more I will probably use MPI through a network using my old machines. All in all, Why and/or when should I use CUDA or another method which uses my graphic card instead of traditional methods like pthreads, java threads, boost threads or the new C++ 11 threads? What about using processes?"}
{"_id": "146536", "title": "When to reintegrate feature branch?", "text": "From SVN 1.5, it supports reintegrate feature. I wonder when I should reintegrate. Should it be done before release or after release? If I do it **Before release**   * Pro: It is not forgettable to merge with trunk.   * Con: Merged version can be different from QAed version. **After release**   * Pro: Releasing version is same with QAed version.   * Con: Some feature from trunk can be missed. So, when do you reintegrate?"}
{"_id": "218344", "title": "Can I use GPL code as textual data in my app?", "text": "In essence, I'm wondering how licenses affect the legality of using source code **as data**. By that I mean _literally_ storing code in a database as strings and using it e.g. for some syntax highlighting experiments, or other such pursuits. I can think of a couple of scenarios:   * My project is closed-source, and I want to use open-source code as data. If I store code that is under GPL, does the GPL license apply to my project? What about other licenses?   * My project is open-source, but licensed under e.g. MIT. Again, if I store GPL code, does that affect my project? I was thinking about GPL specifically because of its viral nature, but if other licenses would have applicable effects, I'd be interested in hearing about them as well."}
{"_id": "218340", "title": "In what URL segment do you have language? /en/admin/dashboard or /admin/en/dashboard?", "text": "maybe you are thinking that this is another dump question about language in URL, but I hope it is not! I've red many articles on this, but non of them was dealing with \"sections of site\" (described bellow). I am programming a new application platform in laravel/php and I am still not 100% convinced where to put language slug. There are many places where you can put it - some of them are better some are worse:   * example.com/en/article   * en.example.com/article   * example.com/article?lang=en My personal choice is to put language after the domain - so the first option in above list. _**But what if you are in some special secion like admin or api?_** where do you put language then?   * example.com/ **en/admin** /dashboard   * example.com/ **en/api/v1** /user/login or   * example.com/ **admin/en** /dashboard   * example.com/ **api/v1/en** /user/login (in frontend it is left the same: example.com/en/some-article) what do you preffer? what are cons and pros? One thing is using language in first segments is far more easier to programm than when it have some variants... **EDIT:** I am also using **two lists of avalible languages** to determine what languages are avalible for app/ **backend** and for **frontend** (if the app is something like CMS). Eg. web can be only in english but app (cms) can be in czech, english, italian... P.S. whould you recoment using only en, cs or do it in full power with cz-CZ, en-US ? thanks for any thoughts! J."}
{"_id": "197174", "title": "Is there a name for when a sales team irresponsibly promises non-existent features?", "text": "It's a common issue to see a company's sales team promise new features in order to close a sale. Many times these new features are still in development or are still being designed. Sometimes features are sold before the development team even knows about them. If the customer understands the features are not yet implemented this can help guide the product's design. However, if the sales team promises these features with an uninformed time frame it can put significant amounts of stress on the developers who are charged by management to meet the deadlines. Additionally, sometimes non-existent features are sold to customers as being either completed or near completion when development may not even be aware of the requirements yet (legal/ethical issues notwithstanding). **Is there a word or phrase that can be used to describe the uninformed/irresponsible/unethical applications of this practice?** It's similar to feature creep, but occurs before development or design."}
{"_id": "202913", "title": "Programming jobs for a science based degree", "text": "I am currently in my last year of a Masters in Physics at Uni and I am looking to go into a job that is mainly programming based. As part of my course we have learnt C++, Matlab and as a hobby I taught myself HTML, CSS, JAVA and a bit of JavaScript. After getting to this stage in my degree I've realised that its actually the programming side of Physics that I enjoy most. I've been working on a few Android apps & websites in my spare time but only things that utilize what I know in JAVA, HTML etc. Using Physics in programming is good fun but I don't want to limit myself just to Physics based jobs. I just want to know a few things:   * What kind of jobs can I apply for that would require the kind of skills I already posses/can work towards possessing in a year   * Can I compete with graduates who have had a lot more programming in their course for example Computer Science?   * Are there any specific extra things I need on my CV before I start applying for these jobs?"}
{"_id": "85793", "title": "Does the single responsibility principal promote flexibility?", "text": "Does the single responsibility principal promote flexibility? If not what are the other methods to make your classes more flexible? By flexibility I mean, a class is able to function correctly at any time with little (or even with no) hassle."}
{"_id": "202917", "title": "use of Enum with flags in practice?", "text": "I just have read some stuff on enum today. Use of flags with enum was something interesting and new for me. But often practice and theoretical uses are different. I go through many articles they examples they quoted were good to get the concept but am still wondering in what situations one can use Enums with flag to store multiple values? Will highly appreciate if you please can share your practical experience of using enum with flags."}
{"_id": "41644", "title": "Is there a recommended way to communicate scientific/engineering programming to C developers?", "text": "I have a lot of MATLAB code that needs to get ported to C (execution speed is critical for this work) as part of a back-end process for a web application. When I attempt to outsource this code to a C developer, I assume (correct me if I'm wrong) few C developers also understand MATLAB code (things like indexing and memory management are different, etc.). I wonder if there are any C developers out there that can recommend a procedure for me to follow to best communicate what the code does? For example, should I provide the MATLAB code and explain what it's doing line by line? Or, should I just provide the math/algorithm, explain it in plain English, and let the C developer implement it with this understanding in his/her own way (e.g. can I assume the developer understands how to work with complex math (i.e. imaginary numbers), how to generate histograms, perform an FFT, etc.)? Or, is there a better method? I expect I'm not the first to need to do this, so I wonder if any C developers out there ran into this situation and can share any conventional wisdom how they'd like this task to be transferred? Thanks in advance for any comments."}
{"_id": "84444", "title": "What should I keep in mind when writing custom software quotes?", "text": "I've been asked to give a quote to extend a piece of software i'm currently giving away for free for use by a company. They tell me they are using it in- house at the moment in conjunction with some \"post processing\" steps, which they would like to incorporate into the application proper. What should I keep in mind when writing quotes for custom or bespoke software requests? How can I ensure all my bases are covered? What aspects of a custom software quote are things that are often overlooked?"}
{"_id": "84446", "title": "How to release a mobile app successfully?", "text": "This includes everything that contributes to the success of the app and is non-programming. Some points to consider:   * How do you make people notice your app when there are hundreds released every week? How to get an article published in a mobile app blog about your app? Should you buy ads? What about a press release?   * How to shoot a promotional video? What material is good? Should you go for animation or real life footage?   * How to make a project website for the app? Should it be simple in design? What about feedback forum? Should you use standard forum like, uservoice.com?   * To which marketplace should you release the app? Should you stick to one or as many as you can?   * Should you wait with releasing until you have all these handled or should you do it immediately? Is there a good time to release your app?"}
{"_id": "123591", "title": "Database design good practices", "text": "I recently joined a new position as SW developer and during the interview process everyone stressed the importance and the pride of the quality standards of the firm in each and every process they have. (This was one of the aspects that made me decide to accept the offer) When I started inspecting the database I realised that it was far from being perfect, far from being good and far from being not bad. Also I realised that all my team mates do think that the database is complex because the business is complex. What is wrong with this database then?   * inconsistent naming   * de normalised table (with conflicting data)   * plenty of stored procedures and tvf with if/switch/case based on values in the tables themselves   * tvf that depend on tvf that depend on tvf making the code unreadeable and unmaintainable   * no FK constraints and in some cases PKs   * no distinction between data abstraction and business logic (too many encapsulated TVFs) I decided to bring the matter up during my next review because I believe my manager (non technical) does not have a clue of what is going on. I need help to come with a list of aspects to consider to asses the quality of a database design and then assess the score of our database against this list. This will help at least my manager to take steps in the right direction (I hope). Which points should I consider to asses whether a database is well designed? Well designed means:   * does it job   * it does not break (or do so in a sensible manner)   * it follows a structure that make it easy to maintain and expand"}
{"_id": "123592", "title": "About technical Certifications", "text": "I am a Java/J2EE/Oracle PL-SQL developer for the past 5 years and have written the SCJP and SCWCD certification exams. But that was long ago. I now plan to get certified, but not sure which track to choose. There is SCBCD, SCEA etc., but I don't find them much useful. Which are the reputed and useful certifications that will help me learn as well as will give my resume a boost (I stress on the former one a bit more than the latter one). I don't mind venturing into new technologies. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "203350", "title": "Why is an operating System denoted as 32 bit or 64 bit", "text": "Why are some operating systems labeled 32-bit and others 64-bit? If the processor is the one doing the actual execution, why does the operating system care about how many bits are used?"}
{"_id": "203354", "title": "Is a finite state machine an appropriate solution for this situation?", "text": "I was writing some test code as an example where I had a washing machine class. It has a door state that should be open or closed, and also a running state, either on or off. I want to prevent the running state from changing from 'off' to 'on' when the door is 'open', and also prevent the door from being set to 'open' while the machine is 'on'. I have this functionality rigged up with a bunch of if statements. It feels inelegant and it could quickly turn into spaghetti code if I want to add another state that puts additional conditions on the changes of other states. I wonder, is a finite state machine a solution for this situation? Would it simplify adding states and defining valid transitions?"}
{"_id": "203357", "title": "Why use JSP instead of servlets?", "text": "_(Rewritten for reopening:)_ What are relative advantages of Servlets over JSP, or vice versa? Might JSP be preferred because it is easy to put code inside JSP, or Servlets because with them code can be separated from view? Are there other considerations? Any information regarding this will be immensely helpful."}
{"_id": "218693", "title": "Multiple roles in Ruby On Rails", "text": "I've been asked to put together an application in RoR which has multiple roles for users. The idea is that a user will have a role, Admin, Moderator, User ect... and they will also have a department as well, HR, IT, Customer Care ect.... The app will have designated sections for each department to manage data and other basic CRUD based tasks. What the app needs to allow is so a user can only access departments they are assigned to, a user can have multiple departments, a user can be a Admin of one department but may be only a user of another department. Whats the best way of putting something like this together?"}
{"_id": "218696", "title": "Why languages that compile to C/C++ generate unreadable, cryptic code?", "text": "I'm willing to compile certain language to C or C++ for some speedups. My idea was, though, to generate readable code and use structures such `std::vector` and similar wherever I can, expecting CLANG to do the trick of optimizing it as much as it can. I notice that some languages that compile to C or C++ are nothing like that, though. Looking on the code generated by Chicken Scheme, for example, is scary. This, for example, is a snippet generated from `(fn (a b) (sqrt (* a a) (* b b)))`:               float f_(float a,float b){         float b_=a*a;         float c_=b*b;         float d_=b_+c_;         float e_=sqrt(d_);         return e_;     };      Is there a particular reason for those languages to do that? Is my approach wrong in some aspect? EDIT: to make it clear, this is an example of \"readable\" code generated from my language. Look at code generated from Chicken Scheme and it looks like an UFO building manual wrote in an alien language."}
{"_id": "14293", "title": "Ruby Sinatra best practices for project structure", "text": "Many people praise Sinatra's ability to create simple projects in a single file. This is great and all but what if I want to use Sinatra for slightly larger project? I'm fairly new to Ruby as a whole but have already found a couple ways to create a Sinatra application with separate models files, partitioning different groups or URLs into individual files, etc... But is there any best practice for this?"}
{"_id": "14295", "title": "Which specific practices could be called \"software craftsmanship\" rather than \"software engineering\"?", "text": "Although not a new idea there seems to have been a big increase in the interest in software craftsmanship over the last couple of years (notably the often recommended book Clean Code's full title is Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile _Software Craftsmanship_). Personally I see software craftsmanship as good software engineering with an added interest in ensuring that the end result is a joy to work with (both as an end user and as someone maintaining that software) - and also that its focus is more at the coding level of things than the higher level process things. To draw an analogy - there were lots of buildings constructed in the 50s and 60s in a very modern style which took very little account of the people who would be living in them or how those buildings would age over time. Many of those buildings rapidly developed into slums or have been demolished long before their expected lifespans. I'm sure most developers with a few years under their belts will have experienced similar codebases. What are the specific things that a software craftsman might do that a software engineer (possibly a bad one) might not?"}
{"_id": "14297", "title": "Which things instantly ring alarm bells when looking at code?", "text": "I attended a software craftsmanship event a couple of weeks ago and one of the comments made was \"I'm sure we all recognize bad code when we see it\" and everyone nodded sagely without further discussion. This sort of thing always worries me as there's that truism that everyone thinks they're an above average driver. Although I think I can recognize bad code I'd love to learn more about what other people consider to be code smells as it's rarely discussed in detail on people's blogs and only in a handful of books. In particular I think it'd be interesting to hear about anything that's a code smell in one language but not another. I'll start off with an easy one: > **Code in source control that has a high proportion of commented out code** > \\- why is it there? was it meant to be deleted? is it a half finished piece > of work? maybe it shouldn't have been commented out and was only done when > someone was testing something out? Personally I find this sort of thing > really annoying even if it's just the odd line here and there, but when you > see large blocks interspersed with the rest of the code it's totally > unacceptable. It's also usually an indication that the rest of the code is > likely to be of dubious quality as well."}
{"_id": "14298", "title": "Is \"Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models\" Still A Good Book To Use For Its Subject Matter Today?", "text": "Is \"Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models\" by Martin Fowler (published 1996) still a good book to use for the content it covers? Are there other good books that cover the same content? Are there more up-to- date books? **Update:** Are there any more answers on this question, as well as any answers on the second part about alternative books?"}
{"_id": "33319", "title": "How does NUnit for C# compare with Unit Test facility integrated with Visual Studio", "text": "I need to work in a team to develop a mid scale Desktop application developed using C# .NET. Prior to this, I have not applied Unit Testing and Test Driven Development. I am aware that there exists many tools and framework for Unit Testing C# applications. As of now, I am aware of Nunit and the Unit Testing facility integrated with Visual Studio. I would like to know, how do the two compare?"}
{"_id": "237955", "title": "How can I hide my signature in a program?", "text": "We have a university programming course and fellow students are asking some programming questions in our Facebook group. I'm a little hesitant to share all of my programs, especially if it's something cool for one of the assignments, since these are looked at by the TAs and they might notice if somebody has the same program and start asking questions on where it came from. Still, sometimes I'd like to share my code to help others, but I don't wanting people just grabbing my work. _(Clarification: We are allowed to collaborate with the tasks)_ This is of course a thin line. While I want to help some people, I'm concerned that they may not have the academic honesty to rewrite the code on their own. Most of my fellow students are not very advanced in their skills, so I'd get away with say hiding my name in Base-64 encoded string crafted into a discrete place. Still, it may be too obvious for a random string to be sitting around. **What options exist to hide my name in a program without it looking suspicious?** I've seen over at CodeGolf that they have made ascii art turn into other things when evaluated. Are there similar strategies I could utilize? The ideal solution would be something that looks like something that fits in discreetly but in reality has a function to prove that I coded it from the beginning. Clarification: _(Sorry, should have said this earlier)_ We're allowed to collaborate but have to explain our programs to the TAs to get the points. It's just for satisfaction to hide some Easter Eggs in other's code if it leaks out, especially since it may be tempting to exchange programs to check that the answers to problems they generate are equivalent etc or to see how others solve the problem."}
{"_id": "237956", "title": "Mongo Licensing (AGPLv3)", "text": "I'm going to include MongoDb(AGPLv3) in my product. My product is SaaS, I don't install this to client directly. My software is ASP.NET MVC website. But MongoDb's drivers for .Net is under Apache My questions are: 1) Should I license my software under AGPLv3 license if I use Mongo? I use them across drivers which written on Apache, but somewhere I've heard that if use GPL component in your software you must license whole your product under GPL 2) If I license my website under AGPLv3 should I provide code for all customers? Thank you for answers?"}
{"_id": "237951", "title": "efficient caching with complex user rights", "text": "I am currently learning about memcached/redis, and I am trying to figure out how could I use this kind of technology at work. Now I understand that you should mostly cache data which is common to many user and which does not get modified every second. In our architecture, we have a very relational data model data model combined with a fairly complex rights management system. To keep it simple, some objects are nested under some other objets with different types. An object can have several \"parent\". A given user can be given access to subset of the data with declaration such as `user can read all objects which have parents a & b of types A and B`. Things can get more complex with groups. This makes very hard to predict which object can be seen by a given user. I also fail to see how can I come up with a good cache invalidation rule, because a lot of events may affect what a user is seeing (access rules modification, a parent is modified in the hierarchy, user added/removed from group etc). So I feel that I will need to create a per user cache with low expected duration, which does not look very useful. In this context, is there still hope to find a decent caching strategy? Am I making incorrect assumptions?"}
{"_id": "15527", "title": "How common is meta-programming?", "text": "How often do you or have you seen meta-programming be used in projects? In uni I've never seen this be applied, but I've seen this on my previous job (when I saw it I was blown away of how effective it was). But how common is it? Is it used all the time, or just occasionally?"}
{"_id": "15528", "title": "Herding your users to your bugtracker", "text": "I have a fully configured mantis bug tracker for tracking issues in apps that I create. When an user is disciplined and goes straight to mantis to write a issue report, he/she will have fastest response and everything regarding the issue will be very easy to track. However, not everyone is keen to do so. They report their problems via phone, e-mail, don't report them at all. What would be the best way to nudge them towards the using a bugtracker system? Clearly, they HAVE to see some immediate benefits so they can return and look for more benefits. EDIT: I am talking about support for the products that I sell as an ISV."}
{"_id": "206321", "title": "How do I deal with a difficult programmmer joining an open source project?", "text": "I have an open source script for a specific site (I'm trying not to call anything by name here) that I and a few other developers recently moved to GitHub. We've gotten several new developers since we moved to the new system, including one very active one in particular. However, this active one has started changing a lot of the project. First of all, he deleted our versioning system (not like Git, but like that -- we called it versions `v4.1.16`) and said it would be better to simply push the code to the site when we think it's ready. Now there's no centralized place to put release notes, which has gotten annoying. The thing that has gotten me just about ready to pack my bags and go was the push script. Another developer on the project wrote a simple Python-based push script. Since we keep multiple versions of the script online in various places, I began coding a larger Java program with a graphical interface that will replace the Python script. I went on IRC to notify everyone about it, and I got a very annoying response from the programmer saying that the old Python- based script can do everything mine can do and is so much more lightweight (he also commented about the fact that he thought Python was better than Java and so on). I looked over the code for the old push script and saw that none of the features he said existed were there. So now I want to know what to do. I've spent a lot of my time on this project, so I don't want to just get up and leave, but I'm finding it hard to work with this new developer. On the flip side, he is now the #1 committer on the project, with even more commits than the lead developer. I'm not really sure what to do about this. Has anybody else experienced this problem? If so, what did you do? **UPDATE 1** : I have disabled everyone's commit access and I am requesting people go through pull requests. I also proposed several measures to fix the other issues. Everyone else hasn't shown any support for it. The troublesome dev has simply said that people who don't follow the \"commit action\" closely can think that the project is disorganized when it really isn't. I obviously don't agree with this, so I am seriously contemplating resigning from the project. **UPDATE 2** : The lead developer began ranting about the fact that one of my commits supposedly deleted three newlines in the code (the revert commit showed up just after I posted the discussion, and doesn't even reference my \"commit\"), and then the two of them began discussing whether to revoke my commit access. So, I have done the logical thing and left the project. Thanks for your help with this everyone!"}
{"_id": "214051", "title": "Can I use a @font-face of \"Courier New\"?", "text": "I currently have my font stack:               font-family: \"Courier New\", Courier, monospace;      In all browsers that I test in I see the font displayed in the `Courier New` font except for my android devices - my nexus and my kindle. And although they have a monospace fallback I would rather have my site displayed the same across these devices. Do I violate any licenses when I add the font using `@font-face`? If so, how do I resolve this?               @font-face {       font-family: \"Courier New\";       src: url(/fonts/cour.ttf) format('truetype');     }"}
{"_id": "233251", "title": "Is storing software in the cloud with reputable vendors secure?", "text": "I have a team member who refuses to use any form of private source code repository on Github or Bitbucket due to \"security concerns\". As a result, we have a hard time sharing code with him. He appears to be concerned about source code theft by some party. To me, using cloud based source code repos is fairly standard industry practice. But does this individual have a point? Vendors do steal from customers in other industries. Should a multimillion dollar idea not be stored on a third party cloud service like AWS, Github, Bitbucket, App Engine, etc?"}
{"_id": "233257", "title": "Mapping between 4+1 architectural view model & UML", "text": "I'm a bit confused about how the 4+1 architectural view model maps to UML. Wikipedia gives the following mapping:   * **Logical view:** Class diagram, Communication diagram, Sequence diagram.   * **Development view:** Component diagram, Package diagram   * **Process view:** Activity diagram   * **Physical view:** Deployment diagram   * **Scenarios:** Use-case diagram The paper Role of UML Sequence Diagram Constructs in Object Lifecycle Concept gives the following mapping:   * **Logical view** (class diagram (CD), object diagram (OD), sequence diagram (SD), collaboration diagram (COD), state chart diagram (SCD), activity diagram (AD))   * **Development view** (package diagram, component diagram),    * **Process view** (use case diagram, CD, OD, SD, COD, SCD, AD),    * **Physical view** (deployment diagram), and    * **Use case view** (use case diagram, OD, SD, COD, SCD, AD) which combines the four mentioned above. The web page UML 4+1 View Materials presents the following mapping: ![UML 4+1 View Materials](http://i.stack.imgur.com/5zzFg.gif) Finally, the white paper Applying 4+1 View Architecture with UML 2 gives yet another mapping:   * **Logical view** class diagrams, object diagrams, state charts, and composite structures   * **Process view** sequence diagrams, communication diagrams, activity diagrams, timing diagrams, interaction overview diagrams   * **Development view** component diagrams   * **Physical view** deployment diagram   * **Use case view** use case diagram, activity diagrams I'm sure further search will reveal other mappings as well. While various people usually have different perspectives, I don't see why this is the case here. Specially, each UML diagram describes the system from a particular aspect. So, for instance, why the \"sequence diagram\" is considered as describing the \"logical view\" of the system by one author, while another author considers it as describing the \"process view\"? Could you please help me clarify the confusion?"}
{"_id": "102693", "title": "Copyright assignment on open source projects", "text": "Some time ago I wrote a BlackBerry application. I find that I now want to release it under an open source license. I am strongly considering the GPL v3 license. All the code is mine; there are no third-party libraries (with the exception, of course, of the all the standard BlackBerry/Java libraries that I am \"linked\" to). This is the first open source project that I will be maintaining or starting. I find myself a bit lost about how to handle contributions. It seems to be more-or-less standard to expect some kind of copyright assignment from contributors so that the project has a unified copyright. I could either assign all copyrights to the FSF or assign all copyrights to myself. How should I handle this? The most important features of whatever implementation I use are:   * Protects me from being sued for any unintentional violations of the GPL in my own code   * Protects others' contributions from being misused by me if I become evil   * Encourage others' contributions to the project (or at least does not discourage such contributions) For assigning all copyrights to myself, the most promising strategy for copyright assignment seems to be one based on Oracle's contributor agreement, located here: http://openjdk.java.net/legal/oca.pdf. However, I feel like expecting any contributors to sign a legal document, providing me with fairly personal information is asking for a lot, especially given that my project is very small. Should I proceed with requiring contributors to sign a document similar to Oracle's agreement? Should I just accept contributions and cross my fingers that I won't have any trouble down the road? Is there another strategy that I should employ?"}
{"_id": "233254", "title": "How can you estimate time for tasks which primarily consist of figuring out a problem?", "text": "While it is relatively possible for an experienced developer to estimate how long it will take to implement code when the pattern and problem the code is solving is well understood, how can you make a good estimate when, while the end goal is well understood, the implementation is 95% theoretical/problem solving and has very small amounts of implementation? My work often consists of tasks to accomplish well defined goals, however I have to find the way to reach that goal and until I understand the solution, it i6sn't clear what additional barriers there may be. More specifically, I'm often working on code generation or automated code manipulation tools. Once the solution is fully solved and the tool perfected, it will directly do 95% of the actual changes very quickly. I don't, however, have any way to estimate how many additional issues may have to be resolved to make the generation or analysis tool deal with unforeseeable edge cases. For planning purposes, my company wants a better idea of how long it will take, but since I don't know how many additional problems may come up while working through solving each step of the solution. I'm not sure how I can approach giving a better estimate."}
{"_id": "233258", "title": "Patterns for propagating changes up an object model..?", "text": "Here's a common scenario that's always frustrating for me to deal with. I have an object model with a parent object. The parent contains some child objects. Something like this.               public class Zoo     {         public List<Animal> Animals { get; set; }         public bool IsDirty { get; set; }     }      Each child object has various data and methods               public class Animal     {         public string Name { get; set; }         public int Age { get; set; }              public void MakeMess()         {             ...         }     }      When the child changes, in this case when the MakeMess method is called, some value in the parent needs to be updated. Let's say when a certain threshold of Animal's have made a mess, then the Zoo's IsDirty flag needs to be set. There are a few ways to handle this scenario (that I know of). **1)** Each Animal can have a parent Zoo reference in order to communicate changes.               public class Animal     {         public Zoo Parent { get; set; }         ...              public void MakeMess()         {             Parent.OnAnimalMadeMess();         }     }      This feels like the worst option since it couples Animal to its parent object. What if I want an animal who lives in a house? **2)** Another option, if you're using a language that supports events (like C#) is to have the parent subscribe to change events.               public class Animal     {         public event OnMakeMessDelegate OnMakeMess;              public void MakeMess()         {             OnMakeMess();         }     }          public class Zoo     {         ...              public void SubscribeToChanges()         {             foreach (var animal in Animals)             {                 animal.OnMakeMess += new OnMakeMessDelegate(OnMakeMessHandler);             }         }              public void OnMakeMessHandler(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             ...         }     }      This seems to work but from experience gets hard to maintain. If Animals ever change Zoo's you have to unsubscribe events at the old Zoo and resubscribe at the new Zoo. This only gets worse as the composition tree gets deeper. **3)** The other option is to move the logic up to the parent.               public class Zoo     {         public void AnimalMakesMess(Animal animal)         {             ...         }     }      This seems very unnatural and causes duplication of logic. For example, if I had a House object that doesn't share any common inheritance parent with Zoo..               public class House     {         // Now I have to duplicate this logic         public void AnimalMakesMess(Animal animal)         {             ...         }     }      I have not yet found a good strategy for dealing with these situations. What else is available? How can this be made simpler?"}
{"_id": "159616", "title": "What's the \"Memento\" class for in the Memento design pattern?", "text": "In the Gang of Four's \"Memento\" design pattern, the `Memento` class looks like a useless wrapper that doesn't actually provide any value to me. What is it for? Is there any reason you can't just pass around the `String` object (in the Wikipedia example)?"}
{"_id": "159614", "title": "Good practice to seperate Git Repo from published Repo?", "text": "We have a central Git repo from which developers fetch and push changes. They make changes on the default master branch. Our Continuous Integration (CI) tool builds artifacts off this default master branch and is the entity responsible for promoting something we want to be tested to a \"UAT\" branch (this is in reality done by a build-master person clicking a button on the CI tools web page that will do the promotion). The CI tool is also responsible for promoting code from UAT to the \"Production\" branch. The purpose of the UAT and Production branches is to capture what was promoted to UAT and to Production. No development occurs on the UAT branch and Production will only contain \"development\" in the form of infrequent \"hot-fixes\" as our development/release iterations are very fast (1 week iterations). If we can do it easily, we'd like to put in a control that will prevent someone mistakenly making development changes to UAT and Production branches directly. One thought is to have a hook on the central server that makes sure that only the CI tool user can make changes to UAT and Production. We also thought we could have a central repo that developers use that only contains the master branch and have a second repo that contains the UAT and Production branches. The CI tool will communicate with both repos-- it will look at the development to repo to see when there are changes and use the second repo to do its promotion to the UAT and Production branches. Is this what folks typically do (separate repos for purposes of development versus promotion?) Would it be better than the server hook approach?"}
{"_id": "226339", "title": "Criteria for prioritizing product backlog", "text": "My list of the most important criteria is below. What do you think?   1. The value to the user - naturally features that are more important to the user must come first   2. Implementation time - the faster it is to implement a feature, the higher it should be on the list   3. Dependency between features - obviously you can't make a \"roof\" feature without developing the \"walls\" feature first.   4. Risk reduction - If a certain feature is very important for the project but we are not sure if we can actually develop it (because of either technological limitations or because we don't know how users will react to it), it climbs up on the list."}
{"_id": "226332", "title": "Is the result of strcmp the same on all machines and compilers?", "text": "Code:               #include <stdio.h>     #include <stdlib.h>     #include <string.h>          int main()     {            int n = strcmp(\"hello\",\"help\");         printf(\"%d\\n\", n ) ;         return 0;     }      Result:               -1      Does the value for this program have to be the same on all machines or different compilers? In other words can this return value take on different values for the same program when run on different compilers or different machines?"}
{"_id": "37126", "title": "Career progression from Systems Architect?", "text": "What are the usual career paths from a Systems Architecture role? Do people ever move from architecture roles into management and work towards CIO/CTO or do they generally just head towards Enterprise Architecture? What would you suggest to learn/do to aid in positioning to move into management and eventually CIO/CTO roles? Experiences?"}
{"_id": "212066", "title": "Database designs, parallel tables, or extra fields?", "text": "I run a database for a sequencing centre. There are other developers getting data out of this and running automated and semi automated processes from the database. We are discussing a change to the database. At the moment we have a library that has a one-to-one relationship with a multiplex_index, which can be used to identify the library. We now want to add an optional GBS_index to each library (another optional one-to-one relationship). So each library will have a multiplex_index and optionally a GBS_index. The columns stored on the new GBS_index will be the same as for the multiplex_index. So we have 2 options for storing the GBS_index data. 1) Store the GBS_index data in the original multiplex_index table, and identifying it by its \"type\" field. 2) We can add a parallel table for the GBS_index, which mirrors the multiplex_index table. I favour the second parallel table option, as I see it as less likely to break existing code (scripts query the database for a list of multiplex_indexes, these would need to exclude the GBL_indexes in this case). Conceptually the two types of indexes are both \"multiplex indexes\", but used in a slightly different manner. Are there any strong arguments for or against either option? * * * Ok, a quick explanation of DNA sequencing may help. DNA sequencing involves taking DNA from cells and splitting them up into \"reads\" of approx 200 base pairs (each base pair is like a DNA char A,T,G or C). We load libraries (DNA from a prepared biological sample) on to a machine and sequence them. The two types indexes I talked about are a another piece of DNA with a known sequence, that is attached to the start of the library DNA before it is sequenced. That way, we can read the first bit of sequence we can identify what library each read (~200 chars) came from. (We are generally interested in the numbers of reads matching a position on a reference genome). Now we can have one (multiplex) or two (multiplex + GBS) indexes at the start of the library DNA (one comes after the other), which form a unique combination to identify the library. Initially two libraries with the same multiplex_index should not be loaded together, as you couldn't identify them from the multiplex_index sequence. Now the combination of the two indexes should be unique."}
{"_id": "212062", "title": "Using jTransforms for a commercial (non-free) android application?", "text": "I am developing an application which is using JTransforms to compute FFT and InverseFFT. I am planning to sell that application on Play Store. The JTransforms Library is covered under MPL/LGPL/GPL tri-license. Does that mean I have to disclose my application's source code to the community ? Does that mean I cannot use an open-source library to sell non- free application ? I found the following link in which the ScissDSP library is using JTransforms under LGPL license : https://github.com/Sciss/ScissDSP/blob/master/licenses/JTransforms-License.txt Does that mean MPL/LGPL/GPL is sort-of Pick 'n' Choose type of License ?"}
{"_id": "245375", "title": "Naming boolean variables: negated or not", "text": "A few years ago, I was in a software engineering class and the teacher explained how messages, options, variables, etc. should not be negated to avoid confusion. He gave the example (something like): > Are you sure you do not wish to delete this file? Yes, No, Cancel explaining that, for a `DELETE` action, the user would require more time to figure out if `Yes` will delete or not the file, and may lead to frustration if the user chooses `No`. I'd like to know if a similar quick-response phenomenon exists with source code. I browse Node.js modules and I often see options like: `disableTimeout = false`, `noAutoDetect = true`, etc. Which, to me, would be better written as `timeoutEnabled = true` and `autoDetect = false`, etc.? This may seem like a matter of opinion, but I believe this is a matter of engineering and leading others to a correct understanding of a variable's purpose. I believe there are academic studies backing this principle, and would prefer answers backed by external references."}
{"_id": "221279", "title": "fill containers with blocks of different sizes to have containers of \"similar\" sizes", "text": "I have a sorted list of blocks `L` that I want to put in 4 containers `C`, the containers have a size limit `S`. I want to have similar containers height, by similar I mean the size variance should be as small as possible. eg:               S = 4     L = [1, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2]      should result in:               C = [[1, 1], [3], [1, 2], [1, 2]]      note: it is always possible to put every blocks inside the 4 containers and I can't change blocks order is there a way to do this efficiently? I couldn't find algorithm names about this but I didn't really know how to search for that"}
{"_id": "245370", "title": "Reduce number of if statements through design pattern", "text": "I had a loop through object `Process`, each `process` instance can be of a different type, derived from `Process` base class (e.g.: `Process1`, `Process2`,...). Each derived type of `Process` has different properties. For instance: some `Process`es are indexable, this is notified by `IsIndexable` flag. When a `Process` is indexable has some additional properties (for instance: `AccessDate`) that non-indexable process doesn't have. Now I have to cycle on each Process in `request.Process` (remember indexable `Process`es are different from others)               foreach (Process process in request.Processes)     {          if(process.getType().Name.Equals(\"Process1\")) // indexable process          {              ((Process1)process).Name = \"aName\";              ((Process1)process).AccessDate = DateTime.Now;          }          else if(process.getType().Name.Equals(\"Process2\")) // non indexable process          {              ((Process2)process).Name = \"anotherNane\";              //compile error - AccessDate don't exist for type Process2              //((Process2)process).AccessDate = DateTime.Now;                    }     }      Since I hate that cascading if I have rewritten using interface:               IProcessable processableImpl = // some Unity stuff based on request type     foreach (Process process in request.Processes)     {          processableImpl.fillTheRightProperties(process);     }      `processableImpl` is injected in a different manner based on the `request.Type`. At this point `fillTherRightProperties` method will do the work for me on the current `process`.               public interface IProcessable     {         void fillTheRightProperties(Process process);     }          public class IndexableProcess : IProcessable      {         void fillTheRightProperties(Process process){             Process1 process1 = process as Process1;                  if(process1==null) throw MyException(\"Process1 expected\");                  process1.Name = \"aName\";             process1.AccessDate = DateTime.Now;         }     }          public class NonIndexableProcess : IProcessable      {         void fillTheRightProperties(Process process){             Process2 process2 = process as Process2;                  if(process2==null) throw MyException(\"Process2 expected\");                  process2.Name = \"aName\";         }     }      This is more beautiful than a cascading `if` but I feel still not as beautiful as it could be. I feel a violation of responsability, since the concrete class edit `process` property elsewhere, and I'm afraid to read this code a week after."}
{"_id": "44870", "title": "Do you have any \u201cFamily Feud\u201d style questions and answers for a game for high school students?", "text": "I am gathering questions and responses in math, science, and technology for a \"Family Feud\" style game for high school students. I am having trouble finding and thinking of questions, especially in the technology realm. Technology (programming or general tech) questions are preferred. If you have never seen the game show, \"Family Feud\" involves two teams trying to guess the most popular responses to questions asked to a group of 100 respondents. The team must guess all the popular responses to get the points for the question. For example, if the question is, \"What are the major tags in HTML 4.0?\", the responses might be:   1. P (64 votes)   2. DIV (16 votes)   3. TABLE (8 votes)   4. BLINK (4 votes)"}
{"_id": "44871", "title": "Is diversifying my programming knowledge good?", "text": "I have skills in so many programming languages, such as Java, C++, C, Obj-C, Scala, Haskell, and Matlab. However I don't know/like web programming at all. I also get bored very quickly. Thus I haven't work with any Java projects that's bigger than say 20-30 java files. I'm finishing off my degree and I want to work as a developer, particularly in mobile area. Do I have enough skills to be recruited by good companies?"}
{"_id": "202004", "title": "Help me to understand following points about the strategy pattern, how it relates to open/closed principle", "text": "I am learning design patterns. I read this article. Point no. 3 is not clear to me. The writer said that **strategy lets you change the guts of an object**. But this is a violation of the **open-close** principle. Am I wrong? If I am wrong, then help me to understand what writer wanted to describe.   1. Strategy is like Template Method except in its granularity.   2. State is like Strategy except in its intent.   3. Strategy lets you change the guts of an object. Decorator lets you change the skin.   4. State, Strategy, Bridge (and to some degree Adapter) have similar solution structures.    5. They all share elements of the \u2018handle/body\u2019 idiom. They differ in intent - that is, they solve different problems.   6. Strategy has 2 different implementations, the first is similar to State. The difference is in binding times (Strategy is a bind-once pattern, whereas State is more dynamic). Strategy objects often make good Flyweights."}
{"_id": "202002", "title": "Design Structure/Data Structure thoughts needed", "text": "I am reading a Binary file, it has several blocks, each block has different names/data. Some of this data is string value, date, datetime, time but most of them are integer value. Previously I code a struct for each Block and create public member to hold each property of that block, and then I make a Wrapper class this wrapper class has Object of each Block Class and we assign values within this wrapper class to keep complete file in one object. Now, I am looking for more efficient way of doing it as our previous code was not very efficient and I have to rewrite all Block classes, but just thought if there is easy and more efficient way of doing it. Maybe I should use List or Dictionary object instead ? What you think is best of doing it. Btw my files are 100MB + and hence it is lot of data as file is binary when it is 100MB :)."}
{"_id": "202003", "title": "Should I be worried about overengineering programming assignments given during interview process?", "text": "I recently had a phone interview with a company. After that phone interview, I was told to complete a short programming assignment (a small program; shouldn't take more than three hours). I'm only directly instructed to complete the assignment and turn in the code. I was given complete freedom to use any language I wished and was not told exactly how to turn in the code. Immediately I planned on throwing it on Github, writing a test suite for it, using Travis-CI (free continuous integration for public Github repositories) to run the test suites, and using CMake to build the Linux makefiles for Travis-CI. That way, not only can I demonstrate that I understand how to use Git, CMake, Travis-CI, and how to write tests, but I can also simply link to the Travis-CI page so they can see the output of the tests. I figured that'd make it a tiny bit more convenient for the interviewer. Since I know those technologies well, it would add essentially no time to the assignment. However, I'm a bit worried that doing all this for a relatively simple task would look bad. Although it wouldn't add much more time at all for me, I don't want them thinking I spend too much time on things that should be simple."}
{"_id": "40515", "title": "Stuff a lead developer for an Objective-C team should know", "text": "Advice on being a lead developer is welcome. Advice on being a lead developer of an Objective-C team more so. Unfortunately, I don't have experience in Objective-C (I suppose the first thing to do is to learn it). Also, I've never been a lead developer before. I do have about 6 years experience in developing applications in Java, Flex and C#."}
{"_id": "202001", "title": "Reducing repetitive DI code", "text": "I have a method which constructs dependencies using Unity. Currently, all of the calls do pretty much the same thing: Registers 2 repository object and 2 'App Part' objects. My issue is, there's a lot of them and the method has become massive. I've generalised the calls but here's an example:               container.RegisterType<IRepositoryOneDataAccess, RepositoryOneDataAccess>();     container.RegisterType<IRepositoryTwoDataAccess, RepositoryTwoDataAccess>();     container.RegisterType<IAppPart, FirstAppPart>(\"FirstAppPart.TestName\");     container.RegisterType<IAppPart, SecondAppPart>(\"SecondAppPart.TestName\");      I though that this could be split out to reduce the code in the method which registers the types with the container. Firstly I moved the bottom 2 calls to another method since they both register to the same interface, I came up with this method:               private void RegisterParts<TPartOne, TPartTwo>(string firstAppPartName, string secondAppPartName) where TPartOne : IAppPart where TPartTwo : IAppPart     {         container.RegisterType<IAppPart, TPartOne>(firstAppPartName);         container.RegisterType<IAppPart, TPartTwo>(secondAppPartName);     }      This seems to work but I'm not sure this is the best way to do it. I would also like to move the other calls out into another method preferably the same as this one I've created but I'm not sure how to do it or even if it's possible. Is there a better way of refactoring this?"}
{"_id": "14435", "title": "Subversion server hierarchy, need advice", "text": "I have a subversion server setup that I need to look after several projects, grouped by language, then client (company) and then by project e.g.               repos/          flex3          \\com1               \\project1               \\project2          \\com2               \\project1               \\project2               \\project3          flex4          \\com1              \\projectx          \\com2              \\projecty          java         \\projectz      repos is my repository root and then I have the 3 repositories inside (create with svnadmin create) flex3, flex4 and java, then flex3 should have two folders com1 and com2 for different clients, each will contain different \"project\" repos. I have a feeling I have done this wrong, should I simply create the top level structure as normal folders and then make the com1 and com2 etc into repos with \"svnadmin create\" so that different projects can be added directly below them. Is this correct? Thanks"}
{"_id": "38095", "title": "What to say to your boss if they want you to use a global variable", "text": "I am currently 4 months into an internship, and when reviewing my code, my boss didn't like that I had kept a specific object local to a number of methods across a few separate classes within one assembly. He didn't like that I was created a new object each time, and instead told me to create a single object that can be accessed from anywhere. I have therefore had to create it as a static object within a static class, and simply reference it from here I want to use it! How would you deal with this, as I have only been programming professionally for 4 months!"}
{"_id": "38094", "title": "Equity derivatives programming", "text": "I've been considering applying for some programming jobs that require experience in Equity derivatives and whilst I know what equity derivatives are, I have no idea what sort of things a programmer working with equity derivatives would do. So I was wondering if there were any developers on here that had experience in development roles working with equity derivatives and could shed some light on what sort of tasks an equity derivatives programmer might be expected to do."}
{"_id": "207637", "title": "Trying to break elements which are lists in a list?", "text": "I am trying to write a program which make the following:               ?- g([2,3, [22,[3],9] ,4,[5],99],X).          X= [2,3,22,[3],9 ,4,5,99]      so it searches for lists in the given list and replace it by their elements without brackets []. so I wrote this program: The first block just searches for the first element in the list which is list   If there is no such element it returns `[there_is_no_list]`.               first_list_in_the_list([],[there_is_no_list]):-!.       first_list_in_the_list([H|_],X):-is_list(H),X=H,!.       first_list_in_the_list([_|T],X):-first_list_in_the_list(T,X).      The first block works in prolog perfectly. The second block just search in the list for an element X and then split the list into a two lists one is the list of all elements before X and the second is the elements after X.               splite_when_find_element([H|T],H,[],T):-!.       splite_when_find_element([H|T],X,F,G):-         splite_when_find_element(T,X,F1,G),append([H],F1,F).      it also works fine in Prolog. and the third block is append, and it joins two list together in a new list.               append([],L,L).       append([H|T],L,[H|U1]):- append(T,L,U1).      and the last part is:               gg(L,L):-first_list_in_the_list(L,[there_is_no_list]),!.         gg(L,U):-first_list_in_the_list(L,X),              splite_when_find_element(L,X,F,G),gg(G,R),append(F,X,E),              append(E,R,U).      when I give a `query [2,[3],5]` I get also `[2,[3],5]` and I really don't understand why it does this."}
{"_id": "207633", "title": "Keeping track of projects", "text": "In my job I deal with several projects at the same time (and who doesn't?). Sometimes I have to make changes to a project which I dealt with half a year ago or even longer. And it's hard to recollect the details about the project. I usually look for the modification dates of the files, then I start digging into my email to find the relevant conversations. If the project is really small then it's not even in company's VCS. Sometimes it takes much longer to recollect the details of the project than to make the required change. I started using Onenote to keep track of relevant information about projects but I didn't succeed much in this, probably because I don't have a clear picture of how this knowledge base should look like. It would be nice if I can use some automated tool which can connect relevant emails, source codes, bugs information and feature requests and time periods of different activities related to a particular project. With advanced search capabilities. How do you keep track of this information?"}
{"_id": "131827", "title": "Why didn't the C++ Standard adopt expression templates?", "text": "It's my understanding that expression templates as a technique were discovered significantly prior to the original C++ Standard in 1998. Why weren't they used to improve the performance of several standard classes like `std::string` and streams?"}
{"_id": "158052", "title": "Are unit tests really that useful?", "text": "I just graduated with a degree in CS and I currently have a job as a Junior .NET Developer (C#, ASP.NET, and web forms). Back when I was still in university, the subject of unit testing did get covered but I never really saw the benefits of it. I understand what it's supposed to do, namely, determine whether or not a block of code is fit for use. However, i've never actually had to write a unit test before, nor did I ever feel the need to. As I already mentioned, I'm usually developing with ASP.NET web forms, and recently I've been thinking of writing some unit tests. But I've got a few questions about this. I've read that unit testing often happens through writing \"mocks\". While I understand this concept, I can't seem to figure out how I'm supposed to write mocks for websites that are completely dynamic, and where almost everything depends on data that comes from a database. For example: I use lot's of repeaters who have ItemDataBound events etc. (again depending on data that is \"unknown\"). So question number 1: Is writing unit tests for ASP.NET web forms something that is done often, and if it is: how do I resolve the \"dynamic environment\" issue? When I'm developing I go through a lot of trial-and-error. That doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing, but I mean that I usually write some code, hit `Ctrl F5` and see what happens. While this approach does the job most of the time, sometimes I get the feeling that I'm being a little clueless (because of my little experience). I sometimes waste a lot of time like this as well. So, question number 2: Would you guys advise me to start writing unit tests? I think it might help me in the actual implementation, but then again I feel like it might slow me down."}
{"_id": "206585", "title": "Is there a name for a randomized heap?", "text": "I've made a container which functions like a Binary Heap in terms of insertions and popping the root element. The key difference is that the comparison steps are all replaced with a random call for deciding when to go left/right. (The underlying data structure is a Vector, written as an expandable array, so you don't need to know how many elements the heap will contain in advance.) The idea is, you can insert items, and when you pop them, you'll get any element at random. You can also iterate through the whole collection, after which the heap is reshuffled (by simply popping and reinserting N times). Insertion and Removal are both O(log N), reshuffling is O(N log N). Its main use is for games, think a deck of cards or a Bingo-tumbler. It isn't really a true Heap in that there's no guarantee that elements will be less than or greater than their children. But insertion and removal are both done Heap- style, just at random. (Also, unlike a regular Heap, the items do not need to be comparable to eachother.) Is there a standard name for this sort of thing? Or maybe a better way of achieving the same results? I'm calling it a \"GrabBag\" for now, since that seems to describe it pretty well, but I was just wondering if there was a more widely-recognized name for it. I looked around for possible standard names for this, but couldn't find anything. All I could find was either Randomized Meldable Heaps, which are a different thing, or people complaining about random heap corruption, which isn't even related."}
{"_id": "244428", "title": "How to Structure a Trinary state in DB and Application", "text": "How should I structure, in the DB especially, but also in the application, a trinary state? For instance, I have user feedback records which need to be reviewed before they are presented to the general public. This means a feedback reviewer must see the unreviewed feedback, then approve or reject them. I can think of a couple ways to represent this:   1. Two boolean flags: Seen/Unseen and Approved/Rejected. This is the simplest and probably the smallest database solution (presumably boolean fields are simple bits). The downside is that there are really only three states I care about (unseen/approved/rejected) and this creates four states, including one I don't care about (a record which is seen but not approved or rejected is essentially unseen).   2. String column in the DB with constants/enum in application. Using Rating::APPROVED_STATE within the application and letting it equal whatever it wants in the DB. This is a larger column in the db and I'm concerned about doing string comparisons whenever I need these records. Perhaps mitigatable with an index?   3. Single boolean column, but allow nulls. A `true` is approved, a `false` is rejected. A `null` is unseen. Not sure the pros/cons of this solution. What are the rules I should use to guide my choice? I'm already thinking in terms of DB size and the cost of finding records based on state, as well as the readability of code the ends up using this structure."}
{"_id": "158054", "title": "Stability vs Reliability", "text": "Is there a difference between _stability_ and _reliability_ (at least in software engineering context) or can they be used interchangeably? If not, what would be some examples of reliable but not necessarily stable systems, and vice versa?"}
{"_id": "238421", "title": "Reason to treat internal class variables and functions inside a class as \"separate\" entities", "text": "Note: there is a similar question that addresses my subject: Better style for member variables? ... but that question does not address \"dealing with large legacy code base and comprehension of functions that grew too large\". I am looking for confirmation or rejection of whether my situation warrants it to be a is a good enough reason to adopt a practice of writing internal-to-the-class functions as if they were separate entities, with their appropriate parameters and return values. **My question** Variables internal to a class are considered to be scoped as \"globals\" within contains of that class. As such, these variables do not need to be included explicitly as parameters to the class' internal functions. Further, if internal functions return values that may belong to existing inside-class variables, those also do not need to be returned explicitly. You can just refer to them via using `this` object. But, is doing so a good practice? My question comes from the context of refactoring a huge legacy codebase. As such, when I see a function inside a class that goes like `$this->IamACute3000LineFunctionDoingInsanelyCuteStuffInASpaghettiCodeLikeWay()`, I have little clue as to which in-class \"global\" variables it needs to do its job, and what exactly it returns. This makes it hard and time consuming to deal with that code when any work is to be done on the class. Thus, even though it may not make sense inside the class itself, I do see some merit in writing code like below, treating variables and parameters as if the function was written to be used outside of the class itself:               class HelloClass     {        $private $name;        $private $greeting;             public function __construct($name)        {            $this->name = $name;                 //line of interest            $this->greeting = $this->prepGreeting($this-name);        }             //function of interest        private function prepGreeting($name)        {           return \"Hello, $name\";        }             public function getGreeting()        {            return $this->greeting;        }     }          $sayHello = new HelloClass(\"Dennis\");     print $sayHello->getGreeting();      Here, `prepGreeting` is the function in question. Surely, it looks a bit ridiculous... as it barely takes advantage of built-in class mechanisms, if at all. It can be rewritten as such instead (with appropriate other constructor changes as well, which are not shown):                  private function prepGreeting()        {           $this->greeting = \"Hello, \" . $this->name;        }      But then you have to actually read the function's body to understand what it does, what it touches and what it returns. **My question is this** : in my example, where I am dealing with large code where understanding a function takes time, I think there is a good reason to write internal class functions as if they were separate, not belonging to the class, as it will be superior for understanding what goes on inside the function, and what it returns. This function will be self-contained and as such, it will help a lot with refactoring. I could pluck that function out, bend the way I need it to bend, move it to another class, if I have to, thus making it easier to work with the class itself. But, in general, would you recommend such function- writing practice when writing/designing classes? Or would you recommend instead to use built-in `this` object, treating internal to the class variables as \"class globals\", even though doing so may impact readability/understanding/comprehension of the function if its size does grow, as it often does in real life projects? Finally, am I missing any greater points while focusing on this specific function-writing-style issue? **Add-on** I do see merit in perhaps using some middle-ground, where function parameters are not passed to the function (function uses `this` object to get to those), but the function still returns values, instead of updating `this` object directly, and it is up to the caller to update `this` variable. i.e. this will change my \"line of interest\" to this code: `$this->greeting = $this->prepGreeting();` and at least I will know what the function is supposed to return, at a glance."}
{"_id": "252464", "title": "How redundant should my tests be?", "text": "This is something I often struggle with in testing, yet can never find a canonical or reasonable answer to. * * * **Simple scenario** A function, `f()`, takes a file, processes it, and returns the processed file. `f()` has unit tests to check that it performs as expected. A command-line interface application (CLI) takes a file path as input and uses `f()` to process the corresponding file. * * * How should I test the CLI? Passing it a path and ensuring that it handles that path \u2014 whether or not the file exists \u2014 is logical, but then passing that file to `f()` and checking the output is exactly what I'm doing in the unit tests for `f()`. It is redundant and twice as much work. Further, maintaining the tests when the function changes is twice as much work again. Note: `f()` can be anywhere \u2014 in a library that someone else has written, for example, or part of the whole program itself. I'm trying to understand best practices in (not) redundantly testing functionality, not just in this small example."}
{"_id": "69840", "title": "What process/guidelines should be followed, when I am about to deprecate a few methods from my service classes in Java?", "text": "My team plans to deprecate a few methods from a specific library. I do not want to simply remove them, but dont want to return results either from the mehtods that are to be deprecated. What are the guidelines/process I should ideally follow?"}
{"_id": "230630", "title": "Rails: get data about a model collection, with new model or method?", "text": "have a model `Product` with attributes `sales`, `views` and I need to get sales/views count of all products, in this case is more correct to implement this things as method and have a call like `Product.all.sales` or create a new model `Stats` and implement as `Stat.products.sales`?"}
{"_id": "96229", "title": "Is structural typing in a hierarchical model necessary?", "text": "> This is part of a series of questions which focuses on a project called the > Abstraction Project, which aims to abstract the concepts used in language > design in the form of a framework. > > Another page associated to it related to ease of use can be viewed here. The > meta-topic associated to an inquiry about the framework and the proper place > to post can be found here. I'm writing a framework which describes the concepts within static high-level languages (like C#, VB.NET, et cetera). As a part of that, it involves synthesis of the structures that describe those concepts. One question I had was about what's called Structural Typing, which I aim to implement through type-parameters (constructors with parameters would be a definite addition.) It's a concept that neither C# nor VB.NET implement. The question I have today is: is structural typing in a hierarchical model necessary? One small example that I can think of is models developed that rely on patterns, but don't necessarily have an interface to specify this pattern. This is useful in instances where you want to use the code for multiple base types without a common ancestor, but with similar structure. If you wanted to display a list of items to the Console via their name, you'd need to write one method for the lowest common ancestor that defines that name property. Person, Control, and Type would all use different methods, as an example. If implemented, the resulted code would look something like:               public static void DisplayNames<T>(IEnumerable<T> namedItems)         where T has         {             ///<summary>Returns the item's name</summary>             string Name { get; }         }     {         foreach (var namedItem in namedItems)             Console.WriteLine(namedItem.Name);     }      The '[' and ']' are used for disambiguation reasons (it'd be difficult to try to discern the body of a type-parameter's structure from an interface's structure otherwise.) Suggestions welcome."}
{"_id": "201674", "title": "Multiple visual studio projects/solutions on the go", "text": "I am working on a large asp.net app as a single developer. I will often work on a number of change requests concurrently. For example, a change required to the Finance component and a change required to the sales component. I sometimes create a separate project to hold the changes and then reference the main application (file reference to the assembly). Is this a common approach or are there any tool/techniques that make this easier? For example, I make a change to the sales component, I will create a new project (SalesChange.sln) and if I make a change to the Finance component then I will create a new project called FinanceChange.sln. FinanceChange.sln and SalesChange.sln reference MainProject.sln and will eventually be migrated to MainProject.sln."}
{"_id": "160922", "title": "Asking back technical questions during the interview (as the interviewee)", "text": "I would like to know if people have already asked back some technical questions to your interviewer. Saying something like \"Well, you asked me a bunch of technical questions, and now, do you mind if I ask you some? If I am going to join your company, we will work closely together and I want to make sure my I respect the skills of my coworkers like they respect mine...\". Doesn't it sound arrogant? I am curious to have your opinion or experience (as the interviewee or the interviewer, of course). P.S: throwaway account as I dont want that people who know me know I am preparing interviews."}
{"_id": "38321", "title": "How can I motivate management to allow freelance work?", "text": "I'm a developer at a small company. Sometimes I'm offered extra cash for freelance work from previous employers or on odd jobs that I could do after hours without encroaching on my full time job in any way. Unfortunately my manager has explicitly forbidden me from working on any side projects. The reason he says is that if I have any free time at all in my life, even on weekends, they should be spent working for his company. My argument is that my weekends are my time, so I should be able to do what I want. Secondly, I'd broaden my skills with a variety of different problems I wouldn't otherwise see, rather than just staring at the same project all year long. It would actually make me a more experienced programmer and help my full time job. Everyone else seems to be doing freelance work on the side and making extra cash, but I don't want to rat them out. What other motivation could I use to help my boss see that it's not such a bad thing?"}
{"_id": "170319", "title": "Why can Perforce be a better version control system?", "text": "I've seen some people love and some loathe Perforce. As users or administrators with experience with other version control systems (free cookie to the ones with DVCS experience [git, Mercurial]), what is the main reason/feature that makes you love Perforce over other version control systems? **Edit** : No, I don't sell Perforce... this is just part of my ongoing research to pitch DVCS at my company (see my question history)"}
{"_id": "38324", "title": "Interview question: How would you implement Google Search?", "text": "Supposed you were asked in an interview \"How would you implement Google Search?\" How would you answer such a question? There might be resources out there that explain how some pieces in Google are implemented (BigTable, MapReduce, PageRank, ...), but that doesn't exactly fit in an interview. What overall architecture would you use, and how would you explain this in a 15-30 minute time span? I would start with explaining how to build a search engine that handles ~ 100k documents, then expand this via sharding to around 50M docs, then perhaps another architectural/technical leap. This is the 20,000 feet view. What I'd like is the details - how you would actually answer that in an interview. Which data structures would you use. What services/machines is your architecture composed of. What would a typical query latency be? What about failover / split brain issues? Etc..."}
{"_id": "234708", "title": "Deleting Content from Service", "text": "I'm not quite sure what the real practice is in the programming community. But when a user deletes content from your service (ie. deleting a status update, a photo of theirs, a comment they made). Should I actually delete them from my server or just hide it? The reason why I am asking this is because we live in a age where the services we build are data hungry. The data is the most valuable aspect of the service you build and keeping everything that comes in is vital. What is the general practice for these type of situations? What are your recommendations?"}
{"_id": "207982", "title": "SOLID Application Structure and Design", "text": "A one possible structure for an application is to have it broken down into modules such as Data Access, Core, Services, UI. Now depending on what type of ORM you are using Data Access layer will have a set of entities that represent the tables in the database. The core layer will have a set of entities that represent the business logic. The service layer will have a set of DTO entities that it will communicate with to the UI. And finally the UI will have a set of View Models that it will use inside the views. Now when we access or store information in the database we have to transform objects from one type to another. When the service calls the core it needs to transform objects from one type to another and finally the UI needs to transform the DTO's to View Models. In a lot of the cases the transformation is a simple act of copying the properties from one object to another. It is a very repetitive and time consuming task that generates large amounts of code. My question is am I doing something wrong here. Should I only have one entity type? If so don't you think that it would have too much information in one object for data access, business logic etc... Is there a quick way to copy the properties between objects? Reflection is an option but gets complicated fast when dealing with object graphs? I know there is no silver bullet to fix this problem but there must be a number of good approaches over copying the properties by hand between the entities?"}
{"_id": "207986", "title": "New job gitters?", "text": "I accepted a new job offer recently as a programmer. I get there on the first day and people are non engaging and didn't really smile. By the end of the first week they reviewed my code and tore it apart, and one of the devs said that they are going to try to mentor me to code better. The description for the position was recent experience in current frameworks but nothing on there about what I would be doing half of the time which would be supporting an older system one minute and bleeding edge the next. I can tell that there is going to be a high probability that I may butt heads with at least one person, since they tend to think that performance is the only thing for code and that should be obvious to everyone. If the code is not acceptable to this person, it doesn't go out( at least that's the impression that I got when I saw their code reviews). One dev told me that the project she was working on was complicated to change and that she wouldn't have done it that way. I come from a background of develop it fast, Refactor to the language standard when its practical to the timeline, but most importantly get it out the door without it breaking. Here its about coding in the fewest lines possible, most efficient code in addition to just getting it done(taking the hill). What do you folks think about this? 1.) Have any of you encountered/worked in a position like this before? 2.)Are there diminishing returns to having to be a jack of all trades, supporting old and developing the bleeding edge?"}
{"_id": "211269", "title": "Python multithreading and utilizing modern processors - what is the downside?", "text": "> CPython implementation detail: In CPython, due to the Global Interpreter > Lock, only one thread can execute Python code at once (even though certain > performance-oriented libraries might overcome this limitation). If you want > your application to make better use of the computational resources of multi- > core machines, you are advised to use multiprocessing. However, threading is > still an appropriate model if you want to run multiple I/O-bound tasks > simultaneously.   >  -> threading > > multiprocessing is a package that supports spawning processes using an API > similar to the threading module.   >  -> multiprocessing All modern PC processors are multicore. What are the downsides to spawning new processes, instead of threads? If they are not significant enough, why does the threading module even exist?"}
{"_id": "116502", "title": "Fastest C++ XML parsing library", "text": "I have thousands of .xml files from size 1MB-45MB (no DTDs). I need to parse and further manipulate these XML files before generating separate .xml files with the results of my regex. What the fastest open-source XML parsing library for C++? Aside from the parsing library, what other approaches can I use to speed up XML parsing?"}
{"_id": "201580", "title": "Python Multiprocessing with Queue vs ZeroMQ IPC", "text": "I am busy writing a Python application using ZeroMQ and implementing a variation of the Majordomo pattern as described in the ZGuide. I have a broker as an intermediary between a set of workers and clients. I want to do some extensive logging for every request that comes in, but I do not want the broker to waste time doing that. The broker should pass that logging request to something else. I have thought of two ways :-   1. Create workers that are only for logging and use the ZeroMQ IPC transport   2. Use Multiprocessing with a Queue I am not sure which one is better or faster for that matter. The first option does allow me to use the current worker base classes that I already use for normal workers, but the second option seems quicker to implement. I would like some advice or comments on the above or possibly a different solution."}
{"_id": "201584", "title": "Merge sign up with Twitter and Facebook", "text": "I want to have sign up/login functionality on my site with a \"Login with Facebook\" and \"Login with Twitter\" button. Considering the following scenario:   * User A logs in with Twitter.    * Account gets created.   * User A logs out.   * User A comes back next week and can't remember what they signed up with (or just feels like) using Facebook login this time. How can you combine these accounts? So far there's 2 options I can think of:-   * Cookie (Not reliable)   * Have a 'login' and 'signup' action. So if they 'login' with Facebook it will say \"You never signed up for this site with Facebook. Did you maybe use Twitter?\" (But maybe they will 'signup' with Facebook then and then I still have no connection with the previous twitter account)"}
{"_id": "43096", "title": "Open Source Project all dressed up but nowhere to go", "text": "Over the past 2 years myself and a colleague have built an online statistical analysis application using a mixture of silverlight, wcf and R. I (a c# programmer) wrote all the silverlight and wcf stuff whilst my colleague (a statistician) came up with the stats algorithms and wrote the R code. Now we think that this app is fairly unique - a rich gui online statistics application that is much more intuitive than all the other online stat apps that I've seen. But despite this we don't really know where to go with the project, mainly for the following reasons: 1) Its fairly complicated stuff - without the mix of programming and stats skills it would be difficult for anyone to \"get into\" the project and contribute. 2) We are stalled by a lack of a proper place to host the site. Currently it sits on the family windows 7 media centre, not exactly the best place to host it as it could interfere with the missus trying to watch Corrie/Friends/Oprah etc. Soo, anyone got any ideas on how to move forward with this? I guess that my strength is programming not marketing so despite working hard at this for the past couple of years I feel that I've reached a dead end! Also, does anyone know of any free windows hosting for open source projects? If I could find a proper place to put the app I might feel re-energised about the whole thing. The source code is on codeplex at: http://silverstats.codeplex.com, whilst the app is currently hosted at http://silverstats.co.uk Edit: to answer some of the points raised: I don't have any documentation so that is a valid point and something that I need to look at. However, I do believe that it is easy to use - try it yourself! It is drag and drop based and fairly intuitive (as long you have some stats knowledge). One point though: Its not aimed at statistians! Its aimed at people who need to do stats to do their job (which is why it is easy to use). Personally on an ease of use basis it beats the like of Rcmdr hands down! You are quite right that the R and stats geeks will continue to tap away at R and SAS and produce their scripts. So, to answer another question: Is it scriptable - of course not because that would defeat the ease of use concept, you might as well fire up R and tap away... Does it produce graphics: yep - output is nice and clean in html with some expalantory text for the people scared by stats. Is it validated, yes and no...the project is a spin off from our closed source (but free!) stats package called InVivoStat (google it) which was built with the same aim: to make statistics easy for non-statisticians, in this case scientists working in the life sciences. The R scripts that InVivoStat uses are fully GxP validated with evidence hosted on the InVivoStat website. This project (SilveR) uses the same scripts, so you could argue that a bit of revalidation is required as the interface has changed, but I am fully confident that the R scripts are correct."}
{"_id": "43095", "title": "Behaviour driven development IRL", "text": "Did any of you use behavior driven development in your projects? The concept and tools for it sound great. But was it easy to introduce and then stick to it? Did it lead to significant and visible positive results?"}
{"_id": "96590", "title": "best way to \"introduce\" OOP/OOD to team of experienced C++ engineers", "text": "I am looking for an efficient way, that also doesn't come off as an insult, to introduce OOP concepts to existing team members? My teammates are not new to OO languages. We've been doing C++/C# for a long time so technology itself is familiar. However, I look around and without major infusion of effort (mostly in the form of code reviews), it seems what we are producing is C code that happens to be inside classes. There's almost no use of single responsibility principle, abstractions or attempts to minimize coupling, just to name a few. I've seen classes that don't have a constructor but get memset to 0 every time they are instantiated. But every time I bring up OOP, everyone always nods and makes it seem like they know exactly what I'm talking about. Knowing the concepts is good, but we (some more than others) seem to have very hard time applying them when it comes to delivering actual work. Code reviews have been very helpful but the problem with code reviews is that they only occur after the fact so to some it seems we end up rewriting (it's mostly refactoring, but still takes lots of time) code that was just written. Also code reviews only give feedback to an individual engineer, not the entire team. I am toying with the idea of doing a presentation (or a series) and try to bring up OOP again along with some examples of existing code that could've been written better and could be refactored. I could use some really old projects that no one owns anymore so at least that part shouldn't be a sensitive issue. However, will this work? As I said most people have done C++ for a long time so my guess is that a) they'll sit there thinking why I'm telling them stuff they already know or b) they might actually take it as an insult because I'm telling them they don't know how to do the job they've been doing for years if not decades. Is there another approach which would reach broader audience than a code review would, but at the same time wouldn't feel like a punishment lecture? I'm not a fresh kid out of college who has utopian ideals of perfectly designed code and I don't expect that from anyone. The reason I'm writing this is because I just did a review of a person who actually had decent high-level design on paper. However if you picture classes: A -> B -> C -> D, in the code B, C and D all implement almost the same public interface and B/C have one liner functions so that top-most class A is doing absolutely all the work (down to memory management, string parsing, setup negotiations...) primarily in 4 mongo methods and, for all intents and purposes, calls almost directly into D. **Update:** I'm a tech lead(6 months in this role) and do have full support of the group manager. We are working on a very mature product and maintenance costs are definitely letting themselves be known."}
{"_id": "89357", "title": "Is that possible to learn Python by building meaningful applications and skip reading heavy books?", "text": "I'm planning to learn **Python**. I know html, javascript, vb .net, ado .net, ms sql, and a little c#. So I have a good working knowledge of programming and capable to write various desktop and web applications. Previously I learn those languages by reading books from page 1 to the end. Then build meaningful applications. Typically I will use Wrox beginning or Sam Unleashed books. And each of those books will exceed 900++ pages. I feel this way of learning a programming language is slow and tiresome. So, this time for learning python language, my intent is to do it another way. I plan not to read book from cover to cover, but just using a few online introduction to Python tutorials. I want to build meaningful applications straight away from minimal knowledge of python and struggle all the ways to the application completion. Of course, I will consult SO and other sites to solve my python problems. Is that way of learning python viable or I should stick with reading books from cover to cover before building any meaningful application? Meaningful applications here mean real world applications like ecommerce site, blog, image converter (desktop app), password manager (desktop app), Invoicing system (desktop app), and media player (desktop app). For your information, I have created those meaningful applications in vb .net."}
{"_id": "89355", "title": "How do you approach class design in OOPs?", "text": "When I try to design an OO solution ,I generally use the CRC modelling wherein I list the class names (nouns), what they do(verbs) and how they collaborate with other classes. This blog has the below thing to say about this noun-verb approach                  ...This approach, which I will call \u201cnoun and verb,\u201d is so limited         I\u2019ll dare to call it brain damaged....      My question is, does a better modelling technique exist to use OO approach?"}
{"_id": "127453", "title": "Choose code design effort or laziness in Bank world", "text": "I've worked for two years in a great Investment Bank. I made some technical projects with the desire of creating code the most optimized, respecting the adapted good design patterns, SOLID principle, law of demeter and avoiding all sorts of duplicate codes ... When delivery in production => zero bugs, all has happened as expected. But, a majority of developers came to me in order to precise that all my code is too complex for reading comprehension. I listened for instance : \"make some if and instanceof, forget polymorphism so that it will be very easily to correct emergency production bugs\". I didn't prefer to answer ...... Knowing these developers are not curious at all, refusing efforts to understand a good design (for instance, 90% of developers don't know what is a Strategy Pattern and make procedural code and never oo-design because they want, they said, simplicity), my project managers told me that I am really in the wrong way and too idealist for the Bank world. What would you advise me ? Should I keep desire of really good code or adapt me to majority of developers who are, I repeat it, really not interesting by design code that is according to me, all the beauty of our developer job. Or in the contrary, should they learn basic OO principles and best-practices to adapt themselves to my code ?"}
{"_id": "87490", "title": "Is issue (bug and feature) count a good measure of a project?", "text": "One of the projects I work on is measured by number of issues. Management has given arbitrary (as far as I can tell) measurements that we need to have no more than X number of bugs and Y number of features in our issue tracking system. This seems like a misguided approach, but I can't seem to find any writings on the subject."}
{"_id": "214056", "title": "Can a team that uses Scrum achieve Co-Dev and domain expertise if it handles many SW domains?", "text": "I've worked in a team that developed and gave support for SW practices tools. Those tools were written (and will be written) in many programming languages. According to Scrum, a given story, **can be implemented by several team members** (according to what I know). When organized in a team that is oriented to a specific SW domain/framework (.NET for example), this seems possible and even reasonable. But if your team needs to write in _Python, C#, Java etc._ for several tools, some with different orientation (DB/UI), is this possible? How does the \"division of labor\" should be made in this case? Thanks."}
{"_id": "150229", "title": "Choosing a restrictive license to be in compliance, but not enforcing it", "text": "I'm very curious about this: Lets say that you have to use the GPL in your library because some dependency uses it or (if your library is fork) the upstream library uses GPL. Now GPL doesn't play well with a couple of important open source licenses which means that some users simply can't use your librar because of licensing issues, which doesn't help anybody An option that I've been toying with is still using GPL to maintain dependency compatibility but telling users that I will not enforce it against open source software or (if that's way too broad) software that uses open source but not completable licenses like Apache, MPL, CC, etc. Would there be any legal ramifications of doing this? Would this put my users at legal risk?"}
{"_id": "155619", "title": "How do I architect 2 plugins that share a common component?", "text": "I have an object that takes in data and spits out a transformed output, called `IBaseItem`. I also have two parsers, `IParserA` and `IParserB`. These parsers transform external data (in format dataA and dataB respectively) to a format usable by my `IBaseItem` (baseData). I want to create 2 systems, one that works with dataA and one that works with dataB. They will allow the user to enter data and match it to the right plugins/implementations and transform the data to outData. I want to write these traffic cops myself, but have other people provide the parsers and baseitem logic, and and as such am implementing these items as plugins (hence the use of interfaces). Other programmers can choose to implement 1 or both parsers. **Q:** How should I structure the way base items and parsers are associated, stored, and loaded into each of my programs? _Class Relations:_ ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/w9adn.png) **What I've Tried:** Initially I though there should be a different dll for each of my 2 traffic cops, that each have a parser and baseitem in them. However, the duplication of baseitem logic doesn't seem right (especially if the base item logic changes). I then thought the base items could all have their own dll, and then somehow associate parsers and baseitems (guids?), but I don't know if implementing the overhead id/association is adding too much complexion."}
{"_id": "65127", "title": "What's a good methodology for a small 2-person project?", "text": "Hello   What's a good methodology for a small 2-person project? Ranges from 20-40hr.   It's mostly small websites. I want to approach it as a developer, but Agile and other methodologies seems too large scale for what I'm after.   Thanks"}
{"_id": "65126", "title": "unit tests for a csv parser", "text": "What tests should I use to unit test a csv parser? I have a simple csv parser in C#, and I want to be sure I have good unit test coverage of all the common (and uncommon) edge cases. What tests should I use to identify potential problems and boundary cases?"}
{"_id": "155614", "title": "New \"delay\" keyword for JavaScript", "text": "I had a great idea for a new javascript keyword \"delay\", but I don't know what I can do to bring it to the new specification. Also I want to know what you guys think about it and if it's even realistic. ## What does the `delay` keyword ? The `delay` keyword does nothing more than stop the execution of the current stack and immediately continues to the next \"job\" in the queue. But that's not all! Instead of discarding the stack, it adds it to the end of the queue. After all \"jobs\" before it are done, the stack continues to execute. ## What is it good for? `delay` could help make blocking code non-blocking while it still looks like synchronous code. A short example:               setTimeout(function(){         console.log(\"two\");     },0);     console.log(\"one\");     delay; //since there is currently another task in the queue, do this task first before continuing     console.log(\"three\");          //Outputs: one, two, three      This simple keyword would allow us to create a synchronous-looking code wich is asynchronous behind the scenes. Using node.js modules, for example, would no longer be impossible to use in the browser without trickery. There would be so many possibilites with such a keyword! Is this pattern useful? What can I do to bring this into the new ECMAscript specification? Note: I asked this previously on Stack Overflow, where it was closed."}
{"_id": "150227", "title": "Requirements/issue tracker similar to online spreadsheet", "text": "Is there a requirements/issue tracker software which is similar to Google spreadsheet? We have Fogbugz but I find it more heavyweight and slow than a simple spreadsheet. Is there a Fogbugz alternative which is - fast - can show issues/requirements as a spreadsheet (at) and allows in-place editing - supports tree structures (where issue can have child issues)? It is required for a small project. There will be 2 developers and 1-2 other users. I guess that only one user will be actively maintaining it. UPDATE I do not say that a spreadsheet is better than Fogbugz or similar tools. In fact I am looking for a tool which is similar to Fogbugz and could replace a spreadsheet, but faster than Fogbugz and has an additional feature (table-like mode). I'd like to find a tool which can operate in a mode which looks like a table (one row per issue) but has a rich set features (similar to Fogbugs and JIRA). I find Fogbugz (and similar tools) inconvenient because I must enter the web form in order to edit anything. In-place editing (when issues are shown as a table) would be much faster."}
{"_id": "103523", "title": "Adding unit tests to a legacy, plain C project", "text": "The title says it all. My company is reusing a legacy firmware project for a microcontroller device, written completely in plain C. There are parts which are obviously wrong and need changing, and coming from a C#/TDD background I don't like the idea of randomly refactoring stuff with no tests to assure us that functionality remains unchanged. Also, I've seen that hard to find bugs were introduced in many occasions through slightest changes (which is something which I believe would be fixed if regression testing was used). A lot of care needs to be taken to avoid these mistakes: it's hard to track a bunch of globals around the code. To summarize:   * How do you add unit tests to existing tightly coupled code before refactoring?   * What tools do you recommend? (less important, but still nice to know) I am not directly involved in writing this code (my responsibility is an app which will interact with the device in various ways), but it would be bad if good programming principles were left behind if there was a chance they could be used."}
{"_id": "155611", "title": "Facebook App EULA & Restrictions: What can't they do that my web app can?", "text": "I have written a nifty little web app (in Java/GWT/JS) and have been experimenting with the idea of making it available through Facebook as a Facebook App as well. After spending some time reading Facebook's developer docs, it seems like I can just create a Facebook App to point at any URL I want and use that as the app/canvas. It accomplishes this via `iframe`s. **So, my tentative plan is to just point it towards my (existing) web app so that I don't have to totally re-write it.** But then that got me thinking: Facebook **must** regulate what sorts of things _can_ be done through a Facebook App, vs. what an app _can't_ do. For instance, I can't imagine I can point a Facebook App to point at a URL for a web app that accepts e-commerce payments (that would by-pass Facebook altogether and not allow them to take a cut from the ecom transaction!). Also, I can't imagine that Facebook allows developers to point their Facebook Apps to _just any old URL_ without some sort of a scan, otherwise that would open Facebook up to the horrors of every security threat knownst to humanity. I know for a fact that when you write an iOS native app and put it up on the Apple App Store, that Apple actually scans your source code for violations of their EULA. So my question: **does Facebook do the same?** If so, what are their terms & conditions for what a Facebook app can/can't do? Suprisingly, I can't find this anywhere!! Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "153758", "title": "How to make this design closer to proper DDD?", "text": "I've read about DDD for days now and need help with this sample design. All the rules of DDD make me very confused to how I'm supposed to build anything at all when domain objects are not allowed to show methods to the application layer; where else to orchestrate behaviour? Repositories are not allowed to be injected into entities and entities themselves must thus work on state. Then an entity needs to know something else from the domain, but other entity objects are not allowed to be injected either? Some of these things makes sense to me but some don't. I've yet to find good examples of how to build a whole feature as every example is about Orders and Products, repeating the other examples over and over. I learn best by reading examples and have tried to build a feature using the information I've gained about DDD this far. I need your help to point out what I do wrong and how to fix it, most preferably with code as \"I would not recomment doing X and Y\" is very hard to understand in a context where everything is just vaguely defined already. If I can't inject an entity into another it would be easier to see how to do it properly. In my example there are users and moderators. A moderator can ban users, but with a business rule: only 3 per day. I did an attempt at setting up a class diagram to show the relationships (code below): ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/lVonP.png)               interface iUser     {         public function getUserId();         public function getUsername();     }          class User implements iUser     {         protected $_id;         protected $_username;              public function __construct(UserId $user_id, Username $username)         {             $this->_id          = $user_id;             $this->_username    = $username;         }              public function getUserId()         {             return $this->_id;         }              public function getUsername()         {             return $this->_username;         }     }          class Moderator extends User     {         protected $_ban_count;         protected $_last_ban_date;              public function __construct(UserBanCount $ban_count, SimpleDate $last_ban_date)         {             $this->_ban_count       = $ban_count;             $this->_last_ban_date   = $last_ban_date;         }              public function banUser(iUser &$user, iBannedUser &$banned_user)         {             if (! $this->_isAllowedToBan()) {                 throw new DomainException('You are not allowed to ban more users today.');             }                  if (date('d.m.Y') != $this->_last_ban_date->getValue()) {                 $this->_ban_count = 0;             }                  $this->_ban_count++;                  $date_banned        = date('d.m.Y');             $expiration_date    = date('d.m.Y', strtotime('+1 week'));                  $banned_user->add($user->getUserId(), new SimpleDate($date_banned), new SimpleDate($expiration_date));         }              protected function _isAllowedToBan()         {             if ($this->_ban_count >= 3 AND date('d.m.Y') == $this->_last_ban_date->getValue()) {                 return false;             }                  return true;         }     }          interface iBannedUser     {         public function add(UserId $user_id, SimpleDate $date_banned, SimpleDate $expiration_date);         public function remove();     }          class BannedUser implements iBannedUser     {         protected $_user_id;         protected $_date_banned;         protected $_expiration_date;              public function __construct(UserId $user_id, SimpleDate $date_banned, SimpleDate $expiration_date)         {             $this->_user_id         = $user_id;             $this->_date_banned     = $date_banned;             $this->_expiration_date = $expiration_date;         }              public function add(UserId $user_id, SimpleDate $date_banned, SimpleDate $expiration_date)         {             $this->_user_id         = $user_id;             $this->_date_banned     = $date_banned;             $this->_expiration_date = $expiration_date;         }              public function remove()         {             $this->_user_id         = '';             $this->_date_banned     = '';             $this->_expiration_date = '';         }     }          // Gathers objects     $user_repo = new UserRepository();     $evil_user = $user_repo->findById(123);          $moderator_repo = new ModeratorRepository();     $moderator = $moderator_repo->findById(1337);          $banned_user_factory = new BannedUserFactory();     $banned_user = $banned_user_factory->build();          // Performs ban     $moderator->banUser($evil_user, $banned_user);          // Saves objects to database     $user_repo->store($evil_user);     $moderator_repo->store($moderator);          $banned_user_repo = new BannedUserRepository();     $banned_user_repo->store($banned_user);      Should the User entitity have a `'is_banned'` field which can be checked with `$user->isBanned();`? How to remove a ban? I have no idea."}
{"_id": "60577", "title": "Why is bitbucket popular in eastern europe?", "text": "I was looking at google trends for bitbucket and github, and it seems bitbucket leads github in Romania, Bulgaria, and Latvia. Why is this so? Are there any historical reasons for this?"}
{"_id": "153754", "title": "What is a T&R cycle?", "text": "I have seen the following in a job offer: \"The Business Analyst is expected to determine an appropriate IT strategy, potential IT solutions and support the submission into the T&R cycle.\" Does anyone known what the T&R cycle is? Never heard of it and googling does not help."}
{"_id": "153750", "title": "If I use Ruby Migrations, do I have to use the rest of Ruby on Rails?", "text": "I'm currently trying to come up with a database migrations strategy for my organization. This includes getting the database scripts into source control, managing versioning, managing releases to QA / Production, managing branching and merging across different release branches, etc. Ruby Migrations seems to offer solutions to a lot of those problems. But, from looking at the Ruby on Rails docs, it is unclear to me whether Ruby Migrations can be separated from the rest of the framework. I work in a primarily .NET shop, but with a lot of other technologies, and with multiple DBMS platforms (SQL Server, Oracle of various versions). Ruby is not present in our portfolio at all right now, and we have no plans to use it. If I was to use Ruby Migrations, it would be the only piece of the Ruby on Rails framework that we would want to use. Can Ruby Migrations be effectively used to manage database changes independently of the rest of the Ruby on Rails framework? Are there any docs or articles out there that describe this workflow? (Yes, I know there are other options such as Liquibase but I'm specifically trying to learn about Ruby Migrations with this question.)"}
{"_id": "254251", "title": "How does Python compile some its code in C?", "text": "I read that some constructs of Python are more efficient because they are compiled in C. https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonSpeed/PerformanceTips Some of the examples used were map() and filter(). I was wondering how Python is able to do this? It's generally interpreted, so how does some of the code get compiled while another is interpreted - and in a different language? Why not just compile the whole thing?"}
{"_id": "148216", "title": "Should a web developer know how to do slicing?", "text": "I am a web developer. I'm doing all kinds of web-sites and web applications. It's very strange for me that a lot of customers do not know the difference between a web developer and a slicer. They just want to \"give you the PSD\" and expect you to give them a web site with a DB back-end and so on... I'm just asking here: am I wrong in my thinking? Of course, a web developer MUST know html and css but I don't think that he should slice the PSD and do all the work a css guru can do... I would like to hear your opinions on this."}
{"_id": "148217", "title": "What is the significance of 10 characters in this Uncle Bob post?", "text": "In this blog posting by Uncle Bob http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/04/20/Why-Is-Estimating-So-Hard.html Author states a possible solution to the problem at hand. He writes \"Try this. Break some long string of text up into columns that are 10 characters long. Each time you break a line, record the position of the break, and why you decided to use that position.\" The problem is about breaking the Address into 13 character columns, so where does 10 come into play? Or is he using that as another example unrelated to the Gettysburg one? I'd like to present this to my team in a presentation I have to do soon. I plan to describe the posting, describe the problem and ask my team members for their estimates. After I would go on to explain the rest of the postings premise about why estimations are often blown. Feel free to offer suggestion on how I can make this a good presentation. I can visualize most of it but towards the end it feels light. After the quick survey, I focus on the problem of estimating the wrong thing and then offer the solution."}
{"_id": "148213", "title": "How can I evaluate a candidate's knowledge of Html/CSS during an interview?", "text": "I am trying to determine some good interview questions to assess the ability of people coming in for a Html/CSS job, however that topic is extremely broad, and I'm not sure what sort of questions I can ask to properly evaluate someone's HTML/CSS knowledge. What sort of questions can I ask to evaluate a candidate's Html/CSS abilities during an interview? Ideally I would like to ask few questions and then give them a real life scenario to combat."}
{"_id": "254255", "title": "How can I find the shortest path between two subgraphs of a larger graph?", "text": "I'm working with a weighted, undirected multigraph (loops not permitted; most node connections have multiplicity 1; a few node connections have multiplicity 2). I need to find the shortest path between two subgraphs of this graph that do not overlap with each other. There are no other restrictions on which nodes should be used as start/end points. Edges can be selectively removed from the graph at certain times (as explained in my previous question) so it's possible that for two given subgraphs, there might not be any way to connect them. I'm pretty sure I've heard of an algorithm for this before, but I can't remember what it's called, and my Google searches for strings like \"shortest path between subgraphs\" haven't helped. Can someone suggest a more efficient way to do this than comparing shortest paths between all nodes in one subgraph with all nodes in the other subgraph? Or at least tell me the name of the algorithm so I can look it up myself? For example, if I have the graph below, the nodes circled in red might be one subgraph and the nodes circled in blue might be another. The edges would all have positive integer weights, although they're not shown in the image. I'd want to find whatever path has the shortest total cost as long as it starts at a red node and ends at a blue node. I believe this means the specific node positions and edge weights cannot be ignored. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/d568B.png) (This is just an example graph I grabbed off Wikimedia and drew on, not my actual problem.)"}
{"_id": "200989", "title": "Software design vs physical products design", "text": "I got a bunch of questions to answer to prepare for an exam and this one I'm actually not sure what's the clear difference : \"Explain the difference between designing software and designing physical products\" I have an opinion on this, but the more I think about it the more it feels like there's no real difference except that the tools and formula's used when making physical items has been established hundreds of years ago and the heuristics/models have been in place since forever. I also thought that, once you design a spoon and make it, it doesn't evolve with time, it fulfills it's requirements and that's that, while for software new requirements come in all the time so you have to consider certain quality attributes in that regard. This is from my software architecture class if you guys need a context. What are the differences between software design and physical design, and am I off the mark with my answer?"}
{"_id": "200981", "title": "Could I have a real-world example of using the Spring scripting module in your Java application?", "text": "The Spring framework supports the use of scripting languages (specifically JRuby, Groovy and BeanShell) whereby a script in any of these can call Java code and vice versa. I have read that a possible use of this feature is when some modules require frequent changes and it would allow to modify your application without having to redeploy it. I have been trying to visualize a possible usage but this sounds too vague to me. I tend to associate things that can change with configuration, data or rolling a new feature in an application, but not with an existing module whose behavior can change frequently. In summary: when did you benefit from using Spring scripting or at least what would be a realistic, concrete example?"}
{"_id": "200980", "title": "How do purely functional languages handle modularity?", "text": "I come from an object oriented background where I've learned that classes are or at least can be used to make a layer of abstraction that allows for easy recycling of code which can then either be used to make objects or be used in inheritance. Like for example I can have an animal class and then from that inherit cats and dogs and such that all inherit many of the same traits, and from those sub-classes I can then make objects that can specify a breed of animal or even the name of it.   Or I can use classes to specify multiple instances of the same code that handles or contains slightly different things; like nodes in a search-tree or multiple different database connections and what not. I'm recently moving into functional programming, so I was starting to wonder:   How do purely functional languages handle things like that? That is, languages without any concept of classes and objects."}
{"_id": "97176", "title": "Data access for composable applications", "text": "I'm wondering if anyone can share their thoughts, experience and guidance on how to approach the data access layer for a composable application? By composable application, I mean an application with the domain layer made up of modules. The goal is to make the application highly extensible by 'plugging in' additional (or replacement) modules. Each module encapsulates (and isolates) a set of related functionality. My dilemma is the right approach for the data access layer to support this composability (modularity) while still providing isolation from the back-end database. Because each \"module\" can implement its own set of domain objects, there really is no way that I see an ORM like EF working unless I simply create one mega data context or make changes to the data access layer each time a new module is introduced (which isn't possible if the module is added by a 3rd-party or as a post-deployment extension). For what it's worth, this is an enterprise-scale application with a database containing over 200 tables and a ton of sproc, udfs, etc. What advice can you share? **UPDATE** I confirmed today that we will be using a legacy data store for the solution that utilizes stored procedures and user-defined functions for the majority of the data access operations. Our hope is to evolve away from this as time goes by, but the budget and timeline for the project dictate the we build on top of the existing databases. Does that change your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "124378", "title": "How to apply dynamic programming to optimization problems with 2 constraints", "text": "Suppose you have a collection of blocks, each with a certain height and a certain weight. For example:               Sample input:     (190, 190) (120, 40) (100, 10) (90,130) (70, 40) (60, 70) (30, 30) (10, 90)          Sample output:     4      You want to find the maximum number of blocks you can pile, with 2 constraints: each block must be lighter than the one below it and it must also be shorter than the one below it. How do you solve it? My approach was to solve it more or less like the knapsack problem. I order the blocks from light to heavier, and I start at the end of the array. Then for each block I am considering, I find the maximum between piling that block and don't piling it, and return it. Here's the C code:               int maxPile(Blocks array[], int block, int maxHeight, int maxWeight){              /* base case with just 1 block left to consider */         if (block==0){             if ((array[0].height < maxHeight) && (array[0].weight < maxWeight))                 return 1;             else                 return 0;         }              /*case where current block can be piled, check the max between piling or not*/         if ((array[block].height < maxHeight) && (array[block].weight < maxWeight))             return max(1+maxPile(array,blockk-1,array[block].height,array[block].weight),maxPile(array,block-1,maxHeight,maxWeight));              /*case where current block can't be piled, so move to next*/         else             return maxPile(array,block-1,maxHeight,maxWeight);     }      The algorithm above seems to solve the problem correctly. The problem, as you might have guessed, are the overlapping sub-problems, so the complexity is exponential. The usual way to solve this is dynamic programming, but I am having a hard time to implement it, specifically because of the 2 constraints. If there was a single constraint, say weight, I would build a 2-dimensional array where the rows would represent the sub-set of blocks you are working with, and the columns would represent the max weight available. But with 2 constraints I would need to have a 3-dimensional array to store the solutions of the subproblems, and as soon as the dataset grows a bit this becomes unfeasible. Another idea I considered was to take the 3 factors (current block, max weight and max height), pass them through a hash function and store the result in a hash table. For some reason this is not working. Any ideas on how to add dynamic programming to the above solution? (or on how to solve it more efficiently?). **Update** : It seems that it's also necessary to sort the array by the second constraint (i.e., height in this case) and run the function again, cause with this order the maximum might be larger."}
{"_id": "88741", "title": "What is the scope of a Bdd Scenario particularly when specifying changes to an existing application?", "text": "We have been working with BDD for sometime now and one issue that keeps cropping up is related to the scope of our scenarios. Particularly when it come to making a change to existing functionality. As a developer I see the scenarios as being akin to a spec, ie. this is the change that is required. However often they seem to stray into regression or acceptance testing. So scenario 2 wont require any code changes itself but might indicate a function that also needs testing following a change made by scenario 1 (regression testing). Or Scenario 2 might provide an alternative test to the same function as scenario 1 (acceptance testing). On the face of it this doesnt seem unreasonable however it greatly increases the number of scenarios which makes them more time consuming to write and makes it harder for the developers to see the wood for the trees. What should the scope of scenarios be when making a change to exising functionality? Can we have a scenario that specifies a change in generic terms rather than having a seperate scenario for each related function?"}
{"_id": "191404", "title": "Where to add the license file?", "text": "I have written an application in Python using Tkinter and want to distribute under the WTFPL license. But I don't understand where to add the copying.txt file that needs to be added in the folder that is distributed. **Please** clarify."}
{"_id": "99319", "title": "Microsoft certifications", "text": "When looking through job postings I noticed some employers listing MCSD or MCAD certifications. Are these certifications correct ones for web developers? Which track should one choose?. I also noticed looking at MCSD that most certifications are \"retired\". So how are suppose to take the exam it it's no longer offered?? thanks"}
{"_id": "99316", "title": "Will a Bachelor of Science in something other than Computer Science hurt a career in software development?", "text": "I have a BSc in Geology. Once I was half-way through my bachelors only, I found where my real talents are. Will my basic degree be a problem for me to progress in the Software field (I feel lot of leading companies are considering the basic degree)? Also what would you recommend to put my self in an equally competent position against a person with a strong BSc in computer science. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "215091", "title": "Why do programming languages allow shadowing/hiding of variables and functions?", "text": "Many of the most popular programming languges (such as C++, Java, Python etc.) have the concept of **hiding** / **shadowing** of variables or functions. When I've encountered hiding or shadowing they have been the cause of hard to find bugs and I've never seen a case where I found it necessary to use these features of the languages. To me it would seem better to disallow hiding and shadowing. Does anybody know of a good use of these concepts? **Update:**   I'm not refering to encapsulation of class members (private/protected members)."}
{"_id": "162387", "title": "Low Coupling: Single Responsibility Principle vs Cohesion", "text": "I've read several articles on _SRP_ and _cohesion_ , and they seem to contradict each other as far as _low coupling_ is concerned. Articles on _cohesion_ argue that putting closely related responsibilities together in a class `Highly_Cohesive_Class` reduces coupling, while articles on _SRP_ would argue that we'd reduce coupling by removing these closely related responsibilities from class `Highly_Cohesive_Class` into separate classes ( such that each class only has single responsibility/reason to change ). Don't the two claims contradict each other? Namely, BTW - I'm aware of the fact that class adhering to SRP principle is also considered highly cohesive class, but in this post the term _highly cohesive_ refers to a class that has several closely related responsibilities thank you"}
{"_id": "195574", "title": "Does any know of a Algorithm that allows for a figure like this image?", "text": "Does anyone know how to create an algorithm capable of making the figure just like in the picture, when given a set of specific points (3D array) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/9P1t0.jpg)"}
{"_id": "197625", "title": "Storing the EOF (End of File) character in a char type", "text": "I read in the Dennis Ritchie's _The C Programming Language_ book that `int` must be used for a variable to hold EOF - to make it sufficiently large so that it can hold EOF value - not `char`. But following code works fine:               #include<stdio.h>           main()  {        char c;        c=getchar();        while(c!=EOF)  {          putchar(c);          c=getchar();        }      }       When there is no more input, `getchar` returns EOF. And in the above program, the variable `c`, with char type, is able to hold it successfully. Why does this work? As per the explanation in the book above mentioned, the code should not work."}
{"_id": "195570", "title": "Entites in Invalid State", "text": "I'm looking into developing my entities so that they cannot be in an invalid state. In particular I'm starting with my Customer entity. This would have fields like:   * Title (enum)   * FirstName (string)   * LastName (string)   * Address (value object with another 6 fields)   * MainTelephone (string)   * AlternateTelephone (string)   * EmailAddress (string) I've added methods such as ChangeOfAddress() to facilitate the changing of address, which will ensure a valid address is entered as a replacement. In the UI, I consider most fields (except for AlternateTelephone and EmailAddress) as 'required', encouraging users to complete fields such as Title to make addressing mail shots easier in the future. For methods like ChangeOfAddress() the concept of 'invalid state' is an easy one, as I can apply validation on the new Address value object, but for the construction of a new Customer object I'm not as sure. I guess my question is, should the bare minimum for the construction of a Customer entity include all the fields I feel are 'required' from the perspective of the UI? I can't imagine how creating a Customer with only a FirstName and LastName (without any contact details), would be valid in the business sense I intend to use the Customer object in. Although in a sense FirstName and LastName are good starting points for a minimum description of a Customer and I guess the Customer wouldn't be 'invalid' it'd just be lacking enough information to be useful to my business needs (which would be, to be able to contact them). Hope this makes sense, I'd be interested to hear any opinions, as I'm still learning as I go."}
{"_id": "207297", "title": "First of the The Ten Commandments for C++ Programmers by Steve Oualline correctly transcribed?", "text": "I do not have the book \u201cPractical C++ Programming\u201d by Steve Oualline but I was reading his Ten Commandments for C++ programmers at http://code.rkevin.com/2010/07/the-ten-commandments-for-c-programmers/ and I was wondering if the first has been correctly transcribed? For reference the transcription is: \"1. Thou shalt not rely on the compiler default methods for construction, destruction, copy construction, or assignment for any but the simplest of classes. Thou shalt forget these \u201cbig four\u201d methods for any nontrivial class.\" He seems to be advocating manually defining copy construction and copy assignment. Is that a correct interpretation of his first commandment? Edit: Although at present I am leaving Adrian's answer as the accepted one I would like anyone who views this question to read Jerry's. I did specifically ask whether the above text is accurately transcribed and not about its merit (which is probably a more interesting discussion). But Jerry does make some good points about its merit (or lack thereof) which are similar to my opinions of it. I just wanted to make sure I had the quote right before I constructed a thorough argument of why I disagree with it."}
{"_id": "88002", "title": "Starting with 3D programming", "text": "I will be working on a 3D project and i need to learn c++ and opengl fast. as i have heard it is the best combination to do graphics. I would also like your recommendation on this book I came across: Angel E, Interactive Computer Graphics: A top-down approach with Open GL, 5th Edition, Addison Wesley 2008 what do you recommend? thanks!"}
{"_id": "88008", "title": "Do we need a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)?", "text": "We're going to meet a potential new client today and between ourselves started discussing the need for a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and whether we need one at this juncture. In this case we don't think we'll be talking about technical specifics as it's an initial meeting about who we are. Is there any precedent on when is the right time for small ISVs to insist on NDAs and when perhaps the insistence might appear over the top and precious. All ideas welcomed, though in our case we're interested in UK law."}
{"_id": "119882", "title": "What are the benefits of archiving?", "text": "I always see sites that only keeps fresh content on the home or subsections, and the rest of the content is kept in a separate section called 'archive'. Recently I have also heard that NoSQL DB's like MongoDB are good for archiving (which makes me think this is related to performance) So why do sites archive their content? What's the benefit over say, a simple paginator through which you could reach all the content? Is archiving done for performance? Or SEO? Or just user experience?"}
{"_id": "214714", "title": "Is there any way around the field-of-use restrictions in Java?", "text": "Current field-of-use restrictions defined in \"Oracle Binary Code License Agreement for the Java SE Platform Products\" prohibit its use in embedded systems. > \"General Purpose Desktop Computers and Servers\" means computers, including > desktop and laptop computers, or servers, used for general computing > functions under end user control (such as but not specifically limited to > email, general purpose Internet browsing, and office suite productivity > tools). The use of Software in systems and solutions that provide dedicated > functionality (other than as mentioned above) or designed for use in > _embedded_ or function-specific software applications... are excluded from > this definition and _not licensed_ under this Agreement. Do these restrictions also apply to OpenJDK and other possible implementations? Is the only way to use Java in such an environment to acquire a separate license from Oracle?"}
{"_id": "9272", "title": "Commented short fancy code vs. uncommented longer easy-to-understand code - which is preferred?", "text": "Sometimes an algorithm can be written in two ways:   * The short, fancy way; or   * The longer, easy-to-understand way. For example, here is a longer, easier way of copying a string `source` to `dest` in C:               *dest = *source;     while (*source != '\\0') {         source++;         dest++;         *dest = *source;     } (true);      And here is a short, fancy way.               // Copy string source to dest     while (*dest++ = *source++);      I've always heard and read that fancy code should be avoided, and I tend to agree. But what if we take comments into account? **Assume that, as in the examples above, we have an uncommented, longer and supposedly easier-to- understand code, and a well-commented, short, fancy code? Is the non-fancy code still preferred?** **EDIT:** Many have commented on variable names, so I've modified the example code as to not make that a factor when preferring on over the other. I tried to remove the double assignment in the first example, but that only made the code less readable. Perhaps this wasn't the best of examples because many find the 'fancy' code more readable and understandable than the longer code. The idea was to have one longer code which was much easier to understand than a very short but complicated code. **EDIT2:** Here's a new examle I got from SO: **Commented fancy version:**               //direct formula for xoring all numbers from 1 to N     int Sum = (N & (N % 2 ? 0 : ~0) | ( ((N & 2)>>1) ^ (N & 1) ) );      **Non-commented long version:**               int Sum = 0;     for (int i = 1; i < N; ++i)     {        Sum ^= i; //or Sum = Sum ^ i;     }"}
{"_id": "10723", "title": "AGPL-compatible license", "text": "I am using a java library licensed under AGPL3. However, I would like to license my own work as BSD, such that my code could then be integrated in proprietary projects if one strips the library. Will I be allowed to do that? So far, I couldn't find a clear answer for my problem on the net or in the license text(not a lawyer). Dual-licensing seems cumbersome and ugly. EDIT: What happens if I use other libraries which are licensed under BSD or anything else?"}
{"_id": "49587", "title": "What project did you work on when you were a C++ beginner?", "text": "I need some ideas for projects that will help me improve my skills.   Here is the requirement for the project   1. It has to be in win32   2. I need something harder than just making a calculator"}
{"_id": "225038", "title": "Software process of small company", "text": "I'm wondering how should testing take place in small teams (or start-up teams). I'm talking 5-10 developers that are assigned to multiple development tasks. From my experience there is little to none testing in the development process, but I also hear small teams **can** get through the initial level of software process maturity. How does QA and testing take place during development in a mature-but-small team? (please, if you can, describe the whole software process including who should be doing what) EDIT (more detail): I'm especially interested in a team developing a distributed processing- intensive back-end with a website as it's API. The two parts (back-end, front- end) are developed by two different groups of 3. I want to understand **who tests what, and when**. If I write a module and it's unit tests, do I write integration tests when completing the code? Should you assign a developer on such a small group to focus on testing?"}
{"_id": "163382", "title": "Grading an algorithm: Readability vs. Compactness", "text": "Consider the following exam / interview question: * * * Implement the strcpy() function in C: `void strcpy(char *destination, char *source);` _The`strcpy` function copies the C string pointed by `source` into the array pointed by `destination`, including the terminating null character. Assume that the size of the array pointed by `destination` is long enough to contain the same C string as `source`, and does not overlap in memory with `source`._ * * * Say you were the interviewer \\ examiner, how would you grade the following answers to this question? 1)               void strcpy(char *destination, char *source)     {       while (*source != '\\0')         {           *destination = *source;            source++;            destination++;         }         *destination = *source;     }      2)               void strcpy(char *destination, char *source)         {            while (*(destination++) = *(source++)) ;         }      The first implementation is straightforward - it is readable and programmer- friendly. The second implementation is shorter (one line of code) but less programmer- friendly; it's not so easy to understand the way this code is working, and if you're not familiar with the priorities in this code then it's a problem. I'm wondering if the first answer would show more complexity and more advanced thinking, in the interviewer's \\ examiner's eyes, even though both algorithms behave the same, and although code readability is considered to be more important than code compactness. It seems to me that since making an algorithm this compact is more difficult to implement, it will show a higher level of thinking as an answer in an exam. However, it is also possible that an interviewer \\ examiner would consider the second answer not good because it's not readable. I would also like to mention that this is not specific to this example, but general for code readability vs. compactness when implementing an algorithm, specifically in exams \\ interviews."}
{"_id": "247440", "title": "What does it mean for a sorting algorithm to be \"stable\"?", "text": "In reading about various sorting algorithms I've seen it mentioned that some are \"stable\" and some are not. What does that mean, and what tradeoffs are involved on that basis when selecting an algorithm?"}
{"_id": "49580", "title": "How come there is still so much programming work?", "text": "I wonder why programming jobs haven't yet \"dried up\" because of the software evolution. For example, I am a developer myself, which means that I do care about software (I mean I am not of the type of guys that needs a computer mainly to just browse the Internet), and still I wouldn't mind if I never receive any more updates on my Ubuntu machine. I find that it provides everything I need, and while the updates provide various bug fixes/improvements, I wouldn't mind using it with its current state for the rest of my life. For two years of Ubuntu usage I have never bumped at a serious bug/problem. Another example is Windows. Almost half of its users still use Windows XP, which is practically ancient, yet they find it satisfying for all their needs (and I agree with them). I could go with many more examples, but by now you are understanding my point and my question. While new \"trends\" appears all of the time (like a new mobile OS) which runs on new platforms and requires some fresh development work, still the majority of the software effort goes in to what I consider as \"completed projects\", or at least a state of a project which is enough to be considered as completed. Do you have an explanation?"}
{"_id": "63005", "title": "Is it reasonable to expect that a senior developer knows what OOP design patterns are?", "text": "I'm preparing questions for job interviews for a senior development position. The job would include object oriented design, and the existing software uses design patterns, so I'd like to ask the candidates to explain a few design patterns they know, they've used, how they've used them, why they've used them and so on. However, in previous interviews when I asked senior developers with at least 5-10 years experience about design patterns, almost none ever heard of them. I think two out of twenty developers could name a single design pattern (Singleton and MVC, respectively). So my question is: does it make sense to ask these questions? Or is this such an obscure subject that you cannot expect new hires to know them already? Should a senior developer have prior experience with design patterns, or would you say that design patterns are such a simple topic that every decent developer can pick them up during training? If so, what questions would you ask instead to gauge their design abilities? **Add** After reading the answers so far, I should give a few clarifications:   * The job is for a .NET developer with experience in OOP/OOD   * The existing code uses class names like `IParameterGraphVisitor` and `IStorageFactory` in many places   * How do you ask people about their past experiences with OO designs they created, if they don't have the vocabulary to explain their designs? That's what I want to do, and all I can come up with is \"please you draw the design/object hierarchy of your last project on the whiteboard\"."}
{"_id": "176008", "title": "multi-clients web application,should I use custom user controls or a common user control", "text": "Say my company is going to build a complicated asp.net web form education system. One of the module is web based registration. To make it flexiable, we decide to use user control(ascx) with rule-engine (work flow) regulating all business logic behide them. Thus in future,for different clients, we can simply config basic existing rules or adding new rules.(Rules stored in db or XML per client). Now the question is how to deal with the user controls (ascx)? My opinion is for different client build diffrent user control from scratch. other voice is like reuse existing user controls."}
{"_id": "149167", "title": "Are functional languages better at recursion?", "text": "TL;DR : Do functional languages handle recursion better than non-functional ones? I am currently reading Code Complete 2. At some point in the book, the author warns us about recursion. He says it should be avoided when possible and that functions using recursion are generally less effective than a solution using loops. As an example, the author wrote a Java function using recursion to compute the factorial of a number like so (it may not be exactly the same since I do not have the book with me at the moment):               public int factorial(int x) {         if (x <= 0)             return 1;         else             return x * factorial(x - 1);     }      This is presented as a bad solution. However, in functional languages, using recursion is often the preferred way of doing things. For example, here is the factorial function in Haskell using recursion:               factorial :: Integer -> Integer     factorial 0 = 1     factorial n = n * factorial (n - 1)      And is widely accepted as a good solution. As I have seen, Haskell uses recursion very often, and I did not see anywhere that it is frowned upon. So my question basically is:   * **Do functional languages handle recursion better than non-functional ones?** EDIT : I am aware that the examples I used are not the best to illustrate my question. I just wanted to point out that Haskell (and functional languages in general) uses recursion much more often than non-functional languages."}
{"_id": "54843", "title": "Should you offer to remember the user on registration?", "text": "What is the typical pattern regarding remembering users for a website? Do you offer to remember the user at login and when they register, or at login only, or either depending on what mood you are in :) ? Not interested in implementation details, just the recommended practice?"}
{"_id": "127551", "title": "Strategies for counting child objects", "text": "What is an efficient, OOP way to count child records of an object? In my current project, a _District_ may contain zero or more _School_ records. The _Districts_ object acts as a collection of District, and can perform a single query to get the data behind several _District_ in one go, rather than each District (Active Record) querying for its own data. District->schools() provides access to child schools. On the page in question, I want to list all the districts and a count of their child schools. This is getting very sluggish as the number of districts grows, as each district must again query the schools table. Additionally, the database driver we're using does not provide a row count for the record set, so that would be another query. Some things I've considered:   * An optional object available through a service locator which can provide counts.   * Storing the child count with the parent record. So, my current method of counting child records is pretty heavy. What are some ways I could lighten this load?"}
{"_id": "225113", "title": "In scrum, how do you give an estimate for a backlog item that is primarily research?", "text": "A few sprints ago I was assigned a task that was primarily research. I had to figure out how to get our product to interoperate with a very complex black box that we did not develop. I couldn't think of a way to estimate this work. Even if I got the ball rolling and knew the immediate problem I faced, I could not get a sense of how many other problems I'd have to solve after that. I could never tell if I was almost done or far from it. How am I supposed to estimate a backlog item like this? * * * I want to elaborate the nature of this assignment. I knew what calls I had to make to interoperate with the black box. That was the easy part. But the API took a very, very complex object as a parameter. Calling the API would throw an error and it was not easy to figure out what that error was trying to tell me. The black box wouldn't tell me all the problems wrong with my request, it would just tell me the first problem it found. This made it very difficult to know how much work I had left."}
{"_id": "153284", "title": "Database structure for various items", "text": "I'm building a sqlite database for an android app which will hold a list of items, each of which have different characteristics. Some of the characteristics are available for all objects, some are only relevant for a subset of objects. For example, all my items have a name, a description, an image. Some items will also have an expiration date, others wont. Some will have a size, some wont. Etc... How should I build my Database, as I don't know how many characteristics may be added in the future, and knowing I should be able to filter the list by any characteristic ?"}
{"_id": "153282", "title": "Using git correctly in a small team", "text": "What would be the easiest way to use git correctly in a small team of about 5 developers, with one server running the live application?"}
{"_id": "64383", "title": "I Quit my job but took back my resignation during the notice period... Did I made a mistake?", "text": "Inspired after reading an article from Lifehacker, I would like to explain, what I went through few weeks back. I am currently working for an MNC in India for the last 4.5 years and on the 14th of last month I decided to resign from here due to various options given below:   1. Multiple responsibilities on my head and along with that normal programming with less pay.   2. No Opportunities in going to onsite working with the onsite project team.   3. Worked almost 3 out of 4 weekends in a months and too much of work related pressure due to adhoc changes in the requirements.   4. Almost burned out and no work life balance.   5. No Vacations. Month end Pay was my major concern for my decision to quit because I believe that for the amount of work I do and the kind of responsibilities I take, I should be paid given a market competent pay. But a huge MNC like my company, the appraisal and hikes happen only once in an year. With all these above reason, I quit 2 weeks back. But, since I was critical to the project, the management tried to retain me back by agreeing to processing my H1B visa, which I agreed with no double thought because my major concern (Money) is been taken care. But rest all my concerns still persist and the management is putting everyone under deliverable pressure by giving tough timelines and adhoc requirement changes. Now I feel like quitting again... I am confused. Any advice here please..."}
{"_id": "64388", "title": "Development Teams - Can One Bad Apple Spoil the Bunch?", "text": "> ...One of the most important features a new employee should have is > compatibility with the spirit of the people who already work there.   >  {...}   >  I am convinced that gaining insight into the developer's real personality > is just as important as checking for professional competence, because **one > bad fit can destroy an entire team.** from Hiring Developers - You're Doing It Wrong Is this true? And, if so, is it true for managers too?"}
{"_id": "118829", "title": "Paranoid Encryption", "text": "Call me paranoid, but I really like to keep my stuff secret, but readily available on the cloud. So, asking this question.   1. How safe and reliable is encryption software (e.g., truecrypt)? The reason I ask is that, what is I encrypt my data today with this software and after a couple of years, the software is gone ! What happens to my encrypted data?   2. Is it equally safe to AES encrypt using 7-zip? Will it provide the same level or equivalent level of encryption as truecrypt or other encryption software? (I agree truecrypt will be better because of the container encryption it gives.) And what happens if 7-zip shuts down after 5 years? I am sorry if I am sounding paranoid, but I am coming back to my original question... Is there any application/software independent encryption? Meaning, can I encrypt with one software and decrypt with another so that I will not be dependent on just one vendor? I want my encryption to depend ONLY on the password and NOT on the encryption program/software? The next question, can I write my own program that does AES/stronger encryption when I give it a passphrase, so that I don't need to depend on third party software for encryption? If yes, which language supports the same? Can someone give me a heads up as to where to look for in case of writing my own encryption program?"}
{"_id": "125420", "title": "Is there any good reason why lines with only whitespace should be truncated?", "text": "Typically, when you hit Enter in a smart editor, it copies the indentation of the last line by inserting the same amount of spaces, so if you don't delete them, the code looks like this:               sub sum {         my @numbers = @_;                  my $sum = 0;         foreach (@_) {              $sum += $_;         }                  return $sum;     }      (Yes, the example is silly; that sub could be written in two or three lines. :)) To be honest, these lines make my cursor feel dizzy, so I tend to clear them out. (I admit, that this behavior generates commit noise + inconsistency.) Plus, the whitespace are unnecessary bytes. Well, probably none of these does matter, at least in most obvious ways. So I wonder if there is any better (i.e. less subjective and less over-pedantic) reason why the lines should be blanked (by `s/^\\s+$//`). **Note:** And please try not to point me to the style guide. Imagine I'm the one writing the style guide: should I inherit rule \"delete the extra spaces\" or just bravely fight my intuition and leave those peaceful `\\t`'s and ``'s alone?. Or I just want to improve my \"own\" guide, which I can use where \"official\" guide is silent or missing."}
{"_id": "254618", "title": "Java: how can I make the return type, of an inherited method in a subclass, the same as the subclass?", "text": "I am rather inexperience in Java, and I'm having a problem in forming a subclass of a class I have created. The class I have made, called `Vector2D`, contains methods, such as `add(Vector2D addend)`, that takes a `Vector2D` object as an argument, and returns a `Vector2D` object. This method in particular is designed to add two vectors, and return the sum. Then, I started coding a subclass, called `Position2D`, which I intend to have all of the functionality of the `Vector2D` class, except have additional functions, and have any usage of `Vector2D` inside the preexisting classes, be it as an argument, return type, etc., replaced with `Position2D`, so that the `add(Position2D addend)` function adds two `Position2D` vectors together, and returns the sum as a `Position2D`. The issue arises that, when `Position2D` inherits from `Vector2D`, such functions continue to work in terms of `Vector2D` objects, spitting out an error as soon as a `Position2D` object is passed through it. The relevant code for the `Vector2D` class is as follows:               public class Vector2D{              //Field Variables         private double x; //The vector's x-coordinate         private double y; //The vector's y-coordinate              //Constructors         public Vector2D(){             //Constructs empty vector.             setX(0);             setY(0);         }              //Methods         public void setX(double newX){             //This method is not problematic when inherited for the subclass.             x = newX;         }              public void setY(double newY){             //This method is not problematic too.             y = newY;         }              public Vector2D add(Vector2D addend){             //Adds two vectors and returns the sum.             //This method, however, does pose a problem.             Vector2D sum = new Vector2D();             sum.x = x + addend.x;             sum.y = y + addend.y;             return sum;         }          }      The only work-around I can currently think of as to what the code in `add(Position2D addend)` in `Position2D` could be is:               public Position2D add(Position2D addend){         //Adds two position vectors and returns the sum.         Position2D sum = new Position2D();         sum.x = x + addend.x;         sum.y = y + addend.y;         return sum;     }      i.e., repeat the method from `Vector2D`, and manually modify it. This, of course, is not efficient and wastes time, especially so whenever the same has to be done for similar methods, and more so whenever I intend to make more subclass, e.g. `Velocity2D`. Therefore, I am looking for a much cleaner and efficient means of doing this."}
{"_id": "118824", "title": "What are Dependency Injections and why are they useful?", "text": "I have heard of ninject and I have to build a lot of apps that have to integrate with other tools. SO i was wondering what this was and how it is used."}
{"_id": "125429", "title": "Are there any studies on the Efficiency/Effectiveness of Agile vs Waterfall", "text": "In a meeting the other day a claim was made that agile was only 60% as efficient in development time when compared to waterfall. I am not looking to validate or refute this claim. I am interesting in finding out if there have been any studies comparing the 2 methodologies. Are there any studies out there comparing the two?"}
{"_id": "58098", "title": "Using regular Java classes in Java web apps", "text": "I'm work on a simple blogging web application using Java and MySQL as the database backend. I'm implementing the whole application using plain HTML and servlets. I'm using a Java class with static methods that are called from within servlets to handle communicating with the database. Is this a good design? Or what should I do instead?"}
{"_id": "211572", "title": "Practices for domain models in Javascript (with frameworks)", "text": "This is a question I've to-and-fro'd with for a while, and searched for and found nothing on: what're the accepted practices surrounding duplicating domain models in Javascript for a web application, when using a framework like Backbone or Knockout? Given a web application of a non-trivial size with a set of domain models on the server side, should we duplicate these models in the web application (see the example at the bottom)? Or should we use the dynamic nature to load these models from the server? To my mind, the arguments for duplicating the models are in easing validation of fields, ensuring that fields that expected to be present are in fact present etc. My approach is to treat the client-side code like an almost separate application, doing trivial things itself and only relying on the server for data and complex operations (which require data the client-side doesn't have). I think treating the client-side code like this is akin to separation between entities from an ORM and the models used with the view in the UI layer: they may have the same fields and relate to the same domain concept, but they're distinct things. On the other hand, it seems to me that duplicating these models on the server side is a clear violation of DRY and likely to lead to differing results on the client- and server-side (where one piece gets updated but the other doesn't). To avoid this violation of DRY we can simply use Javascripts dynamism to get the field names and data from the server as and when they're neeed. **So: are there any accepted guidelines around when (and when not) to repeat yourself in these situations? Or this a purely subjective thing, based on the project and developer(s)?** Example Server-side model               class M      {         int A         DateTime B         int C         int D = (A*C)         double SomeComplexCalculation = ServiceLayer.Call();     }      Client-side model               function M(){         this.A = ko.observable();         this.B = ko.observable();         this.C = ko.observable();         this.D = function() { return A() * C(); }         this.SomeComplexCalculation = ko.observalbe();         return this;     }l     M.GetComplexValue = function(){         this.SomeComplexCalculation(Ajax.CallBackToServer());     };      I realise this question is quite similar to this one, but I think this is more about almost wholly untying the web application from the server, where that question is about doing this only in the case of complex calculation."}
{"_id": "68408", "title": "How much money do frameworks like Django and RoR generate?", "text": "The developers of these frameworks must be generating some kind of money, no? They aren't all just regular old joes with full-time jobs developing web- frameworks in their spare time for the love of programming? Do the sites themselves generate any kind of income? Or do they make money off giving talks? Writing books? Would like to see some numbers/statistics if you have any."}
{"_id": "68406", "title": "Can a CS degree benefit an older programmer?", "text": "Is there any benefit in getting a CS degree in ones mid 40's _career wise_? Would the increased likelihood of getting past the HR filter be worth it? It's something I might actually enjoy doing, and I wouldn't mind solidifying my fundamentals, but I would be reducing my earning capacity during the years it would take to complete the degree, and by the time I'm done, I'll have maybe 15 years left in my career. (I currently have no college degree)"}
{"_id": "211578", "title": "What could be the advantages and disadvantages of decay of Nd arrays to N-level pointers?", "text": "I have been thinking of a couple of possible extensions to the C language which I'd like to know the opinion of others about.1 This one is about multi- dimensional arrays. Imagine the following situation in C:               void matrix_mul(double **res, double **a, double **b, size_t n, size_t m, size_t r);      You cannot pass a `double mat[4][4]` (for example) to this function. If you define the function as:               void matrix_mul_N_M_R(double res[N][R], double a[N][M], double b[M][R]);      You'd just be wasting a perfectly written fine algorithm on a certain size of matrices. What came to me (in shower obviously), was decay of multi-dimensional arrays to multi-level pointers. This is an extension to decay of 1d arrays to pointers. Semantically, this would allow the first type of function to work on any two- dimensional array. Technically, this is how it would be implemented. The following code:               double a[3][5];     double b[5][4];     double c[3][4];     ...     matrix_mul(c, a, b, 3, 5, 4);      would be equivalent to:               double a[3][5];     double b[5][4];     double c[3][4];     ...     double **__a_decay = {a[0], a[1], a[2]};               /* generated by compiler */     double **__b_decay = {b[0], b[1], b[2], b[3], b[4]};   /* generated by compiler */     double **__c_decay = {c[0], c[1], c[2]};               /* generated by compiler */     matrix_mul(__c_decay, __a_decay, __b_decay, 3, 5, 4);  /* first three arguments decayed */      Is the application for such an extension very limited? Are there pitfalls? Could this possibly lead to insecure code where not using this feature wouldn't? Where else could such a feature come in handy? 1 Note that I'm not going to make another language myself, but would like to be sure of the feature's benefits and pitfalls before trying to suggest them to the C Standard Committee."}
{"_id": "157500", "title": "How to document unlimited argument parameters?", "text": "In PHP you can have a function take an infinite number of arguments like                 /**        * Do abc...        *        * @since   1.0        * @param   mixed $arg1       Arg description        * @return  string            Results        */     function abc($arg1 = null){       $args = func_get_args();       // do smth with $args     }      How should I illustrate this in my DocBlock ?"}
{"_id": "157502", "title": "Give open-source developers a free license for my commercial software?", "text": "I am creating a software package that will be useful to programmers, engineers and scientists. List price will be in the region of $1,000 -- way beyond the budget of most open-source developers, hobbyists and enthusiasts. So I am considering two things, the first generous, the second maybe a little greedy:   1. Offering a free license to individual open source developers upon proof of their credentials and details of their project. Possibly also academics too.   2. Making the free license conditional on the developer granting me a commercial license to use the open source code they write in my own projects. In the academic case, it's trickier, perhaps just a credit, a copy of papers, etc. How would (1) and (2) be received? Are there any examples of best practice here, or good precedents I can follow?"}
{"_id": "157503", "title": "C++ Class Initalization", "text": "I'm a python programmer who sees a lot of C++ code but doesn't know the language and there seems to be two ways to initalize a class. I was hoping that someone can tell me the difference.               class Point {             int x, y;          public:             int get_x();             int get_y();             Point(int, int);     }          // ok we are going to leave the methods and constructors unimplemented for brevity     // now here's the part that puzzles me     Point p(5, 5); // ..or     Point p = new Point(5, 5);      What's the diffrence between the two?"}
{"_id": "48188", "title": "Web development \u2014 100% code separation vs flexibility", "text": "This is probably a holywarish topic, but nevertheless. In a perfect content management system of your dream, would you rather want a templating system that is completely, 100% separate from your code, and uses declarative syntax to produce (X)HTML (such as `<your code>` -> DOM/XML -> XSLT -> HTML), or would you rather choose a system that lets your code cook HTML fragments, and then runs some template assembly to put these pieces together to output a complete page? Thanks in advance. **EDIT** To make it probably a bit more clear, I mean that HTML is a declarative 'language', whereas most of the dynamic stuff is done in imperative/functional languages. Templates glue the two together, but the way they do it isn't always clean (as in clean separation of paradigms)."}
{"_id": "48189", "title": "CMS vs homebrew system for implementing an image slideshow", "text": "There is a basic website (homepage and 5 subpages) with static content, we want to add something like a slideshow of current offers with custom images that would change every month. We also want to include an image gallery with effects like Lightbox. The person who is going to add/modify/delete the images in the two new modules doesn't want to deal with FTP. According to your experience, should we install a CMS (Joomla/Drupal) for this or just create a our own basic image management system to upload/select/delete the images?"}
{"_id": "162656", "title": "How do you name your personal libraries?", "text": "I'm pretty bad with naming things. The only name I can every generically come up with is 'helper'. Say, if I have a header file that contains helping functions for manipulating paths, I tend to put it inside my \"helper\" directory and call it \"path-helper.hpp\" or something like that. Obviouslly, that's a bad naming convention. :) I want to have a consistent naming scheme for my folder (and namespace) which I can use to always refer to my own headers and libraries, but I have trouble finding names that are easy to type or remember (like `boost`)... so I end up calling some of them \"helper\" or \"stdext\" or whatnot, which isn't a great idea. How do you find names for your libraries that are easy to remember and easy to type, and which aren't too generic (like \"helper\" or \"std\" or \"stdext\" or the like)? Any suggestions on how to go about doing this?"}
{"_id": "29821", "title": "Launching web-app with database without static ip", "text": "I have created a small web-app and want to deploy it. I have used struts2 and mysql for the database. The problem is that I do not have a static ip to run the app on my machine. Can anyone suggest me hosting services that host java pages and mysql? Since this is a project I am not doing for money, I would prefer free servers even if they are allowing usage for a short period of time."}
{"_id": "13381", "title": "What should a tester (Quality Assurance) person do on a scrum team?", "text": "Coming from a scrum environment with no integrated testing support and an independent minded QA staff, how is a tester (QA person) best integrated with a scrum team? What should they do? For reference some test functions are: * Unit Testing * Integration Testing * Functional Testing * Performance Testing * Acceptance Testing"}
{"_id": "154680", "title": "What is the standard for naming variables and why?", "text": "I'm going through some training on objective-c. The trainer suggests setting single character parameter names. The .NET developer in me is crying. Is this truly the convention? Why? For example,               @interface Square : NSObject     {       int size;     }          -(void)setSize: (int)s;      I've seen developers using underscores `int _size` to declar variables (I think people call the variable declared in `@interface` ivar for some unknown reason). Personally, I prefer to use descriptive names. E.G.               @interface Square : NSObject     {       int Size;     }          -(void)setSize: (int)size;      C, like C# is case sensitive. So why don't we use the same convention as .NET?"}
{"_id": "163527", "title": "Is there a difference between multi-tasking and time-sharing?", "text": "Just going over my school notes, my teacher identifies _multi-tasking OS_ , and _time-sharing OS_ as two different things.   I really don't see a difference between the two.   **MULTI-TASKING** : You load a number of programs in the memory and execute them. You execute another program if the time quantum allocated to the current program expires OR if it goes on to do I/O and leaves the CPU OR if it finishes execution.   **TIME-SHARING** : the same,again.   The same applies in case of _serial processing_ and _batch processing_. Although they are the same, I guess the only difference would be the way in which control information is passed to the CPU. Maybe, and again MAYBE, in serial processing you need to provide the punch cards with all the processes while in batch, the entire batch uses the same set of control information.   Like all the print jobs would have the same control information."}
{"_id": "221734", "title": "which pattern to use - if at all", "text": "I am fairly new to using patterns and although I understand some of them to a point I find it difficult to work out which one(s) to use in a particular situation. I am trying to wrap up an existing db schema into a number of objects and am not sure if I should simply be using inheritance or a mixture some patterns I have an options table, holding the base properties for an item thus:               id     type     code     name      These options also has availability - stored in another table               id (from option table)     fromdate     todate      and prices in another table               id (from option table)     validfrom     fromdate     todate     price      and lastly a booked table this time keyed on the option id and the person who has booked it               id (from option table)     personid     bookedPrice      Just to add more into the mix, there are also a couple of particular option types which have additional properties that are unique to them. Thinking maybe I should use inheritance for the most part - as the price/availability bits are used for ALL option types and then decorate the unique options with these extra bits in those particular cases. So in different circumstances this data will need to be loaded into various objects I wonder if its best to inherit from the base option - making an AvailabilityOption and a PricedOption etc and extending the base option like that or decorating the base option with the extended properties. Not sure if there is enough information here to answer that. I wonder if someone could explain the benefits and pitfalls of each so I don't end up getting myself into a cul de sac?"}
{"_id": "163522", "title": "How safe is it to rely on thirdparty Python libs in a production product?", "text": "I'm new to Python and come from the write-everything-yourself world of PHP (at least this is how I always approached it). I'm using Flask, WTForms, Jinja2, and I've just discovered Flask-Login which I want to use. My question is about the reliability of using thirdparty libraries for core functionality in a project that is planned to be around for several years. I've installed these libraries (via pip) into a virtualenv environment. What happens if these libraries stop being distributed? Should I back up these libraries (are they eggs)? Can I store these libraries in my project itself, instead of relying on pip to install them in a virtualenv? And should I store these separately? I'm worried that I'll rely on a library for core functionality, and then one day I'll download an incompatible version through pip, or the author or maintainer will stop distributing it and it'll no longer be available. How can I protect against this, and ensure that any thirdparty libraries that I use in my projects will always be available as they are now?"}
{"_id": "2932", "title": "Why is free software good for programmers?", "text": "When I say Free Software I mean it in the FSF terms. Free as in Free Speech, not as in Free Beer. Why is it a good idea for programmers to use _and_ write Free Software?"}
{"_id": "250764", "title": "Why is polling accepted in web programming?", "text": "I am currently working on a Ruby on Rails project which shows a list of images. A must-have for this project is that it shows new posts in realtime without the need of refreshing the web page. After searching for a while, I've stumbled upon some JavaScript solutions and services such as PubNub; however, none of the provided solutions made sense at all. In the JavaScript solution (polling) the following happens:   * User 1 views the list of photos.   * In the background the JavaScript code is polling an endpoint every second to see if there is a new post.   * User 2 adds a new photo.   * There is a delay of 50 ms before the new cycle is triggered and fetches the new data.   * The new content is loaded in the DOM. This seems odd when translated to a real world example:   * User 1 holds a pile of pictures on his/her desk.   * He/she walks to the photographer every second and asks if he has a new one.   * The photographer makes a new photo.   * This second when he/she walks in, she can take the picture and put it on the pile. In my opinion the solution should be as following:   * User 1 holds a pile of pictures on his/her desk.   * The photographer takes a new picture.   * The photographer walks to the pile and puts it with the rest. The PubNub solution is basically the same, however this time there is an intern walking between the parties to share the data. Needless to say, both solutions are very energy consuming as they are triggered even when there is no data to load. As far as my knowledge goes there is no (logic) explanation why this way of implementation is used in almost every realtime application."}
{"_id": "153656", "title": "\"UML is the worst thing to ever happen to MDD.\" Why?", "text": "William Cook in a tweet wrote that: \" _UML is the worst thing to ever happen to MDD. Fortunately many people now realize this ..._ \" I would like to know the reasoning behind that claim (apparently, I'm not referring to his personal opinion). I've noticed that many people out there don't like UML that much. Also it is worth mentioning that he is in academia, where UML is preety much the holy grail of effective design and modelling."}
{"_id": "20204", "title": "Working for free?", "text": "I came across this article Work for Free that got me thinking. > The goal of every employer is to gain more value from workers than the firm > pays out in wages; otherwise, there is no growth, no advance, and no > advantage for the employer. Conversely, the goal of every employee should be > to contribute more to the firm than he or she receives in wages, and thereby > provide a solid rationale for receiving raises and advancement in the firm. > > I don't need to tell you that the refusenik didn't last long in this job. > > In contrast, here is a story from last week. My phone rang. It was the > employment division of a major university. The man on the phone was > inquiring about the performance of a person who did some site work on > Mises.org last year. I was able to tell him about a remarkable young man who > swung into action during a crisis, and how he worked three 19-hour days, > three days in a row, how he learned new software with diligence, how he kept > his cool, how he navigated his way with grace and expertise amidst some 80 > different third-party plug-ins and databases, how he saw his way around the > inevitable problems, how he assumed responsibility for the results, and much > more. > > What I didn't tell the interviewer was that this person did all this without > asking for any payment. Did that fact influence my report on his > performance? I'm not entirely sure, but the interviewer probably sensed in > my voice my sense of awe toward what this person had done for the Mises > Institute. The interviewer told me that he had written down 15 different > questions to ask me but that I had answered them all already in the course > of my monologue, and that he was thrilled to hear all these specifics. > > The person was offered the job. He had done a very wise thing; he had earned > a devotee for life. > > The harder the economic times, the more employers need to know what they are > getting when they hire someone. The job applications pour in by the buckets, > all padded with degrees and made to look as impressive as possible. It's all > just paper. What matters today is what a person can do for a firm. The > resume becomes pro forma but not decisive under these conditions. But for a > former boss or manager to rave about you to a potential employer? That's > worth everything. What do you think? Has anyone here worked for free? If so, has it benefited you in any way? Why should(nt) you work for free (presuming you have the money from other means to keep you going)? Can you share your experience? Me, I am taking a year out of college and haven't gotten a degree yet so that's probably why most of my job applications are getting ignored. So im thinking about working for free for the experience?"}
{"_id": "112975", "title": "Trying to learn how to use WCF services in a WPF app, using MVVM", "text": "We're working on a major re-write of a legacy VB6 app, into a WPF app. I've written several WCF services, which are meant to be used with the new WPF app. We want to use the MVVM design pattern to do this, but we don't have experience at that. So, in order to learn MVVM we've watched a video on WindowsClient called How Do I: Build Data-driven WPF Application using the MVVM pattern. This is a great introduction, and we refer to it a lot, but for our situation it doesn't quite give us enough. For example, we're not certain how to use datasets returned by my WCF services in our new WPF app using the ideas that Todd Miranda introduced in the video I referenced. If we did as we think we're supposed to do, then we should design a class that is exactly like the class of data returned in my WCF service. But we're wondering, why do that, when the WCF service already has such a class? And yet, the class in the WPF app has to at least implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface. So, we're not sure what to do."}
{"_id": "112970", "title": "Does a mobile app need to poll external data sources or can it receive data in other ways?", "text": "I'm beginning the design stages of a mobile application. I'm looking for knowledge about common practices for user notifications. I understand that the SDK for the device will expose methods which will allow me to notify a user how and when I need it to. What I'm not sure about is how my application gets notified from a external data source. Is it common practice to poll a web service for data periodically? Or is it more likely that my application will have the facility to receive data at any time? For example: I have a website which asks users to fill out a contact form. I would like my mobile app to display a notification when one of these forms gets filled out. Should my app be polling my data server for updated records or should my site be notifying my app somehow of a new record? Any opinions or advice are welcomed. Thanks."}
{"_id": "79111", "title": "Why use an OO approach instead of a giant \"switch\" statement?", "text": "I am working in a .Net, C# shop and I have a coworker that keeps insisting that we should use giant Switch statements in our code with lots of \"Cases\" rather than more object oriented approaches. His argument consistently goes back to the fact that a Switch statement compiles to a \"cpu jump table\" and is therefore the fastest option (even though in other things our team is told that we don't care about speed). I honestly don't have an argument against this...because I don't know what the heck he's talking about.   Is he right?   Is he just talking out his ass?   Just trying to learn here."}
{"_id": "158887", "title": "Why should I push if I'm working alone in a local repository?", "text": "I'm interacting with Git through GitHub for Windows, which is funny since I'll never push my repository to GitHub. I'm working on it alone and it's intended to be used only by me. I noticed that my commits are listed under \"unsynced commits\" and under \"history\" it says \"no commits\". Which brings me to the question, what will I achieve by pushing except my commits listed under \"history\"?"}
{"_id": "13034", "title": "What legal considerations do I need to have when programming?", "text": "Recently I worked with a group to create a logging system for tutoring labs to track Tutor hours, and usage of the labs. We had to change the design a fair amount to be in compliance with FERPA. My question stems from the curiosity that in my course of study there has never been a real mention of how people in this field have to deal with complying with the law in their work. So I would like to know how much programmers have to consider the law in the work they do."}
{"_id": "237540", "title": "Interface method signature not restrictive enough", "text": "I wrote a piece of code at my job sometime ago. While writting the code I wrote few interfaces who would allow me to add more flexibility and at that time I was also trying to understand OOP concept more deeper. So in the interface I wrote I have a method signature similar to this :               void Add(ImyBase objToAdd)      And then I have few class implementing this interface. But what is bothering me is that I find myself doing this kind of thing pretty often in this `Add` method               public void Add(ImyBase objToAdd)     {         if(!(objToAdd is ImyBaseDeviation))             throw new ArgumentException(\"blablabla\");              //do stuff     }      At the time it was a smell to me but I didn't really bothered with it simply because I'm solo on this projet and this piece of code is only used within my compagny and there only 2 IT guys in there (me + some one else) and this is not near to change. Anyway I recently came back to that piece of code and from my previous reading (actually more than that but this one is pretty similar) it now actually really look bad to me and I'm trying to figure out the best way to improve this piece of code. I don't like the code as it stand now because the interface allow more than the concrete type generally allow so basically the concret implementation doesn't respect the contract given by the interface. I tough of a few solutions First simply delete the `Add` method from the interface since anyway calling `Add` have a high chance to throw an exception. So to call `Add` you need the concret type anyway. So here the object would still have a `Add` method but with the accepted type as a parameter. Secondly add a method who would look something like this in the interface               bool IsValidToAdd(ImyBase objToTest)      But that doesn't satisfy me. So I'm seeking advise from more advance people like you to help me to figure out what would be the best way to implement this so it stay the cleanest possible. Sorry I'm not a native anglophone so if my question need editing or grammar fixing please go ahead. Thank you"}
{"_id": "178128", "title": "Is there any complications or side effects for changing final field access/visibility modifier from private to protected?", "text": "I have a `private final field` in one class and then I want to address that field in a subclass. I want to change field access/visibility modifier from `private` to `protected`, so I don't have to call `getField()` method from subclass and I can instead address that field directly (which is more clear and cohessive). Will there be any side effects or complications if I change `private` to `protected` for a `final` field? UPDATE: from logical point of view, it's obvious that descendant should be able to directly access all predecessor fields, right? But there are certain constraints that are imposed on `private final` fields by JVM, like 100% initialization guarantee after construction phase(useful for concurrency) and so on. So I would like to know, by changing from `private` to `protected`, won't that or any other constraints be compromised?"}
{"_id": "178120", "title": "Structure of a Git repository", "text": "Sorry if this is a duplicate, I looked. We're moving to Git. In Subversion, I'm used to having \\trunk, \\branches and \\tags folders. With Git, switching between branches will replace the contents of the working directory, so am I right to assume that the way we used to work just doesn't apply with Git? My guess is that I'd have a repo folder with maybe a gitignore and readme.txt, then the folders for the projects that make up the repo, and that's it."}
{"_id": "54159", "title": "Library to fake intermittent failures according to tester-defined policy?", "text": "I'm looking for a library that I can use to help mock a program component that works only intermittently - usually, it works fine, but sometimes it fails. For example, suppose I need to read data from a file, and my program has to avoid crashing or hanging when a read fails due to a disk head crash. I'd like to model that by having a mock data reader function that returns mock data 90% of the time, but hangs or returns garbage otherwise. Or, if I'm stress-testing my full program, I could turn on debugging code in my real data reader module to make it return real data 90% of the time and hang otherwise. Now, obviously, in this particular example I could just code up my mock manually to test against a `random()` routine. However, I was looking for a system that allows implementing any failure policy I want, including:   * Fail randomly 10% of the time   * Succeed 10 times, fail 4 times, repeat   * Fail semi-randomly, such that one failure tends to be followed by a burst of more failures    * Any policy the tester wants to define Furthermore, I'd like to be able to change the failure policy at runtime, using external knobs or switches that can be removed (along with the rest of the library) prior to shipping the code. (If the component is loaded by a dependency injection framework, we could provide the mock as one implementation in the testing release and withhold it from the shipped build.) In pig-Java, I'd envision a `FailureFaker` interface like so:               interface FailureFaker {         /**             Return true if and only if the mocked operation succeeded.             Implementors should override this method with versions consistent             with their failure policy.          */         public boolean attempt();     }      And each failure policy would be a class implementing `FailureFaker`; for example there would be a `PatternFailureFaker` that would succeed N times, then fail M times, then repeat, and a `AlwaysFailFailureFaker` that I'd use temporarily when I need to simulate, say, someone removing the external hard drive my data was on. The policy could then be used (and changed) in my mock object code like so:               class MyMockComponent {         FailureFaker faker;              public void doSomething() {             if (faker.attempt()) {                 // ...             } else {                 throw new RuntimeException();             }         }              void setFailurePolicy (FailureFaker policy) {             this.faker = policy;         }     }      Now, this seems like something that would be part of a mocking library, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's been done before. (In fact, I got the idea from Steve Maguire's _Writing Solid Code_, where he discusses this exact idea on pages 228-231, saying that such facilities were common in Microsoft code of that early-90's era.) However, I'm only familiar with EasyMock and jMockit for Java, and neither AFAIK have this function, or something similar with different syntax. Hence, the question: Do such libraries as I've described above exist? If they do, where have you found them useful? If you haven't found them useful, why not?"}
{"_id": "224104", "title": "Why are \"class\" variables misspelled?", "text": "I have started to see variable initialisations like that in Java libraries:               Class clazz = new Class();      or               Class klass = new Class();      Is there a particular reason for people to misspell the word \"class\" when declaring these variables, and to use a \"kool boyz\" sort of writing style? Also what is wrong with using something like `cls` or something similar?"}
{"_id": "28780", "title": "How do you keep the size of your application down (memory usage and physical storage size)?", "text": "I have a personal project that I'm working on although it's quite audio and graphic-intense and I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions or solutions as to how one could keep the size and memory-usage of their application to a minimum? My application is an iPhone application and, as Apple always make clear, the application is only allowed to use a certain amount of memory (in terms of performance and actual size)."}
{"_id": "146053", "title": "How to handle bugs that I think I fixed, but I'm not entirely sure", "text": "There are some types of bugs which are very hard to reproduce, happen very rarely and seemingly by random. It can happen, that I find a possible cause, fix it, test the program, and can't reproduce the bug. However, as it was impossible to reliably reproduce the bug and it happened so rarely, how can I indicate this in a bugtracker? What is the common way of doing it? If I set the **`status`** to fixed, and the **`solution`** to fixed, it would mean something completely fixed, wouldn't it? Is it common practice to set the **`status`** to fixed and the **`solution`** to open, to indicate to the testers, that \"it's probably fixed, but needs more attention to make sure\" ? **Edit:** most (if not all) bugtrackers have two properties for the status of a bug, maybe the names are not the same. By **`status`** I mean _new, assigned, fixed, closed, etc._ , and by **`solution`** I mean _open (new), fixed, unsolvable, not reproducible, duplicate, not a bug_ , etc."}
{"_id": "54155", "title": "A client wants us to screen work machines for pornography. Is it possible?", "text": "A long-time client has asked us to help screen their work machines for pornography. They're worried about liability if sensitive materials were found. Their main concerns (for obvious reasons) are video, audio, and image files. If possible, they'd also like to scan text-based documents for inappropriate content. They have a hierarchy of not-for-work content starting with blatantly illegal (I don't have to list details), moving down to obviously offensive, and also including things that may be offensive to some - think lingerie ads, joke cards featuring butt cracks, and anything related to Howie Mandel. My questions are:   * Is this ethical? I think it is since every employee legally agrees that their work machine belongs to the company and is subject to search. The screenings are not to occur on personal machines brought to work.   * Is it feasible? I've done a lot of image processing/indexing but this seems like a whole new world of complexity.   * Any references to successful techniques for discovering porn?   * Is it appropriate for me to archive the results when something is discovered?"}
{"_id": "175063", "title": "What types of programming contest problems are there?", "text": "Basically, I want to make a great reference for use with programming contests that would have all of the algorithms that I can put together that I would need during a contest as well as sample useage for the code. I'm planning on making this into a sort of book that I could print off and take with me to competitions. I would like to do this rather than simply bringing other books (such as Algorithms books) because I think that I will learn a lot more by going over all of the algorithms myself as well as I would know exactly what I have in the book, making it more efficient to have and use. So, I've been doing research to determine what types of programming problems and algorithms are common on contests, and the only thing I can really find is this (which I have seen referenced a few times):               Hal Burch conducted an analysis over spring break of 1999 and made an amazing discovery:      there are only 16 types of programming contest problems! Furthermore, the top several      comprise almost 80% of the problems seen at the IOI. Here they are:              Dynamic Programming         Greedy         Complete Search         Flood Fill         Shortest Path         Recursive Search Techniques         Minimum Spanning Tree         Knapsack         Computational Geometry         Network Flow         Eulerian Path         Two-Dimensional Convex Hull         BigNums         Heuristic Search         Approximate Search         Ad Hoc Problems          The most challenging problems are Combination Problems which involve a loop (combinations,     subsets, etc.) around one of the above algorithms - or even a loop of one algorithm with      another inside it. These seem extraordinarily tricky to get right, even though      conceptually they are ``obvious''.      Now that's good and all, but that study was conducted in 1999, which was 13 years ago! One thing I know is that there are no BigNums problems any more (as Java has a BigInteger class, they have stopped making those problems). So, I'm wondering if anyone knows of any more recent studies of the types of problems that may be seen in a programming contest? Or what the most helpful algorithms on contests would be?"}
{"_id": "175062", "title": "Should unit test be in separated repository?", "text": "Should I put unit testing stuffs in a separate repository, not in the same repository as the programming library? So I reference the programming library as submodule. But most open source projects that I have seen do not organize the projects like what I mention above. Can anyone explain which approach is better?"}
{"_id": "94529", "title": "BEST Format/Protocol for RESTful SOA", "text": "Which is the best protocol / format for SOA designs using REST. Here are some options but i can't decide...   * XML   * JSON   * YAML   * ProtoBuf   * _... anything else i might have missed_ These are my requirements...   * should be lightweight and less bandwidth guzzler   * should have existing client libs in Python and PHP   * should scale VERY WELL _**\\-- UPDATE --_** We have two machines (one is Python -- our middletier) and the other is PHP (front end -- used for rendering different HTML for old browsers, HTML 5 browsers and our Adobe AIR client). We need a communications pipe between the Python and PHP machine -- and we think a RESTful service pipe will be a good idea -- we just can't decide on the format."}
{"_id": "175060", "title": "How to automate the API Diff document?", "text": "We can use doxygen to do the documentation, but how can I do the API Diff? Any open source or free solution for that? Or I need manually prepare? Thanks."}
{"_id": "256102", "title": "How does contenteditable work?", "text": "I recently came across an article where if you enter               data:text/html,%20<html contenteditable>      into the address bar of a browser that supports HTML5, you can type in the window.   I managed to figure out that with this you can basically write html in the address bar (it would be rather cumbersome) but I do not understand how or why it works. What are the other functionalities of this command?"}
{"_id": "256100", "title": "Changing message without redeploying / restarting application", "text": "Question: In java application, How to change error message or simple alert text without redeploying / restarting application Closest answers I could think up **(1)** is to have a new error messages in specific file in specific location say `\"\\root\\resources\\messages.txt\"`and to create a file object for it like.               File msgFile = new File(\"\\root\\resources\\messages.txt\");      `msgFile.exist()` will return true or false based on the result we can display pre-define message defined else where in application or use this message **(2)** having _a property file_ can sound the same but it'll be loaded only once when application is started so we have to restart Is there anyother way to achieve this? what better place to ask than here.."}
{"_id": "94524", "title": "How to get started with Github (for me)?", "text": "I registered myself in github a few days ago. Mainly for starting projects to share some of my ideas with others as well as get the source available from anywhere. This is my first open-contribution site. I mean, I haven't used sourceforge or Google Code. Now the client software installation and other setup process are not done yet. Because I found it a bit confusing. Probably the cause is, I have very little idea about git as a source control system. I have only used perforce with a GUI(p4v) in the workplace and knows the very basics like get a revision/open for edit/commit/revert etc. Moreover I shall be mostly working with C#. And I shall be using Visual Studio and Windows. I have found in internet that there are other clients for visual studio. May those will suit better for me. So, what are your suggestions? How can I get started and proceed?"}
{"_id": "243215", "title": "ASP.NET MVC WebService - Security for Industrial Android Clients", "text": "I'm trying to design a system that will allow a bunch of Android devices to securely log into an ASP.NET MVC REST Web service. At present neither side are implemented. However there is an ASP.NET MVC website which the web service will site along side. This is currently using forms authentication. The idea will be that the Android devices will download data from the web service and then be able to work offline storing data in their own local databases, where users will be able to make updates to that data, and then syncing updates back to the main server where possible. The web service will be using HTTPS to prevent calls being intercepted and reduce the risk of calls being intercepted. The system is an industrial system and will not be in used by the general Android population. Instead only authorized Android devices will be authorized by the Web Service to make calls. As such I was thinking of using the Android devices serial number as a username and then a generated long password which the device will be able to pick up - once the device has been authorized server side. The device will also have user logins - but these will not be to log into the web service - just the device itself - since the device and user must be able to work offline. So usernames and passwords will be downloaded and stored on the devices themselves. My question is... what form of security is best setup on the web service? Should it use forms Authentication? Should the username and password just be passed in with each GET/POST call or should it start a session as I have with the website? The Android side causes more confusion. There seems to be a number of options here Spring-Android, Volley, Retrofit, LoopJ, Robo Spice which seems to use the aforementioned Spring, Retrofit or Google HttpClient. I'm struggling to find a simple example which authenticates with a forms based authentication system. Is this because I'm going about this wrong? Is there another option that would better suite this?"}
{"_id": "29785", "title": "The present and future of programming in local languages", "text": "Can programming become language-independent? Will we always program in English? Will we ever be able to program in our local languages? Is there any research that addresses the matter? Are there any such developments?"}
{"_id": "156678", "title": "Abstraction Layer over ORM Generated Entities", "text": "I am learning LINQ to SQL (and planning to learn Entity Framework). Initially I used a abstraction layer to convert LINQ to SQL entities into a domain objects. Later I discovered the \u201cInheritance Mapping\u201d option and removed the abstraction layer and started to use ORM entities directly as domain objects. After some time, I got a road block when I don\u2019t use abstraction layer. Please read it here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11470037/get-all-associate- composite-objects-inside-an-object-in-abstract-way   1. Is it possible to achieve all tasks without using Abstraction layer over ORM?    2. What are the rationale to decide have/not have abstraction layer? **REFERENCE** :   1. http://martinfowler.com/bliki/OrmHate.html"}
{"_id": "67658", "title": "Where can I get beta testers for a software library?", "text": "There are a few similar questions to this one already. But mine differs enough to warrant being asked separately. I've written an authentication ASP.Net library and I'm looking for beta testers. I've posted to the forums I frequent, but they are not forums commonly used by .Net people. I've tried inviting friends, but honestly I don't personally know a whole lot of people that use ASP.Net. I'm afraid that posting such a request to http://asp.net/forums would be marked as spam and deleted. What else can I do to find developers to test my library?"}
{"_id": "252612", "title": "With a highly bespoke responsive website, will it be most effecient to customise bootstrap / use something else (pure-io?) / roll my own rules", "text": "I've got a few non trivial responsive website builds coming up. They are not platforms or apps, but large marketing / brochure websites where eye for detail is important. I've used bootstrap extensively as well as pure.io, as well as my own rules. I'm wondering what is the most efficient way to build these. I am planning on starting with bootstrap and customising, but I chose pure.io in the past, as I had to make so many changes to bootstrap to get a very fiddly design into it (ie it went against bootstrap conventions) Does anyone have any advice on this?"}
{"_id": "67656", "title": "Unit Testing: Should we care about distinguishing between Mocks and Stubs?", "text": "There's been a lot of talk in various blogs, forums and on StackExchange about the distinction between Mock and Stub objects (most of them specifically referencing the Rhino Mocks framework). These include posts from Martin Fowler and a chapter in Roy Osherove's \"The Art of Unit Testing\". I'm currently looking at how to write more maintainable, readable tests, and in doing so have been looking at alternative isolation frameworks to Rhino. I've looked into the nSubstitute library, which just references \"Substitutes\" rather than \"Stubs\" or \"Mocks\". This post from Ayende suggests that he may head in a similar direction for RhinoMocks 4.0 My question is - while there seems to be a concensus about the distinciton betewen the purpose of a Mock and a Stub, is it really worth caring about? Does distinguishing between the two lead to more maintainable/readable tests, or does it just introduce unnecessary complexity?"}
{"_id": "252614", "title": "what licence for an application that uses libraries with different licences", "text": "I have developed .NET software that uses two libraries:   * Library A has MIT licence and I'm using my own version of it as I edited the source code of this library.   * Library B has Ms-PL licence and I use only the binaries. My application will be distributed freely in binaries and source code(including the source code of library A). Since it is my first time to distribute a public application I want to know few things:   * what Licence I should choose.   * a part from the to-be-chosen licence Eula presented to the user in the installation , what else I should do for the binaries ?   * for the source code, what should I include exactly ?"}
{"_id": "139395", "title": "What to look for in an outsourced partner", "text": "I'm working in a small startup as the sole developer in my spare time. We might need some more development help and are looking at an Indian company which comes recommended by someone we know (although they are not very technical). I'll be having an informal chat with them, and thought I'd see if people here had some wisdom regarding what to look for and good questions to ask. At least I thought I'd try to get some:   * Code examples   * Info on any policies they might have regarding documentation of code   * Some background on the people we will be working with If you guys can think of anything else I should be particularly on the lookout for, or have any other tips to run the conversation, your input would be much appreciated! ** **Update** ** To be clear: I have some about what questions to ask a sole developer/freelancer. In this instance I will be talking to a an Indian company offering outsourcing services. I'm curious to know whether there is any particular issues I should be aware of, and if someone with this kind of experience have any hard earned wisdom to share. See MainMa's answer for one such point, although it's not developer-specific. I see the title of the question has been slightly modified so it no longer correctly conveys what I was trying to ask.. maybe this was the wrong place for this question. :/"}
{"_id": "23523", "title": "Was getting a computing science degree easier 10 years ago", "text": "I am currently a 3rd year computing science student at a Canadian University. I find it quite challenging, and extremely interesting. One thing that i have noticed is that each person i speak to that took a class 3 or so years ago learned much less than i did in the same class, and people who are taking 1st year classes are doing more than i remember doing in my 1st year classes. Is this just me remembering stuff bad, or do you believe that getting a computing science degree was easier 10 (or even 5) years ago?"}
{"_id": "188258", "title": "Does it make sense and is it to acceptable to say \".NET code\"?", "text": "There is C# code, VB.NET code... **Can I also say \".NET code\" as an umbrella term that covers all the languages you can use with the .NET framework?** I've seen people using it as well as people saying it shouldn't be used..."}
{"_id": "173077", "title": "How can I improve my skills while working on actual projects, in the absence of more experienced developers?", "text": "I'm the lead developer at a small company, working with C# and ASP.Net. Our team is small, 2-3 people, without much experience in development and design. I don't have the opportunity to learn from more senior developers, there is no one in my team to guide me and help me choose the best approaches, as I take care most of the projects myself. How can I improve my software development skills while working on actual projects, in the absence of more experienced developers?"}
{"_id": "188255", "title": "How do remote interfaces work with JavaEE and glassfish?", "text": "I would like to know what is going on \"under the hood\" if I use remote interfaces in JavaEE. In the project I use a stateless enterprise bean that implements a remote interface. And I can call methods in this remote interface from a client (it all runs on the same glassfish server but it should work from a different machine as well). The remote interface is within a Java Class Library, the enterprise bean and the client both include this library, but only in the bean it gets implemented. I am quite new to JavaEE and glassfish. I know there is a container that manages the beans and a lot of stuff which makes everything super easy, but I don\u00b4t know yet what happens behind the scenes. Could you give me a brief description of what happens on a remote call? I think it has to do something with JNDI. And if I would start my client on a completely different machine, how would JNDI find my bean on the other machine?? (Since I use netbeans with glassfish I didn\u00b4t have to configure anything in glassfish) Thanks! EDIT: I use dependency injection, so everything I need to access the bean is the annotation @EJB (this works because of the class library)"}
{"_id": "126194", "title": "Need help with naming (marshaling interface calls)", "text": "**This question was reopened on \"English Language & Usage\":** http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/53683/synonyms-for-multiplexing- and-demultiplexing/ This question is related to something written in C#, but it can be answered by programmers familiar with _any_ language, as the question pertains not to the code itself, but to _naming_ of what the code does. I posted a question on StackOverflow titled Multiplexing interface method calls into a single delegate and demultiplexing asking if anyone knows of any mechanism that will marshal interface method calls into invocations of a universal delegate (or single method interface) of the form `object AnyCall( int method_selector, object[] arguments )` and marshal back from such invocations into the original interface method calls. Since nothing suitable came up, I went ahead and I created such a mechanism. (If it is not clear to you what this mechanism does, please read the original question.) Then, I wrote a paper about this mechanism, which is almost ready, and I am about to publish it on CodeProject, but before I do that I need some help with my naming choices. Naming is quite important to me, and I consider dictionary.com and thesaurus.com as programming tools, but sometimes help from native speakers is indispensable, especially when an attempt is being made to introduce a new concept, or to take an existing technique which had no special name assigned to it thus far, and give it a special name, thus promoting it to a concept."}
{"_id": "66522", "title": "Why are message view counts laggy on most web sites?", "text": "Notice how view counts of youtube videos are always laggy? For example, a video has like 1000 comments and still has 500 hits, and will have 10000 hits hours after. Youtube isn't alone in this. Most message boards are implemented that way and view counts are updated like every 10 minutes or so. Does anyone know the reason behind this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "66523", "title": "How many lines per class is too many in Java?", "text": "In your experience, what is a useful rule of thumb for how many lines of code are too many for one class in Java? To be clear, I know that number of lines is not even close to the real standard to use for what should be in a particular class and what shouldn't. Classes should be designed according to proper OOP philosophies (encapsulation, etc.) in mind. That said, a rule of thumb could provide a useful starting point for refactoring considerations (i.e. \"Hmmm, this class has >n lines of code; it's probably unreadable and doing a lousy job of encapsulation, so I might want to see if it should be refactored at some point\"). On the flip side, perhaps have you encountered examples of very large classes that still obeyed OOP design well and were readable and maintainable despite their length? Here's a related, non-duplicate question about lines per function."}
{"_id": "188253", "title": "what to make of a Microsoft Most-Valued-Professional who believes that .NET types are either primitive or complex?", "text": "I thought that in .NET types are either value types or reference types. But this guy, when asked about .NET types, talked about \"primitive types\" and \"complex types\". I understand that people sometimes use different names to refer to the same concepts, but isn't it strange that a Microsoft certified professional would use this kind of terminology?"}
{"_id": "46999", "title": "How do you research while pair programming?", "text": "I've recently started at a new job and pairing has helped me become effective there very quickly. I am, however, having a hard time when we must do brief joint research during our workflow, covering API features, code examples, or command options. My team lead urges us to do all research on our pairing station, rather than our individual laptops, and to synchronize our research by verbally negotiating the steps between different web resources. I research, read, and absorb information differently from my pairing partner, and I feel much more productive when I can follow a thread of research to the next web page exactly when I want to, rather than trying to keep exact pace and place with what my partner's reading. We're both smart and fast, but we can't help moving in different ways and instantaneous velocities when we're figuring stuff out. It seems so much easier to poke around individually for a minute until one of us says \"I've got it,\" then get back together and code. When you pair program, how do you handle short research tasks? What works best for you, and how to you keep in sync with your partner?"}
{"_id": "27633", "title": "What to use for code design?", "text": "What do you use when designing how everything in a program will work together? Do you use a program? Pencil and paper? A whiteboard? Your mind? And how do you represent these designs? UML? UML2? Something else? And if this isn't too broad, what do you usually define in your designs?"}
{"_id": "27632", "title": "What are common pitfalls of Cloud Development that you have run into?", "text": "I'm looking at beginning some work on a cloud based application and I'd be interested to hear of anybody's experiences of pitfalls they have run into particularly from a design/architectural standpoint when working with cloud platforms. Are there any expectations that might change significantly from regular web development practice? Things that you wish you had been aware of before you got started or that might have influenced your choice of platform had you been aware of them? I realise there are significant differences between the different options out there, but I feel there are significant enough similarities to warrant asking this as a general question. Any experiences with particular platforms would also good- it would be interesting to see whether others have found similar things happening on other platforms too..."}
{"_id": "205037", "title": "Conceptually, how does one make a rules/constraints (not graphics/physics) engine for a game", "text": "I want to make a simple game similar to the choose-your-own-adventure books. The player is presented with a narrative text and gets to choose his action from a list of possibilities. This, in turn, leads to a new narrative text, ad infinitum. The only catch is that depending on some previous decisions, the list of possibilities might differ. At first glance, this sounds like a load of if-else statements, thus implying a rule engine would be in place. But, it also sounds like a finite state machine to me. I am about to write this in Java or maybe Groovy. I'm currently more interested in the conceptual issues, i.e. how should this be done on a broad level (how do people implement chess or card games, anyway?), but some advice on a specific library in also welcome. Obviously, the \"game engine\" from the title does not refer to collision detection or other physics/graphics mechanics, but the logic deciding what options does a player have given the situation and his current state."}
{"_id": "161674", "title": "Just got an initial job offer. How do I ask for more without any real justification?", "text": "I just got an initial programming job offer for $75k + benefits. It's an initial offer, so I feel like I should give a counter offer to avoid unnecessarily leaving any money on the table, but I've never negotiated a salary before and I don't have any real reason for requesting more money other than, \"I shouldn't just take the initial offer.\" Questions...   1. If I'm happy with the initial offer, would it be smart to give a counter offer and ask for more money and risk losing the job offer?   2. If so, how should I approach asking for more without any real justification? I should mention that I already have a job (at a very prominent software company), but it pays $16k/year less with no benefits. As such, I don't feel already having a job improves my position any. Thanks so much in advance for your wisdom!"}
{"_id": "59050", "title": "What is needed for a self-taught developer to be able to move into senior-level and leadership positions?", "text": "I'm a self-taught developer that currently has more than enough experience to hold up against my colleagues waving their degrees. Still, I feel that I'm lacking some important skills to advance into being a senior-level professional in a leading role, specifically in the engineering, planning and designing aspects of software. I've touched the surface of UML, ERM/ERD, have experienced projects managed using waterfall and Scrum. I feel there is something missing, as every time I start on a new project, I don't know where to begin. Should I start diagramming and how? Should I start writing a document describing the project on a technical level first, or should I dive head first into writing the initial tests and code, or pseudo-code? I would like to know what, in my case, would be the best way forward, to learn how I can tackle this problem in the future and get better at leading and starting a project. There is not much I don't know about my technical tools and languages, but when it gets abstract I'm in trouble."}
{"_id": "161670", "title": "Making the switch from MySQL to PostgreSQL?", "text": "I've spent the last year becoming really comfortable with MySQL, but due to its increasing trendiness and my desire to homogenize my web-apps with Heroku, I'd like to start using PostgreSQL for my web apps instead. There are a resources out there for learning PostgreSQL, but I don't really want to have database concepts explained to me from scratch again, and I don't want to have to re-learn all the stuff that's pretty much the same. What are the critical differences that I need to understand - syntactical and conceptual - between MySQL and PostgreSQL that will affect me on a day-to-day basis?"}
{"_id": "129211", "title": "What are some techniques to teach programmers design patterns?", "text": "I'm in a position where my developers are asking to learn design patterns. So far we have done a book club reading Heads First Design Patterns. During this we worked through examples and talked about how to apply this to areas of our own products. The problem is that these exercises didn't stick and they continue to ask to learn them. This post has some great example of books we could use, but I'm also looking for techniques on how to teach the information. So what have you done to teach other developers design patterns?"}
{"_id": "157970", "title": "What are good practices to perform software based optimization?", "text": "On a project that I am working on we encountered some performance problems. We decided to drop hibernate in favor of plain Jdbc to gain database performance. By converting our code to Jdbc we achieved the performance that we aimed for but the code quality seems to have deteriorated. And it took us three months to implement the system, which has me wondering if throwing in more hardware would've been less expensive. **What would you do to optimize your application in a manner that limits side affects on architecture and complexity?** (Mainly interested in answers from perspective of web applications but other perspective are welcome)"}
{"_id": "212479", "title": "How do you decide how much business requirements documentation you need and how to structure it?", "text": "In the past couple of years, I've worked on two projects. The first one, we used a very agile methodology. It was very much developer driven. As such, changes were very quick and rapid. Code quality was high becuase it was a new system. There was an emphasis on group ownership of the project and knowledge sharing. Most knowledge transfer with new staff etc. was conducted just by walking someone through the code or system and most staff members on the project knew enough of the project to do that. The project I thought was successful but one of the regrets I have is the amount of documentation was probably inadequate long term. We had a bunch of user stories which were short term specs only relevant for the sprint, and a a bunch of master specs outlining the business processes that was long term which we would keep up to date. We had no tech specs other than a oneNote page with user logins and links to test envrionments/servers etc. The problem was keeping a balance between putting enough in there so that it would be helpful and not so much that no one will want to read it and be a burden to maintain. I don't think we ever found that balance. The master specs were probably too generic to be useful to someone that wants to understand the system. The second project is completely opposite. It's an old system and it's very big. We use a waterfall methodology. This project is very much tester driven. As such we have probably too much documentation - there are thousands of pages in hundreds of word documents and there is duplication everywhere. (eg. documents with the same or very similar introduction texts) There is a big emphasis on keeping this mammoth of documentation perfect. Creating a simple change to the system requires identifying which documents is affected and making minor changes to all of them. We document things to levels that's probably not neccessary (eg. I found a doco the other day where the File Save dialog in IE was documented) and there is an emphasis on being correct over being readable. In short, we have half a dozen Business Analysts and their job consists more of keeping the documentation up to date than of actual analysis. I think both of these projects have bad practices and what would be optimal is somewhere in between the two. This balance probably depends on the system as well, so how do you decide how much documentation you need and also how to structure it so that maintaining doesn't become more cost than benefit. EDIT - Hi, sorry should've mentioned it before all the answers came along (I only was just able to check). I'm primarily focused on non-technical business requirements here - those that can be consumed not just by developers (audiences may include BAs, managers, testers, stakeholders etc.)"}
{"_id": "205039", "title": "BSD-2 Licence Code modifying", "text": "I'm using a BSD-2 Licence code in my project and with author permission, I modify the code. Now, I am using this code in my project. I know, I should mention Author's name and copyright information. Should, I mention What I modify in this code??"}
{"_id": "126441", "title": "Want to learn C++, and have prior web programming knowledge", "text": "I am actually considering learning C++. I want to become a quantitative financial analyst, and going to pursue my CFQ soon. Java is not heavily used in this field, but C++ is for its complexity. For someone who already has knowledge in HTML, CSS, JavaScript (intermediate), and PHP (intermediate), how hard would the switch be to pick up C++ over the course of a year? How long would it take to get certified in C++? And how hard is it to learn? I have built CMS websites, and some decent applications for the web. I took a college course of beginning programming in Java as well. Basically switching positions as a web designer to a C++ programmer and use Matlab. I have heard the language is very complex, but easier to program than languages like Java."}
{"_id": "126443", "title": "How to license a script/package if it uses multiple 3rd-party components with different licenses?", "text": "I have already searched but didn't managed to find a suitable answer. My problem is this: I use different software packages with different licenses to develop a free and open-source (not commercial) piece of software (a simple data visualization web app that reads data from a specific mysql db and draws graphs and stuff) that I want to release to the public as well. It all started with me writing some simple PHP code using a chart drawing library which is under the GPL. That was the initial version that I simply released through by blog without any license notice. On the next stage I integrated the results (chart images etc) within a free web template from os-templates.com which comes under a license of their own (they simply say that they allow usage for non-commercial and commercial projects with proper attribution to them, fine by me), in order to have a nice looking presentation/interface for them. I released that updated version without any license as well. Next, I expanded the script by using a google visualization api library which is under the BSD license to draw some additional google maps/charts. Still no license notice on my new release. I now want to continue working on this project but I think it's time to license it under an open-source license because it's getting bigger and bigger. Do you have any ideas at all of how can I do this? My work is the php code I wrote and all the other changes I have made to the template (html/css). Must I license it as a whole? Or can I just say that so-and-so libraries and other stuff included have their so-and-so respective licenses, while I release my code and only that under a license of my choice? Any suggestions would be nice. **Edit:** By the way, I know that \"discuss it with a lawyer\" can be a common answer, but we're talking about a small personal/hobby project that due to its nature (application-specific) no more than ~50 people will download/use (ever I guess). So I'm mostly looking for an easy solution, not something complicated like consulting a professional (and pay for it). **Edit 2:** Something else I want to note so there won't be any confusion is that apart from the template which I altered for obvious reasons, I just use the libraries' API by calling their specific functions etc. I haven't build upon them or altered them in any way. I'm saying this because as I understand it, building upon and extending an existing open source project is considered making a derivative and you should follow specific licensing guidelines (eg release the new code under the same license). In my case I just use the libraries as-is, nothing more."}
{"_id": "74603", "title": "Is Flash an Appropriate Platform for Enterprise Level MLS Systems?", "text": "I am a Realtor in a large metro area. Our MLS provider is building the next generation of its MLS software on Flash. Many in the beta test group are against this, citing numerous reasons including lack of native iPad compatibility, buggy behavior, and the general assertion that Flash is simply the \"wrong\" platform upon which to build an enterprise level system such as this. Ultimately, as a Realtor, I continue to be dismayed at the poor quality of software products provided to our industry's software providers while at the same time wondering why sites like Redfin, Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow are so far ahead of us in user interface and functionality, at least from the end user standpoint. Any thoughts or opinions?"}
{"_id": "12815", "title": "communication, realistic approach", "text": "I work for a mid sized Architecture and Engineering firm, our sub group focuses on developing tech solutions for engineers, mappers and technical managers. So we're heavy on desktop based apps for GIS and Civil/Env Engineering (some web). The company sells the services that our Engineers and mappers produce and our team develops tools that aids in them being more productive, efficient and help in adding value to their decisions and products, we DO NOT sell the technology. We are going through growing pains where initially we used to be extremely responsive and could rapidly prototype apps for engineers which immediately brought budgetary savings. That mindset has worked for us in the past. But this year we won a huge contract and our client base has basically quintupled (5 times?). What we are finding is that this rapid prototyping culture is hurting us, where project managers have started to expect short response times for tool development and robust production ready tools for all our engineers and GIS analysts. We've grown organically and now it seems that we are running into these issues were it appears we have to scale back our speed for more stability. Is this a legitimate tradeoff? Is there a win-win? How does one push back the engineer, project manager and analyst when they are our clients, they fund us and yet we need to be able to push back and tell them that if they want stability they have to be realistic about time frames? This isn't Microsoft Word, these are specialized GIS software and Engineering models with a ton of interop components for other industry standard models, they aren't idiot proof tools, they need informed inputs and we can only test things so much. Has anyone dealt with similar growing pains? Recommendations/advice on a communication stance, books, blogs?"}
{"_id": "8565", "title": "Is loose coupling w/o use cases an anti-pattern?", "text": "Loose coupling is, to some developers, the holy grail of well-engineered software. It's certainly a good thing when it makes code more flexible in the face of changes that are likely to occur in the foreseeable future, or avoids code duplication. On the other hand, efforts to loosely couple components increase the amount of indirection in a program, thus increasing its complexity, often making it more difficult to understand and often making it less efficient. Do you consider a focus on loose coupling without any use cases for the loose coupling (such as avoiding code duplication or planning for changes that are likely to occur in the foreseeable future) to be an anti-pattern? Can loose coupling fall under the umbrella of YAGNI?"}
{"_id": "8564", "title": "How much time do you devote to the design document(s) for your software?", "text": "Obviously the size of the project you're working on will be a huge factor in how long you spend writing the design document/specification. But do you go through everything, picking out every tiny detail? Or do you take a more agile approach and start writing the software quite early on and solve the problems as they come to you? I've always found that there's only so far you can go with designing. There will inevitably be some things that are missed, and at that point how well you can adapt to the situation means more than the specification itself. Am I taking the right viewpoint on this? Is it actually an opinion, or is a perfect design spec always the best route to go?"}
{"_id": "111692", "title": "How do I convince my employer to hire an additional developer without selling myself short?", "text": "I'm the only developer at a small company. I've slowly moved into development here; until ~4 months ago 50-75% of my time was spent on operations. Now, 50-75% of my time is spent on development, with the rest split between operations and various IT stuff. I regularly end up working 50+ hours a week. I inherited some rather poorly-written applications (they were previously maintained by two people) that much of the business relies upon. Keeping these up and running, working on new, smaller applications, and my other responsibilities already take up all my time. In order to be scalable, the existing software needs significant refactoring and additional functionality. I haven't had the pleasure to work on properly written or architected software before. The complexity of this task is well beyond anything I've done before (this is my first job out of college.) I know there's a feverish devotion to self-learning/learning by doing among many here, but this is so beyond my expertise that I wouldn't be doing my employer or myself any favors trying to tackle it alone. I've been very direct about my inexperience, and in the past have mentioned that hiring another, more experienced developer will probably be necessary...if anything, just for the amount of time required for anyone to do the work as we grow and have more software to develop and maintain. I know that I would greatly benefit from hiring another developer; having someone to learn from and bounce ideas off of would be great. StackOverflow is great for determining approaches to individual coding problems or concepts, but is no replacement for discussions on a wider or more significant scale specific to a certain business domain. When mentioning hiring another developer in casual conversation recently, they didn't seem to think it was that important or necessary. **tl;dr** : Current patch jobs and other responsibilities already take up all my time at work, work on existing applications that needs to be done is beyond my skillset, little chance of me having any time to work on new products that are being planned. Employer initially seems reluctant about hiring another developer. How can I \"sell\" hiring another developer without sounding like I'm lazy or incompetent (I'd like to think I'm neither!)? **edit** : Just wanted to clarify that I'm in no way interested in taking any kind of hostile action to prove a point (i.e. taking a vacation to show them they'd be screwed if I wasn't around.) I'm pretty content working here and consider myself to be fairly compensated, even figuring in the overtime, which is why I'm nowhere near considering a new job yet. That said, I accepted the 'no more overtime' answer - even if I don't mind working over too much I'm not doing anyone any favors by doing so (prone to more errors, wear myself out) and it's not really tenable in the short term much less the long term. I'll be stressing this when discussing the matter with my supervisor, and will probably suggest hiring a contractor part-time as an initial approach that's more financially palatable. Thanks for all the great answers."}
{"_id": "111691", "title": "What metrics do you use on your Scrum project?", "text": "We are starting a new project and the board/stakeholders are asking for metrics to check the team performance. As a junior ScrumMaster I told them:   * about the Velocity and BurndownChart   * that we can chose any type of metrics as long as they are team based and not individual, they do not push people to act awkwardly / counter productive (as you get what you reward) Is there any other thing I can provide them in this regards? Have you got metrics other than velocity?"}
{"_id": "140992", "title": "Is dependency injection essential for unit testing?", "text": "Is using dependency injection (DI) essential for unit testing? I can't think of another alternative for isolating code so it can be tested. Also, all the examples I have ever seen use this pattern. Is that because it is the only viable option or are there other alternatives?"}
{"_id": "253050", "title": "Pattern or idea to communicate with async hardware", "text": "This is more like a theory question than a practical one. And although I am using Arduino and Labview, it should work independently of the platform. I have an Arduino board controlling a set of pumps (they use standard nema motors). This arduino reads gcode like commands through usb serial port, and actuates the pumps and valves. This part is working, and I can move the pumps around using Arduino serial port. This firmware (in arduino) is async, so it accepts non blocking calls. Basically, while a pump is working, you can send a command and some other pump will execute. Or you can execute several of them at the same time. Each command has an ID, and this ID is sent back to the serial port once the work has been done. This is coded using simply a FSM where every pump represents a state. Before my firmware was blocking, every physical action had a big wait between Nema steps, it's not the case anymore. Also, I have a Labview VI working, which accepts some parameters from the user (pump id, speed, and so), creates the commands, sends it, and actuates the pump. This also works. It's my first VI. Problem, it blocks. It stays there until the pump is finished. I cannot execute other actions while it's actuating the hardware. My question is, as a labview novice (although this is a general software pattern question in general), how can I fix it? Which pattern or template can I use to not block my VI while the pumps are working?"}
{"_id": "134050", "title": "Which notification pattern is preferable?", "text": "I'm working on a view model for a view that presents a dialog with export options. The user selects options then clicks Export. When the view model completes the Export, the calling view model receives notification. I'm curious which is the better practice for implementing the notification: a traditional event or an `Action` callback that gets passed in when the dialog is opened. **Traditional Event**               public class ExportDialogViewModel : ViewModelBase     {         private readonly ICommand _exportCommand;         private readonly ICommand _cancelCommand;              public event EventHandler Finished;              public ICommand ExportCommand         {             get { return _exportCommand; }         }               public ICommand CancelCommand         {             get { return _cancelCommand; }         }              public ExportDialogViewModel()         {             _exportCommand = new RelayCommand(Export);             _cancelCommand = new RelayCommand(Cancel);         }              public void Initialize()         {             //set the initial conditions         }              public void Export()         {             //perform export             OnFinished();         }              public void Cancel()         {             OnFinished();         }              private void OnFinished()         {             if (Finished != null) Finished(this, EventArgs.Empty);         }     }      **Callback**               public class ExportDialogViewModel2 : ViewModelBase     {         private readonly ICommand _exportCommand;         private readonly ICommand _cancelCommand;              private Action _callback;              public ICommand ExportCommand         {             get { return _exportCommand; }         }              public ICommand CancelCommand         {             get { return _cancelCommand; }         }              public ExportDialogViewModel2()         {             _exportCommand = new RelayCommand(Export);             _cancelCommand = new RelayCommand(Cancel);         }              public void Initialize(Action callback)         {             _callback = callback;             //set the initial conditions         }              public void Export()         {             //perform export             _callback();         }              public void Cancel()         {             _callback();         }     }      My initial thoughts are that the traditional event is a little more flexible: it allows more than one subscriber to be notified, and it also allows zero subscribers to be notified. The callback, on the other hand, enforces a particular way of interacting with the dialog--the callback must be passed in during initialization. The callback is also simpler to implement and use, though perhaps less familiar than events. Which of the two notification patterns do you recommend and why?"}
{"_id": "92207", "title": "what exactly is hypertext?", "text": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext: > Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with > references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately > access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running > text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. > Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide > Web.[1] It is an easy-to-use and flexible format to share information over > the Internet. So any webpage that does not have hyper links is NOT hypertext? second question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_markup_language: > HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup > language for web pages. So HTML is not hypertext because it is not displayed on an electronic device, but HTML that is displayed on an electronic device like this:               <b></b>      is considered hypertext? (I was debating whether to post this here or in English.StackExchange but thought probably here is a more appropriate channel)"}
{"_id": "119060", "title": "Does \"open source\" ever become \"my source\"?", "text": "If I were to download some open source code that does some neat thing that I am needing, but doesn't have nearly as many options or bells and whistles that I need... and I make a TON of changes to where some of the base code is still there from the open source project, but a lot has changed and a lot has been added... will that code ever become \"my source\" as opposed to \"open source\"? EDIT: BTW, I don't actually have a project in mind, this is just in general terms - so I wouldn't know the license. This question just crosses my mind from time to time when I see a project that I could improve on..."}
{"_id": "92208", "title": "I want to explain why the specification must not be changed during development period", "text": "I want to explain why the specification must not be changed during development period to the new planning department employee. Is there any cool document that does this?"}
{"_id": "145410", "title": "Should I contract someone to help me with an existing project?", "text": "I have a paid Android app that I made by myself this past summer and I've been working on it throughout the year. The app is geared toward a professional niche market (but there are people all around the world who would buy it,) so it's priced highly. It is   * Mostly C++, some Java   * Built heavily on Qt (in the C++ code)   * 15,000+ lines of code   * Well commented in some places but not others I enjoy working on it, but find I no longer have time to slog through the more \"menial\" coding work of maintaining it, and instead want to focus on building new components and taking it to the next level, where I think I would really get bigger returns. In order to do that, I'm looking at contracting out some programming work to someone else. My app makes some money, but not enough to hire anyone steadily - instead I'll have to just give them smaller jobs to do at a time. I might have to hire someone in a lower economic status country as well, because I expect that rates, say, here in the U.S. won't be affordable to me. My knee-jerk reaction is to go to vWorker.com (formerly RentACoder) where I did a lot of work several years ago. Is this going to help me or cause more headache than help? Here are some more specific questions I have - feel free to answer any that you have thoughts on. Also, please let me know how I can improve this question. Thanks in advance.   1. How can I find a person with the **right skill set**? Is asking for **Qt** and **Android SDK** experience going to increase the price a lot?   2. How can I protect my **copyright**? Is this enforceable in less economically developed countries? Or can someone easily get away with stealing my code and selling it themselves?   3. Are there any other issues you foresee in hiring this person, and how might I address those?"}
{"_id": "245469", "title": "Is The CPOL compatible with the MS-PL", "text": "My question is very simple: Can I use a CPOL project within a MS-PL project? I would like to add a CPOL project to my MS-PL solution, modify it and use it as a tool which helps me compiling my project. I found this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/hGqHO.png) I personally would say, that the CPOL should be compatible with the MS-PL. But I've got nearly no experience with licenses and I am no layer. So I would be really thankful if anyone could tell me whether I am right that the CPOL is compatible with the MS-PL."}
{"_id": "145416", "title": "Design Patterns for Coordinating Change Event Listeners", "text": "I've been working with the Observer pattern in JavaScript using various popular libraries for a number of years (YUI & jQuery). It's often that I need to observe a set of property value changes (e.g. respond only when 2 or more specific values change). Is there a elegant way to 'subscribe' the handler so that it is only called one time? Is there something I'm missing or doing wrong in my design?"}
{"_id": "35776", "title": "Mutating Programming Language?", "text": "For fun I was thinking about how a programming paradigm could differ from OOP and came up with this concept. I don't have a strong foundation in computer science so it might be common place without me knowing it (more likely it's just a stupid idea :) I apologize in advance for this somewhat rambling question, anyways here goes: In normal OOP methods and classes are variant only upon parameters, meaning if two different classes/methods call the same method they get the same output. My, perhaps crazy idea, is that the calling method and class could be an \"invisible\" part of it's signature and the response could vary depending on who call's an method. Say that we have a Window object with a Break() method, now anyone (who has access) could call this method on Window with the same result. Now say that we have two different objects, Hammer and SledgeHammer. If Break need to produce different results based on these we'd pass them as parameters Break(IBluntObject bluntObject) With a mutating programming language (mpl) the operating objects on the method would be visible to the Break Method without begin explicitly defined and it could adopt itself based on them). So if SledgeHammer calls Window.Break() it would generate vastly different results than if Hammer did so. **If classes are black boxes then mutating classes are black boxes that knows who's (trying) to push it's buttons and can adapt their behavior accordingly.** You could also have different permission sets on methods depending who's calling them rather than having absolute permissions like public and private. Does this have any advantage over OOP? Or perhaps I should say, would it add anything to it since you should be able to simply add this aspect to methods (just give access to a CallingMethod and CallingClass variable in context) I'm not sure, might be to hard to wrap one's head around, it would be kinda interesting to have classes that adopted themselves to who uses them though. Still it's an interesting concept, what do you think, is it viable? Here's some potential dummy code from a game where a player has is damaged by something. In normal OOP most things would instead be passed as parameters to the method whereas here Damage \"pulls\" the properties it uses. Different? yes, better? perhaps not :)               Class Player     {         [AccessableBy:Terrain,Player]         void Damage         {             if (#CallingClass has property HitPoints)             {                 this.health -= #CallingClass.HitPoints;             }                  if (this.health < 0 && #CallingClass is Terrain)             {                 ShowMessage(\"was killed by the environment\");             }             else if (health < 0 && #CallingClass is Player &&  #CallingMethod is RocketLauncher)             {                 ShowMessage(\"was killed with a rocketlauncher by player\" + #CallingClass.PlayerName);             }              }     }      To reduce if-else statements you could have method overrides based on caller methods and classes"}
{"_id": "221351", "title": "Do I have to be skilled in advanced theoretical problem solving to become a good programmer?", "text": "I have been doing programming for about a couple of years. I am currently in University 2nd year. In most universities here, the problem solving from sites like uva.onlinejudge.org and projecteuler.net are highly valued. Even in some job interviews, a decent number of UVa solutions is considered a good quality. But for some reason, I find these boring. These seem to have more mathematics rather than programming. When the students around me are busy in solving UVa problems, I find myself trying to make a real program with file manipulation etc. When they are trying to calculate the complexity etc of an algorithm in the algorithm course, I try to directly code them rather spend time in boring mathematical analysis. A few days ago, I got selected to be part of an university team for an inter- university programming contest. But I got so bored by the 4-5 preparation and selection mock contests, I decided not to participate and my teachers got a bit displeased with me, one even got a bit furious I guess. So am I going the wrong way? I mean I like solving problems, but not that much. I am more interested in practical problems rather than efficiency-hungry simplicity-eater theoretical problems. Is very advanced skill in theoretical problem solving really needed to become a good programmer? And I mean a good programmer, not a good computer scientist. Thanks."}
{"_id": "256096", "title": "View model structuring best practise", "text": "What is the preferred convention for structuring view model properties? It is better to use generic or more specific property names? Let's have a user, the page where this user will be displayed should be altered by user's permission. The view model could be written in two different ways:               {         userName,         userEmail,         isAdmin // show/hide controls according the value of this property     }      or               {         userName,         userEmail,         enableDeleteBtn,          showLogData,         // many more show/enable properties which are set according user's permissions     }      The first approach seems to smaller and easier to write, but it's less generic and the logic of displaying/hiding controls have to be changed if for example new type of user role will be introduced."}
{"_id": "221353", "title": "Is there already a commonly known name for the 'ensure pattern'?", "text": "I use a pattern that I call \"ensure\" extensively in my repository layer. In short, it does the following when I call an `Ensure(...)` method:   1. It uses the arguments in the method to attempt to populate an entity of a specified type (ultimately from the database),   2. If it finds one then it returns it; f it does not, it saves the entity to the database and return it. So, my Ensure method ensures that there is always a populated entity with specified properties, irrespective of whether one existed before the call was made. Is there already a more commonly known name for this pattern?"}
{"_id": "35770", "title": "Which Python GUI library is easiest to use?", "text": "Among the GUI libraries for Python, which is more easier to work with: PyQt4, wxPython or any other? I just wrote few lines of PyQt4 code, it seems things are not that easy with Qt. Are there any performance pros and cons also among these GUI libraries?"}
{"_id": "223263", "title": "Additional actions in setup.py for install", "text": "**Background** So, I'm developing a project, and I'm writing setup.py script for it, using distutils. I'm using CPython3.3. I use some libraries that have invalid distributions in PyPI, so they have to be installed by cloning repo and running setup.py manually (I've tried many things, both libraries help said I just need to use git instead of PyPI, so why I need to do that this way is not a question here). So, I've used some subprocess magic, and created script that clones repos and runs \"setup.py install\" in them. It also runs apps setup.py, after ensuring that broken libs are already installed other way. It is easy to convert to several methods, and will be enhanced in few moments. At the moment my app may be installed by running this script (I called it build.py). **Question** How do I create a hook in my setup.py script (for my app) that will run methods installing things from github when (and ONLY when) \"install\" argument was passed to apps setup.py? **What I've tried** I tried googling phrases like \"how do I hook setup.py\" - more or less general, I tried several queries. Nothing has been found. Also, I tried to analyze distutils source, to find some way, but that also got me nowhere. Haven't tried it yet, but I know it is doable - at the beginning of setup.py script checking whether conditions like \"it is ran as main script\" and \"'install' keyword is in sys.argv\" are true, and if so - running my git- related methods, but this is ugly as hell."}
{"_id": "51389", "title": "Suggestions for Summer Intern Application Assignments", "text": "As part of our application process we want prospective college interns to complete an assignment on their own - either programming or analytical - to give us something tangible to evaluate such as code or a flowchart. I have two ideas for these assignments, one programming and one analytical, I am interested in gathering feedback about these. # Programming Assignment Generate an a month's calendar for a given date. The first row should indicate the days of the week (e.g. Sunday - Saturday). Each subsequent row should contain a week's days. The date supplied should be highlighted (e.g. bolded). I am thinking we'll probably proscribe the output format even more strictly - probably down to what the HTML source should look like including CSS classes. Thinking is this forces answerers to actually do some work if they merely copy a solution from the internet. # Analytical Assignment Diagram or describe in prose a system for managing a set of traffic lights for traffic at a four way intersection. Each direction (i.e. North, South, East and West) has two lanes (i.e. right and left). The left lane is turn only and has green arrow light to indicate right of way. The system is able to detect if lanes have cars in them and change the lights accordingly. I would expect a flow chart or some prose describing a finite state machine that deals with each contingency. This would hopefully provide some indication of the applicant's ability to reason through a logic problem of sorts and articulate an approach for solving. # Areas Seeking Feedback   1. Is it unreasonable to ask this of applicants? If not, is it better to request before or after a phone screen?   2. Are these questions too hard or easy for a collegiate audience?    3. Any suggestions for alternate questions?    4. Do these seem like good tools for analyzing people who would part of a software development life cycle?    5. Programming language suggestions - I'm thinking Java, Python and/or C# (we're actually a ColdFusion shop)."}
{"_id": "256090", "title": "Function only returns unchanged parameter, useless?", "text": "I just found this function in the project I'm working at:                 -- Just returns the text unchanged.       -- Note: <text> may be nil, function must return nil in that case!       function Widget:wtr(text)           return text       end      Too sad, the coder does not work in the company anymore. Why would one make a function that does nothing, but returns the parameter it's called with? Is there any use to such a function, not specified to this example, but overall in any case? Due to               function aFunction(parameter)         return parameter     end      Ends in               aFunction(parameter) == parameter      Why would I write something like               aFunction(parameter) == whatIWantToCheck      instead of               parameter == whatIWantToCheck      ?"}
{"_id": "220081", "title": "How should I go about bringing this code under test?", "text": "I'm working on an open-source test framework. 90% of my codebase has good test coverage. My main problem area is the command-line entry point. This module began life as a very short script for calling into the domain model (see the call to `_run_impl()`) and exit with code 1 if the test run failed. It didn't feel necessary to test that script at the time that I wrote it, but as the project has sprouted features, a number of small changes to the logic in this file have led it to become quite long:               import argparse     import os     import sys     from . import _run_impl  # a function, in __init__.py, which calls into the domain model     from . import reporting  # a sub-package concerned with writing output to the console          import colorama; colorama.init()          def cmd():         parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()         parser.add_argument('-s', '--no-capture',             action='store_false',             dest='capture',             default=True,             help=\"Disable capturing of stdout during tests.\")         parser.add_argument('-v', '--verbose',             action='store_true',             dest='verbose',             default=False,             help=\"Enable verbose progress reporting.\")         parser.add_argument('--teamcity',             action='store_true',             dest='teamcity',             default=False,             help=\"Enable teamcity test reporting.\")         parser.add_argument('--no-random',             action='store_false',             dest='shuffle',             default=True,             help=\"Disable test order randomisation.\")         parser.add_argument('path',             action='store',             nargs='?',             default=os.getcwd(),             help=\"Path to the test file or directory to run. (default current directory)\")         args = parser.parse_args()              if args.teamcity or \"TEAMCITY_VERSION\" in os.environ:             reporters = (reporting.teamcity.TeamCityReporter(sys.stdout),)         elif args.verbose:             reporters = (reporting.cli.ColouredReporter(sys.stdout),)         elif args.capture:             reporters = (                 reporting.cli.DotsReporter(sys.stdout),                 type(\"ColouredCapturingReporter\", (reporting.cli.ColouredReporter, reporting.cli.StdOutCapturingReporter), {})(sys.stdout),                 reporting.cli.TimedReporter(sys.stdout)             )         else:             reporters = (                 reporting.cli.DotsReporter(sys.stdout),                 type(\"ColouredCapturingReporter\", (reporting.cli.ColouredReporter, reporting.cli.SummarisingReporter), {})(sys.stdout),                 reporting.cli.TimedReporter(sys.stdout)             )              reporter = reporting.shared.ReporterManager(*reporters)              _run_impl(os.path.realpath(args.path), reporter, args.shuffle)              if reporter.failed:             sys.exit(1)         sys.exit(0)               if __name__ == \"__main__\":         cmd()      I know that this code has bugs (for example, it should be possible to capture stdout from tests when running in verbose mode), and I've lost confidence in my ability to change this module without breaking something. So I want to write some tests for it - but I only really have experience with test-first development, so I don't really know where to start. Should the tests be at the unit or integration level? Should I mock the `ArgumentParser`? Should I mock the `reporting` module? Should I mock `_run_impl`? Should I try to bring the whole module under test at the start, or just add tests as I add features? Do I need to refactor to make this method more testable? _Addendum_ : I think a part of my confusion is due to the fact that this is a relatively thin layer on top of the business logic - it's just there to make it possible to kick-off the test runner from the command line. So I'm feeling confused about what constitutes the service boundary here - in particular, what I should and shouldn't mock."}
{"_id": "220086", "title": "How exactly does a program (executable image) and library (pre-compiled image) \"link\" together?", "text": "I know very well of the difference of static versus dynamic linking. What I want to know is, when linking statically (with a library like Winmm.lib on Windows), how does the linker \"link\" the pre-compiled format with the just compiled binary of the executable? It does not have to pertain to any specific platform, OS, etc. I just want to know the process of which the linking takes place, and how that static \"linking\" binds an executable binary together that, when executed, forms a branch with the necessary system calls, routines, and low-level API access. Basically, how does the compiled file get \"put together\" statically with the pre-compiled data, especially if they're coded differently? I mean I know the library \"exposes\" routines, but where is the certainty that the called routines always work, and how can this be assured in a linking process? EXAMPLE: I compile \"Hello world.exe\", and it is statically linked, and launched from the OS loader. Does something within the binary that the program itself linked with have all the necessary \"instructions\", \"magic number\", \"checksum\", etc. to perform the correct procedures, or the does the OS loader, on the fly, find what's needed to access, i.e. system calls, type of program header, other magic numbers, etc.? I just want to thoroughly understand my linker's job, and how that linking makes the bonafide binary that the OS can handle, and get to my screen, as opposed to just plain instructions that the OS can't \"branch\" to any other process with."}
{"_id": "223268", "title": "Constructor Injection, Single Responsibility and List initialisation", "text": "Given the class:               public class Foo : IFoo     {       private IBarRepository repository            public Foo(IBarRepository repository)       {          this.repository = repository       }            public IList<IBar> Bars { get; private set; }     }      My long standing instinct is to initialise the list of IBar in the constructor: `this.Bars = new List<IBar>();` but using _Constructor Injection_ , the _Single Responsibility_ of the constructor is for it to set the dependancies for the class. What is the best way to handle this? Should I have a collection initialiser that I call in any method before using the collection?               private void InitialiseCollection()     {       if (this.Bars == null)       {          this.Bars = new List<IBar>();       }     }          public void Add(IBar bar)     {         this.InitialiseCollection();         this.Bars.Add(bar)     }"}
{"_id": "166549", "title": "ASP.NET MVC Controller separation best practices", "text": "I am very new in ASP.NET MVC and Web stuff. I want to know how I should separate my page logic into different controllers. Like for example should I use `Home\\BuyProduct` or `Product\\Buy`. When there is a sign to move logic to the new separate controller? Should it be one Controller per page? What is the basic rules?"}
{"_id": "149949", "title": "Python flavor of regular expressions - related to which?", "text": "So my copy of the classic book, Mastering Regular Expressions, just arrived, and I'm scanning through it. The cover (third edition) says, \"for Perl, PHP, Java, .NET, Ruby, and More!\" Well, it does have a full chapter for each of Perl, PHP, Java, and .NET - but no chapter on Ruby, or, more importantly to me, on Python. Although the index lists a few points of Python's differences (such as how it handles newlines), there's not even a table of them, much less an entire chapter. Which of the four covered languages, is Python's regex engine most similar to? More importantly, _how_ similar, and what are the major differences? Note - I don't mean how regexes are _used_ in Python (versus, say Perl) - I know and use the `re` module. I'm only interested in the syntax differences of the _actual_ regexes."}
{"_id": "111528", "title": "There is a (social) network / website for developers share ideas and find a team for development?", "text": "Supposing I want to do some kind of project, but I want to find more people interested in that area that can develop some project with me, there is some website focused on this? Example: \"I want to develop action games for mobiles\" or \"Want to find web developers for a new social network focused on blah blah blah\". This already exists?"}
{"_id": "196065", "title": "How to find the running time of an algorithm that involves heuristics", "text": "I am working with A* algorithm, in which I have a 2D grid and given two points, find the shortest distance between them, while not running into any obstruction. Now, for each cell, I find the distance from the source, and calculate the distance from destination. Add the two quantities, and the one that has the minimum value, that cell is considered next. Now, How do I calculate the running time of such an algorithm, since I'll never know how many times this process will be repeated. i.e how many cells will I have to work, with, before I reach my destination. Kindly help. I am looking for the upper bound of running time. In terms of the length of side of grid, i.e. N. Thanks."}
{"_id": "189126", "title": "Designing a function with many optional components", "text": "I'm trying to figure out a good practice for designing a function with (many) optional components. For a specific example, say I am interested in designing a _feature extractor_ function that takes as input a document and returns a list of features extracted from the document. ### Question If there are many optional components, what kind of approach would be considered good practice and scalable? Below are a couple options I have been able to think of, though there may be other approaches that I have not considered. ### Approach 1: class based               class FeatureExtractor(object):         \"\"\"Extract features from text for use in classification.\"\"\"         def __init__(self, term_frequency=False, consider_negation=False,                      pos_tags=False):             self.term_frequency = term_frequency             self.consider_negation = consider_negation             self.pos_tags = pos_tags             # Could be many more ...              def extract(self, document):             \"\"\"Extract features from a document.\"\"\"             features = []             if self.term_frequency:                 features.extend(self.extract_term_frequency(document))             if self.consider_negation:                 features.extend(self.extract_negation(document))             if self.pos_tags:                 features.extend(self.extract_pos_tags(document))             return features              def extract_term_frequency(self, document):             pass              def extract_negation(self, document):             pass              def extract_pos_tags(self, document):             pass          extractor = FeatureExtractor(term_frequency=True, consider_negation=True,                                  pos_tags=True)     extractor.extract(document)      ### Approach 2: function arguments               def extract(document, *functions):         \"\"\"Extract features from a document.\"\"\"         features = []         for function in functions:                 features.extend(function(document))         return features          def extract_term_frequency(document):         pass          def extract_negation(document):         pass          def extract_pos_tags(document):         pass          extract(document, extract_term_frequency, extract_negation, extract_pos_tags)      ### Approach 3: class with mixins or multiple inheritance Something of a combination of the first and second approach, though I'm not sure how this would be done. Any ideas on a direction to head would be greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "196063", "title": "Why do most java classes end with \"ers\"?", "text": "* ...Provider   * ...Searcher   * ...Resolver   * ...Builder   * ...Manager   * ...Importer   * ...Descriptor   * ...Helper   * ...Indexer Is it a global convention to refer a thing with \"..ers\" or \"..ors\". In contrast, a \"thing\" that composes with behaviors (habits) or attributes (properties) doesn't go with such naming convention. It is fun to think that we named the classes based on their behaviors. The \"Manager\" classes are always resembles my Project Manager."}
{"_id": "221687", "title": "Affero GPL (AGPL3) Quick Question", "text": "Our project is fully open source - it is a web service, we are using the AGPL3 license. Using this license, does that mean we can never offer it as a paid service?"}
{"_id": "52873", "title": "Named arguments (parameters) as a readability aid", "text": "A long time ago I programmed a lot in ADA, and it was normal to name arguments when invoking a function - SomeObject.DoSomething(SomeParameterName => someValue); Now that C# supports named arguments, I'm thinking about reverting to this habit in situations where it might not be obvious what an argument means. You might argue that it should always be obvious what an argument means, but if you have a boolean argument, and callers are passing in \"true\" or \"false\" then qualifying the value with the name makes the call site more readable. contentFetcher.DownloadNote(note, manual : true); I guess I could create Enums instead of using true or false (Manual, Automatic in this case). What do you think about occasionally using named arguments to make code easier to read?"}
{"_id": "60968", "title": "can subcontractors claim contractors work?", "text": "If I am subcontracting from a company. Am I able to claim the work as if I were doing for the client themselves. In other words.... if Client A ask Company A to do some web development. and Company A sub contracts out to Company B. Can Company B claim they did work for Client A. Or must they say they did work for Company A ? I am building my site and I want to release all the work I did for 1 company who subcontracted me. but I dont want to get into any legal issues."}
{"_id": "56555", "title": "Learning to implement dynamically typed language compiler", "text": "I'm interested in learning how to create a compiler for a dynamically typed language. Most compiler books, college courses and articles/tutorials I've come across are specifically for statically typed languages. I've thought of a few ways to do it, but I'd like to know how it's usually done. I know type inferencing is a pretty common strategy, but what about others? Where can I find out more about how to create a dynamically typed language? Edit 1: I meant dynamically typed. Sorry about the confusion. I've written toy compilers for statically typed languages and written some interpreters for dynamically typed languages. Now, I'm interested in learning more about creating compilers for a dynamically typed language. I'm specifically experimenting with LLVM and since I need to specify the type of every method and argument, I'm thinking of ways to implement a dynamically typed language on something like LLVM."}
{"_id": "52875", "title": "How do I write a good talk proposal for a FOSS programming conference?", "text": "I'm hoping to give a talk at RubyKaigi this year, and I'd like to know what makes a good talk proposal. RubyKaigi is a conference run by Ruby enthusiasts (as opposed to it being a trade conference, or an academic conference). The proposal form can be seen here. So far, my draft proposal about a program I'm working on mentions:   1. What the program is useful for and why it is relevant.   2. How it works.   3. What topics it touches upon (such as metaprogramming and testing) Is there anything that I should mention in my proposal? Also, how thorough should I be in my \"Details of your talk\" section? Should I be exhaustive, or only have a couple of short paragraphs?"}
{"_id": "150145", "title": "What is the best way to allow a non-coding designer to design intranet web pages?", "text": "We have an intranet site which was done in .net with plenty of functionality but management wants it to look more visually attractive and get the graphic designer involved. The graphic designer is NOT a programmer nor has any desire to learn how to code. She would be updating the main page only. I was trying to figure out how to make it easy for her to update the site. I was looking into Joomla but it requires PHP, MySQL, and Apache. Our box is .net/iis/sql. Does anyone have experience with this? Just a bit concerned about compatibility issues. or maybe there is an easier way. I'm more of a back end guy than a graphics guy."}
{"_id": "150144", "title": "Is it legal to use icons from some other application while developing?", "text": "On my machine _while developing_ I'm using icons from other application (in particular MS Paint and Paint.NET) as sign for the user that if he chooses to open that file (with our own internal command) it would open in those applications. Is it legal to extract the icons from those applications and use them? Commit them to repository and then use on all developers' machines (even those that do not have Paint.NET installed)? Let me make it clear once more. I'm not talking about including those icons in release version. Providing proper icons is up to graphics/skin designer. I'm talking just about the developing process. Would extracting the icons in run-time either directly or based on file types change anything? * * * Recently there was a similar question: Can I legally use the icon of a different software? Yet mine differs in that I do not want to release those icons along my application. * * * **EDIT** Let me emphasis an issue which (judging by answers so far) was missed. If using the icons in above described circumstances was against the license/law (again judging from answers) then how about asking operating system for an icon of the application or an icon associated with the file. This will likely end in showing the very same icon... How about file browsing apps for which showing those icons is crucial part of their working rather than a nice but minor feature? How (from license/law point of view) is operating system/file browser/... different from my own developed application that they are (as I assume they are) allowed to query those icons and show them while I'm not. After all one could claim that looking at his beautiful icons in file browser aided my development like unit tests do and so I should pay extra like I do for using those unit tests... _(Also if icon would be queried at run-time from operating system it might be irrelevant whether it is on my development machine or on a released version at client machine...)_"}
{"_id": "127714", "title": "Naming conventions for the only envisioned implementation of an interface", "text": "If you decide \"Program to An Interface\" trumps YAGNI and decide to create a supertype where you don't envision anything other than one obvious implementation - is there a convention for naming the obvious concrete type? E.g. this morning I wrote a a class called PlainOldConversionReport and I wonder if that name betrays ignorance of convention. Would there a more normal name, in Object Oriented development generally or .Net or C# specifically, to give to a non specialized subtype of IConversionReport?"}
{"_id": "150146", "title": "Security of logging people in automatically from another app?", "text": "I have 2 apps. They both have accounts, and each account has users. These apps are going to share the same users and accounts and they will always be in sync. I want to be able to login automatically from one app to the other. So my solution is to generate a login_key, for example: `2sa7439e-a570-ac21-a2ao-z1qia9ca6g25` once a day. And provide a automated login link to the other app... for example if the user clicks on: `https://account_name.securityhole.io/login/2sa7439e-a570-ac21-a2ao-z1qia9ca6g25/user/123` They are logged in automatically, session created. So here we have 3 things that a intruder has to get right in order to gain access; account name, login key, and the user id. Bad idea? Or should I can down the path of making one app an oauth provider? Or is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "65248", "title": "Micro-economics for CS students", "text": "I recently went through the article on \"Advice for Computer Science College Students\", by Joel Spolsky - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CollegeAdvice.html . In that Joel says that a programmer who understands the fundamentals of business is going to be a more valuable programmer, to a business, than a programmer who doesn't. Many ideas do make sense in code, but not in business. I'd like to know if there are some quick reference manuals for CS students to learn micro-economics. I'd like to know the ebooks that would help one to understand the basics of it."}
{"_id": "196407", "title": "MVC : Does Code to save data in cache or session belongs in controller?", "text": "I'm a bit confused if saving the information to session code below, belongs in the controller action as shown below or should it be part of my Model? I would add that I have other controller methods that will read this session value later.                 public ActionResult AddFriend(FriendsContext viewModel)       {             if (!ModelState.IsValid)             {                                 return View(viewModel);             }                  // Start - Confused if the code block below belongs in Controller?                  Friend friend = new Friend();             friend.FirstName = viewModel.FirstName;             friend.LastName = viewModel.LastName;             friend.Email = viewModel.UserEmail;                              httpContext.Session[\"latest-friend\"] = friend;                  // End Confusion                  return RedirectToAction(\"Home\");         }      I thought about adding a static utility class in my Model which does something like below, but it just seems stupid to add 2 lines of code in another file.               public static void SaveLatestFriend(Friend friend, HttpContextBase httpContext)     {         httpContext.Session[\"latest-friend\"] = friend;     }               public static Friend GetLatestFriend(HttpContextBase httpContext)     {         return httpContext.Session[\"latest-friend\"] as Friend;     }"}
{"_id": "227686", "title": "Styling/formatting file for programmers, has it been done?", "text": "has there ever been a proposal for establishing a formatting style file for programmers? In web programming, we have CSS files that help separate style from 'code', so two people can see the same code while each can see it in his/her preferred way. I was thinking something like this could theoretically be achieved for programming. How many times have you read code from another programmer with a formatting that you can't stomach? If you change the formatting, you're changing the source file, so whoever comes after you to read the same file could have the same issue against your formatting that you had. You could say \"define coding standards\" but this is usually not done in small or individual teams before the company grows. Why not separate formatting from code? You could define how you like code formatted (brackets here, new line after this, etc) and the IDE would take the source code and auto-format it to your liking (without changing the source code). I guess it wouldn't be a trivial thing, but I'm curious if there are languages or IDEs in which this has been done. Has something like this been done or attempted ever? Is it doable? Could something like this be incorporated in, say, Visual Studio?"}
{"_id": "196405", "title": "How did the term \"hypervisor\" come into use?", "text": "I've read about the \"hypervisor\" in hardware virtualization. VMs are not my area, so I can't quite see where the term came from. THe wikipedia article talks about how \"the hardware's supervisor state was virtualized as well, allowing multiple operating systems to run concurrently in separate virtual machine contexts\" This implies that a _supervisor_ process was virtualized.. which then probably originated a 'hyper'-visor. Is this true?"}
{"_id": "114460", "title": "What's wrong with JavaScript", "text": "There is a lot of buzz around Dart recently, often questioning Google motivations and utility of Dart as replacement for JavaScript. I was searching for rationale of creating Dart rather than investing more effort in ECMAScript. In well known leaked mail its author is saying that > Javascript has historical baggage that cannot be solved without a clean > break. But there is only one concrete example given (apart of performance concerns) of \"fundamental language problems\", which is an > existence of a single Number primitive So, my questions are:   1. How an existence of a single Number primitive can be a \"fundamental problem\"?   2. Are there other known \"fundamental problems\" in JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "114461", "title": "What are the most common problems with recruiting developers?", "text": "This question was inspired by this closed one. Please only answer if you have experience of recruiting developers, and stick to broad issues, not Daily WTF style stories. Basically, what are the main issues that make it hard to find good developers - either making it hard to get people to apply in the first place, or leading to large numbers of applicants being rejected or refusing an offer. General technical ability, specific technical skills, interpersonal skills, salary demands vs. budget constraints, work too dull, whatever - what are the top development recruitment problems?"}
{"_id": "250505", "title": "Comparing two software versions in C#", "text": "I\u00b4m working on a mod update checker for minecraft, but there is a big problem: The modders and online database that I\u00b4m using for update checks has no standard software versions e.g.:               Local: rv0-stable-10 Online: rv1-alpha-13     Local: R1.1-83 Online: r1.1-81     Local: 1.7.10-0.2.250 (1.7.10 is indicating the Minecraft version) Online: 0.2.274     Local: 1.1.0c Online: 1.1.0e     Local: 2.2.526 Online: 2.2.526-experimental      Is there an algorithm or something like that, that is able to compare such different versions?"}
{"_id": "209463", "title": "If I learn ASP.NET with C#, will that help me learn to build Windows .Net non-web programs in C#?", "text": "If I learn to build web applications with the .NET stack in C#, say MVC, entity framework, linq, etc., will that be of any benefit to me in developing native Windows program executables? I see benefits for using Visual Studio, the language, such as C#, just general experience in programming. But I don't know if there is any direct relationship between asp.net and native programming."}
{"_id": "250507", "title": "Should I as a junior-programmer pursuit a course in C#, even though I did Java?", "text": "I'm a junior-programmer, and at present I am pursuing a course in I.T. which involves getting to know Java and JavaScript. Should I pursuit a course in C# also? I really like programming, but I had a lousy lecturer, at the beginning... But now I've changed lecturer, and beginning to see the light, but he's confined to teaching only Java. I would like to become a much better programmer, should I do it (C#)?"}
{"_id": "104299", "title": "What's the relationship between Java EE and Glassfish?", "text": "I'm confused. Does Glassfish come as part of the Java EE platform? Can you get Glassfish but not Java EE?"}
{"_id": "71619", "title": "Dissidence between program leader and me, what should I do?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to tackle a boss who thinks everybody in this world is wrong except > him? I've been an MMORPG programmer for two years. I have some experiences on limited platforms like cell phones, so I've got a strong awareness of memory optimization. But the programs of my current company eat a lot of memory, neither server side fellows nor client side ones do not care about this matter, maybe spoiled by the memory industry growth. I've reported this issue to our program leader but he had nothing but scorn of my ideas, and he told me that we should do the client memory optimization when the project is almost releasing, and the server side memory occupation is not a problem at all, memory chips are cheap thus we could plug more if it's not enough. I'm really distressed about this parlance. We may waste memory everywhere if the leader don't advocate this optimization. This problem is a problem indeed in our released project that it caused low server FPS and client lag. My project is a still developing one. What should I do? Any suggestions is appreciated."}
{"_id": "21911", "title": "How to estimate cost with very little information?", "text": "I have a client who wants a web app that will let him do the following (as he told me word for word):   * User registration   * Recurring payments for users   * Online conference room reservation I am supposed to give him a cost estimate very fast and I don't have any time to do any deeper requirements analysis! How would you deal with that kind of situation? Should I just give a very broad estimate and work out the exact requirements once he has accepted the estimate? At which point do you usually gather requirements, after or before getting a contract?"}
{"_id": "21917", "title": "Python interview questions", "text": "I am going to interview within two weeks for an internship that would involve Python programming. Can anyone suggest what possible areas should I polish? I am looking for commonly asked stuff in interviews for Python openings. Apart from the fact that I have already been doing the language for over a year now, I fail to perceive what they can ask me. Like for a C or C++ interview, there are lots of questions ranging from reversing of strings to building linked lists, but for a Python interview, I am clueless. Personal experiences and/ or suggestions are welcomed."}
{"_id": "216251", "title": "Does the use of mongodb enhance extending/changing database driven applications?", "text": "When an application is created which need to store data, an SQL database is used very often. So did I in a lot of asp.net applications. The resulting applications have often an ORM like the entity framework and maybe a business layer. So when such an application needs to be extended(let's say you have to add a comment property to an object), you have to change/extend the database, then the ORM and the business layer and so on. To deploy the changes you have to update the target database and the application. I know that things like code first and fluent can make this approach easier. I tried mongodb, I only used the standard driver and I had to extend some objects and all I had to do was changing the code. So it feels that such approaches are much easier to realize when using mongodb. I don't have much experience with larger applications an mongodb. I know that a SQL database or mongodb doesn't fit for all needs and both have their pros and cons. I want to know if my feeling is right, if yes I would choose rather choose mongodb than SQL database."}
{"_id": "99876", "title": "Importance of hobby projects", "text": "I want to know, how important is it to program in your spare time? Is it necessary to work your 9-5 as a programmer and then get home and work on your hobby to become a better programmer? This said, I know you only get better at programming by, well, programming. Do prospective employers take hobby programming into account in an interview or do they ask this just out of curiosity? I feel guilty for not having a hobby project, but everything I can think of doing has already been done. So I am kind of in two minds about this, start something that has already been done or leave it until I come up with something original?"}
{"_id": "167638", "title": "Do server-side sessions violate REST?", "text": "According to Roy Fielding (one of the principle authors of the HTTP specification) in his seminal thesis _Architectural Styles_ when discussing REST, he mentions: > [E]ach request from client to server must contain all of the information > necessary to understand the request, and cannot take advantage of any stored > context on the server. By \"stored context\" he's referring to _application state_ e.g. what the page number for the next page is vs. _resource state_ e.g. any data store, image etc. - which is arguably the _whole point_ of REST. Is it fair to say that most attempts at _pure_ rest (hereby defined as an implementation that conforms to the above thesis) must fail due to their reliance on storing session data on the **server** (persistent or otherwise)? The concept of a session is common - in particular to Web developers - but is it RESTful according to the above definition?"}
{"_id": "167635", "title": "Acceptable memory usage as a function of input size", "text": "I know that if a computation takes linear or linearithmic time based on the size of the input, that's good, and if it takes quadratic time, then that's not so good. However, what about memory usage? Suppose a program takes a file as input and does something with that file. Is it okay for the memory usage to be linear in the size of the file or should it be constant?"}
{"_id": "167633", "title": "Constraints while designing the Java generics", "text": "Java generics look quite different from those available in Scala, although both were designed by Martin Odersky. From my point of view, the design of generics in Java is worse, for instance:   * there is no possibility to specify variance   * one can get around the previous limitation by using wildcards, but this means the burden of specifying variance goes on the caller instead of the library designer   * one cannot use a type constructor in generics What were the constraints in Java that forced Odersky to design this mechanism for generics instead of the more flexible one he devised for Scala? Was he just savvier a few years later or there were actual limitations due to Java?"}
{"_id": "220557", "title": "finding patterns into logs", "text": "I am trying to put together a way to figure out if incidents occurred based on log content. Typically, on log (or db table) would contain a list of transactions composed as follow: {Timestamp} {TransactionID} {Message} As an example problem I have run into, I used this to detect if \"incidents\" occured by running some very basic queries such as:               SELECT Timestamp, count(*)     FROM table     GROUP BY Timestamp     HAVING COUNT(*) > 5     ORDER BY Timestamp      This works OK but has very strong caveats:   * In times of high activity it will return records for nothing (and raising the bar will hide rows that should get returned)   * Let say I have 4 events at timestamp t and 2 events at timestamp (t+1), my query will not return anything even if they should be considered. Unfortunately, aggregating timestamps by time ranges will lead me to the previous point about high activity time. Would someone have some insights on how to tackle the broader problem of incident detection within logs?"}
{"_id": "220558", "title": "Will loop constructs become obsolete?", "text": "By loop constructs I mean for\u2026 and while\u2026 constructs with nested statements. Currently I am coding a tool in Python and decided out of curiosity not to use the regular loops - and rely on filter/map/reduce instead. E.g. now I have code like:               fields = filter(None, map(parse_field, struct_decl.get_children()))      So far it works out fairly well and I like the way I am now designing the code - I have a clean-cut functions (though sometimes I need to use a lambda) and I do think that the resulting code might be more efficient (e.g. the iterations are more naturally independent making them more parallelizable). And I only have to increase indentation for conditionals (though I am thinking about avoiding them as well) These new functions are not unique to Python - e.g. C++ had std::foreach for ages. I wonder if traditional loops will eventually be frown upon in mainstream languages, similar to `goto`?"}
{"_id": "121546", "title": "Is it better to use preprocessor directive or if(constant) statement?", "text": "Let's say we have a codebase that is used for many different costumer, and we have some code in it that relevant only for costumers of type X. Is it better to use preprocessor directives to include this code only in costumer of type X, or to use if statement, to be more clear:               // some code     #if TYPE_X_COSTUMER  = 1     // do some things     #endif     // rest of the code      or               if(TYPE_X_COSTUMER) {         // do some things     }      The arguments I can think about are:   * Preprocessor directive results in smaller code footprint and less branches (on non-optimizing compilers)   * If statements results with code that always compiles, e.g. if someone will make a mistake that will harm the irrelevant code for the project he works on, the error will still appear, and he will not corrupt the code base. Otherwise he will not be aware of the corruption.   * I was always been told to prefer the usage of the processor over the usage of the preprocessor (If this is an argument at all...) What is preferable - when talking about a code base for many different costumers?"}
{"_id": "52123", "title": "Where is the best place to teach myself a language, and which one?", "text": "I do not know any programming languages at all. I will self teach myself and need to know the best place to do so where I can learn from a most basic level. Where is a great place to begin learning a language? What language is best to learn first? Is it silly to learn Ruby first? Here, I came across someone saying that learning some of the higher languages can make you 'lazy' if you learn them first. Like Ruby amongst others. For my first language, my husband is advising me to learn Ruby (for his own personal interests). However, I need some independent advice of how to get started and what language I should learn first. I will eventually learn Ruby and then Rails. Four months ago, my husband ordered a text of objective C because he thought he would take it on. I flipped through and it was clearly starting at a place more advanced than where I am coming from. I have dabbled with a Ruby tutorial and I don't get it. I get what I am putting in is what I get, but I don't understand what is leading up to that. I need to know ALL the rules first. I then looked up computer languages and stared researching binary code which helped a lot, but not where I want to start. I don't have a lot of time right now in my life (with four kids) to go back that far. If I were going to school, that would be different. Any advice you could give is most welcomed."}
{"_id": "105656", "title": "Looking for good books about the theory behind search engines", "text": "I am working on a project that requires that I understand different techniques used by search engines for the web. I have a strong scientific and development background, so I am not afraid of highly technical information. I am looking for all forms of technical information including information on web crawlers, other techniques for acquiring data, methods of data storage and how to query it, etc., etc. I am completely new to the subject and I'm looking for useful resource and books on the subject. Any suggestions are appreciated."}
{"_id": "105655", "title": "How to determine the source of a request in a distributed service system?", "text": "Map/Reduce is a great concept for sorting large quantities of data at once. What to do if you have small parts of data and you need to reduce it all the time? Simple example - choosing a service for request. Imagine we have `10` services. Each provides services host with sets of request `headers` and post/get arguments. Each service declares it has `30` unique keys - `10` per set.               service A:     name     id     ...      Now imagine we have a distributed services host. We have `200` machines with `10` services on each. Each service has `30` unique keys in there sets. but now to find to which service to map the incoming request we make our services post unique values that map to that sets. We can have up to or more than `10 000` such values sets on each machine per each service.               service A machine 1     name = Sam     id = 13245     ...     service A machine 1     name = Ben     id = 33232     ...     ...     service A machine 100     name = Ron     id = 777888     ...      So we get `200 * 10 * 30 * 30 * 10 000 == 18 000 000 000` and we get `500` requests per second on our gateway each containing `45` items `15` of which are just `noise`. And our task is to find a service for request (at least a machine it is running on). On all machines all over cluster for same services we have same rules. We can first select to which service came our request via rules filter `10 * 30`. and we will have `200 * 30 * 10 000 == 60 000 000`. So... `60` mil is definitely a problem... I hope to get on idea of mapping `30 * 10 000` onto some artificial neural network alike Perceptron that outputs `1` if `30` words (some hashes from words) from the request are correct or if less than Perceptron should return 0. And I\u2019ll send each such Perceptron for each service from each machine to gateway. So I would have a map `Perceptron <-> machine` for each service. Can any one tall me if my Perceptron idea is at least \u201csane\u201d? Or normal people do it some other way? Or if there are better ANNs for such purposes?"}
{"_id": "186344", "title": "Source code metrics for measuring code stability?", "text": "Considering how software is developed during a release cycle (implementation, testing, bug fixing, release) I was thinking that one should be able to see some pattern in the lines of code that are changed in the code base; e.g. towards the end of a project, if the code becomes more stable, one should see that fewer lines of code are modified per unit of time. For example, one could see that during the first six months of the project, the average was 200 lines of code per day while during the last month it was 50 lines of code per day, and during the last week (just before the product DVD's were shipped), no lines of code were changed at all (code freeze). This is just an example, and different patterns could emerge according to the development process adopted by a particular team. Anyway, are there any code metrics (any literature on them?) that use the number of modified lines of code per unit of time to measure the stability of a code base? Are they useful to get a feeling if a project is getting somewhere or if it is still far from being ready to release? Are there any tools that can extract this information from a version control system and produce statistics?"}
{"_id": "60030", "title": "Why isn't SSL/TLS built into modern Operating Systems?", "text": "A lot of the basic network protocols that make up the infrastructure of the Internet are built in to most major Operating Systems. For example, TCP, UDP, and DNS are all built into Linux, UNIX and Windows, and are made available to the programmer through low-level system APIs. But when it comes to SSL or TLS, one has to turn to a third-party library such as OpenSSL or Mozilla NSS. SSL is a relatively old protocol, and it's basically an industry standard as ubiquitous as TCP/IP, so why isn't it built into most Operating Systems?"}
{"_id": "143973", "title": "Understanding the problem when things break in production", "text": "**Scenario:**   * You push to production   * The push broke multiple things   * That same build did not break qa or dev   * As a developer, you don't have prod access.    * There is lots of pressure from _above_ to get things working agian. **Specifics:**   * PHP/MVC application that is API-driven in Zend.   * Deployed to a few servers. **My question:** While investigating, lets say I have a hunch that something is wrong. But, I don't know for sure. And, of course, I can't test things in production. If I have a suggested fix based on that hunch, would it be wise to try and apply it and see if it works, before understanding what the problem is?"}
{"_id": "185923", "title": "How can I deal with a team member who dislikes making comments in code?", "text": "One of my team members consistently avoids making comments in his code. His code is not self-documenting, and other programmers have a difficult time understanding his code. I have asked him several times to comment his code, however he just gives excuses or claims that he will do it later. His concern is that adding comments will take too much time and delay the projects. What argument can I present to him to convince him to properly document his code? On that note, am I wrong to focus on the code comments or is this indicative of a larger problem which should be addressed?"}
{"_id": "185922", "title": "What the right pattern to Use here", "text": "scenario: I have an entity called `Member`. Members fall into multiple types. Some types are below.   * `Supporter`   * `Volunteer`   * `Sponsor`   * `Player` I can create class for each type and inherit from the base `Member` entity. But when a `Member` has more than 1 type in a given time, it is not the right way. can I use **decorator pattern** to achieve this intent? Or what the best pattern to get this work? **EDIT :** Language I use is C# Also different Member types can have additional methods, for example, `Sponsor` can have its own methods as `Donate()`, Or the `Volunteer` can have a method `Subscribe()` and so on. these thing have to be considered."}
{"_id": "146336", "title": "A word for storing pre calculated-constructed data", "text": "I precalculate data and store it in a static table and call this process 'caching' but that doesn't seem correct based on a quick dictionary search (hiding, concealing) I'm just saving the data statically to avoid the process time to make the calculation. Is there a more appropriate term/word? I think the key words here are 'static' and 'calculated' ## Probable Answers: ## As a noun (the actual output from such a process): Lookup Table ## As a verb (the process of getting there): Tabling"}
{"_id": "113169", "title": "How can a developer test himself for starting a development company on his own?", "text": "Ya !! you can say \"out of work\" people have these thoughts, but then, what can one do :-P . My question is somewhat deep thought. How can someone evaluate himself as a developer and manager to understand whether or not, he is fit for starting a commercial venture on his own. Starting a development company doesn't need too much of an investment and neither it requires a big team. If one is capable developer, then he can definitely get the ball rolling on day one. And may be that's the reason why there are so many freelancers around the world. Doubts are severe thing and once they creep-in, they make travel tough. So, can there be some things or self-assessment kinda test that one must evaluate and pass to boost his idea of development venture."}
{"_id": "102925", "title": "Using Fonts in your Applications", "text": "When writing applications for software, specifically mobile devices, will there be a problem with using any specific type of fonts (copyright/patent issues)? If so, how can we avoid this possible problems? Will it then make a difference if the app was a paid version or a free version?"}
{"_id": "212552", "title": "Can all business logic be decomposed as a (declarative) state diagram on simple crud operations and conditionals?", "text": "This seems an extreme question probably but I'm wondering anyhow: Can all business logic be decomposed as a (declarative) state diagram on simple crud operations and conditionals? Already a _lot_ of lower-level domain logic _can_ , and ofen _is_ declaratively defined with ORM-mappings for instance, handling things like:   * domain-model schema   * validation   * uniqueness constraints   * ACL/ Role-based authorization, etc Of course higher-level domain logic exists that often involves coordinating between multiple Domain Objects. However, it seems ultimately:   * This high level business logic really is just a workflow that can be modeled as a state-machine (or probably more extensive as a extended petrinet)    * in which all branching is based on conditional logic on some state (i.e: domain object attributes)    * the outcome would be a statechange, i.e: a change to domain object attributes (simple crud operations).  If this is the case, could all domain logic be declaratively defined, given a DSL that would support the above workflow, conditional, and CRUD constructs? If you dismiss this braindump please be insightful while doing so :)"}
{"_id": "142864", "title": "Writing low latency Java", "text": "Are there any Java-specific techniques (things which wouldnt apply to C++) for writing low latency code, in Java? I often see Java low latency roles and they ask for experience writing low latency Java- which sometimes seems a little bit of an oxymoron. The only think I could think of is experience with JNI, outsourcing I/O calls to native code. Also possibly using the disruptor pattern, but thats not an actual technology. Are there any Java specific tips for writing low latency code? I am aware there is a Real Time Java Spec, but I have been warned real-time is not the same as low latency...."}
{"_id": "251361", "title": "How does one store a website's holding/maintenance page in Git?", "text": "I'm trying to tidy up the Git repositories for the few sites that I maintain. For each site, I usually create a separate branch in the repo that holds a \"maintenance page\" or \"holding page\", which I checkout if I need to take the site down for any reason. This branch is usually called `maintenance_page`. Normal development is done against `master` and the live site is also deployed from there. Whilst the site code in the `maintenance_page` branch has the same styling as the main (live) site in `master`, it doesn't really share any _history_ with the master branch - think of it like a mini version of the live site, but with it's own basically unrelated codebase. From time to time, changes that I make to the styling, images, etc. in `master` would be useful to have in the `maintenance_page` branch and in these situations, I usually `git cherry-pick` from `master` to `maintenance_page`. I've been working with this setup for a while now, however, I'm conscious that the whole idea of having the two branches (`master` and `maintenance_page`) coexisting in the same repository, but not having anything _really_ in common with each other is not really the \"Git way of doing things\". I've thought of storing the `maintenance_page` branch in it's own repo (as it has very little in common with the master branch), however this just seems to complicate the administration of the repositories and also detracts from the simplicity of being able to simply checkout the `maintenance_page` branch, when I need to take the site down elegantly. I've had a good read around (see here) (and here) to try to find out how other people handle this kind of thing, but I'm strangely unable to come up with any pointers on how other achieve this. Does anyone have any suggestions on better ways to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "194339", "title": "Frame Pointer Explanation", "text": "In MIPS assembly, there is a register for the stack pointer, and another register for the frame pointer. What is the frame ponter and what is its purpose. How does it differ from the stack pointer?"}
{"_id": "189093", "title": "Why sequential cohesion for operations in a method is not a good idea?", "text": "I read from the seminal Code Complete book that method statements that require to be executed in order passing parameter from one to the next is a code smell and is an example of a _sequential cohesion_. Why is this not a good idea? A contrived example of a sequential cohesion:               public Part createPart(input) {             PartOne partOne = computePartOne(input);             PartTwo partTwo = computePartTwo(partOne);             PartThree partThree = computePartThree(partTwo);             PartsBuilder partsBuilder = new PartsBuilder();             return partsBuilder.add(partOne).add(partTwo).add(partThree).build();         }      Here is the exert: > Several other kinds of cohesion are normally considered to be less than > ideal: > > _Sequential cohesion_ exists when a routine contains operations that must be > performed in a specific order, that share data from step to step, and that > don't make up a complete function when done together. > > An example of sequential cohesion is a routine that, given a birth date, > calculates an employee's age and time to retirement. If the routine > calculates the age and then uses that result to calculate the employee's > time to retirement, it has sequential cohesion. If the routine calculates > the age and then calculates the time to retirement in a completely separate > computation that happens to use the same birth-date data, it has only > communicational cohesion. > > How would you make the routine functionally cohesive? You'd create separate > routines to compute an employee's age given a birth date and compute time to > retirement given a birth date. The time-to-retirement routine could call the > age routine. They'd both have functional cohesion. Other routines could call > either routine or both routines."}
{"_id": "210309", "title": "What if my nested class extends another class from another package?", "text": "I'm in doubts this design is OK, it may be there is a way to do it better? The case is that I need a class which would be used in one and only class and that's it. But, this class needs to inherit from another one, which is in another package. This doesn't sound right as for me.               public class User {          private class SpecificParser extends BaseParser {} // BaseParser.java is in another package          }      I would simply create `SpecificParser` as a separate class, but don't want to do that also because the only consumer of it is a `User` class."}
{"_id": "34547", "title": "Adding complexity by generalising: how far should you go?", "text": "Reference question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303813/help-with- interview-question The above question asked to solve a problem for an NxN matrix. While there was an easy solution, I gave a more general solution to solve the more general problem for an NxM matrix. A handful of people commented that this generalisation was bad because it made the solution more complex. One such comment is voted +8. Putting aside the hard-to-explain voting effects on SO, there are two types of complexity to be considered here:   1. Runtime complexity, i.e. how fast does the code run   2. Code complexity, i.e. how difficult is the code to read and understand The question of runtime complexity is something that requires a better understanding of the input data today and what it might look like in the future, taking the various growth factors into account where necessary. The question of code complexity is the one I'm interested in here. By generalising the solution, we avoid having to rewrite it in the event that the constraints change. However, at the same time it can often result in complicating the code. In the reference question, the code for NxN is easy to understand for any competent programmer, but the NxM case (unless documented well) could easily confuse someone coming across the code for the first time. So, my question is this: Where should you draw the line between generalising and keeping the code easy to understand?"}
{"_id": "210305", "title": "External sqlite db file from sdcard in android", "text": "I just searched for the same but didn't get the answers. What I have is a `db` file which is around `100MB`. I have saved the `db` file in `sdcard` . Through this `db` file I'm going to populate the contents for the android app. I can read the db file using like below.               File dbfile = new File(\"/sdcard/Your_db_File.db\" );      SQLiteDatabase  db = SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(dbfile, null);      What I'm concerned is about the memory. I have read like in `assets` it has some memory limitations. I'm just worried like will `100MB` of db file in sdcard or external memory is a harm or is it OK to have `100MB` db file? Or is there any limitations for sqlite db file in external storage as well? Suggestions are appreciated."}
{"_id": "6832", "title": "Are programmers who read programming-related books still rare?", "text": "Both in _Code Complete_ by Steve McConnell and _The Pragmatic Programmer_ by Andrew Hunt & David Thomas, they allege that most programmers don't read programming-related books as a habit, or at least not often enough. Does this still hold? Are programmers who do read such books still rare? I must admit that only quite recently did I start reading (and now I can't stop; it's burning a whole in my wallet!). Before I was actually against it and argued that it's better to write programs than to waste time reading about it. Now I realize that the best outcome, for me at least, is to do both. **EDIT:** I actually meant _any_ kind of books that on way or another was related to programming; be it either on a particular language, technology, pattern, paradigm - _anything_ as long as it may benefit you as a programmer. I was just referring to _Code Complete_ and _The Pragmatic Programmer_ because that's where I read that programmers don't usually read such books. It would have looked stranged if the title just read \"Are programmers who read books still rare?\""}
{"_id": "193227", "title": "Best way to lazy load blob from database in Java?", "text": "I have a database table that stores uploaded files (excel files) in a blob field. Each record contains the uploader, upload-time, the upload ID (primary key) and of-course, the blob itself. At some point, I need to get that data from the database do something with it. Currently, I have a POJO which just mirrors the table structure and stores the file in a byte array, ie;               class Upload {         private String ID;         private ByteArray[] data;         //Other fields and methods ommited for brevity     }      As I am sure you will agree, this leaves the application open to memory issues if the file is particularly large. In reality, this file is unlikely to get so large as to cause a problem, but this definitely can't be considered a good design. I have been trying to find what the best practices are for lazy-loading blob data but I am having trouble finding material that isn't about using particular application frameworks. I am thinking I need to lose the 'data' field and just have a method, ie. getData(), that starts a new DB transaction to retrieve the blob returns an InputStream to it? See below for example, please let me know if there is a better way to do this..               public InputStream getData(){         //Construct and execute SQL query.         Blob blob = rs.getBlob(1);         return blob.getBinaryStream();     }"}
{"_id": "6834", "title": "What are the most impressive tricks an IDE could pull off with the code?", "text": "Modern IDEs have a lot of tricks up their sleeves to help with code writing, refactoring, searching. All those are very helpful, but rarely any of them looks like a real \"magic\" and makes me think \"Wow! How did it figure that out?\" Can you name any impressive IDE code automation (or other) features that blew your mind first time you saw them?"}
{"_id": "166618", "title": "What are the pros and cons for having a dedicated T-SQL developer on your team?", "text": "Our T-SQL developer just gave his two weeks notice. We have been asked if our team of four developers would like an additional developer. We are offered to do our own T-SQL / Entitiy Framework development or we could get another dedicated T-SQL developer. What are the pros and cons with having a dedicated T-SQL developer on the team? Which would you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "193229", "title": "Entity Framework design help", "text": "I'm after some advice as to whether I'm on the right track with what I'm doing. I'm developing a WPF app where I need to retrieve a large graph of entities, work on that graph in the UI (display, CRUD), then persist it all back to the database when the user eventually clicks Save. I've used the DbContext POCO code template for my entities. An added complication is that the UI needs to provide undo/redo functionality, and this is where I started to come a bit unstuck. One of the problems with POCO is that you don't get \"association fix-up\", so when you add a new entity you must remember to set up the relationship on both sides (i.e. `customer.Orders.Add(myOrder);` and `myOrder.Customer = customer;`). Alternatively I could just add the new entity to its parent collection then call DetectChanges(), which has the effect of fixing-up the other side. Either way, there are a couple of things to do when creating a new entity. Deletions are also tricky to handle, not just in POCO but EF in general. To delete an entity I have to call DbContext.Set<>.Remove(entity), but it doesn't feel right having the UI calling into the BLL (my UI view model holds a reference to a BLL class, which in turn holds an instance of the DbContext, ensuring the context is alive from initial retrieval to subsequent saving, giving me change-tracking). Alternatively I could implement an \"IsDeleted\" flag on my entities, but this will complicate many areas of my application - I would have to remember to filter out entities that are pending deletion, and handle deletions manually in my business tier. Back to the undo/redo - if I need to undo a creation, I guess I just need to remove the entity from its parent and set the parent property to null. As for undoing a deletion, I'm not sure what I need to do here. I'm guessing I have to restore the entity's state to what it was before the deletion, _and_ fix-up both sides of the relationship again? **Edit** \\- I've since found that undoing a creation is not straightforward. Although I've removed both sides of the relationship, the context still \"knows\" about the new entity. I guess I would have to detach it, but again it doesn't feel right having to call through to the BLL to perform such operations. The only other solution I can think of to all this is to manage the graph in a \"detached\" state, and implement a flag on my entities to track its state (new/updated/deleted). I would then have to manually manage adding/attaching everything to the context when the graph is passed back to the BLL during saving."}
{"_id": "113782", "title": "How should I organize the words of a sentence for better outputs/maintenance and performance?", "text": "Having this sentence (consider many sentences in the future) > David Henderson Houston patented the first roll film for cameras in 1881. I can make questions like   1\\. Who patented the roll film?   2\\. When was the first roll film for cameras patented?   3\\. What did David Houston patent (in 1881)? The answer will return some or all of the sentence above in a format of answering the who, when and what. My question (and what I am trying to achieve) is to separate this sentence in such a way that I can save it in a DB, smartly and efficiently. I thought of editing this sentence leaving only the main keywords/facts; let's say `David Houston patented the roll film in 1881.` After this, I thought I have to organize the words. So a solution may be to create tables for nouns, verbs, adjectives... separating the sentence in the correct table. Every word will have its unique ID. In the table `answers`, the answer will be saved in a form like 2,23,64,4 every ID is a word... and with some agorithm and sql magic (this is not my point now) it will return the `David Houston patented the roll film in 1881` on the question `who`. What do you think of my thinking of separating the sentences like I wrote above? What are your thoughts on how I should organize the words to access them through a database? Am I entirely off the correct path?"}
{"_id": "187434", "title": "Count true array elements", "text": "In my code (Python+numpy or Matlab, but issue can apply to any array programming language), I often need to count the number of elements in an array where the elements are true. Usually, I implement this as `sum(x>0.5)`, but this may be considered improper. See _Is it correct to add booleans in order to count the number of true values in a vector?_. Numpy has `count_nonzero`, but if there is no special-purpose function, what would be the proper way to write this? For example, in `Matlab`, I can either write `sum(x>.5)` or `length(find(x>0.5))`. The former is slightly faster but may be considered improper (see above). Are there any other alternatives for counting the number of true values in an array, and what should be my criteria for selecting one? (In a low-level language, one would write an explicit for-loop, but that is an extremely inefficient way to implement this in a high-level array programming language)"}
{"_id": "187437", "title": "The array class in C# - Implementation questions", "text": "I am studying the `Array` class in C#. The following is the implementation of `System.Array` class:               [SerializableAttribute]      [ComVisibleAttribute(true)]      public abstract class Array : ICloneable, IList, ICollection, IEnumerable, IStructuralComparable, IStructuralEquatable       I have two questions regarding this:   1. I have read that `System.Array` class is derived from `System.Object`. But why is this not seen in the above definition?   2. ICloneable is implemented in order to allow the Array to be Deep-Copied in case of XML serialization. ICloneable provides only one method - Clone(). What is the advantage of implementing ICloneable explicitly? Why could not Clone() method be directly implemented? Is this a type of providing a Marking Interface pattern where a particular Interface is implemented only to convey a certain characteristic of the class?"}
{"_id": "187436", "title": "Nested Enum type in C++ or C#?", "text": "I've come across a recurring issue in a few of my recent projects in which I find myself using enums to represent state, or type, or something else, and I need to check against a few conditions. Some of these conditions span multiple enums, so I end up with a load of logic in `switch` and `if` blocks, which I don't like. This is a particular problem when having to cast things to and from the enum, like when the enum is being used to check an int that you're getting from a web request or a calculation. Is there something in C++ or C# that can be used as a nested enum? Something like this:               enum Animal     {         Mammal         {             Cat,             Dog,             Bear         },         Bird         {             Pigeon,             Hawk,             Ostrich         },         Fish         {             Goldfish,             Trout,             Shark         },         Platypus    //srsly what is that thing     };      Obviously, it may or may not be declared like that, but you get the idea. The point is that in code you could use it like `Animal thisAnimal = Animal.Mammal.Cat` and then later check `if (thisAnimal.IsMember(Animal.Mammal))` or something like that. I've seen Java's EnumSet, and found them pretty useful, but I don't think they're an exact match for the functionality I'm after. For this example, you'd have to declare an enum with all the animals at one level, and then add them all to the relevant sets. That would mean that when using the original enum, higher-level things like `Mammal` or `Invertebrate` would appear on the same \"level\" as something very specific like `African Swallow`, which would imply that they were (to some degree) interchangeable, which isn't true. In theory, a nested structure as above might allow you to specify the level of \"specificness\" needed, so you could get this:               enum Animal::Kingdom.Order.Family.Genus.Species     { /*stuff*/ }          Organism::Kingdom.Phylum.Class.Order.Family thisThing;          thisThing = Animalia.Cordata;                               //compiler error     thisThing = Animalia.Chordata.Aves.Passeri.Hirundinidae;    //compiles OK      Does a structure like this exist anywhere? If not, how might I build one for C++ and/or C# and have it remain as generic and re-usable as possible?"}
{"_id": "171201", "title": "Considerations when designing a file type", "text": "I'm about to start writing a process for saving some data structure from code in to a file of some proprietary, as-yet-undefined type. However, I've never designed a file type or structure before.   * Are there any things, generally speaking, that I should consider before starting my design?   * Are there any accepted good practices here? Bad practices I should avoid?   * Any absolute do's and don'ts?   * Can anybody recommend any good reading on this topic?"}
{"_id": "33663", "title": "Delphi doesn't have Lambda Expressions and I'm a Delphi programmer, what am I missing out on?", "text": "I'm nearly clueless as to what a lambda expression is, but I have a hard time believing that I couldn't finagle something to the same effect in Delphi (albeit with 900% more code). What is the big advantage of lambda expressions, what am I missing out on and is there anything with the post Delphi 2009 RTL improvements that comes close to emulating the powers of C# in this regard?"}
{"_id": "18265", "title": "Where do you get new software ideas from?", "text": "The world of software creation is very competitive. I've heard it said to be successful you need to be the first one with the idea. Everyone knows how Bill Gates created IBM DOS on one machine while simultaneously building MS-DOS on another machine (and we all know how that turned out). In order to be the first to come up with a new software product, where do you go looking for fresh ideas? **Update 06/26/13:** Reworded this question in an attempt to get it reopened. Bill Gates developed MS-DOS at the same time he was hired to develop IBM DOS. As a programming community, we would all gain by understanding how to think up great ideas for software. As programmer we tend to get stuck in our thinking... it's refreshing to hear how fellow programmers busted out and came up with their ideas. It's not very likely that we will have an MS-DOS opportunity like Bill Gates. Please vote to reopen."}
{"_id": "115781", "title": "What advantages would the Twitter streaming API provide?", "text": "I'm in the very early stages of writing an application to mine through Twitter data looking for certain types of information. I've been using Twitterizer, which I have found effective in downloading the information (it provides interfaces to the \"old\" REST based API, and the newer streaming one). This would only be for personal use, so I don't think I would max out the number of API calls per hour on the old API, and it seems as though the streaming API is slightly slower. On the surface, it seems like the REST would suit me better, but I'm wondering if I'm missing any hidden advantages to using the streaming API that could benefit my application."}
{"_id": "59149", "title": "Programming in the Security Field?", "text": "Is there such a market for programmers who are interested in security (exploits, antivirus, firewalls, etc)? Reason I ask is that I really love software development and I am also interested in security. I'm wondering if I can have a career in this field. If there is such a market, what kinds of concepts and topics should I learn? Any particular languages or operating system? I know some basic networking concepts, C, Unix.."}
{"_id": "175283", "title": "Is there an API for determining congressional districts?", "text": "I'm looking to determine the congressional district based on an address my user is providing. This will avoid having the user to look it up themselves. Does an API of this sort exist? **Note** Through my attempts to find one, I've only come across these:   * http://www.govtrack.us/developers/api   (not sure how to submit an an address or zip code however) > The following resources are available in the API > > ...Bills and resolutions in the U.S. Congress since 1973 (the 93rd > Congress). > > ...A (bill, person) pair indicating cosponsorship, with join and withdrawn > dates. > > ...Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents since the founding of the nation. > > ...Terms held in office by Members of Congress and U.S. Presidents. Each > term corresponds with an election, meaning each term in the House covers two > years (one 'Congress'), as President four years, and in the Senate six years > (three 'Congresses'). > > ...Roll call votes in the U.S. Congress since 1789. How people voted is > accessed through the Vote_voter API. > > ...How people voted on roll call votes in the U.S. Congress since 1789. See > the Vote API. Filter on the vote field to get the results of a particular > vote...   * http://www.opencongress.org/api   (seems to be a way to find congress information, but not districts) > This API provides programmers with structured access to all the data on > OpenCongress, everything from official bill info to news and blog coverage > to user-generated votes on bills and much more... > > This API defaults to returning XML. All queries can also return JSON...   * https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/opendems-discuss/CeKyi_aANaE   (similar question, no resolution) > I've been looking over Open Dems, and seeing what's exposed at this point > and what isn't. I work with Democrats Abroad, and am interested in using > stuff from the lab for their sites. > > I quickly looked over the Precinct API, which does both more and less than > what I'd need. An ideal resource would be any way of translating addresses > into CD at the very least (getting state district data would be good as > well), since that would make it easier for DA's membership to make a > difference in races like last month's NY26 race... **Update** I'm looking at the source for the govtrack.us website and the 'doGeoCode' function may be useful. view-source:http://www.govtrack.us/congress/members If no one has any suggestions, I will try to go off of what they are doing."}
{"_id": "15094", "title": "A measure of development speed", "text": "I've seen a lot of tests measuring execution speed of programming languages, but I've never found tests measuring development speed. I've heard development speed is increased when working with dynamic languages, but is there any proof of that ? I'm not trying to say dynamic languages aren't efficient, but I'd kind of like to see the results of a scientific study, if such a thing exists. Even better would be informations on maintenance facility. Are some languages easier to debug than others ? EDIT : I'm mostly interested in the differences between two languages that are close in syntax. For example, I guess programming in C will usually be slower than programming in Java; but is programming in Java faster than programming in C# ?"}
{"_id": "15096", "title": "Is comparing cloud computing to main frames a bad analogy?", "text": "They both can be seen as centralized processing, but from a developer's perspective is it returning us to the days when access to computers you could program yourself were limited and expensive? To me that was the problem the PC solved. Heard this on http://thisdeveloperslife.com/ 1.0.6 Abstraction."}
{"_id": "231524", "title": "messaging class and global state", "text": "This is a front end project that is using socket.io for all communication with the server. This allows for push which is good, but recently we have been asked to provide a pause button. The pause button is intended on stopping the data from changing out on the ui if the user does not wish it to do so automatically. We currently have a class that wraps the web-socket and provides very minimal wrapping of socket.io. The problem is, we can't just turn off the socket. User interactions need to continue to work, and different views have different specs as to what messages need to be ignored. Ultimately its a big global boolean no matter how you slice it, and that sucks. I would rather not have it truly be a global variable, so here are the idea's I've had so far: * * * **Narsty Global**                 // A non pausable listener       socket.on('myEvent', function(data){           // do thing       });            // A pausable listener       socket.on('myPausable', function(data){           if(window.isPaused){ return false; }           // do thing       });      * * * **Passed Value**                 // A non pausable listener       socket.on('myEvent', function(data){           // do thing       });            // A pausable listener       socket.on('myPausable', function(data, isPaused){           if(isPaused){ return false; }           // do thing       });      * * * **Wrapped Method**                 // A non pausable listener       socket.on('myEvent', function(data){           // do thing       });            // A pausable listener       socket.onLive('myPausable', function(data){           // do thing       });      * * * **Separate Class**                 // A non pausable listener       socket.on('myEvent', function(data){           // do thing       });            // A pausable listener       liveData.on('myPausable', function(data){           // do thing       });      Currently there is ALOT of messaging taking place over the socket, and there is only going to be one 'PAUSE' toggle on the UI, so this needs to be done carefully. Advice and best practices are appreciated. Thanks folks."}
{"_id": "123023", "title": "What is Domain Driven Development in practical terms?", "text": "I heard about Domain Driven Development from a developer in the area. He talked it up like it was just about the silver bullet to changing requirements. I read the wiki. Still not too clear. What is \"3D\" in practical terms? Is it really that amazing that now UML class diagramming is just obsolete?"}
{"_id": "146800", "title": "Equivalent of common IntelliJ actions in vim for C development", "text": "I am attempting to move from IntelliJ IDEA to vim, primarily for C development. What are the equivalent of the following common IntelliJ features/tasks in vim (and what plugin is required if any)? **Source Navigation** 1) Find file in project by name (Ctrl + Shift + N) 2) Navigate to [Function] Declaration (Ctrl + B / Ctrl + Right Click) 3) File Structure Pop-up (Ctrl + F12) 4) \"Forward\" (Ctrl + Alt + Right) 5) \"Back\" (Ctrl + Alt + Left) **Refactoring** Note that for the following, I don't want just \"find/replace.\" If I change a single function definition, I want all occurrences of that function updated in the project (as a single command). 6) Rename File / Function / Variable (Shift + F6) 7) Change Function Signature (Ctrl + F6) 8) Inline Function (Ctrl + Alt + N) 9) \"Safe Delete\" (Alt + Delete) Safe Delete helps you delete a file / function / variable without breaking your compile. So, (for C) you could delete a *.h file from your project, with the operation listing the other files that import functions defined in that header and giving you the chance to cancel the delete. **Other** 10) Show Usages (Ctrl + Alt + F7) This is different from just \"grep\" as it gives you the option to exclude matches in comments, documentation, etc. 11) Surround with... (Ctrl + Alt + T) In IntelliJ, I most commonly use this to surround method calls with \"try/catch/finally.\" Perhaps not something that is needed much in C development? 12) Quick Documentation (Ctrl + Q) IntelliJ pops up the JavaDoc in a tiny window, giving you the option to select from possible matches (if more than one). Here, I would expect equivalent except in a newly-opened split buffer. 13) Using Control-Space for keyword completion."}
{"_id": "123027", "title": "Split git repository in two?", "text": "Nearly a year ago, I started writing a game. I was just messing around at the time, but now I'm pretty serious about it. As it's grown, it's taken on the responsibilities of a major game engine, as well as the game logic of an actual game. At some point, I decided I should break the two out, and designate a game and a game engine. I kept this separation in mind as I programmed for about the last 8 months, but I never did actually separate them. Now I intend to finally move forward with this. The project is all in one git repository right now. I'd like to have two repositories; one for the game engine and one for the game. I have two concrete questions: 1) How should I split the repository? I'd like to maintain history, so I'm thinking I'll just cp the repository, prune the two, and then check in. Any better ideas? 2) Should I add my game assets (models, images, sounds..) to the game repository, or should I make a third for these? I have quite a few assets, and many are subject to change, so it could create an inconvenient amount of noise."}
{"_id": "157265", "title": "Can I use CodeSynthesis XSD (C++/Tree mapping) together with a GPLv3-licensed library?", "text": "Is it possible to write an open source project that uses generated code from CodeSynthesis XSD (C++/Tree) and then link it to a third-party library that is licensed under the **GPL version 3**? Some background information: CodeSynthesis XSD is licensed under the **GPL version 2** but with an extra FLOSS exception (http://www.codesynthesis.com/projects/xsd/FLOSSE). C++ source code generated from CodeSynthesis XSD (C++/Tree) needs to be linked against **Xerces** (http://xerces.apache.org/xerces-c/) that is licensed under the **Apache License 2.0**. **Update** I posted a similar question on the xsd-users mailing list two years ago but I didn't fully understand the answers. In that email thread, I wrote: _I think it is the GPL version 3 software that doesn't allow itself be linked to software that can't be \"relicensed\" to GPL version 3 ( for instance GPL version 2 software ). That would also include XSD as the FLOSS exception doesn't give permission to \"relicense\" XSD to GPL version 3._"}
{"_id": "68364", "title": "Is a genetic algorithm a correct approach to this problem?", "text": "I am trying to calculate a set of items that produce the highest damage output in a video game. There are about 50 different items, of which you can choose 6. There are all sorts of conditions that each item creates. I am writing a small app in javascript that calculates your damage based on the items. Could I utilize a genetic algorithm to find out which item combinations are the strongest? Or is brute force acceptable for this size of a problem? Or is there another way?"}
{"_id": "142363", "title": "Where to start a software Analysis & Designing?", "text": "I am starting a big database-oriented software project to develop. I have full picture of the software in mind. I need to do the designing using UML. As there are various tools in UML such as usecase, class diagram, statechart, component diagram, deployment diagram, activity diagram and so on, where should I start my designing. Should it be from Usecase or from Class Diagram, or from State Chart? Which approach will help me to put my mind's picture in to design?"}
{"_id": "47402", "title": "What is the best toolkit for writing long technical texts?", "text": "I'm looking for a toolkit in the form of one or a couple of applications that can be used to write long technical texts (such as an introduction to a programming language).   * What applications (or combination of) are suitable for this?   * How should said applications be setup (for example how would one setup MS Word to best fit writing a technical text)?   * How do you deal with source code, syntax coloring and formatting?   * In the case of it being several applications, how do you interact between them?"}
{"_id": "142361", "title": "Is there a more efficient way to filter large arrays than preg_match()?", "text": "I have a log that our web application builds. Each month it contains around 16,000 entries of a string with about the average sentence worth of text. To filter/search through these in our admin panel the script uses `preg_match()` but this seems to be taking ages and timing out on the 30sec limit. I have isolated that it is indeed the `preg_match()` that causes the time out. Is there a more efficient way to search through values in a large array for a users input?"}
{"_id": "189976", "title": "LOOP-computable functions", "text": "I was just reading a chapter about LOOP-computable functions and I have the following question: Is it possible to numerate every LOOP program with an algorithm? Formally: Is it possible to have a LOOP program M, s.t M(n,m)=P_n(m) (input is n,m. output is P_n(m), where P_n is the numeration of the loop programs)."}
{"_id": "176970", "title": "Application workflow", "text": "I am in the planning process for a new application, the application will be written in PHP (using the Symfony 2 framework) but I'm not sure how relevant that is. The application will be browser based, although there will eventually be API access for other systems to interact with the data stored within the application, again probably not relavent at this point. The application manages SIM cards for lots of different providers - each SIM card belongs to a single provider but a single customer might have many SIM cards across many providers. The application allows the user to perform actions against the SIM card - for example Activate it, Barr it, Check on its status etc Some of the providers provide an API for doing this - so a single access point with multiple methods eg `activateSIM`, `getStatus`, `barrSIM` etc. The method names differ for each provider and some providers offer methods for extra functions that others don't. Some providers don't have APIs but do offer these methods by sending emails with attachments - the attachments are normally a CSV file that contains the SIM reference and action required - the email is processed by the provider and replied to once the action has been complete. To give you an example - the front end of my application will provide a customer with a list of SIM cards they own and give them access to the actions that are provided by the provider of each specific SIM card - some methods may require extra data which will either be stored in the backend or collected from the user frontend. Once the user has selected their action and added any required data I will handle the process in the backend and provide either instant feedback, in the case of the providers with APIs, or start the process off by sending an email and waiting for its reply before processing it and updating the backend so that next time the user checks the SIM card its status is correct (ie updated by a backend process). My reason for creating this question is because I'm stuck !! I'm confused about how to approach the actual workflow logic. I was thinking about creating a Provider Interface with the most common methods `getStatus`, `activateSIM` and `barrSIM` and then implementing that interface for each provider. So `class Provider1 implements Provider` \\- Then use a Factory to create the required class depending on user selected SIM card and invoking the method selected. This would work fine if all providers offered the same methods but they don't - there are a subset which are common but some providers offer extra methods - how can I implement that flexibly ? How can I deal with the processes where the workflow is different - ie some methods require and API call and value returned and some require an email to be sent and the next stage of the process doesn't start until the email reply is recieved ... Please help ! (I hope this is a readable question and that this is the correct place to be asking) **Update** I guess what I'm trying to avoid is a big `if` or `switch` / `case` statement - some design pattern that gives me a flexible approach to implementing this kind of fluid workflow .. anyone ?"}
{"_id": "142365", "title": "URL Encryption vs. Encoding", "text": "At the moment non/semi sensitive information is sent from one page to another via GET on our web application. Such as user ID or page number requested etc. Sometimes slightly more sensitive information is passed such as account type, user privileges etc. [EDIT: I may have worded this wrong, I'm not passing sessionID or actual user privileges, just simple NON-sensitive data - I just don't want the user to see the words easily, does not matter if a more technical user can read it as they cannot do any damage and cause security concerns. _readthe chat with @delnan_] We currently use base64_encode() and base64_decode() just to de-humanise the information so the end user is not concerned. Is it good practice or common place for a URL GET to be encrypted rather than simply PHP base64_encoded? Perhaps using something like, this:               $encrypted = base64_encode(mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, md5($key), $string, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, md5(md5($key))));          $decrypted = rtrim(mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_RIJNDAEL_256, md5($key), base64_decode($encrypted), MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, md5(md5($key))), \"\\0\");      Is this too much or too power hungry for something as common as the URL GET."}
{"_id": "67351", "title": "Can you get in trouble using programming forums or Q&As at work?", "text": "**Can you get in trouble using programming forums at work?** I'd like to know when it is an acceptable practice and how much is **too much** when it's going to using StackOverflow, or Programmers.SE, for example. Developers and managers may have a different perspectives when it comes to that."}
{"_id": "115252", "title": "Why is Scheme my first language in university?", "text": "I hear about C, C++, Java every day whenever people starting talking about computer science, but in my first computer science class we are asked to write in Scheme (DrRacket). Why is that? What differences will this make to my future understanding of programming? UPDATE: I have finished my first term, but not completely done with Scheme. In my second term (which is now) we got in to C programming. It was frustrated to learn pointers at first, but now I feel much better. There's not much more to say than that. I'm trying to teach myself Java (or C++?) for the OOP part which I'm missing. So far, I still like functional programming best. Lambda is just fascinating. :)"}
{"_id": "144400", "title": "Generalize, or Fix The Problem?", "text": "Which of these two programmers is \"better\", from a managerial standpoint? The first programmer is Albert. You tell Al to make a system that will pass you the salt at the dinner table. He does it in less than a day. It works fine. The second programmer is Ben. Ben is _told_ to make a program to pass the salt, and after two days, he's still working on it. ![The General Problem](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FZKx7.png) It will save time in the long run...if you need pepper, ketchup, etc. There isn't any clear indication that there will be a need for this, but it's not improbable. Who's the better programmer to have working under you, as a manager?"}
{"_id": "115250", "title": "How to allow filtering Films in my app intuitively? (GUI design)", "text": "I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this but I wrote an app that shows all the movies in one's computer with the appropriate info such as genre, director, rating, etc. I am wondering how can I make it so that the user can filter them based on criteria such as genre, rating, etc? Most of them are enums, and I was thinking of using a `ComboBox` for these but they should be able to specify more than 1 genre. So should I use `ListBox` controls for these? Then it will be harder to present all these options in listboxes. I haven't seen any examples of apps doing similar things, that's why I am not sure. Any ideas? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FXk8Q.png)"}
{"_id": "144405", "title": "Designing complex query builders in java/jpa/hibernate", "text": "I need to build complex sql queries programatically, based on large filter conditions. For example, below are few sample/hypothitical filter conditions, based on which i need to fetch users Country: india States: Andhra Pradesh(AP), Gujarat(GUJ), karnataka(KTK) Districts: All districts in AP except 3 district, 5 any districts from GUJ, all district from KTK except 1 district Cities: All cities in AP, all cities except few, include only 50 specific cities from KTK Villages: similar conditions like above with varies combinations... Currently, we have a query builder, which is very complex in nature, and not easy to modify/re-factory for improvements. So, thinking of complete re-design of it. Any suggesations on how to build this kind of complex query builders programmatically using some best practices/deisgn patterns?"}
{"_id": "115254", "title": "Exploiting creativity with \"free time\"", "text": "Some companies have discovered, to their surprise and profit, that programmers are very creative people. I think of Google and Atlassian, for example, who allow regular (monthly, I believe) \"free days\" where programmers get to work on whatever they want (with approval) and the company reaps the rewards. Examples cited were new products, bug fixes that no one had wanted to fix before, new teams forming, etc. Another result (and perhaps the original goal) is that for the remaining days between free time programmers have more motivation. Is there more backing to this theory, that allowing a \"controlled\" creative output is good for motivation and morale, or more examples of successes with this approach?"}
{"_id": "67359", "title": "Can I change the name of a project in codeplex before publishing?", "text": "I started a project repo on codeplex and haven't publicly published it yet. I realized that the name I gave to it is not appropriate and would like to change the name of the project before publicly releasing it (they have a 30 day deadline). The name of the directory that hg clone needs, i.e., `dirname` in `https://hg01.codeplex.com/dirname` is ok, but the project shows up in a different name in codeplex, and that is the name I want to change. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "224648", "title": "CSS for Visually Impaired people?", "text": "So while I was learning HTML I encountered CSS. It's interesting because with CSS you can make a webpage cool or more beautiful. But since it's more about colors, designs, styles etc., I can't know the results of my CSS codes. As someone who is visually impaired, why should I learn CSS if sighted people can always design a webpage better than me because they can see?   1. Are there blind programmers here who write CSS? How did you do it?   2. Should I disregard CSS all together and leave it to sighted programmers? Or there are some things in CSS that I can do without asking people to look at my page to know if it has good design?"}
{"_id": "35897", "title": "Programming for the iPhone", "text": "Whats the best way to get started on iPhone development if you are an expeienced C++ or C# programmer? Most books either assume you know nothing or something. What are the steps to achieve this? For eg: first learn objective C (let's say), next learn cocoa... I am interested in books/resources. I read Getting started with iPhone development from Oreilly (the missing manuals book) but that just provided an over view on the programming and concentrated more on getting your app into the app store. I need resources that will help me start coding. Other questions: How much of objective C do you need to know? How do I start learning the cocoa framework? Can I directly start on cocoa touch or do I need to know the MAC cocoa framework first? Inputs from someone who was in the same situation (Know c++/c# but no clue about mac programming/objective c/cocoa) would help greatly."}
{"_id": "35898", "title": "How and where do you store your private work/sourcecode?", "text": "I have worked as a developer for over 10 years now. During that time I have had my own small projects where I have developed tools, applications and games. I have not found any robust solution to store my work. It\u2019s always fun to get back to your code and see how you did before and how you would do it now. It\u2019s just work that is unfortunate to lose. There are SVN solution such as Google\u2019s Project Hosting. However I\u2019m not interested in sharing my code or making it open source. Currently I\u2019m hosting my own SVN server. So here comes my question: How and where do you store your private work/sourcecode? Requirements:   * Sourcecode versioning   * Backup   * Prefers free   * **Edit:** Remote access **Edit:** I have used Dropbox + TrueCrypt + SVN. Unfortunately you are limited to 5gb."}
{"_id": "133996", "title": "When using Java Persistence API (JPA), which layer owns the entities?", "text": "When working with annotations on entities in JPA, do these entities belong to the model layer or the persistence layer? Does there have to be some kind of clone of the entities (simple JavaBeans) in the model layer so it could be decoupled entirely from JPA? What is the best practice here?"}
{"_id": "133993", "title": "Is programming or computer science in general, all about algorithms?", "text": "As a grad student, I find it more and more common for prestigious companies (like Google, Facebook, Microsoft,...) to put algorithm questions in their test and interviews. A few startups I applied to also asked about algorithms. I wonder if algorithms fluency is the most important thing for software developer in those companies? If the answer being yes, what are the best method or resources for one to learn & practice about algorithms effectively? I can't seem to get interested in solving seemingly too complicated problems found in most textbook or websites. Though easily understand basic algorithms (like quicksort, bubblesort,...), I find it immensely difficult to remember and reuse them later. Thanks. P/S: If you ask me what I like, it's building good softwares to solve users' problems innovatively. I suppose that does not necessarily mean the software has to be very complicated."}
{"_id": "137475", "title": "Should I require users to register to use my app?", "text": "So I'm very close to releasing an app I've been working on, and the server I integrate with allows me to register users. So I was wondering if I should require users to register with the app before they use it. The app wouldn't \"need\" the registration for any of the features (although I have some ideas about future updates where the user's data could be saved to their account in the cloud), but it would still be nice to have a list of registered users. One reason I think I should require users to register is because when the app launches for the first time, the user must accept my privacy policy and terms of use; so if I made a registration screen, it might be an easier and more straightforward, rather than bombarding the user with the thick legal language. But I'm afraid requiring the user to register will cost me some users. I once downloaded an app, and it wanted me to register, but I was lazy never did. Is that a legitimate fear with requiring registration? Thanks! **Edit:** To clearify, if I was to require registration, what info should I collect: name, email, password? other? And we wouldn't be spamming them with emails at all. We also have a very strong privacy policy and would store all data securely."}
{"_id": "108126", "title": "How hard would it be for Microsoft to support deployment of .net apps onto OSX and linux", "text": "Given the announcement of the windows 8 tablet edition and more details on the app store, it would be amazing if this infrastructure could be leveraged for the OSX desktop and or MonoTouch. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/windows-8-experience/ Technically how hard would it be for Microsoft to do this? Is the only problem strategic? I know all about Mono, this is a question about microsoft supporting it directly from Visual Studio."}
{"_id": "108124", "title": "Why it is called \"hash table\", or \"hash function\"? Hash doesn't make any sense to me here", "text": "It's now about 4 years of development that I'm using, hearing, talking about, and implementing hash tables and hash functions. But I really never understand why it's called hash? I remember the first days I started programming, this term was kind'of **cumbersome terminology** to me. I never figured out what is it, **based on its name**. I just experimentally understood **what it does** and **why and when should we use it**. However, I still sometimes try to figure out why it's called **hash**. I have no problem with **table** or **function** and to be honest, they are pretty deductive, rational terms. However, I think better words could be used instead of hash, like **key** , or **uniqueness**. Don't **key table** or **uniqueness table**. According to my dictionary, hash means:   1. Fried dish of potato and meats (highly irrelevant)   2. # symbol (AKA number sign, pound sign, etc.) (still irrelevant, maybe just a mis-nomenclature)    3. Apply algorithm to character string (still has nothing to do with **uniqueness** , which is the most important feature of a hash table)   4. Cut food   5. Another term for hashish Does anyone know why it's called hash?"}
{"_id": "234548", "title": "What are the consequences of Hash-Life running in O(log n)?", "text": "After reading about the HashLife algorithm, I found that it runs in O(log n). The Game of Life is also Turing Complete, so in theory we should be able to run any algorithm on a \"computer\" constructed in GoL. As a consequence of HashLife's time complexity, could algorithms run faster? e.g. if an algorithm takes 10 seconds to run on a pc, could it run faster in HashLife on that same pc? An example: An algorithm running takes a 1000 instructions to run. A certain computer can process 1 instruction per second. So that algorithm takes a 1000 seconds to run. Now, if we take that same algorithm and run it on the \"computer\" in GoL. It would, because of HashLife being O(log n) take 3 seconds? (assuming O(log\u2081\u2080n)) I'm probably overlooking something, since this would be a very important discovery, but I still thought I'd ask about it here."}
{"_id": "234549", "title": "testing: which code layers should I aim to test?", "text": "Say I have this code:               Design     {         public function load()         {             $this->loadProduct();             $this->loadService();             ...         }              public function loadProduct()         {             try             {                 $this->product = new Product();                 $this->product->spec = $this->product->loadSpecs($this->a, $this->b, $this->c);             }             catch (\\BadFunctionCallException $e)             {                 $this->error = true;                 $this->emsg = $e->getMessage();             }         }     }      Questions:   1. Do I test `loadProduct` function only?   2. Do I test `Product` class only?   3. Do I move `loadProduct`'s code into `load` (thereby removing `loadProduct` function from existence, and test the larger `load` function (as part of `Design` class)? Say I may want to do this as part of clean up/reorganization of legacy code.   4. Something else?"}
{"_id": "170150", "title": "Resizing an image with a non-integral conversion factor", "text": "I'm resizing an image based on a non-integral conversion factor (a bmp image, in fact). I understand how resizing works, just non with a decimal number. For instance, if the factor were 2, I would simply write the individual pixels twice to the output file. You can't really write 1.5 pixels if the factor were, say, 1.5. Conceptually, how might this play out?"}
{"_id": "76148", "title": "What is the difference between releasing code under the BSD license and releasing it as public domain?", "text": "You are free to use BSD licensed code for **anything** , even commercial, closed source software. How is that any different than just releasing it as public domain?"}
{"_id": "170155", "title": "Can Win32 message loops survive being ported to native linux?", "text": "I would like to port a large Win32 DLL to native linux in C++. I don't think I can use Wine for a DLL like mine, because users of the DLL would then also have to be in Wine, and then they would all whine... As a Windows C++ programmer, I don't (yet) have any familiarity with the GUI front-end services in linux, but if it logically runs on anything like win32 message loops, fonts, bitmaps, invalidation regions, getmessage( ) calls and so forth, it should be a fairly straight forward remapping of my existing code. So what am I looking at here, a remap or a rewrite? The path for such things must be well worn by now."}
{"_id": "234541", "title": "Which to implement first: GUI or backend?", "text": "So, I can code both, but which should I use a base for development? In terms of TDD, should minimal aspects in the GUI be used as the seed from which to grow towards backend logic? or should the backend give rise to the logic controlling the GUI?"}
{"_id": "233778", "title": "How to data model more than one 'last name'?", "text": "In spanish speaking countries we use more than one last name, like: > First name \u2198                           \u2199 Last name   >                  **Pedro Arturo Rodr\u00edguez Loyola**   >          Middle name \u2197                               \u2196 (?) I'm trying to model data for patient name, in our country it's important, so I can't neglect the second last name, but I would like to build an application that can makes sense to other developers, specially from English speaking countries. * * * I created a similar question on English.SE, it has some insights about why it's important to persist both values."}
{"_id": "229891", "title": "Am I doing it wrong with Hibernate DAO layer? i.e. Feature Bloat", "text": "For quick prototyping I have been actively using Hibernate. Recently I came back to an old project and I wondered why I had a lot of DAOs with what I suspect is commonly named feature bloat. E.g. I have a DAOs for single entities that contains from 15 to 20 methods each. Recently I have been using Hibernate Generic D.A.O. Framework but I still think that the same problem arises when I'm trying to create custom data access logic and my code Olfaction starts to detect bad smells. Is there a guideline for this scenarios?"}
{"_id": "229896", "title": "Are there any standards for separating different kinds of comments (explanatory, debug, to-do, etc.)?", "text": "For a while now I've been in the habit of differentiating different kinds of comments in my code.               //this is an explanatory comment          //!this line was commented out for debug purposes, DO NOT SHIP WITH THIS COMMENT IN PLACE          //?this code was tested, and executed properly in 2.3 uS      This has saved me a lot of trouble, as I can quickly differentiate between debug comments and explanatory comments. It's especially nice to be sure that all my debug comments are gone, and none were accidentally left in place before publishing my code. Is this a common practice? If so, is there a standard way of differentiating comments? Or are there perhaps better ways of achieving what I'm trying to achieve?"}
{"_id": "91274", "title": "Need help on understanding few OOP & programming related concepts", "text": "I been struggling to understand few concepts but no success yet. Can someone help me to understand that with simple example and definition please. 1 - Delegates in .NET 2 - Abstraction 3 - Three tier architecture Thanks"}
{"_id": "91270", "title": "Equality between arity and degree concepts in relational theory", "text": "I've been reading the book \"SQL and Relational Theory: How to Write Accurate SQL Code\" by C. J. Date. I have no formal background in CS, much less relational theory. Combined with the fact English is not my first language, I'm having a little trouble to understand a statement. At one moment (page 17) the author states: > ... the number of attributes in the heading is the degree (sometimes the > arity) ... Does this means that the concept \"degree\" is equals with the concept \"arity\" (ie. I can use those words interchangeably) or this means that sometimes those concepts are equals (but not always)?"}
{"_id": "103720", "title": "Classes naming: singular or plural?", "text": "It is always difficult for me to choose between singular and plural forms for classes names: > >     CustomerRepository vs. CustomersRepository >     CustomerService vs. CustomersService >     CustomerController vs. CustomersController >   And for composite names it is even more difficult: > OrderCustomerRepository vs. OrderCustomersRepository vs. > OrdersCustomersRepository What approach do you prefer and why?"}
{"_id": "234096", "title": "Java's Boolean class - why not an enum?", "text": "It seems to me that the Boolean class is an ideal candidate to be implemented as an enum. Looking at the source code, most of the class is static methods which could be moved unchanged to an enum, the rest become much simpler as an enum. Compare original (comments and static methods removed):               public final class Boolean implements java.io.Serializable,                                           Comparable<Boolean>     {        public static final Boolean TRUE = new Boolean(true);       public static final Boolean FALSE = new Boolean(false);        private final boolean value;        public Boolean(boolean value) {            this.value = value;        }        public Boolean(String s) {            this(toBoolean(s));        }        public boolean booleanValue() {            return value;        }        public String toString() {            return value ? \"true\" : \"false\";        }        public int hashCode() {            return value ? 1231 : 1237;        }        public boolean equals(Object obj) {            if (obj instanceof Boolean) {                return value == ((Boolean)obj).booleanValue();            }            return false;        }        public int compareTo(Boolean b) {            return compare(this.value, b.value);        }     }      with an enum version:               public enum Boolean implements Comparable<Boolean>     {        FALSE(false), TRUE(true);        private Boolean(boolean value) {            this.value = value;        }        private final boolean value;        public boolean booleanValue() {            return value;        }             public String toString() {            return value ? \"true\" : \"false\";        }     }      Is there any reason why Boolean couldn't become an enum?"}
{"_id": "145755", "title": "How to log configuration or code behaviour changes in non-disruptive way", "text": "We've probably all been in the situation where you'd like to alert your team members to some change (\"I changed X, so now it's running every hour instead of every day\"). But the change is non-urgent, and email can be disruptive - or get tuned out. Anyone have any techniques where the team can have a running log of changes that everyone should be aware of, that they can peruse at their leisure - or at least, when they suspect something is up?"}
{"_id": "145751", "title": "Has whitespace in identifiers ever been idiomatic?", "text": "C# style suggests using CamelCase in identifiers to delimit words. Lisp tradition suggests using-dashes-instead. Has there ever existed a programming language where using spaces in identifiers was not only allowed, but a commonly used idiom when employing multi-word identifiers? It's possible to have identifiers with spaces in some Scheme implementations, but it's not a widely seen practice. Here's an example:               Petite Chez Scheme Version 8.4     Copyright (c) 1985-2011 Cadence Research Systems          > (define |hey there| 100)     > (define |x y z| 200)     > (list |hey there| |x y z|)     (100 200)"}
{"_id": "73460", "title": "Ideal data structure for storing map data?", "text": "I was asked this in an interview test. I did okay on the test but didn't know enough to answer this question. I am curious to know what data structures I can use to query the data quickly. Basically the idea is there would be road sections (lines, made up of points) stored in some kind of data structure. It should be quick to query which road sections (or points) are within a certain distance from a point (radius)."}
{"_id": "233822", "title": "Is declaring STL variables in a class definition too revealing?", "text": "If you are trying to hide implementation, would declaring STL variables be too revealing?               // in Word_Bucket.h     class Word_Bucket {     private:         std::vector<std::string> contents;              ...etc     }      ... but then if you wrap it up, to hide the implementation, won't you have to reveal it in the wrapper's interface anyway?               // in Word_Bucket.h     class Word_Bucket {     private:         Bucket contents;              ...etc     }          // in Bucket.h     class Bucket {     private:         std::vector<template_stuff> contents;              ...etc     }"}
{"_id": "73467", "title": "What if the client needs the ability to retrieve passwords?", "text": "I've currently inherited an application at work and to my dismay, I have realized that the user passwords stored in the database are encrypted using an in house encryption function, which also includes the ability to decrypt. So all someone really needs to do is copy the user table and copy the encryption assembly (anyone with database production access) and then they would have access to 100,000 email addresses and potential passwords for them. I'm trying to explain to the business why this is not a good idea, but the security concepts seem to go over their head as they are not that technically minded (it's for government). Plus there are actually existing functionality within the application for admin users to retrieve user's passwords in order to log in as them and do stuff (which they have said, they require). So they don't understand the security implications. And in order to implement a stronger security policy (hashing passwords so they can't be easily retrieved), I have to remove existing functionality for them. What should I do? I didn't build the password system in the first place, so it's not like I can be blamed if anything does go wrong. On the other hand, I don't feel good about it and I also don't want to have access to 100,000 potential email logons."}
{"_id": "185103", "title": "How to profile a Perl + FastCGi + StarRunner web program?", "text": "I've written an extension to RequestTracker for a client, but he says the performance isn't good enough. I'd like to do some profiling, but I'm not sure how to connect up a profiler (say NYTProf, for example)? I tried what the man page says and put `PerlModule Devel::NYTProf::Apache` in my apache config, but all I get in the results are Apache2:XSLoader, Devel::NYTProf::Apache and ModPerl::Util modules in the results, and neither my own nor RT's modules."}
{"_id": "230737", "title": "Database version management on mobile apps", "text": "I am about to start building a mobile (iOS/Android) app that uses a local database (probably sqlite). Since this is my first \"real\" mobile app, I am wondering what the standard approaches are to version management of the DB. My thinking is I would do this:   * include a base creation SQL script in the resources of the app. This would include the creation of a `versions` table, which would have one record for every version of the app.   * for every new version of the app, include a corresponding upgrade SQL script. At a minimum, that script would insert a new entry into the `versions` table   * write a data store management service. This service would be responsible for creating the initial DB (via the create script), reporting the current version of the DB, and upgrading it if necessary (via the upgrade scripts)   * leverage the data store management service during application initialization to create/upgrade the database as necessary. This would of course be done asynchronously and with UI telling the user what is happening Is this approach reasonable? Am I overlooking anything obvious?"}
{"_id": "185104", "title": "Why is a Boolean value stored as a byte inside of a computer when it only requires one bit", "text": "I recently started learning to write code, and in my book I came across this question. \"Why is a Boolean value stored as a byte inside of a computer when it only requires one bit?\" can someone shed more light on this question?"}
{"_id": "230739", "title": "DRY on API specifcations?", "text": "When developing a new RESTful application, I generally:   * Define tests   * Define routes [ e.g.: RESTful CRUD; namespaced on `/api/users` ]   * Define models [ e.g.: \"Users\" ]   * Define forms [ e.g.: in JavaScript (AngularJS), HTML5 and CSS ] Currently thinking about throwing an API explorer into the mix\u2026 which would be another bit of double-typing. * * * The best way I can think of for moving forward is:   1. Define new schema once; using JSON-schema notation   2. Engineer a code-generator to generate tests; and some random data with correct types for input   3. Develop a code-generator to create RESTful routes from JSON schema   4. Utilise something like metawidget to generate frontend forms from decoupled backend * * * Is this the best way of encouraging DRY; is there a better/alternate way you can think of / industry best practise?"}
{"_id": "185109", "title": "Why Java does not allow function definitions to be present outside of the class?", "text": "Unlike C++, in Java, we cannot have just function declarations in the class and definitions outside of the class. Why is it so? Is it to emphasize that a single file in Java should contain only one class and nothing else?"}
{"_id": "185108", "title": "Importing java.awt.* does not automattically imports java.awt.event.*?", "text": "In the Java programming language, why does importing of java.awt.* does not automatically import java.awt.event.* too? Now, you guys may say that it's because it's java.awt.* and not something like java.awt. _._ but when any nice, proper java application requiring java.awt.* also requires java.awt.event.* then why not have them as a single entity?"}
{"_id": "195386", "title": "Why is sizeof called a compile-time operator?", "text": "Originally, this is a part of another question. Why is `sizeof` called a compile-time operator? Isn't it **actually** a run- time operator? And if it is indeed a compile-time operator, how does it help in producing portable code which runs the same in different computers ? Please explain in detail."}
{"_id": "103897", "title": "Is the C programming language still used?", "text": "I am a C# programmer, and most of my development is for websites along with a few Windows application. As far as C goes, I haven't used it in a long time, as there was no need to. It came to me as a surprise when one of my friends said that she needs to learn C for testing jobs, while I was helping her learn C#. I figured that someone would only learn C for testing only if there is development done in C. In my knowledge, all the development related to COM and hardware design are also done in C++. Therefore, learning C doesn't make sense if you need to use C++. I also don't believe in historic significance, so why waste time and money in learning C? Is C is still used in any kind of new software development or anything else?"}
{"_id": "132648", "title": "Authentication for 'participants' vs 'users'", "text": "I'm building a site that lets users schedule interviews/conferences with third parties and I'm wondering what's the best way to provide security around the participant experience while providing the smallest usability barrier possible. Currently, I send an email with a link and a 5 digit auth-code. The link opens a page, the participant types in the auth-code and is temporarily logged in for the duration of the interview/conference. From a security standpoint, I think the auth-code is redundant and introduces friction for the participant, who may never have cause to visit my site again and may not be technically proficient. The link I send as part of the invitation contains a random string, so I could just increase its length by 5 characters and have the same size search space for potential attackers. The downside is that I would potentially have to rate-limit the responses for the invitation URLs, so I'm not sure there's any benefit from a complexity/lines-of-code perspective. The non-auth-code feels less secure, but I know that's irrational. Any thoughts on what the best approach would be?"}
{"_id": "132649", "title": "What's wrong in returning hashtable from public method and when does it make sense to do so?", "text": "What are the design problems in returning a hashtable from a public method when you want to return multiple items instead of creating a class and returning object of that? If it does have problems then under what circumstances it makes sense to do so? How does the answer to this question change depending upon whether the language is dynamic or not? **Edit:** This is to clarify that the keys would be constant and are part of code, not data. Something that we typically create a class for. The question is why would it be wrong to use hashtable instead if creating a class indeed does seem to be the right choice."}
{"_id": "103893", "title": "How to implement DRY principle when using 'using' keyword?", "text": "Consider these methods:               public List<Employee> GetAllEmployees()     {         using (Entities entities = new Entities())         {             return entities.Employees.ToList();         }     }          public List<Job> GetAllJobs()     {         using (Entities entities = new Entities())         {             return entities.Jobs.ToList();         }     }          public List<Task> GetAllTasksOfTheJob(Job job)     {         using (Entities entities = new Entities())         {             return entities.Tasks.Where(t => t.JobId == job.Id).ToList();         }     }      Using block is the same and has been repeated 3 times here (of course, more than 100 times in the real application). How is it possible to implement DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principal for `using` block? Is it considered a breach of DRY principal at all? Update: I'm not talking about what has been implemented inside the `using` block. What I actually mean here, is the `using (Entities entities = new Entities())`. This line is repeated 100 times or more."}
{"_id": "253201", "title": "Which layer should service errors be handled in?", "text": "I am coding in a multitier architecture in Java, and I perform a query to a web service. Is it better form for the errors returned by the service be handled in the data access layer or in the business layer? For example, the service records a response something like this:               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>         <ReturnCode>[integer]</ReturnCode>         <ReturnMessage>[String correponding to ReturnCode]</ReturnMessage>         <UpdateTimestamp>[dateTime - only present if ReturnCode == 0]</UpdateTimestamp>         <UpdateUser>[string - only present if ReturnCode == 0]</UpdateUser>     </xml>      If I handled the errors in the data access layer, my Java code would like something like this: Error logic in DAO. (notice the data type doesn't have `returnCode` or `returnMessage` fields) If I handled the errors in the business layer, the code would look like this: Error logic in BO. (notice the data type has `returnCode` and `returnMessage` fields)"}
{"_id": "103899", "title": "Should a competent programmer be able to come up with his own shortest path algorithm?", "text": "I'm suffering a crisis of confidence in my ability as a computer programmer. Yesterday I tried to come up with my own shortest path algorithm for a graph and after some hours I simply threw in the towel and learned Dijkstra's algorithm. Is this the kind of thing a good programmer should be able to \"reinvent\" in a couple of hours or am I being unrealistic? Oh well, at least I was able to reinvent bubble sort :D"}
{"_id": "206877", "title": "Handling Deployment to Multiple Environments", "text": "How should I handle deploying web applications to multiple servers? **Constraints** I have a dev, test and prod environment. No build server is available. Developers can't deploy to prod. The people that do deploy to prod copy files from test to prod. They don't have VS installed. **Currently** The way it's handled is using web.config transform. However, to deploy to prod involves putting prod code on the test server where it's copied over. **Problem** Sometimes simple mistakes are made, such as forgetting to change test back to the right environment after deployment. Or the test config gets moved to prod instead of the prod config. **Solution** So the question is, what is the best way to prevent mistakes from happening? My first thought is let the app determine which server it's on at runtime and use the appropriate settings/connection strings/etc... However, the server names could change in the not too distant future. So if multiple apps are hard coded, that would mean updating all of them. The easiest way to handle that situation would be to place a DLL in the GAC that determines the environment. Are there any drawbacks or possible complications that this would cause? Or is there a better solution to the problem than this?"}
{"_id": "87966", "title": "How to you solve the problem of implicit locking and parallel execution?", "text": "Where the code is:               function A()     {         lock()         doSomething()         unlock()     }      We can call `A` safely from multiple threads, but it never be executed in parallel . For parallel execution, we have to evade all of this code. But the problem is we never know the `A` is getting lock or not. If we have source code (maybe lucky case), we have to decode all code to know locking is happening or not. This sucks. But even worse is we normally have no source code. And about the case of the lock is exist on base library? It's obvious this kind of hidden locks will become bottleneck of parallel execution even all the other parts are designed for parallel. And also, (1) With locks, execution cannot be parallel. (2) And I can't know whether the locks are used or not in any code. (3) Defensively saying, I can't make parallel anything! This facts drives me crazy. How do you solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "130645", "title": "What you should do if your junior did not adopt your suggestion?", "text": "I am leading a team of 3-4 junior developers. My job-- besides writing code-- is to provide supervision and guidance for the juniors. But, I fully understand how much developers cherish autonomy in their work, and I don't want to destroy their intrinsic motivation by spoon-feeding them with my thoughts and my algorithms; I want them to explore the problem in their own ways, and think about it themselves and only come to me when they are really facing insurmountable issues. When they do come to me, sometimes I would have to propose a completely different algorithm to solve the problem because their algorithm isn't robust enough ( remember, I am the senior and I have seen more than them). Of course I would explain this in a nice manner so as not to hurt their feelings, and I would gently outline how my solution is vastly superior than theirs, no condescending tone or condemning words. But still, they are sometimes reluctant to accept my suggestion, partly because they have invested so much in their own algorithm, or partly because of the fear that using a new method would entail more learning time and make them appear to the management as if they are going nowhere. But deep in my heart I know very well that my algorithm is much better than theirs and they should just adopt it. What should I do if they didn't adopt my suggestion? Should I just ask them to follow my way, or should I just let them have their heads banged on the wall many many more times and wait for them to come back to me? Doing the former makes me into a dictator, but doing the later would cost us precious development time and incur bug fixing cost. I am really in a dilemma here."}
{"_id": "244484", "title": "Designing communications for extensibility", "text": "I am working on the design stages of an application that will a) collect data from various sources (in my case that's scientific data from serial ports), keeping track of the age of the data, b) generate real-time statistics (e.g. running averages) c) display, record, and otherwise handle the data (and statistics). I anticipate that I will be adding both data producers and consumers over time, and would like to design this application abstractly so that I will be able to trivially add functionality with a small amount of interface code. What I'm stumbling on is deciding what communication infrastructure I should use to handle the interfaces. In particular, how should I make the processed data and statistics available to multiple consumers? Some things I've considered: * Writing to several named pipes (variable number). Each consumer reads from one of them. * Using FUSE to make a userspace filesystem where a `read()` returns the latest line of data even if another process has already read it. * Making a TCP server, and having consumers connect and request data individually. * Simply writing the consumers as part of the same program that aggregates the data. So I would like to hear your all's advice on deciding how to interface these functions in the best way to keep them separate and allow room for extenstions."}
{"_id": "43874", "title": "What steps should I follow to start developing website applications?", "text": "I've been developing **desktop applications** for about 4 years, using .NET, C++, C, and a little of Python. I've covered lots of topics while developing my applications, and even web technologies (cookies, GET/POST methods, when programming some scrapers/crawlers). I've been always waiting to start developing websites, preferably using **PHP** \\+ **MySQL** , although other advises will be welcomed to make this question more useful and generic for others. I know I could use a **CMS** instead of starting from scratch, but sometimes I don't need an entire CMS to do minor things... **What steps should I follow to create a website?** Let's suppose I have a web designer. First of all, the designer designs the entire website (CSS, etc) and then I do the programming stuffs, like loading dynamically things from databases, doing some client-side stuffs with javascript, etc? Or how is the best way to do it? **Edit** :   I'm not looking for tools/frameworks/languages suggestions. What I want to know is how a team (or a developer with a designer) starts creating a website. The **steps** they do, what tasks they do first, how they integrate the work, etc. An example of an answer could be: 1) Design the entire website with good CSS practices, using containers instead of tables in some cases, etc. 2) Use that design and develop the logic or the functionalities of the website. Of course, that's just an example. I'm looking for a good way to approach it, because I've been wanting to start on it but don't really know how exactly to organize the job :/"}
{"_id": "244486", "title": "Should I ditch AJAX in client side web development when I've got a web-socket open?", "text": "I was thinking that maybe I should forget AJAX (HTTP) requests when I've got a web-socket open between client and server, but I decided I should ask here to check if this could be a bad practice for some reason that I'm not thinking of. Once the socket is open, there's less syntax (often meaning simpler error handling) involved in passing information between client and server with Socket.io (just one example of a web-socket). * * * Is there some obvious situation where a web-socket (Socket.io for example) isn't going to be capable of handling a functionality that an AJAX request could do easily?"}
{"_id": "101492", "title": "Logging-in and database connectivity in Android", "text": "I am completely new to Android development and have been reading many articles on **the Android site** and elsewhere. There are a lot of articles that give very specific examples, but I haven\u2019t bumped into the articles explaining the following: **Logging-In:**   I haven\u2019t noticed market applications forcing me to create login credentials (per se), only verification of access to types of permissions. However, they surely must need some kind of login credential. This means Android is providing this access (somehow). How? What process? **Database Location:**   Some articles I\u2019ve read \u201cimply\u201d a copy of the applications database is located on the phone (itself), others imply a database located elsewhere (cloud etc.). Lastly, others imply they use both a local database for quick updates and a remote database for synching and error-analysis. Is there a common database available for everyone to use?   * I wouldn\u2019t \u201cthink\u201d so Do you generate the local copy automatically every time?   * Seems wasteful as you just have to re-create the whole thing and re-synch EVERY entity...but I\u2019ve seen articles promote it. Which databases are you using? What best-practices do you use for synching? **Lastly:**   If this forum isn't the right one I will be happy to move this question. I looked at the **Android Enthusiast** forum and it didn't look like the correct one either."}
{"_id": "101495", "title": "How to politely decline recruiters?", "text": "Recently, I've received e-mails from tech recruiters inquiring about whether I'd like to interview for job interviews. The main problems I have with these emails are:   1. I'm a college student, and nowhere have I indicated that I want a full time job, but all these opportunities are for full time work.    2. The position descriptions are so vague that they could apply to many, many people.    3. In addition to #2, most of the e-mails seem to be machine generated, and I am wary of people who just send out mass emails. I don't want to disable the \"receive emails from others option\" and I don't have anything against technical recruiters, but I don't want to apply to the position and I definitely don't want to send my resume to them. In this thread on establishing relationships with unsolicited recruiters, there are a lot of negative points made about recruiters, and this especially stood out to me: > P.S. I once very unfortunately established \"relationships\" with two spam > centers called computerfutures and progressiverecruitment and haven't been > able to get my data out of their systems ever since. They periodically spam > irrelevant ads and ignore all my requests for data removal and compliance. > That's not a relationship you're seeking. :) > > P.S.#2. A piece of advice. Whenever you decide to publish your CV in the > wild, a good idea is to remove your phone number from there. It will > effectively stop phone drones who depend on being able to harass and squeeze > you on the phone hunting for colleague names and references. They however > prove to be not inclined to waste time and engage in long email exchange > with you preferring to just move on to the next target. This will lower your > manual filtration efforts and save you hours of your phone time. It seems like talking to recruiters is a waste of time and potentially a big hassle, but I don't want to just ignore emails either. **How should you go about politely declining a recruiter such that you can contact them when you want but won't have to worry about being bombarded by them? Is that even possible, or is ignore and forget the best option?**"}
{"_id": "101499", "title": "Buy TextMate or PhpStorm for developing?", "text": "i am going to buy TextMate or phpStorm. Before i do it i want to ask community which one is THE choice. I am maintaining existing php+xml+html+yaml code so as developing new functionalities for same existing system. Sometimes running posture queries, or creating views. I often work with Subversion, sometimes with Git. I use very often quick open for classes and files Following i write to tell what assumptions i have and find out which of them are correct, which are not, or thoughts i am missing Unfortunately i've missed my trial time with TextMate, so i can't test it for my work **TextMate** _Why to buy_   * every developer on Mac, i see has TextMate from which i draw about some qualities   * some of mine projects are in Rails which TextMate covers too _Why not to buy_   * i am missing jump to the definition   * it seems TextMate does not have integrated version controll (changed/new lines, diff between particular versions ), but it supposed to be integrated in some of future versions (but when it is?) **phpStorm** _Why to buy_   * integrated version control   * integrated db query tool   * phpDoc      * generation     * reading (methods completion, type of variable, etc) _Why not to buy_   * price"}
{"_id": "177312", "title": "Are session aware Models a bad thing?", "text": "I'm thinking specifically in Rails here, but I suspect this is a wider question. In a Rails web application I'm using data from the session in models in order that the models know who is logged in. I use this in a method which filters out some data from the database depending on a very simple permissions system. The thing is: using sessions in models in Rails requires a bit of a workaround. It works, but I've a feeling that it's something that I shouldn't be doing and I'm worried there's a big gotcha I'm missing. I suppose the Right Thing To Do would be to return all the data and filter out the not-wanted bits in the controller before passing that to the view, but doing it in the model seems to avoid quite a bit of code duplication and so feels \"cleaner.\" Can anyone tell me why or shouldn't do this? Or that it's not a problem?"}
{"_id": "177311", "title": "What programming languages exist for mechatronics purposes?", "text": "Is there any specific language which is designed for mechatronics programming? I know about LabView, which is a data flow language, but not sure about its main platform. Could you recommend to me, some languages apart from c/c++? Any language which is used in the topic of mechatronics( robotics, sensor programming, etc )."}
{"_id": "177319", "title": "What's special about currying or partial application?", "text": "I've been reading articles on Functional programming everyday and been trying to apply some practices as much as possible. But I don't understand what is unique in currying or partial application. Take this Groovy code as an example:               def mul = { a, b -> a * b }     def tripler1 = mul.curry(3)     def tripler2 = { mul(3, it) }      I do not understand what is the difference between `tripler1` and `tripler2`. Aren't they both the same? The 'currying' is supported in pure or partial functional languages like Groovy, Scala, Haskell etc. But I can do the same thing (left-curry, right-curry, n-curry or partial application) by simply creating another named or anonymous function or closure that will forward the parameters to the original function (like `tripler2`) in most languages (even C.) Am I missing something here? There are places where I can use currying and partial application in my Grails application but I am hesitating to do so because I'm asking myself \"How's that different?\" Please enlighten me. EDIT: Are you guys saying that partial application/currying is simply more efficient than creating/calling another function that forwards default parameters to original function?"}
{"_id": "234455", "title": "MVP: Multiple Page-Controllers for a page?", "text": "I'm refactoring a big-scale ASP.NET application written with WebForms which has a very unflexible design of view+code-behind. For this refactor, I'm using MVP Architecture (Model-View-Presenter), which uses a Page Controller approach for pages and controls. Writing a controllers for pages, I've faced a problem of reusability. The following diagram expresses a small sample which will illustrate my problem: ![http://i61.tinypic.com/atoltt.jpg](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LZo8i.jpg) RegistrationView is a view with a form that allows a user to register (introducing data like Name, Address, Country... and then modifies this data through the controller). EditAddressView retrieves already-existing data about the user, allows for modification and then modifies the data back to the model. As you may see, there are some parts in common in the controllers (more specifically, the storage of data). I'd wish to reuse the part of the code where data is stored, so I considered a three options to deal with this:   * Create a superclass that includes the code to be reused, and then make controllers inherit this class and use the store algorithm.   * Create a kind of \"library\" layer (i.e. UserManagerLibrary) which both controllers would make use of and make respective calls to it.   * Implement a somewhat component system and create controllers that would manage these \"components\". This diagram illustrates my approach: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ttzt5.jpg) NOTE: CountryRetriever obtains a list of countries to populate a dropdown menu. In this approach, I make views to conform to several interfaces, which, together, define a view. Then I bind each view with several page-controllers depending on the interfaces the views implement. This way, I think I could easily create new views and expand functionalities of existing ones (for instance, I could expand the EditAddressView with deletion functionality by making it implement a IUserDelete interface). I think that this approach would allow me to maximize my code reusability and Single Responsibility Principle in a MVP architecture, yet I have the feeling I'm somehow violating the Page-Controller pattern, and the feeling that this approach may have a big drawback in the future for me (I don't know, that's why I'm asking if my solution is good). Can anyone enlighten me on this matter? Thank you"}
{"_id": "233833", "title": "Reflecting on finished project with no other technical criticisms?", "text": "I'm a coop (in college but I work 3 months, then do classes for 3 months, work again for 3 months, etc until I graduate) at a company in their IT department. My job usually has to do with writing software but we are not a software company and much of the software that is is written in India. This work term (3 months) I was given a large project, to design some software to visualize data pulled from another one of our systems. I ended up at the end of this term with two pieces of software for, one 100% done (the data pulling back end) and the other 80% done (the graphical front end). I had fun and learned a lot as always, but I'm not too happy with the results code wise. I have never gotten a chance for a code review or a chance to do any learning about design and analysis strategies for the reason I mention above in the year that I've been here (4 terms). Here's how the project went, and it reflects how I have done pretty much every project to date, although it's more clear in this project as this is the biggest thing I've done so far. The first thing I did was diagram out how the whole system would operate from a high level. I don't usually do this but I was asked to by my boss. Then, I dove right into the problem and start banging away. To me, I find that it helps (and is more fun at the same time) to get something down and working to revise for organization shortly after so that I can continue in an organized fashion. From there the building slowed down a bit as the project got bigger. I would get more confused but also start diagramming more things out first, stopping to think about how what I'm currently building will fit into the entire system. This continued on for a while until my 3 month term was almost up. Here, **I started rushing to get things done. I started destroying some of the organization in favor of quick things so that I could get a working prototype** (I was only asked for a prototype so I figured this was alright and if the project went forward I could always revise it). This is where my entire thing started to fall apart as I didn't really have time to properly think through how a lot of what I was coding would affect everything else. I feel like now, at the final stage, I have a lot a mix of loosely and tightly coupled code with a barely working prototype. In hindsight, here's what I see:   * I did a good job on the original overview and it helped me too because I could break down the entire thing into a few main chunks. Problems started to arise when I got into specifics of each chunk. **There was a good set idea on what each piece would do, but not the specific parts that made that piece work** (I don't know what I could have done more though to explain each piece though. I find when it comes down to specifics like this, I find out as I go).   * There were many things about the system that I was pulling data from that I did not know at the very start and I should have gotten a lot more insight onto how the system works as a whole. However, at the start of the term I'm always shy and tend to not ask questions. This probably also contributed to why I usually don't know the specifics of each piece until I'm actually doing them.   * I was also a victim of a bit of scope creep as few features were added to the todo list with about a month and a half to go.   * I never seem to know exactly where I want to go on specific parts. I try something and if that doesn't work, I try something else until it works or I get something that's neater. Is this the right way to do things? My questions: **What could I have done better?** I know no one here will know the specifics of my project but there's no one else with coding knowledge who could tell me how I could grow in this situation.   **How could I review myself better?** Since I never really have anyone else reviewing my coding and I'm not working with any other coders directly, how could I have reflected better on my own project, both after, and during the project?   The question about what I could do better is directed mainly at the bolded portions of my explanation where I feel most concerned about how I approached the problem."}
{"_id": "233837", "title": "Is there a valid case for two components to depend on each other?", "text": "Dependencies are services required by an object to perform its responsibilities. In OOP context it can be thought as a parameter in a constructor. In my experience I've never found a case for a valid cyclic `A <--> B` dependency. Every time I find this it turns out to be one of two cases:   * `A` and `B` should actually be a single component (`AB`)   * one of components violates single responsibility principle and should be divided into separate ones (`A1 --> B --> A2`) To be clear, I'm not talking about cycles in objects used for data structures. I'm interested in components which provide behavior and collaborate between themselves."}
{"_id": "182451", "title": "OO Design related questions in technical interviews", "text": "I've been attending quite a few interviews recently and have been asked by companies to answer \"design a [insert model]\" questions more than a few times.   1. Is this normal in the industry nowadays? I've been in the software world for more than two decades and have attended my share of interviews, but I am seeing this pattern in interviews emerge only recently.   2. I feel the question is very open ended. For example: I was asked to draw a class diagram to \"Design a parking lot\". I am not sure what level of detail the interviewer is expecting. This was in an online test where I was expected to attach a visio diagram, so I couldn't ask them what their expectations were.   3. Do you use these kind of questions in your interview process? Are they related to only class diagrams or do you also ask sequence, flowcharts and ERDs (ofcourse based on the nature of the position) Have they been effective in your hiring process? *** Edit for Kevin's response *** For example: A complete question could be \"Design a parking lot management system that can be used to find vacant slots\" I can be done with 2 classes, `ParkingLot` and `Slot` or I could go on to add `IVehicle` and `Vehicle` and `Car` and `Motorcycle` classes. Where do I draw the line?               public class ParkingLot     {        IVehicle Vehicle {set; get;}             List<Slot> GetEmptySlots() { };     }          public class Vehicle : IVehicle     {       Slot SlotNum {set; get;}     }          public class Slot     {       int Row {set; get;}       int Column {set; get; }     }"}
{"_id": "182452", "title": "Javascript and proprietary algorithms", "text": "I'll be quite to the point, is there any way to make Javascript a bit more concealed than it usually is or is Javascript always out and open if you look in the source code ? This is about hiding proprietary algorithms that would dispense a service that does not exist yet (to my knowledge) on the market and is not really straightforward. I know that patenting is possible but let's leave this out of the question."}
{"_id": "119310", "title": "Is the capability to overwrite functions in JavaScript strength or weakness?", "text": "I recently came across the following code (from liferay.js) when I was working with Liferay:               ....     if (!Liferay._ajaxOld) {         Liferay._ajaxOld = jQuery.ajax;     }          if (Liferay._ajaxOld) {         jQuery.ajax = function(options) {             if (Liferay.Util) {                 options.url = Liferay.Util.getURLWithSessionId(options.url);             }             return Liferay._ajaxOld(options);         };     }     ....      As you can see, the code above overwrites the function \"jQuery.ajax\" to modify \"options.url\". One may say this is a strength of the language since we can easily overwrite and customize existing functions. However, I would imagine this capability can easily lead to a problem. For instance, my code can overwrite the same function \"jQuery.ajax\" to modify \"options.url\" differently from the code above. As a result, any code that expect the behavior defined by \"liferay.js\" may no longer function as expected. I see this as a weakness of the language as it does not provide proper encapsulation. What are the consensus about this feature/capability of the language in the field?"}
{"_id": "231060", "title": "Locking techniques", "text": "Delphi RAD libraries implement many thread friendly objects in a way which forces one to declare another object for storing the reference returned by that object's locking method. The object thus essentially encapsulates the prime object which is returned on locking. For example;               List := ThreadList.Unlocklist;     // do something with List     ThreadList.LockList;      Why is this approach taken? Why is inheriting from the prime object, adding the locking object, overriding constructors and destructors, discouraged? For example the following implementation adds a TMREWSync to a list;               IMREWS = interface            ['{5B6DE5FA-847B-42D5-8BF4-9EB20A452C54}']            procedure BeginRead;       function  BeginWrite: Boolean;       procedure EndRead;       procedure EndWrite;          end;          TThreadList = class ( TList, IMREWS )     private            FLock : TMREWSync;          public            constructor Create;       destructor  Destroy; override;            property Lock : TMREWSync read FLock implements IMREWS;          end;          constructor TThreadList.Create;     begin       FLock := TMREWSync.Create;       inherited;     end;          destructor TThreadList.Destroy;     begin       inherited;       FLock.Free;     end;          // Usage:          ThreadList.BeginWrite;     // Do something with ThreadList     ThreadList.EndWrite;"}
{"_id": "124176", "title": "What's the term for \"while(true)\" loop with \"break\" inside?", "text": "Suppose I have a loop in C++ or C# that goes like this:               while( true ) {         doSomething();         if( condition() ) {             break;         }         doSomethingElse();     }      This is commonly called \"infinite loop\". Yet it is not technically infinite - it will stop once control flows through `break`. What's the term for such loop - that has \"loop forever\" loop control statement and \"break\" inside?"}
{"_id": "250655", "title": "Several enum classes that declare constants with the same names", "text": "I'm working on a Java library for sorts for Magic: the Gathering. Well, without going into a lot of detail, in the game there are five different colors of magic: `white`, `blue`, `black`, `red`, and `green`. That's easy enough, that's a textbook example of an enum. However, there's a problem: there are several variations on these colors. There are your standard variants, the \"monocolored hybrid\" variants, and the \"Phyrexian\" variants (don't ask). So, my question is, which of these is a better approach? Idea 1:               enum Symbol {       WHITE,       BLUE,       BLACK,       RED,       GREEN,            MONOCOLORED_HYBRID_WHITE,       MONOCOLORED_HYBRID_BLUE,     ...       PHYREXIAN_WHTIE,       PHYREXIAN_BLUE,     ...     }      Idea 2:               interface Symbol {       method1()       method2()     ...     }     enum Primary implements Symbol {       WHITE,       BLUE,     ...     }     enum MonocoloredHybrid implements Symbol {       WHITE,       BLUE,     ...     }     enum Phyrexian implements Symbol { ...      I've been using the first way for a while, but I've been starting to think the second way might be better. It shows more clearly that these classes of symbols are different, yet still compatible, since they implement the same interface. It will cause a little bit of boilerplate code (just a couple fields), but my main issue is I have three enum constants called `WHITE`. Now, I'd always be referencing them by their class name, e.g., `Primary.WHITE`, but this still seems a little awkward. But perhaps it's better than the \"Smurf naming\" I'd have to do in the first technique. (I also can't use them in EnumMap/ EnumSet in the second way, but I think I'm okay with that.) So, which is the better approach? Is it okay to have a bunch of enum classes all declaring constants with the same name? Is there a third alternative that's even better?"}
{"_id": "121527", "title": "Meta-licensing of applications", "text": "I'm currently evaluating license management solutions for our customized and project-based applications, which are supported by a single server in the intranet of the customer. The applications use common functionality provided by the server (session handling, data synchronization, management capabilities, etc) and are installed on mobile devices. We allow our customers to run the applications on X devices and want to check on the server, whether the customer sticks to this limit (based on the sessions). We don't want licensing software to be installed on the devices itself (for example providing X serials to the customer) nor do we want to host an additional server for licensing in the intranet of the customer. If a client connects, our server should load the license for the application running on the client and verify, that there are sessions left. The licensing managers I looked at (12 products so far) focus on the application itself and don't allow me to implement such a floating behavior as described above. For example, this software could easily be used to create a \"Standard Edition\" or a \"Professional Edition\" of our server software, which is not our intention. In XHEO DeployLX there is a \"Session Limit\", which allows to limit the license to the currently established sessions in ASP.NET, which comes very close to my needs. I'm currently thinking of implementing a custom solution, which allows me to load and enforce custom-defined licenses per application on the server-side and a simple editor to define such licenses (which would contain a type and the limit itself), but I would appreciate an existing, easy to integrate commercial solution. I think it could be possible to use DeployLX for this task, but I would spend a lot of money for implementing most of the solution myself (except for the editor). Thanks in advance for any suggestions or hints. Gene"}
{"_id": "128297", "title": "Programming around email address case sensitivity", "text": "Like many websites, we use email addresses as user identifiers for logins. RFC 5321 [#2.3.11] states that the local parts of email addresses: > MUST be interpreted and assigned semantics only by the host specified in the > domain part of the address This means that applications processing email addresses can't second guess, for example, the way that GMail will ignore dots when determining usernames. It also means that applications must treat email address local-parts as case sensitive, since that's how the local part is specified. However users are stupid, and in a recent case a user who had signed up with an uppercase email address (and had successfully received and clicked the verification email) found they were unable to log in because they were now using the lowercase format of their email address. I've never come across an email server which enforced case-sensitivity on its inboxes. I don't doubt that some exist somewhere, but I'm questioning whether there isn't a bigger benefit to dropping case-sensitivity for our email usernames than there are problems keeping it. I wouldn't go so far as to emulate GMail's dot processing, or any kind of plus-addressing, because those don't seem to be as ubiquitous or as automatically-assumed as case-sensitivity. However, I'm aware it's not a black and white scenario so I'm interested if anyone knows how widespread case- sensitive email addresses actually are."}
{"_id": "121525", "title": "Should code comments have scope?", "text": "I am asking this because I have seen places where, whoever coded initially had provided proper comments, but later on modifications were made to the code but the comments were left untouched. I remember reading somewhere \" Don't get suckered in by the comments, debug only code\". So is it a good/ relevant/ practical idea that tells the scope of the comments so as to prompt the developer for editing the comment. Your thoughts."}
{"_id": "121524", "title": "The equivalent of a \"Memorandum of Understanding\" for programmers?", "text": "When one business acquires another, they use a Memorandum of Understanding, which is basically an agreement outlining the duties of each party, etc. I am about to begin a massive web development project for a client - What is the equivalent agreement I would use with them?"}
{"_id": "124233", "title": "Why is it impossible to produce truly random numbers?", "text": "I was trying to solve a hobby problem that required generating a million random numbers. But I quickly realized, it is becoming difficult to make them unique. I picked up Algorithm Design Manual to read about random number generation. It has the following paragraph that I am fully not able to understand. > Unfortunately, generating random numbers looks a lot easier than it really > is. Indeed, it is fundamentally impossible to produce truly random numbers > on any deterministic device. Von Neumann [Neu63] said it best: \u201cAnyone who > considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in > a state of sin.\u201d The best we can hope for are pseudo-random numbers, a > stream of numbers that appear as if they were generated randomly. Why is it impossible to produce truly random numbers in any deterministic device? What does this sentence mean?"}
{"_id": "121529", "title": "What language should I use for making a cross platform library?", "text": "I want to build a SyncML parsing library ( **no UI** ) which should be able to build up messages based on information provided by the host application, fed in by the library's methods. Also, the library should to be able to do callbacks to methods in the host application. I want to be able to compile this and have it available on as many platforms as possible: Windows, Windows Phone 7 OS, OSX, iOS, Linux, Android, BlackBerry. Basically as many platforms as possible. The priority is to have this available on mobile devices. **Questions:**   1. What setup should I use? (programming languages, compilers, IDE etc.)   2. How would I compile this library for these different platforms and how would I connect to it?   3. Any other info? e.g. articles that cover the subject of cross-platform development? I haven't done this sort of a cross-platform project before, so any available information to put me in the right direction would be welcomed. Myself, I have a background in C#/.NET and Objective-C."}
{"_id": "121528", "title": "Reading source code to learn", "text": "As you develop as a programmer, software developer, or coder, IMHO, you begin to see different (best or worst) practices, different algorithms, and \"more than one way to do it\". Seeing this code can be a great learning experience for you, even though you did not write the code. But is doing this only going to confuse you? For example, let's say you have a library in any language that was created by a colleague, and you have been using it for a while. You decide to look at the actual source code, regardless of how extensive it is, and get a better look at how this library is written. For the sake of example, the function you use most often from this library is the `max` function, which finds the largest of two numbers. But this function is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. The way it is written is confusing the heck out of you, and you don't know how this works. Will this make you a better programmer, because you realize how complicated it is for such a simple function, or will it make you a worse coder because you feel less confidant? So my question, in general, is **does reading source code make you a better programmer and if so how? If not why do people still do it?**."}
{"_id": "173542", "title": "Why did object-oriented paradigms take so long to go mainstream?", "text": "I read this question and it got me thinking about another fairly recent thing. Object oriented languages. I'm not sure when the first one was created, but why did it take so long before they became mainstream?   * C became vastly popular, but didn't become the object-oriented C++ for years(decades?) later   * No mainstream language before the 90s was object oriented   * Object oriented really seemed to take off with Java and C++ around the same time Now, my question, why did this take so long? Why wasn't C originally conceived as an object-oriented language? Taking a very small subset of C++ wouldn't have affected the core language a whole lot, so why was this idea not popular until the 90s?"}
{"_id": "135691", "title": "Where can I locate business data to use in my application?", "text": "This question talks about any and all free public raw data which appeared to have valuable pieces but nothing that really provides what I am looking for. Instead of using a socially defined listing of businesses (foursquare), I would like a business listing data set of registered businesses and associated addresses that could then be searchable based on location (coordinates). The critical need is that the data set should be filterable based on varying criteria (give me all restaurants, coffee shops, etc...). If the data is free that is great but anywhere that sells this type of data would also suffice. Infochimps looked like a possibility but perhaps something a bit more extensive exists. Where can I find a free or for fee data set of registered business that is filterable based on type of business and location?"}
{"_id": "135693", "title": "Recommendation for a database to query records with attributes that are arrays or hashes?", "text": "I'm building site with a very simple data structure: documents that are nodes that reference other nodes that each have arrays of parents, children and siblings, so the structure is:               Node:     uuid     name [string]     description [string]     children, parents, siblings [arrays of node uuids]      What is most important is making the following query fast and easy: `all nodes with uuid x in their children/parents/siblings array`. I'm considering using Riak or possibly Postgres with hstore, but would like other suggestions as to a good database designed to easily and quickly store and retrieve data with this structure. Persistence is important, scalability is a secondary concern right now."}
{"_id": "173546", "title": "Are Verification and Validation both Quality Assurance and Quality Control?", "text": "Having read a book I found a note that verification and validation can be both quality assurance and quality control. I cannot see how it can be quality assurance because both just provide evidence whether or not the product meets its use, requirements etc., which is quality control.   IMHO V&V cannot assure quality, they only asnwers the question \"does it work?\", \"is it correct?."}
{"_id": "173547", "title": "What is the difference between \"data hiding\" and \"encapsulation\"?", "text": "I'm reading \"Java concurrency in practice\" and there is said: \"Fortunately, the same object-oriented techniques that help you write well-organized, maintainable classes - such as encapsulation and data hiding -can also help you create thread-safe classes.\" The problem #1 - I never heard about data hiding and don't know what it is. The problem #2 - I always thought that encapsulation is using private vs public, and is actually the data hiding. Can you please explain what data hiding is and how it differs from encapsulation?"}
{"_id": "204789", "title": "using business object as a key in a dictionary", "text": "I keep seeing it all over the place. I think it is an anti-pattern, it requires partially instantiated business object to be able to find the full one in a dictionary. Am I correct? Why would people love it so much? I dislike:               class Thingy {       Id id; // first component of the key       SubId subId; // second component of the key       Data data; // useful payload       public Thingy(Id id, SubId subId, Data data) {...}       // equality & compare & hash override     }          Set<Thingy> things;      I like:               class Thingy {       public static class Key {         Id id; // first component of the key         SubId subId; // second component of the key         // equality & compare & hash override       }            Key key;       Data data; // useful payload       public Thingy(Key key, Data data) {...}     }          Map<Thingy.Key, Thingy> things;"}
{"_id": "208081", "title": "How are new file formats constructed?", "text": "I've used a software suite that is installed in offices and on remote vessels. The installations communicate back and forth, and they do that by using a simple proprietary file format that looks something like this:               /SHIP:16     MILES=45213          /ORDER:22943     STATUS=OPEN     TOTAL=447.84     URGENCY=HIGH          /ORDERLINES:22943     ITEM=3544     QUANTITY=1     PRICE=299.99     ITEM=11269     QUANTITY=5     PRICE=29.57      Recently, I've been writing a piece of software for a customer that saves information in the same kind of flat file format. When the file is opened, the lines are iterated over, and \"stuff happens\" to the lines (i.e. they're inserted into a database, or whatever). But it got to me on to thinking, how would this kind of file scale? (I like things being able to scale) I could of course `gzip` it; but how does a file format evolve from being something basic like to this, to being monolithic? What typical practises are employed when making a file format for a new piece of software? How are they typically built? Related: Is there a proper way to create a file format? and Should I encrypt files saved by my program"}
{"_id": "219303", "title": "GIT and different versions of a project: what are the best practices?", "text": "I'm very new in using GIT as a versioning system and despite a lot of searches, I can't seem to really understand how to handle my scenario. I have this web project that needs to be developed in two versions:   * the first is a general version used for demos   * the second is a customized version for my client. As for now, the second versions differs in minor things, mainly branding (i.e. icons, some titles) and database connections. The idea is to enhance its code with suggestions and real use cases provided by the client and, as we progress with bugfixes and new features, port the changes to the \"general/unbranded version\" - but keeping those minor differences. In the future the \"general\" version could be forked and enhanced more with some independent features. Are branches an useful way to deal with this scenario? I think they're not, as (at least so I understood) they're more meant to make changes to be merged back in short- or mid-term."}
{"_id": "255100", "title": "Count Sort Algorithm efficiency", "text": "As I am reading a Book about \"Algorithm Analysis\", I came across count_sort Algorithm. A question has been raised in my head. I read in many other papers, that \"Quick Sort/ Merge Sort\" are the best and the most efficient sorting algorithms. However, the complexity of this Algorithms is O(n+k), same for Quick sort, and better than Merge sort O(n ln n). My question:   * What is the problem with this sorting Algorithm.    * What are the best sorting Algorithms that I have to check ?              def count_sort(seq):         b, c = [], defaultdict(list)         for x in seq:             c[x].append(x)              for k in range(min(c), max(c)+1):             b.extend(c[k])         return b"}
{"_id": "219305", "title": "Is this any form of service pattern, some other pattern, SOA or just an anti-pattern?", "text": "I'm going to set out a scenario/pattern I've encountered and then I have a few questions pertaining to it. During an MVC request in a web framework (PHP, Laravel in my case), if I have an abstract base class `Service` where subclasses:   * Do not return values   * Deposit the result of their work into a common `Response` singleton, even across multiple service classes.   * Never throw exceptions but instead report error situations as another bag of values in the response singleton.   * Offer a fluent API to chain calls to a single `Service` subclass.   * When a caller (controller) does finally want data, they terminate the fluent API with a `getResponse()` method which returns the `Response` singleton, with no idea of what might be in it or what transpired and when over the course of the prior chained calls. Would I have an anti-pattern on my hands here? My concerns being:   * `Service` subclasses now hide the data they return in a generic bag of data - `Response`   * Because of the desire to implement a fluent API, services are now more or less a relocation of controller code, rather than portable business logic. In order to do fluent calls, the methods all have to exist on the same instance which means you are now forced to mix unrelated functionality into the same instance.   * Callers of a service class (typically controllers and other services) are now coupled to the structure of the `Response` class, rather than being provided with the data they request (say an ORM collection, or a simple language collection type), they're now having to perform extra work rather than simply deal with pure, returned data.   * Separation of concerns when creating inter-dependent services, especially during error situations whereby the scope of the failure is lost.   * Loss of the ability to detect accidental circular dependencies between services via dependency injection   * Is this \"SOA\"? Are there any more risks in this design or if it's a known one, are there advantages to this pattern over simply writing plain classes that return the domain data directly for a service layer?"}
{"_id": "219304", "title": "taxonomy of software project resourcing models", "text": "I would like to understand the impact of different resourcing models for software projects. First, I would like to identify the different resourcing approaches that are used to resource software projects. Here are some models that I can think of based in my own experiences:   1. Product centred resourcing   2. Planned resource pooling   3. Chaotic resource pooling _Model 1_ \\- has resources that are product focused. In this model the project team is dedicated to a product (e.g. a SOA service). In this model, the product is the central concept and the team stays and grows with the product. This model promotes continuous learning for the team in the product domain, and facilitates rapid development of new features because the project team is intimately knowledgeable about the product. This model seems to be very effective for evolving existing products in product centered companies. _Model 2_ \\- pulls resources from a resource pool when starting up new projects. This model appears to be most suitable when developing new products from scratch. In this model team members need to acquire the domain knowledge required before starting the project. The model does not seem to be effective for product based companies because product domain knowledge is lost when resources disband after the project completes. This model is typical in consulting organisations. _Model 3_ \\- is really an extension of Model 2. In Model 3, resources are replaced with other resources mid-project. Thus model treats resources as commodities where new project team members are expected to acquire the same knowledge as the resource that they replaced. This model leaks the most domain knowledge, and is is characterised by low morale and low productivity. This model is usually found in organisations that are constantly fire-fighting. **Question** : Is there a taxonomy of software resourcing models that I can use rather than creating my own?"}
{"_id": "219306", "title": "using internal or external iterators over graph edges", "text": "I've written some code to manipulate sparse graphs for school work I'm doing, and I have an operation which requires me to loop over all the edges of a graph. The interface I need to implement is some function               int gimme_some_edges(graph* g, int k, int* I, int* J)      which puts the next `k` edges of the graph `g` into the arrays `I` and `J`, and returns the number of edges actually found in case there are fewer than `k` left. The iterator pattern seems like the tool for the job. The biggest consideration I want to take account of is that my program is parallel; each thread is responsible for processing a disjoint subset of the graph's edges. In that case, the current edge of the iterator has to be private to each thread, and the iterator has to be stopped from continuing past some ending point into the edges for which another thread is responsible. **Do I want graph edge iterators to be internal or external to graph objects?** If the graph edge iterator is external and called by the client, there's more to do in the maintenance of this object but the parallelism is straight- forward. Moreover, they'll get deleted at the end of the edge processing function. On the other hand, if the iterator is a part of the graph, my code looks simpler on the surface. But, I have to make sure I store an array of them, one for each thread. They're also persistent, so their state can get screwy before the next edge processing unless I'm circumspect (don't bet on it)."}
{"_id": "134349", "title": "How do you name your GUI controls?", "text": "It's a generally considered a bad practice to use the Hungarian notation, but is common to find GUI controls named `userNameTextBox` and `userNameLabel`. Do you put the control type in it's name? Isn't this a kind of Hungarian notation?"}
{"_id": "203969", "title": "Do CS departments have formal procedures to choose languages taught?", "text": "I'm not talking about countryside colleges/unis.   * Are there any thought-out procedures in top-ranking institutions based on formal criteria, actual statistics or demand from the industry?   * If so, what are the criteria used?   * Are the decisions to drop certain languages and introduce others made systematically or in a haphazard manner?"}
{"_id": "45111", "title": "Should I use multiple column primary keys or add a new column?", "text": "My current database design makes use of a multiple column primary key to use existing data (that would be unique anyway) instead of creating an additional column assigning each entry an arbitrary key. I know that this is allowed, but was wondering if this is a practice that I might want to use cautiously and possibly avoid (much like goto in C). So what are some of the disadvantages I might see in this approach or reasons I might want a single column key?"}
{"_id": "134341", "title": "Session size management", "text": "From what I know, the session information is usually saved on the server.   In Java the data is handled as a Map which I guess contains the a String identifier and an object reference which points to a memory zone from the server. Considering that, is it safe to assume that storing a `Properties` file on the session will not have a critical effect on performance? I have to handle some Language Properties files (`ResourceBundle`). For some reason I have to translate at every request at least 30 strings in one of 3 languages. This results in many conditional clauses which can be avoided by storing the Properties file on the session. **Note:** The `Properties` file is just an example. The aim of the question is to determine why and how placing an Properties object in the session differs from pacing an String object. I am aware of the size aspect but does this issue stands while all Objects are stored on the server?"}
{"_id": "134340", "title": "Managing constants in application", "text": "Our application is having 2 parts a web app running ROR and a web service running Sinatra. The application communicates with the mobile device for which we use different constants depending on the message we need to the send to the device. We are currently using integer constants saved up in a module. Eg:               SEND_HI=\"122\"      As the application has grown and we have around 50+ constants we are realizing that this is a bad way to handle constants as different developer seems to give different constants and clashes occur. Also there is a mismatch between the constant values in ROR and sinatra (due to developers mistake obviously). What is a pain free way to handle constants or message identifiers."}
{"_id": "45116", "title": "Why are interfaces not casteable/ducktypeable?", "text": "One thing that always irked me (in C#) was that there's a hard dependency between an interface/abstract class and the implementing class and assembly. Meaning that that if two different assemblies implements the same interface either one of them have to reference the other (where the interface lies) or they both have to reference a third assembly with the interface. It makes it harder to test different parts of an application separately and makes code much less flexible since you have to implement that specific interface. It also makes distributing libraries to third parties less tidy since if you want only to distribute part of your functionality you will either have to rework the class for thirdparties to include the interface, or have some silly assembly containing all but a interface in some cases. Shouldn't there be a way to have ducktypeable interfaces? So for instance if you have two objects with a method that takes an interface as parameter, and each assembly has separate but identical interfaces, then you would be able to interchange the two. I'm sure there are instances where we want the good 'ol strict interface dependencies we have right now but also having the possibility of \"soft interfaces\" might be a good idea? Or is the concept too convoluted and applicatable in too few situations (like multiple inheritance for instance). Are there languages which aren't completely ducktyped that have solved this issue and is there perhaps some designpattern to use to avoid the dependency? **Example:** Assembly A:               public interface ISomeInterface      {         ReadBooks();         WriteLetters();     }          Public ClassA : SomeInterface     {     }      Assembly B:               public interface ISomeOtherInterface      {         ReadBooks();         WriteLetters();     }          public class ClassB     {         public DoStuff (ISomeOtherInterface someOtherInterface)         {           ....         }     }      Here I'd like to have a Assembly C that references A and B and do:                 ClassA classA = new ClassA();       ClassB classB = new ClassB()       classB.DoStuff(classA as ISomeOtherInterface);      There's no direct dependency between A and B, but they can still be used together. I guess in this instance I could make an adapter class, but it feels clunky and in some instances not appropriate. Specific casting is one way to go, another would be to declare an interface as dynamic (or whatever) and then it would only check that the interfaces are identical (but not that they are the same interface). A third way would to be able to specify \"dynamic\" on parameters so the object could allow or disallow that kind of interfaces. Perhaps it even should be the other way around that unless you declare an interface as \"explicit\" you can always do that kind of typing."}
{"_id": "128125", "title": "How effective are CSS, Javascript and HTML compression tools and is it worth to compress files?", "text": "I looked into minified versions of jQuery and also various online CSS & HTML compression tools. I tried compressing few CSS files and gained only 20-30% compression. Are these compression tools worth using and do they add considerable performance improvements? I am looking for tools to compress ASP.NET (.aspx) files."}
{"_id": "85618", "title": "Is it a good idea for exams to be done on a computer?", "text": "In some colleges students are let to use an IDE and Internet and in mine you have to write down your solution in paper. As far as I know, it's pretty much impossible to make a correct non-trivial program on the first try. I'd be fine with no using computers if my teachers assessed my _approach_ instead my _code_ -literally-... that's not the case unfortunately. Which ones are more usual, 'written' or 'coded' exams? And which way is the most adequate? **Edit** \\- question title changed (it used to be _Should students have the right to do exams using a computer?_ )"}
{"_id": "133695", "title": "Problems (such as maintenance) in development with unpopular language", "text": "I'm developing some application with clojure(lisp) alone in my team. It starts as small application. No problem. But as it's having features and extending the area, it's becoming important program. I worried about maintenance or something. No one in my team knows clojure or lisp nor is interested in languages such as them. So, isn't it wrong to do programming in unpopular languages? (for my own fun?) Should I use more popular languages? (at least such as python) I'm sure if I leave the team, --not saying I'm leaving. :)-- no one would maintain it. This program will be destroyed and some will develop with other language. I'm very enjoying developing with clojure though, I came across with that this might be not for my team. What do you think about this? I think many programmers loving unpopular languages have been concerning similar issue."}
{"_id": "42838", "title": ".NET Reflector is no longer free - how does everyone feel about this?", "text": "The upcoming version of .NET Reflector, coming in March, will no longer have a free version. .NET Reflector started out as a free utility written by programmer Lutz Roeder and quickly became fairly indispensable to a lot of programmers. After about four years he sold it to RedGate software, who has maintained a free version ever since, as well as a \"Pro\" version about a year ago which adds capabilities and starts at $99/seat. The new version will no longer have a free version, will be $35 for the non- Pro versions, and the existing free versions will still work until the end of May. On the one hand it's annoying that the existing free versions will die and obviously I'd prefer there be a free version going forward. On the other hand I respect where RedGate is coming from and the cost for a license isn't prohibitively expensive. Plus it may encourage more frequent updates. **EDIT:** I originally said it was $35 for everyone but according to this FAQ there's still going to be a Pro version."}
{"_id": "42839", "title": "Online programming degree that employers will not disregard?", "text": "I already have a bachelors in an entirely different field, but I am looking to start a career in programming. However, traveling into school would be very difficult for me at this point. Are there any online programming degrees that are as valuable (in terms of getting a job) as those from a brick-and-mortar college?"}
{"_id": "253995", "title": "Should I sacrifice code succintness to ensure the narrowest variable scope?", "text": "In many languages (e.g. both Perl and Java - which are the two languages I work most with) it is possible to narrow the scope of local variables by declaring them within a block. Although it adds extra code length (the opening and closing block braces), and possibly reduces readability, should I create blocks purely to narrow the scope of variables to the statements that use the variables and to uphold the principle of narrowest scope or does this sacrifice succinctness and readability just to unnecessarily uphold an agreed 'best practice' principle? I usually declare local variables to functions/methods at the start of the function to aid readability, but I could not do this, and just create blocks throughout the function and declare the variables throughout the code - within those blocks - to narrow their scope."}
{"_id": "200706", "title": "Build status reporting on javascript project", "text": "I have a javascript project which uses Grunt and several plug-ins such as:   * jshint   * qunit   * requirejs optimizer Not all of the developers run the grunt tasks locally (e.g. jshint, qunit), so they might not know if code they committed has issues. It's easy enough to set up a grunt watch task, but emailing the team upon error/warning has been less obvious than I expected. I was expecting to find something like grunt-contrib-emailstatus for emailing a nicely-formatted status, but so far have not come across this. Did I miss it? If not, what's the recommended practice here? In the past I've seen things like Cruise Control, Jenkins, or Hudson handle the build status reporting, but it seems like too big a hammer for this nail. And on the other hand, trying to use crontab to email status seems too small."}
{"_id": "200704", "title": "Controlling cookies with many tabs", "text": "I have a peculiar problem. My application has different levels of authentication. One specific level of user (super user) needs to be able to use the application as another user (subordinate user) that has lower privileges. We decided that when the super user selects to be a subordinate user then another tab in the browser will be opened and will load the subordinate user's privileges and their respective cookie. The problem we have is: **how can we get the reference for the new cookie in this new tab?** Also the super user will be able to open multiple tabs and each tab need to reference its own cookie."}
{"_id": "135967", "title": "How do we call a concept when my acceptor loop is ran by some real application while all services are plugins for that application?", "text": "So say we have an app (server) that somehow attaches to itself plugins (services) in form of .dll or .so libraries. Is there any nice short name for such server behaviour model?"}
{"_id": "200701", "title": "How to view my commits on SourceForge", "text": "I want to link to a source forge project for a job application but I can't seem to find where a user's commits are listed. If I go to > https://sourceforge.net/u/USER_NAME/profile/ All I see is the project that I worked on (which just leads to the project page, not my individual activity) and then there's Personal data and skills list. How do I get to a user's actual code?"}
{"_id": "200700", "title": "How can I shorten the amount of time it takes to change variables dependent on environment (QA/Dev/Prod)", "text": "I'm working on a Java Project, and I wrote a small plug-in to the existing project. I wrote it on my Mac(dev), QA is on Windows and Prod is on Unix. In the code I make specific API calls to a different program. On my mac though I'm just reading in a file. In Dev it is using windows file path to execute an external programs CLI. Prod will be the same. I'm aware of property files, should I use a property file for this to quickly switch environments. At the moment it is just a lot of commenting/uncommenting to get everything up and running."}
{"_id": "138517", "title": "What are the main bottlenecks to know about Java portability?", "text": "Java is known to be portable; _\"compile once, run anywhere\"_. I know this is often true because I have many times deployed **jar** or **war** without any cross-platform troubles. Still, I am left wondering if this is always true. For example, Swing applications look different between different OS platforms. Also, JDK-1.7 is still a preview release for Mac OS X. _**So, what are the common problems that prove that Java applications are not entirely cross platform?_**"}
{"_id": "38507", "title": "What are the Most Important things to know about iPhone Development?", "text": "For example I just learned today about NARC. Never release something unless you made it \"New, Alloced, Initialized or Copied\". That just fixed a couple different bugs in my app that I couldn't find. What other things are very important for iPhone development? _**EDIT_**   I have no idea how to make this Community Wiki."}
{"_id": "164419", "title": "When using several languages for different projects, how do you keep the different syntaxes straight?", "text": "Context: I'm taking several classes this semester in which I'll be coding. Here is a list of possible languages I'll be using:   * Java   * C (system and embedded level)   * C++ (contest programming)   * VHDL (for FPGA work)   * Python   * Scheme Is it possible to keep all these languages floating around in one's head? How can one code without having to look up reference material every time they start working?"}
{"_id": "249506", "title": "GSP Algorithm explanation", "text": "I've been trying to implement the GSC algorithm in C++, however I need help with clarifying the definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSP_Algorithm >   1. GSP Algorithm makes multiple database passes. In the first pass, all > single items (1-sequences) are counted > Basically this means that you have something like this? :               std::vector<int> numberSequence = GenerateSequence();          std::vector<in> numberSequenceFrequence;     numberSequenceFrequence.resize(numberSequence .size());          for(int i = 0; i < numberSequence.size(); i++)     {         numberSequenceFrequence[i] = CountNumberOccurenceInVector(numberSequence[i]);     }      And then for part 2: >   1. A set of candidate 2-sequences are formed, and another pass is made to > identify their frequency. > But how do you construct the set of candidate 2-sequences? I'm not exactly sure what they mean. Does this mean that **X** number of elements from `numberSequence` with the lowest counts in `numberSequenceFrequence` are removed from `numberSequence` and the process is repeated? According to this: > Candidate Generation. Given the set of frequent (k-1)-frequent sequences > F(k-1), the candidates for the next pass are generated by joining F(k-1) > with itself. A pruning phase eliminates any sequence, at least one of whose > subsequences is not frequent. Does it mean popping the last element of the vector each step? > A pruning phase eliminates any sequence, at least one of whose subsequences > is not frequent. This part implies I need to be working with vectors of vectors, so I think I've completely missed the point. And finally: > Support Counting. Normally, a hash tree\u2013based search is employed for > efficient support counting. Finally non-maximal frequent sequences are > removed. The definition of **nonmaximal** means something that is not comparable, but an `int` is always comparable to an `int`: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nonmaximal"}
{"_id": "208551", "title": "How to programmatically turn off LED on USB?", "text": "I would like to find out how to programmatically turn off the LED on the USB flash drive. I haven't found any tutorials or good source to get to started with it. I'm willing to try to rewrite or to debug drivers if it will be required. I have experience with programming(any language, but preferably C or Python). I have experience with OllyDBG and IDA PRO. I have some experience with engineering(small devices like Arduino). I'm not interested in disconnecting LED form the board, or closing it with black duct-tape. I need to do it manually using some script, tool, or by rewriting the driver. I have seen a lot of question like this, but non of them have any information that can be used. I also tried to contact some of the persons who have answered to similar question, but no luck so far. I would really appreciate if someone could give me some information or guideline of how to do this. P.S. I need this a start with another project. I want to disable LED on the USB webcam that I have, but I don't know where to start, so I think it will be easier to do with a USB flash drive first. Also, I want to do this on Windows. But if any information is available for Linux I will gladly look at it. Any information regarding any flash drive or webcam will do just fine. * * * I think I have confused many of you. This question is not about turning off LED on **webcam**. It's about turning off LED on **flash drive**. Regular USB flash drive, where no hard can be done if LED will be disabled. I'm sure that they have opinion to blink. For example when transmitting data on flash drive LED in blinking. When it's inactive the LED is on or off. Of course it depends on the flash drive model and manufacturer. But if someone can point how to do it on any flash drive and point where to buy it(eBay, Amazon or any other e-shop), I will be gladly to try it out."}
{"_id": "208557", "title": "Program license : Open-Source and commercial?", "text": "Currently programming a new software, I'm searching for information about protecting my concept and my source-code. I precise I'm quite new in licensing. As I'm feeling very concerned by Open-source and sharing with the community, I'm puzzled on the other hand because I want to make some profit of my work (around 1 year of free-time, you can imagine the amount of missed beers in pub!). So I'm looking for a double license, that is compatible, and allows software source-code distributing, but force companies to get a commercial license, or to negotiate directly with me. But I think it is totally contradictory with GPL like licenses. What are you thinking about that?"}
{"_id": "164413", "title": "mobile app development noob", "text": "I know c, most of c++, a little assembly, win32 console, etc I'm looking for free, cross-platform, c / c++, emulator, etc. I'm a beginner to the mobile app world, so I'm lost. Some that pop to mind on this list:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_application_development Airplay SDK, Aqua, BatteryTech, DragonFireSDK, IwGame Engine, Symbian, Windows Mobile I don't want to use a API that is considered obsolete."}
{"_id": "204464", "title": "Enforcing a uniform Scrum approach to all teams within a department", "text": "Where I work we recently switched the Agile development using Scrum. We went through the typical growing pains but have reached an approach that seems to work for now (whether it'll work in the long term is for another question!). Obviously, the department management is happy the transition to Scrum is working. But they have starting doing something that, to me, feels wrong. Management will observe a team, see what works for them, and the prescribe it to the entire department. Things like:   * The definition of \"Done\"   * Which story point values can be used for story pointing (eg, omitting 8 from the fib. sequence because 1, 2, 3, 5, 13, etc were the only ones used during a sprint they observed)   * Telling teams they must calibrate their story point value of 1 to \"updating a UI label,\" and limiting them to an upper bound of 20      * (although not all our projects have clients and not all developers have UI experience)   * Telling teams to use story point estimates of 100 to mean \"we'll split this story later\"   * Telling teams to use story point estimates of infinity to mean \"this is an epic\" or \"we need more info\" I understand they're trying to be helpful, but shouldn't all the things above be Scrum-team specific? That is to say, what works for one group of individuals on one project may not make sense to another group on another project. I'm concerned we're drifting into a very prescriptive and stiff Agile approach. Am I justified in thinking this, or am I overreacting? ## Edit Just to clarify... by \"Management\" and \"Manager\" I don't mean the Product Owner. I mean any manager outside the Scrum Team, but within the Software Department."}
{"_id": "229095", "title": "how to filter 'must-have' requirements from 'nice-to-have' requirements", "text": "In building a software from scratch, there is necessity to conduct detailed needs assessment and find out what the clients/stakeholders **really** need. When interviewing the end-users, organizing workshops or directly participating in business process for which the software product is written, there are many requirements which are very important, they are 'must-to-have' requirements . In the same process, the clients name some functionalities, which **are related to** software, but they do not seem do solve any problem, so say 'nice-to-have' features., e.g. have the possibility to change the interface color, or be able to manage some processes which the software could do without their interference. There should be some pattern to manage this kind of requirements. How to distinguish between these 2 kind of featuures? How to estimate does an additional feature add value to the software or is just augments the scope of the project? Besides, how to persuade the clients that 'nice-to-have' features are somehow useful, but not really necessary."}
{"_id": "71287", "title": "Functional Programming on the rise?", "text": "I have noticed lately that functional programming languages are gaining popularity. I recently noticed how the Tiobe Index shows an increase in their popularity in comparison to the last year although most of them do not even reach the top 50 most popular languages according to this index. And this has been the case for quite some time. Functional programming simply has not become as popular as other models (i.e object oriented programming). I have seen however a reborn interest in the power of functional programming and now that multicores are more and more popular, developers have started to show interest in other models of concurrency already explored in the past by languages like Haskell and Erlang. I see with great interest the fact that despite of their lack of a big community acceptance, more and more languages of this sort continue to emerge. Clojure (2007), Scala (2003), F# (2002) are just three examples of the recent last decade. I have been, myself, investing some time learning Haskell and Scala. And I find a great potential in the paradigm which for me was totally new despite of being out there for so long. And of course, my biggest question is if any of these are really going to become popular enough as to consider putting any effort in them, but this is a question that not even Mandrake could answer, despite of all the fuss people is making about them. What I do want to ask is:   * In which scenarios should I consider a functional programming languages better suited to do a given task? Besides the so recently popular multicore problem of parallel programming.   * If I decided to switch to a functional programming language which do you consider are the biggest pitfalls that I will face? (Besides the paradigm change and the difficulty to evaluate performance due to lazy evaluation).   * With so many functional programming languages out there, how would you choose the one the better suit your needs?  Any recommendations for further research will be more than welcomed. I have searched the web for opinions and it appears the all this renew popularity come from the idea that now were about to hit the wall of Moore's Law and functional programming languages will come and heroically save us. But if this is the case, I would say there are more probabilities of existing popular languages adapting to the paradigm. Some of you, with more experience working every day with these languages perhaps can offer more insight on the subject. All your opinions will be better appreciated and carefully considered. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "147096", "title": "Using BSD Licensed source code", "text": "Someone wrote a .NET library to use the Google Maps API (link to the project). I downloaded the entire repository and there are only source files, no LICENSE.txt, readme, etc. However, I guess Google makes you pick a license when creating a new project so the author specified \"New BSD License\". What I would like to do is download the source and rework it (maybe include JSON.net, add features, etc) and keep it in my github account. So I have a few questions related to this:   * Is the license valid even though the author doesn't have an explicit file with his name, copyright, etc?   * If the license is valid, then do I just put his name and year into that BSD License Template?   * In general, if there is a license included with a project, how do I make sure I am doing right by the author? Would I just leave their license information in tact and then add my own on top of it?   * Am I over thinking this and some of these licenses just amount to a \"do whatever you want just don't sue me\" (kind of my feelings, since I would be delighted if anyone wanted to use my code for anything at all)?"}
{"_id": "202704", "title": "What values in an application should be configurable?", "text": "What values in an application should be configurable, or otherwise not hard coded? Does this differ based on application type (batch vs UI) and are there any published standards or guidance on this topic (IEEE, ACM, vendor, etc)?"}
{"_id": "202707", "title": "Why did Embarcadero make me sign a waiver?", "text": "Just signed in to the Embarcadero Developer Network and got this: > EXPORT CONTROLS ON EMBARCADERO SOFTWARE Your EDN membership and access to > Embarcadero Software is subject to your agreement to and compliance with the > following terms: > > -You agree that U.S. export control laws govern your use of the Embarcadero > Software. > > -You are not a citizen, national, or resident of, and are not under control > of, the government of Cuba, Iran, Sudan, North Korea, Syria, nor any country > to which the United States has embargoed or prohibited export. > > -You will not provide or export Embarcadero Software, directly or > indirectly, to the above mentioned countries nor to citizens, nationals or > residents of those countries. > > -You are not listed on the United States Department of Treasury lists of > Specially Designated Nationals, Specially Designated Terrorists, and > Specially Designated Narcotic Traffickers, nor are you listed on the United > States Department of Commerce Table of Denial Orders. > > -You will not provide or export the Embarcadero Software, directly or > indirectly, to persons on the above mentioned lists. > > -You will not use the Embarcadero Software for, and will not allow the > Embarcadero Software to be used for, any purposes prohibited by United > States law, including for the development, design, manufacture or production > of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction. I think it's BS, but what craziness is forcing companies like Embarcadero to hold developers to these very high standards? Also, what is \"Embarcadero Software\"? Does that mean I can't put a benign videogame on a website that may have a runtime that might be downloaded by a Iranian who love scrabble. Or does \"Embarcadero Software\" refer to anything I develop using Delphi."}
{"_id": "198332", "title": "Other than XML, what are some examples of \"coding\" a GUI design?", "text": "I've been trying to think outside of the box as to how desktop GUIs can be designed in code(not a graphical designer!). I've come across basically three ways this is done:   1. XML   2. Raw code (create a window, create a text box, add text box to window, etc)   3. HTML and friends I'm sure that someone has done something other than these three though. Are there any existing examples of frameworks or languages which allow you to code a GUI using a format other than these three"}
{"_id": "94", "title": "What techniques do you use when interviewing developers?", "text": "I realize there have been lots of discussions about this type of thing and they often devolve into dogma around whether you ask the \"100 logical pirates\" type of questions or whether you get them to write \"fizz buzz\". I'm interested in what techniques and questions have been effective for _you_ when interviewing potential developers for jobs. One technique per answer so we can vote on them, please."}
{"_id": "236925", "title": "Testing (deterministic) algorithms with multiple or difficult to prove correct right answers", "text": "I'd like to preface this that this question is similar, but my question doesn't involve randomness, just finicky determinism, so the answer of \"use a known seed\" doesn't really apply. Likewise, this question is similar, but again, I'm not expecting the algorithm to ever fail -- I just don't know which way it will be correct. This question came about while testing graph algorithms. but is by no means limited to them. Some algorithms such as A* can have multiple correct answers. Depending on your exact implementation you may get any one of several answers, each of which are equally correct. This can make them difficult to test, though, because you don't know which one it's going to spit out ahead of time, and it's very time consuming to compute the answers by hand. In my specific case, I got around it by modifying Floyd-Warshall to spit out _every possible_ shortest path, and spent the time hand testing that. It had the benefit of being a good feature in its own right. Then I could test other functions in terms of the known correct paths from FW (if the returned path is any one of the paths returned by FW for that start/end pair, it's correct). Of course, this only works for dense graphs due to how FW works, but it's still nice. However, that may not always be viable for all algorithms with this characteristic. So far, the best answer I've come up with is to test for the characteristics of a correct answer, rather than the correct answer itself. To go back to shortest path algorithms, you can check the cost of the returned path against the known right cost and make sure the path is valid. This works, but it can run the risk of not verifying everything correctly the more criteria for correctness there are, especially if the verification is itself complex (e.g. while correct algorithms exist, verifying a minimum spanning tree is a known hard problem; probably harder than constructing the MST itself), in which case you now have to extensively test your testing code. Worse: presumably you have to construct an MST to test an MST verification algorithm so you now have a great scenario where your MST test relies on your MST verification algorithm working, and your MST verification algorithm test relies on your MST generation code working. Finally, there's the \"cheap way\", which involves observing the output, verifying it by hand, then hard coding the test to test the output you just verified, but that's not a great idea since you may have to revise the test every time you change the implementation a little (which is what automated testing is supposed to avoid). Obviously the answer depends on the exact algorithm you're testing to a degree, but I was wondering if there were any \"best practices\" for verifying algorithms that have several definite, deterministic \"correct\" outputs, but those precise correct outputs are difficult to know ahead of time, and possibly hard to even verify after the fact."}
{"_id": "175261", "title": "What diagrams, other than the class diagram and the workflow diagram, are useful for explaining how an application works?", "text": "I am working on a small Delphi project, composed of two units. One unit is for the GUI, and the other for data management, file parsing, list iterating and so on.. I've already made a class diagram, and my workflow looks like hell- it's too complex, even for anyone to read. I've considered making a dataflow diagram, but it would be even more complex. A use case diagram wouldn't be of use either. Am I missing some diagram type which could somehow represent the relationship between my two units?"}
{"_id": "190093", "title": "Is wrapping byte[] for stronger typing good practice?", "text": "I'm working on a Java-based library which makes use of PKCS #10 requests. There are PKCS #10 libraries available for Java (Sun and IBM libraries that come with the respective JDKs), and the open-source Bouncy Castle library. I'd rather not couple my library to another through the API, so my initial thought was to create a wrapper. However, PKCS #10 is potentially complex, so the scope of the wrapper would expand quite quickly, and users of that wrapper would probably \"unwrap\" the wrapper and use one of the aforementioned libraries for any heavy-lifting, particularly if they use PKCS #10 in their own applications already. My remaining option is to provide a simple wrapper around a byte array. Is providing a very thin wrapper just for the sake of typing good practice?"}
{"_id": "253524", "title": "Can't understand on how to implement MVP/MVC for my software requirements", "text": "Recently I decided to start developing a client/service based system using WCF and a Duplex Channel (callbacks from Service to client). The clients will behave as \"slaves\", that is, they will only connect to server and from then on, only the server communicates with them. Eventually the server may request that the clients send \"data streams\" to him (frequent updates of new content/objects). I want to make my software as loosely coupled as possible, but even reading about the different patterns for this, such as MVC and MVP, they don't seem to be designed to fulfill my specific requirements. What is the best code architecture or pattern for my problem? Considering the technologies I am using?"}
{"_id": "237033", "title": "Strategy for maintaining offline repository safely using git", "text": "I use git for versioning. Just yesterday I was working on refactoring my Python code base. After adding a test I found that I had introduced a bug in one of project euler solutions. So I checked out a previous version offline, found the diff and went back to latest version and fixed the problem. It was a bit after that I found a mess up had been done due to this. I use .gitignore to leave many of the unneeded files or WIP things out of git. I found that using checkout and going back to the latest version deleted some files which were not checked in. Now I am finding that a new repo that I keep in an ignored Folder is completed cleaned. It did not have much so far but still all is gone. So I am confused about what is a good way to keep offline codebase intact in case there are many such folders/files that I do not want to check in? Also how to organize codebase on local for new projects? Just take backups on a drive?"}
{"_id": "237030", "title": "Manage ClickOnce releases for different parties", "text": "I'm struggling with release management of a piece of software. First some general information:   * It is a ClickOnce application   * I follow the release often practice   * There are about 30 parties served with this software   * I need full control which update will be delivered to which party   * Not each party is allowed to get the latest update/release   * Each party has multiple clients that are all allowed to get the latest update, served for the specific party So that's what my requirements are in a rough description. So let me explain what I was thinking about how to solve this.   * I would like to create a \"deployment\" website (asp.net) that will handle all the requests   * There are two endpoints one for download the client and one where the client checks for updates   * So each party has a separate endpoint like DeploymentSite/party1 and another for DeploymentSite/party2   * The Application Files should still be stored centralized So I thought it would be manageable with mage.exe with the following steps   1. Build application and store new release into Application Files Repository/Folder   2. Get parties that should be updated (config file, database what ever)   3. Run mage.exe to create a new application and deployment manifest for each party in the update list with new Application File Location (1.0.2)  Actually I'm really struggling with this mage.exe staff. I can't create the appropriate files with the needed codebase. How to handle thes requirements?"}
{"_id": "246226", "title": "How should I test boolean function with many possible permutations", "text": "When I write an unit test I usually provide a context (plain object or mocked/stubbed object) that I setup in some ways and then I can run assert statement on the context: note: code is in pseudo-code; groovy like syntax:               test myTest() {       def o = getTestContext();       o.string = \"testme\"       o.number = \"2\"       assert o.mult() == \"testme testme\"      }      But how to organize the test when you need to test a complex boolean expression that takes many parameters ? EDIT: I have replaced the one line expression with something more readable to avoid confusion.               //this is not a real class, this is an example. Naming is bad, for conciseness sake     //the expression is coming from randomness realm, so it is probably refactorable and simplifiable, but complex real world expression still exists.     enum Type {X,Y,Z}     class C {       boolean a,b,c,d;       Type t;                 boolean isEnabled(boolean anotherFlag) {              def condition1 = (a || b)         def condition2 = (c && d)         def goodType1 = t == X || t == Y         def goodType2 = anotherFlag && t == Z || t == Z && !condition1               return (  condition1  || condition2 ) && (goodType1 || goodType2)        }     }      All tests for this kind of methods I've read so far are very verbose, not complete and hard to understand. And it is quite a shame that such a small line of code, even if it is 'complex', generates awful tests. I've tried to break the boolean expression into smaller sub methods, but sometime it is not so convenient and the permutation count is still high. I also usually break the expression into intermediate variables, but this is not helping in unit test world... How should I test something like this to have test code matching the briefness of the tested code and the completeness that must assert that my code works as expected ? **Edit: about the retained solution.** Refactoring is indeed a way to go, but I really don't want to 'unroll' all combinations manually in my tests: it is verbose, ugly and good be hard to understand to. However I'll keep this answer as a preliminary mandatory step: break the expression into smaller pieces before anything else. Once the refactoring is done and the test still result in combinatory tests, then I'll use the TruthTable solution proposed. I'll just generate the combinations and not declare everything. I found this interesting, but outdated, article about test combination in Groovy.   The tool they spoke about is out of search engine radar, so it must be dead !   However I'll used the same pattern:               assertThat(permutations, expectations, instanceObject)      Where   * permutation is all possible values to assign to properties in a 'condensed map': (a:[true, false], b:[true, false], ...)   * expectation is all combinations that return a specific value, all other combination will be checked against a default value."}
{"_id": "246224", "title": "Synchronizing web ui and third party async services", "text": "I'm looking for concepts, approaches or even Framework/libraries to help me synchronize state reliably from web UI to a third Party Service. For example: creating a JavaScript irc Client ui you need an own backend to handle the IRC connection. The IRC protocol is asynchronous in a way that you send a command to the server and then the server will eventually answer with an event changing the state of your irc connection. In similar ways the JavaScript/web UI is asynchronous when it comes to reflecting changes in that state. From my understanding there are two main issues I am having with implementing something like this. Usecase: Joining a channel:   1. In JavaScript UI I enter a command which will trigger an AJAX(?) call. On the server this request triggers an execution of an IRC command. At this point I Need to have an eventlistener for the possible answers a server could give me and determine whether I have joined the given channel or not. This ideally should result in the ui being updated with either an error message or an opening channel window   2. In IRC you could also be invited by someone to join a channel, or your could be kicked from a channel. Then you have to react to the irc connection state changes and update the ui accordingly Is this a solved problem?"}
{"_id": "123961", "title": "Alternatives to Professional Version Control", "text": "We're teaming up with some non programmers (writers) who need to contribute to one of our projects. Now they just don't like the idea of using Git (or anything for that matter) for version controlling their work. I think this is because they just don't find it worthwhile to wrap their heads around the twisted concepts of version control. (when I first introduced them to branching and merging -- they looked like I was offending them.) Now, we're not in a position to educate them or convince them to use it. We're just trying to find alternatives so that we get all their work versioned (which is what we need) -- and they get easy workflow and concentrate on what they do. I have come up with some ideas...   * tell them to save their work as a separate file every time they make some non-trivial change, and then use a diff on our side to just track changes.   * write a program (in Python) that implements the \"milestones\" in CSSEdit in some way. _**About the project:_** _It is a natural language processing system (written in C + Python). We've hired some writers to prepare inputs for the system in different languages. And as we evolve the software, we'd need those writers to make changes to their inputs (articles). Sometimes the changes are very small (a word or two), and other times big._ _The reason we need to version control those changes is because every small/big change in the input has the potential to change the system's output dramatically._"}
{"_id": "146474", "title": "Display rich text in tool tip", "text": "In this particular website, when you hover your mouse over a particular region, it displays something that is clickable. I know of tool tips, but in my experience, I have only used tool tips to show static text, not click able html text. http://www.cry.org/projects/projects.html What technology do you think is being used here? Also, is this a tool tip?"}
{"_id": "123962", "title": "Does everyone need a framework to work better?", "text": "I have been working with a complex system written with Java. It is made by with many java programs and many shell scripts which call them and some cronjobs to schedule them. The system is hard to maintain. Input/Output/Error/OK files were distributed in different place of the system by the hands of different programmers. In order to know what is going on, I need to check the config file to see where are the relevant files, and go there to check the status of the program by viewing some logs or ok files(a blank file with extension of .ok to indicate the success of a scheduled job). Moreover, I am tired of wasting my time on the JDBC connection/object which need to open explicitly and close explicitly. I've heard that people's compliment over the famous Struts Spring Hibernate (SSH) frameworks. I have never touch any of those, would they help me make a better project which is easy to maintain?"}
{"_id": "123965", "title": "Design Methodology for Developing Interoperable Systems?", "text": "**A bit of background** The company I work for has been creating database applications since around 1980 and, until relatively recently, most of these systems have been stand- alone \"silo\" systems. However, in the last few years, we've seen more of a shift towards gathering \"intelligence\" across all systems within our customers requirements. For example, a system that might collect data about people's dental records may need to talk to a system that collects data about people's optician records, share information about the same person and provide search capabilities across both systems (makes sense, although the example I've used is fictional). In the fictional example above, the dental and optician systems may or may not both be written by the company I work for (in other words we are looking at both internally-developed interfaces and interfaces to systems from third- party providers). **What we've done so far** We have a basic web-services API ( **.asmx** ) for one of our products, but I'm concerned about the change management, in terms of keeping it up-to-date as we add new features to the main product (in terms of providing the new features through the API without breaking compatibility with older interfaces). We have also produced one **WCF** service. The rigid contracts put my mind slightly more at ease than working with the ASMX service, but I think a lack of experience within the company is holding us back, so I'm looking for some guidance on best practice that I can read up on to help move us along (or at least point us in the right direction). **The question**   * **Is there a particular methodology or programming practice for designing systems to maximise their ability to interface to other systems?**   * **Are there any good online (or offline) resources for these programming practices (assuming they exist)?** Any other advice you can provide based on the information above would be appreciated, but not essential. We primarily develop in Microsoft .NET (mainly ASP.NET, with some windows forms applications as well) with a SQL Server/Oracle database back-end, although I expect the programming practices might be language independent. (I've used the .NET tag as an afterthought, but I might take it out later..!) Thanks for your time."}
{"_id": "123964", "title": "Moving legacy application to a testable framework?", "text": "We have a web application which contains a web service with over 50 methods. The application is currently installed at a number of sites and is currently being maintained by one developer. The application is currently a single user system where all the data is stored in XML files. One of our main tasks is to make it a multi user system whilst at the same time put in a database (RDBMS or NoSQL, not decided yet). In addition to other new features we want to get a team of developers (around 5) working on other new features. From what I have seen, the application is not testable. There are no test units and all the code is pretty much in the web service methods. I need to put a framework in place so that the other developers can simply start working on their features using TDD and then finally when we have the database in place we can switch that in at a later date. I was thinking of first moving all the code into libraries and then introducing UNITY and test/mocking frameworks to provide some of the services that the other developers will need. That way via inversion of control they at least have interfaces they can work with. I am not sure if this is the right way to go or whether I should focus on some other area. I was thinking about putting unit tests around the original code but then all the code will change later so this may be pointless in the long run. We have a period of about 6 weeks before we get the other developers involved. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "146470", "title": "What's the difference between dictionary word \"Scheme\" and Computer term \"Schema\"", "text": "What's the difference? In my opinion, I can replace the term \"Schema\" with \"Scheme\". Can I?"}
{"_id": "149756", "title": "How in the earth CHRW produce unicode codes given that it only accept 65k possible input?", "text": "http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-many-unicode-characters-are- there.html says there are 1 million unicode characters and around 240k of which are already assigned. 1 million > 240k > 65k However, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualbasic.strings.chrw says that chrw accept 65k characters. Not only that chrw accept integer. Integer is 4 bytes in vb.net right and can store way more than 65k characters. The numbers do not match up and so what am I missing?"}
{"_id": "180297", "title": "OOP terminology in Ruby and C++", "text": "I am taking a C++ class in my school. Since I've programmed in Ruby I know some OOP stuff. But in C++ there are member functions, member variables, and static functions. In Ruby we have instance methods, instance variables, and class variables. And there are more... Any reason they're different? Are they quite different levels of OOP? Or just some differences in tradition these ecosystems have?"}
{"_id": "185489", "title": "DDD - Aggregate Roots - Dealing with Efficiency and Concurrency", "text": "First off, I'll admit that I'm a newbie to DDD and need to read the \"blue book\". I'm building a system that has an AggregateRoot of type \"Match\". Each Match can have a collection of \"Votes\" and also has a readonly \"VoteCount\" property which gets incremented when a user up-votes or down-votes a Match. Since many users could be voting on a Match at the same time, Votes have to be added/removed from the Match and the VoteCount has to be incremented/decremented as one atomic operation involving write locks (with locks handled by the DB). (I need VoteCount as a static value in the database to be queried on efficiently by other processes/components.) It seems to me that if I were adhering to strict DDD, I would be coding this operation as such:   1. An application service would receive a vote request object   2. The service would then retrieve the Match object from a Match Repository   3. The service would then call some sort of method on the Match object to add the Vote to the collection and update VoteCount.   4. The Repository would then persist that Match instance back to the DB However, this approach is not feasible for my application for 2 main reasons, as I see:   1. I'm using MongoDB on the backend and cannot wrap this read-write operation into a transaction to prevent dirty reads of the Match data and its associated Votes and VoteCount.   2. It's highly inefficient. I'm pulling back the entire object graph just to add a Vote and increment VoteCount. Although this is more efficient in a document db than in a relational one, I'm still doing an unnecessary read operation.  Issues 1 & 2 are not a problem when sending a single Vote object to the repository and performing one atomic update statement against Mongo. Could Vote, in this case be considered an \"aggregate\" and be deserving of its own repository and aggregate status?"}
{"_id": "71758", "title": "How to explain to non-programmers that programming is not a repetitive task?", "text": "Some people have the view of programming that it is just repetitive typing on a keyboard. None of this is true. First of all, there is so much more you have to do than actually typing down the code, such as design architecture and so on. Secondly, it could be a greatly varying, non-repetitive task, with new challenges coming all the time. How should you explain that programming is _not_ a repetitive task to **non- programmers**?"}
{"_id": "18704", "title": "What are some good assignments for an introductory course, to reach today's students?", "text": "I periodically teach an **introduction to programming course using Java**. I want to give my students some exciting **assignments that they can relate to or find interesting**. At the very least, I want assignments that make sense and have an internal cohesion (for example, some very bad programming exercises seem contrived just so that you have to use the most recent programming construct covered). To give you an idea of scope, **here's what's being covered** :   * The assignments must be in Java, using some external library can be done, but it would need to be a simple API and not a full framework   * Variables, Primitives and Strings   * Console input and output   * `if`, `for`, `while`   * Arithmetic and logical operators   * Simple graphics with line and shape drawing   * Static methods   * One-dimensional arrays The students will not go into advanced topics (e.g., no recursion, no emphasis on inheritance). Thus, I'm _not_ looking for complex projects: \"Have them write a C compiler. I did it when I was 5 and it was the only way I learned!\" _If you have ideas that are more advanced than the scope, please post them on the \"Challenging\" question linked below, and not this one._ Instead, what I'm looking for are interesting ideas that can be accomplished in a short program. For example:   * Students can write a console version of the \"Star Wars Name\" Generator. This is effectively reading Strings and using `substring`, but I think it's fun. A similar variation would be a \"Mad Libs\" program. _I used this one five years ago, and perhaps it's already \"stale.\"_   * Using some trig supplied to them, students can draw regular polygons, and create interesting spiral shapes.   * It's also not out of the question to use some simple animation class with most of the code supplied to them. And if you know a Twitter or Facebook service that can be accessed with a simple API, I would be very interested to know. Please note that this question is different from the \"Challenging Java questions for beginners\" Question. I'm not looking for challenging per se, just interesting. I think if students work on something where they can easily answer \"why would anyone ever want to program that?\" then they will learn better. Even simple problems like computing Miles per Gallon can be good. Although, if there's a way to update it to be more relevant, all the better. If you have an exercise from somewhere else (a book or a website), please cite the source. To help you think about the typical freshman today, check out **the Beloit Mindset list**, for many examples that will surely make you feel old."}
{"_id": "89965", "title": "How can I automatically undo checkouts on unmodified files?", "text": "From time to time, I realize that files that haven't been modified have been checked out by my Visual Studio. It's either because I changed something and undid it, or just because Visual Studio decided to check out the file for no obvious reasons (eg if you modify the code of a winform, Visual Studio will automatically checkout the associated .Designer.cs for you) Since I have the habit of making a diff of all my checkins, It would be a nice time-saver to be able to spot them at a glance (or event to automatically perform undo checkout on those) Did someone find a solution to this?"}
{"_id": "108824", "title": "What is the term that describe objects representing both logic and data?", "text": "The reason I am asking this question is I want to know how to properly call an architecture where classes have either data or logic but not both. I know this goes against object orientation and encapsulation. I want to use the proper terms for discussing this architecture. * * * EDIT: By reading the answers I have received, I can see my question wasn't clear. I also feel the edit that was made didn't push the question in the direction I was going for. I will restate the question in other terms. Suppose you are working in C#, Java or some other OO language. You have 2 designs: DESIGN A:               class Car     {          // data          int numberOfWheels;           Engine carEngine;               // methods          public void StartCar();     }      DESIGN B:               class Car     {          // this class contains only data (be it entity, DTO, whatever)          int numberOfWheels;          Engine carEngine;     }          class CarStarter     {          public void StartCar(Car aCar);     }      In DESIGN B, some classes are used as data structures/DTO/entities (they contain only data and should not contain methods). Other classes contains logic and work with the data classes. Now suppose you have a design/architecture where DESIGN B, should be applied throughout rather than design A. I was looking either for a term that described DESIGN B, or the OOP term/notion that consist of DESIGN A. Preferably both. For the OOP term I guess encapsulation could be it. From Wikipedia Encapsulation > A language construct that facilitates the bundling of data with the methods > (or other functions) operating on that data. I still don't know how to call DESIGN B though."}
{"_id": "89960", "title": "How do I negotiate with a company to develop software?", "text": "I am a programmer, I am developing software expected to be between 50k to 100k line of code. I'd like to hire a company to develop an interface to my tool with other software by writing a plugin. This company has done it successfully in the past and I was recommended to use them. However I have never negotiated before and I don't know how its done. I heard in retail one side gets lawyers to put in as much things as possible and the other removes as much as possible. In a different industry I heard distributors or publishers will promise large % of royalties however you'll never see them even if the product has done well. How do I negotiate with a software company on pricing and possibly timeline of this plugin? What do they suspect I'll do? What should I expect them to do?"}
{"_id": "33509", "title": "How do I figure out the minimum number of swaps to sort a list in-place?", "text": "In-place sorting is essentially swapping elements without using extra storage, correct? How can I find the minimum number of swaps required for a list?               A C D Q R Z   E   // input     | | | > > > <<<   // movement     A C D E Q R   Z   // output      Swapping:               A C D Q R Z E          swap Q with E, ACDERZQ     swap R with Q, ACDEQZR     swap R with Z, ACDEQRZ. done.      3 swaps. Shifting items left or right is essentially swapping, but I want the optimal number for plucking an item out of line and switching its place with another."}
{"_id": "41562", "title": "How to Leverage Clearcase's features", "text": "We use Clearcase at our office, and based on my admittedly light knowledge of clearcase, it just _seems_ like a really bloated source control tool. I know from hearing friends talk about Clearcase that it's really powerful. **My question is, what are some features of Clearcase that make it 'powerful', and what are good tips and tricks for getting the most out of Clearcase?**"}
{"_id": "116369", "title": "Should speed reading be applied while reading Tech Books", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How do people read big technical books? It's a known fact that, Science and Tech readings requires most attention, to at least make sense of what one reads. In the age of rapid change of platforms, particularly in the Information Technology Industry, we need to read vast and varied amount of text. How feasible is it to Speed-Read Technology books? I understand, there isn't any objective answer to the question, but interested to know the approaches that can be used to effectively perform Speed-Reading on Software Development/Programming related books."}
{"_id": "17824", "title": "Should I use a parser generator or should I roll my own custom lexer and parser code?", "text": "What **specific** advantages and disadvantages of each way to working on a programming language grammar? Why/When should I roll my own? Why/When should I use a generator?"}
{"_id": "207287", "title": "To master C programming language is necessary to have a full knowledge of the standard library?", "text": "I'm currently studying C from K&R book. In some examples the authors introduces new functions, my question is, to master C is necessary to know all the functions that are part of the standard library?. Suppose that is an extra-time cost to learn. NOTE: I want to master the language, and as K&R says; the standard library is not part of the language. Thanks"}
{"_id": "122381", "title": "Querying key/value store", "text": "I don't know whether this question is reasonably answerable (and therefore will be closed), but I will take my chances: What are the possible problems (and solutions), one might encounter, when developing query mechanism for key/value store/database (like redis for example)? All the values will consist only of JSON documents and all data will be located only in RAM. Query mechanism should be able to search/query for data based on document field values, so I assume one of the problems might be performance based on number of docs in database (this could however be lowered by partitioning documents based on their type like posts, comments, ...)."}
{"_id": "129450", "title": "Example bad code project to motivate refactoring / good design", "text": "This is sort of the opposite of Is there an open-source project that can be an example of well-written code?. I am teaching software engineering to undergraduates and I would like a blob of object oriented code that demonstrates tight coupling, bad abstraction, low encapsulation, poor maintainability, the works. Anyone have a good example? Something that is digestible (as in, able to skim in an hour or less) would be great. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "87107", "title": "What are the differences between QA engineers and software engineers?", "text": "The way I see it is if you write code that does something useful then you're a software engineer but from what I gather QA engineers seem to have an inferiority complex. It seems like QA engineers are much less reluctant to call themselves programmers than software engineers. Are there any real reasons for this divide and the perception that software engineers are the \"real\" programmers?"}
{"_id": "133524", "title": "What things do I need to become expert ASP.net MVC", "text": "I graduated in computer science. I had pretty good knowledge in Java. I have about a year experiences in ASP.net C# Web form. What other things do I need to know if I want become expert in ASP.net MVC which I able to do a complex eCommerce website?"}
{"_id": "137867", "title": "What should Competent Java programmer Be Able To Do?", "text": "To call yourself a competent Java programmer, what should you expect of yourself and what should others expect from you? Does anyone have ideas for a project or problem that would help measure someones \"java-smarts\"?"}
{"_id": "137860", "title": "How do I speed up XML parsing operation?", "text": "I currently have a php script set up to do some xml parsing. Sometimes the script is set as an on page include and other times it is accessed via an ajax call. The problem is the load time for this particular page is very long. I started to think that the php I had written to find what I need in the XML was written poorly and my script is very resource intense. After much research and testing the problem is indeed not my scripting (well perhaps you could consider it a problem with my scripting), but it looks like it takes a long time to load the particular xml sources. My code is like such:               $source_recent = 'my xml feed';      $source_additional = 'the other feed I need';           $xmlstr_recent = file_get_contents($source_recent);     $feed_recent = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr_recent);          $xmlstr_additional = file_get_contents($source_additional);     $feed_additional = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr_additional);      In all my testing, the above code is what takes the time, not the additional processing I do below. Is there anyway around this or am I at the mercy of the load time of the xml URL's? One crazy thought I had to get around it is to load the xml contents into a db every so often, then just query the db for what I need. Thoughts? Ideas?"}
{"_id": "29819", "title": "What is the difference between WCF service and a simple Web service in developing using .NET Framework?", "text": "My questions are:   1. What is the difference between WCF service and a simple Web service in .NET Framework?   2. What a WCF Service can do which a .NET Web service cant? In other words, what are the limitation of .NET Web services which were overcome in WCF services? I understand that WCF are REST based and .NET web services are SOAP based. But I need to know more than that. How a developer will make a design decision whether to developer a Web service or a WCF service?"}
{"_id": "83610", "title": "Steps to take to create the Product Backlog for starting our project with Scrum", "text": "A small team (3 or 4) are working on a fairly big project that might take 1 year to complete. We are basically re-designing an existing software (that had been developer over 5-6 years while being used without any direction). Currently we have a list of things we would like to have (features). We have about 25 of them. How do we effectively turn these into a number of backlog tasks and also build our specs from here. Any resources or help would be appreciated as we are all fairly new to design process."}
{"_id": "137869", "title": "Is it advisable to force your web server to parse HTML files for PHP code?", "text": "I can't remember what site I glanced over and picked up that tidbit, but someone suggested that you should keep PHP parsing to .PHP files, and not modify one's webserver's htaccess to include PHP parsing within .HTML files. Is this true? Is there any generally agreed upon reason as to doing it one way or the other?"}
{"_id": "133529", "title": "API design involving standard and custom settings", "text": "Suppose a class allows some kind of configuration that has some well-known default values but also has the option of defining a custom value. For example, suppose you want to let users configure a person's title. They can choose from a set of standard values (Mr., Mrs., Ms., etc.) but they can also specify a custom (Dr.). What is the most elegant way to put this in an API? Some examples in Java:               public class Person {       public enum Title {MR, MRS, MS, CUSTOM};            setTitle(Title title, String customTitle);     }      This one is quite bad because whenever you specify anything else than Title.CUSTOM the second argument is silently ignored. So maybe:               public class Person {       public enum Title { MR, MRS, MS, CUSTOM};            setTitle(Title title);       setCustomTitle(String title);     }      I don't really like this one either, because it's not immediately clear that calling one will overwrite the effects of the other method. Is there a more elegant interface that I'm overlooking?"}
{"_id": "175885", "title": "Creating my own PHP framework", "text": "Disclaimer: I don't want to start any flame war so there will not be no name of any framework mentioned. I've been using quite many from the existing PHP frameworks and my experience in each case was similar: everything is nice a the beginning but in the moment you require something non standard you get into lot of problems to fix otherwise simple issues. In case of frameworks following the MVC design pattern there are some issues with the implementation of each layer for example there is a lot of codding used for model and data access with using ORM and presentation is not much more than pure phtml. Some frameworks use their own wrappers for existing PHP functionality and in some cases severely limiting original functionality. Depending on framework you can have additional problems like lack of documentation, slow or non existent development cycle and last but not least speed. While ago I made my own framework which while doing it's job and being used for few different applications after couple of years more of experience with PHP doesn't seem to be perfect piece of codding. I could write my own framework and use additional experience I've gathered during these years to make it better on the other hand I'm aware that there is quite many better programmers working on creating/upgrading existing frameworks. So does it make at all nay sense to write my own PHP framework if there is so many possibilities to choose from?"}
{"_id": "175887", "title": "Handling optional GPL dependencies", "text": "Assume I have a library A which is licensed under a two-clause Free BSD style license. Library A optionally depends on library B (the availability of the dependency is configured at build-time), which is licensed under the GPLv3. If I distribute both bundled together, the license will need to be GPL. But am I still able to distribute library A under the FreeBSD license? How do I indicate that the license changes, when the use of library B is enabled? Do I need to distribute two different versions or can I just have one that contains both licenses and states which applies under which conditions? Any example project I can have a look at to see it done?"}
{"_id": "175880", "title": "Is there a real difference between dynamic analysis and testing?", "text": "Often testing is regarded as a dynamic analysis of a software. Yet while writing my thesis, the reviewer noted to me that dynamic analysis is about analyzing the program behind the scenes - e.g. profiling and that it is not the same as testing because its \"analysis\" which looks inside and observes.   I know that \"static analysis\" is not testing, should we then separate this \"dynamic analysis\" also from testing? Some books do refer to dynamic analysis in this sense. I would maybe say that testing is a one mean of dynamic analysis? As for testing definitions: > IEEE 829 broadens the idea to \u201canalyzing,\u201d thus including \u201cstatic testing.\u201d > And ISTQB takes the full step and includes both \u201cdynamic and static.\u201d > Testing is both dynamic and static. So maybe it is just a matter of semantics? If testing is considered to be an analysis, then its both static and dynamic analysis is a testing approach."}
{"_id": "253520", "title": "How is the system software stored in Computer?", "text": "We usually have a lot of system software inside our PC's like Operating Systems (which contains different interrupt handlers etc.), Assemblers and Compilers, Drivers. My question is how do we store this information in the computer? Are these all softwares stored in machine instruction format inside the computer at specific locations inside the PC-ROM? Or they are stored as is in the high-level language (like C) in which they are written and then compiled every time the programs are called?"}
{"_id": "73065", "title": "What are DRY, KISS, SOLID, etc. classified as?", "text": "**Is something like DRY a design pattern, a methodology, or something in between?** They do not have specific implementations that could neccessarily be demonstrated(even if you can easily demonstrate a case NOT using something like KISS... see The Daily WTF for a plethora of examples), nor do they fully explain a development process like a methodology generally would. Where does that leave these types of \"rule of thumb\"'s?"}
{"_id": "129987", "title": "Is there a design pattern for modelling job execution flow?", "text": "In my application I have a set of jobs to execute:   * Each job goes through the states \"not started\", \"started\", \"completed\", \"failed\" etc.    * Each job has a set of pre-conditions and post-conditions.    * Job cannot start until the preconditions are satisfied and should be marked as failed if it doesn't satisfy the post conditions.  For example let's say the job imports a text file into the database. Pre- condition would be to check if the source file exists and post-condition would be to check if data exists in database. On top of these pre and post- conditions, sometimes job is also dependent on other jobs to finish. It is easy to create a jobs table and have a dependency table for jobs, but is it actually possible to make these pre and post validation checks to be configurable in database (so that no code changes need to be made if these conditions change or new conditions are added)? Even if it is possible somehow, is it a good idea to do so? There is a requirement to make this model generic so that other applications can also make use of it even if the validation checks to be performed are entirely different for other applications."}
{"_id": "249916", "title": "Reliable secure data exchange between service written on .NET and an iOS client app", "text": "I have a service written on .NET working on a company server. It designed to do a very simple thing, to receive a request via WCF named pipes from another service working locally on the same server, process it and send a response through named pipes back. Request an response are just a fairly small, XML formatted text. And now I need to couple it somehow with our in-house iOS application to do the same thing but with a remote connection through internet. I'm not all too experienced with an Objective-C iOS development and not sure how to proceed. I was considering adding a TCP endpoint to the same WCF service but then I'm not sure how reliable will it be plus I'll have to use some sort of encryption \"manually\" on both ends of the connection. I can extend or change code of both .NET server and Objective-C iOS client as much as I need but I'm not sure how to ensure reliability and most of all security of data transfer between server and client. Right now I'm considering rewriting my service part to be a web based app since it works at request-response principle anyway but what would be the best approach? Would it be possible to consume a WCF HTTPS endpoint with an iOS client effective enough?"}
{"_id": "178453", "title": "Do there exist programming languages where a variable can truly know its own name?", "text": "In PHP and Python one can iterate over the local variables and, if there is only once choice where the value matches, you could say that you know what the variable's name is, but this does not always work. Machine code does not have variable names. C compiles to assembly and does not have any native reflection capabilities, so it would not know it's name. (Edit: per Anton's answer the pre-processor can know the variable's name). Do there exist programming languages where a variable would know it's name? It gets tricky if you do something like `b = a` and `b` does not become a copy of `a` but a reference to the same place. _**EDIT:_** Why in the world would you want this? I can think of one example: error checking that can survive automatic refactoring. Consider this C# snippet:               private void CheckEnumStr(string paramName, string paramValue)     {         if (paramName != \"pony\" && paramName != \"horse\")         {             string exceptionMessage = String.Format(                 \"Unexpected value '{0}' of the parameter named '{1}'.\",                 paramValue,                 paramName);               throw new ArgumentException(exceptionMessage);         }     }     ...     CheckEnumStr(\"a\", a); // Var 'a' does not know its name - this will not survive naive auto-refactoring      There are other libraries provided by Microsoft and others that allow to check for errors (sorry the names have escaped me). I have seen one library which with the help of closures/lambdas can accomplish error checking that can survive refactoring, but it does not feel idiomatic. This would be one reason why I might want a language where a variable knows its name."}
{"_id": "178455", "title": "What is the best practice for website design and markup now that mobile browsers are common?", "text": "Back in 2008, smartphones were a small market and it was commonplace for sites to be designed for a fixed width - say, 900px or 960px - with the page centered if the browser window was larger. Many designers said fluid width was better, but since user screens typically varied between 1024x768 and 1920x1080, fluid width allowed longer line length than is optimal for ease of reading, and so many sites (including Stack Exchange) use fixed width. Now that mobile devices are common, what is the the best approach to support both desktop and mobile browsers?   * Establish a separate mobile site (e.g: mobile.example.com)   * Serve a different CSS to mobile devices; if so how? Server-side browser sniffing, or a @media rule?   * Use Javascript or something to adapt the website dynamically to the client? Should all websites be expected to be responsive?   * Some kind of fluid layout   * Something else?"}
{"_id": "178454", "title": "How can I tell whether my computer is Harvard or von Neumann architecture?", "text": "I understand the difference between the two architectures is the separation of instructions from data in the Harvard architecture. But how do I know which type of system I'm on? Is it possible to write a program such that the program determines whether the system is von Neumann or Harvard? Could there be another architecture or are these architectures the only ones known?"}
{"_id": "178457", "title": "Why isn't Japanese software industry as strong as their hardware technology?", "text": "I admire Japanese technology and their innovation. They always seem to be one step ahead of everyone else. But why isn't their software industry just as developed? Why aren't there any Japanese operating systems, high-end game engines, 3D digital content creation applications? I would like to see their take on these and I think it could bring alot of innovation. Btw I mentioned 3D software because the animation industry is strong there as well, but they are using North American software for this."}
{"_id": "7181", "title": "How to really master MySQL?", "text": "I have been using mysql for the same amount of time I have been using PHP. However I feel about 10x more confident in PHP; or any other programming language. But I just can't seem to really really grasp SQL. I mean, I can select, update, insert, delete, join, etc. but when it comes to more complex stuff I am lost. How to write a more complicated select statement, how to use indexes properly, which engine to use, etc. For some reason I really find the mysql docs hard to follow, but the php ones easy to follow. I am starting to think that maybe my brain is just wired in a way that makes programming make since but sql confusing. I don't know. Most people think Regex is so confusing but to me it makes more scientific sense than how to construct an sql statement. Please don't get me wrong, I am not hating on SQL, I really like it, I just want to understand it better. Whats the best/fastest way to really master MySQL? When I say \"master\" I don't mean the guru among gurus, I mean smart enough to figure out most of the questions I ask on SO myself without needing help."}
{"_id": "233358", "title": "Performance consideration and code reduction for Templates", "text": "I'm trying to decide if this might be a good idea to help reduce the size of some of my xaml resource dictionaries on a large project. Except I'm concerned about any potential performance issues going this route so hoping to get some insight from other technically proficient folks. So as example, say there's dozens of control `Style` templates which I've standardized to use shared naming conventions in their objects and handling. To make it a more clear example say you have things like Buttons/TextBoxes/GridSplitters/CheckBoxes etc etc etc. They all have their own Style template, but they all would have say a `Border` which is Collapsed by default but each has the same Visibility toggling `DoubleAnimation` in their respective `Storyboard` for the MouseOver state as defined in the `VisualStateManager` Which basically makes the exact same repeated `DoubleAnimation` over and over for dozens of controls for that MouseOver state. My question is could I potentially negatively impact performance if I made each of these overly repetitive `Storyboards` into their own resource so instead of repeating the same thing over and over again on each style template like;               <VisualState x:Name=\"MouseOver\">        <Storyboard>           <DoubleAnimation .../>        </Storyboard>     </VisualState>      Could I instead take that currently repeated exact same `Storyboard` and do something like this with out negatively impacting (and hopefully actually even improving) the performance of such a large project like;               <Storyboard x:Name=\"TheRepetitiveAnimation\">        <DoubleAnimation ..../>     </Storyboard>      Then on each instance in each template instead of having the whole animation repeated I could just do;               <VisualState x:Name=\"MouseOver>        <BeginStoryboard Storyboard=\"{StaticResource TheRepetitiveAnimation\"/>     </VisualState>      Because if I could do it this way, I could probably shave at minimum another thousand lines out of my resource dictionaries by exchanging the multi-line repeated animations with a one line reference to a master `Storyboard` that way. Except I'm concerned doing this for so many control templates calling back to reference the same storyboard for all of the same instance might produce opposite results of what I'm trying to do. Which is simply to reduce the size/footprint of all the XAML and hopefully even speed things up in the process. Any thoughts welcome, cheers."}
{"_id": "195681", "title": "SQL Server + database design and non mandatory fields", "text": "I am developing an app which allows a user to upload a maximum of 20 photos, the straight forward way is of course adding 20 columns to my database table but if the user only uploads 1 image, the remaining columns becomes redundant. Anyone can advice me on a more efficient way to design it? Thanks."}
{"_id": "207861", "title": "What can I do without the iPhone SDK and Xcode?", "text": "I want to develop an iPhone application, I do not have Xcode nor the iPhone SDK (nor a macbook but I plan to buy one). What could be done without those products? Edit: I intend to release it on AppStore (I know I need a mac for it)"}
{"_id": "82058", "title": "What kind of software should we write? What technology should we deliver?", "text": "I like that companies like Twitter and Facebook can push the boundaries of technology. But I wonder, what is the purpose of Twitter and Facebook? Why did they write that software and not something more useful? Do you think developers have some kind of responsibility to work on technology that could further human progress or should they just develop anything that some users want? For example, a bridge engineer or architect build things that may solve a tough problem and maybe there is an explicit need. But no one needs a Facebook account. Note: Some have acknowledged that Twitter and Facebook can be used in emergency situations like with the Japan crisis. But this is after the fact that twitter became popular. I don't think the main purpose of Twitter is to facilitate finding missing people during a crisis."}
{"_id": "193218", "title": "Would it make sense to use objects (instead of primitive types) for everything in C++?", "text": "During a recent project I've been working on, I've had to use a lot of functions that kind of look like this:               static bool getGPS(double plane_latitude, double plane_longitude, double plane_altitude,                            double plane_roll, double plane_pitch, double plane_heading,                            double gimbal_roll, double gimbal_pitch, double gimbal_yaw,                             int target_x, int target_y, double zoom,                            int image_width_pixels, int image_height_pixels,                            double & Target_Latitude, double & Target_Longitude, double & Target_Height);      So I want to refactor it to look something like this:               static GPSCoordinate getGPS(GPSCoordinate plane, Angle3D planeAngle, Angle3D gimbalAngle,                                 PixelCoordinate target, ZoomLevel zoom, PixelSize imageSize)      This appears to me to be significantly more readable and safe than the first method. But does it make sense to create `PixelCoordinate` and `PixelSize` classes? Or would I be better off just using `std::pair<int,int>` for each. And does it make sense to have a `ZoomLevel` class, or should I just use a `double`? My intuition behind using classes for everything is based on these assumptions:   1. If there are classes for everything, it would be impossible to pass a `ZoomLevel` in where a `Weight` object was expected, so it would be more difficult to provide the wrong arguments to a function   2. Likewise, some illegal operations would cause compile errors, such as adding a `GPSCoordinate` to a `ZoomLevel` or another `GPSCoordinate`   3. Legal operations will be easy to represent and typesafe. i.e subtracting two `GPSCoordinate`s would yield a `GPSDisplacement` However, most C++ code I've seen uses a lot of primitive types, and I imagine there must be a good reason for that. Is it a good idea to use objects for anything, or does it have downsides that I am not aware of?"}
{"_id": "82055", "title": "Non-Solicitation clause in my offer letter - Prospective employer says this is non-negotiable. Is this a deal-breaker?", "text": "I recently received an offer from a company that I'll call ACME. In the NDA that came with the offer this clause appears: > 2.Non-Solicitation. I agree that so long as I am employed by ACME and for a > period of two (2) years thereafter, I will not directly or indirectly > solicit for other employment or work any employee, consultant or advisor of > ACME, nor will I interfere with ACME's relationship with any such persons, > or endeavor to entice them away from ACME, or aid any other person(s) in > enticing them away from ACME. Now, I've done my homework. In particular, Joel's excellent article NDAs and Contracts That You Should Never Sign has informed me that this clause is definitely not in my best interest to sign. I emailed the recruiter back and asked them to remove this clause; she responded saying it was non-negotiable. **Is this worth sticking to my guns on?** I am very happy with the offer package otherwise, and this is very much a dream job for me, located in silicon valley, a place I've wanted to work in since I started college. **What are the chances this clause will hurt me?** My nightmare scenario is that some of my coworkers will leave to start a really cool startup but will not be able to bring me on board; I do not like limiting my future career like this. **How often is this clause actually enforced?** I've read that sometimes this clause and other 'non-compete/non-solicit' clauses like it are unenforceable in some jurisdictions anyway. I don't know about California, though. **Edit:** A couple of these answers are slightly ridiculous in their accusations that I wish to 'poach' employees from this company before I even start working there. This is a bit much. My objective is to have a good job that I enjoy doing, and this company will very likely provide that. My simple concern is if this clause will interfere with my career a few years down the line, if I want to move on to a more senior position or to the possibility of starting my own business."}
{"_id": "7456", "title": "What natural language has the advantage when it comes to programming?", "text": "Linguistic relativity is the idea that language shapes the way we think. My question is, how much, and to what extent, does this apply to programming?   * Are some native, natural languages better-suited for thinking about programming than others? For instance, can the following be stated more concisely in a non-English language? `Select a pivot. Move all the items less than the pivot to one side of the list, and all the items greater than the pivot to the other side.`   * Does a Chinese-speaking programmer view programming in a radically different lens than an English-speaking programmer, or do the differences fade away when both are immersed in the subject?   * Are some programming languages and domains easier to think about in one language or another. For instance, is it any easier to grok Ruby if you are Japanese because the creator of Ruby is Japanese? Note that this question is not focused on \"how do programming languages affect the way people think about programming\", but rather \"how do **natural** languages affect the way people think about programming\". To get it out of the way, one language that clearly has a pragmatic advantage is **English**. I think the advantage has little to do with programming languages choosing English keywords like `if`, `for`, `while`, and `do`, just as musicians who don't speak Italian aren't tripped up by words like _forte_. It has more to do with communication of ideas with other programmers, as English is the lingua franca these days, at least in the programming world. For instance, to ask a question in StackOverflow, you really need to know English and know it pretty well if you want good answers. Although this sounds like an imperialist attitude, it really is true in practice. That aside, how do the intrinsic properties of languages affect how programmers who speak them think about data structures, algorithms, etc.? Are any languages particularly concise when it comes to talking about logic and programming, allowing native speakers of those languages to think faster?"}
{"_id": "7455", "title": "What hardware/software tools were used to build commercial quality 8-bits games?", "text": "I mean, I still have a MSX2 with a Z80 processor and if you look at any Konami's game made for that computer in its time (roughly between '84 and '90) is amazing the high quality code of those games. I was a kid at the time, trying to learn how to program a computer and still today fascinated me how well made they are, mostly zero bugs or glitches, despite the really complex behavior. What hardware/software tools could they have used to accomplish that quality, which metodology? I know computers are really more complex today but at that time, even a stock control program I made in Basic was plagued with many bugs and was painful to debug. Any light you can shed will be deeply appreciated."}
{"_id": "123030", "title": "Should I expect to know a lot about every language I put on my resume as a college student?", "text": "If I am asked to program an algorithm, say binary search, in languages other than Java during an interview, I will have a hard time trying to remember the syntax. Is it okay to tell my interviewer that I can only code this in Java, because I have worked with other languages before but have not used them for a while? If not, what suggestions do you have (i.e. what languages and parts of those languages among these should I pick up the syntax of before my interview)?"}
{"_id": "126601", "title": "Comment before or after the relevant code", "text": "Assuming a comment won't fit (or can't go) on the line it applies to, should one write the comment before the code or after? Well, wherever future readers will best understand the comment's scope. In other words, wherever most programmers/scripters put such comments. So **where do most programmers/scripters put a comment: before or after its code?** If your answer applies only to specific languages, please indicate which. And if you can cite an accepted spec or guide that supports your answer, so much the better."}
{"_id": "110634", "title": "Why would it ever be possible for Java to be faster than C++?", "text": "Sometimes Java outperforms C++ in benchmarks. Of course, sometimes C++ outperforms. See the following links:   * http://keithlea.com/javabench/   * http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2008/07/performance-comparison-c-java-python-ruby-jython-jruby-groovy/   * http://blog.cfelde.com/2010/06/c-vs-java-performance/ But how is this even possible? It boggles my mind that interpreted bytecode could ever be faster than a compiled language. Can someone please explain? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "150381", "title": "Building a dropbox clone", "text": "I want to create my own Dropbox clone (for learning purposes - only the Windows app) and am looking for some tips. Currently, I use the `FileSystemWatcher` to check if there's a change, then use `rsync` to sync all the data. Now, how does this work with multiple computers? If computer A changes a file, it should be pushed to computer B (and vice versa). My questions are:   * Do I need to create a push notification system or are there (better) alternatives so I know if data has to be pulled (as in a file has changed on the server)?   * Dropbox has the green tick and a blue sync icon. How can this be done? How do I know which files are being uploaded/downloaded (if `rsync`-ing the whole directory)?"}
{"_id": "117064", "title": "Does having pagination lessens server load? (theory)", "text": "I was wondering what is the reason behind pagination? Is it used because it lessens the burden on the servers since we would technically limit the amount of rows returned per page? I wanted to do something without pagination but given that I am new to this (I am an amateur) started wondering if its OK technically or not."}
{"_id": "252498", "title": "How to implement await in Android", "text": "This is a general question to understand how await in C# works, and particularly I am interested in implementing it in Android. So C# await allows you to go in to waiting mode in the middle of the method until the the task you are waiting for is complete, then you will continue the method execution.   How ever the interesting part is while you are waiting inside the method, the thread that you are working on is not getting locked(or at list it does not looks like it got locked) and the code will continue running from where you called that method. I want to understand what is happening there in C# and how can I implement it in Android?"}
{"_id": "158156", "title": "Confusion regarding def function within Python", "text": "I've been learning Python for about 2 months now (Started with Learn Python The Hard Way, now reading Dive Into Python), and within both books, I still seem to be confused over this one bit of code. Lets just take the default code that Dive Into Python uses as an example:               def buildConnectionString(params):         \"\"\"Build a connection string from a dictionary of parameters.                   Returns string.\"\"\"         return \";\".join([\"%s=%s\" % (k, v) for k, v in params.items()])          if __name__ == \"__main__\":         myParams = {\"server\":\"mpilgrim\",                     \"database\":\"master\",                     \"uid\":\"sa\",                     \"pwd\":\"secret\"                    }          print buildConnectionString(myParams)      How does the function `buildConnectionString` with the argument `(params)` know to get its data from the variable `myParams`? Or `params.items()`, too within the `return` line? Wouldn't the argument in `buildConnectionString` need to be set as `buildConnectionString(myParams)` in order for it to read properly? How can you set the variable of your data to `myParams`, but have the argument of your function be `params` and have it read? How does it know to read `myParams` as `params`? And is there a reason behind not naming your variable `params`, or vice versa naming your argument in your function `myParams`? It's just been extremely confusing seeing the argument set as one word, and then having the variable named something completely different, but having the function still be able to read your code, even when the argument name is different from your variable with the data you're printing from."}
{"_id": "88703", "title": "Do you feel bad when you have to learn new things?", "text": "New thing is not always cool. I see many people say they are very bored by doing the similar things day after day. For me it's the opposite - I'm always learning something new. During the last one and a harf year, nearly every two months I need to do lots of researches on a totally new topic: RTMP, MP4, SIP, VNC, Smooth streaming, ..., I have to read lots of specifications, download tones of open source projects to understand concepts, and turn them into my runnable code. And it was so bad! My brain has never been very sure and very familiar with anything, and when it's close to be sure and familiar, it'll have to switch to next thing. I kind of envy people who build upper level applications because they can be very focusing, and their knowledge set includes most things their job requires. Everything is quite measurable, direct and straightforward. Have you ever had the similar feeling? I'm thinking of asking my boss to assign me some other piece of work so that I work like moving forward on a broad road instead of figuring out a way in the dark, I think it'll be more relaxing, any suggestion?"}
{"_id": "214796", "title": "Proper library for enums", "text": "I'm trying to refactor some code such that the display is separate from the implementation, and I'm not sure where to put the existing `enum`s. My project is currently structured as follows:   * **Utilities**   * **RemoteData** ( _Depends on:_ `Utilities`)   * **LocalData** ( _Depends on:_ `RemoteData`, `Utilities`)   * **RemoteWeb** ( _Depends on:_ `RemoteData`, `Utilities`)   * **LocalWeb** ( _Depends on:_ `RemoteData`, `LocalData`, `Utilities`) I'm now trying to add \" **ViewLibrary** ( _Depends on:_ `Utilities`)\" to this list, and then adding it as a new dependency to both `RemoteWeb` and `LocalWeb`. It will contain a set of interfaces which the other two projects will implement, use to populate the view, and then consume the result. There's an `enum` which is currently used in all the projects _except_ `Utilities`. It thus lives in the `RemoteData` project, because everything else depends on it. But this new `ViewLibrary` won't depend on either data project. So how will it know about this `enum`? Some options I see:   * Create a new project just for shared enum values.   * Add it to `Utilities`, even though it is related to data.   * Define it a second time in `ViewLibrary`, and require both `RemoteWeb` and `LocalWeb` to convert the one type into the other when they access the shared views.   * Add a dependency on `RemoteData` to the `ViewLibrary`, even though it's supposed to be independent of data-source. Are there any better options? Is this structure flawed to begin with?"}
{"_id": "120603", "title": "booth multiplication algorithm", "text": "Is booth algorithm for multiplication only for multiplying 2 negative numbers `(-3 * -4)` or one positive and one negative number `(-3 * 4)` ? Whenever i multiply 2 positive numbers using booth algorithm i get a wrong result. example : 5 * 4 A = 101 000 0 `// binary of 5 is 101` S = 011 000 0 `// 2's complement of 5 is 011` P = 000 100 0 `// binary of 4 is 100` x = 3 y = 3 m = 5 -m = 2's complement of m r = 4   1. After right shift of P by 1 bit 0 000 100   2. After right shift of P by 1 bit 0 000 010   3. P+S = 011 001 0 After right shift by 1 bit 0 011 001   4. Discarding the LSB 001100 But that comes out to be the binary of 12 . It should have been 20(010100)"}
{"_id": "120606", "title": "When should complexity be removed?", "text": "Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice. But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design patterns you will introduce some complexity as features and requirements are added or changed to keep your design as maintainable and flexible as needed. However once that complexity is introduced and working like a champ when do you removed it? Example. I have an application written for a client. When originally created there where several ways to give raises to employees. I used the strategy pattern and factory to keep the whole process nice and clean. Over time certain raise methods where added or removed by the application owner. Time passes and new owner takes over. This new owner is hard nosed, keeps everything simple and only has one single way to give a raise. The complexity needed by the strategy pattern is no longer needed. If I where to code this from the requirements as they are now I would not introduce this extra complexity (but make sure I could introduce it with little or no work should the need arise). So do I remove the strategy implementation now? I don't think this new owner will ever change how raises are given. But the application itself has demonstrated that this could happen. Of course this is just one example in an application where a new owner takes over and has simplified many processes. I could remove dozens of classes, interfaces and factories and make the whole application much more simple. Note that the current implementation does works just fine and the owner is happy with it (and surprised and even happier that I was able to implement her changes so quickly because of the discussed complexity). I admit that a small part of this doubt is because it is highly likely the new owner isn't going to use me any longer. I don't really care that somebody else will take this over since it has not been a big income generator. But I do care about 2 (related) things   1. I care a bit that the new maintainer will have to think a bit harder when trying to understand the code. Complexity is complexity and I don't want to anger the psycho maniac coming after me.    2. But even more I worry about a competitor seeing this complexity and thinking I just implement design patterns to pad my hours on jobs. Then spreading this rumor to hurt my other business. (I have heard this mentioned.) So... In general should previously needed complexity be removed even though it works and there has been a historically demonstrated need for the complexity but you have no indication that it will be needed in the future? Even if the question above is generally answered \"no\" is it wise to remove this \"un-needed\" complexity if handing off the project to a competitor (or stranger)?"}
{"_id": "154862", "title": "At what point can I say I've \"learned\" a language?", "text": "In my few years of programming, I've toyed with everything from Ruby to C++. I've done everything from just learning basic syntax (Ruby) to completing several major (for me) projects that stretched my abilities with the language. Given this variety (and the fact that truly learning a language never stops), when can I say I know (or have learned) a language?"}
{"_id": "160886", "title": "Name of a class that creates a bunch of classes for a process", "text": "We all know that the hardest parts of computer science deal with cache invalidation and naming things; my problem is the latter. I have a process that raises events when various things happen. Rather than creating all of the objects for all potential events before the process is started, I have created classes that create the necessary dependencies for the event when the event is called, then calls the next sub-process. I have no idea what to name these classes. A typical example might include a logger, mailer and anything needed to render a view for that event, such as templates. Not every action needs these things or else I'd just create them and be done with it."}
{"_id": "214240", "title": "From an execution perspective is an interpreter the same as the JVM / or the .net Framework", "text": "I've recently started two introductory level courses - one using Python, the other Java. I've read the answers to **this Question** but still have difficulty understanding how each ends up with machine code and what the main differences between the two models are:   * Is an interpreter doing the same job as something like the **JVM**, just without the byte-code?    * For python is the interpreter taking the high-level code and translating it into machine code?    * The Java virtual machine needs to be installed on a machine for a java program to run on it - is it similar for python - if the interpreter is installed on the target machine then the python program will run?   * Is the JVM (& .net framework) effectively byte-code interpreters?"}
{"_id": "241331", "title": "Are sequence designs appropriate for GUI button design?", "text": "Specifically, I have numerous buttons that will be changing color based on state information from operator input and input from various subcomponents and sensors. I would like to use UML or some other type of design diagrams to be able to capture the color transition. Some folks have suggested sequence diagrams, but I haven't been able to find any good examples that show how to incorporate this design artifact. I would really like to head in this direction to help developers. Are sequence designs in fact, appropriate, or is there a more appropriate design?"}
{"_id": "213210", "title": "Optional semicolons", "text": "Most often, in a general-purpose imperative language - semicolons as statement-delimiters are either required, or completely disallowed (e.g. C and Python). However, some languages, like JavaScript, allow you to opt out of delimiting your statements with semicolons, in favor of other delimiters (such as a newline). What are the design decisions behind this? I understand that semicolons are essential when writing multiple statements on the same line, but is there another reason to make them mandatory (except following C)?"}
{"_id": "155406", "title": "Zero as a constant?", "text": "I have come across this programming idiom recently:               const float Zero = 0.0;      which is then used in comparisons:               if (x > Zero) {..}      Can anyone explain if this is really any more efficient or readable or maintainable than:               if (x > 0.0) {..}      NOTE: I can think of _other_ reasons to define this constant, Im just wondering about its use in _this_ context."}
{"_id": "155404", "title": "What is a user-friendly solution to editing email templates with replacement variables?", "text": "I'm working on a system where we rely a lot of \"admins / managers\" emailing users from the database. One of the key features is being able to email several people at the same time, with specific information relevant to each of them. Another key feature is to be able to hand-craft emails, because it tends to be be necessary to slightly modify them each time, but having a basic template saves a lot of time. For this, we have the typical \"templates\" solution, where we have a template that looks kind of like this:               Hello {{recipient.full_name}},          Your application to {{activity.title}} has been accepted.      You have requested to participate on dates {{application.dates}}, in role {{application.role}}     Blah blah blah      The problem we are having is obviously that (as we expected), managers don't get the whole \"variables\" idea, and they do things like overwriting them, which doesn't let them email more than one person at a time, assuming those are not going to get replaced and that the system is broken, or even inexplicable things like \"Hello {{John}}\". The big problem is that this isn't relegated, as usual, to an \"admin\" section where only a few power users have access to editing the templates that are automatically send out, and they're expected to know what they are doing. **Every** user of the system gets exposed to this problem. The obvious solution would be to replace the variables _before_ showing this template for the user to edit, but that doesn't work when emailing several people. This seems like a reasonably common problem, and we are kind of hoping that someone has already solved it. Have you seen anywhere/created/can think of good solutions to this problem? **Update** What I ended up doing based on Daniel B's answer was detecting, based on the cursor position, and the position of {{ }} in the code whether the user is currently \"inside a variable\" or \"outside\". In inside, I show a little piece of text below the big textarea explaining that this is going to get replaced, and that they can remove it completely if they want, but they can't edit it. I do this onClick, onChange, onKeyDown, onKeyUp. For the \"key\" events, if we're inside a variable, I only return TRUE if the keyCode is one of a few \"navigational\" keys. Otherwise, I return FALSE, which effectively prevents the edition of that variable. It's not perfect, but it was very cheap, and seems effective."}
{"_id": "155403", "title": "UI message passing programming paradigm", "text": "I recently (about two months ago) read an article that explained some user interface paradigm that I can't remember the name of and I also can't find the article anymore. The paradigm allows for decoupling the user interface and backend through message passing (via some queueing implementation). So each user action results in a message being pased to the backend. The user interface is then updated to inform the user that his request is being processed. The assumption is that a user interface is stale by definition. When you read data from some store into memory, it is stale because another transaction may be updating the same data already. If you assume this, it makes no sense to try to represent the 'current' database state in the user interface (so the delay introduced by passing messages to a backend doesn't matter). If I remember correctly, the article also mentioned a read-optimized data store for rendering the user interface. The article assumed a high-traffic web application. A primary reason for using a message queue communicating with the backend is performance: returning control to the user as soon as possible. Updating backend stores is handled by another process and eventually these changes also become visible to the user. I hope I have explained accurately enough what I'm looking for. If someone can provide some pointers to what I'm looking for, thanks very much in advance."}
{"_id": "119458", "title": "How Chatterbots are made?", "text": "I was having sometime making an application that deals with many of chatterbots APIs, That made me wonder, how these bots are exactly made? How they develop an answer for your questions? Do they rely on previous conversations with you/other poeple to develop a more reliable answer?"}
{"_id": "119455", "title": "How to deal with different programming styles in a team?", "text": "We have a small dev team (only 3 developers) and we recently got a new team member. While he is a smart coder, his coding style is completely different from ours. Our existing code base contains mostly readable, clean and maintainable code, but the new team member is quickly changing many files, introducing ugly hacks and shortcuts, using defines all over the place, adding functions in the wrong places, etc. My question is if others have experienced such a situation before, and if anyone has tips on how to talk to him."}
{"_id": "224580", "title": "Webservice Design: benefits of piping use-cases to URL rather than using search param's, or vice versa?", "text": "I've gotta build a webservice for employee information, and I'm trying to plan it out. To clarify, we already have a REST-ish service for People and a separate REST- ish service for Companies.   This service will specifically be for the relationship between those two (all the data will be delivered from services to the data-consumers through a client (or clients) ). Among other tasks, this service will need to:   1. retrieve all employers (company id's) for a given person ID   2. retrieve all employees (person id's) for a given company ID    I could see doing this a couple different ways.   1. Using search parameters could look _something_ like:      * `http://blah/employee/find?person_id=12345`     * `http://blah/employee/find?company_id=9876`   2. Using the URL could look _something_ like:      * `http://blah/employee/find/employers?id=12345`     * `http://blah/employee/find/employees?id=9876`    Taking the URL approach, I'd be able to specifically validate for a single parameter for each the _employer_ and _employee_ cases .. seems nice and clean, but quite fixed.   Taking the parameter approach seems like it's less-rigid/more-flexible, but then requires more data paths (if/else), and therefore the code can take longer to understand when future-me (or anyone else) comes back to it after it's been long forgotten. What benefits might there be to going with once vs the other?   To me, the difference _**seems**_ kinda arbitrary, but this is the first time I've got to make this decision."}
{"_id": "13614", "title": "How serious is losing the source code?", "text": "If a software company loses the source code to one of the products they are selling, how serious would that be, in terms you could explain to a layman? Would the term \"gross negligence\" be too strong? Or \"gross incompetence\"? Obviously no one got killed but isn't it as serious as some financial negligence that people get jail time for? **EDIT:** Let's say it's not a case of a disk drive crashing, natural disaster or anything like that. Just they misplaced it."}
{"_id": "13616", "title": "Are testers considered low profile?", "text": "I happened to know some system admin and according to him, testing guys are not given preferences in an organization in comparison to developers. No doubt software releases are not possible without testers but I've never laid my hands on testing so not much aware of it. No offense intended."}
{"_id": "81505", "title": "App Engine SDK Dev transition to Google Plugin for Eclipse", "text": "I'm trying to understand the transition people make with their apps in the App Engine SDK and how/why/what they move to the Google Plugin for Eclipse. It seems you can create a web application using the App Engine SDK, or you can do the same with Eclipse. Why offer both? How do people transition App Engine into Eclipse and Google Web Toolkit?"}
{"_id": "81504", "title": "What software can be used to create architecture diagrams?", "text": "I use MS Visio for most of my design/architecting work when I need to be able to save the diagram somewhere and edit it later. I'm not the biggest fan of Visio, but it gets the job done (and it's free at work). I was wondering if there were any good alternatives to the fairly expensive Visio software, maybe something even better, that you guys have used in the past and were comfortable with. I'd certainly like to have that program in my toolbox!"}
{"_id": "201428", "title": "Mnemonic for always overriding equals when you override hashCode?", "text": "We java developers always know that you should always override equals() when you override hashCode(), but I consistently have trouble remembering this rule. What is a clever mnemonic to help Java developers remember this?"}
{"_id": "224585", "title": "MySQL PHP User/Group Permissions", "text": "I am trying to configure a mysql database table that I can use as a per user/group permissions table. Almost like what Facebook has, for a local company intranet site. What is the best possible way to design this table, that would allow me to find user permissions with the fewest amount or queries?"}
{"_id": "96411", "title": "Concrete examples of Python's \"only one way to do it\" maxim", "text": "I am learning Python and am intrigued by the following point in PEP 20 _The Zen of Python_ : > There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. > Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch. Could anyone offer any concrete examples of this maxim? I am particularly interested in the contrast to other languages such as Ruby. Part of the Ruby design philosophy (originating with Perl, I think?) is that multiple ways of doing it is A Good Thing. Can anyone offer some examples showing the pros and cons of each approach. Note, I'm not after an answer to which is better (which is probably too subjective to ever be answered), but rather an unbiased comparison of the two styles."}
{"_id": "56827", "title": "Feasibility to take over a JavaMe Project by Coders who have no experience in JavaMe", "text": "As the original JavaMe team will leave to do other items. The JavaMe project will be taken over by some guys knowing nothing about JavaMe. Transition period: One month About this JavaMe project:   1. about 35000 lines of code (more than 180 java file, SourceCode is 8.5KB in total)    2. using the Polish, Proguard    3. document: The JavaMe project itself have no document. No UML map.  Difficulties I guess:   1. familiar with the JavaMe, this should be okay    2. In order to do the further development. We need to Read the sourceCode ---- It's not easy to read 35,000 lines of code having not enough comment   3. Adaptation work for more than 100 phone These are the questions, thank you!   1. In the case of our guys have no experience in JavaMe, Is one month too hasty?    2. In order to take the job in time . What we should ask the original JavaMe team to do .   3. Considering we hava no experience in JavaMe. The complication we taking the Adaptation work without the original JavaMe team?   4. Any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "56821", "title": "Should I be put off a junior role that uses an online development test?", "text": "I've applied for a junior development role, or rather been found by a recruiter looking for a developer. In order to get to a telephone interview stage I've been asked to sit one of those online coding assessments. This wasn't quite what I expected. I consider myself a fairly good developer for my age and experience, but I've no illusions about being Don Knuth or anything. The test was a series of incredibly obtuse questions asking about the results of various obscure evaluations. About 30 minutes in I was thinking to myself I hadn't intended to enter an obfuscated code contest/code golf exercise. After my last telephone interview I was asked to build something. I did. That seemed fair. Go away and work this out is more my in office experience of programming than \"please evaluate this combination of lambdas, filters, maps, lists, tuples etc\". So I'm a little put off, to be honest. I never claimed to know the language inside out or all the little corner cases. My questions, then:   1. Should I be put off? Why? Why not?   2. Are these kinds of tests what I should be expecting for junior roles?   3. Should I learn stuff exam style? That seems to be the objective of these tests, for which you are timed and not supposed to use references or books? Normally, in the course of development I have a fairly good idea of basic types, rules, flow control and whatever. Occasionally I'll come up on something I need to use a regex for and have to go and remind myself of the exact piece of syntax I need if trying what I think should work doesn't. Or I'll come up against a module I've not used before and go and look it up. For example, if I wanted to write a server using sockets in C right now, I'd probably check the last piece of code I wrote doing that (and or the various books I have) and work from there. Chances are I probably couldn't do it exactly from scratch and from memory, although I can tell you you'd need a `socket()`, `bind()`, `listen()` and `accept()` call and you might also want `select()` depending on whether you intend to `pthread_create` or not. So I know what the calls are, but not their specific parameter list.   4. What are your experiences if you are a recruiting manager? Are you after programmers who can quote you the API or do you not mind if your programmers have a few books on their desk and google function calls every so often?"}
{"_id": "161823", "title": "What are the practical examples of code exploration techniques?", "text": "Code Exploration (CE) is quite a new term and I wonder if there already any successful examples of implementing this techniques in terms of Continuous Integration principles? In short, Code Exploration can be described as the process of testing your code using different parameters to achieve high code coverage. The one-and- only tool for .NET world is PEX, but I know there are commercial instruments for code exploration in java world. This topic is very powerful in conjunction with Design By Contract, because it provides you with the means of some formalism in reasoning about code correctness. For example PEX would show that next code contains error (source code uses Code Contracts and I assume default assembly configuration):               public int Factorial(int number)     {         //postcondition of positive result, precondition is omitted          Contract.Ensures( Contract.Result<int>() > 0 );               return number <= 0 ? 1 : number * Factorial( number - 1 );     }      Because by default overflow is not checked in arithmetic operations the input 17 will give the result of -288522240. PEX was discussed here several times here:   * How does Pex work   * Pex and Code Contracts But I don't want to touch internal implementation details, I'm interested in practical aspects of this problem. * * * Main questions are:   1. How exactly do you integrate Code Exploration with Continuous Integration?   2. Do you reject build if PEX gives errors or you notify team about inconsistencies and contracts violations?   3. Scott Hanselman has point, that PEX should run on separate machine (or multiple machines) continuously testing your code for errors (so called Continuous Exploration). You can listen to the talk Hanselminutes Podcast 93 - Pex. Are there any practical implementations of dedicated machine (would it be virtual or physical), that digs into your codebase in search of errors?   4. How do you treat test coverage of such tools? I think it would be unreasonable to merge code coverage results for unit tests written manually with the results by a code exploration tool.   5. Are there any examples of Parameterized Unit Tests in real projects, that would increase you productivity and unit tests quality?"}
{"_id": "166835", "title": "How are crossplatform/multiple-OS C++ projects planned in terms of code and tools?", "text": "I want to create a project in C++ that can work in Windows, Linux and Embedded Linux. How are projects created when they have to work across many OS'es? Is it first created on one OS and then the code slowly modified to be ported to another OS? Eg: to me, the Linux version of Firefox appears to be created as a Windows project and a separate Linux project with a different code base, since Firefox behaves a bit different in Windows and Linux. Although the source code download is surprisingly a single link. If QT is used for UI, Boost threads for threading, Build Bot for CI and NetBeans/Eclipse/QT Creator for an IDE, would a person be able to minimise the amount of code re-write required to get the project onto another OS? Is this the right way to do it, or are such projects meant to be created as two entirely separate projects for two separate OS'es?"}
{"_id": "161824", "title": "Does there exist a design-pattern for this problem?", "text": "I have a big database of data which we can consider today's system. The data has a web front-end which allows my users to update the data. Let's call this \"original solution\" When new users come in they come as a set of new users. These users need their own data and their own web front-end. Let's call this a \"solution\". Originally we have 1 solution (the original solution), however I now need the same solution for a different set of users. Some factors that need to be considered in the design:   * The original solution may choose to implement other solutions updates and inserts on the data.   * Any solution may choose to receive updated and inserted data from the original solution.   * Updates between solutions should be easily shareable. Now the easiest solution would be just to replicate the entire database and have some sort of process to write and read data between solutions. This however has a really high overhead when it comes to duplicate data, storage needs and so on. I would imagine storing some kind of delta between the data would be better? I imagine a possible solution would be to design the architecture much like a source code control system with branches would be? When a new solution is implemented we branch the original solution. The different updates in branches can easily be updated into the main branch and vice-versa. Is there any tips in how I can easily clone the data in the original solution to a new solution without replicating the actual database? Perhaps a design pattern I can use in the implementation?"}
{"_id": "116338", "title": "Reasons for the build-technological fork between Java and UNIX/C/Fortran", "text": "When Java was developed, it's designers chose to discard an unusual amount of the conventional wisdom established in the UNIX and C oriented toolchains. For one (and in my view) the most major example, they chose to discard the practice of header files and Makefiles and tried to build a monolithic, dependency-aware compiler instead. Later on, `ant` was developed to partially remedy the (obvious?) deficiencies of this process, and effectively re- implemented the makefile logic. It's not like I resent old-style make and `#include` going overboard. However, their usage was reinvented in the Java world with `ant` and splitting each class into an Interface and an Implementation class, which is pretty close to the header file/source file pattern. I'm fairly sure the people behind Java knew of the existing tools and patterns and their purpose, so the decision to first do away with them and then reimplementing everything from scratch without even a hint of it in the language design is what astonishes me. Less costly ways would have been available (like parsing the source file and auto- generating a header file, which would have been fairly easy after pruning the C syntax a bit), but weren't taken, and I would love to know about the reason. Similar forks were performed in most other places, at considerable development costs and the considerable cost of a splitted community. Nowadays, Java-world and C++-world developers often have a hard time communicating and collaborating due to a split that seems disproportionate to the actual differences between the C/C++ language and the Java language. While I can see the basic motivation behind the process (everyone loathes Makefile syntax and changing header files manually), I still can't grok the magnitude of the change. Are there historical references about the motivation and reasons of this process? Are there any design documents or interviews with the people who drove this fork?"}
{"_id": "81072", "title": "Why do most programming languages not nest block comments?", "text": "A few do, but not any of the popular ones as far as I know. Is there something bad about nesting comments? I plan to have block comments nest in the (small) language I'm working on, but I would like to know if this is a bad idea."}
{"_id": "116335", "title": "Is JavaBeans a good example of encapsulation?", "text": "I'm trying to understand if JavaBeans is a good example of encapsulation. In my view, it's **not** as usually all the internal state is exposed through getters and setters. A simple example is               public class Test {         private List<String> names = new ArrayList<String>();              public List<String> getNames() {             return names;         }              public void setNames(List<String> names) {             this.names = names;         }     }      This follows the JavaBeans standard but it leaks the implementation. For example a user could call `test.getNames().clear()`. Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "116336", "title": "How to trim all incoming values in an HTTP Post request?", "text": "I have an HTML form, with more than 30 fields in it. When this form is submitted to the server, all of the values of the fields should be trimmed. In other words, no value should start/end with any kind of whitespace (`\\b`). There are many options available for me:   1. Manually trim each value   2. Looping over values and trim each one   3. Creating a framework (something like ASP.NET's HTTP Module) to sit at the way of any HTTP Post request, to trim the incoming value. The third option seems the best one. However, I don't know if it is **really** the best one or not? And I also don't know how to do it. Is it possible at all? What are other solutions?"}
{"_id": "28257", "title": "place to propose a open source project and collaborate on software requirements before start to coding", "text": "I'm searching for a web site to start a new open source project. I want to start the developing of a \"SPORT training log\". I have some developing skill but not all I need (I dont know web coding). Anyone know a good starting point to meet some people, propose the software and then (in another place also) start the development all together? For example, I have python, c, c++ skills and a little training experience, but I want to make it in web, so I can't do all the stuff alone. I dont think I'm the only one who wants to make a training log but dont have necessary skills. I'm searching for a site to manage the idea behind a training log and get interested people to contribute in the idea and then eventualy contribute also in the code. What I mean is a step before actualy FOSS approach. The question is: Why start to code software I need if I can start global software requirements about a \"sport traning log\" and after a useful and global review, we can start all together to developt it? Why should I need to start developing the software with XYZ features and other people who need features YZQ need to start to write another one? Why not put the opensource comunity a step before in a more professional way starting an opensource project with a collaborative approach also in software requirements?"}
{"_id": "11757", "title": "What are good social coding sites?", "text": "I'm used to CodePlex, and I've heard a lot about GitHub, but haven't looked around much there yet. What are the best social coding sites that tracks commits, interesting projects, etc? (From a large community and popularity standpoint)"}
{"_id": "236725", "title": "Charts, SQL and REST?", "text": "We have created a REST API for a voting game. Now we are jumping into creating analytics/graphs/charts for moderators and users to watch how are they doing in the game. The game has a certain group of people vote or use their votes for a certain number of choices. Now there is a moderator for this group which can compare the activity and performance of a group consisting of approx 50 members. So the graph requires votes of a user for a particular choice in days.   * user      * vote     * choice     * when to show the people increase in voting activity over time against a number of choice. Or perhaps comparison of all users showing how many votes they made in days/weeks/months. What is the best way to do this using sql. Should a long running query like this can be a considerable solution. Should this kind of data be prefetched or pre calculated and refreshed after some time? For a real time solution what are the possible ways? If the query is the only way, how can we speed it up? Indexing? Views? Triggers? Procedures? I am familiar with sql but dont know anything more than indexing. So it would help explaining what can help why and where."}
{"_id": "90815", "title": "How do I use an open source project as an educational tool?", "text": "In order to provide a more comprehensive educations for computer science students at my old university, I'm trying to develop an open source group they can contribute to. What should I be looking for in project ideas so that they provide the maximum educational value for students who aren't very experienced in real-world projects? What should I be avoiding when deciding what to do?"}
{"_id": "16390", "title": "What are the fundamental differences between C and C++?", "text": "Many tend to write \"C/C++\", as if they were the same thing. Although they share many similarities, they are clearly not the same. But what are really the fundamental differences between C and C++? Is C++ an enhanced version of C, or are there features in C which do not exist in C++?"}
{"_id": "16395", "title": "How important is my job title?", "text": "I work on two internal, mission critical applications. Let's keep it simple and call them \"Foo\" and \"Bar\". Nobody outside of the company has ever heard of them - like I said, they're internal apps. Until now my jobtitle has just been \"Software Developer\". I've recently discovered that my jobtitle is being changed to \"Foo and Bar Developer\". I'm a little worried that, should I leave the company, I'll have trouble finding a new job because of my weird job title. My question is this: How important is my job title compared to everything else on my CV (or resume, if you're American)? Am I likely to be rejected by box- ticking HR people who don't realise that \"Foo and Bar Developer\" is the same as \"Software Developer\"? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "63902", "title": "Interview process: 'Exam' for empirical scoring of candidates", "text": "As part of an interview process for a senior software development role, we are being asked to create a language-agnostic 'exam' that can be sat as part of the face-to-face interview. The reason being that we will need to produce non-subjective empirical evidence as part of the justification of who is offered the role. **How would you structure/format it to give the most reasonable results possible?** **What sort of questions would you ask?** _(Note: this is not the majority of the interview process, just a small piece we must do)_"}
{"_id": "121951", "title": "Best practices for upgrading user data when updating versions of software", "text": "In my code I check the current version of the software on launch and compare it to the version stored in the user's data file(s). If the version is newer, then I call different methods to update the old data to the newer data version, if necessary. I usually have to make a new method to convert the data with each update that changes user data in some way, and cannot remove the old ones in case there was someone who missed an update. So the app must be able to go through each method call and update their data until they get their data current. With larger data sets, this could be a problem. In addition, I recently had a brief discussion with another StackOverflow user this and he indicated he always appended a date stamp to the filename to manage data versions, although his reasoning as to why this was better than storing the version data in the file itself was unclear. Since I've rarely seen management of user data versions in books I've read, I'm curious what are the best practices for naming user data files and procedures for updating older data to newer versions. Edit: The 'date stamp' stemmed form a discussion here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8104812/does-releasing-a-new-version-of- the-app-delete-files-of-the-older-one/8104906#8104906 Since the question is too open-ended, I should say I'm looking for the recommended procedures for upgrading user data between versions. If possible, it would be nice to see iOS / objective-c practices, but it's not required."}
{"_id": "205739", "title": "Law of Demeter causing subclassing indecision and conflict with Single Responsibility", "text": "This is my situation: I have a class called CueList, which is basically a wrapper around ArrayList. I have another class called `TimeTicker` that alerts all the `Tickable` (interface) in its list that a certain amount of time has passed. Since I need to tick all of the items in `CueList`, but I don't want to violate DRY by keeping a copy of all of the CueList items in the `TimeTickable` class as well (which would make a nightmare when I want to delete a Cue), my immediate instinct was to make `CueList` a `Tickable` and have it pass on the \"tick\" message to all of its items. This seems to violate the Single Responsibility principle, which says that `CueList` should not worry about both keeping track of all the cues AND Ticking them. So what I did was create a `CueManager` class that is itself Tickable and links everything up (and ticks all of the CueList elements). But now, because of the law of demeter, I have a bunch of duplicate methods in the `CueManager` that just mirror the `TimeTicker` and `CueList` class. Doesn't that mean that the `CueManager` class has multiple reasons to change? Doesn't that mean it violates the Single Responsibility principle. Also, since most of the methods in CueManager mirror TimeTicker and CueList, doesn't that really mean that it IS a TimeTicker and CueList. Therefor shouldn't it INHERIT from CueList and TimeTicker! (Obviously you can't do multiple inheritance in Java, but I feel like it sort of makes sense to Inherit from CueList, but then that would violate Single Responsibility) So in summary: **Law of Demeter makes me make a bunch of methods that merror two other classes, but that makes me think that it really should just inherit from both of those classes, but that would mean that one class handles multiple responsibilities (even if it is through its superclass).**"}
{"_id": "97459", "title": "What should developers know about UNIX-based systems?", "text": "I'm a bit amazed that this hasn't been asked by anyone yet, but at a high level, what should every developer know about working with UNIX-based systems? My *nix experience is very limited, because I have absolutely no reason to use it over Windows for my own purposes, but I have two interviews coming up where the companies ideally want someone with *nix experience. I have no problem becoming acquainted with it if they make an offer I want to take, but it's not worth the investment when the majority of my offers are dealing with Windows systems; hopefully this is understandable. Which tools should I know about? Any quirks that I should be aware of? Are there any good, concise resources that can be read quickly to get a broad understanding?"}
{"_id": "236726", "title": "What is the role of the lead developer in an agile team?", "text": "In a non-agile development team a lead developer _generally_ :   * Sets the standard (coding and otherwise)   * Researches new technologies for the team   * Sets the technical direction for the team   * Has the final say on matters   * Designs the architecture of a system However an agile team works differently:   * An agile team will rely on emergent design, rather than up front    * An agile team designs together, rather than design being dictated by one person   * An agile team decides on their own technical direction, which is best to deliver a project Where does this leave a lead developer in an agile team? Is it possible to have a lead developer in an agile team? Does a agile team demand different responsibilities from a lead?"}
{"_id": "153128", "title": "What is a dotted pair's analogy in other Lisp implementations?", "text": "What is Scheme's dotted pair construct analogous to in other Lisp implementations? I can make a vector or list quite easily, and understand those in Clojure, even though the syntax is a little different, like Clojure's vectors use square brackets []. However, seeing a dotted pair for the first time threw me. It almost looks like it is an implementation of of map. I'm not looking for a discussion, but more for use or the dotted pair equivalent in other Lisp dialects, like Clojure, or even Python."}
{"_id": "219032", "title": "Is it okay to test multiple similar files in one functional test", "text": "I've a functional test using `Junit` which tests delivery of xml file to an end-point. XML file is sent by client, so I copied it to a test folder, read it from there in my test and do asserts. We have 10-20 such files with different data but same format, my architect wants me to copy all of them into same folder, loop through them in same test, just to make sure that they are delivered successfully. Note, I am not testing any data validations in this test just successful delivery. I am not sure if its a good idea to loop through multiple files in a single test in my case because if one fails rest will not be executed and also not convinced for writing 20 tests doing exactly same thing. Please advice"}
{"_id": "153124", "title": "What Is The Formula for the 3 of 9 Bar Code Alphabet?", "text": "Background: 3 of 9 Barcode Alphabet A simple syntax for 3 of 9 bar codes What is the formula behind the alphabet and digits in a 3 of 9 bar code? For example, ASCII has a relatively clear arrangement. Numbers start at 33, capitals at 65, lowercase at 97. From these starting points you can infer the ASCII code for any number or letter. The start point for each range is also a multiple of 32 + 1. Bar codes seem random and lacking sequence. If we use the syntax from the second link, this is the first six characters in 3 of 9:               A 100-01     B 010-01     C 110-00     D 001-01     E 101-00     F 011-00      I see no pattern here; what is it? I'm as much interested in the designer's intended pattern behind these as I am in someone devising an algorithm of their own that can give you the above code for a given character based on its sequence. I struggled with where to put this question; is it history, computer science, information science? I chose Programmers because a StackExchange search had the most barcode hits here, and because I wanted to specifically relate it to ASCII to explain what sort of formula/explanation I'm looking for.    ## Update For the curious, here's the full list of all basic characters in Code 39: http://jsfiddle.net/b9chris/LnX2e/2/ (the source lines are taken from my C# barcode lib) You'll notice that the simplified syntax proposed can confuse the issue a bit, because it might imply that every character is a 5-bit number with a dash position. The final 4 characters have numerous dashes (wide gaps). Really, these codes are best thought of as 9-bit numbers that happen to have most odd bits set to 0 for the majority of symbols. Here they are as 9-bit numbers: http://jsfiddle.net/b9chris/LnX2e/1/"}
{"_id": "148405", "title": "A sample build.sbt to allow me easily specify source dirs and libraries?", "text": "I recently started learning Android development and I decided to follow the following development processes:   1. Preinstall Scala in emulator   2. Edit source files in IntelliJ IDEA 11   3. Compile the project with sbt in command line   4. Dex generated classes without Scala libraries   5. Build APK and test in emulator In the above steps, except step 3, I think other steps can be easily handled by command line/makefile. So here I am, I want a sample build.sbt to allow me easily specify the following information:   1. Source directories   2. Reference libraries   3. Output directory I am aware of sbt android plugin and sbt idea plugin but I want to avoid them for the following reason: projects generated by android plugin dex Scala libraries for each build but I want to have control on that part: I want to skip Scala libraries for development but include them for release build, which seams requires a lot of digging if I do it with the plugin but can be easily handled if it is done from command line/makefile. If overall what I plan to do makes sense, could someone familiar with sbt provide such a sample build.sbt? I have already spent hours following sbt tutorials but felt it\u2019s so hard to make each seemed simple change to the default behavior of sbt. A side question, it seems that source directories added by unmanagedSourceDirectories get compiled every time regardless of the time stamp. If that\u2019s the case, what\u2019s the point of using sbt? I can just feed all sources files into scalac. **UPDATE**   This is the build.sbt based on Daniel C. Sobral's answer. When I type in sbt compile, it only prints some info like \"Set current project to HelloAndroid...\". No compilation happens.               name := \"HelloAndroid\"          scalaVersion := \"2.8.2\"          unmanagedSourceDirectories := List(       file(\"src\"),       file(\"gen\"))          libraryDependencies := List() // remove Scala's library from dependencies          unmanagedJars := List(Attributed.blank(file(\"C:/bin/android/platforms/android-10/android.jar\")))          target := file(\"target\")      I didn't expect it compiles because I still need to work out the jar files but at least I should get some compiler error. Any hint? **UPDATE** : the sbt compile outputs the following:               [info] Set current project to HelloAndroid (in build file:/C:/Users...     [success] Total time: 0 s, completed May 14, 2012 10:36:23 AM      I have two source files in src directory:               src/com/example/[HelloScala.scala MyActivity.java]      No class file is found under target folder."}
{"_id": "235595", "title": "What made BASIC profitable?", "text": "In the 1970s, a man called Bill Gates developed an interpreter for BASIC: the Altair BASIC. Per my understanding, he was able to persuade the guy in charge of a microcomputer company to include the interpreter program on every microcomputer he sold, which I assume brought Gates and his crew some royalties. Apparently this made Gates a fortune. What I don't understand is why programing languages aren't as profitable today. What factors in the past made them profitable, but not today ?"}
{"_id": "235590", "title": "Which automated analysis tools can find the heartbleed bug?", "text": "After reading this description of the infamous heartbleed bug, and how the OpenSSL team is relatively small and lightly funded, I'm wondering: would this bug have been uncovered by coverity, valgrind or other tools?"}
{"_id": "118322", "title": "Is having multiple CDN locations for a product self defeating?", "text": "I was double checking the URL for the CDN version of jQuery this morning, and noticed that there are three different locations now. Is having multiple networks hosting a product bad, or even self-defeating? I thought a primary advantage is that as more and more sites use a CDN version, that the odds the library being cached in the browser keep going up. If the CDN is set up properly, and a user is using a decent browser, then the network doesn't even get accessed for a cached file. In the case with jQuery, does't having having three CDNs lower the cache hit rate by 1/3? Am I missing something here?"}
{"_id": "49172", "title": "What source control would be best to use with my private gaming server?", "text": "I'm looking to version control everything, including sql server components, a client launcher, and server-side software. I want to use an online resource where people can make updates, and make it easier to roll out any changes to players. Most of the files are just text files, or gtx image files. I don't think this qualifies as open source, so I don't know what to do. I tried github, and have a free account there, but it was really clunky, mass adding every file to be comitted. I really don't like subversion but if that's the best option, I'll use it. The other people who will need access to the files will have no familiarity with any kind of source control, so I need an easy system for them to download files, make changes, and comit to the repository. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "21280", "title": "What are the essential things I should know about the Mac?", "text": "I am about to start a new job at a startup company on Monday. Today they asked me what I want for a PC for work, Windows, Linux or Mac (presumably a laptop). I am proficient with Windows and Linux but I have never used a Mac, so without hesitation I said I wanted a Mac. Without looking like a idiot on the first day of the new job and without access to a MacBook over the Thanksgiving weekend, what resources would you recommend for me to learn as much as possible before I lay my hands on my Mac? Looks like they use Google Apps so the office suite part is all set, for development, I will use C++/STL/Boost and GCC. A few months ago, I asked about a slightly different question on the Stack Exchange Unix forum: Software developer switching from Linux to OS X, what are the gotchas? Update 1: I'm expecting to work longer than normal hours, so I wouldn't think using some time on the job to acquire a new skill is such a bad thing to the company. Update 2: I'm writing on my new MacBook Pro now, I love my new Mac. thanks for all the answers for helping with this transition. Update 3: to naysayers out there, I'm glad that I picked a MacBook without hesitation. I love my new job and new Mac. :)"}
{"_id": "49175", "title": "Is it possible to build all features of functional language with only closure?", "text": "I'm trying to make a new functional language and it's interpreter for practice. As I know most basic building block is only a lambda function, and it's just a closure. I'm not understanding them well, so I want to ask about I'm right or what's wrong?"}
{"_id": "210540", "title": "8 bit and 1 byte, is this a valid question to be asked?", "text": "I saw these question in our school's past paper, and I'm wondering if this is a valid question. > How big is `bool` in C and C++? > > A) 1 bit > > B) 4 bit > > C) 8 bit > > D) 1 byte > > What is the smallest unit of memory C or C++ use? > > A) 1 bit > > B) 4 bit > > C) 8 bit > > D) 1 byte The answer to both are D, but I am thinking if this is inappropriate. EDIT: 1 byte is not necessarily 8 bits on some systems. See this StackOverflow post."}
{"_id": "99505", "title": "Are there any equivalent articles similar to hginit.com for git (and moving from SVN)?", "text": "I'm wanting to get the most out of git and not just be using it as a translated form of SVN. I've read hginit's article about coming from SVN. That article of course though is concerned with Mercurial. Git is distributed and similar, but I wouldn't think it to be the exact same. Is there any articles similar to hginit to forget about SVN and start over with a Git mindset?"}
{"_id": "99501", "title": "How is the actor model used?", "text": "I have read a bit about the actor model, but don't really understand how to use actors in a real world situation \u2013 how to model a problem with them. Can someone please explain? A simple example or links to examples would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "16936", "title": "Do non-manager coders in their forties or older out there sometimes regret about not being managers?", "text": "And why do most programmers quit coding and become managers so early compared to other areas? You can work as a construction worker, a lawyer, researcher, writer, architect, movie director for decades if not your whole life, without quitting the favorite thing you are doing. And yet most programmers think being a manager, or better, a non-coding manager is a cool thing and the ultimate goal of the software career. It's so rare to see an ordinary coder in his 40s or 50s (or 60s!) in a typical software company. Why? (And I am for being a coder for as long as you love doing it.)"}
{"_id": "195300", "title": "Moving past the ignoring or considering whitespace binary: how should I compare files for e.g. commit review?", "text": "I am dissatisfied with the file comparison tools I have worked with so far. While no tool would be able to always predict the line matchings that make best sense, at least current tools should be able to do a better job when changes mostly consist of added and removed indentation. But the tools have I used end up matching braces in isolation and separating actually related code, and do other seemingly obvious mistakes. An example will speak volumes, let us take this:               // We also have to add any specified prefix and (pre-period) suffix.          if (prefix) [spriteName insertString:prefix atIndex:0];          if (suffix)     {        NSRange pos = [spriteName rangeOfString:@\".\"];        if (pos.location == NSNotFound)        {           // No point, it's a base sprite, so just append.           [spriteName appendString:suffix];        }        else        {           // Append where the period was found, just before it.           [spriteName insertString:suffix atIndex:pos.location];        }     }      and assume it gets changed to this:               // We also have to add any specified prefix and (pre-period) suffix.          if (prefix) [spriteName insertString:prefix atIndex:0];          while (we_need_to_do_stuff)     {        if (suffix)        {           NSRange pos = [spriteName rangeOfString:@\".\"];           if (pos.location == NSNotFound)           {              // No point, it's a base sprite, so just append.              [spriteName appendString:suffix];           }           else           {              // Append where the period was found, just before it.              [spriteName insertString:suffix atIndex:pos.location];           }        }     }      I don't want to namedrop too much, but what does FileMerge (the graphical diff/merge utility that ships with Xcode) do? This: ![Screenshot of FileMerge doing barely useful matching](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SBv0P.png) \u2026how thoughtful, FileMerge, you made sure to match the braces because they were at the same indentation level, and separated the related code. Couldn't have asked for more. The usual solution in that case is to find the option to consider changes in the amount of whitespace as being not significant, and try again. But then I want to make sure I have not fumbled the indentation either, because it is something I am going to commit, so I go back to the options, disable the option, try again. Repeat for all the changes I want to review. There has got to be a better way. Is it just me using my tools badly? Is it theoretically possible to improve this workflow? And this is a simple case, have trickier ones been solved in the abstract? How should I look for better tooling in this domain, given that this is hard to express as a search engine query?"}
{"_id": "195308", "title": "Storing a re-orderable list in a database", "text": "I'm working on a wishlist system, where users can add items to their various wishlists, and I plan to allow users to re-order the items later on. I am not really sure about the best way to go about storing this in a database while remaining fast and not turning in to a mess (this app will be used by a fairly large user base, so I don't want it to go down to clean up stuff). I initially tried a `position` column, but it seems like that would be quite inefficient having to change every other item's position value when you move them around. I have seen people using a self-reference to refer to the previous (or next) value, but again, it seems like you would have to update a whole lot of other items in the list. Another solution I've seen is using decimal numbers and just sticking items in the gaps between them, which seems like the best solution so far, but I'm sure there has to be a better way. I would say a typical list would contain up to about 20 or so items, and I will probably limit it to 50. The re-ordering would be using drag and drop and will probably be done in batches to prevent race conditions and such from the ajax requests. I'm using postgres (on heroku) if it matters. Does anyone have any ideas? Cheers for any help!"}
{"_id": "12229", "title": "Does your company have a written policy about personal (technical) blogging?", "text": "Does your company have a written policy about personal (technical) blogging? Care to share? We encourage our developers to keep personal blogs and talk about technical problems they've encountered at work that are not core competency or core IP. We've been doing it \"don't ask don't tell\" style, but it's time to write something down. **Update** : thank you all for your answers, we've implemented a policy for this last week - the full text is here."}
{"_id": "90105", "title": "Should you bother with SVN branches if you only ever have one?", "text": "If we only work with one branch in Subversion, should we even bother? Can't we just work on the trunk to speed things up? This is how we develop with Subversion:   * There is a trunk   * We make a new development branch   * We develop a new feature on that branch   * When the feature is done, it is merged in the trunk, the branch is removed and a new development branch is made from the trunk When we want to release to production, we make a tag from the trunk. Bugfixes are made on a branch from that tag. This bugfix is then merged in the trunk. This is why we make a new development branch after a feature is done. This way, the bugfix is included soon enough in our new code. Below is a diagram which should clarify: ![Our Subversion strategy](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DAm69.png) Now, there's a feeling this isn't the most efficient way of working. We build locally before we commit, which takes about 5-10 minutes. You can understand that this is experienced as quite a long waiting time. The idea of a development branch is that the trunk is always release-ready. But this isn't true in our situation anymore. Sometimes, a feature is almost ready, and some developers will already start coding the next feature (otherwise, they would be sitting around waiting for one or two developers to finish and merge). Then, when feature 1 is finished, it is merged into the trunk, but with some commits of feature 2 included. So, should we even bother with the development branch, as we only ever have one branch? I've been reading about trunk-based development and branch-by- abstraction, but most articles I've found focus on the branch-by-abstraction part. I get the impression that's for big changes that will span over several releases. This is not a problem we're having. What do you think? Can we just work on the trunk? Worst-case scenario is (I think) that we would have to make a tag from the trunk and cherry-pick the commits we need, because some commits/features aren't production ready yet."}
{"_id": "179199", "title": "IEEE SRS documents: lightweight version when working with outside contractors?", "text": "Typically we follow an Agile development process that tends not to put an emphasis on writing requirements and technical documents that nobody will read. We tend to focus our limited manpower to development and testing activities with collaborative design and whiteboarding as a key focus. There is a mostly standalone web component that will take quite a few weeks to develop, but this work can be mostly parallel with other project work going on. To try and catch up time I was given a budget for hiring a developer on oDesk to complete this work. While my team isn't accustomed to working off of a firm SRS document, I realize that with outsourced development that it is a good idea to be as firm and specific as possible so I realize that I need to provide a detailed Requirements and Technical Specification document for this work to be done correctly. When I do write a Requirements document I typically utilize the standard IEEE SRS document template but I think this is too verbose and probably overkill for what I need to communicate to a developer. Is there another requirements document that is more lightweight and also accepted by a major standards organization like the IEEE? Further, as what will be developed as a software module that will interact with other software modules, my requirements really need to delve into technical specifications for things to work correctly. In this scenario does it make sense to merge technical and requirements specifications into a single document, and if not, what is a viable alternative?"}
{"_id": "179194", "title": "Is it ok to ignore poor performance for a resource that will be cached?", "text": "Let's say I have a web service that is poorly written and inefficient, but it's output is cached so there's no bottleneck. Do you just leave it? Would you go as far as to take deliberate shortcuts knowing that performance problems will be masked?"}
{"_id": "196643", "title": "How to ensure a project 100% tested?", "text": "I want to know how exactly, we can ensure that a project is 100% tested ?   In banking or financial applications not 1% also tolerable.   So being a developer, how can you say your code is 100% tested?   Explanation with example is highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "95163", "title": "N-Tiered Web App Using JQuery/ASP.NET Web Services", "text": "For fairly small, non-complex web applications, we have utilized jQuery to make asynchronous calls to an ASP.NET web service for interaction with our Sqlite data store. This has proven to be a pretty clean way to isolate the application tiers while taking advantage of the powerful client-side functionality of JQuery. However, we are currently in the process of designing a larger application that consists of potentially hundreds of data elements. I am concerned that the sort of architecture mentioned above could get unwieldy pretty fast if we are passing hundreds of elements into the web service from a jQuery ajax post. I was interested in others experience with this sort of design and whether you would recommmend another approach."}
{"_id": "216498", "title": "Is 500 million lines of code even remotely possible?", "text": "The New York Times is reporting that the Healthcare.gov website contains \"about 500 million lines of software code.\" This number, attributed to \"one specialist\", and widely repeated across the interwebs, seems incredibly far- fetched (even assuming a large fraction of that number includes standard libraries). If this is an accurate estimate, it would truly be staggering (as this fascinating infographic vividly reveals). I realize StackExchange:Programmers isn't Snopes.com, but I'd like to find out if anyone here believes this is even remotely possible. I'd like to know if there is a plausible system of accounting (using examples from publicly available data, if possible) that could lead someone to conclude that such an estimate is within the realm of reason. How could a codebase (by any measure) sum up to such an exhorbitant number of code lines?"}
{"_id": "57888", "title": "Advice Required Regarding Creating a Self Learning, Self Organizing Programming Team\u2026", "text": "I'm a senior student at my university and chairperson of IEEE Student Branch there. Recently I was thinking of some idea to acquaint students with the professional environment, how software is produced in the industry and get a practical experience.. Obviously trips to software houses are not enough and we cannot provide this many internships. So the idea of simulating a software house within the university popped in. Resources at my disposal are students with their own laptops, university UPS and lan network with internet access, and a reasonably sized room with a whiteboard and three hours free time daily.. :) However, I have absolutely no idea where to begin with. Milestones or whatever it may be called, are Requirements Document generation, sharing of resources, delegation of tasks, version controlling etc... I'd really appreciate some advice, programming tools (for JAVA), communication tools etc and other things used in a decent software house... Technologies to be targeted shall be random possibly starting with J2EE Spring Hibernate and Later Visual Programming in .NET C# and ASP.NET MVC as well as Android or iPhone development...."}
{"_id": "10574", "title": "What happens at [platform] user groups?", "text": "I'm a .NET developer, but I've never been to a .NET user group meeting or anything like that. I might have the opportunity soon to start attending one, but I'm wondering. What happens at user groups? I'm not looking necessarily for info specifically about .NET ones, but they are preferred. What do you get out of it _excluding_ the opportunity for networking?"}
{"_id": "216495", "title": "Software architecture map to aid cross team communication?", "text": "I work in a company where multiple teams each work on different parts of a software product in a vaguely agile/scrum manner. Mostly the organisation works well but there have been instances where a team may make a change without realising its impact on other teams. Where dependence is known communication has been good, and where dependence is suspected then 'broadcast' emails and informal conversations have also worked well. But there exists a sub-set of tasks that fall between the cracks. Broadcast emails are likely not the solution as they would become too numerous such that the email signal/noise ratio would fall. I'm contemplating a solution that involves a sort of map of the software, which details all of the various parts of the system and loosely tries to place interacting and dependent parts near to each other. Each developer then updates their position on the map (today I'm working on X and Y), and therefore if two or more developers happen to be co-located (or proximate) on the map then we can see this each day and this could form the trigger for further discussion on possible overlap and conflict. Is such a method out there and in use? If so what is it and does it work? Otherwise, do you think such a scheme has merit?"}
{"_id": "223833", "title": "What intermediate representations can be used to reason about concurrency?", "text": "I am trying to better understand what would be required for a compiler to be able to make intelligent choices regarding concurrency on behalf of the programmer. I realize that there are many difficult aspects of this problem for instance:   * Ensuring that there are no race conditions   * Ensuring that the code to be run concurrently won't have side effects that impact the semantic meaning of the code   * Deciding whether the overhead from spinning up threads is worthwhile given the degree of parallelism available in the code My understanding is that the two major intermediate representations used in modern compilers are static single assignment for procedural and object oriented languages and continuations passing style for functional languages. Reasoning about any of the problems listed above seems difficult using these intermediate forms. Even languages that should in theory have the best chance at automatic parallelization (pure functional languages like Haskell with a guarantee of no side effects) have made limited progress on this front. So my question is really what intermediate representations have been used to try and tackle this problem? Are there other representations that have been used in academic research that I am not aware of that are better suited to this task? Is this problem one that fundamentally has to be resolved by the compiler front end by manipulating the abstract syntax tree before compilation reaches an intermediate representation?"}
{"_id": "223834", "title": "Sequence Diagram. UML \"Use Case Ends\"", "text": "I have a couple of questions about UML.   * Firstly, how would you show \"Use Case Ends\" on a sequence diagram.   * Secondly, if you have an alt in a sequence diagram for \"Variable == false\", would you need to show what would happen if the variable is true, even if nothing would happen other than moving onto the next method call?    * Third, isn't the last arrow on the diagram always going to be asynchronous, because it can continue and does not have to wait?"}
{"_id": "49791", "title": "Real-world use cases for Smalltalk", "text": "I've been playing a bit with Smalltalk, and I found it interesting. I know that there are some classical examples of Smalltalk: the Smalltalk images themselves and the Seaside web framework, and that there are lots of in-house custom applications built using this language. I'd like to know:   * if there are computer applications actively used and developed apart from the ones I mentioned;   * if there are software houses that use Smalltalk for doing their job;   * when would you use Smalltalk instead of another language for developing from scratch a new application;"}
{"_id": "78477", "title": "How to foster intrinsic motivation in a software team", "text": "Jeff Atwood's blog post on Amazon's Mechanical Turk suggests that it should not offer monetary rewards but rather intrinsic motivation, _\"motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on any external pressure.\"_ How does a team member (a manager, a lead, or a developer) foster intrinsic motivation in a software team? **EDIT:** Please provide comprehensive answers. Share your personal experience with objective analysis. **EDIT #2:** To facilitate a productive and on-topic discussion, we should assume that monetary compensation is satisfactory to the developer."}
{"_id": "176219", "title": "Why don't we have web IDEs?", "text": "Why don't we have a lot of good web-based IDEs? Which aspects of the system make it difficult for IDE to be implemented as a web application?"}
{"_id": "176218", "title": "Solutions for \"Maintenance Mode\"", "text": "Given a web application running across 10+ servers, what techniques have you put in place for doing things like altering the state of your website so that you can implement certain features. For instance, you might want to:   * Restrict Logins/Disable Certain Features   * Turn Site to \"Read Only\"    * Turn Site to Single \"Maintenance Mode\" page.  Doing any of the above is pretty trivial. You can throw a particular \"flag\" in an .ini file, or add a row/value to a `site_options` table in your database and just read that value and do the appropriate thing. But these solutions have their problems. ## Disadvantages/Problems For instance, if you use a file for your application, and you want to switch off a certain feature temporarily, then you need to update this file on all servers. So then you might want to look at running something like ZooKeeper, but you are probably overcomplicating things. So then, you might decide that you want to store these \"feature\" flags in a database. But then you are obviously adding unncessary queries to each page request. So you think to yourself, that you will throw memcached in to the mix and just cache the query. Then you just retrieve all of your \"Features\" from memcached and add a 2ms~ latency to your application on every page. So to get around this, you decide to use a two tier-cache system, whereby you use an inmemory cache on each machine, (like Apc/Redis etc). This would work, but then it gets complicated, because you would have to set the key/hash life to perhaps 60 seconds, so that when you purge/invalidate the memcached object storing your \"Features\" result, your on machine cache is prompt enough to get the the new states. What suggestions might you have? Keeping in mind that optimization/efficiency is the priority here."}
{"_id": "176211", "title": "Working alone vs with others", "text": "Being a student in a small school, there aren't a lot of people _(well, there aren't any)_ that share the same passion or skill of programming that I have. I have been learning to program myself since the age of 9, and I believe I have reached the level where I am ready to do something more ambitious, as opposed to the little scripts and personal web design I do at the moment. The point is: would having a small group - or just another person - allow us to achieve greater things? If so, how would I begin building a team?"}
{"_id": "236025", "title": "Finding the name of a video game with a picture of its cover (Python/Java)", "text": "For the past few days, I've been trying to figure out how to take an image of a video game cover (like this one) and get the name of the game from it. Initially I attempted to use Google's Search by Image, but they're not fond of automated queries and sadly I am only able to reverse-image search from a browser and not programatically. I have a database of all of the video game covers and their names, but I'm not sure what approach I should take to matching the images (there are just around 7500 of them). I'll also need to account for lighting, orientation, and size differences, so that (I think) throws out pixel comparison. Someone else has done something similar (see this video on Youtube), so I know it's possible, I'm just not sure where to start. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "236024", "title": "Should I use inheritance or an interface?", "text": "So in a nutshell I have an abstract class :               public abstract class Member       {     public string PCode { get; set; }     public string Reference { get; set; }     public DateTime? ElectedDate { get; set; }     }      And this is inherited by 3 other classes:               public class Fellow : Member     {      // some class level properties here     }     public class ForeignMember : Member     {      // some class level properties here     }     public class HonoraryMember : Member     {      // some class level properties here     }      And the usual CRUD operations are done through using a generic repository pattern: ### Interface               public interface ICRMRepository<T>     {         List<T> GetAll();         T GetById(int id);         T GetByPCode(string pcode);     }      ### Class               public class CRMRepository<T> : ICRMRepository<T> where T : class     {             public List<T> GetAll()        {         //actions go here        }             public T GetById(int id)        {         //actions go here                }             public T GetByPCode(string pcode)        {         //actions go here        }     }      The question is if I wanted to do a query that would bring back all the Fellows, HonoraryMembers and ForeignMembers in one result set, how would I do this? Would it be better to have an interface instead of inheritance e.g. IMember, and then the three classes use that interface? Or some solution that uses both?"}
{"_id": "142164", "title": "What is the \"Find-Fix-Verify\" pattern?", "text": "What is the \"Find-Fix-Verify\" pattern, as related to the process of doing editing/spellchecking/debugging, etc.? Where is this pattern best described? What are some advantages and disadvantages of this pattern?"}
{"_id": "115018", "title": "Best practice regarding security in mobile applications", "text": "A friend asked me recently about mobile applications and the security surrounding them. As he wishes to make a mobile app that would handle very secure information such as credit card numbers, I was starting to wonder about the issue of security surrounding these devices. Does it seem reasonable to store sensitive information inside of a mobile app? I wonder this because I have seen dex to class to java decompilers online and I imagine that on any mobile device there is no guarentee that the data in the _secure_ locations is as secure as they would like you to believe. But, I'm not an expert on these things; I feel like I'm a stranger when it comes to the wonderful world of security. So that's why I ask you this, what is the best way to securely store the data? Is it feasible to securely store credit card information/passwords/etc on a mobile device? If so, what methods should one take in order to assure the users that the best possible measures were taken to securely store their information. If not, what is a good alternative to store all that sensitive information? Even then, with the stories in the news about user data stored in web sites being compromised what measures should be taken to ensure that the data stored there is also secure?"}
{"_id": "115019", "title": "What are the valid reasons to use ContentPresenter outside of template?", "text": "I stumbled upon an article by Den Delimarsky on What is a ContentPresenter? which says: > In WPF there is an element called ContentPresenter, that is often used > inside control templates, as well as inside the root application markup. I don't understand the \"inside the root application markup\" part, because I thought that ContentPresenter can only used inside of a ControlTemplate. The role of the ContentPresenter is quite clear when used in a ControlTemplate, but what are the valid reasons to use ContentPresenter outside of a template's markup?"}
{"_id": "67594", "title": "Non-OOP Design Patterns?", "text": "I have only heard the term \"design pattern\" being used for object oriented code, and the GoF patterns include only OOP design patterns, but design patterns are elegant solutions for commonly occuring programming problems, right? There is nothing in there saying that they must be limited to OOP, is there? I would like to see some examples of design patterns _outside_ the realm of object oriented programming. Do you have any? Do such even exist (no book, like the GoF book, must necessarily have been written, they should just be used; that is enough)? They can be specific to some programming language(s), but general (paradigm- level) patterns are preferred, of other paradigms than the object oriented one."}
{"_id": "67598", "title": "Pros and cons of low-level vs high-level software development careers", "text": "I am in the progress of moving on to a new software development job. There are openings for both low-level control software and high-level application software. To me, both opportunities are exciting. Working on embedded/control software technically means programming the operating system for a specific hardware. But this might mean I will be an expert for only that hardware's API and if I move on in the future, I would have to throw away that knowledge. Working on application software, in my understanding, means software that can scale, so I will be developing my design skills as well. Moreover, libraries tend to be reused compared to hardware APIs so what I learn might be of use in the future. But that's my narrow view of the world. I do not have enough experience to see a bigger picture. Is there anything else I should be aware of in choosing between these two software development flavors? Thank you."}
{"_id": "179447", "title": "System requirement specification vs functional one - separate docs?", "text": "A lot of sources (e.g. Wikipedia) mentiones System requirement specification and Functional specification as two separate entities. However, Wiegers in his book writes: > The software requirements specification is sometimes called a functional > specification, a product specification... This is very confusing for me as I thought FS describes just functions while SRS whole system. From this point of view, FS would contain both non functional and functional requirements and everything else."}
{"_id": "187732", "title": "Why isn't Java being used for web multimedia applications?", "text": "I've been focusing on multimedia applications and I've noticed that most applications don't use Java in the back end. Instead, I see solutions with PHP/ROR/Python and Flash/Silverlight without any trace of Java in the application stack. What part of Java is either limiting or constrained - or perceived as limiting or constrained - when building multimedia applications? Let me clarify, when I said Java, I meant Java EE. Of course on the client side people will use flash or html5 for audio/video. But what I am trying is that, why is most multimedia platforms backend is created with PHP/ROR/Python(Django)? There are many audio distribution platforms out there. soundcloud.com (uses go lang), tunrtable.fm (uses Python) youtube.com (uses PHP), is Java EE not capable of doing those?"}
{"_id": "187737", "title": "Is C# namespace should be Project-Name?", "text": "I am working with multiple websites (freelancer) and a good amount of them I write using C# MVC4. I created a very good boilerplace project that I plan to use on every next starting mvc4 application I build, however the namespace is named `Website`. I also do a lot of copy-paste from one project to another and then I always have to refactor namespaces, if I will use single namespace (Website) on all my websites then this problem dissapears. However - will this somehow impact my application, is it considered a very bad practice?"}
{"_id": "251839", "title": "How to maintain view-related information in MVVM and may I store this in the model?", "text": "I have an ongoing discussion with some colleagues on how to manage the views to our model. We've got a model which may be represented by many views. Let's say we've got some data that is stored in an array and we'd like to display the data in a table and in charts.   A certain chart is unique but you're able to duplicate the chart. This duplicate should display the data in the very same way as the original, but it does not display the same part (e.g. if the data is too big to display it at once and you can scroll, so the original shows the first 10 items while the duplicated one shows the last 10). At any time you can remove a view. The view and the view-model are then deleted from the memory. The model persists even if there's no view representing the data. There is a handful of displaying information on the view which tells how and what part of the data is displayed. Scrolling is one of those, so let's stay with that example. This displaying information is neither persistent nor is it stored in the model. If you shut down the application and restart, we don't care about how the view has been before and we always set up a default. If you, however, delete a view and then undo, we'd like to display the data exactly as it's been before deleting. The newly created view is technically not the same as before.   In order to adjust the view, I need to maintain the scrolling position. I would simply put the displaying information into the model as this continued to exist for the whole time. However, some colleagues disagree and they say the model should only contain persistent data (like the actual data we're representing).   Hence we shouldn't keep track of the displaying information about the view in the model. Q1: Is it correct from a design perspective that the model contains only persistent data? If yes, how would you maintain view-related information? As said above, the model may be represented by many views, some of which may be duplicates of each other.   Let's say I found a way to maintain the data. I would have a collection of X displaying information.   Q2: When creating new views which actually replace the old views (keyword undo), how can I determine which displaying information of the collection should be associated to which view.   I mean even if my view had a unique ID, since we've created new one, we cannot rely on this data. I can't quite figure out how I could associate these information correctly. The only idea that raises is having a separate view-model for each view and keeping the view-models alive, too. On the other hand, I think that's not what it's supposed to be, is it?"}
{"_id": "232431", "title": "How to translate SQL query into REST API requests?", "text": "Let's say I have a machine-readable description (such as in WADL, Swagger or RAML) of a REST API that provides interface to a database. My users submit queries about underlying database in form of SQL or similar query language. However, I cannot access the database directly, only through the REST API. **What approach would you choose to build (preferably semi-automatically from description) a system that translates such SQL queries into a sequence of requests to given REST API?** **How would you represent such problem? Are there any algorithms, theoretical frameworks or tools that can help?** The REST API supports:   * read-only operations, i.e. only `SELECT` SQL queries   * XPartial projections (e.g. `/persons?fields=firstname,lastname`)    * RSQL constraints (`/persons?query=firstname==John;department.code==42`, see another examples). Some references between tables (foreign keys) are represented as attributes in the REST API (such as `Person.department` in above constraints example), but some references are represented as subresource (e.g. `/persons/{userName}/projects`). This means that some queries requires to devise \"a plan\" to be answered in terms of REST requests. E.g.: Query for \"names of active projects of Chuck Norris\" would translate to:   1. `/persons?query=firstname==Chuck;lastname==Norris`   2. Get `userName` from result   3. `/projects/{userName}?fields=name&query=state==ACTIVE`"}
{"_id": "251832", "title": "When is an API considered to be an embedded DSL?", "text": "What is the difference between an API and an embedded Domain Specific Language (DSL)? Is it just syntax? Consider an API like OpenGL. How is that different from a graphics DSL? In other words, if an API is sufficiently complex, can it be considered an embedded DSL?"}
{"_id": "251830", "title": "How to define the motion path of one object on a surface of the other one?", "text": "I have an uncommon problem. There are 2 3D objects, which are represented by arrays of vertices and triangles (.stl files). Each of them contains a big enough amount of vertices: 1-10 mln ones. The surfaces of these models are rough, and can contain different spikes or hollows. The aim is to determine path of one these objects, when it moves with contact on the surface of the other one. Moreover, the algorithm should consider how many degrees of freedom are available. In every case there are only 2 objects and one of them is fixed. Example, object `M1` moves on a surface of object `M2`, which is fixed. It's necessary to move M1 from point `A` to `B`. For M1 it's also available one more degree of freedom - along the axis (let's call it `AC`) perpendicular to `AB`. So, the path can be only the curve in the plane `(AC, AB)`. But due to this path, during the motion `M1` should always has at least one contact point. I tried to perform it with collision detection algorithm, but it seems it will be very complicated calculations for ordinary computers. Can anybody advise some algorithms, libraries or concepts how to perform this idea? P.S. I use C, C++ and Java."}
{"_id": "149464", "title": "Difference between planning a project vs. planning a product", "text": "I have read in numerous places that when developing a product you need to take a different approach to when you are developing a project (think \"contract\" work). Some differences are: 1) There is no definitive user, but a \"user-base\". 2) You need to develop the minimal marketable feature set. 3) Scheduling needs to be watched, as there is not often a fixed deadline it is possible for the product to run overtime (or for scope creep). I was wondering if there are people out there with experience in both, and if they could offer some input into any differences that they know of. Also if anybody could provide any tips/good references for how to deal with the differences I would be most appreciative."}
{"_id": "149465", "title": "Who created the idea(s) of the first loop constructs?", "text": "while (1) {           if (1+1==2) {                  print \"Yes, you paid attention in Preschool!\";           } else {                  print \"Wait... I thought 1+1=2\";           }      }      As a developer, we **all** have to use loops _very_ frequently. We know that. What I was wondering was, who thought of the idea to have loops? What language introduced loops? What was the first loop construct? Was it a `while` loop? A `for` loop? etc?"}
{"_id": "58685", "title": "How to Deal with an out of touch \"Project manager\"", "text": "This \"manager\" is 70+ yrs old and a math genius. We were tasked with creating a web application. He loves SQL and stored procedures. He first created this in MS access. For the web app I had to take his DB migrate to SQL server. His first thought was to have a master stored procedure with a WAITFOR Handling requests from users. I eventually talked him out of that and use asp.net mvc. Then eventually use the asp.net membership. Now the web app is a mostly handles requests from the pages that is passed to stored procedures. It is all stored procedure driven. The business logic as well. What are the best arguments for not having the business logic not all in stored procedures?? How should I deal with this?? I am giving an abbreviated story of course. He is a genius part owner of the company all the other owners trust him because he is a genius. and quoting -\"He gets things done. old school\"."}
{"_id": "160062", "title": "Web application without libraries | Relation to job postings", "text": "I have an application built without any libraries using PHP, JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, and mySQL that will support major modern browsers - IE, Safari, FF, Opera, and Chrome. One thing I've noticed is that most web jobs 90%+ ask for library experience of some sort. About 10 % do not... they focus more on the language then language-libraries. Why this lean toward libraries? I can understand that you don't want to have to re-write AES encryption algorithms and PHd level math things like that, but so much web development does not have any high level math at all. What is the difference between jobs that focus on library use vs. jobs that focus on language?"}
{"_id": "160068", "title": "Is there much thought towards internal diagnosis testing within an enterprise application?", "text": "Imagine a discussion between four people - one a developer, one a manager, one a tester and one a deployment/operations type. The Manager is very angry as a system has fallen over after a new version of code was deployed into production. He is looking to point fingers. Operations person pleads ignorance - they followed the deployment steps exactly. Tester pleads ignorance - they have functionally tested code and it worked fine in test environment. Development person pleads ignorance - they provided good code, and claim that the system badly configured. This situation may seem familiar to some. There's always an excuse, some mistake made along the chain - from design to deployment - that allows a system to be upgraded but doesn't work as intended. What are the pros and cons of diagnosis testing - tests run built into the application (perhaps through a command line API or something) that would allow a system to check it's internal connections (database, middleware, filesystem etc) and confirm that everything it expects to work is correct? This is rather than relying on an external monitoring system that may not be configured in the same fashion as the application? (new release, different properties, looking at the wrong database etc) An example : I'm writing a class that interacts with a database. Within this class, I create a method that interacts with the database without affecting it, say a simple select query. In the constructor of this class, I pass to an observer a test based on the arguments passed into the constructor. This observer can be called to run all the tests it has at any time so as to test for the validity of the connection - even while the system is actually running."}
{"_id": "58688", "title": "Should if statments be in inner or outer method?", "text": "Which of these designs is better? What are the pros and cons of each? Which one would you use? Any other suggestions of how to deal with methods like is are appreciated. It is reasonable to assume that Draw() is the only place that the other draw methods are called from. This needs to expand to many more Draw* methods and Show* properties, not just the three shown here.               public void Draw()     {         if (ShowAxis)         {             DrawAxis();         }              if (ShowLegend)         {             DrawLegend();         }              if (ShowPoints && Points.Count > 0)         {             DrawPoints();         }     }          private void DrawAxis()     {         // Draw things.     }          private void DrawLegend()     {         // Draw things.     }          private void DrawPoints()     {         // Draw things.     }      Or               public void Draw()     {         DrawAxis();         DrawLegend();         DrawPoints();     }          private void DrawAxis()     {         if (!ShowAxis)         {             return;         }              // Draw things.     }          private void DrawLegend()     {         if (!ShowLegend)         {             return;         }              // Draw things.     }          private void DrawPoints()     {         if (!ShowPoints ||  Points.Count <= 0))         {             return;         }              // Draw things.     }"}
{"_id": "164997", "title": "What is the relationship between OpenGL, GLX, DRI, and Mesa3D?", "text": "I am starting out doing some low-level 3D programming in Linux. I have a lot of experience using the higher level graphics API OpenInventor. I know it is not strictly necessary to be aware of how all these things fit together but I'm just curious. I know OpenGL is just a standard for graphics applications. Mesa3D seems to be an open source implementation of this standard. So where do GLX and DRI fit? Digging around on Wikipedia and all these websites, I've yet to find an explanation of exactly how it all goes together. Where does hardware acceleration happen? What do proprietary drivers have to do with this?"}
{"_id": "164996", "title": "How can we unify business goals and technical goals?", "text": "## Some background I work at a small startup: 4 devs, 1 designer, and 2 non-technical co- founders, one who provides funding, and the other who handles day-to-day management and sales. Our company produces mobile apps for target industries, and we've gotten a lot of lucky breaks lately. The outlook is good, and we're confident we can make this thing work. One reason is our product development team. Everyone on the team is passionate, driven, and has a great sense of what makes an awesome product. As a result, we've built some beautiful applications that we're all proud of. The other reason is the co-founders. Both have a brilliant business sense (one actually founded a multi-million dollar company already), and they have close ties in many of the industries we're trying to penetrate. Consequently, they've brought in some great business and continue to keep jobs in the pipeline. ## The problem The problem we can't seem to shake is how to bring these two awesome advantages together. On the business side, there is a huge pressure to deliver as fast as possible as _much_ as possible, whereas on the development side there is pressure to take your time, come up with the right solution, and pay attention to all the details. Lately these two sides have been butting heads a lot. Developers are demanding quality while managers are demanding quantity. How can we handle this? Both sides are correct. We can't survive as a company if we build terrible applications, but we also can't survive if we don't sell enough. So how should we go about making compromises? **Things we've done with little or no success:**   * Work more (well, it _did_ result in better quality and faster delivery, but the dev team has never been more stressed out before)   * Charge more (as a startup, we don't yet have the credibility to justify higher prices, so no one is willing to pay)   * Extend deadlines (if we charge the same, but take longer, we'll end up losing money) **Things we've done with some success:**   * Sacrifice pay to cut costs (everyone, from devs to management, is paid less than they could be making elsewhere. In return, however, we all have creative input and more flexibility and freedom, a typical startup trade off)   * Standardize project management (we recently started adhering to agile/scrum principles so we can base deadlines on actual velocity, not just arbitrary guesses)   * Hire more people (we used to have 2 developers and no designers, which really limited our bandwidth. However, as a startup we can only afford to hire a few extra people.) **Is there anything we're missing or doing wrong?** How is this handled at successful companies? Thanks in advance for any feedback :)"}
{"_id": "68619", "title": "Good extension name for a war file with source", "text": "Is there a name for a Java Webapp's war that includes the source code? We will be using a webserver that accepts Java Web Projects with source code) uploaded into the docroot folder, so `docroot/admin.webapp.zip` would be the place to upload a webapp that handles `http://example.com/admin`. This way the compiled binaries and source code are together (and down the road, even the compiled code might not be there at all, but compiled on the first runtime). What are the most common file types for a webapp with source? If it means lining up with a standard, I would be glad to use a similar extension name and zip directory structure. If not, I will probably use something like `.web.zip`. I would just use `.zip`, but then the webserver would not know if it should serve out the zip or only use it as a webapp."}
{"_id": "68616", "title": "Code smells in Android?", "text": "This question arises from seeing code where I feel like something is wrong but I can't put my finger on it while developing Android. What are some red flags in Android development that says your application just may not be organized/programmed in the best way? What are some ways to fix these instances of code smell?"}
{"_id": "157717", "title": "What is dependency of ASP.NET MVC on .NET Framework and how to use it with .NET 2.0?", "text": "When you download and install asp.net MVC, does it just add code to the .net framework class library? Or does it also modify the installed Visual Studio editions? Another question: If it is just adding code to the .net framework class library, why can it not be installed on top of .net 2.0?"}
{"_id": "164999", "title": "Stop myself from over-complicating applications", "text": "Recently I worked on a fairly large project involving C# and MVVM. This application had around 160 projects in the solutions each seprarated into their own layers. As I have been working on this application for almost a year, building it from scratch as part of a team, I am now coming off that project and onto smaller more trivial projects. As I was beginning to develop a small in-house tool I found myself trying to mimic the larger applications structure and layering but in the end I just had a simple application with several DLLs which I know I wouldn't have done if I had not worked on that larger application before. I am just wondering if there are any techniques I can utilise to stop myself from turning a \"code-behind\" style trivial application into a full blown MVVM application? Or should I continue developing as I am and try to keep the unnecessary fluff out of the project?"}
{"_id": "158962", "title": "Ruby/RoR development: desktop or server", "text": "Our company has started development of own systems \"in-house\". We already got couple of developers, who will be responsible for writing code in Ruby/RoR. We are currently discussing infrastructure, and I would like to ask: should we develop everything on local machines, then put it to test server and later to production, or develop everything on a development/test server, then publish it for testing and later to production? Just an update to the description above: under \"local machines\" I meant developers' desktops and this test/development server is a machine in our office."}
{"_id": "157712", "title": "How to modify the open-save-close life-cycle MapEditor class in a uDig Eclipse RCP", "text": "I am working on a uDig application. I have been trying to figure out how to modify the open-save-close life cycle of the MapEditor class created by uDig. The reason being I want to make sure that the asterisk does not display denoting a \"dirty\" editor, avoid the pop-up box that asks the user if they want to save the current map, and avoid having the old map open up again when the user starts the application up again. Any thoughts on how to accomplish this. Does anyone have any experience modifying the life cycle of an editorPart in Eclipse, particularly the uDig MapEditor? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "29596", "title": "If I immerse myself in Dvorak, will I forget QWERTY?", "text": "From a few other questions here, it seems like the suggested route to learn Dvorak is just to do it, and while I have a couple weeks of vacation I'm using, it might be a good time to give it a whirl, so I'm not totally useless at 4 WPM when I go back to work. That said, in a few weeks would I severely damage my QWERTY knowledge or would it still be hanging around? Should I switch back to QWERTY occasionally while learning Dvorak?"}
{"_id": "209930", "title": "Is there a name for the concept of a \"cumulative checksum\"?", "text": "Insofar as I understand it, tools like Git and Mercurial derive checksums from their data, and those checksums are used to derive other checksums used in aggregate, leading to a kind of accumulative checksumming (checksums being the input to other checksums), that ensures a high level of integrity. Is there a name for that, and if so, what is it? (Other than \"accumulative checksumming\" (which, according to Google, is not well used, or I just made up.) My Google foo is failing me here... Another way to put it, is there a name for the way a Git repository ensures its integrity? Sorry for the vagueness - grasping for terminology I sense should exist but I can't actually find."}
{"_id": "24555", "title": "Is working in ''Classic Asp'' good for me for the future?", "text": "I have completed my post graduation in Msc(comp sci)-2010. Is working in \"Classic ASP\" today good for me in the future? Because I am fresher and I have learned ASP.NET 3.5 version. Please let me know your thoughts on whether it really matters to my career that it is it's old technology."}
{"_id": "24558", "title": "Is Python Interpreted or Compiled?", "text": "This is just a wondering I had while reading about interpreted and compiled languages. **Ruby** is no doubt an interpreted language, since source code is compiled by an interpreter at the point of execution.   On the contrary **C** is a compiled language, as one have to compile the source code first according to the machine and then execute. This results is much faster execution. Now coming to **Python** :   * A python code ( **somefile.py** ) when imported creates a file ( **somefile.pyc** ) in the same directory. Let us say the import is done in a python shell or django module. After the import I change the code a bit and execute the imported functions again to find that it is still running the old code. This suggests that *.pyc files are compiled python files similar to executable created after compilation of a C file, though I can't execute *.pyc file directly.   * When the python file (somefile.py) is executed directly ( ./somefile.py or python somefile.py ) no .pyc file is created and the code is executed as is indicating interpreted behavior.  These suggest that a python code is compiled every time it is imported in a new process to crate a .pyc while it is interpreted when directly executed. So which type of language should I consider it as? Interpreted or Compiled? And how does its efficiency compare to interpreted and compiled languages? According to wiki's Interpreted Languages page it is listed as a language compiled to Virtual Machine Code, what is meant by that? ## Update Looking at the answers it seems that there cannot be a perfect answer to my questions. Languages are not **only interpreted** or **only compiled** , but there is a spectrum of possibilities between interpreting and compiling. Also, its not the languages which are interpreted or compiled, but rather their implementations either interpret or compile code.   I also found out about Just in time compilation From the answers by aufather, mipadi, Lenny222, ykombinator, comments and wiki I found out that in python's major implementations it is compiled to bytecode, which is a highly compressed and optimized representation and is machine code for a virtual machine, which is implemented not in hardware, but in the bytecode interpreter. As far as execution speed is concerned the various benchmarks cannot be perfect and depend on context and the task which is being performed. Please let me know if I am wrong in my interpretations."}
{"_id": "187087", "title": "Why use skins if we can handle server controls with CSS in ASP.Net?", "text": "The main difference between themes/skins and CSS are the HTML & Server Side Controls (SSC) only. We use skin files to format & cosmetics SSC which are not in HTML like `<asp:Label>`, `<asp:TextBox>` & `</asp:RadioButtonList>` etc... But what if we use the rendered HTML SSC in CSS instead skin files to handle `<asp:Label>` & `<asp:TextBox>` etc... ie: when SSC `<asp:TextBox>` rendered on browsers it shows `<input type=\"text\">` so if we write following style in my CSS file instead Skin, it also works...               input[type=text], textarea, select {          outline: none;            padding: 3px 0px 3px 3px;         margin: 5px 1px 3px 0px;         border: 1px solid #cccccc;           background: #ffffff;         width: 150px;         color: #484848;         font-size:         12px;      }      So my question is, if we still can handle SSC with CSS do we really need skins? Or if I am missing anything please correct me, thanks."}
{"_id": "50084", "title": "SQL Server DBA - How to get a good one!", "text": "I'm a lone developer. I am currently developing an application which is seeing me get way way way out of my depth when it comes to SQL DBA'ing, and have come to realise that I should hire a DBA to help me (which has full support from the company). Problem is - who? This SO thread sees someone hire a DBA only to realise that they will probably cause more harm then good! Also, I have just had a bad experience with a ASP.NET/C# contractor that has let us down. So, can anyone out there on SO either... a) Offer their services. b) Forward me onto someone that could help. c) Give some tips on vetting a DBA. I know this isn't a recruitment site, so maybe some good answers for c) would be a benefit for other readers!! BTW: The database is SQL Server 2008. I'm running into performance issues (mainly timeouts) which I think would be sorted out by some proper indexing. I would also need the DBA to provide some sort of maintenance plan, and to review how our database will deal what we intend at throwing at it in the future!"}
{"_id": "187083", "title": "One Service or Two Services for Parsing and Sending Emails", "text": "I have a bulk emailing service within the system which allows for a template to be used. When the mail is sent the template is parsed or run through a parser to replace tags with actual information. i.e \"[Foo] has logged in\" is parsed to \"Bar has logged in\" Is it better to have 1 service for sending and parsing emails (concurrently), or to have 2 services, one which only checks for pending emails and parses them, and another which only sends emails who have already been parsed?"}
{"_id": "699", "title": "How often do you expand your skill set?", "text": "In the ever changing world of programming, how often to you catch up on a new language or technology? I have heard it said that one should learn a new language yearly. Is that always true?"}
{"_id": "58533", "title": "How can I use my coding skills for good?", "text": "By this autumn my two small websites should be generating around a total of $1200 a month with minimal/zero input which is enough to for me to live on comfortably enough. Rather than embark on another business venture, I would love to spend the next few years doing something genuinely good or that helps other people that need it. I want to spend 4 or 5 years dedicating my time to a worthy cause and do the most I can to help with the web development & programming skills that I already have. The problem is that I don't know where to start. I don't have an awesome idea of my own and am very sceptical of many large charities. Ideally I'd like to find a small project where everyone is unpaid and focused on helping. Are there any such small organisations? Does anyone have an idea for a project/website/app that can help people in need that they would like me to work on or work with them on? I know this isn't a typical StackOverflow 2+2=? type question and some of you will be itching to delete it but considering the philanthropic nature of the IT industry (just look at S.O. itself) this is very relevant question to many developers either now or at some point in their careers. Given the recent events in Japan this question is particularly relevant with many people looking for ways they can help others with the skills/time that they have available. Really looking forward to reading your thoughts/answers on this, thanks guys"}
{"_id": "94489", "title": "Handling deleted users - separate or same table?", "text": "The scenario is that I've got an expanding set of users, and as time goes by, users will cancel their accounts which we currently mark as 'deleted' (with a flag) in the same table. If users with the same email address (that's how users log in) wish to create a new account, they can signup again, but a NEW account is created. (We have unique ids for every account, so email addresses can be duplicated amongst live and deleted ones). What I've noticed is that all across our system, in the normal course of things we **constantly** query the users table checking the user is not deleted, whereas what I'm thinking is that we dont need to do that at all...! [Clarification1: by 'constantly querying', I meant that we have queries which are like: '... FROM users WHERE isdeleted=\"0\" AND ...'. For example, we may need to fetch all users registered for all meetings on a particular date, so in THAT query, we **also** have FROM users WHERE isdeleted=\"0\" - does this make my point clearer?]               (1) continue keeping deleted users in the 'main' users table     (2) keep deleted users in a separate table (mostly required for historical         book-keeping)      What are the pros and cons of either approach?"}
{"_id": "175740", "title": "Should generated documentation go in version control history?", "text": "I'm against compiled stuff going into version control, specially when it comes to compiled binaries, however, my principles are now in question after adding doxygen support for a project. Should the hundreds of files generated by doxygen go into version control?, what is the recommended practice here?, I think the ideal would be automating the process in a server that publishes that documentation at the same time, however, there is no such server now nor there will be for some time."}
{"_id": "94485", "title": "Open Source Ecommerce - OpenCart a good choice?", "text": "I am considering learning the ropes for an open source ecommerce package. I've played with opencart in the past and I basically want to get opinions on actually using it for clients. Make any suggestions you like, my priorities are: 1\\. not worrying about checkout integration 2\\. plugin writing 3\\. theming, and premade theme availability I develop with php (oo), Javascript(with Jquery) and mySQL. In a nutshell, I want to know if Opencart makes checkout easy to do, whether the api's are kept up to date and how active the community is. Or alternatively, another opensource cart that makes checkout easier than opencart (a checkout wrapper is basically all I want - other features are bonuses). Thanks."}
{"_id": "79703", "title": "How you handle security/permission in enterprise app nowadays (mid 2011)?", "text": "what you people use to handle security issues, different security rules, permissions etc. Possible answers: 1) Security framework like Rhino security or any other. (pros/cons?)   2) Custom solution specific to the problem. (pros/cons?)   3) Other. (what? | pros/cons?) Feel free to elaborate on this topic. Best regards! PS: I will mark the answer with most votes as answer just for the rules..."}
{"_id": "79701", "title": "How important is having a mentor or senior developer in the beginning of your career?", "text": "I just read this question asking how to determine if a senior developer's advice is bad and I realized that I couldn't really relate to his situation since I don't have a mentor. I also realized that I'm probably the most senior developer at the office, at least within my field. Which I suppose is remarkable considering that I'm only 22 and graduated from college a year ago. I realized that I make most of the design decisions and that I write my code however I feel like it. While I'm happy with that I feel like it would be good to be surrounded by superior developers that I could learn from. As it stands right now I'm mostly applying knowledge I've already acquired. Will not having a mentor at this point in my career have negative impacts later in my career?"}
{"_id": "228921", "title": "Using web api or libraries", "text": "We currently have 1 domain and 4 subdomains using 5 different applications. We are programming in asp.net and we have 6 different solution project. 5 applications and 1 solution for shared back-end. Each application is deployed with its own dll + shared dll. Since we are looking to start using asp.net MVC, we are now interested in adding Rest WEB API. Plan is to replace one subdomain app (asp.net web forms) with MVC and instead of using libraries, we want to pull data from WEB API. My questions are 1) Is it worth changing the concept and use wep api instead of libraries to exchange data between our apps? 2) If so, should we create it as a new app (on new subdomain), or just a middle layer in MVC application exposing only methods we need for MVC app?"}
{"_id": "228927", "title": "Physics Engine with Fixed-Point Positions", "text": "Fixed-point object locations allow for worlds which are much more scale-able. Using a 64-bit integer (per dimension), and 0.1 millimeter precision, a world can be created which is 100% numerically stable, and _12,000_ astronomical units across. I have been looking all over the internet, and I can't seem to find a physics engine which supports this. Is there a 3D physics engine in existence, which uses _fixed-point_ (i.e. Integer, hopefully int-64) values for entities' positions? It's for a really ambitious sci-fi game I'm working on."}
{"_id": "197272", "title": "Best practice for creating a 'global' config class used by numerous components", "text": "I have a large project with a driver part and about 5 libraries doing various associated tasks. Many of the libraries require access to 'global' configuration data which is read from a database at startup by the driver code. By driver I just mean the part which contains the main function. My idea on how to handle this was to create a config class with a static method to get the config items. Is this the best approach? How else could this be achieved? eg:               class config {      public:        static get_item(key);           private:        static values;     };      Is singleton design appropriate here?"}
{"_id": "197273", "title": "How to implement a Theme for View Controllers in an iOS app?", "text": "I have an application, where font size, font type, color, background color, image and a lot of things change based on theme. I realised in the beginning itself that using enums to denote themes and then checking the theme everywhere was a horrible mistake. So I have two approaches now and I am confused which one to go with. Keep a Base View Controller for my app with default look and feel of the application and then create a subclass per theme. Or Create a Theme class which will provide theming information and then subclass it per theme and set the theme Object on the view controller and query theme object before applying the theme. Or There could be another approach I haven't thought about :)"}
{"_id": "197270", "title": "Search and Replace in MVC", "text": "What would be a good MVC/OOP/GRASP/SOLID structure for a search/replace functionality. Methods: search/searchNext/replace/replaceAll. I'm interested only in the PHP arhitecture and how a professional developer would implement this in it's **OWN FRAMEWORK**. What names would you use for the classes? What subfolders would you used in your MODEL folder? How would you connect the MODELS/CONTROLLER? This is just a arhitecture question to understand better the principles of good OOP in practice. My current implementation is very simplistic using a service model:                /controller/SearchReplaceController.php      /models/services/SearchReplaceService.php      The problem with this is I know I'm breaking SRP in the service but I found this somehow acceptable. Also creating a service does not feel like the best solution for this."}
{"_id": "165111", "title": "Making two images move at different speeds in Java?", "text": "I am creating a basic game of space invaders. I am using a thread to animate the game and was wondering, how do I get the aliens the speed up going left and right without changing the speed of the ship you control below them? What is the easiest method? I am quite new to Java 2d and have only created two other more basic games."}
{"_id": "197277", "title": "Using sounds on distributable app - Copyright issue", "text": "I've created an app that has some sound file that I've downloaded from Macloops. The user can only listen these sound files (he can't create any new sound files using them) with the app. Now, I want to distribute the app over the internet and I'd like to know if I can do this legally. I've only found the following the Macloops' website about copyright : > Macloops membership disclaimer/terms & conditions. > > By joining the Macloops website, you are accepting these Terms and > Conditions. > > You accept that Macloops.com is part of Siliconbeats.com and you grant us > the right to send you occasional emails regarding our latest news and > developments. Your email address will not be sold to any mailing list > organizations and the content of our emails will be related to samples, > loops and music making resources that we have to offer. > > Whilst all reasonable efforts are made to ensure that all downloadable > material is virus free, we strongly recommend the use of professional virus > checking software. Playing sounds at excessive volumes can cause damage to > hearing. Use common sense when playing sounds and ensure that volume levels > are sensible. > > Macloops cannot be held responsible for injury or damage caused from use of > files and sounds. All members and nonmembers are totally responsible for ALL > Internet access charges. No exceptions are made. The period of membership > for all members is at the discretion of the site administrators. Macloops > reserves the right to deactivate or remove your account at any time. > Macloops cannot be held liable for any damage to hardware, software or > equipment resulting from the use of any files or sounds obtained directly or > indirectly from the Macloops website. > > By joining the Macloops website, you are accepting to be bound by these > Terms and Conditions. There is nothing about using the sound files. So am I allowed to distribute my app?"}
{"_id": "188198", "title": "How would I combine 'Command' and 'Composite' to simulate a time delay?", "text": "As a learning exercise (I am not in school - just an old guy trying to learn something new), I am trying to write a logic gate simulation that incorporates propagation delay. The user should also be able to group gates together to create higher-level objects. I want to apply design patterns to my problem, but I am having a hard time. I am reading _Head First Design Patterns_ , and I see that the Command pattern is a good way to simulate electrical pulses through a circuit with a delay. I also see that the Composite pattern is a good way to simulate nested units. I just don't know how to mix the two. In other words, as I loop through my gates, I see that gate 'x' should fire. It has a 15 nanosecond delay, so I create a command with a time stamp of 15 ns from current game time. Where is the dispatcher? In the example of the diner, with the command being the 'Order', the waitress and the cook each dispatch the command and have the option of introducing a delay. If I have a 'composite' gate, does it also have its own dispatcher? Do I need to use a Singleton to manage the queue? I read what I could find, but I still need a push in the right direction:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2015549/using-command-design-pattern   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12016314/client-server-command-design-pattern-with-variable-delays   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10560892/composite-of-commands-design-pattern   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8874705/how-can-i-calculate-propagation-delay-through-series-of-combinational-circuits-u"}
{"_id": "55103", "title": "Unit Tests as a learning tool - a good idea?", "text": "I'm interested in ways and means for learning (a) programming language(s) efficiently. I believe that using Unit Test concepts and infrastructure early in that process is a good thing, even better than starting with \"Hello world\". Why: To write a decent program even for a toy/restricted problem in a new language, you'll have to master many heterogenous concepts (control flow & variables & IO ...), you are tempted to glance over details just to get your program 'to work'. Putting (your understanding of) the facts about the new language in assertions with good descriptions (=success messages) enforces thinking thru/clearness/precision. Grouping topics and adding assertions to such groups is much easier than incorporation features from the 2. chapter of your \"Learning X\" book to your chapter 1 program. Why not: 'Real' Unit Tests are meant to output \"1234 tests ok; 1 failure: saveWorld() chokes on negative input\"; 'didactic' Unit Tests should output relevant facts about the new language like               perl6 10-string.t     # ### p5chop     ...     ok 13 - p5chop( \"cb\u00e4\" ) returns \"\u00e4\"     ok 14 - after that, victim is changed to \"cb\"     # ### (p6) chop     ...     ok 27 - (p6) chop( \"cb\u00e4\" ) returns chopped copy: \"cb\"     ok 18 - after that, victim is unchanged: \"cb\u00e4\"     # ### chomp     ...      So (mis?)using Unit Tests may be counterproductive - practicing actions while learning you wouldn't use professionally. How: Writing 'didactic' Unit Tests in languages with lightweight testing systems (Perl 5/6) is easy; (mis?)using more elaborate systems (JUnit, CppUnit) may be not worth the effort or not suitable for a person just starting with a new language. So   1. Is using Unit Tests as a learning tool a bad idea?   2. Can the Unit Test tool(s) of your favourite language(s) used didactically?   3. Should implementation details (eventually) be discussed here or over at stackoverflow.com?"}
{"_id": "55104", "title": "Why isn't Java more widely used for game development?", "text": "I'm not a game developer or anything, but I know that Java is not very widely used for game development. Java should be fast enough for most games, so where's the catch? I can think of some reasons:   * Lack of game developers with expertice in Java   * Lack of good game development frameworks   * Programmers don't want to accept Java as a games programming language. Most only accept C++ as that?   * No support for game consoles (though the PC market still exists) It could of course be something else. Could someone who knows the business better than me explain why Java isn't getting momentum when it comes to game development?"}
{"_id": "143341", "title": "Is re-defing idiomatic in clojure?", "text": "Simple example:               (def ticks 0)     (defn run-iteration []       (def ticks (inc ticks)))      Though the usual case involves things that don't change more than once every several hundred ms. How to do this idiomatically? Edit: and why is the idiomatic way idiomatic, and why is it good?"}
{"_id": "111226", "title": "Interviewing someone for general unix skills", "text": "How would you test a developer that claims to have *nix shell experience (just to be clear, we don't want to test if someone can develop on *nix, only that they know their way around the command line). I was thinking about making them solve a problem of getting information out of log files, which would involve some basics like cat, grep, cut, ... combined with piping. What other basic knowledge would you ask for? Once again, this isn't for interviewing someone who will develop for *nix systems, and also not for *nix system admins, but just for regular developers that sometimes need to do some work on a *nix system."}
{"_id": "225865", "title": "\"Open Source\" licenses that do not allow source redistribution", "text": "I am starting to work on a new commercial software project that may use elements of \"open source\" code. I have been instructed to ensure that I only use code which is licensed for commercial use and although we _may_ decide to make it open source in the future it should be _required_ to be open source. So this clearly prohibits the use of any true copyleft licensed code. But this got me wondering; are there any standard \"open source\" software licenses that _allow_ commercial use, but _do not_ allow redistribution of source? I have intensionally used quotes around open source as I am aware that any licenses that fit this criteria cannot be compatible with the accepted OSI definition of open source."}
{"_id": "114053", "title": "How can I know when my application is too complex?", "text": "I'm currently working on my own project for an Android app, but then as time goes it feels like my app is concentrating more on another feature than what I had in mind when I first design the app. So I want to ask how we should know when our application is too complicated (for the user)? What should we do with it? Especially when we strongly think this new feature is important."}
{"_id": "110574", "title": "How to effectively (but minimally) *simulate* a distributed computing environment?", "text": "I am doing some personal research on Byzantine Faults. I am trying out algorithms from various research papers which present algorithms for consensus in distributed systems like this one. For this i need a small scale simulation environment of a distributed system. How do i approach this problem ?"}
{"_id": "114056", "title": "Agile development deployment process. Where do QA and Business Owners test?", "text": "I've been reading up a lot lately on various web application deployment processes using SVN or GIT, with a view to redesigning how we currently deploy where I work. As is the way with many flavours of Agile, it's assumed that anything committed to master or trunk is production ready. Both GitHub and Etsy, http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2010/05/20/quantum-of-deployment/ say that they work on this basis (although Etsy actually have a staging environment). This process assumes all unit test and CI tests have been run. You run the tests locally and on CI and then commit to trunk. SO, at this point your code is **technically** sound. Your code may be technically correct, but user/functional testing may unearth more bugs, particularly when it comes to front end testing. My question is this. Where do QA and Business owners test the feature changes you have implemented? On your local development machine before you commit to trunk, or on a QA/staging machine? If you have a staging machine that runs off trunk, and you assume that all code committed to trunk is production ready ... eh .. then at what point is the code signed off and good to go into production from both a technical and business perspective? If you have only one staging machine, many developers and that is where the code is to be QA'd, then how can you deploy from trunk as many developer changes can be waiting for sign off. I'd be interested to hear how others have approached this?"}
{"_id": "114058", "title": "To Press Onward or Not?", "text": "In the past week I've been meeting and speaking with someone who's interested in finding help on developing a game (built using php and mysql, with a little bit of javascript). I agreed to help out, however, now that I've seen the code and file organization, I don't know if it's feasible for anyone (not just myself) but the original writer to even decipher what's going on. Basically, there isn't any structure either to the files or to their code, it's just sort of strewn about as is. Every php file that didn't come from an external source is in the root and there is a little organization for other files types, but not much. Most of the code isn't indented or readable. I'm not trying to say it doesn't work, I've seen it work, it's just that I don't think anybody else could try to get a handle on what it does (and I don't want to sound like I'm ragging on the guy who wrote it, he told me that he really doesn't do much coding). Basically, my question is should I back out, or should I try to press onward? Does anyone have experience with working on a big-old-system that needs to be completely updated? Any thoughts? **Additional Information:** No, I don't have a contract yet, I've just looked at it thus far. My own feelings are that if I decide to press onward I'll end up rewriting the entire system (which is 113 php files in the root, plus several others located elsewhere in the system), and I don't know if I really want to continue, it's just that I feel like I said I would try to help out."}
{"_id": "221524", "title": "Pros and cons of namespaces vs include/require in PHP?", "text": "I recently started using namespaces in PHP. When I first saw them, I thought that their syntax was ugly and I'd never use them. However, I created an autoloader (spl_autoload_register) that makes it so that I never have to write an include/require statement again. I like namespaces, but is there any objective benefit over include/require statements, or are they the exact same method to accomplish the same goal?"}
{"_id": "181363", "title": "Unit Testing and Asserting", "text": "Assume we have a method that validates an object before saving it to a DB. It returns back KVP something like:               public KeyValuePair<bool, List<FooErrorReason>> ValidateABar(Bar b)     {         var reasons = new List<FooErrorReason>();         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bar.Name))          {             reasons.Add(new FooErrorReason { PropName = \"Name\", Message = \"The name was missing\" };         }         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bar.OtherName))          {             reasons.Add(new FooErrorReason { PropName = \"OtherName\", Message = \"The other name was missing\" };         }         return new KeyValuePair<bool, List<FooErrorReason>(reasons.Count == 0, reasons);     }      So now I want to test that, for a missing bar.Name, the error is returned. My question is on the make up of the test, concerning what to `Assert`.               public void ValidateABar_Fails_For_Missing_Name()     {         //arrange         var b = new Bar { OtherName = \"Other\" };              //act         var result = ValidateABar(b);              //assert         Assert.IsFalse(result.Key);         Assert.AreEqual(1, result.Value.Count);         Assert.IsTrue(result.Value.Any(x => x.PropName.Equals(\"Name\")));     }      I have 3 `Assert` calls and it has a whiff of code smell about it, but I can't quite convince myself either way. I'm asking myself 'What do you want to test?' and I do kind of feel that I should test that this failed, but failed specifically for the property of the test. Is it enough to just use               Assert.IsTrue(result.Value.Any(x => x.PropName.Equals(\"Name\")));      Or should I also check that there are no other errors I have picked up along the way? Say for example someone added another validation rule without my knowing about it, I would think I would want my tests to tell me about this the next time I ran them. As an example, let's say someone changed the method as below:               public KeyValuePair<bool, List<FooErrorReason>> ValidateABar(Bar b)     {         var reasons = new List<FooErrorReason>();         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bar.Name))          {             reasons.Add(new FooErrorReason { PropName = \"Name\", Message = \"The name was missing\" };         }         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bar.OtherName))          {             reasons.Add(new FooErrorReason { PropName = \"OtherName\", Message = \"The other name was missing\" };         }              //added this!         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(bar.ThirdName))          {             reasons.Add(new FooErrorReason { PropName = \"ThirdName\", Message = \"The third name was missing\" };         }         return new KeyValuePair<bool, List<FooErrorReason>(reasons.Count == 0, reasons);     }      The test would now fail and I would see that this rule had been added, and amend my test accordingly (and presumably write another test to cover the new rule). Am I taking the 'one Assert per test rule' too literally?"}
{"_id": "253155", "title": "Which pattern is suitable to send multiple type of responses through REST web service?", "text": "I have bunch of REST style web services which support XML and JSON type responses. Now I have to modify existing web services such that they provide Protobuf type of responses. Developer who has developed these services has created three layers. `Service` layer, `DAO` layer and `Processing` layer. Service layer calls one of the method of processing layer and processing layer calls DAO methods and returns either JSON or XML type response (POJO) to the service. Service layer then sends back this POJO to client. For example, if service to add `list of items` is called then that code roughly looks as shown below:               @Path(\"/item\")     class ShoppingItemService {         // annotations         public ItemAddResponse addList(/* parameters required for this method */) {             ItemProcessor processor = new ItemProcessor();             ItemAddResponse response = processor.process(/* pass some data to processing layer */);             return Response.ok().format(\"XML\").build(response);         }     }      Here `ItemAddResponse` is already annotated with `JAXB` type annotations for `XML` response and other annotations for `JSON` response. I cannot reuse same `ItemAddResponse` because Protobuf generates its own classes using schema files. Processor class has all the business logic and If I want to add support for Protobuf then I have create new method in processor and copy-paste almost all the business logic, but just return object of protobuf generated class. This approach is time consuming and there atleast 50+ similar methods where I have to do copy-paste work. I want to avoid this and would like to design some elegant solution. I would like to know how can I add support for Protobuf with minimal amount of changes? I am reading `Head First Design patterns` book but this book is really huge and it will take lot of time to find proper design pattern. Is there any design pattern which can be useful in this type of situations? Thanks, Chandrashekhar"}
{"_id": "181367", "title": "Qt (C++) vs. JavaFX: What is the relative size of each developer community?", "text": "I am deciding between Qt (in C++) and JavaFX for GUI development for an application with a complex back-end (the back-end will be written in C++). If I use JavaFX for the GUI, I will be using JNI to exchange data between the GUI and the C++ back-end. Except for one major issue, I would prefer to use Qt (C++) for the GUI, rather than JavaFX. The issue is that it is possible that JavaFX has a much larger developer community. On a related note, it will presumably be easier to transfer development of the application to other developers in the future if the GUI is built in JavaFX. (The quality of both of these GUI frameworks seems, on the whole, comparable; see, for example, JavaFX 2.0 and Qt for cross-platform application, Cross- platform desktop development, and Is using Java the proper language/platform for developing a GUI based accounting app?. If I'm mistaken, and in fact if the quality of one of these frameworks is clearly significantly higher than the other, that would become a major factor.) My impression from \"the blogosphere\", as well as from the fact that Qt is being actively maintained, is that Qt has a large following - though presumably the Java Swing community is larger (which will probably also be the case for the JavaFX community after some time has passed, since JavaFX is superseding Swing). My question is: How large of a user base (developer community) does Qt have, in comparison to JavaFX?"}
{"_id": "241023", "title": "Should we still care about _escaped_fragment_ and alternate HTML generation for Single Page Applications?", "text": "A few months ago I started a project, which will have two parts \u2013 business client overview panel (AngularJS SPA) and public front-end (dynamic HTML with progressive enchancements via XHR). I'd really like to stop and throw away dynamic HTML and switch to AngularJS + API + static HTML combo (like in \"panel\") to avoid duplicate work in API resources and HTML templates. As this content will be public and should be indexed, I'm lost on current Google Search state. I'm not sure I wish to implement PhantomJS + nginx cache stack (to avoid DoS possibility via PhantomJS): ![SPA flowchart](http://i.imgur.com/jU1fYNm.png) (I apologize for possibly unreadable font size.) Have anyone of you deployed SPA-only site right now and can give any insights on how (if) Google indexes your site?"}
{"_id": "253151", "title": "Design Pattern: A single class with multiple purposes, or multiple extended classes each with their own purpose in PHP", "text": "I'm working on a PHP framework called Carbon CMS. This framework will be used as base to build larger web applications on top of it. This framework should provide all kinds of interfaces such as database access, caching and so on.   Currently I'm working on the IO and file handling part of the framework. This question will be about the design pattern I should use, whether I should use a single, or multiple classes that extend each other. In this case, the question will be asked with file systems in mind, because this applies to the problem I'm having, and should make it easier to understand the question itself because an example is given. So keep in mind, that this design-pattern question also applies to other cases. My idea is to built a class, or multiple classes that reference to a file, directory or symbolic link on the file system by it's path. Then, these class(es) should also provide an interface to read/write files, to list directories and so on. Think of the `File` class in Java, or the `File`, `Dir` classes in Qt. The question I'm having is what kind of structure or design pattern I should use in this case. I could create a single `File` class that has all the functionality included, not just for files, but also for directories and symbolic link. But I could also create multiple classes, such as `Path`, `File`, `Directory` and `SymbolicLink`. So, there are two possible ways I can think of:   1. Using **a single** `File` **class**. This class holds the reference (path) to a file system entry such as a file or directory. This class includes functionality both for files, directories and symbolic links, such as reading/writing files or listing directory contents.   2. Using **multiple classes** , which extend each other. A `Path` class (or something similar) holds the reference (path) to the file system entry such as a file or directory. And only contains the basic functionality which could be used on all three different file system entry types (files, directories and symbolic links). Think of features such as `Path::isFile()`, `Path::getPath()` or `Path::exists()`. Then three other classes are used for the different file system entry types called `File`, `Directory` and `SymbolicLink`, all of these classes extend the `Path` class to implement it's basic functionality and the path reference. These three classes contain the functionality for that specific entry type. So, methods to read and write files would be found in the `File` class; `File::getContents();`, and a method to list the contents of a directory would be placed in the `Directory` class; `Directory::list();`. So, to clarify my question. Should I go for the first option, and create a single `File` class which handles everything regarding IO and file handling. Or should I go with the second option and create multiple classes. Where each class is for a specific type of file system entry (except the `Path` class, which will be used for all three types). Now, if going for the first option. Functions such as `listContents()` (to list directory contents) could easily be called on a path that references a file. It would be impossible to list the directory contents of a file, thus calls like this would return `null`, or something similar indicating the directory couldn't be listed. When using the second option, this would be a bit different. The `listContents()` method would only be available for `Directory` instances, and these instances should reference to a directory anyway. Of course, it would be possible that the referenced path doesn't exist, but that could be the case with both options. There are a few pro's and con's for both options. Here are some I can think of:   * Going for the first option, with a single class:       1. Casting instances isn't required to use entry specific operations when using `File`'s.     2. Creates one huge interface for everything, which makes it messier and allows certain operations to be used on incompatible file system entry types, such as listing directory contents on a file.   * Going for the second option, with multiple classes:       1. Casting instances, and instance type checking is required to use entry specific operations when using `Path`'s.     2. Creates a separate interface for each file system entry type, which makes it less messy, and also prevents the use of most operations on incompatible file system entry types. The framework will be open to the public and will be used by multiple people, thus I'm looking for the option that is the easiest to use, doesn't have a performance impact if possible and the option that suits this ground the best. Here's some sample code, to show off the very basic structure of both options.   When using a single class, with option one:               class File {         private $path;              public function __construct($path) {             $this->path = $path;         }              public function getPath() {             return $this->path;         }              public function getContents() {             // Return the contents of a file         }              public function listContents() {             // Return the contents of a directory         }     }      When using multiple classes, with option two:               class Path {         private $path;              public function __construct($path) {             $this->path = $path;         }              public function getPath() {             return $this->path;         }     }          class File extends Path {         public function getContents() {             // Return the contents of a file         }     }          class Directory extends Path {         public function listContents() {             // Return the contents of a directory         }     }      I should note that all the methods noted in this question, such as `Path::getPath();` or `Directory::listContents();` are non-static and have to be called on the instance of the class. Java uses a single `File` class, which would be similar to first option I gave with a single class. There are some classes available such as a `DirectoryIterator` but classes like this would be created anyway, and don't depend on the first or second option. On the other hand, Qt uses something similar to the second option I gave, as far as I know. So finally; What would be the best option, and why?"}
{"_id": "22249", "title": "Do you really have to do BDD/TDD in a test first manner?", "text": "Even though I haven't been in a TDD or BDD project, or I have been in some that say they are doing TDD but are pretty far from it, these are things that I think about and really try to read as much as I can about. Back to the question. When you're doing BDD you should write your \"test\" first and make it fail, right? And then implement that feature or what you call it. But if you take this to the extreme couldn't this be some kind of top-down development? You're looking at your UI and says, \"I would like to have this feature/behavior here\". Then you fix your UI to implement that feature and the code that supports the UI. At this point you haven't implemented any business logic or data access logic, you have just implemented your behavior. What I'm aiming at instead of writing the test first you write your UI code first. In some cases it should result in the same code for the data access and business layer, since you use your UI code to define what your business needs to support. Of course you should complement this with tests that is used to make sure that the feature is working as it should in the feature. Any thoughts? **UPDATE:** Good answers and thoughts from everyone I think. Some of you have stated, in one way or another, that you need to write your test first otherwise it is development-driven. I definitely agree with that when talking about TDD, since your test should drive your development. But when talking about BDD I'm not as sure that you have to write your test first, isn't BDD all about defining your behavior first? I think that looking at the UI and say: \"hey I want this behavior/functionality here\", sound quite behavior- driven to me. I don't say you should skip all your test but you could use the top-down approach as the first step as defining your behavior. I do think that when you have taken that first step and maybe implemented the feature in the UI with some mockup data you should start defining your test that verifies that behavior."}
{"_id": "197894", "title": "How does Jump Point Search algorithm work and why is it so efficient?", "text": "While trying out the below applet, I saw that this path finding algorithm called Jump Point Search yields significantly faster result than A* and Dijkstra. http://qiao.github.io/PathFinding.js/visual/ **A*: 46 seconds** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aWWxp.jpg) **Dijkstra: 1 minute 39 seconds** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/X9dV4.jpg) **Jump Point Search: Less than 3 seconds** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/InNV0.jpg) Needless to say, I'm quite astounded at the result. From visual representation, Jump Point Search seems to be making a lot of random guesses (probably very intelligent ones) at finding the path (from the block selection at least), but I haven't yet found a test case where this algorithm yielded worse results than A* and Dijkstra. How does this algorithm work? How is it so efficient in comparison with A* and Dijkstra?"}
{"_id": "197892", "title": "Show all definitions in Scheme?", "text": "I want to see all user-made definitions in a Scheme REPL, both loaded from files and entered at the REPL. Is there any way to \"dump all definitions\"? E.g. if there is:                   (define (plusone x) (+ 1 x))         (define (plustwo x) (+ 2 x))         (define (plusthree x) (+ 3 x))      then I want to see all of these definitions, but only those defined by the \"user\" - something like \",showmealldefs\" or thelike. Can this be done, and if there is no general way, can this be done in Gambit-C? (I tried (apropos \"\"), and this is not what I mean.)"}
{"_id": "197893", "title": "Why are constructors not inherited?", "text": "I am confused as to what the problems could be if a constructor was inherited from a base class. Cpp Primer Plus says, > Constructors are different from other class methods in that they create new > objects, _whereas other methods are invoked by existing objects_. **This is > one reason constructors aren\u2019t inherited**. Inheritance means a derived > object can use a base-class method, but, in the case of constructors, the > object doesn\u2019t exist until after the constructor has done its work. I understand the constructor is called before object construction is completed. How can it lead to problems if a child class inherits ( _By inheriting I mean the child class is able to override the parent class method etc. Not just accessing the parent class method_ ) the parent constructor? I understand there is no necessity of explicitly calling a constructor from within a code[not that I am aware of as yet.] except while creating objects. Even then you can do so using some mechanism to invoke the parent constuctor [ In cpp, using `::` or using `member initialiser list`, In java using `super`]. In Java there is an enforcement to call it in the 1st line, I understand that is to ensure the parent object is created first and then the child object construction proceeds. It can **overrride** it. But, I can't come up with situations where this can pose a problem. If the child does inherit the parent constructor what can go wrong? So is this just to keep away from inheriting unecessary functions. Or is there more to it?"}
{"_id": "197891", "title": "\"Final\" Scheme REPL definitions: how to save them?", "text": "Is there a way to show and save all \"final\" definitions entered into a Scheme REPL into a text file? Say, if I have defined in the REPL:                   (define (increase x) (+ 1 x))         (define (multbytwo x) (* 3 x)) ; let us say this was an error         (define (multbytwo x) (* 2 x))      I want to save this into an .scm-file with the content:                   (define (increase x) (+ 1 x))         (define (multbytwo x) (* 2 x))        * i.e. the multbytwo function that got defined erraneously shall be \"forgotten\" due to re-definition. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "214994", "title": "Best way to store motion changes to reduce memory", "text": "I am comparing jpeg to jpeg in a constant 'video-stream'. i am using EMGU/OpenCV to compare each pixels at the byte level. There are 3 channels to each image (RGB). I had heard that it is common practice to store only the pixels that have changed between frames as a way of conserving memory space. But, if for instance/example I say EVERY pixel has changed (pls note i am using an exaggerated example to make my point and i would normally discard such large changes) then the resultant bytes saved is 3 times larger than the original jpeg. How can I store such motion changes efficiently?"}
{"_id": "197899", "title": "Best Practices for calculating data in GIS-like web application", "text": "Let's assume that we have a simple GIS-like application, which presents (using Google Maps or anything similar) recorded tracks. Each track consists of points (data portions) with geo-data and additional information, like speed, altitude and similar attributes. Basing on these additional params, I want to calculate some extra information, like average speed. What kind of data should web client receive and on which side is it the best to perform necessary calculations:   * _client side_ : client receives (via AJAX) pure array of data (points with additional params) and all the calculations are done in Javascript in the browser,   * _server side_ : client receives content ready to be put in the proper places, like value of average speed, and all the calculations are done on server. Personally I was always choosing (somehow automatically)the first option, as I thought (correct me, if I'm wrong) this gives me more flexibility. But, right now, after reading some docs and pages, I can see clearly, that I may be wrong. So, what is the best practice in such situation?"}
{"_id": "198972", "title": "Are GUIs ever programmed in DirectX for higher performance?", "text": "I've been researching GDI a little and on some websites I'm lead to believe it can hardly draw a few boxes, while on others it can easily be used in an interactive charting application. So I'm wondering what is used in applications like Excel where there can be a lot movement like scrolling through a large amount of data fast? Could DirectX be used and would it increase performance? Is it used?"}
{"_id": "198978", "title": "How to write a program that diffs on hierarchy changes?", "text": "Why is it that diff programs work on a line-by-line basis instead of a hierarchal one? All code can be expressed in a hierarchy, even though it's not immediately apparent. Most of the data we work with is hierarchal as well. What are the potential issues with building a piece of software that can diff based on hierarchy?"}
{"_id": "198979", "title": "Is it a performance hit to create threads that loop a lot to check for things?", "text": "This is a generic question that I've always wondered. **In general, is it intensive for a CPU to create threads that perform \"while not true ...\" loops or similar?** For example, suppose I do:               // pseudo-code     new Thread(function() {         while (!useHasDoneSomething) {             // do nothing...         }         alert(\"you did something!\");     }      So it's just a piece of code that runs in a thread that waits for something to happen. For whatever reason I imagine that this would pressure the CPU. After all, even though it's just one little loop, it's re-running the loop the instant that a cycle is done. Wouldn't this mean that it's going through the cycle many times per millisecond? ... Per nanosecond!? The operating system will \"handle\" the program and the thread(s), right? But that's still an awful lot of attention to running a loop. If the CPU has nothing else to do, wouldn't it just focus on that loop, thereby _consuming all the idle time_? **What if I create 1000 threads that all do the same loop? How might that affect performance/CPU cycles?** Furthermore, is this how **events** function internally? When you're 'listening' for an event in Java, .NET, Javascript etc (such as a button press or a window resize), has a thread that loops been created?"}
{"_id": "115907", "title": "Which operating systems book is good as a quick refresher?", "text": "I am preparing for a technical interview and need to review the basics of major operating systems concepts. We used Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems in school for our operating systems course, which is a good book, but too long to be reviewed in the course of a few days. For an example, I am looking for what Programming Interviews Exposed is to Weiss's Data Structures & Algorithm Analysis. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "205139", "title": "Web Application Development Question", "text": "I checked all the relevant question's of my query and their answer's but my questions aren't exactly listed anywhere. Basically i have just one year of web development experience using joomla , HTML , PHP etc.I have had .NET Training during my academics and now i have a requirement for a professional type .NET web application for a client.Since i don't have .NET production experience i want to ask and discuss few question's and have an advice from the expert's. **Scenario and Scope of the Project** : I am required to develop a web application for hotel management in .NET with modules like   1. User management ( actually roles like , administrator , reservation counter user , restaurant user etc ) with limited functionalities for each user except for the admin.   2. Reservation Module ( includes reservation stuff , alloting room's etc )   3. Billing Module (Includes pending bills from all department's at the time fo guest check out )   4. Reporting Module ( I am confused with this module.i actually want to incorporate a graphical type of a view to show to the end user but i dont think i can get that done using crystal report's. **Your Suggestion for this module would definitely help** )   5. Rates Setup. So , now i want your suggestion as to what should i start first and their best practises ?   * Database Designing.    * GUI Designing.   * Coding. In my opinion , coding should be the last.isn't it ? Also , please advise on security issues too as this is a web application so this must be safe and secure.I wont be using a SSL Certificate so the application would have to run on http only. P.S we are two developer's both have same experience if you could also share about how we can distribute modules among each other and how we can work on the same application accessing it through two laptop's locally only ? Thanks a lot and please dont get my question locked , removed as i couldn't find a relevant answer so this cant be a duplicate one or its context it too large.The question's have been clearly mentioned.Thanks again."}
{"_id": "115903", "title": "Is it possible for an amateur to become a good programmer?", "text": "A professional full-time programmer can do a great job by continuously learning from their work. How can an amateur programmer train to become a good programmer? ** If you like to play music or sing, you can do it because it is your hobby and you are interested, and you can become a good singer or music player. But you do not need to become a professional singer or do singing for a living. Is this also true for programmers ? Any amateur programmer who is famous?"}
{"_id": "205133", "title": "searching for a user given word in a webpage using c# and selenium", "text": "I am trying to develop a selenium application (using c# win forms). So, while the application starts, the users will enter an app name in the text box. I have many fields such as cost, validity etc corresponding to each app. Example webpage:               description  appname  cost  validity  xyzattribute     --------------------------------------------------     some desc     app1     10      30     someattribute      I want selenium to search the entire page for that given app name and if it finds any, I want selenium to retrieve all the attributes (cost, validity) and store those in a variable. How can I achieve this? Please note that none of these fields have a unique attribute (such as name/id/any other)."}
{"_id": "205130", "title": "User Authentication & Session Management", "text": "One of the fundamental ways of handling user login authentication & session management is by storing variables in Session space plus setting some data in cookies on client computer while sometimes in database as well. I have been using this simpler technique in many of my academic as well as a few online projects. But I am a little unsure about it. Do security critical websites like Amazon, Gmail or Facebook use the very same technique for user login & session management or is there more to it than I have known? This could turn out to be a very general question but I'd really like to know if there are other or mix of multiple ways used (like at gmail, stackexchange or myspace) for handling user login authentication & session management in particular."}
{"_id": "205137", "title": "Mocking complex data operations in integration tests", "text": "We have some problems figuring out how to mock complex data and operations on it. First the problems with generating complex data: In one of our components we have really complex data structures where the logic of our classes is executed. Unfortunate there are some bugs, where it is necessary to use a big data model to reproduce the case in a unit or integration test. The first idea was to write a script which converts the model to executable code, with which the data can be generated. To show the complexity of the models, these converted models had 20000++ line of code per model. The problem with the first approach was, that we had some little mistakes in our script and every time we identified one we had to rewrite all models. That was no good idea. The second idea is to use the xml files in which they are saved. Before the test starts we use a class to convert the xml file to the model. The result is better than the first idea, but with this we will never have plain unit tests, because we always rely on the class used for the conversion. Has someone a better idea how to deal with this issue? The second problem is even harder to solve: Manipulation of this complex data. We have a integration test of another component and want to mock all its dependencies. Somehow we create the initial data used by the component (some kind of AST). Now we a syntax check component as a dependency. This component takes in the data and decorates the data. So in the end we have another manipulated AST in the test. Here we have no idea, how to mock this behavior of the syntax check. Best regards, Yggdrasil"}
{"_id": "98669", "title": "Are there any empirical studies on the effect of different languages on software quality?", "text": "The proponents of functional programming languages assert that functional programming makes it easier to reason about code. Those in favor of statically typed languages say that their compilers catch enough errors to make up for the additional complexity of type systems. But everything I read on these topics is based on rational argument, not on empirical data. Are there any empirical studies on what effects the different categories of programming languages have on defect rates or other quality metrics? (The answers to this question seem to indicate that there are no such studies, at least not for the dynamic vs. static debate)"}
{"_id": "9964", "title": "Should I include GPL'd OS Projects on my resume?", "text": "I've recently had a talk with someone about how to include open source projects on my resume. I wanted to include a project of mine where I'd invested a significant amount of code and time: ~40,000 Lines of code and 8 months. He recommended against it though since it was GPL'd, saying it could turn off recruiters since I might include my project (in part or whole) while working there and force the whole project to be OS. I just don't think thats a realistic problem though, but I'm not sure. So my question: Is it safe to include GPL'd OS projects on my resume, or will it just turn recruiter's off?"}
{"_id": "9965", "title": "Why is there still case sensitivity in some programming languages?", "text": "I don't see any use for case sensitivity in a programming language, apart from obfuscating code. Why implement this in a programming language? **Update:** It looks like someone you know made a statement on this."}
{"_id": "9960", "title": "What to say when you don\u2019t know the answer to an interview question?", "text": "When you have no clue about the question, how do you answer/act when you do not know the answer at all? Telling the truth is pretty obvious. But how could you try to transform this weakness into a strength?"}
{"_id": "165800", "title": "How to get multiple open-source projects to use a standard way of doing something", "text": "**\\- Problem** In the last couple weeks, I've used 3 different \"repository\" tools (listed in alphabetical order):   * gradle   * ivy   * maven I'm calling them \"repository\" tools because I've also used sbt \\-- which fortunately uses ivy to manage it's cache or local repository. Each of these tools will create it's own repository. The defaults are:   * ~/.m2/repository for maven   * ~/.gradle/cache   * ~/.ivy2/cache Why can't they all use the same cache? **\\- Goal** I'd like to change the world so that all three build tools could use the same cache. I'm looking for advice about issues I'm likely to run into and smart ways to get around them. By \"use the same cache\", I do **_not_** mean \"retrieve from another build tool's cache\". I mean \" **retrieve from and _store in_** another build tool's cache\". While I could go ahead and submit issues to the three projects, I know from experience (as a developer on an open source project), that if you want something done, you're best off getting it done yourself. Also, it seems like I need to get all 3 communities on board to some degree. **\\- Question** **What is the recommended approach for getting this kind of thing done?** How do I approach the different communities? Do I work on patches for the 3 different projects, or would it be better off to create my own \"interface\" project that deals with these issues and have the 3 tools interface with that? Is this a standards question that I need to address on that front? Lastly, if I'm missing something and this _is_ possible (in an globally configurable fashion), then please let me know."}
{"_id": "165802", "title": "Is switch-case over enumeration bad practice?", "text": "I have an enumeration with the commands `Play`, `Stop` and `Pause` for a media player. In two classes I do a switch-case over the received commands. The player runs in a different thread and I deliver the commands in a command queue to the thread. If I generate class diagrams the enumeration has dependencies all over the place. Is there a nicer way to deal with the commands? If I would change/extend the enumeration, I would have to change several classes. (Its not super important to keep the player extensible, but I try to write nice software.)"}
{"_id": "237378", "title": "Backbone and JavaScript", "text": "I have been programming in JavaScript for just a little over two years give or take, I am still in the intermediate part of the know-how spectrum. I have recently just discovered Backbone and I love its minimalist way, and the way it gives me freedom to decide how to architect my application, problem is that, that is the problem, finding the best or at least an optimal solution that work for a variety of problems across the board is hard. Particularly for applications with complex UI interactions (basically things that have lots of bells and whistles like Stack Exchange for example). My problem is not so much about architecture as such, but how to organize my components and views in a way that they can communicate with each other while remaining 'totally' unaware of the details of each others existence To this end I decided to combine the Module pattern (a representation of it at best) and three other event based patterns i.e Event Emitter, Pub-Sub and Promises (also representations not the ideal). I developed an application class called Itajs on top of Backbone to help me make sense or at least control my applications execution. The application class provides ways for defining modules called mediators, routes, and uses a single backbone router, it also provides a way of subscribing to commands and firing/publishing these commands, and I also added three optional components (Entities, Controllers and PageMakers). One thing I wanted for my applications was that their views should remain as minimal as possible and should only care about user interactions, so, they don't make any data requests, they just fire events (Event Emitters), and the controllers take care of handling the events, that is, if u do use controllers. The controllers should take care of creating and controlling the views and handling the events they emit, and also get data and implement the application logic, this logic could in turn, be passed down to the models (if you are religious about it), so that controllers just become glorified data accessors, The PageMakers are there to make pages just as their name suggest, I use them to respond to routing requests that are responsible for new pages. The Entities are responsible for loading collections and models and responding to data requests, they handle client-server comm. After doing all that I realized at some point I was going to need a way to synchronize my application components in a serialized manner, so I came up with what I call a strict promise, that means that we first set what it to happen when the promise is resolved or rejected, and then fire the promise which for my architecture is just a command. For Clarity if I didn't make sense here is a breakdown for a typical application execution that uses all the components   * Create Application Instance    * Load the Config,    * Load all Entities,    * Load all Mediators     at each Mediator       load Controllers, PageMakers and what not       subscribe to Commands and register Routes     End During application execution:               OnRoute:        Call a PageMaker page handler           Fire Creation and Loading of the different views through single commands              or           Create and Fire a Promise chain             Controllers Create Views, Register for Event Handling and fire response             command for action when completed,passing back a view or any other args              handlers may need      OnCommand: Do whatever it may be that the handler might be doing, just make sure that you don't get caught in endless recursion or cycle. Here is a paste bin link to Itajs and Simple Use case with a mediator. Itajs Example P.S Itajs uses backbone events and something that really made me smile was the fact backbone doesn't register duplicate handlers for events, so no worries for duplicate controller event handlers on the views. Also the Backbone Views extend Backbone Events and therefore are event emitters themselves So the question is, is this a solution that can work and am I implementing the details in the right way, particularly the promises or am I locking myself into the synchronous mode that I am trying to break out of?"}
{"_id": "223010", "title": "Grammar: start: (a b)? a c; Input: a d. Which error correct at position 2? 1. expected \"b\", \"c\". OR expected \"c\"", "text": "I am writing a parser (a parser generator for PEGs) and am trying to figure out how to report errors. Grammar:               rule: (a b)? a c ;      Input:               a d      Question: Which error message correct at position 2 for given input?   1. expected \"b\", \"c\".   2. expected \"c\". So should it be taken into account that \"b\" was also expected at position? The 1st error (expected \"b\", \"c\") wants to say that the input `a b` was expected but because it optional it is only a possibility, not a requirement. I don't know possible is the same as expected or not? Which error message better and correct: The 1st or the 2nd version? Thanks for answers. ## Second Part In first case I define marker of `testing` as limit of position.               if(_inputPos > testing) {       _failure(_inputPos, _code[cp + {{OFFSET_RESULT}}]);     }      Limit moved in optional expressions:               OPTIONAL_EXPRESSION:     testing = _inputPos;      The \"b\" expression move `_inputPos` above the `testing` pos and add failure at `_inputPos`. In second case I can define marker of `testing` as boolean flag.               if(!testing) {       _failure(_inputPos, _code[cp + {{OFFSET_RESULT}}]);     }      The \"b\" expression in this case not add failure because it tested (inner for optional expression). What you think what is better and correct?   1. Testing defined as specific position and if expression above this position (_inputPos > testing) it add failure (even it inside optional expression).   2. Testing defined as flag and if this flag set that the failures not takes into account. After executing optional expression it restore (not reset!) previous value of testing (true or false). Also failures not takes into account if rule not fails. They only reported if parsing fails. ## Third Part This question raised because it related to two different problems. First problem: A Parsing Expression Grammar (PEG) describes input in only three atomic items:   * terminal symbol   * nonterminal symbol   * empty string The grammar doesn't use a lexer, hence the concept of a \u201ctoken\u201d does not apply here. Second problem: What is a grammar? Can two grammars be considered equal if they accept the same input but produce different result? Assume we have two grammars: Grammar 1               rule <- type? identifier      Grammar 2               rule <- type identifier / identifier      They both accept the same input but produce (in PEG) different result. Grammar 1 results:   * `{type: type, identifier: identifier}`   * `{type: null, identifier: identifier}` Grammar 2 results:   * `{type: type, identifier: identifier}`   * `{identifier: identifier}` Questions:   * Are both grammars equal?   * It is painless to do optimization of grammars? My answer on both questions is negative. No equal, Not painless. But you may ask. \"But why this happens?\". I can answer to you. \"Because this is not a problem. This is a feature\". In a PEG grammar each rule _always_ consists from these parts:   * ordered choice      * sequence        * expression And this explanation is the my answer on question \"But why this happens?\". Another problem. As a PEG does not have tokens, whitespace cannot be silently ignored in the lexer between tokens. Therefore whitespace has to be considered inside the grammar. Now look at this grammar (in short):               program    <- WHITESPACE expr EOF     expr       <- ruleX     ruleX      <- 'X' WHITESPACE     WHITESPACE <- ' '?     EOF        <- ! .      The first `WHITESPACE` is at the beginning, other `WHITESPACE (often) occurs at the end of a rule. In this case in PEG optional `WHITESPACE` must be assumed as expected. But `WHITESPACE` does not only mean space (`\\x20`) but also other characters like `[\\t\\n\\r]` and even comments. But the main rule of error messages is the following. > If it is not possible to display all expected elements (or not possible to > display at least one from all set of expected elements) then is more correct > to not display anything. More precisely required to display \"unexpected\" error mesage. So how would I display in a PEG's error message that `WHITESPACE` was expected?   * `Parser error: expected WHITESPACE`   * `Parser error: expected ' ', '\\t', '\\n' , 'r'` What about start characters of comments? They also may be part of `WHITESPACE` in some grammars. In this case optional WHITESPACE will be reject all other potential expected elements because not possible correctly to display WHITESPACE in error message because WHITESPACE is too complex to display. Is this good or bad? I think this is not bad and required some tricks to hide this nature of PEG parsers. And in my PEG parser I not assume that the inner expression at first position of optional (optional & zero_or_more) expression must be treated as expected. But all other inner (except at the first position) must treated as expected. Example 1:               List<int list; // type? ident      Here \"List\" is not at the first position in optional \"type?\". This failure is taken into account and reported as \"expected '>'\". This is because we don't skip `type` but enter into `type` and after really optional \"List\" we move position from first to next real \"expected\" (that already outside of testing position) element. \"List\" was in \"testing\" position. If inner expression (inside optional expression) \"fits in the limitation\" not continue at next position then it not assumed as the expected input. From this assumption has been asked main question. You must just take into account that we are talking about PEG parsers and their error messages."}
{"_id": "117506", "title": "Does a time estimate equal a promise in Scrum?", "text": "If an estimate is not a promise then as a product owner how can I deliver my projects without knowing how long it will take? Does a Scrum team work more efficiently if we treat time estimates as a promise? How much research (preparation, effort to understand the problem) in a story is enough to come up the right estimate? What about unexpected technical problems (problems that can really mess your initial estimates) that come up after you estimate your work?"}
{"_id": "223019", "title": "WCF service to get an atom feed", "text": "I am very new to programming and my first task is to create a WCF service that will take an ATOM feed and expose it to my application. Now, I've read up on XML serialization and syndication but it doesn't seem to be what I need in my (lack of) experience. Here is a snippet of the feed. It's generated by a seedlist spi               <atom:generator version=\"1.2\" lconn:version=\"4.5.0.0\">     Seedlist Service Backend System</atom:generator>     <wplc:timestamp isPartial=\"false\">AAABQtdnfpE=</wplc:timestamp>     <atom:category term=\"ContentSourceType/Wikis\" scheme=\"com.ibm.wplc.taxonomy://feature_taxonomy\"      label=\"Wikis\"/>     <atom:title>Wikis : 0 entries of Seedlist WIKIS</atom:title>     <atom:updated>2013-12-09T13:49:13+01:00</atom:updated>      Do I need to create objects for all these elements? And what about these wplc elements?               <wplc:action do=\"update\"/>     <wplc:fieldInfo id=\"FIELD_ENTRY_TYPE\" name=\"item type\"      description=\"item type - page, file or wiki\" type=\"string\"      contentSearchable=\"false\" fieldSearchable=\"true\"      parametric=\"false\" returnable=\"true\" sortable=\"false\"      supportsExactMatch=\"false\"/>     <wplc:fieldInfo id=\"FIELD_TAG\" name=\"Tag\"      description=\"Document tag\" type=\"string\"      contentSearchable=\"true\" fieldSearchable=\"true\"      parametric=\"false\" returnable=\"true\" sortable=\"false\"      supportsExactMatch=\"true\"/>      All the examples, tutorials and explanations I find are of simple xml files So can I just use XML Reader to achieve this? And if so, I need some help. Here is a sample WCF I found:               public class Service1 : IService1         {             public string GetData(string value)             {                 WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(\"http://wheremyxmlis/file.xml\");                 WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();                 Stream dataStream = response.GetResponseStream();                 XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(\"http://wheremyxmlis/file.xml\");             reader = new XmlTextReader(\"http://wheremyxmlis.xml\");                  try             {                           reader = new XmlTextReader(\"http://wheremyxmlis/file.xml\");                                while (reader.Read())                 {                     switch (reader.NodeType)                     {                         case XmlNodeType.Element:                             Console.Write(\"<{0}>\", reader.Name);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.Text:                             Console.Write(reader.Value);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.CDATA:                             Console.Write(\"<![CDATA[{0}]]>\", reader.Value);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.ProcessingInstruction:                             Console.Write(\"<?{0} {1}?>\", reader.Name, reader.Value);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.Comment:                             Console.Write(\"<!--{0}-->\", reader.Value);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.XmlDeclaration:                             Console.Write(\"<?xml version='1.0'?>\");                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.Document:                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.DocumentType:                             Console.Write(\"<!DOCTYPE {0} [{1}]\", reader.Name, reader.Value);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.EntityReference:                             Console.Write(reader.Name);                             break;                         case XmlNodeType.EndElement:                             Console.Write(\"</{0}>\", reader.Name);                             break;                     }                 }             }                  finally             {                 if (reader != null)                     reader.Close();                           response.Close();"}
{"_id": "98593", "title": "How do freelancers know how much their work is worth?", "text": "I want to start a bit of freelancing in web development using ASP.NET MVC3 and PHP and I already have some people who are interested in hiring me, but I still can't figure out how much to charge for projects since I have never done it. For example how much would this site cost? Would it cost more if the author built it from scratch instead of using WordPress as the CMS? Or what about a simpler site like this? How much time spent is considered good/normal for building sites like these? And maybe some freelancers with experience can tell me what the usual requests are that they get from clients. What sites are the most in demand? I'm asking because I'm a student and I really can't work every day in a full- time job but I need the money so I guess a little freelancing would help me out."}
{"_id": "226183", "title": "return Trivial booleans?", "text": "I am writing a simple piece of code. Its a function that allowed the user to withdraw some money. There are some restrictions to this though.   1. The user can't withdraw more than the given withdraw limit.   2. The user cannot withdraw more money they that have.  The script will terminate if this happens, and let the users know. Otherwise they user can withdraw the money and the balance updates, they also get a confirmation message. Now my question is should I return `False` if they hit either case 1 or 2? And should I return `True` if the transactions completes successfully? I do not have any current plans where I will need the booleans from the function call. But I wonder is it good coding practice to return something in a case like where the function could take different paths. Some example code (Python):               limit = 500     balance = 5000          def withdraw_money(amount):         if amount > limit:  # above the limt             print('You cannot withdraw more than ${}'.format(balance))             return False         elif amount > balance:  # not enough money             print('Insuffecient funds')             return False         else:  # actually worked             balance -= amount             print('Your new balance is ${}'.format(balance))             return True"}
{"_id": "90798", "title": "Interviewing: Company deals with huge amounts of data?", "text": "A company I'm going to interview with says they deal with huge amounts of data. How does one prepare for an interview where that fact is telegraphed beforehand as something that one really ought to ponder over? Should I memorize maximum file sizes for Ext4 file systems or something? Or just be aware of the need for the best possible algorithms... Thanks."}
{"_id": "57418", "title": "Should I be learning Linq, Direct SQL Commands (in .net), EF or other?", "text": "Basically, I have a very good knowledge of plain old SQL coming from Classic ASP programming. Over the past couple of months, I have been learning C# and today was my first full day at MVC 3 (Razor) which I am loving! I need to get back in to Databases and I know that writing SqlCommand everywhere is obviously outdated (although it is nice I can still do it!). I used to go to a great usergroup as an IT Pro and the developer stuff went completely over my head, however I do remember a few things which kept coming up such as LINQ... However, that was some time ago and now the same people on Twitter are saying how out dated it is. I have tried to do research on both and I am clueless as to what direction I should go in, or when to use one over another (if learning both is a good thing). I am more so confused as I thought EF was a part of the .Net Framework, however, reading through the quick start guide, I had to download a component using Nuget. ... Basically I am out of my depth here and just need some honest advice of where to go!"}
{"_id": "57419", "title": "Discrete Math and Computing Course", "text": "I was recently admitted into a Computing and Software Systems program (basically software engineering) and one of the first courses I'll be taking is called _Mathematical Principles of Computing_. The course description: _\"Integrating mathematical principles with detailed instruction in computer programming. Explores mathematical reasoning and discrete structures through object-oriented programming. Includes algorithm analysis, basic abstract data types, and data structures.\"_ I'm not a fan of math, but I've been doing well in all my math classes mostly A's and B's ever since I started two years ago, and I've been doing math every quarter - never took a quarter without math - so I've been doing it all in sequence without gaps. However, I'm worried about this class. I've read briefly on what discrete math is and from what my advisor told me, its connection with computer science is that it has alot to do with proving algorithms. One thing that my instructors briefly touched on and never went into detail was proving algorithms, and when I tried, I just wasn't very good at mathematical induction. It's one of the things that I ignored every time it showed up in a homework problem (usually in Calculus III which I'm finishing up right now). Questions:   1\\. What can I expect from this class?   2\\. How can I prepare myself for this class?   3\\. Other tips? Thank you."}
{"_id": "104739", "title": "mistyping pattern data?", "text": "Can someone point me to data or research on the patterns of mistyping on a keyboard? For instance, I've noticed that google will sometimes auto-correct a word that I've mistyped because my hand was out of position and each key was shifted one to the right. I'm also interested words where there is a mis- coordination between both hands, such as `teh`, and any other misspellings that are artifacts of keyboards and manual dexterity. We're looking at some user-friendly auto-correct functions, and I want some data to help our team get an overview of the landscape and decide what we will and will not handle."}
{"_id": "57412", "title": "Should I pick up a functional programming language?", "text": "I have recently been more concerned about the way I write my code. After reading a few books on design patterns (and overzealous implementation of them, I'm sure) I have shifted my thinking greatly toward encapsulating that which change. I tend to notice that I write less interfaces and more method- oriented code, where I love to spruce life into old classes with predicates, actions and other delegate tasks. I tend to think that it's often the actions that change, so I encapsulate those. I even often, although not always, break down interfaces to a single method, and then I prefer to use a delegate for the task instead of forcing client code to create a new class. So I guess it then hit me. Should I be doing functional programming instead?   **Edit:** _I may have a misconception about functional programming._ Currently my language of choice is C#, and I come from a C++ background. I work as a game developer but I am currently unemployed. I have a great passion for architecture. My virtues are clean, flexible, reusable and maintainable code. I don't know if I have been poisoned by these ways or if it is for the better. Am I having a refactoring fever or should I move on? I understand this might be a question about _\"use the right tool for the job\"_ , but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Should I pick up a functional language? One of my fear factors is to leave the comfort of Visual Studio."}
{"_id": "113085", "title": "Why do Chrome and Adobe use \"download wizards\" to install software?", "text": "Why do software companies use download wizards for large files instead of letting users download the file directly? Is it so the user does not get discouraged by the waiting time, or is it something else?"}
{"_id": "104732", "title": "When a client asks for Proof Of Concept  and expects finished product", "text": "We have a client with whom we have a relationship of delivering proofs of concepts _only_. But when it comes the time to demo they expect an early version of what would be the solution. They want databases populated with real data, look-and-feel of a finished product and other things (including features) which are trivial and no way contribute towards _proving_ the concept. What do you do with that? How do you handle such a situation? (I'm the developer as well as the person who will be talking to the client along with other non-developers.)"}
{"_id": "141451", "title": "Need some critique on .NET/WCF SOA architecture plan", "text": "I am working on a refactoring of some services and would appreciate some critique on my general approach. I am working with three back-end data systems and need to expose an authenticated front-end API over http binding, JSON, and REST for internal apps as well as 3rd party integration. I've got a rough idea below that's a hybrid of what I have and where I intend to wind up. I intend to build guidance extensions to support this architecture so that devs can build this out quickly. Here's the current idea for our structure:   1. Front-end WCF routing service (spread across multiple IIS servers via hardware load balancer)      * Load balancing of services behind routing is handled within routing service, probably round-robin     * One of the services will be a token     * Multiple bindings per-service exposed to address JSON, REST, and whatever else comes up later     * All in/out is handled via POCO DTOs     * Use unity to scan for what services are available and expose them   2. The front-end services behind the routing service do nothing more than expose the API and do conversion of DTO<->Entity      * Unity inject service implementation to allow mocking     * automapper for DTO/Entity conversion     * Invoke WF services where response required immediately     * Queue to ESB for async WF -- ESB will invoke WF later   3. Business logic WF layer      * Expose same api as front-end services     * Implement business logic     * Wrap transaction context where needed     * Call out to composite/atomic services   4. Composite/Atomic Services      * Exposed as WCF     * One service per back-end system     * Standard atomic CRUD operations plus composite operations     * Supports transaction context The questions I have are:   * Are the separation of concerns outlined above beneficial? Current thought is each layer below is its own project, except the backend stuff, where each system gets one project. The project has a servicehost and all the services are under a services folder. Interfaces live in a separate project at each layer. DTO and Entities are in two separate projects under a shared folder.   * I am currently planning to build dedicated services for shared functionality such as logging and overload things like tracelistener to call those services. Is this a valid approach?   * Any other suggestions/comments?"}
{"_id": "141454", "title": "Is it better to learn the DOM or jQuery first?", "text": "I have gotten very familiar with the core functionality of Javascript and now I am aiming at learning DOM manipulation. I have already thought of learning jQeury for this but I don't know if it is good idea to learning it before first getting familiar with the core functionality of the DOM. Should I first learn the core functionality of the DOM and then learn jQuery? If so, why? Or should I just go on ahead and learn jQuery?"}
{"_id": "105280", "title": "How to manage time for studying while working?", "text": "I've been programming 8 years for a company. We build business intelligence software systems. Since I thought working is learning, I've always studied in terms of what I was doing at the company while working for 60 hours per week. These days, however, I am looking for a new company for employment, I can see that thought was a dumb idea because I frequently fail in job interviews mainly due to lack of knowledge on the other areas. Of course, I am still willing to improve myself and am really trying. But while working that much of time per week, I can't find good amount of study time to catch up. I don't think I am the only one to concern about this so I would like to ask how you guys find time to study for your career? How many hours do you assign to studying other areas? Am I missing some time management skills?"}
{"_id": "105281", "title": "What are the deliverables to give to the client for a web application ?", "text": "I have completed a web application which is basically developed in PHP and is just another regular web application. Usually when I deliver the final production release I just handover the code documentation and the architecture information to the client. However, for this particular project the client insists on having the complete in and out data about the project. So I'm just wondering... What are the mandatory technical and non technical docs that I can give my client apart from the code and architecture documentations ? (Also it would be kinda cool to hit the client about various stats and data about the project so that he would actually know the amount of work involved and how cool the product actually is.)"}
{"_id": "105282", "title": "How can I sharpen my team player skills?", "text": "Currently I'm in my dream job in a research lab as the only developer in a multidisciplinary team. I'm getting a little bit worried because I'm forgetting about coding in a team (I don't have legacy code, I maintain my own code, I handle my own agenda, etc). Although I try to follow some of the the best practices like continuous delivery, TDD, and SCRUM just for me I think I'm losing my ability to work in a team of developers. I've joined an open source project and began into the code katas and code golf. But these won't polish my team player profile. What would be your suggestions to sharpen my team player skills? _Update:_ Yes, my communications skills are now better and I can talk to PhD's like never before. Like @Nicholas and @Erick said, someday I will be facing a developing team (maybe in my current job, maybe not) and I want to keep current with those practices that makes a good developer a better team member, like pair programming or code review."}
{"_id": "3684", "title": "What are some good programming cheat sheets?", "text": "What are some good downloadable cheat sheets for learning a particular language or tool?"}
{"_id": "204661", "title": "Approaches for learning or teaching linux development environments and build systems", "text": "I've seen a few instances where programmers have been stymied when installing a new piece of software or creating a non-trivial software project, due to a lack of knowledge of how to use compilers, build systems, and binutils. Examples of errors where someone gets stuck are   * 'make' doesn't know how to build a particular filename   * A build system invokes a program with arguments that it doesn't understand    * A header file outside the project is not found   * A symbol name isn't found at link time How do you teach developers what they need to know to understand what a build system error means, narrow down its cause, and fix it? Is there a good reference on how linux development environments work?"}
{"_id": "245312", "title": "Swing component name suggestion for a specific interface", "text": "As a university project, I have to replicate Raptor. A flowchart interpreter. The interface looks like this ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/GTFmw.gif) But as I am not a experienced swing developer, I don't have much idea about which swing components to use for which part. I know:   1. The whole thing is a JFrame.   2. There is MenuBar on the top.   3. ToolBar exactly beneath it. Question 1: Am I right? Question 2: What component should I use for left hand side _symbols_ and rest of the part named _main_ in the picture? What you would have used? Note 1: We can drag and drop the symbols from Symbols to main. Note 2: I am not looking for any code. I just want direction. As there are always so many options in Java. It's easy to get confused easily. I researched a lot, but found nothing specific as it is mostly a design issue."}
{"_id": "204667", "title": "Bin sorting problem - Please help categorize", "text": "I have a problem I am developing a solution for and currently I solve it with a brute force solution that checks all possibilities. It works for small numbers of bins but I'd like to work with a reasonable speed for increasing numbers, however the algorithm I use (brute force) increases in computing time in a factorial manner related to the number of bins. In other words it gets way too slow pretty quickly after about 6 or 7 bins. I'd like to classify the problem to see if it is NP-Complete, NP-Hard or other so I know where to look in attempting to optimize. The basic problem is this. You have a number of points n and you have weights for these points. The points also have an ordering such that points in a bin must be consecutive. You must place these into a total of a maximum of k bins. The bins contain an estimate for the set of points placed in it and the total error of the absolute value of difference in the points and the estimate must be minimized. The goal is to find how to place these points in the bins to have the minimal total error. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "139912", "title": "The reason to make some code open source", "text": "I have a library that makes architecture to load data from server and display all controls in table layout. It works great but it have a lot of TODOs there. Also, this library in 99% created by me. I starts developing it in when I working in one company, continue developing in in other company - I just move code prototype to new working place. Library contain large amount of iPhone features/hacks/fixes that write again make no sense. All created iOS business applications by me, based on this library. When library become needed in few projects simultaneously, I wanted to make library open source on GitHub but my Team Lead ask to create private repository for it. Library contains and uses 12 open source libraries.   * So:      1. Is it a good idea to make such library open source? It contains all my iOS development experience.     2. How to argue my wish to make library open source for Team Lead?     3. If I can't make this library open source - can I use it in other company? In contract, thats I work with, said that I assign all copyrights to employer."}
{"_id": "139915", "title": "Are operators clearer to read than keywords or functions?", "text": "It's a bit subjective, but I'm hoping to get a clearer understanding of what factors make an operator clear to use vs obtuse and difficult. I've been considering language designs recently, and one issue that I always circle back around on is when to make some key operation in the language an operator, and when to use a keyword or function. Haskell is somewhat notorious for this, as custom operators are easy to create and often a new data type will come packaged with several operators for use on it. The Parsec library, for example, comes with a ton of operators for combining parsers together, with gems like `>.` and `.>` I can't even recall what they mean right now, but I do remember them being very easy to work with once I had memorized what they actually mean. Would a function call such as `leftCompose(parser1, parser2)` have been better? Certainly more verbose, but clearer in some ways. Operator overloads in C-like languages are a similar issue, but conflated by the additional problem of overloading the meaning of familiar operators like `+` with unusual new meanings. In any new language, this would seem like a pretty tough issue. In F#, for example, casting uses a mathematically derived type-casting operator, instead of the C# style cast syntax or the verbose VB style. C#: `(int32) x` VB: `CType(x, int32)` F#: `x :> int32` In theory a new language could have operators for most built-in functionality. Instead of `def` or `dec` or `var` for variable declaration, why not `! name` or `@ name` or something similar. It certainly shortens up declaration followed by binding: `@x := 5` instead of `declare x = 5` or `let x = 5` Most code is going to require a lot of variable definitions, so why not? When is an operator clear and useful, and when is it obscuring?"}
{"_id": "75076", "title": "The \"blub paradox\" and c++", "text": "I was reading the article here: http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html and the part about the \"blub paradox\" was particularly interesting. As someone who mainly codes in c++ but has exposure to other languages (mostly Haskell) I'm aware of a few useful things in these languages that are hard to replicate in c++. The question is mainly to people who are proficient in both c++ and some other language, is there some powerful language feature or idiom that you make use of in a language that would be hard to conceptualize or implement if you were writing only in c++? In particular this quote caught my attention: > By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences > in power between the various languages are those who understand the most > powerful one. (This is probably what Eric Raymond meant about Lisp making > you a better programmer.) You can't trust the opinions of the others, > because of the Blub paradox: they're satisfied with whatever language they > happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs. If it turns out that I am the equivalent of the \"Blub\" programmer by virtue of using c++ this raises the following question: Are there any useful concepts or techniques that you have encountered in other languages that you would have found difficult to conceptualize had you been writing or \"thinking\" in c++? For example the logic programming paradigm seen in languages like Prolog and Mercury can be implemented in c++ using the castor library but ultimately I find that conceptually I am thinking in terms of Prolog code and translating to the c++ equivalent when using this. As a way of broadening my programming knowledge I'm trying to find out if there are other similar examples of useful/powerful idioms that are more efficiently expressed in other languages that I might not be aware of as a c++ developer. Another example that comes to mind is the macro system in lisp, generating the program code from within the program seems to have many benefits for some problems. This seems to be hard to implement and think about from within c++. EDIT: This question is not intended to be a \"c++ vs lisp\" debate or any sort of language-wars type debate. Asking a question like this is the only way I can see possible to find out about things that I don't know I don't know about."}
{"_id": "147851", "title": "Do you perfect your code as you go or FINISH the product first, improve structure later", "text": "I recently read a blog post (which I lost the link) that really make me think. The writer said that the one of the biggest problem in software projects is actaully completing it, and most people will end up abandoning the work. I have been self-learning programming for over 15 years now, at this stage I actually feel pretty competent. However, I have never finish any big project that I set out to do. What I usually do is this:   1. I \"sketch\" my idea in code, compile and run to see if it works, and imagine how other stuff can come toogether.   2. As the \"sketch\" becomes messy, I start to refactor it, consolidate functions, make classes, re-organisation data structures etc.   3. Repeat 1 and 2.... forever! I tried to write on paper UML diagrams etc. but it always end up with things I overlook and then requires some drastic changes and then I becomes 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 again. How does commercial projects handle deadlines? Should I just keep on sketching until the final product is completed before thinking of making the readability/reusability/architecture/engine more sound?"}
{"_id": "182045", "title": "Building dedicated codepad in PHP", "text": "I am author of growing framework, which is focused around User Interface building in PHP. Essential requirements for the up-coming website redesign is ability to **run code examples**. I am willing to extend this option to add-on authors which would mean **other people** will be able to execute code on my server. Please suggest how to securely set up the environment which would allow me execute 3rd party PHP code built on my framework. I'd like to hear ideas from someone who have had experience with building sandboxed solutions."}
{"_id": "182044", "title": "Which k-best shortest-path algorithms should I consider?", "text": "I'm solving a graph-search optimization problem. I need to find the k best acyclic shortest-paths through a directed weighted graph. I know there are a number of exact and approximate k-best algorithms, but most of the recent research seems to be oriented toward very large, very sparsely- connected graphs (e.g. road routing and directions), and my graph is neither. Distinguishing aspects of my problem:   * The graph consists of approximately 160 vertices.   * The graph is nearly fully connected (bidirectionally, so ~160^2 ~= 25k edges)   * k will be quite small (probably less than 10)   * The maximum path length will probably be bounded and very small as well (e.g. 3-5 edges)   * I said 'acyclic' above, but just to reiterate - solutions must not include cycles. This isn't an issue for 1-best shortest path, but it becomes a problem for k-best - for example, consider a road routing - the 2nd shortest path from A to B might be the same as the 1-best, with a quick trip around a block somewhere. That's might be mathematically optimal, but not a very useful solution. ;-)   * We may need to re-weight edges on-the-fly for each calculation. An edge cost consists of a weighted sum of several factors, and the final requirements (whenever we get them) may allow a user to specify their own prioritization of those weighting factors, altering edge weights. This is a relatively small graph (we should be able to represent it in a few hundred KB), so it's probably reasonable to clone the graph in memory, apply the re-weighting, and then execute the search on the cloned graph. But if there's a more effective method of performing the search while computing weights on-the-fly, I'm interested. I'm looking at the algorithms described in Santos (K shortest path algorithms), Eppstein 1997 (Finding the k Shortest Paths), and others. Yen's algorithm is of interest, primarily because of the existing Java implementation. I'm not scared to read the research papers, but I thought it was worth throwing out the details of my problem and asking for pointers to save some reading time. And if you have pointers to Java implementations, even better."}
{"_id": "232243", "title": "Is it possible to have setup and tear down methods run only for specific unittests?", "text": "I currently have a test class with a `setUp` method for creating a temp file and a `tearDown` method for deleting a temp file. However, only some of the the `test_` methods in that class require this functionality. Is possible to either ignore those 2 methods for the test cases which do not require it or to only call those 2 methods for test cases which do require it? It feels a bit 'wrong' to call these 2 methods for every test even if the temp file is not getting used in each one."}
{"_id": "222762", "title": "Ordering menu items fed from multiple modules.", "text": "I have a main application that can load modules (or plugins). Each modules can define one or more links (or items) that will be displayed in a side menu defined in the main application. Right now, my main application execute a list of ItemProviders which are loaded from the modules. These ItemProviders return a list of items to display in the side menu. My question now is how am I supposed to order these items since they are not aware their siblings in the menu? Keep in mind that there is not a particular logic in the order, it depends on what the client wants. My primary solution was to give them an order number (an index). The problem with this approach is that my modules would no longer be completely independent, the \"order number\" would depend on other modules' number. What would be the proper way to handle this particular case?"}
{"_id": "138067", "title": "About shared (static) Members and its behavior", "text": "I just realized that I can access shared members from instances of classes (probably this is not correct, but compile and run), and also learn/discover that, I can modify shared members, then create a new instance and access the new value of the shared member. My question is, what happens to the shared members, when it comes back to the \"default\" value (class declaration), how dangerous is it do this ? is it totally bad ? is it valid in some cases ?. If you want to test my point here is the code (console project vb.net) that I used to test shared members, as you can see/compile/run, the shared member \"x\" of the class \"Hello\" has default value string \"Default\", but at runtime it changes it, and after creating a new object of that class, this object has the new value of the shared member.               Module Module1         Public Class hello                  Public Shared x As String = \"Default\"                  Public Sub New()                  End Sub         End Class              Sub Main()                   Console.WriteLine(\"hello.x=\" & hello.x)              Dim obj As New hello()                   Console.WriteLine(\"obj.x=\" & obj.x)              obj.x = \"Default shared memeber, modified in object\"              Console.WriteLine(\"obj.x=\" & obj.x)                   hello.x = \"Defaul shared member, modified in class\"              Console.WriteLine(\"hello.x=\" & hello.x)                   Dim obj2 As New hello()              Console.WriteLine(\"obj2.x=\" & obj2.x)                    Console.ReadLine()               End Sub          End Module      **UPDATE:** First at all, thanks to everyone, each answer give feedback, I suppose, by respect I should choose one as \"the answer\", I don't want to be offensive to anyone, so please don't take it so bad if I didn't choose you answer."}
{"_id": "222769", "title": "Loose coupling and shuffling dependencies", "text": "I have a bunch of classes that look something like this:               public class MyGame()     {         private Graphics graphics;              private Player player;              public MyGame()         {             graphics = new Graphics();             //...         }              protected void Initialize()         {             player = new Player();             //...         }              protected void Update()         {             player.DoStuff();             //...         }      I've been reading about design patterns, and I've come to understand that this is not a very good design because it isn't loosely coupled. Instead of coding to interfaces, I'm coding to implementations (Graphics, Player, etc.). In order to fix this perceived problem, I start by changing those dependencies to interfaces:               public class MyGame()     {         private IGraphics graphics;              private IPlayer player;              public MyGame()         {             graphics = new Graphics();             //...         }              protected void Initialize()         {             player = new Player();             //...         }      I'm not sure how helpful that really is, but it's nice that the graphics field (for example) isn't tied to the Graphics class - I can use the AwesomeGraphics class or SparklyGraphics class instead as long as those classes implement IGraphics. But I still have hard dependencies on Graphics and Player, so what was the point of all that refactoring? (My actual code is much more complicated.) I've also come to understand that dependency injection is a good idea, so that's what I try to do next:               public class MyGame()     {         private IGraphics graphics;              private IPlayer player;              public MyGame( IGraphics graphics, IPlayer player )         {             this.graphics = graphics;             this.player = player;             //...         }      This looks really nice because I no longer have any hard dependencies in MyGame. However, the dependencies are still in my code - they've just been moved to the class that instantiates MyGame:               static class Program     {         static void Main( string[] args )         {             using ( var game = new Game( new Graphics(), new Player() )             {                 game.Run();             }         }     }      Now I'm back where I started! This class is not loosely coupled at all! So, again, what was the point of all that refactoring? I'm pretty sure I could use an IoC container to take care of these dependencies somehow, but that would likely just add a ton of complication to an already complicated project. Plus, wouldn't that just be moving those dependencies once again to another class? Should I stick with what I had in the first place, or is there some tangible benefit that I'm not seeing yet?"}
{"_id": "138062", "title": "Does the $100 Google Apps Marketplace Fee Apply To All My Developers or Just Me?", "text": "On the Google Apps Marketplace Vendor Listing page, Google says the following: > Google charges a one-time fee of $100 for submitting your first listing. I've searched Google Groups and other forums, and I cannot seem to find the answer to the question of whether or not the one time $100 fee applies to _only my individual Google Apps login_ or if it applies to other Google Apps logins on my domain as well. For instance, If I, james@mydomain.com, pay the $100 fee so I can submit N listings, does this also apply to john@mydomain.com or does John have to pay the $100 fee to so he can publish his apps without having to ask me to do it? Is it best to use a single, group login like admin@mydomain.com or development@mydomain.com when paying the $100 Listing fee? What is your experience in this regard with posting multiple listings to the marketplace where N developers are involved?"}
{"_id": "106390", "title": "Question about raw Javascript vs frameworks in interviews", "text": "If it's wiser to know a framework such as jQuery, MooTools, DoJo, etc. to get over cross-browser issues, why are interviews asking for only javascript?"}
{"_id": "36797", "title": "Where do you look for help?", "text": "I have been on four interviews and this question (\"Where do you look for help?\") was asked three times. What is the point of it? What is my opinion is a bit controversial like googling is OK? Is this answer OK? **UPDATE:** Seems it went well."}
{"_id": "70643", "title": "Is there minimap plugin for Eclipse?", "text": "I'm looking for Eclipse plugin which may show something like mini-map of code. I think this may be nice feature. Here you can see example of what I mean (it's TextMap plugin for gedit)."}
{"_id": "199367", "title": "What should the relation between parent and child GUI components be?", "text": "This seems to happen every time I create any sort of GUI. I have trouble figuring out how child classes should communicate to their siblings. It's a general problem, but it's probably easier to use a concrete example (hopefully that's still okay for this forum? I know it's different from StackOverflow): I have a window that contains 4 panels. Right now, I simply have the children as member objects of the parent. Keypresses change all 4 panels, so I have the child objects throw the event back to their parent, which does the logic, then makes the appropriate calls for each panel. However, mouse events are different. They change the position of a camera (owned by the parent), which every panel uses to render itself. So I must recompute a few matrices, in order to render each panel. The matrices are different for each panel. The problem I'm having is: when do I give the children the matrices? I think I have three possibilities:   1. When reading a mouse event, compute the matrices and call setter methods for each panel. However, sometimes the matrix will be replaced before the window renders.   2. Give the child panel a reference to the parent, and during the render call, request the matrix from the parent (either by method or member variable).   3. Modify child.render() so that it accepts two matrix parameters, and make parent.render() call them appropriately. #2 seems good, because I'm not unnecessarily setting the matrix in the child window. But it also requires me to mess with forward declarations for member objects, which seems like bad practice. And #3 I'm not quite sure how to implement, because render is called by many things other than my code (un- minimizing, for example), and I can't touch them. So I suppose it is #1? Is there a design pattern people usually follow for this? Am I just overthinking, and #1 is actually completely OK?"}
{"_id": "70647", "title": "Automatic source code generation -- good idea or potential nightmare?", "text": "In response to my question regarding Java source code generation, I received this answer warning me about potential maintenance problems: >   1. mixing auto-generated code always pose a risk of someone modifying it > in future to just to tweak a small behavior. It's just the matter of next > build, when this changes will be lost. >   2. you will have to solely rely on the comments on top of auto-generated > source to prevent developers from doing so. >   3. version-controlling - Lets say you update the template of someMethod(), > now all of your source file's version will be updated, even if the source > updates is auto-generated. you will see redundant history. > His proposed alternative is enhancing classes at runtime using bytecode generation. My thinking was that injecting generated code into existing source code files would enhance maintainability, because it makes it obvious what is going on instead of performing some operations behind the scenes. Should I:   1. create a tool to add generated code to existing source code; or   2. augment the classes using bytecode generation at runtime? What has been your experience with either of these approaches?"}
{"_id": "58941", "title": "If you are going to deploy a Rails 3 app, which platform you'll recommend?", "text": "I am looking for advice of where to deploy a Rails app for a small business:   * web-based   * https needed   * fewer than 500 users   * (probably) fewer than 20 concurrent users So far, I am reading pricing information of:   * Amazon EC2   * Dreamhost VPS   * Heroku   * Self-hosting (most unlikely) Any suggestions and/or pros and cons to share? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "131370", "title": "How do you recruit a graduate developer?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are effective interview questions? I'm currently looking to recruit a .Net developer and we've decided to take a graduate straight out of university. The job role will (eventually) be mainly web development. Does anyone have experience of recruiting graduates straight out of university? How do you go about recruiting someone when they have very little in the way of hard skills that you can test directly? What kind of interviewing techniques can you use (telephone/technical test/question and answer/whiteboard session etc.)? What skills or personality traits should you look for?"}
{"_id": "71510", "title": "How do I follow DRY when documenting module structure and interfaces?", "text": "In this paper, it is recommended that one document the following:   * module structure   * module interfaces If I'm writing detailed module structures and interfaces in a standalone document, aren't I repeating work that is also done with object declaration statements, unit tests, and docstrings? If so, and if this is bad repetition in the DRY sense of the term, how do professional programmers avoid this kind of repetition?   * Automatically generate tests/docstrings/code from documentation?   * Automatically generate documentation from tests/docstrings/code?   * Rely on the code as documentation and don't duplicate in the first place?   * Suck it up, Nancy! It's called \"work\" for a reason."}
{"_id": "188114", "title": "Is there an accepted name for a fake object injected via a preprocessor seam?", "text": "I am dealing with some old, sloppy C++ code in which there is a structure with a lot of data members and functions. I want to test a class that I have implemented which uses the struct, but this dependency is going to make the unit tests extremely ugly. Inspired by Michael Feather's discussion of **preprocessing seams** in _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_ , I am getting ready to solve this problem by faking the ugly structure with the preprocessor (not with inheritance) polymorphism as demonstrated in the following notional code. ### test.cpp               #include <iostream>     #include \"NotAsUgly.hpp\"     #include \"DependsOnUgly.hpp\"     int main() {         std::cout << DependsOnUgly().getDescription() << std::endl;     }      ### DependsOnUgly.hpp               #ifndef _DEPENDS_ON_UGLY_HPP_     #define _DEPENDS_ON_UGLY_HPP_     #include <string>     #include \"Ugly.hpp\"     class DependsOnUgly {     public:         std::string getDescription() {             return \"Depends on \" + Ugly().getName();         }     };     #endif      ### Ugly.hpp               #ifndef _UGLY_HPP_     #define _UGLY_HPP_     struct Ugly {         double a, b, ..., z;         void extraneousFunction { ... }         std::string getName() { return \"Ugly\"; }     };     #endif      ### NotAsUgly.hpp               #ifndef _UGLY_HPP_ // Same name as in Ugly.hpp---deliberately!     #define _UGLY_HPP_     struct Ugly { // Once again, duplicate name is deliberate         std::string getName() { return \"not as ugly\"; } // All that DependsOnUgly depends on     };     #endif      Is there a special name for the type of fake object I'm using here? I'm inclined to call it a stub, but it is rather different than what I would normally think of as a stub. I would expect something called a _stub_ to implement the interface of the class which is to be faked through inheritance. Here the implementation is only partial, and happens through the preprocessor. Is there already a known name for this kind of fake/testing object? I want to name the header file that contains it (`NotAsUgly.hpp` in my example) to properly signify to other developers what it is for."}
{"_id": "172969", "title": "Is data integrity possible without normalization?", "text": "I am working on an application that requires the storage of location information such as city, state, zip code, latitude, and longitude. I would like to ensure:   1. Location data is accurate      * ~~Detroit, CA~~       * Detroit **_IS NOT_** in California     * Detroit, MI        * Detroit **_IS_** in Michigan   2. Cities and states are spelled correctly      * **California** not ~~Calefornia~~     * **Detroit** not ~~Detriot~~   3. Cities and states are named consistently      * Valid:        * CA       * Detroit     * Invalid:        * Cali       * california       * DET       * d-town       * The D Also, since city/zip data is not guaranteed to be static, updating this data in a normalized fashion could be difficult, whereas it could be implemented as a _de facto_ location if it is denormalized. A couple thoughts that come to mind:   1. A collection of reference tables that store a list of all states and the most common cities and zip codes that can grow over time. It would search the database for an exact or similar match and recommend corrections.   2. Use some sort of service to validate the location data before it is stored in the database. Is it possible to fulfill these requirements without normalization, and if so, should I denormalize this data?"}
{"_id": "106642", "title": "In a 4 hour Powershell 101 class should I skip for/while/do and just teach ForEach-Object", "text": "I'm making a syllabus to teach non-programmer co-workers PowerShell. The first non-pilot group I will run the course with will be a team that deploys and configures one of our software products. They are bright intelligent motivated IT workers, but not programmers. I intend to cover the basics (variables, arrays, functions, and loops), and then move onto examples that are close to their problem domain. I'm not married to a 4 hour class, if necessary I can expand it to two four hour classes. I'm toying with the idea of skipping for and while loops and simply teaching ForEach-Object. I've personally used traditional for and while loops in powershell scripts, but they can always be rewritten as ForEach-Object loops with a bit of creativity. Part of me feels the good old for ($i=0 $i < foo; $i++) is a necessary fundamental before moving onto foreach, but the other part of me thinks that might be me clinging to my Model M and my K&R Bible. To draw an analogy to SQL, I'd never teach a CURSORs or other loops in a 4 hour class there because you're supposed to be able to do everything in SQL as a SET operation. In theory you should stick to the pipeline in PowerShell. I use for and while loops in PowerShell more often than I do do cursors and while loops in SQL. However, PowerShell is a scripting language and conventions are less strictly enforced and I also push the boundaries of powershell with inline C# and excessive dependencies on calling native .NET APIs. My audience will not be ding this. For those not adept at powershell, I'm pretty sure you don't actually need a for or while loop. I use them, but that's because I have experience with other languages. For example if you only want the first 10 members of an array of 20 members:               1..20 | Select-Object -First 10 | ForEach-Object { Write-Host $_ }"}
{"_id": "113333", "title": "What is the solution for \"not enough commercial experience\"?", "text": "I have almost 2 years commercial experience in web development. Yet every time I apply for a job I get a call back \"Sorry you don't have enough commercial experience for this position.\" The last 6 months have run like this:               10 Try to gain commercial experience.     20 Can\u2019t get a job because I don\u2019t have enough commercial experience.     GOTO 10      I've been applying for PHP developer roles working with existing codebases and requiring between 1 and 2 years of experience. How can I gain creditable 'commercial experience' when no-one will hire?"}
{"_id": "102778", "title": "Is running an executable as a child process the same as linking a library?", "text": "I'm planning on running an executable as a child process in my program (e.g. using Ruby's `popen` or C's `exec()` family of functions). However, the executable I'm planning on running is licensed through the GPL. The GPL, as I understand it, requires that all linked code to GPL licensed code needs to also be GPL. But there's also an \"arm's length\" exception, discussed in the FAQ: > However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside > your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the > free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not > combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program. Would runnning an executable as a child process be part of this exception, or would it still be considered \"linking\" for the purposes of the license? If it is considered \"linking\", how does it differ from running program, like Nmap, from the a command line?"}
{"_id": "133320", "title": "RESTful web service and delta updates - advantages and disadvantages", "text": "Our front-end developers have requested that the RESTful Java web services to support delta queries. The use case for this is to handle periodic ajax refresh of the screen to bring in new data (deltas). I can see a few advantages of this:   * Makes front-end logic simple (i.e. no complicated deduping logic)   * Reduce network traffic (i.e. response size is smaller) However, there are some concern as well:   * supporting delta will require the service to be stateful, which impact scalability   * heavy use of caching (results cached per user per query, to determine the delta)   * heavy processing on the server My questions are:   1. Are there additional advantages of the delta queries?   2. What's a good implementation to for delta queries that would eliminate some of the disadvantages (you can assume we are welling to drastically refactor our code)"}
{"_id": "83458", "title": "Why do we need REST service security if we have HTTPS", "text": "I refer to this excellent article http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/designing-a- secure-rest-api-without-oauth-authentication/ which speaks of amazon like security for web service. However I was asked a question in the team of why do we need it if we already use HTTPS. I was unable to answer as it really seems to me they may be right although gut tells me otherwise. Also is there places when providing REST services where HTTPS may not work? Like 3rd party websites? If anyone has experience in securing Web Services over the public interwebs please shed some light with your experience. Thanks in advance. EDIT: To clarify I am not speaking of user authentication but more of client authentication. The user authentication can be assumed to be plain text over HTTPS+ REST. My worry is that this still allows anyone to use the web service without my client to access it since everything is plai text although over HTTPS the client end point can still use my web service without the client application."}
{"_id": "188944", "title": "OpenGL Image Load-Store Atomics Applications", "text": "I originally asked this on plain old stack but it was closed for being too open-ended. (Which was a good call as this is a better place for such questions.) Original Link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15132135/opengl-image-load- store-atomics-applications So, I've been spending the last couple months or so getting familiarized with the latest OpenGL 4 features when I find myself with free time. (Things like transform feedback, tessellation, compute shaders, etc..) I've finally taken time to mess around with using Image Load-Store textures, and while the idea of being able to atomically read/write to any texture from any GPU core regardless of shader stage seems incredibly powerful, I could not think of interesting applications utilizing the unique facilities these textures provide. Even after consulting \"the google\" for interesting applications, I was left empty handed. So, are there any WOW-THATS-COOL or even DAMN-THATS- HANDY applications you can think of? Application 1 (Suggested By Nicol Bolas): \"Search for order-independent transparency. That requires atomic image operations.\""}
{"_id": "251443", "title": "Changing an int to be a string in PHP / MySQL Schema", "text": "## Background I'm trying to decide the best way to manage a change in requirements. Currently when an admin is assigned to a ticket, the ticket header record is given an owner and the ownerID field is updated with the value of the id which corresponds to the record in the TeamMembers table. The owner (Team member) is notified when a user (Customer) updates the ticket with a comment. I now need to add additional Team Members to the ticket so they are also notified. ## Question ? Do I...   1. Make ownerID field ownerIDs and store a comma separated list of IDs in a string ?   2. Add a new field additionalOwnerIDs and store any extra IDs after the main owner as a comma separated string ?   3. Create a new table that simply links ticketID to assigned owners and have one row per owner ?   4. Do something else ? ## Considerations I want to deliver the new functionality as quickly as possible, repurposing the existing field might seem like the simplest way forward but it would involve changing the schema type of existing data so will need a migration script to rewrite hundreds of thousands of rows. Adding a new field then wouldn't need as much migration work as it would be an empty string for all existing records and default to an empty string for new records. A new link table seems the most programatically correct way (IMHO) but would require the most time to implement and test it and the migrations would be the most complicated in terms of extracting existing ticket owners into the new table. Changing the code for retrieving / updating an owner to query the new table. Then removing the defunct ownerID column from the existing table. Have a missed anything? Which approach is the best in terms of maintaining the code base in the future?"}
{"_id": "113335", "title": "Why there is no ISO hardware query interface?", "text": "I'm currently reading a book, chapter about I/O, and one question came to my mind. Basically, when you program in C/C++, you have an amazing opportunity to optimize for hardware behavior. Using buffering for block devices, use streaming and async I/O for high latency network devices and so on. And if you're writing a server application that is targeted at high load applications, and you can optimize for I/O devices, that can actually change the hardware requirements tremendously. Say, you know that HDD cache is around 32MB, and it likes to stream data in 8MB blocks, and you have 16GB of RAM that's cheap and sitting idle, you could just use low level `_read` with a 8MB buffer and be done with it. Which would remove ton of locking and user->kernel->user transitions that's caused by smaller reads, say 64KB each. The problem is, you basically have to run the program on target platform to get the actual performance data, and optimize for it. And if you port that application to say ARM, the optimizations can even backfire. So why is there no API to get the sweet-spot values for architecture you're running on. Say `QueryOptimalHddReadBuffer`, `QueryOptimalHddWriteBuffer`, `QueryHddSeekTimeCharacteristics`, `QueryOptimalNetworkCardReadBuffer`, etc."}
{"_id": "133325", "title": "Do big software companies develop their business process management solutions (ERP) in-house?", "text": "I was looking at the customer list of a few ERP vendors like SAP. The companies in the list are mostly non IT companies. So, I'm wondering as to how IT companies approach the business process management problem. For example, any IT company with a few thousand employees across different locations will need software for HR management, accounting, and so on. And a software product vendor (like Microsoft) will need CRM software. It looks like buying enterprise software from an outside vendor can be a messy and expensive proposition, especially when they can code it in-house using their excellent grasp on the requirements specific to their business. Do these companies usually build their own solutions using in-house resources or do they buy it from other software vendors?"}
{"_id": "102771", "title": "When would polling for events be better than using observer pattern?", "text": "Are there scenarios where polling for events would be better than using the observer pattern? I have a fear of using polling and would only start using it if someone gave me a good scenario. All I can think of is how the observer pattern is better than polling. Conside this scenario: > You are programming a car simulator. The car is an object. As soon as the > car turns on, you want to play a \"vroom vroom\" sound clip. You can model this in two ways: **Polling** : Poll the car object every second to see if it's on. When it's on, play the sound clip. **Observer pattern** : Make the car the Subject of the observer pattern. Have it publish the \"on\" event to all observers when itself turns on. Create a new sound object that listens to the car. Have it implement the \"on\" callback, which plays the sound clip. In this case, I think the observer pattern wins. Firstly, polling is more processor intensive. Secondly, the sound clip does not immediately fire when the car turns on. There can be up to a 1 second gap because of the polling period."}
{"_id": "200528", "title": "How does a dynamic library's references to a static variable get translated once in the running app?", "text": "If a dynamic library exports the address to a global variable defined within the library, how are accesses to that variable translated during dynamic linking so that a running application can interact with it?"}
{"_id": "83456", "title": "is there a security issue when using Jquery to develop asp.net web applications", "text": "I'm new to web applications. I have developed a web application using ASP.net. After hearing about jquery and going through some examples, I changed the existing application and used jquery to do most of the ajax work. On the server side I used html handlers for db connections and data processing. Because I'm using jquery, my concern is my script is visible to users of the application. Will this be a security issue? Am i following a right path?"}
{"_id": "83455", "title": "Should I test my China-targeted website with \"360 Secure Browser\" (browser in China)?", "text": "Developing a website aiming to the Chinese market, I am wondering whether I should do compatibility tests with the 360 secure browser, which is based on the Trident layout engine (like Internet Explorer). Any developer experienced in designing websites for China? Did you test on this browser? Is it really different from IE? What is its market share in mainland China? _Note: Multiply by OS versions x use cases x website releases, and testing ends up costing a lot, so I need to think carefully about adding a browser to the supported browsers list._"}
{"_id": "230089", "title": "What is the purpose of red zone?", "text": "Red zone is a fixed size area in memory beyond the stack pointer that has not been \"allocated\". Compilers do generate assembly to access that area in simple leaf functions. But I can't see any real advantages for red zone. Accessing memory beyond stack pointer is really dangerous and can easily lead to data corruption. Why even do this? Saving 2 processor instructions (push ebp; mov ebp esp) won't give real speed up. P.S. There was already question on SO that was closed as off-topic (awful injustice)."}
{"_id": "112064", "title": "Is hooking Data access method on wrong object detrimental for a developer", "text": "In a simple application I am creating there are Admin and users where admin can create users. Right now I am creating Classes that encapsulate database CRUD calls with methods. For example: `adminStore.CreateUser(userObject)` will persist that user object into the Database and return the object. I am now confused as to which DataAccess entity I need to attach methods like these. Doing them on `adminStore` will make them sensible in sense developer would understand that admin is creating the user and has access role. But from another perspective the below to sounds logical. like: `userStore.CreateUser(userObject);`. So my questions would somewhat sound like a Api design,Class design question but I would like to know which if the below is the right one. 1 `UserStore.CreateUser(userObject)` 2 `AdminStore.CreateUser(userObject)` Update: Here is what i came up with later after viewing the answers. > User { Name ,Email, Password } > > Admin:User,IImplementsAdmin { FlagPost() etc etc } > > AdminStore { CreateUser(), SetUserStatus() }"}
{"_id": "112065", "title": "How to draw a good diagram of a business workflow? What software?", "text": "I want to create an illustration for a **product purchase wizard** , and I want to illustrate the way user interacts with the wizard. It's basically a simple flowchart or a simple workflow:   1. User starts the wizard   2. User selects product   3. User should check the availability of that product (manually)   4. If the product is available, then the next button is enabled, else it's disabled   5. If user change the product type, then the next button should be disabled   6. User goes to the next step   7. Based on the product type, a different UI is shown to him in the next step   8. He should adjust some other settings, ... I started creating a sequence diagram, but soon it proved not to be a good fit. Then I changed to activity diagram, again no success. What type of diagram should I choose to illustrate this flowchart (which is full of conditions, branching, state management, user interaction and more)? Do we have such a general diagram at all? What software should I use? **Update:** To clarify further, I'd like to draw a diagram of a **scenario** rather than a **workflow**."}
{"_id": "112067", "title": "what is the meaning of a \"Teardown Report\"", "text": "I am sorry if this a wrong place to ask the question. I saw the usage \"Teardown report\" for a product What does it mean?"}
{"_id": "18096", "title": "What should I be responsible for as the first developer in a large scale web project?", "text": "I am the first developer in a large scale web project, in the real estate sector. I am not an expert in any field, I know the basic of all, programming, databases, something about design and a little bit about SEO, and website optimization / caching. And I have some knowledge about other technologies and stuff that could be required in the project. So I am a developer, my boss does some drawing on a paper to present me his ideas and then I start programming and I show him the result. Until now there was no problem, but now the web application is large enough, and it lacks a little bit of database optimization and intuitive user interface. Beside the website, the project also has an offline newspaper, and a desktop application that is a reduced version of the online one, both this things are not managed by me, but by other people or developers that are external to the company. We do not use a collaboration tool for sharing knowledge between the people working on this project, just emails, and we do not use a development methodology, as for the team, we are:   * the developer(me),    * a designer,    * a secretary, and    * the boss. I have the possibility to ask the boss hire the people I want so I can increase the team and have the right person dealing with the right part of the project. This is the story, the real question is, what should be my attitude towards the project and the company? Should I stay a developer and participate in taking decisions and organizing tasks from time to time to help the boss? Or should I get more serious about this and try to learn project management and implement everything I consider it's required to ensure the quality of the work and final results? I am the one who best knows what has been developed until now, should I try to organize all the work and the team? Or should I ask my boss to hire some expert to do that?"}
{"_id": "230085", "title": "Minimize touching the already-working code when a radical change is required", "text": "I have a code that highly relies on an `Array` structure like the following:               $array['customer'][$customer_id]['details'][..];    // it goes to about 10 levels deep      However, after almost two years since the initial development, now I have to include another high-level element to that array which will make it something like this:               $array['company'][$id]['customer'][..];      The challenge is that about 12,000 lines of source code are written by four programmers -- I'm the only one still working on the project, AND there is no unit tests, getters and setters, DI, etc. just a bare-bone MVC structure. So, changing the structure of that array will probably require 30% percent of methods to be modified to adapt with the new change, otherwise they just simply won't work as expected. Is there any general approach for these kinda of headaches? Can I implement a method that could somehow bridge the gap? I know the question is too vague without seeing the actual source code, however I highly appreciate any recommendations. **Update** Currently I'm thinking of having a method/function which returns the _legacy array_ , however you can actually pass the desired _identifier_ and put it in a loop to get the same effect -- I'm not certain if it will work in all cases, but hopefully will fit in most cases:               $data = get_legacy_array( $company_id );    // Instead of: $data = $array['customer']..."}
{"_id": "225410", "title": "R* Tree work with dynamic data", "text": "I'm searching an algorithm to store my data (which are moving objects' coordinates) and allow me to query objects within a specific radius of a specific point. I came up with R* Tree which is said as good solution for geographical data, but as I studied further, R* Tree stored data in secondary memory and its data mostly don't change over time. But my data is updated per second, so if I implement R* Tree, the insert and delete part of the algorithm will be called many time. Is R* tree is suitable for my case or not? If it isn't, can anyone suggest me a better algorithm?"}
{"_id": "225417", "title": "How to clear up basics as well as keep performing in your job?", "text": "I am a software Engineer in a Embedded domain. Here, we are using QT, C++, Sql, UPNP,LINUX and DBUS. However, I have never practiced all the IPC mechanism, C++, Sql, QT, and UPNP. For example, how socket works, etc? I am trying to clear up my fundamentals,but at the same time I need to learn new technologies. In my opinion, one can easily grasp new technology if there fundamentals are good. But, I am facing a problem here. How can I learn as well as work well? When I try to look at basics then I lose time. This effects in the productivity. But without basics also, I can work since one need generally logical skills. But, then you should be ready to burn yourself as you will do permutation and combination. How can I cope with it? How can I balance it?"}
{"_id": "225415", "title": "What is the purpose of chunking strings in natural language processing?", "text": "I see many examples of libraries that use a 'chunker' and also people asking how to write chunkers, but what is this for and why do we need it? Isn't it enough to split a text by whitespace or other characters that delimit boundaries between words?"}
{"_id": "72896", "title": "Declaration vs. Prototype vs. Symbol vs. Definition vs. Implementation", "text": "I see the terms \"declaration,\" \"prototype\" and \"symbol\" thrown around interchangeably a lot when it comes to code like the following:               void MyUndefinedFunction();      The same goes for \"definition\" and \"implementation\" for things like this:               void MyClass::MyMethod()     {         // Actual code here.     }      Are there any distinctions between the terms, or are they truly synonymous? EDIT: I'm unsure whether or not this belongs on Stack Overflow..."}
{"_id": "225419", "title": "Where does non-MVVM code belong in an MVVM app?", "text": "By non-MVVM code, I mean things like highly generalized components, like one with common extension methods for CLR types, and other 'homeless' helper classes etc? I have a `Core` project that most others reference, but to resolve circular dependencies I had to refactor the extensions to another project. This seems a common challenge in a well layered project. In some cases it's easier and produces a better project structure to have one copy of a class in each of two or more components, and I can't use symlinks for these copies because the namespace differs. Or else I'm going to end up with quite a fat `Core` project, hosting disparate groups of helper classes. Down to what granularity can I factor these out and increase the dependency count of clients of these servives. What is a general convention here?"}
{"_id": "233194", "title": "Using Python/Ruby/Lua for Java startup scripts", "text": "I have a number of distinct Java utilities that are shipped together. Currently there are two startup scripts for each utility: a `.sh` one for Linux and a `.bat` for Windows. I'm thinking of rewriting the startup scripts using Python, or perhaps Ruby, Perl, Lua or other scripting language. This way I avoid having different versions for each OS. Is this a good idea? Are there projects that already use this approach? What scripting language would be best suited for the task? What other alternatives exist to avoid having separate `.sh`, `.bat` files for this group of utilities?"}
{"_id": "215523", "title": "Just being hired as a senior developer, never even been a junior developer, what should I expect?", "text": "I've been a freelancer and a coder by night for a while, and recently, I've been hired after several levels of interviews in a nice NY company, even though I've some lacks in specific fields. Is this common for companies to hire seniors with less experience? Will they wait some weeks to respect a certain learning curve? I don't know anything about working in a company, so that's why I worry. After one week, I'm still checking and exploring sources, but after one week of work, it seems that some coworkers are considering that I'm slow. I'm good in maths, physics, algorithms, but still I need to learn about all the templates used in this company. Anyone here already received a less-experienced senior member in his team? Is this acceptable? I'm planing on having a meeting with my boss to stop worrying about that. Sounds like a good idea? [EDIT] Thanks for these answers. I'm definitely a -new - senior developer. I returned to the office with more confidence on Monday. I guess that it's normal to feel a bit incompetent in front of unknown templates/sources during the first weeks when you receive a good pay."}
{"_id": "40761", "title": "Are performance and salary reviews *really* harmful?", "text": "In the second edition of PeopleWare, DeMarco and Lister suggest that annual performance and salary reviews foster teamicide because they encourage competition within the team. Spolsky re-iterates this idea in his \"Incentive Pay Considered Harmful\" essay. Is this really the case? And if we don't have salary reviews, how should pay rises be done?"}
{"_id": "156441", "title": "How do you explain the importance of using a [distributed] version control system to someone who's not in the CS field?", "text": "A good example of someone who fits that description might be a project manager. I was asked by my boss the other day, \"what this Github thing is and why it's important?\" He has some proprietary projects so he would need private hosting and I found myself struggling to explain beyond the usual: VCSs make collaboration trivial, provide a history and \"backup\" of all your data, and allow you to record atomic changes in a code base. In my mind I was thinking, \"it's almost as if you have to use a DRVS to really understand how beneficial it is\". I ended up pointing him to BitBucket because they give you unlimited private repositories (I even had to explain what a repository was). Does anyone have ay really good concrete examples of how a VCS has saved their ass or made life easier, etc -- basically, how would you sell a DVSC to someone who's not unfamiliar with programming, but not a programmer by profession?"}
{"_id": "30297", "title": "Is there any reason to use \"plain old data\" classes?", "text": "In legacy code I occasionally see classes that are nothing but wrappers for data. something like:               class Bottle {        int height;        int diameter;        Cap capType;             getters/setters, maybe a constructor     }      My understanding of OO is that classes are structures for data _and the methods of operating on that data._ This seems to preclude objects of this type. To me they are nothing more than `structs` and kind of defeat the purpose of OO. I don't think it's necessarily evil, though it may be a code smell. Is there a case where such objects would be necessary? If this is used often, does it make the design suspect?"}
{"_id": "15114", "title": "What design pattern is best suitable with this context?", "text": "I have a base class Shape, and drived classes Line Segment, Arc, B-spline,... I want to find the intersection point between these shapes. I would like:               Shape* a = new LineSegment();     Shape* b = new Arc();          bool did_intersect = a->Intersect(b);      I don't like this design in Intersect:               bool LineSegment(Shape* s) {       Arc* arc = dynamic_cast<Arc*>(s);       if (NULL != arc)         return LineSegmentArcIntersection(this, arc);            BSpline* bspline = dynamic_cast<BSpline*>(s);       if (NULL != bspline)         return LineSegmentBSplineIntersection(this, bspline);       ...     }      So, What **design pattern** is best suitable with this context?"}
{"_id": "15112", "title": "Are breadcrumbs still a viable way to navigate web sites and web apps?", "text": "I'm currently working on the following types of web sites and apps:   1. ecommerce like Amazon   2. Reservation system (think of a hotel receptionist checking rooms availability)   3. Invoice management like Freshbook On Amazon, I didn't notice any breadcrumbs, just facets from the left panel. However, newegg is using both breadcrumbs and facets. In a management system like hotel reservations or invoice management, you usually have unique reservation or customer number that you search through your system. Each reservation can then expand to more sections, for instance:               Reservations         > Reservation #123456             > Guests             > Room             > Airport pickup             > Payment      In each unique reservation page, I'm using breadcrumbs to show the location of the current page relative to the site. Is that a good method to present that kind of information? Should I use tabs or other techniques?"}
{"_id": "231105", "title": "How to have my callbacks authenticated in a REST app?", "text": "I'm developing a REST application and I allow my clients to authenticate in several ways (typically using `Authorization: Token ...` as in OAuth 2.0, but also there's session-based auth option for the web-browsable API). The application allows the client to provide their endpoint to which my application would later POST with some data whenever a particular event happens. Now I wonder: what's the best way for the client application to authorise that it's my application calling? Should I roll something up myself (like, include a token derived from the client application secret, which the client app would then verify), or is there a more conventional approach I can follow?"}
{"_id": "213412", "title": "CSS File Editing for Teams? (how to avoid stepping on each others' feet?!)", "text": "I'm wondering if anyone has a good solution for when you're working as a team and there's a single file used throughout a project (like a styles.css file) and everyone needs to use it throughout the day - inevitably someone will make changes and save without grabbing the most recent version first. Is there some sort of group editing program for Windows/web? We currently just access the CSS files via FTP & edit in our usual editors. Probably an editor that can load & save changes on the fly?"}
{"_id": "211358", "title": "SBCL development on Windows, including CFFI", "text": "I have been asked to automate the operation of a Windows (WinForms) application, performing some fairly complicated statistical analysis along the way. My first thought was the usual suspects: .NET, C# and White or AutoItX. Then it occured to me that I could try an alternative stack: SBCL, CFFI, and AutoItX. That way, I could write in a language I like (Common Lisp), using my native Linux development tools via SLIME and Swank. Hence my question: is there some reason I _shouldn't_ try this? I'm a Common Lisp newbie, and have essentially zero experience in CL FFI or SBCL on Windows. The learning curve isn't a problem, though. I'm worried that someone may have tried something like this in the past and discovered insurmountable issues. My list of concerns includes:   * stability / completeness of CFFI on SBCL on Windows   * getting SLIME on Linux talking to SBCL running on a Windows box Any experience, advice or warnings on any aspect of my proposed stack would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "108592", "title": "career development strategy for complementing 0+ years of OO PHP", "text": "I started programming in PHP sometime before last Christmas. Before that, I had done some development with Access/VBA (1-2 years). I have a BA in Art History and a masters in Music Composition. I've been studying up on OOP with PHP 5.3, Zend Framework and some design pattern textbooks, and I'm starting to feel comfortable, conversant. I work for a bank, unfortunately. I say unfortunately simply because I'm not really in a bona fide technical role at the bank (although my manager really supports my development work, probably b/c I work for peanuts), and most of the job openings here I would apply for are for .Net or Java. I'm really enjoying myself, though, and I'm finishing up my first complete ZF application here at work. But I'm at a point where I'd love to start learning something different and new. I want to be excited about it, but I also want to be realistic/strategic about this, because I haven't been able to land a \"real\" developer job, and that is my goal (I don't care what language, or even what working environment at this point--I don't have any real experience with working as a developer yet to know what I like best, honestly. I just know I need to be part of a team now--no more working alone in the dark). I've heard people say that it's best to learn several languages vs. sticking to the same one (especially if it's PHP, for some reason). But I've also heard the opposite. My question then has to do with that: what best complements a 0+ years professional experience PHP developer who wants to learn something new, but aim for being marketable? Should I learn other PHP tools like Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress? Or should I learn a different scripting language, such as Groovy, Python or Ruby? Or should I go for a language more like Java or C# (or even Objective-C)? I'll have fun either way, I just want to be sure I'm not diversifying too much (or not enough), impeding my chances for a first real gig. How should I go about making myself marketable?"}
{"_id": "171430", "title": "Vocabulary: Should I call this apply or map?", "text": "So, I'm tasked with organizing the code and building a library with all the common code among our products. One thing that seems to happen all the time and I wanted to abstract is posted below in pseudocode, and I don't know how to call it (different products have different domain specific implementations and names for it)               list function idk_what_to_name_it ( list list_of_callbacks, value common_parameter ):        list list_of_results = new list       for_each(callback in list_of_callbacks)         list_of_results.push(callback(common_parameter))       end for_each       return list_of_results     end function      Would you call this specific construct a               list ListOfCallbacks.Map( value value_to_map)       method or would it better be               value Value.apply(list list_of_callbacks)      I'm really curious about this kind of thing. Is there a standard guide for this stuff?"}
{"_id": "171432", "title": "How to find optimal path visit every node with parallel workers complicated by dynamic edge costs?", "text": "Say you have an acyclic directed graph with weighted edges and create N workers. My goal is to calculate the optimal way those workers can traverse the entire graph in parralel. However, edge costs may change along the way. Example:               A -1-> B     A -2-> C     B -3-> C (if A has already been visited)     B -5-> C (if A has not already been visited)      Does what I describe lend itself to a standard algorithmic approach, or alternately can someone suggest if I'm looking at this in an inherently flawed way (i have an intuition I might be)?"}
{"_id": "238677", "title": "Using a list of tuples vs a list of custom objects", "text": "I have a situation where I have several text documents and I want to create a list that contains the words in those documents. But I also need to record several properties of each word. These properties are   * The index of the word within all the words in the documents (Integer)   * The word itself (String)   * The document that the word is in (Integer)   * The topic value associated with this word (Integer) I can think of two ways of doing this. The first is simply creating a list of tuples of the form (word,doc,topic) where the word index is given by the index of the tuple in the list. My second idea is to create a word class where the given properties are member variables in the class. Then just create a list of objects from this class. So my question is which is the best solution - the list of tuples or the list of word objects? And a related question is what are the situations when either of these approaches is preferable?"}
{"_id": "238673", "title": "Storing editable site content?", "text": "We have a Django-based website for which we wanted to make some of the content (text, and business logic such as pricing plans) easily **editable in-house** , and so we decided to store it outside the codebase. Usually the reason is one of the following:   * It's something that **non-technical people** want to edit. One example is copywriting for a website - the programmers prepare a template with text that defaults to \"Lorem ipsum...\", and the real content is inserted later to the database.   * It's something that we want to be able to change quickly, **without the need to deploy new code** (which we currently do twice a week). An example would be features currently available to the customers at different tiers of pricing. Instead of hardcoding these, we read them from database. The described solution is flexible but there are some reasons why I don't like it.   * Because the content has to be read from the database, there is a **performance overhead**. We mitigate that by using a caching scheme, but this also adds some complexity to the system.   * Developers who run the code locally see the system in a significantly **different state** compared to how it runs on production. Automated tests also exercise the system in a different state. Situations like testing new features on a staging server also get trickier - if the staging server doesn't have a recent copy of the database, it can be unexpectedly different from production. We could mitigate that by committing the new state to the repository occasionally (e.g. by adding data migrations), but it seems like a wrong approach. Is it? Any ideas how best to solve these problems? Is there a better approach for handling the content that I'm overlooking?"}
{"_id": "88544", "title": "Using Hash Bang URL's. Best practices? Best libraries? Important pitfalls?", "text": "SO I'm about to put together a new site and I'd like to go about it by making a web application that parses /#!/ url's and requests content accordingly via AJAX calls to a JSON API that is already put together. My questions are...   1. What are the best practices concerning #! url's   2. Are there any good JavaScript libraries that are built to handle Routing as well as History? or should I roll my own?   3. What are the pitfalls I should be aware of? Please no \"/#!/ url's are breaking the internet!\" comments , I've read Mike Davies Article as well as this one and this other one. I want to hear from people who have already implemented this type of a url structure and can tell me about their experiences."}
{"_id": "173364", "title": "Manager/Container class vs static class methods", "text": "Suppose I have a Widget class that is part of a framework used independently by many applications. I create Widget instances in many situations and their lifetimes vary. In addition to Widget's instance specified methods, I would like to be able to perform the follow class wide operations:   * Find a single Widget instance based on a unique id   * Iterate over the list of all Widgets   * Remove a widget from the set of all widgets  In order support these operations, I have been considering two approaches:   1. **Container class** \\- Create some container or manager class, WidgetContainer, which holds a list of all Widget instances, support iteration and provides methods for Widget addition, removal and lookup. For example in C#:              public class WidgetContainer : IEnumerable&ltWidget;>       {         public void AddWidget(Widget);         public Widget GetWidget(WidgetId id);         public void RemoveWidget(WidgetId id);       }          2. **Static class methods** \\- Add static class methods to Widget. For example:              public class Widget     {       public Widget(WidgetId id);            public static Widget GetWidget(WidgetId id);       public static void RemoveWidget(WidgetId id);       public static IEnumerable&ltWidget;> AllWidgets();       }      Using a container class has the added problem of how to access the container class. Make it a singleton?..yuck! Create some World object that provides access to all such container classes? I have seen many frameworks that use the container class approach, so what is the general consensus?"}
{"_id": "173365", "title": "When modeling a virtual circuit board, what is the best design pattern to check for cycles?", "text": "To make it simple assume you have only AND and OR gates. Each has two inputs and one output. The output of two inputs can be used as an input for the next gate For example: A AND B -> E C AND D -> F E OR F -> G Assuming an arbitrary number of gates, we want to check if the circuit ever connects back into itself at an earlier state? For example: E AND F -> A This should be illegal since it creates an endless cycle. What design pattern would best be able to check for these cycles?"}
{"_id": "234357", "title": "MVC design, singleton in model with initialization", "text": "I've recently learned of MVC (model view controller) and am trying to refactor an existing program. I am in a situation where I'd like to have exactly one object of a particular class so it seemed evident that I should use a singleton. This singleton will be used to keep a hashmap of certain things. However this hashmap will have to be initialized when the singleton is created by reading nodes from a xml file and storing them as class objects. Now my dilemma is:   1. If I initialize the xml attributes (reading and converting to class objects), I'm effectively doing things in the model class that the controller should be doing, which is definitely not good.    2. If I put the initialization method in a controller class, I would have to refer to a controller class from a model class, which does not conform to the MVC design.   3. If I put the whole singleton in controller, then I'd have to look for the hashmap in the controller package, which defeats the purpose of having model classes.   4. I can't pass a premade hashmap to the singleton as a parameter neither, because the constructor is private.. Well, I technically could, by giving it to the getInstance() method as a parameter, but it feels like a dirty way of fixing, since I now either pass null every time, or make another getInstance() method that doesn't accept a parameter. Right now, my code is looking like this:               public class CategoryCatalog{              private static CategoryCatalog categoryCatalog;         private HashMap<CarOptionCategory, Set<ICarOption>> categoryOptionsMap;              private CategoryCatalog(){             categoryOptionsMap = new HashMap<CarOptionCategory, Set<ICarOption>>();             initialize();         }              public static CategoryCatalog getInstance(){             if(categoryCatalog == null){                 categoryCatalog = new CategoryCatalog();             }             return categoryCatalog;         }              private void initialize(){             // TODO: xml         }     }      Am I overlooking something or should I use a different approach?"}
{"_id": "234352", "title": "Should a stored proc try to do more, in the attempt to avoid php mysql back and forth overhead", "text": "I have a REST architecture, running PHP on the server side which store and query a Mysql database. I am re-evaluating one architecture design decision: **DECISION** to re-evaluate: In an attempt to avoid back and forth communications overhead between PHP and Mysql:   1. For some browser requests (for example: 'GET /sessions/4'), one request requires a big response with related objects links.   2. For these situations, I have designed some big mysql stored procedures to query multiple tables. Therefore, for one browser request, PHP launch this one Mysql stored procedure which execute. On PHP result reception, my PHP code goes through each Packet of query results to create objects and link them logically.   3. At the end of this process, PHP query my internal logical view objects to construct the formatted response returned to the browser request.   4. The alternative would be to request multiple stored procedure and launch each of them within PHP instead of within this one stored procedure. **PROBLEMS** : It becomes quite hard to manage changes over time. These stored procedure becomes hard to maintain cause each table change, have an impact on one of them. **QUESTION** : I have started this design, because many code generated framework are being criticized for their lack of efficiency on communication between the PHP and Mysql layer. Doing those stored procedure by hand, I expected to have the best performance in production, however, the maintenance start to be annoying. Is real life high efficiency architecture attempts to limit the number of PHP-(Mysql stored procedure) back and forth communication or am I attempting to surround a false problem ??? Thanks"}
{"_id": "177872", "title": "How lookaheads are propagated in \"channel\" method of building LALR parser?", "text": "The method is described in Dragon Book, however I read about it in \"\"Parsing Techniques\" by D.Grune and C.J.H.Jacobs\". I start from my understanding of building channels for NFA:   1. channels are built once, they are like water channels with current   2. you \"drop\" lookahead symbols in right places (sources) of the channel, and they propagate with \"current\"   3. when symbol propagates, there are no barriers (the only sufficient things for propagation are presence of channel and direction/current); i.e. lookahead cannot just die out of the blue Is that right? If I am correct, then `eof` lookahead should be present in all states, because the source of it is the start production, and all other production states are reachable from start state. How the DFA is made out of this NFA is not perfectly clear for me -- the authors of the mentioned book write about preserving channels, but I see no purpose, if you propagated lookaheads. If the channels have to be preserved, are they cut off from the source if the DFA state does not include source NFA state? I assume no -- the channels still runs between DFA states, not only within given DFA state. In the effect `eof` should still be present in all items in all states. But when you take a look at DFA presented in book (pdf is from errata): DFA for LALR (fig. 9.34 in the book, p.301) you will see there are items without `eof` in lookahead. The grammar for this DFA is:               S -> E     E -> E - T     E -> T     T -> ( E )     T -> n      So how it was computed, when `eof` was dropped, and on what condition? ## Update It is textual pdf, so two interesting states (in DFA; `#` is `eof`): State 1:               S--- >\u2022E[#]     E--- >\u2022E-T[#-]     E--- >\u2022T[#-]     T--- >\u2022n[#-]     T--- >\u2022(E)[#-]      State 6:               T--- >(\u2022E)[#-)]     E--- >\u2022E-T[-)]     E--- >\u2022T[-)]     T--- >\u2022n[-)]     T--- >\u2022(E)[-)]      Arc from 1 to 6 is labeled `(`."}
{"_id": "177873", "title": "Is it safe to modify sources in repository while git svn dcommit is in progress?", "text": "I have a big repository and `git svn dcommit` takes pretty big time. Will my repo be in consistent state if I'll modify sources (without any git operations) while dcommit is in progress?"}
{"_id": "177875", "title": "Why is the sudden increase in number of Git submitters on Debian popcon graph in 2010-01?", "text": "Almost every article I've read 1 comparing Git and Mercurial it seems like Mercurial has a better command line UX with each command being limited to one idea only (unlike say `git checkout`). But at some point Git suddenly became looking super popular and number of Git submitters on Debian popcon graph (see graph image below) literally exploded. ![Git vs. Mercurial popularity](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nq8qW.png) Source: Debian What happened in 2010-01 that things suddenly changed. Looks like GitHub was founded earlier than that - 2008."}
{"_id": "177879", "title": "Type inference in Java 8", "text": "Is the introduction of the new lambda notation (see e.g. this article) in Java 8 going to require some kind of type inference? If so, how will the new type system impact the Java language as a whole?"}
{"_id": "35917", "title": "Do you know any scenario where asp.net mvc can outperform asp.net?", "text": "Do you know any scenario where asp.net mvc can outperform asp.net? Because while comparing these two, people always say that each of them are different beasts and may be a better choice depending upon the scenario."}
{"_id": "228266", "title": "Is TCP message order still guaranteed when using async IO", "text": "Here the scenario I'm imagining. Two messages are transferred, both will require 2 packets each (I know you don't deal with packets directly with TCP, but on the IP level each message will consist of 2 packets [or segments as they're called in TCP]) The problem I'm imaging is buffering the first packet of the first message, but a router dumps the second packet for some reason. Being TCP, the second packet is guaranteed to be resent, and I know that TCP will hand these two packets up to the application layer in order. But while being handled asynchronously, this first packet will still be handed up to the application which will not block during the period in which the underlying TCP layer handles the retransmission of the second packet. What will happen if the first packet of the second transmission arrives before the last packet of the first transmission? Will TCP not hand these packets up until the first transmission is handled in full? Will an async client not send the second message before the first has been handled in full? I know that TCP will guarantee the order of packets for each message. My confusion is whether it will fully complete one transmission before processing the second transmission when being handled asynchronously."}
{"_id": "35911", "title": "Best book to learn objective C for experienced programmers", "text": "I am an experienced C#/C++ developer. What is the best book to learn Objective C for programmers like me? PS: I interested in developing for the iPhone."}
{"_id": "133817", "title": "What function or method can I use to equally distribute a workload", "text": "This is more of mathematical question than an algorithmic one; nevertheless it will be implemented in php. I have an array of N tasks. Each task has taken t time to complete(e.g. task 1 has taken 5 hours to complete.) Now, in order to review that these tasks were completed correctly, I have to assign a certain number of users U to review each of them. Each user will be assigned a certain number of tasks, ideally, with each user having roughly the same amount of hours assigned as the other. E.G. There are 10 tasks. task 1 took 4 hours, task 2 took 18 hours, task 3 took 6 hours...etc... totaling 80 hours. There are 8 users. If each of the 8 users is to ideally have the same amount of hours (some users get more, yet less lengthier tasks, some users get less, yet lengthier tasks), what is a good way to automatically sort assign the tasks?"}
{"_id": "133819", "title": "When making a website. How do you keep track of an ever growing set of url parameters and expected values?", "text": "A website I'm making has been growing larger and larger feature wise. Which means there's more URL parameters that get passed from page A to B or B to C, etc. Does anyone have any tips for how to keep track of and use parameter keys and expected values? Ex. Say a url I need to build is `www.example.com?type=this&mode=a` Is there some kind of a system that will let me easily keep track of the fact that the \"type\" parameter key is in fact \"type\"? I tried to keep them all in a constants class, but that class quickly grew out of hand.               public class URLParameters {             public static final String TYPE = \"type\" ;        public static final String MODE = \"mode\" ;             //more \"keys\"            public static class Values {               public static final String TYPE_THIS = \"this\" ;          public static final String TYPE_THAT = \"that\" ;               public static final String MODE_PRIMARY = \"a\" ;          public static final String MODE_SECONDARY = \"b\" ;              //more expected values       }          }"}
{"_id": "215712", "title": "Type checking and recursive types (Writing the Y combinator in Haskell/Ocaml)", "text": "When explaining the Y combinator in the context of Haskell, it's usually noted that the straight-forward implementation won't type-check in Haskell because of its recursive type. For example, from Rosettacode:               The obvious definition of the Y combinator in Haskell canot be used     because it contains an infinite recursive type (a = a -> b). Defining     a data type (Mu) allows this recursion to be broken.          newtype Mu a = Roll { unroll :: Mu a -> a }          fix :: (a -> a) -> a     fix = \\f -> (\\x -> f (unroll x x)) $ Roll (\\x -> f (unroll x x))      And indeed, the \u201cobvious\u201d definition does not type check:               \u03bb> let fix f g = (\\x -> \\a -> f (x x) a) (\\x -> \\a -> f (x x) a) g          <interactive>:10:33:         Occurs check: cannot construct the infinite type:           t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1         Expected type: t2 -> t0 -> t1           Actual type: (t2 -> t0 -> t1) -> t0 -> t1         In the first argument of `x', namely `x'         In the first argument of `f', namely `(x x)'         In the expression: f (x x) a          <interactive>:10:57:         Occurs check: cannot construct the infinite type:           t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1         In the first argument of `x', namely `x'         In the first argument of `f', namely `(x x)'         In the expression: f (x x) a     (0.01 secs, 1033328 bytes)      The same limitation exists in Ocaml:               utop # let fix f g = (fun x a -> f (x x) a) (fun x a -> f (x x) a) g;;     Error: This expression has type 'a -> 'b but an expression was expected of type 'a                                                The type variable 'a occurs inside 'a -> 'b      However, in Ocaml, one can allow recursive types by passing in the `-rectypes` switch:                  -rectypes               Allow  arbitrary  recursive  types  during type-checking.  By default, only recursive               types where the recursion goes through an object type are supported.      By using `-rectypes`, everything works:               utop # let fix f g = (fun x a -> f (x x) a) (fun x a -> f (x x) a) g;;     val fix : (('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b = <fun>     utop # let fact_improver partial n = if n = 0 then 1 else n*partial (n-1);;     val fact_improver : (int -> int) -> int -> int = <fun>     utop # (fix fact_improver) 5;;     - : int = 120      Being curious about type systems and type inference, this raises some questions I'm still not able to answer.   * First, how does the type checker come up with the type `t2 = t2 -> t0 -> t1`? Having come up with that type, I guess the problem is that the type (`t2`) refers to itself on the right side?   * Second, and perhaps most interesting, what is the reason for the Haskell/Ocaml type systems to disallow this? I guess there _is_ a good reason since Ocaml also will not allow it by default even if it _can_ deal with recursive types if given the `-rectypes` switch. If these are really big topics, I'd appreciate pointers to relevant literature."}
{"_id": "245055", "title": "Presenter accessing the value in text box using sender object", "text": "I have following method in my presenters which validates the user inputs on the UI. Basically to capture the value of the text property of the text box, it uses sender object which was passed in by the event fire on the form. **PRESENTER**               _View.ValidateInPut += new EventHandler(_View_ValidateInPut);          private void _View_ValidateInPut(object sender,  EventArgs e)     {         var controller = (TextBox)sender;         var text = controller.Text;              If (text is InValid)         MessageBox.Show (\"The value in the Text box is invalid\");          }      **VIEW**               private void txtACNo_Validating(object sender, CancelEventArgs e)     {         ValidateInPut(sender, e); // Firing the event     }      Will this lead to unexpected errors? If so please let me know a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "183606", "title": "Handling table name collisions in Django", "text": "Django creates a table name by joining the app label with the model name. A project can have many apps. If two have the same label, how can both be used in the same database? I'm currently using very long app names to minimize that risk (such as `foo_bar_baz` instead of nesting modules like `foo.bar.baz` \\- app label `baz`). That might be overkill for an internal app (i.e. not meant for reuse), but I have also some modules that are generic and could be used in different projects (which I'm making freely available on the internet, so the possibility of name clashing is greater). If someone downloads my modules, finds a name collision with another third-party app, but doesn't want to change either code (it would be a maintainance hell) what could he do about it? I thought of \"monkey patching\" the apps to add a custom `db_table` to each model, or Django, to change the way the default table name is derived, or maybe ensuring every app uses dependency injection to refer to other apps (so one could freely rename/symlink the app without breaking others that depend on it), but all options seem a lot of work and/or too easily broken. Is there an easier way? Should I drop all this altogether and just keep using fully- qualified names?"}
{"_id": "183602", "title": "C++ on Windows vs Linux - common issues?", "text": "So far all my development in C++ has been targeted to Windows, however I have always had it in the back of my mind that I will someday be targeting Linux. I am aware therefore of the need to select cross-platform libraries, and to keep my code as portable as possible (or provide alternative implementations for code which isn't portable). This question therefore does not relate to issues of code compilation. I would like to know, what are some common issues that a developer will face when targeting both Linux and Windows? In particular, but not limited to:   1. Best practices for handling configuration files. On Windows it seems this is fairly arbitrary - I've seen software store their configuration inside the program folder, in the user's folder (under appData), and in the registry. On Linux it seems much more heavily weighted towards dedicated configuration folders (/etc). How should I handle these differences in my code? Do I hard code the locations, or is there some system-defined function I can consult?   2. Same as (1) but for logging.   3. How do I go about keeping my project files in sync? E.g. if I update something in a Visual Studio project file, do I generally need to manually update the equivalent thing in whatever Linux environment I'm working in, or is there a commonly used method of avoiding this?   4. What is the best way to handle platform implementation differences in my code? Should I use #ifdefs, or should I keep the platform-specific code in separate files and have the project specify which files are included?   5. Anything else I haven't thought of which I should start considering / researching?"}
{"_id": "127821", "title": "Benchmarking databases", "text": "I see lots of discussions flying around about performance of db 'x' or that moving from 'x' to 'y' improved our site performance. I'm yet to see proper benchmarking that works across different types of databases.   1. **Is it possible to write a meaningful benchmark that could be used across multiple db types, such as Relational, Document-oriented, etc.**   2. **How would you go about designing such a benchmark?**"}
{"_id": "103914", "title": "Why and when should I make a class 'static'? What is the purpose of 'static' keyword on classes?", "text": "The `static` keyword on a member in many languages mean that you shouldn't create an instance of that class to be able to have access to that member. However, I don't see any justification to make an entire class `static`. Why and when should I make a class `static`? What benefits do I get from making a class `static`? I mean, after declaring a static class, one should still declare all members which he/she wants to have access to without instantiation, as static too. This means that for example, `Math` class could be declared normal (not static), without affecting how developers code. In other words, making a class static or normal is kind of transparent to developers."}
{"_id": "184461", "title": "use of jquery-latest", "text": "I recently had some code I wrote a year ago fail because someone linked my code to > http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js In the latest version, jquery had deprecated/replaced a function. Nice to have a dynamically updated version but my code isn't going to change, it's going to break. Is there any reason to use jquery-latest?"}
{"_id": "131417", "title": "How to introduce a new pattern into an existing codebase?", "text": "In my quest to better my development skills I learn new design patterns. In sample projects or personal projects it's really easy to adapt new patterns into my code. However at work I have a large code base that I am responsible for architecting and maintaining. This question is focused on writing consistent and maintainable code will still providing business value. When I learn new patterns I find myself conflicted on how to proceed moving forward on an existing codebase. **Do I go back update my code to use my new pattern ?**   * This has the downside of not providing a ton of business value and might not be the best way to efficiently utilize my time. **Do I move forward and use my new pattern/technique in any new code ?**   * This has the downside of being inconsistent, thus making my code less maintainable and setting a poor precedent for new team members.  Optionally I could just catalog the new technique in my head but not implement it. I really dislike this option though."}
{"_id": "131414", "title": "WCF and Service Registry", "text": "I am about to build some WCF Services. Those services need to communicate to each others too, in some scenarios. I've done some \"Google-ing\" about Service Registry but can't figure out how to implement service registry with WCF; is there any other alternate? Is there any Microsoft technology available for Service Registry? I'm new to SOA and I will really appreciate any help or guidance (what and where should I exactly look for registry services)."}
{"_id": "159569", "title": "Smalltalk Beginner needs help", "text": "I was wondering if someone can point me to some good resources in regards to learning Smalltalk. Total \"newb\" here :) so I'm looking for like a foundation tutorial. I saw a few videos on Youtube, but most seem to deal with specifics. I'm looking for more of a high-level overview of the language, as I'm trying to learn the principles/best practices behind OOP. From reading here, Smalltalk seems to be a good foundation. Thanks in advance for your help!"}
{"_id": "180550", "title": "Good resources for a MVC.Net developer going back to WebForms?", "text": "Well it looks like I may be forced to build a new system in webforms after having worked exclusively in MVC for the last 3 years. Initially I didnt think this was going to be a problem except the application calls for a very large amount of ajax and rich client-side interaction, (think GMail or Facebook). Back when I was doing heavy WebForms development we were only doing small amounts of ajax. I remember AJAX update panels being an absolute nightmare. I remember I ended up using mostly straight html and using JQuery to hit ASHX handlers. Basically I know good clean ways of doing almost everything with MVC.Net but having to use WebControls and having seperate webpages everywhere seems like a night mare to me. **Does anyone know any good resources for going from MVC.Net to WebForms?** Seems like a completely idiotic thing to do in my opinion but I planning for the worst."}
{"_id": "240809", "title": "What's the most flexible way to ship changeable resources such as icons for an application?", "text": "We're currently upgrading some components of our application to new technologies such as C# using WPF and MVVM. Since we try to avoid past mistakes that have been made in our now legacy applications, a question came up in our team how we should ship external resources that are likely to change, such as icons or images. In our legacy applications they were basically embedded in each applications, which required a full recompile of the applications just to change some icon. We don't want to just dump the raw files into a folder either, since some of them might be licensed and shouldn't be directly accessible to the customer. We thought that we split all our resources into an external file (such as a DLL), which all our applications can access. So every time some resource is changed, we just have to ship a new version of our resource library. However there are some cases, where a general storage is not desirable, for example if just one specific icon in a single application should change. If we'd just replace that resource, it would likely change in all applications using that resource. How do \"big\" applications handle this or is there a best practice in how to do this?"}
{"_id": "180555", "title": "In functional programming, does having most of the data structures immutable require more memory usage?", "text": "In functional programming since almost all data structure are immutable, when the state has to change a new structure is created. Does this mean a lot more memory usage? I know the object oriented programming paradigm well, now I'm trying to learn about the functional programming paradigm. The concept of everything being immutable confuses me. It would seem like the a program using immutable structures would require much more memory than a program with mutable structures. Am I even looking at this in the right way?"}
{"_id": "4296", "title": "How do you encourage your organization to move from Java to Scala?", "text": "Has anybody's organization started the migration from Java to Scala? If yes, how do you do that? What can I do to encourage my colleagues to do the same?"}
{"_id": "240801", "title": "Is this actually good OO design?", "text": "## Context I have `Specification` class with several properties including: StartDate, EndDate, DaysToComplete, DateToComplete. A specification contains a list of required courses (i.e. a company requires employees to take training... perhaps a technical, diversity, or an ethics class). Based on a specification, courses will be mandated to employees. ## Validation Concerns StartDate and EndDate refer to the window of time in which a company can mandate a class to a user. DaysToComplete is how many days the employee has to compete training from the time it's mandated to them, whereas DateToComplete is the last day they have to complete the course.   * StartDate must always be specified   * DaysToComplete and DateToComplete are mutually exclusive... one and only one must be specified.   * If EndDate is not specified, then DaysToComplete must be used   * If StartDate = EndDate, then DateToComplete must be used And there are other obvious validation rules such as the fact that you wouldn't have an EndDate greater than the DateToComplete since you wouldn't mandate a course after it already had to be completed. ## The Problem It seems as though there is a case here for having a base class and 4 derived classes with the following properties (i.e. this is how I was instructed to and did design the objects):   * SpecificationBase: StartDate   * PerpetualSpecification: DaysToComplete   * OneTimeSpecification*: DateToComplete   * FixedSpecification: EndDate, CompletionDate   * SlidingSpecification: EndDate, DaysToComplete *When a user enters an EndDate that equals the StartDate they must use DateToComplete. In this case the EndDate is not actually saved though. So we're using inheritance to do two things here: encapsulate validation rules and not expose properties that don't exist for particular scenarios. As far as validation goes, from my perspective, the rules are always the same for all scenarios. Yes, certain properties don't apply in all scenarios but for the ones that do the validation logic really doesn't change. The argument, however, is that it is easier to comprehend the validation logic this way because putting it in all in the base class would be too complicated (writing a factory method to choose the right type based on user input and create it with reflection was, by comparison, considered not a big deal at all). And as for hiding unused properties (or as my team lead insists: not exposing properties that don't exist), the argument started out as being an OO design principle that data and behavior should be coupled... until I pointed out that it would still be coupled in the base class without the derived classes (not to mention the data isn't decoupled in the database either). I highly respect my team lead and from a purely philosophical/idealistic point of view this design seems great, but in practice it seems to create more problems than it solves:   * Had to create a factory method since we just get input from users without making them specify the type   * 3rd party tools that rely on reflection can't work with a list of different types with different properties so I have to create a proxy (or cheat and just put the data into an anonymous type and hope I'm never asked to provide a way to update the data from a grid control)   * Because consuming code only uses the factory method, it doesn't know what specific type it has or which properties are on it. This means if/then statements to test for what type I'm working with before trying to access a property that might not exist. I'm sorry for the incredibly long essay, but I just wanted to provide ample context and background before asking my question: Is this 'really' good OO design? I feel like good OO design should make life easier... not harder. What am I missing here? ## Edit: More Info I realize now I left out a an important detail. My team lead is very, very big on requiring all data needed to initialize a proper type to be passed into its constructor (and not allowing a default constructor), and putting validation logic in the properties' set accessors. He feels this is the best way to prevent bad data from getting into the database. I don't particularly like this approach, however he's worked at some places where lack of good validation caused serious, serious problems. So that's why I use a factory method... but the drawback of that is that type casting is required when the extended properties have to be worked with. Another drawback is that if I make the properties virtual then now, because of our validation approach, I have to call virtual properties from the constructor. Actually I ended up doing just that of necessity and practicality, but I'm didn't mention it in the beginning because doing so was a 'work around' to the actual design that I wanted to ask about."}
{"_id": "218958", "title": "Windows Console App vs Service", "text": "## My Situation I work for a company that builds software for many other companies. When I learned installers weren't built-in with VS2012, I was curious how to deploy. So far, I have just been dropping .exes on our clients servers using PowerShell scripts. Now I need a full-blown Windows service. I have seen many example of how to run services via a console application: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7764088/net-console-application-as-windows- service I could easily use `sc.exe` to create a service based on a console application like this. I have no idea how Windows would handle Start/Stop/Restart, though. ## The Question This has made me curious what the relationship between console applications and services is in the Window's world. Are services just console applications with hooks to allow the OS to call start and stop? Or are services completely different? A long time ago, I thought WinForms and console applications were completely different. After messing around in Win32, I realized they were the same thing. ## My Hopes I am hoping services are just console apps, like WinForms, and that I can tap into the Start/Stop capabilities directly in .NET. The built-in installer projects were pretty awful, so I don't feel too bad for copying .exes to the server."}
{"_id": "218952", "title": "What does Dependency Injection mean by saying it can inject on runtime?", "text": "I understand that the dependency injection is something done by coding and its all done at compile time. And that Dependency injection coding is easily done now by helper tools like Ninject. However this is at compile time that the dependency injection occurs. Then what does it mean that dependency injection also occurs at Runtime? This is straight from wiki about Dependency Injection > Dependency injection is a software design pattern that allows the removal of > hard-coded dependencies and makes it possible to change them, whether at > run-time or compile-time. I mean I thought about it and came up with the idea that it may refer to multiple interfaces to a single class when a Delegate calls a metho from one of the interfaces, dependency injection decides something like this at runtime, but when I went deeper into it and even discussed it with my boss it sounded like its not that simple as that. And that then, how does the dependency injection makes this decision and assume it the correct one? Anyone can help me clear out this question?"}
{"_id": "177294", "title": "Transitioning to asynchronous programming model", "text": "our team is mantaining and developing a .NET web service written in C#. We have stress tested the web service's farm and we have evidence that the actual architecture doesn't scale well, as the number of request are constantly increasing. We analyzed Martin Fowler's conclusion in this article, and our team feels that migrating to an asynchronous programming model such as the one described could be the right direction to point to for our service too. My question is: do you think that this \"switch\" needs a complete rewrite of the application? Has been someone of you been able to adopt APM without rewriting everything and has some insight to share? Thank you in advance"}
{"_id": "177299", "title": "What are some important guidelines when starting a software cooperative?", "text": "We are a group of people who are about to start a software cooperative, which means all of us (and other future workers) will be the owners of the 'company' rather than having bosses and employees. We do this from ideological reasons but also because we believe this allows many advantages - power of democracy (see SE..) , motivation, creativity, good work relations and atmosphere and more. We do face some questions about how exactly ownership of our products should be split, should we give different percentage for different people which put in a different amount of work hours or brings expert knowledge. We want people to feel they get what they deserve, not more, not less, and we're not sure just splitting it even will give this feeling. What are some good guidelines for solving these questions in a cooperative?"}
{"_id": "228485", "title": "Etiquette using code found on GitHub and using Code beyond included Libraries", "text": "I've been trying to find what I'm supposed to do when I want to use code I find on GitHub. I think this post had some good information but I'm still somewhat confused. I want to use code found in this repository https://github.com/wcdolphin/python-bcrypt So according to the answer given the post, I'm to take the content in the LICENSE file of that repository and add it to the LICENSE in my project? I understand that I should give acknowledgement to the creator, how do I do that? Do I create a .txt file in the directory that holds the module that is their code and say something like \"Created by wcdolphin, found at https://github.com/wcdolphin/python-bcrypt\"? Also, I haven't used used libraries beyond what is included with the Python library before. I see installation instructions there, but that would only work on my machine right? Can I download and add these files into my project directory and use them as modules? I found this post but I'm not sure if I can custom install stuff on Google App Engine. I intend on hosting my project up there(I'm not going to try to homebrew encrypt super sensitive information, it's more of a demonstration) and I think, with my limited knowledge, uploading the source with my source would be the best way. Thanks"}
{"_id": "77009", "title": "How can I make refactoring a priority for my team?", "text": "The codebase I work with daily has no automated tests, inconsistent naming and tons of comments like \"Why is this here?\", \"Not sure if this is needed\" or \"This method isn't named right\" and the code is littered with \"Changelogs\" despite the fact we use source control. Suffice it to say, our codebase could use refactoring. We always have tasks to fix bugs or add new features, so no time is put aside to refactor code to be better and more modular, and it doesn't seem to be a high priority. How can I demonstrate the value of refactoring such that it gets added to our task lists? Is it worth it to just refactor as I go, asking for forgiveness rather than permission?"}
{"_id": "214023", "title": "How best to implement a Dashboard from data in HDFS/Hadoop", "text": "We have a bunch of data (several TB) in Hadoop HDFS and it's growing. We want to create a dashboard that reports on the contents in there e.g counts of different types of objects, trends over time etc. Our first thought was to use something like Oracle Tableau or d3.js and to use Hive queries. But Hive is just too darn slow for these \"precanned\" queries. Now we're thinking of using Hive to extract data regularly from HDFS and store the output in a \"more real time\" database e.g. HBase or an RDBMS (e.g. MySQL). That'll work but I'm worried we're missing a simpler / easier solution (if there is one) that requires less ETL / extracts and duplicate data storage mechanisms (HDFS + something else)"}
{"_id": "19573", "title": "What are the worst false economies in software development?", "text": "What are the worst false economies (that is ways of saving money that ultimately cost more than they save) prevalent in the software industry and how do you combat them?"}
{"_id": "43442", "title": "English to French translation of computing terminology", "text": "I work in France as a Java programmer, mainly in French, but am a native English speaker. My level of French is pretty good (French wife!), but one thing I have problems with is working out whether to use English terminology or a French equivalent. Examples:   * lock (as in a synchronisation lock) - do I use the verb \"locker\" or do I use verrouiller?   * shard (databases) - \"un shard\" or \"un tesson\" (which means a shard of glass) ...and so-on... So, what do people recommend? Can anyone point out some good websites for translating this kind of terminology? The usual online translation tools are a bit too everyday English/French, not the slightly more specialised version that I find myself needing."}
{"_id": "43443", "title": "Do high standards necessarily lead to frustration, and how to deal with it?", "text": "I consider myself a programming language enthusiast. When I find bad code, especially my own, it is hard to understand, hard to change, and hard to test. My coworkers don't know better, or don't care. I am frustrated that I can't raise the code quality by myself. Is it normal to feel frustrated when the code quality, and maintainability, is not up to my standards? If so, how do you deal with it?"}
{"_id": "170476", "title": "Can SDK license influence an application license?", "text": "Let's say SDK is under specific license that is not compatible with some other licenses (like Flex SDK with GPLv2). Can I create an application by using for example Flex SDK, and license its distribution under GPLv2? Can my application be considered a derivative work? What is a relation between SDK license and application license that was build by using that SDK?"}
{"_id": "177127", "title": "Is there an appropriate coding style for implementing an algorithm during an interview?", "text": "I failed an interview question in C years ago about converting hex to decimal by not exploiting the ASCII table `if (inputDigitByte > 9) hex = inputDigitByte - 'a'`. The rise of Unicode has made this question pretty silly, but the point was that the interviewer valued raw execution speed above readability and error handling. They tell you to review algorithms textbooks to prepare for these interviews, yet these same textbooks tend to favor the implementation with the fewest lines of code, even if it has to rely on magic numbers (like \"infinity\") and a slower, more memory-intensive implementation (like a linked list instead of an array) to do that. I don't know what is right. Coding an algorithm within the space of an interview has at least 3 constraints: time to code, elegance/readability, and efficiency of execution. What trade-offs are appropriate for interview code?   * How much do you follow the textbook definition of an algorithm? Is it better to eliminate recursion, unroll loops, and use arrays for efficiency? Or is it better to use recursion and special values like \"infinity\" or Integer.MAX_VALUE to reduce the number of lines of code needed to write the algorithm?   * Interface: Make a very self-contained, bullet-proof interface, or sloppy and fast? On the one extreme, the array to be sorted might be a public static variable. On the other extreme, it might need to be passed to each method, allowing methods to be called individually from different threads for different purposes.   * Is it appropriate to use a linked-list data structure for items that are traversed in one direction vs. using arrays and doubling the size when the array is full? Implementing a singly-linked list during the interview is often much faster to code and easier remember for recursive algorithms like MergeSort.   * Thread safety - just document that it's unsafe, or say so verbally? How much should the interviewee be looking for opportunities for parallel processing?   * Is bit shifting appropriate? `x / 2` or `x >> 1`   * Polymorphism, type safety, and generics?   * Comments?   * Variable and method names: `qs(a, p, q, r)` vs: `quickSort(theArray, minIdx, partIdx, maxIdx)`   * How much should you use existing APIs? Obviously you can't use a java.util.HashMap to implement a hash-table, but what about using a java.util.List to accumulate your sorted results? Are there any guiding principals that would answer these and other questions, or is the guiding principal to ask the interviewer? Or maybe this should be the basis of a discussion while writing the code? If an interviewer can't or won't answer one of these questions, are there any tips for coaxing the information out of them?"}
{"_id": "17606", "title": "Will You Use an Online Technical Skills Test to Hire a Senior Developer?", "text": "There are online services such as IKM that offer skills tests in many areas, including programming. > Would you use these kind of tests when hiring for a senior developer > position? What about just for objectively benchmarking candidates before calling them for an interview? Would you use it as a step after short-listing candidates after interviews? Is this approach more suitable in some situations compared to others? Have you personally used this kind of service or know someone who has?"}
{"_id": "17600", "title": "What software do you use to track time spent on a project?", "text": "What software do you use to track time spent on a project?"}
{"_id": "13515", "title": "Do social networks increase development productivity?", "text": "I am a developer a fairly large firm of programmers (100+). Since there are several departments and several teams within each department; communication is an issue regarding: sharing of ideas, availability of resources/tools, use of good/bad coding practices, awareness of existing utilities, etc. What social networks (Facebook/StackExchange) are out there that are used 'in- house' for work related communications? What business cases could be used to help senior management see the value of a resource like this for increased productivity?"}
{"_id": "101515", "title": "Is it possible to create and boot a scratch-built Operating System for iTouch devices?", "text": "So, what would I need to write \"Hello world\" on the iPod Touch on boot? Make that the entire operating system? Which compiler would I use, how would the graphics be done...? Can this be done without too much effort? I know writing an Assembly boot loader isn't that hard..."}
{"_id": "235758", "title": "The problem of dependencies management", "text": "Let's consider the next situation:   1. We have a module A which has a class Crt570 intended to interact with a device.   2. We have a module B which uses Crt570 in the class called M100Communicator.   3. We have two applications C and D and both of them wants to use module B.   4. Application D wants to use B, but doesn't want to use Crt570 and reference module A, therefore. \"Module\" here means dll. So we decided to extract an interface from Crt570 and called it ICrt570. But what to do with that now? It's just very strange to move ICrt570 into the domain module (let's call it module E) or somewhere else because after that Crt570 has to reference the module which will contain ICrt570! How to solve the puzzle? **UPDATE** In order to make the question more clear for readers in the future I'll add a bit more details. Module A is the dll which contains nothing but Crt570 class (with it's infrastructure). So this dll is dedicated to manage a device absolutely, nothing more. Module B is the dll which contains models specific for several applications in our domain. At least 3 applications want to use this module and they, of course, don't want to pull dll's they don't need. One of the models that C and D apps want to use is the M100Communicator model. And, in particular, this class (M100Communicator) depends on module A (Crt570 class). Module E which I mentioned is a domain module. It contains many classes and interfaces, so module A doesn't want to use it, apparently."}
{"_id": "185736", "title": "Are there any existing standard software design guidelines?", "text": "My team of about 70 programmers is developing C and C++ code for embedded, multiprocessor, image-processing project. We have a coding standard, and hold design and code reviews. The problem is that we don't have solid design review checklist. Currently we have scattered design checklists, but most of them are vague. For example, you might find statements like these:   * Component design should be extendable.   * Coupling should be reduced between modules. The problem of these statements is that they are totally subjective and not measurable. Extendable design for me might means something else for another one. Is there some kind of widely accepted or proven checklist or design rules that can serve as a basis for our design reviews, especially for our object- oriented C++ code base?"}
{"_id": "101513", "title": "Is it acceptable to use lambda functions\\methods in business software?", "text": "I've noticed posts on here demonstrating the use of delegates\\lambda functions to solve the hole in the middle idea without a lot of repetition: http://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2009/04/04/functional-c-the-hole-in-the- middle-pattern/ The problem seems to be that junior developers and others don't necessarily understand what the function pointer\\delegate\\lambda function concept is, which seems to make reading (and possibly debugging) the code more difficult. Should we avoid or severely limit the use of this tool in writing business software, especially in small team or sole developer shops? Or is it acceptable to use it with appropriate comments and expect that when I'm no longer around that the next developer will understand or learn about lambda functions?"}
{"_id": "230505", "title": "How do I properly add a reference from my Github project to someone elses in VS2013 on Windows 8?", "text": "I need to reference the latest version of Bouncy Castle in a project I intend to publish to Github. In my first posting of the code to Github, someone complained that I downloaded the entire Bouncy Castle library, added it as a project, and uploaded it. What is the correct way to link to the latest version of this Bouncy Castle DLL so that my references are properly maintained?"}
{"_id": "140199", "title": "How much extra time is needed to add unit test in a development task?", "text": "My team is considering moving to test-driven development. Currently we have almost no unit testing, we have been only relying on the user acceptance test, and developer's own manual test. Not everyone have agreed with this proposal. In the team, no one really has an experience on unit testing, so it's hard to convince everyone the benefit of doing it. One of the objection is the time needed. My question is, how much extra time is usually needed to add unit test, relative to the task itself? Let's say if the coding of a task (excluding acceptance test) takes half a day, how much time will the unit test take, in average? This estimation is important for us to explain the relative benefit of doing unit test, and to adjust our planning. If it matters, we are mostly working with .NET desktop application (with a GUI and a database), and it is not safety-critical (I mean, it's not for a nuclear power plant or stuff like that). Also note that none of us have experience, so there will be a learning curve"}
{"_id": "181608", "title": "Choosing a proper wording for referring compiler errors", "text": "Consider someone is writing a message (or a question at StackOverflow). The context is following: > In my code, I have the following line:   >  `int foo = Bar();` > > However, the compiler **returns** an error:   >  _line 42: Bar() is unknown function_ I'm puzzled to choose a proper verb instead of **\"returns\"**. I've seen people using various verbs for it, but I stuck every time I read it:   * \"returns\" can be confused with a function return value;   * \"throws\" is for exceptions;   * \"prints\" has a little sense as the compiler output is not always printed;   * \"outs\", \"outputs\", or \"gives\" do not sound professional;   * \"the compiler complains\" sounds a bit like personification of the compiler; What is the proper verb in this situation?"}
{"_id": "140196", "title": "Common practice in handling bounce message", "text": "At now I mainly create a mail account separately (with different domain name eg.noreply@example.com) and i add this mail as one return path. So the bounce message will only go to that mailbox and i parse the mail message one by one to check the failure receipent and the error code, then i convert the error code to the actual error message. Finally, the error message and the fail receipent's mail are post to my system and let my system user check the bounce information. Is it a common practice? Since i am worry about the mail other from bounce message have sent to my mail box, that would be a disaster if i parse them without filter them out, but how can i filter out between bounce message and normal mail? Thank you for any kind of help."}
{"_id": "140191", "title": "What benefits does embedding resources into the source/binary provide?", "text": "I have 300-500 images and other files that my program uses. I realize I have two options:   1. Save them in a binary format such as BMP which is loaded dynamically.   2. Save them in a C source file such as XPM which allows it to be compiled into the program, but it also can be loaded dynamically. Assuming both are just as easy to implement and I don't require dynamic loading, what are benefits of each method? How would the loading/startup speed compare?"}
{"_id": "124704", "title": "What should we provide to a dev team hired to complete a new project?", "text": "We are wanting to have developers build an in-house payroll and time sheet application using symfony2/doctrine2. We are simply at conceptual stage at this point and this will be our first time and getting developers to build an application for our company. Hence, it is very important to us that we provide the most valid and important information to what will be our new developer team. What documents or tools should we provide to the new team to maximize the odds of success with the project and help the developers be productive from day dot?"}
{"_id": "86864", "title": "Using \"public\" vars or attributes in class calls, functional approach", "text": "I was always wondering about two things I tend to do in my little projects. Sometimes I will have this design:               class FooClass         ...         self.foo = \"it's a bar\"         self._do_some_stuff(self)              def _do_some_stuff(self):             print(self.foo)      And sometimes this one:               class FooClass2         ...         self.do_some_stuff(foo=\"it's a bar\")              def do_some_stuff(self, foo):             print(foo)       Although I roughly understand the differences between functional and class approaches, I struggle with the design. For example, in `FooClass` the `self.foo` is always accessible as an attribute. If there are numerous calls to it, is that faster than making `foo` a local variable that is passed from method to method (like in `FooClass2`)? What happens in memory in both cases? If `FooClass2` is preferred (ie. I don't need to access `foo`) and other attributes inside do not change their states (the class is executed once only and returns the result), should the code then be written as a series of functions in a module?"}
{"_id": "124707", "title": "What is the difference between Software Project Management Process and Software Development Process?", "text": "What is the difference between Software Project Management Process, and Software Development Process, or Software Life Cycle?"}
{"_id": "120883", "title": "What common programming problems are best solved by using prototypes and closures?", "text": "As much as I understand both concepts, I can't see how can I take advantage of JavaScript's closures and prototypes _aside_ from using them for creating instantiable and/or encapsulated class-like blocks (which seems more of a workaround than an asset to me) Other JS features such as functions-as-values or logical evaluation of non- booleans are much easier to fall in love with... **What common programming problems are best solved by using propotypal inheritance and closures?**"}
{"_id": "86863", "title": "How are minimum system requirements determined?", "text": "We've all seen countless examples of software that ships with \"minimum system requirements\" like the following:   * Windows XP/Vista/7   * 1GB RAM   * 200 MB Storage How are these generally determined? Obviously sometimes there are specific constraints (if the program takes 200 MB on disk then that is a hard requirement). Aside from those situations, many times for things like RAM or processor it turns out that more/faster is better with no hard constraint. How are these determined? Do developers just make up numbers that seem reasonable? Does QA go through some rigorous process testing various requirements until they find the lowest settings with acceptable performance? My instinct says it _should_ be the latter but is often the former in practice."}
{"_id": "246925", "title": "Do aggregate-oriented NoSQL databases have advantages for implementing Real Time BI?", "text": "I am reading a book called \"NoSQL distilled\" by Martin Fowler and he writes: > Aggregates can also be used to obtain analytics; for example, an aggregate > update may fill in information on which Orders have a given Product in them. > This denormalization of the data allows for fast access to the data we are > interested in and is the basis for Real Time BI or Real Time Analytics where > enterprises don\u2019t have to rely on end-of-the-day batch runs to populate data > warehouse tables and generate analytics; now they can fill in this type of > data, for multiple types of requirements, when the order is placed by the > customer. But he doesn't explain why can't I do the same things with relational databases and how does the denormalization help to solve this task. Do aggregate and/or denormalization help in implementing Real Time BI and why? What does Fowler mean here? (By aggregates he means documents in databases like MongoDB or other records of data in other databases that have nested structure instead of atomic values and foreign keys)"}
{"_id": "86868", "title": "Places to find free software projects who need developers/project managers?", "text": "While I have plenty of project management \"booksmarts\" and a handful of PM experience, I don't seem to have enough experience to get the sort of job I want. Since \"I read another PM book/blog today\" doesn't really count, I was thinking I could find some free/open source software (FOSS) projects who are looking for/hiring project managers or developers and see if there was anything I could volunteer for. Does anyone know of any FOSS employment sites where I might be able to find such projects? Something similar to careers.stackoverflow.com. I know I could just go to sourceforge/freshmeat and look around, but I was hoping to find some site that fills this need (and if any such sites exist, my google-fu is apparently VERY weak at finding them)."}
{"_id": "179183", "title": "What to do when a sprint is finished early?", "text": "What to do when a sprint is finished early? At the moment our Scrum team works off stories from the backlog, if the sprint is finished early. What happens with stories taken from the backlog? Will the stories be added to the current Sprint ? If yes, what if these stories won't be finished in time. Is the Sprint failed then?"}
{"_id": "244698", "title": "Link relation values and REL attribute - edited", "text": "1. In REST, do we **always** use _link relation values_ to convey semantics/role of a _linked resource_?   2. I assume _link relation value_ is always specified using `rel` attribute?    3. Should `rel` attribute only be specified within a **hypermedia control**?   4. I assume for _an element_ to be considered a **hypermedia control** it must provide a linking functionality and must also contain a `rel` attribute?"}
{"_id": "244693", "title": "Should maven generate jaxb java code or just use java code from source control?", "text": "We're trying to plan how to mash together a build server for our shiny new java backend. We use a lot of jaxb XSD code generation and I was getting into a heated argument with whoever cared that the build server should   1. delete jaxb created structures that were checked in   2. generate the code from XSD's   3. use code generated from those XSD's Everyone else thought that it made more sense to just use the code they checked in (we check in the code generated from the XSD because Eclipse pretty much forces you to do this as far as I can tell). My only stale argument is in my reading of the Joel test is that making the build in one step means generating from the source code and the source code is not the java source, but the XSD's because if you're messing around with the generated code you're gonna get pinched eventually. So, given that we all agree (you may not agree) we should probably be checking in our generate java files, should we use them to generate our code or should we generate it using the XSD's?"}
{"_id": "80162", "title": "Coding site with test harness for basic data structures like linked list,graph,strings etc", "text": "I just took an Amazon online test and I messed it up badly. I am out of practice and have low confidence in writing code. Are there any coding sites with test harnesses for basic data structures and with basic problems like arrays, strings, linked lists, graph adjacency lists etc, so that I can brush up on basic code like reversing linked list, checking if linked list is palindrome, sorting linked list, finding a substring in a string etc. This would make basic DS brushing fun. I know there are sites like codechef and topcoder, but from what I have seen, these don't have such basic list, graph conceptual DS questions and test harnesses."}
{"_id": "233977", "title": "PHP Code base design: Single \"queries.php\" file, or spread queries across different php files/classes?", "text": "When I create PHP projects, is it better to put all database (e.g. MySql) queries in a single file (i.e. \"queries.php\")? Or is it better to place the respective queries in any \"model\" classes (i.e. User.php) that I may be creating? Is it bad practice to put database queries anywhere in any PHP file? In the queries.php I would be placing functions for calling the queries."}
{"_id": "128621", "title": "Rate your programming language expertise by language concepts", "text": "I am looking for a good way to **rate the expertise** in a particular **programming language**. The idea arose when I found the following article: Taking falsely all the credits? You don't know JavaScript. It lists, in a comprehensive way, **language features and concepts** of JavaScript. I wish there would be a list for every programming language. In particular I would be interested about:   * Java   * C   * Python   * C# / .NET   * C++   * JavaScript Any other language or technology would be also interesting. In a similiar question What's a good way to rate your own code skills the Programmer Competency Matrix was suggested. I think it's a good approach, but I think it's too generic. Do you know any other summaries of language concepts which could help to rate the programming language expertise?"}
{"_id": "80166", "title": "Is objective-C++ being phased out?", "text": "Is apple phasing out support for objective-c++? Note the following:   * In the Objective-C language manual, there used to be a section on mixing objective-c and c++. That section is now missing.   * Links to articles on objective-c++ on the apple developer website seem to be broken, and are now redirected, e.g. this one, which I found on this stackoverflow question.   * Searching for c++ on the apple dev website brings very little in the way of current information. Should I be concerned about using c++ for iOS development?"}
{"_id": "80165", "title": "Most commonly used free-of-charge linux and SQL distributions", "text": "I'm looking to reduce the initial costs of starting a business. As much as I like Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, I think their per-processor sale model is very expensive. Plus, if the business were to grow, new web and database servers would depend on those, increasing expenses. What are the most popular (i.e. most widely used) free-of-charge linux distrubitions for commercial businesses? What are the most popular (i.e. most widely used) free-of-charge SQL databases for commercial businesses?"}
{"_id": "254464", "title": "Does the JSON parser omit empty arrays?", "text": "I have a JSON like this:               {      \"CODE\" : [{            \"FOO\" : \"BAR\",            \"SET\" : []            },            {            \"FOO\" : \"ABC\",            \"SET\" : []            }       ]      }      Now, when I try to access CODE[0].SET, I get an error in my browser that \"SET\" does not exist. I use the json_parse library by Douglas Crockford to parse the above JSON: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON- js/blob/master/json_parse.js Sorry, in advance, If I have posted this question in the wrong forum."}
{"_id": "140448", "title": "Inheritance versus Composition in a business application", "text": "I have a training management and tracking system, with a high level structure as follows: We have a _Role_ 1, e.g. Manager, Shift-boss, miner, etc. and a _Candidate_ , training for that Role. The role has a list of courses and their subjects the candidate needs to complete to qualify for the role. _Candidate_ has a `TrainingHistory` attribute, containing the courses and subjects they have completed, their results, and the date completed. Now I see it as a _TrainingHistoryCourse_ **is-a** _Course_ , extended to add `DateCompleted` etc. but something is nagging at me to rather use something like a _TrainingHistoryRecord_ that **has-a** _Course_. How can I further analyse this to determine which pattern to use? Then, a _Role_ has a list of _RoleTask_ definitions that the Candidate must be observed practising, and a Candidate has a history of _RoleTaskObservation_ objects recording their performance at these tasks. This is very similar to the course/subject requirement and history pattern for the candidate, except for one less hierarchical level, but, a _RoleTaskObservation_ clearly does not have an **is-a** relationship with _RoleTask_ , unless I block my nose and rather use _ObservedRoleTask_. I would prefer to use the same pattern for both subject/course and task/observation structures, but I think that would force me to adopt a composition pattern for _TrainingHistoryCourse_. What is the wisdom here? Always inherit where possible and validated by a solid is-a association, or always favour composition wherever possible? 1 Client specified this to be called JobTitle, but he isn't writing the app, and a JobTitle is only one attribute of a Role. Authorization roles are handled by the DevExpress framework and its customization hooks, so there would be very little little confusion between a business Role in my domain objects and an authorization role in lower level, framework code."}
{"_id": "1015", "title": "How do you keep track of all your passwords?", "text": "I'm going to ask this question at the risk of someone exposing me their own personal algorithm, if that's what you do please don't post that! I'm interested in learning what software you use to manage your passwords on various sites. If you do use software, what is it? What features do you like/hate/want? The other day I discovered a vendor that offers a \"Hosted Cloud\" platform to manage your passwords. Would you consider such a thing? What would your requirements be?"}
{"_id": "150843", "title": "Given the presentation model pattern, is the view, presentation model, or model responsible for adding child views to an existing view at runtime?", "text": "I am building a Flex 4 based application using the presentation model design pattern. This application will have several different components to it as shown in the image below. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jpFp8.png) The MainView and DashboardView will always be visible and they each have corresponding presentation models and models as necessary. These views are easily created by declaring their MXML in the application root.               <s:HGroup width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\">         <MainView width=\"75% height=\"100%\"/>         <DashboardView width=\"25%\" height=\"100%\"/>     </s:HGroup>      There will also be many WidgetViewN views that can be added to the DashboardView by the user at runtime through a simple drop down list. This will need to be accomplished via ActionScript. The drop down list should always show what WidgetViewN has already been added to the DashboardView. Therefore some state about which WidgetViewN's have been created needs to be stored. Since the list of available WidgetViewN and which ones are added to the DashboardView also need to be accessible from other components in the system I think this needs to be stored in a Model object. My understanding of the presentation model design pattern is that the view is very lean. It contains as close to zero logic as is practical. The view communicates/binds to the presentation model which contains all the necessary view logic. The presentation model is effectively an abstract representation of the view which supports low coupling and eases testability. The presentation model may have one or more models injected in in order to display the necessary information. The models themselves contain no view logic whatsoever. So I have a several questions around this design.   1. Who should be responsible for creating the WidgetViewN components and adding these to the DashboardView? Is this the responsibility of the DashboardView, DashboardPresentationModel, DashboardModel or something else entirely? It seems like the DashboardPresentationModel would be responsible for creating/adding/removing any child views from it's display but how do you do this without passing in the DashboardView to the DashboardPresentationModel?   2. The list of available and visible WidgetViewN components needs to be accessible to a few other components as well. Is it okay for a reference to a WidgetViewN to be stored/referenced in a model?   3. Are there any good examples of the presentation model pattern online in Flex that also include creating child views at runtime?"}
{"_id": "140445", "title": "A job role where connection with other developers along with writing code", "text": "Is there a position in companies (and which ones?) where the role is writing some code along with going on to the seminars to connect with other developers who maybe the clients of your/company's product? I'd like to get out of the cubicle writing code style. I am already a member of some meetups and go there regularly but would like to get into a job where the requirement is to connect and share. I am not sure what kind of companies have such a position and what are these called. I am a programmer with sufficient web development experience. Thanks."}
{"_id": "214319", "title": "How important it is to fix memory leaks?", "text": "I found by Valgring that some GTK+ programs leaks memory. How important it is to fix those leaks? I mean, often those programs works very well but on the other hand, one can never be sure if one wants to copy part of the leaking code to some other program. And I'm not sure if the idea of GTK+-programs is to work fast and therefore there are leaks. So if I sometimes find a memory leak in an open source program, should I fix it or are there for example efficiency issues and therefore programmers original idea was to write some small leaking code?"}
{"_id": "134139", "title": "How do people doing TDD handle loss of work when doing major refactoring", "text": "For a while I have been trying to learn to write unit tests for my code. Initially I started out doing true TDD, where I wouldn't write any code until I'd written a failing test first. However, I recently had a thorny problem to solve which involved a lot of code. After spending a good couple of weeks writing tests and then code, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that my entire approach was not going to work, and I would have to throw out two weeks work and start again. This is a bad enough decision to come to when you've just written the code, but when you've also written several hundred unit tests it becomes even more emotionally difficult to just throw it all away. I can't help thinking that I've wasted 3 or 4 days of effort writing those tests when I could have just put the code together for proof of concept and then written the tests afterwards once I was happy with my approach. How do people who practice TDD properly handle such situations? Is there a case for bending the rules in some cases or do you always slavishly write the tests first, even when that code may turn out to be useless?"}
{"_id": "134132", "title": "Are we always supposed to create a setup to deploy or application?", "text": "I have recently developed an application in C# which is supposed to run within the environment of the company i work for. I could technically generate a Setup or use ClickOnce to handle the deployment of the application, but I am considering basically copying the EXE file into a public directory and have everybody execute it from there. The program recovers data from a database, makes some computations and displays the results. I was wondering what the downfalls of this idea were. So far, I came up with the following:   * I have to make sure that the prerequisites are installed on each machine (for example, .Net Framework 4.0)   * I will not be able to \"automatically\" create a shortcut and the entries in the \"Start Menu\" (not a problem, user can do it manually). In particular, I was wondering if the fact that several user actually run the same application at the same time could result in a problem (cocurrency, efficiency)?"}
{"_id": "155880", "title": "Unit testing multiple conditions in an IF statement", "text": "I have a chunk of code that looks something like this:               function bool PassesBusinessRules()     {         bool meetsBusinessRules = false;              if (PassesBusinessRule1               && PassesBusinessRule2              && PassesBusinessRule3)         {              meetsBusinessRules= true;         }              return meetsBusinessRules;     }      I believe there should be four unit tests for this particular function. Three to test each of the conditions in the if statement and ensure it returns false. And another test that makes sure the function returns true. **Question:** Should there actually be ten unit tests instead? Nine that checks each of the possible failure paths. IE:   * False False False    * False False True   * False True False And so on for each possible combination. I think that is overkill, but some of the other members on my team do not. The way I look at it is if BusinessRule1 fails then it should always return false, it doesn't matter if it was checked first or last."}
{"_id": "155887", "title": "Is an app that does nothing but link to a web site functional enough to meet Apple's iOS guidelines?", "text": "I don't hang out on Programmers enough to know whether this question is \"ok\", so my apologies if not. I tried to make the title obvious so at least it can be closed quickly :-) The question is simple. My employer wants \"home screen presence\" (or at least the possibility thereof) on iOS devices (also Android but I'm mostly interested in Apple at the moment). Our actual application will be a pure web- delivered mobile-friendly application, so what we want on the homescreen is basically something that just acts as a link to bring up Safari (or Chrome now I guess; not important). I'm presuming that that's more-or-less possible; if not then that would be interesting too. I know that the Apple guidelines are such that low-functionality apps are generally rejected out of hand. There are a lot of existing apps that seem (to me) less functional than a link to something useful, but I'm not Apple of course. Because this seems like a not-too-weird situation, I'm hoping that somebody knows it's either definitely OK (maybe because there are many such apps) or definitely not OK. Note that I know about things like PhoneGap and I don't want that, at least not at the moment."}
{"_id": "155886", "title": "How do I reuse a state machine in a slightly different way?", "text": "## Problem I have a big state machine. The design requirements of the project have changed such that I need to re-use this state machine in another place. All the states remain the same in this new place, but a few states run slightly different stuff. What design pattern allows me to reuse this state machine? ## Motivation I am building a video player. It is modeled by a state machine with these states: stopped, loading, playing, paused, crashed, and some more... This video player needs to be used on two web pages. When the player crashes on the first page, it should show an error message below. If the player crashes on the second page, the error message should appear in the center of the video and pulsate a few times."}
{"_id": "7230", "title": "How would you highlight code?", "text": "While the basic scenarios are white on black and black on white, most programmers find more varied syntax highlighting useful. What advantages do you find from a general setup? (E.g. \"a dark background allows...\") What specific tweaks do you find most helpful? (E.g. \" _slightly_ off-white works to...\", or \"highlighting quote marks and escapes, like \\n, differently shows...\") One answer per person, please; list multiple points as part of your one response, if needed."}
{"_id": "10379", "title": "Learning on the Fly", "text": "I would like to know what other developers do when a situation arises to implement a couple of features in language unknown to you. You are familiar with Javascript, and you do not know jquery, how do you go by implementing some features in jquery assuming you have not much time."}
{"_id": "10373", "title": "What's the better way to charge for a cloud platform, simple but more expensive, or complicated but cheaper for most?", "text": "I'm working on a cloud platform, and was curious what people prefer in terms of paying for web services. There's the option of very simple pricing (tiers and such), which is easy to project costs on, easy to compare, but (possibly significantly) more expensive for the average user, because you're always either underpaying or overpaying. The other option is a complicated pricing structure with many different factors, a lot harder to project costs on, but you're literally paying only for what you use, so it comes out to a lower price for the average user. Which do you prefer?"}
{"_id": "121289", "title": "What is the difference between requirements and specifications?", "text": "I've been tasked with developing requirements and specifications for a project our group is starting. I realized that I don't know the difference; a Google search just confused me more -- it seems some people say that specifications _are_ requirements, but at a lower level."}
{"_id": "163776", "title": "What is Continous Integration (CI) and how is it useful?", "text": "Can some one explain to me the concept of Continious Integration, how it works in an easy to understand way? And why should a company adopt CI in their code delivery workflow? I am a developer and my company (mainly the build team ) uses Team City. As a developer I always checkout, update and commit code to SVN but never really had to bother about TeamCity or CI in general. So I would like to understand what is the usefulness of CI? Is CI a part of Agile methodologies?"}
{"_id": "163777", "title": "Is my use case diagram correct?", "text": "NOTE: I am self studying UML so I have nobody to verify my diagrams and hence I am posting here, so please bear with me. This is the problem I got from some PDF available on Google that simply had the following problem statement:      **Problem Statement** :   A library contains books and journals. The task is to develop a computer system for borrowing books. In order to borrow a book the borrower must be a member of the library. There is a limit on the number of books that can be borrowed by each member of the library. The library may have several copies of a given book. It is possible to reserve a book. Some books are for short term loans only. Other books may be borrowed for 3 weeks. Users can extend the loans.   1\\. Draw a use case diagram for a library.   2\\. Give a use case description for two use cases:   \u2022 Borrow copy of book   \u2022 Extend loan   **Diagram:**   ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/c4lXh.png) **Use case description:**   **1\\. Borrow a copy of the book:** If the person wishes to borrow a book from Derpville Public Library, he/she must be a member of the library in which case they will be allowed to issue a certain number of books. If the person is not a member, the book will not be issued to them for taking away, rather they will have to sit and read in the library.   **2\\. Extending loan:** Some books will be lent for 3 weeks while others will be lent for more than 3 weeks in which case the person borrowing has to come to the library and get the date extended. There is a limit on how much the user can extend the date of a particular book."}
{"_id": "122955", "title": "Are type and scope prefixes worthwhile naming conventions?", "text": "Recently starting my first job as a software developer, I was a little thrown to be told that I did not have to follow any naming conventions in my code. Code written by groups working on other, larger projects followed naming conventions, but since I was brought in to write a new, stand-alone, application, the feeling was that it did not especially matter. It was the last of my worries, so I just took that existing convention and ran with it.               int nTickCount \u00a0       bool bConnected \u00a0       object[] m_aItems \u00a0       fSum += fWeight * fValue \u00a0       class cManager \u00a0       enum etSystemStates \u00a0       etSystemStates eState \u00a0        cManager.cs        But is it actually worthwhile? I find it hard to judge the net effect that following this kind of naming convention has on comprehension and detection of errors, but, _visually_ , it just looks kind of ugly. Plus, having every class and file in the project called cSomething seems pretty asinine. I'm not under the illusion that it's a remotely big deal when compared to things that make an obvious difference, like the algorithms and architectures that you employ. But any convention that affects every line of code that I write seems worth getting right. What do you find the most elegant and effective naming convention, if one need be used at all? Does it denote type and/or scope?"}
{"_id": "122954", "title": "Should exceptions of a subclass extend the superclass exceptions or my own namespace?", "text": "Our library extends another (third-party) library. When we create a child class in our library, and want to throw exceptions, should those exceptions extend the exceptions from the parent class or from our own namespace? For example:               class Their_Exception extends Exception {}          class Their_Class {}     class Their_Class_Exception extends Their_Exception {}          class Our_Exception extends Exception {}          class Our_Class extends Their_Class {}     class Our_Class_Exception extends Our_Exception {} // or Their_Class_Exception?      Is it better to keep our code as above, and extend our own namespace? The way I see it, we have these alternatives:   1. Extend our own namespace, catching all possible `Their_Class_Exception` cases and throwing `Our_Class_Exceptions` in their place (complete encapsulation, but in general could be a fair amount of rework)   2. Extend our own namespace, but only don't catch `Their_Class_Exception` in `Our_Class` (probably means multiple catch blocks)   3. Extend `Their_Class_Exception` (seems counter-intuitive, could introduce bugs by catching the wrong exceptions) Which of these is the best approach in general, in order to keep our code consistent?"}
{"_id": "82584", "title": "what's best platform for explaining pseudo-code to a developer who knows nothing about it?", "text": "I'm a scientific person needing to document complex Matlab code to hand to a developer for him/her to understand and program in a different language. In the past, I've used MS Word (explaining each program step as a new row in a table), and then Excel, but didn't find either particularly well suited to displaying my Matlab code and entering comments in a clear and concise way to document it. I'm wondering if there's any better technique to communicate pseudo-code to a developer. Any existing software (free?) or other platform (e.g. TextWrangler) particularly suited to providing code and some method for explaining it? Hoping to learn from others' experiences doing the same thing. Thanks in advance. After reading some comments, let me try to explain more... I assume all developers know pseudo-code, but I don't assume many know Matlab code. Thus, if I write in pseudo-code, I can ignore the Matlab code (or provide it for reference, etc.). But my question is really simpler... is there any software or platform people have used in the past to clearly communicate code to a developer? Something that enables the person creating the document to easily describe the code? For example, you can embed code that the software color codes (one color for comments, another for reserved words (if, then, else, for, etc.), etc.), and along one side there's room for me to enter explanations and references, etc. I tried do this using MS products, but thought since there's an industry of people needing to do the same thing, maybe someone has developed a system to make this easier."}
{"_id": "10567", "title": "Embedded Linux vs Windows Embedded Standard 7", "text": "Ok looking for some really subjective answers. My company has traditionally been a Linux shop, we manufacture and sell purpose built boxes for video security. We recently decided to build an Embedded Windows Standard 7 box because it shortened our development and time to market, and because of all the tools are available off the shelf for windows. What I am looking for are some solid answers as it relates to the security of WES7 vs. Linux? How stable is WES7, how prone is it to hack attempts, virus attacks etc. From a marketing point of view what could or should one say are the benefits of using WES7 over Linux? Are there any? What comparisons are there between the security of desktop Windows 7 and Embedded Windows Standard 7? Any responses would be greatly appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "236220", "title": "Use one or multiple files for graphics properties?", "text": "I'm creating a 2D game in plain ANSI-C using SDL2. I'm planning to let users create their own graphics. So, to achieve this, I'll use an information file which will hold some data such as Width, Height, X and Y position of each frame. But I have two views of this. One is to use a single file which will hold the information of all graphics. The other is to use one file for each graphic. Which one is faster and cleaner? Or it's just the same?"}
{"_id": "236222", "title": "Best approach for tracking dependent state", "text": "Let's pretend I work on a project tracking application. The application is a database backed, server hosted, web application. In this application there are **Projects** which have many **Activities** which have many **Tasks**. A **Task** has two date fields an _originalDueDate_ and a _projectedDueDate_. In addition, there are dynamic fields on the **Activities** and the **Projects** which indicate whether the **Activity** or **Project** is behind schedule based on the projected due dates of the child tasks and various other variables such as remaining buffer time, etc. There are a number of things that can cause the _projectedDueDate_ to change. For example, an employee working on the project may (via a server request) enter in a shipping delay. Alternatively, a site may (via a server request) enter in an unexpected closure. When any of these things occur I need to not only update the _projectedDueDate_ of the **Task** but also trigger the corresponding **Project** and **Activity** to update as well. **_What is the best way to do this?_** I've thought of the **_observer_** pattern but I don't keep a single copy of all these objects in memory. When a request comes in, I query the **Task** in from the database, at that point there is no associated **Activity** in memory that would be a listener. I could remove the ability to query for **Tasks** and force the application to query first by **Project** , then by **Activity** (in context of **Project** ), then by task (in context of **Activity** ) adding the observer relationships at each step but I'm not sure if that is the best way. I could setup a **_database event listening_** system so when a **Task** modified event is dispatched I have a handler which queries for the **Activity** at that point. I could simply setup a **_two-way relationship_** between **Task** and **Activity** so that the **Task** knows about the parent **Activity** and when the **Task** updates his state the **Task** grabs his parent and updates state. Right now I'm stuck considering all the options and am wondering if any single approach (doesn't have to be a listed approach) is jumping out at others as the best approach."}
{"_id": "70365", "title": "Anyone read Apress C# series(wpf specifically)?", "text": "I am currently reading illustrated C# by Apress(on my first read through) and was thinking about moving on to illustrated WPF or Pro WPF after. I was wondering if anyone has read either and could tell me if pro WPF covers everything in illustrated WPF or should I get illustrated wpf then move to pro? Also, if anyone was thinking about getting illustrated C#, its not a bad book, it can get kind of confusing for someone who hasn't done any programming at all, but I find if you mix the structure of the book with some online videos it goes pretty well."}
{"_id": "70368", "title": "Algorithms that support parallelism?", "text": "Incoming 10th grader here. I recently posted about a science fair project idea and someone suggested that I do \"The Effect of Parallelism on selected computational tasks.\" I'm having difficulty figuring out what I should do for those \"selected computational tasks.\" I've got about a year and a half of c# experience. I asked on freenode's ##programming and someone suggested I do Ray Tracing (http://65.39.148.34/KB/graphics/Simple_Ray_Tracing_in_C_.aspx). Any ideas for other easy-medium difficulty tasks that I could use in my experiment? Thanks."}
{"_id": "125077", "title": "Agile,Waterfall and requirement changes", "text": "Has anyone had this issue of a project defined as 'Agile' being overrun by requirement changes ? I work on a development project which is run in 4 weeks Sprint but there are always changes in between these Sprints . Is it still defined as Agile then ? I feel it's sort of a sub Agile process - The requirements of an Agile process should be defined at the beginning of a sprint and reviewed towards its end. Am I right in this? Please let me know your experiences in this ."}
{"_id": "121750", "title": "To what extent could Java be used over C++ for ultra high frequency systems?", "text": "Could Java ever match C++ with regards to programming ultra high frequency systems? Has the JVM improved enough to allow this? From a theoretical or practical point is it possible? Is C++ used in most UHF systems simply because out of habit? If you agree/disagree, what parts to Java/C++ is the basis for your viewpoint?"}
{"_id": "121752", "title": "How to become an expert in Python, PHP and Javascript?", "text": "So I've been programming for about 9ish months now, and I've taught myself some Python, some PHP and some Javascript. I want to become better at these languages - I can hack something out, but a lot of things like OOP, using lists in the most effective ways, etc, is lost on me. What are the best ways to become an \"expert\" programmer? Does it depend on the nuances of the language, or is it more general? Is there any math I should be studying alongside it? Obviously a lot depends on what you want to do with it - so far I've mostly done small scale internal applications as well as web programming. How do I find out about good program design?"}
{"_id": "125079", "title": "How do you solve large dependencies among files?", "text": "So basically I make several programs. Of course one program often used code from another. So I have my own personal \"library\" Well, I do write jerk codes. Then When I open a project, the project will require another file. I add that file and that file require another file, then I add that file and that file requires another file. Then, I ended up with so many files the program doesn't need. I ended up having to correct really really old codes that are no longer used on files I do not need. Why? Because I don't bother structure dependency. Well, subject for another question. What do you do to avoid this problem."}
{"_id": "221258", "title": "Comparison of route formats", "text": "I'm developing a new application and I'm trying to come up with a convention for defining routes. Ideally, I would like it to be simple, flexible, and reversible. Here are some from popular frameworks: ### Backbone               route                           matches     -----------------------------------------------------     help                            help     search/:query                   search/kiwis     search/:query/p:page            search/kiwis/p7     file/*path                      file/nested/folder/file.txt     docs/:section(/:subsection)     docs/faq, docs/faq/installing      ### Django Uses regexes, but comes with a complex regex reverser               route                                                           matches     -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     ^articles/2003/$                                                /articles/2003/     ^articles/(\\d{4})/(\\d{2})/$                                     /articles/2005/03/     ^articles/(?P<year>\\d{4})/(?P<month>\\d{2})/(?P<day>\\d{2})/$     /articles/2003/03/03/      ### Ruby on Rails               :controller/:action/:id/with_user/:user_id     books/*section/:title      ### ASP.NET / MVC 5               {controller}/{action}/{id}           /Products/show/beverages     {resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}           /WebResource.axd?d=...     {productId:int}/{productTitle}       /5/asp-net-mvc     books/{isbn?}                        /books, /books/1430210079      Django's is probably the most flexible, and it's already familiar to people that know regexes, but it's also the most difficult to read and reverse. Backbone, RoR and ASP.NET all allow optional and wildcard/splat parts, with various syntaxes. MVC 5 has some options for restricting the parameters inline ala `:int`. Where might these schemes fall short, and how could they be fixed?"}
{"_id": "176985", "title": "Is Resharper still a significant improvement for Visual Studio 2012", "text": "I currently use Resharper with VS 2008 Pro. I find it almost a necessity to be as productive as I can be due to lack of some of the basic refactors/shortcuts in VS. However I was wondering if since VS 2008 improvements have been made that make it almost as good as Resharper?"}
{"_id": "14986", "title": "Challenging Java questions for beginners", "text": "I am teaching an introduction to computer science lab session this semester. We are using Java. I am looking for some hard bonus questions for students to solve. They should be able to solve them in a relatively minimal amount of code (say 50-300 lines). So Far they know:   * input using Scanner   * Basic Math (including %)   * boolean logic   * Strings   * if statements   * while/for loops Later in the term they will know how to make methods and classes although this is getting towards the end of the class. I want to offer some short but challenging bonus questions. Does anyone have any good suggestions?"}
{"_id": "176989", "title": "Is there a name for this functional programming construct/pattern?", "text": "I wrote a function and I'd like to find out if it is an implementation of some functional programming pattern or construct. I'd like to find out the name of this pattern or construct (if it exists)? I have a function which takes a list of functions and does this to them:                   wrap(fn1, fn2, fn3, fn4)         # returns         partial(fn4, partial(fn3, partial(fn2, fn1)))      There are strong similarities to compose, reduce, and other fp metaprogramming constructs, since the functions are being arranged together and returned as one function. It also has strong similarities to decorators and Python context managers since it provides a way to encapsulate pre and post execution behaviors in one function. Which was the impetus for writing this function. I wanted the ability that context managers provide, but I wanted to be able to have it defined in one function, and to be able to layer function after function on top. UPDATE: For clarity I've added the implementation:               _wrap = partial(reduce, lambda inner, outer: partial(outer, inner))     def wrap(fns):         fns = tuple(fns)         if len(fns)==1:             return fns[0]         return lambda *a, **kw: _wrap(iter(fns))(*a, **kw)      and an example:               def fn_one(fn, *a, **kw):       print \"entered one\"       response = fn(*a, **kw)       print \"exited one\"       return response          def fn_two(fn, *a, **kw):       print \"entered two\"       response = fn(*a, **kw)       print \"exited two\"       return response          def zero():       print \"zero\"          wrapped_zero = wrap((zero, fn_one, fn_two))     wrapped_zero() # returns entered two, entered one, zero, exited one, exited two"}
{"_id": "247347", "title": "Should we always create web application scalable?", "text": "Fact that now a days everyone is moving to cloud due to ease in scalability, configuration and maintenance. But my question is should we develop all web application scalable event if it is not required? If an application is low budget with no such special requirements then why we should add efforts to make it support sclability? There are many factors to consider while making application scalable. If client has no specific requirement, small application contains 3-4 modules, client budget is low and is using on premises servers. To make application scalable, we have to make sure of session, IO files, caching etc..."}
{"_id": "247344", "title": "To depend on source code or on binary?", "text": "We have two in-house projects, A and B, developed by different teams with B dependent on A. Since source code for both projects is stored in git, I've included project A as a submodule into project B and configured the build system to build both in right order. An alternative solution would be to consume A via a binary repository manager such as Artifactory or Nexus. I wonder about pros and cons of depending on source code vs depending on binary artifacts. When is one better than the other? So far I managed to come up with following factors, but I am really keen on hearing other opinions. Depending on source code is better   * if you don't have a binary repository manager   * if you need to depend on pre-release version of another project   * if you need to patch another project   * because it is easier to browse dependency source code in IDE Depending on binaries is better   * to minimize build time   * to avoid the hassle of setting up another project's build environment"}
{"_id": "70807", "title": "Wondering if my computer books from 2002/2003 are still useful?", "text": "I found two books in my basement today and it was about Javascript and PHP/MySQL. Are they still useful? I hope it's still useful, since I don't want to buy a new one... 1.JavaScript - Comprehensive, Second Edition 2.PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide"}
{"_id": "211921", "title": "What design pattern (in python) to use for properly seperate runtime infos with core code?", "text": "I am not sure if this is a clear question. I work on a python project that is based on terminal(console), for which I am planning to implement a GUI. I am not major in CS so I really have no idea about how to effectively design a message system such that:   1. in console, it provide nice look info when runtime.   2. in GUI, it is directed to a certain widget, let's say, a text label, or a bottom bar, or a hide-able frame. Do you have any suggestions? Currently, I am using `print` function to provide essential informations on `stdout` during runtime. So a lot of `print ....` are distributed here and there among the code. I am thinking to use macro-like variables such as 'FILE_NOT_EXTIS_MESSAGE' for printing, and define the variables in one file. Is this a standard way that people always do? How about I introduce a logging system? In sum, I am ask for a pattern that people are commonly using for handling of screen output information with high effectiveness and adaptivity."}
{"_id": "122480", "title": "What are the pros and cons of multiple inheritance?", "text": "What are the consequences of allowing multiple inheritance in a programming language? Why does multiple inheritance tend to violate the very essence of OOP? Is that what differentiates a pure OOP language like Java from an OOP language like C++? Explain and illustrate."}
{"_id": "122482", "title": "Self-documenting code vs Javadocs?", "text": "Recently I've been working on refactoring parts of the code base I'm currently dealing with - not only to understand it better myself, but also to make it easier for others who are working on the code. I tend to lean on the side of thinking that self-documenting code is nice. I just think it's cleaner and if the code speaks for itself, well... That's great. On the other hand we have documentation such as javadocs. I like this as well, but there's a certain risk that comments here gets outdated (as well as comments in general of course). However, if they are up-to-date they can be extremely useful of say, understanding a complex algorithm. **What are the best practices for this? Where do you draw the line between self-documenting code and javadocs?**"}
{"_id": "141713", "title": "How to draw an E-R diagram?", "text": "I am learning DBMS in my college. Recently I was given an assignment to draw a E-R Model of a Bus Reservation system which handles Reservations, Ticketing and cancellations.   I understand the theory about E-R model when I study from a book, but it gets confusing when I try to draw one from scratch.   How should one proceed? There seem to be a lot of ways to model a E-R diagram for a particular requirement. It's really confusing.   Can anyone explain taking **Bus reservation System** as an example? Here is the model I made (But I am not confident with it because at every step, I could think of many more alternatives!) - > Entity_Set **Passenger** (passengerID,name,age,gender) > > Entity_Set **Ticket** (ticketID,status) > > //Status is either _WaitingList_ , _Confirmed_ or _Cancelled_ > > Entity_Set **Bus** (busID,MaxSeats,Type) > > //Type is Ac or Non-AC > > Entity_Set **Route** (routeID,ArrivalTime,DepartureTime,Source,Destination) And a Ternary relationship between **Passenger** , **Ticket** and **Bus** with attributes as passengerID, ticketID, busID .   Binary relationship between **Bus** and **Route** with attributes as busID, routeID . I have few doubts regarding -   1 . Should we take Time as a composite attribute with Arrival and Departure as its attributes (What's the difference if we take that way?)   2 . The same with Source and Destination. Should they be made into a composite attribute \"Place\" or something like \"Location\"?   3\\. Are there any weak entity sets here? I have no idea at all what to take as a Weak entity set?"}
{"_id": "141711", "title": "C# return variables", "text": "In a debate regarding return variables, some members of the team prefer a method to return the result directly to the caller, whereas others prefer to declare a return variable that is then returned to the caller (see code examples below) The argument for the latter is that it allows a developer that is debugging the code to find the return value of the method before it returns to the caller thereby making the code easier to understand: This is especially true where method calls are daisy-chained. Are there any guidelines as to which is the most efficient and/or are there any other reasons why we should adopt one style over another? Thanks                   private bool Is2(int a)         {             return a == 2;         }              private bool Is3(int a)         {             var result = a == 3;             return result;         }"}
{"_id": "811", "title": "Why isn't literate programming mainstream?", "text": "Literate programming has good ideals. Why do you think that this isn't mainstream? It is because it has failed to deliver?"}
{"_id": "812", "title": "Measure of power other than Turing completeness", "text": "I originally tried asking this on StackOverflow, but it was too subjective :-(. I am interested in methods of defining the power of programming languages. Turing completeness is one, but it is almost universally satisfied. What would be nice is to define a measure of power that discriminates among programming languages that are actually in used. For example, can anyone propose a non-subjective method that would discriminate between assembly and Java? Turing completeness means that a language is maximally powerful in what it can output (which pretty much means it can do anything non-time based in the real world). So if we want to define a stronger measure of power, we need to take another approach. Shortness was suggested in the original question, but this is not easy to define at all. Does anyone have any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "255734", "title": "Client side web application architecture - best practice & patterns", "text": "I'm inheriting some code that takes a rather different approach to architecture than I'd have chosen myself. It consists of a HTML page, some javascript library imports and a single DIV tag. This DIV is populated entirely by handcrafted JQuery based javascript. My normal approach would be to scaffold the presentation part of the app using HTML and handle the interaction using javascript (or use templating), rather than build the entire DOM from scratch. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with the way it's been tackled so far other than it makes picking apart the logic and the structure a bit of a pain in the a*se. For info, the app queries a SOLR endpoint for some odd looking stats data, displays this in tabbed tables, allows the user to facet their search, explore different categories of stats and dig down, etc etc. My question is around best practice here. Is there any best practice around this kind of thing? Are there design patterns and if so, what are they? I realise this could be considered opinion based, so I'm looking for formal approaches and examples in the wild rather than opinions. EDIT in response to the possible dupe: This isn't about a huge horrible mess, just about different approaches to client side architecture. It's not so much how to refactor (I've done enough work with legacy java web applications to know how horrible that can be) it's more what a client side java application should look like post-refactoring."}
{"_id": "255736", "title": "algorithmic problem - Combining overlapping ranges", "text": "I'm looking for an idea to efficiently solve following problem: I have a set of pairs of ranges (range = a pair of numbers), each range is unique (but has same size) e.g.               [      [(0,6),(34,40)],      [(1,7),(35,41)],      [(3,9),(12,18)],      [(2,8),(36,42)],      [(13,19),(22,28)],      [(23,29),(14,20)]        ]      Now I'd like to combine pairs of ranges, if ranges are overlapping e.g.               [(0,6),(34,40)] overlaps with [(1,7),(35,41)] -result-> [(0,7),(34,41)]      So as a result for above set I'd like to get (now each pair may have ranges of different size)               [      [(0,8),(34,42)],      [(3,9),(12,18)],      [(13,20),(22,29)]     ]      The set might be pretty big, I'd like to avoid quadratic complexity if possible. **EDIT:** My best idea so far (in Python) is below. I'd like to know if you know a better(faster) way. Also I'm not sure if my idea of removing already combined pairs is valid:               def ranges_overlap(range1, range2):         return range1[0] < range2[1] and range2[0] < range1[1]               def combine_pairs(pair1, pair2):         return [(min(r1[0], r2[0]), max(r1[1], r2[1])) for r1, r2 in zip(pair1, pair2)]               def combine_overlapping_pairs(pairs):         combined = []         while pairs:             pair1 = pairs.pop()             already_combined = []             for pair2 in pairs:                 for pair2_perm in itertools.permutations(pair2):                     does_overlap = True                     for range1, range2 in zip(pair1, pair2_perm):                         if not ranges_overlap(range1, range2):                             does_overlap = False                             break                          if does_overlap:                         pair1 = combine_pairs(pair1, pair2_perm)                         already_combined.append(pair2)                         break                  combined.append(pair1)             # Not sure if I can do that             for pair in already_combined:                 pairs.remove(pair)              return combined"}
{"_id": "119234", "title": "What are the common mistakes in 'tailored Scrum approaches'?", "text": "I have seen this before. Management wants to be agile and be scrummified, but does not want to step out of the status quo. My latest observation is no different; here, the Scrum is 'tailored' to the organization; specifically into a weird many-people-process. ![Here](http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6175/modifiedscrum.jpg)   **The diagram showing the different participants.** I am putting together a document listing why this will not work. Here are the obvious ones:   1\\. There are _product owner agents_ (an obvious WTF), who report to the _product owner_ : causing dilution of decision making capability   2\\. There is a role that looks similar to a manager in the traditional approach - _development manager_ : an obvious attempt at command-and-control model   3\\. The _ScrumMaster_ 's role includes collecting _timesheets_ , which are used to track progress instead of _burndown charts_ : detrimental to agile's efforts to build teams with motivated individuals Leaving the question \"how would you convince the management?\", my question is more at, \"what else do you see as failures in this/similar 'tailored Scrum approaches'? **EDIT** : The diagram might use a few more details   1\\. The _development manager_ is not part of the development team, with not very clearly defined responsibilities, except: developer performance assessemnt, recruitment, etc.,   2\\. There are more than two teams (with ScrumMaster+development manager+dev team) with the same product owner for all teams!"}
{"_id": "119237", "title": "\"Dedication of the Harvard Mark I computer, 1944 August 7\"- Which text is Brooks referring to and where can I find it?", "text": "I am reading the epilogue of the _Anniversary Edition_ of the _Mythical Man Month_. The author, Frederic Brooks, says > Still vivid in my mind is the wonder and delight with which I - then 13 > years old - read the account of the August 7, 1944, dedication of the > Harvard Mark I computer... Which text is he referring to? I want to be filled with wonder and delight too. Where can get hold of this text so that I can read it too?"}
{"_id": "238993", "title": "How to authenticate user on php and Node.js", "text": "I\u00b4m currently developing a little chat page. The main page and user management is written in php and also all the authentication stuff with sessions. Now I\u00b4m planning to run the messaging stuff on a separate Node.js server, so that I don\u00b4t have to use polling on client side. How can I now use the session to authenticate a user also on Node.js to prevent s.o. passing messages in the name of someone else to the messaging server? My idea was to generate a key on php side, pass it to the Node.js and also to the client. If the user sends a message, I would pass the key to the Node.js and compare it with the key I\u00b4ve send from the webserver. Is this a good approach? Which alternatives do I have?"}
{"_id": "223844", "title": "Terminalogy \"Controller\" in MVC and \"ViewController\" in IOS", "text": "While studying IOS, i generally come across viewcontroller. That gives me, confusion, if this \"ViewController\" has to do something with controller ( in MVC ) ? But how come both \"view\" and \"controller\" are combined in this terminology. What does it actually mean ?"}
{"_id": "80832", "title": "MVC framework seems to suggest creating possibly hundreds of .aspx or .cshtml pages. How do I avoid this?", "text": "So, I was playing around with MVC3. Correct me if I'm wrong but based on all examples I've seen, it is suggested that you pretty much have a page for every model and Action from the Controller. So for example create a pretty basic management portal for the aspnetdb database. **Models** UserModel   RoleModel **Actions** CreateUserAction   DeleteUserAction   ChangeUserAction   CreateRoleAction   DeleteRoleAction   UpdateRoleAction   AssignUserToRoleAction   AssignUsersToRoleAction   AssignUserToRoleAction   AssignUsersToRolesAction   DeleteUsersFromRoleAction   etc... **Pages** CreateUser.aspx or .cshtml   DeleteUser.aspx or .cshtml   ChangeUser.aspx or .cshtml   CreateRole.aspx or .cshtml   DeleteRole.aspx or .cshtml   UpdateRole.aspx or .cshtml   AssignUserToRole.aspx or .cshtml   AssignUsersToRole.aspx or .cshtml   AssignUserToRole.aspx or .cshtml   AssignUsersToRoles.aspx or .cshtml   DeleteUsersFromRole.aspx or .cshtml"}
{"_id": "1701", "title": "Career guidance books for programmers", "text": "I am currently reading the recently published Being Geek by Michael \"Rands\" Lopp and I can't get enough of it. ![alt text](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rb36p.jpg) Is there any other career guidance books aimed directly or indirectly at programmers that are worth reading?"}
{"_id": "35033", "title": "Social Analytics in your current data", "text": "By now everyone is aware of the massive boom in social-networking (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and obviously a big part of its business model revolves around being able to mine this data to create information that can be used to make money for someone. Gartner has identified 'Social Analytics' as one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2011.   * **Has anyone looked at their existing data structures to determine if they could extract a social graph and then perform further data mining against this?**   * **How does it fit in with your other strategic development strategies?**   * **What information are you trying to extract from the data?** Take for example, a bank. They could conceivably determine a social graph through account relationships and transactions. Obviously there would be open edges on the graph where funds enter/leave the institute, but that shouldn't detract from the usefulness of the data. **I'm looking for actual examples with the answers, as well as why/how they did it. References to other sites will be greatly appreciated.** _Note: I'm not at all referring to mining data out of actual social networks._"}
{"_id": "5269", "title": "What's your reason to learn Clojure?", "text": "I got a personal question for you guys out there: what's your reason for learning Clojure ? (For me, it's the same thing as it was with Java over C, it promises a better programming experience)"}
{"_id": "179607", "title": "How to get audio spectrum analysis?", "text": "I need to find or create a tool that analyzes the audio spectrum of a sound file (like a .wav or .mp3). I need to output the \"volume\" or power of x number of frequency bands and output the data as text. This will be used to produce a visualization, a graphic equalizer like you'd see on a stereo. I am currently looking at python to do it. My question is are there some tools out there that would do this (signal processing), like math works or others? I don't have any experience with them so any advice would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "175185", "title": "Model-View-Controller (MVC) Which component handles save/load operations?", "text": "In a traditional MVC application, which component (model, view, or controller) is responsible for reading/writing the model to/from disk?"}
{"_id": "138307", "title": "How can I make sure that people changes his IP or not", "text": "I want to check that people who registrates in my site and check in country box , for example, Argentina is really living in Argentina. How can I make sure that people is really living in that country and not access to my site via proxy or VPN?"}
{"_id": "138306", "title": "What kind of copyright laws should I be aware of when creating software?", "text": "I'm trying to build a winform so I can play a web based game and have some other little utilities on the side. I do not plan on ever selling this or even distributing it to more than a handful of people. My question is, Would I be infringing on any copyright laws if I use images from the game in my client? I just want to be safe on the off chance the company does see it, I don't want to get sued. Edit: I took a screenshot from the game and cropped out the icons for each skill that I will use as a link to skill guides, calculators, etc. Also, I should note that I live in America and the company is based in the UK. I don't know if that affects anything or not."}
{"_id": "138301", "title": "Are RIA plugins a thing of the past?", "text": "In the not-so-distant past our department was touting Silverlight as the de facto standard for corporate intranet applications. A robust framework that allowed us to implement SOA while leveraging our experience in the .NET framework coupled with a rich user interface, all was great, until one day... Today HTML5 and advanced JavaScript libraries dominate the conversations of web application architects and developers, largely due to the cross device solution these technologies provide in the realm of mobile application development. We're living in a unique time in history right now where the capabilities of standard web development technologies (HTML5, CSS3, SVG, etc) have virtually caught up with those of proprietary plugins such as Silverlight and Flash. However, knowing how many years it took the W3C and WHATWG to get the latest version of HTML approved, can we really expect standard web development technologies to be robust and powerful enough to support the incredibly advanced and rich applications and user experiences that tomorrow's user is going to come to expect? Moreover, as processing power continues to increase and devices become more and more capable, will HTML and JavaScript be enough to deliver the goods and fully leverage the power of the next decades super devices and technologies (think holographic projections, social-commercial- industrial ubiquity, etc). Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE HTML5 and our team is doing some truly amazing things with jquery, knockout, underscore and jasmine. I'm very excited for the recent advances in the standard web development technologies and I fully embrace them. They're very powerful, cross device compatible, and fun! Is the death of RIA plugins inevitable?"}
{"_id": "179601", "title": "Is jQuery an example of \"god object\" antipattern?", "text": "I want to ask \u2013 I am slowly learning jQuery. What I see is an **_exact example_** of a God Object anti-pattern. Basically, everything goes to the `$` function, whatever it is. Am I right and is jQuery really an example of this anti-pattern?"}
{"_id": "210298", "title": "How QT Framework handles Events Coming from OS?", "text": "When we call QApplication::exec() at the end of our main() function, the application enters Qt's event loop. Conceptually, the event loop looks like this:                  while (!exit_was_called) {         while (!posted_event_queue_is_empty) {             process_next_posted_event();         }         while (!spontaneous_event_queue_is_empty) {             process_next_spontaneous_event();         }         while (!posted_event_queue_is_empty) {             process_next_posted_event();         }     }      First, the event loop processes any posted events until the queue is empty. Then, it processes the spontaneous events until there are none left. Finally, it processes any posted events that were generated during the processing of the spontaneous events. So A single thread (main() thread in Single threaded GUI application) can not handle program as well as Event loop(With Event Queue functionality). Is there any threads other than main created for handling Events in QT?"}
{"_id": "138308", "title": "Which job should I choose", "text": "I have a two job offers currently one from a upcoming funded start up (I) and other from one of a large established software giant (A) I is paying me less than A but I has potential to pay me better as they are really well funded . What should I do"}
{"_id": "164203", "title": "Maintaining C/C++/Java skills as a web developer", "text": "When I was in college I learned how to program in C, C++, and Java. Currently, I'm a web developer using front end and back end technologies (HTML/CSS/JS, PHP, MYSQL). While the sorting algorithms and OOP concepts that I learned in college can be applied to web development, I'm looking for ways to keep up my knowledge of all languages. I enjoy programming in C-Style (C/C++/Java) languages and front-end/back-end technologies. Unfortunately, there aren't many options to use C-style languages to build websites. However, I would like to keep up my knowledge and skills in the languages I learned in college as I know they will continue to help me with my growth. What resources are available to keep challenging myself in C-style languages that are relevant to web development? Would contract work for C-style languages be beneficial? Are there sites that offer algorithm challenges? Any help is appreciated. I'm also interested in how others that have asked themselves this have solved this problem."}
{"_id": "162917", "title": "Branching and CI Builds with Agile", "text": "We follow many agile processes, including automated tests, continuous integration, sprint reviews, etc... We're currently having a debate about how often we should branch release builds. We've been doing two-week sprints and trying to deploy to production at the end of each sprint. Some of us think we should be branching every sprint. Some of us think that's overkill. If a project encompasses three Visual Studio solutions, and we branch every sprint, then that's three branches, and three CI builds to create every two weeks. If we do this for six months, we'll end up with 36 branches and 36 CI builds. There is overhead involved in that. For those of us that think that branching every sprint is overkill, we don't have a very good alternative. On my last project, we deployed some solutions from the Main trunk. Yeah, that's not good, but it saved on some of the overhead. What's the right way to manage branching/releasing and CI builds, using agile, when we have such short (two-week) sprint cycles?"}
{"_id": "40202", "title": "Compiler Jobs - How Much Education Is Needed", "text": "I was motivated by the Compiler Construction As A Subject question and thought I would ask this one. I have heard from a few people that they have a good \"compiler team\" (don't ask where I heard it, I can't remember), so that led me to wonder, how does one get a job on such a team? I know there are classes at in the Undergrad programs and such, but is that something that a graduate degree would be the minimum (such as a Masters at the least)? I am starting my Masters in Computer Science in two months and the school I am going to has two compiler classes, would that be enough to get a job doing compiler development or would more time need to be invested in it?"}
{"_id": "14326", "title": "How is the development of languages like Python and Perl funded?", "text": "The title pretty much gives you the gist of the question, but allow me elaborate a bit nevertheless. Apart from Google's involvement on Python, and Activestate's on Perl development (Strawberry AFAIK doesn't make any money on its own product) I'm interested in what are the major sources of funding of such. Are there any texts that cover this? I tried searching, but found nothing apart from the \"history of\" and \"it's opensource, everyone gives in\" ..."}
{"_id": "17984", "title": "Why C# doesn\u2019t support multiple inheritance?", "text": "Even if it could be bad practices, I would say that there is time that it would fulfill its purpose."}
{"_id": "94973", "title": "What do you call different user roles in software design?", "text": "I'm just curious, I'm building a web app with a User model which has role- based permissions. I have the following roles:   * Visitor (anonymous user)   * ?? (logged-in user)   * Moderator   * Admin I'm having a hard time figuring out what to call a logged-in user. I want to just call them \"users\", but I find that having a role with the same name as the class creates confusing code sometimes. For instance: `if user.user? then...` If you've built software with roles for users, what do you call the basic, registered, no special permissions, user role? _EDIT:_ As a side consideration, this app has Subscribers and Non Subscribers. Whether or not a user is a subscriber is not the same as their role, but it affects the way I've been thinking about this. For instance, calling a regular user a \"member\" sounds a lot like what I would call a subscriber, so I haven't been too fond of that. I haven't ruled it out though."}
{"_id": "207126", "title": "Explanation of the definition of interface inheritance as described in GoF book", "text": "I am reading the first chapter of the Gof book. Section 1.6 discusses about class vs interface inheritance: **Class versus Interface Inheritance** > It's important to understand the difference between an object's class and > its type. An object's class defines how the object is implemented.The class > defines the object's internal state and the implementation of its > operations.In contrast,an object's type only refers to its interface--the > set of requests on which it can respond. An object can have many types, and > objects of different classes can have the same type. > > Of course, there's a close relationship between class and type. Because a > class defines the operations an object can perform, it also defines the > object's type . When we say that an object is an instance of a class, we > imply that the object supports the interface defined by the class. > > Languages like c++ and Eiffel use classes to specify both an object's type > and its implementation. Smalltalk programs do not declare the types of > variables; consequently,the compiler does not check that the types of > objects assigned to a variable are subtypes of the variable's type. Sending > a message requires checking that the class of the receiver implements the > message, but it doesn't require checking that the receiver is an instance of > a particular class. > > It's also important to understand the difference between class inheritance > and interface inheritance (or subtyping). Class inheritance defines an > object's implementation in terms of another object's implementation. In > short, it's a mechanism for code and representation sharing. In > contrast,interface inheritance(or subtyping) describes when an object can be > used in place of another. I am familiar with the Java and JavaScript programming language and not really familiar with either C++ or Smalltalk or Eiffel as mentioned here. So I am trying to map the concepts discussed here to Java's way of doing classes, inheritance and interfaces. This is how I think of of these concepts in Java: In Java a class is always a blueprint for the objects it produces and what interface(as in \"set of all possible requests that the object can respond to\") an object of that class possess is defined during compilation stage only because the class of the object would have implemented those interfaces. The requests that an object of that class can respond to is the set of all the methods that are in the class(including those implemented for the interfaces that this class implements). My specific questions are:   1. Am I right in saying that Java's way is more similar to C++ as described in the third paragraph.    2. I do not understand what is meant by _interface inheritance_ in the last paragraph. In Java interface inheritance is one interface extending from another interface. But I think the word _interface_ has some other overloaded meaning here. Can some one provide an example in Java of what is meant by interface inheritance here so that I understand it better?"}
{"_id": "207125", "title": "Wikipedia confusion about ExtJS", "text": "I'm looking at the wiki on ExtJS, the wiki on List of rich Internet application frameworks, and the wiki on Comparison of web application frameworks. I'm confused. The first line of the ExtJS wiki page says: > Ext JS is a pure JavaScript application framework for building interactive > web applications[1] using techniques such as Ajax, DHTML and DOM scripting. So I assume it's a web app framework. But in the right hand side summary box it says: > Type: JavaScript library Is ExtJS a web app framework or a Javascript library or both? (Can it be both?) ExtJS is also missing from the web app framework lists...       Thanks for reading"}
{"_id": "236032", "title": "Inventory Management System Design Problem \"Items Packages\"", "text": "I am developing a retail management system with inventory management module, I am facing a logic design problem and I don't really know how to address the problem in an easy way, so I wrote an example which illustrates that problem: Let's say I have an item (e.g. Cola Can), this item have a Barcode (11...1), this is so good until now and we can sell the item smoothly using the Cola Can barcode(11...1). However, when the warehouse buys cola can they buy with larger package for simplicity 6 cans packages which have different barcode(11...2), after that the 6 packages is braked down into 1-1 cans and sold per item of barcode (11...1). The problem is that you buy with package and sell per item which will make the reports for the inventory incorrect, and the inventory stock will never match. How to control this packages problem or should the system deals with the smallest package only (e.g. when I buy 6 cans package, the warehouse should enter 6 items of single can barcode)?"}
{"_id": "111021", "title": "Why do so many developers believe performance, readability, and maintainability cannot coexist?", "text": "While responding to this question, I began to wonder why so many developers believe a good design should not account for performance because doing so would affect readability and/or maintainability. I believe that a good design also takes performance into consideration at the time it is written, and that a good developer with a good design can write an efficient program without adversely affecting readability or maintainability. While I acknowledge that there are extreme cases, **Why do many developers insist an efficient program/design will result in poor readability and/or poor maintainability, and consequently that performance should not be a design consideration?**"}
{"_id": "111026", "title": "Seperating business logic and layout in a highly interlocked project", "text": "My company is developing software that has a lot of technical debt that has existed for more than 20 years. It's a mix of C++ and C and consists of about 2M LOC. I would like to make some suggestions how we can advance our project and get rid of technical debt while using modern design principles. This application is heavily modularized and consists of more than 250 modules that can be viewed by the user. Those modules are designed with our own framework, an xml-file with all the layout, some business logic that is interpreted by the application and a c++ class with other logic. For example to create a mask with single grid that displays some data, we need to create the generic class-files that register our new module to the application, open our application in _designer-Mode_ , place a grid in our module and attach a sql-statement that fetches the data for it. If we would like to add some logic that is not possible with our _designer_ , we need to add some callbacks to our class and add those to our grid in the designer. Now the xml-file is filled with all the information our application needs to generate that module (i.e. where exactly the grid is, the ID, the attached callbacks and the sql to fill it). As you can see there is absolute no cut between design, business logic and the dependencies. There are of course two main advantages:   * many things can be done without recompiling the application   * small errors can be fixed by non-developers (like wrong SQL statements, name of labels, placement of the elements But I hope you agree with me, that this system could benefit a lot, but I'm not experienced to propose my own solutions. **What steps can I take to solve that problem in a realistic way thats acceptable for both us developers and management?**"}
{"_id": "8734", "title": "How to obtain feedback for a project?", "text": "Software is easy to build, but even easier to build the way the developers think it should function. What about the end user? How best to obtain feedback from them regarding a new product? For example: we recently released a new web based application for IT support and this is what the user must use to receive IT support. They have no choice. How can we elicit feedback from them? Ideas outside the box are most appreciated because I find the usual feedback form gets few submissions so I am looking for creative ways to get in touch with our user base and continue to develop this application (or any in the future) with their desires in mind."}
{"_id": "238333", "title": "How should I create object after database insert PHP", "text": "I have just been working on a new project and doing things the same way I have for years now. However for the first time, I am constantly thinking about `scalability and performance` of both the `application code` and the `database`. So in times past, I have been more than happy to `insert` a new row, then grab the `last_insert_id` and then translate this into an `object` by calling the `getObjectById(id)` method from within whichever persistence framework is in use. I find this is good practice because it will ensure that you are returning exactly what is stored in the database and any error will be picked up there and then, rather than next time you ask for the object. The other way, since you have all the data required to build the object right in front of you, is to simply create the new object from the supplied data and simply set the `objectId` once the statement is verified as complete. I have always felt as though there are still some unknowns which can occur, and if there are any `triggers` in the database which transform the data in any way, then you will have a mismatch in state which is bad. However, thinking purely about performance, I am obviously taking a hit by running multiple `queries` to create the object (`insert` plus `select`) which adds `overhead` and I would like to make the application both as `fast` and `secure` as possible. My question is, what would be the most appropriate approach for `performance`, `scalability`, `security` and then for the trade-off between the 3?"}
{"_id": "225116", "title": "Is there a better way of writing unit tests than a series of 'AssertEquals'?", "text": "Here's a basic example of what my unit test needs to be, using qunit:               <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\">     <html>     <head>     <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\">     <title>Insert title here</title>          <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"qunit/qunit-1.13.0.css\">     <script src = \"qunit/qunit-1.13.0.js\"></script>     <script src = \"../js/fuzzQuery.js\"></script>          <script>          test(\"Fuzz Query Basics\", function()             {                 equal(fuzzQuery(\"name:(John Smith)\"), \"name:(John~ Smith~)\");                 equal(fuzzQuery(\"name:Jon~0.1\"), \"name:Jon~0.1\");                 equal(fuzzQuery(\"Jon\"), \"Jon~\");                 //etc                  }         );          </script>     </head>     <body>         <div id=\"qunit\"></div>     </body>     </html>      Now I was thinking this is a bit repetitive. Could put all the inputs/outputs into an array, and loop through it.               test(\"Fuzz Query Basics\", function()             {                 var equals = [                                [\"name:(John Smith)\", \"name:(John~ Smith~)\"],                                [\"name:Jon~0.1\", \"name:Jon~0.1\"],                                [\"Jon\", \"Jon~\"]                                ];                      for (var i = 0; i<equals.length; i++)                     {                         equal(fuzzQuery(equals[i][0]), equals[i][1]);                                    }                  }         );      And this works fine. The single advantage I can think of for this second method, is that if it turns out that you don't actually want to use `equal` it's easier to make that change in one spot. In terms of readability, I don't think it's conclusive either way, though I probably prefer the second. Abstracting it further, you could put the input/output cases into a separate CSV file, which might make it easier to modify. Question is - what are the general conventions around writing these kinds of unit tests? Is there a reason you shouldn't put them into arrays?"}
{"_id": "110777", "title": "Using a CMS that I'm not familiar with just for the sake of the job?", "text": "I've been designing and developing with Wordpress for about two years (and I love it). Recently, a respectable designer told me that I could work for him. He works with Joomla! My job was to create a Joomla! template. I didn't feel myself comfortable using it. I don't like the back-end's UI, the way you add elements and content (I don't even like Joomla!'s logo). I'm used to simple interfaces and Joomla! seems too cluttered to me. That's why I started to wonder if I'm better off just finding clients and using the CMS that I love or making an effort to learn a CMS that I don't like using?"}
{"_id": "238339", "title": "Programmatically syncing with remote servers", "text": "My application generates text files that need to be synced with remote servers, which may be windows or linux. Sync has to happen without user's intervention. I tried with rsync but windows doesn't come with rsync by default. Also it is not possible to supply password in the command line for rsync. Currently I'm going with ftp. But that seems like an inefficient way. Is there a way to rsync without user intervention? What are the ways to sync with a remote server programmatically? App is on nodejs."}
{"_id": "78942", "title": "Speed of MySQL type index access vs. binary jump search on a huge file?", "text": "I am dead set on moving over to a MySQL database for some huge data sets I'm working with but right now I don't have the time. In the meantime I am curious about a technical performance issue regarding speed between the two methods. Obviously binary jumping on a huge sorted file is a nasty hit to performance. The chances of finding the data you need in the chip cache or even memory is pretty bad if you assume a statistically normal distribution of record requests across the huge file. Unless the whole file is in memory, and some of the ones I am working with are 20GB so this is impossible on the Win32 system I am using, it's almost a certainty that a large number of record requests will degrade to the performance killing operation of an actual hard disk read. Since I have never done any database index programming other than some really simple B-tree indexing, I wonder how good the indexes created by modern databases like MySQL are at avoiding hard disk hits. Obviously one big advantage they have is if the index keys are a lot smaller than the data records they represent, you can jam a lot more of the index pages, if not all of it, into memory and that avoids a lot of disk hits. But I was wondering if the code behind those indexes can successfully optimize in other ways, especially when it comes to index page access prediction, to speed things up even more by making sure most index page accesses don't result in disk accesses? If anyone has had any deep experience with the kind of code underlying MySQL indexing or similar entities, or has done some deep performance testing, I'd like to hear about it. \\-- roschler"}
{"_id": "118544", "title": "Is anyone here Zend certified? Do they recommend it?", "text": "For the amount of web developer job interviews I've been to, I'm somewhat surprised that no one has brought up Zend certification. Has anyone ever been certified before, or is it a waste of time/money?"}
{"_id": "66951", "title": "Code licensing / software licensing", "text": "I\u2019ve been working on something outside of my day job and they have asked me if they can use it. It is a closed source project, but I don\u2019t mind giving them the source code; but I definitely want to retain the intellectual property and any improvements they make. Is there a prewritten licence I could use for this? Has anyone got any experience of this situation? Update I decided to drop the \u201cany improvements they make\u201d bit. So I\u2019m looking for a licence that has the following \u2022 The intellectual property to stay with me \u2022 they cannot sell the source code \u2022 but free to use it in all products and to make modifications I think if I modify the BSD license that will achieve this.... Copyright (c) 2011, (My Name) All rights reserved. Use of source, redistribution and use in binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: \u2022 Source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. \u2022 Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. \u2022 The name may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. What you think?"}
{"_id": "66954", "title": "Cost of maintenance depending on paradigms", "text": "Is there any data on which paradigms allow for code which is easier/cheaper to maintain? Certainly, independantly of the chosen paradigm, good design is cheaper to maintain than bad, but there should probably be major differences coming only from the paradigm choice. Unstructured programming, for instance, generates very messy code (spaghetti code) which is expensive to maintain. In object oriented programming, implementation details are hidden and thus it should be pretty cheap to change those. In functional programming, there are no side effects, thus there is lesser risk of introducing bugs during maintainance, which should be cheaper. Is there any data on which paradigms are the most cost-efficient when coming down to maintenance? If no such data exists, what is your take on the question?"}
{"_id": "225258", "title": "Building web apps in server-side vs client-side vs hybrid?", "text": "There are currently multiple approaches for building web applications: ## 1\\. Server-side only This is a classical approach where you render pages on the server by a web framework like Ruby on Rails, Django, Express, Play! Framework and etc. **Typical workflow** : Build all your business logic, models and view templates on the server in the framework of your choice. ## 2\\. Client-side + REST API Relatively not too long ago, web community as a whole started to build client- side applications in Angular, Backbone, Ember, and a few dozen of other JavaScript MV* frameworks. And now we also have React.js join the party. **UPDATE** : There is no misunderstanding. What I meant by client-side only is complete separation of concerns. Your have a REST API server and a client-side application that talks to that server. Depending on your use case, chances are, you will never have a true client-side only application that doesn't connect to a back-end either for authentication or data persistence. **Typical workflow** : Spend hours deciding on Angular vs Backbone vs Ember vs X. Then you build your routes, models, views, controllers on the client. After you are done, now build models, controllers, routes on the server. In a way you are doing double amount of work. # 3\\. Hybrid I don't know much about using this approach, but if I were to take a guess, you render your views (View of the MVC framework) on the server. As a result you get SEO support plus faster page loads. On the **Hybrid** front there is airbnb's **rendr** that supposedly combines backbone and express together. Eric Florenzo has posted on his blog today: React: Finally, a great server/client web stack. The amount of ways to build web applications is just overwhelming. And for someone who's learning web development this can become a problem. How does one decide on which approach to use in order to build their next application?"}
{"_id": "252176", "title": "Would it be the right software engineering system to move from AngularJS-based to jQuery-based or hybrid implementation for webapp?", "text": "I am presently working on an AngularJS-based chat webapp, and it polls the server for updates, and then renders them in what is pretty much a straight shot in AngularJS. The result looks appropriate for the maturity of the project, but it completely shuts down clipboard copying from the dialogue because it redraws the text for each polling interval and overwrites the relevant area of the screen with the most newly polled data. I can see how to reduce this problem by more surgical DOM manipulations in jQuery, where there is one DIV for each completed chunk of data, only DIVs whose contents have actually changed are overwritten, and new DIVs are appended to the container rather than overall. And perhaps someone can point out how to make a more surgical AngularJS implementation so that updates to a small portion of the data rather than thrashing that area of the DOM when the data has been polled (`<div ng-repeat=\"contribution in contributions\" ...>`). However, I wanted to ask for the appropriateness of my approach. AngularJS obviates most of the need for specifying low-level DOM manipulations; if something surgical desired, would a good AngularJS programmer shift to something like jQuery that's more intended to allow low-level DOM manipulations, or does AngularJS offer facilities for more surgical updates so that DIV's whose contents are static are not redrawn? I thought about asking this on StackOverflow, and it might be appropriate to ask there how to make a more surgical update so that if the user has begun selecting an area, things that are not going to be changed again don't get thrashed. However, I wanted to ask here. I know jQuery better than AngularJS, and it seemed appropriate to make a \"Take a step back\" question here about using AngularJS right. Would an AngularJS programmer who knew jQuery do it with jQuery, do it with a more surgical version of AngularJS usage, or do something else? How do programmers who think in AngularJS handle a situation where they need finer- grained control than the default version allows? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "252175", "title": "Representing the hierarchy of groups of numbers using type inheritance", "text": "I've run into an interesting conundrum while coding my own implementations for the basic sets of mathematical numbers (Natural, Integer, Rational, Irrational, Real, Complex). I'm doing this mostly for fun, but also because I want properly represented numbers in code. It started off with RationalNumber. I added two fields to my class: Numerator and Denominator. I've overloaded all the basic operators that I am able to (I'm using C#) so that I can define what it means to add, subtract, etc.. for these objects. From here, I thought that I'd extend my definitions upward and make a `RealNumber` class such that this type can extend from it so that it could fill in for any RealNumber elsewhere in code... Except intuitively, the number system operates contrary to this definition. Illustrating what I mean, consider starting off with the basic natural numbers. We can \"extend\" the natural numbers to include negative numbers as well (and zero if you weren't already including it) and then we call this new group the integers. In code, this would imply that `Integer` inherits from `NaturalNumber`. If I wanted to write a method that accepts an integer parameter, logically one would assume you could use a natural number as well; but with the way inheritance works, this doesn't fly. How can I properly model the relationship between the sets of numbers through inheritance so that I can put a natural number into?"}
{"_id": "252178", "title": "Why do VMs not execute the assembly directly?", "text": "Many VMs execute a language of binary form, knows as 'bytecode', which is assembled down from a human readable 'assembly' language. For example the assembly instructions `push 1 push 2 add` are translated (I think) to a series of ones and zeroes, which is then executed by the VM. Why? Why don't VMs, and the JVM as an example, execute the assembly instructions directly? They don't have the limitation of physical computers that can only handle ones and zeroes. The JVM can very well take textual instructions such as `push 1 push 2` and execute them as they are. Why the additional step of compilation?"}
{"_id": "111796", "title": "How to structure my data model for merging of accounts", "text": "My new site will allow for 'normal' registration or the use of Facebook openauth. I have many tables that link data to a user_id. Imagine one of my users with information on my site forgets they used Facebook to create an account. They create a second 'normal' account and use the site for a while. So the user has data associated with two user_ids. I want to give them the option of \"importing\" the data associated with the first account into the newest account. This is messy, and I would rather design things right in the first place but I can't wrap my head around an elegant way to do this. Here are the options I have thought of:   1. Allow a user profile to have a master(parent?)_id, and write all of my db queries to select many user_ids. Upon a merge from one account to another, the losing account gets the winning account's user_id as it's parent_id.   2. The above, but cleaner: consolidate many logins into a lookup table   3. System-wide one time update: Find all data with user_id 1 and change it to user_id 2. This gets progressively harder as we store more data.   4. Merge with data loss- same as #3 but only crucial data. The user loses historical records etc. Or am I glossing over an easier way to handle the scenario I am trying to plan for?"}
{"_id": "148196", "title": "Interview prep for coding", "text": "I have an interview for a position and was told that I would have to do some coding test, given a laptop in a specific, by myself, in a specific time- period of 45-60 mins.   This is the first time for me for something like this, and I was wondering how could I prepare best? Do you have similar experience?   What do this kind of tests are about?   Any example?"}
{"_id": "244990", "title": "What is the session about simplicity that Martin Odersky suggested during the \"Scala with style\" talk?", "text": "The video of Scala with style is here: http://parleys.com/play/51c1994ae4b0d38b54f4621b/chapter21/about It's around 41:10 that he suggested another talk. I can not hear the name of speaker or the name of the session very clearly. Could someone help me to figure that out?"}
{"_id": "244991", "title": "Looking to simulate the rolling of a ball around a roulette wheel, while the resulting number is already known", "text": "I want to make a roulette board with a ball spinning and landing on a certain field. The catch is that the field the ball will land on, is known beforehand. I want the animation to look somewhat realistic, even though the result is decided beforehand. So I think I need to calculate the path the ball will follow, starting from it's end position. However, in this case, it always needs to end up in the same starting position. How can this be done?"}
{"_id": "126838", "title": "How to effectively define requirements on a complex project requiring collaboration from many people with less than great personal relationship", "text": "I am working on a project that is basically a rewrite of an old batch based system that now should run online. The old system is complex and poorly documented and best source of information are people that originally built it and maintained it. However, even they are often at odds about certain functionalities. What\u2019s worse, they don\u2019t get along very well between them or with the team, since the roles are not very clear, they are considered Product Owners, but feel that they should lead the project. I wonder what would be the best way to extract the information they possess. At this point I think (and I never thought I\u2019d say that) that face-to-face meetings are not very productive. Maybe a tool that would implement a flow where they would all have to answer a question that team has would be appropriate. Or maybe a wiki? What would you propose?"}
{"_id": "196141", "title": "Not using SQL Transactions", "text": "I am looking at a codebase where a developer never uses SQL transactions i.e. each update/insert into the SQL database is an atomic operation. I believe the codebase would benefit from transactions. I was looking online today and in one Stackoverflow question an answerer says: \"In some situations it is better to have a partial update rather than none at all\". Is there any truth in this? I suppose it depends on the problem domain to some extent."}
{"_id": "12444", "title": "Does any programming language use variables as they're in maths?", "text": "In maths, a variable means you can put any number there, and an equation will still be true:               root(square(x)) = abs(x)      In programming languages, this is not so: a var can change. In Python:               y = (x**2)**.5     x *= 2     assert y == abs(x)      will raise an exception, since x in the last line is not the same. Are there programming languages that use immutable variables?"}
{"_id": "48859", "title": "career advice for PhD scientist seeking to program?", "text": "I'm largely a self-taught programmer. In fact, I first started programming about half way through biophysics grad school, and even though I think I've done some pretty nice work, I've never worked as part of a 'serious' development team that had more than one or two other developers (and I wouldn't hesitate to call them equally inexperienced in software development as a profession). After finishing my PhD I've kept focused on programming, officially as a postdoc, but unofficially as staff research programmer. In that time I've also had two interviews at Google, but not an actual offer. As it is I've put down some roots and probably would not have been able to take the job anyways. House + wife w/ very well paying job, etc. It's been about three years, and my honest assessment is that I've learned a ton more, but I really need more of a peer group to maintain or accelerate my growth. The problem is, whenever I look, most job listings have requirements that seem impossibly grandiose and I hesitate to apply. That, or the job/project seems incredibly dull. I suspect that either most people are just a lot less realistic than I am when it comes to assessing how long it will take for them to get up to speed, or they don't care; my fear is that I'm just woefully unqualified for any interesting, well paying developer work. IE: I'm confident I could switch fully back into C++ mode with a couple weeks work (I mostly use C,Python,C# daily) but I don't list myself as being 'proficient' in C++ on my CV, or applying for jobs that 'require' such knowledge. The few applications for which I did feel I was a legitimately good match have not elicited a response. I suspect the following things are potential problems with my application/CV and I would like feedback: I don't have a CS degree. My BS was in biochemistry and molecular biology, my PhD in biophysics. I took undergrad and grad level algorithms courses and completely killed them, but I don't know how to translate that to my CV effectively (the difference between getting an A+, and smoking everyone else in the class). I have a PhD, but it's not in CS... I've been debating if I should remove it from my CV, and wether or not it would then be misleading to list at least some of those years as some kind of 'programming' job (in many respects it was). I think there are sometimes strong stigmas associated with 'self-taught' programmers. I am certainly one of those. I even recognize that some of those stigmas hold a hint of truth, but I really do want to be an asset to a team. How do I communicate that even though I have been largely self-directing for ~8 years I can still take marching orders when needed? Do I just say so outright? Should I just become a lot less scrupulous about the whole process? anecdote: I have a friend who applied for positions where he completely fudged his qualifications to get past the first culling. He was much more honest and forthcoming about his actual qualifications when contacted and he still managed to get invited to a couple of interviews and even got some offers. His balls are larger than mine though."}
{"_id": "48857", "title": "Ways to organize interface and implementation in C++", "text": "I've seen that there are several different paradigms in C++ concerning what goes into the header file and what to the cpp file. AFAIK, most people, especially those from a C background, do: ### foo.h                class foo {      private:          int mem;          int bar();      public:          foo();          foo(const foo&);          foo& operator=(foo);          ~foo();      }      ### foo.cpp                #include foo.h      foo::bar() { return mem; }      foo::foo() { mem = 42; }      foo::foo(const foo& f) { mem = f.mem; }      foo::operator=(foo f) { mem = f.mem; }      foo::~foo() {}      int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { foo f; }      * * * However, my lecturers usually teach C++ to beginners like this: ### foo.h                class foo {      private:          int mem;          int bar() { return mem; }      public:          foo() { mem = 42; }          foo(const foo& f) { mem = f.mem; }          foo& operator=(foo f) { mem = f.mem; }          ~foo() {}      }      ### foo.cpp                #include foo.h      int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { foo f; }      // other global helper functions, DLL exports, and whatnot      Originally coming from Java, I have also always stuck to this second way for several reasons, such as that I only have to change something in one place if the interface or method names change, that I like the different indentation of things in classes when I look at their implementation, and that I find names more readable as `foo` compared to `foo::foo`. I want to collect pro's and con's for either way. Maybe there are even still other ways? One disadvantage of my way is of course the need for occasional forward declarations."}
{"_id": "82150", "title": "Career switch from high level to kernel programming", "text": "Currently I am employed as high level programmer doing some algorithmic & database stuff in C++. In my company there are programmers that are writing Windows kernel drivers (mostly software drivers not hardware). Recently I have read some materials about windows kernel programming and I realised that this type of programming that I am really passionate about (more than high level programming). I would like to switch to kernel programming but I need a plan to do this. I was thinking about asking a boss to move me to the mentioned project but in my company you cannot freely move between projects (there is a lot of pressure to become specialist in one field). I was thinking about changing jobs but there is one issue. Does my high level background disqualify me in becoming kernel programmer? Maybe I should not put on CV my high level jobs? Could you give some advice in changing my job?"}
{"_id": "166426", "title": "Should I create an Enum mapping to my database table", "text": "I have a database table containing a list of systems relevant to the tool I am building, mostly in-house applications, or third-party systems we receive data from. This table is added to infrequently, approx every 2 months. One of these systems is Windows itself, which is where we store our users' LANs, and I now need to explicitly reference the ID relating to Windows to query for user name, team etc. I know it would be bad practice to embed the ID itself into the code, so my question is what would be the best way to avoid this? I'm assuming my options are:   * create a global constant representing this ID   * create a global enum containing all systems now   * create a global enum and add systems to it as & when they are required in the code   * retrieve the ID from the database based on system name I appreciate this may seem a trivial question, but I am going to have many situations like this during the course of this build, and although we are in complete control of the database I would like to conform to best practice as far as possible. Many thanks!"}
{"_id": "206298", "title": "Finding possible positions for rectangle in a 2-d array", "text": "Well, the title is not very appropriate, please read on (I couldn't get a better one). Note: Using Python 2.7, but an algorithm will help too. I'm making a side scroller game, in which I am generating the obstacles on the fly. The trouble I am having is figuring out how to generate the obstacles. o_O   I have a some kind of a logic, but then I'm having trouble in figuring out the entire logic. So here's my problem from an implementation perspective :   I have a `Surface`, in which I have put some `Element`s, which are all rectangles.   Think of it like:               0 0 0 0 0 0 0     0 0 0 0 1 1 0     0 0 0 0 1 1 0     0 0 0 0 1 1 0     0 0 0 0 0 0 0     0 1 1 0 0 1 1     0 0 0 0 0 1 1      As in the above structure, how can I determine if a `axb` rectangle can be added without overlapping another rectangle (of 1s), and where all. Also, that with maintaining a distance of x elements (even diagonally) from all the other objects, that means the entire rectangle is (x+3, x+4). Something like if `x=1, a=3, b=4`, there's only one possible arrangement:   (2s represent the new object)               2 2 2 0 0 0 0     2 2 2 0 1 1 0     2 2 2 0 1 1 0     2 2 2 0 1 1 0     0 0 0 0 0 0 0     0 1 1 0 0 1 1     0 0 0 0 0 1 1      Basically, I need to find all the points, from which an rectangle of sides `a` and `b` can have it's, say, top-left corner. How this be achieved? Note: Open to better ideas for generating the obstacles on the fly! PS: Am I unclear?"}
{"_id": "250009", "title": "does this model-pattern have a name?", "text": "A few years back, I wrote this answer to a question from which the following idea emerged. I call these \"Type Descriptors\", as I have never been able to find this pattern documented or formally described anywhere - not to be confused with type descriptors in C#, but it's the most accurate name I've been able to come up with, so bear with me. Here's my first attempt at a \"formal\" description: > A Type Descriptor is a type that provides meta-information about another > type. > > This pattern can be seen as an alternative to run-time reflection and > annotations, and as such is equally applicable to languages that do or do > not support reflection or annotations. > > Type Descriptors are particularly useful as a means of describing aspects of > model types found in for example domain and view-models, as well as in > specialized types of models, such as form-models in a business- or web- > application. Often such applications have many common aspects, such as the > need to label inputs and perform common validations for e.g. required input, > data types and formats, etc. - the information required by helper objects > (or services) to handle these aspects fits comfortably in descriptors. > > A descriptor mirrors the shape of the type it describes - for example, if a > model type User has properties like id, name and email, it's type descriptor > must have properties id, name and email, but where the properties on the > model type have various value types (in this case for example integer and > string) the properties of the descriptor are objects that provide > information about those properties. > > Maintaining identical model type and descriptor shapes may seem like > duplication, in terms of property-names being identical in the model type > and type descriptor - however, this does not violate the DRY principle as > such, since the model type and descriptor, strictly speaking, are two > different types that only happen to have the same shape, but do not have any > overlapping concerns or duplication of any code; only the property names are > duplicates. I program mostly in PHP on a daily basis, and have used this pattern successfully to build applications. The following example is in PHP, though this could be implemented in any language capable of resolving properties by name at run-time. A tiny bit of framework is required to implement this, so here goes... A model-type implementing the following interface can provide a \"type descriptor\" - a type that describes the model-type itself:               interface TypeInfo     {         function getType();     }      Individual model-properties are described by \"property descriptors\" in the \"type descriptor\", for which I use a base class along the lines of this:               abstract class PropertyInfo     {         /** @var string */         public $name;              /** @var string */         public $label;              public function __construct($name)         {             $this->name = $name;         }     }      From this class, I derive \"property descriptors\" for specific types of properties - for example, this type describes a string property:               class StringInfo extends PropertyInfo     {         /**          * @var int|null          */         public $max_length;     }      Now here's a sample `User` model, and it's \"type descriptor\" `UserType`:               class User implements TypeInfo     {         /** @var string */         public $name;              /** @var string */         public $email;              /** @return UserType */         public function getType()         {             return UserType::instance();         }     }          class UserType     {         /** @var StringInfo */         public $name;              /** @var StringInfo */         public $email;              public function __construct()         {             $this->name = new StringInfo('name');             $this->name->label = 'Full Name';             $this->name->max_length = 50;                  $this->email = new StringInfo('email');             $this->email->label = 'E-mail Address';             $this->email->max_length = 128;         }              /** @return self */         public static function instance()         {             static $instance;                  return $instance ?: $instance = new static();         }     }      As you can see, it's now possible to get the type descriptor either from a `User` instance by e.g. `$user->getType()` \\- notice that the property-names of the \"property descriptors\" in the \"type descriptor\" match the property- names in the actual model; using this pattern, it's my own responsibility to make sure the model and it's descriptor have the same shape. Now I can write services and helpers etc. which may consume information from a \"type descriptor\" while working with model objects - for example, here's a very simple form helper:               class FormHelper     {         /** @var TypeInfo */         public $model;              /** @var string */         public $prefix;              /**          * @param TypeInfo $model          * @param string     $prefix          */         public function __construct(TypeInfo $model, $prefix)         {             $this->model = $model;             $this->prefix = $prefix;         }              /**          * @param StringInfo $prop          *          * @return string          */         public function text(StringInfo $prop)         {             $name = $prop->name;                  return '<label for=\"' . $name . '\">' . htmlspecialchars($prop->label) . '</label>'                 . '<input type=\"text\" name=\"' . $this->prefix . '[' . $name . ']\"'                 . ($prop->max_length ? ' maxlength=\"' . $prop->max_length . '\"' : '')                 . ' value=\"' . $this->model->$name . '\" id=\"' . $name . '\" />';         }     }      You would use the form helper like this:               $user = new User;     $user->name = 'Rasmus';     $user->email = 'rschultz@gorges.us';          $form = new FormHelper($user, 'user');          $t = $user->getType();          echo $form->text($t->name) . \"\\n\";     echo $form->text($t->email) . \"\\n\";      Which would output something like this:               <label for=\"name\">Full Name</label><input type=\"text\" name=\"user[name]\" maxlength=\"50\" value=\"Rasmus\" id=\"name\" />     <label for=\"email\">E-mail Address</label><input type=\"text\" name=\"user[email]\" maxlength=\"128\" value=\"rschultz@gorges.us\" id=\"email\" />      The two key reasons I enjoy working like this are (1) patterns like rendering forms, mapping post-data to model objects, mapping model-objects to database records, performing input validation and so forth can all be performed by formal helpers and service objects, all of which consume the same single source of information, and (2) everything is \"statically typed\", meaning only a single unchecked property-reference (by name, as a string) is made and encapsulated inside the \"type descriptor\", and type-hints and inference in a modern IDE (PhpStorm) can provide automated code inspections at development- time, I can safely use automated refactorings, and so forth. Okay, a rather lengthy discourse, for what boils down to one question: does this pattern have a name? :-) Side question: does this constitute (reflective) meta-programming? (The use of this pattern is very similar to e.g. using reflection to obtain annotations from a model, though I find this to be much safer, less complicated, more flexible and transparent.)"}
{"_id": "206293", "title": "Why is mod (%) a fundamental mathematical operator in many programming languages?", "text": "Is there a reason, historical or otherwise, why the modulus operator is part of a small set of standard operators in what seems like many languages? (`+, -, *, /` and `%`, for Java and C, with `**` in Ruby and Python). It seems strange to include mod as a \"fundamental\" (not to knock it, I use it plenty, but I also use exponentiation, absolute value, floor/ceiling or others -- they seem just as useful and necessary). Was this an old decision made in some specification which Java, C, Ruby and Python all follow or a language they are all descended from? As far as I can tell most Lisp dialects only include `+, -, /` and `*`. At first I wondered if mod was particularly easy to implement at the binary level (would that even make a difference, regarding decisions about what should be a \"fundamental\" operator and what shouldn't?) but it seems not to be. Is it just much more commonly used in programming than I think?"}
{"_id": "232735", "title": "I'm thinking to CSRF protect all public AJAX requests that return JSON, but I have some concerns", "text": "I'm thinking to CSRF protect all public AJAX requests that return JSON, because what's to prevent another site from spoofing the AJAX header and using the JSON as if it were a public API? I think CSRF protection is the best solution for this, **however I'm concerned with the way Laravel handles this** :   1. Using laravel's CSRF filter, I notice in _app/filters.php_ that it checks using `Session:token`, will this require every public visitor to have a session and put additional requirement on server RAM (as opposed to browsing without sessions).   2. In the CSRF filter, Laravel checks `Input::get('token')`, but I may want to make POST ajax calls as well. Are POST requests not going to work?   3. What if a visitor has a window open. They walk away for a bit...then return to perform an ajax request. This would be a problem and we would need to refresh the page, which would seem awkward for a public visitor (as opposed to logged in users, where we could just redirect to a login page).   4. What if a visitor (or even logged in user) has 2 windows open? They walk away and let the session timeout. Then return and refresh one window (or login in again in one window), then go to the second window to perform an operation (only to find it doesn't work or they are forced to login again). **Can anyone address these concerns in Laravel's implementation of CSRF protection?**"}
{"_id": "151993", "title": "As a programmer how do I plan to learn new things in my spare time", "text": "I am a Asp.Net/C# developer, I develop few projects in my spare time. I try to utilize my time as much as I can. I have been working for past 7 months. Suddenly these days I am a bit worried about learning the new stuff that is there for me as a programmer. I develop in my spare time so I don't get enough time to read books or blogs. So my question to some of you guys is how should I plan to learn new things, should I at least dedicate two-three evenings for new stuff, maybe ebooks while travelling is a good option too. How do you people plan to learn,should I also start to develop with whatever I learnt? As far as learning is concerned, should I just pick up the basics and then implement it or I should seek deeper understanding of the subject?"}
{"_id": "115020", "title": "Which GOF design patterns work well with TDD, and which do not?", "text": "The GOF Design Patterns book rarely mentions the test-ability of each pattern. I'm aware that there are patterns such as Singleton that would lead to code for which it is difficult to write unit tests, and some such as Strategy that help with TDD. Which patterns promote TDD, and which hinder TDD?"}
{"_id": "117742", "title": "Devise and Warden", "text": "I've been using Devise for a little while, and I've realized it's built on something else called Warden that handles authentication. What does Devise offer me outside of Warden, because I was considering removing devise and just using Warden."}
{"_id": "166118", "title": "Experience vs. versatility", "text": "Let's say a .NET programmer works at a company which provides software on demand, not as a product. The programmer works in WPF for a period of time and he/she invests lots of time in it. He/she get very good at WPF and Windows Forms and desktop development in general. But the company has to provide a web application now, so the developer has to learn MVC or Web Forms. He/she is not experienced in web development so he/she starts investing time in this new technology and in time they get good at it. But this time the company has to provide a Sharepoint solution, and so on. What is more important:   * Being very very good at a certain technology,   * Or be as versatile as possible knowing less in each technology but covering a greater area of expertise? Should the programmer keep studying and working in WPF until he/she reaches a guru level or is it a good thing that they had to learn other technologies as well? I agree with those of you who will say that when learning different technologies you will also learn things which are useful no matter the technology you're programming in. But eventually, when the programmer will want to change jobs, will it matter more that he/she knows _some_ WPF, MVC or Sharepoint than the fact that he/she is insanely good at one of them? I would think the second one is more important since most companies are looking for a developer for a certain technology. I don't think there are many companies looking for technical know-it-all people. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "224512", "title": "Lisp/Clojure: Removing unnecessary parentheses through conventions", "text": "I am fascinated to Lisp as it is `simple yet powerful`. I am just a beginner and I know there have been lots of discussions on removing parentheses from Lisp and its dialects. Yet I request Lisp ninja's to take few minutes answering this. Will there be any side effects in Lisp/Clojure if they had followed 2 conventions below:               ;; function declaration     defn function-name param-1 .... param-n       ...       function-body ;; not (function-body)       ...          ;; function call     function-name param-1 ... param-n ;; not (function-name param-1 ... param-n)      While still using `()` or `[]` for inline and nested expressions.               (println \"hello, \") (println \"world !!!\") ;; inline         = a (- 2 3) ;; nested"}
{"_id": "161325", "title": "What is the simplest/easiest way to display line of text only when printing a webpage using PHP?", "text": "I have a line of text I would like to display only when a webpage is being printed. Is it possible to only display this line when printing the page or doing a print preview using PHP in some way? Basically, I want to print a page without the print headers, but would like to include the page's URL within the page's content when it is printed."}
{"_id": "224513", "title": "Implementation/Representation of Symmetries in Chessboards", "text": "In a 8X8 chessboard, I was wondering how to implement the symmetry of the board. A lot of positions are just **mirrors** or **rotations** of one another (with no pawns or castling capabilities left the directions are indistinguishable). By using a combination of **vertical, horizontal** and **diagonal mirrorings** of the board it is always possible to fix the position of a piece within the `a1-d1-d4` triangle. How to implement these symmetries on chess board? How does implementation depends on choice of board representation chosen(Bit-boards, 0x88, 8x8 array, and so on) ? **Edit 1:** The main goal is the implementation of the endgame engine generator and compress its results"}
{"_id": "166117", "title": "Should UML be used before or after a basic Program Design", "text": "UML Diagrams take time and even though they provide knowledge about program design, the design changes and so do requirements, and hence it becomes a chore to keep UML Diagrams in Sync with code. I am trying to figure out how should we use UML in an optimum way."}
{"_id": "250233", "title": "Confusion about instance in an interface", "text": "I'm trying to learn OGSi framework (Equinox distribution). I have registered my service, but I'm confused about a piece of code that I've copied:               IAgendaService service = new AgendaService();      What does this line of code mean? I think that in the service object, there are the `IAgendaService` methods that I've implemented in `AgendaService`, but I' m not sure about this. Could it be a sort of upcating? (I know that it can't be because there is no inheritance, but I try to find something similar to compare)"}
{"_id": "226500", "title": "What license shall I use for derivative (ported) software originally licensed under Mozilla Public License v2?", "text": "Currently I'm trying to port one tool fron Java to .NET and original Java tool is licensed under Mozilla Public License v2. Shall my port have the same license or can I apply different open source license? Most of code of the tool's was converted automatically using Java to .NET code converter."}
{"_id": "92984", "title": "How do I \"ease into\" programming coming from a designer background?", "text": "Is there a way I can 'ease in' to programming. Like learning to use/modify CGI scripts to add some functions to a basic html site? Even if it's the only thing I learn it's still useful, right?. Unlike starting on page one of an O'reilly Python book, it might be a year before I'm useful or I find out it's not for me. I'm a designer by trade (not a programmer) but more and more I build sites on php driven apps like wordpress and joomla. Or sometimes I have a basic html site and I want to add a form or some small app. I've simultaneously become more and more interested in interactive functions and the 'gears' of processing so I am considering dabbling in some scripting languages (php, javascript, cgi) or even some high-level languages like perl, python or ruby. But there is part of me that's saying \"what the hell are you doing here? There is a world of programmers in a universe of syntax. You'll get lost before you are useful so just hire a programmer and go learn piano, do some volunteer work or something else useful.\" But there is another side of me that say's \"hey wouldn't it be great if I could just plug in a simple process here an get this little job done.\" Can anyone recommend an insightful approach or should turn back now and just pretend programming never existed? Is Python a suitable starting point?"}
{"_id": "206747", "title": "Can i sell my own software that uses parts of PSEXEC", "text": "I just have a quick licensing question about PSEXEC by sysinternals. As some of you may know if you have ever used PSEXEC, it is confusing to learn at first. I have created a program that makes it easier to use, and was wondering if I am allowed to sell that program (even if PSEXEC is included with it?). I looked in the sysinternals license agreement, but couldn't really find the answer to my question. The agreement is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/sysinternals/bb469936 The main download and info page for PSEXEC is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb469936 Please let me know if I will be allowed to sell my program. (I assume i am on the right stackexchange site, but let me know if I should move my question) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "19246", "title": "Next language? Something practical but off the beaten path?", "text": "I've been itching for a while to learn a new language. I cut my teeth on PHP, though I don't use it anymore. I primarily program in D and Python now. I feel that these languages complement each other well, because D is close to the metal, statically typed and bleeding edge, while Python is more dynamic, interpreted, more mature and has better library support. I also know C pretty well (mostly learned from using the C-like subset of D), have some knowledge of C++, and have written a few very small one-off programs in Perl and Java. The key things I want in a langauge are:   * A language that significantly expands my horizons. I don't want to learn something that doesn't teach me anything conceptually interesting relative to D and Python.   * A practically oriented language. I absolutely, 110% refuse to spend any effort whatsoever learning a language that feels academic and emphasizes purity over practicality.   * Something that is mature, modern and well supported enough to use for real work. This doesn't necessarily mean large production projects, but at least serious prototypes and research code.   * Good generics, templates, duck typing, type inference, or something similar to avoid the rigidity of plain old static typing is a must.   * Terseness and readability count, though these are admittedly subjective."}
{"_id": "16211", "title": "What are use cases and advantages of pointers?", "text": "I often struggle to see the advantages of pointers (except for low level programming). Why use of char* instead of a String or char[] or what advantages pointer arithmetic brings. So what are the pros and use cases of pointers?"}
{"_id": "149244", "title": "wizard-like data collection implementation help (next, next, finish)", "text": "I'm beginning to build an interface for our field techs to close out work orders and we have many different required paper forms for different customers. I had hoped to build a system where i can set up a Page for each form (all in .Net 4.0/wpf and possibly using caliburn.micro if it's not a bad choice), and based on rules, display certain pages automatically. I've started out by setting up a basic framework consisting of a wpf form with 3 buttons (back, next/finish, cancel) and a Frame. In the end i hope to have an object i can pass an identifier that will go get all the information it needs, decide which pages to show, show them in order, and update our database when the user clicks finish. Is there anything specific i should be researching/learning to make my job easier, or my finished product more robust/reliable? What would be a good approach to decide which pages to show? Mostly it would be based on something like `Show this form if Customer is X` but i'd like to be able to be more complex(extensible?) than that if i need. In the end, each page/form will probably also generate a PDF file of the customer's actual form, filled in. Sounds like a routine thing to have, but i've never personally implemented or used anything that did it, myself, so i'm going in blind. would the hosting window ask the page if they need to be shown? should the pages speak up themselves? should the hosting window pass the entire data object to a bool function `ShouldIShowYou()` and let the page sort it out? there has to be some mechanism already in place for me to \"register\" a page as being for a certain \"something,\" but i'm not sure what it is. I'd like it to be fairly easily updated, but the app is deployed via clickonce and total number of users will be under 100 for the foreseeable future. just adding a new page object + logic to the collection and re-deploying shouldn't cause trouble. a few other questions i had:   * could(should) i implement this as a transaction in .net, where i could start a transaction when the window/object is created, have each individual page in the frame do it's own data work (via a shared wcf proxy), then commit the transaction after everything works out?   * should each page just build up an object and the main window pass the object back and have the originating application do the data work? e.g. make the whole segment of the application be data-unaware. not sure this would work out very well, sounds like a maintenance nightmare.   * is this the wrong place to put this kind of question? i'm not looking for code, so it didn't feel right in overflow. this is more of a \"what are the words to describe what i'm trying to do\" question. Thanks! i'll re-read this 10 or 12 times over the course of the day and try to clarify if i can. My brain-speak don't always make gud words."}
{"_id": "214167", "title": "Understanding the difference between mutable and immutable classes", "text": "I faced this question in one interview. I explained that `String` is immutable and `StringBuffer` is mutable class. I don't know very much about mutable and immutable and also don't know the exact answer. What are the key concepts to be able to distinguish the two ideas? Is there a performance impact when chosing one over the other?"}
{"_id": "214164", "title": "is it bad that I have no html, or javascript in my php files", "text": "I have been writing my website, front-end: html, JS, jquery and css, back-end: php mysql. However my php files only contain php and mysql code. Is this a really bad thing? In what situation should PHP files contain html/javascript?? Currently my php files are just there to receive request and response with array of information. I just dont understand why people would put front-end stuff in back-end, is it for security?"}
{"_id": "149240", "title": "Better use on the name of variables", "text": "I have a method that looks like this:               Public Function NormalizeStreetAddress(country As Namespace.Country,                                            streetAddress As Namespace.StreetAddress) _                                        As Namespace.StreetAddress                  Dim _streetAddress As New Namespace.StreetAddress = streetAddress                  If My.Settings.Streeteable = True Then                 Dim _AddressCustom As New Namespace.AddressCustom                 _streetAddress = _AddressCustom.NormalizeStreetAddress(country, streetAddress)             End If             Return _streetAddress     End Function      I receive a streetAddress object, but inside the method I need to use another streetAddress object which I called _streetAddress \u2014 is that following the standard? A friend of mine told me that object names such as _yourNameObject are for global variables, but I can't find info about this and I want to make this method more readable."}
{"_id": "214160", "title": "Naming boolean field that is a verb", "text": "In Java, by convention getter and setter for boolean fields will be `isField()` and `setField()`. This works perfectly fine with field names that are adjectives like `active`, `visible`, `closed`, etc. But how do I name a field that has meaning of a verb, like `haveChildren`? Add _ing to the verb (havingChildren), maybe? Edit: to clarify, I don't have control of the method names (getter and setter), they are auto-generated by the IDE. So what I need is an appropriate field name so that when the IDE generate a getter for it, it make senses. For example, hasChildren is a perfect field name, but when the IDE generate the getter for the field it would be isHasChildren. How do I solve this?"}
{"_id": "63433", "title": "Combating the Einstellung Effect", "text": "The Einstellung Effect refers to \"a person's predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though there are \"better\" or more appropriate methods of solving the problem.\" As a programmer with a decent amount of experience, how can one combat this tendency to always approach problem solving from \"tried and true\" paths from past experience? To give two very concrete examples I have been building web applications for a long time, long enough to predate wide use of Javascript frameworks (e.g. jQuery) and better web application frameworks (e.g. ASP.NET MVC). If I have client work where I am under a time crunch or pressing issues from the problem domain or business rules, I tend to just use what I know to try to achieve a solution. This involves very ugly things like               document.getElementById       or using ASP.NET with template bound controls (DataList/Repeater) rather than figuring out how to rearchitect things with an ASP.NET MVC approach. One technique I've used in the past is to have personal projects which exist simply for exploring these new technologies but this is difficult to sustain. What other approaches could be recommended?"}
{"_id": "250155", "title": "Differences between Direct, Composition, Aggregation, and Temporary Association", "text": "I am looking to take my java certification very soon, and I have a question about the different types of associations described in the official oracle guide book. The book describes the 4 as the following:   * Direct = \"has-a\"    * Composition = \"composed-of\"    * Aggregation = \"part-of\"    * Temporary = method parameters or local variables inside a method etc.. I understand the examples they provide, but when shown a piece of code I can never figure out why it is one type over another. To further my frustration these don't seem to be common terms in uml diagrams and composition or aggragate is usually described as a \"has-a\" relationship depending on where you read. Here is a link to the book. http://www.amazon.com/Programmer-Study- Guide-1z0-803-Oracle/dp/0071789421 Pages 386-388 describe the different associations. Code examples would be very helpful."}
{"_id": "63431", "title": "Senior project environment selection", "text": "My 2 friends and I are preparing our senior project idea for next year. I need some of different ideas while deciding the base environment of the project, especially from software developers/engineers who worked in huge software product developments.   * We have limited human resources ( _just us, 3 students_ ), limited time and very limited fund.   * The project aims to office environments like Outlook, Thunderbird.   * It will run on the desktop, not web   * GUI will be really rich with customized widgets/dialogs like Outlook   * We want to start selling it and opening maybe a small company. So it is not just a senior project for us and we take it serious.   * Even if we can't open a company, we want this project to be a good reference at our CV, especially for when searching jobs in USA.   * Speed of the software is of course important, but realiability _(crashes in a commercial software product is not acceptable for customers right?)_ and bringing the project to a usable state as fast as posible are more important.   * It will be like MS Outlook, with many features in the single client. _(More than Outlook actually if we count.)_   * Also we want this project to carry our practical skills to a better place   * We use C++ and Java really good, but we never worked within a large project like this so we can't see how the environment effects our needs in the long term We have two environments to choose from (Java Swing and C++ Qt) and we are proficient in those, but because of the factors I described above, we should decide which one is better. **What would be your advise for a project with those criterias?** * * * **Our fears for Java:**   * Slowing the software because it is really a big project.   * Especially we are afraid of the GUI's speed. **Our fears for C++:**   * Developing time consuming   * Definitely more bugs will occur   * More time or money to develop and maintain _(harder to find good C++ developers than Java developers right?)_   * Making that much customized GUI with Qt might be really hard   * Libraries won't be reusable for a mobile web interface _(at least easily)_ _PS: It is not an email client. It will be used in office environments like Outlook, but not as an email client. Outlook is a good picture to represent it._"}
{"_id": "119795", "title": "Write own messaging system vs. utilize existing ones", "text": "We are trying to have our own startup, with a middleware application to glue small applications with enterprise legacy systems.   for such middle-ware to function properly, we will need some sort of messaging system to make different components talk to each other in a reliable way. the alternatives are:     * use an existing messaging system, such as 0MQ, jBOSS, WebSphere MQ, etc.   * build our own messaging system the way we see the problem I am more biased towards the later option for the following reasons:   * to have more control over our final product   * to avoid any licensing problems later on   * to learn about messaging while writing the code   * to invent something new, that might cost us lots of $$$ if reused an existing system What would you do if in my shoes?"}
{"_id": "119798", "title": "Dynamic Class Inheritance For PHP", "text": "I have a situation where I think I might need dynamic class inheritance in PHP 5.3, but the idea doesn't sit well and I'm looking for a different design pattern to solve my problem if it's possible. ## Use Case I have a set of DB abstraction layer classes that dynamically compiles SQL queries, with one DAL class for each DB type (MySQL, MsSQL, Oracle, etc.). Each table in the database has its own class that extends the appropriate DAL class. The idea is that you interact with the table classes, but never directly use the DAL class. If you want to support a different DB type for your app, you don't need to rewrite any queries or even any code, you simply change a setting that swaps one DAL class out for another...and that's it. To give you a better idea of how this is used, you can take a look at the DAL class, the table classes, and how they are used on this StackExchange Code Review page. To really understand what I'm trying to do, please take a look at my implementation first before suggesting a solution. ## Issues The strategy that I had used previously was to have all of the DAL classes share the same class name. This eliminated autoloading, so I had to manually load the appropriate DAL class in a switch statement. However, this approach presents some problems for testing and documentation purposes, so I'd like to find a different way to solve the problem of loading the correct DAL class more elegantly. **Update to clarify the issue** The problem basically boils down to inconsistencies in the class name (pre-PHP 5.3) or class namespace (PHP 5.3) and its location in the directory structure. At this point, all of my DAL classes have the same name, DBObject, but reside in different folders, MySQL, Oracle, etc. My table classes all extend DBObject, but which DBObject they extend varies depending on which one has been loaded. Basically, I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too. The table classes act as a stable API and extend a dynamic backend, the DAL (DBObject) classes. It works great, but I outsmarted myself and because of the inconsistencies with the class names and their locations, I can't autoload the DBObject, which makes running unit tests and generating API docs impossible for the DBObject classes because the tests and docs rely on auto-loading. Just loading the appropriate DBObject into memory using a factory method won't work because there will be times when I need to load multiple DBObjects for testing. Because the classes currently share a name, this causes a class is already defined error. I can make exceptions for the DBObjects in my test code, obviously, but I'm looking for something a little less hacky as there may future instances where something similar would need to be done. ## Solutions? Worst case scenario, I can continue my current strategy, but I don't like it very much, especially as I'll soon be converting my code to PHP 5.3. I suspect that I can use some sort of dynamic inheritance via either namespaces (preferred) or a dynamic class extension, but I haven't been able to find good examples of this implemented in the wild. In your answers, please suggest either an alternate pattern that would work for this use case or an example of dynamic inheritance done right. Please assume PHP 5.3 with namespaced code. Any code examples are greatly encouraged and I'm definitely open to different approaches. The preferred constraints for the solution are:   * DAL class can be autoloaded.   * DAL classes don't share the same exact same namespace, but share the same class name. As an example, I would prefer to use classes named DbObject that use namespaces like `Vm\\Db\\MySql` and `Vm\\Db\\Oracle`.   * Table classes don't have to be rewritten with a change in DB type.   * The appropriate DB type is determined via a single setting only. That setting is the only thing that should need to change to interchange DB types. Ideally, the setting check should occur only once per page load, but I'm flexible on that. ## Final Update Thanks to NikiC's suggestion, I created an abstract factory class that loads the proper DBObject and then wraps its public methods on a 1:1 basis. The table classes now extend the factory instead of the DBObject class. This setup will now allow me to test and use each DBObject class without worrying about conflicts and it lets me use multiple DBMS's at a time. It also allows me to retain the code hinting in an IDE for each table class because they each extend the factory wrapper. Using wrapping methods may not be the perfect solution, but it doesn't rely on dynamic class inheritance, it solves my design problem, it meets my requirements, and it works."}
{"_id": "158340", "title": "How can I get my website's search results into Google's search results?", "text": "All I can find online is stuff about search result rankings, which I'm not concerned with at the moment. We're going to have a cloud-based online database and we want Google search results for something relevant to our site to display our website's search results for the same query. For example, if someone types in \"lunchbox\" to google, there might be a result that says \"Amazon search results for 'lunchbox'\" and then you click that and it takes you to amazon, and it's already searched 'lunchbox' for you. What can we do to enable this capability for our site?"}
{"_id": "251187", "title": "In a large statically-typed software project with non-dynamic manual sql statements inside of it, how do you verify all the sql syntax?", "text": "One of the things I seem to struggle with frequently is the need to deploy a software application to test the database interaction. More often than I'd like, I have a syntax error or typo in my sql statement that triggers a runtime error when the statement is invoked. In some of these projects, there is a very large number of sql queries (>100), which makes it very time consuming if I need check each one. Also, deployment and runtime steps can be so time consuming that it slows me down when checking sql I modified. Most of the time after checking out an unfamiliar codebase or one I haven't touched in some time, it is taken on faith that all of the sql works correctly. What are standard practices around verifying database interaction in applications in a non-manual\\more automatic fashion?"}
{"_id": "251185", "title": "API - How to handle scope based functionality?", "text": "> TLDR; > > Where and possibly how should I implement scope based logic in the example > code? I have got a ASP.NET Web Api. The Api uses OData (on top off REST) for data endpoints and OAuth 2.0 authentication. Now I want to add functionality to handle an Access Token in several different scopes. Some of the scopes are:   * User   * Organization   * Customer The result set the API returns should be based on this scope. The same applies if someone wants to add, update or delete an entity. **Now take for example the following endpoint:** `http://myapi/Employees` Someone with a Token in the _Organization_ scope does a GET and should only get the employees that are in the Organization that is defined within the Token. An user in the _Customer_ scope should get the employees for all organizations within the customer defined in the Token. This functionality however is not available for someone with a Token in the User scope. The same applies to a POST. Someone within the organization scope should only be allowed to add a new employee to his own organization. The functionality for the different scopes will usually only differ a little bit. In the case of getting the employees the difference is only a where on organization or otherwise on customer. In the case of a post their should be a check to see if for example the organization is part of the customer that is bound to the customer Token. **Current implementation:** Currently we have a base ApiController which is generic typed. The base controller calls an Query or CommandHandler with the entity type and all the implementation details are inside this handlers. _ApiController_               public abstract class ApiController<TEntity> : EntitySetController<TEntity, Guid>         where TEntity : class, IApiEntity     {         protected readonly IQueryProcessor QueryProcessor;         protected readonly ICommandProcessor CommandProcessor;              protected ApiController(IQueryProcessor queryProcessor, ICommandProcessor commandProcessor)         {             this.QueryProcessor = queryProcessor;             this.CommandProcessor = commandProcessor;         }              [HttpGet]               public override IQueryable<TEntity> Get()         {             var command = new GetEntityCommand<TEntity>();             return this.QueryProcessor.Process(command);         }     }      _EmployeeController_               public class EmployeeController : ApiController<Employee>     { }      _GetEmployeeHandler_               public class GetEmployeeCommandHandler : IQueryHandler<GetEntityCommand<Employee>, IQueryable<Employee>>     {         public IQueryable<Employee> Handle(GetEntityCommand<Employee> command)         {                  // Code that knows how to get a collection of employees.              // This collection contains all employees         }     }         _PostEmployeeHandler_               public class PostEmployeeCommandHandler : ICommandHandler<PostEntityCommand<Employee>, Employee>     {        public Employee Handle(PostEntityCommand<Employee> command)         {                  // Code that knows how to add an employee to the database.         }     }       **The question** Where and possibly how should I implement the scope based logic? I know there has to be a smart way to do this and a good place to implement this scope based logic, I just don't see it (yet)."}
{"_id": "229756", "title": "Should I always start with UML as a good practice when designing classes?", "text": "I am in the middle of creating a Bundle for PHP application based on Symfony 2. I want the bundle to be clear and good designed, so I constantly move and refactor code, rename methods, reorder classes, move them to other folders, add some factories and adapters, proxies, and follow other oop design concepts. I'm thinking if I should design UML diagram first, then start to work with IDE. What is the best practice for designing good architecture? When I start with draw of UML class diagrams before, then after coding, even with empty methods and tests first, I stop following the diagram I drew before, because I found it not matching what I need. Can you share good practices for designing architecture for a libraries? I'm not talking about model (if so I could follow DDD)."}
{"_id": "113615", "title": "How does one become proficient in a language and its idioms?", "text": "I'm a recent graduate and there are a few (three generally) languages I switch between based on the requirement. What I've found is I always have to look up syntax whenever I code. I know I'm not alone because Ryan Dahl, author of node.js, was not sure of JavaScript syntax during a demo. That's somewhat reliving to know. On the other hand, companies recruiting (at least FB because that's what they have told me for the upcoming interview) expect you to _quickly find the most effecient_ algorithm in your head first and then code it bug free. I don't know how much creative thinking one can do under pressure but for this question I'm concerned with the second part. So my question, > How does one before proficient learn \"inside workings\", idioms and in > general become proficient in a language? If the advice is language specific, I love Python the most so how does become a _Pythonista_? I want to be able to code without having to look up syntax, know and use idioms wherever apt, follow the standard practices, etc. ## Update Those who suggest practice, practice only makes permanent. Practice reinforces what you already know. So that may work for syntax, but you have other issues like internal workings, idioms, not-as-expected cases, etc."}
{"_id": "150644", "title": "Should we document stand-up meetings?", "text": "Another team in my company start to document their stand-up meetings, but I believe it is a waste of time. As far as I know, stand-up meetings are for communication not for status reporting (please, correct me if I am wrong) So, Should we document stand-up meetings?"}
{"_id": "150645", "title": "User Authentication. Database lookup vs RPC call", "text": "If we have more than one service that uses same database - is it ok to move out user authentication on separate server and use RPC calls, instead of traditional database lookup?"}
{"_id": "191317", "title": "What does the \"4\" in LCOM4 mean?", "text": "I know that methods in a class should have high cohesion which roughly translates to having all the methods use all the instance variables directly or indirectly. I know that _LCOM4_ (Lack of cohesion)metric is useful for having a quantitative figure of how much cohesive the methods in a class are. A class with a LCOM4 value of 1 will be considered pretty good while a class with LCOM4 value of, say, 10 is considered a poorly designed class and this probably tells that we are better off decomposing the original class into 10 separate classes. All this is okay but what does the _4_ signify in _LCOM4_ metrics?"}
{"_id": "191316", "title": "Language design suggestion on database query", "text": "I am designing a new programming language. I am designing a syntax to implement queries. Currently this is how it works. **The database is accessible through entity object.** on this sample I have \"entity.manufacturers\" and \"entity.products\" table To get manufacturer with an ID of 1:                  var @manufacturer = entity.manufacturers where id = 1;      To query all products for @manufacturer:                   // Get all manufacturers products          var @products = entity.products under @manufacturer;         // No need to specify what links both since system already knows how entity is related      Currently I am using \"under\" as a keyword to get all records for @manufacturer. I want it to make sense by just reading the code. If you can give suggestions on a better syntax or keywords on how to implement this that will be awesome."}
{"_id": "191313", "title": "Redis strategy for activity log data", "text": "Our application requires an activity log of actions that a user has done. For example: 3/19/2013 \\------------- 9:37 AM Chuck Norris scrapped 3 robots.   9:15 AM Chuck Norris fought 3 robots. Currently this is done with a gigantic query that compiles all of a user's activity on a given day. The query is so slow that that application literally forbids you from looking at more than a single day's activity at a time. These results could be aggressively cached in Redis. My question is: what is a good Redis key strategy for storing these activities? I need to be able do a lookup primarily based on the user ID and a date range. I've played with the following possibilities, but nothing has really leaped out at me as the optimal solution.               -- psuedo-code, obviously --     HMSET user:5345:activity date \"3/19/2013\" time \"9:37 AM\" action \"Some action\"     LPUSH user:5345:activity (json)     LPUSH user:5345:activity:2013:03:19 (json)      All three of these have significant tradeoffs. Assume a user hasn't logged in for four months - they might actually want to see their activity from four months ago at the top of the list. The second option gives me that, but there are trade-offs in that direction as well (like not being able to specifically query by date). Any thoughts on a better way to approach this?"}
{"_id": "81713", "title": "Readability vs minimalism/compactness/conciseness in language design: are they antagonistic?", "text": "Currently, there is a discussion in the PHP-Internals mailing list regarding the implementation of a short syntax for arrays and objects, mainly `[1, 2, ...]` for standard arrays, `['one'=>1, 'two'=> 2, ...]` for associative arrays, and `{'one'=>1, 'two'=> 2, ...}` for objects and there is one general disagreement that bothers me: some people argue it is less readable. The main reasons I see this proposal was made is to augment simplicity and readability when using this fundamental data structure in PHP, but I'm having trouble processing the reason of why some people regard it as unreadable, you can even see that, readability is an item both in the pro and con list, and its both an argument for supporters and opposers. My suspicion is that opposers are just considering the standard case of `array(...)` vs `[...]`, but they are not seeing the nested case, meaning this:               $TV = array(         \"flintstones\" => (object)array(             \"series\"   => \"flintstones\",             \"members\"  => array(                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"fred\",    \"role\" => \"lead\", \"age\"  => 36, ),                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"wilma\",   \"role\" => \"wife\", \"age\"  => 31, ),                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"pebbles\", \"role\" => \"kid\",  \"age\"  =>  4, ),             ),         ),         \"jetsons\"     => (object)array(             \"series\"   => \"jetsons\",             \"members\"  => array(                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"george\",  \"role\" => \"lead\", \"age\"  => 41, ),                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"jane\",    \"role\" => \"wife\", \"age\"  => 39, ),                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"elroy\",   \"role\" => \"kid\",  \"age\"  =>  9, ),             ),          ),         \"simpsons\"    => (object)array(             \"series\"   => \"simpsons\",             \"members\"  => array(                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"homer\", \"role\" => \"lead\", \"age\"  => 34, ),                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"marge\", \"role\" => \"wife\", \"age\" => 37, ),                 (object)array( \"name\" => \"bart\",  \"role\" => \"kid\",  \"age\"  =>  11, ),             ),         ),     );      Would become this:               $TV = [         \"flintstones\" => {             \"series\"   => \"flintstones\",             \"members\"  => [                 { \"name\" => \"fred\",    \"role\" => \"lead\", \"age\"  => 36, },                 { \"name\" => \"wilma\",   \"role\" => \"wife\", \"age\"  => 31, },                 { \"name\" => \"pebbles\", \"role\" => \"kid\",  \"age\"  =>  4, },             ],         },         \"jetsons\"     => {             \"series\"   => \"jetsons\",             \"members\"  => [                 { \"name\" => \"george\",  \"role\" => \"lead\", \"age\"  => 41, },                 { \"name\" => \"jane\",    \"role\" => \"wife\", \"age\"  => 39, },                 { \"name\" => \"elroy\",   \"role\" => \"kid\",  \"age\"  =>  9, },             ],          },         \"simpsons\"    => {             \"series\"   => \"simpsons\",             \"members\"  => [                 { \"name\" => \"homer\", \"role\" => \"lead\", \"age\"  => 34, },                 { \"name\" => \"marge\", \"role\" => \"wife\", \"age\" => 37, },                 { \"name\" => \"bart\",  \"role\" => \"kid\",  \"age\"  =>  11, },             ],         },     ];      For me, the second case would be miles more readable, even refreshing since I can move my eyes quicker through it. There is a clear majority of people that want the short syntax, but I'm very interested in knowing why is the second example I provided less readable for some (being some of them well renowned devs, meaning they must have considered the nested case). Anyhow I've seen this argument other places, that minimalism is not the same as readability, but why for this specific case?, the short syntax is well known in other languages and nobody complains about readability, **_so why?_**. Thanks"}
{"_id": "167242", "title": "Where should I handle fatal exceptions", "text": "Suppose I have a controller that loads a file and hands it over to the processing.   * Should I handle the exception in the file loader and return `Null` if something is wrong, or should I throw the exception and handle it in the controller?    * Without the file the rest of the program can\u00b4t work. Where should I handle a exception that shuts down the program properly? I want to shut down an Android application properly."}
{"_id": "229758", "title": "what should I save in local android DB to be more efficient and to last more than one session (and shouldn't be stored in the server only)?", "text": "I write an android app. The user sends the server its location and get places relevant to him. He then can up-vote or down-vote any offer. I wonder if I should write to local DB and when? I connect via fb only. As I see it, there is nothing i should save in local DB performance wize it's better to save and prosess anything at the server side. And also in a local memory (per application session). Any idea what should I save in local DB to be more efficient and to last more than one session (and shouldn't be stored in the server only) ?"}
{"_id": "167246", "title": "Difference between Unified Process model and agile development", "text": "I am confused concerning the unified process model and agile development. When I'm reading about the UP, I'm only understanding that it is an iterative improvement. Can someone please clarify this?"}
{"_id": "197412", "title": "What is the name of this relationship between objects?", "text": "Different types of dependencies have particular names, such as _linear dependency_ , _circular dependency_ , _self-referencing object_ , etc. What is the name of the dependency where those rules are true?   1. A has zero or more B,   2. B has zero or more C, and:   3. A has zero or more C. ![An UML diagram illustrating the relationship described above](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qjRPK.png) If there is no particular name for such relationship, do you have any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "197410", "title": "Accepted best practices for setup.py of a forked project", "text": "## Context: I was looking to see if there was a tool to do something (in my case I was looking for a proxy that would allow for http log inspection from a python test framework). There turned out to be a tool that would require only minor adjustment, and it seemed to be reasonably stable/mature, with no updates in the past 5 months (pymiproxy), so I forked the project (to here) and have got it working as I need. The goal behind the original project is simplicity, so I doubt a pull request would be accepted, especially since one of the files involved is only useful to my current employer. Finally I thought I should update the `setup.py` file, but I'm not sure - I have done a 'useful' amount of work on my fork, and while I have left the original files in tact, subclassing in my own modules, there is now significant additional functionality. I don't know that I feel comfortable claiming to be the 'author' of this module as it would be installed by python, but as the fork project author, I also don't feel comfortable leaving support emails directed to the original project's author. ## Question: What is the general accepted best practice for forked projects? Should the project be renamed to indicate that it is of a different purpose? The original project is not available through pip or else the structure of my project would allow that instead of forking, I only wrap the original as a dependancy. Should I in fact roll back my changes, put these in a new project, and get the two both listed in pypl, or is doing this on behalf of the original author going too far? ## Notes: Headings added to aid speed-reading. I'm looking for accepted best practices, so please no opinions without sources to back them up, be it an authoritative blog post, or examples of other projects which have done the same."}
{"_id": "197416", "title": "Data structure for accessing units of measure", "text": "TL;DR - I'm looking for the \"optimal\" data structure to define units within a unit of measure. * * * A `Unit of measure` is essentially a `value` (or quantity) associated with a `unit`. SI Units have seven bases or dimensions. Namely: length, mass, time, electric current, temperature, amount of substance (moles), and luminous intensity. This would be straightforward enough, but there are a number of derived units as well as rates that we frequently use. An example combined unit would be the Newton: `kg * m / s^2` and an example rate would be `tons / hr`. We have an application that relies heavily upon implied units. We'll embed the units within the variable or column name. But this creates problems when we need to specify a unit of measure with different units. Yes, we can convert the values at input and display but this generates a lot of overhead code that we'd like to encapsulate within its own class. There are a number of solutions out on codeplex and other collaborative environments. The licensing for the projects is agreeable but the project itself usually ends up being too lightweight or too heavy. We're chasing our own unicorn of \"just right.\" Ideally, I could define a new unit of measure using something like this: > UOM myUom1 = new UOM(10, volts);   >  UOM myUom2 = new UOM(43.2, Newtons); Of course, we use a mix of Imperial and SI units based upon our clients' needs. We also need to keep this structure of units synchronized with a future database table so we can provide the same degree of consistency within our data too. * * * What's the best way of defining the units, derived units, and rates that we need to use to create our unit of measure class? I could see using one or more enums, but that could be frustrating for other developers. A single enum would be huge with 200+ entries whereas multiple enums could be confusing based upon SI vs Imperial units and additional breakdown based upon categorization of the unit itself. Enum examples showing some of my concerns: > myUnits.Volt   >  myUnits.Newton   >  myUnits.meter > > SIUnit.meter   >  ImpUnit.foot DrvdUnit.Newton   >  DrvdUnitSI.Newton   >  DrvdUnitImp.FtLbs Our set of units in use is pretty well defined and it's a finite space. We do need the ability to expand and add new derived units or rates when we have client demand for them. The project is in C# although I think the broader design aspects are applicable to multiple languages. * * * Update 1: One of the libraries I looked at allows for free-form input of units via string. Their UOM class then parsed the string and slotted things accordingly. The challenge with this approach is that it forces the developer to think and remember what the correct string formats are. And I run the risk of a runtime error / exception if we don't add additional checks within the code to validate the strings being passed in the constructor. Another library essentially created too many classes that the developer would have to work with. Along with an equivalent UOM it provided a `DerivedUnit` and `RateUnit` and so on. Essentially, the code was overly complex for the problems we're solving. That library would essentially allow any:any combinations (which is legitimate in the units world) but we're happy to scope our issue (simplify our code) by not allowing every possible combination. Other libraries were ridiculously simple and hadn't even considered operator overloading for example. In addition, I'm not as worried about attempts at incorrect conversions (for example: volts to meters). Devs are the only ones who will access at this level at this point and we don't necessarily need to protect against those types of mistakes."}
{"_id": "197414", "title": "Time consuming Unit test for support for 100,000 records: Am I doing it right?", "text": "I am working on adding test coverage for an application that previously didn't have any. One additional requirement that emerged is that one of the background processes should be able to process 100,000 rows at a time. I've written a unit test that ensures that the background process is able to work with the 100,000 entities without crashing the interpretter (PHP) on a 4.0MB memory limit. But each test run takes close to 4 minutes to finish. All other tests take just 10 seconds to run. Can this be approached differently than a unit test?"}
{"_id": "198696", "title": "Keeping agile with zero-bug/defect policy", "text": "In our project we work in a zero-bug (a.k.a zero-defect) methodology. The basic idea is that bugs are always higher in priority than features. If you're working on a story and it has a bug it must be resolved in order for the story to get accepted. If a bug is found during the sprint for an older story we need to put it next on our backlog and resolve it - top priority. The reason I'm saying resolve is that we not always fix the bug. Sometime we just declare it \"won't fix\" as it's not that important. All-in-all it sounds great. We're shipping high-quality products and don't carry \"a hump\" in the form of a huge bug backlog. But i'm not sure this approach is correct. I do tend to agree that we always need to fix serious bugs ASAP and we need to throw-away non-interesting bugs. But what about bugs that are important but not as important as new features? I tend to think they should be filed in the backlog with a suitable priority. I'll give an example in order for it to be clearer - in my project we work with a UI written in flex. We have a wizard screen that opens at the same size for every screen resolution. It turns out that when we extend the wizard window, one of the pages does not look good (there is a vertical scroll bar that does not disappear although the wizard can now present everything and does not require the scrollbar). I think this bug is ugly. I'm sure it MUST be fixed. But we're on a tight schedule and we have a lot of features that we're afraid won't make the cut and enter the release. I feel that we can live with such bug. It does need to be fixed but on lower priority than other features (so, in case we won't be able to complete it, at least we didn't leave out more important features). But, we work in a 0-bug policy and it must be fixed now (even though we spent more than a day trying to resolve it and we'll need at lease another one). I would love to hear opinions about how to manage with bugs that I don't want to mark as \"won't fix\" but also are not of highest importance."}
{"_id": "157039", "title": "Keeping \"historical\" migrations in Django-south", "text": "After a system has gone through many migrations, and evolved enough for a second version, does it make sense to keep the old migrations around? I mean, old versions will use them to upgrade to the new one, sure, but should a fresh install have its database go through all the \"historical\" changes before arriving at the current shape? My gut feeling is that a fresh install should create the database \"as it is\", not go through every mistake that was made in the product lifecycle until reaching a stable condition. I've recently asked a question on SO about splitting a django app into multiple ones. Problem is: after I've done that I'll never be able to remove the old app, since the other ones' past migrations still refer to it, and would break without it, even if the current version of my project does not use it anymore. OTOH if I \"rewrote the history\" in a major update I could pretend that the broken app never existed in the first place, which I believe would make the code cleaner (past revisions would still exist in version control though). The above scenario is just an example, but I'm interested in arguments about the general case: have fresh installs create the database as it is, or go through every migration ever done in the product lifecycle?"}
{"_id": "68136", "title": "Why do we call it \"production\"?", "text": "A coworker was wondering this today: \"Why is it that in our industry 'production' means 'final, deliverable product'? You know, like if a movie is 'in production', it means they're currently filming it, not that that it's done and audiences are watching it.\""}
{"_id": "157036", "title": "Managing Entity Framework at Enterprise Projects (with hundred of tables)", "text": "I am using Entity Framework at my work and faced some problems. Usually I hear about creating tiny Edmx\u00b4s files containing tables related to some Domain ie.: Help Desk Edmx, HR Edmx, etc. Instead of load all tables in one big Edmx, what would be much simpler, but for performance considerations(at design and build time mainly), it isn\u00b4t feasible. It took me to some troubles, first about the commom tables, ie.: Employees Tables, it is at all Edmx\u00b4s, conflicting when I use a Employee class reference and have a using to both namespaces, then I have to reference the Empoyee class by the full name MyCompany.HelpDesk.Employee. It doesn\u00b4t look natural. I find myself repeatedly adding the same tables at all EDMX\u00b4s, it\u00b4s a rework, and I spend some minutes adding a table to entity framework design since I have 2k tables at Add Table Dialog. Maybe VS2012 could be a solution to load 2k Tables at the same Edmx file(since the designer could be splitted), but I don\u00b4t believe that, because it delay to compile too, not only to open the designer. Another option could be the Code First, but it doesn\u00b4t have a decent tool to Reverse Engineer the database to classes, since it tries to load all the tables from database, tooking about 2 hours!"}
{"_id": "68134", "title": "Best existing license for closed-source code", "text": "I'm creating a few closed-source applications on my own (no big company behind me) and am wondering exactly how to protect them. At the top of all the source code files I have this pretty basic copyright notice:               /*******************************************************      * Copyright (C) 2010-2011 {name} <{email}>      *       * This file is part of {project}.      *       * {project} can not be copied and/or distributed without the express      * permission of {name}      *******************************************************/      However I'm really starting to think that's not enough. Without the money to get a lawyer, I'm interested in any closed-source license that essentially says \"You can use it, and that's it\". Finding one has been extremely difficult as I can only find open source license comparisons or \"Find a lawyer\" answers. Is there any closed-source license _that I can use_ that says something similar to this?"}
{"_id": "68131", "title": "New to a project , how to deal with it?", "text": "I just joined a team who has been working in a project for over a year and a half, there's a lot of docs to read (specs, requirements etc..) , and project's repository is full of branches and tags also their are a lot of defects and bugs that need to be corrected , so i'm just kind of in a scary situation now. I should maybe mention that the project uses J2EE, WebServices. So if anyone has any advice on how to approach this . thanks."}
{"_id": "214453", "title": "Best way to plan programming for small teams?", "text": "I am the Director of a small startup organisation. We currently have two programmers (one experienced, one less experienced) who are building a web application platform. One of the greatest challenges so far is the planning process. The programmers usually are in charge of planning their own work, but we keep exceeding their self-imposed deadlines. For instance, a task that they estimate will take 2 days, ends up taking 8 days. For me it is hard to support them in planning, as I lack the technical know- how to precisely estimate how long a certain task will last. Do you have any idea:   1. What is the reason for this, is this common for programmers?   2. What I can do to support them in planning? Are there any methods or tools that are useful to programmers in small teams?"}
{"_id": "102577", "title": "how to advance into higher level functional programming", "text": "first my apologies if this isn't the right place for this question but I think that th.CS is not the right place for sure neither is StackOverflow. I really like functional programming and I think I'm a medium level guy in F# and understand the basic concepts of Haskell rather well - and yes I think I know/fell like I know what a Monad is. Now I really want to take this to the next level and want to understand what all the talk about functors and stuff is all about. I just don't know where to start. Read something about Lambda Calculus? Category Theory? Both I know a bit and I don't think that this is the right/quickest way to enlightment. Maybe you can give me some hints on that. PS: I'm not afraid of math and I don't get frustrated on excercises easily but I would prefere some intros/text where you can put some code down because this way you get the feedback at once."}
{"_id": "116168", "title": "How  'simple' is a real KISS solution?", "text": "**I confess** : I have a problem to \"Keep It Simple and Short\" most of the time because trying to make it according to the books I have read, design- patterns I have heard etc. gives me such an enthusiasm -an enthusiasm coming from the sense of that I am on the right path to a probable perfection. On the other hand, yes, it puts an extra stress on me in terms of delivering the deadlines sometimes... But whenever I say to myself, \"Next time keep it simple, you stupid!\" I find it quiet hard to make it \"simple\" when that next-time comes, because it starts to feel weird... and uncomfortable after a point. Then I start to judge my understanding of 'simple'... > Does SIMPLE mean too short that it works but hard to maintain and extend? > > Does SIMPLE mean breaking many of the OOP principles? > > Does SIMPLE mean cheating? > > Does SIMPLE mean just keeping the deadlines without no dealy? etc. Actually, what is it? **Question is** : Can you write the EXACT definition of SIMPLE in terms of KISS principle? -if there is. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "102574", "title": "What does it mean to drop support for Internet Explorer 6?", "text": "![youtube ie6](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ef2UO.png) When Facebook, Youtube, and even Microsoft themselves say that they've \"dropped support for IE6\", what do they really mean? Youtube still functionally works fine in IE6. If they mean that they've dropped support for visual appearance and fancy features, then their point is moot. Web developers have degraded IE6's appearance and fancy feature set since the dawn of time. So what does all this IE6 bashing from top companies mean for us web developers today? There's no big website that has dropped dropped _functionality_ support for IE6 because they're scared that they would lose the 5% or so customers that are still using it. Until the day Google itself blocks IE6 from searching, thereby lowering IE6's market share to near 0%, I don't see how this \"support dropping\" accomplishes anything."}
{"_id": "60445", "title": "Unit test storage on Android apps", "text": "I've been experimenting recently with Android applications. I've developed the convention (which I've seen used elsewhere) of placing my unit tests in a parallel source folder within an Eclipse project. This works well because the Eclipse JUnit runner can find the tests easily and the project with it's tests are nicely contained in the project. However, Android applications have a very specific structure, and I don't think that my normal unit tree design will work. Also, I don't really want my test code in the published app; it could effectively double the size on disk. How are Android unit tests usually organized?"}
{"_id": "116162", "title": "How to include rookie developers into your project?", "text": "We're considering teaching some employees who have either zero or general hobbyist level programming experience to take workload off me. We use Python/Django which has some of the friendliest documentation around and a breeze to learn. I'm currently a one man IT department for my company and I don't have enough hours to develop everything the company needs. We are not a software company, but it helps to have in house IT to automate tasks, develop customer service features, analyze data, etc. How do you slowly integrate rookies working on your codebase? Say you have an intern - what do they do? I'm completely reluctant to let them design or develop core code as we'll be dealing with their mistakes / strange design patterns for years. As the primary developer, I'll be the one who has to work around their code. My thought was to have rookies only modify existing code, never building core features. I can offload work to them with simple tasks _after_ I build the feature itself. We'd like our employees to learn / find value in the company, and we generally have people 'move up the ranks'. Is it standard practice to teach people with general/hobbyist level programming? How does the \"moving up the ranks\" in a software company work for junior level programmers? When do they start working on core code? I'm trying to decide if it's going to cause more damage than help, and or if there's a way we can use their help without potentially risking core site code (isolated environments?). Thanks for your time guys!"}
{"_id": "102578", "title": "Is there a canonical book on distributing computing in Java?", "text": "I have spent the last 2-1/2 years building a distributed application. We started testing it a couple months ago and we're moving it into production. Everything runs fairly well, but it could definitely run better. I'm looking for some books I can read which will help make sure we're not making any obvious mistakes. I searched online and didn't find anything by any authors I recognize as experts. Others were ten years old. Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about distributed programming in Java? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "113531", "title": "Heaps: Why is there a tradeoff between amount of space occupied (fragmentation), and speed at which operations are carried out?", "text": "Apparently, the two major judging criteria of the effectiveness of heaps are (1) how much we can minimize the amount of space it takes up and (2) how fast operations on the heap can be carried out, eg, malloc and free But I was wondering how these two criteria were related, namely, why there is a 'tradeoff' and why a faster heap makes it difficult for a _smaller_ heap in size. Also, why does a particular allocation alignment need to exist (for instance 8- or 16- byte) when then word size is clearly 4 bytes? If you allocate an int and a double, can't it just be: `allocate int at location 0` then `allocate double at location 4` (and then somehow keep track of the fact that a double-word is located at this location)? Then we would eliminate a LOT of fragmentation within the heap..."}
{"_id": "235254", "title": "ID properties on Domain objects in DDD", "text": "In my domain I have an `Account` object. e.g.               class Account     {         public string Number;         public string SortCode;     }      Within the context of DDD, should this account object have an `ID` property? The `ID` would be a primary key, basically a database artefact."}
{"_id": "113533", "title": "Why is C not considered an 'object-oriented' language?", "text": "It seems that C has its own quasi-objects such as 'structs' that can be considered as objects (in the high-level way that we would normally think). And also, C files themselves are basically separate \"modules\", right? Then aren't modules kind of like 'objects' too? I'm confused as to why C, which seems so similar to C++, is considered a low-level \"procedural\" language where as C++ is high-level \"object-oriented\" *edit: (clarification) why and where, is the line drawn, for what an 'object' is, and isn't?"}
{"_id": "251281", "title": "Implementing keyword \"const\"", "text": "A constant pointer is a pointer which points to a fixed memory location throughout.The question is how do you ensure that this behavior is ensured without using the keyword constant while declaring the pointer in a C program."}
{"_id": "937", "title": "Why aren't macros included in most modern programming languages?", "text": "I know that they are implemented extremely unsafely in C/C++. Can't they be implemented in a safer way? Are the disadvantages of macros really bad enough to outweigh the massive power they provide?"}
{"_id": "141024", "title": "how to choose a web framework and javascript library?", "text": "I've been procrastinating learning some framework for web apps w/ some library for AJAX, something like django with prototype, or turbogears with mootools, or zeta components with dojo, grok, jquery, symfony... The point is to spend some of my spare time, have \"fun\" and create cool stuff that hopefully is some useful. I think maybe I wouldn't like something like GWT or pyjamas because I wouldn't like to \"get married\" with some technology, I want to keep my freedom to add another javascript library, and so on. I didn't decide even the language yet, but I think I'd prefer python. PHP could be fine if there is some framework that is nice enough. Besides that, I don't even know where to start. I don't feel like learning a framework to then realize there is something that I cannot comfortably do, switch to another framework then find that a third framework has something really cool, etc. And the same goes for javascript libraries. So, some guidance would be really appreciated. I don't really know why are so many options available and what do they aim for, I guess some of them focus on some aspects and some on others, but I just want to make cool and nice apps that I can easily maintain, without spending too much time on coding or learning and avoiding the \"trapped in the framework\" feeling, when doing something is awfully complicated (or even impossible) with compared with the rest of things or doing that same thing on a different framework. I guess in the end I'll go for django and jquery since they are the most widely used options, afaik, but if I was going for the most widely used options I guess I should choose Java or PHP (I don't really like Java for my spare time, but php is not so bad), so I preferred to ask first. I think the question has to consider both, framework and library, since sometimes they are coupled. I think this is the place to ask this kind of things, sorry if not, and thank you."}
{"_id": "112667", "title": "Is a multi-page web app unsuitable when reliable server pushes are required?", "text": "Imagine a call center web application with a soft phone that automatically detects when a call has started or the caller has hung up. The obvious approach to receiving these messages would be some kind of server push (a.k.a. Comet). It's pretty disastrous if we miss one of those server pushes. **Must this application be written as a single-page JavaScript-heavy app, or is a more traditional multi-page app also a reliable option?** (Or is this what `iframe`s are for?) My biggest worry about using a multi-page app is losing push messages when changing pages. My biggest worry about using a single-page app is complexity."}
{"_id": "112662", "title": "How costly are the Python dict and set in-built types?", "text": "I have undertaken a project concerning database deduplication. I did some research and have found that the Python dict type actually is a hashmap that uses open addressing. In the deduplication module, we'll have some rules that determine whether two records are identical, with the rules essentially spelling out the attributes that uniquely identify the record (did not call it a candidate key as the DB is going to be non-relational, no-sql). Now let's say we deal with a really large dataset. Naturally, hashing is the way to go ( found that advice here). The question(s):   * does the module need to compute a hash _and_ then store it in a dict? Would that not be unnecessary, as the dict implementation is itself a hashmap?   * how costly is the conversion of a list to a set? That conversion should remove all the duplicates, but given the huge scale, is that practical?   * what is the cost incurred in checking membership in a dict/set using the \"in\" keyword? Hadoop MapReduce is not an option at least for now. I can't really dive into the Python sources to figure this out, as I'm strictly time limited :|"}
{"_id": "157702", "title": "What direction should I consider the offset when searching strings in reverse?", "text": "I'm making an indexOfReverse utility function in my C++ program, and I have caught a bit of a snag. Implementing the offset and maxOffset in my indexOf was very intuitive to me.. These start from the beginning of the string (+offset), and go forth to the end of the string (or maxOffset if given). While implementing offsets for the indexOfReverse, though, I was wondering what the most logical way to do this is? Should the offset be from the beginning of the string, or end of the string? Is there an established norm for this I am missing somewhere? I tried explaining it to my duck, but he just looked at me funny. I'm leaning towards thinking of it from the beginning, because of its ease-of-use being more valuable to me than its counter- intuitiveness.. considering the offset from the end just makes things harder to think about in my head. I have looked at how it's done in a string library for C++, PHP, and Python, and what seems common in the description of each is finding the last of occurrence of a string where the offset is considered from the beginning, rather than doing true reverse-string searching... But I desire true reverse- string searching rather than last occurrence ofs. Is there a most logical way to consider this, though, so I can move on?"}
{"_id": "152644", "title": "Continuing Education as a Part of Your Job", "text": "I work as a programmer for a mid-sized company (about 500 employees) in the medical industry. Before that I worked at a custom software development/consulting company. At both companies programmers were never officially given time to continue their education through taking classes, reading books or blogs, or doing research relevant to the job. At the software development company we were offered some money to pay for a class, but not offered any time off of work to take the class. I have been wondering, do most employers of programmers give time off of work to take a class, read a book, or do job related research? By time off of work I just mean some period of time where you can stop development; it does not have to mean leaving the office. I would be grateful to hear about everyone's experience with this."}
{"_id": "125914", "title": "Shipping test code as a form of sanity check", "text": "Have you ever shipped test code (JUnit, NUnit etc) with your application that could be runnable by the end-user ? Basic Idea is this : The application can be deployed in a varied environment and it is hard to gather all the possible hardware - software combination or pre-requisites for the application. It is however possible to write a test suite that assert that the application has all that it needs to perform the task at hand. Unfortunately this must be done by mocking a few components so that the test does not affect the real production environment. There are clear benefits to shipping these tests such as :   * give the customer a means to verify the system is in order.   * provide reports to help support diagnose issues.   * provide means for implementation team to assert their setup should work   * etc Natural way to do this would be to have a subset of tests that are actually packaged with the application (either as a separate project or as a part of each components of the whole). Even more natural would be to use the tools and techniques we already use for our own unit tests namely Unit test library, mocking framework etc. Have you ever done this ? How have you done it ? or why do you think this is a very bad idea ?"}
{"_id": "148679", "title": "Do you use interface as tagging system for the code?", "text": "Do you use interface as a tagging system for the code, or you have a better way to remember which object does what? how do you keep in mind a complex system, after the use of the abstraction."}
{"_id": "254104", "title": "Dependency Injection: where to store dependencies used by only one method?", "text": "I am developing a project integrated with Dependency Injection (just for reference, I'm using Unity). The problem is that I have some Manager classes with several methods and in many cases I have dependencies used only in one method.               public class UserReportManager : IUserManager     {         private UserRepository  UserRepository  {get;set;}         private TeamRepository   TeamRepository   {get;set;}         private CacheRepository   CacheRepository   {get;set;}         private WorkgroupRepository   WorkgroupRepository   {get;set;}              public UserManager(UserRepository userRepository,                            TeamRepository teamRepository,                            CacheRepository cacheRepository ,                            WorkgroupRepository workgroupRepository,                            ... // Many other dependencies                            )         {             UserRepository  = userRepository;             TeamRepository = teamRepository;             CacheRepository = cacheRepository ;             WorkgroupRepository = workgroupRepository;               ... // Setting the remaining dependencies         }              public void CreateReportAboutMostActivesUsers(){             // Uses only UserRepository           }              public void CreateReportAboutUserInsideTeams(int teamID){             // Uses UserRepository and TeamRepository          }              public void CreateReportAboutUserHistory(){             // Uses UserRepository and CacheRepository          }              public void CreateReportAboutUsersInsideWorkgroup(int workgroupID){             // Uses UserRepository and WorkgroupRepository          }     }      The UserManager is instantiated in this way:               DependencyFactory.Resolve<IUserManager>();       Note: DependencyFactory is just a wrapper to simplify the access to the UnityContainer Is it OK to have classes like that in the example? Is there a better way to implement avoiding to instantiate all the unnecessary dependencies?"}
{"_id": "149457", "title": "Was classical BASIC ever used for commercial software development, and if so, how were limitations overcome?", "text": "Many of us, including me, started their programming life with programs written on home computers, something like               10 PRINT \"ENTER RADIUS\"     20 INPUT R     30 PRINT \"CIRCUMFERENCE=\"; 2 * R * PI     40 PRINT \"AGAIN?\"     50 INPUT A$     60 IF A$=\"Y\" THEN GOTO 10     70 END      Of course, the line-number based BASIC was prone for creating spagetti code, also because most BASIC dialects missed structural statements like `WHILE`, doing everything but the `FOR`-loop with `IF`, `GOTO` and `GOSUB`. I'm talking about BASIC dialects before 1991, when QBASIC and Visual Basic appeared. While BASIC dialects may have promoted bad style amongst aspiring programmers, were there larger commercial projects created in such a BASIC dialect? If so, how did they manage to live with and workaround the obvious shortcomings? By \"serious\", I mean:   * Not a game (I know some commercial games were written in BASIC, for example, Pimania)   * Not freeware   * Not trivial, that is, reasonably large (say: at least 1500 LOC)   * Sold to several customers (not an in-house development)   * \"Mission critical\" is a plus"}
{"_id": "254106", "title": "Interface design where functions need to be called in a specific sequence", "text": "The task is to configure a piece of hardware within the device, according to some input specification. This should be achieved as follows: 1) Collect the configuration information. This can happen at different times and places. For example, module A and module B can both request (at different times) some resources from my module. Those 'resources' are actually what the configuration is. 2) After it is clear that no more requests are going to be realized, a startup command, giving a summary of the requested resources, needs to be sent to the hardware. 3) Only after that, can (and must) detailed configuration of said resources be done. 4) Also, only after 2), can (and must) routing of selected resources to the declared callers be done. * * * A common cause for bugs, even for me, who wrote the thing, is mistaking this order. What naming conventions, designs or mechanisms can I employ to make the interface usable by someone who sees the code for the first time?"}
{"_id": "148672", "title": "How to gain experience?", "text": "This is a problem that I think many people will find very common and some guidance from the expert users around here will be appreciated. **Background** Basically I'm a junior web developer in a team of 6 (all juniors too). 6 months ago our team leader and project manager left the company. Currently we are being managed by a non technical person. The new manager chose me to act as a technical leader for the rest of the team till the company hires a someone more experienced. **Problem** Although I'm a good developer my experience in providing solution to the company's needs is somewhat lacking. I mean I have no problem **implementing** solutions or adding new modules to the system as I have been working for 2 years already in PHP and MySql. The problem is when we are designing a new heavy feature or building a critical module that can't tolerate trial and error. Check this link for a design issue that I recently had to implement: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10529459/building-a-cron-job-scheduler I can easily build all solutions that were mentioned in the post. The only problem is that I don't have enough experience to choose one of them. My ex- Team leader used to make the hard decisions and I really used to learn a lot from him. However, now he's gone and I'm left out all alone. **Solution** Now There is 2 solutions that I figured would be best for me:   1. Leave the company ASAP :D and find a better company that can provide me with good experience and increase my knowledge (Although I can't leave the company any time soon due to various reasons).   2. Find books, references or any available materials for large scale projects or pro web developers techniques. Basically anything beyond simple applications. This is the only option I have right now. **Notes:** I am not looking for resources to learn PHP, MySql, frameworks, ORMs or design patterns. I want knowledge transfer from experienced programmers."}
{"_id": "148676", "title": "Linking in code comments (to other unique anchors/comments)", "text": "How would you recommend creating \"anchors\" in code comments, so that during maintenance, developers can easily cross-reference other code comments. I realise that software should be intelligently structured and this should mitigate this requirement to some degree, but I have often found myself writing a comment where I would like future developers to take something else into account (not necessarily a direct dependency). For example, \"If you change this mechanism, be sure to review XYZ\". I'm thinking of hyper links, wiki-style, where each link has a unique identifier and can have a one-to-many relationship with other links. Ideally, if someone re-writes some of my code, I would like them to be automatically warned that \"something else links here, and you should check it out in case you're changing this\" - and I don't mean breaking something as in \"something won't compile\", but really just an easy-to-follow pointer (or pointers) to somewhere else in a code base that someone (or indeed your past self) felt there was a human-understandable conceptual link, concept or implementation. I would be surprised if there isn't already a standard in place for this, but searching for \"comment\", \"link\", \"anchor\" understandably yields a proverbial haystack."}
{"_id": "148677", "title": "Why is 80 characters the 'standard' limit for code width?", "text": "Why is 80 characters the \"standard\" limit for code width? Why 80 and not 79, 81 or 100? What is the origin of this particular value?"}
{"_id": "68791", "title": "Is there a software development methodology that is best suited for iPhone Development?", "text": "Which project management and software development methodology is best suited for iPhone Development? Are there any documentation templates available which documents an iPhone Development project?"}
{"_id": "68790", "title": "what counts as \"experience\" with a particular language?", "text": "I'm a CS student currently in the process of looking for summer internships, specifically because I want to develop apps for Android and/or iOS. When looking over requirements for various opportunities (any software development opportunities, not just those I singled out) it'll list \"Experience with x, y, z....\". My question: what exactly counts as experience with a particular language or technology? I feel fortunate in that I've had the opportunity to use several languages in my university studies, everything from VB down to MIPS assembly. Yet personally, with few exceptions, I wouldn't consider myself knowledgeable enough in most of the languages I've used to get dropped into a position and told to code x by y date. I may know the basics of the language, the syntax and what sets it apart but not enough to develop functional software without some guidance on where to start, what libraries to use etc. To use the specific example I'm faced with now: An internship I'm interested lists experience with C and/or C++ as a requirement. I've done some work with C, I know what you can and can't do, I own and have read K&R, understand how pointers work, etc. But I haven't actually written a substantial amount of code in C, I've written a few short programs and modified a few others but I've never written anything big enough where I actually had to manage memory allocation or come up with some abstractions to produce some desired functionality. So while I feel like I have the conceptual understanding, I haven't applied it. Does conceptual understanding count as experience? I'm always eager to learn and broaden my knowledge but I also don't want to over- promise (which seems like the opposite of what you're told to do on job applications). Thoughts? Advice?"}
{"_id": "211482", "title": "Reusing code across several clients' projects", "text": "I've been a freelance web developer for 6 years. I have an issue that's bothering me and I'd like some advice. (Do note: I want advice from _experienced freelance developers_ , or people who have been in these situations before and can speak from experience, _not_ from people who are just guessing...) I've worked for a few years for Client A, and developed web app for them. Now I have a new client, Client B, and I'm developing a web app for them. Over the years, I've developed many general-purpose tools that I've used for Client A. Thankfully, most of them are in a separate open-source repo, and I've developed them on my own time. But, some tools are on Client A's repo and legally are the IP of Client A. They're not specific to that client's app, but are generic (like tools for handling times and date, url manipulating tools, etc.) Now, as I've started work on Client B's code, I copied all the tools and I've been using them for Client B's project. I know it's illegal since they belong to Client A, but I'm wondering how much of a big deal it is. I'm asking not for the sake of these 2 clients, who are small non-technology companies who are unlikely to care or even know, but for similar situation in the future of my consulting career. I considered asking Client A to open-source the tools, but I rather not. I'm the company's only developer, and a request like that might seem suspicious to the CEO. From the CEO's point-of-view, he has (1) little understanding of the situation and (2) something to lose and (3) nothing to gain and (4) a lot of important things to work on that are critical to the company. I'd like your advice, especially hearing what you did in such situations and whether it turned into a problem in practice."}
{"_id": "211483", "title": "A question about storing passwords", "text": "I'm creating a program (in C++) that will password protects its user's database (.dat) file. I'm confused on where to store the password? In the user's database file or somewhere else. I'm new to this concept. I don't know where a program should store the hashed password. I've been thinking for this from a long time. I have a question too. If a program stores hashed password in the database file (along with users data) is it possible for an attacker to modify the hash inside the file to some common hash like the hash of the text 'password' so that the password becomes 'password'? Edit: Okay! I've somewhat understood the password storing concept. This is what I've understood: > Get the password from the user > > Hash it (I will use SHA-512) > > Store the hash in the database file > > Done Probably, I didn't understand the symmetric hash concept. Please explain me in an easy way. And the question I have is... I'll better explain it with an example. Assume this is user's file's content               thisismydatabasefile      User decides to add a password. He types in the password and we hash it. The generated hash is somerandomhash. We encrypt the file with somerandomhash as the password and the hash is included in the encrypted file. So now the file content is               encryptedfilesomerandomhash      Imagine the attacker got the encrypted database file. He knows that the hash of the password is \"somerandomhash\". He now modifies the password hash 'somerandomhash' to something common like 'somehashthatheknows'. So what is a better way to store a password. For ease, how do programs like zip, 7z, rar etc store passwords inside a archive file?"}
{"_id": "68795", "title": "Should I re-architect client's web app?", "text": "I've inherited a project that's accrued, layer upon layer, like a pearl over the last six years. It started out as a web page to let the client check the status of their work in production, and has become a full-fledged shopping cart system with a variety of domain-specific features, which involve visualizing custom graphics. Nothing hugely challenging, though with many elements rather particular to this client. The issue is that the code is super crufty, which is not surprising considering its heritage: it's like a giant ball of duct tape at this point, the database schema included; and it's really hard to wrap your head around the thing for this reason, and also because the developers who were in charge of it for the past six years weren't web developers and kind of made it all up as they went. Anyway, the system is successful and useful, and the client likes it, to the point that they regularly want new stuff added to it. But it's really hard to add new stuff to it because it's brittle, and I have been increasingly inclined to scrap all new development on the old codebase and rewrite the thing in Rails (it's all custom PHP at the moment.) The question is, should I? Reasons against:   * It's always way more work re-designing an application than you think it will be   * Especially when you're re-doing it in a different language and different framework   * Maintaining two code bases (for a while) will be extra work   * It might be better to incrementally rewrite, keeping it in PHP, and redesigning as we go Reasons for:   * At this point adding new features requires tearing the thing apart and trying to figure out what I broke. A redesign would pay for itself in short order, when this process became more regular and less chaotic   * The client's needs have changed substantially in the last six years, and it would be good to have them reflected from the beginning in the architecture   * Going to a popular and widely-supported and well-understood framework will give us the luxury of not reinventing the wheel for every part of the system, and allow us to use high-quality components other people have made Anyway, you get the point. I alternate between what I think the right thing to do is. I've developed a good relationship with the client and they trust me, so they'll probably do what I recommend. Does anyone who's been here before have any advice?"}
{"_id": "157698", "title": "What is meant by dynamic code evaluation?", "text": "The following is from the preface of Jon Resig's new book : Secrets of JavaScript Ninjas > The portions of this book that cover features that are relatively un- > changing, such as code evaluation, with statements, and timers are > continually being used in interesting ways. There are now a number of active > programming languages that are built on top of, or compiled to, JavaScript: > Such as CoffeeScript or Processing.js. These languages require complex > language parsing, code evaluation, and scope manipulation in order to work > effectively. While dynamic code evaluation has been maligned due to its > complexity and potential for security issues, without it we would not have > had the CoffeeScript programming language \u2013 which has gone on to influence > the upcoming ECMAScript specification itself. > > I\u2019m personally making use of all of these features, even today, in my work > at Khan Academy. Dynamic code evaluation in the browser is such a powerful > feature: You can build in-browser programming environments and do crazy > things like inject code into a live runtime. This can result in an extremely > compelling way to learn computer programming and provide all sorts of > capabilities that wouldn\u2019t be possible in a traditional learning > environment. What is actually \"Dynamic code Evaluation\" ? What are its benefits ? Please illustrate with a nicely contrived example ."}
{"_id": "142734", "title": "Do I have to deliver my utility and helper code to clients?", "text": "Over the years I've created a bunch of Java utility and helper libraries which I just attach to new projects. Then, when I deliver code to my clients, I send all the code **except** for the libraries themselves (not JARs but source code files). A client complained that he could not compile the project as some libraries were missing. I tried explaining him about my own libraries, but he was not satisfied. How do you handle such situations? I am still apporting changes to these libraries often and I cannot compile JARs each time I start working on some new project. How to overcome this issue - not to share private libraries (personal intellectual property) and have happy clients?"}
{"_id": "167934", "title": "Design patterns to manage multiple windows/screens?", "text": "Supposed there is an application with multiple windows, like: Logo splashscreen Connecting... screen Login-usercontrols screen Logging in... screen etc. Is there a design pattern, which allows to effectively manage all those windows? (to hide previous windows, display a new window etc.)"}
{"_id": "167935", "title": "Proper attribution of derived work in a GPL project", "text": "This is a continuation of me rewriting GPL project. What will be the correct way of attributing my project as being a derivative of some other GPL-licensed project? So far I came up with:               HgSharp          Original Copyright Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> and contributors.          The following code is a derivative work of the code from the Mercurial project,      which is licensed GPLv2. This code therefore is also licensed under the terms      of the GNU Public License, verison 2.                                                               For information on the license of this code when distributed with and used      in conjunction with the other modules in the HgSharp project, please see      the root-level COPYING file.          Copyright 2011-2012 Anton Gogolev <anton.gogolev@hglabhq.com>"}
{"_id": "186657", "title": "How is a 256 bin HSV histogram quantised?", "text": "I am doing some research on the ScalableColor descriptor in MPEG-7 and I came across this passage: > The descriptor extractions starts with the computation of the colour > historgam with 25 bins in the HSV colour space with the Hue (H) component > quantised to 16 bins, and Saturation (S) and Value (V) quantised to 4 bins > each. My statistics is a little rusty so could someone please explain (hopefully with an example) how the bins are quantised?"}
{"_id": "48075", "title": "designing classes with similar goal but widely different decisional core", "text": "I am puzzled on how to model this situation. Suppose you have an algorithm operating in a loop. At every loop, a procedure `P` must take place, whose role is to modify an input data `I` into an output data `O`, such that `O = P(I)`. In reality, there are different flavors of `P`, say `P1`, `P2`, `P3` and so on. The choice of which `P` to run is user dependent, but all `P` have the same finality, produce `O` from `I`. This called well for a base class `PBase` with a method `PBase::apply`, with specific reimplementations of `P1::apply(I)`, `P2::apply(I)`, and `P3::apply(I)`. The actual `P` class gets instantiated in a factory method, and the loop stays simple. Now, I have a case of `P4` which follows the same principle, but this time needs additional data from the loop (such as the current iteration, and the average value of `O` during the previous iterations). How would you redesign for this case?"}
{"_id": "9385", "title": "What is a good way to pick up where you left off?", "text": "My job is roughly a \"9-5\"ish type programming job (I'm occasionally there later when I need to finish something), and over the weekend I'm not in the office. When I get back to the office on Monday, I typically have to spend a lot of time getting myself back \"into the groove\" as well as figuring out where I was when I left, especially if I had to leave in the middle of something. Occasionally I will leave myself some written notes on a pad by my desk, but I find that sometimes (like today) it's insufficient. What are some creative ways that you use to remind yourself where you left off? I could use any help I could get because I really would like to reduce the lack of productivity that I suffer on Monday mornings. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "57922", "title": "I need a term for an appeal to my manager better than \"single box development\"", "text": "NOTE: The information after the question turned out almost like someone who is venting. That wasn't my original intention. If someone does want to take the time to give me an answer/advice, skimming it might help. QUESTION: I'm looking for a better way to phrse \"single box development\". I'm trying to take a first stab at telling my boss (the co-owner of the company who sees every dollar spent as a dollar out of his pocket) that, while it got us this far (i.e. he can't see anything wrong with it yet!), the limit has been reached. BACKGROUND: I'm only programmer at a 40 person company. I started an LOB from scratch 6 months ago (WinForms/MSSQL). So far it's a smashing success. People that used to work until 10pm now head for the door at 6 and thank me on their way out (I know, yay for me). I'm battling an \"if it ain't broke don't fix it\" attitude from people who only see the external results. I sit close to the end users (18 of them) - if something doesn't work, they all tell. If it crashes, they don't care because they walk over (50 feet at most) to me, I press F5, they show me how to reproduce it and more often than now I go, \"Oh, that's easy to fix - just didn't think of that case\". Five minutes later I click \"Deploy\", and shout, \"OK, get the new version!\". ClickOnce deploy makes the line between web apps and desktop apps blur. Knowing I'm only one person, I have taken every measure to keep the use cases non-dependant on eachother. If I write code that could do \"damage\" if it didn't work I've tended to putting preventative measures into database triggers, thinking \"this limits my worst case\" - but this feels \"creative\" to me, and usually that's an indicator that it's not a long term solution. Now I have to add an ASP.NET solution added to my project. I've got two products on two different platforms with two different user bases, but all accessing the same data and for related business purposes. I need to:   1. Remain a one person software team.   2. Have some kind of thing with the word \"cycle\" in it.   3. Keep delivering features with the same pace and reliability. For reasons I'm sure everyone already knows (and doesn't need to tell me) I can't keep adding features and meeting deadlines while maintaining the relatively low defect rate I've managed to date. There's NO WAY I'm going to get the kind of monetary commitment required to start an in-house software company but I can't deny the benefits of having someone right there next to the stakeholders at all times observing how the business operates and ready to tweak things at a moments notice. So my goal is to inch towards the way the rest of the world does it, and my current step is to get at least one more machine so I can have a formal integration environment."}
{"_id": "99770", "title": "As a contractor, am I liable for bugs? (Do I need Liability Insurance?)", "text": "I've got a neighbor who has been trying to sell me insurance for my side business. His claim is that I could be sued by my clients if the software I produce does not perform properly or has bugs in it. It seems like a pretty broad claim, but I'm wondering about the truth to it. Can I indeed get sued by someone I do work for if bugs are found? If so, to what amount would I be liable?"}
{"_id": "67144", "title": "Agile Development with 100 Users; is that possible?", "text": "We are trying to develop a website that automate an organisation process. This company, let's called it Acme Limited, usually ask their clients to submit paper form and have the clerks to manually enter those form into the internal system. At the moment they have 60 clients across the state. Now, Acme Ltd wants their client to go to their website, that we are building, and fill in the data themselves, instead their clerks. The driver for this, is to free up their clerks, and reassign the clerks to do something else. In my understanding for this scenario - please correct me if I am wrong - the customers in an agile environment, must includes not only the users from the within the company, but also their clients. If we were to develop their system using agile, is it better to include the clients into the software development process ? Have them sit within the development area so that we can ask for their input during development ?"}
{"_id": "99774", "title": "Rewriting IBM assembler + COBOL in C++", "text": "I work as a rental agent / manager for a car rental company that is running on a rental system that was written in 1972. I decided that maybe it was time for an update. For a bit of background, here is a short example of the madness that we have to deal with from this program daily: A rental agent must remember that printing on one screen uses \"MXC\" in the ACT field (everything is based on short codes), which perplexingly stands for \"MaXimum display on a Contract\", while on another it requires PR (for PRint) in the ACTION field, but several screens use a Y in the PT (for PrinT) field, yet another screen uses Y in the PRT (for PRinT) field, yet another screen requires the user to hit enter (but not the enter next to the letters, as that's a new line character, it must be the enter on the number pad) and then F8, a different but related screen requires simply F8, some screens have a field labeled PRT, which should be for PRinT, but the field actually does nothing and printing is done automatically after going through several prompts, and still more screens have a field labeled PRINT Y/N, which insanely defaults to Y for operations in which another location is already delivering paperwork, and to N for operations in which another dealer will need paperwork. I decided that I could do a better job than this, so I set out to contact the person in the company that would make the decision to update this. I eventually get through to the VP of IT, who is in charge of this program. I get a bit of information out of him, and learn that my car rental company has its rental program written in IBM mainframe assembler with a little bit of COBOL mixed in. He says that there are no positions open right now, but that I should e-mail him my resume anyway (in case something opens up). This leads me to my questions. The first is technical. With the idea of improving maintainability in the future, my thought is to re-write it in a higher-level language than assembly language. My area of experience is in C++, so that is the obvious choice for me. The company is in dire need of an easier way to update the program, as I recently read an article where the man I spoke with is quoted as saying the team worked hard, and they are proud to announce that the program now has support for 5-digit location codes (instead of 4) and 8 digit car numbers (instead of 7). My philosophy on updates, even in situations this dire, is in line with Joel's: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html in short, re-writes should be incremental, rather than throwing out everything there was before and starting fresh. Is there an easy way to integrate IBM assembly with C++, and if so, how should I do it? I am vaguely aware of the asm keyword, but I don't know if it's best to use that or do something else. Is such a plan ill-advised? I do most of my work on Linux using g++ and GNU make, so answers specific to that are welcomed, but definitely not required (since I have no idea what sort of build system they have no, but I suspect almost none). The second question is more political. How should I go about persuading this company that they need to make the switch? The theoretical cost savings are huge (based on my estimates, the company is wasting an extra million or so dollars per year, just on increased training costs to learn how to interact with the program), but my proposed changes would probably put all of the current programmers out of work, should they be enacted, so there is great structural resistance to change. edit: I should explain why me modifying what the company already has seems like the best solution to me. I am still open to other suggestions, because this is a monster of a program, however. I've never had a programming job before, so please correct me on any incorrect analysis I might give. First off, there is the off-the-shelf solution. From my talks with a few mid-level managers about this sort of thing, one of the main concerns with switching to a new system is the large number of loyal employees who have been with the company for decades and are comfortable with the system by now. If I have the ability to modify what we have, I could maintain the current interface in a sort of 'compatibility mode'. Users already have to log in to use the current system, so I could add the ability to activate a setting when users log in for the 'first' time (after I make this change), where they are given the option to use either the 'classic' interface or the 'new' interface. There is no way I'll find an off-the-shelf solution that allows that, and I think that fears of senior employees getting confused by changing technology would be a major reason for upper management to say no. My company also owns the software we use; we do not license it. This means that the management I am currently talking to are the same people who could actually authorize me to make a change. With a third-party solution, I would have to get approval from my company in addition to securing whatever rights would be necessary from the company that developed the product we use, which adds an additional hurdle. This would also require convincing the company to give up on \"their\" product and take some other product, which seems like a greater hurdle than attempting to update what we have, but I could very well be wrong on this issue. Finally, looking into the future, I don't just want to improve the user interface and fix a few bugs. After I update those 'urgent' issues, I was hoping to update fundamental way the company runs as related to technology. After spending 1-2 years on these sorts of issues, my plan was to go back to management and propose more dramatic changes. There are many ways the company runs that could be fundamentally improved by technology that they simply are not using right now. For instance, each region pretty much operates the same way. The local major airport is the central hub to distribute cars. They are primarily sent on an as-needed basis. However, the airport is used as the home base for all operations. They'll send two people in one car to my location to pick up one car from us that we don't need, then return to the airport with the car they came in, plus what they are taking back (we are 32 miles from the airport). Then they will come to the location 5 miles away from us in two cars to drop one of them off, then return in their other car to the airport. They do this even if the car we sent back is the same kind of car they need near us. I've been with the company for about two years now, and I've only seem them deviate from this in the most extreme emergencies of car shortages (so about three times ever). I would replace the 4 people working in every region with an automated scheduling system that determines what cars go where and try and find the path that requires the least amount of time + miles + drivers to deliver all cars where they need to be, as an example of the higher level fixes I hope to some day add. However, before I would feel comfortable proposing all of this, I feel it would be helpful to get a toehold in the company and the code base by doing the smaller tasks, like updating the interface. Solutions like outsourcing or otherwise would remove this possibility."}
{"_id": "156342", "title": "What Java data structure/design pattern best models this object, considering it would perform these methods?", "text": "![Typical Distance between Cities Grid](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nmltT.png) Methods:               1.  getDistance(CityA,CityB) // Returns distance between two cities     2.  getCitiesInRadius(CityA,integer) // Returns cities within a given distance of another city     3.  getCitiesBeyondRadius(CityA,integer) //Returns cities beyond a given distance of another city     4.  getRemoteDestinations(integer) // Returns all city pairs greater than x distance of each other     5.  getLocalDestinations(integer) //Returns all city pairs within x distance of each other"}
{"_id": "168221", "title": "Is there any kind of established architecture for browser based games?", "text": "I am beginning the development of a broser based game in which players take certain actions at any point in time. Big parts of gameplay will be happening in real life and just have to be entered into the system. I believe a good kind of comparison might be a platform for managing fantasy football, although I have virtually no experience playing that, so please correct me if I am mistaken here. The point is that some events happen in the program (i.e. on the server, out of reach for the players) like pulling new results from some datasource, starting of a new round by a game master and such.   Other events happen in real life (two players closing a deal on the transfer of some team member or whatnot - again: have never played fantasy football) and have to be entered into the system. The first part is pretty easy since the game masters will be \"staff\" and thus can be trusted to a certain degree to not mess with the system. But the second part bothers me quite a lot, especially since the actions may involve multiple steps and interactions with different players, like registering a deal with the system that then has to be approved by the other party or denied and passed on to a game master to decide. I would of course like to separate the game logic as far as possible from the presentation and basic form validation but am unsure how to do this in a clean fashion. Of course I could (and will) put some effort into making my own architectural decisions and prototype different ideas. But I am bound to make some stupid mistakes at some point, so I would like to avoid some of that by getting a little \"book smart\" beforehand. So the question is: **Is there any kind of architectural works that I can read up on?**   Papers, blogs, maybe design documents or even source code? Writing this down this seems more like a business application with business rules, workflows and such... Any good entry points for that? * * * # EDIT: After reading the first answers I am under the impression of having made a mistake when including the \"MMO\" part into the title. The game will _not_ be all fancy (i.e. 3D or such) on the client side and the logic will completely exist on the server. That is, apart from basic form validation _for the user_ which will also be mirrored on the server side. So the target toolset will be **HTML5, JavaScript** , probably JQuery(UI). My question is more related to the software architecture/design of a system that enforces certain rules. ## Separation of ruleset and presentation One problem I am having is that I want to separate the game rules from the presentation. The first step would be to make an own module for the game \"engine\" that only exposes an interface that allows all actions to be taken in a clean way.   If an action fails with regard to some pre/post condition, the engine throws an exception which is then presented to the user like \"you cannot sell something you do not own\" or \"after that you would end up in a situation which is not a valid game state.\" The problem here is that I would like to be able to not even present invalid action in the first place or grey out the corresponding UI elements. ## Changing and tweaking the ruleset Another big thing is the ruleset. It will probably evolve over time and most definitely must be tweaked. What's more, it should be possible (to a certain extent) to build a ruleset that fits a specific game round, i.e. choosing different kinds of behaviours in different aspects of the game. This would do something like \"we play it with extension A today but we throw out extension B.\" For me, this screams **\"Architectural/Design pattern\"** but I have no idea on who might have published on something like this, not even what to google for."}
{"_id": "198348", "title": "Is physical Agile board \"always\" better than electronic tool?", "text": "Whenever the question comes up on which Agile tool to use use there always some people that answer \"don't use an electronic tool because you will lose the big-visible-board advantage which better generate team conversation\". Is this always the case or are there any contexts where an electronic tool is a better choice? What are some of the pros and cons of each approach?"}
{"_id": "163239", "title": "Dependency injection with n-tier Entity Framework solution", "text": "I am currently designing an n-tier solution which is using Entity Framework 5 (.net 4) as its data access strategy, but am concerned about how to incorporate dependency injection to make it testable / flexible. My current solution layout is as follows (my solution is called Alcatraz): **Alcatraz.WebUI** : An asp.net webform project, the front end user interface, references projects _Alcatraz.Business_ and _Alcatraz.Data.Models_. **Alcatraz.Business** : A class library project, contains the business logic, references projects _Alcatraz.Data.Access_ , _Alcatraz.Data.Models_ **Alcatraz.Data.Access** : A class library project, houses _AlcatrazModel.edmx_ and `AlcatrazEntities` DbContext, references projects _Alcatraz.Data.Models_. **Alcatraz.Data.Models** : A class library project, contains POCOs for the Alcatraz model, no references. My vision for how this solution would work is the web-ui would instantiate a repository within the business library, this repository would have a dependency (through the constructor) of a connection string (not an `AlcatrazEntities` instance). The web-ui would know the database connection strings, but not that it was an entity framework connection string. In the Business project:               public class InmateRepository : IInmateRepository     {         private string _connectionString;              public InmateRepository(string connectionString)         {             if (connectionString == null)             {                 throw new ArgumentNullException(\"connectionString\");             }                  EntityConnectionStringBuilder connectionBuilder = new EntityConnectionStringBuilder();                  connectionBuilder.Metadata = \"res://*/AlcatrazModel.csdl|res://*/AlcatrazModel.ssdl|res://*/AlcatrazModel.msl\";             connectionBuilder.Provider = \"System.Data.SqlClient\";             connectionBuilder.ProviderConnectionString = connectionString;                  _connectionString = connectionBuilder.ToString();         }              public IQueryable<Inmate> GetAllInmates()         {             AlcatrazEntities ents = new AlcatrazEntities(_connectionString);                  return ents.Inmates;         }     }      In the Web UI:               IInmateRepository inmateRepo = new InmateRepository(@\"data source=MATTHEW-PC\\SQLEXPRESS;initial catalog=Alcatraz;integrated security=True;\");          List<Inmate> deathRowInmates = inmateRepo.GetAllInmates().Where(i => i.OnDeathRow).ToList();      I have a few related questions about this design.   1. Does this design even make sense in terms of Entity Frameworks capabilities? I heard that Entity framework uses the Unit-of-work pattern already, am I just adding another layer of abstract unnecessarily?   2. I don't want my web-ui to directly communicate with Entity Framework (or even reference it for that matter), I want all database access to go through the business layer as in the future I will have multiple projects using the same business layer (web service, windows application, etc.) and I want to have it easy to maintain / update by having the business logic in one central area. Is this an appropriate way to achieve this?   3. Should the Business layer even contain repositories, or should that be contained within the Access layer? If where they are is alright, is passing a connection string a good dependency to assume? Thanks for taking the time to read!"}
{"_id": "109403", "title": "Do LAMP/Java-based software development teams have SOE's?", "text": "As a developer on the Windows/.NET stack, it's pretty normal for the company- supplied machine to come with Windows (usually an ancient, archaic version like Windows XP) and a stack of software pre-installed as part of a Standard Operating Environment. In companies building software on the Java/Ruby/PHP/C stack using Linux/Unix/BSD as a primary OS, in your experience:   1. Does everyone tend to use the same OS/version?   2. How do you ensure everyone is using the same version of libraries/dependencies/tools (do you?)   3. How do you create an SOE to pre-configure a machine (do you?)"}
{"_id": "109400", "title": "What it is a data structure of a certain type called?", "text": "I'll try to keep this as much language agnostic as I can but I'll give the examples in C# since I now know how to solve it that language. The question came to mind when I was thinking of how could I instantiate many objects of the same type. Lets say I wanted to create one rectangle, I would do: `Rectangle rect1 = new Rectangle()` Now, if I wanted to create 2 I would do.               Rectangle rect1 = new Rectangle()     Rectangle rect2 = new Rectangle()      This of course is not efficient when you need to create many rectangles. The problem is, I couldn't use loops just like that to create a many rectangles:               for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++){         Rectangle rect1 = new Rectangle()     }      This obviously doesn't achieve what I am after since I would just create 100 `rect1`'s. I was pointed out that you could do something like this: Thanks mootinator               var rectangles = new Rectangle[100];     for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++){       rectangles[i] = new Rectangle();     }      For what I understood, the code creates a data structure (Array? ArrayList?) of they type `Rectangle` inside you actually \"store\" Rectangles. The hardest thing for me was putting a question for _this_. So the questions are:   1. What is this called?   2. Is this standard / \"common\" in most OOP based languages? The question actually came up in ActionsScript 3, but is is useful /necessary in any language it might seem.   3. Is this the best way for doing this considering that I would the like to, for example, loop this Array and apply a method `.Move()`.   4. Are there? and what are the other options to do this."}
{"_id": "157960", "title": "Storing and maintaining serialized objects in C#", "text": "What are the best practices to store and maintain serialized objects in C#? Any strategies or patterns that apply? What I have come to believe so far is this:   * Prefer Json over XML, both for space and for speed, but xml is easier to query/mine data via LINQ to XML for bigger data sets.   * For every single property, map explicitly to a serialized name. In the future, when you need to rename a property, your serialized data won't break. Attributes help with this.   * Store some kind of version info on the serialized object, in case you need to mass-migrate data in the future **Update:** (that I found out the hard way)   * Store all datetimes in a uniform way throughout the whole application and throughout all versions. Both concerning format and time zone."}
{"_id": "72076", "title": "How to avoid shooting yourself in the foot when using closure in JavaScript", "text": "The closure feature is widely used in JavaScript and make it quite difficult for programmer who was used to program in a no-closure language. So what is the best practice about using closure and how to avoid shooting yourself in the foot."}
{"_id": "95719", "title": "What are the different considerations to make when determining persistent data format?", "text": "I've recently been struggling with the concept of what file structure to use when creating save-files for a desktop applications. When I say \"save-files\" I mean something like *.doc files. Files that contain the work that the user put into the program and want to be able to load and resume their work at a later time. Things like binary serialization are easy, though if and when the model for the applications gets re-factored or expanded, that breaks (I believe) the files saved with the older format. Things like XML and JSON are more resilient to future change, but I feel like I'm falling into the trap of using XML as my \"golden hammer\" so-to-speak. A database seems overkill for basically all of the applications I develop. What are some common options, and I'm sure there's many, that I'm not considering? Can you describe when each of these options is best used and why its the best choice?"}
{"_id": "232983", "title": "Linked list clarification", "text": "This is a pretty simple question but I'm new to java. The linked list found in java.util.LinkedList. I saw elsewhere that Java does not use pointers... When I create a new list and add new elements to it, does the list contain references to the data and to the next/previous elements or does it also contain the object itself."}
{"_id": "216289", "title": "Is it reasonable to null guard every single dereferenced pointer?", "text": "At a new job, I've been getting flagged in code reviews for code like this:               PowerManager::PowerManager(IMsgSender* msgSender)       : msgSender_(msgSender) { }          void PowerManager::SignalShutdown()     {         msgSender_->sendMsg(\"shutdown()\");     }      I'm told that last method should read:               void PowerManager::SignalShutdown()     {         if (msgSender_) {             msgSender_->sendMsg(\"shutdown()\");         }     }      i.e., I _must_ put a `NULL` guard around the `msgSender_` variable, even though it is a private data member. It's difficult for me to restrain myself from using expletives to describe how I feel about this piece of 'wisdom'. When I ask for an explanation, I get a litany of horror stories about how some junior programmer, some-year, got confused about how a class was supposed to work and accidentally deleted a member he shouldn't have (and set it to `NULL` afterwards, apparently), and things blew up in the field right after a product release, and we've \"learned the hard way, trust us\" that it's better to just `NULL` check _everything_. To me, this feels like cargo cult programming, plain and simple. A few well- meaning colleagues are earnestly trying to help me 'get it' and see how this will help me write more robust code, but... I can't help feeling like they're the ones who don't get it. Is it reasonable for a coding standard to require that _every single_ pointer dereferenced in a function be checked for `NULL` first\u2014even private data members? (Note: To give some context, we make a consumer electronics device, not an air traffic control system or some other 'failure-equals-people-die' product.) **EDIT** : In the above example, the `msgSender_` collaborator isn't optional. If it's ever `NULL`, it indicates a bug. The only reason it is passed into the constructor is so `PowerManager` can be tested with a mock `IMsgSender` subclass. **SUMMARY** : There were some really great answers to this question, thanks everyone. I accepted the one from @aaronps chiefly due to its brevity. There seems to be fairly broad general agreement that:   1. Mandating `NULL` guards for _every single_ dereferenced pointer is overkill, but   2. You can side-step the whole debate by using a reference instead (if possible) or a `const` pointer, and   3. `assert` statements are a more enlightened alternative to `NULL` guards for verifying that a function's preconditions are met."}
{"_id": "194444", "title": "Android design advice - services & broadcast receivers", "text": "I'm in the process of learning the Android SDK and creating some projects to get a grasp on the system. The current project I'm working with works just fine but I'd like to get some advice about other ways I can go about designing it. Here's what it needs to do. When a text message is received from a specific number, it should fire off a toast message that repeats at a certain interval for a specific duration.   1. To make this work, I created an SMS BroadcastReceiver and checked the incoming messages for the number I'm looking for.    2. If found, an IntentService would be started that would pull out the interval and duration from saved shared prefs. The IntentService would then fire off a broadcast.   3. The BroadcastReceiver for this would catch it and use the AlarmManager to handle the toast message repetitions. This all works just fine, but I'm wondering if there's a cleaner or more efficient way of going about doing this? Any suggestions or advice?"}
{"_id": "24526", "title": "ORM domain design pitfalls", "text": "Are there any patterns which seem sensible when designing an object oriented domain, but do not translate nicely onto a relational database schema? If so, are there standard patterns that can be used instead?"}
{"_id": "194447", "title": "Is it OK to have a team with same abilities but different skill levels?", "text": "I believe that in an ideal team, members should have different but complementary abilities. But is that true about software development teams? As an example we are a small team of 5. We almost have the same abilities and interests but with different levels of skills. Regarding such situation I think we don't cover our teammates' weaknesses.   * Is there any pattern to follow to manage and improve such team?   * Should I setup a team with different abilities and interests to maximize the performance and productivity? \\-- EDIT -- Our current team has a specific lifetime. We work together in a per-project manner. In another word we may change the team arrangement for each project depending on the project and developers situation. Actually we've provided a sort of floating situation. In short, we are a network of developers rather than a fixed-size development team."}
{"_id": "147526", "title": "Trying to sort the coefficients of the polynomial (z-a)(z-b)(z-c)...(z-n) into a vector", "text": "So I have a factored polynomial of the form (z-a)(z-b)(z-c)...(z-n) for n an even positive integer. Thus the coefficient of z^k for 0 <= k < n will be the sum of all distinct n-k element products taken from the set {a,b,...,n} multiplied by (-1)^k, I hope that makes sense, please ask if you need more clarification. I'm trying to put these coefficients into a row vector with the first column containing the constant coefficient (which would be abc...n) and the last column containing the coefficient for z^n (which would be 1). I imagine there is a way to brute force this with a ton of nested loops, but I'm hoping there is a more efficient way. This is being done in Matlab (which I'm not that familiar with) and I know Matlab has a ton of algorithms and functions, so maybe its got something I can use. Can anyone think of a way to do this? Example: (z-1)(z-2)(z-3) = z^3 - (1 + 2 + 3)z^2 + (1*2 + 1*3 + 2*3)z - 1*2*3 = z^3 - 6z^2 + 11z - 6. Note that this example is n=3 odd, but n=4 would have taken too long to do by hand. Edit: Let me know if you think this would be better posted at TCS or Math Stack Exchange."}
{"_id": "147520", "title": "Options for programming by contract in Java", "text": "I am working on a project (which includes JavaEE web apps and JavaSE apps) that has grown from a single developer to a team of three, and issues of readability and robustness are starting to emerge. One glaring omission from the Java language has been fine tuned contracts, and how easily these are exposed to other developers. (By contracts I mean mostly validating method parameters and object pre/post conditions). There are a few solutions that I am looking at, and I would like to get some feedback from others who have some practical experience. It would seem that Java currently has two supported ways to define a contracts:   1. The assert statement   2. Throwing exceptions (such as IllegalArgumentException) Asserts seem to only have value as a debugging tool. Since asserts are not enabled by default, the expectation is that developers will only rely on them during some formalized testing period, after which they are ignored. Throwing exceptions seems like a robust option in that they allow almost any kind of checks to be made. However, the range of exceptions defined by the Java library seem to be poorly suited to defining contracts (for examply subclasses of IllegalArgumentException don't specifically with range issues, null checks etc, and subclasses of IllegalStateException appear to be concerned with network connection and file states), which forces each group to define their own range of exception classes. But the biggest problem is that neither asserts nor exceptions explicitly map contract requirements to parameters or concepts like pre and post conditions. It is expected that the developer will manually maintain the JavaDoc comments with the code to make it clear under what conditions an assert will fail or an exception will be thrown. It is clear to me that the standard Java libraries don't adequately support design by contract, which brings me to my questions: Are my assumptions above correct, or have I missed some property of asserts and exceptions that actually makes them quite useful for this kind of problem?"}
{"_id": "143067", "title": "How should I log time spent on multiple tasks?", "text": "In Joel's blog on evidence based scheduling he suggests making estimates based on the smallest unit of work and logging extra work back to the original task. The problem I'm now experiencing is that I'll have create object A with subtask method A which creates object B and test all of the above. I create tasks for each of these that seems to be resulting in ok-ish estimates (need practice), but when I go to log work I find that I worked on 4 tasks at once because I tweak method A and find a bug in the test and refactor object B all while coding it. How should I go about logging this work? should I say I spent, for example, 2 hours on each of the 4 tasks I worked on in the 8 hour day?"}
{"_id": "34512", "title": "How is \"SELECT *\" read in English?", "text": "The other day, a friend told me that in USA, they pronounce SQL like _squel_ , not _es-qu-el_. I was surprised. I was wondering how \"SELECT *\" is read/pronounced while talking.   * select star?   * select asterisks?   * select all?"}
{"_id": "143061", "title": "What's a good algorithm for a random, uneven distribution of a fixed amount of a resource?", "text": "### Problem I have **X** , a positive integer, of some resource, **R**. There are **N** potential targets. I want to distribute all of **R** to the **N** targets in some \"interesting\" way. \"Interesting\" means:   * Some targets may not get any **R**.   * It should rarely be near even (with a majority of target getting near **X/N** of the resource).   * There should be at least a small chance of one target getting all of **R**. * * * ### Bad solutions The naive approach would be to pick a random target and give one **R** to it and repeat **X** times. This would result in too even of an approach. The next idea is to pick a random number between 1 and **X** and give it to a random target. This results in too large of a number (at least **X/2** on average) being given to one target. ### Question This algorithm will be used frequently and I want the distribution to be interesting and uneven so that the surprise doesn't wear off for users. Is there a good algorithm for something in between these two approaches, that fits the definition of _interesting_ above?"}
{"_id": "34518", "title": "What implementation problems are still soaking up all of your time?", "text": "What implementation problems has the industry claimed to have solved many times, but are still soaking up all of your time? Examples:   * Cross platform GUI - mobile devices have blown this issue wide open.   * OO to RDBMS mapping - how do I map this attribute to that field in that database using that framework. You get the idea.   * Interface definitions - ..., CORBA, COM, EJB, WSDL, ..., etc Can you think of any others?"}
{"_id": "106980", "title": "Perks for new programmers", "text": "I intend on hiring 2-3 junior programmers right out of college. Aside from cash, what is the most important perk for a young programmer? Is it games at work? I want to be creative... I want some good ideas"}
{"_id": "194996", "title": "How can a commercially-driven open source project build an open source community?", "text": "I'm working on an ambitious, commercially-driven open source project* (it probably falls under Wikipedia's definition of Open Core). I'm an engineer on the project, so I don't have too much sway over all of our policies. The majority of the code is in public projects on GitHub, and we have public mailing lists, but that's pretty much the extent of our open source engagement. We use the mailing lists to respond to questions from the community, but a lot of topics go unanswered because they are low quality or because we have deadlines and we don't want to spend too much time on the mailing list instead of delivering features. We have a corporate-mandated contributor agreement that is more like a contributor deterrent IMO. We currently few or no passionate community members who feel strongly enough to represent our support as a volunteer. I've been able to find a few guides (Producing Open Source Software was perhaps the best) about building open source communities, but all of them are under the premise that a project is pure open source with the ability to be transparent to the community. For the things I've described above, I know we can do better, but I don't know that I will be able to get management's buy-in on any of those. What kind of things can a commercial open source project do to engage and build an open source community? * * * *(I've intentionally _not_ explicitly named the project; the views in this question are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the rest of my team or my employer.)"}
{"_id": "224219", "title": "Automated testing of programs with graphical output", "text": "I am a lecturer for a post-graduate module where I expect my students to write Python code that replicates examples from the textbook. The project has been running for a couple of years and this year I want to introduce more automated testing. The problem is writing tests for the functions which primarily produce a matplotlib figure. Note that we are only trying to replicate the figures approximately, so binary comparison with a target image won't be very useful. The short question is therefore: what strategies can I use to test programs whose primary graphical output can not be compared against a strict reference image? Some of the problems that I have with the existing code base that prevents automated testing in this case:   * Producing the graph stops execution in many cases   * It is not practical to generate a copy of the figure in the textbook that includes annotations and so on, so algorithmic image comparison is unlikely to be the answer. To clarify my goals:   1. I would like to be able to _execute all the code in the codebase_ to check that it is actually running, even if that means throwing away the output. This would catch regressions where a function is changed    2. Instead of investing deeply into fuzzy matching of the graphical output with the target, I believe that _visual checking_ between a reference image and the generated image is probably going to be the simplest, but this should be deferred to happen once at the end of the run rather than during the run   3. Since this is a collaborative project, I don't have to assume that the students are going to be adversarial. Mistakes will be good-faith rather than perverse."}
{"_id": "180712", "title": "How do I design a DAL when I have to deal with relationships?", "text": "Say I'm developing a bug tracker, where a ticket _belongs to_ at most one milestone, and a milestone can _have many_ tickets. When a milestone is deleted (from the database), all tickets associated with that milestone must have their relationship unset (i.e. set to `null`). This is a simple relationship. The classes are fairly simple, and map directly to a database:               public class Ticket {         public ObjectId Id { get; set; }         public string Title { get; set; }         public ObjectId MilestoneId { get; set; }     }          public class Milestone {         public ObjectId Id { get; set; }         public string Title { get; set; }     }      Now comes the tricky part: where and how do I reset the `MilestoneId` fields? One possible solution is to write a data access layer by creating one giant class with all data accessing methods for all kinds of objects, in this case tickets and milestones. Another possible solution is to write several classes (e.g. `TicketProvider` and `MilestoneProvider`), one for each kind of object, that provide data accessing methods such as `Find`, `Save` and `Destroy`. The latter appeals more to me since I don't like monsterous classes, but there is one caveat: the method that deletes milestones has to reset the `MilestoneId`s of all associated tickets to `null`. This means that `MilestoneProvider`, which is responsible for manipulating milestones, suddenly deals with tickets! How are relationships commonly dealt with in data access layers, and how can I prevent violation of SRP? Should I put the entire DAL in one class, or should I separate it and if so, how can I best do that?"}
{"_id": "180716", "title": "Should database queries be abstracted out of the page itself?", "text": "When writing page generation in PHP, I often find myself writing a set of files littered with database queries. For example, I might have a query to fetch some data about a post directly from the database to display on a page, like this:               $statement = $db->prepare('SELECT * FROM posts WHERE id=:id');     $statement->bindValue(':id', $id, PDO::PARAM_INT);     $statement->execute();     $post = $statement->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);     $content = $post['content']     // do something with the content      These quick, one-off queries are usually small, but I sometimes end up with large portions of database interaction code which begins to look pretty messy. In some cases, I've solved this problem by creating a simple library of functions to handle my post-related db queries, shortening that block of code to a simple:               $content = post_get_content($id);      And that's great. Or at least it is until I need to do something else. Maybe I need to get the five most recent posts to display in a list. Well, I could always add another function:               $recent_posts = post_get_recent(5);     foreach ($recent_posts as $post) { ... }      But that ends up using a `SELECT *` query, which I usually really don't need anyway, but is often too complicated to reasonably abstract. I eventually end up with either a massive library of database interaction functions for every single use case, or a series of messy queries inside every page's code. And even once I've built these libraries, I'll find myself needing to do one tiny join that I hadn't used before, and I suddenly need to write another highly- specialized function to do the job. Sure, I could use the functions for general use cases and queries for specific interactions, but as soon as I start writing raw queries I begin to slip back into direct access for everything. Either that, or I'll get lazy and will start doing things in PHP loops that should really be done directly in the MySQL queries, anyway. I'd like to ask those more experienced with writing internet applications: is the maintainability boost worth the extra lines of code and possible inefficiencies that the abstractions may introduce? Or is simply using direct query strings an acceptable method for handling database interactions?"}
{"_id": "50327", "title": "What is the difference between an engineer and a product manager?", "text": "It seems nowadays all the develop teams have both software engineers and product manager. I am a newbie to the software industry and I wonder what is the difference?   1. Is it necessary for a Product Manager to have a programming background?   2. How to divide work between Engineers and Product Manager?"}
{"_id": "136152", "title": "Should QA find reproducible scenarios?", "text": "Sometimes my QA team reports bugs, but neither I or them have any idea on how to reproduce them. This leads to very long and frustrating debugging sessions which sometimes do not even yield results. My software is tied heavily with proprietary hardware so bugs can come from many directions at once. Should I expect more from them than \"your software crashed when I pressed a button\" or should I figure myself what happened? EDIT: One of my coworker pointed out that we are probably all developers here so the results might suffer a little bias"}
{"_id": "151698", "title": "Where can I safely learn about computer security?", "text": "I find it really hard to find resources about computer security. I asked questions on message boards about key loggers and viruses and I got negative assumption from people assuming the the worse. Also, I don't think that I can trust random message boards. I know that it is a broad topic, but are there any good websites that I can follow and learn from that are targeted to beginner with some samples? I am a developer (or at least want to be one) and I have a CS degree if that helps."}
{"_id": "202031", "title": "What is the reason for using lowercase for the first word in a local variable (eg, employeeCount, firstName)", "text": "I take a good deal of criticism from other programmers due to my use of full proper casing for all my variables. For example, your typical programmer will use `employeeCount` for a variable name, but I use `EmployeeCount`. I use full proper casing for _everything_ , be it a void method, return method, variable, property, or constant. I even follow this convention in Javascript. That last one _really_ rustles people's jimmies. The typical reason given as to why I shouldn't follow this \"non-standard\" casing convention is because full proper case should be reserved for properties and void methods. Local variable and methods that return a value should have the first word in lowercase like `int employeeCount = getEmployeeCount()`. However, I don't understand why. When I question this, it seems that I just get an arbitrary answer of _that's the standard_. Whatever the answer is, it usually always boils down to _That's just the way it is and I don't question it. I just follow it._. Arbitrary answers are never good enough for me. Ever since my early days of programming Excel 97 macros with the Office IDE, I've never needed a casing convention to tell me whether or not something is a local variable or property. This is because I've always used a very intuitive naming convention. For example, `GetNuggetCount()` clearly suggests a method that goes somewhere an gets a count of all the nuggets. `SetNuggetCount(x)` suggests that you are assigning a new value to the count of nuggets. `NuggetCount` all by itself suggests a property or local variable that is simply holding a value. To that last one, one may be tempted to say, \"Ah ha! That is the question. Property or variable? WHICH IS IT?\" To that, I'd reply with, \"Does it really matter?\" So here's the tl;dr;: What are the objective, logical, non-arbitrary reasons to use lowercase for the first word in your variable or return method? **Edit:** For MainMa Replace _this_ code with the first code sample in your answer and see how well your argument holds up:               public void ComputeMetrics()     {         const int MaxSnapshots = 20;              var Snapshots = this.LiveMeasurements.IsEnabled ?             this.GrabSnapshots(MaxSnapshots, this.cache) :             this.LoadFromMemoryStorage();              if (!Snapshots.Any())         {             this.Report(LogMessage.SnapshotsAreEmpty);             return;         }              var MeasurementCount = Measurements.Count();         this.Chart.Initialize((count + 1) * 2);              foreach (var s in Snapshots)         {             this.Chart.AppendSnapshot(s);         }     }"}
{"_id": "188543", "title": "How Should \"Undo Typing\" Behave?", "text": "I'm implementing a Java app that includes an Undo/Redo stack. I've noticed that some apps (such as TextEdit on Mac OS X) let you choose \"Undo Typing\" from the Edit Menu after typing some text. I'd like to implement that sort of thing into my app as well, but I'm having a really hard time finding guidelines about how it should behave. With some trial and error, my best guess about how TextEdit's Undo Typing behaves is:   * When the user types a new character (or types the delete key), merge it into the previous Undo Typing item if one is at the top of the Undo stack, unless one of the following situations occurs   * Always create a new Undo Typing item after the user continues to type after at least 15 seconds of inactivity   * Always create a new Undo Typing item after the user is typing for an extended period of time and some condition is met (couldn't figure out if this was time based or character count based).   * Always create a new Undo Typing item when any text is selected and then deleted or overwritten (selecting text, not making a change, then returning to the original insertion point and continuing to type does not trigger this) In practice, Apple's strategy seems to work (at least it works for me when I type), but as noted by the last point, I haven't really been able to figure out the rules. Also, it seems like other programs follow different rules, such as Microsoft Word. Google has not turned up a defined list of rules for any implementation of Undo Typing and I haven't come across any best practices for how it should behave. So how should it behave? Or is it just up to the whims of the programmer? EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not interested in implementation details right now. I'm especially curious as to whether or not an authoritative reference (e.g. best practices or user interface document) exists describing this or a description of how it is implemented across multiple products."}
{"_id": "189637", "title": "Is bash \"finished\"?", "text": "Should bash be expected to change in ways that break non-trivial amounts of existing scripts at some point in the (near/<5y) future? How much change has it gone trough in the last ten years compared to, say, python or perl?"}
{"_id": "144382", "title": "Are SQL Injection vulnerabilities in a PHP application acceptable if mod_security is enabled?", "text": "I've been asked to audit a PHP application. No framework, no router, no model. Pure PHP. Few shared functions. HTML, CSS, and JS all mixed together. I've discovered numerous places where SQL injection would be easily possible. There are other problems with the application (XSS vulnerabilities, rampant inline CSS, code copy-pasted everywhere) but this is the biggest. Sometimes they escape inputs, not using a prepared query or even mysql_real_escape_string(), mind you, but using addslashes(). Often, though, their queries look exactly like this (pasted from their code but with columns and variable names changed):               $user = mysql_query(\"select * from profile where profile_id='\".$_REQUEST[\"profile_id\"].\"'\");      The developers in question claimed that they were unable to hack their application. I tried, and found mod_security to be enabled, resulting in HTTP 406 for some obvious SQL injection attacks. I believe there to be sophisticated workarounds for mod_security, but I don't have time to chase them down. They claim that this is a \"conceptual\" matter and not a \"practical\" one since the application can't easily be hacked. Their internal auditor agreed that there were problems, but emphasized the conceptual nature of the issues. They also use this conceptual/practical argument to defend against inline CSS and JS, absence of code organization, XSS vulnerabilities, and massive amounts of repetition. My client (rightly so, perhaps) just wants this to go away so they can launch their product. The site works. You can log in, do what you need to do, and things are visibly functional, if slow. SQL Injection would indeed be hard to do, given mod_security. Further, their talk of \"conceptual vs. practical\" is rhetorically brilliant, considering that my client doesn't understand web application security. I worry that they've succeeded in making me sound like an angry puritan. In many ways, this is a problem of politics, not technology, but I am at a loss. As a developer, I want to tell them to toss the whole project and start over with a new team, but I face a strong defense from the team that built it and a client who really needs to ship their product. Is my position here too harsh? Even if they fix the SQL Injection and XSS problems can I ever endorse the release of an unmaintainable tangle of spaghetti code? **EDIT:** As to my role on this project, I'm not a security expert, I'm a web developer generalist. the client initially asked me to load test the app and make recommendations for scalability. I haven't gotten that far yet, because when I first read the output of the home page, I saw inline CSS, table based layouts, and all sorts of crazy JS, so I requested a copy of the code, where I found the unholy mess described above. They don't even abstract the HTML header and footer. Every PHP file has a slightly different pasted version. And as to the app itself, it does store personal information, and it processes (but does not store) credit card data."}
{"_id": "144380", "title": "How to implement a no-login authentication system", "text": "I am looking to build a very loose authentication system that can track a user and link submitted data/comments to a specific user. The submissions are essentially anonymous, but a user may want to edit his submission/comment at a later date. I want the experience to be as smooth as possible so do not want to ask users to sign up for an account and then login each time. There is no point as their submissions are not in their name and to another user browsing the site, there is no way of linking a submission to a specific user (think anonymous comments on a blog post or pastie). However, the user should have the ability to edit (at least in the short term) the content they have posted. The way I imagine doing this would be to place a unique identifier in a cookie on the users machine. This would enable me to link a submission to a user, and while that cookie remained on the users machine, I would allow them to edit their content. Of course, if the cookie is lost, or the user accesses the site from a different browser, then they would not be able to edit their content, but this is not really an issue, they can always resubmit a new piece of content. Is there a better way of doing this? How can I implement this so that the user can edit their data for the longest possible amount of time."}
{"_id": "209744", "title": "SharePoint Versus WordPress for developing business web sites", "text": "We have been using sharePoint server 2013 to build out intranet web application including, discussion forum, wiki library, calendars, announcements ,etc. Now a new requirement has been raised from the management that we want to build a new external web site for our company, including the following main sections; contact us , about us, services, our team member, our customers, etc. at this stage I am trying to find the best tool that we can use to build our website. Either using SharePoint 2013 or WordPress. So can anyone advices on what are the advantages and disadvantages of each tool? Regards"}
{"_id": "209746", "title": "Why do development devices give you more resources than a typical device?", "text": "I have created an app that works on my 4th generation iPod Touch and my company's 5th generation iPod touch. We were about to release, when we found a crash that occurs after any non- developer device runs the app*. The notion came up that a device registered as a 'developer device' gives your app more resources to use. This doesn't seem right to me, since I couldn't think of any reason that would exist - I feel like it is more likely an issue with building or provision profiling. However, that prompted a discussion. Why do devices such as game console development kits, devices that have more capabilities than the target platform, exist in the first place? Of course it is nice to stress test a program, but wouldn't a more accurate representation of the target platform make more sense? TL;DR - Why do development kits have more resources than target platforms? *With a non-developer device being any >3rd gen. iOS device that downloads the app from our server, not directly from a computer with the app & xcode installed. Note there is another question that reads similar, but it is actually different, because that other question is asking about simulator, and I understand that there are massive differences between using a simulator and an actual device."}
{"_id": "93299", "title": "Didn't do too well on a Java IKM test, advice?", "text": "I did an IKM Java test recently and got quite a low score. I only graduated a year ago and I dont have commercial experience in Java (i do web development in my current job). I thought reading up a lot on Java would help me prepare, but when I sat the IKM test i got ripped to pieces. I didn't know much about how the garbage collection actually works, names of other java compilers (i know about javac?), using .dll with Java etc etc. I know a wide range of the basics, but to the extent wether 'int(5L)' produces an integer or not, I really didnt know. My question is that many of the IKM questions I have never come across, yet I have read many of the wider-known Java programming books (Deitel, O'Reilly etc). Am i reading the wrong books??? Could anyone recommend a good plan of action to allow me to go away and self- study and be able to know these really tough java questions?"}
{"_id": "151527", "title": "How to unit test a jsp file?", "text": "I'm developing a Java 6 EE application and I'm testing my jsp code with another one with a testing version of the function calls and code used in the original one but it seems loose and impractical. Is there a good way to accomplish this kind of testing?"}
{"_id": "110989", "title": "Are Bools/Bits Faster Than Integers", "text": "As the title suggests I'm wondering whether bools or bits are faster than using integers (1 and 0)? Specifically I thinking about their speed in CASE statements, even more specifically in T-SQL (although it would be interesting to hear about experiences from other languages). For some context, I have a pretty big SELECT statement over a large table which has to transform a lot of data based on integer being either 1 or 0, and was considering converting the integers to bits for a performance boost. EDIT: Thank you all for your responses. It kind of seemed like you were all giving me pretty much the same advice worded slightly differently or with different levels of detail."}
{"_id": "110985", "title": "Data indexing frameworks fit for large E-Commerce applications", "text": "we wrote and still maintain a large E-Commerce application. Our feature list resembles what you would expect from most shops. We'd like to improve some of our features, and now the search/suggestion list functionality (enter some letters, a JScripted suggestion list appears) has caught our eye. Currently, we use http://xapian.org/. It has some drawbacks. Firstly, it's not actually the right solution. It has been created to index documents, not ever- changing data in a granularity that an E-Commerce application would need. Secondly, the load on the database is significant when we reindex all data every night. We'd like a framework that has been designed for indexing database data, which can add to the index easily and without much load, which can supply data changes in the backoffice quickly to the frontend without much load and delay. I'm aware of the fact that Xapian is Open Source and even Free Software, so we could adapt it to our needs if we decided to invest the time and manpower. But taking a quick look around for a solution more suited seems fair, right? Oh, and commercial applications are fine, too. FOSS is not required."}
{"_id": "110987", "title": "Should I tell someone that their commit caused a regression?", "text": "When you track down and fix a regression\u2014i.e. a bug that caused previously working code to stop working\u2014version control makes it entirely possible to look up who committed the change that broke it. Is it worth doing this? Is it constructive to point this out to the person that made the commit? Does the nature of the mistake (on the scale of simple inattentiveness to fundamental misunderstanding of the code they changed) change whether or not it's a good idea? If it is a good idea to tell them, what are good ways to do it without causing offense or causing them to get defensive? Assume, for the sake of argument, that the bug is sufficiently subtle that the CI server's automated tests can't pick it up."}
{"_id": "187293", "title": "Dynamic items on JavaFX interface", "text": "I am looking to build an application similar to Blocky. For that I will be using JavaFX. I am working on prototypes atm. It appears that JavaFX UIs are generally made using Scene Builders. I am still not sure how much flexibility is this going to provide me, when I will be looking to dynamically change shapes (make them bigger etc) during runtime, detect collisions to connect shapes etc. Could someone more experienced using this technology tell me how feasible an application like this is using JavaFX? Also would it be easier/same to do it with Java? Thanks."}
{"_id": "74913", "title": "What stressors do programmers encounter on the job, and how do you deal with them?", "text": "Learning to manage stress is vital to staying healthy while working at any job. A necessary subtask is learning to recognize and limit the sources of stress. But, in the midst of the daily grind, it can be difficult to recognize sources of stress (especially for an intense, focused persona such as a programmer). What types of stressors should programmers look out for, and how can they be managed?"}
{"_id": "114156", "title": "Why there are no PUT and DELETE methods in HTML forms?", "text": "HTML4 / XHTML1 allows only GET and POST in forms, now it seems like HTML5 will do the same. There is a proposal to add these two but it doesn't seem to be gaining traction. What were the technical or political reasons for not including PUT and DELETE in HTML5 specification draft?"}
{"_id": "145387", "title": "Should an analysis be technology-agnostic?", "text": "I had an argument yesterday with one of my colleagues. He (a business-analyst, previously a programmer) thinks that he should be aware of the technology used to implement the system, so he can take better design decisions. In my opinion (I am a programmer), an analysis should not be coupled in any way to the technology and I believe that a good analyst can make a great design without worrying about the implementation details. Am I right to think that way? Are there any reasons why a business analyst would need to know the technology used to implement the system? EDIT : I believe that I used the wrong term when saying `business analyst`. Maybe I meant architect, or system analyst. I am not used to these terms. I meant something like architect or system analyst if you prefer. Thank you everyone for your awesome answers! I am not very experienced yet and I am glad you opened my eyes on this."}
{"_id": "77798", "title": "Sites for co-funding open source projects", "text": "I am thinking about helping to finance an adaptation of Postgres to utilize the GPU for sequential scans. To reduce my cost, I would like to get others who are interested in the same feature to co-fund it with me. I have come across a few sites facilitating such financing, but as none of the ones I looked at had facilitated the financing of more than a few projects, I did not even bookmark their URLs. **My question** What are the best sites to do this? The sites needs to be active. **EDIT:** The best thing would be if coders could also commit to contribute, either by developing, testing, documenting or doing other work."}
{"_id": "114152", "title": "Ways of integrating legacy applications", "text": "My company is one which has grown up rapidly over recent years in multiple territories. We are not a software company per se, but a technical one who have developed various bespoke applications inhouse. Some of these are now sold as SAAS. I am personally responsible for 3 of these applications: all internal web applications, one written in MySQL/Python/Django, one written in SQL Server/Python/Django and one in MySQL/PHP/Symfony. My developer resource includes expertise in all of these, as well as some Java and Adobe Flex. None of us have any significant experience in Microsoft technologies beyond SQL Server. However, all the other departments in my company that have developers all work using the Microsoft stack - all our other webapps are C#/asp.NET etc etc etc. I have been asked to evaluate integration of our depts products with others in the company at a data-sharing and presentational level. I see 3 possible routes:   1. We bite the bullet and move to the Microsoft development stack, and this becomes a company-wide policy. Pros: standardisation, ability to pool resource, integration can be done at any level. Cons: massive licensing costs we can't really afford right now, complete retraining of all developers required, having to use IIS instead of nice Ubuntu/Apache servers, and general philosophical opposition (we're mostly open-source evangelists in my dept).   2. Middleware. We've been looking at Adobe Flex in order to handle data subscriptions between services. Pros: relatively cheap solution, existing in-house experience, can use whatever underlying tech we choose. Cons: it took ages to get a quote for Adobe data services, it isn't clear to me how futureproof this route is - are we potentially buying into a tech that's going extinct?   3. DIY. We stick with open-source all the way, and custom-write web service APIs between all the apps. Pros: cheap on licensing, open-source. Cons: additional time required, more testing, core issue of techology proliferation not tackled I'd be interested to know what other approaches there might be here. Are there other Middleware ways of going about this? Am I hopelessly out of date with my views? What's a safe bet for the future? Thanks"}
{"_id": "77793", "title": "Library version control best practices", "text": "I may be violating some StackOverflow terms by asking a question which is more likely to yield discussion than a clean answer. Here goes, however. I've developed some software for a small company that isn't a software house (so we don't already have a lot of processes in place). It is in Turbo Pascal (Delphi 2009) and my source is version controlled (CVS). I use several third party components (graphing, TCP comms, etc.) In Delphi, the default behavior is for the source for these to be stored in an include folder under the the Delphi IDE program files folder. It's now time to pass this project off to another developer. Now he'll have to install the IDE + components in order for them to appear correctly when editing forms in this application. But I'd like our production build process to be automated and I'd like a build server to be able to perform a code checkout and compile. This means I think I really need to put all the source code (or at least the DCUs where I don't have the source files) for these 3rd party addons in source control. I think they should be part of the CVS module for the software project being developed (i.e. not their own source controlled module). I think we need to be able (as a small company) to point a future developer at the repository, and say \"Check out this module\" and he'll have everything he needs to be able to compile from the command line without doing anything else. (i.e. portability to new dev environments is important) Is this sensible, or would it be more scalable for us to keep each library in its own version controlled state and then in the build script, pull the source code for this project, and the correct version of the source code for each library? Thanks in advance, and my apologies for the rambling nature of the question. Duncan"}
{"_id": "35649", "title": "Do you know any studies about the percentage of boilerplate code?", "text": "Hey guys. Do you know any studies about the quantity of boiler plate code in different project types? I don't seem to find any actual numbers. I know this is subjective and relative to the language, project type and frameworks used, but there must be an actual study somewhere that covers at least a niche. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "73037", "title": "JavaScript Architecture, Tools, Compatibility and Pitfalls", "text": "I am thinking through how I will use JavaScript for a project which is just in its beginning of coding. I am not an expert in JavaScript, but I recognize it as a very important part of the site so I have a few questions:   1. I often see projects have 1 huge javascript file which handles everything. Is that for the purpose of making things faster?   2. Is it ok to have javascript functions coded inside html pages? Or is it considered bad design?   3. Are most people still using jQuery? I have been seeing a proliferation of other .js frameworks. I know Yahoo made one and there are many others. Is jQuery still the defacto standard for most js frameworks needs? (sorry this question is subjective).   4. How should I approach/test various browser compatibilities? Should I be very concerned about that?"}
{"_id": "165307", "title": "Convincing Upper Management the need of larger monitors for Developers", "text": "The company I work for has recently hired on several developers, and there are a limited number of monitors to go around. There are two types in the office - a standard 15\" (thankfully flatscreen) and a widescreen 23\". No developer has a machine capable of a dual monitor setup, and the largest monitors went to the people who got here first. Three or four new senior level developers only have a 15\" monitor to work on. To make matters worse, there are perhaps a total of 25-30 DBAs/Testers/Admin types in the company who all have dual screen 23\" setups. We have brought the issue to management, and they refuse to take away large monitors from people who have been here for years for the sake of new employees, even if they are senior level. We have pitched the idea of testers sacrificing a large monitor for one of our small ones, but they won't go for that either. What can I say to management to illustrate the need of monitors for developers?"}
{"_id": "165306", "title": "What benefits can I get upgrading my ASP.NET (Webform) + DAL(EF) + Repository + BLL structure to MVC?", "text": "I'm in the process of defining an approach that may best fit our needs for a big web application development. For now, I'm thinking going with an ASP.NET Architecture with a DAL using Entity Framework, a Repository concept to not access DAL directly from BLL and a BLL that call the repository and make every manipulations necessary to prepare data to push in a presentation layer (.aspx files). I don't plan to use ASP.Net controls and prefer to keep things simple and lightweight using plain html, jQuery UI controls and do most of the server calls with jQuery Ajax. Sometimes, when needed, I plan to use handlers (.ashx) to call BLL methods that will return JSON or HTML to client for dynamic stuff. My solution also has a test project that Mock the Repository with in-memory data to not repose on database for testing BLL methods... It may be usefull to add that we will build a big application over this architecture with hundreds of tables and store procedures with a lot of reading and writing to database. My question is, having this architecture in mind, Is there any evident advantages that I can obtain by using an MVC3 project instead of the described architecture base on Webform? Do you see any problem in this architecture that may cause us problem during the next steps of development? I know the MVC pattern for using it in others projects with Django... but the Microsoft MVC implementation look so much more complex and verbose than Django MVC and it's why I'm hesitating (or waiting for a little push?) right now before jumping into it... We are in a real project with deadlines and don't want to slow the development process without any real benefits."}
{"_id": "197531", "title": "Best practice refactor n-tier into vertical slices architecture", "text": "What work path do there exist to identify reasonable vertical slices of a classic n-tier platform code base and infrastructure (enterprise size)? Regardles of refactor or a new solution I think there will be the same approach (more or less?) So i'm primary interested in steps and definitioning of modules, functions, then \"test\" them into a function-unit or if it's appproved as a vertical. To extend my thoughs..   I understand that a vertical should be a actor, a kind of business value. But is a communication system a actor, or a functional unit in a vertical slice? Probably yes And no (depends on enterprise), but how to decide? Is shipment a part of Order, or are both Order and Shipment different verticals? What should a vertical slice consist of, to be a true vertical? In terms of Levels of functions, like \"an own data store, an own client configuration tool, an own business intelligence calculation\" and so on. Btw: It's a requirement that the verticals should be deployed and operatable independently of each other. Maybe there is a kind of \"yes/no\" schema to use? \"Is this X used for Y?\" Yes - then it's a vertical. \"Is this X used with Z?\" - Yes, then it's anti-pattern for vertical. \"Is X depend on the funtion YY?\" If yes, then.. And so on. Links to success stories when define verticals is also of interest."}
{"_id": "32917", "title": "Question about programming in linux", "text": "In the next month I have to shift to work on the ubuntu system and writing c/c++ programs. I used to program in windows visual studio for some years. What should I do to prepare the shift suddenly? And how to debug in that system?"}
{"_id": "32914", "title": "C# .NET 4.0 interactive course?", "text": "I would like to learn C# programming. I already studied it for several weeks and wrote some minor programs with VS2010, and I'm not completely newbie at programming because I worked on STALKER - Shadow of Chernobyl as scripter, but it was LUA. I want to become a real programmer. I think C# is a decent way to start with. I already learned about the most commonly used resource sites and got some nice eBooks as well, but unfortunately I don't have time to sit down in front my computer all the time, so my progress is pretty slow. I would like to ask that if someone can recommend me some decent interactive online courses to make my learning progress faster. I know about the \"joe grip\" course but I don't know if it's worth $39 also it's only for .NET 1.x and 2.0 while I'd like to learn 4.0 so I have no idea what should I do. **UPDATE** Thanks for the advices. I'm not sure if I will develop web or desktop applications in the future, time will tell. First I need to understand the basics of C# and .NET and get some experience. Thanks for the eBooks, I downloaded them, but anyway I've already got several eBooks, for example the Programming C# 4.0 6th Edition, what is approx. 900 pages long. I would rather need video tutorials because nowadays I don't have time to read through ten thousands of pages and it's not so exciting either. Now finally I've found some nice video tutorials where experienced people explains what they are doing. That's fine. I didn't know about that MSDN Virtual Labs, thanks for that too."}
{"_id": "181442", "title": "Generate commercial license key for web service", "text": "# Background I have a business question regarding web-based software licensing. A number of web sites offer software as a service for various APIs. A good example is Google's Custom Search API. The process to use web services typically resembles:   1. **Account.** User creates an account.   2. **Server.** User defines the IP address(es) of the server(s) that will make API requests.   3. **Key.** User receives a public API key for the desired API(s).   4. **Guide.** User is given documentation that shows how to use the API key to make a request.   5. **Test.** User can make test requests to verify integration functionality.   6. **Billing.** User pays to activate the account.   7. **Production.** User integrates the web service into their applications.   8. **Deactivation.** System deactivates accounts when expired, exceeds request limit, etc. These requirements are in addition to integration with the service being licensed. # Problem That is a lot of work for a small business. # Questions What off-the-shelf, open source projects address this problem? If there are no such projects, what would you do to architect a viable, low- cost solution (ideally, a percentage of each license)? That is, what software or existing commercial services would you use for a small business (having little to no income) that seeks to license web-based services? Thank you! # Related Links   * License key solution in web application, what is the best approach?   * API Management System"}
{"_id": "181440", "title": "What is the difference between \"recursion\" and \"self-reference\"?", "text": "The wikipedia articles are too advanced for me to understand, could someone give me a simple explanation please?"}
{"_id": "100914", "title": "What do you do to make the client understand that requirements not mentioned in contract should be charged separately?", "text": "I've done a very small project for a specified amount of payment. The project was some client-side validation code. However, now client asks for code improvement (general code improvement including server-side, not mine which was purely jQuery and client-side) and says that these requirements are obvious duties of developers. What should I do? He doesn't pay till I do something for performance tuning, while we agreed on client-side validation only. Should I forget about my money? Or maybe I should do the second requirement without expecting any return?"}
{"_id": "183979", "title": "How to get a reference to a central AssetLoader in every Widget?", "text": "I'm working on a simple UI system for a game. The building blocks are `Widget` objects, which can contain each other. There are several sub classes of `Widget`, e.g. `LabelWidget`, `ImageWidget`and `ButtonWidget`. Since nesting is possible, a `ButtonWidget`is really nothing but a container for a `LabelWidget` and an `ImageWidget`. I'm pretty happy with that. The problem is: I now need to use an `AssetLoader` to load images, I cannot get them directly from the disk. There are multiple `AssetLoader` implementations, one for each platform the game runs on, and there is only one instance which is created early on. And it has state. So now I need to pass an `AssetLoader` object into `ImageWidget`. And into `ButtonWidget`, since it contains an `ImageWidget`. And so on. I've updated the code and now I need to pass an asset loader into almost every widget, and I really don't like what I see. I've investigated some code bases of UI frameworks I like, and noticed that Android has something similar: There is a `Context` object which is passed into every view, which can be used to load resources. But since views there are usually instantiated magically from XML, it's not as annoying to use as what I have. I can think of only one way out: Make a singleton that does nothing but offer a reference to the asset loader, e.g. `AssetLoaderHolder`. But I'm not convinced that this isn't actually worse than what I have. Can you think of any remotely elegant solution for this? Note that using a dependency injection framework is not an option for me."}
{"_id": "128422", "title": "Designing my password class(es). How to split it up?", "text": "I've inherited a custom made authentication system that needs some refactoring. I'm not quite sure what the best way to split it up the password section and could use some help. **The password class(es) need the following functionality:**   * **Check to see if a password conforms to restrictions.** It needs to be able to provide feedback on why it is incorrect.   * **Generate three kinds of hashes.** We have several file-systems with incompatible hashes, so unfortunately I have to maintain three hashes.   * **Give a different hash for a certain user type.** If a user is web-only we do not keep a password for them as they cannot use the system. Their passwords are always `*`.   * **Be able to verify a password for a given user.** Fortunately I only have to authenticate against one of the three hashes I have to maintain.   * **Be able to generate a random password, unencrypted.**   * **Submit new password to the database.** * * * I'm thinking about using four classes, `Validator`, `Hasher`, `Generator`, and `Changer`.   * Validator      * `isCurrentPassword(int userid, string password): bool`     * `getViolations(string password): array`   * Generator      * `generate(int length):string` Creates a password.   * Hasher      * `hash_*(string password): string` where `*` is the hash type. I'll have four hashing functions.   * Changer      * `change(int userid, string password):void; throws database exceptions` * * * **What would you recommend and why?**"}
{"_id": "140603", "title": "I have a stacktrace and limit of 250 characters for a bug report", "text": "I'm developing an xbox indie game and as a last-resort I have a `try...catch` encompassing everything. At this point if an exception is raised I can get the user to send me a message through the xbox however the limit is 250 characters. **How can I get the most value out of my 250 characters?** I don't want to do any encoding / compressing at least initially.   Any solution to this problem could be compressed if needed as a second step anyway. I'm thinking of doing things like turning this: > at EasyStorage.SaveDevice.VerifyIsReady()   >  at EasyStorage.SaveDevice.Save(String containerName, String fileName) into this (drop the repeated namespace/class and method parameter names): > at EasyStorage.SaveDevice.VerifyIsReady()   >  at ..Save(String, String) Or maybe even just including the inner-most method, then only line numbers up the stack etc. * * * **TL;DR: Given an exception with a stacktrace how would you get the most useful debugging infromation out of 250 characters?** (It will be a .net exception/stacktrace)"}
{"_id": "128424", "title": "How to use designs skills as an advantage when looking for a programmer job?", "text": "Most programmers are not designers; at least that is what I hear a lot. I consider my design skills to be on par with my programming skills, although I prefer programming if I had to choose one. I feel like that could be a great advantage, but I don't know how to use it to my advantage when searching for a job. It seems either people are looking for a designer or they are looking for a programmer. Its hard to find someone who is looking for someone who is _both_. This may be because someone who is both is either too rare, or not actually desired. If it is indeed a desirable combination, then how do I use it to market myself?"}
{"_id": "101064", "title": "How far can I push refactoring without changing external behavior?", "text": "According to Martin Fowler, code refactoring is (emphasis mine): > Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of > code, altering its internal structure **without changing its external > behavior**. Its heart is a series of small behavior preserving > transformations. Each transformation (called a 'refactoring') does little, > but a sequence of transformations can produce a significant restructuring. > Since each refactoring is small, it's less likely to go wrong. The system is > also kept fully working after each small refactoring, reducing the chances > that a system can get seriously broken during the restructuring. What is \"external behaviour\" in this context? For example, if I apply move method refactoring and move some method to other class, it looks like I change external behaviour, doesn't it? So, I'm interested in figuring out at what point does a change stop being a refactor and becomes something more. The term \"refactoring\" may be misused for larger changes: is there a different word for it? **Update.** A lot of interesting answers about interface, but wouldn't move method refactoring change the interface?"}
{"_id": "128428", "title": "Best way to get programmers to ask for help when they get stuck", "text": "What is the best way to ensure that programmers ask for help when they get stuck on a problem, rather than spending too much time trying to figure something out when they've hit a wall? I'm especially interested in how to optimize this with a distributed team. Some ideas that come to mind:   * pair programming   * co-locating the team   * timeboxes (after expiration, must ask for help) Things (goals) to think about:   * avoid developing dependence on others   * maximize learning & knowledge transfer   * cost of developer A's time to help vs. developer B's time to figure it out him/herself There is also the concern that even if a developer comes up with a solution, it may be of lower quality than if they had asked for help. I believe code reviews are a good way to address this. This question: When do you not give help to less experienced programmers? is good background reading for this one."}
{"_id": "164533", "title": "How to join the World of Programming?", "text": "Name's Vlad and I am currently on my third year of Community College, studying Computer Science with emphasis on Programming in C++ and Networking. I have completed a few programming courses with general ease, but have not gained advanced understanding of programming through school. None of my friends are serious programmers working in the industry. Being an active lurker on many programming websites, and in general tech oriented sites I have noticed how little I know about the industry, the lingo and terminology. (I have no clue how Git hub works, but I generally understand what its for). So I am looking for help as to where I should look for information on the programming world and the industry in which I a very interested. By that I mean, what sites I should utilize to gain information on programming practices, introduction to advanced C++ and resources that simply introduce a 20some programming noob. I like programming, but I haven't dug my hands deep into it yet, I want to start to do so before I transfer to a University. All in all, where do I find information on becoming an actual programmer (Information that lays out a path)."}
{"_id": "51148", "title": "What should my \"code sample\" look like?", "text": "I've just had quite a good phone interview (for a CakePHP-related position, not that it's especially important to the question). The interviewer seemed to be impressed with my resume and personality. At the end, though, he asked me to email him a code sample from my existing work project, \"to check you're not secretly a terrible programmer, ha ha!\" I'm not _too_ worried that my code can't stand on its own two feet, but I'm very much an intermediate programmer rather than an expert. What obvious pitfalls should I make sure my code sample **doesn't** fall into, in case they rule me out on the spot? Secondly, and this is probably the harder part of the question to answer, what features in a code sample would be so impressive that they would instantly make you **much more favourably inclined** towards the programmer? All ideas or suggestions welcomed!"}
{"_id": "65953", "title": "Should a senior developer refuse to take paper exams during an interview?", "text": "I found that many senior developers refuse to do paper exams in interviews. They regard the exam as a kind of humiliation, because they think that \"They don't trust my programming ability even if I have five years working experience... only junior staff need take a paper exam...\". However, Joel insists: > **11\\. Do new candidates write code during their interview?** > > Would you hire a magician without asking them to show you some magic tricks? > Of course not. Is it justifiable if a senior developer refuses to take a paper exam in an interview?"}
{"_id": "253349", "title": "MVC Controller - keeping methods small", "text": "I'm reading uncle Bob's Clean Code and it completely revolutionizes my programming style. In this book author claims that best methods are small methods. What about controller's action methods in modern frameworks? Do you try to follow the \"20 lines per method\" rule, or you delegate some tasks to private methods? I don't ask about things that you can move to services and external classes, sometimes there are situations that you cannot avoid bigger code in action. Another question and another look at this problem - do you tract controller class as (some sort of) special class with only action methods, or just another regular class with private methods and own fields along with action methods?"}
{"_id": "61270", "title": "Which is better design: Determining if a function should execute from outside of it, or inside of it?", "text": "I'm often presented with these two options. From a design point of view, which of these is subjectively better, and why? Option A               class foo {       private boolean bar() {         //Stuff       }            private void A() {          if(bar())            B();       }            private void B() {           // more stuff       }     }      Option B               class foo {       private boolean bar() {         //Stuff       }            private void A() {           B();       }            private void B() {          if(!bar())             return;               // more stuff       }     }      Let's assume that code duplication isn't an issue here, and the division is only to separate, logically, the code for better readability/understanding (A, B, and bar have meaningful names in context). Is it more readable to have the reader know that B might not do anything when looking at just A? Or is the encapsulation of state better put into B? Obviously, this can be refactored to separate B and bar() into a separate class entirely, which separates concerns even more, but assuming mostly shared state, which is better?"}
{"_id": "205077", "title": "Why Aren't Rule Engines Written In Prolog?", "text": "From what I've seen of Prolog, it seems as if it would be ideal for crafting a rule engine for an app. Yet, I don't believe I've ever seen a rule engine written in Prolog. Is there some inherent limitation in Prolog (e. g. poor garbage collection algorithm) that would prevent it from being used to build a rule engine?"}
{"_id": "253345", "title": "JS design pattern/algorithm for avoiding duplicate redraws in a fairly coupled system", "text": "Given:   * some sort of widget based web app   * lots of JS functionality   * high coupling (communication/callbacks between widgets)   * widgets draw themselves   * certain widgets need to do a complete and fairly expensive redraw every time one of their dependencies is changed. Problem: there can be complicated dependency chains and it becomes difficult to make sure redraws only happen once per user action. For example:   * `A` needs to be redrawn if `B` or `C` change   * `B` is dependent on `C`'s state   * So if `C` changes, so does `B` and _both_ may end up causing `A` to redraw. If this only happens a few times, it's easy to solve. But when it happens all over, it becomes a nightmare to engineer and makes maintenance even worse. I assume this is a somewhat common problem, so there must be some method of dealing with. That or my designs are flawed in some way. Any suggestions? Either some design pattern or an algorithm to deal with limiting redraws would be very much appreciated. **Edit** Alright, based on Randall's suggestions, here's what I'm thinking:   * Semaphore like global variable but without any multi-threading stuff so basically just a global count. Let's name this `S`. I would have one per widget that requires expensive redraws.   * `S` has a signal and a wait function. Signal increments `S` and wait decrements it.   * `S` is initialized with a callback function to the draw of the widget.   * Every time something is triggered (user event, ajax return, etc) `S.signal()` is called.   * Once the event is finished changing things within an object (after callbacks are made), `S.wait()` is called.   * `S.wait()`, after decrementing `S` check if count is 0. If it is, it redraws. So if `C` changes:   * `C` runs `S.signal()` (`S==1`)   * `C` makes its changes, callback to `B`   * `B` runs `S.signal()` (`S==2`)   * `B` makes its changes   * `B` runs `S.wait()` (`S==1`, no redraw)   * `B` finishes, C starts again.   * `C` runs `S.wait()` (`S==0`, redraw) Like the dirty flag but more of a dirty-count and I think this is easier to implement. It can be extended for additional functionality fairly easy. If, for some reason, I want to optimize it so not everything is redrawn in certain cases, I can add some flags that represent things to be redrawn and reset them every draw. Also, it could be replaced with a stack and do basically the same thing but with some better extension capabilities. **Edit 2** Izkata's solution turned out to be trivial to implement and only slightly less flexible. Only 2 changes are needed:   * Add a timerID property to the widget that needs redrawn.   * Wrap redraw function in a timer: JS code:               A.draw = function(){         var that = this;          clearTimeout(this.drawTimer);         this.drawTimer = setTimeout(function(){that._draw();},0);     }     A._draw = function(){         //old draw code goes here         //could be made \"private\" or nested in A.draw     }        * No other changes are needed so your interface stays the same and it works unless you need it to work with Async code like ajax calls."}
{"_id": "181197", "title": "Showing a grammar is ambiguous", "text": "I have the following question taken from a compilers course exam:               Show that the following grammar is ambiguous.          S = XcY     X = a     Y = b | Z     Z = bW     W = d | \u03f5      I drew the following tree: ![grammar diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/17J52.png) Am I correct in thinking it is ambiguous because **acY** can end up at **acb** (one of which is followed by an epslion) following different paths?"}
{"_id": "209255", "title": "How do you convince development teams to move to a new version of middleware?", "text": "I'm working on a project to update our (out of support) middleware stack to a stable but supported version. There are several teams with applications running on the version we currently have in production and understandably nobody wants to carry the risk of being the first to run on the newer version. What strategies have you used or found most compelling to move to a new release like this in the past? There are some performance and functional benefits offered by the newer version but there isn't really any major technical incentive for the teams to move that's a must-have right now. This is mainly being driven by the cost of extended support for the old version and also a desire by the infrastructure teams to be running on a supported version with the improved management offered by the newer version. It's more of a people question than a technology question."}
{"_id": "25509", "title": "What do Java developers think of Scala?", "text": "I've noted that IDE support is nowhere near as good, but the language itself supports functional programming idioms much more cleanly."}
{"_id": "185635", "title": "Should Controller know about View & Model? or vice versa?", "text": "I'm conceptually trying to understand if I should be doing this:               item = Model()     screen = View()     brain = Controller(item, screen)      or this..               brain = Controller()     item = Model(brain)     screen = View(brain)      or this..               class Controller():         def __init__(self):             item = Model(self)             screen = View(self)      or something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "185636", "title": "Should I create interfaces for data transfer objects?", "text": "Is it a good idea or a bad idea to create an interface for data transfer objects? Presuming that the object is usually mutable. Though my example is in Java, it should be applicable to any other language that has similar concepts.               interface DataTransferObject  {         String getName();         void setName(String name);     }          class RealDataTransferObject  implements DataTransferObject {              String name;         String getName() {             return name;         }          void setName(String name) {             this.name = name;         }     }      Of course, this is a simplified example, in real life there may be more fields."}
{"_id": "36342", "title": "Can desktop applications be written using javascript?", "text": "Is it currently possible to write desktop applications using javascript, html, css?   Possible solutions:   Use Adobe AIR runtime and program in js. But no, if I'm using AIR, the AS3 suites it the most. So not a good option.   GWT: No because it uses Java and then convert it to js or what ever.   Pyjamas: Interesting. But I'm currently focusing on JavaScript. So I don't want to use python and cross-compile to js. Run a local server and use the browser in full screen mode. Sort of okay, but still its the same browser thing. And difficult to distribute.   So what is the best option? I'm excited about node.js which is the main reason for looking into JavaScript. Otherwise I would have choose python."}
{"_id": "85464", "title": "Cloud service and IM protocol advice, for a backend to group chat mobile app", "text": "**Overview**   I\u2019m going to develop an app on Android and iOS. It will allow users to set up group \u2018chat rooms\u2019 and talk on chat rooms set up by other users. The service needs to be highly scalable, such that it could accommodate a massive increase in users overnight (we can only dream).    **Background info**   Previously I've used mainly Java and Python, but the most appropriate languages for this task should be used. I don\u2019t mind learning a lot of new skills. **Chat requirements**   The chat protocol should be flexible: it should allow for determining who can view/post on \u2018chat rooms\u2019 based on factors determined by the first poster/creator of the particular \u2018chat room\u2019. It should also allow for users to simply install the app and begin using the service, after only providing a simple nickname (which could be changed later).    **Chat protocol plans**   Having looked around I think the XMPP protocol is the best candidate. In particular the Multi-user chat extension looks like what I\u2019ll need. Would this be most suited to my requirements, or do you know another potential solution? _Update:_ I've since researched the Protocol for SYnchronous Conferencing and it seems to fit perfectly with my needs. However I am unsure how well documented it is or how I would actually implement it.    **Cloud service**   I have been deciding between Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine and Windows Azure. I\u2019m coming to the conclusion that Azure will be best, as it is easier to manage than AWS (ease of scalability will be a key factor in the design), I think it may be less restricted than GAE, plus Azure will soon have toolkits to allow easy interfacing with both Android and iOS phones. _Update:_ Looking into it further it seems that AWS would be cheaper, and that they do have provisions, such as Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling, that makes the extra work needed to maintain scalability fairly negligible. Is this the decision you would have made, or would you recommend/look into other cloud services?    **General Requirements**   Any components should be well documented, proven reliable and preferably high- level where possible. For example I would prefer to use a plugin to implement the chat protocol rather than write it myself - thus leaving it to more experienced people.    **Thank you**   Thanks for reading, and any advice you have about any aspect would be greatly appreciated :-)"}
{"_id": "74265", "title": "what info do wcf/.net developers need when joining a new project?", "text": "I'm a technical writer tasked to document a rather complex WPF/WCF .net application for a governmental agency. I'm not sure where to start and would like some suggestions from .net developers about what information I ought to capture. If you were a .net/WCF developer and you were brought into a massive custom .net application using WCF, what information would you need to be able to figure out how to use and customize or extend the system? The application, when finished, will consist of:   * a client app which is available on each machine of an AD authenticated user   * a variety of web services which are run on a machine IIS   * one big SQL database which contains the data for the records created by the system   * calls to third party applications available elsewhere which will be called by the main application. This is a multimillion dollar custom application with lots of hands touching it and lots of developer hours. It also involves a lot of stakeholders and financial transactions. The purpose of my documentation is to document the application system for future developers who are new to the project or support personnel who have to figure out what's not working. We already have a technical writer who is documenting user behavior and typical user behavior, so I don't need to cover that. The developer lead explained a little about the system itself and how the dll's on client and server app talk to one another. He also said that the dll's themselves are compiled code that by themselves they aren't interesting. He also explained that there is a data abstraction layer (called \"entities framework\"??) which the developers will reference in Visual Studio (instead of incorporating SQL queries in their code). Because of this data abstraction layer, the lead developer seems to feel that documenting the DB tables is not useful (which makes sense). Instead I need to document the service components at a fairly high level. Now my question: what sort of information should I be capturing? What sort of information would help experienced .net developers learn how to develop for a new application? What sort of questions should I be asking the developers to get this information? I am not a developer (and certainly not a .net developer), but I've worked with several programming languages and documented several Windows apps. The manager who assigned this task to me must feel that the app is not well-documented (even though I've found a lot of UML diagrams and diagrams by business analysts which document business processes. My main audience for whatever I produce will NOT be system administrators or users but other developers. So do you have any ideas or tips for me? Thanks."}
{"_id": "98413", "title": "Whats the best book to master OO language, say C#?", "text": "I have quite some experience in software development.   In the initial stages I worked on a really large project, with dozens of projects involved in it, hundreds of large files each with 10s of thousands of lines which has been under development from 2 decades. It was so complex that rather than understanding all the architecture, OO implementation, I just followed my line managers orders. (My first big mistake) And then a year back I joined a rather small company where I have major chunk of development responsibility where I have to do the design and development.   Thru my experience, I am in a position to write code to accomplish any business logic. But I cant make use of all goodies of Object Orientation. Is there a book that is practical oriented with real world examples which helps me understand why and where to use interfaces, polymorphism, inheritance or one that gives good examples on SOLID? Or, since I know how to cut code, is it the design patterns I should be looking for?"}
{"_id": "204039", "title": "Text message (SMS) paid by receiver", "text": "I am building a system where the staff have to sent confirmation text messages to our mobile phone. Is there an easy way so that our company immediately pays for the text message? Sort of a collect-sms instead of collect-call."}
{"_id": "4889", "title": "Why can't there be an \"universal\" programming language that serves all purposes?", "text": "why not combine the best features of the all existent programming languages and fit it in a universal programming language?"}
{"_id": "70568", "title": "Incremental self-education", "text": "What is the best way to **incrementally educating yourself**? I mean I have a team, we work in scrum with 14 days long sprint and I would like to reserve each sprint some time for self-education including theory/practice all together (that whole team will study the same area, for example 4 hours each). For example to learn design paterns, is there any site (paid or not it doesn't matter) which provides self-education in following form:   * clear explanation of one topic (which could be studied in question of hours)   * provides some primitive self-evaluate test which finds out whether he understood (could be implementation of one example where correct result is also provided) I think this \"school style\" would be very efficient and it would be incremental and continuous education. Books usually doesn't provide that self testing part (they are mostly theoretical), and 1 week trainings are different topic (they are expensive and usually 50% forgotten by trainee) I also very like **\"Pecha Kucha\"** presentation format, but it dosn't bring a new \"know how\" to the team. I would appreciate any sites or books providing self-education in this format"}
{"_id": "204031", "title": "What are some possible interactions between multiple bugs?", "text": "I was thinking about how two bugs could interact with one another. The only relationship I can think of is one bug being the cause of another. What other interactions between multiple defects are common in everyday coding? What kinds of behaviors could result?"}
{"_id": "39829", "title": "How to sell/distribute my software?", "text": "I'm working on a personal project (Windows desktop application) and started thinking about trying to make some money from the application (not the source). I'm not expecting to make a billion dollars but who knows right? The easiest way I see is give it out for free and allow people to donate but I'm not sure how well that works or what payment system is the easiest/best (Paypal)? If I were to sell it how would go about that? 3rd party distribution? Sell it from my own website with Paypal and verify reciepts? Build my own \"store\" for the application? Essentially: What method did you use to make money from a personal project (donation, selling, other?) and how did you go about it? Tips? Thanks for your response."}
{"_id": "39821", "title": "what's the name of the position in an one man project (do everything from talking to the client to typing code)", "text": "I worked on a project where I did everything from   * talking about how the software should be and how they are doing the stuff at the moment with the client (end users) ...   * choosing technology to be used   * typing code   * installing the application on the web server previously I was writing in my cv that I worked as a **software developer** what should I write now ? * * * it's a 16 people Non-profit organization sponsored by USAID, I did a country- wide system for managing and paying subventions to farmers"}
{"_id": "231925", "title": "Is it an acceptable practice to Get a property, that involve parsing binary, that might throw an exception?", "text": "I have a property that is loaded lazily, any time after the ctor is called. It is possible that the binary that my property relies on is invalid. If invalid I might have to throw an exception. Should I   1. Make the property a method, and be done with it.   2. Leave things as is.   3. Leave the property as-is, but add a method to validate the object, which will invoke the lazy parse, that might throw an exception."}
{"_id": "231928", "title": "How to keep track of links pointing to existing web applications in an Intranet?", "text": "At my new place of employment we have a Intranet solution containing multiple web applications hosted in IIS. Outside of the development department other departments either source or create other applications / reports that deep link into these web applications. Unfortunately, I have no direct control over these potential applications and some get created without our knowledge. This causes a problem if we need to do some re-structuring or re-factoring. I was wondering if anyone had an approach where all inbound links regardless of origin had to be registered - i.e like a link registry or some other approach on how to deal with this. This could then be used so that the impact of any re-organisation of the structure of the web application could be understood. Any help much appreciated"}
{"_id": "227735", "title": "Even distribution through a chain of resources", "text": "I'm working on an algorithm which routes tasks through a chain of distributed resources based on a hash (or random number). For example, say you have 10 gateways into a service which distribute tasks to 1000 handlers through 100 queues. 10,000 connected clients are expected to be connected to gateways at any given time (numbers are very general to keep it simple). Thats   * 10,000 clients    * 10 gateways (producers)   * 100 queues    * 1000 workers/handlers (consumers) The flow of each task is client->gateway->queue->worker Each client will have it's own hash/number which is used to route each task from the client to the same worker each time, with each task going through the same gateway and queue each time. Yet the algorithm handles distribution evenly, meaning each gateway, queue, and worker will have an even workload. My question is what exactly would this be called? Does such a thing already exist? This started off as a DHT, but I realized that DHTs can't do exactly what I need, so I started from scratch."}
{"_id": "197204", "title": "Implementing a claims-based security model to secure a WCF service", "text": "Currently, all of our web applications (and the WCF services they interact with) are run internally. Nothing is exposed to the web. We want to open up our web applications to the Internet and will need to secure access to the services. We have several existing \"RESTful\" WCF services. We want to secure these services using Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS) and several possible Identity Providers (Google and one or more Active Directory Federation Services). I want to use JWT as the token format (I know it's in beta in Azure). I'm hoping someone could offer some advice or point me in the direction of good tutorials...everything I read is using ASP.NET WebAPI...and we don't want to use that. We want to be able to support any client that can parse JSON. Currently, our web apps are just HTML/jquery. Some guidance would be great. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "227733", "title": "Finding minimum path with return?", "text": "I'm having trouble understanding a past quiz question I got: Bobby works at Starbucks in San Mateo (V). He is doing quality assurance testing and needs to visit stores in Palo Alto (B), Tenderloin (C), and San Jose (S) - and then return to San Mateo for a meeting. The distances between the stores are: V\u2192B = 2   V\u2192C = 3   V\u2192S = 6   B\u2192C = 1   B\u2192S = 5   C\u2192S = 4 Which is the first store he visits in the optimal solution to this problem? How would you approach solving this problem? It reminds me a bit of Djistra's algorithm but I suspect there's an easier way other than trying every combination as the time limit is short. My interpretation:                 B__1__C       |     |     2 |     | 4       |__6__|       V     S      For Bobby to visit all 4 stores and return to V, he simply starts at V and travels the edges of the above box. But the question is asking which is the first store? Either direction will give a total of 13, so how is there a right answer?"}
{"_id": "227732", "title": "Need an optimization algorithm", "text": "I need this algorithm for one of my projects. I will paraphrase the problem. There are 'n' ropes that have different colored rings on them. (The colors might repeat on the same rope or across different ropes). My job is to pick a few of these ropes and join them such that all the colors in the n ropes are included in that joined rope. I should get the smallest rope size possible. I am allowed to cut each rope once and discard the end part if needed. There is one pre-defined end for each rope which should be used as the starting point incase that rope is included in the solution. It will be nice to have exact solution for this.(This gives us something like a goal that our project is aiming to achieve). Can someone tell me how I might approach this? The n is about 10^5 for my work. The total number of colors is also of the order of 10^5. The number of distinct colored rings on each rope ranges from 0 to about 10^3 at most."}
{"_id": "188180", "title": "Convert an interpreter to a compiler?", "text": "First off, I know this is a question asked by MANY other programmers before me. But I couldn't find any useable resource that could help me. Well, I'm creating an programming language called \"Light\" the syntax is comparable to python but it has an strict object-orientated concept. I have made an interpreter ( in C++ ) for this language yet, my problem is how to turn this into an executeable. ( Or simply: how do I make an compiler ? ) Thanks for your attention P.S.: I've found some links to a very old tutorial but it is in Pascal... EDIT: Well, well. Now I have found a suitable tutorial for C++. About the project: There have been some changes. Now the language is called \"Q.\" ( kju Dot )."}
{"_id": "227739", "title": "How to measure that a team is doing Test Driven Development", "text": "My team is considering a department goal of doing Test Driven Development next (fiscal) year. TDD sounds good and my manager is on board. The only problem is measurement. Our company rules require that department goals be measurable. Is there any (sane) way to measure if a team is doing TDD? **Note:** We had a goal for writing unit tests already, **so a code coverage goal will not work.** We write the unit tests but we do it after the fact, not before. Is there a way to measure that TDD is being done? (NOTE: We use Visual Studio 2013 and TFS in case it matters)"}
{"_id": "227738", "title": "How do I get a project owner to participate in acceptance testing?", "text": "I have started using Pivotal tracker for a project I'm working on. Conceptually, this seems really cool and I'm interested in using the agile model. However, I have one problem with everything talked about in the video. At 4:19 in the linked video they talk about story acceptance and how it should be done by the project owner. This concept sounds great on paper but I'm not sure I can actually get the project owner to sit down and try out even half of the new features I create, let alone all of them. My question is: how do you approach a product owner about the work that this flavor of the Agile Model asks of them? What do you do if they refuse to participate in acceptance testing?"}
{"_id": "99934", "title": "Does scrum have any merit in defense contracting?", "text": "Overheard at the watercooler yesterday: \"Scrum has no place in defense contracting.\" I tend to disagree in the sense that I believe Scrum can be tailored to work in many scenarios and I can see defense being one of them. This sparked a huge debate amongst my colleagues (many of us work in defense contracting) with a fairly even split for/against. To make this a proper question: Has anyone successfully used (or has experience working with) scrum in a defense contracting situation? What worked well, what didn't work well and what (if any) modifications to vanilla scrum did you do?"}
{"_id": "123515", "title": "Is there a term used when internal variables are declared public and accessible?", "text": "If someone writes code so that an internal variable $_fields is accessible without using getter/setter methods, is there a proper term used to describe that? Something polite enough to use with management :)"}
{"_id": "123513", "title": "Ideal Programmer for Client-Side HTML5 Game Development", "text": "Our next game will be built on Javascript/HTML5 Canvas rather than ActionScript/Flash. Clearly there are not enough experienced HTML5 Developers in the market (yet), so we'll need to be creative in our hiring efforts. So the question is what the profile looks like for that model developer who can learn the necessary skills on-the-job as efficiently as possible. Here are the options we have considered--really just the two obvious and opposing models. **1\\. Hire Flash developers**   * _disadvantage:_ they will have to learn not just a new language but also a new development environment, because of the idiosyncratic nature of Flash Builder every component of an HTML 5 Dev environment is likely to seem new and unfamiliar   * _advantage_ : already fluent in client-side development--the tasks remain the same only the language has changed.   **2\\. Hire the most talented developers available**   * _disadvantage_ : latency--most or all of their time for (8-12?) weeks should be spent in a pure learning mode with no other demands on their time.   * _advantage_ : they will learn quickly and they'll continue to learn; outstanding programmers will become outstanding Javascript programmers; it will just take some time.       The best answer to this Question might offer a third recruiting model, or it might present a more refined analysis of the two presented below. In other words, i did not intend the prior discussion to constrain the responses in any way."}
{"_id": "187907", "title": "idquantique .vs. rdrand", "text": "We are currently looking at using the idquantique random number generator device to provide random numbers. There are some issues though. We would only be using one device and we have at least 5 servers that would need to use it and this number will probably increase in the future. This implies that blocks of random numbers would have to be sent to the servers in some way. All the servers are running Linux. All of our servers are Intel based and have the RDRand random number instruction available. It would be easier to use RDRand since no networking calls would need to be made and RDRand also appears to be significantly faster. But, the question I would like answered is - is there a difference between the quality of the random numbers generated by RDRand and those generated by idquantique? Has anyone ever measured or tried to measure how well these two random number devices perform against each other?"}
{"_id": "187900", "title": "Domain Services as facades", "text": "I read .NET Domain-Driven Design with C#: Problem - Design - Solution and I noticed that the author created a domain service for each aggregate root. However, the domain services were only facades to the corresponding repository. For example this is a code sample from the application from his book               public static class CompanyService     {         private static ICompanyRepository repository;         private static IUnitOfWork unitOfWork;              static CompanyService()         {             CompanyService.unitOfWork = new UnitOfWork();             CompanyService.repository =                  RepositoryFactory.GetRepository<ICompanyRepository,                  Company>(CompanyService.unitOfWork);         }              public static IList<Company> GetOwners()         {             return CompanyService.GetAllCompanies();         }              public static IList<Company> GetAllCompanies()         {             return CompanyService.repository.FindAll();         }              public static void SaveCompany(Company company)         {             CompanyService.repository[company.Key] = company;             CompanyService.unitOfWork.Commit();         }              public static Company GetCompany(object companyKey)         {             return CompanyService.repository.FindBy(companyKey);         }     }      As you see almost all calls to the services are wrappers to repository calls. Is this a good pattern when building domain services? Should we always wrap our repositories in domain services? Is there a better approach?"}
{"_id": "139890", "title": "What's the role of a Project Manager in Scrum?", "text": "What's the role of a Project Manager in Scrum? I have heard that it is not advisable for the PM to be a SCRUM Master which I can see as making sense as the PM oversees the project whereas the SCRUM Master is more concerned with managing the work packages. To my mind it would seem that having a PM as SCRUM Master goes against managin by exception, one of the principles of PRINCE2. The PM should be more concerned with:   * establishing the scope of the project, ensuring the business case for the project remains valid   * planning the number of iterations   * maintaining the overall project plan including software release dates   * acquiring external resources needed by the Scrum team e.g. users for User Acceptance Testing   * managing risks and issues which are escalated by the Scrum team   * communicating with the executive including reporting progress Could any PM's (or SCRUM Masters) experienced in managing agile projects using SCRUM give their experience/opinion on whether the two roles could/should be combined?"}
{"_id": "99930", "title": "How to prevent hardcoding addresses in a web project?", "text": "In a fairly complicated web application, there are almost hundreds of redirecting to another page, or linking to another page, etc. Imagine that you have a page called `/services/users/register-new-user` and in many places you want to redirect users to this page, or you want to provide links to this page. However, if for any reason in future, you change this address to something like `/users/register`, you should update all links, otherwise they won't resolve. I'm finding myself always encountering this problem, since wherever I want to redirect or link to `/services/users/register-new-user` I hard-code the entire relative address. How can I improve this pattern?"}
{"_id": "18979", "title": "Freelancers: How Do You Go About Gathering Requirements?", "text": "As a freelance programmer:   1. What is your process for gathering requirements from a client?   2. How much time does the requirement gathering process take you? I know this is not fixed, and there are variables such as how prompt the client is in responding and such. In general, accounting for the delay in responses and such, how long does it take to get to the final requirement?   3. Which communication channel (email, phone, instant messenger, other) do you use to gather these requirements?   4. Do you charge for the time spent in requirements gathering?   5. Are there any deliverables in your requirements gathering process? If so what are they?"}
{"_id": "75136", "title": "What problems should I be aware of when franchising my code?", "text": "I provide a web service using a site and recently I got a proposal for franchising that service to another company. The problems come when they want all my code to run in their servers. I understand their reasons, but I want to take measures that the core of my PHP code remains hidden and unchanged. I want to take measures that they don't resell my code to another bidder, or use my IP. After some research I came up with a few solutions like PHP encryption, obfuscation or data fingerprinting. What I'm asking is manly:   * What should I be aware of when giving my code?   * What can I do to prevent them from understanding and selling my code to another person?"}
{"_id": "182368", "title": "I've had 7 jobs in 16 years. Is that OK?", "text": "I've had 7 jobs in 16 years. This is what happens at every job:   * Year 1: New people! New place! New tech!   * Year 2: Productive.   * Year 3: Disinterested. Can I get another job, doing the same thing, but make more money? Now I'm in year 5 of my current job and I'm still disinterested. But, I'm making 99k as a \"consultant\" and won't be able to make any more money anywhere else, for just programming. Also, I never make friends at my jobs. I don't write code in my spare time. I chose MIS because I knew it would get me a good paying job and I wouldn't have to rely on anyone else for money. I'm surrounded by people who have a passion for developing, which makes it even worse. I have to take anti-depressants and I have a post-it note saying \"Gratitude\" that I have to look at everyday to remind myself that I have it great. Does anyone else go thru this? Is it normal for programmers?"}
{"_id": "33398", "title": "What do you do about content when someone asks you to build a website", "text": "I am an experienced asp.net developer and asp.net mvc and I have my own CMS that I have written but starting to think there should be another approach. When someone asks you to develop them a website how do you develop it so that they can add pictures,slideshows, content, news items, diary events. On a side note do you give them a design for the home page and inner page and thats it. I'm just thinking if they turn around and say 6 months down the line I want a jquery slideshow on the right hand side of this page how do you or CMS's handle it?"}
{"_id": "182367", "title": "How to write stories for internal projects", "text": "I'm working on a project which runs as a process, on a regular basis. The results of the projects daily run are used by other projects. This brings me to question how our team writes stories. The normal format, `As a [role] I want [goal/desire] so that [reason`] does not seem to apply, but at the same time I'm doubting that. This is what we do now: _The system shall execute after process ABC has finished successfully._ Should we be using the other projects (that utilize the data from our process) as the _role_ portion of the stories? What we do now just seems too much like requirements.."}
{"_id": "182362", "title": "would like help understanding javascript throttle function", "text": "A user on Stack Overflow posted a question related to overriding a native JS function. The question is here and this is the code:               function throttle(fn, time) {       var handle;            var execute = function() {         handle = null;         fn.apply(this, arguments);       };            var throttled = function() {         if(!handle) {           handle = setTimeout(execute.bind(this), time);         }       };            throttled.toString = function() {         return fn.toString() + \"\\n// throttled to \" + time + \"ms\";       };            return throttled;     }          var makeAjax = throttle(function(callback) {       $.getJSON(\"/path\", callback);     }, 500);      I have a pretty good handle (I think) on JavaScript, but there are some areas that remain very grey to me. I would like to know what is happening in this code? I don't really understand what `bind` and `apply` are doing, or what the end result of this all would be. I've looked up `bind` and `apply` on Mozilla's JS documentation, but the \"official\" definition has done little to help me understand what they are doing in this context. I appreciate your help!"}
{"_id": "182363", "title": "project layout using webapi", "text": "I have the following project structure I would like to implement. I would like to know if there are any pitfalls to structuring my code this way. It is going to be using Microsoft's WebAPI, an MVC 4 project, and Plain Old C# Objects (POCO). The explanation follows. First off there is going to be a class library project that contains only interfaces and objects like so:               public interface IBookService {        IEnumerable<Book> GetBooks();     }          public class Book {        public int Id { get; set; }        public string Name { get; set; }     }      This interface and class will be shared by the other projects. The first being the implementation project which contains:               public class BookService : IBookService {       // implementation that pulls books from somewhere     }      The third project is going to be a WebAPI project that exposes `IBookService` as a uri, such as _http://mysite/books_. **UPDATE:** This WebAPI site will be sitting on a different machine than the MVC site. Now here is where I'm concerned about my implementation choice. The fourth and final project is an MVC 4 application. It will reference only the interfaces and the web api (via `HttpContent` and friends). I would like to implement the `IBookService` interface in this project as well. Except in this implementation it would call the WebAPI like so.               public class MvcBookService : IBookService {        public IEnumerable<Book> GetBooks() {           var client = new HttpClient();            client.BaseAddress = new Uri(\"http://mySite\"); // would be pulled from config           client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(              new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue(\"application/json\"));                HttpResponseMessage response = client.GetAsync(\"books\").Result; // blocking call           if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode) {               // blocking call               return response.Content.ReadAsAsync<IEnumerable<Book>>().Result;           } else {              // handle response code              return null;           }        }     }      I plan on enforcing this project structure for all WebAPI interaction within the company. I don't for see any maintenance problems with this project layout. However many eyes always helps."}
{"_id": "182360", "title": "Multi-platform design with Delphi, Java, MySQL and CouchDB", "text": "What are the most obvious drawbacks to this idea for an enterprise(ish) model using the following technologies.   1. Browser based and native developed GUI using Delphi to connect to    2. Datasnap server (Delphi, obviously) via Rest which stores documents in      1. A CouchDB Server  But gets the structure for those documents from a centralized tree of   3. JBoss servers connecting to      1. MySQL databases which have information about all kinds of domain specific things   4. Which connects to another JBoss server, all the way up to a centralized hosted repository to maintain some sort of control over licensing and structure of the program.  I know that's kind of vague, but bear with me. I'm really asking:   1. Whether it's sensible to use a mixture of NoSQL and SQL DB's and    2. Whether it's easier to mix them if they're not connected to the same backend service.   3. If this is just crazy.  I thought of it on the drive to work and it seems to solve all the problems that we have. I'm not sure that datasnap is robust enough, but we could use node.js or another jboss server instead. I just wanted to go with Delphi since we've got it and know it. I think this is a fairly normal model, the difference being the web server (or datasnap server) being the thing that has a database attached to it as well as the data server. I think it's better that way, and it would probably make sense if I said this is for medical records primarily and it's better that documents stay separated from things that need to be updated, but it's meant as a general purpose solution for storing info in a structured way."}
{"_id": "134442", "title": "implicit vs explicit interfaces", "text": "I think I understand the actual limitations of compile-time polymorphism and run-time polymorphism. But **what are the conceptual differences between explicit interfaces (run-time polymorphism. ie virtual functions and pointers/references) and implicit interfaces (compile-time polymorphism. ie. templates).** My thoughts are that two objects that offer the same explicit interface must be the same type of object (or have a common ancestor), while two objects that offer the same implicit interface need not be the same type of object, and, excluding the implicit interface that they both offer, can have quite different functionality. Any thoughts on this? And if two objects offer the same implicit interface, what reasons (beside the technical benefit of not needing dynamic dispatch w/ a virtual function lookup table,etc) are there for not having these objects inherit from a base object that declares that interface, thus making it an _explicit_ interface? Another way of saying it: can you give me a case where two objects that offer the same implicit interface (and therefore can be used as types to the sample template class) should not inherit from a base class that makes that interface explicit? Some related posts:   http://stackoverflow.com/a/7264550/635125   http://stackoverflow.com/a/7264689/635125   http://stackoverflow.com/a/8009872/635125 * * * Here's an example to make this question more concrete: Implicit Interface:               class Class1     {     public:       void interfaceFunc();       void otherFunc1();     };          class Class2     {     public:       void interfaceFunc();       void otherFunc2();     };          template      class UseClass     {     public:       void run(T & obj)       {         obj.interfaceFunc();       }     }      Explicit Interface:   `                           class InterfaceClass     {     public:       virtual void interfaceFunc() = 0;     };                              }                              class Class1 : public InterfaceClass     {     public:       virtual void interfaceFunc();       void otherFunc1();     };                              class Class2 : public InterfaceClass     {     public:       virtual void interfaceFunc();       void otherFunc2();     };                              class UseClass     {     public:       void run(InterfaceClass & obj)       {         obj.interfaceFunc();       }     }      * * * An even more in-depth, concrete example: Some C++ problems can be solved with either:   1. a templated class whose template type provides an implicit interface   2. a non-templated class that takes a base-class pointer which provides an explicit interface  Code that doesn't change:               class CoolClass     {     public:       virtual void doSomethingCool() = 0;       virtual void worthless() = 0;     };          class CoolA : public CoolClass     {     public:       virtual void doSomethingCool()       { /* Do cool stuff that an A would do */ }            virtual void worthless()       { /* Worthless, but must be implemented */ }     };          class CoolB : public CoolClass     {     public:       virtual void doSomethingCool()       { /* Do cool stuff that a B would do */ }            virtual void worthless()       { /* Worthless, but must be implemented */ }     };      Case 1: A non-templated class that takes a base-class pointer which provides an explicit interface:               class CoolClassUser     {     public:         void useCoolClass(CoolClass * coolClass)       { coolClass.doSomethingCool(); }     };          int main()     {       CoolA * c1 = new CoolClass;       CoolB * c2 = new CoolClass;       </br>       CoolClassUser user;       user.useCoolClass(c1);       user.useCoolClass(c2);       </br>       return 0;     }      Case 2: A templated class whose template type provides an implicit interface:               template <typename T>     class CoolClassUser     {     public:         void useCoolClass(T * coolClass)       { coolClass->doSomethingCool(); }     };          int main()     {       CoolA * c1 = new CoolClass;       CoolB * c2 = new CoolClass;       </br>       CoolClassUser<CoolClass> user;       user.useCoolClass(c1);       user.useCoolClass(c2);       </br>       return 0;     }      Case 3: A templated class whose template type provides an implicit interface (this time, not deriving from _CoolClass_ :               class RandomClass     {     public:       void doSomethingCool()       { /* Do cool stuff that a RandomClass would do */ }            // I don't have to implement worthless()! Na na na na na!     }               template <typename T>     class CoolClassUser     {     public:         void useCoolClass(T * coolClass)       { coolClass->doSomethingCool(); }     };          int main()     {       RandomClass * c1 = new RandomClass;       RandomClass * c2 = new RandomClass;       </br>       CoolClassUser<RandomClass> user;       user.useCoolClass(c1);       user.useCoolClass(c2);       </br>       return 0;     }      Case 1 requires that the object being passed in to _useCoolClass()_ be a child of CoolClass (and implement _worthless()_ ). Cases 2 and 3, on the other hand, will take _any_ class that has a _doSomethingCool()_ function. If users of the code were always fine subclassing _CoolClass_ , then Case 1 makes intuitive sense, since the _CoolClassUser_ would always be expecting an implementation of a _CoolClass_. But assume this code will be part of an API framework, so I cannot predict if users will want to subclass _CoolClass_ or roll their own class that has a _doSomethingCool()_ function."}
{"_id": "134441", "title": "Feedback on this back-end stack", "text": "I'm planning to setup an scalable architecture capable of providing web services on a REST interface where JSON will be sent as a result. The web services will be quite simple for a CRUD web 2.0 app. ![Architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Omfqb.png) I think javascript (nodejs + mongodb) is a good choice for the following reasons:   * Easy to find javascript developers   * Good performance   * Easy to scale   * Shared logic/language or possible reuse of code between database query language, back-end and web-client.   * There are testing and logging frameworks for node   * By the examples I've seen node seems light in terms of the lines of code needed to implement web services. **Questions:**   1. I think of scaling a node app which supplies a web service as having a central node which will be routing/balancing charge to each of the node instances. Which will also help doing seamless updates, is there any piece of software already implemented which can fit that task?   2. Please point all the disadavantages or other advantages you find in this back-end stack   3. Any other good persistence choices other than MongoDB? Mainly this choice comes from the javascript query language and JSON schemas."}
{"_id": "249959", "title": "Should special (simpler) cases have separate code paths?", "text": "I have a rather complex method which can get called in two possible \"scenarios\". One is a special case of the other in which all the nested `foreach` loops are only executed once and several `if` statements are false such that essentially only two lines of code nested deeply inside the method are actually executed. Now the question is: Should I provide a separate (simpler) code path for the special case even though the complex code handles that case just as well? I suppose the code would be more readable/understandable that way but I don't want to give the impression that the two cases are handled differently. Performance is not an issue here so the fact that a simpler code path might also execute faster is negligible. Example code:               foreach(...)     {         foreach(...)         {         ...             if(...)             {                 ...             }                  Something();         }     }      as compared to               if(SpecialCase)     {         Something();     }     else     {         foreach(...)         {             foreach(...)             {             ...                 if(...)                 {                     ...                 }                      Something();             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "84732", "title": "what is the difference between callbacks and listeners?", "text": "In blackberry we can override keyChar() method and capture the keypress event or we can register onKeyPressListener. i know, onKeyListener is observer pattern. In android also there is a KeyEvent.callback and onKeyListener Both are events why we no need to register for keyChar event. what is the difference between both pattern?"}
{"_id": "134448", "title": "Where should I put functions that are not related to a class?", "text": "I am working on a C++ project where I have a bunch of math functions that I initially wrote to use as part of a class. As I've been writing more code, though, I've realized I need these math functions everywhere. Where is the best place to put them? Let's say I have this:               class A{         public:             int math_function1(int);             ...     }      And when I write another class, I can't (or at leat I don't know how to) use that `math_function1` in that other class. Plus, I've realized some of this functions are not truly related to class A. They seemed to be at the beginning, but now I can see how they're just math functions. What is good practice in this situation? Right now I've been copy-pasting them into the new classes, which I'm sure is the worst practice."}
{"_id": "249956", "title": "AngularJS directive architecture: Where to put parameters?", "text": "I'm using a charts-Plugin (Morris.js) in my AngularJS application. I'm building a directive for each type of chart. The plugin is called like this:               new Morris.Line({       // ID of the element in which to draw the chart.       element: 'myfirstchart',       // Chart data records -- each entry in this array corresponds to a point on       // the chart.       data: [         { year: '2008', value: 20 },         { year: '2009', value: 10 },         { year: '2010', value: 5 },         { year: '2011', value: 5 },         { year: '2012', value: 20 }       ],       // The name of the data record attribute that contains x-values.       xkey: 'year',       // A list of names of data record attributes that contain y-values.       ykeys: ['value'],       // Labels for the ykeys -- will be displayed when you hover over the       // chart.       labels: ['Value']     });      The first step is just to include this code into my `link`-function:               angular.module('app')       .directive('donutchart', function () {         return {           link: function (scope, element, attrs) {             new Morris.Bar({              element: element[0].id,              data: [               { Age: '20', value: 20 },               { Age: '25', value: 10 },               { Age: '30', value: 5 },               { Age: '40', value: 5 },               { Age: '50', value: 20 }             ],             xkey: 'Age',             ykeys: ['Amount'],             labels: ['views']           });         }       };     });      But I don't like it to manipulate the directive when i want to change the data. So I save every attribute inside the scope inside the controller. But, is this the 'right' way to do it? Or should I use a config variable to store very attribute? Like:               var CONFIG = { bar_labels: ['views'] }      and then inside the controller:               $scope.bar_labels = bar_labels"}
{"_id": "249950", "title": "Does it make sense to use interfaces if you don't have polymorphism?", "text": "Suppose I have distinct classes that have the same behavior, which can be represented like this:               public interface Behavior {         void operationA();     }          public class ImplementerA implements Behavior {         public void operationA() {              }     }          public class ImplementerB implements Behavior {         public void operationA() {              }     }      But `ImplementerA` and `ImplementerB` are used by distinct clients; `ClientA` only uses `ImplementerA` and `ClientB` only use `ImplementerB`; other than these, there are no other clients for `ImplementerA` and `ImplementerB`. In this scenario, does the interface `Behavior` have any purpose? Should it be created because maybe future requirements changes..."}
{"_id": "168361", "title": "Need explanation of hexagonal architecture", "text": "I am reading about Alistair Cockburn's Hexagonal Architecture http://alistair.cockburn.us/Hexagonal+architecture with interest. One claim he makes is: \"Finally, the automated function regression tests detect any violation of the promise to keep business logic out of the presentation layer. The organization can detect, and then correct, the logic leak.\" I do not understand this point. Is he saying that because the test is headless, then calls to a ui layer will throw exceptions? That doesn't seem to be a very sound test!"}
{"_id": "159697", "title": "When, how and why should one upgrade (Java) frameworks?", "text": "Short summary as introduction: We are a small Java web development team, creating applications using various frameworks and libraries like JSF, Hibernate, Seam, all together deployed in JBoss AS. Initially, the app was put together and some features added to form a showcase to show to potential customers. Some polishing took place, the app got released, it was accepted and working and as time went by, additional features were added, bugs got fixed, new bugs occurred, as it always is. Due to high bus factors and startup racing, development got a bit out of hand - more and more features were added, not having fully understood the core architecture of the system. It's still working, but there are always pitfalls because the system evolved from where it originated to something else and in the beginning, various shortcuts were taken to speed up development - now all this comes back and development slows down, because workarounds are used and it's fairly hard to introduce new developers into the project. Now, I'm in the progress of cleaning up and organizing things - installing a bug tracking system, build up a testing/quality culture, thinking of how to do automated testing, code reviews (all that fancy professional stuff we were lacking in the beginning) and doing general refactoring like organizing class hierarchies and functions to make it easier to use stuff. That makes everything a bit better, but there is still a lot to do. As I'm not the person who initially build the system (former lead programmer left) and not that experienced (developing for 2.5 years now, but that's my only 'open world' experience so far), I'm not always sure what to do. Here's my problem: Refactoring is always something good and I'm constantly doing it to make things easier, but what puzzles me is when, how and why I should upgrade the basic architecture (that means, libraries the system relies on, application server, database etc.) Examples:   * We are currently using JBoss 4.2.2 - I read somewhere of JBoss 7.1 already out, should I go for that? How can one evaluate this?   * We use Seam 2.2 what seems to be a big blocker (does not work on higher JBoss versions, doesn't support JSF2). In addition, I see sources telling me to use JEE features instead of Seam. Basically, I'm interested in any generic approach for this problems, not only the ones I mentioned in the examples above - as I may stumble over this problems for another library on another system in another time (or someone else may face similar problems). So, what's the point? Shall I be up to date and use only cutting edge libraries or should i stay with what i have? How do I recognize, the technology I am using is literally a dead horse and jump off? How often should such technology upgrades appear? And, another question beside the general 'how to do upgrades'-stuff. How do I recognize my piece of software could be called one 'crafted by professionals'?. Is there a Joel test for well-done software besides common programmers sense?"}
{"_id": "168367", "title": "Multithreading synchronization interview question: Find n words given m threads", "text": "I came across this question: > You are given a paragraph , which contain n number of words, you are given m > threads. What you need to do is , each thread should print one word and give > the control to next thread, this way each thread will keep on printing one > word , in case last thread come, it should invoke the first thread. Printing > will repeat until all the words are printed in paragraph. Finally all > threads should exit gracefully. What kind of synchronization will use? I strongly feel we cannot take any advantage of threads here but interviewer is trying to understand my synchronization skills? No need of code, just put some thoughts. I will implement by myself."}
{"_id": "219071", "title": "Selecting a software license for a blog posting in CodeProject.com", "text": "I am planning to post an article on codeproject.com where I will be sharing some code I feel worthy of the effort - so I went and read the posting guidelines. It appears that I will have to select a software license for my submission. I really do not care about my material and what people will do with the code that I will give. If they profit from it that is all fine with me and I am happy to have shared my ideas. My concern really is more about my own personal protection that if the code I give for some remotest of reasons inflict damage to them or to their system that I should not be liable for anything. Or something to that effect. My material is about patterns for ASP.NET CRUD operations. I use this pattern every single project that I have. It is absolutely harmless, but you never know really how other people will use it. I just want to have some safety net. What license is suitable for me in this situation?"}
{"_id": "126175", "title": "Hiring programmers for small companies?", "text": "I've been running a company for nearly 10 years, and all this time it's been just myself, another programmer (who's a great friend and cofounder), and a salesman (who's also a friend). Together, we've managed to do decent business and we've all managed to make a living, but we've been trying to expand for a long time now. Unfortunately, there are a few problems:   * The technology we use is not obsolete, but it's also not as popular compared to other web development options like PHP   * We work in a competitive market, competing against multi-million dollar companies   * We can't afford to pay new programmers or salesmen very well. We make enough money for ourselves, but unless we got a significant number of new customers we wouldn't be able to pay much.   * Because of the fact we can't pay much, we use a slightly more rare technology, and we compete against large companies, we find it difficult to find new programmers or salesman. We desperately need to expand, but when we try to get more customers, we can't support them with so few people (or their demands grow outside of our range of expertise) and when we try to hire new programmers and salesman, we usually don't get a high quality and they usually don't provide a major benefit for our company. Does anyone have some suggestions or tips on how we could expand?"}
{"_id": "132844", "title": "Is it better idea to call an external command-line application or to internalize that application's logic?", "text": "I have a \"pipeline\" sort of process that is essentially just linking together a bunch of existing tools to automate a workflow. For one of the steps, there is an existing command-line tool that already does the meat of what that step needs to do. The external CLI tool is java-based, and so is my pipeline, so it would be possible to integrate the tool directly into the pipeline step, but the tool is very complex and is currently closely tied to having command-line input (something like 37 config flag options). The question is: Is it a better idea to simply call out and invoke the external process, or would it be better to integrate the external code within my application? What are the pros / cons of integrating vs. calling the external process?"}
{"_id": "15839", "title": "What are some good End-User Programming solutions you have seen?", "text": "End-User Programming is where regular end users, i.e. non-programmers, are able to customize a program, or create a new one, with minimal training or instruction. App Inventor for Android is one recent example, but perhaps the most popular example of end-user programming is the spreadsheet. What examples of end-user programming have you seen used, or believe to be useful? What's the philosophy of the system? What challenges remain?"}
{"_id": "233784", "title": "what is a basic block called if it contains a branch instruction?", "text": "what is a basic block called if it contains a branch instruction? How about a block that does not contain a branch instruction? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "230642", "title": "My architecture has a problem with views that required information from different objects. How can I solve this?", "text": "I am building an architecture like this: These are my SW layers                ______________     |              |     |    Views     |     |______________|           ______________     |              |     |Business Logic|     |______________|           ______________     |              |     |  Repository  |     |______________|      My views are going to generate my HTML to be sent to the user Business logic is where all the business logics are Repository is a layer to access the DB My idea is that the repository uses entities (that are basically the representation of the tables, in order to perform DB queries. The layers communicate between themselves using Business Objects, that are objects that represent the real-world-object itself. They can contain business rules and methods. The views build/use DTOs, they are basically objects that have the information required to be shown on the screen. They expect also this kind of object on actions and, before calling the business logic, they create BO. First question: **what is your overall feeling about this architecture?** I've used similar architecture for some projects and I always got this problem: If my view has this list to show :               Student1, age, course, Date Enrolled, Already paid?      It has information from different BO. How do you think one should build the structure? These were the alternatives I could think of:   * **The view layer could call the methods to get the student, then the course it studies, then the payment information**. This would cause a lot of DB accesses and my view would have the knowledge about how to act to generate this information. This just seems wrong for me.   * **I could have an \"adapter object\", that has the required information (a class that would have a properties Student, Course and Payment).** But I would required one adapter object for each similar case, this may get very bad for big projects. I still don't like them. **Would you have ideas? How would you change the architecture to avoid this kind of problems?** @Rory: I read the CQRS and I don't think this suits my needs. As taken from a link references in your link > Before describing the details of CQRS we need to understand the two main > driving forces behind it: collaboration and staleness That means: many different actors using the same object (collaboration) and once data has been shown to a user, that same data may have been changed by another actor \u2013 it is stale (staleness). My problem is that I want to show to the user information from different BO, so I would need to receive them from the service layer. How can my service layer assemble and deliver this information? Edit to @AndrewM: Yes, you understood it correctly, the original idea was to have the view layer to build the BOs, but you have a very nice point about the creation of the BO inside the business layers. Assuming I follow your advice and move the creation logic inside the business layer, my business layer interface would contain the DTOs, for instance               public void foo(MyDTO object)      But as far as I understand, the DTO is tightly coupled to each view, so it would not be reusable by a second view. In order to use it, the second view would need to build a specific DTO from a specific view or I would have to duplicate the code in the business layer. Is this correct or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "202088", "title": "When to write tests for a new class using BDD?", "text": "I've been practicing behaviour driven development (BDD). I understand that you have to write tests that test the behaviour of the code, and this will allow the design of your code to evolve and take shape. When doing BDD and I find I need to refactor my code into a better design, and that refactor happens to involve extracting some code into a new class, when do I start writing tests for that new class? Or are tests not needed for that class at all since it's a implementation detail and the behaviour of it should already be tested with the existing test coverage?"}
{"_id": "202089", "title": "Chrome's multiple process per each tabs", "text": "I am wondering what is the purpose of Chrome using multiple processes for each tabs? I asked this to C++ chat room and one responded it is a product of laziness. I personally believe this is an example of \"Distributed processing\" like in Erlang programming language. What exactly is it?"}
{"_id": "40593", "title": "Do you use Mathematica during the software development process?", "text": "I'm curious whether Mathematica could help me in software development or not. Do you use it for that, and for what? For instance, do you use it to analyze algorithms, or to do something else? I will probably buy myself a (student) license, but I'm not completely sure (if it isn't good for software development, I might still use of it for math, of course)."}
{"_id": "40590", "title": "Why do some programmers hate the UI part of the development?", "text": "Lots of programmers that I've met always says that \"He is not a UI guy.\" The fact is that development nowadays, whether web, Windows, Linux, OSX, or any other type of development now comprises software with a good-looking UI. Why do so many developers seem to not like UI work?"}
{"_id": "202082", "title": "How do I reduce the number of WCF config files in a SOA?", "text": "After embracing the whole SOA thing, I've found that I'm gradually drowning in a sea of web.config and app.config files. As an example, one system has 2 services that it interacts with. Each service has 3 config files - one for dev, one for staging and one for production. That's 6 config files. Then each application (3 different ones) that use these services needs three config files again, that's another 9. So that's 15 config files just for a relatively simple system. How can I go about simplifying my configuration? Is there a better way of doing this? Should I try to make my config files environment agnostic? Should I investigate the whole WCF Discovery? Should I use the web.config transformation syntax?"}
{"_id": "233788", "title": "Why is it bad to write something in language X as if you're writing a program in language Y in terms of using a shared coding paradigm", "text": "A while ago, I asked a question on SO about something written in C++, but instead of getting an answer to the problem at hand, the comments went all crazy on my coding style, even when I indicated that it was a WIP piece of code and that I meant to clean it up later when I had the base case running. (I got so many down votes that I decided to pull the question, as my rep on SO already is near-abysmal) It made me wonder why people adopt such a hard line \"you're a noob, go fuck yourself\" attitude. I was being accused of writing C++ as if it was Java. Something that I cannot understand, and that still baffles me. I've been programming in quite a few OOP languages for a number of years now, albeit in intervals. I choose the language to use in terms of its available libraries and optimal execution environments for the job at hand. I adopt design patterns in OOP code and I'm quite confident that my use of patterns is sound and that OO wise, I can hold my own. I understand the OOP toolbox, but choose to use the tools only when I think it's really required, not to just use a neat trick to show my coding wits. (Which I know are not top notch, but I think aren't at n00b level either). I design my code before I write a single line. To define tests, I list the goals of a certain class, and the test criteria that it has to adhere to. Because it is easier to me to create sequence diagrams and then write code, I chose to write my tests after the interface has become obvious. I must admit that in the piece of code I posted in the question, I was still using pointers, instead of using smart pointers. I use RAII whenever I can. I know proper RAII means safeguarding against nullpointers, but I work incrementally. It was a work in progress and I meant to clean it up later. This way of working was condemned strongly. In my view, I should have a working example first so I can see if the base case is a viable way of thought. I also happen to think that cleaning up the code is something that is typical of the refactoring phase of agile, after the base case has been proven. I must admit that although I'm slowly getting the Cxx standard, I prefer to use what I understand, instead of taking the risk of using concepts that I have yet to master in production code. I do try new stuff once in a while, but usually in play projects that I have on the side, just for that purpose. [edit] I'd like to clarify that gnat's suggestion [1] did not show up in the search I did before I started to ask my question. However although his suggestion does cover one aspect of the question, the question he linked to does not answer the heart of my question, just part of it. My question is more about the response I got to my coding style and the professional aspects of handling different coding styles and (apparent) levels of skill. With my previous question on SO and it's response as a case in point. [/edit] The question then is: why scoff someone that doesn't use your coding style? The matters/subdivisions at hand for me are:   * Why would it be a bad programming practice to use more error prone code in prototype situations, if refactoring makes it more robust afterward?   * How would can program written in C++ be like it was written in Java? What makes it a bad program, (considering that I indicated the intent of the current style and the planned work to improve?)   * How would I be a bad professional if I chose to use a construct that is used in a certain programming paradigm (e.g. OOP/DP)? [1] Develop fast and buggy, then correct errors or be slow, careful for each line of code?"}
{"_id": "178823", "title": "How do I improve my logic in general and programming in particular?", "text": "I'm good with understanding technology and implementing it. At least that is what I feel. But it seems that when I come across experienced programmers they point out that my logic is weak. I feel that I would need some time with real programming to improve it. But nobody is ready to give that time to me. I'm just about starting my carer and it often feels disheartening to hear this. I want know how can I improve my logic and also does this sort of thing happens to others too?"}
{"_id": "58372", "title": "Is the \"One Description Table to rule them all\" approch good?", "text": "Long ago, I worked (as a client) with a software which use a centralized table for it's codified element. Here, as far as I remember, how the table look like :               Table_Name (PK)     Field_Name (PK)     Code (PK)     Sort_Order     Description      So, instead of creating a table every time they need a codified field, they where just adding row in this table with the new Table_Name and Field_Name. I'm sometime tempted to use this pattern in some database I design, but I have resisted to this as from now, I think there's something wrong with this, but I cannot put the finger on it. It is just because you land with some of the structure logic within the Data or something else?"}
{"_id": "108418", "title": "Do modular PHP frameworks really improve applications?", "text": "One of the goals of modular frameworks like Kohana or Alloy is to make it easy to add and remove components (i.e. \"plugins\" or \"modules\"). However, in all the larger projects I have ever worked - the system often becomes dependent on the modules it is built on. After all, that is why they are there - to build with them. **So, I'm wondering if the concept of building distinct separate sections of a web application as independent modules is even a good idea to begin with?** For example, we may build a general user, forum, and blog module - but each project is different and usually involves building many layers of abstractions to add new features - or editing the files directly to customize them. I can't re-use the same module on multiple projects. In other words, they are no longer just a _plug-in-play_ add-on to the site. _Now I'm not confusing this with proper class design to ensure un-coupled MVC and library logic_. But I'm wondering if \"MMVC\" was a superfluous effort to apply proper class design concepts to application design as well. After all, many migration systems or database libraries like Doctrine require all the relations spelled out in the models from day one, thereby linking the entities. Is it one of those things that sounds like a good idea when the project starts, but eventually is shown to be a useless feature? Do modules have their place in systems like wordpress - but not in frameworks where you are obviously building something custom?"}
{"_id": "230328", "title": "How to show confidence during an interview?", "text": "I got into an interview which I knew what I am trying to explain or have some idea on the question of the interviewer. What's the best way to explain it and show my confidence?"}
{"_id": "18357", "title": "C# Interview Preparation - References?", "text": "This is a specific question relating to C#. However, it can be extrapolated to other languages too. While one is preparing for an interview of a C# Developer (ASP.NET or WinForms or ), what would be the typical reference material that one should look at? Are there any good books/interview question collections that one should look at so that they can be better prepared? This is just to know the different scenarios. For example, I might be writing SQL Stored Procedures and Queries, but I might stumble when asked suddenly Given an Employee Table with the following column(s). EmployeeId, EmployeeName, ManagerId Write a SQL Query which will get me the Name of Employee and Manager Name? NOTE: I am not asking for a Question Bank so that I can learn by rote what the questions are and reproduce them (which, obviously will NOT work!)"}
{"_id": "108414", "title": "How would you quantify quality?", "text": "What should be the core functions of games which represents an excellent game? What quality goals it should achieve to become successful game? Any concise formed answer will get me on track."}
{"_id": "230321", "title": "Does OO, TDD, and Refactoring to Smaller Functions affect Speed of Code?", "text": "In Computer Science field, I have noticed a notable shift in thinking when it comes to programming. The advice as it stands now is   * write smaller, more testable code   * refactor existing code into smaller and smaller chunks of code until most of your methods/functions are just a few lines long   * write functions that only do one thing (which makes them smaller again) This is a change compared to the \"old\" or \"bad\" code practices where you have methods spanning 2500 lines, and big classes doing everything. My question is this: when it call comes down to machine code, to 1s and 0s, to assembly instructions, should I be at all concerned that my class-separated code with variety of small-to-tiny functions generates too much extra overhead? While I am not exactly familiar with how OO code and function calls are handled in ASM in the end, I do have some idea. I assume that each extra function call, object call, or include call (in some languages), generate an extra set of instructions, thereby increasing code's volume and adding various overhead, _without adding actual \"useful\" code_. I also imagine that good optimizations can be done to ASM before it is actually ran on the hardware, but that optimization can only do so much too. Hence, my question -- how much overhead (in space and speed) does well- separated code (split up across hundreds of files, classes, and methods) actually introduce compared to having \"one big method that contains everything\", due to this overhead? UPDATE for clarity: I am assuming that adding more and more functions and more and more objects and classes in a code will result in more and more _parameter passing_ between smaller code pieces. It was said somewhere (quote TBD) that up to 70% of all code is made up of ASM's MOV instruction - loading CPU registers with proper variables, not the actual computation being done. In my case, you load up CPU's time with PUSH/POP instructions to provide linkage and parameter passing between various pieces of code. The smaller you make your pieces of code, the more overhead \"linkage\" is required. I am concerned that this linkage adds to software bloat and slow-down and I am wondering if I should be concerned about this, and how much, if any at all, because current and future generations of programmers who are building software for the next century, will have to live with and consume software built using these practices. **UPDATE: Multiple files** I am writing new code now that is slowly replacing old code. In particular I've noted that one of the old classes was a ~3000 line file (as mentioned earlier). Now it is becoming a set of 15-20 files located across various directories, including test files and not including PHP framework I am using to bind some things together. More files are coming as well. When it comes to disk I/O, loading multiple files is slower than loading one large file. Of course not all files are loaded, they are loaded as needed, and disk caching and memory caching options exist, and yet still I believe that `loading multiple files` takes more processing than `loading a single file` into memory. I am adding that to my concern."}
{"_id": "234838", "title": "Why isn't there parallel reduction in the Standard Template Library?", "text": "Alexander Stepanov stated in talks and interviews that his realization that eventually lead him to generic programming and the Standard Template Library, was from the case of the parallel reduction algorithm. Why isn't there parallel_reduction(begin,end,associativeop) in the STL? Or something that could easily be turned into it with an operator overload (inner_product does only one pass and accumulate does the operations asymetrically). I could not even find such in the SGI-version, nor in the numeric section. Examples of what I am thinking: parallel reduction of [a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h] with binary operator ~ is               ((a ~ b) ~ (c ~ d)) ~ ((e ~ f) ~ (g ~ h))      as opposed to accumulate               (((((((a+b)+c)+d)+e)+f)+g)+h)      and with inner_product you can get only               (a*e)+(b*f)+(c*g)+(d*h)      if I am not mistaken."}
{"_id": "245323", "title": "Is there such a thing as API documentation management?", "text": "So I started thinking, what is the best practice for publishing generated documentation (e.g. Doxygen, NaturalDocs, etc.) in terms of infrastructure? I would be generating it through continuous integration:   * Should it be put in a regular web server?, or should I use something like Sharepoint or some other content publishing software?   * Should the documentation be available for each build?, or just stable releases   * Should I put a full copy of each documentation iteration?, or should I put it in version control overwriting itself? (a repository separate to the project code, of course) For some weird reason I find hard to think that I should just put it in a web enabled server, but this is how I see most do it: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/ However, what happens when your company works on tenths if not hundreds of projects?, most documentation generation tools AFAIK just give you the final HTML output, but it is up to you to manage it. So, what gives?, is there a better practice/solution than just putting it in the \"doc server\"?"}
{"_id": "234837", "title": "Necessity of Interfaces for Small Projects", "text": "Is it necessary to use interfaces for small projects? I work at a shop writing small custom applications for clients, primarily data manipulation. I'm mostly self-taught but also took some programming classes in college. I've been trying to apply more OO concepts to my coding practices, but I really don't see the need for interfaces in the work that I do. My largest project so far had around 10 classes in it. Are interfaces necessary for small projects/applications or only for large- scale software systems? EDIT: This is not a duplicate. I'm asking about using interfaces in general for small projects, not using an interface for when there is only a single implementation..."}
{"_id": "208623", "title": "What are some algorithms that can assist with reservation time scheduling?", "text": "Here's the gist of the problem: There are multiple service providers who each have their own schedules of availability. There are multiple customers who seek their services. Customers need to be able to book a reservation time for the service but they should only be able to book times in which _some_ service provider is available (ie they don't really care which particular provider they get so long as they get a provider). Unfortunately, service providers may change schedules between when the customer registers and when the service is provided, meaning that even with the reservation safeguards in place there could still end up being too many reservations for a given time. I would like to know what work has already been done on this sort of problem, and additionally:   1. Should providers actually be \"assigned\" to customers in a persistent way even though providers are interchangeable?   2. Depending on the answer to the previous question, how might I determine the provider's \"next assignment\" based on the current time, other providers' schedules, and scheduled reservations? I've thought a lot about this problem but I am stumped and left with unsatisfying solutions. As someone with no CS background I would appreciate some insight and/or a better way to think about the problem."}
{"_id": "229079", "title": "Should the views or front-end server call the RESTful API layer", "text": "I need to build a new web application and I am looking for advice on how to manage communication to my API layer. My goal is to have complete separation between the front-end and back-end code. Like most, I plan on having a front- end server to serve the views, while the back-end server will expose my API layer. I am a bit confused on how to approach pulling data from the API.   1. Should the node server handle all the calls to the API and provide that data to the views?   2. or Should the views be able to call the API directly and letting the server manage OAuth magic? I am curious what others have done to approach this. Let me know what your thoughts are, and I would be really interested if you have any good materials to read."}
{"_id": "232788", "title": "Protecting API Keys", "text": "Iv'e moved this from SO as it's more of a design question than a code one. In many applications third party websites/programs can access the website via a key. For example, a web application hosts applications each of which have a unique API key. These keys are issued to the various developers to ensure they don't make too many requests based on their contract. However, the 3rd party applications often make requests in the form: > http://www.thewebapplication.com/my.api?key=TheKey&parameter=SomeValue These can be seen by a myriad of technologies (fiddler, traffic snoopers). Even worse these requests may be placed in Javascript and made available to everyone. How can you design an API system which helps to protect your clients' API keys?"}
{"_id": "171669", "title": "Does license matter if I host a maven repository?", "text": "* If I make a maven repository available for others to use, do I have to get permission form the authors of those software that I host in my repository even if they are free software?   * Can I host free software libraries under any license or should they have compatible licenses?"}
{"_id": "89021", "title": "Books to learn to develop Rails Plugins", "text": "I am using Ruby on Rails 3.0.7 and I would like to learn to write \"advanced\" plugins for the current versione of the framework. In order to do that I would like to buy some books but what I have seen on the Amazon website are two or three year old... Do you know and\\or advice some books for this matter? P.S.: Also link to good on-line guides are welcome in answers."}
{"_id": "233437", "title": "Derivations in BNF", "text": "I get how to do a derivation of a BNF. My text books do a good job of explaining it (much better than the on-line lecture notes of many profs etc). Example below then my questions:               <program> => begin <stmt_list> end     <stmt_list> => <stmt>                        | <stmt>; <stmt_list>     <stmt> => <var> = <expression>     <var> => A | B | C;     <exression> => <var> + <var>                        |<var> - <var>                        |<var>      Generates:               <proogam> => begin<stmt_list> end           => begin<stmt>;<stmt_list> end           => begin<var> = <expression>;<stmt_list>end           => begin a = <expression>;<stmt_list>end           => begin a =  <var> + <var>;<stmt_list>end           => begin a = b + <var> ; <stmt_list>end           => begin a = b + c ; <stmt_list> end           => begin a = b + c; <var> = <expression>; <stmt_list>end           => begin a = b + c; b  = <expression>; end           => begin a = b + c; b = <var> + <var>;<stmt_list> end           => begin a = b + c; b = c + <var>; <stmt_list> end           => begin a = b + c; b = c + a; <stmt_list> end           => begin a = b + c; b = c + a; <var> + <expression>           => begin a = b + c; b = c + a; c = <expression>;           => begin a = b + c; b = c + a; c = <var>;           => begin a = b + c; b = c + a;  c = b;      I get the how mostly and I know the benefit of BNF. But regarding derivations, why do we do them token by token when it's quite obvious what the resultant code would be? Also, with BNF derivation, when an OR is used in the syntax how do we translate this? Such as:               <if_stmt> \uf0e0 if (<logic_expr>) <stmt>|                         if (<logic_expr>) <stmt> else <stmt>"}
{"_id": "31532", "title": "How successful is GPL in reaching its goals?", "text": "There are, broadly, two types of FOSS licenses when it relates to commercial usage of the code - let's say the GPL-type and the BSD-type. The first is, broadly, restrictive about commercial usage (by usage I also mean modification and redistribution, as well as creating derived works, etc.) of the code under the license, and the second is much more permissive. As I understand, the idea behind GPL-type licenses is to encourage people to abandon the proprietary software model and instead convert to the FOSS code, and the license is the instrument to entice them to do so - i.e. \"you can use this nice software, but only if you agree to come to our camp and play by our rules\". What I want to ask is - was this strategy successful so far? I.e. are there any major achievements in the form of some big project going from closed to open because of GPL or some software being developed in the open only because GPL made it so? How big is the impact of this strategy - compared, say, to the world where everybody would have BSD-type licenses or release all open-source code under public domain? Note that I am not asking if FOSS model is successful - this is beyond question. What I am asking is if the specific way of enticing people to convert from proprietary to FOSS used by GPL-type and not used by BSD-type licenses was successful. I also don't ask about the merits of GPL itself as the license - just about the fact of its effectiveness."}
{"_id": "228385", "title": "MVVM / API design: who is responsible for what in the example inside?", "text": "Note: this question is about the MVVM pattern in general and not related to any specific MVVM framework. I am wondering what the best design approach for the requirements below is (hypothetical example). I will also leave out all interfaces, dependency injection etc to keep it simple. Requirements:   * View A: user enters a password and has to confirm it. The password's hash value is then stored in a database. The password is asked from the user every time he starts the application.   * View B: user has to enter his username. The username is supposed to be encrypted with the password entered in View A. In terms of MVVM, I would create two view models: **ViewModelA:**   * `string Password`   * `void SaveHash()` **ViewModelB:**   * `string Username`   * `void SaveEncrypted()` However in order to save the username, **ViewModelB** will need to know the password, so it can derive a key from it and do the encryption. And here is where I start to ask myself if the \"correct\" solution (if something like that exists) is:   * Pass **ViewModelA** in the constructor to **ViewModelB** so that saving can use the information required?   * To change `void SaveEncrypted()` to `void SaveEncrypted(string password)` and only pass the relevant information?   * To change `void SaveEncrypted()` to void `SaveEncrypted(ViewModelA passwordViewModel)` and pass the complete view model that contains the information required? This would prevent abuse of the method by applying some other password.   * To remove the `void SaveEncrypted()` method from ViewModelB and create another interface that is responsible for saving the information, like:  Interface responsible for saving **ViewModelB**                interface IViewModelBSaver             {               void SaveEncrypted(ViewModelB usernameViewModel, ViewModelA passwordViewModel);             }      I could ask similar questions for ViewModelA because there the password's hash is stored."}
{"_id": "228384", "title": "How do you manage config with dependency injection?", "text": "I am a big fan of DI/IOC. It is great for handling/abstracting away hard dependencies, and makes life a little easier. However I have a small gripe with it, which I am not sure how to solve. The basic idea in DI/IOC is that when an object is instantiated, all of its dependencies are pre-filled within the constructor. However IMHO there are several types of parameters for constructors (especially when your objects are immutable).   1. Dependencies (Objects required for your object to do work)   2. Configuration (information about the environment required to do work)   3. Parameters (Data that work is done on) I find that IOC works well with dependencies. But I am still trying to work out the best way to deal with the other two. However, since the constructor is run meant to be run by the IOC container, it seems I need to place these items into the IOC container. I'd like to know what strategies/patterns people employ and what advantages and disadvantages people have found. NB. I am aware this is a highly subjective question, and have tried to make it a \"good\" subjective question as per SE guidelines."}
{"_id": "31536", "title": "Will taking two years off for school in a related field destroy a mid level development career?", "text": "I know some people have asked about getting back into programming after a break and this is a potential duplicate. I just am in a position where I can go back to school for a graduate degree in Stat/Applied Math. But I'm very worried about the impact it will have on my career and ability to find a job afterwards. I have 3 years experience in .NET on top of a couple of years in PHP. Right now, I'm a senior software engineer. Do you think taking two years off to do math is going to dramatically hurt my marketability?"}
{"_id": "170392", "title": "What are best practices for testing programs with stochastic behavior?", "text": "Doing R&D work, I often find myself writing programs that have some large degree of randomness in their behavior. For example, when I work in Genetic Programming, I often write programs that generate and execute arbitrary random source code. A problem with testing such code is that bugs are often intermittent and can be very hard to reproduce. This goes beyond just setting a random seed to the same value and starting execution over. For instance, code might read a message from the kernal ring buffer, and then make conditional jumps on the message contents. Naturally, the ring buffer's state will have changed when one later attempts to reproduce the issue. Even though this behavior is a _feature_ it can trigger other code in unexpected ways, and thus often reveals bugs that unit tests (or human testers) don't find. Are there established best practices for testing systems of this sort? If so, some references would be very helpful. If not, any other suggestions are welcome!"}
{"_id": "170393", "title": "Is there an opposite for the term \"Backporting\"?", "text": "As I understand, the term \"Backporting\" is used to describe a fix which is applied in a future version which is also ported to a previous version. Wikipedia definition is as follows: > **Backporting** is the action of taking a certain software modification > (patch) and applying it to an older version of the software than it was > initially created for. It forms part of the maintenance step in a software > development process... For example:   * A problem is discovered and fixed in V2.0. The same fix is ported and applied to V1.5. What is the term when this is done in the opposite direction?   * The problem is discovered and fixed in V1.5. The same fix is ported and applied to V2.0. Would the term \"Backporting\" still apply? Or is there a term such as \"Forwardporting\" (which amusingly sounds a lot like \"Port Forwarding\")?"}
{"_id": "170394", "title": "Should business services cross bounded contexts?", "text": "Firstly, I am following the convention that a bounded context is synonymous to a department, or possibly one department has 1 to many bounded contexts. We have a client consultancy department that has a Documentation Service. Documents are stored in the Document Store Service (which is where all documents in the company are stored - it is a utility service), and the Documentation Service stores information about that document (a business service). As it was designed for the client consultancy, it is information relevant to them. Now health and safety need somewhere to store information about a document. This is different information to client consultancy, but I have been instructed to extend the existing service to account for this extra information. I feel this service is now crossing a bounded context. My worry is that all departments will eventually store there information in here and the service will become bloated, trying to be all things to all departments. Each document record will only store a subset of the information because it will only belong to one department. It will get worse when different departments want to store the same information but refer to it in a diferent ways, or when two departments want to store different information that they refer to in the same way. In my understanding, this is exactly the reason for bounded contexts. I feel each department should have it's own business service for information about a document, but use the same utility service to actually store the document. What would be the correct approach?"}
{"_id": "170399", "title": "Switch or a Dictionary when assigning to new object", "text": "Recently, I've come to prefer mapping 1-1 relationships using `Dictionaries` instead of `Switch` statements. I find it to be a little faster to write and easier to mentally process. Unfortunately, when mapping to a new instance of an object, I don't want to define it like this:               var fooDict = new Dictionary<int, IBigObject>()     {         { 0, new Foo() }, // Creates an instance of Foo         { 1, new Bar() }, // Creates an instance of Bar         { 2, new Baz() }  // Creates an instance of Baz     }          var quux = fooDict[0]; // quux references Foo      Given that construct, I've wasted CPU cycles and memory creating 3 objects, doing whatever their constructors might contain, and only ended up using one of them. I also believe that mapping other objects to `fooDict[0]` in this case will cause them to reference the same thing, rather than creating a new instance of `Foo` as intended. A solution would be to use a lambda instead:               var fooDict = new Dictionary<int, Func<IBigObject>>()     {         { 0, () => new Foo() }, // Returns a new instance of Foo when invoked         { 1, () => new Bar() }, // Ditto Bar         { 2, () => new Baz() }  // Ditto Baz     }          var quux = fooDict[0](); // equivalent to saying 'var quux = new Foo();'      Is this getting to a point where it's too confusing? It's easy to miss that `()` on the end. Or is mapping to a function/expression a fairly common practice? The alternative would be to use a switch:               IBigObject quux;     switch(someInt)     {         case 0: quux = new Foo(); break;         case 1: quux = new Bar(); break;         case 2: quux = new Baz(); break;     }      **Which invocation is more acceptable?**   * Dictionary, for faster lookups and fewer keywords (case and break)   * Switch: More commonly found in code, doesn't require the use of a Func<> object for indirection."}
{"_id": "186086", "title": "What to learn and how?", "text": "I am a Java (Web) Developer. Having knowledge about c#, PHP and Ruby. I am getting confused how to keep myself updated with very fast changing the programming language and their implementation. Like, in the mobile, you can see around 7-8 OS. There are very much finer example of event-driven programming to make scalable application like node.js, Ember, Require etc.. Then WebSockets, Socket.io, HTML5. Python and C once again climbing on the top. Scala and clojure are becoming very popular languages. Haskell and Erlang are also a great language too.. With so many programming language and platform, it is sometimes i feel very bad that i am missing some good things in my career. I am just confused what to learn and how to co-op with this fast-changing world. Please suggest."}
{"_id": "102807", "title": "Should the syntax for disabling code differ from that of normal comments?", "text": "For several reasons during development I sometimes comment out code. As I am chaotic and sometimes in a hurry, some of these make it to source control. I also use comments to clarify blocks of code. For instance:               MyClass MyFunction()     {         (...)         // return null; // TODO: dummy for now         return obj;     }      Even though it \"works\" and alot of people do it this way, it annoys me that you cannot automatically distinguish commented-out code from \"real\" comments that clarify code:   * it adds noise when trying to read code   * you cannot search for commented-out code for for instance an on-commit hook in source control. Some languages support multiple single-line comment styles - for instance in PHP you can either use `//` or `#` for a single-line comment - and developers can agree on using one of these for commented-out code:               # return null; // TODO: dummy for now     return obj;      Other languages - like C# which I am using today - have one style for single- line comments (right? I wish I was wrong). I have also seen examples of \"commenting-out\" code using compiler directives, which is great for large blocks of code, but a bit overkill for single lines as two new lines are required for the directive:               #if compile_commented_out         return null; // TODO: dummy for now     #endif     return obj;      So as commenting-out code happens in every(?) language, shouldn't \"disabled code\" get its own syntax in language specifications? Are the pro's (separation of comments / disabled code, editors / source control acting on them) good enough and the cons (\"shouldn't do commenting-out anyway\", not a functional part of a language, potential IDE lag (thanks Thomas)) worth sacrificing? **Edit** I realise the example I used is silly; the dummy code could easily be removed as it is replaced by the actual code."}
{"_id": "103039", "title": "What are the algorithms behind low pause GC?", "text": "Some languages, for exemple java, introduced a low pause GC. Those GC can do most of the work without pausing the whole world. This is obviously a quite hard problem because it require to analyze the memory when thread are modifying it, resulting in data that can be used in the begining of the process and not anymore when it finishes, or data that appears to be garbages but because the reference was moved in memory and never appeared where the GC was looking. So basically, what is the algorithm(s) behind that ? Research papers or really technical article's link would be considered as valid answer, as this topic is really technical."}
{"_id": "225606", "title": "How do you get developers to want to write good code they can be proud of?", "text": "In a team of developers, how do you get the developers to feel pride in their code and write good code (I realize this is subjective and everyone is different, but there is a point when I write code that i can say, this is a good piece of code that I am happy to show off). To often I hear we have no time to write good code and all that matters is getting the defect fix closed. How do I change this outlook and make the coders create code they can be proud of. This seems to be more prevalent in the younger coders, not all but most."}
{"_id": "205857", "title": "Why do old C-style method names continue being used in modern languages?", "text": "I understand that in the earlier days of computing, shorter method names like `printf` made sense, because storage was limited. But why do modern languages like Python and Go still use the less readable names from the C APIs? Why don't they switch to a more readable form like print_format, the same goes for other names. I wouldn't mind having to write `make_directory` instead of `mkdir` in go."}
{"_id": "213739", "title": "How can I test an application that depends on specific hardware", "text": "I have written an Android application. The application requires a Bluetooth connection to a very specific piece of hardware, currently a prototype. The only way I can test the app at present is to drive hundreds of miles to see if it works. If I end up with an ANR it can be very embarrassing in front of my client. The connection type and the mechanics of this app are very tightly tailored to this hardware. I am not permitted to bring a laptop, root my phone, or connect to any other device on the premises. Is there any way to test this application at home, or step through the activities to ensure I don't have another ANR on the second activity while the client looks at me horrified? I should point out I am not an experienced programmer and this is a new idea that I am helping someone with, as hiring staff is not on the cards at present, so I am undoubtedly missing some of the very basic concepts of developing this."}
{"_id": "103031", "title": "Should I remove unreferenced code?", "text": "I'm working on a medium sized (100k lines) code base, it's all relatively recent code (less than a year old) and has good unit test coverage. I keep coming across methods which are either no longer used anywhere or only referenced in unit tests which only test that specific method. Should I remove this code if I'm certain that it's no longer needed? **Reasons to remove it:**   * Less code, less bugs   * Less code is easier for others to digest   * It's still under source control **Reasons to keep it:**   * Can be used as reference   * It may be useful sometime   * It may have been written to 'round-out' the functionality for a class"}
{"_id": "244756", "title": "UIDocumentInteractionController in iOS for Whatsapp Integration", "text": "I was looking for a way to share my application created files through Whatsapp. I found we can chat using custom URL scheme provided by whatsapp. But, to share files of my app, I read that I have to use `DocumentInteractionController`. Is there any sample available? Also, when I read about this on Apple docs, it says: > Create an instance of the UIDocumentInteractionController class for each > file you want to interact with. Is it necessary to create an instance for each file? I just want to share the files as and when I receive them through my service to my app."}
{"_id": "225871", "title": "How many Angular Controllers and/or Directives is too many?", "text": "I'm building a large, editable data table with angular, and I'm trying to figure out what the best practice is. The table will be a couple of hundred rows, with a couple of dozen columns, so upwards of 2000 cells. Each cell needs to be editable inline. My first thought was to have directives at the cell level, so it would look something like:               <editablecell model=\"some model expression\"></editablecell>      But I'm concerned about the performance of creating thousands of directives instances, each with its own scope, controller, and event listeners. I'm worried that if the table needs to be redrawn (you change the sorting, for instance) the performance will suffer. Is it a better idea to maybe have a per-row directive that has a meatier controller and template to handle all the data binding and event handling at a higher level, and thus create fewer child scopes and event listeners?"}
{"_id": "83170", "title": "Redis vs Zookeeper", "text": "It seems silly to compare these two servers considering that they're meant for very different things. But if you think about it, they can do lots of similar things: store configuration data, distributed locking, queueing, etc. I've got an instance of Redis that I'm using for some production-related things, but would like to do some simple synchronization between servers (mostly configuration changes that don't require pushing up code and simple locking between servers). What does Zookeeper give me that Redis wouldn't?"}
{"_id": "83175", "title": "How can I actually apply the javascript I am learning", "text": "I am a front end programmer. I'm good with design, html, css, and jquery, but I want to learn javascript more than anything. I've taken a couple of courses, read books and tutorials online and feel like I have a good grasp of the core principles: variables, logic etc. This is where I see to differ from all the other \"What's the best way to learn js\" questions on the web. What I can't seem to do is put this into actual practice. I can't take the jump from knowing the bits and pieces to figuring out how they work together to become a program. What's the best way to get actual applied knowledge with js? I assume becoming an apprentice or being tutored would be the best, but you don't hear about those sorts of things often."}
{"_id": "83179", "title": "Why don't schools cover debuggers?", "text": "After yet another homework question on SO. It seems like that vast majority of students have no idea what a debugger is or how to use one. I feel that knowing how to use a debugger is almost as important as other fundamental of programming.   * The question is shouldn't debugging and how to use modern debugging tools be taught alongside programming fundamentals? If not why not."}
{"_id": "145212", "title": "Naming convention: is it good that all subclasses have same prefix or suffix or not?", "text": "I'm bothering about a naming problem. Given that I got an interface which got named Extension, and there will be lots of implementations, like Radio extension, video extension, music extension, etc. First I have them all named with same suffix, \"ext\", e.g., RadioExt, VideoExt, etc. Moment later I realized the suffix was redundant since they all realized the same single interface Extension, and I should describe them in more literal manner. So I removed all suffixes. However, there was debate among my colleagues, some argued that suffix was more clear and more readable. Actually, I think it's right at some extent. So I'm confused which naming is better. Any opinions? **UPDATE**   I'm targeting Android and iOS. As what you guys said, language support would be preferable. The fact that obj-c doesn't support namespace is really a pain. Furthermore, looks like prefixes in iOS programming is more official way to solve name collision, I'd have to apply this guide anyway for trying keeping consistent for all my ports."}
{"_id": "47063", "title": "Why do many people think Mac will become a closed platform because of the App Store?", "text": "Isn't the App Store basically just Steam but for general applications?"}
{"_id": "239142", "title": "Do you have a metaphor for cache/data latencies?", "text": "From this answer about latencies, we have some numbers (yes, caveat caveat) for latencies when coding (slightly edited):   * L1 cache reference 0.5 ns   * Branch mispredict 5 ns   * L2 cache reference 7 ns   * Main memory reference 100 ns   * Send 2K bytes over 1 Gbps network 20,000 ns   * Read 1 MB sequentially from memory 250,000 ns   * Disk seek 10,000,000 ns   * Read 1 MB sequentially from network 10,000,000 ns   * Read 1 MB sequentially from disk 30,000,000 ns   * Send packet CA->Netherlands->CA 150,000,000 ns Do you have a metaphor that puts this in human terms? For example, a human might find a value in a table on their desk (L1) in 15s, so the equivalent time to go find the same thing if the page is still in the book on the shelf (L2) would be 14x longer, or 3.5 minutes. I know this seems like an ELI5, but I think most programmers (including me) lack a real grasp of how the orders of magnitude vary, making it hard to reason about whether to memoize some function or pre-cache some data. I'll expand the example in an answer. If you have a handle on CPU pipelining and cycles instead, that would be a great boon for understanding CPUs. Also mutex performance, SIMD paralellism, multi-threading, multi-core..."}
{"_id": "206502", "title": "Is the database the bottleneck or not? High Scalability talk", "text": "I found an interesting article on high scalability web site where it talks about EBay scalability and especially a specific passage struck me: > \"(Ebay strategies)...Move work out of the database into the applications > because the database is the bottleneck. Ebay does this in the extreme. We > see it in other architecture using caching and the file system, but eBay > even does a lot of traditional database operations in applications (like > joins).\" and the above is no mistake because again in the same article: > \"Move cpu-intensive work moved out of the database layer to applications > applications layer: referential integrity, joins, sorting done in the > application layer! Reasoning: app servers are cheap, databases are the > bottleneck.\" Any explanation on this? If the above were true then I should only use the database for retrieving data and do all other operations in the programming logic. I was always told the opposite: \"databases are optimized for operations on data and complex selects so use them\". Any insight?"}
{"_id": "231497", "title": "Efficient algorithm for joining sieves", "text": "I'm trying to find an efficient algorithm for the following algorithm. I have a sequence consisting of lists of indices denoting indices to be removed. The semantics are such that each sequence must be performed in order. I want to take these sequences and flatten them into one sequence of absolute indices to be removed. This can be achieved by performing a series of sieves (somewhat akin to the Sieve of Eratosthenes). The caveat is that this technique is slow (quadratic). Thus this group of relative indices:               R0: 0 3 10 15     R1: 2 7 20     R2: 1 11 12 14 17     R3: 0 1 2      Would correspond to this group of absolute indices:               A0: 0 3 10 15     A1: 4 9 22     A2: 2 17 18 20 24     A3: 1 5 6      And when merged into one sequence of absolute indices, I would have the following:               A': 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 9 10 15 17 18 20 22 24      There may be any number of relative sequences, each of which may contain any number of elements and may have large gaps between indices. The input relative sequences are sorted in increasing order any may not contain duplicates. Obtaining the intermediate `A#` lists is unnecessary. I only care about the list `A'` from the inputs `R#`. * * * Clarification on the algorithm Let's take the list of non-negative integers               0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 ...      And remove the indices given by R0 Then we have               1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 ...      The removed values yield A0 (`0 3 10 15`) Now remove the indices given by R1               1 2 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 ...      The removed values yield A1 (`4 9 22`) Now remove the indices given by R2               1 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 16 19 21 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 ...      The removed values yield A2 (`2 17 18 20 24`) Now remove the indices given by R3               7 8 10 11 12 13 14 16 19 21 23 25 26 27 28 29 30 ...      The removed values yield A3 (`1 5 6`)"}
{"_id": "213085", "title": "How to manage your personal ssh keys?", "text": "I understand that ssh keys are a cryptographically secured way of authenticating yourself to a service or to another person, but beyond that I'm frankly at a bit of a loss. What confuses me is that I see many developers mention their public key on their site, but how does one have just one key? I have a few for different things. And if my computer crashed, I would have to generate new ones. I obviously can't remember the key. Do people just save it somewhere, the sequence of numbers/letters, like in their email? And then use that one key for everything? How does someone get a _personal_ key? I just feel like I'm missing something about this whole theater of operations. I mean, we walked through RSA in university; I understand the principle, but I never used it in practice until I signed up for github and heroku and few months ago and they forced me to generate some keys, something I didn't even realize I could do before then."}
{"_id": "6417", "title": "How to deal with programming projects that fail?", "text": "It's not uncommon for projects to fail. As a programmer, how do you deal with projects that fail? Some definitions of failure:   * Misses deadline.   * Code and functionality does not do what it's supposed to.   * Software becomes vapor-ware or endless number of phases, essentially undeliverable. Or maybe you have your own definition(s) of failure. Do you start pointing fingers? Do you blame yourself, the requirements, the technology, the management, the client, etc? Do you do a lessons learned session as a team?"}
{"_id": "87410", "title": "Modern browser features that allow a web application to behave like a local application?", "text": "I'm almost three years in to a career as a web application developer. It's my first \"real\" programming job\". We use ASP.net at my shop, but I've been making it a point to constantly strive toward mastery of client-side scripting. My primary pet peeve about web application development is the disconnect between what is happening client-side and what is happening server-side. Of course, the primary issue with web development is that for the last 20 years, we have built the web on extensions to what is essentially a text-file viewer. I have a more experienced co-worker who tells me that he used to be a non-web application developer. He says that moving from application development to web application development, his concern is to make the web application behave as much as feasibly possible as if it were a local application. I agree that my users would like this, too. I frequently learn about modern tools that I can add to my toolbox to accomplish this: jquery-ui, for example. This morning, I learned about using the new CSS position:fixed value to make elements appear static on my page as a user scrolls. I'd like to ask, what are the best tools that I can use to make my web applications more responsive and interactive; what can I use to make my web application be perceived to be like a locally running application."}
{"_id": "173284", "title": "What's a good scheme for multi-user database synchronization?", "text": "I'm working on a system to allow multiple users to collaborate on an online project. Everything is fairly straightforward, except for keeping the users in sync. Each user has their own local copy of the project database, which allows them to make changes and test things out, and then send the updates to the central server. But this runs into the classic synchronization question: how do you keep two users from editing the same thing and stomping each other's work? I've got an idea that should work, but I wonder if there's a simpler way to do it. Here's the basic concept:   * All project data is stored in a relational database.   * Each row in the database has an owner. If the current user is not the owner, he can read but not write that row. (This is enforced client-side.)      * The user can send a request to the server to take ownership of a row, which will be granted if the server's copy says that the current owner is `NULL`, or to release ownership when they're done with it.     * It is not possible to release ownership without committing changes to the server.   * It is not possible to commit changes to the server without having first downloaded all outstanding changes to the server.   * When any changes are made to rows you own, a trigger marks that row as Dirty. When you commit changes, the database is scanned for all Dirty rows in all tables, and the data is serialized into an update file, which is posted to the server, and all rows are marked Clean. The server applies the updates on its end, and keeps the file around. When other users download changes, the server sends them the update files that they haven't already received. So, essentially this is a reinvention of version control on a relational database. (Sort of.) As long as taking ownership and applying updates to the server are guaranteed atomic changes, and the server verifies that some smart- aleck user didn't edit their local database so they could send an update for a row they don't have ownership of, it should be guaranteed to be correct, and with no need to worry about merges and merge conflicts. (I think.) Can anyone think of any problems with this scheme, or ways to do it better? (And no, \"build [insert VCS here] into your project\" is not what I'm looking for. I've thought of that already. VCSs work well with text, and not so well with other file formats, such as relational databases.)"}
{"_id": "158640", "title": "Why can't the IT industry deliver large, faultless projects quickly as in other industries?", "text": "After watching National Geographic's MegaStructures series, I was surprised how fast large projects are completed. Once the preliminary work (design, specifications, etc.) is done on paper, **the realization itself of huge projects take just a few years or sometimes a few months**. For example, Airbus A380 \"formally launched on Dec. 19, 2000\", and \"in the Early March, 2005\", the aircraft was already tested. The same goes for huge oil tankers, skyscrapers, etc. Comparing this to the delays in software industry, I can't help wondering why most IT projects are so slow, or more precisely, why they cannot be as fast and faultless, at the same scale, given enough people? * * * Projects such as the Airbus A380 present both:   * Major unforeseen risks: while this is not the first aircraft built, it still pushes the limits if the technology and things which worked well for smaller airliners may not work for the larger one due to physical constraints; in the same way, new technologies are used which were not used yet, because for example they were not available in 1969 when Boeing 747 was done.   * Risks related to human resources and management in general: people quitting in the middle of the project, inability to reach a person because she's on vacation, ordinary human errors, etc. With those risks, **people still achieve projects like those large airliners in a very short period of time** , and despite the delivery delays, those projects are still hugely successful and of a high quality. When it comes to software development, the projects are hardly as large and complicated as an airliner (both technically and in terms of management), and have slightly less unforeseen risks from the real world. Still, **most IT projects are slow and late** , and adding more developers to the project is not a solution (going from a team of ten developer to two thousand will sometimes allow to deliver the project faster, sometimes not, and sometimes will only harm the project and increase the risk of not finishing it at all). Those which are still delivered may often **contain a lot of bugs, requiring consecutive service packs and regular updates** (imagine \"installing updates\" on every Airbus A380 twice per week to patch the bugs in the original product and prevent the aircraft from crashing). How can such differences be explained? Is it due exclusively to the fact that software development industry is too young to be able to manage thousands of people on a single project in order to deliver large scale, nearly faultless products very fast?"}
{"_id": "254302", "title": "Composing programs from small simple pieces: OOP vs Functional Programming", "text": "I started programming when imperative programming languages such as C were virtually the only game in town for paid gigs. I'm not a computer scientist by training so I was only exposed to Assembler and Pascal in school, and not Lisp or Prolog. Over the 1990s, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) became more popular because one of the marketing memes for OOP was that complex programs could be composed of loosely coupled but well-defined, well-tested, cohesive, and reusable classes and objects. And in many cases that is quite true. Once I learned object-oriented programming my C programs became better because I structured them more like classes and objects. In the last few years (2008-2014) I have programmed in Ruby, an OOP language. However, Ruby has many functional programming (FP) features such as lambdas and procs, which enable a different style of programming using recursion, currying, lazy evaluation and the like. (Through ignorance I am at a loss to explain why these techniques are so great). Very recently, I have written code to use methods from the Ruby Enumerable library, such as map(), reduce(), and select(). Apparently this is a functional style of programming. I have found that using these methods significantly reduce code volume, and make my code easier to debug. Upon reading more about FP, one of the marketing claims made by advocates is that FP enables developers to compose programs out of small well-defined, well-tested, and reusable functions, which leads to less buggy code, and low code volume. QUESTIONS:   1. Is the composition of complex program by using FP techniques contradictory to or complementary to composition of a complex program by using OOP techniques?    2. In which situations is OOP more effective, and when is FP more effective?   3. Is it possible to use both techniques in the same complex program?    4. Do the techniques overlap or contradict each other?"}
{"_id": "170539", "title": "One dimensional cutting algorithm with minimum waste", "text": "Can anybody point me to some resources about \"cutting algorithm\"? The problem:   * have rods with length of `L` meters, e.g. 6 m   * need cut smaller pieces of different lengths, e.g. need:      * 4 x 1.2m     * 8 x 0,9m     * etc... (many other lengths and counts) How to determine the optimal cutting, what will produce the minimum wasted material? I'm capable write an perl program, but haven't any idea about the _algorithm_. (if here is already some CPAN module what can help, would be nice). Alternatively, if someone can point me to some \"spreadsheet\" solution, or to anything what helps. Ps: in addition, need care about the \"cutting line width\" too, whats means than from the 6m long rod is impossible to cut 6 x 1m, because the cutting itself takes \"3mm\" width, so it is possible cut only 5 x 1m and the last piece will be only 98.5 cm (1m minus 5 x 3mm cut-width) ;(."}
{"_id": "127983", "title": "Is the author of an open-source application obliged to make the \"open-sourceness\" visible?", "text": "What are the legal obligations to put into evidence that my application (I am the author) is open-source (especially when it is derivate), if I want to sell copies of it? I mean, could my open-source application be sold, with all the licensing stuff and source code inside and not hidden, but without saying so in the advertising for the app in the app-store?"}
{"_id": "200902", "title": "Is every object rounded to the same size in Java?", "text": "According to this answer every object in Java is of the same size? Is the answer talking about the object itself or the reference to the object? Here's the statement: > every object size is rounded to 16 bytes in Hotspot, so an object with a > single byte field will take up precisely the same space as a single object > with a long or double field; I am completely baffled by the claim in this statement. So many upvotes to this answer further befuddled me. Can some one please explain what is meant by the above statement?"}
{"_id": "229923", "title": "Does it make sense to break fluid interface if a bad argument is passed?", "text": "If I chain some setters together and one of them does not return $this, then I will get a fatal error. But maybe that is a good thing.               $object = new object();     $object->set('name','foo')->set('number',12)->set('color'=>'brown');          class object {       protected $name;       protected $number;       protected $color;            protected $allowed_to_set = array('name','color');            public function set($property,$value) {         if(!in_array((string)$property,$this->allowed_to_set)) {           return false;         } else {           $this->$property = $value;           return $this;         }       }     }"}
{"_id": "127985", "title": "Naming conventions for instance, local and parameter variables", "text": "I was discussing with a senior developper coding conventions to apply to our projects (mainly Java/JEE projects). I disagreed with one convention he proposed: > Instance variable names should start with \"_\", local variables with \"loc\", > and method parameters with \"par\", so it would be easy to identify a variable > origin and scope. While he put forward arguments for short-term memory and readability, I disagreed on the fact that it rather decreases readability, IDEs like Eclipse format variables differently depending on their type, and this problem would be avoided with a good class and method design. Do you have any opinion, arguments or studies that supports my point (or opposes it)?"}
{"_id": "200908", "title": "Is it okay to call a model method in my view?", "text": "In the interest of keeping my Controller's skinny, I put a `headline` method in a Model.               # My Model     class Property       def headline          \"#{name} | #{address}\"       end     end      _(Then, Property Controller for context...)_               # My Controller         class PropertyController       def show         @property = Property.find(params[:id])        end     end      Question: As far as MVC is concerned, is it okay to call that Model method from my View, like so?               # My View     <h1><%= @property.headline %></h1>"}
{"_id": "173139", "title": "Do support sites like Stack Overflow upset the paid-support open source model?", "text": "In order to stay relevant in the marketplace, I'm researching new business models for my software company. The open source model with paid support seems like a good fit for our product, but I have concerns about whether or not a paid support model is viable in an era where top-notch help is readily available for free on sites like those in the Stack Exchange network. Case in point -- I moved my employees to Ubuntu last year because I didn't want to pay for Win 7 licenses and new hardware (plus, the mono platform was highly attractive). My staff had no Linux experience, but were able to achieve relative competency in about 120 days with the help of AskUbuntu, Stack Overflow, and a few \"For Dummies\" books. We did employ an Ubuntu consultant for 7 days to provide training and support, but beyond that spent $0.00 on any kind of paid expertise. In regards to my due diligence, I ran a 3 month beta of the freemium-paid- support model with one of our smaller customers, and achieved mediocre results. I'd like to think its because our software is so stable and easy to use that the customer didn't need much paid support, but I suspect that they circumvented the terms of our SLA in the same manner that we did with the move to Ubuntu. Does anyone out there has any thoughts, advice, or experience relevant to the move I'm considering? What worked, what didn't, etc?"}
{"_id": "229928", "title": "Adding object properties using functional programming", "text": "I am currently learning functional programming using Underscore.js. What I want to do is add two co-ordinates together. Let P1 = (0, 0) and P2 = (1, 1). Therefore, P1 + P2 = (1, 1) I have a solution, but it seems so convoluted that I'm sure I'm doing something wrong:               // Base 2D Cartesian Point     var Point = function(x, y) {       this.x = x;       this.y = y;     }          Point.prototype.add = function(delta) {       return _.object(_.keys(this),         _.map(           _.zip(             _.values(this),              _.values(delta)),              function(point) {               return _.reduce(point,                  function(memo, num) { return memo + num; }, 0);             }         )       );     }      Is this the proper implementation of the add function for points using Underscore.js or is there a better solution?"}
{"_id": "177622", "title": "How to work as a team of two", "text": "I work in a team of 2 developers, my partner is the founder of the company, in the beginning he did everything on his own. He hired me about 3 years ago to help him get things done quicker and satisfy our customer needs. Often I get small project to do all by my own, as long as it works great (and it usually does...) he doesn't care much on what I did or how I did it. But if the customer calls him up asking why something doesn't work as expected and I'm not around to forward the call to me, he could get very angry on why he doesn't have an idea on how that program works. I don't keep anything as a secret, if he asks me on something how I did it I'm happy to explain as long as he's willing to listen (which isn't long), but I don't know why I need to say it in first place, in developing software everything is written down clearly. Most of the time I work on projects he wrote and I don't need to ask him anything (it happens maybe once a month that I ask him how something works, just because I don't have the time to look it up). I've read a lot on that great site about small teams that usually means 7-12 people. I couldn't find how 2 people work as a team; we don't have project managers, reviewers or testers. I feel that the fact he don't have time to review the code on his own is not my problem, so the question here is am I doing something wrong? Do I need to walk over to him and give him a lecture on what I did even he doesn't ask me?"}
{"_id": "184342", "title": "Where did the T in wchar_t come from?", "text": "In many native types, a common suffix (and sometimes prefix) of `t` or `_t` is used to denote platform-independent types (such as `wchar_t`, `int32_t`, etc.) What was the logic behind the letter `t` as opposed to other letters (or none at all, especially in the case of `wchar_t`)? Does it stand for something?"}
{"_id": "254304", "title": "What is referential transparency?", "text": "I have seen that in imperative paradigms f(x)+f(x) might not be the same as: 2*f(x) But in a functional paradigm it should be the same. I have tried to implement both cases in Python and Scheme, but for me they look pretty straightforward the same. What would be an example that could point out the difference with the given function?"}
{"_id": "177625", "title": "Learning curve for web development", "text": "At the moment our team has a huge challenge, we're being asked to deliver a new GUI for an embedded controller. The deadline is very tight and is set on April 2013. Our team is very diverse, some people are on the level of procedural/structured programming (mostly C), others (including myself) have mastered object oriented programming (C++, C#). We built a prototype for Android, although it has its quirks, it is mostly just OO. For the future there is a wish to support multiple platforms (Windows, Android, iOS). In my opinion a HTML5 app with a native app shell is the way to go. When gathering more information on the frameworks to use etc., it became obvious to me a paradigm shift is needed. None of us have a web background so we need to learn from the ground up. The shift from functional to OO took us about 6 months to become productive (and some of the early subsystems were rewritten because they were a total mess). Can we expect the learning curve to be similar? Can this be pulled off with a web app? (My feeling says it will already be hard to pull off as a native app which is at the edge of our comfort zone)."}
{"_id": "177628", "title": "Is code that terminates on a random condition guaranteed to terminate?", "text": "If I had a code which terminated based on if a random number generator returned a result (as follows), would it be 100% certain that the code would terminate if it was allowed to run forever.               while (random(MAX_NUMBER) != 0): // random returns a random number between 0 and MAX_NUMBER        print('Hello World')      I am also interested in any distinctions between purely random and the deterministic random that computers generally use. Assume the seed is not able to be known in the case of the deterministic random. Naively it could be suggested that the code will exit, after all every number has some possibility and all of time for that possibility to be exercised. On the other hand it could be argued that there is the random chance it may not ever meet the exit condition-- the generator could generate 1 'randomly' until infinity. (I suppose one would question the validity of the random number generator if it was a deterministic generator returning only 1's 'randomly' though)"}
{"_id": "231146", "title": "fast n-gram access data structure", "text": "**TL;DR** Is there a data structure that'd quickly let me match words at any point (e.g., 'foo' matches 'foobar' and 'zoofoo'), and, ideally, returns a list of \"characters that show up after the needle\" (e.g., 'foo' should return ['b', $]). * * * I'm implementing an algorithm that generates random words from a training set of other words. In simple terms, it's basically like this:   1. Choose an arbitrary starting point.   2. Choose the longest suffix of the current word that is contained in at least 2 other words   3. Choose one of those words at random, and append the next character to the current wor.   4. GOTO 2 until \"next character\" is EOW e.g., if the current word is 'tat', some valid options would be 'potato' and 'tattoo'; if the current word is \"ophtalmi\", the only option is \"ophtalmic\", so we search if any words contain \"phtalmi\", \"htalmi\", \"talmi\", and so on. I've tried a couple of implementations: in one, I've used a trie populated with every suffix of every word. This is very fast at generating words, but populating the trie is VERY slow (~4 million words have not finished in over 10 hours). In another, I've generated a hash of:               for word in words:         for suffix in tails(words):             for prefix, suffix in prefixes(words): # prefixes(\"foo\") = [(\"f\",\"oo\"),(\"fo\",\"o\"),(\"foo\",\"\")]                 ngrams[prefix].add(suffix) # this is a set      and it's much faster at reading the training set, and very fast at generating, but it takes a lot of RAM. And, finally, the dumb option, of simply searching               candidates = [word for word in words if string in words]      which takes very little memory, but is much slower. Is there a data structure with the behaviour I need?"}
{"_id": "224550", "title": "GPL and confidential business rules in a single page application", "text": "I am designing a web app for a client who wants to keep some of his business rules private, we have an NDA. In a nutshell, customers use the app to book a service, and employees use it to keep track of bookings. Since the front end is public (and untrustworthy), all of the decisions that are determined by business rules have to happen on the server. Now, if I use a very nice GPLv3 licensed module, then that SPA has to be licensed under a compatible license, like MIT, because the app (including the module) is being distributed to everyone who visits the site. That's fine, it isn't possible to hide anything on the front end anyways. I don't contribute enough back to the community, and I would love to release an example of a production grade SPA as open source. It would be a great way to start a blog. The server would implement a publicly defined API, and the front end would work with any server that implements the API. I would include a simple server with the GPL licensed app so that it can be run by anyone. The server doesn't depend on the client, because could it could be replaced with curl. What I am wondering is, in this scenario, could I keep my client's unique business rules private in a server app without violating the rules or intentions of the GPL?"}
{"_id": "228030", "title": "How to line-break an email address?", "text": "After some discussion, I have come across a rather complicated situation. Say I intend to display an email address. I have, obviously, limited space available on the screen - be that browser or application UI. Email addresses are, however, limited to 64 + 1 + 255 = 320 characters by RFC5321, while the same RFC also caps the path at 256 (which leads to an actual 254) characters. That's quite a lot for most screens - the lines I'm writing right now contain less than a hundred characters each. So, that poses a bit of a problem when trying to display email addresses. At this character count, sufficiently large containers would seem huge for a \"default-sized\" email address (my average is a bit below 30 characters right now), while a smaller container would lead to overflow. At first the option to use a smaller container but introduce line-breaks on longer addresses seems like a good idea.   Which brings me to the first important question to this: **Where do I break?** After a set/relative amount of characters? Before or after the `@`?   And the second question follows right after: **How do I break?** Zero-width space? `<wbr>` in HTML? Insert a dash or not? There seem to be reasons for and against any of these, but I can't for the life of me find any sources to go off in my decision. It seems as though nobody ever actually dealt with this situation (that is, the physical cap on estate is never exhausted). The best I can find are some online publishing styleguides preferring an email address in one line and adjusting surrounding elements to make that work. Well, we might just not have that option under some circumstances."}
{"_id": "228037", "title": "Can Google use my users data?", "text": "I have a webapp that uses Google App Engine and Google Cloud Datastore services. But reading the new Google Cloud terms of services I notice this part: > Further, Customer will notify its End Users that any Customer Data provided > as part of the Services will be made available to a third party (i.e. > Google) as part of Google providing the Services. and this: > \u201cCustomer Data\u201d means content provided, transmitted, or displayed via the > Services by Customer or its End Users; but excluding any data provided as > part of the Account. Does that mean Google can access the data stored in the Datastore of my End Users to, for example, improve their advertising system? Are the terms of Amazon AWS like that too? And what about Windows Azure?"}
{"_id": "73951", "title": "Would leading a major refactoring effort appeal to a senior developer?", "text": "My company is inheriting a large code base for two products that's fragmented into different applications using different languages and technologies, with a significant portion of it spaghetti code. I'm the only in-house IT person, and while I'm confident I could maintain the software for current operations, I don't have the expertise to refactor it into a more maintainable form. With the approach and development choices being entirely malleable, would a role like this appeal to a senior developer or would \"we have a bunch of bad code\" cut off \"and are intent on improving it correctly\"?"}
{"_id": "73954", "title": "Where can I ask for an accessibility review for a site?", "text": "I'm not _too,_ too far (I hope) from finishing a site. I want to have it reviewed with an eye to its accessibility. The site's job is to display streaming, up-to-the-10-second-period stock- option data. Does anyone know of a group or forum where I can post a request for a review of the site's accessibility? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "180459", "title": "Proper workaround for multiple inheritence in Java (Android)", "text": "I have a conceptual problem with a proper implementation of code which seems require multiple inheritance, that would not be a problem in many OO languages, but as the project is for Android, there is no such thing like multiple `extends`. I have a bunch of activities, derived from different base classes, such as simple `Activity`, `TabActivity`, `ListActivity`, `ExpandableListActivity`, etc. Also I have some code fragments which I need to place into `onStart`, `onStop`, `onSaveInstanceState`, `onRestoreInstanceState` and other standard event handlers in all activities. If I have a single base class for all activities, I'd place the code into a special intermediate derived class, and then create all activities extending it. Unfortunately, this is not the case, because there are multiple base classes. But placing the same portions of code into several intermediate classes is not a way to go, imho. Another approach could be to create a helper object and delegate all calls of the abovementioned events to the helper. But this requires the helper object to be included, and all handlers to be redefined in all intermediate classes. So there is no much difference to the first approach here - still a lot of code duplicates. If a similar situation occured under Windows, I'd subclass base class (something that \"corresponds\" to the `Activity` class in Android) and trap appropriate messages there (in a single place). What can be done in Java/Android for this? I know there is interesting tools such as Java instrumentation (with some real examples), but I'm not a Java guru, and not sure if it's worth trying in this specific case. If I missed some other decent solutions, please, mention them. **UPDATE:** For those who may be interested in solving the same problem in Android I've found a simple workaround. There exist the Application class, which provides, among other things, the interface ActivityLifecycleCallbacks. It does exactly what I need allowing us to intercept and add some value into important events for all activities. The only drawback of this method is that it's available starting from API level 14, which is not enough in many cases (support for API level 10 is a typical requirement today)."}
{"_id": "215", "title": "What are some interesting but not too difficult projects for a beginner kernel hacker?", "text": "Having taken a course in Operating Systems I'm interested in expanding my knowledge of the Linux kernel and practice working with a big system. What are some interesting but not overly difficult projects I can try my hand at? EDIT: a bit of background on what I did do with the kernel.   * Implemented a new scheduling policy   * Implemented User Threads and a corresponding mutex library (not really kernel hacking but contained kernel related theory)"}
{"_id": "16769", "title": "Whiteboard \"testing\" during an interview: legitimate way to back up your (whiteboard) code?", "text": "As I get it, **having an error (even a typo like or missing \";\") in your whiteboard code will often cost you some interview points**. Avoiding that will inevitably make one proof-reading code again and again (losing time and possibly neural energy / concentration) or even using a simpler (and thus less effective) algoritm -- and both these ways are \"costy\" again! So, **why not just fast write code** as elegant and effective as you would having a (unit) testing framework at your disposal **and then just normally test it it (just on the whiteboard)** ? Has anyone tried / seen this approach? Is the whole idea worthy? **[this also applies to the pen-and-paper case of course]**"}
{"_id": "16760", "title": "The 10 minutes technical interview", "text": "I must do a quick assessment of dozens of fresh students very quickly. I have 30 minutes meeting with each of them (in two or three days). I want to use most of the time to discuss non technical aspects. So I plan to use 10 minutes for technical questions. The same questions for all of them. They are all _hired_ already (they are students), what I need to know is the average level in order to prepare a training. Ideally, the difficulty `must be progressive` in order to set a level for each. Level I will average, and I'll do an average on each question too. **If you had only 10 minutes and 10 questions to ask to a candidate, what would be your top 10 ?**"}
{"_id": "245842", "title": "Modifying the MIT license for modified source code?", "text": "I have made a large number of modifications to some MIT-licensed source code to tailor it to the requirements of my project. Since this is JavaScript (for a website) the minified source code is naturally attainable by anyone viewing the site. Whilst I am happy for people to use the source code under the terms of the MIT license, I feel that the body text of the license may lead to confusion since this is a highly modified version. Is it acceptable to amend the license text? What is the correct etiquette ? **Original Text:**               The MIT License (MIT)          Copyright (c) 2009 - 2014 Adriana Palazova     http://www.adipalaz.com          ...      Full license in question (for a jQuery accordion control): http://www.adipalaz.com/docs/mit-license.txt **Proposed Change:** Add my name to the copyright notice in the MIT license:               The MIT License (MIT)          Copyright (c) 2009 - 2014 Adriana Palazova, 2014 {{My Name Here}}     http://www.adipalaz.com          ...      And then change the header in the minified JavaScript file to the following:               /*!       * Nested Accordion (Modified by {{My Name Here}})      * Copyright (c) 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Adriana Palazova      * Copyright (c) 2014 {{My Name Here}}      * Licensed under the MIT (http://{{My URL Here}}/mit-license.txt) license.      */"}
{"_id": "12073", "title": "Unit tests, write them before or after the framework?", "text": "This is my first question here, so i'll make it short and to the point. When Writing unit tests, should you write them before or after you have made the underlying framework for them? This came up in a discussion between my CEO and President, and I wanted your opinion on this. Personally, I have always wrote the code first, then wrote the unit tests, but what about you?"}
{"_id": "12070", "title": "Would you put your stackoverflow profile link on your CV / Resume?", "text": "If applying for a new job, would you put your stackoverflow profile link on your resume? This would show the employer you're an active member of the development community and also provide an insight into your knowledge + how well you convey your ideas. However it would feel a bit gimmicky to me?"}
{"_id": "100074", "title": "How to effectively manage source control for project with both open and closed source?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that has both an open-source \"community edition\" and a set of closed-source features for paying clients. One of the pain-points right now is figuring out how to handle keeping the shared source in sync between projects. We use Mercurial for source control, and the open-source piece is pushed to both CodePlex and Kiln, while the closed-source piece is pushed only to Kiln. We're presently keeping them in separate repositories with project references into the open-source repository where applicable. Is this really the best way to handle this kind of situation, or if there's something I'm missing (like using a subrepository within the closed-source repository to contain the open-source portion) that might be easier and cleaner to work with?"}
{"_id": "154126", "title": "Is it any good to use binary arithmetic in a C++ code like \"C style\"?", "text": "I like the fact that the C language lets you use binary arithmetic in an explicit way in your code, sometimes the use of the binary arithmetic can also give you a little edge in terms of performance; but since I started studying C++ i can't really tell how much i have seen the explicit use of something like that in a C++ code, something like a pointer to pointer structure or an instruction for jumping to a specific index value through the binary arithmetic. Is the binary arithmetic still important and relevant in the C++ world? How i can optimize my arithmetic and/or an access to a specific index? What about the C++ and the way in which the bits are arranged according to the standard? ... or i have taken a look at the wrong coding conventions ... ?"}
{"_id": "69227", "title": "Balancing time learning theory and time practicing", "text": "I'm currently learning C++ from Stroustrup. At the same time I'm practicing C++ by doing some little projects (Project Euler, a bit of SDL with Tetris, etc). But I have a tough time balancing. What should be a good balance, fifty-fifty? A bit more theory, a bit less practice?"}
{"_id": "81150", "title": "Can I use open source libraries in trialware?", "text": "I have written a small Java program which i'd like to distribute on my website. I have used a few external librarys which declare following licences: Apache License (2.0), LGPL and one API doesn't declare any licence.. It's open source though. I have spent a lot of time and effort developing my program. That's why I thought of distributing the software so that only donators (no matter how much or little they donate) can use it to it's fullest extent. Non donators get to see a nag screen now and then with a suggestion to donate and can only download one file at a time instead of simultanious downloads. (Yeah my program does some downloading) Can I do that without getting legal issues? On one hand I would like to distribute the complete source of my project but on the other hand that would render the limitation of functions for non-donators useless, because they could simply remove the part with the serial nr check and redistribute my software.. Under what licence should i distribute my program?"}
{"_id": "154121", "title": "Unit and Integration testing: How can it become a reflex", "text": "All the programmers in my team are familiar with unit testing and integration testing. We have all worked with it. We have all written tests with it. Some of us even have felt an improved sense of trust in his/her own code. However, for some reason, writing unit/integration tests has not become a reflex for any of the members of the team. None of us actually feel bad when not writing unit tests at the same time as the actual code. As a result, our codebase is mostly uncovered by unit tests, and projects enter production untested. The problem with that, of course is that once your projects are in production and are already working well, it is virtually impossible to obtain time and/or budget to add unit/integration testing. The members of my team and myself are already familiar with the value of unit testing (1, 2) but it doesn't seem to help bringing unit testing into our natural workflow. In my experience making unit tests and/or a target coverage mandatory just results in poor quality tests and slows down team members simply because there is no self-generated motivation to produce these tests. Also as soon as pressure eases, unit tests are not written any more. My question is the following: Is there any methods that you have experimented with that helps build a dynamic/momentum inside the team, leading to people naturally wanting to create and maintain those tests?"}
{"_id": "119804", "title": "How to fundamentally approach creating a 'financial planner' application?", "text": "I want to create a financial planning application (for personal use), for which the overall functionality will be this:   * User (me..) can create different 'scenarios'.   * Each scenario is configured with different incomings/outgoings.   * Scenarios can be 'explored' in a calendar format with projections taking into account tax, interest (on both debt and savings) and so on and so forth. My problem lies in how to fundamentally approach the project. I've considered:   * When creating incomings/outgoings for a script to apply them to each day in a 'days' table of a database, acting as a method of caching. This means that if I wanted to look at January 14th, 2074 there aren't thousands of cycles of calculations to run through and the result can just be pulled.   * Do each calculation dynamically, but again, I'm finding it hard to visuallize how I would handle different tax allowances (I'm based in the UK by the way), payrises and 'changes' to my incomings/outgoings. I've sat on this for a couple of days and am struggling to come up with an elegant approach to my problem. There may well be software out there that does what I'm looking to do (in fact I'm sure it is) but I would like to develop this myself for learning purposes, to be able to add it to my personal life 'toolset' and to allow me to expand on it in the future. Many thanks to all who have any input on my dilemna."}
{"_id": "159338", "title": "To be an interviewer - Java", "text": "The internet is full of references on how to get prepared for an interview. Many websites are loaded with questions and answers. But I can't find any useful information about what exactly an interviewer should do to evaluate a candidate. What I mean is not just collecting good questions to be asked. I am asking about strategy for evaluating a candidate and find out if he is really good or just learnt the questions and answers well. I wonder if someone can share his experience in interviewing SWES, and what do you think about the following   * What to expect from a junior java developer? what he should know?   * What to expect from a senior java developer? what he should know?"}
{"_id": "215369", "title": "how to architect this to make it unit testable", "text": "I'm currently working on a project where I'm receiving an object via web service (WSDL). The overall process is the following: Receive object -> add/delete/update parts (or all) of it -> and return the object with the changes made. The thing is that sometimes these changes are complicated and there is some logic involved, other databases, other web services, etc. so to facilitate this I'm creating a custom object that mimics the original one but has some enhanced functionality to make some things easier. So I'm trying to have this process: Receive original object -> convert/copy it to custom object -> add/delete/update -> convert/copy it back to original object -> return original object. Example:               public class Row     {         public List<Field> Fields { get; set; }         public string RowId { get; set; }         public Row()         {             this.Fields = new List<Field>();         }     }          public class Field     {         public string Number { get; set; }         public string Value { get; set; }     }      So for example, one of the \"actions\" to perform on this would be to find all `Fields` in a `Row` that match a `Value` equal to something, and update them with some other value. I have a `CustomRow` class that represents the `Row` class, how can I make this class unit testable? Do I have to create an interface `ICustomRow` to mock it in the unit test? If one of the actions is to sum all of the `Values` in the `Fields` that have a `Number` equal to `10`, like this function, how can design the custom class to facilitate unit tests. Sample function:               public int Sum(FieldNumber number)     {         return row.Fields.Where(x => x.FieldNumber.Equals(number)).Sum(x => x.FieldValue);     }      Am I approaching this the wrong way?"}
{"_id": "159331", "title": "Generating different combinations from a list of muscles", "text": "Suppose we have a model of a human muscular system containing the following muscles each within a specific muscle group:   * **Arms**     * Biceps     * Triceps     * Forearms   * **Torso Front**     * Abs     * Chest     * Shoulders   * **Torso Back**     * Trapezius     * Lats     * Rear Shoulders     * Lower Back   * **Lower Body**     * Quads     * Hams     * Hip & Butt     * Calves Now, given a list of selected muscles, I need to find combinations following the given rules: **If all muscles are selected from a group:**               Full body (All muscles)      Arms      Torso     Torso Front     Torso Back     Lower Body      **If there are full groups together:**               Arms and torso     Arms and torso front     Arms and torso back     Arms and lower body     Torso and lower body     Torso front and lower body     Torso back and lower body      When both the front and back of the torso is selected it can be considered just \"torso\". **If there are more than 2 muscles selected from a group but not all:**               Parts of torso (This is the case where there are muscles selected from both front- and back-torso)     Parts of torso back     Parts of lower body      \"Parts of torso front\" and \"Parts of arms\" never occur on their own as they only have a total of 3 muscles, **thus those cases can be represented by their names: eg. \"biceps and triceps\", etc.** **Combinations of these aforementioned \"parts\"**               Parts of arms and torso     Parts of arms and lower body     Parts of torso and lower body     Parts of  arms, torso and lower body.      Parts = groups are not full and there are more than 2 muscles selected. This \"rule of 2\" is the most important one. * * * **Examples of output** **biceps, triceps and chest:** parts of arms and torso **biceps, triceps, calves, tai biceps, triceps, quads, hams, hip & butt:** Parts of arms and lower body **biceps, abs, calves:** Parts of arms, torso and lower body **biceps, triceps:** Biceps and triceps **biceps, triceps, forearms:** Arms **chest, shoulders, abs, trapezius, lats, rear shoulders, lower back:** Torso and so on, there are multiple possible variations. * * * Now my problem is that I have no idea how to write this as clean and modular as possible, so that rules can be added or removed if necessary. I could just write a massive if-elseif-else pile that would consider all cases, but you know why I won't. How would **you** tackle this kind of task?"}
{"_id": "43764", "title": "Best way to learn Java if you already have an OOP background, like ActionScript 3?", "text": "I'm looking to learn Java, but I don't want to get a book that is going to tell me what an object is, how OOP works, etc. I know this from my existing ActionScript 3 work. One idea is to look at all the areas Java covers, pick one that is of interest to me and delve into that. Is this a good idea? Any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "215367", "title": "Functional/nonfunctional requirements VS design ideas", "text": "### Problem domain   * Functional requirements defines **what** a system does.     * Non-Functional requirements defines quality attributes of what the system does as a whole.(performance, security, reliability, volume, useability, etc.)      * Constraints limits the design space, they restrict designers to certain types of solutions.  ### Solution domain   * Design ideas , defines **how** the system does it. For example **a stakeholder need** might be we want to increase our sales, therefore we must improve the usability of our webshop so more customers will purchase, a requirement can be written for this. (problem domain)      Design takes this further into the solution domain by saying \"therefore we want to offer credit card payments in addition to the current prepayment option\".      My problem is that the transition phase from requirement to design seems really vague, therefore when writing a **software requirement specification** I am often confused whether or not I incorporated design ideas in my requirements, that would make my requirement wrong.      Another problem is that I often write functional requirements as what a system does, and then I also specify in what timeframe it must be done. But is this correct? Is it then a still a functional requirement or a non functional one? Is it better to seperate it into two distinct requirements? Here are a few requirements I wrote: > ### FR1 Registration of Organizer > > _FR1_ describes the registration of an Organizer on _CrowdFundum_ > >   * **FR1.1** The system **shall** display a registration form on the > website. >   * **FR1.2** The system **shall** require a Name, Username, Document number > passport/ID card, Address, Zip code, City, Email address, Telephone number, > Bank account, Captcha code on the registration form _when_ a user registers. >   * **FR1.4** The system shall display an error message containing: > \u201cRegistration could not be completed\u201d to the subscriber within 1 seconds > after the system check of the registration form was unsuccessful. >   * **FR1.5** The system shall send a verification email containing a > verification link to the subscriber within 30 seconds after the system check > of the registration form was successful. >   * **FR1.6** The system shall add the newly registered Organizer to the > user base within 5 seconds after the verification link was accessed.   > > > ### FR2 Organizer submits a Project   > > > > > **FR2 describes the submission of a Project by an Organizer on CrowdFundum**   >   >  - **FR2** The system shall display a submit Project form to the Organizer > accounts on the website.< - **FR2.3** The system shall check for > completeness the Name of the Project, 1-3 Photo\u2019s, Keywords of the Project, > Punch line, Minimum and maximum amount of people, Funding threshold, One or > more reward tiers, Schedule of when what will be organized, Budget plan, > 300-800 Words of additional information about the Project, Contact details > within 1 secondin after an Organizer submits the submit Project form. - > **FR2.8** The system shall add to the homepage in the new Projects category > the Project link within 30 seconds after the system made a Project webpage   >  - **FR2.9** The system shall include in the Project link for the homepage : > Name of the Project, 1 Photo, Punch line within 30 seconds after the system > made a Project webpage. Questions:   **FR 1.1** : Have I incorporated a design idea here, would \" the system shall have a registration form\" be a better functional requirement?   **F1.2 ,2.3** : Is this not singular? Would the conditions be better written for each its own separate requirement   **FR 1.4** : Is this a design idea? Is this a correct functional requirement or have I incorporated non functional(performance) in it? Would it be better if I written it like this:   FR1 The system shall display an error message when check is unsuccessful.   **NFR:** The system will respond to unsuccesful registration form checks within 1 seconds. Same question with FR 2.8 and 2.9.   **FR2.3:** The system shall check for \"completeness\", is completeness here used ambigiously? Should I rephrase it?   **FR1.2:** I added that the system shall require a \"Captcha code\" is this a functional requirement or does it belong to the \"security aspect\" of a non functional requirement. I am eagerly waiting for your response. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "135181", "title": "Deployment Tools that Integrate with TFS?", "text": "So I have this issue. The Operations team where I work has taken over TFS because they are using MS Build to build and deploy code to production servers. As a result developers have lost A LOT of functionality from TFS (see earlier question.) Essentially the operations team has taken owner ship of Trunk in order to manage their deployments. The development cycle thus goes something like this:   1. Request Operations Team to create a Branch from Main for development work.   2. Perform Development work on development branch.   3. Merge from Trunk to development branch prior to release (basically make sure that the development branch has all of the latest changes)   4. Request Operations Team merge to Trunk from development branch (Developers do not have permissions to do this) -> this request will cause Operations to not only to merge to Trunk but also to deploy to the development environment.   5. Perform integration Testing, fix defects found in development branch.   6. Repeat steps 3 - 6 as necessary.   7. Request Operations Team merge from Trunk to a QA branch (there is only ONE on-going QA branch per project) -> this request will cause a deployment into the QA environment (An MS Build template is used to compile the code from QA branch and then deploy to QA servers)   8. QA tests, fix defects found in development branch.   9. Repeat steps 3 - 8 as necessary.   10. Request Operations Team merge from QA branch into PROD branch (there is only ONE on-going PROD branch per project) -> this request will caus a deployment into the PROD environment (Again an MS Build template is used to **re-compile** the code from PROD branch and then deploy to PROD servers) As a result of the Ops team using an MS Build template to deploy to Production servers, the Development team has now lost the \"Builders\" role. We cannot create our own MS Build templates, we cannot create or edit a Build definition, and we cannot queue a build -- Even in the Development Environment -- because the Build process runs under a service account which has access to Production servers (since it is use to deploy to production servers). Besides the removal of TFS permissions, I have some issues with this process:   1. The assemblies which were compiled and tested in the QA environment are not the assemblies being deployed into the Production environment. Because the MS Build process is being used to deploy to production, code is recompiled and deployed from the Production branch. In theory, the resulting assemblies should be the same, however this is depenent upon a) the operations team (who are not developers) properly merging the code from the QA branch to the PROD branch (human error potential) b) the build environment not changing in such a way as to affect the way assemblies are compiled (since this is primarily .Net improbable but not impossible)   2. Since there is only ONE QA branch, if I have a production issue which needs a \"hot fix\" after other work has been merged to QA, I have to wait for Ops to rollback changes to the QA branch, merge my changes in and perform the build and then HOPE that operations correctly performed the rollback and merge operations on the QA branch in order to get my \"hot fix\" into the QA environment.   3. Many of my projects have multiple outputs (e.g. a web-application and a windows service). Often I may want to only deploy one or the other. But if I upgrade one to a new version, I no longer have a PROD branch which represents the one I didn't upgrade.   4. Operations team has already demonstrated that merge operations are not being performed correctly: Following a recent merge from Development to Trunk I performed a compare on the two branches and they were different.   5. Because code is recompiled for each environment we cannot use automated versioning, or make use of the \"build quality\" features of TFS. Essentially what it comes down to is the Operations Team has attached themselves to using MS Build for deployments and as such have adopted a rediculous Source Control branching and merging strategy to support using MS Build for managing deployments. (I see no benefit in having a QA and PROD branch other than to support MS Build based deployments). What I am trying to do is convince the powers that be and the operations team that what we're doing is a bad practice, and also give them an alternative deployment strategy. What I need for this is a Deployment tool that integrates with TFS (e.g. it will show a list of Builds that have a specified \"build quality\" level (depending upon the environment being deployed into) as a \"deployment source\" and allow then to maintain a list of \"deployment targets\" so that at deployment time, they simply pick the build (source) and the target and click the \"GO!\" button. A proper deployment tool will hopefully eliminate their dependence upon MS Build, allow them to remove access to QA and Production servers from the MS Build process, follow a more sane approach to branching and merging (e.g adopt a \"branch per release\" best practices strategy) and restore to the developers the TFS permissions which were revoked to support this rediculous process."}
{"_id": "135188", "title": "Why did Google develop a cross-compiler from Java to JavaScript?", "text": "Google developed a cross-compiler from Java to JavaScript. Why did they do this? Does this mean that JavaScript is not good enought for developing advanced web apps?"}
{"_id": "21676", "title": "Micro finance in the programming industry", "text": "I've read quite a bit about the positive effects of micro finance in developing countries. Organizations exist that solicit capital from donations and then make micro loans to people for the purpose of setting up some kind of business. The loans are usually quite small, with little to no interest and are well under ten thousand US Dollars, typically reaching only hundreds of dollars. The pay back rate is also excellent. The programs that exist seem to focus on retail and agricultural endeavours, I have yet to see an organization with a focus on technology sectors like software development. Do you know of any established / credible micro finance organizations that supply micro loans to individuals in order to set up software related businesses? Have the loans been paid back as well as other sectors, such as agriculture and retail? I'm looking globally, so organizations in any country would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "49503", "title": "Why do companies want you to register with their program?", "text": "I've always wondered why some companies want you to register when you install their programs. Personally, I just find it annoying and decline, but what do companies have to gain by having their users get registred? They claim that you get \"the latest updates\" and stuff, but often you get that anyway without having to register. So what's the deal with this registering? I just don't see that point."}
{"_id": "219819", "title": "How to queue work orders by date and priority?", "text": "In my organization I work on orders based on date, so earliest work orders first. We also have an option for order to be marked \"priority\" in which case those orders are done first but not always. I've asked my boss some questions and I couldn't get answer that made sense...   1. If one order has today's date, and another order has tomorrows date but is marked priority, which order should I work on first? He said the order marked \"priority\".   2. If one order has today's date, and another order is dated 14 days from today and is marked priority, which order should I work on first? He said the one that has today's date. So the problem is properly placing the order in queue, but it's not something they have an exact formula for. If I was to make a class that only has two properties...               public class WorkOrder     {         public DateTime dueDate;         public bool isPriority;     }      What would be the most straightforward way to put them in queue?"}
{"_id": "219818", "title": "Is it acceptable to use C11 generic macros in Objective-C to box numbers?", "text": "I was getting tired of repeating types when writing things like this:               NSDictionary* d = @{@\"so\": [NSNumber numberWithInt:index]),                         @\"much\": [NSNumber numberWithBool:accepted]),                         @\"repeat\": [NSNumber numberWithDouble:height]};      So I defined a generic macro (a new feature in C11):               #define box(X) _Generic((X), \\     char: boxChar, \\     unsigned char: boxUnsignedChar, \\     short: boxShort, \\     unsigned short: boxUnsignedShort, \\     int: boxInt, \\     unsigned int: boxUnsignedInt, \\     long: boxLong, \\     unsigned long: boxUnsignedLong, \\     long long: boxLongLong, \\     unsigned long long: boxUnsignedLongLong, \\     float: boxFloat, \\     double: boxDouble, \\     BOOL: boxBool \\     )(X)          ... implement type-specific box methods as well ...      So that I could write things like this:               NSDictionary* d = @{@\"so\": box(index),                         @\"much\": box(accepted),                         @\"shorter\": box(height)};      Is this a good idea? Can I expect others to be able to build the code? Will they hate it for not being standard?"}
{"_id": "251446", "title": "I made improvements to free code I found online and notified the author. Was this the right thing to do?", "text": "I recently used a library from http://www.braemoor.co.uk/software/index.shtml (the EU VAT No validation library at http://www.braemoor.co.uk/software/vat.shtml) in a project at work. It mentions as the license (or something that looks like one): > All software is provided as freeware for personal or commercial use without > obligation by either party. The author will not accept responsibility for > any problems that may be incurred by use of this software, although any > errors reported will be corrected as soon as possible. Re-distribution of > this software is NOT permitted without explicit permission. I checked the code and found (and applied) a few ways to improve the code so it's more easily maintainable and more readable (you can find one of them on CodeReview.SE). After applying these changes, I considered that others might benefit from them as well and sent them as feedback to the author on his contact address. A few hours later, the author sent a reply thanking me for my suggestions, and that he would go over my changes and keep me informed. My main concern is that while the website mentioned that it was freeware, I'm not sure how far I am allowed to go in altering his software without knowing the license. I assume it's license-free, but it's not specifically mentioned as open source, and I'm slightly worried that I might have overstepped my bounds and took too much liberty with the whole thing. Did I do the right thing?"}
{"_id": "219814", "title": "Shoud I directly return a string message or rather a i18n key when dealing with JSON api?", "text": "Suppose a rest api returning this json:               {         \"status\" : \"fail\",         \"data\" : { \"title\" : \"A title is required\" }     }      Since the client application would always adapt the error message, would it be better to return an explicit i18n key that the client would have mapped rather than \"A title is required\"? :               {         \"status\" : \"fail\",         \"data\" : { \"title\" : \"error.creation.title.required\" }     }      Indeed, the point is to expect the request consumer (web application for instance) to easily translate the message regarding its localization."}
{"_id": "219816", "title": "Approach to develop an inline editor for enumerated lists", "text": "# Background Looking to develop a WYSIWYG editor for ordered lists so that people can directly edit lists of instructions on a web page. # Problem The `contentEditable` attribute is woefully immature for editing ordered lists (e.g., `<ol contentEditable=\"true\">...</ol>`). I discovered four bugs in Firefox 25.0.1 within seconds of editing; Chromium was acceptable; IE8+ will likely border on nightmarish. A number of inline editors exist, and I've gone through almost all of them. Even the lightest-weight editors are far too heavy, or have too many bugs, for accomplishing such a seemingly simple task. # Question What approach would you take to developing a browser-based WYSIWYG inline editor for enumerated lists? Some of my ideas have included:   * Take the most robust inline editor and trim back all needless functionality.   * Build up an inline editor that meets my needs. Both approaches will be time-consuming. What other approaches are worth considering?"}
{"_id": "45428", "title": "How do I transition from software support to software development?", "text": "I am at a crossroad - I've been working for whole 4 years as a support person fixing countless bugs, developing (minimal) changes and improvements to our software, working together with our clients and users. I started as a complete noob, without a good understanding of .NET, C#, SQL Server, etc. I had to work late nights and weekends just to catch up to my co- workers and to prove to myself that I am capable to do the work and do it good. I don't consider myself an expert in those fields, but I feel pretty comfortable working with them. I think I have had enough of it and I want changes - I want to move away from support and start working as a developer. Is there anyone who has gone this road before? Could you, please, share an advice or two?"}
{"_id": "162303", "title": "Does C# give you \"less rope to hang yourself\" than C++?", "text": "Joel Spolsky characterized C++ as \"enough rope to hang yourself\". Actually, he was summarizing \"Effective C++\" by Scott Meyers: > It's a book that basically says, C++ is enough rope to hang yourself, and > then a couple of extra miles of rope, and then a couple of suicide pills > that are disguised as M&Ms... I don't have a copy of the book, but there are indications that much of the book relates to pitfalls of managing memory which seem like would be rendered moot in C# because the runtime manages those issues for you. Here are my questions:   1. Does C# avoid pitfalls that are avoided in C++ only by careful programming? If so, to what degree and how are they avoided?   2. Are there new, different pitfalls in C# that a new C# programmer should be aware of? If so, why couldn't they be avoided by the design of C#?"}
{"_id": "90441", "title": "PHP/MySQL Database application development tool", "text": "I am an amateur PHP coder, and have built a couple of dozen projects from scratch (including fairly simple e-commerce systems with user authentication, PayPal integration etc - all coded by hand from a clean page. Have also done a price comparison engine that takes data from multiple sites etc.). But I am no expert with OO and other such advanced techniques - I just have a fairly decent grasp of the basics of data processing, logic, functions and trying to optimize code as much as possible. I just want to make this clear so you have some idea of where I'm coming from. I have a couple of fairly large new projects on my plate for corporate clients - both require bespoke database-driven applications with complex relationships, many tables and lots of different front-end functions to manipulate that data for the internal staff in these companies. I figured building these systems from scratch would probably be a huge waste of time. Instead, there must be tools out there that will allow me to construct MySQL databases and build the pages with things like pagination, action buttons, table construction etc. Some kind of database abstraction layer, or system generator, if you will. What tool do you recommend for such a purpose for someone at my level? Open source would be great, but I don't mind paying for something decent as well. Thanks for any advice."}
{"_id": "162305", "title": "Is there an \"ask for only what you need\" interface principle?", "text": "I have grown into using a principle for designing and consuming interfaces that says basically, \"ask for only what you need.\" For instance, if I have a bunch of types that can be deleted, I'll make a `Deletable` interface:               interface Deletable {        void delete();     }      Then I can write a generic class:               class Deleter<T extends Deletable> {        void delete(T t) {           t.delete();        }     }      Elsewhere in code I will always ask for the smallest possible responsibility to fulfill the needs of the client code. So if I only need to delete a `File`, I'll still ask for a `Deletable`, not a `File`. Is this principle that is common knowledge and already has an accepted name? Is it controversial? Is it discussed in textbooks?"}
{"_id": "45425", "title": "I'm a CS student, and honestly, I don't understand Knuth's books", "text": "I stumbled upon this quote from Bill Gates: \"You should definitely send me a resume if you can read the whole thing.\" He was talking about _The Art of Programming_ books. So I was pretty curious and want to read it all. But honestly, I don't understand it. I'm really not that intellectual. So this should be the reason why I can't understand it, but I am eager to learn. I'm currently reading Volume 1 about fundamental algorithms. Are there any books out there that are friendly for novices/slow people like me, which would help to build up my knowledge so that I can read Knuth's book with ease in the future?"}
{"_id": "235499", "title": "Storing a C# dictionary of type <datetime,enum>", "text": "As title says it, i'm looking for a way to store many dictionaries (one per user) of type `Dictionary<DateTime,enum>` in a database (sql server 2012). Each dictionary has 366 items inside and it represents a calendar where each day has a certain \"status\", and preferably i don't want to store each item as a separate record in the DB. Ideas? **update** : With the suggestion @AndyBursh & @Konrad Morawski made, i've also come up with another optimisation. Rather than by default creating a new calendar (represented as `Dictionary`) for each item the user adds, let them pick a predefined one from a drop down, and if that doesn't work for them, then create a separate calendar. With the ability to reuse a calendar and **not** storing default values, i would have to deal with a lot less data in the long term."}
{"_id": "80244", "title": "Are there any actual drawbacks to self-referential method chaining?", "text": "I recently suggested a method of chaining be implemented for a certain class in a certain project so readability of the code could be improved. I got a \"fluent interfaces should not be implemented just for convenience, but for semantics\" answer and had my suggestion shot down. I answered that I was not suggesting a fluent interface but method chaining itself (both **can be confused** with each other, read at bottom) to improve readability and coding comfort, suggestion was shot down again. Anyhow, this got me thinking that maybe I could be incurring in a bad practice by always returning \"this\" in methods that are not supposed to return anything (e.g. setters). My question is: can applying the previous convention be regarded as bad practice or abuse?, why?. I don't think there are any performance drawbacks, or are there?."}
{"_id": "190358", "title": "Is ABET accreditation important for a bachelors degree in Software Engineering?", "text": "Is ABET accreditation important for a bachelors degree in software engineering in the US? Does a person with a non-accredited degree in software engineering have a disadvantage when applying for graduate school?"}
{"_id": "190359", "title": "What is Delegation and why is it important in iOS programming?", "text": "At the moment I am teaching myself iOS programming, and one concept I find really hard to wrap my head around is delegation. What is it? Why and how is it used? What is the advantage? The technical writing from the book I'm reading makes it hard to understand."}
{"_id": "200018", "title": "Is there an equivalent to gnu parallel for windows?", "text": "gnu parallel is a small utility that allows you to execute bash commands in parallel. I was wondering if there's something similar for windows."}
{"_id": "160234", "title": "What are the problems which I will face if all the classes I use are loosely coupled", "text": "Loosely coupled classes gives flexibility. If I understand it right, Event flow, Observer Pattern and Design Patterns like MVC focus on loose coupling. So in this context I am aiming towards making a project where all the classes are loosely coupled. So, for example I have a class A that uses B: then instead of `a.b.doThis() ;` I will be going like this :               b.addEventListener( B.OnEventHappens, doThisInA ) ;       So, my question is. If this sort of loosely coupled relationship throughout a project is a good thing to do? Would it make a robust project? Or is it not advisable to use it on the \"Extreme\" side?"}
{"_id": "135450", "title": "Taking an open source project to closed source", "text": "How is it legally possible to take a project initially released as open source back to closed source? Especially one licensed with the GPL any version."}
{"_id": "200014", "title": "How to automatically have Tortoise svn copy last log to clipboard on commit?", "text": "After each commit I bring up the Log Messages dialog and copy the log entry to the clipboard so I can include it in the issue tracking system. Eventually I hope to get SVN integrated with the system so this isn't necessary, but for now this is a great way to keep the two attached. Is there a way to automatically copy the last log entry to the clipboard or even a text file on commit without needing to manually bring up the Log Messages dialog?"}
{"_id": "135454", "title": "Is it possible to speed-read code well?", "text": "Sometimes we have _huge_ code listings to deal with, and I'm curious as to how the advanced, highly skilled programmers read code. And I'll say with an emphasis on debugging and finding issues."}
{"_id": "200010", "title": "Value of MVVM in a Line of Business Application (and a Rant of Current Development Practices)", "text": "After 2 years, I'm still struggling with MVVM as a practical method of producing working software. In some cases it's great. I did a multithreaded application that controlled a small assembly line that would have been a nightmere without MVVM concepts. An abstraction from the physical assembly line was almost a no brainer. However, my career mostly revolves around internal line of business applications - formalizing and optimizing the operations of a business. In such apps, there is generally a business teir revolving around CRUD and compound operations. In LOBs, my view models end up being a very simple collections of one line wrapper functions of the business class methods and in the end only end up complicating the simplest of tasks like showing a message box or opening a window. Doesn't anybody else find it odd when people go into long discriptions of \"dependency injection\" and \"messaging providers\" for a Window.ShowDialog call that has been around for decades? How many other questions are there on stack overflow asking for advice for tasks that were extremely simple in winforms? Don't get me wrong - I get MVVM and how it could be invaluable to large teams doing horizontal development of a shrink-wrapped and marketed software package. Unit testing the view models could save millions by avoiding a bad RTM bug and dedicated UI developers could give a rich experience. But when the cost of redeployment is minimal and all the business cares to pay for is simple working software, why should i spend time unit testing a simple \"wrapper\" vm when my business logic is already unit tested? How much time is the business really going to allow me to spend on cute animations and color schemes? Is there anything left for a junior developer to do (tracking down a bug in a save functionality used to be looking at \"Save_Click\", but now you have to understand the patterns and the project as a whole especially if you're relying on templating to marry up the VM with the view). Admittedly, I really like the databinding of WPF. To take advantage of it, I set the data context to the window itself, where it has access to the business class as well as any other observable properties. Yes I break nearly every MVVM \"rule\" by doing so. But at least I have simple event driven code that's easy to read AND I get to take advantage of the new databinding and validation. The problem is in the designers - which I don't use all that much but hope to now that it's better integrated in 2012 - the designer shows the hundreds of properties that a window and its base classes have. For those that can relate can you point me to resources, books, or even just changes in perspective that made this easier to swallow. I'll give MVVM another shot, but the last time I felt pretty stupid for worrying about dependency injection just to show a message box from a VM I had no intention of unit testing. Even if I did unit test are we really getting more quality by trading run time testing for compile time errors of those dreaded \"tightly- coupled\" applications? I realize one answer is to just stay in winforms. But as one of the last supporters of WebForms (I have much of the same critique of the trend of web developement), i felt a little like a dinosaur as it is when I descovered there's no more WebForms left in the Microsoft certification tracks. Moving forward is the only option, even if I don't like it."}
{"_id": "38833", "title": "Dependent on CVS tagging for automated builds", "text": "My current work relies on using tags in CVS for an automated build process (ANT currently) to build for respective environments (development, QA, production). From our research, neither Git or Subversion support tagging in the same manner. If we use Subversion or Git, they don't support tags (in the same manner - please correct me?). So how would ANT or Maven know what to pick up for the respective build? ## Example: For a webapp, when viewing our repository say for the web.xml file -- the history would look like:               web.xml  v1     ...     web.xml  v1.2.3  Tag: Prod     web.xml  v1.2.4      web.xml  v1.2.5  Tag: QA     web.xml  v1.2.6     web.xml  v1.2.7  Head      The ANT build scripts are run as CRON jobs, at different times & intervals for different environments. The environment build is based on the repository checkout, based on the tag. Development continues, and eventually the respective tags are moved:               web.xml  v1     ...     web.xml  v1.2.3       web.xml  v1.2.4      web.xml  v1.2.5       web.xml  v1.2.6  Tag: Prod     web.xml  v1.2.7  Tag: QA     web.xml  v1.2.8  Head"}
{"_id": "251444", "title": "Storing and accessing settings from database query", "text": "I am trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this so feel free to criticize my thought process. My tool has different locales and each locale can have different settings for the tool. For example, Arizona could have the top 5 stats turned on where as California does not. I pull all of the settings based on the locale and have an array of the data:                   SimpleXMLElement Object     (         [settings] => Array             (                 [0] => SimpleXMLElement Object                     (                         [settingName] => Home Page Stats                         [settingDescription] => Show the Top 5 Teammate / Teamleader stats?                         [requireValue] => 0                         [localeID] => 14                         [status] => 1                         [value] => SimpleXMLElement Object                             (                             )                              [settingID] => 3                     )                      [1] => SimpleXMLElement Object                     (                         [settingName] => Test                         [settingDescription] => Testing                         [requireValue] => 1                         [localeID] => 14                         [status] => 1                         [value] => 66                         [settingID] => 5                     )                  )          )      What I need to be able to do though is get information based on a current setting. They will never be in the same order so I can't do it by location in the array. I need to be able to access the data based on the setting name. I have tried a few things with iterating over the array and getting the value I need at that time but it seems like its not a great way to do it. Is there a better way to store / access this data? I just need to be able to say `If setting name \"Home page stats` has a status of `1` then then get me its value. I feel like I may be making this more complicating than it should be."}
{"_id": "128984", "title": "Are Business Majors considered for Programming Jobs?", "text": "Are business majors like Marketing relevant for programming jobs. Do employers even consider business degree holders as potential candidates? Let's say, if all I had was a business degree, should I be spending time applying for programming jobs, or should I be doing something else? [Update] I should clarify that I already got the Business degree, and more than half way through the CS one."}
{"_id": "214068", "title": "Algorithm to Find the Aggregate Mass of \"Granola Bar\"-Like Structures?", "text": "I'm a planetary science researcher and one project I'm working on is _N_ -body simulations of Saturn's rings. The goal of this particular study is to watch as particles clump together under their own self-gravity and measure the aggregate mass of the clumps versus the mean velocity of all particles in the cell. We're trying to figure out if this can explain some observations made by the _Cassini_ spacecraft during the Saturnian summer solstice when large structures were seen casting shadows on the nearly edge-on rings. Below is a screenshot of what any given timestep looks like. (Each particle is 2 m in diameter and the simulation cell itself is around 700 m across.) ![_N_-body cell of a simulation of Saturn's rings with particles shown as tiny shaded spheres against a black background.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/XUsR7.png) The code I'm using already spits out the mean velocity at every timestep. What I need to do is figure out a way to determine the mass of particles in the clumps and NOT the stray particles between them. I know every particle's position, mass, size, etc., but I don't know easily that, say, particles 30,000-40,000 along with 102,000-105,000 make up one strand that to the human eye is obvious. So, the algorithm I need to write would need to be a code with as few user- entered parameters as possible (for replicability and objectivity) that would go through all the particle positions, figure out what particles belong to clumps, and then calculate the mass. It would be great if it could do it for \"each\" clump/strand as opposed to everything over the cell, but I don't think I actually _need_ it to separate them out. The only thing I was thinking of was doing some sort of _N_ 2 distance calculation where I'd calculate the distance between every particle and if, say, the closest 100 particles were within a certain distance, then that particle would be considered part of a cluster. But that seems pretty sloppy and I was hoping that you CS folks and programmers might know of a more elegant solution? * * * **Edited with My Solution:** What I did was to take a sort of nearest-neighbor / cluster approach and do the quick-n-dirty _N_ 2 implementation first. So, take every particle, calculate distance to all other particles, and the threshold for in a cluster or not was whether there were _N_ particles within _d_ distance (two parameters that have to be set _a priori_ , unfortunately, but as was said by some responses/comments, I wasn't going to get away with not having some of those). I then sped it up by not sorting distances but simply doing an order _N_ search and increment a counter for the particles within _d_ , and that sped stuff up by a factor of 6. Then I added a \"stupid programmer's tree\" (because I know next to nothing about tree codes). I divide up the simulation cell into a set number of grids (best results when grid size \u22487 _d_ ) where the main grid lines up with the cell, one grid is offset by half in _x_ and _y_ , and the other two are offset by 1/4 in \u00b1 _x_ and \u00b1 _y_. The code then divides particles into the grids, then each particle _N_ only has to have distances calculated to the other particles in that cell. Theoretically, if this were a real tree, I should get order _N_ *log( _N_ ) as opposed to _N_ 2 speeds. I got somewhere between the two, where for a 50,000-particle sub-set I got a 17x increase in speed, and for a 150,000-particle cell, I got a 38x increase in speed. 12 seconds for the first, 53 seconds for the second, 460 seconds for a 500,000-particle cell. Those are comparable speeds to how long the code takes to run the simulation 1 timestep forward, so that's reasonable at this point. Oh -- and it's fully threaded, so it'll take as many processors as I can throw at it."}
{"_id": "152405", "title": "When to write an explicit return statement in Groovy?", "text": "At the moment I am working on a Groovy/Grails project (which I'm quite new in) and I wonder whether it is good practice to omit the `return` keyword in Groovy methods. As far as I know you have to explicitly insert the keyword i.e. for guard clauses, so should one use it also everywhere else? In my opinion the additional `return` keyword increases readability. Or is it something you just have to get used to? What is your experience with that topic? Some examples:               def foo(boolean bar) {         // Not consistent         if (bar) {             return positiveBar()         }         negativeBar()     }          def foo2() {         // Special Grails example         def entitiy = new Entity(foo: 'Foo', bar: 'Bar')         entity.save flush: true         // Looks strange to me this way         entity     }"}
{"_id": "128989", "title": "Why special characters are deemed risky in URL and query strings?", "text": "From a security perspective, the special characters like '&' or `<b>` are a big no no in URLs and query strings. I could find the articles that explained the ways to bypass this restriction, but could find something that explained with example how can this be a security risk. Please explain the risks of these special characters. The question is simpler and I could google a bit more to find the answer. But the reason I am asking it here is that it will help someone in the future. Besides the level of detailing and specification one gets here, cannot be learned anywhere else."}
{"_id": "62353", "title": "How can I make feasible the deployment of my application on the servers ", "text": "I am a Java Web Application Developer. I have an idea for a web application project that I am working on. I personally believe that the app has potential to become a popular website. Currently I am working on it as a developer with two others in the project. The development costs has been almost null uptil now since we are doing in- house development with open source technologies. But the costs are now going to appear as we'll have to host our application online on the servers. Right now I see this as the major expense as we go live. Are there any ways by which we can smartly deal with this hurdle ?   We want to minimize the costs as much as possible, or even better, if we can make this null, perhaps, through some partnership agreement with the hosting solutions provider!? Your opinions are highly solicited!! Please enlighten with your experiences and knowledge. Thanks so much, for your time !"}
{"_id": "62352", "title": "What is the most effective/efficient way to develop an application with multiple people without source control?", "text": "## Introduction to my situation I work for a small web development company. We have a team of four ASP.NET developers, including me. Almost all of our projects (> 98%) are one-person projects that take about 1-4 weeks to complete. We don't use source or version control. The only thing we have is a shared folder on a local server that contains the latest source (== the source of the live application) of all projects. On the rare occasions that we do need to work on the same project with more than one person, we use... Beyond Compare. One or two times a day the developers ask each other if they have a version that compiles and then they synchronize their code using Beyond Compare. When only two people are working on a project, this works \"rather well\", but as soon as a third developers enters the process, it becomes an unmanageable piece of rubbish. Especially when everyone starts making changes to the database. I (and one or two of my fellow developers) have already told my boss several times that we should start using some form of source and version control like Git, Mercurial or TFS (our boss is very Microsoft minded). Unfortunately, my boss doesn't see the advantage of switching to a source and version control system, because in his eyes everything works just fine now and he doesn't want to invest time and money in setting up a new system and making sure everyone knows how to use it. Even after I explained the advantages (like simplified collaboration, different versions of an application, safer way to change code, ...) to him, he still doesn't think it is something we need. Of the four developers, only two (including me) have experience with source control (Git). And that experience is _very_ limited. I know how to clone a Github repository to my computer, make some changes, commit them and push them back to Github. That's it. ## Explanation of my problem/concern In a few weeks we are going to start working on a rather big project for our standards. It will probably take 2-3 developers a few months to complete it. I will be the project lead (project manager and lead developer) and I will be responsible for everything. I've had my share of problems with our Beyond Compare approach and I don't want to take this road with this big project that will be my responsibility. Since I doubt that we will be able to   * set up our own Git server,   * teach everyone to work with Git and   * employ Git successfully in this big project, I am interested if any of you know some good ways to allow multiple people to collaborate on the same project without using source or version control. ## Update I would to thank everyone for their answers and comments. Here is the plan:   1. Have a meeting with the developers to make sure all the technical people feel the same way about implementing source control. We'll make a stronger point when everyone is behind it.   2. Present the idea to the boss and tell him that we really _need_ source control.   3. Implement it as soon as possible."}
{"_id": "124514", "title": "Proper use of classes", "text": "I'm writing a class that draws a very complex image, with multiple parts. I also plan on adding to the class to add more functionality. Would it be right to make a function for each part, even if that function will only EVER be called in the render function? I see an upside to this since it will be easier to read the code, and easier to add parts. A downside however, would be that it would increase complexity and quite possibly make it harder to maintain. Should I keep all the code in the render function, or break apart the different steps?"}
{"_id": "246718", "title": "How does the \"Fourth Dimension\" work with arrays?", "text": "**_Abstract:_** So, as I understand it (although I have a very limited understanding), there are three dimensions that we (usually) work with physically: The 1st would be represented by a line.   The 2nd would be represented by a square.   The 3rd would be represented by a cube. Simple enough until we get to the 4th -- It is kinda hard to draw in a 3D space, if you know what I mean... Some people say that it has something to do with time. **_The Question:_** Now, though that doesn't all make much sense, that is all great with me. My question isn't about this, or I'd be asking it on MathSO or PhysicsSO. My question is: **How does the computer handle this with arrays?** I know that you can create 4D, 5D, 6D, etc... arrays in many different programming languages, but I want to know how that works."}
{"_id": "20109", "title": "What's the best way to manage error logging for exceptions?", "text": "**Introduction** If an error occurs on a website or system, it is of course useful to log it, and show the user a polite message with a reference code for the error. And if you have lots of systems, you don't want this information dotted around - it is good to have a single centralised place for it. At the simplest level, all that's needed is an incrementing id and a serialized dump of the error details. (And possibly the \"centralised place\" being an email inbox.) At the other end of the spectrum is perhaps a fully normalised database that also allows you to press a button and see a graph of errors per day, or identifying what the most common type of error on system X is, whether server A has more database connection errors than server B, and so on. What I'm referring to here is logging code-level errors/exceptions by a remote system - _not_ \"human-based\" issue tracking, such as done with Jira,Trac,etc.    **Questions** I'm looking for thoughts from developers who have used this type of system, specifically with regards to:   * What are essential features you couldn't do without?   * What are good to have features that really save you time?   * What features might seem a good idea, but aren't actually that useful? For example, I'd say a \"show duplicates\" function that identifies multiple occurrence of an error (without worrying about 'unimportant' details that might differ) is pretty essential.   A button to \"create an issue in [Jira/etc] for this error\" sounds like a good time-saver. Just to re-iterate, what I'm after is practical experiences from people that have used such systems, preferably backed-up with _why_ a feature is awesome/terrible.   (If you're going to theorise anyway, at the very least mark your answer as such.)"}
{"_id": "246710", "title": "Seeking Mongoose schema design advice", "text": "I'm having some trouble deciding on a proper way to layout some of my schemas in Mongoose. I have a User schema currently as:               {       name: { type: String, default: \"\" },       phoneNumber: {type: String, required: true, unique: true },       contacts: { type: [ObjectID], ref: 'User', index: true },       ...     }      But I am curious if removing contacts from the user schema and having another collection (Contacts) like the following isn't a better idea:               {       user: { type: ObjectID, ref: 'User', index: true },       contact: { type: ObjectID, ref: 'User', index: true }     }      Where each entry would compose a composite key. Two questions pop to mind when I would need to query the data.   1. Who are user `x`'s contacts?   2. Which users have user `x` as a contact? (My reason for this post) I've tested my current setup, option 1, with about 1 million users with 100 contacts each and the index created on the contacts field is about 3GB with fast search results for question 2 (< 80ms). However, I'm not certain if it's the right approach or if that index size is acceptable. I want to lean towards option two and normalize the data, but am I right to do so in this case?"}
{"_id": "246717", "title": "In terms of Software, what constitutes a quality control plan for ISO 9001 compliance?", "text": "I am bidding on a government contract (my first) and there is a section requesting that I provide a high-level outline of a quality control plan that would ensure that the end product is ISO-9001 compliant. I don't know much about ISO 9001 so I am certainly doing my own homework and research on this, but thought I would ask the question here in case there happens to be someone very knowledgeable in the area who could provide 5-10 broad bullet points on which I should focus."}
{"_id": "168021", "title": "PHP Drupal alternatives", "text": "Based off answers to this question: Will I pick bad coding habits from PHP books? and many others it is a general consensus that PHP is not the most well suited language for web development anymore (if you are not completely knowledgeable about the language). I use Drupal and write custom modules in PHP, does this viewpoint of PHP being an ill fitted web coding language also apply to Drupal based PHP sites? I generally build community sites and intra-company sites, are there better means of building these than with PHP and drupal frameworks?"}
{"_id": "168020", "title": "How signing out a CLA prevents legal issues in open-source projects?", "text": "For example: yeoman. It's licensed under a BSD license. The CLA form (Contributor License Agreement) isn't project specific, and it can be signed electronically.   * How and what issues can signing out this agreement prevent?    * Does it matter how big or minor contribution I made?   * Why some projects require signed CLA to accept patches, while others don't? (eg. node.js vs rails)"}
{"_id": "168025", "title": "Achieving decoupling in Model classes", "text": "I am trying to test-drive (or at least write unit tests) my Model classes but I noticed that my classes end up being too coupled. Since I can't break this coupling, writing unit tests is becoming harder and harder. To be more specific: **Model Classes:** These are the classes that hold the data in my application. They resemble pretty much the POJO (plain old Java objects), but they also have some methods. The application is not too big so I have around 15 model classes. **Coupling** : Just to give an example, think of a simple case of Order Header -> Order Item. The header knows the item and the item knows the header (needs some information from the header for performing certain operations). Then, let's say there is the relationship between Order Item -> Item Report. The item report needs the item as well. At this point, imagine writing tests for Item Report; you need have a Order Header to carry out the tests. This is a simple case with 3 classes; things get more complicated with more classes. I can come up with decoupled classes when I design algorithms, persistence layers, UI interactions, etc... but with model classes, I can't think of a way to separate them. They currently sit as one big chunk of classes that depend on each other. Here are some workarounds that I can think of:   1. **Data Generators** : I have a package that generates sample data for my model classes. For example, the OrderHeaderGenerator class creates OrderHeaders with some basic data in it. I use the OrderHeaderGenerator from my ItemReport unit-tests so that I get an instance to OrderHeader class. The problem is these generators get complicated pretty fast and then I also need to test these generators; defeating the purpose a little bit.   2. **Interfaces instead of dependencies** : I can come up with interfaces to get rid of the hard dependencies. For example, the OrderItem class would depend on the IOrderHeader interface. So, in my unit tests, I can easily mock the behaviour of an OrderHeader with a FakeOrderHeader class that implements the IOrderHeader interface. The problem with this approach is the complexity that the Model classes would end up having. Would you have other ideas on how to break this coupling in the model classes? Or, how to make it easier to unit-test the model classes? * * * **Update after going through the answers:**   * I have done a little more thinking on this problem and noticed that some of these dependencies were not really necessary (as most answers pointed out). The reason why they existed is because my UI layer needed it. Basically, I have inserted these dependencies so that UI layer can easily navigate from child to the header and display some header fields at the child level views. Looking at it now, it looks so simple; however it took some time for me to figure out why these dependencies existed in the first place. Now, the UI will basically keep the header in its context when navigating to the child level views.   * On the other hand, I have removed some of the dependencies via interfaces. These dependencies were mostly one-to-one; for example between Header and HeaderReport. Previously, HeaderReport depended on Header for retrieving information (items, date, etc...) and this made HeaderReport very hard to test. Now, the HeaderReport depends on the HeaderDataProvider interface and I am able to achieve complete isolation. HeaderReport is very easy to test with stub classes for the HeaderDataProvider interface.   * It looks easy to create these abstractions (UI Layer - Model Layer - Backend Layer), however in reality, it really takes a lot of practice!"}
{"_id": "168024", "title": "What does the arrow mean in a Class Diagram?", "text": "I need help trying to understand what the meaning of the arrow in a UML Class Diagram is, more specifically in this Composite Diagram. What's the difference between the simple line (from a class to another one) and the arrow (not the inheritance arrow, I refer to the black one)? ![UML Class Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nip2w.jpg)"}
{"_id": "168029", "title": "How to structure a set of RESTful URLs", "text": "Kind of a REST lightweight here... Wondering which url scheme is more appropriate for a stock market data app (BTW, all queries will be GETs as the client doesn't modify data): Scheme 1 examples:               /stocks/ABC/news     /indexes/XYZ/news     /stocks/ABC/time_series/daily     /stocks/ABC/time_series/weekly     /groups/ABC/time_series/daily     /groups/ABC/time_series/weekly      Scheme 2 examples:               /news/stock/ABC     /news/index/XYZ     /time_series/stock/ABC/daily     /time_series/stock/ABC/weekly     /time_series/index/XYZ/daily     /time_series/index/XYZ/weekly      Scheme 3 examples:               /news/stock/ABC     /news/index/XYZ     /time_series/daily/stock/ABC     /time_series/weekly/stock/ABC     /time_series/daily/index/XYZ     /time_series/weekly/index/XYZ      Scheme 4: Something else??? The point is that for any data being requested, the url needs to encapsulate whether an item is a Stock or an Index. And, with all the RESTful talk about **resources** I'm confused about whether my primary **resource** is the **stock & index** or the **time_series & news**. Sorry if this is a silly question :/ Thanks!"}
{"_id": "254693", "title": "How to test generated file without hardcoding name generation logic?", "text": "I have a unit I'm testing which generates a file name and saves something there. I will need to pull the file out of that location to test it was stored right. I know how the file name is generated, however, hardcoding the logic for file name generation throughout my tests feels like a 'Magic Number' to me. Is there a better approch? I thought of pulling the logic that generates the path name out into it's own helper method in the unit I'm testing, and testing that method once, then using that method when I need a path name. Then I only 'hardcode' the path generation logic in one test where it seems reasonable. However, if I did pull that method out it would usually be a private method, which brings up the whole question as to how to test it, rather it's fair to make it public just for testing, and is it a code-smell to be testing helper functions at all. What is the most elegant way of testing something like this? just hardcode it?"}
{"_id": "254694", "title": "Why did GCC switch from Bison to a recursive descent parser for C++ and C?", "text": "Was there a language change that required it or some practical reason why Bison was no longer appropriate or optimal? I saw on wikipedia that they switched, referring to the GCC 3.4 and GCC 4.1 release notes. These release notes state: > A hand-written recursive-descent C++ parser has replaced the YACC-derived > C++ parser from previous GCC releases. The new parser contains much improved > infrastructure needed for better parsing of C++ source codes, handling of > extensions, and clean separation (where possible) between proper semantics > analysis and parsing. The new parser fixes many bugs that were found in the > old parser. And: > The old Bison-based C and Objective-C parser has been replaced by a new, > faster hand-written recursive-descent parser What I would like to know is what actual problems were they having and why it was impossible / impractical to solve using Bison"}
{"_id": "44776", "title": "Is there a programming language with not a tree but tags idea behind OOP?", "text": "I'm thinking about tree structures, and I feel that I don't like them. It's like when you have a shop, then you try to put all products to tree-like catalog, and then you need to place one product to multiple categories, now you have multiple routing, bla-bla. I don't feel like everything in the world could be put to a tree. Instead, I like idea of tags. I would like to store everything with tags. With tags I could do much more. I can even simulate trees if I want. I want to have tag-based filesystem! But hey - modern OOP paradigm with inheritance is based on tree. I want to see how it is when you don't have such basement. Closest thing I found is mixins in some languages. Do you know what else is also about this ideas?"}
{"_id": "254696", "title": "From a technical point of view, could JavaScript be compiled instead of interpreted?", "text": "The question title speaks for itself. I'm specifically thinking in terms of a Node.js server. Additionally, this question is assuming that you don't need `eval()`. Also, if this is not possible, why not?"}
{"_id": "44774", "title": "Do you know any resources to learn design for a programmer?", "text": "Meanwhile I'm waiting for Design for Hackers do you know any good design resources, as many I love designs by 37signals and I'd like to start making my websites look like that."}
{"_id": "256182", "title": "How can i print multiple jasper report in single page of PDF", "text": "I can print multiple report in single PDF file . using :               JasperReport jreport1 = JasperCompileManager.compileReport(\"D:\\\\FTP\\\\JRXML\\\\PatientConsultantReport\\\\\"+checkedReport+\".jrxml\");     JasperPrint jprint1 = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jreport1, new HashMap(), new JRResultSetDataSource(rs));     jprintlist.add(jprint1);               .              So ON               .               .     jprintlist.add(jprint5);              JRExporter exporter = new JRPdfExporter();                     exporter.setParameter(JRPdfExporterParameter.JASPER_PRINT_LIST, jprintlist);                     OutputStream output = new FileOutputStream(new File(\"D:\\\\FTP\\\\PDF\\\\VisitsSummaryReport.pdf\"));                     exporter.setParameter(JRPdfExporterParameter.OUTPUT_STREAM, output);                     exporter.exportReport();      So Question is : (here for each report it going to add new page in my pdf.) How can I print all data of this all report on single page of PDF ."}
{"_id": "256186", "title": "How do I avoid duplicating utility functions across modules?", "text": "I've seen this question but it doesn't help me because I'm writing functional code (Standard ML) and the answers there are heavily focused towards OOP (the OP is advised to use the Facade pattern, to use inheritance, etc -- answers that are not relevant to an SML programmer). In two separate, largely unrelated modules, `Foo` and `Bar`, I need to accomplish the same task: given functions `equal` and `equals` with the signatures:               val equal: t * t -> bool     val equals: t list * t list -> bool      make two new functions with the following signatures:               val equal': t * t -> t option     val equals': t list * t list -> t list option      Here, `t` stands for either `Foo.t` or `Bar.t`. The natural solution is to use a higher order function:               local       fun boolToOpt (comparison: ('a * 'a) -> bool) (left, right) =         if comparison (left, right) then           SOME left         else           NONE     in       val equal' = boolToOpt equal       val equals' = boolToOpt equals     end      I need to repeat exactly this code snippet in both modules. Now, this is a tiny, minor implementation detail, and it would be a bad idea to let it be publicly visible from either `Foo` or `Bar`. At the same time, it seems too small -- and too tightly coupled to the two `equal(s)` functions -- to be factored out in to a module of its own. Maybe in another language, the `equals'` functionality would merit its own class, say, `ComparisonDecorator`, that overrides `equal(s)` to give me functions with the return type `t option`, but that's not an option here. I run in to situations like these at least once per day. Is there a sane way to avoid just copy+pasting here?"}
{"_id": "41050", "title": "Why isn't software as reliable as a car?", "text": "I had a user ask me this question. We know that cars break down, but **that's because of something physical** (unless software is involved!). I tried to answer that software is a much younger industry, but the user countered with \"didn't the automobile industry become much more stable than and reliable with less people?\". I also tried to answer that software is more complex, but the user countered that there are many thousands of parts that make up a car. People that design and build cars generally just know their component(s) very well, but they still all end up working together as an end result. So, **why isn't software as reliable as a car?**"}
{"_id": "256184", "title": "File Uploading Speed Difference Between Eclipse environment and Deploy to tomcat webapps folder", "text": "Hello I have used `File Upload` in `struts2` with `commons-fileuplod` . Edit : When i run my demo from `eclipse with right click and run on server` so time taken to upload File is very small               **Run From ECLIPSE :**         File Size : 247 MB         Time TAken By upload using Run On server From eclipse  :--> 2989 MS      On other side when i `deploy same demo war file to Tomcat in webapps folder` and run . So it take more time to upload file compare to previous case . (Why this big time difference ?)               **Run Using Deploy Demo In Tomcat :**     File Size : 247 MB     Time TAken By upload By deploed war file to tomcat web apps folder  :--> 14162 MS      I have change `java.io.tmpdir` in `MonitoredMultiPartRequest.java`:                       System.setProperty(\"java.io.tmpdir\", \"D:\\\\ankit\");             System.out.println(\"java.io.tmpdir :--> \" + System.getProperty(\"java.io.tmpdir\"));                  UploadListener listener = new UploadListener(servletRequest);             // Create a factory for disk-based file items             FileItemFactory factory = new MonitoredDiskFileItemFactory(listener);             // Create a new file upload handler             ServletFileUpload upload = new ServletFileUpload(factory);                  try{                 long start = System.currentTimeMillis();                 List items = upload.parseRequest(servletRequest);                 long end = System.currentTimeMillis();                 System.out.println(\"Time TAken By upload 3.2.1 :--> \" + (end - start));                 getsystemDetail();           } catch (Exception e){             errors.add(e.getMessage());         }      Here I mention My Log: **Run From ECLIPSE :**               ==== System Property =========     java.io.tmpdir :--> D:\\ankit     ================================     Time TAken By upload File :--> 2989     ==================================     ##### Heap utilization statistics [MB] #####     Used Memory:46     Free Memory:85     Total Memory:132     Max Memory:675     File system root: C:\\     Total space (mb): 79899     Free space (mb): 31833     Usable space (mb): 31833     File system root: D:\\     Total space (mb): 158472     Free space (mb): 117366     Usable space (mb): 117366     This is ServletContext RealPath path ::--> D:\\eclipseWorkSpace\\.metadata\\.plugins\\org.eclipse.wst.server.core\\tmp0\\wtpwebapps\\FILEUPLOAD_DEMO_OldLIB\\     File Uploaded Succ. TO ::-> D:\\ankit\\eclipse.zip      **Run Using Deploy Demo In Tomcat :**               ==== System Property =========     java.io.tmpdir :--> D:\\ankit     ================================     Time TAken By upload File :--> 14162     ==================================     ##### Heap utilization statistics [MB] #####     Used Memory:100     Free Memory:31     Total Memory:132     Max Memory:1820     File system root: C:\\     Total space (mb): 79899     Free space (mb): 31830     Usable space (mb): 31830     File system root: D:\\     Total space (mb): 158472     Free space (mb): 117358     Usable space (mb): 117358     This is ServletContext RealPath path ::--> D:\\tools\\tomcat7-6\\webapps\\FILEUPLOAD_DEMO_OldLIB\\     File Uploaded Succ. TO ::-> D:\\ankit\\eclipse.zip"}
{"_id": "256185", "title": "Floating point number to binary", "text": "Which Algorithm does java uses to convert floating point number (Ex:0.15625) into binary(0.00101). Whether java uses normalized form or denormalized format ? If i type \"float ab=0.15625\" in java source file, which program will convert that floating point number into a format that could be stored in memory ?"}
{"_id": "255563", "title": "XNA Buffer Best Practice", "text": "I am currently converting a 2D game to 3D, never having worked with 3D before I am trying to learn as I go. I am wondering what the best way to use vertex/index buffers is. Currently I am looping through a grid and creating a set of buffers for each tile type, these are then used in the draw method. Im presuming I shouldnt use multiple sets of vertex buffers but dont know of another way to do this, as each tile is a different texture. Grid loop               for (int i = Convert.ToInt32(xPos / 2) - 30; i < Convert.ToInt32(xPos / 2) + 30; i++)             {                 for (int a = Convert.ToInt32(yPos / 2); a < Convert.ToInt32(yPos / 2) + 50; a++)                 {                     if (mapXtile > 0 && mapYtile > 0 && mapXtile < Globals.mapsizex && mapYtile < Globals.mapsizey)                     {                         int currentTile = Globals.levelArray[level, mapXtile, mapYtile].TyleType;                              if (currentTile == tyleType.grass)                         {                             createCubeVertices(i * 2, a * 2, 1, 0f, count, grassVertices);                             SetUpBufferIndices(count, grassIndices);                             count++;                         }                              if (currentTile == tyleType.water)                         {                             createCubeVertices(i * 2, a * 2, 1, 0f, count, waterVertices);                             SetUpBufferIndices(count, waterIndices);                             waterCount++;                         }                     }                     mapYtile = mapYtile + 1;                     //mapYtile++;                 }                 mapXtile = mapXtile + 1;                 mapYtile = Convert.ToInt32(yPos / 2);             }     CopyToBuffers(grassVertices, grassIndices);     CopyToWaterBuffers(waterVertices, waterIndices);      Draw code                  foreach (EffectPass pass in grassEffect.CurrentTechnique.Passes)             {                 pass.Apply();                      device.Indices = myIndexBuffer;                 device.SetVertexBuffer(myVertexBuffer);                 device.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, grassVertices.Length, 0, grassIndices.Length/3);               }                  foreach (EffectPass pass in mouseEffect.CurrentTechnique.Passes)             {                 pass.Apply();                      device.Indices = myWaterIndexBuffer;                 device.SetVertexBuffer(myWaterVertexBuffer);                 device.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, 10000, 0, 10000);             }      Any advice is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "255562", "title": "Simple unicode application?", "text": "I want to create simple language learning applications to help friends in learning languages. A simple Java console application would do the trick, but the Windows console does not seem to handle Unicode (and I need my software to work with all kinds of special letters at once). Googling it, I get the idea there might be ways to actually make Unicode work in the Windows console, but it seems a bit overly complex, plus that it requires some effort from anyone running the program. I want to write programs that anyone without computer experience can run easily. I wanted to try doing this in Python instead, as the IDLE console at least seemed to work with Unicode. But it has its own set of problems (I can't enter certain letters, like the \u00e9, without writing it elsewhere and pasting it in) Now I'm considering building this as a web application or Swing application, to actually be able to make my program work with Unicode. But I feel I'm maybe overlooking something. Is there no easy way to make a Unicode console application that'd work on Windows?"}
{"_id": "129166", "title": "How can a programmer keep up with the hardware world?", "text": "I think that it's safe for me to assume that many, if not most, programmers are quite enthusiastic about computers, and even electronics in general. Now, I realize that a programmer should first and foremost keep up with the **programming** world, which is a difficult task in and of itself: with new languages and methodologies making their way into the fray every year, there is never a shortage of interesting things to learn about and try out. Yet, the hardware world is also advancing very quickly, and is also highly interesting, I'd argue. I recall days when I would study the newest chipsets, CPUs, compare the popular (and not so popular) manufacturers, and read up on specs for my favorite graphics cards. However, since that time, I've stopped keeping up with the hardware that is being developed, and have instead focused my studies and attention on, well, programming. I still intend to focus myself on programming, by and large. But, my question is, are there efficient / effective methods or learning resources that would make it easier for a programmer to keep up with the latest hardware, if only in a minimal way?"}
{"_id": "252690", "title": "Factory Design pattern in languages with class types", "text": "I was reading in Peter Norvig's Design Patterns presentation. From slide 13: > Dynamic version needs only the Window classes. > > The classes themselves serve as factories > > This works because classes are first-class values We can say `make(c)` Does it mean that Java and C# don't need the factory design pattern since they can pass around class type as a variable."}
{"_id": "129164", "title": "Should I use acronyms when listing technical jargon on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9?", "text": "I'm wondering if I should use acronyms or initialisms when I list technical qualifications or mention specific technologies on my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 or CV. For example:   * _Entity Framework_ vs. _EF_ vs. _EF (Entity Framework)_   * _Graphical User Interface_ vs. _GUI_ vs. _GUI (Graphical User Interface)_ Is there a reason to prefer one version over another? Is it better to be as clear as possible, companies view not using the correct acronym a sign of lack of knowledge about the subject?"}
{"_id": "161549", "title": "What kinds of visual content, tables or diagrams might I want to include in my Project Architecture Document?", "text": "Besides logical and physical architecture diagrams, comps / mockups and tables for expected network load between components and various data schemas, what kinds of visual content, tables or diagrams might I want to include in my Project Architecture Document? The specific project is an integration of 3rd party social networking features into a fashion site. Please post example graphics. Thanks."}
{"_id": "129161", "title": "Mobile Apps developement for Web Developer", "text": "I have been working in asp.net from past 5 years. I have so far liked it. But I am seeing a new boom in the market. And its not all about money. People are going towards iphone developement and android developement. since I have not done developments in both. so was wondering if it is better to stay where and what I am doing or take a risk and should try to learn these technologies and jump with new job. Would my web development background anyhow support this new learning?"}
{"_id": "252695", "title": "Product Configuration with conditional options", "text": "Suppose you need to create a website where you can choose a Widget, and then configure all of the various options to go with that widget. The options have many interactions. For example, if you choose to add Wheels to your Widget, this should enable the selection of which Rims you would like. However, if the user selects an Orange colored Widget, the Alloy Rims are not available. I'm am struggling with the best way to design my tables and code to enforce these restrictions and conditions governing these options while remaining flexible for future Widgets. New widgets are going to come along every year where these options and their restrictions / conditions need to be added for the new products, so I'm trying to avoid hard-coding these types of things. At the same time, it is difficult to picture a data model in a database for governing these conditions / interactions. Some of them may be simple (Option A enables Option D and E), and some of them may be very complex (Option A plus Option B plus a quantity of 10 widgets disables Option Z, but enables Option X). I get the feeling that this sort of option-interaction logic belongs in a \"Business Rules\" type of layer. Is this a scenario that any of you have tackled before, and if so did you find a quality / flexible method of handling these types of things?"}
{"_id": "40903", "title": "How can we deal with experiental gaps in learning of programmers or any technology field?", "text": "This problem is a re-occuring one in my experiences. That of the ability to learn from other people's experiences, and being able to share what I have learned. Part of the problem of this learning process, is the dependence on experience. If for example, you've never had many jobs cleaning up other people's code for ease of readability, better written queries, and better logic, and validation practices, you might not have had developed the same practices and behaviors I have, in how I write my code. This is what I call the \"Experiental Gap\". It is very hard for people who haven't had the exact same experiences I have had to understand the reasoning why I have adopted the techniques and methods I have had. Take as an example, source control, which is on the famous \"Joel Test\" as just one of the 12 items there. Let's say you have worked with a wide variety of source control software/applications, not married to any of them, just want to use one that works. And have experienced a lot of the painful errors and problems that occur from not having source control. Then how can you explain to someone who has never experienced those same problems, why source control is important and why they need to adapt it immediately. This question is not about source control, that is just an example I am using to help illustrate the problem of communicating best practices or methods of any kind, when the reason we adopted them is mostly because of our personal work experiences. Then when we meet someone that we see needs to adopt some of what we think is core, must have practices, and they have not had our experiences, it becomes nearly impossible to persuade or educate those people. It's not because they are dumb or uneducated or stupid. It is because of the \"Experiential Gap\" So now brings to the point of this question, because I want to be able to discuss and learn from other people how they have overcome this gap? How do you teach or learn when you may not understand why you need to learn things or teach things. Another example, I for years, have been anti-oo, anti-cfc's, (Used In ColdFusion). And then got into many flame wars because those people who have had the painful experiences could not persuade me of the importance of that. And since i wasn't in a situation where I could experience what they had, this made for a very frustrating experience for both of us. I didn't understand the need for the best practice. And they couldn't understand why I didn't get it. So how can we overcome this gap which is a key part of our learning process. Most of us, or a huge chunk of us, learn by self-teaching, reading, practicing. This can be good and bad, but doesn't help us learn how to learn, or what to learn. Because then each of us have had different jobs with different skills and different experiences, then we each learn from those experiences, and can't really relate very well to people who haven't been what we've been through. This is a very big but subtle problem, I think it needs to be addressed, if not by me, by someone more educated or experienced than I am. I only want to help, us all learn more and learn from each other more easily.. Thanks...I hope this re-write is better. Thank You."}
{"_id": "243299", "title": "Are there theoretical reasons why arrays in C take less RAM than Java?", "text": "My experience is that Java requires about twice as much RAM compared to C (comparing char arrays or other comparisons). I also read in a hardware book that Java takes about twice RAM than C. Is is based solely on empirical evidence or also has a theoretical explanation? Is there a theoretical limit that limits Java from minimizing its memory usage?"}
{"_id": "29709", "title": "Innovation on CS", "text": "its been some time that i've been thinking about creating something that could help the web community and leave some mark, but the problem that there are no ideas poping out of my head. So 2 questions comes to my mind: First, how did projects like Twitter, Google or any other big project that had changed our way of living in the internet get started? Secondly, do we have to force it or just keep doing what we do best and wait to that idea that could change things? While writting this question, one quote come to mind: > Imagination is more important than knowledge > > **Albert Einstein**"}
{"_id": "29707", "title": "How are you using the Managed Extensibility Framework?", "text": "I have been working with MEF for about 2 weeks. I started thinking about what MEF is for, researching to find out how to use MEF, and finally implementing a Host with 3 modules. The contracts are proving to be easy to grasp and the modules are easily managed. Although MEF has a very practical use, I am wondering to what extent? I mean, _is everyone going to be rewriting existing applications for extensibility?_ Yes, that sounds, and is insanely impractical. Rhetorically speaking:   * how is MEF affecting the current trends in programming?   * have you begun looking for opportunities to use MEF?   * have you begun planning a major re-write of an existing app that may benefit from extensibility? That said, my questions are:   **_how do I know when I should plan a new project with extensibility?_**   **_how will I know if an existing project needs to be re-written for extensibility?_** _**Is anyone using MEF?_**"}
{"_id": "243295", "title": "Correct process for creating builds reliant on 3rd party packages", "text": "I work on a Symfony 2 codebase. We use a number of third-party packages (most are in the Symfony Standard Edition). We use composer for dependencies. We current have all of our third-party code committed in our repository (after changing .gitignore files) to ensure stability. According to Proper Programming Practices\u2122, we are not supposed to have any third-party packages in our repo. We are supposed to pull them down and include them at build time. How are we to do proper QA and debugging when at any given time our dependencies could push an update that breaks functionality?"}
{"_id": "243296", "title": "Multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problem: find a feasible solution", "text": "My assignment is to use local search heuristics to solve the Multidimensional multiple-choice knapsack problem, but to do so I first need to find a feasible solution to start with. Here is an example problem with what I tried so far. ## Problem                          L1  L2  L3          RESOUCES : 8   8   8          GROUPS:              G1:                      11.0    3    2    2                 12.0    1    1    3              G2:                      20.0    1    1    3                 5.0     2    3    2              G3:                      10.0    2    2    3                 30.0    1    1    3      * * * ## Sorting strategies To find a starting feasible solution for my local search I decided to ignore maximization of gains and just try to fit the resources requirements. I decided to sort the choices (strategies) in each group by comparing their \"distance\" from the multidimensional space origin, thus calculating `SQRT(R1^2 + R2^2 + ... + RN^2)`. I felt like this was a keen solution as it somehow privileged those choices with resouce usages closer to each other (e.g. R1:2 R2:2 R3:2 < R1:1 R2:2 R3:3) even if the total sum is the same. Doing so and selecting the best choice from each group proved sufficent to find a feasible solution for many[30] different benchmark problems, but of course I knew it was just luck. So I came up with the problem presented above which sorts like this:                          L1  L2  L3          RESOUCES : 8   8   8          GROUPS:              G1:                      12.0    1    1    3 < select this                 11.0    3    2    2              G2:                      20.0    1    1    3 < select this                 5.0     2    3    2              G3:                      30.0    1    1    3 < select this                 10.0    2    2    3      And it is not feasible because the resources consmption is R1:3, R2:3, **R3:9**. The easy solution is to pick one of the second best choices in group 1 or 2, so I'll need some kind of iteration (local search[?]) to find the starting feasible solution for my local search solution. Here are the options I came up with **Option 1: iterate choices** I tried to find a way to iterate all the choices with a specific order, something like               G1   G2   G3     1    1    1     2    1    1     1    2    1     1    1    2     2    2    1     ...      believeng that feasible solutions won't be that far away from the unfeasible one I start with and thus the number of iterations will keep quite low. Does this make any sense? If yes, how can I iterate the choices (grouped combinations) of each group keeping \"as near as possibile\" to the previous iteration? **Option 2: Change the comparation term** I tried to think how to find a better variable to sort the choices on. I thought at a measure of how \"precious\" a resource is based on supply and demand, so that an higer demand of a more precious resource will push you down the list, but this didn't help at all. Also I thought there probably isn't gonna be such a comparsion variable which assures me a feasible solution at first strike. I there such a variable? If not, is there a better sorting criteria anyways? **Option 3: implement any known sub-optimal fast solving algorithm** Unfortunately I could not find any of such algorithms online. Any suggestion? * * * ## EDIT **NOTE: I updated the previous description using labels L1 L2 L3 for the problem resource limits in place of R1 R2 R3 which now indicate the resource requirements of each strategy (choice)** Fallowing the input by @J Trana, I decided to go and try a genetic algorithm for the problem setup. This seemed quite fitting to the problem structure as each Group is a Gene, each Solution is a Chromosome and each Strategy is an Allele. I also modified the distance expression to fit better with heterogeneous resource limits, so now the distance is : `SUM(Rn/Ln)` which should give a lower distance (i.e. higher priority) to those strategies with lower resource requirement portions. Since this part is intended only for solving initialization, I chose the fallowing genetic functions: ## Fitness               // if solution is feasible, that's just enough, it has the greatest fitness possible     if(solution.isFeasibleInProblem()) return Integer.MAX_VALUE;          ArrayList<Integer> consumptions = new ArrayList<Integer>();          for(Integer limit : problem.resourceLimits){         consumptions.add(0);     }          // add the resources consumptions from each group     for(Group g : genes){         for(int i = 0; i < g.currentSelectedSolution.resourceRequirements.size(); i++){             consumptions.set(i, consumptions.get(i) + g.currentSelectedSolution.resourceRequirements.get(i));         }     }          ArrayList<Double> subFitnesses = new ArrayList<Double>();          // each subFitness is the ratio between the total limit and the actual consumption     // this way if the consumption is < limit subFitness is greater than 1 (rises the fitness), else it is less than 1 and lowers the fitness     for(int j = 0; j < consumptions.size(); j++){         double subFitness = problem.limits.get(j) / consumptions.get(j);         subFitnesses.add(subFitness);     }          double fitness = 1;          for(Double sF : subFitnesses){         fitness *= sF;     }          return fitness;      So resource requirements lesser than the limit rise the fitness, where requirements greater than the limit lower the fitness. ## Mutation For the mutation function I found that feasible solutions contain strategies with smaller distance and considering solutions far down in the ordered distance list slows the evolution because most of the time those mutations have negative effects.               public void mutate(int strategyIndex, double mutationIntensity){              // if there's no choice, don't mutate         if(this.strategies.size() <= 1) return;              ... here I'd need something that keeps in the first positions of the list         but eventually, with higher mutation intensities, goes to greater indexes...              selectStrategy(newStrategyIndex);          }      * * * The above solution works very well for most of the benchmarks, but there are 2 of them, having a lot of choices per group and a lot of resources per choice, that simply won't find a feasible solution. How could I implement the mutation algorithm so that those 2 benchmarks convert to a feasible solution? Is there any improvement I can put in my fitness function or in the strategy ordering to speed up the solving path?"}
{"_id": "243291", "title": "What is the benefit of the 'free-to-deobfuscate' model over open-source?", "text": "Some applications (for example Minecraft) have the 'free-to- deobfuscate'-model. It means that you are free to make and distribute changes to the applications code, but you must decompile and deobsuscate the application first. This makes less than zero sense to me. Isn't the whole point of obfuscation the prevention of people messing with your code? Why not just use the open- source model?"}
{"_id": "54220", "title": "Have you worked with a well designed application?", "text": "Inspired by this question, I started wondering - is there or has there ever been such a thing as a \"well designed application\"? One where the architecture would be perfect and no refactoring would ever be needed; code would be easy to read and understand even for someone new to the project; changes could be done with a 100% certainty that they won't break anything; etc? I must admit that whatever codebases I've worked with, they've all been more or less a mess. Even code that I start myself only stays organized at the start, and then slowly deteriorates as the time passes. I'm even starting to accept this as part of life and can't figure out whether I should be worried about that or not. So... is there such a thing as a \"well designed application\"? Or is all our code so shitty that there isn't even a point in trying to make it better, because it will never be good anyway?"}
{"_id": "11813", "title": "GPL in the workplace?", "text": "I once interviewed at a consulting company where it came up in the conversation that they use open source products (which is great, I've used Hibernate, JBoss, etc. extensively.) One thing that did surprise me is that when I asked if they used GPL licensed OSS when writing applications for clients, they said \"Sure, all the time! As long as the client gets what they want and are happy.\" Now, I'm no lawyer or big license buff, but I was under the impression that using GPL code (let's say some library that you include), then you are required to release the entire application under the same license. When I pointed this out, I was given a quick response of, \"Well, we give the clients all the source code when we're done, so that's really not an issue.\" Not wanting to press the issue further (interviews aren't the place for arguments like that), I let it slide. However, that still concerns me about that particular practice of the business. What is the official word on GPL licensed code and how \"open\" does it need to be? Do you have to publish it and say \"My company used this library so here is the site where you can download our shopping and order fulfillment system application that we spend millions of dollars to build.\"? In this situation, is the company right for using GPL code without the client's knowledge? Is it enough to just \"give them the source\"?"}
{"_id": "179835", "title": "unseen/unknown function definition in linux source", "text": "Can any one please explain this piece of code I found in the linux kernel source. I see a lots of code like this in linux and minix kernel but dont seem to find what it does (even if C compilers support that kind of function definition)               /* IRQs are disabled and uidhash_lock is held upon function entry.      * IRQ state (as stored in flags) is restored and uidhash_lock released      * upon function exit.      */     static void free_user(struct user_struct *up, unsigned long flags)     __releases(&uidhash_lock)     {     uid_hash_remove(up);     spin_unlock_irqrestore(&uidhash_lock, flags);     key_put(up->uid_keyring);     key_put(up->session_keyring);     kmem_cache_free(uid_cachep, up);     }      I cannot find out if this reference `__releases(&uidhash_lock)` before the parenthesis starts is allowed OR supported. (It sure is supported as it is in the linux kernel)"}
{"_id": "175391", "title": "reference datatype javascript", "text": "In javascript, what is the difference in applying a toString() method to the primitive datatype, number like this               var myString = myNumber.toString();      and applying the same toString() method by creating a reference datatype equivalent, the Number class like this               var numberObject = new Number(myNumber);     var myString = numberObject.toString();"}
{"_id": "175393", "title": "ISO 12207: Verification of integration and Unit test validation", "text": "I have received comments from the supervisor reviewing my thesis. He asked two questions I cannot answer right now:   1. If ISO 12207 says under \"Integration verification\" that it \"checks that components are correctly and completely integrated into a system\", how this can be verified without testing, if all testing is validation? How without testing can I know that system is integrated correctly and fully?   2. If unit testing is validation, how does it match the ISO definiton of validation \"that requirements for intended use were fulfilled\" if its so low level?"}
{"_id": "175392", "title": "projective geometry: how do I turn a projection of a rectangle in 3D into a 2D view", "text": "So the problem is that I have a 3D projection of a rectangle that I want to turn into 2D. That is I have a photo of a sheet of paper laying on a table which I want to transform into a 2D view of that sheet. Thus, what I need is to get an un-distorted 2D image by reverting all the 3D/projection transformations and getting a plain view of the sheet from the top. I happened to find some directions on the subject but they don't suggest an immediate instruction on how this can be achieved. It would be really helpful to get a step-by-step instruction of what needs to be done. Or, alternatively, a link on a resource that breaks it down to little details."}
{"_id": "164072", "title": "Are there any conceptual drawbacks to building a web app with C++ and MySQL?", "text": "I've inherited a pretty interesting project where there is a good opportunity to take an existing piece of software and turn it into a SaaS web app. As the project is inherited, the code base/ framework is already defined as C++ and MySQL. The app itself is compiled and run as an EXE on Windows Server. The UI is web based and the app works as a kind of server. From what I do know of modern web apps, this is perhaps an unusual choice. These days, most people seem to opt for a PHP framework or Ruby on Rails. Certainly that is the impression I get from reading blogs on the subject. So, I'm very interested to know if a C++ EXE backed by MySQL is a solid foundation for a web app, or whether we should be looking to build in another way?"}
{"_id": "202643", "title": "CppUnit for unit-testing executable files?", "text": "I am not sure if anyone has done it. I am trying to do something that is in general, uncommon i.e. unit-testing executable (Windows) or ELFs (Linux). I know that CppUnit provides a good unit testing facility, but I have never used it for unit-testing (used UnitTest++). I hear rumours that you can unit-test executables too. Does anyone have the experience in this? _A relevant post regarding the philosophy of it washere_"}
{"_id": "175399", "title": "Programming C++ using Qt4", "text": "Hey guys I am really new to the C++ programing I have a little knowledge in C and a bit more in C++, but I do not know them enough to call myself a programmer. I am working as a PHP Web Developer I like being a crafts man and creating things so that is the reason to combine the programming with web development. I think that I could really benefit from both of them and so... My question is:   * Is it a good Idea to learn C++ with Qt or not?   * Can you give me pros and cons of both? **Note** : _I do not want to become a programmer and give up the web development I want to combine them both._"}
{"_id": "164077", "title": "How should I track approval workflow when users at every security level can create a request?", "text": "I am writing a new application that allows users to enter requests. Once a request is entered, it must follow an approval workflow to be finally approved by a user the highest security level. So, let's say a user at Security Level 1 enters a request. This request must be approved by his superior - a user at Security Level 2. Once the Security Level 2 user approves it, it must be approved by a user at Security Level 3. Once the Security Level 3 user approves it, it is considered fully approved. However, users at any of the three Security Levels can enter requests. So, if a Security Level 3 user enters a request, it is automatically considered \"fully approved\". And, if a Security Level 2 user enters a request, it must only be approved by a Security Level 3 user. I'm currently storing each approval status in a Database Log Table, like so:               STATUS_ID (PK) REQUEST_ID    STATUS           STATUS_DATE     -------------- ------------- ---------------- -----------------------     1              1             USER_SUBMIT      2012-09-01 00:00:00.000     2              1             APPROVED_LEVEL2  2012-09-01 01:00:00.000     3              1             APPROVED_LEVEL3  2012-09-01 02:00:00.000     4              2             USER_SUBMIT      2012-09-01 02:30:00.000     5              2             APPROVED_LEVEL2  2012-09-01 02:45:00.000      My question is, which is a better design:   1. Record all three statuses for every request ...or...   2. Record only the statuses needed according to the Security Level of the user submitting the request In Case 2, the data might look like this for two requests - one submitted by Security Level 2 User and another submitted by Security Level 3 user:               STATUS_ID (PK) REQUEST_ID    STATUS           STATUS_DATE     -------------- ------------- ---------------- -----------------------     1              3             APPROVED_LEVEL2  2012-09-01 01:00:00.000     2              3             APPROVED_LEVEL3  2012-09-01 02:00:00.000     3              4             APPROVED_LEVEL3  2012-09-01 02:00:00.000"}
{"_id": "129291", "title": "Version Control with SQL Server", "text": "I'm starting a new project and using SVN (with Tortoise) as my Version Control System. I was wondering if it was possible to also maintain a SQL Server Database using the same system. I'd want to version my tables/functions/views/procs/triggers/etc. but not my data as it's all going to be test data anyway. I'm not really sure how to set this up. I've come across a few options but I would like to know if there were any I was missing, and if there's maybe a guide or something out there to help me get running with it. I've seen and heard of Red Gate, but I'm looking for something free (or at least very low cost). I know I could always write something myself, but I'm not really trying to spend time on that. One thing I did come across was an open source package put together called ScriptDB4Svn. Has anyone used this before? Is it good? Can it do the things I need it to do and is it pretty simple to get setup?"}
{"_id": "191903", "title": "Migrating web app from php to Java", "text": "Hi I had today my first interview for a position of android developer.In my portfolio I had a php e-commerce application that has a catalog , ajax powered shopping cart , and administrator functionality. Because my Android knowledge is prety limited , I only started learning about 3 weeks ago , I was asked to migrate my current PHP web appplication to Java Web until April 19th when the second stage of the interview will take place , so they can asses how fast I can learn a new technology. I have no experience with Java working on the web so I do no know where to start. After a bit of research I found that for developing website with Java usually you use JSP, Spring or Struts. I would like a recommendation on witch one should I learn to quickly get started on migrating the web application to Java and some resources that do not get into to mutch details just enought to get started."}
{"_id": "129292", "title": "What do you call a pair of function that are complements of each other?", "text": "I am looking for the right word to describe a function and its complement. Here I am looking for the proper word to describe a couple of functions when applied in sequence the system reverts to its original state.   * Marshalling and Unmarshalling would be a subset of this   * Add and Remove Idempotence comes to mind though I am not sure if it can apply to more than one operation. Reversible could also do, but it seems a tad bit too general. Is there a right word that would describe this \"systemic idempotence\"."}
{"_id": "129296", "title": "The case for code obfuscation?", "text": "What are the top reasons to write obfuscated code, in terms of a real benefit to the people developing the code, and the business that runs that code (if the code in question is in fact commericial code)? **Are there documented cases (available online in some location) which describe when obfuscation did more good than bad? Are there well-known examples where, for example, obfuscation was proven to meaningfully delay a malicious 3rd party from getting at the code?** It seems that, just like rolling up your car windows won't stop people from breaking them and stealing your stereo, obfuscating your code just keeps honest people honest. ========= Background: This is an attempt to purposely challenge my assumptions on this topic. I'm big-time against using code obfuscation in general, but I'm curious if I'm missing something. I get why, in cases like JavaScript, minification helps things load faster and all (there's a real, functional benefit there), but I can't seem to come up with a single reason why code obfuscation, **for the purpose of being an obstacle to discovering what an section of code/algorithm does** , is actually effective for any purpose whatsoever. With open source being crazy popular, the question seems to be \"share the code, or keep it proprietary?\" When it comes to commercial code, I can understand why you can't share everything, and you've got the law in your side to fight theft. BTW, if the reason someone is writing obfuscated code is \"job security\" then I would fire any programmer found to be consistently, and purposely using obfuscation **with the sole purpose of helping to keep their jobs,** unless they could reasonably show that it had some business benefit. It's so completely anti-team that it's ridiculous, and points to someone that's more concerned with keeping their job through misguided practices, then keeping it because they write awesome software. I only mention this specific case because, while I realize people are usually joking, I'd like to deter any answers whose basic thrust is that obfuscation for job security alone is a good idea."}
{"_id": "215337", "title": "Setter Validation can affect performance?", "text": "In a scenario where you use an ORM to map your entities to the DB and you have setter validations (nullable, date lower than today validation, etc), every time the ORM gets a result, it will pass into the setter to instance the object. If I have a grid that usually returns 500 records, I assume that for each record it passes on all validations. If my entity has 5 setter validations, than I have passed in 2.500 validations.   * Does those 2.500 validations will affect the performance?   * If was 15.000 validation, it will be different? In my opinion, and according to this answer, setter validation is useful than constructors validation.   * Is there a way to avoid unnecessary validation, since I am safe to say that the values I send to the DB when saving the entity won't change until I edit it on my system?"}
{"_id": "238814", "title": "How to debug weak references?", "text": "How can I test (what tools do I use) if my reference graph is correct and if objects are released at appropriate times (and there are no memory leaks)? In my case I'm using Java, but answers related to another languages are welcome too..."}
{"_id": "238815", "title": "Helping someone who is not and never will be a professional programmer write code that is more legible and usable to use and interpret", "text": "I am Elvis, trying very hard to learn to be Einstein. I work for Mort. What the hell is this crazy idiot talking about!?!? (You only need to read the first few paragraphs) If you don't feel like reading that link, basically, I am a professional programmer, and my boss is (this is scarily accurate): > the professional line-of-business programmer who lacks a degree in computer > science but has a great deal of familiarity with Office and VBA, and who > typically writes productivity applications shared amongst his coworkers All that said, a large portion of my job is taking his cobbled together code and making it production ready. However, the very poor style and cargo-cultism makes this difficult. This is compounded by the fact that he is unwilling to read programming books or allow me to help him refactor his code. Are there some other strategies for helping someone who is not a professional programmer, never will be a professional programmer write code going forward that is more legible and usable for me to use and interpret?"}
{"_id": "195375", "title": "Is $.proxy a code smell?", "text": "I've been writing most of my javascript applications in an OO style close to what I would use for most other languages. However, this means that most callbacks need to have a reference to an object, and I generally handle that by using $.proxy (or dojo.hitch, or whatever the framework's tool for this is) to be sure that the callbacks are operating in the context of my object, rather than the tag they were attached to. Very quickly, this seems to lead to using proxied calls for almost everything, and can look like I'm fighting against the tool, particularly if the tool is jQuery. Do you have a policy on how to handle javascript function binding in your work? Do you try fit your design to how the tool binds it's functions, or do you force the bindings to work according to your design?"}
{"_id": "111616", "title": "Handling false positives and legacy code warnings in static-analysis of C++ code?", "text": "We have a large \"legacy\" C++ code base on which _no_ static analysis is run at the moment. Every now and then, we are thinking about at least using cppcheck, maybe via Visual Lint. (I've also briefly checked the sites of Coverity or Klocwork or RedLizards/Goanna.) However, I do expect a _huge_ number of found warnings and probably also false positives (in that the error does not actually cause an observable bug in the application). We simply do not have the resources available to address these all on rollout of any analysis tool, especially as we would _very much_ only like to touch \"code that works (well enough)\" if we really have to. So what I am looking for are experiences and _user stories_ of adding C++ static analysis to legacy code bases: > We had this product, consisting of xxx lines of code over zzz C++ projects > and we started using static analysis tool yyy in development. Rooting out > the legacy code warnings took aaa effort, (temporarily) ignoring them was > hard/easy/impossible. Ignoring warnings selectively for the code base really > worked well/didn't work at all. Etc. Something like this. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "111615", "title": "Premium and opensource", "text": "I am thinking about releasing my premium (commercial) project as an opensource project, but I am not sure how the user might benefit, how I will benefit and which license will I use. I really need to know anything possible about this step..."}
{"_id": "163079", "title": "Basic web architecture : Perl -> PHP", "text": "This is an architecture question. If there is a better forum, please redirect me. Apologies in advance. Essentially every website is built around a relational database, right? When a user uploads form data, that data is stored in a table. The problem is that the table structure(s) need to be modified whenever the website form is modified. Although I understand that modern web frameworks work around this problem by automatically building forms based on the table structure. For the last 20 years, I have been building websites using Perl. When I first encountered this problem, the easiest solution was to save serialized Perl objects as data BLOBS. After XML's introduction, this solution worked even better because XML is so effective for representing arbitrary data. This approach is consistent with the original Perl principles of Hubris, Laziness, and Impatience and I'm pretty committed to it. Obviously, the biggest drawback is that this solution locks me into the Perl interpreter. So instead, I've just completed a prototype of a universal RDB table. The prototype is written in Perl but porting it to PHP will be a good chance to develop those skills. The principal is based on the XML::Dumper module, which converts arbitrary Perl data structures into uniform XML. With my approach, each XML node is stored as a table record. I underestimated this undertaking and rolled something up myself. But the effort allows me to discuss the basic design instead of implementation details.   1. As mentioned, I'm pretty committed to this approach of using flexible data structures. It's been successfully deployed on many websites, large, and complex. But are there any drawbacks I've overlooked?   2. I rolled my own. Are other people taking a similar approach to their data? What kinds of solutions are available?   3. I have not abandoned my dream of eventually contributing something useful to the worldwide community. In order to proceed, the next step would be peer review. How does one pursue that effort?"}
{"_id": "151322", "title": "When too much encapsulation was reached", "text": "Recently, I read a lot of good articles about how to do good encapsulation. And when I say \"good encapsulation\", I am not talking about hiding private fields with public properties; I am talking about preventing users of your API from doing wrong things. Here are two good articles about this subject: http://blog.ploeh.dk/2011/05/24/PokayokeDesignFromSmellToFragrance.aspx http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/03/28/encapsulation-youre-doing-it- wrong/ At my job, the majority of our applications are not destined for other programmers but rather for the customers. About 80% of the application code is at the top of the structure (Not used by other code). For this reason, there is probably no chance ever that this code will be used by other application. An example of encapsulation that prevents users from doing wrong things with your API is returning an IEnumerable instead of IList when you don't want to give the ability to the user to add or remove items in the list. My question is: When can encapsulation be considered simply OOP purism, keeping in mind that each hour of programming is charged to the customer? I want to create code that is maintainable and easy to read and use, but when I am not building a public API (to be used by other programmers), where can we draw the line between perfect code and not so perfect code?"}
{"_id": "126112", "title": "Contracting out software development; deliver user stories or business requirements?", "text": "We are a small company that I am lead developer on, and we have been having on and off meetings with a potential stakeholder for a good opportunity. This stakeholder is helping us directly in getting a proposal together to a group of other stakeholders for software that they have a strong need for. Hopefully if we sell them on our proposal (consisting of very high level features and general deliverables) then they will sponsor the project and it will grow organically from there to users around the country who will see how useful it is. Problem is that we as a development are terribly bogged down as it is with prior projects, maintenance of existing production systems, and badly needed features on the backlog. As it stands, because this project could be highly lucrative and there are no serious competitors, management wants to act FAST and get the most basic functionality out as quickly as possible, **no matter the cost**. This isn't realistic for us without growing our team but that takes too much time. They are thinking about contracting the development work out, but want me to be a business analyst and also have architectural say in the project. When they finish major feature development, they anticipate my team taking responsibility over maintenance so clearly architectural control is important as we want the deliverables to be maintainable. I am okay with this role, but am unaccustomed to it. In house we typically don't use formalized requirements documents, and instead gather requirements from user stories, use cases, workflows and customer agreements. We are used to formulating user stories but I am afraid that doesn't make sense to deliver user stories to an outside contract company as they will likely have their own project managment who might want to do things their way. I wouldn't want to impose our unfamiliar project managment process on them if they find it alien and it slows them down. I am thinking that extremely detailed formalized business requirements are in order because we want to be sure that they have the necessary guidelines to create quality software, but I have no idea what kind of effort this will take from myself alone. I am also unsure of when to start. Nothing is official yet, but I have 90% of the information I feel I need from stakeholders. I just don't want to end up with management informing me that the deal was signed, we have to deliver in 6 months and to get him all the requirements documents by the end of the week. Feeling a little in over my head here, do I formulate user stories or business requirements? Any other helpful suggestions?"}
{"_id": "162896", "title": "Is there a precedent for the license on a compiler restricting the kind of development you can use it for?", "text": "It was recently let slip that the new EULA for Delphi XE3 will prohibit Client Server development with the Professional edition without the additional purchase of a Client Server license pack. This is not to say the Professional version will lack the features, but the license will specifically prohibit the developer from using the compiler for a specific class of development, even with 3rd party or home grown solutions. **So my question is if there is a precedent of a compiler or similar creative tool prohibiting the class of work you can use it for. Specifically a commercially licensed \"professional\" tool like Delphi XE3. Also, would such a restriction be legally enforceable?** I know there have been educational edition or starter edition tools in the past that have restricted their use for commercial purposes, but those were not sold as \"professional\" tools. Also I know that a lot of computing software and equipment will have a disclaimer that it is not for use in \"life support equipment\" or \"nuclear power\" but that is more of avoiding liability than prohibiting activity. Seems like I recall Microsoft putting a restriction in FrontPage that you couldn't use it to create a web site that reflected poorly on Microsoft, but they pulled that restriction before it could be tested legally. **Update:** The EULA was dropped before the product shipped because of public resistance."}
{"_id": "126119", "title": "Web Developer: Ask to play more of a Project Manager role", "text": "I am a Web Developer (working with PHP/WordPress/Symfony2) in a small company (still hiring but at the moment 5 staff), has ~8 months experience (currently a Computer Science student) and asked to fulfill more of a Project Manager role. I am not really even good at personal time management nor would I say my programming is that outstanding yet (still learning, frequently stuck on errors, sometimes server fault eg. setting up a development server and SVN). In reality, it appears compared to my peers, its actually good, but thinking about Google, Microsoft or even err ... Oracle maybe, my skills are probably quite lacking still I thought either way, its a good learning opportunity. How do I start? I think I need to have a proper way of collaboration or communicating each others progress and documentation. Theres SVN but being relatively new, it slows things down sometimes. How do I assign work such that people dont mess up other's code? I actually caused a colleague quite a headache when I edited some configuration, meant for personal development use. I found myself waiting for another colleagues work (user management/login/registration) to be able to complete mine (ACL part for my \"module\", similar to blog posts). I actually wanted to \"fake\" a logged in user, but that didnt work out (entirely)"}
{"_id": "154946", "title": "It's ok to study the C++ from a book that only support the 1998 version of standard?", "text": "I have this big book that basically covers all the main aspects of the C++, the problem is that is pretty old according to the C++ standards of today, it's ok to use it?"}
{"_id": "28078", "title": "Does Silverlight have a future?", "text": "Recently I have read some articles/blogs/comments about the development and history of WPF and Silverlight. In some forums many developers and users criticize the performance of WPF applications (for example Visual Studio 2010). Actually the market share of Silverlight in comparison to Flash is not very high. At PDC 2010 Bob Muglia said something like \"our Silverlight strategy and focus going forward has shifted....\" and Microsoft wants to push HTML5 in the future. Additionally, Microsoft has announced HTML5 being a core part of the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 (\"Mango\") platforms. Recently I have started learning Silverlight and now I must ask myself, if I should continue investing time in learning these (in my opinions) very nice and powerful technologies!? Does they have a future? Does (Windows) desktop (client) applications have a future? Does so called \"Rich Internet Applications\" have a future? Or will HTML5 become the \"absolute truth\" in software development? What is your opinion and what do you think?"}
{"_id": "28072", "title": "What are sites tracking software bugs/defects?", "text": "I am looking for websites which have list of 'real life' software bugs from software (OS software, application software, ... it can be any layer). It could be open-source or it can be code under any other model of development. Basically I am interested in finding out sites which allow me to read code snippets which have bugs in it. Programming languages interested are C,C++,PERL. But if the s/w defects are language agnostic, and more to do with general concepts(or misuse of them rather), then it still would be helpful. P.S. To check out 'bugzilla' or bug tracking links for each open-source project for this is one way. (BTW what is the url for bug tracking in Linux development(kernel related bugs, device driver related, networking layer related,...) Any pointers would be useful. Thank you, -AD."}
{"_id": "129835", "title": "Resources relating to Java EE and Scala", "text": "Are there any good sites / blogs / books / articles on using Java EE together with Scala? Or indeed articles saying that it should not be done. Many Scala resources talk about using Akka and Lift. Akka solves a different domain problem than Java EE. I don't know Lift, but I assume its geared towards the web end of Java EE and doesn't replace app server containers which provide transactions, security, scalability, resource management, reliability, etc. (all those things which Java EE markets itself as being good at)."}
{"_id": "245432", "title": "How to get an image or rectangle to detect collision with another image", "text": "Can someone please explain to me how to detect collision with another image? The tutorial I was watching explained how to detect if a collision occurs between two rectangles but I would like to use two images instead. Please see the code below.               public void paintComponent(Graphics g){      //g.drawImage(yellowBall, xCoor, yCoor, this);     Rectangle r1 = new Rectangle((boardXSize/2), (boardYSize/2),50, 50);     Rectangle r2 = new Rectangle(200, (250),50, 50);     g.setColor(Color.red);     g.fillRect(r1.x, r1.y, r1.width, r1.height);     g.setColor(Color.blue);     g.fillRect(r2.x, r2.y, r2.width, r2.height);          if(r1.intersects(r2)){             System.out.println(\"Collision Detected\");          }     repaint();          }      How can I detect if r1 intersects yellowBall instead of r2? Please keep responses at the beginner level but of course, any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks!!"}
{"_id": "228571", "title": "Hadoop and Object Reuse, Why?", "text": "In Hadoop, objects passed to reducers are reused. This is extremely surprising and hard to track down if you're not expecting it. Furthermore, the original tracker for this \"feature\" doesn't offer any evidence that this change actually improved performance (unless I missed it). > It would speed up the system substantially if we reused the keys and values > [...] but I think it is worth doing. This seems completely counter to this very popular answer. Is there some credence to the Hadoop developer's claim? Is there something \"special\" about Hadoop that would invalidate the notion of object creation being cheap?"}
{"_id": "245435", "title": "The destination of cout messages in a GUI program", "text": "I've been building some classes and functions in a static library which has the familiar printing of text messages to `stdout`:               cout << \"Hello World!\" << endl;      I've been developing this library for use in a console application but I'm considering also trying to make a GUI version, because it will be both useful and highly educational (for me). I wonder how is it possible to make output in a library sent to both `stdout` and GUI controls (like a status bar or a popup window). Since such messages are all sent (in my case anyway) to one destination (cout) could some sort of redirection be possible? I've always presumed something like this may be possible as people often release command line and GUI versions of their programs."}
{"_id": "114394", "title": "Scrum tool for Product Backlog management", "text": "My team and I are very keen on doing Scrum \"manual\"-style (with paper and scissors). Though, we are struggling to find a tool to manage our backlog. The main requirements are:   * To be able to print the backlog in cards to stick to the whiteboard   * To be able to assign backlog items to the releases manually So far we have not found anything that matches these criteria. Suggestions?"}
{"_id": "114396", "title": "How are dates typically handled with testing?", "text": "I am writing an app at the moment that has some pretty extensive business logic based around dates. I have several hundred thousand records to test and testers who want to see how those records are handled, which has worked well so far, however, some edge cases are difficult to replicate. The reason is that most of the logic is related to today's date, in one way or another. What is the best way to handle this with both unit testing and for traditional testing? The only way I can really think of is allowing for today's date to be faked and fixed."}
{"_id": "114397", "title": "Is it bad practice to use reflection to do DB inserts with data from an external service?", "text": "Our supplier's webservice is returning address objects (~30 fields) and I'm using LINQ and reflection to store the returned data straight into the databse. I loop over the attributes and set the value from the object to the LINQ class. I'm fairly new to refection and I'm worried this may be bad practice; it saves ~30 lines of code in 3 or 4 methods but I'm afraid it could introduce hard to fix bugs. **EDIT** Here is the code. Target is normally a LINQ to SQL entity and input would be a webservice object.               public static void SetValues(object target, object input)     {         Type targetType = target.GetType();         Type inputType = input.GetType();              PropertyDescriptorCollection inputProperties = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(inputType);         PropertyDescriptorCollection targetProperties = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(targetType);              foreach (PropertyDescriptor p in inputProperties)         {             object value = p.GetValue(input);                  var t = targetProperties.Find(p.Name, false);             if (t != null && value != null)             {                 if (value.GetType() == typeof(string) || value.GetType() == typeof(Int64) || value.GetType() == typeof(int) || value.GetType() == typeof(Boolean))                 {                     t.SetValue(target, value);                      }                 else if (value.GetType() == typeof(DateTime) || value.GetType() == typeof(DateTime?))                 {                     if ((DateTime)value > DateTime.MinValue)                     {                         t.SetValue(target, value);                     }                      }                 else                 {                     t.SetValue(target, value.ToString());                 }             }              }"}
{"_id": "216953", "title": "Making Class Diagram for MVC Pattern Project", "text": "I have a question about making a class diagram for an MVC based college senior project. If we have 2 actors of users in my system, lets say `Undergrad` and `Graduate` students are the children of abstract class called `User`. (Generalisation) Each actor has his own features. My question, in such case, do we need to have these two actors in separate classes which inherits from the abstract class `User`? even though, I'm going to implement them as roles using one Model called `User Model` ? I think you can see my confusion here. I code using MVC pattern, but I've never made a class diagram for this pattern. Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "114398", "title": "Is it a betrayal of user privacy to publish server logs with IP addresses in them?", "text": "I have a web application with server logs that are attractive to researchers. Is it ethical or not to release the logs publicly? They contain visitor IP addresses and the user-agent but no more identity-related information than that."}
{"_id": "160797", "title": "Extend functionallity of a class: inheritance or java's dynamic proxy", "text": "Currently I have three classes and respective interfaces and respective builders:   * **Tree** : the data structure (implemented in `SimpleTree`)   * **ProbabilityTree** : is a `Tree` with added functionality to randomly select child nodes and to adjust the probability of selecting a node (implemented in `ProbabilityTreeImpl`).   * **DynamicTree** : is a `ProbabilityTree` which dynamically constructs nodes when a requested node doesn't exist yet. The client code needs Trees that support both random selection of nodes, as provided by `ProbabilityTree`, and the tree dynamically growing when yet unexisting nodes are requested, as provided by `DynamicTree`. _NOTE: Currently all three trees are immutable after having been build; for`DynamicTree` this means clients cannot add or remove nodes, but the tree itself can automatically change._ _NOTE: SeeGithub gist with the five Java classes for the code._ There are at least two issues with this design:   1. `DynamicTree` is derived from `ProbabilityTree`, while conceptionally these two capabilities are unrelated (i.e. orthogonal).   2. Using inheritance to add functionally is often considered \"bad design\" (correct me if I'm wrong here). * * * An alternative design would be to decouple `ProbabilityTree` and `DynamicTree` using something similar to the decorator and/or adapter pattern. Using Java's dynamic Proxy might enable \"decorators\" that extend the interface and that can decorate other `Tree`s with extended interfaces; i.e.:               TreeDecorator implements InvocationHandler, ... {         Tree adapted;         ...         Object invoke(Method method, Object[] args) {             if( \u00abthis class can/should handle method\u00bb ) {                 return method.invoke(this, args);             } else if ( \u00abthis.adapted can/should handle method\u00bb ){                 return method.invoke(adapted, args);             }         };     }      Again there are some issue's:   1. Using `Proxy` makes the code more difficult to understand. What shall I do? Use inheritance to extend functionallity, use dynamic proxy, or something else?"}
{"_id": "160794", "title": "Can display issues affect SEO?", "text": "Can website display issues on certain platforms affect a website's search rankings and potentially hinder any SEO efforts?"}
{"_id": "195252", "title": "Dependency Inversion Principle: How to define \"high-level policy\" and \"low-level detail\" to other people?", "text": "I am trying to explain the dependency inversion principle to my (mostly junior) colleagues. How can we define which one is the \"high-level policy\" and which one is the \"low-level detail\" in a software? For example, if our software automates workflow of several business applications, why do we say that the workflow automation is the high-level policy and the business applications are the details?"}
{"_id": "207378", "title": "QFS (Quantcast File System): Scalable for medium \"big data\" problems or only for extremely large", "text": "I am doing some investigating and research into programming \"big data\", and am particularly interested in QuantCast (QFS) because it is written in my own favourite programming language, C++. Looking at how this may play a part in the solution to certain \"big data\" problems, I know this can manage implementation of peta-byte file systems. I would like to know however how scalable it is for big-data systems that are not as hugely big. I have seen a lot of comparisons between QFS and Hadoop, and how QFS can outperform Hadoop and so anyone who uses Hadoop may consider using Quantcast (if they just want mega performance). Essentially is it scalable for medium to large projects? (Someone asked the same about BDD but not Quantcast) (Also I have seen Hadoop and thus Quantcast being called a \"database\". I would call it a filesystem, on top of which you might build a database but wouldn't call it a database itself)."}
{"_id": "195370", "title": "How might a simple IDE work? Algorithms/Pseudocode/etc", "text": "**Background** In a recent school software engineering module, I needed to developed a static program analyzer. Given a ficticious programming language source code, I need to analyze it, then the user can query about the program, eg. what statements uses this variable, which modifies, statements affected by another etc. **Possible link with IDEs** At first, it sounded very useless... it was a software engineering module but in reality more like some theoretical programming language module instead. However, some of these functionality could be what goes into the IDE's we use. So I was wondering how might some common IDE functionality be implemented. _**Static_ Program Analyzer (how to make it _dynamic/realtime_ )** In the project, we designed the analyzer for a _static_ program ... but who needs that? In the IDEs we use, everything is near realtime, as we type, syntax highlighting is done, the IDE's analyzes the code for errors, variables that are not used, etc. How is it done so efficiently? In the static analyzer, there is a parser that parses the source, builds AST & CFG. This can then be used to see if a variable is used by some statement etc. In reality what can be cached are cached. There are many areas that can be optimized, but I am not sure any (I can think of) can make it realtime. Some problems I can see are:   * As we type, things are incomplete, this will lead to a parsing error, but a real IDE somehow is smart enough to know where to continue parsing.    * As we type, things change very rapidly, we cannot parse the entire program. Even if I make the parser smart enough and parse only the changed line, I need to update my AST/CFG/expire relevant cache etc.  **In a real IDE, I don't see that CPU usage spikes as we type etc. How is it done?** Some might suggest looking at the source of some open source IDE eg. Eclipse or Netbeans. But I expect it to be really hard to understand such a big app by just reading code. What I hope to get is a high level _idea_ of how might a simple IDE (and some of the commonly used features) be implemented, a simple paragraph or some pseudocode etc. Some common features I can think of now are   * Refactoring (something like a contextual find and replace)   * Find usages   * Go to definition   * Auto complete (find all possible classes, variables, methods in context)   * Syntax highlighting For static code, some might be trivial to implement, but an IDE is _(near) realtime_"}
{"_id": "95876", "title": "Audiobooks for programmers?", "text": "I'm a programmer with a two-hour round trip commute to work each day. I'd like to fill some of that time with audiobooks about software development. Any audiobooks that would help me become a better programmer would be appreciated. I'm thinking that books about design patterns and non-fiction about computing history might be good here, but I'm open to anything. Keeping in mind that I will be listening to this in a car, what are the best audiobooks that I can listen to? EDIT: Many people have also suggested podcasts. This is appreciated, but since podcasts arrive in a constantly arriving stream of data rather than as a finite amount of data, ways to juggle all of these different content streams would also be appreciated. To be more specific to my situation, my commuting vehicle has an MP3 CD player, USB input for MP3 files, and AUX input. I own Android and webOS devices that can be plugged into the AUX input."}
{"_id": "200955", "title": "Are unused CSS rules so costly that they must be removed?", "text": "I have been reading various Web application optimizing articles and many of them suggest to remove unused CSS rules. Currently, I have a page which has jQueryUI css, Bootstrap CSS, Datatables CSS and couple of more. All together they translate to about couple of thousands of rules ( my estimate ) and am quite sure I am using only 20-30% I asked my friend in UK who has very high speed broadband, to check the page load time and he says, like for every other page on his connection this one too loaded in a second which is quite suggestive that rendering time seems insignificant to the page load time. How much improvement is expected in removing unused CSS rules? Is it really worth it?"}
{"_id": "95872", "title": "Would you purchase hardware with your own money to use at work to do your job better?", "text": "At work, I was given a reasonably-spec'ed machine (dual quad 2GHz, 4GB RAM, 160GB 7200RPM drive, Win7), but it was lacking in a few places (HDD / RAM). The IT staff was OK with me replacing hardware with my own, so now I'm sporting an SSD and an extra 8GB of RAM (so I can run multiple Visual Studios & virtual machines). I realize it was the company's business decision to pick the machines they did, but at the same time faster hardware made me happier and more productive at work. I guess my question is, am I the only one (self-employs not withstanding :) who's willing to spend personal money on their work hardware for a better quality of life, and should I approach it in a different way? Is it possible to retroactively say \"I think you should reimburse me for this $500 in hardware because [blah]\"?"}
{"_id": "118733", "title": "How to make sure I don't end up with the blame", "text": "I'm working on a contract at present where I'm essentially working as a subcontractor for a fairly big digital agency. The real end customer is a big corp. So far, I have of course done an **_amazing_** job :)   * The agency had a \"spec\" up front - basically a \"sitemap\" for the app. This was my \"blueprint\".   * Inside the first week, I built a working prototype app complete with a new data service - which met the sitemap perfectly. Milestone formally accepted - lots of +ive feedback from the agency.   * In the second week I built and delivered a beautiful fully working CMS for the data (really, it's beautiful - I'm stunned). Milestone formally accepted - again lots of +ive feedback from the agency. Then the problems started... basically I needed the assets and design pack to complete the app and the project, and what the agency delivered was rubbish - unfinished photoshop files completely skipping half of the app and with every page having undecided A/B options. There's nothing decided in this design pack, so we can't even start on the next project phase. I flagged this with them a few times... they ignored me for a week, then came back with \"what are you talking about? we finished the design pack weeks ago\"... I then asked them if they'd looked at what they produced... they then looked at it and admitted it needed \"some work\". Since then it's been more delays and nothing delivered. The situation now is that:   * this project is now being delayed and delayed and delayed which is causing problems all over the place (with the customer, within the agency, within my schedule)   * I get the sense that the problems/delays are actually being blamed on \"that subcontractor\"   * my only contact in the project is one person in the agency - so no-one has any visibility of what the true situation is. I can cope with the delays and the problems, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to work with this current contact ever again. However, I'd really quite like to work for other people in this same agency in the future - and (in my dreams) I also wouldn't mind getting some contact with the end customer too. How can I avoid a \"bum rap\" on this project? Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "104216", "title": "What's the best way to version a multi-component project", "text": "I have a program which is built of 5 major components. I find the standard version numbering too limiting because I would like to see what version each compoment is at. Has anyone found an easy way to do this other than list each separately?"}
{"_id": "197990", "title": "Using gerrit (or similar tool) on a team where multiple devs work on a single feature", "text": "We have a team of roughly ~8 devs who regularly work on the same feature over the course of a 3 week sprint. It isn't quite pair programming, but in our current workflow devs regularly push up incomplete code for a colleague to complete. This worked fine before we introduced Gerrit, but now our commits need to represent chunks of test-passing, complete, logical functionality, and so the model breaks. My only idea is to have everybody push up to a separate, untracked branch up until the functionality is ready for review, then squash everything into commits that make sense and push up. Is there another Gerrit-ized workflow that could work? I know this is a widely discussed topic on Google Groups, and that there has recently been some discussion of Gerrit topic reviews, but I wanted to see if there is anybody out there using Gerrit in this way, and what the suggested workflow would be."}
{"_id": "118734", "title": "ELMAH - Where does it fit right...?", "text": "The question title may not be correct. I have worked in a very big ASP.NET web application (without using MVC), there I used a simple error handling strategy :   1. Enclose every statement in try..catch block   2. Have a error label on each page at the very top    3. If any exception occurs then show the error description on the Error Label. Now I am switching to a new project where MVC 3 framework is to be used, so I came across ELMAH. It is indeed a nice tool for error handling and logging. But as I read from many sites, it basically logs unhandled exceptions. If I use the same strategy that every statement in try..catch block and then show the error message on the page at the top, then where does ELMAH sit, how will it log the exception? Which exception will it log if I am not putting a single statement outside try..catch block. So there is no scope for the unhandled exception."}
{"_id": "61070", "title": "Keeping a project alive with a \"skeleton crew\"? Bad/good idea?", "text": "For political reasons, management seems intent on keeping a project progressing, but stripping away the most senior developers to perform other higher-priority tasks. Instead one more junior developer will be working on the project while consulting periodically with senior devs. Ostensibly the project will keep progressing, but at a much slower pace on the back burner. This seemingly satisfies both those that need the senior devs to fight fires and those that want to see the project continue to be worked on. In theory the senior devs will come back full time 6 mos from now to finish off the project. Is this a good idea? What problems could this cause? Would it be better to completely staff or completely halt the project and finish other stuff?"}
{"_id": "222534", "title": "Should db be mapped directly to the UI or should there be multiple layers of enties/models with mappings to/from each?", "text": "I would like to know arguments for/against this concept. Technologies in use from the bottom up:   * MSSQL 2012 DB (exclusively accessed via sprocs)    * Entity Framework    * WCF Web Service    * ASP.NET Webforms Someone on my team would like to use Entity Framework to map the sprocs to ComplexTypes, and then use those ComplexTypes as DTOs, eventually using them as a view model to display on the page. His argument is that it's the fastest/easiest way and we'll get noticeable/valued changes more quickly. Also, he does not like the idea of the numerous mappings that would be necessary to go from DB -> Entity -> DTO -> ViewModel. Another consideration is, the majority of things from the DB are going one direction (db -> web), with only a few things actually needing to be changed on the UI and saved/persisted to the DB. To scope this question, there are thousands of previously existing sprocs written against poorly designed database structure (think tables that are 276 columns wide and single rows actually contain multiple entities). The poor structure isn't about to change soon because there are over 200 legacy apps written on top of it."}
{"_id": "116822", "title": "Animated requirements analysis flows with PPT or other software?", "text": "I've seen people do neat little PowerPoint shows that show data flowing in and out of a system that they use to wow a customer. Is this something you've done before? like show data in from source 1 and out to source 2? I've used mockups and DFD's but never presented anything in motion and I wonder if that adds value or ethos."}
{"_id": "151815", "title": "How to deal with ad-hoc mindsets?", "text": "I joined a dev team of six two month ago. People are nice, all is good. But more and more I observe an ad-hoc mindset. Stuff gets quick fixed, at the cost of future usability, there is little testing and two people happily admitted, that they like to carry the knowledge around in their head, rather than to write it down. How to deal with this? I'd like to lead by example, but time is limited - I like architecting _and_ actually implementing the stuff. But I'm afraid the ad-hoc mindset infects me and rather than striving for clearness and simplicity in design and code - which isn't simple to establish - I get pulled down the drain of an endless spiral of hacks on hacks - which no outsider can uncouple - just for schedule's and management's sake."}
{"_id": "110253", "title": "Database source control", "text": "Should database files(scripts etc.) be on source control? If so, what is the best method to keep it and update it there? Is there even a need for database files to be on source control since we can put it on a development server where everyone can use it and make changes to it if needed. But, then we can't get it back if someone messes it up. What approach is best used for databases on source-control?"}
{"_id": "110252", "title": "What's the best way to use a kinect with multiple software music synthesizers?", "text": "For the past few months I've been looking into developing a Kinect based multitouch interface for a variety of software music synthesizers. The overall strategy I've come up with is to create objects, either programatically or (if possible) algorithmically to represent various controls of the soft synth. These should have;   * X position    * Y position   * Height   * Width   * MIDI output channel   * MIDI data scaler (convert x-y coords to midi values) 2 strategies I've considered for agorithmic creation are XML description and somehow pulling stuff right off the screen (ie given a running program, find xycoords of all controls). I have no idea how to go about that second one, which is why I express it in such specific technical language ;). I could do some intermediate solution, like using mouse clicks on the corners of controls to generate an xml file. Another thing I could do, that I've seen frequently in flash apps, is to put the screen size into a variable and use math to build all interface objects in terms of screen size. Note that it isn't strictly necessary to make the objects the same size as onscreen controls, or to represent all onscreen objects (some are just indicators, not interactive controls) Other considerations; Given (for now) two sets of X/Y coords as input (left and right hands), what is my best option for using them? My first instinct is/was to create some kind of focus test, where if the x/y coords fall within the interface object's bounds that object becomes active, and then becomes inactive if they fall outside some other smaller bounds for some period of time. The cheap solution I found was to use the left hand as the pointer/selector and the right as a controller, but it seems like I can do more. I have a few gesture solutions (hidden markov chains) I could screw around with. Not that they'd be easy to get to work, exactly, but it's something I could see myself doing given sufficient incentive. So, to summarize, the problem is   * represent the interface (necessary because the default interface always expects mouse input)   * select a control   * manipulate it using two sets of x/y coords (rotary/continuous controller) or, in the case of switches, preferrably use a gesture to switch it without giving/taking focus. Any comments, especially from people who have worked/are working in multitouch io/NUI, are greatly appreciated. Links to existing projects and/or some good reading material (books, sites, etc) would be a big help."}
{"_id": "195737", "title": "What is the best way to prove that in-code documentation is greater than extensive external documentation?", "text": "What is the best way to prove to my boss that in code documentation is greater than extensive external documents containing documentation and screenshots of code/ui? We have a group in the company running SAP code. Their documentation process involves hours of laborious documentation and screenshots of the code and the interface (before and after). They want us (C# developers) to follow the same rubric as they do. I want to argue that using comments in the code, and a great, self documenting language such as C# is fulfilling the need for documentation the same as, or greater than the other team's document method. Is there any published research by big companies that say external documentation is out dated and that in code comments are more efficient? (or something similar to this point) Edit - This has nothing to do with users. this is NOT user training documentation. Only internal use Edit Edit - This has nothing to do with Design Documents or Architectural Documents. Its comparing screenshots of code, before and after a change, and screenshots of forms, before and after the change, and putting them into a document with extensive documentation, opposed to simply having great incode documentation. Would you really want to have to screenshot your code before and after every single baby change and then write a document explaining the change in great depth? when no one will ever use these documents as reference material in the future?"}
{"_id": "253633", "title": "How do I fix and prevent corrupted MySQL tables?", "text": "We have developed software that uses MySQL. After some months of usage, some of the database tables had been corrupted and need to be repaired. Because of the corruption,we are not able to create a backup using Navicat, and we can not generate a dump too. The log file has been indicating the following error for more than 2 days:               YYMMDD HH:MM:SS [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Can't open file: 'ini.MYI' (errno:145)      What is the cause of this corruption? How can we fix them? How can we prevent the database tables from corruption in the future?"}
{"_id": "253639", "title": "Should I limit my type name suffix vocabulary when using OOP?", "text": "My co-workers tend to think that it is better to limit non-domain type suffixes to a small fixed set of OOP-pattern inspired words, e.g.:   * *Service   * *Repository   * *Factory   * *Manager   * *Provider I believe there is no reason to not extend that set with more names, e.g. (some \"translation\" to the previous vocabulary is given in brackets):   * *Distributor (=> *DistributionManager or *SendingService)   * *Generator   * *Browser (=> *ReadonlyRepositoryService)   * *Processor   * *Manipulator (=> *StateMachineManager)   * *Enricher (=> *EnrichmentService) (*) denotes some domain word, e.g. \"Order\", \"Student\", \"Item\" etc. The domain is probably not complex enough to use specialized approaches such as DDD which could drive the naming."}
{"_id": "214552", "title": "Helper functions - well defined inputs or well defined outputs?", "text": "### Problem In Codeigniter (PHP framework), I am trying to create a helper function that will inject an ActiveRecord (for MySQL) command into a chain of existing ActiveRecord calls. The reasoning for this is that the current ActiveRecord commands available are not reliable enough, and produce differing results depending on what parameters are passed in. For example:               $param = \"\";     $this->db->where('field', \"\");      produces               WHERE `field` = \"\"      This would provide a result set where **only blank fields were returned**. This is not always the intended behavior, as the input comes from a web form, and may be the result of no specific query being submitted - thus **all results should be returned instead**. ### Attempted solution What I decided to come up with, was a helper method that would take in a set of unknown inputs, and return a result set that would match my desired behavior (eg. return all results or return none). Using test cases and a test method to abstract the desired set of inputs and outputs away, I hoped to produce an easy-to-call method for coercing the database results into my desired behavior. This would be easier then say, **coercing the input into an expected type** , and then using the unreliable behavior of Codeigniter's ActiveRecord commands. My main concern however, is that my helper function may be trying to do too much - my colleague described it as a magic method that takes anything and may have arcane implementation details. It would thus be less readable than the ActiveRecord convention (which is more well-known) and harder to maintain. Is my function the best way to go about it, or are there better alternatives out there?"}
{"_id": "214557", "title": "Rails: Useful example of delegate and Law of Demeter", "text": "I am currently learning about `delegate` and the Law of Demeter. I understand the Law of Demeter, but I can't seem to find a good example of where using `delegate` to avoid breaking the law would actually even be useful. I want to find an example related to my project, since I have to give a presentation. The only line of code that I found that could possibly be breaking the Law of Demeter is the following: `@game.promotions.find_by_promo_type(\"cross\")` The model `Game` `has_many` `Promotions` and it is reaching across another model to execute a `find` call based on promotions attribute `promo_type`. From my understanding this is a violation of the Law of Demeter, and I should implement the following solution.               class Game < ActiveRecord::Base        has_many :promotions             delegate :find_by_promo_type, :to => :promotion     end      Can you give me an example where this would actually be useful besides \"the Law of Demeter says so\". The only thing I can think of, is for some reason I wanted to change the name of `promotions` to `promos`, then the solution would be useful because I would only need to make the following change and `:find_by_promo_type` will still work for `Game`               class Game < ActiveRecord::Base        has_many :promos             delegate :find_by_promo_type, :to => :promos     end      The only thing is, I believe this argument is flawed. If I were to change a models name, I would also have to refactor code in many other places that don't even break the Law of Demeter. It's hard to believe that this is all the Law of Demeter can accomplish in regards to this example. Can somebody please help me understand this."}
{"_id": "155318", "title": "SQLite resources or any other storage concept for mobile applications?", "text": "I would like to know what storage concepts are used for mobile or handheld devices, where an app is operated on?. AFAIK one of them is SQlite. Can anyone shed a light on this concept? perhaps links and resources will be much useful to many of new developers. Thanks a ton.:) EDIT: My target would be Android and ios OS."}
{"_id": "155316", "title": "What ever happened to the Defense Software Reuse System (DSRS)?", "text": "I've been reading some papers from the early 90s about a US Department of Defense software reuse initiative called the Defense Software Reuse System (DSRS). The most recent mention of it I could find was in a paper from 2000 - A Survey of Software Reuse Repositories > ### Defense Software Repository System (DSRS) > > The DSRS is an automated repository for storing and retrieving Reusable > Software Assets (RSAs) [14]. The DSRS software now manages inventories of > reusable assets at seven software reuse support centers (SRSCs). The DSRS > serves as a central collection point for quality RSAs, and facilitates > software reuse by offering developers the opportunity to match their > requirements with existing software products. DSRS accounts are available > for Government employees and contractor personnel currently supporting > Government projects... > > ...The DoD software community is trying to change its software engineering > model from its current software cycle to a process-driven, domain-specific, > architecture-based, repository-assisted way of constructing software [15]. > In this changing environment, the DSRS has the highest potential to become > the DoD standard reuse repository because it is the only existing deployed, > operational repository with multiple interoperable locations across DoD. > Seven DSRS locations support nearly 1,000 users and list nearly 9,000 > reusable assets. The DISA DSRS alone lists 3,880 reusable assets and has 400 > user accounts... > > The far-term strategy of the DSRS is to support a virtual repository. These > interconnected repositories will provide the ability to locate and share > reusable components across domains and among the services. An effective and > evolving DSRS is a central requirement to the success of the DoD software > reuse initiative. Evolving DoD repository requirements demand that DISA > continue to have an operational DSRS site to support testing in an actual > repository operation and to support DoD users. The classification process > for the DSRS is a basic technology for providing customer support [16]. This > process is the first step in making reusable assets available for > implementing the functional and technical migration strategies. > > ...   >  [14] DSRS - Defense Technology for Adaptable, Reliable Systems   >  URL: http://ssed1.ims.disa.mil/srp/dsrspage.html   >  [15] STARS - Software Technology for Adaptable, Reliable Systems   >  URL: http://www.stars.ballston.paramax.com/index.html   >  [16] D. E. Perry and S. S. Popovitch, \u201cInquire: Predicate-based use and > reuse,''   >  in Proceedings of the 8th Knowledge-Based Software Engineering Conference, > pp. 144-151, September 1993.   >  ... Is DSRS dead, and were there any post-mortem reports on it? Are there other more-recent US government initiatives or reports on software reuse?"}
{"_id": "127795", "title": "Suggesting albums based on friends' top ten lists", "text": "Just wondering if someone could suggest a good algorithm in the collaborative filtering vein that I could use to suggest music choices based on top ten lists. This is a personal project, I am a member of a private music blog where most of the users recently submitted \"best of 2011\" lists. The lists range in size (say 10-50 albums) and are not ranked. Have around 100 lists. Basically hoping to give each user some recommendations based on the correlation of their list with everyone else's."}
{"_id": "127792", "title": "Ideas on the best way to structure my app in Xcode", "text": "I'd like my app to show locations of nearby restaurants, with different categories. It would have a screen with a button to select which categories should be shown. Depending on which button is pressed, map pins come up at nearby locations, and the pins can be pressed for more information. For storing all the restaurant data, should I create a list using 'enum', similar to the Apple sample code 'MapCallouts'?"}
{"_id": "82341", "title": "Ideas for scraping a home-brewed Php-powered bug system", "text": "I work at a large company, and we are stuck with a crappy home-baked bug tracking tool, which does too many things half-decently, but it search functionality is next-to-impossible to use (has about 80 fields that one has to / can fill out) and the search needs to be precise. We have many duplicate bugs filed that are never consolidated, plus pulling up all bugs filed against some product in some version just will not be easy AT ALL. Getting rid of the current system is a political and strategical impossibility. Hundreds of people are tied into it. What I am hoping to do it iterate over bugs 1 through however many (there is a way, I believe) and then save the resulting HTML pages named 'bug000001.html', 'bug000002.html', etc. After that I would want some sort of Google-Style full text indexing going. What we have is so bad, that doing this would be worthwhile. Bugs do not change that much over time, so I am not that worried about being out-of-sync with the original - it will not be great. So, my question is: suppose I have downloaded the html files in the same folder. What free and open source tool can I use then that would allow fuzzy search on the content? I realize that I can concoct a specific regex every time I search that would probably do the task, but I would like to make this even easier, where mis-spellings do not hurt. I realize that Google's full power of personalized, history-based search will probably not be accessible to me, but I will gladly settle for something close, that is free and easy to use. If you have suggestions for a good free and open source tool/Python library that I can use to automate simple browser actions, such as entering text into a textbox, clicking the button and then saving the content into an HTML file, then please list that as well, although that probably should be a separate question. **EDIT** I do not have access to the source code for PhP front end or back end; this is all locked away by socialists on another continent."}
{"_id": "82342", "title": "Providing work experience on my resume", "text": "I have a question in writing my resume. I am looking for a career in Java/J2EE etc., I had worked as a teaching assistant for Data Structures in Java. This was from Aug 2009-May 2010. I got internship on PHP during May 2010 and as PHP developer in my univ as RA during Jan 2011 to May 2011. Since I am looking for a long term career in java should I mention the teaching assistant position i.e., Aug 2009- may 2010 at the top or the most recent experience at the top in my experience list."}
{"_id": "215603", "title": "Is \"code that generates code\" really all that great?", "text": "I was looking through CodePen's \"popular pens\" and I noticed this cool little spiral animation somebody made with a seemingly ridiculously small amount of code. This is quite impressive until you click the headings for HTML and CSS to show the \"compiled\" versions of the same code. Suddenly the 3 lines of HAML and ~40 lines of SCSS turns into a gigantic monster of repetition. Here's where my question comes in: Is it acceptable to do something like this in practice? Don't get me wrong - I love using preprocessors to help me write code faster, but in some cases it looks like it's an automatic copy-paste machine."}
{"_id": "120228", "title": "Is there a name for \"More events than expected\" bug?", "text": "Is there a **name for a family of bugs** , that are caused by assumption, that user would generate only 1 event during the execution of the handler ? Simplest example is: animation triggered by click, which can run several copies of itself, if user rapidly clicks several times."}
{"_id": "215609", "title": "Help in (re)designing my Swing application", "text": "I have developed a Swing application that controls execution of several scripts like jobs. I need to display the interim output of the jobs concurrently. I have followed MVC while writing the application. The application is working as expected. But off late I have the following requirements in hand:     1. A few of the script jobs need special user privileges to execute so as to access specialized resources. There seems to be no way in Java to impersonate as a different user while running an application.[examined in this question]. Also trying to run the Swing application as a scheduled task in windows is not helping.   2. Once started the jobs should be running even if the user logs off after starting the jobs. I am thinking of separating the execution logic from the UI and run that as a service; and introduce JMS in between the two layers so as to store/retrieve the interim the output. Note: I need to run this application on windows. Any ideas on meeting my requirements, will be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "153410", "title": "What are the design principles that promote testable code? (designing testable code vs driving design through tests)", "text": "Most of the projects that I work on consider development and unit testing in isolation which makes writing unit tests at a later instance a nightmare. My objective is to keep testing in mind during the high level and low level design phases itself. I want to know if there are any well defined design principles that promote testable code. One such principle that I have come to understand recently is Dependency Inversion through Dependency injection and Inversion of Control. I have read that there is something known as SOLID. I want to understand if following the SOLID principles indirectly results in code that is easily testable? If not, are there any well-defined design principles that promote testable code? I am aware that there is something known as Test Driven Development. Although, I am more interested in designing code with testing in mind during the design phase itself rather than driving design through tests. I hope this makes sense. One more question related to this topic is whether it's alright to re-factor an existing product/project and make changes to code and design for the purpose of being able to write a unit test case for each module?"}
{"_id": "153416", "title": "using source control to create release notes?", "text": "Lets say i have an off the shelf eccomerce cart. I put all the code inside subversion. I start to make changes and check the code changes back in. is it possible to then display each \"check in\" with the developer messages so that i can make release notes? I would like to use this for actual quoted time."}
{"_id": "251670", "title": "ISerializable vs WCF attributes", "text": "In C# .NET there is two main possibilities to serialize and object.   1. Implementing the **ISerializable** interface?   2. Using the [DataContract/DataMember] serialization **attribute** of WCF? What are the differences of this two possibilities and what is the better in term of execution time."}
{"_id": "191298", "title": "How to maintain synchronised state across threads - is this a good use for a Singleton?", "text": "I hear a lot about \"Singletons are always bad\" around the place. I don't hate on them to that degree but I try not to use them if I have a better alternative. In this case I have a system that handles a lot of requests, each of which comes in on its own thread. Every request that comes in needs to be allocated its own unique sequential Id. Currently I have a Singleton class whose role is to initiate this Id at start- up then maintain it while the system runs. The Singleton is created/retrieved and the Id value incremented in a thread safe way, as one would expect. It is actually handed out to the threads on creation by Dependency Injection, but the core of the class is a classic Singleton built around a static representation of the current Id value. Given that we are only likely to do more work that requires a multi-threaded approach, I would be interested to know whether there is a way I could implement this type of functionality in a way that allows data to be maintained synchronously across threads that are otherwise unaware of each other, without using the much feared Singleton pattern?"}
{"_id": "251675", "title": "How to avoid reinventing the wheel when using complex frameworks?", "text": "For the backstory, I'm developing a GUI application in C#/WPF. I already had in my code quite many instances of               <ComboBox ItemsSource=\"{Binding Items}\">         <ComboBox.ItemTemplate>             <DataTemplate>                 <TextBlock Text=\"{Binding ItemName}\"/>             </DataTemplate>         </ComboBox.ItemTemplate/>     </ComboBox>      when I accidentally stumbled upon `DisplayMemberPath` during a marginally related StackOverflow search, which makes the above               <ComboBox ItemsSource=\"{Binding Items}\"               DisplayMemberPath=\"ItemName\"/>      Now `ComboBox` has 158 public properties, and I really doubt that I should read all of their descriptions before even starting to use a ComboBox. On the other hand I'm really afraid of encountering this problem on a larger scale, since this is my first WPF app and I sometimes get the feeling of doing it wrong. Note that online tutorials apart from the official documentation are very unreliable, often wrong and/or poorly written; at least I found it hard to find a good one. On the other hand, any programming books I've encountered went into too much detail, taking whole chapters explaining things that were obvious to me after the first paragraph, so I skipped a lot of parts. _When using a complex framework or library, how can I avoid accidentally skipping a relevant part of the impenetrably huge documentation, therefore creating unnecessary work for myself?_ I don't think this is a duplicate of What kind of process should I use to learn a big system? or How do you dive into large code bases?, because these are about learning a codebase that you have to understand/work on/modify/improve, also assuming that you have access to the code itself. My question is about being a user of a framework, and the task at hand is \"given the huge official documentation and Google, efficiently find those parts of the framework that I can use to make my work easier\"."}
{"_id": "251679", "title": "Unit testing - should tests for a method validate the results of other methods?", "text": "One thing bothers me while I'm writing unit tests of my code. did tests of method should include validation of outcome from other methods? Of course, public methods. Let's go to - rather trivial - example:               public int Solve(string forumla)     {         if (forumla.Contains(\"+\"))         {             return SolveAddiction(formula);         }         if (forumla.Contains(\"-\"))         {             return SolveSubstraction(formula);         }         throw new ArgumentException();     }          public int SolveAddiction(string formula)     {         var strings = formula.Split('+');         if (strings.Length != 2)         {             throw new ArgumentException();         }         int firstFactor = int.Parse(strings[0]);         int secondFactor = int.Parse(strings[0]);         return firstFactor + secondFactor;     }      In this case, should tests of `Solve` methods only test control flow, or each possible scenarios for `SolveAddiction`? Let's assume, that `SolveAddiction` and `SolveSubstraction` have they own tests. Using other words, did test scenarios for `Solve` should contains only:   * 2+2   * 2-2   * 2:2 Or also include:   * 2+2+2+2   * 2-2-2-2   * potato - hamster Best regards"}
{"_id": "56330", "title": "And if I ask the job interviewer for reasons to join the company?", "text": "In job interviews I am frequently asked if I know the company, explain why do I think I would be the best choice for this company, etc and I have never liked this kinds of questions. Using your experiences in job interviewing, what do you think it would happen if I ask the interviewer to explain me why he think the company is the best company for me and why I should accept their answer? Do you think it would be a good think or bad thing to do? Edit: the idea of the question would not be to \"challenge\" the interviewer. The idea of the question would be to see what he thinks about the company, what values he thinks are given importance inside the company and what are the strong points of the company."}
{"_id": "193672", "title": "Suggested Web Application Framework and Database for Enterprise, \u201cBig-Data\u201d App?", "text": "I have a web application that I have been developing for a small group within my company over the past few years, using Pipeline Pilot (plus jQuery and Python scripting) for web development and back-end computation, and Oracle 10g for my RDBMS. Users upload experimental genomic data, which is parsed into a database, and made available for querying, transformation, and reporting. Experimental data sets are large and have many layers of metadata. A given experimental data record might have a foreign key relationship with a table that describes this data point's assay. Assays can cover multiple genes, which can have multiple transcript, which can have multiple mutations, which can affect multiple signaling pathways, etc. Users need to approach this data from any point in those layers in the metadata. Since all data sets for a given data type can run over a billion rows, this results in some large, dynamic queries that are hard to predict. New data sets are added on a weekly basis (~1GB per set). Experimental data is never updated, but the associated metadata can be updated weekly for a few records and yearly for most others. For every data set insert the system sees, there will be between 10 and 100 selects run against it and associated data. It is okay for updates and inserts to run slow, so long as queries run quick and are as up-to-date as possible. The application continues to grow in size and scope and is already starting to run slower than I like. I am worried that we have about outgrown Pipeline Pilot, and perhaps Oracle (as the sole database). Would a NoSQL database or an OLAP system be appropriate here? What web application frameworks work well with systems like this? I'd like the solution to be something scalable, portable and supportable X-years down the road. Here is the current state of the application:   * Web Server/Data Processing: Pipeline Pilot on Windows Server + IIS    * Database: Oracle 10g, ~1TB of data, ~180 tables with several billion-plus row tables    * Network Storage: Isilon, ~50TB of low-priority raw data"}
{"_id": "166322", "title": "GPL licensed software installed on commercial hardware", "text": "Do vendors need to provide sources, at the customer's request, for GPL licensed software installed on the hardware they sell? For example, a vendor sells an IPTV box and pre-installs some proprietary software product which is linked with some GPLed library. As a consequence, the software becomes GPLed itself.   Does the vendor need to provide the source code for it? The vendor doesn't sell that software, he sells hardware."}
{"_id": "199738", "title": "git tagging comments - best practices", "text": "I've adopted a tagging system of x.x.x.x, and this works fine. However, you also need to leave a comment with your git tag. I've been using descriptions such as \"fixes bug Y\" or \"feature X\", but is this the best sort of comment to be leaving? Particularly, what if a tag encompasses several fixes, it seems not to make sense to have a very long tag comment. Does this mean that I should be creating a tag for every bug fix or feature, or should the tag comments be reflective of something else? I have a few ideas that may be good, but I'd love some advice from seasoned git tagging veterans :) For those who prefer specific examples:               1.0.0.0 - initial release     1.0.0.1 - bug fix for issue X     1.0.0.2 - (what if this is a bug fix for multiple issues, the comment would be too long, no?)      Another example, in this example, the comments are more or less the same as the tags, it seems redundant. Is there something else we could be describing? https://github.com/osCommerce/oscommerce2/tags"}
{"_id": "191126", "title": "What is tabular programming?", "text": "The Falcon programming language advertises itself as supporting tabular programming: > Falcon provides six integrated programming paradigms: procedural, object > oriented, prototype oriented, functional, tabular and message oriented. And > you don't have to master all of them; you just need to pick the ingredients > you prefer, and let the code follow your inspiration. The documentation expands a bit on how the language's flavour of tabular programming works, but it's focused on the language's own structures and syntax, and doesn't really explain the benefits of the paradigm (except of course those that are obvious from the simplistic examples). I'm a bit confused on how the whole thing works internally, from what I understand Falcon's `Table` is a native structure that works more or less as a relational table and could be described (in OO vernacular) as a native Record Set with relational querying capabilities. A horrible description, I know (blame my OO roots and years of abusing tequila). Could you help me get a better idea of what tabular programming is all about and how it works internally? **Clarification:** I am _not_ asking about Tabular Model Programming."}
{"_id": "191123", "title": "Why isn't the Microsoft Public License compatible with the GPL?", "text": "According to this GNU Project page, regarding Microsoft Public License (Ms- PL): > This is a free software license; it has a copyleft that is not strong, but > incompatible with the GNU GPL. They do not explain _why_ it is incompatible. I cannot find any satisfactory answers nor explanations via Google."}
{"_id": "255335", "title": "Automatic denormalization for a NoSQL database application", "text": "We have a use case where we store table-like data, but we know about the schema of the data only at runtime. In our application, a power user defines a schema and normal user can create records and make relations between those records. The problem that we are having is that when doing complex queries over the related \"tables\" (one could say, joins) with filtering and sorting, stuff becomes slow, which is logical. To give an example. Lets say we have an article table with 1M rows and supplier table with 500 rows. Some suppliers have 50K articles. Now lets say I want to get all the articles from that supplier, but sorted by the article name. This query is slow. Which is not strange as it basically creates some sort of temporary table/result, which it needs to sort, but it cannot do it fast as there is no index on a temporary table/result. Our current solution uses Neo4j, but I also tried this on orientdb and in both cases queries are slow, because of the same behavior. Now we have solved this problem for now by creating indexes at runtime based on the schema the user provided, denormalizing articles and suppliers in one index. The problem is that keeping this index up-to-date is very cumbersome. Lets say we want to filter on the articles table on its supplier name. Now the supplier name is in the index, but it has been replicated 50K times in the above example. So if the user changes the name of the supplier, 50K index records need to be updated. Giving us all sorts of performance headaches and timing issues such as what happends if the user in a couple of seconds changes the supplier name twice, we need to queue the operations. Etc etc. So my actual question, is there a clean, non-cumbersome way to automatically denormalize or index out of the box, for a system where the DB schema can change at run-time?"}
{"_id": "219091", "title": "How to scope code base health when interviewing for new a company?", "text": "I've recently started working for an awesome company, on a product which is a steaming pile once you go under the hood. Apart from asking for a code review (which I doubt I'd get anyway), what are the ways of estimating code quality when interviewing?"}
{"_id": "221848", "title": "How to implement change and new tools in a small dev team?", "text": "I have been tasked with producing a plan for implementing a slight change to the work of our developers (there are eight of us working at this company). The change affects a small portion of our work, but introduces a new tool that the developers aren't familiar with, and a new \"step\". _Very_ schematically the change looks like this Before change:   1. Write stuff   2. Do thing X After change:   1. Write stuff   2. Use tool A   3. Use tool B to do thing X What I have done so far is that I've written documentation for the use of tool A and tool B. My question is what should you be keeping in mind when introducing new tools/changes in development to a small development team? How do you assure that the transmission to the new way of doing things is smooth? What type of educational resources should be available? (The tools introduced are for version control of database schema [so it's only when we make changes the database schema that our development is affected], but I figured that was irrelevant to the topic)"}
{"_id": "9481", "title": "Are there any unions for software developers?", "text": "Why does Software Engineering not have union representation like other professional occupations, such as teaching? Are there any unions for software developers that exist and are successful?"}
{"_id": "221846", "title": "What is right choice of Data Access Layer for large application", "text": "I am using Singleton pattern for my application, I have used ADO.NET Entity framework as my Data Access Layer, after login to my application, it's taking 3 to 5 minutes to load the dashboard. Is there a way to reduce the time? Or I have to look for some other methods instead of Entity framework?"}
{"_id": "221841", "title": "Should a structure be refactored into smaller structures?", "text": "In one of the projects (in C), I have the code that looks like this ( ** _the names are obfuscated specially for question to not give out details of the probject_** ):               typedef struct Module_s {         /* These fields are parsed by f1() */         S1 *s11;         S2 *s12;         size_t n11;         size_t n12;         int i11;              /* These fields are parsed by f2() */         S2 *s21;         S3 *s22;         S4 *s23;         char *c24;              /* These fields are set by f3() and later */         void *v31;         bool b32;         S5 s33[N];         bool b34;     } Module_t;          {         /* Read only header of file and          * parse first 5 fields to determine how to load the rest. */         Module_t *module = f1(input_file);              /* Read the rest of file using information set by f1()          * and determine how f3() should preprocess it. */         f2(input_file, module);              /* Preprocess the file using information provided by f1() and f2(). */         f3(module);              /* Process the file using the information provided by f2() and f3(). */         f4(module);     }      Then, the question is, is it a good move to separate the `Module_t` into 3 smaller chunks, which will contain corresponding fields, set by each function? Then each function will only accept and return a smaller part of `Module_t`, which is probably good, but may complicate further development as interconnections become more complex \u2014 and keeping all the dependent fields in one place looks simpler. What I have in mind is this:               typedef struct SS1_s {         /* These fields are parsed by f1() */         S1 *s11;         S2 *s12;         size_t n11;         size_t n12;         int i11;     } SS1_t;               typedef struct SS2_s {         /* These fields are parsed by f2() */         S2 *s21;         S3 *s22;         S4 *s23;         char *c24;     } SS2_t;               typedef struct SS3_s {         /* These fields are set by f3() and later */         void *v31;         bool b32;         S5 s33[N];         bool b34;     } SS3_t;               typedef struct Module_s {         SS1_t ss1;         SS2_t ss2;         SS3_t ss3;     } Module_t;               {         /* Read only header of file and          * parse first 5 fields to determine how to load the rest. */         SS1_t *ss1 = f1(input_file);              /* Read the rest of file using information set by f1()          * and determine how f3() should preprocess it. */         SS2_t *ss2 = f2(input_file, ss1);              /* Preprocess the file using information provided by f1() and f2(). */         SS3_t *ss3 = f3(ss1, ss2);              /* Compose module and          * process the file using the information provided by f2() and f3().          * Store ss1 as well for future use. */         Module_t module = f4(ss1, ss2, ss3);     }      So, should I refactor the structure into smaller substructures?"}
{"_id": "233119", "title": "Where should CMS data logic go", "text": "We have a large web site written in `WebForms` and have begun implementing some new modules in MVC. We have a custom CMS in place. I put the data structure to hold CMS data in a `BaseModel` class. Now I`m wondering where would be the best palce to put the logic which calls the CMS data manager to get data relevant to the page. On one hand, I can create a `BaseModel`, which in its constructor receives a page Id, and calls the CMS manager. Then build all models on that model. On the other hand, I can do the same in a `BaseController`. I can't decide which is more correct, since I cannot think of any advantage one will have over the other. Most of my experience is in `WebForms`, so I am wondering what would be the more ASP.NET MVC way of placing this logic."}
{"_id": "224174", "title": "Do RESTful APIs tend to encourage anemic domain models?", "text": "I'm working on a project in which we are trying to apply both domain-driven design and REST to a service-oriented architecture. We aren't worrying about 100% REST compliance; it would probably be better to say we are trying to build resource-oriented HTTP APIs (~Level 2 of Richardson's REST maturity model). Nevertheless, we are trying to stay away from RPC-style use of HTTP requests, i.e. we attempt to implement our HTTP verbs according to RFC2616 rather than using `POST` to do `IsPostalAddressValid(...)`, for example. However, an emphasis on this seems to be at the expense of our attempt to apply domain-driven design. With only `GET`, `POST`, `PUT`, `DELETE` and a few other rarely used methods, we tend to build CRUDdy services, and CRUDdy services tend to have anemic domain models. `POST`: Receive the data, validate it, dump it to the data. `GET`: Retrieve the data, return it. No real business logic there. We also use messages (events) between the services, and it seems to me that most of the business logic ends up being build around that. Are REST and DDD at tension at some level? (Or am I misunderstanding something here? Are we maybe doing something else wrong?) Is it possible to build a strong domain model in a service-oriented architecture while avoiding RPC- style HTTP calls?"}
{"_id": "141825", "title": "Build tools for php, html, css, js web app development", "text": "What are some recommendations for a build tool that would allow me to upload changes to a web server or a repository and minify the js and css automatically, and possibly even run Closure compiler on the JavaScript? I'm not worried about doing anything with the php code other than update with most recent changes although in the future would like to have phpdoc updated automatically. Just wondering if there is some way to do all this other than an amalgam of scripts that run or have to be invoked every time?"}
{"_id": "141822", "title": "Low level Linux graphics", "text": "For educational purposes, I'd like to write an application on a Linux environment that can process keyboard events and draw graphics without huge dependencies like X or SDL. I presume that this must be possible, because X and SDL are just programs themselves, so they must rely on other methods inherent to the environment. Is this understanding correct? If so, where might I learn to write such a program? My limited experience tells me that it would involve making calls to the kernel, and/or writing to special files; however, I haven't been able to find any tutorials on the matter (I am not even sure what to Google). Also, in case it is relevant, I am running Debian Squeeze on Virtualbox. I have used a netinst cd without networking, so there isn't much installed on it currently. I will install `gcc`, but I am hoping I can get by with nothing more."}
{"_id": "233117", "title": "reloading singleton classes and dependency", "text": "I have a singleton object. It's a DAO that looks somewhat like this (pseudoish code):               class UsersDAO {       public usersDAO init(string sDSN){         variables.sDSN = sDSN;              return this;       }            public array getUsers(){         //do a query to get users, make into array              return aUsers;       }     }      my applications makes an instance of this and uses it throughout the codebase, but I also have another DAO that requires it:               class OrganisationsDAO {       public OrganisationsDAO init(UsersDAO oUsersDAO,string sDSN){          variables.sDSN = sDSN;          variables.oUsersDAO = oUsersDAO;               return this;       }            public array getUsersOrganisations(){         variables.aUsers = variables.oUsersDAO.getUsers();              //getOrganisations for the returned users              return aOrganisations;       }     }      so to make the OrganisationsDAO object I need to pass it the UsersDAO. At a later point in my applications life, I need to update the UsersDAO to include a `public user getUser(int userid)` function. I'm wondering, is there a way of passing through the new UsersDAO to objects that depend on it, without having to restart the application. In this instance the application is a website rather than a desktop based application."}
{"_id": "251093", "title": "What is the purpose of RESTful URIs for POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE methods?", "text": "In the process of conceiving a web application framework, I spent some time pondering the notion of RESTful paths. If I wanted to create e.g. a new topic, I might send a POST request to /topics. The parameters thereof might be something like: `{ topic: { body: 'Body' } }` As such, the type of resource being created can be inferred from the parameters. Since there is the top-level item 'topic', we can logically ascertain that the request is to create a topic. For me, the strange thing is that POST create is the one action that falls outside of the notion of either a singular resource or a collection. It is arguably neither. Sure, you're adding to a collection, but in contrast to say a `GET index` you are not retrieving any part of that collection, and the state of that collection to a large extent is irrelevant. In contrast to a `GET`, `PUT/PATCH`, or a `DELETE`, you are not retrieving a singular item based on an identifier. You are creating an item where one does not exist. I conceived of a \"master registrar\" service that would respond to all incoming `POST`requests. Imagine every form `POST`ing to `/`, with the master registrar determining the intended resource based on the params, and deferring to services that exist for the purpose of persisting a resource based on those params. In fact, for any non-GET action, the paths become irrelevant. They don't seem to have an important semantic purpose. A user is not going to link to a form's action URL. Even in the case of `PUT`, `PATCH`, or `DELETE` The type of resource being created or the resource being modified can be inferred from the parameters. For example, if we were editing a topic versus creating one, the parameters might be `{ topic: { id: 1, body: 'New Body'} }`. The presence of an ID in the parameters indicates that the topic in question already exists and should be retrieved foremost. I don't know if this is RESTful or not. Regardless, I cannot see why this approach is invalid or inadvisable. Given my caution and naivete, however, I'd like to know why it might be."}
{"_id": "113703", "title": "How much data should be required in a request to a webservice?", "text": "When recieving data from clients how much data that you provided to them should you require back from them? For example when clients order a product from a webservice should they just need to provide a product code? The other alternative would be to require the product code product name and product price ect. I have alway built webservices the former way with the minimum of data returned back to me, however I have just been consuming another web service that requires the vast majority of the data returned back to them. What are the advantages of the second way?"}
{"_id": "49260", "title": "Designing for an algorithm that reports progress", "text": "I have an iterative algorithm and I want to print the progress. However, I may also want it _not_ to print any information, or to print it in a different way, or do other logic. In an object oriented language, I would perform the following solutions: **Solution 1: virtual method** have the algorithm class MyAlgoClass which implements the algo. The class also implements a virtual reportIteration(iterInfo) method which is empty and can be reimplemented. Subclass the MyAlgoClass and override reportIteration so that it does what it needs to do. This solution allows you to carry additional information (for example, the file unit) in the reimplemented class. I don't like this method because it clumps together two functionalities that may be unrelated, but in GUI apps it may be ok. **Solution 2: observer pattern** the algorithm class has a register(Observer) method, keeps a list of the registered observers and takes care of calling notify() on each of them. Observer::notify() needs a way to get the information from the Subject, so it either has two parameters, one with the Subject and the other with the data the Subject may pass, or just the Subject and the Observer is now in charge of querying it to fetch the relevant information. **Solution 3: callbacks** I tend to see the callback method as a lightweight observer. Instead of passing an object, you pass a callback, which may be a plain function, but also an instance method in those languages that allow it (for example, in python you can because passing an instance method will remain bound to the instance). C++ however does not allow it, because if you pass a pointer to an instance method, `this` will not be defined. Please correct me on this regard, my C++ is quite old. The problem with callbacks is that generally you have to pass them together with the data you want the callback to be invoked with. Callbacks don't store state, so you have to pass both the callback and the state to the `Subject` in order to find it at callback execution, together with any additional data the `Subject` may provide about the event is reporting. **Question** My question is relative to the fact that I need to implement the opening problem in a language that is not object oriented, namely Fortran 95, and I am fighting with my usual reasoning which is based on python assumptions and style. I think that in Fortran the concept is similar to C, with the additional trouble that in C you can store a function pointer, while in Fortran 95 you can only pass it around. Do you have any comments, suggestions, tips, and quirks on this regard (in C, C++, Fortran and python, but also in any other language, so to have a comparison of language features that can be exploited on this regard) on how to design for an algorithm that must report progress to some external entity, using state from both the algorithm and the external entity ?"}
{"_id": "223729", "title": "proposed algorithm and representation of an algorithm", "text": "What is the difference between an ambiguity in a proposed algorithm and an ambiguity in the representation of an algorithm? I have done some research and found out that ambiguity in the representation of an algorithm is when the representation can be understood by a group of people and not clear to another group e.g. a layman and a programmer."}
{"_id": "19966", "title": "Which benchmarking software would you use to evaluate the performance of your development rig?", "text": "I have been tasked with evaluating a new PC for our dev team that is spec'd only slightly better than our current models. Could anyone recommend appropriate benchmarking software that would be useful to emulate typical development tasks?"}
{"_id": "49268", "title": "Are there architecture smells?", "text": "There are tons of resources on the web referring to and listing code smells. However, I've never seen information on _architectural smells_. Is this defined somewhere, and is there a list available? Has any formal research been done into architecture defects, and their impact on project speed, defects, and the like? **Edit:** I wasn't really looking for a list in the answers, but documentation (on the web or in a book) about architecture smells."}
{"_id": "21339", "title": "Which http response do you return to a hit from a blacklisted ip?", "text": "I have been using the http:BL to block bad IP's from accessing my site. If a malicious IP (comment spammer) trys to hit the site I just `exit` the web script which implicitly returns a `200 OK` response. Other responses I could return: 404 - Not found? If I return a 404 maybe the robots will think \"this is a waste of time, lets move on to attack another site\" which would reduce the load on the site (I currently get about 2 spam-hits per second). However   * I'm reluctant to return 404's on urls that, under normal circumstances, _can_ be found.    * I'm not sure if spam robots can 'waste time'. i.e Why would a bot writer be bothered to code for 404's when they just blitz the web anyway? 401 Unauthorized? Blocking a bad IP is not quite the same as \"resource requires user authentication 1) which has not yet been provided or 2) which has been provided but failed authorization tests\" * * * In general I feel that 'responding to the bad-bots according to proper http protocol' gives the bad guys the upper hand. In the sense that I play by the rules while they do not (a bit like Britain in the EU - ha, ha). On some days I feel like I should do something clever to divert these bot's away. On other days I just think that I should not take it personally and just ignore them. Accepting it as par for the course of running a web site. I dunno - what are your thoughts? How do you respond when you know its a bad IP?"}
{"_id": "54268", "title": "Were they joking when they named PHP?", "text": "PHP stands for: > PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor This a recursive loop, if I'm not mistaken. Did the creator of PHP have this in mind when he named PHP? Is this the only language where the name has some sort of spurious grammar, spelling or phonetic?"}
{"_id": "22976", "title": "Required skills for a senior level ActionScript/Flex developer", "text": "I'm looking to take my Actionscript knowledge to the next level and I've been having trouble finding what it takes to become a senior level AS developer. From my searching this has what I've come up with so far:   * Component Creation   * Memory Usage Debugging/Profiling   * AS specific usage of OOP    * Correct Use of Code-behind    * Accessing remote data   * Flex architecture frameworks   * Component lifecycle Those are just the topics I've been able to find. Resources on mastering those topics have been very hard to come by(i.e. what are common AS design patterns, etc). I may just not be searching correctly, but any help here would be greatly appreciated. My focus is on Flex specific AS development. Currently I've found here and here are the most similar SO questions I've been able to find. Any help would be appreciated, though I'm looking for specific examples. * _this question was first asked onstackoverflow and asked to be moved here_"}
{"_id": "112256", "title": "What's the best way to organize our unit tests", "text": "We've built up a substantial number of unit tests for our main program over the years. Several thousand. The problem is that we don't have a clear idea of what tests we have because there are so many. And that's a problem because we don't know where we're weak on tests (or where we have duplicates). Our app is a reporting engine. So you can have a template that is used to test parsing (do we read all table properties), merging in data (did we keep the correct table properties in the merge), formatting the final page (is the table placed correctly on the page), and/or the output format (is the created DOCX file correct). Add to this what we need to test. Take the padding around a table cell (we use Word, Excel, & PowerPoint for the report design). We have to test the padding across page break, for a table inside a cell, vertically merged cells, horizontally merged cells, a vertically & horizontally merged cell that contains a table with a vertically & horizontally merged cells in the inner table, where that table breaks across a page. So what category does that test go in? Table padding, page breaks, nested cells, vertically merged cells, horizontall merged cells, or something else? And how do we document these categories, name the unit tests, etc.? **Update:** A number of people have suggested using coverage tools to verify that we have full coverage. Unfortunately that is of limited use in our case because the bugs tend to be due to specific combinations so it's code that has all been tested, but not in that combination. For example, we had a customer yesterday that started a Word bookmark at the end of a forEach loop in their template (a Word document) and ended it in the beginning of the next forEach loop. This all used code that has unit tests against it, but we had not thought of the combination of a template expanding a bookmark start to be started 25 times, then ended 10 times (the two forEach loops had a different number of rows)."}
{"_id": "246933", "title": "Commenting strategies in C# & asp.net web api", "text": "I've been working on a ASP.NET Web Api 2 project as a learning exercise, and I was wondering what the norm regarding commenting is. I use the Repository / Service Pattern, and everything is very much decoupled, which results in having a large number of classes whose purpose is pretty clear. I also name my variables in a way that they explain themselves. This leaves me wondering what I should actually be commenting in this scenario.   * Should I just stick to class-summaries ( even if the class itself is self-explanatory ) ?    * What about self-explanatory methods ?   * Do data / business entity classes need a summary ?    * What about interfaces ? To give a bit more context, here is one of my repository classes which provides CRUD functionality:               public class UserRepository : RepositoryBase<User, decimal>     {         private readonly ShortStuffContext _context;              public UserRepository(ShortStuffContext context)         {             _context = context;         }              public override IEnumerable<User> GetAll()         {             return _context.Users.BuildUser();         }              public override User GetById(decimal id)         {             return _context.Users.FirstOrDefault(u => u.Id == id).BuildUser();         }              public override CreateStatus<decimal> Create(User entity)         {             if (_context.Users.Any(u => u.Id == entity.Id))             {                 return new CreateStatus<decimal> { status = CreateStatusEnum.Conflict };             }                  var user = new Data.Entities.User();             user.InjectFrom<SmartConventionInjection>(entity);             _context.Users.Add(user);             _context.SaveChanges();                  return new CreateStatus<decimal> { status = CreateStatusEnum.Created, Id = user.Id };         }              public override UpdateStatus Update(User entity)         {             var dbUser = _context.Users.FirstOrDefault(u => u.Id == entity.Id)                                  .InjectFrom<NotNullInjection>(entity);                  if (dbUser != null)             {                 var changeTrackerUser = _context.ChangeTracker.Entries<Data.Entities.User>()                                 .FirstOrDefault(u => u.Entity.Id == entity.Id);                      changeTrackerUser.CurrentValues.SetValues(dbUser);                 if (_context.SaveChanges() == 0)                 {                     return UpdateStatus.NoChange;                 }                 return UpdateStatus.Updated;             }             return UpdateStatus.NotFound;         }              public override void Delete(decimal id)         {             var user = _context.Users.FirstOrDefault(u => u.Id == id);             _context.Users.Remove(user);             _context.SaveChanges();         }     }      So in a class like that, is it worthwhile to put a summary like \"Provides CRUD functionality for the User Data Entity\" ( and then repeat that summary for every other repository ), or not ? What about method comments, or inline comments? Edit: My project is on Github. I know about adding comments to more complex methods, and I'm planning on adding comments to the Extensions and the ValueInjecter classes soon ( which hold by far the most complex code ). Apart from that, any advice regarding where to put comments is very much welcome."}
{"_id": "71944", "title": "Delegate pattern for retrieving data v.s. using simple setters", "text": "I am considering using the Delegate Pattern to get some data necessary for an operation. There are a few different pieces of data that the algorithm needs to run, but they all have default values that can be used if they aren't explicitly set. If I were to use the delegate pattern, I would define an interface that defines a function for each piece of information that the algorithm would then use to retrieve the data as it needs to. The other option I see is to have setters on the algorithm object so that those properties can be set explicitly instead of waiting for it to be requested through the delegate pattern. There are many advantages to using the delegate pattern, but I feel that many of them don't really apply to my situation. One of the biggest things is that it eliminates the need to make specialized subclasses of the object, but in my case, using setters also removes this need. Also, the delegate pattern allows reuse of delegates like \"configurations.\" If I use setters, everything will have to be explicitly set whenever reconfiguring (instead of just changing delegates around). I would definitely lean towards using the delegate pattern, my only issue is that this is a public interface that will be used by people who aren't necessarily familiar with the pattern. I feel that using setters would be a more natural way for someone to do it without knowledge of design patterns. **A very simple example** of what I am trying to do would be the following: I have an algorithm that is going to determine if a certain range of characters exits in a string. The configurable options of the algorithm are:   * First character (e.g. \"k\" )   * Last Character (e.g. \"p\" will make it search for k,l,m,n,o and p )   * number of characters out of range that need to match So If I have the string \"stack overflow\" searching with a character range of \"k-p\" requiring that at least 4 characters match, it should return true because it contains \"k\",\"o\",\"l\", and \"o\". Using the delegate pattern it would look this this (not necessarily the most efficient):               char startRange = delegate.startChar();     char endRange = delegate.endChar();     int targetCount = delegate.charCount();     int currentCount = 0;     for( char c in targetString )     {        if( c >= startRange && c <= endRange )        {            currentCount++;            if( currentCount == targetCount )                 return true;        }     }     return false;      Otherwise the algorithm would require that member functions and variables are defined to set and store those values. The algorithm would look like this.               int currentCount = 0;     for( char c in targetString )     {        if( c >= mStartRange && c <= mEndRange )        {            currentCount++;            if( currentCount == mTargetCount )                 return true;        }     }     return false;      The variables may or may not be changed often, and there will definitely be reuse of those variable configurations. Are there any advantages of the delegate pattern that I am missing? Are there any disadvantages of using setters that I am missing? Any other comments or suggestions? Thanks!!"}
{"_id": "71946", "title": "infrastructure software/technologies for developing web service", "text": "[Edit: Thanks S.Lott for the hints] I'm developing a web service from scratch. The service could have potential of 10,000 requests a day. Actually, to be honest, requirements aren't that clear at this point of the project. What the management team wants is to build something and getting it working. However, it does have the potential of getting bigger, so I need to put down the * foundation* right. I've decided to   1. Use Tomcat 6.0 as the application server   2. Use Apache Axis2 as the web service engine (Install it in Tomcat)   3. Use ??? for web service implementation   4. Use Hibernate for accessing database Point 3 is a bit fuzzy, I am not sure if I should use jax-ws or jaxb or spring or ejb or just POJO to implement the service. To people who have used these technologies, which one is easy to use, which one is easy to maintain, and which one is easy to scale? Thanks,   Sarah"}
{"_id": "71947", "title": "Trademark question: naming an app after a common noun when an app from another store uses it", "text": "Here's my scenario with made-up names: A big company called Supersoft have announced that in about 3 months they're going to release an Android app called \"Supersoft Metronome\" (where Metronome is a fairly common noun). I want to call my new iPhone app (notice the other app is on Android) \"Metronome\" and I'm ready to release in a week. Should I rename my app? Will I get in legal trouble otherwise? Both apps are in the same category of program. I've already bought a related domain name, paid for artwork and styled my app around the name so I really don't want to change it now. I've considered extending the name to something like \"Metronome Music Editor\". Would this protect me?"}
{"_id": "210922", "title": "CA1819: Properties should not return arrays. Does this happen only with arrays? If yes, why?", "text": "I have a question about CA1819 msdn performance warning. The rule is: Arrays returned by properties are not write-protected, even if the property is read-only. To keep the array tamper-proof, the property must return a copy of the array. Typically, users will not understand the adverse performance implications of calling such a property. Specifically, they might use the property as an indexed property. I understand the rule. I want to know if this happens only with arrays? If yes, why?"}
{"_id": "210920", "title": "can I use XML for AJAX in a website created using HTML5", "text": "I am new to web programming and just started learning XML and AJAX. I am creating a social gaming website for my college project. I am confused at the point of using XML for AJAX in HTML5. As XHTML is replaced by HTML5 so is it ok to use XML or i should choose JSON (i know nothing about JSON but it is what I found in answers on web to the question related to choice between JSON and XML). My preference is XML because it is in my syllabus but I want to make sure that XML and HTML5 will not conflict."}
{"_id": "198061", "title": "Is context-driven testing suitable for all projects?", "text": "One thing I cannot find anywhere is: is this approach limited to non-critical software? Because in critical (or just when customer wants us to follow his rules) we have no freedom in testing and just follow the procedures. Am I right?"}
{"_id": "137161", "title": "Method to test/reproduce Heisenbug possibly relating to Multimedia Class Scheduler Service?", "text": "## The Problem I am hunting down a bug in a web application related to multi-uploads using a Flash movie/applet. Sometimes, the progress bar that is used in the Flash applet to indicate file upload progress will read over 100% for a progress and causes the entire upload system to halt. Aside from the logic errors associated with the rest of that code, attempting to reproduce this bug to trace execution and debug is a feat in itself. It's a Heisenbug, and I have seen it just once in about two days of trying. Other developers' machines can reproduce it with more regularity. The only time I reproduced it was rebooting after changing my registry key for `SystemResponsiveness`, as my machine uses Windows Server 2008 R2. That registry key controls CPU priority for multimedia applications. Windows Server 2008 R2 sets this key to `100` (giving multimedia applications very low priority), whereas I set mine to `20` as it is what a desktop Windows 7 install sets it to. All other developer machines that can reproduce this issue have `SystemResponsiveness` set to a default 100. When I set my `SystemResponsiveness` back to `100`, I immediately saw this issue. However, reproducing the issue is still spotty. ## My Theory So I am going on the assumption that this bug, as it involves Flash, is related to the `SystemResponsiveness` registry key as described in Microsoft's documentation for Multimedia Class Scheduler Service, which is the multimedia subsystem of Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. By setting the responsiveness to 100, multimedia like Flash 'movies' (which this uploader is) may encounter problems, and this becomes a timing/interruption issue for the uploader, which then causes other bugs to manifest themselves. ## How to test? Now I'm trying to come up with a way to test this theory. I think I need to have a background process peg the CPU usage at 100% (across 4 cores), and then attempt to use the uploader. The background/non-multimedia services should cause stuff like Flash to perform worse and I should run into problems. **edit** I decided to run a CPU stress test to peg my system's CPU utilization at 100% - other than make my machine slow to a crawl, the bug did not manifest itself. This Heisenbug is really eluding reproduction. ## My Inquiry However, I'm not sure if that is the correct approach to test my theory, so I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into tracking down MMCSS-related issues?"}
{"_id": "211035", "title": "How to name nested function?", "text": "When you have a function that wraps another one in Scala. What do you call the nested function? I found this :               def factorial(i: Int): Int = {            def fact(i: Int, accumulator: Int): Int = {          if (i <= 1)             accumulator          else             fact(i - 1, i * accumulator)       }            fact(i, 1)          }      I usually use just _do_ because it is shorter, generic, and explicit. But is there a better way or a naming convention for nested functions?               def myFunction() = {            def do(i: Int) = {         ...       }       do(1)          }"}
{"_id": "102300", "title": "Is there any difference between Custom Control and User Control in .NET", "text": "As stated in the question, is there any difference in the meaning of the two as applied to the Controls of .NET. Or are they alias of one another?"}
{"_id": "3066", "title": "What do you think of the F# language?", "text": "What do you think of the F# language? I would like to learn it's positive and negative points. What is your experience with this language? When should or shouldn't someone use F#? See also: F# at Microsoft Research"}
{"_id": "3069", "title": "Should I bother learning about small or niche languages?", "text": "If you browse the code golf questions on StackExchange, you notice a ton of non-standard but real world (Eg not brain-f*ck) languages like F#, Scala, R, J and Clojure. Visiting their websites, some of the languages look interesting solving problems in whatever language your already using. However there is coding in spare time, and coding for money. The closest thing we have to the truth on who uses a language is the TIOBE Index, which lists none of the above languages in the top 10-15. Which makes me wonder if I'll ever use them. Should I even bother learning some of the small niche languages? It doesn't seem I would be making money, and some will probably fail anyway."}
{"_id": "27472", "title": "How forgiving do you need to be on new employees?", "text": "Recently we have a new developer in our team. We are getting him up to speed and he is picking it all up quite fast, but a new developer means new (foreign) coding styles and ways to solve things. It feels kinda petty to start whining about coding styles at the first three classes he codes, but how forgiving are you guys when dealing with new developers? Do you let them muddle on, and point it out later? Or do you wield the scepter of intolerance immediately? When do you draw the line, or if not, why not? _P.S. New guy, if you read this: you are doing great, keep up the good work ;)_ **Edit:** I've accepted the most up-voted answer, as most answers share the same message: Be nice, but tell them asap!"}
{"_id": "119859", "title": "How to do thread management in C++?", "text": "We use `pthread` for thread management in C based systems. pthread is in general compilable by C++ compiler (like g++). However, what are the better ways of abstractions for threads in C++? Also, for making any system to be working in a multi-threaded system, it is also important to make thread safe. What are the standard libraries that requires alternative (installs) to be thread safe or are they unsafe for multi-threaded environments? Is smart pointers, templates require special measures to make it safe? What are the best practices for the thread managements in C++?"}
{"_id": "169981", "title": "Where to find common database abbreviations in Spanish", "text": "I'm doing a little pro bono work for an organization in Central America. I'm ok at Spanish and my contacts are perfectly fluent but are not techincal people. Even if _they_ don't care what I call some fields in a database _I_ still want to make as clean a schema as possible, and I'd like to know what some typical abbreviations are for field / variable names in Spanish. I understand abbreviations and naming conventions are entirely personal. I'm **not** asking for the \"correct\" or \"best\" way to abbreviate database object names. I'm just looking for references to lists of typical abbreviations that would be easily recognizable to a techincally competent native Spanish speaker. I believe I am a decent googler but I've had no luck on this one. For example, in my company (where English is the primary language) 'Date' is always shortened to 'DT', 'Code' to 'CD', 'Item' to 'IT', etc. It's easy for the crowds of IT temp workers who revolve through on various projects to figure out that 'DT' stands for 'Date', 'YR' for 'Year', or 'TN' for 'Transaction' without even having to consult the official abbreviations list."}
{"_id": "91143", "title": "MS Certifications for Non-IT students", "text": "It may seem like a silly question, but it's important at least for me and I'm interesting to hear from you. I'm a .NET developer 4 years ago, even before I went to university, I'm currently earning an MCTS in web development, and some of them told me that it's invaluable for my position, I'm not and wouldn't be an IT student anyway, just because I believe that in IT field, knowledge could be gained from experience and self-teaching (via books and videos) , I know lot of IT students (in my region at least) fight just for the sake of having a degree and to get a job, no more... I'm currently looking forward to complete my path in MS Certifications and hold the MCPD, is it really that you should be an IT guy in order to be certified? does it make sense for you that non IT students never need those certifications?"}
{"_id": "144959", "title": "When to stop inheritance?", "text": "Once upon time ago I asked a question on Stack Overflow about inheritance. I have said I design chess engine in OOP fashion. So I inherit all my pieces from Piece abstract class but inheritance still goes. Let me show by code               public abstract class Piece     {         public void MakeMove();         public void TakeBackMove();     }          public abstract class Pawn: Piece {}          public class WhitePawn :Pawn {}          public class BlackPawn:Pawn {}      Programmers has been found my design a little bit over engineering and suggested to remove colored piece classes and hold piece color as a property member like below.               public abstract class Piece     {         public Color Color { get; set; }         public abstract void MakeMove();         public abstract void TakeBackMove();     }      In this way Piece can know his color. After implementation i have seen my implementation goes like below.               public abstract class Pawn: Piece     {         public override void MakeMove()         {             if (this.Color == Color.White)             {                  }             else             {                  }         }              public override void TakeBackMove()         {             if (this.Color == Color.White)             {                  }             else             {                  }         }     }      Now I see that keep color property causing if statements in implementations. It makes me feel we need specific color pieces in inheritance hierarchy. In such a case would you have classes like WhitePawn, BlackPawn or would you go to design by keeping Color property? Without seen such a problem how would you want to start design? Keep Color property or having inheritance solution ? **Edit:** I want to specify that my example may not completely match real life example. So before try to guess implementation details just concentrate the question. I actually simply asking if using Color property will cause if statements better to use inheritance ?"}
{"_id": "169982", "title": "design for a parser to handle very large files", "text": "I have written a program which records protocol messages between an application and a hardware device which matches each application request with each hardware response. This is so that I can later remove the hardware, connect a 'replay' application to the main application and wait for an application request and reply with a matched copy of the requisite hardware reply message. My replay application saves the matched request/response in a list (using C++ std::list). This works fine on a small interaction session. My problem now is that I need to be able to use the replay over a long long session. With my current implementation, the replay program eventually uses up all available memory on my computer and crashes. So I need some sort of lookahead - and not parse the whole session in one go. Can anyone make any suggestions on how to get started?"}
{"_id": "186190", "title": "HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript... what's next?", "text": "I just completed a front-end web development course. I now have a rudimentary understanding of what it takes to make a website sorta pretty and minimally functional. I also now know (barely) how to link up to an api via AJAX. I don't know what's next. I know I want to learn what it takes to make real- time collaborative web apps. node.JS? An online course? What should a beginner learn to jump into development of real-time collaborative software?"}
{"_id": "186193", "title": "@Deprecated as of version x.y in JavaDoc", "text": "This question & its answers are useful but not sufficient for my problem. My Question is if I want to add a javadoc as _@Deprecated As of version x.y, replaced by {@link SomeClass}_ in my current file's javadoc then what should be the version no. in place of x.y ?? Let my current version is 1.2 & after CVS checkin it will be 1.3"}
{"_id": "115704", "title": "Why are weakly-typed languages still being actively developed?", "text": "I wonder why are weakly-typed languages still being actively developed. For example, what benefit can one draw from being able to write               $someVar = 1;     (...)  // Some piece of code     $someVar = 'SomeText';      instead of using the much different, stongly-typed version               int someInt = 1;     (...)     string SomeString = 'SomeText';      It is true that you need to declare an aditional variable in the second example, but does that really hurt? Shouldn't all languages strive to be strongly-typed since it enforces type-safety at compile time, thus avoiding some pitfalls in type-casting?"}
{"_id": "186196", "title": "Why don't we use a class and its static members to do what a singleton does?", "text": "In Java,C++,Objective C, C#, and all other similar OOP languages, Why don't we use a class with static methods and vars instead of going through a singleton syntax having to deal with various scenarios ?"}
{"_id": "147758", "title": "Which user-story estimation technique is better?", "text": "I found two techniques for estimating user stories:   1. by the size of the story, which is unit-less   2. by the time estimate, which is measured by days The first uses relative comparison between stories to infer time, and it should be independent on developer experience, while the second depends on developer experience. I tried the first which is good, but I believe the second is more developer- friendly, and I want to see the pros and cons of each of them from practical experience. Any idea?"}
{"_id": "136699", "title": "How can a developer evaluate the effectiveness of his workflow?", "text": "This question has been on my mind for probably 10 years. Ever since I've started programming for a living. And I've seen multiple discussions about good fit, distractions, being in the zone, etc. But I haven't seen links to some information/research that could give an objective self evaluation measure/tool to understand how you're really doing. What constantly bugs me, is that I think I'm not spending enough time on coding, and the effective work hours are not 8 out of 8, but less, with some days being even super ineffective, exactly like in this article. There are some metrics expressed as lines of code per day, with some sources quoting 1.5 being good and some sources indicating 500 per day being normal, but this again, is completely invalid metric as far as I can see. So at the end of the day, you have an assignment, you do it, but part of the time evaporates in sort of like \"wth I was doing\" kind of way. Emails, just staring at the code, thinking, painting a mental picture of the code in your head, floating somewhere, rethinking how things could have done more effectively, etc. And because of that, I'm never sure if I need to do something ASAP, to keep the raises coming, or am I paranoid, or is it just normal. The only half-good measure I've found so far, is seeing the amount of code other developers produce-vs-code I produce. And that usually floats around same number. But when I look at my code, or others code I still always get a feeling it could be done 10x faster. Then again, code crunching doesn't seem to work, or does seem to cause a burnout if not handled properly. So do you know of a good self evaluation approach to see if you're ineffective/effective? How do you weight the work you've done?"}
{"_id": "136698", "title": "How to deal with variables when extracting methods in to smaller methods?", "text": "This is an abstract question to clarify a refactoring concept in the ruby language. Assume in the real world that there would be many more variables and method in the Furniture Class and Refinish method. I have a Class called Furniture. It has a method called '`refurnish(VarnishToUse, TimeToTake)`'. This method has               varnish_cost = Varnish(VarnishToUse).price * TimeToTake      I want to extract out the cost calculation into               def VarnishCost       price * TimeToTake     end      then the Furniture class can just have:               def Refurnish(VarnishToUse)       varnish_cost = VarnishCost(VarnishToUse)     end      How do I pass in the VarnishToUse into VarnishCost? Should the method be               def VarnishCost(Varnish)     ...     end      or should I be setting an instance variable `@varnish = VarnishToUse` in the Refinish class and then just expect that instance variable to be available in the VarnishCost method as I showed above? Does it make a difference if the other method is private? protected? I am looking to minimize the use of variables and multiple responsibilities for a class (SRP)."}
{"_id": "136690", "title": "Suitable vocabulary when helping novice programmers", "text": "I find myself aiding novice programmers relatively often; explaining why their code won't work when they ask, suggesting solutions and the like. The people I'm helping do have a formal education in programming from a first-year degree-level module, in Java, but I feel like I can't communicate with them very well. For example: one might write a function but not understand why it isn't executed, not realising they forgot to call it. If I use phrases like `\"(make a) call (to) the function/it\"` and `\"pass it the..\"` I get blank looks. My normal process then would be to find some place in their code where they call a function from the language, and tell them they can call their own functions in the same way as they called this other function. Sometimes even that gets blank looks. **Are there other pieces of vocabulary that are more suited to (better for?) helping novice programmers? Or is this not an issue of communication?**"}
{"_id": "98438", "title": "Why would a language let programmer to handle divison by zero", "text": "This happens in Javascript, for example, that division by zero is not handled by the language itself. Is there's a valid reason for this? I see this as a very basic exception that a language should be able to handle (they even handle 0/0 as NaN NaN). > or take the square root of a negative number or use arithmetic operators > with non-numeric operands that cannot be converted to numbers."}
{"_id": "143453", "title": "Best way of Javascript web development in Netbeans (Hot deployment)", "text": "I'm beginning Javascript development and as a beginner in JavaScript I make a lot of mistakes. The way I'm developing is very counter-productive because every mistake I fix I have to shutdown Glassfish, re-build the app and re- deploy it. My app is a Java back-end with REST services and the Html, JavaScript, CSS for the frontend. Everything is packed in a .ear file. As of right now, I'm just working with the frontend but I do have to make this whole process to update the files. My question is ... is there a better way of doing this? Can somebody tell how do you guys work in a similar setup to do the everyday development?"}
{"_id": "144484", "title": "Is it possible to efficiently store all possible phone numbers in memory?", "text": "Given the standard North American phone number format: (Area Code) Exchange - Subscriber, the set of possible numbers is about 6 billion. However, efficiently breaking down the nodes into the sections listed above would yield less than 12000 distinct nodes that can be arranged in groupings to get all the possible numbers. This seems like a problem already solved. Would it done via a graph or tree?"}
{"_id": "186445", "title": "What would Business Intelligence (BI) developers look for in code reviews?", "text": "Let me preface this with saying I am **_not_** a Business Intelligence (BI) developer. I'm a .NET developer, and I have only a vague notion of what BI is, and encompasses. I've been an evangelist for a secure development lifecycle in our company, and recently convinced the rest of the development team that we should be doing peer reviews including...   * Requirements Reviews   * Code Reviews   * Architecture/design reviews   * Documentation Reviews The .NET team does code reviews and we look for various things - general overview:   * Maintainability (clear design, adequately documented, etc.)   * Code clarity (standard .NET coding/naming guidelines)   * Security (scanning for failures to sanitize input, prevent SQL injection, etc)   * Functionality (does it do what it's supposed to)   * Usability   * Performance At any rate, our Business Intelligence developers don't really do the same type of coding/development that we do for websites, windows apps, etc. Our templates/checklists don't really apply to them. Since I've been the one trying to evangelize and get everyone do start doing peer reviews, they asked me for advice on what types of things they should be looking for. I could probably guide them and help them to develop their own checklists by asking questions about what can go wrong, what is important to them, etc., but I thought I'd ask and see if anyone is aware of established guidelines for doing \"code reviews\" for BI developers. I'll also take, from BI people \"What would you look for in evaluating another BI developer's work?\"."}
{"_id": "143454", "title": "Coding a web browser on Windows using a layout engine?", "text": "I've never attempted anything like this before but what I want to do is code a browser for Windows. I know that I can use the web-browser control that Microsoft has released, but I'm interested in seeing how the problem is solved from a lower level. So I want to know what layout engine I should be looking at? Or is a layout engine the best way to go? I've been looking at WebKit, but it seems rather Mac-centric, so I'm wondering if there are any more practical one's for windows? Has Microsoft released the source code for their webbrowser winforms control in the .Net framework? That would be dependent on the CLR anyway, I suppose? Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "144488", "title": "Git: Pushing to a remote repo from a remote repo?", "text": "I have a destination repo that is remote and I have a source repo that is also remote. I would like my local machine to act as a proxy to allow me to push to the destination from the source without ever download the repo to my machine. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "225371", "title": "Why are threads called threads?", "text": "I understand that a process a unit of resource ownership and executable instructions. Threads allow a process to share its resources with multiple executions, and it's easier for an OS to schedule threads because of all the overhead associated with whole processes. But why the name _thread_? Does it have some reference to _string_ or the interleaving of execution? Even so, this isn't an intuitive term in my opinion."}
{"_id": "143458", "title": "Is database based chat room bad idea?", "text": "Most of simple \"group chat\" systems are based on local file storage logs (e.g. _log.txt_ ). I'm developing a simple group chat (under 20 users simultaneity ) with jQuery/AJAX. So basically, client-side code loads log from server **every second**. It needs to be fast. In database system (PHP/MySQL) that would mean MySQL query every second. Is that overload for server (shared hosting)?"}
{"_id": "225376", "title": "Managing child worker thread list", "text": "After so much research, I thought I should ask the experts. I am working on a project for my corporate employer, we have android and iPhone mobile apps that make request to a web service, the request is logged in pending state for processing. A windows service retrieves the pending requests and spins a new thread for every request. This is because the request could be directed to different providers who process request in different manners. One could immediately process the request and return feedback, others could receive the request and take up to 30 seconds to return a feedback which you have to poll for the status. The mobile app will also be polling for the status of the request. Now my challenge is: I am thinking of creating a list of threads say 100 and assign each thread to execute a request, once finished the thread will be recreated and assigned a new request. It is a high response based platform so I am thinking of not using ThreadPool. Is it advisable to spin new threads in a fire and forget sequence or manage these list of threads and if it is to managed, then what is the best approach to manage these list of threads and ensure high performance in C# as the mobile apps will be polling for a response."}
{"_id": "216560", "title": "How to handle editing a large file for a non-technical user", "text": "I have a client who is given a tab delimited .txt file containing hundreds of thousands of rows. I have a user story as follows: > As a user I want to take the text file and add a new value at the end of > each line which contains the concatenated value of two of the columns. for example if the file read               text_one    text_two      I need to output the following (preferably to a .txt file)               text_one    text_two    text_onetext_two      My first approach was to ask the vendor supplying the file to do the concatenation before providing the file, the easiest way to solve a problem is to eliminate it right? however they are very uncooperative and have point blank refused. I've looked at building a simple javascript application that does this client side so a non-technical user could select the file using a file selector. This approach has a few problems   * The file could be over a GB in size and so can't be loaded straight into memory, I've tried and the browser crashes   * There is no means to write a file in javascript so I'd need to output the content to the screen and have the user save it (somehow) I was thinking if I could get around the filesize limitations I could just output the edited content to the page and have the user save the page as a .txt file, however I think there is a better way than using javascript that will still accommodate the users lack of technical know-how. Please consider this question to be stack agnostic, but bear in mind that a nice little shell script or python script would be deemed unsuitable for a non technical user unless there is a way of \"packaging\" it nicely for a non- technical user. ## Updates The file is too large to open in excel. The process needs to be run weekly, but it doesn't require scheduling or automation...(yet)"}
{"_id": "216561", "title": "Is Java's ElementCollection Considered a Bad Practice?", "text": "From my understanding, an ElementCollection has no primary key, is embedded with the class, and cannot be queried. This sounds pretty hefty, but it allows me the comfort of writing an enum class which also helps with internationalization (using the enum key for lookup in my ResourceBundle). **Example:** We have a user on a media site and he can choose in which format he downloads the files ![](http://s9.postimg.org/9y69wyfin/Database.png)               @Entity     @Table(name = \"user\")     public class User {             /* snip other fields */              @Enumerated         @ElementCollection(                 targetClass = DownloadFilePreference.class,                 fetch = FetchType.EAGER         )         @CollectionTable(name = \"download_file_preference\",             joinColumns = @JoinColumn(name = \"user_id\")         )         @Column(name = \"name\")         private Set<DownloadFilePreference> downloadFilePreferences = new HashSet<>();     }          public enum DownloadFilePreference {         MP3, WAV, AIF, OGG;     }      This seems pretty great to me, and I suppose it comes down to \"it depends on your use case\", but I also know that I'm quite frankly only an initiate when it comes to Database design. Some best practices suggest to never have a class without a primary key- even in this case? It also doesn't seem very extensible- should I use this and gamble on the chance I will never need to query on the FilePreferences?"}
{"_id": "216565", "title": "What functionality should a (basic) mock framework have?", "text": "If i would start on writing a simple Mock framework, then what are the things that a basic mock framework MUST have? Obviously mocking any object, but what about assertions and perhaps other things? When I think of how I would write my own mock framework then I realise how much I really know (or don't know) and what I would trip up on. So this is more for educational purposes. Of course I did research and this is what i've come up with that a minimal mocking framework should be able to do. Now my question in this whole thing is, am I missing some important details in my ideas? * * * # Mocking   * **Mocking a class:** Should be able to mock any class. The Mock should preserve the properties and their original values as they were set in the original class. All method implementations are empty.   * **Calls to methods of Mock:** The Mock framework must be able to define what a mocked method must return. IE: `$MockObj->CallTo('SomeMethod')->Returns('some value');` # Assertions To my understanding mocking frameworks also have a set of assertions. These are the ones I think are most important (taken from SimpleTest).               expect($method, $args)             Arguments must match if called     expectAt($timing, $method, $args)    Arguments must match when called on the $timing'th time     expectCallCount($method, $count)       The method must be called exactly this many times     expectMaximumCallCount($method, $count)     Call this method no more than $count times     expectMinimumCallCount($method, $count)     Must be called at least $count times     expectNever($method)           Must never be called     expectOnce($method, $args)  Must be called once and with the expected arguments if supplied     expectAtLeastOnce($method, $args)  Must be called at least once, and always with any expected arguments      * * * And that's basically, as far as I understand, what a mock framework should be able to do. But is this really everything? Because it currently doesn't seem like a big deal to build something like this. But that's also the reason why I have the feeling that i'm missing some important details about such a framework. So is my understanding right about a mock framework? Or am i missing alot of details?"}
{"_id": "196034", "title": "Design pattern for client/server sessions?", "text": "Are there any common patterns or general guidance I can learn from for how to design a client/server system where the both the client and server must maintain some kind per-client session state? I've found any number of libraries that can help with some of the plumbing, but it's the overall design I'm wondering about. Open issues in my mind:   * How to structure the client/server communication so that bidirectional synchronous and asynchronous requests are possible?   * The server side needs to spawn a couple of per-connected-client session-long helper process. How to manage that?   * How to manage the mapping from a given client (and any of it's requests) to server state and helper process instances in the face of multiple clients and intermittent network connectivity.   * Most communication can be simple blocking request/reply, but some will be long running processing tasks that the client will want to keep tabs on. To the extent that it matters, the platform is Linux/C/C++. Not web based. Just an existing thick-client software app being modified to talk to backend servers for some tasks."}
{"_id": "216569", "title": "Licensing a collaborative research project", "text": "I am involved with an international research project which involves many different universities, national labs, and companies. The project is developed by national grants and in-kind support. One task in the project is to develop code to streamline workflow in our domain (energy simulation) by scripting common pre- and post-processing tasks for different tools. We want this code to be freely distributable to the simulation community. How can we ensure that this effort is digestible by the legal departments of these different parties such that the people involved can freely code?"}
{"_id": "156130", "title": "Unit testing time-bound code", "text": "I'm currently working on an application that does a lot of time-bound operations. That is, based on `long now = System.currentTimeMillis();`, and combined with an scheduler, it will calculate periods of time that parametrize the execution of some operations. e.g.:               public void execute(...) { // executed by an scheduler each x minutes         final int now = (int) TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toSeconds(System.currentTimeMillis());         final int alignedTime = now - now % getFrequency() ;         final int startTime = alignedTime - 2 * getFrequency();          final int endTimeSecs = alignedTime - getFrequency();          uploadData(target, startTime, endTimeSecs);     }      Most parts of the application are unit-tested independently of time (in this case, `uploadData` has a natural unit test), but I was wondering about best practices for testing time-bound parts that rely on `System.currentTimeMillis()` ?"}
{"_id": "156136", "title": "Is 'Protection' an acceptable Java class name", "text": "This comes from a closed thread at stack overflow, where there are already some useful answers, though a commenter suggested I post here. I hope this is ok! I'm trying my best to write good readable, code, but often have doubts in my work! I'm creating some code to check the status of some protected software, and have created a class which has methods to check whether the software in use is licensed (there is a separate Licensing class). I've named the class 'Protection', which is currently accessed, via the creation of an appProtect object. The methods in the class allow to check a number of things about the application, in order to confirm that it is in fact licensed for use. Is 'Protection' an acceptable name for such a class? I read somewhere that if you have to think to long in names of methods, classes, objects etc, then perhaps you may not be coding in an Object Oriented way. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this before making this post, which has lead me to doubt the suitability of the name! In creating (and proof reading) this post, I'm starting to seriously doubt my work so far. I'm also thinking I should probably rename the object to applicationProtection rather than appProtect (though am open to any comments on this too?). I'm posting non the less, in the hope that I'll learn something from others views/opinions, even if they're simply confirming I've \"done it wrong\"! EDIT: Thanks for all the responses, which have been all been helpful. I think 'Protector' fits the bill perfectly, as the class checks the license, and acts accordingly."}
{"_id": "156135", "title": "Automated tests for differencing algorithm", "text": "We are designing a differencing algorithm (based on Longest Common Subsequence) that compares a source text and a modified copy to extract the new content (i.e. content that is only in the modified copy). I'm currently compiling a library of test case data. We need to be able to run automated tests that verify the test cases, but we don't want to verify strict accuracy. Given the heuristic nature of our algorithm, we need our test pass/failures to be fuzzy. We want to specify a threshold of overlap between the desired result and the actual result (i.e. the content that is extracted). I have a few sketches in my mind as to how to solve this, but has anyone done this before? Does anyone have guidance or ideas about how to do this effectively?"}
{"_id": "185187", "title": "Simulating a projector in openGL", "text": "I wish to simulate a projector screen in OpenGL, where an image is truly being projected onto the wall in real time. By this I mean if an object were to get in between the projector and the wall, that portion of the image will appear on the obstructing object. Is this functionality possible in OpenGL? And what technolgies/libraries can I implement to facilitate this development?"}
{"_id": "185186", "title": "COM INTEROP Support - which is better? C# or VB", "text": "I keep hearing that c# is \"better\" than vb... but as far as I can see, aside from syntactical differences, both compile down to the same IL. I've found some good articles by googling that explain what the differences are between the two and so I feel comfortable in \"diffusing\" conversations between developers arguing over vb / c#. =) But I did read an article that said vb.net 2005 had better support for com interop stuff. But i'm wondering if this is still the case? This is of interest to me because we are in the middle of redesigning an old vb6 app that communicates with some older COM components. Does anyone have recent experience with .NET and COM interop? Thanks."}
{"_id": "66007", "title": "definition of Acme Developers for iPhone", "text": "I have heard the term acme developer of iPhone. I was just wondering, what it stands for? I think I know the meaning, it is when a developer goes to a client and present's his/her ideas for the app. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "185184", "title": "One Login amongst multiple ASP.NET MVC applications Questions", "text": "I have been working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 application that uses forms based authentication. Users are validated against a membership provider based on a provider selection on the login form. For example, at this moment there are two providers: active directory and a custom provider that calls an external web service. If the user is valid then we update information in our local users table, like last logon date, etc. If the user is valid and doesn\u2019t exist in the local users table, we add them. Once all of this is done we set a cookie and move on to the main content. All of the controllers check **User.Identity.IsAuthenticated** and return to the login page if the test fails. Now I am told that this application is going from a single web application to a multiple application solution. Each application should exist independently from the others, share the same look and feel, and use the same login functionality. Each application can require a new membership provider to be added. We will also add data for limiting access to the applications. One user may only have access to one of the applications while another user has access to all of them. Setting up the data storage is not a problem. Sharing the layout from one application to be used in the others is not a problem either. What I am having trouble with is deciding how to \u201crefactor\u201d the login functionality such that adding a new membership provider and application \u201cdown the road\u201d will not require us to republish existing applications. Right now they would also not want a single sign-on launch page for the applications. They would like for the users to go straight to an application, login, and do what they came there to do. Thus, I may go to http://site1.mysites.com, login and do my work while the guy next to me goes to http://site2.mysites.com, logs in and does his work. I am having trouble wrapping my head around the best way to do this. My first thought was a WCF web service for the login. I would have a controller action call the webservice passing the login credentials. If the login was successful, then I could get a list of applications for the user from the local storage. Adding more applications would not require us to republish existing apps due to no changes in the web service for those apps. I also keep hearing about this ASP.NET Web API stuff. Should I go that route instead? I may want to build a site around administering the local user database so having a site that hosted the web api could be an option. Is the Web API stuff wrong for this situation? If not, does it hold advantages over the WCF web service? Are there alternative methods of achieving my end result?"}
{"_id": "34492", "title": "Design of input files reading when it comes to defaults/transformations", "text": "Suppose you have an application that reads an input file, on a language that does not support the concept of None. The input is read, parsed, and the contents are stored on a structure for later use. Now, in general you want to keep into account transformation of the data from the input, such as adding default values when not specified, or adding full path information to relative path specified in the input. There are two different strategies to achieve this. The first strategy is to perform these transformations at input file reading time. In practice, you put all the intelligence into the input parser, and your application has no logic to deal with unexpected circumstances, such as an unspecified value. You lose the information of what was specified and what wasn't, but you gain in black-boxing the details. Your \"running code\" needs that information in any case and in a proper form, and is not concerned if it's the default or a user-specified information. The second strategy is to have the file reader a real one-to-one mapper from the file to a memory-stored object, with no intelligent behavior. unspecified values are not filled (which may however be a problem in languages not supporting None) and data is stored verbatim from the file. The intelligence for recovery must now go into the \"running code\", which must check what was specified in the file, eventually fall back to a default, or modify the input properly before using it. I would like to know your opinion on these two approaches, and in particular which one you found the most frequently implemented."}
{"_id": "181872", "title": "User selection and object creation", "text": "I'm writing a GUI application. The user selects item from a comboBox (non editable). The suitable input data control is then enabled and user enters data. Then the appropriate object according to the comboBox selected item is created.   1. I've thought of using String[] array to display the list of choices and then using conditional statements to create the object.   2. Or create all the objects before user selects and set each object's properties accordingly after user data input. I can't think of any better way to do this so I'd like to ask if there is one. If no, the first or the second way listed above is better? Thank you."}
{"_id": "95355", "title": "Should a developer have fast-typing skill?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How important is the ability to touch-type? We're going to hire new programmers and we just wondered should we include typing skill in our employment filters? Someone has already applied for the the vacant position, and is qualified for it. The only thing that is under doubt, is his poor typing skill (using 2 fingers and slowly). Should we consider this as a highly negative point? Or in general, should developers know how to type fast? Also I want to know how fast a touch-typist can type? Mine is 69 wpm with 95% accuracy (690 lpm)"}
{"_id": "201529", "title": "Programming as fast as you can touch-type... How to get to that stage?", "text": "I took a test recently and found that I could touch type comfortably at around 100 wpm... and if given some sort of autocorrect/intellisense then that would be even faster (who knows maybe 150 wpm?)... I definitely do not program anywhere near that speed... This led me to wonder how exactly does one become faster at programming? Once I look at a problem and design the algorithm to solve it (the problem is solved... I know what i'm going after give or take some debug runs) why does it take so much longer for me to actually type up the program? What I found was that in general when I'm coding, until I am done typing a word... even if it is just the letter a or number 1, I cannot simultaneously think and type. What that means is that I can come up with stuff as I'm typing but I don't have the ability to look ahead. Its either one or the other... For example in writing this, I might have a feel for where this goes, but until my fingers hit the keyboard, I don't really know what I'm going to say next. How do I change this? How do I get the ability to think ahead while typing so that I can take advantage of my typing speed? Also just in general how does one become a faster problem solver? I know the usual list of practice (which I have no problem with) but is there any particular excercise one should emphasize to train their mind? For example is playing various logic games (sudoku etc...) carry much help in improving your sense of logic in other areas of programming? Sorry its a bunch of questions at once but they are all sort of related... P.S. Is it possible to use a stenograph to program? I've heard that users of stenographs can achieve blistering speeds like 200 - 300 wpm. Assuming I can somehow think faster... that would be pretty cool. Obviously fast programming != good programming. But if your always training to become a better programmer, it doesn't hurt to be able to do it fast."}
{"_id": "177423", "title": "Allowing client to select data to return via REST interface", "text": "I have a rest service that is essentially a proxy to a variety of other services. So if I call `GET /users/{id}` It will get their user profile, as well as order history, and contact info, etc... all from various services, and aggregates them into one nice object. My problem is that each call to a different service has the potential to add time to the original request, so we would rather not get ALL the data ALL of the time if a particular client does not care about all of the pieces. A solution I have arrived at is to do something like this: `GET /users/{id}?includeOrders=true&includeX=true&includeY=true...` That works, and it allow me to do only what I need to, but it is cumbersome. We have added enough different data sources that there are too many parameters for that style to be useful. I could do something similar with a single integer and a bitmask or something, but that only makes it harder to read, and it does not feel very Restful. I could break it down into multiple calls so they would need to call `/users/{id}/orders` and `/users/{id}/profile` separately, but that sort of defeats the purpose of an aggregating proxy, who's purpose is to make clients jobs easier. Are there any good patterns that can help me return just enough data for each client, without making it too difficult for them to filter and select what they want?"}
{"_id": "177424", "title": "Can HTML injection be a security issue?", "text": "I recently came across a website that generates a random adjective, surrounded by a prefix and suffix entered by the user. For example, if the user enters \"123\" for prefix, and \"789\" for suffix, it might generate \"123Productive789\". I've been screwing around with it, and I thought I might try something out. I entered this into the prefix field:               <a href=\"javascript:window.close();\">Click</a><hr />      And, sure enough, I was given the link, then an `<hr>`, then a random adjective. What I'm wondering is, could this be dangerous? There must be many more websites out there that have this issue, are all of them vulnerable to some sort of php injection?"}
{"_id": "105949", "title": "What is the best way to comment a deprecated class in Java?", "text": "I would like to know the best way to add a comment to identify a deprecated class in Java. Should I remove the previous comment added to the top of the class that helps another programmer to know what was that class for, or should I add it below the comment?"}
{"_id": "177428", "title": "Sets Data Structure in Golang", "text": "I really like google golang but could some one explain what the rationale is for the implementors having left out a basic data structure such as sets from the standard library?"}
{"_id": "105941", "title": "What's the purpose of 'so that' clause in user story definition?", "text": "A user story can be defined in a sentence like:               As a <type of user> I want <some goal> so that <some reason>      Just Google for 'user story formula' and first links all propose this formula. My question is, what is the purpose of **so that** clause? Is it there for managers? Is it there so that project managers and stakeholders can understand the priority of the item better? Why is it there? Note: I've worked with `as a <type of user> I want <some goal>` formula, and it works just well. I haven't noticed any problem in my work by implementing this format which is more brief."}
{"_id": "92499", "title": "Is it beneficial to have a long-term experience in a specific technology rather than short-term multiple ones?", "text": "I am currently working in asp.net and having almost 1 year of experience. Now my company wants to change my technology and wants to put me in mobile development (might be other than .net mobile development). Would this be harmful for my career? As I have heard that it is beneficial to have a long experience in a specific technology than multiple ones."}
{"_id": "180695", "title": "When did the standard for packaging Linux source code become .tar.gz?", "text": "When browsing open-source projects that are primarily developed for Linux systems and downloading the latest packages, the source code is always stored in a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file. Is there any reason for using .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 rather than something like .zip or .rar or some other compression algorithm (or even leaving it uncompressed if the project is small enough)?"}
{"_id": "31047", "title": "What happened to Alan Cooper's Unified File Model?", "text": "For a long time Alan Cooper (in the 3 versions of his book \"About Face\") has been promoting a \"unified file model\" to, among other things, dispense with what he calls the most idiotic message box ever invented - the one the pops up when hit the close button on an app or form saying \"Do you want to discard your changes?\" I like the idea and his arguments, but also have the knee-jerk reaction against it that most seasoned programmers and users have. While Cooper's book seems quite popular and respected, there is remarkably little discussion of this particular issue on the Web that I can find. Petter Hesselberg, the author of \"Programming Industrial Strength Windows\" mentions it but that seems about it. I have an opportunity to implement this in the (desktop) project I am working on, but face resistance by customers and co-workers, who are of course familiar with the MS Word and Excel way of doing things. I'm in a position to override their objections, but am not sure if I should. My questions are: Are there any good discussions of this that I have failed to find? Is anyone doing this in their apps? Is it a good idea that it is unfortunately not practical to implement until, say, Microsoft does it?"}
{"_id": "228638", "title": "Quality Assurance (Testing) in Scrum", "text": "I just had a Release Retrospective for my scrum team. We talked a lot about our release process. I pointed out that because our company is not able to tolerate bugs in our production environment we are not be able to adhere to the traditional scrum mantra of releasing often. In short, we are a medical company. Bugs in production can cause issues with patient care. (A rapid fix release does not help the patient that was negatively impacted by the bug.) I pointed out that scrum does not have a formal quality assurance process. (It is assumed that testing will be done during development.) I then stated that scrum has an implied expectation of bugs in production. (Based on the process of releasing early and often.) The Scrum Process people in the room said that scrum is not that way. They said that properly done scrum can be bug free in production. So here is my question: **How does testing and quality assurance work for scrum? (So that there is very low occurrence of bugs in production.)** OR **Is there documentation that bugs are expected to a small degree in Scrum (along with quick follow up releases)?** NOTE: This is for full enterprise level development. We have 6+ WCF services, several Service Buses, 4 databases, a WPF front end application and a Web Interface all written by two separate scrum teams of about 6-8 people each. _This means answers that include just coding it right the first time are not realistic._ NOTE II: I know that no software product is going to be bug free. But our release process (non-agile) catches the few that get past our development process and brings our software fairly close to the \"No Bugs\" level."}
{"_id": "32893", "title": "Is INT_MIN-1 an underflow or overflow?", "text": "I seem to remember that I was reading that   * `underflow` means you have a too small _magnitude_ that cannot be presented anymore in a type   * `overflow` means you have a too large _magnitude_ that cannot be presented anymore in a type However, in practice I perceive that the terms are used such that   * `underflow` means you have a too small _value_ that cannot be presented anymore in a type   * `overflow` means you have a too large _value_ that cannot be presented anymore in a type What is the correct meaning to use here? Are the terms defined differently for integer and floating point types?"}
{"_id": "14942", "title": "Methods to encourage good behaviour when using shared servers?", "text": "This question was prompted by a comment left on another question pointing to this article. What Is Clean Code? I was thinking about how that sentiment can be applied to shared resources (servers, etc). What are some of the ways you've found that work to ensure that when others use a shared server they clean up after themselves?   * Delete files / folders after one time use (after a fix or upgrade)   * Leave the desktop clean of crap   * Dont install software that they can use on their desktop    * Dont create filesystem shares not needed for the solution Oh Yes, the applies mostly to a windows server environment, in a team of developers + support staff of about 25. I know there are a few ways to tackle the problem, so what have you guys found that works?"}
{"_id": "225959", "title": "Distributing Contestant Entries Between Multiple Bins, Is this Knapsack?", "text": "I am an algorithm novice and am faced with a rather difficult problem. I am working with contests. There are   * **contestant** - individual player   * **entry** - contestants can have multiple entries into a tournament   * **contests** - abstract - has a max number of entries property   * **contests instances** - contains entries My requirements are:   1. all contestant's entries must only be grouped into one instance (they cannot span instances)   2. minimize the number of instances created.   3. If multiple instances are required, distribute the contestants among them to get as close to equal entry distributions as possible (if there are 120 entries and 2 instances selected should be distributed as close to 60 / 60 as possible while keeping each contestant's entries in only 1 instance, whoa)   4. If all entries cannot be fit into the number of instances allotted alert user.   5. There is a hard limit on the number of instances. An example end user scenario is:   * client selects a contest that has 100 max entries   * the client then selects they will pay for up to 200 entries (2 instances)   * the client registers contestants and grants entries   * suppose the client has 22 registered contestants and grants them each 9 entries (198 total entries)   * then the client registers another contestant and grants them 2 entries.   * In the above scenario the contestant/entry combination will not fit into exactly 2 instances, so we must detect that. The difficulty is fitting these blocks of contest entries into only 1 instance while respecting the hard limit on the number of instances. My current solution is extremely lackluster, right now (from what I've read I'm solving it as more of a bin packing style) I am putting the blocks of entries into the a first instance and spilling over into the remaining available instances. If there is no available space in either instance I remove single entries and merge the instances. This was working because we would only need to generate 1 instance maybe 2 every now and then and there were quite a few single entries, But now that we need to generate many instances, this completely fails. Is this an example of a multiple knapsack problem? It certainly seems like it, but I want to make absolutely sure before I start diving into solutions like http://www.or.deis.unibo.it/kp/Chapter6.pdf , because papers like that are a struggle for me and it is going to take a very large time investment to work through something like that."}
{"_id": "208633", "title": "How do you call the discipline which consist of making the right choice of language/paradigm/class diagrams?", "text": "As a physicist, I've learnt programming on my own. But I would like to know the name of the discipline (like algorithmics is the discipline of designing algorithms) which consists of :   * making the right choice of language/paradigm   * designing a class diagram   * organizing the different parts of a code and how they will interact between each other"}
{"_id": "225956", "title": "Python - assert vs if & return", "text": "I am writing a script that does something to a text file (what it does is irrelevant for my question though). So before I do something to the file I want to check if the file exists. I can do this no problem, the issue is more that of aesthetics. Here is my code, I have two ways of doing the same thing.               def modify_file(filename):         assert os.path.isfile(filename), 'file does NOT exist.'               Traceback (most recent call last):       File \"clean_files.py\", line 15, in <module>         print(clean_file('tes3t.txt'))       File \"clean_files.py\", line 8, in clean_file         assert os.path.isfile(filename), 'file does NOT exist.'     AssertionError: file does NOT exist.      or:               def modify_file(filename):         if not os.path.isfile(filename):             return 'file does NOT exist.'               file does NOT exist.      The first method produces an output that is mostly trivial, the only thing I care about is that the file does not exist. The second method return a string, it is simple. My questions is: which method is better for letting the user know that the file does not exist? Using the `assert` method seems somehow more pythonic."}
{"_id": "72550", "title": "FPGA device + networking + software kit", "text": "Sorry for the very abstract and uncertain question, but I guess if I could ask it better I would have answered it myself. Here is the thing. I am getting more and more interested in FPGA. However, it is hard to tell where I should start off. What I want to do is to write a simple application that listens to UDP packets and sends TCP/IP packets. So I think something like Xinix Virtex\u00ae-7 FPGA will work for me as FPGA. How does that sound? I will also need a PCI card that will host it with Ethernet card on it. Obviously I am not that good in hardware on that level and won't make it myself. Are there any out of the box solutions? Also, I guess there must be a core for working with Ethernet adapter already. Am I right on that? Where should I look? Is there anything with interface close to POSIX sockets? What is the best software kit I will need to achieve that? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "72551", "title": "In Visual Studio 2010, which is better to use: VS Installer or the InstallShield LE?", "text": "I built a VS Installer project in Visual Studio 2008. I see in VS 2010 they have InstallShield LE available as an alternative. I used InstallShield long ago as part of Borland Delphi, but haven't really looked at the latest version. I am time constrained and don't want to spend a lot of time digging into it if it's not worth it. Can anyone provide the pros and cons of using it vs. the VS Installer tool? I don't want want to have re-make my installer unless there's a really compelling reason to do so. Thanks, Michael"}
{"_id": "72557", "title": "How do you design programs in Haskell or other functional programming languages?", "text": "I have some experience in object oriented programming languages like c# or ruby. I know how to design a program in object oriented style, how to create classes and objects, and how to define relations between them. I also know some design patterns. How do people write functional programs? How do they start? Are there design patterns for functional languages? Are methodologies like extreme programming or agile development applicable for functional languages?"}
{"_id": "92727", "title": "Can Agile software development be used in projects defined by a contract?", "text": "I recently had a conversation with a fellow developer about Agile Software Development. While I understand the principle, it seems that continuously changing requirements creates the potential for the project to go on forever. But, at least where I work, projects need to reach completion because it's a contract. That is, the first iteration could take months, because for some projects the customer cannot use an incomplete application. For some projects, I think you need to define finished first, then you can break it into iterations and refine your definition after each iteration. But you _must always_ have this definition. If Agile Software Development embraces changing requirements how do you know where it ends? How can you budget for a project when the end result is always changing? Is Agile Software Development more about an agile process, than an agile product?"}
{"_id": "177399", "title": "Relationship between \"Task Parallel Library\" and \"Task-based Asynchronous Pattern\"?", "text": "In the context of C#, .NET 4/4.5 used for an application running on a web- server, what is the relationship between \"Task Parallel Library\" and \"Task- based Asynchronous Pattern\"? I understand one is a library and the other is a pattern. But to dig deeper, is it like \"The library is used by the pattern to enforce good practices\". I'm also not clear if both are supported in .NET 4.0 (with `await` and `async` keywords) Edit: Seems that `await` and `async` are only in .NET 4.5 ..."}
{"_id": "177398", "title": "Help me understand a part of Java Language Specification", "text": "I'm reading part 17.2.1 of Java language specification: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.html#jls-17.2.1 I won't copy a text, it's too long, but I would like to know, why for third step of sequence they're saying that `If thread t was removed from m's wait set in step 2 due to an interrupt` Thread couldn't get to step 2 it wasn't removed from wait set, because it written for the step 1: `Thread t does not execute any further instructions until it has been removed from m's wait set` Thus thread can't be removed from wait set in step 2 whatever it's due to, because it was already removed. Please help me understand this."}
{"_id": "212815", "title": "What is a Ruby on Rails way to save images?", "text": "I develop on iOS, and I'm switching from a PHP backend to Ruby on Rails. The interchange format is JSON. A quick Google search for 'save images in Rails' has nearly every result talking about saving image data as blobs to the database. I might be mistaken, but I'm under the impression that saving image data in a database is a huge waste of time and space (as opposed to saving a link to the file location ('/img/subcat/4656.png'). In PHP, it's pretty standard to receive the data, generate a filename, save that file to disk, and update the database with the image's location on disk. Is this the same for Ruby on Rails, or is there some built-in ActiveRecord image functionality I'm not aware of?"}
{"_id": "177391", "title": "Counting product releases if you work on the backend/online services?", "text": "I am trying to update my resume, and I would like to count the number of \"product releases\" that I was directly involved in with a company. It would seem to serve as a performance metric. The problem is that I was working on the backend of a very large distributed system, like along the lines of Hadoop or other huge database. We had regular 6-month major releases and other minor releases. My manager kept saying that we \"shipped\" these releases, but \"shipping\" a product to me sounds like releasing single pieces of software, like Microsoft would ship Office 11 or something. Any ideas on \"product releases\" for backend service engineers, or any other type of performance metric?"}
{"_id": "24464", "title": "Programmer VS Commercial Systems (ERP)", "text": "My question here is relative to jobs for programmers. Why does employer still contract programmers if today we have a lot of good commercial system avaliable on the market? I want to be very clear at this point, this question is relative only to a system, more specially to ERP systems. Maybe this question looks a little bit useless, but right now I'm working and this doubt arose to me and my boss. I have a few answers to my own question, but I really would like to speculate this subject a bit more. Also I know, every good company needs a customized system, but ... the question is here. :-) Any answer will make me feel better. Thanks."}
{"_id": "24466", "title": "Best Practices: Database app programming patterns", "text": "I have written many database (MySQL) web apps so far but I always think my structure is kinda clumsy. I want to improve the programming/design pattern I use, hoping for some advice here. Particularly, I cannot find a structure that complements an OOP approach that encapsulates the implementation of the database (schema). I Think my question can be best explained by example. There are 2 approaches I use now say I have an Invoice object/class: first is to use static member functions               class Invoice     {        int id;        string ref;        int customer_id;        date created;        date due;             static id create();        static bool update(id, field1, field2, ...);        static bool delete(id);        static bool get(id);     };      The second approach is to put every thing in a database object:               class Database extends ProprietaryDBConnecter, Singleton     {        id createInvoice();        bool updateInvoice(id, field1, field2, ...);        bool deleteInvoice(id);        bool getInvoice(id);             id createCustomer();        bool updateCustomer(id, field1, field2, ...);        bool deleteCustomer(id);        bool getCustomer(id);             // etc...     }      I find that both ways the (SQL) member functions are very much unseparable from the \"view\", in that the \"view\" determines what the classes needs to have and hence seems to break the document/view architecture. Also, it seems kind of inefficient for example a SELECT statement should only select what is needed, but the presence of member variables in Invoice seems to imply \"guaranteed data\". Don't know if I explained the question clearly, What are some other best approaches to this architecture/design pattern/what-it-is-known-as? Thanks for advices"}
{"_id": "130976", "title": "How to quantify benefits from a programming training?", "text": "I'm conducting a programming training for 3 months. Details in this link - Programming Training Details. My question is \"How do we quantify benefits from such training?\". I think the two important factors to focus on are   - Quality of Code   - Productivity  My current thinking is on the lines of having the group solve a problem on day 1 of the training and compare it with how the group solves a similar problem on the last day of the training. **Edit 1 :** Thanks for the feedback. This is a program which I have plans to extend to other teams if it is successful. And there by the thoughts on how to quantify benefits. I agree that all the replies saying \"Its difficult to quantify!\" and I had further discussions outside which helped me understand that measuring might even be counter productive."}
{"_id": "50179", "title": "Why OOP is enforced in Java and C#?", "text": "In many other languages like C++ and Javascript, OOP is optional. Procedural code is ok. But in languages like Java and C#, OOP is somewhat enforced. Everything is to be a part of a class or an object. What are the benefits?"}
{"_id": "187316", "title": "Types in Lisp and Scheme", "text": "I see now that Racket has types. At first glance it seems to be almost identical to Haskell typing. But is Lisp's CLOS covering some of the space Haskell types cover? Creating a very strict Haskell type and an object in any OO language seems vaguely similar. It's just that I've drunk some of the Haskell kool-aid and I'm totally paranoid that if I go down the Lisp road, I'll be screwed due to dynamic typing."}
{"_id": "187317", "title": "Is currying too complex a tool to actually use?", "text": "Today I feel like I finally grokked currying (in Javascript), and of course, like any programmer who has learned a new trick, my mind immediately began racing over how to improve my current codebase using it. And again, like any programmer, the little voice shouting \"[new trick] all the things!\" was silenced by another saying, \"[new trick] is really complex. maybe you shouldn't use it.\" Curry is sugar, essentially, after all. I understand that there's nothing wrong with using a feature in moderation, especially one as mind-bending as currying, but for the sake of simplicity should I avoid using it if something equally as efficient is sufficient?"}
{"_id": "50175", "title": "Conways Game of Life C#", "text": "Not sure if this is the correct place for this question or SO - mods please move if necessary. I am going to have a go at creating GoL over the weekend as a little test project : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life I understand the algorithm, however I just wanted to check regarding the implementation, from maybe somebody that has tried it. Essentially, my first (basic) implementation, will be a static grid at a set speed. If I understand correctly, these are the steps I will need:   1. Initial seed   2. Create 2d array with initial set up   3. Foreach iteration, create temporary array, calculating each cells new state based on the Game of Life algorithm   4. Assign temp array to proper array.   5. Redraw grid from proper array. My concerns are over speed. When I am populating the grid from the array, would it simply be a case of looping through the array, assigning on or off to each grid cell and then redraw the grid? Am I on the correct path?"}
{"_id": "221014", "title": "Is there a downside to using Access as a database?", "text": "I have inherited an application that stores data in multiple tables in Microsoft Access; the Access DB is only used for storage, all data processing is handled by the app (VB.net). Is this good practice? I need to build a similar app from scratch and am unsure of what is 'normal' practice. I have tried Googling the question in various formats and checked through numerous results (including many on this forum) but all questions seem to relate to where you are programming within Access rather than simply using it for data storage. I guess I could be more specific and say would SQL Server Express or similar be a better option and if so why? If you are reading this post due to having a similar question then check out this link provided by @DanielB below - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/694921/ms-access-mdb-concurrency"}
{"_id": "181259", "title": "Reporting and handling asynchronous process errors to a client", "text": "I have a product with two separate applications. The core of the product lives in the database (oracle) and runs according to a schedule. The other is a client application (currently ASP.NET MVC3) used to manage the database application. There are three levels of validation going on; client, server- side, and database before the client data is saved to the database. However, there are cases where pieces of the data set are currently valid but could become invalid at some point in the future. In these cases rather than abort the entire (lengthy) data input process, we just place the process for the data set on hold until the data either becomes valid, or is updated to a valid value. The error might be something like, \"Hey, you scheduled the copy process of data Foo to location X, and then grant access to user Bob. The Bob user account you originally selected is no longer valid, what would you like to do? 'Cancel the Copy Request' 'Change the User' or 'Wait'\". Is there a best practice for storing and reporting error conditions (fixable by the user) and exceptions (not fatal and not fixable by the user) back to the client from the database? For example:   - Database starts process A   - Database selects data set Foo   - During process an error or exception is encountered   - Database stores the error or exception   - Database handles the abort for process A with data set Foo   - Database continues process A with next data set until all data sets are processed   - Database completes process A  Then some time later:   - User logs in to client application at a later time (after the weekend?)   - User receives notification that an error or exception occurred  My first thought is some sort of db table storing various fields (event_ time_stamp, process, event, object_type, object_pk, event_code, additional_details, status, last_updated). Then setting up client-side templates (i.e. hard coded with parameters) for each error code and presenting those to the user...but there has to be a better way? Ideally I am looking for a solution that will allow the client to provide helpful UI options that will aid the user in possibly resolving the errors. What solutions have you found to this problem? Would something like NServiceBus or MassTransit work? EDIT: There are two different requirements here. The first to store the exceptions, and the second to report (and possibly take action on) them."}
{"_id": "117839", "title": "Is using xml + xsl to create a weekly html email a good or bad idea?", "text": "The guy who is in charge of our html emails is leaving and I have been asked to take over. We are an online retailer and send out an email once a week. An email will consist of a main image, a bit of an opening paragraph and then rows of product offers. As everyone knows html emails are painful to work with due to the archaic html and css you need to deal with. When something needs changing last minute it's a real pain to wade through the spaghetti of td's to get to the link that needs it's url and tracking code changing and the opportunities to make a mistake are plentiful. So I've decided to create an `xml` file consisting of all the data that needs to go in the email. For example, the products would be recorded like this:               <products>         <product id=\"1\">             <title>My Product</title>             <image width=\"160px\" height=\"160px\">                 <alt>My Product</alt>                 <url>http://somedomain.com/emails/image1.jpg</url>             </image>             <link>                 <term>my_term_for_google_analytics</term>                 <url>http://somedomain.com/products/1</url>             </link>         </product>         <product id=\"2\">             <title>My Second Product</title>                  ... etc ...         </product>     </products>      I could then use an `xslt` template to create the email. The advantage of this is that when a product goes out of stock the morning the email is due to go out I can just change a bit of text in the `xml` file, generate the html and we're good to go again. I can also use the same `xml` to create a microsite for the email. The trouble is I've had a good ol' Google about this and I can't find anyone else who has really tried this. So I'm either a visionary genius or an idiot. It usually turns out I'm an idiot so has anyone else had any experience of creating html emails from `xml` using `xslt` or can anyone see any major pitfalls with this approach. Is it a good idea? Disclaimer - I don't really think I'm a potential visionary genius."}
{"_id": "32763", "title": "How would you practice concurrency and multi-threading?", "text": "I've been reading about concurrency, multi-threading, and how \"the free lunch is over\". But I've not yet had the possibility to use MT in my job. I'm thus looking for suggestions about what I could do to get some practice of CPU heavy MT through exercises or participation in some open-source projects. Thanks. Edit: I'm more interested in open-source projects that use MT for CPU-bound tasks, or simply algorithms that are interesting to implement using MT, rather than books or papers that only describe the tools like threads, mutexes and locks, or how MT can be used to have responsive GUIs..."}
{"_id": "189408", "title": "Is a single object to be preferred over multiple variables?", "text": "It was quite hard to put what I meant into a title, but it's easy to put into code. **C++** Is this               int offset_x = 10;     int offset_y = 40;     ...     element.move(offset_x, offset_y);      To be preferred over this?               Vector<int> offset(10, 40);     ...     element.move(offset.x, offset.y);      (Note that Vector is not like `std::vector`, it's a 2D vector. This class has lots of methods I don't need here, like `normalize()` and `scale()`. Should I have a more basic `Point` class for this?) **JavaScript** Is this               var offsetX = 10;     var offsetY = 40;     ...     element.move(offsetX, offsetY);      To be preferred over this?               var offset = {x: 10, y: 40};     ...     element.move(offset.x, offset.y);"}
{"_id": "131377", "title": "What's the benefit of avoiding the use of a debugger?", "text": "Over the course of my career, I've noticed that some developers don't use debugging tools, but do spot checking on erroneous code to figure out what the problem is. While many times being able to quickly find errors in code without a debugger is a good skill to have, it seems it's less productive to spend a lot of time looking for issues when a debugger would easily find little mistakes like typos. Is it possible to manage a complex without a debugger? Is it advisable? What benefits are there to be had by using \"psychic debugging?\""}
{"_id": "22158", "title": "How do you use Roundup issue tracker?", "text": "Roundup issue tracker is pretty minimalistic by default, and it does not bring any specific workflow with itself. It was once called \u2018so configurable that it\u2019s probably better described as a lightweight tracker-oriented framework.\u2019 Have you ever used Roundup extensively or seen some interesting use cases? If so, please share an example. (If you don\u2019t consider your workflow special enough, at least tell how do you understand & utilize `superseder` field in the default \u2018classic\u2019 template, which alone could be interpreted differently\u2014see _old.nabble.com/Superseder- td13792131.html_ )"}
{"_id": "247411", "title": "What's the proper way of dealing with a global file path?", "text": "I don't have compilable code, because the code in question depends on a large function that's irrelevant to the question, but say I have the following scenario:               savePath = \"C:\\\\...\"          changePath1, changePath2 :: String -> String          changePath1 passedPath =         'Do something with passedPath'          changePath2 =         'Do something with savePath'          let newPath1 = changePath1 savePath in ...     let newPath2 = changePath2 in ...      Is it more proper to set up functions like changePath1 (where the global path is passed in), or changePath2 (where it just internally uses the global path) If the functions had a chance of processing more then 1 path, obviously I'd use changePath1, but in my current program, there is only 1 path to deal with, so it seems simpler to just have all the functions internally know the global path instead of constantly passing it in. Thank you"}
{"_id": "77455", "title": "Is it worth cross-browser testing in GWT applications?", "text": "as **GWT** is supposed to abstract all the browsers implementations (for widgets, etc) is it worth doing cross-browser testing? I was just thinking to test only the styling related stuff (CSS related) in different browsers. Any opinion on that?"}
{"_id": "77450", "title": "How much of original code is left in modern software products?", "text": "Many of you out there work for large companies that ship well-known software. I was wondering, how much of original code (basically, code that was \"v1.0\" release) is left in modern massive applications, such as, say, Firefox, Photoshop, Windows, Linux, etc? I'd really prefer first-hand experience and real-world war stories. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity. **EDIT** Turns out there's a degree of misunderstanding. What I'm after is basically as follows: when you blame/annotate source code, are there any parts or even whole files untouched since the initial 1.0 release."}
{"_id": "77452", "title": "Advice and resources on collaborative environments", "text": "I need some advice on collaborative software environments. More specifically, I am looking for books and reference materials that can aid me in understanding team and code structures and the interactions thereof. In other words books, blogs or white papers explaining:   * Different strategies for structuring teams that share common code between each other but have distinct individual functions?  To summarise my question I would like to know what would be a good source of knowledge if I were to set up teams in an organisation that shared code but each unit still remained autonomous. I have done some research on this subject and explored:   * code review tools,   * distributed VCS,   * continuous integration tools,   * Unit testing automation. The tough part about implementing these tools are to determine where a good place would be to start, which tools are low hanging fruit, which tools or methods provide higher success rates. If someone asks me about code quality reference I point them to Code Complete. I am looking for an equivalent guide on software team structures and tools to make this equation work better. I realise that this question is quite vague but it arose as \"we need to share code between teams without breaking each others stuff and causing management headaches and reams of red tape\" The answer is definitely not simple and requires changes on many levels, hence the question. If the question is too vague please vote to close or delete. I would accept any good starting point as an answer."}
{"_id": "197385", "title": "Find the peak of each islands in sparse matrix", "text": "I have a sparse matrix that contains several islands of unknown size. I would like to find the highest peak of each islands. Consider this matrix as an example:               0 0 1 0 0 0 0     0 0 1 2 1 0 0     0 0 0 3 2 1 0     0 1 0 0 0 0 0     0 2 3 4 0 1 0     0 0 1 1 0 1 0     0 0 0 0 0 1 0      In this case I would like to get the position of 3 at (3, 2), the position of 4 at (3, 4) and the position of 1 at (5, 4), (5, 5) or (5, 6). Note: I consider 4-connected neighbours. Until now I came up with the solution that scans each pixel and if it is not zero it starts a flood fill from that pixel. The flood fill paints the pixels to zero keeping track the maximum value visited. This algorithm works well but I was wondering if there are any faster solution? In my target platform (iOS) I have access to different vector processing frameworks like BLAS, LAPACK, vDSP that provide some functions for fast finding the maximum value in a vector (or matrix). Maybe one could implement a faster solution with the help of these functions?"}
{"_id": "197380", "title": "Why are the version / build numbers different for Mylyn?", "text": "At projects.eclipse.org Mylyn Build 1.1.0 is slated for June 2013. At www.eclipse.org/mylyn The \"news\" says Mylyn 3.8.3 was released on March 1st. Why is there little or no correlation between the two?"}
{"_id": "197388", "title": "What aspects of \"maintainability\" can influence choice of IS implementation technology?", "text": "**Background** : I'm an apprentice and am handling the project of developing a particular IS-System. Currently I'm only managing the requirements analysis and the information-processes design, but as a Software Developer, I would also like to implement the concept as an actual Web-Portal. When it comes to choice of technology, I personally would like to build my front-end based on JavaScript Frameworks(jQuery, Bootstrap, DataTables.Net, ...) which offer high front-end implementation flexibility and nice out-of-box modern design, and wire these to .NET MVC in the code-behind. The people around me, who haven't written a line of code in what seems like decades, all fret about difficulty to maintain such a system, in comparison to using .NET Controls and sticking to the MS Web-Site development Package. So whenever I try to bring up, that I could build a nice-looking, user-friendly, modern portal, once we're done with the first concept-phase, I just get concerned looks and a mumble about \"maintainability\" and \"we'd prefer trying to use Sharepoint Analysis Services connected to our DB\". **Question** : what aspects of \" _maintainability_ \" can influence choice of System implementation technology? **Goal** : I would like to sit down and \"prove\" that my approach is just as maintainable as what they are suggesting, and if it isn't I would like to identify ways to improve it. * * * Questions I found interesting:   * JavaScript codes complexity and maintainability   * How does one meaningfully measure maintainability?   * How to have a maintainable and manageable Javascript code base   * What characteristics or features make code maintainable? (!)    * What hurts maintainability? (!) Some abstract aspects of maintainability:   * readability   * coupling   * consistency   * the reasoning behind code is documented"}
{"_id": "135619", "title": "Does anyone have any idea how Java decides the names of the converters?", "text": "Making reference to this link In particular, what made them decide to pick 'tl' as the converter symbol for hour... It seems so random. I understand why they've decided on 'te' (it's because 'e' comes after 'd' in 'td' and d is the first letter of 'day'). Edit: Oh come on, why the downvote? I'm asking something that might not be important but it does nag on me"}
{"_id": "219383", "title": "Problems with Facades and then evolution in software", "text": "I initially started a project with Facades and Polymorphism as a way to create simple extensible design following SOLID Principles. Here is a sample code:               public interface IInterface     {         void FillList(List<InputPocoObject> listOfInputObjects, out List<OutputPocoObject> ListOfOutputObjects);     }          public class SampleClass : IInterface     {              public void FillList(List<InputPocoObject> listOfInputObjects, out List<OutputPocoObject> ListOfOutputObjects)         {             //some data layer code              //and a for loop to fill OutputPocoObject object and add it to list         }     }      I have number of classes such as above which are created in runtime with the help of factory( not shown here for the sake of simplicity) Recently after couple of months I see that there are different requirements emerging in my project, which I attempted to solve by the help of Polymorphism and I see that I am stuck with violating DRY principles. Here is a sample code of this situation:               public class SampleClass2 : IInterface     {              public void FillList(List<InputPocoObject> listOfInputObjects, out List<OutputPocoObject> ListOfOutputObjects)         {             //some data layer code              //and a for loop to fill OutputPocoObject object and add it to list             // there is a property in OutputPocoObject which is set to 1         }     }               public class SampleClass3 : IInterface     {              public void FillList(List<InputPocoObject> listOfInputObjects, out List<OutputPocoObject> ListOfOutputObjects)         {             //same code as above              //with only one difference that  property in OutputPocoObject is set to 5 here         }     }      One Simple solution will be to add a control parameter to interface such as:               public interface IInterface     {         void FillList(List<InputPocoObject> listOfInputObjects, out List<OutputPocoObject> ListOfOutputObjects, int controlParameter);     }      but I don't know whether this is such a better idea? Or whether it might introduce some complexity in my design?"}
{"_id": "200259", "title": "Creating a System Sequence Diagram from an [extended] use case", "text": "As I have been taught - one controller = one use case. But I have:   * OutsiderController   * SupplierController (which extends OutsiderController)   * SubContractorController (which also extentds OutsiderController) And I want to do the SSD for `SupplierController` and `SubContractorController`. What do I do? Do I write in both SSDs the methods from `OutsiderController`?"}
{"_id": "219386", "title": "How to categorise information in end-user documentation?", "text": "One of the greatest piece of documentation I ever read is _the TeXbook_ by Donald Knuth\u2014the manual of the _TeX_ typesetting system, and I used it in my first analysis. As far as I can tell, the type of information conveyed by documentation falls in three categories: _recipe,_ _reference_ and _expert knowledge_ that I describe hereafter. Which categories am I missing? ## Recipe A recipe answers a question like \u201chow do I solve that problem with this software?\u201d and binds the _problem world_ with _software features._ Chapters 3, 7 and 8 in the _TeXbook_ answer questions like \u201cHow do I run TeX?\u201d or \u201cHow do I type text?\u201d and provide the user with recipes. Other software packages often contain installation or backup procedures that fall in this category. ## Reference A _reference_ documents all the needed details on some piece of software. It is useful for the user knowing that \u201cthis feature is useful to solve that problem\u201d and wanting to know if it can parametrise \u201cthis feature\u201d to solve a close problem. It is also useful for troubleshooting the software when it gives unexpected results. Chapter 14 \u201cHow TeX Breaks Paragraphs into Lines\u201d in the _TeXbook_ is an example of a reference text. UNIX manual pages almost always belong to this category. ## Expert knowledge Expert knowledge pertaining to the problem solved by the software also belong to the software documentation. Reasons for this are at least:   1. Users are not experts in the area where the software is useful.   2. Experts use varying terminology and methodologies to describe or solve problems. For 1. mathematicians reading the _TeXbook_ also learn the _basics_ of design and layout: they get aware that there is a structured knowledge in this area and learn the names of the basic concepts involved, so that they can phrase out problems and get help. For 2. it is useful to \u201cfix the notation\u201d in the software documentation and this is best done by providing some high-level or background information. Hence expert knowledge contained in the user documentation binds the conceptual organisation of the problem as it is known to the software designers to the conceptual organisation of the problem as it is known to the software users."}
{"_id": "135611", "title": "what do programmers dealing with data driven/machine learning related programming need?", "text": "Given the increasing amount of data generated through different web services ( social network, etc), there are must be more and more programmers who are familiar with machine learning and/or statistics needed to write programs to deal with those data. I wonder if any one working in related jobs could briefly describe what are the possible daily activities. Is it more like a traditional software engineering or is it more like working as a statistician? I am personally interested in machine learning and programming. If I want to work in jobs like this, should I spend more time learning statistics or more time in the traditional software engineering side?"}
{"_id": "135612", "title": "Saving mobile application data when no service?", "text": "Say I have a mobile application that allows users to enter information which is then uploaded to a central location. I had planned on building this using only HTML5 and javascript (non-native app), but I'm assuming if someone is in an area where there is no service they simply will not be able to use the app. As a work around would it be possible to write a native app that saves the information on the device and then uploads it whenever service returns? If so, is it possible to write a native app entirely in HTML5 and Javascript that does this?"}
{"_id": "200251", "title": "What should I look for in a school when trying to obtain a Software Engineering degree?", "text": "My goal is to be as employable as possible and to have enough knowledge not to look foolish when interviewed. However, that's probably everyone's goal and it's not achieved simply by taking classes in the University -- you have to put in some of your own time as well (which I do). I'm in process of obtaining my Associates degree in Computer Programming through a local community college. There are several options for me to choose from in the area, such as Cal Poly Pomona, CSU San Bernardino, UC Riverside, and a few other schools in that general area (one of them is CalTech Pasadena, but I hear it's very hard to get in...even with my 4.0 GPA). Of course, there is plenty of information ranking schools, but nothing really explains on what to look for in a school when choosing a particular area of study. I'm interested in Software Engineering. I might branch of into AI, but that's up in the air as of right now. I think for Bachelor's I'd just go with general Software Engineering, unless I find a specific area I want to commit to. I'm definitely aware that student-to-teacher ratio is a huge point to consider when choosing a school. But what other things should I take into account? Should I choose a school that's more focused on theory, such as UCR, or a school that takes a hands-on approach such as CalPoly Pomona? What have you seen in the industry that would point as one being superior over the other? What is your own experience? Education is not cheap and I have a family to support (I work full time and go to school), so, I want to make sure that my investment is justified. That being said, I make a decent salary, so I can afford to invest into education, as long as it's not wasteful. I'm reaching out to those of you who have first- hand experience in these matters to assist me with some tips and answers to the above questions. I hope I am being clear with my goals and what I'm trying to find out; if clarification is needed, please let me know (I just got done with a 12-hour shift, so I'm a bit drowsy, heh)."}
{"_id": "135616", "title": "Is the architecture of my project a common one? What's its name?", "text": "I am responsible for a software project for a few years now (a Java desktop application, which is mostly event-driven). I started it from scratch, and at the beginning of this project I made some strong choices on the architecture of the software. ## My architecture I introduced the `Module` class, which represents a functionnal part of the application, with a well-defined responsability. The only thing a `Module` exposes to the world is a set of \"communication handles\". There are 4 types of communication handles :   * an `Emitter<T>` can emit a message of type `T`.   * a `Handler<T>` can receive a message of type `T`   * a `Puller<R, Q>` can make a query represented by a message of type `Q`, and will receive a response message of type `R`   * a `PullServer<R, Q>` can receive a query represented by a message of type `Q` and will send back a response message of type `R`. Then, at the beginning of the execution of the application, I instanciate all the modules that compose the application, and I set up all the connections between them. An `Emitter` can be linked to one or many `Handlers`, and a `PullServer` can serve one or many `Pullers` (the types of these two endpoints must be compatible, of course). All the classes used to represent a message are immutable, and are defined in one subproject. Every `Module` depends on that subproject, and nothing more. This makes the `Modules` very decoupled (a `Module` knows nothing about the other `Modules`, and their input/output to the outside world very clear). Also, the dynamic aspect of the application (the dataflow) is defined in a unique place, in the `main` function. Also, it is super easy to test a `Module`, we just have to provide fake `Emitters` and `PullServers`, and plug it to the `Module`'s `Handlers` and `Pullers`. ## My thoughts on this architecture So, this is the first \"big\" software project I work on, and I made up this design because it felt like the right thing to do. Now, the project is working just fine, with a total of 57 `Modules` working together. One of my co-worker, who joined the project recently, asked me if this was a common architecture, if there was a name for such a design. I don't have an answer, since I am not really familiar with other real-world software architectures. It seems to me that this design is close the the concept of Actors, that we can find in languages such as Scala (and maybe Erlang). However, Actors do not provide the decoupling provided by my design. And Actors have an additional capability : each Actor has its own message queue, and its own thread of execution (kind of). Also, I think my design is somewhat related to the Dependency Injection pattern, in the sense that dependencies between the `Modules` are defined in a central place. However, this pattern deals with interfaces, not with messages. It does not define how the modules communicate (notification, request/response). ## The question (finally !) Do you know of a software project that's architecture is similar to mine? Is there a name for that? ### Edit @Doc Brown suggests that this design is similar to the Flow Design. I cannot agree more. Here is a one to one comparision between those two designs :   * My _Module_ is the same thing as a _Functionnal Unit_.   * My _Emitter/Handler_ are the same as the _Output-pin/Input-pin_ , except mine don't have a name. In my design, the \"communication handles\" are only identified by their types.   * The connections between my Modules is the equivalent of their _wires_.   * My _Puller/PullServer_ is similar to their _Dependency relations_. However, they say there is an explicit dependency from the caller to the callee. In my design they are decoupled.   * They define the concept of _Boards_. That's interesting, I think I'll borrow this idea !   * They define the concept of _Configuration_. I do have the need for configuring a Module in my program, and for that I define a configuration Handler on some of my Modules.   * Both solutions are synchronous.   * I don't have the concept of _map_ and _join_. But I don't feel the need for it. Well found, Doc !"}
{"_id": "135617", "title": "Sprint planning and accommodating slack", "text": "After reading Tom DeMarco's Slack, I'm wondering how to factor slack into sprints. For those who haven't read the book, TDM describes 'slack' as providing time for innovation and other good things. Scrum leans towards eliminating slack and resisting change within the sprint. Allowing stories to be re-prioritised between sprints. I appreciate the purpose of a sprint, and am not trying to ask how to respond to change within them. My initial thought about adding slack to sprints would be to plan a sprint with 8/9 days of work for a two week sprint. If you're conscious of this decision, can still calculate your velocity accurately? Based on story points completed in your 8/9 day window (vs 10). Conversely, these are two competing ideas and don't belong together... ? gnat's focus factor link is interesting."}
{"_id": "184751", "title": "terms for the html/css/javascript model?", "text": "Are there any words for the design model implemented by HTML + CSS + JavaScript, either for that specific set of technologies or any abstract pattern that they follow?"}
{"_id": "184753", "title": "Scalability: How does splitting a database table work on different replicated SQL Servers?", "text": "I would like to know more about the general concepts behind dividing data of a database into different servers. For example, suppose I have a SQL Server database which has a massive table. Assume one single server cannot handle the amount of data in this table. I would like to break that table down and split its contents among different servers with an identical database (replicated). Now, suppose I have a single SQL (ADO) connection to any one of these servers, and choose to select records from this particular table. Since the data is in separate databases on separate servers, I need to gather the records from all the various servers and combine them into one. I'm sure there's standard ways of accommodating for this, and I'm willing to go another route than a direct SQL Server connection (I plan to wrap it in my own HTTP Server API anyway) but I'm still going to use SQL Server as the actual engine. What is the most standard practice and where can I learn more about it?"}
{"_id": "184755", "title": "Using ref instead of out. Would that be considered a bug?", "text": "Given that out and ref parameters have slight different connotations would writing code like below be considered a bug (even though it doesn't cause an issue at present), or just a lack of understanding on ref and out parameters?               public void MyMethod()      {         int myInt = 0;         MyMethodWithRef(ref myInt);     }          public void MyMethodWithRef(ref myInt)     {         // not used before being assigned a value.  Does an out parameter make more sense then           myInt = 5;     }      I understand that this is the incorrect usage of ref but if you saw that in code constantly or even once would you consider it a bug and hence fix it as well as inform the original coder or just do it as part of general refactoring practices?"}
{"_id": "100898", "title": "Domain-Driven-Design - external dependencies in the Entity problem", "text": "I'd like to start Domain-Driven-Design, but there are several problems I'd like to solve before starting :) Let's imagine I have a Groups and Users and when user wants to join a group, I'm calling `groupsService.AddUserToGroup(group, user)` method. In DDD I should do `group.JoinUser(user)`, which looks pretty good. The problem appears if I there are some validation rules for adding a user, or some external tasks need to be started when user is added to the group. Having these tasks will lead to the entity having external dependencies. An example could be - a restriction that user can only participate in 3 groups max. This will require DB-calls from inside group.JoinUser method to validate this. But the fact that an Entity depends on some external services/classes doesn't seem so good and \"natural\" to me. What's the proper way to deal with this in DDD?"}
{"_id": "130391", "title": "A good schema to represent integer numbers from 0 to infinity, assuming you have infinite linear binary storage?", "text": "I would like a schema to represent integer numbers starting with 0, without any limit (assuming access to infinite linear storage). Here's a schema that can represent numbers from 0 to 255: Use the first byte of the storage (address 0) to store the integer. Now, suppose I want to represent numbers larger than 255. Of course, I could use more than 1 byte to represent the integer, but as long as it's a fixed number, there will be eventually an integer so large that it cannot be represented by the original schema. Here's another schema that should be able to do the task, but it's probably far from efficient. Just use some sort of unique \"end of number\" byte, and use all the previous bytes to represent the number. Obviously, this \"end of number\" byte cannot be used anywhere in the number representation, but this can be achieved by using a base-255 (instead of base-256) numbering system. However, that's slow and probably inefficient. I want to have a better one that performs better with low values and scales well. Essentially, it's a UUID system. I want to see if it's possible to create a fast-performing UUID system that can theoretically scale to use for years, thousands of years, millions of years, without having to be redesigned."}
{"_id": "130398", "title": "Why does a Java source file bear the name of the public class it contains?", "text": "I am a newbie learning Java. In Java every source file must contain a public class and that source file should have the same name as that public class. Moreover, no source file can contain two public classes. Why is this restriction?"}
{"_id": "230954", "title": "Advantages and disadvantages of PHP/Ruby", "text": "I've been a front-end developer for about two years now, and I'm attempting to break into the server side of things. Ideally I'd like to work for a startup social network on the back-end side so I want to try and be as marketable as possible. In my quest to learn a new scripting language I've dug myself into the PHP vs Ruby hole. What are the main advantages and disadvantages of the two? I would really appreciate words from experience with the two, but will settle for any experience. Cheers."}
{"_id": "230950", "title": "Reasoning behind indexedDB versioning", "text": "So, the last 2 weeks I have been fighting with `indexedDB` and one of two recurring questions that keep popping up is why `indexedDB` has to use/present it's entire versioning system? I do understand that in certain very specific cases it's a nice thing to have, but in those cases an `if(localstorage.dbversion <= ...)` would do, so is there some reason in respect to browser implementations/optimalizations that require this roundabout1 system? Or does it make indexedDB far more efficient or something? 1 Roundabout because **for example** in `onupgradeneeded` you get the transaction from `event.target.transaction` whereas in `onsuccess` you get it from the `result.transaction()`. And there are countless of other more complex examples. (Such as cases where `createStore` is called in response to various huge (too big to keep it all in memory) ajax calls)) * * * If this does not belong on Programmers, but after all on SO then my sincere apologies and I will re-ask it there. (Will remove this note in a bit if it turns out that this is the right place)."}
{"_id": "236332", "title": "Dedupe while or after write", "text": "I have a summary tool written in python that reads input files, and writes them into a summary file. I have the following stipulations:   1. No duplicates.    2. If it exists, add a count to it.  Is it better / faster to write one GIANT output file THEN de-duplicate the entries or to dedupe as you go (ie, each write command checks before writing)? The small files are about 100-300k each, there can be hundreds of thousands of these, and the final output file is usually 1-4 MB. A sample line in the file would be like this: `String,number` I would be checking the string for dupes. If it were a dupe, I would output: `string,COUNT,number(additive)` as in, I would keep add the numbers every time I'd get a duplicate, and keep a count of how many times it was duplicated. I would say there are mostly duplicates."}
{"_id": "5034", "title": "What 's the minimal requirement for a code be considered an AI implementation?", "text": "I'd like to know at what point can be considerated an AI implementation? I means, what is the minimal requeriment for that? Can you give a simple code example?"}
{"_id": "246558", "title": "What UML diagram should be used for modelling permissions/users/files in Linux?", "text": "If I am planning a structure for support testing in Linux, a structure that will contain packages, such files as shell and build scripts, app configurations, DBs, sources, tests and jars for to be managed, applications for be managers, users, permissions, etc., what diagram could be used for it? Just now I am using the Component Diagram with some stereotyping, but it is not at all convenient in the part of permissions/users stuff. There are such diagrams as RBAC, but they are not UML, and it remains unclear how to combine them. An example picture and/or a real experience description would be highly appreciated. But any fresh thought will be useful, too."}
{"_id": "138595", "title": "What's the best/most efficent way to create a semi-intelligent AI for a tic tac toe game?", "text": "basically I am attempting to make a a efficient/smallish C game of Tic-Tac- Toe. I have implemented everything other then the AI for the computer so far. my squares are basically structs in an array with an assigned value based on the square. For example               s[1].value = 1;      therefore it's a _x_ , and then a value of 3 would be a _o_. My question is whats the best way to create a semi-decent game playing AI for my tic-tac-toe game? I don't really want to use minimax, since It's not what I need. So how do I avoid a a lot of _if statments_ and make it more efficient. Here is the rest of my code:               #include <stdio.h>     #include <stdlib.h>     #include <string.h>     #include <time.h>          struct state{ // defined         int state; // 0 is tie, 1 is user loss, 2 is user win, 3 is ongoing game         int moves;     };          struct square{ // one square of the board         int value; // 1 is x, 3 is o         char sign; // no space used     };          struct square s[9]; //set up the struct     struct state gamestate = {0,0}; //nothing          void setUpGame(){ // setup the game         int i = 0;         for(i = 0; i < 9; i++){             s[i].value = 0;             s[i].sign = ' ';         }         gamestate.moves=0;         printf(\"\\nHi user! You're \\\"x\\\"! I'm \\\"o\\\"! Good Luck :)\\n\");     }          void displayBoard(){// displays the game board         printf(\"\\n %c | %c | %c\\n\", s[6].sign, s[7].sign, s[8].sign);         printf(\"-----------\\n\");         printf(\" %c | %c | %c\\n\", s[3].sign, s[4].sign, s[5].sign);         printf(\"-----------\\n\");         printf(\" %c | %c | %c\\n\\n\", s[0].sign, s[1].sign, s[2].sign);     }          void getHumanMove(){ // get move from human         int i;         while(1){             printf(\">>:\");             char line[255]; // input the move to play             fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);                 while(sscanf(line, \"%d\", &i) != 1) { //1 match of defined specifier on input line                 printf(\"Sorry, that's not a valid move!\\n\");                 fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);             }             if(s[i-1].value != 0){printf(\"Sorry, That moves already been taken!\\n\\n\");continue;}             break;         }         s[i-1].value = 1;         s[i-1].sign = 'x';         gamestate.moves++;     }          int sum(int x, int y, int z){return(x*y*z);}          void getCompMove(){ // get the move from the computer          }          void checkWinner(){ // check the winner         int i;         for(i = 6; i < 9; i++){ // check cols             if((sum(s[i].value,s[i-3].value,s[i-6].value)) == 8){printf(\"The Winner is o!\\n\");gamestate.state=1;}             if((sum(s[i].value,s[i-3].value,s[i-6].value)) == 1){printf(\"The Winner is x!\\n\");gamestate.state=2;}            }         for(i = 0; i < 7; i+=3){ // check rows             if((sum(s[i].value,s[i+1].value,s[i+2].value)) == 8){printf(\"The Winner is o!\\n\");gamestate.state=1;}             if((sum(s[i].value,s[i+1].value,s[i+2].value)) == 1){printf(\"The Winner is x!\\n\");gamestate.state=2;}         }         if((sum(s[0].value,s[4].value,s[8].value)) == 8){printf(\"The Winner is o!\\n\");gamestate.state=1;}         if((sum(s[0].value,s[4].value,s[8].value)) == 1){printf(\"The Winner is x!\\n\");gamestate.state=2;}         if((sum(s[2].value,s[4].value,s[6].value)) == 8){printf(\"The Winner is o!\\n\");gamestate.state=1;}         if((sum(s[2].value,s[4].value,s[6].value)) == 1){printf(\"The Winner is x!\\n\");gamestate.state=2;}     }          void playGame(){ // start playing the game         gamestate.state = 3; //set-up the gamestate         srand(time(NULL));         int temp = (rand()%2) + 1;         if(temp == 2){ // if two comp goes first             temp = (rand()%2) + 1;             if(temp == 2){                 s[4].value = 2; s[4].sign = 'o';                 gamestate.moves++;             }else{                 s[2].value = 2; s[2].sign = 'o';                 gamestate.moves++;             }         }          displayBoard();         while(gamestate.state == 3){             if(gamestate.moves<10);                 getHumanMove();             if(gamestate.moves<10);                 getCompMove();             checkWinner();             if(gamestate.state == 3 && gamestate.moves==9){                 printf(\"The game is a tie :p\\n\");                 break;             }             displayBoard();         }     }          int main(int argc, const char *argv[]){         printf(\"Welcome to Tic Tac Toe\\nby The Elite Noob\\nEnter 1-9 To play a move, standard numpad\\n1 is bottom-left, 9 is top-right\\n\");         while(1){ // while game is being played             printf(\"\\nPress 1 to play a new game, or any other number to exit;\\n>>:\");             char line[255]; // input whether or not to play the game             fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);             int choice; // user's choice about playing or not                while(sscanf(line, \"%d\", &choice) != 1) { //1 match of defined specifier on input line                 printf(\"Sorry, that's not a valid option!\\n\");                 fgets(line, sizeof(line), stdin);             }             if(choice == 1){                 setUpGame(); // set's up the game                 playGame(); // Play a Game             }else {break;} // exit the application         }         printf(\"\\nThank's For playing!\\nHave a good Day!\\n\");         return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "246556", "title": "is there any language that supports automatic evaluation of input expressions?", "text": "I'm wondering if anyone knows of a language that supports automatic- evaluation. (not sure this is the right term. so let me describe what I mean below) For example, a program asks for an `int` as its input, one can give it `2 + 2`, which evaluates to an `int` with value `4`. Of course, one can certainly make a program that accepts this using any language, but I'm wondering if there is any language that natively supports this. What are the plus and down sides of this? P.S: My \"ultimate\" goal is to decide whether to do this in a language that I'm designing. So I'd appreciate any input especially with regard to design."}
{"_id": "140837", "title": "Should I use a unit testing framework to validate XML documents?", "text": "From http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema: > [XML Schemas] provide a means for defining the structure, content and > semantics of XML documents. I'm using an XML Schema (XSD) to validate several large XML documents. While I'm finding plenty of support within XSD for checking the structure of my documents, there are no procedural if/else features that allow me to say, for instance, If Country is USA, then Zipcode cannot be empty. I'm comfortable using unit testing frameworks, and could quite happily use a framework to test content integrity. Am I asking for trouble doing it this way, rather than an alternative approach? Has anybody tried this with good / bad results? -- **Edit** : I didn't include this information to keep it technology agnostic, but I would be using C# / Linq / xUnit for deserialization / testing."}
{"_id": "85349", "title": "Is aspect-oriented programming a misnomer?", "text": "From everything I have learned about \"Aspect-Oriented Programming\" or \"Aspect- Oriented Software Development,\" labeling it as a programming paradigm or methodology appears to be inaccurate. From what I can tell it is not a fundamental technique for programming. To nail down what is meant by \"paradigm\" and \"methodology,\" please refer to the following definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary. Compare how well or poorly \"Object-Oriented Programming\" applies to each vs. how well AOP fits. > Paradigm: A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that > constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, > especially in an intellectual discipline. > > Methodology: A body of practices, procedures, and rules used by those who > work in a discipline or engage in an inquiry; a set of working methods. \"Evidence-based medicine\" satisfies the definition of paradigm, but \"hysterectomy-based medicine\" would be a misnomer because the problem space is too narrow. I am getting the impression that AOP may be misnamed because based on the \"oriented-programming\" suffix, AOP is alleging to be both a paradigm and a methodology in the same way \"Object-Oriented Programming\" is. Both of these terms (paradigm and methodology) indicate a fundamental technique, where what I understand about aspects is a technology for solving a narrow problem scope, maybe comparable in magnitude to the static variable feature of Java. If it's true that aspects solve a narrow set of problems, and AOP isn't a misnomer, then why shouldn't all programming techniques be given the \"oriented-programming\" suffix, such as \"inheritance-oriented programming,\" \"dependency-oriented programming,\" or \"scope-oriented programming?\""}
{"_id": "128212", "title": "How to verify/prove orthogonality of a programming language?", "text": "I know the concept of orthogonality, but from a programming language point of view, is there a way to verify/prove it? For instance in C#, one can use `public` or `static` for a method signature. You can use either or both and they wouldn't interfere with each other, so they are orthogonal to each other, right? My question is, how do I go about the rest of features, particularly features that are not related to each other? Do all the features have to coexist/stack together? Is there a programming language that is 100% orthogonal?"}
{"_id": "85343", "title": "Are XML databases good for small to medium non-programming business project management?", "text": "Last couple of weeks I've been searching for some project management solution for a place where I work at the moment. There we rely on excel spreadsheets, but we meet limitations like access rights and concurrency (I have to work with a local copy of a spreadsheet and twice a day dump it to the main spreadsheet) and software versions compatibility (some people have the latest office, some have 2003). Redmine was the closest, but it really does not meet our needs - excel spreadsheets suck, but they have some stats tools, and anyone can edit them without any extra learning. Now, not to be immediately (or at all) proposed to use in production, but rather as a proof of concept, I would like to play with OODBMS or XML DB on my spare time, to make a web app for managing repetitive tasks which can however vary, for a group of 5-10 people, to be used not instead of 'serious' solutions, but maybe along with them. So I wonder, would these DB management systems work here or should I learn relational databases and ORM in details instead of wasting my time with these? Would they allow to clone existing workflows descriptions and fine tune them for another task? Would they be difficult to maintain?"}
{"_id": "41293", "title": "How long would it take to learn Python?", "text": "I have decided to take the time out after work to learn Python. Python appeals to me because at work (Web and eLearning Company), I have to follow out very repetitive tasks like delete all these tags, rename all these tasks and even more advanced repetive tasks. Additionally it would be good for me to get an understanding of Python first because of its fairly easy to learn syntax. How long would it take to learn the basics of Python?"}
{"_id": "41291", "title": "Why are there so many spaces and line breaks in Unicode?", "text": "Unicode has maybe 50 spaces > > \\u0009\\u000A-\\u000D\\u0020\\u0085\\u00A0\\u1680\\u180E\\u2000-\\u200A\\u2028\\u2029\\u202F\\u205F\\u3000][\\u0009\\u000A-\\u000D\\u0020\\u0085\\u00A0\\u1680\\u180E\\u2000-\\u200A\\u2028\\u2029\\u202F\\u205F\\u3000 and 6 line breaks > not only CRLF, LF, CR, but also NEL (U+0085), PS (U+2029) and LS (U+2028). Maybe I could understand most of the spaces and PS (\"Paragraph separator\"), but what are \"Next Line\" and \"Line separator\" good for? It all looks like invented by a very big committee where everybody wanted their own space and the leaders were granted one line break each. But seriously, how do you deal with it when your programming language doesn't support it (or does it wrong as e.g. Java does)?"}
{"_id": "55284", "title": "Is LISP still useful in today's world? Which version is most used?", "text": "I try to teach myself a new programming language in regular intervals of time. Recently, I've read how Lisp and its dialects are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from languages like C/C++, which made me curious enough to know more about it. However, two things are unclear to me, and I'm looking for guidance on them :   1. Is LISP still practiced/used in todays world, or is it a legacy language like FORTRAN/COBOL ? I mean, apart from maintaining existing code, is it used on new projects at all ?   2. What is the most widely used dialect ? I came across Scheme and Common Lisp as the 2 most prevalent dialects, and wanted your opinion as to which is the most favored/useful one to learn - and would be immensely gratified if you can suggest any resources for a rank beginner to start from. While eager to learn a language which is fundamentally different from the procedural languages I'm used to, I don't want to invest undue effort in something if its totally obsolete - I'd still learn it if it was professionally \"dead\", but only with an academic perspective..."}
{"_id": "252077", "title": "When would you want two references to the same object?", "text": "In Java specifically, but likely in other languages as well: when would it be useful to have two references to the same object? Example:               Dog a = new Dog();     Dob b = a;      Is there a situation where this would be useful? Why would this be a preferred solution to using `a` whenever you want to interact with the object represented by `a`?"}
{"_id": "87279", "title": "API naming and namespacing", "text": "Is it right or more beautiful to name the functions with an prefix, like in Qt? Or using \"many\" namespaces, but 'normal' names for functions? For example, ` slOpenFile(); //\"sl\" means \"some lib\" vs some_lib::file_functions::openFile(); ` **Update:** I've read somewhere that the first variant(using some prefix) is better, because the API users can perform 'fast' search among the documentation and in the Internet. E.g. by typing the magic prefix search engine starts to advice the exact functions. Is it enough to use the first variant?"}
{"_id": "203789", "title": "Is it technically possible to write a JS interpreter using Lisp macro readers, in the browser?", "text": "Using macros readers, it's possible to interpret JavaScript, and have it compiled just like normal Common Lisp code. Hence getting the benefits of Lisp implementations, notably their performance. Which would mean having native performance in the browser, without cheating. Would it be technically possible to build this for the browser? I'm mainly worried about the DOM bindings."}
{"_id": "232085", "title": "In which step of a software development life cycle I should design my computing algorithm?", "text": "In software design, we usually take care of UML diagrams and architecture design. But in case of a data analysis software, we must pay attention to design algorithms and stuff like that. Consider the case of a face detection software which needs AI. Do we need to design AI part of the software explicitly in software design? **P.S:** My manager says that it must set clear in feasibility study and be so clear that we could design it in design steps. Is he correct?"}
{"_id": "204654", "title": "Primer on moving around in MVC", "text": "It was suggested on my Stack Overflow question that this might be better suited to this site, so I'm cross-posting it. I'm working on my first ground-up build of an MVC site. I have a collection of views, a collection of models, and I've tested most of my views and fixed the obvious bugs. The last step I need to do is tie the views together - to enable the user to click links/buttons and move between them. Most of my Google searches for Actions and ActionLinks in MVC/Razor lead me back to StackOverflow, to very specific questions which don't really help me out - the questions assume what I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to learn at a high level the way to pass various things to controller methods (i.e. override the controller method for a view to accept 2 parameters versus 3, or to accept POST data, understand what will be passed along from one view to another action from an Html.Action call, etc)."}
{"_id": "87272", "title": "Do you tend to write your own name or your company name in your code?", "text": "I've been working on various projects at home and at work, and over the years I've developed two main APIs that I use in almost all AJAX based websites. I've compiled both of these into DLLs and called the namespaces Connell.Database and Connell.Json. My boss recently saw these namespaces in a software documentation for a project for the company and said I shouldn't be using my own name in the code. (But it's my code!) One thing to bear in mind is that we're not a software company. We're an IT support company, and I'm the only full-time software developer here, so there's not really any procedures on how we should write software in the company. Another thing to bear in mind is that I do intend on one day releasing these DLLs as open-source projects. How do other developers group their namespaces within their company? Does anyone use the same class libraries in personal and in work projects? Also does this work the other way round? If I write a class library entirely at work, who owns that code? If I've seen the library through from start to finish, designed it and programmed it. Can I use that for another project at home? Thanks, _**Update_** _I've spoken to my boss about this issue and he agrees that they're my objects and he's fine for me to open-source them. Before this conversation I started changing the objects anyway, which was actually quite productive and the code now suits this specific project more-so than it did previously._ _But thank you to everyone involved for a very interesting debate. I hope all this text isn't wasted and someone learns from it. I certainly did._ _Cheers,_"}
{"_id": "87275", "title": "How to report on a bug to the boss", "text": "I am a programming intern who has worked for a company for 6 mnths now (this is my 1st programming job so I have 6 mnths experience). I am a 1 man team right now & I am creating a mobile application using the Mosync C++ API. **I am looking for advice on how to report a bug to a boss who is not a programmer. I have had trouble in the past explaining the gravity of a bug/programming issue & he will say \"just work on something else for a couple of days\" with the expectation it will be fixed in a couple of days anyway. The major problem is that he thinks that amount of effort directly relates to the outcome of solving a bug & if it is not fixed after a couple of days its due to lack of effort or skill** How can I explain that I cannot determine how long a bug will take to fix, & that if it does take a long time to fix its not related to lack of effort or skill? Some background information: I have a bug in a the current project(mobile app) I am working on. The mobile app was complete but my boss wanted me to add features to it. After adding a feature the app now crashes after transitioning screens X amt of times & it is very difficult to replicate the bug(seems random & intermittent) but it is also very serious because releasing an app that randomly crashes is obviously very bad. As a young programmer I know that my experience is most likely to blame for an error in my app & that there is much I could have done to avoid issues like this such as regression tests, maybe better app architecture design to allow for component based development(add new features that work well with existing ones). But I also know that bugs are a fact of programming & it will always happen."}
{"_id": "133613", "title": "Pro's/Con's to database table layout as it relates to maintenance & extensibility ", "text": "Basic pseudo class layout below...               class Location(): # Class containing information about a location.         id         address_one          class CustomerLocation(Location):         customer_id         account_rep           class VendorLocation(Location):        vendor_id        drop_ship_cut_off_time      Let's say you have locations which are going to be used to store location info for customers and vendors. What would be the pro's/cons of the three options in how they relate to application maintenance and extensibility...   1. One large table containing all fields.    2. One large table containing all common fields with related tables containing specialized information about the large table records.    3. Many small tables containing all fields related to specific uses.CustomerLocation table VendorLocation without using a \"master table\" for common fields."}
{"_id": "133614", "title": "Abstract methods vs instance variables for reusable objects", "text": "I have quite a bit of Java code that I'm re-working to be re-used. The problem is that there are many pieces that are project specific so there are ends up being a higher level of coupling between the application project and the code base project. Compare to following situations where we use a class that implements the use of abstract methods to get the resources out of the child class, and one where we simply declare instance variables. Abstract methods:               public abstract class SuperBaseClass {              public abstract int getNumberOne();         public abstract String getStringOne();         public abstract String getStringTwo();              public printStuff() {             Log.i(\"IntAndTwoStrings\", String.format(\"%i %s and %s\",                                 getNumberOne(), getStringOne(), getStringTwo()));         }          }          public class ReusedAppClass extends SuperBaseClass {              public int getNumberOne() {             return 1;         }         public String getStringOne() {             return \"String1\";         }         public String getStringTwo() {             return \"String2\";         }              public ReusedAppClass() {             printStuff();         }          }      Instance variables:               public class SuperBaseClass {              protected int numberOne;         protected String stringOne;         protected String stringTwo;              public printStuff() {             //Possibly throw RuntimeExceptions if the app didnt set these             Log.i(\"IntAndTwoStrings\", String.format(\"%i %s and %s\",                                 numberOne, stringOne, stringTwo));         }          }          public class ReusedAppClass extends SuperBaseClass {              public ReusedAppClass() {             numberOne = 1;             stringOne = \"String1\";             stringTwo = \"String2\";             printStuff();         }          }      Is there a trade-off? Is the abstract method situation overkill, or is this what abstract classes were created for?"}
{"_id": "185406", "title": "What is the purpose of NaN boxing?", "text": "Reading 21st Century C I arrived at chapter 6 at the section \"Marking Exceptional Numeric Values with NaNs\", where it explains the use of the bits in the mantissa to store some arbitrary bit patterns, to use them as markers or pointers (the book mentions that WebKit uses this technique). I'm not really sure I understood the utility of this technique, that I see as an hack (it relies on the hardware not caring on the value of the mantissa in a NaN) but coming from a Java background I'm not used to the roughness of C. Here is the snippet of code that sets and reads a marker in a NaN               #include <stdio.h>     #include <math.h> //isnan          double ref;          double set_na(){         if (!ref) {             ref=0/0.;             char *cr = (char *)(&ref);             cr[2]='a';         }         return ref;     }          int is_na(double in){         if (!ref) return 0;  //set_na was never called==>no NAs yet.              char *cc = (char *)(&in);         char *cr = (char *)(&ref);         for (int i=0; i< sizeof(double); i++)             if (cc[i] != cr[i]) return 0;         return 1;     }          int main(){         double x = set_na();         double y = x;         printf(\"Is x=set_na() NA? %i\\n\", is_na(x));         printf(\"Is x=set_na() NAN? %i\\n\", isnan(x));         printf(\"Is y=x NA? %i\\n\", is_na(y));         printf(\"Is 0/0 NA? %i\\n\", is_na(0/0.));         printf(\"Is 8 NA? %i\\n\", is_na(8));     }      it prints:               Is x=set_na() NA? 1     Is x=set_na() NAN? 1     Is y=x NA? 1     Is 0/0 NA? 0     Is 8 NA? 0      and at JSValue.h webkit explains the encoding, but not why it's used. What is the purpose of this technique? Are the benefits of space/performance high enough to balance its hackish nature?"}
{"_id": "45477", "title": "What do you think about gems and eggs? Alternatives?", "text": "I've read recently some criticism (see 1, 2, 3) about the packaging distribution system of two popular programming languages: Ruby gems and Python eggs. The most important argument stated against them is that they replace the system package manager (in case there is one, as in every Linux distribution), which makes eggs and gems difficult to track, code difficult to patch, and so on. Are actually eggs and gems right? In case not, are there any alternatives to distributing Python or Ruby modules? Should developers focus on taking advantage of package manager (apt-get, pacman, ...) capabilities?"}
{"_id": "133618", "title": "Returning an object or false in dynamic languages", "text": "Consider the following JavaScript function:               function Foo() {       function getPreferences() {         if ([there is an existing preferences object]) {           return preferences;         }         return false;       }     }      The calling code is:               var foo = new Foo();     var prefs = foo.getPreferences();     if (prefs) {       // do something with prefs     }        * Is the pattern of returning an object if it exists, or false otherwise, seen as a good or bad practice? Other alternatives I can see are to return an empty object {} or null.   * Does this pattern have a name?"}
{"_id": "185403", "title": "Under which area of Artificial Intelligence is my knowledge store?", "text": "I've a maturing idea regarding a knowledge store. For the purposes of this question, the store would be used by a police force for the recording and querying of crimes. I believe that historically, police forces used to hold vast index card systems, allowing cross-correlation and querying. The knowledge store would contain a collection of known facts, collated in a way that supports unknown future questions. Obviously if I knew the future questions \"how many crimes this month\", \"what tool is most commonly used for breaking and entering\" it would be fairly straightforward to store, collate, and present the data. My requirement for unknown future questions presents the problem. I imagine a series of authors collating details of crimes. They'd submit details, making heavy use of relationships: \"crime **occurred** in the evening\", \"burglar **used** a brick\", \"crime **committed** by Person_A\". The when considering a crime, the user would enter \"brick\" and be presented with collated knowledge related to that concept.   * frequently used at night   * frequently used in opportunist burglary   * frequently used in in assault   * most common entry object used in Neighbourhood D   * most used object by Person_A, Person_B The user would then browse/wander through the information set learning more about past crimes. The underlying information store seems close to that in a Graph Database - but I don't want to \"sleepwalk\" into using one of those if there's a more natural, AI based solution that not only solves the storage/retrieval problem but which also provides expert-system style deductions."}
{"_id": "85698", "title": "Trying to find video of a talk on the impact of memory access latency", "text": "Some months ago I stumbled across a video on the internet of somebody giving a very good talk on the impact of memory access latency on the execution of programs. I'm trying to find the video again; maybe you know what video I mean and were I can find it. This is what I remember about the talk/video:   * I don't remember the title and it may have been broader, but the talk was a lot about impact of memory access latency in modern processors on program execution.   * The talk was in English and most likely the location was in America.   * The speaker was very knowledgeable about the topic, but the talk was in an informal setting (not a conference presentation or university lecture). I think the speaker was known to the audience and may even have been famous (I don't remember)   * The audience may have been a computer club / group of a local community or company (but I don't remember for sure)"}
{"_id": "200783", "title": "Can I use a LGPL licensed library for my web project", "text": "I am looking to use a javascript libray licensed under the LGPL license v3. From what I have read so far, I understand that If I do not make any modifications to the library, I can use the library without any restrictions. But if I modify the library, I need to make the modified version available to the end users and also enable them to link the library dynamically. Since I am using javascript, my code is anyways open to the end user. Also the user can dynamically link to library through the debug console. So my question is, do I need to do anything explicitly since javascript is already open to users ? Also, are there any other restrictions that apply which I may have missed out ? Note: I found other answers that describe LGPL with respect to any application. But I am looking for an answer that describes how LGPL applies to javascript specifically."}
{"_id": "215968", "title": "Is there a representation for mixins or traits on UML?", "text": "Is there a representation for modern programming constructs that are becoming common in modern OOP/hybrid languages like mixins/traits/categories/partial classes ?"}
{"_id": "168315", "title": "Model View Presenter over Model View Controller", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Building websites, which is the better approach MVP or MVC? I am trying to learn the difference between the MVC and MVP models. So far, I do not see much difference in terms of how they are architecturally set up. So my question is when should the MVP model be chosen over the MVC model? Are there situations where one is better than the other?"}
{"_id": "203604", "title": "Blank lines in C", "text": "I'm working through K&R and I notice that their code is extremely tightly spaced. I haven't developed C since at University, but professionally most source from other languages I've worked in has used blank lines to aid readability. Is C generally more tightly packed or is it a historical matter related to display size in the 70s? Exercise 1-16 seems to hinder readability by, for example, an `if` immediately after `for` loop that doesn't have braces.               /* mygetline: read a line into s, return length */     int mygetline(char s[], int lim)     {       int c,i;            for (i=0; i<lim-1 && (c=getchar()) != EOF && c!='\\n'; ++i)         s[i] = c;       if (c == '\\n') {         s[i] = c;         ++i;       }       s[i] = '\\0';       return i;     }"}
{"_id": "85695", "title": "Recommended library for getting 2d coordinates of head movement", "text": "My target platform is Mac OS X, but I'm looking for a library that will give me a 2D coordinate of someone's head, via the built in webcam. My requirements are that it be near real time if not real time, give me a 2d screen coordinate I can write out to a log."}
{"_id": "85694", "title": "How do I publicize a cool bookmarklet?", "text": "I wrote a really cool bookmarklet and now I want to tell everyone. I have absolutely no idea where to go, is there some sort of exchange for these things? In case anyone is curious: I was tired of having to retype URLs from my desktop browser on to my phone browser, with its itsy-bitsy keyboard, so I wrote a bookmarklet that converts the current URL to a QR code, which I can scan in a few seconds.               javascript:window.location=\"http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=250x250&cht=qr&chl=\"+escape(window.location)"}
{"_id": "203254", "title": "how to get from 1 byte to 2 bytes", "text": "I just got something I can't understand, so we have `1 byte`, which is `8 bits`, which is `2^8`. Now `2 bytes` should be `2 * 1 byte`, which is `2 * 2^8 = 2^9`, but actually 2 bytes is `2^16`. What I'm missing here? I mean, it seems like `2 bytes` isn't `2 * 1 byte`, it's more like `1 byte * 1 byte`, but this should give you `byte^2`, which doesn't make sense. Can Please someone explain me some concept I am getting wrong here? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "203255", "title": "Creating java package on ubuntu?", "text": "I am new to java. Here I am trying to create java package. And try to compile it from another directory . But there is an error like bash: `/home/gaurav/Desktop/package2/B.java: Permission denied` Here is My first code and directory is /home/Desktop/package/A.java               package package1;     public class A     {     interface A1     { void show();       void display();     }     }          class B extends A     {      public void show()     {     System.out.println(\"This is show method()\");     }     public void display()     {     System.out.println(\"this is Display metthod()\");     }     }      For compilation I did this command it's works fine. Working Directory is /home/gaurav > javac /home/gaurav/Desktop/package/A.java When I try to compile B.java which is in my Other drive > /media/gaurav/iPlay/package/B.java               package package2;     class B     {     public static void main(String args[])     {         System.out.println(\"Reached in Main method of B\");         package1.A Object = new A();     }     }      I tired this vommand (grom previous working directory)               javac -cp /home/gaurav/Desktop/;/media/gaurav/iPlay/package/B.java       _Error Comes_               javac -cp /home/gaurav/Desktop/;/media/gaurav/iPlay/package/B.java      javac: no source files     Usage: javac <options> <source files>     use -help for a list of possible options     bash: /media/gaurav/iPlay/package/B.java: Permission denied      What i am doing wrong? Please it my assignment I am not able to move further without this. I changed permissions."}
{"_id": "203252", "title": "How far to go with Domain Driven Design?", "text": "I've read a little about domain driven design and the usage of a rich domain model, as described by Martin Fowler, and I've decided to put it in practice in a personal project, instead of using transaction scripts. Everything went fine until UI implementation started. The thing is some views will use rich components that are backed up by unusual models and, thus, I must transform the domain model into what is used by those components. And that transformation is specially \"complex\" in the view-to-domain portion, up to the point that some business logic is involved. Wich brings me to the questioning: _where_ should I do these adaptations? So far I've got the following conclusions:   * Doing it in the presentation layer is good because, well, if that layer imposes restrictions in it's model, then it should be the one to handle them. But it's bad because there'll be some business leakage.   * If I do it on the services objects (controllers, actions, whatever), then it'd be good because there won't be any change to the domain API just because of presentation layer, but it's bad because then I'd have transaction scripts, wich is not the intended design.   * Finally, if I do it on the domain model, there'd be no leakage of business logic at all. But in the future I could expect an explosion of the API into a series of methods designed just to handle that view-model <-> domain-model adaptation. I hope I could make myself clear on this."}
{"_id": "84566", "title": "Can I link GPL and CDDL if I do not distribute?", "text": "Perhaps this is an esoteric question, since I will never distribute the code in question and I can fairly easily avoid using GPL code, but I'm curious and it's bugging me--but not enough to consult a lawyer. What is more, I think I am more interested in the morality of this issue than the legality. I have a program that I use under the CDDL. The program had a pretty small user base to start with and the creators now offer a later version, which is closed source. Thus I have no interest in contributing my minor modification back to the project. For my use only, I would like to include a single module that is GPL to avoid a small amount of tedious coding. If I were to distribute the result, it is clearly a violation of the terms per various sources such as the FSF's comments on GNU GPL and CDDL. If I have correctly tracked the source of the incompatibility back to the MPL from the link from wikipedia, all of the issues seem to arise with clauses that occur with distribution. This would imply to me that I can legally modify and combine GPL and CDDL, but cannot legally distribute the combination. Setting aside the legality, does anyone see any moral issues with making a minor tweak to a program for my own use that introduces this incompatibility for distribution?"}
{"_id": "203259", "title": "The difference between waterfall model and object oriented model?", "text": "Please explain the difference between the waterfall model and the object oriented model. Since the books and web sites that I've seen didn't provide much information about it, I need someone to explain it to me."}
{"_id": "83695", "title": "How can I keep track of all the websites I've made like a proper business would?", "text": "A few other students and I are forming a group that wants to become good at what we do: websites. We are making websites for free for friends at the moment in order to get ourselves some experience and to learn from each other. We are about to finish our first website this week. In 6 months time we plan to have a portfolio and hope to start charging for websites. The issue is that we are all beginners and we are unsure about how to keep records of the websites we do. It is important as we may want to maintain a few websites or add to them later on. How does a proper web design business keep records of all info needed? Is there a program or software package we can use?"}
{"_id": "224722", "title": "Is there a download limit to ios apps?", "text": "With reference to iOS 7. I couldn't find any Apple documents with regards to this. Are we able to download any size of documents and manage them ourselves (within our app say < 100MB)?   Example, we roll out new content every month. Thus after downloading contents for this month, we should remove last month's content to save space. Content doesn't have to be backed up and will be stored in Caches folder."}
{"_id": "202784", "title": "Avoiding the Anaemic Domain - How to decide what single responsibility a class has", "text": "Even after reading a bunch I'm still falling into the same trap. I have a class, usually an enity. I need to implement more than one, similar operations on this type. It feels wrong to (seemingly arbitrarily) choose one of these operations to belong inside the entity and push the others out to a separate class; I end up pushing _all_ operations to service classes and am left with an anaemic domain. As a crude example, imagine the typical Employee class with numeric properties to hold how many paid days the employee is entitled to for both sickness and holiday and a collection of days taken for each.               public class Employee     {         public int PaidHolidayAllowance { get; set; }              public int PaidSicknessAllowance { get; set; }              public IEnumerable<Holiday> Holidays { get; set; }              public IEnumerable<SickDays> SickDays { get; set; }     }      I want two operations, one to calculate remaining holiday, another for remaining paid sick days. It seems strange to include say, CalculateRemaingHoliday() in the Employee class and bump CalculateRemainingPaidSick() to some PaidSicknessCalculator class. I would end up with a PaidSicknessCalculator and a RemainingHolidayCalculator and the anaemic Employee entity as seen above. The other alternative would be to put both operations in the Employee class and kick Single Responsibility to the curb. That doesn't make for particularly maintainable code. I suppose the Employee class should have some initialisation/validation logic (not accepting negative alowances etc.) So maybe I just stick to basic initialisation and validation in the entities themselves and be happy with my separate calculator classes. Or maybe I should be asking myself if Anaemic Domain is actually causing me some tangible problems with my code."}
{"_id": "202786", "title": "Flowchart with subroutine", "text": "I am not really sure how to correctly describe my question, so please forgive me if this is a duplicate. I am creating a flowchart for my program where I implement a method. Let's assume I call this method **someMethod**. The C code could look something like this:               bool someMethod(int Foo, int Bar)     {         foo += 5;         bar -= 5;         return (foo == bar);     }      This means that my flowchart will have a subroutine block where I call this function. But how do I correctly show the reader which integers I pass? And when I create the flowchart of \"someMethod\", I face a similar problem: how do I correctly show the reader that Foo and Bar are passed parameters? **EDIT:** From what I have found so far, people have solved it by using the Start block as some sort of function declaration block, where they would replace Start with _someMethod_ and place _foo_ and _bar_ on a new line. But from what I understand this isn't good practice since the start and end of every flowchart should be blocks containing respectively _Start_ and _Stop_. I also have seen people using an IO-block as the first non-start block where they would _\"read\"_ the passed parameters but that just seems like a hack. But unless there are better ideas, I suppose I'll have to go with that. **EDIT 2:** I am starting to wonder if this question is actually valid for this site. Is nobody using flowcharts anymore as a project preparation method?"}
{"_id": "202789", "title": "Would learning any natural language in particular further your programming career?", "text": "It seems apparent that English is the dominant international language for programming based on previous P.SE questions (though a highly upvoted comment correctly points out that asking a question like that on a predominantly English site will skew the results). However, is there benefit in learning a foreign language for software development? For example, do the Chinese have completely different software tools, languages, technologies, etc? How about Japanese, Russian, and other non-latin based languages? **Is there an entire world of software development languages, tools and so on that only exist in these other languages?** **Or do people that know these languages use the tools and languages we know and love?**"}
{"_id": "39676", "title": "Design pattern for window management in a Java Swing app", "text": "I've just started creating my very first little Java Swing app. When the program opens, it brings up a single, simple window with a label and a couple buttons. Clicking one of those buttons is supposed to wipe out the welcome screen and replace it with a totally different panel. I'm not sure what the best way to create that functionality is. One method would be to pass my `JFrame` as an argument into... just about every other component, but that feels hacky to me. Or, there's making each panel double as an action listener, but that doesn't seem right, either. Is there a design pattern I should be applying here? \"Replace the contents of the main -- and only -- window\" must be a reasonably common operation. A name for the pattern would be enough; I can use Google on my own from there. (I wouldn't say no to a longer explanation, though.)"}
{"_id": "39677", "title": "What are the best practices of Java Swing development?", "text": "While doing my pre-research for this question, I found that there isn't much well-organized information about Java Swing best practices out there on the Internet. So I figure I'll give Stack Exchange a shot at building that One Great List. What are the best practices of Java Swing development? What have you found to work for you, and why?"}
{"_id": "254661", "title": "Saxon genitive in variable names - should we avoid it?", "text": "consider case of following collisions with plurals: `publisher_tree` instead of `publishers_tree` (genitive) which will be for plural (e.g container/list) the same `publishers_tree`. For me english is foreign language so I will appreciate the hints for good practice in naming."}
{"_id": "18838", "title": "Haskell AND Lisp vs. Haskell OR Lisp", "text": "I currently code with C, C++, and Python. I'm wanting to pick up a functional programming language, and right now I'm leaning toward Haskell. I do NOT want to start a \"Haskell vs Lisp\" war here; what I want to know is this: **if I learn Haskell primarily for exposure to functional programming, what benefits, if any, will I gain from later learning Lisp?** * * * Update: Thanks everyone for your answers. Now all I need to do is pick a dialect of Lisp, but _that's_ a question for another time."}
{"_id": "71206", "title": "When to write Abstract code and when to be more specific?", "text": "I'm working on a small tool as a toy project to show the difference between two directories, showing which files/directories were added, removed, modified, etc. I was trying to represent these changes as simply 'ChangeItem' objects, without distinction between whether it was a file or directory. However, that created a lot of problems, e.g how to display them in a tree, how to know who the parent of a child is, etc. And it was also very unintuitive. I then split the changes between directory changes and file changes. That immediately made it very easy to code and to understand what was going on. Now its a lot simpler to select all files in a directory, etc. My question is, how can one know whether to use abstraction or to get more specific in their code? How can you tell if you have too much or too little abstraction?"}
{"_id": "71204", "title": "How do you document your large projects?", "text": "We've currently got a small team of programmers (3 people) but are expecting to add more soon and are starting to keep documentation on things that need to be interacted with a lot, or reusable generic classes we've written. Originally we were storing all this information on writeboards @ backpack, but it doesn't support code highlighting or much other formatting. My current choice has to been to install Media Wiki along with a javascript based syntax highlighter and it seems okay except for lack of being able to put things in a nested structure (the plugins I've found are either broken or too lacking in documentation). While this solution seems suitable now, I'm wondering what other approaches other teams take to storing/organizing large amounts of documentation to an ongoing, ever growing project."}
{"_id": "232625", "title": "How can a route finding program avoid obstacles/locations when calculating routes?", "text": "Do you delete nodes from the underlying graph representation? Or is there a more elegant way to do it?"}
{"_id": "232626", "title": "Is it a good practice to choose the highest warning level in C++ programming?", "text": "I used to select the default warning level in C++ programming. For example, in VS, the default warning level is **`Level3 (/W3)`** and **`No (/WX-)`** (don't treat warnings as errors). I am wondering is it a good practice to choose highest warning level in C++ programming, e.g. **`EnableAllWarnings (/Wall)`** with **`Yes (/WX)`** (treat warnings as errors)? Any advice will be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "28113", "title": "Refactoring in domain driven design", "text": "I've just started working on a project and we're using domain-driven design (as defined by Eric Evans in _Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software_. I believe that our project is certainly a candidate for this design pattern as Evans describes it in his book. I'm struggling with the idea of constantly refactoring. I know refactoring is a necessity in any project and will happen inevitably as the software changes. However, in my experience, refactoring occurs when the needs of the development team change, not as understanding of the domain changes (\"refactoring to greater insight\" as Evans calls it). I'm most concerned with _breakthroughs_ in understanding of the domain model. I understand making small changes, but what if a large change in the model is necessary? What's an effective way of convincing yourself (and others) you should refactor after you obtain a clearer domain model? After all, refactoring to improve code organization or performance could be completely separate from how expressive in terms of the ubiquitous language code is. **Sometimes it just seems like there's not enough time to refactor.** Luckily, SCRUM lends it self to refactoring. The iterative nature of SCRUM makes it easy to build a small piece and change and it. But over time that piece will get larger and what if you have a breakthrough after that piece is so large that it will be too difficult to change? Has anyone worked on a project employing domain-driven design? If so, it would be great to get some insight on this one. I'd especially like to hear some success stories, since DDD seems very difficult to get right. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "172857", "title": "Seeking advice on system documentation", "text": "I have a rating engine (it is basically an algorithm) which when I started had no formal documentation. We have created a functional specification/decomposition which is our business level document but now I need something more technical (a technical specification). What I am struggling to understand is what that document looks like, what format it should be in and to what level of detail we should go into. We are in the process of commenting all of the code. We also have a rough document called a Blueprint which reflects the flow of the model and is written in pseudo code. Is the combination of this blueprint and the model comments sufficient as a Technical Specification?"}
{"_id": "175804", "title": "Objective C style nil in java?", "text": "Objective C has a concept of a nil object which would accept any method call with any parameters without complaining and silently return another nil. I have used something similar in Java using easymock and mockito for testing. Is there something similar for main line code? Is it even a good idea to have something like this? One use-case where I am considering using it is with optional metrics. We have codahale metrics counters on which we call mark() every time an event is generated. This is surrounded by an If/then to check for metrics enabled flag. I could just use a nil object as counter and silently accept the mark call if metrics are not enabled."}
{"_id": "172854", "title": "GitHub OS project how to have a good version and a work in progress version", "text": "I have started my own OS application, I am hosting it on GitHub. My problem is that I push changes to the repository from more than one location so sometimes I want to work on it and sometimes I can't always finish something in time but I would still like to push it anyway so I can fetch it later from my other location. I'd like to be able to somehow have a stable version and have the master branch be a 'work in progress'. How do I do this? Is there some button I can push that will take the code from my master branch and make it into a zip file in my downloads tab and call it a version or should I do this by hand? Would it be better to have the master branch be nice and neat and have a separate branch to play with and then merge the two when the time is right? Would this not cause more problems in the merging phase?"}
{"_id": "175802", "title": "Is it legal and ethical to reverse engineer software to port it to another system?", "text": "I love gaming, I love games that allow modding and I love linux. But the fact that most games right now are targeted for windows (consoles aside), most mods and modding tools are also targeted for windows. There is a certain modder called Boris Vorontsov that makes a famous visual overhaul mod series called ENB. What he does (or I think he does) is he enhances or changes the behavior of classes defined in the `d3d9.dll` library. Needless to say it almost never works under wine. Recently I have asked him if he would ever release his version of the library under some open license, and he said \"no\". Now that I think of it, even if he did release his code, he would have surely faced some legal problems. Now there is my question. Is it legal and ethical to reverse engineer his version of the library to adapt the wine's open source version of `d3d9.dll` to be able to run his mods?"}
{"_id": "201692", "title": "What does it mean for a developer to be given \"creative freedom\"", "text": "So I was reading the flowchart shouldiworkforfree, and I was thinking what does it mean to be given `creative freedom`? as a developer?.. > _\"Will they give you creative freedom?\"_ For example does it mean, to be given the freedom to design the User Interface/Page on your preferences (and not somebody elses, such as management)? or is it to be given the ability to implement software features without approval?"}
{"_id": "123308", "title": "Transition from enterprise-level PHP with Zend Framework to more enterprisey Java EE", "text": "I've been seriously considering my career progress and would like to know your opinion on the following:   * 5 years full-time employment as a software developer / web technologies / best practices   * MSc Software Engineering student   * based on typical tasks that I've been doing, I'd say I'm a Software Architect + sysadmin + security consultant. The problem which exists with PHP is that most of its users (incl. employers) are sort of technological enthusiasts without proper training. Companies are small, typically start-ups, and they cannot afford following formal processes. Consequently, requirements engineering is skipped, project management is skipped, testing is about systematically clicking everywhere because use cases are skipped, architecture is skipped, documentation is skipped, etc. I've been working on senior positions, incl. technical lead, and always addressed these issues until I started studying. For studies it's better to be an independent contractor working at home online. My aim is to join a medium / big company that can afford doing things as in the book and then I want to enjoy new challenges, bigger projects, other senior staff, etc. I've been also planning further study following my Master's. Do you think Web Development with Java EE and Oracle 11g is what I need to achieve these goals? For the record, I have several years of experience with C/C++ and Java, but I did that mostly as an additional work. My positions were more about PHP and various enterprise systems / frameworks. Thanks for exchanging your stack, this question may attract someone who has a few years' experience working exclusively with these technologies. :)"}
{"_id": "244566", "title": "How to keep AST for feature access?", "text": "Consider such code (let's say it is C++)               Foo::Bar.get().X      How one should keep the AST for this -- as \"tree\" with root at left `Foo(Bar(get(X))`, or with root at right `(((Foo)Bar)get)X`? Or maybe as a flat structure (list)? The first one seems more convenient when resolving names, the second when working with it as expression. _I set tag`parsing` but I am asking from semantic analysis POV really (there is no such tag)._"}
{"_id": "123305", "title": "What is the difference between the \"lib\" and \"vendor\" folders?", "text": "Regarding source folder hierarchy, there are always some common features, such as the `src`, `doc` or `test` folders, which have rather easy-to-understand contents. However, I realized that big projects have both a `lib` and `vendor` folders, while I had always thought they were the same, as their names hint at including \u201cthird-party `libraries` from external `vendors`\u201d. Though, seeing both in the same project means there _is_ a difference. I couldn't find any information nor on Google nor on sources such as the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, even though this is actually a somehow common practice. * * * Here is a more detailed example with Symfony: once you create a project, you get a `lib` folder at the root of your project. In this folder, the following structure is found:               lib     +--filter     +--form     +--\u2026     +--vendor         +--simpletest         +--symfony      Here, the `symfony` folder contains all Symfony's core."}
{"_id": "254666", "title": "Loading database in memory vs querying", "text": "I am currently developing a continuous backup software. The key feature of the software is instant backup meaning that each time a file is created, modified, renamed or deleted the change is immediately reflected on the backup repository. In order to achieve this we designed the system so that once the client application starts, the entire backed up files database is loaded in memory. The issue arise when backing up large amounts of files say 10 - 15 million files. This first causes the load time to be slow and high memory usage. In some cases reaching 2GB. Querying the database on every change is also frowned upon as it will cause heavy loads on the disk where the database resides not to mention how slow the query execution time becomes as the database grows. So I was wondering what options does one have to design such a system to be memory efficient and reasonably fast."}
{"_id": "255392", "title": "Unit Testing an object which belongs to another", "text": "My example is in Rails/rspec, but is more generic in nature. I have an (abstract-y) class of `Events` which are attached to another (abstract-y) class, `Assets` (. Now, I'm testing using FactoryGirl and I'm not sure how to create events which are truly orthogonal to assets. If I build an event, it's only valid when it belongs to a asset, so am I supposed to build dozens of events, each of which has its own asset?"}
{"_id": "86588", "title": "How Would You Design This Table?", "text": "I have to create a table where each row needs to store 50 number values. Each row will always need to store 50 number values. If this was a smaller number of values, I would just make fields for each of the values, but because there are 50, this approach seems a bit cumbersome (but since it will always be 50 values, maybe this is the correct approach?). Is there a way to store an array of values in a field? This seems like a nice solution, but the concept is almost identical to creating a relational database."}
{"_id": "86589", "title": "Why Should I Avoid Inline Scripting?", "text": "A knowledgeable friend recently looked at a website I helped launch, and commented something like \"very cool site, shame about the inline scripting in the source code\". I'm definitely in a position to remove the inline scripting where it occurs; I'm vaguely aware that it's \"a bad thing\". My question is: what are the real problems with inline scripting? Is there a significant performance issue, or is it mostly just a matter of good style? Can I justify immediate action on the inline scripting front to my superiors, when there are other things to work on that might have a more obvious impact on the site? If you pulled up to a website, and took a peek at the source code, what factors would lead you to say \"hmm, professional work here\", and what would cause you to recoil from an obviously amateurish job? Okay, that question turned into multiple questions in the writing. But basically, inline scripting - what's the deal?"}
{"_id": "37600", "title": "Project Manager that wants to lock in time estimate with a signed contract", "text": "At a previous employment, a project manager (PM) wasn't satisfied with the delivery time of the code on a project I was on. I was told by my project lead that that the PM was considering having me _sign a contract to lock-in my time estimates_ I gave for tasks and delivery dates. The situation on the project was that we were working with new technologies, codebase, coding standards, and very prone-to-change requirements. I was learning new things and applying them the best I could on requirements that kept on changing. The requirements throughout the iterations grew by 2-3 times, with my estimate-to-complete growing by roughly 5-8 times. The only things that didn't change were the estimates and delivery dates. Yes, I did end up missing most deadlines. And I was working on some very new technologies that no one else on the entire development team could really help out on because they wouldn't be familiar with it. At least not easily. It seemed to me then, that the PM wanted his numbers to add up-- and thus wanted me to sign a contract to \"ensure\" that I would always deliver working code on time. I suppose with a signed contract the PM could use it against me if I couldn't deliver on time. I believe what happened next was that other project managers and/or project leads defended me, and didn't let this happen. My question is, **should this raise a red flag about the manager?** Is it common practice for a manager to lock-in time estimates of a software developer with a signed contract? Or in this case, try to. _Please note, I was a full time employee, not an independent consultant._ **Update** : I want to add that I did give new estimates weekly, but it seems the _original_ estimates and delivery dates were what the PM was fixated on."}
{"_id": "18784", "title": "Third party controls. Will experience in using them play a role while hunting a job?", "text": "We do end up using lots of third party controls in our development. They help us to develop quicker, help us to generate good looking reports etc. But do they really help us to get a good job elsewhere? Should we explain about third party tools we have used in our resume?"}
{"_id": "82919", "title": "Iterative alternative to decorators?", "text": "So decorators wrap a base class recursively, right? And have a single super class object which is at the \"core\" class. Couldn't you just add an ArryList/LinkedList of decorations in the \"core\" class and achieve the same thing? This would avoid recursion (which is expensive), but allow the dynamic behavior of being able to \"decorate\" your classes. Is this a different pattern or an alternative version of decorators or something else? Ex: Decorator               Beverage class       getDescription(){blah}       cost();          HouseBlend inherits from Beverage       cost(){2.99}          CondimentDecorator inherits from Beverage       Beverage bev;       cost(){.19 + bev.cost}       getDescription{blah}      VS Other?               Beverage class       getDescription(){blah}       cost();          HouseBlend inherits from Beverage       List<Beverage> condiments             cost(){2.99 + iterative condiments}          CondimentDecorator inherits from Beverage       cost(){blah}       getDescription{blah}      It seems like the decorator might be a little more flexible, but the other version would allow you to keep track of specific instances of items. Also, if you had espresso you could have a double shot, where with a pure decorator that would be hard."}
{"_id": "83037", "title": "Best practices for expiration of tokens in a Security Token Service (STS)", "text": "When creating a Security Token Service (STS) for a claims based security model, it seems appropriate that tokens are generated in such a way that they expire after some duration, as suggested here. Around this concept, I have a few specific questions, but am looking for any feedback regarding best practices in this area.   * What are recommended values for the timeout length and/or what should be taken into consideration when determining this?   * If a user is active for longer than the typical expiration period, how should this be handled such that the user is no required to re-authenticate in the middle of their session?   * Is there an elegant way to design a service to perform batch actions \"on behalf of\" another user by utilizing the token? i.e. Utilizing the token at a later time may have caused it to expire."}
{"_id": "229220", "title": "what is difference between protected static method and protected method?", "text": "What is difference between `protected static` method and `protected` method? For example `demo` and `demo2` in `Data2` respectively Data.java:               package pack1;          import pack2.*;          public class Data extends Data2 {              public static void main(String args[]){             System.out.println(\"From main class\");             Data d=new Data();             d.first();          }              void first(){             Data2 d2=new Data2();                  d2.demo();             d2.demo2();         }     }      Data2.java:               package pack2;          public class Data2 {         protected static void demo(){             System.out.println(\"In method demo\");         }              protected void demo2(){             System.out.println(\"In method demo2\");         }     }"}
{"_id": "83038", "title": "Who is responsible for defects found during development?", "text": "When the QA find an error like 'broken design in web programming', do you call it a bug and the corrections 'patches'? (Assume all this is before delivery.) I was of the feeling that the corrections for bugs found after delivery were called patches. Developers don't add bugs intentionally and it's QA's duty to find bugs. Sure I agree a programmer should be able to solve the bug, **but should the programmer be blamed for these bugs?**"}
{"_id": "30057", "title": "How much configurability to give to users regarding concurrency?", "text": "This question is a narrowing-down of these related questions:   * How much effort should we spend to programming for multiple cores?   * Concurrency: How do you approach the design and debug the implementation? Given that each user's computers may have different performance characteristics with respect to calculations, memory, disk I/O bandwidth and network I/O bandwidth, and that it is difficult to implement an automated self-tuning system in your software, how much configurability should we give to the end-users so that they can find ways (by trial-and-error?) to improve our software's efficiency? If we give users the ability to change these settings, how do we give visual feedback to users so they can measure the performance changes?"}
{"_id": "178981", "title": "Am I missing a pattern?", "text": "I have a class that is a singleton and off of the singleton are properties that hold the instances of all the performance counters in my application.               public interface IPerformanceCounters         {             IPerformanceCounter AccountServiceCallRate { get; }             IPerformanceCounter AccountServiceCallDuration { get; }      Above is an incomplete snippet of the interface for the class \"PerformanceCounters\" that is the singleton. I really don't like the plural part of the name and thought about changing it to \"PerformanceCounterCollection\" but stopped because it really isn't a collection. I also thought about \"PerformanceCounterFactory\" but it is really a factory either. After failing with these two names and a couple more that aren't worth mentioning I thought that I might be missing a pattern. Is there a name that make sense or a change that I could make towards a standardized pattern that would help me put some polish on this object and get rid of the plural name? I understand that I might be splitting hairs here but that is why I thought that the \"Programmers\" exchange was the place for this kind of thing. If it is not... I am sorry and I will not make that mistake again. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "178980", "title": "Scrum got specific ways for testing software?", "text": "When reading Scrum Guide, as the official text for scrum, I find out there is no specific solution to provide software testing in scrum. (the only hint is on page15) I'm a little vague on whether scrum is considered a software development methodology or not? If it is not, then how come some of its practices opposes _Extreme Programming_? (I know that in scrum guide, the author notes that scrum is a framework not a methodology, but still I'm not pretty clear on that) And what's more, I'm not sure if there are any other important textbook that I'm missing so far about scrum. I need them to be official or of great deal of public acceptance."}
{"_id": "178984", "title": "Is there a good design pattern for this messaging class?", "text": "Is there a good design pattern for this? I want to create a messaging class. The class will be passed: the type of message (eg. signup, signup confirmation, password reminder etc) the client's id The class needs to then look up the client's messaging preferences in the db (whether they want communication by email, sms or both) Then depending on the client's preference it will format the message for the medium (short version for sms, long form for email) and send it through our mail or sms provider's API. Because the fact that we want to be able to change out email and sms providers if need be I wondered if the Command Pattern would be a good choice."}
{"_id": "178989", "title": "What patterns book for iOS development contains this specific information?", "text": "I've read several books on iOS development and Objective-C, however what a lot of them teach is how to work with interfaces and all contain the model inside the view controller, i.e. a `UITableViewController` based view will simply have an `NSArray` as it's model. I'm interested in what the best practices are for designing the structure of an application. Specifically I'm interested in best practices for the following:   * How to separate a model from the view controller. I think I know how to do this by simply replacing the `NSArray` style example with a specific model object, however what I do not know how to do is alert the view when the model changes. For example in .NET I would solve this by conforming to `INotifyPropertyChanged` and databinding, and similarly with Java I would use `PropertyChangeListener`.   * How to create a service model for my domain objects. For example I want to learn the best way to create a service for a hypothetical `Widget` object to manage an internal DB and also services for communicating with remote endpoints. I need to learn the best ways to do this in a way that interface components can subscribe to events such as `widgetUpdated`. These services should be singleton classes and some how dependency injected into model/controller objects. Books I've read so far are:   * Programming in Objective-C (4th Edition)   * Beginning iOS 5 Development: Exploring the iOS SDK   * The iOS 5 Developer's Cookbook: Expanded Electronic Edition: Essentials and Advanced Recipes for iOS Programmers   * Learn Objective-C on the Mac: For OS X and iOS I've also purchased the following updated books but not yet read them.   * The Core iOS 6 Developer's Cookbook (4th edition   * Programming in Objective-C (5th Edition) I come from a Java and C# background with 15 years experience, I understand that many of the ways I would do things in these languages may not fit to the ObjC way of developing applications. Would someone be able to provide me with _the_ book on this topic containing this specific subject matter?"}
{"_id": "178988", "title": "Useful design patterns for working with FragmentManager on Android", "text": "When working with fragments, I have been using a class composed of static methods that define actions on fragments. For any given project, I might have a class called `FragmentActions`, which contains methods similar to the following:               public static void showDeviceFragment(FragmentManager man){         String tag = AllDevicesFragment.getFragmentTag();              AllDevicesFragment fragment = (AllDevicesFragment)man.findFragmentByTag(tag);              if(fragment == null){             fragment = new AllDevicesFragment();         }              FragmentTransaction t = man.beginTransaction();         t.add(R.id.main_frame, fragment, tag);              t.commit();     }      I'll usually have one method per application screen. I do something like this when I work with small local databases (usually SQLite) so I applied it to fragments, which seem to have a similar workflow; I'm not married to it though. How have you organized your applications to interface with the Fragments API, and what (if any) design patterns do you think apply do this?"}
{"_id": "219606", "title": "Theoretical basis for (Linux) kernel development", "text": "KernelDevViewpoint (an apparently serious source) makes kernel development look like an accessible art. According to them: > Contrary to popular belief, kernel developers rarely need to know math at > the calculus level. You need to be good at basic arithmetic and you must > know Boolean algebra to work on device drivers. > > One skill that many kernel developers learn on the job is the ability to > build state machines in your head of what the code is doing. (...) and > Technical skills for kernel developers include experience with the C > programming language, and knowledge of Git. Is that the basis of kernel development? Basic arithmetic, Boolean algebra, C and Git? Obviously, I don't expect to read \"C in ten days\" (or whatever similar book) and start contributing to the Linux kernel development, however, I wonder how difficult will be to obtain the skills to do that?"}
{"_id": "212651", "title": "When should you trim input?", "text": "I am intern learning tons about the industry outside of academia. One thing I thought about today was trimming input. On one side of the coin I don't want the user/implementer to constantly receive unexpected results because their input had too many spaces, thus I need to constantly trim user input after every function call. But at the same time If I am creating a ~~API~~ library for internal use here at the office trailing/leading whitespace may be crucial to the results. Then there are instances were I am not sure if whitespace will be important or not. The big issue for me is that I find myself CONSTANTLY calling .trim() everywhere in my code. Does anyone have any tips/ rules of thumb or just thoughts on how to handle certain situations?"}
{"_id": "212656", "title": "Why is the yield keyword used in conjunction with return and break, and not by itself?", "text": "In C# you can construct methods with the return type of `IEnumerable<T>` and use `yield return` and `yield break` to control the flow. Here is a simple example that uses both controls:               public IEnumerable<int> GetEvens(int start, int end) {         if(end < start)             yield break;              if(start & 2 != 0)             start++;              for(int i = start; i <= end; i+=2) {             yield return i;         }             }      My question is, why was it originally designed to use two keywords with `yield` and not use it like the following with the single `yield` \"yielding the return value\":               public IEnumerable<int> GetEvens(int start, int end) {         if(end < start)             return; // stop completely and return nothing              if(start & 2 != 0)             start++;              for(int i = start; i <= end; i+=2) {             yield i; // yield the current value.         }             }      To me, this is simpler to read and understand."}
{"_id": "232107", "title": "Version number as a part of a file name", "text": "I see that some software have the version number included as a part of their file name, while others do not. I am more used to the latter type, and I think that is more popular, but I see the former type sometimes in javascript libraries. For example, jQuery's file name is like `jquery-2.1.0.js` instead of `jquery.js`. Whenever I update these types of files, I have to look for the places in other programs that load these files, and change the file name they refer to, and manually delete the older version of these libraries. That is inconvenient to me, so I rather rename the file to exclude the version number, and keep the file name referred to to not include the version number. I suspect that these numbers are for some kind of version control, but am not clear when and how they are used.   * What are the pros and cons for including version numbers in the file name?   * Is there de facto consensus on which areas of software or languages use version number in the file name, and which areas/languages do not? If so, is there any rationare for that?"}
{"_id": "14778", "title": "Why are they stacking technologies and languages for single person jobs?", "text": "I see this too often. They need **one** guy who is proficient in:   1. Assembly   2. C/C++ (sic!)   3. Python   4. Delphi   5. C#   6. PHP   7. SQL   8. Joomla   9. Drupal ... and so on. Why?"}
{"_id": "14779", "title": "How can current IDEs improve the development experience? What secondary tools should be primary?", "text": "A modern IDE wouldn't be taken seriously if it didn't have a good editor with syntax highlighting, comprehensive warnings, and a source-level debugger. And there are many more tools/IDE features that programmers find essential:   * Refactoring transformations   * Unit testing support   * Source code control integration Yet, there are still **many good tools** that don't have the exposure and usage that they should. For example, the following tools are usually expensive or hard to find for a given language:   * Automated GUI testing   * Program slicing (e.g. CodeSurfer -- useful for finding what statements can affect another statement)   * Test coverage (depending on your language, this can be very easy to find, or quite difficult)   * Points-to analysis (\"Do I really need to make this list concurrent, or will it ever be accessible by one thread anyway?\") Partly it's an issue of education and awareness, and partly it's because IDE makers are often too busy supporting the next version of the language to dedicate resources to developing these secondary tools. _What features are missing in today's IDEs? What secondary tools should really be primary? What makes them so helpful?_ That is, what features do you think you'd use every month, or every day, if the tool was available? Please consider tools that both exist or should exist. For a tool that _should_ exist, make sure the idea is feasible."}
{"_id": "47923", "title": "When is it ok to use a Global variable", "text": "Ok, so this is a bit of a devils advocate question really. When are global variables ok, and if never, what would you use as an alternative? An interesting side-case to this question, how is a public static class field different from a global?"}
{"_id": "207574", "title": "Lead Developer responsibilities", "text": "At my current job (been here for 6 years). The VP of the company has decided he wants to make me the lead developer. I believe this is being done because my current boss who is a BA was pin holed into that position, its not something he wants to be doing. I asked him what the responsibilities are and he mentioned I will be dealing with bugs, coming up with estimates and also still involved in coding. Right now its myself another senior developer and a junior. The junior and the senior doesn't know nearly as much as I do about the company specific components and business rules. I can't see myself doing both, to be honest it sounds like two separate jobs. Bugs take time to research and figure out the validity, etc. Writing emails back and forth to the project managers. And I still need to be responsible for coding?? My question is do lead developers usually manage tasks/people AND also code?"}
{"_id": "207577", "title": "When comparing floats, what do you call the threshold of difference?", "text": "I'm comparing floats in Java right now and the simplest formula is:               Math.abs(a - b) < THRESHOLD      When naming your variable for the threshold of difference, should you name it delta or epsilon? Specifically, which of the two is the correct term for the smallest value that a floating-point number can represent? Is the term programming language specific, or is it universal across languages?"}
{"_id": "147843", "title": "Replacing dao layer", "text": "I am developing a series of webservices (based on spring and spring mvc). For the first time in my dev career I do plan on replacing the dao layer in the future(I have always seen it mentioned but never had to do it). Currently I'm using spring annotations, so I could simply change the qualifier name of the injected dao in each place it is used; is there a better (global) mechanism I could use ? Currently my code looks like this (declaring the dao) :               @Repository(\"regionDao\")     public class RegionDao implements IRegionDao      and Injecting it :               @Resource(name = \"regionDao\")     IRegionDao regionDao;      But going into each service class and changing the qualifier name seems rather long winded, is their a better way. Basically in the future I want to flip a switch and each reference to a _regionDao_ will then point to _newRegionDao_ and so on for other dao's. A solution using annotations is preferred- for no other reason than I subjectively prefer them. But I realize this may be a case for xml based config ?"}
{"_id": "207573", "title": "Are t-shirt estimates a good way to conduct initial estimates?", "text": "I've read articles with very conflicting arguments on t-shirt estimates. Neither article seemed all that credible so I thought I would bring this up here. Are t-shirt estimates a good idea? For those who haven't heard of this: T-shirt estimates are the practice of giving very vague and high level estimates when given vague, high level requirements, and no resources to estimate. They are based on t-shirt sizes and as such are broken down into: XS, S, M, L, XL, etc. I don't see any problem in them in principle. Requirement gathering, requirements research and proper estimation all require time. Much of the time, 'clients' can request premature estimates and the ability to use t-shirt estimations allows for answers that are obviously overly vague and can't be held to any standard. At the time, this satisfies the 'clients' as they at least something to base their thinking on. Conversely, if you were to give the same client the answer of 5,000 hours but gave the stipulation that this was just a guess and put that in bold, red, and blinking text. You run the risk of the client 'forgetting' this and then getting upset when these hours change drastically when a proper estimate is done."}
{"_id": "238748", "title": "Can GPL v2 code link to an LGPL v3 library", "text": "If I write a library that is released under the terms of the GPL v2 (or higher, at option); may that library _depend on_ another library released under the LGPL v3 (or higher), without implicitly enforcing GPL v3. That is, I am purely linking to that library. Reading this and this, I understand that the LGPL v3 and GPL v2 are not \"compatible\". But it is not clear to me, whether compatibility means only mixing of code, or whether it extends to the linking (without modifying the LGPL'ed library)."}
{"_id": "13927", "title": "How can I get involved with developer communities in my area?", "text": "I live in Manchester, UK, and while there are lots of developer communities (regular events, get togethers etc) in London, there are not many \"up north\". I know of a few (NxtGenUg and ManchesterGeekNights) but there must be more than this. What's the best ways of finding out about these? How have people got involved with communities in there area?"}
{"_id": "76068", "title": "How to Convince management that a specific product training is important to QA?", "text": "I am leading a QA team of 10 people. we have been received the request for a training of a ETL dataware housing tool for QA, Support and Development. But however the management does not feel that it is important for QA to be involved in such a training as it is support and development team who will be involved ih developing or fixing the issues in the product. How do I convince the management that this training is very important from the QA perspective as this is the team that will find bugs and which will reduce the maintainance cost?"}
{"_id": "160809", "title": "Is it a good idea to install Mercurial on your server and hg pull to deploy?", "text": "I've just started at a new job this past month and looks like they have NO source control for their code. They are relying on the backups their hosting provider takes for them. After talking a bit I convinced my boss that we should definitely be using source control and after I gave a short seminar on it, the entire team is on board; they loved Mercurial. So right now this is the way we work:               \u00ba----------BitBucket     \u00ba---------/     \u00ba--------/      Myself and the three other developers `hg pull` from BitBucket, make our changes, then `hg push` to BitBucket. Now for deployment, someone would need to FTP the latest files towards the production server. I was thinking of installing Mercurial on our server, and using `hg clone` (subsequently `hg pull`) to keep the versions up to date on production.               \u00ba---push->-----BitBucket----<-pull-----\u00ba (production server)     \u00ba---push->----/     \u00ba---push->---/      Is this a good idea? Any potential pitfalls I may not be seeing? Has anybody here done something similar? How do you deploy a large PHP framework application (We're using Moodle)?"}
{"_id": "5592", "title": "Is it best to try to work at a company where your software directly makes the company money?", "text": "I was told once that the best place to work as a developer is a company where the software you write is what makes the company money, whether it be software production or software services like consulting. This is opposed to a company where the software you write is just to support some other part of the business that makes the money, like manufacturing or finance. I know there are always exceptions, but in general, are employees treated better if they are on the front lines of profit generation, as opposed to being just another cost center? **cost center (n.)** - A cost center is part of an organization that does not produce direct profit and adds to the cost of running a company. Examples of cost centers include research and development departments, marketing departments, help desks and customer service/contact centers."}
{"_id": "160807", "title": "Using UML and Use Cases in Game Design", "text": "In the Use case you need to make all the activities the user can do. And then in the Activity diagram I need to explain the Use cases, show the steps that it handles. But if this is all correct, where do I need to show the enemies? Like: Generate path, walk, etc... Because it isn't controlled by the player, the player has almost no influence on the enemy."}
{"_id": "89786", "title": "Best git practices for android project with multiple sets of resources", "text": "I have a commercial Android project that I have created a client-specific version for (mainly UI tweaks). Since the bulk of the tweaks are in the res/ folder in XML files, we have the changes currently in a branch but I really don't want to have to port changes back and forth between branches in perpetuity. I'm curious if anyone has any source control strategies that will make managing multiple client-specific versions of an Android application as painless as possible. Also, not sure if this belongs here or StackOverflow. Feel free to transition over there if I guessed wrong."}
{"_id": "72967", "title": "What should I know before starting a software company?", "text": "Seeing that so many of my friends are unemployed, some of my frinds and I are planning to create a small software company. What are the basic things we should know and do? Are there things specific to running a software company that we'd need to be aware of?"}
{"_id": "234666", "title": "Is there a specific term for the variable in a `foreach` construct?", "text": "Does the variable used for iteration in a `foreach` loop have a more specific term than simply 'the foreach variable?' Especially to differentiate it from the collection variable? E.g. `item` in `foreach (item in collection)` Edit: Loop variant was suggested (wiki): > In computer science, a loop variant is a mathematical function defined on > the state space of a computer program whose value is monotonically decreased > with respect to a (strict) well-founded relation by the iteration of a while > loop under some invariant conditions, thereby ensuring its termination. To me this sounds similar to 'iteration variable.' Is this strictly speaking correct? I would have assumed that 'loop variant' refers to the internal integer (or similar) that the `collection` enumerator uses for its internal state- not the variable that is set to the `Current` value on each iteration. Also, an enumerator of a linked list or a dummy enumerator that never terminates do not have monotonically decreasing variables, while at the same time the `foreach` loop does have its `item` variable. Edit 2: The motivation of this question is to find a descriptive name for a parameter in a bytecode emitting API. This parameter is a number that refers to the local that will be set on each generated foreach iteration. It's not an `iterationLocal`, that would be misleading. `currentLocal` may be the most helpful name."}
{"_id": "234665", "title": "Event Sourcing for Enterprise Applications", "text": "Is it viable to store information a la event sourcing when dealing with large enterprise applications ? I know lokad has been using it for a long time, but they are not in the ERP business I have been looking for this solution, since is seems very interesting."}
{"_id": "38207", "title": "How to convince an employer to move to VB.Net for new development?", "text": "Some history:For the last six months I have been employed at a small firm with just three programmers, my employer among them. The firm maintains two programs written in VB6. I am asssigned as the lead programmer to one of these. In the last six months I did some maintenance and bug hunting, but created some new functionality too. I had an interview last december, which was favorable, and my contract was prolonged. I am very happy with this course of events as I only obtained a .Net certification a year ago and have no other qualifications (in the field of coding, that is). It is my strong opinion that, while migration of the existing program to .Net is advisable, it is paramount that from now on the new functionality should be written in VB.Net class libraries. After some study I found out how simple it is to integrate .Net class libraries into the VB6 development environment and how easy it is to add their functionality to existing installations by using application manifests. So, I have decided that now is the moment to roll up my sleeves and try and convince my employer that he should let me develop new code in VB.Net, using VB6 for maintenance only. We get along quite well, but I think I am going to need all the ammunition I can get to convince him. Any arguments, preferably backed up up ones, are very welcome, even arguments to dissuade me ;-)"}
{"_id": "208877", "title": "Disillusioned with agile; how do you prepare for life after release 1.1?", "text": "My company is going full steam with the agile process, with multiple agile projects in work. The first agile team, the proof of concept, carried the product through release and the first post production release. After this successful effort, the team was quickly disbanded, sent off to help other projects on their agile way. My disillusionment with agile comes from third and later release stage of the software life cycle. Agile is good at pulling expert and building moment, getting all excited for a project, but how do you wind down a project and move it stage where existing customers must be kept happy, to keep paying for all that early agile fun? If you will, the party is over, and this light on documentation, don\u2019t design it till you need it, and keep racing to the next sprint leaves little documentation, little vision, and poor records of why design decisions were made. This stage of life also has little interest in the initial agile developers, as they are done with that project and are off looking for new exciting teams to start. I understand, and have lived through waterfall of the problems with long term planning, schedules being missed, and requirements being out of date, but for part that was usable and accepted by the customer, there is information and distributed knowledge of why decisions were made, what steps were taken, and something more supportable in the end. Basically, what does an agile team need to be doing, what must it do, what must be deliverable, for an agile project to be successful, with success being defined as a sustainable, maintainable, and hopefully revenue generating product? If the agile software we build cannot be maintained, in a couple years agile will just be another broken promise, which business managers will not pay for, allowing them to go back to the old, micro-manageable waterfall process."}
{"_id": "204827", "title": "Tools aiding in documenting API requierements for a REST Service", "text": "We need to define our requirements for a REST API. What are tools which aid in creating a document which will fully describe the webservice so it can be created by another entity?"}
{"_id": "174860", "title": "Do database tables need to have IDs?", "text": "Is an ID field is always needed in database tables? In my case I have a user with `firstName`, `lastName` and `email` fields. `email` is unique and not null, so it could be used as an ID, right? So in that case, could/should I try to remove the ID? Also I want to have another table which extends this one. Let's say its called patient and it has it's own field `additionalData` and I would like to link the relationship through the email of user I mentioned. So the relationship should be 1 to 1, right? and I wouldn't need the IDs? Somehow MySQL Workbench wants me to use the IDs. What do you guys think. Any suggestions on this topic?"}
{"_id": "13691", "title": "Jython and JRuby vs. Groovy (and Java)", "text": "I am very interested in Python for programming on the JVM, and I've worked in Java and Ruby (not JRuby) a lot, and to a certain extent in Groovy. What are the limits to the Java-Jython and Java-JRuby integration right now? What about Groovy: are there any things that a Java class can do that a Groovy class cannot? And what about IDE integration (mostly Eclipse, but IntelliJ and Netbeans are also interesting)? **I'm not interested in whether Python, Ruby or Groovy is better/more- concise/whatever.** I'm just interested in how well they are working in the JVM and tools (especially IDEs) right now. My main interest is not inside a web server, if that matters. Simple examples of getting a HelloWorld which extends a custom Java class and implements a custom Java interface would be very useful to me."}
{"_id": "13693", "title": "How do you measure the effectiveness of your hiring & interview process?", "text": "Although I've seen many discussions on how to do an interview and develop your brand, I haven't seen many discussions on how to determine if your hiring & interview process is actually working well. I think this question has two parts:   1. How do you know your hiring process is getting the right candidates to apply and go through the interview process?   2. Of the people that you end up interviewing, how can you tell that the ones you choose to hire are better (on average) than those that you rejected? I suppose the \"extreme\" cases - when you end up with a superstar or a total dud - are pretty obvious, but what about the rest?"}
{"_id": "38942", "title": "How is C different from C++?", "text": "Many people have said that C++ is a completely different language than C, but Bjarne himself has said that C++ is a language that is extended from C hence that is where the `++` comes from. So why does everybody keep saying that C and C++ are completely different languages? In what way is C different from C++ other than the extended features in C++?"}
{"_id": "11209", "title": "What's the difference between \"Programmer\" and \"Coder\"?", "text": "Sometimes I heard people talking about how \"that guy is not a programmer, he is just a coder.\" Could someone specify what's the difference between \"programmer\" and \"coder\"? Does the IT coder profession even exist?"}
{"_id": "43355", "title": "Is there such a thing as \"closure\" with software work?", "text": "I burned out last year (after a decade of fulltime programming jobs) and am on a sabbatical now. With all the self-examination I've started to figure out some of the root causes of my burnout, and one of the major ones is basically this: there was never any real closure in any of the work I've ever done. It was always a case of getting into an open-ended support/maintenance grind and going stale. When I first entered the industry, I had this image of programming work being very project-based. And I expected projects to have a start, beginning, and END. And then you move on and start on something totally new and fresh. Basically I never expected that a lot (most) of software work involves supporting and maintaining the same code base for open-ended long periods of time - years and even decades. That, combined with generally having itchy feet makes me think that burnout is inevitable for me, after 2-3 years, in ANY fulltime software job. All this sounds like I probably should have been a contractor instead of a fulltimer. But when I discuss this with people, a lot of them say that even THEN you can't really escape having to go back and maintain/support the stuff you worked on, over and over (eg. Coming back on support contracts, for example). The nature of software work is simply like that. There is no project closure, unlike in many other engineering fields. So my question is - Is there ANY programming work out there which is based on short to mid term projects/stints and then moving on cleanly? And is there any particular industry domain or specialization where this kind of project work is typical?"}
{"_id": "43356", "title": "How to create a \"cult of quality\"", "text": "DeMarco and Lister (Peopleware) suggest you create a \"cult of quality\" within your programming team. Frustratingly, they don't suggest how you go about doing that! Anyone got any thoughts on how to accomplish this?"}
{"_id": "19073", "title": "Does your company donate financially to open source projects? Why not?", "text": "Does your company donate financially to open source projects? My company doesn't. We use open source operating systems, tools, libraries, IDEs, application servers, databases, websites (Wikipedia) etc. We produce a product from this which we sell. Yet we contribute nothing back. I'm sure this is the normal case in many companies. How can this be justified?"}
{"_id": "19071", "title": "How to deal with complex codes in (huge) projects", "text": "I am preparing a memoir about \"Why do (some) IT projects become too complex and how to avoid it ?\". If you have ever encountered projects having complex codes or were hard to maintain, how did you manage to go through it? If you have to choose between several applications to use in your project, what would be your top priority in their functionality and why?"}
{"_id": "225031", "title": "O good approach for permissions of an application' users", "text": "I have an app that have multiple users. In my app an user can - create contacts (people) - edit contacts - view contacts - create an entry to agenda - view entry from agenda Also I need that User A is allowed to view User's B contacts but is not allowed to edit that contact. User B can view and edit User's A entries in Agenda. The app will have about 10-15 permission for each module (Agenda, Contacts, Documents, EmailMarketing) and the number of modules can reach to about 20 Let's say \"User A\" is a sales person, and \"User B\" is the sales manager. For sure, each Business Object (contact, agenda entry,etc) will have a owner id. What is the best approach/design patter/good practice to use to handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "214712", "title": "Hierarchic (tree) access control", "text": "I am currently at the task to create an hierarchic user management system. The requirements for me are to have **users** with rights (roles), **customers** with rights and **groups** (containers for customers and subgroups). The customers and groups can have users assigned to and those users should have access only to groups and customers below their assigned groups/customers. For this I am currently looking at ways how to implement it, my current preferred solution would be based on MongoDB with this concept: MongoDB array of ancestors The `ancestors` array would then be added to groups and customers so selecting all accessable groups/customers would be really fast by just looking into the `ancestors` array. Also updating the ancestors array seems to be pretty fast also if moving a group with ten thousands of groups/customers. Tough the problem I see is when the groups are being moved below other groups, for this I would have to remove the old parents from the ancestors trees with update and then add the new parents to the ancestors array with another separate update. The problem is that MongoDB is not able to isolate those 2 operations and therefore the chance for race conditions exist if the groups would be moved at the exact same time and the removing and adding of ancestors would overlap. Any ideas how to solve this within Mongo? I know an ACID conform relational DB could help me here, but I don't want to lose the ease of use when adding settings to a customer/user just by adding a new subdocument to them, also scalability may be easier.   Would LDAP be a good solution for this? Tough I have no experience at all in LDAP.   Another idea would to regularly check and update the ancestors if something is wrong by recursively checking all the elements. Tough ths doesn't sound very clean to me ;)"}
{"_id": "155159", "title": "Few specific questions on how games are developed", "text": "When it comes to programming games from the old school sega games like sonic to indie games or angry birds or even to more advance games like Diablo, how exactly is level design done? As in, are the levels sometimes designed straight out of code in an IDE? Or do they create a visual level design editor where things can be placed at the click of a mouse button? I'm imagining old school games or very simple ones like indies are done via code, where extremely complicated ones require a visual editor. Is this correct? Also, when it comes to libraries like SDL or XNA, how often are these used rather than just utilizing OpenGL or DirectX? What about creating your own game engine vs utilizing one already made? Do most use already built engines? This question is directed toward the whole gaming spectrum of indie/big game development. Thanks."}
{"_id": "155158", "title": "Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?", "text": "I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very _usable_ language for these reasons:   * It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android)   * As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support.   * Other than that it's used for servers _but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers_. The .NET languages are nice, however:   * People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation.   * It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made).   * Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. * * * ## What I've Looked Into _**Fantom_** looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. _**D_** also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. * * * ## My Question Is it worth learning these \"experimental\" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. * * * ## Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. **_Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING!_** I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments. * * * ## The Results... I'm truly amazed by the amazing responses, most of them so nicely pointing out my misunderstandings and misjudgments. I've learned quite a lot from this and I'm excited to hopefully utilize everything I've learned! I'll probably start learning Haskell next (the _not_ so old language, albeit over 20 years old - _hahaha_ ) and then start looking at some other options around me. _**Thanks_**"}
{"_id": "225037", "title": "State pattern vs Inheritance", "text": "In the following image for the **State Pattern** from Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UCMr1.png) I'm trying to persist the `SalesOrder` entity into the database. Normally I would have a `salesOrder` table in my database with a field `currentState` pointing to the current state of the entity. This implementation is fine as there is a **single** entity and its states only contain different behavior. **However** , what if I had to track other properties for the different states? Examples:   * When a SalesOrder is cancelled I need to track the cancelled `quantity`,`cancellationReason`, `cancelledBy`, `cancellationDate`.   * When a SalesOrder is Refunded I need to track `refundQuantity`, `refundPrice`, `refundFee`. So basically it is like I have a `CancelledSalesOrder` and `RefundedSalesOrder` entities with additional attributes. Same can be said for the other states as well. So my problem now is that I will have to change the design from using the state pattern into using inheritance. However, inheritance doesn't allow my to dynamically change my state at run time (the problem which the state diagram solves initially). so my questions:   1. Does the state pattern fail when an entity in each state has additional attributes? what's the alternative?   2. How should I persist my entities in this case? Single table inheritance? table per class? table per concrete class?   3. If I have to maintain some attributes from a former state (Refund a Shipped order, but don't delete the Shipping address from Shipped state ), how would one approach this problem?   4. How do you keep track of the order of which the states occurred?"}
{"_id": "127554", "title": "Template for writing requirements/specs for a WCF service interface", "text": "I need to write requirements/specs for a WCF service interface between our system and a third-party BizTalk server. I'm not quite sure how to do this, so I'm looking for a template. I guess I should at the very least define the interface itself, authentication policy and error handling. Any resources regarding documenting WCF/SOA requirements would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "103203", "title": "Rails data model - best practices question", "text": "I'm writing a Rails cookbook app as a learning exercise. I've created a table for Recipes which holds info for the recipe (name, author, etc...). I also have a table for Ingredients which will be a master ingredients list, and then a table in-between which holds info specific to that recipe/ingredient combo (for example, the ingredient table would have a listing for Onion, the in- between table would have the amount, technique (slice, chop, etc...) and whatever else for a particular recipe). Anyway - this is all working fine, but as I add ingredients to the table, I realize there are quite a few categories of ingredients (Spices, Vegetables, Meats, Fruits, etc...) and they have different bits of info I want to record about them. For example, meats and veggies might have the technique field (chop, dice, mince, etc) but spices might have a \"spice_type\" field to record if it is dry or fresh. Meats might require a \"doneness\" field (well-done, rare, etc..) while fruits do not... So, the crux of my question - is it better to have one large ingredients table with fields for every category, only using the ones I need for a particular row, or is it better to create five tables, one for each type of ingredient? I started coding it as separate tables, as it seemed proper since I am holding different fields for each type, but then I realized how much work it will be to code 5 x models, 5 x controllers, 5 x views, etc... SO, better to stuff it all in one table (after all, they are all ingredients!), have each record just leave the non-applicable fields nil, and make my views/etc.. dynamic to adapt to whatever type of ingredient is being worked with (essentially hiding or displaying the appropriate fields)? I hope this makes sense, whenever I get on this site I turn into a rambling fool ;) Thanks for the help **Update:** I was making some beer yesterday and thinking about my beer recipes along the lines of my cookbook app, and realized the beer recipes are a much better example of what I am trying to figure out, so below is the same question posed in a different paradigm: In my beer recipes, I have three types of Ingredients. There is malt, hops, and yeast. They are common in the sense that they are all ingredients, and will all have a few common attributes such as Name, Brand, and Price. However, there are specific attributes to each that the others don't share - for example, Malt has an SRM attribute (essentially color), while Hops has an AA (alpha acids) attribute, and yeast has a Flocculation attribute. So do I go STI and lay out a table like this? id, type, name, brand, price, srm, aa, flocculation Additionally, the \"in-between\" table will contain different info on each. All ingredients will have an Amount attribute, but hops will have a BoilTime and malts will have a MashTemp, etc... So do I use one table with STI and one \"in-between\" table to join? Do I make the \"in-between\" table STI as well? I have a lot of reading to do! :)"}
{"_id": "245149", "title": "Why is sem_post pthread_mutex_lock protected while sem_wait is not?", "text": "All the pthread semaphore examples I have seen protect the sem_post call with a pthread_mutex_lock, but the sem_wait is left unprotected! It seems to me that sem_wait also should be protected in some fashion, though being a blocking call, it would lock the mutex permanently! What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "65004", "title": "How does SCRUM manage different projects about the same product with different teams?", "text": "It happens in my workplace that when a product is finished, and just some weeks before it is released and the project is closed, some business considerations remain about features that are wanted for future versions. A revision is made about the features when the project is closed, and the clients and stakeholders, along with the team decided, for example, that they want to open a new project that has as objective to create a new version of the project that includes some new requirements. Now this is a typical case, but it happened before that the team that made the product, now works for another company and a new fresh team is formed to do this project. I know Agile aims to give value to interactions rather than documentation, but how does Agile manages this? How do you continue a new project to extend an already existing product without documentation?"}
{"_id": "155150", "title": "Placing of copyright notice in source code", "text": "I'm about to release a project of mine that I'm really proud of under the GNU GPL and I have some questions:   1. Should one attach a copyright notice on each and every source code file from their project? I think it's a bit ridiculous to claim copyright on a 3 line abstract class. Should I attach a copyright notice only to really important source code files?   2. Can I not attach the whole standard thingy? Because it's big and bulky and gets in the way... If so, is the variant below ok/enough?  _Copyright year firstname lastname. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation._"}
{"_id": "201524", "title": "When is it a good time to reason about performance in Haskell?", "text": "Simon Peyton Jones himself recognizes that reasoning about performance in Haskell is hard due to the non strict semantics. I have yet to write a significant project in haskell so I wonder: can I reason about performance only at the beginning of a project (when choosing basic data structures & IO library) and whenever a problem arise, deal with it with the profiler? To put it differently, is it possible (ie not too painful) to postpone dealing with performance when you have performance issues, or do you have to learn to predict how GHC will run your code (for exemple: infer what the strictness analyser will decide)?"}
{"_id": "64753", "title": "What are examples of small/medium and large applications?", "text": "My question is associated with the accepted answer to this question. It says that the language should be based on the fact whther the application is small,medium or large. What popular applications would you put in each category? And why? (is it the size of the codebase/number of simultaneous users etc..) * * * Thanks for all your answers. But in your examples I didn't see any web applications.Can you include some?"}
{"_id": "153652", "title": "Naming convention for iOS", "text": "I am learning Objective-C and iOS development and not sure what proper naming convention should be used. I understand how to use the label aspect of Obj-C methods but not the proper way to name each label. What is the best practice for naming methods, properties, objects, outlets, and actions? Also,   Should different naming conventions be used between Obj-C code and C code? And if so what differences is there?"}
{"_id": "154681", "title": "Reading graph inputs for a programming puzzle and then solving it", "text": "I just took a programming competition question and I absolutely bombed it. I had trouble right at the beginning itself from reading the input set. The question was basically a variant of this puzzle http://codercharts.com/puzzle/evacuation-plan but also had an hour component in the first line(say 3 hours after start of evacuation). It reads like this This puzzle is a tribute to all the people who suffered from the earthquake in Japan. The goal of this puzzle is, given a network of road and locations, to determine the maximum number of people that can be evacuated. The people must be evacuated from evacuation points to rescue points. The list of road and the number of people they can carry per hour is provided. Input Specifications Your program must accept one and only one command line argument: the input file. The input file is formatted as follows: the first line contains 4 integers n r s t n is the number of locations (each location is given by a number from 0 to n-1) r is the number of roads s is the number of locations to be evacuated from (evacuation points) t is the number of locations where people must be evacuated to (rescue points) the second line contains s integers giving the locations of the evacuation points the third line contains t integers giving the locations of the rescue points the r following lines contain to the road definitions. Each road is defined by 3 integers l1 l2 width where l1 and l2 are the locations connected by the road (roads are one-way) and width is the number of people per hour that can fit on the road Now look at the sample input set               5 5 1 2 3          0          3 4          0 1 10          0 2 5          1 2 4          1 3 5          2 4 10      The 3 in the first line is the additional component and is defined as the number of hours since the resuce has started which is 3 in this case. Now my solution was to use Dijisktras algorithm to find the shortest path between each of the rescue and evac nodes. Now my problem started with how to read the input set. I read the first line in python and stored the values in variables. But then I did not know how to store the values of the distance between the nodes and what DS to use and how to input it to say a standard implementation of dijikstras algorithm. So my question is two fold 1.) How do I take the input of such problems? - I have faced this problem in quite a few competitions recently and I hope I can get a simple code snippet or an explanation in java or python to read the data input set in such a way that I can input it as a graph to graph algorithms like dijikstra and floyd/warshall. Also a solution to the above problem would also help. 2.) How to solve this puzzle? My algorithm was: Find shortest path between evac points (in the above example it is 14 from 0 to 3) Multiply it by number of hours to get maximal number of saves Also the answer given for the variant for the input set was 24 which I dont understand. Can someone explain that also. UPDATE: I get how the answer is 14 in the given problem link - it seems to be just the shortest path between node 0 and 3. But with the 3 hour component how is the answer 24 UPDATE I get how it is 24 - its a complete graph traversal at every hour and this is how I solve it               Hour 1     Node 0 to Node 1 - 10 people     Node 0 to Node 2- 5 people     TotalRescueCount=0     Node 1=10     Node 2= 5          Hour 2     Node 1 to Node 3 = 5(Rescued)     Node 2 to Node 4 = 5(Rescued)     Node 0 to Node 1 = 10     Node 0 to Node 2 = 5      Node 1 to Node 2 = 4     TotalRescueCount = 10     Node 1 = 10     Node 2= 5+4 = 9          Hour 3     Node 1 to Node 3 = 5(Rescued)     Node 2 to Node 4 = 5+4 = 9(Rescued)     TotalRescueCount = 9+5+10 = 24      It hard enough for this case , for multiple evac and rescue points how in the world would I write a pgm for this ?"}
{"_id": "215443", "title": "Importance of uniformity of development architecture across the team", "text": "If some developers still use a 32 bit 'Windows XP' and others use a '64 bit Windows 7', would it be advisable for the entire team to work with 32 bit development tools even if their OS is 64 bit? Are there any problems that could happen if uniformity is not followed?"}
{"_id": "120023", "title": "How does PHP5 fare with earlier versions of the language", "text": "I would like to learn PHP for web development but have been drawn back because of comments like the following*:   * PHP is good but generates spaghetti code   * PHP is nice but Python is marriage material   * PHP lacks stuff that you get in other languages like C# or Java But for PHP5 I have seen some promising comments. So, my question is: How does PHP5 fare with earlier versions of the language and is it good enough now to learn for web development. * Comments are just for reference not to incite a flame war. No comparison of PHP with other languages is asked for here. Please comment just on PHP5 and how it compares with earlier versions."}
{"_id": "235049", "title": "API Client Design", "text": "I'm designing a client to the Tomtom WEBFLEET.connect API in PHP. (You can read more about the API through the full documentation here: https://uk.support.business.tomtom.com/ci/fattach/get/488198/1396263217/redirect/1/filename/WEBFLEET.connect- en-1.19.1.pdf) The API provides a CSV over HTTP(S) interface (JSON and SOAP are also available but their JSON interface has a couple of issues I've noticed at present). I am using the CSV method of interacting, which is a little unorthodox but does work. I am designing my PHP classes to particularly be compliant with the Single Responsibility Principle, Open-Closed Principle and the Dependency Inversion Principle. Writing this API client library is as much as personal programming exercise as I'm trying to better my OOP and class design principles. I've included a brief class diagram below. Please excuse the verbose names, this is of course expressing the PHP namespaces. I would be most appreciative of some comments regarding:   * General class design thoughts and critique (e.g. compliance with SRP, etc.)   * Whether distinct objects for each type of Request and Response are recommended, as I have proposed below (this mirrors each API method).   * How the public API to external calling code should appear. For example, should I have a 'factory' class return an instance of the chosen Transport to the calling code? Or should a central class (similar to the command pattern) hold an instance of the transport class and offload requests to it? ![UML Class Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HzFIC.jpg) Larger image URL: http://i.imgur.com/kneY9GE.jpg"}
{"_id": "235046", "title": "Dealing with a large pull request", "text": "I'm currently working on a project with a team that's using a git workflow. It's fairly simple, master should be in a deployable state and branches are used to create features and hotfixes. Whenever we have a feature or bugfix completed and tested then we move that over to master as soon as we can. The idea is that branches should be as small as possible to make it easier to merge them back into master. We have a policy that any code pushed to master branch should be in a deployable state and pass the tests. We have got a situation where one of the developers has done a lot of work (a few months worth) on a single branch and this branch hasn't been merged back into the master yet. There's now a few separate features and a bunch of commits on this branch, essentially this branch really should have been merged back in a few times already but so far hasn't been. Most of the code is in a good state with unit tests that could be merged back into master but the most recent changes should certainly not be as they are not completed and aren't tested. What is the best way to deal with such a situation where one branch is really far away from the others? What ways can we avoid branches getting a very large number of commits away from master in the future?"}
{"_id": "235042", "title": "What are the perks and drawbacks of using html templates versus building the html in-code", "text": "As far as I can see there are two ways of building a html page: \"inside\" the language (I'll call it _building_ for lack of a better name) or outside the language (using templates). Let me explain a bit what I mean by this before I jump to the questions. ### Building One way is to build the html page \"inside\" the language you are using, using preferably in-language constructs (not just by concatenating strings), and converting these constructs to html in one last step. A really good example of this is Clojure's hiccup library, which uses the Clojure maps and vectors to represent the html. This allows one to use the full power of the language one's working in to manipulate these structures. ### Templating The second way is to write the html separately from the main program and use some kind of template DSL to insert logic into the templates. The hamlet package for Haskell is an example of this. **Now my question is** : what are other advantages and disadvantages of both approaches? * * * I'd love to get more acquainted with these concepts so pointers to articles etc. are more than welcome. Also please inform me if there is another approach I didn't think of. * * * ## Summary of answers so far ### Pro templating   * It's easier to separate the view from the rest of the code. The code will be easier to maintain and you avoid mixing business logic with the rest of your code.   * This approach generally is much more accessible to people with less technical skills. ### Con templating _(none so far)_ ### Pro building   * Functional languages, make it easy to write declarative code natively so a template language is not required.   * You can get all the power and flexibility of your programming language, and still get the benefits of a declarative syntax. ### Con building   * Designers/clients are bad at your preferred logic language.   * It still boils down to hard-coding the page into codem just that it is not separate template code.   * Has more power, that could be used inappropriately. You have to take extra care   to separate view code and business logic.   * In ideal cases it is faster though."}
{"_id": "155486", "title": "What are the typical applications of Lisp macros?", "text": "I am trying to learn some LISP and I have read a lot about the importance of LISP macros so I would like to get some working experience with them. Can you suggest a practical application area that would allow me to use macros to solve a real-world problem, and to understand the usefulness of this programming construct? **NOTE** This is not a generic **what project should I do next** question. I am interested to understand which kinds of problems are typically solved by means of LISP macros. E.g., are they good for implementing abstract data types? Why was this construct added to the language? What kinds of problems does it solve that cannot be solved by means of simple functions?"}
{"_id": "69495", "title": "Resharper - Benefits", "text": "Having seen a few mentions about Resharper on this site and on SO, I thought I would take a look. There seems to be a hell of a lot of documentation on their website, so I was just wondering, in a snapshot, what benefits it brings and what are the main reasons people use it?"}
{"_id": "82632", "title": "Babysitting your Continuous Integration System", "text": "One of my roles in my team is _the build person_. I am responsible for maintaining/updating our build scripts and making sure we are building 'smoothly' on the continuous integration server. I usually do not mind this job, though often it feels like I am constantly babysitting the CI server. This job can be annoying at times because if the build breaks I have to drop the story I am working on and investigate the build failure. Build failures happen daily on our team. Sometimes developers simply do not build locally before committing so tests fail on the CI server. In this situation I like to quickly get to the person who had the 'bad commit' so the build does not stay broken too long. Sometimes (a lot less frequently) a strange condition exists on the CI server that needs to be debugged. I know that many mature teams use Continuous Integration but there is not a lot of material out there about good practices. Do my problems point out that our continuous integration is not very mature or is this simply part of the job? What are some good practices to follow? What are the characteristics of _mature continuous integration_? **Update** Instead of answering some comments I am going to make an update instead. We have a single, simple command that does exactly what the build server will do when building the app. It will compile, run all unit/integration and some quick UI based tests. Reading everyone's answers, it feels we might have two major problems.   1. CI Server not complaining loud enough when a build fails.    2. Developers do not feel like its everyone's responsibility to make sure their commit goes through successfully. What makes things harder in my team is that we have a large team (10+ developers) AND we have a couple of off-shore team members committing when we are not even at work. Because the team is large and we established that frequent, small commits are preferred, we sometimes have really a lot of activity in a day."}
{"_id": "173078", "title": "In GSL, why do some functions take a \"workspace\" argument?", "text": "In certain functions in GSL (GNU Scientific Library), some functions take a \"workspace\" environment as an argument. For example, `gsl_poly_dd_taylor` from this page. Why? Wouldn't it be easier for the function to allocate its own memory, or at least the same difficulty? I suppose that this allows the caller to specify _where_ the function works, but I don't see how it helps."}
{"_id": "199311", "title": "Most human-friendly way to order class method definitions?", "text": "In any given class definition, I've seen the method definitions ordered in various ways: alphabetical, chronological based on most common usage, alphabetical grouped by visibility, alphabetical with getters and setters grouped together, etc. When I start writing a new class, I tend to just type everything in, then reorder when I'm done writing the entire class. On that note, I've got three questions:   1. Does order matter?   2. Is there a \"best\" order?   3. I'm guessing there's not, so what are the pros and cons of the different ordering strategies?"}
{"_id": "213295", "title": "Applying DDD principles in a RESTish web service", "text": "I am developing an RESTish web service. I think I got the idea of the difference between aggregation and composition. Aggregation does not enforce lifecycle/scope on the objects it _references_. Composition does enforce lifecycle/scope on the objects it _contain/own_. If I delete a composite object then all the objects it contain/own are deleted as well, while the deleting an aggregate root does not delete referenced objects. **1)** If it is true that deleting aggregate roots does not necessary delete referenced objects, what sense does it make to not have a repository for the references objects? Or are aggregate roots as a term referring to what is known as composite object? **2)** When you create an web service you will have multiple endpoints, in my case I have one entity `Book` and another named `Comment`. It does not make sense to leave the comments in my application if the book is deleted. Therefore, book is a composite object. I guess I should **not** have a repository for comments since that would break the enforcement of lifecycle and rules that the book class may have. However I have URL such as (examples only):               GET /books/1/comments     POST /books/1/comments      Now, if I do not have a repository for comments, does that mean I have to load the book object and then return the referenced comments? Am I allowed to return a list of Comment entities from the BookRepository, does that make sense? The repository for Book may eventually become rather big with all sorts of methods. Am I allowed to write JPQL (JPA queries) that targets comments and not books inside the repository? What about pagination and filtering of comments. When adding a new comment triggered by the POST endpoint, do you need to load the book, add the comment to the book, and then update the whole book object? What I am currently doing is having a own CommentRepository, even though the comments are deleted with the book. I could need some direction on how to do it correct. Since you are exposing not only root objects in RESTish services I wonder how to handle this at the backend. I am using Hibernate and Spring."}
{"_id": "213294", "title": "Icons for my program", "text": "I'm developing a simple text editor, just to practice a little bit. I'm developing it under Linux but since I am using Qt as GUI Framework I can easily compile this on a Windows or Mac with the same code (in other words, it's cross-platform). Qt offers a function `QIcon::fromTheme()`. This function allows me to get the standard Icon for e.g. the _New Document_ Icon and use it for whatever I want. These Icons are sadly only available on Linux. However, I wrote a simple function to save these icons as PNG files in different formats (16x16 up to 1024x1024) so that I can use these on a Windows as well. Now my question, is it even legal to use these images on windows as well? And would you find it strange if such icons appear in a windows program? Because Linux has a whole different style than windows... Same thing with OS X'. The _New Document_ Icon for example would look similar to this:   http://findicons.com/files/icons/2455/web_icons/48/empty_document_new.png"}
{"_id": "209156", "title": "We need a custom strategy for collecting unhandled application exceptions. What are our options?", "text": "## \"Unhandled exception\" term In .NET Framework, unhandled exceptions are the exceptions which were not handled by the application itself, and result in a crash. In a case of a desktop application, it means that a window similar to this one is displayed: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/96et2.png) For a web application, it mostly means an HTTP 500. Under unhandled exceptions, I also include ones which are \"handled globally\", i.e., in a case of a desktop applications, the global handling which consists of displaying a custom window instead of the Windows default one. ## Context When I work as a freelancer, I use my own in-house solution to gather unhandled exceptions from different sources (web apps and desktop apps). The gathered results are then displayed on a monitoring panel in real time as well as collected for future analysis (to be linked with a bug tracking software, etc.) Currently, I work in a company where I wouldn't be able to use my in-house solution to collect the exceptions (one of the reasons being that they won't accept to send all the exception messages to my servers). This company doesn't have any precise strategy for collecting unhandled exceptions. The only solution which was used before is both rudimentary and out of question: it consists of sending every exception by e-mail. This means that for the new product I'm working on, we should develop a custom strategy for collecting unhandled exceptions. ## Question I can always do by hand the part which will save the exceptions to the database or a log and the part which will load them from the database, a log or Windows Events. I would like to avoid reinventing the wheel and use something which is already commonly used. What are my choices? How are unhandled exceptions usually collected and processed later? By the way:   * Are there any libraries which help collecting those exceptions?   * Are there any software products which help analyzing those exceptions?"}
{"_id": "213291", "title": "Which concepts are pertinent to plan a \u201cend-user documentation\u201d strategy?", "text": "I am writing a lot of software and I feel that writing good documentation is very difficult. Since I am not aware of any structured theory about software documentation I started to organise my knowledge in this field and hope that doing this will help me to break down information in sensible units and organise documentation efficiently. First, I would like to make a complete list of relevant concepts, that I will investigate in other questions. Which concepts are useful or relevant when describing user documentation? How does these concepts interact with each other? Is there any methodology I can use to analyse my software and devise a pertinent documentation strategy? I identified the following concepts:   * _Information categories_ like recipes (\u201chow do I\u2026?\u201d), _references_ (like UNIX man pages) or _expert knowledge_.   * _User role_ like normal user, power user, system administrator and any other roles that the system defines like security officer, data officer, etc.   * _Medium_ like a hardcopy manual, contextual help, editable wiki. These concepts interact one with the other and lead to a variety of questions: When is it useful to write a handbook for each role? What should go in hard copies and what in the on-line reference? When is it useful to run a wiki gathering \u201crecipes\u201d? With these examples, I hope I could provide a useful explanations of what I understand under \u201cconcept\u201d and \u201cinteraction\u201d in my questions."}
{"_id": "215198", "title": "Presenting agile estimates for Pivotal Tracker project", "text": "I've been developing for 6-7 years but never in a particularly agile way. With the latest project I'm trying to make our development process more professional, and more agile. We're using Pivotal Tracker to track the project and have gathered some pretty well thought out stories. We're also trying to keep some of our (Prince2/Waterfall mindset) project managers happy. So far I've got them to accept that   * requirements always change   * priorities always change   * some of the requirements won't be delivered if you fix the time scale    * you should fix the time scale   * short sprints and regular review is good However they still feel like they need to get a better grip of roughly how much will be delivered within a certain time. I've come up with a spreadsheet to demonstrate what we might expect to get done in a range of 4 different timescales. ![Estimates Example](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VbHr9.jpg) Questions   * Are we setting ourselves up to fail   * Are there better ways to do this"}
{"_id": "215199", "title": "Listening For and Raising Events in the BLL", "text": "I'm working on a WinForms .Net Recording App and I have a RecordingMgr in my BLL to listen for new events captured by another class. I want to display the events in my UI and I'm stuck as to what's the **best** way to do this. I can think of a few scenarios to handle this but all of them seem sub-optimal:   1. Listen for and handle Recorded Events in both the UI and in the RecordingMgr   2. After receiving the event in the RecordingMgr, raise it again so that the UI can pick it up   3. Create a variable in RecordingMgr (e.g., a BindingList) that the UI can bind to and update it when an Event is received   4. Ditch the RecordingMgr and just put the event recording logic in the UI What's the best approach? Something above or something else?"}
{"_id": "191729", "title": "Boolean-Integer Typecasting to Replace Conditional", "text": "When choosing a value based off of 2 boolean values in this format               var foo:int;          if (X){         foo = 50;     } else if (Y){         foo = -50;     } else {         foo = 0;     }      I discovered that I can condense this down by typecasting the boolean operations to integers, and mathing it up a bit like so:               var foo:int;          foo = ( int (X) - int(!X && Y) ) * 50;     // int() typecasts a boolean argument to an int of 1 if true, 0 if false.      Here are my questions:   1. Is this approach less resource intensive?   2. Is this approach readable to you?   3. Is assigning values in this way common?   4. If 1 is true then in your opinion, does the performance increase justify the less readable nature of this approach? This situation arose in ActionScript 3.0, but I am interested in answers from all languages, and from a best practice perspective."}
{"_id": "215195", "title": "UML activity diagram: How to end activity after Event Signal Action?", "text": "To my knowledge, event signal actions are not allowed to have output control flow, so how can I model the end of an activity after a event signal action? The same issue arises for accept event actions and activity start nodes."}
{"_id": "240980", "title": "Does this Decorator implementation violate the Liskov Substitution Principle?", "text": "Please consider the following implementation of the Decorator design pattern: `WordBank` objects store strings and return them to the client through the method `getWords()`. The decorator class, `WordSorter`, is a subclass of `WordBank` (as in the Decorator pattern). However it's implementation of `getWords()` sorts some of the strings and removes them, before returning the array to the client. For example a `WordSorter` might delete all of the strings in the bank that start with letter 'a', and only after that return the array to the client. Does this violate the Liskov Substitution Principle? Since some implementations of `WordBank` return strings while others first sort through the strings and only return some of them, I'm not sure if it's safe to say that a `WordSorter` can be used anywhere any other `WordBank` is used. Or am I understanding this principle wrong? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Zafoi.png)"}
{"_id": "195433", "title": "How does one generate challenging different puzzles like the one in AirLock android game", "text": "here's the link of the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iatll.airlock I had studied AI in the final year of b.tech cs programme, and i do remember some algorithm of generating and solving the 8 puzzle game; we had to implement it in Prolog (tough times) But I'm not sure if the above mentioned app uses that same algorithm. Where do I need to look to create a puzzle game like that? They seriously couldn't have designed each level by hand right? Had to be computer generated. How can I so that? pardon me for not formatting, I'm on a mobile device."}
{"_id": "80670", "title": "ActionScript and Python", "text": "I am currently using VB.net 2010 and WPF 4 to create an application, but the further I learn it, the more I realize that the two programming languages may not meet my needs, especially where I have to migrate a version to a web-based Silverlight platform. With this in mind, I'm thinking of dumping the Microsoft programming languages all together before I get further into this project, and build this entire thing over again in a cross-platform language. This brings me to my question: I need the graphic capabilities of WPF, which I know is in the Flash platform, but I also need a language I can migrate my VERY complex VB.net core code into; thus, I'm thinking using Python. Are these two languages capable of working side by side? Alternatively, can I convert all my Vb.net code into ActionScript, instead of using two languages?   Is there another alternative to consider? Open source is the best, though I know ActionScript isn't, by any means open source. This is a strictly commercial project. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "97724", "title": "How quickly, and how severely, should one sound the alarm when things look suspicious?", "text": "I presently have the task of baby-sitting a business critical batch ETL system, querying the database of this system every morning for inconsistencies, and rerunning jobs that have failed. I am not the original designer of the system or of the database, but have made several changes to both, and am reasonably comfortable with the codebase and the data model. The system has a reputation for being unreliable. Improvements have been made, but we are still a long way from hitting the targets we need to hit. This has led to trust issues for both the system and the team involved. Hence, the system now has a baby-sitter who makes sure it behaved well every morning while we work on hardening it up. With this in mind, I have come up against a dilemma that my team is split on. Whenever the system shows inconsistencies or failed runs, how rapidly and how severely should we sound the alarm? Here are the factors that have gone into the discussion thus far:   * If we do not know what is causing a symptom, but the symptom looks severe, do we hold off on sounding the alarm, or sound the alarm with a lesser severity until we know the cause and discover it really is that severe?   * Say we know the cause of something causing a symptom, and the symptom is severe. We have a strategy to mitigate that symptom, but the solution has a possibility of one or more failures before a success, and will nevertheless take time to implement. Do we hold off on sounding the severe alarm until we complete the mitigation steps, and still see the data going sideways?   * Say we know the cause of something causing a symptom, but the cause is out of our control, and we will not be able to mitigate the symptom until the cause is rectified by a third-party. Does this deserve the same severity of alarm as if the data loss were the responsibility of our code.   * If we sound false alarms too often, we run the risk of losing even more trust, because now we seem incompetent about the failure modes of our system. Is it worth delaying alarms, or tempering their severity, to avoid losing trust in our ability to know when and how our system is breaking? Is following up on high severity alarms to lessen the severity level enough mitigation, or has the damage already been done when the severe alarm goes out? The reason I ask this is because I sounded what turned out to be a false alarm this morning, due to some data that looked initially to be way out of what I expected. Further research demonstrated that it was just a run against unusual data, and so the inconsistency I saw was to be expected. Along with this, I had to go back and rerun a few things that failed, and had to wait for these to finish before my data consistency checks would mean anything at all. Another member of my team called me on this, and made the point that I should not have sounded the alarm, and should've instead either said nothing until I was certain, or reported a less severe status until I was certain that the data was in a severely compromised state and that it was our responsibility for it being that way. By doing so, I am not helping us restore trust. So, with this in mind, I'd like to ask the following questions: **when would you sound the alarms, and at what severity** , for batch job issues like the one I describe above, knowing that it has a history of problems? Also, **are we focussing on the wrong things in building back trust by trying to assure we send off alarms as little as possible**?"}
{"_id": "46383", "title": "Is Domain Driven Design useful / productive for not so complex domains?", "text": "When assessing a potential project at work, I suggested that it might be advantageous to use a domain driven design approach to its object model. The project does not have an excessively complex domain, so my coworker threw this at me: > It has been said, that DDD is favorable in instances where there is a > complex domain model (\u201c...It applies whenever we are operating in a complex, > intricate domain\u201d Eric Evans). What I'm lost on is - how you define the complexity of a domain? Can it be defined by the number of aggregate roots in the domain model? Is the complexity of a domain in the interaction of objects? The domain that we are assessing is related online publishing and content management."}
{"_id": "97729", "title": "Where to start to learn C/C++ Embedded Linux Programming", "text": "I'm an experienced software engineer and an advanced Linux user. I already know C and C++. I've developed C applications on Unix in the past and C++ (mostly on Windows). I would like to start to learn how to program on embedded Linux systems. I'm particularly interested by the ARM plate-form and the Beagle Board. I would like to learn how to do low level programming in C/C++ (device drivers, interfacing with BeagleBoard peripherals, compiling customized kernels, etc). Could you point me to the best (free or not too expensive) ressources on the Internet? The best beginner books to learn to program C/C++ on Linux for ARM?"}
{"_id": "46386", "title": "What is programming like in the Japanese language?", "text": "Is the code written in Japanese? Are filenames in English? What about like a C preprocessor? Is that still in English? Are comments in Japanese? Examples would be nice too."}
{"_id": "195388", "title": "Saving Multiple Sizes of Images", "text": "We have lots of user-generated images on our site. When users upload their images, we only store the original. However, depending on the page, we show different sizes of those images (small, medium, large, original). Is it necessary to store all sizes of these images or is there a better way? Currently, we are resizing them with CSS but this is really slow."}
{"_id": "63762", "title": "Header comment format", "text": "I realize that the \"header comment\" format varies from programmer to programmer, but what would be an example of a \"good\" header comment?"}
{"_id": "63761", "title": "Has anyone collated a comprehensive list of all the prototype-programming style javascript work?", "text": "I'm looking for a comprehensive (or as close as possible) list of all the prototype-programming style javascript work done to date. Does anyone know of such a list somewhere, or have the knowledge to compile it somewhere and then reference it here?"}
{"_id": "176169", "title": "Can you explain me why multiple threading need lock?", "text": "Assume these threads run in single core cpu. As a cpu only run one instruction in one cycle. That is said, even thought they share the cpu resource. but the computer ensure that one time one instruction. So is the lock un-necessary for multiplethreading?"}
{"_id": "195383", "title": "Estimated errors in implementation comparison", "text": "I've been working on improving an existing library to be more maintainable after trying to implement a feature I wanted and found the code to be hard to alter. The library is a node.js grunt plugin called grunt-contrib-jshint and my implementation is in a repo called grunt-jshint-bfs. I've run a code analysis tool called plato that generates a source analysis report that includes metrics line total/average lines of code, maintainability and estimated errors in an effort to compare the code bases for code quality purposes. The trouble I'm having is comparing the estimated errors between the two projects, since one has 2 files and the other has many more files it would seem that the exposure to errors would increase, or am I reading that wrong? Here is a link to my repo's report and the grunt-contrib-jshint report for comparison."}
{"_id": "236539", "title": "How to implement an algorithm out-of-core?", "text": "I want to implement a parallel clustering algorithm \"out-of-core\" in CUDA. My CPU has **12GB** of RAM and GPU has **4GB** of it. What I want is that the entire dataset should be on the disk, and I can pick blocks of data from it, put the blocks on CPU memory, pass them to the GPU, process it there and store the result back on disk. The step complexity of the original (in-memory) algorithm is **O(logN)** , N-> no. of data points. For the external memory algorithm, suppose M points can fit in the memory at once, then according to me, the running should be               (N/M)*(logM)      (N/M) -> equals the number of such sets of points that will have to be put in memory and during each pass, logM time to process it. How does this running time relate to the I/O time between disk and memory, i.e., have I already considered the I/O time by using (N/M) or am I leaving something out? Is this analysis correct, or do I need to know more about Input/Output to implement an algorithm using external memory?"}
{"_id": "159107", "title": "How to deal with hints/tutorial mode?", "text": "Currently I'm working on an basic application that has a 'tutorial mode'. Initially hints (bubbles with text) will be displayed above various ui elements, explaining how they work. Currently I have a main view which contains a hint object that can be updated (position, text, etc.) and I'm dispatching update events from the various views that need to display a hint. In most cases when the user click a hint, it disappears, but there are a few situations when the user must perform another action(like dragging-dropping an element, clicking another,etc.) to progress. Phew, that's the background in a nutshell. My main question is: Should there be dispatching events from various views and handle the hints centrally or should hints only be handled locally within each view ? What's the recommended approach ?"}
{"_id": "124230", "title": "I want to program, but I can't find the time if I want to maintain my grades", "text": "I'm a high school senior, and I'm applying for various colleges. Among them, Stony Brook, which I understand has a very good CS program. My grades are good, so I'm not concerned about getting into college; however, I _do_ want to get into Computer Science Honors. The Honors courses are smaller, and the core sequence is two courses rather than three (though since I'm in AP Computer Science, which I find to be a joke, I don't really benefit from the compressed lessons). However, they want a 93 GPA (amongst some great SAT scores that I already have), and I'm at a 93.24. I want to maintain this so I can get into the program and enjoy the smaller class sizes. Great, except that the studying I do in high school (three AP courses, including CS) eats heavily into the time I'd like to spend programming. If I had zero homework after school, or even no school, then I would jump on my computer immediately and continue this one program I'm working on, which is ironically something that outputs the courses I want to take in college in a neat and formatted HTML file. That's why I can't wait to get to college. I did the math, and on average I'd be in class much less in college than in high school, freeing me up to program (which I'd be doing a lot of anyway). Of course, I do make time in the evenings to relax so I can maintain sanity and sleep; but by then, it's close to bedtime, and I'm not as \"on the ball\" as I'd like to be, especially since I try to get to bed by 11 (maybe midnight). Weekends seem to be a theoretically good time to program, if I don't have homework, but why limit myself to two days of the week? I might also be good for mornings, but if I'm sitting through a Forensic Science lecture then how will I know? I do have around six months of independent C++ studying under my belt, as well as some Processing. You can see a bit more, plus two projects, on my site; obviously, I give a damn about making cool things, that's not the issue. Yes, I do want to make games, thanks for guessing, but that will come later on once I have some experience under my belt. I also have a study hall in school, but this may not actually be the best time for me to program; my school actually gives computers to its students, but does not allow them to bring their own from home. My development environment is there, but not here, and shifting code back and forth really breaks the flow and makes things difficult, in my opinion. Also, Code::Blocks doesn't seem to work on my school computer, which really blows. (I spent today's study hall writing this sob story up.) Ultimately, what I ask here is, what advice can you guys offer in setting aside time to program? I'm something of a perfectionist, which I really hope won't be my downfall. I'm currently at a point where I have to compromise to get my coursework done; I'm behind on some calculus, for instance, and didn't study very much for my test today because I spent last night reading The Communist Manifesto and a chapter about Russia from my AP Comparative Government textbook. Oh, and I own an Arduino if that inspires any solutions."}
{"_id": "159103", "title": "How to properly design classes for a big project?", "text": "If we need to represent classes in a class diagram for a big project that is not completely designed yet, and the classes have to be actual tables in a database, how would we predict and design the classes? Let's say we have a project that is going to have more than 15 tables, do all these tables need to be classes in the class diagram? How would classes be designed in this kind of situation? The language that is being used is Java and the class diagram has to prepared in UML. I know how to design them, I just don't know if the tables should represent the classes in this case."}
{"_id": "250877", "title": "Algorithm to reverse engineer permutation", "text": "I have a sequence of permutations formed using these strings: `\"A\"`, `\"BC\"` and `\"D\"`. The permutations are:               BCAD     ABCD     BCDA     DABC     ADBC     DBCA       Now I need to reverse engineer this; i.e. I have a text file containing the sequences, I should be able to tell the strings that are used to construct the permutations. What algorithm I can use?"}
{"_id": "250870", "title": "Android network Lib development", "text": "I have to develop an Android library that should frequently communicate with a server in the background. Access to the lib Object should be guaranteed everywhere in the Apps that will use it, so I decided to extend the Application class from Android API and return the instance created when an App is started, every time it's needed. The lib sends frequent polls to the server (Not the best practice, I know. But it's a given system and still experimental). If there's a message for the App to be parsed, it should call some kind of listener, which has to be registered by the App. When onPause is called the Lib should continue the communication for a defined time. So my questions are:   * Would it be the best way to implement the lib as an intent service?   * Is it the right approach to extend the Application class?  This is my first library project on Android, so excuse me if some of the questions seem to be too basic."}
{"_id": "20801", "title": "How would you evaluate object oriented design skills?", "text": "what kind of insights or questions would lead you to determine a person's OOAD skills."}
{"_id": "20800", "title": "Java vs C#: What should a junior programmer (just finished degree) consider when entering the programming world?", "text": "**I just want to hear some pro and con's - it's obvious that there is no right answer** So would Java be a better choice for a long term career? Or should I opt for .Net since it could be the platform having all the latest advances? **I just want to hear others point of view, so please don't close this question just because it's being subjective**"}
{"_id": "125545", "title": "Evaluating Software Maintenance", "text": "**1. When to treat a software as deployed and when to start charging for maintenance ?** In most of the cases the software we make is deployed on the web at early stages to enhance the testing process from the client side. This means that bugs keep arising and we keep fixing them alongside development. Not just that, as the clients use it, they come to know of modifications required which creates a pile of extra work for us. Because of no demarcation line between development, deployment and maintenance stages its hard to understand when to charge for what. **2. How to charge for software maintenance ?** I read that vendors charge 15%-22% generally for softwares annually. That being a fixed fee what happens if the maintenance takes more time then expected ? What happens if the system runs fine or without issues for an year ? Does the client still pay maintenance ? **3. How to charge for non-application specific improvements ?** We use a core engine to build business applications. Improvement in that engine means improvements, new functions, etc can be made available to all clients without modifying their application layer. Should that be included in maintenance as free upgrades ? **4. How to charge for maintenance in case of hourly contracts ?** If we work on an hourly project most of the times the scope of the project keeps expanding but that doesn't require a revaluation of the project because the increase in scope equates to increase in hours and hence increase in budget. But most of the times due to increase in the scope the bug fixing and maintenance work also gets included in the development time. Is that good ? Or should there be a demarcation between deployement and maintenance even for hourly projects ?"}
{"_id": "121045", "title": "Maintaining Regex in a .net application", "text": "I am sure everybody has had his/her share of regex woes. We have a big application with around 30 developers working on a mvc3 web application , and the two fold regex validations (front-end and server side) is becoming a nightmare to maintain. Is there a way to keep all the regexes in one place ? so that they can be used as attributes for entities and also be used for validations in the controller?"}
{"_id": "121046", "title": "How do you learn to effectively use more than one framework", "text": "Someday, my leader told me that _don't reinvent the wheels, use framework built-in classes._ (with a serious mood) when I implement some algorithm has been supported by .NET fx. And seriously, I didn't know about these support before, cause this is the first time I work with .NET).   So I have this questions. For example, for building an Web-App we have some ways:   1. C# with ASP.NET framework   2. Java with JavaEE (and friends like Struts, Spring v.v.) framework.   3. PHP with Zend framework.   4. ... It just takes about 1 months to learn language (C#, Java, PHP...), BUT learning to use a framework **effectively** takes you at least SOME YEARS working (to know every bit of code has been built-in).   So, _how do you learn to use effectively 2 (or more) frameworks?_ Any ideas are welcome!"}
{"_id": "121042", "title": "Best algorithm to correlate similar articles", "text": "which is the best way to correlate and group similar articles? I mean something like Google News, which groups under a single topic different articles from different sources. I'm not interested in something much sophisticated, it is just important to be efficient in terms of speed and resources needed. I can live with a correlation only on short text like the titles of the articles, not the article itself. I read a paper which talks about tuples of two or three words (best with three) to extract and use to produce a score to achieve the correlation, but it's way too much academic for me"}
{"_id": "254558", "title": "Addressing the fact that primary keys are not part of your business domain", "text": "In almost all circumstances, primary keys are not a part of your business domain. Sure, you may have some important user-facing objects with unique indices (`UserName` for users or `OrderNumber` for orders) but in most cases, there is no _business need_ to overtly identify domain objects by a single value or set of values, to anyone but perhaps an administrative user. Even in those exceptional cases, especially if you are using global unique identifiers (GUID), you will like or want to employ an alternate key rather than expose the primary key itself. So, if my understanding of domain-driven design is accurate, primary keys _need not_ and thus _should not_ be exposed, and good riddance. They're ugly and cramp my style. But if we choose not to include primary keys in the domain model, there are consequences:   1. Naively, data transfer objects (DTO) that derive exclusively from combinations of domain models will not have primary keys   2. Incoming DTO's will not have a primary key So, is it safe to say that if you are really going to stay pure and eliminate primary keys in your domain model, you should be prepared to be able to handle every request in terms of unique indices on that primary key? Put in another way, which of the following solutions is the correct approach to dealing with identifying particular objects after removing PK in domain models?   1. Being able to identify the objects you need to deal with by other attributes   2. Getting the primary key back in the DTO; ie, eliminating the PK when mapping from persistence to domain, then recombining the PK when mapping from domain to DTO? EDIT: Let's make this concrete. Say my domain model is `VoIPProvider` which includes fields like `Name`, `Description`, `URL`, as well as references like `ProviderType`, `PhysicalAddress`, and `Transactions`. Now let's say I want to build a web service that will allow privileged users to manage `VoIPProvider`s. Perhaps a user-friendly ID is useless in this case; after all, VoIP providers are companies whose names tend to be distinct in the computer sense and even distinct enough in the human sense for business reasons. So it may be enough to say that a unique `VoIPProvider` is completely determined by `(Name, URL)`. So now let's say I need a method `PUT api/providers/voip` so that privileged users can update `VoIP` providers. They send up a `VoIPProviderDTO`, which includes many but not all of the fields from the `VoIPProvider`, including some flattening potentially. However, I can't read their minds, and they still need to tell me which provider we are talking about. It seems I have 2 (maybe 3) options:   1. Include a primary key or alternate key in my domain model and send it to the DTO, and vice versa   2. Identify the provider we care about via the unique index, like `(Name, Url)`   3. Introduce some sort of intermediate object that can always map between persistence layer, domain, and DTO in a way that does not expose implementation details about the persistence layer - say by introducing an in-memory temporary identifier when going from domain to DTO and back,"}
{"_id": "254551", "title": "Is creating and writing to one large file faster than creating and writing to many smaller files in Python on Linux?", "text": "If using Python on a Linux machine, which of the following would be faster? Why?   1. Creating a file at the very beginning of the program, writing very large amounts of data (text), closing it, then splitting the large file up into many smaller files at the very end of the program.   2. Throughout the program's span, many smaller files will be created, written to and closed.  Specifically, the program in question is one which needs to record the state of a very large array at each of many time-steps. The state of the array at each time-step needs to be recorded in independent files. I've worked with C on Linux and know that opening/creating and closing files is quite time-expensive, and fewer open/create operations means faster programs. Is the same true if writing in Python? Would changing the language even matter if still using the same OS? I'm also interested in RAM's role in this context. For example -- correct me if I'm wrong -- I'm assuming that parts of a file being written to will be placed in RAM. If the file gets too big, will it bloat RAM and cause problems in speed or other areas? If an answer could incorporate RAM that would be great."}
{"_id": "149752", "title": "Setting variable in constructor or within method", "text": "I have a class which contains two methods. These methods add & remove an object to a datastore. The class which contains these methods has a no arg constructor but each of the two methods takes a variable amount of parameters for the addition / removal. Should these methods be static and if not should the method parameters be initialized within the structure as instance variables instead of at the method level ? pseudo code :                  class Utility {                 public Utility(){         }              public void add(String arg1, int arg2, boolean arg3){         //add logic here         }              public void remove(int arg1, char arg2, float arg3){         //remove logic here         }         }"}
{"_id": "190090", "title": "When to use DI and when to create yourself in Java", "text": "I've a decent amount of OOP with various languages but am pretty new to Java. I'm reading through a lot of tutorials where large numbers of objects are created within the code of a class, and I'm trying to run through them but build versions of the classes in the tutorials that do Dependency Injection instead of instantiating all the classes themselves. But Java is not like other languages I've used in that pretty much everything is an object. If I was to literally inject everything then the result would be very messy and hard to follow. Obviously you wouldn't inject String objects, and I'm guessing there are other objects you wouldn't inject, but I'm not sure where the line should go. At what point does DI stop being the right thing to do, and when does it start being a burden? How do you decide pragmatically what to inject and what to just instantiate? FYI, the tutorials I'm doing are http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/31995 and http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/networking/sockets/clientServer.html for building a simple client and server. I'm not copying them line for line though, I'm trying to create equivalent classes that follow best practice"}
{"_id": "176295", "title": "GPL question : web application using Imagick and GhostScript => Which would be the final licence?", "text": "I am a bit confusing and I need your help to undertand my problem. I have developed a web application (PHP, JQuery) for one of my customer. Recently, my customer ask me to add a new feature permitting PDF to JPG conversion. After web browsing, I have discovered that iMagick (Apache licence) PHP extension with GhostScript (GPL licence) is the only solution. But, as my customer want to sell the web application to others companies, I have to use non-GPL licences. By the way, this feature is OPTIONAL and the final user must download and install manually iMagick and GhostScript if he his interesting by using the PDF conversion. Is there someone to tell me if the fact to use Imagick to convert PDF to JPG (and therefore use GhostScript) turns my current proprietary licence to GPL? And what about if I don't use Imagick but call GhostScript using PHP exec() function? Is there others non-GPL projects to convert PDF to JPG that I could use with PHP? Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "190094", "title": "Is there a way to calculate whether to spawn a new thread or use current thread", "text": "I am building an interpret DSL in which parallelism is part of the language - the user simply states that a calculation can be done in parallel and the interpreter _may_ decide whether to make the calculation in parallel or not. Since it is not always helpful to do parallel calculations, specially for very small jobs (context switch, memory copying between cores, etc may actually make the program slower). I want to know if there are any \"best practices\" available that can calculate (with high degree of certainty) whether to do a new calculation in the current thread or spawn a new thread for the calculation. Note that since my language is interpreted, I can do all kinds of monitoring on the executed program and make this decision depending on how the program executes (kind of a JIT compiler). **Update** By \"Spawn\" I didn't mean that I will create a new thread, but transfer the processing to a different thread, maybe from a thread pool. Note that even when using a thread pool there is overhead of possible memory transfer between processor cores and stuff like that, so even in this case the amount of work should be relatively high."}
{"_id": "46965", "title": "How do big companies of software developers check for bugs in their programs?", "text": "I was wondering how big companies of software developers check for bugs in their programs. Do they just test it on several computers?"}
{"_id": "49714", "title": "Managing Spanish Code", "text": "We have a new project from a client who is Spanish and has all his Java code and comments, variables, method names in Spanish. We are not permitted to convert it into English and then use them. If any of you have worked in such a condition, can you advice what can be done to mitigate this risk as we have to do new developments and this is a major show stopper.. Their Java project has a mix of EJBs, Struts, Custom Framework and more than 10000 Java Files with atleast total of 200k lines of code (min. estimate) and is deployed using Weblogic Server 10 Regards, Dazzlers"}
{"_id": "211633", "title": "MVVM application architecture, where to put dependency injection configuration class, BusinessLayer and Common interfaces?", "text": "Planning my architecture for an MVVM application I come to this:   * MyApp.UI      * View   * MyApp.BusinessLayer      * ViewModel   * MyApp.DataAccessLayer      * RepositoryImplEF   * MyApp.DomainLayer      * DomainObject     * RepositoryInterface   * MyApp.Common      * Logging     * Security     * Utility (contains some reflection method used by many levels)     * CustomException   * MyApp.UnitTest I was inspired by Domain-driven-desing, test-driven-development and onion architecture but not sure to have done all well. I am not sure of a couple of things:   1. where to put dependency injection configuration class? In the common project?   2. where to put BusinessLayer interfaces? in Domain layer?   3. where to put Common interfaces? in Domain layer? But Common in referenced from domain (for some reflection utilities and for DI if the response to 1. is yes) and circular reference isn't good"}
{"_id": "17590", "title": "What is a \"task pool\"?", "text": "I have searched for many websites for a definition of \"task pool\", but most descriptions are very vague. Anywhere I can find a precise definition of it? More details.   * Are dependencies allowed in task pool?   * Can a running task exchange data with other running tasks?      * To phrase conversely, are tasks permitted to accept data _only_ prior to start and permitted to publish results _only_ after the task has finished?   * What keeps track of the temporary resources (memory, CPU etc) that are used by tasks?   * How to define weights that will encourage efficient task assignment?      * For example, if one task needs to pass a lot of data to the next task, it may make sense to run the next task immediately following the first task, and as close to the first thread / CPU / machine / cluster (locality) as possible   * What about tasks that are not known (do not exist) in the beginning, but were \"created\" later?"}
{"_id": "211635", "title": "how to model a connection to a resource, with rudimentary event processing", "text": "For my simple MUD client I'm using Apache Telnet (no, not ssh). A mud client is a strange beast: > Generally, a MUD client is a very basic telnet client that lacks VT100 > terminal emulation and the capability to perform telnet negotiations. ... > Standard features seen in most MUD clients include ANSI color support, > aliases, triggers and scripting. - Wikipedia I would **like** for a not-yet-written `Controller` to have a reference to `TelnetConnection` and just use it for a higher level of abstraction for I/O, but all attempts to prise this class apart fail for me. `TelnetConnection` seems to take on responsibility for everything, and then some, and just keep growing.               package telnet;          import java.io.IOException;     import java.io.OutputStream;     import java.net.InetAddress;     import java.net.SocketException;     import java.util.Deque;     import java.util.Observable;     import java.util.Observer;     import java.util.logging.Logger;     import org.apache.commons.net.telnet.TelnetClient;     import player.GameAction;     import player.DataFromRegex;     import player.Regex;          public class TelnetConnection implements Observer {              private static Logger log = Logger.getLogger(TelnetConnection.class.getName());         private TelnetClient telnetClient = new TelnetClient();         private InputOutput inputOutput = new InputOutput();         private Regex regexParser = new Regex();         private DataFromRegex data = null;         private Logic logic = new Logic();              public TelnetConnection() {             init();         }              private void init() {             try {                 int port = 3000;                 InetAddress host = InetAddress.getByName(\"rainmaker.wunderground.com\");                 telnetClient.connect(host, port);                 inputOutput.readWriteParse(telnetClient.getInputStream(), telnetClient.getOutputStream());             } catch (SocketException ex) {             } catch (IOException ex) {             }             inputOutput.addObserver(this);         }              private void sendAction(GameAction action) throws IOException {             log.info(action.toString());             byte[] actionBytes = action.getAction().getBytes();             OutputStream outputStream = telnetClient.getOutputStream();             outputStream.write(actionBytes);             outputStream.write(13);             outputStream.write(10);             outputStream.flush();         }              private void sendActions(Deque<GameAction> gameActions) {             while (!gameActions.isEmpty()) {                 GameAction action = gameActions.remove();                 try {                     sendAction(action);                 } catch (IOException ex) {                 }             }         }              @Override         public void update(Observable o, Object arg) {             String line = null;             if (o instanceof InputOutput) {                 line = inputOutput.getLine();                 log.fine(line);                 data = regexParser.parse(line);                 Deque<GameAction> gameActions = logic.getActions(data);                 sendActions(gameActions);             }         }              public static void main(String[] args) {             new TelnetConnection();         }          }      Part of the difficulty lies within the `InputOutput` class, which is adapted from `IOUtil` from Apache. (For some reason, I cannot include the link to to the Apache source code.) Once I send the `InputStream` to `InputOutput` there needs to be callback using `Observable` to then send the String data for matching and searching? And then get back **what** after matching and searching the text? The trick being, in terms of I/O:   1. capture console input   2. print remote output from the MUD server to the console like regular telnet   3. some regex/etc on the remote output, _concurrent_ with open, unterminated streams.  This last requirement seems to make an odd beast for which I cannot envision the flow of control and data."}
{"_id": "158475", "title": "Should architect or dev lead tell teammate where to add their code before coding a new feature?", "text": "I have experienced with two kinds of team. After a feature is assigned to me, one kind of dev lead tell me the exact file or class to add my code, another kind of team just say the story or requirement to me. The latter job is hard, if the software I am working on is too big to grasp the structure. Should senior guys tell the place to add the code before coding?"}
{"_id": "158472", "title": "Why should I add CHECK CONSTRAINT?", "text": "Following is a table creating script created by Entity Framework using the model shown in http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/14077/is-it- proper-tpt-inheritance. In this script, there are two alter statements. What is the need for the second ALTER statement? SCRIPT               CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SellingItems_Book](     [Title] [nvarchar](max) NULL,     [Id] [int] NOT NULL,      CONSTRAINT [PK_SellingItems_Book] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED      (     [Id] ASC     )WITH (PAD_INDEX  = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE  = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF,      ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS  = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS  = ON) ON [PRIMARY]     ) ON [PRIMARY]          GO      First Alter                ALTER TABLE [dbo].[SellingItems_Book]  WITH CHECK ADD  CONSTRAINT [FK_Book_inherits_SellingItem] FOREIGN KEY([Id])     REFERENCES [dbo].[SellingItems] ([Id])     GO      Second Alter               ALTER TABLE [dbo].[SellingItems_Book] CHECK CONSTRAINT [FK_Book_inherits_SellingItem]     GO"}
{"_id": "163641", "title": "Interfaces on an abstract class", "text": "My coworker and I have different opinions on the relationship between base classes and interfaces. I'm of the belief that a class should not implement an interface unless that class can be used when an implementation of the interface is required. In other words, I like to see code like this:               interface IFooWorker { void Work(); }          abstract class BaseWorker {         ... base class behaviors ...         public abstract void Work() { }         protected string CleanData(string data) { ... }     }          class DbWorker : BaseWorker, IFooWorker {         public void Work() {             Repository.AddCleanData(base.CleanData(UI.GetDirtyData()));         }     }      The DbWorker is what gets the IFooWorker interface, because it is an instantiatable implementation of the interface. It completely fulfills the contract. My coworker prefers the nearly identical:               interface IFooWorker { void Work(); }          abstract class BaseWorker : IFooWorker {         ... base class behaviors ...         public abstract void Work() { }         protected string CleanData(string data) { ... }     }          class DbWorker : BaseWorker {         public void Work() {             Repository.AddCleanData(base.CleanData(UI.GetDirtyData()));         }     }      Where the base class gets the interface, and by virtue of this all inheritors of the base class are of that interface as well. This bugs me but I can't come up with concrete reasons why, outside of \"the base class cannot stand on its own as an implementation of the interface\". What are the pros & cons of his method vs. mine, and why should one be used over another?"}
{"_id": "163642", "title": "What Does It Usually Mean for a Feature to be \"Supported\"?", "text": "I'm currently working some testing for a particular area of an application. I had to write some automated tests for a particular feature but due to the circumstances, this was not easy to do. When I asked one of the other testers about it, he mentioned that the same features exist in a sister application our company produces but isn't documented anywhere (end-user documentation or otherwise). He also said that the feature doesn't typically get tested at all in the sister application and isn't usually tested in the application I work on. Apparently this feature isn't heavily used but removing it would require a fair bit of work so the benefit-cost ratio doesn't work out. All of this has left me with some questions. Other than \"The documentation says so\" or \"We told the client it is\", what usually makes a feature \"supported\" versus an unsupported feature?"}
{"_id": "168619", "title": "How to manage long running background threads and report progress with DDD", "text": "Title says most of it. I have found surprising little information about this. I have a long running operation of which the user wants to see the progress (as in, item x of y processed). I also need to be able to pause and stop the operation. (Stopping doesn't rollback the items already processed.) The thing is, it's not that each item takes a long time to get processed, it's that that there are usually a lot of items. And what I've read about so far is that it's somewhat of an anti-pattern to put something like a queue in the DB. I currently don't have any messaging system in place, and I've never worked with one either. Another thing I read somewhere is that progress reporting is something that belongs in the application layer, but it didn't go into the details. So having said all this, what I have in mind is the following.   * User request with list of items enters the application layer.   * Application layer gets some information from the domain needed to process the items.   * Application layer passes the items and the information off to some domain service (should the implementation of this service belong in the infrastructure layer?)   * This service spins up a worker thread with callbacks for both progress reporting and pausing/stopping it.   * This worker thread will process each item in it's own UoW. This means the domain information from earlier needs to be stored in some DTO.   * Since nothing is really persisted, **the service should be singleton and thread safe**   * Whenever a user requests a progress report or wants to pause/stop the operation, the application layer will ask the service. Would this be a correct solution? Or am I at least on the right track with this? Especially the singleton and thread safe part makes the whole thing feel icky."}
{"_id": "163648", "title": "How to write reusable code in node.js", "text": "I am trying to understand how to design node.js applications, but it seems there is something I can't grasp about asynchronous programming. Let's say my application needs to access a database. In a synchronous environment I would implement a data access class with a read() method, returning an associative array. In node.js, because code is executed asynchronously, this method can't return a value, so, after execution, it will have to \"do\" something as a side effect. It will then contain some code which does something else than just reading data. Let's suppose I want to call this method multiple times, each time with a different success callback. Since the callback is included in the method itself, I can't find a clean way to do this without either duplicating the method or specifying all possible callbacks in a long switch statement. What is the proper way to handle this problem? Am I approaching it the wrong way?"}
{"_id": "186761", "title": "Should Junior Programmers be involved as code reviewers in the projects of Senior Programmers?", "text": "One of my team members, a junior programmer, has impressive programming skills for his level of experience. And during code reviews, I believe in emphasizing learning, not pointing out mistakes. But should junior programmers be involved in code reviews for more senior programmers? Or should code reviews be attended only by programmers with corresponding experience?"}
{"_id": "168611", "title": "What types of processes have to be reflected in flowchart?", "text": "In visual programming, there are many events which support our application tasks. So, along with user defined processes, should these also be in flowchart or not? What about the constructors of classes, are they supposed to be shown in flowchart or not?"}
{"_id": "11998", "title": "What methods to you use to promote programmer awareness in an API or custom architecture?", "text": "If you are developing your own architecture or heavily use anothers vendors API, how do you promote awareness to the programming staff? For example, say you use Infragistics controls for you C# winforms apps - the controls have boatloads of methods, some quirks, and a best way to use them for your application. How do you promote the knowledge transfer thru your programming staff? Wiki's? Email? Blogs?."}
{"_id": "79260", "title": "How can I practice design patterns and refactoring in a deliberate way?", "text": "I was reading the book Refactoring to patterns and was wondering how I can get chance to practice the skills, because without deliberate practice on new ways to refactor and use patterns, my skills won't improve. But office work requires me to finish each task as quickly as possible. Most of the time, the project's design and architecture isn't controlled by me, I can only follow the similar style as the existing code. Sometimes there is a project with a bad design, but there is also another developer whose design skill is better than me and he already has the whole plan to refactor the project, so that I'm just following his plan. How do I get opportunities to practice?"}
{"_id": "58602", "title": "Do enterprises use TIOBE ratings for programming languages?", "text": "Does the TIOBE rating of programming language play a prominent role in the selection of programming language in enterprise computing?"}
{"_id": "164919", "title": "Should concrete classes avoid calling other concrete classes, except for data objects?", "text": "In Appendix A to _The Art of Unit Testing_ , Roy Osherove, speaking about ways to write testable code from the start, says, > An abstract class shouldn't call concrete classes, and concerete classes > shouldn't call concrete classes either, unless they're data objects (objects > holding data, with no behavior). (259) The first half of the sentence is simply **D** ependency Inversion from SOLID. The second half seems rather extreme to me. That means that every time I'm going to write a class that isn't a simple data structure, which is most classes, I should write an interface or abstract class first, right? Is it really worthwhile to go that far in defining abstract classes an interfaces? Can anyone explain why in more detail, or refute it in spite of its benefit for testability?"}
{"_id": "62492", "title": "Ruby: The Bad Parts", "text": "I recently read Crockford's book \"Javascript: The Good Parts\" and one of the underlying premises was that programming languages can have bad sets of features which programmers should avoid. I'm a Rubyist and whilst I love the language there's always value in getting perspective. So, **what do you see as the worst feature (e.g. methods, classes, practices) in Ruby?** My intention here is not to start an argument about the merits of the language itself or its speed and so on. Rather I'd prefer a discussion of what features you consider dangerous / troublesome / painful to use, based on past experiences."}
{"_id": "164916", "title": "Development-led security vs administration-led security in a software product?", "text": "There are cases where you have the opportunity, as a developer, to enforce stricter security features and protections on a software, though they could very well be managed at an environmental level (ie, the operating system would take care of it). Where would you say you draw the line, and what elements do you factor in your decision? ## Concrete Examples ### User Management is the OS's responsibility Not exactly meant as a security feature, but in a similar case Google Chrome used to not allow separate profiles. The invoked reason (though it now supports multiple profiles for a same OS user) used to be that user management was the operating system's responsibility. ### Disabling Web-Form Fields A recurrent request I see addressed online is to have auto-completion be disabled on form fields. Auto-completion didn't exist in old browsers, and was a welcome feature at the time it was introduced for people who needed to fill in forms often. But it also brought in some security concerns, and so some browsers started to implement, on top of the (obviously needed) setting in their own preference/customization panel, an `autocomplete` attribute for `form` or `input` fields. And this has now been introduced into the upcoming HTML5 standard. For browsers that do not listen to this attribute, strange hacks* are offered, like generating unique IDs and names for fields to avoid them from being suggested in future forms (which comes with another herd of issues, like polluting your local auto-fill cache and not preventing a password from being stored in it, but instead probably duplicating its occurences). In this particular case, and others, I'd argue that this is a **user setting** and that it's the **user's desire** and the **user's responsibility** to enable or disable auto-fill (by disabling the feature altogether). And if it is based on an internal policy and security requirement in a corporate environment, then substitute the user for the administrator in the above. I assume it could be counter-argued that the user may want to access non- critical applications (or sites) with this handy feature enabled, and critical applications with this feature disabled. But then I'd think that's what security zones are for (in some browsers), or the sign that you need a more secure (and dedicated) environment / account to use these applications. * I obviously don't deny the ingeniosity of the people who were **forced** to find workarounds, just the necessity of said workarounds. * * * ## Questions That was a tad long-winded, so I guess my questions are:   * Would you in general consider it to be the application's (hence, the developer's) responsiblity?   * Where do you draw the line, if not in the \"general\" case?"}
{"_id": "164913", "title": "When creating a library for a simple program, what must I do to protect others from its lack of thread safety?", "text": "When creating a library for a simple program, is it more cost effective to make it thread safe or is there a way to detect the program's use in a multithreaded program and ASSERT() or otherwise determine (preferably at compile or link time) that it may create problems. Related help for this question would be automated tool support for finding potential problems with thread safety, programming language features that enforce it,"}
{"_id": "53580", "title": "Should Swing knowledge be required from Java programmers?", "text": "Swing is an integral part of the Java API. It is also the most popular GUI framework for Java. I still wonder, should every Java programmer still know, or at least be pretty familiar with, Swing (possibly excluding web developers)? There are alternatives (e.g. SWT), but they are not very widely used (compared to Swing). What do you think about requiring Swing knowledge from Java programmers? If such knowledge is important, to what degree? Are the basics enough or not? The reason I wonder is because I really don't like Swing but wonder if I still should brush up my skills in it. I'm able to create simple GUIs in it, but I would definitely not say that I know Swing well."}
{"_id": "13172", "title": "Where to get experience with Big Data?", "text": "I have a strong interest in creating and learning about highly scalable web sites and applications which deal with Big Data. For example, many world class web companies and startups such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc deal with massive amounts of data and their software engineers use tools such as Hadoop/MapReduce, Cassandra/memcache, and other algorithms and techniques and tools to make sense of this data. To me this is a very interesting and challenging area and much more invigorating than just creating yet another e-commerce or web portal for a commercial company. Naturally working at a typical software development firm won't get you experience with this level of massively distributed data processing opportunity, and very few if any people have access to cpu clusters to run Hadoop, DryadLinq, etc. I wanted to inquire if there are certain geographic areas in the countries which have companies dealing with such Big Data problems - Silicon Valley would be an obvious one, any others? Also, feel free to mention any non-obvious startups and companies which are dealing with such challenging problems. EDIT: Just read this recent article by Matt Welsh of Harvard on his (sabbatical) at Google and the scale of problems he's working on (he sounds clearly excited): Computing at scale, or, how Google has warped my brain EDIT: Found another new link on getting experience with large scale data at government institutions Tackling Large Scale Data in Government Thanks,"}
{"_id": "176835", "title": "When should I make the first commit to source control?", "text": "I'm never sure when a project is far enough along to first commit to source control. I tend to put off committing until the project is 'framework- complete,' and I primarily commit features from then on. (I haven't done any personal projects large enough to have a core framework too big for this.) I have a feeling this isn't best practice, though I'm not sure what could go wrong. Let's say, for example, I have a project which consists of a single code file. It will take about 10 lines of boilerplate code, and 100 lines to get the project working with extremely basic functionality (1 or 2 features). Should I first check in:   1. The empty file?   2. The boilerplate code?   3. The first features?   4. At some other point? Also, what are the reasons to check in at a specific point?"}
{"_id": "176831", "title": "Continous Delivery TFS", "text": "Is it possible to achieve Continuous Delivery using TFS e.g. Windows Service? There are > 1000 posts on how to use msdeploy with TFS for WEB projects. I am trying to understand why there are no resources such as blogs, articles, msdn or best practises for Continuous Delivery for Windows service using TFS. I am not sure tow to achieve the following without any working reference materials. This is so frustrating.   1. Archive existing codebase on Remote server for Service as well for Web project not on Integration Server please!    2. How To Stop services on Remote server not on Integration Server    3. Copy New code Base on Remote Server    4. Start Services"}
{"_id": "122535", "title": "On the frontier between work and home", "text": "I think we've all been there: You hear of someone say \"hey, wouldn't it be nice if platform X had feature Y?\" You look around (on SO!), the feature really doesn't exist, even though it probably would be useful in many contexts. So it's pretty generic. Your mind wanders for a bit. \"How tough would it be? Well, it'd probably be just a snippet. And an ad-hoc function. And maybe a wrapper.\" And boom, before you know it, you've spent a dozen hours of **your free time** implementing a FooFeature that's really neat and generic. The kind of code you might not even have the time to spit and shine at work, that would be a bit rushed and not so documented. So now you wonder \"wouldn't this be useful to others?\" And you've got your blog, maybe a CodeProject account, and your colleague who asked if FooFeature exists might, haphazardly, come accross that blog entry, had it existed before they told you. On the otherhand, the NDA agreement. It's sort of vague and general. It doesn't forbid you from coding at home, but it's clear on sharing company code, that's a big NO. But this isn't company code. Or is it? Or will it be? So, what do you do with code (that's more than just a snippet) you wrote in your off time with universality in mind but an idea that came from work, and that will most likely be used at work? Can it be published?"}
{"_id": "62141", "title": "Pitfalls in the Grails Framework", "text": "What are some of the biggest issues/pitfalls with using the Grails framework? I'm learning the framework now, and I really like it, but I need to know what major issues I may encounter when using it and how to avoid them."}
{"_id": "94407", "title": "Is there a name for the new \"shake phone\" interface convention?", "text": "Some mobile applications leverage the fact that smart phones have motion sensitivity to provide a \"shake\" feature. For example, I believe Urban Spoon has an app with which you can view a recommendation for a nearby restaurant; if you don't like the recommendation then you can shake your phone and it will immediately come up with another one. Is there a **word** for this new interface pattern/idiom/convention (or whatever you want to call it)?"}
{"_id": "94409", "title": "Will taking courses in system administration help land a programming job?", "text": "I just completed a B.S. in Computer Science from a less-than-reputable college, and I am having trouble finding a job. Looking around for ways to find a job, I came across an institute that teaches system administration. Their claim is that, after finishing the course, I will be in a much better position than \"normal\" Java programmers and my salary will grow \"exponentially\". I don't buy that claim, but additionally, he kept saying that this course will help me choose jobs in country of my choice as there are very less people available in this particular domain. When asked why the salary grows \"exponentially\", he drew an analogy where he said it was \"for the same reasons heart specialists are paid more than orthodontists\". This is because the job profile will be maintaining important data and make sure that availability of the systems which is very critical in fields like health care and Banking (I am not sure about this claim). My whole point is, I am very interested in programming. Will taking a course in systems administration help me at all? Are any of the claims he's made reflective of reality?"}
{"_id": "237374", "title": "To Repository Or Not To Repository", "text": "When I first learnt about Domain Driven Design, I was also introduced to the repository and unit of work patterns that once seemed to be top notch for the cool kids that threw SQL queries like cavemans against databases. The deeper I got into that topic, the more I learnt that they don't seem to be necessary anymore because of _ORMs_ like **EF** and **NHibernate** that implement both unit of work and repositories into one API, called session or context. Now I'm unsure what to do. To repository or not to repository. I really understand the argument that such leaky abstractions only over-complicate things while adding absolutely nothing that may simplify data access, however, it doesn't feel right to couple every possible aspect of my application to e.g. **Entity Framework**. Usually, I follow a few simple guidelines:   1. The domain layer is the heart of the system, containing entities, services, repositories...   2. The infrastructure layer provides implementations of domain interfaces of a infrastructural concern, e.g. file, database, protocols..   3. The application layer hosts a composition root that wire things up and orchestrates everything. My solutions usually look like this:               Domain.Module1     Domain.Module2         IModule2Repo         IModule2Service         Module2     Infrastructure.Persistence         Repositories             EntityFrameworkRepositoryBase     MyApp         Boostrapper             -> inject EntityFrameworkRepositoryBase into IRepository etc.      I keep my domain layer clean by using a `IRepository<'T>` which is also a domain concern not depending on anything else that tells me how to access data. When I now would make a concrete implementation of `IModule2Service` that requires data access, I would have to inject `DbContext` and by this, coupling it directly to the infrastructure layer. ( _Coming to Visual Studio project, this can end up really tricky because of circular dependencies!_ ) **Additionally** What can be an alternative to _depositories_ and _fucktons of works_? CQRS? How does one abstract a pure infrastructural framework?"}
{"_id": "213907", "title": "structure problem in Relational DBMS creation", "text": "For learning and understanding purpose, I currently want to try to make a small relational `DBMS` with simple features like (for now) only sequential reading/writing and **CREATE TABLE** , **INSERT** , **SELECT** , **UPDATE** and **DELETE** management. I am currently on the \" _think_ \" part of the project and I am stuck on the way to store the read data in memory. First I was thinking of putting them properly on a structure, but the problem is that tables are all different, know the type of each column is not an issue, but I am not sure C provide a way to make fully dynamic structure. My second and current idea is to make a simple `char array` of the required length and just get the data by order with cast. But I am not sure if it is the good way to do that part, so I wanted to ask for your opinion and advices about that. Thanks in advance for your help. * * * nb: I hope my question is enough clear and understandable, I still lack of pratice in english"}
{"_id": "143614", "title": "Conceptual question regarding the portability of a software from desktop to mobile", "text": "I am planning to create a web solution for the desktop, I would be dividing my task into three steps   1. Design   2. Coding   3. Automated use case I am wondering if in the future I have to port my web solution as mobile phone native application. How would I do that? Will I go back again to the design phase to redesign or will I just recode some of the already written stuff meant to be for the desktop?"}
{"_id": "133356", "title": "Standard semantic name for 3rd table in 3NF", "text": "For 3 tables that are in 3NF, a many-to-many relationship, is there a standard name or term to describe the 3rd table, the one that associates the other tables? Basically, I'm looking for a semantic way to name the 3rd table. **Example** You have two tables: _users_ and _widgets_. A user can have multiple widgets and a widget can be owned by multiple users. What is the most semantic name for the 3rd table? In the past, I've used the following at one time or another:   * userWidgets   * userWidgetAssn (association)   * userWidgetXref (cross-reference) In my example, userWidgets is probably my top choice, but it doesn't always work as cleanly depending on the table names. Is there an industry standard?"}
{"_id": "20371", "title": "Developing With Ruby/Rails Easier, Faster Than Developing With PHP/CakePHP?", "text": "What is your experience when developing web applications using one of these two languages/frameworks? Which have you found to be more convenient and faster to develop with?"}
{"_id": "213909", "title": "Best way to implement database design for a set of entities", "text": "Lets say I have a scenario like so: I have many claims to get money from another entity and this claim has to go through two gateways. This claim is sent from an origin system and can possibly be rejected at each gateway. If the claim is rejected at either gateway, one or more messages will be sent back to the origin system that indicate why it was rejected at that gateway. Here's a diagram: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RTBvY.png) Note that the some attributes of messages of a rejection from Gateway #1 are different from #2 in my actual system, so they are not the same type of entity. Now, my requirement is to create a reporting system that can display various aggregations of that data by designing a database layout for it. The reporting needs to be able to aggregate by claim cost, number of claims, and be able to display reports at the rejection message level too. Another requirement is to be able to see if a claim was resubmitted through the process based on an ID representing an overall claim process. From my company there appear to be two routes to go about creating the database table layout for this reporting system, listed here: Have one table that displays all attriutes of the claim, and both rejection levels and put all necessary attributes of those entities as different aggregations on that table (denormalized). Or... Create a table layout in which there is a table that represents the claim, a table that represents a rejection at gateway 1, and a table that represents a rejection at gateway 2, with the claim table being the parent of the other two. Keep in mind that rejections at both gateways #1 and #2 contain different attributes. What is the best route to choose between these two choices? Is it situational, as in is there a best option depending on other requriements, and if so, can you explain what those requirements might be?"}
{"_id": "213908", "title": "In Android, is there any reason to set up a content provider for a local database?", "text": "I have an android application with a custom content provider set up to load data asychonously. The database is a local file so I'm not sure if I needed to set up a content provider at all. Sometimes I just need to do something like get a name back from a short list by id. Is it ok to mix the content provider pattern with simple direct database calls, i.e open, query, close type of code blocks?"}
{"_id": "155971", "title": "Functional Programming, JavaScript and UI - some neophyte questions", "text": "In the discussion here, the comments in the accepted answer suggest that I approach the given code from a functional perspective, which was new to me at the time. Wikipedia said, among other things, that FP \"avoids state and mutable data\", which includes according to the discussion global vars. Now, being that I am already pretty far along in my project I am not going to learn FP before I finish, but:   1. How is it possible to avoid global vars if, for instance, I have a UI whose entire functionality changes if a mousebutton is down? I have a number of things like this.   2. Why was there a strong negative reaction among some experienced coders to implementing FP in JS? When I brought up what seemed to me to be supportive comments by Crockford, people got even madder. Are there strong arguments against using fp in JS? What constitutes a \"functional language\" and why is JS \"not it\"?"}
{"_id": "216362", "title": "Learning to program after a 9-5 job", "text": "I'm currently working as an IT administrator, but I'm thinking of making a slight career change into programming. I want to focus my time and effort into learning some web-based languages, but does it feel achievable when working full time to expect to make much progress after a long day's work? I love to read, but this is sometimes a hindrance. I have read on some resources that you will never make much progress unless you quit your 9-5 job and dedicate six months to getting a fundamental understanding."}
{"_id": "133352", "title": "How REST is used outside of the web", "text": "I was recently reading the Wikipedia article for Resource-Oriented Architectures (ROA) and stumbled across an article that made the assertion that, although REST is a technology that is very-well suited for web applications and web services, that it is nevertheless a standalone technology that can be used in non-web applications. This is the first I've ever heard of such a thing! I thought REST was a SOAP competitor, but that the two were strictly web service solutions. My question: can someone provide an example for how REST is used in something that isn't a web app? Like a Swing client, or a command line tool, or an EJB."}
{"_id": "224184", "title": "What effect does the utilization of pseudocode and comments have when a software engineer designs software?", "text": "I am a programmer by trade so in my English Class ENC 1102, when we were asked to come up with a discourse community in which we could relate the use of writing skills I thought about pseudocode and comments. So the question is as follows: What effect does the utilization of psuedocode and comments have when a software engineer or programmer designs software? I want to know how writing pseudocode and comments have had in your work process. Does it make it better, faster, worse? Share your experiences and opinions please."}
{"_id": "1090", "title": "Do you prefer conciseness or readability in your code?", "text": "Language shortcuts can often be used to make code more concise. For example, ternary and null coalescing operators can reduce the amount of code, but arguably to the detriment of readability: In C#:               Person newGuy = new Person();     if (boss == null) {         newGuy.Boss = GetDefaultBoss();     } else {         newGuy.Boss = boss;     }      is functionally equivalent to:               Person newGuy = new Person();     newGuy.Boss = boss ?? GetDefaultBoss();      but obviously a lot more verbose. **Where do you draw the line when it comes to conciseness vs readability?**"}
{"_id": "188110", "title": "Noda Time vs Joda Time?", "text": "In the Noda Time User's Guide, the rationale section states: > the public API has been largely rewritten, both to provide an API which is > more idiomatic for .NET, and also to rectify some of the Joda Time decisions > which the Noda Time team view as \"unfortunate\". (Some of these are simply > due to having different goals; others I'd argue are really mistakes.) What are these decisions that are different/better? This would not count differences just for language syntax, but would include anything done to make the users less likely to make a programming error (library usability)."}
{"_id": "126096", "title": "How do I create a potential shippable product (PSP) at the end of a sprint?", "text": "I'm running a team of 4 developers and 2 testers and trying to abide by the Scrum principle of creating a PSP with every sprint. That means I need to create a potential release with all the user stories that got to Done and store it on some publish server for the PO to do with as they please. My problem is how to technically create the build when some stories are not at Done at the end of the sprint? The code is checked in, but didn't completely pass testing. If I only check-in code that is Done, i.e. code complete-reviewed-tested, I run in to the possibility of diverging code bases and merges that may be disastrous. For instance Developers A and B work on different features that modify assembly X. Dev A finishes coding, pushes assembly X to test. The next day Dev B finishes coding and pushes assembly X to test. Feature A comes back with bugs, feature B is perfect. Oops, sprint is over. Now, how do I create a PSP with feature B but not A?"}
{"_id": "126095", "title": "Resources on learning to program in machine code? ", "text": "I'm a student, fresh into programming and loving it, from Java to C++ and down to C. I moved backwards to the barebones and thought to go further down to Assembly. But, to my surprise, a lot of people said it's not as fast as C and there is no use. They suggested learning either how to program a kernel or writing a C compiler. My dream is to learn to program in binary (machine code) or maybe program bare metal (program micro-controller physically) or write bios or boot loaders or something of that nature. The only possible thing I heard after so much research is that a hex editor is the closest thing to machine language I could find in this age and era. Are there other things I'm unaware of? Are there any resources to learn to program in machine code? Preferably on a 8-bit micro-controller/microprocessor. This question is similar to mine, but I'm interested in practical learning first and then understanding the theory."}
{"_id": "161738", "title": "Migrating from jdbc to MyBatis -- advice needed", "text": "I am working on a Java application (an ERP) that has grown pretty large, and will continue to grow for the next couple of years. We have been using Spring- JDBC for our DAO layer. But the amount of boilerplate code that needs to be written is slowing us down significantly, not to mention introducing silly bugs in the system. So now we're looking for a solution that will:   * Reduce the amount of time we need to spend on the DAO layer   * Doesn't have a very steep learning curve   * Gives us control over our queries, like we have with JDBC.   * We should be able port our existing code part-by-part, not all at once. I thought MyBatis would be a good choice, but I'm not sure if it would satisfy all our requirements. In particular, would it be able to work alongside our Spring-JDBC code without creating problems in transaction management, handling concurrency etc? Edit: Forgot to mention that we're using Spring-AOP for transaction management, which we'd prefer to continue with. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "161739", "title": "What to do when the lead programmer is doing almost zero work?", "text": "I am currently working on a project with a small dev team. The problem is that the lead programmer is \"working remotely\", and does virtually no work. We have missed every deadline, and at this rate we will miss many more. The lead programmer is a great talker, and has convinced the CEO that everything is fine. It doesn't bother me that he gets paid for doing nothing. What bothers me is that he is harming every single employee and destroying the company. It's clear from our project management tool that the lead programmer hasn't delivered most of his tasks. The idea to critique the code and not the programmer ( My coworker is a nice guy, but his performance is sub-par. Do I tell my boss?) is great, but the problem is not the quality of the code. The problem is that code is not being created. I feel like I should tell the CEO what is going on, but I also feel like it's not fair to the lead programmer to go behind his back and tell the boss that he is not doing work. The other problem is that the boss is very direct. I think he will call the lead programmer and say, \"This guy says that you aren't doing anything. What's going on?\" The result will be that nothing will get solved and the lead programmer will get pissed off, making it difficult to work with him."}
{"_id": "156446", "title": "Parsing multiple file formats/protocols", "text": "We are starting a project where we will need to write parsers for a bunch of binary file formats, each of them representing very similar data (time-value series from different measurement devices). Since we are starting from scratch, I would like to get it right, and I see two possible approaches:   1. write dedicated, home grown binary parsers for each format separately, or   2. represent binary formats using a grammar, and then use some standard algorithms for lexical analysis/tokenization. Whenever I seek for advice on how to build a parser, I find most guys advocating the latter approach. However, I don't have much experience with formal grammars and languages, and I am afraid that there might be a learning curve before we get results. So, I basically have these questions:   * What is the problem with coding parsers \"by hand\"?   * Is there a practical \"size limit\" of a problem when it pays off to invest in learning the \"formal approach\"?   * Most parsing examples focus on textual files. What is the good way to specify grammar for a binary parser?"}
{"_id": "29514", "title": "DVCS and different versions of the same Product", "text": "Let's say that we have an application, with two (or more) different versions. E.g. Professional and Lite editions. What would be the best way to keep the source under version control (DVCS in particular). The assumption here is that some or most of the code is common, but the Professional edition has some extra code as well. What would be the optimum way of versioning the code with a system like git or Mercurial?"}
{"_id": "55653", "title": "Reinventing the Wheel, why should I?", "text": "So I have this problem, it may be my OCD (i have OCD it's not severe.....but It makes me very..lets say specific about certain things, programming being one of them) or it may be the fact that I graduated college and still feel \"meh\" at programming. Reading This made me think \"OH thats me!\" but thats not really my main problem. My big problem is....anytime im using a high level language/API/etc. I always think to myself that im not really \"programming\". I know I know...it sounds stupid. But Like I feel like....if i can't figure out how to do it at the lowest level then Im not really \"understanding\" it. I do this for just about every new technology I learn. I look at the lowest level and try to understand it. Sometimes I do.....most of the time I don't, I mean i've only really been programming for 4 years (at college, if you even call it programming.....our university's program was \"meh\"). For instance I do a little bit of embedded programming (with the Atmel AVR 8bits/Arduino stuff). And I can't bring myself to use the C compiler, even though it's 8 million times easier than using assembly......it's stupid I know... Anyone else feel like this, I think it's just my OCD that makes me feel this way....but has anyone else ever felt like they need to go down to the lowest level of the language to even be satisfied with using it? I apologize for the very very odd question, but I think it really hinders me in getting deep seeded into a programming language and making a real application of my own. (it's silly I know)"}
{"_id": "200303", "title": "Developing wheel reinventing tendencies into a skill as opposed to reluctantly learning wheel-finding skills?", "text": "I am more of a **high-level wheel reinventor**. I definitely prefer to make use of existing API features built into a language and popular third-party frameworks that I know can solve the problem, however when I have a particular problem that I feel capable of solving within a reasonable time **I am very reluctant to find someone else's solution**. > ## Here are a few reasons why I reinvent: > >   1. **It takes time to learn a new API** >   2. **API restrictions might exist that I don't know about** >   3. **Avoiding re-work of unfamiliar code** > I am conflicted between doing what I know and shifting to a new technique I don't feel comfortable with. On one hand I feel like following my instincts and getting really good at solving problems, especially ones that I would never challenge myself with if all I did was try to find answers. And on the other hand I feel like I might be missing out on important skills like saving time by finding the right framework and expanding my knowledge by learning how to use a new framework. * * * I guess my question comes down to this: My current attitude is to stick to the built-in API and APIs I know well* and to not spend my time searching github for a solution to a problem I know I can solve myself within a reasonable amount of time. _Is that a reasonable **balance** for a successful programmer?_ *Obviously I will still look around for new frameworks that save time and solve/simplify difficult problems."}
{"_id": "1323", "title": "Does your company have a coding standard?", "text": "I recently saw that Microsoft released a coding standards document (All-In-One Code Framework Coding Standards) and it got me thinking... The company that I work for has no formal coding standards at all. There are only a few developers and we have been together long enough to have evolved into similar styles and its never been an issue. Does the company you work for have a documented coding standards? If no, why not? Does having a standard make a difference? Is it worth writing a standard from scratch or should you adopt another standard as your own (ie. make Microsoft's standards yours)?"}
{"_id": "59260", "title": "sets of numbers that sum to a certain number?", "text": "I was asked this in an interview, and I'm not sure what the answer is or how to approach the problem. > Find a pair of numbers that sum up to zero (or any other number), then find > three (and then four) numbers that sum up to zero."}
{"_id": "59268", "title": "web vs desktop? (php vs c++?)", "text": "I need to write a simple file transfer mechanism (that isn't ftp). Firstly, it must have a GUI. Secondly, it must not be dropbox. Third, it may not use any paid libraries, and hopefully, it uses open source components. The question that came to my mind is, where is everyone moving, from desktop to web, or from web to desktop? Would it be more useful to be experienced in say, C++ than in PHP (or vice versa)?"}
{"_id": "119380", "title": "The perfect crossfade", "text": "I find it hard to describe this problem in words, which is why I made a video (45 seconds) to illustrate it. Here's a preview of the questions, please have a look at it on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/epologee/perfect-crossfade ![Using a linear crossfade the resulting image will have a 'dip' in transparency. How can I prevent this?](http://i.stack.imgur.com/EkLXN.png) The issue of creating a flawless crossfade or dissolve of two images or shapes has been recurring to me in a number of fields over the last decade. First in video editing, then in Flash animation and now in iOS programming. When you start googling it, there are many workarounds to be found, but I really want to solve this without a hack this time. **The summary:**   What is the name of the technique or curve to apply in crossfading two semi- transparent, same-colored bitmaps, if you want the resulting transparency to match the original of either one? Is there a (mathematical) function to calculate the neccessary partial transparency/alpha values during the fade? Are there programming languages that have these functions as a preset, similar to the `ease in`, `ease out` or `ease in out` functions found in ActionScript or Cocoa? **Update:** In addition to the video, I've made a sample project (requires Xcode and iOS SDK) and posted it on github. It shows the same animation as the video but this time with squares: https://github.com/epologee/StackOverflow- Example-Code"}
{"_id": "119384", "title": "Breaking down CS courses for freshmen", "text": "I'm a student putting together a slide geared towards freshmen level students who are trying to understand what the importance of various classes in the CS curriculum are. Would it be safe to say that this list is fairly accurate?   * Data structures: how to store stuff in programs    * Discrete math: how to think logically    * Bits & bytes: how to \u2018speak\u2019 the machine\u2019s language   * Advanced data structures: how to store stuff in more ways    * Algorithms: how to compute things efficiently    * Operating systems: how to do manage different processes/threads"}
{"_id": "92124", "title": "When we say \"sanity\" when referring to user input, are we talking about the cleanliness of the input or whether or not it is sane?", "text": "I often hear people say they \"sanitize input,\" which would mean make it clean. I understand this to mean \"clean of potentially damaging contents,\" where the function that does the sanitizing would do something like character escaping. But then I hear things like \"sane input,\" which to me, means the input isn't a string where a double was expected, or \"January Third of Nineteen Ninety Five\" where \"1995/01/03\" would have been correct. This represents a matter of formatting. Then we have \"sanity functions,\" which handle user input to make it usable by the backend of the software. Can this refer to both types of input validation? Does it only deal with the formatting (like \"sane input\"), or with cleanliness of the input (like \"sanitized input\")? Are they two different classes of operations, or does sanity in this case just refer to both? I always thought it referred to sanitizing it (if that actually means something different than making it sane) since I thought \"sanity\" was a root for \"sanitize.\" But I just looked it up and can't find any definition of \"sanity\" that has anything to do with cleanliness or sanitization. Is there idioms for each of these operations that I don't know about, or is it always just \"sanity functions\" which do both of these things? Would it be confusing to see \"sanity\" and \"safety\" functions?"}
{"_id": "119386", "title": "Object oriented EDI handling in PHP", "text": "I'm currently starting a new sub project where I will:   1. Retrieve the order information from our mainframe   2. Save the order information to our web-apps' database   3. Send the order as EDI (either D01b or D93a)   4. Receive the order response, despatch advice and invoice messages   5. Do all kinds of fun things with the resulting datasets. However I am struggling with my initial class designs. The order information will be retrieved from the mainframe which will result in a \"AOrder\" class, this isn't a problem, I am not sure about how to mold this local object into an EDI string. Should I create EDIOrder/EDIOrderResponse/etc classes with matching decorators (EDIOrderD01BDecorator, EDIOrderD93ADecorator)? Do I need builder objects or can I do:               // $myOrder is instance of AOrder     $myOrder->toEDIOrder();     $decorator = new EDIOrderD01BDecorator($myOrder);     $edi = $decorator->getEDIString();      And it'll have to work the other way around as well. Is the following code a good way of handling this problem or should I go about this differently?               $ediString = $myEDIMessageBroker->fetch();     $ediOrderResponse = EDIOrderResponse::fromString($ediString);      I'm just not so sure about how I should go about designing the classes and interactions between them. Thanks for reading and helping."}
{"_id": "92126", "title": "What did Bjarne Stroustrup mean by his characterization of C and C++?", "text": "There's a quotation by Bjarne Stroustrup that says: > C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when > you do, it blows away your whole leg. I've often come across this quotation when reading library documentation and tutorials; particularly ones that wrap C functions in C++ classes, or are wrappers to C libraries. But what did he mean by this?"}
{"_id": "35038", "title": "What can I do when the interviewer doesn't know the answer to his/her own question?", "text": "Yesterday I had a terrible experience in an interview. Interviewer asked me about pure virtual function. I said, It may or may not have definition in base class, but derived classes should provide definition unless they also want to be abstract class. But interviewer kept on asking that \"Can pure virtual have definition !!! ???\"... I said yes. Again he said \"Pure ?\" I said yes. It is allowed, derived classes can explicitly call that function if they want that particular behavior. He sent me out. I am sure that he doesn't know the fact that pure virtual function can have definition. How to deal with this kind of Interviewers ? After asking 2nd time, should i lie that it can't have definition ? :) Or i should stick to my words and loose the job opportunity ?"}
{"_id": "8968", "title": "At what age could I reasonably teach my children about programming?", "text": "In case my child would be interested in what I am doing... At what age could I reasonably teach my child what programming is? What is your experience with teaching them to program if they want to? Are there great articles about this?"}
{"_id": "50777", "title": "How to bill a client for frequently-interrupted time", "text": "I find that when I'm working on hourly-billable projects (in particular, those that are research/design/architecture-oriented as opposed to straight coding) that I'm easily distracted by any number of things (email, grab a drink (loss of focus, but nature happens), link off the webpage I was reading, wandering mind (easy when the job calls for a lot of thinking), etc.) This results in very fragmented time, far too incremental IMO to accurately track with a timeclock, and some time very gray. I frequently end up billing for only some fraction of the elapsed time I spent in order to feel fair, but sometimes it takes a really long time to put in an 8-hour day. By contrast, when I've worked for salary I've not worried about whether I'm actively working at any given minute, I just get the job done, and I've never had anything but stellar reviews/feedback from past salaried employers, so I think I get the job done well. I personally believe in an 80/20 cycle: I get 80% of my work done during an inspired 20% of my time. But I have to screw around the other 80% of the time in order to get that first 20%. So the question: what billing/time-tracking policy can I adopt in order to be fair to my hourly customers without having to write off my own less-productive 80% that a salaried employer is willing to overlook in light of the complete package? Note: This question is not about how to be more productive or focused. It's about how to work around whatever salient limitations that I have in a way that's both fair to me and to my customers. **Update** : A little clarification (to pre-emptively stop some righteous indignation): I currently have a half dozen different project/client groups. It's not a great situation and I'm working at reducing it down to two, but that's my current reality. It's very easy to get off on a thread related to a different project than the one I'm clocking, and I'm not always conscious of it at the time. [I did not intend the question to mean that I was off playing games or making personal calls, etc., and have adjusted wording above to be clearer. Most of the time. I am only human, and sometimes the mind does force you to take a break! :-)]"}
{"_id": "145517", "title": "Integer sign and compilation via C", "text": "I'm writing a compiler that uses the time-honored strategy of using a C compiler as the back end, and I'm trying to figure out exactly how to handle integer sign. I'm using machine word integers as the default (translating into `intptr_t` and `uintptr_t` in the generated C), and while for myself I would prefer to make the default unsigned, I probably don't have much choice about making it signed just because that expectation is so widely ingrained. I'm defining the result of integer overflow to be wraparound (at least by default, might add an option to throw an exception later), but in C, signed integer overflow is undefined behavior, so I can't just emit code that performs signed integer arithmetic. It seems to me there are two options:   1. Emit signed integers, but convert to unsigned for all arithmetic operations except division and right shift (these are the only ones where the difference matters, and also the only ones that can't overflow - **edit:** except for `INT_MIN` / -1; I had been considering that in the same category as division by zero, but of course it is strictly speaking an overflow).   2. Emit unsigned integers, but convert to signed for division (resisting the temptation to make division of negative numbers undefined behavior), right shift and comparison other than equality.   3. Emit signed integers anyway, use `-fwrapv` when using GCC as the backend, and hope other C compilers either don't take advantage of signed overflow being undefined, or provide a switch to disable such optimizations. Does the third option work (e.g. are there any C compilers where you can't make signed overflow wrap)? If not, which of the first two is likely to involve less code and opportunity for error? Is there anything I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "110860", "title": "Average size of in-house web development team for U.S. companies?", "text": "When I graduated, I thought getting into a web development job meant I get to work in a group of at least a handful of developers, and seniors can teach this young Padawan their tricks of the trade. In my experience, when I get hired as a junior web developer I'm usually have really limited contact and collaboration with one or two other developers (because we seldom work on the same projects), or sometimes I'm the only one that knows how to code. I've grown to hate these \"lone wolf\" positions and would rather work in a highly collaborative environment full of other programming geeks. Most of these places tend to outsource technical work, and I prefer face-to-face communication with peers in my dept. I like the small-company culture but at the same time, there's such a thing as too small, to the point where there's little actual technical work done in- house so I can't get any expert advice. Because my experience is anecdotal, I don't think I am getting the big picture as to the sizes and structures of web dev companies. So my related questions... Is my lack of experience with large in-house teams due to the fact that I mostly get hired by consulting firms that do client work? Do companies that create their own products have a vastly different structure? What should I look for in a company if I want to get into a larger, in-house development team?"}
{"_id": "178791", "title": "Get/Post Controller Logic Best Practice", "text": "In an ASP.NET MVC project (Razor), I have a Get request, which loads two properties on a model, dependent on the property passed into the action method. So if the parameter has a value, the Group property is supplied data. But if not, the Groups collection property is supplied data. In the post action method, when I process the data, to repopulate the view, I have to provide similar logic, and could getaway with returning `Action(param)` (the get response) to the caller. My question is, based on experience, is that a good practice to get into? I see some downsides to doing that, but adds the lack of code redundancy. Or is there a better alternative?"}
{"_id": "253240", "title": "How to generalize a classes that has identical function plus some additional function", "text": "I have some designing problems with my project. To illustrate my problem, I'll use the following two classes from my project.               public class RAM_UserManagement{       private Map<int,User> userList;       public User addUser(User user){//do stuff}       public User deleteUser(User user){//do stuff}       public User updateUser(User user){//do stuff}       public List<User> getAllUser(){//do stuff}       public User getUserById(int userId){//do stuff}     }          public class RAM_ServiceManagment{       private Map<int,Serivce> serviceList;       public Service addService(Service ser){//do stuff}       public Service deleteService(Service ser){//do stuff}       public Service updateService(Service ser){//do stuff}       public List<Service> getAllSerivces(){//do stuff}       public Service getServiceById(int id){//do stuff}       public Service getServiceByStatus(ENUM_STATUS status){//do stuff}       public Service getServiceByUserName(String Name){//do stuff}     }      As you can see, from the nature of these classes they both doing exact same thing with some extra functionality. I am trying to generalize it by creating an interface. This is what I have in mind               public interface IStorage<T>{       public T add(T item);       public T delete(T item);       public T update(T item);       public List<T> getAll();//This is where I am struggling..     }      So CUD operation in both classes are ok to implement but the R(Read) method in both classes varies. In RAM_ServiceManagement I have extra getAll, getById, getStatus, getByName than the other class. How can I generalize this? or generalization cannot be applied here at all? Really appreciate if you can give some suggestion. Thanks"}
{"_id": "55728", "title": "As a programmer, what would you use a personal Wiki for?", "text": "Do any programmers out there keep a personal wiki? Either locally or online. What do you use your wiki for? or what might you use one for? I was thinking of starting a personal wiki as a place to record documentation and and other documents for my personal projects, and various notes etc, but how else is a personal (maybe private) Wiki useful to a programmer/developer? What type of things would you put in a personal Wiki?"}
{"_id": "78944", "title": "Programming toolset for restricted typing ability?", "text": "This is a cousin to the question Programming with Speech Recognition for Typing Instead of the Keyboard: I program in Visual Studio 2010, and I find that programming takes a much greater toll on my hands than typing text does. I attribute this to (1) the extensive use of punctuation and other characters away from the home row, and (2) the extensive use of multi-key command such as Ctrl+Shift+B. So a question in three stages:   1. What programming language is \"easiest\" to type? BASIC? COBOL?   2. What editor/IDE is easiest (from a typing standpoint) for the edit/compile/execute roundtrip (and perhaps debugging)?    3. Is there a combined solution that's powerful enough to create, say, a web application? Ideally I'd like to hear about ideas for completely mouse-free solutions, compatible with (say) a one-handed chording keyboard."}
{"_id": "55722", "title": "I am now ready to publish my commercial Android/IPhone/Anything application - what disclaimers should I use to protect myself?", "text": "I have now written my last line of code and I am ready to publish my application to the Android Market, what disclaimers should I add to protect myself as a developer from customers who purchase my application, to prevent being sued by stupid people? It might be a harsh question, but how does developers protect themselves when publishing their software? Developers or small companies (for example all these iPhone/Android developers) that can't afford hiring a small army of lawyers, what should they do? Any solid text I can use?"}
{"_id": "55723", "title": "OOP for unit testing : The good, the bad and the ugly", "text": "I have recently read Mi\u0161ko Hevery's pdf guide to writing testable code in which its stated that you should limit your classes instanciations in your constructors. I understand that its what you should do because it allow you to easily mock you objects that are send as parameters to your class. But when it comes to writing actual code, i often end up with things like that (exemple is in PHP using Zend Framework but I think it's self explanatory) :               class Some_class     {         private $_data;              private $_options;              private $_locale;              public function __construct($data, $options = null)         {             $this->_data = $data;                  if ($options != null) {                 $this->_options = $options;             }                  $this->_init();         }              private function _init()         {             if(isset($this->_options['locale'])) {                 $locale = $this->_options['locale'];                      if ($locale instanceof Zend_Locale) {                     $this->_locale = $locale;                 } elseif (Zend_Locale::isLocale($locale)) {                     $this->_locale = new Zend_Locale($locale);                 } else {                     $this->_locale = new Zend_Locale();                 }             }         }     }      Acording to my understanding of Mi\u0161ko Hevery's guide, i shouldn't instanciate the Zend_Local in my class but push it through the constructor (Which can be done through the options array in my example). I am wondering what would be the best practice to get the most flexibility for unittesing this code and aswell, if I want to move away from Zend Framework. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "111408", "title": "What are good techniques for keeping your place in code?", "text": "I understand using _bookmarks_ to remember a single point in your code. However, how does one keep track of the _flow_ of the code they are investigating? Eg: multiple bookmarks and the order in which they were made. Example: >   1. Bug report: \"Collisions aren't working on the corners of walls\" > >     1. Reproduction of the bug puts it down to certain polygons not > colliding. >     2. The collision code was written by an unavailable dev. So > investigation goes something like: > > > ![Schema of a flow](http://i.stack.imgur.com/TBzUT.png) During the investigation, especially when reviewing non-code items such as Google, one may reasonably be expected to loose their place in the code ( _Have I already looked at this code path?_ or _Which code path was I investigating? There are multiple that lead to this function_ , etc). The same goes for unavoidable interruptions (Boss: _I need [Lengthy Pointless Report] NOW_ , etc) It would be useful to have a resource of techniques or tools for providing a way to keep track of one's place in the code. * * * _Edit_ : The above example is meant as a potential illustration, not as an actual problem that needs answering. Another way to phrase this question is: When learning a new system, how do you keep track of where you are up to in learning the code? It's not about understanding _why_ the code does what it does (which is what comments should be for), but _how_ it does it (which is only learned through reading the code, not comments)."}
{"_id": "111407", "title": "Methodologies/tools for when developing on your own", "text": "Suppose you have to develop a medium+ sized software, fully on your own. Like if it was a personal project you want to accomplish. What methodologies/tools would you use to define what needs to be developed, learned and have a global idea of what the system is as well in its details? Basically to keep yourself in track and not get lost on the way."}
{"_id": "8352", "title": "What naming conventions do you use for php classes?", "text": "I really like using `ClassNames` and `memberNames` as convention but I am not sure how I would name the file containing a class. I like making my classes defined in a file with the exact same name as the class. But I also like making php files all lowercase. So I am conflicted. If I have a class called `ProductGroup` should that be defined in `ProductGroup.php`, `productgroup.php`, or `product_group.php`? I know there is no right answer, so I am looking for what is most common or your opinion of which to use.. which do you use?"}
{"_id": "189244", "title": "Web Project Class Architecture", "text": "I think this is a good question for here but I'm not 100% sure. Please flag if it's too vague. I've worked on many websites where common framework classes are overridden. Since I work mostly in .net these days examples would include Page, Masterpage, UserControl, DbContext ect. I believe this could apply to any language though. Sometimes I can see why it's done, I overrode entity framework's DbContext to include some logging code. Allot of the time though I don't see why these base classes were created. Because I've inherited most of the sites I can't really ask why. My question: Is it a good idea/practice when creating a new site to Override the common framework classes mentioned above? Would doing so be considered more of an old style?"}
{"_id": "8355", "title": "Any experience with \"beginner's mind\" in pair programming?", "text": "The article \"Promiscuous Pairing and Beginner\u2019s Mind\" (PDF) suggests that you put someone in the pair that knows the least about the particular area of the code base. It also suggests that you swap **out** the senior member of the pair every 90 minutes or so. Not only will the newbies learn about that area of the code but they will also think differently compared to someone who already knows the area. Does anybody have experience with this strategy? Does it have any connection with reality? I found other questions about when to use pair programming and whether to accept a job where pair programming is required, but I didn't find any that are specifically about promiscuous pairing and this \"beginner's mind\" strategy. If you are unfamiliar with pair programming, there are interesting articles on Wikipedia and c2.com."}
{"_id": "189246", "title": "How to properly diagram lambda expressions or traversals through them in Architecture Explorer?", "text": "I'm exploring a piece of code in Architecture Explorer in Visual Studio 2010 to study the relations between methods. I noticed a strange behavior. Take the following source code. It generates a hello message based on a template and a template engine, the template engine being a method (a sort of strategy pattern simplified at a maximum for demo purposes).               public string GenerateHelloMessage(string personName)     {         return this.ApplyTemplate(             this.DefaultTemplateEngine, this.GenerateLocalizedHelloTemplate(), personName);     }          private string GenerateLocalizedHelloTemplate()     {         return \"Hello {0}!\";     }          public string ApplyTemplate(         Func<string, string, string> templateEngine, string template, string personName)     {         return templateEngine(template, personName);     }          public string DefaultTemplateEngine(string template, string personName)     {         return string.Format(template, personName);     }      The graph generated from this code is this one: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/khnYr.png) Change the first method from this:               public string GenerateHelloMessage(string personName)     {         return this.ApplyTemplate(             this.DefaultTemplateEngine, this.GenerateLocalizedHelloTemplate(), personName);     }      to this:               public string GenerateHelloMessage(string personName)     {         return this.ApplyTemplate(             (a, b) => this.DefaultTemplateEngine(a, b),             this.GenerateLocalizedHelloTemplate(), personName);     }      and the graph becomes: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bWuuh.png) While semantically identical, those two versions of code produce different dependency graphs, and Architecture Explorer shows no trace of the lambda expression (while Visual Studio's code coverage, for example, shows them, as well as Code analysis seems to be able to understand that the link exists). How would it be possible, without changing the source code, to:   * Either force Architecture Explorer to display everything, including lambda expressions,   * Or make it traverse lambda expressions while drawing a dependency through them (so in this case, drawing the dependency from `GenerateHelloMessage` to `DefaultTemplateEngine` in the second example)?"}
{"_id": "107976", "title": "What is O in Big O?", "text": "What is Big and O in Big O notation? I've read the definitions and it doesn't tell what is _O_ pronounced as 'oh'. For example - I understand that _O_ (n) is complexity of a linear algorithm where n could be the number of operations. but what is an _O_?"}
{"_id": "104176", "title": "\"Joel test\" for B2B hardware/software developers", "text": "I discovered the Joel test recently and applied it to my team. However, I but found hard to apply some points to my company since we are developing small chips with both \"wired\" and programmable algorithm. > 5: Do you fix bugs before writing new code? Since we cannot patch the hardware/software once delivered, we cannot tolerate any know bug, and a whole team of senior developer are building tools used for tracking them. This point should be for example \"do you have 2 different implementations for each of your products, and are you testing test against each other?\" > 12: Do you do hallway usability testing? We don't develop UI. This point seems irrelevant. How can we adapt this test to the kind of development we do?"}
{"_id": "127056", "title": "How good are (or have to be) programmers after study / education?", "text": "Since I don't have much practical experience and I'm not studiing computer science directly (rather multimedia focused programming) I really would like to know how good (and maybe how old) People are before they are taking their Jobs. Coming from Germany, it is not unusual to know little to nothing really useful (practically) when done with study. You just prove you're generally capable of leaning things and learn the real stuff after University. Or does that differ in Computer Science? Or to put it in another Question: Is the average computer-science first time employee capable to program serious things?"}
{"_id": "214452", "title": "Which is the best style: for loop with unused control variable and expensive termination condition?", "text": "Which style is best when you have a for loop with an unused control variable and a computationally expensive termination condition? The number of iterations is important, but the control variable (n) is not used within the loop.               //1     for(int n=0; n</*termination condition*/; n++) {      //do something     }          //2     int limit = //termination condition     for(int n=0; n<limit; n++) {      //do something     }          //3     for(int n=/*termination condition*/; n>0; n--) {      //do something     }      Option 1 will cause the condition to be evaluated on each iteration of the for loop, which is not performant. I tend to use option 2, since it is performant and explicit. Option 3 is performant and concise."}
{"_id": "142987", "title": "Implementing Command Pattern in Web Application", "text": "I'm looking to implement the command pattern in a web application (asp.net c#)... Since the commands come in text format from the client, what is the best way to translate the string to a command object? Should I use reflection? Currently I just assume the command that comes in matches the file name of a user control. This is a bit of a hack. Rather than have a select case statement that says if string = \"Dashboard\" then call Dashboard.Execute(), is there a pattern for working with commands that originate as strings?"}
{"_id": "127052", "title": "Any good examples of visualizations of performance test data?", "text": "I run some basic performance tests in `C#` on simple methods, but there are also legacy monolithic pieces written in `C#` as well as other languages. So, when testing, I often end up working with a black box that takes a number of parameters. I can write code to get a bunch of sample data out, but making sense of it (e.g. presenting it visually is a challenge). I think that most people will not bother looking at a bunch of data or a bunch of poorly done graphics. It better tell a story at a glance. I can draw pretty 2d graphs, surfaces, heat maps, surface heat maps, what have you. I am hoping to make the graphics so useful, that, when a somewhat trained eye looks at it, they can say \"I think we have a problem there. It should not be that slow when we change from 5 to 10 securities.\" or \"This piece is running 20% longer than last month. What feature is killing the performance now?\" I do not have much experience with presenting complex data in a good way, but I know that clever tricks do exist. Good examples are shown here: http://www.datavis.ca/gallery/timelines.php The Napoleon\u2019s March is a great one, as it packs many-dimensional data onto a 2D piece of paper. Can you suggest any good examples of how to visualize performance test data?"}
{"_id": "223095", "title": "Is it possible to tag only a portion of a git push?", "text": "I'm very new to git, but last week I installed it, set up bitbucket, and pushed my current project to my first bitbucket repo. All went well and I'm pleased with git as a simple, powerful, yet free way to back up my source code offsite, as well as keep track of my changes. My next step is to keep track of actual version numbers. I'm developing in Visual Studio, where the version numbers live in the project's assembly information. I've read that version numbers are usually tracked in git with tags, so I went to tag my commit with the current version number I'm on. At this point I realized that the project that I linked to my bitbucket repo contains two projects, an application and a set of web services. At this moment they share the same version number, but most likely in the future they will have differing version numbers. Right now each of these projects is in their own folder in the repo's root directory. Is there a way for me to mark one of these directories with one tag, and the other directory with another? Or should I step back and create two separate repos, one for the application, and the other for the web services?"}
{"_id": "142989", "title": "Optimal number of years per job", "text": "Some developers keep their job for too little, as if they have commitment issues. Some keep their job for too long, as if they're afraid to leave their safety zone. What is the optimal number of years a developer should keep a job?"}
{"_id": "250467", "title": "Why don't Python and Ruby make a distinction between declaring and assigning a value to variables?", "text": "Two of the most popular dynamically typed scripting languages, Python and Ruby, do not make a distinction in syntax between the declaration of a variable and assignation of a value to it. That is in both languages, declaring a variable `n` and assigning a value to it would look like so:               n = 10      And assigning a new value to the variable later on would look just the same. This creates two major problems:   1. A typo in a variable's name when changing it's value would create a new variable and cause bugs.   2. It makes the intentions of the code less clear. Hard to know where a variable is first declared and used, might make the code more confusing. What I don't understand is why these languages don't have a `var` keyword to use on declaration, to make a distinction between a declaration and an assignment. This doesn't make the language any less dynamically typed, and I see no drawbacks. What is the advantage of not having to explicitly define a variable?"}
{"_id": "227968", "title": "Sorting an array when values are decreased by each swap", "text": "Recently in an interview I come across a question: > We have an unsorted array, we need to sort it with minimum number of swap. > We have in sort a 'tax' of 1 is deducted from the number we are swapping. so suppose initially we have an array as               2 4 1 3 5     ^   ^      on swaping say 2 and 1, the new state of the array is:               0 4 1 3 5  // 'tax' of 1 is deducted from 1 and 2      ^   ^      // so we have 0 and 1 at there place after the swap      So we need to sort the array in min. number of swap. Any suggestions regarding the algorithm design? I thought of doing this with merger sort but still not sure if this is the best approach."}
{"_id": "250462", "title": "PHP: frequent file system write", "text": "I am building a game based on PHP and MySQL. Basically there is a player-vs- player mode but I figured I should add a player-vs-computer mode as well, since players may not be online at all times, especially in the beginning. Basically it is a combat type of game where players have up to 2 characters and can fight each other, taking turns. I decided to save the computer's units on the filesystem instead of in a database. There are different monster camps which players may attack. If multiple players attack the same camp, separate instances are being created. However what I'm having my doubts about is whether I should save the full unit information in the instance or just the properties that can change in the course of battle. Let me give an example. Here's the unit class               class Unit {         // Generic         protected $id = null;         public function getID(){ return $this->id; }              public $owner = null;         public $name;              // Vitality         public $HP          = 100;         public $HPmax       = 100;         public $energy      = 100;         public $NRGmax      = 100;              // Physical         public $strength    = 0;         public $endurance   = 0;              // Psychical         public $knowledge   = 0;         public $wisdom      = 0;             // ...     }      And here's how the file structure looks like               /PvC/prototypes/     /PvC/clones/      in prototypes are saved the preset settings of individual units, while in clones are saved the instances that the players are fighting against currently. How it works at the moment is in clones I save `serialize($computer->units)` which inserts the complete full information of the unit. My concern is that some properties, such as name, owner and others, will never change during the battle, so rewriting those each time is pretty pointless. And the instance file is getting rewritten pretty often I'd say, with almost every single request during battle. In order to avoid that continuous overwriting I could serialize only the properties that can change during battle and then load the unit from the prototype as is, then overwrite that with the properties from the clone. However the problem with that is that I'm loading 2 files instead of one, then loading a bunch of data from the first file that I won't use, and is going to get overwritten. I know this is not really something that would matter, as file size will rarely exceed 10kb, but it is just bugging me so bad. What are your thoughts on this, I'm open for advice. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "227965", "title": "Extending Internet Explorer to use a credit card machine and cash drawer", "text": "I have a software application which is currently a win forms application using an embedded IE web browser control. The win forms application provides access to an attached credit card machine and cash drawer to the web site running in the IE web control. Its does this by creating JavaScript objects in the IE web browser control which the web applications calls to do operations such as perform a credit card swipe or open a cash drawer. Those js objects are mapped to methods in the win forms application which then interacts with the devices. Its a pretty cool solution except that the embedded IE web control lacks all of the great development tools of a standard web browser window. So... I want to move the web application to being used in a normal web browser window (sticking with IE is fine for this client) while still having access to the credit card machine and the cash drawer. So my question is this... What solution is best or even possible?   * Active X Control - I do not really like this option   * Java Applet   * Flash   * Create an IE Extension - with an IE extension is it possible to do something like we are doing with our current solution? - Preferred option if possible Does anyone have any experience with this or any ideas? Thank you very much for your help!"}
{"_id": "181931", "title": "Do we achieve 100% Persistence Ignorance solution if we're not using ORM's POCO objects to model the Domain?", "text": "Persistence ignorance is ability to retrieve/persist standard objects, where standard objects are considered as classes focused on particular business problem and thus don't contain any `infrastructure-related logic`. In DDD a _Repository pattern_ is used to achieve PI. Assuming we don't use ORM's POCO objects to model the _Domain_ , then our _Domain objects_ don't have to adhere to design requirements of a particular O/RM ( such as using _default constructor_ or marking properties as `virtual` ). Such _Domain objects_ would be considered _Persistence Ignorant_. But if we want these _Domain Objects_ to also support features such as _lazy loading_ , then their properties must contain some logic which at some point would need to check whether related data was already loaded and if it wasn't, it would contact the appropriate _Repository_ and request the related data. Now even though these _Domain Object_ are completely unaware of how they are being persisted and as such their _Domain_ is completely decoupled from the underlying _DAL provider_ , couldn't we still argue that such _Domain Objects_ contain `Infrastructure-related logic` and thus still violate _PI_? Thank you"}
{"_id": "250469", "title": "Why do Haskell functors only have derived types in their target category?", "text": "In Haskell, the Functor typeclass functor is defined as follows (see e.g. Haskell wiki):               class Functor (f :: * -> *) where       fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b       As far as I understand (please correct me if I am wrong), such a functor can only have as target category a category constructed using a type constructor, e.g. `[]`, `Maybe`, etc. On the other hand, one may think of functors having any category as target of a functor, e.g. the category of all Haskell types. For example, `Int` could be an object in the target category of a functor, not just `Maybe Int` or `[Int]`. What is the motivation for this restriction on Haskell functors?"}
{"_id": "114584", "title": "Standards in Enterprise Development", "text": "Is it perhaps time for enterprise systems to be developed to strict enforced standards? Many books list optional 'standards' and best practices, but these are purely suggested practices. Still, every time I look at the code for an enterprise system I have not been a part of, I spend a lot of time trying to work out the architecture. Should we not have some form of ISO accreditation for our systems? We could have a selection of standard architectures such as Domain Model, Transaction Script etc, but once we choose one of these, we have to follow a strict architectural template. Systems could be audited to ensure we are working to these standards, and our companies would carry this accreditation. This would be better for developers because when we take on legacy work that was written by another company, we will not have to spend time deciphering the architecture. It would benefit clients because they would know that if they used the services of an accredited development company, they could used another company to maintain/amend it, and not be tied to the original developers."}
{"_id": "17788", "title": "What do you optimize for?", "text": "Generally speaking, what type of optimizations do you typically slant yourself towards when designing software? Are you the type that prefers to optimize your design for   * Development time (i.e., quick to write and/or easier to maintain)?   * Processing time    * Storage (either RAM, DB, Disc, etc) space Of course this is highly subjective to the type of problems being solved, and the deadlines involved, so I'd like to hear about the reasons that would make you choose one form of optimization over another."}
{"_id": "250914", "title": "Why does C# allow properties in interfaces?", "text": "In C#, the following code is valid               interface I{         int property{get;set;}     }      Which doesn't make any sense to me. This seems to break one of the most important principles of interfaces: lack of state (in other words, no fields). Doesn't the property create an implicit private field? Wouldn't that be really bad for interfaces?"}
{"_id": "114588", "title": "Downsides of GNU LGPL v3 vs. GNU LGPL v2.1?", "text": "Firstly, I realize that this is a programming Q&A site, and not a place for legal advice.... Just trying to get a basic idea of what the downsides to using an LGPLv3 library might be. What are the differences between GNU LGPL v2.1 and GNU LGPL v3? In particular, I know that regular GPLv3 has many anti-drm and anti-patent clauses. In principal I don't have anything against these clauses, but I will these suddenly apply to the main application if I choose to use an LGPLv3 library. The rules of LGPL v2.1 seems to only apply to the library that you use or modify. It says nothing about the main application. (Assuming no static linking etc.) Thus, in the niche-market software provider where I work, we regularly use (and contribute to) LGPL licensed libraries, without needing to open-source our main application. Does this change in LGPLv3? The question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1108238/differences-between- gnu-lgpl-v2-1-and-gnu-lgpl-v3 got a couple of answers, but none that address any new obligations that the main application might have. To clarify: I'm asking about the LGPL v3, not plain GPLv3. Do any of the Tivoization / patent grant requirements \"bleed through\" from an LGPLv3 library to the host application?"}
{"_id": "93296", "title": "Relation and differences between SGML, XML, HTML and XHTML", "text": "1. I was wondering what \"profile\" means in Wikipedia: > XML is a profile of an ISO standard SGML, and most of XML comes from SGML > unchanged.   2. According to http://xml-tips.assistprogramming.com/sgml-xml-html-xhtml-all-together.html: > HTML is a subset of SGML. > > XML is a highly functional subset of SGML. > > XHTML extends and subsets HTML. Does \"one being a subset of another\" mean that code in the first is also syntactically correct and semantically the same as in the second? As in the sense of elementary set theory,     * are HTML, XML and XHTML all different subsets of SGML?     * do XML and HTML almost not intersect each other?     * is XHTML a superset of both XML and HTML?   3. Can I expect some more concise and clear summation of the differences in the purposes of the four and/or when to use which, than the link above? I am really confused about the clear line between their intended purposes.   4. According to http://xml-tips.assistprogramming.com/sgml-xml-html-xhtml-all-together.html: > XML is not a single Markup Language. It is a metalanguage to let users > design their own markup language. I was wondering how to understand XML and HTML are both subsets of SGML, but HTML is a markup language while XML is not a markup language but a metalanguage for designing markup languages? Are SGML and XHTML both also metalanguage for designing markup language?   5. As in both links mention that HTML is an applicaiton of SGML as well as a subset of SGML, and XHTML is an application of XML. I wonder what differences are between saying one language is an application of another, and one language is a subset of another? Thanks and regards!"}
{"_id": "165737", "title": "Should I comment Tables or Columns in my database?", "text": "I like to comment my code with various information, and I think most people nowadays do so while writing some code. But when it comes to database tables or columns, I have never seen anyone setting some comments, and, to be honest, I don't even think of looking for comments there. So I am wondering if some people are commenting their DB strcuture here, and if I should bother commenting, for instance when I create a new column to an existing table?"}
{"_id": "194792", "title": "Can a lone programmer become a mid or senior level programmer without a mentor?", "text": "**Question:**   Can a mere entry level programmer become a mid or senior level programmer working in a company as the only programmer without a mentor? **Background:**   I was hired as an entry level programmer for a mid size company that does not do programming except for internally. I am regarded as a genius inside the company with a decent salary but after 2 years I decided I wanted to move to an actual software company. The interview processes have been extremely demoralizing because even though I have wrote intra-company enterprise applications these interviews have made me aware of how little I actually know."}
{"_id": "166286", "title": "Free tool to design Java user interfaces", "text": "While in the process of developing GUIs for my Java project, I am wondering if there is something that lets you visually design your GUI for Java and correspondently generates the needed code, just to speedup the task. I am using Eclipse, and I already tried Window Builder, but I'm not keen on the code it produces. Does anyone know some alternatives (possibly non-commercial)?"}
{"_id": "75348", "title": "When applying for an entry level programming position, how do I include my coding examples?", "text": "I will soon begin the process of applying for entry level programming positions. As of now I have no professional coding experience, so all I have to show is some personal projects and code samples to show what I am capable of. How do I present such things as code samples, my specific work on collaborative projects, personal projects, etc, to a prospective employer? Something like a digital business card? a web link on the resume to a page where it is all laid out? links to individual project pages? Basically, is there a preferred method for listing or displaying what I have done aside from just a few lines on a resume describing it?"}
{"_id": "250793", "title": "What's the Content-Security-Policy-friendly way to hand data from the server to the browser on page load?", "text": "When developing for the web, I often find myself wanting to pass a few variables from the server scripts to my javascript - data pulled from a database, and set differently on different pages running basically the same code. (Typically, this is something along the lines of `example.com/slideshows/1` needing to know that that slideshow 1 has 8 images, and what their urls are, but that's just a random example; I'm looking for a general answer.) My normal approach is to include a short block of inline javascript that sets a few global variables or calls some initializer functions, which is straightforward and effective. It is not, however, Content Security Policy- friendly, since inline javascript is blocked by default, and not without reason. (I know the policy can be set to allow inline javascript if you have access to it, but even if you do that opens potential security issues.) I need a strategy that plays nicely with proper CSPs. I know that it could be done with an ajax call, but that's overkill for something that only needs to be set once, and adds an extra call that slows down the page load. In some cases, like the slideshow I mentioned, this could be handled by having the javascript examine other dynamically-constructed page elements to reconstruct the desired data, which is fine, but not a very general solution. What's the best way to handle this? (I almost posted this question on SO, but it seems kind of subjective; I can think of ways to do this, I just don't _like_ any of them.)"}
{"_id": "250795", "title": "Organizing Business and Presentation entities", "text": "**Background** I am developing a WPF project. This is the basic structure:   * **User Interface** (WPF Project);   * **Interfaces** (class library, contains all the interfaces and the entities used by the application;   * **Modules** (every module contains the logic of a specific argument, e.g. File Management, and can eventually contains Wpf User Controls). In the WPF Controls, to facilitate the binding operations I have created a BaseViewModel class which contains a Raise method that automates the binding mechanism (for further details, I used a technique similar to that one described in this article). * * * **The problem** Understand which is the best way to separate Presentation form from the Business form in the entities classes. * * * **The case** In the **Interfaces** project I have, for instance, the class `User`               public class User     {         public virtual string Name { get; set; }              // Other properties     }      In one of the modules I need to use the `User` class and to bind its properties to the User Interface controls. To do so I have to use a custom implementation of the `get` and `set` keywords. At first point, I thought to create a class in the Module called, for instance, ClientUser and override the properties that I need:               public class ClientUser : User      {         private string name;              public override string Name { get { return name; } set { Raise(out name, value); } }              // Other properties     }      The problem is the Raise method, which is declared in the `BaseViewModel` class, but due to C# single inheritance constraint, I can't inherit from both classes. Which is the right way to implement this architecture?"}
{"_id": "250797", "title": "How do I access a web service from Windows 8.1 mobile app?", "text": "Over the last few months, I've been making a Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime application. I have little experience with this (although a decent amount of other programming experience), but I've managed to make my way through. Now, however, I've hit a wall. What I need to do is, from the mobile app, send a query to some sort of web service, which will do some things with the query based on a database and return a result. The problem is I have zero experience with any sort of web service, and although I am fairly confident in my ability to work out how to do it once I know what I'm doing, the last few days I've been running into the issue of what exactly I should be doing. There's a lot of options that I can hardly distinguish between, and not a lot of introductory explanations to which one should be used where. There's also this issue which keeps coming up: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/windowsapps/en- US/9ab43a4c-499a-4f2e-81e5-c1ab5acbe9bf/wcf-add-service-reference-not- supported-for-windows-phone-81-xaml-applications?forum=wpdevelop So in all, I'm left not really knowing in what direction I should be heading. On the web service-side, should I be making a WCF application? ASP.NET? On the phone-side, should I be accessing the web service using an HttpClient? StreamSocket? Something else? Does it matter? Really, what I'm asking is -- what are the differences between these options, and which ones will work for what I'm trying to do?"}
{"_id": "4319", "title": "Which tips helped you learn touch-typing?", "text": "I've been learning touch-typing for about two weeks now, and I'm really commited to mastering this skill. Eventhough I'm doing ok with prose already, I'm struggling with **programming syntax** and even more with **keybindings**. Those stray you away from the home row more than regular words, and aren't as easy to practice. So I often hunt and peck in order to just get it out, but when reverting to old habits like this, I find it hard to get back into the touch-typing mindframe quickly. One little trick that has helped me so far when getting lost is to reposition every finger on its home row key, and mentally visualize the layout bias of the keyboard, ie the backslash kind of alignment of key columns. It's hard to describe though and probably a bit weird... Hope you guys have better tips !"}
{"_id": "116984", "title": "What is an inconsistent state?", "text": "I've been trying to experiment with coded user interface testing (CUITS) lately and I get the following error whenever I try to create one. > The following package failed to load: C:\\Users[File Path Goes > Here]\\Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITest.Extension.IE.dll. Coded UI > Test is now in an inconsistent state. Remove this package and restart Visual > Studio to work with Coded UI Test. I have a question on Stack Overflow about the error, which seems to have no solution, but that made me wonder, what exactly is an inconsistent state? I have never encountered this error before and I have not seen a good explanation of what it means."}
{"_id": "116982", "title": "Whats the difference between syntax and grammar?", "text": "I understand the difference between syntax and semantics - **syntax** - how the symbols are combined to form a valid expression or statement.   **semantics** - the meaning of those symbols that form an expression or statement. But what is the grammar? for example: Sometimes I hear people say that some construct is \"grammatically incorrect but syntactically it is correct\" what does it mean?"}
{"_id": "57766", "title": "Advantage of Learning Lisp for a Python Programmer", "text": "I am primarily a Python, Java, C++ programmer, and I've gained a recent interest in functional language. I'm thinking of picking up a LISP dialect: Clojure. Now, I've been working through tutorials and whatnot, but I've noticed that beyond syntax differences, I don't feel that I am learning any fundamentally different way of solving problems. So, are there any advantages of learning Clojure after Python in the way I can write programs?"}
{"_id": "183685", "title": "Problem Understanding the IEEE definition of Software Engineering", "text": "**Background** _Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the design, development, operation, and maintenance of software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineering to software._ My instructor, when explaining this definition has told me that the terms \"systematic\", \"disciplined\" and \"quantifiable\" imply \"one after another, structured\", \"repeatable\", and \"measurable\" among various other possible interpretations. However, it's the second part of the definition that confuses me. When talking about what \"operation\" implies, he described it this way: _\"it's the process of maintaining the software, like updating or patching pieces of it. Earlier we used to remove the whole software and change the source, recompile it and install it back. This part of definition is more or less of historical significance - the way engineering was thought of in other disciplines like Mechanical Engineering.\"_ **Question** I am really confused about what the definition implies about SE.   * If \"operation\" was just the process of maintaining the software, why include it in the definition independently?   * If not, What do the terms \"Operation\" and \"Maintenance\" imply in the definition?   * Don't maintenance and Operation and everything come under development? Let's say we are developing an automatic updater component of a software for maintenance, doesn't that mean we are \"developing\" the \"maintenance\" part too? Why include the other two in definition then? Please explain me what SE really means. Thank You!"}
{"_id": "99938", "title": "Legal proof of when a feature been implemented", "text": "For various reasons I need to supply \"proof\" my company's lawyer that I implemented a feature by a certain date. I have used source control since the late 90s and even the oldest databases are still working. I also have the all the old setups. Our release notes are not always as clear as they could be and most of them are not dated but organized by revision number. I figure rather than guessing I as other software developer if they know what is typically provided in this situation given what I have. I am particularly confused when a feature is spread among several source files. One feature we need to document is not just dependent on an algorithm but the UI as well and there a half-dozen files that were modified to this. **Update** By Completed, the feature was tested and released to the customer and it worked. And listed in the release notes. Also I already handed the lawyer the release dates, and the release notes (when they existed). However that was not sufficient. I need to show how I got dates. I got them out of my source control databases (Sourceforge, Subversion, Mercurical) so how to I put data that in my source control in a form that a non-technical layman can understand. Note: If you wondering why we have multiple database it is because the software in question been in continuous development since the late eighties."}
{"_id": "167773", "title": "How does the GPL static vs. dynamic linking rule apply to interpreted languages?", "text": "In my understanding, the GPL prohibits static linking from non-GPL code to GPL code, but permits dynamic linking from non-GPL code to GPL code. So which is it when the code in question is not linked at all because the code is written in an interpreted language (e.g. Perl)? It would seem to be too easy to exploit the rule if it was considered dynamic linking, but on the other hand, it would also seem to be impossible to legally reference GPL code from non-GPL code if it was considered static! Compiled languages at least have a distinction between static and dynamic linking, but when all \"linking\" is just running scripts, it's impossible to tell what the intent is without an explicit license! Or is my understanding of this issue incorrect, rendering the question moot? I've also heard of a \"classpath exception\" which involves dynamic linking; is that not part of the GPL but instead something that can be added on to it, so dynamic linking is only allowed when the license includes this exception?"}
{"_id": "167777", "title": "Why should one use a single-use temporary variable?", "text": "Let's say we have a class called 'Automobile' and we have an instance of that class called 'myCar'. I would like to ask why do we need to put the values that our methods return in a variable? Why don't we just call the method? For example, why should one write:               string message = myCar.SpeedMessage();     Console.WriteLine(message);      instead of:               Console.WriteLine(myCar.SpeedMessage());"}
{"_id": "165889", "title": "Data Flow Diagrams - Difference between Lines and Arrows", "text": "I'm currently working with Visio to create Data Flow Diagrams for a System Analysis and Design class but I'm unsure what the difference between `\\------` and `\\------>` is. I can connect 2 shapes together with a line (process, entity, data store) but does the single line connecting the two mean data flow? Do I need to explicitly use the data flow arrow to show which way data is flowing? (There doesn't seem to be tags for this topic, maybe im in the wrong place?)"}
{"_id": "220616", "title": "A metric to measure the cost of cut and paste programming", "text": "I'm hunting a metric to measure the cost of cut-and-paste programming. We already use tools to detect duplicated code - but if we don't clean up our duplicated code, how much will it cost us? We know that the DRY principle, Don't Repeat Yourself, is a core principle of Extreme Programming. How can we actually measure the impact of non-DRY code on our projects? I'm referring to the simplest duped code problem of the same expressions in two or more places. Other cases of duplication such as the same logic written differently in different places is trickier to detect. I'm hunting a metric, a solid number that I can offer management. I am aware of the \"WTF\" metric of Robert Martin, but that is not precise enough. What is the purpose of insisting on a metric? Management is insisting on this metric and they won't be dissuaded. I'm really afraid that they may mandate that duplicated code be reduced on each sprint. Because we are so pressed to deliver, developers will find the duplicated code and hack it so it does not get detected. This would be a ticking time bomb!"}
{"_id": "104404", "title": "Is it better to have separate Create and Edit actions or combine Create and Edit into one?", "text": "We are using ASP.NET MVC 2 with a Controller/View Presentation Layer and Model consisting of A Business Logic Layer, Data Access Layer [Stored Procedures and classes/methods to talk to the stored procedures]. In the business layer and above for most purposes Edit seems to be capable of representing both the creation of an object and the editing of an object. This coincides well with our Repository Design Pattern that defines a \"Save\" method. We can simply check in the stored procedure if the ID is 0 and then create a new object if it is 0 otherwise we can just update the existing object, since the category id should match one. **The primary point of discussion is if it makes the most sense to split Edit that includes Creation into it's separate parts of Create and Edit beyond the DAL layer.** An obvious example can be shown as routes: _Create_ - http://someurl/somearea/edit/0 _Edit_ - http://someurl/somearea/edit/254 **vs.** _Create_ - http://someurl/somearea/create _Edit_ - http://someurl/somearea/edit/254 **Are there any established standards or best practices in regard to this?** I know this is a small detail, but I think it's logistically an important one."}
{"_id": "104407", "title": "How to commit in-progress refactoring?", "text": "So, I have this big project, which is in the process of being refactored by me. I am changing a lot of stuff, so there is no chance to get it to compile some time soon. I am living in a special git branch which I named `cleanup` (which is going to get merged into `master` eventually, of course). The problem is, that I/we have the policy to never commit non-compiling code (ideally it should also work, but it must compile and link, at the very least). So, until I am finished with this huge task, I am unable to commit anything (for review or for bookkeeping).   This is not the way I like to work (I believe most people commit at least once a day or so). What do you think? Is there a solution I am overlooking?   Can I later tell git to aggregate commits or something? I could live with non- compiling commit as long as they _stay_ in the `cleanup` branch. ## Edit To the subject of pushing/committing: I am aware that it is a huge difference, but later, there will be broken revisions, when I merge my stuff into `master`. So if you browse through the history (or `git bisect` ...) then the \"local\" revisions will be world accessible. So only committing locally and not pushing is not the best solution, because it will cause you trouble later on (when the subject is closed and forgotten for some time). In short: Local commits will be pushed eventually. The global history should not show non-compiling commits."}
{"_id": "104406", "title": "What is the limit to the number of a class methods?", "text": "In different design books that I read, sometimes big emphasis is put on the number of methods that a class must have (considering an OO language, as java or C# for instance). Often the examples reported in those books are very neat and simple, but rarely they cover a \"serious\" or complex case.   **However the range seems to be between 5 and 8.** In a project I developed a class \"Note\", with its attribuse as properties: Title, Desctiption, CreateDate, etc.   Then some basic methods like: getRelations (if the note is assigned to different documents), getExpiryDate, ect. However proceeding in the development of the application, more functionalities were required, and, therefore, more methods. I know that the less methods a class has, the more loosly coupled it is. That is indeed a good advantage in terms of modularity and reusability, plus easier to edit.   By the way if in our context there is no need (or even sense) to create sub- classes and all the needed functions are related to that class, how many methods can we further attach? I agree that having more than 15 methods, then maybe a little re-design might be required.   But even in that case, if deleting some of the methods or inheritance is not an option, which would be the proper way?"}
{"_id": "96112", "title": "How to Identify the Programmers with the Appropriate Skill Sets?", "text": "I'd appreciate help in fleshing out a set of criteria or \"outline\" for determining the most appropriate programmers for my situation as well as avenues to find these programmers. I've put together a fully functional web application, which is build using jvm based languages, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. My background is in Finance and CS, and as a result I'm very comfortable with development/IT. In the initial stage, I need to: sure up security, refactor the current code base, and implement two relatively simple features. As I'm finishing my project/business plan I'm struggling with what criteria to use in order to identify the programmers I need. At a high level, I know I need 2-3 (backend) programmers:   * 1 \"Senior\" or \"Expert\" programmer   * 1 to 2 \"Mid-level\" or \"Competent/Proficient\" programmer(s) I know I should (and I will) find programmers that have worked on similar-type projects, but beyond that I'm unsure what criteria to look at. For example, should the senior/expert programmer have 10 years, 15 years or more of experience?"}
{"_id": "252628", "title": "Extending a struct. Using helper classes rather than composition", "text": "I have a struct which I want to add static methods to. Yes, you guessed right I'm talking about `Datetime`. It's a pretty typical requirement to add MyCustomParse. It happens to return `Datetime?`, so it's not a constructor, but it's in that area, a static method that returns an instance. The content of this method has already been written and currently happy lives as a instance method of a class that uses it. I want to bring it out of that class so I can use it elsewhere. Traditionally I would put it in a **helper class** (which is what I've done here), but apparently they're evil. What I really want to do is tie `Datetime.MyCustomParse(mystring)`. But the only way I can see is **to make a new struct that composes`Datetime`**. I then add in my method, write the implicit conversions and then put in all the other `Datetime` methods etc. **This would be a pain to code** (Being verbose also causes problems wrt xml docs and naive code coverage metrics, if that counts for anything). I have considered **extension methods** , but I don't think the methods make sense on instances. **What is the strict OO position? Do I get a pass on writing methods that should belong to classes in separate helper classes** when I want to extend structs in this fashion? **What is the pragmatic position** (I'm not saying OO isn't pragmatic), is this code you would write, or have I missed a trick?               internal static class DateTimeHelper     {              public static DateTime? MyCustomParse(string utcDateTimeText, string[] formats)         {             DateTime utcDateTime;             if (DateTime.TryParseExact(utcDateTimeText, formats, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.RoundtripKind, out utcDateTime))             {                 return utcDateTime;             }                  return null;         }     }      PS I know there are more nuanced views on helper classes, but I still feel I need to justify my use here."}
{"_id": "106313", "title": "\"positively formulated\" vs. \"reads as english sentence\" style logic", "text": "Sorry, I'd be happy to have someone improve the title of this question. What are the benefits and downsides of \"positively formulated\" logic vs. having it \"english readable\". I'm looking for a generic position that can be placed into code guidelines. Examples of what I see as \"positively formulated\" logic               if ($obj->isValid()){               if ($found){                    if ($first){         //do nothing     }else{         doX();     }          $this->useFields(array('a','b'));      Examples of what I see as \"negatively formulated\" logic               if (!$first)         doX();     }          $this->unset(array('d','e','f','g'));      Whereas if focusing on \"English readable\" I would see this as good:               if (isValid()){                         if ($found){      and this is not \"English readable\"               if ($l){                    if (isValid() || !isActive()){         doX();     }"}
{"_id": "141988", "title": "Practical considerations for HTML / CSS naming conventions (syntax)", "text": "**Question:** _what are the practical considerations for the syntax in`class` and `id` values?_ Note that I'm not asking about the _semantics_ , i.e. the actual words that are being used, as for example described in this blogpost. There are a lot of resources on that side of naming conventions already, in fact obscuring my search for practical information on the various _syntactical_ bits: casing, use of interpunction (specifically the `-` dash), specific characters to use or avoid, etc. To sum up the reasons I'm asking this question:   * The naming _restrictions_ on id and class don't naturally lead to any conventions   * The abundance of resources on the semantic side of naming conventions obscure searches on the syntactic considerations   * I couldn't find any authorative source on this   * There wasn't any question on SE Programmers yet on this topic :) * * * Some of the conventions I've considered using:   1. `UpperCamelCase`, mainly as a cross-over habit from server side coding   2. `lowerCamelCase`, for consistency with JavaScript naming conventions   3. `css-style-classes`, which is consistent with naming of css properties (but can be annoying when Ctrl+Shift+ArrowKey selection of text)   4. `with_under_scores`, which I personally haven't seen used much   5. `alllowercase`, simple to remember but can be hard to read for longer names   6. `UPPERCASEFTW`, as a great way to annoy your fellow programmers (perhaps combined with option 4 for readability) And probably I've left out some important options or combinations as well. So: what considerations are there for naming conventions, and to which convention do they lead?"}
{"_id": "167482", "title": "What is the Best Practice for creating a secure login in a client - server appllication?", "text": "It's been a while I have been thinking on what could be the best scenario for creating a secure login in a client-server application running on internet or any other networks ! So I became with the idea to ask this question on programmers and I hope that this question will make awareness of new aspects of threads and security here by some kind of brain storming , I am really interested in good and new anseawres . Thanks in advance for your participation ."}
{"_id": "186220", "title": "What do I need to know re. Javascript frameworks?", "text": "I recently asked this question on SO, which quickly became downvoted and closed. Clearly I lack a deeper understanding of JS, which I'm hoping you'll help me fill here. I'm a perfectly capable web developer and have built plenty of visually and functionally pleasing websites but am struggling to get to grips with how I should be handling JS. Up until now, I've only really used jQuery for form validation or providing AJAX functionality to forms/other page elements. There seems to be a lot of hype around JS frameworks - backbonejs, emberjs, etc, but when I look into them, it looks like they're just good for if you intend to build full applications in them. I'm happy using PHP/Symfony and just want to use JS to give my web applications a nice interactive/responsive 'feel'. Are the aforementioned frameworks any use to me, or am I right in just sticking with jQuery?"}
{"_id": "60174", "title": "Experience w/ eLance (and similar sites)", "text": "I'm considering freelancing via eLance.com (or another similar site) to help pay the bills while developing games (that will eventually pay the bills). **What's working through elance like?** Any recommendations or strategies? Any feedback is appreciated."}
{"_id": "116672", "title": "How can I best study a problem to determine whether recursion can/should be used?", "text": "In some cases, I fail to see that a problem could be solved by the divide and conquer method. To give a specific example, when studying the find max sub- array problem, my first approach is to brute force it by using a double loop to find the max subarray. When I saw the solution using the divide and conquer approach which is recursion-based, I understood it but ok. From my side, though, when I first read the problem statement, I did not think that recursion is applicable. When studying a problem, is there any technique or trick to see that a recursion based (i.e. divide and conquer) approach can be used or not?"}
{"_id": "99370", "title": "how much time do you spend on Unit testing?", "text": "In a company I used to work for, executives insisted that the code coverage with unit tests must be 99% or more. This resulted in writing more tests than code. It took us literally 3 days to write tests for a single class that took a day to implement. As a result, however, I learnt a lot about TDD, testing tools, practices etc. In the company I worked for afterwards, unit testing was an unknown thing. It was something someone maybe heard before. I struggled to introduce them to concept of unit testing, but without effect. Now, as a self-employed, I wonder - how much time is **really** necessary to spend on unit testing? Being mostly iPhone/Android developer, which parts of the code should be covered in tests?"}
{"_id": "253844", "title": "Is NAN suitable for communicating that an invalid parameter was involved in a calculation?", "text": "I am currently working on a numerical processing system that will be deployed in a performance-critical environment. It takes inputs in the form of numerical arrays (these use the `eigen` library, but for the purpose of this question that's perhaps immaterial), and performs some range of numerical computations (matrix products, concatenations, etc.) to produce outputs. All arrays are allocated statically and their sizes are known at compile time. However, some of the inputs _may_ be invalid. In these _exceptional_ cases, we still want the code to be computed and we still want outputs not \"polluted\" by invalid values to be used. To give an example, let's take the following trivial example (this is pseudo- code):               Matrix a = {1, 2, NAN, 4}; // this is the \"input\" matrix     Scalar b = 2;     Matrix output = b * a; // this results in {2, 4, NAN, 8}      The idea here is that 2, 4 and 8 are usable values, but the NAN should signal to the recipient of the data that that entry was involved in an operation that involved an invalid value, and should be discarded (this will be detected via a `std::isfinite(value)` check before the value is used). Is this a sound way of communicating and propagating unusable values, given that performance is critical and heap allocation is not an option (and neither are other resource-consuming constructs such as `boost::optional` or pointers)? Are there better ways of doing this? At this point I'm quite happy with the current setup but I was hoping to get some fresh ideas or productive criticism of the current implementation."}
{"_id": "253842", "title": "Models, collections...and then what? Processes?", "text": "I'm a LAMP-stack dev who's been more on the JavaScript side the last few years and really enjoying the Model + Collection approach to data entities that BackboneJS, etc. uses. It's helped me organize my code in such a way that it is extremely portable, keeping all my properties and methods in the scope (model, collection, etc.) in which they apply. One thing that keeps bugging me though is how to organize the next level up, the 'process layer' as you might call it, that can potentially operate on instances of either models or collections or whatever else. Where should methods like find() (which returns a collection) and create() (which returns a model) reside? I know some people would put a create() in the Collection prototype, but while a collection operates on models I don't think it's exactly right to create them. And while a find() would return a collection I don't think it correct to have that action within the collection prototype itself (it should be a layer up). Can anyone offer some examples of any patterns that employ some kind of OOP- friendly 'process' layer? I'm sorry if this is a fairly well-known discussion but I'm afraid I can't seem to find the terminology to search for."}
{"_id": "99372", "title": "Why is Big O taught instead of Big Theta?", "text": "Big O notation provides an **upper bound** to a function whereas Big Theta provides a tight bound. However I find that Big O notation is typically (and informally) taught and used when they really mean Big Theta. e.g. \"Quicksort is O(N^2)\" can turned into the much stronger statement \"Quicksort is \u0398(N^2)\" While usage of Big O is technically correct, wouldn't a more prevalent use of Big Theta be more expressive and lead to less confusion? Is there some historical reason why this Big O is more commonly used? Wikipedia notes: > Informally, especially in computer science, the Big O notation often is > permitted to be somewhat abused to describe an asymptotic tight bound where > using Big Theta \u0398 notation might be more factually appropriate in a given > context."}
{"_id": "240662", "title": "Message Passing: How to detect and/or handle \"dead ends\"", "text": "I'm playing with a mental model for distributed actor system that communicates using messages. In this, it is possible for an actor to create another actor. I've encountered one specific situation where I'm not really sure how to resolve. Consider this sequence of events:   1. Actor 1 requests creation Actor 2. As part of the \"construction\", it passes its own ID.   2. Actor 1 requests its own deletion.   3. System sends KILL message to all Actors who subscribed to {Actor1|KILL}   4. Actor 2 is created, saves ID of \"1\" sent to it as construction parameter.   5. Actor 2 attempts to send a message to Actor 1.   6. ???   7. Actor 2 detects that Actor 1 is gone, and reacts. Since Actor 1 and 2 can be on physically different machines, querying \"Does Actor X exist?\" every time (or before every time) you attempt to send a message will introduce latency that shouldn't be there in the typical case. Similarly, blocking until you know \"Send Success\" or \"Send Fail\" seems like a bad idea. It also seems that litering code with `if(send() == fail) { ... }` is ugly and error-prone. Are there known solutions for robustly and cleanly handling these sorts of situations?"}
{"_id": "210606", "title": "Is there an advantage for a C programmer to have read K&R?", "text": "This question has been haunting me because I'm now reading Kernighan & Ritchie's: The C Programming Language (K&R) but I meet a lot, and I mean A LOT, of C programmers that have never read it. So, my question is: Is there an advantage to reading K&R? Should be a necessity?"}
{"_id": "240665", "title": "Online error reporting without network access", "text": "I have developed an application for android requiring no permissions, but the biggest downside of this is that I don't have error reporting. So, I was playing around for the past week with any alternative options which would allow error reporting without network permissions and without privacy risks. So I came up with the following: Errors could be reported through a custom Google Play API, but would only be displayed once more than n users would have triggered the same error and displayed only in the aggregate sense. This (I believe) would prevent exploitation where an app could use this as a method to communicate private data. N would be defined by something along the lines of `max(10,number_of_users * 0.001)` or something along those lines. So my question is, would such an architecture be safe or am I overlooking possible exploits? If not it seems a huge waste android lacks such an API as right now virtually every app requires network access for exactly this reason. A similar API could then also be used for rudimentary statistics, once again without the up and downsites of user identifiable analytics like with Google Analytics for android."}
{"_id": "210603", "title": "Liskov substitution principle when implementing two unrelated interfaces", "text": "Suppose I have two unrelated interfaces with the same method:               interface Table {         /**          * @param width (0 < width <= 100)          */         void setWidth(int width);     }          interface Square {         /**          * @param width (50 <= width <= 10000)          */         void setWidth(int width);     }      Then I create a class which implements both of these interfaces:               class SquareTable implements Square, Table {         void setWidth(int width) {             precondition = ...             if (!precondition)                 throw new PreconditionFailedException(\"Precondition failed: ...\");         }     }      How precondition expressions should be combined to satisfy Liskov substitution principle? Should they **and** 'ed or **or** 'ed? I.e. what should be written instead of `...`:               width > 0 && width <= 10000 // using OR     width >= 50 && width <= 100 // using AND      And which rule should be used for postconditions?               interface Table {         /**          * @return width (0 < width <= 100)          */         int getWidth();     }          interface Square {         /**          * @return width (50 <= width <= 10000)          */         int getWidth();     }          class SquareTable implements Square, Table {         int getWidth() {             postcondition = ...             if (!postcondition)                 throw new PostconditionFailedException(\"Postcondition failed: ...\");         }     }          width > 0 && width <= 10000 // using OR     width >= 50 && width <= 100 // using AND"}
{"_id": "198740", "title": "What are the prerequisites for learning Go", "text": "I am considering learning Go. As far as I know about it, it's a systems language geared toward parallel programming. (correct me if I'm wrong)   * Should I have a very good understanding of C in order to be good Go programmer?   * How much systems concepts (*nix OS concepts) I need to master before delving into Go   * What other things I should know/learn before starting Go"}
{"_id": "210229", "title": "Acceptable dependencies in a service-oriented architecture, internal to a team", "text": "In a service-oriented architecture, subsystems can depend on each other in different levels:   1. Database level => Foreign keys to enforce data integrity across services on deletions and updates (cascade), and views which use tables from other services to increase performance   2. Code reuse => like DLL references in .NET platform, to reduce the amount of code, and to follow DRY   3. Service usage => To enforce business centralization; Each service can use any other service in a mesh-like scheme   4. UI reuse => To facilitate consistency in UI and take UX higher Which of these dependencies are encouraged and which are not?"}
{"_id": "210221", "title": "Coding style for chained function calls", "text": "A common thing you need to do is to take a value, do something with it by passing it to a function, and then do some more with the return value, in a chain. Whenever I run into this type of scenario, I get unsure about how best to write the code. As an example, let's say I have a number, `num`, and need to take the floored square root of it and turn it into a string. Here are a few possibilities (in JavaScript). I might simply pass `num` to one function at a time, and replace `num` with the return value:               function floorSqrt(num) {         num = Math.sqrt(num);         num = Math.floor(num);         num = String(num);         return num;     }      This is nice since I don't need the original `num` any more, but in practice it might be confusing to start with one thing (a number) and end up with something completely different (a string). I can save each step in a new variable:               function floorSqrt(num) {         var sqrtNum = Math.sqrt(num);         var floorSqrt = Math.floor(sqrtNum);         var stringNum = String(floorSqrt);         return stringNum;     }      Although it seems wasteful to declare all those variables and come up with good names for them. Or I can just do it all as a one-liner:               function floorSqrt(num) {         return String(Math.floor(Math.sqrt(num)));     }      But for more than two functions that approach gets incredibly unreadable, almost like code golf. It seems to me like the most beautiful way to do this would be with some stack-based language, which might look something like this (pseudo code):               [sqrt floor toString]      Is there a way to do something similar with JavaScript? List some functions, run one at a time, and use the return value of each one as the argument for the next? The closest is how some libraries like jQuery or Underscore.js allow you to chain methods, something like this:               function floorSqrt(num) {         return _.chain(num).sqrt().floor().toString().value();     }      I'm sure many wise people have thought wise things about this. What are some thoughts on pros and cons of the different styles?"}
{"_id": "210225", "title": "Should a persisted and 'finished' by state transaction be editable to any user", "text": "This question has been bugging me for a while. I came from a background where I taught that when a transaction reached some state (FINISHED, PRINTED, etc) it should no longer be opened for modification even to admin users. But here I am, fixing their human-input error barbarically by deleting a row in database and/or changing the current item's state to it's previous one. At some point they even make a mistake in inputting a transaction date, and just realized it somewhere later. And it's really annoying. Should a software, especially an enterprise one, gives a user all the freedom they requested? If so, what good does a transaction state for? Update : Here, by transaction I mean a Transaction object which usually consisted a reference to Master object and it's own attributes, not database transaction."}
{"_id": "139995", "title": "Do you have regularly schedule app updates? And if so how do you handle bugs that make it out?", "text": "We are trying to make our releases more frequent. As part of that we have blocked out a day of the week where we told users that we'll be doing updates. Similar how Microsoft has Patch Tuesday. This is for a web app running completely server side, by the way. So updates are not a huge problem to deploy. Though they can get time consuming. Occasionally an update has a bug that needs to be fixed before the next update window rolls around. I see two real options: either undo the update and restore a backup of the previous version, or make a fix and deploy it outside the scheduled time. Making a fix sounds easy, but often times there are other changes that have been made to the code base. And the fix needs testing before it can realistically go out. Rolling back isn't a bad option, but sometimes that will remove recent features or at least delay them until the next week."}
{"_id": "139994", "title": "Software markets for solo developer", "text": "I want to create something useful of my own which others can use it. This can be free or it can make a little money for sustaining its development and increase income little. However, when think about the market, I don't know what market is lacking applications, what types of domain can be possible for a solo developer or small development? For example, I can develop small game for the smartphone market, with me as the programmer, another person is graphic designer and another person is music composer, to create a functional and playable game. Or what types of domain/market in web development are possible for a single developer to produce a web application? Or should I include the forth person, business man to identify this for me? If you have experience on this, I would love and highly appreciate if you share for me and everyone. _EDIT:_ I want to do this as my part time job, not the main job until it's possible."}
{"_id": "199501", "title": "Change of the complexity class through compiler optimization?", "text": "I am looking for an example where an algorithm is apparently changing its complexity class due to compiler and/or processor optimization strategies."}
{"_id": "27886", "title": "What default features is Windows missing that are required for programmers?", "text": "What features is Windows missing that can improve the productivity of a programmer. I know a lot of people would want some features from Linux and OSX ported or being created for Windows as well. What is missing for you ? An example would be the option to have multiple workspaces. When not having the possibility to use dual monitors that can come in handy."}
{"_id": "9675", "title": "One language to rule them all? (Them being platforms.)", "text": "I have been discussing a project with a client and they want to use a single language to deploy to as many platforms as possible. (I am not sure that it's such a good idea, because each platform offers a different user experience and UI metaphor. In some cases, screen sizes vary as well. Also, iPhone is out of the running no matter what language we use. But, I digress...) The project is going to display an arbitrary block of text each day and will track if the user has \"read\" it. Some other features on the table are \"nags\" and the ability to go to another days' text. I know Flash from the CS3 days, and I think that translates into AIR, but I dont know if AIR can do what we want. On the other hand, I have (a) little experience with Java or Python, but those seem like good contenders also. Which language should I use here? Why? **Edit:** This is going to run on desktop platforms too."}
{"_id": "194560", "title": "A design decision in composition or aggregation", "text": "I've recently had doubts about some design decisions that I frequently make, so this time I decided to take some time and try to analyze it to find the best solution. I will describe a simple scenario where the design decision can be easily understood. :) Suppose we are developing a game in Java where players can have any number of many different types of items.               /** Class that represent an item type existing in the game */     // you may prefer to call this ItemType,     // but for me appending the word \"Type\" is not necessary     class Item {         private String descrip;         private Image icon;     }      In this situation I need to keep track of how many of each item the player has in his bag, so I keep a collection of them, in each element of which I have item type and quantity. Additionally one can think of other attributes that belong to that relation (perhaps a max capacity), but the question is: how do I model this scenario in general but with a practical implementation in Java? Here are two approaches I've come up with: ### Using a List               class Slot {         private Item item;         private int quantity;              /** Auto generated */         public int hashCode()         {             int hash = 7;             hash = 13 * hash + (this.item != null ? this.item.hashCode() : 0);             return hash;         }              /** This method is also auto generated and just compares the Item,              independent of quantity */         public boolean equals(Object object)          {             if (!(object instanceof Slot))             {                 return false;             }             Slot other = (Slot) object;             if ((this.item == null && other.item != null)                   || (this.item != null && !this.item.equals(other.item)))             {                 return false;             }                  return true;         }     }      The above class relates one item with a quantity, and a collection of `Slot`s is the primary attribute of the `Inventory` class. The disadvantages of this appear as soon I design the `Inventory` interface to not expose `Slot` to the client (making `Slot` private or hiding it in some other way): in creating a simple interface but providing access to all the standard collection methods. In my humble opinion there is nothing wrong with this:               /** Class that represent the bag that holds the player's items */     class Inventory {        // this collection holds only one element for each type of item        private ArrayList<Slot> slots;               public Inventory()         {             slots = new ArrayList<Slot>(10);         }              public void add(Item item, int quantity)         {             Slot slot = new Slot(item, quantity);             // if we don't already have a Slot for the added Item, add it             if (!slots.contains(slot))             {                 slots.addElement(slot);             }             // if we already have a Slot for the added Item, increase the quantity             else             {                 Slot _slot = slots.elementAt(slots.indexOf(slot));                 _slot.addQuantity(quantity);             }         }              public void subtract(Item item, int quantity)         {             Slot slot = new Slot(item, 0);              int index = slots.indexOf(slot);                  // only if we actually have this item             if (index != -1)              {                 Slot _slot = (Slot) slots.elementAt(index);                 _slot.quantity -= quantity;                      // if we have fewer of the Item than the number to remove,                  // remove the slot from the collection                 if (_slot.quantity <= 0)                 {                     slots.removeElementAt(index);                 }             }         }              public void remove(Item item)         {             Slot slot = new Slot(item,0);             slots.removeElement(slot);         }              public boolean hasItem(Item item)         {             Slot slot = new Slot(item,0);             return slots.contains(slot);         }     }      As you see, we have to jump through some hoops to implement certain collection methods: in `hasItem` we have to create a `Slot` element just for that operation. In the add and subtract methods, we have to create the `Slot` object just to check if it's there. I wonder if this really necessary. I suppose that it is if we desire to provide an interface to the standard collection methods. Perhaps we can move all this logic to another class (for example: `Slots`), exposing a cleaner interface that lets us search by item without the need of creating a Slot, but we are just moving the same problem to another class. We will face the same problem there, besides the fact that `Inventory` is basically a set of `Slot`s, we're really just creating another class to be exactly the same thing, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Would it be more correct to change the interface of this class to work directly with `Slot` class instead? This implies moving from composition (having `Slot`s created within Inventory) to an aggregation (having `Slot` creation outside of Inventory). The result might look like:               /** Class that represent the bag that holds the player's items */     class Inventory {        private ArrayList<Slot> slots;              public Inventory()         {             slots = new ArrayList<Slot>(10);         }              public void add(Slot slot)         {             if (!slots.contains(slot))             {                 slots.addElement(slot);             }             else             {                 Slot _slot = slots.elementAt(slots.indexOf(slot));                 _slot.addQuantity(slot.getQuantity());             }         }              public void subtract(Slot slot, int quantity) // how would the client get the Slot?         {             int index = slots.indexOf(slot);                  // only if we actually have this item             if (index != -1)              {                 Slot _slot = (Slot) slots.elementAt(index);                 _slot.quantity -= quantity;                      // if we have fewer of the Item than the number to remove,                  // remove the slot from the collection                 if (_slot.quantity <= 0)                 {                     slots.removeElementAt(index);                 }             }         }              public void remove(Slot slot) // again, how would the client get the Slot?         {             slots.removeElement(slot);         }              // Hard to change a parameter type here. This strongly suggest there is         // a flaw in the design. I only keep this here to communicate the observation         public boolean hasItem(Item item)          {             Slot slot = new Slot(item, 0); // here we have no choice but to create it             return slots.contains(slot);         }     }      But again, is this convenient? I don't often put this approach into practice, so I'm not sure. ### Using a lookup Another approach is to use something like a Hashtable with `Item` objects as keys quantities as values, so only quantity is associated with Items, without the need for a `Slot` class. An `Inventory` implementation using Hashtable might look like:               public class Inventory     {         private Hashtable items;              public Inventory()         {             items = new Hashtable(10);         }              public void add(Item item, int amount)         {             int stock = amount;             if (items.containsKey(item))             {                 stock += ((Integer) items.get(item)).intValue();             }             items.put(item, new Integer(stock));         }              public void subtract(Item item, int amount)         {             if (items.containsKey(item))             {                 int stock = ((Integer) items.get(item)).intValue();                 stock -= amount;                 if (stock > 0)                 {                     items.put(item, new Integer(stock));                 }                 else                 {                     items.remove(item);                 }             }         }              public void remove(Item item)         {             this.items.remove(item);         }              public boolean hasItem(Item item)         {             return this.items.containsKey(item);         }     }      To me this seems much better than using a List because there is no need of the `Slot` class, and all interactions with the `Item` collection are much simpler, but I'm not sure if I'm right. The same type of problem is also evident in this scenario: Suppose that we are implementing an order application for a pizza shop; every order consists of types of pizzas and quantities.               /** Type of pizza */     class Pizza {         private String descrip;         private Image icon;     }          /** Customer request for pizza */     class Request {         // for each type of pizza we have to keep a count of how many the customer ordered     }          /** A pizza order */     class Order {         private Pizza pizza;         private int   amount;         privete BigDecimal price;     }      Knowing how to solve the first problem, I have a pattern to use for this similar situation; so the question is, what solution is best? I try to convince myself that I'm not the only person with this concern, that ordinary people like me face this problem on a regular basis, so I hope to find how other people solve this problem. On the other hand, I know that this question is quite big and maybe a little elaborate, so maybe I need to split it into several more specific questions. Maybe the answer to this problem is simple I'm over-complicating things, or even worse, my doubts about how to handle this situation arise because I really don't understand some basic design principle, like a captain on a ship using a spyglass in order to sight land but doesn't realize that his ship has been beached on solid ground that was close at the moment he draw his spyglass to look. Okay, enough cheap poetry (but it was hard to describe my feelings without it hehehe). I apologize for the length of the question, and would very much appreciate anyone's help with this problem."}
{"_id": "99067", "title": "Want to know performance issues of Class types & access modifiers", "text": "Someone suggested me to mark classes as SEALED that are not being inherited anywhere. I was using default style and was not concerned with the type of class. At present I don't have a benchmark tool to study the performance gains but read somewhere that Sealed Classes give performance benefits. Is this performance issue applicable to other class types like: Abstract, Static, New etc. and also with access modifiers like public, protected, internal, protected-internal and virtual? If it does make difference in performance, what type of optimization is done internally?"}
{"_id": "198453", "title": "Is there a point to unit tests that stub and mock everything public?", "text": "When doing unit tests the \"proper\" way, i.e. stubbing every public call and return preset values or mocks, I feel like I'm not actually testing anything. I'm literally looking at my code and creating examples based on the flow of logic through my public methods. And every time the implementation changes, I have to go and change those tests, again, not really feeling that I'm accomplishing anything useful (be it mid- or long-term). I also do integration tests (including non-happy-paths) and I don't really mind the increased testing times. With those, I feel like I'm actually testing for regressions, because they have caught multiple, while all that unit tests do is show me that the implementation of my public method changed, which I already know. Unit testing is a vast topic, and I feel like I'm the one not understanding something here. What's the decisive advantage of unit testing vs integration testing (excluding the time overhead)?"}
{"_id": "198452", "title": "Designing an scalable message queue architecture", "text": "I have recently started learning the nuances of scalable and enterprise computer architecture, and one of the central components is a messaging queue. In order to learn the most I can from any programming paradigm, I am trying to implement my own version of a messaging queue service. So far, my initial design runs on a threaded socket listener, but in order to prevent the same message being downloaded twice by two separate processing nodes, the message queue index register is locked when a read is initiated, and unlocked after the register has been updated. As such, this negates the need for it to be threaded, and means that there is a ceiling for the size of a scalable system based on the processing speed of the server the messaging queue service is running on. The way to get around this would be run the message queue service on multiple servers, but this will increase the likelihood of the same message being downloaded twice. The only way to prevent such issues occurring would be to include a revocation callback that (after the servers, or even the threads on a single server, have synchronized their information and detected such a re- issuance) would command the processing node to stop its current job, and re- query the message queue for the next message, but again, there would be a ceiling where most of the traffic being sent would be synchronizations, and revocation callbacks, causing a bottleneck and slowing the processing of information so that a lot of the processing nodes would be performing null operations and wasting time. The last way I can think of to get around this problem is to have each message queue server (and each thread on each server) would have a specific offset as to where in the queue it is looking, but that might have issues based upon the type of application, especially if the processing is required to be done in a specific order. So, all that being said, are there any designs of message queue architecture's that could show me how existing enterprise grade message queue services avoid these problems?"}
{"_id": "187575", "title": "Is there a cleaner way of caching data", "text": "We've started implementing some caching code in our MVC project. We've derived from .Net's ObjectCache to store it in a SQL database. What we do right now is in each method we want to cache we have code like this:               public StatusCounts GetCounts()     {        var cache = new SqlCache<StatusCounts>(\"mykey\");        if(cache.HasCachedData())           return cache.GetCachedData();             var data = StatusRepository.GetCounts();             cache.SetData(data, DateTime.Now.AddHours(2));     }      As far as caching goes, it works. But my concern is it seems like now GetCounts has multiple responsibilities. It's no longer just calculating counts, it's getting them from a cache (if they exist) and saving them to a cache before returning. Is there a cleaner way to do this?"}
{"_id": "105463", "title": "Examples and resources for writing a development proposal for a client", "text": "We're looking into our processes and client relationships at work and part of this is creating a standardised template for our development proposals that we send to clients. The development areas we cover are mainly web development and design and mobile application development. On top of this we also offer native software developments for small to large companies. What we are aiming for is a template for each development area, something we can base future proposals on. How do you go about writing something like this? Are the resources to help on the internet? More importantly maybe, what would you guys say is important to include in a proposal? This is normally pre-\"indepth technical spec\", but I would suggest (for instance) including a wireframe or mockup of the finished product. How detailed must you be in order to portray the project to the client and understand the needs of the project yourself in order to charge accordingly?"}
{"_id": "37042", "title": "Windows Phone 7 dev: C# or silverlight for a simple app?", "text": "I'm about to hire a programmer to develop Windows Phone 7 apps. The current app that shall be developed is quite simple.   * The app will download content from a Web-API.    * There are two lists to select content.    * There is a single item content page.    * Users can rate the content and upload photos. The screens will be produced by our artist. I am pretty sure that most of the available programmers haven't touched WP7 development yet. **Now the questions are:**   1. What technology is suitable for this kind of app?   2. What technology requires less research, learning and production time?   3. Do you already have experience of limitations of silverlight compared to C#? (I am also thinking of future projects)   4. My guess is that silverlight programmers are more experienced in UI programming than C# coders. Do you feel the same way?"}
{"_id": "91749", "title": "For very short programming jobs, how should one approach the concept of a contract?", "text": "I am wondering what other contractors in the field of software development do when a potential client approaches them with a spec.. in terms of contracts. In my experience, clients will often be happy to proceed with no formal agreement. I know this is quite an open ended question, so I will break it down into a series of subquestions that can be actually answered. If the client does not have a contract for you to sign, do you present a physical contract to them? If you have such a contract to present to clients, how did you acquire such a thing? Obviously you can pay through the nose to have a lawyer write it, and other obvious answers, but are there other reasonable (cost effective?) solutions to acquiring such a contract? At what stage, if any, would you require the client to physically sign such a contract? (what if the job is just one day?) In some cases, the software you are providing to the client is a customized version of an off-the-shelf, open-source, or proprietary in-house software, how does this affect things? _I realise that the best answer is probably \"It depends on the client, and other factors..\", you don't need to tell me that. But what are your experiences and opinions about 'best practices' in this area? Or to put a programming slant on it, do you have a reliable algorithm for managing the contract side of things, ie keeping both sides happy, most of the time?_"}
{"_id": "37047", "title": "Prefer algorithms to hand-written loops?", "text": "Which of the following to you find more readable? The hand-written loop:               for (std::vector<Foo>::const_iterator it = vec.begin(); it != vec.end(); ++it)     {         bar.process(*it);     }      Or the algorithm invocation:               #include <algorithm>     #include <functional>          std::for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(),                   std::bind1st(std::mem_fun_ref(&Bar::process), bar));      I wonder if `std::for_each` is really worth it, given such a simple example already requires so much code. What are your thoughts on this matter?"}
{"_id": "155352", "title": "When to skip solving the general problem and settling for the specific problem?", "text": "I've been working hard on trying to develop a general solution to my problem, but I cannot seem to formulate a proper algorithm for it, at least one that doesn't take a ton of inaccurate grunt work building a lookup table. I have a solution already for the specific requirement, but it requires the software's configuration to be changed every time the software is loaded with a different geographic area's datasets. So is it better to be finished and move on for now, or to keep attempting to solve the general problem knowing that the specific problems will keep popping up?"}
{"_id": "30210", "title": "Are there any compilers that attempt to fix syntax errors on their own?", "text": "I heard a while back that there used to be a compiler that attempted to fix syntax errors by analyzing context and inferring what was intended. Does such a compiler really exist? Obviously it has little practical value, but would be very interesting to play with and learn from."}
{"_id": "214594", "title": "Should selenium tests be written in imperative style?", "text": "Is an automation tester supposed to know concepts of OOPS and design patterns to write Tests in a way where changes & code re-use are possible? For example, I pick up Java to write cucumber step definitions that instruct a selenium webdriver. Should I be using a lot of inheritance, interfaces, delegation etc. to make life easier or would that be overly complicated for something that should just line by line instructions?"}
{"_id": "113919", "title": "For performance critical situations is storing file metadata in a database better?", "text": "As per the title of this question, for extremely performance critical situations, is storing a file's metadata (e.g. location, size, download on, etc) in a database going to allow for better performance than attempting to get it from the file system itself? Have there been any case studies into this problem? To provide a bit more detail on a specific situation, the application needs to mirror terabytes of data (hundreds of files) between a remote site on a continual basis and the current program architecture uses Unix commands (i.e. `ls`) to determine which files needed to be updated. The file themselves are split between Isilon IQ clusters and Sun Thumper clusters which I have been told good throughput but poor metadata performance. As the application will be the only process to have write permissions to the files we aren't concerned with things getting out of sync, but we are concerned with performance as it currently takes between six and ten hours to transfer the data."}
{"_id": "161080", "title": "Can an open source solution match or surpass Team Foundation Server's features?", "text": "Team Foundation Server offers a version control system, but with many more side features, such as bug tracking, user stories, project planning, and it is all integrated into visual studio. Someone put a more complete list of features over here: Over the past year I have been working with Mercurial and from the moment I typed \"hg init\" I was in love. My new colleagues are convinced that even though other scm solutions are probably better, TFS provides a better complete package for teams. What I would like to know is whether it is better to just use TFS, or to go the open source route and select various solutions and integrate them to get a better result, and if its even possible to get that level of integration? So in summation: Can it be done and is it better to go for various OSS tools?"}
{"_id": "113911", "title": "What is a reasonable and secure password requirement for user registration?", "text": "This is the password policy I just got from UPS (just for package status checking): > Your password must be between 8 and 26 characters long. It must contain at > least three of the following character types: lowercase letters, capital > letters, numerals, special characters, or spaces. The password may not > contain your User ID, your name, or your e-mail address. (SSO_1007) I actually have to wrack my brain somewhat to generate this password, but not only that, most importantly, I am sure that after 3 days I will forget what this password is. Users won't be so happy. Password reset can be frequent. I think users will try to avoid using the site unless they have to. What is a reasonable and secure password policy when setting up a website? I think some companies may fear some hackers trying passwords a million times or more, so they add all those requirements for \"special characters, lower case, upper case\", but won't it be reasonable to turn off the account or just disable the password and require a password reset if a user has tried 30 times or 100 times? Or, add a 5 second delay each time after the user tried 30 times? If so, then those special characters won't be that much needed."}
{"_id": "211176", "title": "In need of a more technical answer for an interview question about how the internet works from beginning to end", "text": "I've had interviews with 5 separate people over the past two weeks and three of those five have all asked me this question: _Explain what happens between hitting \"Google.com\" and the page coming up on the screen._ Basically, how the Internet works. I figure after three times that I better be prepared if I ever get this question again. I know _some_ things, but I'm not fully convinced that my answer is good enough. Basically, I mention that the DNS server translates \"google.com\" into an IP address. I kinda gloss over TCP/IP, then talk about the web server literally serving up requested pages that get sent back to the browser which the browser then interprets and displays. As I said before, I'm not convinced my answer is technical enough. What are the steps that I'm leaving out? For what it's worth, two of those three times have been with the same company and I'm being called back for a third interview with them, so I can't have bombed it _too_ hard."}
{"_id": "157181", "title": "Why aren't design patterns added to the languages constructs?", "text": "Recently I was talking with a colleague who mentioned that his company was working on adding the MVC design pattern as a PHP extension. He explained that they wrote C code for adding `Controllers, Models and Views` to the language constructs to increase performance. Now I know that MVC is an architectural design pattern that is used widely in web applications, but I still have to come across languages that have a language construct for Controllers for example. IMHO integrating design patterns into a language can emphasize the importance of good OO design. So, **Why aren't the most used design patterns (MVC, Factory, Strategy,...etc.) added to the language constructs?** If the question sounds too broad then you may limit the question to PHP only. **Edit:** I'm not implying that one **must** use a design pattern when developing a project. Actually I promote the methodology of keep it simple as long as it works."}
{"_id": "211170", "title": "Issue with scrum adaptation by team", "text": "I have been playing with Scrum methodology since year and half. I am using VersionOne as scrum tool. I have tried to follow most of the scrum principles. Sometimes, I feel like there is an issue with transparency of the stories. As of now, the whole team can get an access to all stories defined for the project. This creates issues with different levels of developers like junior and senior level developer. People's complains are about the work distribution or type of work they are assigned to. There is an issue of comparison among the developers. I don't know if I am following scrum properly or not. In scrum, should we give access of the all stories to everyone? or only assigned person can view his/her story?"}
{"_id": "68088", "title": "What makes a great user management interface great?", "text": "I'm currently working on user management for a project and while thinking about how I should design this I realised that there's really no standard in how these things look as it often vary a lot from application to application. So what makes an great user management interface great? What do the best ones have in common?"}
{"_id": "184173", "title": "Why does Java not do type inference?", "text": "I have always wondered why Java does not do type inference given that the language is what it is, and its VM is very mature. Google's Go is an example of a language with excellent type inference and it reduces the amount of typing one has to do. Is there any special reason behind this feature not being a part of Java?"}
{"_id": "193142", "title": "Do integrated systems increase development time and cause inflexibility?", "text": "I work for a large financial company that manages money for thousands of clients. This company has very complex business processes and they operate in a very dynamic environment. This is a fairly old company and over the years they have implemented many heterogeneous systems to automate processes within the company. There are rumors in the company that there may be an effort to move to \"a system\" (re-written from scratch) that consolidates the many disparate systems in place now. Debate has arisen that questions the value of such a move:   One side claims a single system is easier and cheaper to maintain due to greatly reduced redundancy i.e. properly factored business logic, unified data model, reusable UI components, etc. Other side claims that the company, clients, and products (financial instruments) are too complex and too dynamic to be pigeonholed by one system. Single system will risk breakages in one component when another is modified. There is no way and no reason to consolidate business logic because it is too client- and product-specific. Time to implement changes will increase because multiple higher level components will be affected by changes to lower level components. Question: Should the company seek to invest time and resources in creating a unified data model, factoring business logic and creating reusable code at all layers? Or should they \"copy and modify\" in order to speed development time, reduce the chance of regression, and reduce complexity? Is there a false dilemma presented here (i.e will there be a net change one way or the other and does one answer necessarily preclude another)? To be clear, this really a matter of **long term goals and priorities** , not about a specific product design. The company will never eliminate a certain amount of redundancy and it would not be desirable for them to do so."}
{"_id": "67259", "title": "How important is an in-depth knowledge of the Common Language Runtime to a .NET developer?", "text": "I wonder how many .NET developers have a working knowledge of CIL and where it has been useful to them. In case you are missing my meaning, here is a simple CIL example to add two locations together:               ldloc.0     ldloc.1     add     stloc.0    // a = a + b or a += b;"}
{"_id": "195777", "title": "How do I Integrate a Former Team Member into the Current Team", "text": "Is it possible to re-integrate a former team member into a software project? We have a product with a looming customer deadline and we don't have enough hours to get it done! We have a former employee who left on excellent terms and wants to come back. They are familiar with the codebase and architecture (which has not changed significantly since they left). Can we use this situation to avoid Brooks Law? It seems like an ideal situation, team member up to speed with processes, tools, etc. What do we need to be careful of? Are there any dragons in the water? Or should we expect smooth sailing?"}
{"_id": "137730", "title": "Is Rule 9 of Object Calisthenics applicable in Objective C?", "text": "Rule 9 in Object Calisthenics by Jeff Bay (RTF) is: > **Rule 9: No getters/setters/properties** > > The last sentence of the previous rule leads almost directly to this rule. > If your objects are now encapsulating the appropriate set of instance > variables but the design is still awkward, it is time to examine some more > direct violations of encapsulation. The behavior will not follow the > instance variable if it can simply ask for the value in its current > location. The idea behind strong encapsulation boundaries is to force > programmers working on the code after you leave it to _look for_ and _place_ > behavior into a single place in the object model. This has many beneficial > downstream effects, such as a dramatic reduction in duplication errors and a > better localization of changes to implement new features. > > Another way this rule is commonly stated is \u201cTell, don\u2019t ask\u201d. I get the point of the rule. But I find it only useful in garbage collected environments where modifying a reference is very simple. Will this be of any help in Objective C? Because it's always important to let only setter change the ivar and let it also take care of retaining new value and releasing the old one. and use the setter anywhere inside methods to alter ivars which are pointers."}
{"_id": "133892", "title": "How to let  teammates know what  changes I made to an object?", "text": "Suppose I have a PHP object, let's say: companyObj.               class companyObj     {       private company_name;       private company_address;            public function print_contact()       {         //logic       }     }      This is the object I wrote, and shared with the teammates. Now I would like to make it more powerful, like this:               class companyObj     {       private company_name;       private company_address;       private company_contact_person;            public function print_contact()       {         //logic updated       }     }      Now, how can I notify my teammates that my object had more attributes that they can set? Instead of sending e-mail to everyone in the development team, how do I make the team know what's going on, when I don't want my teammates to waste their time to look at what is changed at the source code level?"}
{"_id": "71486", "title": "NP complete or NP hard problems in real life", "text": "Does anybody have real life examples where they regularly solve NP complete or NP hard problems (by heuristics, or chasing a suboptimal solution or whatever) in their job? I know they occur in scheduling, planning, VLSI design, etc., but I am trying to get an idea of the major industries employing programmers or engineers today that regularly do this. If one were to develop expertise or a library, in say, combinatorial optimization where could one use that as part of a programming job? Any personal accounts?"}
{"_id": "133894", "title": "Components under what licenses can I use in my paid app?", "text": "I'm working on an application and I need to use some existing components such as libraries and JavaScript frameworks that are covered by licenses. My application will be paid (not free) and closed-source. Can I use components in my app that are under one of following licenses:   * MIT   * Apache   * BSD"}
{"_id": "197031", "title": "Why does gmail use java? Is there really a advantage over something like php or python?", "text": "Note: I know that none of you (probably) work for google, so this is a lot more of a conceptual question. So yeah, i discovered that Gmail uses java and that got me thinking, Why? I personally never really learned java and am familiar with C/C++, Python, Php e.t.c But what i dont understand is why do some websites use languages such as java? (Note: This is in no way a thread saying one language is better than the other). What i want to know is why do some websites such as Gmail use java and similar languages?What advantages/disadvantages come with using java/similar languages over languages such as php/python/ruby for web development? Ps: I know that some sites prefer to compile their code for optimization(Like facebook's hiphop)"}
{"_id": "197033", "title": "Recommendations on what technology to use to call REST API", "text": "I'm creating a small web-site that needs to call a REST API to retrieve some JSON and display it. What is the best tool for this job? There are so many Javascript libraries available now it is difficult to decide which one to choose. Is there are particular library that people would recommend that will do what I want both efficiently and without extensive development effort."}
{"_id": "197034", "title": "Given a situation, and some conditions, verify is that situation is possible", "text": "Well it's a problem me and my friend had thought of, and well, haven't come up with anything to solve the following problem(I'll try to phrase it in the best way I can): > Given that there are `n` number of teams, and the number of matches each > team has played, and that no team can play more than 2 matches with any > other team, predict if the distribution of matches played by each team is > possible. P.S. : I am a Python Programmer, so (if possible) post only python code for explaining.."}
{"_id": "3383", "title": "Does keeping a journal help in your job?", "text": "Years ago, in my first real programming job, my boss encouraged me to keep a journal of my daily activities. I still do so, although no longer a paper and hand-written one. Do you keep a journal, if so, what do you write in it, and how does it help you in your job? Or, does it just take time that is not ever recovered?"}
{"_id": "197038", "title": "Should code and data be treated seperately?", "text": "Is it really necessary to differentiate between code and data ? Is there any language where such differentiation is not there ?"}
{"_id": "109982", "title": "What is the Best Collation for Use in MySQL Tables?", "text": "I'm curious what is considered the standard today for use as the Collation of MySQL Tables? I was told that Latin-1 was the best choice when I was beginning with MySQL, but came across this post from 2009. It states that US-ASCII and LATIN-1 Character Sets are on the way out, and that UTF-8 is on the way in and should be made the default by MSQ version 6. Does this gel with what you know, or with what you think, or with what you do? For this question, let's assume there is no specific need for non-english characters."}
{"_id": "68558", "title": "Hibernate building HQL queries", "text": "I just read hibernate reference and they say that you should use constans for HQL queries. However that is not always possible, for example if you do search function and have 10 criterias (not jpa criterias, just columns you are searching by). I bet you can do some hacky HQL that is transformed into badly performing SQL, but I feel that is not the best choice. I do know you can use The Criteria API, but its not as powerfull as HQL and some people just don't like it (I'm one of them). How you do it in Yours applications? I mean code like (its just an example!)               String hql = \"from Biuro where \";     List parameters = ...     if (dateFrom!=null){        hql += \" dateFrom>=? \";        parameters.add(dateFrom);     }"}
{"_id": "157458", "title": "Strategy/algorithm to divide pot to chips", "text": "I want to split poker pot to chips. Example: Pot = $17.500. I have the endless piles of chips. I have the following types of chips: ChipsTypes = [$1, $5, $10, $25, $100, $500, $1.000, $5.000, $10.000, and so on]. Index starts from 0. I want to get an array that says which chips I have to take to divide the pot and in which order to have minimum number of denominations and chips after pot-to-chips conversion. For example Result = [7, 5] means that I have to take 3 * $5.000 + 5 * $500 which $17.500. Is there is any strategy or algorithm that would suit my need?"}
{"_id": "109974", "title": "Starting developer fighting with webforms, is moving to MVC a good idea?", "text": "A young developer frequently hits me up for help with Asp.net web forms. Usually his problems revolve around the actual controls and how to manipulate them, rather than pure middleware type code. Since I work with Asp.Net MVC quite a bit I usually see simpler solutions to his problems, but he can not implement them because of the structure he is working in. I have discussed this with fellow developer, and he feels that it would not be a good move. His reasoning is that if you remove the structure that web forms provides, the young developer will flounder and not be able to do anything. I, on the other hand, feel that by removing the built in abstraction of web forms and their associated controls, and just focus on HTML and the code he will be more successful in his projects. Would it be a wise move for a developer in this situation to move away from web forms and start to learn Asp.net MVC?"}
{"_id": "157452", "title": "Understanding comparison using Big O notation", "text": "I was going through this heavily discussed and highly voted question on SO and stumbled across one comment that got 5 upvotes. So I assume this was a great comment.But it got my head spinning at the same time. Can any one explain this comment? The comment says: > You can't compare big-O values directly without thinking about constant > factors. For small lists (and most lists are small), ArrayList's O(N) is > faster than LinkedList's O(1)."}
{"_id": "109978", "title": "Testing-related methodologies except TDD/BDD", "text": "Are there any testing-related methodologies except TDD/BDD? I see a lot of people who practice their own testing approaches (e. g., see Ayende post), but I don't see any formalization for it, no naming for these approaches."}
{"_id": "170741", "title": "Is functional intellisense and code browsing more beneficial than the use of dependency injection containers", "text": "This question is really based on PHP, but could be valid for other dynamically typed, interpreted languages and specifically the methods of generating code insight and object browsing in development environments. We use PHPStorm, and find intellisense invaluable, but it is provided by some limited static analysis and parsing of doc comments. Obviously this does not lend well to obtaining dependencies through a container, as the IDE has no idea of the type returned, so the developer loses out on a plethora of (in the case of our framework anyway) rich documentation provided through the doc comments. So we start to see stuff like this:               $widget = $dic->YieldInstance('WidgetA', $arg1, $arg2, $arg3, $arg4...));     /**      * @var $widget WidgetA      */      So that code insight works. In effect the comments are tightly bound, but worse they come out of sync when code is modified but not the comments:               $widget = $dic->YieldInstance('WidgetB', $arg1, $arg2, $arg3, $arg4...));     /**      * @var $widget WidgetA      */      Obviously the comment could be improved by referencing a Widget interface, but then we might as well use a factory and avoid the requirement for the extra typing hints in the comments, and dic complexity / boiler plating. Which is more important to the average developer, code insight / intellisense or 'nirvana' decouplement?"}
{"_id": "229751", "title": "C++ project organization to reduce unit testing build time", "text": "I want to organize tests for a project large enough that build time matters (especially for the CI server). Say I have this code that I would like to test :               //foo/greet.cpp     #include <stdio.h>     #include \"foo/greet.h\"     int greet() { return printf(\"Hello, World!\\n\"); }      And I have this main program that is boilerplate that I will not test.               //main.cpp     #include \"foo/greet.h\"     int main() { return greet(); }      I will use this code to generate a unittest program               //testgreet.cpp     #include <some_test_framework.h>     SOME_TEST_FRAMEWORK(\"Testing greet\")         SOME_TEST_FRAMEWORK_ASSERT(greet() > 0)     SOME_TEST_FRAMEWORK_END()      I thought of the following   * Skipping the build of `greet.cpp` for the unittest target, and linking with the objects   * Create a separate project structure for the tests, but share the output folder   * Pile everything in one place, maybe with a new folder named test   * Make a `greeting` library and link both main and unittests targets to it How can I organize my project so that I can build `greet.cpp` only once, yet reduce confusion caused by having two targets that share a lot of code ? This question is related, but not duplicate (IMHO). (+I tried making my question generic, reusable and future proof. If you think that this is too opinion based, vote to close and I will not repost)"}
{"_id": "103449", "title": "What are the most efficient code review processes?", "text": "I am looking for an efficient code review process where nothing can be pushed without being reviewed by another dev. For instance (we are using Mercurial):   * push to another branch and the reviewer will merge with the 'head'   * push directly to the reviewer The main issue here is that everybody can push to the default branch, so it doesn't enforce the code review."}
{"_id": "143555", "title": "Any basic difference between Unix and Linux in design and other aspects?", "text": "I keep reading this sentence: > Linux is a Unix-like system, but it is not Unix. I don't know what's the real difference between the two. I know Linux got a lot of ideas from Unix and the licenses of the two are different. Apart from that, as I am not an expert in either one of them, I want to know whether there are basic differences between them in design or other significant aspects."}
{"_id": "111872", "title": "How to learn microcontroller programming?", "text": "I am interested in learning how to program microcontrollers. It seems to be quite interesting, but I don't know, where to start. I am particularly interested in:   * What platform is worth learning?   * Are there any cheap systems that make it easy to write own programs for them?   * Pointers to good books / tutorials"}
{"_id": "143553", "title": "What are good books for learning C++11?", "text": "I'm just starting to get interested in C++11 (late I know). Does anyone have any recommendations for books available that cover the new features in depth?"}
{"_id": "225238", "title": "Python - 'if foo in dict' vs 'try: dict[foo]'", "text": "This is less a question about the nature of duck typing and more about staying pythonic, I suppose. First of all - when dealing with dicts, in particular when the structure of the dict is fairly predictable and a given key is not _typically_ present but sometimes is, I first think of two approaches:               if myKey in dict:         do_some_work(dict[myKey])     else:         pass      And of course Ye Olde 'forgiveness vs permission' approach.               try:         do_some_work(dict[myKey])     except KeyError:         pass      As a journeyman Python guy, I feel like I see the latter preferred a lot, which only feels odd I guess because in the Python docs `try/excepts` seem to be preferred when there is an actual mistake, as opposed to an, um\u2026 _absence of success?_ If the occasional dict does not have key in myDict, and it is _known that it will not always have that key,_ is a try/except contextually misleading? This isn't a programming error, it's just a fact of the data - this dict just didn't have that particular key. This seems particularly important when you look at the try/except/else syntax, which looks to be really useful when it comes to making sure that try isn't catching too many errors. You're able to do something like:               try:         foo += bar     except TypeError:         pass     else:         return some_more_work(foo)      Isn't that going to lead to swallowing all kinds of weird errors that are probably the result of some bad code? The above code might just be preventing you from seeing that you're trying to add `2 + {}` and you may never realize that some part of your code has gone horribly wrong. I don't suggest that we should Check All The Types, that's why it's Python and not JavaScript - but again with the context of try/except, it seems like it's supposed to catch the program doing something it shouldn't be doing, instead of enabling it to carry on. I realize the above example is something of a straw-man argument, and is in fact intentionally bad. But given the pythonic creed of `better to ask forgiveness than permission` I can't help but feel like it begs the question of where the line in the sand actually is between correct application of if/else vs try/except is, in particular when you know what to expect out of the data you're working with. I'm not even talking about speed concerns or best practice here, I'm just sort of quietly confused by the perceived Venn diagram of cases where it looks like it could go either way, but people err on the side of a try/except because 'someone somewhere said it was Pythonic'. Have I drawn the wrong conclusions about the application of this syntax?"}
{"_id": "111871", "title": "Module vs. Package?", "text": "Whenever I do `from 'x' import 'y'` I was wondering which one is considered the 'module' and which is the 'package', and why it isn't the other way around?"}
{"_id": "34028", "title": "Why is it recommended to close all programs before installing a new program?", "text": "What kind of problems arise from installing a new program while other programs are running? I'd imagine the GAC solved a lot of the old problems of shared dll's being locked. So what kind of issues still arise? I can see issues with upgrading a single program for sure, but outside of this its hard to see why apps would stomp on eachother's toe's."}
{"_id": "91330", "title": "What is involved in learning Eclipse-RCP, from zero Java background?", "text": "I've not yet started working on a new project where everything is done with \"Eclipse RCP\" which I never heard of until last week. We'll use lots of Java and SWT for GUI. I'd like to get up to speed on this new technology ASAP. (Or else I'll be the company \"coffee boy\" for the next several months...) Given a starting point of zero Java experience, zero use of Eclipse and zero use of SWT, zero computer science background (I'm into physics, engineering and art) and only modest experience working on the applications level in any sense, but OTOH, years of low-level programming and doing various neat cutting-edge things in areas that don't overlap at all with the Java or Eclipse worlds, how big a chunk of learning curve do I need to climb? To be clear, while I need to become more fluent in Java, and learn the end user basics of Eclipse and beyond, I don't need to learn the fundamentals of programming, OO, what a \"compiler\" is, etc. and am an old pro at Linux, C++, event-driven GUIs and much more. How to guesstimate how many days I'll need to become competent at working on Eclipse-RCP based apps? (No need to become a master guru. Of course that comes with time.) How to judge my level of skill along the way? How might I come up with a checklist of topics I should cover? What to tell the boss about when I'll be ready to work on this thing? What books, tutorials, etc are good for this learning curve climb? (No budget for classes, workshops, or books pricier than what I can get at Barnes & Noble.) (Actually I do have some modest experience in Java, but let's pretend it's zero, to make the question and answers more fun and useful to others.)"}
{"_id": "103443", "title": "Handling requests RESTfully?", "text": "There is a push in modern scripting frameworks to use RESTful request routing instead of a one-size-fits-all URL path routing.               respond('GET',    '/posts',       callback);     respond('POST',   '/post/create', callback);     respond('PUT',    '/post/[i:id]', callback);     respond('DELETE', '/post/[i:id]', callback);      vs               respond('/posts',       callback);     respond('/post/create', callback);     respond('/post/[i:id]', callback);     respond('/post/[i:id]', callback);      I must confess that I am still using the old-and-busted method where the resource is accessible at the given URL regardless of the request type. **Is there anything I'm missing by using the old format?**"}
{"_id": "225233", "title": "Ruby module namespacing advice", "text": "in my current project have:               module Stats            class Site         ...       end            class Product         def initialize(product_id)           @product_id = product_id         end       end            class Profile         ...       end          end      now in my `Product` class have methods to get/set product `views`(day, week, month) and methods to get/set product `sales`(day, week, months) is better to namespace like `Stats::Product::Views` and `Stats::Product::Sales` or simply prefix methods like `sale_add` and `view_add`? example calls with namespace:               Stats::Product::Sales.add(product_id) # increment sales counter      Stats::Product::Sales.today(product_id) # get n. today sales       Stats::Product::Sales.week(product_id) # get n. week sales            Stats::Product::Views.add(product_id) #increment product page view counter     Stats::Product::Views.today(product_id) #get n. today product page views     Stats::Product::Views.week(product_id) #get n. week product page views      example with current structure:               Stats::Product(product_id).sale_add # increment sales counter      Stats::Product(product_id).sales_today  # get n. today sales      Stats::Product(product_id).sales_week # get n. week sales           Stats::Product(product_id).view_add #increment product page view counter     Stats::Product(product_id).views_today #get n. today product page views     Stats::Product(product_id).views_week #get n. week product page views      Now, what you think is more elegant solution? and why?"}
{"_id": "143558", "title": "Manual memory allocation and purity", "text": "Language like Haskell have concept of _purity_. In pure function, I can't mutate any state globally. Anyway Haskell fully abstracts memory management, so memory allocation is not a problem here. But if languages can handle memory directly like C++, it's very ambiguous to me. In these languages, memory allocation makes visible mutation. But if I treat making new object as impure action, actually, almost nothing can be pure. So purity concept becomes almost useless. How should I handle purity in languages have memory as visible global object?"}
{"_id": "180087", "title": "Adding Methods In Addition to an Interface", "text": "Let's say I have `ThingImpl` and `IThing`. The former is an implementation of the latter, which is an interface. IThing has 1 method: `do(arg1)` Is it considered a hack/bad practice to add a method in addition to do()? Example: `do(arg1, arg2)`"}
{"_id": "145896", "title": "The bracketless if statement is frowned upon, but is it still bad style if your IDE is equipped for it?", "text": "This type of conditional statement is generally frowned upon               if(condition)       statement;      because if you add another statement, like this               if(condition)       statement;       statement;      it gives the impression that the second `statement` is part of the `if` block when it isn't. That said, my IDE does automatic indentation, which I think makes this problem moot. Furthermore, when I want to add another statement, it automatically does the bracket completion--which makes the issue about having to manually add brackets when you want to add another statement moot. Is there any reason why this would still be bad style?"}
{"_id": "145891", "title": "If I am developing a hosted payments page, what should the infrastructure look like?", "text": "If I am not storing credit card info, do I have to be concerned with PCI- compliance? I will be using a payment processor with a bank in my country. Literally just taking the credit card info and passing it to the gateway and processor. I would love to get an idea of the various technologies I might need to consider from an software architectural point of view. What are the best practices in terms of accepting credit cards and reducing fraud risk on my end? I will be creating the app in Rails."}
{"_id": "35375", "title": "What to do if I hate C++ header files?", "text": "I was always confused about header files. They are so strange: you include .h file which doesn't include .cpp but .cpp are somehow compiled too. Recently I joined a team project, and of course, both .h and .cpp are used.   I understand that this is very important, but I can't live with copy-pasting every function declaration in each of multiple classes we have. How do I handle the 2-file convention efficiently?   Are there any tools to help with that, or automatically change one file that looks like example below to .h and .cpp? (specifically for MS VC++ 2010)               class A     {     ...         Type f(Type a,Type b)         {             //implementation here, not in another file!         }     ...     };          Type f(Type a)     {          //implementation here     }     ..."}
{"_id": "224188", "title": "Is api user authentication with oauth possible for both email/pw and 3rd party services", "text": "I have an api only application (rails-api) and I'm looking to authorize a user on both email/password or 3rd party services like facebook or twitter etc, so I know I will have to use Oauth at some point. My question is, can I solely use Oauth, or do I have to implement my own authentication (or something like Devise) to do the manual email auth. I don't understand Oauth well enough to know whether I can do manual authentication with my single endpoint, it seems like it only works with 2 endpoints (my server and a 3rd party service). I would much rather not use Devise is not built for an api and adds alot of overhead IMO."}
{"_id": "224187", "title": "How to deploy C# application to be used in branch / remote office(s)", "text": "Have very recently started a new position. One of my key challenges is a C# WinForms application (let's call it AppX) that causes a lot of non-planned work. The main reason for this is that it needs to be deployed to several hundred branch offices. Currently, this is done via GP update or bespoke application. Both of these methods are unreliable and means we can't effectively deploy version upgrades. Bit of background to what the software needs to do and some of the technical issues / background:-   1. AppX needs to produce results in real time    2. AppX needs to connect to a SQL server (express or full edition) which is physically located in the branch office    3. AppX needs to ensure that after a version upgrade all remote sites are on the same version    4. AppX can't be deployed via a thin client solution such as Citrix or Remote Desktop services    5. The headquarters network can see the entire branch office network and connect into their SQL servers My initial thoughts were ClickOnce deployment -- however there seems to be some suggestions that there may be some issues with conflicts of the .Net framework with other software Deploy the solution as a web app at the headquarters which connects back into the remote SQL server - technically I'm not sure how I would go about this I guess that this is something that others may have come across so I would be interested to know if there are any other suggestions on how to approach this Thanks"}
{"_id": "228404", "title": "equals and hashcode methods autogenerated, is it always a good practice?", "text": "Preamble: Let's say I aim to cover all my classes with test coverage. Despite the common opinion (expecially in Java community) to \"not pay too much attention to Cyclomatic Complexity (CC) and code coverage\", I really think that these information are extremely useful: When you have a very high CC, or an uncovered zone in your code, very likely you wrote a dead code, or either is a smell that you have problems in design. In my personal experience I can say that many time dead code _is_ code smell. This problem become a little tricky when you have to deal with auto-generated code, and that's the point, how can I easily deal with `hashcode` and `equals` autogenerated methods? I came across this question in StackOverflow and I realized some very good point: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5764380/unit-testing-equals-and-hashcode-a- complexity-story But this question is not a duplicate because I want to use a different approach: The best options available in the answers of that question are, as far as I can see, EqualsBuilder of Apache Commons Lang or Guava. Both uses reflection (correct me if I'm wrong) and that could be a problem for performance in some situations. But my actual question is: Since most of the times both `equals` and `hashcode` methods are **not** covered, is that a hint that this particular class does **not** need those 2 methods? Since many Java developers a lot of time generate equals and hashcode even when not needed, what am I missing? Shouldn't be a better solution to generate those methods only when you need, for instance, to sort objects of that class, to use that objects as an Hashtable key, and so on? As I said, I think that goals of low complexity and high coverage are admirable, but the solution of using EqualsTester , seems to me like \"Force to cover code that you don't actually need in your program\"."}
{"_id": "73501", "title": "Code review guidelines for CSS, JS and HTML", "text": "I have been asked to create guidelines for review CSS, JS and HTML. I know there are coding guidelines for JS but I don't know any about HTML and CSS. To review JS I will certainly follow those guidelines and mention them. But what about CSS and HTML? Apart from logical errors and indentation issues, are there any specific things I need to check when I review markup and or CSS?"}
{"_id": "224182", "title": "What are the advantages to developing with outdated technologies?", "text": "**A little background** : I am working at a large company, using Windows XP and coding Winforms in VB6/VB.Net and some WebForms in VB.Net (95% maintenance code). I have one 4:3 19\" screen. A more modern version of Windows isn't happening soon, neither is any greenfield work by the sounds of it! I wasn't told about any of this when I joined the company, I was mislead to think I would be working with much more up to date technologies and frameworks. I have much more up to date experience from previous jobs, both with more modern frameworks and other programming languages, and when I am catching up with developer friends from other companies all I hear about is how they are using the latest ASP MVC framework, or Vagrant/Ruby on Rails/etc and I am getting the green eyes! I could sort myself out with another job pretty quickly, but I feel as though I should give this one more of a chance. **The question** : I am trying to convince myself that my current job isn't that bad. So what are the advantages to this sort of role? Are there advantages to working with outdated technologies? Maybe some techniques that I wouldn't pick up working with more modern ones? Or is this the sort of place where careers go to die, and I should get out while I still have my soul?"}
{"_id": "73505", "title": "Functional as a first language", "text": "What are some pros and cons to learning functional programming before other paradigms?"}
{"_id": "136062", "title": "Exchanging program results in Java", "text": "I wrote a calculator similar to the windows calculator using Java. And now I want to integrate this calculator into other projects as a separate package and use results obtained with the calculator in these projects with a single click (not using copy and pasting). How can I do this. (I'm using Netbeans to code Java)"}
{"_id": "136061", "title": "Transforming theoretical knowledge into practical knowledge", "text": "I have got good grades and ~ 10 years of professional embedded s/w development. However I have come to realize that and also been pointed out in performance appraisals that although I have good theoretical knowledge and have even read lots of programming books - Code complete, pragmatic programmer etc.. , my hands on practical knowledge is weak and I am unable to translate my theoretical ability into practical expertise. I need to figure out a plan on how to do this. Any ideas in this regard? EDIT : I take too long in understanding specs and in developing code and and miss some aspects in development particularly domain knowledge."}
{"_id": "185226", "title": "About clean code", "text": "Example: I have a method that formats the output based on a parameter from an object. The question is, should I pass the object that holds the parameter to the method, or just the required param? Still trying to grasp clean coding so I might be wrong, my take is that the 2nd approach is cleaner because it doesn't require you to pass the entire object, and is easy to test.   However, it makes calling the method ugly now since I have to check for the param every time when I call the method. And its used very very often. In contrast, the first approach while not that easy to test, because I have to mock the requestObject, is much easier to use. So which method should I go with? Or is there an even better approach?               // The output method with object as input     public function outputResponse($message, $requestObject) {         if (isset($resquestObject->param['response_type']) && $requestObject->param['response_type'] == 'json') return json_ecode($message);         return xmlOutput($message);     }          // So you call it like     $this->outputResponse($message, $requestObject);      The other approach...               // The output method with just the param as input     public function outputResponse($message, $responseType) {         if (responseType == 'json') return json_ecode($message);         return xmlOutput($message);     }          // So you call it like     $responseType = (isset($resquestObject->param['response_type']) && $requestObject->param['response_type'] == 'json') ? 'json' : '';     $this->outputResponse($message, $responseType);"}
{"_id": "185224", "title": "What *are* the programming concepts I should master to have a deep understanding of my craft (programming)?", "text": "In order of importance, if its possible to do so and it may not be, what are the most important foundations of knowing how to program. Algorithms, iteration, recursion, etc? Note that where I put etc. is where my question lies. I recently read an Internet post that said 9 out 10 programmers can't _gasp_ program! http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers-program.html I want to have a deep knowledge of what it is I am actually trying to accomplish when programming and an exhaustive comprehension of the basic tools at my disposal. Basically I want to be able to paint with all the colors of the wind."}
{"_id": "185222", "title": "What is the point of using lists over vectors, in C++?", "text": "I've run 3 different experiments involving C++ lists and vectors. Those with vectors proved more efficient, even when a lot of insertions in the middle were involved. Hence the question: in which case do lists make more sense than vectors? If vectors seem more efficient in most cases, and considering how alike their members are, then which advantages are left for lists?   1. Generate N integers and put them in a container so that the container remains sorted. The insertion has been performed naively, by reading elements one by one and inserting the new one right before the first larger one.   With a list, time goes through the roof when dimension increases, compared to vectors.   2. Insert N integers at the end of the container.   For lists and vectors, time increased by the same order of magnitude, though it was 3 times faster with vectors.   3. Insert N integers in a container.   Start timer.   Sort the container using list.sort for lists, and std::sort for vectors. Stop timer.   Again, time increases by the same order of magnitude, but it is in average 5 times faster with vectors. I might continue to perform tests and figure out a couple of examples where lists would prove better. But the joint experience of you guys reading this message might provide more productive answers. You might have come across situations where lists were more convenient to use, or performed better?"}
{"_id": "181939", "title": "Different Project Type in a Single Website", "text": "I have developed a website in asp.net and I have some additional tasks, improvements to develop. In order to get experience in asp.net/mvc, I want to create an admin panel using asp.net mvc. **Is this a logical next step?** * * * P.S. The project is small and 20% of the website is mine, so there are not any restrictions. There is no problem if I do not meet deadlines! :)"}
{"_id": "181932", "title": "Dealing with Feature Intersections", "text": "I have recently witnessed more and more problems similar to the ones explained in this article on feature intersections. Another term for it would be product lines, though I tend to attribute these to actually different products, whereas I usually encounter these problems in the form of possible product configurations. The basic idea of this type of problem is simple: You add a feature to a product, but somehow things get complicated due to a combination of other existing features. Eventually, QA finds a problem with a rare combination of features that no one thought of before and what should have been a simple bugfix may even turn into requiring major design changes. The dimensions of this feature intersection problem are of a mind-blowing complexity. Let's say the current software version has `N` features and you add one new feature. Let's also simplify things by saying that each of the features can turned on or off only, then you already have `2^(N+1)` possible feature combinations to consider. Due to a lack of better wording / search terms, I refer to the existence of these combinations as _feature intersection problem_. (Bonus points for an answer including reference(s) for a more established term.) Now the question I struggle with is how to deal with this complexity problem on each level of the development process. For obvious cost reasons, it is impractical up to the point of being utopian, to want to address each combination individually. After all, we try to stay away from exponential complexity algorithms for a good reason, but to turn the very development process itself into an exponentially sized monster is bound to lead to utter failure. So how do you get the best result in a systematic fashion that does not explode any budgets and is complete in a decent, useful, and professionally acceptable way.   * Specification: When you specify a new feature - how do you ensure that it plays well with all the other children?  I can see that one could systematically examine each existing feature in combination with the new feature - but that would be in isolation of the other features. Given the complex nature of some features, this isolated view is often already so involved that it needs a structured approach all in itself, let alone the `2^(N-1)` factor caused by the other features that one willingly ignored.   * Implementation: When you implement a feature - how do you ensure your code interacts / intersects properly in all cases. Again, I am wondering about the sheer complexity. I know of various techniques to reduce the error potential of two intersecting features, but none that would scale in any reasonable fashion. I do assume though, that a good strategy during the specification should keep the problem at bay during implementation.   * Verification: When you test a feature - how do you deal with the fact, that you can only test a fraction of this feature intersection space?  It is tough enough to know that testing a single feature in isolation guarantees nothing anywhere near error-free code, but when you reduce that to a fraction of `2^-N` it seems like hundreds of tests are not even covering a single drop of water in all oceans combined. Even worse, the most problematic errors are those that stem from the intersection of features, which one might not expect to lead to any problems - but how do you test for these if you don't expect such a strong intersection? While I would like to hear how others deal with this problem, I am primarily interested in literature or articles analyzing the topic in greater depth. So if you personally follow a certain strategy it would be nice to include corresponding sources in your answer."}
{"_id": "132764", "title": "Solving Scrabble board?", "text": "I recently saw a question on SO about solving the scramble/boggle game, where the letters are in a 4x4 grid and you have to find as many words as possible. I looked at some of the solutions, tried it myself, and would now like to move onto solving a scrabble game. The boggle solving code is rather simple; store the board state in a matrix and iterate over every move from every position and checking if words exist with the current letter chain. With scrabble, the idea is similar, but I'm still having trouble figuring it out. My currently thinking of:   1. Storing the board in 2 dimensional array.   2. Iterating over each position and skipping if the position is empty.   3. Creating some sort of regex pattern for the letters on the rack and the letter at the position... I'm still really iffy on what to do at step 3 because I know the tile at the position could be the beginning end, or some point in the middle of a word. And then there's the matter of making sure that if a word does fit that it also makes words with other tiles it touches.. I'm not asking for code samples, just the thought process from more experienced programmers. To clarify, my goal is: > Given the current state of a board and a person's tiles, calculate the legal > moves and the points for that move. For anyone following this and waiting for an answer, I found this: http://www.chaddington.com/portfolio/project.html#scrabble I might look through what he wrote, but I do want to try to figure it out myself first."}
{"_id": "132767", "title": "Logistics of becoming a iOS development Firm", "text": "We've had a lot of success in our company with the iOS apps that we have made that we are now looking at branching out and offering our services to people who want iPhone/iPad applications made for them or their company. What options do we have for deployment scenarios? If they want it up on the app store than this is quite easy and we will just submit it in the normal process. But what clauses do people put on these contracts because I know Apple still holds all the cards and could decline an app in the end if it doesnt suit their guidelines (which can be unclear sometimes). What if the customer does not want to deploy it to the app store but just want an in-house app? Is it on the customer than to purchase an Apple developer/enterprise license allowing them to do Ad hoc deployments to devices and we just supply them the application?"}
{"_id": "109399", "title": "Scrum, is there a Critical Path for release planning?", "text": "Mike Cohn in Agile Estimating and Planning, page 154, defines a \"natural order\" for implementing user stories - this, according to him, is a intuitive sequence that makes sense to both developers and the team. I understand and endorse this idea. Though, I am having trouble letting go the concept of \"critical path\"; I see the value of ordering stories based on their dependencies. Even if the backlog is an always evolving tool, we could derive the \"critical path\" of the current backlog to prioritize and derive for 3-6 months worth of releases. It just does not sound right considering all I know about Agile. How do you apply the concept of critical path in Scrum? Your personal opinion would be much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "131492", "title": "Functional Programming approach for a simplified game using Scala and LWJGL", "text": "I, a Java imperative programmer, would like to understand how to generate a simple version of Space Invaders based on Functional Programming design principles (in particular Referential Transparency). However, each time I try to think of a design, I get lost in the morass of extreme mutability, the same mutability which is shunned by the functional programming purists. As an attempt to learn Functional Programming, I decided to attempt to create a very simple 2D interactive game, Space Invader (note the lack of plural), in Scala using the LWJGL. Here are the requirements for the basic game:   1. User ship at the bottom of the screen moved left and right by the \"A\" and \"D\" keys respectively   2. User ship bullet fired straight up activated by the space bar with a minimum pause between shots to be .5 seconds   3. Alien ship bullet fired straight down activated by a random time of .5 to 1.5 seconds between shots Things intentionally left out from the original game are WxH aliens, degradable defense barriers x3, high speed saucer ship at at the top of the screen. Okay, now to the actual problem domain. For me, all the deterministic parts are obvious. It's the non-deterministic parts that seem to be blocking my ability to consider how to approach. The deterministic parts are the bullet's trajectory once they exist, the continuous motion of the alien and the explosion due to a hit on either (or both) of the player's ship or the alien. The non-deterministic parts (to me) are handling the stream of user input, handling fetching a random value for determining alien bullet firings and handling the output (both graphics and sound). I can do (and have done) lots of this type of game development over the years. However, all of it was from the imperative paradigm. And LWJGL even provides a very simple Java version of Space invaders (of which I began moving to Scala using Scala as Java-without-semicolons). Here are some links that talk around this area of which none seem to have directly dealt with the ideas in a way a person coming from Java/Imperative programming would understand:   1. Purely Functional Retrogames, Part 1 by James Hague   2. Similar Stack Overflow post   3. Clojure/Lisp Games   4. Haskell Games on Stack Overflow   5. Yampa's (in Haskell) Functional Reactive Programming It appears that there are some ideas in the Clojure/Lisp and Haskell games (with source). Unfortunately, I am not able to read/interpret the code into mental models that make any sense to my simpleminded Java imperative brain. I'm so excited by the possibilities offered by FP, I can just taste the multi- threaded scalability capabilities. I feel like if were able to grok how something as simple as the time + event + randomness model for Space Invader can be implemented, segregating the deterministic and non-deterministic parts in a properly designed system without it turning into what feels like advanced mathematical theory; i.e. Yampa, I'd be set. If learning the level of theory Yampa seems to require to successfully generate simple games is necessary, then the overhead of acquiring all the necessary training and conceptual framework will vastly outweigh my understanding of the benefits of FP (at least for this over-simplified learning experiment). Any feedback, proposed models, suggested methods of approaching the problem domain (more specific than the generalities covered by James Hague) would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "131491", "title": "Managing lots of little (sometimes contradictory) changes", "text": "I work in a large company and most coding projects are fairly structured with a project plan and review process. However, for existing support there are occasional periods where a department will need lots of tiny changes made to an existing app or site such the accounting department at the end of a fiscal year. The problem is that they get incredibly busy and my team gets a slew of tiny emergency changes thrown at us. We need to be flexible enough to support their needs as they are real and provide a great deal of value to the company. On the other hand, given how crazy their environment is, they sometimes give us contradictory changes (change the text to 10pt, then the next day change it to 12pt). Again, the changes are trivially tiny but they can suck up a developer's day given how frequent they are. I'd like to push back and set some fair limits for how we'll handle these requests going forward. Is there a best practice for handling these types of small changes? The department in question is far to busy to commit a lot more time to working with us. We also don't charge back so it's hard to communicate the problem to them. What's a good approach to resolving this?"}
{"_id": "206936", "title": "Should Item Grouping/Filter be in the ViewModel or View layer?", "text": "I'm in a situation where I have a list of items that need to be displayed depending on their properties. What I'm unsure of is where is the best place to put the filtering/grouping logic of the viewmodel state? Currently I have it in my view using converters, but I'm unsure whether I should have the logic in the viewmodel? e.g. ViewModel Layer:               class ItemViewModel     {         DateTime LastAccessed { get; set; }         bool IsActive { get; set; }     }          class ContainerViewModel     {          ObservableCollection<Item> Items {get; set;}     }      View Layer:               <TextView Text=\"Active Items\"/>     <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupActiveItemsByDay}/>     <TextView Text=\"Active Items\"/>     <List ItemsSource={Binding Items, Converter=GroupInActiveItemsByDay}/>      or should I build it like this? ViewModel Layer:               class ContainerViewModel     {        ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;}        ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItemsByGroup {get; set;}     }      View Layer:               <TextView Text=\"Active Items\"/>     <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItemsGroupByDate }/>     <TextView Text=\"Active Items\"/>     <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItemsGroupByDate }/>      Or maybe something in between? ViewModel Layer:               class ContainerViewModel     {        ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> ActiveItems {get; set;}        ObservableCollection<IGrouping<string, Item>> InActiveItems {get; set;}     }      View Layer:               <TextView Text=\"Active Items\"/>     <List ItemsSource={Binding ActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/>     <TextView Text=\"Active Items\"/>     <List ItemsSource={Binding InActiveItems, Converter=GroupByDate }/>      I guess my question is what is good practice in terms as to what logic to put into the ViewModel and what logic to put into the Binding in the View, as they seem to overlap a bit?"}
{"_id": "206937", "title": "Do we set the bar too high by requiring that code tests not suffer from buffer overflow?", "text": "We are currently recruiting for a Junior Developer position working mainly in C on Linux. As part of the process, we require candidates to complete a code test at their leisure in C. So far we have rejected two candidates on the basis that their code, although readable and in one case rather idiomatic, suffered from buffer overflow errors due to unbounded buffer writes. Are buffer overflows acceptable from a graduate developer? Are we setting the bar too high? What is the expected capability of graduate/Junior engineers? **[Edit]:**   * We explicitly ask for error-checked, production quality code.   * We provide a test & build framework for the candidates **[Update]:** As a result of this thread, and conversations we have had with other developers in person, we are changing the way we carry out code tests and who we target with our recruiting. We decided that a candidate being unable to fix or understand a buffer overflow means that he would be unsuitable for the work we carry out, in particular he would take more mentoring than we are comfortable with. We will therefore still reject candidates that cannot eventually submit a robust code sample. However, we have put in place some measures to make the recruitment process more productive for both us and the candidates. In particular:   * We make our expectation more explicit, with clear explanation of what we mean by production quality, and a warning that the code is expected to be robust with respect to input and errors.   * We now link candidates to resources on defensive programming and the C standard library in the description of the code test.   * We changed our target audience from Junior developers and graduates to target people with some relevant experience.   * In case the submitted code fails in some way but would otherwise be accepted, we now provide a minimum test case that causes the error condition and give the candidates a chance to correct their mistakes (unless the code is rejected for some other reason). We'll also point out problematic lines/functions if appropriate.   * The goal of the tests itself has now slightly changed from a front end filter to a chance to build a better picture of the candidate, in particular it will inform our phone discussion. That said, we are still willing to reject based solely on code."}
{"_id": "183688", "title": "Is the use of security conditionals in a view a violation of MVC?", "text": "Often what's displayed to a user (e.g. on a web page) will be based partly on security checks. I usually consider user-level / ACL security to be part of the business logic of a system. If a view explicitly checks security to conditionally display UI elements, is it violating MVC by containing business logic?"}
{"_id": "206935", "title": "Two components offering the same functionality, required by different dependencies", "text": "I'm building an application in PHP, using Zend Framework 1 and Doctrine2 as the ORM layer. All is going well. Now, I happened to notice that both ZF1 and Doctrine2 come with, and rely on, their own caching implementation. I've evaluated both, and while each has its own pro's and cons, neither of them stand out as superior to the other for my simple needs. Both libraries also seem to be written against their respective interfaces, not their implementations. Reasons why I feel this is an issue is that during the bootstrapping of my application, I have to configure two caching drivers - each with its own syntax. A mismatch is easily created this way, and it feels inefficient to set up two connections to the caching backend because of this. I'm trying to determine what the best way forward is, and would welcome any insights you may be able to offer. What I've thought up so far are four options:   1. Do nothing, accept that two classes offering caching functionality are present.   2. Create a Facade class to stick Zend's interface onto Doctrine's caching implementation.   3. Option 2, the other way around - create a Facade to map Doctrine's interface on a Zend Framework backend.   4. Use multiple-interface-inheritance to create one interface to rule them all, and pray that there aren't any overlaps (ie: if both have a \"save\" method, they'll need to accept params in the same order due to PHP's lack of proper polymorphism). What option is best, or is there a \"None of the above\" variant that I'm not aware of?"}
{"_id": "183686", "title": "Can multiple CPU's / cores access the same RAM simutaneously?", "text": "This is what I **guess** would happen:   1. If two cores tried to access the **same** address in RAM, one would have to **wait** for the other to access the RAM. The **second** time that each core would try to access the same address, they may still have that RAM cached, so they could access their respective **caches simultaneously**.   2. If two cores tried to access **different** addresses in the same RAM, one would have to **wait** for the other to access the RAM. In other words, I would imagine that for RAM intensive programming tasks, multiprocessing won't help much unless it involved reading from the same address in RAM multiple times per core. So, can multiple CPU's / cores access the same RAM simutaneously, or is what I'm saying correct?"}
{"_id": "241131", "title": "How do you handle domain logic that spans multiple model objects in an ORM?", "text": "So I know that business logic should be placed in the model. But using an ORM it is not as clear where I should place code that handles multiple objects. E.g. let's say we have a `Customer` model which has a `type` of either `sporty` or `posh` and we wanted to `customer.add_bonus()` to every posh customer. Where would we do this? Do we create a new class to handle all this? If yes, where do we put it (alongside all the other model classes, but not subclass it from the ORM?)? I'm currently using django framework in python, so specific suggestions are even more wanted."}
{"_id": "131499", "title": "What are the reasons one would use fully qualified class names in source code?", "text": "I recently ran across code where the developers used both fully qualified class names AND imported class names in their source code. Example:               import packageA.Foo;          public class Example {         public packageB.Bar doSomething() {             final Foo foo = new Foo();             ...         }     }      I was under the impression that the only reason one might want to use fully qualified name for classes in source code is when they have identical class names in two different packages and they need the fully qualified name to distinguish between the two. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "183683", "title": "How should I distinguish between built-in types in Python?", "text": "I have a function that accepts either a string or a dictionary as an argument. That is, it can be called as either:               lookup_person({name: \"John Smith\", age: 57})      or               lookup_person(\"John Smith\")      My first inclination is to use `type` or `isinstance` to distinguish the type of the argument, but I've seen a lot of ink spilled over whether and when rigid type detection is appropriate. The prevailing wisdom I've read suggests that I should test if my object implements some interface, but testing for particular string or dictionary methods seems significantly less safe than simply testing if the type of the object is a string or dictionary. Is it possible to employ duck typing here, and is it appropriate to do so? Or do I have a larger problem, and my approach here somehow fundamentally not Pythonic? **EDIT:** To clarify, passing a dictionary is the \"typical\" use. Passing in a string is simply an API shorthand for a single-entry dictionary with `name`, i.e., `lookup_person({name:\"John Smith\"})`."}
{"_id": "183680", "title": "Sorting : Useful for more than just viewing data?", "text": "**Context** I'm currently working on a personal project involving functional reactive JavaScript, and I've come up with an odd question. Note that this question is not JavaScript specific, but that is the context in which I am asking it. **Scenario** When filtering a collection of data, you end up with a smaller set of data. Therefore, correctly filtering your data earlier (rather than later) ends up optimizing your later code, as it does not need to iterate through the portion of data which will not be used. (think filtering before mapping, instead of visa-versa) However, I was wondering if there's a scenario in which sorting provides similar benefits, or if sorting is generally used as a way of formatting data to be displayed, so that an end user may more easily absorb it (sort by name, city, state, etc). **Question** When is sorting your _data_ more desirable than sorting the corresponding _views_ of that data?"}
{"_id": "241134", "title": "One method with many behaviours or many methods", "text": "This question is quite general and not related to a specific language, but more to coding best practices. Recently, I've been developing a feature for my app that is requested in many cases with slightly different behaviours. This function send emails , but to different receivers, or with different texts according to the parameters. The method signature is something like               public static sendMail (t_message message = null  , t_user receiver = null , stream attachedPiece = null)      And then there are many condition inside the method, like               if(attachedPiece != null)     {     }      I've made the choice to do it this way (with a single method) because it prevents me to rewrite the (nearly) same method 10 times, but I'm not sure that it's a good practice. What should I have done? Write 10 `sendMail` method with different parameters? Are there obvious pros and cons for these different ways of programming? Thanks a lot."}
{"_id": "240668", "title": "How does a search functionality fit in DDD with CQRS?", "text": "In Vaughn Vernon's book Implementing domain driven design and the accompanying sample application I found that he implemented a CQRS approach to the iddd_collaboration bounded context. He presents the following classes in the application service layer:   * CalendarApplicationService.java    * CalendarEntryApplicationService.java   * CalendarEntryQueryService.java   * CalendarQueryService.java I'm interested to know if an application will have a search page that feature numerous drop downs and check boxes with a smart text box to match different search patterns; How will you structure all that search logic? In a command service or a query service? Taking a look at the CalendarQueryService.java I can see that it has 2 methods for a huge query, but no logic at all to mix and match any search filters for example. I've heard that the application layer shouldn't have any business logic, so where will I construct my dynamic query? or maybe just clutter everything in the Query service?"}
{"_id": "130722", "title": "What is the difference between a function and a lambda?", "text": "I'm a little bit confused about 'function' and 'lambda'. I've seen some examples showing that the scheme keyword `lambda` works very similarly to the JavaScript keyword `function`, but I really don't know how they are related. I'm told that 'function' and 'method' can be used interchangeably when speaking about objects in .net. I'm wondering if 'lambda' and 'function' similarly mean the same thing. I wonder if 'lambda' has some esoteric meaning, seeing that the Greek letter lambda (\u03bb) appears in so many avatars on this site. To make things even more confusing, in .net, the functional parts of C# refer to function expressions passed to another function as 'lambda expressions', so the word really seems to be all over the place. I'm also vaguely familiar with the term 'lambda calculus'. What is the difference between a function and a lambda?"}
{"_id": "238647", "title": "Pure Front end JavaScript with Web API versus MVC views with ajax", "text": "This was more a discussion for what peoples thoughts are these days on how to split a web application. I am used to creating an MVC application with all its views and controllers. I would normally create a full view and pass this back to the browser on a full page request, unless there were specific areas that I did not want to populate straight away and would then use DOM page load events to call the server to load other areas using AJAX. Also, when it came to partial page refreshing, I would call an MVC action method which would return the HTML fragment which I could then use to populate parts of the page. This would be for areas that I did not want to slow down initial page load, or areas that fitted better with AJAX calls. One example would be for table paging. If you want to move on to the next page, I would prefer it if an AJAX call got that info rather than using a full page refresh. But the AJAX call would still return an HTML fragment. My question is. Are my thoughts on this archaic because I come from a .net background rather than a pure front end background? An intelligent front end developer that I work with, prefers to do more or less nothing in the MVC views, and would rather do everything on the front end. Right down to web API calls populating the page. So that rather than calling an MVC action method, which returns HTML, he would prefer to return a standard object and use javascript to create all the elements of the page. The front end developer way means that any benefits that I normally get with MVC model validation, including client side validation, would be gone. It also means that any benefits that I get with creating the views, with strongly typed html templates etc would be gone. I believe this would mean I would need to write the same validation for front end and back end validation. The javascript would also need to have lots of methods for creating all the different parts of the DOM. For example, when adding a new row to a table, I would normally use the MVC partial view for creating the row, and then return this as part of the AJAX call, which then gets injected into the table. By using a pure front end way, the javascript would would take in an object (for, say, a product) for the row from the api call, and then create a row from that object. Creating each individual part of the table row. The website in question will have lots of different areas, from administration, forms, product searching etc. A website that I don't think requires to be architected in a single page application way. What are everyone's thoughts on this? I am interested to hear from front end devs and back end devs."}
{"_id": "180338", "title": "Language for Chess Position Evaluation (experimental)", "text": "My aim is to, via pattern analysis and statistics, (as well as piece mobility and position) build a chess position evaluation analyzer (rather than simply going brute force ply-searching). Id like to hear some thoughts a language that will be interesting/fun/challenging to learn and reason with. Ideally the language would have be well suited for:   1. Statistical Analysis   2. Pattern Analysis    3. Native Array and Vector Operations    4. Native Mathematical Functions Note:   1. I have no need for a GUI, and may not even get to the point of a 'move engine' but simply stop at a position evaluation engine   2. I am not interested in speed.    3. I am personally most comfortable with Python but I might be interested in trying something else. (though feel free to suggest this if you think it fits).   4. I am particularly curious about how good a fit a functional language would be in this context."}
{"_id": "240660", "title": "What was before MVC?", "text": "MVC is used a lot (not only in web apps) and it seems it's the 'go to' approach when designing software. There are also a lot of MVC versions. My question is: what was before MVC? How did people structure large software systems? Obviously 'separation of concerns' wasn't invented with MVC (even if it wasn't called that). I assume this type of thinking, which is crucial for building and maintaining software, was present long ago. But in more technical terms, how was software structured before MVC?"}
{"_id": "180336", "title": "How should I organize bugs in redmine?", "text": "I'm helping to reogranize several redmine projects; although I have a lot of experience with issue tracking systems, I've never worked with redmine before. What is the best way to organize Issues in Redmine so that they can be easily grouped by:   * feature (e.g. \"Upload a file\", \"Login to site\", \"Send message\")   * system component (e.g. front-end, back-end, database), and   * target version (\"beta 1\", \"beta 2\" \"GA\") Right now, most \"Bugs\" are child issues of \"Features\"; unfortunately, this means that the Target Version of each bug is automatically populated with the Target Version of the parent feature. Is there some way to fix this?"}
{"_id": "180335", "title": "Representing domain objects", "text": "This is related to my recent question regarding naming awkward domain objects. A number of answers indicated I was using the wrong representation for the domain objects. To summarize, I chose to use an enum to represent some domain objects used as keys in lookups. For this question, I want to review my decision to use an enum and identify alternatives. Jump to the bottom of my question for the TL;DR. **Domain Description**   My application is responsible for performing some calculations involving chemical compounds. Some basic equations are:   * calculating the number of moles of a compound    * calculating the specific gravity or density of a compound at various concentrations These equations could be handled as methods within a `Chemical` class like:   `Chemical.GetMolesFromMass(double mass_grams)` or   `Chemical.GetDensity(double concentration)`   or they could be implemented as methods off of a generic chemical properties class like:   `Chemical.GetMolesFromMass(Compound cmpd, double mass_grams)` or   `Chemical.GetDensity(Compound cmpd, double concentration)` I think from an object responsibility point of view, the first option of methods off of the `Chemical` class would be a better representation. Some advanced equations involve:   * calculating quantities of a compound consumed by a business process   * calculating storage requirements of compounds    * optimizing deliveries based upon standard container sizes  In these equations, the chemical compound is an input to the method.   `StorageTankCluster.Generate(Compound cmpd, double requiredVolume)` The `StorageTankCluster` needs to know about the chemical because the dimensions and spacing of the tanks within the cluster will change based upon the chemical and required volume. The chemical being stored can affect tank material selection as well as impacting safety clearances between tanks. At the moment, I'm considering those parameters (spacing, material, ...) as lookup items instead of elements that the compound is responsible for knowing about. Likewise, the delivery optimization as affected by the chemical compound but it's arguable on whether or not those aspects are the compound's responsiblity. Both the `StorageTankCluster` and the delivery optimization components are intended to be reused by other non-chemical aspects of the application. As this question is already getting complicated, we can just call those other elements `Foo` and `Bar`. Both `Foo` and `Bar` could utilize the delivery optimization, but only `Foo` can be used with the `StorageTankCluster`. It's not in the application now, but all of the various properties discussed so far will need to be stored within a database / persistence layer. I realize that shouldn't affect a good design, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I'll admit that some of my decisions have been biased because I'm porting this application from another source that forces everything to be done in a structured manner. Writing out this question has highlighted a few areas where I should have better examined what object had responsibility for that functionality. My design so far has been oriented around lookup tables and I'm using the enum values as the keys to those tables. It is their use as keys that causes me to treat them as named objects within the program instead of treating them as objects the system would operate upon. This has pretty much relegated the chemical compounds to 2nd-tier class status, and I'm wondering if that was the right decision. On the other hand, I'm concerned about the chemical compound class becoming bloated beyond usefulness. **TL;DR**   My implementation is / must be in C#. So was using an enum the right choice, or what should I have done and why?"}
{"_id": "244560", "title": "Continuing to code on large projects", "text": "I am a hobbyist programmer, and I've started many medium - sized projects to work on just by myself. These include games, a raytracer, physics simulations etc. By the time these projects get to a certain size (around 5000 lines), I begin to slow down in adding features to the program. This is not because of a lack of ideas of what to implement in a program, but rather a struggle in how to go about it. In particular, I'm afraid of breaking what I already have working in order to implement a new feature. I've tried using version control like Git and Subversion, but these seem unnecessary when you are a one man team. I simply have a folder of \"versions\" of my program, one for each major change I make. How do I keep coding past this 5000 line mark? What about the 50000 line mark?"}
{"_id": "195040", "title": "Is there such a thing as truly random?", "text": "I saw a video about random numbers and how the programmer in that video was talking about computers generating pseudo random numbers and that they are not really random. I knew about this. Then he showed the decay of a radioactive material to generate random numbers where he claimed to be truly random. Is there really such a thing? I mean the process of the radioactive material shooting electrons might seem random but is it? Isn't it just a mysterious black box to us simply because we don't know how it really works? Or does randomness just depend on the current level of scientific knowledge? If so, then how come quantum computers are often quoted to be capable of generating truly random numbers? Can they really do this?"}
{"_id": "140112", "title": "Is there a desktop tool to auto-combine & minify JS on save?", "text": "I've been using Less.app lately to automatically minify CSS and compile it from LESS to CSS immediately when I save a LESS source file. It seems like an obvious thing, but I can't find a tool that does the same thing for JavaScript. Does such a tool exist? Desired features:   * I'm on OSX, but a cross-platform solution (e.g. using Adobe AIR) would also be acceptable.   * Leave it running minimized/hidden, automatically watches specified folder for changes (no button clicking necessary)   * Installing NodeJS/python/php/etc is a non-starter. Must be totally self-contained.   * Especially interested if it will automatically combine all of the files from the same directory.      * Either sorting based on filename so that I can name them \"1.library.js\", \"2.framework.js\", \"3.app.js\", etc, or...     * Allow setup of manual sorting"}
{"_id": "101595", "title": "Charging for a project where you retain the IP for the end product", "text": "I have read up on quite a few of these questions asked on here regarding \"how much should I charge for...\" such as: How should I charge for programming things which take two minutes to fix? How much should I charge for a web app How much can I charge for this a little job? and these are fine for freelance projects dealing with specific clients for a specific product. My situation has a bit of a curve-ball to it, and this is: how much should I charge a company to develop a product where I retain the 'Intellectual Property' of the final product. I am working with a company to create a web application that will help with some administrative processes. The idea for this project had originated between me and an employee of the company outside of business hours. Thus the product idea was then presented to the company and they are very interested in me developing this idea for them. The CFO of the company wants to pay me for my time to develop this product, yet I would also like to own the IP of this product and resell it to other companies when it is completed. When we do meet to discuss fair wages, what would be the best way to position myself? Presumably in the future with a completed product this would be a 'fee for service' software platform, wherein a company would purchase seats (monthly or annually). But I am unsure of how I should treat this development 'partner'. Their contributions would include helping me tailor the product to fit their needs specifically, along with debugging and testing.. So should I charge an hourly rate? A lump sum? Or start out right away with a monthly subscription type? This project is done on the side, I still have a day-job.. But will be investing a lot of time into this project since it has a lot of potential. (if that factors into any of it)"}
{"_id": "101597", "title": "How do I partially add PHP namespacing to a library without breaking existing code?", "text": "My company has created a modular PHP framework over the years, beginning long before PHP 5.3 added namespaces. Recently, we decided to start using namespaces in our library's new code, and we intend to namespace old code eventually. However, we have a few issues we are trying to work out to determine if adding namespaces to a pre-v5.3 codebase is just not a good idea:   1. Can I namespace a class but also import (use) the global namespace so all global classes do not need a `\\` prefix?   2. If we namespace an existing class in our library, how can we prevent all existing projects from breaking as soon as the framework upgrades? For example, can the library change the name of class `ThemeEngine` to `\\module\\theme\\ThemeEngine`, but the existing websites call `ThemeEngine` without **any** code modification? If so, what would that code look like?"}
{"_id": "101590", "title": "How do I determine what project ideas will work as a resum\u00e9 builder?", "text": "I have been programming almost exclusively in C/C++ for the almost 3 years now (not including college) and feel stagnated (not to mention working on proprietary code for the most part). So I decided to change my career path and jump into web devlopment by learning Rails. The problem is not the learning but getting a Rails/web dev job. Since I don't have any real work experience in RoR, the one way to get noticed is through side projects. There's a lot of basic advice about building up a resum\u00e9 in a new technology: creating a project on GitHub, for example. But being new to the whole web development world I don't know what constitutes as a good project that shows that I am good programmer and not just an eager enthusiast: things like my testing methodology, coding standards, design patterns, programming practices, and so on. How do I come up with a project that'll demonstrate these things?"}
{"_id": "233619", "title": "Should an API be aware of client versions?", "text": "Should an API be aware of a client version? The idea of that really goes against the grain for me, but it seems like it is being pushed for in my current project. Am I wrong? Can I get some reasons for or against this that I can present or understand why it might be good. The API is a RESTful API."}
{"_id": "109021", "title": "Finding my path for masters (CS or HCI or some other trail)?", "text": "I am student pursuing Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication at my university. While pursuing my course, I started to work on some projects related to CS. Computers being my favourite from the very foundation, I kept on working on towards my passion for these three years winning some awards, writing a paper, doing projects etc. I am currently in fourth year now and I am thinking to totally switch my branch to CS for masters. I always work to build innovative solutions to problems like software for disabled, something for education, or be it software for environment etc. There is no certain subject for solutions but innovation and novelty is certainly what I yearn for while scheming inventive solutions. The problem is that I am not able to find the correct path to go for the masters i.e. the diversification of courses is taking a toll. Mostly, there are HCI courses in universities which focus to build these innovative solutions but, I was trying to parallel MS in CS & MS in HCI. There looks like more of a focus on drawing/arts type if thing in HCI which I don\u2019t want to go ahead with but what I do want is building up creative solutions with technical ingenuity. A person in HCI also has all the same technical skills as that of a CS student, then where does the difference arise? Let\u2019s say as a very odd example, can a HCI student apply for SDET positions for example at a big firm, instead of User Experience Design etc. since he is having the same skill set? Or, in terms of monetarist paybacks, is there a difference between salaries of CS graduates and HCI graduates? I do not want to remain as an interaction designed submitting just on-paper designs of things. I do want to surface with more imaginative ideas. At the current stage, what\u2019s stopping me is that I am a little lesser than the technical knowhow as compared to a full time CS student since I put in the effort for all the CS prep myself (being a non-core CS student). I presently need to learn more about CS at a reputed place while pursuing these projects. So, is it really HCI that I should be going for or is there is some other contour that I haven\u2019t given a thought to? Please help me out. Thanks"}
{"_id": "109022", "title": "Tutoring students who are struggling with the basics in C++", "text": "I am tutoring a few students who are having significant trouble learning the basics of their first programming language: C++. I have known many excellent and bright students who have failed or dropped their first CS course. Everyone I am tutoring gives a similar account of his or her experience in class: the instructor moves along too quickly, nothing in the lectures make any sense, et al. Prior to this CS class, most of these struggling students had not expressed any interest in computers as anything more than word processors, web browsers, or some other form of entertainment. The computer is a blackbox that works, so why mess with it? My best guess is that they are having trouble connecting the abstractions of computer science with familiar concepts. That is to say, these student might know how to learn math, biology, or physics, but those techniques are not working when it come to programming. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice? The students I am helping do not deserve to fail this class. It is clear that the instructor is not taking into account the learning style of these students. That is to say, the instructor is failing not his students."}
{"_id": "76939", "title": "Why almost no webpages hash passwords in the client before submitting (and hashing them again on the server), as to \"protect\" against password reuse?", "text": "Relevant XKCD There are many sites on the Internet that require login information, and the only way to protect against password reusing is the \"promise\" that the passwords are hashed on the server, which is not always true. So I wonder, how hard is to make a webpage that hashes passwords in the client computer (with Javascript), before sending them to the server, where they would be re-hashed? In theory this doesn't give any extra security, but in practice this can be used to protect against \"rogue sites\" that don't hash your password in the server."}
{"_id": "181681", "title": "How to share common methods if objects have different roles?", "text": "If 2 classes have the following in common:   * part of how their state is represented (both have a linear container)   * multiple identical methods (identical code, not just signature) But are not substitutable, ie: they play different roles.   Then how do I avoid repeating those methods? The obvious solution would be inheritance, but I have read: \"inheritance is not for code reuse\". (Does this apply here?, Is this really a case of just code reuse?) I am deliberately not telling you which language, because I am hoping for a language agnostic answer. The methods are couple lines long, all of them modify the container, one of them transforms/extracts a sort of \"final result\" from the container. By roles I mean: substituting one for the other would be valid runnable code (in the places where only the common methods are used), but would result in logic/semantic error. By inheritance I meant that introducing a 3rd class as base/super with the common methods, but that would be virtual. So by substitution I meant substituting a \"sibling\" type and not a subtype."}
{"_id": "181687", "title": "Introducing polymorphism to new programmers", "text": "I've been teaching Java to a group of four people for about four months now. Prior to this, they've all had very limited or no other experience programming. We've gotten through basic control structures and their use and have been able to solve some of the simpler Project Eulers. Things similar to:               int count = 0;          for(int index = 0; index < 1000; index++)     {             if(index % 3 == 0 || index % 5 == 0)             {                     count += index;             }     }               System.out.println(count);      We've also gone over basic object-oriented things such as classes and their uses. However, we have not covered inheritance or polymorphism yet. I'd like to introduce inheritance and polymorphism together, but I'm not sure how to properly explain polymorphism to someone who's never seen nor heard of it before. To sum up my question in a few words, I am looking for an effective way to introduce polymorphism to new programmers."}
{"_id": "194822", "title": "When to separate a project in multiple subprojects", "text": "I'd like to know if it makes sense to divide the project I'm working on in two repositories instead of one. From what I can say:   * Frontend will be written in html+js   * Backend in .net   * The backend doesn't depend on frontend and the frontend doesn't depend on the backend   * The frontend will use a restful api implemented in the backend.   * The frontend could be hosted on any static http server. As of now, the repository has this structure: root:   * frontend/*   * backend/* I think it's a mistake to keep both project in the same repository. Since both project do not have dependencies between each others, they should belong in individual repositories and if needed a parent repository that has submodules. I've been told that it's pointless and that we won't get any benefit from doing that. Here are some of my arguments:   * We have two modules that don't depend between each others.    * Having source history of both projects in the long term may complicate things (try searching in the history for something in the frontend while you have half of the commits that are completely unrelated to the bug you're looking for)   * Conflict and merging (This shouldn't happen but having someone pushing to the backend will force other developer to pull backend changes to push frontend changes.)   * One developer might work only on the backend but will always have to pull the backend or the other way around.    * In the long run, when it will be time to deploy. In some way, the frontend could be deployed to multiple static server while having one backend server. In every case, people will be forced to either clone the whole backend with it or to make custom script to push to all servers the frontend only or to remove the backend. Easier to just push/pull only the frontend or backend than both if only one is needed.   * Counter argument (One person might work on both projects), Create a third repo with submodule and develop with it. History is kept seperated in individual modules and you can always create tags where version of backend/frontend do really work together in sync. Having both frontend/backend together in one repo doesn't mean that they will work together. It's just merging both history into one big repo.   * Having frontend/backend as submodules will make things easier if you want to add a freelancer to the project. In some case, you don't really want to give full access to the codebase. Having one big module will make things harder if you want to restrict what the \"outsiders\" can see/edit.   * Bug introduction and fixing bug, I inserted a new bug in the frontend. Then someone fix a bug in the backend. With one repository, rolling back before the new bug will also rollback the backend which could make it difficult to fix. I'd have to clone the backend in a different folder to have the backend working while fixing the bug in the frontend... then trying to remerge things up... Having two repository will be painless because moving the HEAD of one repo won't change the other. And testing against different version of backend will be painless.  Can someone give me more arguments to convince them or at least tell me why it is pointless (more complicated) to divide the project in two submodules. The project is new and the codebase is a couple of days old so it's not too soon to fix."}
{"_id": "194828", "title": "RESTful URI's, Creating a new noun/uri or add a queryparameter", "text": "I have a Person class with a one to many relationship to Employment. A Person in the CRM can have multiple Employments (historic data). My current REST URI for this class looks like this:               http://domain/persons GET [collection]     http://domain/persons/{id} GET [resource]     http://domain/persons/{id}/employments GET [collection]      To get the CURRENT active employment (so the employment where the endDate is NULL) should I create a URI or should this be done using a QueryParam? Basically should I do this:               http://domain/persons/{id}/employments/current GET [resource]      or               http://domain/persons/{id}/employments?current GET [collection with query param filter]      I'm thinking the second one (with the queryparam) because as far as I understand REST a resource should be identified with a non changable URI. Since the current employment position can change it should be done with a QueryParam. What are your suggestions?"}
{"_id": "194829", "title": "C quiz, puzzles obfuscated C", "text": "I believe that I am a good C programmer. I can solve beginner level Question in google's code jam. I did solve all of the programming examples in KN kings: C programming. Given a problem I can express a solution to it in C(probably not good, but still works with brute force most of the time). A couple of days ago I had registered for a C quiz. And took the quiz today. From the beginning till the end I was confused, feeling rejected and unhappy most of the time. I could not figure out what most of the question did. It was cryptic to me. For example I have used for loop almost 1000 times, but the for loops in that quiz were just cryptic and confusing. Most of the question looked like it had illegal syntax. After the test I felt dejected and posted this question. I wanna know that does solving cryptic code make you a good or a great programmer?. A simple solution to a straight forward question is better than a cryptic confusion right?. If I had done really well in the test what does it indicate? If I have performed average or bad what does that indicate?. Oh yes, I will get the paper of quiz on monday and i will update that monday evening around 7:30. (GMT +5:30). Thanks for your concern. By the way to hell with you people who have down voted for this post. You people cant wait for edits or dont have patience to at least listen to someone. I still think there is nothing wrong in this question and i wont delete it."}
{"_id": "252818", "title": "Distributing GPL licensed software that optionally links to non-GPL licensed libraries", "text": "I can find lots of information regarding the restrictions imposed on linking GPL licensed libraries from non-GPL licensed software. However, I'd like to do the opposite - I'd like to distribute some software under a GPLv3 license that has the option to dynamically link to a proprietary shared library. The proprietary library would not constitute an essential component of the functioning software, since there are other open source (BSD licensed) libraries that could be linked at runtime instead (specifically, I'm thinking about linking MKL BLAS versus ATLAS, OpenBLAS etc.). I found this relevant section in the GPL FAQ.   * Does this mean that I would need to explicitly grant an exception for every possible non-GPL licensed shared library the user might choose to link to at run-time?   * Would I need to write exceptions for libraries that are open source, but not GPL licensed (e.g. BSD)?   * If the library that is being linked to is not covered by an exception (i.e. if it is GPL or LGPL), what would be my obligation to distribute the source code for that library?"}
{"_id": "74579", "title": "How do I resolve a Title Dispute? Head Programmer/Developer and Consultant", "text": "I am working on a project (software) for an organization. Someone else from that organization asked If I could build something for the organization. I did so, for free in fact because I wanted to support this organization. Now heres the problem. This other person, has come back and asked me to polish up the titles/credits give to us in the about screen. But he want's to be called the lead Developer and call me lead Programmer. The thing is that, he has not contributed any code towards this application. Thing is, I feel that I developed/programmed/designed the entire thing. I did 100% of the actual product including design. His input was, can we have it have a specific color background (for design) or how soon \"we\" can incorporate another feature. Maybe I'm being one sided, but technical stuff wise, the other person has no \"developmental\" use. I'm still happy to have him, because he is my contact within the organization and he has brought some interest into the product but I don't know if the title is fitting. What do you think the best title/solution is here? Am I being narcissistic/worrying about things that don't matter? Let me be clearer 1. Dude asks me if I can make something 2. I say yes. I want to help the organization that he works for (the product is not for profit) 3. I build the thing with design and stuff 4. Initial launch. 5. He suggests some design changes, maybe a feature. 6. I change + add features 7. Pretty successful, generates interest in growing larger 8. And then, the tittle issue Would Lead Consultant be a nice way out of this?"}
{"_id": "74575", "title": "Avoiding problems when copying code", "text": "From time to time, I find myself copying a bit of code and modifying the copied version. I know very well that having two copies of the same code is a very bad idea, but those pieces of code are small and have significant differences. The problem is, when modifying the copy, I sometimes forget some piece of the original, that shouldn't be there. So for example I first write (C# code, but that's not important here):               if (DateFrom != null)         query = query.Where(x => x.Date >= DateFrom.Value);      then I copy-paste it and modify into the following:               if (DateTo != null)         query = query.Where(x => x.Date < DateFrom.Value);      which isn't correct, because there should be `DateTo` on the second line instead of `DateFrom`. What would you suggest to help avoiding this kind of bug?"}
{"_id": "131237", "title": "HTML 5 Double-Helix/DNA", "text": "What would be the most cross browser friendly (IE9, Chrome, FF, Safari, Opera) way to code an animated, interactive double-helix? HTML 5/JavaScript is fine. Flash or Java is not. I am unsure if canvas or svg or pure css should be considered as graphics aren't typically my thing. In fact, I really don't know where to start here, so I probably just need a nudge in the right direction. Any advice is appreciated!"}
{"_id": "131232", "title": "Do coding puzzles make good interview questions", "text": "I am interviewing candidates for Java programmer positions. My colleague insists in filling more than half of the interview with java coding puzzles.His view is that, if candidates are able to navigate through the loops, then they must be good. One such example of coding puzzle is                       i=0;             for( i=1 ; i< 10 ;i++)             {                     if(i%3 ==0) i++; break;                     if(i%2 ==0) i++;                   }               print(i);      Follow up: what happens if break is removed ?"}
{"_id": "131231", "title": "How to stop dwelling on problems rather than tasks?", "text": "I can't say I am a good programmer but I've been earning money for programming last decades. I've thought I was born for programming and people said I was very good at it - at some point. But after 10 years of programming, I feel my programming efficiency is not as good as others. Of course, CS education is way better now and many young programmers are smarter than me. But one of my problem is that when I am executing a task, I tend to dwell on specific problems I am facing with the task rather than focusing on completion of the task. I understand to keep thinking about it does not solve the problem. But I habitually do that and easily become exhausted. I hope I am not the only one feeling in this way. Did you feel the same feeling? If so, how did you get rid of this terrible habit?"}
{"_id": "124038", "title": "What's the best way to handle multiple simultaneous \"streams\" of development in version control?", "text": "My department is planning on working on our next several releases (spanning a year) simultaneously. The powers that be are advocating we support this by refactoring all affected code into classes like AbstractGizmo, R1Gizmo, R2Gizmo, etc and use configuration (via Spring and/or ANT) to control which classes are used in a particular release. Ostensibly this is to save us the work of merging changes into multiple branches, especially when the changes are in the common code. However, I see this as a clear cases for branching and merging in version control (TFS, in our case). However, I have very little experience on projects that have active streams of development like this. I'm sure others have (like Microsoft, with Windows XP, Vista, and 7). What's the best way to handle multiple simultaneous \"streams\" of development in version control? Do you branch and merge changes in version control, try to develop everything in one branch and use configuration or build scripts to assemble the different version, or something else? P.S. We use TFS right now, but our version control strategy may not be constrained by it. A coworker of mine is pushing to switch to Git or Mercurial, and it seems like he's getting a bit of traction."}
{"_id": "125783", "title": "What are the similarities between Perl and Java?", "text": "I have my mind set that I'm learning Java as my second language (I am a Perl developer). But just from reading a little of the online tutorials, I really can't find any similarities between the two. What will I have an easy time understanding when learning Java?"}
{"_id": "121200", "title": "FOSS Development: Who develops the OS-specific packages?", "text": "I have a couple of FOSS projects. They can be a bit of a pain to get running unless you've got dependencies in place already, which I figure is par for the course for FOSS projects. We know that each free operating system out there has its own package management systems. A few of them, such as homebrew on Mac OS or AUR on Arch linux are very friendly to community contributions. What I am wondering is, who exactly is expected to contribute packages? Primarily I am concerned with the case of small or developing projects, since it's pretty standard for the big projects to be put in there by the OS maintainers. From my perspective, it is something of a chicken-egg problem, because your software will not make its way into a package system if it does not have users, and it is less likely to gain users if it is not easy to install and use. For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the software in question is actually legitimately useful. I can see where people could create crapware or spam and that should obviously be kept out of any package system. So, in summary, whose job is this? Is it spammy for a FOSS software dev to put his own work into various OS package repositories?"}
{"_id": "125784", "title": "Exposing warnings\\errors from data objects (that are also list returned)", "text": "I'm exposing Data objects via service oriented assembly (which on future usages might become a WCF service). The data object is tree designed, as well as formed from allot of properties.Moreover, some services return one objects, others retrieve a list of them (thus disables throwing exceptions). I now want to expose data flow warnings and wondering what's the best way to do it having to things to consider: (1) separation (2) ease of access. On the one hand, I want the UI team to be able to access a fields warnings (or errors) without having them mapping the field names to an external source but on the other hand, I don't want the warnings \"hanged\" on the object itself (as I don't see it a correct design). I thought of creating a new type of wrapper for each field, that will expose events and they'll have to register the one's they care about (but totally not sure) I'll be happy to hear your thoughts. Could you please direct me to a respectful design pattern? what pattern will do best here?"}
{"_id": "125789", "title": "How to go about \"taking over\" an open-source project?", "text": "There's an open-source project that I'm interested in and use regularly. It's licensed under the Apache License 2.0 and it has basically no activity any more. It's hosted on Google Code and I'm interested in continuing it's development. I'm new to the open-source process and I'm trying to figure out the appropriate way to go about this. Can I just check it out and push it to github so I can continue it's development in the open there? Should I contact the project \"owner\" first? Also, do I leave all the author information at the top of the classes, etc even though I'm going to be making changes..(I'm assuming the answer is yes)? Also, how do I practically adhere to the license requirement of \"all modifications are clearly marked as being the work of the modifier\"? Do I place a comment by every change I make? Any guidance on what's the normal course/standard here would be greatly appreciated?"}
{"_id": "231237", "title": "Should a class validate argument using external method/service with unit testing?", "text": "I have a class that runs as a service and returns html code of a website when supplied with a URL. The code:               public interface IHtmlDownloader     {         IWebProxy Proxy { get; set; }         string UserAgent { get; set; }              string GetHtml(string url)     }          public class HtmlDownloader : IHtmlDownloader     {         WebClient _client;              public IWebProxy Proxy         {             get { return _client.Proxy; }             set { _client.Proxy = value; }         }              public string UserAgent         {             get             { return _client.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.UserAgent].ToString(); }             set             { _client.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.UserAgent] = value; }         }              public HtmlDownloder()         {             _client = new WebClient();         }              public string GetHtml(string url)         {             this.CheckValidity(url);                  var htmlOfWebsite = _client.DownloadString(url);                  return htmlOfWebsite;         }     }      Now I am not sure how exactly I should validate the URL. I know that it should not be null or whitespace or anything else, but should I validate that it is indeed a properly built URL? Doing so would result in a method which would perform the validation. I could simply create a public static method inside `HtmlDownloader` so that the caller can validate the URL, or maybe even not a static one (`GetUrl(string url)` is after all called after the object has been instantiated), but it would be wrong for at least two reasons:   1. It would be a validator applicable in so many places, and it should be available to other classes.   2. I can't contract a static method with an interface. Furthermore, it shouldn't be made static, but rather a service, so I could unit test `HtmlDownloader` (service would be injected through the constructor). All of those ideas are quite dreadful and I am starting to think, that I shouldn't validate anything, but simply create a `try/catch` block that would catch the proper exception and then throw a UrlNotFoundException with the original exception supplied through InnerException. Still, it would be nice to check for the validity of the URL. But to whom and how? Should the caller be injected with the proper service? But then, what if the URL is generated higher than the caller and the caller simply passes it on to the HtmlDownloader? Where should I validate the URL? Or is the simple fact that the URL have to passed through a few levels a code smell?"}
{"_id": "173469", "title": "Which numeral systems are useful in computer science?", "text": "I am wondering which numeral system different programmers are using, or would use if their language has support for them. As an example, in C++ we can use:   * Octal by prefixing with 0 (e.g. `0377`)   * Decimal by default (e.g. `255`)   * Hexadecimal by prefixing with 0x (e.g. `0xff`) When working with bitmask, I am using hexadecimal but would sometimes want to be able to express binary numbers directly. I know some programming language support it with 0b syntax (e.g. `0b11111111`). Is there any other numeric system useful in some computer science domain (e.g. cryptography, codecs, 3D graphics, etc)?"}
{"_id": "250251", "title": "Python Compare Values from 2 Columns from two separate CSV files", "text": "I am using Python. I have two columns(in separate CSVs) that contain an ID tag. Ideally, I would like to add on columns of information from one CSV to the other whenever the ID tag matches. For the most part, the tags are hand and hand, however, there might be times where one ID tag is missing, and if that happens, I would like it to just continue through. Here is an example of the data: From 1: ID   1   2   3   4   5 From 2: ID VariableX Variable Y missing......................................                     2     X1          Y1      missing........................................ 4 x4 y4                     5     x5          y5      I would like to take the values from variable x and y and add those columns onto the first file (with only the ids) whenever the IDs match from each file. Another thing to note, these IDs will show up from time to time again periodically (maybe every 3-400 times). If anybody could help with this topic, I would really appreciate it! Thank you!"}
{"_id": "231238", "title": "implementing dynamic query handler on historical data", "text": "**EDIT :** _Refined question to focus on the core issue_ Context: I have historical data about property (house) sales collected from various sources in a centralized/cloud data source (assume info collection is handled by a third party) Planning to develop an application to query and retrieve data from this centralized data source Example Queries: **Simple** : for given XYZ post code, what is average house price for 3 bed room house? **Complex** : What is estimated price for an house at \"DD,Some Street,XYZ Post Code\" (worked out from average values of historic data filtered by various characteristics of the house: house post code, no of bed rooms, total area, and other deeper insights like house building type, year of built, features)? In addition to average price, the application should support other property info ** maximum, or minimum price..etc and trend (graph) on a selected property attribute over a period of time**. Hence, the queries should not enforce the search based on a primary key or few fixed fields In other words, queries can be What is the change in 3 Bed Room house price (irrespective of location) over last 30 days? What kind of properties we can get for X price (irrespective of location or house type) The challenge I have is identifying the domain (BI/ Data Analytical or DB Design or DB Query Interface or DW related or something else) this problem (dynamic query on historic data) belong to, so that I can do further exploration **My findings so far** I could be wrong on the following, so please correct me if you think so I briefly read about BI/Data Analytics - I think it is heavy weight solution for my problem and has scalability issues. DB Design - As I understand RDBMS works well if you know Data model at design time. I am expecting attributes about property or other entity (user) that am going to bring in, would evolve quickly. hence maintenance would be an issue. As I am going to have multiple users executing query at same time, performance would be a bottleneck Other options like Graph DB (http://www.tinkerpop.com/) seems to be bit complex (they are good. but using those tools meant for generic purpose, make me think like assembly programming to solve my problem ) BigData related solution are to analyse data from multiple unrelated domains So, Any suggestion on the space this problem fit in ? (Especially if you have design/implementation experience of back-end for property listing or similar portals)"}
{"_id": "182242", "title": "Loop invariant vs Assertions", "text": "I have an exam on Programming Concepts this Saturday and I am struggling to find some information to understand some concepts better. What is the difference between loop invariant and assertion? To me they look the same. Also, what exactly is `while` loop invariance theorem? Not sure whether it is me or it is ridiculously hard to find any specific information about algorithms and pseudocode online."}
{"_id": "124783", "title": "Why is Python recommended as an entry level programming language?", "text": "I've read here on P.SE more questions in which beginner programmers are advised to pick Python as their first programming language. Don't get me wrong, I like Python. I like it a lot! But its philosophy revolves around \"We are all consenting adults here\". From an experience/knowledge point of view, a beginner programmer is not an adult. Which then kinda means it is easier to shoot yourself in the foot and pick up some bad habits even if you survive the wound. I'm thinking that in a \"more static\" language it would be harder to shoot yourself in the foot as it will be more restrictive. Back to my question. Why is Python recommended as an entry level programming language? What are the points that make it good for teaching a programming language. Or... is it personal preference of the adviser?"}
{"_id": "139382", "title": "In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?", "text": "XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it\u2019s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely _new_ syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? **If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL?** Since it\u2019s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I\u2019ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML _might_ be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it\u2019s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, _much_ less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it\u2019s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built \"on top\" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use _completely different syntax_ than if you set the _exact same thing_ as a content property. It\u2019s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the _syntax_ is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it\u2019s the framework\u2019s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the \"needs learning\" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can\u2019t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses **XAML** and **WPF** , but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff."}
{"_id": "85559", "title": "What are the downsides of RoR?", "text": "I'm currently trying to decide what server-side language to learn and use for web development, and while it's relatively easy to get information on why x, y, or z is a good thing, it's harder to figure out the downsides to each of them. In particular, I'm curious about what drawbacks there are to learning and/or using Ruby on Rails as opposed to any other given language/framework."}
{"_id": "85556", "title": "Good Programming Competitions for Highschool Students", "text": "What are good programming competitions (or web design competitions) available for highschool students in the Northeast (I am looking for a pretty long/comprehensive list)- of the USA? The competitions must either allow you to chose what language to use or must be in PHP or C. They can either be single coder or group coding competitions. Thanks you to anyone who can help me out."}
{"_id": "128003", "title": "Are tree structures inherently bad for mark-and-sweep garbage collector performance?", "text": "I'm implementing a bounding volume hierarchy in F#. Since it would be for a game, I want the garbage collector to be as quick and infrequent as possible. It seems though that I may have to pull some whacky tricks, probably pre- allocating everything. That means that I can't have many things immutable, and that I have to know up front how large my tree will be -- a major annoyance. I'll probably end up biting the bullet and doing just that (or maybe just go back to C++), but for the record, are trees inherently bad for GC performance? They would seem to be, considering the mark stage would have to traverse a lot of nodes."}
{"_id": "128002", "title": "How to master C++?", "text": "I am a grade 11 student and have Computer Science... I just love the subject.. We are doing C++ ... I have loadsss of interest in this subject ... I am kind of able to do the programs but would like to master C++ before college itself... It would be kind enough if someone can tell me some sites where there are source codes of some good programs (specially library systems)...Also, can anyone recommend any books! Moreover, to have a profession as a C++ programmer, what is required? I mean what type of courses in college should I apply to? Do I need to do Computer Engineering for this?"}
{"_id": "75623", "title": "BIG O - Algorithm Case Analysis", "text": "Why is big O most commonly associated with worst and average case complexties of a function"}
{"_id": "38465", "title": "What equipment do you use to avoid wrist pain?", "text": "I've recently been trying to improve the ergonomics of my workspace, and as a part of that I'm looking into how I can improve the hardware I use. Do you use a standard keyboard, a shaped one, or a split one? Mouse or trackball? Are there any other accessories you can't live without?"}
{"_id": "141795", "title": "Is the 'C' in MVC really necessary?", "text": "I understand the role of the model and view in the Model-View-Controller pattern, but I have a hard time understanding why a controller is necessary. Let's assume we're creating a chess program using an MVC approach; the game state should be the model, and the GUI should be the view. What exactly is the controller in this case? Is it just a separate class that has all the functions that will be called when you, say, click on a tile? Why not just perform all the logic on the model in the view itself?"}
{"_id": "38463", "title": "Is the agile approach compatible with having contractors on staff?", "text": "On the one hand, the agile approach stresses a tight-knit team that holds each other accountable and accepts collective ownership of the project. On the other hand, companies use contract programmers so that they can manage the peaks and valleys of funding without laying off actual employees. If there is a shortfall in funding, the contractors are the first to go, even if they are fully integrated members of the team (and there are employees are not). Companies also only like to keep contractors around for a limited amount of time. This is somewhat mitigated by the possibility that some contractors could be brought on as regular employees. Thus my question of whether there is a fundamental contradiction of having an agile team with a mix of employees and contractors, and the vastly different statuses that entails? * * * EDIT: The answers are indicating that I may not have expressed the tension I'm facing well, so let me take another shot. I'm a permanent employee. The agile approach (at least as implemented here) encourages me to see all team members, both permanent employees and contractors, as equal members of a cohesive team. The corporate approach to contractors encourages me to see them as expendable resources to whom we shouldn't become overly attached. I'm curious how others have resolved this tension."}
{"_id": "70059", "title": "VB6 to .Net 4.0 Conversion 3rd party tools", "text": "Since Visual Studio 2010 does not come with a VB6 conversion tool, the boss wants to use a 3rd party tool (i.e VBUC) that Microsoft is suggesting. Has anyone used one of these 3rd party tools/services? If so, have you found them to be worth the money?"}
{"_id": "204504", "title": "How to interest my 8 yo child about programming?", "text": "I tried to make him interested, but he got bored very quickly and got back to his iPad games. I want to try again. Any idea how to approach this?"}
{"_id": "228216", "title": "What is the historical reason why Python uses the double underscore for Class Private members", "text": "In python a module private function or variable is named `_foo`. If it is private to a class it is names `__foo`, The mechanics behind how these work are different, however that is of little relevance to the question. Why, during the design of the Python language was the double underscore characters chosen for class private members? Why not single underscore, like for module private? Why not some other character that is more visible? (Differentiating between _ and __ is hard). I'm sure there is some history here, but I'm having trouble finding it, because all I find are tutorials telling me what it means, rather than why it is that way."}
{"_id": "95209", "title": "Where should you be at with 5 years experience?", "text": "**Backround:** I am currently a Junior in college working towards a degree in MIS. I've been interning with a compnay for a 3 summers and a winter break in there. With only 11 months to go before I start marketing myself to potential employers I've decided to teach myself as much as possible about languages and platforms that are currently in high demand. My school offers job placement, but I've heard stories where it doesn't work out so well for applicants. Its this reason I've started doing searches for jobs online - Dice, Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. It seems that the only jobs I can find reequire at least up to 5 years experience. I also know not every requirement needs to be exact. **Situation:** Although I've not been in the field for 5 years, I would like to assure employers that I'd be able to keep up with someone who was. Experience is critical to self-development but I need somewhere to gain that experience. If you were an employer looking for someone with 5+ years experience, what would you expect them to know? How can you tell a 2 year from a 5 year besides a resume? I know this question is very general and it could apply to many different levels. I'm mainly concerned with programming languages such as C#, Java, etc. I won't be an expert on either but I want to know what I can at least set as a goal? **EDIT** : I found this website that explains the progression of skills that I though gave me an idea of where I stand. I know it doesn't specify years like I asked but it was helpful nonetheless."}
{"_id": "237175", "title": "Implementing a basic interpreter - should I learn regular expressions?", "text": "For fun and for practice, I'm thinking of maybe implementing a very basic programming language to run on a simple interpreter written in Java. My question is this: **Is it a 'must' to know regular expressions when designing an interpreter, for parsing the text?** Should I learn this topic before starting to implement the interpreter? Or is it enough to just run through the text, break down into strings, etc, i.e. do 'basic parsing' without regular expressions?"}
{"_id": "138385", "title": "What is the differences between committing and patching?", "text": "I am quite new to source control and would like to know the differences between committing and patching? Also, how/when a patch is use and can it be used on a web application?"}
{"_id": "116860", "title": "Has anyone ever claimed a warranty on an SSL certificate?", "text": "SSL certificates often advertise varying amounts of warranties or guarantees, for example $500,000 or $1m. My question is, in the history of SSL, has anyone ever actually successfully claimed one of these warranties? Has there ever been a case? If not, is it fair to assume they are just marketing gimmicks?"}
{"_id": "175106", "title": "Why is it said that V-model introduces QA?", "text": "In several articles and books I learnt that \"V-model introduced QA into SW development\". I would like to understand the point of such statement, as from my understanding, V model activities (verification and validation) cannot be considered as QA as both deal directly with product control, no matter if it's static (verification) or dynamic (validation). I would agree that testing (say V&V) is a tool used by QA to measure the quality, but how does it assure it? Examples in Google Books:   _\"Real-Time Systems Design and Analysis: Tools for the Practitioner\"._ \" **..these QA activities form the heart of the V model...** \"   or   _Iterative Software Engineering for Multiagent Systems: The MASSIVE..:_ **the V-Model adds explicit quality assurance mechanisms to the Waterfall model: verification is concerned...**"}
{"_id": "221305", "title": "Graph traversal and filtering in indoor navigation and path finding", "text": "Which of the following options take less processing time/is less expensive in a graph traversal algorithm for a (indoor)navigation system? a) To produce all possible paths between start and destination points (nodes on the graph) then applying a filtering mechanism to match the navigation user's capabilities and preferences (such as finding all the paths on the graph and then exclude stairways for wheelchair users), or b) As soon as the user's profile is available to the system, filter the graph and exclude the paths which are non-traversable for this user and then run a shortest path algorithm?"}
{"_id": "36052", "title": "If the bug is 5+ years old, then is it a feature?", "text": "Allow me to add details: I work at an institutional place with many coders, testers, QA analysts, product owners, etc. and here is something that bugs me: We have been able to sell crappy (albeit pretty functional) software for over a decade. It has many features and the product is competitive, but there are a some serious bugs out there, as well as thousands of \"paper cuts\" - little annoyances that clients need to get used to. It pains me to look at some of the things because I firmly believe that if computers do not help to make our lives easier, then we should not use them. I have confidence in my colleagues - they are smart, able, and can improve things when the focus is on doing that. But, it can be difficult to file bugs against some old functionality without seeing them closed or forgotten. \"It worked like that for eons\" is a typical answer. Also, when QA does regression, they tend to look for anything that is different as much as anything that does not seem right. So, a fix to an old problem can be written up as a bug, because \"it has been like that before even my time\". The young coder in me thinks: rewrite this freaking thing! As someone who had the opportunity to be close to sales, clients, I want to give a benefit of a doubt to this approach. I am interested in your opinion/experience as well. Please try to consider risk, cost-to-benefit, and other non-technical factors."}
{"_id": "36056", "title": "How to obtain GPS Coordinates for local businesses?", "text": "Is anybody aware of a database that consists of businesses, addresses and GPS location information, preferably searchable by city at a minimum? I have an application in mind that I'd like to develop and would like to know if someone is doing this for free or cheap in possibly a web service or similar open format."}
{"_id": "18669", "title": "Is there a viable alternative to the agile development methodology?", "text": "The two predominant software-development methodologies are waterfall and agile. When discussing these two, there is often much focus on the particular practices that distinguish them (pair programming, TDD, etc. vs. functional spec, big up-front design, etc.) But the real differences are far deeper, in that these practices come from a philosophy. Waterfall says: _Change is costly, so it should be minimized._   Agile says: _Change is inevitable, so make change cheap._ My question is, regardless of what you think of TDD or functional specs, is the waterfall development methodology really viable? Does anyone really think that minimizing change in software is a viable option for those that desire to deliver valuable software? Or is the question really about what sort of practices work best in our situations to manage the inevitable change?"}
{"_id": "71013", "title": "Which mobile development platform is easiest to develop?", "text": "From your experience in developing mobile apps, which mobile development platform is easiest to develop? iOS, Android or WinPhone 7? And why would do you think it is the easiest? If you can order it from easiest to most difficult it is even better."}
{"_id": "18666", "title": "how do I form a team which is remote?", "text": "I've got a bit of a challenge. While I'm not \"in charge\" I'm certainly lead developer on a project and my team will be scattered to high heaven. I've got someone who works on Fridays only, and probably 2 people who will be 3-4 hours away in another state. (One of the lovely side effects of partnering with multiple universities). Anyway, how can I get them all on the same \"team\"?? I've read a bunch of Joel Spolsky's stuff, but I can't create the same kind of environment that he uses. This is also the first project I'll be lead on, so it's kindof make-or-break. Specifically I'm looking for managing styles (personality), process models, project management (scrum?), video conferencing tools, and the like. I just don't have any resources for this kind of thing, and I'm afraid I'm going to be stuck doing too much work. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "18667", "title": "Reasons for looking to change a job - What do you give", "text": "What reasons do you usually give when you are looking for a change to your prospective employer/recruitment consultants?   1. I need a change, which is basically this question but here, I am asking it more specifically as a response to the recruitment consultants.    2. I am interested in working in .NET 4.0 but my current organization is still stuck on VB6.0   3. I am working in the Telecom sector and I want to move to the Financial Sector.   4. ... The above are more or less responses that either some of my friends (including me) have given or we have heard. What would you classify as a **definite NO NO** reason? More importantly, what would you classify as an acceptable reason?"}
{"_id": "246070", "title": "Why is the finalize method included in Java?", "text": "According to this post, we should never rely on the finalize method to be called. So why did Java include it in the programming language at all? It seems like a terrible decision to include in any programming language a function that _might_ get called."}
{"_id": "246077", "title": "How to execute batch jobs via webservices or rest api", "text": "I have an AppHarbor site where I need to do weekly updates to some of the data. I don't want to go the route of deploying an exe and adding an additional \"webworker\" to my site because those cost money. My thought is to add a web service/REST api service to the site so I can just call it, it will execute the \"batch job stuff\", then when it's complete, return a custom status code, like success or failure. Behind the scenes, it would update a \"BatchLog\" table or something like that, then I could create a page/view where I could access the log details and see which batch processes did or did not run. So, that's how I'm thinking I want to implement, but I'm a little skeptical of the security around this. First of all, obviously I don't want ANYONE to be able to kick off these batch jobs just by going to my web service/rest api. To fix that, I'm thinking there are 2 different ways to do this, or a combination of both. 1) Require some credentials and maybe an additional secret code in order to get them to actually kick off. 2) Configure in a table when each batch job can actually run, and the frequency. That way, if a hacker does call my service/rest api. It will only be able to execute 1 time per hour/day/week/month/etc. So they could hammer the service, but each successive call would just return a failure, or something like that. One thing to note, I read someplace a couple months ago that there are cloud services out there that will \"schedule\" batch jobs like this for you. And the free one that I read about will do 1 service. Any more than 1 and you have to start paying for it. So for my example, I'd just create one service, and have it called multiple times per day/week, and let my BatchJob configuration table determine whether it actually needs to process or not. So, how horrible of an idea is this? What are some other approaches to accomplishing batch jobs in a cloud environment where they don't offer batch services."}
{"_id": "45901", "title": "Issue Management", "text": "I know this isn't about `programming` but i should learn \"`Issue Management`\" What is `Issue Management`? I read Wikipedi page but i don't understand very well. Can you tell me `Issue Management` and if there is some product for this subject?"}
{"_id": "246079", "title": "Is Akka a good solution for a concurrent pipeline/workflow problem?", "text": "**Disclaimer:** I am brand new to Akka and the concept of Actors/Event-Driven Architectures in general. I have to implement a fairly complex problem where users can configure a \"concurrent pipeline\":               Pipeline: consists of 1+ Stages; all Stages execute sequentially         Stage: consists of 1+ Tasks; all Tasks execute in parallel             Task: essentially a Java Runnable      As you can see above, a `Task` is a `Runnable` that does some unit of work. Tasks are organized into `Stages`, which execute their `Tasks` in parallel. `Stages` are organized into the `Pipeline`, which executes its `Stages` _sequentially_. Hence if a user specifies the following Pipeline:               CrossTheRoadSafelyPipeline         Stage 1: Look Left             Task 1: Turn your head to the left and look for cars             Task 2: Listen for cars         Stage 2: Look right             Task 1: Turn your head to the right and look for cars             Task 2: Listen for cars      Then, Stage 1 will execute, and _then_ Stage 2 will execute. However, while each Stage is executing, it's individual `Tasks` are executing in parallel/at the same time. In reality Pipelines will become very complicated, and with hundreds of Stages, dozens of Tasks per Stage (again, executing at the same time). To implement this Pipeline I can only think of several solutions:   1. **ESB/Apache Camel**   2. **Guava Event Bus**   3. **Java 5 Concurrency**   4. **Actors/Akka** Camel doesn't seem right because its core competency is _integration_ not synchrony and orchestration across worker threads. Guava is great, but this doesn't really _feel_ like a subscriber/publisher-type of problem. And Java 5 Concurrency (`ExecutorService`, etc.) just feels too low-level and painful. So I ask: is Akka a strong candidate for this type of problem? If so, how? If not, then why, and what is a good candidate?"}
{"_id": "252243", "title": "Naming convention: Final fields (not static)", "text": "Today I had a discussion with a co-worker about the naming of `final` fields in Java classes. In his opionion `final` fields should also be considered constants since their values won't change after the creation of the instance. This would lead to the following naming convention for `final` fields:               public class Foo {         private static final String BLA_BLA = \"bla\";              private final String BAR_BATZ;              ...     }      In my opinion only `static final` fields should be considered constants while fields which are only `final` should follow the usual camelCase naming convention.               public class Foo {         private static final String BLA = \"bla\";              private final String barBatz;              ...     }      Now I'm a bit uncertain since he is a far more experienced programmer than I am and I usually agree with his opinions and consider him a very good developer. Any input on this?"}
{"_id": "210619", "title": "Best practices when dealing with lots of empty table columns?", "text": "I have a schema that allows for multiple post types in my Django project (kinda like Tumblr). Users can make Posts of different types. One of those types is a photo, which I'll want the EXIF data for. If I have a super generalized table, does it make sense to create additional columns for the exif data? This would result in a ton of empty columns for every post type that isn't Photo. Alternatively, would it make sense to create a separate model for photos completely and create a foreign key to the Posts model instead?"}
{"_id": "87024", "title": "TDD, new tests while old ones not implemented yet", "text": "I am experimenting with test-driven development, and I found that I often come to a following situation:   1. I write tests for some functionality X. Those tests fail.   2. While trying to implement X, I see that I need to implement some feature Y in a lower layer of my code. So...   3. I write tests for Y. Now both tests for X and Y fail. Once I had 4 features in different layers of code being worked on at the same time, and I was losing my focus on what I am actually doing (too many tests failing at the same time). I think I could solve this by putting more effort into planning my tasks even before I start writing tests. But in some cases I didn't know that I will need to go deeper, because e.g. I didn't know the API of lower layer very well. What should I do in such cases? Does TDD have any recommendations?"}
{"_id": "44058", "title": "F# open source project hosting using SVN", "text": "I'm looking to choose open source project hosting site for an F# project using SVN. CodePlex is where the .NET community in general and most F# projects are hosted, but I'm worried TFS + SvnBridge is going to give me headaches. So I'm looking elsewhere and seeking advice here. Or if you think CodePlex is still the best choice in my scenario, I'd like to hear that too. So far, Google Code is looking appealing to me. They have a clean interface and true SVN hosting. But there are close to no F# projects currently hosted (it's not even in their search by programming language list), so I'm wondering if there are any notable downsides besides the lack of community I might encounter. If there is yet another option, I'd like to hear that too. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "212192", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of cryptographically signing commits and tags in Git?", "text": "So someone peer reviewed my work, and he told me that I should always sign my commits and tags cryptographically. When asked why, he didn't know to explain it to me, and said \"It's just a good thing to do\". Trying to avoid an obvious chimpanzee scenario, why should I really? Are there really so many distinct advantages and no disadvantages? **What are the practical reasons which would make me want to sign every commit and tag I make?**"}
{"_id": "47882", "title": "Database GUI Programming - .Net vs MS Access", "text": "MS Access gets pooped on a lot because A) many newbies use it B) people use it as a database backend which is not a good idea. I'd like to see some reasonable discussion on why you might choose VB.Net over MS Access or vice versa for programming a Database GUI (forms and reports) to be used with MS SQL Server."}
{"_id": "12992", "title": "Is there a cheaper non-express non-student, non-msdn version of Visual Studio 2010 that supports plugins in the US than the $710 Professional Edition?", "text": "I've never actually purchased a copy of Visual Studio myself. SharpDevelop and Express edition have always been good enough for my personal use, and my employers always furnished me with the IDEs I needed to serve them. However, I'm thinking of actually paying for a copy for my personal laptop. I need this mainly so I can open solutions that contain web projects. So my question is: Is there an edition cheaper than the $710 Pro edition on Amazon that will do what I need: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-C5E-00521-Visual-Studio- Professional/dp/B0038KTO8S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287456230&sr=8-2 ? What I need is defined as:   1. Open up a solution with C#, Web App, VB.NET, and Web Projects.   2. Install addins like resharper, testdriven.net, etc, SCM plugins, etc.   3. Some level of db project support. At least to be able to open a dbproj. I only need that for SCM hooks. SSMS and SQLCMD are good enough for actually editing databases.   4. Ability to install F#, IronPython, IronRuby etc. Now naturally I'm a fairly intelligent resourceful person so I realize I can get Visual Studio in a questionable manner. Thats not what I'm looking to do. I want a legal copy, I don't want a student copy, or an MSDN copy. I want a real copy, I just want to make sure I get the cheapest edition that serves my needs."}
{"_id": "41739", "title": "Best arguments for/against introducing ORM technology into a companies dev process", "text": "I have started using ORM technology in the last few years. My first exposure was NHibernate. I then moved onto Linq 2 Sql, and Entity Framework. The issue I have however is, there are some organisations where I have found strong opposition to introducing ORM tools. They usually have a number of reasons:   * they have a lot of built up SQL skills in the team, and are worried about the underlying SQL that ORM's generate.   * they have DBA's who like to be able to see the SQL an app uses in order that can review it for best practice.   * they are worried about performance (some people have \"heard\" the ORM's aren't as performant but have no real proof themselves - there may well be some truth in this! :). So, I'm looking for the best or most convincing arguments that you have put forward FOR the use of ORM tools. Equally, I would be interested in the against arguments too. Note: this is NOT a discussion over which ORM I should use."}
{"_id": "12996", "title": "Should I go with PHP.NET and Resharper or PHPStorm", "text": "I am a fairly adept .NET and PHP programmer. These days my pattern of choice for complex web apps is an SOA approach where I use PHP as the front end, and WCF web services as the middle tier. My ajax calls are usually to JSON webHttpBinding WCF endpoints. On the .NET side of things I am absolutely in love with the Visual Studio plugin ReSharper. So my question is as follows, I want to rethink my tool chain on the PHP side of things. On one side JetBrains, the makers of Resharper, have a PHP IDE called PHPStorm. On the other side, I can use VS.PHP and ReSharper. Does anyone use the later combination fo VS.PGP and Resharper? Can you recommend it?"}
{"_id": "213825", "title": "Algorithm to infer tag hierarchy", "text": "I'm looking for an algorithm to infer a hierarchy from a set of tagged items. E.g. if the following items have the tags:               1 a     2 a,b     3 a,c     4 a,c,e     5 a,b     6 a,c     7 d     8 d,f      Then I can construct an undirected graph (or graphs) by tallying the node weights and edge weights:                node weights  edge weights           a 6           a-b 2      b 2           a-c 3      c 3           c-e 1      d 2           a-e 1  <-- this edge is parallel to a-c and c-e and not wanted      e 1           d-f 1      f 1      The first problem is how to drop any redundant edges to get to the simplified graph? Note that it's only appropriate to remove that redundant a-e edge in this case because something is tagged as a-c-e, if that wasn't the case and the tag was a-e, that edge would have to remain. I suspect that means the removal of edges can only happen during the construction of the graph, not after everything has been tallied up. What I'd then like to do is identify the direction of the edges to create a directed graph (or graphs) and pick out root nodes to hopefully create a tree (or trees):                trees                       a        d        // \\\\      |       b     c     f              \\                    e           It seems like it could be a string algorithm - longest common subsequences/prefixes - or a tree/graph algorithm, but I am a little stuck since I don't know the correct terminology to search for it."}
{"_id": "213828", "title": "Best Practices PHP mvc routing", "text": "I have a custom MVC framework that is in a constant state of evolution. There's a long standing debate with a co-worker how the routing should work. Considering the following directory structure:               /core/Router.php     /mvc/Controllers/{Public controllers}     /mvc/Controllers/Private/{Controllers requiring valid user}     /mvc/Controllers/CMS/{Controllers requiring valid user and specific roles}      The question is: \"Where should the current User's authentication be established: in the Router, when choosing which controller/directory to load, or in each Controller?\" My argument is that when authenticating in the Router, an Error Controller is created instead of the requested Controller, informing you of your mishap; And the directory structure clearly indicates the authentication required. His argument is that a router should do routing and only routing. Leave it to the Controller to handle it on a case by case basis. This is more modular and allows more flexibility should changes need to be made by the router. PHP MVC - Custom Routing Mechanism alluded to it, but the topic was of a different nature. Alternative suggestions would be welcomed as well."}
{"_id": "41732", "title": "Tips for developing with a remote team?", "text": "My company has corporate offices around the country and I have been hired under contract to work in one office while the rest of my team works in another. We are in the same time zone, but definitely remote. I have not met the team yet, but will be flying up there soon. What is your best advice for integrating and developing with this team? What are the most important priorities? Standard versioning control, e-mail, phone, conference call and IM are all available resources, however Google apps, Skype and the like are not for security reasons."}
{"_id": "247038", "title": "Testing gap between unit and integration: Integration in the Small, Component, Unit Integration Tests", "text": "Over the past few weeks I've been mulling and researching how to fill a gap in our testing methodology. In simplified terms unit tests are too small and traditional integration tests are too big. A frequent scenario comes up where `A` and `B` both use component `C`. However `A` and `B` have slightly different requirements for, and make slightly different assumptions about `C`. If I'm the developer of `A` how and where do I test my assumptions about `C`? Obviously unit testing `A` with mocked assumptions about `C` is fine for testing `A` in isolation, but it doesn't test the assumptions themselves. Another possibility is to add unit tests for `C`. However this isn't ideal because, while `A` is in development, altering the tests for `C` with evolving assumptions from `A` will excessively be clumsy. Indeed `A`s developer might not even have adequate access to the unit tests of `C` (e.g an external library). To frame this with a more concrete example: Assume that this is a node application. `A`, and `B` depend on `C` to read a file (among other things) and store the file contents in object passed to `C`. At first all files that `C` handles are small and can be read synchronously without significant blocking. However the developer of `B` realizes that his files are getting huge and needs to switch `C` to a async read. This results in a sporadic synchronization bug in `A`, which is still assuming `C` is reading files synchronously. This is the type of bug that is notoriously difficult to track down from full integration tests, and may not be caught in integration tests at all. It is also not caught by `A`s unit tests because the `A`s assumptions are mocked. However it could easily be caught by a \"mini\" integration test that exercises just `A` and `C`. I've only found a few references to this type of testing. Integration in the Small, Component Integration Testing, Unit Integration Testing. It also relates somewhat to BDD testing direction rather than formal TDD unit testing. How do I fill this testing gap? Specifically -- where do I put such tests? How do I mock the inputs of `A` and `C` for \"mini\" integration tests? And how much effort should be put into separating testing concerns between these tests and unit tests? Or is there a better way to fill the testing gap?"}
{"_id": "218767", "title": "Storing object-graphs with class-evolution in Java with transformation (long time archiving)", "text": "## Abstract A common problem is to store objects (with graph), and to load them back. This is easy as long the stored object representation matches the executing code. But as time goes by, requirements change and stored objects do not match any longer the code. The stored objects should not loose their data, and the code in the clients should work with the latest object-models. So a transformation has to occur somehow between loading the data and returning a object to the client. I know that there exist some libraries such as XStream, gson, protobuf and avro. They could load older objects, but afaik just ignore data that does not match any longer the fields in the class (maybe I missed something).   (When I'm talking about storing and serialization I do not mean Java's built in serialization mechanism.) ## Question So what is the question? I'm now researching for some time, and there seems no library that adresses this issue (class evolution) without data-loss. I hope to find another working solution or idea how to implement it by myself here. I have some requirements:   * File-based - I want to be able to store the serialized object on disk   * Appendable - I want to append multiple objects to one file without loading the whole file in memory again and again   * Support for multiple versions in one file - A file could contain objects with different version (only of the same type)   * Transformation - Data should be accessible by using the same type, even when changed in between.   * Generic - The mechanism itself has to be generic, so I could use it for different objects (different objects do not get mixed in one file, only different versions of one type). It would be nice if the storing format is human-readable. Already stored objects are not updateable (at least not without huge effort). Think of an long-term archive. ## Example I could give an example for better illustration. Let's suppose we have two Pojos that we want to serialize.               public class MyPojo {         String text;         Long number;         Integer[] values;         SubPojo pojo;     }          public class SubPojo {         List<String> items;     }      In the next version we might have renamed a field (text->content), changed a type (Integer[]->List), and have transformed a field to List (SubPojo->List) where the previous field now is the first element of the new list (not loosing data, just transforming to new representation).               public class MyPojo {         String content;         Long number;         List<Integer> values;         List<SubPojo> pojo;     }          public class SubPojo {         List<String> items;     }      Some pseudocode how the client might take use of this:               // Write     Serializer ser = new Serializer();     MyPojo pojo = new MyPojo();     pojo.xxx = ...; // set fields     ser.store(pojo, file, append);          // Read (a version later)     Serializer ser = new Serializer();     ser.registerTransformer(new TransformerV1ToV2());     List<MyPojo> pojos = ser.load(file);      This approach has some drawbacks:   * The transformer have to work on some kind of intermediate format (could be the backed stored format such as json or xml)   * You don't know how the class format was at some point in time, since you're only transforming relative to the previous version and mapping to the final class, making search for errors hard   * Performance (depending on how the transformation happens)"}
{"_id": "218760", "title": "DDD Proper aggregates division and getting rid of too many references", "text": "I am designing an application, which will aid designing electric installations. I went for Domain Driven Design, as the topic is complex and the application will be growing with gained knowledge. However, I am newbie to this concept. For now, I have a problem to properly model the domain, especially to divide entities into aggregates. I have defined wiring - **Installation** as a set of **ConnectionPoints** and **Cables** , which connect them. One **ConnectionPoint** has one or more **Cables**. Each **Cable** has a set of wires. I consider end of a wire as a **Terminal** , which we can connect to another **Terminal** creating a **Junction**. **Terminals** differ one from another, as wires have different colours and purpose. **Junctions** are made of two or more **Terminals** and can be done only inside a **ConnectionPoint**. I have illustrated it for a better understanding: ![Illustrated ConnectionPoint](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mU78k.png) Besides **Cables** there are also **Devices** , which also have **Terminals**. They are also connected in a **ConnectionPoint** and their **Terminals** are treated the same way as **Cable** 's **Terminals**. For each **Device** I must be able to track, where the **Terminal** is connected to (it might be a list of end points). The problem, with the design, is the need of having references to **Terminals** outside of a **Cable** and **Device** entities to create **Junctions** and track connections. I could consider a **Cable** and a **Device** as aggregates of **Terminals** , as **Terminals** cannot exist without them and as a knowledge of **Terminal** 's parent is important. However, each **Terminal** has also an identity outside of a **Cable** / **Device** and I have no idea how later in code and database I could keep knowledge of the connections made. Do you have any ideas how could I model it? What questions should I ask myself to define a correct model and avoid keeping references everywhere?"}
{"_id": "218762", "title": "Modeling an extensible Domain Driven Design project", "text": "Say that we are developing an application with modules (Sales, Accounting, Purchasing, etc). An example case here is : Sales module is the basic / primary module available, and Accounting module is a complementary module.               SalesModule     -. Product      And               AccountingModule     -. Account     -. Journal      If we were to say that : > If the Accounting Module were installed, then it will provide a direct > integration with the Product class from the Sales Module, such as : a > Product now has a List of Account which if a transaction is applied to the > Product, a Journal will be posted according to the Account. In my mind, I would picture that `Product` would have a property of `List<Account>`, but that would be impossible without adding that property directly in the `Product` class, making `Product` now dependent on Accounting Module when SalesModule should be able to run without it. Another solution came up to mind is to add `SalesIntegrations` classes (ProductAccount, etc) to complement the previously described `Product`, making it independent. But this solution doesn't sound as 'natural' as saying that `a Product has a list of Accounts`. From what I understand, doing DDD means to know beforehand the whole concept of business rules. What if a requirement come along to add a new project to complement the previous DDD project with only having it's DLL (no access to source code)?"}
{"_id": "178551", "title": "Storing revisions of a document", "text": "This is a follow up question to my original question. I'm thinking of going with generating diffs and storing those diffs in the database 'History' table. I'm using diff-match-patch library to generate what is called a 'patch'. On every save, I compare previous and new version and generate this patch. The patch could be used to generate a document at specific point in time. My dilemma is how to store this data. Should I: a Insert a new database record for every patch? b. Store these patches in javascript array and store that array in history table. So there is only one db History record for document with an array of all the patches. Concerns with: a. Too many db records generated. Will be slow and CPU intensive to query. b. Only one record. If record is somehow corrupted/deleted. Entire revision history is gone. I'm looking for suggestions, concerns with either approach."}
{"_id": "40285", "title": "How is Sencha Touch performing on Android in practice?", "text": "I'm just about to start a project using Sencha Touch, and just done some minor testing on my HTC desire device. All tutorial videos at Vimeo seems to be using an iPhone emulator running on a Mac. Im not sure how fast this emulator is compared to a real iPhone device or even an real Android device, but from what i have experienced, it seems that my HTC desire is not performing that nicly as this emulator. All animations (sliding, fading, etc) seems abit laggy. You can easily notice that the FPS is much less than on the Vimeo videos. HTC desire is a relativly new and modern Android 2.2 phone, running with decent hardware, so im wondering if Sencha Touch is \"ready\" for the Android platform. Anybody with practical experience with Android and Sencha Touch ?"}
{"_id": "40284", "title": "What is the best way to handle nuances for different platforms?", "text": "I'm working on a normal Java/SWT desktop application I'm planning on distributing to the three primary PC platforms (Windows, OSX, Linux). Obviously, there are slight differences between them, mainly having to do with files. What's the best way to keep those differences separate? I'm thinking three different SVN branches (win, osx, linux), and trunk for development, but then how do I update the branches without overwriting the differences? Do I need to define a platform constant instead at compile time? And then, of course, there are different versions of libraries (i.e. SWT in my case). How should those be handled? Where should I keep the compiled byte-code \".jars\" files?"}
{"_id": "47778", "title": "Why are SW engineering interviews disproportionately difficult (vs. research interviews)?", "text": "First, some background on me. I have a PhD in CS and have had jobs both as a software engineer and as an R&D research scientist, both at Very Large Corporations You Know Very Well. I recently changed jobs and interviewed for both types of positions (as I have done in the past). My observation: SW engineer job interviews are way, way disproportionately more difficult than CS researcher job interviews, but the researcher job is higher paying, more competitive, more rewarding, more interesting, and has a higher upside. Here's a typical interview loop for researcher:   * Phone interview to see if my research is in alignment with the lab's research   * In-person: give presentation on my recent research for one hour (which represents maybe 9 month's worth of work) and answer questions from the audience   * In-person one-on-one interviews with about 5 researchers, where they ask me very reasonable questions on my work/publications/patents, including: technical questions, where my work fits into related work, and how I can extend my work to new areas Here's a typical interview loop for SW engineer:   * Phone interview where I'm asked algorithm questions and maybe do some coding. Pretty standard.   * In-person interviews at the whiteboard where they drill the F*** out of you on esoteric C++ minutia (e.g. how does a polymorphic virtual function call work), algorithms (make all-pairs-shortest-path algorithm work for 1B vertices), system design (design a database load balancer), etc. This goes on for six or seven interviews. Ridiculous.  Why would anyone be willing to put up with this? What is the point of asking about C++ trivia or writing code to prove yourself? Why not make the SE interview more like the researcher interview where you give a talk about what you've done? How are technical job interviews for other fields, like physics, chemistry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering?"}
{"_id": "76540", "title": "Seeking Delphi (Pascal) code beautifier", "text": "Preferably a tool which will run from inside of the Delphi IDE (I use Delphi 7), but I can accept a standalone program. Should have the ability to define rules (X space indent, no tabs, one statement per line, etc, etc (perhaps capitalization rules too?)) Nice if it can handle an entire directory or project at one touch, rather than just a single file. Anyone?"}
{"_id": "195961", "title": "Do setters and getters always break the Single-Responsibility Principle?", "text": "As we know, The SRP states that every class should have single responsibility and that responsibility must be entirely encapsulated by the class. But setters and getters do serve another responsibility - they do abstract class property(data) access. if _Setters and getters_ do abstract class property access, then **they do serve another responsibility**. So if I have something like this,               class Config     {              private location;                   public function write(array $data)         {             ....         }              public function read($key)         {             ...         }              public function exists($key)         {             ...         }              public function delete($key)         {             ...         }              // Below comes property abstraction              // Here I doubt - I CANNOT USE this class without them         // but they seem to break the SRP at the same time!?              public function setFileLocation($location)         {             $this->location = $location;         }                   public function getFileLocation()         {             return $this->location;         }                   public function setConfigArray(...)         {             ...         }              public function getConfigArray()         {             ...         }     }      I do break the SRP. The problem is that, that's the only way class may exists. So the question is, In my situation, it's almost impossible to avoid `setFileLocation()` and `getFileLocation()` methods with CRUD ones. So if by combining CRUD methods with Data Access abstraction I do break the SRP, Is there any way I can adhere the SRP and keep the common concept of the Config class (CRUD operations) at the same time?"}
{"_id": "8119", "title": "When should an IT consultant use full disc encryption?", "text": "In what circumstances should an IT Consultant encrypt their hard drive to protect their code/data of their clients? I am thinking that if it does not add much to your work load you might as well use full disc encryption with a 'weak' password to at least prevent someone from accessing your email files and other documents if your laptop is stolen, even if they will not get access to any database files or other very sensitive data."}
{"_id": "6929", "title": "How do you decide what to work on in your own time?", "text": "I've got an itch and it needs to be scratched. I've got nothing to program these days. Normally I'd just pick my flavour of the month technology and fiddle with it, but I want to make something and take a break from serious research/experimentation for a while and just write something for fun (ie. not necessarily purely educational/professional development). Problem is,   * I can't think of software that I need that I don't already have.   * Sifting through the open-source projects on various sites to help out on is excruciating (5 hrs down the tubes so far - not worth the trouble) I'm not looking for a specific suggestion for what to work on because that would be a terribly hard task. I don't think that here knows nearly enough about eachother to effectively give good suggestions. So I ask, is there any mental exercise that you use to decide what to make when you're not \"fiddlin'\"?"}
{"_id": "15419", "title": "Problem sets or challenges and solutions for beginners to practice MVC, OOP, MVT etc. type problems", "text": "Coding bat, project euler, python challenge for example are all amazing brain teasers that usually provide you with some learning material, ways to compact your code, and enhance your problem solving skills. At the end of the day, when you go through a few of those exercises, you learn something new, or you better understood a concept. Are there similar exercises for OOP, MVC, MVVM, MVT, and so on type situations? In class it is usually taught to think of an object as a cat, part of an animal class. and you have mammals and so on. However, in real life, objects are more abstract, and harder to imagine and implement. The same could be said about MVC, MVVM, and MVT, where applying a small system is usually simple, but when the problem is scaled, it suddenly becomes a bit more daunting."}
{"_id": "206211", "title": "By the definition of a Tree(ADT), is it \"wrong\" for a node to add a sibling?", "text": "The title pretty much says it all. I'm just having a little computer science exercise and am building a Tree. I want a node to be able to add a sibling which requires one to first get a reference to the parent, obviously. I was wondering what is the \"correct\" way, by definition of what a Tree is, to do such a thing?"}
{"_id": "237827", "title": "MVC: Does the Controller break the Single Responsibility Principle?", "text": "The Single Responsibility Principle states that \"a class should have one reason the change\". In the MVC pattern, the Controller's job is to mediate between the View and the Model. It offers an interface for the View to report actions made by the user on the GUI (e.g. allowing the View to call `controller.specificButtonPressed()`), and is able to call the appropriate methods on the Model in order to manipulate it's data or invoke it's operations (e.g. `model.doSomething()`). This means that:   * The Controller needs to know about the GUI, in order to offer the View a suitable interface to report user actions.   * It also needs to know about the logic in the Model, in order to be able to invoke the appropriate methods on the Model. That means that is has **two reasons to change** : a change in the GUI, and a change in the buisness logic. If the GUI changes, e.g. a new button is added, the Controller might need to add a new method to allow the View to report a user press on this button. And if the business logic in the Model changes, the Controller might have to change in order to invoke the correct methods on the Model. Therefore, the Controller has **two possible reasons to change**. Does it break SRP?"}
{"_id": "237829", "title": "How to unit-test for PHP implicit conversion errors?", "text": "Is there a way to find errors caused by crafted input in php, such as naming POST-fields like `variable[]` instead of `variable`, causing PHP to implicitly convert it into an array, by using some form of automated testing?"}
{"_id": "8111", "title": "What is a Ph.D. good for in the software industry?", "text": "I'm a self-taught programmer and have just started a computer science degree to supplement my knowledge and fill in the gaps. However, I'm already debating the direction of my education. I want a 4 year bachelor's degree for sure, but after that, I'm not sure: Is it worth it to get an M.Sc? What about a Ph.D.? What opportunities do these degrees open up? Currently my goal is to be a software developer, but there are a number of fascinating fields in the software industry and I'm certainly interested in investigating many of them. It is in this respect that I think a higher degree may be worth it -- even if it wouldn't necessarily help a career of software development. So will it be worth it? Will grad school open doors?"}
{"_id": "123172", "title": "Is there any technology similar to LINQPad for compiling C# that runs in a browser?", "text": "Think JSFiddle. LINQPad is pretty sweet for fast C# with similar options. Is there anything like LINQPad that runs in a browser?"}
{"_id": "159729", "title": "What level do I mock when I have function A calling function B which calls the database?", "text": "I have created a scenario in which I have two functions, A and B, both are tested, but despite the tests I still injected a rather stupid bug and some data is not getting into the database. Note that there is no ORM present. I've written my CRUD operations directly, and I'm paying the price therefor. In this scenario, I have (perl) something like this:               sub A {       ... do a bunch of work ...       my $res = B( %data );       ... do a bunch more work ...     }          sub B {       my ( %data ) = @_;       ... record data to the database and return a result ...     }      What happened, though, is that in my higher-level application and in A itself, I changed the name of one of the fields that goes into %data, but forgot to change it in B. I have a test for A which stubs/mocks out a _lot_ of the things A does (A needs to meet with a goodly refactoring), including B. The stub for B verifies that all of the correct parameters, including the correct field names get passed in, and so the test passes. _BUT_ the test for B verifies the old field names, the real B actually uses the old field names, and that test passes as well. And, thus, I put into production some code that, because of this oversight, is putting NULLs into the database where I don't want NULLs.   * A is clearly too big. To isolate it, I mock out six different functions, each of which could cause a system state change.   * A, and thus the test for A is theoretically unconcerned as to the strategy by which B will store data in the database or even what kind of database B will store data to, so I think the test for A probably should not query the database directly.   * But, I changed the format of %data, and I think that the test for A should have detected that I basically changed the API without propagating the change down. What is a better way to set up a test to catch this case beforehand?   * Continue with the isolation strategy for A and B, but also write an integration that tests A --all the way to-> the database? This would lead to a proliferation of possible test cases, and I'm already having trouble justifying the existing test case proliferation to management (though I know the coverage to be woefully inadequate).   * Just write the test for A to query the database, possibly through an abstraction?   * Is there something different that would help here? * * * Ultimately, I took Karl Bielefeldt's suggestion. I added the data validation code into function B. I also added the integration test that tests from A all the way to DB. As far as I can tell, I need to have as many integration tests as I possibly can, verifying that the overall state of the system resources change predictably. At the same time, I expect I'll still need to mock network resources if I cannot actually get a test network environment."}
{"_id": "126520", "title": "Is there a reason to prefer lambda syntax even if there is only one parameter?", "text": "List.ForEach(Console.WriteLine);          List.ForEach(s => Console.WriteLine(s));      To me, the difference is purely cosmetic, but are there any subtle reasons why one might be preferred over the other?"}
{"_id": "171176", "title": "Synchronous sockets with Node.js", "text": "I want to port an existing app from Java to Node.js - would like to seek your advise. The java app is a multithreaded socket server where arbitrary number of clients can connect. The app runs on java executors. Each client is given a socket to connect to the app. The client will connect to the socket server and there will be handshake. After handshake, the data will be transmitted between the client and server. The data transferred is in sequential order because the client sends the data over as such. And I.m able to control the thread that the client is connected on. Now, Node.js does not have threads so I am confused on how to port the multithreaded Java socket server over. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "229416", "title": "How are atomic operations are a dynamic language feature?", "text": "I was told that atomic operations are a dynamic language feature. I was too afraid to ask in that context what this actually means because I didn't want my coworkers to think I'm stupid. But I actually don't really understand this statement. My understanding of the term \"atomic operations\" is any operation that is either wholly executed or wholly not executed; you will definitely never be halfway through the operation when the thread context switches. What does this have to do with dynamic vs static typing?"}
{"_id": "229415", "title": "Difference between an architecture and a framework", "text": "A terminology question appeared when I was comparing EJB 3 and Spring. Wikipedia says that > Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is a managed, server-side component architecture > for modular construction of enterprise applications. and also > The Spring Framework is an open source application framework and inversion > of control container for the Java platform. \"EJB 3 in Action\" suggests that > Together, the components, or EJBs, and the container can be viewed as a > framework that provides valuable services for enterprise application > development. Is any framework an architecture? If not, what is the difference between these terms? Could EJB be considered a framework?"}
{"_id": "158532", "title": "Should OAuth token be shared to implement SSO?", "text": "What's a commonly accepted way of implementing SSO using a third party OAuth provider? I have a server with user resources associated with server's user ID, the user ID also has a Facebook user ID associated. Would it be a good approach to authenticate a client to the server if the login was redirected to, say, Facebook where it would return an OAuth token and the token is then shared with the client? Suppose SSL is implemented, the OAuth token would then act in the same way as a session cookie that gives permission to user resources on the server. The same user an different client can then reauthenticate with Facebook which would return the same Facebook ID, which gives access to the same user's resources and a different OAuth token which expires independently and removing the app on Facebook can callback the server with a deauthenticate request to keep things synchronised. Is this a good policy to use? Is it safe against attacks like session sidejacking, cross site reference etc?"}
{"_id": "133691", "title": "What do you absolutely have to know about a candidate before hiring him?", "text": "What **essential questions** do you have to know the answer for, about a prospective software development candidate, before hiring him/her? I'm not seeking specific interview problems (e.g. sort this 3D array of numbers in O(1) complexity), but simply for things you need to find about, for yourself, about a new hire. (e.g. which source control systems / languages / frameworks / OS has he used?) Cross-posted to Quora"}
{"_id": "244911", "title": "Memory read/write access efficiency", "text": "I've heard conflicting information from different sources, and I'm not really sure which one to believe. As such, I'll post what I understand and ask for corrections. Let's say I want to use a 2D matrix. There are three ways that I can do this (at least that I know of). **1** :               int i;     char **matrix;     matrix = malloc(50 * sizeof(char *));     for(i = 0; i < 50; i++)         matrix[i] = malloc(50);      **2** :               int i;     int rowSize = 50;     int pointerSize = 50 * sizeof(char *);     int dataSize = 50 * 50;     char **matrix;     matrix = malloc(dataSize + pointerSize);     char *pData = matrix + pointerSize - rowSize;     for(i = 0; i < 50; i++) {         pData += rowSize;         matrix[i] = pData;     }      **3** :               //instead of accessing matrix[i][j] here, we would access matrix[i * 50 + j]     char *matrix = malloc(50 * 50);       In terms of memory usage, my understanding is that **3** is the most efficient, **2** is next, and **1** is least efficient, for the reasons below: **3** : There is only one pointer and one allocation, and therefore, minimal overhead. **2** : Once again, there is only one allocation, but there are now 51 pointers. This means there is `50 * sizeof(char *)` more overhead. **1** : There are 51 allocations and 51 pointers, causing the most overhead of all options. In terms of performance, once again my understanding is that **3** is the most efficient, **2** is next, and **1** is least efficient. Reasons being: **3** : Only one memory access is needed. We will have to do a multiplication and an addition as opposed to two additions (as in the case of a pointer to a pointer), but memory access is slow enough that this doesn't matter. **2** : We need two memory accesses; once to get a `char *`, and then to the appropriate `char`. Only two additions are performed here (once to get to the correct `char *` pointer from the original memory location, and once to get to the correct `char` variable from wherever the `char *` points to), so multiplication (which is slower than addition) is not required. However, on modern CPUs, multiplication is faster than memory access, so this point is moot. **1** : Same issues as **2** , but now the memory isn't contiguous. This causes cache misses and extra page table lookups, making it the least efficient of the lot. First and foremost: Is this correct? Second: Is there an option **4** that I am missing that would be even more efficient?"}
{"_id": "219415", "title": "When to use (Or not) C# myVariable { set; get; }", "text": "I have been trying to wrap my head around the finer points of this today. Essentially I have fallen in love with this format for booleans:               Class {     public static bool myBool {set; get;}         private static void Method()         {             if (!myBool)              {                 myBool = !myBool;                 // stuff that needs to be done              }         }     }      Obvious things like do not use a public when a private will work and scoping properly applies. But when is this a best practice vs using a simpler:               Class {     bool myBool = true;         private static void Method()         {             if (!myBool)              {                 myBool = !myBool;                 // stuff that needs to be done              }         }     }      Or do I have this backwards completely? I understand that by using the format `public static bool myBool {set; get;}` I doing the following:               public static bool myBool     {        get        {            return myBool;           }        set        {            myBool = valuePassedIn;        }     }      I feel like the first method is the best approach, but I have no idea why I think this. Is there a best from these choices? Am I doing something horribly wrong, or all three methods equivalent?"}
{"_id": "28950", "title": "Is Haskell's type system an obstacle to understanding functional programming?", "text": "I'm studying Haskell for the purpose of understanding functional programming, with the expectation that I'll apply the insight that I gain in other languages (Groovy, Python, JavaScript mainly.) I choose Haskell because I had the impression that it is very purely functional, and wouldn't allow for any reliance on state. I did not choose to learn Haskell because I was interested in navigating an extremely rigid type system. My question is this: Is a strong type system a necessary by-product of an extremely pure functional language, or is this an unrelated design choice particular to Haskell? If it is the latter, I'm curious what would be the most purely functional language that is dynamically typed. I'm not particularly opposed to strong typing, it has its place, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it benefits me in this educational endeavor."}
{"_id": "241271", "title": "Data structure for grid with negative indeces", "text": "Sorry if this is an insultingly obvious concept, but it's something I haven't done before and I've been unable to find any material discussing the best way to approach it. I'm wondering what's the best data structure for holding a 2D grid of unknown size. The grid has integer coordinates (x,y), and will have negative indices in both directions. So, what is the best way to hold this grid? I'm programming in c# currently, so I can't have negative array indices. My initial thought was to have class with 4 separate arrays for (+x,+y),(+x,-y),(-x,+y), and (-x,-y). This seems to be a valid way to implement the grid, but it does seem like I'm over- engineering the solution, and array resizing will be a headache. Another idea was to keep track of the center-point of the array and set that as the topological (0,0), however I would have the issue of having to do a shift to every element of the grid when repeatedly adding to the top-left of the grid, which would be similar to grid resizing though in all likelihood more frequent. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "213313", "title": "API Caching Layer", "text": "**Primer:** We have a mobile app being served by an API (written in PHP). The main point of the app is to display products from a large items table in the database, in a multitude of different configurations. Categories, suggested items, user compiled feeds, \"similar to\" feeds. Basically most, if not all of the display data comes from a single table, however the filtering and sorting is really what the app does. Some feeds are fairly simple such as \"get all items that are in one of these categories using an items to category link table\". Others are more complex using fulltext search to filter, along with category filters and stock filters and sometimes we may even require that the results have an additional filter such as \"exclude items from any category that doesn't have 10 matching items in that category\" (sort of like a self regulating, category filter invalidation). * * * We are now in the process of trying to speed up the API and looking to start putting the tech in, to allow us to scale. We've already decided on certain things like seperated search engines (i.e. elasticsearch for fulltext replacement e.c.t.). However one thing which i'm a little \"new\" in, is caching the API feeds. My only caching experience has been either caching full webpage outputs in things like magento/wordpress. Or caching complex objects that are built from several queries and processes. I've decided, object caching probably isn't suitable here, as most of the final object data comes from a single table. So object caching would not provide much speed improvement. I'm currently figuring i need to cache the final output collection of objects, as its really the complex filtering and sorting which slows everything down. But that's where i get stuck... First of all, should we cache the entire collection of objects, or just store a collection of the object id's, and still go to the database to do the final data lookup (my theory being, that with all the different compilation of feeds, the memory usage would grow quite quickly caching all the objects themselves). Secondly, do we cache the very final output of the feed, or do we try and find a common point at which we can create a cached copy of the feed that isnt quite right. So for example, rather than caching \"similar products to X where the similar products are in 1,2,3 categories\", we would instead cache \"similar products to X\", then on each request, get the collection from cache, and do the additional filtering manually after retrieving the \"base collection\". Hopefully that all makes some sort of sense,a nd apologies if its a little rambly. I'm a little out of my depth with this one, but im keen to learn. No doubt whatever solution i decide to implement first, will need many, many iterations before we deem it \"correct\". But at the moment, i just don't have any experience in this, to give myself a suitable, appropriate starting point, to start development."}
{"_id": "213316", "title": "xml based programming languages", "text": "I was looking at wikipedia - Category:XML-based programming languages. Why would someone take this approach for designing a language?   What are the advantages of it? I can only think of disadvantages.   * hard to maintain   * hard to read   * hard to write"}
{"_id": "213317", "title": ".NET MVC project architecture / layering", "text": "When planning the architecture for a mid-large scale MVC web application how do you implement the layers to be as decoupled as possible and easy to test? (basically follow best practices) Let's say I'm using code first as my data access. I struggle with what to define \"business logic\" as, and how it is meant to interact with the data layer. Taking a vehicle sales application as an example, would business logic be classes that performed tasks such as calculating the tax band for given vehicles, comparing mile per gallon statistics etc? As for the business entities (e.g. Cars, Vans, Motorcycles) I would put these in the data layer along with my datacontext class. Also what would constitute application logic as opposed to business - I'm guessing things like session / user input validations? So for example, a car controller might return an action/view result that lists the top ten cars filtered by type and best mpg. So let's say I have an ICarRepository 'carRepo' injected into my controller(using the repository pattern / DI), I filter my cars from an action method parameter e.g. var cars = carRepo.getCarsByType(\"hatchback\"); So I've kept the data access knowledge out of my controller using a repository, now to keep the business logic out of the controller using a domain model - var result = new MpgCalculator(cars); - Let's say I need the calculator class because it needs to perform additional logic to calculate the best fuel efficiency, more than just loading / filtering entities from the DB. So now I have a data set for my view to render that used a repository to retrieve from the data access layer, and domain specific object to process and perform business related tasks on that data. Am I making mistakes here? do we still need to use the repository pattern or can I just code against an interface to decouple the ORM and test? On this topic, as my concrete data access classe(s) dbcontext are in the data layer, should the interface definitions go into the domain/business layer meaning that if the data access technology is ever changed, my other layers aren't effected? From what I have studied thus far my structure looks like this: MVC Internet Application - The standard internet project - models in here are ViewModels Domain/Business layer - business specific classes/models that controllers can use to process domain entities from the data layer before passing on to the relevant views Repository abstraction necessary? - I hear lots of debate on this, especially when using an ORM Data layer - Entity classes (Car, Van, Motorcycle), DbContext - Concrete data access technology layer Apologies if my examples do not make sense, I'm trying to learn the best patterns without making applications unnecessarily complicated!"}
{"_id": "241278", "title": "Clean way to use mutable implementation of Immutable interfaces for encapsulation", "text": "My code is working on some compost relationship which creates a tree structure, class A has many children of type B, which has many children of type C etc. The lowest level class, call it bar, also points to a connected bar class. This effectively makes nearly every object in my domain inter- connected. Immutable objects would be problematic due to the expense of rebuilding almost all of my domain to make a single change to one class. I chose to go with an interface approach. Every object has an Immutable interface which only publishes the getter methods. I have controller objects which constructs the domain objects and thus has reference to the full objects, thus capable of calling the setter methods; but only ever publishes the immutable interface. Any change requested will go through the controller. So something like this:               public interface ImmutableFoo{              public Bar getBar();         public Location getLocation();     }          public class Foo implements ImmutableFoo{              private Bar bar;         private Location location;              @Override         public Bar getBar(){             return Bar;         }              public void setBar(Bar bar){             this.bar=bar;         }              @Override         public Location getLocation(){             return Location;         }      }           public class Controller{          Private Map<Location, Foo> fooMap;               public ImmutableFoo addBar(Bar bar){              Foo foo=fooMap.get(bar.getLocation());                   if(foo!=null)                  foo.addBar(bar);                   return foo;          }     }      I felt the basic approach seems sensible, however, when I speak to others they always seem to have trouble envisioning what I'm describing, which leaves me concerned that I may have a larger design issue then I'm aware of. Is it problematic to have domain objects so tightly coupled, or to use the quasi- mutable approach to modifying them? Assuming that the design approach itself isn't inherently flawed the particular discussion which left me wondering about my approach had to do with the presence of business logic in the domain objects. Currently I have my setter methods in the mutable objects do error checking and all other logic required to verify and make a change to the object. It was suggested that this should be pulled out into a service class, which applies all the business logic, to simplify my domain objects. I understand the advantage in mocking/testing and general separation of logic into two classes. However, with a service method/object It seems I loose some of the advantage of polymorphism, I can't override a base class to add in new error checking or business logic. It seems, if my polymorphic classes were complicated enough, I would end up with a service method that has to check a dozen flags to decide what error checking and business logic applies. So, for example, if I wanted to have a childFoo which also had a size field which should be compared to bar before adding par my current approach would look something like this.                public class Foo implements ImmutableFoo{               public void addBar(Bar bar){              if(!getLocation().equals(bar.getLocation())                 throw new LocationException();                   this.bar=bar;          }      }           public interface ImmutableChildFoo extends ImmutableFoo{          public int getSize();      }           public ChildFoo extends Foo implements ImmutableChildFoo{                private int size;                @Override           public int getSize(){               return size;           }                @Override           public void addBar(Bar bar){               if(getSize()<bar.getSize()){                   throw new LocationException();                    super.addBar(bar);           }      My colleague was suggesting instead having a service object that looks something like this (over simplified, the 'service' object would likely be more complex).                public interface ImmutableFoo{          ///original interface, presumably used in other methods          public Location getLocation();          public boolean isChildFoo();      }      public interface ImmutableSizedFoo implements ImmutableFoo{          public int getSize();      }          public class Foo implements ImmutableSizedFoo{          public Bar bar;               @Override          public void addBar(Bar bar){              this.bar=bar;          }               @Override          public int getSize(){              //default size if no size is known              return 0;          }                @Override           public boolean isChildFoo              return false;           }      }           public ChildFoo extends Foo{                private int size;                @Override           public int getSize(){               return size;           }                @Override           public boolean isChildFoo();              return true;           }      }           public class Controller{          Private Map<Location, Foo> fooMap;               public ImmutableSizedFoo addBar(Bar bar){              Foo foo=fooMap.get(bar.getLocation());              service.addBarToFoo(foo, bar);                   returned foo;          }               public class Service{                   public static void addBarToFoo(Foo foo, Bar bar){                      if(foo==null)                    return;                 if(!foo.getLocation().equals(bar.getLocation()))                     throw new LocationException();                 if(foo.isChildFoo() && foo.getSize()<bar.getSize())                     throw new LocationException();                      foo.setBar(bar);              }        }     }      Is the recommended approach of using services and inversion of control inherently superior, or superior in certain cases, to overriding methods directly? If so is there a good way to go with the service approach while not loosing the power of polymorphism to override some of the behavior?"}
{"_id": "150534", "title": "Want to use a lib for my project, confused with license (AGPL vs MIT License)", "text": "Im working on a Java Software and there is a need to use some extern libraries. I found two relevant libs. The one is on an AGPL and the other on the MIT License. Now Im asking my self, can I use these libs if:   * I would make a non-opensource-nonfree-software or   * I would make a non-opensource-free-software I dont really understand the whole license stuff, could somebody tell me which one of the libs for what kind of software would be better? Thank you"}
{"_id": "65636", "title": "Events where junior-level developer/CS student can prove himself?", "text": "I spotted a \"Google Summer of Code\" announcement recently, and though eager to join, I see my chances are plainly poor. I'm short on time to shape my ideas and study the source code. I just wonder - Are there any similar events that provide an opportunity for students to develop real working projects? Especially ones that are worth mentioning in one's CV?"}
{"_id": "119714", "title": "Introducing Programming To a Mathematician", "text": "I currently am a programmer, I'm almost 16 years of age and have pretty much narrowed my careers down to something involving a Computer Science degree or Electrical Engineering degree (I know they are quite different but this question is about my friend) but my friend isn't so sure. He is very interested in maths and is very good at it and I think he would enjoy programming but he isn't willing to try it ( **edit** he _is_ willing to try but has never done before). Can anyone give me an suggestions for a language or tool that he could dabble in programming (at a reasonably basic level I assume) to solve maths problems or involve some kind of maths. As I say he enjoys maths a lot but I think he would enjoy programming, the problem is I don't want him to be put off by the stuff that isn't relevant at introductory levels such as memory allocation et al. I know that is very important but the point is that I want him to learn a bit of programming with maths then hopefully if he is interested enough he can start learning programming as programming. **Edit:** Its not that he's completely uninterested - more that he hasn't actively explored the area before, maybe because he isn't informed about it. I wouldn't want to force him to do something he doesn't want to, I see this as more of a little push so that he can learn about programming. If he doesn't like it - fair enough, I can't control that and don't want to but if he turns out to enjoy it - this push will have been the right thing."}
{"_id": "199083", "title": "How do I handle 3rd party search result data (via cache)", "text": "I have a search function on my site and it is taking data from 6 different 3rd party resources. The problem is, it takes too long requesting the data over and over again on the results page. I've read for questions like this on SO about session not being a good choice but for me **'memcache'** is not an option, because the server doesn't have memcached installed and I have no way to install it now. Is there any other approach to do this? Storing in the database seem inappropriate because the data depends on the search terms requested. What I've been thinking is writing a file on the server that would act as a cache for this file but I don't know how I would know when to delete it after."}
{"_id": "13711", "title": "Servicing background tasks on a large site", "text": "We're dealing with an interesting problem on StackOverflow. We've got a whole bunch of little \"needs to be done soon-ish\" tasks. An example is updating \"Related Questions\" lists. What we've done in the past is to piggy-back those tasks onto some users' page loads. This was never ideal, but it wasn't really noticeable. Now that SO has passed the 1,000,000 question mark, those unlucky users are starting to feel it. The natural solution is to actually push these tasks into the background. There are two broad ways of doing this I'm considering. ### 1. In IIS as a custom Thread-Pool/Work-Queue Basically, we spin up a few (non-ThreadPool, so as to not interfere with IIS) threads and have them services some collections we're shoving Funcs into. The big pro here is simplicity. We don't have to worry about marshaling anything, nor do we have to make sure some external service is up and responding. We also get access to all of our common code. The con is, well, that we shouldn't use background threads. The objections I know of are all centered around starving IIS (if you use ThreadPool) and the threads dieing randomly (due to AppPool recycling). We've got existing infrastructure to make the random thread death a non-issue (its possible to detect a task has been abandoned, basically), and limiting the number of threads (and using non-ThreadPool threads) isn't difficult either. ~~Am I missing any other objections to in IIS process thread-pooling/work- queues?~~ Moved to StackOverflow, as it wasn't really addressed here. ### 2. As a Service Either some third-party solution, or a custom one. Basically, we'd marshal a task across the process boundary to some service and just forget about it. Presumably we're linking some code in, or restricted to raw SQL + a connection string. The pro is that its the \"right way\" to do this. The cons are that we're either very restricted in what we can do, or we're going to have to work out some system for keeping this service in sync with our code base. We'll also need to hook all of our monitoring and error logging up somehow, which we get for free with the \"In IIS\" option. **Are there any other benefits or problems with the service approach?** In a nutshell, are there unforseen and insurmountable problems that make approach #1 unworkable and if so are there any good third-party services we should look into for approach #2?"}
{"_id": "215877", "title": "Is linq more efficient than it appears on the surface?", "text": "If I write something like this:               var things = mythings         .Where(x => x.IsSomeValue)         .Where(y => y.IsSomeOtherValue)      Is this the same as:               var results1 = new List<Thing>();     foreach(var t in mythings)         if(t.IsSomeValue)             results1.Add(t);          var results2 = new List<Thing>();     foreach(var t in results1)         if(t.IsSomeOtherValue)             results2.Add(t);      Or is there some magic under the covers that works more like this:               var results = new List<Thing>();     foreach(var t in mythings)         if(t.IsSomeValue && t.IsSomeOtherValue)             results.Add(t);      Or is it something completely different altogether?"}
{"_id": "199081", "title": "How to get different resources in a single endpoint in RESTful?", "text": "I have a REST webservice that have a couple of resources, like Company and User. But now I need to make a modification to the API to return a special list combining company, user and maybe other type of resource. Like a list of recommendations with various type of resources. Which is the best approach to solve this? I need to make a new endpoint (resource), something like: `/recommendations`? I already have the `/company` endpoint, and the `/user` endpoint returning the corresponding objects. This is fine. But now I need some way to return an array with a combination of users and companies. Also I'm thinking that the json will look like an array of objects, but how the client can know which type of object is parsing if every object in the array is a different resource? **EDIT** I want that my client could show a recomendations screen in the app. The problem is that this list can combine multiple types of data (users, companies). It doesn't matter if this resources have a relationship or not. The client shoud recive a json like that:               \"recomendations\": [         {             \"id_user\": 1             \"name\": \"Jean\"             ...         },         {             \"id_company\": 2             \"name\": \"Starbucks\"             ...         },         ...     ]"}
{"_id": "154403", "title": "Messaging technologies between applications ?", "text": "Recently, I had to create a program to send messages between two winforms executable. I used a tool with simple built-in functionalities to prevent having to figure out all the ins and outs of this vast quantity of protocols that exist. But now, I'm ready to learn more about the internals difference between each of theses protocols. I googled a couple of them but it would be greatly appreciate to have a good reference book that gives me a clean idea of how each protocol works and what are the pros and cons in a couple of context. Here is a list of nice protocols that I found:   * Shared memory    * TCP    * List item   * Named Pipe    * File Mapping    * Mailslots    * MSMQ (Microsoft Queue Solution)    * WCF I know that all of these protocols are not specific to a language, it would be nice if example could be in .net. Thank you very much."}
{"_id": "170222", "title": "What can go wrong if the Liskov substitution principle is violated?", "text": "I was following this highly voted question on possible violation of Liskov Substitution principle. I know what the Liskov Substitution principle is, but what is still not clear in my mind is what might go wrong if I as a developer do not think about the principle while writing object-oriented code."}
{"_id": "96359", "title": "Career Confusion", "text": "For someone who has not worked anywhere in Java Technology except learning just the core concepts in his Masters (MCA) and Graduation (BCA, bachelor degree course):   1. Is it possible to get job anywhere in Java technology? Considering he/she has not studied it in regular college and not First Class throughout except BCA, MCA (in case of Indian or international companies).   2. How will he/she get his/her dream job (in the Java field) and what are the prospects for his/her career life?   3. If the knowledge he received in his grad/univ is not enough, than what more should he do to make this his specialty before getting started for the search job or to increase job offers? All kinds of suggestions are welcome. And thanks very much for kind suggestions."}
{"_id": "96356", "title": "Blaming the ills of today on the technical debt of yesterday", "text": "A surprising number of quality, scalability, and load problems have been occurring on an application I currently support that I did not originally write. Thankfully I have new projects that I have been doing from the ground up to retain some semblance of my sanity. The original team consisted of 20 some developers (most of them with outdated skill sets), no business requirement documents or quality assurance testers, and poorly managed from the very beginning in a waterfall fashion. The early days of production were an embarrassing nightmare that involved patching brittle procedural-like code with even more brittle fixes. Features were added later that were sledgehammered into a datamodel that was never meant to support them and it is not uncommon to see the same code duplicated 10 times over and to see resources not being safely closed and ORM queries that fetch tens of thousands of entities just to throw out all but a handful. It is just me now and everytime there is a new problem that crops out I rewrite a module to better standards and make it MUCH more stable but Management needs a proper explanation as to why all of this is occurring. They seem shocked and perplexed at the notion that this application is of poor quality and drowning in technical debt. Fortunately they understand the concept of technical debt and support me in my quest to eradicate it and they are very supportive and appreciative of me, but I feel as if I just keep **blaming** the original team (who all left to ruin another project in a different division). The bottom line is that I don't want to be _\"That Guy\"_ who always complains about the developers on the project before him. I have seen this attitude before from people in my career who I personally felt were being ignorant and not considering the circumstances and design influences that encouraged things to be the way that they were. Usually I see this attitude of blaming the previous team for poor design and implementation from idealistic junior developers who have not had the life experiences that more senior members have had and benefitted from. Do you feel that there is a better way, perhaps softer way of doing of reporting these kinds of problems to management without stepping on the reputation of the person/team before you?"}
{"_id": "216909", "title": "Recommended secure approach to confirming an URL is called by a legitimate caller", "text": "I'm using a CRON on AppEngine and the cron calls my web app at a specific app. I only want to execute functionality when called by my AppEngine app. What's is/are recommended approach to confirming that the caller is legitimate? I don't wish to rely on no one else knowing the specific URL."}
{"_id": "116476", "title": "Purpose of ending tags in SGML/HTML/XML?", "text": "There are those tags which have immediate effect (< br >) and those which affect what is between them ( < a > < / a > ). Closing tag is **verbose** , and I believe also **redundant** :               <tag parameters> ... </tag>      ## verbose Compare to LISP's s-expresions.               (tag parameters)      ## redundant Ending tags are not even necessary. These language are context-free and this is not possible there:               <tag1> <tag2> </tag1> </tag2>      Basically these should be equivalent:               <tag1> <tag2> </> </>     <tag1> <tag2> </tag2> </tag1>             ## questions Are ending tags there to aid readability? What is purpose of redundancy in closing tags? I want to understand inside the logic behind desing of this. Thanks. :)"}
{"_id": "154406", "title": "Is it a security flaw to log the class and method name when an exception occurs?", "text": "I have the following :               public class doCheck(){              public void performCheck(){             try {                 perform all checks......             }             catch(Exception e){                 logger.error(\"Exception occured in class doCheck in method performCheck\");                 thrown new MyNewException(e.getMessage());             }         }     }      Is it safe to log the class and method name?"}
{"_id": "97083", "title": "Are there coding tests to recruit a QA engineer?", "text": "I'm a software engineer in a small company and we are currently recruiting our first QA engineer. The guy will have to write as many as possible automated tests on our web-based tools suite. As I've participated in the recruitment of almost all the developers of our engineering team, the QA manager has asked me to interview the candidates. Most of them sound really smart. When they explain their past experiences, they give the feeling that they know what they were talking about, even when they give a lot of details on the framework or tools they are familiar with (like selenium or ohter stuff). However at the end of the interview I like to challenge them with a small coding test. I know we aren't recruiting a developer but as he'll have to _code_ tests, I believe that he has to be a bit skilled in that domain. I systematically ask the same question: \"In the language of your choice, could you write a the body of the function that takes in input a integer and return its string representation.   For instance in C#, the prototype of the method could be something like `public string itoa(int n)`\" And unfortunately, until now, 100% of the candidates have failed... So, is it because the question is somehow out of scope for a QA engineer? and in this case could you propose a better exercise?   Or is it just unacceptable and we still have to look for someone that would be at least able to pass the test? Thank you for you answers."}
{"_id": "116478", "title": "Is object oriented really good for kids?", "text": "I read, that Smalltalk was designed for kids or for education. So was it good at it? Better than the other languages? Was it good/easy also for average kid (I read that bright kids enjoyed). Is there any study to back it up? Or is Your experience it is good?"}
{"_id": "81794", "title": "What advantages does Linux give me when developing in PHP for the web?", "text": "I'm about to begin a big PHP project with a friend. It's my first time using PHP and I've been wondering wether I should try developing on Linux since it's so popular.   I've had some past experience with Linux and the choice of an editor won't be hard since I know vim (though I've looked at VS.PHP and it's putting me back from the change).   Does using Linux when developing PHP (or any web language) give me an advantage?"}
{"_id": "60374", "title": "Is functional programming strongly related to mathematics?", "text": "Is functional programming so related to mathematics because much of the functional programming is depicted with mathematical notions? Is it a MUST to have a strong base of maths to learn & understand functional programming for a programmer with a imperative background?"}
{"_id": "60372", "title": "Do Fortran compilers really generate faster code than C compilers?", "text": "When I was studying in the university I often heard the idea that Fortran compilers produced faster code than C compilers for an equivalent program. The key reasoning went like this: _a Fortran compiler emits on average 1,1 processor instruction per line of code, while a C compiler emits on average 1,6 processor instruction per line of code_ - I don't remember the exact numbers but the idea was that C compilers emitted noticeably more machine code and therefore produced slower programs. How valid is such comparison? Can we say that Fortran compilers produce faster programs than C compilers or vice versa and why does this difference exist?"}
{"_id": "96681", "title": "Where do you use ROT13?", "text": "I was reading through the docs for vim, and noticed there's a shortcut, for example `g?w` would transform the next word using ROT13. I also know that you can change the encoding of a Python file to ROT13. Here's my question: Why? It seems like it wouldn't be that useful, aside from prank programs like Django FUNserver."}
{"_id": "201299", "title": "If the model is validating the data, shouldn't it throw exceptions on bad input?", "text": "Reading this SO question it seems that throwing exceptions for validating user input is frowned upon. But who should validate this data? In my applications, all validations are done in the business layer, because only the class itself really knows which values are valid for each one of its properties. If I were to copy the rules for validating a property to the controller, it is possible that the validation rules change and now there are two places where the modification should be made. Is my premise that validation should be done on the business layer wrong? # What I do So my code usually ends up like this:               <?php     class Person     {       private $name;       private $age;            public function setName($n) {         $n = trim($n);         if (mb_strlen($n) == 0) {           throw new ValidationException(\"Name cannot be empty\");         }         $this->name = $n;       }            public function setAge($a) {         if (!is_int($a)) {           if (!ctype_digit(trim($a))) {             throw new ValidationException(\"Age $a is not valid\");           }           $a = (int)$a;         }         if ($a < 0 || $a > 150) {           throw new ValidationException(\"Age $a is out of bounds\");         }         $this->age = $a;       }            // other getters, setters and methods     }      In the controller, I just pass the input data to the model, and catch thrown exceptions to show the error(s) to the user:               <?php     $person = new Person();     $errors = array();          // global try for all exceptions other than ValidationException     try {            // validation and process (if everything ok)       try {         $person->setAge($_POST['age']);       } catch (ValidationException $e) {         $errors['age'] = $e->getMessage();       }            try {         $person->setName($_POST['name']);       } catch (ValidationException $e) {         $errors['name'] = $e->getMessage();       }            ...     } catch (Exception $e) {       // log the error, send 500 internal server error to the client       // and finish the request     }          if (count($errors) == 0) {       // process     } else {       showErrorsToUser($errors);     }      Is this a bad methodology? # Alternate method Should maybe I create methods for `isValidAge($a)` that return true/false and then call them from the controller?               <?php     class Person     {       private $name;       private $age;            public function setName($n) {         $n = trim($n);         if ($this->isValidName($n)) {           $this->name = $n;         } else {           throw new Exception(\"Invalid name\");         }       }            public function setAge($a) {         if ($this->isValidAge($a)) {           $this->age = $a;         } else {           throw new Exception(\"Invalid age\");         }       }            public function isValidName($n) {         $n = trim($n);         if (mb_strlen($n) == 0) {           return false;         }         return true;       }            public function isValidAge($a) {         if (!is_int($a)) {           if (!ctype_digit(trim($a))) {             return false;           }           $a = (int)$a;         }         if ($a < 0 || $a > 150) {           return false;         }         return true;       }            // other getters, setters and methods     }      And the controller will be basically the same, just instead of try/catch there are now if/else:               <?php     $person = new Person();     $errors = array();     if ($person->isValidAge($age)) {       $person->setAge($age);     } catch (Exception $e) {       $errors['age'] = \"Invalid age\";     }          if ($person->isValidName($name)) {       $person->setName($name);     } catch (Exception $e) {       $errors['name'] = \"Invalid name\";     }          ...          if (count($errors) == 0) {       // process     } else {       showErrorsToUser($errors);     }      # So, what should I do? I'm pretty happy with my original method, and my colleagues to whom I have showed it in general have liked it. Despite this, should I change to the alternate method? Or am I doing this terribly wrong and I should look for another way?"}
{"_id": "201296", "title": "voting system to select next set of product features", "text": "My product just deployed 2.0. Now there are many thing to plan for next sprint. From the list of 5-10 items, we need to ask everyone of our staff to order these 10 items based on importance. It all should be single vote and anonymous. Is there any site giving this service? It could be made in an hour but it wont appear anonymous to the staff, no matter what I say. (Sorry, if its the wrong place to ask. I could not find other.)"}
{"_id": "201293", "title": "Creating a site just for URL redirecting (.NET MVC) due to changing domains and URLs", "text": "I'd just like to hear about any experience creating a (simple) site for redirecting requests. Basically we have multiple domains, but as we add more domains and change URLs, there is a huge problem of maintaining old links. When discussing this we are considering using one constant site to determine where the present url is located. The idea would be pretty simple, just e.g. `links.url.com` and then a parameter to find a database row which would contain e.g. domain, parameters, and any other necessary fields to redirect successfully. for example: `links.url.com/id=12345` would read the new domain e.g. `url2.com` and the `parameters id=324324324&id2=34234` so the controller would just redirect to `url2.com/id=324324324&id2=34234`. Is this a good way to handle changing URLs as the domains and URLs change? Are there downfalls to this approach, or better ways to go about URL change?"}
{"_id": "69400", "title": "What is pattern based programming?", "text": "Can somebody explain the obsession with patterns and anti-patterns in programming? I ask because I have absolutely no idea what any of the patterns mean. When faced with a programming task I think about the problem for a little bit, write down some data structures that I think will be relevant, prototype a solution, separate out some modules and iterate. Nowhere in the process do I think \"Oh, I need FunkyLookyTastic pattern here\"."}
{"_id": "51887", "title": "Java vs. C# - Productivity perspective", "text": "If you have a number of years experience in working with Java and a number of years experience in working with C# and .NET, I would value your opinion on software development productivity differences between these two environments. One of our customers is considering replacing their existing software solution. As the replacement will require approx. 10 - 15 man years work, a choice for Java or .NET, based on productivity differences between the them, may significantly influence the investment required and time-to-market. Would you be able to provide us, an indication of software development productivity differences between Java and C#/.NET? I would prefer to receive an answer as follows: > My experience is based on X years experience working with Java and X years > experience working with C#/.NET. Java is X% more productive then C#.NET or > C#/.NET is X% more productive than Java if you take the the following into > account."}
{"_id": "16296", "title": "Hiring at start-ups vs established companies", "text": "I have always wondered about this and perhaps experienced folks here can comment on this. I always read that big established software companies such as Google, Microsoft, etc are always wary of hiring software engineers/(or other related professionals) who don't exactly meet the job requirements, and would rather turn down a close \"Yes/Maybe\" decision. There's also the general perception that start-ups are generally more willing to hire such \"less-than-perfect\" employees. But to me this sounds counter- intuitive: start-ups are generally much smaller and resource constrained so they would actually need a \"10/10\" hire while established companies with bigger teams and more resources would be willing to take a (small) risk on a hire. Anyone have any comments on this from first-hand experience? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "51884", "title": "How to verify the code that could take a substantial time to compile?", "text": "As a follow up to my prev question: What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment To recap: I am stuck with a large software system with which a TDD ideology of \"test often\" does not work. And to make it even worse the features like pre- compiled headers/multi-threaded compilation/incremental linking, etc is not available to me - hence I think that the best way out would be to add the extensive logging into the system and to start \"coding in large chunks\", which I understand as code for a two-three hours first (as opposed to 15-20 mins in TDD) - thoroughly eyeball the code for a 15 minutes and only after all that do the compilation and run the tests. As I have been doing TDD for a quite a while, my code eyeballing / code verification skills got rusty (you don't really need this that much if you can quickly verify what you've done in 5 seconds by running a test or two) - so I am after a recommendations on how to learn these source code verification/error spotting skills again. I know I was able to do that easily some 5-10 years ago when I din't have much support from the compiler/unit testing tools I had until recently, thus there should be a way to get back to the basics."}
{"_id": "2959", "title": "How important are daily builds?", "text": "One of the criteria of the Joel Test is daily builds. The idea is that if the build is broken, whoever broke it is around to fix it up. If the build cannot be fixed, everyone will have to check out an old version and work on that. I can understand how this can be pretty bad on centralised version control where it is important to avoid merging and branching as much as possible, but this only sounds like a minor nuisance for distributed version control. Do you agree with this? Are there other reasons why daily builds are important?"}
{"_id": "94196", "title": "Is Objective-C an Interpreted or Compiled language?", "text": "I want to know if Objective-C is an interpreted or a compiled language."}
{"_id": "210691", "title": "Moving from C# to C++, and tips?", "text": "I've been using `C#` for a while now, and for the sake of furthering my career and extending my knowledge of programming, I want to get into `C++`. `C#` is very useful, and fast to work with, but since my team and I will be making large scale projects I need to consider working at a lower level language for several reasons. Most commercial companies use `C/C++` due high performance and portability. Of course, `C#` isn't necessarily bad compared to `C` or `C++`, but I just prefer to have a different tool for each job. So I read C++ is harder because it is a low level language, machine code, and doesn't have memory management. But the fact that it is machine code also reduces the amount of memory consumed. The language is hard to work with, but in a way difficulty makes it a powerful language. It was made to be fast and efficient, machine code, but this makes it harder to understand and learn \"since it is closer the the machine\". * * * I've made up my mind, and I want to learn `C++`, so what are some tips to keep in mind while learning? It's best to avoid getting into bad habits rather than to try and break them later, safe than sorry. I plan to use the resources stated here, but I would prefer any personal recommendations, books or online guides, possibly those that can be easily understood by someone who has fair knowledge of `C#`."}
{"_id": "50238", "title": "what is a phone interview?", "text": "So..I am going to have a phone interview with a company tomorrow. I never had a phone interview before so I don't know anything about it except that I am going to talk to someone over the phone. This is a PHP developer position. Is she/he going to ask PHP questions only? or is she/he going to ask any other questions? Please advise me!"}
{"_id": "90688", "title": "What do I need to know to develop a paperless application using .NET?", "text": "I want to develop a paperless application in .NET to reduce paper usage at my university. It will contain Exchange data and reporting. What do I need to study before I start?"}
{"_id": "90689", "title": "Possible hack aftermath", "text": "After being hacked companies often give numbers and details on how much of their data was compromised e.g \"13K user and passwords\". After a possible intrusion how do you know what the hacker did in your server?"}
{"_id": "215251", "title": "Which one is better offline method for large scale application", "text": "We've a big data management website used by several property. Some of our customers have downtime (they can't access net for an hour or two). We want our site to support offline data viewing and inventory management (typical data search and add/remove) and when the user goes online we can sync the changes back to our central database. Customers use several platforms like Windows, iOS, etc. We've been looking into several different options, here are the major choices - Develop offline web app supported in HTML5. Develop a 'fallback' mechanism and interact with data from the app cache as explained in here (http://www.htmlgoodies.com/html5/tutorials/introduction-to-offline-web- applications-using-) Develop a desktop based cross platform solution. I remember the old MONO which has been popular. Here's a post (What do you suggest for cross platform apps, including web cross-platform-apps-including-web) and another one (Technology choice for cross platform development (desktop and phone)? platform- development-desktop-and-phone?rq=1) I realize the the desktop solution might be hard to maintain and result in some compatibility issues and demand test environments. Can HTML5 handle moderate to high level complexity and data flow? Or would it be better to rely on a desktop based app for better scalability & performance?"}
{"_id": "152972", "title": "Is automatically checking code quality via metrics possible?", "text": "For several years now I am a big fan of using static code analysis tools for checking the source code quality. We are mostly doing C# development so NDepend was the best way to go for me. Most of the time I manually perform the analysis, for example once every two weeks. Lately I have had a discussion with a college whether we should include NDepend in our continuous integration process so that the build automatically turns red if for example a method has a too high complexity. My opinion hereby is that it's not possible to define metrics that are valid for the whole code. I think that you would either get way to many \"false complaints\" - code that generally is ok but does not match the metrics. The following code for example has a very high complexity, even if I think that sometimes you can't prevent it.               if (remoteResult == RemoteResult.Dummy1 || remoteResult == RemoteResult.Dummy2 ||          remoteResult == RemoteResult.Dummy3 || remoteResult == RemoteResult.Dummy4 || ...      Of course it would also work to increase the thresholds of the metrics, but in this case I would loose valuable information. Another example for example is the maximum number of members for a class. I would like to keep this lower than 10 for classes with lots of logic. But on the other hand there are many \"domain models\" with more than 10 properties. I wouldn't like to extract another class just because of the metric - as this would lower the readability and does not improve it which should be the goal of code quality metrics. Do you think automatically checking code quality via metrics is possible? If yes, for all or only for specific metrics? (A list of common NDepend metrics can be found at http://www.ndepend.com/Metrics.aspx )"}
{"_id": "251205", "title": "syncing code with repo/backup", "text": "I am doing a small software project on my local PC. I'm the only person working on this. I'd like to back this up to the cloud every day so that if anything happens to my HDD I have a various copies going back in time. I have a box account although that seems to want to sync continuously and with constant file changes with code I don't really want this. Can anyone recommend any site or software that will allow me to back up to an external location online? I'm happy to manually kick off this process at the end of each day."}
{"_id": "251207", "title": "Why do binary files load quicker than alphanumeric text files?", "text": "I've noticed that when I load/store large data files in a binary format, the program runs much faster than if I load data from an ASCII encoded file. Why is this the case? The data in my case is plain, with limited parsing involved other than `read()` or `fscanf()`."}
{"_id": "118044", "title": "How to understand the beauty of UNIX?", "text": "Some of my friends say that UNIX is beautiful and simple. But I really don't know what they mean. Why are they saying so? For me, UNIX is just a boring command prompt with different shells. How can I experience the beauty of UNIX? Can you share any experience?"}
{"_id": "148365", "title": "Pythonesque global variable assignment", "text": "I'm designing a language with Pythonesque syntax, including casual creation of variables by assignment. I'm wondering at the moment exactly how to deal with assignment to global variables (and object/class variables, since I'm implementing classes as scopes). In Python itself, by default the attempt will create a local variable instead:               x = 1     def f():         x = 2 # creates a local variable      but you can override this with a `global` declaration:               x = 1     def f():         global x         x = 2 # updates the global variable      I'm going to implement a prefix `.` for referring to variables in outer scopes (somewhat akin to prefix `::` in C++, but will probably jump one scope instead of all), so that could be written as:               x = 1     def f():         .x = 2 # updates the global variable      Would it be better to have just that one way of doing things, or would it be clearer or more convenient to have the mechanism of declaring variables as global the way Python does it?"}
{"_id": "118047", "title": "Working with a remote developer", "text": "My company is going to hire an external developer to write some simple PHP modules and some minor bugfixing in our software. We have never hired an external developer by the hour before. How can we measure external developer's productivity and coordinate with them? I thought about using a combination of http://worksnaps.net/ and https://github.com/. Any better ideas?"}
{"_id": "46029", "title": "Steps after SQL Injection detected", "text": "I've come across SQL injection vulnerabilities on my companies ecommerce page. It was fairly poorly put together. I believe I have prevented future attempts however we are getting calls about fraudulent credit card charges on our site and others. This leads me to believe that someone was able to get a list of our credit card numbers. What doesn't make sense is that we don't store that information and we use Authorize.net for the transaction. If someone was able to get the CC#s, what should I do next? Inform ALL of our customers that someone broken into our system and stole their information? I have a feeling that will be bad for business."}
{"_id": "46020", "title": "How do you find local fellow programmers?", "text": "I'm a self-tought programmer living in a small town. Except for the occasional meetups at the other end of the country, I rarely talk face-to-face with other programmers. I'm well aware of the merits of pair programming, feedback, discussion with other programmers and all... What do you do to get in contact with other local programmers? p.s. If you live near Loenen (gld), Netherlands, I'd like to have contact ;)"}
{"_id": "46022", "title": "What is the most accurate/frequent report on browser usage on the Internet?", "text": "I'm determining which browsers a new site should support. I'm looking for a respected and accurate (as possible) report on the browser versions that are currently in use. This report should, at minimum cover the % of people who use what browsers, and versions of that browser. Is there a widely accepted source for this kind of report? If so, are they regularly released and available for free? Bonus points for other metrics such as breaking down by OS, Flash versions, JS versions, etc."}
{"_id": "153372", "title": "function works fine without return value in c++", "text": "I forgot to write `return 'a';` in function and `return 0;` in main function but its works fine in Code::Blocks.               #include <iostream>          using namespace std;          char show()     {          cout<<\"this is show function\"<<endl;     }          int main()     {         show();     }      i am using Code::Blocks 10.05 in Ubuntu 12.04. Why this happen and why does the same thing cause an error in TURBO C++?"}
{"_id": "153370", "title": "Layout of mathematical views (iOS)", "text": "I am trying to figure out the right way to encapsulate graphical information about mathematical objects. It is not simple. For example, a matrix can include square brackets around its entries, or not. Some things carry down to sub-objects -- for example, a matrix might track the font size to be used by its entries. Similarly, the font color and the background color would carry down to the entries. Other things do not carry down. For example, the entries of the matrix do not need to know whether or not the matrix has those square brackets. Based on all of the above, I need to calculate sizes for everything, then frames. All of this can depend on the properties stored above. The size of a matrix depends on the sizes of its entries, and also on whether or not it has those brackets. What I am having a hard time with is not the individual ways to calculate sensible frames for this or that. It is the overall organizational structure of the whole thing. How can I keep track of it all without going crazy. One particular obstacle is worth mentioning -- for reasons I don't want to go into here, I need to calculate the sizes and frames for everything before I instantiate any actual views. So, for example, if I have a Matrix object, I need to calculate its size before I make a MatrixView. If I have an equation, I need to calculate the size of the view for the equation before I create the actual view. So I clearly need separate objects for those calculations. But I can't figure out a sensible class structure for those objects. If I put them all into a single class, I get some advantages because copying then becomes easy. But I also end up with a bloated class that contains info that is irrelevant for some objects -- such as whether or not to include those brackets around the matrix. But if I use a lot of different classes, copying properties becomes a real pain. If it matters, this is all in Objective C, for an iOS environment. Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. EDIT: To clarify: I have model objects that contain mathematical information and can compute the text that will be displayed. I also _think_ it will make sense to have style sheet objects that will know the font size. Therefore, between the two, I can compute everything. This still leaves the issue of how to keep track of the resulting information. I don't want to call the \"compute- your-size\" methods more than necessary as they are expensive. So I have to cache some things. But where? And how do I manage that caching?"}
{"_id": "150223", "title": "Backbone/JQuery, ExtJs 4.... is there something else worth looking?", "text": "Im currently evaluating a front-end architecture for a big app that will be developed by a team of about 6 developers + 1 web designer so that said, having a robust SVN friendly architecture is a must. So far I'm evaluating this two options:   * A mixture of JQuery/UI/Mobile + Backbone/Underscore + Require JS + Twitter-Bootstrap   * ExtJS 4 This are the requirements the architecture needs to meet:   * SVN Fiendly (or Friendly depending on you previous experiences)   * Active community and extensive documentation   * Extensible   * Easy to learn and to maintain (nice to have)   * Cross-browser support (most of the time at least)   * Support for Mobile devices   * Easy to maintain (MVC, MVVM)   * OpenSource (nice to have) The previously mentioned ones meet most of the requirements in different levels and so far they are the only ones I've found about, am I missing any others?"}
{"_id": "153375", "title": "what programming languages and skills are necessary to learn hypervisor development?", "text": "I would like to know the skills and programming languages necessary to learn hypervisor development and any good resource to start learning?"}
{"_id": "48349", "title": "Why are Javascript for/in loops so verbose?", "text": "I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind why the language designers would make the `for (.. in ..)` loops so verbose. For example:               for (var x in Drupal.settings.module.stuff) {         alert(\"Index: \" + x + \"\\nValue: \" + Drupal.settings.module.stuff[x]);     }      It makes trying to loop over anything semi-complex like the above a real pain as you either have to alias the value locally inside the loop yourself, or deal with long access calls. This is especially painful if you have two to three nested loops. I'm assuming there is a reason why they would do things this way, but I'm struggling with the reasoning."}
{"_id": "45594", "title": "What have you learned from the bugs you helped discover and fix?", "text": "I liked the core of this question, and wanted to re-ask it in a way that made it less about 'fun' and more about 'What do these past mistakes tell us about how we can write and test software better?' As an SDET, I'm always looking for anecdotes about new and interesting ways that programs can fail. I've learned a lot from these tales in the past, and would like to get that from the intelligent people in this community as well. I'd be interested in hearing what the issue was, how it was caught, if you think there was anything that could have reasonably done to catch it earlier or to avoid the same issue on later projects, and any other interesting lessons you took away from this bug. Please only write about bugs you _personally_ were involved with, ideally on a project you worked on (e.g., no \"10 years before I was born, this happened and it was FUNNY!\" answers). Please vote up answers that are thought-provoking or could change how you develop or test in some way, so this isn't just 'social fun'. Try to avoid voting up something just because it was funny. Edit: Please also focus on concrete examples of bugs or classes of bugs, not general discussion of what you've generally learned. They don't have to have been super-difficult or extremely weird, just something that made you go, \"huh\"."}
{"_id": "45597", "title": "Office design and layout for agile development", "text": "(moved from stackoverflow) I have found lot of discussions here on about which keyboard, desk, light or colored background is best - but I can't find one addressing the layout of the whole office. We are a company with about 20 employees moving to a new place, something larger. There are two main development practices going on here with regular combination, the back end people often needing to work with the mobile people to arrange web services. There are about twice as many back end people as mobile people. About half of the back end developers are working on-site at any time and while they are almost never all in the office at once at least 5-10 spaces need to be provided - so most of the time the two groups are about equal. We have the chance to arrange desks, partitions and possibly even walls to make the space good. There won't be cash for dot-com frills like catering or massages but now's the time to be planning to avoid ending up with a bunch of desks in a long line. Joel on Software's Bionic Office is an article I've remembered from way back and it has some good ideas but I* (and more importantly the company's owners) are not completely sold on the privacy idea in an environment where we are supposed to be collaborating. This is another great link - The Ultimate Software Development Office Layout - I hadn't even remembered enclosed meeting rooms until reading this. Does the private office stand in the way of agile development? Is the scrum enough forced contact and if you need to bug someone you should need to get up and knock on their door? What design layouts can you point to and why would you recommend them? *I'm not against closed offices at all but would be happy if some other solution can do just as well. If it can't... well, that's what this question is all about. * * * Two updates - April 2013. The first move was to an office that was \"funky\". Basically open but with weird features like one wall carpeted, half the floor carpeted, half the floor polished concrete. Everyone seated on the concrete wanted to be on the carpet. It looked OK but in practise I would recommend not carpeting only half the office, the people who felt the cold really hated it. For standups it was fine - huge whiteboards occupied one wall, plenty of space to talk and break out. Then I moved to a very crowded place mixed in with another company (same owners) whose function was all about collaboration, design, phone calls, maintenance and installation of physical things. That sucked. Then we moved to new premises and someone decided warehouse/industrial was cool. Hard surfaces everywhere, glass and polished concrete. Developers sharing one big table in the middle of the highest traffic area right next to a kitchenette and dishwasher, not even in an alcove, just out there. Next to the people who spent all day on the phone. It sucked and continued to suck despite bandaids like noise absorbing panels. It sucked for agile because there was no space designed in for the board or for the standup and the acoustic characteristics of the place made hearing any one person above the clatter very difficult - as well as that feeling, during quiet moments, of shouting in a cathedral. Nobody ever listened to the complaints. I quit and so did a few others. Oh, it didn't help that the person who insisted on being \"product owner\" never bothered to show up."}
{"_id": "210750", "title": "Algorithm for compression of a dictionary (words and definitions)", "text": "The theoretical situation is this: Let's say that we have a digital dictionary (by which I mean a traditional list of words and definitions, not an associative array). For the sake of simplicity, let's also say that each word can be replaced by its exact definition, and still make sense in a sentence; for example, if this dictionary holds the definition of the word \"ocean\" to be \"large body of salt water\", then the following passage:               \"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean.\"       could be modified to:               \"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the large body of salt water.\"      without any loss of logic or meaning. Now my question is this: given a dictionary with all of the words in the English language, what is an algorithm that could be applied to compress the dictionary, through the replacement of all the occurrences of a given word with its definition, and in doing so find a base set of words through which all of the meanings of the original language could be expressed? To clarify even more; if \"sadness\" is defined as \"an unhappy emotion\", then the word sadness can be completely removed from the dictionary by replacing all instances of the word \"sadness\" that occur in the definitions of other words with its definition. The definition of \"depression\", for example, might change from \"a sustained period of sadness\" to \"a sustained period of an unhappy emotion\". In this way, the algorithm would eventually arrive at a base set of words from which all other words could be represented. Are there any algorithms that exist that can do this, or something similar? How might this be done programmatically, without using brute force? Any insight is appreciated."}
{"_id": "198616", "title": "What license is best for this: Software is open source and free to use as long as you don't charge your customers", "text": "I'm releasing an open-source jQuery plug-in that is free to use, modify and redistribute as long as you don't directly or indirectly charge your customers. Your software doesn't need to be open-source, it just need to be free. If you charge your customers, you need a commercial license. I'm not sure about the licensing. http://www.turnjs.com/ is a plug-in that is similarly licensed and it is `Non-comercial BSD license`. But I can't find the definition for this license online. Can anyone help me determining the best license for me based on my description? Thanks."}
{"_id": "198619", "title": "MorphAdorner Licensing confusion", "text": "I want to use the MorphAdorner library available free for commercial use. But it uses several other libraries that restrict commercial use (like Gate etc). Can I use this library in my application?"}
{"_id": "254181", "title": "Why does void in C mean not void?", "text": "In strongly-typed languages like Java and C#, `void` (or `Void`) as a return type for a method seem to mean: > This method doesn't return anything. Nothing. No return. You will not > receive anything from this method. What's really strange is that in C, `void` as a return type or even as a method parameter type means: > It could really be anything. You'd have to read the source code to find out. > Good luck. If it's a pointer, you should really know what you're doing. Consider the following examples in C:               void describe(void *thing)     {         Object *obj = thing;         printf(\"%s.\\n\", obj->description);     }          void *move(void *location, Direction direction)     {         void *next = NULL;              // logic!              return next;     }      Obviously, the second method returns a pointer, which by definition could be anything. Since C is older than Java and C#, why did these languages adopt `void` as meaning \"nothing\" while C used it as \"nothing or anything (when a pointer)\"?"}
{"_id": "125990", "title": "Questions over Excel programming", "text": "I have always heard about the powerful programming capabilities of Microsoft Excel (not VBA, I am referring to the formulas of Excel itself), but have never seen it.   * Does it really have all that power on formulas or have I misunderstood?   * If it does, what is the extent of Excel's programming capabilities?   * How is it done (what does serious, complex programming looks like in terms of syntax, patterns, styles, etc.)?   * Does it pertain to a paradigm (say, functional programming)?   * Do Excel programmers exist?   * What is it mainly used for?"}
{"_id": "97555", "title": "Future of SOAP, with REST?", "text": "Considering that more and more Web Services are implementing a RESTful interface, I am wondering what the future of SOAP will be? I'm looking for any kind of papers, statistics, articles or publications from official sources (e.g. books, articles and journals) which provide information on the future of SOAP. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "97550", "title": "Is there any legal issue for copying javascript code to website", "text": "I am making one website and i want to use mortgage repayment calculator. I have seen many real estate sites using that. I want to know that i copy their `javascript calculator` code and style my form differently , will that be an legal issue there"}
{"_id": "90024", "title": "How could RDBMSes be considered a fad?", "text": "Completing my Computing A-level in 2003 and getting a degree in Computing in 2007, and learning my trade in a company with a lot of SQL usage, I was brought up on the idea of Relational Databases being used for storage. So, despite being relatively new to development, I was taken-aback to read a comment (on Is LinqPad site quote \"Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?\" accurate? ) that said: > [Some devs] despise [SQL] and think that it and RDBMS are a fad Obviously, a competent dev will use the right tool for the right job and won't create a relational database when e.g. flat file or another solution for storage is appropriate, but RDBMs are useful in a massive number of circumstances, so how could they be considered a fad?"}
{"_id": "162724", "title": "Is my DFD accurate?", "text": "This is my first ever DFD that I made after my fair share of learning but I have no way of verifying whether it is correct or not. Although I have taken utmost care to make sure it is right, I may be wrong. **Here is the scenario:** Bebop Records is a mail-order company that distributes CDs and tapes at discount prices to record club members. When an order processing clerk receives an order form, he or she verifies that the sender is a club member by checking the Member file. If the sender is not a member, the clerk returns the order along with a membership application form. If the customer is a member, the clerk verifies the order item data by checking the Item file. Then the clerk enters the order data and saves it to the Daily Order file. The clerk also prints an invoice and shipping list for each order, which are forwarded to Order Fulfilment. **And here is my diagram:** ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FnD6D.png)"}
{"_id": "162725", "title": "How much overhead is there in persistent connections?", "text": "Ok so I'm musing over a little side project I want to start. Essentially its a multi-session web based FTP client. Multi-session in that you can log into several FTP servers at the same time and perform operations like moving a file from one FTP server to another. I'm doing this mainly to brush up on the new webdev technologies, particularly websockets. I'm using node.js + socket.io to keep a persistent bi-directional connection between the web browser and the web server. The web server will also have persistent connections to each FTP server the user has logged into. So if there are 100 concurrent users each logged into 5 ftp accounts, the web server will have 100 websocket connections + 500 ftp connections. Is servicing 600 connections a lot? I know it depends on the hardware resources of the server but is something like this doable on a budget? Are there more efficient means of doing something like this? I know its unlikely that this project will really get popular but I want it to scale well regardless. Thanks for any help, I've still got a lot to learn."}
{"_id": "59876", "title": "what is a \"proxy based\" framework?", "text": "I just started reading about spring , and a book mentioned \"Spring AOP is a Proxy based framework\" . What is meant by \"Proxy based\" framework."}
{"_id": "193936", "title": "Is it a good idea to build a library on top of somebody else's library?", "text": "Is it a good idea to use somebody else's library as a base and build your own library over that. I want to make a JavaScript Canvas framework for a animation player on top of KineticJS. Should I do it? Do I need permission from the author of KineticJS? Do I just say to users to donwload KineticJS before my library, or do I just copy paste the kineticJS code in my library?"}
{"_id": "45046", "title": "Why do almost all Java jobs (postings and from recruiters) say J2EE rather than the newer JEE versions?", "text": "I'm still fairly new to Java but have definite comfort now working within the framework I am used to which would mainly be focused on Spring, Hibernate and JEE 6. It seems like every time I talk to a recruiter all they do is throw around the keyword \"J2EE\", they need someone with J2EE experience, etc. I am aware that legacy systems would still be using J2EE but it seems like at least some jobs would be advertising JEE now. Just curious if they are just stuck with some keyword that they can't seem to wrap their heads around it having a newer version or what. Having not done Java all that long, I haven't used J2EE specifically but wouldn't it be fairly easy to adapt having used the newer enterprise edition? Just curious to hear anything about this from someone with more experience."}
{"_id": "59870", "title": "Best/Bad practices for code sharing?", "text": "The more I explore Github, the more I like it. I really enjoy how coding is becoming more social. I'm curious as to if there are _any bad practices_ that programmers should avoid in sharing their code with each other. And in naming bad practices, **what are the best practices for code sharing**? For example: Is it a bad practice for a single repo to have multiple scripts/projects named **'MiscProjects'**? Where this repo, as the name suggest, is a collection of miscellaneous small scripts and projects. This may resemble how a programmer organizes projects on his/her local storage, but it's possibly not optimal for code sharing? Maybe if a good README/documentation is done, it would be better? Or as long as it's well documented, anything goes?"}
{"_id": "53629", "title": "How do you communicate improvements in tools and process to the development team?", "text": "My team does a lot of internal tooling and infrastructure work - you can think of us as a small scale version of the teams Facebook, Etsy, Netflix, etc. who build all the infrastructure for scaling their services up to thousands/tens of thousands of servers and supporting millions of users. Lately, we've been running full steam ahead improving much of the tools we use internally, like tools for automatically creating new servers, setting up new application instances, etc. An end result of this has been decreased developer frustration, but increased 'ignorance' by most of the developer team about how to use our tools correctly and effectively. More often than not, my team will be asked by other teams to help them use the tools. Solutions we've thought up or things already in place: * * * **All our code is relatively simple and self-explanatory, with good comments where necessary, so developers could read the scripts.** Counterargument: You can guess this isn't a particularly good idea, having people read our tools' code to figure out how to use it. * * * **All our code is committed to Subversion with very detailed commit messages about changes, developers could read the commit emails.** Counterargument: Expect the developers to read all our commits? Ludicrous. * * * **Wiki - we have an internal company wiki, that we try to maintain with up to date information, but as we are moving so fast, the wiki has to keep pace as well.** Counterargument: As mentioned, we move fast in my team, as more improvements on our tools are added daily. Again still relies on people to read something that might change constantly. * * * **Email the team? We could email the team when we have a glut of improvements to communicate.** * * * So as you can all see, we are trying to find new ideas, and explore options we haven't thought of yet. Anyone else ever been in a similar situation and have some guidance?"}
{"_id": "152392", "title": "Is it ok to replace optimized code with readable code?", "text": "Sometimes you run into a situation where you have to extend/improve some existing code. You see that the old code is very lean, but it's also difficult to extend, and takes time to read. Is it a good idea to replace it with modern code? Some time ago I liked the lean approach, but now, it seems to me that it's better to sacrifice a lot of optimizations in favor of higher abstractions, better interfaces and more readable, extendable code. The compilers seem to be getting better as well, so things like `struct abc = {}` are silently turned into `memset`s, `shared_ptr`s are pretty much producing the same code as raw pointer twiddling, templates are working super good because they produce super lean code, and so on. But still, sometimes you see stack based arrays and old C functions with some obscure logic, and usually they are not on the critical path. Is it a good idea to change such code if you have to touch a small piece of it either way?"}
{"_id": "216753", "title": "Design pattern to handle queries using multiple models", "text": "I am presented with a dilemma while trying to re-designing the class structure for my PHP/MySQL application to make it more elegant and conform it to the SOLID principle. The problem goes like this: Let as assume, there is an abstract class called `person` which has certain properties to define a generic person, such as `name`, `age`, `date of birth` etc. There are two classes, `student`, and `teacher`, that implements this abstract class. They add their own unique properties to it. I have designed all the three classes to include all the operational logic (details of which are not relevant in context of the question). Now, I need to create views/reports/data grids which contain details from multiple classes, for example, say, a list of all students doing projects in Chemistry mentored by a teacher whose name is the parameter to the query. This is just one example of a view, there are many different views in the application, which uses data from 3-4 tables, and each of them have multiple input parameters to generate them. Considering this particular example, I have written the relevant query using JOIN and the results are as expected and proper, now here is the dilemma: Keeping in mind the single responsibility principle, where should I keep this query? It does not belong to either `Student` class, or `Teacher` class or any other classes currently present. a) Should I create a new class, say `dataView` class, and design it as a MVC pattern and keep the query there? What about the other views? how do they fit in this architecture? b) Should I not keep the query in code at all, and make it DB View ? c) Am I completely wrong in the approach? If so what is the right approach? My considerations are as follows: a) should be easy to add new views later on if requirement comes, without having to copy-paste-modify code b) would like to make it as loosely coupled as possible so that if minor db structure changes happen, it does not break I did google searches on report design and OOP report generators, but all the result seem to focus on the visual design of the report rather than fetching the data. I have already taken care of the visual aspect of the report using MVC with html templates. I am sure this is a very fundamental problem with known solution, but I am somehow not able to find it (maybe searching with wrong keyword). **Edit1: Modified the title to make it more relevant** **Edit2: The accepted answer got me thinking in the right direction and identify my design flaws, which eventually led me to findthis question and the solution in Stack Overflow which gave me the detailed answer to clear the confusion.**"}
{"_id": "29234", "title": "Is there any evidence that one of the current alternate JVM languages might catch on?", "text": "There's been a lot of enthusiasm about JRuby, Jython, Groovy, and now Scala and Clojure as the language to be the successor to Java on the JVM. But currently only Groovy and Scala are in the TIOBE top 100, and none are in the top 50. Is there any reason to think that any of this bunch will ever gain significant adoption? My question is not primarily about TIOBE, but about any evidence that you might see that could indicate that one of these languages could get significant backing that goes beyond the enthusiasts."}
{"_id": "142047", "title": "DI/IoC in Java for a .NET'er used to Castle.Windsor", "text": "Is there a Java DI container that works in a similar way to the most excellent Castle.Windsor container on the .NET side? The Java containers I've had a look at all seem to rely on annotations (Guice) within my services, which I don't dig all that much - I'd like to go POJO all the way if possible. Spring on the other hand can do without the annotations, but it requires a lot of XML. XML configuration != maintainability. One of the really nice things about Castle.Windsor is the wiring you're able to set up in code with Installers, auto wiring based on naming conventions and whatnot. Ideally the container should also support lifecycle management and configuration; i.e. registering components as transient, singleton, pooled etc. Another bonus would be support for interceptors. Any tips would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "176316", "title": "Annotate source code with diagrams as comments", "text": "I write a lot of (primarily c++ and javascript) code that touches upon computational geometry and graphics and those kinds of topics, so I have found that visual diagrams have been an indispensable part of the process of solving problems. I have determined just now that \"oh, wouldn't it just be **fantastic** if I could somehow _attach_ a hand-drawn diagram to a piece of code as a comment\", and this would allow me to come back to something I worked on, days, weeks, months earlier and far more quickly re-grok my algorithms. As a visual learner, I feel like this has the potential to improve my productivity with almost every type of programming because simple diagrams can help with understanding and reasoning about any type of non-trivial data structure. Graphs for example. During graph theory class at university I had only ever been able to truly comprehend the graph relationships that I could actually draw diagrammatical representations of. So... No IDE to my knowledge lets you save a picture as a comment to code. My thinking was that I or someone else could come up with some reasonably easy-to-use tool that can convert an image into a base64 binary string which I can then insert into my code. If the conversion/insertion process can be streamlined enough it would allow a far better connection between the diagram and the actual code, so I no longer need to chronographically search through my notebooks. Even more awesome: plugins for the IDEs to automatically parse out and display the image. There is absolutely nothing difficult about this from a theoretical point of view. My guess is that it would take some extra time for me to actually figure out how to extend my favorite IDEs and maintain these plugins, so I'd be totally happy with a sort of code post-processor which would do the same parsing out and rendering of the images and show them side by side with the code, inside of a browser or something. Since I'm a javascript programmer by trade. What do people think? Would anyone pay for this? I would."}
{"_id": "142044", "title": "Design in \"mixed\" languages: object oriented design or functional programming?", "text": "In the past few years, the languages I like to use are becoming more and more \"functional\". I now use languages that are a sort of \"hybrid\": C#, F#, Scala. I like to design my application using classes that correspond to the domain objects, and use functional features where this makes coding easier, more coincise and safer (especially when operating on collections or when passing functions). However the two worlds \"clash\" when coming to design patterns. The specific example I faced recently is the Observer pattern. I want a producer to notify some other code (the \"consumers/observers\", say a DB storage, a logger, and so on) when an item is created or changed. I initially did it \"functionally\" like this:               producer.foo(item => { updateItemInDb(item); insertLog(item) })     // calls the function passed as argument as an item is processed      But I'm now wondering if I should use a more \"OO\" approach:               interface IItemObserver {       onNotify(Item)     }     class DBObserver : IItemObserver ...     class LogObserver: IItemObserver ...          producer.addObserver(new DBObserver)     producer.addObserver(new LogObserver)     producer.foo() //calls observer in a loop      Which are the pro and con of the two approach? I once heard a FP guru say that design patterns are there only because of the limitations of the language, and that's why there are so few in functional languages. Maybe this could be an example of it? EDIT: In my particular scenario I don't need it, but.. how would you implement removal and addition of \"observers\" in the functional way? (I.e. how would you implement all the functionalities in the pattern?) Just passing a new function, for example?"}
{"_id": "176311", "title": "Would it be a good idea to work on letting people add arrays of numbers in javascript?", "text": "I am a very mathematically oriented programmer, and I happen to be doing a lot of java script these days. I am really disappointed in the math aspects of javascript:   * the Math object is almost a joke because it has so few methods   * you can't use ^ for exponentiation   * the + operator is very limited, you cant add array's of numbers or do scalar multiplication on arrays Now I have written some pretty basic extensions to the Math object and have considered writing a library of advanced Math features, amazingly there doesn't seem to be any sort of standard library already out even for calculus, although there is one for vectors and matricies I was able find. The notation for working with vectors and matricies is really bad when you can't use the + operator on arrays, and you cant do scalar multiplication. For example, here is a hideous expression for subtracting two vectors, A - B:               Math.vectorAddition(A,Math.scalarMultiplication(-1,B));      I have been looking for some kind of open-source project to contribute to for awhile, and even though my C++ is a bit rusty I would very much like to get into the code for V8 engine and extend the + operator to work on arrays, to get scalar multiplication to work, and possibly to get the ^ operator to work for exponentiation. These things would greatly enhance the utility of any mathematical javascript framework. I really don't know how to get involved in something like the V8 engine other than download the code and start working on it. Of course I'm afraid that since V8 is chrome specific, that without browser cross-compatibility a fundamental change of this type is likely to be rejected for V8. I was hoping someone could either tell me why this is a bad idea, or else give me some pointers about how to proceed at this point to get some kind of approval to add these features. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "176313", "title": "Expanding existing DVCS Wiki", "text": "A portion of my job is to maintain technical documentation for a rapidly expanding manufacturing company. Because it is only a portion of my job and the company's product line is expanding so quickly, I can't stay on top of the documentation. As a result, I've been yearning for an information management system with a handful of specific features. I've found many products that have a subset, but none that have all the features I'm looking for. I'm at the point of picking an existing product and expanding it to cover my desired feature set, however, this will be a pet project and I will be learning the underlying language as I go. So, the main question is which existing product will be the easiest to expand to cover the full feature set and has a relatively easy to learn language? Alternatively, have I missed another existing program that will cover the feature set or should be in my list of \"close, but not quite there\"? ### Feature Set   * web interface   * based on a distributed version control system (e.g., git)   * easy to edit by logged in novices (e.g. wiki, multimarkdown)   * outputs in more traditional formats (e.g., doc, odt, pdf)   * edits held in queue until editor/engineer/manager approves them (e.g., MS Word editing) [this is the really big elephant in list - suggestions on where to start appreciated]   * edits held in queue specifically for engineer approval [extra limb of the elephant in the list]   * well-supported in the open source community ### Closest, but not quite there ikiwiki - http://ikiwiki.info (php)   * lots of awesome functionality and extensions, including easy to edit and based on DVCS   * lacks a review/forward for review queue   * appears to be well-supported within the OSS community gitit - http://gitit.net/ (haskell)   * easy to edit and based on DVCS   * lots of outputs in traditional formats   * a great web-based gui diff interface   * lacks a review/forward for review queue   * appears to be primarily maintained by one individual"}
{"_id": "195197", "title": "Should I create a separate table for every derived type?", "text": "We are having a debate and I am struggling to decide which side to come down on. Basically we have an event type lets say like like this (simplified example).               public class Event     {         public virtual int EventId { get; set; }         public virtual DateTime DateTimeOccurred { get; set; }     }      Many different events in our system can inherit from this so we could have:               public class UserUpdatedEvent : Event     {         public virtual User User { get; set; }     }      So basically any event can inherit from the base event and then we can track what is happening in our system which we need to do as tasks occur off these events, etc. My question is should we have a table in the DB for every event so we can enforce foreign keys in this example to the user using table per type with each sub type referencing the base Events table. Or should we have a single table and a column, maybe linking to an enum saying what the event is and then another column containing the primary key to that object but we won't be able to enforce referential integrity (maybe with a trigger but not ideal and not full proof). The pros for a single table are speed, no joins, simpler to build/maintain, etc. The cons are no referential integrity, we are using EF and table per type does work very well, on the other hand we produce a lot of reports and these are direct SQL sprocs for speed and the joins will become pretty heavy. How do people normally come down on a situation like this? Many thanks for any insight into existing systems with similar problems and helping us settle this decision."}
{"_id": "78333", "title": "Is Extreme Programming (XP) incompatible with ideas expressed in Peopleware?", "text": "I have just finished reading Peopleware (DeMarco, Lister) and have researched on Extreme Programming (XP) a little before. As I see it now, the two approaches are almost exclusive to each other. Peopleware suggests to isolate programmers from any disturbance and sets priority on uninterrupted work in order to help programmers to achieve flow. XP on the other hand proposes to ensure as much communication as possible, even suggesting for programmers to \"sit together\", code in pairs and generally work in the same room (generating a lot of noise). Are those two competing schools of thought, is perhaps one of them proven right/wrong or is there an effective compromise? I can see the points both sides make, but can't see any reasonable compromise. I am very new to studying software development management, so it's possible that I just misunderstood something. All comments welcome. P.S As an added mini-question, as a programmer, which would you find more productive?"}
{"_id": "142048", "title": "How to deal with tautology in comments?", "text": "Sometimes I find myself in situations when the part of code that I am writing is (or _seems to be_ ) so self-evident that its name would be basically repeated as a comment:               class Example     {         /// <summary>         /// The location of the update.         /// </summary>         public Uri UpdateLocation { get; set; };     }      (C# example, but please refer to the question as language-agnostic). A comment like that is useless; what am I doing wrong? Is it the choice of the name that is wrong? How could I comment parts like this better? Should I just skip the comment for things like this?"}
{"_id": "149099", "title": "How to implement Facebook leaderboard game for mobile?", "text": "I am in the final stages of developing an indie C# mobile game that I will deploy to iPhones and Androids using Mono. I wish to add push notifications and a Facebook leader board feature into the game, such that the user will be presented with a list of all his/her friends that are playing the game and their weekly scores in the main screen. I have **ZERO** experience with web development/networking/databases. I recently started researching the field and formed a basic understanding. Facebook has SDKs in PHP, JavaScript, obj-c and java, tho reading the documentation examples still feels cryptic to me since it involves web/server tech. After researching some more, I understood that my options for server side are basically PHP or ASP.Net. It seems that ASP.Net is more favorable in my case since I am already proficient with C# (but there is no ASP.net SDK from Facebook... I am not sure if this implies that I cant interact with Facebook using ASP.Net). On the down side some have mentioned higher costs for ASP.Net, tho I havent looked further into that aspect yet. I also understood that JavaScript is client side technology. I started going through tutorials of ASP.Net, I was thinking that ASP.Net is a purely server side management language, but it started feeling more like WPF as those tutorials started getting into very lengthy discussions about creating website interfaces and styles. I am not interested in that, I just want to have a web server which my app can somehow communicate with and get friends/scores. Am I learning the right technologies for my goal? should I be learning something else? I am posting this in hopes that someone who knows this field well can see through my problem and help guide me, otherwise I could spend months studying something that might not be the right solution to my goal. Thanks."}
{"_id": "62843", "title": "Best Ruby Git library?", "text": "Which is the best Git library in Ruby to use?   Git, Grit, Rugged, Other? Background: I'm the current maintainer of TicGit-ng which is a distributed offline ticket system built on git, and I've read and heard over and over again that Grit is the one I should use because it supersedes the Git gem, but there seems to be either a lack of documentation or a lack of features because myself and others have failed in trying to switch from the deprecated-but- functional Git to the newer Grit gem."}
{"_id": "62848", "title": "IntelliJ Idea - am I doing it wrong? (former Eclipse user)", "text": "I have been an Eclipse user as long as I can remember, and have always been happy with what it has offered. As you know, Idea is now free, and one of my main excuses for not using Idea has been \"I'm sure it's very very good, but Eclipse is free and it's easily good enough for what I need\". So, now that Idea is free, in order to try it out I decided to start a new Play Framework project, and instead of typing `play eclipsify` I typed `play idealize`, and followed the steps to import the project into Idea. This worked fine, and at some point along the way I was given the opportunity to choose my key layout mappings, so I chose Eclipse. I have made lots of progress, and am really impressed with Idea's superior refactoring and variable name suggestion. However, at the same time, I am missing some key features of Eclipse that I would be astonished not to find in Idea:   * In Eclipse, I can type `CTRL`+`Shift`+`O` to organise imports. All the imports are sorted out for me, and for anything ambiguous it asks. In Idea I seem to need to move to any ambiguous ones with the cursor and hit `Alt`+`Enter` for each one so that I can choose which import to do.   * On methods with misspelled names, incorrect signatures, etc, in Eclipse I can hit `CTRL`+`1` and a dropdown gives me suggestions. I don't seem to be able to do this in Idea.   * `CTRL`+`O` gives me the quick outline, which is a nice popup showing the current class's high-level outline. I don't seem to be able to do this in Idea.   * `CTRL`+`Shift`+`T` in Eclipse brings up a dialog to type the name of a class to open. More often than not, Idea seems to stop responding at this point, and I have to, at the very least, move focus away and back again in order to get it to start responding again.   * how on earth do I expand a collapsed import statement without resorting to the mouse? In Eclipse I would just move the cursor to it and hit enter. In Idea the best I can do is a `CTRL`+`D` and then `CTRL`+`Shift`+`O` :) I'm guessing that these are features that I've just not found beceause Idea's keyboard mapping is not a 1:1 match with Eclipse's, or that the functionality can't be perfectly matched to a specific hotkey combination because Idea goes further in what it offers. The problem where Idea stops responding seems more like a bug to me. I really really want my 'relationship' with Idea to work out, I can 'feel' it is a very very good IDE, but these little niggles are getting in my way. Is the latest free release buggy, or have I just not given myself enough time to change my habits and expectations compared with Eclipse (I've only been using it for a week or so)?"}
{"_id": "236700", "title": "What is a good algorithm for tracing around the edge of a 2D polyline", "text": "If I have a polyline made up of any number of vertexes, what is an efficient algorithm for tracing around the boundary of this polyline? There are 4 situations to consider:   1. The polyline does not intersect itself and has no colinear edges.   2. The polyline does not intersect itself but has an interior or exterior loop.   3. The polyline has self intersections in a bowtie shape.   4. The polyline has self intersections which form interior loops. An example of each (all are closed):   1. Vertex List = (5,3) (10,3) (10,7) (5,7)   2. Vertex list = (0,0) (3,0) (3,3) (1,3) (1,2) (2,2) (2,3) (0,3)   3. Vertex list = (5,3) (10,7) (10,3) (5,7)   4. Vertex list = (0,0) (3,0) (3,4) (1,4) (1,2) (2,2) (2,3) (0,3) Visually: ![The shapes to trace the outline of.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/NYUSy.png) In this case a convex hulling algorithm really is not appropriate, because I wish to preserve any concavities in the shape. Results: To clarify, the bow tie shape should not be crossed over, and a simple area calculation should yield an area for this shape (i.e. the two triangles end up logically wound in the same direction). ![This is what the resultant shapes should look like](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KUJv7.png) Not only does this algorithm have to work (which is the first priority) it should be fast enough to run on hundreds of thousands of polylines in a few seconds. In addition, the algorithm has to be able to handle any combination of the four cases."}
{"_id": "149092", "title": "Design patterns: moving object references around an application", "text": "I'm new to Programmers and I am looking to increase my knowledge of programming. Recently, a user on Stack Overflow told me using singletons is a bad idea, that they encourage tight coupling and that they make testing harder. What prompted this discussion was that every class I've ever written accessed any kind of data through a singleton. For example, a class that handles state data for a game. If any other class wanted to access this data, all they would have to do is get the singletons instance and there it would be. Specifically, instantiating a class on the AppDelegate, then accessing it via: [[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate] gameObject] getScore]. The SO user told me that I should instantiate the 'gameObject' wherever I first need it, then pass that object to every other class that needs it via either a method as an argument, or via a property. I was discussing these points when someone else pointed out that this information is completely wrong, that singletons are unrelated to coupling and that they do not affect testing at all. I'm now completely confused as to which person is correct. Could someone please clarify which technique is best for an object to persist for the lifetime of the app, and be accessible to other classes, and also maintain loose coupling. To me, the object passing by method or property to each class seems the most logical, but I do not know! Thanks in advance for any help!"}
{"_id": "8966", "title": "How do I unit test multi-threaded code?", "text": "Are there ways to unit test your multi-threaded code for race conditions and deadlocks? To see if they are performing the way they should be..."}
{"_id": "149097", "title": "Logic required to solve a problem relating to location of objects", "text": "I have raised a question on dba.stackexchange.com but as the heart of my question is in fact to do with logic I have raised a more general representation of my issue here. I think it is the right place, apologies if not. I have a number of objects that are read and written to in a set sequence. I also have four locations in which I can store these objects. These objects vary in size but for the purposes of simplicity I have rated them 1 to 3 with 3 being the largest. Location of objects is fixed e.g. objects can not be moved in between sequence steps I have a table which details the sequence of the process. It has three columns: Sequence, Source, Destination. Processes can and do run in parallel and therefore sequence is not a unique identifier however should one be required it can be considered to be in place. In an ideal world no object should be located in a way that would result in no object required for a sequence step being co-located with another. Of course this is highly unlikely and instead I am looking for a best solution as opposed to a perfect one. I have therefore considered that the potential locations may be best ranked as followed.   1. All objects for a sequence located separately.   2. Source and destination objects for sequence located separately.   3. Objects located anywhere Given that each object has a size I also considered perhaps multiplying the location rank by the size and therefore giving the locations a score. Then based on this I could find the best solution by looking at it's total score. Does anyone have any suggestions or perhaps addressed a similar problem in the past? Any help input is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "65216", "title": "How can you explain \"beautiful code\" to a non-programmer?", "text": "When speaking with a non-programmer friend, I happened to mention the concept of \"beautiful code\" and she wanted to understand what that meant, but I was at a bit of a loss as to how to explain it to someone who would have no context whatsoever. When all code looks like gibberish to someone anyways, how can you explain what makes one piece of code prettier than another? Analogies could be useful too."}
{"_id": "251977", "title": "A question about static types", "text": "How would you statically type the following JavaScript program               function c(str) {       c = eval(str);       return c(str);     }      I'm not trying to start a flame war but I'm genuinely curious. I've always assumed that dynamic languages allow more programs to be written because of examples like the above. But if a statically typed language is Turing complete then it should be able to express the equivalent of the above program. So where exactly does my reasoning break down because this seems paradoxical to me? My reasoning is that this is obviously a function that can not be typed in a statically typed language and still allow the generality that the above code allows for."}
{"_id": "160380", "title": "Is it smart to design a command and control server, that will monitor system resources and spin up/spin down servers at times of peak? ", "text": "I am building an application that will be modular, in a way that it will be a set of separate systems communicating with each other. It uses Hadoop on all systems, and HBase on 3 of the 4. Scaling will only be an issue on the non Hbase system, it uses it's own NoSQL like system. It will be a client facing system, and is very memory intensive, so each server can handle a limited number of users, before drastically dropping performance. All 4 systems have Zookeeper procedures & options built in. Is it smart to design a command and control server, that will monitor system resources and spin up/spin down servers at times of peak? Would that set me up for failure, since if it faults the whole system can fail? How hard would it be to automate a task like that for Hadoop?"}
{"_id": "149546", "title": "I want to sell an app but also share the source code", "text": "I'm sorry if the title isn't clear, I have no idea about licences... The thing is that I have created a little app for android targeted at developers. I want to get paid for the app, but I also want to share the code so others can modify it to improve it or to suit their needs. I think this is somewhat close to minecraft way (sell and expect that everybody pays, but have no problem with people modifing the source, build mods, etc) and is pretty close to http://livereload.com/ way of distributing and licensing. Maybe I should sell the app and give access to a private repo from the app itself (so, once you bought it, you get access to the source). Am I right? is this my best option?"}
{"_id": "160386", "title": "I-Framing Third Party Pages In Chrome Extensions", "text": "I wrote a (super) simple Chrome Extension for the Telerik Code Converter that just iframes their page in a browser action pop-up. It's been really helpful as I use this tool all the time when I have to port some of my more complex C# code to VB. I was wondering if it would be **ethical** for me to upload this Extension to Chrome Web Store for other developers to use? Of course I wouldn't ever be charging or profiting from it in any way."}
{"_id": "160387", "title": "Is an Inner Function Justified in this Situation", "text": "I'm new to the functional programming concepts in C#, but I have some experience with higher order functions via Haskell, Scala, Python and Ruby. I'm currently going through an old .NET 2.0 codebase with a LOT of duplication in it. Most of it is simple \"copy/paste\" with a few variables changed. I'm trying to condense as much of this as possible. **A chunk of code within a routine I'm working on now goes a bit like this, for example:**               if (PostProcess.UsesFirstPass)     {         w.WriteLine(V1 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET FOO\");         w.WriteLine(V2 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAR\");         w.WriteLine(V3 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAZ\");         if (PostProcess.IsSpecial){             w.WriteLine(V3 + \" = 20\" + \" !! INCREASE BAZ\");         }         w.WriteLine(V4 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET QUUX\");     }     if (PostProcess.UsesSecondPass)     {         w.WriteLine(V5 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET FOO\");         w.WriteLine(V6 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAR\");         w.WriteLine(V7 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAZ\");         if (PostProcess.IsSpecial){             w.WriteLine(V7 + \" = 20\" + \" !! INCREASE BAZ\");         }         w.WriteLine(V8 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET QUUX\");     }     if (PostProcess.UsesFinalPass)     {         w.WriteLine(V9 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET FOO\");         w.WriteLine(V10 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAR\");         w.WriteLine(V11 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAZ\");         if (PostProcess.IsSpecial){             w.WriteLine(V11 + \" = 20\" + \" !! INCREASE BAZ\");         }         w.WriteLine(V12 + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET QUUX\");     }      Where any of the \"V\"s you see in there is a string variable defined earlier. It's part of a fairly large method. I could write another method called, say, `WriteVariables()` and pass in the required info and call it three times, but it only ever applies to this section of method. I think this would be a place where writing an anonymous inner function would make sense. I did it to test it out, and it seems to work fine. **Now I have a single delegate that looks something like:**               private delegate void WriteCutVars(string V1,          string V2, string V3, string V4, CuttingParameters cutParam);          // snip //          WriteCutVars WriteVars = (Va, Vb, Vc, Vd) => {         w.WriteLine(Va + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET FOO\");         w.WriteLine(Vb + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAR\");         w.WriteLine(Vc + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET BAZ\");         if (PostProcess.IsSpecial){             w.WriteLine(Vc + \" = 20\" + \" !! INCREASE BAZ\");         }         w.WriteLine(Vd + \" = 0\" + \" !! SET QUUX\");     }     if (Process.UsesFirstPass) WriteVars(V1, V2, V3, V4);     if (Process.UsesSecondPass) WriteVars(V5, V6, V7, V8);     if (Process.UsesFinalPass) WriteVars(V9, V10, V11, V12);      **My main questions:**   * Is this a proper use of inner functions?    * Is this acceptable when I'm the only CS graduate on a team of mostly mechanical engineers?"}
{"_id": "49963", "title": "Can a domain specific language be used to representing the Open SRD", "text": "I am in the early stages of creating an open source C# library that would allow developers to drop in the open SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) into an existing project. Abstracted it is a complex set of tightly coupled business rules. Having previously worked on an adaptive object model project for health care risk management I began with that pattern in mind. Due to the high coupling of rules it is becoming apparent that the project may require some kind of scripting. Have started researching DSL implementation I am now considering scrapping the adaptive object model for a domain specific language. I have not work with domain specific languages so my question is it reasonable to assume a domain specific language can be used to representing the open SRD?"}
{"_id": "208210", "title": "WPF Development in businesses", "text": "Apologies if this is too broad a question(or wrong SE to ask on), but something I've been wondering for a while. I enjoy WPF a lot, and think I'm fairly competent at work with it, and developing for it, and considering trying to advance my career further in that direction (currently on web, would like to move more towards a desktop/wpf focus). But I've never seen a WPF front-end designer position job advert, (or a FED designer position with WPF facets), is this down to in the industry that WPF devs are expected to handle both design & implementation of the UI, alongside the behind-code. Only asking this, as I'm terrible at design and if it's a crucial part of being a WPF developer, then it's going to be a fairly large hurdle to overcome. That's not to say I can't work with a given design. I know it could be a company dependant thing, some requiring WPF devs to have both sides, some companies just requiring them to have the behind C#/VB skills, but would like to hear from current developers in the industry, what their experience is. Thanks"}
{"_id": "157611", "title": "User management data - the need for a username and password", "text": "I would have this asked on StackOverflow if it had code, but it's more on the idea/concept so I asked here. I am working on the UI of our inventory system when I found out that when registering a user in the system, the username and password of the user _is optional_. I asked our supervisor why is this so. He said that in the system, there are \"bins of assets\" (think of boxes with toys) where we assign through the system employees to handle these bins. Employees must be registered in the system but some of them are not given access to the system, therefore _there is no use giving them usernames and passwords_. But I think his argument is wrong, really wrong because every time I hear \"no username no password\" makes me cringe as it is most synonymous to a no- password, free-to-access account. And so I ask:   * **What would be the correct database design to separate this system-user employee and non-system-user employee that does not use this no username, no password scheme?** Currently, as the description implies, we have a single table with uid, username, hashed password and other fields with additional user data.   * To prove to him a point, I would like to know **why storing a blank username and password for an account is totally wrong for non-system-user registered employee**.   * **What are alternatives to having this system?** I know it's best to keep in one table the registered users but I have never seen this situation where there are registered users that don't have access to a system. It's like you are given a Facebook account, profiles and all but don't have a username and password for it (or in this case, blank)"}
{"_id": "157612", "title": "If python compiles to assembly and an OS is written in it, will it compete favorably with C in benchmarks?", "text": "Ok, I have used the word _python_ in the question, but it well could be language agnostic in that: If a language X has a well optimised compiler targeting assembly and an OS is written in that language, then will it compete favorably with C in benchmarks? This comes from two conceptions I have (could be wrong):   * Languages are defined by grammar rules (syntax-semantics); they themselves are independent of performance. Performance is a function of implementation.   * C is often efficient because the most popular OS(es) are written in it - so limited wrapping and unwrapping - and it compiles to (these days) well optimized assembly code. And, yes, before some of us pull out guns, I understand and appreciate that in certain situations some languages may outperform C, but by and large C does better than most languages in most situations."}
{"_id": "255272", "title": "Website compatibility with old operating systems", "text": "I'm a web developer. I most often come across this critical situation when the website layout fits with the design when run on Windows 7 or 8 and Mobile Operating Systems (Android, iOs, Windows 8). But when the website is visited by old operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 1998 the whole layout collapses very badly. And specially when visited on old operating systems with Internet Explorer. If we take into account the old operating systems (and/or IE on them) it creates havoc for us. Sometimes, even the well supported front-end frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap give up there and won't support the older browsers. When clients or management request to make the website compatible with all the OS out there including Win XP, how to address this?"}
{"_id": "255275", "title": "Are mutliple database calls really significant with a network call for a web API?", "text": "At one of my employers, we worked on a REST (but it also applies to SOAP) API. The client, which is the application UI, would make calls over the web (LAN in typical production deployments) to the API. The API would make calls to the database. One theme that recurs in our discussions is performance: some people on the team believe that you should not have multiple database calls (usually reads) from a single API call because of performance; you should optimize them so that each API call has only (exactly) one database call. But is that really important? Consider that the UI has to make a network call to the API; that's pretty big (order of magnitude of milliseconds). Databases are optimized to keep things in memory and execute reads very, very quickly (eg. SQL Server loads and keeps everything in RAM and consumes almost all your free RAM if it can). **TLDR: Is it really significant to worry about multiple database calls when we are already making a network call over the LAN?** If so, why? To be clear, I'm talking about order of magnitude -- I know that it depends on specifics (machine hardware, choice of API and DB, etc.) If I have a call that takes O(milliseconds), does optimizing for DB calls that take an order of magnitude less, actually matter? Or is there more to the problem than this? **Edit:** for posterity, I think it's quite ridiculous to make claims that we need to improve performance by combining database calls under these circumstances -- especially with a lack of profiling. However, it's not my decision whether we do this or not; I want to know what the rationale is behind thinking this is a correct way of optimizing web API calls."}
{"_id": "169863", "title": "Validation and Error Generation when using the Data Mapper Pattern", "text": "I am working on saving state of an object to a database using the data mapper pattern, but I am looking for suggestions/guidance on the validation and error message generation step (step 4 below). Here are the general steps as I see them for doing this: (1) The data mapper is used to get current info (assoc array) about the object in db:               +=====================================================+       |  person_id  |   name   |   favorite_color   |  age  |       +=====================================================+       |   1         |   Andy   |   Green            |  24   |        +-----------------------------------------------------+      mapper returns associative array, eg. Person_Mapper::getPersonById($id) :               $person_row = array(         'person_id' => 1,         'name' => 'Andy',         'favorite_color' => 'Green',         'age' => '24',     );          (2) the Person object constructor takes this array as an argument, populating its fields.               class Person {              protected $person_id;         protected $name;         protected $favorite_color;         protected $age;              function __construct(array $person_row)         {             $this->person_id = $person_row['person_id'];             $this->name = $person_row['name'];             $this->favorite_color = $person_row['favorite_color'];             $this->age = $person_row['age'];         }              // getters and setters...              public function toArray()         {             return array(                 'person_id' => $this->person_id,                 'name' => $this->name,                 'favorite_color' => $this->favorite_color,                 'age' => $this->age,             );         }     }      (3a) (GET request) Inputs of an HTML form that is used to change info about the person is populated using Person::getters               <form>         <input type=\"text\" name=\"name\" value=\"<?=$person->getName()?>\" />         <input type=\"text\" name=\"favorite_color\" value=\"<?=$person->getFavColor()?>\" />         <input type=\"text\" name=\"age\" value=\"<?=$person->getAge()?>\" />     </form>      (3b) (POST request) Person object is altered with the POST data using Person::setters               $person->setName($_POST['name']);     $person->setFavColor($_POST['favorite_color']);     $person->setAge($_POST['age']);      *(4) Validation and error message generation on a per-field basis   - Should this take place in the person object or the person mapper object?   - Should data be validated BEFORE being placed into fields of the person object?  (5) Data mapper saves the person object (updates row in the database):               $person_mapper->savePerson($person);     // the savePerson method uses $person->toArray()      // to get data in a more digestible format for the      // db gateway used by person_mapper      Any guidance, suggestions, criticism, or name-calling would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "250574", "title": "How restrictive are the GPL's linking restrictions really?", "text": "To my basic understanding, software licenses only apply when redistributing software. Even if I am wrong about this in general, the GPL states that you need not agree to the GPL in order to receive or run a GPL-covered program. Say there is Program X. Program X requires Library L to run. Program X is covered by a GPL-incompatible license (e.g. the Eclipse Public License, or a proprietary license). Library L is covered by the GPLv3. Program X cannot be distributed alongside Library L - the combination would need to be covered by the GPL, which would violate the EPL.   1. What prevents users from separately installing Program X and Library L, and then using Program X?   2. Perhaps more relevantly in the modern world of auto-updaters, what prevents Program X from including a wrapper which downloads Library L from the Internet (say, from Library L's official website) and then executing Program X? In both of these cases, nothing from Library L is distributed by the authors of Program X, so Library L's license should not apply.   3. What, if anything, changes if Program X instead requires Library L', a fork of Library L by the authors of Program X, which is only available from the same website as Program X and is only usable with Program X, but is never distributed in the same package as Program X?   4. What if this is all in a dynamic language, and no part of Library L is required to compile Program X?   5. What if Program X is distributed in source code form, so that the distribution was not compiled from Library L's headers?"}
{"_id": "209872", "title": "Blurring the lines between async and regular functions in C# 5.0", "text": "Lately I can't seem to get enough of the amazing async-await pattern of C# 5.0. Where have you been all my life? I'm absolutely thrilled with the simple syntax, but I'm having one small difficulty. My problem is that async functions have a totally different declaration from regular functions. Since only async functions can await on other async functions, when I'm trying to port some old blocking code to async, I'm having a domino effect of functions I have to convert. People have been referring to this as a _zombie infestation_. When async gets a bite in your code, it will keep getting bigger and bigger. The porting process is not difficult, it's just throwing `async` in the declaration and wrapping the return value with `Task<>`. But it is annoying to do this over and over again when porting old synchronous code. It seems to me it will be much more natural if both function types (async and plain old sync) had the exact same syntax. If this were the case, porting will take zero effort and I could switch painlessly between the two forms. I think this could work if we follow these rules:   1. Async functions won't require the `async` declaration anymore. Their return types wouldn't have to be wrapped in `Task<>`. The compiler will identify an async function during compilation by itself and do the Task<> wrapping automatically as needed.   2. No more fire-and-forget calls to async functions. If you want to call an async function, you will need to await on it. I hardly use fire-and-forget anyways, and all the examples of crazy race conditions or deadlocks always seem to be based on them. I think they are too confusing and \"out of touch\" with the synchronous mindset we try to leverage.   3. If you really can't live without fire-and-forget, there will be special syntax for it. In any case, it won't be part of the simple unified syntax I'm talking about.   4. The only keyword you need to denote an asynchronous call is `await`. If you have await, the call is asynchronous. If you don't, the call is plain old synchronous (remember, we don't have fire-and-forget anymore).   5. The compiler will identify async functions automatically (since they don't have a special declaration anymore). Rule 4 makes this very simple to do - if a function has an `await` call inside, it is async. Could this work? or am I missing something? This unified syntax is much more fluid and could solve the zombie infestation altogether. **Some Examples:**               // assume this is an async function (has await calls inside)     int CalcRemoteBalanceAsync() { ... }          // assume this is a regular sync function (has no await calls inside)     int CalcRemoteBalance() { ... }          // now let's try all combinations and see what they do:          // this is the common synchronous case - it will block     int b1 = CalcRemoteBalance();          // this is the common asynchronous case - it will not block     int b2 = await CalcRemoteBalanceAsync();          // choosing to call an asynchronous function in a synchronous manner - it will block     // this syntax was used previously for async fire-and-forget, but now it's just synchronous     int b3 = CalcRemoteBalanceAsync();          // strange combination - it will block since it's calling a synchronous function     // it should probably show a compilation warning though     int b4 = await CalcRemoteBalance();      Note: this is a continuation of an interesting related discussion in SO"}
{"_id": "209873", "title": "Java Program That Notifies When Camera is Being Accessed", "text": "I'm trying to find a developer to write me a pretty basic program. I am also a developer, but don't have enough time to write it myself. This program has a pretty basic function. It will notify users, via some dialog (or alert) that some program is about to access the _built in desktop / laptop_ camera. It could be skype or facetime, or whatever it is, the program should be aware of when the OS's camera is going to be accessed and notify the user. Yes, even if the user is initiating the camera themselves via Skype, the notification would still appear. My question is this. If I need this program written in Java, is it possible? Obviously I am trying to get it done in Java so it would run on Windows _and_ Mac. If it is not possible, then it seems as though I'd have to write 2 separate programs on Windows and Mac. I've come here to get suggestions so that I can connect with the right developers. If you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "67729", "title": "What I need to do to learn Quality Assurance?", "text": "I am a Biology student, who has changed my career to IT and have been working in the software field for the past 4 fours under the **QA (auditing processes for ISO9001 purposes)**. Now I'm a Software QA Execute and have decided to increase my knowledge on QA. What are the next steps I can look for? Are there any **certifications** that I can do under QA, which will be very useful? (I have already done certification on IQA). I have heard about **CSQA** certifications for QA, are there any other certifications apart from these? Or as always, are there any books for upgrading my knowledge on QA?"}
{"_id": "29496", "title": "Open Source PHP Encoder", "text": "Are there some recomendations on Open Source or Free **PHP Encoder** systems? Is something available?"}
{"_id": "209874", "title": "How should I unit-test a class that relies on having realistic data?", "text": "I have a class that encapsulates the results of a scientific measurement. I\u2019m building in unit tests from the beginning, but I don\u2019t have a lot of experience with unit testing and I\u2019m not sure which behaviors I should be testing and how. My class does three kinds of things:   1. Reads measurement data from a file (or a string) into its instance variables   2. Writes its measurement data out to a file or a string   3. Performs calculations on its data (e.g. getting the average of a set of numbers) My approach right now is to include a known-good example data file in my `test` directory. One test reads the data in from the file, passes it to my class, and makes sure that it meets some basic sanity checks. Another test passes the file\u2019s _filename_ to my class, lets the class read it, and runs the same tests. The remainder of the tests read the data in from the file, pass it to my class, and check that the results of the data-processing methods are correct, given what I know about that data set. This seems pretty tangled, though. The tests that check (3) implicitly assume that the behaviors of (1) are correct, since it\u2019s the functions in (1) that are being used to populate the class in the first place. And the tests of (1) could benefit from the extensive checks done by the tests for (3). Am I structuring my unit tests poorly, or is this just a natural result of the fact that I need to use a specific dataset in my tests?"}
{"_id": "209878", "title": "Is there a tool that visually represents all the potential paths to a particular piece of code?", "text": "As an example of what I need and why I want it, I am trying to determine how a certain value (CurTotal) is getting set (wrongly). I've come up with these notes to myself to try to understand just what is happening: **CurTotal is declared in frmEntry.SetTotalControlsProperties(). CurTotal gets its value within that method from wrkFile.getAmount(), and txtCurTot is eventually assigned that value. SetTotalControlsProperties() is called:**               0) From the main (frmCentral) form's openfrmUPC() method     1) From frmEntry's overloaded constructor: public frmEntry(string DSDtablename, string recType, int QOne, int sDesc, int sList)     2) Conditionally from within DoSave(), which is called from btnSave_Click() and PrepareForPrinting()     3) From frmEntry's saveDSD(), which is called from DoSave(), which is called by btnSave_Click and PrepareForPrinting()     4) From frmEntry's saveINV(), which is called from DoSave(), which is called by btnSave_Click and PrepareForPrinting()     5) From frmEntry's btnClear_Click()      **So the most \"interesting\" ones are 0, 2, and 3 (I don't think the observed bogus activity takes place in saveINV(), I'm almost positive it's not in the constructor, and I know it's not in btnclearclick()).** So my head is swimming better than Mark Spitz (or, for you young whippersnappers out there, Michael Phelps) ever dreamed of slicing pell-mell through the chlorinated aqua. Making matters more malevolent for me, I can't step through this code (Windows CE, running in Windows XP mode, no emulator), except in my waterlogged brain*. So I ask: Is there a tool that visually represents all the potential routes from which SetTotalControlsProperties() is called/CurTotal is set? Best of all would be a tool that provided a listing of just what route the code took to get to a designated spot. Side question: Why is there no \"spaghetti\" tag? People got arrested for less than this in communist Russia.   * Cue (or is it \"queue\"?) TYA's \"Over the Hill\" here. ## UPDATE Fresh evidence that there truly is a need for such a tool: The method that sets the CurTot amount, namely _wrkFile.getAmount()_ , does this:               public double getAmount()     {         if (tAmount < 0)         {             SetTotalItemsAndTotalAmt();         }         return tAmount;     }      SetTotalItemsAndTotalAmt() assigns vals based on this query:               string dynSQL = \"SELECT * FROM workTables WHERE name = '\" + name + \"'\";      ..and \"name\" here is not passed in to SetTotalItemsAndTotalAmt, nor is it a local var. Arggghhhhhhhhh!!!"}
{"_id": "209879", "title": "Why does the tool offer to change the code - just because it can?", "text": "Resharper (or is it Visual Studio - it's a yellow light bulb with a tiny red filament in it) offers to \"invert if\" on this code:               if (tItems >= 0)     {         return tItems;     }     SetTotalItemsAndTotalAmt();      ...and if I allow it to, it becomes this:               if (tItems < 0)     {         SetTotalItemsAndTotalAmt();     }     return tItems;      ...but then it offers to \"invert if\" again, and if I gullibly take the bait, it sets it back to its former glory. If one way is considered better (more grokkable, I guess) than the other, why would it also allow a reverse inversion? And if it's a case of \"six of one and half a dozen of the other,\" why does it even bother to offer a change? ## UPDATE Actually, come to think of it, one of those ways is not even valid, for it says, \" _WorkFiles.getAmount()': not all code paths return a value_ \" unless it has the return statement outside the if condition. My guess is this is _not_ Resharper doing this; those Urquell-powered cats wouldn't do such a thing, methinks."}
{"_id": "67724", "title": "Prefered way to declare events", "text": "I am fairly happy with my understanding of the .NET event model. I think I might be misunderstanding a small nuance of the system. When I started out putting events into my classes I would use the standard way like so:               public event EventHandler<MyEventArgs> MyEvent;      This meant that anything subscribing to the event would need a method like:               void HandleThatEvent(object sender, MyEventArgs args){...}      Which is nice, but I found that I would rarely care about the sender, so it made a lot of method signatures bloated. So I switched to declaring my own delegate types               public delegate void MyEventHandler(SomeClass argument);      Which cut down on clutter, but left me with a small problem when it came to writing handlers:               eventImplmentor.MyEvent += HandleThatEvent;     .     .     .     void HandleThatEvent(/*oh, um, what arguments does it take? Intellisense isn't telling me*/)      So I would have to go back to the declaration of the delegate and look and then go back and write them in, or compile it and wait to be told. So now instead, I'm just using `Action`, `Action<T>` or whatever template fits.               public event Action<SomeClass> MyEvent;      So that I can hover over the event and be told what parameters it expects. My question, after all that: Is there a best practice for declaring events in C#? Should I go back to the `EventHandler<T>` way, or is `Action<T>` acceptable?"}
{"_id": "24212", "title": "Has working on open source projects helped your productivity in your day job?", "text": "If yes, can you provide an example? Is it due to learning new tricks that you wouldn't learn otherwise by reading other's code? Or any other reasons as well?"}
{"_id": "151610", "title": "what exactly is system programming?", "text": "I have never understood what system programming meant. The usual definition given is \"...doing something close to the Os or extending Os features...\". Does using Windows API directly rather than some libraries to say do file i/o make it system programming? Was writing Android OS system programming? If I write something that would expose linux kernel through a console like app on Android am I doing system programming? If I am writing software to control a washing machine am I writing system programming? I am a beginner in programming and this is confusing me to no end. Please explain contrasting it with \"application programming\"."}
{"_id": "209691", "title": "ASP.NET without viewstate input, How comes?", "text": "I got surprised when I visited some sites with an 'aspx' extension at the end of their URLs and when I looked at their html source I didn't see any view state like the follwing:               <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"__VIEWSTATE\" id=\"__VIEWSTATE\" value=\"SNIKalxBOk0/lp+SgXklgi/0/IUoRXTjEjp6NrL2ColFXGht1bTDit5V+wHdkcuM3YVmVNKG1jpM6zAg+MQCnvPDvlEvK8RNwHblq8NN1Ys=\" />      How did they prevent this to happen? even if you turn the view state off you'll get at least of of the above input in your HTML output. Here is one of the examples that I looked at: http://www.ada.org/index.aspx"}
{"_id": "151614", "title": "About Intellectual-Property agreement with employer", "text": "In IP agreement IP is define as below > Intellectual Property (whether or not patentable and whether or not made > during working hours) is defined as but not limited to: all product > specifications, developments, inventions, works of authorship, derivative > works, technologies, programs, systems, software, mobile applications and > other mobile programming interfaces, designs, methodologies, encryptions, > ideas, techniques, patents, formulas, processes, concepts, know-how and date > made or conceived or reduced to practice or developed during employment > period ,remain the property of XXXXXXX[COMPANY_NAME]XXXX or its affiliates. This is the first time I have seen any IP agreement. Isn't it too stringent? or its standard practice across industry?"}
{"_id": "168408", "title": "Java default Integer value is int", "text": "My code looks like this               import java.util.Scanner;               public class StudentGrades {          public static void main(String[] argv)     {         Scanner keyboard = new Scanner(System.in);         byte q1 = keyboard.nextByte() * 10;     }     }      It gives me an error `Type mismatch: cannot convert from int to byte.` Why would Java store a literal operand that is small enough to fit in a byte, into an int type? Do literals get stored in variables/registers before the ALU performs arithmetic operations?"}
{"_id": "168405", "title": "Convert plain text to a pdf template", "text": "I have some articles (more than 200 pages) in plain text. It needs to be converted to an given PDF markup. I got some Photoshop files for the headers for every page and a list of requirements for the different elements. Which program would you use? And what would be your workflow?"}
{"_id": "151619", "title": "Why are there so many string classes in the face of std::string?", "text": "It seems to me that many bigger C++ libraries end up creating their own string type. In the client code you either have to use the one from the library (`QString`, `CString`, `fbstring` etc., I'm sure anyone can name a few) or keep converting between the standard type and the one the library uses (which most of the time involves at least one copy). So, is there a particular misfeature or something wrong about `std::string` (just like `auto_ptr` semantics were bad)? Has it changed in C++11?"}
{"_id": "2806", "title": "Is MVC just the SEO of PHP programming?", "text": "There's around a zillion \"PHP frameworks\". And most of them bill themselves as _following_ the MVC pattern. While it's welcome to overcome osCommerce coding style (processing logic heavily intermixed with SQL and HTML), there are certainly simpler and easier to follow approaches to get a maintainable application design. The original MVC concept was targetted at GUI applications. And for Gtk/Python it seems feasible to follow it accordingly. But PHP web apps don't operate on live Views (GUI elements) and a persistent Controller runtime. It's quite certainly a misnomer if it just describes the used code + directory grouping or class naming. \"MVC\" seems to be used like a buzzword for PHP frameworks. And I've actually seen one or two mature PHP frameworks admit it, but redefining the phrase anyway to match interna.   So is it generally snake oil? Why isn't better terminology used, and a more sensible concept for maintainable PHP propagated? **Some elaborative reasoning** Why I suspect that PHP implementations don't follow the real MVC pattern: **Models** : in theory, Models should be fat and contain business logic, and controllers should be thin handlers (input->output). In reality the PHP frameworks advocate **shallow** Models. CI and Symfony for example equate Model == ORM. Even HTTP input is handled by the controller, isn't treated as model. **Views** : workarounds with AJAX discounted, there can't be Views on web pages. PHP frameworks still pump out pages. The interface still effectively follows the ordinary HTTP model, there's no advantage over non-MVC applications. (And lastly, none of the widespread php frameworks can factually output to GUI Views instead of HTML. I've seen a PHP library that can operate Gtk/Console/Web, but the frameworks don't.) **Controller** : I'm unsure. Controllers probably don't need to be long- running and persistently active in the MVC model. In PHP framework context, they're however mostly request handlers. Not really something to get argumentative about, but it just feels slightly buzzwordish. **Would there be better descriptors?** I've seen acronyms like PMVC or HMVC thrown around. Though descriptions get more ambigous there, maybe these would describe the current web frameworks less hokey?"}
{"_id": "187166", "title": "WAN Connectivity between multiple MS ACCESS DB", "text": "I have a client that asked me to develop his Windows Application and use MS Access instead of SQL database. I did and now he asked me that he deployed the Application through several of his offices. Now he wished to have a \"main Server\" with all information from the \"client applications\" for Reporting purposes and also to update information per \"client application\". I proposed the idea of \"EDI\" through FTP, also converting the current app to connect thru SQL via WAN, but somehow he said that FTP is not an option and also WAN connection is impossible since the internet on their country is so slow that an mp3 must be downloaded for 20 minutes or so he says. Is there any other way to communicate with the other DB(MS Access) and capture data or update data as necessary without using FTP EDI exchange?"}
{"_id": "112889", "title": "What are the common techniques to handle user-generated HTML modified differently by different browsers?", "text": "I am developing a website updater. The front end uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and the backend uses Python. The way it works is that `<p/>`, `<b/>` and some other HTML elements can be updated by the user. To enable this, I load the webpage and, with JQuery, convert all those elements to `<textarea/>` elements. Once they the content of the text area is changed, I apply the change to the original elements and send it to a Python script to store the new content. The problem is that I'm finding that different browsers change the original HTML.   * How do you get around this issue?   * What Python libraries do you use?   * What techniques or application designs do you use to avoid or overcome this issue? The problems I found are:   * IE removes the quotes around `class` and `id` attributes. For example, `<img class='abc'/>` becomes `<img class=abc/>`.   * Firefox removes the backslash from the line breaks: `<br \\>` becomes `<br>`.   * Some websites have very specific display technicalities, so an insertion of a simple \"\\n\"(which IE does) can affect the display of a website. Example: changing `<img class='headingpic' /><div id=\"maincontent\">` to `<img class='headingpic'/>\\n <div id=\"maincontent\">` inserts a vertical gap in IE. The things I have unsuccessfully tried to overcome these issues:   * Using either JQuery or Python to remove all `>\\n<` occurences, `<br>` etc. But this fails because I get different patterns in IE, sometimes a `\u2219\\n`, sometimes a `\\n\u2219\u2219\u2219`.   * In a Python, parse the new HTML, extract the new text/content, insert it into the old HTML so the elements and format never change, just the content. This is very difficult and seems to be overkill."}
{"_id": "28547", "title": "How many applications should you provide to cover all sort of mobile phones", "text": "At the moment we have:   * Iphone   * Android   * J2me touch   * J2me non-touch   * J2me touch for Blackberry   * J2me non-touch for Blackberry We were thinking of making another   * J2me non-touch for crappy devices (because the regular non-touch is just to heavy) The question is, can you think of any other versions of our application that we should provide to target 'ALL' mobile phones"}
{"_id": "112886", "title": "If attribution is done via a pseudonym, who owns the rights to the code? ", "text": "I'm aware of a few cases where coders used a pseudonym for attribution instead of their real names. **Examples include:**   * Satoshi Nakamoto (Bitcoin)   * Why (Ruby) One thing I've wondered is if attribution is done via a pseudonym, who owns the rights to the code?"}
{"_id": "160655", "title": "How to split large, tightly coupled classes?", "text": "I have some huge classes of more than 2k lines of code (and growing) that I would like to refactor if possible, to have some more light and clean design. The reason it is so big is mainly because these classes handle a set of maps that most methods need to access, and methods are very connected to each other. I will give a very concrete example: I have a class called _Server_ that handle incoming messages. It has methods like _joinChatroom_ , _searchUsers_ , _sendPrivateMessage_ , etc. All of these methods manipulate the maps such as _users_ , _chatrooms_ , _servers_ , ... Maybe it would be nice if I could have a class handling messages concerning Chatrooms, another handling all about Users, etc. but the main problem here is that I need to use all of the maps in most of the methods. That's why for now they are all sticked in the _Server_ class as they all rely on these common maps and the methods are very connected to each other. I would need to create a class Chatrooms, but with a reference to each of the other objects. A class users again with a reference to all the other objects, etc. I feel like I would be doing something wrong. Thank you for advice!"}
{"_id": "115356", "title": "Why are assumptions important when defining a puzzle?", "text": "in this question OP has presented a site where some puzzle are available. He described the problem about solving them. I was curious is that really so problematic. The first one was really easy, so I tried next one this time from the end that should be the hardest one (puzzle). And here I have some problem with understating it or probably I am messing something. Let focus on the example: Data:               M1      C1      C2      277317     M2      C2      C1      26247     M3      C1      C3      478726     M4      C3      C1      930382     M5      C2      C3      370287     M6      C3      C2      112344      Result:               617317     2 3 6      My problem is that relying on the assumption that > any one compound can be used in a chemical reaction to create any other > compound The solution could be               508878     2 6 5      Why ? In the content of the task, we do not have sad anything about that we have to start with compound one then from this get two then from two, three etc. So the result should be to have all cheapest compounds, basing on the assumption we dont need to care how it was created. So this reduce our problem to structure like this.               M1      C2      277317     M2      C1      26247     M3      C3      478726     M4      C1      930382     M5      C3      370287     M6      C2      112344      And from this list we should pick the lowest cost for each compound. * * * So how did the achieve that solution, `2 3 6` ? By me they have used to complex logic for that, their basic assumption was that C1 -> C2 is the same as C2 -> C1 so they have used a rank (hash code)               17 * 37 * 1 * 2 == 17 * 37 * 2 * 1      (for this post i have used easier representation using the bit shift and bit- wise or that is more less the same)               M1    001 | 010 = 011  277317     M2    010 | 001 = 011  26247     M3    001 | 100 = 101  478726     M4    100 | 001 = 101  930382     M5    010 | 100 = 110  370287     M6    100 | 010 = 110  112344      After such operation the set of solution is reduced to this form               M1    3  277317     M2    3  26247     M3    5  478726     M4    5  930382     M5    6  370287     M6    6  112344      So now I don't have the information about compounds, but only a rank that provide the solution. We had three compounds on start we have three ranks so is seams to be correct, and the result is the same that in the example (cost 508878 machines 2 6 5). * * * My observation is that the content of the puzzle is very funny but have a lot of holes in the limitation about the method that should be applied to achieve the result. So concluding, what i am messing ?"}
{"_id": "115355", "title": "How do you work with Asynchronous functions, recursively?", "text": "I am currently working on FLEX and have to call a web services. once I have the result, I have to call the web service again, with the previous result as the input. A compounding problem, is that the service might return multiple results, and I have to call the service again with each of the results as the input. Lastly, i need the results to be in a hierarchical array collection, with each result as the child of the input to the web service. If it were a synchronous function, it would have been very easy, but I have spent half a day trying to come up with something elegant for the web service. I ended up with having two arrays, one for the input, and one for the results. Every time I had one or more result, I would put it in the Input array and the results. I would then remove the first item from the input array and call the web service with it, and so on, till I finished all the inputs. Once I had all the results, I made a recursive function that would create the hierarchical tree, that I needed. This seems like a very hacky, WTF Solution. Is there any elegant and better solution? I am all ears."}
{"_id": "175666", "title": "As a solo programmer, of what use can Gerrit be?", "text": "**Disclaimer:** I'm aware of the questions How do I review my own code? and What advantages do continuous integration tools offer on a solo project?. I do feel that this question aims at a different set of answers though, as it is about a specific software, and not about general musings about the use of this or that practice or tech stack. I'm a solo programmer for an Eclipse RCP-based project. To be able to control myself and the quality of my software, I'm in the process of setting up a CSI stack. In this, I follow the Eclipse Common Build Infrastructure guidelines, with the exception that I will use Jenkins rather than Hudson. Sticking to these guidelines will hopefully help me in getting used to the Eclipse way of doing things, and I hope to be able to contribute some code to Eclipse in the future. However, CBI includes Gerrit, a code review software. While I think it's really helpful for teams, and I will employ it as soon as the team grows to at least two developers, I'm wondering how I could use it while I'm still solo. _Question:_ Is there a use case for Gerrit that takes into account solo developers? Notes: I can imagine reviewing code myself after a certain amount of time to gain a little distance to it. This does complicate the workflow though, as code will only be built once it's been passed through code review. This might prove to be a \"trap\" as I might be tempted to quickly push bad code through Gerrit just to get it built. I'm very interested in hearing how other solo devs have made use of Gerrit."}
{"_id": "79063", "title": "Motivation for a development team?", "text": "In two and half months I have successfully brought a team from the brink of doom to being a successful development team. The project is a using new .net technologies (MVC, EF), has new tools, and the team members have a large say in how a feature will be created, designed and implemented. What I want to do for the team is to keep this momentum going. I think the motivation is good and the project is interesting enough that it won't bore someone just yet, but I know that as time goes on, doing the same thing over and over lowers the interest level. What as a team lead can I do to make sure that we keep up this high level of motivation we have right now?"}
{"_id": "143798", "title": "What are the design decisions involved in choosing how to expose a Java web application?", "text": "There are many ways to expose a Java web application to the consumer: application container (JBoss etc), servlet container (Tomcat etc), OSGi (Knopflerfish etc), self-executable WAR (Winstone etc) and so on. Are there any clear considerations where one approach should be favoured over another? As an example, could a collection of self-executable WARs running as raw Unix processes outperform the same applications deployed within Tomcat taking into account administration and scalability concerns?"}
{"_id": "143799", "title": "Submitting Java Code with Junit unit test", "text": "I have mostly worked on simple java programs and compiled and run them with Eclipse on Windows. So, I have no experience of using command prompt for compiling Java projects and do not have much info about what actually happens beneath the play button in Eclipse. Now I have to submit a Java application which will have basic operation on XML. My project also will have (JUnit) Unit Test. My question is related to submission of this Project.   1. Which files would be necessary to submit the code. So, it executes properly?   2. Does choosing Eclipse as an IDE or junit as a unit testing framweork produces any dependenices i.e the executor of the program should have eclipse/libraries to execute the program on his machine?"}
{"_id": "178056", "title": "Override methods should call base method?", "text": "I'm just running NDepend against some code that I have written and one of the warnings is `Overrides of Method() should call base.Method()`. The places this occurs are where I have a base class which has virtual properties and methods with _default_ behaviour but which can be overridden by a class which inherits from the base class and doesn't call the overridden method. For example, in the base class I have a property defined like this:               protected virtual char CloseQuote     {         get         {             return '\"';         }     }      And then in an inheriting class which uses a different close quote:               protected override char CloseQuote     {         get         {             return ']';         }     }      Not all classes which inherit from the base class use different quote characters hence my initial design. The alternatives I thought of were have get/set properties in the base class with the defaults set in the constructor:               protected BaseClass()     {         this.CloseQuote = '\"';     }          protected char CloseQuote { get; set; }          public InheritingClass()     {         this.CloseQuote = ']';     }      Or make the base class require the values as constructor args:               protected BaseClass(char closeQuote, ...)     {         this.CloseQuote = '\"';     }          protected char CloseQuote { get; private set; }          public InheritingClass()         base (closeQuote: ']', ...)     {     }      Should I use `virtual` in a scenario where the base implementation may be replaced instead of extended or should I opt for one of the alternatives I thought of? If so, which would be preferable and why?"}
{"_id": "210710", "title": "Why softwares used in factories are so poorly designed?", "text": "Why apps like Trumph's suite are so poorly designed and (without seeing the actual source, I can only guess) badly written? This question came this afternoon after a crash while doing a simulation in Trumph's Punch software, my boss told me \"they're the leader in this sort of technology, so if something goes wrong it's likely on purpose\"... I tried to explain, as a dev, the fact that even leading companies can release ugly software (in terms of efficiency and design) with, as an example, the fact that even big companies like twitter/facebook/google/microsoft/sony... are often in trouble with security holes, couldn't make him understand this. **TL;DR: why such high-cost software aren't well designed and are not as efficient as they could be?**"}
{"_id": "199988", "title": "Is Notepad++ used in professional software development?", "text": "iam a newbie in programming , focusing on web development with PHP. I have tried several IDEs Nusphere,PHP storm, all IDEs i tried doesnt load fast (ofcourse because of all extra features) i always liked Notepad++ as its fast even though it doesnt have features. Does notepad++ meets all requirments for professional PHP development? Should i invest time on learning IDEs? Should i learn any PHP IDEs to be a professional PHP Developer?"}
{"_id": "199989", "title": "Using <= for every dependency in case of following semantic versioning idea", "text": "As Semantic Versioning (and common sense) declares - the major version is incremented in case if non backward compatible change is introduced. Now let's assume we have a project called `Project` that has a current version `1.0.42` and a library `Lib` it depends on that is of a `2.1.3` version at the moment. Does that mean that following semver ideology we should constraint the dependency of the `Project` to be `Depends: Lib (< 3)`? From my experience - no one does that, but I find it semantically correct and very self-descriptive. What do you think of this?"}
{"_id": "197133", "title": "Source Code Only Allowed With One Open Source Project", "text": "I have an open source project that is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3 and it's done in Windows Presentation Foundation. I came across someone that sells themes/skins for WPF projects and he is willing to donate one of the skins for use with open source project. However, he only wants the skin to be allowed to be used with my project. I was wondering what the best way would be to prevent other people from stealing the skin and using it with their projects? Is there a license that would fit this requirement? Or is there a better way to accomplish this?"}
{"_id": "197134", "title": "Threads or ThreadPool? Fixed or Dynamic ThreadPool?", "text": "I have a java program which listens on a port for input. Based on Input, it calls a webservice and then returns a success/failure back to the client program. I fork a thread for each client connection. The response back to the client which connects to the program has to be quick. These are the choices I am considering   1. use regular threads   2. use `ExecutorService` with `newFixedThreadPool`   3. use `ExecutorService` with `newCachedThreadPool` The reason I am considering Pools is because my threads are shortlived - they just call a webservice, return result to the client and close the connection. I don't think `newFixedThreadPool` would be the right thing because then connections would be waiting in queues to get a thread. `newCachedThreadPool` would have been perfect except for one thing - threads die after a minute. In my case, I get bursts of connections - i.e. multiple connections and then there may be a lull for a few minutes and then again bursts. I think the threads in the CachedThreadPool would die and and would again have to be recreated - so in this case, it may work like #1 sometimes. Ideally I would have loved to have `newCachedThreadPool` with a minimum - i.e. a setting which says number of threads would never go below say 20. So idle threads are killed but never allow to go below a minimum threshold. Is there anything like this available? Or are there any better alternatives?"}
{"_id": "204500", "title": "When and for what purposes should the const keyword be used in C for variables?", "text": "While getting my code reviewed here the issue of using the `const` keyword came up. I understand that it is used for implementing read-only behaviour on variables. I am confused about what are the various situations when it can be useful.   * Should it be used for the sake of clarity in function prototypes?   * Should it be used as a security measure during code development?   * Should it be used in the scope of various functions for declaring run-time constants?   * Should it be used at all? These question are just examples of the confusion that I am facing. The general confusion is   * When should be the `const` keyword used in C programming?    * What are the various types of benefits that can be gained by using this keyword in C?   * Are there any cons of using `const` keyword? * * * It has been pointed that this question may be too broad due to all these questions in the detail of my question. I just wanted to clarify that these questions are just to clarify the confusion regarding the main question. > When and for what purposes should the const keyword be used in C for > variables? It can also be rephrased as > The proper use of `const` keyword in C` with the pros and cons of the same."}
{"_id": "197138", "title": "Project implementation details in node.js", "text": "I am working as a software engineer turned team leader in a large software company. One of my areas of strength is node.js, and we are in the process of moving a lot of our services to separate node.js services, which is proving to be very successful so far. However, I am supposed to stop day to day development of small node.js services, and simply lay down a proper specification, so that one of my team members can work on the actual code. I am aware of tools like UML, but I don't think they apply to a system with apis built with node.js/express. I have made a few flowcharts, but my seniors want me to be very complete with the spec, down to each implementation detail. How I can achieve this? Should I design objects in UML and make my developers make javascript objects which can be used in express routes?"}
{"_id": "106903", "title": "Don't like my current job, want to leave, how to explain this in a job interview?", "text": "A few years ago I immigrated to another country and early last year I managed to get my master's degree. Back then I was desperately looking for a job and I was fortunate to get offered a job in a small software development company. For the record, back in my home company, I was a well-known developer with a very good track record and I used to work as a senior developer and team leader for a software development company. Now after more than 1 year, for both technical and non-technical reasons I want to leave my current job. I can tolerate some of the technical problems we have but our manager and team leader are constantly disrespecting me and communicate with me in an offensive and belittling manner and for times and times this has made me feel depressed, anxious, stressed, and what not. Now my question is, how should a person in my situation, respond to \"why are you leaving your current job?\". Obviously I cannot say \"because my manager is a psycho who is disrespecting me and offending me all the time and I have had enough\". How do you think I should respond to questions like this?"}
{"_id": "106904", "title": "What is ideal range (Min and Max date) for Calendar backup?", "text": "I need to take backup of calendar on my phone. We have requirement that we need to take backup of entire calendar data. Now, phone always supports recurring events. So, event may exist from 01-01-1601 to 31-12-3000. Logically, there is no point of taking backup from 01-01-1601 to 31-12-3000. I just want to know your views on the ideal range for the same."}
{"_id": "144078", "title": "JEE frameworks, a road map to learn? and should I learn them?", "text": "**Background Information** I have been into programming since past 1 years professionally, my day to day work includes writing BIRT reports, designing and validating forms using JEE (struts/spring, hibernate). I don't have a comp Sci 4 year degree (Electronics), so I have very Limited experience in comp Sci. **Question** JEE frameworks (struts1/2, spring, hibernate etc) are hot nowadays, however java world have a tendency of building A4j, B4J... mayway4J kind of stuff (and I am tired of it). AFAIK, frameworks are nothing but bunch of XML config files and hundreds of classes built to cram (by developer). And sooner then later a new framework come into picture that says **I am the best among all**. So My Question is - 1.What will you do to learn a framework (many frameworks) considering that it can be obsolete till you'll be master in it (Learning frameworks can take significant amount of time)? 2.Considering early into your career, will you give a damn that how well someone knows framework (knowing frame work is important but still..) and why/how should I learn a framework knowing I have to (un)learn it in order to learn other one (plenty of of 4Js....)? I am just trying to get a big picture, that, if you're in place of me, what would be your learning/cramming strategy (Road map)? I am not intended to start a holy war between A versus B, (frameworks are more or less essential)."}
{"_id": "144075", "title": "Learn C++ before/at the same time as C#?", "text": "I'm currently learning C#, but wondering whether it is beneficial to learn some C++ before/at the same time as in order to understand the concepts a little better? I've got a C++ book and it does seem rather useful, especially explaining pointers and references."}
{"_id": "144070", "title": "Solutions for software using many calls to a server", "text": "I am developing software that uses many calls to a server. On a client side it's a Silverlight application. Almost every time a user clicks on a button in it, it sends 1-5 WCF calls to a server. There can be up to dozen or so users at a time. The server is a database server that serves data to a client. I am an intermediate level developer and am thinking about caching some data and syncing my changes from time to time. Are there any official solutions or technologies for it, like, patterns and such?"}
{"_id": "222936", "title": "Game server code design", "text": "I'm designing a multiplayer game server where the players are in rooms. Right now I have classes to take care of the client, networking, etc. I'm struggling however to find a design for this Room class. For example, when I want to change a client's room, should I call `client.changeRoom(newRoom)` or `newRoom.addClient(client)`? What about when leaving a room, should a client detach itself from the room or the room detach the client? I'm very confuse here, I just don't want to end up with a design I will regret in the future."}
{"_id": "130521", "title": "Are there any opensource APIs that help analyze code?", "text": "As an example, let's say that I need to check for a certain usage of C# code and warn the user that that is a bad pratice. There are multiple usages that I want to detect, such as:   * Resource not being released by developer (in a heavy COM environment)   * Instance should be created using Activator instead of new (I don't have control of the API I'm analyzing)   * Others The implementation of the API can be in any language, but I'll be mostly analyzing c# and vb.net. Suitable languages:   * C#   * Python   * Other"}
{"_id": "145302", "title": "Always return single objects in an array for REST API JSON payloads?", "text": "For a REST API that I am working on, I want to return JSON in a consistent layout:               {       \"Data\" : {          \"Id\" : 123,          \"Email\" : \"charlie@somewhere.com\"          \"Firstname\" : \"Charlie\",          \"Surname\" : \"Brown\",      },      \"Error\" : null     }      The payload will always contain \"Data\" and \"Error\", where one or the other can be null. My question relates to \"Data\" and endpoints which only ever really return one object. For example, let's say I have an API `users/current`, which returns the currently authenticatedd user. I would have returned that user as shown above; a single JSON object named \"Data\". For endpoints that could return zero, one or more objects, then I would (of course) make \"Data\" be an array:               {       \"Data\" : [         {           (first object)         },         {           (second object)         }       ],       \"Error\" : null     }      I've heard a point of view that, for consistency, \"Data\" should _always_ be an array. Even when an endpoint would logically only ever return a single object (or null). What do others think? I think that there's no need to make \"Data\" and array if there'll never be more than one object returned."}
{"_id": "51414", "title": "reading and understanding c code", "text": "I want to understand the linux kernel code, and I have been going through it but I am not able to get the full feel of what is happening(I am concentrating on network part of the linux kernel), so can anyone of you suggest good practices of reading C (or any other lang) code in general and specific to network part of the linux kernel. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "165382", "title": "How do I organize a GUI application for passing around events and for setting up reads from a shared resource", "text": "My tools involved here are GTK and Haskell. My questions are probably pretty trivial for anyone who has done significant GUI work, but I've been off in the equivalent of CGI applications for my whole career. I'm building an application that displays tabular data, displays the same data in a graph form, and has an edit field for both entering new data and for editing existing data. After asking about sharing resources, I decided that all of the data involved will be stored in an MVar so that every component can just read the current state from the MVar. All of that works, but now it is time for me to rearrange the application so that it can be interactive. With that in mind, I have three widgets: a TextView (for editing), a TreeView (for displaying the data), and a DrawingArea (for displaying the data as a graph). I _THINK_ I need to do two things, and the core of my question is, are these the right things, or is there a better way. Thing the first: All event handlers, those functions that will be called any time a redisplay is needed, need to be written at a high level and then passed into the function that actually constructs the widget to begin with. For instance:               drawStatData :: DrawingArea -> MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO ()     createStatView :: (DrawingArea -> IO ()) -> IO VBox          createUI :: MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO HBox     createUI storeMVar field = do         graphs <- createStatView (\\area -> drawStatData area storeMVar field)              hbox <- hBoxNew False 10         boxPackStart hbox graphs PackNatural 0              return hbox      In this case, createStatView builds up a VBox that contains a DrawingArea to graph the data and potentially other widgets. It attaches drawStatData to the realize and exposeEvent events for the DrawingArea. I would do something similar for the TreeView, but I am not completely sure what since I have not yet done it and what I am thinking of would involve replacing the TreeModel every time the TreeView needs to be updated. My alternative to the above would be...               drawStatData :: DrawingArea -> MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO ()     createStatView :: IO (VBox, DrawingArea)      ... but in this case, I would arrange createUI like so:               createUI :: MVar Core.ST -> (Core.ST -> SetRepWorkout.WorkoutStore) -> IO HBox     createUI storeMVar field = do         (graphbox, graph) <- createStatView (\\area -> drawStatData area storeMVar field)              hbox <- hBoxNew False 10         boxPackStart hbox graphs PackNatural 0              on graph realize (drawStatData graph storeMVar field)         on graph exposeEvent (do liftIO $ drawStatData graph storeMVar field                                  return ())              return hbox      I'm not sure which is better, but that does lead me to... Thing the second: it will be necessary for me to rig up an event system so that various events can send signals all the way to my widgets. I'm going to need a mediator of some kind to pass events around and to translate application-semantic events to the actual events that my widgets respond to. Is it better for me to pass my addressable widgets up the call stack to the level where the mediator lives, or to pass the mediator down the call stack and have the widgets register directly with it? So, in summary, my two questions: 1) pass widgets up the call stack to a global mediator, or pass the global mediator down and have the widgets register themselves to it? 2) pass my redraw functions to the builders and have the builders attach the redraw functions to the constructed widgets, or pass the constructed widgets back and have a higher level attach the redraw functions (and potentially link some widgets together)? Okay, and... 3) Books or wikis about GUI application architecture, preferably coherent architectures where people aren't arguing about minute details? * * * The application in its current form (displays data but does not write data or allow for much interaction) is available at https://bitbucket.org/savannidgerinel/fitness . You can run the application by going to the root directory and typing               runhaskell -isrc src/Main.hs data/      or...               cabal build     dist/build/fitness/fitness data/      You may need to install libraries, but cabal should tell you which ones."}
{"_id": "27749", "title": "Deciding factors in pair programming", "text": "Are there specific things that you look out for before getting the team into pair programming? Obviously pairing someone who's great with C++ with another who knows ASP.NET best won't get me far, but how about someone who's great with C++ with another who knows Java best but can pick up C++ quick enough? What else? Experience levels? Character traits?"}
{"_id": "61764", "title": "Moving your career to another programming language", "text": "I'll cut to the chase. I'm looking for advice on how an experienced developer would convince a prospective employer that they should be considered for a position that uses another language. This is with other non-language specific requirements being met (knowing version control, OO, degree, etc...). For example an experience PHP developer looking to move to a Perl position. Is it even possible? How diffiult would it be? Is it language dependant? EDIT: The answers that I got are proof that this communitys future is bright indeed, but sadly it only allows me to select one answer. Thank you to all that replied."}
{"_id": "129505", "title": "Data Serialization to process business logic", "text": "Going by the general principle of data abstraction, I normally abstract data in a serialized format(JSON) and pass it as a parameter to the Business Logic(BL) modules such that the BL module always see a consistent format of the data irrespective of the underlying data storage layer. Even if I use a ORM, I use the serialized format of that ORM. I feel I have the following advantages.   * By serializing data, there would be better control over data and parameters   * Any developer can write BL without thinking too much about the underlying data storage   * Wrappers can be written for new databases (There are a lot of ready-made wrappers to convert data into JSON)   * Testing could be done ruthlessly and without a database (since the data format is serialized)   * Functionally easier to understand and better OLAP, OLTP integration I also notice the following drawbacks   * A new layer to be added between the database and the BL module (most ORM's nowadays come with a predetermined JSON format)   * Extra function calls slow down the application (but I think this trade-off is OK when compared to better testing and easy maintenance)   * Increased level of abstractions may confuse the developer I make the above observations mostly in the context of business applications To follow this discussion, lets have an example so that things could be discussed in its context. Assume a product database having the columns: Product,Rate,Taxes and we need to create a invoice **Code without database abstraction**               GET rate,taxes for product X from database     multiply qty with rate and add taxes     display invoice      **Code with database abstraction**                 GET rate,taxes for product X from database       Convert it into JSON       call create_invoice function //This does all the calculations       display invoice      In the second example, I would pass arguments in the form (Product=X, Qty=5, Rate=5, Taxes=0.05). If taxes are to be split into more that one category (State Tax=0.03, Central Tax=0.02) or a discount factor to be added I would just increase the number of parameters in the BL functions such that the database fields, the JSON keys and the function parameters match (this is done automatically during serialization and most ORM's do it). This makes it easy, in my approach, to extend functions and also make modules independent of data since the modules always know the data they can receive and even if they receive a new parameter, they can adapt it provide the underlying code is intelligent. My general questions are   1. Is this a good pattern and what's it called (Data abstraction comes to my mind)?   2. Pros/Cons of this pattern(apart from those mentioned above) in the context of business application, apps for embedded devices, big data   3. Is there a difference between this pattern and ORM (I believe so since ORM is mostly a class wrapper to get data from a database while this pattern is more oriented towards data structure)   4. If this is good, can this be easily understood by a new developer?"}
{"_id": "230029", "title": "Which statement performs best?", "text": "I was faced with this question by my team leader. Statement 1 (written by me):               lnkbtn1.visible = lnkbtn2.visible = lnkbtn.visible = false;       Statement 2 (written by my team leader):               lnkbtn1.visible = false;     lnkbtn2.visible = false;     lnkbtn3.visible = false;      Which statement is better and why?"}
{"_id": "74770", "title": "What lessons did you learn from a project which nearly/actually failed due to bad multithreading?", "text": "What lessons did you learn from a project which nearly/actually failed due to bad multithreading? Sometimes, the framework imposes a certain threading model that makes things an order of magnitude more difficult to get right. As for me, I have yet to recover from the last failure and I feel that it is better for me not to work on anything that has to do with multithreading in that framework. I found that I was good at multithreading problems which have simple fork/join, and where data only travels in one direction (while signals can travel in a circular direction). I am unable to handle GUI in which some work can only be done on a strictly- serialized thread (the \"main thread\") and other work can only be done on any thread but the main thread (the \"worker threads\"), and where data and messages have to travel in all directions between N components (a fully connected graph). At the time when I left that project for another one, there were deadlock issues everywhere. I heard that 2-3 months later, several other developers managed to fix all of the deadlock issues, to the point that it can be shipped to customers. I never managed to find out that missing piece of knowledge I'm lacking. Something about the project: the number of message IDs (integer values which describe the meaning of a event which can be sent into the message queue of another object, regardless of threading) runs into several thousands. Unique strings (user messages) also run into about a thousand. **Added** The best analogy I got from another team (unrelated to my past or present projects) was to \"put the data in a database\". (\"Database\" referring to centralization and atomic updates.) In a GUI that is fragmented into multiple views all running on the same \"main thread\" and all the non-GUI heavy-lifting is done in individual worker threads, the application's data should be stored in a single plase which acts like a Database, and let the \"Database\" handle all the \"atomic updates\" involving non-trivial data dependencies. All other parts of GUI just handle screen drawing and nothing else. The UI parts could cache stuff and the user won't notice if it's stale by a fraction of a second, if it's designed properly. This \"database\" is also known as \"the document\" in Document-View architecture. Unfortunately - no, my app actually stores all data in the Views. I don't know why it was like that. **Fellow contributors:** (contributors don't need to use real/personal examples. Lessons from anecdotal examples, if it is judged by yourself to be credible, are also welcome.)"}
{"_id": "74772", "title": "How to include programming-related hobbies on a resume?", "text": "I'm sure a lot of software developers have pet projects and hobbies that they do outside professional tasks. I have my own, and I'm struggling with how to include them on a resume. These are not necessarily hot open source projects that everyone's life depends on, just some tinkering with fun languages like Haskell or Lisp that I do to learn new concepts. Maybe some experimenting with a web framework that I was curious about. I have a couple reasons for wanting to include these on a resume:   * I have a handful of languages and technologies listed where I would consider myself \"experienced.\" I would have no trouble being grilled on these at an interview. But if I put Haskell on that line of technologies, I would fold if asked an advanced question about it.   * When I help interview job candidates (I'm not a hiring manager, but we have engineers participate in the technical side of interviews), I always ask them about their programming hobbies, if any. It opens them up about stuff not on their resume, maybe leads to something interesting that I wouldn't have learned just from asking about past jobs.   * I really am passionate and curious about software, and I want to show potential employers that I am expanding my knowledge outside job duties. But I want to be honest about not being an expert when I'm not an expert. What's a good threshold for including a programming hobby on a programming resume - read a book or two, wrote working programs, used it to solve a problem of X magnitude, etc.? How segregated should it be from professional experience - included with other skills (but with some sort of \"just a hobby\" qualifier, in its own section of \"personal interests\", or pushed off to the second page everyone throws away? Or, leave it off entirely and let the interviewer ask, if they care?"}
{"_id": "25670", "title": "Dealing with co-workers in a stressful work environment", "text": "Our department has been hit by some layoffs over the past year and we're running a skeleton crew. They got rid of most of our support staff. The remaining team members would rather worry about what others are doing rather than work as a team and figure out how to improve their own situations. The one co-worker (who does network administration) spends long hours in the office. Part of it is due to the workload but another part of it is due to bad time management (his own fault and management). He'll walk past my desk and make snide remarks like \"working hard?\" and \"do something\". If I offer to help, he acts like he doesn't need it. He's kind of the insecure type and likes to do everything himself and then hold it over everyone else. I'm afraid he might end up burning out. Another guy has been bitching about his workload. He spends as much time worrying about what others are doing than getting stuff done himself. He thinks he's too good for \"grunt work\" and wants to be a manager. When his plate is full, he makes sure everyone else knows it when he has to do get stuff done. They're not bad guys but the stress seems to be getting to everyone. I'm the only one left who knows how to code so a lot of time is spent on programming projects but also have support duties. I can't get a whole lot done due to the interruptions. The guys in the office don't consider what I'm doing to be \"work\"....and seem to think that I should be helping them with support and not programming. So basically they think I'm supposed to work on IT support and then go back to the office to work on programming projects while they surf the internet. I don't whine and moan and complain like everyone else does so they assume that I don't have enough to do. So now I get to listen to snide remarks about my workload. Management likes my projects because they save the company money. What is the best way to deal with this situation?"}
{"_id": "130297", "title": "What license/EULA do I need for free to use software?", "text": "I am not sure what exactly I am looking for here, but here are the facts: I will be offering a free to use software, free as in $0 cost only(not OSS). I need a piece of text included in the installer with agree/disagree, that would protect my rights. Specifically that I don't guarantee anything and shouldn't be held liable for their losses that the software might cause. I want to allow them to use the software for anything they like, but not allow to redistribute, sell, or reverse engineer it. I am not even sure whether this text is technically a license, disclaimer, or end user license agreement. I doubt there is a ready to go template for what I am looking for, but any pointers would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "198025", "title": "Why not use a RTOS with microkernel architecture for highly concurrent web servers?", "text": "Why not use a RTOS with microkernel architecture for web servers? The scheduler is deterministic and all requests will be handled quickly leading to faster response time? It's easy to extend an OS based on microkernel architecture, since everything is like a client-server communication via message passing. Also, the server will be very light weight and requires less resources. Say that you are developing the web service using C++. I am thinking about QNX for the OS. Is it a bad idea, or it does not matter?"}
{"_id": "27299", "title": "Database strategy for connected but disparate applications", "text": "I'm working on a series of inter-related but separate web applications, all situated on the same host:               Super Admin     |     ---Site Network Admin     |   |     |   ---Site     |   |     |   ---Site     |   |     |   ---Site     |     ---Site Network Admin         |         ---Site         |         ---Site         |         ---Site      All three will have access to the same core library (Zend Framework), and separate application libraries for each tier in the network - thus 3 applications and one library - but different configurations to support unique instances. I'm interested to hear people's opinion on the best database strategy to support these applications. On the one hand, I could deploy one database, or perhaps one for each application level (i.e. 3). This has the advantage of being easy to roll out changes, but the disadvantage that users share the access burden - i.e. if one user is really hammering the database, the performance of other applications sharing the database will suffer. Another disadvantage is that any data corruption could potentially affect all end users. On the other, I could utilise a series of databases - one for the first two tiers to share administrative data - but separate instances for each site deployed on the network. This has the advantage that end users are isolated and thus data corruption is more easy to contain. The disadvantage is obviously the converse of the previous example - in that changes are then harder to roll out across the network. My thinking is that it's dictated by usage vs user population. If you have low quantities of users, but they interact with the database a lot - then plan B is best. If it's the former, that you have high yields of users with low interaction rates - then plan A is best. I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts as to the best approach for dealing with this situation."}
{"_id": "115826", "title": "Which CS courses are a \"must\" for a web developer", "text": "My goal is to learn how to program a website with Python/Django in the next year. From what I've understood, I also have to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I understand in order to build a website, I will need to find a co-founder whose skills far exceed mine. But still, the situation will be way different if I'm a person who's closer to his/her level and has dedicated a lot of time teaching himself than every other \"I have an idea, just need a tech co- founder\" type of guy. I do plan to pursue a degree in computer science, but after finishing high school last May decided to take an year off, so I am free to learn programming in the next 10 months. For now, I have the chance to attend some college courses in a top institution. Which ones are a must for a web developer so that I don't have any gaps in my understanding of programming and write \"sophisticated code\"? EDIT:Thank you all for the help!From the courses suggested I may be able to attend some/none/all of OOP(with Java),Networks and Graphics,SE- Algorithms,Discrete Math for Comp.Scientists,Databases,Information Retrieval and Data Mining.Which of those are more important for Web development with Django? I've read a lot of times people saying that self-taught programmers had gaps in their knowledge, didn't write clear code.This is why I'm asking which CS courses can fill those gaps? Not only in practical skills,but in mindset,way of thinking."}
{"_id": "214867", "title": "Perfomance of 8 bit operations on 64 bit architechture", "text": "I am usually a Python / Database programmer, and I am considering using C for a problem. I have a set of sequences, 8 characters long with 4 possible characters. My problem involves combining sets of these sequences and filtering which sets match a criteria. The combinations of 5 run into billions of rows and takes around an hour to run. So I can represent each sequence as 2 bytes. If I am working on a 64 bit architechture will I gain any advantage by keeping these data structures as 2 bytes when I generate the combinations, or will I be as well storing them as 8 bytes / double ? (64 bit = 8 x 8) If I am on a 64 bit architecture, all registers will be 64 bit, so in terms of operations that shouldn\u00b4t be any faster (please correct me if I am wrong). Will I gain anything from the smaller storage requirements - can I fit more combinations in memory, or will they all take up 64 bits anyway? And finally, am I likley to gain anything coding in C. I have a first version, which stores the sequence as a small int in a MySQL database. It then self joins the tabe to itself a number of times in order to generate all the possible combinations. The performance is acceptable, depending on how many combinations are generated. I assume the database must involve some overhead."}
{"_id": "214866", "title": "Is it acceptable to upload offensive content to GitHub?", "text": "I developed an offensive content checker for my website and want to publish it on GitHub. However, the source code contains many offensive, racist and otherwise nasty content. The source is fully documented, but I wanted your opinion on whether it's acceptable to publish such work on GitHub or whether to leave the array of strings up to the imagination of the reader?!"}
{"_id": "180824", "title": "I've been told HTML is a markup language, C++ is a programming language, what could make that difference?", "text": "My programming friends are always telling me that HTML is a markup language and C++ is a programming language. When I ask them what's the difference, they never give me a reasonable answer. What could make one call C++ a programming language, and HTML not?"}
{"_id": "9881", "title": "What should I include in my class documentation header", "text": "I'm looking for informative class documentation format for my Entity, Business Logic and Data Access classes. I found following two formats from here **Format 1**               ///-----------------------------------------------------------------     ///   Namespace:      <Class Namespace>     ///   Class:          <Class Name>     ///   Description:    <Description>     ///   Author:         <Author>                    Date: <DateTime>     ///   Notes:          <Notes>     ///   Revision History:     ///   Name:           Date:        Description:     ///-----------------------------------------------------------------      **Format 2**               // ===============================     // AUTHOR     :     // CREATE DATE     :     // PURPOSE     :     // SPECIAL NOTES:     // ===============================     // Change History:     //     //==================================      I feel following are the basic elements   * Author    * Created Date   * Description   * Revision History as Namespace and Class name will be there in anyway. Please let me know your thoughts, which format is recommended and whether there is a standard way of writing revision history?"}
{"_id": "208929", "title": "What does the \"d\" mean after linux packages?", "text": "I've noticed that a lot of the packages I've been installing on my Ubuntu machine has this \"d\" at the end. Googling it doesn't give me any answers that I can find. For example: FTP server - Package called: pure-ftpd TFTP server - Package called: atftpd SSH server - Package called: sshd What's up with this \"d\"?"}
{"_id": "9889", "title": "How to ditch the cubicle?", "text": "I would really like to get out of the 9-5 \"cubicle\" existence and do something where I can work from home, take off when I like, etc. Don't get me wrong... I don't mind working hard, but I just am not enjoying the whole corporate thing where my hours, vacation days, dress code, place of work, etc. are set. I really think this is possible because other developers are somehow pulling this off. But so far it is just in the \"dream\" stage and I have no idea how to move it forward. I don't know if I want to be freelancer, start my own company or what. In case it matters, I have been working in .Net / MVC for the past few years (both desktop and web) but have experience with other languages as well (Java, C++, Perl, etc.). I don't have much experience with \"web design\" side of things since in all my jobs other people have handled that while I have worked on the \"programming\" work. Just to make it more concrete what I want... I wake up on a random Tuesday in June and it's a gorgeous day. I am ahead of schedule on my projects and I don't feel like working ... I want to go hiking. I want the freedom to do that without dealing with some PHB. Another scenario... I do feel like working but I want to go visit an old friend or relative for a week in Bismarck / Budapest / Boston. Said friend has reliable Internet. Why can't I do that? I'm not talking about being irresponsible just a bit more free."}
{"_id": "220793", "title": "Reassigning Ownership Automatically", "text": "Are there any software licenses that automate the reassignment of ownership? For instance, in a usual circumstance, you have a license, and then you make all contributors sign off that by contributing they reassign ownership to the project owner. In the sort of license I'm looking for, by just _editing **and** redistributing_ the result (whether in source or binary form), the person who had made changes would not only have to redistribute the code but would also have automatically reassigned their ownership to me. Alternatively, if that's not possible, can I add a binding clause to an existing license that makes it so?"}
{"_id": "220791", "title": "Why are <section>, <header> and <footer> tags not used much when I see sites that are in HTML 5?", "text": "I've noticed that even when a websites front end is coded in HTML 5 as evidenced by the `<!DOCTYPE html>`, people rarely seem to use the new HTML 5 `<section>`, `<header>` and `<footer>` tags. Is it because people don't understand that you're supposed to use reusable classes for styling things within a `<section>` instead of the full path of tag selectors to the element?"}
{"_id": "165967", "title": "Would I be able to use code hosting services to host malware code?", "text": "Let me start by saying that I am a computer security researcher. Part of my job is to create malware to deploy on a controlled environment in order to study or evaluate several aspects of computer security. Now, I am starting to think that using an online code hosting service (such as BitBucket, Github, etc...) to have all my code in 1 place, would allow me to work on my projects more efficiently. My question is: **Are there any issues with this?** I have studied those companies' privacy policies, and they state that they allow usage of their services for lawful usage. Since I am not distributing malware, but I am only using it on my machines and machines that I am authorized to use, aren't I allowed to use the service? For the usage that I am doing, malware is the same as any other software. **I recognise that I should be extremely careful with code hosting** , as any mistake from my part could hold me liable for damages and leave me open against legal action. As such I am recognizing that I should use private repositories, so the code is not available to the public. **But how private is a private repository?** How can I trust that companies like them will not leak or sell a potential (electronic) viral weaponry that I may have created in the future?"}
{"_id": "165960", "title": "How to copyright and license individual code files", "text": "I have a habit of writing small, reusable components in my spare time. I reuse these components with my clients' code bases. It occurs to me there's a potential issue that using identical code for multiple clients may bite me back in the future. I don't care who uses the code. I just don't want a situation where one company tries to sue another for copyright infringement due to my actions. I'm not familiar with common licensing schemes. What do I need to specify in my code files to indicate that these protions are copyrighted to myself and usable by anyone, while differentiating them from the code specificly written for the client? Where can I find more information on this scenario?"}
{"_id": "117466", "title": "web Service - what happens when client doesn't get the response?", "text": "We have developed a WCF service which acts as an API to our system. some of the methods expose functionality which eventually writes and updates data to DB. Lets say that the client sent one of those requests, the service performed the needed operations while the client disconnects for some reason and did not get the response. the response holds information about success/failure of all sub-operations An example of \"problematic\" data being updated - \"Add X amount to Balance of Member M\". So if the client did not get the response - the client doesn't know that the data was updated. **How should we deal with this scenario while keeping the client side implementation as clean as possible?**"}
{"_id": "55913", "title": "How do your busiest people transfer their knowledge?", "text": "We have recently polled our company wide wiki users and found out that there are two large groups of users:   * people with **lots of knowledge** but (who claim they have) no time to document   * people with **time** but (who claim they have) not enough knowledge worth documenting Each group covered almost 50% of the users! How do your companies handle this? That is, **how do you encourage your busiest / most knowledgeable people to share their knowledge?**"}
{"_id": "117461", "title": "When should a class or module be in a separate Assembly/DLL?", "text": "Are there any guidelines for deciding when a class should be in its own assembly/DLL? I often see two schools of thought: 1) Every \"grouping\" of classes belongs in its own DLL e.g. Repositories, Services, DTOs, Infrastructure, etc. 2) Everything should be in a single DLL but separated out via namespaces/folders e.g. have a \"Core\" DLL with additional namespaces e.g. Core.Repositories, Core.Services, Core.DTO, etc. At work we just lump everything in a single Assembly called \"Business\". There are some folders but there's no real separation - business objects (with logic, some of which shouldn't even be classes) are lumped in a \"BusinessObjects\" folder without care. Things used in more than one class are in a \"Core\" folder. Utilities are in a \"Utilities\" folder, the data access infrastructure is a \"Data\" folder - you get the idea. For a new module I'm working on I want/need to have a separate data access layer (think a rudimentary Repository implementation) but I don't want to just throw it under the \"BusinessObjects\" folder with the other 160 (!) classes there. At the same time I'm concerned about creating a new Class Library since everyone is used to stuffing a class in the single Library; a folder/namespace could work however."}
{"_id": "117460", "title": "How to handle management pushing legacy systems?", "text": "I am currently on a paid internship, and have been tasked with maintaining an obsolete system that has been developed by multiple developers (at different times) over the course of the past 5 years. Management agrees the \"system is on life support\", and I receive a fairly regular supply of bug reports from end users currently using the system. Management now wants to extend the project for another year, and in the process nearly triple the user base. As an intern (or any entry level position) how do I \"push back\"? I've already written a report stating my concerns, albeit in an open-ended document. Is there protocol or document type for suggesting changes? Am I in a position to make suggestions, or should I simply continue to support the old system?   * To clarify, software development is not my company's primary business. As such no internal protocols exist. Additionally, the project has no formal documentation at all, and no requirements documents either. The development is very ad hoc."}
{"_id": "142828", "title": "Making money from a custom built interpreter?", "text": "I have been making considerable progress lately on building an interpreter. I am building it from NASM assembly code (for the core engine) and C (cl.exe the Microsoft compiler for the parser). I really don't have a lot of time but I have a lot of good ideas on how to build this so it appeals to a certain niche market. I'd love to finish this but I need to face reality here ... unless I can make some good monetary return on my investment, there is not a lot of time for me to invest. So I ask the following questions to anyone out there, especially those who have experience in monetizing their programs: 1) How easy is it for a programmer to make good money from one design? (I know this is vague but it will be interesting to hear from those who have experience or know of others' experiences). 2) What are the biggest obstacles to making money from a programming design? 3) For the parser, I am using the Microsoft compiler (no IDE) I got from visual express, so will this be an issue? Will I have to pay royalties or a license fee? 4) As far as I know NASM is a 2-clause BSD licensed application. So this should allow me to use NASM for commericial development unless I am missing something? It's good to know these things before launching into the meat and potatoes of the project."}
{"_id": "22583", "title": "How do you format arrays within parameters?", "text": "I'm talking about something like this:               echo $form->input('general_addresss', array(                 'label' => 'Where will you go today?'                 'format' => array('before', 'input', 'after', 'label', 'after', 'error')                 ));      Do you start with one array parameter, then break a line? If it can't fit on a line, do you immediately break a line? After of which, do you do a set number of tabs over? What happens if an array within an array has lots of properties? Is there any particular guide you follow?"}
{"_id": "221771", "title": "Limiting certain functionality to development environment only", "text": "I intuitively think that an application should be exactly the same in DEV, QA, and PROD environments. However, I have been asked to add a feature to an application that will only be available in DEV environment. The tool modifies DEV database values and produces an output script that will be tested in QA and afterwards will be used to modify production data. The authentication that allows access to the feature will not be available in QA and PROD environments. I understand that this will work, but is this correct for Java EE standards? **Additional details:** -I removed \"best practice\" because of the comments below.  -I have a development server and development database, a testing server and testing database, and a production server and production database. I want to know if there would be any possible issues that could arise (and \"best practice\" for avoiding them) from having a feature of a large application only available on development server. The feature would modify values in the development database then export a SQL script that has the current state of the development database. The SQL script would then be run on testing database and if every function worked properly afterwards it would also be run on production database. The code that would modify the testing and production databases is not available in either of those environments. I apologize, I know that says basically the same thing as above. If it is still unclear, I will remove the question. Thanks."}
{"_id": "100993", "title": "Multiple inheritance use cases", "text": "Java omits multiple inheritance on the grounds that it obviates the design goal of keeping the language simple. I wonder if Java (with its eco-system) is really \"simple\". Python is not complex and has multiple inheritance. So without being too subjective, my question is... **_What are the typical problem patterns that benefit from a code designed to make heavy use of multiple inheritance_**"}
{"_id": "100992", "title": "Subset counting algorithm", "text": "I have a following problem i want to solve efficiently : Input: Set s of {Pass,Fail}^k vectors, m - minimum percent of vectors Output : Set of Sets of indexes: Where each set Contains indexes of Pass word in given vectors, and number of vectors that contains Pass in those indexes is over m percent from total vectors. Example: {(Pass,Fail,Pass,Fail),(Pass,Fail,Pass,Pass)} where k is 4 and number of set elements is 2 and m 60% , output will be {{0,2},{0},{2}} The output is group of sets where every set contains vector indexes that for at least 60% of vectors value was Pass"}
{"_id": "100991", "title": "What are the trademark guidelines for Java technologies?", "text": "The former page \"Trademark and Logo Usage Requirements\" at http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/ is no longer available, is there a new version which helps with the proper naming of products (beans, libraries) for Java? I have found Third Party Usage Guidelines for Oracle Trademarks at http://www.oracle.com/us/legal/third-party-trademarks/index.html however there is no occurence of \"Java\" related product names. Former guidelines said that \"(productname...) for the Java platform\" was a correct name, and now it seems to me that it must be renamed to \" **(productname...) for Oracle Java** \" to comply with the Third Party Usage Guidelines for Oracle Trademarks"}
{"_id": "221778", "title": "Should more than one function be used when they do similar, but not identical things?", "text": "For example, if I wanted to generate some HTML based on some input. Which is the preferred way out of:               <?php          function generate_html($type, $input){         switch($type){             case 'paragraph':                 //Generate and return the HTML code for a paragraph                 break;             case 'ul':                 //Generate and return the HTML code for an unordered list                 break;             default:                 error('Invalid type specified');                 break;         }     }          generate_html('paragraph', 'This is a paragraph');     generate_html('ul', [         'This is the first item in a list',         'This is the second item in a list'     ]);      or:               <?php          function generate_paragraph($input){         //Generate and return HTML for a paragraph     }          function generate_ul($input){         //Generate and return HTML for a list     }          generate_paragraph('This is a paragraph');     generate_ul([         'This is the first item in a list',         'This is the second item in a list'     ]);      I know about the idea of a function doing only one \"thing\", but I'm not sure how specific that \"thing\" should be. The first type could only be doing one thing (generating HTML), or it could be doing two things (generating lists, paragraphs). It depends how you look at it. What would be the preferred way of doing something like this?"}
{"_id": "220429", "title": "Are there any concerns with using a static read-only unit of work so that it behaves like a cache?", "text": "Related question: How do I cache data that rarely changes? I'm making an ASP.NET MVC4 application. On every request the security details about the user will need to be checked with the area/controller/action that they are accessing to see if they are allowed to view it. The security information is stored in the database. For example:               User     Permission     UserPermission     Action     ActionPermission      A \"Permission\" is a token that is applied to an MVC action to indicate that the token is required in order to access the action. Once a user is given the permission (via the UserPermission table) then they have the token and can therefore access the action. I've been looking in to how to cache this data (since it rarely changes) so that I'm only querying in-memory data and not hitting a database (which is a considerable performance hit at the moment). I've tried storing things in lists, using a caching provider but I either run in to problems or performance doesn't improve. One problem that I constantly run in to is that I'm using lazy loading and dynamic proxies with EntityFramework. This means that even if I `ToList()` everything and store them somewhere static, the relationships are never populated. For example, `User.Permissions` is an ICollection but it's always null. I don't want to `Include()` everything because I'm trying to keep things simple and generic (and easy to modify). One thing I know is that an EntityFramework DbContext is a unit of work that acts with 1st-level caching. That is, for the duration of the unit of work, everything that is accessed is cached in memory. I want to create a read-only DbContext that will exist indefinitely and will only be used to read about permission data. Upon testing this it worked perfectly; my page load times went from 200ms+ to 20ms. I can easily force the data to refresh at certain intervals or simply leave it to refresh when the application pool is recycled. Basically it will behave like a cache. _Note that the rest of the application will interact with other contexts that exist per request as normal._ **Is there any disadvantage to this approach? Could I be doing something different?**"}
{"_id": "175002", "title": "Overview of the agile process that I can apply to a startup", "text": "I need to provide a quote to an external client for some software. I'm looking to use agile just for initial requirements building (which I'm experienced in from a developer perspective) but I need to do everything this is just a one man job. The client are having a hard time working out what there requirements are and the value I can add will be to sit down with them and work out what they want using user stories etc, I basically need to be a BA for a little bit. I am looking for good overview of the procedures to go through in the agile process for building requirements, and the continuing process a bit for further down the line. For example the initial inception through to elaboration of epics and building user stories (or not) just need to read a bit about it before the meeting so I know the best way to proceed if I spend a day with them. Having additional resources to provide to the client so that we are all on the same page would be useful too."}
{"_id": "204747", "title": "Serializing an object in different ways", "text": "It is usual for me, when doing web development, to copy attributes from my model classes to the other class that will be sent to the client. Usually, with a class that accepts a model and extracts the necessary information this is sufficient (something like a adapter I suppose), but sometimes it is not that easy. In some systems, for different reasons I need to send a different sets of attributes, and this is where simplicity seems to disappears. With my usual approach I end up with lot's of classes very similar one from each other, just because one is for being used in one channel that requires some information and the others for channels that require very similar information. But cannot be the same sum of the two because performance or security. (When I say channels it is because it could be a serialized using json or xml, or used in other protocols, or just displayed as html by the server.) **The question is:** Is there a pattern that allows for different transformations of a object (that might aggregate others objects) depending the context being used? (without too much code duplication) **Case of study:** in a distributed cards game (like poker), I need to send to every user the score, the name of the players, the cards that were played, and the cards he has in his hand. But when the game ends I need to send the cards in the hands of the others players too. And in other view of the game I need to send only the score and the name of the players. Sorry about my English, it is not my first language (and the idea I am trying to communicate seems a little complex for me)."}
{"_id": "250615", "title": "Handling leaves in tree-based menus", "text": "**Tl;Dr** Given a language with no polymorphism how to you elegantly modify the behavior of a leaf in a tree data structure. **Context** I'm programming an application in C for a microcontroller and I'm wondering what would be the best way to design flexible GUI-less menus. Basically inputs may come from 2 different sources: The built-in buttons on the board used by the user and a Uart port used by the production team to calibrate the device before shipping. I already have a mechanism using a thread to listen to inputs (from both the buttons and the serial port) who post them to a crude parser. The parser then takes action depending on the currently registered callback for the received input. It also knows if the menu must be printed on the LCD screen or through the serial port. I'm also using a k-ary tree to represent the hierarchy between sub-menus and different options. Since the menus are not defined yet it'll allow me to simply add / remove nodes when my supervisor makes his mind on the supported features. Now when the currently displayed menu is not a leaf, the behavior is quite simply. Left and Right moves between siblings, Back selects the parent and Enter selects the first child. If its a leaf, Enter activates / deactivates modifications, Left and Right increment / decrement the value and Back cancels the moficiation. **Other concerns**   * Am I over-engeenering stuff that could be done with a bunch of switch-cases?   * Are there ressources giving example of clean GUI-less menus when you don't know where the inputs come from, the actions you will have to take, the menus you must offer and where to display those menus?   * Since there is basically 2 options (leaf or not) should I just do everything with if/elses and move on?"}
{"_id": "250616", "title": "Implementing IEnumerator without using 'yield return' in c#", "text": "I'm new to C# programming, I was experimenting with iterators concept in C#. Here, I'm trying to display all the terms in a list, for that I'm trying different ways to obtain the results. In the below code, I'm using two classes ListIterator and ImplementList. In the `ListIterator class` : I defined a `HashSet` and it uses `IEnumerator` to store the values. Here `GetEnumerator()` method returns the values in the list. GetEnumerator is implemented in the `ImplementList class` (other class). Finally, the list is displayed in the console.               public class ListIterator     {         public void DisplayList()        {         HashSet<int> myhashSet = new HashSet<int> { 30, 4, 27, 35, 96, 34};         IEnumerator<int> IE = myhashSet.GetEnumerator();         while (IE.MoveNext())           {             int x = IE.Current;             Console.Write(\"{0} \", x);           }           Console.WriteLine();         Console.ReadKey();        }     }      In the ImplementList class : `GetEnumerator()` is defined and it returns the list using `yield return x.`               public class ImplementList : IList<int>       {         private List<int> Mylist = new List<int>();         public ImplementList() { }              public void Add(int item)          {              Mylist.Add(item);          }              public IEnumerator<int> GetEnumerator()         {           foreach (int x in Mylist)             yield return x;         }       }      Now, I want to rewrite the `GetEnumerator()` without using `yield return`. And it should return all the values in a list. I tried using for loop as `for(int x=0; x<Mylist.Count; x++)`, but it doesn't return all the values in the list. Is it possible to get all the values in the list without using `yield return` in IEnumerator"}
{"_id": "204744", "title": "Is the Observer pattern adequate for this kind of scenario?", "text": "I'm creating a simple game development framework with Ruby. There is a node system. A node is a game entity, and it has position. It can have children nodes (and one parent node). Children are always drawn relatively to their parent. Nodes have a `@position` field. Anyone can modify it. When such position is modified, the node must update its children accordingly to properly draw them relatively to it. `@position` contains a `Point` instance (a class with x and y properties, plus some other useful methods). I need to know when a node's `@position`'s state changes, so I can tell the node to update its children. This is easy if the programmer does something like this:               @node.position = Point.new(300,300)      Because it is equivalent to calling this:               # Code in the Node class     def position=(newValue)       @position = newValue       update_my_children    # <--- I know that the position changed     end      But, I'm lost when this happens:               @node.position.x = 300      The only one that _knows_ that the position changed is the `Point` instance stored in the `@position` property of the node. But I need the node to be notified! It was at this point that I considered the Observer pattern. Basically, `Point` is now observable. When a node's `position` property is given a new `Point` instance (through the assignment operator), it will stop observing the previous `Point` it had (if any), and start observing the new one. When a `Point` instance gets a state change, all observers (the node owning it) will be notified, so now my node can update its children when the position changes. A problem is when this happens:               @someNode.position = @anotherNode.position      This means that two nodes are observing the same point. If I change one of the node's position, the other would change as well. To fix this, when a position is assigned, I plan to create a new Point instance, copy the passed argument's `x` and `y`, and store my newly created point instead of storing the passed one. Another problem I fear is this:               somePoint = @node.position     somePoint.x = 500      This would, technically, modify `@node`'s position. I'm not sure if anyone would be expecting _that_ behavior. I'm under the impression that people see `Point` as some kind of primitive rather than an actual object. Is this approach even reasonable? Reasons I'm feeling skeptical:   * I've heard that the Observer pattern should be used with, well, _many_ observers. Technically, in this scenario there is only one observer at a time.   * When assigning a node's position as another's (`@someNode.position = @anotherNode.position`), where I create a whole new instance rather than storing the passed point, it feels hackish, or even inefficient."}
{"_id": "141556", "title": "What is the simplest human readable configuration file format?", "text": "Current configuration file is as follows:               mainwindow.title = 'test'     mainwindow.position.x = 100     mainwindow.position.y = 200          mainwindow.button.label = 'apply'     mainwindow.button.size.x = 100     mainwindow.button.size.y = 30          logger.datarate = 100     logger.enable = True     logger.filename = './test.log'      This is read with python to a nested dictionary:               {       'mainwindow':{         'button':{           'label': {'value':'apply'},            ...       },       'logger':{          datarate: {'value': 100},          enable: {'value': True},          filename: {'value': './test.log'}       },        ...         }      Is there a better way of doing this? The idea is to get XML type of behavior and avoid XML as long as possible. The end user is assumed almost totally computer illiterate and basically uses notepad and copy-paste. Thus the python standard \"header + variables\" type is considered too difficult. The dummy user edits the config file, able programmers handle the dictionaries. Nested dictionary is chosen for easy splitting (logger does not need or even cannot have/edit mainwindow parameters)."}
{"_id": "167660", "title": "Should I still use a web application framework?", "text": "I'm about to make a simple web application with just image uploading and user management. I'm browsing through several web app frameworks I could use yet I'm still thinking if I should still make use of them or just make one from scratch for this specific application. Any suggestions from experienced web app developers? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "141552", "title": "Non-Profit Technololgy for Non-Profits?", "text": "I've been looking around for a way to give back to the community, but I haven't found my right fit yet, so an idea came to mind: A non-profit technology \"company\" that targets non-profits. Do these exist? I've been doing some google searches and can only find software that is targeted for non-profits that is created by for-profit companies or that charges what I believe to be an outrages amount, conferences directed towards non-profits and technology they may use -- or articles complaining about the digital divide and how non-profits view technology as key but dont have the funds or the knowledge to employ it. **Pseudo \"Business Model\"** An open source 501(3)(c) organization that targets directly targets non- profits to fill the \"digital divide.\" Most services would be free and consulting fees would be charged for customization. Donations would be accepted and government grants would be sought after. This would enable non- profits to keep pace with the for-profits in the technology sector, but at little to no cost. Perhaps the first \"industry\" to be targeted would be those that fill key social needs like unemployment, or food banks."}
{"_id": "110205", "title": "What are the consequences of still sticking with Windows XP despite there are Windows Vista, 7 and very soon 8?", "text": "From a .Net programmer perspective, what are the consequences of still sticking with Windows XP despite there are Windows Vista, 7 and very soon 8? How does having windows XP limit programmers development in .Net platform?"}
{"_id": "26167", "title": "Publishing: Hows and Whos of Peer Reviews", "text": "So, I'm sitting here, chewing on a couple of novel data structures. I'm thinking of coding them up, but I'ven't got any professional use for them at the moment. Nonetheless, they solve interesting problems, and deserve reference implementations. So, I'd like to publish them, ideally in a peer- reviewed journal, so there's at least an off-chance someone will run into them and get some use out of it. But I can't for the life of me figure out how I'd even start to go about such a process, and none of my old professors seem to be in a position to help. Can I get a primer on how to go about getting something published in a moderately reputable journal?"}
{"_id": "209596", "title": "Is there a term for reusing code by retyping it?", "text": "I built a prototype (\"one to throw away\") a while ago, and I'm rebuilding it now as an alpha. My goodness, it's been worth it. I reused some of the prototype code by copy-pasting then modifying it, but I've fallen into a pattern of looking at the prototype for guidance, but writing the new code from scratch. This doesn't take too long for me because I'm a pretty fast touch-typist. Right now I'm rebuilding a complex function, and I'm actually reading it line- by-line and typing equivalent code into my alpha version. I find it's better than copy-paste-refactor because I get reacquainted with the logic, and I don't miss parts of the code when I'm reading it. Is there a name for this kind of reuse? Any authoritative commentary on its benefits/drawbacks?"}
{"_id": "63859", "title": "Why do people hesitate to use Python 3?", "text": "Python 3 was released in December 2008. A lot of time has passed since then but still today many developers hesitate to use Python 3. Even popular frameworks like Django are not compatible with Python 3 yet but still rely on Python 2. Sure, Python 3 has some incompatibilities with Python 2 and some people need to rely on backwards-compatibility. But hasn't Python 3 been around long enough now for most projects to switch or start with Python 3? Having two competing versions has so many drawbacks; two branches need to be maintained, confusion for learners and so on. So why is there so much hesitation throughout the Python community about switching to Python 3?"}
{"_id": "13782", "title": "Are code reviews necessary for junior developers?", "text": "I've worked at two companies, who each had a different methodology when it came to code reviews: In the first company, a code review was conducted by the team leaders and was required after the completion of every module. However, in the second company, team leaders weren't required to conduct any code reviews, and just checked for functionality and design issues. So I am confused. Is the code review process really needed? If it is, why? And if it isn't, why not?"}
{"_id": "63851", "title": "Apple subscription for customer", "text": "When developing an iOS application (freelance) for a customer, how do you handle the iOS Developer Subscription? On the one hand, I have no problem submitting the app using my own subscription.   On the other hand, the subscription is per year which means the customer would be dependent on me actually renewing my subscription every year."}
{"_id": "187984", "title": "What is the relationship between a framework like RoR and a database?", "text": "I'm a front end developer...I've never done ANY backend, although I did take a course in databases once. (I have a comp sci degree; I'm a competent programmer, I just haven't done any backend web stuff before.) So I'm trying to figure out how the framework relates to the database. Presumably they're set up separately, and the framework receives requests from the website and sends them to the database, then receives the response and handles it appropriately to deliver the content correctly? It's basically a complex intermediary for all the web-app logic? Am I far off? Need a good explanation of this."}
{"_id": "210950", "title": "Parsing Text Tokens in Script Files", "text": "My team is wanting to migrate away from compiled code to dynamic code. We have a wide variety of customers and each has different business rules. Instead of having a single compiled code base, we are considering having different templated script files for each customer. However we have a lot of compiled code, so for now we are wanting to keep most of our current code and shell the script files like `ruby my.rb` or `node my.js`. In addition, we need to get data into the scripts. So, we are thinking we will have variable declarations in the script, and those variables will be set to some character sequence that we will treat as a token. Then with another app, we'll process the document looking for the tokens replacing them with the actual data. I have some concerns and am not sure what to think of all this, but I'm wondering if someone with more experience can shed some light on the quality of this solution and what some other alternatives might be. EDIT: I hope this helps explain my scenario. Some of the motivation of this is our clients are not always accessible. In addition, we have services running on the client that would need to be stopped to install new versions of .dlls or .jars. Also, our clients get fragmented on versions of software despite attempts to keep them together. The thought is the script files will ship on demand with the other files and data to which that script is valid, and the compiled software will change less often."}
{"_id": "139812", "title": "What's the difference between using RDFS/OWL versus XML?", "text": "I was wondering what advantages the ontology languages of RDFS/OWL has over using a tagging/markup system (such as http://www.schema.org/) for managing and creating metadata?"}
{"_id": "238566", "title": "WCF service - best way to accept requests from a client and do background work?", "text": "For a project at work, I was tasked to create a WCF service that will receive email messages from client and queue them on a database, while at the same time the service will check the DB every 30 minutes or so to check if there are any new email messages queued, and send them automatically with the appropriate credentials. To accomplish this, my boss told me to do it with threads: while the main thread is in charge of taking requests from clients, a background thread will be in charge of checking the DB for as long as the service is alive, and send the queued emails. After asking on StackOverflow, however, I was told that for this kind of scenario _two_ services is a better option, a WCF service that takes requests and a different Windows Service that does the background work. So my question is, what is the best option for implementing this kind of scenario? And is doing this with just threads possible, but ill-advised? I would like to hear more opinions before checking with my boss about the best way to accomplish this."}
{"_id": "228284", "title": "Auxiliary space complexity of map vs map!", "text": "I'm curious about the difference in space complexity between `map` and `map!` in ruby. If I have the methods:               def mult_by_two(arr)       arr.map {|i| i * 2 }     end          def mult_by_two!(arr)       arr.map! {|i| i * 2 }     end      While there's no explicit assignment in the first method, it's implicitly collecting the result of the `map` somewhere and is not operating in-place like the second method. Would it be correct to say that the first has O(n) auxiliary space complexity while the second is O(1)? How should I represent them when looking at the auxiliary space complexity of a method?"}
{"_id": "79809", "title": "Do good code readers write bad code?", "text": "I've been observing programmers that are great at reading foreign, messy and undocumented code. At the same time they tend to also write messy code without documenting it. Is this common or just a coincidence? My theory is that since they can understand almost anything, they don't see the need for quality code. While I'm not that good at interpreting foreign code, when I write new I try to show the intent in the code and use plenty of comments, so that I myself could understand it later. Does this make sense?"}
{"_id": "138149", "title": "How to describe the complexity of a project, without revealing information?", "text": "I will be looking for a job after a long break, so I need all the help I can get. Problem is, my best point in a portofolio is an unusual application, using quite unusual algorithms, that may seem simple at a glance for anyone who didn't have to design and implement them. The natural thing to do would be to describe the design and implementation details, so that any developer would be able to assess how much skill and determination it took to finish the project. But, I intent to polish the application some more and sell it. I don't want clones to appear anytime soon. The barrier to entry currently is high, but if I were to be giving hints about my implementation, then it's no longer the case. I don't believe in the honesty of recruiting developers. I have experience going to interviews and in some cases it seems like the main point of an interview was to gain information about our pipeline, used technologies and custom solutions, as opposed to hiring me :) EDIT: Not telling what the application does, or not providing a link to it won't even get me a call back for an interview. I won't be applying to companies which could be selling solution similar to mine. I'm rather worried about giving advice to individual developers on how to make a clone, without going through some dead corners and lengthy research."}
{"_id": "209040", "title": "MVP Implementation at the UserControl Level", "text": "I'm trying to figure out how MVP should be implemented at the `UserControl` level. I thought I had it, but I ended up reading a blog post that pretty much shut me down. Now I'm back at the start and with no idea how to proceed. Let's say my `UserControl` is something simple like two `TextBox`es and a `ComboBox`. This gets invoked from a main form (which has its own View and Presenter). Now, the way I understand MVP is that the Main Form Presenter is supposed to invoke a second presenter to handle all communication with the UserControl that gets dropped there. And this is where I get completely lost. My past implementations of `UserControl`s (before I learned MVP) always incorporated the logic behind the control (e.g. `ComboBox` selection will change text label related to `TextBox1`). As such, implementation of the `UserControl` is done by dragging it onto the designer, and then calling commands like `UserControl1.Update()` or `UserControl1.DisplayData(data)`. In any third-party `UserControl`, all commands to the `UserControl` are performed by commands to the control. There is no \"presenter\" that needs to be invoked, for instance, when I drop a `ComboBox`, or a `ListView`, or any other WinForms control onto my form. Yet they have internal logic that dictates how they display, and in the essence of testing, it should have a \"presenter\" separation to it **somewhere**. I _thought_ that a good solution would be that the **constructor** of my `UserControl` would create a Presenter. Any commands to the `UserControl` would delegate straight to the Presenter. This would allow my `UserControl` to have its own presentation logic separated from its \"view\", such that I can test it, and such that the implementer (the Main Form) need only drop in the `UserControl` and perform data sends and receives as part of its local presentation logic. The `UserControl` has its own presentation logic left invisible to the implementer. And just when I thought I understood it all, I find out that it's bad practice (The Self-Aware View). So I plead with people who understand this better than I: How do I construct a `UserControl` that keeps its presentation logic invisible to the end-user, such that I don't have to construct the wrapping presenter in my Main Form, **without** violating the principles that Matt Wynne discusses in the linked post above? Or am I completely misunderstanding the concept of MVP here?"}
{"_id": "222484", "title": "what's the proper way to organize code that straddles multiple objects?", "text": "Let's say I have the following classes: person, widget, foo_bars. A person can have multiple widgets and foo_bars. When an admin deletes a person, I want my code to do a cascading delete... and remove all related records in the database for this person In my widget class, I have a delete method... and the same is true for my foo_bars class But in order to accomodate something like the person delete function, I feel like I should be creating \"Person Manager\" class, that will actually repeat a version all the logic inside both the delete methods in the widgets / foo_bars classes. (instead of just calling the existing methods on the classes. Here's what I'm thinking: **Example 1**                public class PersonManager{               delete_person(personID as int)          {              // assume that I've queried for list of all widget and foobars IDs.             //1.  delete all widgets for personID             success = true             dim obj_widget = new widget;             loop through all widgets                   result = obj_widget.delete(widgetID)                    if not result then                    success = false                     exit with error                 end if               end loop                   //2.  delete all foo bars for personID             if success then                  dim objfoobar= new foo_bars;                 loop through all foobars                     result = objfoobar.delete(foobarid)                          if not result then                         success = false                         exit loop                       end                   end loop               end                   //3. delete person record.              if success then                   result = databaseobj.deleteperson(personID)                  if not result then                       return false, \"Delete person failed because....\"                  else                      return true                  end                             end           }      }      In the above example, I'm trying to demo the reuse of existing the existing delete methods on each class... and then if it successfully deletes all widgets and foobars for the person, then i delete the person record itself. The problem with this is that if the widgets delete properly, but the foo_bars don't, how do I rollback? Each delete method has it's own transaction defined within, because deleting a widget or foo bar involves, let's say 2 - 3 steps. So, in other words, the delete method on the widget class currently looks like this:                   public class widget{              delete_widget{                      database.execute(\"BEGIN TRANSACTION\")                      database.execute(\"DELETE FROM XYX ...\")                      if successful then                              database.execute(\"DELETE FROM yyy...\")                      else                              database.execute(\"ROLL BACK\")                             return false                      end if                      database.execute(\"COMMIT\")                      return true                   }           }      For each widget, I'll be calling this method... So what if all the widgets delete, but it dies deleting the first foobar? I think I have to rewrite the code to delete everything right inside the Person manager class and wrap it in a transaction, instead of calling the existing delete methods on the classes. At least, that's what I'm thinking. If there's another way to look at this problem, please let me know. I could just write a cascading delete SQL statement in the PersonManager class, and not call the methods on the two classes. But I don't know if using SQL cascading deletes is a good thing... Thanks!"}
{"_id": "238563", "title": "Should methods returning a hashmap of string to object be avoided?", "text": "In my current code I have felt the desire multuple times to have helper methods that generate a collection of objects and return them as a map of string to object, with the string being some unique id like the objects label. Many of my objects have gaurenteed unique labels since these labels are used via restful interface when querying the object. The reason I want to do this is efficency. I may have a decent sized collection and I know that the method calling whatever private helper method I wrote will definately want to search for specific objects within my collection, so returning them as a map allows the calling method to run in O(n) instead of O(n^2). However, I feel that the return is not self documenting. The key is just a string, there is nothing that makes it obvious that the string is specifically the objects label. Obviously I will have comments to that effect, but ideally self documenting code is writen so well one doesn't have to go to method delarations to figure something out. So I have a few questions: 1) Is the fact that i find myself needing to return maps a code-smell in itself? (other then possibly premature-optimization, which I know I may be a little guilty of, but I don't feel too bad about worrying about the big O of a method) 2) Is this generally acceptable, or should I be looking into a cleaner approch? For instance should I have be making some map object that auto-maps any object by label? What about places that I want to return a map where the key is a different key, should I make a wrapping object for all of them? or is my map good enough? EDIT: More detail was asked, so to clarify my specific situation. I am working within java. While I may have unique strings they aren't known until compile time and enums are not a good fit, or I would have used them! I'm not using reflection or any other systems to dynamically generate data, the methods and their meaning is pretty much standard each time. Usually using the equivalent of a UUID of the objects (which in this case is a string which is used throughout the domain), or the label, which is a guaranteed unique string used to reference the object in question for a restful call."}
{"_id": "138145", "title": "Best practice for combining a Java Applet/ Android interface?", "text": "I'm working on an online game, which I am seriously considering writing a Java Applet for it. The game is not overly complex on the features. I'm considering at some point having at least 3 versions of the game, which include a Java stand alone, applet, and Android game. I know from Design Patterns that the best way to use differing things like buttons and the like is to use a Bridge interface, where I have a common template for the common buttons. However, I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding what to do about the following. I know that Android programs use an Activity structure, which I am well familiar with, and that Applets extend the Applet interface, which I am not as familiar with. I also know that a stand alone java program uses basically a main() function, which doesn't have much structure. I'm convinced that there should be a way to design a common design pattern between the two, but somehow I'm missing what that is exactly. What can I do to make the different frameworks work with as much common code as possible?"}
{"_id": "138144", "title": "Are service locators really that bad?", "text": "People say Service Locators are bad because they expose the dependencies in some random method from the class (and not in the constructor's arguments like it should):               class A{          function F(){        DB::query(...)     }     }      instead of               class A{     protected $db;           function __construct(DB $db){       $this->db = $db;     }           function F(){       $this->db->query(...);      }     }      But consider a function, like `imagejpeg()` from GD. Obviously you can't \"inject\" that, so you have to call it somewhere in your class, just like your service. So isn't this the same thing? That function is a dependency too. Or what about instantiating an object somehwere in your class methods, like PDO. Aren't these things exactly like services after all? So why all the fuss about service locators being evil?"}
{"_id": "199209", "title": "Sourcecode license: free for personal use and modification but no public distibution", "text": "For one of my apps, I want to make the source code \u201copen source\u201d so that others might adapt the code to their personal needs or even contribute improvements, but I don\u2019t want anybody else to publish \u201cmy app\u201d. Furthermore, I still want to be able to sell the app at some time in the future. Is there a usual license for this, like the GPL or similar? I found similar questions from 2010 which say something about dual licensing, but maybe there is a license fitting my needs?   * A commercial software but open and free for personal/edu. How to license?   * Free for personal use license?   * Open Source but not Free Software (or vice versa)   * Software licensing: open source, no commerical, no derivatives"}
{"_id": "57514", "title": "How do you search your codebase?", "text": "I am using egrep to search our codebase, but at around 300MB of source code that starts to get a little slow. How do you search your codebase?"}
{"_id": "113746", "title": "Where can I find examples of functional specifications?", "text": "I am writing a functional specification for a software program (Mac OS X application to be exact). I want to improve this by looking at other (good) functional specifications, but I cannot find any. Are there any (open-source) projects that have their specs publicly available so I can learn from them and improve my spec writing skills?"}
{"_id": "167523", "title": "Unit testing a text index", "text": "Consider a text index such as a suffix tree or a suffix array supporting _Count_ queries (number of occurrences of a pattern) and _Locate_ queries (the positions of all the occurrences of a pattern) over a given text. How would you go about unit testing such a class ? What I have in mind is to generate a big random string then extract a random substring from this big string and compare the results of both queries with naive implementations (such as string::find). Another idea I have is to find the most frequent substring of length `l` appearing in the original string (using perhaps a naive method) and use these substrings for testing the index. This isn't the best way, so what would be a good design of the unit tests for a text index ? In case it matters, this is in C++ using google test."}
{"_id": "199202", "title": "UI (Specifically FLEX) automation testing", "text": "I was wondering whether the community utilizes automation tests to the extent of UI? Is there some common best practices for testing UI? Also - the product I'm working on is flex-based. I would love to get ideas how to test it. Mainly I want to test:   1. Data appears on the screen as expected   2. Field validations (for example: field is not a number) are working as expected   3. Alignment of fields And so on"}
{"_id": "33468", "title": "What are all things that do/can happen when a user enters in a web page's URL?", "text": "Sorry if this is a naive title. I am trying to break into web development. I have taken a basic intro to OS, intro to Networking as part of my bachelors degree several years ago. I cannot say that we went into things deeply, beyond academic assignments. I would like to understand things much better regarding to this specific task (e.g what goes on in at the OS level, at networking level, what are other computers involved, where do proxy servers and hackers come in). Again, at the very basic level this has been covered, but I would like to review this specific thing better. Are there chapter(s) os a specific book, or specific SHORT reading that you recommend? I have nothing against your list of 20 favorite books, but I want to understand this one thing better in 2-3 weeks of reading after work / on the weekends (realistically 5-10 hrs per week, so I am looking for about 15-20 hrs of reading material, NO MORE). I am not a fast reader :) Thanks."}
{"_id": "14124", "title": "What can I do if my boss is asking about my program every hour?", "text": "Here is the situation: You are working on your complex, hi-tech code, and your boss keeps on asking if it's finished. But the project started just yesterday and you have two weeks to go. What can I do? Shall I keep on answering \"I'm on it!\"? :)"}
{"_id": "108944", "title": "Why python library APIs are more intutive than C++ STL library APIs?", "text": "I am not sure whether it is a personal perspective or just a common feeling. I think in most cases, python's API is much more intuitive than C++ STL library APIs. If it is not a subjective judgement, could anyone explain why?"}
{"_id": "33460", "title": "Is individual code ownership important?", "text": "I'm in the midst of an argument with some coworkers over whether team ownership of the entire codebase is better than individual ownership of components of it. I'm a huge proponent of assigning every member of the team a roughly equal share of the codebase. It lets people take pride in their creation, gives the bug screeners an obvious first place to assign incoming tickets, and helps to alleviate \"broken window syndrome\". It also concentrates knowledge of specific functionality with one (or two) team members making bug fixes much easier. Most of all, it puts the final say on major decisions with one person who has a lot of input instead of with a committee. I'm not advocating for requiring permission if somebody else wants to change your code; maybe have the code review always be to the owner, sure. Nor am I suggesting building knowledge silos: there should be nothing exclusive about this ownership. But when suggesting this to my coworkers, I got a ton of pushback, certainly much more than I expected. So I ask the community: what are your opinions on working with a team on a large codebase? Is there something I'm missing about vigilantly maintaining collective ownership?"}
{"_id": "106123", "title": "Should I judge an IT company by the look of the interior office space?", "text": "I recently attended an interview for an IT company. Though the interview process itself was decent, I was shocked by the rather poor working conditions and interior of the office. A few things stood out:   1. The building is located in a shady area of an otherwise bustling mega-city.   2. The interiors are not well furnished. No false roofing with AC ducts, wires and pipelines randomly scattered overhead, no cubicles/desks/partitions, no proper meeting rooms.   3. The workplace had an unpleasant odour.   4. The interview itself was conducted in a makeshift room - almost looked like the safe locker of a bank to me. When I asked if they were in the process of renovating the premises, I was told, \"No, that's how it's always been\". In fact if I believe my ears, he mentioned that the building used to be a barn before the IT company occupied it. Should I really be worrying about all these aspects of my next employer? Doesn't it clearly hint that they don't have enough funds and interest for the betterment of their own workplace?"}
{"_id": "165071", "title": "Extracting main article from webpage/feed. Is it legal/ethical?", "text": "There are some applications like Readability and Pocket, which are letting users to read the main content of web pages, in a clean interface or such. But the articles should be bookmarked from another application, or the web browser. However, I'm creating a news reader app (Zite and Flipboard are popular news reader apps), and I want to create a clean experience for users, so I want to show full content of articles inside my application. Some websites have fulltext feeds, and I'm using it. But about some other websites, which don't have full text feeds: I want to know, is it legal/ethical to use for example Readability API (Or maybe writing my own code for this) to show full text of articles inside my application?"}
{"_id": "222158", "title": "Is it OK to use email as an identifier in a RESTful URI?", "text": "I'm working with a team building a RESTful web service, and our current implementation utilizes the user's email as a unique identifier for the user resource, yielding URIs like the following: `https://www.domain.com/users/example@gmail.com/resource` Emails are guaranteed to be unique in our system, and we've handled when the user changes his/her email, so it seems OK. But is it _correct_? The debate is whether we should use an immutable user ID instead, which in our case would look more like: `https://www.domain.com/users/a36571b87be464728c8d/resource` Or perhaps something else altogether. For instance, several Google APIs simply use `/users/me/resource` and identify the user via auth data. In a nutshell, is it acceptable to use a unique but mutable identifier in our URIs, or should we use an immutable one? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "222159", "title": "Slower Ajax Response", "text": "Does putting the view logic inside the controller increase page load speed? Because I have a controller action calling a view which I am loading through ajax and I am getting a very slow response. Why is that happening? Does putting the view logic inside controller like...               echo \"<div>View echoed</div>\"      a good way to code? does this increase efficiency? I have writted a controller action like               class Ajax extends CI_Controller{        foo ($id){        $data = $this->model->get_data();//has joins in query        $this->load->view($data);      }     }      In view, I have used two foreach loops nested to get the table having about 100 rows and I load the view through a jquery ajax request to the url ajax/foo/1 My question clearly is whether it is a good practice to put view-logic into the controller for ajax calls? will it increase the speed my page will load. I am new to coding things very professionally. Is this a good and a professional method or any other alternative available."}
{"_id": "232471", "title": "Epsilon Transitions in an NFA", "text": "I'm attempting to teach myself the basics of finite automata and have been exploring the differences between Deterministic Finite Automata and Non Deterministic Finite Automita. One thing that pops up quite often in the on-line examples, lectures slides and videos of various CS instructors is the epsilon transition. The problem is none of them do very good job of explaining epsilon transitions. They just kind of pop them out of nowhere as this mysterious property that allows a you to jump from one state to another without reading an input character. O.K. I get that, but how are these arbitrary jumps facilitated semanticly if we were to create this automata? Take the image below for example. Lets say we are in S0, there are two epsilon transitions to s1 and s4. How is it decided which one to go down. If you go to S1 and do not have an a, can you backtrack and try b? I say this because the arrows do not seem to infer this. Or have I conceived this wrong, could the automata actually be in both states S1 and S2 concurrently? Also s3 and s6, have epsilon transitions to s7, so why don't we have two accepting states S3 and s4 instead? Finally the S2, has two paths that react to a, s5 has two paths that react to b. How does that work in practice. How is the path to follow determined? When answering please try to limit the use of esoteric mathematics, and if you do use operators and symbols explain each one clearly. I'm not a maths wizz. ![NFA with Epsilon Transitions](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qUDyA.png)"}
{"_id": "146029", "title": "When is 'cloning', rather than reusing, a module acceptable design solution?", "text": "For this question, I'll give an example module to facilitate the discussion, Let's say the module is a calculation engine, It currently servers its purpose for its current audience. The requirement is to **clone** the same engine but with some **tweaking** for an entirely new audience. Given that, these are Considerations/Factors that will affect the design solution:   1. User expects that the current engine will remain **unchanged** , because its not part of the requirement (note the new engine is for some new audience, and does not affect the users of the current engine).   2. In addition to #1, the expectation is **no regression testing** for the code base of the current engine since no changes are introduced.   3. Just to drive the point, refactoring the current engine to make it flexible to address both current and new engines, will not be an option given that will not satisfy the 2 points above.   4. We can expect in the future that there will be **exclusive changes** for each engine, ie. change is applicable only to the new engine hence should not affect the current.   5. Tight deadline. However, I am still conflicted, since:   1. It will inherently be a copy-paste solution.   2. Duplicate code.   3. Maintenance issue for code changes that should be common to both.   4. Does not address extension issue, ie. a third engine, and so forth could all be possible. Is the **compromise** acceptable in this situation, given the user expectations highlighted above? And followup question, is there something I can add to the solution that will address the conflicting issues but at the same time satisfy the user requirements?"}
{"_id": "185855", "title": "How do I avoid feature creep on a solo project?", "text": "So I have a program I'm worked on back in 2011 and all through 2012, but the last release was in December of _2011_. I've been actively working on it, but feature creep lured its ugly head and now it is filled with tons on unfinished features. The bad part is that as I implement a feature, a new one creeps in. What can I do to avoid feature creep in the future so I can **actually get a release out** in over a _year_? The project is based around iOS and used to have releases around each iOS version update, but the last one was back with 5.1 (2011). I would like to be able to get that steady release cycle back, but it has proven too difficult."}
{"_id": "146021", "title": "Determining if an Algorithm is O (log n)", "text": "I'm refreshing my CS Theory, and I want to know how to identify that an algorithm O (log n) complexity. Specifically, is there an easy way to identify it? I know with O(n), you usually have a single loop; O(n^2) is a double loop; O(n^3) is a triple loop, etc. How about O (log n)?"}
{"_id": "36524", "title": "What personal milestones can you use to measure growth in your programming abilities?", "text": "How can you determine objectively, over time, that you are getting any better at producing code? For example, I may sit here and feel that \"I know `<language>` now, and I use `<technique>` now, so I must be better.\" But this does not account for my own bias, or the fact that I may be getting better at a slower rate than intended, or I may actually suck at `<technique>` and not realize it. What methods are available for one to **objectively** rate one's own abilities? What about to objectively compare them to their peer groups?"}
{"_id": "112145", "title": "Why is software still released with known bugs?", "text": "It seems that frequently in large projects the software is still released with the bug tracker full of bugs. Now I can understand feature requests, but several times I've seen large numbers of bugs still unresolved, not reviewed, or not finished but a release is still pushed out. Why? Why would an open source project or a project in general be released with **known** bugs? Why wouldn't they wait until the bug tracker had 0 opened bugs?"}
{"_id": "197356", "title": "How does Go improve productivity with \"implicit\" interfaces, and how does that compare with C#'s notion of Extension Methods?", "text": "In the Go Language Tutorial, they explain how interfaces work: > Go does not have classes. However, you can define methods on struct types. > The _method receiver_ appears in its own argument list between the func > keyword and the method name.               type Vertex struct {         X, Y float64     }          func (v *Vertex) Abs() float64 {         return math.Sqrt(v.X*v.X + v.Y*v.Y)     }      > An interface type is defined by a set of methods. A value of interface type > can hold any value that implements those methods. This is the only way to create an interface in Go. Google further explains that: > A type implements an interface by implementing the methods. There is no > explicit declaration of intent [i.e. `interface` declarations]. > > Implicit interfaces decouple implementation packages from the packages that > define the interfaces: neither depends on the other. > > It also encourages the definition of precise interfaces, because you don't > have to find every implementation and tag it with the new interface name. This all sounds suspiciously like Extension Methods in C#, except that methods in Go are ruthlessly polymorphic; they will operate on _any type_ that implements them. Google claims that this encourages rapid development, but why? Do you give up something by moving away from explicit interfaces in C#? Could Extension Methods in C# allow one to derive some of the benefits that Go interfaces have in C#?"}
{"_id": "34963", "title": "Releasing poorly written software", "text": "I've made a poorly written, yet fully functioning website, in _(shock, horror, shock)_ PHP. Everything works as expected, I've implemented the necessary security measures: http://php.net/manual/en/security.php and phpsec.org/projects/guide/ It's poorly written in the sense that it's a bunch of functions thrown together that do something...oddly enough I was consistent with the naming conventions. Would you release something you were not happy with, but worked? I would also like to point out that I don't collect much user information (username, email and password) is about it -- but it's not really the security part I'm worried about, it's the spaghetti code I've written."}
{"_id": "194244", "title": "What language is most similar to JavaScript?", "text": "I am looking for a language that   1. has First class functions   2. is dynamic   3. has prototypical inheritance   4. does not have too many features (i.e is easy to get into and write first program). I have been programming in JavaScript for quite some time and have gotten quite fond of it. Are there any other languages that have similar design? Edit (just some clarification) I know a bit of c#.After doing some programming in node js I really started to appreciate javascript and ease of its use.However outside of web development javascript falls short.Sure there are libraries like app.js that allows desktop programming but that's about it.Which is why I was looking for a more general purpose sripting language that has the above mentioned features.I listed those features to make the question more in tune with stack exchange policies other wise it would probably have been closed."}
{"_id": "194240", "title": "Exercise for implementing design patterns", "text": "I have started to study design patterns using some course in pluralsight and the gang of four book. While I feel I understand what I have studied so far, I think it would be very helpful if I would have some way of practicing them. I know that I will get the chance in time but I feel I would get a better understanding of each design pattern if I would do some exercises for each of them. What I would like is if someone knows any websites or documents that provide exercises for implementing design patterns. I am particularly interested in ones where the author provides some source code and the problem that has to be solved and I have to implement a design pattern to solve it. I am not interested in examples and theory; I already got that covered from what I am reading."}
{"_id": "194249", "title": "In Unit Testing, why would I create a Repository twice?", "text": "The other day I was reading a little about Unit Testing and I saw some examples where people create a repository interface (i.e. `IExampleRepository`) and then create the real repository (`public class ExampleRepository : IExampleRepository`) and a repository to be used for unit testing (`FakeExampleRepository : IExampleRepository`). In the `IExampleRepository` they were implementing the same methods as in the `ExampleRepository`, however with different Linq queries. What is exactly the objective here? I thought one part of unit testing your code is make sure that a method works correctly? But when I use two totally different queries, one for 'real' and one in the test, how much sense does the test make?"}
{"_id": "71654", "title": "Code Reviews, what are the advantages?", "text": "In my team, we don't do formal code reviews. We tend to think that it's enough with pair programming and rotating pairs often. Should we consider doing formal code reviews? What would be the advantages?"}
{"_id": "210415", "title": "Design of interface for finding one of something or a list", "text": "I am developing a telephony call model and thinking about how best to design the interface. One basic idea is that a call has a unique call identifier. I have a list of calls and finding a specific call is easy by callid. Each call has zero or more parties. A party has a device identifier (eg extension 201) and a state. Eg my extension 201 can be alerting or established or whatever. I have a class to represent a call which has functions to find a party on the call, I have the following findxxx functions:               party* find_party_by_dn(const std::string& dn) const;     int find_parties_by_dn(const std::string& dn, std::list<party*> pties) const;      find_party_by_dn seems ok, but it has a problem in that a call may have 2 parties with the same device identifier. Eg a user may put a call on hold and make a new consult call to another device. In which case the call has a party with dn 201 in state hold and another party with dn 201 and state dialling for example. So if I use function find_party_by_dn only the first party in the list with this dn will be returned. So I thought ah, why not return (well via reference) a list of parties with a given dn. Hence the second function. Does that seem like a useful interface? Could it be improved? I also have these functions:               party* find_party_by_state(const std::string& dn, pstate state) const;     party* find_party_by_states(const std::string& dn, int states) const;      In which case the caller needs to specify either a specific state or a number of states - eg state1 | state2 I am looking for feedback on this interface. Does it seem logical? Could it be improved to make it more user friendly or robust?"}
{"_id": "198552", "title": "Implementation of automated updates", "text": "What is the best way to implement automated updates? I've gotten as far as libcurl, I imagine I need to ping the server every now and again with the current version of the software. But then what should I do? What server tech needs to respond, and how?"}
{"_id": "198551", "title": "Writing data driven reflection based tests to ensure design completeness", "text": "When writing software I'm often forced to at some point to make a decision that involves a design pattern of \"by convention\" naming and behavioral patterns. This normally makes me feel kind of slimy as a .NET developer because nearly everything is statically typed (arguably even the dynamic type is statically typed, but others have covered this well, go read their blogs, they will thank you for it.) Naturally I encountered others with opposing views who felt that in many cases, convention based naming and behavioral patterns are actually helpful in that they allow for cleaner, more readable, and more consistent code. It was even stated that depending on how far that convention is taken, for instance into a type reflection name determined behavior scenario, that it might even enforce good naming by breaking functionality if naming in inconsistent with the established conventions. All of this brought me around to the place where the love and passion for development goes to die, \"Testing.\" I came up with the following hypothesis: > Using naming conventions and associated behavioral or structural rules > associated with those conventions, it should be possible to write tests for > the product that enforce that behaviors and structures associated with names > are implemented correctly by reflecting the available target binaries. > Furthermore it should also be possible to enforce a by convention design > that doesn't allow for the misuse of naming conventions by means of having > names that fall under the naming conventions that don't follow those same > behavioral or structural rules to be used inappropriately (i.e something > with the word Locator in the type name that doesn't implement the service > locator pattern.) Has anyone ever investigated this kind of architectural and design testing and provability? What have your experiences been with writing architecture and convention tests? What challenges have you faced and what solutions have you devised? Are there frameworks or tools for doing this? Is there research on the subject done that has been peer reviewed?"}
{"_id": "133171", "title": "How can I write HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to make back-end developers work easier?", "text": "When I get a design from a designer, I get it as a PSD (Photoshop) file. I always expect proper layer and folder names, basically a clean and managed PSD. From this desigbn I develop HTML, CSS and JavaScript and deliver it to the back-end developers. To make it easy for them to understand, I   * write semantic code,   * keep JavaScript and CSS in external files,   * add useful comments in HTML, CSS and JS files,   * use CSS sprites (though developers don't like it),   * use HTML5 boiler plate,   * use jQuery for JavaScript,   * try to use new HTML5 tags and CSS3 whenever possible and   * sent a Zip file containing the HTML, CSS, JS and images. I expect that if small changes will need to be made to the layout, the developers can handle that. I would like to hear from back-end developers and other CSS ninjas what more one could do in terms of organization of files and mark-up to make the integration with back-end systems easier (i.e. back-end technologies, PHP, .NET, Ruby etc.) Different client uses different systems."}
{"_id": "133170", "title": "Are there general rules or best practices for building a new framework?", "text": "I need to start the design and development of a new framework to interact with an open source ECM. This inludes a customized data model to help web site developers interacting with this ECM, so they don't need to care about the details of nodes manipulation and other low level details. That's just a bunch of classes and methods to develop. I have some doubts about how to handle the organization and managment of that project: Are there some general rules to follow, tips, best practices or something to keep in mind for developing this kind of project? I'm sure there are some difference between the development of a framework or library and an application."}
{"_id": "210418", "title": "\"Extends is evil\" vs. OCP?", "text": "As far as I have understood(?), the \"Extends is evil\" idea is in direct opposition to the Open Closed Principle? In here, the concept of OCP is presented as inherently using Extends:   http://www.oodesign.com/open-close-principle.html While in for example this article, the act of extending is considered a capital offense?   http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-08-2003/jw-0801-toolbox.html?page=1 What is the correct way to satisfy both OCP and not using Extends? Consider a simple BulletinBoard class that has Posts, which can be either NewsPosts or GuestbookPosts with different properties, but same methods/behaviour."}
{"_id": "76384", "title": "How to apply one of the OOP concepts (Closed for Modification and Open for extension)?", "text": "Days before, I created Question, Quiz, and Main classes. One Quiz has one or more Questions. From the main class I first create Question objects (the constructor accepts an array of numbers). The Quiz is like when I display the questions I omit the last number of the array and the user will try to figure out that number. Then from Main I created a Quiz Object. From Main I only call methods of the Quiz class and from Quiz Class I only call methods in Question class. Then I also created a web application (with JSP and Servlets) which uses the same Question and Quiz classes but not Main. Instead of Main I used JSP and Servlets to display the data. So without modifying the model classes(Quiz and Question) I am able to use them from other applications. But now, I need to add a HINT, which will give the user hints for every questions. If I go and modify those 2 model classes, I am going to violate the Open-Close principle. If I am going to create a class called Hint(one hint per question) and extend from question class, it doesn't make a sense because Hint is not a Question. But Question has a hint. Can you please guide how to have a HINT in my application so that I will use the previous classes without modification and violating any OOP concepts?"}
{"_id": "225683", "title": "What are the disconnected scenarios in Entity Framework?", "text": "I'm not sure I understand what all fall under the disconnected context scenarios in EF (See this and this). This link says use Web API or WCF services to avoid the complexities of disconnected tier EF solutions. Here's my understanding. If I create a new DbContext, get some entities, pass it to another process/machine (anything outside the scope of the current context), and there I make some changes to these entities and try to save them, then this is a disconnected scenario. EF will not know whether it is an Add or Update or what fields have changed, unless I explicitly tell it. Suppose I have an MVC app, with a UserController. The UserController takes in a IUsserService through dependency injection. UserService, the concrete implementation of IUserService takes in a UnitOfWork. My DbContext is instantiated for the UnitOfWork, and SaveChanges() is called only on Commit() of the UnitOfWork. I also set the lifetime of the DbContext in Unity as PerRequestLifetime -> which means one instance is created for each HttpRequest. My UserService works with different entities required to do its job. I believe this is not a disconnected scenario, **since my context is the same throughout**? If my MVC controller were in one machine (web), and the UserService in another machine(app - http endpoints exposed using webapi), does anything change? In this case, I need the DbContext only starting with ApiController, and everything will stay within the app layer. So I still avoid disconnected contexts. Am I right? If I'm not clear, I can put some code, but nothing different in there."}
{"_id": "225682", "title": "Is it a bad idea to return different data types from a single function in a dynamically typed language?", "text": "I come from a statically typed language background (Java). In Java, you have to return a single type from every method. For example, you can't have a method that conditionally returns a `String` or conditionally returns an `Integer`. But in JavaScript, for example, this is very possible. In a statically typed language I get why this is a bad idea. If every method returned `Object` (the common parent all classes inherit from) then you and the compiler have no idea what you're dealing with. You'll have to discover all your mistakes at run time. But in a dynamically typed language, there may not even be a compiler. In a dynamically typed language, it's not obvious to me why a function that returns multiple types is a bad idea. My background in static languages makes me avoid writing such functions, but I fear I'm being close minded about a feature that could make my code cleaner in ways I can't see. * * * **Edit** : I'm going to remove my example (until I can think of a better one). I think it's steering people to reply to a point I am not trying to make."}
{"_id": "138854", "title": "Why is it suggested stories be sized to 2-3 days?", "text": "If sprints are on average 10 days, why is it often suggested stories be sized to 2-3 days? **Related Question:** How to handle backlog-items that are longer than one sprint?"}
{"_id": "138857", "title": "Is it a bad practice to use GUI designer tools with code generation for application programming in Java/C++?", "text": "In a stackOverflow question I have read that using a GUI designer program can generate lots of messy code and is considered to be a bad practice unless you're making smaller programs. My question is why and how. Is it bad to use a GUI designer program? Why? Additional details:   * Programming on a Windows platform;   * Only programming in C++/Java for windows programs.   * For IDE I've been using visual studio 2010 (Not the express edition) since it comes with the GUI designer."}
{"_id": "107655", "title": "Is there any work into the application of the Halstead complexity measures to determine software quality?", "text": "In 1977, Maurice Howard Halstead introduced his complexity measures for software systems, which included measurements of the program vocabulary, program length, volume, difficulty, effort, and an estimated number of bugs in a module. According to Wikipedia, difficulty relates to the difficulty of understanding the program when reading or writing it and effort can be translated into the time it takes to code an application where Time = (Effort / 18) seconds. A measurement is useless unless the data and calculations relate to some aspect of software development. However, I haven't found any work which states that a difficulty of a certain value or higher tends to a statistically significant increase in defects or a relationship between difficulty and time to read code (a difficulty of N yields an average of M hours spent understanding the code base) or any analysis of being able to compute Time after the fact being useful in determining quality (especially since time to write should have been recorded as a measurement already). I'm especially interested in Halstead's bug estimation (which is not mentioned on Wikipedia) - the number of bugs in an application can be estimated by Volume/3000 or Effort^(2/3)/3000. I'm looking for two things:   * Has anyone used Halstead's software complexity measures in a real-world application to assess software quality? If so, how did you apply them and did they turn out to be a useful, valid, and/or reliable measurement?   * Is there any academic research in the form of surveys, analyses, or case studies that discuss the validity (or invalidity) of Halstead complexity measures when applied to software quality?   * Is there any academic research in the form of surveys, analyses, or case studies that demonstrate the use of Source Lines of Code (SLOC) to compute something similar to the Halstead metrics of Volume, Difficulty, Effort, Time, and Bugs? I would suspect that Volume might just correspond to a SLOC count and Difficulty might correspond to cyclomatic complexity (and possibly other measures). I'm also well aware that measuring effort, productivity, or time in SLOC is potentially misleading."}
{"_id": "226482", "title": "Fixing a security exploit - but then everyone knows about it", "text": "Earlier, I was messaged about a potential security risk in one of my projects. I checked it and found that it allows for \"arbitrary code execution\". (Quotes because it is running in a VM, but the damage that can be done is huge nonetheless) Since it is an open source project, I imagine other people have found it and exploited it already. However, I am reluctant to fix it, because everybody will be able to see the commit and know about the exploit. Since I have no way of contacting the users and no way of forcing an update (updates are manual), I am at a loss at what to do here. If I let it stay, people are going to exploit it. If I fix it, people are going to exploit it even more. How can I proceed?"}
{"_id": "78074", "title": "Subset sum problem is NP-complete?", "text": "If I know correctly, subset sum problem is NP-complete. Here you have an array of n integers and you are given a target sum t, you have to return the numbers from the array which can sum up to the target (if possible). But can't this problem be solved in polynomial time by dynamic programming method where we construct a table n X t and take cases like say last number is **surely** included in output and then the target becomes t- a[n]. In other case, the last number is **not** included, then the target remains same t but array becomes of size n-1. Hence this way we keep reducing size of problem. If this approach is correct, isn't the complexity of this n * t, which is polynomial? and so if this belongs to P and also NP-complete (from what I hear) then P=NP. Surely, I am missing something here. Where is the loophole in this reasoning? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "238133", "title": "Should all foreign table references use foreign key constraints", "text": "Closely related to: Foreign key restrictions -> yes or no? I asked a question on SO and it led me to ask this here. If I'm faced with a choice of having a circular reference or just not enforcing the restraint, which is the better choice? In my particular case I have customers and addresses. I want an address to have a reference to a customer and I want each customer to have a default billing address id and a default shipping address id. I might query for all addresses that have a certain customer ID or I might query for the address with the ID that matches the default shipping or billing address ids. I'm not sure yet how the constraints (or lack of) will effect the system as my application and it's data age."}
{"_id": "238132", "title": "As a .NET WPF developer what are key differences I should be aware of when working with ASP.NET MVC?", "text": "I'm a fairly experienced desktop .NET developer with a solid feel for MVVM and WPF, and I've worked with JavaScript, jQuery and HTML/CSS in the past - though I'm pretty dated and haven't had a ton of experience with the new frameworks (Angular, et al). My question is, for anyone who has had to do it, what are the key pain points and differences I should be aware of when working on an ASP.NET MVC project? I have a general sense of the MVC pattern and where it differs from MVVM, but ASP.NET tricks me by looking familiar, but with subtle and not-so-subtle differences in implementation and execution. I'm helping out with an ASP.NET project at work, and while my C# knowledge helps, my desktop habits seem to be a liability. Links to material I can review would be appreciated, or a succinct summary of what I need to change about my mindset."}
{"_id": "233706", "title": "Separation of presentation and logic", "text": "I'm now writing a program, which will allow processing data expressed in the form of graphs. These graphs will determine workflow of the processing and they are actually an essence of this program (in terms of being the main object being edited by the user). It is very, _very_ tempting to put all the processing, data containment and presentation in a single control, which will also display these graphs and handle user interaction. From one side it seems to be violation of the presentation/logic rule, but from the other I'm certain I will write surely at least 2x or 3x less code, because I won't have to take care of constant synchronization between data model and the control, which will present this model (+encapsulation, interfaces, proxy classes etc.) I'm wondering how it is done in editors like Word. Is the data displayed by the control really physically separated from the presenter or are they combined? If you use the Word document control in your program, you ask the control to perform operations on text, what would suggest, that there is no separation (but we don't know how does it work under the hood). So the question: is separation between data presentation and logic worth it _even_ if it requires like 2x or 3x more code to keep everything consistent and synchronized? (yes, I mean 2x or 3x). * * * I've described the situation in more detail in the next question: How to separate logic from presentation?"}
{"_id": "226489", "title": "How to ensure method finishes running before being run again", "text": "I'm new and I am trying to figure something out. I have a simple program which executes a method either when an event happens or when my timer ticks. Lets just say the method takes 5 seconds to complete. During that 5 seconds an event could happen. **What would I use/do to make sure my method isn't called while its already running.** Or is this something I would not have to worry about in a simple program, as it wouldn't run until the method is done anyway ? A little background and example. I am using System.Windows.Forms.Timer, I am not using any threads or anything, and I just have a simple windows form application with a timer, a method to do stuff, and two event handlers.               Program{       public Program(){         DoSomething();         Event.EventHappened += HandleEvent;       }       void DoSomething(){         MyTimerVariable.Stop();         InitMyTimer();         //Just do something check network, access db write line, something         //that in this example takes 5 secs for example purposes         MyTimerVariable.Start();       }       void HandleEvent(){         DoSomething();       }       void InitMyTimer(){         // Create Timer, and add Timer tick event       }       void TimerTickedEvent(){         DoSomething();       }     }      I left a few things out of that program, but just was trying to show how simple it is. I was just thinking about making it more efficient so that say in the middle of doing \"DoSomething()\" an event is triggered, I wouldn't want two \"DoSomething()\"s method running."}
{"_id": "238134", "title": "Utility Functions Best Practices", "text": "**Update:** Most answers are about how to write a wrapping interface or what is a good wrapper around ADO. but my question is more about when to do so and when not. I never found a good rule for deciding when to write a wrapper and when not. As nobody came up with a suggestion I think the reviewers are right in that this question has no general answer and is to broad. Even in the specific case of ADONET the answer may depend on the use case and for most use cases a wrapper has been written already. Dapper and Orseis for e.g. as MainMa points out. I would like to remove the question but I do not want to steel any ones points 8-) **Original Question** Let's take code executing a query using ADONET as an example.               var cmd = connection.CreateCommand();     cmd.CommandText = \"SELECT 1 FROM DUAL\";     cmd.CommandTimeout = 1000;     var dataReader = cmd.ExecuteReader();      Many will want to write this as a one-liner and create a bunch of utility functions in this example called as follows (or extension classes):               var cmd = connection.CreateCommand();     Utility.SelectToReader (connection, \"SELECT 1 FROM DUAL\", 1000);      So what are good rules to introduce or deprecate utility functions? Apart from ADONET this question arises using almost any framework."}
{"_id": "231416", "title": "Building complex algorithms with TDD", "text": "I'm trying to adopt TDD in my daily programming practice. I use it at work very effectively, but I'm having trouble with my personal projects where I'm using some complex algorithms. The particular algorithm that makes me ask this question is the Extended Kalman Filter. It's complex enough that I'm not confident in the code I've written, but it's simple enough that it's hard to break up. I could write a test for the algorithm with an input and the expected output, but I'll do a lot of thrashing and shotgun coding in the middle because I don't have confidence in those intermediate steps. If you've worked with reasonable complex algorithms and use TDD, what is your approach?"}
{"_id": "231413", "title": "Design pattern for bidirectional signals/events", "text": "This problem feels rather basic, yet I've never known a great solution. I'm looking for a way for components in an application to notify each other while being as decoupled as possible (both at build/compile and run time), but also **avoiding circular notifications** in a way that components do not need to self-mitigate against. I happen to be hitting this issue (for the hundredth time) in JavaScript right now, but that is incidental. Some means of decoupling include:   * **Dependency injection (DI)**. In this case I use `require.js` which allows, for instance, substituting mock implementations in unit tests by creating alternate `require.config()` setups.    * **Event dispatching**. E.g. `fooInstance.listen('action string', barInstance.actionHandler)`   * **Publish/subscribe** (aka pub/sub). The last two are basically variants of the Observer pattern with different pros and cons. The problem I want to solve is not specifically addressed by these patterns, and I'm not sure if its an implementation detail or if there is a pattern to apply:   * `fooObj` sends a message (fires an event, whatever) that the `\"baz\"` property has changed   * `barObj.bazChanged()` handles this event by calling its own `setBaz()` method   * `barObj.setBaz()` fires an event that \"baz\" has changed   * `fooObj.bazChanged()` handles this event ... As a real case, imagine `fooObj` is a GUI component, with a slider for `\"tempo\"`, and `barObj` is a music sequencing component that plays back a score. The slider should affect the tempo of the sequencer, but the score can contain tempo changes so when playing the sequencer should affect the slider position. A solution should be modeless. One approach is to add guards, for example:               function handleTempoChanged(tempo) {         if (this.tempo == tempo) return;         ...     }      This works but feels like a poor solution because it means every event handler needs to either assume it needs a guard, which is ugly boilerplate and often not required, OR needs to be aware of the other components in the system that would make a cycle possible. Arguably, this point is wrong, guards should always be used _if_ the handler is going to fire a changed event directly or indirectly, but this still feels like boilerplate logic. This may be the only answer to my question... Is there general case pattern to deal with potential cycles as described? Note that this is _not_ about synchronous vs. asynchronous; either way the cycles can occur. EDITED to reflect insight from commenters: I realize it is possible to eliminate the boilerplate, using some sort of mixin. In pseudo-code:               class ObservablePropsMixin:              // generic setter with gaurd         function set(propName, value):             if this[propName] = value: return             this[propName] = value             _fire(propName, value)               // generic method to add listeners         function observe(propName, handler):             _observers[propName].add(handler)                  // private event dispatching method         function _fire(propName, value):             foreach observer in _observers[propName]:                     observer.call(propName, value)              ...      This is simplified to focus on my question, but a real mixin would implement other pubsub or event or signal semantics, analogous to any event dispatcher implementation. Components needing to be observers or observables would inherit/extend from the mixin (the above assumes some form of multiple or aggregate inheritance is possible in the language. This could be modified to work with composition instead, e.g. ObservableMixin.constructor(observedObject) rather than using \"this\"."}
{"_id": "231412", "title": "Including front end designers in enterprise web development", "text": "We are developing a web application using Java EE. The stack is heavy, the deployment is complex and now we want to include a purely CSS designer in the team. We want to include this designer without having him have to understand the build and deployment of our application. We want him to be included in the projects version control. What is an effective way of allowing a designer to work without being exposed to to the rest of the project? Simply working from browser inspectors is insufficient, as it does not give him the ability to upload images."}
{"_id": "109724", "title": "How do random number generators work?", "text": "I am a Programmer out of Oregon, I currently work as a web developer for a local company, and am starting college this winter for Computer Science. I was just pondering about php `rand()` function, and thinking about how I could remake it, and I came up completely stupified. How the heck do random number generators work?"}
{"_id": "173209", "title": "What is the difference between SOAP and Web Services?", "text": "Keep getting confused about these two. Anyone care to explain the difference(s)?"}
{"_id": "173208", "title": "Developing JSON API for a Carpool Engine", "text": "I am developing a new set of API methods for carpooling/cab booking, so if a developer needs to develop an app or webportal for carpooling, he can call my JSON API. Basically making it easy for developers. My API current has:   * `AddVehicle`   * `AddJourney`   * `SearchJourney`   * `SubscribeToThisJourney(journey)`   * `SubscriberList(journey)` to get list of people who have subscribed for this journey   * `AcceptSubscription(subscriber)`   * `AcceptedSubcriberList`   * `SubscriberList` to get list of providers I have subscribed to I need help with replacing subscriber with something else. It's difficult to remember, and confusing when you see 3 methods that mean very different things: `SubscriberList`, `SubscribedToThisJourneyList` and `AcceptedSubscriberList`. Confusing to remember.   * One is a list of who I have subscribed to   * Who has subscribed to me   * Whose subscription I have accepted How can I name these methods to make them easier to understand and remember?"}
{"_id": "55040", "title": "Game programming : C# or C++?", "text": "I've decided what I really want is to do game programming. So the question is, as a 18 years old who wants to learn self taught programming, what is the most suited programming language between C# and C++? (I should state that I don't care about Unix because I believe windows will be still the most used OS) I know the basics of C++, but none about C#. I know that C++ has more tutorials guides, dlls and stuff like that, while C# doesn't, but it's far easier to learn and to use for a single person to develop a program, but I've read even if the program is obfuscated it's easy to get the source of it. Well, I kinda want to focus on basic a lot first, I must say that I have a preference for C++ just because it feels more suitable to me, but I must consider that I work alone. So even if I like it, it may not be the best thing to do. I am really not sure of which one to go for, I've read a lot of threads on various websites and it looks like C# is becoming more popular than C++. But yeah, that said, I also specified I want to do game programming. So I need to know some better points than just \"C# is easier because of .net memory handling while C++ isn't\" because I couldn't just find it."}
{"_id": "180986", "title": "DB Schema for packaging products / services together under a single pric / Offer", "text": "I'm trying to 'conceive' the business logic of this website that have many activities, that the users can build their \"combo\" and get discounts depending on their choices and how long they are willing to pay for their plan (1, 3, 6 and 12 month plans). I'm having a hard time trying to come up with a solution, while keeping the database normalized and with proper relations, without having to resort to JSON encoded data in the database fields. The system must stay generic enough to fit many businesses types that relies on plans / activities. **I need to know how to do the structure of my tables**. Scenario: For example, in case of a gym, will have bodybuilding, yoga, boxing, body pump. If the person choose bodybuilding and boxing, they will have a discount, if they add yoga, boxing and bodybuilding will keep the discount but will add the yoga without any discount to the price, but if the person decides to pay 12 months upfront, they will get a bigger discount. Bodybuilding + Body Pump   * `Bodybuilding..$70 | 28% discount`   * `Body Pump.....$70 |`   * `Total.........$100`   * `1 month - $100 / month`   * `3 months - $91 / month`   * `6 months - $75 / month` Bodybuilding + Body Pump + Yoga   * `Bodybuilding..$70.00 | 28% discount`   * `Body pump.....$70.00 |`   * `Yoga..........$90.00 | No discount`   * `Total.........$190`   * `1 month - $190 / month`   * `3 months - $171 / month`   * `6 months - $158 / month` I'll be using PHP and MYSQL, but that doesn't matter much, only the RDBMS part. * * * **Edit for clarification:** What I really looking for is a DB Schema for Packaging products (or in this case services) together under a single price\\Offer. Each product must also exist in the systems as a stand alone product. I Still need the ability to report on sales (& Profit) by product even if that product was sold as part of a package. I would Need the ability to report on Package performance."}
{"_id": "180980", "title": "Having error codes option in C++ library for performance", "text": "I have written an open source and cross-platform C++ File Library which have exception and error codes. Exceptions can be disabled when the program is running. In that case, the user have to check the error codes. Of course, when exception throwing is enabled, error code won't be returned because exception is thrown before the called function returns. Currently, exceptions still could be thrown when disabled (bug). I'll fix that soon. Someone comment to me that it is considered bad design to have both exception and error codes. I agree with him and I am about to remove the error codes and have library throw custom derived exceptions with more error information. But I hesitate. I like to have this hybrid approach for performance reasons. This is what I am thinking of doing: keeping exception throwing and error codes but exception throwing is disabled through macro at compile time instead of runtime. If user define the following in a common config file               #define ELMAX_EXCEPTION 1      The follow code               int Write(std::wstring str) ELMAX_THROW_OR_NOT;      would expand to either of the 2.               // under C++11 compiler     int Write(std::wstring str) noexcept;          // under C++98 compiler     int Write(std::wstring str) throw();      If `ELMAX_EXCEPTION` is not defined or is zero, the macro would expand to nothing.               int Write(std::wstring) ;      The reason I want to do this, is for library user who wants the performance gain of not having the compiler generating the stack unwinding code (for exception) and compiler can better optimize such functions. My C++ file library is using C file API and the only thing which could throw exception is `new` keyword, which I intend to add `nothrow`. The UTF-8 code can also throw exceptions (need to be changed too)               char *parr = new (nothrow) char[num];          if(parr==NULL)         // handle it either through error code or throw exception (if enabled)      Please kindly advise if I should have a pure exception approach or a hybrid approach (as mentioned), for my library errors?"}
{"_id": "228304", "title": "IUserType like feature inEntity Framework", "text": "I'm working on a new project, we want to build a new, modern, application working with our legacy data sources, and especially, legacy databases. We want to use an ORM and we want advanced features so the obvious choice seems to be between NHibernate and EF 6. We can eventually make some minor changed to the databases but not totally modified the model since it's used by many other apps. Now, obviously since it's legacy stuff, it sucks. The database has many flaws and at the moment, I'm writing some basic code to test EF and NH and see if we can work around these flaws. My current problem is with Entity Framework. In my database, many fields are used in a \"non-standard\" way. For example, I have fields that are representing datetime with special format strings, or xml data in string. I'd like to let EF do the convert work without exposing these special fields to my API and without using another layer on top of EF. I could solve this problem with IUserType in NHibernate but I didn't find a way in EF. Here's an example, let's say I have a field representing a date in my DB, and it should be formatted like this : ddmmyy (090214 for today). I don't want to expose this string in my object but I want to be able to manipulate this date with classical datetime like : var comp = ctx.Companies.First(c => c.Id == 1); comp.Date = DateTime.Now; ctx.SaveChanges(); And it automatically saves the date with the special format in the DB. I can do this by mapping a DateString property for example and makes my Date field with a getter/setter that do the transform but I don't want to expose this DateString property and it's a bit painfull to do it with all my Date fields across all my tables. IUserType in Nhibernate was perfect to solve this kind of problems, is there something equivalent in EF? Thanks"}
{"_id": "180983", "title": "How did Python become popular as a scripting language?", "text": "I looked at it in my field of work, which is film and pretty much every software we use comes with python as a scripting language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Python_software That made me assume it's the most popular. How did Python become popular as a scripting language? Especially as an embedded language into standalone applications. What's the reason for this? There are others like Lua, Ruby, etc. but yet it looks like Python came on top. If it's because of a particular thing or just a matter of getting out there at the right time?"}
{"_id": "180988", "title": "Memory management for fast message passing between threads in C++", "text": "Suppose there are two threads, which communicate by asynchronously sending data messages to each other. Each thread has some kind of message queue. My question is very low level: What can be expected to be the most efficient way to manage the memory? I can think of several solutions:   1. Sender creates the object via `new`. Receiver calls `delete`.   2. Memory pooling (to transfer the memory back to the sender)   3. Garbage collection (e.g., Boehm GC)   4. (if the objects are small enough) copy by value to avoid heap allocation completely 1) is the most obvious solution, so I'll use it for a prototype. Chances are that it is already good enough. But independent of my specific problem, I wonder which technique is most promising if you are optimizing for performance. I would expect pooling to be theoretically the best, especially because you can use extra knowledge about the flow of information between the threads. However, I fear that it is also the most difficult to get right. Lots of tuning... :-( Garbage collection should be quite easy to add afterwards (after solution 1), and I would expect it to perform very well. So, I guess that it is the most practical solution if 1) turns out to be too inefficient. If the objects are small and simple, copy by value might be the fastest. However, I fear that it forces unnecessary limitations on the implementation of the supported messages, so I want to avoid it."}
{"_id": "189807", "title": "What is Java's primary focus? Why does it take so long to get new features?", "text": "I have been exploring the new features in the JDK8, like the lambda expressions, the extension methods, and the new stream API. Evidently none of these features are new in the programming world and that made wonder why are getting all these things in Java until now. We had lambda expressions in Lisp (1958), SML (1973), Haskell (1990), Python (1991), JavaScript (1994), Ruby (1995), Scala (2003), C# (2007) and 55 years after Lisp and practically everyone else, in Java (2013). And I had read about streams in SIC (1996). I have been wondering why now? The evidence suggests that competing with other languages is not the motivation. It would seem that all the cool new features in this release of Java are just a by-product of implementing parallelism. We have lambdas because they make writing parallel algorithms simpler, and we have extension methods because we needed them to give support to the changes that lambda expressions required, etc., etc. So, my question is: can we safely affirm that the main topic in this upcoming release of Java is actually parallelism? Or can we justify other reasons for the appearance of the oldest tricks in the book until now in Java?"}
{"_id": "189805", "title": "Brittle unit tests due to need for excessive mocking", "text": "I've been struggling with an increasingly annoying problem regarding our unit tests that we are implementing in my team. We are attempting to add unit tests into legacy code that wasn't well designed and while we haven't had any difficulty with the actual addition of the tests we are starting to struggle with how the tests are turning out. As an example of the problem let's say you have a method that calls 5 other methods as part of its execution. A test for this method might be to confirm that a behavior occurs as a result of one of these 5 other methods being called. So, because a unit test should fail for one reason and one reason only, you want to eliminate potential issues caused by calling these other 4 methods and mock them out. Great! The unit test executes, the mocked methods are ignored (and their behavior can be confirmed as part of other unit tests), and the verification works. But there's a new problem - the unit test has intimate knowledge of _how_ you confirmed that behavior and any signature changes to any of those other 4 methods in the future, or any new methods that need to be added to the 'parent method', will result in having to change the unit test to avoid possible failures. Naturally the problem could be mitigated somewhat by simply having more methods accomplish less behaviors but I was hoping there was perhaps a more elegant solution available. Here's an example unit test that captures the problem. **As a quick note 'MergeTests' is a unit testing class that inherits from the class we are testing and overrides behavior as needed. This is a 'pattern' we employ in our tests to allow us to override calls to external classes / dependencies.**               [TestMethod]     public void VerifyMergeStopsSpinner()     {         var mockViewModel = new Mock<MergeTests> { CallBase = true };         var mockMergeInfo = new MergeInfo(Mock.Of<IClaim>(), Mock.Of<IClaim>(), It.IsAny<bool>());              mockViewModel.Setup(m => m.ClaimView).Returns(Mock.Of<IClaimView>);         mockViewModel.Setup(             m =>             m.TryMergeClaims(It.IsAny<Func<bool>>(), It.IsAny<IClaim>(), It.IsAny<IClaim>(), It.IsAny<bool>(),                              It.IsAny<bool>()));         mockViewModel.Setup(m => m.GetSourceClaimAndTargetClaimByMergeState(It.IsAny<MergeState>())).Returns(mockMergeInfo);         mockViewModel.Setup(m => m.SwitchToOverviewTab());         mockViewModel.Setup(m => m.IncrementSaveRequiredNotification());         mockViewModel.Setup(m => m.OnValidateAndSaveAll(It.IsAny<object>()));         mockViewModel.Setup(m => m.ProcessPendingActions(It.IsAny<string>()));              mockViewModel.Object.OnMerge(It.IsAny<MergeState>());                  mockViewModel.Verify(mvm => mvm.StopSpinner(), Times.Once());     }      How have the rest of you dealt with this or is there no great 'simple' way of handling it? **Update - I appreciate everyone's feedback. Unfortunately, and it's no surprise really, there doesn't seem to be a great solution, pattern, or practice one can follow in unit testing if the code being tested is poor. I marked the answer that best captured this simple truth.**"}
{"_id": "47578", "title": "I'm creating my own scalable, rapid prototyping web server. How should I design it?", "text": "I'm going to create my own web server that focuses on scalability, rapid prototyping and the use of JavaScript as the server's scripting language, much like node.js. It will use a Model-View-Controller design pattern so a web application can support more concurrent users just by adding hardware -- and not having to redesign the software. Basically, I'm aiming to produce a framework that allows for fast and easy development of cloud applications without the need to write lots of boiler plate code. I've got some questions about this...   1. How hard will it be to put MySQL in the cloud? How could I go about implementing this and make the resulting product free? Will I have to write my own engine or modify an existing one, if I do what should I watch out for?   2. To make this scalable I need to adjust from one server to hundreds of servers this creates the requirement for the servers to be load balancing, how should I do this? If I balance based on the work load per server I would need gateway to handle all the incoming requests. Is it the right idea to have all the servers check into the gateway and update there status.   3. By having the servers run through a gateway if the gateway dies all the incoming requests are ignored. I'm thinking that having all the servers maintain a list of each other, or at least a few I could rebuild the list of servers and establish a new gateway. Is it worth it? Or should I have a backup gateway that could switch out? Should I let the user choose?   4. How should I pick which server handles the database and which handles the page serving? Should I spread the database so that queries are preformed on multiple servers? Which would theoretically improve performance.   5. The servers would need to mirror the database at least once so that if a server goes down the database isn't corrupted. So this brings up writing another question, should I broadcast SQL queries so that all the servers can take a bit of the work load? If I do it that way wouldn't a query clog up the network so that other queries couldn't be preformed? What are my alternatives?   6. Finally, is there a free solution already out there that might need a little modification that suits my needs?"}
{"_id": "183725", "title": "Which string search algorithm is actually the fastest?", "text": "I have been stuck for some time on which is the fastest string search algorithm, heard many opinions, but in the end I'm not sure. I have heard some people saying that the fastest algorithm is Boyer-Moore and some saying that Knuth-Morris-Pratt is actually faster. I have looked up for the complexity on both of them but they mostly look the same `O(n+m)`. I have found that in the worst case scenario Boyer-Moore has an `O(nm)` complexity compared to Knuth-Morris-Pratt which has O(m+2*n). Where n=length of text and m=length of pattern. As far as I know Boyer-Moore has a linear-worst case-time if I would use the Galil Rule. My question, Over all which is actually the fastest String search algorithm (This question includes all possible sting algorithms not just Boyer-Moore and Knuth-Morris-Pratt). **Edit:** Due to this answer What I'm exactly looking for is: Given a text `T` and a pattern `P` I have to find all the appearances of `P` in `T`. Also the length of P and T are from `[1,2 000 000]` and the program has to run under 0.15 sec. I know that KMP and Rabin-Karp are enough to get a 100% score on the problem but I for one wanted to try and implement Boyer-Moore. Which would be best for this type of pattern search?"}
{"_id": "127909", "title": "Optimal storage space calculation for name, address, phone, fax and email data", "text": "Given the following assumptions:   * The amount of available data storage is highly limited   * All data is international    * As much storage as possible must be preserved since it will be used for something else Is there any widely accepted standard or best practice which defines how much storage should be allocated for those items? **Note** : I'm not looking for assumptions but for facts like \"97.5% of all names fit into 70 bytes using UTF-8\" and \"An international address must at least contain field1, field2 and field3 of size1, size2 and size3\". **Edit** : I'm looking for the fields/lengths to use in the user interface. Not a technique to store it efficiently."}
{"_id": "144530", "title": "How important are UML diagrams for a successful project?", "text": "I'm in the middle of a project and I was asked to write UML diagrams (use cases,class diagram,etc). The project isn't very complex. I was wondering if this be a waste of my time? Should I just be doing other fun stuff like writing code? And when is it not ok to build something without going through all of the conceptual phase? Is it all about complexity? And if so, how to measure it?"}
{"_id": "183723", "title": "Low Latency Unix/Linux", "text": "Most low latency/high frequency programming jobs (based on job specs) appear to be implemented on unix platforms. In a lot of the specs they make particular request for people with \"low latency linux\" type of experience. Assuming this does not mean a real-time linux OS, could people give me help with what this could be referring to? I know you can set CPU affinity to threads, but I am assuming they are asking for much more to it than that. Kernel tuning? (although I heard manufacturers like solarflare produce kernel bypass network cards anyway)? What about DMA or possibly shared memory between processes? If people could give me brief ideas I can go and do the research on google. (This question will probably require somebody familiar with High Frequency Trading)"}
{"_id": "241077", "title": "Difference between lexical scoping and passing variables in JS", "text": "There are several ways to reach the same end point in JS, for example:               (function (foo, bar) {       return {run: function () {return foo(bar);}};     } (foo, bar));          (function (foo, bar) {       return (function(foo, bar) { return {run: function () { return foo(bar); }}} (foo, bar))     } (foo, bar))          (function (foo, bar) {       var Fizz = function (foo, bar)  { this.run = function () { return foo(bar); }; };       return new Fizz(foo, bar)      } (foo, bar))      Now for these, I know that one difference is that the prototype in the third case for the returned object would be different, but other than that, all three paths lead to an object which provides the same api. And since Javascript is a duct typed language, what a thing is is usually defined by its behavior. Are there any other implications of choosing any one approach of the three that I am ignoring ?"}
{"_id": "241074", "title": "Bug fixing in Scrum, at the end of the project", "text": "We have a project that is reaching a deadline for the final production release. It's a fixed price project and up till now we've managed to work in 2 week iterations, doing regular releases to our \"inner test environment\" where BAs and people acting as POs from the client's side had a chance to have a look, give feedback etc. We're now at the point where we have only 4 weeks to end this project and as we go to deploy the separate modules of this application to the client's environment, we've been struggling with a lot of bugs appearing. We have some functionality to be done still but my question is - what is the best way to handle those bugs as they appear? Since there's really a lot of them (due to project specifics, we didn't have the ability to test it on client's environment earlier) and it's impossible to estimate them up front + we have only 4 weeks till the end, does it make sense to keep Scrum or switch to Tech Lead dispatching work daily to the devs directly?"}
{"_id": "88374", "title": "Will the portions of Boost that are incorporated into the new C++ standard continue to be developed?", "text": "What will happen to the portions of the Boost library that are incorporated into the new C++ standard? Will they continue to evolve and any changes be reincorporated into the standard which follows C++0x?"}
{"_id": "88373", "title": "Is collective code ownership mandatory in Scrum?", "text": "Is is an absolute must when following the Scrum methodology to practice collective code ownership, instead of for example weak code ownership?"}
{"_id": "127904", "title": "How does a fresher with a clean slate turn into a good programmer?", "text": "As a graduate fresh out of college with a clean slate, how can one go about being a good programmer who writes good maintainable code? How does one learn good coding practices and apply them? Can one get these skills by reading any specific books on Software development or is it something that comes purely from experience? (I don't like to believe that it's purely experience based since I see people here complaining about bright co-workers with years of experience writing bad code). What are some suggestions on getting good at writing clean code? Passion and ability are assumed."}
{"_id": "100561", "title": "Do Web Applications and The Cloud provide better Career Opportunities than Systems Programming?", "text": "As the years progress , I can't help but see how web apps and the cloud is replacing normal computer software. Developers of systems programming languages like C/C++ are going down the hill and PHP / ASP.NET(C#) is rising to the skies (cloud?). Since I am a serious C++ fan and like to develop mostly in C++, I was wondering whether it is prudent to say on this path. Will there be employment for C++ programmers after , say , 10 years? I have seen a lot of unemployed C++ programmers while there are no .NET programmers or Web Developers going downhill. So should I move to the web and/or cloud now, when there is still time, or should I continue going down the C++ path? Will there be enough employment for C++ and other Systems (offline?) Programming Language developers?"}
{"_id": "100567", "title": "When is a loop \"non-trivial\"?", "text": "Is it correct to call a loop that you do not know the limit at compile time `\"non-trivial\"`? If you know that you will be using a value from a class that will be in a range e.g. between 0-1000, is that still non-trivial? e.g. Where ISomeInterface.MAX_LIMIT is always between 1-1000:               public bool someMethod(Type someType, int someId, int someVariable)     {         bool returnFlag = false;         int maxLimit = (Activator.CreateInstance(someType) as ISomeInterface).MAX_LIMIT;              for (int i = 0; i < maxLimit; i++) //is this a non-trivial loop?         {             if (_someSerivce.SomeOtherMethod(someType, someId, someVariable, i))             {                 returnFlag= true;             }         }         return returnFlag;     }      * * * **Edit:** Was uncertain as to whether this was a meaningful piece of terminology. I originally read it in one of Jon Skeet's pieces from yoda.arachsys: http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/stringbuilder.html (see the section headed _Rules Of Thumb_ ). Do you use this as technical terminology at all?"}
{"_id": "137501", "title": "Who extends interfaces? And why?", "text": "AFAIK, my class `extends` parent classes and `implements` interfaces. But I run across a situation, where I can't use `implements SomeInterface`. It is the declaration of a generic types. For example:               public interface CallsForGrow {...}          public class GrowingArrayList <T implements CallsForGrow>  // BAD, won't work!                                   extends ArrayList<T>       Here using `implements` is syntactically forbidden. I thought first, that using interface inside <> is forbidden at all, but no. It is possible, I only have to use `extends` instead of `implements`. As a result, I am \"extending\" an interface. This another example works:               public interface CallsForGrow {...}          public class GrowingArrayList <T extends CallsForGrow>  // this works!                                   extends ArrayList<T>       To me it seems as a syntactical inconsistancy. But maybe I don't understand some finesses of Java 6? Are there other places where I should extend interfaces? Should the interface, that I mean to extend, have some special features?"}
{"_id": "214601", "title": "Is inline SQL still classed as bad practice now that we have Micro ORMs?", "text": "This is a bit of an open ended question but I wanted some opinions, as I grew up in a world where inline SQL scripts were the norm, then we were all made very aware of SQL injection based issues, and how fragile the sql was when doing string manipulations all over the place. Then came the dawn of the ORM where you were explaining the query to the ORM and letting it generate its own SQL, which in a lot of cases was not _optimal_ but was safe and easy. Another good thing about ORMs or database abstraction layers were that the SQL was generated with its database engine in mind, so I could use Hibernate/Nhibernate with MSSQL, MYSQL and my code never changed it was just a configuration detail. Now fast forward to current day, where Micro ORMs seem to be winning over more developers I was wondering why we have seemingly taken a U-Turn on the whole in-line sql subject. I must admit I do like the idea of no ORM config files and being able to write my query in a more optimal manner but it feels like I am opening myself back up to the old vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and I am also tying myself to one database engine so if I want my software to support multiple database engines I would need to do some more string hackery which seems to then start to make code unreadable and more fragile. (Just before someone mentions it I know you can use parameter based arguments with most micro orms which offers protection in most cases from sql injection) So what are peoples opinions on this sort of thing? I am using Dapper as my Micro ORM in this instance and NHibernate as my regular ORM in this scenario, however most in each field are quite similar. What I term as _inline sql_ is SQL strings within source code. There used to be design debates over SQL strings in source code detracting from the fundamental intent of the logic, which is why statically typed linq style queries became so popular its still just 1 language, but with lets say C# and Sql in one page you have 2 languages intermingled in your raw source code now. Just to clarify, the SQL injection is just one of the known issues with using sql strings, I already mention you can stop this from happening with parameter based queries, however I highlight other issues with having SQL queries ingrained in your source code, such as the lack of DB Vendor abstraction as well as losing any level of compile time error capturing on string based queries, these are all issues which we managed to side step with the dawn of ORMs with their higher level querying functionality, such as HQL or LINQ etc (not all of the issues but most of them). So I am less focused on the individual highlighted issues and more the bigger picture of is it now becoming more acceptable to have SQL strings directly in your source code again, as most Micro ORMs use this mechanism. Here is a similar question which has a few different view points, although is more about the inline sql without the micro orm context: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5303746/is-inline-sql-hard-coding"}
{"_id": "137508", "title": "How can I justify my disclaimer of warranties license to a customer?", "text": "I'm selling a software that lets users manipulate critical information. In my licence contract (redacted by a lawyer specialized in this field), I've got a standard clause reading : > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED > WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF > MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO > EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, > SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, > PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; > OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, > WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR > OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF > ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. I've seen equivalents in almost every single software I've been using so far. So far, all of our clients accepted that without difficulty, but now one potential client is contesting it. Actually he's telling me something along the lines of : > You mean that if I use your software to buy something at $10 to a third > party company, and there's a bug in your software (as you don't guarantee > there aren't any), and you transmit a $20 order, I shall pay the $10 > difference, not you? I'm a bit stuck between what seems like common sense on his part, and the fact that my insurance companies would probably not insure me for those kind of risks, and if you consider we're talking millions, not plain $, it doesn't feel comfortable being responsible for that kind of potential losses. So far, the best answer I've come up with is that everybody does it in the industry (Microsoft doesn't guarantee that the mail you've sent using Outlook won't be altered, eg by turning all the $10's in $20's ...) Any advice on how to handle this ? (apart from doing our best to ship bug-free software, of course :p)"}
{"_id": "4399", "title": "Should programmers help testers in designing tests?", "text": "How much should programmers help testers in designing tests? I don't think they should help at all. My worry is that if they help testers in designing tests for their own code, they'll 'infect' the testers with their own prejudices and blind spots about that code. I feel that the requirements should be sufficient for giving the information needed for testers to create their tests. If there is some part of the implementation that the programmers find worrisome, then I think it's their duty to implement unit tests to test that part or even run their own informal system tests to test that part. Not everyone I know agrees with this though (and I understand some of their points to a certain extent). What do others think about this? Is this discussed in the literature anywhere?"}
{"_id": "4391", "title": "Should we be using functional and/or logic programming languages more?", "text": "I've programmed a bit of Haskell and Prolog as part of a couple of uni courses, but that's about it. And I've never seen it been used in industry (not that I've had much of working experience to begin with but I've never seen an ad where you are required to know them). So should we be using functional and/or logic programming languages more often? Are there any advantages or disadvantages for using or not using them?"}
{"_id": "229480", "title": "Store the result of a complex but frequent database query, in another temp persisting table", "text": "I have a slightly complex SELECT query which uses a number of JOINs and variables inside it and the query is run frequently throughout the application. The result varies when one column is updated. Eg: When the product quantity is updated only, the result set changes. So my question is, is it a good idea to run a trigger and update a temporary table in the database, with my SELECT queries results, whenever the product quantity is updated? Or to run the complex SELECT query every time? Right now I tested with ~10 rows of data and the query execution time is 0.001 seconds. I want to use the best possible method which won't hinder the performance as the DB grows. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "136452", "title": "What are the rules for permissible names on google app engine?", "text": "When I create a new application, and I am choosing a name, most common dictionary words appear to be unavailable, along with even some of the more esoteric ones including 'aaaaaa' (I've tried variable length, and different letters). However, most of these applications don't actually seem to exist. So either all of these names have been taken, but none of these people have bothered to build even a hello world app on it, or there are additional naming rules that app engine enforces beyond > Application Identifier must be between 6 and 30 characters. Lowercase > letters, digits, and hyphens are acceptable characters. Leading and trailing > hyphens are prohibited. I'd like to rule out the later -- are there any additional naming rules that GAE imposes?"}
{"_id": "24343", "title": "What is the one bit of computer science theory I should know?", "text": "Speaking as someone with an Electronic Engineering rather than Computer Science degree, what is the **one bit** of computer science I should know to make me a better **real world** programmer? (By real world I mean something I'm going to use and benefit from in my day to day job as a programmer - for instance I'd suggest understanding database normalisation is of more practical use than understanding a quick sort for which there are lots of libraries)."}
{"_id": "115745", "title": "How do you avoid disrupting the flow of work when the Product Owner asks for a release?", "text": "My team has been using Scrum for years with a goal to deliver a potentially releasable build each sprint. We recently started using a Kanban board moving away from time-boxed delivery to feature-boxed delivery. So far, this seems to better fit the teams natural way of working. With feature-boxed delivery, stories are pulled from the backlog when an individual feels they are comfortably ready to begin working on it. The teams average story lead time is three weeks. So, theoretically, at the moment the product owner asks for a release, the team should be able to deliver it three weeks later. When the PO sets the \"stop development\" trigger, individuals who have time are supposed to start helping with stories already underway to begin clearing out the board. The people freed up first are typically the \"front-end\" folks... Those more skilled at analysis and development. They are typically asked to help with back-end work, like system testing. The teams work flow, or cadence changes each time the stop trigger is set. What do you do to minimize this change and keep the team working as efficiently as possible? How do you avoid the disruption caused by the Product Owner asking for a release?"}
{"_id": "240308", "title": "Correct pattern for Worker Processes involving Queues & Tables", "text": "Edit: OK, so, people said it is unclear what I am asking. I am asking for feedback on this design. Here is an example user story: As a group admin on the website I want to be notified when a user in my group uploads a file to the group. Easiest solution would be that in the code handling the upload, we just directly create an email message in there and send it. However, this seems like it isn't really the appropriate level of separation of concerns, so instead we are thinking to have a separate worker process which does nothing but send notifications. So, the website in the upload code handles receiving the file, extracting some metadata from it (like filename) and writing this to the database. As soon as it is done handling the file upload it then does two things: Writes the details of the notification to be sent (such as subject, filename, etc...) to a dedicated \"notification\" table and also creates a message in a queue which the notification sending worker process monitors. The entire sequence is shown in the diagram below. My questions are: Do you see any drawbacks in this design? Is there a better design? The team wants to use Azure Worker Roles, Queues and Table storage. Is it the right call to use these components or is this design unnecessarily complex? Quality attribute requirements are that it is easy to code, easy to maintain, easy to debug at runtime, auditable (history is available of when notifications were sent, etc...), monitor-able. Any other quality attributes you think we should be designing for? Original: We are creating a cloud application (in Azure) in which there are at least 2 components. The first is the \"source\" component (for example a UI / website) in which some action happens or some condition is met that triggers a second component or \"worker\" to perform some job. These jobs have details or metadata associated with them which we plan to store in Azure Table Storage. Here is the pattern we are considering: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fLIs4.png) Steps:   1. Condition for job met.   2. Source writes job details to table.   3. Source puts job in queue. Asynchronously:   1. Worker accepts job from queue.   2. Worker Records DateTimeStarted in table.   3. Queue marks job marked as \"in progress\".   4. Worker performs job.   5. Worker updates table with details (including DateTimeCompleted).   6. Worker reports completion to queue.   7. Job deleted from queue. Please comment and let me know if I have this right, or if there is some better pattern. For example sake, consider the work to be \"sending a notification\" such as an email whose template fields are filled from the \"details\" mentioned in the pattern."}
{"_id": "86364", "title": "How do I overcome paralysis by analysis when coding?", "text": "When I start a new project, I often times immediately start thinking about the details of implementation. \"Where am I gonna put the DataBaseHandler? How should I use it? Should classes that want to use it extend from some Abstract superclass..? Should I use an interface? What level of abstraction am I going to use in my class that contains methods for sending requests and parsing data?\" I end up stalling for a long time because I want to code for extensibility and reusability. But I feel it almost impossible to get past thinking about how to implement perfectly. And then, if I try to just say \"screw it, just get it done!\", I hit a brick wall pretty quickly because my code isn't organized, I mixed levels of abstractions, etc. What are some techniques/methods you have for launching into a new project while also setting up a logical/modular structure that will scale well? - _-_ EDIT - _-_ Well, this is already the type of question that is difficult to accept an answer to, but wanted to get some more feedback, see if there's some consensus. TDD sounds really cool and, frankly, I've been meaning to get more up to speed on using JUnit, etc. At the same time, what do the fans of TDD think about the fact that one legitimate point with relation to TDD solving my particular issues, is that TDD doesn't really seem to address the question of design. Sure, I agree TDD will help me define what I want to do and then I can gradually work through the how, but there are many different overall design patterns/structures that could all pass through unit testing. That's just it: it tests single UNITS. I guess I'm a bit confused... I dunno. Maybe I'm just trying to procrastinate even more by trying to figure out some magical formula, but I would like to hear how some of the veterans approach this area... Thanks!"}
{"_id": "244687", "title": "Creating an Interface To a Language's Standard Library?", "text": "In the process of learning test-driven development, I've been introduced to dependency injection and the use of interfaces, and have started using these concepts in my own PHP code in order to make it more testable. There have been times when I've needed to test code that was doing things like calling the PHP `time()` function. In order to make these tests predictable, it seemed logical to create an interface to the standard PHP functions I use so that I can mock them out in my tests. Is this good software design? What are the pros and cons of doing this? I've found myself groaning at how quickly my PHP interface can stick its fingers into everything I do. Is there a better way to make code that relies on PHP- accessed state and functions more testable?"}
{"_id": "77160", "title": "Does FitNesse improve product quality and collaboration?", "text": "I heard about a tool named FitNesse, which is supposed to promote better collaboration between development, testing, and product groups. What are your experiences with it? Does it really improve program quality? Are there any drawbacks to using it?"}
{"_id": "77161", "title": "Generating tests from specification", "text": "I am reading \"The Pragmatic Programmer\" . The book has the following paragraph > Dave once worked on an international telex switch. Quite understandably, the > client demanded an exhaustive test specification and required that the > software pass all tests on each delivery. To ensure that the tests > accurately reflected the specification, the team generated them > programmatically from the document itself. When the client amended their > specification, the test suite changed automatically. Once the team convinced > the client that the procedure was sound, generating acceptance tests > typically took only a few seconds. I am curious to know how he created tests from specification . What format was the specification in ? How to write a program that will automatically read the specification and write test cases. Have I misunderstood the above paragraph ?"}
{"_id": "4028", "title": "How do you overcome your own coding biases when handed legacy code?", "text": "As programmers, we often take incredible pride in our skills and hold very strong opinions about what is 'good' code and 'bad' code. At any given point in our careers, we've probably had some legacy system dropped in our laps, and thought 'My god, this code sucks!' because it didn't fit into our notion of what good code should be, despite the fact that it may have well been perfectly functional, maintainable code. How do you prepare yourself mentally when trying to get your head around another programmer's work?"}
{"_id": "240304", "title": "What would be the most efficient way to reduce the complexity of a set of rotations to a cube?", "text": "Despite the long title, my question is fairly simple. Let's say you have a cube in 3D-space and you want to rotate it along the three axes based on the set of instructions provided by a user or elsewhere in the program. How would you simplify, if you will, that set of rotations? For simplicity's sake, we'll use the notation involved in rotating a Rubik's cube. (And also because that's what I'm programming.. But that's unimportant.) So, X would be a clockwise rotation along the X axis, X' would be a counterclockwise rotation along the X axis, and X2 would be two clockwise rotations rotations along the X axis. Now, let's say I have a set of instructions `X Y X'`. That set of instructions did the same thing that the single instruction of `Z` would have done. Or, in a simpler case, if I had `X X'` or `X2 X2`, those rotations cancel out. My question is, what is the best way - from a programming perspective - to simplify these sets of instructions?"}
{"_id": "234165", "title": "Web Services exposed by url", "text": "Lets take some random internet site which i am not aware of any API it exposes for it's web services if there are any , is there a way to query that URL for exposed web services ?"}
{"_id": "234161", "title": "Is it advisable to create an ad-hoc open source software license?", "text": "IANAL I have several private projects that I _might_ be needed to show to my prospective employers. I haven't uploaded them to any online version control system because not only do I not have the patience to filter the many many licenses available and choose the most appropriate one (as I am not yet sure how I would want my open source code to be used), I also feel the projects aren't fit enough for upload in public domain as they are not tested rigorously enough for me. I could create a private repository somewhere and allow access to the prospective employers, or I could simply take a USB stick with me, but the question still remains about licensing. So, I thought of creating an ad-hoc license to the effect of saying \"this code is made available to you and no part of it shall be reproduced from memory...\", which is almost like signing a NDA. I know it might sound silly, or inane, but I want to protect my IP in someway (you never know what your code could become!). What is the best way of going about this? If indeed license creation is an option, how would the creation work? Would merely writing a prologue at the beginning of every source file suffice, or is there some long winding legality involved?"}
{"_id": "234168", "title": "State Pattern Code for embedded device - Dependency Injection of Device Objects in Context and State Classes", "text": "I'm wrestling with some code and I think I've finally gotten some state pattern code working with my events. I've got a _simplified_ system that will work like this: ![State Diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LzxdG.jpg) This is my first go with State Pattern code and the examples I found were too simple or just not related to my type of device. **Q:** Is the context class supposed to do all of the controlling of peripherals of the device or should the active state directly control them? For instance, Drive the display, read the sensors, etc. To me, either way would work, but don't have enough experience here to choose what's correct. I mention DI because I'm having to pass all of my peripherals into the context then into each state to provide control. OR do I just pass them into context and make the calls to the context from the active state(mentioned above)? The way I see it, the active state and the context are constantly communicating with each other via DI to control the device. I hope this is clear. Context Class Code:               //context     //the context will capture the interrupt events and delegate the response     class ModeContext     {         private int rotationCount;         private string direction;         private State state;         public RotaryEncoder rotaryEncoderInstance;         public Tlc5940 Display;              //public event NativeEventHandler rotationEventHandler;// = null;              public ModeContext(RotaryEncoder re, Tlc5940 display)         {             this.State = new Mode1(this);             rotaryEncoderInstance = re;             rotaryEncoderInstance.RotationEventHandler += OnRotationEvent;//attach to Context's Handler             rotaryEncoderInstance.MomentaryButtonEventHandler += OnButtonEvent;             Display = display;             rotationCount = 0;         }              public void RunStateTask()         {             state.MainTask(this);         }              public State State         {             get { return state; }             set { state = value; }//debug state change         }              //Event Handler                 public void OnButtonEvent(uint clickCount, uint zero, DateTime time)         {             switch (clickCount)             {                case 0:                                                     state.OnButtonHold(this);                             break;                case 1:                             state.OnButtonSingleClick(this);                             break;                //default:                //             throw new Exception(\"Something went wrong!\");                //             break;                  }                   }              public void OnRotationEvent(uint data1, uint data2, DateTime time)         {             rotationCount++;             if (data1 == 1)              {                  direction = \"Clockwise\";                 state.OnCWRotationEvent(this);             }             else             {                  direction = \"Counter-Clockwise\";                 state.OnCCWRotationEvent(this);             }             //Debug.Print(rotationCount.ToString() + \": \" + direction + \" Context Mode Rotation Event Fired!\");         }          }      Example State Class:               class Mode1 : State//, IDisposable     {              public Mode1(ModeContext mode): base(mode)         {             Display = mode.Display;            }              public override void MainTask(ModeContext mode)         {             Debug.Print(\"Mode1 Main Task Running...\");             //read Sensor             //display the value to Display             //let the context determine how to display it??             //or call a method in the context that encapsulated all of it's functions?             //Thread.Sleep(500);         }              #region event handlers         public override void OnCCWRotationEvent(ModeContext mode)         {             //change state             mode.State = new Mode2(mode);             Debug.Print(\"Changing State\");         }         public override void OnCWRotationEvent(ModeContext mode)         {             //change state             Debug.Print(\"Changing State\");             mode.State = new Mode0(mode);         }         public override void OnButtonSingleClick(ModeContext mode)         {             Debug.Print(\"Mode1: Single Click!\");         }         public override void OnButtonHold(ModeContext mode)         {             Debug.Print(\"Mode1: Press and Hold Detected!\");         }              #endregion               }"}
{"_id": "228750", "title": "Multiple remote views of a C# application", "text": "I have a C# application (Desktop based application for Windows OS), which I wanted to use from Web browser. The application is a kind of analyzing tool, which takes some input values and performs set of calculations over it then displays an animation of the results. Since the application can't be coded again in a new language, Can anyone suggest me, how I can view and interact with this C# application from browser (like the way we interact with Java Applets)? Also the application can be used by more than one user at a time, so there must be multiple views for this web application."}
{"_id": "100383", "title": "Small companies and software licensing", "text": "Small companies with small budgets may not have have the money to invest in expensive software licenses that they may need for a given development project. This is even more so if the project was a loss-leader to drum up more business and the price of the development product cannot be renegotiated without potentially harming relationships, when it is discovered later that some proprietary expensive software license is needed for a very small yet crucial part of the application. I have dealt with this in the past by cleverly using trial versions of software in potentially unethical ways just trying to delay or prevent purchasing the license. What creative ways do smart software engineers work around this problem when the money to invest would be hard to acquire without breaking laws or stealing? **UPDATE:** To give some context of a situation where free or open source isn't available, you have a signature pad peripheral device that comes with an integration plugin to Adobe Acrobat Professional. To use this device properly a PDF needs to be created with Acrobat and its accompanying plugin. The trial works fine for creating the PDF but what happens if the customer wants to modify the PDF a year from now? You basically just punted that problem down the road."}
{"_id": "177007", "title": "Can I use aac in an commercial app for free?", "text": "I was wondering if I can use the aac codec in my commercial app for free (through lgpl ffmpeg). It says on the wiki: > No licenses or payments are required to be able to stream or distribute > content in AAC format.[36] This reason alone makes AAC a much more > attractive format to distribute content than MP3, particularly for streaming > content (such as Internet radio). However, a patent license is required for > all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs.> For this reason free and > open source software implementations such as FFmpeg and FAAC may be > distributed in source form only, in order to avoid patent infringement. (See > below under Products that support AAC, Software.) But the xSplit program had to cancel the AAC for free members because they have to pay royalties per person. Is this true (that you have to pay per each person that uses aac)? If you do have to pay, which company do you pay to and how does one apply?"}
{"_id": "146228", "title": "Question regarding approach to programming and testing", "text": "I have read somewhere that the cost of resolving bugs increases if it is not resolved at the initial stage. My question is: Which approach should I take while creating programs:   1. Divide program development in modules. Complete coding one module. Fix ALL bugs of that module before starting coding other modules.   2. Divide program development in modules. Complete coding all modules. Then start fixing bugs in the whole program. Please let me know your experiences in which approach you found better."}
{"_id": "177003", "title": "More productive alone than in a team?", "text": "If I work alone, I used to be superproductive, if I want to be. Running prototypes within a day, something that you can deploy and use within a few days. Not perfect, but good enough. I also had this experience a few times when working directly with someone else. Everybody could do the whole thing, but it was more fun not to do it alone and also quicker. The right two people can take an admittedly not _too_ large project onto new levels. Now at work we have a seven person team and I do not feel nearly as productive. Not even nearly. Certain stuff needs to be checked against something else, which then needs to also take care of some new requirement, which just came in three days ago. All sorts of stuff, mostly important, but often just a technical debt from long ago or misconception or different vocabulary for the same thing or sometimes just a not too technically thought out great idea from someone who wants to have their say, and so on. Digging down the rabbit hole, I think to myself, I could do larger portions of this work faster alone (and somewhat better, too), but it's not my responsibility (someone else gets paid for that), so by design I should not care. But I do, because certain things go hand in hand (as you may experience it, when you done sideprojects on your own). I know this is something Fred Brooks has written about, but still, what's your strategy for staying as productive as you know you could be in the cubicle? Or did you quit for some related reason; and if so where did you go?"}
{"_id": "177000", "title": "Why should I use a web framework's template language over python's templating options?", "text": "I'm coming from a python CGI background and was wanting to move into something more contemporary and think I have decided upon `web.py` as the framework I would like to use. In regards to templating, previously I used formatted strings and the `string.Template` module to effect most of my templating needs. After reading through a few of the templating options I have heard mentioned, I began wondering what the main benefits of using something like the `Django` or `jinja` templating options over \"native\" Python templating options were? Am I just going to be replacing `$tmpl_var` with `{{ tmpl_var }}` and `s.substitute(tmpl_var=value)` with `t.render(s)`, i.e., alternate syntax? or will I gain additional advantages from using these templating systems?"}
{"_id": "130886", "title": "Anyone know of any parallelizing compilers following the approach of the Dragon Book?", "text": "In _Compilers: Principles, Techniques, & Tools_, Aho _et al_ describe an approach for optimizing for parallelism (chapter 11 in the second edition). Is anyone aware of any existing compilers which follow that approach?"}
{"_id": "230428", "title": "Is rapid prototyping incompatible with software requirements specification?", "text": "From what I've learned last term on SWE courses, a big part of it is writing documents, so it seems that a software requirements specification (SRS) should earn points for my end-of-course project. However, I will be more comfortable if I use prototyping, i.e., I make a small thing that works for the most trivial of situations and gradually add up features and improvements. LVS 68:1996 doesn't seem to recommend mixing these two things together. Is it possible to still maintain my preferred approach to development, and have some usable requirement specification document?"}
{"_id": "235411", "title": "Git, rebase and stay synced with remote branch", "text": "I have something of an annoyance in my Git workflow. I do the usual thing where I branch off master, into a branch called feature. I work on this feature branch for a while, meanwhile possibly master has commits of its own, which I might merge into feature. As I do this, I have a remote branch for feature (origin/feature) that I use so I can build and run my code on multiple machines. Now, when I finish with the feature branch, I need to push the code to our code review system. This means rebasing feature off master, and squashing all the commits into one. I do this, resolve conflicts if necessary, great. Here's the problem: feature and origin/feature now have different histories, and I'm not able to push. I tried push with -f to force it even, and this did not work either. Is there some convenient way to rebase feature off master, and keep feature and origin/feature synced? What I'm considering is doing another branch for the code review. In other words, before the rebase and squash, branch into featurecodereview. Then rebase featurecodereview off master, and if I like I can push this upstream to a new remote branch. I was wondering if there was something cleaner than opening another branch."}
{"_id": "230421", "title": "How to Detect Sprites in a SpriteSheet?", "text": "I'm currently writing a Sprite Sheet Unpacker such as Alferds Spritesheet Unpacker. Now, before this is sent to gamedev, this isn't necessarily about games. I would like to know how to detect a sprite within a spriitesheet, or more abstactly, a shape inside of an image. Given this sprite sheet: ![](http://www.gotoandplay.it/_articles/2006/06/beatemup/pixel_splatter.gif) I want to detect and extract all individual sprites. I've followed the algorithm detailed in Alferd's Blog Post which goes like:   1. Determine predominant color and dub it the BackgroundColor   2. Iterate over each pixel and check ColorAtXY == BackgroundColor   3. If false, we've found a sprite. Keep going right until we find a BackgroundColor again, backtrack one, go down and repeat until a BackgroundColor is reached. Create a box from location to ending location.   4. Repeat this until all sprites are boxed up.   5. Combined overlapping boxes (or within a very short distance)   6. The resulting non-overlapping boxes should contain the sprite. This implementation is fine, especially for small sprite sheets. However, I find the performance too poor for larger sprite sheets and I would like to know what algorithms or techniques can be leveraged to increase the finding of sprites. A second implementation I considered, but have not tested yet, is to find the first pixel, then use a backtracking algorithm to find every connected pixel. This should find a contiguous sprite (breaks down if the sprite is something like an explosion where particles are no longer part of the main sprite). The cool thing is that I can immediately remove a detected sprite from the sprite sheet. Any other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "185072", "title": "Microsoft Public License vs MIT?", "text": "I'm working with a new plugin (flexbox), and I ran into the MS-PL license, which I had not run into before. In the past, I've used mainly MIT and Apache licensed projects, so I have no idea what the main differences are with this one. Here's a link to it: http://opensource.org/licenses/MS-PL Can anyone help explain the differences to me? I'm usually wary of Microsoft, so the fact that this product comes with this makes me nervous."}
{"_id": "185071", "title": "Using a \"dead man's switch\" to manage time-sensitive code", "text": "In our software environment, we often run a/b tests, as is probably good practice. However, our environment is set up such that, in very short order, the code starts to become very crufty with dead tests. The testing registry is little more than a collection of internal wiki pages. I thought of a \"dead man's switch\" style of defunct code management. If you're not familiar with the term, it refers to a switch that must be reset periodically in order to keep something from triggering -- in essence, if you don't responde, the switch triggers, and whatever you wanted the switch to trigger is performed. For example, I would write some code, register it with this system in some way, and when a date of my predetermined choosing rolled around, I would get a notification that this code would be removed (automatically cleaned up) unless I intervened (manually clean up, or snooze). What are the pros, cons and viability of incorporating such a system? Is it possible or wise? What might be some alternative ways to manage code against rotting?"}
{"_id": "140091", "title": "Java or c++ for math intensive graphics application?", "text": "Lets say my friend needs to write an incredibly math heavy application. He has thought about using C++, but he wants to write it in Java. Just how slow is Java compared to C++? His application will need to solve something like a 10000 by 10000 matix per frame, so performance is important. What should I tell him? Make it in Java or C++? And why? (He really really wants to use Java, but if the application is going to run at snail speed, he's going to be extremely disappointed.)"}
{"_id": "86982", "title": "SUN Java and GPL V2 licence issue for linked applications", "text": "I have recently noticed that the Sun Java code has been released as GPL V2 code (see Google code repo). Does that mean that all applications written in Java and linked to Sun APIs (beans, and so on) are also in GPL ? If we strictly follow the GPL then this should be the case (Libs should be in LGPL, not GPL if we want to build proprietary software on top of it). Is there another commercial licence which can avoid such an issue ? I cannot believe this is the case. There must be an explanation on this. Regards, Apple92"}
{"_id": "86983", "title": "Is creating a full application in Silverlight advisable?", "text": "Is creating a huge public site fully in Silverlight really advisable? for eg. an ecommerce site. I don't want to start any debate but actually I feel Silverlight shouldn't be used for full website because the biggest loss you incur is of SEO. No search engines till today can parse the xap file and index it based on it's content. You can get around it by doing ifs and thens like if Silverlight is not supported then make an Asp.Net equivalent page for it but that only doubles our effort of making application, more than anything else. Why write double code in 2 applications meant for the same purpose. If that is the only option why not create Asp.Net application only. What are your views? Thanks in advance :)"}
{"_id": "86980", "title": "ASP.NET web-application example for newbies", "text": "I want to learn ASP.NET web-application development by example. I want to learn it from an already developed web-application that is good as a tutorial for newbies. A fully functional web application that is small but powerful enough to teach newbies the development effort required for web-application development. I am looking for some application that is made using software engineering principles and not just a code written haphazardly."}
{"_id": "218146", "title": "Are \"Compile to JavaScript\" Frameworks Hostile to Continuous Integration?", "text": "Lately we've been looking at ways to improve automated testing and related tooling of our enterprise-level GWT web app. I've realized that in some ways, GWT is a bit hostile to automated testing, mainly because of the nature of the long GWT compile times from Java to JS. This makes unit testing somewhat challenging, but it also puts some roadblocks up for testing in a CI environment. I've also found out that some of our build and deployment processes are somewhat complicated due to the nature of GWT's compile process. Is this a general problem for \"compile to JS\" frameworks for webapps? I don't have much experience with them, but I can see some potential problems for automated testing and continuous integration and deployment. Some issues I see:   * Long build and compile times preventing quick deployments   * Language the app is developed in != JS, preventing good unit testing   * Obfuscated JS in the actual app makes it more like a executable than a web app Are these issues present in other similar frameworks, or is this more a GWT issue?"}
{"_id": "244790", "title": "High-level description of how experimental C++ features are developed?", "text": "Herb Sutter in a video answers a question about the concepts proposal considered for C++11 and from his remarks it sounds like multiple groups offered prototype implementations but all of them left concerns about slow compile times. The comment surprised me because it suggests that, at least in some cases, the prototypes being developed are not just proofs of concept -- they're even expected to perform. All the work that must take has me curious. For mature languages, especially C++, how are experimental language features developed? Is it much different from developing a compiler that implements a standard? Does a developer have a sense of if it will work and perform or even if it ever could? What are the most time consuming parts and are any parts surprisingly easier than one might expect? The question is not what does the C++ standards committee do, but rather the part that comes before. When an experimental implementation for a proposal is being put together and there aren't any completely solidified rules, how is the sausage made? I'm not a professional compiler developer nor do I expect answers with step by step accounts. I'd like a high-level idea of how this would be done or if there are any general patterns at all. I don't know what to expect from the answers but even if there are no rules to the process and the small number of people who do this just cowboy it and then, for stuff that worked out, write up the \"official version\" as a proposal, that answer would still be informative."}
{"_id": "157841", "title": "Is ATL a deprecated language?", "text": "I currently developing some M2M-transformations with the Atlas Transformation Language (ATL). During studying the language constructs and properties I have often read, that ATL is a prototype for QVT, but was not used for QVT. This leads me to the question, if ATL is a deprecated language. Personally, I claim that ATL is not deprecated because there are some indications for this:   1. If I look at the website of ATL the last Update was August, 26th 2011. The first specification of QVT was 2008. So I think the development of ATL seems to proceed.   2. There are also some papers since 2011 on google scholar: http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=atl+m2m&btnG=&hl=de&as_sdt=0&as_ylo=2011   3. It is still part of the M2M-frameworks of Eclipse What would you say? Would it be better to user another M2M language or is ATL future proof? If not, do you know possibilities to transform ATL into other M2M-languages?"}
{"_id": "43983", "title": "Load Balancer impact on web development", "text": "This question has it's roots in a SharePoint site that I am help with. ### Background on the issue I dealt with: The dev box and integration server are not setup behind a load balancer. The links were being built using the HttpRequest.Url value from the current context. Note that the links weren't relative links but full URIs. Once we deployed to testing (which has a LB, amongst other things) we received errors on the links being built since the server had an address of \"http://some.site.org:999\" while the address at the LB as \"https://site.org\" (SSL was off-loaded at the LB). The fix was easy enough by using relative URIs. ### The Question: Since this is the first site I've worked with that's behind a Load Balancer on I'm wondering if there are other gotcha's that I need to consider when developing a site behind one?"}
{"_id": "244796", "title": "Caching large amount of ajax returned objects", "text": "I'm building an application which fetches large amount of items with ajax requests via other application API. It returns me 6k - 30k js objects which are used multiple times across various application views (sorting, filtering etc.). I would like to avoid querying API every time for such big list so I decided to cache this data somehow. I was thinking about various solutions:   * saving it to localstorage,   * using some caching library (e.g. locachejs),   * storing in js var. I'm not an expert so I would like to hear Your suggestions about each (or one of these) solution, about its pros and cons. Every help will be very appreciated."}
{"_id": "157840", "title": "event source calls methods in a interface", "text": "I am using Java. How does an event source like a (button in a GUI) knows which method to call in an interface? For example, I am listening to Mouse Events and have implemented a Mouse Listener interface in my class then how would the event source know whether it should call `mousePressed()`, `mouseReleased()` or some other abstract method in the in the interface? I am aware that using `addMouseListener(this)`, provides a way for the event source to call the method of an interface."}
{"_id": "42055", "title": "Learning Python is good?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is Python worth learning? Is it a useful tool? Recently I have seen some videos from MIT on computer programming topics. I found it's really worth watching. Especially the concepts of algorithms and fundamental stuffs. The programs were written and explained in Python. I never had looked into this language before as I learned and doing stuffs with C/C++ programming. But the cleanliness and better readability of syntax attracted me. Of course as a C++ programmer for long time it's the most readable language for me. Also I heard Python library contains solid algorithms and data-structures implementations. Can you share your experience in this language?"}
{"_id": "101388", "title": "Why do so many libraries have no/poor documentation?", "text": "In a similar vein as the Why do many open source projects have no documentation about their design or architecture? question, I'm curious: Why are so many libraries so lacking in end user documentation? My view is this:   1. Most everyone agrees that reading source code is more difficult than writing source code.   2. Without documentation, one must read the library's source code in order to use that library.   3. Therefore, using the undocumented library is more work than just recreating the library from scratch.   4. As a result, if you want to have people use your library, you'd damn well better make sure it's documented. I know lots of developers don't like writing docs, and I'll agree it can be tedious work. But it's essential work. I'd even say it's more important that a library have good documentation than have the best programmer's interface in the world. (People use shitty libraries all the time; few use undocumented libraries) Oh, note that when I say documentation, I mean real documentation. Not Sandcastle/Javadoc/Doxygen boilerplate."}
{"_id": "80208", "title": "Consequences of not using an open source license?", "text": "Lets say you don't use a license for your open source project. And you don't put anything about a license anywhere in the code..is this okay to do?"}
{"_id": "80203", "title": "Enforcement of returning non-null", "text": "We are implementing some web services, and need to ensure that some of our methods **always** return non-null values. We've investigated two ways of doing this:   * Using code contracts, and returning the default value using `Ensures` constraints on the return value.   * Using an aspect-oriented programming approach using PostSharp. Both approaches work, but I'm wondering whether there are any other approaches that we should consider. How would you enforce non-null return values? * * * Looks like there was a similar question on SO, and Jon Skeet recommends the Code Contract approach."}
{"_id": "128903", "title": "Should you bring up commercial projects in an interview?", "text": "I am not sure if it's a good idea or not to mention commercial software projects. Right now, I have one desktop software site selling (not enough to support myself yet) and I am not sure what is a good way to use it as a way to convey my skills and experience? Speaking of experience, I've never had a developer job. I've worked by myself developing applications with intention to sell, and one one hand I feel like if I mention this, I might come across as someone who is not serious about getting a developer job, which is not true, my mind is set on getting a developer job. Should I say I gave up the project to look for a job? Or does this appear weak? I just don't know how to tie up my involvement in self started software projects in an interview situation in a relevant manner."}
{"_id": "101383", "title": "Implementing a machine learning algorithm to detect the region of an address", "text": "I have 10,000 addresses from a city, which all have a region field in the database. When a new address is entered, then I want my software to automatically detect the region of the address . I think it should be implemented with some sort of machine learning algorithm. How can I do this? And with every newly inserted address, the machine should learn to detect the region of the new address. Is there any library for machine-Learning algorithms (like aforge.net for neural networks)?"}
{"_id": "101382", "title": "Will there be any official LINQ like lambda based library for C++?", "text": "Given C++('11) has lambdas now, will there be any LINQ like higher order function library officially supported later? Is there any such library now being used in any production level code? Obviously I'm not expecting the SQL-like expression tree based LINQ query syntax in C++. I am talking about the lambda based one. So, no new language feature in needed in C++'11, just a library will do."}
{"_id": "135108", "title": "Is it OK for me to suggest ready-made scripts to a programmer? If so, how can I do it without offending him/her?", "text": "Is it ok to suggest pre-built scripts from a place like codecanyon to a programmer who is building a startup web app? Or is it more likely to offend? I don't expect that a whole web app could be built from bits and bobs purchased from a site but I'm unsure of whether its the right thing to ask someone to do. Also, I am not a programmer."}
{"_id": "139488", "title": "How to get JMS to front end", "text": "I currently have a web application and I would like to add a messaging feature to it. In order to do that, I use JMS(actually OpenMQ, the implementation provided with Glassfish 3). The problem is that I do not know how to get the message notification from the background(from the listener) to the foreground. I am using JSF as a framework, if it does have an importance. Could you please tell me how should I notify the user about a received message(like a chat). Any suggestions are welcomed."}
{"_id": "135104", "title": "Rendezvous in Ada", "text": "In a test I was asked: > What elements present in the general form of a rendezvous are not present in > Ada language? I was a bit stumbled as I thought Ada fully supported rendezvous. Now it seems it doesn't. Can anyone tell me what are those elements?"}
{"_id": "213386", "title": "What are the reasons for great performance differences running the same program?", "text": "I'm no computer scientist so please bear with me. Lately I wrote a python program that has to perform some expensive spatial searches while holding lot's of data in memory. I tried to improve the performance, that is tried different approaches (see my question here for example). First, and maybe not so surprisingly, I found great performance differences when running the same code on two different machines (up to 6 x faster on one machine). Then however and very much to my own surprise, running the exactly same code on the same machine on two different days showed great performance differences. To give you a rough idea what I mean by great. Machine 1, day 1: 11 minutes Machine 1, day 2: 2 minutes There was no reboot in the meantime by the way. So my question really is: what could be possible reasons for this difference? How can I can I make sure my system is ready for high performance when I start running my program?"}
{"_id": "205242", "title": "Keeping third-party source code up to date", "text": "What is the best way to keep third-party source code up to date? For instance in my app, I'm using third-party source code from an open GitHub repository. What I've done is that I have downloaded the zip of the source code, unpacked it and imported it in my iOS app and then started modifying this source code to my hearts content. So this third-party source code has been working great for me, but now some months later the developer of the third-party source code released an update to his code from `1.0 -> 2.0`. Now of course I want to have this update as well in my iOS app. What would be the easiest way to migrate my `1.0` third- party source code (together with all my additions to the code) to `2.0`?"}
{"_id": "15207", "title": "Product agnostic book on Message Queues?", "text": "Are there any recommendations for book(s) that are largely agnostic (with examples of MQ implementations is fine) on vendor but go to great details on the architecture, management, nomenclature, atomicity, durability, patterns, and logical deployments on Message Queue systems? Surely there are enough shared concepts between MQ Series, MSMQ, SysV IPC (OK, that might be stretching it), RabbitMQ, &c &c?"}
{"_id": "254955", "title": "Algorithms for making image mosaics - is there a quicker way than this?", "text": "I've been playing with making image mosaics. My script takes a large number of images, scales them down to thumbnail size and then uses them as tiles to approximate a target image. The approach is actually quite pleasing: ![](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RZKkTm.jpg) I compute the mean square error for every thumb in every tile position. At first I just used a greedy placement: put the thumb with the least error on the tile it best fits, and then the next and so on. The problem with greedy is that it leaves you eventually placing the most different thumbs on the least popular tiles, whether they match closely or not. I show examples here: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/84505278488/making-image-mosaics So I then do random swaps until the script is interrupted. The results are quite OK. A random swap of two tiles is not always an improvement, but sometimes a rotation of three or more tiles results in a global improvement i.e. `A <-> B` may not improve, but `A -> B -> C -> A``1` may.. For this reason, after picking two random tiles and discovering they do not improve, I pick a bunch of tiles to evaluate if they can be the third tile in such a rotation. I do not explore if any set of four tiles can be profitably rotated, and so on; that'd be super-expensive real soon. But this takes time.. A lot of time! Is there a better and faster approach? * * * **_Bounty Update_** I tested out various Python implementations and bindings of the Hungarian Method. By far the fastest was the pure-Python https://github.com/xtof- durr/makeSimple/blob/master/Munkres/kuhnMunkres.py My hunch is that this approximates the optimal answer; when run on a test image, all other libraries agreed on the result but this kuhnMunkres.py, whilst being orders of magnitude faster, only got very very very close to the score the other implementations agreed on. Speed is very data-dependent; Mona Lisa rushed through kuhnMunkres.py in 13 minutes, but the Scarlet Chested Parakeet took 16 minutes. Results were much the same as random swaps and rotations for the Parakeet: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ZW8uh.jpg)![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/RZKkTm.jpg) (kuhnMunkres.py on the left, random swaps on the right; original image for comparision) However, for the Mona Lisa image I tested with, the results were noticeably improved and she actually had her defined 'smile' shining through: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/u4muy.jpg)![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/2fI3G.jpg) (kuhnMunkres.py on the left, random swaps on the right)"}
{"_id": "201943", "title": "Are there elements common to nearly every SRS?", "text": "An SRS is a staple of any serious contract work, and it can be _incredibly_ dull for those who've never had the misfortune of needing to read one through in one go. I'm writing a series of document classes with LaTeX (markup language for profession-quality documents; see these questions and this answer on TeX.SE) and, in so doing, I need to define the core tenets and common logical structures evident through any reasonable SRS. I have unfortunately never had the opportunity to participate in the creation of an SRS from scratch save a simplified, somewhat contrived example during college, so I don't think I know the breadth of what goes into a Software Requirements Specification (SRS). I do know it consists of at least the changelog and the requirements themselves, but beyond that... ? What are the indispensable parts of the document that every SRS should have? * * * I'm still pretty new here, but I'm open to making this CW if Programmers.SE is _all about_ this kind of stuff."}
{"_id": "201940", "title": "License Requirements for Including Dual-Licensed Open-Source Software", "text": "How do you opt into one software license and not the other when the distributor gives the consumer more than one choice? For example I would like to use the DataTables JavaScript library in my web application. According to their web site, \"DataTables is dual licensed under the GPL v2 license or a BSD (3-point) license.\" Furthermore, the source code of the JavaScript library has this text **that calls out both licenses:**               /**      * @summary     DataTables      * @description Paginate, search and sort HTML tables      * @version     1.9.4      * @file        jquery.dataTables.js      * @author      Allan Jardine (www.sprymedia.co.uk)      * @contact     www.sprymedia.co.uk/contact      *      * @copyright Copyright 2008-2012 Allan Jardine, all rights reserved.      *      * This source file is free software, under either the GPL v2 license or a      * BSD style license, available at:      *   http://datatables.net/license_gpl2      *   http://datatables.net/license_bsd      *       * This source file is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but       * WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY       * or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the license files for details.      *       * For details please refer to: http://www.datatables.net      */      Finally, the web pages with the licensing text (e.g. the DataTables BSD license page) has this statement: \"DataTables is made available under both the GPL v2 license and a BSD (3-point) style license. **You can select which one you wish to use** the DataTables code under.\" My specific question is \"how do you select which one you want to use.\" In my case, I want to only use the BSD license and I want to make it explicitly clear that I do not opt into the GPL v2 license in any way. How do you do that **and have it hold up to legal challenge?**"}
{"_id": "201946", "title": "Design pattern for complex view creation in sheet music", "text": "I've got a bunch of `Note`-Models with properties like `pitch`and `duration`. In music notation, these notes must now be placed into a certain bar on a certain line on a certain page, and so on. Many more factors influence the positioning of these notes like the notes that are placed in the same bar before them. Also, style-properties influence many different view-elements. The positioning of notes is affected by the \"line-height\" of the music lines, whether the bar is justified to the width of the page or not, and so on. **I'm looking for a design pattern that can help me cleanly position all these views relative to each other.** Can anybody help me out? I'm using SVG with JavaScript for my current project, if this is important. Thank you so much for helping out! :)"}
{"_id": "201945", "title": "Executables and Python", "text": "I've started learning my first language recently, Python, and I became interested in how it differed from the myriad of other programming languages. I've been able to find most of it out with some searching: There is interpreted, compiled and assembly language. Then there is numerical machine code (which as I understand is just binary?) that is read by hardware directly. So Python is an interpreted language because it isn't explicitly compiled to machine code (although from what I understand this is a false distinction since most code is both compiled and interpreted, if only behind the scenes). I still have one question I couldn't figure out how to search an answer for. I assume Python code requires the Python platform to be read because it contains the interpreter. But how do you get those \"standalone\" .exe programs which you can run on most computers? Are those files just using a platform which every computer has by default, or are these files that are already compiled completely to machine code? (Like with C++?) The main reason I'm wondering this is that I was wanting to send someone my simple Python programs without having them install the platform. I've searched online and found some 'compilers?' that will do this, but they don't seem to work very well and are very difficult to work with."}
{"_id": "163039", "title": "Must all new features go through betatest?", "text": "Obviously, small usability fixes and bugfixes go directly into the stable product. What about small new features? Can you afford to just release them after internal testing, or do they have to be betatested by customers first? Situation: This is a young commercial project, produced by a one-person company. It has an existing userbase and is at it's second major version. Previous betatests have produced some results, however most feedback came from the stable product and not from beta versions."}
{"_id": "163035", "title": "Which license can I use for my open source AWS project", "text": "I'm creating a project on codeplex that uses Amazon Web Services and the AWS SDK for .NET Which licenses can I use? The SDK is released under Apache 2.0 license, so I assume my project can or should use the same. If I add another open source library released under a different license, do I need to find a license that is 'compatible' with both ie. one that has the same requirements for derivative works? * * * My requirement is for a license that allows me to publish a derivative work from the AWS .NET SDK. I can use any of the licenses that codeplex supports, which includes:   * Apache 2.0    * GNU GPLv2    * MIT    * Mozilla Public License 2.0    * Microsoft Public License"}
{"_id": "196517", "title": "Creating an entity relationship in REST: May I create the parent by posting to a child id?", "text": "We are currently designing a REST API to access classical customer data. One of the elements in the API are the assets of an user. The assets are added under a given service. The backend API will only add an asset to an user under a given service. So, there's no User--Asset relation, but a User--[Service]--Asset relationship. Our URI's will look like this:               /users/{id}/assets/{id}/services/{id}      Uses of the API will know the asset id and the service id to create a new entry. What we are struggling with is the creation of this relation. One straightforward way would be to post the whole relation to `/users/{id}/assets/`               POST /users/{id}/assets         {asset:${id}, service:{id}, attribute1:\"{var}\", attribute2:\"{var}\"}      but then we are not actually creating an asset as the URI might indicate, but an asset-service relation. As an alternative, we are considering POST'ing to the URI addressing the relation, like this:               POST /users/{id}/assets/{id}/service/{id}     {attribute1:\"{var}\", attribute2:\"{var}\"}      But in this case, the resource path `/users/{id}/assets/{id}` will not exist before the POST and will be created as a side-effect. Is POST'ing to a resource path that does not exist yet allowed at all? Thanks for your thoughts, Gerard."}
{"_id": "236140", "title": "Sproc chaining verse discrete calls from OO code", "text": "I'm currently working on a change at work to generalize a function that was sloppily coded up to work for a particular use case. The function calls a particular sproc that checks if an entity exists and if it does not inserts it, this is the core problem. In discussion about the change with a co-worker we both agreed this should be more modular (you need to be able to get without inserting), however I stated a preference to have two individual sprocs which are discretely invoked in our C# code. He claimed it's superior to have one sproc call the other but wasn't actually able to provide me a convincing argument for why that practice would be better (other than making a the generalized claim that it performs better, to which I said there is much lower hanging fruit for performance optimizations). Which practice do you believe to be better? Why?"}
{"_id": "196510", "title": "Do you unit-test your PODs?", "text": "do you create unit-tests for PODs (Plain Old Data Structure)? And why? I'm interested in your opinions. Regards Tobias"}
{"_id": "70248", "title": "What is the Most Expedient Way to Make Legacy Code Conform to 'The Principle of Proximity'?", "text": "On page 242 of Code Complete 2, Steve McConnell touts **The Principle of Proximity**.   Put simply, Mr. McConnell advises programmers to **keep related actions together**. In my case, the applicable emphasis is:   * It's important to initialize and set variables (and objects) close to where they are being used. It's usually easy to abide by 'The Principle of Proximity' when you're working within a single code block or method body; but what if you're working with legacy code and an object at the top of the stack is set or mutated deep within the stack? To make things more complicated, what if that object is set, mutated, or referenced _multiple times_ within the stack? So here's my question: > What is the Most Expedient Way to Make Legacy Code Conform to 'The Principle > of Proximity'? Incidentally, I'm working with Visual Studio 2010 and Resharper 5.   Are there any IDE tricks that could help me out?"}
{"_id": "70244", "title": "Javascript project for analysis and learning", "text": "I started learning and using Javascript now for about six months. First i started by following different tutorial on the internet. Testing them, playing with them and trying different variation. Afterwards i picked up up a couple of intermediate Javascript book and learned valuable thing from them. And now i am interested in the following:   * If someone can recommend a Javascript project from where i can learn the structure of a serious Javascript application and a project that will give me an a idea how Javascript application should be written.   * Example:realworld uses of prototyping, anonymous(lambda) functions, general program structure, how to write OO applications, what is the appropriate task to use a closure   * etc.. Further explanation: I'm working on my college final paper, on the subject of graph visualization. So im looking at project that will help me realize good patterns, so i can apply them in my project and also to see viable examples of Javascript design patterns Regards, FJ"}
{"_id": "121411", "title": "Why is Javascript used in MongoDB and CouchDB instead of other languages such as Java, C++?", "text": "I asked this question on SO but was suggested to try here. So here it goes: My understanding of Javascript so far has been that it is a client-side language that capture events and makes a web-page dynamic. But on reading the comparison between MongoDB and CouchDB I noticed that both are using Javascript. This makes me wonder the reason behind the choice of JavaScript over other conventional languages. I guess I am trying to understand the role of JavaScript and its advantages over other languages. Update: I am not asking about the languages / drivers supported by the two databases. The comparison says: > Both CouchDB and MongoDB make use of Javascript. CouchDB uses Javascript > extensively including in the building of views. > > MongoDB also supports running arbitrary javascript functions server-side and > uses javascript for map/reduce operations. My lack of understanding pertains to why is Javascript being used at all for the backend work. Why is it preferred for building views in CouchDB, or for using map/reduce operations? Why C/C++ or Java were not used? What are the advantages in using Javascript for such back-end work?"}
{"_id": "40981", "title": "Why are a seemingly disproportionate amount of programmers just, well, not nice?", "text": "Maybe it's just my personal experience, but I associate with varying different groups and types of people and it seems to me that an oddly large percentage of programmers I have encountered are \"not nice\" or for an attempt at a better definition:   * Condescending    * Snarky   * Negative in the way they talk about people If you have noticed the same thing, any theories as to why? Any suggestions on how to politely or not so politely let one of these programmers know how they are acting and suggest they correct it if they want to be perceived as professional one would want to work with? Or perhaps I've just come across a bad sample and there are bad seeds in every group of people one can name."}
{"_id": "40986", "title": "Learning a new language using broken unit tests", "text": "I was listening to a dot net rocks the other day where they mentioned, almost in passing, a really intriguing tool for learning new languages -- I think they were specifically talking about F#. It's a solution you open up and there are a bunch of broken unit tests. Fixing them walks you through the steps of learning the language. I want to check it out, but I was driving in my car and I have no idea what the name of the project is or which dot net rocks episode it was. Google hasn't helped much. Any idea?"}
{"_id": "255077", "title": "How does a dependently typed programming language cope with mutability?", "text": "I have been investigating on the viability of a \"normal\" programming language with dependent types. Think for example in Java and add dependent types to it. One difficulty which I have found is that the type of a variable may change when mutated, like in the following piece of pseudo-code:               let xs = [1, 2, 3]; // The type of xs is List<int, 3>     let ys = [4, 5];    // The type of ys is List<int, 2>     xs.concat(ys);      // We concatenate the lists, so the type of xs is now List<int, 5>      This becomes a problem when we mutate a variable inside an `if` statement:               let xs = [1, 2, 3]; // The type of xs is List<int, 3>     if random_bool {         xs.push(4);     // The type of xs is List<int, 4>     }     // The type of xs is unknown, because random_bool is set at runtime      Is there any research on this topic? Is it possible to address this issue without renouncing to mutability?"}
{"_id": "219230", "title": "Intersection of geometric entities", "text": "I was trying to design a small C++ geometric API for learning purposes, but came across a problem when dealing with intersections of geometric entities. For example, the intersection of a line and a sphere can have three different types: a couple of points, a point or nothing at all. I found several ways to deal with this problem, but I don't know which of them seems to be the best: ## CGAL `Object` return type I first tried to see what was done in other geometric libraries. The most complete I can found was CGAL. In CGAL, intersection functions return an `Object` which is a generic type that can hold anything (like `boost::any`). Then, you try to assign the `Object` to a value of another type, here is an example:               void foo(CGAL::Segment_2<Kernel> seg, CGAL::Line_2<Kernel> line)     {         CGAL::Object result;         CGAL::Point_2<Kernel> ipoint;         CGAL::Segment_2<Kernel> iseg;              result = CGAL::intersection(seg, line);         if (CGAL::assign(ipoint, result)) {                  // handle the point intersection case.              } else if (CGAL::assign(iseg, result)) {                  // handle the segment intersection case.              } else {                 // handle the no intersection case.         }     }      By the way, the `assign` function uses `dynamic_cast` to check whether the two variables are assignable (everybody loves RTTI). ## Union return type A union can also be used as a return type, but it means using an `id` for every geometric type and having some kind of variant type to cover all the problems.               struct Variant     {         int id;         union         {             Point point;             std::pair<Point, Point> pair;         };     };          int main()     {         Point point;         std::pair<Point, Point> pair;              Variant v = intersection(Line{}, Sphere{});         if (v.id == ID_POINT)         {             point = v.point;             // Do something with point         }         else if (v.id == ID_VARIANT)         {             pair = v.pair;             // Do something with pair         }         else         {             // No intersection         }     }      ## Avoiding the \"no intersection\" problem In order to split the \"no intersection\" case from the main problem, some libraries used to require the user to check whether there was an intersection before trying to find what was the intersection return type. It looked like this:               Line line;     Sphere sphere;          if (intersects(line, sphere))     {         auto ret = intersection(line, sphere);         // Do something with ret     }      Another way to split the \"no intersection\" case from the rest of the problem would be to use an `optional` type:               std::optional<...> ret = intersection(Line{}, Sphere{});     if (ret)     {         // Do something with ret     }      ## Using exceptions to control the \"return\" type _I can already see some of you crying._ Yet another way to handle that problem of having different return types would be to `throw` the results instead of returning them. The \"no intersection\" return could still use one of the techniques from the previous paragraph:               try     {         intersection(Line{}, Sphere{});     }     catch (const Point& point)     {         // Do something with point     }     catch (const std::pair<Point, Point>& pair)     {         // Do something with pair     }     // Can still catch errors (or \"no intersection\" special type?)      ## Having a \"main\" return type, throwing the other ones Another way would be to have a \"main\" return type for the intersection, let's say `std::pair<Point, Point>` and considering the other return types as \"exceptional\"; it gives more meaning to the use of exceptions while this is still not quite an error gestion. On the other hand, it could seem strange to handle a \"main\" type differently than the others...               try     {         auto pair = intersection(Line{}, Sphere{});         // Do something with pair     }     catch (const Point& point)     {         // The chances for a sphere and a line to meet at         // a single point are so small that the case can         // already be considered exceptional.         // ...     }      I purposedly left the errors gestion and the \"no intersection\" case out of this last example since many techniques already described could be used to handle it and I don't want the number of examples to be exponential. Here is one though:               try     {         // res is optional<pair<Point, Point>>         if (auto res = intersection(Line{}, Sphere{}))         {             std::cout << \"intersection: two points\" << '\\n'                       << std::get<0>(*res).x() << \" \"                       << std::get<0>(*res).y() << '\\n'                       << std::get<1>(*res).x() << \" \"                       << std::get<1>(*res).y() << '\\n';         }         else         {             std::cout << \"no intersection\" << '\\n';         }     }     catch (const Point& point)     {         // Exceptional case         std::cout << \"intersection: one point\" << '\\n'                   << point.x() << \" \"                   << point.y() << '\\n';     }      Since the cases where the result is thrown are exceptional, it should not add any runtime overhead to the program if the underlying system uses zero cost exceptions instead of the old SJLJ exceptions system. ## The actual question Well, that was a pretty long introduction, so here is the question: is there an idiomatic solution to the problem in these examples? And if not, are there at least some of the examples which could be banned without a second thought (well, you could give a second thought to the exception examples though...)? **Note:** something seemed evident to me but apparently is not: the entity returned by intersection between two geometric entities is not limited to a nothing, a point or a set of point. An intersection can pretty much return any geometric entity. Therefore, using a container to hold the values does not sound like a good idea."}
{"_id": "219232", "title": "Which database schema should I pick?", "text": "I am planning a database scheme and I hesitate between two designs, which one should I choose? For the purpose of the question, assume we want to prepare a database scheme for an application managing student information in a university. There is several modules in the application:   * **Registry,** dealing with general informations, like date of birth, health insurance number, and the like.   * **Library,** dealing with the properties useful to the library management, like the number of books withdrawn, quitus or penalties.   * **Exams,** dealing with the exams taken and the grades. The modules Library and Exams see the modules Registry, but apart from that, are independant. In the application scenario, there is a very large number of students, data is written once, seldom updated and often read. Furthermore, the university expands its system each year, so that modules are added: Sport, Campus, whatever. Modules remain quite independant. I hesitate between two database layouts. ### First layout In the first layout, a table `MODULE` is associated to each Module and a `UID` is used as primary key. Since each module needs the properties under control of Registry, we also prepare views of the join of `REGISTRY` and `MODULE` on `UID`, so that the database knows we will use this join extensively. When the system expands, we add a new table and a new view to reflect this expansion. ### Second layout In the second layout, we create a table with a large number of columns holding the properties of the various modules. When the system expands, we add columns to the tables. ### Comparison How does these two approaches compare? If, say, some software upgrade comes with a major bug, requiring to downgrade the software and perform later a second upgrade, the first layout seems to be more robust. Regarding perfomance, the second layout saves a lot of join operations, but in the first layout, we defined views for the join operations, thus advertising which complex operations are likely to happen so that the database system can plan this. I am far from a database expert, but am I right if I think that if I put all relevant information into the hands of the database system, it will be able to properly carry operation? If I did not see it used in industrial applications, I would never had given 2 pences on the second layout. But since I did, I would like to get other advises."}
{"_id": "176664", "title": "Why do generics in Scala have erased types, and are not reifiable?", "text": "Why do generics in Scala have erased types, and are not reifiable? Is it due to lack of support from the JVM or for compatibility with Java libraries? What are the advantages in general of having generics as reifiable?"}
{"_id": "176665", "title": "Generics and Type-erasure", "text": "Generics in Java are implemented using type erasure. The JLS says that the inspiration was backward compatibility. Where as on the other hand C# generics are reifiable. Theoretically what are the advantages and disadvantages by having Generics as \"erasure\" or \"reifiable\"? Is Java missing onto something?"}
{"_id": "247262", "title": "Is it good practice declare a function inline?", "text": "I'm writing a method and depending on a config field I need to change where I get my data from. What this results in me having to write code that looks like this:               List<string> result = new List<string>();     if (configField)     {         result.Add(fieldA);     }     else     {         result.Add(...BusinessLogic...);     }      I'll have to write that if statement many many times so of course I want to turn it into a method instead so I can just write `result.Add(newMethod(configField, fieldA, dataForBusinessLogicToParse))`. This method would be useless to anyone not writing the specific method I'm writing so does it make sense to declare this method as a separate `private` method or can I just declare it inline as a `delegate` like this:               Func<Enum, int, int> newMethod = (configField, fieldA, dataForBusinessLogicToParse) => ...businessLogic...      I'm worried declaring it inline might make the code more difficult to understand but I think it makes the class cleaner."}
{"_id": "247264", "title": "Repository pattern implementation that knows nothing about the database table and column names", "text": "I've seen around the Internet and Github, implementations for the design pattern Repository that knows about database table and column names. I was think, if I want to work with the database as a plugin, that I can unplug and plug another respecting Open/Closed for the rest of my code, my repository should not know about the column names of the database I'm using. So how to implement this pattern in a way that it can transform the result from the database into a Entity of my domain, without knowing about the database table and column names? As my main language is PHP, I saw that in Doctrine\\ORM you can easily pass different yamls or xmls config files, mapping the column names to property names on the Entity, but... I cant be a hostage of a library implementation, if I want to implement raw PDO, or any other library for my repositories that doesn't make this hydration out-of-the-box, my implementation should do, so how? **Update**   ![Illustration](http://s30.postimg.org/u2vp7n0xt/Desenho_sem_t_tulo_1.jpg) **Update 2**   Please, take a look at: http://leocavalcante.github.io/patterns/2014/07/11/repository-pattern-and- database-schema.html"}
{"_id": "176662", "title": "Views : ViewControllers, many to one, or one to one?", "text": "I have developed an Android application where, typically, each view (`layout.xml`) displayed on the screen has it's own corresponding fragment (for the purpose of this question I may refer to this as a `ViewController`). These views and Fragments/ViewControllers are appropriately named to reflect what they display. So this has the effect of allowing the programmer to easily pinpoint the files associated with what they see on any given screen. The above refers to the one to one part of my question. _Please note that with the above there are a few exceptions where very similar is displayed on two views so the`ViewController` is used for two views. (Using a simple switch (type) to determine what `layout.xml` file to load)_ On the flip side. I am currently working on the iOS version of the same app, which I didn't develop. It seems that they are adopting more of a one-to-many (`ViewController`:`View`) approach. There appears to be one `ViewController` that handles the display logic for many different types of views. In the `ViewController` are an assortment of boolean flags and arrays of data (to be displayed) that are used to determine what view to load and how to display it. This seems very cumbersome to me and coupled with no comments/ambiguous variable names I am finding it very difficult to implement changes into the project. What do you guys think of the two approaches? Which one would you prefer? I'm really considering putting in some extra time at work to refactor the iOS into a more 1:1 oriented approach. My reasoning for 1:1 over M:1 is that of modularity and legibility. After all, don't some people measure the quality of code based on how easy it is for another developer to pick up the reigns or how easy it is to pull a piece of code and use it somewhere else?"}
{"_id": "246793", "title": "Why isn't testing a language a supported feature at the syntax level?", "text": "You can find an endless list of blogs, articles and websites promoting the benefits of unit testing your source code. It's almost guaranteed that the developers who programmed the compilers for Java, C++, C# and other typed languages used unit testing to verify their work. So why then, despite its popularity, is testing absent from the syntax of these languages? Microsoft introduced LINQ to C#, so why couldn't they also add testing? I'm not looking to predict what those language changes would be, but to clarify why they are absent to begin with. As an example: We know that you can write a `for` loop without the syntax of the `for` statement. You could use `while` or `if`/`goto` statements. Someone decided a `for` statement was more efficient and introduced it into a language. Why hasn't testing followed the same evolution of programming languages?"}
{"_id": "184847", "title": "Determining which decorator classes are available via reflection", "text": "I'm creating a pizza place application where employees will be able to create orders for customers(pizza and any number of toppings). This is for a school project but the requirements have nothing to do with this question. On the GUI I have a number of checkboxes that the employee will use to determine which toppings the pizza should have. I want to use the decorator pattern for this. **This is what I want to do(just not sure if its a good idea):** I want to put all of my decorators in a separate namespace, and then using reflection grab all of the decorator names out of that name space and use them to build the checkbox list. The reason for doing this is because if more toppings are added later I think it would be beneficial to just be able to add assemblies (topping decorators) without having to recompile/re-distribute the entire application. Thoughts? (I just learned reflection and I have a hammer and am just trying to pound everything in that even remotely looks lilke a nail)"}
{"_id": "246791", "title": "Remote limitations of hg4j?", "text": "I\u2019m evaluating hg4j to see if it\u2019s useable in my current project. I need a (preferably) pure Java hg library that can:   1. Check out a working copy of a _remote_ hg repo at, say, http://myhg01.example.com/myapp   2. Create a new repo on the same hg server; perhaps a new repo called \u201cfizzbuzz\u201d that would then be hosted from http://myhg01.example.com/fizzbuzz   3. Check code in (\u201cpush\u201d) to that new repo My question: does hg4j currently do this? If not, does anyone have any suggestions for me?"}
{"_id": "141052", "title": "How many indexes is too many indexes?", "text": "I have a table with about 37 indexes. Would that be considered too many? What are some best practices regarding indexing? EDIT: It is warehousing data, updated daily with new transactions. There are 47 million rows. 3 of the indexes are very necessary. The other 34~ are 'where' clause indexes intended to speed up queries."}
{"_id": "216526", "title": "Service layer coupling", "text": "I am working on writing a service layer for an order system in php. It's the typical scenario, you have an Order that can have multiple Line Items. So lets say a request is received to store a line item with pictures and comments. I might receive a json request such as               {          'type': 'Bike',         'color': 'Red',         'commentIds': [3193,3194]         'attachmentIds': [123,413]     }      My idea was to have a `Service_LineItem_Bike` class that knows how to take the json data and store an entity for a bike. My question is, the `Service_LineItem` class now needs to fetch comments and file attachments, and store the relationships. `Service_LineItem` seems like it should interact with a `Service_Comment` and a `Service_FileUpload`. Should instances of these two other services be instantiated and passed to the `Service_LineItem` constructor,or set by getters and setters? Dependency injection seems like the right solution, allowing a service access to a 'service fetching helper' seems wrong, and this should stay at the application level. I am using Doctrine 2 as a ORM, and I can technically write a dql query inside `Service_LineItem` to fetch the comments and file uploads necessary for the association, but this seems like it would have a tighter coupling, rather then leaving this up to the right service object."}
{"_id": "238898", "title": "What syntax should I use to execute functions in jQuery Terminal?", "text": "I want to add feature, to jQuery Terminal, that will allow to execute commands from the server. Right now it only have formatting syntax that look like this:               [[<list of one letter styles> ; <color> ; <background> ; <class>] TEXT ]      and if you want to display bold white text you can use: `[[b;#fff;]Some Text]`. What syntax should I use for executing commands that will not interfere with formatting but will be similar? Maybe something like `[{name}(param1, param2, param3)]` or `[[exec:name(param1, param2, param3)]]` Any suggestions are wellcome."}
{"_id": "238899", "title": "From a DDD perspective is a report generating service a domain service or an infrastructure service?", "text": "Let assume we have the following service whose responsibility is to generate Excel reports:               class ExcelReportService{             public String generateReport(String fileFormatFilePath, ResultSet data){           ReportFormat reportFormat = new ReportFormat(fileFormatFilePath);           ExcelDataFormatterService excelDataFormatterService = new ExcelDataFormatterService();           FormattedData formattedData = excelDataFormatterService.format(data);           ExcelFileService excelFileService = new ExcelFileService();           String reportPath= excelFileService.generateReport(reportFormat,formattedData);                    return reportPath;            }         }      This is pseudo code for the service I want to design where:   * `fileFormatFilePath`: path to a configuration file where I'll keep the format of my excel file (headers, column widths, number of columns,..etc)    * `data`: the actual records returned from the database. This data   can't be used directly coz I might need to make further calculations to the data before inserting them to the excel file.   * `ReportFormat`: Value object to hold the report format, has methods   like `getHeaders()`, `getColumnWidth()`,...etc.   * `ExcelDataFormatterService`: a service to hold any logic that need to be applied to the data returned from the database before inserting it to the file.   * `FormattedData`: Value object the represents the formatted data to be inserted. `ExcelFileService`: a wrapper top the 3rd party library that generates the excel file. Now how do you determine whether a service is an infrastructure or domain service?   I have the following 3 services here:   `ExcelReportService`, `ExcelDataFormatterService` and `ExcelFileService`?"}
{"_id": "238895", "title": "Front end developers vs HTML/CSS coders plus \"the JavaScript developer\"", "text": "I was just googling around to find a good definition of front-end developer and the definitions that I found were pretty much \"a guy that does HTML/CSS/JavaScript (jQuery)\". But I think this is no longer the case. Today we have very complex interfaces, say a single page BackboneJS app that require a lot more than just \"a guy that does HTML/CSS/JavaScript\" and has no background in Computer Science. I would argue that the guy that engineers the front-end app (Backbone, Angular, etc) should be as (if not more) skilled programmer than the guy that engineers the back-end. So in my scenario (single page webapp - say with Backbone), I have 3 people:   1. A back-end programmer - the guy responsible for all the API calls that the Backbone app would make    2. A \"front-end\" programmer - they guy that's responsible for getting the work from the designer (wireframes if you will) and turning it into responsive, cross-browser, cross-platform HTML/CSS code   3. The \"JavaScript\" developer who makes everything light up, hooks up the HTML/CSS to the API and brings the app to life.  My question is: What is the most usual modern dev team structure? How is the work usually divided between the front end and back end developers. Of course if you only have full-stack developers that can produce JavaScript and say PHP equally well, then you have less of an issue. But still, who is the front-end developer and how do you call \"the JavaScript developer\"? Excuse my simple language, I tried to stay as far away from terminology as possible."}
{"_id": "238897", "title": "Software License for project using .NET and Sql Server Express", "text": "I considering making my application open source on github. I don't intend to sell it (neither in binary form nor source code form). It probably isn't even useful to a lot of people except maybe for learning purposes. The application is developed in .NET 4.5 (WPF). It doesn't use any external libraries. Only pure .NET libraries as provided by Microsoft. However, it is dependent on Microsoft Sql Server Express 2008. I would like to license the application under the GPLv3 but I don't know if that will work because of the SQL Server requirement. If not, what would you recommend? Sorry, but English isn't my first language and hence I'm having difficulties understanding all this legal stuff. Thanks for your time."}
{"_id": "238890", "title": "static set and non-static get method", "text": "I've the following Interface.               public interface ValueInterface     {       long  getValue();     }      And the class:               public class ValueCreator implements ValueInterface     {       private static long value  = 0;            public void setValue(long valueInDollar)       {         value= valueInDollar;       }            @Override       public long getValue()       {         return value;       }     }      The static code analyzer findbugs warned me not to set a static field in a non-static method. If I make the set method static, I can't make the getter static as it is an interface overridden method. So, is it okay to have a static setter and non-static getter or what could be a better approach?"}
{"_id": "80974", "title": "What is the standard for modeling modern applications prior to development?", "text": "I'm taking on my first enterprise-level application ~~and I want my team to model the entire ASP.NET MVC C# application before we even tap out one line of code.~~ UPDATE: This was not intended to be a philosophical discussion about when to document/model an application. Please only provide answers for \"how\" to document/model. The truth is that I've always skimped in this department and I've never really modeled an application before. What is the standard way to do this? What type of diagrams should be used and what would the documentation look like? Links to sample diagrams and documentation is appreciated. When searching I can find numerous things around the net but I wanted to see if there is a current modern consensus on how to go about doing this. Thanks in advance! ### Closing Statement I had no idea this was such a sticky subject. Thank you to all of you that could set aside the obvious controversy and provide useful answers. It was an interesting discussion to say the least :) Another useful link I discovered is this: Do you use UML in Agile development practices?"}
{"_id": "1620", "title": "What is happening to PHP 6?", "text": "I am excited about the changes in PHP 6 previewed in PHP 5.3+. However, I wonder why it takes so long to release PHP 6? Books about it have been published since 2008, and announcements on it since 2007, but I am yet to hear about an alpha or a beta. Why does it take so long to release it? Or is that the way it goes with all languages when they transition to a major release where I guess it takes around 4-5 years to release?"}
{"_id": "170840", "title": "Should we have a database independent SQL like query language in Django?", "text": "**Note :**   * I know we have `Django ORM` already that keeps things database independent and converts to the database specific `SQL` queries.   * Once things starts getting complicated it is preferred to write `raw SQL` queries for better efficiency.   * When you write `raw sql` queries your code gets trapped with the database you are using.   * I also understand its important to use the full power of your database that can-not be achieved with the `django orm` alone. My Question :   * Until I use any database specific feature, why should one be trapped with the database.   * For instance : > We have a query with multiple joins and we decided to write a raw sql query. > Now, that makes my website `postgres` specific. Even when I have not used > any postgres specific feature. I feel there should be some `fake sql` language which can translate to any database's sql query. Even Django's ORM can be built over it. So, that if you go out of ORM but not database specific - you can still remain database independent. I asked the same question to `Jacob Kaplan Moss` (In person) :   * He advised me to stay with the database that I like and endure its whole power, to which I agree. But my point was not that we should be `database independent`.   * My point is we should be database independent until we use a database specific feature. Please explain, why should be there a `fake sql` layer over the actual sql ? ================================ **Update:** ================================ **My suggestion:** Solve the independence of the database on a `fake sql` level and then build ORM over that fake sql. So, if I have to write a sql query - I will use `fake sql` that would work on all databases yet raw SQL. That way, I will remain database independent unless I use a feature very specific to my database. Therefore, a query like `select * from table limit 10;` will work on both `postgres` and 'MS-SQL Server'. Is that sensible ? **Note:**   * I am not talking about `ANSI SQL`, I am suggesting a `fake sql` to make all databases work with 1 standard sql. **[ Which may not cover db specific features ]**"}
{"_id": "134763", "title": "Team Parallel development in ASP.NET", "text": "I am developing an application written in ASP.NET (C#) which heavily use on Master Page and Session. As there will be enhancement in the same web application, and will be done by my teammate. is there any good approach that can enable we to work on the same solution, and delivery the change to UAT / PDN separately? the change control team of my company don't allow us to create 2 set of code in UAT and merge it into one set in PDN. any idea is welcome. Thanks."}
{"_id": "134766", "title": "The term \"interface\" in C++", "text": "Java makes a clear distinction between `class` and `interface`. (I believe C# does also, but I have no experience with it). When writing C++ however there is no language enforced distinction between class and interface. Consequently I've always viewed interface as a workaround for the lack of multiple inheritance in Java. Making such a distinction feels arbitrary and meaningless in C++. I've always tended to go with the \"write things in the most obvious way\" approach, so if in C++ I've got what might be called an interface in Java, e.g.:               class Foo {     public:       virtual void doStuff() = 0;       ~Foo() = 0;     };      and I then decided that most implementers of `Foo` wanted to share some common functionality I would probably write:               class Foo {     public:       virtual void doStuff() = 0;       ~Foo() {}     protected:       // If it needs this to do its thing:       int internalHelperThing(int);       // Or if it doesn't need the this pointer:       static int someOtherHelper(int);     };      Which then makes this not an interface in the Java sense anymore. Instead C++ has two important concepts, related to the same underlying inheritance problem:   1. `virtual` inhertiance   2. Classes with no member variables can occupy no extra space when used as a base > \"Base class subobjects may have zero size\" Reference Of those I try to avoid #1 wherever possible - it's rare to encounter a scenario where that genuinely is the \"cleanest\" design. #2 is however a subtle, but important difference between my understanding of the term \"interface\" and the C++ language features. As a result of this I currently (almost) never refer to things as \"interfaces\" in C++ and talk in terms of base classes and their sizes. I would say that in the context of C++ \"interface\" is a misnomer. It has come to my attention though that not many people make such a distinction.   1. Do I stand to lose anything by allowing (e.g. `protected`) non-`virtual` functions to exist within an \"interface\" in C++? (My feeling is the exactly the opposite - a more natural location for shared code)   2. Is the term \"interface\" meaningful in C++ - does it imply _only_ pure `virtual` or would it be fair to call C++ classes with no member variables an interface still?"}
{"_id": "164560", "title": "How to Be a Software Engineer?", "text": "My problem is kind of weird so please bear with me. I have been working in a start up concerned basically with mobile development since my graduation 2 years ago. I develop apps for iOS but it's not really relevant. The start up structure is simply founders > developers, with no middle-tier technical supervision or project management whatsoever. A typical project cycle of ours is like this: meet with a client > send very vague requirements to an outsourced graphics designer > dig in development right after we get the design, no questions asked > then improvise improvise improvise! It's not that we are unaware that stuff like requirements analysis, UML, design patterns, source code control, testing, development methodologies... etc. exist, we just simply don't use them, and I mean like never. The result is usually a clunk of hardly-maintainable yet working code. Despite everything we are literally flourishing with many successful apps on all platforms and bigger clients each project. The thing is, we want the chaos to stop and we're looking for advice. How would you fix our company technically? Given that you can't hire project managers or team leaders just because we are barely 5 developers, so it wouldn't be a justified cost for the founders, but one-time things like courses, books, private training... etc is an option. Lastly, if it's relevant, we are based in Egypt. Thank you a lot in advance."}
{"_id": "134769", "title": "Program more professionally (planning, notation, ...)", "text": "I program a data-analysis framework for my company (20000LOCs by now). There are 2 programmers who help writing individual module for interfaces I have predefined. So far I haven't used much planning or tools. I basically think of new classes in my head and write them down in Python+Eclipse. As Python is good for proto-typing I can easily modify it if I overlook one aspect. However, sometimes I need to refactor some structure and I wonder if that hadn't happened if I used planning tools. What do you think is the most important start to plan programming more professionally? The project won't become too big as it's only for data analysis, but managing which data is processed which way is also tedious. Can you suggest methods, reading or tools? My class hierarchy is pretty flat so I don't see much use in class diagrams. However, something like call diagrams and diagrams which show how objects reference each other might help. I've learned OOP by myself, but I'm confident that once I consider all requirements I can design a nice class structure. What about TDD? For the moment I cannot imagine how to use it since most calculation are on network-like data with objects and many object references (links). Moreover data content hasn't been a problem yet. Yet, I suspect that some more professional approach might be more efficient. Ideas?"}
{"_id": "164565", "title": "Methods for systematically researching technologies to use in a project?", "text": "If I want to recommend a technology/plugin/library to my company for use in a project, are there any methodologies I can use that will produce more reliable results and a more convincing presentation of said results than just my own \"common sense\" approach?"}
{"_id": "133230", "title": "Should I Correct Candidates' Interview Answers?", "text": "I've been interviewing software engineers lately and I tend to ask harder and hardeer questions until they get something wrong, then switch to another technology track and do the same. When the candidates do get something wrong, I always tell them the right answer...mainly because that's what I would want if I were being interviewed. It sucks to just hear \"no that's not right\" and nothing else... Yesterday a candidate made a snarky comment when I gave him the correct answer after he answered incorrectly, saying \"well I'm not sure I'll ever use that information...\". I never speak condescendingly or critically. I just say in a matter of fact tone: \"actually, in xyz language, abc is implemented in such a way, not in that way\". Is my practice of providing correct answers inappropriate? Should I reconsider this practice?"}
{"_id": "162813", "title": "Code Review process", "text": "I'm looking for a light-weight code review process. A couple of requirements, the reviewer must be able to do the review alone at the time of his/her choosing (not tied to check-ins), the reviewer must be able to easily find the target code, the review has to leave some document showing what was reviewed. I know there are tools available for code review but I work in a very ridig environment and introducing new tools is not an option. One idea I've been thinking about is to create a new Visual Studio Task List token called REVIEW, and use it to mark the code that needs reviewing. Something like,               // REVIEW doe_john: New method, not sure about the exception.      Then we would add a Review workitem in TFS (we're using the CMM template). Another possibility, which I would actually prefer, would be to have developers create a TFS Review workitem and add links to code to it, but I don't know if this is possible. Obviously you can add a link to a file, but I'd like to have a link to a particular method."}
{"_id": "162810", "title": "is 'protected' ever reasonable outside of virtual methods and destructors?", "text": "so, suppose you have some fields and methods marked protected (non-virtual). presumably, you did this because you didn't mark them public because you don't want some nincompoop to accidentally call them in the wrong order or pass in invalid parameters, or you don't want people to rely on behaviour that you're going to change later. so, why is it okay for that nincompoop to use those fields and methods from a subclass? as far as i can tell, they can still screw up in the same ways, and the same compatibility issues still exist if you change the implementation. the cases for protected i can think of are: non-virtual destructors, so you can't break things by deleting the base class. virtual methods, so you can override 'private' methods called by the base class. constructors in c++. in java/c# marking the class as abstract will do basically the same. any other use cases?"}
{"_id": "178697", "title": "Are these advanced/unfair interview questions regarding Java concurrency?", "text": "Here are some questions I've recently asked interviewees who say they know Java concurrency:   1. Explain the hazard of \"memory visibility\" - the way the JVM can reorder certain operations on variables that are unprotected by a monitor and not declared `volatile`, such that one thread may not see the changes made by another thread. Usually I ask this one by showing code where this hazard is present (e.g. the `NoVisibility` example in Listing 3.1 from \"Java Concurrency in Practice\" by Goetz et al) and asking what is wrong.   2. Explain how `volatile` affects not just the actual variable declared `volatile`, but also any changes to variables made by a thread before it changes the `volatile` variable.    3. Why might you use `volatile` instead of `synchronized`?    4. Implement a condition variable with `wait()` and `notifyAll()`. Explain why you should use `notifyAll()`. Explain why the condition variable should be tested with a `while` loop. My question is - are these appropriate or too advanced to ask someone who says they know Java concurrency? And while we're at it, do you think that someone working in Java concurrency should be expected to have an above-average knowledge of Java garbage collection?"}
{"_id": "133235", "title": "Are there any off the shelf solutions for feature use analysis?", "text": "I write a set of productivity tools that sells online and have tens of thousands of users. While we do get very good feedback, this tends to come from only the most vocal users, so we fear we might be missing the big picture. We would like to know if there is any off the shelf (or nearly so) solution to capture usage of different features and to report usage patterns and trends over time. Note: These tools are native apps, not web-based. I know about Google Analytics and the like. They're great, but I'm looking for native code solutions."}
{"_id": "133238", "title": "Computed Values and Simple Reads - A nagging pain for my Domain Driven Designs!", "text": "The problem I continually face is how to deal with computed values driven by domain logic while still working efficiently against the data store. Example: I'm returning a list of Products from my repository via a service. This list is limited by pagination info from request DTO sent by the client. In addition, the DTO specifies a sort parameter (a client-friendly enum). In a simple scenario, everything works great: the service sends paging and sorting expressions to the repo and the repo issues an efficient query to the DB. That all breaks down, however, when I need to sort on values generated in memory from my domain model. For instance the Product class has an IsExpired() method that returns a bool based on business logic. Now I can't sort and page at the repo level --it would all have be done in memory (inefficient) and my service would have to know the intricacies of when to issue these params to the repo and when to perform sorting/paging itself. The only pattern that seems to make sense to me is to store the state of the entity in the db (make IsExpired() a readonly field and update it via the domain logic before saving). If I separate this logic into a separate \"read model/dto\" and \"reporting\" repository, I'm making my model more anemic than I'd like to. BTW, every example I've seen out there for computations like this really seems to lean on in-memory processing and glossing over the fact that it is far less efficient in the long run. Maybe I'm prematurely optimizing, but that just doesn't sit right with me. I'd love to hear how others have dealt with this as I'm sure it's common on nearly project involving DDD."}
{"_id": "178698", "title": "Web interface with FastCGI or with direct HTTP?", "text": "Let's assume I want (for fun at start) to play with some new DSL (domain specific language) idea. And I really want its user[s] (probably only me at first) to interact thru a web interface. I'll probably implement it in C++ (probably using LLVM). Should I use an HTTP server library (like libonion or microhttpd) to talk directly HTTP or should I use FastCGI? I could also use libraries doing both like cppcms or wt... In particular, I am noticing that several recent web frameworks (Opa, Ocsigen, ...) do not have any FastCGI interface but only HTTP one.... (but Ur/Web seems to have both) So my feeling is that FastCGI is really out of fashion.... Any opinions on that? Do you know recently started project using FastCGI ? (and what about SCGI?)"}
{"_id": "197977", "title": "Is there a better way of handling access control logic instead of it being in the UI?", "text": "Through most of my dev experience, I've never had to deal with much variety of access control architectures. They've all been pretty straight forward:               Group [Create, Update, Delete]         - User 1         - User 2          Group [Update, Delete]         - User 2      Which, for all intents and purposes, works well. The problem I have is the actual implementation of it. All the solutions I've worked on either grant/deny the visibility of a menu link, or disable a button etc. This is all controlled via the top-most layer of the app, whether it be a WebApp or WinForms UI. I'm in the early stages of designing a rather large WinForms system so I'd like to get the security architecture right from the beginning. Although I don't see myself getting away from visually limiting the user from performing certain actions (by disabling restricted controls etc), I'm sure there are better solutions available then doing most of the work in the UI. As I understand it (and these might be limited by my ignorance), these are my options:   * Put the logic to return and verify user rights in the business layer   * On the form_load event, get these rules and enable/disabled UI elements   * Leave the UI elements in tact and halt the operation from within the business layer if the user doesn't have permission for the action (dirty!) Surely there must be more elegant solutions than this. Could someone please provide me with alternatives or improvements to the aforementioned ideas? Am I thinking about it incorrectly? Should I re-evaluate my database design while I'm at it?"}
{"_id": "94832", "title": "Will staying in this position affect my career negatively?", "text": "I work at a small software company where the owners are also the managers. My concern is that any and all progression in technology is met with utter disdain by management. Some of the comments are as follows:   * LINQ, nHibernate, and ORM are bad programming practice, we will never use them.   * The majority of large applications are still written in VB6.   * The web is just a waste of time, its not meant for applications. Every time a new version of development software is released, I have to listen to the management complain about it for hours. Technologies like WPF, WCF, MVC and Entity are completely ignored. All that said, its not a horrible place to work, the pay is average and its close to home. My concern is that, even though we are technically using the latest version of .NET, we are hardly using the latest technologies, we might as well be using .NET 1. If I decide to move, will this \"experience\" limit me career wise? I have been here for a few years already. EDIT: I am really grateful for the superb response. I honestly think it might be in my own best interest to make a move."}
{"_id": "122147", "title": "Multiple possible jsp views for a request", "text": "I'm looking to offer the user some way of changing how a single page looks based on some pre-defined jsps. i.e. Two or more jsp's contain similar information, and would be backed by a single controller method. The controller would decide which view to return.   1. Is there a common way of achieving this? At the moment I have some administration screens where I control a list of possible views. The user can then choose which one to see from a drop-down. My current issue is that I don't know how to confirm (at the admin screen) that the view is valid.   2. Is there a way of asking spring for all possible views so I can filter them and resent a drop-down on the admin screen rather than a free text field? If not is there a way of asking spring if a single view is valid? All these views will reside under a common directory, so it would probably be possible to scan recursively from that point and build a list of possible views. This goes beyond simply changing the css, since the page content might be different despite being backed by the same model."}
{"_id": "5452", "title": "Books and stories on programming culture, specifically in the 80's / early 90's", "text": "I've enjoyed a number of (fiction/non-fiction books) about hacker culture and running a software business in the 80's, 90's. For some reason things seemed so much more exciting back then. Examples are:   * Microserfs (Douglas Coupland)   * Accidental Empires (Robert X. Cringely   * Almost Pefect (W.E. Peterson, online!)   * Coders at Work (Peter Seibel) Today I'm an entrepeneur and programmer. Back in the 80's a I was a young geek hacking DOS TSR's and coding GWBasic / QBasic. In the 90's I was a C.S. university student, experiencing the rise of the Internet world wide. When reading these books running a software business seemed so much more fun than it is nowadays. Things used to be so much simpler, opportunities seemed to be everywhere and the startups seemed to work with much more real problems (inventing spreadsheets, writing word processors in assembly on 6 different platforms) than all our current web 2.0 social networking toys. Does anyone share these feelings? Does anyone have any good (personal) stories from back then or know of other good books to read?"}
{"_id": "246138", "title": "Source code modification and GPLv3 compatibility", "text": "Assume that the source file A contains the following license notice: \"This code is Copyright 1234 by XYZ. It may be freely redistributed in its entirety provided that this copyright notice is not removed.\" Can I combine it with a project B published under the GPL version 3 license? In particular, does the lack of a permission to modify source file A (\"redistributed in its entirety\") prohibit that?"}
{"_id": "207042", "title": "Is there a good reason not to display error messages to users?", "text": "Windows 8 seems to have chosen to silently shutdown applications that misbehave, there is no message informing the user something bad happened and no information on why the application closed. I heard through the grapevine that employees at Microsoft are tired of customers blaming them for crashes and that they believe when they display an error to the user the user will accuse Microsoft of the crash instead of the app developer. Regardless of whether that is true or not is it really not a good idea to display error messages? I thought that error messages at least give users something to use when they are searching the web for help or talking to customer service. What possible good reason is there for crashing silently and not showing an error message?"}
{"_id": "232131", "title": "Use of Unmodified AGPLv3 lib - am I AGPL too?", "text": "So, I've been reading the AGPL and here is my understanding (not being a lawyer and I'm not trying to look at it through the lens of \"Since I WANT it to be ''free'', it therefore is.\". In my case, I am considering the use of itext, an AGPL library, to crack open PDF files and extract the text - that's it. There will be an internal desktop app and I've proposed using my extraction code (which uses the itext dll) on the website to speed up the process for those folks upstairs who've been doing it manually for years. Under definitions:   * \"the program\" means the itext lib, being the copyrightable work.   * \"modify\" or \"based on\" means, a version of the program which differs from the original. Not applicable here since I am not modifying the code.   * \"covered work\" means the original or modified versions of the original work. In my case, it would be the original work.   * \"propagate\" and \"convey\" mean to copy or distribute the program (the itext lib, in my case, compiled as a dll), in which case, as I understand it, the source to the covered work must be made available. This doesn't apply to use within companies (since the company can require employees to not make copies and distribute software). Use on public facing networks though, might be a consideration per sec13, though the web users won't be interacting with the program itself or with the output of the program.   * \"interactive user interface\"... so far, haven't seen one in the lib but this is probably the least clear of the definitions since it mentions the \"work\" and libs (the work, in this case) generally don't interact with users. If I need to, I can include a mention somewhere, no biggie. So, by my interpretation of the definitions, the covered work is the itext code I am using. The code I write separately, is not based on or modified from the itext code and thus, can be licenced any way I choose, incl locking it down tightly or posting openly on my fav forum. So long as I do not modify or incorporate copyrighted AGPL code directly into my code, there is nothing I can see in this licence that prevents me from linking to the original version I downloaded. Most I might have to do is provide the source to the version of the covered work. So, emotions aside and focusing solely on legality, what say you? I think it's clear from the FSF FAQ, that internal corporate use means I can do pretty much anything I like and no source needs to be distributed outside the organization. My only real concern is making a web app which in turn, makes calls to the itext lib. What am I required to do in this case? I believe I only need to provide a link or location to download the itext code. Another option, what if I made a small, separate, standalone program, and had the website call it via a standard \"run\" mechanism? The rest of the existing website should not have to suddenly fall under the AGPL even if my text extractor portion does, correct?"}
{"_id": "175318", "title": "see what ARC does?", "text": "If I understand correctly, all ARC does is automatically add memory-management statements such as `retain` and `autorelease` in the proper places in a program. Is there any way to see all the memory-management statements that ARC automatically adds to a program?"}
{"_id": "175313", "title": "One codebase - lots of hosted services (similar to a basecamp style service) - planning structure", "text": "We have built a service (PHP Based) for a client, and are now looking to offer it to other clients as a hosted service. For this example, think of it like a hosted forum service, where a client signs up on our site, and is given a subdomain or can use their own domain, and the code picks up the domain, checks it against a 'master' users table, and then loads the content as needed. I'm trying to work out the best way of handling multiple clients. At the moment I can only think of two options that would work:   * **Option 1** - Have 1 set of database tables, but on each table have a column called 'siteid' - this would mean every query has to check the siteid. This would effectively work with just 1 codebase, and 1 database.   * **Option 2** - Have 1 'master' database with all the core stuff such as the client details and their domain. Then when the systen checks the domain, it pulls the clients database details (username/password/dbname) from a table, and loads a second database. The issue here is security of the mysql server details, however it does have the benefit that they are running their own database instead of sharing one. Which option would I be better taking here, and why? Ideally I want it to be fairly easy to convert the 'standalone' script to the 'multi-domain' script as we're on a tight deadline."}
{"_id": "238271", "title": "Refactoring a live system that is tightly coupled with improper data models and business logic in the front-end", "text": "# Scenario This was a project that I once had to maintain. After reading _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_ , I started to think how I would refactor this system in a live environment, _if I had to (thankfully, I didn't)._ The system was a legacy system without documentation and extremely tightly coupled. Database relationships were incorrectly modelled - i.e. objects that were meant to be many-to-one were mapped as one-to-one. Using \"duplication\" allowed for \"pseudo-many-to-one\" relationships. Business logic was stored as JavaScript solely on the front-end. Data was tightly coupled to Presentation data. As an example, a Question object could not exist without a Table Cell object. The database had a table call \"TableCell\" to store inline CSS for each cell which was mapped one-to-one with a \"Question\" object. The system was a horrendous mess and eventually lead to loss of data and a complete re-write in the end. In total the project was about 350K LOC. As a side note, the reason why the system was re-written (or needed refactoring) was that it was to be exposed to the Internet, but we were able to modify the business logic using the Chrome Debugger to elevate roles, inject code, and execute all sorts of undesired functions. ## Question The book used examples where the logic was placed in the middle tier. However, what happens when the business logic is placed in the front-end? From my point of view the refactor process would have to go this way:   1. Refactor the front-end JavaScript to understand the business logic   2. Refactor the middle-tier to include validation   3. Refactor the database to decouple the data models   4. Migrate the data   5. Refactor the middle-tier to decouple the data models   6. Refactor the front-end to reflect the changes in the data models. I have read Techniques to re-factor garbage and maintain sanity? and it is helpful, but it doesn't address the order in which refactoring should occur for this specific scenario. This process seems to add a lot of redundancy as the front-end and middle-tier are refactored twice in the live system.   * What is a more efficient way to refactor such a system while keeping the system live?"}
{"_id": "254857", "title": "Handling multiple packet types in Java 8", "text": "I have a Netty-based game server implementation that handles 40 or so distinct packets with their own serialization structure, for brevity I'll refer to them as `FooPacket`, `BarPacket`, ... These packet types have been assigned consecutive numerical \"packet types\", which are unsigned bytes. For example, `FooPacket` is type 0x01, `BarPacket` is type 0x02, etc... All of these packets extend an abstract class, `MyGameNetworkPacket`. My current approach with Netty is to use an initial decoding layer to convert a TCP stream into a series of unparsed packet objects, which are defined as consisting of a packet type, length, and buffer containing the actual packet contents. (no byte stuffing is performed). I then feed this packet down the pipeline to one of a few \"deserializing processors\", each of which handles a set of packet types that are semantically related to each other (for example one such processor might handle connection state messages, while another may handle packets related to a certain aspect of the game itself). As per the design of Netty's MessageToMessageDecoder usage, my decoder is implemented as:               protected void decode (ChannelHandlerContext ctx, UnparsedPacket msg, List<Object> out)             throws Exception {         switch (msg.command) {             case FooPacket.COMMAND_ID:                 FooPacket fooPacket = new FooPacket(msg.frame);                 out.add(fooPacket);                 break;             case BarPacket.COMMAND_ID:                 BarPacket barPacket = new BarPacket(msg.frame);                 out.add(barPacket);                 break;         }          }      Once I get a structure decided upon I can easily create this with a code generator. In addition, I override `public boolean acceptInboundMessage(Object)` to specify if an unparsed packet should be handled by this decoder. This is attaining a bit of what appears to be a code-smell for me, so I was looking into alternative solutions, such as:   * Having an array whose (integer keys) map to values of a lambda that takes a RawPacket and returns the parsed packet. This seems like a somewhat weird way to use an array and requires that I manually maintain the definition of that array so that its index-element mapping exactly matches the actual packet type to packet structure mapping already in use.   * Having a map structure that does the same thing as the array. Similar pitfalls, but somewhat more maintainable. Are these any more novel ways to approach this that I haven't thought of yet?"}
{"_id": "254854", "title": "How create unit test the performance of an application?", "text": "What I want is to run automatically methods to tests the performance of an application. Just like the unit tests, but with the purpose of evaluate the performance and create reports if is it possible. Is there any framework or tool to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "254852", "title": "Using Mockito.reset", "text": "I've just read a lot of arguments against using `Mockito.reset` and can't make much sense of it. Put differently, I agree in general, but there's always a case which looks like using `reset` is useful or even necessary. Grossly simplified, my class under test is an encapsulated map like               class Handler {         private final Map<String, String> map;              public void handle(RequestResponse rr) {             if (rr.isPut()) {                 map.put(rr.key(), rr.value());                 rr.response(\"OK\");             } else {                 rr.response(map.get(rr.key());             }         }     }      To test it, I mock `RequestResponse` and do something like               when(rr.isPut()).thenReturn(true);     when(rr.key()).thenReturn(\"key\");     when(rr.value()).thenReturn(\"value\");     handler.handle(rr);     verify(rr).response(\"OK\");          reset(rr);          when(rr.isPut()).thenReturn(false);     when(rr.key()).thenReturn(\"key\");     handler.handle(rr);     verify(rr).response(\"value\");          reset(rr);          when(rr.isPut()).thenReturn(false);     when(rr.key()).thenReturn(\"anotherKey\");     handler.handle(rr);     verify(rr).response(null);      I can see, I'm testing three things at once:   * proper response after \"put\"   * proper value returned from get with the same key   * `null` returned from get with another key I can imagine reasons to separate the two last tests. However, they both need the first one and I still need a `reset` in between? Or don't I? ### Update In the meantime the class under test has got a bit more complicated and the need for `reset` bigger. It's sort of a state machine and the test looks like   * repeat the following accross different paths      * try an illegal step and expect an exception     * try another illegal step and expect an exception     * do a legal step and verify output I actually only need two methods, one verifying the exception for an illegal step and the other verifying correct output for a legal step. Executing an illegal step mustn't change the state, so it's safe to mix it in. Consider this example: If the only valid input sequence was `A, B, C` (three steps) and the corresponding outputs were `a, b, c`, then a test looks like               checkException(\"B\")     checkException(\"C\")          checkOutput(\"A\", \"a\")     checkException(\"A\")     checkException(\"C\")          checkOutput(\"B\", \"b\")     checkException(\"A\")     checkException(\"B\")          checkOutput(\"C\", \"c\")     checkException(\"A\")     checkException(\"B\")     checkException(\"C\")      walks through the whole path and verifies everything. It would take many \"normal\" single-condition-verifying tests to achieve the same, right?"}
{"_id": "254851", "title": "Basic logical operator question", "text": "#include <stdio.h>     int main()     {         int k=5;         if(++k < 5 && k++ / 5 || ++k <= 8)         {              printf(\"%d\",k);         }         return 0;     }      Why is the output 7 and not 8?(I am a beginner in programming so please bear with me.)"}
{"_id": "87611", "title": "Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?", "text": "GMail has this feature where it will warn you if you try to send an email that it _thinks_ might have an attachment. ![Did you mean to attach files?](http://i.stack.imgur.com/sHTG9.png) Because GMail detected the string `see the attached` in the email, but no actual attachment, it warns me with an OK / Cancel dialog when I click the Send button. We have a related problem on Stack Overflow. That is, when a user enters a post like this one:               my problem is I need to change the database but I don't won't to create      a new connection. example:          DataSet dsMasterInfo = new DataSet();     Database db = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase(\"ConnectionString\");     DbCommand dbCommand = db.GetStoredProcCommand(\"uspGetMasterName\");      **This user did not format their code as _code!_** That is, they didn't indent by 4 spaces per Markdown, or use the code button (or the keyboard shortcut `ctrl`+`k`) which does that for them. Thus, our system is accreting a lot of edits where people have to go in and manually format code for people that are somehow unable to figure this out. This leads to a lot of bellyaching. We've improved the editor help several times, but short of driving over to the user's house and pressing the correct buttons on their keyboard for them, we're at a loss to see what to do next. That's why we are considering a Google GMail style warning: > Did you mean to post code? > > You wrote stuff that we think looks like code, but you didn't format it as > code by indenting 4 spaces, using the toolbar code button or the `ctrl`+`k` > code formatting command. However, presenting this warning requires us to **detect the presence of what we think is unformatted code in a question**. What is a simple, semi-reliable way of doing this?   * Per Markdown, code is always indented by 4 spaces or within backticks, so anything correctly formatted can be discarded from the check immediately.   * This is only a _warning_ and it will only apply to low-reputation users asking their first questions (or providing their first answers), so some false positives are OK, so long as they are about 5% or less.   * Questions on Stack Overflow can be in _any_ language, though we can realistically limit our check to, say, the \"big ten\" languages. Per the tags page that would be C#, Java, PHP, JavaScript, Objective-C, C, C++, Python, Ruby.   * Use the Stack Overflow creative commons data dump to audit your potential solution (or just pick a few questions in the top 10 tags on Stack Overflow) and see how it does.   * Pseudocode is fine, but we use c# if you want to be extra friendly.   * The simpler the better (so long as it works). KISS! If your solution requires us to attempt to compile posts in 10 different compilers, or an army of people to manually train a bayesian inference engine, that's ... not exactly what we had in mind."}
{"_id": "87612", "title": "Licensing issue for RSA and Rijndael algorithms", "text": "I'm using .Net to build a commercial application, i.e. a secure chat application. This application is using RSA and Rijndael algorithms. Do we need licenses for using RSA and Rijndael algorithms for commercial product?"}
{"_id": "83725", "title": "How do you design code?", "text": "Even though I work as a programmer, I've never actually been trained as one. Everything I know is self-taught. As part of my continual process of self- improvement, I want to develop better habits/techniques. I'm wondering how most of you design your code before you actually begin coding? Right now, I write an empty program with all my methods and variables commented, and pseudo-code in place of blocks of logic. Do you guys have other tricks/techniques you can share? Right now, most of my work is in client-side Javascript development but of course, these techniques should be global."}
{"_id": "83724", "title": "Making the move to team leading", "text": "I'm looking for some examples of experiences from people who have made the move from programmer to team leader. I'm kind of wanting to know the reasons why people have done it. Specifically, these are some questions and concerns that are floating around in my head.   * Did you have a waning desire to write code but still a strong desire to create programs?   * Did you realise that you were more of a people person and you could utilise your communication skills better?   * Was it because you were asked by management and thought why not?   * For the money?   * How were the initial few months after making the move?   * Were relations with colleagues affected?"}
{"_id": "156812", "title": "OSS - GPL v3 plugins in non-copyleft codebase.", "text": "I've been working on software to modify a game's resource files, and I'm planning on releasing it in open source. I'm perfectly fine with releasing my code under gpl v3. However, I'm afraid that that would deter others from writing extensions for my software, as I have had others offer to do so - the community which I'm working with is very much afraid of open source leeches, and as a result, the majority of popular released projects are closed source. As such, I'd be more comfortable with something like BSD or MIT. The codebase is extremely modular, and one window might consist of the end products of many different plugins. One plugin which I am working with is the work (licensed under gpl v3) of a person who I have communicated with, who was enthusiastic of me using his software. As one other person has contributed to that software, I don't think he can simply release his source to me under a different license. In the future, I'd like to have more plugins for a variety of things which would be difficult to manually implement (as doing so would require large amounts of reverse engineering). Tl;dr: As I am in good terms with these people, is there any means for me to use their code as plugins? I would have permission, but licensing would be the issue, since others have contributed to the codebases. If so, would it be okay if i distributed their plugins with my built software (in a plugins folder)? How about placing them in the code repository and visual studio solution? Any other advice would be appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "83722", "title": "Continuously Improving output of a team", "text": "I am having my own software service company, DIGICORP and I am leading a team of 10 developers. The total company size is of around 50 persons. We are four friends who have started this venture from 2004. During last year, we have read the Getting Real and Rework books from 37signals founders. We closely followed what Zappos did, we have started focusing more on providing quality service and building great environment in the company. This has changed a lot in the way we were doing business. We have been able to build a friendly culture. We also make sure that the team does not face any issues with infrastructure. We keep doing innovative events to make sure that the team has more and more reasons to work at the company. We started making following changes to our business decisions   * Limited Team Size   * Not throwing more time at a problem (Avoiding late night stays and working on weekends)    * 5 days and 8 hours of effective output We face mainly following two issues.   * We find that the output we get today was less as compared to past. This is not just an observation, some of our old employees talk to us in one to one and they also raise the same question.    * We recently discovered that in the friendly culture we have most of the time started showing the better side of the work that way it is becoming more difficult nowadays to reprimand someone when they make mistake. Also due to the same fact, everyone in the company has a feeling that they are producing the greatest output.  So the answer I am looking for :   * How can we improve culture so that everyone in the team keeps improving output regularly and their 8 hours keep becoming more and more valuable?"}
{"_id": "89546", "title": "Choice of technology to develop multi-platform application", "text": "What I have is business WinForms application written in C#.   What I would like to do is to redesign it to meet multi-platform approach. I was thinking about architecture involving application server (executing all the logic and performing database operations) and thin client side running on Windows and Mac OS as well as Android, iPhone or just in web browser. Windows version should also have to be able to use methods from some DLLs. Solution that comes to my mind is desktop client developed to target Silverlight (for Windows and Mac OS users). Web part, based on ASP.NET, would be adjusted for mobile devices. All would use WebServices provided by WCF server running on Mono. What do you think about this approach? Why is it good and why if it's not? I know that all of those platforms are in range of Adobe AIR but choosing it will result in abandonment of all existing code and development team's knowledge about .NET. Thank you for any hint."}
{"_id": "212765", "title": "If the user declines a \"continue?\" prompt, what exit code should be returned?", "text": "In terminal based scripts (Shell, Bash, Python, etc), if you prompt the user _\"Do you wish to continue?\"_ and the user chooses _\"No\"_ , what exit code should the script ideally return? On one hand, the script executed as the user expected it to (the user wanted to quit, so it quit), so it should give an exit code of `0`. On the other hand, the script was unable to complete its main task, which should be a non- zero exit code."}
{"_id": "212760", "title": "Multiple applications in a single Visual Studio solution", "text": "I am doing work for a company that is wanting to put all their .Net applications (web applications, Windows applications and console applications) together in a single Visual Studio solution. I am looking for experience from developers who either structure their own applications this way or who work in a company that does this. Is this a good idea?   * What are the pro's/con's to putting all your applications in a single solution rather than having separate solutions for each application?    * How fast is Visual Studio with a solution of 20+ projects?    * And how stable is the solution file with source-controlled concurrent development?"}
{"_id": "212769", "title": "Discovering functionality from parallel class hierarchy", "text": "I have an abstract syntax tree which I want to compile down to different representations. I am now struggling to arrange the classes in a way that new representations can be added easily. The easiest way to achieve this is to add a method for each representation, e.g. `compile_to_foo`, `compile_to_bar`. Additional representations can be added by monkey patching. The problem with this is that the compilation implementations are spread all over the place, and that it violates the single responsibility principle. The advantage is that compilation can be inherited. Now, I could also define a compilation function containing a giant switch which dispatches on argument type. But this looses advantages of polymorphism, and makes inheriting behavior of the compilation more difficult. This is not a viable option. An interesting solution would use an abstract factory: ![Abstract Factory](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Lhciy.png) This design looks fairly promising, but has some disadvantages:   * The AST Node hierarchy cannot be extended without also extending the `AbstractCompiler`, and in turn all concrete compilers and their parallel hierarchies of concrete nodes.   * The subtyping information of the AST nodes is spead across the whole system. it has to be specified between the `AbstractNode`s in order to share behaviour (I will be using roles), between the `ConcreteNode`s in order to share `compile` implementations, and in at least in the `AbstractCompiler` to provide default implementations (e.g. `method NodeA() { return Node() }`). This could be partially solved via metaprogramming.   * When an AST is built, this can only compile down to _one_ representation. If I want to have multiple outputs, I need to rebuild the AST with a different `ConcreteCompiler`. Ideally, I would just pass a concrete compiler instance as a parameter to the `compile` method: ![Ideal class diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pRbBz.png) \u2026 but I have no idea how the `compile` method could obtain the actual implementation from a parallel class hierarchy (without again using a giant switch on the node type). I also investigated the Bridge pattern, but the solution does not seem applicable to my problem without creating a thousand little bridges. I carefully read through this previous question: \u201cDesigning a robust architecture for multiple export types?\u201d. The key difference is that the input data (there: equivalent, standalone data represenations) are now hierarchical AST nodes, so that inheritance between the compilation implementations is crucial. The system will be implemented in Perl, so I'm not restricted to classic OOP, but can also use Metaprogramming, Roles (aka. traits), and Functional Programming. What am I missing? Is there an architecture I could use to elegantly structure this system? How can I make the corresponding class from the parallel class hierarchy discoverable to the node classes, without sacrificing polymorphism?"}
{"_id": "127245", "title": "How can I separate the user interface from the business logic while still maintaining efficiency?", "text": "Let's say that I want to show a form that represents 10 different objects on a combobox. For example, I want the user to pick one hamburguer from 10 different ones that contain tomatoes. Since I want to separate UI and logic, I'd have to pass the form a string representation of the hamburguers in order to display them on the combobox. Otherwise, the UI would have to dig into the objects fields. Then the user would pick a hamburguer from the combobox, and submit it back to the controller. Now the controller would have to find again said hamburguer based on the string representation used by the form (maybe an ID?). Isn't that incredibly inefficient? You already had the objects you wanted to pick one from. If you submited to the form the whole objects, and then returned a specific object, you wouldn't have to refind it later on since the form already returned a reference to that object. Moreover, if I'm wrong and you actually should send the whole object to the form, how can I isolate UI from logic?"}
{"_id": "127243", "title": "Is this bad design? How can it be improved?", "text": "I wrote the following a while back, but I've come to review it recently, and now don't think it's good design. The design is for a kind of modular database layer using Entity Framework 4. There is a single database object which loads (lazily) entity framework contexts from external libraries in a specified location, and instances of the loaded contexts are stored in a hash table against their name (EG \"ContentMgmtContext\"). All contact with the database in this system is through stored procedures. To make a call to the database, the query method signature looks like this:               List<TReturn> Query<TReturn>(string Context,                                   string Procedure,                                   TransactionScope Scope,                                   List<ObjectParameter> QueryParameters)      This modularity is something I like. However, there is one significant drawback to this approach: `when using the database layer, the code using it has to have a reference to the library in which the context is stored, in order to access the types returned by the stored procedures through Entity Framework.` In the model, the objects from the database layer are translated in to new objects that the view and controller use. I think this is bad design, but how can I improve it? I've considered adding an empty interface like `IStoredProecedureObject` to give every data type returned by a stored procedure a common base type, however this appears to be foiled by Entity Framework. Every time the `.edmx` file is recompiled, the code is generated anew, and any additions removed. Is there any way to stop this happening? How can I improve this design? What (else) is wrong with it? Or am I on the right track?"}
{"_id": "7690", "title": "Do hardcopy certificates matter?", "text": "I'm asking this question because Oracle has decided not to give hardcopy certificates for all Sun certifications Is this good or bad? and does any employer ask for the certificate itself?"}
{"_id": "19783", "title": "I use an IDE (Eclipse) to develop software.  Why should I switch to vim or emacs?", "text": "My day job is java/web developer. I have been using eclipse for ~5years. I think its excellent and I also use Webstorm for javascript and html/jsp. I do on occasion need to ssh into server and mess around with config files; for this I use vi and it pains me. I have to get up a webpage listing the syntax/commands : _press escape, then asterix, turn around three times and the text will be entered two lines above your cursor_. Its so **unintuitive** to me, and I imagine anyone who grew up in the late eighties nineties. Here are the main reasons I think eclipse is brilliant(and I assume other IDE's), and do not switch to emacs and/or vim.   * Error highlighting with no need to recompile project.   * Code assist.   * Refactoring.   * Opening call hiearchy/Opening declaration.   * Fully integrated with source control.   * Debugger is included.   * availablity of 3rd party plugins - eg findbugs/checkstyle. One of the arguments I hear is that with emacs/vim you can create your own plugins - well OK, but you can do that in eclipse too. But you don't need to as everything is already there! Its like saying buy this half built car, you can build the rest yourself. Why are people using emacs/vim ? Do people who use it actually work on complex object-oriented projects in large organisations ? **What are the reasons to switch to vim/emacs. How would my productivity increase if I did switch?**"}
{"_id": "206394", "title": "How should I implement \"queueing\" of approval on my objects?", "text": "I have a list of objects that will need to go through an approval process. I am curious if it would be best to simply add some properties to my object, like `ApprovedBy`, and `ApprovedOn`. Another option is to create an `ObjectApproval` class that contains this information as well as other information that needs to be stored. If I wanted a list of objects that still needed approval, I could simply query for a null `ApprovedBy` in the first scenario. In the second scenario, I would have to maintain an accurate list of `ObjectApproval` items. The next thing is, what if I need a multi-step approval process? In this case, I think it would be better to create an `ObjectApproval` type to track all the intricate details, and I could simply query for the `ObjectApproval.Step` (or something similar) to find out the items a specific user needs to approve based on their role Any thoughts on this? Or perhaps design patterns to recommend?"}
{"_id": "206395", "title": "What is the best solution for static memory allocation?", "text": "I'm working on image processing and I need to use big Images in a critical system. A good practice for critical systems is to avoid dynamic allocation of memory but what is the design/recommendations for static memory allocation? If we do a static allocation of a big matrix we get stack overflow.               class test     {         public:             test(){};             ~test(){};              private:             float m_bigMatrix[3000000];     };      To solve this problem we can define the matrix as static, but then this matrix will be the same for all the instance of this class.               static float m_bigMatrix[3000000];      The other solution is to have a static object.               static test t;      I've got a solution from another forum where it was suggested that the best approach would be to use a class specific for memory management. All the instances of the class are static and are used by other classes throughout the code. Here is a sloppy version for this solution (it's just an example):               class MemManager     {     public:         MemManager(){ m_counter = 0u; }         ~MemManager(){ printf(\"Out of MemManager nbr %d\\n\", m_counter); }              uint16_t getCounter() { return m_counter; }         uint16_t getData(uint32_t pos) { return m_data[pos]; }              void setCounter(uint16_t val) { m_counter = val; }         void setData(uint16_t val, uint32_t pos) { m_data[pos] = val; }          private:         static const uint32_t MEM_SIZE_DATA = 100000000u;         uint16_t m_counter;         uint16_t m_data[MEM_SIZE_DATA];          protected:     };          class MemUser     {     public:         MemUser(){ m_memManager = NULL; }         ~MemUser(){ printf(\"Out of MemUser\\n\"); }              void init(MemManager& memManager) { m_memManager = &memManager; };         uint16_t getCounter() { return m_memManager->getCounter(); }         uint16_t getData(uint32_t pos) { return m_memManager->getData(pos); }              void setCounter(uint16_t val) { m_memManager->setCounter(val); }         void setData(uint16_t val, uint32_t pos) { m_memManager->setData(val, pos); }          private:         MemManager *m_memManager;          protected:     };          int main()     {         static MemManager mManager;         mManager.setCounter(1);         {             MemUser mUser;             mUser.init(mManager);             printf(\"Exit scope\\n\");         }         for(uint8_t i = 1u; i<5u; i++)         {             static MemManager mManager2;             printf(\"Note that mManager2 is the same: %d\\n\", mManager2.getCounter());             mManager2.setCounter(i);         }         printf(\"Exit process\\n\");         return 0;     }      So, is this correct? What is the best solution?"}
{"_id": "151894", "title": "When will java change to 64bit addressing and how can we get there faster?", "text": "Having to work with large files now, I would like to know when the java libraries will start switching to long for indexing in their methods. From Inputstreams read(byte[] b, int off, int len) - funnily there is long skip(long) also - to MappedByteBuffer to the basic indexing of arrays and lists, everything is adressed as int. Is there an official plan for enhancment of the libraries? Do initiatives exist to pressure oracle into enhancing the libraries, if there is no official plan yet?"}
{"_id": "117668", "title": "Learn a language bottom-up or top-down?", "text": "When starting the first project in a new language, you have basically two approaches to learning. Either you do a quick Google search, pull together the most popular frameworks and libraries and work your way from their tutorials towards what you want to achieve (top-down). Or you start with the language basics and the standard library and by and by replace your own simple components with more sophisticated third-party components once you know what you're searching for (bottom-up). Now I'm about to embark on my first serious Javascript project. There's probably as much to know about the language as there is about jQuery, ExtJS and whathaveyou, and I'm trying to decide what to focus on."}
{"_id": "117664", "title": "Licensing for a web based desktop application?", "text": "I have created a desktop application(winfoms) using C#.net 3.5, the application is an SEO application, so it has to be connected to the internet, i implemented a simple licensing routine where every time the application is started it will query the web service on my server with the key and machine hash to validate. But recently i have noticed that some \"crackers\" have disabled the license verification (simply removed the lines of code that does that) of the application which i have obfuscated, and the sad thing is that they are selling it at a cost that is only 10% of what i am selling for, they didn't even bother to remove my website address and company details from the about box. The application is having an auto-update feature, which they so-called crackers have intentionally left it on in the cracked version I was just trying to figure out a way out of this, i can release an update and disable all the versions that are brought from the crackers, but without a proper licensing it will broken again and the next time, i don't have the guarantee that they will keep the auto update feature on."}
{"_id": "117667", "title": "How many are too many interfaces on a class?", "text": "I would probably consider it a code smell or even an anti-pattern to have a class that implements 23 interfaces. If it is indeed an anti-pattern, what would you call it? Or is it simply just not following the Single responsibility principle?"}
{"_id": "161049", "title": "Can I change operator precedence and associativity in C++?", "text": "As the title says, I find it useful to be able to overload operators. Is it possible to also change the way the operators are parsed by specifying the precedence and associativity of overridden operators?"}
{"_id": "206026", "title": "When to use event.initMouseEvent for simulating mouse clicks?", "text": "I wonder if there are benign use-cases for simulating mouse clicks using event.initMouseEvent. I found that it is used for creating pop-under ads in the following way:                       var e = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');             e.initMouseEvent('click', true, true, window, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, true, false, false, true, 0, null);             a.dispatchEvent(e);      This code simulates a click on the opening browser window, to force the newly opened window beneath it. Evil. I'm thinking of simply preventing all simulated clicks in my own browser via a browser extension, but I wonder if I might break useful websites and behavior in the process. Therefore I wonder what situations justify simulating mouse clicks, and if there are big sites that use it in non-evil ways."}
{"_id": "206020", "title": "Algorithm to analyse and predict", "text": "I'm having a set of data's, say               Question,     Question's Main Category,Main Category followers,     Question's Related Categories,Each Related Categories followers,     Whether it got answer in 24hrs [Yes/No]       Now, I need to analyse a database with thousands of sets of data's like given above and predict whether the new given question(with all details like main category,followers...etc) will get answer in 24hrs or not ? I have no idea which algorithm will be more suitable to solve this kind of problem."}
{"_id": "206021", "title": "How to develop an attitude for abstraction fundamentals?", "text": "I know it's mostly a psychological question, but what practices exist for a software developer to improve the _sense_ of **recognizing basic concepts** in the domain and the _habit_ to **define simple reusable expressions** for them instead of duplicating their definitions all over the code? I'm not speaking about hard-to-learn tools for abstraction but trivial, essential ones like constants and functions that every programming language has. For example, if someone has the task of changing multiple string literals in the code by adding a prefix to them, instead of `\"FooBar\"`, they should write (pseudocode):               def prefix = \"Foo\"     prefix + \"Bar\"      Or if there is a domain-specific derived property of a certain type of entity to compute, introduce a function for that which clearly reflects the nature this derived property:               def boolean isRight(Foo foo) = foo.bar.length > 0      The problem is that even more experienced developers sometimes fail to do this due to lots of possible causes (encountering a new programming language, time pressure etc.). Do you know any good, respectful ways to communicate this with fellow colleagues (not students) in order to let this approach become more instinctive?"}
{"_id": "161043", "title": "Overloading Operators - C++", "text": "I was experimenting with new overloaded operators, I have created one void operator and another one that returns something when it's called:               #include <iostream>          struct chichachicha{         int operator()(){             return 25;         };     };          struct boomboom{         void operator()() {             std::cout << \"Hi folks!\" << std::endl;         };     };          int main(){         chichachicha objC;         int f = objC();         std::cout << f << std::endl;         boomboom objB;         objB();         return(0);     }      Is this the best way to write a code that does that? How can I write an operator that can be called from anywhere in the code without instantiating the associated struct, that returns `void`/nothing and only prints a string of text? I'm not considering static methods, just operators."}
{"_id": "92862", "title": "I'm a manager. How can I improve work relationships and communication with programmers?", "text": "A little background first. I'm a project manager at medium-sized company. I started as a CS major and had a little exposure to programming, but after a few months I knew it's not my path, so I switched over to management. That proved to be a good decision, and after graduating I've worked in software management at various companies (for 5 years now). Recently, we had a very painful project. It was the worst of the worst, with many mistakes both on our side and on the customers side and just barely ending it without losses. It has led to many frustrating situations, one of which escalated to the point where one of our senior developers left company after a vocal argument with us (the management). This was a red flag for me: I did something terribly wrong. _(for the record, the argument was about several mistaken time estimates)_ I searched many places for answers and a friend pointed me to this site. There are many questions here about frustrations with management. I can understand that the general bad experiences lead to a general reluctance against \"those guys in the suits\". I'm that guy in the suit. It may not look like it, but all I want is a successful project, and with limited resources it takes painful decisions. That's my job. One of the things the aforementioned senior developer complained about was work equipment. Frankly, I had no idea that the computers we had were not suited for working. After this, I asked many programmers and the general consensus was that we need better machines. I fixed that since then, but there was obviously a huge communication gap between me and the programmers. Some of the most brilliant developers are the most shy and silent people. I know that, and it was never a problem during an interview. People are different, and have strengths at different areas. The case of the underpowered PCs is just one of the many that led me to thinking that there is a communication issue. How can I improve communication with programmers without being intimidating and repetitive? What I'm hoping is that people don't complain about good things. If you love your workplace and love (or at least _like_ :)) your manager, please tell me about them. What are they doing right? Similarly, if you hate it, please describe in detail why. I'm looking for answers about improving communication because I think that is my problem, but I might be wrong."}
{"_id": "200802", "title": "Implementing Digitally signed data in a Web Application", "text": "I understand PKI well from a conceptual point of view - i.e. private keys/public keys - the math behind them, use of hash & encryption to sign a certificate, Digital Signing of Transactions or Documents etc. I have also worked on projects where openssl C libraries were used with certs for securing communication and authentication. I am also extremely familiar with openssl command line tools. However, I have very little experience with webbased PKI projects & hence I am trying to design and code a personal project for this. ## The requirements (This is a learning project - This is never going to be used in a bank) This is the website for a bank. All Internet Banking users are allowed use any signing certificate issued by a few known CAs (verisign, Thawte, entrust etc). The Bank is not responsible for procuring certificates for the user. The user logs into the bank site with his userid/password etc. He has access to most parts of his account. However, when the user wants to do a transaction - like transferring money to different account - the bank wants him to sign the transaction with a certificate. ## The design When user choses \"Transfer\" option - the website throws up a form where there are 3 entries - \"Transfer To\" account, the Amount of the transaction and a way for chosing a cert for doing the digital signing & do the signing. I concatenate the \"Transfer To\" Account no & the amount plus a nonce and this is the string which will be signed and sent to the backend. I have searched a lot but haven't been able to figure out how to achieve - letting the user chose a cert - do the signing. I know how the user can add certs to his personal truststore on Windows. But how would I ask the browser to show him certs to chose from? How does the signing get done - I really don't want to write crypto code in Javascript!!! So is the alternative having an ActiveX or a Java Applet? Is there a better way? Is there a way to ask the browser to use the cert and do the signing? I have not decided on a platform/framework/language for now - so this question is rather generic. I have searched a lot for this kind of info without luck - all I get is tutorials on digital signing, tutorials on how to enable PKI in Apache etc. If someone feels my whole approach is wrong & there is a better way to do digital signing in a web-app - feel free to suggest those alternatives also."}
{"_id": "92867", "title": "GUI-Development with QT for OpenGL/C++/MAC", "text": "I am a complete newbie considering QT. Would you say it is recommendable to use. I would like to build a GUI for my programm. I need about 10 buttons.(Maybe more) It would also be nice to have a regulator to choose colour like in photoshop. Is it hard to understand if you already have intermediate level in c++ and opengl. Which books would you recommend? Are there many differences between windows and mac, because it seems that there are much more books for windows. What else can you do with QT except for GUI- Development. Thanks in advance..."}
{"_id": "200803", "title": "Watching file changes/additions/removal, but with an eye on partial transfer", "text": "I would like to monitor the filesystem in python, so that my application gets warned of the new file addition, file removal, or file change. Once the file is detected, the application starts extracting the contained data through various plugins. The problem is that I am dealing with big files, and when the user starts copying a file from outside into the watched directory, it will be detected, but it will appear as corrupted. Checking for file size between invocations is potentially a good strategy, but it ignores the fact that other generators of the file (such as wget) might have long pauses when the file is not changing in size, and yet is not completed. I don't have control of the file format I am downloading either, so I can't check for an end-of-file mark, because it could not be there. Is there a cross platform way (or different, platform specific ways for linux and windows) to solve this problem? Can I check if a file is currently open somehow? How is this problem solved in other software?"}
{"_id": "96521", "title": "How is switch/case handled as to avoid comparisons to the case values?", "text": "I've read in multiple answers that switch/case avoids \"unnecessary\" comparisons, but I never learned this in college, and I'm a little stumped on how the program would figure out which case to jump to without doing a comparison. Obviously, in the case of `int switchVar=3; switch (switchVar) { case 0: ... case 1: ... case 2: ... case 3: ... case n: ... }`, this would be pretty easy, as it could just create an array of pointers that point to the beginning of each case's code block, and it would simply do something along the lines of `instructionPointer = switchJumpTable[switchVar];`. However, this breaks down if you were to do a switch/case on a string, e.g. `char switchVar[]=\"North\"; instructionPointer = jumpTable[switchVar];` where trying to access the \"North\" index of an array would cause an error (or if the compiler allowed this behind the scenes, I still don't see how it would avoid comparisons when converting the char array into an integer in order to access the array.) I can think of one way to get around unnecessary comparisons, but it wouldn't be terribly efficient, so I'm sorta curious as to how this is actually done, as I can't imagine that compilers are using the method that I have in mind."}
{"_id": "96520", "title": "Should we quit trying to do agile if QA takes 12 weeks?", "text": "Someone in my company recently proposed changes to our core product that our managers feel should trigger what I guess my company considers a full QA cycle (i.e. testing the entire product suite from the ground up). Apparently our QA takes 12 weeks to do a full QA cycle for our product. My problem with this is that we are trying to do Agile (although mostly half-assed in my opinion) development. We will do a whole set of sprints and then do a release, which QA will take forever to go through I guess. The question is really, if our QA is going to take 12 weeks to do their job, shouldn't we just give up trying to do Agile? What the hell is the point of trying to do Agile in a situation like this?"}
{"_id": "88636", "title": "What is the *correct* term for a program that makes use of multiple hardware processor cores?", "text": "I want to say that my program is capable of splitting some work across multiple CPU cores on a single system. What is the simple term for this? It's not multi-threaded, because that doesn't automatically imply that the threads run in parallel. It's not multi-process, because multiprocessing seems to be a property of a computer system, not a program. \"capable of parallel operation\" seems too wordy, and with all the confusion of terminology, I'm not even sure if it's accurate. So is there a simple term for this? Edit: The parallelization framework used by my program implements parallelism by forking multiple processes and communicating between them. Edit 2: I found the following in Wikipedia's article on Concurrency: \"Concurrent programming is usually considered to be more general than parallel programming ...\" Based on this, both \"concurrent\" and \"parallel\" are apt descriptions of my program, with \"parallel\" being the more precise one. However, I realize that Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is appropriate for getting an overview of a subject, but may not be the best source for resolving such subtleties. So I would appreciate it if someone could cite a more authoritative source demonstrating the difference between these two, or whether there really is a difference."}
{"_id": "214084", "title": "PDF to doxygen - how to do it?", "text": "I have a big pdf with the documentation for a project and I need to render this to doxygen (so take each function from the pdf and write it out into doxygen). Any suggestions on how to do this quickly and effectively (other than doing it by hand)?"}
{"_id": "149320", "title": "Synchronously write file", "text": "I am implementing a server in C for a course project. The server should serve more than one client simultaneously. The description of the project states that `fork()` should be used to serve more than one client. Each children should write something to a common file. How do I handle this synchronously? Is there any mechanism like in Java where only one thread can use a function at the same time?"}
{"_id": "149327", "title": "How do you map members and their responsibilities to an organization?", "text": "I'm working on a Django project that tracks arts-related activities, and I'm stuck on the human-resources part of things. (code below) I have a class `Ensemble` that subclasses `Organization`. `Organization` only has one important field, `name`. `Ensemble` has another field, `players` (a many to many relationship). A player is a `Performer` which has two foreign key fields, `individual` and `instrument`. The idea is that a performer is any individual on a particular instrument--so, e.g., I can be one individual that can be two performers: one on guitar, the other on bass. The problem is that not all `organization`s are as clean as this. Some `Organization`s will have dancers, for instance (a dance troup), plus any number of generic `Individual`s who do any number of specific tasks not tracked as a specific class (like `Performer`). So at first I was thinking it would be best to just map `Individual`s to the `Organization` through a many to many relationship, create a `Job` class mapping `Individual`s to a `JobCode` class (which might include a row with something like 'performer'), but that doesn't work well if for instance you want to keep track of _which_ instrument a performer plays for that particular ensemble, or if they play multiple instruments, I would like to be able to make that explicit. That's why the `Ensemble::players` relationship made sense to me. So it seems I have an `Organization` class that will never truly be more than abstract, but I still need to be able to track what type of job an `individual` does for an `Organization`. `Ensemble` only makes sense for mapping `Performers` to an `Organization`, but what about `Teacher`s in a `School`? Again, I would like to be able to make it explicit that a bassoon player is teaching bassoon at the school, and not clarinet (even though they might play both). So I can't just map the `Individual` to the `School` organization, right? Also, this seems like it would be a common problem. Is there a conventional way of dealing with these kinds of relationships? What is the most effective? **Code:**               class Individual(models.Model):         surname = models.CharField(max_length=255)         name = models.CharField(max_length=255)         prefix = models.ForeignKey(Prefix, blank=True, null=True)         suffix = models.ManyToManyField(Suffix, blank=True)         date_of_birth = models.DateField(null=True, blank=True)         phone_numbers = models.ManyToManyField(PhoneNumber, blank=True)         addresses = models.ManyToManyField(Address, blank=True)         user = models.OneToOneField(User, blank=True, null=True)          class Performer(models.Model):         individual = models.ForeignKey(Individual)         instrument = models.ForeignKey(Instrument)          class Organization(models.Model):         name = models.CharField(max_length=255)         founded = models.DateField()         tags = TaggableManager(blank=True)         media = models.ManyToManyField(Upload, blank=True)          class Ensemble(Organization):         players = models.ManyToManyField(Performer)"}
{"_id": "214082", "title": "Creating an effective C++ library website and documentation", "text": "Creating a C++ library also means documenting it so that others can use it, and that documentation can vary dramatically in quality. **How should a website for a C++ library be structured so that it is most effective?** I would frame \"most effective\" as being divided among three specific groups of library stakeholders, which should each be able to find and learn what they need to participate in and use the library:   1. New users need an excellent, easy introduction, download, setup, and documentation that clearly flows from one step to the next.   2. Seasoned users need a solid reference with fast access to the details they need, and clear information about new updates.   3. New contributors need a how to guide covering the steps they must take to get their contributions into the library. I would like to figure out how to make each very happy with what they see and use. This question is a bit of a cross between professional programming and user experience. For specific examples, Boost is one of the best collections of libraries, but the initial installation, reference documentation, and figuring out how to contribute can be somewhat confusing. On the other hand, I have found cppreference.com and the SGI STL documentation to be very clear and useful with explanations, links, and examples. While the examples are merely opinions and others may differ, it does help give context to the question I am asking."}
{"_id": "214088", "title": "What are the alternate models for remote desktop software?", "text": "A coworker and I were trying to brainstorm and list the different ways an application developer can write a program enabling a user on one computer to run remotely on another computer while being displayed on their own computer. She suggested all possibilities would fall into only three categories:   * remote desktop software   * hosted service   * appliance I think I understand how an application developer might approach this using the first model (for example, by writing an application that uses a service on the server via a protocol.) I'm unsure how the second model would be different than the first, and I don't understand what the term 'appliance' would mean in this case. What I would like to know is how should an application developer compare these alternatives when designing a strategy for a new application - that will be used remotely?"}
{"_id": "154794", "title": "Use constructor or setter method?", "text": "I am working on a UI code where I have an `Action` class, something like this -                   public class MyAction extends Action {           public MyAction() {               setText(\"My Action Text\");               setToolTip(\"My Action Tool tip\");               setImage(\"Some Image\");           }         }      When this Action class was created it was pretty much assumed that the `Action` class won't be customizable (in a sense - its text, tooltip or image will be not be changed anywhere in the code). Of late, now we are in need of changing the action text at some location in code. So I suggested my co-worker to remove the hardcoded action text from the constructor and accept it as an argument, so that everybody is forced to pass the action text. Something like this code below -               public class MyAction extends Action {         public MyAction(String actionText) {             setText(actionText);             setTooltip(\"My Action tool tip\");              setImage(\"My Image\");          }     }      He however thinks that since `setText()` method belongs to base class it can be flexibly used to pass the action text wherever action instance is created. That way, there is no need to change the existing `MyAction` class. So his code would look something like this.               MyAction action = new MyAction(); //this creates action instance with the hardcoded text     action.setText(\"User required new action text\"); //overwrite the existing text.      I am not sure if that is a correct way to deal with problem. I think in above mentioned case user is anyway going to change the text, so why not force him while constructing the action? The only benefit I see with the original code is that user can create Action class without much thinking about setting text."}
{"_id": "255810", "title": "Which one is better for Offline chat using JMS either RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ?", "text": "I have a lot worked on the Java Standard Edition; and now I am new comer on the Java Enterprise Edition. Currently I am working on Offline chat module of Enterprise level Application using Spring MVC. Now I have confused in the selection of RabbitMQ or ActiveMQ?Can any one suggest me which one is better for the offline chat. Thanks In Advance"}
{"_id": "255812", "title": "Should every member of scrum team be universal?", "text": "We have a scrum team where there are 5 developers, 2 automated testers, 1 manual tester. Our tasks are completely independent. Shouldn't there be 8 people, every one should be able to do every task: write code, write tests for it, sometimes manually test something?"}
{"_id": "177768", "title": "How do I correctly sub-license a library that is under the MIT license?", "text": "How do I correctly sub-license a library that is under the MIT license. I am using and extending the library. The MIT license states that I am free to sub-license the library. Can I simply state:               <Software library> is copyright <original author> and licensed under the MIT license.          <orignal license>          Extensions to <Software library> are copyright <me> and licensed under the GPL license,      or commercial license if applicable.          <GPL, or commercial license>"}
{"_id": "215938", "title": "Participants in Agile retrospective", "text": "Who should be the participants in retrospective? Will it be only the team members OR should the Product manager, all the stakeholders and dependent teams also participate. I am of the opinion that only the team should meet to discuss in retrospectives, else all team members will not open up. But one of the managers insist that all the stake holders should also be included."}
{"_id": "120736", "title": "What is a software prototype?", "text": "I understand this site is for programmers, and i have to ask specific coding question. I am doing a software engineering degree and i have been asked to reference at-least 7 books in my definition of prototyping. The best place to ask is here because most of you have probably read books on this and would be able to recommend books to me. I dont mind buying them from Amazon so if you could some books for me that define prototyping or a prototype i would really appreciate it."}
{"_id": "64845", "title": "confusion between these two networking terms: transmission rate vs. propagation speed", "text": "I read this in _TCP/IP PROTOCOL SUITE_ second edition, written by Behrouz A. Forouzan and Sophia Chung Fegan. > In traditional Ethernet, the minimum frame length is 520 bits, the > transmission rate is 10 Mbps, the propagation speed is almost the speed of > light, and the collision domain is almost 2500 meters. So what is **transmission rate** and **propagation speed**? Why they are not the same?"}
{"_id": "16483", "title": "Which language is best for OpenGL?", "text": "I have the following list of languages:   * C++   * C#   * VB.Net   * D   * Delphi   * Euphoria   * GLUT   * Java   * Power Basic   * Python   * REALbasic   * Visual Basic I would like to know what people think is the:   1. Best ( _most efficient_ ) language to work with OpenGL?   2. Easiest language to work with OpenGL?"}
{"_id": "158576", "title": "What is the structure of a team developing a computer game?", "text": "I wanted to ask if there is a typical structure for a team developing a computer game and, if so, what are the specific roles of the team members. Also, what is the size of such a team (in terms of order of magnitude, 5-10? 10-100? more?). Is there any literature on this topic?"}
{"_id": "65467", "title": "What does XXX mean in a comment?", "text": "What do people generally mean whenever you see `XXX` in a comment. Occasionally, I'll see a comment like this:               # XXX - This widget really should frobulate the whatsit      Of course, I can tell what the comment means, but what does the XXX generally mean? Is it saying \"This is a hack\" or maybe \"Perhaps we should revisit this later\"? Or is it saying something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "150766", "title": "Wisdom of using open source code in a commercial software product", "text": "I'm looking at using some open source code in my ASP.NET web app (specifically dapper). Management is not a fan, because open source is seen as a risk that has bitten us before. Apparently previous developers have had to rewrite things after having open-source components fail. The pros seem to be:   * It does a lot of stuff for me that would otherwise involve either lots of boilerplate code or Microsoft's recommended but slower solution (Entity Framework). Cons:   * It's complex enough that if it were to fail suddenly in production, I would be hard pressed to fix it. However, it's in use on a much higher-traffic site than mine, so I don't think it'll end up being a high risk portion of the project. What is the consensus here? Is it unwise to use open source code in my project that I don't know/understand as well as I do my own code?"}
{"_id": "199046", "title": "Violating the Interface Segregation Principle?", "text": "I currently have an interface named `InternalEntityIdTransformer`, which has a `getInternalId` method, that given an external id returns the corresponding internal one. Now I am working on functionality that will need to do the opposite transformation, and go from internal id to external id. Is adding an `getExternalId` method to this `InternalEntityIdTransformer` a bad violation of the ISP? (All places that currently are using this interface only need the `getInternalId` and are not going to care about `getExternalId` at any point.) And if it is, then is is particularly harmful? Should I rather have two dedicated interfaces here? The language used is Java, PHP or C#."}
{"_id": "64593", "title": "Is it good idea to write variable names that match application specific terms?", "text": "Let us say I am writing a Facebook like application. I write code like below               $this->get_user_friends();       then next morning the boss says that we don't want to call Friends friends anymore, we will call them Pal. Then all the templates are changed but what about the code above? After 2 years when some programmer will have to look into it he is likely to get confused isnt it ? What do you guys really do ?"}
{"_id": "154440", "title": "C++ Iterator lifetime and detecting invalidation", "text": "Based on what's considered idiomatic in C++11:   * should an iterator into a custom container survive the container itself being destroyed?   * should it be possible to detect when an iterator becomes invalidated?   * are the above conditional on \"debug builds\" in practice? **Details** : I've recently been brushing up on my C++ and learning my way around C++11. As part of that, I've been writing an idiomatic wrapper around the uriparser library. Part of this is wrapping the linked list representation of parsed path components. I'm looking for advice on what's idiomatic for containers. One thing that worries me, coming most recently from garbage-collected languages, is ensuring that random objects don't just go disappearing on users if they make a mistake regarding lifetimes. To account for this, both the `PathList` container and its iterators keep a `shared_ptr` to the actual internal state object. This ensures that as long as _anything_ pointing into that data exists, so does the data. However, looking at the STL (and _lots_ of searching), it doesn't look like C++ containers guarantee this. I have this horrible suspicion that the expectation is to just let containers be destroyed, invalidating any iterators along with it. `std::vector` certainly seems to let iterators get invalidated and still (incorrectly) function. What I want to know is: what is expected from \"good\"/idiomatic C++11 code? Given the shiny new smart pointers, it seems kind of strange that STL allows you to easily blow your legs off by accidentally leaking an iterator. Is using `shared_ptr` to the backing data an unnecessary inefficiency, a good idea for debugging or something expected that STL just doesn't do? (I'm hoping that grounding this to \"idiomatic C++11\" avoids charges of subjectivity...)"}
{"_id": "154448", "title": "Lead Programmer definition clarification", "text": "I have been working on PHP and MySQL based web application for more than 5 years now. I started my career as an Intern, and worked my way up through Jr Developer and Software Developer to Sr. Software Engineer (Team Lead), and that's what I am nowadays. I was looking at the link at Wikipedia regarding who is a lead programmer. The link states the following: > A lead programmer is a software engineer in charge of one or more software > projects. Alternative titles include Development Lead, Technical Lead, > Senior Software Engineer, Software Design Engineer Lead (SDE Lead), Software > Manager, or Senior Applications Developer. When primarily contributing in a > high-level enterprise software design role, the title Software Architect (or > similar) is often used. All of these titles can have different meanings > depending on the context. My current job responsibilities are more or less like a _Development Lead_ and to some extent near _Software Architect_ because I usually design the core structure of new products, and manage 2-3 project simultaneously while assisting other teams regarding the structural design of their projects. I am usually on call with clients along with project managers. I code most of the time when my team is stuck somewhere, has a heavy workload, is integrating some third party API, etc. Does what I do qualify for a **Development Lead** title in accordance with my above mentioned job descriptions?"}
{"_id": "250362", "title": "Why are floats called \"real numbers\" in some languages?", "text": "Some programing languages, notably Pascal, have a type of numbers called \"real\". However, mathematically speaking, these types aren't real. For them to be \"real\", these types have to be able to represent **any** real number. Real numbers like 1/3 and irrationals, however, can't be represented in floating point. So why do some programing languages call these types \"real\"?"}
{"_id": "11595", "title": "C#/.Net/Programming talk", "text": "Lately we have decided in our company to have a monthly 30-60 minutes talk on a subject that relates to C#/.Net programming or anything else that will make us better in our work.   We are currently programming in C# 3.0 with .NET 3.5 in VS 2008. So... I've tried to come up with a topic for the talk (Something that is not too trivial but still could be applied as a guide for better programming, and not just an ad-hoc solution for specific problem) but nothing has come to my mind. I will be more than happy to hear about such topics that could fit my need. Feel free to elaborate or provide references to any resource that would help :)"}
{"_id": "191213", "title": "design practice for business layer when supporting API versioning", "text": "Is there any design pattern or practice recommended for business layer when dealing with multiple API version. For example, I have something like this. http://site.com/blogs/v1/?count=10   which calls business object method GetAllBlogs(int count) to get information http://site.com/blogs/v2/?blog_count=20 which calls business object method GetAllBlogs_v2(int blogCounts) Since parameter name is changed, I created another business method for version 2. This is just one example but it could have other breaking changes for which it requires me to create another method to support both version. Is there any design pattern or best practice for business/data access layer I should follow when supporting API Versioning?"}
{"_id": "201551", "title": "What are good words for defining multiples?", "text": "In databases you might take about one-to-many. This means there's one thing that maps to zero or more others. In this kind of style I'm looking for words that define min/max amounts of things. So far, I have:                       min     max     one      1       1     many     0    infinite     optional 0       1     ???      1    infinite      Is there a single word that fits '???' to mean more than one?   Do you have better alternatives for 'optional'? I'm wondering if there are any conventional names for those concepts?"}
{"_id": "201552", "title": "Is 25% to me as sole author a good deal?", "text": "This is my first contract negotiation. So I've written a program which supports some hardware that the company makes. (The support is important, and most customers will buy it, but the software product is ultimately optional.) It will sell for about $2K/license and they sell 70-80 hardware systems/year. The market here is biomedical research, i.e. the customers are individual research labs in universities and hospitals. The company will be hosting the software (obviously) and it will be part of their marketing pitch. They tell me that a 75-25% split is typical. Really? How does this smell to you guys? What are numbers that you have worked with? Edit: A little more info. I have written an open-source version of this program that has been out about a year. The contract is to write a commercialized version (basically, more features) which I would give to them. They are going to pay me some money up front, then pay me 100% of gross up to a certain amount (low six figures) and after that, 75/25% them/me in perpetuity. They will have all rights and I won't be able to build another product in that category as long as I have a relationship with them."}
{"_id": "192091", "title": "Is there a design pattern or technique in Coldufsion/Java for serializing objects differently depending on customer's desires?", "text": "I have data available in the form of Structs and Arrays. I need some design pattern advice, which I can use to model this situation into corresponding Coldfusion Components. Here is the data definition I have objects like   * Hotel   * Apartment   * Bus Each object has it's attributes and images. Images have also different types like thumbnails, gallery etc. Attributes may be simple or complex   Simple Attributes like: name, code, id etc   And complex attributes are themselves objects which have it's own Attributes and Images. The second part is Customers. Our customers receive these objects as XML export files. Each customer has it's own requirements. For example some want one kind of attributes and other want other attributes. Some want that one type of images should be exported and some want all image types should be exported."}
{"_id": "191218", "title": "Continuous \"Platform\" Integration?", "text": "We have accumulated a large codebase of somewhat-well-document projects, many of which aren't actively being used, but that we want to be able to start using again quickly if necessary. What is the best way to automatically make sure that these projects stay in working condition as the dependencies backing different projects are upgraded? These dependencies tend to be large, open-source and external, such as OpenCV and FFMPEG. Between consecutive versions, they offer Warnings during compilation about the use of recently-deprecated functions; jump more than a few version, though, and updating becomes a significantly more challenging task."}
{"_id": "43040", "title": "Online medical image processing grand challenges", "text": "I'm currently working on my thesis, and I'm looking for an/some online medical image processing grand challenge(s). I already know this site but I need a challenge which has microscopic image dataset like cells, chromosomes, bacterias, viruses etc with classification or recognation objective. Like karyotyping. Maybe someone is working on this field or his university made a challenge what I'm looking for, and can help me."}
{"_id": "46278", "title": "Coming from QA, how can one land that first development job?", "text": "I have been in QA for 10 years, trying to get into development for about 5 of them. I have taken classes in C++, Java and C#. I was able to write some tools and unit tests in C# at my current job and (by all accounts) did a good job of it. However, 8 months ago, my employer tasked me with the responsibility of establishing the new QA group. Now I'm doing manual testing and deployment with no promise of returning to development. I have looked at the job boards and there are a lot of jobs for web developers, so what else can I do to get one? I've picked up some books on Ruby on Rails that I plan to work through on the Mac at home, but I'm not sure employers would be interested in anything but commercial web development. Do you have any suggestions on how I can use my experience to get a job as a junior developer? And I mean one that entails programming; the postings I've seen for junior developer amount to doing all the grunt work besides coding. They should just call them \"Technical Secretaries\"."}
{"_id": "81668", "title": "Organizing classes with many properties that need to be iterated through", "text": "Sometimes when I'm working with a class (usually one that represents a database model), I'll have about 15 different properties on it, usually of different types. These are properties that need to be accessed by the users, as well, so each property will typically need some function like               T getPropertyName();     setPropertyName(T value);      But, it's also extremely valuable for me to be able to iterate through each property **in a particular order** (although, I suppose that \"value\" may stem from laziness of not having to type each one individually). Is there some logical way to set up this class, so that I could iterate through it in this order? Or am I helpless for organization, and I should just go back to the basics of having 15 private variables, and 15 \"getters\" and \"setters\"? As an aside, currently I'm working with Android and Java, so answers pertaining specifically to that would be the most helpful, but seeing how I encounter this somewhat frequently in other languages, too, any solution would be ideal. **Edit:** I've been thinking about using something similar to a Bundle with a list of keys, but I don't know how effective that would really be either."}
{"_id": "166908", "title": "A way to return multiple return values from a method: put method inside class representing return value. Is it a good design?", "text": "I need to return 2 values from a method. My approach is as follows:   1. create an inner class with 2 fields that will be used to keep those 2 values   2. put the method inside that class   3. instantiate the class and call the method. The only thing that will be changed in the method is that in the end it will assign those 2 values to the fields of the instance. Then I can address those values by referencing to the fields of that object. Is it a good design and why?"}
{"_id": "56910", "title": "How Data Transfers differ on Smart Phones: Iphone vs. Android vs. Windows Phone", "text": "I am interested in how each individual smart phone is allowed to handle data transfers within a third-party app. I am interested in designing apps that allow customers to update, transfer, download, etc. data from their smart phone to their personal computer and vice-versa. (Ranging from just text, to XML, to a Relational Database) I only have experience with the Ipod Touch before and one particular app that maintained all the data on an online server, so to update the data on your pc or iphone you had to go online, are there other ways to do it? Like bluetooth, wireless LAN, USB, etc? I believe Apple has certain policies on this in order to control the App Store and individual Iphones. I suppose each company has a particular policy on how an app is allowed to transfer data to another system, does anyone have a good understanding of this? Thank you."}
{"_id": "116206", "title": "Newbie seeking advice on programming in general", "text": "need some of you to remember back to a time when you might have been bad at programming... Been at my new job (as a software developer) for a couple of months now, passed probation period. Have very little programming experience (C++ only) and am currently working with asp.net MVC and silverlight. So there's a website the company has been working on and I am joining the effort to make it better, iron out bugs etc. The problem is - learning about a system/website which has already been made, via visual studio. I ALWAYS feel HUGELY overwhelmed, never knowing which part of this line should I look up, and generally having lots of trouble getting the big picture. Visual studio itself is something I'm finding it difficult to get to grips with, let alone the asp.net framework. I get the impression that because my coworkers have more experience than me, they are getting all the good jobs, and I am left with crap to do - stuff which is not even vaguely programming. Meaning they are learning/creating more, and I am learning/creating near nothing. I'm getting demoralised, and too scared to say anything. I'm not stupid, I've read and practiced plenty of the fundamental programming concepts...I'm just bloody scared of this damn framework. I look at it and just feel paralyzed. The result is that I keep asking the older veteran guy of questions, and he is getting irritated, and would rather give me easy/mindless/non programming jobs to avoid wasting time with helping me out. Then when I don't understand something, I'm hesitating about whether or not I should ask him yet, and trying to decide if it would be a waste of time. I'm the kind of person who picks things up slowly, but with a lot of attention to detail. The former I think is making me look incompetent though. Anyone get where I'm coming from please say something helpful....I'm scared of losing my job in a few months or something..."}
{"_id": "211304", "title": "Embed Python into Lua?", "text": "I've found a lot of things about embedding Lua into Python, but I was wondering is is possible to embed Python into Lua? I've searched for a while, and couldn't find anything on it, so maybe some of the StackExchange community knows. It's not a big deal if it _isn't_ possible, but if it is it could be really awesome for a Lua game I am currently working on, using L\u00d6VE. Thanks! :)"}
{"_id": "56916", "title": "Technology/Programming mailing lists How do you manage?", "text": "Email Alerts, Blog /Forum updates, discussion subscriptions general programming/technology update emails that we often subscribe to.Do you actually read them ? or go direct to the source when you find time. Often we might the mail of programmers filled with loads of unread subscription mail from technology they previously were following or worked on or things they wish to follow .Some or a majority of these mail just keep on piling up . I personally have few updates that i wish i read but constantly avoid and keep of for latter and finally delete them in effort keep the in box clean. Few questions come to mind regarding this   * Do you keep such mail in separate accounts?    * Do you read all the mail you have subscribed to?   * Do you ever unsubscribe to any such email if you aren't reading them?   * How much do you really value these email.    * Lastly do you keep your in box clean ? wish to deal with this in a better way."}
{"_id": "162029", "title": "Static and dynamic programming languages", "text": "Someone who's just getting started in programming asked me about the advantage of different approaches programming languages take. For example, some allow the programmer to omit variable declarations and just use them (like PHP). Others require declaration but not necessarily with a type. And others require a full declaration of the variable (including its type). So what's the advantage of each approach? Why is it better to (not) declare a variable and/or its type? The ones that don't require a type I believe allow for more efficiency for the programmer. You can just take a variable and use it rather than think about what type it may have at the moment of needing it. And potentially you can change its type later on. But is there more to it than that?"}
{"_id": "235351", "title": "Dropping database in Grails is too easy. How to prevent accidental drops?", "text": "I just dropped production database. It happened because I used dbCreate = \"create\" instead of \"update\" in DataSource.groovy. I was changing some domain models and wanted to update the database. dbCreate value was empty string (\"\"), and I accidentally changed it to \"create\" instead of \"update\". How could I prevent this from happening in the future (grails wise or in general)?"}
{"_id": "235352", "title": "Compile-time IOC", "text": "Has anyone started a project to do IOC at compile time (possibly using Roslyn or Linq MethodInfo emit)? My experience with IOC containers has thus far been great, baring a few small issues   1. Many IOC containers are slow to start up, as much of the resolution logic occurs here   2. It is often hard to ensure that resolution is possible, as compilation no longer ensures that the constructor can be called   3. Often IOC containers add a small overhead to the runtime (some aren't even small, often the ones that start up quickly run slowly) It seems to me that the ideal solution would be to add a compile step to the build chain that adds a Factory class instead of IOC. Has anyone done this before? If not, why not?"}
{"_id": "155210", "title": "What's the point of passing a parameter by reference in C#?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Why are objects passed by reference? Doesn't C# send the objects themselves? So unless it's some kind of swap function for primitive typed variables - why would I send an object by reference?"}
{"_id": "9409", "title": "What was the worst experience you've had with a customer/user?", "text": "As a programmer, you have to interact with your users/customers in some way to both develop and support the software they pay for. > What was the worst experience you've gotten from those interactions? What did you learn from that experience? Why did this situation happen? How can you to avoid it in the future? I'm also interested in best experiences you have, and why they were different from the worst. and how you can reproduce them."}
{"_id": "57064", "title": "Best practices for logging and tracing in .NET", "text": "I've been reading a lot about tracing and logging, trying to find some golden rule for best practices in the matter, but there isn't any. People say that good programmers produce good tracing, but put it that way and it has to come from experience. I've also read similar questions in here and through the internet and they are not really the same thing I am asking or do not have a satisfying answer, maybe because the questions lack some detail. So, folks say that tracing should sort of replicate the experience of debugging the application in cases where you can't attach a debugger. It should provide enough context so that you can see which path is taken at each control point in the application. Going deeper, you can even distinguish between tracing and event logging, in that \"event logging is different from tracing in that it captures major states rather than detailed flow of control\". Now, say I want to do my tracing and logging using only the standard .NET classes, those in the `System.Diagnostics` namespace. I figured that the TraceSource class is better for the job than the static Trace class, because I want to differentiate among the trace levels and using the TraceSource class I can pass in a parameter informing the event type, while using the Trace class I must use `Trace.WriteLineIf` and then verify things like `SourceSwitch.TraceInformation` and `SourceSwitch.TraceErrors`, and it doesn't even have properties like `TraceVerbose` or `TraceStart`. With all that in mind, would you consider a good practice to do as follows:   * Trace a \"Start\" event when begining a method, which should represent a single logical operation or a pipeline, along with a string representation of the parameter values passed in to the method.   * Trace an \"Information\" event when inserting an item into the database.   * Trace an \"Information\" event when taking one path or another in an important if/else statement.   * Trace a \"Critical\" or \"Error\" in a catch block depending on weather this is a recoverable error.   * Trace a \"Stop\" event when finishing the execution of the method. And also, please clarify when best to trace Verbose and Warning event types. If you have examples of code with nice trace/logging and are willing to share, that would be excelent. **Note:** I've found some good information here, but still not what I am looking for: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff714589.aspx Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "176992", "title": "My father is a doctor. He is insisting on writing a database to store non-critical patient information, with no programming background", "text": "So, my father is currently in the process of \"hacking\" together a database using FileMaker Pro, a GUI based databasing tool for his small (4 doctor) practice. The database will be used to help ease the burden on reporting from medical machines, streamlining quite a clumsy process. He's got no programming background, and seems to be doing everything in his power to not learn things correctly. He's got duplicate data types, no database-enforced relationships (foreign/primary key constraints) and a dozen other issues. He's doing it all by hand via GUI tool using Youtube videos. My issue is, that whilst I want him to succeed 100%, I don't think it's appropriate for him to be handling these types of decisions. How do I convince him that without some sort of education in these topics, a hacked together solution is a bad idea? He's can be quite stubborn and I think he sees these types of jobs as \"childs play\" How should I approach this? Is it even that bad an idea - or am I correct in thinking he should hire a proper DBA/developer to handle this so that it doesn't become a maintenance nightmare? NB: I am a developer consultant of 4 years and I've seen my share of painful customer implementations."}
{"_id": "197682", "title": "One to Many Relationship Django", "text": "let say I want my User model to have only one location and my Post model to have many location. How Do I design the model? This is what I have in mind so far. Is this going to work? Do I need to create two different Location model for each User and Post model? `class User(models.Model):` `class Post(models.Model):`               class Location(models.Model):      user = models.ForeignKey(User,unique=true)      post = models.ForeignKey(Post)"}
{"_id": "197680", "title": "Hallway usability testing and quiet working environment together", "text": "How can one achieve both the 8th and 12th point, i.e. > Do programmers have quiet working conditions? and > Do you do hallway usability testing? mentioned in The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code?"}
{"_id": "52749", "title": "Why is VB so popular?", "text": "To me, Visual Basic seems clumsy, ugly, error-prone, and difficult to read. I'll let others explain why. While VB.net has clearly been a huge leap forward for the language in terms of features, I still don't understand why anyone would choose to code in VB over, say, C#. However, I still see (what seems to be) the vast majority of commercial web apps from \"MS shops\" are built in VB. I could stand corrected on this, but VB still seems more popular than it deserves. Can anyone help answer any (or all) of these questions:   * Am I missing something with VB? Is it easier to learn, or \"friendlier\" than C#? Are there features I don't know about?   * Why is VB/VB.net so frequently used today, especially in web projects?"}
{"_id": "250941", "title": "How do you handle specific networking exceptions in Haskell?", "text": "I have the following to try and connect to a server:               testAddress :: HostName -> Int -> IO (Maybe Handle)     testAddress host iPort = do         let port = PortNumber $ fromIntegral iPort         putStrLn $ \"Testing - Host: \" ++ host ++ \", Port: \" ++ show iPort         result <- try $ connectTo host port         case result of             Left (SomeException e) -> return Nothing             Right h -> do                 putStrLn $ \"Connected to \" ++ host                 return $ Just h      I made the exception to catch \"SomeException\", but I know that's not the proper way to do it; as it will catch everything, and you can't handle individual cases. I can't find the names of specific network exceptions though. There doesn't appear to be any documentation for the Network package, and a every example I can find on google just uses \"SomeException\". If I try and connect to a random host and port, and I don't attempt to catch anything, I get the error: \" _*_ Exception: connect: failed (Connection timed out (WSAETIMEDOUT))\" But it doesn't seem to give me the exact name of the exception to try and catch. I thought it might be \"WSAETIMEOUT\", but when I tried catching that, I got a compilation error saying that it couldn't find the constructor for \"WSAETIMEOUT\". What should I do. I don't want to just catch everything and treat it the same, because then I don't know whats going on. Thank you"}
{"_id": "250943", "title": "Object Chain through an Interface", "text": "Say I have 3+ types of objects:               function Sea() {         var logs = [Logs];         this.getLog = function(ind){return logs[ind]}     }          function Log() {         var bumps = [Bumps];         this.getBump = function(ind){return bumps[ind]}     }          function Bump() {         var frogs = [Frogs];         this.getFrog = function(ind){return frogs[ind]}     }          function Frog() {         this.ribbit = function(){alert(\"Onomatopoeia!\")}     }      So, `Frog` doesn't know about `Bump`, and `Bump` doesn't know about `Log`, but `Log` can access `Bump` and `Frog` directly and indirectly, respectively. Now, let's say that whenever a `Frog` utters a `ribbit`, the `Log` moves slightly (although `Frog` internally doesn't care what happens outside of itself). Now, Mrs. Demeter suggests that I don't do this:               Sea.getLog(5).getBump(2).getFrog(1).ribbit()      It reads nice, but there's some problems. Besides the issue of tight coupling, this method also makes it impossible for the `ribbit` to move the `Log` unless `Frog` ends up getting a reference about `Log`, which means the coupling gets even tighter. However the alternative \"one dot\" method looks a tad atrocious:               Sea.tellFrogOnBumpOnLogToRibbit(1, 2, 5)      * * * A reasonable solution that has been suggested here (I think) is to create a concise but tightly coupled interface to... interface, with the more business- logicy code:               function SeaInterface() {              var sea = createSea(); //Genesis 1:10              var logInterfaces = [LogInterfaces];         this.getLog = function(ind) {return logInterfaces[ind]}          }          function LogInterface() {              var log = createLog();              var bumpInterfaces = [BumpInterfaces];         this.getBump = function(ind) {return bumpInterfaces[ind]}              //Private method that Frogs will know about internally:         var move = function(){}      }          function BumpInterface() {              var bump = createBump();              var frogInterfaces = [FrogInterfaces];         this.getFrog = function(ind) {return frogInterfaces[ind]}          }          function FrogInterface(log) {              var frog = createFrog();              this.ribbit = function() {             frog.ribbit();             log.move(); //I'm allowed to do this because I'm a simple interface         }          }      That way, I could still use chaining and make the code read well (note: chaining is not a necessity):               Sea.getLog(5).getBump(2).getFrog(1).ribbit()      And the `Log` would still move after a `ribbit`. In the end, it's really just an attempt to minimize the detrimental affects that objects knowing about other objects can cause. Questions:   1. Is there an equally readable or more readable and fool-proof way to achieve the same thing (multiple objects within objects where occasionally manipulating an inner object affects an outer object)?   2. Besides requiring more code, and the fact that the interface itself is tightly coupled (acceptable?), what other problems might arise if I were to interface with the actual object through something like this? Also... does this method have a name? I haven't really seen many approaches like this in the wild, which is what makes me nervous."}
{"_id": "250944", "title": "Android SDK and Iphone SDK limitations", "text": "I have an idea that would require triggering a call or text message simply by pressing or dialing a certain number. Example: Pressing 2324 on the pin code. Despite it not being your pin code to unlock the device, my application (always running in the back) would detect your code \"2324\" has been typed in and send a call or text message. Another Example: Holding volume button for 5 seconds and then pressing \"2\" on pin code lock. This could be another trigger. My question is, how flexible are the iOS and Android SDK's to allow this level of customization? Can I override tone settings via an application (change from Silent to Normal)? Can I close applications? What can't I do? I tried researching this but have not come up with any recent or updated answer. Hoping someone could clarify what I can't/can do with Iphone and Android SDK's."}
{"_id": "187683", "title": "A Web application as a REST API client: how to handle resource identifiers", "text": "Several concepts related to REST conflict in my head when I try implementing it. I have a REST-ful back-end API system that holds the business logic, and a web application that provides the UI. From various resources about REST (particularly, REST in Practice: Hypermedia and Systems Architecture) I know that I should not expose raw identifiers of my entities, but rather return hyperlinks with `rel=\"self\"`. Consider the example. The REST api has a resource that returns a person:               <Person>       <Links>         <Link rel=\"self\" href=\"http://my.rest.api/api/person/1234\"/>       </Links>       <Pets>         <Link rel=\"pet\" href=\"http://my.rest.api/api/pet/678\"/>       </Pets>     </Person>      The problem arises with the web application. Let's assume it returns a page that contains a hyperlink to browsers:               <body class=\"person\">       <p>         <a href=\"http://my.web.app/pet/???????\" />       </p>     </body>      What should I put into the `href` attribute? How do I keep the API entity URL in the web application to be able to get the entity when a user opens the target page? The requirements seem conflicting:   1. The hyperlink `href` should lead to the web application because it is the system hosting the UI   2. The `href` should have some id of the entity because the web app must be able to address the entity when the target page opens   3. The web app should not parse/construct REST URLs beacuse it's not REST-ful, The mentioned book says > URIs should be opaque to consumers. Only the issuer of the URI knows how to > interpret it and map it to a resource. So, I cannot just take `1234` from the API response URL because as a RESTful client I should treat it as if it was something like `http://my.rest.api/api/AGRIDd~ryPQZ^$RjEL0j`. On the other hand, I must give some URL that leads to my web app and is enough for the app to somehow restore the API's original URL and use that URL to access the API resources. The simplest way is probably just using the API URLs of resources as their string identifiers. But web page urls like `http://my.web.app/person/http%3A%2F%2Fmy.rest.api%2Fapi%2Fperson%2F1234` are ugly. It all seems quite easy for a desktop app or a single-page javascript app. Since they live continuously, they can just keep the URLs in memory together with the service objects for the application lifetime and use them when necessary. With a web app I can imagine several approaches, but all seem weird:   1. Replace the host in the API URLs and keep the result only. The huge downside is that it requires the web application to handle whatever URL the API generates, meaning monstrous coupling. Moreover, it's not RESTful again, because my web app starts interpreting the URLs.   2. Expose the raw ids in the REST API together with the links, use them to build Web App's URLs, and then use the ids on the web app server to find the required resources in the API. This is better, but will affect the web app server performance because the web app will have to go through the REST service navigation issuing a chain of get-by-id requests of some form to handle any request from a browser. For a somewhat nested resource this might be costly.   3. Store all `self` URLs returned by the api in a persistent (DB?) mapping on the web app server. Generate some ids for them, use the ids to build the web app page URLs and to get the URLs of the REST service resources. I.e. I keep the `http://my.rest.api/pet/678` URL somewhere with a new key, say `3`, and generate the web page URL as `http://my.web.app/pet/3`. This looks like a HTTP Cache implementation of some sort. I don't know why, but it seems weird to me. Or Does it all mean that RESTful APIs cannot serve as backends for web applications?"}
{"_id": "254017", "title": "Strategy to use two different measurement systems in software", "text": "I have an application that needs to accept and output values in both US Custom Units and Metric system. Right now the conversion and input and output is a mess. You can only enter in US system, but you can choose the output to be US or Metric, and the code to do the conversions is everywhere. So I want to organize this and put together some simple rules. So I came up with this: **Rules**   * user can enter values in either US or Metric, and User Interface will take care of marking this properly   * All units internally will be stored as US, since the majority of the system already has most of the data stored like that and depends on this. It shouldn't matter I suppose as long as you don't mix unit.   * All output will be in US or Metric, depending on user selection/choice/preference. In theory this sounds great and seems like a solution. However, one little problem I came across is this: There is some data stored in code or in the database that _already_ returns data like this: `4 x 13/16\" screws`, which means \"four times screws\". I need the to be in either US or Metric. Where exactly do I put the conversion code for doing the conversion for this unit? The above already mixing presentation and data, but the data for the field I need to populate is that whole string. I can certainly split it up into the number 4, the 13/16\", and the \" x \" and the \" screws\", but the question remains... where do I put the conversion code? **Different Locations for Conversion Routines** 1) Right now the string is in a class where it's produced. I can put conversion code right into that class and it may be a good solution. Except then, I want to be consistent so I will be putting conversion procedures everywhere in the code at-data-source, or right after reading it from the database. The problem though is I think that my code will have to deal with two systems, all throughout the codebase after this, should I do this. 2) According to the rules, my idea was to put it in the view script, aka last change to modify it before it is shown to the user. And it may be the right thing to do, but then it strikes me it may not always be the best solution. (First, it complicates the view script a tad, second, I need to do more work on the data side to split things up more, or do extra parsing, such as in my case above). 3) Another solution is to do this somewhere in the data prep step before the view, aka somewhere in the middle, before the view, but after the data-source. This strikes me as messy and that could be the reason why my codebase is in such a mess right now. It seems that there is no best solution. What do I do? **Question** My goal is to figure out how to structure and where to place my unit conversion code within the system. Software system in question is MVC-like (Zend Framework 2 - like) LAMP system. **Specific Example** Right now I have some class that given an `id` at creation time, has a method `getValue()`, which returns `4 x 13/16\" screws`. Depending on `id`, different numbers can be produced, but they are still in inches. I should note that some numbers are written with the dividing bar (`13/16\"`) and some use decimal notation (`0.8125\"`). How could I set up my framework so that I can display such values in millimeters as well?"}
{"_id": "153239", "title": "When to use mixins in Ruby", "text": "I am wondering when to use mixins? I have read about them. Many authors compare them to interfaces, abstract classes, etc. Mixins are modules that are mixed-in and modules are a way to group similar methods, constants and classes together. I have seen examples where a module for math functions is created. It makes sense to group and reuse such functions but should I only mix these in a class if I am faced with an inheritance situation? Should I mix these in anytime I want to use them in a class? Should they be used exactly like interfaces in other languages or are there other subtleties?"}
{"_id": "256219", "title": "Would comments increase the chance of being fired?", "text": "I have had this burning question for a while. If I have a job and I comment my code well, to the point that anybody can now understand my hard work, would it make me less indispensable to the company? From my experience any homework assignment I hand in that is fully commented receives lower grades than, for example, a friend who submits fairly similar code without comments. Almost as if the comments helped nitpick the assignment. I have observed this several times in different classes. I have seen this even in my own tests. One question I commented the code and it was nitpicked until I lost 2 points. Then another question I was unsure and I didn\u2019t comment, I earned full points on it and when I tested the code at home it not only failed to compile but it wouldn\u2019t solve the problem. In the other hand I like comments, it helps me code, but now that I have a job I feel like submitting my code without comments. Any advice on the matter? * * * Since it was mentioned that I might be writing comments that don't contribute positively; here is a sample of something I just coded:               // Deactivate all enemies.     foreach(Transform t in transform)        t.SendMessage(\"Deactivate\");      In this case I do think my comment is helpful, since it won't be clear that `Transform` is actually an `Enemy`, it could be anything really."}
{"_id": "102381", "title": "Is thinking out loud during an interview really the best strategy?", "text": "In another question I asked recently about best practices for whiteboarding, there was general consensus that thinking out loud while coming up with the answer was the best strategy. Indeed, long moments of silence are awkward. However after recent interviews I have noticed that if my thinking out loud leads to wrong solutions or down the wrong path, that with further consideration I would have seen, interviewers tend to quickly jump in and point out problems with my approach, especially if I stop to pause for a minute. This was not an isolated case, and happened during more than one interview with more than one interviewer. The other thing is that after the interview, on a problem I absolutely bombed, when I sat down and sketched out the problem on a piece of paper in silence I was able to sketch out the solution pretty quickly. Thinking out loud ends up with me spending brain cycles on reflecting on how what I say must be registering with the interviewer and in addition there's a fear of recognizing that I've gone down the wrong path and starting over after having written something on the board wastes a lot of time. Once you've started down one path and realize you've written a lot of junk, you can't undo it, whereas if you've thought quietly about it the interviewer wouldn't have seen the mess and it would have been quicker since whiteboarding a bad idea takes up more time than simply considering a bad idea. I don't want moments of silence but at the same time speaking takes more time, leads to self-consciousness and can lead to interviewer intervention on something I might have figured out myself with just a little more time."}
{"_id": "148539", "title": "What norms/API for monitoring my servers?", "text": "I have a dozen server applications installed on my customers intranets (they can send http requests over the internet but cannot be called from outside). They're written in various technologies, mainly java and Go. I want them to regularly push information about their state towards a central server which is visible on internet. Some of this information is generic ( _is it ON ?_ ), some is specific (size of a cache in an application for example). The main goal is to be able to make a small web page on which I could instantly check the state of every servers. And maybe later add some kind of notification in case of problem. Obviously I can do this by writing a few dozen lines of code each side (or a little more if I put this data in a database) but in order to ease future evolution, it could be interesting to use some existing norms or libraries. So, what are the current opensource free and light solutions to do this, preferably with no central configuration when I add a server ? I'd prefer a norm over a library."}
{"_id": "148538", "title": "Would \"Efficient C++\" book be irrelevant now due to compiler improvements?", "text": "I am planning on purchasing this book to learn more about C++ programming with regards to fast code. However, the book was published in 1999 and I am worried most of it may be irrelevant now due to optimizations that compilers perform. Could anyone please advise? http://www.amazon.com/Efficient-C-Performance-Programming- Techniques/dp/0201379503/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top edit: Found this book too, albeit also rather old: http://www.amazon.com/Optimizing-C-Steve-Heller/dp/0139774300"}
{"_id": "187684", "title": "Checking \"instanceof\" rather than value using a switch statement", "text": "Is there some syntax (other than a series of if statements) that allows for the use of a switch statement in Java to check if an object is an instanceof a class? I.e., something like this:               switch (object) {          case instanceof SecondObject:             break;          case instanceof ThirdObject:             break;     }      Sidenote: I recognize that as a design pattern, checking against instanceof and making decisions based on it is not as preferable as using inheritance. To give some context why this would be useful to me, here's my situation: I'm working on a project that involves a kryonet client/server. For communication over KryoNet, you pass objects that it serializes using kryo. Anything added to the object increases the size of these packets,1 so to minimize the network traffic, you keep these objects as light weight as possible. When you receive a packet, you need to know what to do with it, so I'm making this determination based on what type of packet object the passed object is an instanceof. This approach is the same undertaken in the examples included with Kryonet's distribution. I'd love to clean up the hideous class that translates these packets into action, and figure a switch statement would at least make it look moderately more organized. * * * 1As I wrote the statement above, I had doubts about whether what I was saying was accurate. The answer below seems to disagree: > Methods don't add anything to the runtime size of an object. The method code > is not transmitted, and nothing about the methods requires any > representation in an object's state. This is not a sound reason for > instanceof testing, etc. I guess the real issue is I don't know what happens under the hood for Kryo to serialize an object and I was nervous to do anything that increased the bandwidth. Your answers have inspired me to do it with inheritance and add the appropriate methods to the objects. So thank you!"}
{"_id": "80561", "title": "Is this a proper use of the word \"enumerate\"?", "text": "I'm reading a book that has a section about processes. In it is this sentence: > The next method to enumerate processes is the `GetProcessById` method. This > method does exactly what its name implies: it will take a process ID and > return information about it if it's found. This doesn't sound right to me. Google dictionary has this as a definition > Enumerate - Mention (a number of things) one by one - for ex. \"there is not > space to enumerate all his works\". I think of enumerate as exactly that, \"mentioning\", but in the context of walking through a list. If you are getting something by ID, that doesn't sound like \"enumerating\", that sounds like \"retrieving\". Am I wrong? Should I broaden my sense of \"enumerate\"?"}
{"_id": "251015", "title": "How do tablespaces differ in DB2 from databases in MySQL or MS SQL Server?", "text": "In DB2, it seems there is a strong separation between what a _database_ is and what a _tablespace_ is. Where as in MySQL and MS SQL Server _tablespace_ and _database_ seemed to be used synonymously. What are the differences, if any?"}
{"_id": "148532", "title": "How is the speed of a page affected?", "text": "I am trying to develop a single-page web application. I was wondering how big the disadvantages of using jQuery are. I have been told that it makes the application slower, but, as I have seen here, there are only 150ms at every 500 consecutive selections, which seems to me impossible to notice by a user. Others say, that with every jQuery selection, the browser will save jQuery objects in its cache, instead of DOM elements, making the cache bigger, resulting a bigger memory consumption and therefore making the application run slower. Is this true? (I have no idea how the browser's cache is working.) Is jQuery really slowing down such an application? (By this, I mean if the user will ever notice the use of this framework or not.)"}
{"_id": "251011", "title": "Is it allowed to distribute a program which source code is under Ms-PL to paying customers?", "text": "What I want to do is bundle XML Notepad (as is, no modifications) with the installation of our commercial product. Instead of telling the customer \"go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7973 and download XML Notepad\". Any one who can offer insight on how to derive the legality of this from the license?"}
{"_id": "148534", "title": "Does MSDN follow documentation conventions for .NET, and if so is it publicly available?", "text": "While browsing the MSDN documentation for the .NET Framework Class Library (FCL) I've always been amazed by how **consistent** and fully documented it is. It's a constant companion when developing .NET applications. Most doubts that arise when using the APIs are covered. The contrast with e.g. the older Win32 documentation is striking. Some examples:   * Documentation for properties always starts out with either _\"Gets\"_ or _\"Gets or sets\"_ to specify accessors.   * Type parameters start out with: _\"The type of ...\"_. Does Microsoft use a documentation convention which is followed for the FCL? If so, is this convention publicly available for me to use as well?"}
{"_id": "254060", "title": "Advice on approaching a significant rearrangement/refactoring?", "text": "I'm working on an application (hobby project, solo programmer, small-medium size), and I have recently redesigned a significant part of it. The program already works in it's current state, but I decided to reimplement things to improve the OO design. I'm about to implement this new design by refactoring a big part of the application. Thing is I'm not sure where to start. Obviously, by the nature of a rearrangement, the moment you change one part of the program several other parts (at least temporarily) break. So it's a little 'scary' to rearrange something in a piece of software that already works. I'm asking for advice or some general guidelines: how should I approach a significant refactoring? When you approach rearranging large parts of your application, where do you start? Note that I'm interested only in re-arranging the high-level structure of the app. I have no intention of rewriting local algorithms."}
{"_id": "122803", "title": "How to update display during large processing job", "text": "I have an ASP.NET C# application that needs to go off and iterate through a directory of .xml files and do some processing on the data inside them. This is easy enough, but i need to display the result after each .xml is processed, how can this be done? What im really asking here is how do you process a lot of data in a loop that needs to be displayed back to the client even though the server processing has not fully completed. Is this even possible? I could start the big process in a seperate thread and start a js timeout to postback and essentially poll the process but this doesn't sound great and would probably require using static variables to maintain state. Would it be correct to use SessionState / ViewState / QueryString to persist the status of which file ive processed and do away with the loop altogether? Therefore seperate the large job into seperate requests?"}
{"_id": "122802", "title": "How do you maintain a common library used by different clients?", "text": "I am part of a software deveopment team. Originally there were just 2 of us, and two applications. To ease our job we create a set of libraries, handling stuff like GUI, database access, calculation, business rules etc, so that we can reuse them in our applications without implementing them twice. Now the team grew, 6 people and ~5 applications (and growing). The applications use the same library, which are great because we don't have to develop and maintain the same thing more than once. I and the other initial guy developed and are mostly responsible for the library, but other people have access to the code and occasionally update it to fix bugs and add improvements. But soon we notice that the more we grow and the more people can modify the code, there is a risk that \"improvements\"/\"bug fixes\" that someone does can unintentionally break someone else's application which depends on the old behavior. On the other hand, assigning one guy to maintain the libraries and make sure modifications won't break anything is not practical because there are many applications, and possibly many improvement requests to be done, and he can't be sure of everything either. How do teams normally manage situation like this? Perhaps by implementing rules on allowed modification? Defining behaviours that shouldn't be changed? There are a lot of libraries in the internet used by a lot of people, for example open-source/free to use libraries like Apache, Castle, etc. How do they make sure that changes won't break existing client codes?"}
{"_id": "122808", "title": "Is there a formula to figure out the total execution time of sequential asyncronous processes?", "text": "I have a set of steps that need to run sequentially over a list of data. However each step only operates on a single piece of data at a time. Because of this, I can run the steps asynchronously. For example I have two pieces of data, and two steps. When step one is done processing the first piece of data, it passes it to step two. Now step one processes the second piece of data while step two is processing the first piece of data. So forth and so on until all of the data has been processed by each step. In contrast, looping through the list of items and executing every sequentially in order turns into the equation:               total_time = (step1 + step2 + ... + stepN) * number_of_items      Given that I know the execution time of each step for a single piece of data, and I know the number of items to be processed, **is there a formula that will tell me the total execution time for processing all the data items asynchronously?** I have written a program (see below) that simulates this process. I'm not entirely sure that it is computing it correctly, but I believe it is close. This was my attempt at figuring out how to solve the problem. I'm including it here to show my understanding of the problem, which may be wrong.               using System;     using System.Collections.Generic;     using System.Linq;     using System.Text;     using System.IO;          namespace ConsoleApplication1 {         class Step : Queue<object> {             public Step(int totalExecutionTime)             {                 _totalExecutionTime = totalExecutionTime;                 CurrentExecutionTime = _totalExecutionTime;             }             readonly int _totalExecutionTime;             public Queue<object> NextStep { private get; set; }             public int CurrentExecutionTime { get; private set; }             public void RunTick()             {                 if (Count == 0)                     return;                 if (CurrentExecutionTime == 0)                     CurrentExecutionTime = _totalExecutionTime;                 CurrentExecutionTime--;                 if (CurrentExecutionTime == 0 && NextStep != null)                     NextStep.Enqueue(Dequeue());             }         }         class Program {             static void Main(string[] args)             {                 int totalItems = 10;                 int[] stepLengths = new int[] { 1,2,5,2,2 };                 if (File.Exists(\"output.txt\"))                     File.Delete(\"output.txt\");                 WriteLine(\"ASYNC: {0}\", TotalTime(totalItems, stepLengths));                 WriteLine(\"SEQUENTIAL: {0}\", stepLengths.Sum() * totalItems);                 Console.WriteLine(\"DONE\");                 Console.ReadLine();             }                  static int TotalTime2(int totalItems, int[] stepLengths)             {                 throw new NotImplementedException();             }                  private static int TotalTime(int totalItems, int[] stepLengths)             {                 var steps = new List<Step>();                 Step prevStep = null;                 foreach(var stepLength in stepLengths) {                     var step = new Step(stepLength);                     steps.Add(step);                     if (prevStep != null)                         prevStep.NextStep = step;                     prevStep = step;                 }                 var first = steps.First();                 for(int i = 0; i < totalItems; i++) {                     first.Enqueue(new object());                 }                 var last = steps.Last();                 var revSteps = steps.Reverse<Step>().ToList();                 var totalTime = 0;                 do                 {                     Display(steps, totalTime);                     revSteps.ForEach(s => s.RunTick());                     totalTime++;                 } while (last.Count < totalItems);                 if (last.CurrentExecutionTime > 0)                 {                     do                     {                         Display(steps, totalTime);                         revSteps.ForEach(s => s.RunTick());                         totalTime++;                     } while (last.CurrentExecutionTime > 0);                 }                 Display(steps, totalTime);                 return totalTime;             }                  static void Display(List<Step> steps, int totalTime)             {                 Write(\"[\");                 steps.ForEach(s => Write(\"{0},\", s.CurrentExecutionTime.ToString().PadLeft(2)));                 WriteLine(\"]\");                 Write(\"[\");                 steps.ForEach(s => Write(\"{0},\", s.Count.ToString().PadLeft(2)));                 WriteLine(\"] {0}\", totalTime.ToString().PadLeft(5));                 WriteLine();             }             static void Write(string fmt, params object[] args)             {                 Console.Write(fmt, args);                 using (var w = new StreamWriter(\"output.txt\", true))                 {                     w.Write(fmt, args);                 }             }                  static void WriteLine(string fmt, params object[] args)             {                 Console.WriteLine(fmt, args);                 using (var w = new StreamWriter(\"output.txt\", true))                 {                     w.WriteLine(fmt, args);                 }             }                  static void WriteLine()             {                 Console.WriteLine();                 using (var w = new StreamWriter(\"output.txt\", true))                 {                     w.WriteLine();                 }             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "222013", "title": "Python - defining exit method before importing", "text": "This breaks nothing (in my experience), but lots of things \"don't break anything\" and are still wrong.               #! /usr/bin/env python     \"\"\"Short description of this module.\"\"\"          def preferred_exit_method(*args):         #code for exiting as desired          try:         import foo         import bar         import eggs     except ImportError as e:         #code code code         preferred_exit_method(e)      So, clearly defining the program's behavior on exit, then using it during the `import` process can't be too terrible, right? But it goes against the oft- cited PEP 8, which states that modules should be absolutely be imported before anything global. It seems like an unrisky proposition, but then there's always something like this:               #! /usr/bin/env python     \"\"\"Description of module\"\"\"          def exit_of_choice(*args):         #code code code         sys.exit(0)          try:         import sys         import other_things     except ImportError as e:         exit_of_choice(e)      Apart from writing code that never needs to do this because it is perfect and never fails at anything, is there a reason besides PEP 8 and \"other Python people will be cross with you\" not to do this? (well, I'm less concerned with the latter - even though `sys` wouldn't typically fail to import, I still sort of hate that on principle)"}
{"_id": "174923", "title": "Which is more effective in coding? Reducing line of code and execution of code?", "text": "I have this doubt many years. I am wring some code to achieve some functionality. For example I am writing 20 lines of code to achieve the functionality and my co worker writing the code for the same functionality with just 5 lines. Since he used some looping statement to achieve that, but that code will execute around 30 to 50 times. So which is best way of coding? As per my knowledge I always try to reduce coding length as much I can."}
{"_id": "222015", "title": "To load or not to load data for unit tests from external files", "text": "When unit testing I often find myself debating how much of the data I feed to, and expect back from my units under test, I should include in the actual test files. The tradeoff I constantly struggling with is:   * If a large portion of the test (in code volume) consists of input and output data, it seems difficult to actually read the test, but I can easily see the actual in-and outputs.   * If I load the test data from files, I can easily test a bunch of variations on possible data input, easily reuse test data for multiple tests, but I have to leave the source code to look at another file to see what exactly the inputs are. Is either one of these an anti-pattern?"}
{"_id": "216659", "title": "Building a regex builder", "text": "I am a beginner in programming in general and web development in particular. I am especially bad at regular expressions. Recently I was involved in building a couple of cPanel plugins(Perl-CGI) and that's when I realized how bad I am in regex. As a result, I have decided to build an online regex builder - this will help me to learn regex and help other struggling with regex. I have checked out GSkinner, Rubular and a couple of others like regexpal. It seemed to be a little difficult to use, hence i thought of writing another one. I do not know which tool is best suited for the job. should I write it in Perl or Python? My skill level is between beginner and intermediate in both those languages. What would be a good starting point - building it for the CLI or for the browser? I plan to get a string as an input, ask if the user want to search or search and replace, enter the search string (and the replace string where applicable) and then generate a regex. Would this be the right way to go?"}
{"_id": "99433", "title": "AOP concepts explained for the dummy", "text": "I'm learning Aspect Oriented Programming and have isues understanding concepts. I'm not a bad programmer but my english is bad and can't understand fully the definitions. Can someone explain AOP concepts for dummies: join point, pointcut, weaving etc. For example: **Aspect: a modularization of a concern that cuts across multiple classes.** What that means? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "163370", "title": "What scripting languages can be embedded within HTML?", "text": "Most of scripting languages (like Pythong, Perl, etc) generates the whole HTMLfile. However, PHP code can be embedded within html codes. PHP will process only code between `<?php ?>` tags and ignore other lines. What other scripting languages are available with possibility to be embedded within HTML?"}
{"_id": "163374", "title": "C++ Library API Design", "text": "I'm looking for a good resource for learning about good API design for C++ libraries, looking at shared objects/dlls etc. There are many resources on writing nice APIs, nice classes, templates and so on at source level, but barely anything about putting things together in shared libs and executables. Books like Large-Scale C++ Software Design by John Lakos are interesting but massively outdated. What I'm looking for is advice i.e. on handling templates. With templates in my API I often end up with library code in my executable (or other library) so if I fix a bug in there I can't simply roll out the new library but have to recompile and redistribute all clients of that code. (and yes, I know some solutions like trying to instantiate at least the most common versions inside the library etc.) I'm also looking for other caveats and things to mind for keeping binary compatibility while working on C++ libraries. Is there a good website or book on such things?"}
{"_id": "163375", "title": "How do I break down and plan a personal programming project?", "text": "I've just started a programming job where I'm applying my 'How to code' knowledge to what I'm being taught of 'How to Program' (They are different!). As part of this, I've been taught how to capture requirements from clients before starting a new project. But... **How do I do this for a nebulous personal project?** I say nebulous, as I often find halfway through programming something, I want to expand what my program will do, or alter the result. Eventually, I'm tangled in code and have to restart. This can be frustrating and off-putting. Conversely, when given a fixed task and fixed requirements, it's much easier to dig in and get it done. At work I might be told \"Today/This week you need to add XYZ to program 1\" That is easy to do. At home (for fun) I want to make, say, a program that creates arbitrary lists. It's a very generic task. How do I start with that? I don't _need_ it to do anything, but I want it to do something. So how do I plan a personal programming project? ### Related: What to plan before starting development on a project?"}
{"_id": "78271", "title": "Variable naming conventions?", "text": "I've just started using ReSharper (for C#) and I kind of like its code smells finder, it shows me some things about my writing that I meant to fix a long time ago (mainly variable naming conventions). It caused me to reconsider some of my naming conventions for methods and instance variables. ReSharper suggests that instance variable be lower camel case and begin with an underscore. For a while I meant to make all my local variables lower camel case but is the underscore necessary? Do you find it comfortable? I don't like this convention but I also haven't tried it yet, what is you opinion of it? The second thing it prompted me to re-evaluate is my naming conventions for GUI event handlers. I usually use the VS standard of ControlName_Action and my controls usually use hungarian notation (as a suffix, to help clarify in code what is visible to the user and what isn't when dealing with similarly named variable) so I end up with OK_btn_Click(), what is your opinion of that? Should I succumb to the ReSharper convention or there are other equally valid options?"}
{"_id": "78270", "title": "What's the best setup for a development machine (when you have multiple clients)?", "text": "I have my development machine (a laptop, since I do often go onsite to a client) setup like this:   1. Windows 7 x64 - it's a great OS, and the 64 bit version let's me put in a lot of RAM   2. 8 GB RAM   3. VMWare - I used to use Virtual PC, but VM Ware has so many features that I prefer, like support for USB etc. I develop primarily in .NET and I setup the development environment like this:   1. Very little (if any at all) developer tools on the host. Mostly I just have Office, Photoshop, etc. things that are independent from actual development   2. I have a different VM for every client. This allows me to configure the VM to their evironment, and in fact I have several clients where my VM is actually joined to their domain. Every client's VM runs _on its own external drive_! Putting a VM on it's own drive makes your VM run much faster. I use laptop hard drives in small drive cases, very easy to put in my laptop bag, and each drive has a sticker with the client's name so I can easily grab the right external drive. I usually allocate about 3.5 - 4 GB of RAM to each VM.   3. On the VM I have all the tools I need to work for that particular client, including VPN software, developer tools (SQL Server, VS), etc.   4. I have a few VM's that are \"client agnostic\", and these run server software (Wink2k, Win2k3, Win2k8) with IIS etc. for testing deployment, etc.   5. I have GoToMyPC set up so I can access the laptop from a remote location in extreme emergencies. In the past I have been set up differently, with the development environment set up on a beefy server running everything, and I just RDP in, so the laptop doesn't have to be that robust (it's basically just painting the screen), and I can access from anywhere. There are pluses and minuses to this, mostly that sometimes I like to develop when I am not able to connect to the internet, and my development is hindered anytime my internet connection speed is slow or lagging. How do you set up your development machine? Feel free to take this in any direction you want. . . **Note:** The only thing I would change about this is more RAM, and for multiple hard drives in my laptop so I don't have to carry around so many external hard drives."}
{"_id": "255708", "title": "Is there any logical reason to auto-generate code documentation?", "text": "Automatic documentation generation can be done with a variety of tools, GhostDoc being one of the more prominent. However, by definition, everything it generates is redundant. It takes a look at names of methods, classes, etc. and outputs English that _might_ explain them more verbosely. In the best case, it does what the reader could already do in their head (examples taken from here):               /// <summary>     /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref=\"Person\"/> class.     /// </summary>     public Person() ...      In the worst, it can actually end up generating bizarre documentation that is actually misleading in its attempt to heuristically figure out the meaning of names:               /// <summary>     /// Riches the text selection changed.     /// </summary>     /// <param name=\"richTextBox\">The rich text box.</param>     private void RichTextSelection_Changed(System.Windows.Controls.RichTextBox richTextBox) ...      It seems that the attitude with GhostDoc is, \"it's intrinsically better to have _some kind of_ formal XML documentation\", but when that documentation is 100% redundant, why? Isn't it just wasting a ton of space at best? At my workplace, we have to document everything, and almost always with GhostDoc's auto-generated docs. Do you do this, and are there any rational reasons not to simply leave code undocumented if you aren't going to actually write the documentation yourself?"}
{"_id": "157809", "title": "How not to forget new and interesting information", "text": "The thing is that I read a lot of things over a period of time because it is interesting and I like to know it and secondly it will be helpful in my future job interviews. For example I read about data structures: association, aggregation and composition; about 2 months ago with great interest and I thought I had it all but struggled big time recalling the information at a recent job interview. How do you people handle these things? How can I make my reading meaningful without worrying about forgetting about it in the future."}
{"_id": "109523", "title": "How do I convince my fellow devs to WANT to add comments to source code commits?", "text": "I know that Subversion (what we're using at work) can be configured to require comments on commits, however I'm not in a position of power to simply turn this on. I know that _my_ reason for commenting my commits is because it is useful, if only as a memory-jogger, to quickly understand the reason behind the commit. However, this doesn't seem to be enough to combat the two responses I always get:   1. It takes too long and I just want to get my changes into the repo.   2. It's easy enough to just look at the diffs. I even show them the value of simply putting in a JIRA issue ID and how it automatically gets tied to the issue, but still no dice with them. Worst of all, the person who _can_ make the call is in the same camp: doesn't want to bother and is fine with looking at diffs. I know it's the right thing to do, but how can I make them see the light? Even if I can't convince my fellow devs, how can I convince management that it's the right thing to do for the business?"}
{"_id": "157803", "title": "Auto update for application hosted on multiple servers on cloud", "text": "I'm working on an application which will run on multiple Amazon EC2 instances. I wish to incorporate auto update feature for my application. The updater should update all the Ec2 instances. Also, there is a central server which governs the creation/termination of EC2 instances as per load. The central server creates a EC2 new instance from a pre-configured custom AMI (custom image which has our application pre-installed). Also, once there is an update, the pre-configured AMI needs to be updated too else it would create new instances which are not updated. Should the central server notify all the ec2 instances for an update and then the instances update themselves?Or should the application on Ec2 instance have a check for periodically updating themselves? Also how should the Amazon custom AMI be updated? Should a new instance be created from it, updated and then a new AMI be re-created and then new images be created from this AMI? What is the best way to incorporate an auto update feature for this architecture? The central server is written in Java and the application running on the cloud is written in C++. Is there a good framework available that can be used for this architecture? Please let me know on what I could be missing in the design and how it would help me to have a nice, extensible and fail safe auto update architecture. Thanks"}
{"_id": "68901", "title": "Is listing developer's full names in splash screen or about box still a widely spread and desirable practice?", "text": "Just like in the closing credits of movies, some software vendors list the **full names of the team** that worked on the piece of software you are using. They are usually displayed in the **splash screen** (Photoshop) ![Adobe Photoshop Vintage Splash Screen](http://i.stack.imgur.com/qq1U8.png) ... or in the about box (Traktor). ![Traktor Famous DJ Software About Box](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ICNPI.png) In the demoscene, it is a mandatory practice, like in the movie industry. > How do you see that in your own software? Is there any reason why not doing > it? Is there any reason encouraging companies to do it?"}
{"_id": "91813", "title": "When is cloud database right for me?", "text": "Some say that DBaaS (database as a service) -- aka cloud database -- is not suitable for Business Intelligence (BI), analytics (OLAP) or archiving. Is this true? More generally, when DBaaS is the most effective technical choice?"}
{"_id": "255707", "title": "Efficient \"Object with weights\" structure", "text": "I need to find an \"efficient\" data structure / set of algorithms to do the following things: I have a list of objects. I need to assign them weights and later on increase or decrease these weights. For instance: We have the hashmaps `{o1}, {o2}, {o3}`. The `{o}`'s don't have any particullar structure, just random json. I am looking for a way of saying: Increase the weight of o1 by 1. Increase the weight of o2 by 1. Increase the weight of o1 by 1. Now give me the results sorted by their weight. I am using Python. So far I have tried using a normal hashmap to store them, but the problem is that I can't just hash the `{o}`'s. I thought of hashing the pointer of the `{o}`'s in memory, but it seems I don't have access to it in Python."}
{"_id": "225807", "title": "How to create business layer objects out of input parameters properly?", "text": "**Application description** I have an application of the following structure, simplified:                   Http request              \u2193      +-----------------+     |  RequestParser |     +-----------------+              \u2193     Business layer request object      **Problem code** The request parser layer accepts the input parameters, validates them and builds the business-layer request object. The code looks like that:               public function processMyRequest()     {         validationForm =             Form::create()                 .addIntegerValidator('order_id')                 .addStringValidator('external_id')         ;              if (validationForm.hasErrors()) {             throw new Exception();         }              return             BusinessRulessObject::create()                 .setOrderId(validationForm.getParameter('order_id'))                 .setExternalId(validationForm.getParameter('external_id'))         ;     }      **Some prerequisites** The form can be huge, so does the business layer object. Unfortunately, the Form class belongs to framework and it is final, so I can not inherit the concrete form from the base one where I could specify all the validators. The agreed solutions was to create this forms via Factory classes (this is not the Factory template though as it is not needed here: no mocks in tests, no polymorphism in client code). The RequestParser class can handle several requests. **Better version** So now the code looks like this:               public function processMyRequest()     {         validationForm = FormFactory.createSomeForm();              if (validationForm.hasErrors()) {             throw new Exception();         }              return             BusinessRulessObject::create()                 .setOrderId(validationForm.getParameter('order_id'))                 .setExternalId(validationForm.getParameter('external_id'))         ;     }      **How can I make it better? Version 1** But how should I create my object? Should I have some factory that creates it from form? I.e.,               public function processMyRequest()     {         ...         return BusinessRulessObjectFactory::createMyConcreteObject(form);     }      **Version 2** Or should BusinessRulessObject class have some method like `createFromForm()`, i.e.               public function processMyRequest()     {         ...         return BusinessRulessObject::createMyConcreteObject(form);     }      **Version 3** Or RequestParser's method `createFromForm()` would be enough, i.e.               public function processMyRequest()     {         ...         return createMyConcreteObject(form);     }          private function createMyConcreteObject(Form validationForm)     {         return             BusinessRulessObject::create()                 .setOrderId(validationForm.getParameter('order_id'))                 .setExternalId(validationForm.getParameter('external_id'))         ;     }      **So?...** I guess I should choose between the first and the second option, but what aspects should I take into consideration when choosing the way object should be created? And, actually, what way is preferable in my case?"}
{"_id": "63308", "title": "Is it necessary for Java programmers to learn some C/System programming?", "text": "I've read a blog(in Chinese only) in which the author had jeered at Java programmers who know little about C and system programming. The author illustrated how he had found the deep reason of a Java NIO Selector exception using his knownledge of C and Windows/Linux system API. The IOException is thrown with message \"Unable to establish loopback connection\" when calling java.nio.channels.Selector.open() too many times. What he had found was that for each opening of Selector, a pair of TCP connections were created in Windows and a pair of pipes were created in Linux. In another blog, he also mentioned that GNU Java compiler was a clever implementation than Sun Java. What he said seems completely new and interesting to me. But I am not sure if C/system knowledge is the only way to figure out such problems quickly. Is it really worth spending much time on learning those knowledges for Java programmers?"}
{"_id": "149667", "title": "Creating a websocket server on Linux", "text": "I want to create a websocket server and I've found a great article here. However C# will output an exe file. I'd like to have it run on a linux box. What I want to do is to connect to the server, and when something happens on the filesystem to retrieve a message from the server (using the `FileSystemWatcher` on Windows or the `iNotify` daemon on linux) and the program will run the corresponding code. So, how can such daemon for linux (in C#) or any other way to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "176501", "title": "Inventory Consignment Flow", "text": "Not sure whether this is the right place to ask this question, but here goes.. Currently I have requirement to add support for consignment transaction in our inventory module. I have a very limited understanding of what consignment means in inventory, i.e. > Customer get stocks/products from Seller without actually buying them, the > product just resides in the Customer's inventory and it's still owned by the > Seller. Only when the Customer actually buy the stocks then only will the > ownership of the stock is transferred. The issue is i can't imagine how the data will be presented to both the Customer and the Seller. What i know is that i would need to deduct the stock from the Seller's inventory when the Customer raise a request to get the stock through consignment, but what about the 'ownership' of the stocks/products? Does that mean i would need to create another column in my table to state that for each inventory it is owned by who? Anywhere i can get information on how i should work out an inventory module like this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "176500", "title": "Duplication of code (backend and javascript - knockout)", "text": "We have a new developer on our team. He seems to be a smart guy (he just came in so I cannot really judge). He started with implementing some small enhancements on the project (MVC3 web application using Javascript with jQuery and Knockout). Let's say we have two values:               A - quite complex calculation         C - constant         B = A + C      On the screen there is value B and user can change it (normal texbox). When B changes, A changes as well because C is constant. So there is linear dependency between A and B. Now, all the calculations are done in the back-end, but we need to recalculate A as user changes B (in Javascript, I would use knockout). I thought about storing old A and B and when B changes by 10 then we know that new A will be `old A + 10`. He says this is dirty, because it's duplication of code (we make use of the fact that they are dependent and according to him that should be only in one place in our app). I understand it's not ideal, but making AJAX request after every key press seems a bit too much. It's a really small thing and I would not post if we haven't had long discussion about it. How do you deal with such problems? Also I can imagine that using knockout implies lots of calculations on the client side, which very often leads to duplication of the same calculations from the back-end. Does anyone have links to some articles/thoughts on this topic?"}
{"_id": "223948", "title": "Replacing static classes with global state to a series of POJOs, beginning to feel like an anti-pattern", "text": "I'm trying to refactor some code, and one of the major changes is to remove the (ab)use of static classes to give global state. I've tried to split up some of the 'global state' functionality with POJOs that can be passed around. But the further down the rabbit hole I go the more and more I feel like this is an Anti-Pattern. Is holding state in POJOs and then passing them around bad form? It means the outline of my methods often look like this:               public MyPojo makeReport(int myInt, String pathToInput, MyPojo myPojo){         ...         if(myPojo.whatKindOfReport()==Reports.reportTypes){             ...         }         ...         myPojo.isWritingReportToFileSuccessful(true);         ....         return myPojo;     }      Where the POJO 'state' is set from the GUI that the user interacts with. For instance with tickboxes for report types etc. But this blocks other return types, and seems overly complicated. * * * I've taken this approach because the application has several 'paths' (see `whatAmIDoing`) the user can take in running it, each of which has several stages. What options the user has depends heavily on what path they pick and then from there, the result of that choice (normally, success or failure, see `myPojo.isSomethingSuccessful(true)`). I'm trying to encode that information in a POJO rather than a Global State Class. Is this an anti-pattern? How can I get round this? * * * Edit: I think what I'm after is _something_ like Chain of Responsibility. After looking at this answer I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "147205", "title": "What were the \"core\" API packages of Java 1.0?", "text": "Reading about the Google v Oracle case, I came across these questions (apparently from the presiding Judge) > ...   >  Is it agreed that the following is true, at least as of 1996? > > The following were the core Java Application Programming Interface: > java.lang, java.util and java.io. > > Does the Java programming language refer to or require any method, class or > package outside the above three?   >  ... source: Groklaw There are obviously lots of legal ramifications, Google and Oracle probably disagree on some points, and **I don't care**. Leave law to the lawyers. However, I suspect there's an interesting bit of history in here. My question is (as someone who first did any Java coding around 2001 in version 1.3), in version 1.0 of Java was anything required outside of `java.lang`, `java.util`, and `java.io` to compile a valid Java program? As an example (using C# 5.0), the `await` keyword is dependent upon ~~`Task<T>`~~ `GetAwaiter()` (amongst other things). The compiler couldn't function to spec without that class. Equivalently, were there any core runtime features (like ClassLoader*) that were dependent on other packages? I'll admit I ask out of curiosity, exactly what is necessary for minimum- viable Java (the language, ignoring all the legal bits around it) is interesting. *I am assuming that ClassLoader was even a feature in Java 1.0, it's part of the spec in 7.0 and presumably many earlier versions."}
{"_id": "223947", "title": "What is an \"abstraction layer\"?", "text": "I need a very simple explanation because I'm not a professional programmer. I found the terminology \"abstraction layer\" reading the documentation of mysqli extension where is described the difference among mysql, mysqli and PDO extensions in PHP. The article is this, that's where I met \"abstraction layer\" for the first time (referred to PDO). Now, trying to elaborate my question, we could speak of PDO abstraction layer against mysqli extension in php. So, for example, why mysqli is not defined as abstraction layer? How an abstraction layer acts? (like PDO in php) I would like to understand in a general way what is an\"abstraction layer\", I will not do particular questions about php or mysqli and PDO extensions. So, what is an abstraction layer? And what is its difference from a common application's extension?"}
{"_id": "230190", "title": "Putting together Data Mappers and Domain Objects inheritance", "text": "Currently, I have a system with a Data Mapper and multiple Domain Objects which inherit from the same class, let's say B and C that inherit from abstract class A. In order to retrieve data, I need to pass a parameter to the data interface (getObject('a'), getObject('b')), based on which data for class B or class C will be returned. Then, the Data Mapper uses a Factory class to create the correct object based on some parameters (coming from the data itself). Class B and class C only differ in the implementation of one method, the rest is inherited from class A. I have a few doubts on this, it seems flawed but I can't really figure out a better way of doing it. The points are:   1. Is inheritance a good way to go about the implementation of different entities that differ in concept but only very slightly?   2. Is the factory class a good way to return the correct Domain Object?   3. Consuming the data mapper with a parameter feels wrong, is there a better way to do this? Would the use of abstraction be any better? I hope I have explained it clearly enough, if not I'd be happy to clarify."}
{"_id": "176509", "title": "What does it mean that \"language A is written in language B\"?", "text": "I often hear the term that language A is written in language B. For example, **PHP** has been written **C** , **C#** is written in **C++**. Can someone please explain what does that mean and if it is even correct? Does that have anything to do with the compiler of interpreter used by the language? In addition what are the factors on which the choice of the implementing language is built upon?"}
{"_id": "143181", "title": "Why do you have to manually type variable names while debugging?", "text": "I've seen this in a lot of IDEs (even in the most popular and heavily used ones, like Visual Studio): if you want to watch a variable's value, you have to manually type its name in the Watches section of the debugger. Why can't there just be a list of all of them with checkboxes next to them ? The developer can then just check the box next to the one he wants to watch and that's it. Variables with identical names can probably be numbered in some way (for example `a`, `b`, `x(1)`, `x(2)`, `c`, etc. I've seen some exceptions to this (NetBeans or BlueJ), but there are exceptions to everything, right ? Maybe it's a stupid question, maybe not, but I've always wondered why this is so."}
{"_id": "34418", "title": "What is your code review and approval process, and what are its advantages/disadvantages?", "text": "Does your team rely on code reviews for approval of work? Is it simply QA that signs off your features and fixes? Do you have a lead programmer (or architect) that reviews code design and implementation? Or is it simply a Works on My Machine paradigm? What would you recommend or have seen that works well?"}
{"_id": "245960", "title": "Bug Report System - Getting people to use it", "text": "I've built already a bug report system. It looks like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Hl6ZE.png) It is accessed using a secret key combination detected by the JavaScript code. Not hard. It has everything - sends the standard emails to management and testers, logs the Javascript variables and current DOM HTML. We are also improving the backend of the system to act as a full bug report system. Previously, it was only via email. The problem is, unfortunately, the bug reporters _still_ preferred email. Even when I refused to answer their queries until they sent a bug report, they would not consistently send them. I don't understand it, because, for them it should be easy, but they act like it was a big deal. (The appearance was slightly more complex before, but still, all they had to do, minimally, was type a subject and press SUBMIT). I can't ask them, because they really have no idea. The second issue, more difficult, is to create a way to manage these issues that will be suitable to us developers. I actually have been satisfied managing new issues and bugs via Gmail inbox but my co-worker would like to use a system. He gets more mail than I do and has other reasons. I am completely at a loss for what to do. My problem is solved as much as I need it to be. When I look at other bug report systems, they both look terrible and are often expensive. Moreover, if even one person reports a bug via email, it will be a disaster! We can't refuse every bug via email and then will have two bug reporting systems. Sorry to put out all these complaints here, but maybe someone has some insightful advice that hasn't already been said."}
{"_id": "109297", "title": "Recommend a design pattern/approach to exposing/tolerating/recovering from system errors, Exception handling (e.g.s in Java, C++, Perl, PHP)", "text": "Can you recommend a design pattern/approach to exposing/tolerating/recovering from system errors, Exception handling (Java, C++, Perl, PHP)? Some errors need to be reported. Some errors can be handled internally (by a retry or are inconsequential (can be ignored). How do you structure the code to catch them? But all errors need to be logged. What best practises are there? And for simulating them to be able to fully test components that are impacted by them? General non-programming-language specific question applicable to several modern programming languages but would welcome example illustrations of patterns, approaches and philosophies in Java, C++, PHP and Perl. (Also asked in stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7432596/recommend-a-design-pattern- approach-to-exposing-tolerating-recovering-from-system but I thought it should be asked on programmers too because I think the programmers Q&A covers wider software/programming issues whereas stackoverflow is more about technical implementation IMHO)."}
{"_id": "194655", "title": "Is it allowed to make multiple instances of a singleton class?", "text": "I am confused when I read this (regarding singleton design pattern): > How do we ensure that a class has only one instance and that the instance is > easily accessible? A global variable makes an object accessible, but it > doesn't keep you from instantiating multiple objects. So what is the use of singleton pattern if we can create multiple instances? **SOURCE:** Design Patterns - Elements Of Reusable Object Oriented Software (1995) - Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vl"}
{"_id": "67686", "title": "Moving from a traditional waterfall methodology to an agile one", "text": "My development team is in the process of 'going agile' and lot of people are looking at each other blankly, not really too sure what it means. All management are saying is 'start working agile' without suggesting any particular methodology so they're waiting to see if we can come up with something ourselves. Has anyone been in this situation before and how did you handle it? Any do's and don'ts? I'm one of the senior members of the team so there's an expectation to show some initiative. I know that what works for one won't necessarily work for another so I'm more interested in the approach not so much the end result because I think the result will come naturally with the right approach."}
{"_id": "67682", "title": "Escaping language pigeon hole", "text": "I have spend the last 5 or so years doing PHP, and I have to say it is far from my favorite language. I would like to move to a position doing something else (say Erlang) but how do I get people to look at me. It seems despite everything on my CV (including an upcoming book from O'Reilly) I keep getting pigeon holed into PHP type positions."}
{"_id": "114873", "title": "Is coding and unit testing violating the DRY principle", "text": "The dry principle states: > \"Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative > representation within a system.\" However when writing tests for code you are describing the expected behavior for the system twice (once in the code and once in the test). I know both descriptions are from a different perspective but share a great deal of the underlying idea. Any thoughts on this? In general I think both unit tests and the DRY principle are good ideas and I try to apply them as much a possible. This question is more on a philosophical level, but I wondered if anyone had also thought of this."}
{"_id": "114875", "title": "Is it possible to combine XPath and CSS selectors?", "text": "Just came through XPath. I got curious about this. Why is there a different way to select tags in XPath and CSS(selectors). Why cant there be a common way in both XPath and CSS?"}
{"_id": "187648", "title": "Can a neural network provide more than \"yes\" or \"no\" answers?", "text": "Every example neural network for image recognition I've read about produces a simple \"yes\" or \"no\" answer. One exit node corresponds to \"Yes, this is a human face,\" and one corresponds to \"No, this is not a human face.\" I understand that this is likely for simplicity of explanation, but I'm wondering how such a neural network could be programmed to give a more specific output. For example, let's say I was classifying animals. Instead of it saying \"Animal\" or \"Not an animal\", I would want responses like \"Dog\", \"Fish\", \"Bird\", \"Snake\", etc., with one final exit node being \"Not an animal/I don't recognize this\". I'm sure this must be possible, but I'm having trouble understanding how. It seems like due to the training algorithm of backpropogation of error, as you train up one exit node (i.e., \"This is a dog\") and the weights of the neurons are changed, then the ideal state for another exit node that you previously trained (i.e., \"This is a bird\") will begin to deviate, and vice versa. So training the network to recognize one category would sabotage any training done for another category, thus limiting us to a simple \"Yes\" or \"No\" design. Does this make such a recognizer impossible? Or am I misunderstanding the algorithm? The only two things I can think of are that:   * Either we could train one neural network for each thing we want classified and somehow use those to construct a greater, super-network (so for example, a network for \"dog\", a network for \"bird\", etc., which we somehow add together to create the super-network for \"animals\"); or,   * Create some kind of ridiculously complicated training methodology which would require incredibly advanced mathematics and would somehow produce an ideal neuron-weight-state for all possible outputs (in other words, `insert math magic here`). (Side note 1: I am specifically looking at multilayer perceptrons as a kind of neural network.) (Side note 2: For the first bulleted \"possible solution\", having each specific neural network and iterating through them until we receive a \"Yes\" response is not good enough. I know this could be done fairly easily, but that is simple functional programming rather than machine learning. I want to know if it's possible to have _one_ neural network to feed the information to and receive the appropriate response.)"}
{"_id": "240535", "title": "Direct database manipulation an anti-pattern?", "text": "Recently I learned that some teams have moved all their database manipulation to the actual database through the use of stored procedures. I thought that was pretty clever, since the database becomes a black box and any change to how the data is stored and manipulated won't affect application code. Is it accurate to conclude that manipulating the database in application code is an anti-pattern, since it unnecessarily couples application and storage code, or are there circumstances that would make decoupling sql queries from the application a disadvantage?"}
{"_id": "187646", "title": "Software for prioritising issues / tasks in an ordered list/queue (ideally in Github)?", "text": "It seems to me that the best way to manage priority for programming tasks in a backlog is to simply put them in order. Do the top task first, second one next. If priority changes, re-order the queue. I thought this was exactly how things were supposed to work in Agile. I have yet to find an online open-source team task manager that supports custom ordering of tasks this way - although I might be out of date. Assembla definitely doesn't. Jira doesn't seem to. When we used Agilo in my previous company, it didn't seem to either. The only service I've found that implements this simple concept well is Google Tasks, but that's hardly suitable for managing software projects. I don't understand why this isn't the standard way to manage priority. My ideal way to track issues would be through Github. As far as I can tell Github Issues also doesn't support custom ordering of tasks. Does anyone know if there's any way to implement this on top of Github Issues somehow? Is there any way I can suggest it as a feature?"}
{"_id": "26700", "title": "Is there a useful correlation between choice of web-browser/search engine and good quality programmers?", "text": "After a round of interviews earlier this year, which included some practical questions with access to a computer, I noticed that, at least for the applicants we were seeing, there was a high inverse correlation between quality of applicant and the explicit choice of Bing/IE as the stack for search/browsing the web. That is, a large number of applicants specifically searched for IE to use as a browser when browsing the web, and specifically used Bing as the search engine (even typing in Bing in the Google search box, before starting a search) Is this just an outlier, a fluke, or is there some sort of information I can obtain from this observation? So far, my best candidates are:   * Yes, there is a high correlation between good programmers and choice of web browser/search engine   * There is some training program, or community, which advises using IE/Bing during interviews, and I just happened to run into a poor selection from that group   * Something else is going on, that I don't know about, but someone here might know. So, to repeat, the question is: is there more than coincidence at work here, and, if there is, what's going on?"}
{"_id": "180617", "title": "Rearranging Cartons Algorithm", "text": "**Problem Statement -** ![Problem Statement](http://i.stack.imgur.com/pbK2U.png) The task is to find the minimum number of swaps required in the given arrangement of cartons to get the desired arrangement of cartons. Only adjacent cartons can be swapped. I have tried an ad hoc approach, but it proved inefficient towards the upper limit of the data range. Here it is for reference -               Traversing through the given arrangement of cartons      if position of carton>than the desired position       swap back       go to previous iteration      What would be a pragmatic approach to the problem? Test Data Range - N<=105 Source - INOI 2009 Q Paper"}
{"_id": "187642", "title": "Is tracking Android OS.Buid/Manufacturer info a privacy issue?", "text": "On the Android operating system details about the phone are available via the `Android.OS.Build` class. These details include things such as the phone manufacturer, model, version, etc. The customer may want us to collect this data and save it to our database for analytics and tracking. I think this raises some privacy concerns for the end user. Are we obligated to inform the user that we are collecting this information (similar to how the use of the device's capabilities, such as camera or microphone, are presented in the Play Store) and what we intend to use it for? If we are not required to do so, is this something that we should, from an ethical perspective, inform the user that we are doing?"}
{"_id": "180611", "title": "What pattern should one use to dynamically add multiple small views to one big main view?", "text": "Imagine a small calculator GUI, with basic operations (`+,-,/,*`), and in the menu we can check for example scientific calculator and a small new view with the extra functions appears beside. I was thinking that the decorator pattern is the solution but after reading some documentation on it, I am confused now. Which pattern would be more suitable for doing such things?"}
{"_id": "24398", "title": "What happens if you're unable to solve a problem?", "text": "I'm a year away from graduating from university, and I'm really looking forward to solving practical problems. Especially non-trivial ones which require a bit of research and a lot of thinking. But at the same time, that is also my greatest fear - being faced with a problem that I'm unable to solve, no matter how hard I try. And with pressure to deliver code on impending deadlines just around the corner, it does look a bit scary when viewing it from the safe playgrounds on uni (where the worst thing that can happen is that you have to redo a course or exam). So for those who have been in industry for any longer length of time, what would happen if you were told to solve a problem that you couldn't? Has it happened, and if so, what did happen? Did they just drop it and said \"Oh well, guess we can make do with something else\"? Were there consequences? Were you reprimanded, or even fired?"}
{"_id": "136615", "title": "How practical is it to build your very own social network?", "text": "A friend of mine wants to create his own niche social network for a specific target audience. I want to give my friend an idea about how practical this is on the software side. What kind of work would go into this? Is this a practical undertaking?"}
{"_id": "142584", "title": "Best practices in versioning", "text": "I develop some scripts for data analysis in a small team. For the moment we use SVN, but not in a very structured way. We haven't even looked how to use branches even though we need this functionality. What do you suggest as the best practice to setup the following system:   * two code bases (core and plugins)   * versions can be incompatible to previous scripts   * sometimes individual features are being developed and not yet finished, while other fixes have to be done urgently to the code In the end we don't deliver the code as a package, but rather place the Python scripts in some directory (with version names?). Some other python script which serves as a configuration choses the desired version, sets the path to these libraries and then starts to import the modules. I saw stable releases to be named \"trunk\" so I did the same. However, no version numbers yet. Core and plugins are different repositories, however we have to match versions for compatibility. Can you suggest some best practices or reference to ease development and reduce chaos? :) Some suggested GIT. I haven't heard about it, but I'm free to change."}
{"_id": "66377", "title": "Can you recommend a good release notes template?", "text": "I am looking for a good release notes template. Possibly in a plain text or HTML form. What do you guy use? **EDIT:** I forgot to mention that these notes will be used internally in our company for other developers using our libraries. I am interested in what you believe a release note should and should not contain. E.g. do you list all open issues or just issues closed in this release? Do you maintain all previous release notes in the same file (possibly in reversed chronological order), or have separate documents for each release? A couple of examples that I have found on Apache web site:   * TXT: Apache Commons Net   * HTML: Maven"}
{"_id": "199864", "title": "Is it possible to develop a web application entirely in Javascript today (client and server) including a RESTful API exposing PostgreSQL data?", "text": "Where I work we have over a dozen internal SW systems that we have developed in-house using a variety of technologies, frameworks, and languages. Those include various from Microsoft (ASP.NET Web Forms, WebAPI, WinForms, SharePoint, Office Automation, Win8 Native Apps, SQL Server, SSRS) and others not from Microsoft (plain-old JS/HTML/CSS, PHP, Lithium, PostgreSQL, MySQL). Our SW dev team has grown and shrunk again to where it's just me and one other dev now. I love trying shiny new tech and taking advantage of different tools to get things done, which partly explains the huge span of different technologies we've chosen over the years, but we're suffering from the \"jack of all trades, master of none\" syndrome. Now we've been told that the company is expecting significant new growth and that the two of us will need to produce a number of new applications over the next year. I'm ready to consolidate our skill sets and tool sets so that we can master the tools and focus more on the business problems we will face without having the slowdown of context switching between technologies. The two of us have been doing a lot of \"plain old\" JS/HTML5/CSS3 development recently and I would like to focus on that technology set moving forward. We will be primarily using PostgreSQL as our data store on the back end (possibly augmenting with some NoSQL for very specific uses, and probably needing to find an advanced full-text search tool to integrate in). Our primary user interfaces will be a combination of traditional web apps and Single Page Apps (50%-50% mix), but there is the hope for native mobile apps down the line. Therefore I would like to expose our business data via a RESTful API so that it's easy to consume by various clients. And **the most important factor in all of this is that I want to be able to code exclusively in Javascript from front to back** (with the exception of writing SQL as necessary for the DB layer, and HTML5/CSS3 for the presentation). This leaves me with the following questions:   1. Is it possible today to code all these layers/components exclusively in Javascript without resorting, for example, to PHP on the server, or C# for the RESTful API (i.e., WebAPI)?   2. Is node.js required to make this a reality, or can I use a non-node web server and still achieve the \"Javascript-only\" ideal? (related...would node.js just make more sense in a JS-only paradigm?)   3. Are there any frameworks for building JS-only RESTful APIs that can talk to PostgreSQL?   4. Are there any advanced full-text search tools (such as Lucene) that allow you to program against them with a JS-only approach?"}
{"_id": "61683", "title": "\"Standard\" format for using a timestamp as part of a filename", "text": "I searched for a standard format for using a date/time as part of a file name and was unable to come up with anything. My question is two parts: **Is using time stamps ~~to enforce unique~~ in file names a poor practice?** I could get the time from the creation date and serialize the file names (file0001.bak, file0002.bak, etc) but just including the time stamp lets perform file operations such as `mv 2011-01* somewhere/`. Is there a downside to using this type of naming system? The format I am using is `YYYY-mm-dd_HH-MM-SS`. **Is there a better format I should be using?** With this format should i be concerned with file system compatibility, str_to_date_parsing concerns, etc? Thanks! edit: I might have wanted to leave out the **enforce** uniqueness bit since it's a single user generating backup using a cronjob (there shouldn't be any concurrency problems)."}
{"_id": "189772", "title": "Do I have to include full gpl v2 license information in my commercial project if I use another author's work?", "text": "I would like to use another author's work in my commercial project. That author's work is licensed under GPL v2. I'm not using full code. I'm using only part of the code. Also I modified it as per my project needs. Now i'm confused about what kind of license information I should include. This is the full license text. I'm using multiple author's work in functions.php file. Some works are licensed under MIT. 1) Do I have to include full license text in my php file as a comment? 2) Do I have to create separate php file for each author's work.?"}
{"_id": "189777", "title": "How to implement two different web services running the same business logic?", "text": "We are developing a ReSTful HTTP API with Servicestack(.NET). Some of the API clients, which have a subset of the actions, demand a service which could be easily added with all the entities, like with the \"Add Service Reference\" with Visual Studio. We are thinking about creating a simple asmx web service, but our thoughts on how to do it divide to two:   1. The asmx WS will call the ServiceStack service with an HTTP client.   2. The asmx WS will reference the same BL that the main service references and will call it directly. **Which is the preffered way?** **Is there any other way you would recommend?**"}
{"_id": "221093", "title": "How does customized executable generation work?", "text": "One of the things that Valve's Steam distribution platform is known for is its Custom Executable Generation system, which creates a unique copy of a program for each person that buys it. I'm sure that Valve isn't the only company or person to have implemented or thought of implementing such a system, however. If I wanted to try and roll my own system that generated executable files on the server side that are unique to the downloader or their account, what would I need to know how to do? What are the basics of such a system in the first place?"}
{"_id": "209620", "title": "Is Python Cookbook for python 2.4 applicable to python 2.7.5?", "text": "My college has a course on Introduction to programming using python and we are using Python 2.7.5. I would like to know if it will be helpful to read Python Cookbook which is for python 2.4? There are no separate cookbooks for python 2.7.x, to my knowledge. But, are there any similar books? There is a later edition to python cookbook for Python 3, but it turns out that python 3 and python 2 are quite different."}
{"_id": "107268", "title": "Using Paypal (or similar) to log into my site?", "text": "I have a web site and I want to offer a few levels of service - one free, one for a one-off payment, and one for a subscription. My first inclination is to use Paypal for the payment options. I understand that I can make some login page on my site where you create an account or login to an existing account, and then I can make an API call to Paypal to see what they've paid for and give them the appropriate level of access, and redirect to Paypal for them to pay for the access they want. I'm not sure yet if the free service will require a login or not. But having read Joel Spolsky's and Bruce Schnier's blogs, I'm conscious of how hard it is to do authentication right, and what a pain it is for users to have to create an account or login to my site, and then create an account or login to Paypal. Is there a way to use Paypal's login system directly, so they login to Paypal and Paypal sends me back a token saying who they are and what they've paid for? That kind of sounds like almost an OpenID, or something similar?"}
{"_id": "201312", "title": "When should i learn a php framework?", "text": "I am working on a project , a mobile hybrid application , that combines native code , html5 - jquery mobile (for the frond end) and php - mysql (for the back end). The server side , is responsible for things like registering new users to a database , updating users , subscribing users to events etc. Basically is simple php code with mysql queries. Lately i started to read a lot about php frameworks. I started to wonder when is really time to use any and basically why? From my understanding the framework only helps in the back end of a service and usually all the back end i ve build till now is described roughly above. In general i am interested a lot on building mobile services which include both back end and frond end development. By learning/using a framework do i earn something special in my case? I dont understand how my 100line php scripts could get any easier if they were written with a framework. Yes i ve read a 100 times that is better to use something tested and bug free than use your own things but i dont understand what exactly they are talking about. What could go wrong by quering a database and fetching/saving/editing data that a framework would solve it? What i am asking here is maybe for some examples when a php framework should be preferred."}
{"_id": "130186", "title": "Should a PHP beginner use a framework?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  When should I start learning a PHP Framework I am an absolute beginner programmer. I've got lots of theoretical understanding from university a decade ago but no practical experience. I want to remedy that with a hobby project that would be similar to a real-world sellable web app. I've chosen PHP in order to avoid OS specifics, build process, etc. **Should I start out using a framework, or coding everything by hand? What would the benefits of using a framework be?** I have briefly looked at PHP Code Ignition and it does a good job of praising its own benefits. I am sure that is true for an experienced developer, but does it also apply to a beginner?"}
{"_id": "107266", "title": "How should I specify a grammar for a parser?", "text": "I have been programming for many years, but one task that still takes me inordinately long is to specify a grammar for a parser, and even after this excessive effort, I'm never sure that the grammar I've come up with is good (by any reasonable measure of \"good\"). I don't expect that there is an algorithm for automating the process of specifying a grammar, but I hope that there are ways to structure the problem that eliminate much of the guesswork and trial-and-error of my current approach. My first thought has been to read about parsers, and I've done some of this, but everything I've read on this subject takes the grammar as a given (or trivial enough that one can specify it by inspection), and focuses on the problem of translating this grammar into a parser. I'm interested in the problem immediately before: how to specify the grammar in the first place. I'm primarily interested in the problem of specifying a _grammar_ that formally represents a collection of concrete examples (positive and negative). This is different from the problem of designing a new _syntax_. Thanks to Macneil for pointing out this distinction. I had never really appreciated the distinction between a grammar and a syntax, but now that I'm beginning to see it, I could sharpen my first clarification by saying that I'm primarily interested in the problem of specifying a grammar that will enforce a predefined syntax: it just so happens that in my case, the basis for this syntax is usually a collection of positive and negative examples. How is the grammar specified for a parser? Is there a book or reference out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about specifying a grammar for a parser? What points, when reading about parser grammar, should I be focusing on?"}
{"_id": "67971", "title": "What's the best way to store documentation associated with a code project?", "text": "We have a lot of documents associated with our software development. These include things like requirements, design documents, external PDFs, customer files, testing instructions, etc. Currently, these documents are scattered all over the place (wiki, \"some place on the network\", a local developers hard drive(!), and even worse places). What's the best way to keep track of them? Since we use visual studio (2010) for our development, and we don't really have any non-developers on the project, I thought it'd be a great idea to store them within the VS \"solution\", which would allow them to be source controlled, and universally accessible by all the developers. However, VS really doesn't seem to be built to do this. If you edit any document file, even one that is setup with the build properties \"None\", \"Do not copy\", VS must will rebuild the software before it will run again. There is no way to create a \"Documentation Project\" within the solution. (We use an Empty C# project for this). Visual Studio and Word/Excel flat do not do source control well. You can't view a checked-in file, and then decide to make a change without first closing the file, going to the project, and manually checking it out before making the change. It's slow and tedious at best. Anyway this is the best our team has come up with, but I really wish I had a better (free) solution."}
{"_id": "67976", "title": "Lowering barriers to entry into new programming endeavors", "text": "What things do you do to lower the barrier to beginning new projects? How long does it take to get into something new from when the idea hits to when you start making enough code to play with? In general, I'm referring to toy projects, but the concept still stands for more substantial FOSS projects upon which work is desired to be done. For example, I would like to stop being afraid of image file formats, and to that end I'd like to be able to create an app that leverages OpenGL for viewing arbitrary image formats. Or, I'd like to explore how to handle very large image files. Maybe these kinds of projects are not casual enough for me to dive into and out of. Other examples are things like, wow this FOSS program is great! But I'd like to fix some functionality. Oh look, if I'm going to build this on windows I have to find these million dependencies and compile them myself. Or, dang, this code is written in python. Oh wait, 2.6, now I need to make sure I install that version as well, and remember which version I'm writing for. Do you find it more conducive to work in linux? Is the idea of a casual programming endeavor just a myth? In what ways have you lowered your barrier to getting started? Thanks"}
{"_id": "77361", "title": "Best resources for learning Play! Framework", "text": "Awhile back I discussed the possibility of moving to a startup that is going to be using Java, more specifically the Play! Framework; well, I'm going to go for it! I have been a .NET guy for a long time now and haven't really been in the Java game except for the occasional Android tinkering or messing around with Scala a little bit. I have looked at the Play! Framework before but only on a cursory level. I think I will be fine with Java as a language, as I've been given great advice before on learning materials. My question, is aside from the very great site for the Play! Framework I haven't found much else out there except a few blogs. Does anyone know of any other good resources for the Play! Framework like books? An Amazon search turned up zero results. I know there is an eBook floating around out there but it seems a little outdated at this point. Anyway, thanks for your input."}
{"_id": "151407", "title": "Creating Objects", "text": "I have a general coding standard question. Is it bad practice to initialize and create an object in multiple methods depending on the outcome of a users choice. So for example if the user quits a poker game, create the poker hand with the cards the user has received, even if < 5, and if the user played till the end create object to show completed hand to show outcome of the game. The key is that the object will only be created once in actuality, there are just different paths and parameters is will receive depending on if the user folded, or played on to the showdown."}
{"_id": "199823", "title": "External repository moved from Sourceforge (SVN) to GitHub, now what?", "text": "We've been getting the head revision of the JEDI Code library for a while, we only use it a tiny bit so never have bothered to manage which version we're getting. The problem is they appear to be totally untethered from SVN now and we'd been including it in our repository as an external and now my build server it kaput. The obvious thing to do would be to just download zip and make a new repository on my SVN server and use that instead, updating when I feel like it. But is there a better solution? We use Tortoise SVN as an SVN client. (BTW, it's pretty strange that the JCL changed to Git with the great integration in the Delphi IDE isn't it?)"}
{"_id": "117692", "title": "Steps towards TDD", "text": "I need some advice to take the steps for TDD. How do we think in terms of interfaces for everything when we are writing code? Most of the testing books tell you how to write tests. But I want a book which tells whats the good way to write code in terms of TDD"}
{"_id": "209667", "title": "Is it possible to write an operating system in C?", "text": "A while back I saw a comment on a Stack Overflow question that surprised me: > No one can write an operating system in C. It is not possible. What one can > do is write an operating system in a C-based/C-like language that > adds/defines a considerable amount of non-standard capabilities on top of C > core. Is it useful to define C so narrowly? People say Linux, or a GPU driver, or an embedded system was \"written in C\", not \"written in C-with-some-extensions-to- accommodate-the-hardware.\" Is it incorrect to do so?"}
{"_id": "72626", "title": "3-Tier Object-Oriented Design Flaw?", "text": "I am going through training at my new job to use good object-oriented design with a 3-tier programming style. My supervisor says I have a design problem with my code:               class Program     {         public static void Main()         {             UserInputValidator Validater = new UserInputValidator();             int logSelected = -2;             Console.Write(\"\\nFilepath: \");             string filePath = Console.ReadLine();             while (logSelected != -1)             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"\\n\" + \"SELECT AN OPTION MENU\");                 Console.WriteLine(\"-----------------------\");                 Console.Write(\"\\n\" +                 /* Display option menu here with several options */                 \"9 ) Exit\\n\\n\");                 Console.WriteLine(\"-----------------------\");                 logSelected = Convert.ToInt32(Console.ReadLine());                 Validater.ValidateOptionsMenu(logSelected, filePath);             }         }              public void DisplayMessage(string message)         {             Console.WriteLine(message);         }     }      Validator.ValidateOptionsMenu() handles the logic for starting a process depending on the option that was selected. This is a 3-layer application with Presentation, Business, and Data Access layer. Program is in the Presentation layer, and other layers use code similar to the following to display a message:               Program program = new Program();     program.DisplayMessage(message);      I need to understand why this is bad practice - my supervisor says the class Program only starts the application, like App class in WPF. It has to have only 1 responsibility. The interaction with user (my option menu) is delegated to another class. I am having a hard time understanding my supervisor, and I'm not sure how to fix it. Can anyone help me understand?"}
{"_id": "72621", "title": "How can I overcome a badly structured software development model?", "text": "I joined the company currently I am working on as a fresher. Due to the limited number of skilled people in GIS software development, and since I was among one of them I was directly recruited as a Project Manager. I was quite conversant with Java and GIS, and I have done self motivated research on location based services, but not with project management and structured software development. It was one year after my graduation as a Geology special and during the previous year I was working as an academic in a University. Thanks to the interest I was having at work, an opportunity shown up, and eventually I was made responsible for the Business Intelligence department of the company as well. The company believed in me. I myself studied data warehousing and BI concepts and was successful in combining GIS with BI as well. Also I am currently working with two developers on our BI tool in C# WPF, where I also play the role of a developer at times (which I like). I tried extremely hard to adopt good software development methodologies with agile project management, but it was not very successful. Also, though I believe in well designed code as far as a product is concerned, due to the lack of technical knowledge my CEO has (who is directly above me), I normally do not get the amount of time needed to do it. The time taken is greatly enhanced by the lack of expertise we have in the specific coding language as a whole too (for instance WPF opposed to Java). Also there is no version controlling system in place as well. I am extremely fed up with the way things are going as it is not structured and I find most of my time thinking than working as to how to get things structured. I hope you guys with good professional experience will be able to help me overcome this situation."}
{"_id": "23280", "title": "How many programming languages is a programmer expected to be an expert at?", "text": "Do most programmers specialize on a single stack, leaving other things be, or are they expert at multiple languages at the same time? If it's more than one, how many is standard? By expert, I mean more than simply knowing the syntax of a language - an expert knows enough of standard libraries, tools, environments and syntax to be able to write non-trivial programs without having to constantly look things up or read books/tutorials."}
{"_id": "253054", "title": "Splitting up a Rails/Ruby app onto multiple servers", "text": "We recently moved a large application to two machines, both running the same codebase. I. Machine A   * Web server for public facing application   * Receives web hook call backs from our ESP   * Handles a few large, list-processing jobs (uploaded spreadsheets with data) II. Machine B   * Manages a massive set of (background) jobs but, primarily, focuses on building and assembling newsletters   * Runs all integration with our NetSuite platform   * Runs all system maintenance (read: DB) jobs  To me, having these two apps running the same codebase (a large, monolithic Rails application) seems 'wrong'. I am wondering if anyone has advice on how to better break up the code for these two apps. While they both need the same DB and, ultimately, the same model code, Machine B has no need for Controllers and Views and it feels wasteful running a full-stack Rails app for its tasks. A couple things came to mind but I'm not sure if I'm trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist:   * Break the models out into a sub-module on git and include into both apps   * Build out the Mahcine B app in plain Ruby or a lighter framework like Sinatra (where I could use ActiveRecord with Sinatra in combo with a sub-module for the model folder).  I'm new to this scenario and appreciate any and all feedback or direction! Thank you."}
{"_id": "224063", "title": "how complex a constructor should be", "text": "I am having a discussion with my co-worker on how much work a constructor can do. I have a class, B that internally requires another object A. Object A is one of a few members that class B needs to do its job. All of its public methods depends on the internal object A. Information about object A is stored in the DB so I try to validate and get it by looking it up on the DB in the constructor. My co-worker pointed out that the constructor should not do much work other than capture the constructor parameters. Since all of public methods would fail anyway if object A is not found using the inputs to the constructor, I argued that instead of allowing an instance to be created and later fail, it is actually better to throw early in constructor. Not all classes do this but i found that StreamWriter constructor also throws if it has problem opening a file and doesn't delay the validation until the first call to Write. What others think? I am using C# if that makes any difference. Reading Is there ever a reason to do all an object's work in a constructor? i wonder fetching object A by going to DB is part of \"any other initialization necessary to make the object ready to use\" because if user passed in wrong values to the constructor, i wouldn't be able to use any of its public methods. > Constructors should instantiate the fields of an object and do any other > initialization necessary to make the object ready to use. This is generally > means constructors are small, but there are scenarios where this would be a > substantial amount of work."}
{"_id": "228851", "title": "What is the benefit of having the assignment operator return a value?", "text": "I'm developing a language which I intend to replace both Javascript and PHP. (I can't see any problem with this. It's not like either of these languages have a large install base.) One of the things I wanted to change was to turn the assignment operator into an assignment command, removing the ability to make use of the returned value.               x=1;          /* Assignment. */     if (x==1) {}  /* Comparison. */     x==1;         /* Error or warning, I've not decided yet. */     if (x=1) {}   /* Error. */      I know that this would mean that those one-line functions that C people love so much would no longer work. I figured (with little evidence beyond my personal experience) that the vast majority of times this happened, it was really intended to be comparison operation. Or is it? Are there any practical uses of the assignment operator's return value that could not be trivially rewritten? (For any language that has such a concept.)"}
{"_id": "188289", "title": "iOS App Signing and Certificates", "text": "In order to sign an application for the Apple App Store, we need to create a certificate by saving a certificate request file from `keychain` and then upload it to the Apple store. I was wondering, what does this certificate request file contain?   Does the certificate contain any information (like a finger print) about the OS or hardware?"}
{"_id": "188287", "title": "How do you track third party services SSL certificates?", "text": "Recently Windows Azure Storage SSL certificate unexpectedly expired and since a lot of dependent services defaulted to \"refuse to connect to a site with expired SSL certificate\" that became a serious problem. Now the SSL certificate of any web service can be retrieved by anyone at any time for validation. The picture is from the linked to question: ![cert expired](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xebIt.png) So it means that the information was available at all times to \"anyone it might concern\" and any user of the service could have noticed the upcoming expiration and for example post a message on Microsoft forums before it was too late. However I can't find any information about how such cases are typically handled except this question for doing that in code. Is there any kind of best practice for validating third party services SSL certificates? What tools are typically used?"}
{"_id": "165027", "title": "Testing Git competence", "text": "I hire a lot of programmers for tiny tasks. I very clearly specify that the tasks can only be completed by making a pull request on GitHub. Unfortunatelly, so many programmers do not know Git and often the programmers cannot complete the project due to not understanding/being willing to learn Git, even after they have undertaken the programming of the task. This is bad both for me and for the programmers. Sometimes I end up arguing for why it is inefficient that they just send me a zip file containing the code. Therefore, I am looking for an online service to certify that the programmers know how to make a pull request so I do not waste their nor my time. The certificate should be free for the coders, but may cost me. It is important that the course just focuses on exactly what is needed to make a clean pull request so it should not take more than 5 minutes to go through. Does such a thing exist?"}
{"_id": "165025", "title": "What is the difference between Times and Dup in Assembly Language?", "text": "In a bootloader, the second last line is : > TIMES 510-($-$$) db 0 Now, will this command also do the same : > db 510-($-$$) DUP (0) If not why? I know what `TIMES` does, but its not mentioned in my x86 book by Mazidi (Pearson Publication). Any idea why? And what is the meaning of the `$` sign exactly? Different sites have different information about `$`. And is the line `TIMES 510-($-$$) db 0` absolutely necessary even if my bootloader code is of 512 bytes in size? So can anyone help me with these questions?"}
{"_id": "188283", "title": "How do I correctly include copyright statements for included libraries?", "text": "How do I correctly include copyright statements for included libraries? I have a program that uses libraries which are licensed under the GPL and MIT (either jointly under both, just only MIT) licences. How do I specify this at the top of a combined and minified file? I have this currently:               My Program (GPL)     Copyright 2009-2013, Me          jQuery (GPL/MIT)     Copyright 2005, 2012 jQuery Foundation, Inc. and other contributors          Some other library (MIT)     Copyright 2013, Some other person          This file is part of My Program.          My Program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by     the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or     (at your option) any later version.          My Program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,     but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of     MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the     GNU General Public License for more details.          You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License     along with My Program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.          ...jQuery's code...     ...my code...     ...some other libraries code..."}
{"_id": "188281", "title": "How can I cleanly separate first open tutorial code from my regular display code under OOP?", "text": "I have a MVC architecture, and I have the basic views completed. I now need to add the first user tutorial mode into the project. I don't want to add checks for first user state in all the views that need it, but the only alternative I can think of is to subclass everything and use those subclasses on first open. Is there a standard or widely-used practice for adding support for tutorials, etc. without making a mess of everything? EDIT: I was unclear in my question. I'm talking about tutorials that a user encounters when first using the app -- in our case we want to add visual effects to direct their attention to key UI elements. I wrote \"first user state\" to mean we store state about the number of uses on a local machine and use that to determine if display is necessary. Usually I would add some kind of edge case code to the views, say, if User.firstUse() arrowView.show();, but I was wondering if there's a cleaner way to partition that kind of code from regular code."}
{"_id": "91854", "title": "How to train yourself to avoid writing \u201cclever\u201d code?", "text": "Do you know that feeling when you just _need_ to show off that new trick with `Expression`s or generalize three different procedures? This does not have to be on Architecture Astronaut scale and in fact may be helpful but I can't help but notice someone else would implement the same class or package in a more clear, straightforward (and sometimes boring) manner. I noticed I often design programs by **oversolving the problem** , sometimes deliberately and sometimes out of boredom. In either case, I usually honestly believe my solution is crystal clear and elegant, until I see evidence to the contrary but it's usually too late. There is also a part of me that _prefers_ undocumented assumptions to code duplication, and cleverness to simplicity. > What can I do to **resist the urge to write \u201ccleverish\u201d code** and when > should the bell ring that **I am Doing It Wrong**? The problem is getting even more pushing as I'm now working with a team of experienced developers, and sometimes my attempts at writing smart code seem foolish even to myself after time dispels the illusion of elegance."}
{"_id": "63186", "title": "Technology for atoms animation", "text": "I would like to make an animation of Molecular diffusion. I have some CSV or binary file with data to create 3D scene with atoms. It has to be fast animation with diffrent camera views and transparency vary depends on atom's energy. Since I code in C# on a regular basis I am going to pick up XNA (later Mono.XNA). Is it the best fit? Is there anything good that reduce the amout of code? Has anyone had problem with porting XNA animation to Mono.XNA?"}
{"_id": "55032", "title": "Detailed C++ book for a programmer already familiar with C and object-oriented programming?", "text": "I know (to some extent) a few languages, including C, Java and Python. I'm also (somewhat) familiar with Scala and Scheme, plus I can read (but not write) x86 Assembly. Say I want to learn C++, what is a good book which doesn't try to teach me what a class is, teach me inheritance, polymorphism or loosely coupled classes again, nor does try to teach me other basics, just the C++ language (as well as how to write _idiomatic_ C++ code, not e.g. Java with C++ syntax) and its standard library? **Note:** \"Detailed\" as used in the title means that it doesn't try to cover C++ in 100 pages, I want to know the details of the language. Of course, mastery comes from practice, but I don't want to learn just a little bit of C++ from the book, but learn it quite thoroughly."}
{"_id": "181563", "title": "What does it mean to expose a C++ code publicly as a C API and what are the advantages of doing it?", "text": "I often hear people say that C++ programmers should expose their library's/product's public API as a C API. What does that mean and what are the advantages of that?"}
{"_id": "107841", "title": "Recursion without factorial, Fibonacci numbers etc", "text": "Almost every article I can find about recursion includes the examples of factorial or Fibonacci Numbers, which are:   1. Math   2. Useless in real life Are there some interesting non-math _code_ examples to teach recursion? I'm thinking divide-and-conquer algorithms but they usually involve complex data structures."}
{"_id": "221632", "title": "Testing: deterministic or non-deterministic?", "text": "Is it better to have either a   * Deterministic test suite, that results in the same tests succeeding   * Non-deterministic test suite, which potentially possibly covers more cases ? **Example:** You write a test suite to test controller functionality in an MVC application. The controller requires application data from a database as input during the test. There are two options to do this:   * You hardcode which row(s) from the test database are selected as input (e.g. the 10th and 412th row)   * You use a random number generator to pseudorandomly pick the data from the database (two rows selected by a random number generator) The first is deterministic: every run of the test for the same revision of code should yield the same result. The second is non-deterministic: every run of the test suite has the possibility to yield a different result. The randomly picked data might however be a better representation of data edge cases. It might simulate a user feeding our controllers with unpredictable data better? What are reasons to choose one over the other?"}
{"_id": "189947", "title": "How Immutable Sets are Manipulated", "text": "When working with an immutable set or map, like the ones found in many functional programming languages, operations that would otherwise modify the container generate a new container instead. I know that most list operations in functional languages do not result in a copy of the list and just rearrange pointers. This is why working with lists is extremely efficient. I am curious whether immutable maps are similar or if an entirely new map is created after each operation. I am asking because a library I wrote manipulates a lot of maps and I am curious whether I will see a performance boost if I switch over to immutable maps. Currently, I am just looping over my map adding or throwing away key/value pairs as I go."}
{"_id": "130313", "title": "MVVM Reporting App Approach ? Data Access Layer?", "text": "I'm trying to follow the MVVM pattern in a reporting / statistics application that I'm making in C# / WPF. I have made many model classes to hold properties as a starting point. Some of these models are made to encapsulate different statistics so that I can present data that can be cross refrenced. I'm thinking the next step is to create a data access layer with classes and methods to connect to a database and grab the values to populate these models. I was thinking of creating a connection and query passing class. Then other classes for each specific set of data that I will need for the models. (constructing queries to pass) From what I understand I will be calling these data access layer methods from the view model to populate instances of my models. Which I will present with the view. Is my approach in theory the correct standard way to approach this problem? Any suggestions? Or Reference Material?"}
{"_id": "51626", "title": "Warranty or guarantee clause for code breaking", "text": "Should I guarantee or add a warranty clause to my contract in the event code breaks or an anomaly occurs outside the client's hand or act of God? If so, what should that language say?"}
{"_id": "140527", "title": "How do I improve my ability to manipulate code quickly, not wpm?", "text": "I have seen several questions on here about touch typing and words per minute but not about improving ones ability to manipulate text using keyboard shortcuts, bindings etc. I have tried putting a **cheat sheet of keyboard shortcuts** next to my monitor but I can never incorporate them in my 'flow'. I have also tried the **'just use vi and don't touch the mouse'** method but that only helps me with navigating code and not editing. I would prefer to use some application (or game) to learn text manipulation. But it looks like nothing like that exists (app idea?). I'm open to other suggestions too."}
{"_id": "51621", "title": "Using some kind of version control when working alone and with small projects?", "text": "Very often I'm working on small projects only for myself. I'm working on one machine, but recently I thought about using some kind of version control nevertheless. This would have some benefits as for example:   * I don't have to care anymore for local backup   * Mistakes can easily made undone   * History can be maintained But on the other hand it has also some drawbacks like for example:   * Additional resources required   * Time to setup, get used to it, etc. From your experience, is it a good thing to use revision control when your working alone?"}
{"_id": "23863", "title": "How long does a Comp Sci degree last?", "text": "I keep hearing from people that if I don't become a programmer soon after graduation my degree will be a useless piece of paper, they claim it will become outdated. I kind of find this hard to believe considering what I was taught at a fairly good school has been standard practice for some time. So is this a true belief in industry? That somehow I become less desirable after a year or two, even though the graduates who comes after me pretty much get the same identical education."}
{"_id": "61533", "title": "C# Unit Testing In A Single Project", "text": "Alright, so I'm doing my first \"real\" C# project. I'm chugging along, enjoying myself, nice little language I've got here, fairly easy to use, la ti da. Then I get to the point that I realize there's no simple way of setting up friend classes for unit testing. Well. This is unfortunate. I dig around and find that I can jump through some burning hoops and expose everything to another assembly with:               [assembly: InternalsVisibleTo(\"AssemblyName\")]      But... this is a fairly minor in-house app that I've just going to a single binary and doesn't really warrant multiple assemblies. What other options - if any - does C# offer?"}
{"_id": "189485", "title": "How many different configurations are used for software tests?", "text": "This article shows that for Android apps, software developers use between 30 and 50 different devices for compatibility tests. I tried to find information about tests of applications on \"classic\" computers, for example PC games or graphics-oriented business applications: how many different hardware configurations are typically tested in this area?"}
{"_id": "253394", "title": "Separating roles authorization and database", "text": "Something really bothers me about the way authorization tends to be done with roles in ASP.NET MVC. The way it is normally done is that you have a Users table and a Roles table. A User can have many Roles. Then you decorate your controllers/actions with an authorize attribute saying which roles you want to allow access to the controller/action:               [Authorize(Roles = \"Admin\")]     public ActionResult AdminOnlyAction()     {     }      The problem with this is that your code is reliant on data within the database. Obviously you could, at application start, seed your database with the roles needed if they're not present but there's still a fragile dependency on the data in the database (e.g. it could be deleted, renamed, etc. etc.). Having an enum or similar with the Role levels in instead of storing them in the database seems reasonable but still leaves me with a sour feeling. Is there an elegant alternative which I've not hit upon?"}
{"_id": "142359", "title": "How and what should I be (unit) testing for in this method?", "text": "I am relatively new to unit testing and have a query about what/how I should be testing a certain method. For the following (psudo-c#) method I have created (not a real-life example) what would you test for? Initially, my thoughts would be to test the output with variations on the dictionary of form fields, e.g. valid, invalid, missing values. However I also wonder how you would test to make sure the object values have been changed to the correct value and that the correct email message was attempted to be sent (obviously both services could/would be mocked). I hope what I am asking makes sense, I appreciate this is a subjective question and the answers may be 'it depends' ;)               public bool ProcessInput(Dictionary<string, string> formFields, ObjService objService, EmailService emailService)         {             try             {                        // Get my object id                        int objId;                        if(!int.TryParse(formField[\"objId\"], out objId)                        {                           return false;                        }                             // Update my object - would you validate the save against a DB or a mocked inmemory db?                        var myObj = objService.Find(objId);                        myObj.Name = formField[\"objName\"];                        objService.Save(myObj);                             // Send an email - how would you test to make sure content, recipient, etc was correct?                         emailService.SendEmail(formField(\"email\"), \"Hello World\");                             return true;                 }             catch(Exception ex)             {             return false;             }         }"}
{"_id": "1376", "title": "What to do with bugs that do not repro?", "text": "I have a tester that while testing will have an error occur (ok so far), but then he frequently reports it right away. We (the developers) then later find that the tester has not tried to reproduce the issue and (when asked) cannot find a way to make it happen again. Now these are still bugs, I don't want to ignore them. But without repro steps I am kind of stuck. Sometimes there is a stack trace (though frequently it is not useful because this is compact framework and there are no line numbers). But when there is one I can take the stack trace and crack open the code and start guessing, but that does not lead to testable \"fixes\". What do you do in scenarios like this?"}
{"_id": "36228", "title": "Programming During a Crisis", "text": "I'm having difficulty turning this into a proper question, but here goes... Some of you may have heard about the flooding happening in Queensland, Australia. Well, I'm in the inner suburbs of Brisbane right now; the river has been slowly creeping toward my house since Tuesday. When I left for work this morning it was twenty meters down the road when it is normally kilometers away. Within hours of the distater striking, the government already had some pretty good web applications available for people to get information about what was happening and where the flood was predicted to rise. They also set up a database for people to search for the whereabouts of relatives or could register their location for others to see. Has anyone been involved in the development of these kinds of projects before? It's interesting that they could churn out this software in what appeared to be less than a day when the average development house could take weeks at best. In what ways did it differ from a 'normal' project? Any other thoughts?"}
{"_id": "74105", "title": "Is it legal for me to contribute to open source software while employed?", "text": "I work for a large corporation and I want to keep my skills fresh. I think contributing to an open source project would help, especially if I ever want a job at a startup. I have heard that large companies often own any development employees do outside of work. Could I face legal consequences by contributing to an open source project without notifying my employer? Could I be putting an open source project at risk if I contributed to it while employed? If refrained from contributing due to legal reasons and I applied to another company where open source development experience is expected, would they understand or would my application go in the trash bin?"}
{"_id": "36226", "title": "Programming Language most relevant to the Financial sector?", "text": "I am a freshman in college and doing a software engineering/ finance double major. I've been learning programming on my own and have a good bit of familiarity with php by now. I was wondering what you guys think the most relevant programming language is for financial/investment banking use? I have read this thread: Books on developing software for financial markets/investment banks I want to start learning/reading up on a language (the basics not financial/quant stuff) to set a foundation for the future financial/quant stuff."}
{"_id": "25425", "title": "Is Rails 3 ready for use in production?", "text": "I'm looking to get a snapshot of Rails 3 at this point in time. We're about to start a new long term project, and I'm wondering if R3 is ready for real use. Or, if there are still a lot of bumps to be worked out. E.g. I saw questions about its compatibility with Passenger. (?) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "253574", "title": "Why we need Throw-away Prototyping?", "text": "What is throw-away prototyping model and why do we need it? How does it differentiate from Evolutionary Prototyping?"}
{"_id": "139130", "title": "How does the MongoDb licence define \"commercial\" and \"non-commercial\" use?", "text": "I have a question about \"commercial\" and \"non-commercial\" usage, also with the usage of MongoDb. Lets imagine we got a website without a business model, the site grows in popularity but still no incomming money. Are we talking about non-commercial at this point? And once the website starts making money, is it allowed to decide at that point to get a commercial license? Thanks for help."}
{"_id": "205625", "title": "Cookie access within a HTTP Class", "text": "I have a HTTP class that has a Get, and Post, method. It's a simple class I created to encapsulate Post and Get requests so I don't have to repeat the get/post code throughout the application. In C#:               class HTTP     {         private CookieContainer cookieJar;         private String userAgent = \"...\";              public HTTP()         {             this.cookieJar = new CookieContainer();         }              public String get(String url)         {             // Make get request. Return the JSON         }              public String post(String url, String postData)         {             // Make post request. Return the JSON         }     }      I've made the CookieJar a property because I want to preserve the cookie values throughout the session. If the user is logged into Twitter with my application, each request I make (be it get or post) I want to use the cookies so they remain logged in. That's the basics of it anyway. But, I don't want to return a string in all instances. Sometimes I may want the cookie, or a header value, or something else from the request. Ideally I'd like to be able to do this in my code:               Cookie cookie = http.get(\"http://google.com\").cookie(\"g_user\");     String g_user = cookie.value;      or               String source = http.get(\"http://google.com\").body;      _My question_ - To do this, would I need to have a Get class, and a Post class, that are included within the HTTP class and are accessible via accessors? Within the Get and Post class I would then have the Cookie method, and the body property, and whatever else is needed.   Should I also use an interface, or create a Request class and have Post and Get extend it so that common methods and properties are available to both classes? Or, am I thinking totally wrong?"}
{"_id": "139135", "title": "JavaScript client for talking with WCF server with WebSockets binding", "text": "I'm excited about the possibilities for duplex communication with WebSockets between a web browser and web server. I see that WCF for .NET 4.5 supports a WebSockets binding now, and I know there's a JavaScript API for using WebSockets. However, what I don't understand is how these are supposed to interoperate. Yes, you can deal with raw message passing with the JS API, but there doesn't seem to be any JS library for doing SOAP-based RPC compatible with WCF. Do any of you know if there are any libraries to enable a web browser to call a WCF service using WebSockets?"}
{"_id": "139134", "title": "Do all functional languages use garbage collection?", "text": "Is there a functional language which allows to use stack semantics - automatic deterministic destruction at the end of the scope?"}
{"_id": "139137", "title": "Is there a good example of Python code for unit testing an api?", "text": "Do you know any good example of Python unit testing code for testing an API? Thanks! **Update** :   * Found this very interesting question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7336101/testing-rest-api-with-database-backend   * I am especially looking for examples to test a CRUD API"}
{"_id": "253578", "title": "Asymptotic running time of for-loops", "text": "I have this question which I need answered: > What is the asymptotic running time for the following piece of code? >   >   >     if (N < 1000) >       for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) >         for (int j = 0; j < N; j++) >           A[i] = j; >     else >       for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) >         A[i] = i; >   > >   1. logarithmic in N >   2. linear in N () >   3. linearithmic in N >   4. quadratic in N > And the correct result is \u201c _2. linear in N_ \u201d which I can't figure out why, since that as far as I've understood, we want to accept the worst case>best case. The worst case here is that the if statement is run and the time would then be quadratic in N. I am aware that we're trying to find some kind of average of more attempts, but how can I know what the value of N is? If N is really high (10000), it's obviously the else statement that is run most of the times. But can we assume this or have I misunderstood something?"}
{"_id": "253579", "title": "Implementing a modern web application with Web API on top of old services", "text": "My company has many WCF services which may or may not be replaced in the near future. The old web application is written in WebForms and communicates straight with these services via SOAP and returns `DataTables`. Now I am designing a new modern web application in a modern style, an AngularJS client which communicates with an ASP.NET Web API via JSON. The Web API then communicates with the WCF services via SOAP. In the future I want to let the Web API handle all requests and go straight to the database, but because the business logic implemented in the WCF services is complicated it's going to take some time to rewrite and replace it. **Now to the problem:** I'm trying to make it easy in the near future to replace the WCF services with some other data storage, e.g. another endpoint, database or whatever. I also want to make it easy to unit test the business logic. That's why I have structured the Web API with a `repository layer` and a `service layer`. The repository layer has a straight communication with the data storage (WCF service, database, or whatever) and the service layer then uses the repository (`Dependency Injection`) to get the data. It doesn't care where it gets the data from. Later on I can be in control and structure the data returned from the data storage (DataTable to POCO) and be able to test the logic in the service layer with some mock repository (using Dependency Injection). Below is some code to explain where I'm going with this. But my question is, does this all make sense? Am I making this overly complicated and could this be simplified in any way possible? Does this simplicity make this too complicated to maintain? **My main goal** is to make it as easy as possible to switch to another data storage later on, e.g. an ORM and be able to test the logic in the service layer. And because the majority of the business logic is implemented in these WCF services (and they return DataTables), I want to be in control of the data and the structure returned to the client. Any advice is greatly appreciated. **Update 20/08/14** I created a repository factory, so services would all share repositories. Now it's easy to mock a repository, add it to the factory and create a provider using that factory. Any advice is much appreciated. **I want to know if I'm making things more complicated than they should be.** So it looks like this: **1. Repository Factory**               public class RepositoryFactory     {         private Dictionary<Type, IServiceRepository> repositories;              public RepositoryFactory()         {             this.repositories = new Dictionary<Type, IServiceRepository>();         }              public void AddRepository<T>(IServiceRepository repo) where T : class         {             if (this.repositories.ContainsKey(typeof(T)))             {                 this.repositories.Remove(typeof(T));             }                  this.repositories.Add(typeof(T), repo);         }              public dynamic GetRepository<T>()         {             if (this.repositories.ContainsKey(typeof(T)))             {                 return this.repositories[typeof(T)];             }                  throw new RepositoryNotFoundException(\"No repository found for \" + typeof(T).Name);         }     }      _I'm not very fond of`dynamic` but I don't know how to retrieve that repository otherwise._ **2. Repository and service**               // Service repository interface     // All repository interfaces extend this     public interface IServiceRepository     {     }          // Invoice repository interface     // Makes it easy to mock the repository later on     public interface IInvoiceServiceRepository : IServiceRepository     {         List<Invoice> GetInvoices();     }          // Invoice repository     // Connects to some data storage to retrieve invoices     public class InvoiceServiceRepository : IInvoiceServiceRepository     {         public List<Invoice> GetInvoices()         {             // Get the invoices from somewhere             // This could be a WCF, a database, or whatever             using(InvoiceServiceClient proxy = new InvoiceServiceClient())             {                 return proxy.GetInvoices();             }         }     }          // Invoice service     // Service that handles talking to a real or a mock repository     public class InvoiceService     {         // Repository factory         RepositoryFactory repoFactory;              // Default constructor         // Default connects to the real repository         public InvoiceService(RepositoryFactory repo)         {             repoFactory = repo;         }              // Service function that gets all invoices from some repository (mock or real)         public List<Invoice> GetInvoices()         {             // Query the repository             return repoFactory.GetRepository<IInvoiceServiceRepository>().GetInvoices();         }     }"}
{"_id": "166595", "title": "Common header file for C++ and JavaScipt", "text": "I have an app that runs a C++ server backend and Javascript on the client. I would like to define certain strings once only, for both pieces of code. For example, I might have a CSS class \"row-hover\" - I want to define this class name in one place only in case I change it later. Is there an easy way to include, or read, some sort of common definitions file into both C++ and JavaScript? Ideally as a compile / preprocessing step but any neat approach good."}
{"_id": "182497", "title": "Asking people to disable Java for security - what's next for developer?", "text": "I don't know what best to give as title to this so pardon me if it sounds weird. I saw this question asked on IT Security and another site asking people to disable Java from their system or browser because it's vulnerable. As a lover of Java, though currently doing C#, I would love to still do more Java in future, but this news is giving a bad name to the good old Java. Wouldn't this drive developers like me away from Java? Wouldn't it spell a bad name for Java among developers and prospective clients?"}
{"_id": "39900", "title": "What does the term \"fast follower\" mean?", "text": "In the last few days, I've heard the term \"fast follower\" mentioned several times. It's used in the context of an unresolved bug/issue that (supposedly) will be quickly fixed and implemented. Is this some new corporate jargon? I'm aware of a fast follower strategy, or second mover strategy (as described in this wikipedia article), but that doesn't apply in the context."}
{"_id": "249809", "title": "Automatically propagating changes", "text": "When working on multiple similar projects there are often changes that can't be extracted into a library, but should be applied to most of the projects. I mean changes like a modified directory structure, some common configuration, similar ui code, etc. The most basic strategy is to copy a new project from the last finished one and throw out the business logic. The problem is that the improvements to the newest project won't move back to the older ones. A slightly better strategy is to set up a boilerplate repository, clone every new project from it. Then the reusable bits can be extracted form the newest project into the boilerplate and then pulled to the older projects. Of course, merging might be complicated, but I've had this strategy work quite well for me. Pushing the changes is still too much work though. Is there a strategy to automate propagation of _some_ changes across multiple projects?"}
{"_id": "223161", "title": "Scrum decision making versus maintainability and development time?", "text": "I appreciate that this question may be controversial. In a sense, it is the flip-side of the question \"Business trying to make technical decisions\". In Scrum, the development team is supposed to be collectively responsible for making design and technical and code-level decisions, to fulfill the customer requirements. There is a division of responsibility and power between the product owner, who defines and prioritises the stories by communicating with stakeholders, and the team, who decide _how_ to implement the stories. I think this is motivated by the belief that, since developers are intimately familiar with the code they have written so far, and all the information they have memorised or noted about the project, and they will face the consequences of poor decisions when they have to modify the code in future, they are best placed to make design decisions. And if in hindsight they realise they made a bad decision, it will be a very valuable learning experience for them, and they won't be able to blame management for what went wrong. In theory, I agree with all this. But (to kind of play devil's advocate) I can see several situations in which following this principle _to the letter_ could be a bad idea:   1. The development team are mostly either temporary contractors, are (unbenownst to others) intending to jump ship, or are going to be made redundant after shipping this project, or are going to move to another project and there is an _entirely separate_ team which will do \"code maintenance\". (A good example of this might be: a typical outsourced government computerisation project.) So, for any of these reasons, the team mostly aren't the people who will be doing the actual maintenance.   2. Or, the development team are _all_ inexperienced developers who don't really have a clear idea of the maintainability problems that can be caused by slipshod development practices or poor design decisions. While they have an incentive _in theory_ to do the right things, the incentive isn't working yet because they haven't been burned enough times (or they haven't acknowledged the connection between sloppy coding practices and getting burned).   3. The development team _like_ making big mistakes and working crazy hours to fix or work around them because (a) they are workaholics, (b) they like wasting time writing boilerplate code or using some bad old framework because it gives them a sense of job security, or (c) it makes them look like or feel like heroes.   4. The team like to endlessly bikeshed, or discuss endless different permutations of ideas, or add \"internally-visible features\" which are low-value, while the business really needs them to deliver value faster, and come on, good enough is good enough! There may be others in the organisation who could provide a variety of useful inputs into design and technical decisions: More experienced developers; Polyglot developers; Specialists, including DBAs (who may not necessarily be in the scrum team); Managers, who may be cynical and may have seen over- ambitious or wrong-headed architectures go awry too many times. But it's not just about getting input from people with valuable experience. More than this, isn't it fundamentally sometimes necessary for management (at any level) to be able to say \"No, this way of implementing it would be a bad idea. Do it this way instead\", or at least \"No, you can try that later if there's time, but do it this simpler way initially\"? It seems to me that Scrum is too idealistic in this respect. I know that this does happen, obviously, but to say that because of this interference \"your organisation is not doing Scrum\" suggests that \"doing Scrum\" is not desirable in such cases!"}
{"_id": "223167", "title": "Distribution of Event Listeners in a Distributed Service Oriented Architecture", "text": "I have a service architecture composed of services that service common areas of the application. Examples of services would be:   * AccountService (manages client accounts in the system)   * BillingService (bills clients for products that are configured)   * UserService (manages user and groups under a given client)   * NotificationService (sends notifications via email/SMS/push/any method when certain events happen) I have an ActiveMQ cluster where I push events to act on...which leads to the question... Where is the right place to put a message listener that reacts to an event for the purposes of sending a notification? A simple example would be: \"I want to notify the account owner via e-mail when a new user is added to their account.\" Should this listener be in NotificationService (which is intended to be highly generic), or in UserService (where the action is being performed), or in a separate service entirely which acts as a sort of router?"}
{"_id": "166048", "title": "Futures/Monads vs Events", "text": "In an application framework when performance impact can be ignored (10-20 events per second at max),   **what is more maintainable and flexible to use as a preferred medium for communication between modules - Events or Futures/Promises/Monads**? It's often being said, that Events (pub/sub, mediator) allow loose-coupling and thus - more maintainable app... My experience deny this: once you have more that 20+ events - debugging becomes hard, and so is refactoring - because it is very hard to see: who, when and why uses what. Promises (I'm coding in Javascript) are much uglier and dumber, than Events. But: you can clearly see connections between function calls, so application logic becomes more straight-forward. What I'm afraid. though, is that Promises will bring more hard-coupling with them... p.s: the answer does not have to be based on JS, experience from other functional languages is much welcome."}
{"_id": "56071", "title": "Best Way to Present a Report with Code", "text": "I'm in a statistic course at Uni currently. We have to present reports on the findings along with the code we used. I'm wondering what is the best way to present this code in the reports. A separate page with a reference to the report or inline. Or something else? Thanks"}
{"_id": "98284", "title": "Minimising little coding mistakes", "text": "I make a fair amount of small mistakes when I code (things such as getting an angle bracket to the wrong direction). It adds a fair amount of time to my coding because I have to debug several times and iron out the dinks. Have you got any advice on how to stop these mistakes creeping in?"}
{"_id": "141698", "title": "Version control and personal configuration file", "text": "Our project uses a user-specific configuration file. This file is currently not in version control, since it is different for each user. The problem is, whenever a developer adds a new module that requires configuration, or changes the name of an existing modules, the other developers get errors because their private configuration files are not updated. To solve the problem, we thought of working with two configuration files: a default/global configuration file that will be in version control and will be updated regularly by each developer that adds a new module, and a private configuration file that will be kept out of version control and will contain only the user-specific changes. However, this still seems like an ad-hoc solution. Can you propose a better solution? What do the professionals do?"}
{"_id": "98282", "title": "What to do after reading a beginner's book on C#?", "text": "I am 16 years old and want to get a job in the programming field in the future. Since I will be applying for a foreign university, I want to start programming by myself and gain experience, both to increase my chances for quality education and for later employment. Last year I learned Java, but whatever motivation I had mustered fizzled out after finishing the book, and I only did some basic work on a project I came up with by myself, before getting stuck and abandoning it. This year, I decided to learn C#. My Java knowledge, however small it may be, would help me pick up and remember more information from a beginner book, and since an year of inactivity without much prior experience warrants a reread anyway, I thought I might as well learn a different-yet-similar language, as opposed to just going through my HF Java for a second time. I picked up Herb Schildt's \"C# 3.0 A Beginner's Guide\" and finished it. However, I have no idea what to do now. Come up with a random project and work on it (potentially picking up something far beyond my limited ability)? Read up on more advanced topics (even though I don't have any practical experience)? I'm at a loss regarding what to do to actually become a capable programmer, after reading a beginner's book."}
{"_id": "57300", "title": "Is it possible to write a program that pipes the sound from one computer through the sound card of another?", "text": "I have a case where I need to use one computer's sound card to play sound but I want the sound to be generated at another computer that's on the same network as the other. Ideally the program that does this would only run on the computer that was generating the sound, though I'm fairly certain that isn't possible based on the research I have been doing. What ever I do with it though the solution would need to be such that the computer actually playing the sound would be secure. Thanks for any input."}
{"_id": "36480", "title": "What is Android's payment system like?", "text": "I've heard that Apple pays the developers in lump sums (I forget how often) for their app downloads. My question is does Google work the same way with Android? If not, how do they operate their payment system? Kind of a side question as well, but how do Apple and Google get you the money from other countries? Do they automatically convert it for you and take a cut for swapping the currency or is that your job?"}
{"_id": "101850", "title": "Learning PHP OOP", "text": "I have been coding PHP for about 2 years now and I THINK that I have a very good grasps of the fundamental parts of PHP, i.e.   * Functions   * foreach/IF statements   * sessions/cookies   * POST/GET Amongst a few others. I want to move on to learning OOP PHP now, so learning how to use classes and making it a really valuable skill. I have 1 requirement, the source must be a respected source that doesn't teach developers bad habits. I have the book: PHP and MySQL Web Development However, as useful as that is I would like an online source. I would like to know from people with experience in OOP PHP, how and where did they learn OOP PHP. Obviously by doing, but I would really appreciate some great resources which help me along the way."}
{"_id": "101853", "title": "Rails: controllers vs models which should handle file manipulation", "text": "This post by Jamis Buck about keeping Rails controllers skinny has always stuck with me. I have an app in which a zip file consisting of an XML file and some images is uploaded and used to create the model (mostly from the xml file, which points to the images). Should all the code dealing with extracting the files from the zip and moving them to their appropriate place go in the controller or the model? thanks!"}
{"_id": "75275", "title": "Does it make sense to have a single tab interface?", "text": "This is more a web design / user experience question, but since programmers.stackexchange.com is more opinion based, I posted this here - Does it make sense to have a single tab in a web app? I don't see any reason to have a tab if you can't tab to it from some other tab. My PM is demanding a single tab. I honestly think my PM is making horrible decisions regarding the design (we have no official designer) and eventually we will lose customers. The design of the application was made early 2000's and it shows (HTML tables, lots of inline css, etc). I am afraid that if we don't update it to match this decade's expectations of application, it will just turn off our potential customers. The application is an enterprise app that we sell to potential customers. We are a small company - our team for this application is 6 (3 developers, 2 qa (one being the pm), and one of the company's partners). Everyone's opinion matters (so I have been told), but if someone happens to disagree with the PM (who can do no wrong), she gets all huffy....and I am rambling. So my question remains - what are your thoughts on a single tab?"}
{"_id": "84071", "title": "Is it better to document functions in the header file or the source file?", "text": "In languages that distinguish between a \"source\" and \"header\" file (mainly C and C++), is it better to document functions in the header file: _(pilfered fromCCAN)_               /**      * time_now - return the current time      *      * Example:      *  printf(\"Now is %lu seconds since epoch\\n\", (long)time_now().tv_sec);      */     struct timeval time_now(void);      or in the source file? _(pilfered from PostgreSQL)_               /*      * Convert a UTF-8 character to a Unicode code point.      * This is a one-character version of pg_utf2wchar_with_len.      *      * No error checks here, c must point to a long-enough string.      */     pg_wchar     utf8_to_unicode(const unsigned char *c)     {     ...      Note that some things are defined in the header only, such as structs, macros, and `static inline` functions. I'm only talking about things that are _declared_ in a header file and _defined_ in a source file. Here are some arguments I can think of. I am leaning toward documenting in the source file, so my \"Pro-header\" arguments may be somewhat weak. Pro-header:   * The user doesn't need the source code to see the documentation.      * The source may be inconvenient, or even impossible, to acquire.     * This keeps interface and implementation further apart. Pro-source:   * It makes the header a lot shorter, giving the reader a birds-eye view of the module as a whole.   * It pairs the documentation of a function with its implementation, making it easier to see that a function does what it says it does. When answering, please be wary of arguments based on what tools and \"modern IDEs\" can do. Examples:   * Pro-header: Code folding can help make commented headers more navigable by hiding the comments.   * Pro-source: cscope's `Find this global definition` feature takes you to the source file (where the _definition_ is) rather than the header file (where the _declaration_ is). I'm not saying don't make such arguments, but bear in mind that not everyone is as comfortable with the tools you use as you are."}
{"_id": "37572", "title": "License for freeware but closed source application", "text": "I have developed a simple application which I want to put release for free but I'm not planning releasing the source code. I want the application to be freely available but I do not want anyone to sell it or reverse engineer it. MIT License looks simple and nice but it also allows anyone to sell it. Is there any license out there suitable for me or should I just modify MIT License?"}
{"_id": "209362", "title": "How to manage ratings system of my web app?", "text": "I am making a website where in users would rate posts by other users, according to how useful they are. The posts will be about products - mobiles, tablets, and other personal consumer electronics only. I want to make sure no trolling or slandering goes on, so I'll need a system that will make sure the good ratings of posts are genuine, and not just from people hired by those products' companies, or the bad ratings aren't from that product's company's competitors. I like the StackOverflow system of upvotes and downvotes. But that requires a lot of moderation, and frankly, I don't have the resources for that. I mean, the SO community has a lot of trusted mods, and admins, but in my site, in the beginning only me and my friend who are making this site would be the ones to trust, in order to keep only legit posts and legit ratings in our database, for the public to value from. EDIT 1: One solution I have in mind is, to include Facebook Like button as the only way to \"upvote\" a post. That way, leveraging the authenticity of users offered by Facebook (atleast to some extent), would benefit me. I'd count the number of likes and store them as upvotes for a particular post. There would be though, no downvotes. I'm thinking storing a ratio of \"X users found it useful\" as `Viewers that liked this post`/`Total number of viewers of that post`"}
{"_id": "134569", "title": "Should the controller pass data to a view in the MVC pattern?", "text": "I work with ASP.NET MVC (and other web-based MVC implementations) quite often, but this is something I've never been sure of: Should controller and view communicate? Of course the controller should be choosing which view to use, but what I is mean should the controller be passing data to the view? In my opinion, if the view is expecting data from the controller, then they're effectively tied together as a (controller, view) pair. Instead, I usually have the view communicate with the model itself and be independent of any controller. Do I have the right approach, or is this a case of there being no one correct answer? Does the answer change when working in the web versus other environments? Does the answer change when you have the concept of a strongly- typed view (like in ASP.NET MVC) or not?"}
{"_id": "249852", "title": "Subclass only have methods without variables", "text": "Is it ok to have subclass which does not declare its own variables (instance variables) and inherits from super class or base class? It has methods and there are some common methods which it overides but do not have variables of its own. Is it ok to have subclasses which defines behavior only or I am missing something? I want to divide in subclasses to separate logic of my classes. I have `Medication` class and I want to subclass to `DailyMedication` , `WeeklyMedication` but I have all my instance variable in `Medication` as I do not have any specific for these classes. I want to make subclasses to divide logic as I have too much if conditions in my code.               MedicationEntity     name     dose     weekdays    //in case of daily and monthly this is null      monthdays   //in case of weekly and daily this is null     frequencyType  //Daily or weekly or monthly     etc      EDIT: I want to make subclasses because these all classes have diffrent logic.I have enum of `frequency`(for Daily,Weekly etc) in my `Medication` class and this makes worse as i have to put all the checks in my code for these frequency type as if frequency is that than do that and if daily than do that as now i want to remove these switch conditions. 1)Also please suggest any good idea as weekdays is null if frequency is daily or monthly.But i need to send null to server.So where i can put weekdays if i subclass as it is not null only in case of weekly frequency but as i have to send null to server in request for all other frequencies.Should i put `weekdays` in subclass if yes than how i send null to server if frequency is daily as `DailyMedication` have no information about `weekdays`."}
{"_id": "138262", "title": "API method placement guidelines?", "text": "Are there any guidelines for placing methods in API when the placement isn't obvious? Example: I have classes `A` and `B` and a method `X`. The work being carried out can be phrased in two ways:   1. `A does X with B`   2. `B does X to A` Given the two ways of phrasing this, it's unclear whether `X` belongs in `A` or `B`. **Are there guidelines for placing the method in this scenario?** * * * For a more concrete example, consider think of a user (`A`), an event (`B`) and a sign-up action (`X`). A user can sign up to an event (`A does X with B` ), or an event can add a user to the sign-up list (`B does X to A`)."}
{"_id": "249857", "title": "Property or Method to obtain information about a collection?", "text": "Suppose I have a `MyList` class which extends `ObservableCollection<MyObject>` where `MyObject` has the `Boolean` Property `Enabled`. Let's say I want the number of `MyObject` objects that have the Property `Enabled` equal to `true`. Should define this as a Property or a Method? In `MyList` class, should I use:               public int GetNumEnabledMyObjects(){         return this.Count(o => o.Enabled == true);     }      or               public int NumEnabledMyObjects {         get {             return this.Count(o => o.Enabled == true);         }     }      I looked at Properties vs. Methods in MSDN Design Guidelines and I'm leaning towards a method since it might be considered expensive enough."}
{"_id": "159957", "title": "Return interface or class", "text": "Suppose I have a method               public List<User> GetBatchOfUsers(IEnumerable<int> userIDs)     {         List<User> users = new List<User>();              // some database stuff              return users;     }      I have read that it would be better to return an interface (either `IList` or `IEnumerable`) as opposed to returning a `List`. Some arguments I have heard for doing so is that it hides data, and gives the API developer the flexibility of changing the internal representation of the data at a later date. My concern about just returning an `IEnumerable` is that you lose functionality, such as random access and the `Count` property. I know that accepting an `IEnumerable` as a parameter makes sense, as it gives the consumer the best flexibility to send data to my method, the minimalist set of requirements for the method to operate. What is the best practice for the return type?"}
{"_id": "113422", "title": "Solutions to C# 5 async re-entrancy", "text": "So, something's been bugging me about the new async support in C# 5: The user presses a button which starts an async operation. The call returns immediately and the message pump starts running again - that's the whole point. So the user can press the button again - causing re-entrancy. What if this is a problem? In the demos I've seen, they disable the button before the `await` call and enable it again afterwards. This seems to me like a very fragile solution in a real-world app. Should we code some sort of state machine that specifies which controls must be disabled for a given set of running operations? Or is there a better way? I'm tempted to just show a modal dialog for the duration of the operation, but this feels a bit like using a sledgehammer. Anyone got any bright ideas, please? * * * EDIT: I think disabling the controls that shouldn't be used while an operation is running is fragile because I think it will quickly become complex when you have a window with many controls on it. I like to keep things simple because it reduces the chance of bugs, both during the initial coding and the subsequent maintenance. What if there is a collection of controls that should be disabled for a particular operation? And what if multiple operations are running concurrently?"}
{"_id": "182137", "title": "What's the difference between WTFPL, CC0, and public domain?", "text": "What's the difference between WTFPL (NSFW text), CC0, and public domain? Are they essentially the same thing?"}
{"_id": "219133", "title": "Patterns for maintenance login", "text": "Are there any reliable strategies to implement a login mechanism that will allow access to an application for maintenance purposes? Kind of like how some routers have a list of default logins that technicians can use. But the way routers do it is insecure, and I was wondering if there are better ways to implement this sort of access control. EDIT: Here's a possible solution I came up with. Generate a list of passwords for a given time window, say a month, with a different password for every day. This list would exist in the software in encrypted form. Maintenance technicians would have access to this list, and its use would be logged so we know when to block access should unauthorized personnel gets a copy of the list and use it to log in. Periodic updates would renew the application's password table."}
{"_id": "219130", "title": "Problem regarding DRY principle and Polymorphism", "text": "I have a class that is 99% identical to its counter part. Sample code goes below:               public abstract class BaseClass     {         void Method1() { }         void Method2() { }         void Method3() { }         public void MainMethod(List<Object1> listObject)         {             Method1();             Method2();             Method3();             Method4();         }              abstract internal void Method4();          }          public sealed class DerivedClass : BaseClass     {         internal override void Method4()         {             throw new NotImplementedException();         }     }          public class BaseClass2     {         void Method1() { }         void Method2() { }         void Method3() { }         public void MainMethod2(List<Object2> listObject)         {             Method1();             Method2();             Method3();         }          }      As You can see that BaseClass and BaseClass2 are almost identical with Method1 ... Method3. Is there a better alternative that can be used to minimize duplication of code. * * * I initially started this polymorphism as an encouraging stuff, I have over 11 derived classes on BaseClass, and because of the second implementation of MainMethod2, I am stuck with duplication of code. I just cannot think of any clever way to get out of it. * * * **Update:** So this question is potentially containing two parts: **1. How to avoid duplication of code?** I solved this by using Composition successfully as suggested by wonderful answers below. **2. How to avoidleaky abstractions?** With this I am still struggling..."}
{"_id": "219131", "title": "Forcing users to use Javascript", "text": "This is more of a business / ethics type of question that incorporates programming principles. So I as a developer will be selling a database driven web application to a local college university. I am currently working on the program and I coming up across a couple issues that would be easily worked with using javascript. Now I know some people do not use javascript at all so I wanted to know would forcing the usage of javascript (for the user interface only not the sites functionality) be wrong in an ethical / professional / business aspect? - I can't really find much information on this. My way of thinking about it is, that since it is a intranet application that the college is actively wanting and understand the features that come with the application it shouldn't be a problem right? * * * I just want to state that currently the app is not intensively javascript, but a lot of things that would be \"easier\" with javascript or just make the UI look better are not there. I also want to stress that the functionality will be PHP based and not dependent on Jquery."}
{"_id": "209330", "title": "ASP.NET deployment code?", "text": "I have a question regarding uploading an asp.net website to a real web sever. What type of files will be uploaded is it ASP.NET files or is it assemblies? To be more clear if someone got an access to my ftp and downloaded all the files will he be able to edit those files?"}
{"_id": "14089", "title": "When you write wrappers for APIs how do you handle usage errors?", "text": "When you write wrappers for APIs how do you handle usage errors? Do you assume that the user uses it right and write the wrapper such that it makes the call to the server and let the server return the error? Or do you check for the missing parameters and return an error? If yes, how do you convey the error? a string or an error code?"}
{"_id": "219138", "title": "Technical reason of why you need to use Class::static_method() instead of Class->static_method() in PHP", "text": "I'd like to know if there's a technical reason of why PHP's designers decided to invoke a static method using `Class::static_method()` instead of `Class->static_method()` (like any other method). Does the syntax change reflect any technical requirement? I'm asking this because the syntax for every single other language I know to invoke a method is always the same, despite it being static or not."}
{"_id": "132923", "title": "How to deal with a teammate who rather has his design ideas over good ideas", "text": "We have a situation in our team in which one member prefers his own ideas no matter what problems it has. When confronted with issues about a specific design he made - this teammate can get very protective and does not see the problems. In a result, this is a serious Software design issue for our team, because in the end some of the teammate's design will fall through to the end-design, and it will damage our software. Should we confront the teammate about his overall behaviour? Should we go the boss and tell him we can't deal with it and it's hurting our design?"}
{"_id": "132922", "title": "What services exist for finding someone specific to then run your own peer to peer software with?", "text": "If you give people peer to peer software (such as a web sockets application if the peer to peer part gets implemented, but could be anything) the first step for some kinds of applications is to find a specific person and try to connect with them. If neither of you has a URI (and knows what it is) you need a third party to handle finding each other and verifying your identities. After that the third party isn't needed because you go peer to peer. I could of course write that third party software and put it up on a website, but then I would have to write that third party software and put it up on a website (or a server that isn't a website if that's how I want to do it). Does anyone offer this service? Ideally as a website and of course ideally free."}
{"_id": "70734", "title": "DDD \u2013 A rookie\u2019s unanswered questions", "text": "I\u2019ve decided to use DDD in one of my pet projects to find out what the fuss is about! Let me start off by saying that this (DDD) is the way software SHOULD be written, I\u2019ve seen some strange patterns and conventions but DDD is really the most natural way of writing code. Interesting points that I noted started with DDD:   * I can now dream about code without being reminded of constraints set upon us by databases Persisting data now takes the backseat when developing a complex system (This might come back to bite me)   * I feel a lot closer to the business and business problem at hand   * Discussions between you and the client is now done on their neutral ground   * Discussions between developers are in line with the code   * I learned to love refactoring (You better make peace with that right now) Question 1: Is an entity allowed to make repository calls? For instance, if you need to validate that a certain field is unique in the system, should you write a domain service or can the entity make a call to the repo? Question 2: What is the best practice for validating a new entity? Should you have a Validate() function, or can the validation be done in the constructor? Your thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "204286", "title": "Job interview for Trainee Programmer, how to increase chances of success?", "text": "I have my first programming job interview today (in a few hours!) and would like some advice.      **The job title is Trainee Programmer and it is for a secure printing company.** I have found a lot on the internet about programming interviews, but since this is a Trainee role I have no idea what to expect. I know that the company prefers Java and C#, and I have a little knowledge of them, but my main language is C++. **I would like:** * Some pointers on what to expect from this Trainee interview. * Tips on how to improve my chances."}
{"_id": "204287", "title": "Is the List interface a leaky abstraction?", "text": "If I have a variable containing a `List` it could contain objects of a lot of different types e.g. `ArrayList` or `LinkedList`. The difference between a `LinkedList` and an `ArrayList` is pretty big. The big O behavior of the methods differs greatly. For example sorting the `List` and then using it to do binary searches is perfectly ok for an `ArrayList` but would not make sense with a `LinkedList`."}
{"_id": "204283", "title": "When to use interfaces (unit testing, IoC?)", "text": "I suspect I've made a schoolboy error here, and am looking for clarification. A lot of the classes in my solution (C#) - dare I say the majority - I've ended up writing a corresponding interface for. E.g. an \"ICalculator\" interface and a \"Calculator\" class that implements it, even though I'm never likely to replace that calculator with a different implementation. Also, most of these classes reside in the same project as their dependencies - they really only need to be `internal`, but have ended up being `public` as a side- effect of implementing their respective interfaces. I think this practice of creating interfaces for everything stemmed from a few falsehoods:- 1) I originally thought that an interface was necessary to create unit test mocks (I'm using Moq), but I've since discovered that a class can be mocked if its members are `virtual`, and it has a parameterless constructor (correct me if I'm wrong). 2) I originally thought an interface was necessary to register a class with the IoC framework (Castle Windsor), e.g.               Container.Register(Component.For<ICalculator>().ImplementedBy<Calculator>()...      when in fact I could just register the concrete type against itself:               Container.Register(Component.For<Calculator>().ImplementedBy<Calculator>()...      3) Using interfaces, e.g. constructor parameters for dependency injection, results in \"loose coupling\". So have I gone mad with interfaces?! I'm aware of the scenarios where you would \"normally\" use an interface, e.g. exposing a public API, or for things like \"pluggable\" functionality. My solution has a small number of classes that fit such use cases, but I wonder if all the other interfaces are unnecessary, and should be removed? Regarding point 3) above, won't I be violating \"loose coupling\" if I was to do this? **Edit** :- I'm just having a play with Moq, and it seems to require methods to be _public_ and virtual, and have a _public_ parameterless constructor, in order to be able to mock them. So it looks like I can't have internal classes then?"}
{"_id": "137209", "title": "Github Organization Repositories, Issues, Multiple Developers, and Forking - Best Workflow Practices", "text": "A weird title, yes, but I've got a bit of ground to cover I think. We have an organization account on github with private repositories. We want to use github's native issues/pull-requests features (pull requests are basically _exactly_ what we want as far as code reviews and feature discussions). We found the tool hub by defunkt which has a cool little feature of being able to convert an existing issue to a pull request, and automatically associate your current branch with it. I'm wondering if it is best practice to have each developer in the organization fork the organization's repository to do their feature work/bug fixes/etc. This seems like a pretty solid work flow (as, it's basically what _every_ open source project on github does) but we want to be sure that we can track issues and pull requests from ONE source, the organization's repository. So I have a few questions:   1. Is a fork-per-developer approach appropriate in this case? It seems like it could be a little overkill. I'm not sure that we need a fork for every developer, unless we introduce developers who don't have direct push access and need all their code reviewed. In which case, we would want to institute a policy like that, for those developers only. So, which is better? All developers in a single repository, or a fork for everyone?   2. Does anyone have experience with the hub tool, specifically the pull-request feature? If we do a fork-per-developer (or even for less-privileged devs) will the pull-request feature of hub operate on the pull requests from the upstream master repository (the organization's repository?) or does it have different behavior? **EDIT**   I did some testing with issues, forks, and pull requests and found that. If you create an issue on your organization's repository, then fork the repository from your organization to your own github account, do some changes, merge to your fork's master branch. When you try to run `hub -i <issue #>` you get an error, `User is not authorized to modify the issue`. So, apparently that work flow won't work."}
{"_id": "178902", "title": "If I release a program under GPL, do I have to continue to do so?", "text": "Consider this scenario:   * I am developing a program FooSuite that uses a GPL-licenced library QuuxTools   * I release the program FooSuite 1.0 under GPL Later on I discover that, for some reason, I need to licence the program to someone on different terms.   Hence:   * I remove the dependency on GPL via QuuxTools, by either...     * rewriting the program not to use this library any longer     * obtaining a different licence for QuuxTools (if it's dual-licenced; see PyQt)   * I release FooSuite 1.1 under a non-GPL licence. However, _FooSuite 1.1 is still a derivative work from FooSuite 1.0_. I understand that it's not legal for a stranger to do what I did, but am I myself - as the owner of FooSuite - free from this restriction?"}
{"_id": "137204", "title": "Java editor/IDE for beginners?", "text": "I teach some beginners the fundamentals of Java these days and they need to see the output for their small programs such as Hello world, etc. I need basic editor that contains code highlighting and contains the compiler with it so they can quickly run and see the result of their programs. What would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "208703", "title": "Translating variables into english", "text": "I have recently came across some code where the variable names are in french, I could not use google translate because only part of the code needs translated, and it would not be that practical to copy and paste each of the variables into the translator. How can i easily translate the variable names? what translator could i use? Here is some french that i tried to translate.               #include <stdio.h>          int main()     {         unsigned int nombre;         unsigned int diviseur;         unsigned int reste;              for (nombre = 2; nombre != 0; nombre++)         {             for (diviseur = 2, reste = 1; (diviseur < nombre) && (reste > 0); diviseur++)             {                 reste = nombre % diviseur;             }             if (reste > 0)             {                 printf(\"%d\\n\", nombre);             }         }              return;     }      But when i tried to translate the code using google translate i got this bad translation.               # include stdio.h          int main ()     {         unsigned int number;         unsigned int divisor;         unsigned int left;              for (count = 2, number = 0;! number + +)         {             for (divisor = 2, left = 1, (divisor <number) && (rest> 0) + + divider)             {                 remainder = number% divisor;             }             if (left> 0)             {                 printf (\"% d \\ n\", count);             }         }              return;     }"}
{"_id": "208701", "title": "to teach or not to teach GUI for beginners in CS", "text": "I have been teaching an OOP course for almost one year from now. The premise of the school is to use Java by using NetBeans for the programming part. I have seen the following scenarios:   * The students get overwhelmed by the amount of information about the different controls to use, so they lost focus on the programming paradigm taught (in our case OOP)   * They rely on their memory, mainly of the different Java GUI tools Is the best approach to teach the OOP topics by making use only of console and with little or no use of the Net Beans GUI? Could that help the students to focus more on the logic of the program and maybe to learn how to do quick tests? Thanks"}
{"_id": "208700", "title": "Is it okay to add time for \"unexpected delays\" to a time estimate?", "text": "I've landed my first contract (hooray, self employment!) and the company is asking for time estimates. Programmers are notoriously bad at time estimates, and I know I've been laughably wrong before. It's fixed bid, so I'm not concerned about charging. I'm just concerned about expectation management. So far I've itemized the work I need to do, estimated the time it would take, then significantly padded that time. I'm still nervous about it, though. Is it acceptable to write in time for \"unexpected delays\"? I've estimated 4 weeks, and I'd like to add a 5th week for problems I haven't thought of. Is that something people do? Would you balk if someone gave you an estimate with that in it?"}
{"_id": "230244", "title": "Memoization Memory", "text": "Memoization is definitely a powerful technique. But Dynamic Programming is slightly better IMO, since it does not involve the memory strain (in a recursive program, the parameters occupy memory and this memory increases as we go deeper into the recursion). But speed-wise, both are pretty equal. But definitely memoization is a lot more straight-forward than Dynamic Programming. My question: Is it somehow possible to use memoization without the memory constraint ?"}
{"_id": "219686", "title": "How is machine learning incorporated into search engine design?", "text": "I am currently building a small in-house search engine based on Apache Lucene. Its purpose is simple - based on some keywords, it will suggest some articles written internally within our company. I am using a fairly standard TF-IDF scoring as a base metric and built my own scoring mechanism on top it. All of these seem to be working excellent except for some corner cases where the ranking seems messed up. So what I am planning on doing is to add a small Relevant/Not Relevant link to the search results page so that users can click on one of those depending on their perception of whether that result should have been included in the first place. # My Idea   1. Treat these Relevant/Not Relevant as labels and create a training data.    2. Use this data to train a classifier (such as SVM)   3. Incorporate this model into the search engine i.e., every new result will pass through the classifier and will be assigned a label on whether it is relevant or not. This approach seems intuitive to me but am not sure whether it will work in practice. I have two specific questions:   1. What all features should I extract?   2. Is there a better way to integrate the machine learning component into the search engine? My final goal is to \"learn\" the ranking function based on both business logic as well as user feedback."}
{"_id": "230241", "title": "Is more dependency inversion always better?", "text": "Is there any situation in industrial object-oriented programming when the dependency inversion principle should not be used?"}
{"_id": "230240", "title": "What data should QR-Code contain to serve both my own and external QR-Code reader", "text": "My webapplication uses codes (in form of `http://www.url.com/code/105820582020204`), that I want to encode as QR-Code. I assume that such generated QR-Code will be scanned by both people using my mobile application (and bundled built-in QR-Code scanner) and by some 3rd party, external scanners. Exactly what data should I encode to support both of them -- code itself only or full URL? First scenario fails with external QR-Code reader. It will decode a QR-Code to just a long number and will get no idea, what it should do with such number. Only my own, mobile application QR-Code scanner will know, that it should exchange data with server, using decoded code. In second scenario, I assume that external QR-Code reader open up entire URL, so the whole thing will work as supposed, while my on, in-app QR-Code reader will extract code itself from the URL, and also be able to use it (just as in first scenario). So, second scenarion seems to be the only one to support both kinds of QR-Code readers. The problem is, that I read in this answer, that I shouldn't encode entire URLs in generated QR-Codes."}
{"_id": "219682", "title": "High Level Configuration of Constructor Injection in C++", "text": "My questions are specifically dealing with dependency injection through the constructor. I understand the pros/cons of service locator pattern, constructor/setter injection, and their flavors, however there is something I can't seem to get past after choosing pure constructor injection. After reading many materials for testable design, including a thorough perusing of Mi\u0161ko Hevery's blog (specifically this post) I'm at the following situation: Assume I'm writing a C++ program, and I have correctly injected my dependencies through their constructors. For readability I have given myself a high-level object which has a single Execute() function called from main:               int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {         MyAwesomeProgramObject object(argc, argv);         return object.Execute();     }      Execute()'s responsibility is to simply wire up all required objects and kick off the highest level object. The highest level object requires a couple dependencies and those objects required a few objects and so on and so on, implying a function that looks like this:               MyAwesomeProgramObject::Execute() {         DependencyOne one;         DependencyTwo two;         DependencyThree three;              MidLevelOne mid_one(one);         MidLevelTwo mid_two(two, three);              // ...              MidLevelN mid_n(mid_dependencyI, mid_dependencyJ, mid_dependencyK);              // ...              HighLevelObject1 high_one(mid_one, mid_n);         HighLevelObject2 high_two(mid_two);              ProgramObject object(high_one, high_two);         return object.Go();     }      From what I take from Mi\u0161ko's blog (and I would ask him, but figured he wouldn't have time to get back to me), this is the only way to satisfy pure constructor injection of dependencies. In the blog post mentioned, he states we should have factories on a per object lifetime level, but this is essentially what Execute is doing, making my code look identical to his example:               AuditRecord audit = new AuditRecord();     Database database = new Database(audit);     Captcha captcha = new Captcha();     Authenticator authenticator =         new Authenticator(database, captcha, audit);     LoginPage = new LoginPage(audit, authenticator);      ## Questions:   * Is this the standard approach?   * Is this a pattern that I'm not aware of (seems similar to Maven's context.xml)?   * For pure constructor injection, do I simply suffer the cost of \"upfront\" allocation?"}
{"_id": "230242", "title": "Was there ever a serious push for partial classes in java", "text": "was there ever any serious attempt/demand to introduce C#-style partial classes to the java language? an abandoned JCP? a mailing-list flame-war? anything? or was this never even suggested?"}
{"_id": "76777", "title": "Learning Smalltalk as a Java programmer", "text": "I am a Java programmer willing to learn smalltalk. As of now I am working within the Pharo environment. Trying to switch from Java to Smalltalk is being a bit of a headache, honestly. I would like to learn Smalltalk with the help of a code base available but I believe that there aren't many Smalltalk example projects available on the web. So are there any particular websites that involve learning Smalltalk (Pharo) based on some simple examples? Currently I am taking the help of Pharo By Example doc but I feel it is just not sufficient for me. I am looking for more some code examples in Smalltalk."}
{"_id": "76778", "title": "What are the advantages of having a built-in datatype in a data interchange format over not having it?", "text": "Due to the requirement of a project we had to develop a data interchange format with a built in data types. The format served the purpose well in the scope of that project. But I was thinking that does it have any advantages of having a built-in type system (int, long, bool, string etc.) in a more general scope of data interchanging? Take XML as an example. It has been serving the purpose very well, but if XML would have a built-in data type system (forget about dtd/xml schema), would that be of any extra advantage than its currently having? e.g, we generally use xml for serialization, during the operation if we would be able to store the datatype along with the data, would that be more helpful?"}
{"_id": "18166", "title": "We need a DVS. They need an SVN repo. What should we do?", "text": "We are a team of two people who need a versioning system for their university project. Due to administration issues, the graders need us to register on a site that happens to only support SVN; however, we cannot commit to SVN from inside the university as the required protocols are filtered out by the proxy (including the HTML extensions that would make SVN checkins over HTTP possible). Sigh. Is it possible to have a hg repo for ourselves that can then be converted to SVN for purposes of hosting on this site? * * * **Please note that practically all students commute to university,** so the \"we can't commit from university so we can't do this\" is not as strong of an argument as you'd think."}
{"_id": "89703", "title": "Measuring risk of source code changes?", "text": "My manager asked me to write a estimation of work hours and a risk estimation of source code changes for a defined task. While the first is no problem for me and there are many resources on the web, I cannot get my head around the latter one. I already asked for a clearer description of risk estimation and got the answer that the risk for the need of \"follow-up code changes due to the changes made\" and \"potential loss of stability of the overall software\" should be stated. How can I approach this task (thumb rules, documents about risk estimation, ...)?"}
{"_id": "18161", "title": "What are good Information System design resources?", "text": "After taking a class about information systems, I want to find additional resources for learning the various patterns, concepts, and examples of their implementation. The course did focus on Martin Fowler's Principles of Enterprise Application Architecture and had a project that attempted to implement some of them. Basically, where can I learn more about Information System design and implementation?"}
{"_id": "234576", "title": "Algorithm to Select Sequential Subarrays from an Array", "text": "I solved my problem by using simple nested loops and comparisons but I'm wondering if there is a well known Selection Algorithm to solve my problem. Let's say I have an array such as [1, 10, 250, 9, 8,8, 249, 249, 248, 247, 2, 4, 9, 10, 9, 7, 6] I need to find subarrays [6,7,8,9,10] [8,9,10] [247, 248, 249, 250] Subarrays should be min. 3 length size. I dont want a solution but a similar algorithm would help me refactor my code. I'm currently doing this with nested loops and using buffer collections."}
{"_id": "89709", "title": "What is the best way to prepare for CSDA-like certification exams?", "text": "I am interested in taking the IEEE CSDA exam. What are some of the better, individual strategies for learning software engineering practices in preparation for the exam?"}
{"_id": "233573", "title": "Can rabbitmq client have its own exchange and queue in client environment itself?", "text": "Is that possible to create exchange and queue in client environment by the client? Below is the quote from http://blog.dtzq.com/2012/07/amqp-exchanges-and- rabbitmq.html > AMQP clients are free to create their own exchanges or use the predefined > defaults. Or exchange and queue can be only at the server where the broker is?"}
{"_id": "233570", "title": "How does user confirmation box work?", "text": "How does the client know to send request to server only when the confirmation box result is ok and stay on page if cancelled? Also, is this mechanism any different in ASP.Net and ASP.Net MVC? I want to know the internal working of when user clicks OK/cancel what happens internally. How does browser come to know it has to proceed to server call or close itself and do nothing? What I have researched so far tells me, that on a web forms page, the Page.IsValid property is somehow responsible for browser to determine the outcome.Is it correct? Also what happens with MVC?"}
{"_id": "233571", "title": "Open source: what is the definition of \"derivative work\" and how does it impact copy-left", "text": "I am a commercial software developer and I want to make use of open-source in my proprietary software. As I understand the concept of copy-left, it uses the original authors copyright to ensure that their ultimate end users (which would include my customers) are not deprived of benefits of the original work that the original authors of the OS components intended for them to have. I also understand that there is an incentive to produce more free software and I often find that sites that clarify and recommend various licensing terms are mixing the legalities with the ideology. All I am asking for is a clear picture. The people who want to create OS exclusively for other OS projects should be allowed to do so. The people who want to put code out there for anybody to use should be allowed to do so. Also, there are many claims which have no legal precedence and are not as clear cut as authors of OS interest sites would like them to be. And we all know that code is not just code. There is a difference between:   * Copying somebodys source code into your source code.   * Consuming a library compiled as-is from github.   * Consuming a library compiled from a locally altered version from github. Let's pretend that I use an open source library for accessing Excel spreadsheets. It makes sense that I would contribute back bugfixes/additions etc that had anything to do with the general problem of accessing excel spreadsheets. This is to make an excel plugin for an application that already accepts XML, SQL db etc as alternative input mechanisms for the same data. ** Does this mean that the application is considered \"derivative\" even when it does not expand into the problem domain of importing excel sheets? **"}
{"_id": "38280", "title": "What makes Agile software development so appealing?", "text": "Agile software development is becoming a pretty fun buzzword these days. As a developer, I understand the pragmatic value of iterative development, but (most often) it isn't a developers choice to embrace an Agile approach to software development. It's a top-down management choice! Whether it is crystal, agile methods, dsdm, rup, xp, scrum, fdd, tdd, you name it. It's not a developer choice. For all the managers out there, **what are the biggest reasons for choosing to do Agile development** when (in my experience) most managers haven't even touched a piece of code in their life!"}
{"_id": "5513", "title": "Why does it seem so hard for non programmers to understand versioning?", "text": "In the past I have worked with designers, BAs and project managers, all who regularly produce project artifacts, yet very really do they understand the concept of versioning. When I try to explain it to them (even in its most simple form of mulitple differently named files) they seem to have some kind of mental block. Why do you think this is?"}
{"_id": "85856", "title": "Future-proofing myself when learning to program", "text": "I want to learn to program in a 'future-proof' manner, if you like. Whilst Windows dominates the desktop OS marketplace (for now), obviously there is a lot of value in learning its languages/frameworks/API's and so on - this might be subject to change as new devices emerge or Windows shoots itself in the foot (over-friendly previews of Windows 8 don't look too appealing...). Would I be right in thinking that having a solid knowledge of C/C++ for back- end logic/low level programming and the like, combined with an extremely portable language like Java for GUI's and so on, would be a good basis for software development that will prove useful on the most amount of systems? - I'm talking desktop PC's, tablets, phones."}
{"_id": "85851", "title": "Advantages to Multiple Methods over Switch", "text": "I received a code review from a senior developer today asking \"By the way, what is your objection to dispatching functions by way of a switch statement?\" I have read in many places about how pumping an argument through switch to call methods is bad OOP, not as extensible, etc. However, I can't really come up with a definitive answer for him. I would like to settle this for myself once and for all. Here are our competing code suggestions (php used as an example, but can apply more universally):               class Switch {        public function go($arg) {           switch ($arg) {              case \"one\":                 echo \"one\\n\";              break;              case \"two\":                 echo \"two\\n\";              break;              case \"three\":                 echo \"three\\n\";              break;              default:                 throw new Exception(\"Unknown call: $arg\");              break;           }        }     }          class Oop {        public function go_one() {           echo \"one\\n\";        }        public function go_two() {           echo \"two\\n\";        }        public function go_three() {           echo \"three\\n\";        }        public function __call($_, $__) {           throw new Exception(\"Unknown call $_ with arguments: \" . print_r($__, true));        }     }      Part of his argument was \"It (switch method) has a much cleaner way of handling default cases than what you have in the generic __call() magic method.\" I disagree about the cleanliness and in fact prefer call, but I would like to hear what others have to say. Arguments I can come up with in support of `Oop` scheme:   * A bit cleaner in terms of the code you have to write (less, easier to read, less keywords to consider)   * Not all actions delegated to a single method. Not much difference in execution here, but at least the text is more compartmentalized.   * In the same vein, another method can be added anywhere in the class instead of a specific spot.   * Methods are namespaced, which is nice.   * Does not apply here, but consider a case where `Switch::go()` operated on a member rather than a parameter. You would have to change the member first, then call the method. For `Oop` you can call the methods independently at any time. Arguments I can come up with in support of `Switch` scheme:   * For the sake of argument, cleaner method of dealing with a default (unknown) request   * Seems less magical, which might make unfamiliar developers feel more comfortable Anyone have anything to add for either side? I'd like to have a good answer for him."}
{"_id": "85850", "title": "How do you structure computer science University notes?", "text": "I am completing a year of postgraduate study in CS next semester. I am finishing a law degree this year, and I will use this to briefly explain what I mean when I refer to the 'structure' of University notes. My preferred structure for authoring law notes:   * Word   * Two columns   * 0.5cm margins (top, right, bottom, middle, left)   * Body text (10pt, regular), 3 levels of headings (14/12/10pt, bold), 3 levels of bulleted lists   * Color A background for cases   * Color B background for legislation I find that it's crucial to have a good structure from the outset. My key advice to a law student would be to ensure styles allows cases and legislation to be easily identified from supporting text, and not to include too much detail regarding the facts of cases. More than 3 levels of headings is too deep. More than 3 levels of a bulleted list is too deep. In terms of CS, I am interested in similar advice; for example, any strategies that have been successfully employed regarding structure, and general advice regarding note taking. Has latex proved better than Word? Code would presumably need to be stylistically differentiated, and use a monospaced font - perhaps code could be written in TextMate so that it could be copied to retain syntax highlighting? (Are notes even that useful in a CS degree? I am tempted to simply use a textbook. They are crucial in law.) I understand that different people may employ varying techniques and that people will have personal preferences, however I am interested in what these different techniques are. **Update** Thank you for the responses so far. To clarify, I am not suggesting that the approach should be comparable to that I employ for law. I could have been clearer. The consensus so far seems to be - just learn it. Structure of notes/notes themselves are not generally relevant. This is what I was alluding to when I said I was just tempted to use a textbook. Re the comment that said textbooks are generally useless - I strongly disagree. Sure, perhaps the recommended textbook is useless. But if I'm going to learn a programming language, I will (1) identify what I believe to be the best textbook, and (2) read it. I was unsure if the combination of theory with code meant that lecture notes may be a more efficient way to study for an exam. I imagine that would depend on the subject. A subject specifically on a programming language, reading a textbook and coding would be my preferred approach. But I was unsure if, given a subject containing substantive theory that may not be covered in a single textbook, people may have preferences regarding note taking and structure."}
{"_id": "234572", "title": "How to handle or prevent all Admins and users being removed", "text": "I have a website that stores all users in a database. A user can log on to the website and if they have sufficient privileges can add/delete users, as well as change their privileges. How do I ensure there is always at least one Administrator (to create/edit/delete users) in the system or that an administrator can easily be added to the system. Surely I can put rules in place so that the Admin can't delete himself, or other rules like that. But what if someone deletes all the users in the SQL table. The passwords are hashed so it's not as if the DBA can just go in and add a new user with Admin rights. Do I hardcode some special username/password that automatically gets added to the system if no Admin exists?"}
{"_id": "103178", "title": "How to handle \"can you add just a few more fields\" type of requests from customers?", "text": "Very commonly we have feature requests for fields that only one customer wants. This, at best, clutters the application's code. Often when we look in their database a few months after adding the fields, we can see that they are not actually even using the extra fields. Also, it's quite an old application so adding a single field requires multiple code changes, changing reports, and making sure that it doesn't affect other customers who do not need to see the field.   * How can we make sure that a customer actually needs these feature requests?    * How do we politely say \"you don't really need that\"? Currently we are beginning to charge for certain feature requests. (Previously, feature requests were free usually) Is there anything else we can do?"}
{"_id": "225528", "title": "C++ Performance vs. Java/C#", "text": "My understanding is that C/C++ produces native code to run on a particular machine architecture. Conversely, languages like Java and C# run on top of a virtual machine which abstracts away the native architecture. Logically it would seem impossible for Java or C# to match the speed of C++ because of this intermediate step, however I've been told that the latest compilers (\"hot spot\") can attain this speed or even exceed it. Perhaps this is more of a compiler question than a language question, but can anyone explain in plain English how it is possible for one of these virtual machine languages to perform better than a native language?"}
{"_id": "225523", "title": "What are good unit tests to cover the use case of rolling a die?", "text": "I'm trying to get to grips with unit testing. Say we have a die which can has a default number of sides equal to 6 (but can be 4, 5 sided etc.):               import random     class Die():         def __init__(self, sides=6):             self._sides = sides              def roll(self):             return random.randint(1, self._sides)      Would the following be valid/useful unit tests?   * test a roll in the range 1-6 for a 6 sided die   * test a roll of 0 for a 6 sided die   * test a roll of 7 for a 6 sided die   * test a roll in the range 1-3 for a 3 sided die   * test a roll of 0 for a 3 sided die   * test a roll of 4 for a 3 sided die I'm just thinking that these are a waste of time as the random module has been around for long enough but then i think if the random module gets updated (say i update my Python version) then at least i'm covered. Also, do I even need to test other variations of die rolls e.g. the 3 in this case, or is it good to cover another initialized die state?"}
{"_id": "136557", "title": "Is HTML5 more secure to develop for than Silverlight?", "text": "I'm learning Silverlight, and I know that if I master it, I can apply the same concepts to WPF, which means I can do either web or desktop development pretty easily. But I've read articles and followed the discussion online, and I understand HTML5 is gaining traction for being cross-platform, and a lot of people seem to be moving to HTML5. From my understanding, any HTML5 application would be built with HTML and JavaScript (or Flash). But is it secure? It seems like anyone can easily use their browser's \"view source\" option and grab your code. Is this something I should be worried about, or is there a way to protect against it?"}
{"_id": "47305", "title": "How should I manage a team with different skill levels?", "text": "I'll be working on a software project with some friends of mine, and I've been appointed technical lead. None of these guys is a bad programmer at all, but I do have significantly more experience than them. I need to be able to distribute the work among everyone on the team, while also making sure that we don't tread on one another's toes; that they meet the relatively high standards of quality and scalability that we need to make this project successful, without requiring me to review everything they commit. How should I maintain standards while avoiding micromanagement? Is it enough to make some diagrams, schedule some code reviews, and trust that I'll be able to fix anything that they might break, or should I go the TDD route and write explicit tests for the team to satisfy?"}
{"_id": "136553", "title": "What is a reasonable number of threads for a Java program?", "text": "In Java (or probably most other languages targeting the JVM) what is a reasonable number of threads to use? Presumably, this will be expressed as a ratio to the number of cores/processors available, is that correct? At least initially, it seems like twice as many threads as cores might make sense, but 20+ times as many seems unreasonable. Is the ratio likely to be affected by the type and/or architecture of the software? Are there types of software and/or situations in which a much larger number of threads really makes sense? [And yes, I know that's phrased as a number of separate questions, but I think they're closely enough related for a single answer to cover all of them, since they're all really about how many threads make sense under what circumstances.]"}
{"_id": "103280", "title": "How do you help your fellow programmers to grow?", "text": "As a team lead, how can you help your programmers to grow? The reason I ask this is because there are a few programmers working with me, and I really want to \"turn them on the loose\", to realize their maximum potential, and to keep them happy. But I don't quite know how to do this, do I have to   1. Interact with them frequently, or give them quiet time, leave them undisturbed?   2. Ask them to follow coding guidelines, such as enforcing unit tests, coding styles, or let them do whatever they see fit?   3. Be lenient with them. Such as don't really care whether they really come into office for 8 hours or 4 hours, or need to enforce some \"disciplines\" in the work place? Guess what, each positions have their own points, and different people would argue for different things. Such confusions make managing people indefinitely harder. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "76191", "title": "How Do You Handle Non-Functional Work With Scrum in Embedded Systems?", "text": "I have two issues with scrum in embedded systems. First, there are many tasks to do, especially in the early stages, which are not demonstrable. We started with a dev board, no OS, no display, no serial comms, etc. We didn't have our display for 6 sprints. The first 4 sprints were:   * Getting the RTOS up and running    * Creating tasks Writing network and serial drivers   * Writing interrupt routines for buttons, comms, etc   * Writing the primary database classes and methods   * Writing a serial debug menu Most of these tasks are not well suited for user stories. In fact, the only interface into the whole system was the serial debug menu, built in sprint 3 so there was nothing to demonstrate at the end of the sprints. Even the serial menu was meant for internal use and not an end user. Never the less, I still want to track and manage these development activities via scrum. We ended up writing \"user stories\" phrases like, \"As a developer...\", which I'm not happy with but in using Target Process (www.targetprocess.com), there is no concept of a backlog item which is a task or chore. Second, how do you handle releases and testing? It's a real pain for us because the testers don't have the hardware debuggers so we have to build flash versions of the code and burn them on their dev boards to test. The testers are not technically as sharp as the developers and often require a lot of support in getting things working in the early stages (resetting the board, connecting the serial comms, etc), or even in understanding the output. Finally, regarding the definition of done, a sprint can't be complete until all stories are complete. All stories aren't complete until verified by the testers. There is no way to avoid \"robbing\" developer time to give to the testers. In other words, if the last 3 user stories in the sprint will take 5 days to test, they must be coded and unit tested 5 days before the end of the sprint. What's the developer supposed to do, stop working? I'm being facetious but it is a real problem trying to conform to the rules. Now, I'm fine with bending the rules but the issue I have is, it screws up all my burndown metrics if I can't mark things done until their tested. I'd love to hear how others have handled these situations."}
{"_id": "208048", "title": "What do other languages offer when it comes to infrastructure technology that could indicate its advantage over C in the future?", "text": "I have been going through interview questions and I saw one which made me stop and think for a while. It starts with a quote and asks about your interpretation and whether you agree or not. \"For infrastructure technology, C will be hard to displace.\" Dennis Ritchie From a bit of background reading you can find that he was the mastermind behind C language as well as the UNIX OS. At the time it was a phenomenal improvement and at the forefront of cutting edge techniques. I feel that C++ and Java are becoming increasingly popular languages, but C will always be an important language. What do other languages offer when it comes to infrastructure technology that could indicate its advantage over C in the future. On a side note, does anybody know which year this quote was made? I just want the opinions of people who use these languages a lot, I myself use python language and would love to learn a bit more about the framework around C and it's importance firsthand."}
{"_id": "103288", "title": "Can you get fired from a work-for-hire contract with no pay, and a lawsuit?", "text": "The story is like this: I was hired under a work-for-hire contract that didn't specify what the pay is going to be. I was told it would be on the 15th of every month, depending on what work was completed. On the 15th of the first month, I was told it was going to be at the end of the project. Then the project got halted (required client response on some matter). Then another project was given to me, one that would take at least two months to complete. Few weeks after that, I have told the boss that I will refuse to do any work until at least a partial payment is made. I got fired and got promised a lawsuit. We're in different countries. He's from US. Contract doesn't have his signature in original, in my country this would render it invalid. There are a few questions here, the main one is how to handle this from this point forward? Maybe you could give me some advice to avoid this in the future? Does this lawsuit have any chances to be taken seriously?"}
{"_id": "34356", "title": "how do I write a functional specification quickly and efficiently", "text": "So I just read some fabulous articles by Joel on specs here. (Was written in 2000!!) I read all 4 parts, but **Im looking for** some methodical approaches to writing my specs. Im the only lonely dev, working on this fairly complicated app (or family of apps) for a very well known finance company. I've never made something this serious, I started out writing something like a bad spec, an overview of some sorts, and it has wasted a LOT of my time. Ive also made 3 mockup-kinda-thingies for my client so I have a good understanding of what they want. Also released a preview (a throw away working app with the most basic workflow), and Ive only written and tested some of the very core/base systems. I think the mistake Ive been making so far is not writing a detailed spec, so Im getting to it now. So the whole thing comprises of   * An MVC website (for admins & data viewing)   * 2 Silverlight modules (For 2 specific tasks)   * 1 Desktop Application Im totally short on time, resources and need to get this done quick, also, need to make sure these guys read it up equally quick and painlessly.   * So **how** do I go about it, **Im looking** for any tips, any real world stuff, how do you guys usually do it?   * Do you make a mock screenie of every dialog/form/page? Im thinking of making a dummy asp.net web forms project, then filling in **html** files in folders and making it look like my mvc url structure. Then having a section in the spec for the website and write up a page for every URL Ive got with a screenie. For my win forms app, Ive made somewhat of a demo Win Form project, **would I** then put in a dialog or stucture everything as I would in the real app and then screen shot it? * * * For some background into this question. I've always been a crazy jump-to-code kinda guy, which has worked ok, but for the app I'm working on, its not only complex, its for a very very reputed and large company and I have to get it right! (And it has been going well so far, today I gave a demo of the preview version which a lot of people liked!! =D ) If I do get the initial design right I will also have a great business with this company, there are already many thinking about new \"awesome\" features which they're ready to pay for."}
{"_id": "109888", "title": "How can I organize my implementation notes to use as a future reference?", "text": "How should I document my designing of the app better so that I avoid programming by coincidence? How can I structure notes so that it is clear how an app works so that when I refer to it a year later I'm not lost for the first 3 days?"}
{"_id": "206623", "title": "Why does Java compiler decide whether you can call a method based on the \"reference\" type and not on actual \"object\" type?", "text": "I was just wondering why does Java compiler decide whether you can call a method based on the \"reference\" type and not on actual \"object\" type? To explain I would like to quote an example:               class A {         void methA() {             System.out.println(\"Method of Class A.\");         }      }          class B extends A {         void methB() {             System.out.println(\"Method of Class B.\");         }         public static void main(String arg[]) {             A ob = new B();             ob.methB();       // Compile Time Error         }     }      This will produce a Compile Time Error that method methB() not found in class A, although Object Reference \"ob\" contains an object of class B which consists of method methB(). Reason for this is that Java Compiler checks for the method in Class A (the reference type) not in Class B (the actual object type). So, I want to know whats the reason behind this. Why does Java Compiler looks for the method in Class A why not in Class B(the actual object type)?"}
{"_id": "206627", "title": "What is a first class connector?", "text": "I was reading Towards Architecture-based Self-Healing Systems, and came upon the term `first-class connectors`. What are they? Searching some more finds this paper Systematic Construction of Software Architecture Supported by Enhanced First-Class Connectors, which looks like it might have an answer, and I might read it in detail later, but regardless, it would be useful to have the question up here with an answer shorter than that paper. :) An example of why having a connector being first class might also be relevant."}
{"_id": "6510", "title": "What is the best setup for distributing a PHP application?", "text": "What is a recommended setup in terms of source control, builds, testing, bug tracking, and deployment for a downloadable PHP application (a la Wordpress, phpBB, Magento, etc.)? As a developer working on the application, what would you expect? What about as a user of the application? Please describe a setup and workflow, as well as any resources you think might be relevant or helpful."}
{"_id": "6512", "title": "Why don't people use white space inside parentheses?", "text": "Clearly, this:               if( foo( 5, 6, 7 ))       do_something( arr[ 5 ]);      if more readable than:               if (foo(5, 6, 7))       do_something(arr[5])      yet very few people use whitespace inside their parens. The venerable **indent** program doesn't really provide useful options for this behavior (the option to include whitespace inside parens adds a space between consecutive occurrences, which is pretty hideous), and certainly some people will argue that it's a waste of horizontal space (but those same people would probably omit the spaces after the comma as well, so their opinion is clearly suspect), but surely there's some valid reason that this style is not more popular. Why don't you use any whitespace inside your parentheses and/or braces?"}
{"_id": "213160", "title": "What are the real life use cases for tagged pointers?", "text": "What are the real life use cases for tagged pointers? This is mostly coming from reading about small 64-bit systems and possible uses of 64-bit word pointers. To my understanding tagged pointers are addresses which can containing extra information in bits due to possible address space on that particular architecture is much smaller. But then, is it possible to use tagged pointers beyond trivial cases? Any cool ideas / examples? Are there popular libraries, frameworks taking advantage of 64-bit pointers via tagged pointers? Is that possible on every hardware?"}
{"_id": "213167", "title": "When to use private methods in Python", "text": "I have a class, but every method in it should be private (apart form `__init__` and `__str__`). Should I denote every method with a double underscore, or is that deemed bad practice?"}
{"_id": "231594", "title": "Mocking static methods", "text": "Having recently returned from a Test Driven Development (TDD) course I had the following thought. While writing unit tests using Mockito we came up against of the problem of mocking static methods. It was suggested by one developer we use PowerMock, which allows mocking of static methods, and then we got into a big discussion on how we should approach this problem. However, in my experience static methods should only really be used as utility type methods. The classic example in java being Math.random(). So a static method should only, execute one defined action regardless of any interaction with a class instance. If this is not the case, and you require class instance interaction, your method should not be static and you need to rethink your design. So my question is, with this in mind should you need to mock static methods at all? If they are always performing a simple action, then surely you should just call them as you would in real code."}
{"_id": "171503", "title": "How representative is Ohloh?", "text": "My colleague recently pointed me to Ohloh, a website providing statistics on FOSS based on versioning repositories. It's quite a fun procrastination tool, e.g. to compare programming languages by active projects: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ekEZT.png) Which makes me wonder: how representative is such a comparison? Can we draw conclusions from this such as \"Javascript is the most used programming language in FOSS, followed closely by Python, Java and C++\"? Or are there some big caveats to take into account?"}
{"_id": "171508", "title": "PHP file_put_contents File Locking", "text": "**The Senario:** You have a file with a string (average sentence worth) on each line. For arguments sake lets say this file is 1Mb in size (thousands of lines). You have a script that reads the file, changes some of the strings within the document (not just appending but also removing and modifying some lines) and then overwrites all the data with the new data. **The Questions:**   1. Does 'the server' PHP, OS or httpd etc. already have systems in place to stop issues like this (reading/writing half way through a write)?   2. If it does, please explain how it works and give examples or links to relevant documentation.   3. If not, are there things I can enable or set-up, such as locking a file until a write is completed and making all other reads and/or writes fail until the previous script has finished writing? **My Assumptions and Other Information:**   1. The server in question is running PHP and Apache or Lighttpd.   2. If the script is called by one user and is halfway through writing to the file and another user reads the file at that exact moment. The user who reads it will not get the full document, as it hasn't been written yet. (If this assumption is wrong please correct me)   3. I'm only concerned with PHP writing and reading to a text file, and in particular, the functions \"fopen\"/\"fwrite\" and mainly \"file_put_contents\". I have looked at the \"file_put_contents\" documentation but have not found the level of detail or a good explanation of what the \"LOCK_EX\" flag is or does.   4. The scenario is an example of a worst case scenario where I would assume these issues are more likely to occur, due to the large size of the file and the way the data is edited. I want to learn more about these issues and don't want or need answers or comments such as \"use mysql\" or \"why are you doing that\" because I'm not doing that, I just want to learn about file read/writing with PHP and don't seem to be looking in the right places/documentation and yes I understand PHP is not the perfect language for working with files in this way."}
{"_id": "77820", "title": "How can I make the transition from being a beginner to an Intermediate/advanced level iPhone developer?", "text": "I've been programming for the iPhone for quite some time now. I have read books like Beginning iPhone 4 Development by Jeff LaMarche and Programming in Objective C by Stephen Kochan. Right now I am pretty comfortable with view controllers, table views, gestures, GCD, Core Data etc. I am now seeking to build a career in iOS (instead of a hobby as it has so far been). How can I take my knowledge to the next level so that I can be hired as a profesional iOS developer. What are the other technologies I must be familiar with in order to be comfortable building enterprise level applications for different industries like banking, telecommunications etc? Are there any good books that talk from the perspective of enterprise architecture for mobile applications ?"}
{"_id": "77823", "title": "How can I work on my reverse-engineering skills?", "text": "I would like to start building up some software reverse engineering skills, and I'm looking for exercises or \"challenges\" to work on. Are there definitive or go-to sites, like Project Euler, specifically for reverse engineering? For example, exercises where I have to figure out why a program is crashing or behaving incorrectly."}
{"_id": "170674", "title": "Can non-IT people learn and take advantage of regular expressions?", "text": "Often times, not-IT people has to deal with massive text data, clean it, filter it, modify it. Often times normal office tools like Excel lack the tools to make complex search and replace operations on text. Could this people benefit from regexps ? Can regexp be taught to them ? Are regular expressions the exclusive domain of programmers and unix/linux technicians ? Can they be learned by non-IT people, given regexps are not a programming language? Is this a valid or achievable goal to make some users regexp-literate through appopriate training ? Have you have any experiences on this issue? and if so, have it been successful ?"}
{"_id": "170672", "title": "How to wrap console utils in webserver", "text": "I have a big dataset (100Mbs/day) and a bunch of console a TCL/TK tools to view it - I want to turn it into a web app that I can build, and others can maintain. * * * In long: my group runs simulations yielding 100s of Mbs of data daily, in multiple (mostly but not only) text forms. We have a bunch of scripts and tools, mostly old school 1990's style stuff requiring a 5-button mouse, as well as lots of ad-hoc scripts that engineers build out of frustration every month or so. These produces UIs, graphs, spreadsheets (various sizes), logs, event histories etc. I want to replace (or at least supplement) the xwindows / console style UI with a web-based one, so I need the following properties:   * pleasant to program   * can wrap existing command-line tools in separate views (I don't need to scrape GUIs or anything)   * as I port logic from the existing scripts I can create a modularised and pleasant codebase to replace it   * I can attach a web-ui to navigate between views - each view is likely to contain keys which might make sense to view in another I am new to building systems that have logic on the back-end and front-end of a web-server. from that point of view, they do this:   * backend wraps old-school executables, constructs calls into them and them takes the output and wraps it up, niceifies it and delivers it to the web client. For instance the tool might generate a number of indexed images (per invocation) which I might deliver all at once or on-demand. May (probably) need to to heavy stats on some sources.   * frontend provides navigation connecting multiple views, performs requests from one view for data from another (or self to self), etc. Probably will have some views with a lot of interactivity. Can people please point me towards viable solutions for this? I know it's a bit of an open question so as answers come in I hope to refine the spec until we have a good match. I guess I expect to see answers like \"RoR!\" \"beans!\" \"Scala!\" but please give an indication of why those are a good fit; I know nothing! I'm not asking for _which is best, Scala or RoR*, but rather which have been a good fit for people doing what I'm trying to do? * * * I got bumped off SO for asking an open-ended question, so sorry if its OT here too (let me know). I take the policy that I use the best/closest matched language for a project but most of my team are extremely low level (ie pipeline stages and CDyn) so I don't have the peer group to know where to start."}
{"_id": "229536", "title": "Scrum for Embedded system devices", "text": "In our company, we are going to deliver a new product which will be used for mass notification, so it is an embedded software project and we are going to use the SCRUM as a framework for the product. We have started to write down the product backlog. Based on what I understood the product backlog should reflect a business value for each item. The nature of embedded software is that it has a lot of technical details that will consume a large amount of time to create drivers for microcontrollers, like the SPI, UART, ethernet, WIFI, so on. for example the System is sounding by playing message for notification, so it is pretty obvious that playing a message is a business value but to achieve this goal i have to write down the -requirements which are what also not how - for many drivers like the SPI, MP3 decoder chip driver, SD card driver and finally the FAT, so all of the previous drivers have requirements that should be written in the product backlog, such that the requirements started with a one business value requirement while it has a lot of technical sub- requirements. These don't reflect a business value for the client; can someone tell me how am I going to create my product backlog?"}
{"_id": "170679", "title": "Why are there no package management systems for C and C++?", "text": "There are some programming languages for which exist their own package management systems:   * CTAN for TeX   * CPAN for Perl   * Pip & Eggs for Python   * Maven for Java   * cabal for Haskell   * Gems for Ruby Is there any other languages with such systems? **What about C and C++?** (that's the main question!) Why there are no such systems for them? And isn't creating packages for `yum`, `apt-get` or other general package management systems better?"}
{"_id": "231627", "title": "Is the Adapter the correct design pattern for this situation?", "text": "I have an instance of a class `UntouchableClass` of which I need to access the member variables to use in my DotLiquid template. Problem is, `UntouchableClass` has to inherit from `Drop` if I want to use it in my template, but I can't change it since it is from an existing library. I've read about the Adapter pattern, but `UntouchableClass` does not have an interface from which to inherit the Adapter. Also, I can't use multiple inheritance (I would create a class which inherits from both `UntouchableClass` and `Drop` but this is C# and from what I know this isn't possible). Is there a design pattern that would suit this situation? Or is there a particular way to do this using DotLiquid?"}
{"_id": "231620", "title": "Correct Seam for Stub", "text": "In Chapter 3 of his book The Art of Unit Testing: with Examples in C#, Roy Osherove illustrates the issue of undesirable external dependencies in code under test. He shows this with a method named `IsValidLogFileName` which takes in a filename string as an argument, reads in a config file from the local filesystem and checks whether the given filename extension exists in the config file. Here's what such a class would look like:                  public class LogAnalyzer         {             public bool IsValidLogFileName(string fileName)             {                      string [] extensions = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(@\"C:\\Users\\Public\\ext.config\");                      foreach (string ext in extensions)                 {                     if (fileName.EndsWith(ext))                     {                         return true;                     }                 }                 return false;             }         }      The issue here is that testing `IsValidLogFileName` has a dependency on the local filesystem. The author introduces the concept of **stubs** as a means of removing this dependency. In particular, he describes the following design: Create an interface:                   interface IExtensionManager         {             bool IsValid(string fileName);         }      an implementing production class:                   class FileExtensionManager : IExtensionManager         {             bool IsValid(string fileName)             {                 string [] extensions = System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(@\"C:\\Users\\Public\\ext.config\");                      foreach (string ext in extensions)                 {                     if (fileName.EndsWith(ext))                     {                         return true;                     }                 }                 return false;             }         }      a stub:                   class FakeExtensionManager : IExtensionManager         {             bool IsValid(string fileName)             {                 string [] extensions = { \"txt\", \"c\", \"cpp\", \"cs\"};                      foreach (string ext in extensions)                 {                     if (fileName.EndsWith(ext))                     {                         return true;                     }                 }                 return false;             }         }      refactor `LogAnalyzer` as follows:                  public class LogAnalyzer         {             IExtensionManager em;                  public LogAnalyzer(IExtensionManager extensionManager)             {                 em = extensionManager;             }                  public bool IsValidLogFileName(string fileName)             {                 return em.IsValid(fileName);             }         }      run production code like this:                   LogAnalyzer la = new LogAnalyzer(new FileExtensionManager);      and test code like this:                   LogAnalyzer la = new LogAnalyzer(new FakeExtensionManager);      The part I don't understand is why we have to extract the validation logic from the original `IsValidLogFileName` by making an `ExtensionManager` interface. Wouldn't it make more sense to create something like a `ConfigManager` interface and refactor as follows: interface:                   interface IConfigManager         {             string [] GetFileExtensionConfig();         }      an implementing production class:                   class LocalConfigManager : IConfigManager         {             string [] GetFileExtensionConfig( )             {                 return System.IO.File.ReadAllLines(@\"C:\\Users\\Public\\ext.config\");             }         }      a stub:                   class FakeConfigManager : IConfigManager         {             string [] GetFileExtensionConfig( )             {                 string [] extensions = { \"txt\", \"c\", \"cpp\", \"cs\"};                 return extensions;             }         }      refactor `LogAnalyzer` as follows:                  public class LogAnalyzer         {             IConfigManager cm;                  public LogAnalyzer(IConfigManager configManager)             {                 cm = configManager;             }                  public bool IsValidLogFileName(string fileName)             {                 string [] extensions = cm.GetFileExtensionConfig( );                      foreach (string ext in extensions)                 {                     if (fileName.EndsWith(ext))                     {                         return true;                     }                 }                 return false;         }      run production code like this:                   LogAnalyzer la = new LogAnalyzer(new LocalConfigManager);      and test code like this:                   LogAnalyzer la = new LogAnalyzer(new FakeConfigManager);"}
{"_id": "229843", "title": "What's that rule where you aren't supposed to give visibility into an object called?", "text": "I forget the name of it but there's a rule that you aren't supposed to allow visibility into an objects inner makeup. It has to do with not allowing more than one dot in the implementation like this for example:               return world = foo.bar.hello.world();"}
{"_id": "109865", "title": "Applications Architecture - fewer big systems vs more smaller systems", "text": "re: Applications Architecture, that is, \" _the science and art of ensuring the suite of applications being used by an organization to create the composite application is scalable, reliable, available and manageable._ \" When looking at a range of applications in an organisation, I can see various reasons for merging apps together, but sometimes also good reasons for keeping them separate. _In general_ , what are the pros and cons of having fewer big systems versus more smaller systems (bearing in mind that many of the systems will exchange information). I'm thinking things like: fewer, bigger apps means less plumbing between apps, but more smaller apps means more flexibility for individual departments. Is there any literature on this, or has anyone got a list of pros and cons that they've discovered? edit: In my scenario, a lot of the apps might be customisable off-the-shelf ones rather than in-house developed, but feel free to consider more general scenarios."}
{"_id": "239030", "title": "Establish connection between parent and child class", "text": "Assume you have two classes, a `Manager` who holds a set of `Client`s and the `Client` holds a backreference to the `Manager`.               class Manager {     public:         void addClient(Client* client) {             m_clients.push_back(client);             client->setManager(this);         }     private:         std::list<Client*> m_clients;     };          class Client {     public:         void setManager(Manager* manager) {             m_manager = manager;         }          private:         Manager* m_manager;     };      The confusing, probably even dangerous feature of this API is that Client exposes a setManager() method that can be called by anyone, yet should only be called by the Manager::addClient() method. `assert(manager->hasClient(this))` in setManager() would prevent wrong calling at runtime, however I would prefer a solution that doesn't allow the user to call methods he isn't supposed to call. What would be common solution? I don't   * want to use `friend` to expose all of Clients members to Manager so that he can establish the binary connection in `addChild()`   * want both classes to share some kind of Composite base class. They should remain unrelated inheritancewise."}
{"_id": "239032", "title": "c# naming - What are common conventions for a suffix to distinguish between read-only and writable interfaces", "text": "Assume an interface that allows queries on a spatial tree               public ISpatialTree     {         int FindChildIndex(Vector point);         bool IsLeaf { get; }         ICollection<ISpatialTree> Children { get; }     }      and another one that allows changing the tree:               public ISpatialTreeWriter : ISpatialTree     {         void Add(Vector point);         bool Remove(Vector point);         void Clear();     }      I am looking for a name to denote the writeable interface. Ideally it would be reasonably short and readable word. It's not only for this example, but I would like to use a convention for all code in the project because this is a common case. Does anyone know of a good convention for this problem? What conventions are used in other projects? Words that were discussed include Writer (ambiguous, often used in other contexts), Mutator (confusing), Rw (unreadable, not a word). A good solution would be a single word, not longer than 6-8 letters and that makes it obvious that this is the writer interface."}
{"_id": "203866", "title": "ruby-idiomatic hashes vs arrays", "text": "So I am still fairly new to ruby, though I have noticed that it is very hard to create 2d-array and that hashes seem to be more of the go to data structure than arrays. I was wondering why the Ruby community is so focused on Hashes and maybe if there is something more ruby-idiomatic than a 2d-array when trying to create something like a game board."}
{"_id": "184264", "title": "Name for intentionally assertless unit test", "text": "I have a tool that is going to be run as part of commit stage on Continuous Integration server to check whether all unit tests run do have an assert. Its main purpose is to eliminate silly mistakes like using `Equals` method that just returns bool instead of `ShouldEqual` assertion method. But there are sometimes cases when tests are intentionally (or at least semi- intentionally) written without asserts - with an assumption that if the code doesn't throw, the test should pass. I'd argue about readability and explicness of that kind of tests, but there are some suites that do this all the time. I'd like to have a possibility to mark that kind of tests with special attribute, so that if someone really wants to have a test without explicit assertion, he would at least need to say it explicitly. I'm wondering what would be a good name for such an attribute. My two (fairly different) ideas by now are:   * `[SmokeTest]` - as \"passes when no exception thrown\" kind of tests is only looking for smoke and not testing any outcome, this name sounds right, and it also suggests that this is not a full-fledged unit test - as is my intent,   * `[ExpectedNoException]` - this one is much more obvious in its meaning and corresponds pretty well with standard `[ExpectedException]` attribute provided by some of the most popular .NET unit testing tools. Or maybe it would be the best to have both possibilities? But the result of both will be exactly the same, so it can be confusing which one to use. As naming things is one of the hardest thing in Computer Science, I hope for some good suggestions. **EDIT** First answers suggest adding try-catch and `Assert.Fail` in catch. This would do the trick, right, but somehow I feel that an obligation to add meaningless code just to satisfy the build process is a bit smelly. The attribute is not much different, but I treat it more as \"metadata\" than the code. At least this is my personal opinion - you could disagree and I will be grateful for saying this, too :) What I seek for is not a way to have a dummy assert in each test, I'm looking more for the generic term I could call that kind of tests."}
{"_id": "184260", "title": "Where to check that a function actually did what I told it to?", "text": "Consider this function intended to kill all running instances of a subprocess:               killAllFoobars()     {         pids = getRunningFoobars();              foreach ( pids as p ) {             killOneFoobar(p);         }              return TRUE;     }      Where should I check that in fact all Foobars were killed? Should killOneFoobar() check that its Foobar is now killed? Should killAllFoobars() check that there are no more running Foobars before returning TRUE (seems a bit disingenuous to return TRUE without checking). Should the function calling killAllFoobars() check? Consider that the check is an expensive operation, so should not be done 'just whenever' but rather only when necessary."}
{"_id": "184263", "title": "MVC 3 Page design; split pages into Many partials?", "text": "I am currently working on an MVC 3 Web app project where I need to display a lot of information on the front page. I am relatively new at web page layout and design so I have hit a wall in terms of how to structure the code behind for this page. My first thoughts were to split the page up into as many partials as possible so the View Models are smaller and easier to manage. Although I am not sure if this is the correct way of going about it. Or should I try to fit all the needs of the page into one view model that will display all the information I need? My question: **Should I split my pages up into a lot of small partials or just make it one big page?**"}
{"_id": "9351", "title": "Good uses for VBScript?", "text": "What are some good uses for VBScript? Is it still a widely used language today?"}
{"_id": "232305", "title": "A* with possible multiple paths", "text": "Greetings I am currently studying pathfinding and I came across A* algorithm from this site https://github.com/qiao/PathFinding.js I tried to test A* with bi-directional and it is working great. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/H9fz7.png) What I wanna do now is increase the path that it can make without adding more nodes in the openlist. For example is that the algorithm was able to find a path but as you look at the results it can still generate one more path without touching the other path. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bDeSj.png) Any ideas? Thank you so much"}
{"_id": "35863", "title": "Can a programming language make you happy?", "text": "Some language designer create a language that focus on developers so they can be happy. Can a programming language make a programmer happy? In what way a programming language make a programmer happy? In the end all programming language is the same isn't it? You also have the burden to do the work which might not make you happy anymore."}
{"_id": "100488", "title": "Is learning C# as a first language a mistake?", "text": "I know there are similar questions on here, which I've read, but I recently read this post by Joel Spolsky: How can I teach a bright person, with no programming experience, how to program? And it got me thinking about my way of learning and whether it might actually be harmful in the long run. I've dabbled with various languages but C# is my first serious one, I've read \"Head First C#\" and created a few projects. But after reading the post above I've found it a bit disheartening that I may be going about it all wrong, obviously I respect Joel's opinion which is what has thrown me a bit. I've started reading \"Code\" as recommended in the reading list and I'm finding it pretty hard going, although enjoyable. I feel like it's taken the shine off of my \"noobish hacking about\" in Visual Studio. So now I'm unsure as to what path I should take? Should I take a step back and follow Joel's advice and start reading? I guess my main aim is just to become a good programmer, like everyone else, but I don't want to be going into bad practice by learning a .NET language when someone who's opinion I respect thinks that it is harmful. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "35865", "title": "Want to learn/dive into Java Web Development\u2014where to start?", "text": "I want to dive into Java Web Development, but I don\u2019t know where to start because I am overwhelmed with Frameworks, JSRs, modules and the like. Coming from a PHP and Ruby (on Rails) background, it may seem awkward to go the other way \u2019round\u2014still there are a lot of places where Java is (and probably will be) prevalent. I know basic Java concepts, syntax and OOP, and I have done (too much) nonsense in existing projects in JSP. I am already using SVN and GIT, but like coding PHP and Ruby mostly via VIM, i\u2019ve also done versioning from the command line. But this time I want to learn to build a new project from the ground up, in a more, let\u2019s say, academic way (instead of the hackery to date). Looking at e. g. Eclipse frightens me. Then there is Struts, Spring, JPA, Hibernate, Seam, just to throw in some buzzwords, that I cannot put into clear relation to each other. Can you point me to some tutorials or books that could help me? What are the technologies you absolutely have to know, the JSRs that are widely implemented in the industry? Or, if you are an employer: What does a \u201cJunior Java Web developer\u201d have to know? Thanks for your suggestions!"}
{"_id": "145133", "title": "software for spying on staff?", "text": "I have worked as a junior help desk sys admin, and in those days the only option for \"monitoring\" what other people was doing was by \"shadowing\" their screen , like windows remote desktop, RDP. Now I'm working as a mobile developer[iOS Android], and in the contract I saw a clause, where I accept to be monitored. So my question is what software is out there to monitor silently [with out the developer (me) knowing]. Would they see my screen?, or take snapshots? It's not that I waste time or do \"illegal\" activities, I'm just wondering if this is normal? and how to notice it? I'm using a Mac - if that makes any difference."}
{"_id": "103827", "title": "Creating an a project-site for an open source project", "text": "So I have an open source project that I would like to promote and I want to create a project-site for it where I will host the documentation, etc. (preferably something that integrates with github for handling downloads, issues, etc). The project-site should be just like a typical. Is there anything out-of-the-box for this or do I have to code it from scratch? Thank you."}
{"_id": "74848", "title": "Vim key mappings / plugin XCode?", "text": "I'm a developer who mostly does web stuff in ruby and C#. I'd like to start tinkering with iOS and Mac development. Over the last few month i've been trying to get fluent in one set of key bindings (vi / vim because it just feels right). I have the awesome ViEmu installed for visual studio on windows which gives me a ton of the vim awesomeness side by side with visual studio power toys. Is there anything like this for xcode? I know I could set up MacVim as the default editor, but I'm not too interested in this as it means losing all of xcode's cocoa awareness. The other option of course would be to go for the lowest common denominator and switch to emacs (as the mac keybindings are based massively on emacs) but let's not think about that for too long. :P"}
{"_id": "103823", "title": "What to do when you are not doing what you are supposed to at work?", "text": "First off, I think my title is maybe a bit vague, so feel free to edit. My current situation is as follows. I recently decided to leave the previous company I worked for due to a number of reasons, but considering the work I was doing there I was never unhappy. Now, however, at my new job, it is a different story. When I interviewed here to be a developer, the world was promised. _\"Yes, you will be coding, designing, etc. etc.\"_ , but that is definitely not the case. As a developer, when assuming a role as a primary developer (to clarify, primary here means I should be primarily coding, not a lead developer), I would expect the following breakdown:   * 50% - 60% actual coding   * 20% design   * the rest - testing / admin etc. Is this an unrealistic expectation? Currently, my breakdown is as follows:   * 1% actual coding   * 95% testing / upgrading / wondering why everything is breaking that the previous guys have done   * 4% drinking coffee, as the boredom is killing me I realize that for some people that might be what they want to do, but coming from quite an academic background, I enjoy problem-solving and grappling with a problem until you figure it out. And off-course, doing a lot of coding. It has actually reached a point once or twice where I was told to roll back changes I have made (for the better!) becuase: _\"Yes, I know it's better, but revert because it wasn't the task assigned to you!\"_ And I mean, it's not like it took me a day of work which I could have spent otherwise, it was 5 minute changes. Now, my real question is this. Seeing as I'm feeling that I will not grow as a developer here, how fast should I get out of this? Should I stay a while longer and see if things change? I have spoken to some of the other developers here and they say that this is just the way things are. A group of about 10 people write about 99% of the code, and they have all been here for about 10 years. My two concerns are:   1. I would probably have to take a pay cut if I move, since they pay quite generously here.   2. Having a company for 2 - 3 months on your CV doesn't always look good. I could really use some help from someone who has some experience in this? Maybe someone has had a similar situation? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "74840", "title": "What considerations should be given for and against \"super\" sites?", "text": "My company is considering consolidating all their tier-1 (i.e. top end production) applications and sites into one all-encompassing code base. The theory is that their permissions, design and overall functionality can be homogenised and centrally managed. I have no end of concerns about this approach since the data structures underpinning each application are very different, the business rules are complex and unique to each application and the overall code bases for the existing applications are extremely disparate and very neglected. **EDIT** : The current environment consists of three ASP.Net 1.1 sites that have barely seen any real love since first being written (due chiefly to an absence of experienced developers in the company) and one MVC2 application that was also an ASP.Net 1.1 site before being upgraded last year. We write exclusively in C#. The company is a fairly small one, with about 50 staff; three of whom are actual developers. Management (even IT management) do not have any IT background or experience other than project management of IT projects (and therefore some passing knowledge of terminology and business impacts). The applications are chiefly online services to support the products sold by the company. The company doesn't sell any software directly. So to phrase this whole situation in a reasonably specific and answerable question: What are some compelling reasons for and against trying to pull all your systems together into one over-arching solution given the current conditions (i.e. old code base, complex business systems and rules)?"}
{"_id": "74846", "title": "Why dynamically typed languages do not let the developer specify the type?", "text": "The dynamically typed languages I know never let the developers specify the types of variables, or at least have a very limited support for that. JavaScript, for example, doesn't provide any mechanism to enforce types of variables when it is convenient to do so. PHP let you specify some types of method arguments, but there is no way to use native types (`int`, `string`, etc.) for arguments, and there is no way to enforce types for anything other than arguments. At the same time, it would be convenient to have a choice to specify in some cases the type of a variable in a dynamically typed language, instead of doing the type check manually. Why there is such limitation? Is it for technical/performance reasons (I suppose it is in the case of JavaScript), or only for political reasons (which is, I believe, the case of PHP)? Is this a case for other dynamically typed languages that I'm not familiar with? * * * **Edit:** following the answers and the comments, here's an example for a clarification: let's say we have the following method in plain PHP:               public function CreateProduct($name, $description, $price, $quantity)     {         // Check the arguments.         if (!is_string($name)) throw new Exception('The name argument is expected to be a string.');         if (!is_string($description)) throw new Exception('The description argument is expected to be a string.');         if (!is_float($price) || is_double($price)) throw new Exception('The price argument is expected to be a float or a double.');         if (!is_int($quantity)) throw new Exception('The quantity argument is expected to be an integer.');              if (!$name) throw new Exception('The name argument cannot be an empty string.');         if ($price <= 0) throw new Exception('The price argument cannot be less or equal to zero.');         if ($price < 0) throw new Exception('The price argument cannot be less than zero.');              // We can finally begin to write the actual code.         // TODO: Implement the method here.     }      With some efforts, this can be rewritten as (also see Programming by contracts in PHP):               public function CreateProduct($name, $description, $price, $quantity)     {         Component::CheckArguments(__FILE__, __LINE__, array(             'name' => array('value' => $name, 'type' => VTYPE_STRING),             'description' => array('value' => $description, 'type' => VTYPE_STRING),             'price' => array('value' => $price, 'type' => VTYPE_FLOAT_OR_DOUBLE),             'quantity' => array('value' => $quantity, 'type' => VTYPE_INT)         ));              if (!$name) throw new Exception('The name argument cannot be an empty string.');         if ($price <= 0) throw new Exception('The price argument cannot be less or equal to zero.');         if ($price < 0) throw new Exception('The price argument cannot be less than zero.');              // We can finally begin to write the actual code.         // TODO: Implement the method here.     }      But the same method would be written as follows if PHP would optionally accept native types for arguments:               public function CreateProduct(string $name, string $description, double $price, int $quantity)     {         // Check the arguments.         if (!$name) throw new Exception('The name argument cannot be an empty string.');         if ($price <= 0) throw new Exception('The price argument cannot be less or equal to zero.');         if ($price < 0) throw new Exception('The price argument cannot be less than zero.');              // We can finally begin to write the actual code.         // TODO: Implement the method here.     }      Which one is shorter to write? Which one is easier to read?"}
{"_id": "16647", "title": "Good practices every startup should follow", "text": "A couple of friends at work an me are going to set up a little startup / create our own software, probably moonlighting at first, since we cant yet afford to quit our day jobs. Neither of us has have this experience, we've all worked for other companies before, where a set of guidelines are set, and I think this is the time to establish good practices to follow (like avoiding meeting-itis). For people that have gone this way, what piece(s) of advice would you give us? I'm looking more for the technical side of things, things such as:   * Is it worth to have some kind of build server or is that going to far ahead?    * Would you do extensive TDD or do you think it would be too much overhead for a small team that is not too experienced with it? But wouldn't mind to listen to the management side of things. * * * The project is a web application done in ASP.NET MVC, I'm thinking of using Mercurial and BitBucket or Kiln + FogBugz or some other online project tracking tool, since we are going to be working remotely."}
{"_id": "131523", "title": "How do you prevent getting stuck in \"research-mode\" on a big project you're unfamiliar with?", "text": "I'm in a situation where there's a big project that I need a lot of background know-how to accomplish. yet I'm not moving fast enough in the research/study phase - and seeing myself off-track frequently. What it amounts to is procrastination, except it's mixed with simply being overwhelmed and delaying the necessary background study. How do you extract yourself from that limbo? My intuition says I should quickly study the material and start a tiny part of the whole project. I appreciate any tips or advice."}
{"_id": "131520", "title": "Can you point me to a nontrivial strategy pattern implementation?", "text": "We are faced implementing a registration workflow with many branches. There are three main flows which in some conditions lead to one another. Each flow has at least four different steps; some steps interact with the server, and every step adds more information to the state. Also the requirement is to have it persistent between sessions, so if the user closes the app (this is a mobile app), it will restore the process from the last completed step with the state from the previous session. I think this could benefit from the use of the strategy pattern, but I've never had to implement it for such a complex case. Does anyone know of any examples in open source or articles from which I could find inspiration? Preferably the examples would be from a live/working/stable application. I'm interested in Java implementation mostly; we are developing for Java mobile phones: android, blackberry and J2ME. We have an SDK which is quite well separated from platform specific implementations, but examples in C++, C#, Objective-C or Python would be acceptable."}
{"_id": "12734", "title": "Ideas for developer management software?", "text": "(I posted this at serverfault and it was suggested I post here instead) I'm looking for an application recommendation to help me keep track of the discussions I have with the members of my team during our weekly 1-on-1 meetings. A windows desktop app would probably be best. For features, it should be able to manage goals, training, performance, reviews, and incidents. It should have an easy to use interface, but not as clunky as some of the tools like http://www.managerassistant.com/products.html word/notepad or excel just doesn't seem like a good fit... any ideas?"}
{"_id": "131528", "title": "Learning event driven programming", "text": "I want to learn more about event driven programming. Especially where and why I would consider using events. What resources/books should I consider reading to this end? (note: I'm indifferent to language. )"}
{"_id": "204915", "title": "Event based logging. Is it a good idea and is it ok to pass a handle to a \"logged\" object?", "text": "Hi I have fairly complex program that is doing computations in a quite large loop. I want to log some basic statistic about the run to be able to analyze its performance over time and vs loop number. For now I am outputting a set of numbers, about 5 or 6, each loop. The problem is the number of loops is quite large so the log files are big. Also putting 10^6 of measurement points on a plot is kind of pointless. I thought of \"filtering\" the results by for example printing every 1k'th loop but I would lose some points-of-interest. I also cannot log only POIs, because I would lose track of general progress. I decided to switch to an event based logging. Primarily the events I have in mind are combination of the two aforementioned things: improvement of current solution and some progress over the loops. The Implementation I have in mind is to write a simple `StatLogger` that would be responsible for outputting the data to the log stream. The main program would just issue a `log()` method whenever an event occurs. The events can occur simultaneously and it does not make sense to log the state twice, so the class would be responsible for not outputting the stats twice. My questions are:   1. Is this a good or common approach and pattern?   2. Is it better to pass a handler to the number cruncher object, so the logger can get all the interesting stats like `StatLogger::log(const RunEnviroment *this)`, or is better to make another structure to hold all the interesting stats and make a `StatLogger::log(const Stats& stats)` method.   3. If my approach is bad, what are common solutions in similar cases?"}
{"_id": "154606", "title": "Convention for writing Python without newlines or whitespace?", "text": "Is there a convention for writing Python when deprived of newlines and whitespace? For example, stackexchange comments, Twitter, text messages..."}
{"_id": "154604", "title": "Equivalent of Domain Driven Design for functional programming languages", "text": "I really love the idea of domain driven design, however, as I'm learning Go, I'm wondering if there's the equivalent of DDD that's aimed at an effectively more functional language?"}
{"_id": "100738", "title": "MVVM light Communication", "text": "I am working on a large MVVM application. I am using the MVVM light toolkit for this. The application is like a web browser with back and forward buttons. The main view is an user control. I laid the back and forward buttons in the main view user control. The main view in turn has user controls. The user controls change when the back and forward buttons are clicked. The main ViewModel keeps track of the current user control and loads the next one depending on the button click. All these user controls are loaded depending on the selection(ID) made on the first step. Lets say, the main view is a search screen and we select a customer. The next screens would be Address, Billing, Requests, etc. These screens does not share any data. But the data is for the same customer. So, is it a good practice, to store the customer ID in the main view? If I do this, I should have a UserControl_Loaded event bound to a command, where I would then request for Address and Billing Info. Or I can move the buttons(back and forward buttons) to each user control instead of the main view, Pass the customer ID with the message which would load the next view. Which is better?"}
{"_id": "84816", "title": "Models should match table structure, Viewmodels match how the data need to be displayed?", "text": "I have a database table with many columns, that I want to display over several pages, similar to a turbo tax style information collection form. With only 1 or 2 items per page. Is it right to create 1 model, then a viewModel with only certain properties per ViewModel for each section I want to create in this workflow?"}
{"_id": "204919", "title": "How can I distinguish between one-worded expressions and two-worded expressions?", "text": "I was told to create two lists concerning most frequently used words from a plain text (10 Mb arbitrary texts) as monograms (for single worded expressions such as human, water, is) and bigrams (for two-worded expressions such as basketball team, united states and etc) I am stuck here and don't know how I can go about it! And how I can distinguish between these two? My domain is not English, I only gave those examples to make my intention and meaning more clear."}
{"_id": "201397", "title": "Difference between the Adapter pattern and the Proxy pattern?", "text": "As far as understand, the **adapter pattern** is creating a wrapper object for our real object of interest, simply one more level of indirection, which provides flexibility. the flexibility is in that, if the real object's interface is changed, then we change the wrapper interface pointing at the real object, leaving the client-side exposed interface unchanged. The **proxy pattern** is the same, with the difference that every proxy wrapper provides only a coherent subset of the real object's functionality. Why would this be useful, when we strive to make \"one class for one purpose\" is beyond me. _Have I gotten this correctly?_"}
{"_id": "201395", "title": "All images in one folder for a website?", "text": "When creating websites, is it better to have a lot of images in one folder, or have them separated? It's something that has always been in my mind but I never researched enough about it, and googling didn't give me many answers. So I have been building mostly sites for real estate agencies since I started, and I always liked to organize the images by folders, lets say in webroot/photos/$propertyId/ but sometimes I've seen websites storing all the images in a folder, and differencing them mainly by the name. I never had to build a huge website, so this has been in my mind but didn't concern me too much, but I would like to know, generally which of the 2 ways is a better approach. Is there really a human noticeable performance difference when performing different action like searching/deleting those files? Keep in mind that sometimes there's not a images limit on the galleries, so having one column per image path/name in the property's row is not often an option for me, I would have to use another table to relate them. Also I would like to mention that for example in my last project I had to manage tens of GB's of images, we had like 300000 properties and they had lets say an average of 10 pictures per property."}
{"_id": "36439", "title": "How much sense does it make for a veteran .Net developer to move to ROR professionally?", "text": "I consider myself a moderately skilled (definitely not stupid) .Net developer. Over the past 5 years I've been working with ASP.Net, ASP.Net MVC, SharePoint, WPF, Silverlight, RDBMS (SQL Server and Oracle). I maintain/contribute a couple of .Net OSS. I've also picked up F# and Haskell over the previous year. I am currently employed at one of the better (best) software firms out there and would surely love to continue working here. However over the past 6 months opportunities in .Net have mostly dried up and all new work is headed towards ROR (and whatever is left towards Java). I have never been apprehensive about learning a new stack/language for fun and have previously picked up Haskell and Python in my free time. I am however apprehensive as to what impact moving to a new entirely different stack would have on my career. What would you do:   * Change jobs if you don't find anything on .Net soon.   * Try out the ROR stack for some time. If you find that its not your cup of tea, move back. (How would this impact my career and job opportunities in the longer run?) Also it would be very helpful if there are any ASP.Net MVC folks who have switched over to ROR professionally who can share their experiences. **Edit:** I have not done any development on a *nix box before. I've however used Ubuntu for fun and games. Sorry if this sounds subjective."}
{"_id": "201398", "title": "if i have many calls of single method that returns field value, is it better to make a local variable?", "text": "In a method, i have calls of single method of another object that returns field value, like `foo.value()`, which is defined like `Field value() {return this.value;}` Is it better to make a local variable, like `Field value = foo.value()` and use it. Or use many method calls of a single method? Why? How does it correlate with number of method calls, like for 3, 5, 10 what will be better and why it may be a concern? Edit: field doesn't change anyhow during the flow of a method, just the same value all the time. Edit2: does it depend on programming language? If it's important, it's java."}
{"_id": "224347", "title": "Online vs Web - write once application", "text": "I have been asked to write an application (visual application) that can be run both online and locally. This application contains a lot of external data (video, images and audio) files so the main issue I have is deploying this over the web. I want to architect this so that I only have to write 1 system and not a separate code base for the online version. What I and a colleague have come up with so far is;   * Tomcat/Application server - for the code logic   * HTML Pages for the delivery of the content   * A number of small Silverlight Scenes depending on the page that is severed. I have only got a few months so writing 2 sets of applications is not efficient for me. Is this a scalable approach? Are there better ways to write/deploy this type of application?"}
{"_id": "50876", "title": "Are there any \"best practices\" on cross-device development?", "text": "Developing for smartphones in the way the industry is currently doing is relatively new. Of course, there has been enterprise-level mobile development for several decades. The platforms have changed, however. Think of:   * from stylus-input to touch-input (different screen res, different control layout etc.)    * new ways of handling multi-tasking on mobile platforms (e.g. WP7's \"tombstoning\") The way these platforms work aren't totally new (iPhone has been around for quite awhile now for example), but at the moment when developing a functionally equal application for both desktop and smartphone it comes down to developing two applications from ground up. Especially with the birth of Windows Phone with the .NET-platform on board and using Silverlight as UI-language, it's becoming appealing to promote the re- use of (parts of the UI). Still, it's fairly obvious that the needs of an application on a smartphone (or tablet) are very different compared to the needs of a desktop application. An (almost) one-on-one conversion will therefore be impossible. **My question** : are there \"best practices\", pitfalls etc. documented about developing \"cross-device\" applications (for example, developing an app for both the desktop and the smartphone/tablet)? I've been looking at weblogs, scientific papers and more for a week or so, but what I've found so far is only about \"migratory interfaces\"."}
{"_id": "21133", "title": "How to write \"good\" unit tests?", "text": "Triggered by this thread, I (again) am thinking about finally using unit tests in my projects. A few posters there say something like \"Tests are cool, if they are good tests\". My question now: What are \"good\" tests? In my applications, the main part often is some kind of numerical analysis, depending on large amounts of observed data, and resulting in a fit function that can be used to model this data. I found it especially hard to construct tests for these methods, since the number of possible inputs and results are too large to just test every case, and the methods themselves are often quite longish and can not be easily be refactored without sacrificing performance. I am especially interested in \"good\" tests for this kind of method."}
{"_id": "219918", "title": "Better way to create samples", "text": "I've done this piece of code for creating bernulli samples, but I think that it is a so heavy algorithm because every time I call this recursive function I create a new vector that is passed to it. Is there a way for making this algorithm faster? Here is the algorithm and the description: As already said, this function creates bernulli samples recursively. If `n`, that is the number of elements that should be found, is equals 0 I print the sample. Else to the sample that is passed I add every element of the population (I have to create a vector for everyone of this new samples), and I call the function with this new sample and n(the number of element to be found) decremented.               private static void distribuzioneBernoulli(int n, Vector<Float> population, Vector<Float> sample){         // exit condition, when n equals 0 the fuction doesn't self-calls         if(n==0){             JOptionPane.ShowMessageDialog(null, campione);         }              // Every element of the population is added to the sample,         // and is recalled the function         for(int x = 0; x < population.size(); x++){             Vector<Float> aggiunta = new Vector<Float>(sample);             aggiunta.add(population.elementAt(x));             distribuzioneBernoulli(n-1, population, aggiunta);         }     }"}
{"_id": "219919", "title": "Facebook authentication with an Authoritative Server for a Flash Game", "text": "I'm working on a multiplatform game in Flash. This game utilizes Photon Server for authoritative physics and user statistics tracking. I'm looking to leverage Facebook authentication as an alternative to creating a domain specific account. I'm curious if I can use the Flash SDK for Facebook to indirectly authenticate a user on the Photon Server application. I've not made anything for Facebook, though I've looked through several different sources of information and have yet to find a solution which seems applicable. For example I've looked at the javascript libraries which outline the returned data, such as user id, and the access token. This seems to be all of the data I need to track for the players. I also know that the access token is for short term authentication, and primarily used to utilize Facebook functionality post-authentication. Given this, tying the data to the account is done with the Facebook user id. It also transmits an expire date. I can leverage message encryption using the Photon Server framework. The users are linked to game accounts using an inherited entity derived from an abstract PlayerData class in a server-side Entity Framework model. This entity contains the information for Facebook authentication. **Can third-party authentication be done safely by forwarding the encrypted user access token and user id to the server from the Flash client, after authenticating with the Flash API for Facebook?** **What methods are available for determining that the Facebook credential are still active, so that the client can be disconnected from the server should they log out of Facebook?**"}
{"_id": "46471", "title": "Can an aggregate root hold references of members of another aggregate root?", "text": "I know that outside of aggregates I can't change anything inside an aggregate without passing by his root. That said I would like to know if an aggregate root can hold references of members (objects insides) of another aggregate root? (following DDD rules) Example : a **Calendar** contain a list of **phases** which contain a list of **sequences** which contain a list of **assignations** Calendar is root because phases and sequences and assignations only work in context of a calendar. You also have **Students** and **Groups** of student (called groups) It is possible (following DDD rules) to make Groups holding references of **assignations** or it need to pass by the root for accessing groups from assignations ? Thanks."}
{"_id": "236984", "title": "How to test state of the object", "text": "I have a class `DataImport` with only two public methods               public void fromStream(InputStream inputStream);     public ImportCommand getImportCommand();      When I test it I send some test data to `fromStream` method               dataImport.fromStream(some stream with data...)      Only way how to test the result of this method is to get the `ImportCommand` from `getImportCommand` and test if this object is in the state according to the input I provided. But what if `ImportCommand` has only one method?               public ImportResult execute();      I could test `ImportResult` (after invoking `execute()` which would involve some mocks and additional setup) because it has some state exposed. But this way I am testing `ImportCommand` and the `DataImport` class in one unit test which does not feel right to me. But exposing inner state of the classes I am testing or accessing their private fields/methods also is not good thing. Does this mean that my design is not ok (how should I change it) or is there some way how to solve this situation? Related: TDD anti-patterns on SO"}
{"_id": "241552", "title": "Should I create separate work and personal GitHub accounts?", "text": "I'm fairly new to programming, and I've been working on many personal projects, which I'm concerned can come across as silly and unprofessional. The kind of projects I have are a Reddit Image Downloader and a tool for GMs to use in roleplaying games. I want to start building up a GitHub account for projects in my chosen field of data analytics, but I'm not sure how to organize projects on my GitHub account. Should I create a \"professional\" GitHub, mainly containing different analytical scripts and have a separate \"personal\" account for fun little projects of mine? Or am I just overthinking this, and should I just maintain one account?"}
{"_id": "241555", "title": "Good approach for hundreds of comsumers and big files", "text": "I have several files (nearly 1GB each) with data. Data is a string line. I need to process each of these files with several hundreds of consumers. Each of these consumers does some processing that differs from others. Consumers do not write anywhere concurrently. They only need input string. After processing they update their local buffers. Consumers can easily be executed in parallel. Important: With one specific file each consumer has to process all lines (without skipping) in correct order (as they appear in file). The order of processing different files doesn't matter. Processing of a single line by one consumer is comparably fast. I expect less than 50 microseconds on Corei5. So now I'm looking for the good approach to this problem. This is going to be be a part of a .NET project, so please let's stick with .NET only (C# is preferable). I know about TPL and DataFlow. I guess that the most relevant would be `BroadcastBlock`. But i think that the problem here is that with each line I'll have to wait for all consumers to finish in order to post the new one. I guess that it would be not very efficient. I think that ideally situation would be something like this:   1. One thread reads from file and writes to the buffer.    2. Each consumer, when it is ready, reads the line from the buffer concurrently and processes it.   3. The entry from the buffer shouldn't be deleted as one consumer reads it. It can be deleted only when all consumers have processed it.   4. TPL schedules consumer threads itself.   5. If one consumer outperforms the others, it shouldn't wait and can read more recent entries from the buffer. Am i right with this kind of approach? Whether yes or not, how can i implement the good solution? I was suggested to move the question here as more appropriate place from StackOverflow. **Update:** According to david.pfx comment here is some detailing. Performance is at the first place, ease of maintenance is at the second."}
{"_id": "162220", "title": "What should developers know about Windows executable binary file compression?", "text": "I'd never heard of this before, so shame on me, but programs like UPX can compress my files by 80% which is totally sweet, but I have no idea what the the disadvantages are in doing this. Or even what the compressor does.   * Website linked above doesn't say anything about dynamically linking DLLs but it mentions about compressing DESCENT 2 and about compressing Netscape 4.06. Also, it doesn't say what the tradeoffs are, only the benefits. If there weren't tradeoffs why wouldn't my linker compress the file? If I have an environment where I have one executable and 20-30 DLL's, some of which are dynamically loaded an unloaded fairly arbitrarily, but not in loops (hopefully), do I take a big hit in processing time decompressing these DLL's when they're used?"}
{"_id": "162224", "title": "What exactly do I have to pay attention for when choosing Windows Hosting Provider?", "text": "This is my first time choosing a hosting company. It is for a web site made in asp.net mvc3. So I was thinking choosing a provider would be easy since I found this page http://www.microsoft.com/web/Hosting/Home which contains hosting offers. Now hours later, I am still searching. The reason is that as soon as I start investigating about particular company, something stands out that I do not like. Here are some examples what I noticed when checking various companies in more detail:   * **Company \"about us\" page is lacking in information about their company.** Few of them had just general description what they do and nothing else, while some others had information like company name but had no address.   * **Checking company name in Business Registry Searches gave no results.** Two of the companies I checked had both company name and address but I was unable to find them in the registry.   * **Putting company domain into Google gave mostly results from that domain or web hosting review sites but not much else.** I am assuming that good companies should have search results from other sites too.   * **Low Alexa Traffic Rank.** There was one company which had a site that looked very professional but their alexa traffic ranking was like 2 million. Are there any other factors I should pay attention to when choosing a hosting company? Do I have legitimate concerns or am I just too paranoid?"}
{"_id": "162229", "title": "Maintenance model for external artifacts", "text": "When we think about maintaining a software solution holistically, we have to think about things like non-code change control and configuration management, in addition to the actual source code. For example, for maintaining a large web application, tracing: > \"Make the following (manual) configuration change to the farm, as part of > deploying this specific xx.yy.zz version of the solution package.\" I've implemented a fairly good model for this, but now I'm tackling the next largest problem - how do we manage changes in other systems we don't own? Let's take a simple example: We have an ASP.NET application owned by a solution team (let's call them the PLM Team). Their next release includes a change that requires the SAP team (which is under a different maintenance umbrella) to also deploy a change to one of their BAPI endpoints. Of course the actual coordination of the deployment at release time is simple human interaction & coordination, but in terms of the total SDLC:   * How does our example \"PLM Team\" package & trace this dependency as an artifact, both as an upcoming change and, post-deployment, a managed dependency with requirements they own but an implementation they do not directly control?   * What is the right information to capture about it? How should it be treated differently than non-code configuration items they do control?"}
{"_id": "159185", "title": "Pattern(s) about hierarchical settings overwriting", "text": "Assume that you have a hierarchy of organizational units:               - Company     -- Branches     --- Departments     ---- Teams      Lets say I have some settings (for simplicity assume that they have the same properties) for each level of hierarchy:   * Max nr of documents   * Min something else   * Can do X   * Can do Y   * many other properties So, the sub-units can reuse as default the parents settings, or they have only one or two of these settings modified. Same for their sub-units. What would be the proper pattern to follow - both as code structures, as well as db storage to support that, with the idea that each unit's settings can be modified independently, and sub-unit's settings override the default of the parent. We were thinking about key/value pairs, and then lookup for each one going up the hierarchy until we find the right setting, but this can become ugly pretty fast. Another option we were considering is that each unit has it's own record of the settings, and update accordingly when parent's settings changed. I'd appreciate any suggestion of well known approaches/patterns in that regard."}
{"_id": "81363", "title": "Is maintaining Heavily Ajax-Based Web Apps more difficult?", "text": "Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but in my experience, developing and maintaining heavily ajax-based web apps is much more difficult then a \"more standard\" web app. I'm not talking about an app that uses ajax to load in some data here and there, but the style where the page the server sends out is just a frame, and all the data is filled in at load time. I'd love to hear from those with experience in developing these types of apps. My personal experience is that they take more hours to both build and maintain."}
{"_id": "159183", "title": "Where have all the programming kids gone nowadays?", "text": "**a bit of background:** I come from an environment where we all started to learn programming with Excel VBA and later VB6 (yeah, VB6 - but we were young and it was great fun these days). So to me, it was a completely natural way of getting started with programming. I later worked in a VB-related programming forum where a major part of the community comprised exactly these young amateur programmers. Now of course, VB is a dying language so we made a transition into .NET languages (C# and VB.NET), **but the number of visitors was (and is) steadily declining.** It's these **young programming kids that we'are lacking** in particular. We could have well attributed this solely to VB, but I looked around in other forums and they all seem to face similar problems. **So my question is** > Where are today's programming kids gone? Is .NET \"more professional\" in a > way that it attracts fewer junior programmers than the older languages (VBC, > Delphi, Pascal, whatever one used to start with) did? Or is it a broader > phenomenon that we've got fewer \"new blood\" today? Does anyone have similar (or contrary) experience in this points? Where have the kids gone and which languages are they using (hopefully not all Java/Javascript :D )? Or maybe it's the concept of forums that's on the decline?! I'd just want to _collect some thoughts_ here, and hopefully _hard data_ if it should be available. Thanks"}
{"_id": "190018", "title": "LOOP program only need inc and zero", "text": "I have 4 different commands in LOOP programming language:                   y=Zero()         y=Val(x)=copy x and put it in register y         y=Inc(x)=x+1         y=Dec(x)=x-1      Finally I also have                   loop n times {         ...         }      How is it possible that there is an equivalent loop program to every other loop program which uses only Inc, Zero and the loop? For me it is not clear how to express the Dec-command using only Inc, Zero and the loop."}
{"_id": "200114", "title": "Need help on user story with multiple condition", "text": "I have the following user story:   * As a registered user i can request for a new license key with the following condition   * When the user request a license key they required to enter some hardware id Should i create another user story base on this condition? example   * As a registered user i can request a new license key only when hardware id is provided. In a situation when i have multiple condition should i create many user story to fit in the condition? thanks"}
{"_id": "200115", "title": "What is early and late binding?", "text": "In many interviews I've been asked this question. I found the following answer: > Early binding refers to assignment of values to variables during design time > whereas late binding refers to assignment of values to variables during run > time. I can't understand it without an example. Can anyone give me one?"}
{"_id": "17519", "title": "Why does DirectX use a left-handed coordinate system?", "text": "I considered posting on Stack Overflow, but the question strikes me as being far too subjective since I can't think of a reasonable technical explanation for Microsoft's choice in this matter. But this question has bugged me for so long and the issue keeps coming up in one of my projects, and I have never actually seen an attempt at explaining this: OpenGL uses a right-handed coordinate system, where the +Z part of the world coordinate system extends toward the viewer. DirectX uses a left-handed system where the +Z part of the world coordinate extends _into_ the screen, away from the viewer. I never used the Glide API, so I don't know how it worked, but from what I can gather, it uses a left-handed system as well. Is there a technical reason for this? And if not, is there some conceptual advantage to a particular handedness of a coordinate system? Why would one choose one over the other?"}
{"_id": "41978", "title": "Do SQL Devs create SQL queries using SQL Query Designers?", "text": "I was just curious if SQL Devs write their code freehand or do they make use of the visual query designer to generate queries? In the majority of the cases, the query designer can create most of non-complex queries, no? (I'm a WinForms dev just now getting started with SQL Server)"}
{"_id": "162593", "title": "Why C# has no monkeypatching?", "text": "I was reading about monkeypatching _ dynamically overriding the functionality of classes. C# allows dynamic extending, but no monkeypatching, which I find reasonable. But I wondered why they wouldn't include the feature. Is it because you could hurt other programs running on your machine, or just the feature wasn't considered necessary?"}
{"_id": "66962", "title": "Are \"wrapper\" and \"shim\" synonymous?", "text": "Are the words \"wrapper\" and \"shim\" more or less synonymous, or is there a distinction, perhaps connotative?"}
{"_id": "162597", "title": "A sample Memento pattern: Is it correct?", "text": "Following this query on memento pattern, I have tried to put my understanding to test. > Memento pattern stands for three things: > >   1. Saving state of the \"memento\" object for its successful retrieval >   2. Saving carefully each valid \"state\" of the memento >   3. Encapsulating the saved states from the change inducer so that each > state remains unaltered > _**Have I achieved these three with my design?_** _**Problem   _** This is a zero player game where the program is initialized with a particular set up of chess pawns - the knight and queen. Then program then needs to keep adding set of pawns or knights and queens so that each pawn is \"safe\" for the next one move of every other pawn. The condition is that either both pawns should be placed, or none of them should be placed. The chessboard with the most number of non conflicting knights and queens should be returned. **Implementation** I have 4 classes for this:   1. `protected ChessBoard` (the Memento)              private int [][] ChessBoard;          public void ChessBoard();     protected void SetChessBoard();     protected void GetChessBoard(int);        2. `public Pawn` This is not related to memento. It holds info about the pawns              public enum PawnType: int     {         Empty = 0,         Queen = 1,         Knight = 2,     }     //This returns a value that shown if the pawn can be placed safely     public bool IsSafeToAddPawn(PawnType);        3. `public CareTaker` This corresponds to caretaker of memento This is a double dimentional integer array that keeps a track of all states. The reason for having 2D array is to keep track of how many states are stored and which state is currently active. An example: 0 -2   1 -1   2 0 - This is current state. With second index 0/   3 1 - This state has been saved, but has been undone              private int [][]State;     private ChessBoard [] MChessBoard;          //This gets the chessboard at the position requested and assigns it to originator     public ChessBoard GetChessBoard(int);          //This overwrites the chessboard at given position     public void SetChessBoard(ChessBoard, int);          private int [][]State;        4. `public PlayGame` (This is the originator)              private bool status;     private ChessBoard oChessBoard;          //This sets the state of chessboard at position specified public     SetChessBoard(ChessBoard, int);          //This gets the state of chessboard at position specified public     ChessBoard GetChessBoard(int);          //This function tries to place both the pawns and returns the status of this attempt     public bool PlacePawns(Pawn);      **Edit after discussion with Kevin** The way I am trying to apply design patterns to my problems is not correct. In a way it helps me understand \"how\" to \"implement\" it. Yes. But then, this is not its ideal usage. I might as well simplify my \"learning\" problem and use my text book ones. Also refer to this question on programmers.stackoverflow and all the discussions!"}
{"_id": "117876", "title": "Is prototype.js still relevant?", "text": "I'm developing a web application which I started on about 2 years ago. It is an AJAX-heavy single page design and prototype solved problems where I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. I am using a couple of third-party tools that depends on prototype, namely okonet modalbox, protofish tooltips, scriptaculous, My own use of prototype is relegated to simple operations such as reading input values and creating elements. My concern started with the lack of updates for prototype and prima facie evidence on the Internet. If you search for something JScript related jquery is mentioned a lot and prototype hardly at all. Lately it seems that jquery is the toolkit of choice and prototype is stagnating. Should I make the switch to jquery?"}
{"_id": "244451", "title": "Relationship between TDD and Software Architecture/Design", "text": "I'm new to TDD and have been reading the theory since applying it is more complicated than it sounds when you're learning by yourself. As far as I know, the objective is to write test cases for each requirement and run the test so it fails (to prevent a false positive). Afterward, you should write the minimum amount of code that can pass the test and move to the next one. That being said, is it true that you get a fast development, but what about the code itself? this theory makes me think you are not considering things like abstraction, delegation of responsibilities, design patterns, architecture and others since you're just writing \"the minimum amount of code that can pass the test\". I know I'm probably wrong because if this were true, we'd have a lot of crappy developers with poor software architecture and documentation so I'm asking for a guide here, what's the relationship between TDD and Software Architecture/Design?"}
{"_id": "125893", "title": "When should I use a CSS class over inline styling?", "text": "I have some hidden divs that I show via JavaScript when a button is clicked. Right now, I'm hiding them with by using inline styling (i.e. `style=\"display:none;\"`). This works, but are there general rules or guidelines to follow to determine if I should use inline styles or styling via stylesheets and class selectors?"}
{"_id": "152520", "title": "the decisive difference between LGPL and AGPL", "text": "What is the decisive difference between LGPL(v3) and AGPL(v3) ? Both can be used in commercial production, both can also be packed within a payed product. As long as I do not change the source code of these, I am not forced to enclose the source code with my product. So where lies the eminent difference? (Asked this also at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10996160/the-decisive- difference-between-lgpl-and-agpl, but a user suggested to ask it here.)"}
{"_id": "125891", "title": "How to organize programming exercise", "text": "Due to my bad performance on past job interviews, I decided to perform daily programming exercises out of my work. Currently, I am concentrating on algorithms, design patterns, and unit testing in C++ language platform. But I'd like to have balance over more important areas. So if I may, I'd like to know how other programmers organize their programming exercises."}
{"_id": "101463", "title": "Risks in giving out distribution cert/private key/provisioning profile to freelancer", "text": "Are there any risks in giving out distribution certification/private key/provisioning profile to a freelancer? The freelancer needs to build the binary for me to submit (I am okay with this because I don't own the source code of the app), I just want to know if there is any risk involved in sending the distribution cert/private key/provisioning profile to him? p.s. They don't have the iTunes connect/portal login. Updated: The freelancer will build the binary for me, and I will upload for them."}
{"_id": "101464", "title": "What do I call a non-MVC pattern?", "text": "I am finishing my project and in my thesis I am explaining why I used an **MVC** pattern to build my website, and have stated the advantages of designing it this way. However, if I had **not** used MVC and had built my website from scratch with all the functions for data, processing, and display into each page, what would that have been called in terms of architecture? For example, I would have had one PHP file that has all of the code and functions that it needs. Would it have been called \"a standard website architecture\"?"}
{"_id": "101466", "title": "How do I manage success as an independent contractor?", "text": "I'm fixing bugs for a software company as a contractor on a per hour basis (first time for me). Today, in 6 hours I fixed two issues which had been planned at 32 and 40 hours each. The days before (I've been working here a week or so) the pattern was the same. I didn't plan time to fix those issues, and I didn't know what the issues were before signing the contract. I found a JIRA with all planned hours: some of those issues have been waiting to be worked on for years. I signed a contract for two months, but I'm afraid I'm going to run out of work much sooner."}
{"_id": "254260", "title": "Evolutions in Agile development field", "text": "I recently pull up from under ten inches of dust one of my agile book. The book is now six years old; published in 2008. I prefer to keep it anonymous preventing to create a guerrilla of which one will yielded the best book about this subject. For that, I'm totally able to do a simple search from Amazon or Gooble to find the best book. I seen a couple of books about agile released in the last 2-3 years and I'm wondering if it will be a good investment to buy a more recent book than my old one. I mean, is there any great advancements in the last few years in the world of agile that worth to buy a more recent book? Thank you."}
{"_id": "254262", "title": "Is my class structure good enough?", "text": "So I wanted to try out this challenge on reddit which is mostly about how you structure your data the best you can. I decided to challenge my C++ skills. Here's how I planned this.   * First, there's the **Game** class. It deals with time and is the only class main has access to.   * A game has a **Forest**. For now, this class does not have a lot of things, only a _size_ and a _Factory_. Will be put in better use when it will come to SDL-stuff I guess   * A **Factory** is the thing that deals with the _Game Objects_ (a.k.a. Trees, Lumberjack and Bears). It has a vector of all _GameObjects_ and a queue of _Events_ which will be managed at the end of one month.   * A **GameObject** is an abstract class which can be updated and which can _notify_ the _Event Listener_   * The **EventListener** is a class which handles all the _Events_ of a simulation. It can recieve events from a Game Object and notify the _Factory_ if needed, the latter will manage correctly the event. So, the **Tree** , **Lumberjack** and **Bear** classes all inherits from **GameObject**. And **Sapling** and **Elder Tree** inherits from **Tree**. Finally, an **Event** is defined by an _event_type_ enumeration (LUMBERJACK_MAWED, SAPPLING_EVOLUTION, ...) and an _event_protagonists_ union (a GameObject or a pair of GameObject (who killed who ?)). * * * I was quite happy at first with this because it seems quite logic and flexible. But I ended up questionning this structure. Here's why :   1. I dislike the fact that a **GameObject** need to know about the Factory. Indeed, when a Bear moves somewhere, it needs to know if there's a Lumberjack ! Or it is the Factory which handles places and objects. It would be great if a GameObject could only interact with the EventListener... or maybe it's not that much of a big deal.   2. Wouldn't it be better if I separate the Factory in three vectors ? One for each kind of GameObject. The idea would be to optimize research. If I'm looking do delete a dead lumberjack, I would only have to look in one shorter vector rather than a very long vector.   3. Another problem arises when I want to know if there is any particular object in a given case because I have to look for _all_ the gameObjects and see if they are at the given case. I would tend to think that the other idea would be to use a matrix but then the issue would be that I would have empty cases (and therefore unused space).   4. I don't really know if **Sapling** and **Elder Tree** should inherit from **Tree**. Indeed, a Sapling _is_ a Tree but what about its evolution ? Should I just delete the sapling and say to the factory to create a new Tree at the exact same place ? It doesn't seem natural to me to do so. How could I improve this ?   5. Is the design of an **Event** quite good ? I've never used _unions_ before in C++ but I didn't have any other ideas about what to use. * * * Well, I hope I have been clear enough. Thank you for taking the time to help me !"}
{"_id": "62418", "title": "Where to look for a programming partner?", "text": "Say that you want to start a new project (I'm talking about a _serious_ project -- e.g if you had an idea that seems good and profitable -- not about something you start just to learn a new technology or just for your enjoyment) but you don't feel like you can do it alone since, for example, you lack the experience or the technical skills to go through all the phases needed to go from the idea to the final product. Say also that you don't simply want to hire someone. You want someone who can be as passionate as you in the job, that is \"proficient\" in and enthusiast of the same technologies as you are and that possibly has a background similar to yours (e.g. you both are students, you both come from a prestigious univerity or just you're both Star Trek nerds). So, basically you don't want a person to tell what to do (e.g. \"implement this and that, slave!\") but someone who can be inspiring and bring something new and important to your project. Someone to go with you from the earliest stage -- from clearly shaping the project's philosophy to drawing mockups etc. Someone who agrees to share the outcome of the project, that strongly believes in the idea behind it and is completely 50-50 with you. Now the question is: how to improve your chances of finding this person (or persons)? Where would you look at first? For example, if you had a lot of funds and were looking for someone to hire, you'd maybe post an ad in SO careers or jobs.73signals; if you already had a team and were looking for funding, you'd start a project on kickstarter or indiegogo, or you'd go to some startup event. But if you had to find a good partner (and programmer, of course) for you're project, where would you start looking? Which strategies would you use?"}
{"_id": "237662", "title": "Cache concurrency: ensuring latest version in cache", "text": "We have a data service app working on object graphs. We place some complex graphs in a (memory) caching tier as a single data item, so as to avoid the length of time to retrieve every individual data item in disk storage in order to build the entire hierarchy. That means whenever any of the data items change, a re-cache event is triggered - reloading everything in the hierarchy and storing the newer version to cache. Recently we made tweaks to the service to increase its concurrency of asynchronous operations (mostly network I/O), and observed contention behaviour if multiple incoming requests made updates to items in essentially the same object graph. Each update operation is unaware of other concurrent updates. At the storage persistence level, the infrastructure has timestamps on the data rows; allowing us to apply optimistic concurrency techniques, ensuring nobody is writing an outdated version back to storage. A change in any child object causes the root object to increment a version number, thus the re-cache. During such an event, other concurrent updates may happen for any other child object (or even the same), which makes it difficult to tell what a particular version of the root object is supposed to really have (at point of update time). What is worse, and the main concern here, is that due to concurrent thread contention for processor attention, the caching attempt of an older version can happen _after_ the caching attempt of a newer version. Right now we have minimised this behaviour by verifying that the root object's version during a re-cache event still matches the version saved during its own update operation. If the version number is not the same, it means another concurrent update has since changed it further and the re-cache should not proceed - let the last update operation perform the re-cache. That of course _minimises_ the chances but not _eliminate_ outright; it can still be possible for the root object to retain its original version number on re-fetch, and while re-fetching all the children objects, another update happens and by stroke of (ill) luck manages to complete and re-cache before this ongoing re-caching attempt has completed its round. To further complicate the issue, this data service is deployed as a cluster of servers with no knowledge about each other's siblings. Was wondering if there is any effective way to manage the concurrent updates across multiple threads and servers to ensure the cached copy is indeed always the latest copy?"}
{"_id": "227779", "title": "Is Pre-Order traversal same as Depth First Search?", "text": "It seems to me like pre-order traversal and DFS are same as in both the cases we traverse from root till the left branch and back to root and then to the right branch recursively. Could any please correct me if I am wrong? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "120970", "title": "How is precedence determined in C pointers?", "text": "I've come across two pointer declarations that I'm having trouble understanding. My understanding of precedence rules goes something like this:               Operator             Precedence             Associativity     (), [ ]                  1                  Left to Right     *, identifier            2                  Right to Left     Data type                3      But even given this, I can't seem to figure out how to evaluate the following examples correctly: ### First example               float * (* (*ptr)(int))(double **,char c)      My evaluation:   1. `*(ptr)`   2. `(int)`   3. `*(*ptr)(int)`   4. `*(*(*ptr)(int))` Then,   1. `double **`   2. `char c` ### Second example               unsigned **( * (*ptr) [5] ) (char const *,int *)        1. `*(ptr)`   2. `[5]`   3. `*(*ptr)[5]`   4. `*(*(*ptr)[5])`   5. `**(*(*ptr)[5])` How _should_ I read them?"}
{"_id": "81947", "title": "Why is jQuery released under MIT and not LGPL?", "text": "Why is jQuery released under MIT and not LGPL? What are the benefits of using MIT compared to LGPL for a framework?"}
{"_id": "14781", "title": "How do you deal with the anxiety of not knowing enough?", "text": "I just finished college a couple of months ago and im taking time out to improve my knowledge. I love programming but i feel like i dont know enough to be confident if I went for an interview. Last night i was browsing through questions and came across a question that asks interviewees how to work out a linked list. I learned these at college but if i was asked on the spot how to do it i wouldnt know. So that's another thing added to the list of what to learn. This is when the anxiety hit me because i have so much to learn in so little time (at least it feels that way). Upon introspection i think this anxiety is related to my perfectionism even though being perfect isnt rational e.g. Shakespeare and Einstein failed 80% of the time. So the questions are, have you felt this anxiety of not knowing enough? If so, how did you deal with it? I suppose there's a point in time when you begin to feel comfortable in your abilities?"}
{"_id": "124417", "title": "How is the \"Pizza picking problem\u200d\u200b\" solved using dynamic programming techniques?", "text": "Winkler's pizza picking problem:   * A circular pizza pie of `n` slices, where slice `i` has area `S_i` i.e, the area is different for each pie piece.    * Eaters Alice and Bob take turns picking slices, but it is rude to create multiple gaps in the pie (consider it not allowed).      * Thus each eater is restricted to taking one of the two slices adjacent to the open region. Alice goes first, and both eaters seek as much pie as possible.  How would a dynamic programming algorithm determine how much pie Alice eats, if both Alice and Bob play perfectly to maximize their pizza consumption? My understanding: In a general DP problem, we go forward with finding sub-problems which can be visualized using recursion tree or, more tightly, using a DAG. Here, I'm not finding any lead to find the sub-problems here. Here, for a given set of S_i s, we need to maximize the area of slices eaten by Alice. This will depend on choosing a permutation of Pizza slices out of (n-1) permutations. Choosing a max area slice out of two options available in every n\\2 turns Alice gets, will give us the total area of slice for a permutation. We need to find area of slice for all such permutations. And then the maximum out of these. Can somebody help me out on how to go forward?"}
{"_id": "20663", "title": "Are PGP keys as good for certificates as X.509 keys?", "text": "I'm working on a decentralized transaction processing system that needs both authentication and general encryption, and I have a design decision to make: should I use PGP or X.509 certificates? While the world tends to use X.509 for authentication (especially in browsers), they are based on the principle of having a _central_ authority vouch for each certificate, meaning the system would need a CA and anyone who wants to participate in the system would need to have their keys signed by that CA. PGP, on the other hand, is based on a \"Web of Trust\", where parties who want to communicate merely need to have _any_ trusted party in common who will sign both keys. A CA isn't necessary in this case. My overall design goals prefer the Web-of-Trust model, to keep the system decentralized, but I may also have customers who prefer a centralized model, and I don't want to prohibit that possibility. Is there anything stopping the Web-of-Trust principle from working with X.509? Likewise, is it easy and straightforward to mimic CAs in the PGP cryptosystem? Are they interchangeable in practice? (For some reason, this is making me think of the false dichtomy: \"I'm trying to bang in a nail, should I use a beer bottle or the heel of a shoe?\")"}
{"_id": "175435", "title": "Should I use an interface when methods are only similar?", "text": "I was posed with the idea of creating an object that checks if a point will collide with a line:               public class PointAndLineSegmentCollisionDetector {         public void Collides(Point p, LineSegment s) {             // ...         }     }      This made me think that if I decided to create a **Box** object, then I would need a **PointAndBoxCollisionDetector** and a **LineSegmentAndBoxCollisionDetector**. I might even realize that I should have a **BoxAndBoxCollisionDetector** and a **LineSegmentAndLineSegmentCollisionDetector**. And, when I add new objects that can collide I would need to add even more of these. But, they all have a **Collides** method, so everything I learned about abstraction is telling me, _\"Make an interface.\"_               public interface CollisionDetector {         public void Collides(Spatial s1, Spatial s2);     }      But now I have a function that only detects some abstract class or interface that is used by **Point** , **LineSegment** , **Box** , etc.. So if I did this then each implementation would have to to a type check to make sure that the types are the appropriate type because the collision algorithm is different for each different type match up. Another solution could be this:               public class CollisionDetector {         public void Collides(Point p, LineSegment s) { ... }         public void Collides(LineSegment s, Box b) { ... }         public void Collides(Point p, Box b) { ... }         // ...     }      But, this could end up being a huge class that seems unwieldy, although it would have simplicity in that it is only a bunch of **Collide** methods. This is similar to C#'s **Convert** class. Which is nice because it is large, but it is simple to understand how it works. This seems to be the better solution, but I thought I should open it for discussion as a wiki to get other opinions."}
{"_id": "175437", "title": "What if I can't make my unit test fail in \"Red, Green, Refactor\" of TDD?", "text": "So let's say that I have a test:               @Test     public void MoveY_MoveZero_DoesNotMove() {         Point p = new Point(50.0, 50.0);         p.MoveY(0.0);         Assert.assertAreEqual(50.0, p.Y);     }      This test then causes me to create the class **Point** :               public class Point {         double X; double Y;         public void MoveY(double yDisplace) {             throw new NotYetImplementedException();         }     }      Ok. It fails. Good. Then I remove the exception and I get green. Great, but of course I need to test if it changes value. So I write a test that calls _p.MoveY(10.0)_ and checks if _p.Y_ is equal to 60.0. It fails, so then I change the function to look like so:               public void MoveY(double yDisplace) {         Y += yDisplace;     }      Great, now I have green again and I can move on. I've tested not moving and moving in the positive direction, so naturally I should test a negative value. The only problem with this test is that if I wrote the test correctly, then it doesn't fail at first. That means that I didn't fit the principle of \"Red, Green, Refactor.\" Of course, This is a first-world problem of TDD, but getting a fail at first is helpful in that it shows that your test can fail. Otherwise this seemingly innocent test that is just passing for incorrect reasons could fail later because it was written wrong. That might not be a problem if it happened 5 minutes later, but what if it happens to the poor-sap that inheirited your code two years later. What he knows is that MoveY does not work with negative values because that is what the test is telling him. But, it really could work and just be a bug in the test. I don't think that would happen in this particular case because the code sample is so simple, but if it were a large complicated system that might not be the case. It seems crazy to say that I want to fail my tests, but that is an important step in TDD, for good reasons."}
{"_id": "20664", "title": "In-Memory Debugger for .NET?", "text": "I don't know if \"In-Memory debugger\" is really what I mean, or if it's even possible to produce, but it's the best name I could come up with... Here's the tool I'm looking for:   * Given a variable name, resolve that name to a reference   * Given that reference, be able to watch the object referenced   * Given the watch, be able to visualise it in a useful way, e.g.      * browse the properties of the object as you can in Visual Studio     * be notified when the object referenced is changed. Here's a use case for this hypothetical tool. I have spent all of today trying to track down an ObjectDisposedException in my C# web app. The object being disposed is the WindowsIdentity of the current user, and there would appear to be a race condition causing the WindowsIdentity to be disposed before it is used. If I could watch a particular memory reference in an intelligent way, rather than a variable in some given scope, I think it would help me pin down the source of this sort of bug more easily. Does such a tool exist for .NET?"}
{"_id": "118940", "title": "What kind of test should be given to Java EE programmers?", "text": "I'm looking to hire developers and I wish to test them. I have been especially told by my boss that we should have programmers on board that can consult on banking sector software and I'm to come up with the test. Now I've never done Java EE development in depth and my knowledge of it isn't the greatest but I've not had any trouble understanding what I've read so far. Now I'm wondering how to construct a test to test candidates for Java EE knowledge as well as experience. And if I should make the test more conceptual like logical reasoning and pattern detection etc."}
{"_id": "118945", "title": "What is the best way to insert range of values into a datastructure", "text": "If I have a datastructure which is the fastest way I could insert values into it in a specified range? For example if I had a method:               myDatastructure var=new myDataStructure();     var.insert(2,1000);      it would mean that I get a most optimised way of getting a datastructure holding values from 2 to 1000 in each of index sequentially."}
{"_id": "139677", "title": "How to write functionally in a web framework", "text": "I love Rich Hickey, Clojure and Haskell and I get it when he talks about functions and the unreliability of side-effecting code. However I work in an environment where nearly all the functions I write have to read from the database, write to the database, make HTTP requests, decrement a user's balance, modify a frontend HTML component based on a click action, return different results based on the URI or the POST body. We also use PHP for the frontend, which is littered with functions like parse_str(), which modifies an object in place. All of these are side-effecting to one degree or another. Given these constraints and the side-effecting nature of the logic I'm coding, what can I do to make my code more reliable and `function`-able?"}
{"_id": "139672", "title": "is it programmer's duty to disable directory listing?", "text": "Recently I have project in which a directory listing is enabled, due to which some scripts can be seen by outside world. I asked website administrator and he said it's not his responsibility, its the programmer's job. I also asked programmer about this and he said that the script is actually a cron job, and according to him, he has to test the script on webserver as there is a difference between development and production environment, so he placed there to test that. According to him, there was no direct link as he assumed directory listing is disabled and taken care by administrator. Who is the right person to do this?"}
{"_id": "85069", "title": "PHP and Ruby: how to leverage both? and, is it worth it?", "text": "As you might have noticed from the title, this is not a \"PHP or Ruby\", or a \"PHP vs. Ruby\" question. This is a question on how to leverage PHP + Ruby in the same business. I myself am a PHP developer, I love the language because of its convenience and I specially love the ecosystem of resources that surround it: Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Symfony2, Doctrine2, etc. However, the language itself can be a little disappointing sometimes. OTOH, Ruby looks like a very beautiful language and \u2014from studying it superficially in several aspects\u2014 I could say it is leaner than Python as a language per se. However, from what I've seen there is pretty much only RoR making noise, and I don't like RoR so much (mainly because its model layer). As Co-CEO and CTO at my company I'm trying to think outside of the box since I want to start to focus on the human side of technology and see if its sane to use both PHP and Ruby. Here are some random thoughts:   * Ruby folk seem to be generally better suited programmers than PHP folk (in terms of averages), I know the previous statement is somewhat baloney because very good and well architected PHP can be written, but I'd say the Ruby programmer culture is better than PHP's.    * The thing about Ruby is that it seems better suited for rapid development, I don't really know if this is only the case for RoR, but I do know that there are certain practices (perhaps not so good) like monkey patching that let business needs be satified quicker.   * From a marketing point of view (yep, sometimes you need to leverage the marketing BS for the sake of your company) Ruby seems better while PHP carries some stigmas.   * PHP 5.4 is bringing traits, and that is better/cleaner than mixins. That could really make PHP as lean as Ruby \u2014or more\u2014 for certain stuff. Now, concretely, my questions:   * Would a PHP programmer want to learn Ruby?, I know I do, but conversely, would a Ruby programmer want to learn PHP?.   * What kinds of projects or situations would be better suited for Ruby that are not suited for PHP?.   * What is the actual ecosystem of Ruby?, aside from RoR, I have not seen other hyped technologies/frameworks (I've seen RSpec, but I confess being a total noob on what BDD really consists of and its implications).   * Supposing there are a certain type of projects ideal for Ruby, would there be a moment that its better to move it to PHP?. I know PHP can handle lots of stuff, but I've read that Ruby has its limitations when scaling (or is that RoR?, or is that baloney for both?).   * Finally and most importantly, would it be sane to maintain projects in two languages?, or is that just stupid. As I said, it looks like Ruby is leaner on the short term and that can make a project happen and succeed, but I'm not so sure about that on the long run. I'm looking for insights mainly from people that know well the strengths and weaknesses of the languages \u2014preferably both of them\u2014 and Ruby's ecosystem in real practice, meaning: frameworks and applications like the ones I quoted from PHP's ecosystem."}
{"_id": "128717", "title": "Why is there such limited support for Design by Contract in most modern programming languages?", "text": "I recently discovered Design by Contract (DbC) and I find it an extremely interesting way to write code. Among other things, it would seem to offer:   * Better documentation. Since the contract is the documentation, it's impossible for one to be out of date. Additionally, because the contract specifies exactly what a routine does, it helps to support reuse.   * Simpler debugging. Since program execution stops the moment a contract fails, errors can't propagate, and the specific assertion violated will presumably be highlighted. This offers support during development and during maintenance.   * Better static analysis. DbC is basically just an implementation of Hoare logic, and the same principles should apply. The costs, in comparison seem to be rather small:   * Extra finger-typing. Since the contracts have to be spelled out.   * Takes some amount of training to get comfortable with writing contracts. Now, being familiar with Python primarily, I realize that it is in fact possible to write up preconditions (just throwing exceptions for inappropriate input) and it's even possible to use assertions to test again certain postconditions. But it's not possible to simulate certain features such as 'old' or 'result' without some extra magic that would ultimately be considered un-Pythonic. (In addition, there are a few libraries that offer support, but ultimately I get the vibe it would be wrong to use them, as most developers don't.) I assume that it's a similar problem for all other languages (except of course, Eiffel). My intuition tells me that the lack of support must be a result of some kind of rejection of the practice, but searching online has not been fruitful. I'm wondering if someone can clarify why most modern languages seem to offer so little support? Is DbC flawed or overly expensive? Or is it just obsolete due to Extreme Programming and other methodologies?"}
{"_id": "85065", "title": "Is programming as a career in the US being hurt by competition from programmers in India?", "text": "I don't want to be offensive; people in India matter just as much as people in the US and also need work. However, I'm one of the people in the US. Are there fewer programming jobs in the US because of competition from India? Are the programming jobs in the US less lucrative because of competition from India? Is programming a good career choice in the US (in terms of being able to actually make a fair amount of money)?"}
{"_id": "163174", "title": "Was Xcode created with Xcode?", "text": "I don't want to get too philosophical here (like did God create God?), but how did Apple create Xcode? Would it have been possible for them to use Xcode to create Xcode? Or would they have to use another code program (and what might that be?). In general, how does that work with code editors?"}
{"_id": "163175", "title": "Difference between spring setter and interface injection?", "text": "I know how constructor and setter injection works in spring. Normally I use interfaces instead of classes to inject beans using setter and I consider it as interface injection, but in case of constructor we also use interfaces (I am confused). In following example I use `JobProcessor` interface instead of `JobProcessorImpl` class.               public class JobScheduler {         // JobProcessor interface         private JobProcessor jobProcessor;         // Dependecy injection         public void setJobProcessor(JobProcessor jobProcessor){             this.jobProcessor = jobProcessor;         }     }      I tried to find a solution by googling but there are different opinions by writers. Even some people says that spring doesn't support interface injection in their blogs/statements. Can someone help me by example?"}
{"_id": "80012", "title": "How can I make tagging work for the concept of \"all\"?", "text": "There's an approach to organising information that says that hierarchy is a tool of the devil, or at least is overrated. I've embraced this understanding for a data-driven site I'm working on which has a fixed set of admins who create and tag data and a slightly less fixed group of data consumers. It uses tagging and search to inform the data consumers when a piece of information is related to what they're reading or searching for (as opposed to expecting non-1337 admins to maintain an object-style hierarchy). I now face the situation of needing some items of information to relate to \"all\" others in one respect. I cannot expect content creators to tag their \"all\" entries with every subject in the domain, and if they did the sheer weight of tags in that domain would drown out the information implied by the other tags on the entry. The options I can think of thus far (all unappealing) are:   * Create an \"all\" checkbox, which can assign an arbitrarily higher score to an entry when considering relevance    * Make different categories of tags, i.e. one tag field per clearly delineated group of subjects   * Replace tagging with a more traditional hierarchy   * Create magic \"all\" tags that get handled differently by my code (I can't believe I'm even thinking that out loud) Are there any other approaches that could work? Is one of these a clear winner?"}
{"_id": "128712", "title": "What is a \"markdown-formatted\" README file on Github?", "text": "It's unclear to me what the format is, if there's systematic/command-line requirements for creating it, etc. Basically, just to need to know the specs, and if there's technical steps for generating the README file."}
{"_id": "134047", "title": "How might a Windows 8 Metro app handle back end database access?", "text": "While researching Metro and WinRT I haven't been able to find anything regarding enterprise apps and database access. All I hear about is the front end development. Does anyone have any idea of how a Metro app will access a database server? Will this still be done through ASP.Net and ADO.Net? If not, then does anyone have any idea or guess as to how?"}
{"_id": "48443", "title": "How many ASP.NET developers program using pure OO?", "text": "How many ASP.NET developers program using OO (e.g. using get, set)? 6 years ago I developed and maintained a .Net 1.1 Intranet application that had no get/set. So how about today? Worth trying the pure OO route? Thanks, TDG"}
{"_id": "211858", "title": "How to get Object Oriented Programming Concepts?", "text": "What is the best way or best resources or tutorials to learn Object Oriented Programming? For instance, when I begin a program with Java and all my code goes into just one class and I can't estimate when I need to create new classes and operate on these classes together."}
{"_id": "211853", "title": "Naming a sending/receiving module. Does the pattern have a name?", "text": "I'm working on a simple piece of functionality (actually a ruby gem, but that is beside the point) which can be used to   * receive and persist incoming messages   * send and persist outgoing messages   * supplies a hook to the implementing code for performing some action based on a received message. Could for example send a reply, but also perform other actions. I'm struggling to find a short and concise name for this functionality. Does this bare resemblance to any named patterns, and if so which? ******* UPDATE ******* To be more specific, what I am actually doing here is receiving and sending SMS. Starting to wonder if perhaps the most appropriate name for this functionality would be an SMS dispatcher. From the Dispatcher page on wikipedia (although it has nothing to do with computing): > Dispatchers are communications personnel responsible for receiving and > transmitting pure and reliable messages Or would using the dispatcher name for this concept cause confusion with other design patterns?"}
{"_id": "252955", "title": "Java: method takes varargs of unrelated types", "text": "I have a Java factory method with a varargs array of `Object`s at the end. The array can contain any combination of `String`s and `ScaledJpeg`s. The theory being that an HTML table cell can contain any number of text nodes or `<image>` nodes and it will line-wrap the images as though they were just funny-shaped words.               // constructor     public Cell(TextStyle ts, float w, CellStyle cs, Object... r) {         if (w < 0) {             throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"A cell cannot have a negative width\");         }         if (r != null) {             for (Object o : r) {                 if ( (o != null) &&                      !(o instanceof String) &&                      !(o instanceof ScaledJpeg) ) {                     throw new IllegalArgumentException(INVALID_ROW_TYPE_STR);                 }             }         }         textStyle = ts; width = w; cellStyle = cs; rows = r;         avgCharsForWidth = (int) ((width * 1220) / textStyle.avgCharWidth());     }      In Scala, I might use a list of `Either[String,ScaledJpeg]`. But some day I'll probably make this method allow something else, say another nested `Cell`, but doing so would break existing code that only expected two possible types. At least the way it is, future changes won't break existing code. The current solution works, allows for expansion, and is relatively easy to use, except that it defeats type safety and can only throw an exception at runtime if someone passes something unexpected as a vararg. For instance, I just forgot to add `toString()` to a `StringBuilder` and it blew up at runtime. So already that's a third class to account for (Since `toString()` is defined on every object, I don't want to call it on whatever is passed because doing so for most object types would be an error much further down in the code violating the fail-fast behavior of this example). `java.lang.String` can't implement any new interfaces and that's probably a good thing. Even if I could make a wrapper class, everything about the way text and images are treated by this class is completely different _except_ that they are line-wrapped together the way they would be in HTML (or in a Word doc). As I write this, it occurs to me that I should probably use a Builder pattern, make a `CellBuilder` class that has `addText()` and `addImage()` methods that does away with the varargs constructor. This would encapsulate the underlying List in a way that the user of the API gets 100% compile-time type safety. But out of curiosity, I'm still posting this in case there are other creative and possibly better solutions out there."}
{"_id": "53287", "title": "How do programmers deal with Project Lead/Managers?", "text": "Project Managers/Technical Leads sometimes tend to be over enthusiastic when it comes to software. But during code reviews if instead of functionality of the code the only complain one hears is about formatting/spacing and similar trivial things, when there are far better things to discuss (Among other things I have noticed the sometimes during the so called \"reviews\" suggestions are made that implementation needs a re-write just because it doesnt use the most happening technology/buzzword) How do fellow programmers deal with such scenarios? or is this just a one off? (or is the fault entirely on me )If you have similar experience and what you did to overcome it? Feel free to share."}
{"_id": "213985", "title": "Should a developer close a ticket in bug tracking tool?", "text": "Should a developer close a ticket in a bug tracking tool? Or should only the scrum master or testers should do it? What are the best practices?"}
{"_id": "243158", "title": "What exactly are Link Relation Values?", "text": "From REST in Practice: Hypermedia and Systems Architecture: > For computer-to-computer interactions, we advertise protocol information by > embedding links in representations, much as we do with the human Web. To > describe a link's purpose, we annotate it. Annotations indicate what the > linked resource means to the current resource: \u201cstatus of your coffee order\u201d > \u201cpayment\u201d and so on. We call such annotated links **hypermedia controls** , > reflecting their enhanced capabilities over raw URIs. > > ... **link relation values** , which describe the roles of linked resources > ... **Link relation values** help consumers understand why they might want > to activate a hypermedia control. They do so by indicating the role of the > linked resource in the context of the current representation. I interpret the above quotes as saying that **Hypermedia control** contains both _a link to a resource_ and _an annotation describing the role of linked resource in the context of the current representation_. And we call this annotation ( which describes the role of linked resource ) a **link relation value**. Is my assumption correct or does the term **link relation value** actually describe something different? Thank you"}
{"_id": "121592", "title": "What to look for in selecting a language for Algorithmic/high frequency trading?", "text": "If one were a quantitative developer, what factors are considered in language choice? I am talking high frequency trading on the scale of investment banks. I know latency is definitely a factor and maybe readability of code (not sure how much code is altered in which case this would be big). Anyone with more knowledge on this know the pros/cons sought in development?"}
{"_id": "121590", "title": "Local versioning system especially designed for documents", "text": "I have to work on some docs, I need a software that can trace all the modifications that I will make to a specific file or project (group of files): is there something like that? The important thing is that I have to do that with a single machine so I do not need a distributed solution, I only have to work with txt files with UTF-8 charset and pdf files."}
{"_id": "243153", "title": "Software architecture for two similar classes which require different input parameters for the same method", "text": "I am writing Java code to simulate a supply chain. The supply chain can be simulated in either an intermediate stocking or a cross-docking configuration. So, I wrote two simulator objects `IstockSimulator` and `XdockSimulator`. Since the two objects share certain behaviors (e.g. making shipments, demand arriving), I wrote an abstract simulator object `AbstractSimulator` which is a parent class of the two simulator objects. The abstract simulator object has a method `runSimulation()` which takes an input parameter of class `SimulationParameters`. Up till now, the simulation parameters only contains fields that are common to both simulator objects, such as `randomSeed`, `simulationStartPeriod` and `simulationEndPeriod`. However, I now want to include fields that are specific to the type of simulation that is being run, i.e. an `IstockSimulationParameters` class for an intermediate stocking simulation, and a `XdockSimulationParameters` class for a cross-docking simulation. My current idea is take the method `runSimulation()` out of the `AbstractSimulator` class, but to put a `runSimulation(IstockSimulationParameters)` method in the `IstockSimulator` class, and a `runSimulation(XdockSimulationParameters)` method in the `IstockSimulator` class. I am worried however, that this approach will lead to code duplication. What should I do? ### Edited Currently, the `AbstractSimulator` class defines the `runSimulation` method which calls other abstract methods that are only defined by the concrete child classes.               public abstract class AbstractSimulator {         public void runSimulation(SimulationParameters params) {             int startPeriod = params.startPeriod;             int endPeriod = params.endPeriod;             for (int t = startPeriod; t < endPeriod; ++t) {                 submitReports(t);                 makeShipments(t);                 demandArrives(t);             }         }         protected abstract void submitReports(int t);         protected abstract void makeShipments(int t);     }      One of the differences between the `IstockSimulator` and the `XdockSimulator` is that in an intermediate stocking configuration, tier 3 facilities submit reports to tier 2 facilities, while in a cross-docking configuration, tier 3 facilities submit reports to tier 1 facilities. Thus the `IstockSimulator` and the `XdockSimulator` have their own implementations of the methods `submitReports` and `makeShipments`. ### What worked for me Thank you for your answers. Inspired by your answers, and after sleeping it over, I came up with my own answer based on refactoring. See below."}
{"_id": "173594", "title": "Thin client Web browser?", "text": "Many times i have heard people saying that a particular hardware to be running a thin client web browser. But from the definition of \"thin-client\", doesnt all browser qualify as a thin-client? as all they do is rendering the information sent from a remote server minimizing the work at the browser end?"}
{"_id": "173597", "title": "Compiled code spreadsheet-like cell management? (auto-updating)", "text": "Okay so I am fully aware how spreadsheets manage cells, they build dependency graphs where when one cell changes it tells all the other cells that are dependent on it that it changed. So they can from there update. How they update I think involves either re-evaluating the formulas stored as strings, or re-evaluating the abstract syntax tree which I think is stored differently and might be faster. Something like that. What I'm looking to do is manage a few variables in my code so I don't have to update them in the correct way, which would be a nightmare. But I also want it much faster than spreadsheets. And since I'm not looking for any functionality as great as are in these spreadsheets, I just figured from that thought point that there has to be a way to have a very fast implementation of this functionality. Especially since I don't have to modify cells after compiling unless that would be an option. I'm very new to programming so I have no idea. One example might be to have a code-generator that generates code that does this for me. But I have no clue what the generated code would look like. Specifically, how exactly would variables inform others that they need to update, and what do those variables do to update? I'm looking for any kind of ideas. Programming is not my job but nonetheless I was hoping to have some kind of system like this that would greatly help me with some stuff. Of course I have been programming plenty lately so I can still program. I just don't have the full scope on things. I'm looking for any kind of ideas, thank you very much in advance! Also, please help me with the tags. I know C# and Java mainly and I'm hoping to implement this in either of those languages and I'm hoping this can stay in those tags. Forcing this into some kind of spreadsheet tag wouldn't be accurate."}
{"_id": "11915", "title": "How to work in localhost properly", "text": "I am using MAMP (just and example) to develop web applications without having to constantly upload and download via FTP. I\u00b4m sure this is the correct way to test a project but I\u00b4m no sure if I\u00b4m doing it right. After I\u00b4m satisfied with the project I have to change in every page the MySQL databases and most of the links etc. Is there a workaround this? How should this be used? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "54506", "title": "How to market yourself as a software developer?", "text": "I have noticed that this is a frequent issue among _younglings_ from technical areas such as ours. In the beginning of our careers we simply don't know how to sell ourselves to our employers, and random guy #57 (who is a programmer, but not as good as you - technically) ends up getting a raise or a promotion because he knows how to communicate and market himself better than you. Many have probably seen this happen in the past, and most certainly many more will in the future. What kind of skill/ability (either technical, or of other nature) do you think is relevant to point out when doing a job interview or asking for a raise, besides listing all the programming languages and libraries you know?"}
{"_id": "173599", "title": "Verification as QA - makes sense?", "text": "Preparing my thesis, I found another interesting discrepancy. While some books say verification it terms of static analysis of work products is quality control (looking for defects), other say it is actually quality assurance because the process of checking is decreasing the probability of real defects when these deliverables will be used for product manufacture. I hesitate as both seems to be correct: it is a way of checking for defects (deviation from requirements, design flaws etc.) so it looks like quality control, but also it is a process which does not have to be done and if done, can yield better quality."}
{"_id": "143405", "title": "How to generate \"language-safe\" UUIDs?", "text": "I always wanted to use randomly generated strings for my resources' IDs, so I could have shorter URLs like this: /user/4jz0k1 But I never did, because I was worried about the random string generation creating actual words, eg: /user/f*cker. This brings two problems: it might be confusing or even offensive for users, and it could mess with the SEO too. Then I thought all I had to do was to set up a fixed pattern like adding a number every 2 letters. I was very happy with my 'generate_safe_uuid' method, but then I realized it was only better for SEO, and worse for users, because it increased the ratio of actual words being generated, eg: /user/g4yd1ck5 Now I'm thinking I could create a method 'replace_numbers_with_letters', and check that it haven't formed any words against a dictionary or something. Any other ideas? ps. As I write this, I also realized that checking for words in more than one language (eg: english and french, spanish, etc) would be a mess, and I'm starting to love numbers-only IDs again. **UPDATE** Some links everyone should read: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Automated-Curse-Generator.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2008/06/27/8659071.aspx"}
{"_id": "164339", "title": "Relationship between SOA and OOA", "text": "Thomas Erl defines SOA as follows in his site: > Service-oriented computing represents a new generation distributed computing > platform. As such, it encompasses many things, including its own design > paradigm and design principles, design pattern catalogs, pattern languages, > a distinct architectural model, and related concepts, technologies, and > frameworks. This definitely sounds like a whole new category which is parallel to object orientation. Almost one in which you would expect an entirely new language to exist for. Like procedural C and object oriented C#. Here is my understanding: In real life, we don't have entirely new language for SOA. And most application which have SOA architecture have an object oriented design underneath it. SOA is a \"strategy\" to make the entire application/service distributed and reliable. SOA _needs_ OOPS working underneath it. Is this correct? Where does SOA (if at all it does) fit in with object oriented programming practices? Edit: I have learnt through answers that OOA and SOA work with each other and cannot be compared (in a \"which is better\" way). I have changed the title to \"Relationship between SOA and OOA\" rather than \"comparison\"."}
{"_id": "237084", "title": "Interfaces and abstraction: takes more time?", "text": "At the company I work for I want to improve the way we write software: designing our applications more `SOLID`. We've been in a new project for a few weeks and I've tried to apply some good practices in its design. For example, loose coupling by programming against interface instead of a concrete class, dependency injection / inversion of control, seperation of concerns etc. This is all meant as a springboard to test driven development in the (far) future. In the application we're developing we need to calculate a score depending on a filled in survey by a user (a survey has categories which themselves have questions / answers). I've splitted the calculations in multiple classes and subsequent interfaces (calculating score of a question, category, survey, etc). Also, in the front-end (ASP.NET Web Forms), I've splitted many parts of pages into seperate user controls. For example: a 'widget' which shows the culumative scores in the application or a widget for showing all files related to the application. These are all seperate user controls. We're now a few weeks in the project and I find that some of my co-workers (especially ones older of age) are complaining about:   * Not being able to find a implementation of a interface directly but needing to 'search' for the implementation   * Needing more time to find the implementation of a particular markup on the front-page They also don't see the point of splitting up seperate functionality into user controls because sometimes (usually) the user control is only used on one page. I, on the opposite, find it to work better since it keeps the code- behind of a page tight and lean. My question is: Do I apply good practices the wrong way or does it simply take time to get used to it? **Note** : Until very recently we developed software with tight coupling (e.g: static classes, never use interfaces, only use user control when necessary)."}
{"_id": "59152", "title": "Code Documentation First?", "text": "Has anyone ever tried creating a complete code documentation first, before actually writing the code? I was thinking about this earlier because I thought it would help to write a concrete interface and would make sure your initial design wasn't floored by making you think about how classes interact. Is this a good idea? Has anyone tried it? Ell"}
{"_id": "175294", "title": "Indenting/formatting brackets like { } and [ ]", "text": "Is there an application that can easily align/format brackets such as [ ] { and } ? e.g. change               {          {          }         }      into               {       {       }     }"}
{"_id": "164332", "title": "Managed Languages vs Compiled Language difference?", "text": "I get confused when people try to make a distinction between compiled languages and managed languages. From experience, I understand that most consider compiled languages to be C,C++ while managed languages are Java,C# (There are obviously more, but these are just few examples). But what exactly is the core difference between the two types of languages? My understanding is that any program, regardless of what language you use is essentially \"compiled\" into a low-level machine code which is then interpreted, so does that kinda make managed languages a subset of compiled languages (That is, all managed languages are compiled languages but not the other way around)?"}
{"_id": "237089", "title": "selling closed source commercial product in a virtualbox (GPL)", "text": "Can I sell a closed source commercial product inside a virtualbox VM? This is extremely useful when you want to deliver server side software to users, and not mess in with different OS's (windows/osx). By reading some of the answers here in programmers, I get that it should not be a problem since my software does not link a GPL library, and that's practically the biggest concern of GPL FOSS. So, if I use GPL software just **bundled** with Closed source software that's fine?"}
{"_id": "191820", "title": "Is it good practice for Azure applications to self-administrate?", "text": "In a lot of examples for the Azure platform I'm seeing a lot of self- administration happening: an application will test for the presence of an external system such as a queue or database and create the necessary structures it needs to function. This behaviour seems contrary to a more traditional application's environment being configured by an administrator or a separate setup application acting on behalf of the administrator. So far, the biggest drawback I can observe to this is that the application would need to have some level of administrative rights over the services it is configuring and that could lead to increased vulnerability. However, the Code-First approach in Entity Framework would also seem to suggest a practise of allowing an application to work at an administrator- level on the resources it needs to function. Is this a paradigm I should be expecting to see more of, and are there compelling reasons to consider it as \"good practice\"?"}
{"_id": "129394", "title": "Help on a Dynamic Programming definition in Cormen", "text": "I am reading about `Dynamic Programming` from Cormen.   In the beginning of the chapter it says (relating to the term Dynamic Programming): > \"Programming\u201d in this context refers to a tabular method, not to writing > computer code. I can not really understand what this statement means.   I mean, I understand that the dynamic programming algorithms look up solutions, but I get a feeling that this point here defines something fundamental on the Dynamic Programming that I am not grasping.   Any help?"}
{"_id": "191828", "title": "Might starting variables/members with an underscore puzzle the compiler?", "text": "I've been taught since high school that defining variables like this: `int _a;` or `int __a;` should be consider bad practice because this would eventually puzzle compilers that use variables starting with an underscore to name temporary variables. As far as I know this is the reason why some people like to move the underscore at the end of the name, like: `int a_;` However, I see a lot of code all around that makes use of underscore-starting variables. And that code builds fairly well with both Visual Studio 2010 and g++ 4.x. So I wonder: is this a non-issue nowadays? Are modern compilers smarter about naming conventions?"}
{"_id": "129392", "title": "Should web browsers include popular web framework libraries?", "text": "What reasons are there for web browsers to not have a library of popular web frameworks. For example if a web page included jQuery, why shouldn't the browser have it's own static version, which is separate from the normal cached items? I would imagine if most libraries were preloaded into a browsers cache, before any request was made with a document that included a library, then this would remove the initial request to a CDN and have a potential performance improvement. But if the browser 'preloaded cache' didn't include the library then the browser should request the resource that is included in the document."}
{"_id": "121621", "title": "What are some common examples of a Hash Table?", "text": "I was just wondering if there were some \"standard\" examples that everyone uses as a basis for explaining the nature of a problem that requires the use of a Hash table. What are some well-known problems in the real world that can see great benefits from using a Hash table? **Also, a little background or explanation as to why the problem benefits from using a Hash Table would be of help!**"}
{"_id": "121627", "title": "What do I need to develop a PHP extension in lampp?", "text": "Actually I'm dealing with a trouble in my system, I have to delivery the system to clients and it was built in PHP, JS, ShellScript and SQL. I would like to encrypt the code or obfuscate it from eyes of others! Then someone from the community told me about building my own PHP extension, it sounds to me as a great idea, since it will not be with the main code of the system. But I have a problem doing this way, if a programmer get in the extensions and find it, all the hard work has gone. Then I'm here to ask again about this matter. What is the best way to hide my Business Logic from third parties? I know that there are stuff like IonCube, Zend Guard, and many others. But I'm looking something that I can build myself. Is PHP extension the right way to follow? Or some Half SaaS system, with dependencies (Business Logic) in a remote server? **About the environment** OS: Kernel Linux 2.6.37.1-1.2 - LAMPP (Apache 2.2, MySQL 5.5 PHP 5.3.8) In php generally the extension is located at `/php/ext/` but in lampp I have no idea where it is, I just found a folder `/opt/lampp/lib/php/extensions/` is that right place?"}
{"_id": "174745", "title": "Isolating test data in acceptance tests", "text": "I'm looking for guidance on how to keep my acceptance tests isolated. Right now the issue I'm having with being able to run the tests in parallel is the database records that are manipulated in the tests. I've written helpers that take care of doing inserts and deletes before tests are executed, to make sure the state is correct. But now I can't run them in parallel against the same database without uniquely generating the test data fields for each test. For example. Testing creating a row i'll delete everything where column A = foo and column B = bar Then I'll navigate through the UI in the test and create a record with column A = foo and column B = bar. Testing that a duplicate row is not allowed to be created. I'll insert a row with column A = foo and column B = bar and then use the UI to try and do the exact same thing. This will display an error message in the UI as expected. These tests work perfectly when ran separately and serially. But I can't run them at the same time for fear that one will create or delete a record the other is expecting. Any tips on how to structure them better so they can be run in parallel?"}
{"_id": "255604", "title": "Is this a good use of a base class?", "text": "I am developing some HW drivers, which access registers. I have a few classes, for example. ClassRegisterBlock1, ClassRegisterBlock2. In each of these classes, they define the bits to manipulate, the register offsets etc and validate the parameters. However all the functions use the same way ofaccessing the HW, via a memory map and then there are common functions like setRegisterBit. I was planning on putting the common functions, like setRegisterBit, CreateMemoryMap etc.. into a base class and then the ClassRegisterBlock(x) inherits from that. Is this a sensible use of base class? as strictly speaking the ClassRegisterBlock is not a kind of RegisterFunctions class. Is there a better way of doing that? I am using c++."}
{"_id": "255602", "title": "Is there any license which require to distribute the source code, even it is only used in a company's internal project?", "text": "I am looking for a software license which has stronger protection than AGPLv3. The GPL license said that when we distribute the software, we must provide a way for user to download the source code. However there is a loophole in this license, the GPL FAQ said (see below) it is not considered \"distribution\" if the company uses it as an internal project. Is there any license which require to distribute the source code, even it is only used in a company's internal project? PS, GPL FAQ \"Internal Distribution\" section: > **Is making and using multiple copies within one organization or company > \u201cdistribution\u201d?**   >  No, in that case the organization is just making the copies for itself. As > a consequence, a company or other organization can develop a modified > version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving > the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders. > > However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or > individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to > contractors for use off-site is distribution."}
{"_id": "15928", "title": "What is agile methodology?", "text": "Can any one explain about the agile methodology in simple sentences?"}
{"_id": "15925", "title": "Unit test coding standards", "text": "Usually when talking about coding standards we refer to the code of the program itself, but what about the unit tests? Are there certain coding standards guidelines that are unique to unit tests? What are they?"}
{"_id": "15926", "title": "Are there fees associated with listing my app to the salesforce marketplace?", "text": "I am a web developer and i want to take my web app to the cloud.Could anyone take me through the steps involved.Do they like have a lamp installation which they will assign to me or will i continue hosting my data and scripts?. Are there fees associated with listing my app to the salesforce marketplace? Thanks."}
{"_id": "252378", "title": "When to declare @throws with a Scala annotation - abstract parent or concrete implementation?", "text": "In this StackOverflow question I asked about the behavior of the `@throws` annotation in Scala. Now that I understand how it works I want to ask about best practices with using it. Here's a repost of my code from that question:               abstract class SFoo {         def bar(): Unit     }          class SFoobar extends SFoo {         @throws[Exception]         override def bar(): Unit = {             throw new Exception(\"hi there\")         }     }      The problem here is that if I declare a variable as a `SFoo` in Java, but instantiate it as a `SFoobar`, the Java compiler is unable to detect the checked exception and a runtime exception will occur. So my inclination would be to declare `@throws` in the parent class, `SFoo`. But say I have another concrete implementation of `SFoo`:               class SBarfoo extends SFoo {         override def bar(): Unit = {             println(\"no exception here!\")         }     }      In this case, is it appropriate to declare `@throws` in the parent class if one of its implementations does not throw an exception? What is the best practice here? (Sorry for the subjective question.)"}
{"_id": "8605", "title": "Recommendations for finding part-time consultancy work", "text": "Although I have a full-time development job, I have occasionally done some part-time paid work in evenings / weekends for various people who have contacted me as a result of open-source projects I have worked on. It's a nice way to earn a bit of extra cash, but obviously it is not always available. My question is, what is a good way of getting your name out there to do some small projects? I have seen a few programmers-for-hire type websites, but I don't know which I can trust or whether there are too many people willing to work for very low prices. Also, being UK based, I would want something which did not assume I have a US bank account."}
{"_id": "123669", "title": "Working with a restful Api; what resources would you like available to start with?", "text": "When working with a web based restful api what resources would you like to work with from the beginning when developing a system against it?   * Web based documentation?   * Working example? Simple? Complex?   * An SDK which abstracts away some of the details and allows in depth development straight away?   * All of the above? With your answers if web sites of examples are available that would be cool. Appreciate all the help in advance."}
{"_id": "119301", "title": "How to protect a peer-to-peer network from inappropriate content?", "text": "I\u2019m developing a simple peer-to-peer app in .Net which should enable users to share specific content (text and picture files). As I've learned with my last question, inappropriate content can \u201crelatively\u201d easily be identified / controlled in a centralized environment. But what about a peer-to-peer network, what are the best methods to protect a decentralized system from unwanted (illegal) content? At the moment I only see the following two methods:   1. A protocol (a set of rules) defines what kind of data (e.g. only .txt and jpg-files, not bigger than 20KB etc.) can be shared over the p2p-network and all clients (peers) must implement this protocol. If a peer doesn\u2019t, it gets blocked by other peers. Pro: easy to implement. Con: It\u2019s not possible to define the perfect protocol (I think eMail-Spam filters have the same problem)   2. Some kind of rating/reputation system must be implemented (similar to stackoverflow), so \u201cbad guys\u201d and inappropriate content can be identified / blocked by other users. Pro: Would be very accurate. Con: Would be slow and in my view technically very hard to implement. Are there other/better solutions? Any answer or comment is highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "119303", "title": "Headaches using distributed version control for traditional teams?", "text": "Though I use and like DVCS for my personal projects, and can totally see how it makes managing contributions to your project from others easier (e.g. your typical Github scenario), it seems like for a \"traditional\" team there could be some problems over the centralized approach employed by solutions like TFS, Perforce, etc. (By \"traditional\" I mean a team of developers in an office working on one project that no one person \"owns\", with potentially everyone touching the same code.) A couple of these problems I've foreseen on my own, but please chime in with other considerations. In a traditional system, when you try to check your change in to the server, if someone else has previously checked in a conflicting change then you are forced to merge before you can check yours in. In the DVCS model, each developer checks in their changes locally and at some point pushes to some other repo. That repo then has a branch of that file that 2 people changed. It seems that now someone must be put in charge of dealing with that situation. A designated person on the team might not have sufficient knowledge of the entire codebase to be able to handle merging all conflicts. So now an extra step has been added where someone has to approach one of those developers, tell him to pull and do the merge and then push again (or you have to build an infrastructure that automates that task). Furthermore, since DVCS tends to make working locally so convenient, it is probable that developers could accumulate a few changes in their local repos before pushing, making such conflicts more common and more complicated. Obviously if everyone on the team only works on different areas of the code, this isn't an issue. But I'm curious about the case where everyone is working on the same code. It seems like the centralized model forces conflicts to be dealt with quickly and frequently, minimizing the need to do large, painful merges or have anyone \"police\" the main repo. So for those of you who do use a DVCS with your team in your office, how do you handle such cases? Do you find your daily (or more likely, weekly) workflow affected negatively? Are there any other considerations I should be aware of before recommending a DVCS at my workplace?"}
{"_id": "95353", "title": "How to become a JavaScript ninja?", "text": "I want to choose JavaScript as my main development field, alongside HTML and CSS to become a developer commonly known as **front-end developer**. But I don't know how to become a JavaScript professional. I've read many books and learned the pieces including data types, syntax, tools usage (like IDEs, Debuggers, etc.), jQuery, etc. But when I look at some sophisticated JavaScript codes including famous libraries, I'm like \"I never could write that code\". What's wrong here? What step should I had taken that I didn't? I feel I'm missing something here to become a professional JavaScript developer. I also watched training movies, including Douglas Crockford's movies at Yahoo Theater."}
{"_id": "119306", "title": "How was Git designed?", "text": "My workplace recently switched to Git and I've been loving (and hating!) it. I really do love it, and it is extremely powerful. The only part I hate is that sometimes it's too powerful (and maybe a bit terse/confusing). My question is... **How was Git designed?** Just using it for a short amount of time, you get the feel that it can handle many obscure workflows that other version control systems could not. But it also feels elegant underneath. And fast! This is no doubt in part to Linus's talent. But I'm wondering, was the overall design of git based off of something? I've read about BitKeeper but the accounts are scant on technical details. The compression, the graphs, getting rid of revision numbers, emphasizing branching, stashing, remotes... Where did it all come from? Linus really knocked this one out of the park and on pretty much the first try! It's quite good to use once you're past the learning curve."}
{"_id": "202400", "title": "Git tracks _lines_ of code. Is there something that track _words_?", "text": "In git if I change a character in a line the entire line is considered changed. I don't know much but stackexchange seem to track changes in a word-by-word basis in the edit history.   Is there an option to make git like that, or is there anything else that does this?"}
{"_id": "1010", "title": "What cloud technologies should Application Architects know about?", "text": "There is so much going on in the cloud, acronyms like PaaS, SaaS, IaaS, (any more?) that I'm losing track of what technologies are important (within each category) how relevant each one is. What are the core cloud technologies that Architects should know about in each category?"}
{"_id": "128252", "title": "Organizing Class Members in Regards to Access Modifier", "text": "If we look at typical implementation of a Class, we usually see the private members defined at the beginning and public( mostly functions and Accessors) defined towards the bottom. Now, is this a Industry standard agreed by a lot of people? How about keeping the private members towards the end as updates and additions are usually done to the Public Members(mostly functions), to fix bug or provide enhancement, so we don't have to scroll down towards the end to get to the function definition section. I understand, good IDEs will allow us to Jump towards a specific attribute, but considering other factors, such as Code Review, it may be convenient to have the Public Definitions towards the beginning. What is the most accepted standard for Class Member Organization?"}
{"_id": "216850", "title": "In retrospect, has it been a good idea to use three-valued logic for SQL NULL comparisons?", "text": "In SQL, NULL means \"unknown value\". Thus, every comparison with NULL yields NULL (unknown) rather than TRUE or FALSE. From a conceptional point of view, this three-valued logic makes sense. From a practical point of view, every learner of SQL has, one time or another, made the classic `WHERE myField = NULL` mistake or learned the hard way that `NOT IN` does not do what one would expect when NULL values are present. It is my impression (please correct me if I am wrong) that the cases where this three-valued logic helps (e.g. `WHERE myField IS NOT NULL AND myField <> 2` can be shortened to `WHERE myField <> 2`) are rare and, in those cases, people tend to use the longer version anyway for clarity, just like you would add a comment when using a clever, non-obvious hack. **Is there some obvious advantage that I am missing?** Or is there a general consensus among the development community that this has been a mistake?"}
{"_id": "129978", "title": "Do multiple computer screens reduce productivity?", "text": "I was reading the wonderful post of Trent Walton : UniTasking which contains a lot of useful thoughts and ideas, plus some good links to some neat OS X apps. (which I have started using right after I read the blog.) But I noticed a funny notion. Many people talked very negatively about using multiple screens. Onwards to Tom Cunningham's : Stay productive, he actually mentions using only 1 monitor as the first tip to increase productivity. Is this a common belief ? And has anyone done any tests with this ? I work at a software studio, and we have three screens as standard (Macbook 15\" + two 21\" screens) but due to the fact that I take my macbook with me every day, and set it up every morning, I can easily go an hour or two with only the main screen turned on. So what are your beliefs on this ? Myth, fact or completely up to individual preferences ?"}
{"_id": "216859", "title": "Can anyone explain to me what problem Core Data solves?", "text": "Core Data seems to add a needless layer of complexity. If you want to save data created natively by the user in an app why not just use an object and then write the data all to SQLite or back to a server using a RESTful script if necessary. Android doesn't have Core Data (though if it has something similar I haven't seen it.). What the heck is the point of buggy CD except useless needless overhead for people who can't write SQL or CGI scripts?"}
{"_id": "128257", "title": "Is the COCOMO model a good argument when defending a programming language choice?", "text": "Currently, I'm following a course on embedded software development. The lecturer has chosen J as an architecture language for model-driven software development. J itself is a very terse programming language and one of his main arguments for this language is its terseness. For instance, this is a Quicksoft implementation in J:               quicksort=: (($:@(<#[) , (=#[) , $:@(>#[)) ({~ ?@#)) ^: (1<#)      Another argument is that through such a language and the reduced number of characters, you introduce less bugs and the time to fix bugs is reduced. Since I have a strong software engineering background and through various books like Clean Code, Pragmatic Programmer and others, I feel that these arguments aren't valid. I find that there is a strong movement towards descriptive names and code that reads like natural language (alright, this might only be related to applications with lots of business logic and less math). The question therefore is, can you really argue that usage of a terse programming language will result in less errors and that time to fix a bug is reduced? Also, since the language is terse, the number of lines of code is reduced and you would get a better COCOMO rating. But can this be applied in the first place or does the COCOMO model use the number of lines of code as a way to estimate a project's overall size (project size should be the same whether you implement it in a terse language or in an imperative one, but again, maybe I didn't understand the COCOMO model correctly)? **Update** Thank you all for your answers. Admittedly, I should have stated more clearly that my intention was to get more information on the COCOMO model (again, sorry S.Lott). As such, I feel that Thomas Owens's extensive answer and comments are the best fit for this question. Thanks again! :-)"}
{"_id": "11002", "title": "Best free UML authoring tool", "text": "What free UML authoring tools do you use and why is it better than others?"}
{"_id": "151178", "title": "What is a name for a job where you do system analysis, project management and data diagramming?", "text": "In the last 4 months I've been able to manage a team and step away from the coding for a bit. I've been planning the system in full (both System Analysis and project managing, alongside action and data diagramming) writing the technical documentation, the code's architecture, keeping track of the other guys doing the actual coding, QA, bug reports and dealing with clients. I had to take two days' training on node.js just to see if it would be suitable for a project we were considering. Is there a name for this job? Project Manager and Systems Architect don't quite seem to have the same stuff, and IT manager seems way off. I only want to know so that I can get some qualification towards it and try to move into this kind of work full-time."}
{"_id": "11007", "title": "Do companies care about university grades when hiring programmers?", "text": "Most of my fellow students that I've talked to claim that aiming for good grades is useless as the companies don't care about them when hiring programmers. To them, it's enough to have simply attended courses which may be important, and that's that. Is this true? Are university grades useless when leaving campus, or do employers ask to see them for an interview?"}
{"_id": "212358", "title": "Transparant OSGi support in modules", "text": "I have a bunch of libraries and I have started exposing them as OSGi modules. However there were two requirements:   * no new dependencies   * the modules still had to run in non-OSGi environments The first requirement is easily solved by using DS (declarative services) however the second seems slightly more difficult. I currently have a working solution but I'm not sure if it is a good one. I will explain my methodology using a simple example, any feedback on it is welcome. Suppose you have a service class called MyService. You also have 3 client services A, B and C that each require an instance of the service. OSGi would inject the instance as needed and all would be well. However consider running the module outside an OSGi container. At this point you yourself are responsible for injecting the proper beans and (if necessary) manage the singletons that most osgi services are. So at this point you have to inject the proper singleton into three other objects. This can scale to unmanageable levels fast. My solution consists of reusing the factory pattern:               public class MyServiceFactory {              private static MyServiceFactory instance;              public static MyServiceFactory getInstance() {             if (instance == null)                 instance = new MyServiceFactory();             return instance;         }              private MyService myService;              public MyService getMyService() {             // fall back to SPI             if (myService == null) {                 ServiceLoader<MyService> serviceLoader = ServiceLoader.load(MyService.class);                 Iterator<MyService> iterator = serviceLoader.iterator();                 if (iterator.hasNext())                     myService = iterator.next();                 // if no SPI modules, you could for instance initialize a stub, a default,...                 else                     myService = new MyServiceStub();             }             return myService;         }              public void setMyService(MyService myService) {             this.myService = myService;         }              public void unsetMyService(MyService myService) {             this.myService = null;         }              @SuppressWarnings(\"unused\")         private void activate() {             instance = this;         }         @SuppressWarnings(\"unused\")         private void deactivate() {             instance = null;         }     }      Any code that requires a MyService instance can simply do:               MyServiceFactory.getInstance().getMyService();      It will use an OSGi-managed instance when possible (the private activate/deactivate) or fall back to SPI when necessary. Is this a good solution or are there better ones? Is it a solved problem where I somehow missed the obvious answer?"}
{"_id": "207239", "title": "How do I manage the technical debate over WCF vs. Web API?", "text": "I'm managing a team of like 15 developers now, and we are stuck at a point on choosing the technology, where the team is broken into two completely opposite teams, debating over usage of WCF vs. Web API. Team A which supports usage of Web API, brings forward these reasons:   1. Web API is just the modern way of writing services (Wikipedia)   2. WCF is an overhead for HTTP. It's a solution for TCP, and Net Pipes, and other protocols   3. WCF models are not POCO, because of [DataContract] & [DataMember] and those attributes   4. SOAP is not as readable and handy as JSON   5. SOAP is an overhead for network compared to JSON (transport over HTTP)   6. No method overloading Team B which supports the usage of WCF, says:   1. WCF supports multiple protocols (via configuration)   2. WCF supports distributed transactions   3. Many good examples and success stories exist for WCF (while Web API is still young)   4. Duplex is excellent for two-way communication This debate is continuing, and I don't know what to do now. Personally, I think that we should use a tool **only for its right place of usage**. In other words, we'd better use Web API, if we want to expose a service over HTTP, but use WCF when it comes to TCP and Duplex. By searching the Internet, we can't get to a solid result. Many posts exist for supporting WCF, but on the contrary we also find people complaint about it. I know that the nature of this question might sound arguable, but we need some good hints to decide. We're stuck at a point where choosing a technology **by chance** might make us regret it later. We want to choose with open eyes. Our usage would be mostly for web, and we would expose our services over HTTP. In some cases (say 5 to 10 percent) we might need distributed transactions though. What should I do now? How do I manage this debate in a constructive way?"}
{"_id": "207232", "title": "Are there legitimate reasons for returning exception objects instead of throwing them?", "text": "_This question is intended to apply to any OO programming language that supports exception handling; I am using C# for illustrative purposes only._ Exceptions are usually intended to be raised when an problem arises that the code cannot immediately handle, and then to be caught in a `catch` clause in a different location (usually an outer stack frame). **Q:** Are there any legitimate situations where exceptions are not thrown and caught, but simply returned from a method and then passed around as error objects? This question came up for me because .NET 4's `System.IObserver<T>.OnError` method suggests just that: exceptions being passed around as error objects. Let's look at another scenario, validation. Let's say I am following conventional wisdom, and that I am therefore distinguishing between an error object type `IValidationError` and a separate exception type `ValidationException` that is used to report unexpected errors:               partial interface IValidationError { }          abstract partial class ValidationException : System.Exception     {         public abstract IValidationError[] ValidationErrors { get; }     }      (The `System.Component.DataAnnotations` namespace does something quite similar.) These types could be employed as follows:               partial interface IFoo { }  // an immutable type          partial interface IFooBuilder  // mutable counterpart to prepare instances of above type     {         bool IsValid(out IValidationError[] validationErrors);  // true if no validation error occurs         IFoo Build();  // throws ValidationException if !IsValid(\u2026)     }      Now I am wondering, could I not simplify the above to this:               partial class ValidationError : System.Exception { }  // = IValidationError + ValidationException          partial interface IFoo { }  // (unchanged)          partial interface IFooBuilder     {         bool IsValid(out ValidationError[] validationErrors);         IFoo Build();  // may throw ValidationError or sth. like AggregateException<ValidationError>     }      **Q:** What are the advantages and disadvantages of these two differing approaches?"}
{"_id": "207234", "title": "Agile in a multidisciplinary environment", "text": "I work for an engineering consultancy who do a combination of industrial design, mechanics, electronics and software. By their nature - or perhaps simply by history - the overall development philosophy has been waterfall. But when I joined I was surprised that Agile, which I would now say is an industry standard, had barely been heard of. For me, whilst I remain skeptical of Agile, I recognize its benefits for both developers and clients, and have been keen to promote its use. It seems clear to me that you can't build hardware in an Agile fashion. It's just too time-consuming and expensive to \"refactor\" a physical thing. This means we are moving towards being software-Agile and hardware-Waterfall, and the Project Manager is struggling to make the two work together. Worse, it becomes difficult when we are faced with providing clients with a definitive cost for a project. Agile doesn't do uber-plans, and velocity projections require a project to be up, running and a few sprints to have passed to be meaningful. This means we tend to over-estimate as contingency, driving up our prices and our competitiveness goes down. Seems to me then that either We sell Agile explicitly to the client, and get their buy-in to receiving new software iterations per sprint, being able to add to the backlog and prioritize the next tranche of work. We persuade them that this is a no- bullshit way of working, and that waterfall is unrealistic and results in overspend. The Product Owner is from the client in this model. How then do we approach contracts, saying how much we charge for the software? How do we avoid the impression that this is an open-ended revenue stream in which it is in our interests to take as long as we like? We adopt Agile internally only. The Product Owner is one of our guys / girls. The client just gets an alpha/beta/release version of the software as in waterfall. If we're over time, do we then fudge the slippage in the final phases? Is this even Agile? In short, having a contract between us and a client seems a very un-Agile way of doing things. And yet waterfall is doomed to fail in an environment where we see every day that not only do we not understand the problem domain on day 1 of a project, neither does the client. And how do we do Agile for software and waterfall for hardware - is there software that can handle both under one umbrella? How do we marry these worlds?"}
{"_id": "239132", "title": "How to migrate an XML serialization framework in Java in a tightly coupled system?", "text": "I work for a company that uses XML for storing a bunch of serialized Java classes. The framework we use is Apache Betwixt (abandonded in 2008) and it's kind of pain to maintain and extend (it seemed like a good choice back in the day). **Crash course in Betwixt along with the detailed problem:**   * Only supports public getters and setters, both getter and setter have to be present   * Does not support JAXB-style type adapters   * The XML evolves with the Java objects, resulting in redundant methods in our classes Our list of xml serializable classes is well over 150, and the codebase can get very messy when changes to definitions are made. Since the XML is bound to Java getters and setters, we can only migrate XML by keeping old properties in the class definitions. NowTake a look at this change:               public class ThingWithText {              private String text;            public String getText() {          return text;       }            public void setText(String text) {          this.text = text;       }     }      The resulting XML looks something like:               <thingWithText>         <text>Whatever</text>     </thingWithText>      Now consider a change in the model to add multiple locales to the `ThingWithText`:               public class ThingWithText {        private List<TextWithLanguage> texts = new LinkedList<TextWithLanguage>();             // Getter must be here so the framework recognizes the property.         public String getText() {           return null;        }             // Has to be here so it can be serialized        public void setText(String text) {           this.texts.add(new TextWithLanguage(text));        }             public List<TextWithLanguage> getTexts() {           return texts;        }             public void addText(TextWithLanguage text) {           texts.add(text);        }     }          public class TextWithLanguage {        private Locale locale = // omitted;        private String text;             public TextWithLanguage(String text) {           this.text = text;        }             // Getter and setter omitted     }      The XML now looks like:               <thingWithText>         <texts>             <text locale=\"en\">Whatever</text>         </texts>     </thingWithText>      Now the XML isn't bad looking or anything, but it still leaves the `ThingWithText` class with several problems:   * A setter for a non-existing field   * A getter that always returns null, may cause exceptions because stuff still compiles **My questions go:** We have made the decision to do something about this, and it seems like a problem other people would have.   1. How does one handle migration between an old framework like Betwixt to a newer (JAXB, Xstream, whatever)?   2. If we were to keep our framework: How can we manage the considerable code complexity added by null methods and fake setters?"}
{"_id": "221085", "title": "How do I recreate this Access Control/Group/ whatever methodology in OO/MVC", "text": "I am looking at trying to rewrite an application that is mostly procedural to an MVC/OO approach in order to teach myself a deeper understanding of both. BUT, I am having some conceptual issues with the current group/access control that is used. We have Groups (Businesses) that have role based users (Manager, salespersons, customers). They can have customers either assigned to a salesperson, or not. The manager sees everything, the salesperson only those customers assigned to him.               Business       |       ---Manager            |            ---Salespersons                 |                 ---Customers       |       ---Customers      The table structure for this currently is something like this:               users (userID [demographic info])     business (businessID, userID, et al [demographic info])     salespeople (salesID, businessID, userID [just foreign keys])     customers (customerID, businessID, userID, et al [demographic info])     salesAssignments (salesID, customerID [just foreign keys])      The Manager can affect everyone within that businesses group (everyone has a `businessID` that links them to that business and no other). The customers can login and make minor changes to their profiles or interact via messaging to their salesperson or the businesses manager. Added Spice to the mix: (comment on any of these if they apply to your insights to the above question) Is there a better way to have similar user access and control? I want to rebuild the site with an API that can be used by both the web app and mobile apps. **EDIT** My main conceptual hangup at the moment relates to how to recreate this structure in a user object for the OO part of the application. Now everything is accessible via session variables, or queried from the DB via procedural functions. Again my understanding of OO is limited, and this is an attempt to figure it out."}
{"_id": "114504", "title": "Need help - brainstorming php scheduler class", "text": "I've never written a php class before from scratch. But I guess you have to start somewhere right? I've got an idea, but need help with logic. Please tell me what you think. Below is shorthand obviously. In the planning stages.               Class -       -> type (recurring, single, day)      -> Recurring days (4,2,3,4,1,2....etc. for odd schedules- need even pairs)      -> Shift Type (onshift, vacation, medical, etc...)      -> Emp Id      -> Start      -> End      -> Location Id      -> Hours per day      -> Day start time           get schedule ( by account/location/company/unit/crew/individual )           select single entries           separate array into days (1 day) increments           if single entries have linking day entries, replace array with day entry information           return mysql array of days for the time period;           set schedule ( dates, emp id)           if recurring               if already exisits || conflicts with existing                   error               create recurring template in db table               create single db entries using recurring days for 1 year           if single               if date is between dates already in db || more than 1 year out                   error               else                   insert into db           if day               if no existing single range                  error               else                  insert into db under day table, with id linking to id of existing single.           remove recurringOnly(emp id)           delete all entries with recurring id           remove all entries( from this date forward, emp id )           delete entries with start date > date           cronUpdate( cron start / end dates)           if cron start / end dates                delete anything with dates bigger than nextUpdate (to make sure no errors)                select recurring db entries with nextUpdate between cron start/ end                insert into db the next set of \"recurring days\" for the employee                update nextUpdate date for employee           else - error"}
{"_id": "148367", "title": "Scope of work contents in freelance development", "text": "One of my clients demanded to append screen shots of UI in the SOW. Also, I was asked to give a workflow diagram for the same. The project I am about to take is relatively small and my question is,   * Should we always provide UI snap shots before project begins? (at least basic). Personally I feel this is not possible as UI keeps changing until agreed upon by client, which is waste of time before development.   * Is it necessary to provide both Data Flow Diagram (DFD) and UI screen shot before development begins?"}
{"_id": "50996", "title": "Entity-relationship model diagrams in Visio", "text": "I would love to create some database diagrams like this one with Visio but I can't find any templates at all for that kind of notation. The example I linked to was apparently made in Photoshop, which sounds like a terrible way to make ERDs. Are there any good Visio templates for this sort of thing? (I have Visio 2010 Pro, by the way.)"}
{"_id": "101736", "title": "US Software Patents", "text": "Hypothetical: I\u2019m based in the UK. I\u2019ve developed an application only to discover after it has gone live, that someone else has filed a US Patent application for similar software. I don\u2019t know if the patent will actually be granted, since the software-functionality has probably already existed long before now. Definitely the business process has been done for many decades albeit manually or semi-manually. What are my options? I\u2019m thinking   * Assume the patent will fail and just carry on. But be prepared to stop shipping if and when they are granted the patent.   * Assume it will be granted (because that what they normally do by default) and stop selling the application now; and offer refunds to those already purchased.   * Open the source. Make my source code open-source and free to amend etc. But copyrighted. Then I could at least continue and get cred for giving the software away free and revenue for improving or customising the application for individuals."}
{"_id": "114502", "title": "What it the best programming/developer productivity tool ... you have coded youself?", "text": "Well, the question is in the subject, but I would repeat - what is the best programming/developer productivity tool you have coded yourself. A small console application or a script you hacked in a day or two, and then wondering why have you waited for so long and haven't coded it earlier. Something that automated the (now only a 10 seconds long) process which was a mundane 20 minute manual task before. Something that not only made you a day, but continued to do so for another month or even longer. A pinnacle of a DRY principle, even though it was just comparing a two xml files which could not be **easily** compared with a Beyond Compare. A small living piece of software that makes proud of. So, what it was for you?"}
{"_id": "220124", "title": "State design pattern: best implementation for my case?", "text": "Me and a mate have a discussion about what would be the best way to implement the pattern state for managing several screens for an application we are developing. We have a ScreenManager (I guess the Context class according some books) which looks like this (some irrelevant code has been removed to ease understanding) :               public class ScreenManager : DrawableGameComponent     {              #region Fields              List<GameScreen> screens = new List<GameScreen> ();         List<GameScreen> screensToUpdate = new List<GameScreen> ();              InputState input = new InputState ();              #endregion              /// <summary>         /// Constructs a new screen manager component.         /// </summary>         public ScreenManager (Game game)             : base(game)         {             content = new ContentManager (game.Services, \"Content\");                  graphicsDeviceService = (IGraphicsDeviceService)game.Services.GetService (                                                         typeof(IGraphicsDeviceService));                  if (graphicsDeviceService == null)                 throw new InvalidOperationException (\"No graphics device service.\");         }              public override void Update (GameTime gameTime)         {             // Read the keyboard and mouse.             input.Update ();                  // Make a copy of the master screen list, to avoid confusion if             // the process of updating one screen adds or removes others             // (or it happens on another thread)             screensToUpdate.Clear ();                  foreach (GameScreen screen in screens)                 screensToUpdate.Add (screen);                  while (screensToUpdate.Count > 0) {                 // Pop the topmost screen off the waiting list.                 GameScreen screen = screensToUpdate [screensToUpdate.Count - 1];                      screensToUpdate.RemoveAt (screensToUpdate.Count - 1);                      // Update the screen.                 screen.Update (gameTime);                 screen.HandleInput (input);             }         }              public void AddScreen (GameScreen screen)         {             screen.ScreenManager = this;                  if ((graphicsDeviceService != null) &&                 (graphicsDeviceService.GraphicsDevice != null)) {                 screen.LoadContent ();             }                  screens.Add (screen);         }              public void RemoveScreen (GameScreen screen)         {             screens.Remove (screen);             screensToUpdate.Remove (screen);         }     }      As you can see, the screenmanager has a list of GameScreens which are updated every time the Update method is called. Then here we have a couple of screens + base Screen class. At the base class, we create a coupling between GameScreen and ScreenManager, while there also exist a coupling between ScreenManager and GameScreen:               public abstract class GameScreen     {         ScreenManager screenManager;              public ScreenManager ScreenManager {             get { return screenManager; }             internal set { screenManager = value; }         }              public virtual void HandleInput (InputState input)         {         }              public virtual void LoadContent ()         {         }              public virtual void UnloadContent ()         {         }              public virtual void Update (GameTime gameTime)         {         }     }          public class TitleScreen : GameScreen     {         public Texture2D titleScreen;              public TitleScreen ()         {         }              public override void HandleInput (InputState input)         {             if (input.MenuSelect) {                 ScreenManager.AddScreen (new PlayingScreen ());         }          }               public class PlayingScreen : GameScreen     {     //...... Irrelevant implementation details for my question     }      As you can see there, TitleScreen knows about PlayingScreen, creates it and adds it to ScreenManager (creating a dependency between TitleScreen and PlayingScreen). Although this kind of implementation has been seen in books (as far as I've read), my companion proposes me another kind of implementation: He proposes to create an Observer approach, replacing in TitleScreen the whole PlayingScreen management with an event, which would then be suscribed by the ScreenManager, and then the ScreenManager would orchestrate all the management of screens. With this approach, he says TitleScreen could be reused in other applications and decouple screens among them, but create a big ScreenManager class who would be coupled with everyone. I'm not sure whether the State approach or the Observer approach is better for my specific case. Which would be the best implementation? Thank you"}
{"_id": "160522", "title": "Should I put newlines before or after binary operators?", "text": "When you're in Python or Javascript, you should always put binary operators at the _end_ of the previous line, in order to prevent newlines from terminating your code prematurely; it helps you catch errors. But in C or C++, this isn't an issue, so I'm wondering: Is there any reason for me to prefer the second version to the first?               return lots_of_text            + 1;      versus               return lots_of_text +            1;      (For example, does one of them help prevent other kinds of errors? Or is one of them considered more readable?)"}
{"_id": "160524", "title": "What statements and approaches should I avoid when learning functional programming? ", "text": "I have 6 years of programming experience, mostly following the object oriented paradigm, and I'm interested in learning functional programming. My main goal is to become a functional paradigm programmer and not a programmer who is using a functional language but still writes in imperative style. When I'm practising in functional programming I still follow an object oriented way of thinking, like loops, mutable variables and so on. I picked F# as a basic functional language and because it's very tightly integrated with other .Net languages, like C#. F# allows usual object oriented statements, therefore you can use F# syntax but not actually produce functional code. What statements and approaches should I avoid when learning functional programming?"}
{"_id": "93215", "title": "What are the open source options for a Bug tracker on IIS 7 & SQL Server 2008?", "text": "What are the open source options for a Bug tracker on IIS 7 & SQL Server 2008? Currently we're running a Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7, Coldfusion 8 & SQL Server 2008. What are the best options for an easy to install & use Bug Tracker?"}
{"_id": "61337", "title": "What is TCL, and is it a marketable skill?", "text": "I've gotten pretty far in some interviews for a company which seems to use several technologies I've frankly never heard of. The big one which I'd be working with if I got the job is TCL. What is TCL, and more importantly, how marketable is it as a skill? Would working in a job using for TCL for a few years be like getting a case of the MUMPS?"}
{"_id": "61334", "title": "Book on Access and SQL", "text": "My little brother is a CPA but in his new job he is required to use access to pull his own data. He has grown frustrated with the limitations of the canned reports that he has access to. However he does have read access to the data cubes and can write his own queries. I am looking for a book that would be easy for him to understand. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "214989", "title": "Designing object oriented programming", "text": "Basically, I want to make api calls using an SDK I am writing. I have the following classes:   * Car   * CarData (stores input values needed to create a car like model, make, etc)  Basically to create a car I do the following:               [Car carWithData: cardata onSuccess: successHandler onError: errorHandler]       that basically is a factory method that creates instance of Car after making an API call request and populating the new Car class with the response and passes that instance to the successHandler. So \"Car\" has the above static method to create that car, but also has non- static methods to edit, delete cars (which would make edit, delete API calls to the server) So when the Car create static method passes a new car to the successHandler by doing the following:               successHandler([[Car alloc] initWithDictionary: dictionary)      The success handler can go ahead and use that new car to do the following:               [car update: cardata]     [car delete]      considering the new car object now has an ID for each car that it can pass to the update and delete API calls. My questions:   * Do I need a cardata object to store user inputs or can I store them in the car object that would also later store the response from all of the api calls?   * How can I improve this model? With regards to CarData, note that there might be different inputs for the different API calls. So create function might need to know model, make, etc, but find function might need to know the number of items to find, the limit, the start id, etc."}
{"_id": "110350", "title": "What are good projects to create to show your future employers?", "text": "I'm finishing my last year of school while working full time and currently, I have a job that's completely unrelated to programming (student job to pay the bills...). I'm trying to find a job as a programmer (or website developer) or in a related field to get some experience. So far, I've seen companies that hire students part-time and I tried going there, but they always ask me for a portfolio of some kind to show my work and what I can do. The problem is most of my projects so far have been for school work, so they're not really impressive. The other projects are for my current job to help my fellow coworkers accomplish some tasks more easily or so they can be able to accomplish my current tasks when I'm gone. This would be a great project to show, but it's not done yet since I'm always adding new functionalities and I don't really feel like it's a good idea to show something that's not polished enough as a project I'm proud of. So I end up with nothing to show future employers and they don't call back for an interview or anything. I'd like to know what kind of projects are good to add to a portfolio to show future employers. I know it depends on where I'm applying and what that corporation does, but I'd like to have multiple different projects to show I can learn quickly and that I'm versatile. I know Python, Java, C++, Javascript, PHP, Oracle and MySQL the most, but I can pick up other languages and be functionnal with them very quickly. I'm asking because I don't want to end up spending a lot of time on projects that will end up not being a good way to show what I can do. I'm trying to plan my future the best I can."}
{"_id": "253537", "title": "In C++, are acquire-release memory order semantics transitive?", "text": "According to cppreference, we can use release-acquire semantics to ensure write-read precedence between two threads as follows:               // Thread A     1. Write to X     2. Atomic store to Y with std::memory_order_release     // Thread B     3. Atomic load at Y with std::memory_order_acquire     4. Read at X      Supposing that `2` is ordered before `3` (take it as a given that this occurs according to Y), we are guaranteed that `A`'s write to `X` is visible to `B` since we can establish a total order on the events (as conveniently described by my enumeration above) because `1 sequenced-before 2 synchronizes-with 3 sequenced-before 4` and because release-acquire ensure that all of `A`'s writes are visible to `B` after `3`. _However_ , the link above explicitly states that in this situation \"all memory writes (non-atomic and relaxed atomic) [by A become] visible side- effects in thread B.\" My question is then: **are \"visible side-effects\" considered writes made`B` to threads previously unaware of `A`'s writes?** In other words, suppose I had a third thread `C` and another atomic:               // Thread A     1. Write to X     2. Atomic store to Y with std::memory_order_release     // Thread B     3. Atomic load at Y with std::memory_order_acquire     4. Read at X     5. Atomic store to Z with std::memory_order_release     // Thread C     6. Atomic load at Z with std::memory_order_acquire     7. Read at X      (Assume similarly that `5 happens-before 6`). Would `C` read `A`'s write to `X`? Or is `B`'s \"visible side-effect\" on `X` not considered a write?"}
{"_id": "110359", "title": "What does a programmer do at a consulting firm type of organization?", "text": "I'm a senior in college and am getting close to graduation. I love programming, and I certainly want my first job to involve programming (I'm also looking at fit, culture, location, etc. etc.). I've noticed that some major consulting firms are recruiting from my school's engineering department and are looking for computer science majors. I'm considering going out to a few info sessions to get a feel for the work, but in general, what does a programmer do at a company like this? If the company is looking to fill a position called \"Business Analyst\" with a computer science major, will the job likely even involve any programming? If it does, how might this work vary from a typical programming job at a software company? Here is an example of the type of company I see recruiting."}
{"_id": "126900", "title": "In Knuth's MMIX, how can x be an octabyte (64 bits) and M[x] be a byte (8 bits)?", "text": "In Knuth's Fascicle 1 on MMIX, the \"Memory and Registers\" section on page 4 states: \"thus if _x_ is any octabyte, M[ _x_ ] is a byte of memory.\" and \"thus if _x_ is any byte, $ _x_ is an octabyte.\" How can _x_ be an octabyte (64 bits) and M[ _x_ ] be a byte (8 bits)? Conversely, how can _x_ be a byte and $ _x_ be an octabyte?"}
{"_id": "126904", "title": "Building a route creator", "text": "Ok, already up front, I'm going to tell you, that this is a bonus task for Data structure course I'm taking. That should take care of all the questions whether or not this is for a homework. **Route creator** I have a task, where a company has to create a route for a given data set. The data set can be input for every operation and in the end, it should print out the optimum route. The conditions are like this:   * Streets can only be directed North-South or East-West, effectively making every angle between 2 streets in 90 degrees.    * The data set includes streets, junctions and places to pick client and where to drop him off, as well as the starting place for the car. My problem is, that I'm having trouble thinking of the correct data structure way to do this. What came up first from the top of my head was a directional graph. In theory, it should fit perfectly   * Streets are input up front with numeric identificators   * A node represents junction and is represented by the id's of the streets   * An edge between 2 nodes represents a piece of street and has length   * Places of interest are effectively a sub-class of Junction nodes therefore they have distance from the one node to another. Best route would then be calculated by finding the shortest path from the starting place of the car to the starting place of the client + shortest path from the starting place of the client to the ending place of the client + shortest path from the ending place of the client to the starting place of the car. Is my thinking in this matter even remotely correct? I am finding this quite difficult to image with any other data structure than a directed graph, but maybe I'm just limiting my options with this thinking."}
{"_id": "126908", "title": "research papers vs books", "text": "For studying advanced topics, what's the better and nearer to complete approach? Can books cover what's in research papers, journals or those ACM transactions, or Springer's LNCS? Or reading research papers is indispensable for getting advanced? If we can't depend on books for information, how can a learner know of what he is missing in a specific topic, since research papers cover a specific (very specific) topic which cannot be found in a collected manner of the whole topic as books do. Is there a place (may be wikipedia) which could help finding the way through a topic? Rephrasing my question, do research papers offer new information which may not be found in books or are they clever applications of the information found in books?"}
{"_id": "118168", "title": "May I give a single class multiple responsibilities if only one will ever be reusable?", "text": "To the extent that I understand the Single Responsibility Principle, a SINGLE class must only have one responsibility. We use this so that we can reuse other functionalities in other classes and not affect the whole class. My question is: what if the entity has only one purpose that really _interacts_ with the system, and that purpose won't change? Do you have to separate the implementations of your methods into another class and just instantiate those from your entity class? Or to put it another way... Is it ok to break the SRP if you know those functions will not be reusable in the future? Or is it better to assume that _we do not know_ if the functionalities of these methods will be reusable or not, and so just abstract them to other classes?"}
{"_id": "163952", "title": "How do PGP and PEM differ?", "text": "Email messages are sent in plain text which means that the messages I send to Derpina are visible to anyone who somehow gets access to them while they are in transit. To overcome this, various encryption mechanisms were developed: PEM and PGP are two of them. PEM canonically converts, adds digital signature, encrypts, and sends; PGP does exactly the same. So how do they differ? Is it that PGP (being a program) is used to generate a PEM message?"}
{"_id": "163954", "title": "Are there studies on what programming does to the brain?", "text": "Are there studies on what effects have programming languages on the brain or for that matter any other artificial languages in general, like mathematics ? Speaking from my personal experience I feel very different every time I speak Italian, I feel like a virtuoso on a quest but at the other end when I coded in machine code in debug.exe I felt like the main charcter in`\u03c0(Movie)`. Why do I bring this up because I am suspecting that languages affect your mind and popular legends back this up too often: are full of mathematicians that crossed the Rubicon."}
{"_id": "253777", "title": "Requesting feedback on my OO design", "text": "I'm working on an application that creates music by itself. I'm seeking feedback for my OO design so far. This question will focus on one part of the program. * * * The application produces `Tune` objects, that are the final musical products. `Tune` is an abstract class with an abstract method `play`. It has two subclasses: `SimpleTune` and `StructuredTune`. `SimpleTune` owns a `Melody` and a `Progression` (chord sequence). It's `play` implementation plays these two objects simultaneously. `StructuredTune` owns two `Tune` instances. It's own `play` plays the two `Tune`s one after the other according to a pattern (currently only `ABAB`). `Melody` is an abstract class with an abstract `play` method. It has two subclasses: `SimpleMelody` and `StructuredMelody`. `SimpleMelody` is composed of an array of notes. Invoking `play` on it plays these notes one after the other. `StructuredMelody` is composed of an array of `Melody` objects. Invoking `play` on it plays these `Melody`ies one after the other. I think you're starting to see the pattern. `Progression` is also an abstract class with a `play` method and two subclasses: `SimpleProgression` and `StructuredProgression`, each composed differently and played differently. `SimpleProgression` owns an array of chords and `play`s them sequentially. `StructuredProgression` owns an array of `Progression`s and it's `play` implementation plays them sequentially. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uzgkQ.png) * * * Every class has a corresponding `Generator` class. `Tune`, `Melody` and `Progression` are matched with corresponding abstract `TuneGenerator`, `MelodyGenerator` and `ProgressionGenerator` classes, each with an abstract `generate` method. For example `MelodyGenerator` defines an abstract `Melody generate` method. Each of the generators has two subclasses, `Simple` and `Structured`. So for example `MelodyGenerator` has a subclasses `SimpleMelodyGenerator`, with an implementation of `generate` that returns a `SimpleMelody`. (It's important to note that the `generate` methods encapsulate complex algorithms. They are more than mere factory method. For example `SimpleProgressionGenerator.generate()` implements an algorithm to compose a series of `Chord` objects, which are used to instantiate the returned `SimpleProgression`). Every `Structured` generator uses another generator internally. It is a `Simple` generator be default, but in special cases may be a `Structured` generator. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SuK5T.png) * * * Parts of this design are meant to allow the end-user through the GUI to choose what kind of music is to be created. For example the user can choose between a \"simple tune\" (`SimpleTuneGenerator`) and a \"full tune\" (`StructuredTuneGenerator`). Other parts of the system aren't subject to direct user-control. * * * My question regarding this design is rather specific: **When I look at my design, it looks like the design-equivalent of 'code duplication': _'class-duplication'_ or _'design-duplication'_.** You can clearly see what I'm referring to if you look at the above diagram. My question is split into two:   1. Is my intuition correct? Is this duplication, or reoccuring pattern in the design, a bad thing?   2. If it is, how can I design this differently and more efficiently?"}
{"_id": "253775", "title": "Prevent product key from being used on multiple virtual machines", "text": "I have a software product. it will probably run on VMs that have no network connection at all. I want the user to pay for each VM the user runs. I thought to ask the user for some kind of hardware ID and provide him with serial that is unique for his machine. But user can just copy the VM image and than have two machines running? So I thought of having a security dongle. But how can I prevent user from running two VM's on the same machine both connected to the same dongle? This should be only basic defense so that actual hacking will be required to breach the license and not only spinning one more VM."}
{"_id": "253778", "title": "How best to construct our test subjects in unit tests?", "text": "Some of our business logic classes require quite a few dependencies (in our case 7-10). As such when we come to unit test these the creation become quite complex. In most tests these dependencies are often not required (only some dependencies are required for particular methods). As a result unit tests often require a significant number of lines of code to mock up these useless dependencies (which can't be null because of null checks). For example:               [Test]     public void TestMethodA()     {           var dependency5 = new Mock<IDependency1>();       dependency5.Setup(x => x. // some setup            var sut = new Sut(new Mock<IDependency1>().Object,         new Mock<IDependency2>().Object,         new Mock<IDependency3>().Object,         new Mock<IDependency4>().Object,         dependency5);            Assert.SomeAssert(sut.MethodA());         }      In this example almost half the test is taken up creating dependencies which aren't used. I've investigated an approach where I have a helper method.               [Test]     public void TestMethodA()     {           var dependency5 = new Mock<IDependency1>();       dependency5.Setup(x => x. // some setup           var sut = CreateSut(null, null, null, null, dependency5);            Assert.SomeAssert(sut.MethodA());         }          private Sut CreateSut(IDependency1 d1, IDependency2 d2...)     {       return new Sut(d1 ?? new Mock<IDependency1>().Object,         d2 ?? new Mock<IDependency2>().Object,     }      But these often grow very complicated very quickly. What is the best way to create these BLL classes in test classes to reduce complexity and simplify tests?"}
{"_id": "220697", "title": "MVP pattern and references", "text": "I am doing a Windows C# application. I asked this question and I was told that the viewer/presenter should never know anything about the model. Does this mean that I should not add a reference of my model to the GUI I am making and instead of, lets say `List<Car>` I should transport the information using only strings and ints e.g. `Dictionary<carID, carName>`? Because of the fact I am using EntityFramework, half of my domain model are basically in the `DAL` and rest are in the `BLL` and then I would need to add reference to both those layers. Is this the approach or am I doing it wrong?"}
{"_id": "139170", "title": "Computers that operate exclusively on boolean algebra", "text": "I was wondering if there are any computers that operate exclusively on boolean operations. For example, no add, sub, mult, or div in the instruction set (although these could be emulated with the appropriate boolean code). Rather, the cpu would work by comparing 2 bits at a time, with instructions like and, or, xor. I realize that no modern computer would operate like this, but have any historical computers had an instruction set something like this?"}
{"_id": "245263", "title": "How to avoid downcasting?", "text": "My question is about a special case of the super class Animal.   1. My Animal can moveForward() and eat().   2. Seal extends Animal.   3. Dog extends Animal.   4. And there's a special creature that also extends Animal called Human.   5. Human implements also a method speak() (not implemented by Animal). In an implementation of an abstract method which accepts Animals I would like to use the speak() method. That seems not possible without doing a downcast. Jeremy Miller wrote in his article that a downcast smells. What would be a solution to avoid downcasting in this situation?"}
{"_id": "213403", "title": "DDD Bounded Contexts & Domains?", "text": "I've been working in a relatively complex application with 10's of database tables (Aggregates, Entities/Value Objects) and applying DDD. At this point it appears to be basically DDD-Lite meaning that there are Application/Domain Services, the Domain Model (Entities, Value Objects), and Repositories. I picked up a book Implementing DDD and the first thing he is mentioning is DDD-Lite and Bounded Contexts and Domain Events missing as first mistakes which are usual when beginning DDD. Currently I've tried organizing the Domain Model by Aggregate relationships, and using namespaces to demonstrate it. I'm failing to see the benefit/downfalls relating to separating the Domain Model project into separate Bounded contexts (yet). Perhaps it will become apparent later on but I'd like some real life feedback on Bounded Contexts (and possibly sub domains etc. if they tie into it)."}
{"_id": "155211", "title": "Who should get a developer certificate from Apple if client want their company name to show up in App Store", "text": "I am about start my first project with client, However I will work as a consultant. So do I need to get developer certificate and post my client's app in app store? Or I should ask my client to get the license and then I help them deploying the app on their name? They don't want company name to be my organisation but they want their company name to show up in App Store. However the developer of app is my organisation not them. How to deal with this situation?"}
{"_id": "155217", "title": "How to control messages to the same port from different emitters?", "text": "_Scene:_ A company has many factories X, each emits a message to the same receive port in a Biztalk server Y; if all messages are processed without much delay, each will trigger an outgoing message to another system Z. _Problem:_ Sometimes a factory loses its connection for a half-day or more and, when the connection is reestablished, thousands of messages get emitted. Now, the messages still get processed well by Y (Biztalk can easily handle the load) but system Z can't handle the flood and may lock up and severely delay the processing of all other messages from the other X. What is the solution? Creating multiple receive locations that permits us to pause one X or another would lose us information if the factory isn't smart enough to know whether the message was received or not. **What is the basic pattern to apply in Biztalk for this problem?** Would some throttling parameters help to limit the flow from any one X? Or are their techniques on the end part of Y which I should use instead ? I would prefer this last one since I can be confident that the message box will remember any failures, which could then be resumed."}
{"_id": "175452", "title": "Control flow testing in white box - static or dynamic?", "text": "Yesterday I asked a question that happened to have another meaning inside. I can see that Control/data flow is often mentioned to be static analysis (when tools is used) or dynamic analysis testing in terms of white box testing. Could it be that automatic analysis tools can just help by creating graphs or they do actually test it with inputs (then it would not be static IMHO)."}
{"_id": "25154", "title": "I don't understand the arguments against operator overloading", "text": "I just read one of Joel's articles in which he says: > In general, I have to admit that **I\u2019m a little bit scared of language > features that hide things**. When you see the code >   >   >     i = j * 5; >   > > \u2026 in C you know, at least, that j is being multiplied by five and the > results stored in i. > > But if you see that same snippet of code in C++, you don\u2019t know anything. > Nothing. **The only way to know what\u2019s really happening in C++ is to find > out what types i and j are, something which might be declared somewhere > altogether else. That\u2019s because j might be of a type that has`operator*` > overloaded and it does something terribly witty when you try to multiply > it.** (Emphasis mine.) Scared of language features that hide things? How can you be scared of that? Isn't hiding things (also known as **abstraction** ) one of the key ideas of object-oriented programming? Everytime you call a method `a.foo(b)`, you don't have any idea what that might do. You have to find out what types `a` and `b` are, something which might be declared somewhere altogether else. So should we do away with object-oriented programming, because it hides too much things from the programmer? And how is `j * 5` any different from `j.multiply(5)`, which you might have to write in a language that does not support operator overloading? Again, you would have to find out the type of `j` and peek inside the `multiply` method, because lo and behold, `j` might be of a type that has a `multiply` method that does something terribly witty. \"Muahaha, I'm an evil programmer that names a method `multiply`, but what it actually does is totally obscure and non-intuitive and has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with multiplying things.\" Is that a scenario we must take into consideration when designing a programming language? Then we have to abandon identifiers from programming languages on the grounds that they might be misleading! If you want to know what a method does, you can either glance at the documentation or peek inside the implementation. Operator overloading is just syntactic sugar, and I don't see how it changes the game at all. Please enlighten me."}
{"_id": "120501", "title": "how to layout good documentation", "text": "I need to write out a documentation for developers to be able to use some API web software how should i lay out a documentation? What should always be included? And does it need to be really long or keep it simple and easy as possible for anybody to understand?"}
{"_id": "215763", "title": "Getting the relational table data into XML recursively", "text": "I have levels of tables (Level1, Level2, Level3, ...) For simplicity, we'll say I have 3 levels. The rows in the higher level tables are parents of lower level table rows. The relationship does not skip levels however. E.g. Row1Level1 is parent of Row3Level2, Row2Level2 is parent of Row4Level3. Level(n-1)'s parent is always be in Level(n). Given these tables with data, I need to come up with a recursive function that generates an XML file to represent the relationship and the data. E.g.               <data>       <level levelid = 1 rowid=1>         <level levelid = 2 rowid=3 />       </level>       <level levelid = 2 rowid=2>         <level levelid = 3 rowid=4 />       </level>     </data>        I would like help with coming up with a pseudo-code for this setup. This is what I have so far: Edited/Updated code:               XElement GetXML(ArrayList list, XElement xml)             {                 XElement xElement = xml;                 // Get the rows of the current list into xmlData format                 ArrayList childList = GetChildList(list);                      if (childList != null)                 {                     foreach (Row r in list)                     {                         // Convert the rows to xml                         xElement = new XElement(xml);                         xElement.AddFirst(new XElement(\"Row\"));                         xElement.Add(new XAttribute(\"RowId\", r.RowId));                              // Get the children as xml                         if (childList != null)                         {                             ArrayList childRows = GetChildRows(list);                             XElement childXml = GetXML(childRows, xElement);                             if (childXml != null)                             {                                 xElement.Add(childXml);                             }                         }                     }                 }                 return xElement;            }      This is the main function. I can add the rest of the test program if needed. Thank you.               static void Main(string[] args)             {                 Program p = new Program();                      // Initialize datasets                 p.InitializeLists();                      // Create xml map of the datasets                 XElement x = p.GetXML(p.level1, new XElement(\"Row\"));                      Console.WriteLine(x.ToString());                 Console.ReadLine();             }"}
{"_id": "215761", "title": "Separating Db from business with Inherited classes using multiple views", "text": "I have a software that has a car model that will be used in different views (listing, ads, detail page, carousel, up sell widget,etc).               class CarModel extends DbModel{          }      I look for a \"nice way\" (a combination of flexible, easy to maintain,etc) to have this used in views. I'm thinking at two different ways   1. Having object views for each context              CarViewBase{         var car;// of type CarModel         function constructor(args){             //will instantienta internal variable car based on args         }              function getThumb(){         }              function getTitle(){              }      }          CarListingView extends CarViewBase{         function getListing(){         }     }          CarAdsView extends CarViewBase{     //the busines rule changes for ads widget         function getThumb(){         }     }        2. Extending directly the CarModel The challenges comes when My Car Model might need an abstract factory. Let's say I have a field on my car object that states the type of the car : a truck, or a bike, or van. How would affect that my object view? Let's say that getTitle() rule would be different for each type of it. How would you do it?"}
{"_id": "253416", "title": "How to get a database on my filesystem that I can use in my application", "text": "I'm making a .NET application where I'll have a lot of data entries. This will not go to any server though, but needs to be stored and updated, frequently on the local machine. I would like something like an SQL database, that simply exists in a file, in my application's folder (or in %appdata% or whatever). But how do I go about this? What can I use? I'm a big fan of Linq2Sql, so if it supports that, it would be awesome. I've tried to use MSSQL Compact, but I couldn't really get it to work very well. It basically required me to install MSSQL as well. What options do I have, other than MSSQL Compact?"}
{"_id": "225579", "title": "Efficient mixing of sync and async methods within a single method?", "text": "Okay, it sounds odd, but the code is very simple and explains the situation well.               public virtual async Task RemoveFromRoleAsync(AzureTableUser user, string role)     {         AssertNotDisposed();         var roles = await GetRolesForUser(user);         roles.Roles = RemoveRoles(roles.Roles, role);         await Run(TableOperation.Replace(roles));     }      (I know I'm talking kind of in the abstract below, but the above is an actual method from what will be actual production code that is actually doing what I'm asking about here, and I'm actually interested in your actually reviewing it for correctness vis a vis the async/await pattern.) I'm encountering this pattern more and more often now that I'm using `async`/`await` more. The pattern consists of the following chain of events:   1. Await an initial call that gets me some information I need to work on   2. Work on that information synchronously   3. Await a final call that saves the updated work The above code block is typically how I go about handling these methods. I `await` the first call, which I have to because it is asynchronous. Next, I do the work that I need to do which isn't IO or resource bound, and so isn't async. Finally, I save my work which is also an `async` call, and out of cargo-cult I `await` it. But is this the most efficient/correct way to handle this pattern? It seems to me I could skip `await`ing the last call, but what if it fails? And should I use a `Task` method such as `ContinueWith` to chain my synchronous work with the original call? I'm just at a point right now where I'm not sure if I'm handling this correctly. **Given the code in the example** , is there a better way to handle this async/sync/async method call chain?"}
{"_id": "162495", "title": "How to manage a growing team?", "text": "I'm the admin assistant of the CTO and our organization has recently experienced a lot of growth. Within six months, we have merged with another organization and our Dev team has grown from 8 to 16, with another 8 people in QA. What we're dealing with now is a highly technical individual, with little patience, managing a much larger team than he's accustomed to, 40% of which is junior as well as an increase in the number of projects. Needless to say, my boss is being pulled in too many directions at once. How can I help him manage his workload and his team so that the team feels they're getting enough help and support and remain effective? Also, where can I find additional resources on managing a growing team?"}
{"_id": "251730", "title": "Phone Number based Login", "text": "I'm trying to implement a phone number based login and not sure if I should ask the users for full number, i.e country code + number or just the number. What I have in mind so far:   * Attempt optimistic login using whatever number user gives.   * Most likely, it'll come back with a single user match.   * In case there is a collision, throw an error (and show some helpful clue to the user asking them to enter full number) I guess this is a simplistic approach with minimum friction and complexity (as opposed to IP detection, geography based resolution etc.)."}
{"_id": "166204", "title": "What is a good algorithm to distribute items with specific requirements?", "text": "I have to programmatically distribute a set of items to some entities, but there are rules both on the items and on the entities like so:               Item one: 100 units, only entities from Foo     Item two: 200 units, no restrictions     Item three: 100 units, only entities that have Bar          Entity one: Only items that have Baz     Entity one hundred: No items that have Fubar      I only need to be pointed in the right direction, I'll research and learn the suggested methods."}
{"_id": "82571", "title": "Are there any good tools to help implement or enforce the proper equals and hashcode patterns for c#?", "text": "A very common bug on my development team is forgetting to, or incorrectly overriding equals and hashcode. While the pattern is simple, there's a lot of boilerplate code that goes into doing this correctly. Implementing `IEquatable<T>`, `IEquatable`, `IComparable<T>`, and `IComparable`. While sometimes this needs to be done in a custom fashion, almost always this is simple a checking of types followed by a checking of an ordered set of fields. In the absence of compiler support (while I hope is coming), can a code generator/analysis tool help with this problem? What would be idea is to simply tag properties or fields with an attribute (say [EC_KEY] (for Equality/Comparison Key)). Then all the appropriate routines for checking those fields/properties (in lexical order) would be generated (using those field's type's corresponding equality or comparison operators and, of course, natural ordering for primitives) Ideally, the analysis tool would report as error objects where no tags (or explicit overloads) were found, but could have tags like [EQ_ALL] (to use all fields/properties) or [EQ_IGNORE] to explicitly ignore the class."}
{"_id": "166200", "title": "Complex Release Vehicle Management", "text": "I'm looking into improving our build and release system. We are a .Net/Windows shop, and I don't see any really good tools for Windows for generating the files that are to be dropped in patch or hotfix. We are currently using TFSBuild 2010 with Windows Workflows for our continuous integration builds as well as our daily full build which includes an Installshield package for deployment.   1. What is a good way of generating the list of files to be included in a \"patch\" style release, where one does not redistribute all the files, but only those necessary to accomplish the necessary changes? Are there any open source tools that work well for this, or do teams usually roll their own? I have considered using Beyond Compare but I would prefer something open source. The file \"patch\" creation must be 100% automatable.   2. Which release vehicles really ought to be patch style? And which releases should replace all system files related to our application? Assume we have a very large amount of resources necessary to maintain.   3. Is there any established material that is trusted within the industry for strategies about this? I realize it is different for \"enterprise\" rather than with typical websites. I am looking more for \"enterprise\" strategies due to our product distribution style. tl;dr > Looking for info on how to ship more reliable packages?"}
{"_id": "21896", "title": "Do you know of a data-pump design pattern?", "text": "I frequently encounter a situation where I need to write a program which reads data-objects from a file or system, does a transformation on the data, convert the data to another datamodel and then push the data in another file, or system. Do you know of a object-model which facilitates these type of programs in such a way that it is pluggable and scalable?"}
{"_id": "21891", "title": "Are Language Comparisons Meaningful?", "text": "Dr Bjarne Stroustrup in his book D&E says > Several reviewers asked me to compare C++ to other languages. This I have > decided against doing. Thereby, I have reaffirmed a long-standing and > strongly held view: \"Language comparisons are rarely meaningful and even > less often fair\" . A good comparison of major programming languages requires > more effort than most people are willing to spend, experience in a wide > range of application areas, a rigid maintenance of a detached and impartial > point of view, and a sense of fairness. I do not have the time, and as the > designer of C++, my impartiality would never be fully credible. > > -- The Design and Evolution of C++(Bjarne Stroustrup) Do you people agree with his this statement \"`Language comparisons are rarely meaningful and even less often fair`\"? Personally I think that comparing a language X with Y makes sense because it gives many more reasons to love/despise X/Y `:-P` What do you people think?"}
{"_id": "98048", "title": "What are some reasonable arguments in favor of closed source software? ", "text": "I like a technology (including programming language) but its platform is closed sourece and many times I meet people who ask me, \"why do you use a closed source platform, why not use an open source alternative? If there is something wrong it should be with the closed source not with the open source, (as they say)\". Actually I don't know how to answer their question. Could anyone tell me a good answer? Why do you use a closed source platform?"}
{"_id": "56270", "title": "How Can I Make My Programming Class More Interesting?", "text": "I already found a similar question here on SO, but almost all of the answers were more philosophical, rather than practical. I'd like some PRACTICAL ideas about how to make my programming course more interesting. It doesn't matter how much effort it takes. I thought about asking my students to pick a topic in the beginning of the course and to work on it as some kind of a real, small, startup project that they could financially exploit once it's finished. But I'm afraid that most of them will not take the project to its completion, and that it could become very boring. Also I thought about involving them in Torcs, but I'm afraid most of them wouldn't be up to the task. Btw, Torcs is Car Racing Simulation, but there's an API for developers so they can develop their own AI for the driver, and then race their car against other programmers' AIs. I'm not asking here for problem examples, as I asked a separate question about that. I need ideas about making my lectures more interesting and fun."}
{"_id": "116904", "title": "Algorithm refresher. Why is heapsort an insort algorithm?", "text": "I can not see why the heapsort is considered an inplace **sorting** algorithm. I mean an **extra** data structure populated with the elements of the array to be sorted i.e. a heap, is used to assist in the extraction of the min value and the sorting process. So may be I am misunderstanding the definition of inplace here? But insertion sort for example it is obvious that it is inplace algorith, i.e. no extra memory needed for the elements. So why is it considered inplace?"}
{"_id": "10832", "title": "How can I advocate unit testing on private code?", "text": "I'm trying to advocate unit testing in my workgroup, but an objection I often get is that it should be used only for externally exported API (which is only a minimal and non critical part of our system), and not on internal and private code (which now has only functional testing). While I think that unit test can and should be applied to all the code, how can I persuade my coworkers?"}
{"_id": "98042", "title": "How much math do you learn in computer science?", "text": "How much do you need to know for computer science? When you get out of a PhD program in computer science at most schools how much math do you come out knowing? I'm guessing beyong the high school precalc stuff, you have to know what's called discrete math that there's usually one course for at most schools and it covers all the concepts required for compiuter science (combinatorics, probability & statistics, number theory, proofs, formal languages, etc.) And I'm guessing you need to know linear algebra, and calculus (both single and multivariable). I don't think you need to know differential equations, abstract algebra, higher analysis, non-euclidean geometry, and stuff like that - typically, a math major learns those."}
{"_id": "116909", "title": "I'm so jealous of middle-aged developers. Are we unlucky?", "text": "First of all, I couldn't decide the right words for title after reading How old is \"too old\"? question. I still can't decide with old, middle-aged, expert or professional. As you know, there are a lot of developers over 35-40 years old in StackExchange. They are helping to beginners and having less experience people. They are so valuable users. And mostly, their some answers are awesome becauase of good analyzing and adding their experience to answers. When I see this kind of users, they all started programming with kind of Lisp, Pascal, Cobol or Basic type programming language. These are the first modern programming languages. And I think these people are so lucky learning programming with them first because of they are close to machine language. Maybe they learn the basics of programming better. Now it looks they are working easly with object orianted programming. I'm graduated from computer engineering a year ago . First year, we superficial learned C programming language. Second year, there are C# and Java course. But when I try to learn this languages in colluage, I always feel like I missed something. Learning languages, structures, libraries.. if fine but teachers never teach us \"How the codes working in machine?\". They teach us the programming language which is popular in software market. So kind of they prepare us for companies. They think If we learn assembly or fortran, we can't easly find a job according to Java or C#. Unfortunately, at these days, this is kind of true. Could be better learning first Assembly, Fortran, Cobol instead of Java and C#? Are we unlucky?"}
{"_id": "191003", "title": "How to prevent my executable being treated from AV like bad or virus?", "text": "I'm creating a piece of software, that will run on windows and will act like launcher for the game, to serve as an auto-updater and file verifier in client siede PC. One thing I don't understand, why my antivirus software (Avast) is considering my exe file as dangerous and won't start it without asking to put it into sandbox, for safe use. Is there any rules that my software should obey, to be treated as good, or should I pay hundreds of dollars for some sort of digital signing and other stuff? I'm using C# with MS Visual Studio 2010. VirusTotal report. No DLL injections, working as remote file downloader, using WebClient() class. It is not like it warns about virus, but it \"suggests\" to sandbox it. Look at screenshot:![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Cp85Z.png)"}
{"_id": "194072", "title": "Application architecture for subscriber based system", "text": "I am planning on building a system where users \"subscribe\" to \"records\". Records are updated on a schedule, several times a day. When records are updated, the user should be notified that these records have been added/updated. I don't want each user to have their own copy of the records due to storage space and the overhead of inserting many records, one for each subscriber, each time the schedule runs. However, each user will need to add metadata against each record they are subscribed to. Such as notes and flags that the record has been read etc. Can anyone give me any advice or how to structure such a system or where I can learn more about this sort of application architecture? Is this the correct place to ask? At the moment, I'm not even sure what to Google for ;)"}
{"_id": "191005", "title": "How to manage my private key for signing .NET assemblies?", "text": "I write open source .NET class libraries as a hobby and thought about signing them. I can get Visual Studio to generate me a password protected public/private key pair and save it as a .pfx file, but I don't think I should do this for _each and every_ project. One key pair should be enough, right? Obviously I'm not going to put my .pfx file with the source code in my online public repository: only the assemblies I release should be signed with my key pair. Other people can use their own keys if they want. So I'm left with some .pfx file that supposedly contains my public/private key pair.   * How do I manage my key pair effectively?   * Where do I store it?   * Do I have to import it somewhere?   * How can I use it on both my PC and my laptop?   * How do I prevent the key pair hell when switching from PC to laptop?"}
{"_id": "117364", "title": "Is wikipedia a valuable resource for studying data structures? (can we call it complete?)", "text": "Can I depend on wikipedia to learn data structures fully using the list of data structures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_structures and the links they refer to? The same question for algorithms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithm_general_topics ?... What's after learning algorithms and data structures? Specializing in a certain field of algorithms such as computer graohics, memory management...etc? or what could be the plan for mastering programming after knowing the language syntax and the background about program design and programming logic? I asked about wikipedia because i would like to find a complete resource or are least a resource which would be enough for the field of data structures instead of searching for separate articles in different places in other words an alternative to books which may even be more complete."}
{"_id": "93968", "title": "Semi-securely storing data in a remote key-value store, ensuring minimal data corruption/tampering", "text": "I'm bashing around a few ideas for storing usage data (similar to google analytics) for some Javascript products that we are working on. Unfortunately as yet we don't quite know 100% what data we want to store and only have a basic idea of the metrics we want to glean from it. My thinking is that basically we want to store a set of key-value pairs grouped by a unique instance_id (there may well be flaws in this logic:)). With that in mind I knocked up a (very) quick prototype in monkrb, the grand total of which is below:                 get \"/store\" do         key = params[:key]         value = params[:value]         instance_id = params[:instance_id]         Ohm.redis.hset instance_id, key, value       end      While this should work, I'm somewhat worried that an inquiring mind could easily pollute our data with random sets and key-values, doubled by the fact that this is all going to be called in Javascript so anything we do to secure or encrypt it is going to be pretty transparent to anyone who cares to view source. A lot of it should be easily filtered out, as come reporting time we'll have an idea which keys we are interested in (and know which ones we've created) so we can just junk any sets that contain keys which we know nothing about (though again there's the risk that additional keys have been added to an otherwise valid set..) Following down this path here are my questions:   1. What steps can I take to make it as hard as possible to add completely false data? (handshaking, obfuscation, signing, etc)    2. What can I do to try and detect any junk data? (bonus for a rough idea of how to implement too)   3. What sort of checks should I have in place to stop an existing instance_id being guessed and messed about with? (so any historical data can't get polluted) It should be noticed that this is mostly academic at the present stage, as I know 6 lines of ruby does not an application make, I'm just interested in the scenario and would like to hear others approaches and thoughts on where one could go with this."}
{"_id": "187869", "title": "Storing 'sensitive' data in settings file", "text": "I'm writing a small utility in AutoIt that connects to Twitter. I would like to store the username and password in the programs setting file, but I know that it needs to be encrypted obviously. Previously when I've done this for personal use I've just adopted an `ini`format - written to a temporary file and then encrypted it using a rediculously long password and 256 bit AES encryption, just calling the file \"settings.eini\". However, I'm going to be offering this utility to the public. I don't expect a large amount of people to use it or for it to become a target, but I thought that it's best not to take chances. I've been reading about creating custom file extensions and it seems like something I want to avoid for now, so is there a standard/acceptable way of doing this?"}
{"_id": "187861", "title": "Why isn't the \u2018format\u2019 method more widely used in Python?", "text": "I'm probably missing something here, after searching I couldn't find an answer. I've explored quite a few Python projects and one thing I keep noticing is the fact that the majority of them continue to use the **`%`** operator for formatting strings rather than the newer, recommended **`.format()`** method. Is there a reason for this? it seems like a trivial change, unless I'm missing something entirely. For example:               # count how many times the % operator technique is used     find . -name \"*.py\" -exec grep -HE \"\\\"[^\\\"]+\\\"\\s\\%\\s\\w+|'[^']+'\\s\\%\\s\\w+\" {} \\; | wc -l          # and the same for format()     find . -name \"*.py\" -exec grep -HE \"\\w+\\.format\\(\" {} \\; | wc -l          # Results:     #     #               % operator        format()     # iPython          670               63     # Django           977               8     # Tornado          91                0     # requests         25                1      No real reason for this question, just curious. Cheers guys!"}
{"_id": "97247", "title": "What is the advantage of choosing ASCII encoding over UTF-8?", "text": "All characters in ASCII can be encoded using UTF-8 without an increase in storage (both requires a byte of storage). UTF-8 has the added benefit of character support beyond \"ASCII-characters\". If that's the case, why will we _ever_ choose ASCII encoding over UTF-8? Is there a use-case when we will choose ASCII instead of UTF-8?"}
{"_id": "213502", "title": "What would be the optimal way to solve a problem like this?", "text": "I have a problem where I have to change all the Xs in a 2D array into 0s, and I have to calculate the minimum steps (where a single step consists of changing an entire row or column) required to do so. For example, in an array like-               [[X, X, X],          [X, 0, 0],          [X, 0, 0]]      The minimum number of steps required here is 2. I thought of a brute force approach (where I am checking row-wise once and column-wise thence and then comparing them to check which takes minimum number of steps) but that would give me an answer of 3, which is not the desired output. Any help, or clue, regarding how I should approach this problem would be appreciated, thanks!"}
{"_id": "218220", "title": "History of vendor css prefix", "text": "When and how did this process of prefixing css with vendor specific prefix begin. Which browser/org start this and why was this started. I searched the web but found no details on this."}
{"_id": "68954", "title": "Whats the logic behind making ViewBag a dynamic object in ASP.NET MVC 3", "text": "Last time I checked C# was loved by many because it's a statically typed language but the introduction of ViewBag in ASP.NET MVC 3 brings the same problem that is there with strings: in a controller you type one thing and in the view you can by mistake type something else. What's the reason for making ViewBag dynamic? How is it better?"}
{"_id": "218222", "title": "Searching integer sequences", "text": "I have a fairly complex search problem that I've managed to reduce to the following description. I've been googling but haven't been able to find an algorithm that seems to fit my problem cleanly. In particular the need to skip arbitrary integers. Maybe someone here can point me to something? Take a sequence of integers A, for example (1 2 3 4) Take various sequences of integers and test if any of them match A such that.   1. A contains all of the integers in the tested sequence    2. The ordering of the integers in the tested sequence are the same in A   3. We don't care about any integers in A that are not in the test sequence   4. We want all matching test sequences, not just the first. An example               A = (1 2 3 4)     B = (1 3)     C = (1 3 4)     D = (3 1)     E = (1 2 5)      B matches A C matches A D does not match A as the ordering is different E does not match A as it contains an integer not in A I hope that this explanation is clear enough. The best I've managed to do is to contruct a tree of the test sequences and iterate over A. The need to be able to skip integers leads to a lot of unsuccessful search paths. Thanks Reading some suggestions I feel that I have to clarify a couple of points that I left too vague.   1. Repeated numbers are allowed, in fact this is quite important as it allows a single test sequence to match A is multiple ways A = (1234356), B = (236), matches could be either -23---6 or -2--3-6   2. I expect there to be a very large number of test sequences, in the thousands at least and sequence A will tend to have a max length of maybe 20. Thus simply trying to match each test sequence one by one by iterating becomes extremely inefficient. Sorry if this wasn't clear."}
{"_id": "141900", "title": "How much should I pay to Microsoft when I am selling a desktop & Web base software built on VB.NET using MS SQL 2005 Express Edition?", "text": "Can I distribute the MS SQL 2005 Express edition along with my application to the customer?"}
{"_id": "251192", "title": "Why are some files in programming projects named \"commons\"?", "text": "I have seen numerous projects have a file named `commons` for example:               commomns.go      I was wondering, why was this convention adopted and what did the meaning of naming a file or a package or something as commons?"}
{"_id": "218083", "title": "How do I dissuade users from using the same password with similar systems?", "text": "I'm building a web application that connects to other web services (using strictly anonymous binding, so no user passwords are being used). However the web application maintains its own users itself, and is required to ask certain details such as e-mail addresses and public linking information to these other web services (for example, a username but not a password). I want to deter or prevent users from reusing passwords in my application that they have also used in the applications I'm linking to. For example, if I ask for their e-mail and provide me with their gmail address, I don't want them using their gmail password for my system. Another example would be reusing a password to a linked system in which they also gave me their username. One idea I had was to simply try using the information they gave me, along with the password they are trying to store and log in to these external web applications to test the password - then immediately unbind if I was successful and ask the user to use a different password. However I suspect there is a host of morale and legal issues there. The reason this is a big deal to me is accountability. My application is simply not funded enough to invest properly in security around user passwords. A salted, hashed password in a public SQL-like database is as secure as it gets. So if passwords and linked usernames or e-mails get out, I don't want my userbase compromised."}
{"_id": "49189", "title": "Writing/discussions about the aesthetics of code?", "text": "I'm looking for considerations of the questions \"Can code be beautiful?\" and \"What makes code beautiful?\" Examples would include:   * This academic paper: Obfuscation, Weird Languages, and Code Aesthetics   * This blog post: Hamon or the Skin Deep Beauty of Code Please note that I'm not trying to start a discussion here, or asking for opinions about what makes code beautiful, or for code you think is beautiful; I'm trying to find stuff that has already been published. Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "56899", "title": "Does professionalism in job postings matter?", "text": "I came across this job posting: http://www.justin.tv/jobs/jobs. The page contains some bad language (\"No bulls--t\"). I personally find this vaguely offensive, and it would certainly put me off applying to work there: It made me wonder what kind/personality of people work at this company. At least where I'm from (EU), the language would be considered bad form, and it would be seen as badly representing the company. Some job postings seem to go to the other extreme, filled with vacuous people skill descriptions and irrelevant details. It's tempting to dream up pictures of each company based on their job posting. So, does professionalism in job postings matter? Are you inclined to see through bad language, irrelevant corporate speak and so on, or do these affect interest in a job?"}
{"_id": "81005", "title": "Document Versioning", "text": "I have been tasked by my boss to look at a system where we create Python scripts and upload them to a server and store details in the DB. He also wants me to implement versioning, so that if any changes are made to a script then the updated version has an incremented version number. This is the area where I am not so sure about. How would you go about implementing a versioning tool? Is it simply a case of incrementing a field in the Database with the new version number? Or is it more complex than what it initially seems?"}
{"_id": "81003", "title": "How to explain why multi-threading is difficult", "text": "I am a fairly good programmer, my boss is also a fairly good programmer. Though he seems to underestimate some tasks such as multi-threading and how difficult it can be (I find it very difficult for anything more than running a few threads, waiting for all to finish, then return results). The moment you start having to worry about deadlocks and race conditions, I find it very difficult, but the boss doesn't seem to appreciate this - I don't think he has ever come across this. Just slap a lock on it is pretty much the attitude. So how can I introduce him, or explain why he might be underestimating the complexities of concurrency, parallelism, and multi-threading? Or maybe I am wrong? Edit: Just a bit on what he has done - loop through a list, for each item in that list create a thread that executes a database update command based on the information in that item. I'm not sure how he controlled how many threads executed at once, I guess he must have added them to a queue if there were too many running (he wouldn't have used a semaphore)."}
{"_id": "210847", "title": "Storing different algorithms and using them for demonstration", "text": "I have an app for creating simple graphs (the kind with vertices and edges) and then using different algorithms on them (BFS, DFS, topsort, Prim's etc) for demonstrating how they work. I'm now working on porting it into a Rails app and deploying so it can be used by my university (hopefully). Currently the graphs are stored in a SQLite db and I am planning to do some D3 magic on them. Then to the real problem, how should I implement and store the algorithms? I want to be able to \"step\" through the algorithm, showing step by step how it works on the graph. In my previous implementation, written in Java, I had an abstract Algorithm class with abstract methods like init, step and reset. But, now that we are out of the Java world and using wonderful Ruby, I have a feeling that there's a really clever and elegant way achieving the same. I am planning to pack it into a Rails engine, just for kicks. Here is the mentioned Java implementation: https://github.com/7SLEVIN/visualgraphalgs"}
{"_id": "198182", "title": "Dataset with coordinates of borders of countries", "text": "I am creating an application that visually displays world regions, e.g. to place markers within an administrative region. Does a dataset exist with geometrical or geographical (long/lat) descriptions of the world's current country borders (and possibly other administrative divisions)? Ideally the dataset would be in a format that I could easily generate border images of the size that I require."}
{"_id": "198188", "title": "Is it possible to use the Intel C/C++ compiler on Linux to create object files to be linked on Windows?", "text": "**Why?** Depending on your source the Intel compiler is likely or most definitely the compiler generating the fastest executables for the x86 architecture (5 to 100 % execution time improvement). Intel offers its compilers for Linux under a non-commercial license for free (I think I read it is free somewhere on their page: Intel - Non-Commercial Software Development). There is also a free non-commercial license for students, but this license is not applicable although tools are offered for all three major operating systems (link dropped due to reputation restriction). **Goal** I (as a non-student) would like to be able to use the Intel compilers for possible execution speed improvements under the non-commercial license to compile object files that can be linked to create executables and dynamic link libraries for Windows (and possibly OS X) **More Details:** What I inferred from this document is that the Intel compilers create object files that are compatible to the dominant compilers of the platform. **Sub-questions:**   1. What are the object file formats of gcc, g++, cl, mingw32, icc, icpc, and icl on Windows and Linux (current versions)?   2. _Could parts of the mingw32 cross-compiler toolchain be used to accomplish the goal?_   3. Am I right that the metadata in the generated object files is the main issue? ad 2:   mingw32-objcopy seems to be able to convert the Intel compiler output on Linux (presumably ELF) to Microsoft-compatible COFF (with the possible exception of relocateable object files). Could someone confirm that this actually works (for non-trivial applications), please?"}
{"_id": "223578", "title": "What is the best way to build a static page web site from a JSON API?", "text": "I have a JSON API that includes some discusssions. I want to build a static html site on another server, pages that are built from data on that API. I am more comfortable using Rails than Node. The API is done in Node. The idea is that I periodically call the JSON api to get the data, and dynamically build the html pages on the Rails server. This way the web pages would be super fast, wouldn't have to call the JSON API. One technology that looks like it would do the job is http://middlemanapp.com/, but I haven't used it before. Anybody done this before and have any suggestions? My preference is to use Rails, and Heroku."}
{"_id": "142286", "title": "How does one become a big contributor to an opensource project?", "text": "I know that the default advice for open source projects, and getting started, is to start fixing bugs. But I have a feeling that its the path that one would want to take if they wanted to be a tester/fixer of bugs in the project. How does one become an active contributor of an opensource project? [I.e. on the level of architecture]"}
{"_id": "142289", "title": "How does one write a book on a new framework?", "text": "How are authors able to write a book on a framework that is just released? A framework like spring is updated, and a book is released in the next day. Is this typically by people who are direct contributors? Are they basing it off of beta/alpha versions? I find this rather difficult to understand as that documentation is rarely up to snuff by the time the framework is updated."}
{"_id": "157108", "title": "Rails - Does using partials slow views rendering?", "text": "I'm having performance issues on a Rails `3.1.0` application, now I've done dome changes on my queries with AR and so but views still takes too many time to render, I've divided the views, loops and so, on many partials that are rendered dynamically inside views and inside other partials. So it's a bad practice to have a large number of partials? Should I reduce the number of partials to improve the views rendering time? Thanks"}
{"_id": "157104", "title": "Is there something wrong with how we're doing version control?", "text": "I work with a team of programmers as the business analyst. We just released version 2.0 of our product and are working on the next version to be released in 3 months (it's an internal software product). Unfortunately version 2.0 has some issues that they have had to fix and we're going to deploy those fixes in a couple weeks. The problem is that we also don't want to deploy the changes that are still being worked on and are not slated to be released for another 3 months. The programmers decided that the way to manage this was that only the code for the defects will be checked in, and the code for the new enhancements will be kept on the developer's local machines until they are done. I will have to get local builds from their machines to test because if they check in the code and we have to push out another patch to fix defects we don't want to include those enhancements just yet. There is also the problem where the same code file contains both defect fixes and enhancements, so they have to copy the code file locally, then make a change to fix a bug and check that one in, then resume work on the enhancements by taking the local copy they made. It seems quite convoluted - is there a better way to handle this type of scenario? We're using Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio 2010."}
{"_id": "98957", "title": "Is there a technical reason why you can't develop iOS apps on a Linux computer?", "text": "I understand why you can't develop OS X apps on a Linux computer, but is there a good technical reason why you can't develop iPhone and iPad apps on Linux? Why isn't it possible to compile iOS source code into an iOS executable and run it in an iOS simulator on Linux or install it on a development iOS device? Is it just because the XCode IDE is a Cocoa application? You can develop Android apps on any kind of platform, it seems. I don't see why the same can't be true of iOS."}
{"_id": "98954", "title": "AGPL Question about Linking and Derivative Works", "text": "I'm thinking of selling a collection of Django apps I've written which provide the basic functionality of a Facebook game, but I'm also thinking of releasing it under a GNU Affero GPL. I read the Affero GPL, and the extra clause specified that modified versions of a covered work have to be distributed under the same license. What I'm wondering is, do derivative works have to be distributed under the GNU Affero License, even if they don't modify the original? The scenario is someone could use my project and add a few features of their own contained in separate Django apps; would those new apps they've written which depend on my software have to be released under an Affero license as well?"}
{"_id": "199587", "title": "Is it a good idea to read compiler source code?", "text": "I'm a junior in college majoring in Computer Science. Apart from writing lots of code, I want to start reading source code written by others to improve my coding skills and learn better/different ways of doing stuff. I was thinking I should start reading some of the key parts of the code in C++ compilers. I think this would help me do two things:   * Learn elegant coding practices because compilers are hard and the code represents solutions to this hard problem.   * This would also help me learn about how my most used language is compiled, the details, how each error is generated, how code is parsed, and become really good with the specifications of the language. Do you think this is a good idea?"}
{"_id": "36978", "title": "Do most programmers copy and paste code?", "text": "I learned very early on that cutting & pasting somebody else's code takes longer in the long run that writing it yourself. In my opinion unless you really understand it, cut & paste code will probably have issues which will be a nightmare to resolve. Don't get me wrong, I mean finding other peoples code and learning from it is essential, but we don't just paste it into our app. We _rewrite_ the _concepts_ into our app. But I'm constantly hearing about people who cut & paste, and they talk about it like it's common practice. I also see comments by others which indicate it's common practice. So, do most programmers cut & paste code?"}
{"_id": "199580", "title": "How can I send data without POSTFIELDS in PHP curl?", "text": "I'm using a REST API through PHP and I'm a bit confused on the CURL_POSTFIELDS behavior, which implies that I must send a querystring or array, but what I'm seeking to do is just to send a string of JSON text. In the API I'm using there is no such thing as a field: https://developer.atlassian.com/display/JIRADEV/JIRA+REST+API+Example+-+Edit+issues So, how can I just send data that doesn't get interpreted as a query string, and without having to use a file?"}
{"_id": "90739", "title": "Lost Interest in Programming", "text": "I am a computer science student currently in my 2nd year of bachelors. My problem is pretty straight forward yet still so far has not been self- resolvable. It is simply is that I am tired of programming. I don't know why but it just happened. When I started my first course in c++ I was very excited. So excited that I finished two heavy c++ books within 2 months and was way ahead of my class and my own expectations. It was like I can easily develop algorithms and code them. I explored C++ a lot, > but for the past 2 semesters I am pretty much not into coding and I have > lost a great amount of interest or passion for it. I love programming as well my CS degree.But even with that i am not able to set things up. Kindly tell me what to do? I have started C# and XNA Game development on my own but still it's like I am pushing myself. Can anyone give give suggestions to wake up the coder inside of me?"}
{"_id": "108047", "title": "Interviews: How far to go on DVCS experience?", "text": "I've been interviewing some potential interns for a project I'm working on. We use git, so I'm looking for someone familiar with DVCS (or SVN/CVS or a desire to learn). A response that threw me off was \"I've worked with github\" with no further information, so it forced me to consider what to expect from a programmer working with version control. I actually led a VCS conversion, so I got more intimately involved with Git/DVCS administration than I thought I ever would be, so I don't think it is fair to hold a student to that standard. My question is, what should a junior programmer be comfortable doing when working with a DVCS? Should it be simple adds, commits, merges, remotes, or would you expect something more? If you've been asked good questions in interviews, I'd appreciate them being shared. I don't really want to hire the developer that pushes a backwards merge! Edit: I really should have mentioned before this got rolling that our distribution model relies heavily on Git and our self-hosted repository (I'm a web developer), and that's why I feel it's important to know (at the very least) the consequences of serious actions like remote pushes; these actions triggers a few different processes in our environment. My fault! The answers have still been very helpful."}
{"_id": "168317", "title": "Why does Eclipse need to be restarted after installing a plugin?", "text": "As Eclipse uses OSGi to handle modules and bundles, and therefore should be able to hot-deploy them, why does it suggest to restart after installing a plugin \"for changes to take effect\"? Has Eclipse hit some OSGi limitation, or is its architecture such that even with hot-deploy, it cannot guarantee that deployments went smoothly and hence takes the safest route by offering a restart?"}
{"_id": "168316", "title": "Isn't MVC anti OOP?", "text": "The main idea behind OOP is to unify data and behavior in a single entity - the object. In procedural programming there is data and separately algorithms modifying the data. In the Model-View-Controller pattern the data and the logic/algorithms are placed in distinct entities, the model and the controller respectively. In an equivalent OOP approach shouldn't the model and the controller be placed in the same logical entity?"}
{"_id": "220901", "title": "Backbone.js app pulling large data sets with fetch()", "text": "I'm currently making some improvements for a client on a backbone.js app. The app is a web store and inventory management system. One thing that bothers me about this app (and other backbone.js apps I've encountered) is that it loads the entire collection of inventory items into memory from the server on every initial page load. After about a year and a half in production, this data set (not including image assets) is around 2.7 MB. So for every visitor to the web site, the javascript front-end pulls 2.7 MB data over the wire on initial page load. Of course this results in serious lag (around 8-12 seconds to load over most consumer-class broadband connections in my area). To me this load time is unacceptable. Of course once the data is loaded, the rest of the website is super snappy and responsive. Is loading an entire collection really the best-practice way of developing backbone.js apps? I'm trying to figure it out because the books and tutorials I've come across seem to teach this. Is there another pattern to follow? Trying to keep it backbone.js specific --- but how does one manage large datasets in this framework?"}
{"_id": "62751", "title": "Where is the best place to get off my feet in Python programming?", "text": "I have tried to learn C++ and Java before, but the syntax confused me. I definitely will be learning them after, but for now, where is the best place for a guy who has programmed before to learn python? Do you concur with me learning Python? Should I stick with Java or C++ before?"}
{"_id": "220909", "title": "Service layer vs DAO -- Why both?", "text": "I have been working with SpringMVC, Hibernate, and some databases in a java web application example. There are a few different ones that do this, but this Spring 3 and hibernate integration tutorial with example has a model class, view (in jsp), and a service and dao classes for the controller. My question is, don't both the service and DAO classes do the same thing? Why would you need them both? EDIT: This was the tutorial I was actually using (not that it matters) http://fruzenshtein.com/spring-mvc-security-mysql-hibernate/"}
{"_id": "115667", "title": "Tracking feature requests for small-scale components", "text": "I'm curious how other development teams (especially those that work in moderate to large development groups) track \"future\" features/wishlists for functionality for internally developed frameworks or components. I know the standard advice is that a development team should find one good tool for tracking bugs/features and use that for everything and I agree with that if the future requests are for the product itself. In my company we have an engineering department, which is broken up into multiple groups and within each there can be one to several agile teams. The bug tracking product we use has been \"a leader since 1997\" (their UI/usability seems to also be evaluated against that year even today) but my agile team or even group doesn't really control what is being used by the whole department. What we are looking to track is not necessarily product features but expansion/nice to have functionality for internal components that go into our product. So to name a few for example...   * framework/utility library on top of CppUnit which our developers share   * low-level IPC communications framework   * Common development SDK that myself and several other team leads started to help share some common code/tools at the department-wide level (this SDK is released as internal \"product\" to each of the groups). Is the standard practice to use the one bug tracking tool? Or would it make more sense to setup something more localized specifically for our needs and maintain it ourselves? It's also unclear how management will feel if developers start performing \"IT\" roles of maintaining software and servers. At the same time, right now, we use excel files, internal wiki and MS OneNote for this kind of stuff and that just doesn't feel right. (I'm afraid to ask for actual software recommendations, since that might make this question more localized or something. Also developers needs this way more than management, so it would be nice to find something either free or no more than the cost of a happy hour)."}
{"_id": "143886", "title": "Learning the basics", "text": "I am a Linux server administrator first and foremost... Having said that, I have been asked by a former high school teacher of mine to teach students a bit about programming. Like any Linux administrator, I know my fair share of Python and Bash. The problem is that I know NOTHING about the lower level stuff like \"machine code\" and compilation. The main purpose of this series is to teach programming, not computer science, so I don't need a graduate degree's level of knowledge for this, they will be learning Python first and foremost. However, I would like to learn enough to at least broach the subject with them, any ideas where I can learn that kind of stuff relatively quickly?"}
{"_id": "143887", "title": "What Technology can Render Medium Scale 3d Environments in a Web-Browser", "text": "I intend to make a web application that displays 3d environments that can be navigated by dragging(with a finger or mouse depending on the platform). The web app will render 3d environments of development sites including contours, water pipeline locations, buildings etc. I am trying to decide what technology/libraries to use that will create a web- app that will work on Android-Web-Browser, iOS-Safari, IE9, Safari, Firefox and Chrome. And also what technology will provide speed in development. I understand that this is _'asking for my cake and eating it too'/'asking for the moon'_ but I don't know all the technologies out there - so there may be advanced libraries that can render 3d environments across many web-browsers including the main smart phone ones and I dont know of them. The 3d rendering would not be highly detailed buildings or water with effects, but rather simple 3d representations of these objects. The environment would be navigable by dragging around and you could view the landscape in layers(view only contour lines, view only underground pipelines, view only sewerage pipes, etc.). **Are there any 3d libraries for web-browsers out there? Is there a way to run OpenGL(or OpenGL ES) through a webbrowser?** **What technology would you use if you were making this kind of app/web app that should work on desktop Windows, Android, iOS and WindowsPhone?** **Is there any technology I have failed to mention that would be good for this kind of project?** I am tending towards a Browser Driven Web App because I get that cross platform ability(where it even works on linux and MacOS by using compatible web-browsers). Also I know of CSS3 transforms that can create cubes that can rotate in 3d space(NOTE only works for WebKit browsers - so no IE :( ). _But I don't know if CSS3 is robust enough to render whole 3d environments? Do you think it could? Maybe I could use HTML5 canvas's for this? Can Google maps create custom 3d maps?_"}
{"_id": "250570", "title": "Is it useful to keep 'definition' entities in a database vs using an enum?", "text": "In a project that I have started working on, the database has a lot of `FooDefinition` tables which act like an enum. It's a C# project using Entity Framework although that is not central to the question. The entities have an ID, a string Name field and an int Type field that is converted to an enum. For example:               public class FooDefinition     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public string Name { get; set; }         public FooType FooType { get; set; } // this is an enum that defines the entity     }      The FooDefinition table is populated with an entity for each defined enum value, and does not change unless there is a new enum value added. I am struggling to see the use in this pattern over just using the enum directly as opposed to joining on this Definition table. What are the possible benefits of this approach?"}
{"_id": "137043", "title": "Greenspun's Tenth Rule, does every large project include a Lisp interpreter?", "text": "Greenspun's tenth rule (actually the only rule) states that: `Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.` My memory is that there are some papers on the topic, perhaps for Borland's Quattro (spreadsheet) project and possibly others. Google is unhelpful, maybe the right search terms are not coming to mind. I am looking for papers or articles supporting this claim, if any."}
{"_id": "113990", "title": "How can I inspire my group to start using an online collaborative tool more?", "text": "I'm in a project with 4 other people, and I've been willing to fully adopt a collaborative tool in order to make it possible to share information and store data (PDFs, DOCs, etc.) in an online tool, rather than doing it by e-mail. The problem is that I'm the only one enforcing it; actually I'm the only one using it. The others only use it when I ask them to do so. How would you handle this? Have you experienced something similar, if so, what have you done?"}
{"_id": "102194", "title": "How can you measure your own daily contributions?", "text": "I've recently finished the _The Three Signs of a Miserable Job_ by Patrick Lencioni and one of his core ideas is that you need to have _some_ form of measurement. I have a pretty standard internal developer job where I work on new tools and do some support/bug fixes for past tools I have written. For purely personal fulfillment reasons, what things would you measure on a daily basis? (This is not a report to managers and not something to game, just something to help me mark progress). The goal is to find things that measure not just productivity, but how good of a job you are doing (so a customer service person might record positive interactions in addition to number of calls taken). My stab at this would be to measure two things every day: support requests opened/closed and number of checkins to source control. I understand if this gets closed, but once again this isn't a question about management, its about personal development as a programmer/software developer."}
{"_id": "136794", "title": "Is it reasonable to run processes with CI tools?", "text": "At my company, we have a quagmire of disparate cron jobs (on multiple systems) and manually kicked off processes which keep our business functioning that is a result of years of expedient development and subsequent neglect. Someday, we will need to come up with a more centralized solution for obvious reasons. One thought that we have been kicking around is to use our Continuous Integration software (Jenkins) to run these processes, which seems logical. **My question is whether or not other companies are doing this? Is this a generally accepted practice? Doesn't this conflict with the definition of a CI tool implicit in its name? Are there any other options?** Note: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Meet+Jenkins Jenkins claims that it focuses on \"Monitoring executions of externally-run jobs, such as cron jobs and procmail jobs\". I'm not sure if this is exactly what I am talking about."}
{"_id": "132275", "title": "PHP web application architecture/design", "text": "I've been thrown head-first into a new job developing web applications in PHP. I'm by no means new to PHP, but I haven't developed large-scale applications before. I'm wondering how to structure my development to avoid setting myself up for problems in the future. How do I design and architect my applications in a sound way that allows them to scale over time in terms of functionality and performance. I'm thinking of things like:   * Separating back end from front end   * Directory structures I would appreciate pointers to architectural and application design patterns, frameworks and methods that allow me to approach large-scale PHP web application development in a sustainable way."}
{"_id": "147416", "title": "Estimating Cost of modifying someone elses code", "text": "I am relatively new to web development and haven't had to provide estimates for many large projects yet (my last large project was just paid for by the hour without a strict deadline or budget). A client is asking me to provide a cost and time estimate for providing a myriad of changes to another developers code for a website (php/mysql backend). Can anyone provide some advice or links on how to go about analyzing and estimating this? The code is horrible (the website was originally outsourced to india years and years ago) and it's hard to know if I'm going to suddenly hit hurdles and blow my estimates out of the water."}
{"_id": "142423", "title": "Is there a language between C and C++?", "text": "I really like the simple and transparent nature of C: when I write C code I feel unencumbered by \"leaky abstractions\" and can almost always make a shrewd guess as to the assembly I'm producing. I also like the simple, familiar syntax for C. However, C doesn't have these simple, helpful doodads that C++ offers like classes, simplified non-cstring handling, etc. I know that it's all possible to implement in C using jump tables and the like, but that's a bit wordy at times, and not very type-safe for various reasons. I'm not a fan of the over-emphasis on objects in C++, though, and I'm gun shy of the 'new' operator and the like. C++ seems to have just a few too many hiccups to, for instance, be used as a system programming language. Does there exist a language that sits between C and C++ on the scale of widgets and doodads? Disclaimer: I mean this as purely a factual question. I do not intend to anger you because I don't share your view that C{,++} is good enough to do whatever I'm planning."}
{"_id": "78750", "title": "What do programmers want in a web API?", "text": "I'm currently building a web API for popular piece of forum software (XenForo). What kind of things do developers find important in a web API? Are there certain architectures (REST, SOAP, etc.) that are much better than just doing my own thing? The API I have the most experience with is MediaWiki's API, but that doesn't seem to follow any sort of standard. What should I be planning to include (e.g. output formats, OAuth) and what are some good examples to follow?"}
{"_id": "78754", "title": "How to comfortably monitor 5 daemons while developing them?", "text": "This is the scenario: I'm on this project for which I wrote 4 Node.js scripts that act as \"servers\" for some service (they have to be separated). I also use Redis, that is another service to keep an eye on. The system is not yet in production (the reliability of it will raise another set of problems, but not now). While developing, those services spits a lot of interesting console.log() messages that I care of. I'm actually using a big terminal window split in 4 with GNU screen, but every time I have to start screen, ctrl+a+c, ctrl+a+c, ctrl+a+c and so on then manually start the services. How would you comfortably automate this operation? Or are there some tools to better enhance MY user experience as the shepherd of those little monsters? :) I'm on my way using ANOTHER service that will publish those logs via HTTP. The logs (mostly debug messages) will be published by the other 4 guys in a Redis channel that the log2http server will subscribe to..."}
{"_id": "106473", "title": "What does artifact mean?", "text": "The dictionary defines artifact as: > artefact, artifact [\u02c8\u0251\u02d0t\u026a\u02ccf\u00e6kt] n > >   1. something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, > esp an object of archaeological interest > >   2. anything man-made, such as a spurious experimental result > >   3. (Life Sciences & Allied Applications / Biology) Cytology a structure > seen in tissue after death, fixation, staining, etc., that is not normally > present in the living tissue > > The word `artifact` often appears in software development, software development cycles, effort estimation, etc. But the above definition doesn't make sense to me in that context. Could someone please explain this word by giving some specific examples from software industry?"}
{"_id": "106477", "title": "What standards does your team use for your specification documents headers and footers?", "text": "## TL;DR: What header/footer do you put on your Functional&Technical specifications to avoid people having different versions at meetings? ## Story: We're have a lot of documents, being changed by everyone. Functional specifications, technical specifications, addendums, etcetera. Problem is offcourse that during a meeting, after an hour someone notices their printed version differs from someone else's. I thought this could be solved by forcing everyone to use the same header/footer on each document: ### Header   * Project concerned   * Document title (center aligned)   * Document author (right aligned) ### Footer   * Last modification date   * Date on which document was printed   * Full document path and name (which always include the version number)   * Page X of Y This way, we could all easily check the filename and last modification date before starting the meeting, and make sure everyone has the same copy and is talking about the same document. Would this work? Am I missing something? What do you guys use for your specifications to avoid versioning problems?"}
{"_id": "99605", "title": "In pair programming, what is each role named, and why?", "text": "I've heard the person at the keyboard named the \"driver\", and the other person named the \"navigator\". I've imagined rally car racers, where the person at the wheel just _cannot_ keep up with _everything_ that's happening, and they _must_ have the help of the \"navigator\", who's shouting volumes and volumes of directions at them to, literally, keep them \"out of the weeds\", much like a person at the keyboard is kept \"on course\" by the person in the second chair. What are the more/most commonly accepted terms for the two roles in pair programming, and (if it's not obvious) are they borrowed from any earlier professions?"}
{"_id": "222229", "title": "Team Git workflow working with a multi-project Sitecore solution using TDS", "text": "We are a team of 8-10 developers working on different parts of a Sitecore instance. In the past we've used SVN and more recently (and successfully) Hg, but are moving to using Git as our primary source control. We're working with Sitecore 7, and using the latest TDS from Hedgehog. In case it matters we're also using the Glass.Mapper.sc lib from Mike Edwards. The problem we're running into, especially compared to how easy it was with Hg, is that merges are a nightmare. It doesn't help that most of our team is new to Git, but most of us have at least used Hg so it's not a huge leap. We've had so many problems that we moved to a merge-master setup, where the team leads are handling all the merges. My question is this: From people using these tools, what would you suggest is the best workflow and supporting configuration? A team member suggested rebasing to reduce conflicts, but that doesn't seem to matter. Our Hg workflow, which worked very well was: 1) Commit local changes as many times as needed. 2) Pull changes from the server, and update to the remote branch after any merge. 3) Sync TDS. We do this after the pull so that we're not overwriting the .scproj file in the merge 4) Commit the merge and TDS sync 5) Push the results back to remote We didn't have merge nightmares and tds was kept very clean. We tried to adapt something similar with Git and have wasted a lot of time each week to resolve issues. We currently have each dev working in their own branch because of the merge errors working with everyone in master. The type of merge issues I'm seeing seem to mostly come from what Git merges automatically. I definitely don't want to merge everything by hand every time, but I wouldn't mind doing project file merges by hand. We're using Sourcetree and I have BeyondCompare Pro. Any suggestions, especially coming from successful implementations, would be greatly appreciated. If there are simply config changes that can be made or a change to our workflow to make the process more reliable I'd love to learn about them."}
{"_id": "99607", "title": "declaration and definition", "text": "People say definition is used when the declared stuff has some memory allocated. If I declare a class               class fish     {       char* name;       int type;       //someting i dont know about fish     };      int main()     {         fish a;        return 0;     }      Should it mean this is a declared fish or a defined fish ? Let me try first! it is called a defined fish! I now leave a breapoint at //something..... (that is a valid declaration of something I just dont know) Do you know what is there that at //someting the debugger may never reach ? Does that also mean there is no memory allocation for it. I'll be deeply sad to hear a no."}
{"_id": "99606", "title": "How best to learn OOP concepts/principles practically?", "text": "I wanted to learn object oriented programming language, I dont want it for any purpose just to know the whole concept of OOP. So can anyone tell me which language I should start learning?"}
{"_id": "99601", "title": "What is the \"PHP Way\"?", "text": "I see constant references to the \" Way,\" such as descriptions of a particular framework or application as \"Pythonic,\" a certain person as a \"Perl hacker,\" or \"true Ruby code,\" but where are the \"PHP hackers,\" the \"PHP-ic\" applications, the \"true PHP style\"? This made me think - does PHP even have a definite style? Saying PHP is easily \"changeable\" to other styles doesn't count, as the same goes for any reasonable language. Any input much appreciated."}
{"_id": "196698", "title": "Distributed SVN?", "text": "I work for a large bureaucratic (and security paranoid) organisation that provides SVN for its development teams to use. I am working with a 3rd party vendor (at their site) and we currently share code via SVN export and patch files. The only way I have for transferring files is by a FTP drop box or email. I would like a better way to work. I am currently lobbying to get some kind of DCVS system setup, ideally cloud hosted. Failing that I want a better way to manage keeping SVN repositories in sync. In the meantime (or if I fail to get DCVS) how do I keep two SVN repositories in sync? How do I best manage exporting the repository? How do I manage incoming changes?"}
{"_id": "115599", "title": "Is it poor technique to have functions within a class depend on one another in a \"cascade\" type fashion?", "text": "I am fairly new to PHP and OOP. Having said that, I wanted to know how independent functions should be within a class. I know that each function should be responsible for doing just one thing. However, as you can see in my class below, I occasionally find myself creating functions that build upon one another in a \"cascade\" type fashion. Is this good practice? Is there a different way I should be structuring this class/these types of functions? I want to make sure I am developing good habits. Thanks in advance for your help.               class PubMedQuery {          private $query;     private $searchParameters;     private $searchURL;     private $fetchParameters;     private $fetchURL;     private $searchResults;     private $fetchResults;     private $matches;     private $matchRegex;     private $emailAddresses;          public function __construct($query) {         $this->query = $query;     }          public function setSearchParameters() {         $this->searchParameters = array(             'db'         => 'pubmed',             'term'       => $this->query,             'retmode'    => 'xml',             'retstart'   => '0',             'retmax'     => '1000',             'usehistory' => 'y'         );     }          public function getSearchParameters() {         return $this->searchParameters;      }           public function setFetchParameters() {         $this->fetchParameters = array(             'db'        => 'pubmed',             'retmax'    => '1000',             'query_key' => (string) $this->searchResults->QueryKey,             'WebEnv'    => (string) $this->searchResults->WebEnv         );     }          public function getFetchParameters() {         return $this->fetchParameters;      }           public function setSearchURL() {         $this->baseSearchURL = 'http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils /esearch.fcgi?';         $this->searchURL = $this->baseSearchURL . http_build_query($this->getSearchParameters());     }          public function getSearchURL() {         return $this->searchURL;      }          public function setFetchURL() {         $this->baseFetchURL = 'http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/efetch.fcgi?';         $this->fetchURL = $this->baseFetchURL . http_build_query($this->getFetchParameters());     }          public function getFetchURL() {         return $this->fetchURL;      }          public function setSearchResults() {         $this->setSearchParameters();           $this->setSearchURL();         $this->searchResults = simplexml_load_file($this->getSearchURL());     }          public function getSearchResults() {         $this->setFetchParameters();         $this->setFetchURL();         return file_get_contents($this->getFetchURL());      }          public function setEmailAddresses() {         $this->matches = array();         $this->matchRegex = '/[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}/';          preg_match_all($this->matchRegex, $this->getSearchResults(), $this->matches);         $this->emailAddresses = array_unique(array_values($this->matches[0]));     }          public function getEmailAddresses() {         $this->setSearchResults();         $this->getSearchResults();         $this->setEmailAddresses();         return $this->emailAddresses;     }     }          //Example using search term \"psoriasis\"     $query  = new PubMedQuery('psoriasis');     echo implode('<br />', $query->getEmailAddresses());"}
{"_id": "115598", "title": "How can I justify software testing to management?", "text": "I work for a small company (less than 200 employees) whose software group only makes up a small part of our staff (4 employees, occasionally with a few contractors). The four of us have been making strides in transitioning to better practices, and one of the next logical steps is to improve our testing. As anyone who has done any meaningful tests knows, testing takes a lot of time - and at my company, it takes too much time to justify to management, so we generally do what little we do on the sly. I don't think this is serving us well, as we keep coming up against otherwise avoidable problems when we ship under-tested software. I would like to be able to come to management with a justification for hiring a dedicated software test engineer (someone who can both write automated tests and perform manual ones). Are there any good published studies that show the benefits of adding such a position to a small company? Where can I find information about costs associated with the position? I plan on doing a little number crunching on our own history, but having some external sources to point to would help bolster my case."}
{"_id": "183576", "title": "async+await == sync?", "text": "Stumbled upon this post that talks about making async web requests. Now simplicity aside, if in real world, all you do is make an async request and wait for it in the very next line, isn't that the same as making a sync call in the first place?"}
{"_id": "222226", "title": "What design pattern matches this problem the closest?", "text": "I have two objects, one is a User object and the other is a Content object. The User object has properties like 'reads_articles' or 'reads_books'. The Content object has properties like 'is_article' or 'is_book'. If the two properties match up (i.e. the User reads_articles and the Content is_article), then the User can see the Content. Basically, I am looking for the best solution to approach this without using a switch() statement. I am also wondering if maybe I'm making this too difficult and/or a design pattern is overkill here. Preliminary research has suggested that the Strategy pattern may be the most appropriate, but I'm having a hard time modeling this problem to that pattern. I don't want to hard code the tests - I would really like to come up with a general solution that examines the properties of both classes, and determines whether the Content can be viewed by that User. Clarification: My end goal is an algorithm that will examine the properties of the User and the properties of the Content, and see if they match. Basically, I want to see if the two objects have matching properties (without hardcoding the properties themselves into the algorithm) and do some actions. Not sure if what I want is a pipe dream, so I thought I would ask. Thanks for the help!"}
{"_id": "196690", "title": "Did I answer this correctly and concisely?", "text": "By email I just answered my brother who is learning computer programming that C++ and Java are more similar than C and C++ even though C++ is nearly a superset of C. Do you agree? AFAIK Stanley Lippman wrote the \"canonical work\" (C++ Primer) on C++ and Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan wrote the \"canonical work\" (The C Programming Language) on C but I'm no C++ expert so I ask you the question. Here is the conversation translated to English: > ---------- Forwarded message ----------   >  From: Niklas   >  Date: 1 May 2013 07:22 > > It is rather that one knows Java if one knows C++. > > There is more difference between C and C++ than between Java and C++ example > C + + features, but does not use, pointers, rather than using C + + so- > called references which also are used in Java instead of pointers. In C > dynamic memory is allocated with malloc and in C++, this is done with the > keyword new and in C is dynamic memory is released using the keyword free > which in C++ is called called delete. > > Operating systems get programmed in C and assembly language, and > applications such as GUI programming are done with more object-oriented > languages e.g. C++, Java, Visual Basic, Flash...so it depends on what > problem you want to solve, CPU scheduling or widgets. There are different > paradigms. > > On 1 May 2013 07:16 wrote Holger: > > I'm reading a book on C++. So far it seems to be identical to java, except > for a few minor syntactical variations (include instead of import, etc.), > but I assume that the differences will subsequently. Is it possible to > automatically C if it can C + +? > > On May 1, 2013 6:45 AM, \"Niklas\" wrote: > > Hello! Here is the pdf of programming in C. It's fine to ask me if you have > any questions. Sincerely, Niklas"}
{"_id": "161336", "title": "How to generate random numbers without making new Random objects?", "text": "I'm using this as part of a game, but it's not really a game development question, so I'm putting it on this more general Stack Exchange. The goal is to generate \"random\" outputs for a fixed integer input, but (and this is the clincher) to generate the _same_ random output every time the _same_ random input is put in. The idea here is that the function will generate the world the same way every time, so we don't need to store anything; the function itself is the storage. Unfortunately access speed is a little slow, because the only way I can find to generate random numbers is to create a new Random() object with a seed based on the input, which is surprisingly slow. Is there a better way? I'm not worried about crypto-safe generation; in fact I'm just going to pick a random seed in advance and expose it quite publicly. The current code looks like this:               private const int seed;          public MapCell GetMapCell(int x, int y)     {         Random ran = new Random(seed + (x ^ y));         return new MapCell(ran.NextInt(0, 4));     }      Where the `MapCell` is one of four types (in fact it's more complicated than this, but not a whole lot). The point is that this could be called for any parameters, at any time, in no particular order, but it needs to return the same answer every time, if x and y are the same every time. That's why I can't fix a certain Random object and use it repeatedly. I also don't want to store anything, because I want to keep the RAM usage quite low, but allow the player to wander freely to the edges of `Int.MaxValue`"}
{"_id": "216448", "title": "Naming methods that perform HTTP GET/POST calls?", "text": "In the application I am currently working on, there are generally 3 types of HTTP calls:   * pure GETs   * pure POSTs (updating the model with new data)   * \"GET\" POSTs (posting down an object to get some data back, no updates to the model) In the integration service, generally we name methods that post \"postSomething()\", and methods that get, \"getSomething()\". So my question is, if we have a \"GET\" POST, should the method be called:   * getSomething - seeing as the purpose is to obtain data   * postSomething - since we are technically using POST   * performSomeAction - arbitrary name that's more relevant to the action What are everyone's thoughts?"}
{"_id": "216443", "title": "What is meant by, \"A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or Security system should.\"", "text": "The example used in the question pass bare minimum data to a function touches on the best way to determine whether the user is an administrator or not. One common answer was:               user.isAdmin()      This prompted a comment which was repeated several times and up-voted many times: > A user shouldn't decide whether it is an Admin or not. The Privileges or > Security system should. Something being tightly coupled to a class doesn't > mean it is a good idea to make it part of that class. I replied, > The user isn't deciding anything. The User object/table stores data about > each user. Actual users don't get to change everything about themselves. But this was not productive. Clearly there is an underlying difference of perspective which is making communication difficult. Can someone explain to me why user.isAdmin() is bad, and paint a brief sketch of what it looks like done \"right\"? Really, I fail to see the advantage of separating security from the system that it protects. Any security text will say that security needs to be designed into a system from the beginning and considered at every stage of development, deployment, maintenance, and even end-of-life. It is not something that can be bolted on the side. But 17 up-votes so far on this comment says that I'm missing something important."}
{"_id": "216440", "title": "SOA, Java EE and data organization", "text": "At the company I work for, we're currently splitting up our monolith solution into a number of small services (SOA). The purpose of this is to make the developers working on each chunk of code (service) more independent, and on the whole to make the code base more manageable. When a change in code is introduced, only one part (i.e. a whole service) needs to be deployed, instead of having to deploy _everything_. This also helps with testing, there's less of a need to test everything when something is deployed. Many of the services are small, so we'd like to deploy a number of these services on the same application server, JBoss 7.1 in this case. As per the SOA philosophy, the independence of each service and the teams working on them is very important. What would be the best way to organize the data?   * Use one schema per service      * Would you use one datasource per schema in the application server?     * Or use one datasource, prefixing all DB object names with the schema name in some transparent manner?   * Use a shared schema, but evading any naming collisions by requiring each service to use a distinct prefix for all DB objects   * Other options? Am I maybe thinking this completely wrong here? :) Edit: Explained _why_ the code base is being split up from a monolith to smaller services."}
{"_id": "23121", "title": "Why are good programmers referred to as Ninjas?", "text": "How is a Ninja programmer defined? If it is just an experienced developer, then is there really no better way to describe that? Ninja sounds like a childish marketing ploy designed to attract developers with delusions of self- grandeur. Or am I missing something? In particular I want to know what qualities of a Ninja are desired in programmers that makes the comparison valid (besides the coolness factor)? I did find this article which makes some good comparisons between Ninja characteristics and Agile development. However, I would like to hear from people who have used the word Ninja for hiring purposes and what their motivation was behind it. **Update:** There were several good points raised on both sides of the argument. I've tried to summarize these in my blog post. I've chosen JB's answer as the accepted one because it summarizes all the valid reasons for making the comparison."}
{"_id": "23120", "title": "Does tweeting 9 to 5 hurt job applicants?", "text": "If you were looking into a job applicant's background and discovered that he or she has 1200 followers on Twitter and averages 50 tweets per day (more than half of which are during business hours), would it affect your hiring decision? How and why? Personally, I'd be a little worried about the candidate's ability to focus on the job at hand if they're constantly checking in with their 'tweeps' thoughout the day. In non-tech jobs, a lot of companies simply block Twitter as an irrelevant distraction. But it _can_ be a useful resource---to programmers in particular. I just wonder how much is too much. At what point does it become a red flag?"}
{"_id": "66125", "title": "Is there any reason to Dual-License a permissive License with a copyleft one?", "text": "My understanding of permissive licenses (MIT, BSD) is that they allow a user to re-license the software, provided that they attribute moderate portions to the original author. Is there a reason why anybody would dual-license with something like MIT and GPL, if the MIT license would allow any person to take the code and license it as GPL? I know JQuery does this, but I don't understand why. Am I misunderstanding the MIT license or is it just redundant?"}
{"_id": "204249", "title": "Should integration test be included in continues integration (CI)?", "text": "Assume that we are developing a web application, and Hudson does typical jobs such as compile, unit test and static code analysis. But the tricky part is: Hudson **deploys and starts up application server to do integration tests** , once the previous jobs done. That means some difficult things, such as database connection, 3rd part application connection, socket port listening, environment variables, server start up failure handing, etc. We have to set up and tear down these things correctly each time, it\u2019s hard thing. Worse, the integration tests can break the integration test easily. Do you think if integration test should be included in continues integration (CI)? Can it be manually? Or simplify integration test?"}
{"_id": "109312", "title": "Are database schema migrations a problem in production environments?", "text": "In discussions about NoSQL vs SQL databases, I sometimes hear that companies prefer to use schemaless NoSQL databases because it is problematic to migrate the schema to a new version. But is that really a big problem when doing upgrades? Are relational databases bad for such operations? I read this blog post on the MongoDB blog: Why Schemaless?"}
{"_id": "196349", "title": "Passing data between two windows forms using visual c++ 2010", "text": "1. So, i have a simple forms application : i have a form 1 ( **Form1.h** ) and a second form ( **Form2.h** ). Form1 consists of a simple _Add User button_ (which at this stage does nothing but _opens the form2 and hides form1_ ).(Till this point , everything works).    But when I _add a button \"Done\" to the Form2_ which is supposed to _open form1_ again , there are following **errors** :   left of ->Show must point to class/struct/union/generic type   f1: undeclared identifier   Form1: undeclared identifier   Please help!   2. the code is :              //Project Name: MultipleForms     //Form1.h     #ifndef FORM1_H     #define FORM1_H     #pragma once     #include \"Form2.h\"     namespace MultipleForms {              using namespace System;         using namespace System::ComponentModel;         using namespace System::Collections;         using namespace System::Windows::Forms;         using namespace System::Data;         using namespace System::Drawing;              /// <summary>         /// Summary for Form1         /// </summary>         public ref class Form1 : public System::Windows::Forms::Form         {         public:             Form1(void)             {                 InitializeComponent();                 //                 //TODO: Add the constructor code here                 //             }              protected:             /// <summary>             /// Clean up any resources being used.             /// </summary>             ~Form1()             {                 if (components)                 {                     delete components;                 }             }         private: System::Windows::Forms::Button^  btnAddUser;         private: System::Windows::Forms::Button^  btnExit;         protected:               private:             /// <summary>             /// Required designer variable.             /// </summary>             System::ComponentModel::Container ^components;          #pragma region Windows Form Designer generated code             /// <summary>             /// Required method for Designer support - do not modify             /// the contents of this method with the code editor.             /// </summary>             void InitializeComponent(void)             {                 this->btnAddUser = (gcnew System::Windows::Forms::Button());                 this->btnExit = (gcnew System::Windows::Forms::Button());                 this->SuspendLayout();                 //                  // btnAddUser                 //                  this->btnAddUser->Location = System::Drawing::Point(78, 44);                 this->btnAddUser->Name = L\"btnAddUser\";                 this->btnAddUser->Size = System::Drawing::Size(75, 23);                 this->btnAddUser->TabIndex = 0;                 this->btnAddUser->Text = L\"Add User\";                 this->btnAddUser->UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;                 this->btnAddUser->Click += gcnew System::EventHandler(this, &Form1::btnAddUser_Click);                 //                  // btnExit                 //                  this->btnExit->Location = System::Drawing::Point(263, 136);                 this->btnExit->Name = L\"btnExit\";                 this->btnExit->Size = System::Drawing::Size(75, 23);                 this->btnExit->TabIndex = 1;                 this->btnExit->Text = L\"Exit\";                 this->btnExit->UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;                 this->btnExit->Click += gcnew System::EventHandler(this, &Form1::btnExit_Click);                 //                  // Form1                 //                  this->AutoScaleDimensions = System::Drawing::SizeF(6, 13);                 this->AutoScaleMode = System::Windows::Forms::AutoScaleMode::Font;                 this->ClientSize = System::Drawing::Size(410, 200);                 this->Controls->Add(this->btnExit);                 this->Controls->Add(this->btnAddUser);                 this->Name = L\"Form1\";                 this->Text = L\"Form1\";                 this->ResumeLayout(false);                  }     #pragma endregion         private: System::Void btnAddUser_Click(System::Object^  sender, System::EventArgs^  e) {                      Form2^ f2 = gcnew Form2();                      f2->Show();                      this->Hide();                  }         private: System::Void btnExit_Click(System::Object^  sender, System::EventArgs^  e) {                      exit(1);                  }         };     }          #endif          //Form2.h          #include \"Form1.h\"     #ifndef FORM2_H     #define FORM2_H     #pragma once          #include<stdlib.h>          namespace MultipleForms {              using namespace System;         using namespace System::ComponentModel;         using namespace System::Collections;         using namespace System::Windows::Forms;         using namespace System::Data;         using namespace System::Drawing;              /// <summary>         /// Summary for Form2         /// </summary>         public ref class Form2 : public System::Windows::Forms::Form         {         public:             Form2(void)             {                 InitializeComponent();                 //                 //TODO: Add the constructor code here                 //             }              protected:             /// <summary>             /// Clean up any resources being used.             /// </summary>             ~Form2()             {                 if (components)                 {                     delete components;                 }             }         private: System::Windows::Forms::Button^  btnDone;         protected:               protected:               private:             /// <summary>             /// Required designer variable.             /// </summary>             System::ComponentModel::Container ^components;          #pragma region Windows Form Designer generated code             /// <summary>             /// Required method for Designer support - do not modify             /// the contents of this method with the code editor.             /// </summary>             void InitializeComponent(void)             {                 this->btnDone = (gcnew System::Windows::Forms::Button());                 this->SuspendLayout();                 //                  // btnDone                 //                  this->btnDone->Location = System::Drawing::Point(98, 110);                 this->btnDone->Name = L\"btnDone\";                 this->btnDone->Size = System::Drawing::Size(75, 23);                 this->btnDone->TabIndex = 0;                 this->btnDone->Text = L\"Done\";                 this->btnDone->UseVisualStyleBackColor = true;                 this->btnDone->Click += gcnew System::EventHandler(this, &Form2::btnDone_Click);                 //                  // Form2                 //                  this->AutoScaleDimensions = System::Drawing::SizeF(6, 13);                 this->AutoScaleMode = System::Windows::Forms::AutoScaleMode::Font;                 this->ClientSize = System::Drawing::Size(292, 273);                 this->Controls->Add(this->btnDone);                 this->Name = L\"Form2\";                 this->Text = L\"Form2\";                 this->ResumeLayout(false);                  }     #pragma endregion         private: System::Void btnDone_Click(System::Object^  sender, System::EventArgs^  e) {                      Form1^ f1 = gcnew Form1();                      f1->Show();                      this->Hide();                  }         };     }     #endif"}
{"_id": "73856", "title": "TFS - web sites based under IIS - how to handle branching", "text": "I'm just looking for some advice/best practice for this situation: We have a solution with a couple of web sites in it (one is a web site project, the other is a web application project). We have both of these sites set up to use our installed IIS (v7), as we have other projects that we need to access these via localhost whilst debugging. We've just moved to TFS (from GIT) - when we switch branches, I have to go and 'repoint' my virtual directories under IIS to point at the new branch, which is a bit of a nuisance. Does anybody have any advice/guidance as to what is the best way to approach this? I would note that I don't think that switching to using Cassini will suit our situation."}
{"_id": "196341", "title": "How do you test database abstraction in PHP?", "text": "I apologise in advance if this question is too subjective but I'm struggling to find a good answer, probably as there is not really a correct answer to give. I'm currently writing a database abstraction layer to unify the use of a single API throughout my applications. Possibly re-inventing the wheel but I'm mainly doing it for my specific need of certain Oracle functionality that will eventually be migrated away from Oracle. For the Oracle driver I'm finding it difficult to test the object due to the lack of an OO API in PHP, so to test I need to touch the database. There seems to be two schools of thought on testing database functionality.   1. Don't touch the database, mock it all away (obviously impossible without an OO API).   2. Allow the functionality to run and therefore feature test rather than unit test. My question is two fold, has anyone done this before and how did you handle testing? If you haven't had cause to do this before, what are your thoughts on how you would handle it and why?"}
{"_id": "196340", "title": "atlassian confluence as source for bdd stories", "text": "I want to start using BDD in our company. The best place to keep stories from my point of view is the Atlassian Wiki pages. Obviously I expected some existing techniques for retrieving stories from pages, but found only an advice to use `pageUrl?decorator=printable` to get the page in printable form and parse it afterwards. And that is it, no plugins nothing... **Question** : What is the best way to retrieve stories from Atlassian Wiki? Are there any well known alternatives? I can definitely keep them in the SVN folder where business analysts could have access to, but this is far much less comfortable for them. All other technical documentation is kept on wiki and I do not want to split it."}
{"_id": "29657", "title": "Purpose of `return self` from a class method?", "text": "I came across something like this in an open-source project. Methods that modify instance attributes return a reference to the instance. Would you trust code that is written like this?               class Foo(object):            def __init__(self):         self.myattr = 0            def bar(self):         self.myattr += 1         return self"}
{"_id": "72455", "title": "Being the only developer and its consequences", "text": "I am the only developer in my company. I do programming (in ASP.NET 4.0, jQuery and SQL Server 2008) and maintain the database and web server (win 2008 r2). I enjoy the freedom of implementing what I like at the same time I feel I could be doing everything in a bad way. I don\u2019t use any SDLC diagrams not any kind of methods like Agile etc. I handle multiple small projects. I use my free time in keeping up with latest technologies and learning and testing new stuff. I have been doing this for the past 7 years.   1. My concern is how difficult will it be for me to adjust when I switch my job to a company wherein more developers are involved in a project?   2. Since I don\u2019t follow any design pattern would it play against me when I look for job or get adjusted with new job?   3. Any other pros/cons you can think of?"}
{"_id": "72454", "title": "Packaging F#/C# Application", "text": "There is a .NET application built using F# (the core part, as a DLL) and C# (the GUI part, using WPF). What is the best way to package it and to make an installer package and what are the most appropriate tools to use, commercial or free? It needs to include F# redistributable package in my application package and to check/download .NET framework needed. As you guessed, I'm completely new to this Windows world. Thanks in advance. Kh"}
{"_id": "179096", "title": "What's so great about Clojure?", "text": "I've been taking a look at Clojure lately and I stumbled upon this post on Stackoverflow that indicates some projects following best practices, and overall good Clojure code. I wanted to get my head around the language after reading some basic tutorials so I took a look at some \"real-world\" projects. After looking at ClojureScript and Compojure (two the the aforementioned \"good\" projects), I just feel like Clojure is a joke. I don't understand why someone would pick Clojure over say, Ruby or Python, two languages that I love and have such a clean syntax and are very easy to pick up whereas Clojure uses _so much_ parenthesis and symbols everywhere that it ruins the readability for me. I think that Ruby and Python are beautiful, readable and elegant. They are easy to read even for someone who does not know the language inside out. However, Clojure is opaque to me and I feel like I must know every tiny detail about the language implementation in order to be able to understand any code. So please, enlighten me!   * What is so good about Clojure?   * What is the absolute minimum that I should know about the language in order to appreciate it?"}
{"_id": "72459", "title": "UML modeling tool for Linux", "text": "I am starting a new project using Eclipse under Linux and I am looking for a UML 2.x **modeling tool** not just a diagramming tool.   * Do anyone has experience with UML plugin for Eclipse? Does it support all UML diagrams?   * Do you recommend another modeling tool?   * If you have been in a similar situation, what did you end up doing anyway?"}
{"_id": "206752", "title": "Why do different java collections have different default capacity?", "text": "Looking at different collection constructors the question comes to mind. Why does ArrayList() construct an empty list with an initial capacity of ten and ArrayDeque() constructs an empty array deque with an initial capacity sufficient to hold 16 elements."}
{"_id": "179094", "title": "Windows Server or Linux for final project", "text": "A few weeks ago I came up with an idea to develop a mobile app which will direct students in my university to the nearest printer availiable. The whole thing is part of my final project.   The Android based app will need to perform the following tasks:   1. The user's location in the campus is sent to the server. Assume this part works just fine.   2. The server sends an SNMP request to the printers in the user's vicinity. I'll probably use PHP or Python for that part.   3. The data requested by SNMP is processed and sent back to the client My question concerns the server. The university's IT manager offered me a designated server for development, which sounds great. Now I need to choose which OS I want installed on the server - Windows server or Linux (don't know which versions). I don't have any server programming/operating experince, but generally speaking I feel more comfortable in Windows enviroment (just because that has always been my OS). I don't have much time for learning a new OS, but when does it make sense generally to host or develop server side applications on a Windows environment versus a Linux environment?"}
{"_id": "144147", "title": "Automated architecture validation", "text": "I am aware of the fact that TFS 2010 ultimate edition can create and validate architecture diagrams. For example, I can create a new modeling project > add Layer Diagram > Add Layer called View > Add BL Layer > Add DL layer. Then I can validate this architecture as part of the build process when someone tries to check code into TFS. In other words, if the View references the DL then the compilation process will fail and the checkin will not be allowed. For those without an MSDN ultimate license, can FxCop or some 3rd party utility be used to validate architecture in an automated fashion? I prefer a TFS install-able plugin, but a local VS plugin will do."}
{"_id": "209984", "title": "Why was F# created?", "text": "For my current class, I have to pick and research a Programming Language (or popular scripting language) and answer quite a few questions about it, write a paper, and do some example programs displaying it's strengths and weaknesses compared to other languages. I'm currently looking into F# as a possible candidate, my problem is I can't find any information stating (at least explicitly) why F# was created. I've found many strengths and a few weaknesses of F# but do these necessarily imply reasons as to why it was created? Does anyone know any links or reads that would explicitly state why F# was created and/or the history of F# (particularly things like, what the creator was thinking, and stuff like that)? And yes, I've been searching and will continue to, I just can only find implicit reasons, and I was hoping to find something stating explicitly reasons why F# was created."}
{"_id": "209982", "title": "Is it considered Pythonic to have multiple classes defined in the same file?", "text": "In working with python for the first time, I've found that I end up writing multiple classes in the same file, which is opposed to other languages like Java, which uses one file per class. Usually, these classes are made up of 1 abstract base class, with 1-2 concrete implementations who's use varies slightly. I've posted one such file below:               class Logger(object):              def __init__(self, path, fileName):             self.logFile = open(path + '/' + filename, 'w+')             self.logFile.seek(0, 2)              def log(self, stringtoLog):             self.logFile.write(stringToLog)              def __del__(self):             self.logFile.close()          class TestLogger(Logger):                 def __init__(self, serialNumber):             Logger.__init__('/tests/ModuleName', serialNumber):              def readStatusLine(self):             self.logFile.seek(0,0)             statusLine = self.logFile.readLine()             self.logFile.seek(0,2)             return StatusLine              def modifyStatusLine(self, newStatusLine):             self.logFile.seek(0,0)             self.logFile.write(newStatusLine)             self.logFile.seek(0,2)          class GenericLogger(Logger):              def __init__(self, fileName):             Logger.__init__('/tests/GPIO', fileName):              def logGPIOError(self, errorCode):             self.logFile.write(str(errorCode))      As seen above, I have a Logger base class, with a couple of implementation differences below that. **The Question:** Is this standard for python, or for any language? What problems could arise from using this implementation if any? **EDIT:** I'm not really looking for guidance on this _specific_ file, but in a more general sense. What if the classes ended up being 3-5 moderately complex methods? Would it make sense to split them then? Where is the cutoff for saying you should split a file up?"}
{"_id": "209983", "title": "Best way to process a queue in C# (PDF treatment)", "text": "First of all let me expose what I would like to do : I already dispose of a long-time running webapp developed in ASP.NET (C#) 2.0. In this app, users can upload standard PDF files (text+pics). The app is running in production on a Windows Server 2003 and has a dedicated database server (SQL server 2008) also running Windows Server 2003. I myself am a quite experienced web developer, but never actually programmed anything non-web (or at least nothing serious). I plan on adding a functionality to the webapp for which I would need a jpg snapshot of each page of the PDF. Creating these \"thumbnails\" isn't the big deal as such, I already do it inside my webapp using ghostscript. I've only done it on 1 page documents for now though, and the new functionality will need to process bigger documents. In order for this process to be transparent aswell for the admins as the final users, I would like to implement some kind of queue to delay the processing of the thumbnails. There again, no problem to create the queue, it will consist of records in a table, with enough info to find the pdf document back. Then I will need to process this queue, and that's were my interrogations start. Obviously the best solution to process it isn't an ASP script or so, so I will have to get out of my known environment. No problem, but I have no idea which direction to go. Therefore, a few questions :   * What should I develop ? I presumably need something that is \"standby\" on the server, runs when needed, then returns to idle state until further notice.Should I be looking into Windows service ? Is there another more appropriate type of project ?    * Depending on the first answer, what will be the approach ? Should I have somehow SQL server \"tell\" the program/service/... to process the queue, or should I have that program/service/... periodically check the state of the queue and treat new items. In both case, which functionality can I use ?   * we're not talking about hundreds of PDF a day (max 50 maybe), I can totally afford to treat the queue 1 item at a time. Can you confirm I don't have to look much further on threads and so ? (I found a lot of answers talking about threads in queue treatment, but it looks quite overkill for my needs)   * Maybe linked to the previous question : what about concurrent call to the program, whatever it is ? Let's suppose it is currently running, and a new record comes in the queue, what should be the behaviour ? I don't need much detailed answers and would already be happy with answers like \"You can do the processing with a service, and yes it's possible to have sqlserver on machine A trigger a service start on machine B\" or \"You have to develop xxx and then use the scheduler to run it every xxx minutes\". I don't mind reading articles and so, but I can hardly afford to spend too much time learning stuff to finally realize I went the wrong way for this project, so basically I'm trying to narrow down the scope of matters I need to investigate. Thanks for reading me, I hope I'll find some helping hands on here :-)"}
{"_id": "224101", "title": "How would I structure my code into an MVC format?", "text": "I want to have the home page (root of the website), check if a cookie exists for a user being logged in, and then based off of that determining whether or not to load the sign up page (landing page) or the feed of the user logged in. Where would I have this check occur? I've kept it in the controller for now, but based on some articles I've read (such as Skinny Controller, Fat Model, I'm not sure that's the right place to keep it in."}
{"_id": "224109", "title": "Is there any way without looking at the source code to know how modular the code is", "text": "I've been working with TDD, most patterns, mostly OO code and still not found a way of knowing if a particular piece of code confirms to modularity , without the need reviewing the code. On a recent project which had split up everything into jars specifying a \"module\" which still wasn't modular code. So is there any way of actually knowing or measuring if code is modular or not? Modularity is away of minimizing the ripple effect when doing changes to a system. I've been doing a post mortem on a large system and one of the biggest issues have been the inability of containing changes to a minimum. There are several reasons for this, one where the code is actually not modularized despite following best practices. As a result the belief have been that the system is actually resilient for changes but in practice it isn't. A distinct pattern have emerged and shows why the system fails being modularized and that might be a a way of actually provide metrics for how modularized you code is."}
{"_id": "50038", "title": "How to 'reproduce copyright` in an app?", "text": ">   * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright   >  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the   >  documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. > The above is quoted from a BSD licensed COPYING file. How can I \"reproduce the above copyright\" when I distribute my app in binary form? Should I put the COPYING file content in some `Credit`/`About` screen of my app or what? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "145819", "title": "How do I communicate concepts and design for a web application?", "text": "Iam not sure if this topic is ok to ask, but we are talking about this since years in our Developer-\"Shop\". How to write concepts for Web- Applications? We are using Zend Framework (MVC), OOP Based, Databases, LDAP and such stuff. But no one ive ever meet can show me an good example for some kind of \"technical conception\". Goal: Write an document, hand it our to an 2nd person with \"some\" knowledge about our systems and good PHP 5/Zend Framework skills. Now he must be able to code without many questions to the architect. Is it possible that this is not common in the \"web scene\"? Does everyone is just hacking code till the application works? If someone knows some good papers, examples .. Some keywords to think about:   * ERM   * UML"}
{"_id": "24583", "title": "Any real use of pointers in C#?", "text": "What is a situation while coding in C# where using pointers is a good or necessary option? I'm talking about _unsafe_ pointers."}
{"_id": "145817", "title": "Can writing mobile apps be a full time job?", "text": "As an aspiring android developer, reading this today gave me a distinct feeling of a rug being pulled under my feet. While the research discussed, is about the Apple apps store, I believe it safe to say that everything is also true for the multitude of Android apps markets (or Plays as they are called these days). If it's true, then what does it mean for developers considering up to mobile development as their chosen career? Do any of you makes a living out of apps development? Can it be done as a full-time job able to pay the bills and put food on the table?"}
{"_id": "50035", "title": "How do I keep controversy in check?", "text": "This is probably OT but it's less OT here than on any other SO site, so please bear with me. I'm working on a new project votEm. The goal is to give independent candidates a platform to introduce themselves to get elected for a political office. My main reason is that today, it's too expensive to run for an office. Some politicians in the US spend as much as 30 million dollars (!) for a single campaign. That money is better spent elsewhere. In a similar fashion, people who want to change countries like Egypt, could use such a platform to present themselves. Now I expect a lot of emotions and pressure on my site. People with a lot of money (and a lot to lose) will try to game it (political parties, secret services of ... errr ... \"not 100% democratic countries\", big companies, ...) To avoid as many mistakes as possible, I need a list of resources, ideas and tips how to keep such a site out of too much trouble. PS: I'd make this CW but the option seems to be gone..."}
{"_id": "180000", "title": "Why isn't DSM for unstructured memory done today?", "text": "Edit: Comments suggested, that DSM just faded out by being not used recently. What were the reasons for this, what are DSMs drawbacks? Literature lists many positive aspects like easy to port programms to, no marshalling and therefore faster and so on but also negative aspects like only usable in homogenous environments due to endianess and word size issues. So why is all data synchronizing done by databases and not DSM anymore? Has there been a historic comparison or study at the time when both ways existed concurrently? Old text: Ages ago, Djikstra invented IPC through mutexes which then somehow led to shared memory (SHM) in multics (which afaik had the necessary mmap first). Then computer networks came up and DSM (distributed SHM) was invented for IPC between computers. So DSM is basically a not prestructured memory region (like a SHM) that _magically_ get's synchronized between computers without the applications programmer taking action. Implementations include Treadmarks (inofficially dead now) and CRL. But then someone thought this is not the right way to do it and invented Linda & tuplespaces. Current implementations include JavaSpaces and GigaSpaces. Here, you have to structure your data into tuples. Other ways to achieve similar effects may be the use of a relational database or a key-value-store like RIAK. Although someone might argue, I don't consider them as DSM since there is no coherent memory region where you can put data structures in as you like but have to structure your data which can be hard if it is continuous and administration like locking can not be done for hard coded parts (=tuples, ...). Why is there no DSM implementation today or am I just unable to find one?"}
{"_id": "187051", "title": "Database connection - should they be passed as parameter?", "text": "We have a system whereby the database connection is get once using a common method, and being pass throughout the relevant class to be used. There are doubts that passing the database connection as a parameter to different classes would cause problem, so i'm checking here to see whether this is actually viable, and are there any better patterns to do it? I know there are some ORM tools to do the persistence but we can't go into that, yet.. Any feedback is welcomed, thanks."}
{"_id": "55206", "title": "Time management and self improvement", "text": "I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several technologies, mainly .net stuff: WPF, WF, NHibernate, WCF, MySql and other third party SDKs relevant for the project nature. My experience and knowledge vary, for example I have a lot of experience in WPF but much less in WCF. I work full time on the project and im curios on how other programmers which need to multi task in many areas manage their time. I'm a very applied type of person and prefer to code instead of doing research. I feel that doing research \"might\" slow down the progress of the project while I recognize that research and learning more in areas which I'm not so strong will ultimately make me more productive. How would you split up your daily time in productive coding time and time to and experiment, read blogs, go through tutorials etc. I would say that Im coding about 90%+ of my day and devoting some but very little time in research and acquiring new knowledge. * * * Thanks for your replies. I think I will adopt a gradual transition to Dominics block parts. I kinda knew that coding was taking up way to much of my time but it feels good having a first version of the project completed and ready. With a few months of focused hard work behind me I hope to get more time to experiment and expand my knowlegde. Now I only hope my boss will cut me some slack and stop pressuring me for features..."}
{"_id": "216750", "title": "Is it possible to implement an infinite IEnumerable without using yield with only C# code?", "text": "# Motivation The main idea is to explore and understand the limits of how far one can go with the basic LINQ primitives (Select, SelectMany, Concat, etc.). These primitives can all be considered functional operations on a theoretical sequence type. Taking examples from Haskell:   * `Select` 'lifts' a function into the sequence (like `fmap` in Haskell)   * `Concat` is composition   * `Aggregate` is the sequence type's catamorphism (fold)   * `SelectMany` 'extracts' information from the sequence (the Monad bind, `>>=` operation)   * etc. (and I'm sure there are better abstractions for the above) So the question is whether or not the basic sequence (Enumerable) operations in C# are enough to construct an infinite sequence. More concretely it is the following problem: # Problem I'm curious to know if there's a way to implement something equivalent to the following, but without using `yield`:               IEnumerable<T> Infinite<T>()     {         while (true) { yield return default(T); }     }      Is it possible to do sue using the built-in LINQ operators only? The short answer is that theoretically yes, but practically not because of how Linq is implemented (causing stack overflows). That's why here are less restrictive rules: # Rules Alternatively a less restrictive question would go by the rules   1. You can't use the `yield` keyword directly   2. Use only C# itself directly - no IL code, no constructing dynamic assemblies etc.   3. You can only use the basic .NET lib (only `mscorlib.dll`, `System.Core.dll`? not sure what else to include). However if you find a solution with some of the other .NET assemblies (WPF?!), I'm also interested.   4. Don't implement IEnumerable or IEnumerator. # Notes An example theoretically correct definition is:               IEnumerable<int> infinite = null;     infinite = new int[1].SelectMany(x => new int[1].Concat(infinite));      This is \" **correct** \" but hits a StackOverflowException after 14399 iterations through the enumerable (not quite infinite). I'm thinking there might be no way to do this due to the C#'s compiler lack of tail recursion optimization. A proof would be nice :)"}
{"_id": "238799", "title": "Android DB With Some Multi-Language Data", "text": "I have a SQLite Database in my Android app with a \"Question\" table, among others. That table contains \"default\" or \"pre-loaded\" data (in this case the questions asked by the app). Some of its columns are \"technical\" or \"internal\" data to be used behind the scenes - like the number of points the question is worth, the type of user that may answer it, etc. - while others are textual data that are presented to the user (e.g. Title, Description, etc.). Now, I intend to let my app be internationalization-friendly (translatable) so I'm thinking that:   * Instead of following what seems to be the 'standard approaches' for multi-language DB design - either creating different columns for the translatable attributes (e.g. name_en, name_es, ...) or a separate table where each row represents a translation of the base object;   * ...I could simply keep the values for those translatable attributes in my `R.Strings` resource and have my DatabaseHelper class fetch the text from there, by building the resource name based, for instance, in the question's ID (e.g. q1_name, q2_name, q1_description, ...). This way I could have several R.strings and the DB helper would read from the right one. I'm a bit unsure about this approach and I'm curious if this is a bad practice and/or I'm missing any potential drawback."}
{"_id": "151231", "title": "The model to sell apps on App Store is better with a paid only version?", "text": "Rob Napier, the author of iOS 5 Programming Pushing the Limits, mentioned there are several models of selling apps on the App Store:   1. Write an app and sell it   2. Publish a free and a full version   3. Ad supported by third party or by iAd   4. In App purchase Surprisingly, the author said that the most workable model is (1) in terms of sales. I would think that (2) with fairly limiting ability for the free version can bring more sales, as people without trying, might not plunge down $0.99 or $1.99 for something they haven't tried? I for one, might not have purchased Angry Birds if I didn't try their free version first. Also, I think it also depends on the situation: for example, if the app is an alarm clock, and there are already 5 alarm clocks in App Store that are free, then your app that is $0.99 might not be that eagerly purchased (or they may end up never trying your app). But if yours is also free, and users really like it out of all the other ones, then they may think, $0.99 is nothing to get a good alarm clock, and gladly pay you the $0.99 in exchange for a full version of the alarm clock, for something that they can't get with the free version. (such as the full version can let you choose a song from your Music Library for the alarm). Could (1) work only if the user definitely want it and have no substitute? How might it work the best?"}
{"_id": "151232", "title": "International two-part date formats", "text": "Do people outside of the USA use two-part date abbreviations for the current year? For instance, representing the last day of May, you might see someone enter `5/31` into a date field. Do international users do something similar? In a country that ordinarily uses dd/MM/yyyy would they use `31/5` or some such?"}
{"_id": "200358", "title": "Design pattern advice required for sending xml files to different destinations", "text": "I am using an Export Module, now I want to extend it for different connections. I have a database which contains products Its Description, Review, Images etc. I use the serialize function to save it as XML file. After saving it as XML, in admin pannel I have possibility to select how this XML file will be exported. for example throught ftp, http, local, webservice, email etc. user has the possibility to select one or more connections to export the files. Each connection like ftp, http has it own settings in Database e.g ftp domain, username, password. what will be the best way to write these connection classes (by implementing Interface or using Abstract class or some Manager) and how to pass them to the export component as one exoprt may have on to many connections."}
{"_id": "208164", "title": "1h coding test for recruitement interview, is it a common practice", "text": "I received an email for a web company position I applied to. They are asking me to provide a 1h time slot, so that they can make me pass a coding test. They'll send the test, start the time, and 1h after, I'll have to provide them what I came up with. This will be on Python and Javascript. I'm a developer since 18 months only, as I was a Unix SA for 15 years before this. Is it a common practice? How to prepare and is there any tests examples on the net? I cannot find any. Thanks"}
{"_id": "208162", "title": "Is it possible to build software that interprets video in real time?", "text": "Say you had a live video stream of a popular boardwalk that had thousands of pedestrians walk down it each day. Could software be written to count the number of people that walk by a camera and collect data on things like how many of them were wearing red clothing or how many were over 6' tall? I'm thinking the software would be a layer between the camera and the people. But I have no idea if that is even possible. If something like this already exists, I wasn't able to find it but please share if it does. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "205183", "title": "Licensing open source controls iOS", "text": "I am confused about using licensed open source control in my comercial iOS application. Do I have to include any license in my code or i can just add open source control and push app to app store? For example have look on following https://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/klnoteviewcontroller It has two lincenses. I can download it for free using Apache 2.0 License but I am not sure if I can use it my paid iOS application. Please advice"}
{"_id": "205181", "title": "Why is aggregation function bad idea for RESTful?", "text": "As title: Why is aggregation function bad idea for RESTful? Although I know CRUD is good for RESTful. For example, the resource is ' _employee_ ', and client needs to retrive sum of total ' _salary_ ' of all employees. Shouldn't RESTful service provide such sum function? Further question: if aggregation function is bad for RESTful, how can a client get sum of total salary? To retrieve all 'employee' records and sum up itself?"}
{"_id": "205186", "title": "Which is Preferable: FirstName LastName or Forename Surname etc", "text": "It seems there are many different ways to represent the same information:               FirstName, MiddleName, LastName     Forename, MiddleName, Surname     GivenName, MiddleName, FamilyName      Which one is preferable? It depends??"}
{"_id": "200357", "title": "Implementing search over large data set, PHP or Mysql stored procedure?", "text": "I'm building an Online Food Ordering System with PHP and MYSQL, One of the feature of the application is to allow users to search for the restaurants by typing the area name. I would like to know using PHP for search will be more efficient or using Stored Procedure or using any third party tool. Efficient in the sense when it is to be searched among large set of data which one will be the fastest?"}
{"_id": "73325", "title": "\"Pythonic\" equivalent term for code written in modern C++ style?", "text": "There's a lot of good idioms promoted in modern C++. These include RAII and elegant use of boost or STL or a `std::algorithm` to solve a given problem. Just like you can write C in any language, you can certainly write C in C++. However you can write really good modern C++ code with the right subset of features. When someone does something really cool with an STL or boost construct I always get the urge to call it \"pythonic\" in the sense that its the canocical elegant way to do something. Is there a term like how \"pythonic\" is used in python to refer to C++ code written in the modern style with modern idioms?"}
{"_id": "77662", "title": "How to give the sense of a team that is fragmented based on projects?", "text": "The software engineering team of which I am part of is approximately 7 strong located in adjacent cubicles. 3 of us work on the same project but the rest are working on their own on different projects. In some cases one guy will be on his own on a project for nearly 1-2 yrs. There is no overlap in the projects that are being done as well. Currently I am one of those 3 guys working in the same project. So I have people to talk and discuss the problems and also to do some peer programming and reviewing. But everybody in the team have also been on a project just by themselves for about 2 yrs. It gives a very aloof feeling as you get further along the project. I was wondering if any of you guys were part of such a team and what did you guys do to have a healthy team spirit. Any thoughts/ideas are welcome. Thanks for your time. Cheers."}
{"_id": "204850", "title": "Can a random number generator ever produce different output given identical seeds?", "text": "The title sums it up. I'm interested to know if there exists an algorithm capable of producing variable output given identical input without relying on other sources for randomness such as DateTime.Now or a number generated from a light sensor etc. In addition, the algorithm can not be run in sequence, just two distinct, unrelated runs that produce different output."}
{"_id": "22742", "title": "Is there anyone who has used Python/Ruby and PHP for a long time and still prefer PHP?", "text": "I am usually fascinated by articles defending PHP and the arguments being used. Quite often authors of these types of articles don't mention what experience they have with other languages. Personally I find it hard to imagine that somebody would know either Python or Ruby, and PHP at a high level and still prefer PHP. So if anyone fits this description, I would be interested in hearing why you prefer PHP to either of these languages."}
{"_id": "141245", "title": "Do you think we will ever settle on a \"standard\" platform?", "text": "The recent explosion of phone platforms has depressed me (slightly), and made me wonder if we will ever reach any kind of standard for presentation? I don't mean language or IDE. Different languages have different strengths and I can see that there may always be a need for disparity, although I do note that languages are merging somewhat in functionality, with traditional imperitive languages like C++ now supporting things like lambdas. What I'm really talking about is a common presentation mechanism. Before smart phones and tablets came along, the web seemed to be finally becoming a reasonable platform for presenting an application that was globally accessible, not just geographically, but by platform too. Sure there are still (sometimes infuriating) implementation differences and quirks, but if you wrote a decent site you knew it could be accessed on anything from a PC to a phone to a C64 running the right software. \"Write Once Run Anywhere\" seemed to finally be becoming a reality. However, in the last few years we've seen an explosion of mobile operating systems, and the ubiquitous \"app\". A good site is no longer enough, you need a native \"app\", and of course we have a sudden massive disparity in OS, language, and APIs needed to write them as each battles for supremecy. It's kind of weird how the cycle of popularity goes. Mainframes with terminals - thin client. PC - thick client. Web browser - thin client. Phone app - thick(ish) client. I just wonder if you think there will ever be a global standard for clients, or whether the \"shiny and different\" cycle will always continue along with the battle of the tech du jour."}
{"_id": "184657", "title": "agile / scrum and functional specs", "text": "I work in a small team of four devs, one domain expert and one manager. We are looking to move to using scrum to try and formalise our processes. From what I understand of agile, it seems to be close(ish) to what we are doing anyway. We have a brief document with the overall features our product will have. As we come to code each feature, we sit down and thrash it out verbally, relying on our domain expert for what the customer will want. We then code it, and it gets tested in vague ways by the other devs / domain expert. Improvements get suggested and implemented. At our last ISO 9001 audit we were (deservedly) reprimanded for lack of any traceability. The auditor wanted some way of seeing we had records of what the product would do, and then testing to prove that it did it. We are looking to scrum to give us a process for this, along with other benefits, but my reading up so far has not answered my question of where detailed functional requirements are recorded / tested? My understanding of agile / scrum is far from complete, so please correct me if I have misunderstandings. As an example, let's say we have a user story that says: \"As a customer, I need to be able to select a system state of A, B or C\". It has an acceptance test that says \"I should be able to select state A, B, or C, and the system will change to that state\" Come the sprint where this gets implemented, we sit around and decide that we will build a widget with A, B and C radio buttons, and a \"Apply\" button. Then we code it. When this widget is tested, the following problems are found: 1. Selecting B sometimes doesn't uncheck the previous radio button. 2. Sometimes option C is unavailable on the system, and so should be greyed out. 3. When first opened, the initial selection does not match the current system state. My question is how and where is this recorded? There is no detailed functional spec saying \"There will be a widget with three radio buttons. When the widget is created, the current radio selection should match the system state\" blah blah. Given the lack of this document how are we supposed to prove that the system does or does not do what it's supposed to to an auditor?"}
{"_id": "184650", "title": "What is \"the right way\" to do search on a website?", "text": "I'm talking the kind of search that auto-suggests your query as you type, the way Google does, the way Wikipedia does, the way Stack Exchange suggests other questions as you type the title, etc. And Wikipedia used to have an _awful_ search implementation, for those of us who remember. It had no auto-suggest, was shut down by the slightest typo or misspelling, and rarely gave pertinent results. As an amateur web programmer, I'm trying to figure out how I would implement an effective and high-performing search-and-auto-suggest as Wikipedia now has, and as SE has, and as so many other websites have. How can you obtain that kind of incredibly fast performance and flexibility? Does everyone just wing it, or are there principles, guidelines, helpful libraries, or other such resources to help you get it done right in the style of the \"Internet of the Future\"?"}
{"_id": "38971", "title": "Is it recommended to use SQL Server as database for massively scalable applications?", "text": "Let's say you are planning to create a website of the scale of Facebook (If I am going to cite a website's name then why not Facebook?!). Is it recommended to use SQL Server as your database for such applications? I am asking this question because many colleagues of mine say that SQL server should not be used such applications. They prefer Oracle or MySQL instead."}
{"_id": "165272", "title": "Would a professional, self taught programmer benefit from reading an algorithms book?", "text": "I'm a 100% self taught, professional programmer (I've worked at a few web startups and made a few independent games). I've read quite a few of the \"essential\" books (Clean Code, The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete, SICP, K&R). I'm considering reading Introduction to Algorithms. I've asked a few colleagues if reading it will improve my programming skills, and I got _very_ mixed answers. A few said yes, a few said no, and a one said \"only if you spend a lot of time implementing these algorithms\" (I don't). So, I figured I'd ask Stack Exchange. Is it worth the time to read about algorithms if you're a professional programmer who seldom needs to use complex algorithms? For what it's worth, I have a strong mathematical background (have a 2 year degree in Mathematics; took Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Calc I-III)."}
{"_id": "230856", "title": "secure photos on server", "text": "I would like to hear advice from the more experienced developers. The project is now in the design stage. It's mobile application and a simple web application. Content is pictures, comments, personal correspondence. Pictures can be quite personal. Need a very serious attitude to security. The question is simple: **where to store photos and how to secure it?** I think it's will be in the following way:   1. User make some photo. Via SSL the application sends photo to the server.   2. The server recieve photo, encrypt it and store somewhere.  Also, via app the user can see all own photos.   1. Request to server for photos.   2. Server decrypt stored photos and send via SSL to client. I need some technical advices: where to save images, I know that database is quite slow for this case, which algorithms use for encrypt/decrypt, what about cache. It will be highload project and performance is very important. Mobile application is planned on cross-platform framework like phoneGap, Titanium. On the server is .NET. But it is planned. I also consider full stack frameworks for javascript."}
{"_id": "98562", "title": "Using a standard localised data cryptography pattern with an ASP.NET MVC3 application", "text": "I have been given the task to rejuvenate an existing Human Resources application from Access into ASP.NET. This is a strictly internal application, and I have no problems developing it within our standard ASP.NET environment. It does however pose it's own problems, both technically and ethically. The HR app will be responsible for storing employee pay data, for which it is not appropriate for me, the developer, to see. It's essentially three fields (salary band, actual salary, comments) and four other values, calculated on the front end. I'd like to go down the cryptography route to encrypt said data - cryptography with the .NET Framework is very easy to implement. I could \"roll my own\", which as we all know is a bad idea. However I was wondering if there was a _more better_ way of doing it. Here are some points:   1. For starters, we're all attached to the same domain.   2. I've heard and read about Certificates, can they be useful here? (x.509?)   3. The data will be stored in our local SQL Server, obviously the actual data here needs to be encrypted, so can SQL Server help me? Certificates again?   4. If a user doesn't have the appropriate certificate, can the data just be null? (You can't see this matey!)   5. This encryption problem doesn't have any relevance to usage of the system via a permissions model."}
{"_id": "63131", "title": "Most common \"Y2K-style\" bugs today?", "text": "I don't specifically mean date-related issues like 2038, but more generally, bugs that fit the pattern:   * A generation ago, programmers tended to write code that ass-u-me-d X, which was reasonable at the time.   * But circumstances have changed, and now X is a common source of problems that need to be fixed. For example:   * X = \"Memory is too expensive to justify storing all 4 digits of the year. Don't worry about 2000; that's a long way off.\" (broken by Y2K)   * X = \"Who needs `size_t`? We can just use `unsigned int`.\" (broken by 64-bit systems)"}
{"_id": "195191", "title": "Designing application flow", "text": "I am creating a web application in java where I need to mock the following flow. When user trigger a certain process (add product to cart), I need to pass through following steps   1. Need to see in HTTP Session if user is logged in.   2. Check HTTP Session if shopping cart is there   3. If user exist in HTTP Session and his/her cart do not exist in HTTP Session   4. Get user cart from the database.   5. add item to cart and save it to HTTP session and update cart in DB.   6. If cart does not exist in DB, create new cart and and save in it HTTP Session. Though I missed a lot of use cases here (do not want question length to increase a lot), but most of the flow will be same as I described in above steps. My flow will start from the `Controller` and will go towards `Service` Layer and than ends up in the `DAO` layer. Since there will be a lot of use cases where I need to check HTTP session and based on that need to call `Service` layer, I was planning to add a `Facade` layer which should be responsible to do this for me like checking `Session` and interacting with `Service` layer. Please suggest if this is a valid approach or any other best approach can be implemented here? One more point where I am confused is how to handle `HTTP session` in facade layer? do I need to pass HTTP session object each time I call my `Facade` or any other approach can be used here?"}
{"_id": "4570", "title": "What is your opinion of C++ Frequently Questioned Answers?", "text": "Do you think that the criticisms in Frequently Questioned Answers are accurate?"}
{"_id": "196628", "title": "How do you keep track of what classes and functions your team has written?", "text": "When working on code, I face many of the same challenges that my teammates do, and I have written some helpful functions and classes, and so have they. If there is good communication, I'll hear about some great thing someone put together, and six months later when I need it I may remember it and call that function, saving myself time. If I don't remember it, or never knew about it, I will probably re-invent the wheel. Is there a particular practice of documenting these kinds of things? How do you make them easy to find? If your team has no such documentation, how do you find out if your wheel already exists? **EDIT:** All but one of the answers so far deals with an ideal situation, so let me sum up those solutions: documentation & communication; wikis, stand-up meetings, etc. Those are all great things, but they rely on programmers having the time (and skills) to write up the documentation and attend the meetings and take notes and remember everything. The most popular answer so far (Caleb's) is the only one that could be used by a programmer who is incapable of documentation and meetings, and does only one thing: programming. Programming is what a programmer does, and yes, a great programmer can write up documentation, unit tests, etc., but let's face it - most of us prefer programming to documenting. His solution is one where the programmer recognizes re-usable code and pulls it out to its own class or repository or whatever, and _by the fact that it is isolated,_ it becomes find-able and eases the learning curve for using it.... and this was accomplished by programming. In a way I see it like this: I've just written three functions, and it occurs to me that someone else should know about them. I could document them, write them up, announce them at a meeting, etc. - which I can do, but it's not my strength - or .... I can extract them to a class, name it well, make them function like a black box, and stick it where other class files go. Then a short email announcing it is easy. Other developers can scan the code and understand it better than they could an isolated function used in code they don't fully understand - that context is removed. I like this because it means having a set of well-named class files, with well-named methods, is a good solution that is accomplished by good programming. It does not require meetings, and it softens the need for detailed documentation. Are there any more ideas in this vein ... for isolated and time-pressed developers?"}
{"_id": "4573", "title": "What C++ coding standard do you use?", "text": "For some time now, I've been unable to settle on a coding standard and use it concistently between projects. When starting a new project, I tend to change some things around (add a space there, remove a space there, add a line break there, an extra indent there, change naming conventions, etc.). So I figured that I might provide a piece of sample code, in C++, and ask you to rewrite it to fit _your_ standard of coding. Inspiration is always good, I say. ^^ So here goes:               #ifndef _DERIVED_CLASS_H__     #define _DERIVED_CLASS_H__          /**      * This is an example file used for sampling code layout.      *      * @author Firstname Surname      */                    #include <stdio>     #include <string>     #include <list>     #include \"BaseClass.h\"     #include \"Stuff.h\"                    /**      * The DerivedClass is completely useless. It represents uselessness in all its      * entirety.      */     class DerivedClass : public BaseClass {              ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////         //   CONSTRUCTORS / DESTRUCTORS         ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////          public:              /**          * Constructs a useless object with default settings.          *          * @param value          *        Is never used.          * @throws Exception          *         If something goes awry.          */         DerivedClass (const int value)          : uselessSize_ (0) {}              /**          * Constructs a copy of a given useless object.          *           * @param object          *        Object to copy.          * @throws OutOfMemoryException          *         If necessary data cannot be allocated.          */         DerivedClass (const DerivedClass& object) {}              /**          * Destroys this useless object.          */         ~DerivedClass ();                        ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////         //   PUBLIC METHODS         ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////          public:              /**          * Clones a given useless object.          *          * @param object          *        Object to copy.          * @return This useless object.          */         DerivedClass& operator= (const DerivedClass& object) {             stuff_ = object.stuff_;             uselessSize_ = object.uselessSize_;                 }              /**          * Does absolutely nothing.          *          * @param useless          *        Pointer to useless data.          */         void doNothing (const int* useless) {             if (useless == NULL) {                 return;             }             else {                 int womba = *useless;                      switch (womba) {                     case 0:                         cout << \"This is output 0\";                         break;                          case 1:                         cout << \"This is output 1\";                         break;                          case 2:                         cout << \"This is output 2\";                         break;                          default:                         cout << \"This is default output\";                         break;                 }             }         }              /**          * Does even less.          */         void doEvenLess () {             int mySecret = getSecret ();             int gather = 0;             for (int i = 0; i < mySecret; i++) {                 gather += 2;             }         }                        ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////         //   PRIVATE METHODS         ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////          private:              /**          * Gets the secret value of this useless object.          *          * @return A secret value.          */         int getSecret () const {             if ((RANDOM == 42) && (stuff_.size() > 0) || (1000000000000000000 > 0)                 && true) {                      return 420;             }             else if (RANDOM == -1) {                 return ((5 * 2) + (4 - 1)) / 2;             }                  int timer = 100;             bool stopThisMadness = false;             while (!stopThisMadness) {                 do {                     timer--;                 } while (timer > 0);                      stopThisMadness = true;             }         }                        ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////         //   FIELDS         ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////          private:              /**          * Don't know what this is used for.          */         static const int RANDOM = 42;              /**          * List of lists of stuff.          */         std::list <Stuff> stuff_;              /**          * Specifies the size of this object's uselessness.          */         size_t uselessSize_;          };                    #endif"}
{"_id": "186870", "title": "Java Generics - how to strike a balance between expressiveness and simplicity", "text": "I'm developing some code that utilizes generics, and one of my guiding principles was to make it usable for future scenarios, and not just today's. However, several coworkers have expressed that I may have traded off readability for the sake of extensibility. I wanted to gather some feedback about possible ways to resolve this. To be specific, here is an interface that defines a transform - you start with a source collection of items, and you apply the transform to each element, storing the results in a destination collection. Additionally, I want to be able to return the destination collection to the caller, and rather than forcing them to use a Collection reference, I want them to be able to use whatever collection type they actually provided for the destination collection. Finally, I make it possible for the type of items in the destination collection to be different from the type of items in the source collection, because maybe that's what the transform does. In my code, for instance, several source items make up one destination item after the transform. This yields the following interface:               interface Transform<Src, Dst> {         <DstColl extends Collection<? super Dst>> DstColl transform(                     Collection<? extends Src> sourceCollection,                     DstColl                   destinationCollection);     }      I tried to be all nice and apply Josh Bloch's PECS principle (producer extends, consumer super) to make sure the interface is usable with super- and sub-types where appropriate. The end result is somewhat of a monstrosity. Now, it would have been nice if I could extend this interface and specialize it somehow. For example, if I don't really care about playing nice with subtypes of the source items and supertypes of the destination items, I could have:               interface SimpleTransform<Src, Dst> {         <DstColl extends Collection<Dst>> DstColl transform(                       Collection<Src> sourceCollection,                       DstColl         destinationCollection);     }      But there is no way to do that in Java. I want to make implementations of this interface something that others would actually consider doing, as opposed to running in fear. I've considered several options:   * Don't return the destination collection. Seems weird given that you do a transform but get nothing back.   * Have an abstract class that implements this interface, but then translates the parameters to something easier to use and calls another method \"translateImpl()\" which has the simpler signature and thus presents less of a cognitive burden for implementers. But then it's weird to have to write an abstract class just to make an interface user-friendly.   * Forgo extensibility and just have the simpler interface. Possibly couple that with not returning the destination collection. But then that limits my options in the future. What do you think? Am I missing an approach I could use?"}
{"_id": "186871", "title": "Why do code generators always use fully-qualified identifiers?", "text": "When you look at the code for the Winforms Designer, you see things like this:               this.label1.Font = new System.Drawing.Font(\"Microsoft Sans Serif\", ... etc.      instead of               using System.Drawing;     label1.Font = new Font(\"Microsoft Sans Serif\", ... etc.      The same is true of tools like Linq to XSD, XSD2Code and, I suspect, of Linq to SQL. These tools generate hoards of code with extremely long fully- qualified names. Wouldn't it be easier to generate the appropriate `using` statements, and ditch the long names? Or is there some technical reason for this that I'm missing? * * * **Note:** For those folks that are baffled by the notion that I might want these classes to actually be readable by a human, note that this is exactly my goal. I have an XSD with about 300 classes in it, I don't want to write them all by hand, and yes, I'd like them to look like ordinary code written by humans."}
{"_id": "204588", "title": "What is good practice when inheriting static classes isn't possible/allowed", "text": "I am developing a project in C# and due to a design decision it is not possible to have a static class inherit another static class. But I have, in my opinion, a case where this would make sense. I have a music player which is able to play music from many different music sources: local files, YouTube, SoundCloud, Jamendo, etc. I have currently one static class for each of these sources with static methods such as retrieving the top tracks, searching for tracks, etc. Naturally, a lot of code is shared among all these classes so I wanted to refactor and put all common code into a more generic MusicSource class. But C# doesn't allow me to do that. What would be the best practice here? I want to get rid of all my redundant code and make it easier to create new music sources."}
{"_id": "138651", "title": "Help needed with class design and structure", "text": "This question is mostly about the best way to approach this problem. Any input is appreciated. ### The Problem In my application i need to send some data to a number of different destinations (we will call them receivers from now on) using different protocols (http post, ftp, soap services). Each of the different receivers respond differently and some processing needs to be done on each response to work out what happened. This response processing can become quite complex. My application also needs to do take different actions based on the receiver. ### My Solution My plan is to create a separate class for each receiver that implements an interface and use Factory design pattern to decide which class to load based on the receiver. Each receiver has a unique name (which is stored in the database for other reasons) which i plan to use to decide which receiver to load. I'll pass this to the factory constructor. Currently i plan to have my interface implement these methods   * prepareData()    * sendData()    * handleResult() I'd also like a wrapper for these function such as process() which would just return a boolean based on wether the send sent. I'm not sure where i would fit this in though. Thanks"}
{"_id": "138650", "title": "How to develop line-of-business tablet apps as a .NET developer?", "text": "My company has a lot of experience in .NET development, and one of our products in an ERP system. Recently, a customer asked us if we could provide a tablet interface to that system, i.e., a software that allows the customer to view product information and create orders on a tablet. Of course, we are not thrilled about the idea of investing a lot of time and money into learning Objective-C, purchasing Mac development workstations, paying fees to Apple, etc. just for this one project (we _might_ be able to sell the app to a few additional customers afterwards, but the market is very small, since it would only be useful for existing customers of our ERP system). So, what should we do? As far as I can see, we have the following options:   * Write a \" **plain old Windows application** \" (WPF) and run it on a Windows 7 tablet, such as the Samsung Slate or Acer Iconia. Drawbacks: Heavy, expensive devices with short running time (as compared to \"real\" tablets).   * Wait for **Windows 8 ARM-based tablets** and write a Metro (WinRT) app. Drawbacks: Wait for at least one year; it's unclear whether Windows 8 ARM will support installation of custom B2B apps without going through the app store.   * Use **mono for Android** and write a .NET app for Android. Drawbacks: Yet another UI library (different from WPF and Silverlight); some providers disallow sideloading of apps. So far, options 1 and 3 seem to be the most realistic. Did I miss any obvious drawbacks or advantages? Is there another option that I haven't considered yet? Have you been in a similar situation and (successfully) chosen one particular option?"}
{"_id": "186878", "title": "Is it plausible to use a filesystem-based configuration format rather than an INI file?", "text": "After having had endless issues with INI-style configuration files and parsing them correctly (let along getting binary data right), a crazy idea crossed my mind recently: What if an INI file like               # settings.ini     [Windows]     DirectorySeparator='\\\\'     PathSeparator=';'          [Linux]     DirectorySeparator='/'     PathSeparator=':'      Would rather be stored in the file system; each group is a directory, each key/value pair is a file, so               settings/Windows/DirectorySeparator (contains just `\\`)     settings/Windows/PathSeparator      (contains just ';')     ... you get the idea ...      Disadvantages:   * Possibly slow due to IO work, but maybe file system caches help?   * Running low of inodes on some file systems?   * Group/Key names may only consists of characters which are also valid for directory/filenames, may be rather restrictive depending on the FS. Advantages:   * Arbitrarily deeply nested groups   * No worries about escaping, binary data is easy. Just have each file contain the raw data.   * Automatic locking, access control and whatever the filesystem provides   * Easy to access with most programming languages, even by hand I'm very tempted to try this in my next project, I wonder whether anybody else has experience with this approach already?"}
{"_id": "130108", "title": "Choose C++ or Java for applications requiring huge amounts of RAM?", "text": "I'm thinking of scientific applications that are mostly processor-bound and heavy on heap usage (at least several gigabytes). Any other time of the year I would happily go with C++, but in this case I wonder if the fragmentation natural to the C++ memory manager can be a serious issue versus the advantage of Java's compacting collectors. Can anybody point to real-world examples related to this?"}
{"_id": "225392", "title": "Approach to statically analyze a Python code base", "text": "What approach should I use to statically analyze a Python code base? In particular, I am looking for ways to:   * extract and display the class hierarchy,   * extract and display class relationships,   * include a cross-reference of all functions, modules and variables The specific application that I am dealing with is not well documented which is why I am looking to automate the process."}
{"_id": "181064", "title": "Why must the burden of proof rest with the caller and not the method of the class that is being called?", "text": "Michael Perry states in his Pluralsight course on Provable Code (transcript subscription only) that: > [T]he burden of proof rests with the caller In a code contract, why must the burden of proof rest with the caller and not the method of the class that is being called? Is this a preferred convention or does it have a more solid basis? At the moment it just like a dogma to me as the class being called could make its own safety checks, which would reduce calling code duplication."}
{"_id": "85268", "title": "How To Build An iPhone App With A Web Server?", "text": "I have an iPhone app out that stores data on the device. I want to create an app with user accounts like Instagram, Path, Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. What would you recommend for the quickest and easiest way to get an app of this nature (social, iPhone) going? I'm deciding between RoR or PHP still. Will the final stack come down to: iPhone --> RestKit --> RoR/PHP --> MYSQL? I have a solid background in iOS development, but not the rest."}
{"_id": "181063", "title": "Google App Engine, what are the advantages and limitations?", "text": "First, does anyone know a specific advantage of Google App Engine for Python Apps? Is there some advantage over Heruko or Appfog? And about the database API? Now, what about the limitations? Are there any factors that make you think twice about using GAE?"}
{"_id": "125702", "title": "Why is the Unit of Work pattern considered fast and efficient when working with an ORM?", "text": "In working with Doctrine 2 I came across the following paragraph. > In fact, since Doctrine is aware of all your managed entities, when you call > theflush() method, it calculates an overall changeset and executes the most > efficient query/queries possible. For example, if you persist a total of 100 > Product objects and then subsequently call flush(), Doctrine will create a > single prepared statement and re-use it for each insert. This pattern is > called Unit of Work, and it's used because it's fast and efficient I am not up to speed on relational databases and ORM theory so I was wondering why is the Unit Of Work pattern  considered fast and efficient?"}
{"_id": "125707", "title": "Orthogonal design for product pricing and production planning with a NoSQL database", "text": "I am in the process of developing extensible software for the company I am working with for product pricing and production planning. **The Present Scenario** There are basically two types of products: manufactured and traded (simple buy and sell with no conversion). Manufactured can be regular or made-to-order with made-to-order mostly being a deviant of the regular model. There is only a finite number of products (around 2000) but each product has got multiple attributes such as size, color, shade and more. Presently, there is software for order management with inventory and a decent accounting package. Costing and pricing is now done on an arbitary basis via sampling a few models and adding overhead and margin percentages. **Required**   * To calculate product cost per unit   * Convert them into a valid pricing model (pricing may differ upon quantity and other factors),   * Calculate exact cost and profitability per product,   * Proactively plan production for regular models and made-to-order units, based on existing order management system and inventory **Proposed Design** I have proposed the following design.   * Store product information for each unique product in document-style based on the 5M's of production (Man, Material, Machines, Methods and Money)   * A separate module of each of the four M's - Men, Machine, Material and Methods in terms of Money with primitive building blocks for each module that can be merged and combined into a compound block    * Store metadata and result set required along with each document   * A separate layer to parse metadata, act upon data based on metadata and return result set as defined (similar to a DSL with both metadata and result set redefined at runtime)   * A separate pricing model that works on the cost of the product   * A separate production planning module that works on the data of the order management system and the product information   * Using MapReduce to aggregate data and analyze it   * Technologies: MongoDB, Python, Django, and NumPy All data to be stored in JSON format with all business logic written to parse a JSON file (technically, in my case a Python dictionary) and produce output based on keys and values. **So why am I here?** The present software company has recommended a traditional out-of-the-box RDBMS system that could be customized. The main problem I find with the system is the duplication of data for products with varying attributes, lack of analytical tools, tight coupling with products and prices and too many joins for complex queries, but it is recommended for better robustness and better aggregate analysis and the XXXX always told market runs this approach. Since the entire software is not to be used in real-time and most of the real-time sytem links to unique products only.   * Does my proposed design is truly orthogonal?   * Does loose-coupling product, cost and pricing work?   * What is the general approach for this kind of problem?   * Do MapReduce provide a better way to analyze data for this kind of problems (along with NumPy) than the traditional SQL approach Basically I work with numbers, and I am thinking of a generic model which I could extend in the future."}
{"_id": "134687", "title": "Which is the most permissive open-source license?", "text": "Which is the most permissive open-source license available? \"Permissive\" would be defined as \"the minimal requirements about how the software can be redistributed\"."}
{"_id": "246349", "title": "Need advise for porting linux script to Win command line", "text": "I am creating app(script) that is used similar to RSS reader for specific webpage that doesn't have RSS. So my app downloads that html page in defined intervals, checks new items and parses them into messages that are sent over network. But my app prototype is written in Bash (Linux is my primary OS), and I was asked that this app will be needed on Windows also - luckily WinXP 32bit only. So I am deciding how rewrite it easily and without testing various scripting languages and technologies. Currently my app is working with Bash, and calls for unix utilities like sed, wget and curl. I checked that these utilities are for win32 also. So my question is about Windows commandline capabilities compared to linux bash. Does wincmd have similar capabilities like bash? In e.g. manipulating strings, cycles or something that might be a problem? I also found Cygwin, but don't know if it works reliable and this is important in this case of app."}
{"_id": "103780", "title": "Performance vs. Laziness: Why use setters from within a class?", "text": "I notice that web related code uses setter methods to set class fields instead of setting them directly since they are in scope. I find this to be a bit odd. Using setters is certainly safer, but if unit tests are implemented then bugs will be found. And it's not worth the extra stack call, imo. Does any production code do this or is this just what you see in sample code online? Edit: I have to make clear that I'm only talking about the case whereby the setter consists solely of a single assignment expression and nothing more."}
{"_id": "25219", "title": "Web design standards", "text": "While designing web pages using php, are there standards that should be followed? For example suppose there are two pages. First page looks like this:               <body>     <div>     <?php include 'page2.php';?>      `page2.php` file looks like this:               <?php print 'some text';?>     </div>     </body>      Is such designing a standard practice? Does it affect search engine results?"}
{"_id": "185529", "title": "Will experience suffice for a Computer Science degree", "text": "I am debating on a career in programming. The problem for me is that I don't think college is right for me. I am planning on joining the Air Force as a Computer Systems Programmer will they will train me and I will gain some college credits. From what I can understand there is a large amount of people taking a major in Computer Science because they hear computers make money. Most drop out but some do graduate but find they don't really know anything about programming. Ive always heard the issue being that these students often get good grades but don't push themselves to learn beyond the course. I'm a very self motivated learner and I am having a blast learning C++ as well as I love computers and have since before I could even read or write. So learning the actual trade isn't the issue. I could go to college for free or nearly free. I will most likely enlist for 6 years. But when (or if I decide to make a career out of it) I get out of the military will I be able to find a job with 6 years of experience in lieu of a degree. I would assume i would because said employer would know if I could do the work rather then having to deal with some college kid who there not even sure if he knows how to program."}
{"_id": "128082", "title": "Is it a priority for a web developer to be familiar with the source code of a web browser?", "text": "How important is it for a developer that deals with web applications (let's say writing html and js) to download a browser's source code (like Chromium) and learn how the engine works (renderer, javascript vm, network processing, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "74311", "title": "Using requirements for a completed company project as a basis for a personal learning project", "text": "Background: I want to learn, try out new frameworks, tools, languages, but I'm terrible at coming up with something to build. The company I work for recently completed work on building a piece of software for internal use. I was not involved in the project at all. The software is purely internal, we do not sell it on. The results are not what people hoped for. Is it acceptable for me to build my own solution in my own time but use the requirement documentation for the companies project? Are there pitfalls I should watch out for with this approach, things I can do to mitigate those risks? Alternatively I could build it the way I think it should be done without referencing those docs. Is this the better approach as it definitely frees me to do what I like with the code afterwards?"}
{"_id": "185525", "title": "Design pattern for polymorphic behaviour while allowing library separation", "text": "Let's say I have a hierarchy of `Item` classes: `Rectangle, Circle, Triangle`. I want to be able to draw them, so my first possibility is add a virtual `Draw()` method to each:               class Item {     public:        virtual ~Item();        virtual void Draw() =0;      };      However, I want to split the drawing functionality to a separate Draw library while the Core library contains only the basic representations. There's a couple of possibilities I can think of: 1 - A `DrawManager` that takes a list of `Item`s and has to use `dynamic_cast<>` to work out what to do:               class DrawManager {       void draw(ItemList& items) {         FOREACH(Item* item, items) {            if (dynamic_cast<Rectangle*>(item)) {               drawRectangle();            } else if (dynamic_cast<Circle*>(item)) {               drawCircle();            } ....         }       }     };      This isn't ideal as it relies on RTTI and forces one class to be aware of all items in the hierarchy. 2 - The other approach is to defer drawing responsibility to an `ItemDrawer` hierarchy (`RectangleDrawer`, etc):               class Item {        virtual Drawer* GetDrawer() =0;     }          class Rectangle : public Item {     public:        virtual Drawer* GetDrawer() {return new RectangleDrawer(this); }     }      This achieves the separation of concerns between the base representation of the Items and the code for drawing. The problem though is that the Item classes are dependent on the drawing classes. How can I separate out this drawing code into a separate library? Is the solution for the Items to return a factory class of some description? However, how can this be defined so that the Core library isn't dependent on the Draw library?"}
{"_id": "185527", "title": "How to find a 'good' seed page for a web crawler?", "text": "I started building a web crawler and read somewhere that it's a very hard problem to find a good seed page for the crawler. Can anyone explain me if there is any pre-defined procedure/ guidlines of finding a good seed page? or how you say that a particular page is a good seed page?"}
{"_id": "146736", "title": "Keeping binary search tree balanced", "text": "I am educating myself on algorithms and data structures. For that, I am doing a simple program that would read lines like this:               bdhj 168.24     dahf 42.88     dhfa 128.92      First column represents an account name (and it needn't have to be 4 characters), and second represents value to add (or remove if value is negative) to that account. I have a huge test data that I could profile different algorithms. I tried keeping this information in linked list and dynamic arrays and some mixture of that two so far. Although dynamic arrays were good at allowing binary search, inserting elements requires a call to memmove (since I am inserting sorted) and it takes a lot of time. I want to try binary search trees for this program, however, I don't have any idea how to keep search tree balanced. I tried google search, but couldn't find any explanations about a algorithm I could use, or any pointers at all. Could you give pointers and/or sources that I could check?"}
{"_id": "185520", "title": "Changing __class__ in a factory?", "text": "I'm parsing a set of XML files of different kinds (these kinds are known in advance). These are my requirements:   * I want an object to represent each XML document (object-xml mapping)   * I'd rather have a different class for each kind, so that identifying the type of the XML file is equivalent to looking at the class of the instance   * I don't know the kind in advance   * I want some specific behaviour for each object But for the sake of simplicity, let's consider, I just need to open different numbers, of two know kinds:   * even number   * odd number In term of design pattern, I use a variation of the _factory design pattern_ , where the afctory is in the `__init__` of the top level class, and I set the correct implementaion by a changing `__class__` dynamically               class Number():         def __init__(self, val):             # common implementation (in case of XML, I do the recursion of xml imports)             self.value = val                  # This is also the point where I discover the type of my object             # Hence, the constuctor is also a factory of the appropriate type             if val % 2 == 0:                 self.__class__ = EvenNumber             elif val % 2 == 1:                 self.__class__ = OddNumber             else:                 # keep the default Number implementation                 pass               class EvenNumber(Number):         def half(self):             '''              specific behaviour for even numbers             '''             return self.value / 2               class OddNumber(Number):         def next_int(self):             return self.value          if __name__ == '__main__':         for x in (Number(2), Number(3)):             '''             In the main algorithm, the processing depends on the type of the object             '''             if isinstance(x, EvenNumber):                 print(x.half())             elif isinstance(x, OddNumber):                 print(x.next_int())      What do you think about this approach? I knew `__class__` could be read, and was very surprised it can also be written. What do you think of changing `__class__` dynamically? Is this a well-known design pattern (it is not the _factory pattern_ nor the _state pattern_ nor the _strategy pattern_ , even if it seems related to all of them) **Edit** My real use-case I want to open a XBRL taxonomy, which is made of XML linkbases. Except the generic XML Linkbase, I want to handle more precisely some of them:   * XML Label linkbase   * XML Definition linkbase   * etc. In substance, here is what I have done:               class Linkbase(etree.xml.ElementTree):         '''         Generic linkbase         '''         def __init__(self, filename):             # parse XML             if self.type == 'definition':                 self.__class__ = DefinitionLinkbase             elif self.type == 'label':                 self.__class__ = LabelLinkbase               @property          def type(self):             return self.find('//xpath/expression').tag          class LabelLinkbase(Linkbase):        @property        def labels(self):          # find all appropriate elements and returns a list of Labels          class DefintionLinkbase(Linkbase):        @property        def definitions(self):           # returns all definitions      Alternatively, I could have used a factory. I can think of something like this, but it doesn't look as elegant as the first approach.               class Linkbase(etree.xml.ElementTree):         '''         Generic linkbase         '''         def __init__(self, tree):             self.tree = tree               @property          def type(self):             return get_type(self.etree)          class LabelLinkbase(Linkbase):        @property        def labels(self):          # find all appropriate elements and returns a list of Labels          class DefintionLinkbase(Linkbase):        @property        def definitions(self):           # returns all definitions          def build_Linkbase(file):         tree = etree.parse(file)         if get_type(tree)== \"defintion\"            return DefintionLinkbase(tree)         elif get_type(tree) == \"label\":            return LabelLinkbase(tree)         else:            return Linkbase(tree)     def get_type(tree):         return tree.find('//xpath/expression').tag"}
{"_id": "236707", "title": "URL and Controller structure for parent-child-relationship", "text": "I use an MVC web framework to create an application which contains a hierarchy:               Location <1-N> Devices <N-M> Services      I have a number of Locations. Each Locations can have several devices (represented by an 1-N relationship in the database). Each device runs services. The services (like http, ftp, etc) are defines in an extra table and are connected to the devices using an N-M relationship. So far I have a model for each of the entities and one Location-controller for CRUD operations. Since the devices somehow belong to the location all the device CRUD-functions are located in the location controller as well. The services have their own controller. The url to access the data is structured like this:               /locations/    # to get an overview of the locations     /locations/*id*/    # to view the details of one location     /locations/*id*/edit    # to edit the details of one location     /locations/*id*/device/*deviceid*/    # to view details of a device     /locations/*id*/device/*deviceid*/edit    # to view details of a device     /services/     # list of all the services     /services/*id/    # view details of a service      Note: There are also urls to create and delete entries, which are omitted. But I think you get the idea. Now to my questions: It feels wrong, and I think it is wrong to put all the functions inside the Location-controller, therefore I would like to move them so separate controllers. On the other hand, I like the URL-Structure, since it represents the hierarchy of the data pretty well. Furthermore I like when the URL structure corresponds with the Controllers. What is the \"better\" solution: Separate controllers with combined URLs? Separate controllers, separate URLs? Or combined controller with combined URLs?"}
{"_id": "205454", "title": "is there a programming language designed to express data combinations?", "text": "Very often, when using the command line or just programming, you want to express some kind of combination that you end up using a `for` - which is often verbose.               for (int i = 0; i<10; ++i)         std::cout << \"img_\" << i << std::endl;          for f in *; do echo \"$f\"; done      I always wondered if there is some kind of language made to simplify this case? For example:               \"mv img_[0~6] imgs\"      Would translate to               mv img_0 imgs     mv img_1 imgs     mv img_2 imgs     mv img_3 imgs     mv img_4 imgs     mv img_5 imgs      `img_[0~1][0~1]` could work for `img_00, img_01, img_10, img_11` `img_[x:0~2][x]` could work for `img_00, img_11, img_22` Etc. I'm not asking for this particular syntax, just if there is any kind of language/feature ever implemented with the purpose of expressing such combinations as easy as possible?"}
{"_id": "205455", "title": "Not sure how to study Web programming", "text": "Hello everyone and thank you for your time :) So I'm a 17 portuguese boy and I'm thinking about starting a website, but because I don't have much money I decided I'd need to learn how to do it myself. So I got several books on the main languages ([X]HTML, AJAX, JS, PHP, MySQL, CSS) but I'm not sure what to do with them. I started studying them in January and, for I thought this was hard, I decided to basically copy the books into several notebookes, and then, once I got the general picture of how these languages operate, I'd restart and starting apply the knowledge. However, this is taking too long. I've been studying this for over 6 months now, wasted over $20 in notebookes, and still there are several books that remain untouched. I'm thinking: maybe it would be a better approach to simply study the books and directly apply the knowledge and keep doing that, step by step, instead of overkilling like this. Meaning: instead of taking notes as you'd do in a normal school class, simply ignore that and dive right into the action and learn from experience. Thoughts? :) Thanks again."}
{"_id": "135886", "title": "How can I unit test audio?", "text": "I have inherited a small project and want to extend it and stabilize it at the same time by writing Unit Tests for all the new code I am adding. The first class, `TypedAudioCreator`, creates audio files and this turned out to be very easy to test first and write code for second. However, when it came time to write `TypedAudioPlayer`, I had no idea how I could test it. It's a very small class focusing on the very basics of playing sound:               public class TypedAudioFilePlayer     {         public event StartedPlayingHandler StartedPlaying;         public event StoppedPlayingHandler StoppedPlaying;              public readonly int TimeBetweenPlays;              private Queue<TypedAudioFile> _playlist = new Queue<TypedAudioFile>();               public TypedAudioFilePlayer(int timeBetweenPlays)         {             TimeBetweenPlays = timeBetweenPlays;         }              public void AddFile(TypedAudioFile file)         {             _playlist.Enqueue(file);         }              public void StartPlaying()         {             ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(ignoredState =>             {                 while (_playlist.Count > 0)                 {                     var audioFile = _playlist.Dequeue();                          if (StartedPlaying != null)                         StartedPlaying(audioFile);                          audioFile.SoundPlayer.PlaySync();                     audioFile.SoundPlayer.Dispose();                          if (StoppedPlaying != null)                         StoppedPlaying(audioFile);                 }             });         }              public void StopPlaying()         {             if (StoppedPlaying != null)                 StoppedPlaying(null);         }     }      I'm still very new at TDD, but I realize the benefits of the practice and would like to try and get better at it. I have written Code first, no tests here, but that was just me being too lazy to properly think of the TDD way of solving it. The question I have is, how should/could I test this class?"}
{"_id": "139305", "title": "Should I be bothered if my LOC/day ratio is too high?", "text": "I'm currently working on an indie project, so I don't exactly have the luxury of throughout human testing or external code review \u2014 however, I don't see any difficult bugs in my current code (I fix them as I see them, and most of the time they're just wrong field names and such, things that you fix in a minute or two), and I test it after implementing any feature before pushing it. Lately my LOC number was about 400 a day (for the record, it's C#), and I'm not only implementing new systems, but also rewrite things I've already written and fix some bugs. Should I be bothered? Is it the sign that I need to stop and review all the code I've been writing up to this date and refactor it?"}
{"_id": "205459", "title": "Object Oriented Design", "text": "Suppose you have the following:                    +--------+     +------+          | Animal |     | Food |          +-+------+     +----+-+            ^                 ^            |                 |            |                 |       +------+              +-------+       | Deer |              | Grass |       +------+              +-------+      `Deer` inherits from `Animal`, and `Grass` inherits from `Food`. So far so good. `Animal` objects can eat `Food` objects. Now lets mix it up a bit. Lets add a `Lion` which inherits from `Animal`.                    +--------+     +------+          | Animal |     | Food |          +-+-----++     +----+-+            ^     ^           ^            |     |           |            |     |           |       +------+ +------+     +-------+       | Deer | | Lion |     | Grass |       +------+ +------+     +-------+      Now we have have a problem because `Lion` can eat both `Deer` and `Grass`, but `Deer` is not `Food` it is `Animal`. With out using multiple inheritance, and using object oriented design, how do you solve this problem? FYI: I used http://www.asciiflow.com to create the ASCII diagrams."}
{"_id": "39181", "title": "Introducing Scala to a Technical Manager", "text": "I've been promoting Scala at work as something we should try out for things like testing with Specs http://code.google.com/p/specs/ and rapid prototyping of web services with tools like Scalatra https://github.com/scalatra/scalatra and Lift http://liftweb.net. A technical manager is interested in hearing more about Scala, and has no experience with the language. I've pointed out how Scala prototypes could be written quickly and deployed into our existing Java infrastructure as well as use our existing Java libraries. He is largely interested in the specific benefits of using Scala over Java and will be interested in concrete examples. I'd like to hear any thoughts or experiences people have introducing Scala to technical management. Thoughts on good code, clear, concise examples that demonstrate a big win over the Java equivalent, would be greatly appreciated. Some examples areas for discussion I have been thinking about are: **REPL**   A big win over Java, and I use it every day to test the Java code I am writing. **Basic Collection Iteration**   One of the first areas I think Java programmers can see immediate benefit. **Type Inference**   We use a lot of Python at work - I think less type boilerplate in a strongly typed language will be appealing. **Java Integration**   Given our Java investment, this will be a biggie. **Concurrency**   A brief run through of Akka actors and the new parallel collections. I'd love to see any small, focused examples anyone has here. **Specs**   I've been finding BDD with Specs excellent for testing Java applications. **Web development**   I've found Scalatra ideal for rapid development of REST services. Please share any other areas you think might be of interest as well as any focused code examples in these or other areas you think demonstrate advantages of Scala over the Java equivalent. **EDIT:** To be perfectly clear I am primarily interested in **concise concrete code examples** appropriate to this situation. Not at all interested in another \"Java vs Scala\" thread. I hope that was clear. Something like: **Java:**                 Foo theFoo = null;     for(Foo aFoo: allTheFoos) {       if (aFoo.getId().equals(theIdIWant)) {         theFoo = aFoo;         break;       }     }      **Scala:**                 val thefoo = allTheFoos.find(aFoo.id == theIdIWant)"}
{"_id": "242888", "title": "exception for string literal conventions", "text": "If I'm used to use ' for string literals in PHP, would it be better if I'll stick to it in any situation or can there be exceptions when it would increase readability? example: `$foo = \"bar'baz\"; // this may be easier to read $foo = 'bar\\'baz'; // but this would stick to the convention`"}
{"_id": "203111", "title": "What to call objects that may delete cached data to meet memory constraints?", "text": "I'm developing some cross-platform software which is intended to run on mobile devices. Both iOS and Android provide low memory warnings. I plan to make a wrapper class that will free cached resources (like textures) when low memory warnings are issued (assuming the resource is not in use). If the resource returns to use, it'll re-cache it, etc... I'm trying to think of what this is called. In .Net, it's similar to a \"weak reference\" but that only really makes sense when dealing with garbage collection, and since I'm using c++ and shared_ptr, a weak reference already has a meaning which is distinct from the one I'm thinking of. There's also the difference that this class will be able to rebuild the cache when needed. What is this pattern/whatever is called? Edit: Feel free to recommend tags for this question."}
{"_id": "204320", "title": "How can I secure a request handler so I only respond to the correct clients?", "text": "Here's the scenario... I have a web site that has a generic handler written in asp.net (.ashx file) that accepts http requests, gets relevant data, converts the result into xml and then passes that back via the response. This will eventually be used so that a windows application can make data requests to this web site. My concern is that anyone who knows how to put together the request can then access potentially personal data. The data isn't anything as sensitive as financial information, but it will have names and addresses so I obviously need to think about securing it. My initial thought was to encrypt the information before responding, and maybe even encrypt the request as well, and I'm happy to do this, but I just wanted to ask some other boffins for their opinion on the matter. Is this something that has a \"standard\" way of doing it, or is it simply a case of thinking of something suitable and implementing it. Incidentally, the windows app will be distributed all over the country so the requests will come from many places. Using the IP address is not only a laborious way of doing it, but it also doesn't help as you could obviously send the message from an IP without using the application. TL;DR How do I make sure that it was my windows app that asked my web app for information?"}
{"_id": "203115", "title": "What do I need to know about Data Structures and Algorithms in the \"real\" world", "text": "I just finished the data structures and algorithms course in school , I took it during the summer so 6wks course vs a 16 wk course during the regular semester. So not only was the course hard but it was really really really fast. My question is what do I need to know about data structures in the real world? I understand what they do and how they work, for the most part, but I had a real tough time coding them , I wouldn't be able to write the code for a binary tree class or a balanced tree class from scratch .... Is that bad? should I retake it , or is knowledge of how they work sufficient, without being able to write the classes from scratch?"}
{"_id": "203118", "title": "What are some ramifications of open source software turning into closed source software?", "text": "If a company takes a permissively licensed open source application and then develops a closed source application from that by reworking extensive parts of the application, adding new features and applying bug fixes... Ignoring any license requirements...   * How does the transition happen and what can be done to prevent it beyond choosing a difference license?   * What are the (ethical or social) responsibilities for the company? (For example: Giving back to the open source project would be the ethical thing to do)   * If the open source version and closed source version are both available, how does the competition affect either product? Are there any examples of companies or products that have done this (either successfully or unsuccessfully) in the past? What was the community attitude toward those projects?"}
{"_id": "45982", "title": "Assembly as a First Programming Language?", "text": "How good of an idea do you think it would be to teach people Assembly (some variant) as a first programming language? It would take a lot more effort than learning for instance Java or Python, but one would have good understanding of the machine more or less from \"programming day one\" (compared to many higher level languages, at least). What do you think? Is it a realistic idea, at least to those who are ready to make the extra effort? Advantages and disadvantages? _Note: I'm no teacher, just curious_"}
{"_id": "41401", "title": "Eclipse RCP - Programming or configuring?", "text": "when I develop a RCP application I always ask myself should I do it 'by hand' or should I use the XML configuration? Is it only a matter of taste, what benefits am I missing when I don't use the configuration approach. Is there anything to think of when converting an RCP app to e4 in the future? Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Thomas"}
{"_id": "123342", "title": "Inheritance vs mixins in dynamic languages?", "text": "**When should you prefer inheritance patterns over mixins in dynamic languages?** By mixins, I mean actual proper mixing in, as in inserting functions and data members into an object in runtime. When would you use, for example, prototypal inheritance instead of mixins? To illustrate more clearly what I mean by mixin, some pseudocode:               asCircle(obj) {       obj.radius = 0       obj.area = function() {         return this.radius * this.radius * 3.14       }          myObject = {}     asCircle(myObject)     myObject.area() // -> 0"}
{"_id": "218457", "title": "Visual Studio's Developer License duals as a personal license?", "text": "I can be completely wrong but I vaguely remember hearing from a podcast that according to Visual Studio's license, a developer who works with Visual Studio professionally at their work place automatically has the license to use it in their personal life. That means a developer may not have to pay for Visual Studio to legally use/own it. Again, I can be completely wrong but if I'm right, can someone confirm with a source?"}
{"_id": "218458", "title": "Is there any \"real\" reason multiple inheritance is hated?", "text": "I've always liked the idea of having multiple inheritance supported in a language. Most often though it's intentionally forgone, and the supposed \"replacement\" is interfaces. Interfaces simply do not cover all the same ground multiple inheritance does, and this restriction can occasionally lead to more boilerplate code. The only basic reason I have ever heard for this is the diamond problem with base classes. I just can't accept that. To me, it comes off an awful lot like, \"Well, it's _possible_ to screw it up, so it's automatically a bad idea.\" You can screw up anything in a programming language though, and I mean anything. I just cannot take this seriously, at least not without a more thorough explanation. Just being aware of this problem is 90% of the battle. Furthermore I think I heard something years ago about a general-purpose work-around involving an \"envelope\" algorithm or something like that (does this ring a bell, anyone?). Concerning the diamond problem, the only potentially genuine problem I can think of is if you're trying to use a third-party library and can't see that two seemingly unrelated classes in that library have a common base class, but in addition to documentation, a simple language feature could, let's say, require that you specifically declare your intent to create a diamond before it'll actually compile one for you. With such a feature, any creation of a diamond is either intentional, reckless, or because one is unaware of this pitfall. So that all being said...Is there any **real** reason most people hate multiple inheritance, or is it all just a bunch of hysteria that causes more harm than good? Is there something that I am not seeing here? Thank you. **Example** Car extends WheeledVehicle, KIASpectra extends Car and Electronic, KIASpectra contains Radio. Why doesn't KIASpectra contain Electronic?   1. Because it _is_ an Electronic. Inheritance vs. composition should always be an is-a relationship vs. a has-a relationship.   2. Because it _is_ an Electronic. There are wires, circuit boards, switches, etc. all up and down that thing.   3. Because it _is_ an Electronic. If your battery goes dead in the winter, _you're in just as much trouble as if all your wheels suddenly went missing._ Why not use interfaces? Take #3, for instance. I don't want to write this over and over again, and I _really_ don't want to create some bizarre proxy helper class to do this either:               private void runOrDont()     {         if (this.battery)         {             if (this.battery.working && this.switchedOn)             {                 this.run();                 return;             }         }         this.dontRun();     }      (We're not getting into whether that implementation is good or bad.) You can imagine how there may be _several_ of these functions associated with Electronic that are not related to anything in WheeledVehicle, and vice-versa. **Edit** I wasn't sure whether to settle down on that example or not, since there is room for interpretation there. You could also think in terms of Plane extending Vehicle and FlyingObject and Bird extending Animal and FlyingObject, or in terms of a much purer example."}
{"_id": "218459", "title": "Connecting a native iOS app to backend and database", "text": "I have a good amount of experience working with objective-C and making iOS apps that work locally and with BaaS providers (Parse.com). However, I'd like to take my mobile development to the next level and I'd like tips on the order in which to do things and tips on which services/technologies to use. So, I need a database, and a place to host my database. I've used Amazon AWS for some things, and I can easily set up a mySQL DB on an EC2 instance there. Alternatively, I've heard that GAE is very useful. I don't really know if I have to write any back-end code. It seems to me that objective-C can take the place of my back-end code. Is that secure? Should I be making an entire service that is simply called from the iPhone? So, I know that it's a loaded question, and it may require a few different opinions to really round out a good answer. Sorry about that. But, assuming that I am proficient enough with Obj-C to make anything happen client side, and that I'm sentient enough to learn other languages that I might not know and follow tutorials and examples online - What are the steps (and the best technologies/services at each step) to making a native iOS app that does not use a BaaS provider like Parse.com or Stackmob.com. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "133488", "title": "Common diagnostics which VisualVM is used for", "text": "There's a lot of documentation out there on how to _use_ the 'jvisualvm' profiler, but very little (if any) real-life advice on how to _analyze_ all those charts and dumps. I'm just a little overwhelmed by all the graphs and having trouble making sense of it all. I know this is sort of a monolithic-type question, but there _has_ to be a way to condense its _typical_ uses into a fairly concise list - finding memory leaks, zombie threads and such. What specifically are some of the common analyses for VisualVM?"}
{"_id": "202866", "title": "Should I force users to update an application?", "text": "I'm writing an application for a medium sized company that will be used by about 90% of our employees and our clients. In planning for the future we decided to add functionality that will verify that the version of the program that is running is a version that we still support. Currently the application will forcequit if the version is not among our supported versions. Here is my concern. Hypothetically, in version 2.0.0.1 method \"A\" crashes and burns in glorious fashion and method \"B\" works just fine. We release 2.0.0.2 to fix method A and deprecate version 0.1. Now if someone is running 0.1 to use method B they will be forced to update to fix something that isn't an issue for them right now. My question is, will the time saved not troubleshooting old, unsupported versions outweigh the cost in usability?"}
{"_id": "71368", "title": "How would you answer this job-interview question?", "text": "One of the five people who interviewed me asked a question that resulted in an hour-long discussion: **\"Explain how you would develop a frequency-sorted list of the ten thousand most-used words in the English language.\"** My initial response was to assail the assumptions underlying the problem. Language is a fluid thing, I argued. It changes in real time. Vocabulary and usage patterns shift day-to-day. To develop a list of words and their frequencies means taking a snapshot of a moving target. Whatever snapshot you take today isn't going to look like the snapshot you take tomorrow or even five minutes from now. Thanking you advance for your answers and consideration."}
{"_id": "133486", "title": "How should I deal with external data sinks?", "text": "I recently took on a contract job that will largely involve generating data feeds from my client's data and sending it to external partners, via feeds and API invocations. I've always found this particular kind of coding to be frustrating, for a number of reasons:   * You have to rely on specs, which often diverge from the actual implementation or simply don't go into sufficient detail   * You have little to no ability to see into the external system, to ensure that your data has been accepted and interpreted properly   * If there's any kind of problem with data you've generated, it's not always straightforward to back out the changes and try again   * External testing and staging environments frequently diverge from production logic and the production database What are some best practices for doing this kind of work? Creating mocks and stubs won't necessarily resolve my problems, as my real concern is: do my feeds have the correct effect on another system, which is basically a black box? Mocks simply duplicate my assumptions."}
{"_id": "133485", "title": "Source/Version control for application used by multiple companies", "text": "Do you find it easier to keep a branch for each company that uses software you support/develop? Each company will want \"customizations\" and I am just trying to figure out the best way to handle those changes. A branch for each company makes sense in the short term but I could see how this could cause issues with upgrades when a new version is developed. Is better to have a branch for each company or to setup customizations so that they are always merged to a main branch to minimize issues with future releases?"}
{"_id": "231812", "title": "Difficulty understanding difference between Project Manager (Business Analyst) and Software Architect and Scrum Master", "text": "From what I've gathered: **Project Manager (PM)(or Business Analyst (BA))** : Decides EVERYTHING. Capable of solving problems. This means he or she will have the skills necessary to look at data and other relevant information in order to determine where the losses are within a company. He or she must be skilled in negotiation, listening, motivational speaking and will also be a good team leader.   * Responsible writing the BRD, where contained are all the Business Requirements of the users/customers.   * BAs serve as a communication conduit between the stakeholders and the team **Software Architect** : The Architect is the interface between the dev team and the stakeholders. They need to be able to understand the business side and the technical details. Architects see what you need now, what you mean when you say what you need, and design a software strategy that will give you what you need today, and a home that you can grow into (and from) in the future. **Scrum Master** : Priority # 1 is to remove impediments as reported by team. He should also constantly look out for potential impediments.. and more importantly impediments that are there but not yet identified. Impediments are opportunities. So scrum-master should avail these opportunities all day long to bring his team(s) to hyper productivity. (avail = use or take advantage of) It appears several of these roles overlap one another. Please help clarify this issue. Some kind of story that strings together all these people would really help! Thanks much."}
{"_id": "231816", "title": "xaml schedule control how to cope with items of vastly differing durations", "text": "I have to create a schedule control using WPF XAML for displaying items with duration as little as 1 seconds and potentially as large as couple of hours. First thing which seems clear is that I will need some kind of zoom capability, for drilling into the items with very short durations and zooming out to view the items with very large durations. I have a UI style in mind where by when the control is zoomed to view the large items, any small duration items which generally occur between the large duration items are some how collected in to a 'bucket' which has a height >= a minimum display height. So that I can perhaps hover a mouse over this bucket and get a tool tip which renders the contained items into a time ordered list view. I am at a loss as to where to begin. I feel that I could perhaps achieve something in the Measure/Arrange overrides of a custom Panel. But I think this could adversely affect render performance. If I were to do it this way, I guess I would need to inject a 'bucket' view into the panels children collection, but that would break the use of ItemTemplate in my Custom Items Control? My second though is that I create a custom observable collection which has a bindable Scale property which then organises the collection into 'buckets' of a duration large enough to be displayable. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I should best approach this problem?"}
{"_id": "231814", "title": "Should I really need to implement event sourcing is this case?", "text": "An example of use case when event sourcing is applicable here whose excerpt is: > Say, something went wrong in your app and as a result, a user gets blocked > for abuse but that user claims to not have done anything to break rules. Now > you can go back to your staging environment and play the events leading up > to the block in that system and see what happens first hand. > > What\u2019s needed for this is a comprehensive log of events for basically any > interaction that happens around your app and a staging system to replay > events to. Based on the sensitivity of your data you may want to anonymize > some details before hand but that\u2019s about it. IMO, event sourcing has a real benefit when we are asking for \"why\" was there this state rather than \"what\" was the state. My application is designed following CQRS principle, but I don't use Event Sourcing yet. If my application is really focus on the \"what\" rather than the \"why\" (since operations are really simple, meaning there are no different ways to end up the same result), is it similar to use the Temporal Pattern as introduced here (persisting object's versions/revisions in database) rather than implementing event sourcing? Especially for tracking user abuses (like posting some insults) that were temporary (so hidden), a simple query asking for the version where the abuse was commit could be enough and quickly made, rather than having a \"script\" in staging environment replaying the events to get the right snapshot showing the abuse."}
{"_id": "43840", "title": "Representing timezone list", "text": "I have a web application that allows the user to choose the timezone from the list. The list is very long (pretty much all CLDR-supported timezones). So the question is - how should I represent it? How should it be sorted - alphabetically or by timezone offset? What information should each item contain - offset, location, long name (like Europe/Zurich) or short name (like CET)? Should I display information about DST or only current offset? Let's say I can't right now do something like fancy maps OS configuration dialogs display, so the list is the only option. However I want to make the list look nice. Any best practices how it's done?"}
{"_id": "33157", "title": "How to ramp up my data structures skills after a long hibernation", "text": "I was pretty good with algorithms and data structures once, a long long time ago. Since then, I programmed professionally, and then went to manage a small team, which totally shot my tech skills in this field back. I've decided I want to be a developer again, and work for Google. The thing is, I'm so out of practice, that if I were to be interviewed right now I would surely flunk out in 10 minutes. What training program would you recommend for me to get back into shape? I already started this weekend by going back to the absolute basics and implementing a few sort algorithms, linked list, and hash table. Next, I think I'll read through the entire course material on the other basic data structures and graph algorithms. I want to find a focused set of practical exercises I can do in a relatively short amount of time, to juggle the old brain cells. I know this stuff - I just need to remind myself that I know it."}
{"_id": "33156", "title": "Defensive Programming Techniques", "text": "I was attempting to identify an element of software engineering that I think is overlooked, not emphasized or not taught in typical undergraduate course work for CS or SE. What I came up is the concept of defensive programming. I would like to hear the community's options on defensive program and/or specific techniques that you use on a regular basis. Also, I would to know if there are any language specific techniques. Edit: Just to more clear. I am not looking for a lesson in defensive program. I understand what it is. I was hoping this would be more of discussion about different method members of the community employ or find valuable. Here are some techniques that I use. Keep in mind that I use C almost exclusively. Coding standard. You not might initially think that this has anything to do with defensive programming, but it does. To illustrate, suppose your coding standard requires you to prepend variable names with the type of variable it is such as IntValue or UIntValue. The convention allows you to easily spot potential promotion rule issues like (IntX = IntValue * UIntValue) Use preprocessor macros for constants. Personally, I think this also make your program more readable and maintainable, but it also provided a safety net. You can be sure that all areas of the code that use the macro will be updated when you change the value. Other uses of preprocessor macros can also provided defensive attributes in your code. Some technique are built right into the language such as static variables or function declarations or in c++ data encapsulation. Of course there are more obvious ones including validating all your input and output."}
{"_id": "70944", "title": "Lecture-like CS videos", "text": "I have no formal education in computer science (I am a mathematician), and I recently discovered that well-made videos make for decent substitutes of actual lectures. I'm looking for advice about some nice video lectures, but I have a more specific requirement than this question. Namely, many videos I found online do not make use of the blackboard and use a still camera. In these videos you just see the teacher talking and pointing at something that may be projected on the overhead, but you have no way to tell. Often there are slides to follow, but these are not a great help. Instead lectures like SICP or this course on Channel 9 make use of blackboards and have undergone a proper video editing, which ensures that you always see the relevant slides. This makes an enormous difference with respect to still camera lectures, which I find mostly unuseful. I can easily Google for lectures, but I need the help from people that actually followed them to find the relevant ones. I am mostly interested in the following topic, in descending order:   1. Compilers and interpreters   2. Operating systems   3. (Advanced) data structures and algorithms   4. Networks and protocols I don't really mind for the language used for the course, but in case I speak (at various levels) PHP, Javascript, Python, Scheme, C and Haskell. Even better if the courses proceed at a high pace. I generally learn rather quickly, but I do not have much spare time."}
{"_id": "232546", "title": "Best design pattern for library with data model", "text": "I am refactoring an old Codeigniter library to be php framework agnostic. There are these core parts:   * the connection object - this will come from the \"user\"; ie, the framework's connection, or their own connection library. My library will not want to \"know about it\" except that (at first) it will be a PDO conn object (but things should be written to handle a native driver type)   * the model object - runs the queries & returns results array (or error array) to the main lib. As it is now, it is very \"thin\" and only has transactions, query building & the actual db query   * the model interface - I'm a big fan of interfaces, and I see this model as being swappable for a NoSQL model, for example   * the main library - in my current CI library, this 1) receives the function request, 2) validates the params passed to it, 3) requests from the model, 4) creates a response array that includes the data & error codes and messages (multilingual configurable, but not really part of this question)  So, in summary, the way it works NOW is in your controller or calling page: 1) call main lib function 2) main lib calls model 3) model returns to main lib 4) main lib returns to controller * * * NOW starts my real design pattern question: I would like to pass my conn object via DI to my main library, but I'd also like to pass my model via DI to the main library to keep things flexible. The flexibility goal I'm after would be to allow people to create their own Native DB or NoSQL models & pass non-PDO conns into this, so keeping them decoupled seems optimal. BUT to do this, the only thing I can think of would end up as: (controller - where I might actually execute the query in the lib, not model)               $conn //from the user     $model = new MyModel();     $lib = new MyLib($conn, $model);      or               $conn //from the user     $model = new MyModel($conn);     $lib = new MyLib($model);      which feels more \"natural\" since the query & conn tend to work together Either case feels pretty clumsy for the user, and I can't help but wonder if I'm not either overdoing this whole DI thing or just have picked the wrong design pattern to go about this. Any guidance as to how to best set this up would be greatly appreciated - spent more time thinking about this than it will take me to refactor the actual code! TIA"}
{"_id": "12915", "title": "Project organization with professionals and students", "text": "I am working as a PhD student developing scientific/engineering simulations and algorithms to be tested in these simulations. These days the first student started to work on my project (for his Bachelor thesis) and I am wondering: how should I organize the project now? I think I have some good C++ knowledge (although I still want to improve everyday!) and the code contains some design patterns, lots of templated classes etc. These techniques are new to the student and I wonder if it's a good idea to have him work directly in the trunk of the project. Do you have any experiences what happens if programming newbies and more experienced programmers are mixed? Does the code get messed up or do the newbies learn more by this? Is it wise to have a branch for the student to test his algorithms and maybe merge them into the trunk later? Should I first give him a book like The Pragmatic Programmer for reading (better suggestions?)? Thanks for every answer! PLEASE NOTE: I asked this question on Stackoverflow. The answer was about code reviews and I think this is a good way, but I was also advised that this site might be the more correct one, so I wanted to see if there are more things that might help or other opinions?"}
{"_id": "123469", "title": "How to choose a language, when taking in account the community it includes?", "text": "I was reading the following article: Great Hackers The following part grabbed my attention: > \"When you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. The > programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as > smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. And > the quality of your hackers probably matters more than the language you > choose. Though, frankly, the fact that good hackers prefer Python to Java > should tell you something about the relative merits of those languages.\" I would like to apply his advice on a commercial web application I am building (I am a strong believer in culture and community), yet this article was written in 2004, and python has increased in popularity in the recent years. How can I decided a language when taking in consideration its community, rather than the popularity? Any recommendations? Is there any language community that show dedication and passion for developing, rather than learning a language to get a Job and a paycheck?"}
{"_id": "123461", "title": "Window Position on Startup", "text": "Here's a question for me that really makes me wonder every time I start designing and developing a thick-client desktop application. I'm a .NET developer, and with my forms (WinForms mostly, but the platform should be unimportant) I also choose the startup position to be **Center**. The reason I do this is because I can't stand randomness, and as a user myself I don't like when windows jump all over my monitor. So my question for you, is what is the best way to go about this? Center an application startup window or have it randomly placed? And why?"}
{"_id": "123462", "title": "Definition of mixing programming idioms?", "text": "Say I have class that is partially implemented as a static class and partially implemented as a singleton. Besides \"kludge\" and \"code-smell\" (imo this is both) is there a more appropriate term for this type of mixing programming idioms?"}
{"_id": "180826", "title": "Static Tables vs Dynamic Entity Attributes Storage Configurations", "text": "I am trying to figure out a better way to decide table storage configurations whether it will use **static configurations using tables** or **dynamic configurations using EAV** (entity-attribute-value) When creating database tables, forms, and reports, when do you decide that a program should use a normal database (wherein everything is statically configured, possibly final) or use entity-attribute-values (wherein all of the data are dynamic and can be customized)? Does it all depend on the client/people using it? Is static-table-customized- programs only applicable for small and medium businesses? and dynamic-eav- customizable-field-programs (like Quickbooks) only for the general public or big businesses wherein they don't want another programmer to tamper again with their software?"}
{"_id": "238581", "title": "Why is there no 'subclasses-only' access modifier in Java?", "text": "In Java, there are four available access modifiers for methods: `public` - any class can use this method. `protected` - classes in the same package and subclasses in any package can use this method. `private` - only this class can use this method. `no modifier` (\"package private\") - only classes in the same package can use this method. What happens often is that I want to have useful methods in a superclass, that all subclasses can use. But it wouldn't make sense for other classes to access this method, and in a sense it would break encapsulation. So I have to declare these useful methods in the superclass `public` or `protected`, which exposes them to all other classes at least in the package. Even though they're only meant to be used by the subclasses. Is there a reason why there isn't a `subclasses-only` access modifier in Java? It seems very odd to me. Am I missing something? _Also, a`subclasses-only` access modifier would also be useful for when you want to expose variables only to subclasses. Which to me happens a lot._"}
{"_id": "83376", "title": "What does a Technology Analyst do at a banking company?", "text": "I just graduated from college and I got a job as a _Technology Analyst_ in a banking company. I was told that I would be working on .Net or Java. What kind of work will I be doing? What is the need of a programmer in a banking company?"}
{"_id": "83372", "title": "How should I program with dynamic typing language even no type is noted on documentation?", "text": "I lived long time on static typed language world. All types were explicitly noted on each variables and arguments. Now I have to use some kind of dynamic typing language. (Smalltalk) The problem is there is no type noted on any message argument, and even on documentation. So, how can I know what should be passed to the each argument? Why the people didn't note type on message arguments? Really isn't it need?"}
{"_id": "83370", "title": "MBA versus MSIS", "text": "I am considering going back to school for my masters and I've been looking at several avenues I can take. I've been considering either an MBA or an MSIS degree. Overall I know that an MBA is going to give me a solid skill set that can help me become an executive. However they seem to be a dime a dozen these days and the University I can get into is good, but it's not exactly in the top 100 anything. My undergrad MINOR was in Business Information Systems. I'm rusty as hell, considering I haven't touched it, but an MSIS would be more in the direction of my past academic experience and seems to touch both on business management and IT. Question... With an MSIS will I just be a middleman? Will I really be an important person with a real skill set or will I merely be someone who isn't quite cut out to be a manager and who is clueless about the tech side? Is an MSIS degree going to give me a real chance to move up the pay scale quickly or am I better off learning programming, networking through another BS degree? What will give me more upward mobility career wise? An MBA or an MSIS?"}
{"_id": "202245", "title": "Gathering all data in single iteration vs using functions for readable code", "text": "Say I have an array of runners with which I need to find the tallest runner, the fastest runner, and the lightest runner. It seems like the most readable solution would be:               runners = getRunners();     tallestRunner = getTallestRunner(runners);     fastestRunner = getFastestRunner(runners);     lightestRunner = getLightestRunner(runners);      ..where each function iterates over the runners and keeps track of the largest height, greatest speed, and lowest weight. Iterating over the array three times, however, doesn't seem like a very good idea. It would instead be better to do:               int greatestHeght, greatestSpeed, leastWeight;     Runner tallestRunner, fastestRunner, lightestRunner;     for(runner in runners){         if(runner.height > greatestHeight) { greatestHeight = runner.height; tallestRunner = runner; }         if(runner.speed > ...     }      While this isn't too unreadable, it can get messy when there is more logic for each piece of information being extracted in the iteration. What's the middle ground here? How can I use only a single iteration while still keeping the code divided into logical units?"}
{"_id": "202247", "title": "clarification about amortized analysis", "text": "I was going through an article here In the section named Aggregate Method ,the author says > Then summing over the entire sequence, all the 1's sum to O(n), and all the > di also sum to O(n). That is, and then gives this               \u03a31\u2264i\u2264n ci   \u2264   n + \u03a30\u2264j\u2264m 2j\u22121      I can understand how summing 1's to get n , But I am not very clear how the second term becomes `\u03a30\u2264j\u2264m 2j\u22121` and thereby O(n) Sorry about the formatting..I am not sure how the math notations are to be printed here.. Will you please see the original article ?"}
{"_id": "212110", "title": "An ideal way to decode JSON documents in C?", "text": "Assuming I have an API to consume that uses JSON as a data transmission method, what is an ideal way to decode the JSON returned by each API resource? For example, in Java I'd create a class for each API resource then initiate an object of that class and consume data from it. for example:               class UserJson extends JsonParser     {         public function UserJson(String document) {         /*Initial document parsing goes here...*/         }     //A bunch of getter methods . . . .     }      The probably do something like this:               UserJson userJson = new UserJson(jsonString);//Initial parsing goes in the constructor     String username = userJson.getName();//Parse JSON name property then return it as a String.        Or when using a programming language with associative arrays(i.e., hash table) the decoding process doesn't require creating a class: _(PHP)_               $userJson = json_decode($jsonString);//Decode JSON as key=>value       $username = $userJson['name'];      But, when I'm programming in procedural programming languages (C), I can't go with either method, since C is neither OOP nor supports associative arrays(by default, at least). What is the \"correct\" method of parsing pre-defined JSON strings(i.e., JSON documents specified by the API provider via examples or documentation)? The method I'm currently using is creating a file for each API resource to parse, the problem with this method is that it's basically a lousy version of the OOP method, as it looks exactly like the OOP method but doesn't provide any OOP benefits(e.g., can't pass an object of the parser, etc.). I've been thinking about encapsulating each API resource parser file in a **publicly accessed** structure(pointing all functions/publicly usable variables to the structure) then accessing the parser file code from within the structure(`parser.parse()`, `parser.getName()`, etc.). As this way looks a bit better than the my current method, it still just a rip off the OOP way, isn't it? Any suggestions for methods to parse JSON documents on procedural programming lanauges? Any comments on the methods I'm _currently_ using(either 3 of them)?"}
{"_id": "47806", "title": "Examples of Finite State Machines", "text": "I'm looking for good examples of finite state machines, language isn't particularly important, just good examples. Code implementations are useful (generalized pseudo-code), but it's also very useful to gather the various uses of FSM's. Examples don't necessarily need to be computer based, for example Mike Dunlavey's Railroad networks example, is very useful."}
{"_id": "221953", "title": "Why do programmers use `Acme` as a package, namespace or directory name", "text": "This may or may not be a silly question, but I really would like to know the answer to something which has been bothering me for a while. I quite often see programming examples/conventions where the programmer has created a directory called `acme` to put stuff in. What does `Acme` mean? Why Acme and not Emca or other? Is Acme like a generic folder name to group miscellaneous OOP classes? Where did the term come from in terms of the programming convention. As far as I can see, it has nothing to do with a programmer UI http://plan9.bell- labs.com/sys/doc/acme.html"}
{"_id": "233840", "title": "One Event Sent to Multiple Listeners, Want to Log Notification Once", "text": "![System Layout](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jc40i.png) I have a system in place where a Cache is made up of many Cache Nodes. When one is added, a CacheNodeAdded event is raised by the Cache. The Cache has a redundant set of Monitors listening for this event. Monitors are responsible for notifying on Cache events. Since I have multiple Monitors, but only want to be notified once, **Step 3** is what I am looking to implement. Solutions I can't use:   * Cache notifying directly. Monitors must be used.   * Have each Monitor check the log to see if the notification has been sent. Since they all run separately, they could all access the list of notifications at the same time, see the notification hasn't been sent, and notify multiple times as a result. Solution I'm toying with:   * When event is received, get a list of all Monitor IDs (GUID), order the list, and the first Monitor in the list gets to send the notification. This is a simple solution but it seems a little inelegant. Are there any other simple solutions that I may be overlooking?"}
{"_id": "40465", "title": "Are project managers useful in Scrum?", "text": "There are three roles defined in Scrum: Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. There is no project manager, instead the **project manager job is spread across the three roles**. For instance:   * **The Scrum Master:** Responsible for the process. Removes impediments.   * **The Product Owner:** Manages and prioritizes the list of work to be done to maximize ROI. Represents all interested parties (customers, stakeholders).   * **The Team:** Self manage its work by estimating and distributing it among themselves. Responsible for meeting their own commitments. So in Scrum, there is no longer a single person responsible for project success. There is no command-and-control structure in place. That seems to baffle a lot of people, specifically those not used to agile methods, and of course, PM's. I'm really interested in this and what your experiences are, as I think this is one of the things that can make or break a Scrum implementation. _**Do you agree with Scrum that a project manager is not needed? Do you think such a role is still required? Why?_**"}
{"_id": "208934", "title": "How to evaluate Secure Authorization for server to client", "text": "I have a customer that wants me to build a web portal (Asp.net 4.0) that will communicate with a desktop client, tablet and/or smart phone (e.g. iOS and/or Android). I was thinking of using oAuth 2.0. But I'm not familiar with any potential cons to using OAuth. And I don't know how to compare OAuth to other Secure Authorization method/protocols that would be appropriate for this situation. How should I evaluate OAuth to see if it's right for my project or if I should use a different protocol?"}
{"_id": "208935", "title": "How do you evaluate learning C# from videos for a beginner?", "text": "I have an idea about programming in general so I know what a variable and a method is but I didn't program before. I liked C# because of Visual Studio and I only tried Hello word program in it. I still don't know much about OOP. Now, I have videos to learn from which I found on (LearnVisualStudio.net). However, I'm not sure about the author of the videos in that site if he is a professional or just a hobbyist because I want someone to teach me with a good practice habits, I want to learn the right way! I also have some books but I found most of them don't explain the principles in a clear way. So they start with a 'hello world' program and after that you find yourself lost with a lot of concepts which are explained randomly. Please let me know if you know anything about the site mentioned above if it is good or not to start with and let me know if learning from videos considered good for learning programming and OOP?"}
{"_id": "136961", "title": "How would you architect an application which is largely a collection of flowcharts?", "text": "I am working with a history teacher on a history app. He has like 200 flowcharts that he wants to put into the app (among other things). The two likeliest-looking ways to do it:   1. HTML/CSS. The big minus here is that neither one of us is a big HTML/CSS person. Though I do know a bit about them.   2. Adobe Illustrator. The interface makes it easy to draw stuff, and we can make vector graphics files and work from those. The drawback is that the text of a box, the graphical box, and the corresponding hyperlink would be different entities, where as if the HTML/CSS is done right, they might all be a single thing. There are some flowchart-drawing websites out there. But the ones I have looked at have some problems:   1. In the ones I have looked at, the HTML is big and messy. We need ours to be short and simple.   2. Often a large amount of JavaScript is involved. We could do that, but it adds to the complexity of our mobile app, as well as the risk of failures. We are starting on iOS but may add other platforms later."}
{"_id": "207741", "title": "Code design: is this specific case of monkeypatching in python acceptable?", "text": "I'm using python to do some research tasks. I have a class hierarchy for \"tools\", where each object is an instance of a particular tool. They all share some functionality and have many similarities in their states. Some of these tools can use one of several methods based on the tool object's current state. The specific tool I'm going to ask about actually calls functions from external modules instead of methods written in the class directly. The underlying reason for this is to break up the code into multiple files, i.e. not have any huge monster file that has all the various methods and helper functions those methods use, when all it needs at any given time is a particular very-targeted subset. I.e. when the mode of the tool is \"clean_house\", I would only functions like \"wash_windows\", \"vacuum_carpet\", and \"ask_girlfriend_for_help\", while when the mode is \"do_work\", I use functions like \"write_code\", \"debug_code\", and \"ask_SO_question\". The subsets don't intersect in any way, i.e. \"write_code\" would never call \"ask_girlfriend_for_help\", etc. Instead of calling these functions from module scope within the class methods, it seems to me that it's a better idea to monkeypatch them to the tool's class, since there are instance methods they need to call that go further up the class hierarchy and modify some (protected) part object's state that is used later in the destructor. I know monkeypatching is often considered poor design or last-resort practice when hot-fixes are in order (Programmer's SE post here), but is it justified in this case? Any alternative code design suggestions?"}
{"_id": "136965", "title": "Grouping conceptual algorithms into one class or associate with their object models", "text": "If I have a number of classes, lets say a variety of buildings of some sort. Each of these buildings have various properties and do some stuff etc Now there is a set of operations I need to do on these buildings that are all conceptually the same. Lets call this conceptual group of operations _Move building effluent_. This functionality is essentially responsible for performing methods based on the information of each Building and then setting properties in other areas of the code as well as setting information on the building itself (can't help the need to set properties in other areas at the moment due to current system design limitations). It's important to note that although these methods are conceptually the same and they set many of the same properties in various classes the way they calculate and get to these values are different (they do share some code however). My question is should I put the code to do this into one class called say _EffluentBuildingDistribution_ or should I put it into each buildings own class with appropriate methods to perform essentially the same code. So either something like:               public class EffluentBuildingDistribution      {         public void DistributeEffluent()         {            // parameters example only            DistributeBuildingHouse(var param1, var param2);            DistributeBuildingDogHouse(var param1, var param2);            DistributeBuildingSecondHouse(var param1, var param2);         }              // and various private methods to help work with the 3 methods some shared         // others not         }      or               public class HouseBuilding    {        public void DistributeEffluent(var param1, var param2)        {           // do stuff        }     }          public class DogHouseBuilding    {        public void DistributeEffluent(var param1, var param2)        {           // do stuff        }     }      Or perhaps neither of these options!. I'm not sure if putting the code on the objects they are working on is the way to go, or putting it in a class that represents conceptually what we are trying to do. This is an example of my current dilemma however it's also a general responsibility question on where to proportion methods and actions etc If it's not specific enough or needs more explanation etc let me know and I'll try to explain more of my issue. EDIT: Due to some understandable confusion with my usage of the term _Structure_ in my example, I since changed it to _Building_. Some of the answers below refer to Structure but they are still valid as I have not changed the core of the question."}
{"_id": "136964", "title": "Easy To Use Collaborative Editing Software?", "text": "My friend and I usually don't have time to meet up in person to do some real pair programming. Since we want to program together anyway, we turned to the world of collaborative software editing. Sadly, most of the solutions we have tried are either lackluster or don't work at all. Cloud9 (fusion of Mozilla Skywriter, ACE) is tossing errors like there's no tomorrow and makes developing a project impossible. Notepad++'s plugin seems to be broken. CollabEdit allows only for one file at the time. Granted, you can open multiple windows, but that makes editing a bunch of files really, really awkward and clumsy. Is there any online or offline software to enable sane collaborative editing? We tried Skyping with a shared screen, and while it's truer to pair- programming than two people coding at once, we don't want to be limited that way."}
{"_id": "230033", "title": "Python sorted iterable set, modifiable during iteration", "text": "I am looking for a datastructure to handle cycling through a large number of ordered subroutines, some of which are active, most of which are not. I am thinking I need an implementation of a python set like object which remains ordered when modified, can be easily iterated over (I don't care if an actual for loop works, as long as there is a simple and efficient way to read each element in order). And most notably can be modified while being iterated over. This is to allow an implementation of a very specific form of subroutine program (unfortunately I cannot use the built in subroutine modules as my python program is emulating the behaviour of a legacy system precisely so I need finer control.) Effectively I have a list of subroutines which are referenced by an index number in a dictionary, the subroutines are iterated over in ascending order until the last is reached at which point we return to the lowest number one. However there are a large number of subroutines and only a few at any time will be 'active' and ones which are not active are skipped in the order for running. I considered simply giving each routine an active flag which would be tested before running however the enormous number of potential routines compared to the tiny number of active ones makes this method much to slow. Subroutines are only occasionally activated or deactivated but running them must be very fast. As such I have been looking to keep a list of the keys of the active ones and iterate through that, adding or removing them as they are activated or deactivated but am looking for a reasonably efficient way of maintaining this list. The main two systems which seem feasible to me are blist sorted sets, however I am not sure if they support being modified while iterated over, and using two heapq and shifting the items between them in order, this will definitely support modification at any time but would require a lot more manual work, and would probably be slower. However somebody may have a much better answer than either of those so I will appreciate any ideas on how to achieve this with reasonable efficiency and ideally in a 'pythonic' way, though I can deal with it being a little ugly if it does the job."}
{"_id": "14543", "title": "Is it appropriate to go around your boss to receive an answer? If so how?", "text": "If you have a project and there are questions that need answered regarding a specific part of it but answers are not coming back to you because of a reason such as: \"The project is not in scope and as a side project we are not going to push for answers,\" is it appropriate to go outside/around your boss to get those answers. If so how? If not why? My situation: In the next month we have a lot of projects slated for our team but currently we have a lot of down time and some side projects that I really want to participate in are coming to a screeching halt because of the lack of answers I have received regarding some of the specifications. My boss won't press for answers because he said since this is a side project we are not \"supposed\" to really be investing out full efforts into it, however, I go crazy at work with down time unless I find something constructive to do. Ie. learn a new language, take on a side project like this one. How can I elicit the answers I need to start working on this project because chartered projects come up that require my full time and I have to toss this side project off to a student developer? Additionally, how can I do so without pissing off anyone above me?"}
{"_id": "219496", "title": "Duplicate code in DCI model and use case", "text": "I'm just coming in to an application that's already built with a DCI architecture. I've discovered in trying to implement a feature that there is duplicate code in a use case and a model. This is not general utility code, but domain specific code about pulling data back from a service. As I understand DCI right now, I don't see an obvious good way to factor this out so I can call the same code from both places. What is the recommended way to deal with a problem like this in DCI?"}
{"_id": "230036", "title": "Looking for a specific type of artificial intelligence", "text": "I am looking to create a challenging AI project. There is an online card game that allows you to build a deck to play with out of randomly presented cards. You have to choose one each time out of a couple of cards. I want to build an AI that picks the cards as I would pick them myself using my knowledge of the game. My guess is that I would have to create a system that can be trained based on \"experience\" (taught by training) and adapts its choices based on which previous cards it has already selected. I am looking for the specific name for this type of AI so I can start finding some resources for it or similar projects if you know any."}
{"_id": "219490", "title": "How Challenging is it to Mix Pure JS with CoffeeScript on a Team?", "text": "I keep running into Senior JS positions where they want CoffeeScript. The reason I don't use CoffeeScript is that my first impression of it was that it puts limitations on JS OOP features that I find valuable. I've seen claims that the two can inter-mix freely but that sounds dubious to me. Should I even bother applying to these positions if CoffeeScript-only is a dealbreaker for me?"}
{"_id": "72844", "title": "Is it appropriate to only release the GPL-licensed part of the code as open source?", "text": "Is it appropriate to release incomplete open-source firmware, or in other words, to release only GPL software but not proprietary software source code? How are non-open-source programs, in compiled firmware for a router/embedded device, allowed with the open-source, Linux-based operating system and other GPL software? For example: If a company releases compiled firmware and source code for a router but only releases the source code for GPL software within the firmware, is it okay, according to the GPL, that the firmware source code would be uncompilable because it is incomplete and is missing the proprietary part of the software?"}
{"_id": "72846", "title": "GPL modify code", "text": "If I take GPL code and modify it, does it have to still be under GPL?"}
{"_id": "38127", "title": "Customized Computer Science Degree - What other field would mesh well with computer science?", "text": "So here's my situation: I have seven years of experience with web development. I can do PHP, MySQL, OOP, all of that stuff. I would like to make the argument that I have enough technical experience to go out in the real world and get a well-paying, full-time job if I were to drop out right now (I've had a number of job offers recently, and I have already gotten a lot of actual job experience), but I would like to stay in school and get a degree for a number of reasons ranging from the social aspects to the fact that I just want to have a BS in one thing or another as it seems to be important to have one for a lot of jobs, even when it doesn't have anything to do with the job. With that said, it makes little sense for me to major in Computer Science, because that would be like studying everything I already know. I don't want to major in something COMPLETELY different, because that would be contrary to my career goals. I am considering trying to find some interdisciplinary, customized degree of sorts that allows me to combine my current skills with a new education. I'm thinking maybe buisness or even psychology (interface design?). Could I get some ideas for what to major in and tips on who I might talk to? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "13793", "title": "Is Information Technology really Engineering?", "text": "While travelling I met a mathematician who was sitting near me. In a discussion he said: \"... _there is nothing like engineering in IT or rather programming_ \". A true engineering is what Architecture is, what Electrical and Mechanical is. It made me think and I was puzzled. A percent of my brain agreed also because in Indian Army, there is no subject like Computer Engineering in the Engineering Corps. They don't consider programming as engineering. This is what I heard few years back, I don't know what Indian Army thinks now. What are your views?"}
{"_id": "174940", "title": "Will SRS be sufficient enough for the programmers to do their work, without the additional overhead of FS?", "text": "We always make 2 documents the SRS (Software Requirement Specification) and the FS (Functional Specifications) documents for the coders aka programmers. As I have examined the SRS is more like containing both functional and non- functional requirements as compared to the FS that deals only with the functional requirements. To cut it short will the SRS be sufficient enough for the programmers to do their work? and not make any FS anymore?"}
{"_id": "174947", "title": "Why does Java use UTF-16 for internal string representation?", "text": "I would imagine the reason was fast, array like access to the character at index, but some characters won't fit into 16 bits, so it wouldn't work... So if you have to handle special cases anyways, why not just use UTF-8?"}
{"_id": "171710", "title": "creating object parameters in {}?", "text": "I am trying to decode a piece of code from a book:               List<Person> people = new List<Person>()     {     new Person {FirstName=\"Homer\",LastName=\"Simpson\",Age=47},     new Person {FirstName=\"Marge\",LastName=\"Simpson\",Age=45}     };      Person is just a simple class they made, with a bunch of fields: Name, Last Name, etc... What I don't understand is, don't we send parameters to a constructor of Person in non-curly brackets? I tried replicating this code, but it doesn't seem to fly, any takers? Thanks for input."}
{"_id": "13796", "title": "Good example of a properly unit tested PHP project?", "text": "In hopes of getting myself and my coworkers to adopt automated unit testing methods in future projects, I would like to see a proper example on how it's done. Simple introductionary lessons to unit testing only cover very basic examples and they don't seem to convince anyone of the benefits unit testing can offer. What are some open source projects written in PHP that come with an extensive array of unit tests that are done \"properly\", and can be used as an example of how testing should be done?"}
{"_id": "13798", "title": "What are the advantages of using bitwise operations?", "text": "Following reading the latest CodeProject newsletter, I came across this article on bitwise operations. It makes for interesting reading, and I can certainly see the benefit of checking if an integer is even or odd, but testing if the n-th bit is set? What can possibly be the advantages of this?"}
{"_id": "89110", "title": "Is it worth writing a memory error detection tool for C++ these days?", "text": "For past 2 years, I have been writing a tool in C++, meant for C++ as my hobby project. Slowly, I realized that it can be made commercialized, as it can compete with other memory leak detectors. This tool finds:   * all kind of memory leaks   * null pointer exception   * corrupt heap   * static/dynamic array out of range   * multiple or invalid deallocations   * It also gives real time code flow, i.e. what functions are called (without any debug statements) I have written a parser (which also parses the complex syntax of template also) which replaces all the pointers in the code with my custom made smart pointers and new/delete with my wrappers. With making some primary tests, this tool seems to work fine. I still continue to work on it to complete the remaining 20%. However, I am just wondering whether will it be a good idea to work on it ? Now a days, so many programming techniques have been developed to overcome such errors. People simply don't use raw pointers (while most of the errors occur due to pointers). This kind of thoughts, sort of demoralize me. Would highly appreciate some expert opinions."}
{"_id": "238558", "title": "Should shopping carts be secure via SSL/TLS", "text": "So, pretty straight forward question. Somebody told me that all shopping carts should be secure. I can see in some instances where this would be beneficial... but all instances? I realize that typically carts are stored on the server via a session, but in the end the details of the cart have to be sent to the user so they can see what is in their cart. This is very difficult to google because all that comes up is ads for commercial shopping carts. Question: Is it a standard/typical to secure all shopping carts? (pages which display the shopping cart)"}
{"_id": "89117", "title": "AVL Trees and the REAL world", "text": "in school we are taught how we can balance an AVL tree upon an insertion or deleting. How is this type of knowledge actually going to be useful in the real world? Can someone give an example on when this type of knowledge would actually be useful? From what I have seen, in the workplace such details hardly ever come up... I can see how detailed knowledge about algorithms and some data structures can be important but not such details as AVL tree rotations (and similar detailed concepts). thanks!"}
{"_id": "238552", "title": "Front-End Business Rules / JSON", "text": "I am working on a project that now needs business rules. One design discussed is to make API calls (based on the form we are on) which responds with business rules for form input. I am unsure if this is the best way. The business rules are in JSON, but the business rules server actually has a business rules engine (so the engine crunches the rules and spits out JSON). Some background: In our web app, various forms exist, such as for logging in, registering, editing a profile, etc. Maybe 25-30 forms. They are content managed. For any of these forms, various rules exist to show or hide fields, or present error messages on the form based on logic such as a field name being too long, too short, or not meeting a regular expression. Other things such as required field validators, etc, exist. The idea was to have everything centralized in a different environment (as mentioned above...on the business rules server). I am concerned about making so many calls to a server to get simple rules like a first name being required, or showing or hiding a button based on if a person sells a certain number of widgets, etc. Perhaps a better solution would be to have this rules engine publish to our server, and we just call the local server rather than make API calls from the front end each time. What does everyone think? Is it natural to make API calls from our .net forms (using jquery) to get our rules for each form, each time? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "238555", "title": "Object-Oriented Object Transformations", "text": "At my company, we are considering rewriting our business logic and database to have a better architecture after years of organic and unforeseen growth, leading to the inevitable maintenance nightmare. The business model is one where a, let's say, cookie flows through multiple steps, changing states along the way. It is received raw, gets cooked, and is potentially split into two or more smaller cookies depending on the order. At this point, one of two things could happen: one, the cookie or cookies are considered finished and sent out to the customer, or two, the cookies requires outside processing (adding icing, adding food coloring, cutting to a design (there is no theoretical limit to an outside processing change to a cookie but it always changes the physical properties)), from which it is sent straight to the customer or back to us for shipment. The customer can reject the cookies if they don't find them to their standards, and we can then store and attempt to resell the cookies to a less discerning customer and/or send them to outside processing again as per the customer's whim. The way our system currently works is initially assigning it a Raw Cookie number, then baking and/or cutting it and assigning the resulting cookie(s) a Finished Cookie number, one for each cookie. However, there is no common ground between any types of Cookies, resulting in a lot of extra code. I'm trying to propose an object-oriented approach. I am fresh out of college while my coworkers are close to 30 or more years older than me; they know little about it and some are hesitant to change, so my model has to be pretty solid. I have worked with it academically, but never practically, and especially not when monitoring the form of a flow of a specific object. I may be a bit off in my understanding, but I believe OO is the best choice for this problem. I have a UML diagram showing my proposed class hierarchy. Each kind of cookie that can be instantiated has access to a function that turns it into the next step's cookie. Is this a correct way of doing it? Would it be better to have these toCookie() functions accessed through the static abstract Cookie class? ![](https://www.dropbox.com/s/663zilppijft8uq/cookies.png) Don't worry too much about inherited method placement, I'm just trying to understand how objects transform here."}
{"_id": "201743", "title": "TDD and Version Control", "text": "I am currently learning about TDD and trying to put it into practice in my personal projects. I have also used version control extensively on many of these projects. I am interested in the interplay of these two tools in a typical work flow, especially when it comes to the maxim to keep commits small. Here are some examples that come to mind:   1. I start a new project and write a simple test to create an as-yet-nonexistent class. Should I commit the test before writing the class even though the test doesn't even compile? Or should I stub out the minimum amount of code that is needed to get the test to compile before committing?   2. I find a bug and write a test to recreate it. Should I commit the failing test or implement the bug fix and then commit? These are the two examples that come immediately to mind. Feel free to provide additional examples in your answer. **Edit:** I made an assumption in both examples that immediately after writing the test I will write code to make the test pass. Another situation might also arise: I work on a project using TDD for several hours without committing. When I finally make commits, I want to break up my work into small chunks. (Git makes this relatively easy even if you want to want to commit only some of the changes in a single file.) This means that my question is as much about as _what_ to commit as it is about _when_ to commit."}
{"_id": "5727", "title": "Quicksort and don't bother?", "text": "Especially when writing 'standard' (non-HPC) applications, do you consider what sorting algorithm to pick, or just settle with quicksort (which is what most libraries just call sort)? To some extent it may be profitable in specific situations, but on the other hand proper optimization requires some time to analyse the problem and make benchmarks."}
{"_id": "245061", "title": "Unit testing - one test is partly a \"superset\" of another, is this wrong?", "text": "Wasn't sure how to phrase that title, sorry! I've just come across this in our code base, and was wondering what the consensus was about how to unit test it: **C#** (-ish, sorry, this is paraphrased from memory)               class DateCalculator     {        public static DateTime CalculateLeadTime(DateTime deliveryDate)        {           //return the result of some determinate calculation involving deliveryDate        }     }          //New example     class OrderController     {         public ActionResult GetLeadTime(WidgetOrder order)         {             var leadTime = DateCalculator.CalculateLeadTime(order.GetDeliveryDate() );             return Json(leadTime.Value.Date.ToString(\"dd/MM/yyyy\") );         }     }          //Old, incorrect example     class OrderService     {        public DateTime GetLeadTime(WidgetOrder order)        {           return DateCalculator.CalculateLeadTime(order.GetDeliveryDate() );        }     }      We've then got two unit tests, one to verify that CalculateLeadTime works (this is very easy, you can put in several test values and predict what comes out), and one that GetLeadtime works (still easy, but...). My question is: what would you test here, and where? It makes sense to me to test CalculateLeadTime in isolation, because it could be a complicated calculation, and it's already a nice small predictable unit. But would you then go on to test some of the same stuff (maybe a single representative input and output?) in your GetLeadTime method? Or would you simply test that _any_ DateTime value is returned, and assume that the calculation is correct because you're testing that somewhere else? Or would you not test the Calculate method on its own, because you know that you're going to test it when you use it, and you don't like the duplication? EDIT: to muddy the waters a bit, I can see the code now, and rather than a Service, the calling class is an MVC Controller, and the Action under scrutiny is an AJAX method so returns the result of the calculation wrapped in JSON. The current test verifies that JSON is returned, but not the contents of it. Does this change anything?"}
{"_id": "245063", "title": "what to do when UX asks for an ugly, convoluted event driven design and you don't know how to implement it in a clean manner?", "text": "I have been tasked with creating a desktop client application that fetches data from web apis and presents it to the user. During the last month or so, I've spent most of my time and energy bringing to life the functionality that UX described with two pictures. Looking at the pictures, it seems like a simple design. There are only 4 controls: One drop down list that fires a selection event. Another drop down list that is populated based on selected data from the first drop down list and also fires a selection event. Two radio controls that enable or disable the second drop down list. A third drop down list that, depending on which radio button was last selected, is populated with data based on either the first drop down list or the second drop down list. Doesn't seem hard. But then when I actually start implementing this design I find that I don't know, for example, what to do with if the user selects radio button B (which is supposed to enable the second drop down list) but the drop down list has no elements; in that case, do I force the first radio button A to be reselected? Do I display an error message? Do I prompt the user for action? It's these little 'corner' cases that don't necessarily jump at the people who request these designs that make me wonder if I'm in the wrong line of business or if I'm stuck working with people who don't have a clear picture of what they want or don't really know what they want but expect me to fill in the dots without actually doing the UX design myself. UX is about enhancing the user's experience, not the programmer's experience, I get it, but is this the kind of input that programmers are typically expected to receive from UX? Are programmers always expected to fill in the dots, even when the proper behavior hasn't been explicitly stated?"}
{"_id": "144806", "title": "Real-time Dataflow Programming", "text": "## Background Recently, I have been fascinated about the possibilities of dataflow-based programming approaches - in particular, signal/event-based concepts as realized by functional reactive programming, Boost::Dataflow::Signals, and the like. ## Sample scenario: Consider a car that has four speed sensors, one at each of its tires. Let's simplify things and say that these sensors are analog sensors providing the measured speed at that tire. The car further has individual brakes on the four tires (the actuators) that one can program to break more or less strongly. There is no concrete task, but imagine having to realize things like detecting tires not turning due to aqua-planing, or ABS-support, or or or... In short: you have to evaluate the speed sensor data and control the actuators according to some logic. From a programming point of view, one could think of realizing this via a signal-network of the following sort:               timer ------------\\     sensor1/2/3/4 -> logic -> brakes1/2/3/4      (That is, the timer triggers the logic, which takes the latest analog values of the sensors) Like this, the timer can be programmed to trigger in fixed intervals (especially important to ensure the real-time constraints). The advantage of the dataflow-approach here is that the above diagram is directly realized in the code, i.e. you have a logical wiring of signals and just need to provide an implementation that turns your actual hardward sensor's data into a signal (of the corresponding library you are using). When it comes to real-time requirements, the maximal signal path length can also be computed (or at least more easily derived from the source). ## The question Of course, all of this is just an application idea and I am sure several brilliant people have come up with this before. What I am looking for is the follow-up. Are there any hard problems with this scenario which make it unrealizable in practice? Are there experiences from real-world projects on following such a line of thought? Is there even existing literature on this? To make things clearer and more objective, I am looking for an answer that either shows an inherent fault in my line of thinking or provides reference to existing work/literature along with evaluations. Bonus points if real-time constraints are taken into account."}
{"_id": "200284", "title": "Copyright in a database schema using a licenced windows application", "text": "I work for a company that has bought a licence for a windows client software that allows only 20 running clients per company. I am trying to find a way around this 20 user restriction by programming a PHP web front end that connects to the existing database. This will allow unlimited users to access the database. The problem I have is that the licence states that no CRM type interface is allowed to be used with the package. Since I will not be using the windows binary in any way, what is to stop me from studying the database schema and developing my own front end? I would have thought that a schema that uses common tables, for example, customer addresses, materials, parts, orders etc could not be copyrighted by law otherwise a single company could have a monopoly over it. What makes a database general or distinct enough to warrant copyright? Any thoughts on this?"}
{"_id": "225779", "title": "Is it a deal breaker if the HR person asks programming questions during an interview?", "text": "The title pretty much says it all, but the longer story is: I went to a job interview last year for a junior tester position. The first interview was with a person from HR. This is weird, in my opinion the technical interview should come first. We started talking HR specific stuff and some details about the company/job/etc. Then, out of the blue, she just started asking me very general and easy questions about object-oriented programming. Things like what is a class, what is inheritance, what's the difference between overriding and overloading blabla. Now, maybe it makes business sense to make the people in HR memorize some programming questions and answers in order to screen out completely idiot applicants. However, there are a few important setbacks about this:   * most of the time, the HR person will have absolutely no idea what he/she or the applicant are talking about at that moment. So if the applicant's correct answer differs from the one he/she memorized (which it probably will), then he/she will wrongfully consider (with very high probability) that the applicant has no idea about OOP.   * why not just have a senior developer do phone screening instead ? Seems much more effective (and also cheaper).   * my CV was pretty complete, it contained all my relevant skills and projects. Did he/she even bother read it ? Or, if he/she did read it, does he/she just assume that every applicant is lying on their CV ? In that case, why should I ever bother putting one together and sending it to them ? All this definitely raised some red flags in my mind for the reasons mentioned in the list above. We did not move forward for second and/or 3rd interview (the reason for this is irrelevant), but **is it reasonable to consider this a deal-breaker ?**"}
{"_id": "144802", "title": "A good way to share knowledge of a new technology with team members when time is short?", "text": "We've been having constant requirement changes of having to choose which graphic rendering library to use for our project. In a team of about 10 members, two of us are exploring the new graphic library. The team lead expects that we learn what's necessary within 2 days and introduce it to the rest of the team ( _wants the two of us to give a value-add to the other teams by introducing it to them so they won't be lost_ ). We've told him that 2 days is ridiculous, so he asked us to give him our plan. We've already lost a few months in exploring some other graphic libraries, so the project is behind schedule. The other team members are developing algorithms that will make calls to the graphic library. They'll have to write some code using the graphic library too. In such a situation, what is a good way to share knowledge?   * Have brainstorming sessions everyday for an hour where they tell us their algorithm interfaces and we tell them the graphic library interfaces which they can use?   * Give them a short overview of the skeleton of how their interfaces would fit in with ours and let them figure out the graphic library code for themselves?   * Any other ways?"}
{"_id": "214614", "title": "How to maintain a forked git repo with feature branches that upstream won't pull?", "text": "So here's a typical workflow on Github...   1. Like some project `->` fork it `->` `git clone https://github.com/you/someproject`.   2. Open project. Like what you see, but make some changes.    3. Having been careful to work only in a `feature-branch` (`git checkout -b some-feature`), you decide to make a pull request with the `upstream` maintainer - after having pushed your `feature-branch` to your Github fork.   4. Maintainer, for whatever reason, declines the pull. For example.. here is a failed pull request that I submitted that matches the above scenario... Now _typically_ , if the maintainer _HAD merged_ the pull... the workflow would be simple... On my local machine, I would commit any local changes on whatever `feature-branch` I was on at the time... `git fetch --all`, `git checkout master`, `git pull upstream --ff-only`. Then replay my changes on top of that, as desired... BUT... What if I decide that you want to continue working off the changes to my fork, regrdless... yet still want to be able to track + merge changes that happen `upstream`? Ordinarily, I would delete the feature branch, and go on my way.. How can you maintain a `master` branch that is able to be merged upstream, yet maintains your fork's features while being \"permanently detached\" from `upstream`'s `HEAD`?"}
{"_id": "155051", "title": "Any suggestions how it would be good to promote software in a small company ?", "text": "Ok, I know if I am Red hat or other giant and offer some support etc. I can be profitable, in fact, Red Hat is doing quite well. However, what about a small company where I create a small program. e.g. an instant messenger for a windows or linux (just as an illustration) and I want to sell it. But how can I sell it if it is free and everybody can download it? Any advice? I like the idea of FSF by Richard Stallman, however I am missing the way how to sell my software under GNU/GPL licence. Any advice, how can I solve this problem? Any profitable small business software developers around with their opinion? Any links or names of small companies taht I can look at and study their model of business?"}
{"_id": "214616", "title": "What to call requirements that are \"assumed\"/\"invisible\"/\"very obvious\"", "text": "I'm looking for an umbrella term for all the nitty-gritty requirements that it's helpful to have specified up front but which the client never thinks about in his excitement about the product. In the client's mind, they think of the headline requirements, the main user stories such as \"I need to be able to view the status of all equipment\" and \"I need to receive automatically any notification equipment failure\". But at times the mundane ones are there but the client never mentions them until the result differs from his unspoken expectations: \"Well _of course_ a user must be able to change his own password\" and \" _Of course_ the user's session must time out after 30 mins\" Any development team can anticipate what's likely to be needed but is there a name for this category of requirements? Obvious/infrastructural/boring/details?"}
{"_id": "213645", "title": "Animation in Swing", "text": "I have a project written using Swing, and I want to make it more smoothly (like JavaFX is) by adding animation to some components(`JButton`, `JScrollPane`, `JSplitPane`) using `javax.swing.Timer`. **UPD:** That is not a game. I want to use the Timer for short animations like mouseHover events or dropdown, or scroll. But the problem is, a lot of Timer objects should be created. **Question:** What action does it perform for JVM? I would start and stop a lot of Timers during app session."}
{"_id": "88863", "title": "What are the key factors in choosing a Mocking Framework?", "text": "I'm looking to get started with objects in my unit tests. It seems there are tons of good mocking frameworks out there.   1. Do the different frameworks have different target audiences?    2. What factors should I consider when choosing which framework is right for my situation?"}
{"_id": "214612", "title": "Are there any concerns with one user mapping a TFS project to two directories?", "text": "I'm planning to map some of my TFS projects to two different directories as discussed here. I'll be using two different workspaces, both with the same Computer and the same Owner. Is there any reason why this would be a bad idea? Are there any complications with merging or locks that one user with two mappings would run into, that are different from the normal complications that two users checking out a project run into? Basically, I want to keep all of my projects on a shared drive, all mapped to TFS, but then have additional second local mappings for the few projects I'm most actively working so that Visual Studio is faster. I'm using VS 2010 with the TFS Power Tools Extension."}
{"_id": "215568", "title": "I need to create an employee schedule/appointments program, but I don't know how to set it up", "text": "I work for a gym. I am the programmer, its just me, nobody else! Gets really frustrating when there's nobody to bounce conceptual ideas off of. I'm getting rid of our archaic paper binder systems for tracking appointments and what not. I've made a lot of things successfully already, now I'm trying to tackle the personal training department. What I want:   * Trainer information and work schedule   * Appointment booking that can be done by time slot with all available trainers for that time, or by trainer with all available hours for that trainer What I've tried so far:   * I started with an 'appointments' database, a 'trainers' database, and a 'schedules' database. This became so complicated trying to fit the schedule in that I scrapped it. Does anyone know know the best way to structure the tables for this and how to sort of make them communicate correctly? I don't need specific code, I just need help understand _how_ to make this thing!"}
{"_id": "120344", "title": "How can I convince my managers to enforce documentation standards?", "text": "I'm trying to convince another group in my company\u2014 that's about to hand code off to my group\u2014that they need to provide more documentation in their source code, but they're treating it as a \"nice to have\". In my view, it's a necessity. Of course, I also support intuitive naming conventions, but I think I'll have less difficulty getting the original authors to add comments than I would getting them to rename their functions and variables. I've run a source code analysis tool and it's showing about 10% comment line, but looking at the source code, most of that is coming from entire functions that the author has commented out. How can I convince my managers to enforce documentation standards on this other team? Have there been studies or work done to prove that code documentation increases profitability or productivity?"}
{"_id": "228722", "title": "Redex and reduction strategies", "text": "I'm studying Types and Programming Languages, and have some trouble getting my head around the concepts of the 5th chapter, _The Untyped Lambda Calculus_. Specifically, _redex_ , _reduction_ and the various evaluation strategies are doing my head in. The following is what I understand put into my own words, in an attempt to explain things to myself and get more knowledgeable people to correct my mistakes / imprecisions. I am honestly unsure as to whether this is an acceptable format for stackexchange, and am open to suggestions to make this a better fit. Note that others have tried to answer a very similar question, but have still left me confused:   * Call by value in the lambda calculus   * Untyped lambda calculus: Why is call-by-value strict? ## Redex If my understanding is correct, a _redex_ is a reducible expression, that is, the application of a lambda term to a lambda abstraction. Or, more concretely, a redex is always of the form `(\u03bbx.s)t`. ## Redex reduction Reducing `(\u03bbx.s)t` is done by replacing all free occurrences of `x` in `s` by `t`. For example:               (\u03bbx.x + 2) 1     \u2192 1 + 2     \u2192 3      The process of reducing a lambda expression to its normal form is driven by an evaluation strategy: an algorithm for picking which redex to reduce first. In order to describe these however, we need some more vocabulary. ## Redex qualifications ### Leftmost and rightmost   * the _leftmost redex_ is the one whose abstraction is textually to the left of all other redexes.   * the _rightmost redex_ is the one whose abstraction is textually to the right of all other redexes. So, for example, in `(\u03bbx.x + 2) (\u03bby.y + 1)`, we have:   * leftmost redex: `\u03bbx.x + 2`   * rightmost redex: `\u03bby.y + 1` There can only be one leftmost and one rightmost redex in a given expression. I'm assuming that in an expression composed of a single redex, that redex is both the leftmost and the rightmost. ### Innermost and outermost   * an _innermost redex_ is one that contains no other redex.   * an _outermost redex_ is one that is contained within no other redex. So, for example, in `(\u03bbx.(\u03bby.y + 1) x) 2`, we have:   * innermost: `\u03bby.y + 1`, as it contains no other redex.   * outermost: `\u03bbx.[...]`, as it isn't contained in any other redex. I'm assuming that in an expression composed of a single redex, that redex is both outermost and innermost. ## Evaluation strategies Having defined this, we can talk about the two evaluation strategies that I'm struggling with: _call by name_ and _call by value_. ### Call by name In _call by name_ , the leftmost outermost redex is always picked for reduction. Additionally, no reduction can occur within a lambda abstraction. The example given by _Types and Programming Languages_ is:               id (id (\u03bbz. id z)) # the leftmost, outermost redex is the very first id     \u2192 id (\u03bbz. id z)    # the leftmost, outermost redex is still the first id     \u2192 \u03bbz. id z         # there is no outermost redex remaining, we're done.      I do not understand the need for the definition of the strategy to include _no reduction can occur within a lambda abstraction_ : is that not implied by the fact that only outermost redexes are eligible for reduction? ### Call by value In _call by value_ the rightmost outermost redex is always picked for reduction. The example given by _Types and Programming Languages_ is:               id (id (\u03bbz. id z)) # the rightmost, outermost redex is the second id     \u2192 id (\u03bbz. id z)    # the rightmost, outermost redex is the first id                        # (it's textualy on the left, but there is no redex to its right)     \u2192 \u03bbz. id z         # the only remaining redex is not outermost (it's contained within                        # an abstraction) and cannot be reduced."}
{"_id": "120346", "title": "Is there a correlation between complexity and reachability?", "text": "I've been studying cyclomatic complexity (McCabe) and reachability of software at uni recently. Today my lecturer said that there's no correlation between the two metrics, but is this really the case? I'd think there would definitely be _some_ correlation, as less complex programs (from the scant few we've looked at) seem to have 'better' results in terms of reachability. Does anyone know of any attempt to look at the two metrics together, and if not, what would be a good place to find data on both complexity and reachability for a large(ish) number of programs?"}
{"_id": "215562", "title": "How to sell Agile development to (waterfall) clients", "text": "Our development shop would really like to do more agile projects but we have a problem getting clients on board. Many clients want a budget and a deadline. It's hard to sell a client on an agile project when our competitors do come up with waterfall-based fixed deadlines and fixed prices. We know their fixed numbers are bad, but the client doesn't know that. So, we end up looking bad to the client because we can't fix the price or a deadline but our competitors can. So, how can you get your sales force to successfully sell a project that uses agile development methods, or a product that is developed using such methods? All the information I found seems to focus on project management and developers."}
{"_id": "47116", "title": "What are the basic skills a beginner JavaScript programmer should have?", "text": "In NYC, we are working on creating a collaborative community programming environment and trying to segment out software engineers into differing buckets. At present, we are trying to define:   * Beginners   * Intermediates   * Advanced   * Experts (and/or Masters) Similar to an apprenticeship, you would need to demonstrate specific skills to achieve different levels. Right now, we have identified beginner programming skills as:   * Object - method, attributes, inheritance   * Variable - math, string, array, boolean - all are objects   * Basic arithmetic functions - precedence of functions   * String manipulation   * Looping - flow control   * Conditionals - boolean algebra This is a first attempt, and it is a challenge since we know the natural tension between programming and software engineering. How would you create such a skills-based ranking for JavaScript in this manner? For example, what would be the beginner JavaScript skills that you would need to have to advance to the intermediate training? And so on."}
{"_id": "47114", "title": "Microsoft Certified Solution Developer with .net Framework 4?", "text": "So I am confused when it comes to the .net framework 4. Is there a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for .net framework 4? The Visual Studio 2010 Certifications Paths seemms to highlight MCPD 70-519 for one, which does not have pre reqs... Have I gotten it wrong? Is there still Microsoft Certified Solution Developer? and the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer Enterprise?"}
{"_id": "169867", "title": "Prerequisites to compiler theory?", "text": "It's not meant to be subjective or get advice on what would be the best path to take, but an objective list of things that must be known in order for me to pick up a book on compiler theory and understand it. What level of mathematics, and related skills are required?"}
{"_id": "235123", "title": "Ruby on Rails - branding", "text": "I am working on a website, which is to have multiple brands. The core functionality for all brands will be the same, however there will be a number of differences between them. Those differences may appear, obviously, in assets, models, views or settings. One example would be that one brand will have one extra field for one of our models. This means that we need to have an extra database column for this brand only, together with proper validations within the model and modified view. The question is, what would be the best way to implement this? There is a number of ways we can think of, none of them is perfect:   1. Conditionals (previous implementation): at the application start, set the global variable called `BRAND` and then fork our logic depending on that constant. This obviously is not what we are looking for, as it will clutter the code terribly as we are planning to have a large number of brands.   2. Load path precedence (current implementation): We can have one folder with core functionalities and another with brand specific overrides. On the application start we can prepend load paths with brand-specific folder path. This way it will always try to load brand-specific models and fall back onto core if none are defined there. The downside of this approach is that we need to duplicate each file we want to modify for given brand. So if we want to add an extra field to the brand, we need to copy the core view to the brand folder and modify it there. If at any point we would like to change the core view, this change needs to be added to this branded view as well manually.   3. Using git branches (proposed): The core implementation sits on git master branch and each brand occupies its own branch. Then any brand specific changes are committed to underlying brand branch. If we need to modify all the brands, we modify master branch and then we merge this change to all brands. Downside: for a large number of brands merging this change might be quite a long and conflict-prone process Are there any other ways to implement flexible branding for ruby on rails application? I am definitively in favour of the git option - are there any obvious `no-no`s for this solution?"}
{"_id": "211404", "title": "How can I limit access for automatically generated files to specific users in a MVC setup?", "text": "I have a typical MVC based website, and I'd like to give some registered users the abillity to extract data from the database (in a variety of formats). The workflow is very simple:   * User logs in,   * User clicks export,   * A file is generated,   * User downloads the file. I'm trying to figure out a way to secure the last step and limit access to the file. In order for the user to be able to download the file, it should be in a publicly accessible folder. That, however, means that the file is accesible to everyone else that has access to its full url. I thought of a few possible solutions:   1. Email the export file Instead of having the user download the file, I could simply email it to their email (the one they used to register on the site). This seems like a decent option when the export files are small, but I don't think it'll be optimal for larger files.   2. .htaccess magic I could automagically generate an .htaccess in the export dir that would only let the user who requested the export access it. Also a decent option, but it's webserver specific and IP based. I don't know if Apache will always be the webserver of choice for the project, and I'm not sure an IP based solution is actually secure.   3. Store the export file in a private folder and have the user fetch it through ftp Secure, but not particularly user friendly. All my options seem to have problems, and I'm at that point where I'm completely stuck and can't shake the feeling I'm missing something obvious. Am I? Is there a better workflow? I'm more interested in a high level overview than technical details, the project is still in its early days and technical requirements haven't yet stabilized (e.g. we may not use Apache after all). The project is build in PHP, but I don't think that matters (does it?). Thanks."}
{"_id": "82774", "title": "Demoing Project", "text": "I'm an undergraduate student studying computer science. I have been working at a company as a student researcher and next week I am to demo my complete project to my boss and the other developers. It is the most complex and largest program I have developed. My questions are: What is the most effective way to demo? Are there any good articles concerning this issue? What are key points to show? How do you do demo? I began this project before I knew much of TDD so it was not developed this way. Most of my testing/validation was done as I wrote the program with print statements and myself just verifying results. I will want to prove the program works and based on my testing it is bug free. My only proof really is it does what it should do... This is a little disconcerting for me. Any question answers, comments, suggestions, links and all else greatly appreciated. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "82779", "title": "Is it a bad idea to sell Android apps in the Android Market under your real name?", "text": "I'm just getting started in Android development and am working on a few small \"practice\" apps. As an example, one is a live wallpaper. The others are similar in terms of development effort. When these apps are done I would like to list them in the market. I may list them for free (or maybe not), and they're simple apps, but if things go smoothly I may try to build and sell larger and more ambitious projects in the future. My question is **is it wise to sell apps in the Android Market under my own name?** Looking around in the market, it seems almost everyone is selling under a company name, even if they're only a 1-2 man shop. I can definitely see the advantage of creating a company to sell my apps if they were big apps involving a team of people. But it seems like overkill to create a company, even if just in name and identity, just to list something like a live wallpaper. On the other hand, I don't want to expose myself to legal liability or other potential problems that I haven't foreseen. What's the best course of action here? For purposes of legal jurisdiction, I am in the United States. I understand that you are not my lawyer and answers are not legal advice. **Edit for clarification:** Just to be clear, what I want to ask is less about the advantages of forming a company, and more about potential dangers of _not_ forming one. In other words, are there likely to be situations where I'm beating myself up and saying \"Oh, if only I had formed a company instead of listing this is as a personal project!\"."}
{"_id": "213395", "title": "What are the negatives of Development Managers as Scrum Masters?", "text": "It is commonly agreed that team managers should not be scrum masters, but I am struggling to see why. For context, I am an Application Development Manager with 4 devs in a Scrum Team. I come from a Scrum Master background, and have introduced scrum to the organisation. I have built the team from scratch and made it clear that everything I do is to facilitate the team, and that they make the decisions. As a team we are very open - they even silenced me at stand-ups for a while to eliminate the 'reporting' feel we were starting to get. A lack of openness is generally the biggest argument against the manager as scrum master, but handled well, is easily overcome with the right culture. I've been warned by experienced scrum coaches that this is a dangerous situation, and there are risks 'if things go badly'. The way I see it the 2 positions do not conflict, in both roles I have the same aim for the team and individuals. Scrum resolves conflicts within the team, which could traditionally be a managers role. The self-managing nature of sprints takes away the allocation of work a manager would traditionally do. All I really see left to pick up as a dev manager is making sure individuals needs are met, career objectives, workplace etc. I have a weekly catch up with each team member to raise any issues, and handle any admin tasks. A lot of this relates directly to the team, or my role as scrum master anyway. I understand in large organisations how this could be unmanageable and a separate role but for a small organisation we could certainly not justify another Scrum Master or Development Manager. Please enlighten me as to the pitfalls of Development Managers as Scrum Masters, excluding the points I raised above and have already overcome."}
{"_id": "213396", "title": "What the best way to wire up Entity Framework database context (model) to ViewModel in MVVM WPF?", "text": "As in the question above: What the best way to wire up Entity Framework database model (context) to viewModel in MVVM (WPF)? I am learning MVVM pattern in WPF, alot of examples shows how to implement model to viewModel, but models in that examples are just simple classes, I want to use MVVM together with entity framework model (base first approach). Whats the best way to wire model to viewModel. Thanks for answers.               //ctor of ViewModel      public ViewModel()     {      db = new PackageShipmentDBEntities(); // Entity Framework generated class          ListaZBazy = new ObservableCollection<Pack>(db.Packs.Where(w => w.IsSent == false));      }      This is my usual ctor of ViewModel, think there is a better way, I was reading about repository pattern, not sure if I can adapt this to WPF MVVM"}
{"_id": "240501", "title": "Sharing source code of my online game?", "text": "So one of my long-standing projects is an online fan-game that's been running for a good four years now, and is at least somewhat well-known among the related community. To give you an idea, Alexa ranks my online game higher than the official website for the franchise my game is based on. One thing I've been wondering is, would it be a good idea to make the game's source code publicly viewable? The reasoning for the idea is that this will allow the more programmer- oriented people in the community discover how the game works internally, and research certain features to determine possible outcomes of events, and share this knowledge with other users. For instance, they would be able to discover the exact chances of various treasures appearing in Chests, rather than just having a statistical analysis. Major reasoning against it is \"people can copy it\", but honestly there are already copycat sites out there and many of them fall flat on their face simply because they try to be my game and either just don't get any attention in the first place, or get called out on being a rip-off by other members of the community. These two points have been like a see-saw in my mind, tipping back and forth between \"I should totally do it\" and \"nowai, src iz myne!\" (not really like that :p) So I was hoping that I might be able to get some advice here, perhaps someone else has been through this and might have seasoned advice to offer?"}
{"_id": "240502", "title": "Updating GUI in 'realtime' using events", "text": "My Plan   * Have a system that holds some objects   * Have a winforms-form that displays some key values of these objects   * When certain changes occur(object gets add / removed / datat change): Update GUI My Idea   * subscribe my form to events in the objects   * update form when objects chamge (/raise events) My Troubles   * winforms (for good reasons) does not allow for changes coming from foreign threads   * an eventHandler is in fact run in the thread of the object calling   * hence .net throws an exception and I'm done. Question:   Is there a way to manipulate a form through events not raised by itself? Alternatively:   Is there a way I can \"nudge\" my form to say \"hey, better check your data, there's something new\", without having to constantly poll?"}
{"_id": "240504", "title": "In C++ is casting to find bad pointers undefined behavior?", "text": "By accident I found that with a polymorphic type using dynamic_cast back to the derived class will throw a 'bad cast' error if the pointer is no longer valid. Is this undefined behavior or could this be a way to check for valid pointers without using smart pointers? I'm not really against using smart pointers as they serve a real need, but I dislike the syntax. I don't have anything against templated types but I find smart pointers to bloat the code and I'm not a fan of macro's to try and avoid that bloat. I wish C++ included something in the language syntax itself vs using the template feature **but with this question I'm more concerned about what is happening below and if this is a valid and defined way to checking for valid pointers as this gives an exception every time from my tests.**               #include <string>     #include <map>               using namespace std;          class Base     {     public:         virtual ~Base(){}     };          class Derived : public Base     {     public:         virtual ~Derived(){}     };          class Storage     {     private:         map<string, Base*> storage;     public:         void AddItem(string name, Base* base)         {             if (storage.find(name) == storage.end())             {                 storage[name] = base;             }         }              template <class T>         T& FindItem(string name)         {             if (storage.find(name) != storage.end())             {                 Base* item = storage[name];                      return dynamic_cast<T&>(*item);             }                  throw;         }     };          int main()     {         Storage store;              // force 'd' to go out of scope for our test         {             Derived d;                  store.AddItem(\"test\", &d);         }              // this will throw a bad cast exception         Derived& test = store.FindItem<Derived>(\"test\");                   return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "239204", "title": "Import data and modify", "text": "I should build an importer in PHP. So below you can see how it should work or how it currently works. This is only a small example, the real importer is much bigger so the import() method is also very big :(               function import($src, $dest)      {         // Name         if(!$dest->nameFixed()) {             $dest->setName($src->getFirstName() . $src->getLastName());         }              // City         $city = City::searchByName($src->getCity());         if ($city instanceof City) {             $dest->setCityById($city);         } else {             $dest->setCity($src->getCity())         }              // Image         $now = new DateTime();         if ($src->getImage() && $now->diff($src->getBirthdate())->format('%y') >= 18) {             $image = myDowndloader::download($src->getImage());             $dest->setImage($image);         }              // Birthdate         $dest->setBirthdate($src->getBirthdate());         // ...     }      some ideas:               class Translate      {         protected $src  = NULL;         protected $dest = NULL;              public function __construct($src, $dest)          {             $this->src  = $src;             $this->dest = $dest;         }              public function importName()          {             if(!$this->dest->nameFixed()) {                 $this->dest->setName($this->src->getFirstName() . $this->src->getLastName());             }         }              public function importCity() {             $city = City::searchByName($this->src->getCity());             if ($city instanceof City) {                 $this->dest->setCity($city);             } else {                 $this->dest->setCity(City::createByName($this->src->getCity()));             }         }         // ...     }      or a little bit more fancy:               namespace Translate      {              class Abstract          {             protected $src  = NULL;             protected $dest = NULL;                  public function __construct($src, $dest) { ... }             abstract pubilc function import();         }                   class Name extends Abstract          {             public function import()              {                 if(!$this->dest->nameFixed()) {                     $this->dest->setName($this->src->getFirstName() . $this->src->getLastName());                 }             }             // ...         }          }      I'm not really happy with the examples above. The main problem is how to call the methods (1st solution) or create the Objects (2nd solution). One option is to get all methods or classes dynamicly by get_class_methods() and parse the method names for /import\\w+/. But I'm not sure how performant this is. The other option is to call the methods staticly but there is also a danger to forgot a method to call..."}
{"_id": "80739", "title": "How to implement only a part of an interface", "text": "When developing in OOP, sometimes an interface / contract is given by a library that you cannot alter. Let's call this interface J. Now you have an object of class A that consumes objects that implements this interface. Inside A only a small part of the interface's definitions are needed. Some of the object classes are created by me during the project (let's call one of them type D), so there's an overhead in the implementation of everything inside interface J. I want to implement a subset of the functionality in interface J, but my solutions so far do not satisfy me:   * implementing every aspect of J and then throwing \"notImplementedExceptions\" misinforms the user of my objects: it would seem my objects of type D do conform to interface J, but they don't - and other consumers of my objects (that accept objects implementing interface J) can't rely on the integrity of my objects.    * Implementing a newly defined interface prohibits me from using objects that implement only interface J, although interface J is fully compatible with my own interface.   * Letting my custom objects implement interface J would create significant overhead, because they don't need all this functionality. When I was able to alter interface J, I would create a \"super-interface\" K that had this subset of the functionality of interface J, and make interface J inherit from interface K. But I cannot alter interface J. What is an object-oriented solution to this problem? Is the best solution still implementing \"just\" interface J? Or are there OOP-ways to \"superclass\" an interface without altering it?"}
{"_id": "80738", "title": "How do we learn BPM products?", "text": "What are the topics I should learn for a BPM (Business Process Management) product? I mean, do I need to learn BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation), BPEL (Business Process Excecution Language)? Are there any open source lightweight BPM products by Apache or somebody?"}
{"_id": "161945", "title": "Should I continue to perform freelance work for customers who keep on demanding more without paying?", "text": "So a client comes to me and says it needs some work done. Basically 4 tasks, which I agreed to perform for a certain price. The customer creates the job offer (a fixed time and price job) on ODesk, I accept it, but it took some days and constant reminding for the customer to initiate a contract based on that job. The problem is that the original task has been completed, the contract is still active, I have not been paid yet, the customer says he will pay when the project is completed, and until then, new tasks occur constantly, or changes to older tasks that require full re-doing of elements. For all of this the client promises payment. No updates from this client on ODesk, no new tasks there. I keep reminding the client about sorting out the administrative issues, but with no results. At the same time, the client pushes on continuing work, since the project is soon to be launched. I don't know what to do.   * If I refuse to perform any work without the bureaucracy, the project will be late. But it's not my fault, is it? I am scared that I might receive a negative feedback in this case, or something even worse.   * If I drop out of this project I'm afraid I won't be getting even what I've earned.   * If I continue like this, I'll be wasting a lot of time doing stuff similar to the stuff described here, but as a programmer (yes, it has already come to similar requests, for lots of hardcoded content). How do I communicate with such clients in such situations? How do I avoid a conflict? P.S. The client is a small company. Different people handle different aspects of this project, and everybody introduces their own changes to the original specs. **After 2 years** : Wow! Very question! Much popular!   I decided to let everyone in on the ending of this story. I've confronted the customer, explained that I will not work until I get paid for what I did, and until a hourly contract is open. They paid me the next day and opened a contract. A fruitful, but short collaboration started. Everyone was happy. Except I didn't get any feedback."}
{"_id": "200838", "title": "Why was strict parsing not chosen for HTML?", "text": "I am pretty much unaware about the detailed computing history that surrounds internet but it has always made me think why strict parsing was not chosen when creating HTML. Browsers accept any rubbish you write and try their best to parse it. The process, if I am not wrong, hinders performance, allows people to write insane markup, and also allows the obsolete features browsers support because of legacy reasons. Is there a specific reason for why HTML is not strictly parsed?"}
{"_id": "173629", "title": "What is the most reliable session storage in PHP: Memcache, database or files?", "text": "What is the best and most safest way to handle PHP sessions. Is the best way to store sessions in:   1. Database (more reliable, but high bottleneck, slow speed, not good for high database usage websites)?   2. Memcache (super fast, but distributed more security problems, chances of loosing data when the server restarted and chances of loosing data when the cache is full)?   3. Files (default option, I guess slow since it reads and writes from file I/O, less security, etc). Which method is the best? What are the problems and good things of each of those approaches?"}
{"_id": "161946", "title": "Best Way To Bring C++ Into Objective-C Project", "text": "For an upcoming XCode iOS project I'm planning on writing my views and view controllers in Objective-C. My model will be provided to me in C++. I am aware of 2 ways of using C++ in an objective-c project. They are described below. What are the pros and cons of each method. Is there any other recommended way, and what are its pros and cons? -In C++ header files, use extern \"C\" declaration as described in Wikipedia. -Wrapping C++ with an Objective-C++ as described by Rob Napier."}
{"_id": "173627", "title": "Why do browsers leak memory?", "text": "A colleague and I were speaking about browsers (using a browser control object in a project), and it appears as plain as day that all browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera) display the same characteristic or side-effect from their usage and that being 'Leaking Memory'. Can someone explain why that is the case? Surely as with any form of code, there should be proper garbage collection? PS. I've read about some defensive patterns on why this can happen from a developer's perspective. I am aware of an article Crockford wrote on IE; but why is the problem symptomatic of every browser? Thanks"}
{"_id": "97008", "title": "How to outsource a pet project?", "text": "I have a fairly ambitious software development project that I have no time to give. This project is for my personal life and if completed will save me much time and money. I am a software developer by trade but don't have much time to work on this project. So, I am considering outsourcing or contracting out some of the work so I can get it done faster. It's one of those projects where the longer I take to finish it, the more it costs me. I have not outsourced anything and would like to try, what is a good way to get started? What are some risks that I might face?"}
{"_id": "173621", "title": "what kind of certificate needed for my application ?", "text": "I am releasing free C# softwares I've created using Visual Studio. In the future, some of these softwares might become Paid. I was wondering if I need to purchase any kind of license for them ? I understand that it's good to have a certificate for your website (SSL?), if your trying to sell your software but what about your applications ? I just don't want anti-virus/browsers flagging my application as not trusted. Any suggestion is appreciated."}
{"_id": "12672", "title": "How common are \"bandage\" fixes?", "text": "Imagine the following scenario: You've detected that your (or someone else's) program has a bug - a function produces the wrong result when given a particular input. You examine the code and can't find anything wrong: it just seem to bog out when given this input. You can now do one of two things: you either examine the code further until you've found the actual cause; or you slap on a bandage by adding an `if` statement checking if the input is this particular input - if it is, return the expected value. To me, applying the bandage would be completely unacceptable. If the code is behaving unexpectingly on this input, what _other_ input that you've missed will it react strangely to? It just doesn't seem like a fix at all - you're just shoveling the problem under the rug. As I wouldn't even consider doing this, I'm surprised at how often the professors and books keep reminding us about how applying \"bandage\" fixes is not a good idea. So this makes me wonder: just how common are these kinds of \"fixes\"?"}
{"_id": "206896", "title": "Code execution time out occasionally", "text": "I am working on an e-commerce website. There is a case where I need to fetch the whole data in database through a third-party API and send it to an indexing engine. This third-party API has many functions like getproducts, getproductprice, etc., and each of those functions will return the data in XML format. From there I will take charge, I will use various API calls and will handle the XML data with XSLT. And will write to a CSV file. This file will be uploaded to an Indexing engine. Right now I have details of 8000 products to feed the engine, and almost all time the this process takes about 15 min to complete, and sometimes fails. I can't find a better solution for this. I am thinking about handling the XML data in C# itself and get rid of XSLT. As I think, XSLT is far slower than C#. Is it a good Idea? Or what else I can do to solve this issue?"}
{"_id": "52204", "title": "What should you do when presented with a horrible design?", "text": "Our firm makes websites. We also design websites. But sometimes our client brings his/her own design. This is often made by an in-house designer, or it is the same design they used for something else. However, sometimes these designs look awful. And I am talking really unprofessional, unbalanced, uncool. But the client really wants this design. I really do not like working with a design that is so awful. It takes away all pleasure in coding. You code. You check the demo. Works great. Looks awful. It's just not fun. And ultimately the client might be happy, but 1) I do not feel proud of the final product and 2) the community sees you 'develop' ugly websites, which is bad for your image. Anybody experiencing this kind of stuff? What do you recommend? I've been thinking:   * Blocking these clients. If somebody has an 'own' design, ask to see it first. Then somehow politely decline. Drawback: you lose a client.   * Create a new design. Have our in-house designers work one something really cool. Drawbacks: client would need to pay for this (without asking for it), or it will be declined and the company loses time = money. And it might come as an insult if you propose a new design out of the blue. THEIR designer won't like it for sure.   * Put a clear disclaimer at the bottom of the site: Website design by XXXXX, Website development by US. Helps for the community-impact (if people pay attention), but not for the uneasy feeling."}
{"_id": "100678", "title": "What techniques do you use when dealing with a difficult project manager?", "text": "I'm currently working on one part of a technical data heavy project. The project manager in charge of this project is what one might term \"An Old- School Project Manager\" in that he has absolutely no knowledge of the application domain or anything remotely technical whatsoever - in his own words \"What he does is Delivers.\" As well as designing the technical specifications and developing the code to those specifications, my role is also quite client facing, so I need to interact with the people who will be consuming the data to help to get it in shape for when it is all finally deployed; most of the tasks that these clients are being asked to do is way beyond their job description and I think it is important to be respectful of that and realise any help that they give us is based on goodwill. The PM is an absolute control freak who rubs everyone he ever deals with completely up the wrong way. All emails must go through him (maybe he will forward them on, maybe he will let you know if there has been a reply), and all emails must be written in a language that he understands (he doesn't know what a database is, or the difference between a schema and data so...). He almost never reads anything he's sent, what he does read he sends back asking for it to be \"more high level\", and he never knows what he is asking for, he just starts rambling about \"this must be simple right, this is how it is, no?\" - not that he admits this, he just says that he needs me to make what I've said \"more high level\". I'm struggling to work out what he actually does all day except of course for Delivering and acting as postmaster. How do you work with a manager who has this kind of personality?"}
{"_id": "63644", "title": "Should I sign an NDA and IP contract without an expiry date?", "text": "I work in a small software development company. I just received a NDA and IP contract to sign, but it doesn't have an expiry date.   1. Does this mean that it's a lifetime agreement with the corporation?   2. Lacking an explicit expiry date, is there an implicit date at which the contract expires?   3. If/when I leave the company, does the agreement still stand? If so, how long?"}
{"_id": "7804", "title": "What is the best IDE for Scala?", "text": "I tried programming Scala in Netbeans and Eclipse, but it is not what I'm looking for. In Netbeans suggestions for method names etc. are not working. In Eclipse I can't go to some classes sources by pressing F3. (e.g. scala List). Is support in IntelliJ IDEA any better? Are there other IDE's supporting Scala?"}
{"_id": "7806", "title": "What would be a few ideas/concepts from programming that I can have on paper and hang on a wall as art?", "text": "And by that I mean any piece of code, or an idea/algorithm presented in pseudo code, something which is very important and is almost art now. I intend to put up a few paintings and work on paper around my office which depict engineering, rather celebrate engineering. I want them to be not so commonplace like e=mc2 or anything too geeky, like 42. They be special, they be important and have earned the position of being almost sacred owing to their contribution to their field. So I want a representation of computer programing as well. Thanks for your time. EDIT:After seeing a few initial responses I would like to mention that I am not looking for things which go on a t-shirt or mug, but huge framing on a wall. So anything funny/wicked/clever is not only not suitable, but I want it to be inspiring/celebrating. Not to say that I don't love the funny, but this time I want to focus on things serious."}
{"_id": "235787", "title": "Method naming advice required", "text": "My question will be about how do you think it would be fit to name some methods in a fluent interface. Let me try to demonstrate the problem. Consider this relation tree: ![associations](http://i.stack.imgur.com/SgfFs.png) A person can have dogs and cats, and a dog can have bones. Pretty simple. What i'm trying to do is create a domain specific fluent interface for determining, which ones of these relations does the user need. It is able to handle any depth of relationships. **I designed the operation something like this** (It is building the assoicaiton tree, from which i can determine, what the user wants): ![association tree building](http://i.stack.imgur.com/R1UCs.png) As code (it may be more readable):               personAssoc = person.associate().withCats().and().withDogs().withBones().up().done();       But i'm trying to make this part as intuitive as possible, so i wan't the **method names** to **make sense after each other** , and **be as close to spoken language as possible**. My biggest concerns are the following 3 method names:   1. **`and()`** in my language of choice `and` is a reserved keyword, so i can't use it. I looked up synonyms (`together()`, `including()`, `also()`) but they don't sound/look right (`and` means, that we will add more children to the parent association).   2. **`up()`** it is obviously breaking any kind of flow. With this method name, the whole thing became a lot further away from spoken language, than i wanted to (`up` means, we are not necessary wan't to add more relations to the parent, but we are done with the current one. In code it is the same as `and`).   3. **`done()`** is only called once, at the end of the method calls, but still doesn't fit the picture (`done` means, that we are literally done, we won't add more associations). **What i'm looking for** is other, better names for the above 3, which:   1. Which make the usage of the fluent interface closer to spoken language.   2. For `and` a name, which is as far as possible from any language keywords. If you read this whole thing, feel free to drop by any ideas, it might help me out a great deal! **Thank you for any suggestion.**"}
{"_id": "95535", "title": "Scheme Stream Implementation", "text": "After working my way through SICP I decided to work though some Project Euler problems using scheme. In this particular problem I am trying to generate an infinite stream of integers however I am recieving an error from the MIT Scheme interpreter.               ;Aborting!: maximum recursion depth exceeded      This leads me to believe my stream implementation is incorrect however after comparing my code against that in the book I can not find any errors.               (define (delay x)       (lambda ()         (x)))          (define (force x)       (x))          (define (cons-stream a b)       (cons a (delay b)))          (define (car-stream s)       (car s))          (define (cdr-stream s)       (force (cdr s)))          (define (integers-starting-from n)       (cons-stream n (integers-starting-from (+ n 1))))      The error occurs when I run the following code:               (define n (integers-starting-from 1))      Where have I gone wrong? **EDIT:** Thanks to Chris Jester-Young below I have it working now. The correct implementation of delay and stream are as follows.               (define-syntax delay       (syntax-rules ()         ((delay expr)          (lambda ()            (expr))))          (define-syntax stream       (syntax-rules ()         ((stream a b)          (cons a (delay b)))))"}
{"_id": "191570", "title": "JUnitEE vs JUnit", "text": "I know what unit testing is in general and what _JUnit_ is in particular. But here I see that there is a project called _JUnitEE_ which seems to me to be a wrapper over JUnit. So I would like to better understand the pain point of using vanilla _JUnit_ and how _JUnitEE_ is able to solve those problems."}
{"_id": "95533", "title": "Who can be called a good team player?", "text": "Many times you encounter something like \"team-worker\" or \"enthusiast to work in a team\" or stuff like that in employment ads which state that they want you to be or become a good member of a development team. Who can be regarded as a good team member? Which qualities of a developer can be regarded as good points regarding to work in a team? Also how can a developer improve his/her teamwork skills (or attributes, if you will)?"}
{"_id": "191576", "title": "Python code style - blank lines in long list", "text": "I'm curious, is there a standard approach to dealing with long lists in the Python community, and in particular, is there any antipathy toward doing blank lines followed by comments to break up a particularly long list, e.g. of tuples, or in a dict, etc.? For example, I'm developing a GUI application in wxPython, and am defining the keyboard shortcut mappings to . Is this fairly Pythonic?               accelerator_table = wx.AcceleratorTable([         # Case accelerators         (CTRL, ord('S'), EventIds.SAVE_CASE),         (CTRL_SHIFT, ord('S'), EventIds.RENAME_CASE),         (CTRL, wx.WXK_DELETE, EventIds.REMOVE_CASE),         (CTRL_SHIFT, wx.WXK_DELETE, EventIds.DELETE_CASE),              # Project accelerators         (CTRL_ALT_SHIFT, ord('S'), EventIds.RENAME_PROJECT),         (ALT, wx.WXK_DELETE, EventIds.REMOVE_PROJECT),         (ALT_SHIFT, wx.WXK_DELETE, EventIds.DELETE_PROJECT),              # Help accelerators         (NORMAL, wx.WXK_F1, EventIds.HELP),         (NORMAL, wx.WXK_F2, EventIds.LAUNCH_MANUAL),         (NORMAL, wx.WXK_F12, EventIds.ABOUT),         ...     ])      The details aren't particularly important, but I'd like to write in a style that will not annoy other programmers along the way, and therefore to decide right now whether this pattern is worth keeping around. **Edit:** Just to clarify: I'm not intending to put anything beyond that single blank line between sections in the list. That seems like it should minimize any confusion on the part of someone reading through the code."}
{"_id": "195269", "title": "Formal study about trends and prevalence of agile vs traditional methodology in the industry", "text": "Has there been a formal study about the prevalence of agile vs traditional (e.g. waterfall) software development methodology in the IT industry? And how fast the agile share is growing (assuming it is)?"}
{"_id": "42697", "title": "Weighing pros and cons for using jQuery for just one widget", "text": "I have been using html select boxes or textboxes for date input. On submit, the date is validated and if invalid an error is returned. I have avoided javascript calendars thus far, but jQuery datepicker seems to be a popular choice amongst people on SO. I was updating my app and wondered whether to use a Javascript Calendar(jQuery datepicker in particular). It would be a good \"feature\" for existing users and will fit the \"2011\" upgraded look of the app. I am not using jQuery or anyother JS library. The scripts in use are \"plain\" javascript. With jQuery, I will have to include jQuery's library in the universal .js files list or link to Google's copy. Either way it will increase page load time. And I understand that with or without datepicker in place, the validation(and the error handling) stays and that the datepicker widget is for visual purposes only. But UI is an important factor. A positive that I can see is, I might use more of jquery in the future and I will not have to think about page load time and bandwidth issues then. So my question is, is lugging along jQuery the right decision, when I only see one use in the near future? Or should I use a \"plain\" JS only calendar widget or should I simply stick to the select or text boxes. Wanted to post this on SO, but since the topic is more about programming practices and decision making, I am posting the question here."}
{"_id": "195262", "title": "unique_ptr and references - coding style question", "text": "I'm pretty sure this is a question purely about aesthetics but I wanted to get all your opinions on it before I start proliferating this type of code in my codebase. Consider the following code:               //Foo.h     class Bar;     class Foo     {         public:            Bar& GetBar(){return *bar.get();}         private:            std::unique_ptr<Bar> bar;     };          //Bar.h     class Bar     {          public:              DoSomething(){//did something...}     };      This allows us to forward declare Bar in Foo.h and avoid having to #include Bar.h. This leads to using Foo's Bar in the following way:               Foo foo;     foo.GetBar().DoSomething();      Personally, I think this would look a lot nicer:               Foo foo;     foo.bar.DoSomething();      To achieve that, I've written:               //Foo.h     class Bar;     class Foo     {         public:             Foo();             Bar& bar;         private:             std::unique_ptr<Bar> bar_ptr;     };          //Foo.cpp     #include \"Bar.h\"     Foo::Foo() : bar_ptr(new Bar()), bar(*bar_ptr) {}      This allows me to forward declare Bar and use the 'bar.' syntax. Ugly? Not Ugly? The downside is that I have 2 member vars for only 1 object."}
{"_id": "195261", "title": "Which practice is the best for database connection? (PHP, etc)", "text": "Leave a open database connection throughout the execution of the aplication, or for each time a operation will be executed a new connection will be created? Open throughout the execution: Open aplication -> Open connection; Operations -> use the opened connection -> commit; Close aplication -> close connection; For each time a operation will be executed: Open aplication -> ...; Operations -> create connection, execute operation, commit, close connection; Close aplication -> ...;"}
{"_id": "119970", "title": "any good book on Investment banking for IT professionals", "text": "I have been working as a Java developer for corporate Banking client. Now I want to step into an investment banking domain job. What sorts of resources (books, sites, etc.) can I use to understand investment banking so that as an IT Professional, I can become effective developing software applications for this domain?"}
{"_id": "245937", "title": "How to make a random-access archive of text files?", "text": "I wrote an application that tests the performance of evolutionary algorithms. This application performs a **run** of the algorithm which consists of **several generations**. The data which is produced by my application looks like this:               run1.run             // text file containing metadata     run1_data            // folder containing experimental data        -statistics1      // text file containing some specific statistics        -statistics2             -generation0             -generation10     // snapshot of the algorithm at generation10        -generation20        ...      Once this data is written, **it is never changed**. When I want to **examine** the data, my application reads the **metadata** file (.run), opens the **_data** directory and reads the rest of the data. This was all fine until recently. I now have **hundreds of thousands** of these files and I ran out of inodes on my system and also the loading of the data and copying is extremely slow, even though there are only a few gigabytes. My data seems to be too fragmented, since the files are quite small. My application is written in **C++** and uses the **Qt** library for filesystem operations. I was thiking of using the `<system>` header to issue a `tar` command to archive data after writing and un-archive before reading, but I found out that `tar` must read the entire archive to find the contents. This is a problem for me, since to save operating memory and time I sometimes load only `Statistics1`, sometimes only `generation10`... I was considering to change the format of my data so that there would be **only one file** , which would have something like a **table of contents** at the beginning, followed by **all data files concatenated**. The table of contents would indicate the **beginning and end** of each concatenated file. However I am not sure if this is a good solutions since the `std::ifstream` class that I use to read the files **cannot make random jumps**. I am a beginner programmer and I do not want to waste a lot of time on developing something that would not work so I ask for any advice on how to solve my problem."}
{"_id": "236471", "title": "Responding to app feature requests I'm not going to implement", "text": "I'm a new app developer and after like 20 downloads of my app (free and ad- free) I already got two feature requests, and I'm not going to implement either. Should I respond to these feature requests and if so, how? I'd prefer not responding at all because I'd rather spend the time to work on my app, but being a new developer, a couple of poor ratings in the app store could hurt my app."}
{"_id": "109629", "title": "Supporting multitenancy", "text": "What are the typical challenges that arise when converting a single-tenant app into a multitenant app? Security and data isolation strike me as the most significant. What are some others? I'm one of the architects for a fairly significant automation effort, and historically it's just been our company using it. We want to make it possible for others to use it as well. Every time we talk about \"making it multitenant\", the conversation revolves around keeping users with one tenant away from the data that another tenant owns, and making sure that users with one tenant can't (either intentionally or inadvertently) create impacts in another tenant's environments. What I'm wondering is whether security/data isolation are really the only major concerns here, or whether there are some other major concerns that we're just not thinking about."}
{"_id": "187169", "title": "How to detect the encoding of a file?", "text": "On my filesystem (Windows 7) I have some text files (These are SQL script files, if that matters). When opened with Notepad++, in the \"Encoding\" menu some of them are reported to have an encoding of \"UCS-2 Little Endian\" and some of \"UTF-8 without BOM\". What is the difference here? They all seem to be perfectly valid scripts. How could I tell what encodings the file have without Notepad++?"}
{"_id": "119979", "title": "How to search the web for programming related solutions?", "text": "I have the impression that Google has become unusable when searching for programming related questions. Example: I'm Googling for               XML-RPC Redstone Cookie      I'm expecting results where all three terms are contained. I don't care for results where one term misses. I guess until some months ago Google just worked this way, i.e. all terms were included. Somehow this feature is gone now (Google apparently thinks it is more intelligent than the user and knows what the user is searching for). So I helped myself putting a + in front of every word. This is, however, a bit cumbersome. And for the last weeks, it even doesn't work anymore in all cases, Google ignores the +. So how do you search for progamming related problems? Do you still use Google? If yes, which techniques do you use to get the right results? Or do you use another search engine? Which one?"}
{"_id": "119978", "title": "Massive vehicular network simulator", "text": "I am interested in making a vehicular network simulator (vehicular network as in vehicles can be equipped with radios and when they come in range they can talk with each other). I want to be able to scale to 1000s of nodes if not more. I am quite frankly torn on how to do, or even which language to use or whether I should instead be using some other piece of software/code. I know that this should depend on a lot of design decisions that I may have, but it would be great if somebody can point me towards the right direction. I was planning to use a multi-threaded architecture, but not sure whether it will add to the complication or make it easier. Also if I go for a multi- threaded architecture, do you think that the Go language will be a good choice? I have a few years of experience in Java, but haven't done any big project, and essentially no experience in Go."}
{"_id": "154017", "title": "Ruby using the Gosu framework: why it runs slow first time?", "text": "I'm creating a Ruby game using the Gosu framework. All good. Sometimes, when I run the game, it has some kind of slow startup, and probably it will be rather slow during the whole game. So I close it and... open it again. It is very likely that it will startup quickly and the whole game will run smoothly and fast. Why is that? What is this phenomenon? Is it faster because of some cache stored or whatever since the first run? (But why would cache be stored? If the app dies, I would expect no references at all etc...) Ruby, Windows 7."}
{"_id": "199153", "title": "What is the way to go to extract data from websites?", "text": "I've been thinking about a side project that envolves web data scraping. Ok, I read the Getting data from a webpage in a stable and efficient way question and the discussion gave me some insights. In the discussion Joachim Sauer stated that you can contact the owners of the sites and architect some way to provide the data that I want. The problem I see is that the websites are generally badly created and apparently seldom have changes in HTML (I don't think they will help me), but the data is relevant. I have suffered a lot using those sites so I would like to aggregate and show them in a better way. So, going with scraping, specifically Scrapy (for python), is a problematic approach? I read that parse.ly uses scraping (Python and Scrapy), but in another context. Given my context, there's a better approach than going with scraping? If going with scraping, how to deal with website structure's changes?"}
{"_id": "159023", "title": "Can CC0 code use a GPL library?", "text": "Suppose my code uses (simply links to) a library licensed under the GPL. Can I release _my code_ under CC0 (public domain dedication)? Is my code affected by the copyleft nature of the GPL?"}
{"_id": "153046", "title": "use of script tag in different position of page", "text": "I found that sometimes the script don't run properly when I add script tag in the head section. But when I add script right before the ending tag of body it works fine. What is the difference between adding script in head tag   **OR**   on just before ending body tag   **OR**   right after the control? I found this issue very often when I use JQuery.."}
{"_id": "154019", "title": "REST: How to store and reuse  REST call queries", "text": "I'm learning C# by programming a real monstrosity of an application for personal use. Part of my application uses several SPARQL queries like so:               const string ArtistByRdfsLabel = @\"     PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>     PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>     SELECT DISTINCT ?artist     WHERE     {{         {{             ?artist rdf:type <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/MusicalArtist> .             ?artist rdfs:label ?rdfsLabel .         }}         UNION         {{             ?artist rdf:type <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/Band> .             ?artist rdfs:label ?rdfsLabel .         }}         FILTER          (             str(?rdfsLabel) = '{0}'         )      }}\";          string Query = String.Format(ArtistByRdfsLabel, Artist);      I don't like the idea of keeping all these queries in the same class that I'm using them in so I thought I would just move them into their own dedicated class to remove clutter in my RestClient class. I'm used to working with SQL Server and just wrapping every query in a stored procedure but since this is not SQL Server I'm scratching my head on what would be the best for these SPARQL queries. Are there any better approaches to storing these queries using any special C# language features (or general, non C# specific, approaches) that I may not already know about? **EDIT:** Really, these SPARQL queries aren't anything special. Just blobs of text that I later want to grab, insert some parameters into via String.Format and send in a REST call. I suppose you could think of them the same as any SQL query that is kept in the application layer, I just never practiced keeping SQL queries in the application layer so I'm wondering if there are any \"standard\" practices with this type of thing."}
{"_id": "80192", "title": "Methods for efficient knowledge retention and fast study material lookup", "text": "When I read a book or article about something new, I have two main concerns:   1. Retaining the new knowledge I just acquired   2. Being able to access the new knowledge efficiently later on What are some methods you folks use to annotate what you learn? I recently read _Pragmatic Thinking and Learning_ and one of the things I'm trying out is making notes from books in mind-map format. Another method I'm trying out is tagging important passages in books with labels such as: definition, feature, remember, usage, caveat... It's too early to tell how these will work for me, but I'd like to know what works for you and how you use it. There are other questions asking what tools people use, but I think process is more important than the tool, so that's what I'd like to learn about."}
{"_id": "121121", "title": "How does throwing an ArgumentNullException help?", "text": "Let's say I have a method:               public void DoSomething(ISomeInterface someObject)     {         if(someObject == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"someObject\");         someObject.DoThisOrThat();     }      I've been trained to believe that throwing the `ArgumentNullException` is \"correct\" but an \"Object reference not set to an instance of an object\" error means I have a bug. Why? I know that if I was caching the reference to `someObject` and using it later, then it's better to check for nullity when passed in, and fail early. However, if I'm dereferencing it on the next line, why are we supposed to do the check? It's going to throw an exception one way or the other. **Edit** : It just occurred to me... does the fear of the dereferenced null come from a language like C++ that doesn't check for you (i.e. it just tries to execute some method at memory location zero + method offset)?"}
{"_id": "121128", "title": "Modern programming language with intuitive concurrent programming abstractions", "text": "I am interested in learning concurrent programming, focusing on the application/user level (not system programming). I am looking for a modern high level programming language that provides intuitive abstractions for writing concurrent applications. I want to focus on languages that increase productivity and hide the complexity of concurrent programming. To give some examples, I don't consider a good option writing multithreaded code in C, C++, or Java because IMHO my productivity is reduced and their programming model is not intuitive. On the other hand, languages that increase productivity and offer more intuitive abstractions such as Python and the multiprocessing module, Erlang, Clojure, Scala, etc. would be good options. What would you recommend based on your experience and why? EDIT: Thanks everybody for your interesting answers. It's hard to make a conclusion without actually trying since there are many good candidates: Erlang, Clojure, Scala, Groovy, and perhaps Haskell. I voted the answer with the most convincing arguments, but I'll try all the good candidates before deciding which one to pick :)"}
{"_id": "152313", "title": "Visual programming for serious software", "text": "Are visual program control flow diagrams and languages which support that used for larger serious programs? Why not? They seem like a nice overview of the code. In the thread What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program? a visual language is mentioned (Drakon) and I wondered why such approaches aren't used more often? Is there nothing a visual control flow representation (I don't mean class diagrams etc.) which are 1-to-1 with code can help compared to typing in letters in an editor?"}
{"_id": "149010", "title": "Experiments correlating code metrics to bug density", "text": "I'm wondering if someone has done some experiments correlating code metrics (SLOC, Cyclomatic Complexity, etc) with bug density in Object Oriented applications. I'm not looking for experiments that only prove or disprove a correlation, but on both. I'm not trying to find a silver bullet as I believe that the bug density of a project _might_ correlate to one or more metrics for a given project or team and the correlation can change during the lifetime of the project / team. My goal is to   1. Measure all interesting metrics for 2-3 months (we already have quite a few from sonar).   2. Find one metric that correlates with the number of new bugs.   3. Do a root-cause analysis to check why this happens (e.g. Do we lack a certain design skill?).   4. Improve the skill and measure change for a couple of itereations.   5. Rinse and repeat from 2. If you don't have any experience on this, but remember seeing a paper / blog on this subject, I would appreciate if you can share it. * * * So far I've found the following links with some information about this subject   * Do Bugs Reside in Complex Code? - just the slides from a presentation.   * Changes and Bugs: Mining and Predicting Development Activities - Just slides frmm a presentation. Bottom line the more dependencies, the higher the chances of bugs (I think this is quite a general rule).   * Failure is a four-letter word - A parady about the correlation between bugs and metrics."}
{"_id": "236780", "title": "User Generated Content and Hotlink Protection", "text": "I have a website that allows for users to paste content (like snippets of code, etc) for sharing. Like Pastebin and Github, I also have a \"raw\" link that will display the raw contents of those posts. However, some users are posting up code and then using our service as a host for distributing content that violates our TOS (for example, javascript code and then linking to that code from external sites). Running on NGINX and PHP, what is the best way to manage this? I have a feature that when reported, I can disable the raw version of a particular post. However, it is not feasible to monitor each and every post (and then be sure that I understand what is good / what is bad). Is my only solution to disable raw functionality across the board? Should I block the raw versions from sites like facebook (using referrer maybe)? I played around with hotlink protection, but in all truth, it doesn't really appear to work all that well (or it could be just my configuration of it)."}
{"_id": "236781", "title": "Modelling network and persistent entity representations", "text": "I have an app where I need to synchronize some entities (simply download latest versions of entities from server to client). Entity has bunch of text properties and bunch of resource links (referenced by ids, URLs, whatever). For example let `Entity` has three properties:               id: integer,     name: string,     photos: array of photo ids      For now `Entity` is represented by two classes: one for persistent store (I'm using CoreData storage in iOS, you may consider it as ORM if you aren't familiar with iOS SDK) and one for JSON parsing and serialization called `Entity` and `JSONEntity` respectively. `Entity`               id: integer,     name: string,     photos: array of paths for files at local file system     pendingDownloads: object to track pending file downloads for `Entity`      `JSONEntity`               id: integer,     name: string,     photos: array of photo ids      I'm going to use the following algorithm:   1. call server API and obtain array of instances of `JSONEntity`   2. for each retrieved `JSONEntity`     1. find or create corresponding instance of `Entity` that should be updated     2. immediately update `name` property of `Entity` instance     3. associate `pendingDownloads` instance with current `Entity` instance `Entity` instance that have associated `pendingDownloads` object is considered as downloading and can't be used. When application starts:   1. find `Entity` instances that have non-null `pendingDownloads`   2. for each `id` in `pendingDownloads`     1. download photo     2. add local file reference to photo into `photos`     3. remove current item from `pendingDownloads`   3. null-out `pendingDownloads` property   4. notify model that `Entity` finished syncronization As for me the biggest flaw of current approach is that I have to keep two parallel hierarchies of classes - one for persistent store and one for JSON parsing/serialization. I tried to use inheritance: I declared newtork-level (like photo ids) properties in superclass and local-level (like file references) in subclass. But I don't like this approach either - object become overloaded with responsibilities - it have to track both network-level and local-level information. Are there any patterns or approaches to handle this kind of situations? Would be grateful for any thoughts. Thanks."}
{"_id": "236787", "title": "Full production build in source control for easy rollbacks?", "text": "I want a quick way to roll back our production build in the event of any mishaps - a one-click solution, if you will. My gut is telling me that this is important - and I believe that my gut is correct, but I want implementation advice. My current thought is to start a local repository on our production server, and simply commit the entire production build to the repo - binaries, web assets, everything. When we make an update to the production site, we can commit the changes to the repo. This way, if anything breaks for any reason and we need a quick rollback - it's simply a case of checking out the previous commit. What better methods are available for this type of rollback? I know that there are multiple backup solutions, but a VCS is familiar to work with and provides similar benefits. Am I stepping into a trap?"}
{"_id": "236784", "title": "gnu lesser general public license question", "text": "I have a question about Thingiviews license. I have a site that has to do with 3D Printing, it is not done yet but I was wondering if I would be able to use it on my site, The big reason I am asking is because it will be used to show 3D models that will eventually be made and sold, like shapeways kinda, so I am not selling Thingiview but it would be used to show something that will eventually make money. Thingiview is currently licensed under: > GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE and from what I can gather, it seems that what I want to do should be okay, do I just need to give the creator of it credit? I will either way but it seems that is all that is required. Is what I want to do okay (by ok I mean legal)? Also if I want to change it I can do that too right, I have some ideas to add to it. Is there anything I would need to do if I change it a little bit?"}
{"_id": "149016", "title": "Are there any scientific studies done on TDD that use total cost of ownership for a product as the measurement?", "text": "When I was reading the summary of previous work in _Dogsa T, Batic D. The effectiveness of test-driven development: an industrial case study. Software Quality Journal. 2011;19(4):643-661._ it struck me that the measurements used in a lot of studies around TDD are based on things like lines of code, defects and time spent on development. Are there any studies out there that focus on the total cost of ownership for products that have been developed using TDD vs ex traditional development or test-last? I am especially interested in the total cost of acquisition and operating costs."}
{"_id": "236788", "title": "Learning to investigate bugs", "text": "I'm not even sure how to define this difficulty. It reminds me of the test a couple of prospective employees did on me before I got a job. They would pick an object in the room and then I'd be allowed to ask questions to help myself determine what that object is (much like 20 questions). I was ridiculously good at this (no, I never got high points for humility), so I'd assumed that I'd be really good at troubleshooting bugs... But here's the thing I figured out recently. I'm really good in that situation because it's really easy to see everything that's in the room, thus I can approach my problem with some concept of it's component parts. In essence I \"know what I don't know\". But with programming I run into a lot of situations where the problem is a complete unknown to me. I know it's broken, but I have no concept of how it might be broken. I've followed all the instructions, I know the technology fairly well... If I'm honest, I feel like I'm just having a hard time imagining things that could be wrong so I can test them and, hopefully, find a solution. How do I go about developing that skill? What do I need to do to help my, apparently, limited imagination come up with ways that my project could possibly be broken? Are there exercises (puzzles perhaps?) that can make me better at this? I'm aware that probably the biggest cure is just experience...but I'm hoping to help accelerate the process if I can. Staring at my computer screen blankly for a few hours at a time is not even kind of fun..."}
{"_id": "212938", "title": "Shall I separate the admin part from the rest of the war", "text": "I built a web-applicationg using struts2. Then I built a small admin interface in the same war. With time the webapp grew and so the admin-interface. Now, I'm thinking to separate the admin interface from the rest of the app in a separate war Is it a good idea ? Is there any performance benefit that I can get due to separation of the admin war and the rest of the webapp. The admin part is mostly about making changes/updations/settings in the database, so it's not affecting the UI of the rest of the app directly. Separating it also ensures that I can make updations to both parts without affecting the other. [UPDATE] I cannot put admin part on local machine. It's a web-app. `Do they use the same classes?` Nope, the entire package is different for admin actions and view is also separate. `How do you update them?` upload war `Do you use application session?` yes of course, although different sessions are used for admin & normal-user."}
{"_id": "176391", "title": "Mocking concrete class - Not recommended", "text": "I've just read an excerpt of \"Growing Object-Oriented Software\" book which explains some reasons why mocking concrete class is not recommended. Here some sample code of a unit-test for the MusicCentre class:               public class MusicCentreTest {       @Test public void startsCdPlayerAtTimeRequested() {         final MutableTime scheduledTime = new MutableTime();         CdPlayer player = new CdPlayer() {            @Override            public void scheduleToStartAt(Time startTime) {             scheduledTime.set(startTime);           }         }              MusicCentre centre = new MusicCentre(player);         centre.startMediaAt(LATER);              assertEquals(LATER, scheduledTime.get());       }     }      And his first explanation: > The problem with this approach is that it leaves the relationship between > the objects implicit. I hope we've made clear by now that the intention of > Test-Driven Development with Mock Objects is to discover relationships > between objects. If I subclass, there's nothing in the domain code to make > such a relationship visible, just methods on an object. This makes it harder > to see if the service that supports this relationship might be relevant > elsewhere and I'll have to do the analysis again next time I work with the > class. I can't figure out exactly what he means when he says: > This makes it harder to see if the service that supports this relationship > might be relevant elsewhere and I'll have to do the analysis again next time > I work with the class. I understand that the service corresponds to `MusicCentre`'s method called `startMediaAt`. What does he mean by \"elsewhere\"? The complete excerpt is here: http://www.mockobjects.com/2007/04/test-smell- mocking-concrete-classes.html"}
{"_id": "176393", "title": "How to do dependency Injection and conditional object creation based on type?", "text": "I have a service endpoint initialized using DI. It is of the following style. This end point is used across the app.                public class CustomerService : ICustomerService     {         private IValidationService ValidationService { get; set; }         private ICustomerRepository Repository { get; set; }              public CustomerService(IValidationService validationService,ICustomerRepository repository)         {             ValidationService = validationService;             Repository = repository;         }                   public void Save(CustomerDTO customer)         {             if (ValidationService.Valid(customer))                 Repository.Save(customer);         }      Now, With the changing requirements, there are going to be different types of customers (Legacy/Regular). The requirement is based on the type of the customer I have to validate and persist the customer in a different way (e.g. if Legacy customer persist to LegacyRepository). The **wrong** way to do this will be to break DI and do somthing like                 public void Save(CustomerDTO customer)         {             if(customer.Type == CustomerTypes.Legacy)             {                 if (LegacyValidationService.Valid(customer))                     LegacyRepository.Save(customer);             }             else             {                 if (ValidationService.Valid(customer))                     Repository.Save(customer);             }         }      My options to me seems like   1. DI all possible `IValidationService` and `ICustomerRepository` and switch based on type, which seems wrong.   2. The other is to change the service signature to `Save(IValidationService validation, ICustomerRepository repository, CustomerDTO customer)` which is an invasive change.   3. Break DI. Use the Strategy pattern approach for each type and do something like:              validation= CustomerValidationServiceFactory.GetStratedgy(customer.Type);     validation.Valid(customer)      but now I have a static method which needs to know how to initialize different services. I am sure this is a very common problem, What is the right way to solve this without changing service signatures or breaking DI?"}
{"_id": "45510", "title": "how to fully unit test functions and their internal validation", "text": "I am just now getting into formal unit testing and have come across an issue in testing separate internal parts of functions. I have created a base class of data manipulation (i.e.- moving files, chmodding file, etc) and in `moveFile()` I have multiple levels of validation to pinpoint when a `moveFile()` fails (i.e.- source file not readable, destination not writeable). I can't seem to figure out how to force a couple particular validations to fail while not tripping the previous validations. Example: > I want the copying of a file to fail, but by the time I've gotten to the > actual copying, I've checked for everything that can go wrong before > copying. Code Snippit: (Bad code on the fifth line...)               // if the change permissions is set, change the file permissions     if($chmod !== null)     {         $mod_result = chmod($destination_directory.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$new_filename, $chmod);         if($mod_result === false || $source_directory.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$source_filename == '/home/k...../file_chmod_failed.qif')         {             DataMan::logRawMessage('File permissions update failed on moveFile [ERR0009] - ['.$destination_directory.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$new_filename.' - '.$chmod.']', sfLogger::ALERT);             return array('success' => false, 'type' => 'Internal Server Error [ERR0009]');         }     }      So how do I simulate the copy failing. My stop-gap measure was to perform a validation on the filename being copied and if it's absolute path matched my testing file, force the failure. I know this is very bad to put testing code into the actual code that will be used to run on the production server but I'm not sure how else to do it. Note: I am on PHP 5.2, symfony, using `lime_test()`. **EDIT** I am testing the chmodding and ensuring that the array('success' => false, 'type' => ..) is returned"}
{"_id": "55455", "title": "System response times --- A good Service Level Agreement?", "text": "In order to view system performance, I have been asked by management to give page response times for a few key pages. I want to make sure I am giving a good picture of the overall health of the system, and not just narrowing in on a single measurement. So my question is: **When developing software, what metrics would you provide to your stakeholders to indicate a system that is healthy and running well?** (if it is not running well, that should also be evident! Not trying to hide/obscure any problems.)"}
{"_id": "162418", "title": "Crappy school, what to do?", "text": "I started programming fairly late. I am 24 years old and about to graduate from a local public university with a really poorly designed curriculum and teachers. Most of the work felt like busy work, and no matter how much I try, it all feels like a waste. I know what a good curriculum looks like. I know what books I should read, but alas it's not so in my university. There is no way at this point that I can catch up to those graduating from places like MIT. My question and this is a serious one: what do I do? Do I just postpone learning the theory I would have learned until later and focus on software engineering skills? How important is the theory in terms of landing a job in New York? Any particular things I should focus on to land a software engineer job? I am very motivated and I just wish someone would give me the time and a chance."}
{"_id": "162415", "title": "What do you call \"X <= $foo <= Y\" comparison?", "text": "While writing a Perl statement like `if ( $foo >= X && $foo <= Y )` yet again, I wondered why many programming languages do not support the more comfortable form `if ( X <= $foo <= Y )` and what this is called. I came up with \"3-legged comparison\" but no results when searching for it. By the way there is also the \"element-of-set\" form `if ( $foo in X..Y )` which I only consider more readable when provided via a short keyword. Is there a term for `X <= $foo <= Y` comparison? Which languages support it?"}
{"_id": "160308", "title": "Pair programming remotely with Visual Studio?", "text": "What tools exist to facilitate pair programming with Visual Studio when the programmers are not in the same physical location? At the moment we are thinking voice (Skype?) plus remote desktop (VNC? TeamViewer?), but it would be good to know of other suggestions and experiences. Also, is there anything more integrated with Visual Studio? A bit more background: we are two experienced developers with who have collaborated well for a long time on a large mature project (ASP.NET, Windows Forms and SQL Server). However we are not usually working on the same part of the code base at the same time. We intend to spend some weeks doing substantial refactoring and it would be ideal if we were able to do this work with a pair-programming approach."}
{"_id": "58168", "title": "How do you make CS students and future programmers aware of the various software licenses and their nuances?", "text": "To be specific: How would you include it as part of curriculum? Would it be too boring to just introduce them as a pure law subject? Are there any course structure available or can we derive one? What are the books that could be used? I would like to see that - after going through the course - candidate is well aware of \"what software licenses are and what they are good for\". Various implications of not knowing it in it's proper sense. What licenses they should use for their own code. What to consider when they are trying to use certain libraries or tools in their project and gauge risks/rewards associated with it. The idea is to let them make informed choices when they are professionals/practitioners in field of programming and not make them substitute for a lawyer or even a paralegal who is going to fight the case or draft things."}
{"_id": "158649", "title": "What are the main differences between FUML and the Executable UML profile?", "text": "I'd like to know what are the main difference between the Foundational Subset for Executable UML models and the Executable UML profile (which followed the Schlaer-Mellor methodology). Thank you"}
{"_id": "160304", "title": "Mixing languages in .Net", "text": "I know that .Net provides the feature to mix several languages within the same application (there are some constraints of course, but this is not essential). Theoretically, this might be done because the languages supported by .Net do not fully expose all the features it can provide. IL does of course. So when you need a feature that the current language doesn't provide, you could write it in another .Net language. The whole code would be translated into IL, and so you would gain more features. From my personal experience, I was writing a project in C# and needed to integrate a small project written in C++ under .Net. When I consulted with some more experienced programmers, they said that it would be much easier to \"translate\" the C++ code into C# than integrate it. Since I had little time, it was what I did, and it was quite easy (the project was quite small). So my question is, has anyone experienced a real-life situation when mixing languages is an absolute necessity?"}
{"_id": "190227", "title": "Is Non-Deterministic Resource-Management a Leaky Abstraction?", "text": "From what I can see, there are two pervasive forms of resource-management: deterministic destruction and explicit. Examples of the former would be C++ destructors and smart pointers or Perl's DESTROY sub, whilst an example of the latter would be Ruby's blocks-to-manage-resources paradigm or .NET's IDispose interface. Newer languages seem to opt for the latter, perhaps as a side-effect of using garbage collection systems of the non-reference-counting variety. My question is this: given that destructors for smart pointers or reference- counting garbage collection systems -- almost being the same thing -- allow implicit and transparent resource destruction, is it a less leaky abstraction than the non-deterministic types which rely on explicit notation? I'll give a concrete example. If you have three C++ subclasses of a single superclass, one may have an implementation that doesn't need any specific destruction. Perhaps its does its magic in another way. The fact that it doesn't need any special destruction is irrelevant -- all of the subclasses are still used in the same way. Another example uses Ruby blocks. Two subclasses need to free resources, so the superclass opts for an interface that uses a block in the constructor, even though other specific subclasses might not need it since they require no special destruction. Is it the case that the latter leaks implementation details of the resource destruction, whilst the former does not? EDIT: Comparing, let's say, Ruby to Perl might be more fair since one has deterministic destruction and the other hasn't, yet they're both garbage- collected."}
{"_id": "179013", "title": "Is there a manageable way of keeping track of loose code?", "text": "I program simple tasks everyday, but I have a hard time finding the scripts, and code snippets I write. Is there an manageable way to keep track of this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "120835", "title": "Should we write detailed architecture design or just an outline when designing a program?", "text": "When I'm doing design for a task, I keep fighting this nagging feeling that aside from being a general outline it's going to be more or less ignored in the end. I'll give you an example: I was writing a frontend for a device that has read/write operations. It made perfect sense in the class diagram to give it a read and a write function. Yet when it came down to actually writing them I realized they were literally the same function with just one line of code changed (read vs write function call), so to avoid code duplication I ended up implementing a do_io function with a parameter that distinguishes between operations. Goodbye original design. This is not a terribly disruptive change, but it happens often and can happen in more critical parts of the program as well, so I can't help but wondering if there's a point to design more detail than a general outline, at least when it comes to the program's architecture (obviously when you are specifying an API you have to spell everything out). This might be just the result of my inexperience in doing design, but on the other hand we have agile methodologies which sort of say \"we give up on planning far ahead, everything is going to change in a few days anyway\", which is often how I feel. So, how exactly should I \"use\" design?"}
{"_id": "120832", "title": "Doubt regarding search engine/plugin(One present on the website itself)", "text": "I am new to web development and trying to study various types of websites as case study. Right now my focus is on how search engines works for an eCommerce website. I know basic functioning for a search engine, i.e. crawl web pages, index them and the display the results using those indexes. But I got little confuse in case of an eCommerce website. Don't you think that it would be better if a search engine instead of crawling the web pages containing products, it should directly crawl the database and index the products stored in the database? And when a user search for any product, it will simply give us the rows of the table which matches the user query? If this is not the case, can someone please explain how the usual method works on eCommerce website?"}
{"_id": "179017", "title": "XMPP\u2014 openfire, PHP and python web service", "text": "I am planning to integrate real time notifications into a web application that I am currently working on. I have decided to go with XMPP for this and selected openfire server which I thought to be suitable for my needs. The front end uses the strophe library to fetch the notifications using BOSH from my openfire server. However the notices are the notifications and other messages are to be posted by my application and hence I think this code needs to reside at the backend. Initially I thougt of going with PHP XMPP libraries like XMPHP and JAXL but then I think that this would cause much overhead as each script will have to do the same steps like connection, authentication etc. and I think this would make the PHP end a little slow and unresponsive. Now I am thinking of creating a middle-ware application acting as a web service that PHP will call and this application will handle the XMPP service. The benefit with this is that this app (a server if you will) will have to connect just once and it will sit there listening on a port. I am also planning to build it in a asynchronous way such that it will first take all the requests from my PHP app and then when there are no more requests; go about doing the notification publishing stuff. I am planninng to create this service in Python using SleekXMPP. This is just what I planned. I am new to XMPP and this whole web service stuff and would like to take your comments on this regarding issues like memory and CPU usage, advantages, disadvantages, scalability issues, security etc. PS:-- also if something like this already exists (although I didn't find after a lot of Googling) Please direct me there. EDIT --- The middle-level service should be doing the following (but not limited to): 1. Publishing notifications for different level of groups and community pages. 2. Notification for single user on some event. 3. User registration (can be done using user service plugin though). EDIT --- Also it would need to create pub-sub nodes and subscribe and unsubscribe users from these pub-sub nodes. EDIT -- Working with Twisted-Python to develop the REST API part now(had to chose between XML_RPC and REST) will keep updating this question as I go along. Also I want to store the notifications and messages in a database (openfire doesn't). Would that be a good choice?"}
{"_id": "164810", "title": "MVC two models required?", "text": "I've been doing software for a long time, but almost all of it has been back- end centric. I recently decided to learn Swing and tried to apply MVC principles. I realize that in Swing the View is handled for you by the components you add to the window/frame/panel, and the Controller is your code responding to the events. However, when it comes to Model I quickly found that I needed TWO models. One is the back-end model representing the underlying data universe. That model is completely unaware of the UI and the fact that it's even being displayed. The second is a version of the model with additional attributes governing display- related aspects. For example, the project I chose was a tool that cross-references the database instances, schemas and tables in a huge enterprise application containing 140 db instances, several hundred schemas and thousands of tables. Sometimes when looking at unfamiliar code you have a table name but finding which instance and schema it's in is a chore. The tool displays 3 columns: DB Instance, Schema and Table, and each column contains only unique names. When you click on a table name (for instance) the schema and instance columns get filtered showing where that particular table occurs. Clicking on a schema name or instance name results in similar filtering behavior on the other two columns. ![Schema Crossreference Tool UI Sample](http://i.stack.imgur.com/tFWme.png) I have a backend model containing a three-level tree (Instance, Schema, Table) but this is inappropriate for the UI I want to display. So I have a second \"display-model\" that is built from the backend model, and backs the three columns. That is where I store flags indicating which entries are visible based on user input. The two models are significantly different in structure, and the display-model entries contain references to the backend-model entries. In a sense the display-model entries are adapters that allow the backend-model entries to be handled in a display-appropriate way. I haven't run across any references to this, but my gut feel is that this must be a very common problem. Has anybody else run into this issue, and what are the \"accepted\" UI programming ways to accomplish the objective?"}
{"_id": "164812", "title": "Does using a wrapper class for pointers make sense?", "text": "In C++, pointers generally have a lot more functionality associated with them than is really necessary. A class template that wraps a pointer and removes most of the less-used features (arithmetic, indexing, deletion). Each function could then decide how powerful a pointer it requires and take the appropriate type. Would using such types make sense in an actual project, though? Are errors caused by unintentional arithmetic/deletion common enough to justify the additional effort? To clarify: I am considering this as a system alongside existing `weak_ptr`, `shared_ptr`, `unique_ptr` -- those three are great when ownership is involved, but sometimes non-owning nullable or reseatable references are useful."}
{"_id": "211215", "title": "Is nesting typedefs a good style?", "text": "Let's say I have a namespace `my` and this namespace contains a class `foo`. What should I prefer nesting typedefs into my class or hold it in my namespace?               namespace my {          class foo {       // some stuff            // nested one       typedef bar my_foo_bar;          };          // or namespaced one     typedef bar my_foo_bar;          }      Looking at the std-libs most things are the namespace variant. (maybe a bad example but...) istream is not nested in iostream (at this point I only mean the way of using -> std::fstream, std::istream, ...), so I can use it directly. but also the list of possible functions is quite huge in std:: I could do both. The first variant is more encapsulated but also if I have to much inheritance I have to type a lot (my::foo::inh::and::so::on) if I won't use `using [namespace]`. First I thought the nested variant is more nice because of the encapsulation of what I want to have in the same \"group\". I also could do a new namespace inside my, but then I have also to type every time the new namespace (also without using [namespace])."}
{"_id": "164816", "title": "What to look for in a training course", "text": "My development team is looking to expand into some new areas that we don't currently have direct skills for. We're trying to evaluate the available training courses, but there's not much depth of differences that you can plumb from a webpage or two and a brochure. So the root of my question is what should we be looking for while selecting a training course? I think the best approach at this point is to send an RFC (request for comment) to the firms we've identified and ask the following:   * syllabus of coursework   * amount of hand's-on-work versus lecture   * preparatory references they recommend   * instructor biographies   * rough estimates of number of students trained*   * amount of time in training*   * amount of time in training on _this_ subject*   * results of end-of-class student satisfaction surveys   * expected student background   * general class size   * how they tailor the course to the individual student's needs *No, these aren't great measures for the quality of a courses but I struggle to identify a more relevant metric. **The Real Question(s) -->**   _What else should we be asking about or investigating?_   _Is there a superior approach to evaluating training courses?_ This question is perhaps the closest to answering my question, but it didn't gain much traction. In addition, it seems oriented towards how to design the course instead of what to look for. This question is related, but the person asking the question didn't appear to want the training. That's definitely not our situation - we have a known skills gap and we're looking to close it. The links from this question didn't really have any content that met my needs. This question and this question are related to the training (iOS development) we're particularly interested in. The questions are slightly stale, which is part of why they are off topic for P.SE. One nugget that I liked from these two questions was to purchase and review books published by the training firm if they're available."}
{"_id": "237789", "title": "Guidelines for returning collections from public functions", "text": "## The Problem Imagine you have a function in a public API that needs to return some kind of collection. Its type is something like               foo :: a -> b      where `b` is some kind of collection. As far as I can see, there a three major kinds of collections -- at least those are the ones used most often:   1. Sequences (order matters, there might be duplicates)   2. Sets (order doesn't matter, no duplicates)   3. Maps (elements are key-value pairs, order doesn't matter, no duplicate keys) What should you use for `b` in these three cases?. I have considered three alternatives, but there might be more. * * * ## A. Just return a list In this alternative, you just return lists for everything:   1. `foo :: a -> [c]`   2. `foo :: a -> [c]` (and document that there are no duplicates)   3. `foo :: a -> [(k, c)]` (and document that there are no duplicate keys) The advantage of this is that the client can construct any collection they want from the returned list. The disadvantage for 2 and 3 is that   * the type does not have the \"no duplicates\" guarantee and that the client has to do more work to get a set/map out of it   * construction of the list in 2 and 3 might be less efficient, because something like a `union` for sets is obviously faster than for lists   * you might construct an intermediate list (depends on the problem at hand). ## B. Return a concrete type matching the guarantees In this alternative, you return a type that precisely matches the guarantees you are giving:   1. `foo :: a -> [c]` (or maybe `foo :: a -> Data.Sequence.Seq c`)   2. `foo :: a -> Data.Set.Set c` (lazy or strict?)   3. `foo :: a -> Data.Map.Map k c` (lazy or strict?) The advantage is that the type accurately describes the guarantees you want to express and that the client doesn't have to do any extra work. The disadvantage is that you're locked into a particular implementation. If you just want to switch to a different set implementation, you break the public API. That might be a good thing in case of a switch between lazy and strict, because those can matter for correctness of the calling code. But in general you want to be able to swap implementation without your clients noticing. ## C. Let the client decide In this alternative, you just constrain the return type with a type class and let the client decide on the concrete type:               1. `foo :: Sequence b c => a -> b`     2. `foo :: Set b c => a -> b`     3. `foo :: Map b c k => a -> b`      (The names I used are from collections-api, but it doesn't really matter.) The advantage of this is that the client can choose which collection type to use. The disadvantage is that you have no control over the collection you construct anymore. This means, e.g., that you cannot assume laziness or complexity of inserts. Another problem is that the client can get ambiguous types, e.g., when they immediately fold the returned collection:               Data.Foldable.fold (foo whatever)      Now `b` is ambiguous. * * * Are there any other alternatives? What would you recommend? I **don't** want `foo` to be able to return a different kind of collection on every call. The three cases considered are completely separate. In each case the question is \"if I have a function that needs to return an X, what type should it have?\" where X can be a sequence, set, or map (or any other kind of collection you can think of)."}
{"_id": "237787", "title": "Should duck typing affect naming conventions?", "text": "I'm a C++/C# developer and recently I've started to learn Python. I think I understand the concept of duck typing right now except for one thing. When I'm coding in C++ or C# I sometimes create completely unrelated classes that have similar methods with similar signatures, for example: Create(), Open(), Close(), ProcessData(), etc. It's not a big deal in C++ or C# (unless you want to mess with C++ templates), but in languages with duck typing like Python this could cause a disaster. Consider the following example:               class DbTransaction:         def rollback(self):             pass          class SourceControlChangeset:         def rollback(self):             pass          def rollback_transaction(transaction):         transaction.rollback()          transaction = DbTransaction()     changeset = SourceControlChangeset()     rollback_transaction(transaction)     rollback_transaction(changeset) # Oops!      Maybe be example is a bit artificial, but I think this could happen pretty easily in a big project with many classes. What should I do in this situation? I think that type checking is not \"pythonic\" so my only idea is to change naming convention for class methods like this:               class DbTransaction:         def rollback_transaction(self):             pass          class SourceControlChangeset:         def rollback_changeset(self):             pass      Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "237786", "title": "Should a lexer un-escape strings?", "text": "Is it a lexer's job to undo any escaping done to a string literal? For example:               \"Me: \\\"Hello World!\\\"\"      Becomes:               Me: \"Hello World!\"      Should this conversion be done inside the lexer? I am guessing it should, because it'd allow for a more abstract and modular design. You could add ways to represent strings and you won't have to update every component."}
{"_id": "112802", "title": "Who should be responsible for writing/updating design specifications in an agile team", "text": "I work as part of a scrum-like Agile team and a while ago, one thing we identified that the team should do is maintain good set of design documents for our code base. Because we are agile and do have good amount of discussion and communications, our designs are kept at a high level and are generally used for describing general layout of modules, including main classes and some of their interactions and. We also found them useful for discussion starting points since and also for reminding people that design needs to be considered before you jump into code. So far, it was expected that everyone will update design specs on as needed basis. Design leads for each team are responsible for giving people advice on design in general, on what to update in the SDSs and also for reviewing the specs to make sure everything stays consistent. The issue I'm seeing is that while everyone, especially new members find design specs very helpful when learning new components or even going back to components they haven't touched for a while, most people only update the docs for the sake of updating them (i.e. they are told they must do it and so they do it). So that we end up with one-liner descriptions which sometimes aren't even full sentences and when I tell them this needs to be updated and filled in, they add more but again, only because they are told. So now one-liners become 1.5 lines and there's still nothing helpful written down. Obviously different team member skills/strengths will be different. So the question is, should certain team members on an agile team simply not be responsible for design and be reduced to just a coder? Or should it be design leads role to go back to those team members and make them rewrite the specs as many times as necessary (and this is really becoming painful) until they pick up enough skills to produce what's expected? My basic guideline that I suggest to everyone: if you were sitting in a meeting or making a presentation about class diagram X, what would you say if your audience needed to know how your code works. Instead, half the time they simply restate what I can already see in the class diagram. \"Class X implements interface Y\". That would be entire class description. **Amendment:** I work for a large corporation with a very healthy appetite for outsourcing/contracting. The team I'm on has permanent members, it also has permanent members who are very new to the team (from recent merger). And we have contractors from India and Poland who will most likely be reassigned to other project after the current release. So different members have different buy-in at this point. Documentation is definitely important to those of us that have been on the project in the last release and will be on the project in the next release."}
{"_id": "54311", "title": "Getting graduates up to speed?", "text": "This question got me thinking about how comapnies deal with newly-hired graduated.   * Do experienced programmers expect CS graduates to write clean code (by clean I mean code easily understandable by others -- maybe that is too much to expect?)   * Or do significant portion of graduates at your place (if any) just end up testing and fixing small bugs on existing applications?   * And, even if they do bug fixes, do you end up spending double the amount of time just checking they did not end up breaking anything and creating new bugs? How do you deal with such scenarios when pair programming and code reviews are not available options (for reasons such as personal deadlines), and also what techniques did you find to get fresh graduate up to speed? Some suggestions would be great."}
{"_id": "176973", "title": "Agile project management, agile development: early integration", "text": "I believe that agile works if everything _is agile_. In software development area, in my opinion, if team members' code is integrated early, code will be more in sync and this has a lot of pros:   * Early integration helps team members to avoid painful merges.   * Encourages better coding habits, because everyone makes sure that they don't break co-workers' code everyday.   * Both developers and architects ( _code reviewers_ ) may detect bad design decisions or just _wrong_ development directions in real-time, preventing useless work. Actually I'm talking about getting the latest version of code base and checking-in your own code to the source control in a daily basis. When you start your _coding day_ (i.e. you arrive to your work), your first action is updating your code base with the latest version from the source control. In the other hand, when you're about an hour to leave from your work and go home, your last action is checking-in your code to the source control and be sure that your day work doesn't break the project's build process. Rather than updating and checking-in your code once you finished an entire task, I believe the best approach is fixing small and flexible personal milestones and checking-in the code once you finish one of these. **I really believe that this coding approach fits better in the _agile_ project management concept**. **Do you know some document, blog post, wiki, article or whatever that you can suggest me that could be in sync with my opinion?**. And, **do you find any problem working with this approach?**. Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "249531", "title": "Can Excel be a strong development platform?", "text": "We are a group of enthusiast engineers who are developing a series of application using Excel as our front end. We are using VBA but plan to start doing in VB.net. Some people in IT have questioned the wisdom of using Excel as a platform because it crashes, it's unsafe, difficult maintain, slow, etc."}
{"_id": "176976", "title": "Separation of development responsibilities in a new project", "text": "We have very recently started a new project (MVC 3.0) and some of our early discussion has been around how the work and development will be split amongst the team members to ensure we get the least amount of overlap of work and so help make it a bit easier for each developer to get on and do their work. The project is expected to take about 6 months - 1 year (although not all developers are likely to be on and might filter off towards the end), Our team is going to be small so this will help out a bit I believe. The team will essentially consist of:   * 3 x developers (All different levels i.e. more senior, intermediate and junior)   * 1 x project manager / product owner / tester   * An external company responsbile for doing our design work General project/development decisions so far have included:   * Develop in an Agile way using SCRUM techniques (We are still very much learning this approach as a company)    * Use MVVM archectecture   * Use Ninject and DI where possible   * Attempt to use as TDD as much as possible to drive development.   * Keep our controllers as skinny as possible   * Keep our views as simple as possible During our discussions two approaches have been broached as too how to seperate the workload given our objectives outlined above. **OPTION 1** : A framework seperation where each person is responsible for conceptual areas with overlap and discussion primarily in the integration areas. The integration areas would the responsibily of both developers as required.               View prototypes (**Graphic designer**)              |               - Mockups                    |     Views (Razor and view helpers etc) & Javascript (**Developer 1**)              |               - View models (Integration point)              |     Controllers and Application logic (**Developer 2**)              |               - Models (Integration point)              |            Domain model and persistence (**Developer 3**)      **OPTION 2:** A more task orientated approach where each person is responsible for the completion of the entire task (story) from _view_ -> _controller_ -> _model_. **QUESTION:** For those who have worked in small teams developing MVC projects how have you managed the workload distribution in this situation. I can't imagine the junior would be responsible for building parts of the underlying architecture so would given them responsibility for the view make sense considering we are trying to keep it simple?"}
{"_id": "176978", "title": "Is there a way to develop desktop software using PHP?", "text": "I have to develop a real estate marketing CRM software for my client - where the application is installed on desktop but can also be accessed from web. 2 reasons why they want the application to run from desktop :   1. So that it can work with/without internet connection   2. They don't want their complete data to be online  They want to access few of the data like property listing & inquiries (managed from desktop application) from their website through secure login & password. The data that is entered in desktop application should be automatically synchronized with the website application. I was wondering if there is a way to develop this kind of software using PHP & MySQL. If yes, it will be great if anyone can provide me the referral link.Else please suggest, which language should I use."}
{"_id": "163450", "title": "Binding in the view or the controller?", "text": "I've seen 2 different approaches with MVC on the web. One, like in ExtJS, is to bind the callbacks to the view via the controller. Finding every element on the view and adding the functionallity. The other, like in angular.js and in the lift framework, is to bind in the views and just write the functionallity in the controller. Which is better and cleaner? The ExtJS approach has dumb views and all the logic in the controller which seems clean to me. I had problems with global IDs for GUI-elements or relative navigation to GUI-elements in this approach. When I changed the view, the controller couldn't find the buttons anymore or I had multiple instances of one button with the same ID on a single application, because of the global ID. But I solved this with IDs that are only global in a view and can be on the application multiple times. So I could mess with the (dumb) views layout and design and the functionality wouldn't break. The angular.js approach with the bindings in the view doesn't have the problem with global IDs. Also, the person who changes something in the view layout has to know the IDs anyway, so the controller can put the data at the right spot. So if I write               <a ng-click=\"doThis()\" />      for angular.js and implement `doThis()` or               <a lid=\"buttonwhichdoesthis\" />      for extjs and find the element with the local id and add `doThis()` as the handler on the controller side, it seems to not be so different. The only thing is, the second one has one more layer of indirection, which seems cleaner. The first one seems less effort."}
{"_id": "163457", "title": "Understanding the static keyword", "text": "I have some experience in developing with Java, Javascript and PHP. I am reading Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Step by Step which I feel it is a very good book on introducing you to the C# language. I seem to be having problems in understanding the static keyword. From what I understand this far if a class is declared static all methods and variable have to be static. The main method always is a static method so in the class that the main method exists all variables and methods are declared static if you have to call them in the main method. Also I have noticed that in order to call a static method from another class you do not need to create an object of that you can use the class name. What are the advantages of declaring static variables and methods? When should I declare static variable and methods?"}
{"_id": "94723", "title": "is there any future with computer programming without the knowledge of science?", "text": "my main subjects are commercial studies and computer **applications**.I dont have knowledge of science. Is there a good career which involves both the subjects."}
{"_id": "94727", "title": "Using all the parameters of a function", "text": "Code Complete (2nd ed.) says: \"If you pass a parameter to a routine, use it. If you aren't using it, remove the parameters from the routine interface.\" However, in the past I sometime had to do that. Consider the following example: Assume that we have an abstract base class called `Food`, containing a pure virtual function called `getEaten`. We derive two separate classes from it:               class Apple : public Food     {         void getEaten(const Utensil &utensil);         // otherstuff     };      and               class Soup : public Food     {         void getEaten(const Utensil &utensil);         // otherstuff     };      When we call `mySoup.getEaten(spoon)`, the function makes use of the `spoon` parameter in order to perform the action. However, an apple does not need a utensil, and in those cases I have to send a dummy utensil to `myApple.getEaten(emptyUtensil)`. Yes, this is ugly, and has the overhead of unnecessarily creating and passing a dummy object. I can generalize the problem like this: \"When we have two concepts, which are represented as two classes, have the same action applied on one of them, and one needs more information than the other when requesting to execute those actions, I tend to pass dummy information to the less information requesting objects.\" So my questions are: 1) How can we change the design of this somewhat silly example, so that we don't need to pass the dummy utensil? 2) If there is a nice simple solution to the first question, would there be a way to generalize it to the generalized problem above (like solutions as \"in those cases create a new x such that it interacts with the less informating demanding class like this\" etc.)"}
{"_id": "237433", "title": "Git: Branch or Fork?", "text": "I have game project that will have two versions:   1. A simple version of the game, the core   2. An advanced version of the game. I have the 1st version in my public repository and only I will be working on it. As for the 2nd version, me and two friends of mine will work on it. The crucial part is I want the two versions stay in my repository. I though I might use branches for this, but considering this question and its answer, it's not good practice to do so in terms of versioning. As far as I've found out, forking your own repository is not possible. What are my options here? How can I keep both versions in my repository?"}
{"_id": "20038", "title": "Web Usage Policies at \"Best Companies to Work For\"", "text": "For any company that has made it onto a \"Best Companies to Work For\" list* in 2010 that hires programmers, what restrictions on web usage do they have in place? Does that company view unrestricted internet access as a benefit to their employees even if they might use it for non-work related reasons? If you can provide a link to back up this information, even better. (* I don't want to promote any specific publication, but they are easy enough to find.) My hypothesis is that a company that aspires to be one of the best needs to provide fairly unrestricted internet access and I'm trying to test it."}
{"_id": "237435", "title": "What is the Loopback Pattern?", "text": "I was reading this blog post about Hexagonal architecture and at the bottom it says: > The Loopback pattern is an explicit pattern for creating an internal > replacement for an external device. When I google for \"Loopback pattern\" I don't find any details about it. Does anyone know what the author is referring to? For curiosity's sake, I'd like to know how to implement this."}
{"_id": "143795", "title": "What should happen at the start of a software project startup?", "text": "## A quick introduction My college semesters include a 8 week project working for an actual company with a software need in order to get some much needed practical experience. I have just started such a project with 5 other students. We're required to spend roughly 40 hours a week per student on this project. We're working with SCRUM as the software development method, this was assigned by our teachers. ## The question Day one of the project just ended which has created some questions for me as to how to start a project in the 'real world'. Our first day included working on a project planning document (not sure what the English term is), creating a appointment with the company for an introduction and the opportunity to start specifying the requirements and setting up some standards for the behavior within the group. However these items didn't take that long to finish. We've made some concrete plans for tomorrow and the day after we'll meet the company. This still leaves several hours of 'work-time' unspent. Is it usual not being able to fill every hour of a day for work at the start of a project or are we simply too inexperienced to see what work needs to be done at this stage of a project, or are we, perhaps, going through the above list too fast? How does this work in the 'real world'? Do you spend your time wondering 'what should I do now', or do you have a clear view of what you're supposed to do at that moment?"}
{"_id": "143714", "title": "is jargon related to a frameWork (concept)", "text": "If this is not the right place to ask this question please inform where it would belong, to change it... I have a doubt for the correct word or concept in english language [not my native], about the relationship of > language to framework for example i work with > objective C, with the cocoa touch frame work || python with the django frame > work My comparison is between natural languages and formal languages, So would be in a natural language > english and the frame work a [computer, it]jargon? Does this make sense? Or what other concept would be the relationship between natural language - framework?"}
{"_id": "20036", "title": "Why the current enthusiasm for Functional Programming?", "text": "I've been hearing a lot of enthusiasm about functional programming languages lately, with regards to Scala, Clojure, and F#. I've recently started studying Haskell, to learn the FP paradigm. I love it, it's really fun, and fits my math background. But will it ever really matter? Obviously, it's hardly a new idea. Here's my questions:   1. What has contributed to the recent FP enthusiasm? Is is merely boredom with OO, or has something changed to make FP more needed than before?   2. Is this indicative of a FP future? Or is this a fad, like object orient databases? In other words, can anyone help me understand where this comes from and where it might be going?"}
{"_id": "155834", "title": "JavaFX - the right way to use Properties with domain objects", "text": "JavaFX has provided a bunch of new Property objects, such as `javafx.beans.property.DoubleProperty` which allow you to define fields which can be automatically observed and synchronised. In many JFX examples, the MVC model class has a number of these Property fields, which can then bind automatically to the view. However, this seems to be encouraging us to put JFX properties into our Domain objects (if you assume that the Model class is going to be a domain object), which strikes me as a poor separation of concerns (i.e. putting GUI code in the Domain). Has anyone seen this problem being solved in 'real life' and, if so, how was it done?"}
{"_id": "254764", "title": "Repurpose MySQL as a mutex", "text": "My application needs to perform an operation once every 10 minutes, but that operation is triggered many times more frequently. Occasionally it is triggered three or four times a second in different processes, and that's the main thing I want to avoid. It's Django, and at first I used the `django.core.cache` feature, but I am still getting more than one worker performing the operation simultaneously. I have Redis also, and know that WATCH and MULTI can be used to prevent race conditions, but the django-redis library doesn't support them. This is my solution; please comment on how well (or not) it prevents multiple workers (processes) from performing the operation simultaneously:   1. Have a MySQL table with fields `when` and `uuid` and just a single row starting with both NULLs.   2. When a worker is told to start the operation, it quits early if `when` is less than 10 minutes ago.   3. Otherwise, generate a UUID and store it in the table, updating `when` to `NOW()` in the same query.   4. Then, select the row and quit early if `uuid` doesn't match the one just generated.   5. Otherwise continue with the operation This relies on MySQL enforcing the order of reads and writes and enforcing that only one query access the row at once, which may be invalid assumptions. Any alternative ways of keeping Celery processes from running a task simultaneously would be just as helpful."}
{"_id": "79068", "title": "What is the difference between debugging and testing?", "text": "Introduction To Software Testing (Ammann & Offutt) mentions on p.32 a 5-level testing maturity model: **Level 0** There\u2019s no difference between testing and debugging. **Level 1** The purpose of testing is to show that the software works. **Level 2** The purpose of testing is to show that the software doesn\u2019t work. **Level 3** The purpose of testing is not to prove anything specific, but to reduce the risk of using the software. **Level 4** Testing is a mental discipline that helps all IT professionals develop higher quality software. Although they don't go into much further detail. What are the differences between debugging and testing?"}
{"_id": "254762", "title": "C++ Data Server and J2ME client communication", "text": "I am working on a robot that has some AI built in. However, the mandated robot controller does not have the power to do the work onboard. This means that I need to use a co-processor. I am writing all of my AI in C++. This will also be a TCP server. I have an idea for the protocol. The C++ server receives commands and only sends back values when absolutely required. The String for a basic command would be:               REQUEST DATA PUT data storename ENDREQ       The C++ server would parse the request and store data under the reference of storename. To read data from the server:   The Java request would be:               REQUEST DATA GET storename ENDREQ      The server will reply with:               data      I will be using TCP for the transmission of data because it seems much more robust and easy to implement using the libraries that I am using. I am not too knowledgeable when it comes to Java, especially with J2ME. How to implement the Java side? CHANGE: It is quite easy for me to implement a web server on the C++ side, so please feel free to use HTTP for the protocol!"}
{"_id": "254769", "title": "Why is Throwable initCause designed to be called only once?", "text": "I find it really odd that the `initCause` method of Java's `Throwable` class can only be called once, or even not at all (if the constructor accepting a `Throwable` was used). This makes exception chaining not as easy as I think it should be.               private Throwable cause = this;          public Throwable(String message, Throwable cause) {         ...         this.cause = cause;     }          public Throwable getCause() {         return (cause==this ? null : cause);     }          public synchronized Throwable initCause(Throwable cause) {         if (this.cause != this)             throw new IllegalStateException(\"Can't overwrite cause\");         if (cause == this)             throw new IllegalArgumentException(\"Self-causation not permitted\");         this.cause = cause;         return this;     }      It leads to ugly boilerplate code that has to take care of edge cases where the method _may_ have already been called, but the part of the code where you want to call it again, you're not sure. What is worse is that the `getCause` method does not correctly tell you whether `initCause` method had been called or not. This is because someone else could have called `initCause(null)` and this would make `getCause` to return `null` while at the same time have `initCause` fail with `IllegalStateException` (because `null != this` is true). The result is a boilerplate code as follows:               try {         exp1.initCause(exp2);     } catch (IllegalStateException ise) {         // do something or ignore     } catch (IllegalArgumentException iae) {         // do something or ignore     }      Whereas I should be able to simply call `exp1.initCause(exp2);` without caring whether it's the same exception or the method had already been called (and let the method take care of what to do if either of the condition was true; _for example_ simply ignore the new cause). **What is the reason behind such an odd design?** **_Edit:_** I would like to clarify that I don't have a problem with the cause being immutable. My problem is that, ensuring such immutability is not violated is made a burden for the programmers, rather than being handled automatically by the implementation. It would have made more sense to me if the cause was implemented as follows:               private Throwable cause; // null means no cause          public Throwable(String message, Throwable cause) {         ...         this.cause = cause;     }          public Throwable getCause() {         return cause;     }          public synchronized Throwable initCause(Throwable cause) {         if (this.cause == null)             this.cause = cause;         return this;     }      Or even if the **original** implementation was kept, a handy method could have been added:               public boolean hasCause() {         return (this.cause != this);     }      So that I could reduce the boilerplate code to simply:               if (!exp1.hasCause()) exp1.initCause(exp2);      I would also like to clarify that this is not a question of which Java version I should be using, or whether I should continue using versions of Java that have reached their support's end-of-life. There are many reasons why older versions of Java continue to be used other than _\"lazy to upgrade\"_ or _\"don't care about security\"_. `:)`"}
{"_id": "148878", "title": "Should Multiple Data Items be in Multi Unit Test Methods?", "text": "I often want to have the same unit test applied to data multiple items that are roughly equivalent (two non-empty strings). Currently I implement these in multiple unit test methods, with names like `MethodNonEmptyValidString1` and `MethodNonEmptyValidString2`. This has a bit of a code smell to me. Is it better to have the multiple data items in one method with multiple asserts? Is there another design pattern that models this more accurately?"}
{"_id": "148879", "title": "mysql, one connection vs multiple", "text": "On nodejs with node-mysql, should I create one connection for the service like this:               var client = mysql.createClient({         user: 'user',         password: 'pass'     }); // Create a new mysql Client     io.sockets.on(\"connection\", function (user)) // when a user enters     {         result = client.query('check user'); //check for user on DB         if (result) {             user.on('do stuff', function (data) // set to do something on ask             {                 client.query('some stuff'); //run the mysql client to work             });         } else {             user.disconnect();         }     });     }      or or for each user like this:               io.sockets.on(\"connection\", function (user)) // when a user enters     {         var client = mysql.createClient({             user: 'user',             password: 'pass'         }); // Create a new mysql Client when the users enters         result = client.query('check user'); //check for user on DB         if (result) {             user.on('do stuff', function (data) // set to do something on ask             {                 client.query('some stuff'); //run the mysql client to work             });             user.on('disconnect', function (data) {                 client.close();             });         } else {             user.disconnect();             client.close();         }     }      What I'm asking is:   * is the first one faster because the connection is always open and on the second one it needs to create every time a user connects?   * is the first one slower because if many users are asking for queries he only does one at the time, and on the second one each one have his own client and can make multiple connections at the same time?   * is the second one heavier for the node server and for the mysql because it needs to have 1 client for each user?   * is the first one heavier because it never closes the mysql connection, and after some queries may have some memory leaks?   * or should I create and close a mysql connection for every query? PS: the application connected to the node server will have a big number of users, connected during a long period of time, but will have a very low number of queries, but the users probably will ask for queries at about the same time."}
{"_id": "255410", "title": "Content CDNs and dynamic content", "text": "I am curious as to how dynamic web applications play with content delivery networks such as cloudflare, amazon cloudfront, etc. I understand the concept of a cdn obtaining a cache of your static pages and then serving those pages from their various servers relative to where the request is coming from. However when it comes to applications that are database heavy that require user sessions, allow for searches, and other user interaction is a cdn still useful? If the answer is yes, does the cdn crawl your server and create caches of all of the pages that could be created dynamically? If this is true then how is sensitive data handled? (For example if your application is pulling profile information specific to a user that only that user should have access to.)"}
{"_id": "255413", "title": "How to avoid redundant code in designing inheritance in C++", "text": "Say I have a Base class called `Car` and it has 3 derived classes say `Ford`, `Honda` and `Audi`. The issue is, all three derived classes have exactly same code but minor difference in calling member functions of their respective engines (these engines have separate class). For example, `Ford` class calls code which is exactly same as other two classes but do call something like `ford_engine-> start()`, `ford_engine->clean()` etc.               //ly  honda  calls   honda_engine->start()   honda_engine->clean();          //ly  Audi calls audi_engine->start()  audi->clean();      Now here the issue is, it has redundant code in all three places with minute difference. How can I have code at one place, most probably in base class and all derived classes use same code?"}
{"_id": "255419", "title": "What licenses are compatible with MASM32's license requirements?", "text": "The MASM32 documentation clearly states that the GPL violates MASM32's license, and therefore cannot be applied to projects built with MASM32. > The MASM32 project **cannot be used to create open source software** or any > other project under any form of licence that requires the user of the MASM32 > project to surrender the rights they are afforded under the MASM32 licence. > In particular the MASM32 licence completely excludes projects licenced under > the GNU organisation's published GPL licence and/or variants. However, no guidance is given on what licenses _are_ MASM32 compatible. My best guess based on the general push for freedom and not restriction in the MASM32 license is that the MIT license would be compatible. However, I'm not a lawyer. Anyone else gone down this path already and figured out which licenses are able to be used with MASM32?"}
{"_id": "164762", "title": "Can each mobile app have its own client account for payments? (Windows Phone, Android and iPhone)", "text": "My company has many clients wanting mobile applications and having the payments come into our account and then sorting the payments would be a real pain. So can a company have a main account to publish applications (free and chargeable) and still have some sort of client account for each app (so they could view sales and receive full payment directly)? I would like to know for Windows, Android and Apple please."}
{"_id": "59699", "title": "When does one NO longer need to RENEW his Commercial off the shelf products (COTS) License?", "text": "Let's assume that someone buys \"off the shelf\" a Social Network (License) with all the core social network features needed, for a one off payment of 500$, and then a renewal fee of 250$ per each following year (of continued use). Then, the inhouse graphic designers and web developers modify the webpages (template) layout, the colours; and they adapt (change) the coding to their own needs. Over time additional plugins and other webpages are added and the original language becomes a smaller proportion than the originl 100% (of the COTS). When can a web development Team claim Copyrights \"ownership\" of their enlarged \"coding\" and stop paying the renewal fee to the Company from which they bought the COTS product? When is the line crossed between \"It was yours on Day 1....but... it's mine now, as it looks to different from what I bought from you\"? Do you have a ratio in mind, for example, old coding 30% new 70%? or how else could you possibly justify not paying whoever sold you that License and is chasing you for the yearly renewal?"}
{"_id": "156565", "title": "Cataloging events, projects and tasks: Is SQL appropriate?", "text": "I have this idea for a database: it would hold everything I \"need to remember\", and allow future coding projects to access the information. These future projects include a day-planner and historical analysis of what I've been up to. The things I need to remember break down in to two main categories: Events and Tasks. Some tasks (like \"wash dishes\") won't be part of a project, but most will (like \"write abstract for AIAA paper\"). Both Events and Tasks will always have a category like \"Home\", \"School\", \"Work\", or \"Family\". I want to base this on a few SQL tables because I have used SQL before at work, and it was really straightforward and easy to work with. I also recently became acquainted with it so it is fun and new to me. For this specific project, I was thinking a big table for the actual entries with foreign keys for their project and category. My question is this: Is SQL the right choice for this, or am I using a jackhammer to open a screen door? I am sure that it is possible to do it this way; but I am worried that there might be a more sensible solution out there, and I am certain that the shiny new-ness of SQL is clouding my vision. **Edit after reflecting on comments:** A spreadsheet introduces the possibility of errors due to constantly repeating myself instead of referencing predefined entities; furthermore, it sacrifices machine readability to provide a cumbersome GUI. I accept the notion that SQL would be inappropriate but I do not think a spreadsheet could meet my needs. **Final Edit:** I did some more searching around and found a few potential ways to implement this that strike a nice balance between \"sensible\" and \"interesting\". I realized while I was reading y'all's comments that I needed to decide if I wanted to do it the \"right\" way or the fun way. And I think I want to do it the fun way. I did some exploring and found a few solutions that could extend my toolset for future projects without being completely superfluous like SQL.   * KirbyBase is a really simple ruby database that seems to be perfect for small, silly projects like this one.    * There are also a lot of interesting NoSql options that I intend to do more research on: MongoDB, CouchDB, and neo4j. I am going to go ahead and select the only answer that answered the question and let this topic sink because most of the commentary (not excluding my own) is too subjective for SE. Thank you all for the advice!"}
{"_id": "216131", "title": "Editing files without race conditions?", "text": "I have a CSV file that needs to be edited by multiple processes at the same time. My question is, how can I do this without introducing race conditions? It's easy to write to the end of the file without race conditions by open(2)ing it in \"a\" (O_APPEND) mode and simply write to it. Things get more difficult when removing lines from the file. The easiest solution is to read the file into memory, make changes to it, and overwrite it back to the file. If another process writes to it after it is in memory, however, that new data will be lost upon overwriting. To further complicate matters, my platform does not support POSIX record locks, checking for file existence is a race condition waiting to happen, rename(2) replaces the destination file if it exists instead of failing, and editing files in- place leaves empty bytes in it unless the remaining bytes are shifted towards the beginning of the file. My idea for removing a line is this (in pseudocode):                   filename = \"/home/user/somefile\";         file = open(filename, \"r\");         tmp = open(filename+\".tmp\", \"ax\") || die(\"could not create tmp file\"); //\"a\" is O_APPEND, \"x\" is O_EXCL|O_CREAT         while(write(tmp, read(file)); //copy the $file to $file+\".new\"         close(file);     //edit tmp file         unlink(filename) || die(\"could not unlink file\");         file = open(filename, \"wx\") || die(\"another process must have written to the file after we copied it.\"); //\"w\" is overwrite, \"x\" is force file creation         while(write(file, read(tmp))); //copy \".tmp\" back to the original file         unlink(filename+\".tmp\") || die(\"could not unlink tmp file\");      Or would I be better off with a simple lock file? Appender process:               lock = open(filename+\".lock\", \"wx\") || die(\"could not lock file\");     file = open(filename, \"a\");     write(file, \"stuff\");     close(file);     close(lock);     unlink(filename+\".lock\");      Editor process:               lock = open(filename+\".lock\", \"wx\") || die(\"could not lock file\");     file = open(filename, \"rw\");     while(contents += read(file));     //edit \"contents\"     write(file, contents);     close(file);     close(lock);     unlink(filename+\".lock\");      Both of these rely on an additional file that will be left over if a process terminates before unlinking it, causing other processes to refuse to write to the original file. In my opinion, these problems are brought on by the fact that the OS allows multiple writable file descriptors to be opened on the same file at the same time, instead of failing if a writable file descriptor is already open. It seems that O_CREAT|O_EXCL is the closest thing to a real solution for preventing filesystem race conditions, aside from POSIX record locks. Another possible solution is to separate the file into multiple files and directories, so that more granular control can be gained over components (lines, fields) of the file using O_CREAT|O_EXCL. For example, \"file/$id/$field\" would contain the value of column $field of the line $id. It wouldn't be a CSV file anymore, but it might just work. Yes, I know I should be using a database for this as databases are built to handle these types of problems, but the program is relatively simple and I was hoping to avoid the overhead. So, would any of these patterns work? Is there a better way? Any insight into these kinds of problems would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "156569", "title": "How many make threads to use?", "text": "When I (re-)build large systems on a desktop/laptop computer, I tell `make` to use more than one thread to speed up the compilation speed, like this:               $ make -j$[ $K * $C ]      Where `$C` is supposed to indicate the number of _cores_ (which we can assume to be a number with one digit) the machine has, while `$K` is something I vary from `2` to `4`, depending on my mood. So, for example, I might say `make -j12` if I have 4 cores, indicating to `make` to use up to 12 threads. * * * My rationale is, that if I only use `$C` threads, cores will be idle while processes are busy fetching data from the drives. But if I do not limit the number of threads (i.e. `make -j`) I run the risk to waste time switching contexts, run out of memory, or worse. Let's assume the machine has `$M` gigs of memory (where `$M` is in the order of 10). So I was wondering if there is an established strategy to choose the most efficient number of threads to run."}
{"_id": "175668", "title": "How to structure git repositories for project?", "text": "I'm working on a content synchronisation module for Drupal. There is a server module, which sits on ona website and exposes content via a web service. There is a also a client module, which sits on a different site and fetches and imports the content at regular intervals. The server is created on Drupal 6. The client is created on Drupal 7. There is going to be a need for a Druapl 7 version of the server. And then there will be a need for a Drupal 8 version of both the client and the server once it is released next year. I'm fairly new to git and source control, so I was wondering what is the best way to setup the git repositories? Would it be a case of having a separate repository for each instance, i.e:               Drupal 6 server = 1 repository     Drupal 6 client = 1 repository     Drupal 7 server = 1 repository     Drupal 7 client = 1 repository     etc       Or would it make more sense to have one repository for the server and another for the client then create branches for each Drupal version? Currently I have 2 repositories - one for the client and another for the server."}
{"_id": "168486", "title": "Concurrency pattern of logger in multithreaded application", "text": "The context: We are working on a multi-threaded (Linux-C) application that follows a pipeline model. Each module has a private thread and encapsulated objects which do processing of data; and each stage has a standard form of exchanging data with next unit. The application is free from memory leak and is threadsafe using locks at the point where they exchange data. Total number of threads is about 15- and each thread can have from 1 to 4 objects. Making about 25 - 30 odd objects which all have some critical logging to do. Most discussion I have seen about different levels as in Log4J and it's other translations. The real big questions is about how the overall logging should really happen? One approach is all local logging does `fprintf` to `stderr`. The stderr is redirected to some file. This approach is very bad when logs become too big. If all object instantiate their individual loggers - (about 30-40 of them) there will be too many files. And unlike above, one won't have the idea of true order of events. Timestamping is one possibility - but it is still a mess to collate. If there is a single global logger (singleton) pattern - it indirectly blocks so many threads while one is busy putting up logs. This is unacceptable when processing of the threads are heavy. So what should be the ideal way to structure the logging objects? What are some of the best practices in actual large scale applications? I would also love to learn from some of the real designs of large scale applications to get inspirations from! ====== **EDIT:** Based on both the answers here is the question I am now left with : What is the best practice about assigning loggers (logging queues) to the object: should they call some global_api() or should the logger be assigned to them in the constructor. When the objects are in some deep hierarchy this later approach becomes tedious. If they are calling up some global_api() it's kind of coupling with the Application, so trying to use this object in other application throws this dependency. Is there a cleaner way for this?"}
{"_id": "168485", "title": "Should we exclude code for the code coverage analysis?", "text": "I'm working on several applications, mainly legacy ones. Currently, their code coverage is quite low: generally between 10 and 50%. Since several weeks, we have recurrent discussions with the Bangalore teams (main part of the development is made offshore in India) regarding the exclusions of packages or classes for Cobertura (our code coverage tool, even if we are currently migrating to JaCoCo). Their point of view is the following: as they will not write any unit tests on some layers of the application _(1)_ , these layers should be simply excluded from the code coverage measure. In others words, they want to limit the code coverage measure to the code that _is tested_ or _should be tested_. Also, when they work on unit test for a complex class, the benefits - purely in term of code coverage - will be unnoticed due in a large application. Reducing the scope of the code coverage will make this kind of effort more visible... The interest of this approach is that we will have a code coverage measure that indicates the current status of the part of the application we consider as _testable_. However, my point of view is that we are somehow faking the figures. This solution is an easy way to reach higher level of code coverage without any effort. Another point that bothers me is the following: if we show a coverage increase from one week to another, how can we tell if this good news is due to the good work of the developers, or simply due to new exclusions? In addition, we will not be able to know exactly what is considered in the code coverage measure. For example, if I have a 10,000 lines of code application with 40% of code coverage, I can deduct that 40% of my code base is tested _(2)_. But what happen if we set exclusions? If the code coverage is now 60%, what can I deduct exactly? That 60% of my \"important\" code base is tested? How can I As far as I am concerned, I prefer to keep the \"real\" code coverage value, even if we can't be cheerful about it. In addition, thanks to Sonar, we can easily navigate in our code base and know, for any module / package / class, its own code coverage. But of course, the global code coverage will still be low. What is your opinion on that subject? How do you do on your projects? Thanks. _(1)_ These layers are generally related to the UI / Java beans, etc. _(2)_ I know that's not true. In fact, it only means that 40% of my code base"}
{"_id": "168481", "title": "How to choose between using a Domain Event, or letting the application layer orchestrate everything", "text": "I'm setting my first steps into domain driven design, bought the blue book and all, and I find myself seeing three ways to implement a certain solution. For the record: I'm not using CQRS or Event Sourcing. Let's say a user request comes into the application service layer. The business logic for that request is (for whatever reason) separated into a method on an entity, and a method on a domain service. How should I go about calling those methods? The options I have gathered so far are:   * Let the application service call both methods   * Use method injection/double dispatch to inject the domain service into the entity, letting the entity do it's thing and then let it call the method of the domain service (or the other way around, letting the domain service call the method on the entity)   * Raise a domain event in the entity method, a handler of which calls the domain service. (The kind of domain events I'm talking about are: http://www.udidahan.com/2009/06/14/domain-events-salvation/) I think these are all viable, but I'm unable to choose between them. I've been thinking about this a long time and I've come to a point where I no longer see the semantic differences between the three. Do you know of some guidelines when to use what?"}
{"_id": "55991", "title": "Resources for functional programming beginner", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  How to grasp functional programming concepts? I'm looking for some resources on functional programming subject. It seems to be a paradigm which is gaining visibility and I wanna know a bit more of it. What are the books/ebooks/articles do you recommend? **Note:** I'm not necessarily looking for a specific language, but for the paradigm itself."}
{"_id": "59343", "title": "In times where there are lot of cloud based hostings what would still make you go for dedicated or vps hosting?", "text": "Are dedicated hosting yet cheaper and would remain so ? Do they really going to survive as cloud based offering are also getting cheaper day by day ? I am asking to gain perspective of long term scenario in hosting space as well as to know what is the current situation. Everywhere I go there is this buzzword \"cloud\" and audience don't even bother to compare it with dedicated hosting options. Is cloud really the way to go ahead ? what are it's cons ?"}
{"_id": "59344", "title": "I'm trying to understand hash tables - can someone explain it to me - clearly?", "text": "I want to understand the correct use and implementation of hash tables in php (sorry). I read somewhere that an in-experienced programmer created a hash table and then iterated through it. Now, I understand why that is wrong but I haven't quite got the full knowledge to know if my understanding is correct (if you know what I mean). So could someone explain to me how to implement a hash table in php (presumably an associative array) and perhaps more importantly, how to access the values 'with a hash' and what that actually means?"}
{"_id": "161166", "title": "Should I prefer properties with or without private fields?", "text": "The codebase I'm working in now has the convention of using private fields and public properties. For example, most classes have their members defined like this:               // Fields     private double _foo;     private double _bar;     private double _baz;          // Properties     public double Foo     {         get{ return _foo; }         set{ _foo = value; }     }          public double Bar     {         get{ return _bar; }         set{ _bar = value; }     }          public double Baz     {         get{ return _baz; }     }      I know these can be rewritten **without** their internal private properties:               public double Foo{ get; set; }     public double Bar{ get; set; }     public double Baz{ get; private set; }      I'd like some input on this:   * Is there a good reason to prefer the older, more explicit style over the newer, more concise one?    * Should I write any new classes using the concise style, or should I try to match the older code for consistency? Is consistency worth enough in this case to justify the older format?"}
{"_id": "179906", "title": "Why does Zend discourage \"floating functions\"?", "text": "Zend's Coding Standard Naming Convention says > Functions in the global scope (a.k.a \"floating functions\") are permitted but > discouraged in most cases. Consider wrapping these functions in a static > class. The common wisdom in Python says practically the opposite: > Finally, use staticmethod sparingly! There are very few situations where > static-methods are necessary in Python, and I've seen them used many times > where a separate \"top-level\" function would have been clearer. (Not only does the above StackOverflow answer warn against overuse of static methods, but more than one Python linter will warn the same.) Is this something that can be generalized across programming languages, and if so, why does Python differ so from PHP? If it's not something that can be generalized, what is the basis for one approach or the other, and is there a way to immediately recognize in a language whether you should prefer bare functions or static methods?"}
{"_id": "179907", "title": "Should I use JSON just to use JSON", "text": "I'm building a blogging site for learning, with a PHP/MySQl back-end. All of the user input is handled with forms sent in POST requests. Will using JSON somehow make it cleaner, or easier to maintain or add features? Or am I just adding an interchange format for no reason? So essentially, what functionality would be best implemented by using JSON?"}
{"_id": "150922", "title": "Flash messages in ASP.NET MVC without sessions", "text": "I'm developing a web application for Windows Azure using ASP.NET MVC 4. I would like to enforce one restriction in the architecture: **do not use Session**. To achieve availability on Azure, and since there is no sticky sessions, I would need to store the session data in some central service, probably either SQL Azure or the Caching Service. I would rather avoid sessions on the SQL database to avoid the increased latency, and the caching service on Azure is very expensive for the ammount of memory offered. On the other hand, I would like to have the ability to easily pass Flash-style messages among redirects. TempData is the recommended way to do this, but by default it uses the session object. So I would like to know:   1. Is there an alternative way to use TempData that doesn't require sessions or shared data between servers? Cookies perhaps?   2. Is there a better alternative I'm overlooking?"}
{"_id": "150921", "title": "What is the reason for section 1 of LGPL and what is the implication for section 9.", "text": "Why was section 1 added to LGPLv3? My understanding of section 3&4 is, one can convey the combined work under any license and with no requirements from GPLv3 (besides those explicitly stated as requirements in LGPLv3 3&4). Given that, why is section 1 necessary. Wouldn't that sections 3&4 by themselves already imply anyhow what section 1 explicitly states? I assume that I'm missing something and section 1 isn't redundant. Assuming that, does this have implications for other sections in GPLv3? E.g. does conveying a covered work under sections 3&4 fall under the patent clause of section 10 of GPLv3? Why does section 1 not also state an exception for section 10? Put another way. Is the Eigen FAQ correct by stating: > LGPL requires [for header only libraries] pretty much the same as the > 2-clause BSD license. It it true that for conveying object files including material from LGPLv3 headers no GPLv3 patent clauses apply?"}
{"_id": "95090", "title": "Directory structure of web application written in PHP", "text": "I would like to know which convention (if any) you use for your PHP web application projects."}
{"_id": "233530", "title": "At what point does data access\\manipulation logic becomes business logic?", "text": "Consider a service which updates PersonDetail tables in database. I am Using EF which maps the table to this Entity. When a record is updated, it is not actually updated but a new record is created and old one is made history by setting HistoryCode to 0               Class PersonDetail     {       int age;       Date birthDate;       DateTime effectiveDate;       int sequenceNumber; //An incremental number.       int HistoryCode; //0 represents history record and 1 current record     }      Now we have a service that updates the person details               if(newPersonDetail.effectiveDate < currentPersonDetails.effectiveDate)     {       //update sequence number of currentPersonDetails by 1       //insert a new Person Details record and assign its sequenceNumber as the sequence number           //of currentPersonDetails and HistoryCode as 0 to represent this is an history record     }     else     {        //Make the currentPersonDetails HistoryCode to 0 from 1        //Insert a newPersonDetail with sequence number incremented by 1 and HistoryCode set to 0     }      Logic? I am trying to move the data-access logic out of service layer to repository layer but not able to clearly figure out what part of this is considered as business logic and what is considered as Data Access logic."}
{"_id": "250686", "title": "What is a good design approach in .NET for performing a series of checks in background process?", "text": "I have a flight planning system in .NET/SQL Server which needs to perform several validation checks. This needs to work on both a windows and a web client. Currently the checks run synchronously but this is slowing the system down, plus it is often repeating the same checks. Like \"is this aircraft in the right start location\", \"is the aircraft available\" and many more complicated checks. This is needed since the current system does not know if other flights have been changed which might cause issues. Am looking for a way in which I could create a single background process which runs independently and asynchronously on an interval and might be triggered by data changes or explicit requests. This process could then update a list of found issues per flight. Another process could simply use this list to report the issues to the user without having to perform the checks itself. Any ideas on architecture pattern and best practices to implement something like this? Would like to keep the installation process fairly simple, so the fewer \"moving parts\" the better."}
{"_id": "238962", "title": "Dividing responsibilities between client and server", "text": "I'm working on a Web app that uses node.js on the server and AngularJS on the client. I'm new to Angular, but enables writing client-side applications that can be more self-contained than some other approaches. Here is the scenario. On the server, I query a DB and then transform the results into a list of nodes and edge objects. These objects are sent to the client (browser), and the client displays them as a graph. The code to parse the query results and build the graph is pretty generic and I expect to use it again subsequent apps. It can stay on the server. However, a lot of the code could be moved to the client because it is specific the sigma.js package that displays the graph. Part of me wants to offload the processing the client. There is also talk of ditching sigma.js for the next application we build, so shoving it into the client sounds pretty appealing. However, the client is already feels bloated and complicated. I could use something like the decorator pattern to keep the sigma.js specific code encapsulated while leaving room for more representations. Which direction should I go? What should I taking into consideration?"}
{"_id": "250684", "title": "How can I configure updates in a CMS like WordPress?", "text": "I have a CMS built in core PHP. Till now, if a new version is released, it is downloaded to client machine in zipped form. And then client has to manually unzip the folder and copy that to required location. Because there is no way to download zip file to required location. I want that CMS should be updated in the background like-WordPress. In other words, I want that new version can replace old version. How can I do this?"}
{"_id": "78820", "title": "How to overcome the \"being fed up\" on a project", "text": "I've been working on this contracted project for over a year now and I'm the only developer (as a contractor delivering the product) on a mis-planned project with unrealistic deadlines. I've pointed those out at the very beginning but since I need the money I took the project. I don't care that much if I'm earning less due to this deadline overdue-ness... Anyway. Since I've been working many many late (as well as early) hours I became really fed up by this project and my productivity has fallen below 50% (approximation). **How do I fight this to boost productivity?** I can't take time off, because I'm the sole developer on this and because project is already too late. **Some more info** I got this project over another intermediary company (in other words: with connections). I'm mostly communicating with the end client and they are aware that things can only go as fast as they do. They have the know-how, we keep meetings every other week to check progress and talk about outstanding things, processes etc. They seem content and satisfied with my work. But this intermediary of course want their stake (25%) and are saying things are going too slow. That's why I say that I don't care that much about being late, because I know I'm delivering a very good as well as useful product that will be used heavily. And hopefully sold to other clients afterwards as well. I also have a strong wish to finish it and get some rewards myself as well. I've been working _on fumes_ for the last year. Until I deliver the first phase (out of three) I see no money. Last two phases will be shorter. Especially the second one."}
{"_id": "78825", "title": "What do you consider to be the essential design patterns? And do you use them?", "text": "It seems to me that programmers have an increasingly uphill task of staying up-to-date. In my efforts to improve my programming ability, I am in search of the essential design patterns that are commonly used in computing (more specifically around .net). For example, should I bother to memorise:   * Search algorithms?   * MVC? (is it bad to use this just for the smart url's? lol)   * MVVM? (seems no point, but haven't researched it) etc... What are your top 5 design patterns that you commonly use day to day (not just the ones you like)?"}
{"_id": "117973", "title": "Are there any OS which are simple enough for learning?", "text": "I would really like to understand how an operating system works behind the scenes. However, I think that the kernel of most open-source OSs out there are too complex for learning purposes, even for a full-time programmer to learn. Are there any \"simple\" OSs made for learning purposes only out there?"}
{"_id": "111728", "title": "Integrating Domain Model Applications - Resources/Guidance", "text": "I'm struggling to find guidance on integrating various applications, usually based on a Domain Model architecture. The applications often expose and consume each others WCF services, but this tends to be done in a rather hap- hazard way. I'm quite certain that the domain should not access another applications services, but where should they be consumed from? UI, Application layer? Data Layer? All I've read about SOA seems to contain theoretical information about what makes a service, but nothing about how to actually implement it in code. And what if I need to return/query on a join between two entities in two systems? Many resources suggest denormalising data into the calling system, and updating using messages, but should messaging and WCF be combined in the same system? I've read Enterprise Application Integration but it still leaves me with many questions. What are good resources/code samples for integrating domain model systems?"}
{"_id": "36816", "title": "Ruby but not Rails on my Resume", "text": "I have listed Ruby as a skill on my resume becuase I've been programming in Ruby for 5 years while I work on my Ph.D. thesis. I've mostly been using it to implement natural language processing algorithms. I'm starting to look for a job, and I posted my resume to a few sites (as an extra bonus when applying to certain on-target jobs). Now I get recruiters calling me to offer me Ruby on Rails jobs. The problem is that I've never learned Rails. It was never relevant to what I'm doing for my Ph.D. How do you recommend handling this situation to avoid wasting my time and theirs? (And learning Rails probably isn't an option until I finish my thesis.) Can my resume be adjusted to make this clearer? Should it be adjusted? Should I just politely tell them on the phone that I don't know Rails? By the way, the relevant part of my resume simply says: > ## Skills: > > **Programming Languages:** C, C++, Java, Scala, Ruby, LaTeX > > **Databases:** MySQL, XML, XPath and lists a few other skill areas that couldn't possibly be confused with a Rails developer."}
{"_id": "8416", "title": "How would you name import and export functions in Java?", "text": "I have a Java class that handles import and export of data. It started out as a simple               private void export() {     }     private void import() {     }      Of course, I wrote the export first, committed it, and then went on to write the import. But import is a keyword in Java - I can't use that as a function name. So I go back and rename both methods. I usually end up with               private void doExport() {     }     private void doImport() {     }      which is both ugly and feels contrived. What do you think of these names? Got any better suggestions? Note: I'm asking now, because it's now happened thrice and that keyword is getting quite annoying."}
{"_id": "8415", "title": "What is a good way to brainstorm algorithms on a computer?", "text": "I'm looking for something that allows me to work out an algorithm on a computer similar to how I would do it on a whiteboard. At work, I have a huge whiteboard that I can use for this, but at home, I don't (and can't). This makes it difficult to design algorithms when I'm working on hobby projects. I think better when I use drawings as opposed to text, so pseudocode is no good. I guess what I'm looking for is something like a flowchart program, but that allows a less rigid approach to designing algorithms. I'd like the program to be cross-platform (Mac, Linux), but I'll be happy even if it just runs on Macs. Free is preferred, but reasonably priced programs are good too. I would prefer programs that people have used and had experiences with, rather than whatever turned up on Google, as I know of some flowchart and mind-mapping software, but haven't really been satisfied with either. I realise that a computer isn't the best platform for doing this kind of stuff, but assume for a moment that it's the only medium I possess."}
{"_id": "165997", "title": "Motivation for a service layer (instead of just copying dlls)?", "text": "I'm creating an application which has 2 different UIs so I'm making it with a service layer which I understood is appropriate for such scenario. However I found myself just creating web methods for every single method I have in the BL layer, so the services basically built from methods that looks like this: `return customers_bl.Get_Customer_Prices(customer_id);` I understood that a main point of the service layer is to prevent duplication of code so I asked myself - why not just import the BL.DLL (and the dal.dll) to the other UI, and whenever making a change re-copy the dlls, it might not be so 'neat', but still less hassle than one more layer? {I know something is wrong in my approach, I'm probably missing the importance of service layer, I'd like to get more motivation to create another layer, especially because as it is I found that many of my BL functions _ALREADY_ looks like: `return customers_dal.Get_Customer_Prices(cust_id)` which led me to ask: was it really necessary to create the BL just because on several functions I actually have LOGIC inside the BL?} so I'm looking for more motivation to creating _ONE MORE_ layer, I'm sure it's not just to make it more convenient that I won't have to re-copy the dlls on changes? Am I grasping it wrong? Any simple guidelines on how to design service layer (corresponding to all the BL layer functions or not? any simple example?) any enlightenment on the subject?"}
{"_id": "50542", "title": "Licensing issues with using code from samples coming with SDK", "text": "Samples coming with SDK are intended to provide best practices. So logically it looks perfectly valid to take code from them. But usually samples come under licenses, for example a lot of samples from Microsoft are released under Microsoft Public License (MS-PL). Samples are usually published to provide best practices and common reusable code. But how can I use code from samples if they are under rather strict licenses?"}
{"_id": "221446", "title": "Any programming languages that support Generics exclusively and have no OOP support?", "text": "I am writing a paper on the tension between OOP and Generic programming created by Stepanov. He widely criticizes OOP and says it is \"technically flawed\" when compared to Generic Programming. Now I know we have plenty of programming languages that support OOP exclusivley and have no Generic support including Google GO for example, that is a modern language that they chose not to implement Generics because of their complexity. I know we have plenty of languages that support both Generics and OOP, for example C++ and Stepanov's famous STL library. _My question is:_ **Do we have any modern programming languages or any at all that support Generics exclusively without OOP?** _EDIT: I would like to add I tried looking around and cant seem to find much so I figured I would ask here._ Just to add that when I refer to Generic vs Object Oriented Programming I am refering to: Generic Vs Object Oriented Programming On the Tension Between Object-Oriented and Generic Programming in C++"}
{"_id": "212256", "title": "Pattern / methodology for representing large database records as objects", "text": "A bit of background information: We have an old database application written in Access that lets users monitor their workload, and the code is... 'procedural' might be too kind. The vast majority of code is hard-wired to form events, there's a _lot_ of duplication, and little to no abstraction. If it needs to fetch data from the database, it'll just do it right there and then, even if that means roughly the same bit of code repeated 6 times for 6 similar buttons (and 6 practically identical database requests). It's not pretty. I want to rebuild the application in VB.NET, but I'm hitting a bit of a design snag when it comes to writing classes to represent database records as objects - I don't have a huge amount of experience in OO programming (written a few small apps, read lots of books and material, regular SE lurker), so this is my first OO database application. The problem is that a given 'job' for a user has a _lot_ of fields on the database. About 30 or so - ID, Title, Requestor, Request Date, Target Date, Priority, Type, Approval... and so on. First pass: Whack everything into a dirty great `Job` class:               Public Class Job         Private mID As String         Private mTitle As String         Private mRequestorName As String         Private mRequestorEmail As String         ...              Public Property ID() As String             Get                 Return mID             End Get             Set(value As String)                 Me.mID = value             End Set         End Property         ...     End Class      Yikes. I'm sure you can see my hesitance at having such an enormous class sitting front-and-center of the application. All those properties seem to be violating encapsulation too - the Private members might as well be Public, but conversely I need to be able to alter fields and later write back to the database. Second pass: There's a few things in here that could be extracted and situated elsewhere: for example, all those `Requestor___` members could sit in a `Requestor` class               Public Class Job         Private mID As String         Private mTitle As String         Private mRequestor As Requestor         ...     End Class          Public Class Requestor         Private mName As String         Private mEmail As String         ...     End Class      So now I have half a dozen of these. Smaller classes? Feels nice. But it feels like all I've really achieved is essentially database normalisation, which doesn't feel like it should live in the application. And the only real change to the structure is that it takes more steps to get to data items. And I still have all those properties (which are forcing me to use hungarian notation on my private members, which I'm not a fan of, but VB.NET isn't case- sensitive so I can't use the same names), which still aren't sitting right with me. **Is there a standard pattern or methodology for moving large data items to and from a database?** My current best idea is the above with `commit()` and `read()` methods in the `Job` class - alterations are made to the objects and then later commited to the database."}
{"_id": "66450", "title": "Techniques for parsing XML", "text": "I've always found XML somewhat cumbersome to process. I'm not talking about implementing an XML parser: I'm talking about _using_ an existing stream-based parser, like a SAX parser, which processes the XML node by node. Yes, it's really easy to learn the various APIs for these parsers, but whenever I look at code that processes XML I always find it to be somewhat convoluted. The essential problem seems to be that an XML document is logically separated into individual nodes, and yet the data _types_ and attributes are often separated from the actual data, sometimes by multiple levels of nesting. Therefore, when processing any particular node individually, a lot of extra state needs to be maintained to determine _where we are_ and _what we need to do next._ For example, given a snippet from a typical XML document:               <book>       <title>Blah blah</title>       <author>Blah blah</author>       <price>15 USD</price>     </book>      ...How would I determine when I've encountered a text node containing a book title? Suppose we have a simple XML parser which acts like an iterator, giving us the next node in the XML document everytime we call `XMLParser.getNextNode()`. I inevitably find myself writing code like the following:               boolean insideBookNode = false;     boolean insideTitleNode = false;          while (!XMLParser.finished())     {         ....         XMLNode n = XMLParser.getNextNode();              if (n.type() == XMLTextNode)         {             if (insideBookNode && insideTitleNode)             {                 // We have a book title, so do something with it             }         }         else         {             if (n.type() == XMLStartTag)             {                 if (n.name().equals(\"book\")) insideBookNode = true                 else if (n.name().equals(\"title\")) insideTitleNode = true;             }             else if (n.type() == XMLEndTag)             {                 if (n.name().equals(\"book\")) insideBookNode = false;                 else if (n.name().equals(\"title\")) insideTitleNode = false;             }         }     }      Basically, the XML processing quickly turns into a huge, state-machine driven loop, with lots of state variables used to indicate parent nodes we've found earlier. Otherwise, a stack object needs to be maintained to keep track of all the nested tags. This quickly becomes error-prone and difficult to maintain. Again, the problem seems to be that the data we're interested in is not directly associated with an individual node. Sure, it could be, if we wrote the XML like:               <book title=\"Blah blah\" author=\"blah blah\" price=\"15 USD\" />      ...but this is rarely how XML is used in reality. Mostly we have text nodes as children of parent nodes, and we need to keep track of the parent nodes in order to determine what a text node refers to. So...am I doing something wrong? Is there a better way? At what point does using an XML stream-based parser become too cumbersome, so that a fully- fledged DOM parser becomes necessary? I'd like to hear from other programmers what sort of idioms they use when processing XML with stream-based parsers. Must stream-based XML parsing always turn into a huge state machine?"}
{"_id": "126200", "title": "Is there a canonical resource on R programming?", "text": "Considering I have no programming background, Is there a resource out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on R programming? What about that resource makes it special?"}
{"_id": "212252", "title": "Will a binary include methods that are not called in the source code?", "text": "[Potentially misleading title, but I'm not sure how best to word it.] Theoretical question on compilers and language design. Say I'm re-implementing a method in a code base. Instead of removing or commenting out the method that I'm re-implementing I leave it where it is, for reference and testing purposes, and just remove all the calls to it. Something like the following (in C-style pseudo code):               public void aMethodToCallFooVariants()     {        // oldFoo();        newFoo();     }          private void oldFoo ()     {        // Some code here that's not very good     }          private void newFoo ()     {        // Some better code here     }      newFoo is called by the method that originally called oldFoo, meaning that oldFoo is no longer called anywhere in the source code, but it still in the listing. Are compilers smart enough such that when I run my build script, the code for oldFoo isn't included in the compiled binary, or will oldFoo still be included but not called anywhere? I can understand if public method will still be included, they could be called by code that is external to the compiled binary (especially if it's compiled as a library). But would the private method still be compiled into the binary?"}
{"_id": "242987", "title": "Architecture driven by users, or by actions/content?", "text": "I have a question about designing MVC app architecture. Let's say our application has three main categories of views (items of type 1, items of type 2...). And we have three (or more in future) types of users - Admins, let's say Moderators and typical Users. And in the future there might be more of them. Admins have full access to app, Moderators can visit only 2/3 type of items, and Users can visit only basic type of items. Should I divide my controllers/views/whatever like this: Items \"A\", Items \"B\", Items \"C\", then make them 100% finished and at the end add access privileges? **Pros:**   * DRY option **Cons**   * Conditional expressions in views Or another options: Items \"A\" / Admin, Items \"A\" / Moderator / Items \"B\" Admin ...? **Pros:**   * Divided parts of application for specific user (is that pros?) **Cons:**   * A lot of repeated code I don't have great experience in planning such things so it would nice if you can give me some tips or links to learn something about it."}
{"_id": "151034", "title": "Initialized variables vs named constants", "text": "I'm working on a fundamental programming class in college and our textbook is \"programming logic and design\" by joyce farrell(spelling?) Anyhow, I'm struggling conceptually when it comes to initialized variables and named constants. Our class is focusing on pseudo-code for the time being and not one particular language so let me illustrate what I'm talking about. Let's say I am declaring a variable named \"myVar\" and the data type is numeric: num myVar now I want to initialize it (I don't understand this concept) starting with the number 5 num myVar = 5 how is that any different than creating a named constant?"}
{"_id": "126208", "title": "Datetime vs Timestamp in MySQL and PHP in practice?", "text": "I am not sure how to specify my datatype as datetime or timestamp, I think I will need both of them but on the different events. My website sells products and services worldwide and also have an account system for user to login. Please clarify the following:   * Current date and time customer buys products from my website: Datetime?   * Delivery date and time based on their location and date/time purchased, calculated from our system: Datetime?   * Last time they logged-in on their account: Timestamp?     1. What is the code in php to store purchasing date (current date) and then store in the database?     2. Please elaborate how to use each of them as after reading plenty of explanation on the internet, I still don't quite get it."}
{"_id": "22504", "title": "What would you add in this Software Development Project Checklist?", "text": "I'm a big fan of checklists. There is Travel Checklist, Moving Checklist and even a Scrum Checklist. **Context** : you have been hired by a large corporation and given the mission to setup the whole software development environment, processes, team, etc. You have \"carte blanche\". You will be responsible for the creation of the working increments of the software. Project size: 2000 man/days. What items would you add to the following (intentionally small and incomplete) checklist:   * Install a Continuous Integration Server   * Write a DoD   * Write a one page coding guidelines   * Create a product backlog   * Install a Bug Tracking System   * Schedule Regular Face Time"}
{"_id": "189053", "title": "Space between negative sign and variable name", "text": "I tried doing a Google search, as well as searching this Stack Exchange site but could not find a question relating directly to this. The PEP 8 -- Style Guide for Python Code has lots of good style recommendations, however I don't think they mention anything about whether a space between a minus or negative sign (`-`) and a variable name would be more or less readable. ### Question It's a (very) minor issue, but which is considered more readable?   * `false_positive = -true_positive`   * `false_positive = - true_positive` ### Motivation I ask not to be trivial, but because in my past math courses I often find myself not noticing the negative sign in important equations, such as the equation for computing entropy: ![entropy formula](https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?cht=tx&chl=H%28X%29%20%3D%20-%20%5Cdisplaystyle%20%5Csum_%7Bi%3D1%7D%5En%20%7BP%28x_i%29%20%5Clog_b%20P%28x_i%29%7D) I often don't notice the `-` sign before the summation, so making it stand out would be desirable."}
{"_id": "189052", "title": "Building a computer system with JS?", "text": "I recently finished this book called The Elements of Computing Systems where you build a working computer system from the ground up, starting from basic logic gates, to creating your own machine code and Assembly language, to intermediate code, and finally a simple object-oriented programming language that compiles down to VM code. I enjoyed it a lot and I'd like to create something similar in JavaScript, but with more features. I've already written an emulator for the Hack machine in JS:                 // Creates a new CPU object that is responsible for processing instructions       var CPU = function() {          var D = 0;    // D Register         var A = 0;    // A Register     var PC = 0;   // Program counter               // Returns whether an instruction is valid or not     var isValidInstruction = function(instruction) {         if (instruction.length != 32)             return false;              instruction = instruction.split(\"\");               for (var c = 0; c < instruction.length; c++)         {             if (instruction[c] != \"0\" && instruction[c] != \"1\")                 return false;         }              return true;     };                 // Given an X and Y input and 6 control bits, returns the ALU output     var computeALU = function(x, y, c) {              if (c.length != 6)             throw new Error(\"There may only be 6 ALU control bits\");              switch (c.join(\"\"))         {             case \"000000\": return 0;              case \"000001\": return 1;              case \"000010\": return -1;              case \"000011\": return x;              case \"000100\": return y;              case \"000101\": return ~x;             case \"000110\": return ~y;             case \"000111\": return -x;              case \"001000\": return -y;              case \"001001\": return x+1;              case \"001010\": return y+1;             case \"001011\": return x-1;             case \"001100\": return y-1;             case \"001101\": return x+y;             case \"001110\": return x-y;             case \"001111\": return y-x;             case \"010000\": return x*y;             case \"010001\": return x/y;             case \"010010\": return y/x;             case \"010011\": return x%y;             case \"010100\": return y%x;             case \"010101\": return x&y;             case \"010110\": return x|y;             case \"010111\": return x^y;             case \"011000\": return x>>y;             case \"011001\": return y>>x;             case \"011010\": return x<<y;             case \"011011\": return y<<x;                  default: throw new Error(\"ALU command \" + c.join(\"\") + \" not recognized\");          }     };                // Given an instruction and value of Memory[A], return the result     var processInstruction = function(instruction, M) {              if (!isValidInstruction(instruction))             throw new Error(\"Instruction \" + instruction + \" is not valid\");              // If this is an A instruction, set value of A register to last 31 bits         if (instruction[0] == \"0\")         {             A = parseInt(instruction.substring(1, instruction.length), 2);                  PC++;                   return {                 outM: null,                 addressM: A,                 writeM: false,                 pc: PC             };          }              // Otherwise, this could be a variety of instructions         else         {             var instructionType = instruction.substr(0, 3);             var instructionBody = instruction.substr(3);                  var outputWrite = false;                   // C Instruction - 100 c1, c2, c3, c4, c5, c6 d1, d2, d3 j1, j2, j3 (000..000 x16)             if (instructionType == \"100\")             {                 var parts = [ \"a\", \"c1\", \"c2\", \"c3\", \"c4\", \"c5\", \"c6\", \"d1\", \"d2\", \"d3\", \"j1\", \"j2\", \"j3\" ];                 var flags = {};                       for (var c = 0; c < parts.length; c++)                     flags[parts[c]] = instructionBody[c];                       // Compute the ALU output                 var x = D;                 var y = (flags[\"a\"] == \"1\") ? M : A;                  var output = computeALU(x, y, [flags[\"c1\"], flags[\"c2\"], flags[\"c3\"], flags[\"c4\"], flags[\"c5\"], flags[\"c6\"]]);                       // Store the result                 if (flags[\"d1\"] == \"1\") A = output;                  if (flags[\"d2\"] == \"1\") D = output;                 if (flags[\"d3\"] == \"1\") outputWrite = true;                       // Jump if necessary                 if ((flags[\"j1\"] == \"1\" && output < 0) || (flags[\"j2\"] == \"1\" && output == 0) || (flags[\"j3\"] == \"1\" && output > 0))                      PC = A;                 else                     PC++;                       // Return output                 return {                     outM: output,                     addressM: A,                     writeM: outputWrite,                     pc: PC                 };              }                  else throw new Error(\"Instruction type signature \" + instructionType + \" not recognized\");         }     };                // Reset the CPU by setting all registers back to zero     this.reset = function() {         D = 0;         A = 0;         PC = 0;     };                // Set the D register to a specified value     this.setD = function(value) {         D = value;     };                // Set the A register to a specified value     this.setA = function(value) {         A = value;     };                // Set PC to a specified value     this.setPC = function(value) {         PC = value;     };               // Processes an instruction and returns the result     this.process = function(instruction, M) {         return processInstruction(instruction, M);      };      };       I was thinking about adding things like a filesystem, sound, Internet connectivity, and an RGBA screen output (currently it's only black and white). But how feasible would this be, really? Because what I'm thinking about doing is starting _completely_ from scratch. And what I mean by that is create my own machine code, then work all the way up towards a C-like language and actually create working programs and stuff."}
{"_id": "189057", "title": "C++ vs Objective-C design principles of setters and getters", "text": "In C++ I was told that my classes shouldn't have getters and setters: Doing it wrong... blog post. On the other hand, in Objective-C, the direct use of ivar is discouraged, because the getters allow to do lazy instantiation, and setters make KVO easy. Why is that difference?"}
{"_id": "236912", "title": "How does one deliver messages to (and query from) sites with possibly bad connectivity, having numerous WCF Soap and Web API services?", "text": "My company is investigating using a service bus. Currently we have running prototypes of NServiceBus and Microsoft Service Bus (on premise). I'm quite happy with the pub-sub and topic messaging capabilities the bus provides but I'm getting lost in one of the requirements they are referring to. For example: They want to query the service bus and \"GetAccountInformation()\" and expect a result back ala WCF service style and expect the bus to answer them sufficiently to display the result in a UI. Now, with the above I mentioned the following :   1. The bus cannot be used for querying as the inherit pattern involves a \"high latency\" as we cannot be guaranteed that any subscriber would be listening at that point.   2. It sounds like they want to use the bus as a \"hub\" for all communications. To me that's sounds like they need WCF relays. To complicate matters, the reason why they are looking into it, we need to be able deliver messages to (and query from) geographically dispersed sites some of which has absolute horrible connectivity issues. So, for this case messaging fits. Also, all different sites have numerous WCF Soap and Web API services. How to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "149839", "title": "Is XHTML5 dead or is it just an synonym of HTML5?", "text": "So what happened to XHTML5? http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/ That page is a draft for both xhtml5 and html5? So there's no difference between these doctypes?"}
{"_id": "149838", "title": "Just getting started in Spring and my preference is XML config over annotations. Correct or not?", "text": "After having read through some of the Spring docs my inclination is towards using a XML config file rather than annotations on the classes themselves. My reasoning is that by doing so you avoid tying your POJOs to a particular framework. Based on your experience with Spring, are there any advantages that XML configuration have over an annotation based configuration, and if not what are the disadvantages?"}
{"_id": "26473", "title": "Going from cutting edge to maintaining legacy projects", "text": "I have an Access 03 program with a bunch of VBA code that is in use and the end user wants new functionality. I am finding it very difficult to add new functionality because my brain wants to use the most recent .NET technologies and VBA is not recent at all. How should I go about \"rolling back\" technologies in my head to keep my frustration levels to a minimum? Also my boss said it wasn't in the budget to rewrite the project from access and vba to some sort of form and SQL combo (which I could probably pound out in a few days, which is the same amount of time that I feel that it will take me to look up and implement in the old system)."}
{"_id": "227843", "title": "What are the tradeoffs for using 'partial view models'?", "text": "I've become aware of an itch due to some non-DRY code pertaining to view model classes in an (ASP.NET) MVC web application and I'm thinking of scratching my itch by organizing code in various 'partial view model' classes. By partial-view-model, I'm referring to a class like a view model class in an analogous way to how partial views are like views, i.e. a way to encapsulate common info and behavior. To strengthen the 'analogy', and to aid in visually organizing the code in my IDE, I was thinking of naming the partial-view-model classes with a `_` prefix, e.g. `_ParentItemViewModel`. As a slightly more concrete example of why I'm thinking along these lines, imagine that I have a domain-model-entity class `ParentItem` and the user- friendly descriptive text that identifies these items to users is complex enough that I'd like to encapsulate that code in a method in a `_ParentItemViewModel` class, for which I can then include an object or a collection of objects of that class in all the view model classes for all the views that need to include a reference to a parent item, e.g. `ChildItemViewModel` can have a `ParentItem` property of the `_ParentItemViewModel` class type, so that in my `ChildItemView` view, I can use `@Model.ParentItem.UserFriendlyDescription` as desired, like breadcrumbs, links, etc. * * * As a second example, imagine that I have entity classes `SomeKindOfBatch`, `SomeKindOfBatchDetail`, and `SomeKindOfBatchDetailEvent`, and a view model class and at least one view for each of those entities. Also, the example application covers a lot more than just _some-kind-of-batches_ , so that it wouldn't really be useful or sensible to include info about a specific some- kind-of-batch in _all_ of the project view model classes. But, like the above example, I have some code, say for generating a string for identifying a some- kind-of-batch in a user-friendly way, and I'd like to be able to use that in several views, say as breadcrumb text or text for a link. As a third example, I'll describe another pattern I'm currently using. I have a `Contact` entity class, but it's a _fat_ class, with dozens of properties, and at least a dozen references to other _fat_ classes. However, a _lot_ of view model classes need properties for referencing a specific contact and most of those need other properties for collections of contacts, e.g. possible contacts to be referenced for some kind of relationship. Most of these view model classes only need a _small_ fraction of all of the available contact info, basically just an ID and some kind of user-friendly description (i.e. a friendly name). It seems to be pretty useful to have a 'partial view model' class for contacts that all of these other view model classes can use. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding 'view model class' \u2013 I understand a view model class as always corresponding to a view. But maybe I'm assuming too much."}
{"_id": "227846", "title": "Design of a custom query result array with lazy loading", "text": "I have a database that generates a query result array, each position of the array being a hash like object. Since each array item must be mapped into a well defined class, I decided to implement an array-adapter that cast every item into the expected object class. This cast is done only upon request, not in advance. The native query only return **ids**. The adapter uses these to pull the object that must be adapted. This approach introduces a time delay between the query (native query result) and the provided final item. During this time any item could have been modified in the background by other process. There is also an ugly effect where different sections of the array have different eventual consistency. > Does this mean that any database query must be exhaustive (no lazy fetch of > results)? If a query should always be exhaustive, I am considering in making my adapter _smarter_ , capable of performing a limited query for my views. If the view request a point past the initial limit, it will load more results, however this seems to have the same consistency by parts problems as before. > How are the problems for lazy loading of past query results consistency > problems solved?"}
{"_id": "60853", "title": "Senior developer role to architect role", "text": "Sometimes I think architect role is just a title that is given for someone that has been a senior developer for a number of years. How do you know when a senior developer is ready to take on an architect role? Is it by market standard common for senior developer to jump to architect role or do they need to be a team lead then architect? I need some enlightment on this topic."}
{"_id": "32444", "title": "Opensource, noncommercial License?", "text": "i want to publish my software under a opensource license with the following conditions: you are allowed to:   * Share \u2014 to copy, distribute and transmit the work   * use a modified version of the code in your application you are not allowed to:   * publish modified versions of the code   * use the code in anything commercial Is there a software license out there that fits my needs ? (crosspost: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4558546/opensource- noncommercial-license)"}
{"_id": "253487", "title": "Know executables files launched/loaded by an executable file", "text": "I would like to know any executable files launched or loaded by an executable file (if possible without running it,if it is not possible i don't want any change in the system). For example i have this source code compiled in an executable :               CreateProcess(\"C:\\\\Windows\\\\explorer.exe\", NULL, NULL,NULL,FALSE,0,NULL,NULL,&SI,&PI);     hKernel32 = LoadLibrary(\"kernel32.dll\"); // I can know this by looking in the import table     g_LoadLibrary = (pLoadLibrary)GetProcAddress(hKernel32, \"LoadLibrary\");     g_LoadLibrary(\"unknow.dll\");     ShellExecute(NULL,\"open\", \"script.py\", \"\", \"\", SW_SHOWDEFAULT );      Here i want to know he spawn explorer.exe, load kernel32.dll ,unknow.dll and start script.py. How i can do that ? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "160489", "title": "Code obfuscator for C++", "text": "I suspect that obfuscating C++ code will make reverse engineering harder: without meaningful symbol names there will be no hints about modules functions and interactions. Can anyone recommend good, verified obfuscator for C++? Their prices are about $150, but if I end up purchasing 3 different products, it will be $450."}
{"_id": "160488", "title": "How to quickly adapt to a project?", "text": "Suppose my favourite open source application has a bug. Now I want to contribute to the application by fixing its bug and submit the patch to the development team. What's the most effective way to do this? Do you actually read the whole source code of the project (or most of it) to understand the logic before start fixing it?"}
{"_id": "165474", "title": "Belkin device runs Linux, how can I create my own custom firmware for it?", "text": "The Belkin N300 F9K1002 firmware is located here. It does not appear to be encrypted. How can I upload my own custom Linux firmware to this device. How would I go about hacking it?"}
{"_id": "160481", "title": "Should Android development be done on Windows or OSX? Is there any difference?", "text": "I have the option to install the Android SDK on Windows or OSX. Which platform provides a better (easier) development experience? To keep this constructive, I'm looking for any difference that eliminates compatibility issues, ease of debugging, or compatibility with 3rd party utilities."}
{"_id": "165472", "title": "C# Open Source software that is useful for learning Design Patterns", "text": "In college I took a class in Expert Systems. The language the book taught (CLIPS) was esoteric - Expert Systems: Principles and Programming, Fourth Edition. I remember having a tough time with it. So, after almost failing the class, I needed to create the most awesome Expert System for my final presentation. I chose to create an expert system that would calculate risk analysis for a person's retirement portfolio. In short, the system would provide the services normally performed by one's financial adviser. In other words, based on personality, age, state of the macro economy, and other factors, should one's portfolio be conservative, moderate, or aggressive? In the appendix of the book (or on the CD-ROM), there was this in-depth example program for something unrelated to my presentation. Over my break, I read and re-read every line of that program until I understood it to the letter. Even though it was unrelated, I learned more than I ever could by reading all of the chapters. My presentation turned out to be pretty damn good and I received praises from my professor and classmates. So, the moral of the story is..., by understanding other people's code, you can gain greater insight into a language/paradigm than by reading canonical examples. Still, to this day, I am having trouble with everyday design patterns such as the Factory Pattern. I would like to know if anyone could recommend open source software that would help me understand the Gang of Four design patterns, at the very least. I have read the books, but I'm having trouble writing code for the concepts in the real world. Perhaps, by studying code used in today's real world applications, it might just \"click\". I realize a piece of software may only implement one kind of design pattern. But, if the pattern is an implementation you think is good for learning, and you know what pattern to look for within the source, I'm hoping you can tell me about it. For example, the System.Linq.Expressions namespace has a good example of the Visitor Pattern. The client calls Expression.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor()), which calls ExpressionVisitor (VisitExtension), which calls back to Expression (VisitChildren), which then calls Expression (Accept) again - wooah, kinda convoluted. The point to note here is that VisitChildren is a virtual method. Both Expression and those classes derived from Expression can implement the VisitChildren method any way they want. This means that one type of Expression can run code that is completely different from another type of derived Expression, even though the ExpressionVisitor class is the same in the Accept method. (As a side note Expression.Accept is also virtual). In the end, the code provides a real world example that you won't get in any book because it's kinda confusing. To summarize, If you know of any open source software that uses a design pattern implementation you were impressed by, please list it here. I'm sure it will help many others besides just me.               public class VisitorPatternTest     {              public void Main()         {             Expression normalExpr = new Expression();             normalExpr.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor());             Expression binExpr = new BinaryExpression();             binExpr.Accept(new ExpressionVisitor());         }     }          public class Expression     {         protected internal virtual Expression Accept(ExpressionVisitor visitor)         {             return visitor.VisitExtension(this);         }              protected internal virtual Expression VisitChildren(ExpressionVisitor visitor)         {             if (!this.CanReduce)             {                 throw Error.MustBeReducible();             }             return visitor.Visit(this.ReduceAndCheck());         }              public virtual Expression Visit(Expression node)         {             if (node != null)             {                 return node.Accept(this);             }             return null;         }              public Expression ReduceAndCheck()         {             if (!this.CanReduce)             {                 throw Error.MustBeReducible();             }             Expression expression = this.Reduce();             if ((expression == null) || (expression == this))             {                 throw Error.MustReduceToDifferent();             }             if (!TypeUtils.AreReferenceAssignable(this.Type, expression.Type))             {                 throw Error.ReducedNotCompatible();             }             return expression;         }          }          public class BinaryExpression : Expression     {         protected internal override Expression Accept(ExpressionVisitor visitor)         {             return visitor.VisitBinary(this);         }              protected internal override Expression VisitChildren(ExpressionVisitor visitor)         {             return CreateDummyExpression();         }              protected internal Expression CreateDummyExpression()         {             Expression dummy = new Expression();             return dummy;         }     }               public class ExpressionVisitor     {         public virtual Expression Visit(Expression node)         {             if (node != null)             {                 return node.Accept(this);             }             return null;         }              protected internal virtual Expression VisitExtension(Expression node)         {             return node.VisitChildren(this);         }              protected internal virtual Expression VisitBinary(BinaryExpression node)         {             return ValidateBinary(node, node.Update(this.Visit(node.Left), this.VisitAndConvert<LambdaExpression>(node.Conversion, \"VisitBinary\"), this.Visit(node.Right)));         }     }"}
{"_id": "150078", "title": "Parameterized Django models", "text": "In principle, a single Django application can be reused in two or more projects, providing functionality relevent to both. That implies that the same database structure (tables and relations) will be re-created identically in different databases, and most times this is not a problem (assuming the projects/databases are unrelated - for instance when someone downloads a complete app to use in their own projects). Sometimes, however, the models must be \"tweaked\" a little to better fit the problem needs. This can be accomplished by forking the app, but I wondered if there wouldn't be a better option in cases where the app designer can anticipate the most common customizations. For instance, if I have a model that could relate to another as one-to-one or one-to-many, I could specify the `unique` property as a parameter, that can be specified in the project's settings:               class This(models.Model):         other = models.ForeignKey(Other, unique=settings.OTHER_TO_THIS)      Or if a model can relate to many others, I could create an intermediate table for each of them (thus enforcing referential integrity) instead of using generic fks:               for related in settings.MODELS_RELATED_TO_OTHER:         model_name = '%s_Other' % related         globals()[model_name] = type(model_name, (models.Model,) {             me:models.ForeignKey(find_model_class(related)),             other:models.ForeignKey(Other),             # Some other properties all intersection tables must have         })      Etc. Let me stress out that I'm **not** proposing to change the models at runtime nor anything like that; once the parameters were defined and `syncdb` called for the first time, those parameters are not to be changed again (unless you're doing a schema migration). Is this a good design? Are there better ways to accomplish the same thing, or maybe drawbacks I coulnd't anticipate? This technique is meant to be used sparingly (only on apps meant to be reused in wildly different contexts, and only when a specific need of customization can be detected while the app model is being designed)."}
{"_id": "92959", "title": "How to manage an open source project's documentation?", "text": "I am the creator of a growing open source project. Currently, I'm becoming frusterated trying to figure out the best way to manage documentation. Here are the options I have considered:   * HTML Website   * A Github Wiki   * Markdown Files Hosted On Github   * Placing All Docs in Github README.md The documentation is already written in Markdown, I just can't figure out how I want to make it available. I'm really drawn towards Git since I can branch and tag the documentation just like I can branch and tag the source. I could use a Markdown library to translate the Markdown to HTML and display it on a styled website. I would need to upload changes to the website anytime there was a change, and it would be difficult to manage all of the different \"tags\" of the documentation. Github Wikis (as far as I know) do not change according to the branch you are on. So, I could only have the \"master\" version of the documentation in Github Wiki form at any given time. Putting it all in the Github README is kinda neat. I get branching and tagging, but it's a little tiring to use and doesn't lend itself well to easy navigation. Am I missing some awesome solution? What other options do I have?"}
{"_id": "209517", "title": "Why is imperative programming preferred over functional programming?", "text": "**Background:** I am proponent of functional programming who works at a VB.NET shop where the prevailing mental model is imperative programming. Being that foundation of our system is WinForms I can understand we're not going to get entirely away from imperative programming, but still I try to use FP (primarily via Linq) wherever possible because I believe in its merits. **Arguments & counter-arguments against FP**   1. One might notice that fluent Linq is less efficient than its imperative counterpart in that this style processes a sequence down to another sequence and repeats that. Generally, its going to take a few more passes than the imperative approach which can be better optimized to avoid repeat passes over a sequence. For this reason, the lead couldn't understand why I would choose a functional approach that is clearly \"less efficient.\"     * _Counter-argument_ : I argued that while it is sometimes less efficient in terms of CPU cycles, that I felt it is more humanly intelligible and easy to follow since each line does just one thing on its pass over the sequence. To me this feels like having an assembly line where each person at his station has just one job to do. I feel that the negligible trade off of efficiency is recompensed by code whose concerns are neatly separated.   2. The next argument against FP that I hear in my shop is that it's harder to debug -- which is true. It's not easy to step over Linq code. And I do sometimes have to unravel a method chain in order to better follow and dissect issues that I can't immediately spot.     * _Counter-argument: For the most part though I don't have issue with this because I think the functional style is more declarative in how it reads and when an error is thrown within a functional chain, I can usually spot the issue immediately. **My Question** I've been trying to promote functional style in our shop and I don't feel like I'm making headway. I've done both styles of programming and have only recently dabbled in Haskell. Despite years of imperative experience, now that I'm making routine use of FP in JavaScript, it's grown on me. It rings a note of rightness in my core when I compare it to what I might have done if I stuck to an imperative style. I've retrained my brain toward functional thinking, toward functional composition. _What I can't understand is how hard its been to convince others of FP's merits._ For example, the developers in my shop do use Linq, but I think they generally use it in the context of dealing with domain data. I use it in a more general sense and prefer it anytime I'm dealing with sequences/lists or persistent data structures. I haven't been able to convince my teammates to expand their use of Linq. _What I'm trying to understand is what causes a developer to not like FP._ I would like to see an answer from someone who has a good deal of experience with FP but decided in favor of the imperative style. What drove the decision to stay with imperative instead of using functional? * * * Here's an additional example highlighting the differences between imperative & functional programming. I wrote the `SelectedRows` method of our grid in Linq as such:               Public Property SelectedRows() As DataRow() Implements IDataSourceControl.SelectedRows         Get             Return Me.ugrBase.Selected.Rows.                 OfType(Of Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.UltraGridRow)().                 Select(Function(ugr) ugr.ListObject).                 OfType(Of DataRowView)().                 Select(Function(drv) drv.Row).                 ToArray         End Get      However, this style of code makes some of our developers uncomfortable and so our lead rewrote it to the more familiar:               Public Property SelectedRows() As DataRow() Implements IDataSourceControl.SelectedRows         Get             Dim plstRows As New List(Of DataRow)             For Each bugrLoop As Infragistics.Win.UltraWinGrid.UltraGridRow In Me.ugrBase.Selected.Rows                 If bugrLoop.ListObject IsNot Nothing Then                     plstRows.Add(CType(bugrLoop.ListObject, DataRowView).Row)                 End If             Next             Return plstRows.ToArray()         End Get"}
{"_id": "250694", "title": "Return tasks or expose events?", "text": "What is preferable when you program an API? And I have to add that in my case there will be two events exposed in spite of everything."}
{"_id": "250695", "title": "Best way to deploy database-dependant application", "text": "I have always \"custom developed\" software for clients. This means:   * Develop the software   * Install SQL Express on client site   * Import DB, create DB user, set DB permissions etc.   * Install software on client site (multiple pc's)   * Voila! Now, I am looking at deploying your basic \"end user\" app, to a mass of unknown audience. I.e. your basic app someone will download. What are the best common methods for deploying an app with a database? I am looking for the classic (one setup app, deploying both app and db) without the user needing to do some technical configs. I would appreciate some ideas..."}
{"_id": "250692", "title": "How to handle business rules with a REST API?", "text": "I have a REST API to manage a booking system I'm searching how to manage this situation : A customer can book a time slot : A TimeSlot resource is created and linked to a Person resource. In order to create the link between a time lot and a person, the REST client send a POST request on the TimeSlot resource But if too many people booked the same slot (let's say the limit is 5 links), it must be impossible to create more associations. How can I handle this business restriction ? Can I return a 404 status code with a JSON response detailing the error with a status code ? Is it a RESTFul approach ? **EDIT :** Like suggested below I used status 409 Conflict in addition to a JSON response detailing the error"}
{"_id": "118646", "title": "What options are there if an SVN repository becomes unavailable?", "text": "A project I'm working on was hosted on a svn repository at bettercodes.org. This was under another user's name and **that repository is now unavailable**. The person responsible for the project was sent an export from Eclipse and I had a more or less up-to-date project on my machine. I could see no other option than to commit my copy of the project to another repository. **It is now possible that some of the most recent changes by another programmer are missing**. Now, what options do I have to bring this project together? Is some of the necessary metadata saved on Eclipse or are all the changes on the original repository? What tools could I use to check what is missing in terms of classes, config files and code?"}
{"_id": "148127", "title": "Programming without target platform?", "text": "I have a idea for a program and have began laying out the software design concept in a traditional SDLC model of charts and instructions for what I want all parts to achieve. A quick explanation of my idea is this, I want to build a IDE for a tablet that is intended to run on mobile platforms but can also be ran on Windows, Macs, etc. This platform will have a couple very unique concepts in it for graphical programming interface and remote application server usage for compiling and project management like a GIT. I would like to achieve this without having to revamp the code for each system and believe C will allow me to stay close to my goal of no specific platform programming. **The Question** I would assume I want to avoid OS specific calls and (or) external libraries (stick to standard library much as possible) to a minimum. What would be the best practice of doing this while still completing a nearly finished program (until I make targeted platform adjustments)? Would C be my best option to achieve this? **Why I ask.** I have been really interested in using C because of its portability, ability to utilize memory, program sizes are smaller and more efficient, and integration in to nearly all mobile platform. I have done a fair amount of homework on C and am halfway through the \u201cC Programming Guide, second edition\u201d by Kernighan and Ritchie. I have even ordered some books on building compilers and OS design to assist in some fundamental concepts that I believe are relevant to my idea."}
{"_id": "148123", "title": "What is the algorithm to copy a region of one bitmap, into a region in another?", "text": "In my project (and I am sure many others), I need to copy a subset (R2) of one bitmap image (R1), into a region (R3) in another, where the destination region can be any size (stretching and scaling where necessary). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fuZqL.png) I am sure this is a solved problem but I cannot find any examples; **what is the most straightforward algorithm for performing this operation?** (Linear interpolation would be sufficient for filling in the pixels when the source is scaled upwards, if that is the quickest (computationally) method)"}
{"_id": "148120", "title": "Python 3, replace in strings", "text": "I need to transliterate a Hebrew text. So wrote a little Python script, which reads-in the Hebrew text from a text file, globally replaces the Hebrew letters with Latin ones. Now I need to do some fine tuning (replace certain things in some position but not in other, so a global replace won't do). The trouble is the following: The read-in text is a string so I cannot replace individual string elements. So, what would be the best way to do it?"}
{"_id": "252996", "title": "How to handle growth of an open source project?", "text": "I've been involved in helping out doing support for an open source project for a year or two now, and the project has gained a lot of popularity since I started. The program sees more than 100,000 downloads per week, and is used by more than 60% of people in its primary field, so we're obviously delighted that people have enjoyed using it so much. However, the problem is that the development and support base has not grown nearly as fast, and we're starting to hit some growing pains. The small handful of developers (the main developer in particular) are getting stretched pretty thin, and the tech support volunteers are starting to get burned out. Thus far, it has pretty much just been a bunch of dudes hanging out on IRC, writing this program and helping users. There's no 501(c)(3) organization or LLC or anything like that. Right now, we don't have a very formal bug tracker or issue database (we do have a forum with a category dedicated to bug reports), which I do admit is something that we could improve to get more developers on board. But I suppose my real question is, how does one make the transition from small personal project to a real... _thing?_ How have the big boys like GIMP, FFmpeg, Blender, etc. handled this transition? And on top of this, is there a way to offer compensation with a FOSS project? I suppose donations help, but that only goes so far...it seems strange to make a living off of free software, but if the program is going to continue to get better, I don't see how we can continue without compensating people for full time work. Basically, we're having some growing pains, and feeling \"too big for our britches.\" What can we do to manage this transition and not get burnt out on doing too many things at once?"}
{"_id": "19662", "title": "Is there any express edition like thing in Delphi?", "text": "I visited the site of Embarcadero and read about Delphi. Though the new version is named Delphi XE, but it is not Express Edition. I want to learn programming in Delphi. Is there any Express Edition or a trial version with no time limit?"}
{"_id": "55994", "title": "Best Practice to return responses from service", "text": "I am writing a SOAP based ASP.NET Web Service having a number of methods to deal with Client objects. e.g:   * int AddClient(Client c) => returns Client ID when successful   * List GetClients()   * Client GetClientInfo(int clientId) In the above methods, the return value/object for each method corresponds to the \"all good\" scenario i.e. A client Id will be returned if AddClient was successful or a List<> of Client objects will be returned by GetClients. But what if an error occurs, how do I convey the error message to the caller? I was thinking of having a Response class:               Response { StatusCode, StatusMessage, Details }      where Details will hold the actual response but in that case the caller will have to cast the response every time. What are your views on the above? Is there a better solution? ---------- UPDATED -----------   Is there something new in WCF for the above? What difference will it make If I change the ASP.NET Web Service to a WCF Service?"}
{"_id": "96010", "title": "Should a web designer know server-side coding?", "text": "We're implementing an CMS based on ASP.NET MVC. Now, any designer should be able to provide themes for this CMS. But to write a theme, they need to be able to modify the generated HTML, thus the concept of View. In other words, they should be capable to either modify current views, or create new views from scratch, to fit their requirements. However, now we're not sure that we're taking the right path. Should a web designer (HTML, CSS, JavaScript + Photoshop) really know about server-side platforms like Razor or PHP, or classic ASP, or anything else?"}
{"_id": "220713", "title": "How do you assess your Agile compatibility?", "text": "After adopting Agile for a while now, we started to think that we can improve how we do Agile. But for starter, we need to know how well are we doing now and to identify the problems in our current processes before we can improve it. One thing we notice is that every team do Agile a little different from another. A ritual might works well for one team but not for another team. So we want to identify these incompatibilities in our team. What are the common tools/methods that your organization uses to identify these problems?"}
{"_id": "79885", "title": "Is there such thing as a \"theory of system integration\"?", "text": "There is a plethora of different programs, servers, and in general technologies in use in organizations today. We, programmers, have lots of different tools at our disposal to help solve various different data, and communication challenges in an organization. Does anyone know if anyone has done an serious thinking about how systems are integrated? Let me give an example: Hypothetically, let's say I own a company that makes specialized suits a'la Iron Man. In the area of production, I have CAD tools, machining tools, payroll, project management, and asset management tools to name a few. I also have nice design space, where designers show off their designs on big displays, some touch, some traditional. Oh, and I also have one of these new fangled LEED Platinum buildings and it has number of different computer controlled systems, like smart window shutters that close when people are in the room, a HVAC system that adjusts depending on the number of people in the building, etc. What I want to know is if anyone has done any scientific work on trying to figure out how to hook all these pieces together, so that say my access control system is hooked to my payroll system, and my phone system allowing my never to swipe a time card, and to have my phone follow me throughout the building. This problem is also more than a technology challenge. Every technology implementation enables certain human behaviours, so the human must also be considered as a part of the system. Has anyone done any work in how effectively weave these components together? FYI: I am not trying to build a system. I want to know if anyone has thoroughly studied the process of doing a large integration project, how they develop their requirements, how they studied the human behaviors, etc."}
{"_id": "222408", "title": "What HTTP status codes need to be checked for this network task to perform smoothly?", "text": "My office department logs in to the ISP Server through a keep-alive-browser login page. This, for better performance, is encapsulated in to a small python script. This is what it does (Pseudo code)               1.CheckForActiveInternet     2.if not active          Login          KeepAlive     3.else          report      In step 1, a host like \"www.google.com\" is checked for active connection. A status code is returned and this is exactly what my doubt is; what would this code be? **200** or **202**? Incase google redirects to .co.** urls the status code would be **302** which even complicates it further since our ISP redirects too, when there is no active internet connection.   You could see that if we check **302** for deciding on weather or not we'd be needing a login, it could be either the google redirecting or our ISP itself. So what could be done here? The current script checks:               if status in (200, 202, \"\"):         Connection is Active      This is quite vague isn't it? When is an empty string returned as status code? A non-redirecting site like wikipedia.org might do the trick I thought, but I don't know how feasible this method would be."}
{"_id": "199283", "title": "Best resource for developing JavaScript curriculum?", "text": "At the risk of being downvoted, I really need the community's input - I am helping put together a post-secondary quality curriculum (vocational school, not university) around open-source languages, specifically JavaScript and maybe some Ruby or PHP. There are some great trade books out there, but things get a little more limited when you need a text book with quizzes and an answer key, for example. I believe this material exists somewhere - is there an online resource or any sort of accreditation body around JavaScript? I realize this may be considered too 'subjective', but I am having a hard time sifting through the mountains of online JavaScript tutorials and trade books."}
{"_id": "79891", "title": "How do you handle constantly changing database dimensions?", "text": "For the last two months or so I have been looking for solutions or practices to handle release management within databases. I'm looking for what people view as the best process for handling this. We have 3 environments for our databases:   * Development   * User Acceptance Testing (UAT)   * Production The problem is sometimes we are making changes to several things within our development database and come time to deploy, some of the features may not be ready to be released to UAT. Recently we have started using Red Gate SQL Source control for storing all of our entities (with regular commits). I was thinking of going based off of changesets (i.e. say everything from changeset X and back is now being pushed to UAT) however, this means that people are only checking their code into source control just before we do a deploy which can get confusing (especially since people are forgetful). Another issue with going with the changeset approach is if there is a bug in a stored procedure that needs to be fixed, the changeset number would end up being out of scope of our max changeset for the revision therefore making it so that if we need to recreate the database off of a maximum changeset, we would be pushing the bug out again. Any suggestions on a process? Thanks"}
{"_id": "199285", "title": "What can I use to keep track of the status of 60 software projects, some of which are obsolete?", "text": "I've taken a software development role in an engineering company(all software developed is for internal use only). The company has about 60 individual projects from past developers. The problem is that all past developers are gone and no one knows why about half of the software was built, who uses it, or even what some of it does. We use SVN, but no past developers wrote comments or did any sort of documentation. Assuming I figure all of this out, is there some program/system/method that could be used to keep track of all this information? The company is leaning toward Excel, I'm assuming there's something better. Would it just be better to write up documentation in a Word Doc and commit it to svn so it's right next to the code?"}
{"_id": "199284", "title": "Why should I use Iesi.Collections instead of the traditional System.Collection?", "text": "Was research on how (for convetion) define a Many Many where table where both fields are primary key and found this post. So decide to install the Iesi.Collections in my library domain. But there came a doubt. In the \"Iesi.Collections\" outperforms \"System.Collections\" Iesi.Collections? Why should I use? It is better in performance?"}
{"_id": "222402", "title": "Minimax in a bayesian game with multiple players who do not play in order", "text": "Premise: I know that such a game would be better solved by MCTS, however, from a theoretical point of view, would it be possible to apply minimax to a bayesian multiplayer game where the order of playing is determined by result of the previous turn? Game description:   * Players: {A,B,C,D} (A and C are the maximizing team while B and D are the minimizing team)   * Bayesian to set for example players' cards.   * Turn 1: A->B->C->D   * Turn 2(the order depends of the actual epilogue of Turn 1): C->D->A->B   * Turn 3: B->C->D->A   * ...   * Turn N: game ends. My feeling is that wouldn't be possible because after Turn 1 finished, in minimax standard definition, I must be able to start the next turn from a known player, while chance should be only applied to game's payoffs. Any opinion would be helpful."}
{"_id": "222412", "title": "What kind of user authentication do I need in for a restful web api", "text": "I am doing a restful web api with asp.net Web API 2 I do not want to use any form of cookies or basic authentication (send user/pass in cleartext thus SSL needed) I do not use/need claims stuff. I have not decided yet about asp.net self hosting or IIS. I just want to send an encrypted token between client server via SSL. I am using Entity framework 6, .NET 4.5.1 and I just want to do CRUD-actions on my user table. Not more. What is the project template/library/approach I should start with to do the above?"}
{"_id": "253925", "title": "How to avoid being forked into oblivion by a more powerful contributor?", "text": "As recently reported here: > Xamarin has forked Cocos2D-XNA, a 2D/3D game development framework, creating > a cross-platform library that can be included in PCL projects. However the founder of the project that was forked says: > The purpose of the MIT license is to unencumber your fair use. Not to > encourage you to take software, rebrand it as your own, and then \"take it in > a new direction\" as you say. > > While not illegal, it is unethical. It seems that the GitHub page of the new project doesn't even indicate that it's a fork in a typical GitHub manner, opting for an easily-removable History section instead (see bottom). So my questions are:   1. Was Xamarin's action and the way the action was done ethical or not?   2. Is it possible to avoid such a situation if you are a single developer or a small unfunded group of developers? I am hoping this could be either a wiki question or there will be some objective answers grounded on modern OSS ethics/philosophy."}
{"_id": "253929", "title": "How do I start my career on a 3-year-old degree", "text": "I received my bachelor's degree in Com S (second major in math) in December 2011. I didn't have the best GPA (I was excellent at programming projects and had a deep understanding of CS concepts, but school is generally not the best format for displaying my strengths), and my only internship was with a now- defunct startup. After graduation I applied for several jobs, had a fair number of interviews, but never got hired. After a while, I got somewhat discouraged, and though I still said I was looking, and occasionally applied for something, my pace slowed down considerably. I remain convinced that software development is the right path for me, and that I could make a real contribution to someones work force, but I'm at a loss as to how I can convince anyone of this. My major problems are as follows.   1. Lack of professional experience-- a problem for every entry-level programmer, I suppose, but everyone seems to want someone with a couple of years under their belt.   2. Rustiness-- I've not really done any programming in about a year, and since school all I've really done is various programming competitions and puzzles. (codechef, hackerrank, etc.) I need a way to sharpen my skills.   3. Long term unemployment-- while I had a basic fast-food job after I graduated, I've been truly unemployed for about a year now. Furthermore, no one has ever hired me as a programmer, and any potential employer is liable to wonder why.   4. Old References-- my references are all college professors and one supervisor from my internship, none of whom I've had any contact with since I graduated.   5. Confidence-- I have no doubt that I could be a good professional programmer, and make just about any employer glad that they hired me, but I'm aware of my red flags as a candidate, and have a hard time heading confidently into an interview. How can I overcome these problems and keep my career from being over before it starts?"}
{"_id": "252993", "title": "Hardware-control on one computer. But how about several?", "text": "For a while I have been pondering the question of, given a standard interface specification, whether there is a way to allow multiple programs to control multiple hardware devices across the network. The program I am working with is the standard implementation of the ASCOM standard. In short, the principle is that any program can call another known program or driver and expect it (computer-wise) to implement certain standard interfaces, allowing the calling program to control hardware. Currently we only use COM and .NET to do this. This allows many different hardware and software manufacturers to all build software and drivers that all work together. By now it is becoming quite standard, including standard telescope companies providing drivers. Within the ASCOM group, we _have_ discussed how to do this across the network, but since we are more of a user group with a couple core devs, we have never been able to really decide what's a good way to do this. In order to understand the situation better, since I have already made a proof of concept system that works, here are several questions.   1. What transports/pipes/interops are available that most or all languages support across OSs? Or is the transport OS specific? I mean, for instance, the COM interop is on windows. Is there an equivalent on Linux, for instance, that would work the same and the language could use interchangeably? Most languages support network IO. Do we have to use that for interprocess communication or are there other options?   2. To make something truly platform and language agnostic, it would almost need to be dealing with text strings, not binary objects. What standard formats are there, and what are the pros and cons of each.   3. What are your thoughts on getting multiple languages to work together on one computer? Can it work well? Inter-process or intra-process as well?    4. Is something like ASCOM done in any other field of computing? Or are astronomers the only people who connect various software programs and hardware devices together to get one working system? If you need more information, feel free to ask. The ASCOM standards home page is short and hopefully might help illustrate things a bit, but I don't expect you to crawl all over the site before you can answer. :D"}
{"_id": "153528", "title": "What's the term for re-implementing an old API in terms of a newer API", "text": "The reason for doing it is to solve the case when a newer API is no longer backwards compatible with an older API. To explain, just say that there is an old API v1.0. The maker of this API decides it is broken and works on a new API v1.1 that intentionally breaks compatibility with the old API v1.0. Now, any programs written against the old API cannot be recompiled as-is with the new API. Then lets say there is a large app written against the old API and the developer doesn't have access to the source code. A solution would be to re- implement a \"custom\" old API v1.0 in terms of the new API v1.1 calls. So the \"custom\" v1.0 API is actually keeping the same interface/methods as the v1.0 API but inside its implementation it is actually making calls to the new API v1.1 methods. So the large app can be then compiled and linked against the \"custom\" v1.0 API and the new v1.1 API without any major source code changes. Is there a term for this practice? _There's a recent example of this happening inJamie Zawinski's port of XScreenSaver to the iPhone - he re-implemented the OpenGL 1.3 API in terms of the OpenGL ES 1.1 API. In this case, OpenGL 1.3 represents the \"old\" API and OpenGL ES 1.1 represents the \"new\" API._"}
{"_id": "134913", "title": "Is placing self taught programming experience in a (computer science) university CV a good idea?", "text": "I wish to know if putting my attempts at programming in my university CV is a good idea. On the one hand it could show I'm willing and eager to learn, but on the other it could make it appear tacky and a little overqualified. Also, can I say I have experience in X programming language without being fully confident in it?"}
{"_id": "188821", "title": "What topics/abilities are critical to learning a programming language?", "text": "What topics/abilities are generally accepted as vital-to-know of any programming language? (Can be answered through either language-specific or non-specific suggestions, however) For example, I wager \"Data Structures\" would be one. Or if this was for learning a foreign (non-programming) language, \"Verb conjugation\" might be one. I've found this, which is a helpful start: http://www.indiangeek.net/wp- content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm"}
{"_id": "198883", "title": "Java Design Question", "text": "I am considering the options for designing a system in java which accepts data files from different systems applies some transformations to the data, concats data from multiple files to produce some output data files for the downstream systems. The data transformations are not per record transformation, e.g. I need to read a record , then search the file for another record matching the pattern of a given field from the first record I was thinking of spring batch,but have been asked to consider other options also. Kindly help with any pointers, things to consider while designing and evaluating options."}
{"_id": "196954", "title": "Are there any statistics on how often code is read?", "text": "I have often come across claims that source code is read much more than it is written and just wanted to do a little calculation like: > If you write a line that takes me 5 minutes longer to read because you were > to lazy to write a comment for 5 minutes it will cost us n*X if 5 minutes of > programmer time cost X. Then I realized that I not only lack n to do the calculation but also have never seen any evidence for the claim that code is read much more than it is written. Is that just a fishy \"well it is only written once so it has to be read a lot more\" argument or are there any studies on the subject that you know of?"}
{"_id": "193700", "title": "Evaluating the complete revision of other's software", "text": "I'm having some difficulty to evaluate the revision of a software: the software was paid by customer years ago, never used, and now the customer have noticed that it doesn't work as expected. Now this customer asked me to evaluate the project (I have the sources), and I should give an estimation of the time to fix it and probably a maintenance contract. However, after having analysed the code all the day, I notice that the source code base is very bad. Here is the crucial characteristics:   * A lot of source lines (140K+)   * C++ without classes, all statically allocated, all externs, all public   * Poor comments, poor documentation   * A bunch of warnings, counted more than 7K+ times. Warnings spreads from _unsigned/signed mismatch_ to _aliased variables_ , till _uninitialized variables_.   * Static analysis tools have signaled buffer overflows, unassigned variables, suspect string operations.   * Lot of multithreading and no critical section at all. The code will compile, but only the \"debug\" version is able to run for a short time. I suspect that buffer overflows are working enough. I've already encountered code like this, I'm not surprised that it is not working as expected. Now I'm thinking how to face this task in the most convenient way, and this is what I thought:   * Fix all compiler warnings.   * Fix all static analysis warnings   * Ensure exclusive access to data shared across multiple threads   * Enable `_HAS_ITERATOR_DEBUGGING` for debugging `std::vector` accesses (vector is used a lot). This imply an upgrade to VS 2005, at least.   * Uses CRT heap debugging as much as possible, even if this imply to move most of the global variables to be allocated on the heap.   * Extensive use of assertions (along with minidump creationg for post-mortem analysis)   * Exhaustive test cases to prove/test software robustness. I would like to prepare unit testing, but I should refactor methods with 2500+ lines, and it would add enough pain to give up. I think I have a good plan, or maybe I'm only in the right direction. I think I'm missing a measurement to actually evaluate the work I could face. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "199425", "title": "The rationale behind Falsy values", "text": "I'm wondering what the arguments for/against Falsy values are. On what principles would you decide to add or exclude them from a language? Are there any problems you could see them causing off-hand? For users of languages that support Falsy values:   * Where specifically have you used them to your advantage?   * Where have you had unpleasant run-ins with them?   * Are there any rules or finer points in your language/project/team about where it's appropriate or inappropriate to use them? For users of other languages:   * Have you ever seen a situation where you've thought \"I wish I could use a Falsy value here\"? I'm tagging the question `haskell` and `python` because AFAIK those two represent opposite ends of the spectrum (Haskell demanding `Bool`s when you use `if`, and Python treating `None` and some \"empty\" values as Falsy), but feel free to talk about your experience from other languages. Just mention where on the spectrum they stand."}
{"_id": "199420", "title": "Is the Javascript bet a loser or a winner one?", "text": "Recently I had the the sensation that the world is trying to port _every_ existing application in HTML5. The proliferation of Javascript API meant to cover almost every programmer's need is the tangible proof. There's an API for every taste: graphics (2D/3D), audio, video, realtime communication, filesystem access, permanent storage, database, connectivity and many more. Everythings seems really nice, but the shame is that at the basis we have Javascript. Now, I cannot say that I'm a real every-day Javascript programmer, and I don't know anyone like that, that's why my experience is not so meaningful, but in the last time I found myself writing some prototypes to see which can be the limit of HTML5. The outcome for me has been discouraging. I find that the language itself, when writing something more complicated than dealing whith some DOM manipulation and event-handling, is not _handy_ (read: maintainable, readable, sharable, ..). But the real problem is not the sytax which may be a matter of taste, but the fact that I see there is a stubborness of people trying to make a _universal_ language out of Javascript, with the browser acting as a sort of a Virtual Machine, which, as a matter of fact, is not and never(?) will be. The availability of new APIs certainly creates many possibilities, and developers are trying to take advantage of them, but at the end they may eventually fight against the inevitable and intrinsic slowness of the language. A slow language, even with every possible shiny feature, remains a slow language, and in some cases this is a true limit. In the past 5/6 years we have seen really huge improvements in Javascript enginges, but today Javascript is still a slow language, and I have the feeling that there is no more room for great improvement in this. So, what now? With GWT (that I think has already reached its top), Google wanted to simplify the developers' life, taking Javascript away from them, and offering every kind of optimization to squeeze Javascript at its limit. Then Google created a new language, dart, with its own Virtual Machine running on a browser ([Dartium]), and which aspires to completly replace Javascript from every browser; in the meanwhile you can always compile it into Javascript (as GWT does). Mozilla has created asm.js where (if I get it right), one can write applications in C/C++, compile the code with clang obtaining LLVM bitcode, which can be compiled again in (a small subset) of Javascript, which, if executed in a special version of Firefox, it can reach great performance. Now, as a programmer, I find myself writing a real HTML5 program, where I have to fight against the Javascript poor performance, and I see that the world is puzzling trying to find exotic ways to overcome the problem, and I ask myself: would it be such a bad thing to keep Flash (or equivalent technologies) alive? Isn't this Javascript _hype_ (I'm exaggerating here..) just trying to make it behave different from what it actually is? Am I the only one seeing this trend?"}
{"_id": "199423", "title": "Mixing Fowlers Transaction Script and Domain Model", "text": "I am developing a large application where the previous developer used Martin Fowlers Transaction Script pattern. The requirements are becoming more complex and it is becoming a bit of a maintenance nightmare. Therefore I have started to use Fowlers Domain Model and Table Data Gateway in an attempt to separate concerns and reuse code. It is becoming a refactoring process. My question is: is it bad practice to mix and match patterns? e.g. using Transaction Script and Domain Model in the same application or is this relatively common practice?"}
{"_id": "199428", "title": "The Proper UML Model of a System for Non-Technical Boss", "text": "I've taken on some side work for this non-profit and last week was my first week on the job. They have two SQL Server Databases each with many tables in them that represent over 20 different applications such as   * **Course signup** - Trainers can signup to teach different available classes   * **Course Approval form** - trainers complete this form to get new courses approved to be added to the list of available classes.   * **Schedule** - schedule of important dates for a term (holidays, start date for classes, etc.)   * **Trainer** - list of all trainers and other information about a trainer (contact info, education, etc.)   * **Training Calendar** - List that students can look at to see what's available for the current term   * **Training plan** - a report that is printed for student with all of the classes they've signed up for   * **Certificate** - Print a certificate for a student once the training course has been completed There are about 15 other applications but it's all related to trainers, training, courses, students, etc. This data is all over the place as there are no relationships between tables and very tedious processes have to be done to complete simple task. For example, for every new term you have to copy the data in the \"old\" table, create a new table, paste the old data into the new table and append the new data for the current term to the new table. So there's a table for every term (3 terms per year) for the past 10 years and that's only the beginning. There's a lot of copying and pasting from Excel to SQL Server to get the data into the database and their front-end to manipulate the data isMS Access which I'd like to replace with ASP.NET (they have IIS 7). To properly architect this and have good documentation, I've installed Visio 2013 and I'm learning about UML. So that boss can know exactly how this system will be re-architected, and how all the pieces will fit together what UML diagram should I create for him? Would that be a component diagram? I need to give him the 10,000 foot view so something like use-case, sequence, or database diagrams is way to low-level for him."}
{"_id": "191637", "title": "C++ why & how are virtual functions slower?", "text": "Can anyone explain in detail, how exactly the virtual table works & what pointers are associated when virtual functions are called. If they are actually slower, can you show the time that the virtual function takes to execute is more than normal class methods? It is easy to lose track of how/what is happening without seeing some code."}
{"_id": "99100", "title": "Is there a design pattern for managing dependencies?", "text": "I'm building a component that manages available resources (JavaScript and CSS files) for a web page. As controls are added to the page, they register and un-register their requirements with this manager. Then at render time the manager only renders `<script>` and `<link>` tags for the required resources. A basic implementation would be to have a dictionary with the resource URL as the key and a list of dependent controls as the value. Then at render time, if the list is empty, don't render the resource. I'm wondering if there is an established pattern for this? I'm using ASP.NET and C# if that bares any significance. **UPDATE** I was thinking about it and while the manager is controlling the dependencies of the controls of the page, the fact that they are dependencies is almost superfluous to my question. I think what I'm looking for is something like the Observer Pattern but the observers don't require being notified, the manager simply needs to maintain a list of subscribers."}
{"_id": "99105", "title": "Silverlight 5 and MVVM. Do I really need other frameworks? What is the best way for rapid development?", "text": "I've been reading and watching videos on MVVM and Silverlight.. I'm pretty new to Silverlight but not new to .NET. Interesting that I used MVVM in my WPF apps without knowing that it's MVVM. I was creating easily-bindable classes to serve as a layer between data and XAML :) Project that we start will be done with Silverlight 5 and WCF on a back end. Project will be rather large with several modules 50 or screens each, ideally I would like to load them on demand. MOST(not all) UI will be straight-forward data entry stuff. I'm trying to see what should be our architecture and how will it benefit us in future. I think I GOT IT as far as what MVVM and WHY. I also checked Caliburn Micro (and understood what it does). I see ReactiveUI and MVVMLight. To be honest I don't like external libraries/dependencies. Also, I don't really care about using naming conventions to satisfly external framework and perfectly OK with binding in XAML. Since we have good commands support and XAML debugging in SL5 - I don't think I need external framework. So, I think having ViewModels and binding via XAML with minimal view-related code in code-behind will be perfectly fine with me. Here is my dilemma:   1. If I use RIA services. 80% of my UI will bind perfectly to RIA generated stuff with some converters of course. Will it be bad architecture to have everything bind directly and just some more complex views to use ModelView?    2. Should I use RIA services?! I think YES. I'm all for generated code especially when it's plain data-entry stuff. Will it keep client code synced with server-side?   3. From what I see - ModelView have to be manually coded. Am I correct? Again, for 80% of project that's probably going to be waste of effort.   4. If I want to have multiple xap files that load on demand, should I use some kind of framework? I think keeping it in one file may get too big. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "210498", "title": "Smallest set of objects that add up to a certain value", "text": "I\u2019m trying to write an algorithm that, given a number of credits and a set of objects that have different values, calculates: 1) The smallest set of objects which values add up to the number of credits. 2) if 1 is impossible (no combination adds up to the number of credits) finds the set of objects that comes closest to the amount of credits (the sum must be strictly less than the amount of credits). If more than one set adds up to the same number of credits the smallest set should be returned. By smallest set I mean the set with the least objects. In english: I'm trying to pay a price with the smallest amount of objects possible. If that cant be achieved I want to pay the closest to such amount possible (less than) with the smallest amount of objects. simple examples: credits: 6 objects: 10 5 2 2 2 Result: 2 2 2 credits: 10 objects: 5 2 11 2 1 5 Result: 5 5 credits: 9 objects: 5 2 10 Result: 5 2 I was wondering if there is any algorithm already developed to do such a search."}
{"_id": "66708", "title": "How can we reduce downtime at the end of an iteration?", "text": "Where I work we practice scrum-driven agile with 3-week iterations. Yes, it'd be nice if the iterations were shorter, but changing that isn't an option at the moment. At the end of the iteration, I usually find that the last day goes very slowly. The actual work has already been completed and accepted. There are a couple meetings (the retrospective and the next iteration planning), but other than that not much is going on. What sort of techniques can we as a team use to maintain momentum through the last day? Should we address defects? Get an early start on the next iteration's work anyway? Something else?"}
{"_id": "105541", "title": "Do some languages make it easier to build graphically-intensive GUIs?", "text": "I made an algorithm that has a good potential use for a commercial application. I'm thinking of making a GUI, and since it's computationally expensive, I'm thinking of putting it \"on the cloud\" to offer the numerical part as a service. What I'm thinking is making a GUI, and then the users submit the work to the server. This GUI could be made open software (in fact, very probably will be). The GUI has a lot of graphics. Imagine something like making picks on surfaces plots, taking a look at those picks with different tools, and using numerical mathematics on those picks. Are there languages that make this work easier? What, specifically, about them aide in creating GUIs like this?"}
{"_id": "105547", "title": "How do I teach to my brother how to program?", "text": "My brother is 12, and he's asked me several times to teach him how to program. I'm confident that I'm not a terrible programmer, but I don't see myself as an effective teacher. I taught myself most of what I know, using books and the web.   I've loaned him the \"Head First iPhone Development\" book, which was quite obviously way above him, since he\u2014like I was at that age\u2014loves to read fiction, but hates technical books, and has no prior experience. I also asked him for an app idea, and he came up with something that involved 3D modeling and such. It's great that he's aspiring high, but I doubt he has the patience to learn enough to gain patience to learn the rest. He's definitely bright, and I was able to explain the concept of variables to him. I'm taking a C++ course in college and I can probably pass that on to him. Is that a dumb idea? What do you suggest? Should I continue to encourage him? If so, what materials should I suggest?"}
{"_id": "102010", "title": "TTS on App Engine", "text": "I have written a small front-end to the Festival TTS system using Python/Django. I wish to deploy it on the Google App Engine cloud. A few questions:   1. My application uses the Festival app 'text2wave'. Will is work on the cloud?   2. I have used Python primitives like subprocess.call() to invoke the aforementioned program. Will that work?   3. If your answer to any or both of (1) and (2) is no, is there a free api on the web that I can use (from the appengine)? I read somewhere about placing calls from Phono to a Voxeo backend, but I'm not sure what that means. I am aware of the Google Translate extension that allows translation using an HTTP GET (REST) request, but here the text is limited to 100 chars. Bad. Plus, they may take it down any point of time."}
{"_id": "102016", "title": "can we do scaling by throwing ruby stone", "text": "1. I heard developers at my office discussing Ruby language can be used for following purposes: Desktop apps,Web Apps,and may be handheld devices. Actually,we are in phase of selecting technology to have scalability of the following:   2. I have - Ruby made Desktop apps on each inventory unit of the big firm. And wish to synchronize all relevant data from those desktop apps to a web app DWarehouse like Dropbox for some ontology and mining work. And wish to have some wireless chat app also on handsets like whatsapp to assist in faster communication between inventory unit managers.   3. So,can we get a faster good build of Desktop apps,web apps and handset chat apps using ruby technology.   4. And I know ruby can't be scaled up for large workload,then what we can do later,should we get some java or php support to scale the application base or there is some cloud option present for ruby."}
{"_id": "102018", "title": "What Features of an IDE Would Make It More Useful Than A General Purpose Editor", "text": "I am authoring a IDE for the Lua language. I find that many programmers do not like to use IDE and prefer VIM (which is in vogue at the moment), SCiTE, or . In trying to win some mind-share I am interested in what features an IDE could provide that would make it a compelling alternative to a general purpose editor. Is there a \"killer-app\" so to speak for an IDE that would make it a \"must- have\"? This could be thought of as the reverse of Most useful features of VIM that aren't standard in a IDE I won't link to my IDE unless someone asks - but you can pretty much just Google my name and find it. EDIT: My IDE is actually a language plugin for an existing IDE, so I do inherit many features from the host IDE - at some level though my language support is an IDE in and of itself - at least as far as the language specific aspects are concerned."}
{"_id": "9026", "title": "I am in a rather difficult work situation. Should I stay or should I go?", "text": "After reading a lot on this forums, it seems that my current employer isn't a really great place to work and I'm wondering if I should move on, or stay a bit longer and then leave so it looks better on my resume (Only been here 3 months). Things that I'm worried about with this company   * A completely non technical manager with little management experience leading this team. Fine in a bigger company but we're a small team (< 10 employees)   * Alright hardware but no choice of OS and we can't get any decent software bought for us   * Terrible salary and no overtime pay, not great benefits   * Mandatory overtime. If I didn't work tons of overtime nothing would be done in time and I'd get in trouble   * Stuck fixing old code which is terribly written, unstable, undocumented and full of bugs. We don't use it anymore but lots of clients to maintain   * We must track ALL of our time, billable, non-billable and internal   * No bug database (I'm trying to implement one, hard since I have no time since I'm working crazy overtime and I want some time to myself when I get it   * I'm the only programmer So I work for a web development company that works with Joomla quite a bit, and I'm a PHP/Python guy with Java/C++ experience and a willingness to learn many other languages. I've also got experience in technical but non programming related fields such as System Administration. I'm wondering, should I call it quits, wait a while longer so I can use the job on my resume, or try and fix the problems we have?"}
{"_id": "223439", "title": "Fast fourier transform based multiplication algorithm", "text": "Can someone explain how to do the Fast fourier transform based multiplication algorithm in very large numbers more clearly? I've been searching for this a lot and I'm having a very hard time because all explanations I get have mathematical notation represented in figures or images and my screen reader can't read it. Can someone explain this clearer? And with examples if possible. Preferable in java."}
{"_id": "226404", "title": "Implementation of deque in C++ with an array", "text": "How is the `end()` function implemented in deque-STL of C++ with array? As per my knowledge it returns past-the-end element. But when a loop is run like, `for(i=deq.begin();i!=deq.end();i++)` and the whole array is full (suppose size=4), then I think `end()` will point to the position where `begin()` is pointing, in this way it won't go in the for loop. How to resolve this problem?"}
{"_id": "223434", "title": "Help with inheritance hierarchy design", "text": "I'm having trouble designing an inheritance hierarchy. In the figure: **Base class:**   * This uses the Template Method.    * Contains core logic/algorithm that calls virtual/abstract methods **Derived types:**   * These classes provides concrete implementation of the virtual/abstract methods expected by the Base. **Conditions:**   1. I have a virtual method (Run).    2. The default Run method uses another virtual method (Proc).   3. If a derived class uses the default Run behaviour, they must implement Proc.   4. If a derived class overrides the Run behaviour, then it shouldn't have to care about the existence of Proc, let alone overriding it. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fPlc6.png) I've considered making Run() abstract and let each derived class handle their own. But then I'll end up with duplicate code. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/kJ5Gp.png) I'm using a simplified example here. In my actual project, I have several \"Run\"-typed virtual methods, each calling several \"Proc\"-typed methods. Because of that, I have a whole bunch of virtual \"Proc\" methods with \"throw new NotImplementedException()\" Creating a new derived type is also confusing, because the coder may not know which virtual methods must be implemented/can be ignored/etc. I've considered using a strategy pattern, but since I have several \"Run\" methods, each one of those would have to be a strategy, which seems like overkill/overengineering. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IWsqE.png) Is there any way to simplify this? * * * **[Update 1]** Here's an example that's closer to the kind of methods I'm working with ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rsuoV.png) And imagine yet another method: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QXu3b.png)"}
{"_id": "254138", "title": "What is the use of the prefix \"for(;;);\" in an Ajax response", "text": "After using the chrome debugger to inspect the ajax requests of Facebook (for curiosity), I noticed that the response is in JSON, however it is always prefixed with               for(;;);      In example, if the JSON were `{hello:\"world\"}`, then Facebook would respond               for(;;); {hello:\"world\"}      Does this have any use? I imagine it must have a purpose..."}
{"_id": "57581", "title": "In C++, is it a reflection of poor software design if objects are deleted manually?", "text": "With the advent of smart pointers, is it a sign of poor design if I see objects are deleted? I'm seeing some software components in our product that people are still doing this. This practice strikes me as un-idiomatic, but I need to be sure this is the industry consensus. I'm not starting a crusade but it'd be nice to be prepared theory wise. **Edit** : legit uses of delete, Klaim mentioned the object pool use case. I agree. Bad examples of using delete, I am seeing many new's in constructor or start() and corresponding delete's in the destructor or stop(), why not use scoped_ptr? It makes the code cleaner."}
{"_id": "22885", "title": "Can I get sued over duplicating another program's UI?", "text": "If I see something I like in another application, and create something similar from the ground up in a commercial product, could I get sued over it? Of course it would be styled to look differently, however most of the functionality would be the same since the functionality is what I liked about it. It also would not be the entire system, just a part of one. I live in the US."}
{"_id": "146972", "title": "Resource/Thread Allocation and Deadlock", "text": "Here is the question I'm having trouble with: > Give the resource graph and determine whether a deadlock state results. > Assume that when a thread requests an available or unallocated resource, the > OS immediately allocates that resource to the thread.   * There are three threads: T1, T2, T3   * There are three resources: R1, R2, R3 Here is the sequence of events:   1. T1 requests R1   2. T1 requests R3   3. T2 requests R2   4. T2 requests R3   5. T3 requests R1\" Now, I have written out the graph for the problem.   ![Allocation Question](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DeSE0.jpg) Have I drawn the graph appropriately? Based off of this graph, I assume there is no deadlock because there are no cycles. I am unsure if my solution is correct. Can anyone help clarify this? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "146971", "title": "Writing a killer use case for a cron job", "text": "I'm a beginner when it comes to writing use cases, but I searched a lot and most of the materials I found mentioned that I should concentrate on the business value to the customer when writing a use case. example: Use case for a search page               1- User opens search page       2- User provides the search word     3- The system presents the search results      Of course it was easy to write the use case as the system had some kind of UI that that user interacted with. However, what if I'm writing a use case for a cron job? I was developing a module that basically connects to a number of ftp servers to download some files then the downloaded files are parsed to generate some reports and finally these reports are uploaded to my company's ftp server. The problem is the only business value for the whole module is the generation of the reports (i.e. The team who requested that module only cares about the reports not anything else). This is the use case I came up with:               1- The system downloads the files from the ftp servers.     2- The system generates the reports from the files.     3- The system uploads the reports to the company's ftp server.      However as I was reading Applying UML and Patterns, 3rd released edition the author introduced a monopoly game use case as follows: ![use case](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ey1NZ.png) A whole game in just 3 steps!!! I thought since the whole purpose of the game is just the simulation then maybe that's why he didn't mention any details, and maybe I should do the same too. * * * So now I have exactly 3 mixed questions: 1- Should use cases focus entirely on the business value for the customer and ignore internal operations? 2- In case a cron job is invoked how to determine the business value if the customer has no interaction what so ever with the system? 3- A colleague of mine actually contradicted with my approach entirely and he insisted that I should write as much details as possible in a use case (as instead of `The system downloads the files from the ftp servers` it should be decomposed to the smaller functions that make this feature such as `get list of servers from DB`,`connect to ftp server`, `check if there are any files`, `download file`,`delete file from ftp server`,`close connection`). Is this correct or better?"}
{"_id": "235677", "title": "Communication between resource and authorization server/identity manager?", "text": "## Short Doing the design / for an api we're building we noticed there is little to nothing to be found on how your resource server can validate a token given by a client with the authorizationserver/identity manager. ## Longer So in our system the resource server and identity manager are seperate systems (we call it the identity manager because we also implement an authentication layer there). I believe we have a pretty good grasp of what oAuth is/defines but in a lot of examples and essentially how we always implemented it in the past (mainly just experimenting) the authorization server and the resource server were the same. But in this setup we want to split that up. This to seperate the authentication/authorization from the actual API. That creates a problem, since there's little to nothing said in oAuth 2.0 about how to then validate a token with the authization server as far as we know. I made a diagram to illustrate the situation. ![oAuth seperate systems/communications, it's simplified, a lot is missing](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UbqRs.png) I am talking about the communication between **Identity Manager** and **Resource server** to validate the token. We have 2 proposed solutions to the problem, but are not sure what is acceptable.   1. We can make a call (https) over to the Identity Manager from the Resource Server to validate the token, and get authorization scope, cache that for the given lifetime.   2. We could also make a shared (Redis?) cache (only for the tokens) to which the Resource Server gets read only access. This would reduce overhead and we would be able to invalidate tokens from the Identity Manager by simply removing it it from the cache without having to notify the Resource server. We would limit access to this cache to only be able to get using a client/token combination, so no 'get all', if it's not set we assume the client is not authorized. The reason we want to do it this way is to seperate the responsibilities and over time be able to add different Resource Servers (APIs) while still keeping user management central to our organisation, tho currently it would only be a single api. **What would be a good way to tackle this problem?** One of our suggestions or something completely different? Does oAuth 2.0 say anything about this that I missed? **P.S.** I did find this post about the same problem, but that doesn't answer what might be a proper solution to this problem given the situation. I will keep looking until I find something I am not too unsure about and post the direction we take if this doesn't get answers :)"}
{"_id": "184037", "title": "Descriptive naming vs. 80 character lines", "text": "I frequently hear these two valuable programming practices: (1) lines of code should be 80 characters or less and (2) use descriptive names for variables, methods, classes, etc. I understand the reasoning for both of these words of advice, however, they seem to often be tradeoffs of each other. If I keep my code below 80 chars/line I end up using less descriptive names (esp. in Python in which each indentation counts as 4 characters) but if I use more descriptive names, I end up with lines over 80 characters. So, my question is which of these two pieces of advice is more important to abide by if the choice must be made? I am wondering this as an independent (hobbyist) programmer, but more importantly from the perspective of a software engineer working for a larger company."}
{"_id": "67192", "title": "Should I release source code to fix bug", "text": "I have a bug in my application that I'm building. I asked a question on S.O. and one of the users asked me to post or send all the code to him so he could look at it. I totally understand the request. It is valid and understandable. However, I'm having doubts on if I should. Obviously, I give him/her the keys to the kingdom and I will not have any recourse if he/she would do something malicious. **I also want to add that I mean no-disrespect to the user on SO that offered their help. I'm just airing a concern.** I do want to have my bug fixed but there is no guarantee that this person would be able to fix it. Should I release the entire source code and hope for the best? Or keep it and try to figure it out on my own? What would you do?"}
{"_id": "233484", "title": "Why are header files bad design?", "text": "this says header files are bad design, but I don't know why. The answers specified there are about the inefficiency of header file when building. Why it is _bad design_ is not really touched upon. As far as I know:   - headers lets you break the source file up so you can compile smaller things faster   - headers lets you separate the interface from the implementation   - headers lets you specify functionality in only one place. ie. no repeating Yet using includes, include guards, headers, etc. are considered bad design. How so? What are the alternatives? -- EDIT: re. DRY issues A common argument is that it violates DRY in that you repeat changes in signatures in both the .cpp and .h files. However, if the code is designed to reuse functionality specified in outside files, is it not unavoidable that header files must be used? The question asks why header files are bad design, yet without the headers, is modularity not lost? If modularity is lost, is that not itself a design issue? Thus using header files averts a separate design issue. Repeating in general is a bad idea, I get that, but it seems unavoidable if you require common functionality. In which case headers are bad, in terms of signature repetition. In terms of how you design your software, I'm inclined to say that splitting code up/modularizing, and reusing code means your code is designed well."}
{"_id": "82244", "title": "Starting Java Web Services and feeling lost", "text": "After building mainly Java desktop apps and some small GWT services, I'm trying to learn how to build Web Services in Java but I feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of buzzwords, terms, specifications and technologies. Besides, I'm not able to find a comprehensive, yet correct source to learn. Is this normal when starting WS, and what are good books/resources?"}
{"_id": "197773", "title": "Optimization algorithm, how to develop this problem", "text": "I have a situation where I would like your input and think over / solve algorithm. The specs > There are inventories with a specified amount of capacity.   >  'X (width) and Y (time)' creates together a total space. '60 * 100 = 6000'. > In reality \"width\" are a business value unit, but we can talk width here. > > Now there also are boxes, which take a part of the space.   >  Each box take width (X) and time (Y). Two boxes with 80 * 20 each, will > fill a inventory with 1600+1600. It will result a fill factor, 2800 space > left in the inventory, after the boxes are added. Each box always belong to > it's inventory. > > There exist unlimited, serial dependent, inventories with boxes added > individually. The former inventory have to be performed before next are > performed. > > Boxes themself have a attribute, like a color, which make a ownership in > higher context. Like a \"give me all boxes of color -yellow-\" context. I.e. > to find out which inventories contain that color. A box with same color can > exist several times, even in same inventory. But if in same inventory, they > have unique box-id's. The problem > There have to be added optimization strategy which make width (X) > adjustable. Time (Y) is still fixed and can't change. The optimization rule > is that available space in former inventory should be filled with a > part/slice from second inventory. > > Time must fit. I.e. 2x15 or 1x25 can fit to 1x30. 1x35 can't fit. Also the > width added to former, must be reduced from second. Remember that a box > isn't allowed to be removed from it's inventory (but width can be 1 as > minimum). Though, on adjustment, new boxes have to be created in the former > inventory.   > It's a mathematical theory but i mainly want to transform a algorithm of this kind, into code. Or give the question a glance of what kind of theories to look for. Perhaps this is a common problem? or too complex considered as \"re- invent the wheel\" and recommend to buy a third party module. [Edit] 'length' changed to 'width'   Added a graphic to better illustrate how the optimization rule will apply. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QMmSL.gif) There are a little green piece remaind at right, after optimization, because of the \"at least 1 width must remain\"-rule. The red and blue did not fit fully."}
{"_id": "30154", "title": "Difference between Software Engineering and IT?", "text": "I see mostly everyone distinguishes between being a Software Engineer and being in IT on the jobs sections of their site. What is the distinction?"}
{"_id": "68212", "title": "What am I supposed to take away from the term Routed Events?", "text": "I use events all the time, I cheat and use autocomplete in Visual Studio. Object.closing += [tab] button. Put something in the autogenerated function. Some people like to emphasize the \"routed\" nature of it, and that leads me to believe I'm missing something. Is there more to it? What am I supposed to know about routed events?"}
{"_id": "68213", "title": "Difference Between Software Development and Production?", "text": "**In a typical SDLC** there isn't much mention of the word production or development or the distinction between the two.These seem more of a real time , industrial driven concepts . I have come across these terms in regards describing companies. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BCwJy.jpg) As i understand Production in Software does not necessarily mean product development.Inspired from the question Why do we call it \u201cproduction\u201d? I came to question the basic distinction between the two i.e **development and production in regards to software**. I used to be under the impression it was just a way of describing the development process in a product development company.   * **Question 1: What is the distinction between the two?**   * **Question 2: How widely are these terms used? and are they properly understood and distinguished ?**"}
{"_id": "211721", "title": "Collecting and sweeping of session-dependent uploads", "text": "I develop a Java web application with an upload-feature. The upload is devided into two parts:   * During a user-session the user can upload files at any time while navigating through the whole site.   * All uploads of a single user during a session will be collected on the server. Moreover the files of each user are stored into different directories, that is each named with the session-id of user.   * Only when the user commits this uploads explicitly all uploaded files of his directory will be transfered to a target. (The explicit commit is needed because it is a long running threaded action on a legacy-system).   * If the user doesn't commit the uploaded files, the temporary-directory of the user will be deleted at logout. Now the essential part of my question: If the user closes his browser the files won't be deleted, because I don\u2019t get an event. To workaround this situation I clean up all temporary directories by a scheduled task in this way:   * Get all directorynames (the session-id)   * Lookup each directoryname respectively session-id in a collection of active sessions.   * If the session is found, keep the directory, otherwise delete the directory. Now I'm in doubt if it is a security risk to use the session-id for naming the directory. Sure it's easy to lookup and cleanup, but I haven't found another way to link a directory to a concrete session. Do you have a clever and easy solution to handle upload into a user specific directory and especially deleting directories of lost users? Or is there another way to tell the cleanup task which directories are obsolete?"}
{"_id": "157316", "title": "What's a technical way to describe removed functionality in a software application or framework?", "text": "I'm not trained programmer, so be gentle with my ignorance. I'm trying to search changelog files for where an open source project dropped a feature I need. I was just wondering if there may be a good set of terms to describe this. Bugzilla has detailed bug reporting forms. Are design changes also logged using rigorous language? Its something I can see myself advocating as my own small contribution. (^_^)"}
{"_id": "67442", "title": "How to generate nonce for Ajax web requests", "text": "As many of you know WordPress uses \"secret key\" like thing for every AJAX request. Making each request unique and also 'somewhat' secure (just a step ahead than nothing). How would I implement the same using PageMethods (webservice methods inside aspx page) in asp.net application. Some things I have already taken care of are authentication and authorization to access the page. I would like to know How to generate the same nonce/secret key whatever in C# for asp.net application? Also doesn't this affect the performance of the application like 100 thousand users use it and each time the method has to go through encryption, random number generation etc..? Is there any way I can check if posted data is what was actually posted. Checking the integrity of posted data? Do you need to follow design patterns to secure application logic? Does one exist to make your application at the least somewhat secure?"}
{"_id": "87792", "title": "I made an HTML5/Javascript game. Do I have to license it?", "text": "So I created an HTML5/Javascript online game. I host it on my website for anyone to play for free. I am still currently working on it. Do I need to license my game? And if so, what license do you recommend? I was looking at some open source licenses like GPLv3, but i'm not sure if I even need a license? **If I need a license** , I need one that allows:   * my game to be totally free **to play**   * my game to be embedded on other websites   * no one else can re-distribute my game, unless it is under my name and not theirs Also, if I need a license, where do I include it? Do I just have to state somewhere that the game is licensed under \"xxxxx license\"? Or do I have to include a link to the license file hosted on my server? OR even include the license file in my game (i.e. in the games javascript file, or under a game menu, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "137581", "title": "should I throw exception from constructor?", "text": "I know I can throw exception from constructor in PHP but should I do it? For example, if a parameter's value is not as I expected it. Or should I defer throwing an exception till a method is invoked. What are advantages and disadvantages in both cases?"}
{"_id": "225077", "title": "Web Routing Standards", "text": "We are putting together an API to provide our vendors some simplistic direct access. I've built APIs before, and have always routed them as such:               {controller}/{action}/{id}      My boss, however doesn't think that's intuitive. He thinks we should route our API like this:               {controller}/{id}/{action}      His reasoning is this: \"For object number 7, get it\" or \"For object number 15, save it.\" He thinks it makes more sense that way and that out vendors will understand it better that way. For me, it's about starting with the most detail then drilling down: \"I'm dealing with an object, I need to save it, save it with id 15\" I'm trying to build an argument for keeping it standard, and the \"Everyone else does it this way and we are just going to confuse people\" argument doesn't seem to be effective. His response is, \"We've never had an API before, so it will be OK for our customers to use it this way.\" I would like to find some stronger arguments, backed up by white papers if I can find them, but I am coming up blank. What arguments would you use, and are there any whitepapers you could point me towards?"}
{"_id": "142725", "title": "Drawback of implementing DDD service as static class?", "text": "Can Services in a domain-driven design be implemented as C# static class? What are the drawbacks of this choice? Can it be implemented as a non-singleton non-static class?"}
{"_id": "147599", "title": "Best way to set sys.path for \"hot library\" development in Python?", "text": "I have my Python source structured as follows:               +-branchname/       +-dst/       +-src/       | +-library/       | | +-cleese/       | | | +-test/       | | | | +-__init__.py       | | | | +-test_cleese.py       | | | +-__init__.py       | | | +-cleese.py       | | +-palin/       | |   +-test/       | |   | +-__init__.py        | |   | +-test_palin.py        | |   +-__init__.py       | |   +-palin.py       | +-productline/       |    +-circus/       |    | +-test/       |    | | +-__init__.py       |    | | +-test_circus.py       |    | +-__init__.py       |    | +-circus.py       |    +-grail/       |      +-test/       |      | +-__init__.py       |      | +-test_grail.py       |      +-__init__.py       |      +-grail.py       +-branch_root_marker      Entry points are in circus/ and grail/, as well as (possibly) each of the test/ directories, depending on how testing is implemented. I have multiple copies of this source tree present on local storage at any one point in time (corresponding to various maintenance and feature branches), so I cannot set PYTHONPATH in my shell without some pain. (I would need to remember to change it each time I switched to work on a different branch, and I am very forgetful) Instead, I have some logic that walks up the file tree, starting at the \"current\" file location, moving from leaf towards root, looking for branch_root_marker. Once the root directory of the current working copy is found, it adds library/ and productline/ to sys.path. I call this function from each entry-point in the system.               \"\"\"Add working copy (branch) to sys.path\"\"\"          import os     import sys               def _setpath():         \"\"\"Add working copy (branch) to sys.path\"\"\"              markerfile = \"branch_root_marker\"         path = \"\"         if (\"__file__\" in locals() or globals()) and __file__ != \"__main__\":             path = __file__         elif sys.argv and sys.argv[0] and not sys.argv[0] == \"-c\":             path = sys.argv[0]         path = os.path.realpath(os.path.expandvars(path))         while os.path.exists(path):             if os.path.exists(os.path.join(path, markerfile)):                 break             else:                 path = os.path.dirname(path)             errormsg = \" \".join((\"Could not find\", markerfile))             assert os.path.exists(path) and path != os.path.dirname(path), errormsg              path = os.path.join(path, \"src\")         (_, subdir_list, _) = os.walk(path).next()         for subdir in subdir_list:             if subdir.startswith(\".\"):                 continue             subdir_path = os.path.join(path, subdir)             if subdir_path in sys.path:                 continue             sys.path.append(subdir_path)     _setpath()      Currently, I need to keep a separate but identical copy of this function in each entry point. Even though it is quite a short function, I am quite distressed by how fragrantly the DRY principle is being violated by this approach, and would love to find a way to keep the sys.path modification logic in one place. Any ideas? Note:- One thing that springs to mind is to install the sys.path modifying logic into a common location that is always on PYTHONPATH. Whilst this is not a terrible idea, it means introducing an installation step that needs to be carried out each time I move to a fresh environment; another thing to remember (or, more likely, forget), so I would like to avoid this if at all possible."}
{"_id": "234253", "title": "Why is CPU cache memory so fast?", "text": "What makes CPU cache memory so much faster than main memory? I can see some benefit in a tiered cache system. It makes sense that a smaller cache is faster to search. But there must be more to it."}
{"_id": "234251", "title": "What really is the \"business logic\"?", "text": "I'm working with web development since 2009, when I started with PHP. When I moved to ASP.NET I've heard a lot about DDD and OOAD where a lot of focus is given to this \"business logic\" and \"business rules\". The point is that all the apps I've developed until now were all about CRUD operations and I've never seem these things in practice. I simply can't imagine what those things can really be in practice. So, what really is this business logic and how this fits into an app? I know these are implemented as methods in domain models, but what those methods could possibly be, and where in the application they could possibly used?"}
{"_id": "170025", "title": "How to document experimental or incomplete APIs like @deprecated?", "text": "Is there a good term that is similar but different than \"deprecate\" to mean that a method or API is in the code base but should not be used because its implementation is not complete or will likely change? (Yeah, I know, those methods shouldn't be public, yada yada yada. I didn't create my situation, I'm just trying to make the best of it.) What do people suggest? Experimental, Incomplete, something else? If I'm building javadoc documentation for this API that is still in flux, should I use the @deprecated tag or is there a better convention? To me @deprecated implies that this API is old and a newer preferred mechanism is available. In my situation, there is no alternative, but some of the methods in the API are not finished and so should not be used. At this point I cannot make them private, but I'd like to put clear warnings in the docs."}
{"_id": "170020", "title": "Is there anything in .NET that allows me to define a grammar and generate a programming language?", "text": "I have a course in which the proffesor has asked us to create a DSL for a our final project. He presented us in the first courses xText with Eclipse. This being a new course, I am still a bit fuzzy on what Domain Specific Languages means. This is my current understanding: a domain specific language is a language that is created for specific problems in software development. Examples of DSL's are PHP, SQL, JavaScript and on the opposite are languages like Java , C# , C++ , Ruby etc. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. What I would like to know: is there is any tool for .NET/Visual Studio that is similar to Xtext, that allows me to define a grammar and be allowed to generate a programming language based on that with an activity diagram?"}
{"_id": "170021", "title": "What is SAP and where can I learn about it?", "text": "I've just inherited a code base that makes extensive use of SAP technologies. The project is written in C# if that makes a difference. I'm having trouble finding resources for learning more about SAP. Can anyone point me in the right direction?"}
{"_id": "186687", "title": "ORM: Keep entities coherent in a cache or retrieve entities each time?", "text": "We have a tricky question in a project using Java & Hibernate, with a model containing bi-directional relationships. As it's a small project with few users, few entities, and few rows involved in relationships (not more than 100 in 1-n relationships), we don't really need a 2nd level cache. Operations done with entities are simple: inserting, removing and performing some computations with entities involving relationships loading. Let say we have two Java entities: `Room` and `Furniture`. An item of furniture is in one room and a room can have many items of furniture. So `Furniture` has a reference to `Room`, and `Room` has a list of `Furniture`. For the `Delete Furniture` action, the easiest thing to do is to retrieve the right `Furniture`, and tell the EntityManager to remove the `Furniture`. But, to ensure the Java instances remain coherent, we should also remove the `Furniture` instance in the list of `Furniture`s in the associated `Room`. Unfortunately, if the `Room` instance is not loaded, a request will be done to the database for nothing if we don't have a cache. So, what would be a better choice between: A) Keeping it simple   * In general, no preoccupation about bilateral relationships in java instances coherence, as we don't have 2nd level cache   * Well document the fact that there is a cache per-action, so if specific computations must be done requering bilateral relationships coherence within an action, this action must take care of the coherence   * No boilerplate code for bilateral relationships coherence management needed   * No overhead of loading non-necessary entites   * If a 2nd level cache must be added, then a big effort in refactoring has to be done B) Keeping it coherent   * Always maintain the bilateral relationship's coherence   * Enable 2nd level cache"}
{"_id": "203226", "title": "C++ log every function and parameter values", "text": "I want to log every function call and parameter value in my C++ app. Is there a generic approach for this task ? (3rd part library, **VAR_ARGS** etc.)"}
{"_id": "186682", "title": "JVM vs operating systems", "text": "Recently i was re-visiting the basic concepts of operating systems. Since I am a java developer, I have inherently started looking at everything from java point of view. I am also reading 'Inside the JVM fundamentals' from http://www.artima.com/insidejvm/ed2/jvm.html so when I see the basics of operating systems and JVM, I have begun to think that there are lot of similarities on an abstract level, i.e. both do the memory management, process scheduling, etc. So I want to ask SO programmers whether I am correct in my learning or assumptions?"}
{"_id": "222386", "title": "what kind of functions and/or classes are impossible to unit test and why", "text": "Main excuse from the developer for not having a good unit testing is \"Code is not designed in a unit testable fashion.\" I am trying to understand what type of design and code that can't be unit tested."}
{"_id": "222385", "title": "Where do service implementations fit into the Microsoft Application Architecture guidelines?", "text": "The guidelines discuss the service layer with its service interfaces and data/message/fault contracts. They also discuss the business layer with its logic/workflow components and entities as well as the 'optional' application facade. What is unclear still to me after studying this guide is where the implementations of the service interfaces belong. Does the application facade in the business layer implement these interfaces, or does a separate 'service facade' exist to make calls to the business layer and it's facade/raw components? (With the former, there would be less seemingly trivial calls to yet another layer, though with the latter I could see how the service layer could remove the concerns of translating business entities to data contracts from the business layer.)"}
{"_id": "79301", "title": "How to find a job as a developer with a charity", "text": "Can anybody suggest the best way to go about finding software development jobs within charitable organisations? This comes from an experienced developer who dreams of working for a company he actually believes in :) The most obvious answer would be, of course, to check job listings for some of the larger charities. But how about the large number of smaller charities out there? Where would they advertise?"}
{"_id": "115418", "title": "Do object-oriented programming languages exist that are not class-based?", "text": "Are there any object-oriented programming languages that are not based on the class paradigm?"}
{"_id": "229652", "title": "Is there something a `Promise` can do that `async` cannot?", "text": "Recently, I've spent a lot of time trying to dive into, and understand, Javascript Promises, especially those adhering to the Promises/A+ spec. What I'm trying to understand is whether or not `Promises` actually give developers additional tools specifically when compared to CPS based `async`, or whether it is mostly syntactic sugar and a tool to reduce verbosity or streamline some behaviors. One argument I've heard for promises is error handling. In that case, using the `async` library it is very easy to execute a `async.waterfall` of functions, each waiting for the prior to complete, each wrapped in a try/catch to handle synchronous errors (since neither `Promises`, nor `async` handle async errors), passing caught errors to an error handler. In that situation `Promises` and `async` behave identically regarding error semantics (gist showing this behavior). Another argument I've heard for promises is future-proofing methods which are sync now, but asynchronous later on. The theory is that if the function returns a promise, it doesn't matter what if it is modified later. Since both sender and receiver have to modified to adhere to the promise contract, can't the same argument be stated for modifying both sender and receiver to use the CPS contract, even if it's synchronous, to future proof it? So with that in mind is there any use-case that you can think of which can only be solved optimally by `Promises` or is their usage really more a case of preference and the desire to reduce verbosity and reduce the chance of error?"}
{"_id": "225172", "title": "Is it good to create static method at Visual Studio refactoring?", "text": "There are various refactoring options in Visual Studio to use at the time of coding. When we extract and create a new method. Then Visual Studio decide whether the new method will be static or instence depending on the usage inside the new method. If that method use some intence member of the class then it creates as instence method, if it does not use any instence member of the class then it creates the method as static. I can understand that if there is no instence member usage then it is better to declare that method as static to prevent initialization for every object. Static method initilize only once at the time of class load. ![Extract method in Visual Studio](http://i.stack.imgur.com/fEmyB.png) But the question is if there are many static methods inside various classes of a application, then performance will hurt? Because many object of that class will share same static method of that class? Should we do thread safety management to that static method? Or in this kind of setuation it is better to simplily create instence method if there are no usage of instence member of the class?"}
{"_id": "145990", "title": "What is Global Delivery Model?", "text": "Many software companies preach in their Website Banners: \"Global Delivery Model\". Has it anything to do with Deployment?"}
{"_id": "145993", "title": "Trying to grasp the idea of DI/Unity and possibly apply it to our simple application", "text": "Our app basically is a few forms that are filled out by people.. Then these forms are validated and reviewed and reports are created.. So I was thinking about DI and messing with a simple example of Unity + MVC http://netmvc.blogspot.com/2012/04/dependency-injection-in-aspnet-mvc-4.html So could it be useful for something or overkill ? It seems to me the idea behind DI is to dynamically grab objects of a different type.. So in my case maybe those can be a set of rules for validation of a form... Something like SyntaxRules1.dll, BusinessRules1.dll, CalculationRules1.dll... So then as time goes by maybe additional sets of rules would be created so I can drop another DLL like BusinessRules2.dll in a folder and DI would pick it up in the boot strapper.. But then again if it changes very little then using DI might be pointless and just be a layer of abstraction that is not needed.. Do I have the right idea? Is there any other ideas how DI could be useful for this type of app ? Could I make the entire view/controller/model or each form its own DLL ? That make sense ? I just read alot of theory and struggling to find some concrete examples of what DI can do."}
{"_id": "145995", "title": "GIS-based data visualization and maintenance tool", "text": "## Background Looking to leverage an existing GIS system for exploring organizational data. ## Architecture The following figure represents a high-level overview of the system's desired features: ![](http://i.imgur.com/SskPD.png) The most basic usage would be as follows:   1. The user visits a web site.   2. The system presents a map (having regions, cities, and buildings).   3. The user drills-down on the map to a particular building.   4. The system provides a basic CRUD interface.   5. The user can view and modify information about personnel (e.g., their assigned teams), equipment (e.g., network appliances), applications, and the building itself (e.g., contact and phone numbers). Ideally, all the components should be open-source (or otherwise free). ## Problem This must be a small project that needs a quick (but functional) prototype, mostly to confirm whether or not such a system would be useful in the long term. ## Questions   * What software components would you use to quickly develop a working prototype?   * What open-source solutions already exist, if any? ## Ideas Here is what I am thinking:   * PostGIS - Define the regions, cities, and sites   * Google Maps - Display an interactive, clickable map   * geoJSON - Protocol between PostGIS and Google Maps   * Seam - CRUD interface ## Custom Development For example, this would entail:   1. Installation and configuration      1. Configure SSH for remote logins     2. Subversion (or git)     3. PostgreSQL     4. PostGIS     5. Java     6. Tomcat     7. Seam     8. JasperReports   2. Enter GIS information into PostGIS   3. Aggregate data sources into PostgreSQL database   4. Develop starting page for map interface   5. Develop clickable Google Maps interface   6. Develop summary reports   7. Develop CRUD interface using Seam for data maintenance Surely something like this already exists? Thank you!"}
{"_id": "145997", "title": "How to manage contextual objects without IoC container (session or passing around objects)?", "text": "I'm using asp.net (c#). I have a factory that uses a dictionary of keys that are mapped to objects types. I originally used a static variable to track the dictionary but realized it would be shared among all sessions. Then I'm left with the idea of passing the object map around everywhere, which seems messy. Should object maps or other contextual items get passed around, stored in the session, or should I just create a new instance each time I need one (in the case of non-contextual items)? I'm not using an IoC container. An example of a non-contextual item in my case would be mapping text commands that come in from the client to objects. In general it seems there is no good way to deal with contextual data without at least having a static object that pulls the values from a session. Otherwise I am stuck with passing tons of context objects around everywhere they are needed. Surely there is a good pattern for handling contexts, object maps, etc. without using session to store everything?"}
{"_id": "145999", "title": "What is the alternative to an enterprise portal strategy in the Java space?", "text": "So, I got my wrist slapped by asking this question over on StackOverflow. I guess the previous iteration of the question was not one that gets resolved with a concise enough answer - hopefully some of the edits here will help. Anyways, one commenter, Perception, suggested that I reposted the question over here where some of the handsome and intelligent readership might be able to provide an answer. Here's the question as it was posted over at SO, but edited a bit to be more specific in focus. * * * I'm trying to garner insight from as many sources as I can, and I wanted to hear from the big brains at Stackoverflow (well, I guess it's now all about the big brains at stackexchange). **Disillusionment with the Portal Space** I'm seeing a disturbing number of large, enterprise clients who have become disillusioned with their enterprise Portal experience, especially those in the WebSphere Portal Server (WPS) space. Millions have been invested, yet the promise of personalized content with aggregation and integrated collaborative tools has never come to fruition. The move to WPS 7.x is a big rip and replace move, and clients are wondering if they should move somewhere else completely. **Portal Software: A horrible option, but what's the alternative** There are loads of Portal haters out there, and sometimes a portal solution is indeed overkill, but when you're talking about large, multi-national corporations, how would one recommend they architect a global solution without a portal server? Portals aren't always as fun to work with as Tomcat or JBoss AS, but when it comes to integrating multiple applications, managing content, updating individual applications that are deployed as individual war files, managing security down to the portlet level, proving a certain amount of personalization to users, and help with the overwhelming task of managing the thousands of pages large scale enterprises have as part of their internal and external websites, is there a better technology out there? **Garnering community insight and feedback** I've been trying to garner as much insight as possible. I wrote a little article on TSS about the issue: Which other alternatives to portal exists on market? I'm also resurrecting a thread at the CodeRanch to see if I can get any insight from that handsome crew. Updated Thread Asking for an Alternative to a Portal Software Stragety. Circa 2012 I'm also looking for some insight from the twitterati (@potemcam). It's not so much a cross-posting as much as it is an attempt to really gather some keen insight from the community. If I can get some solid responses and experiences, I'd like to aggregate them into an advice article over at TSS. **What is the right alternative to an enterprise Portal in the Java space** Looking forward to hearing your advice. By the way, I'll be cross-linking to this thread from the other sights as well so people with the same questions will be able to bounce back and forth and see what the community is saying on this topic. * * * Hopefully this iteration of the question will be well recevied by the programmers community at stackexchange."}
{"_id": "232946", "title": "Is it a code smell if you are frequently creating an object just to call a method on it", "text": "I inherited a code base where there is a lot of code that goes something like this:               SomeDataAdapter sda = new SomeDataAdapter();     sda.UpdateData(DataTable updateData);      And then sda is never used again. Is that a code smell that indicates that those methods should actually be static class methods instead?"}
{"_id": "228526", "title": "It is bad practice to hard couple logging interface/implementation with business model classes?", "text": "Should we avoid using logging in business model classes and try to move logging to service/controller classes? In for example java context, logging in model classes will hard couple the code with dependencies on `slf4j` or `commons-logging` etc."}
{"_id": "228523", "title": "An alternative to an array of functions?", "text": "I'm programming an app (php) which requires a very long list of **similar yet different functions, which are being called by a set of keys** :               $functions = [         \"do this\" => function() {             // does this         },         \"do that\" => function() {             // does that         }     ]      etc.      I've chosen to place the similar functions in an array because they are not similar **enough** - getting the same result with one big function which is full of conditional statements isn't gonna work. And **I do need to be able to call them only by key** , for example:               $program = [\"do this\", \"do that\", \"do this\"];     foreach ($program as $k => $v) {         $functions[$v]();     }      Thing is this functions-array structure is causing many problems, for example I'm having a hard time **calling one array function from within another array function** , e.g. this doesn't work:               \"do that\" => function() {         $functions[\"do this\"]();     }      nor this:               \"do that\" => function() {         global $functions;         $functions[\"do this\"]();     }      or this:               \"do that\" => function($functions) {         $functions[\"do this\"]();     }          $functions[\"do that\"]($functions);      I guess I could have one giant function with a long **switch statement** :               function similar_functions($key) {         switch ($key) {             case \"do this\":                 // does this             break;             case \"do that\":                 // does that             break;         }     }      But that doens't really seem like good practice. Or maybe it is? **So, what are my alternatives?** Should I go with the switch structure? Or is there another, better solution?"}
{"_id": "132407", "title": "Should I remove an 'embarrassing non-programming' project from my CV?", "text": "At a major IT company the project that I was working on got cancelled. The entire team was _benched_. Since the team size was large (>300) not everyone was immediately employable. To cover the losses the company took on a project that involved content cleaning. It involved reading 1000's of pages of documents and fixing the disparity between them i.e. fixing the English! We had to make sure the punctuation was correct, word spellings were consistent, sentence structure etc. We were given 3-5 pages of a checklist of the most common mistakes. This was NOT a programming job at all. It was just given to the folks who were _on bench_ and had them billable for some time. However, this project duration was about 6 months! There were no projects coming by or the talent pool had more resources IMO. Of course, I did quit the company but I still show the entire duration of my work at the organization on my CV. However, this 'English' (non-programming) project is a bit embarrassing (although I try to frame the English well so it doesn't feel so :) Should I just get rid of such a project altogether? It was quite a while back, but I'm only concerned about the authenticity of the duration - I did work from date A-B. Should I just indicate the primary project for the entire duration and drop the English one?"}
{"_id": "147627", "title": "What is an Aguri tree?", "text": "Going through some old Hacker News items, I came across a post from a user that said > Aguri trees, which marry a bounded-size radix trie (like you'd use in a > software routing table) to an LRU list, and automatically synthesize > aggregates (like, 10.0.0.0/16 from 1,000 observations across all IPs) from > the pattern of insertion. They're best known in traffic analysis, but we've > used them on in runtime memory analysis as well. ~ tptacek So I decided to look it up,   * A quick Google Search leads me to a F1 driver.   * A search on Wikipedia leads to a agricultural caste in India and some items from Japan    * Stack Overflow hits 0 results http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=aguri `site:stackoverflow.com/questions aguri` So I have finally linked it back to the user see he has a link on his blog > http://www.matasano.com/log/1009/aguri-coolest-data-structure-youve-never- > heard-of/ But it's dead. _So, what is this Aguri data structure and if it is a real data structure, why is it not documented anywhere else?_"}
{"_id": "185345", "title": "When to use weak references in .Net?", "text": "I have not personally come across a situation where I've needed to use WeakReference type in .Net, but the popular belief seems to be that it should be used in caches. Dr Jon Harrop gave a very good case against the use of WeakReferences in caches in his answer to this question. I've also often heard AS3 developers talk about using weak references to save on memory footprint but based on the conversations I've had it seems to add complexity without necessarily accomplishing the intended goal, and the runtime behaviour is rather unpredictable. So much so that many simply give up on it and instead manage the memory usage more carefully/optimize their code to be less memory intensive (or making the trade-off of more CPU-cycles and smaller memory footprint). Dr Jon Harrop also pointed out in his answer that the .Net weak references are not soft, and there's an aggressive collection of weak references at gen0. According to MSDN, long weak references gives you the potential to recreate an object, `but the state of the object remains unpredictable.`! Given these characteristics, I can't think of a situation where weak references would be useful, perhaps someone could enlighten me?"}
{"_id": "136188", "title": "How Would I Start With Prolog?", "text": "If I wanted to start learning Prolog on Windows, is there any package that would integrate Prolog into Visual Studio 2010? That is, a compiler and templates and so forth for working with Prolog on Windows? Assuming there is no flavor of Prolog targeting the .Net platform, is there a GCC Prolog compiler for Windows?"}
{"_id": "185343", "title": "Design pattern for object conversion (java)", "text": "I don't use design patterns very often, besides an occasional factory and MVC, and I want to start using them more. I have a concrete case at hand that I would like your opinion on the use of design patterns in this case. In my application I have to convert objects pretty often in different situations. I might have to convert a Hibernate POJO to a DTO, because I use GWT and Hibernate POJO's aren't serializable and can't be sent over the line. In another situation I might need to convert Java objects to SolrInputDocument's for indexing by Solr. I would like to know if I should use a design pattern for this. It seems that \"object conversion\" is a generic task that could be handled in a flexible/abstract way by a pattern, but I don't really see how. Without patterns I would just create a separate class for each type of conversion, for example CourseToSolrInputDocument (Course is a Hibernate entity in my application). Or CourseToCourseDTO. Each of these conversion classes might have a single static method called `convert()` that takes the source object as input and returns the output object. But that is not really a pattern, is it? So I started of on something with generics and created this class that implements the Converter interface. But is somehow feels silly tgo create a generic interface and I don't really see the advantage other than being able to congratulate myself on the use of generics.               public class CourseToSolrInputDocument implements Converter<Course, SolrInputDocument>         {         @Override         public void convert(Course source, SolrInputDocument destination) {             //To change body of implemented methods use File | Settings | File Templates.         }     }      So, the real question here is: is there a pattern that applies to generic object conversion and, what would be your approach and what are the advantages over using just a class-per-conversion type approach?"}
{"_id": "185342", "title": "MVC - Isolating view and model logic", "text": "I understand that the model should generally consist of data manipulation and the view for data display from the model, but how do I keep my model and view layers decoupled? My simple view has a few tables that display data. Its associated model manipulates the data based on the view's type of `TableModel`. Most of its methods involve using the `TableModel` type. Should the view generally \"breakdown\" the data into a more generic type of integers and strings for the model? Therefore all the model handles are simple generic lists of data without needing to use `TableModel` in case the view is changed into another interface. The model should be \"unaware\" of the view for good programming practices, right? If I change my view to a command-line interface, the associated model should still be able to perform its functions, given the correct associated Lists of integers/strings/whatever."}
{"_id": "103651", "title": "Does it violate the license to use Windows XP Mode with Virtual Box?", "text": "I am working on a team developing a client-side application. We work in a Linux environment, but the server we work with can only be run from a Windows environment. As such, each developer is being set up with a virtual machine, running on Oracle VM Virtual Box. Would it violate the terms of use or licensing for the developers to use the virtual hard drive from Windows XP Mode with Oracle VM Virtual Box?"}
{"_id": "103659", "title": "How can one manage thousands of IF...THEN...ELSE rules?", "text": "I am considering building an application, which, at its core, would consist of thousands of if...then...else statements. The purpose of the application is to be able to predict how cows move around in any landscape. They are affected by things like the sun, wind, food source, sudden events etc. How can such an application be managed? I imagine that after a few hundred IF- statements, it would be as good as unpredictable how the program would react and debugging what lead to a certain reaction would mean that one would have to traverse the whole IF-statement tree every time. I have read a bit about rules engines, but I do not see how they would get around this complexity."}
{"_id": "25826", "title": "Heuristics for absolutely-positioned GUI design - are multiples of 5 a good idea?", "text": "Disclaimer: I do not specialize in [desktop] GUI design, but have to do it on occasion. I have seen co-worker's dialogs worse than the once I created, and my major problem with them is that they can be unnecessarily big, and things do not line up. To be more specific, I mostly do it in .Net Winforms, but occasionally with MFC(C++) as well. My simple heuristic so far is: I try to make the sizes and positions divisible by 10 ... or 5 if I have to. Something like a Label would be an exception, for it knows its own size. I find that things mostly look OK after I am done (of course there are other considerations such as grouping things intelligently, etc.), and I am satisfied because I know that every control has non-random position, and my OCD can now go back to sleep. Somewhere at work I found a guide from MSFT about ideal spacing between things. Sorry, I do not have a source for it available. It has many rules, such as (for instance) 2 pixels between a button and a border, 3 pixels between two buttons horizontally, 4 pixels vertically, unless ... it is pretty complicated and not practical to remember. Additionally, I simply do not trust that MSFT knew much about GUI design, not until they hired an ex-apple person to help them design the ribbons for Office 2007, etc. What rules/heuristics do you follow? References to short articles and other links are welcome."}
{"_id": "156045", "title": "How to change careers", "text": "For the past 4 years I have worked in c# doing web development. I have really enjoyed it, learnt a lot and have a worked hard to get to a position where I am earning good money and enjoy the work. However lately - I have wanted a change. What with the \"native renaissance\" I would like to change my career from being high level application and web development to more down to the metal native development. I haven't done any c or c++ since Uni over 4 years ago and so I have begun reading text books and websites to brush up. However - one major issue I have is that I have no practical experience with C++ and although I am brushing up on it, there will be a lot I don't know. Most of the jobs I have seen in native code around me all require native experience. The only positions I can find that don't explicitly ask for native experience are junior level positions. In my current role I am a mid level developer and although there would be a lot to learn in a c++ position, I wouldn't class myself as a junior. I guess my question is, how do people solve this issue when changing programming languages for their profession and / or how would you approach this hurdle? Like I said, I would really like to try out native development professionally but I wouldn't want to move back to a junior role. Would employers consider years of managed development and native hobby projects enough experience?"}
{"_id": "186538", "title": "Secure silverlight WCF calls", "text": "I have a Silverlight application that uses Entity Framework. The application are protected with a login made in ASP, so only valid users get the xap file. Have do I secure the WCF calls to the Entity Framework? I have to make the calls over https, but have can i make sure that only valid users can get data from the WCF service? Thanks Jakob"}
{"_id": "186535", "title": "Committing https certificates to Github...is there ever a good reason for this?", "text": "If a server certificate is published to Github, a la:               -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----      is that necessarily a bad thing? Is there ever a legitimate reason to do this? I ask because of a recent wave of attention Github has gotten since allowing users to search for certain things as `.ssh/id.rsa` and the like in public repositories. Also, server certificates are involved in the `https` protocol, but honestly I'm having trouble determining if they are generally regarded as sensitive information."}
{"_id": "246822", "title": "Is Haskell appropriate for Signal Processing, Communication Systems and Information Theory?", "text": "I have been working on Software-Defined Radio projects for almost a year. This is an area which requires lots of signal processing (digital filters and FFTs), communication theory (modulation, equalization and synchronization) and information theory (specifically, coding theory, as Huffman, Linear and Convolutional codes). I program mostly in Matlab (for simulations) and C++ and Python (for practical applications using GNURadio and the USRP). As you can see, those areas require lots of mathematical concepts. As I've been studying Haskell, I see that it is a good programming language for applications that involve heavy math.It seemed a good idea to program in Haskell for problems in the area I have been working on. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a lot of people doing this. There seems to be a Haskell DSP library, but there aren't many projects using it available on the web. I've also found a thesis where Haskell was used to implement a Viterbi coder/decoder and it seems quite an elegant solution. But it seems to me that people in the communication industry and research still don't use a lot of Haskell in their codes. Maybe this coulde be because many of them still haven't heard about Haskell. What would be upsides and downsides of applying Haskell to those kind of problems? What will be key benefits of doing SDR in Haskell? What about Haskell would make it a bad choice for SDR? Should I expect severe pain points using Haskell for SDR (what are they?)."}
{"_id": "66715", "title": "Which version of C should I learn?", "text": "It looks like _K &R \"C Programming Language (2nd Edition)\"_ covers ANSI C, but another book that I'm starting ( _Stephen G. Kochan \"Programming in C\"_) says that it uses C99. I'm coming from a C#/JavaScript/Python/PHP/Java background and looking to round out my skills. I'm currently using GCC, but I'm curious about Clang. Which version is used more in new and existing code? Does it even matter, or should I learn both?"}
{"_id": "218504", "title": "How to avoid dragging arguments from function to function", "text": "When I do my code layout, I like to start with a rather high level view, and then start to delegate actual computation to class or functions that have a bit more detail. Then in these classes of functions, I do the same, layer by layer, until I get to the bottom where I have to do the 'real' action. Example:               def build_table():         legs = get_legs()         plate = get_plate()         return put_together(legs, plate)          def get_legs():         legs = []         for i in [0,1,2,3]:             legs.append(get_leg_from_warehouse())         return legs          def get_plate():         plate = get_plate_from_warehouse()         return finish_plate(plate)          def put_together(legs, plate):         table = Table()         for i in [0,1,2,3]:            table.mount(legs[i])         table.mount(plate)         return table          class Table:         self.component = []         def mount(self, item):             self.component.append(item)      In this way, I find it easy to think about the layout, and hide complexity. I mostly have short pieces of code that are easy to understand. The downside of this is, that when I discover I need a piece of information available at the top of the stack further down, I pass arguments from function to function. In the above example, I might gather 'screws' at the top, and then keep passing them down to a function where they are actually drilled into the wood. This makes it feel that it is not so easy to modify the code, and I wondered what I could do about this. In this example the modified code would look like this:               def build_table():         legs = get_legs()         plate = get_plate()         screws = get_screws()         return put_together(legs, plate, screws)          def get_legs():         legs = []         for i in [0,1,2,3]:             legs.append(get_leg_from_warehouse())         return legs          def get_plate():         plate = get_plate_from_warehouse()         return finish_plate(plate)          def get_screws():         drive_to_hardwarestore()         screws = buy_screws()         drive_home()         return screws          def put_together(legs, plate, screws):         table = Table()         for i in [0,1,2,3]:            table.mount(legs[i], screws)         table.mount(plate, screws)         return table          class Table:         self.component = []         def mount(self, item, screws):             self.component.append((item, screws.pop()))      So besides adding the code for getting screws, I had to modify 4 lines. This would increase linearly with the amount of layers. How can I refactor? On the other hand, how can I avoid this in the first place? Is my design process 'wrong'?"}
{"_id": "145669", "title": "What software programming languages were used by the Soviet Union's space program?", "text": "I got interested in the Soviet space program and was interested to discover that the software on the Buran spacecraft circa 1988 was written in Prolog. Does anyone know what languages might have been used in earlier missions, especially the Mars PrOP-M rover missions of the early 1970s which were somewhat autonomous and could navigate obstacles? **Edit** My source for the Buran Prolog is this declassified document from the CIA site from May 1990. I couldn't find an OCR version, so here's the relevant quote from p. 0449: > According to open-source literature, the Soviets used the French-developed > programming language known as Prolog to develop on-board system software for > the Buran vehicle..."}
{"_id": "130808", "title": "Source control workflow for managing a software platform", "text": "I'm in charge of a software platform, written in C, that is used to provide a variety of projects to clients. I am trying to improve the workflow for people using this platform, and looking at whether source code control (Mercurial being the most likely candidate) can help. The platform is only used internally for ~10 projects / year. It's got a wide range of functionality, and lots of bits that are unused on most projects. As a result, there are plenty of bugs hidden away. I'm wondering if anyone has similar experience, either managing or using a constantly updated platform in this way. **The current situation** Platform development is done with a mercurial repository, but the releases of the platform are not done through mercurial. For a release, the platform files are put into a tarball on a central server. For any system connected to the core, the start of the build process copies the updated tarball and unpacks it into the application source code. Application programmers can't edit the core files (various commands are aliased through shell scripts, and they get an error if they try). **What I'm after** It seems like it should be possible to somehow use Mercurial to manage this. We could easily maintain a release branch of the platform, and have projects clone the release branch as their starting points. But I'm not sure where it would go after that. On a project, the functionality is completely up to the client. If the core files are unlocked, people will immediately start editing them, even when there is a better way (this is what happened before the lockdown). This is going to mean merging in new core changes becomes difficult, and I suspect will result in a lot of teams not bothering. The draconian solution of locking the core files, and forcing automatic updates to all projects was really quite successful: we get more complaints and problems from the projects that are disconnected, than the ones receiving the forced updates. However, as soon as projects go into testing, they have to be disconnected. After that, short of manual merging, they get no more platform updates."}
{"_id": "180272", "title": "Are all security threats triggered by software bugs?", "text": "Most security threats that I've heard of have arisen due to a bug in the software (e.g. all input is not properly sanity checked, stack overflows, etc.). So if we exclude all social hacking, are all security threats due to bugs? In other words, if there were no bugs, would there be no security threats (again, excluding the faults of humans such as disclosing passwords and such)? Or can systems be exploited in ways not caused by bugs?"}
{"_id": "130805", "title": "How can I best prepare for building Windows Phone 8 Apps", "text": "I'm interested in learning to develop for Windows Phone down the road a bit, and am mostly interested in developing Metro Apps for the Windows Phone. It seems like there is some basic info for Metro development now, but no guidance on what will be relevant when Windows Phone 8 releases. There seem to be two potential strategies: 1) Start coding for Mango/WP7.5 and then later attempt to convert the experience for use with WP8. I guess this would involve learning Silverlight for applications (as opposed to XNA for games)? 2) Write Windows 8 Metro apps now with the dev preview. This experience seems less likely to be deprecated but it also seems harder to test in a real world fashion. I'd normally lean towards option 1, but there are a few downsides with that route imo. First, I'd read elsewhere that Silverlight 5 was the last Silverlight release. I'm not completely clear on how much Silverlight experience will be useful for future iterations on their phone OS. Also, one thing I find interesting is the improved async/await setup and my understanding is that WP7 still relies heavily on callbacks for async operations. I'm pretty unfamiliar with Silverlight/WP7/etc so please be gentle if there are some flagrant misunderstandings on my part. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "140010", "title": "Migrating from Python to Scala wise when a lot of work is already done in Python?", "text": "Me and my friend are developing a web-app in Python + Flask + PostgreSQL. We have been working on it for the past few months and have developed a lot of schema/use-cases specific to Python + Flask + PostgreSQL. Now, all of a sudden, we plan to move to another NoSQL database (Neo4j) because it somehow fits better to what the core of our web-app is going to be. Python supports Neo4j through embedded/rest api bindings, but uses a technology **JPype, which is rather unmaintained, to say the least**. So, this question of using Scala arose today. **Ours is going to be next-to- realtime application, so we can't afford to have the lag/overhead** of having intermediate steps of Python->Java requests (Neo4j standalone server is based on embedded Neo4j). So, whereas I am in favour of spending a month or two and learning Scala/Lift, he is in favour of carrying on with Python and porting to Scala whenever need arises, even though when we know that Python+bindings will be a bit slower as compared to the native Neo4j support for Java. In the past few months, we had done a lot of work in Python + Flask + PostgreSQL already. If we port to Scala, we will need to port all of it to Scala. Would it be wise to port now? Are there any personal experiences or advices from you all? Or is this just premature optimization? _P.S.: I am aware of the learning curve of Scala/Lift._"}
{"_id": "140014", "title": "Agile development : How to design your code for an iteration / Sprint?", "text": "In Agile development you work on small user stories and produce a working iteration. But what happens when the next user story comes in and affects the design for the already done iteration? Sometimes it seems like re-doing the last iteration or another user story to incorporate the new user story in the last iteration! How to approach on this?"}
{"_id": "136238", "title": "Do people use any tools to make Rich UI on Web Application?", "text": "As titled, take ASP.NET/Perl/PHP for example. Because I don't have chance to work with UI Designer/or know anyone like that, so I really wonder do they use any tools to do the UI design? I don't mean tools like PhotoShop or Flash to make the graphic, but I mean like writting CSS, Table layout/color, Div, JQuery animation etc. I know for ASP.NET Visual Studio have some support on UI design, but is very minimum compares to like ExpressionBlend for WPF/Silverlight. I have been still typing everything when I do the UI Design for ASP.NET. So I wonder do people use any tools to help doing UI Design? Or everyone take it like a man to type everything else like what we did back then with NotePad?"}
{"_id": "188040", "title": "Patching open source software when upgrading is not an option?", "text": "I recently ran into a rather annoying (confirmed) bug in an open source software package that I have integrated into my application. According to the public issue tracker this bug has been resolved in the latest release of the software. Occasionally you NEED that bug fix to avoid an expensive refactor of a particular module, however for technical and/or political reasons, you will not be able to upgrade to the latest release. On inspecting the code changes made, the fix seems simple enough that I feel a viable option would be to patch the code myself and recompile my current approved version of the software, however detractors want to argue the case that this is nearly always a bad idea in that it is risky and introducing a troublesome complexity. In their eyes because this code change was done by us solely for our use, it must be part of our code base, meaning that rather than introducing the open source software as a third party dependency, we must introduce it as a new project and incorporate its automated build into our build process. To me I think this is wrong headed, as we would be pulling their code from their source control repository into ours, and we lose the history behind any code changes that came before that. Also it just seems like something that is far too complicated for such a small code change that needs to be made. Would it be a bad idea to do the above in this case? If so, then what is the ideal situation when open source needs to change, but only for your sole benefit in house?"}
{"_id": "188042", "title": "How to count condition coverage", "text": "I am wondering, What would be the correct condition coverage test cases for the following condition:               if(A && E && (B || C || D))      Considering short circuiting, what cases would I need? EDIT: Sorry I put only a half of the expression"}
{"_id": "136233", "title": "Is there an effective way to test XSL transforms/BizTalk maps?", "text": "Creating repeatable tests for BizTalk maps is frustrating. I can't find a way to handle testing them like I'd do unit testing, because I can't find ways to break them into logical chunks. They tend to be one big monolithic unit, and any change has the potential to ripple through the map and break a lot of unit tests. Even if I could break it up, creating XML test inputs is painful and error prone. Is there any effective way of testing these? I'd settle for recommendations for testing XSL transforms in general, but I specifically mention BizTalk maps primarily for the reason that when using the mapper, there really isn't any way to break your XSLT into templates (which I'd imagine you could use to break up your logic into testable chunks, but I've honestly never gotten that far with XSLT)."}
{"_id": "109107", "title": "Should every git commit leave the project in a working state?", "text": "I'm curious to know what the prevailing best practice is about get commits are. Should they be enforced such that the project is in a working state (builds properly, all tests pass etc), or is committing broken code OK? If you waive the requirement, you can be more flexible with commits (use them as logical chunks, even though the app is not in a working state etc). But if you enforce it you gain the flexibility of being able to cherry-pick any given commit later on..."}
{"_id": "232282", "title": "How to check robustness in a service that includes multiple points of failure in workflow, including FTP", "text": "As part of my workflow, I need to do all these steps in one transaction - I need to ftp files to 2 different FTP servers. - There is also a spreadsheet that gets generated which needs to be FTP'ed. Can this be streamed, instead of downloading and then pushed to FTP server. I am using Ruby Net::SFTP and Net::FTP libraries to send the files. I would like it to be robust. I am not sure if I need to do anything else or of this is good enough. Just to be clear, this is already working in production, I am not stuck, just looking to exchange design/architecture ideas on how to improve this."}
{"_id": "109103", "title": "How fast should a version number increment?", "text": "Some version numbers increase very quickly (like firefox and google chrome) and others don't (like cloudapp and the ubuntu kernel). I'm kinda thinking that the developer chooses how fast the number increments; it'd be silly to add a full +1 to the number if you fixed only minor stuff though...."}
{"_id": "230969", "title": "How does working in a team (in an OO project) work?", "text": "I'm programming in Java, in a very OO style, by myself. Never had the chance to work with other programmers (I'm not a professional, at least yet). Out of curiosity, I wanted to ask: How does working with a team on a project work, especially when working on an OO project? How does splitting tasks work? **How do you develop something that will succesfully work with something another programmer developed?** How and when do programmers communicate? Thanks"}
{"_id": "109101", "title": "Does it always require a lot of programming practice before you really master an algorithm?", "text": "I have programmed for several years. And I found it is always difficult to master an algorithm(What 'master' mean here is to understand how the algorithm works and could implement independently in some programming language). I could implement some easy algorithms(such as bubble sort, binary search, basic graph traversal algorithms such as DFS, BFS, basic dynamic programming problems such as ). But it is very difficult for me to master some advanced algorithms such as KMP, max-flow. I could understand the basic idea behind the algorithms. But I am usually stucked at implementation and forget the algorithm in a while. So my questions are:   1. what is a reasonable procedure to learn/master a new algorithm?    2. Do I need practice it again and again in platform such as USACO, topcoder to master it? Or is there any better way?"}
{"_id": "194945", "title": "How much product value can be hurt if demo of product not working properly", "text": "I am just checking a java script framework . A universal JavaScript framework. To check how its really works i just checkout a demo of this product example site which is just normal todo list . I just start to playing with the `todo` list and i just notice that after click on `add` if i click on `cancel` in that dialog box, Its still add a blank `todo item` . I am sure this is bug . Here my point is not solve this bug or find this bug .My point is that if i have such products and there demo have bugs which can be easily noticed then **Are those bugs going to hurt my product reputation ? and how much ?**"}
{"_id": "194946", "title": "Improve Bad testing", "text": "We have a large team of developers and testers. The ratio is one tester for every one developer. We have full bug tracking and reporting systems in place. We have test plans in place. Every change to the product, the testing team is involved in the design of the feature and are included in the development process as much as possible. We build in small iterative blocks, using scrum methodology and every scrum they are included in, including the grooming sessions etc. But every release of the product, they miss even the most simple and obvious defects. How can we improve this?"}
{"_id": "177559", "title": "Keeping an enum and a table in sync", "text": "I'm making a program that will post data to a database, and I've run into a pattern that I'm sure is familiar: A short table of most-likely (very strongly likely) fixed values that serve as an enum. So suppose the following table called `Status`:                 Status       Id Description       --------------        0 Unprocessed        1 Pending        2 Processed        3 Error      In my program I need to determine a status Id for another table, or possibly update a record with a new status Id. I could hardcode the status Id's in an enum and hope no one ever changes the database. Or I could pre-fetch the values based on the description (thus hardcoding _that_ instead). What would be the correct approach to keep these two, enum and table, synced?"}
{"_id": "177550", "title": "How to programmatically construct textual query", "text": "Here is a query language, more specifically, it's JQL, you can use it in Jira, to search for issues, it's something like SQL, but quite simpler. My case is that, I need to construct such queries programmatically, in my application. Something like:               JQLMachine jqlMachine = new JQLMachine()     jqlMachine.setStatuses(\"Open\", \"In Progress\")     jqlMachine.setReporter(\"foouser\", \"baruser\")     jqlMachine.setDateRange(...)     jqlMachine.getQuery() --> String with corresponding JQL\u00a0query is returned      You get my point I hope. I can imagine the code for this, but it's not nice, using my current knowledge how I'd do that. That's why I'm asking. What you'd advice to use to create such thing. I believe some patterns for creating something like this already exist and there is already best practices, how to do that in good way."}
{"_id": "177552", "title": "What is a \"complimentary license\" for a software product?", "text": "I don't really understand the term. I got a survey about either getting gift card or a complimentary license for a SDK control set. But I really wonder what's complimentary license means? I tried to search in their official site but didn't say anything about it... Is it last for the life and I can use the controls in all my personal software and publish it?"}
{"_id": "74436", "title": "What is the historical basis of using Javascript in web programming?", "text": "I come from a scientific biology background where we also use Python a lot. Now that I've begun to start with Web development, I've consistently found myself wondering just why it is that JavaScript is the primary client-side language on the Web. Is JavaScript's predominance a historical accident or something else? Also, I'm curious if there are any hurdles to integrating Python into client-side scripting?"}
{"_id": "238022", "title": "Back button after doing posts on the same page", "text": "I have 3 pages to my site. The 1st page allows you to select a bunch of options. Those options get sent to the 2nd page to be displayed with some data about those options. From here I can click on a link to get to page 3 on 1 of the options. On page 3 I can create a new/edit/delete all on the same page where reloads come back to page 3. I want a \"back\" button on page 3 to go back to page 2, but retain the options it had from the original page 1 request. Page 1 has a bunch of check boxes which are passed to page 2 as arrays to the controller. My thought is that I have to pass these arrays (I converted them to lists) to page 3 (even thought page 3 directly doesn't need them) so that page 3 can use them in the back link to it can recreate the values page 1 sent to page 2 originally. I'm using asp.net MVC and when I pass the converted array it seems to convert it to the type instead of actually showing the values: \"types=System.Collections.Generic.List\" (where types is a List. **Is this what is needed or are there other options to getting a \"back\" button in this case to go back to page 2.** It's sort of a pain to pass information to page 3 that isn't really relevant to page 3 except the back button."}
{"_id": "139400", "title": "Please explain the benefit(s) of using an XML-based syntax (e.g. XAML) instead of normal source code (e.g. WinForms)?", "text": "First off, please note that this question is not about WPF vs. WinForms. What are the highest-ranking benefits that led Microsoft to invent XAML in favour of the \u201cold\u201d approach of generating compilable C# code? My impression is that other developers seem to find a lot of downsides to it, but Microsoft went with it regardless, which must mean that there is a benefit that I am not seeing. I would like you to explain to me what it is that I am missing."}
{"_id": "139407", "title": "Automated out going ACH transfers", "text": "Our team is working on a market place web application where the application will collect payments from individual users then deduct a small percentage fee before paying the balance to the users chosen service vendor. We've encountered problems finding a service provider that will allow outgoing ACH. We've asked both several merchant accounts and banks looking for a solution. Although out going ACH is possible through some banks, we are so far unable to find a bank that exposes an API for automating the process. We're hoping the community has found a viable solution for the redistribution of funds as described. We're certainly not stuck on any particular technology or method such as ACH. Your thoughts, idea or solutions are greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "177084", "title": "learning on the clock", "text": "Some might argue this question is too general, but because keeping up seems especially relevant to programming, is anyone's experience that:   * do employers expect you to stay current? what is the \"industry standard\" of expected time a programmer should spend keeping up-to-date?    * is it generally acceptable that a programmer can spend some time during working hrs on meeting the expectation to keep skills current? If not, how do most programmers find the time?  -"}
{"_id": "131171", "title": "Choosing the right branching strategy for releases", "text": "Starting with a new dev team on a new project and we have to define our Branching strategy for our source repository ( _e.g. Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010_ ). We've run into a sticky discussion over whether or not to... **A**. Have one **Release** branch from which we do production builds and then **Label** when something is actually released OR **B**. Have a new **Release** branch for each new Release into production ( _Ex. Version 1, 2, 3, etc..._ ) Option **A** seems pretty straight-forward but we're not sure if this will lead to problems in the long run. Option **B** seems like it just creates lots of one-time long-lived branches that just pile up over time. Does anyone have any experience either way that could help us decide? Specifically, I'm looking to hear where the pain-points are for any one choice. Feel free to provide specific experience relative to TFS and/or Release-Management implications."}
{"_id": "6660", "title": "What does Software Engineer in Test do?", "text": "Normally unit tests were written by developer who write the code, i.e. Test Driven Development. So what does Software Engineer in Test do?"}
{"_id": "6665", "title": "Should a developer adhere to the class diagrams produced during system design?", "text": "The class diagram is modeled on the system requirements, and it is important to create solutions based on those requirements. If I have said class diagram should I strictly adhere to it? What about refactoring? What if the diagram did not provide some design principle that I feel were left out?"}
{"_id": "221126", "title": "How is a committer expected to behave?", "text": "In _open source projects_ there is typically a set of devs that have permissions to commit code - the committers -, and others that \"pull request\" or send patches, the \"general public\". I find a annoying when   1. the committer signs the commit with its own name, and writes in the commit message a \"Thanks to ...\".   2. the committer changes the patch before commit without asking if the original author agrees. Given this two annoyances, I'm compelled to think that I should put myself in the other side and ask how should a core committer behave. Are these two particular situations expected? I mean, is this the correct behaviour for building and maintaining an active community of \"general public\"? EDIT: I'm not asking if they have the right to do it or are legally obliged to do so. IMO a committer should not content himself to follow the law, but should be interested in building/maintaining the community within the project objectives constraints. That is what I'm asking for: how he should behave to accomplish this."}
{"_id": "240745", "title": "Website Internationalisation approaches", "text": "I'm currently working on a project that the client wants to deliver to different countries. The application is a website. We started out using resource files to change the text the user sees when visiting pages based on their locations. But this isn't enough. In the English version of the site we have a page that states \"page x of y\". In the Chinese version of the site, it's not enough to do \" x y\" The syntax for the language doesn't match the placeholders that were created for the English language. The only other option I can think of is to have a completely separate site, serving different content. Are there any other options to solve this issue?"}
{"_id": "240741", "title": "Dealing with not knowing parameter names of a function when you're calling it", "text": "Here's a programming/language problem I'd like to hear your thoughts on. We have developed conventions that most programmers (should) follow that aren't a part of the languages syntax but serve to make code more readable. These are of course always a matter of debate but there's at least some core concepts that most programmers find agreeable. Naming your variables appropriately, naming in general, making your lines not outrageously long, avoiding long functions, encapsulations, those things. However, there's a problem that I have yet to find anyone commenting on and that just might be the biggest one of the bunch. It's the problem of arguments being anonymous when you call a function. Functions stem from mathematics where f(x) has a clear meaning because a function has a much more rigorous definition that it usually does in programming. Pure functions in mathematics can do a lot less than they can in programming and they are a much more elegant tool, they usually only take one argument (which is usually a number) and they always return one value (also usually a number). If a function takes multiple arguments, they are almost always just extra dimensions of the function's domain. In other words, one argument isn't more important than the others. They are explicitly ordered, sure, but other than that, they have no semantic ordering. In programming however, we have more freedom defining functions, and in this case I'd argue it isn't a good thing. A common situation, you have a function defined like this               func DrawRectangleClipped (rectToDraw, fillColor, clippingRect) {}      Looking at the definition, if the function is written correctly, its perfectly clear what's what. When calling the function, you might even have some intellisense/code completion magic going on in your IDE/editor that will tell you what the next argument should be. But wait. If I need that when I'm actually writing the call, isn't there something we're missing here? The person reading the code doesn't have the benefit of an IDE and unless they jump to the definition, they have no idea which of the two rectangles passed as arguments is used for what. The problem goes even further than that. If our arguments come from some local variable, there might be situations where we don't even know what the second argument is since we only see the variable name. Take for example this line of code               DrawRectangleClipped(deserializedArray[0], deserializedArray[1], deserializedArray[2])      This is alleviated to various extents in different languages but even in strictly typed languages and even if you name your variables sensibly, you don't even mention the type the variable is when you're passing it to the function. As it usually is with programming, there are a lot of potential solutions to this problem. Many are already implemented in popular languages. Named parameters in C# for example. However, all that I know have significant drawbacks. Naming every parameter on every function call can't possibly lead to readable code. It almost feels like maybe we're outgrowing possibilities that plain text programming gives us. We've moved from JUST text in almost every area, yet we still code the same. More information is needed to be displayed in the code? Add more text. Anyways, this is getting a bit tangential so I'll stop here. One reply I got to the second code snippet is that you would probably first unpack the array to some named variables and then use those but the variable's name can mean many things and the way it's called doesn't necessarily tell you the way it's supposed to be interpreted in the context of the called function. In the local scope, you might have two rectangles named leftRectangle and rightRectangle because that's what they semantically represent, but it doesn't need to extend to what they represent when given to a function. In fact, if your variables are named in the context of the called function than you're introducing less information than you potentially could with that function call and on some level if does lead to code worse code. If you have a procedure that results in a rectangle you store in rectForClipping and then another procedure that provides rectForDrawing, then the actual call to DrawRectangleClipped is just ceremony. A line that means nothing new and is there just so the computer knows what exactly you want even though you've explained it already with your naming. This isn't a good thing. I'd really love to hear fresh perspectives on this. I'm sure I'm not the first one to consider this a problem, so how is it solved?"}
{"_id": "92034", "title": "Do .NET 4.0 Code Contracts have a role to play in solo-programmer projects?", "text": "I often find myself wondering what programming best practices apply to solo programming, since most of the time, I'm the only programmer on a project. I just started experimenting with C# 4.0 Code Contracts, and I thought I'd ask the community what utility they may have for a solo programmer. Here's where I'm coming from with this. Most of the time, when I encounter an exception, it means there's a bug in my code. There are definite exceptions (no pun intended) to this, such as when I'm dealing with something external, such as a text file, database, or service, but for the most part, exceptions mean _I_ did something wrong. Take this simple method:               public void MapEntity(PersonModel model, PersonEntity entity)     {         entity.Name = model.Name;         entity.Age = model.Age;         entity.Updated = DateTime.Now;     }      If either `model` or `entity` are null, this method will throw a `NullReferenceException`. As the only consumer of my code, I know that I shouldn't pass in a null reference, but if I somehow do, I _want_ an exception to be thrown, and I _want_ the debugger to jump right to the source of the error so I can see what happened. That said, I could write:               public void MapEntity(PersonModel model, PersonEntity entity)     {         Contract.Requires(model != null);         Contract.Requires(entity != null);         entity.Name = model.Name;         entity.Age = model.Age;         entity.Updated = DateTime.Now;     }      This has the advantage of explicitly indicating (to myself) that the two arguments are not allowed to be null. However, it's very unlikely I would make this mistake (because I know what the method does). Further, if I understand properly what `Requires()` does, the behavior at runtime if a null argument is encountered would be pretty much the same. So, I can't help but wonder, what have I gained besides two lines of code? As a counterpoint, here's a case where I see definite value in being explicit:               public User FindUser(string emailAddress)     {         if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(emailAddress)) return null;         var users = DbContext.Users.Where(u => u.EmailAddress == emailAddress);         Contract.Assert(users.Count() <= 1,                         \"The database appears to be corrupted:                         More than one user was found for the provided email address.                         Email addresses are supposed to be unique.\");         return users.SingleOrDefault();     }      But in this case, the reason I see value in using a coding contract is to indicate that something that has gone wrong that is not a bug per se (though it could have resulted from a bug elsewhere in the system). I'd like to know if I'm on the right track with my thinking, or if there is more value in code contracts than I realize. Does it pay to use contracts when you can examine and debug the code yourself or only when the code is going to be used by a third party?"}
{"_id": "92038", "title": "I'm a iOS developer and I want to learn game programming", "text": "I programmed for the iphone (and a bit for mac) for the last 1 or 2 years and now I want to learn Java. I know OOP and am also farmiliar with a bit of the c syntax! Are there any books like java for objective-c programmers or some stuff like that? If you think c++ would be a better idea than Java (for game programming) please also give me tips for that. I'd really like to stay in OOP."}
{"_id": "100303", "title": "Correlation between two curves", "text": "I am trying to solve a mathematical problem in two different ways and output is a curve in both the cases. I want to compare these output curves for similarity in python. Is there any function or framework which provides this functionality? Thanks."}
{"_id": "212665", "title": "Settle an Argument: String vs. Array?", "text": "True or False: A string is the same thing as an array. I had an interview the other day and the above question was asked. I said false, but the interviewer said it was actually true. I explained to her that a string is a data type and an array is an object that holds multiple instances of a variable, and that they aren't even similar concepts. But, she was an HR person who was just reading tech questions that were handed to her, so she couldn't elaborate or relate to my point. A coworker later explained the True answer by stating that a string is actually a character array... thus, a string is an array. Now, if a string is a character array, that doesn't mean that document arrays or integer arrays qualify as strings. Thus, a string is not the same thing as an array. But even so, (considering C#) a string isn't even a character array. In order to do character manipulation on a string (without using concatenation methods), you have to convert the string to a character array. Now, if a string was synonymous with a character array, why would you need to convert it? Wouldn't you just be able to call each character in the string implicitly as you would a character array? No! Why? Because a string is not a character array! I liken it to asking, \"Is a primary key the same as a unique identifier?\" The answer is false. Reason being: A primary key is a unique identifier, but you can have unique identifiers in a table without setting them as keys. What do you all think? Is a string (data type) the same thing as an array (object type)? If so, why?"}
{"_id": "189317", "title": "Plugin Architecture: How to Handle Databases and Logging?", "text": "I am in the process of designing an architecture for a plugin based application and I have some questions about how to handle database access and logging. The goal of my application is to allow a device my company is manufacturing to send messages over any number of third-party protocols and to any number of third party devices. Because of the nature of my application, I need to log every message that is sent via my system in reasonable detail. Here's what I am thinking on the Database side: There will be a global message table which stores all of the implementation agnostic data we have, and then there will be a table (or set of tables) for each messaging plugin _as defined by the plugin writer_ which references the Global Message table via a foreign key. It is handling these other tables that I am having a hard time figuring out how to design safely. On the one hand, I don't particularly want to give the plugins full access to the database (I want them to have the fewest possible privileges), on the other hand I want the plugin developers to have full reign to log any data they need to tables that they define similarly to how plugins work in Wordpress. Additionally, I don't want logging to the Database to be optional at all: Good logging is crucial to my application. Things I have considered:   * Designing a logging infrastructure which allows a plugin to define (maybe in an XML file) the tables it needs in the DB and a mapping between those tables and objects that they will return, and using those mappings and table definitions to write to the DB the results from method calls.   * Making a naming convention for Stored Procedures in the DB that each plugin must define when defining their tables and automatically calling those stored procedures after sending a message.   * Allowing each plugin to implement a logging method which returns a String holding the proper SQL query. Each of the above solutions makes me a little uncomfortable, but I'm not sure what other approaches might exist. Any Suggestions? Implementation Details: I am writing my application in Java, and I am using a hand-rolled plugin solution, so I have a pretty decent amount of flexibility. Since none of the actual code has been written (other than some proof-of concept code which is really just for reference), I can make fairly major changes to my plan without great cost."}
{"_id": "231376", "title": "Algorithm to order array", "text": "Take for example this input array:               [2,7,1,4,9]      For this input, I need to produce an array of total 23 elements which contains two elements of 2, seven elements of 7, one element of 1, four elements of 4 and nine elements of 9. Example of output array:               [2,2,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,1,4,4,4,4,9,...]      However, this array **needs to be ordered in the way that minimizes the number of same elements appearing next to each other**. The example of such array would be something like this:               [7,2,9,4,9,1,7,...]      The primary goal is to minimize the number of the same adjacent elements. Secondary goal is to distribute elements unbiased across resulting array if possible. Any pseudo code or C#, java, ... would be helpful."}
{"_id": "173704", "title": "Nesting Linq-to-Objects query within Linq-to-Entities query \u2013what is happening under the covers?", "text": "var numbers = new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };             var contacts = from c in context.Contacts                       where c.ContactID == numbers.Max() | c.ContactID == numbers.FirstOrDefault()                       select c;              foreach (var item in contacts) Console.WriteLine(item.ContactID);       Linq-to-Entities query is first translated into Linq _expression tree_ , which is then converted by Object Services into _command tree_. And if Linq-to- Entities query nests Linq-to-Objects query, then this nested query also gets translated into an _expression tree_. a) I assume none of the operators of the nested Linq-to-Objects query actually get executed, but instead _data provider_ for particular DB (or perhaps Object Services) knows how to transform the logic of Linq-to-Objects operators into appropriate SQL statements? b) _Data provider_ knows how to create equivalent SQL statements only for some of the Linq-to-Objects operators? c) Similarly, _data provider_ knows how to create equivalent SQL statements only for some of the non-Linq methods in the Net Framework class library? **EDIT:** I know only some Sql so I can't be completely sure, but reading Sql query generated for the above code it seems data provider didn't actually execute `numbers.Max` method, but instead just somehow figured out that `numbers.Max` should return the maximum value and then proceed to include in generated Sql query a call to **TSQL's build-in MAX function**. It also put all the values held by `numbers` array into a Sql query.                SELECT CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN '0X0X'              ELSE '0X1X'            END                      AS [C1],            [Extent1].[ContactID]    AS [ContactID],            [Extent1].[FirstName]    AS [FirstName],            [Extent1].[LastName]     AS [LastName],            [Extent1].[Title]        AS [Title],            [Extent1].[AddDate]      AS [AddDate],            [Extent1].[ModifiedDate] AS [ModifiedDate],            [Extent1].[RowVersion]   AS [RowVersion],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[CustomerTypeID]            END                      AS [C2],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[InitialDate]            END                      AS [C3],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[PrimaryDesintation]            END                      AS [C4],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[SecondaryDestination]            END                      AS [C5],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[PrimaryActivity]            END                      AS [C6],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[SecondaryActivity]            END                      AS [C7],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[Notes]            END                      AS [C8],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[RowVersion]            END                      AS [C9],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[BirthDate]            END                      AS [C10],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[HeightInches]            END                      AS [C11],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[WeightPounds]            END                      AS [C12],            CASE              WHEN (([Project1].[C1] = 1)                    AND ([Project1].[C1] IS NOT NULL)) THEN [Project1].[DietaryRestrictions]            END                      AS [C13]     FROM   [dbo].[Contact] AS [Extent1]            LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT [Extent2].[ContactID]            AS [ContactID],                                    [Extent2].[BirthDate]            AS [BirthDate],                                    [Extent2].[HeightInches]         AS [HeightInches],                                    [Extent2].[WeightPounds]         AS [WeightPounds],                                    [Extent2].[DietaryRestrictions]  AS [DietaryRestrictions],                                    [Extent3].[CustomerTypeID]       AS [CustomerTypeID],                                    [Extent3].[InitialDate]          AS [InitialDate],                                    [Extent3].[PrimaryDesintation]   AS [PrimaryDesintation],                                    [Extent3].[SecondaryDestination] AS [SecondaryDestination],                                    [Extent3].[PrimaryActivity]      AS [PrimaryActivity],                                    [Extent3].[SecondaryActivity]    AS [SecondaryActivity],                                    [Extent3].[Notes]                AS [Notes],                                    [Extent3].[RowVersion]           AS [RowVersion],                                    cast(1 as bit)                   AS [C1]                             FROM   [dbo].[ContactPersonalInfo] AS [Extent2]                                    INNER JOIN [dbo].[Customers] AS [Extent3]                                      ON [Extent2].[ContactID] = [Extent3].[ContactID]) AS [Project1]              ON [Extent1].[ContactID] = [Project1].[ContactID]            LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT TOP (1) [c].[C1] AS [C1]                             FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll3].[C1] AS [C1]                                     FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll2].[C1] AS [C1]                                             FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll1].[C1] AS [C1]                                                     FROM   (SELECT 1 AS [C1]                                                             FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable1]                                                             UNION ALL                                                                       SELECT 2 AS [C1]                                                             FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable2]) AS [UnionAll1]                                                     UNION ALL                                                               SELECT 3 AS [C1]                                                     FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable3]) AS [UnionAll2]                                             UNION ALL                                                       SELECT 4 AS [C1]                                             FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable4]) AS [UnionAll3]                                     UNION ALL                                               SELECT 5 AS [C1]                                     FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable5]) AS [c]) AS [Limit1]              ON 1 = 1            LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT TOP (1) [c].[C1] AS [C1]                             FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll7].[C1] AS [C1]                                     FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll6].[C1] AS [C1]                                             FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll5].[C1] AS [C1]                                                     FROM   (SELECT 1 AS [C1]                                                             FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable6]                                                             UNION ALL                                                                       SELECT 2 AS [C1]                                                             FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable7]) AS [UnionAll5]                                                     UNION ALL                                                               SELECT 3 AS [C1]                                                     FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable8]) AS [UnionAll6]                                             UNION ALL                                                       SELECT 4 AS [C1]                                             FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable9]) AS [UnionAll7]                                     UNION ALL                                               SELECT 5 AS [C1]                                     FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable10]) AS [c]) AS [Limit2]              ON 1 = 1            CROSS JOIN (SELECT MAX([UnionAll12].[C1]) AS [A1]                        FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll11].[C1] AS [C1]                                FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll10].[C1] AS [C1]                                        FROM   (SELECT [UnionAll9].[C1] AS [C1]                                                FROM   (SELECT 1 AS [C1]                                                        FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable11]                                                        UNION ALL                                                                  SELECT 2 AS [C1]                                                        FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable12]) AS [UnionAll9]                                                UNION ALL                                                          SELECT 3 AS [C1]                                                FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable13]) AS [UnionAll10]                                        UNION ALL                                                  SELECT 4 AS [C1]                                        FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable14]) AS [UnionAll11]                                UNION ALL                                          SELECT 5 AS [C1]                                FROM   (SELECT 1 AS X) AS [SingleRowTable15]) AS [UnionAll12]) AS [GroupBy1]     WHERE  [Extent1].[ContactID] IN ([GroupBy1].[A1], (CASE                                                          WHEN ([Limit1].[C1] IS NULL) THEN 0                                                          ELSE [Limit2].[C1]                                                        END))      Based on this, is it possible that Linq2Entities provider indeed doesn't execute non-Linq and Linq-to-Object methods, but instead creates equivalent SQL statements for some of them ( and for others it throws an exception )? Thank you in advance"}
{"_id": "189318", "title": "What are some JavaScript selectors?", "text": "I was at an interview recently and although they knew that I was a beginner in javascript they asked me what selectors I used before? I didn't know what to say. I came back home and searched for it but can't find a clear definition. Isn't a selector something like a .class or #id?"}
{"_id": "184592", "title": "Is Using Locking/Unlocking in Version Control an Anti-Pattern?", "text": "Recently I've started using Git at work. Previously I've only ever used VSS (which has some problems) and so far, Git is orders of magnitude better. The key differences here is that Git is distributed while VSS has a centralized \"server\" version, and that VSS uses a \"checkout-lock-checkin\" workflow while Git doesn't. The biggest problems we've had on working with code on our team relate to code being checked-out and unavailable to other people. This slows down work considerably, but I also know this isn't unique to VSS. Other source control systems like CVS apparently also lock files as part of their workflow. Is there any good reason for locking to be part of a version control system? Or even a development workflow? Or perhaps locking practices should be considered bad practice and discouraged?"}
{"_id": "184597", "title": "success:/failure: blocks vs completion: block", "text": "I see two common patterns for blocks in Objective-C. One is a pair of success:/failure: blocks, the other is a single completion: block. For example, lets say I have a task that will return an object asynchronously and that task might fail. The first pattern is `-taskWithSuccess:(void (^)(id object))success failure:(void (^)(NSError *error))failure`. The second pattern is `-taskWithCompletion:(void (^)(id object, NSError *error))completion`. ### success:/failure:               [target taskWithSuccess:^(id object) {         // W00t! I've got my object     } failure:^(NSError *error) {         // Oh noes! report the failure.     }];      ### completion:               [target taskWithCompletion:^(id object, NSError *error) {         if (object) {             // W00t! I've got my object         } else {             // Oh noes! report the failure.         }     }];      Which is the preferred pattern? What are the strengths and weaknesses? When would you use one over the other?"}
{"_id": "184596", "title": "What does \"recursive\" mean for a program which processes files and directories?", "text": "I know what recursion is in programming. I do understand the basics of version control systems (have used svn that is). But I have often wondered what the meaning of \"recursion\" or \"recursive\" is with respect to version control systems. What does a function calling itself have to do with working with files and directories in a version control system?"}
{"_id": "43901", "title": "What use is a Business Logic Layer (BLL)?", "text": "In reading up on good practice for database applications I've frequently come across advocates of so-called \"business logic layers\" and I'm trying to decide if it's best for my project to use one (it's a small personal project). My issue lies in the fact that I can't think of anything for the BLL to do that the DAL can't already handle (executing queries and mapping results to objects), so my BLL just calls the DAL without doing anything itself. Maybe I'm wrong about exactly what the DAL should be doing too. But regardless, what sorts of functionality should be expected of a BLL in a database management application?"}
{"_id": "124661", "title": "Are there benefits to deriving versions from SCM branch?", "text": "Currently, we have a versioning scheme following the major.minor.patch pattern. Development is done in a branch (i.e. - branches/b4_2); a release is a tag (tags/r4_2_0). To determine the version inside the code, we have a class which can parse the SCM URL (FooVersion.java). If the URL represents a branch, the SVN revision is appended (for QA builds). We're re-evaluating versioning and, more pointedly, what sort of environments we have up. The big change here is adding the concept of a beta environment for our \"super users\". Along with this, I'm rethinking this potentially over- engineered version derivation system. How do you determine, in the code, what the version of the software is? Creating a release is already a manual process (create tag, check in JARs for the related libraries we develop, etc.) which could probably be scripted, so is there a benefit to the way we do it over having a text file which is updated when a version is cut?"}
{"_id": "124667", "title": "Filling a scene with cubes", "text": "I am trying to design a solution for simulating gaseous fluids in confined areas, I am using naiver-stokes equations for fluid dynamics but since it only covers incompressible fluids like liquid, i needed to find a way to simulate compression Recently, I came up with the solution which is, creating a field storing pressure data for each volumetric partition and I thought it would be a good idea to construct this field as a composition of cubes where each cube has homogeneous pressure value within itself. I tried to inflate a cube from a point and create other cubes from its surfaces recursively minding the collision with surfaces inside that scene, but this algorithm fails because there are lots of detailed cases involving complex holes and notches on the object. Is there a better way to construct this field?"}
{"_id": "86903", "title": "Are there any subversion \"dash board\" web applications that can show me a list of recent commits from all my repositories?", "text": "I am looking for something like a subversion dashboard that at the very least can show me commits from across a group of repositories. Is there anything like this available? Since it could just as well be dead simple and I can't find anything immediately I am thinking if just scratching my own itch here, but I am hoping someone has wanted this before? Are there any subversion \"dashboards\" that an show me even a simple twitter-like list of commits from across my repositories?"}
{"_id": "86900", "title": "Online Poker Game Programming", "text": "I am trying to write a massive online multiplayer client for a poker site, where one user can be on a Flash client and the other on say an iOS client (iPhone / iPad), and would like to know how can interaction between two users be visible on both clients. What would be better to use?   * Should I use MSMQ?    * AJAX?    * Something other?  I need the messaging layer (client interaction messages) to scale up to 100K+ online users to begin with. In other words; What scalable technology can I use to make game interactions between online users visible to all game participants?"}
{"_id": "86901", "title": "A local/internal deployment of something like Campfire for developers", "text": "I've been looking at Campfire by 37Signals and it looks like a great tool for collaboration between developers but we need something that can be deployed internally. Any good options out there?"}
{"_id": "140905", "title": "PHP, when to use iterators, how to buffer results?", "text": "1. When is it best to use Iterators in PHP, and how can they be implemented to best avoid loading all objects into memory simultaneously?   2. Do any constructs exist in PHP so that we can queue up results of an operation for use with an Iterator, while again avoiding loading all objects into memory simultaneously?      1. An example would be a curl HTTP request against a REST server   3. In the case of an HTTP request that returns all results at once (a la curl), would we be better off to go with streaming results, and if so, are there any limitations or pitfalls to be aware of?      1. If using streaming, is it better to replace curl with a PHP native stream/socket? My intention is to implement Iterators for a REST client, and separately a document ORM that I'm maintaining, but only if I can do so while gaining benefits from reduced memory usage, increased performance, etc. Thanks in advance for any responses :-)"}
{"_id": "140907", "title": "How do I capture information from a website that doesn't provide an API?", "text": "Do you know any good tutorials, frameworks, anything that can help me to write code that captures information from a website that don't have a public API, or hasn't been written in a RESTful way? I've heard there's a Ruby gem that simulates a browser, but I forgot its name and couldn't find any information about it anymore."}
{"_id": "128326", "title": "How do you keep track of large projects?", "text": "When dealing with a project that has many different files, I always seem to loose track of how the parts interact with one another. I've never really had much of a problem understanding smaller components in isolation, but as the complexity of the project increases, I find myself unable to mentally construct an understanding of what is going on. I notice this especially with OOP projects, as the number of methods and source files increase. My background: I'm a self-taught web programmer. I've dealt mostly with python for quick and dirty scripts, but I've also done a few basic django projects. I like web frameworks such as flask, because in the simplicity of a single-file layout, I can easily keep track (mostly) of what is going on. I now find myself in a situation where I need to interact with a large Zend Framework PHP project that someone else developed, and I'm overwhelmed with trying to understand the code spread out to numerous files. **What techniques and processes have you found useful to understand a large code base that someone else has developed? Is there any particular diagram that you find helps you grasp the larger picture?**"}
{"_id": "128327", "title": "What is the difference between a pointer pointing to 0x0 location and a pointer set to NULL?", "text": "Is a pointer pointing to 0x0000 the same as a pointer set to NULL? If NULL value is defined in the C language, then what location does it physically translate to? Is it the same as 0x0000. Where can I find more details about these concepts?"}
{"_id": "233858", "title": "Name for use of methods that return rather than set", "text": "There exists a general OOP principle that methods should return local variables rather than set object fields. For instance, say I have the following piece of code (example in Java):               public class Number {         public int myNum;     }          public class Horrible {         public static void areYouSerious(Number num){             num.myNum = 47;         }     }          public class Test {         public int num = new Number();              public void doHorribleThings(){             Horrible.areYouSerious(num);         }              public static void main(String[] args){             Test test = new Test();             test.doHorribleThings();         }     }      Obviously this style of programming can go sideways very quickly, and becomes a massive headache for anyone attempting to maintain it. A more correct way of doing this would be the following:               public class Number {         public int myNum;     }          public class NotAsBad {         public static int getDefaultVal(){             return 47;         }     }          public class Test {         public int num = new Number();              public void doHorribleThings(){             num.myNum = NotAsBad.getDefaultVal();         }              public static void main(String[] args){             Test test = new Test();             test.doHorribleThings();         }     }      The first example is modifying a passed in reference, whereas the second is generalizing the static setting function, making it return a value which can be used to set the object field. **Is there a name for the principle that the second method should be preferred over the first? A sort of \"modularity\" principle?** Just as `encapsulation` is the term for restricting variable manipulation, I would like a term for limiting the scope of the effects of some piece of functionality. If there is no existing term, I am going to call it _consequence localization_."}
{"_id": "75743", "title": "How do I build a highly scalable user/profile service?", "text": "Question -- I currently have a large monolithic Java application which I am working to break up into services components. One of the components I want to separate out is the service which handles and presents users and profiles. Currently the core service uses a MySQL backend and is written in Java, and is only hosted on one set of servers (web, app, db). My primary goal is to get the user/profile service to be n+ scalable across multiple web, and app servers and trying to figure out a way to do it across the database layer. What are some of the best practices to achieve high scalability with this environment? (We currently have a few million users, but expect to grow past that). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "38448", "title": "Do unfamiliar frameworks make you nervous?", "text": "Our company is a small (non-technical) startup who is currently going through a developer transition, and we considered bringing in a local web development firm to work with us on a project basis. I sat down with a developer from one of these firms, and gave him a tour of our code base. He seemed like a pretty bright guy, and while he admitted no experience with our particular PHP framework (rhymes with 'Bend'), he appeared to be a totally capable developer. We found out the next day that they didn't want to work with us because of our choice of framework. For people who do consulting or work for development, how much does a client's choice of framework influence your decision for taking the client? Obviously, language and platform make a huge difference (I wouldn't expect a PHP shop to write C#), but as a developer I would always pick the client using any framework, over one that does not. I know everyone has their own comfort level and areas where they specialize, but do you feel comfortable tackling a new technology armed with only some API docs and google? Do you try to make this as clear as possible to the client? What are some reasons you would turn down someone for their choice of framework (assuming it fell into your basic realm of knowledge)? And with all the frameworks out there, how is one developer ever expected to pick something others can support?"}
{"_id": "208318", "title": "Possible holes in a spam-registration prevention approach?", "text": "I was thinking of creating some login code (probably to work with BrowserID so users don't need to store their passwords with my site while also ensuring the supplied email account belongs to them) which required any user accounts to be an email address in the \".name\" or possibly \".me\" TLD (or in any other TLD that was intended for individuals or individual corporate employees only-- i.e., not open to public registration) and perhaps disallowing subdomains (as it might be tempting for some companies to purchase a generic domain and lease out the personalized subdomains); of course it wouldn't stop a company from leasing out names like user123@spam-friendly-site.name, but as the TLD is intended for individuals, it would hopefully be easier to blacklist any such bad behavior-enabling sites wholesale. The purpose would be two-fold:   1. Raise the threshold for spammers as they would have to either purchase a new domain any time they wanted a new spam account (and any abusing _domains_ could be blacklisted and shared as a public list) or obtain control of a legitimate user's email account or browser/system.   2. Encourage people to throw off the yoke of dependency on fixed third parties for emails as well as website hosting, chatting, etc. by getting their own domains. One wouldn't want a phone number like 555-123-1234@att.com because one could not freely change providers. And there are no doubt many would-be content creators who would share more freely if they had a site belonging to them. If one wanted to be anonymous, one could reserve domains like anonymous567.name (e.g., me@anonymous567.name) -- and this would be fine with me as my purpose is not to positively ID people outside of the context of confirming they control the email address they give me but to raise barriers to spammers. It would add a small price to do content creation on the site as users would have to purchase a domain and configure email on it and would cost more so to become truly anonymous (e.g., to purchase separate domains for each site to avoid tracking between sites), but I think the burden should not lie on content websites to deal with spam registrations. If this really gets going, one might also be able to set up one's email filters to block anyone not belonging to such a personalized domain as well, giving an auto-reply of how to register for one. Does anyone have feedback on the idea, specifically any unexpected barriers I might encounter (such as ways it could be circumvented)? I know of course that it will raise barriers for some users, but any potential technical challenges?"}
{"_id": "208319", "title": "VB stand alone application or ASP web application", "text": "I have experience developing software and web applications and I have decided to do some freelance work on the side. Well, I met with my first client and they are requesting a relatively simple, custom system that (without being long winded) tracks client\u2019s paperwork as it progresses through the business\u2019s different manual processes. It is a small business that has about 10 employees, but all of the employees will interact with the client\u2019s paperwork, therefore everyone would need access to the new system. When I say **track** I literally mean that the employees will **check as complete** on a simple page the increases a progress bar at different stages for the paperwork. Now I am %110 capable of coding the custom system that meets their needs, but I am unsure about how I should go about doing it. The information that is being tracked in the new system and stored in the DB is confidential information that they are very protective of. My main question is how should I be developing this to be as secure as I can?   * They have their own server in house, so should I develop an application (VB and SQL) for the server and require employees to log on remotely to use it? Can more than one person access/use the application at a time?   * Or should I develop a web application (ASP.Net/VB and SQL) that is only accessible on their network to their employees? They plan to expand offices, could they set up a VPN to access the site? I\u2019m leaning towards a web application, but I have not done too much in term of security. What specific options do I have for security that aren't too complex. Basically I\u2019m looking for pros and cons for either option or any suggestions on what I should."}
{"_id": "249742", "title": "Is testability and mockability really that important in web development?", "text": "I'm reading this series on Laravel, and it's in great depth dealing with making everything testable, using _Repository_ instead of just using the _Models_ , using _Dependency Injection_ and other obscure techniques. I've got a feeling that adding all this extra complexity in the name of Testability may not be the right thing. Writing unit tests for everything, that sounds plain silly. I have used Laravel before, without all this \"testability\" stuff, and it just worked. Is \"testability\" worth the effort and making code harder to understand? (note that I'm posting here instead of StackOverflow, for this is kind of opinion based. I hope I won't be frowned upon for asking it.)"}
{"_id": "249743", "title": "Setting fields with correct default value", "text": "When writing constructors, I regularly encounter a situation where some fields already have approperiate (default) values, such as `false` for boolean values and `0` for integers. What are reasons to emphasize these values, for example like: `state = 0;` Do you appreciate it when reading someones code? On one side I feel like expressing implementation details explicitly, on the other side I find it pointless to set a field when I'm sure it is already correct."}
{"_id": "198607", "title": "Why doesn't layered architecture translate easily to tiered architecture?", "text": "Basically, I'm trying to understand why layered and tiered are that different, and why they don't translate easily to each other. I understand that layered could be 3 separate class files for UI, BL and DAL. Whereas tiered can be a Project for the UI, which links to a BL project which links to a DAL like entity framework, and then a database. So why are/aren't they easily translatable? Hope that makes sense, Thanks."}
{"_id": "138751", "title": "Cron'ing PHP scripts that write to other files.", "text": "So the client I am working for right now is really big on load time speed, so we try to shave every micro second possible. We found a file the other day that was pulling some word press blogs and it was adding a solid second to the load time. Now I didn't write that particular script and perhaps I can go optimize it later, but for now, what I did was make a script that writes the output of the wp script to another file, then I simply reference that file when we need it. We run a cron on the script I wrote so it checks the wp script every so often and outputs any updates if needed. That obviously really made things faster but I just have never done it before so I am curious about it:   * obviously we have a file with 777 permissions, what are my security concerns for this?   * Is this a good strategy to cut down in the future when the processing doesn't have to be done at the time of load?"}
{"_id": "200674", "title": "How to name your application version so a user don't find out that it doesn't change during an update", "text": "I know it's a strange requirement but we want to create some version string which wouldn't change and that would prevent a user to notice that after an update, the version is the same as before. Example               asfkl1sd35f1s3df15s53dfs1df3sd15s3fsf      But this is quite ugly and may attract too much attention :) Simple strings on the other hand are easily distinguishable and one may notice that it does not change in time... So basically we want to have the same version but we don't want to hear users complaining that they updated the application and the version is the same. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "200678", "title": "Copyright/Licensing on a complete rewrite", "text": "There was an application for PalmPilots that I liked back when PalmPilots were a thing. I want to recreate it (or at least what I remember of it) for modern mobile devices. The problem is, after scouring the internet for any information on the application or the original author, I am unable to find anything. I can't even find any binaries for the app. Since I have absolutely nothing but memories to work with, I'll have to write this from scratch, but my intention is to make it as similar as possible to the original. Since I have no idea who the original author was or what the original license was (I do know that it was at least freeware), I wonder to what extent I can do this. I don't plan on charging for my rewrite and I would like to license it under the GPL or similar. I know this is probably a gray issue, but is it closer to light gray or dark gray? EDIT: I should also add that I know for a fact that any text or graphics (ie. anything except code/functionality/UI layout/general concept) would have been licensed to the author in such a way that, without question, I would also be able to use them."}
{"_id": "231998", "title": "Does a repository belong in this project?", "text": "I have a project that gets all of its data from API calls. The server that hosts this API connects with it's own database (not even sure what DB it is, etc). More or less the idea of a repository is to separate data and map it, right? I shouldn't be concerned where my data comes from. But if, at the end of the day, they are API calls, should the repository itself be doing all the api calls within its methods? For example if we had a FindBY method in the repository, should that method be the one making the API call?"}
{"_id": "122676", "title": "A good substitute for ASMX web service methods, but not a general handler", "text": "The best thing I like about ASP.NET MVC, is that you can directly call a server method (called action), from the client. This is so convenient, and so straightforward, that I really like to implement such a model in ASP.NET WebForms too. However, in ASP.NET WebForms, to call a server method from the client, you should either use **Page Methods** , or Web Services, both of which use SOAP as their communication protocol (though JSON can also be used). There is also another substitution, which is using Generic Handlers. The problem with them however is that, a separate Generic Handler should be written for each server method. In other words, each Generic Handler works like a simple method. Is there anyway else to imitate MVC model in ASP.NET WebForms? Please note that I can't change to MVC platform right now, cause the project at our hand is a big project and we don't have required resources and time to change our platform. What we seek, is a simple MVC model implementation for our AJAX calls. A problem that we have with Web Services, is the known problem of SoapException, and we're not interested in creating custom SoapExctensions."}
{"_id": "197801", "title": "Sorting an ArrayList by a Split Value", "text": "I am attempting to create an list which should be sorted by a particular field in a colon separated string. I have an array of strings with the following values:               name1:535     name2:697      After sorting this list, I would have it sorted by the number in the second field:               name2:697     name1:535      How should I go about doing this, are there any issues I should be aware of when sorting this List of Strings?"}
{"_id": "122675", "title": "What should I put in comments while commiting to the Source Control?", "text": "I am a lone developer and maintain a SVN server for source control. So far, I haven't followed anything specific while committing my changes. I was just reviewing my previous commits, and couldn't make any sense of my comments. What do you put in comments while committing your checkins?"}
{"_id": "237235", "title": "Moving our web application from a windows development environment to linux environment seamlessly", "text": "I am trying to develop a web application on a windows machine using apache wicket, java, jquery etc. Apache wicket comes with an embedded jetty server. I am using eclipse as the IDE. The application needs to access some resources like configuration files etc that are present on remote machine (linux server) to which we could ssh, once development is complete we would like to deploy this application on a tomcat server hosted on this linux server. How to move seamlessly from the windows development environment to the linux server deployment? Right now we do the development by copying over the latest config files from the server, however this is error prone as it becomes difficult to keep track of the latest config files, this leads to unexpected behavior when the application is deployed. Our team is located in India and our servers are located in US, mapping the config files and accessing them do not have good response times."}
{"_id": "237236", "title": "PaypalCheckout object is composed of PaypalQuery objects. Hide PaypalQuery objects to users of PaypalCheckout?", "text": "I have a `PaypalCheckout` object that handles the checkout process: from initiating API calls, to providing an interface for front-end code (e.g. View/Controller). The `PaypalCheckout` object handles: gathering price details from a basket, to redirecting to paypal for payment, to getting the customer's address details from Paypal, sending payment confirmation to paypal and finally determining the status of the payment. It does so by instantiating children of an abstract `PaypalQuery` class such as `PaypalQuery_StartCheckout`, PaypalQuery_GetAddressDetails`,`PaypalQuery_ConfirmPayment`. **My question is about how to organise methods in`PaypalQuery_ConfirmPayment` and 'PaypalCheckout':** At present, my `PaypalQuery_ConfirmPayment` objects have methods such as:   * `public function isPaymentSuccessful();`   * `public function isPaymentPending()`   * `public function hasItemNotReceivedProtection()`   * `public function getPendingReason()` And I was hoping to hide all `PaypalQuery` object methods from front-end code. The problem is, that would involve making methods in `PaypalCheckout` which blindly call and return methods in the `PaypalQuery` class(es). While not exactly much of a hassle, it 'smells'. Although what the smells are, let alone the best solutions, elude me. I am hoping to keep this simple - while I may add other payment options besides Paypal in the future, I am comfortable refactoring at that later date. Also, in case it makes a difference, I don't think I am using any traditional framework patterns such as MVC - (although I have taken ideas from them). I am doing this in PHP. What solutions could I use? Thanks"}
{"_id": "237238", "title": "CI runner on same server of GitLab?", "text": "I'm setting up a GitLab server in my company and now I'm adding GitLab CI to it. Before start this task I'd like to understand if there are any disadvantages running my runners on the same server used by GitLab and GitLab CI. I've read that there are security concerns but we use it only internally so I don't think this could be a problem. Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "193718", "title": "How to best organize spaghetti Javascript on the client with an MVC server architecture?", "text": "A LAMP project I am currently working on is pretty well organized on the backend. However, there are a ton of pages that just have a diarrhea of javascript and html squirted all over numerous locations with little discernible architecture, rhyme, or reason. In a few cases, some kind of javascript prototype was created for a common control, and the MVC framework in place is taking care of templating pages. How do we start to get all this spaghetti code under control? On backend projects I would start with getting some unit testing in place, CI, refactor common MVC or model/mapper code out etc.."}
{"_id": "36396", "title": "Good resources for web form design and usability", "text": "Can anyone suggest good resources about web form design and usability for web applications?   Especially complex forms with 15+ fields etc."}
{"_id": "36390", "title": "Should I start making connections even if I'm not ready for a job yet?", "text": "The first job is always the hardest to get and I'm no exception. I'm 23 years old and I have no college degree but planned on going to college this year if all goes well (CS of course). I'm self-studying java right now. I know most of the topics related to the language besides the more advanced topics and I'm beginning to look at open source projects. I would like to find a job (at least a part time job) after a year or two when I'll gain more experience and learn more about java technologies and other technologies that interest me. Finding a job will be a bit difficult because most of the people (or a lot of them at least) at my current age already have 2 years or more of experience, so I will be somewhat disadvantaged. Should I start building connections and joining websites such as linkedin ? I never bothered to look into it because I'm not much of a social network person. If I start contributing to open source projects and create personal projects for 2 years could I apply for jobs that require 1-2 years of experience? Does this experience count ?"}
{"_id": "173030", "title": "Equal Gifts Algorithm Problem", "text": "Problem Link - http://opc.iarcs.org.in/index.php/problems/EQGIFTS > It is Lavanya's birthday and several families have been invited for the > birthday party. As is customary, all of them have brought gifts for Lavanya > as well as her brother Nikhil. Since their friends are all of the erudite > kind, everyone has brought a pair of books. Unfortunately, the gift givers > did not clearly indicate which book in the pair is for Lavanya and which one > is for Nikhil. Now it is up to their father to divide up these books between > them. > > He has decided that from each of these pairs, one book will go to Lavanya > and one to Nikhil. Moreover, since Nikhil is quite a keen observer of the > value of gifts, the books have to be divided in such a manner that the total > value of the books for Lavanya is as close as possible to total value of the > books for Nikhil. Since Lavanya and Nikhil are kids, no book that has been > gifted will have a value higher than 300 Rupees... For the problem, I couldn't think of anything except recursion. The code I wrote is given below. But the problem is that the code is time-inefficient and gives TLE (Time Limit Exceeded) for 9 out of 10 test cases! What would be a better approach to the problem? Code -               #include<cstdio>     #include<climits>     #include<algorithm>     using namespace std;          int n,g[150][2];          int diff(int a,int b,int f) {         ++f;         if(f==n) {                    if(a>b) {                            return a-b;                    }                    else {                         return b-a;                    }         }         return min(diff(a+g[f][0],b+g[f][1],f),diff(a+g[f][1],b+g[f][0],f));     }          int main() {         int i;         scanf(\"%d\",&n);         for(i=0;i<n;++i) {                          scanf(\"%d%d\",&g[i][0],&g[i][1]);         }         printf(\"%d\",diff(g[0][0],g[0][1],0));     }      Note - It is just a practice question, & is not part of a competition."}
{"_id": "33349", "title": "Scientific evidence that supports using long variable names instead of abbreviations?", "text": "Is there any scientific evidence that the human brain can read and understand fully written variable names better/faster than abbreviated ones? Like               PersistenceManager persistenceManager;      in contrast to               PersistenceManager pm;      I have the impression that I get a better grasp of code that does not use abbreviations, even if the abbreviations would have been commonly used throughout the codebase. Can this individual feeling be backed up by any studies?"}
{"_id": "203097", "title": "Share Mulitple Classes as one dll or a lib with Mulitple Projects", "text": "Currently I have some shared class files(.cpp and .h) which I include them in around 20 Projects. Currently I have to include them in all of the projects. So if I get some business requirments and I change some of the shared(.cpp or .h) files I have to include them in all the 20 Projects which is kind of tedious. Is there a way where I can create a shared dll or library and include it all of my Projects. So if I have to change it, I just have to change it once and then just Add Reference to include that dll or library which contains all the shared(.cpp, .h) files. Any help/recommendations regarding the same, will be highly appreciated. I am using VS2012 for VC++."}
{"_id": "134497", "title": "Might I run into any trouble if I plug into an existing service/application with my own application and charge for it?", "text": "I know this is more of a lawyer question, however I figure someone here has probably done this and can give me a quick answer. Lets take a moderately extreme case. I build an adapter for a website that translates the requests and markup into a more formal API. I then take this API I developed and build a mobile app on it. So in short I take a site that doesn't support mobile. Build a mobile application, and then charge for the mobile application. I am not talking about charging for any of the original product. Simply the extension to the product. I ask because there is a site I would really like to build a mobile app for, because it would make my life easier, and it would be pretty gravy if I could earn some cash on the side from the work as well."}
{"_id": "173034", "title": "File system implementation in MongoDB with GridFS", "text": "I am working on two projects that will both implement a Webdav server backed by a MongoDB GridFS. In each case, there is the potential for the system to store tens of millions of files spread across thousands of hierarchical directories. I can come up with two different ways of storing the directory structure:   * As a \"true\" hierarchical file system, with directories containing the IDs (`_id`) of subdirectories and regular files. The paths will be separated by slashes (`/`) as in a POSIX-compliant file system.     * The path `/a/b/c` will be represented as a directory `a` containing a directory `b` containing a file `c`.   * As a flat file system, where file names include the slashes.     * The path `/a/b/c` will be stored as a single file with the name `/a/b/c` What are the advantages and disadvantages of each, with respect to a \"real\" folder-based file system?"}
{"_id": "203098", "title": "Best alternative of Property file in Java", "text": "Hey I an working on the product which is live at multiple portals. The product is developed in GWT, JAVA, Hibernate. **My question is :** Whether there is any alternative of using property file in java. **My Requirement :**   1. For one property key there are multiple values in live portal for each different portal.   2. Each time I change property file, I need to make the war again.   3. The loading of any of the property should not be time-consuming. Any help or suggession would be apprecialble !!!"}
{"_id": "203099", "title": "Concept of bit fields", "text": "Whenever I read a code like this:                 struct node       {               int x : 2;               int p : 4;        }n;      with bit fields involved, I get really confused, as to how they are represented in memory, what is `sizeof(n)` etc., how does it differ with normal members of structures? I tried referring K&R and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_field but they little to remove my confusion. What concepts of bit fields am I failing to grasp?"}
{"_id": "252526", "title": "Is having some logic in source code in order to perform some tests a good practice?", "text": "The question is not about changing the method/function visibility or extract local variable into instance variable in order to perform unit tests. There are cases where we could include some logic in the source code in order to help us performing some functional tests or end-to-end tests. Generally speaking, these code interact with main logic directly and if the test code is defective, the business logic is affected. One example could be that we have some test code around date/time logic so that if the testers make server and client time different, this code could help them to perform some tests. So how bad you think having this is, if there is no other easy(ish) way to test this part of business logic? Please comment if this plain explanation is too vague and you need more examples."}
{"_id": "252522", "title": "Many Arguments in Case Classes", "text": "I have generally read that having many (>4) arguments to a function/constructor is a bad practice.   1. Is this still considered a bad practice? And is there a non-obvious reason?   2. In something like a Scala Case Class where there may be many fields what can be done to avoid such a construction? (Not sure if this is best fit for here, SO, or CodeReview)"}
{"_id": "146508", "title": "Passing member variable as a method parameter", "text": "In a project, I've found a code like this:               class SomeClass     {         private SomeType _someField;              public SomeType SomeField         {             get { return _someField; }             set { _someField = value; }         }              protected virtual void SomeMethod(/*...., */SomeType someVar)         {         }              private void SomeAnotherMethod()         {             //.............             SomeMethod(_someField);             //.............         }          };      How do I convince my teammates that this is bad code? I believe this is an unnecessary complication. Why pass a member variable as a method parameter if you already have access to it? This is also a violation of encapsulation. Do you see any other issues with this code?"}
{"_id": "85764", "title": "Why is prefixing column names considered bad practice?", "text": "According to a popular SO post is it considered a bad practice to prefix table names. At my company **every column** is prefixed by a table name. This is difficult for me to read. I'm not sure the reason, but this naming is actually the company standard. I can't stand the naming convention, but I have no documentation to back up my reasoning. All I know is that reading AdventureWorks is much simpler. In ~~this~~ our company DB you will see a table, Person and it might have column name: Person_First_Name   or maybe even   Person_Person_First_Name (don't ask me why you see person 2x) Why is it considered a bad practice to pre-fix column names? Are underscores considered evil in SQL as well? * * * Note: I own Pro SQL Server 2008 - Relation Database design and implementation. References to that book are welcome."}
{"_id": "44158", "title": "Would adding award points or game features to workplace software be viewed poorly amongst the programming community?", "text": "So one of my responsibilities at work is to build an internal tool that helps the workers enter in all their information. It's an enterprise application that is similar to a Windows forms database tool. So it's not much different than like developing a Word + Excel combo application, but the average person in this workgroup is a 20-40 year old woman or a random chatty male type. Plus I know all of these people are heavily involved with Facebook on a daily basis. How bad would it be if I styled my new interface to be similar to what Facebook does. People could get award points and stuff when they fill out different types of forms and basically compete against each other like it was a game. When people had completed one, it would be posted on their wall and everyone could comment/like stuff just like in Facebook. And it would be like they are doing peer reviewing for fun. The rewards would be outstanding I would imagine. These people are so into Facebook and Facebook games that productivity would rise due to them trying to compete and earn points and achievements. Would this be taking advantage of the people by 'tricking them into working harder by giving them a game' or would it be viewed as something that would improve happiness at work?"}
{"_id": "218391", "title": "Arrays vs Objects in view template", "text": "I am wondering, in view templates, what would contribute to me choosing between using arrays or objects for getting things printed out in arrays `{{$user->zip_code}}` vs `{{$user['zip_code']}}` I'm working in blade templates in Laravel/PHP fwiw. My feeling is that it makes sense to use objects: we can use methods if we need to to display/format data, it looks a lot cleaner in the views, and bc of how PHP works fails gracefully if the item isn't set (an unset array value will puke, so you either need to make sure all possible properties are present but false, or do a `{{(isset($user['zip_code'])) ? $user['zip_code'] : ''}}` for everything you use in a view. However, I have encountered some contrasting opinions like: the less the view knows about the layers below it, the better. As such, \"flat\" values (arrays) are better to use in the view. We should not trust the view not to explode if a value is not set, that should be handled in the controller. Because our object properties are not encoded in the models in this system, we can't rely on each object always having the same info in a model level. Wondering if there are other factors at play here. Orr.. Does it not matter"}
{"_id": "44156", "title": "Uncomfortable terminology", "text": "I couldn't imagine using terminology like \"code smell\", scrum \"chickens\", \"pigs\" at my workplace. These types of terms just wouldn't fit in to my environment. My co-workers would look at me, and tell me to grow up, or stop being offensive or similar. Does anyone else find terminology used on this site, or other related terminology uncomfortable to use at work?"}
{"_id": "218393", "title": "Can relational algebra/calculus proofs be used to test/verify SQL?", "text": "Is it feasible or even possible to use relational algebra and/or relational calculus in the form of proofs to test/verify the correctness of SQL statements, functions, and stored procedures? It seems to me like it should be at least possible, but I don't know if there's a detail I'm missing that makes a 1:1 mapping between the proof and the code incorrect. Have any of you tried a method like this? Did it work? What were your experiences like?"}
{"_id": "146506", "title": "Writing-Reading a hashtable to a text file", "text": "I'm implementing a hashtable structure for a dictionary. Dictionary is in a text file. There are 2 words on each line. I'm generating the hashtable by using the first word as a key. I'm holding the hashtable on a list. I want to save the hashtable to a text file to use it every time. What kind of structure should I use? Is there a way to do this without reading the whole hashtable from text file?"}
{"_id": "44150", "title": "Which languages are more conducive to telecommuting, and also less concerned with pairing?", "text": "I don't know that it may even make a difference, and I reckon if it did the differences would be cultural rather than technical, but if one were going to set out today (2011) to learn a language, and specifically wanted to telecommute (so they could live in two different places during the year), are there any languages whose culture looks more favorably upon telecommuting than other languages / cultures? For example, I get the impression (and I am probably completely wrong) that in the Ruby community, you are more likely to be expected to be on-site and doing pair programming (though I suppose you can do pairing remotely too). As a corollary question, are there languages / communities where pair programming is less important, for people who wanted to program in part because they aren't social butterflies?"}
{"_id": "132895", "title": "What language is used to program nano quadrotor behaviour?", "text": "Just watched this fascinating and terrifying video. I'm curious what programming language / paradigm is used to control these beasties?"}
{"_id": "41678", "title": "How to implement software for my vehicle", "text": "I'm developing a Driver Safety Monitoring System which is kind of small software which would be implemented inside a car with connections to few cameras. What I want to know is **to implement this software inside the vehicle what kind of computer can I use?**"}
{"_id": "87698", "title": "Parsing scripts that use curly braces", "text": "To get an idea of what I'm doing, I am writing a python parser that will parse directx .x text files. The problem I have deals with how the files are formatted. Although I'm writing it in python, I'm looking for general algorithms for dealing with this sort of parsing. .x files define data using templates. The format of a template is               template_name {        [some_data]     }      The goal I have is to parse the file line-by-line and whenever I come across a template, I will deal with it accordingly. My initial approach was to check if a line contains an opening or closing brace. If it's an open brace, then I will check what the template name is. Now the catch here is that the open brace doesn't have to occur on the same line as the template name. It could just as well be               template_name     {        [some_data]     }      So if I were to use my \"open brace exists\" criteria, it won't work for any files that use the latter format. A lot of languages also use curly braces (though I'm not sure when people would be parsing the scripts themselves), so I was wondering if anyone knows how to accurately get the template name (or in some other languages, it could just as well be a function name, though there aren't any keywords to look for)"}
{"_id": "41671", "title": "Most difficult subject/theory in Computer Science?", "text": "Which is the most difficult CS subject/theory that you studied but important to the field? And the reason please?"}
{"_id": "41675", "title": "Is it OK to live without knowing how the program you created works?", "text": "I mean, there are really useful libs that can solve problems when you are stuck and do not know how to solve this or that with your knowledge of programming language you use... For example, Boost for C++ or JQuery for JavaScript or Spring for Java... They solve problems in seconds and you do not really care how they did it (despite that they are written in the very same language you are programming in)... So I wonder am I alone in using libs while not being capable to write solutions for my problems from scratch or is it standard practice?"}
{"_id": "231274", "title": "\"Property Container\" design-pattern in-depth definition", "text": "Could anybody, please, explain what is a `Property Container` or at least where can I get information about that pattern **on the Internet**? I've found that it exists as one of the `Fundamental` patterns in this article. Unfortunately, it is not described in the corresponding English article. The only thing is a short description in Wikipedia that I've tried to approximately translate below: > This pattern allows to add additional properties for the class in container > (inside the class), instead of extending the class with the new properties. If a short example is possible in PHP / C# / C++ or Java, it would be quite useful for understanding. P.S.: It seems like it has been described in \"SanFrancisco(TM) Design Patterns: Blueprints for Business Software\", but I don't have access to it. Google does not help or I'm searching with the wrong keywords..."}
{"_id": "218642", "title": "How to approach multiple page form with just one save option", "text": "The screen shot shows the magento product upload page. The left nav allows you to switch to different options for the product. Basically each option in the left nav appears as a different page. However when you save and close, it will save all the updates made on each page. Using Foundation4, html, css, js - what would be the best approach to replicating something similar? Say I want 3 pages and one save button option. Using http://foundation.zurb.com/docs/components/section.html#panel2 and having the save buttons the top line form level seems a possible option. ![Magento screen shot](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7BRce.jpg)"}
{"_id": "218641", "title": "Problems with Corba", "text": "I have a software engineering midterm tomorrow and as I was going through the past exams I saw this question: True or False with justification: One of the problems with CORBA is that distributed systems created using it must be written using the same programming language. I don't remember my professor saying anything about CORBA in class so I am having hard time answering this question even though I searched for CORBA online , so it would be great if you could help me understand the question. Thanks in advance"}
{"_id": "218644", "title": "How could Clang release under BSD license?", "text": "I found that llvm could only generate assembly code. If someone want generate and link assembly code to native executable code, they should use external tool(GNU as/ld, for example. Currently lld is not ready, and there no more information about llvm-mc). This question's answer and other answers imply that Clang use Binutils(as and ld) to generate and link native code(I'm not quite sure about this). If so, how could Clang release under BSD like license? I can't find any license exception(like Bison Exception) about ld or as. If I misunderstand some concepts, please forgive me! BTW, could we use GNU as and ld in programmatically way? **EDIT:** Thanks for these answers. It seems that clang still not a standalone toolchain and have to use VS or GNU tools. Does it mean if someone write a compiler based on llvm. If users didn't install GNU or VS tools. The compiler is not a out-of-the-box compiler?"}
{"_id": "129741", "title": "Do paint programs also need database?", "text": "I was thinking about how would a paint software works. Firstly I thought that it might not use any database but when I started thinking about the undo function I realized that it might be that the data is somehow stored in the database. Can anyone please help me out by telling me how the images are stored in a normal paint program(say MS-PAINT of Windows)."}
{"_id": "129747", "title": "planning the same app for both OSX and iOS", "text": "I would like to ask which is the best strategy for creating an application that will be developed both on Mac and iPad, so to make minumum effort to port it from one platform to the other, starting from iPad, for example, but rather trying to make both at the same time. The application, in fact, would be an iPad-style one on the Mac too. How should I have to plan the project? Which are the main tricks to easily get the goal?"}
{"_id": "71110", "title": "Need to include Calendar and Email in own CRM system. Whose?", "text": "I am writing a web based application that needs to have some elements of CRM in it but I cannot use an of-the-shelf CRM to do what I want. (Honestly we have been through it all and it will not work). Now while Tasks, Calls, Meetings and Notes are straightforward the idea of reinventing Mail and Calendars seems a waste of time and effort and also unproductive as most users already have their own and it simply adds to the complexity of my application and hacks users off. My thoughts are going around using Outlook and or GMail/iCal and or Mac Mail/iCal and or Thunderbird and importing the relevant data or if possible integrating it into the application. Any thoughts? Anyone got any experience of this can point me in a few directions. N.B. Not looking for an answer as too complex just some pointers and thoughts. Thanks. p.s. We did look at Sugar CRM as the basis for our project and it is useful to get best practice from but as I say it was not useable due to how we are structuring our software, not Sugar's fault."}
{"_id": "178613", "title": "Internationalization of non-english application", "text": "I know there are lots of posts for internationalization, but this is something I didn't found while searching. I have a PHP Web application, which is pretty big right now. It's developed actively for 4 years and wasn't built with internationalization in mind. Text is everywhere - in plain HTML, in PHP variables, in echo's, in the DB... Now I'm familiar with the concept of gettext and this is what i plan to use for the internationalization project of the application. However the app is not written in English and here is my question: Should I first translate everything to English while wrapping every string in gettext() function, or I can use my native language as a base? P.S. also any quick suggestions (links maybe) on making my life easier with the whole i18n project will be greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "137913", "title": "Need advice for approach for a web-based app that loads excel worksheet but exposes only the charts", "text": "I'm looking for suggestions on the Visual Studio approach to take for a web application that is in the conceptual stage. My environment has a lot of tools:   * Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard 64bit   * Visual Studio 2010 Professional Edition   * Sharepoint 2010 Server Enterprise Edition   * SQL Server 2008 R2   * Office 2010 Professional I know I will need this app to retrieve data from a database (or a web service - not sure exactly at this point). The data needs to be placed in an Excel workbook dynamically. The app will need to have a nice user interface (standard web controls - perhaps with some Javascript effects). The Excel ribbon and worksheet grid will need to be hidden. Some web control(s) will cause the Excel chart(s) to be rendered. I am thinking this sounds like Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) so as to leverage .Net and hide Excel. Can you offer suggestions regarding: One ASP.Net Web App Project One Class Library Project for Excel or perhaps which one of the several different Excel 2010 project types (addin, template, document) Would Excel Services for Sharepoint be useful (or required) ? I am feeling a little overwhelmed with so many choices at this early stage of conceptualizing the app. Can you suggest some ideas for this sort of thing? Also, I am a bit more experienced with C# but I've read VB.Net is better for work with the Excel object model. What are general advises with regard to tool choice and overall approach tradeoffs?"}
{"_id": "137912", "title": "What's new in PL/I, DB2, and S/390 assembler?", "text": "I have an upcoming technical interview with a former employer that will focus on PL/I, DB2, and ISPF. The job will be with systems that I architected and wrote myself 20 years ago. The few years of professional programming that I did since then was all assembly language. The problem is that I haven't programmed professionally in 15 years, and the personal programming that I've done since then has been in other \"modern\" languages. My question is whether there are new features in PL/I and DB2 that I should be aware of. (When browsing through the latest \"Principles of Operation\" I saw machine instructions to support C style strings that weren't there in ancient times - cool.)"}
{"_id": "178616", "title": "Separating merged array of arithmetic and geometric series", "text": "Given an array of positive integers in increasing order. Separate them in two series, an arithmetic sequence and geometric sequence. The given array is such that a solution do exist. The union of numbers of the two sequence must be the given array.   Both series can have common elements i.e. series need not to be disjoint.   The ratio of the geometric series can be fractional. Example:               Given series : 2,4,6,8,10,12,25     AP: 2,4,6,8,10,12     GP: 4,10,25      I tried taking few examples but could not reach a general way. Even tried some graph implementation by introducing edges if they follow a particular sequence but could not reach solution."}
{"_id": "8254", "title": "Function overloading? Yes or no", "text": "I'm developing a statically- and strongly-typed, compiled language, and I'm revisiting the idea of whether to include function overloading as a language feature. I realized that I'm a little bit biased, coming mainly from a `C[++|#]` background. What are the most convincing arguments _for_ and _against_ including function overloading in a language? * * * **EDIT:** Is there nobody who has an opposing opinion? Bertrand Meyer (creator of Eiffel back in 1985/1986) calls method overloading this: (source) > a vanity mechanism that brings nothing to the semantic power of an O-O > language, but hampers readability and complicates everyone's task Now those are some sweeping generalizations, but he's a smart guy, so I think it's safe to say he could back them up if he needed to. In fact, he almost had Brad Abrams (one of the CLSv1 developers) convinced that .NET shouldn't support method overloading. (source) That's some powerful stuff. Can anyone shed some light on his thoughts, and whether his viewpoint is still justified 25 years later?"}
{"_id": "8257", "title": "Load Test Methodology", "text": "I'm currently writing a load test for a cache which should test how a cache will react to persistent requests. A colleague and I had differing opinions on how this load testing should be performed. I believe that a load test should be as random as possible. It should model real-world load as much as possible, and the way towards that is randomality. So I have created this random test as follows:   * Test data is held in spreadsheets and is loaded into TestRunner objects at startup      * The test data is **not** random   * The load test will run 10 random TestRunners in individual Threads at the same time   * The object returned by the cache will be tested to make sure it is sensible, it is not thoroughly tested      * Any tests that fail will be output at the end and each test has a unique ID to easily find failed tests   * At random intervals, the cache will be cleared to model the real-world requirement of the cache being cleared at any time.   * The load test will run for a configurable amount of time My colleague's idea of what a load test should do is:   * Test data is held in spreadsheets and is loaded into TestRunner objects at startup   * All TestRunner objects are run in a sequential manner   * Each time the load test is run, it will run the TestRunner objects in the same order Which methodology do you feel would produce the most reliable load test? I personally think the random test will produce a more reliable load test as it will model real-world usage. It is not known what order requests will come in when this is released to production, so it should be tested with that unknown element taken into account. However, running all tests in the same sequence each time will make any failures reproducable, which is important during testing."}
{"_id": "76465", "title": "8yr+ .Net developer interested in game programming - should I learn C++?", "text": "I've been writing .Net code since 2003 and so I am very comfortable with it now and have a fairly deep knowledge surrounding the .Net framework that I have built over the years, plus feel very comfortable with advanced programming concepts and programming in general. I want to get into some game programming, but the last C++ I wrote was at a beginner-to-intermediate level around 2001-2002. I know that there is a lot of support for game development in .Net languages these days, but I also know that there are a lot of game libraries, resources and commercial products built on or around C and C++. Would learning C++ at this stage be a practical endeavour for me, or would the amount of time required to become competent with C++ outweigh the productivity advantage I'd get from sticking with .Net? One of my considerations is that I'm concerned about the massive and growing impact Apple is having on the tech world and the general complacency Microsoft seems to have with winning consumer and developer mindshare these days, which leaves me wondering, if I were to focus my efforts on .Net technologies (particularly in view of the fact that the Mono team was recently laid off after Novell's acquisition), am I probably severely limiting my potential future audience for any games I create?"}
{"_id": "76463", "title": "Reasons for separate source and generated trees", "text": "What are the reasons for putting the generated files in a tree parallel to the source trees? For example, in Eclipse I usually choose to put the sources to `.../src` and the compiler generated files in `.../classes`. _Mixing both in a single tree looks dirty to me, however I can't find any advantage in the separation_ :   * Theoretically, I could backup the sources more easily, but that's not true. I'm using git and ignoring all `*.class` files everywhere is just trivial. With other version control systems it should be very easy, too.   * Theoretically, it helps to find a given source file faster as the tree is not polluted by the class files. Actually, I seldom need it (the IDE offers much faster ways). For looking at the classes I'm using the Class View, which abstracts from the directory structure.   * Theoretically, there may be tools requiring that, but I'm not aware of any. There's two disadvantages of the separation:   * The IDE copies all non-java files (\"resources\") from the source tree to the generated one. If the IDE doesn't notice a changed resource, then there's an old version on the classpath (i.e., in the generated tree) and I'll find myself running a program working with the old version... this may cost me quite a lot of time.   * Once upon a time, I need to find the class-file corresponding with a given java-file (or vice versa), which takes quite a lot of time. _So what are the real advantages of the separation?_ This question is not Java (Eclipse) specific. However, in Java the problem of navigating to a parallel tree is aggravated by the fact that the trees tend to be very deep (because of the directory structure mirroring the package structure and because of the world-wide package naming convention)."}
{"_id": "195842", "title": "Approach to simplifying an algorithm", "text": "For completely random reasons*, I wrote some code that calculates and displays the following expression: > P=1*(2+2) _(3+3+3)_ (4+4+4+4) _.._ (n+n...\u2026 Which is equivalent to `(n!)^2` The version I wrote (listed below the line) isn't terribly efficient; especially not in how it calculates the inner product. **How should I go about simplifying the algorithm so it will operate faster and be more easily understood?** And yes, I know I should use something other than `int` for the variables. That aspect of my code isn't as interesting as re-working the algorithmic approach. * In the spirit of full disclosure this off-topic question sparked my working on the code  * * *               int sequence(int n)     {       int i, accum, prod, j;            accum = 1;       for (i = 2 .. n)       {         prod = i;         for (j = 1 .. i-1)         {           prod += i;         }         accum *= prod;       }       return accum;     }"}
{"_id": "195844", "title": "Designing a universal database driver class", "text": "I have a homebrew MVC framework that I have been using for a while, and it has been working great, but I am planning an upgrade to it for its ORM classes. So far, it only supports SQL databases by creating statements dependent on what function is being called. The ORM class includes field structure and validation, computed fields, indices and joined classes (for associations, `1-1`, `1-*`, `*-1` and `*-*`), and that provides enough functionality for selecting any data and fetching associated rows in the database. But I would like to extend it to support XML, LDAP and NoSQL databases (i.e. MongoDB). My ideas for implementing this would be to modify the functions within the ORM class to interact with a custom driver (for each database type) in a common format. Unfortunately, I haven't had enough experience with using these other formats enough to adequately design an interface class that could be used by the ORM for any type. So, are there any universal database drivers that would support all of these database types so I can learn by example? The current interface I am working by is:               interface DBDriver {       function connect($host, $un, $pw, $persist = false);       function disconnect();       function selectDB($db);       function charset($charset);       function insert($table, $values);       function select($table, $fields, $joins, $where, $group, $having, $order, $limit);       function update($table, $where, $values, $where, $order, $limit);       function delete($table, $where, $order, $limit);       function transactionBegin();       function transactionCommit();       function transactionRollback();     }      But I am concerned that although this will provide enough for creating SQL statements, it might not be sufficient, or perhaps even overkill for other methods such as XML or NoSQL."}
{"_id": "15519", "title": "Taking scalability to the next level. What methods can help me make sure I do the right thing?", "text": "Myself and a fellow PHP dev are starting to research a new web app that we think (hope) will have a global reach. The trouble is that, whilst we both consider ourselves capable, we are concerned with the sheer size of the potential traffic (neither of us has done anything with a reach beyond a few thousand. This site will hopefully serve millions) and wonder what we can do along the way to ensure we have tested things for scale. The site will be dependant on mass simultaneous log ins, uploads of relatively large files (3-10mb audio, >4mb images) and also streaming of audio."}
{"_id": "206310", "title": "Data Synchronization in mobile apps - multiple devices, multiple users", "text": "I'm looking into building my first mobile app. One of the core features of the application is that multiple devices/users will have access to the same data -- and all of them will have CRUD rights. I believe the architecture should involve a central server where all the data is stored. The devices will use an API to interact with the server to perform its data operations (e.g. adding a record, editing a record, deleting a record). I imagine a scenario where synchronizing the data will become a problem. Assume the application should work when it is not connected to the Internet, and thus cannot communicate with this central server. So:   1. User A is offline and edits record #100   2. User B is offline and edits record #100   3. User C is offline and deletes record #100   4. User C goes online (presumably, record #100 should get deleted on the server)   5. User A and B goes online, but the records they edited no longer exist All sorts of scenarios similar to the above can come up. **How is this generally handled?** I plan to use MySQL, but am wondering if it's not appropriate for such a problem."}
{"_id": "206317", "title": "SQL Server: When to use SSIS vs T-SQL for ETL Tasks", "text": "When should I use one versus the other? For instance, let's say I have 20 comma delimited, denormalized text files and I want to transform the data and load it into normalized SQL Server tables."}
{"_id": "175931", "title": "Verify uniqueness of new content", "text": "I'm working on a review site, where there is a minor issue with _almost_ duplicate reviews across items. Just a few words are changed. It would be very nice to be able to uncover these duplicates before they are approved by a moderator, and I'm hoping someone could chime in on the best strategy to get there. The site is running Ruby on Rails on a Postgres database and using Thinking Sphinx for search (all on Heroku), and so far the best option I see is to be pulling all the reviews out of the db and using a module like amatch to compare the strings. Not very efficient, so in this case I guess I'll have to limit the number/age of reviews to scan for dupes. Anyone got a better idea?"}
{"_id": "237905", "title": "Object Identity and Mutability", "text": "I was reading a proposal for value types in Java, and I came across this sentence: \"Object identity serves only to support mutability, where an object\u2019s state can be mutated but remains the same intrinsic object.\" From what I understand about object identity (though I'm likely wrong, in which case please correct me), it's the idea of your variable acting as a pointer or reference to an object located elsewhere in memory (usually on the heap, a la Java and C#). So what would this have to do with object mutability? Does this imply that for example, instantiated objects on the stack in C++ are immutable? I'm having trouble seeing the link here."}
{"_id": "175934", "title": "What's the best way to use requestAnimationFrame and fixed frame rates", "text": "I recently got into using the HTML5-`requestAnimationFrame`-API a lot on animation-heavy websites, especially after seeing the **Jank Busters** talk. This seems to work pretty well and really improve performance in many cases. Yet one question still persists for me: When wanting to use an animation that is _NOT_ entirely calculated (think spritesheets for example) you will have to aim for a fixed frame rate. Of course one could go back to use `setInterval` again, but maybe there are other ways to tackle this. The two ways I could think of using `requestAnimationFrame` with a fixed frame rate are:               var fps = 25; //frames per second          function animate(){             //actual drawing goes here        setTimeout(function(){           requestAnimationFrame(animate);        }, 1000 / fps)          }          animate();      or               var fps = 25; //frames per second          var lastExecution = new Date().getTime();          function animate(){              var now = new Date().getTime();              if ((now - lastExecution) > (1000 / fps)){             //do actual drawing             lastExecution = new Date().getTime();         }              requestAnimationFrame(animate);          }          animate();      Personally, I'd opt for the second option (the first one feels like cheating), yet it seems to be more **buggy** in certain situations. Is this approach really worth it (especially at low frame rates like 12.5)? Are there things to be improved? Is there another way to tackle this?"}
{"_id": "237900", "title": "Sqlite3 slow on standard queries, is it expected?", "text": "Using Python and sqlite3. This simple print loop takes a few seconds to execute. I don't know much about databases, so I'm guessing I'm not using these queries correctly. Surely sqlite should be faster? The entire db has 5k or so rows and just a few columns if that matters.               con = lite.connect('gamelist.db')     with con:         cur = con.cursor()         cur.execute(\"SELECT * FROM GameList WHERE processed IS NULL LIMIT 4\")         for i in range(0, 4):             print cur.fetchone()"}
{"_id": "123239", "title": "Should controls on a form be prepared in a separate class?", "text": "I have a form with several controls on it. Every control has to be declared in the class, formatted in the constructor (-size, location, event subscription etc), and its event-handlers declared, again, in the class. This is getting a bit unorganized, so I was thinking of refactoring this. For every control: Preparing a class which derives from that control-type (which will include location, event-subscription and event-handlers, etc.), and then using an instance of it. Am I going to run into any trouble doing this?"}
{"_id": "159644", "title": "MIT License Question (download somebody else's code and throw it on github)", "text": "Sometimes I use plugins and 3rd party libraries, and one thing that drives me crazy is when these libraries are not versioned. So, if I download it, make some mods to it, I am the only person in the world who can benefit from it... well, until I version it myself. My question is simple: if a library I find online has an MIT License, would it violate the license if I download it, modify it, and put it on github? I'm not trying to pass it off as my own, I'm just trying to help the community benefit from my work. A lot of libraries are pretty nice, but for some reason they aren't versioned... Thanks!"}
{"_id": "159646", "title": "NSNotificationCenter vs. Protocol", "text": "I am using `MPMoviePlayerController` in a project. The `loadState` of the `MPMoviePlayerController` object is observed using `NSNotificationCenter`. Why did Apple choose `NSNotificationCenter` in this situation instead of using delegation?"}
{"_id": "7618", "title": "Does OOP fulfill the promise of code reuse? What alternatives are there to achieve code reuse?", "text": "Perhaps the greatest promise of using object-oriented paradigm is the code reuse. Some dispute that this was achieved. Why was it (not) achieved? Does code reuse as OOP defines it, make projects more productive? Or more manageable? Or easier to maintain? Or with more quality? Probably we all agree that code reuse is a good thing, but there are several ways to achieve this goal. The question is about the method of code reuse offered by OOP. Was it a good thing? **Are there better methods to achieved code reuse** than object orientation, sub-classing, polymorphism, etc.? What ways are better? **Why**? Tell us your experience with OOP reuse or other paradigms reuse."}
{"_id": "123230", "title": "Submitting R\u00e9sum\u00e9 To Bolster Bids on Side Projects While Employed", "text": "A friend is bidding on a IT project, and he needs to include my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 with his response to the bid; I'm the \"Subject Matter Expert.\" I will be helping him outside of my regular working hours. How do folks in the IT field handle such r\u00e9sum\u00e9 submissions? First of all, I don't want to include (or exclude) anything that would be misleading or untrue, but my concern is that in my field people know each other and I don't want my current employer finding out that I have submitted a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 with another company especially when I am not an employee of my friend's company. All in all, I want to avoid the awkwardness of my employer finding out (and the worse of whatever that might lead to), yet balance that with helping a friend. So my question is, what should I leave out or retain? What is appropriate? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "171038", "title": "What did programmers do before variable scope, where everything is global?", "text": "So, I am having to deal with seemingly archiac language (called PowerOn) where I have a main method, a few datatypes to define variables with, and has the ability to have sub-procedures (essentially void methods) that does not return a type nor accepts any arguements. **The problem here is that EVERYTHING is global.** I've read of these type of languages, but most books take the aproach _\"Ok, we use to use a horse and cariage, but now, here's a car so let's learn how to work on THAT!\" We will NEVER relive those days\"_. I have to admit, the mind is struggling to think _outside of scope and extent_. Well here I am. I am trying to figure out how to best manage nothing but global variables across several _open_ methods. Yep, even iterators for `for` loops have to be defined globaly, which I find myself recycling in different parts of my code. My Question: for those that have this type experience, **how did programmers deal with a large amount of variables in a global playing field?** I have feeling it just became a mental juggling trick, but I would be interested to know if there were any known aproaches."}
{"_id": "212094", "title": "Correct comment to put for boolean function arguments that are \"false\"?", "text": "From some open source projects, I gathered the following coding style               void someFunction(bool forget);          void ourFunction() {       someFunction(false /* forget */);     }          I always have doubt about what `false` means here. Does it mean \"forget\", or does the \"forget\" refer to its corresponding parameter (like in the case above), and \"false\" is meant to negate it? What style is used most often and what is the best way (or some of the better ways) to avoid the ambiguity?"}
{"_id": "242654", "title": "Managing setTimeouts and setInterval in a distributed environment", "text": "I am building a turnbased game on nodejs using socket.io and redis as the datastore. I am planning on hosting the game on AWS opsworks with the ability to scale by adding more nodes. How should I structure the application so that I can have `setTimeout` like behaviour to work correctly in the event that the node that triggered the `setTimeout` goes under for some reason? My initial plan is to have every setTimeout get stored in redis under a sorted set, with the score of the event as the unix timestamp that it should get executed in. I see 2 major problems with this approach that I am not sure how to tackle:   1. The time of the node that reads the event may not necessarily be in sync with the time of the node that stored it, causing events to fire earlier or later than they were supposed to. I'm not sure how big a problem this might be as a quick googling reveals that the drift will be minimal at worst, but I lack any practical experience to make a judgement call on this.   2. There is no way for any of the 'worker' nodes to know that there might be a task due so they would have to poll redis every second to see if there is a task that they can handle. The ideal solution for this would be a publish/subscribe that has a delay built in but this does not seem to be straight forward to implement either. Any advice on how to solve this is much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "226361", "title": "Decision making process within a Scrum team", "text": "Two questions:   1. I assume that when Scrum coaches say \"the team should decide\" they mean there has to be a consensus decision process usually facilitated by the Scrum Master?    2. What if there is a disagreement between members of the Scrum team on the way to develop/design some feature and a consensus cannot be reached, who decides? The Scrum Master? The system architect? The funcional manager? Thanks."}
{"_id": "247125", "title": "What's a good way to make sure that locally serialized data can be deserialized in newer code?", "text": "Context: I'm working on an HTML 5 game without persisted state. Every time you refresh the page, you start at the beginning. People are requesting that they can start where they left off if they leave the page. I plan to implement this as Local Storage. The thing that makes apprehensive about this is a new kind of bug I'll have to consider: If you come back and there's a newer code, it may not be able to deserialize the storage. As an example, the state when serialized may have looked like this:               {       foo: \"bar\"     }      But when the player tries the game next month, that field doesn't even exist anymore and has been broken up into two fields with a completely different type. This is bound to happen, and I think I know how to fix this: I'll put a version number in the data, and when I release version y of the app, I'll have to write code to migrate from version x state to version y state. If I release version z of the app, I'll have to write code to migrate from version y to version z. I'll probably call this logic after deserialization. But that's not what this question is about (although if there's a flaw in my approach, I'd want to hear it). What I want to know is: **How do I automate something (possibly a test) that tells me _when_ I need to write a migration script and _when_ I need to change the data's version number?** I feel automation is the key here, because things will go very wrong if I make a mistake and remembering to change a version number / write a migration script will be the last thing on my mind when I just finished that shiny new feature I want others to see. * * * An interesting (but perhaps irrelevant) realization: All these issues go away if I store the data on _my_ server in a database with a schema. That lets me confidently know that all the data is in the right state (if my schema is good). The problem with persisting locally is I lose control of the data and _when_ it gets migrated. * * * This question is similar but different to this one. The difference is I'm concerned primarily with automation and s/he's not and we're using different languages (seeing how the accepted answer is a Java library, that makes it irrelevant to me)."}
{"_id": "233267", "title": "Intel Nehalem/SB/IB/Haswell CPUs, cache vs TLB", "text": "On the Nehalem+ architecture Intel CPUs what is the interaction between the L1 cache, L2 cache, L1 DTLB and L2 DTLB? On all the images I have found there isnt a clear explanation whether the CPU looks at the L1 DTLB first, then goes to the L1D cache, or whether it only goes to the L1 DTLB cache if there is a cache miss in the L1D or the L2 cache?"}
{"_id": "108871", "title": "Are there any languages built to facilitate implementing design patterns?", "text": "Often it is not obvious how to implement a given design pattern in a language. Sometimes it is difficult or cumbersome. Are there any languages built to make using design patterns easy and effective?"}
{"_id": "245381", "title": "Mental Models or Real-World-Metaphors for Functional Programming", "text": "Does anyone have a good mental model or metaphor for functional programming which references something in the real world? Object Oriented programing intuitively makes sense to me. There are things that have properties and sometimes they also can do stuff or perform calculations on their properties (methods). (Ex: Car, Shape, Cat). I bear functional programming no ill will whatsoever and I am not interested in a debate about the virtues of the two. I just need a metaphor or mental model to work with as I have with Object Oriented programming. What are some good mental models or real world metaphors for programming in a functional paradigm? There is something about functions composed of functions processing functions which leaves one without a firm place to stand and cogitate."}
{"_id": "229352", "title": "How to support the sales team and avoid the \"Often the sales team gets us into trouble just to get a commission\" problem", "text": "With reference to this answer: > At the end of the day, we are delivering a product to a paying customer. > This customer has needs and expectations, realistic or not. Often the sales > team gets us into trouble just to get a commission. I realise there are processes (mainly with communication and project managment) that can help minimise risk (these seem to have minimal impact, mainly due to being ignored by anyone other than dev) and believe a percentage of the problem is their complete lack of technical understanding rather than greed (though this does play a part). But when it isn't possible to get rid of commissions (very good article), get (train) better salesmen, or increase dev resources, how can you minimise the impact on developer moral, timelines and generally development department being held responsible? How common is this damaging to the business (and no one higher up will believe how much better it could be - they don't see any problem now, but wonder why sales fall through and customers aren't happy) and how do others mitigate the risk, prove development is not the issue and handle such situations where the marketing is too aggressive and overselling is normal (which all propagates from the top)? How can you support the sales team and upper management to improve the root cause of this situation and what changes can be implemented in dev department to help with this? Additional information: the is only one product we create and as such is sold with additional functionality as required or work to let it integrate with existing systems. I was worried about close votes, but this is a very real problem (and I have tried to word it objectively)- if you can comment on how to improve this question, please let me know."}
{"_id": "229359", "title": "How to avoid too much html in JQuery?", "text": "I'm not liking how my JQuery is after making some dynamic buttons, or other dynamic things. For example, when I have checkboxes marked, I add a button that is called \"Download Selected\" and \"Remove Selected\". Of course, there are many more JQuery + HTML things in my site. I'd like to know how I can make my code better, not spaghetti looking. Thanks a lot!                 $(document).on('change', '.docListCheckbox', function(event){         if( $('#resultsContainer').find('.docListCheckbox:checked').length > 0 )         {           if( ! $('#download-sel').length > 0 )           {             var downSelectionBtn = '<button id=\"download-sel\" class=\"button-small button-blue\" type=\"button\">DESCARGAR MARCADOS</button>';             var delSelectionBtn = '<button id=\"delete-sel\" class=\"button-small button-red\" type=\"button\">ELIMINAR MARCADOS</button>';             $('#selection-controls').append(downSelectionBtn);             <?php if( SwHelper::checkAccess('Docusearch.Documento.Eliminar') ): ?>             $('#selection-controls').append(delSelectionBtn);             <?php endif; ?>           }         }         else         {           if( $('#download-sel').length > 0 )           {             $('#download-sel').remove();             <?php if( SwHelper::checkAccess('Docusearch.Documento.Eliminar') ): ?>             $('#delete-sel').remove();             <?php endif; ?>           }         }       });                $(document).on('click', '#docActionEdit', function() {         var button = $(this);         var isToggled = button.data('toggled');         $('#docDataEditor').slideToggle({           duration: 1000,           easing: 'easeOutBounce',           start: function(){             if(isToggled == 'false') {               button.html('EDITAR');               button.data('toggled', 'true');               $('#docActionSave').remove();             }             else {               button.html('CANCELAR');               button.data('toggled', 'false');               $('#docAvailableActions').prepend('<button id=\"docActionSave\" class=\"button-small button-green\">GUARDAR</button>');             }           }         });       });"}
{"_id": "229358", "title": "Why is the json format necessary over the normal javascript object format?", "text": "Before you answer, yes I know that other languages have no native javascript object support, but neither do they have native support for json. So wouldn't it make much more sense to modify the json spec to allow identifiers without \"\" and allow comments? Very sensible things because you don't have to serialize/deserialize when working in javascript, no?"}
{"_id": "219510", "title": "How strict should you be about indentation/white space?", "text": "Our development process is as follows code the task -> someone else QAs code and documentation -> task is merged into trunk. Recently a colleague is refusing to pass the code QA due to issues with indentation and whitespace. Here are examples of these issues (syntax is SAS): Additional whitespace:                       %if &syserr gt 0 %then %goto err; /*last line of code*/                         /* Footer area*/      Extra line of white space, and not indented inside proc sort:                /* End Of header * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */                   proc sort data = %dataset ;         by id;          run;         %if &syserr gt 0 %then %goto err;               proc sort data = &second_dataset.;         by id;         run;          %if &syserr gt 0 %then %goto err;       Extra white space between steps:                       /*join all details on for each record*/             proc sort data = &data out = data_srt ;                    by &conditions;              run;             %if &syserr gt 0 %then %goto err;                  proc sort data = &data2.;                   by &conditions.;             run;              %if &syserr gt 0 %then %goto err;                                  /*cartesian join*/             data new_data;                   join data                                &data2.  ;                   by &conditions;                   run;      The question is, being a good programmer, is looking over your code and correcting all this kind of thing the right thing to do, or is this just ridiculous? There is an additional complication, that because we don't have continuous integration or automated testing, it's not possible for the QAer to quickly fix up these issues and commit the code, for risk of accidentally deleting semicolon or something. (To be fair, the risk applies to the initial developer making these changes, so either way if this mistake occurs, it just needs to be fixed and move on)."}
{"_id": "219516", "title": "why c++11 define closure as a process of capturing variables", "text": "when using closure in other languages, it just feels nature, variables from outer scope are captured automatically , without the need of declaring such captures. in c++11, good to see we have closures, but why they make it so uncomfortable to work with, not only have to declaring the capture, but also read write controls? not likely implementation considerations, but what kind of philosophy is leading to this awkward spec ?"}
{"_id": "126770", "title": "Web pages in UML sequence diagrams?", "text": "In my current project, we have an ongoing discussion about whether or not it's a good idea to include an artifact representing a web page in an UML sequence diagram for a web application, making explicit which page starts a business interaction. I think it's a bad idea to include a web page, for me a sequence diagram should be about business logic and the interactions between business objects, and not include presentation concerns such as web pages. If I were to include a web page it'd be in a navigation diagram. Also, in my experience I had not seen web pages included in sequence diagrams, up until now. What's the recommendation/best practice on this? Should we include an artifact representing a web page in each of our sequence diagrams, or not? **EDIT :** It'd be ideal if the answers quoted design/modeling guidelines, books on UML, etc. arguing in favor or in opposition to including presentation artifacts in UML design diagrams. So far I haven't found an authoritative source that I can quote on the subject, instead of personal opinions."}
{"_id": "131814", "title": "Are there any downsides or problems with Haskell?", "text": "I'm looking at diving into Haskell for my next (relatively trivial) personal project. The reasons that I'm tackling Haskell are:   1. Get my head into a purely functional language   2. Speed. While I'm sure this can be argued, profiling that I've seen nails Haskell close to C++ (and seems to be quite a bit faster than Erlang).    3. Speed. The Warp web server seems to be crazy fast in comparison to virtually everything else. So, given this, what I'm looking for are the downsides or problems that come along with Haskell. The web has a tremendous amount of information about why Haskell is a Good Thing, but I haven't found many topics about its ugly side (apart from gripes about its syntax which I don't care about at all). An example of what I'm looking for could be like Python's GIL. Something that didn't rear its head until I really started looking at using concurrency in a CPython environment."}
{"_id": "255892", "title": "Unevenly distributed random number generation", "text": "Let's say I have to generate random number from 1 to 100, however, the probability of each number is not 1/100, but a predefined probability. How to generate that number? I use Ruby/Python."}
{"_id": "255895", "title": "Building workspce using Ojdeploy on linux", "text": "I am having a java application created using Jdeveloper. I want to build the workspace on linux machine using ojdeploy instead of Jdeveloper IDE. But for that I need to add 3rd party jars like hibernate. I am using putty to access the machine. so I want to know how to add third party libraries without using IDE. Thanks"}
{"_id": "213057", "title": "How to handle lookup data in a C# ASP.Net MVC4 application?", "text": "I am writing an MVC4 application to track documents we have on file for our clients. I'm using code first, and have created models for my objects (Company, Document, etc...). I am now faced with the topic of document expiration. Business logic dictates certain documents will expire a set number of days past the document date. For example, Document A might expire in 180 days, Document 2 in 365 days, etc... I have a class for my documents as shown below (simplified for this example). What is the best way for me to create a lookup for expiration values? I want to specify documents of type DocumentA expire in 30 days, type DocumentB expire in 75 days, etc... I can think of a few ways to do this:   1. Lookup table in the database I can query   2. New property in my class (DaysValidFor) which has a custom getter that returns different values based on the DocumentType   3. A method that takes in the document type and returns the number of days and I'm sure there are other ways I'm not even thinking of. My main concern is a) not violating any best practices and b) maintainability. Are there any pros/cons I need to be aware of for the above options, or is this a case of \"just pick one and run with it\"? One last thought, right now the number of days is a value that does not need to be stored anywhere on a per-document basis -- however, it is possible that business logic will change this (i.e., DocumentA's are 30 days expiration by default, but this DocumentA associated with Company XYZ will be 60 days because we like them). In that case, is a property in the Document class the best way to go, seeing as I need to add that field to the DB?               namespace Models     {         // Types of documents to track         public enum DocumentType         {             DocumentA,             DocumentB,             DocumentC // etc...         }              // Document model         public class Document         {             public int DocumentID { get; set; }                  // Foreign key to companies             public int CompanyID { get; set; }                  public DocumentType DocumentType { get; set; }                  // Helper to translate enum's value to an integer for DB storage             [Column(\"DocumentType\")]             public int DocumentTypeInt             {                 get { return (int)this.DocumentType; }                 set { this.DocumentType = (DocumentType)value; }             }                  [DataType(DataType.Date)]             [DisplayFormat(DataFormatString = \"{0:MM-dd-yyyy}\", ApplyFormatInEditMode = true)]             public DateTime DocumentDate { get; set; }                       // Navigation properties             public virtual Company Company { get; set; }         }     }"}
{"_id": "213056", "title": "Distributing PC software without a website", "text": "I am trying to distribute a small PC program, but have run into a few problems. I first tried to upload it to cNet, and then to softonic, but the problem with these sites, and all that I have seen like them is that they require a direct link(which I can't get, see below). After running into that problem, I simply uploaded my software to a file sharing site, but in reality, very few of my current users(from a mobile version)installed my software because once downloaded was listed as dangerous by the anti-virus due to the website that it was downloaded from. So then I set about trying to find a download website that would give me a direct link, but unsurprisingly, I can't find that. I can't host the file myself, because I don't have a webpage. Even though I haven't found any, I would be fine with a site that hosts my software and doesn't require a direct download link to use. Or I would be fine with a site that would give me a direct download link. I'm interested in an answer to the general problem - distributing software without a website. I assume that not everyone who has ever released software has their own webpage, what is the best way to get around this?"}
{"_id": "158068", "title": "How do I go from \"here's the zip\" to a good release strategy?", "text": "I can write code, resolve dependencies, and get my program to run on _my_ computer; I have no idea where to go from here though. How do I get the software ready for distribution? The school environment has taught me to do a few random tests by hand, make sure nothing is obviously broken, then throw all the source files into a zip and send it off. This is all that's needed to get a good grade is most CS courses. Nobody taught me how to release to real users. The only clues I have are a few phrases like \"automated builds\" and \"continuous integration\", but I don't know what these mean. How can I properly distribute my work? How can I make it easy for others? How can I move beyond \"here's the zip\" releases?"}
{"_id": "213052", "title": "Heuristic for consistiently ordering points in a a plane", "text": "I have rectangular regions in a plane. I want to consistently order them in a human-friendly way that a typical y-x sort won't work for. Basically I want (0,0), (1,0), and (0,1) to sort the same as (0,0), (1, -0.1), and (-0.1, 1). Ideas? * * * _From comments:_   * The obvious answers, y-x and x-y sort, result in different orders for the short example I posted. The things I'm coming up with, now, are clustering approaches where I cluster the y values, sort by cluster y means, then by x. > Question: What are you sorting your rectangles for? Searching? Displaying?   * Numbering the regions, and I want two region sets a human would say are nearly identical to get numbered identically.  > Question: Is the orientation of the rectangles really important (what is the > difference between (0,1) and (-1,0) in the problem domain)? Would primarily > sorting by area or diagonal be ok?   * I can't tell the orientation of them beyond portrait or landscape, and size doesn't work because a lot might be practically the same."}
{"_id": "214003", "title": "OAuth alternative for a 2 party system", "text": "I'm writing a RESTful service (Java EE, Jersey) and a client application that communicates with it, and I wish to secure it and store any usernames & passwords dedicated in my own database. I do not want the client to store the username and password locally, not in any form such as base-64 or other encoding at all, I rather have something like the OAuth2 authorization system, where the client app only stores a refresh & access tokens after the resource owner signed-in, but I do not need to provide access to 3rd party services. Securing my service using Basic auth means the client app has to store the password and send it for each future request, so that's not what I need. I'm aware that OAuth is intended for different situations, where there are more than just 2 parties involved (see other question). as mentioned here https://blog.apigee.com/detail/when_to_use_oauth: `OAuth is the only realistic choice for a web application that itself uses another web application's API on behalf of the user. For instance, consider a web application that integrates with Twitter. (Perhaps it's a geolocation app like Foursquare that offers the ability to tweet where you are and what you're doing.)` So what is the correct standardized method to secure my RESTful service if I do not wish to re-invent the wheel and create my own auth method, and if \"Basic\" is not what I need because it forces me to store the credentials locally on the client, and OAuth is probably an overkill with it's 3rd party access nature. P.S- I do wish to provide users with an option to sign-in to my service using facebook or open-id, but that's another story I guess."}
{"_id": "89094", "title": "Does RSI qualify for a disability? Are you killing your career if you do?", "text": "My RSI has gotten pretty bad now. I'm still in school and thought about applying for a grant based on disability. Is this a bad idea in terms of it being seen as incapable of doing a job after I graduate? Will people see \"oh, you have RSI.. and a permanent disability app.. I don't want to hire that poo-poo head.\" students with permanent disabilities I know it is possible to recover, but the fact is if you're a programmer, you're going to fight it your whole life."}
{"_id": "89096", "title": "Is it worth trying my IT experience in a totally different domain?", "text": "I have a good breadth of experience now (over a dozen) primarily as a dba,developer, BI admin, data analyst. I started my career in a couple of startups and now for a big internet company. The culture has always been interesting, fast-paced and just constantly moving. Recently, a family member of mine asked if I would be interested in taking my experience to his company (an established Oil & Gas). There's an opening for a database developer position there. The hiring manager liked my quals and has asked me to come in for an interview. Not having experience in this domain, the opportunity seems to be intriguing to work with data in this domain. It sounds like the culture is much slower- paced, but there is stability. People who have worked there for years. This is primarily a windows shop using .NET, Sybase, SQL server. Almost all my experience has been on unix/linux platforms with oracle, mySQL, open source tools. Given my experience thus far described, would this be an opportunity worth trying? Going essentially from an internet domain to a manufacturing company? Anyone experience this transition? I'm thinking there might be a good growth opportunity in the manufacturing company. There is also a chance I can obtain security clearance which could lead into other opportunities as well."}
{"_id": "160973", "title": "Automation at GUI or API Level in Scrum", "text": "I am a Automation Engineer. I use QTP for Automation. I wanted to know couple of things.   1. In a scrum Project which has 2 weeks of work, how can complete automation be done in that time frame (talking only about the GUI Level)?   2. Similarly, how can API Level of automated testing be accomplished, especially inside a single sprint? And what exactly is API level testing?   3. How to begin with API Testing? I assume QTP is not the tool here certainly."}
{"_id": "89093", "title": "How do I find UI ideas for a reporting system", "text": "I am developing an OS reporting system for PHP, it's main emphasis is right now on the server side of things.   I am trying to look for examples of good UIs for reporting systems. The problem: there are dozens of reports, each linked to the other, how do you navigate between them? How do you know the path you took to get to a specific report etc. Any examples out there?"}
{"_id": "170345", "title": "What is the point to namespaces in branches in git?", "text": "So I mainly use Mercurial for my projects and I decided to sit down and learn all Git's shenanigans to discover if I'm in the right side (at least for me). I'm learning that git uses namespaces for branches and I would like to know (in your experience) what is the point of namespaces?. In Mercurial I could just set the convention of naming branches like so:               <branch name> //for \"origin\" branches     <username>/<branch name> //for user branches      I imagine that there is more to it than just the name (aside from avoiding naming conflicts), but what do I get out of this seemingly more complicated (not necessarily bad) model?"}
{"_id": "207950", "title": "Is the Dart philosophy compatible with testability and dependency injection?", "text": "One of the Dart criticized features are named and factory constructors. There are opinions (from dependency injection people), that constructors should be simple and just assign some fields and the object graph creation is a responsibility of factories. There are also some argues against the static methods. It seems, that Dart constructors bring complexity to constructors. You can not even have a lot of named constructors to create the object in a various ways, you can even have a static factory supposed to construct object of other type than the class it is in. So, what is the philosophy of Dart and how does it relate (or respond) to the Dependency Injection and no-static state philosophies?"}
{"_id": "207954", "title": "Can you apply agile/TDD in all circumstances?", "text": "I'm not against agile/TDD and use it under most circumstances. However, in some circumstances I feel it doesn't work well. For example, the other day I was building a fairly complex data processing app. In an ideal world I'd layout the foundation, design the components, write unit tests and demo on each sprints as I finish \"features\". In practice however, I don't think this works before the first version is released because:   * **The foundation/component design changes frequently as I figure out how to do things better, and simple test drivers are much more useful than richer unit tests**   If you are building a MVC app., the foundation isn't going to change, but with an app. where you more or less build the framework yourself, and don't quite know how to do things best beforehand this isn't the case. I feel simple test drivers with no automated verification are much more useful than richer unit tests at this stage.   * **Until the basic infrastructure is in place, it's hard to break down things into individual \"features\"**   If you already have an MVC framework, this is easy. But imagine how the the first MVC framework ever was developed. It must have been much less useful to think things as individual \"features\" in the initial stages, because the most important thing was to work out the principle and philosophy of separating Model, View and Control, and how to do that.   * **Demos help very little until a sizable part of the app. is done**   In a UI, you can just put up a mocked up interfaces and get lots of valuable feedback. However, e.g. in a web crawler, you can't really do a meaningful demo to non-technical people until quite a bit is done, and even if you did, they usually won't be able to give useful inputs anyway. Sure, you can demo to your developer colleagues, but it's hard to give input based on some log output. It's usually much more productive to explain how you did things and how you plan to do things perhaps showing illustrations and code, and get feedback this way. Or am I just doing it wrong?"}
{"_id": "254644", "title": "Is RESTFUL API as back-end service one of the best (or suitable) choice for Mobile App?", "text": "I have a background on .NET development, recently I was asked to code back-end service for a mobile app. I had experiences on MVC, and now I'm trying to understand more on Restful Web API. My questions are: Is Restful API as back-end service one of the best (or suitable) choice for mobile app? What is the common solution for mobile app back-end service nowadays? **Edit** : (about off-topic) I read this before I ask this question. > If it's related to higher level programming concepts or is conceptual (but > still related to programming), it should be on Programmers. This is not a question about **recommend a tool, library or favorite off-site resource** **I asked about**   * if restful web API suitable for creating mobile service    * what are the common solutions to build mobile app API"}
{"_id": "96255", "title": "Is experience very important when hiring/being hired in your country?", "text": "In the Indian IT industry, I have found that regardless of the candidate's skill level, filtering is done based on number of years of experience. I have found that people with 5 years of work experience have appalling programming skills, general aptitude and intelligence. They are mostly people who did non-CS courses in college but not necessarily (sadly). I think years of experience is a very marginal and unreliable indicator of the person's skill level. A person could have spent 5 years as a programmer doing mediocre to substandard work. But they are still considered a valuable candidate given the \"experience certificate\" they can produce. But that's the reality in India. What is the general practice in the US and other countries? Do recruiters filter based on years of experience? If you are a recruiter and you understand the practice of filtering based on years of experience can you explain the logic behind this? Edit: While I agree that experience trumps added qualifications (in terms of degrees), I don't think YEARS of experience - a document stating the same - is a reliable indicator of skill or maturity. That was my question. Indian IT recruitment works on certificates. I don't mean unheard of companies that trade on the sole fact that $1 = Rs.45. I've found this in companies like Oracle! The experience certificate qualifies you or doesn't for an interview. Sure I GUESS you don't want to put a fresh out of college for a project management position. Even there I am no certain how heavily should experience weigh in qualifying candidates for consideration for recruitment."}
{"_id": "96254", "title": "ado .net connected and disconnected classes?", "text": "## Pros and cons and Usage I have been preparing myself for an interview for the post of software developer in .net platform. For database related issues, I have to to a point about the connected ans disconnected classes of ADO .NET. I have read several articles but still not getting a perfect picture of those two terms. Hence, here I am, to the best place to get a concrete ans. Can any one explain me the pros and cons and the usage scenarios?"}
{"_id": "116531", "title": "What are the disadvantages of automated testing?", "text": "There are a number of questions on this site that give plenty of information about the benefits that can be gained from automated testing. But I didn't see anything that represented the other side of the coin: what are the disadvantages? Everything in life is a tradeoff and there are no silver bullets, so surely there must be some valid reasons not to do automated testing. What are they? Here's a few that I've come up with:   * Requires more initial developer time for a given feature   * Requires a higher skill level of team members   * Increase tooling needs (test runners, frameworks, etc.)   * Complex analysis required when a failed test in encountered - is this test obsolete due to my change or is it telling me I made a mistake? **Edit**   I should say that I am a huge proponent of automated testing, and I'm not looking to be convinced to do it. I'm looking to understand what the disadvantages are so when I go to my company to make a case for it I don't look like I'm throwing around the next imaginary silver bullet. Also, I'm explicity _not_ looking for someone to dispute my examples above. I am taking as true that there _must_ be some disadvantages (everything has trade-offs) and I want to understand what those are."}
{"_id": "81696", "title": "Is .Net memory hungry?", "text": "A friend of mine told me that .NET Framework is memory hungry and he gave me an example that if I make an application (in .NET web forms) which will take 20 mb of your RAM, it will be actually wasting 1.5 MB This means that it will leak 15 mb for 200 MB application which is way too much. Is it true? Can anyone provide me any links which describes it?"}
{"_id": "81693", "title": "Alternative for Access+SQL Server for enterprise projects", "text": "We're a small software company, developing projects for manufacturing facilities about analysis, traceability, reporting etc. We're using Access for front end, SQL Server for back end. We've quite big customers too and our company is growing. So far it is working fine but I wonder should we move to more influential technologies, such as web based solutions. What do you think about the future of Access?"}
{"_id": "11517", "title": "How can documentation writing be made less unpleasant?", "text": "What makes writing documentation unpleasant for some people, and what can be done to make it less unpleasant? Current thoughts:   1. Ensure the program being described makes sense (eg doesn't have too many fudges or +1s or -1s in it). You feel bad, and it's more difficult, describing a program that doesn't make sense!   2. Conquer your fear of writing. Improve your writing skills, possibly on pleasant tasks."}
{"_id": "11512", "title": "Are there any major alternatives to Waterfall and Agile?", "text": "I am curious if anyone knows of any methodologies that are significantly different (not a recombination) and I would especially appreciate anyone who brought forward any experience with alternatives."}
{"_id": "150277", "title": "how to handle / architect soa when service becomes unavailable?", "text": "Say I've got a third-party service called Cool.io that provides a RESTful API but often goes down. My applications consume that API, but when Cool.io goes down, my app really can't do much... but it should! Say I create a proxy to the Cool.io and this proxy stores a copy of Cool.io's data and provides RESTful endpoints for my application. Let's assume that my proxy has 100% reliability, or, at least more than Cool.io's. Let's also assume that my proxy has no problem propagating PUTs/POSTs to Cool.io, and no problems receiving the same from Cool.io (in other words, there are no data sync issues between my proxy and Cool.io). This decouples my application's dependency on Cool.io, which goes down all the time... but it doesn't decouple the proxy from the Cool.io service. As such, when my application modifies something on the proxy, the proxy's data changes and tries to send that change to Cool.io. But, if Cool.io is down, that request just results in an unavailability error (or a failed connection). What's the proper way to architect something like this? How do guys like Amazon or Netflix decouple their services such that an outage doesn't affect the consumer, or if it does, it does so gracefully? Is a message queue in order here? Is there a simpler solution than creating a proxy to the unreliable service?"}
{"_id": "16159", "title": "Reasonable test coverage requirements when dealing with a contractor?", "text": "We're outsourcing some work to an external developer, so I'm busy writing up a contract about what constitutes a deliverable. So far I require that the code is shipped with automated tests. But, what is a reasonable way to specify the detail of tests up-front in the contract in a measurable way? I'm loathe to say \"100% code coverage\" because it's been established pretty often that 100% is pretty meaningless, and the diminishing returns above about 70-80% would probably just be pushing up our costs unnecessarily, and possibly even pushing up the complexity of certain things that might otherwise be very simple. Internally we pretty much leave it up to our developers to decide on the level of tests needed, based on their intuition and experience. With a contractor however there is a fixed price that has to be agreed to up front and we need some way to enforce a certain level of quality. Any suggestions or recommended reading matter would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "150272", "title": "Algorithm to minimize distance variance between 2D coordinates", "text": "I've been looking around for an algorithm that would optimize the distance between 2 list of coordinates and choose which coordinate should go together. Say I have List 1:               205|200     220|210     200|220     200|180      List 2:               210|200     207|190     230|200     234|190      Calculated Distance between Coords:               205|200 to 210|200 == 5.00     205|200 to 207|190 == 10.20     205|200 to 230|200 == 25.00     205|200 to 234|190 == 30.68          220|210 to 210|200 == 14.14     220|210 to 207|190 == 23.85     220|210 to 230|200 == 14.14     220|210 to 234|190 == 24.41          200|220 to 210|200 == 22.36     200|220 to 207|190 == 30.81     200|220 to 230|200 == 36.06     200|220 to 234|190 == 45.34          200|180 to 210|200 == 22.36     200|180 to 207|190 == 12.21     200|180 to 230|200 == 36.06     200|180 to 234|190 == 35.44      This Algorithm would pick:               205|200 to 230|200 == 25.00     220|210 to 207|190 == 23.85     200|220 to 210|200 == 22.36     200|180 to 234|190 == 35.44      The Algorithm would pick these numbers as they would be the group that would have the littlest variance between the distance. Conditions:   1. A Coordinate may only be used ones from each list   2. If List 1 or List2 is larger than it still only uses each coordinate once, but it tries to get the smallest distance variance and does nothing with the unused coordinates. If you need more clarification please ask. P.S. I've looked at the Hungarian algorithm and it seems like it will sort of do the job, but not exactly how I was expecting. The Hungarian algorithm will only try and make the least distance from all the coordinates, which can mean the smallest variance, but not every time as variance is more important here then least distance optimization. **Additional Information** I will have an array of List1, List2, and then the distances:               Distance[List1_item_0][List2_item_0] = 5;     Distance[List1_item_0][List2_item_1] = 10.20;     Distance[List1_item_0][List2_item_2] = 25.00;     Distance[List1_item_0][List2_item_3] = 30.68;          Distance[List1_item_1][List2_item_0] = 14.14;     Distance[List1_item_1][List2_item_1] = 23.85;     Distance[List1_item_1][List2_item_2] = 14.14;     Distance[List1_item_1][List2_item_3] = 24.41;          Distance[List1_item_2][List2_item_0] = 22.36;     Distance[List1_item_2][List2_item_1] = 30.81;     Distance[List1_item_2][List2_item_2] = 36.06;     Distance[List1_item_2][List2_item_3] = 45.34;          Distance[List1_item_3][List2_item_0] = 22.36;     Distance[List1_item_3][List2_item_1] = 12.21;     Distance[List1_item_3][List2_item_2] = 36.06;     Distance[List1_item_3][List2_item_3] = 35.44;      From the Distance['List1_item_#] I would need to pick a distance. Once that distance is picked the [List2_item_#] CANNOT be picked by a different [List1_item_#]. The distances picked for each [List1_item_#] element would need to be picked in a way that the variance between them all is minimal. So distance for each [List1_item_#] should be as close as possible to each other without reusing a [List2_item_#] more than once."}
{"_id": "5972", "title": "What are the most popular IDEs per language?", "text": "This has nothing to do with having a favourite editor or anything like that. I was just wondering, per language, what are the most popular Integrated Development Environments? Maybe a top 2-3 if there is some contention. (Perceived popularity is enough) Thus Far: **C#** - Visual Studio, SharpDevelop **Java** - Eclipse, NetBeans, IDEA **Objective-C** - Xcode **Delphi** - RAD Studio **Object Pascal** - Delphi, Lazarus **C, C++** - Visual Studio, Vim **PL/SQL** - RapidSQL, Oracle SQLDeveloper **PHP** - Eclipse, NetBeans, Nusphere PHPed **Actionscript (AS2, AS3)** - FlashDevelop **Flex** - Flash Builder 4 **Python** - Eclipse, IDLE **Perl** - Padre **Common Lisp** - Lispworks, Emacs **Ruby** - TextMate **Haskell** - Vim **Fortran** - Vim **Visual Basic** - Visual Studio"}
{"_id": "51966", "title": "How come compilers are so reliable?", "text": "We use compilers on a daily basis as if their correctness is a given, but compilers are programs too, and can potentially contain bugs. I always wondered about this infallible robustness. Have you ever encountered a bug in the compiler itself? What was it and how did you realize the problem was in the compiler itself? ...and how _do_ they make compilers so reliable?"}
{"_id": "60521", "title": "Application internal design VS Web application design", "text": "I come from the web application development and I try to make a small desktop application. I am looking for a good way to build the skeleton of my desktop application. From the web design, the skeleton is mainly handled by the web browser combined with the web server which manage application states (each page could be compared to a state) which in some way \"wrap\" the whole application and give you access to the basic informations like the `post` and `get` variables (and many others). Finally you can wrap the whole web application in a MVC design. I am wondering how I can do the same (or something similiar) in a desktop application? How can (or should) I properly wrap my application? Should I go with a state machine design combined with a MVC or is there something better? Thanks for your time"}
{"_id": "52432", "title": "Ways of handling asynchronous receive calls", "text": "I am implementing a primitive message-passing system. Currently, I am designing a receive function for async calls. Can I implement such a async receive function without using callback functions?"}
{"_id": "94095", "title": "How to prevent same user rating a web content like video more than once?", "text": "We have youtube kind of website where we calculate rating for every video. Based on rating we award cash. Our problem is no same user can rate a video more than once. We thought if we keep track of static IP, we will be able to achieve this but we found there are third party tools that can be used to manipulate the IP and break this. **Note:** We thought about only signed in customers can rate the video but client asks that even guest should be able to rate the video. Do we have any other method to track this so that they a user cannot rate more than once?"}
{"_id": "116280", "title": "Are there any good Java/JVM libraries for my Expression Tree architecture?", "text": "My team and I are developing an enterprise-level application and I have devised an architecture for it that's best described as an \"Expression Tree\". The basic idea is that the leaf nodes of the tree are very simple expressions (perhaps simple values or strings). Nodes closer to the trunk will get more and more complex, taking the simpler nodes as their inputs and returning more complex results for their parents. Looking at it the other way, the application performs some task, and for this it creates a root expression. The root expression divides its input into smaller units and creates child expressions, which when evaluated it can use to build it's own result. The subdividing process continues until the simplest leaf nodes. There are two very important aspects of this architecture:   * It must be possible to manipulate nodes of the tree after it is built. The nodes may be given new input values to work with and any change in result for that node needs to be propagated back up the tree to the root node.   * The application must make best use of available processors and ultimately be scalable to other computers in a grid or in the cloud. Nodes in the tree will often be updating concurrently and notifying other interested nodes in the tree when they get a new value. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to discuss my actual application, but to aid understanding a little bit, you might imagine a kind of spreadsheet application being implemented with a similar architecture, where changes to cells in the table are propagated all over the place to other cells that need the result. The spreadsheet could get so massive that applying multi-core multi-computer distributed system to solve it would be of benefit. I've got my prototype \"Expression Engine\" working nicely on a single multi- core PC but I've started to run into a few concurrency issues (as expected because I haven't been taking too much care so far) so it's now time to start thinking about migrating the Engine to a more robust library, and that leads to a number of related questions:   1. Is there any precedent for my \"Expression Tree\" architecture that I could research?   2. What programming concepts should I consider. I realise this approach has many similarities to a functional programming style, and I'm already aware of the concepts of using futures and actors. Are there any others?   3. Are there any languages or libraries that I should study? This question is inspired by my accidental discovery of Scala and the Akka library (which has good support for Actors, Futures, Distributed workloads etc.) and I'm wondering if there is anything else I should be looking at as well?"}
{"_id": "116281", "title": "c++ Model View Presenter: Where to construct presenter?", "text": "I'm using the Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern as described in The Humble Dialog Box paper (pdf) with an MFC project. I'm sure the issue is the same with most GUI toolkits. The thing that's bothering me is the concrete view (i.e., the dialog class) is creating not only the presenter but also the services that the presenter needs. Is that normal? Why does the view need to know what services the presenter needs? What I'm thinking is that I should dependency inject the presenter into the dialog class. The main control for the application is a class derived from CWinApp. So should I construct services and presenter in this class and then inject them into the dialog class? Although how would I dependency inject the presenter into the dialog class when the presenter needs a reference to the view class in it's constructor? `MyPresenter(IView *view, MyService *service);` Also how about if the main window spawns off a popup window, where should the details for that windows presenter and services get constructed? Since this is C++ I don't think I'd be interested in any kind of DI framework. **UPDATE** One idea I had was to construct the presenter with a null view, constructor inject the presenter into the dialog class, and then in the constructor of the dialog class call a `SetView(IView *view)` method on the presenter with `this` where `this` would be the dialog class (which derives from IView). So:               MyApp::Start()     {       SomeService *service = new SomeService();       MyPresenter *presenter = new MyPresenter(null, service);       MyDialog *dialog = new MyDialog(presenter);       ...     }          MyDialog::MyDialog(MyPresenter *presenter):      presenter_(presenter)     {       presenter_->SetView(this);     }      Seems a little kludgy but keeps service construction out of the Dialog class. The null view seems a little dangerous. An alternative would be to actually construct a NullView class that had empty method bodies and then pass that into the presenter constructor."}
{"_id": "148242", "title": "Mac Applications Developer interview preparation", "text": "I'm a Mac Applications Developer with an experience of 1 year and 8 months. I need to change the company. What type of questions should I expect in an interview? I've worked on 2 projects of which the second one is a very large and have been working on that for about more then a year till now. But, none of them are in the market yet. Both are desktop applications.   * How good should I prepare for the interview?   * On what things should I concentrate more ?   * This will be my first interview as an experienced. I haven't worked on iOS. Will that be a demerit ?   * Would that be a disadvantage having unreleased projects in my resume ?   * Should I think of including the other projects on which I haven't worked(but studied) into my resume, even after knowing that it is not a good thing to do ?"}
{"_id": "148241", "title": "C++ \"under the hood\" books for advanced readers?", "text": "Are there any particularly good books for understanding how C++ works \"under the hood\"? My reasons for asking this are that I am very interested in C++ performance system programming (low latency etc). I have been suggested the following but wasn't sure if there are any others:   * C++ FAQs    * Modern C++ Design    * Effective C++ Basically I dont want books which are going to teach me the C++ syntax, but rather if I create this object, this is what really happens and this is achieved via this part of the operating system bla bla etc. An example of something I recently learnt and would like to learn more similar interesting facts: if you inline C++ code too much, you will increase the program instruction size, the number of OS pages it occupies and this will increase the likelihood of TLB misses for the processor."}
{"_id": "90960", "title": "I had a bad job interview, but still got the job. How do I handle the relationship with my new manager?", "text": "I participated in a set of interviews for a position in which I was hired recently. During the interview process I was interviewed 6 seperate times. 3 technical interviews and 3 situational / business interviews. During my second (and most dificult interview) the interviewer, who is now my manager, asked me to provide a solution to a programming problem overnight. I submitted the solution the next day but found out shortly that it was not what the interviewer expected. I quickly followed up with another solution that included the correct answer, and was deemed as such from the interviewing company. I now know that behind the scenes, during this time period, the interview process was changed because the manager had not hired any employees for the position in a 6 month time period. Now that I have the position, I am somewhat worried that this particular situation has put a bad taste in this manager's mouth regarding my placement here (which I believe was done above his head because of the new hire process taking too long). I have now been at the job for over 2 months and have NOT had ANY direct interaction with this manager, just a team lead. I believe that I have performed well, and have received praise and confirmation of my perceptions from my team lead. From a professional perspective, How do I make sure that my manager sees this, noting my interviewing history? Thanks in advance for any answers."}
{"_id": "121869", "title": "Process arbitrarily large lists without explicit recursion or abstract list functions?", "text": "This is one of the bonus questions in my assignment. The specific questions is to see the input list as a set and output all subsets of it in a list. We can **only use cons, first, rest, empty?, empty, lambda, and cond**. And we can only define **exactly once**. But after a night's thinking I don't see it possible to go through the arbitrarily long list without map or foldr. Is there a way to perform recursion or alternative of recursion with only these functions?"}
{"_id": "82920", "title": "Looking for unpaid interns (2) - am I crazy?", "text": "**Edit - 6/10/11 in response to first batch of responses** : Wow, what a response. Let me speak to a few points.   1. I already stated that I will have a curriculum, and my intention is to teach people the things that college courses don't prepare you for (the entire CI process and all the technologies it entails for one)   2. All the people that complain about **CS programs that don't prepare students to enter the workforce**... where are you at? You seem to have left and invited the anti-taking-advantage-of-students brigade, and the you-cheap-bastard committee in your place.   3. I didn't really want to advertise the fact that I was at a **not for profit** as I just trashed my IT department (and deservedly so) I doubt **any** of them will actually see this, but it was my preference to not make myself easier to identify to people in my organization   4. I am not as convinced as many here seem to be that there are a lots of local business wanting interns (paid or not), but I will definitely feel it out with local schools if I decide to go forward   5. Regarding being Cheap... seriously? I am a developer. Not a manager, not anybody with any ability to spend budget. I am trying to improve myself (by mentoring), others (interns, and by extension the community) my team, and my employer.   6. I **did not** refer to **useless** CS grads. I referred to **clueless** CS grads. As in the many questions on this very forum that deal with the notion that CS grads know nothing about actually applying the technical skills they have acquired.  **End Edit/Rant** Just to give you an idea of where I am coming from... I am a developer on a small team reporting to the business (yes, the business... we have a horrible, dictatorial IT division that refuses to meet business needs, hence several business development teams) in a fairly large company. My motivations for wanting interns include:   * Bettering my own skills, (technical and otherwise) by mentoring others   * Teach interns (and even coworkers) ideas and methods for software construction that go beyond just solving a biz problem (readable/maintainable code, benefits of design and testing, etc   * Accelerate adoption of .Net on the team   * Help solve the problem that we all complain about - that being clueless CS grads I don't, for one second, believe that getting unpaid interns will be free labor. Before even going down that path, I will have setup an entire CI setup, which will of course be one of the benefits to the interns. I will also have to find a small project, or a piece of a project that can be broken off and given to interns to chew on. I will have a bit of a curriculum, which will include introduction to all the technologies involved in the CI, and other software development concepts. I will also be prepared to spend time with them every day to help set direction and help out when they hit a wall. I've been kicking this idea around in my head for a bit now, and the recent questions have prompted me to post. I was actually surprised to see such a negative reaction to unpaid internships, but then again maybe it is the norm that unpaid internships aren't that helpful for the intern? Anybody with experience with interns (either being one, or teaching one) have any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "155576", "title": "When designing a job queue, what should determine the scope of a job?", "text": "We've got a job queue system that'll cheerfully process any kind of job given to it. We intend to use it to process jobs that each contain 2 tasks:   * Job (Pass information from one server to another)      * Fetch task (get the data, slowly)     * Send task (send the data, comparatively quickly) The difficulty we're having is that we don't know whether to break the tasks into separate jobs, or process the job in one go. Are there any best practices or useful references on this subject? Is there some obvious benefit to a method that we're missing? So far we can see these benefits for each method: **Split**   * Job lease length reflects job length: Rather than total of two   * Finer granularity on recovery: If we lose outgoing connectivity we can tell them all to retry   * The starting state of the second task is saved to job history: Helps with debugging (although similar logging could be added in single task method) **Single**   * Single job to be scheduled: Less processing overhead   * Data not stale on recovery: If the outgoing downtime is quite long, the pending Send jobs could be outdated"}
{"_id": "155574", "title": "What is the canonical approach to using a VCS right from a project's infancy?", "text": "## Background I've used VCS (mainly `git`) in the past to manage many existing projects and it works great. Typically with an existing project, I would check in each change I make to the code that either optimizes or changes the overall functionality (you know what I mean, in suitable steps, not every single line I change). ## Problem One thing I've not had so much practise at is creating new projects. I'm in the process of starting a new project of my own that will probably grow quite large, but I'm finding that there is _a lot_ to do and a lot changing in the first few days/hours/weeks/the period up until the product is actually functioning in it's most basic form. Is there any point in me checking in each step of the process as I would with an existing project? I'm not breaking the project with changes I make since it isn't working yet. At the moment I've simply been using VCS as a backup at the end of each day, when I leave the computer. My first few commits were things like \"Basic directory structure in place\" and \"DB tables created\". How should I use a VCS when starting a new project?"}
{"_id": "155578", "title": "Why would I want to use CRaSH?", "text": "Justed stumbled across CRaSH and although it looks mighty interesting, I'm wondering why a Java developer should invest time & energy into learning (yet another) shell language. What sort of standard- and cool-applications can CRaSH be used for? Is this like a Groovy-version of Jython? I guess, when the dust settles, I'm looking for CRaSH's \"wow\" factors. I'm sure they're there, but after spending ~20 minutes perusing the documentation I'm just not seeing them. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "46143", "title": "Starting my first project and have no idea about it. Guide please", "text": "I am a Computer Science student (6th semester). I want to make a project and I have a team of 4 people (My friends). So we are 5 people and we have decided to make a \" **Web based file explorer** \". The project will be similar to THIS one. How should we start with this project? We guys don't know much about programming. I know Java a little and I am a RHCE so can handle the server and all such administrative stuffs. Since this is our first project so we guys have no idea how we'll make it? I know Java and other guys in the group knows C#, ASP.NET, PHP, SQL and Joomla. Please guide and give your suggestions. Thank you. PS : Perhaps my question is not complete, if you want more information then leave a comment I will edit the question."}
{"_id": "215064", "title": "What is the disadvantage of using abstract class as a database connectivity in zend framework 2 instead of service locator", "text": "If I use database by creating adapter with drivers, initialize it in some abstract class and extend that abstract class to required model. Then use simple query statement. Like this:               namespace My-Model\\Model\\DB;     abstract class MysqliDB {         protected $adapter;              public function __construct(){              $this->adapter = new \\Zend\\Db\\Adapter\\Adapter(array(                     'driver' => 'Mysqli',                     'database' => 'my-database',                     'username' => 'root',                     'password' => ''             ));         }          }      And use abstract class of database like this in my models:               class States extends DB\\MysqliDB{              public function __construct(){             parent::__construct();         }         protected $states = array();              public function select_all_states(){             $data = $this->adapter->query('select * from states');             foreach ($data->execute() as $row){                 $this->states[] = $row;             }             return $this->states;         }     }      I am new to zend framework, before i have experience of working in YII and Codeigniter. I like the object oriented in zend so i want to use it like this. And don't want to use it through service locater something like this:                public function getServiceConfig(){             return array(                 'factories' => array(                 'addserver-mysqli' => new Model\\MyAdapterFactory('addserver-mysqli'),                 'loginDB' => function ($sm){                     $adapter = $sm->get('addserver-mysqli');                     return new LoginDB($adapter);                 }             )             );              }      In module. Am i Ok with this approach?"}
{"_id": "215065", "title": "Can anyone explain representation of float in memory?", "text": "This is not duplicate question as I read the previous question. Can anyone help me in understanding `how float values are stored in the memory` . My doubt is here float values contain '`.'` (`for example 3.45`) how the `'.'` will be represented in the memory? Can anyone please clarify me with a diagram?"}
{"_id": "154223", "title": "What individual needs to be aware when signing a NDA with client?", "text": "I am very new to IT industry and have no prior experience. However I came into contact with a party who is gear to build a mobile application. But, they want me to sign NDA (No Disclosure Agreement). The definition seems vague, > The following definitions apply in this Agreement: Confidential Information > means information relating to the online and mobile application concepts > discussed and that: > >   * (a) is disclosed to the Recipient by or on behalf of XYZ; >   * (b) is acquired by the Recipient directly or indirectly from XYZ; >   * (c) is generated by the Recipient (whether alone or with others); or >   * (d) otherwise comes to the knowledge of the Recipient, > When they say otherwise comes to the knowledge of the recipient. Does it mean if I think of any idea from my own creative mind and which is similar to their idea then it would be a breach of this agreement? and also is it okay to tell to include application name in definition as currently to me it sounds like any online of mobile application concept they think I should not disclose it to anybody. `\"Confidential Information means information relating to the online and mobile application concepts discussed and that:\"` I am more concerned about this part, > Without limiting XYZ\u2019s rights at law, the Recipient agrees to indemnify XYZ > in respect of all claims, losses, liabilities, costs or expenses of any kind > incurred directly or indirectly as a result of or in connection with a > breach by it or any of its officers, employees, or consultants of this > Agreement. Is it really common in IT industry to sign this agreement between client and developer? Any particular thing I should be concerned about?"}
{"_id": "154225", "title": "Standards & compliances for secure web application development?", "text": "I am working with developers right now that write code the way they want and when i tell them to do it other way they respond that its just matter of preference how to do it and they have their way and i have mine. I am not talking about the formatting of code, but rather of way site is organized in classes and the way the utilize them. and the way they create functions and process forms etc. Their coding does not match my standards, but again they argue that its matter of preference and as long as goal achieved the can be different way's to do it. I agree but their way is proven to have bugs and we spend a lot of time going back and forth with them to fix all problems security or functionality, yet they still write same code no matter how many times i asked them to stop doing certain things. Now i am ready to dismiss them but friend of mine told me that he has same exact problem with freelance developers he work with. So i don't want to trade one bad apple for another. **Question is is there some world wide (or at least europe and usa) accepted standard or compliance on how write secure web based applications. What application architecture should be for maintainable application.** Is there are some general standard that can be used for any language ruby php or java govern security and functionality and quality of code? Or at least for PHP and MySQL i use for my website. So i can make them follow this strict standard and stop making excuses."}
{"_id": "99342", "title": "How to select a most probable option from the list based on user text Input", "text": "I am working over a OCR Application where I need to select a option based on user text input.               Ex:     Available Options:     [\"python\", \"ruby\", \"java\", \"clojure\", \"haskell\"]          Input: kava     Output: java          Input: ruby     Output: ruby          Input: clujuro     Output: clojure          etc..       my application is python based, is there a algorithm already exist to solve this problem."}
{"_id": "154228", "title": "Why is it good to split a program into multiple classes?", "text": "I'm still a student in high school (entering 10th grade), and I have yet to take an actual computer course in school. Everything I've done so far is through books. Those books have taught me concepts such as inheritance, but how does splitting a program into multiple classes help? The books never told me. I'm asking this mainly because of a recent project. It's an arcade video game, sort of like a Flash game as some people have said (although I have no idea what a Flash game is). The thing is, it's only one class. It works perfectly fine (a little occasional lag however) with just one class. So, I'm just asking how splitting it into multiple classes would help it. This project was in Java and I am the only person working on it, for the record."}
{"_id": "45492", "title": "Do you ever worry that you're more concerned with how something is built rather than what you are actually building?", "text": "As a programmer I have an inherent nagging annoyance at my tools, other peoples code, my code, the world in general. I always want to improve it. So I refactor, I stay on top of the latest techniques. I try and learn patterns, I try to use frameworks so as not to reinvent the wheel. I can write a tech spec that will blow your socks off with the amount of patterns I can squeeze in. However, lately I feel I actually know more about the tools I use than how to actually implement successful software. I feel like I'm lacking in the human factors skill set and I believe that to be a successful software engineer takes more than knowing the coolest framework. I think it needs some of the following skillsets too.   * Interaction design   * User experience    * Marketing I've got a bit of this that I've learned from people I've worked with and great projects I've worked on but I don't feel like I \"own\" these skills. Am I right? Should I be trying to develop these skills further, or should these be left to the people who do these for a career? How do you make sure you don't get too tied up in how you're doing something and make sure you \"make your users awesome\"? Does anyone know of good resources for learning these skills from a programming point of view?"}
{"_id": "118253", "title": "OO best practices for C programs", "text": "_\"If you really want OO sugar - go use C++\"_ -- was the immediate response I got from one of my friends when I asked this. I know two things are dead wrong here. First OO is NOT 'sugar', and second, C++ has NOT absorbed C. We need to write a server in C (the front-end to which will be in Python), and so I am exploring better ways to manage large C programs. Modeling a large system in terms of objects, and object interactions makes it more manageable, maintainable and extensible. But when you try to translate this model into C which does not bear objects (and everything else thereof), you're challenged with some important decisions. Do you create a custom library to provide the OO abstractions your system needs? Things like objects, encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, exceptions, pub/sub (events/signals), namespaces, introspection, etc. (for example GObject or COS). Or, you just use the basic C constructs (`struct` and functions) to approximate all your object classes (and other abstractions) in ad-hoc ways. (for example, some of the answers to this question on SO) The first approach gives you a structured way to implement your entire model in C. But it also adds a layer of complexity that you have to maintain. (Remember, complexity was what we wanted to reduce by using objects in the first place). I don't know about the second approach, and how effective it is at approximating all the abstractions you might require. So, my simple questions is: What are the best practices in realizing an object oriented design in C. Remember I am not asking HOW to do it. This and this questions talk about it, and there's even a book on this. What I am more interested in are some realistic advice/examples that address the real issues that show up when dong this. _**Note: please don't advice why C shouldn't be used in favor of C++. We've gone well past that stage._**"}
{"_id": "92508", "title": "Too much version control and bug tracking overhead per change?", "text": "I work at a place that is CVS-crazy and Bugzilla-nuts.   1. There are so many branches off each release that one cannot count them. Everyone is constantly auto-merging.    2. There is no _fluidity_ at this job. Everything feels _lock-step_. It takes 25 steps even for a simple thing. It's not like being on a factory production line: it's like setting up a factory myself every day. Example situation: To fix a single bug, first I obtain a clean, new virtual machine. Then I create a branch for that single bug fix, based on another branch described in the Bugzilla report. I install the branch on the machine, set that up. I fix the bug. I check it in, leaving it and the machine for others to test with. Then I have to go into the bug control software and explain what I did and write a test case, with all the steps. Eventually someone else merges it with a release. No matter how tiny the bug is, I have to do all of these things. Sometimes people combine work on multiple bugs, but as I said there are so many branches that this is hardly possible. At any other job, I'd just go in and fix the bug. I barely even remember using SCM, although every job I've had has used it: that's because at every other job, they somehow kept it _out of the way_. _Is there a point at which the process gets in the way and becomes an end unto itself? Is that even engineering?_"}
{"_id": "221779", "title": "Where does Web Reference go in 3-layer app", "text": "I have a 3 layered application.   * Presentation Layer (PL): ASP.NET MVC app   * Business Logic Layer (BLL) project   * Data Access Layer (DAL) project I need to add a Web Reference to a service for a payment gateway. Where does it go? `PL` or `BLL`? P.S. Before using the Web service I need to retrieve some data from database and send that data to web service."}
{"_id": "210658", "title": "Can everything in computing be classified as either data or a process?", "text": "Working in a field called \"revenue assurance\" I basically build systems to validate other systems. After a while in this market it seems to me that all these \"validations\" are verifying either a process from my customer's environment or the data used by these processes. With this in mind I am considering using such definition to orientate sales people and even architects working on the products. However, researching this topic I couldn't find a definitive answer although haven't dismissed the possibility either. Is everything one of the two then?"}
{"_id": "195548", "title": "What skills are essential for professional programming that are not commonly taught in schools?", "text": "I am a first year computer science major. I went to a job fair, handed out resumes, much to my surprise I got an interview and eventually an internship as a developer. I explained to the interviewer (who will be my boss) that I am only a first year and do not have a large amount of experience programming. He simply told me that because I have a strong background in math (I am almost done with my BA in math, plus I have some grad courses under my belt) the he is confident I will do fine. I do well in all programming courses but I still feel that I am at a disadvantage. Right now, I really just want to do good at this job when it starts. The job will be using mostly C#, but besides obviously learning some C#, what is the one skill that you wish you could have learned before you became a real programmer? Any advice is greatly appreciated, but if you have any books in mind please tell. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "195549", "title": "Exploratory Development vs Incremental Development", "text": "In Software Engineering Methodologies... The Evolutionary Development contains Exploratory & Prototyping... Is Exploratory Development same as Incremental Development... What do you mean by exploratory Development?"}
{"_id": "198715", "title": "Java MVC extra classes", "text": "I have a simple MVC project. My current packages:   * gui    * controller    * db    * domain I want to put extra classes which I will use, e.g. md5 hashing, email validator (methods which I will use in more than one class). Where do I put them? I will probably not use them in only one package, but in two or three (not in model for sure). Do I create an extra package, or do I put them in domain as they're \"static\" (unchangable)?"}
{"_id": "210656", "title": "Kafka, is it possible to get the message offset after producing?", "text": "While using Apache Kafka, is it possible to get the offset of the message that has been produced? From the Kafka documentation page it says: > each message in the partition are assigned a unique sequential id/number > called Offset Now suppose when I am producing any message I want to retrieve the offset that has been assigned to it."}
{"_id": "195541", "title": "How common is it for a team to write everything in-house?", "text": "In a recent interview I asked the interviewers \"how do you go about evaluating new technologies and libraries (such as SignalR) and bringing them in to use?\". They said they don't, that instead they write everything themselves so they don't have to rely on anyone else. The firm doesn't work for the government or defence contractors or on any safety-critical projects or anything like that. They were just your average, medium-size software development firm. My question is: **how common is it for teams to write everything themselves? Should I be concerned by teams that do?** Edit -- Most every response has said this is something to be concerned by. **Would a second interview be an appropriate time to ask them to clarify/repeat their position on writing everything in house?**"}
{"_id": "97611", "title": "Best practices for for putting tabular data on the web for users to edit?", "text": "I've been working in ASP.net for over three years now. The project I'm working on is designed with a 3-layer presentation/business/data design. The presentation layer is an ASP.net web site. The business and data layer are also in .net, with the data layer working with a SQL server. Recently, I've had to add several new screens to my ASP.net web application. The order from my customer was essentially, \"Take these Excel Spreadsheets and put them on the web so that I don't have to pass them around to the different people who make edits and I don't have to worry about keeping track of the changes.\" Sounds simple, right? Well, I've been doing this, but I feel as if I'm making the project more difficult than it needs to be. I'd like to tell you how I've done this and I'd like to know how I can improve my process. (1) I showed the spreadsheets to my DBA who created a table for each spreadsheet with a column for each column on the spreadsheet. Let me emphasize that in my office, only the DBA is allowed to change anything about the structure of the data in SQL. (2) I created functions in my business and data layers that   (a) Get the rows from the tables.   (b) Insert rows.   (c) Update rows. (3) I coded an ASP.net web page to user the ASP.net GridView to display the tabular data to the user. There is one button the user can click to add a new row and another button the user can click to edit an existing row. (4) I wrote JavaScript so that upon a button click, the user sees a form he can use to add a new row or edit an existing row. (5) I wrote some ASP.net page methods that allow the user to send changes back to the ASP.net server using AJAX once he fills out the form. (6) I wrapped the ASP.net GridView in an ASP.net UpdatePanel so that the table can be refreshed without reloading the whole page. That is my process. I've been doing this for each spreadsheet I received from my customer. I feel like there ought to be a better way to do this. I have a co-worker who really likes the DHTMLX stuff, but that would only possibly replace or simplify steps 4 and 6. What is a better way to accomplish what my customer wants?"}
{"_id": "190529", "title": "run local php/database application on windows pc without wamp", "text": "I have a php/mysql applications which I designed, and the client doesn't want it to be online (installed on a webserver) or available on the internet, he wants his employees to use it on a local system. I don't want them to go through the process of starting up wamp to access the program, is there a simple way to make php web programs run on a local windows pc? using mysql database?"}
{"_id": "97615", "title": "What can multiple threads do that a single thread cannot?", "text": "While threads can speed up execution of code, are they actually needed? Can every piece of code be done using a single thread or is there something that exists that can only be accomplished by using multiple threads?"}
{"_id": "97618", "title": "What part of your work does a company own when you program for them?", "text": "Say you're a software engineer, what does the company actually own of your work? Do they own the source code, the binary, both? What about code you do outside of the workplace? Do they have any claim to that? I was just wondering from a legal standpoint how that all works."}
{"_id": "153613", "title": "What is the benefit of a visual editor over straight programming?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out what the benefit to having a WYSIWYG HTML editor over hard coding, outside of, say, accessibility. It seems like a waste of time to learn how to use something like Dreamweaver over Notepad++. Am I missing something here? Every time I've ever used one, I end up going back into the code to fix the problems the visual editor made."}
{"_id": "166982", "title": "Scrum - real life example?", "text": "I'm starting with scrum and saw many partial examples on books and tutorials, but when try to use scrum in the real life, it's not easy to write the user stories and create the product backlog. I want to see a real project with user stories, product backlog and sprint backlogs to see if I'm doing it in the correct way. Is there any open source project with a public product backlog ? Is there any shared complete user stories and product backlog from a real project?"}
{"_id": "162609", "title": "Reading data from file and const", "text": "Is it sane to let a read method on a file object to be const? For example               size_t read(void* buffer,size_t length) const;      The read method does not change the contents of the file, but updates the file pointer which is invisible behind a handle."}
{"_id": "162607", "title": "admin-over-clients application", "text": "I have the same web application running on several different servers. Now I want a central place to administer everything in one web interface. What is the best way to do this? Should I provide a REST interface on every web application and let the admin application make all the calls? This seems like a common problem that's already been solved by smarter people than me. UPDATE: I want to change the application data per web application + see the results per web application"}
{"_id": "193875", "title": "How concerned about load balancing do I need to be?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project which will have client applications (desktop & android & web) communicate with varies processes running on a server(s). My question is how much should I be thinking about load balancing and the like? All projects which I have worked on before consisted of creating applications for internal use within companies so the number of connections was alwyas very low (probably no more than 50 at a time). However in my own time I decided to start creating a piece of accounting software, just because. So what I have ended up with is a WPF desktop application, and ASP.NET MVC web site and an Android App which all connect to various processes/data running on my server. On the server there is an SQL database (MS), various WCF services for communication from client to server and a few services running cleanup stuff. This works fine when I'm testing and its just me connected. However I have no idea how it will scale if a few people start connecting at once. I'm not even sure if I will release the software, let alone anyone use it! However as part of a learning exercise how should I be developing the system so that it could take on a large load and not crash/delay. I'm aware this could be a very open question and could be subjective to a lot of things, but as I say I have no experience in this department and it's something I would like to learn."}
{"_id": "195099", "title": "Why is String immutable in Java?", "text": "I couldn't understand the reason of it. I always use String class like other developers, but when I modify the value of it, I need to create new instance of String. What might be the reason of immutability for String class in Java? I know there are some alternatives like StringBuffer or StringBuilder. It's just curiosity."}
{"_id": "149196", "title": "Origin of structures and classes", "text": "What design and implementation issues did programmers have to solve when they decided first to use structures and classes? When did this happened and who were the pioneers behind these ideas? Note, this is double question, because structures and classes are related. I realize that structures are quite older than classes. It would be great if the answer would talk separately about both of them and cite some sources."}
{"_id": "149197", "title": "Algorithm for finding overlapping times", "text": "Part of our ERP system is a sub-system for running background jobs. We track a variety of meta-data about our jobs in a table including timestamps for submitted, started, and end times. I'm creating a report showing the performance of our job system, detailed by day. One KPI is maximum # of jobs running at once. The algorithm I'm currently using is:               dim cnt as integer    'number of overlapping jobs     dim max as integer    'maximum number of jobs running at one time          for each Job where               Job.SubmitTs = today            'bJob is a 2nd instance of Job       for each bJob where                bJob.SubmitTs =  today and                bJob.StartTs  <= Job.EndTs and                bJob.EndTs    >= Job.EndTs         cnt = cCnt + 1       next            if cnt > max then max = cnt     next      The problem with this algorithm is that it is very slow due to all the looping. I was wondering if there is a faster way to implement this? **Edit** I cannot use SQL queries to access the data."}
{"_id": "54875", "title": "Newbie worried about CASE tool", "text": "I'm looking for some guidance on CASE tools and whether my concerns are valid. Recently I was in a meeting between my employer and an external software company which have a CASE tool currently in beta. They demonstrated this tool to us, showing how you build a UML model in Enterprise Architect (or something like it) and then, through their tool, that UML model is transformed into a Visual Studio project, with C# files, stored procedures for SQL Server, code for the data layer, WCF stuff, logging code and allsorts. Now, admittedly, I don't see the point in this, as in I'm not convinced it will save that much time (plus it feels like overkill). The tool authors said that a trial of the tool at another company had saved a team there 5 weeks of development time (from 6 weeks down to about 1 week) using this tool. I find the accuracy of that estimate hard to believe. My main concern is whether using this tool is going slow down my productivity. For example - Say I have a UML model which I built a VS solution from. Now, I want to rename a class method to something else; will this mean having to update the UML model first and then rebuilding the code? Is this how case tools normally work? Something I will need to check with the authors is the structure of the generated VS solution. I like the Domain Driven Design way of project structure - Infrstructure, Services, Model, etc. I doubt very much this tool will do that. Also, I've been playing around with Entity Framework Code First and think it's a great way to build the data model. I have nice repositories, unit of work classes and other design patterns that work well with EF. I have data anootations and stuff like that working great. By not having EF (the CASE tool uses it's own data layer code) I'm concerned that this tool's data layer code might not be a nice to integrate in the UoW pattern, repositories, etc. This I will need to verify when I get a closer look at the generated code. What are other people's experiences with CASE tools? Am I being paranoid about nothing? Am I being unfair - are my negativities unfounded? EDIT: I like to use TDD/BDD for building my code, and using a CASE tool looks like it will make this difficult. Again, any feedback on this would be great. Cheers. Jas."}
{"_id": "212871", "title": "Architecture design for a web application that runs SSH connections to remote servers", "text": "This is a followup to my question here. I have to make a web GUI for a library that manages remote clusters via SSH. The main point is that this library spawns threads and subprocesses (Popen) internally (for the SSH connections), so I think I am I/O bound by these SSH connections. I want to prevent my server from going down as soon as I get 20-50 simultaneous requests. I have no idea of how to proceed with the architecture. I don't know if I can solve this at the server level with a more powerful server (gevent??) or if I should do something like using background threads (twisted reactor??) Some considerations:   * I work with django so the server (if I finally have only one) must be WSGI.   * I need both blocking and non-blocking calls via SSH.   * I will probably need shared state between successive requests as well."}
{"_id": "195090", "title": "Are square brackets and curly braces in Clojure still S-expressions?", "text": "I am trying to learn Lisp and looking at all the Lisps out there and their differences. I see that in some implementations of Scheme, you can use square brackets interchangeably with round brackets for readability, so because they are treated the same, I assume they are still just S-expressions like everything else. However, in Clojure I see that square brackets and curly braces are used to represent different data types like vectors and so on. Are these also still valid S-expressions, or must they be considered atoms? Doesn't this \"break\" the whole concept of S-expressions, thereby making Clojure an \"impure\" Lisp?"}
{"_id": "19007", "title": "Web Developer or Software Engineer?", "text": "A question that I have been asking myself and really confused which path to take. So I need your guys help as to the pros and cons of these 2 professions in today's world. I love web applications development as the Web is the best thing to happen in this age and nearly everyone gets by on the World Wide Web. And also tend to keep learning about new technologies and about web services.      On the other hand I like software engineering also for the desktop applications as I have had experience with development small scale softwares in VB.Net, Java, C++, etc.      Which path has more scope and better future? Whats your view?"}
{"_id": "149199", "title": "Why do some open source projects do not accept pull requests, but emailing patch files only", "text": "Why do some open source projects not accept pull requests, but require contributors to email patch files only? e.g. Git Although they publish code in github or other distributed scm hosting. It is not interactive nor convenient to send patch files. Patch file is an old-fashioned way. Pull requests are interactive. Other people may also discuss."}
{"_id": "12359", "title": "Is there a valid reason to wrap built in type with your own", "text": "I am editing some c++ and all of the built in types have been wrapped in a corresponding wrapper class. All of the operators have been overloaded to do bizarre things like operator[] coded to ignore the argument or to exactly what the underlying type would do. Is this malevolent or is there some possibility this is a good idea in some other universe."}
{"_id": "62965", "title": "What is the definition of user classes, with respect to software use?", "text": "I'm writing the Software Requirement Specification document for a piece of software that I am developing. A part of the SRS is the identification of the user class. Can somebody please give or refer me to definition of a user class as it relates to a software product?"}
{"_id": "236623", "title": "Image coordinates calculation algorithm", "text": "I was looking at _Jcrop_ library code for scaled image size calculation, but I couldn't clearly understand algorithm used in following function: https://github.com/tapmodo/Jcrop/blob/master/js/jquery.Jcrop.js#L187               function presize($obj, w, h)     {       var nw = $obj.width(),           nh = $obj.height();       if ((nw > w) && w > 0) {         nw = w;         nh = (w / $obj.width()) * $obj.height();       }       if ((nh > h) && h > 0) {         nh = h;         nw = (h / $obj.height()) * $obj.width();       }       xscale = $obj.width() / nw;       yscale = $obj.height() / nh;       $obj.width(nw).height(nh);     }      I know that its using jquery image object and boxWidth and boxHeight as described on following link:   http://deepliquid.com/content/Jcrop_Sizing_Issues.html But I want to understand the algorithm used."}
{"_id": "12357", "title": "During interviews, how do I gauge a company's respect for my position?", "text": "I'm a web developer who previously joined a software company not knowing their value and respect went to big data analysis, not their website. Sure, they needed a public-facing website, but I eventually found that the most exciting, valued projects there went to data teams. Realizing this, members of the web team were picked off and switched teams, making it hard for those left behind to keep up the work load, and making us look bad. At times it seemed the company culture sneered at us, wondering, _\"What does that team even do here?\"_ A friend of mine had the opposite problem at another software company. All he wanted to do was crunch big numbers. However he complained that the rest of the company wouldn't shut up about developing the usability of their website. Meanwhile his analytics team languished. I've also heard of salespeople getting love at a company, while engineering as a whole is undervalued, or vice versa. As for my story, if I could have known the company was like that, I might have avoided the job in the first place. So, before I join a new company, how do I gauge its actual respect for my programming role? For its other roles? I want to avoid companies that aren't serious about my particular focus in programming, or, perhaps bigger picture, companies that don't value everybody who works there. (Note I think gauging the company's attitude toward the basic needs of its programmers is covered by these related questions.)"}
{"_id": "118876", "title": "Internship Pay Reasonable?", "text": "I received an offer at two companies for a spring co-op. They are both software engineering related. The first company(C1) offered me 22/hr. Is $22/hr + housing stipend a reasonable offer? The area is cheap to live in, which leads me to believe that 22/hr is a good offer. Would it be possible/reasonable to negotiate this? I still have not received the offer details from the other company(C2), but they said they are currently preparing the letter. C2 is in Boston, which will obviously be more expensive. C2 pays for housing entirely. My main problem is deciding between the two. Both are apparently good places to work, so the main issue comes down to pay. Everything else put aside, what salary/hourly rate should C2 offer to top C1?"}
{"_id": "63381", "title": "Functional Languages that compile to Android's Dalvik VM?", "text": "I have a software problem that fits the functional approach to programming, but the target market will be on the Android OS. I ask because there are functional languages that compile to Java's VM, but Dalvik bytecode != Java bytecode. Alternatively, do you know if the `dx` utility can intelligently convert the `.class` files generated from functional languages like Scala? **Edit** : In order to add a bit more helpfulness to the community, and also to help me choose better, can I refine the question a bit?   * Have you used any alternate languages with Dalvik? Which ones?   * What are some \"gotchas\" (problems) that I might run into?   * Is performance acceptable? By that, I mean the application still feels responsive to the user. I've never done mobile phone development, but I grew up on constrained devices and I'm under no illusion that there is a cost to using non-standard languages with the platform. I just need to know if the cost is such that I should shoe- horn my approach into default language (i.e. apply functional principles in the OOP language)."}
{"_id": "63383", "title": "Best opinion to give a potential client", "text": "I have a friend that works for a company. They use a software product that is aged, and written in Delphi. There are concerns at this company about the life of the software company that provides the software (which they pay a monthly license to use). It's quite _specific_ software. My friend has spoken to his boss and I am being invited in with the potential opportunity to \"re-write\" their windows application with a view to also supplying source-code (C#, is what I plan to provide should this kick off). Giving this some more thought, and even though it could give me some nicely- needed cash, I wonder what is the best option here... The initial requirement would appear to be to replicate this application exactly as it stands. It was not developed in-house and therefore is used by other companies as-well. It's large and complex. While this does not worry me, I am concerned at the cost and time to do this just to bring it \"in-house\". They don't appear to want any new or different functionality, just a code-base they own. So I guess, my real question; now that you have background information - is it worth me suggesting that rather than re-write this thing dot-for-dot, and feature-for-feature, to actually see what parts they use/don't use - and design an application tailored just for them rather than the generic off-the- shelf one they are using? It seems a huge waste to just duplicate the application just to have ownership, but then I'm a programmer and not a business-decision-maker :) Any ideas/thoughts/flames?"}
{"_id": "157557", "title": "Appropriate data structure for deeply nested data?", "text": "I can't figure out what would be an appropriate data structure for my problem. I need to write a script that will count some events. Input is a list of events (thousands of them). Each event is an object with following attributes:               class Event       company       city       office       department      You can look at it like this: \u201eEach event is related to one company in a particular town in one office and in one department of that office\u201c. My script needs to output the total number of events for company, town office and department. Basically it needs to output sentences like this:               Total events in company X in town Y in office Z in department T : 15     Total events in company X in town Y in office Z in department R: 36     ...     Total events in company N in town Y in office G in department T: 89     ...      How should I store these counts and how should I count them. I was thinking of using nested dictionaries (in python) or in-memory SQL database. Is there any other way?"}
{"_id": "157555", "title": "Scoring/analysis of Subjective testing for skills assessment", "text": "I am lucky in the sense that I have been given the opportunity to be a 'Technical Troubleshooter' for our offshore development team. While I am confident and capable of dealing with most issues, I have come across something that I am not. Based on initial discussions with various team members both on and offshore, a requirement for a 'repeatable, consistent' skills assessment has been identified. In my opinion, the best way to achieve this would be a combination of objective and subjective tests. The former normally being an initial online skills assessment on various subjects, for example General C#, WCF and MVC. The latter being a technical test where the candidate would need to solve various problems and (hopefully) explain the thought processes involved with the solution whilst doing so. Obviously, the first method is consistent, repeatable and extremely accurate. The second is always going to be subjective and based on the approach, the solution (or possibly not) and other factors. The 'scoring' of this is also going to be down to the experience and skills of the assessor and this is where my problem lies;   * The person that is expected to be the assessor initially (me) has no experience.   * The people that will ultimately continue this process for other people will never remain the same due to project constraints and internal reasons, this changes the baseline for comparison.   * I am not aware of any suitable system that can be classed as consistent and repeatable for subjective tests with the 2 factors above, let alone if those did not exist. So anyway, I have to present a plan that will ultimately generate a skills/gap analysis and it is unlikely that I will be able to use an objective method (budget constraints most likely reason). The only option left is the subjective methods and the issues above. Does anyone have any suggestions for an approach that may tick all the boxes?"}
{"_id": "255337", "title": "What does this javascript file do? Is this a virus?", "text": "While searching on google I found a website that shows other content to Google Bot and other to his users, and also a very suspicious javascript file. Maybe it's a tracking cookies virus/malware, I don't know, so I am asking here if someone can explain me the code?               document.write ('<a href=\"http://www.51.la/?17211156\" target=\"_blank\"><img alt=\"&#x35;&#x31;&#x2E;&#x6C;&#x61;&#x20;&#x4E13;&#x4E1A;&#x3001;&#x514D;&#x8D39;&#x3001;&#x5F3A;&#x5065;&#x7684;&#x8BBF;&#x95EE;&#x7EDF;&#x8BA1;\" src=\"http://icon.ajiang.net/icon_8.gif\" style=\"border:none\" /></a>\\n');     var a1156tf=\"51la\";var a1156pu=\"\";var a1156pf=\"51la\";var a1156su=window.location;var a1156sf=document.referrer;var a1156of=\"\";var a1156op=\"\";var a1156ops=1;var a1156ot=1;var a1156d=new Date();var a1156color=\"\";if (navigator.appName==\"Netscape\"){a1156color=screen.pixelDepth;} else {a1156color=screen.colorDepth;}     try{a1156tf=top.document.referrer;}catch(e){}     try{a1156pu =window.parent.location;}catch(e){}     try{a1156pf=window.parent.document.referrer;}catch(e){}     try{a1156ops=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(^| )a1156_pages=([^;]*)(;|$)\"));a1156ops=(a1156ops==null)?1: (parseInt(unescape((a1156ops)[2]))+1);var a1156oe =new Date();a1156oe.setTime(a1156oe.getTime()+60*60*1000);document.cookie=\"a1156_pages=\"+a1156ops+ \";path=/;expires=\"+a1156oe.toGMTString();a1156ot=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(^| )a1156_times=([^;]*)(;|$)\"));if(a1156ot==null){a1156ot=1;}else{a1156ot=parseInt(unescape((a1156ot)[2])); a1156ot=(a1156ops==1)?(a1156ot+1):(a1156ot);}a1156oe.setTime(a1156oe.getTime()+365*24*60*60*1000);document.cookie=\"a1156_times=\"+a1156ot+\";path=/;expires=\"+a1156oe.toGMTString();}catch(e){}     try{if(document.cookie==\"\"){a1156ops=-1;a1156ot=-1;}}catch(e){}     a1156of=a1156sf;if(a1156pf!==\"51la\"){a1156of=a1156pf;}if(a1156tf!==\"51la\"){a1156of=a1156tf;}a1156op=a1156pu;try{lainframe}catch(e){a1156op=a1156su;}     a1156src='http://web.51.la:82/go.asp?svid=8&id=17211156&tpages='+a1156ops+'&ttimes='+a1156ot+'&tzone='+(0-a1156d.getTimezoneOffset()/60)+'&tcolor='+a1156color+'&sSize='+screen.width+','+screen.height+'&referrer='+escape(a1156of)+'&vpage='+escape(a1156op)+'&vvtime='+a1156d.getTime();     setTimeout('a1156img = new Image;a1156img.src=a1156src;',0);"}
{"_id": "255330", "title": "Can I use FontAwesome fonts with my own custom CSS files?", "text": "I want to use the WebFont icon library FontAwesome (FA) for all the icons in my project. They are using SIL OFL 1.1 for the fonts and MIT License for the source files. My problem is that, I want to use the FA fonts in my project, however I don't want to be tied to their CSS files. Is it possible for me to use the fonts with my own custom CSS styles, without having any dependence on the FA's CSS files. I don't even mind endorsing the project on my website, but if even do that, I want to only endorse the art not the code. FontAwesome License: http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/license/"}
{"_id": "68451", "title": "What is the most pragmatic & basic UI pattern to follow for Silverlight and/or WPF", "text": "Here is the context. The apps will:   * consume existing (and standard) web services.   * app is UI intensive (UI updated frequently and lot of data to display).   * development team experience level is average.   * development team has very few experiences in silverlight & WPF.   * I want it simple, but I want to avoid a complete rewrite in the near future, so I must (try to) take a correct path from the beginning. I know that using no pattern at all is the easiest and fastest way to go, and that implementing MTVT is the phantasm of all the .NET architects out there. But I don't have the budget ;) I need a pragmatic solution, easy to implement, easy to understand, and that works. When I browse the internet, MVVM Light is well positioned, but Microsoft is proposing its own implementation. Will it become standard like ASP.NET MVC?"}
{"_id": "190389", "title": "Git Workflow - turning a local reposity into a \"central\" one", "text": "I have a local repository with a toy project that has turned out to be more serious than I had thought. So from a single development branch where I have carelessly committed, I have started to use branches kind of like in the famous http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ I would now like to have a \"central\" remote repository that I can push my develop and master tree. The first issue is: how do I do this. Do I initialize an empty repository on my server and reference to this repository as the remote origin in my local repository? Do I have to create the branches in the remote repository beforehand or is it enough just to push them? Secondly the first commits in my local repository are really awkward, so I would like to cumulate a lot of those early commits into one, either in the way of --no-ff or as I understand to squash them. As I understand, this is only working with an intermediate branch. i.e. right now I have 2 branches \" **develop** \" and \" **master** \" in my local repository. I came up with two ideas how to \"change history\" I create two branches **develop-squashed** and **master-squashed**. Rebase my original branches to those while squashing commits I want to loose. Upon having **-squashed** branches being equivalent with the original master and develop branches, I can delete the original ones and \"rename\" the ***-squashed** branches to **master** and **develop**. Finally I can push **_master_** and **_develop_** into the _remote_ repository.   * Is that the way to go?   * How can I make sure that by rebasing, both branches **master** and **develop** both have the same history up to the point when I started to follow the \"successful git branching model\"? (They have the same history up to that point at the moment)."}
{"_id": "255333", "title": "optimise my solution", "text": "I just solve this but want know more efficient way to do matrix multiplication               M :     ------     1 1 0     0 0 5     3 2 0       f[n] = M^n I have implemented using Exponentiation_by_squaring Is there more efficient then this ?"}
{"_id": "49801", "title": "Content of Project Wiki", "text": "I've set up a small Google Code project. I feel a bit obligated to use the built-in wiki feature, but I'm unsure of what to use it for. The project is basically a C++ library for container classes. I'm currently the only member of my project, but I might get a few friends involved. So, what should I use the wiki for? Do I even need to use it at all?"}
{"_id": "49806", "title": "Reasons Programmers Leave", "text": "I am interested in finding out why programmers leave their jobs and if the reasons for leaving have resurfaced in your now job? Is the reason for leaving simply down to remuneration, location, I hate my boss / coworker, lack of recognition or retirement / new career path. Update: I am responsible for a team of programmers and testers and I would like to better understand what could motivate my team to leave, and hopefully try to address such issues."}
{"_id": "255339", "title": "Is a complete rewrite against the license/eula of this software?", "text": "Okey, so I have for a while now been thinking of rewriting the minecraft server, this time in a language called golang. It's just a example project that I can learn a new programming language through.. My question is: If I -rewrite- the minecraft -server-,:   * I read the Minecraft EULA, and they only talking about -modifying- the the current server or client. Nothing about re-creating it. Do I violate the EULA if I recreate the minecraft server in golang?   * If I ever will finish the project, having a completley functional rewritten server. Can I release it?   * And if I can release it, can I earn money from it in form of donations? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "176582", "title": "Is there an excuse for short variable names?", "text": "This has become a large frustration with the codebase I'm currently working in; many of our variable names are short and undescriptive. I'm the only developer left on the project, and there isn't documentation as to what most of them do, so I have to spend extra time tracking down what they represent. For example, I was reading over some code that updates the definition of an optical surface. The variables set at the start were as follows:               double dR, dCV, dK, dDin, dDout, dRin, dRout     dR = Convert.ToDouble(_tblAsphere.Rows[0].ItemArray.GetValue(1));     dCV = convert.ToDouble(_tblAsphere.Rows[1].ItemArray.GetValue(1));     ... and so on      Maybe it's just me, but it told me essentially nothing about what they represented, which made understanding the code further down difficult. All I knew was that it was a variable parsed out specific row from a specific table, somewhere. After some searching, I found out what they meant:               dR = radius     dCV = curvature     dK = conic constant     dDin = inner aperture     dDout = outer aperture     dRin = inner radius     dRout = outer radius      I renamed them to essentially what I have up there. It lengthens some lines, but I feel like that's a fair trade off. This kind of naming scheme is used throughout a lot of the code however. I'm not sure if it's an artifact from developers who learned by working with older systems, or if there's a deeper reason behind it. **Is there a good reason to name variables this way, or am I justified in updating them to more descriptive names as I come across them?**"}
{"_id": "45723", "title": "I just received a complaint from a user of the website I maintain. Should I do anything?", "text": "I was sent sent a large wall of text from a user of the website I maintain at my job. They are clearly upset for having to deal with a horribly outdated web application that has not seen any serious updates in over 6+ years. No refactoring has been done, the code quality is terrible, the security unchecked, policy compliances ignored, in addition to being ugly and frankly embarrassing. Keep in mind this is a small business but the website is used by hundreds daily. I'm one of two programmers there, and I've been working there for two years. This person says they are about my age (22) and understand technology (but can't use proper grammar). The complaint mentioned awkward pages and actions on the website, but they don't even have a clue as to the depth of the flaws in this website. Now, I would love to honestly tell them that there's a lot wrong with this company and that this application was built when we were in high school. And that while it's not my fault that the website is terrible, I'm the one in position to fix it. But on the other hand, I could just say nothing and ignore it. Would doing this publicly have any advantage to future employees (showing integrity) or would it just be a completely pointless mistake? Odds are, even if I respond only that one person will ever read it. Regardless, I'm probably just going to ignore it and continue starting my project to refactor the website."}
{"_id": "211526", "title": "Date & time - apply current, or 'then' DST?", "text": "I'm designing a function that given a UTC timestamp will convert it to the local time. The question I have, should the current times DST settings be applied to the conversion, or the timestamps DST settings? If going with the former, current DST setting applied to timestamp - it would mean 4pm that was recorded with DST+1 would be 3pm with DST+0 and 4pm with DST+0, depending on the time of the year you checked the date at. If going with the latter, the timestamps DST setting would be applied to it - so 4pm recorded with DST+1 will always say 4pm, no matter what time of the year you've checked it at. Which is more preferrable in practice?"}
{"_id": "226410", "title": "difference between exponential and logarithmic growth", "text": "Why   `for(k=1;k<=n;k*=2)` grows logarathmically = `O(logn)` but I feel it grows exponentially, as the seq look like `1,2,4,8....` and for fibonacci series people say it grows exponentially. which for me doesnt look like `0,1,1,2,3,5...` but for tis they tell `O(2^n)`. PLease explain"}
{"_id": "243245", "title": "How often should saving to disk occur in an automatically saving text editor?", "text": "I am developing a simple text editor and would like the application to save the text automatically. In other words, the user would never have to press a save button. I have seen other applications that do this, and was wondering how often is it safe to write files to disk? From a user experience standpoint, it seems that the more frequently this happens the better, but I am worried about performance and possible disk wear (especially on writes to SSDs). It seems like the operating system disk caching might help avoid these problems, but I also don't know if its safe to rely on that for an application like this. I was planning on writing the whole document to disk at each save, but this just seems terribly inefficient if the OS ends up writing it to disk to frequently, but relying on program unload may lose data in the case of a crash. Does anyone have any experience dealing with this that might be able to help?"}
{"_id": "243244", "title": "Do cross reference database tables have a place in domain driven design?", "text": "First some background. Let's say we have a system where a customer is placing an order in a web interface. The items that customer is ordering can priced in various ways. Sometimes including the cost of delivery and sometimes not at all. That pricing effectively depends on a variety of factors including the vendor's own pricing model, that vendor's individual contracts with customers as well as that vendor's contracts with its own suppliers. Let's assume that once a customer places an order for a particular item and chooses a contract if any, the method of delivery can be determined by variables on those contracts. Those delivery methods also live in their own table in the database and have various properties consumed downstream. It makes sense that a cross reference or lookup table would store that information. That table would be loaded into the domain and could then be used to apply the appropriate delivery method while processing the order. Does this make sense in the context of domain driven design? Or is my thinking too relational? Is this logic that should be built into it's own class/method (I mean beyond apply the cross reference table data)?"}
{"_id": "243241", "title": "Use adapter pattern for coupled classes", "text": "I need (for unit testing purposes) to create adapters for external library classes.ExchangeService and ContactsFolder are Microsoft's implementations in its' EWS library. So I created my adapters that implement my interfaces, but it seems that contactsFolder has a dependency for ExchangeService in its' constructor. The problem is that I cannot instantiate ContactsFolderAdapter without somehow accessing the actual ExchangeService instance (I see only ExchangeServiceAdapter in scope). Is there a better pattern for this that retains the adapter classes? Or should I \"infect\" ExchangeServiceAdapter with some kind of GetActualObject method? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rgpv1.png)"}
{"_id": "24310", "title": "Does it make sense to make a field mandatory which has a default value?", "text": "Consider a drop down \"Duration\" which has 3 options               1. 30 days     2. 60 days     3. 90 days      and by default 30 days will be the selected value. Does it make sense to make this dropdown mandatory? Do we really need to put a ***** (Mandatory mark) for this field?"}
{"_id": "68982", "title": "Why isn't the Stab language more widely used?", "text": "I am wondering if there are technical reasons that make Stab an unsuitable alternative to Java. Stab borrows heavily from C#, bringing many C# features to the JVM:   * Less verbosity      * type inference (implicit typing)     * properties and indexers     * null coalescing operator     * 'using' and 'as' shortcuts   * delegates   * lambda expressions   * anonymous types   * generators (iterator blocks/yield return)   * non-checked exceptions   * initializers   * partial classes and methods   * extension methods   * a form of LINQ   * other stuff Many of the above features seem like things that people are clamouring for in Java. Stab seems like a way of getting these features today while not falling very far from the Java tree. I am surprised that Stab has not been more popular with C# developers that also have to write and maintain code on the JVM. Stab is not 100% the same as C# but it is pretty close and I would think that C# developers would prefer coding in Stab to coding in Java. I am surprised that Stab has not seen greater adoption with Java programmers. It has a syntax that is very similar and incremental to Java, uses the plain vanilla JDK, and generates libraries that interact very naturally with Java on the JVM. Scala is an obvious alternative as well and has an even greater feature set. I can see why you would choose Scala. In my opinion, Scala is a bigger jump conceptually, syntax-wise, and even in terms of libraries for both Java and C# programmers. Even in a world with Scala as a choice, I am surprised that Stab has not seen more traction. It seems like there could be a few reasons:   * People are just not aware of it   * Java folks do not like the 'Microsoft' influence   * These features are not as compelling as I imagine compared to vanilla Java   * There are technical issues with using Stab in the real world The last option seems most suitable for discussion here. So, what are the technical reasons that keep Stab from being a popular choice when developing on the JVM? I think this may be the first question here about Stab. Ceylon already has questions and nobody has even seen it yet."}
{"_id": "158852", "title": "Any reasons not to use multiple version control systems?", "text": "I'm working on a project which uses GIT as the main version control system for trunk, the official branches and most sub-projects/unofficial branches. As such, I want to make my own branch use GIT to allow the rest of the community to access my branch using the system they know. However, I'm working on a part of the project which overlaps both official and unofficial branches, along with some patches which will never enter trunk - as such, I need to be able to keep my patches separate, allowing all to be used in my branch and selective patches to be taken for use in trunk. This naturally leans towards using mercurial queues. Is there any reason that I can't use mercurial for my own local repository, but push the entirety to both GIT and Mercurial hosted repositories? Or rather, is there any good reason not to, I'm sure it's possible."}
{"_id": "68980", "title": "Interesting variations of FizzBuzz?", "text": "In hiring programmers, a common test is the Fizz Buzz test. What are some neat/interesting variations on fizz buzz which keep with about the same difficulty level? Basically, if I asked someone to do a fizz buzz test over email or something, I'd want to make sure they can't just google the code."}
{"_id": "62383", "title": "What is the point of properties?", "text": "Here are some arguments for properties and my counter-arguments: ### Easier to use than writing getter and setter methods Getter and setter method pairs are a code smell. Making it easier to write these is like making it easier to fail a math test by using a Scantron form and filling in all 'C's. Objects that contain only state, for persistence, shouldn't be using getters/setters and should be creating immutable objects at the time of persistence. What is important to a consumer of an object is what it does, not how it does it. Its behavior is what it does; its state is how it does it. If you find yourself caring about an object's state (except for persistence, though this also breaks OO), you're simply not doing OOP and losing out on its advantages. ### They give a rough indication of performance to consumers This is something that could change in the future, for any given property. Suppose in release 1.0, accessing PropertyX simply returns a field. In release 1.5, if the field is null, PropertyX uses the Null Object pattern to create a new null object. In release 2.0, the field is getting further validated by the getter method in PropertyX. As the property gets more and more complex, the performance indication of using a property seems less and less truthful. ### They're better than public fields This is true. But so are methods. ### They represent a fundamentally different aspect of an object than a method, and all consumers of the object should care about this Are you sure that both of the above statements are true? ### They're easier to type, man Sure, typing `myObject.Length` is easier than typing `myObject.Length()`, but couldn't that be fixed with a little syntactic sugar? * * * ### Why use methods instead of properties?   * No performance guarantees. The API will remain truthful even if the method gets more complex. The consumer will need to profile their code if they are running in to performance issues, and not rely on word-of-API.   * Less for the consumer to think about. Does this property have a setter? A method sure doesn't.   * The consumer is thinking from a proper OOP mindset. As a consumer of an API, I am interested in interacting with an object's behavior. When I see properties in the API, it looks a lot like state. In fact, if the properties do too much, they shouldn't even be properties, so really, properties in an API ARE state as they appear to consumers.   * The programmer of the API will think more deeply about methods with return values, and avoid modifying the object's state in such methods, if possible. Separation of commands from queries should be enforced wherever possible. * * * So I ask you, why use properties instead of methods? Most of the points on MSDN are code smells in and of themselves, and don't belong in either properties or methods. (These thoughts came to me after thinking about CQS.)"}
{"_id": "62381", "title": "What strategy to landing an enterprise postion given a non-enterprisey past?", "text": "I'm at a place of potential career change. Among the options is to stay in software development but move into commercial and enterprise systems work. My past has been mostly working with scientists and engineers in academic and research organizations. It's cool to be on the cutting edge of discovery, but coolness doesn't help buy furniture, build long term savings, buy solar panels, boost the local economy, or fund friends' start up ideas. The pay _can_ be decent by general population standards, but is around 2/3 to 1/2 what it could be at a commercial firm. Besides the money, there's the nature of the work. Academic groups often don't have good software development methodologies in place. I'm lucky to have svn in my current project. Many developers are students with immature approaches to design, who have glamour stars in their eyes for every new fad technique. Many high IQ people with expertise in one area who try to develop software apps going beyond just the math and plotting they really need, tend to over- design everything. One recent science data analysis project written by several people none of whom had a holist view of the project, involved such a tangle of badly organized layers of abstraction for things that really don't need any abstracting, with overuse of... oh never mind, this isn't the place to go ranting about all that! In contrast, all commercial projects are well-managed with proper tools, keen judgement, well-tuned regression and unit testing, and efficient methodologies. Right? Right? (laughter follows...) Well alright, the grass isn't actually greener _anywhere_ , but I accept imperfection. I do get more of a thrill out of making a good product that solves real world problems, while making a good salary with a real potential of bonuses or other rewards for mission crititcal work done under budget and in time. Another big advantage of commercial and enterprise IT work is that one can live in or near just about any city, whereas science swdev work strongly clusters to where science is done: university towns and near research centers like NIH, NASA, Fermilab, NRAO etc. While I have >20 yrs of experience in software, I have little know-how of databases (beyond the toy examples given in mysql tutorials), networks (beyond setting up a home LAN), financial stuff, point-of-sale stuff, BI stuff, or anything remotely enterprisey. I think BI might be interesting, but I don't know much more than how to spell it. So what is the gap (or canyon) I must bridge to make this change? What are effective strategies for making this shift? Are certain types of organizations, or certain job roles, better suited for this switch? What culture shock can I expect and how to deal with it, especially regarding what to say at a job interview? I can find out which specific skills are needed from job descriptions; what I'm after is all the other stuff, the unwritten and the hard to define things to consider. Or am I a fool to even be considering all this?"}
{"_id": "58733", "title": "Does your organization still use the term \"screens\" to describe a user interface?", "text": "I have been in the field long enough to remember when the term \"screen\" entered our lexicon. As difficult as it is to believe, the early systems on which I worked had no user interface (UI). These systems ran as \"card image\" production jobs back in a day when being a computer operator required a reasonably deep understanding of how computers worked. Flashing forward to today: I cringe every time I hear a systems practitioner use the term \"screen.\" The metaphor no longer fits the medium. The term somewhat fit back when the user dialog consumed 100% of available monitor real estate; however, the term lost its relevance the moment we moved to windowed environments. With the above said, does your organization still use the term \"screens\" to describe an application's UI? Has anyone successfully purged the term from an organization? For those who do not use the term to describe UI dialog elements, what term do you use in place of \u201cscreen.\u201d"}
{"_id": "58734", "title": "Acceptable # Lines of Code for Projects to be Presented to Interviewer?", "text": "I'm going to graduate soon and I've been thinking. I have a few really small projects/scripts (~100-200 LOC) that I made on my free time and I have them on Github. I was wondering if they are \"worthy\" enough to be presented to future employers? Or should I only include those that are big (~1000 LOC)?"}
{"_id": "164608", "title": "How to efficiently protect part of an application with a license", "text": "I am working on an application that has many functional parts. When a customer buys the application, he buys the standard functionality, but he can also buy some additional elements of the application for an additional price. All of the elements are part of the same application executable. A license key is used to indicate which of the elements should be accessible in the application. Some of the elements can be easily disabled if the user didn't pay for it. These are typically the modules that you can access via the application's menu. However, some elements give more problems:   * What if a part of the data model is related to an optional part? Do I build up these data structures in my application so the rest of my application can just assume they're always there? Or do I don't build them, and add checks in the rest of may application?   * What if some optional part is still useful to perform some internal tasks, but I don't want to expose it to the user externally?   * What if the marketing responsible wants to make a standard part now an optional part? In all of my application I assume that that part is present, but if it becomes optional, I should add checks on it everywhere in the application. I have some ideas on how to solve some of the problems (e.g. interfaces with dual implementations: one working implementation, and one that is activated if the optional part is not activated). Do you know of any patterns that can be used to solve this kind of problem? Or do you have any suggestions on how to handle this licensing problem? Thanks."}
{"_id": "179201", "title": "JavaScript and callback nesting", "text": "A lot of JavaScript libraries (notably jQuery) use chaining, which allows the reduction of this:               var foo = $(\".foo\");     foo.stop();     foo.show();     foo.animate({ top: 0 });      to this:               $(\".foo\").stop().show().animate({ top: 0 });      With proper formatting, I think this is quite a nice syntactic capability. However, I often see a pattern which I don't particularly like, but appears to be a necessary evil in non-blocking models. This is the ever-present nesting of callback functions:               $(\".foo\").animate({         top: 0,     }, {         callback: function () {             $.ajax({                 url: 'ajax.php',             }, {                 callback: function () { ... }             });         }     });      And it never ends. Even though I love the ease non-blocking models provide, I hate the odd nesting of function literals it forces upon the programmer. I'm interesting in writing a small JS library as an exercise, and I'd love to find a better way to do this, but I don't know how it could be done without feeling hacky. Are there any projects out there that have resolved this problem before? And if not, what are the alternatives to this ugly, meaningless code structure?"}
{"_id": "13001", "title": "What timestamp to use when pulling files from a VCS system?", "text": "Yesterday, a colleague asked me how to configure our VCS to timestamp the local copy of files pulled from the repository with the modification time in the repository. I've always believed that they should be timestamped with the time they were pulled so that if you make a change, build, then back out by overwriting the changed file with the repository's copy, everything that depends on that file will build correctly. I thought about it overnight, but couldn't come up with a good reason to have timestamped with the repository modification time. What would be the advantages of doing it that way? (Bonus question: repository modification time and local modification time are the only timestamping strategies that I'm aware of. Are there others in use by VCS systems?)"}
{"_id": "13000", "title": "Tools every graduate student should know?", "text": "I recently started on my master studies adventure, and got recently introduced to LaTeX. I am parallely learning it and also wondering what other languages|tools are absolute essential for graduate student (Masters|PhD) to know? I want to continue into PhD later in my career."}
{"_id": "175586", "title": "What is the politically correct way of refactoring other's code?", "text": "I'm currently working in a geographically distributed team in a big company. Everybody is just focused on today's tasks and getting things done, however this means sometimes things have to be done the quick way, and that causes problems... you know, same old, same old. I'm bumping into code with several smells such as: big functions pointless utility functions/methods (essentially just to save writing a word), overcomplicated algorithms, extremely big files that should be broken down into different files/classes (1,500+ lines), etc. What would be the best way of improving code without making other developers feel bad/wrong about any proposed improvements?"}
{"_id": "175588", "title": "Can a table be both Fact and Dimension", "text": "Ok, I am a newbie and don't really think \"dimensionally\" yet, I have most of my initial schema roughed out but I keep flipping back and forth on one table. I have a Contract table and it has a quantity column (tonnes), and a net price column, which need to be summed up a bunch of different ways, and the contract has lots of foreign keys (producer, commodity, futures month etc.) and dates so it appears to be a fact table. Also the contract is never updated, if that makes a difference. However, we create cash tickets which we use to pay out part or all of the contract and they have a contract ID on them so then the contract looks like a dimension in the cash ticket's star schema. Is this a problem? Any ideas on the process to resolve this, because people don't seem to like the idea of joining two fact tables. Should I put producerId and commodityId on the cash ticket? It would seem really weird not to have a contractID on it."}
{"_id": "175589", "title": "Should I expect my team to have more than a basic proficiency with our source control system?", "text": "My company switched from Subversion to Git about three months ago. We had weeks of advance notice prior to the switch. Since I'd never used Git before (or any other DVCS), I read Pro Git and spent a little time spinning up my own repositories and playing around, so that when we switched I'd be able to keep working with minimal pain. Now I'm the 'Git guy' by default. With a couple of exceptions, most of my team still has no idea how Git works. For example, they still think of branches as complete copies of the source code, and even go so far as to clone the repo into multiple folders (one per branch). They generally look at Git as a scary black box. Given the fundamental nature of source control in our daily work (not to mention the ridiculous amount of power Git affords us), I'm of the opinion that any dev who doesn't achieve a certain level of proficiency with it is a **liability**. Should I expect my team to have at least some understanding of how Git works internally, and how to use it beyond the most basic pull/merge/push operations? Or am I just making something out of nothing?"}
{"_id": "179208", "title": "Alternatives to sql like databases", "text": "These days computers usually have 2GB or 4GB memory. I like to use some secure client server model, and well an sql database is likely candidate. On the other hand I only have about 8000 records, who will not frequently be read or written in total they would consume less then 16 Megabyte. And it made me wonder what would be good secure options in a windows environment to store the data work with it multi-client single server model, without using SQL or mysql? Would for well such a small amount of data maybe other ideas better? Because I like to keep maintenance as simple as possible (no administrators would need to know sql maintenance, as they dont know databases in my target environment). Maybe storing in xml files or.. something else. How others would go if ease of administration is the main goal? Oh and it should be secure to, the client server data must be a bit secure (maybe NTLM files shares https or...etc) Maybe I should say something of the use, it would be like client ask for a single record and retrieves an answer a single byte is returned those clients won't launch complex questions, only the maintenance server side might require record editing, clients will only ask not change records. And clients wont perform advanced queries."}
{"_id": "237578", "title": "Are the following Use Case Levels determined correctly?", "text": "I am confused about use case levels. All I could understand was that use cases that are contained in another use case fall under the level which is below the level of the container use case. I have identified the following use cases for an e-commerce store and I would like to know if their levels are correctly determined or not. Please provide a description of the differences between levels if I have done something wrong here. ![Identified Use case Levels](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QijX0.png)"}
{"_id": "164606", "title": "Is mysql_* deprecated after PDO was introduced?", "text": "I have been noticing for a long time on Stack Overflow that most users recommend to use PDO instead of `mysql_*`, because PDO is more secure than `mysql_*`. But my question is if websites which are already running with `mysql_*` will stops working? Or what exactly does \"deprecating\" mean here? So should we have never used `mysql_*`? From which PHP version is is deprecated?"}
{"_id": "54121", "title": "Explain Model View Controller", "text": "My experience with developing dynamic websites is limited mostly to Java servlets. I've used Tomcat to develop various Java servlets, and I wouldn't hesitate to say that I'm reasonably proficient with this technology, as well as with client-side HTML/CSS/Javascript for the front-end. When I think \"dynamic website\", I think: user requests a URL with a query string, server receives the query, and then proceeds to output HTML dynamically in order to respond to the query. This often involves communication with a database in order to fetch requested data for display. This is basically the idea behind the `doGet` method of a Java `HttpServlet`. But these days, I'm hearing more and more about newer frameworks such as Django and Ruby on Rails, all of which take advantage of the \"Model View Controller\" architecture. I've read various articles which explain MVC, but I'm having trouble really understanding the benefits. I understand that the general idea is to separate business logic from UI logic, but I fail to see how this is anything really different from normal web programming. Web programming, by it's very nature, forces you to separate business logic (back- end server-side programming) from UI programming (client-side HTML or Javascript), because the two exist in entirely different spheres of programming. **Question:** What does MVC offer over something like a Java servlet, and more importantly, what exactly _is_ MVC and how is it different from what you would normally do to develop a dynamic website using a more traditional approach such as a Java servlet (or even something older like CGI)? If possible, when explaining MVC, please provide an _example_ which illustrates how MVC is applied to the web development process, and how it is beneficial."}
{"_id": "250617", "title": "Database design with \"draft\" version of data", "text": "The database I'm currently building is pretty traditional relational database stuff, but there is one requirement that is not clear to me how model appropriately. There are many business rules which are translated into database consistency checks (i.e. date A must be between date B and C or this field must be not null when another field is a specific value). My problem arises because a user must be able to work on a \"draft\" version on the data, being allowed to save their changes even if the consistency checks fail. Eventually, a user can commit their draft, but only once all the consistency checks pass. The main reason the client wants this functionality is so that they can query the database directly for reports, and be sure that they are using the most recent version of the data that is \"consistent\", but not restrict the user from entering partial data. I've played around with storing the changeset to the data in JSON in a document store, and then applying the changeset in code when dealing with the user is dealing with draft data, but this makes it hard to manage things like relationships and the creation/deletion of records. Is there a common way to accomplish this goal? Or does anyone have any suggestions about how I may approach this problem differently?"}
{"_id": "150356", "title": "I've released a software product - how do I maximize exposure given no budget and limited time?", "text": "I'd like to reach out to the community on this one. As a software developer, I'm not an expert salesperson or marketing guru - I think in code and not much else. Most developers I come across are like this and also tend to be serious penny-pinchers. Let's say, as a developer, I recently released a new software product that I'm pretty sure will be a hit IF people only knew about it. Assume a budget of $0.00 and limited time each day (i.e. 30 to 60 minutes). What can I do, within those limitations, to maximize exposure? If possible, please back up your reply with at least two working examples."}
{"_id": "91760", "title": "How to be a good citizen when crawling web sites?", "text": "I'm going to be developing some functionality that will crawl various public web sites and process/aggregate the data on them. Nothing sinister like looking for e-mail addresses - in fact it's something that might actually drive additional traffic to their sites. But I digress. Other than honouring `robots.txt`, are there any rules or guidelines, written or unwritten, that I ought to be following in order to (a) avoid appearing malicious and potentially being banned, and (b) not cause any problems for the site owners/webmasters? Some examples I can think of which may or may not matter:   * Number of parallel requests   * Time between requests   * Time between entire crawls   * Avoiding potentially destructive links (don't want to be the Spider of Doom - but who knows if this is even practical) That's really just spit-balling, though; is there any tried-and-tested wisdom out there that's broadly applicable for anybody who intends to write or utilize a spider?"}
{"_id": "20206", "title": "Are my method or variable names too long?", "text": "So I was currently in the middle of coding, unfortunately for me, I was in \"The Zone\" then I thought to myself, are my method/variable names to long? **POP** out of the Zone I go! So I came here to ask, are my method/variable names too long? You be the Judge! Bonus points to anyone who can figure out what I'm writing, although I'm sure a guru will figure it out fast! Anyway, here are some of my method and variable names. Methods : searchBlockedListForBlockedSquares(), isCurrentSquareNextToAtLeastOneBlockedSquare(), searchBlockedListForBlockedSquares() Variables: isNextToBlockedSquares; I Guess there was only one variable that seemed too long."}
{"_id": "62038", "title": "What is the difference between a floating decimal number and fixed decimal number?", "text": "Please explain in layman's terms."}
{"_id": "256150", "title": "Is a long list of parameter checks an anti-pattern?", "text": "Background: I'm working on an application that will manage backup generators. These generators need to be able to be \"linked\" together. For example, Generator B might serve as a backup for Generator A. If A fails, then the software turns B on. Or they might be linked in a load-sharing configuration, where Generator A and B run together, and share the load. I'm making a function that will make the link, given 2 generators and the type of link desired.               public void LinkGenerators(Generator A, Generator B, Type linkType);      In writing my tests, I've come with a large number of invalid parameter configurations. My `LinkGenerators` function looks like this:               public void LinkGenerators(Generator A, Generator B, Type linkType)     {          if (linkType.BaseType != typeof(Link))          {             throw new ArgumentException(\"linkType is not a valid link type\");          }          if (linkAlreadyExistsFor(A, B))          {             throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Link for A and B already exists\");          }          if (A.Equals(B) || B.Equals(A))          {             throw new InvalidOperationException(\"A and B cannot be the same generator\");          }          if (A == null || B == null || linkType == null)          {             throw new ArgumentException(\"Cannot pass a null argument\");          }          .....          //Actually make the link after making sure all the arguments are valid.     }      Most of the LinkGenerator functions consists of verifying that the parameters are good. The actual link creation takes 2 lines of code. There's a bit of business logic (verifying that link doesn't already exist and that the generators are not the same) mixed in with a bit functional logic (making sure that the linkType derives from `Link`, arguments aren't null...), and makes me.......uncomfortable. Is a long list of parameter checks an anti-pattern or a code smell? And if so, what can one do about it? (Just to make this clear to close-voters probably misunderstanding the question: this is not a question about \"coding style for conditions\" like this one)."}
{"_id": "256158", "title": "Standardization and official guidelines for C++ template parameter naming", "text": "What are some explicit and official guidelines or standards for template parameter naming in C++? I've done something like this in the past:               template<typename TContainer, typename TKey>     void AddKeyToMap(TContainer& the_map, TKey const& the_key);      I've also seen names like `container_t` and `key_t`. I'd also accept advice against standardization here, if it makes sense."}
{"_id": "67605", "title": "Python syntax highlighting on Codeplex", "text": "My .py files in a Codeplex (hg-based) repository don't show up with the nice syntax highlighting as they do for C and C++ when I browse the code on the web. Is there a way to change the syntax highlighting settings in Codeplex?"}
{"_id": "175059", "title": "How can I discourage the use of Access?", "text": "Lets pretend that a very large company (revenue numbers with more than 8 figures) is looking to do a refresh on a software system, particularly the dashboard used by employees. This system was originally put together in the early 1990's to handle inventory tracking and storage across a variety of facilities (10+). Since this large company is now in the process of implementing some of these inventory processes with SAP they are in need of a major refresh. The existing system:   * Microsoft Access project performs dashboard duties   * Unique shipping/receiving configurations at different facilities require unique forms and queries within the Access project   * Uses 3rd party libraries referenced by Access to directly interface with at control system (read: motors, conveyors, and counters)   * Individual SQL Server 2000 instances (some traces of pre-update SQL Server 6.0 documents) at each facility The Issue:   * This system started as a home brewed inventory tracking scheme with a single internal sponsor who is still in charge of the technical direction. The original sponsor prescribing the desired deliverables that are being called for in the current RFP.   * The RFP describes a system based around a single Access project.   * Any suggestion that Access is ill suited for a project of this scope are shot down under the reasoning that \"it works for the scope now\". Are there any case studies, notices, or statements that can be used to disuade this potential customer from repeating their mistake? Does Microsoft make any statements directly about when it is _highly_ recommended to ditch Access? **EDIT:** To answer some of the comments below, the system is getting a rewrite no matter what due to the need to integrate a even greater push towards the deployment of an ERP solution. Problems with the current solution involve additional maintenance of ODBC connections, Office deployments, deploying an Access file to hundreds of workstations, and about 15 years of someone who doesn't know how to program generating enormous amounts of technical debt."}
{"_id": "156682", "title": "how to move Silverlight app to Html5", "text": "I have been working with Silverlight 5 application for a while. I liked this technology and I was captivated to the point to get certified in Silverligt development. However, Html5 gained momentum this point, a new wave of thinking about new applications. Now, i am considering whether to develop in Sl or html5. I have read thousands of post on the subject and can not find clear if there is any way to migrate an application to HTML5 SL, know if there is any tool to help the process?"}
{"_id": "175052", "title": "Project/DLL separation of concerns in ASP.NET MVC", "text": "I'm coming from a web forms n-tier background into ASP.NET MVC projects, and I'm wondering what the best practices are for separation of the components of MVC into different libraries (or not to) in the way one might with an n-tier model. Most of the sample apps I have seen only had one project file and objects were separated only by folder. Thanks"}
{"_id": "115165", "title": "Revealing interest in other companies in an interview", "text": "I graduate at the end of this year and I've been to a couple of interviews recently.   In almost all of them, i've been asked: \"to which other companies have you applied to?\" Why is this important to them? What is the best way to answer this question? FYI, I was caught out by this q and my answers involved some kind of lies."}
{"_id": "84363", "title": "Flat File in a Unit Test", "text": "Is it considered bad practice to use a flat file when doing unit tests? If an application reads in flat files and parses them, would this be a better approach than hard coding strings into the unit tests themselves?"}
{"_id": "156689", "title": "Domain integrity check in application", "text": "Is it better to check for allowed domain values on the frond end or let the database engine handle the domain integrity. For example If you have a data entry form for employee, is it better to check for allowed values on the data entry form before submitting the data to the database assuming network IO is not a big issue. What if there are lots of checks to be performed, would the engine be faster or would checking the value on the front end take the load of the dB engine?"}
{"_id": "115163", "title": "Is object pooling a deprecated technique?", "text": "I am very familiar with the concept of object pooling and I always try to use it as much as possible. Additionally I always thought that object pooling is the standard norm as I have observed that Java itself as well as the other frameworks use pooling as much as possible. Recently though I read something that was completely new (and counter- intuitive?) to me. That pooling actually makes program performance worse especially in concurrent applications, and it is advisable to instantiate `new` objects instead, since in newer JVMs, instantiation of an object is really fast. I read this in the book: `Java Concurrency in Practice` Now I am starting to think if I am missunderstanding something here since the first part of the book adviced to use `Executors` that reuse `Thread`s instead of creating new instances. So has object pooling become deprecated nowadays?"}
{"_id": "145464", "title": "Adapter Pattern to expose different aspects of an object -- Is this a correct use?", "text": "Quite frequently, I use an Adapter-like design to expose different aspects of data objects. For example, in a 3D modelling application I use an object hierarchy to represent the 3d models in the scene. This hierarchy contains lots of internal information and is quite complex to traverse. For exporting the 3D model data to different file formats (which involves quite significant transformation and omitting or converting some objects), I have a separate class called ModelAdapter. It extracts the important information of a 3D model and provides them in a different format, usable for export. The export plugins, in turn, read the data from the ModelAdapters and have nothing to do with the internal scene data structure. For Example:               class 3DModelAdapter     {     private 3DModel internal_model;     public List GetTriangles()     {      internal_model.Do_Some_Complex_Thing_To_Retrieve_The_Triangles();     }     ...     }      ` Is this a valid use of the Adapter pattern? Is there a better way to accomplish the same thing?"}
{"_id": "93721", "title": "CakePHP - Element Overkill", "text": "While implementing a flash game portal I decided to \"component-ize\" my views. The repeating elements were a no brainer and the templates for these were placed in elements. I pass through data from the controller to the element via the view using the Html helper. This is all working fine, and except for a very minor subset of elements, I haven't had too many issues with complicated logic in the view in order to massage parameters - in other words they have all been completely pass-through and therefore very transparent to the elements. Here-in lies my problem. I realize I have over 20 elements which far eclipses my paltry 8-10 views and 3 controllers. I've also had the urge to turn almost everything into a \"component\" and convert it into an element. For example, I have a rating control that is used on only one page - the game play page - and I recently contemplated converting it to an element. I'm wondering if I've gone overboard at this point. So, in summary, my question boils down to what are the best practices when using the CakePHP Html helper and what makes a chunk of html a candidate for an element (aside from the the obvious of only writing it once). I've read the cakePHP manual and it gives \"rough\" guidelines but I'm looking for some \"field level\" or real world experience to guild my decisions. TIA"}
{"_id": "93726", "title": "How to encourage version control adoption", "text": "I have recently started working in a team where there is no version control. Most of the team members are not used to any kind of version control. I've been using mercurial privately to track my work. I would like to encourage others to adopt it, and at the very least start to version their code as they develop changes. Can anyone give me advice on how I can encourage adoption of a distributed version control such as mercurial. Any advice on how to win people including managers to DVCS would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "93727", "title": "Is it beneficial to read old Java programming books?", "text": "Many of my Java books are 5 - 10 years old. Does it still help to read them, or should I use something within 2 years."}
{"_id": "111397", "title": "What is a better word for aligning your nesting?", "text": "I was taught by an old-time programmer who called this nested code               if(condition){       <div>         <b>text <u>text</u></b><br/>         <table>           <tr>              <td>a</td>              <td>b</td>           </tr>         </table>       </div>     } else {       log();     }      as opposed to this code which was considered to be not nested               if(condition){<div>     <b>text         <u>text</u></b>         <table><tr><td>a</td><td>b</td></tr></table>         </div>     } else {log();}      When I started reading tutorials I found early on that I had the wrong definition to nested. Messy vs clean is not sufficient for this because messy code encompasses other problems that I am not talking about, for example confusing flow of logic, using static initializers inappropriately, poor use of variable names, using twice the code to get the job done in a more confusing manner, etc. What is the right word for this, where the first example is ... and the second example is not ...?"}
{"_id": "61606", "title": "What features should the next systems language come with?", "text": "It seems like we still resort to C or C++ when we are going to do \"serious\" systems programming. We have some small languages which try to come up with new stuff inside systems programming such as Go and D (I have had a little experience with D and I like it a lot so far), but those aren't very widely used (Go is from 2009, so it shouldn't be that surprising but D is from 2001). There are non-language-technical reasons why these aren't so popular, such as there aren't many jobs, frameworks etc., but exclude such things and instead focus on what features should the next generation systems programming language come with? What do you, as a systems developer, lack in the \"traditional systems programming languages\" (that is C, C++ etc.)? Why do these things matter now in today's world (concurrency etc. would matter, I guess)?"}
{"_id": "161643", "title": "Which timezone is used for permalinks of posts", "text": "I wanted to add timezone support to my blog app but got stuck with a design problem. Every post has a published_on field which stores the publication date in a timezone aware format (UTC converted to user's timezone). So far so good. But the permalink of a post is created from the publication date as well. It has the format: /year/month/day/slug. This of course is **not** timezone aware and must be the same for all users around the world. So I have to define a timezone to use for the **permalink**. There are three options which make sense:   * The author's timezone   * UTC   * The default timezone of the server. Which would be the most appropriate?"}
{"_id": "161641", "title": "How should UI layer pass user input to BL layer?", "text": "I'm building an n-tier application, I have UI, BL, DAL & Entities (built from POCO) projects. (All projects have a reference to the Entities). My question is - how should I pass user input from the UI to the BL, as a bunch of strings passed to the BL method and the BL will build the object from the parameters, or should I build the objects inside the UI submit_function and send objects as parameters? EDIT: I wrote `n-tier application`, but what I actually meant was just layers."}
{"_id": "27666", "title": "What makes Python more used as an implementation language than the others?", "text": "Perl and Python are often compared to each other (let's not forget Ruby), and almost always those discussions will come to the conclusion pretty much anything you can do in one or the other. Without going into that, I've noticed that Python however, is often used as an implementation language (uhmm, maybe the term here is incorrect technically - a language you use to, for example, enable some degree of scripting in a large application ... Tecplot, Rhinoceros etc.; these are from the scientific area; there are others surely) and Perl never (well, to my knowledge at least). So I was wondering - what makes Python more suitable for something like that? What particulars make a language more suitable to be implemented as part of a larger app. for scripting in general? Is it only that that wasn't so common 10 years ago (scripting in applications), and Python is just at its peak at the moment, ... or something else?"}
{"_id": "27661", "title": "as a team: multiple projects vs single project?", "text": "I've been wondering for a while. I guess I have been adapting to the circumstances but I am in desperate need of some clearly defined workflows. Ok, so say I am working with one other person and I have 2 projects come up both of equally large size with LOOSE deadlines. What should I do: > a) turn down one, work on other exclusively > > b) take both on and develop both simultaneously > > c) assign one person to each project I have done c in the past which works fine. As a manager also, I've simply had to manage that project while I work on another. No big deal. But what is the ideal option above? I'd hate to do a because I am turning down work either though deadline would permit working on both projects. Any input? Following things should be taken into account: > -) all members have same expertise in design & development and can > effectively function as freelancers > > -) timezones may not be the same so they would not be working at the same > time"}
{"_id": "129264", "title": "Web Development: is always Typing necessary or can type on demand work?", "text": "I realize this idea might seem really foreign but I started thinking about this a bit back. Far as web sites go, at least in my experience, there is far more time spent retyping things to a String than the other way around. For instance: Say you have a user model:               user        int UserId      And I wanted to log the user in:               View  -> string to int -> controller -> int to dbInt -> database -> dbint to int -> controller -> int to string -> View      At no point in that whole exchange did I need an int. The one typing I did need was with the database, but that's just kind of expected. Now if I wanted to show a list of users based on a group id, the same thing happens except that UserId conversion happens for how many there are on the list and in the end it will just be represented as a string in the UI. Now I understand that a string might be larger memory wise than some types (bool for example) but is this more costly than all the typing that happens? Could it be more productive to only type when needed (Validating a number, date, ect) and just leave them as strings for the most part?"}
{"_id": "129269", "title": "How big should OSGi bundles be?", "text": "Or more completely \"What are the trade-offs and questions that should be raised when trying to decide the bundle structure of an OSGi application?\" Our existing OSGi bundles have tended to be quite fat: basically an API bundle and an implementation bundle, but with a lot of functionality. That has advantages in terms of project and build complexity, but maybe doesn't give us all the reusability and flexibility we desire. So in a recent project, we intentionally made quite thin bundles. We did a walkthrough this AM and we wondered if we'd gone too far. In this quite-small service we had 7 bundles, several of which only had 1 domain class. The question raised was \"This is almost like we're driving towards a bundle per package. But we _have_ classes and packages already in the language, are we going too far with our bundle granularity?\" To make it concrete, this is a Web Service that performs a calculation on the aggregate results of other Web queries (specifically, we query a bunch of astronomical databases for objects in a given area and then we filter the results based on our own criteria and then we estimate a probability of an adequate observation based on the filtered results). We ended up with 7 bundles, which seems like a lot for what is essentially \"a servlet that performs a calculation.\" Is such very-fine granularity good (lots of flexibility at runtime) or bad (overly complicated)? How can we develop our intuition about the \"just right\" granularity of our OSGi bundles?"}
{"_id": "126432", "title": "What is OpenCL?", "text": "I've been looking around, but I'm still not sure on the what OpenCL is. Other than multi processor stuff... Is it another graphics API like OpenGL and DirectX? Or something that works alongside OpenGL? I'm planning on learning OpenGL soon (with java if it makes a difference) so I want to know how/which direction to learn it with. Also, I hear things about CUDA which confuses me further. Just looking for some simple clarifying statements. Thanks."}
{"_id": "126433", "title": "Is Python's C interface faster than JNI?", "text": "I was reading What makes JNI calls slow? and I was wondering if Python's C interface is any better than JNI. I heard that if you want to make certain parts of your python programs faster, or if a certain part of the program was really hurting your program's performance, you write them in C, and make Python call them. Does the C interface it incur the same costs JNI does? why or why not?"}
{"_id": "74635", "title": "What can / should be done with regular expressions?", "text": "I've recently learnt regular expressions and I love writing / using them. I'm looking for ideas and more opportunities to use them, however I don't want to overuse them as an all purpose tool, as often warned by people. What kind of things should I use regular expressions for, and where should I not use them? (Apart from the obvious: HTML parsing)."}
{"_id": "126438", "title": "Pattern for user interaction and confirmation", "text": "Suppose a FileWriter class that needs validation that it will not erase a file already present, if one is found. It would have two functions:               public bool FileExists(string filePath) //...     public bool WriteFile(string filePath, string text) //...      The main concern is to not erase a file already present. A first interface is actually just interaction via a console:               public void Save()     {         FileWriter fileWriter;         //...         if (fileWriter.FileExists(filePath))         {             Console.WriteLine(\"File already exists. Continue? Press 'y' for yes\");             if (Console.ReadKey().KeyChar != 'y')                 return;         }         fileWriter.WriteFile(filePath, text);     }      And some time later comes a second interface, this one with a GUI, that needs the same user interaction:               public void SaveButton_click(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         FileWriter fileWriter;         //...         if (fileWriter.FileExists(filePath))         {             if (DialogResult.Yes != MessageBox.Show(\"File already exists. Continue?\", \"\", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo))                 return;         }         fileWriter.WriteFile(filePath, text);     }      Save for the way the interaction is made, the logic is the same. What pattern can be used to not duplicate this logic? Is a callback function to perform the check the best approach? Formatted as C#, but doesn't have to be C# specific."}
{"_id": "253063", "title": "Protected variable & protected method in the era of TDD", "text": "I understand protected method is good for unit testing since you can easily mock by the class by overriding the protected method for the sake of testing. However, protected variable is just a global variable (although limited) and should be avoided at all. Especially if you've all the essential getter/setter declared, you should have zero protected variable and it should not affect anything else. So, in the future, if I am going to elimiate all protected variables in my codes, are there any caveat that I am not aware of?"}
{"_id": "253065", "title": "What is your approach to debugging a transient problem", "text": "I am working on a system that controls a label printer and occasionally the label printer will print the same label 2,3,...,10 times. The error is transient, occurring once per 3000-4000 (once a month) or so labels. I am adding tracing to a log file to see what commands are being sent to the printer and state of the printer (we have a state machine defining allowable commands). But since this is a transient problem that may tell me that we had an error, but not why we had the error so I can fix the problem. I am also trying to get the print job files for the errant jobs so that I can emulate the job in my test environment. Hopefully with these I can reliably make the error occur I am curious how other might approach diagnosing this type of transient error."}
{"_id": "159146", "title": "Sporadic unittests or TDD?", "text": "I've read some basics about unit tests and TDD, but I find it hard to convince myself why TDD can have an advantage over only selected unittests. I've read common arguments for TDD, but don't see the improvment compared to simple unittests. Maybe you can help to clarify:   * TDD allows a loosely coupled, testable design -> I believe I can well imagine if a class is theoretically testable, without having to write tests; Loose coupling is a fundamental requirement that one can judge without refering to TDD?!   * TDD gives confidence in refactoring -> Isn't it more efficient to add selected unittests as soon as you start refactoring? While you have to think what to cover by test, you still save writing a lot of tests.   * TDD makes you define the interface first -> To me it seems some minor points are easier to decide while coding (which also agrees with agile?). It's even hard to predict a nested return data structure, but after coding I can often validate that I get what I expected. I made up the nested data while coding (a small unit) and see the behaviour. I'd save a lot of time writing the method first and using the validated result a posteriori to plug into a unittest.   * from what I've read many (of course not all) sources state that TDD does require more development time even considering the benefit for debugging; merely the code quality improves -> Can it be that some programmers make different kinds of mistakes and for some TDD doesn't cover the type of mistakes they make anyway? So if my typical bugs are not approachable by predictable tests, it's not for me?   * TDD aids changing teams, and larger interacting teams -> Is this a large issue? I can imagine it is, however as for the moment I program alone I cannot judge. How does TDD help teams in ways that... and here is the important point: other ways don't? It can force some discipline for less experienced team members, but apart from that any advantages?"}
{"_id": "35727", "title": "Testing website content with graphs", "text": "I'm looking for a way to test my webpages that have dynamically generated graphs (using such things like Google Graphs). Does anyone know if there are such tools that exist (perhaps Selenium would do this). Thanks"}
{"_id": "73175", "title": "What are some really tough programming books?", "text": "I was wondering what are some really tough books on programming that would make me think. I'm talking about low level languages such as c etc and algorithms, points, functions etc. Thanks ALot."}
{"_id": "159145", "title": "How to represent association in programs", "text": "Could someone help me in implementing association in cpp. I am trying to implement a dice game where I have two classes a diegame and a dice."}
{"_id": "35728", "title": "How to define template directives (from an API perspective)?", "text": "## Preface I'm writing a template language (don't bother trying to talk me out of it), and in it, there are two kinds of user-extensible nodes. TemplateTags and TemplateDirectives. A TemplateTag closely relates to an HTML tag -- it might look something like               div(class=\"green\") { \"content\" }      And it'll be rendered as               <div class=\"green\">content</div>      i.e., it takes a bunch of attributes, plus some content, and spits out some HTML. TemplateDirectives are a little more complicated. They can be things like `for` loops, `ifs`, `includes`, and other such things. They _look_ a lot like a TemplateTag, but they need to be processed differently. For example,               @for($i in $items) {        div(class=\"green\") { $i }     }      Would loop over `$items` and output the content with the variable `$i` substituted in each time. So.... I'm trying to decide on a way to define these directives now. ## Template Tags The TemplateTags are pretty easy to write. They look something like this:               [TemplateTag]     static string div(string content = null, object attrs = null)     {         return HtmlTag(\"div\", content, attrs);     }      Where `content` gets the stuff between the curly braces (pre-rendered if there are variables in it and such), and `attrs` is either a `Dictionary<string,object>` of attributes, or an anonymous type used like a dictionary. It just returns the HTML which gets plunked into its place. Simple! You can write tags in basically 1 line. ## Template Directives The way I've defined them now looks like this:               [TemplateDirective]     static string @for(string @params, string content)     {         var tokens = Regex.Split(@params, @\"\\sin\\s\").Select(s => s.Trim()).ToArray();         string itemName = tokens[0].Substring(1);         string enumName = tokens[1].Substring(1);         var enumerable = data[enumName] as IEnumerable;         var sb = new StringBuilder();         var template = new Template(content);         foreach (var item in enumerable)         {             var templateVars = new Dictionary<string, object>(data) { { itemName, item } };             sb.Append(template.Render(templateVars));         }         return sb.ToString();     }      (Working example). Basically, the stuff between the `(` and `)` is _not_ split into arguments automatically (like the template tags do), and the `content` isn't pre-rendered either. The reason it isn't pre-rendered is because you might want to add or remove some template variables or something first. In this case, we add the `$i` variable to the template variables,               var templateVars = new Dictionary<string, object>(data) { { itemName, item } };      And _then_ render the content manually,               sb.Append(template.Render(templateVars));      ## Question I'm wondering if this is the best approach to defining custom Template Directives. I want to make it as easy as possible. What if the user doesn't know how to render templates, or doesn't know that he's supposed to? Maybe I should pass in a `Template` instance pre-filled with the `content` instead? Or maybe only let him tamper w/ the template variables, and then automatically render the content at the end? OTOH, for things like \"if\" if the condition fails, then the template wouldn't need to be rendered at all. So there's a lot of flexibility I need to allow in here. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "209773", "title": "How does google code prettify works?", "text": "I am using google code prettify. After a page renders, I decided to check how `<code>` and `<pre>` tags and their contents were manipulated.   But in view source, I found no changes were made (in contrast to online syntax highlighters, which generate css style code with code text).   So, how/where is info about keywords, variable, comments, etc (from code tag text) stored and manipulated?"}
{"_id": "74188", "title": "How about multiple bits performance in common databases?", "text": "If there are 20 bit columns (non-null boolean), is it better to explicitly hold them in an integer type (int32)? Or, will the underlying database merge them in a single integer? I'm using PostgreSQL, though. Generally, is using bit-mask in SQL databases kind of anti-pattern? Backgrounds: The usage of these bit columns are left to be defined by the end user, along with a few of other int, float, double, varchar columns, so as to make the table a little more extensible. I'm also not going to use one-to-many custom property table in practice. Add an integer column is cheap, but if the underlying database could store several bit columns in one int32 field, I don't have to explicit merge them myself."}
{"_id": "93183", "title": "Logic in setters vs. getters?", "text": "Okey dokey, next crappy-code-at-work-rant-turned-into-a-real-question (I hope): So, I'm debugging some code, and we've got something like this:               objFoo.TabIndex = 5   'VB.NET property with setter implicitly called      and TabIndex is a property whose setter is the beginning of an _insane_ call tree, with subroutines and XML and special cases depending on context (like: modes), and so on. (Gack. You can see what working here is doing to me. I just prefixed Foo with \"obj\". :( ) Ok, granted, we need to manage state and perform computations and whatnot. Our state is either in the database (but may be expensive to pull out) or it's not yet ready to be committed to the database (e.g., it's only half-baked), so we can't just run out to the d/b every time we need some info, but... Is it better to manage this state in setters or is it better to do it in getters? I would think doing it in getters (i.e., lazily) would mean we would compute (and, presumably, cache) only what we need, while doing it in setters means we're essentially overcomputing, anticipating what getters may be called in the future and precomputing their results. (And then, there are the data members that don't have getters at all, they're just global variables in a 6,000-line class.) Shouldn't we just, as a general rule, set the indicated data member, maybe set some flags indicating other data is now invalid (cache invalidation) and wait for the various getters to be called to recompute? I can imagine one argument for doing this in setters is that our object is so complex that we really need to configure its state properly, using multiple complex data members. But isn't that a red flag in itself, indicating that a better approach would be to break the object up into smaller objects, not write a complex setter? (Now, I know there are all sorts of exceptions which people will no doubt point out, but I'm looking for a general rule of thumb and the logic behind it, or the statement that no such general rule of thumb is possible, accompanied by a convincing argument.) Thanks. John."}
{"_id": "166517", "title": "How to unit test image processing code?", "text": "I'm working in image processing (mainly OCR) and I wonder how I should integrate unit tests in my development. I'm already using unit tests for more \"common\" type of code but when dealing with image processing code I'm not sure how to deal with it. This kind of code always need some image data input/output and mocking this is not obvious. For now I'm mostly doing integration tests but they take a while to run and I would like some ideas on how to break down this kind of code into unit tests so that I can run them more quickly. Edit: Analyzing a character can go through many steps involving multiple rotation, scaling and morphological operations. These steps change often as the algorithm is being developed. Thus the input and expected output can evolve a lot while testing. Each character can be 100x100 pixels so hardcoding them in the code or working with generated data is out of question."}
{"_id": "149975", "title": "timers with threads on queue", "text": "So I've been asking the wrong questions for the last three days and after searching a lot I think I have an idea of what I need, my question is how to use timers with two threads writing and reading on one queue. In other words, I have one queue(or any other data structure) and two threads, producer and consumer, so the producer write values on the queue, with a time for each value(let's say 10 seconds) and the consumer read the queue, both are using lock mechanism, what I need is a timer function that check which value has passed the 10 seconds and remove it from the queue. I know how to implement the producer/consumer threads, but I don't know where to put this, is it a third thread or what? and do I need to write the time of the value when entered the queue, so the timer function can check it, or just write 10 and the timer function will decrement 1 each second?"}
{"_id": "196032", "title": "Atmosphere + Long Polling : No message distribution?", "text": "I'm experiencing a strange behavior with Atmosphere + Long Polling. I'd like to have a broadcaster per user, so I have registered a broadcaster on resource suspension with id : /user/. I use Atmosphere on a clustered environnement, so I have configured to use an external broadcaster that use Hazelcast. (No chance for Redis, corporate rigidity). Everything seems to work, BUT all broadcasted messages never reach the browser.               Future<Object> f = BroadcasterFactory.getDefault().lookup(\"/user/foo\").broadcast(\"my lovely message\");     f.get()      I can see my pending request on each browser (Chrome/ Firefox), but no resume, and no response until the socket timeout to renew the connection. My environment :   * Servlet 3.0   * JBoss AS7 7.20   * Spring 3.2 + MeteorServlet   * Atmosphere 1.1.0RC1 (same with the most stable version) + jQuery Atmosphere"}
{"_id": "149970", "title": "I can write code... but can't design well. Any suggestions?", "text": "I feel that I am good at writing code in bits and pieces, but my designs really suck. The question is, how do I improve my designs - and in turn become a better designer? I think schools and colleges do a good job of teaching people how to become good at mathematical problem solving, but let's admit the fact that most applications created at school are generally around 1000 - 2000 lines long, which means that it is mostly an academic exercise which doesn't reflect the complexity of real world software - on the order of a few hundred thousand to millions of lines of code. This is where I believe that even projects like topcoder / project euler also won't be of much help, they might sharpen your mathematical problem solving ability - but you might become an academic programmer; someone who is more interested in the nice, clean stuff, who is utterly un-interested in the day to day mundane and hairy stuff that most application programmers deal with. So my question is how do I improve my design skills? That is, the ability to design small/medium scale applications that will go into a few thousand of lines of code? How can I learn design skills that will help me build a better html editor kit, or some graphics program like gimp?"}
{"_id": "166510", "title": "Java - What methods to put in an interface and what to keep out", "text": "I'm designing a file handler interface:               public interface FileHandler     {         public void openFileHandler(String fileName);         public void closeFileHandler();              public String readLine();         public String [] parseLine(String line);         public String [] checkLine(String line[]);              public void incrementLineCount();         public void incrementLineSuccessCount();         public void incrementLineErrorCount();              public int getLineCount();         public int getLineSuccessCount();         public int getLineErrorCount();          }      It is soon apparent to me that these methods **can't be made private**. I don't want incrementLineCount to be public. What is proper way to design an interface like this?"}
{"_id": "223256", "title": "Handling a sms pull request from spring controlller", "text": "I am using spring xml mapping and I have to handle a request that is coming from sms gateway and I want to send the response as SMS. My scenario is like   1. user sends sms from mobile in the format `code subcode XXXXX`.   2. sms gateway will generate a request and send to my registered url using the format `url??mobileNumber=99999999&timeStamp=2014-01-06 16:10:20&operatorName=&areaCode=&message=code subcode xxxxxxx` I want to handle this request from my spring controller. Right now what I did was I created a controller and handle it from reference data. Any other better solutions?"}
{"_id": "223257", "title": "Junior developers in a remote working environment", "text": "Our company is looking to introduce remote working as an option for its developers. This book (Remote: Office not required) has been offering some valuable guidance. However one issue that is not addressed is the employment and management of junior level developers. In a remote working environment, how do you ensure that junior developers receive the same standard of guidance and experience that they would gain from being around more senior developers in an office environment?"}
{"_id": "149978", "title": "How to sell my work?", "text": "I'm a freelancer, a company I'm working with (which has a government as customer) asked me to write an app (web-based and/or system) to allow them archiving documents, and making them downloadable by given users/groups. I'm planning to make it with APIs, and to make a light web interface and a cross-platform desktop app. My question is: How much can I sell it? Based on time developing? A very light, free and nude app (same as dropbox), then make them pay for each functionality (users/groups/ssl/resume downloads/desktop app...)? Or make a global price, based on approximate cost, based on I don't know what ? It's my first closed source project."}
{"_id": "196038", "title": "Is it a bad idea to sync file system with remote server using HTTP?", "text": "I have started a project which will duplicate Dropbox or Google Drive behavior but using Amazon S3 az a backend. Idea is very simple, a Node.js server that watchs a directory for file changes and PUT them on the S3. Or it will look at S3 for changes and applies them to file system structure. I'be uploaded very early version of my app to Github. You can find it here. Because I am a web developer, I am using web technologies to solve the problem. I'm afraid of my limited mindset and picking wrong tools for the job. There are other solutions to this problem. One is S3FS which is a FUSE file system for Unix systems. In my opinion that is very hard to use and limited to platform. My solution uses Node.js to overcome cross-platform issues. I can pack my Node.js app with App.js and make it an easy to use software. To clarify, my questions are:   * Is HTTP/HTTPS good enough for file transfer?   * Is Node.js good enough for working with File System?   * Scalability: can this approach fail in large file sizes?"}
{"_id": "23270", "title": "Should a programmer know Linux?", "text": "I'm a PHP/Python programmer learning Java and C#(.NET). My main OS is windows 7 but I've used Linux and currently dual-booting with Ubuntu. My Linux knowledge however, is pretty limited. I can work with the command line on simple tasks but that's pretty much it. I don't do any shell scripting, don't know very well the most important commands, nor the system in general. My interests are web development, mobile apps and maybe some embedded stuff in the future. Should I get myself familiarized more with Linux ? Even if at the moment I'm not that interested in it? Is it a must for future job positions considering my field of interest? Thank you."}
{"_id": "23392", "title": "How to learn UML for a design usage?", "text": "10 years ago at college I had some UML lectures. From these I remember and use only some basic part of class and sequence diagrams and how our teacher was trying to convince us that in the future, we won't be coding but we will be using (bloated at the time) UML tools to generate software ! What a laugh ! Today I think I can have a better use of UML than only reverse engineering my code to have some nice diagrams to illustrate a documentation. I feel than I can use it to design some part of my code and avoid late problems. But each time I want to really use UML to design something I get lost: too much diagrams, too much obscure jargon, too much text field and options in UML editor with dark meanings... So I want to know how do you have learn UML in order to know enough to use it in design phase without being drawn by its complexity. Note:   I already have this book: UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language from M. Fowler. What I miss is more a practical approach with one or many real world examples of how to model a real project using UML."}
{"_id": "56562", "title": "Host Matching Interview Tips?", "text": "So I've gotten past the technical interviews for a company, and now I'm having an interview with my potential host for an internship during the summer. What are some tips for interviews like these? I know they're not really technical, but I'm not sure what exactly they are meant to gauge. Any tips on what to say, how to show my interest in the project, questions I should ask, etc.? * * * Edit: Side question: What's a good synonym for the word \"interesting\" or \"interested\"? I find that I use those words a bit too often (e.g. \"I'm definitely interested in working on the front-end!\" or \"Yeah, that sounds really interesting, I would love learning more about it.\" or \"Those all sound really interesting, I'm definitely interested in all of them!\", etc.)... but I can't seem to find any good synonyms. (Online sites don't really give me good synonyms.) Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "98757", "title": "Can agile be effectively used for initial development on a substantial project?", "text": "I think the short answer to this question is probably \"yes\", but I thought I'd ask anyway! We are in the process of taking **a number of existing similar-but-different applications** and, as part of what is for us possibly the largest development project ever, attempting to **replace them and any subsequent similar-but- different applications with one over-arching super configurable system** to rule them all. I fully expect Difficult Second System Syndrome to give us plenty of problems delivering the behemoth in the first place, but I don't want our choice of methodology to make it all worse. We've dabbled in agile, from something mostly waterfall, but this would be our first substantial project using some new improved methodology. We have Big Plans for the new system, and while it doesn't all have to be delivered at once **we will need to implement large chunks of it from the word go to allow anything to be given to the customer that they would even understand**. My concern is that, since we're dramatically changing so much at once, there is little scope for small chunks of work that lead to useful/demoable deliverables. I'm worried that, even if we did manage to find a way to do it in small chunks, we'd need those chunks to fit well into a bigger picture, and so would find it hard to develop them in isolation for that reason too. We're aiming for quite a decoupled SOA approach, which is something. **Timescales are tight** , and reputations have been staked on delivering on time. So I'd like to know if, in this case:   * it is advisable to do loads of up-front design, put together the overall shape of the app and get the crucial modules working in one big push (which might be sprintable in terms of keeping track of work, but not so much in terms of feedback and improving design and so on), before maybe going more agile from then on, or...   * try to be as agile as possible from the start - agree things like coding standards, maybe some API basics, general module splits, and then trust to independent coding while bearing flexibility in mind to let the other stuff gradually flesh out; maybe some stuff has to be reworked, but anything that can be better steered during development rather than up-front will benefit, or...   * maybe something else, and...   * any general tips?"}
{"_id": "110442", "title": "Should code from an incomplete story be removed from the build?", "text": "During the sprint review the product owner may say that a particular story is incomplete or the team itself may not have completed some committed tasks. In what situations do you leave the code in the build? If the code is left in the build, is this a conscious decision made during the review? In other words, do you discuss this issue during the review? Are there specific instances where code should be removed?"}
{"_id": "60955", "title": "Writing Software", "text": "A couple of weeks I got my first Java assignment in my first career job and my partner and I are working through the requirements. I'm mostly shadowing him and learning (awesome!) and it's been great to see how he works. One thing that I noticed that I never even thought of was how to build an application from the ground up. I mean I understand the software life cycle and all, but actually implementing in the real world was very much so different that I imagined. As an example, we have a requirement where one object has many objects and I had no clue how to implement that and he was like (with his 20 years experience), \"Oh that's just an ArrayList<> of objects within this class. How can I get like that? Is it just an experience thing or are there good reference books on how to WRITE good code? I mean, I understand the basics of programming, but putting together an entire app just baffles me. Can someone please advise me on how to proceed? I hope this makes sense..."}
{"_id": "60957", "title": "Why must we learn Procedural programming before we learn Object-oriented programming", "text": "I'm in the 4th year at an IT university now, and when I talk with my professor about this topic he rejects my opinion and gives me a very heavy criticism (in my university, we were being taught C (ANSI) (in Procedural Programming class - in the 1st year at university ) before C++ (in OOP class in the 2nd year) and others... But at age 13 my brother was taught, by me, Java first and nothing else. Now, he can do almost everything which a normal 2nd-year-student can do with Java. To you pros, I'd like to know why you think we should be taught procedural programming first."}
{"_id": "125503", "title": "What language/framework/workflow sets do you recomend for a small office?", "text": "I work in a small office (only 1 designer, me and plus 1 programmer). We have a solid background in classic ASP development and some sort of a small proprietary framework/cms based on ASP + MySQL + Javascript written line by line in here and the projects aren't so big until now and we want to step up with something more fast and secure way to develop without reinventing the wheel (again). I have a little knowledge in PHP and .Net (C#) from some particular projects and personal learning. We have researched various languages and frameworks, as well as some new (to us) methodologies like TDD and some version control oriented workflows with GIT, etc. Until now we have thought in PHP with some framework like CodeIgniter or Kohana and ASP.net (C#) with MVC 3, since I can start from some knowledge I already have and maybe adopting GIT as our version control system for the bigger projects. We need some advice in getting a new set of skills and tools that work the best for us before getting 1 by 1 and trying. **EDIT: What we need to change(maybe)**   As you can imagine, we don't have a testing process like TDD or BDD and the testing is done very breafly (We have luck with so little problems after release) nor a real idea of how to use it (need more study and clarification). We use Dreamweaver most of the time to code and need a more fast and robust development environment with an autocomplete feature like MS Intelisense and nice highlighting (I personally like to write code and have used the notepad to write almost all of my first apps, but in a profitable work with a short deadline we can't go this way. Not that Dreamweaver is bad, but it's too general and lacks some features). I know that security is a thing to see at the programmer side, but there's plenty of frameworks with features that helps in this case and now we have a very basic and limited set of tools written by us to do this (poor SQL injection protection, etc). Our \"version control\" is purely based on a network share and our machines. The final version is always the one in our file server and most of the time, when we have to make some changes, we change the files directly and upload them again. A backup of this share is made each 2 or 3 months. We are growing up and expect to hire someone soon. Its hard to find a VBScript programmer for ASP and when we find one, the salary is to high for us by now because nobody is learning it in this days and who knows already have a job with a good one. **Final concerns:** We've decided to use ASP.Net(C#)/MVC as our primary framework and use CodeIgniter as an alternative to linux servers and other projects. Thinking in joining some MS program for startups and small business to help with some costs. We're getting Git as our vcs in our private file server for the origin and instances in each develop machine for us to clone, work and push back. We also considering a service like Bitbucket to maintain a copy on the cloud. If some of you have any more advice or other thoughts about this I'll follow- up. I would like to thank you all and mark many of the answers as right but I can't. I think this question may be a base of reference for small offices like us to get some points and help on the same decisions."}
{"_id": "253686", "title": "Name of my software similar to name of an other program", "text": "I am going to write some software. I'd like to call my software X-former (from XML + transformer). But there is already Xformer emulator. (My software is not related to emulators.) Taking this into account, is calling my software X-former: a. legal; b. ethical?"}
{"_id": "253687", "title": "Is there a way to avoid type-checking in this scenario?", "text": "I have a class `SuperClass` with two subclasses `SubClassA` and `SubClassB`. I have a method in a different class which takes a `SuperClass` parameter. The method should do different things depending on the type of the object it receives. To illustrate:               public void doStuff(SuperClass object){         // if the object is of type SubClassA, do something.         // if it's of type SubClassB, do something else.     }      I want to avoid type-checking (i.e. `instanceof`) because it doesn't feel like proper OO design. But I can't figure out how to employ Polymorphism to elegantly solve this problem. How can I solve this problem elegantly?"}
{"_id": "253683", "title": "Algorithm to match items be value into sets base on total", "text": "Given n sets of items. Each item has a value. The items in a set have similar values but vary by a small amount. The goal is to create new sets containing three items selected from the original sets such that the total of the values is within a given range. Only one item a source set can be selected. For example: If we have the following starting sets:   * Set A - { 4.0, 3.8, 4.2 }   * Set B - { 7.0, 6.8, 7.2 }   * Set C - { 1.0, 0.9, 1.1 }   * Set D - { 6.5, 6.4, 6.6 }   * Set E - { 2.5, 2.4, 2.6 } Goal is to create sets containing three elements such that the total is between 11.9 and 12.1.     * For example { 3.8, 7.2, 1.0 }   There can be unused elements. Can someone suggest an algorithm for this problem?"}
{"_id": "104530", "title": "Over normalization in database", "text": "Currently I am working on creating a new database schema as part of a major new product. Our previous customer address records (in a previous product) look something like this in our current schema (not all columns shown):               AddressID, AddressLine1, AddressLine2, City, State. Zip, Country, Etc.      I want to normalize this so that an address actually breaks down to:   * 1 address to many address lines    * 1 address to a zip/postal code So, I sent out a communication saying that zip code will now be in its own table and that each \"address\" corresponds to one zip/postal code. Also addresses would be broken out so that we could support more than 2 address lines with a 1 to many relationship. Some people in my group are now saying that I am over normalizing the database. Am I? Note, I am not a DBA but I feel that this is more logical and more efficient than the previous schema. **UPDATE** Thx to everyone for thier input. I'm not going to break out the address or zips to thier own tables. My original plan was to have a zip code lookup and re-use for the addresses so I would only have to have one set of zips, but I'll just drop everything on the record itself, and have a separate table for zip lookups."}
{"_id": "220501", "title": "MVC to create desktop and mobile webapps?", "text": "I'm planning the creation of a webapp with a dedicated mobile web interface and a dedicated desktop/tablet interface. I am considering ASP.NET MVC, but it is clear to me that MVC is for separation of concerns as explained here, anyway in my case i'd like to minimize the code and to support elegantly phones and desktop (may be landscape tablet can be \"desktop\" too). So is MVC a wise choice in this case or which is the 1st stop for this kind of xdevice web app?"}
{"_id": "220500", "title": "Image strategy on Android", "text": "I am creating an application with lots of photos. They will take `> 100 mb` on memory. So far I have 3 ideas: >   1. Place it in `@drawable` \\- app will be heavy >   2. Download by JSON and place in java array - caching - How long it can be > there? >   3. Download by JSON, place it on phone memory/SD card and read in the > application from memory. User can Remove pictures. > The best option will be to give possibility to user if he want to have a pictures or not. What strategy is most efficient and recommended?"}
{"_id": "75581", "title": "\"Pretty good\" WPF/Winforms programmer interviewing for ASP.NET job", "text": "I have 5 years of experience writing WPF and WinForms applications. I solo wrote the software and thing always turned out well, and the company I work for has happy customers. Plenty of SQL, EF, LINQ, etc along the way. Things look nice to boot. I know zero ASP.NET. Neither my job nor personal projects have let me to work with it. Tomorrow I have an interview for a job that is for an ASP.NET/MVC/WPF/WinForms developer, though I gather from my recruiter that they like to ask about ASP.NET specifically. Now my question is, what exactly are my strengths here? I know I have a good amount of skills, but will they translate well going to ASP.NEt, in that I should act confident that I could pick it up quick on the job since I learned the other technologies? Any other advice? For comparison's sake, while I feel that I have a good handle on and am \"pretty good\" at WPF programming, it took me a while to get the hang of it coming from WinForms. I feel that if an employer had kept a close eye on me during that time, they wouldn't have been impressed. Any thought? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "209497", "title": "Looking for a book, blog or feed about anti-patterns", "text": "In my experience, being familiar with anti-patterns is as vital as knowing patterns themselves. Despite an abundance of literature on patterns, there is a surprising lack of literature on anti-patterns. Browsing the web usually reveals advises that are either too vague (e.g. \" _do not use global variables_ \"), too specific (e.g. \" _java.lang.Boolean.getBoolean doesn't do what you think it does_ \") or obviously wrong to begin with (e.g. _God object_ ). What I am looking for are anti-patterns that appear to be good solutions at first glance, but tend to lead to issues further down the line. Do you know any good source of such anti-patterns? (the only good example I know is SQL Antipatterns)"}
{"_id": "141613", "title": "confusion understanding the fluid 2 column navigation layout", "text": "I'm trying to understand the following cross-browser layout: http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/perfect-2-column-left-menu.htm but I'm having some confusion with some of its parts and there isn't enough information on the page or in the css comments to help me.     * What is the purpose of the .colleft div? Why can't the 2 columns be directly under the .colmask container?   * Why does the .colleft div have a right 75%? I don't understand its purpose/benefit.   * Why don't the widths of .col1 and .col2 add up to 100%?   * How was left:102% calculated for .col1 and left:6% for .col2? The comments for this are not very clear to me. How is it any different from not even specifiying a left/right css property?"}
{"_id": "212593", "title": "Should ** bind more tightly than !, ~?", "text": "Designing a programming language, I'm including the `**` exponentiation operator. In Fortran and Python, the two languages I know of which have this operator, it binds more tightly than unary minus, which makes sense for practicality as well as tradition. It should bind more loosely than the prefix increment operator `++` because the other way wouldn't make sense. Thus the usual single precedence level for the prefix unary operators gets split in two, which is fine as far as it goes. I'm also including the logical and bitwise _not_ operators `!` and `~`. Which side of the split should they fall on? Should they bind more loosely or tightly than `**`? I haven't been able to find either objective reason or relevant precedent for either choice. Is there any of either that I'm missing? Failing that, which would people find less surprising?"}
{"_id": "157328", "title": "Add a second developer to the team", "text": "In my company, I'm the only developer, but we plan on expanding the team by hiring a second programmer. I know there are a lot of implications to that (especially around source control). I've Googled a lot, but haven't found a good tutorial/article on how to grow the team from one to many developers. Do you have any resources that we could make use of?"}
{"_id": "56384", "title": "Why are most websites optimized for viewing in portrait mode?", "text": "I simply cannot figure this out. Almost all monitors have an aspect ratio where width is much bigger than the height and yet almost all websites are designed exactly for the other way round? I am not really a web developer and am just experimenting stuff at the moment but this madness baffles me!!! Edit: The point is not that I would like to limit the height of a website. The point is that I'd wat it to somehow fill all available space when I have my 1920x1080 in landscape mode. Edit 2: See this to understand what I am saying ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/t6tGR.png)"}
{"_id": "3730", "title": "What is the development process like at Google?", "text": "What tools do they use? What processes? What rules do they have regarding code? How do they test their code?"}
{"_id": "204178", "title": "Writing unit test only for applications that requires them", "text": "Bit of a rant, but bear with me. People call me purist. I do not code in any way other than TDD. When I try to push TDD as a company policy, the following conversation: company owner: \"we'll do TDD when the project warrants it\"   me: \"if you can't do TDD on even small/simple projects, you won't suddenly know how to do it for big projects. Also if a project is small/simple. the so- called cost of unit test should be negligible\".   company owner: \"all the devs here know how to do TDD, they'll do it when required\". That last sentence struck me as complete B(each) S(and). My argument is if a dev \"choose to do TDD when he's told it's required\". He's doing it wrong and he has no clue about unit test/TDD. Unit testing is like my left hand and my code is like my right hand. Yeah sure I can just use my right hand. It'll just do things wonky and slower. Do I have my head too far up my @$$? I just have a hard time believing a dev who does TDD fluently would prefer not to do it. (For a whole application) Edit- I'm not talking about whether TDD/Unit testing is/if/how/when required and its benefit. It's a dead horse. I'm talking about now that I do it day in and day out, I feel uncomfortable NOT doing it. I just want to know if it is a healthy mentality."}
{"_id": "245290", "title": "Apply filter only if not null", "text": "My function takes an optional parameter, `type`, which is used to filter through a collection. However, the filter should only apply if the parameter is passed in (in other words, non-null). If the filter is not passed in, it should not be applied. How can I write my logic to reflect this? What I have now is -               if( other conditions && ( Type == null || (Type != null && Order.Type == Type ) ) )         return val += Order;      But this feels clunky and wrong. Is there a way I can simplify my logic here?"}
{"_id": "204175", "title": "What is the significance of the Salesforce platform to a developer?", "text": "I decided to learn Salesforce (without any knowledge of this platform) and so far it just seems that I can simply store JSON objects into the cloud... similar to OData + Microsoft SQL or Azure Table storage.   * Link to Salesforce REST API Is my understanding over-simplified, or what additional value does Salesforce provide to the developer?"}
{"_id": "250087", "title": "Integrate NuGet Package Restore feature into checkout process", "text": "There are some situations where I have no internet connection and so I am forced to work offline. Usually it would look like this: I get connected, do a checkout from source control server, and move out of office. The NuGet packages stay on the server, because I have enabled Package Restore and should have opened Visual Studio and fired a build at least once, to download them. Before using NuGet we had the package management integrated using SVN externals. The required assemblies were automatically downloaded during checkout. But this system has some limitations, I'd like to get rid off. The prefered way to use Package Restore would be to execute it on checkout or update. Is there a way doing so, using hooks for SVN (TortoiseSVN) or GIT (TortoiseGIT, Github for Windows) as version control system?"}
{"_id": "250080", "title": "Simple straight-line path algorithm", "text": "I need a simple pathfinding algorithmn to go from point A to point B. A* seems like an overkill because It doesn't matter wheather I hit walls or not and there's no terrain. I was wondering if there was a simpler one which would find a direct path(a straight line) from point A to B."}
{"_id": "79925", "title": "cakephp admin panel, different controller for different group of tasks or one for all?", "text": "I am writing an admin panel in cakephp I got a question the panel will have the functionality to add items to the main website (images specifically) so I am wondering if I should put all the functionality (add,edit,view,delete) to the main admin controller or should I make a different controller for that? As the admin panel will most likely be extended with more features such as adding new users, modifying them etc. What do you recommend?"}
{"_id": "99807", "title": "What is a good code practice of when to make a function/method for small repetitive code segments?", "text": "Many times throughout writing larger programs I have questioned after how many copy and pastes does it make sense to put the code into a function or method and what is a good rule of thumb? I have been using a rule of thumb of four lines or greater and appearing more then twice, then I make a simple function / method containing that code. Can you think of a better practice or offer any pointers? This is more of a general design pattern question rather then a language specific question."}
{"_id": "105662", "title": "Is return-type-(only)-polymorphism in Haskell a good thing?", "text": "One thing that I've never quite come to terms with in Haskell is how you can have polymorphic constants and functions whose return type cannot be determined by their input type, like               class Foo a where         foo::Int -> a      Some of the reasons that I do not like this: **Referential transparency:** \"In Haskell, given the same input, a function will always return the same output\", but is that really true? `read \"3\"` return 3 when used in an `Int` context, but throws an error when used in a, say, `(Int,Int)` context. Yes, you can argue that `read` is also taking a type parameter, but the implicitness of the type parameter makes it lose some of its beauty in my opinion. **Monomorphism restriction:** One of the most annoying things about Haskell. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole reason for the MR is that computation that looks shared might not be because the type parameter is implicit. **Type defaulting:** Again one of the most annoying things about Haskell. Happens e.g. if you pass the result of functions polymorphic in their output to functions polymorphic in their input. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but this would not be necessary without functions whose return type cannot be determined by their input type (and polymorphic constants). So my question is (running the risk of being stamped as a \"discussion quesion\"): _Would it be possible to create a Haskell-like language where the type checker disallows these kinds of definitions? If so, what would be the benefits/disadvantages of that restriction?_ I can see some immediate problems: If, say, `2` only had the type `Integer`, `2/3` wouldn't type check anymore with the current definition of `/`. But in this case, I think type classes with functional dependencies could come to the rescue (yes, I know that this is an extension). Furthermore, I think it is a lot more intuitive to have functions that can take different input types, than to have functions that are restricted in their input types, but we just pass polymorphic values to them. The typing of values like `[]` and `Nothing` seems to me like a tougher nut to crack. I haven't thought of a good way to handle them. I doubt I am the first person to have had thoughts like these. Does anybody have links to good discussions about this Haskell design decision and the pros/cons of it?"}
{"_id": "209041", "title": "Breaking down a complex story at project start", "text": "I'm trying to get to grips with agile project management (with Pivotal Tracker) but keep finding myself running into walls when trying to define the first few stories of a project. Take for example this very simple story: \"A user should be able to tag a product\" Assuming I've already defined \"product\" elsewhere, this story would possibly involve writing a polymorphic tagging system under the hood, on completion of that system id be able to finally add the ability to tag a product. My problem is with the amount of work hidden in this story. I can define tasks to get the story done but stories as a whole are supposed to be 1-2 days work? I don't feel right about the story just revealing the tip of the iceberg but that's the only part that relates to the User. How do you overcome this kind of thing? What are the best practices? **UPDATE 25/08** Thanks to everyone for your guidance, I've taken all advice onboard on how to define stories. I am now switching to Jira Grasshopper which has better support for tasks within stories (assignment, estimates etc) and tracking of development tasks once the sprint has began."}
{"_id": "222483", "title": "What database structure is suitable for tracking File audits?", "text": "I need to track permissions and access requests to a file server in a database. I'm given the full path of the folder and am considering parsing the path (splitting on the \"/\" character) and creating a self-referential link to the table... in addition to a column intended to store the full file path. What is the ideal approach for dealing with such a system that can have a tree of folders and having a database schema suited for that purpose? Is self-referential columns overkill?"}
{"_id": "106004", "title": "What is a *slightly* less extreme equivalent to being \"fluent\" in a language?", "text": "tl;dr: What is a less extreme (but still noticeable) alternative to the word \"fluent\", when saying e.g. \"I am fluent in C++/Python/whatever?\" * * * I think I can call myself \"fluent\" in C#, because I know the language and runtime very well, and I'm very familiar with the .NET framework's APIs and classes, etc. I would _like_ to claim the same thing for Python and C++. But while I _can_ program in Python (I did so for an entire summer, making a website with Django), for example, I would not call myself _fluent_ because **my code isn't always \"Pythonic\"** (e.g. using `map`/`filter` vs. list comprehensions), and I'm not too intimate with some aspects of the language and standard library yet (e.g. the introspection API, etc.). Is there a word or phrase I can use on e.g. a resume to describe what I know? I can think of \"very familiar with\", but is there a better word/phrase I can use?"}
{"_id": "167396", "title": "How long can a programmer concentrate in a day?", "text": "There is this question ( which is now closed as _not constructive_ ) that asked about the average productivity per day. My question is, is there any scientific study on the productivity of programmers? I can't help but feel that doing 8 hours of quality programming work from Monday to Friday consistently is very hard. And if yes, is there any literature that investigates this?"}
{"_id": "222612", "title": "Is there a guide for software development to design efficient hotkeys for actions?", "text": "I don't know how to word this easily but basically the software I am writing has a ton of actions and I want to assign hotkeys to every one of them so power users can work super fast. First off they are not actions related to the application itself, i.e. Quit, Maximize Window, About, Preferences, etc. But rather actual operations you perform on the data set. It's not exactly the same but closest example I can give is the Nuke compositor, where each action is represented by a node. So things like Blur, Sharpen, Add, Color Correction, Keylight, etc. But since the number of nodes are over 500, I don't know how to create easy to remember hotkeys that do not use every modifier key combination. Is using 2 key combo, i.e. CC for Color Correction the best way? Are there resources on this subject? Basically maximizing the use of hotkeys to take working speed to the max without having to remember 1000s of key combinations. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/icbaH.png)"}
{"_id": "186313", "title": "Lowercase in Linux file names", "text": "As I find that UpperCase are really readable for first letter word separation in long complex names, I tend to give some of my Linux files names with some UpperCase. Mostly executables, some directories too. But it's been a few weeks I have remarked that the huge majority off all file names in my linux distrib are lowercase... So I made some googling a moment ago, and I found this article: Linux File Names, that states one should _always_ use lowercase in the unix world, > ...It's best to _always_ use lowercase in Linux unless you can think of a > good reason to use uppercase or mixed case. Most Unix people use lowercase > almost exclusively, but aside from this \"cultural\" point, there's another > good reason to use lowercase. If you're sharing or accessing a DOS file > system with Linux, DOS will not be able to see the files that have uppercase > or mixed-case file names... Is that really the case?"}
{"_id": "232336", "title": "Universal means of describing what functions a library should expose", "text": "I am busy with a hobby OS and I am planning on making the project open-source and eventually have support for multiple platforms. With this in mind I have taken the approach of putting all hardware specific code in a separate Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) library so that the kernel does not need to know how the specific hardware handles things such as memory and interrupts. The kernel will just call the HAL function asking for some memory or to hook an interrupt by calling `hal_memory_malloc(...);` and `hal_interrupts_hook(...);` respectively. My question is, I would like to know if there are any universal means of describing what functions the library has to expose if a developer wants to port the HAL to another platform. Seeing the Kernel knows the name of the function because it's in the kernel's header files the library just needs to have a function with that specific name in it. As the kernel I don't care how your function works as long as its there and I can call it. _**Edit_** My kernel and library is written in C so the library will be a normal statically linked libray At the moment I have a Word Document that has a diagram showing the different functions but this is going to become a mess soon. Any advice would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "143921", "title": "Should I store \"system b\" password in \"system a\"?", "text": "I am developing a system for mailing which has a account id/password to login and I need to store the smtp server account and password for sending mail. Since the mail is auto send I can't request the user input password/id each time when sending. Therefore, is storing the user account id/password (system b password) in my system (system a) insecure design? How can I improve this?"}
{"_id": "146348", "title": "Does this implementation of the state pattern make sense?", "text": "I have the task to implement the state pattern in one of my classes. The assignment referenced a suggested implementation, and upon reviewing that implementation I was confused since I believed it to be nonsensical for most applications and frankly simply bad from a design point of view, since it completely dismisses some very basic design principles of software code. This is the class diagram of the suggested implementation: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/mexgp.png) I wonder: What is the use of this implementation? It (imo) clearly violates the two main design principles of software engineering: Make things easily maintainable, and easily extensible. In my eyes, this implementation has zero easy extensibility(you have to change the source of at least two classes, for example, to implement a new state that you forgot about when first implementing it). The coupling between this code and client code seems to be huge. If you remove anything in this pattern, all client code will break. If you want to add anything, you have to change all client code in order to adapt, for example, a new state, because new states can only be entered via the enter() method of the concrete state, or by directing injecting them into the Controller using the changeState() method. As a bonus, you can only have one garage door in the entire world, since the states are practically singletons. The enter() method in the concrete states was given as this:               public static State enter(Controller c) {     if(m_instance == null) m_instance = new <<concreteStateName>>(c);     return m_instance;     }      Or you can have multiple garage doors, which all open simultaneously if you open one. Why would you put all methods in the abstract State class? Where's the polymorpy? Why do concrete states have either empty or exception throwing versions of methods that have nothing to do with their state (for example, the resulting interface of Opened will have a \"lock()\" method, even though you can't directly lock the garage door when it's open. You have to close it first). Why not choose a single method and implement it differently in the concrete States, making the thing easily extensible again? It is also (again, as far as I can see) not really maintainable without a lot of troubles. What if you, after a couple of months of using the garage, decide that one state is in fact not only obsolete but wrong? You're going to have to take it out, and the according method in State() with it, breaking the entire code base that uses this implementation. This is a garage door with four states. I wouldn't want to work on that thing if it had any more states. The situation gets more confusing when I look around the internet: The pattern actually seems to be implemented exactly this way a lot of times (for example it is implemented like this way in our national Wikipedia (German)). The actual question: Am I missing anything or is this simply bad? Since this is so widespread, I'm thinking that I might be missing something obvious here."}
{"_id": "185959", "title": "Is it fine to use logs in the Helper Methods?", "text": "I have been doubting for a long time whether or not to have a logger in methods (usually helper methods) like the one below. Whether we can print it in the method or print the response where the method is called.               public String getAddNewUserUrl()     {         String url      =   null;         String mode     =   null;         try         {             log.info(\"Inside getAddNewUserUrl \"); // Can u use logs like this.             mode        =   new ModeUtil().getMode();                  if(\"local\".equalsIgnoreCase(mode) || \"staging\".equalsIgnoreCase(mode))             {                 url     =   ResourceBundle.getBundle(\"ApplicationResources\").getString(\"staging.url\");             }             else             {                 url     =   ResourceBundle.getBundle(\"ApplicationResources\").getString(\"staging.url\");               }             log.info(\"The url is  : \" + url);  // Can u use logs like this              }         catch(Exception e)         {             e.printStackTrace();             log.info(\"Exception in the method getMode ::\"+e.getMessage());         }         return url;"}
{"_id": "251685", "title": "Should data be stored to local database in Android when heavily using REST services?", "text": "Let's say I have an application that has constantly changing data. Changes are so frequent that you basically need to refresh data every time you open some screen and keep refreshing it. Is it worth implementing local database for such application? Implementing database in such application seems redundant because:   * Data structure might be complex (arrays, optional parameters and etc) and so using cursors is not a very efficient way to pass it around   * Data does not need to be stored for long time   * If optimized to request filtered data in certain screens (to reduce data traffic), must make sure to filter database updates in such way that unfiltered data (which might be used by other screens) is not affected. Not that hard but still something to develop (and test) However, implementing local database might mean faster navigation. But again, that's not true if service requests are highly optimized to avoid sending redundant data. Do applications like Play Store, Facebook, Google+ use local database to replicate data structures stored in remote database? **I just wanna know what is the common practice for developing applications heavily based on web services.**"}
{"_id": "57384", "title": "Erlang web frameworks survey", "text": "(Inspired by similar question on Haskel) There are several web frameworks for Erlang like Nitrogen, Chicago Boss, and Zotonic, and a few more. In what aspects do they differ from each other? For example:   1. features (e.g. server only, or also client scripting, easy support for different kinds of database)   2. maturity (e.g. stability, documentation quality)   3. scalability (e.g. performance, handy abstraction) main targets Also, what are examples of real-world sites / web apps using these frameworks? EDIT: Starting a bounty in hopes that it will get some conversation going"}
{"_id": "185953", "title": "JUnit Testing in Multithread Application", "text": "This is a problem me and my team faces in almost all of the projects. Testing certain parts of the application with JUnit is not easy and you need to start early and to stick to it, but that's not the question I'm asking. The actual problem is that with n-Threads, locking, possible exceptions within the threads and shared objects the task of testing is not as simple as testing the class, but testing them under endless possible situations within threading. To be more precise, let me tell you about the design of one of our applications: When a user makes a request several threads are started that each analyse a part of the data to complete the analysis, these threads run a certain time depending on the size of the chunk of data (which are endless and of uncertain quality) to analyse, or they may fail if the data was insufficient/lacking quality. After each completed its analysis they call upon a handler which decides after each thread terminates if the collected analysis-data is sufficient to deliver an answer to the request. All of these analysers share certain parts of the applications (some parts because the instances are very big and only a certain number can be loaded into memory and those instances are reusable, some parts because they have a standing connection, where connecting takes time, ex.gr. sql connections) so locking is very common (done with reentrant-locks). While the applications runs very efficient and fast, it's not very easy to test it under real-world conditions. What we do right now is test each class and it's predefined conditions, but there are no automated tests for interlocking and synchronization, which in my opionion is not very good for quality insurances. Given this example how would you handle testing the threading, interlocking and synchronization?"}
{"_id": "57380", "title": "How to start a Software Company", "text": "I've always been interested in wondering how software companies happen. I find it extremely difficult once you're tied down with car, house, life etc. Funding is always the biggest concern. To make this a bit more specific, I see two types. Those offering a _product/service_ or those offering a _consultancy_ company. One things that bugs me about the product/service kind is that we all know how burning the candle at both ends is extremely exhausting. Coding for 8-10 hours in the day and then code in the evenings on your own stuff, doesn't last long. No matter how passionate you are about your idea, simply put, coding day and night is a recipe for burn out. Is this a defeatist attitude though? Can it be balanced? A consultancy kind isn't as tricky in my honest opinion. I think once you have spent years and years in the industry building up relationships, contacts from contracting or moving around, and of course, being involved in the community, then landing your first project as a consultant I'm sure is easier than the product/service kind. I'd imagine friends then could join you as you take on bigger company projects, like an Agile implementation or TDD training, then off you go gaining bigger things. Could you please specify which company type you're answering if you can't contribute to both. I'd like to hear everyone's experiences or ideas on any level for software company start-ups."}
{"_id": "13641", "title": "annual goal for programmers in IT company", "text": "As IT manager what goals would you set for your programmers in your team. These goals would be used in the annual performance review. Any recommendations? How would you create goals that actually measure programmers technical abilities."}
{"_id": "34806", "title": "Posting High Salary in Job Ad for Programmer", "text": "Would posting a high salary on a programmer job advertisement encourage strong candidates and weed out lesser candidates? The salary would be relative to the position. Edit: Maybe it wouldn't alter your application, but would you have any concerns or does this raise any red flags? It wouldn't make them seem desperate?"}
{"_id": "106295", "title": "What is the best way to scale a CQRS system?", "text": "In the previous months I have been asking a lot of questions concerning the architecture of an application I'm working on. Thanks to the answers the architectural design has changed - in fact, it has really been simplified as shown in the following graph: ![architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ELCA8.png) Internally I have a two services ( **NOT WCF!** ) that follow CQS principles. It means that the query service simply returns database views; while the command service has a full domain model that contains all business logic, and repositories to access the database (no event mechanism or other complex pattern here). Both services use the same database. These services are class libraries, NO WCF services, because they are used only internally so I don't need the overhead of WCF (don't distribute your objects, Martin Fowler's first law). These internal operations are used by the ASP.NET MVC site and the PartnerService. This PartnerService is a WCF service, which exposes the functionality I would like to be exposed to partners. If I ever need to scale because of high traffic, I could add web servers and/or migrate parts to a full CQRS system (my contracts are already designed for it). Does anyone see any problems with this? One thing I see is that if the query or command service changes, this impacts both the web site and partner service directly, so I have to deploy the changes to both. But I don't know if this is an issue...? Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "194364", "title": "How do I manage multiple relationships from a software design perspective?", "text": "How do I go about managing projects when there are two fundamental relationships that need to be maintained? The most obvious example that I can think of would be a firm doing some kind of location-based consulting. I've been wracking my brain on how to explain this, in essence, this is the bullet point version:   * Each client that has multiple locations   * There are several projects that relate to specific client locations   * There are deliverables for these projects      * Each deliverable my only relate to a few locations the project is linked to The system seems to break down when you overlay these two main relationships; a client with multiple locations which have projects assigned to them, and deliverables that link back to individual locations. You just end up with too many many-to-many relationships that are difficult to manage. The problem is then visualizing this in a system. You have a client record with location sub-records. Each location record has many project records associated with it. Each Project record has deliverable records, and then those deliverables relate to specific loations. I realize that this seems a bit estoeric, but is there a way to simplify this so that it is visually understandable?"}
{"_id": "194366", "title": "clojure/erlang/go for high volume server", "text": "I have a project that will need to handle 1000s of requests a second with a decent amount of processing for each. For the most part, the processing will be done on a list of items, basically filtering it and returning a smaller list. This process can be done in parallel fairly easily and I should also say, speed is important. I've narrowed my language of choice for the project down to clojure, erlang, and go, and have researched them all to a moderate degree. My question is, what factors should I be looking at in my decision? What language is better for what (examples would be great)? Because it's a little difficult for me to tell."}
{"_id": "254243", "title": "Cheerp -- C++ for web: advance or regression?", "text": "Recently I've run into Cheerp, a C++ to Javascript compiler, which uses a modified version of clang to generate Javascript code from C++ sources. That makes me wonder: why in the seven kingdoms would someone do this in their right mind? I mean: why would you take a language that is not designed for web at all, that is far more convoluted and bureaucratic, write your code and then compile it into Javascript itself? Can anybody see any advantages in doing so? We surely can discard performance as a reason, because in the end it generates pure Javascript code. Is there anyone here that have real experience with this? P.S.: I'm not sure if this is an on topic question, but this is the most general forum about programming that I could find in the StackExchange network. ## Edit Although this seems like a subjective question, it is not. I am asking for reasons why this tool could be useful. I got interested at first, but started wondering why would someone use it."}
{"_id": "210357", "title": "What project meeting structure should a single developer choose?", "text": "I am a solo developer working on a decently small project with about 3 other people (non-developers). These other people are involved in the project in non-development ways and one is also my manager. Everyone is pretty open to ad hoc discussions, too. My manager just gave me what seems like a dream come true - I was tasked with determining what meeting structure would work best for the project. This seems like a wonderful way to deal with meeting overload and/or pointless meetings. With great power comes great responsibility, as now, if I suggest something which ultimately results in much wasted time it's my fault. I have never had such a blank slate to think how I would structure meetings. My thoughts are:   * Daily \"touch base/status update\" meeting for 15min or less (similar to standup meetings) to communicate daily objectives and review previous day. Or, it seems I could just get a whiteboard and put it at my desk to communicate this info.   * As needed meetings to make specific decisions or address questions any of the team has ... I don't see the need for a weekly \"status\" project meeting. I'm also not sure the second bullet would require many formally scheduled meetings. My concern is these \"developer focused\" (ie me) might cause alienation with others or make my manager feel a loss of control on the project, as this structure would be considerably different than most projects are run. What project meeting structure should a single developer choose? * * * Addressing comments: > What are the other people contributing? Are they the intended users of this > project? Working on non-development aspects of it (such as website themes & > images or a DBA, or QA testing)? Other levels of management/administration? They are some of the eventual users and are interested in the overall workflow. They are also contributing to several areas of forms/documents (the format of which will not affect any development work). > Are you able to get feedback from the other two members? Some managers need > to have a regularly scheduled meeting or they'll never be able to fit it > into their schedule. Getting time does not seem to be a problem going forward."}
{"_id": "214040", "title": "How to mitigate security risks when deploying a database to the web via automated migrations?", "text": "I'm looking at using built in database migrations frameworks (such as the migration framework included in EF Code First or migratordotnet) but I have concerns about the implications of allowing a production website to have permissions to execute DDL statements. In the past when working with web apps I would migrate database objects manually which would allow me to restrict the permissions the web application's database user was given. This mean even in the case of a SQL Injection attack, a stolen web.config or some other attack on the web site it would be more difficult for an attacker to do serious damage (though obviously not impossible). It seems to me by performing migrations via the application (as seems to be almost required when using a PaaS like AppHarbor) you your application up to more threats. So, the heart of my question is:   1. Are my concerns unwarranted?   2. Are there any steps I can take to mitigate those threats while still taking advantage of automated deployments?"}
{"_id": "210351", "title": "Sleeping Web Server?", "text": "Are there any languages or even servers that instead of running a script on page load, (Apache/PHP, Ruby on Rails, ...) actually keep the code loaded and running forever, and when it receives a connection it calls a function of that code? (Like a PageLoad event basically?) I didn't really know how to call this so I went for Passive Web Server because the code is basically sleeping till an event occurs, instead of fully unloaded or just cached."}
{"_id": "68056", "title": "Is the synchronized keyword,still used/needed in java?", "text": "Is the synchronised keyword still required (ignore backwards compatibility, I'm thinking in terms of writing new code, today) or should we all be using the features available in the Concurrent and Collection packages?"}
{"_id": "202432", "title": "What does \"branching is free\" mean in Git?", "text": "What does \"branching is free\" mean in Git? I hear this a lot whenever Git is mentioned in comparison to other version control systems. I haven't had the opportunity (?) to deal with others (SVN, etc.), so how is branching \"expensive\" in others?"}
{"_id": "202437", "title": "APIs that deal with logins", "text": "I have been asked to make a mobile app for a friends website. The website is a Multi level marketing site that sells products and franchises. A client logs in in to the website and can view his or her dashboard ( user can view team members, business volume, commissions, invoices, etc.) The app is supposed to bring the dashboard to user's mobile devices (w/ some added features). The company does not have any APIs that deal with interaction or authentication, and I am new to the whole secure login side of app development. My questions is this, how do I let the users gain access to their information via my app from the secure website when there is no API?"}
{"_id": "202436", "title": "Why nginx's http parser doesnt use regular expressions?", "text": "I see the http parser written by Igor Sysoev for nginx does not use regular expressions https://github.com/joyent/http-parser What could be the main reason for such design decision? I guess I could write few regular expressions to parse HTTP req & res this would be a lot less complex than Igor's version of the parser. What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "138957", "title": "what is sharding in MongoDB", "text": "i have just reading MongoDB.came across sharding but not getting what exactly is it .watever i understood is its better to have more small servers than a huge one for data storage and when data exceeds capacity of one server you can use another machine to store data.can anyone give soem more idea about sharding?"}
{"_id": "225602", "title": "SOA: should I always consider it?", "text": "While I think how to direct the future development: ### Mini-introduction As a fixed rule, I start with SOA (and REST as protocol) then I work on the interfaces (and that interface is a customer of my service, and usually is a separate project). I assume my _deviation_ is because I'm first of all a back- end developer ( _with poor drawing skills_ ). ### Considering:   1. The BIGs are making a great effort in making quick and easy to use tools for creating interfaces. _(I am referring to projects such as the bootstrap, angular, android studio, and many others)_ ; This is a relief for those who develop platforms, opens the door to many new applications for their platforms.   2. MV*, JSON, Javascript are becoming a standard in building (even) complex applications; It does not matter if the interfaces are all the same, the boilerplate today have reached a level that can be considered viral.   3. The increasingly common repository of modules (ex. NPM), enable even novice programmers _the use_ and _implementation_ of external APIs with great ease.    4. _fate_ can always kiss our products and this maybe become the new facebook (with this I am referring to the fact that a product, even if required as a standalone, it can easily attract the interest of many, and it is very likely that new interfaces are required out of the initial planning). ### Questions:   1. Is SOA an approach that architects (and programmers) should **encourage** and **consider** starting new design?   2. Is SOA the **most suitable architecture** to react to **unplanned expansion**?"}
{"_id": "15759", "title": "Do you use code names for your projects?", "text": "Pretty much every CPU has some internal code name before it is released to the public (and even after it hangs on). But what about software projects? Are those usually code named? Do you code name your projects?"}
{"_id": "137281", "title": "Is programming experience useful to become a Business Analyst?", "text": "Is programming experience important to become a BA? I have an opportunity to switch from programming to BA in IT, but I am not sure what to do. In the future, I want to proceed as BA only. Does programming experience really matter in such a role? I have graduated in Computer Science, but have just 6 month of programming experience"}
{"_id": "171230", "title": "Beyond Syntax Highlighting - What other code representations are possible today?", "text": "Despite GUI applications having been around for 30ish years, software is still written as lines of text instructions, for various valid reasons. But we've also found that manipulating these text instructions is mind-blowingly difficult unless we apply a layer of coloring on different words to represent their syntax, thus allowing us to quickly parse through these text files without having to read the whole words. But besides the Sublime Text minimap feature, I've yet to see any innovation in visual representation of code since colors came around on CRT monitors. I can think of one obviously essential representation that modern graphics technology allows: visual hierarchies for nested structures. If we make nested text slightly smaller than its outer context, and zoom on it when the cursor is focused on the line, then we will be able to browse huge files of nested statements very quickly. This becomes even more essential as languages based on closures and anonymous functions become filled with deep statements. Has anyone attempted to implement this in a text editor? Do you know of any otherwise useful improvements in representing code text graphically?"}
{"_id": "107757", "title": "What should I name this helper class?", "text": "Usually when writing unit tests I create a helper class with extension methods. I use these methods exclusively for generating generic data for things that I am too lazy to type out. I usually name these classes something relevant to the class under test - for example, I'll follow a pattern like TestHelper.cs. I've read that helper classes don't promote good design; however I know SOLID principles pretty well and I don't see how using \"helpers\" in the way described is violating any principles. I think the issue I'm having is with the name of my \"TestHelper\" ... Should I simply come up with a new naming scheme or am I really violating a SOLID Principle by utilizing these helpers?"}
{"_id": "33634", "title": "Web framework for iPad and common desktop browsers?", "text": "We are developing a web-based, commercial point-of-sale application. We'd like the same web site to work well on an Ipad as well a desktop browsers. We're looking for a web framework that makes the site look good on an iPad, but also makes the site work well in a desktop browser such as Chrome, IE, or Firefox on Windows or a Mac. I found quite a few at 18 mobile frameworks and development tools for creating iPhone Apps Most of them, such as jQTouch, help a web site look and act more like a native iPhone application but they don't emphasize the cross platform/browser experience. The exception seems to be Sproutcore, which seems to be a full-fledged JavaScript MVC application framework. I did have trouble getting some of the demos to work under Chrome, but what did work looks good. What framework(s) have you actually used to develop web sites to work on an iPad and desktop browser? If you didn't use a framework, how did you get it to work well under both environments?"}
{"_id": "71465", "title": "Analysing Group & Individual Member Performance -RUP", "text": "I am writing a report which requires the analysis of performance of each individual team member. This is for a software development project developed using the Unified Process (UP). I was just wondering if there are any existing group & individual appraisal metrics used so I don't have to reinvent the wheel... EDIT This is by no means correct but something like: Individual Contribution (IC) = time spent (individual) / time spent (total) => Performance = ? (should use individual contribution (IC) combined with something to gain a measure of overall performance).... Maybe I am talking complete hash and I know generally its really difficult to analyse performance with numbers but any mathematicians out there that can lend a hand or know a somewhat more accurate method of analysing performance than arbitrary marking (e.g. 8 out 10)"}
{"_id": "71461", "title": "Are there any A.I. resources that explain the concepts and present source code?", "text": "Are there any A.I. resources that explain the concepts and present source code, similarly to AI Horizon? I've read books and research papers but they generally present a conceptual approach, without really delving into the source code of it."}
{"_id": "229593", "title": "Learning python functions and parameters", "text": "def printMax(a, b):        if a > b:        print(a, 'is maximum')        elif a == b:        print(a, 'is equal to', b)        else:        print(b, 'is maximum')          printMax(3, 4) # directly give literal values     x = 5     y = 7     printMax(x, y) # give variables as arguments      I'm learning python via the byte of python book, and the author uses this example to introduce us to functions. When the author calls the function printMax, he does not use quotation for the numbers 3,4 i.e. he does not use printMax(\"3\",\"4\") which I thought was fine. However, later on he defines a function like so               def say(message, times = 1)        print(message * times)          say(\"hello\", 3)      why does he use the quotations for the message (i.e. why does he use say(\"hello\", 3) instead of say(hello, 3)? How does python notice the difference?"}
{"_id": "6591", "title": "How do I evaluate if writing a book, article, or presenting at conference is worth it?", "text": "I'm trying to understand how I should evaluate writing a book, article, or conference presentation. Writing a book is a lot of work. Same for writing an article in a magazine or presenting in a conference. They need time and you may even make a mistake here and there that back fires (bad reviews, people calling you an idiot..) Also you do it for free (at least for magazine articles and conference presentations. For books you get something like a $5K deposit and you rarely get any additional sales royalties after that). So how should I evaluate the benefits? I would appreciate answers that call out if you have done this before. I may not write a book because it's way beyond what I'd like to commit time-wise, but should I bother giving conference presentations or writing shorter articles in magazines?"}
{"_id": "6595", "title": "How to get out of supporting deadend sales pitches?", "text": "As part of being a programmer, you often are asked to provide estimates/ make slideware / do technical demos for Sales teams to present to end-clients. Sometimes we go along for the 'technical' discussions or 'strategic capability planning' or some similar mumbo-jumbo. Sometimes, you kind of know which ones are totally going to fail and are not worth pursuing but the Sales guys present fake optimism and extract 'few more slides' out of you or the 'last conference call'. These don't lead to anywhere and are just a waste of time from other tasks for the week. My question is how do you get out of these situations without coming across as non-cooperative. **Updated afterKate Gregory's answer:** The problem is related to projects we know are doomed (from the technical feedback we've received) But Sales ain't convinced since they've just had a call higher up the management chain - so it's definitely going ahead !"}
{"_id": "231514", "title": "Preferred Scala code style for several embedded brace sets", "text": "I was wondering the correct way to format a situation such as this, where I have a def, a foreach and an if clause all nested, requiring braces. Currently I find it hard to read, and there is no obvious place to put the 'x =>' bit. Thank you.               def getAnswer(): String =     {       var sum = 0       (0 until 1000).foreach        { x =>          if (x % 3 == 0 || x % 5 == 0)         {           sum += x         }       }       sum.toString     }"}
{"_id": "109809", "title": "How to get on the ladder - Java Development jobs", "text": "Ok so I've been out of university now for 7 years and in the same job as an application developer for a company that uses their own in house development languages/products. I've learnt a lot here but I should definitely be moving on now! In my time here I've dealt with hands on support, on site installation, training of customers, development of POC's (having to use a mix of technologies including Java and Python) and many other tasks. My main job however has NOT been Java oriented, although I'd say I do have a good deal of experience in it from my own personal projects. I am aware that this might reflect badly on my CV so I have spent a number of months adding professional certs to my resume, these include.   * Sun Certified Java Programmer 6   * Oracle Certified Expert, Java EE 6 JSP and Servlets Developer   * Oracle Certified Exper, Java EE 6 Enterprise JavaBeans Developer I also plan to take the core spring training, shortly followed by taking the springsource certified spring professional exam. I'm not entirely sure how to structure my CV? Restricting myself to two pages is quite difficult especially seeing as mentioning my career history is obviously a big part (I currently have 3/4 of a page which mentions, job title, brief description of company I work for, what my duties include and some of my achievements, Java has a brief mention). Any advice for what I should do? Ideally if I get my foot in the door for an interview I'd be looking to start on a salary of about 35k (I'm in the UK) which is only a few k more than I'm earning currently. I'm posting this as anon because I'm aware of leaving a trail for potential employers, plus I'm disappointed in myself for staying here so long. EDIT: Forgot to mention I was in the UK, so that's \u00a335k not $35k so in USD that's closer to $55k Edit2: Not in London, Bristol"}
{"_id": "109803", "title": "Secure cloud based code storage and syncing across multiple computers", "text": "I've been thinking recently about how and where I keep my code - I work across multiple locations, with at least three different computers and I'm considering how I manage my code across these machines. I've got a dropbox account, which I use. For non sensitive files this is fine, and I do keep some sensitive files in there, but in a TrueCrypt file - this won't work large scale as the entire TrueCrypt file would need to be uploaded for any change. I don't feel safe putting my, or my employers, code on DropBox because of several security issues and news that they can access everyones' files. I have a github account where I store my code (open and closed source), but I don't want to have to always push up to GitHub, also I work a lot on the train so I can't push as I don't have a stable data connection and chances are that I'll forget to push or grab data at some point and then I'll be stuck! So - with that in mind, I'd like a discussion about storing code in the cloud:   1. Is keeping source code in the cloud dangerous?      * I understand the implications of keeping employers code in the cloud, but are there alternatives, given that a good number of VPN/RDC solutions that I've used are slow to the point of unusable? (this may be a point against my/my employers network speeds rather than the actual programs - but it's a impediment)   2. Is there a good cloud based service with good encryption, good uptime, diff, auto sync?      * Is there one aimed solely at developers? If not, does anyone want to start one with me? (joking but at the same time, it could be a good business venture - drop me a line if interested)   3. What do you use? Does it work? how would you change it?"}
{"_id": "76110", "title": "Why have a method that returns a bool/int and has the actual object as an output parameter?", "text": "I see the following code pattern all over the place in my company's codebase (.NET 3.5 application):               bool Foo(int barID, out Baz bazObject) {          try {                  // do stuff                 bazObject = someResponseObject;                      return true;         }         catch (Exception ex) {              // log error             return false;         }     }          // calling code     BazObject baz = new BazObject();     fooObject.Foo(barID, out baz);          if (baz != null) {          // do stuff with baz     }      I'm trying to wrap my head around why you would do this instead of having the `Foo` method simply take the ID and return a `Baz` object, instead of returning a value that isn't used and having the actual object be a ref or output parameter. Is there some hidden benefit of this coding style that I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "155854", "title": "How to fetch commit messages from bitbucket for project manager to see", "text": "Is it possible to fetch commit messages from bitbucket via json or something so that a project manager can see what the changes are without having to look at the code. If it's possible can you give me some ideas on how to do it."}
{"_id": "146832", "title": "Good practices for packaging Python programs", "text": "I've been using Python for a while now, both in the context of personal and professional projects. One thing that occured to me recently is that I had never thought about a good way to deploy Python programs. Basically, since it's mostly a bunch of scripts, I usually just copy them to the machine where I want it deployed and _voila_ ! But I believe there should be some good practices as to how you should deploy Python projects. I've heard about Python Eggs but not familiar enough with it to see if it's a good choice. Or a plain old _tarball_ with a bunch of Shell scripts to run the core module scripts? Basically I'd like to be able to do a nice, elegant and self-contained deployment, and not just copying files here and there, as it doesn't allow version tracking easily and it's quite messy."}
{"_id": "146833", "title": "How does agile work when replacing a working system?", "text": "In an ideal Agile world, you quickly build a small, but useful subset of the desired end system, and give it to users. They're excited, because it's useful, they start using it and give feedback. You then work out what to add on to it, build that, and repeat until you run out of time. I've had a couple of projects recently that involved replacing some kind of working system. The above model just didn't work at all: until you'd built a system that included virtually all the functionality of the existing system, users had no interest at all. They wouldn't use it. How do you apply Agile when \"the smallest useful subset\" is \"all of it\"?"}
{"_id": "146838", "title": "I have to run certain number of statements (which are executing .exe) in a loop", "text": "I have to run certain number of statements (which are executing .exe) in a loop.                ForEach(object obj in ListOfVersions)         {           Step 1: call Exe1 Args=obj.somevalues           Log Step 1 completed for obj                Step 2: call Exe2 Args=obj.somevalues           Log Step 2 completed for obj                Step 3: call Exe3 Args=obj.somevalues           Log step 3 completed for obj         }          Step 4: call Exe4      Is there any specific design pattern available to use for above situation."}
{"_id": "225880", "title": "Typical agreements for freelance development?", "text": "I am just starting out my programming career and I have a chance to bid on a freelance job. I have looked over the specifications for the app and believe I am capable of meeting the requirements satisfactorily. I have worked on a team developing 2 different apps for the same platform , as well as one app I wrote for a friends business (for pay but it was informal) and all of the stuff I have done for personal use/school so I believe I can estimate fairly accurately how long it will take me. However I have no clue about how these things work in the real world. I have only been finished school for less then a year and I have only had 2 short- term developer contracts. Specifically:   1. Payment: what is usual? Payment on delivery? Payment upfront? Percentage upfront?   2. Sourcecode: I understand that I would need to give them the source code but what about previous librarys which I have made. If I use those in the project would they then belong to the client as well?    3. How detailed should the initial contract be? What if the client changes their mind about details part way through.    4. I'm not really certain how to set a price (I would appreciate suggestions formulas). I assume that there must be some sort of industry standards for this sort of thing I'm just not sure what they are/ where to find them? I would really appreciate any advice on the subject, even if it is just links to other resources. If it matters both myself and the potential client are located in Canada."}
{"_id": "171587", "title": "Good practices to write Tags at SVN", "text": "Tags are a vital part at Version Controlling for example SVN.   * When should i write Tags at SVN?   * What information should have a Tags?"}
{"_id": "171580", "title": "How to detect two moving shapes overlapped?", "text": "Given a list of circles with its coordinates (x and y) that are moving every second in different direction (South-East, South-West, North-East and North- West), and the circle will change direction if it hits the wall sort of like bouncing, so how do we detect if any of them collide or overlap with each other ? I am not sure if we can use some data structures like a `Binary Search Tree` because since all the coordinates vary every seconds, so the tree will have to re-build accordingly. Or can we use Vertical Sweep Line Algorithm each time ? Any ideas on how to do this in a efficient way ?"}
{"_id": "142335", "title": "How easy is it to alter a browser fingerprint?", "text": "I am researching this question for a possible paper. Given the exploitation of user identities for risk management and market tracking, how easy is it to alter a browser enough to throw off fingerprinting techniques? My current sources are:   * EFF Panopticlick project   * Peter Eckersly's follow-up presentation at Def Con 18."}
{"_id": "136885", "title": "Cheat notes for telephone interview (.NET /DBs, OO)", "text": "I am preparing for a telephone interview. I am thinking that instead of trying to memorize SOLID or ACID for example I could have some cheat notes ready. So:   1. Any tips on how to organize them?   2. Where to find material for .NET, OO, DB (Both Oracle and SQL Server). It should be easy to find/read the information by looking at the paper/screen, also I need some way to look it up. (Cheat Sheets in IT context seems usually to be something else - like condensed information to keep next to you while you are working.)"}
{"_id": "136886", "title": "Is it possible to get formal recognition of self-taught knowledge?", "text": "I like many others have spent a few of my High School years teaching myself software development and various languages.   * I'm fluent in C++/C#   * Have a fairly solid understanding of Computer Science and Computing Techniques.   * I _don't_ have any worthy projects to display because I have a bad habit of stopping them before they're presentable in pursuit of newer, more exciting projects; **But if you asked me to sit down and solve a problem I could do it easy.** * * * **Is there any way to get formal recognition of all the time I've spent watching online lectures / tutorials, actually coding, and researching?** * * * It would be nice to have something I can actually put on my college application!   _I just want to show that I havn't just been sitting around playing Video- Games all day._"}
{"_id": "142336", "title": "Polymorphism and passing", "text": "I am writing a text based RPG, and I have three classes that inherit from a super class, they all have special attacks that they can perform, at the same time I have a class that holds the function which handles battles in my game. Now how do I get the unique special abilities functions for whatever role the player chooses into the battle function? Also I am using the vector.push_back method to handle how my sub classes are referenced."}
{"_id": "136881", "title": "What is a good Scrum management software for a Scrum newbie?", "text": "I want to practice Scrum on a personal project and I'm looking for Scrum management software. I've tried Jira + GreenHopper, but it has some limitations - limited nesting of user stories in particular. It's also a bug tracker at its core. I'm looking for something built for Scrum from the ground up so I don't go down too many blind alleys. As a newbie to Scrum and as a learning exercise, what software would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "47436", "title": "Best practices when managing long running asynchronous jobs", "text": "I am in the design phase of a project where the end user will submit a request from a web page that will spawn a long running asynchronous processed job. Is there a \"best practice\" for this problem? Are web services and service brokers a good way to go? Is Microsoft messaging queue applicable here?"}
{"_id": "147128", "title": "switch statement - handling default case when it can't be reached", "text": "If I'm using a switch statement to handle values from an enum (which is owned by my class) and I have a case for each possible value - is it worth adding code to handle the \"default\" case?               enum MyEnum     {         MyFoo,         MyBar,         MyBat     }          MyEnum myEnum = GetMyEnum();     switch (myEnum)     {         case MyFoo:             DoFoo();             break;         case MyBar:             DoBar();             break;         case MyBat:             DoBat();             break;         default:             Log(\"Unexpected value\");             throw new ArgumentException()      }      I don't think it is because this code can never be reached (even with unit tests). My co-worker disagrees and thinks this protects us against unexpected behavior caused by new values being added to MyEnum. What say you, community?"}
{"_id": "136888", "title": "What do you want to see in a job offer?", "text": "Which information do you want to see in a job offer for programmers? In which order? What are the most important points for you?"}
{"_id": "112779", "title": "Is it possible to access .NET APIs with JRuby?", "text": "I know that JRuby can access COM APIs, but can it interface with .NET?"}
{"_id": "226613", "title": "What development process encourages frequent releases (rolling code to a live site), as well as developer individuality", "text": "Some quick background - we don't have PMs or upper management breathing down our necks about status of features, etc, as we almost always deliver ahead of time and have built up a high level of trust with them. In other words, we have a huge amount of flexibility as far as process goes. We do very well with our current process, but we feel there can be some improvement. We have a small team (3 devs, 1 tester) and everyone on the team is senior level and can deliver large pieces of functionality, and usually does so on an individual basis. Sometimes two people work on the same story/task, but since we are all very familiar with the codebase(s), we typically handle things by ourselves and consult/collaborate when needed. We roll to a live site and have the ability to roll on a daily basis, which someone on our team typically does. On average, I'd say an individual developer rolls his own code 3 times a week. We have been doing scrum with 2 week sprints, but from my experience scrum was more advantageous when we needed the majority of the team to work on the same features at the same time (swarm-type stuff), and when needing to communicate out to external teams. We currently don't have either of those needs, so we're re-evaluating our process. What it seems like we're moving toward is a model where each team member exists in his/her own sprint (with optional teammates being less common), which lasts anywhere from 1-3 days. We don't have a requirement that all sprints have to end on the same days, etc, so in theory we could pull this off. My question is, is there something better than scrum that models this type of development process? Oh, I almost forgot. We're moving away from TFS to use Git, and while I have experience with Git, most of the team members don't. Since it's a paradigm shift for some on the team, I'm wondering if we can use the change to our advantage somehow process-wise. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "144472", "title": "Should classes from the same namespace be kept in the same assembly?", "text": "For example, `ISerializable` and the `Serializable` Attribute are both in the `System.Runtime.Serialization` namespace, but not the assembly of the same name. On the other hand, `DataContract` attributes are in the namespace/assembly `System.Runtime.Serialization`. This causes confusion when a class can have `using System.Runtime.Serialization` but still not have reference to the `System.Runtime.Serialization` assembly, meaning `DataContract` cannot be found. Should this be avoided in practice, or is it common for namespaces to be split over multiple assemblies? What other issues should one be careful of when doing this?"}
{"_id": "144474", "title": "Application that provides unique keys to multiple threads", "text": "Thanks all for your help before. So, this is what I came up with so far, the requirements are, application has two or more threads and each thread requires a unique session/transaction ID. is the below considered thread safe? thread 1 will register itself with get_id by sending it's pid thread 2 will do the same then thread 1 & 2 will call the function to get a unique ID               function get_id(bool choice/*register thread or get id*/, pid_t pid)     {          static int pid[15][1]={0};//not sure if this work, anyway considor any it's been set to 0 by any other way than this     static int total_threads = 0;      static int i = 0;     int x=0,y=0;              if (choice) // thread registeration part          {             for(x=0;x<15;x++)             {                 if (pid[x][0]==0);                 {                 pid[x][0] = (int) pid;                 pid[x][1] = (x & pidx[x][1]) << 24;//initiate counter for this PID by shifting x to the 25th bit, it could be any other bit, it's just to set a range.                 //so the range will be between 0x0000000 and 0x0ffffff, the second one              will be 0x1000000 and 0x1ffffff,                  break;                 }             total_threads++;             }          }          //search if pid exist or not, if yes return transaction id              for(x=0;x<15;x++)             {                 if (pid[x][0]==pid);                 {                 pid[x][1]++;//put some test here to reset the number to 0 if it reaches 0x0ffffff                 return pid[x][1];                 break;                 }                  }           }"}
{"_id": "144476", "title": "Have there been attempts to make object containers that search for valid programs by auto wiring compatible components?", "text": "I hope this post isn't too \"Fringe\" - I'm sure someone will just kill it if it is :) Three things made me want to reach out about this now:   1. Decoupling is so in the forefront of design.   2. TDD inspires the idea that it doesn't matter how a program comes to exist as long as it works.   3. Seeing how often the adapter pattern is applied to achieve (1). I'm almost sure this has been tried from a memory of reading about it around the year 2000 or so. If I had to guess, it was maybe about and earlier version of the Java Spring framework. At this time we were not so far from days when the belief was that computer programs could exhibit useful emergent behavior. I think the article said it didn't work, but it didn't say it was impossible. I wonder if since then it has been deemed impossible or simply an illusion due to a false assumption of similarity between a brain and a CPU. I know this illusion existed because I had an internship in 1996 where I programmed neural nets that were supposedly going to exhibit \"brain damage\". STILL, after all that, I'm sitting around this morning and not able to shake the idea that it _should_ be possible to have a method of programming to allow autonomous components to find each other, attempt to collaborate and their outputs evaluated against a set desired results."}
{"_id": "144477", "title": "On a queue, which end is the \"head\"?", "text": "I had always thought that the \"head\" of a queue as the next element to be read, and never really questioned that usage. So a linked-list library I wrote, which is used for maintaining queues, codified that terminology: we have a `list1_head` macro that retrieves the first element; when using this library in a queue, this will be the first element to be removed. But a new developer on the team was used to having queues implemented the other way around. He described a queue as behaving like a dog: you insert at the head, and remove at the tail. This is a clever enough description that I feel like his usage must be more widespread, and I don't have a similarly evocative description of my preferred usage. So, I guess, there are two related questions: 1, what does the \"head\" of a queue mean to you? and 2, why do we use the word \"head\" to describe that concept?"}
{"_id": "144479", "title": "Any success stories about using slicing tools to help debugging", "text": "Program slicing is one of those software technologies where there is much more activity in the research community than in the industry community. Does anybody outside of the research community using slicing tools on production code to help with debugging or other tasks? If so, what tools did you use?"}
{"_id": "133966", "title": "WPF more dynamic views and DataAnnotations", "text": "Comparing WPF and Asp.Net Razor/HtmlHelper I find WPF/Xaml to be somewhat lacking in creating views. With HtmlHelpers you could define in one place how you wan't to represent specific type of data and include elements set from the DataAnnotations of the property. In WPF you can also define DataTemplates for data but it seems much more limited then EditorTemplates. It doesn't use information from DataAnnotations. Also the layout of elements can be bothersome. I hate having to constantly add RowDefinitions and update the Grid.Row attribute of lot of elements when I add a new property somewhere in line. I understand that GUI programming can be a lot of grunt work like this but as Asp.Net MVC has shown there are ways around that. What solutions are out there to make view creation in WPF a little bit cleaner, maintainable and more dynamic?"}
{"_id": "224614", "title": "Creating A News Feed with Relevant Data for App", "text": "I'm creating an app that currently allows users to create topics, vote in topics, follow topics, and chat in topics. Currently working on creating a News Feed like Facebook or Twitter that brings users topics that are related to what they've interacted with in the past. I understand this a complex topic, but I would appreciate any answers anyone might have to working towards a solution. Current solution: Point system where topics will be added +1 to +1000 points for user activity. For example: > If user creates topic, then add +50 points to topic. Topic is more likely to > show up on the user's news feed. Another example: > If user \"follows\" topic, then add +25 points to topic. Topic is more likely > to show up on the user's news feed. Another example: > If topic was created in the past 24 hours, add +24 -(number of hours since > creation) to the topic. Hoping to learn if there's a more practical approach to figuring this out."}
{"_id": "137421", "title": "Patterns for Versioning Relational Data in a MySQL database?", "text": "I am trying to find an approach for a project, where A user can edit records, and be able to see past versions of those records. Here is a simlified example schema, using a list:               TABLE list (       id int auto_increment primary key,       user_id int,        title varchar(255)     );          TABLE list_tasks (       id int auto_increment primary key,       list_id int,       title varchar(255),       order int,       is_complete tinyint     );      So a user may come in, and make several edits to the list, (i.e., add or remove tasks, re-order tasks, mark some complete, rename some, etc.), Then save them. At this point, I'd like to generate a 'version 2' of the list and tasks, and have them be able to view previous versions, but when they access the list, always get the latest version. Is there a common approach / design pattern for dealing with versioning data in this way in a MySQL database?"}
{"_id": "100404", "title": "Coming from a Windows keyboard background and still using a generic keyboard, how can I transition to Mac for development?", "text": "I got a new MacMini a little while ago because I already had a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc so I just wanted something cheap I could play with for Apple development where I could just change plugs to the computer I want to use. The biggest problem is that my keyboard is a standard (or not so standard being a DasKeyboard) keyboard in regards to the Control-Windows-Alt key setup. As all good developers should, I have trained my fingers' muscle memory to work well with common Windows-based (and Linux for that matter) keyboard shortcuts. I've actually instinctively hit `Control-Shift-B` to \"compile\" a Word document before (/facepalm). I tried remapping the `Command` key to be my keyboard's `Control` key, and that alone takes care of most of my problems. `End` and `Home` buttons are another issue altogether, and trying to highlight words using `Control` (aka the `Command`) causes frustration as well. I've considered just getting myself a wireless Apple keyboard just for the MacMini and forcing myself to learn things their way. Or perhaps resetting my current key mappings and trying to force learn everything in an Apple-ish way on my standard keyboard (so I just need to get used to using `Alt` instead of `Control`). Has anyone else run into this problem? How did you go about solving it?"}
{"_id": "133968", "title": "Is it a must for every programmer to learn regular expressions?", "text": "I am new to programming, and at an interview I got a question on regular expressions; needless to say I couldn't answer. So I was wondering whether I should learn regular expression? Is it a must for every programmer of all fields? Or it is a must for programming for some particular fields? Related questions:   * Why are regular expressions so morbidly attractive?   * When you should NOT use Regular Expressions?"}
{"_id": "137428", "title": "normal order evaluation -vs- applicative order evaluation", "text": "I am going through Abelson and Sussman (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) and I am a little confused about when normal order evaluation is used and when applicative order evaluation is used. This sentence throws me off: > _**Lisp uses applicative-order evaluation_** partly because of the > additional efficiency obtained from avoiding multiple evaluations of > expressions suich as those illustrated with (+5 1) and (*5 2) above and, > more significantly, because normal-order evaluation becomes much more > complicated to deal with when we leave the realm of procedures that can be > modeled by substitution. [emphasis added] on page 17 paragraph 1. However, in exercise 1.6, the implication is that Lisp uses normal order evaluation for primitives but applicative order evaluation for complex procedures. Could someone clarify?"}
{"_id": "108170", "title": "How should one pay for employees' publications?", "text": "Suppose a company wants to encourage employees to publish articles, blogposts, participate in community discussions. Let us not consider the pure-rhetorical ways of encouragement (\"Guys, you'll be so respected!\"). What could be a sensible strategy to encourage publications by money? Many things come to mind, such as \"pay for word count\", \"pay for audience size\", \"pay for view count\", \"pay for number of reactions or citations of the publication\" etc, but most of them fall apart as unfair in trivial corner cases."}
{"_id": "108179", "title": "Architecture of interaction modes (\"paint tools\") for a 3D paint program", "text": "We are developing a Qt-based application to navigate through and paint on a volume treated as a 3D pixel graphic. The layout of the app consists of three orthogonal slice views on which the user may paint stuff like dots, circles etc. and also erase already painted pixels. Think of a 3D Gimp or MS Paint. _How would you design the the architecture for the different interaction modes (i.e. paint tools)?_ My idea is:   * use the MVC pattern   * have a separate controler for every interaction mode   * install an event filter on all three slice views to collect all incoming user interaction events (mouse, keyboard)   * redirect the events to the currently active interaction controler I would appreciate critical comments on that idea."}
{"_id": "170182", "title": "Effective handling of variables in non-object oriented programming", "text": "What is the best method to use and share variables between functions in non object-oriented program languages? Let's say that I use 10 parameters from DB, ID and 9 other values linked to it. I need to work with all 10 parameters in many functions. I can do it next ways: **1\\. call functions only with using ID and in every function get the other parameters from DB.** Advantage: local variables are clear visible, there is only one input parameter to function Disadvantage: it's slow and there are the same rows for getting parameters in every function, which makes function longer and not so clear **2\\. call functions with all 10 parameters** Advantage: working with local variables, clear function code Disadvantage: many input parameters, what is not nice **3\\. getting parameters as global variables once and using them everywhere** Advantage - clearer code, shorter functions, faster processing Disadvantage - global variables - loosing control of them, possibility of unwanted overwriting (Especially when some functions should change their values) Maybe there is some another way how to implement this and make program cleaner and more effective. Can you say which way is the best for solving this issue?"}
{"_id": "170186", "title": "Something similar to Objective-C categories in other languages?", "text": "I understand Objective-C categories and how they become useful, but I always have a hard time explaining the concept to other programmers that are not familiar with Objective C. Maybe I'm just bad at explaining things, but I was thinking at another way to explain it by comparing to similar features offered by other (more popular) languages. (ex : I can explain the similarities between Objective C protocols and Java Interfaces) Any examples similar to Categories ?"}
{"_id": "170185", "title": "Is Creative-Commons license compatible with Apache License?", "text": "For example if I have code that contains parts of code rewritten from code found here or on Stack Overflow or other Creative-Commons licensed code, can my final code be licensed with an Apache License?"}
{"_id": "47388", "title": "Why is (Ogg) Vorbis not automatically supported by Windows?", "text": "1. Vorbis was never threatened by MPEG LA, so it is undoubtedly completely patent free.   (MPEG LA never misses a chance to spread patent FUD)   2. Windows supports mp3, so it isn\u2019t because they want to push their crappy wma.   3. The GPL allows distribution alongside commercial products, and   4. Even if they fear to ship GPL software, they can still load it automatically, like they do with XviD So why can\u2019t a windows customer not simply drop a ogg vorbis file into his/her music library and listen to it via WMP? PS: To counter misconceptions: They already download the GPL\u2019d XviD codec on demand, so they already have 99% of what it takes to do the same with Vorbis. It would take me about 5 minutes to do this, if I were familiar with the WMP code base and directshow filter system. PSS: I was told to ask this here rather than on stackoverflow, so i do."}
{"_id": "170189", "title": "How to verify the Liskov substitution principle in an inheritance hierarchy?", "text": "Inspired by this answer: > Liskov Substitution Principle requires that > >   * Preconditions cannot be strengthened in a subtype. >   * Postconditions cannot be weakened in a subtype. >   * Invariants of the supertype must be preserved in a subtype. >   * History constraint (the \"history rule\"). Objects are regarded as being > modifiable only through their methods (encapsulation). Since subtypes may > introduce methods that are not present in the supertype, the introduction of > these methods may allow state changes in the subtype that are not > permissible in the supertype. The history constraint prohibits this. > I was hoping if someone would post a class hierarchy that violates these 4 points and how to solve them accordingly.   I'm looking for an elaborate explanation for educational purposes on how to identify each of the 4 points in the hierarchy and the best way to fix it. **Note:**   I was hoping to post a code sample for people to work on, but the question itself is about how to identify the faulty hierarchies :)"}
{"_id": "170188", "title": "Is requiring attribution GPL-compatible?", "text": "Can code licensed under a clause like this:               Redistribution of this work, with or without modification, is permitted if     Bob Joe is attributed as the original author or licensor of     this work, but not in any way that suggests that Bob Joe endorses     you or your use of the work.      be used in a project using GPL, or does this make it incompatible with the GPL?"}
{"_id": "84891", "title": "Improvements to Joshua Bloch's Builder Design Pattern?", "text": "Back in 2007, I read an article about Joshua Blochs take on the \"builder pattern\" and how it could be modified to improve the overuse of constructors and setters, especially when an object has a large number of properties, most of which are optional. A brief summary of this design pattern is articled here. I liked the idea, and have been using it since. The problem with it, while it is very clean and nice to use from the client perspective, implementing it can be a pain in the bum! There are so many different places in the object where a single property is reference, and thus creating the object, and adding a new property takes a lot of time. So...I had an idea. First, an example object in Joshua Bloch's style: Josh Bloch Style:               public class OptionsJoshBlochStyle {              private final String option1;         private final int option2;         // ...other options here  <<<<              public String getOption1() {             return option1;         }              public int getOption2() {             return option2;         }              public static class Builder {                  private String option1;             private int option2;             // other options here <<<<<                  public Builder option1(String option1) {                 this.option1 = option1;                 return this;             }                  public Builder option2(int option2) {                 this.option2 = option2;                 return this;             }                  public OptionsJoshBlochStyle build() {                 return new OptionsJoshBlochStyle(this);             }         }              private OptionsJoshBlochStyle(Builder builder) {             this.option1 = builder.option1;             this.option2 = builder.option2;             // other options here <<<<<<         }              public static void main(String[] args) {             OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation1 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1(\"firefox\").option2(1).build();             OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation2 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1(\"chrome\").option2(2).build();         }     }      Now my \"improved\" version:               public class Options {              // note that these are not final         private String option1;         private int option2;         // ...other options here              public String getOption1() {             return option1;         }              public int getOption2() {             return option2;         }              public static class Builder {                  private final Options options = new Options();                  public Builder option1(String option1) {                 this.options.option1 = option1;                 return this;             }                  public Builder option2(int option2) {                 this.options.option2 = option2;                 return this;             }                  public Options build() {                 return options;             }         }              private Options() {         }              public static void main(String[] args) {             Options optionsVariation1 = new Options.Builder().option1(\"firefox\").option2(1).build();             Options optionsVariation2 = new Options.Builder().option1(\"chrome\").option2(2).build();              }     }      As you can see in my \"improved version\", there are 2 less places in which we need to add code about any addition properties (or options, in this case)! The only negative that I can see is that the instance variables of the outer class are not able to be final. But, the class is still immutable without this. Is there really any downside to this improvement in maintainability? There has to be a reason which he repeated the properties within the nested class that I'm not seeing?"}
{"_id": "84897", "title": "Charging for Open-Source", "text": "**Is it viable to charge for an open-source product?** Both legally and financially, it seems like a very strange thing to do. However, I keep hearing people say that it's possible. Are there even any real-world examples for this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "84898", "title": "Based on what I read in \"Inside the Machine\", is this approach to branches more optimal?", "text": "So I have been reading Inside the Machine by Jon Stokes. It is a FANTASTIC book, and it has got me thinking about the effects of programming on processors... Given a branch unit in a CPU and a complex conditional statement that involves a procedure call (If IsTodayAHoliday( Now ) > 0 Then), is it faster to stick the results of that procedure call in a variable just before the IF statement? In terms of static and dynamic branch prediction, it seems logical that having the decision value before the branch unit has to evaluate causes the prediction algorithms to execute flawlessly. Is this true?"}
{"_id": "84899", "title": "Is it possible to have an effective VIM environment for both C++ and Python?", "text": "I have recently moved to a VIM environment for Python development. I learned the setup from John Anderson's outstanding web page on the subject. I am about to try and set up another VIM environment for C++. Is this even possible to do effectively? Or should I really have two accounts on my Linux box, one for Python, one for C++ development? If anyone could outline their setup, either way, I would appreciate it greatly. To further clarify the question, I am not asking \"what is best way?\" which is unanswerable. I am asking those VIM users who program both C++ and Python if they use one VIM environment, or two (perhaps on different accounts), and how they accomplish it either way. (For Java, I am sticking with NetBeans and am pretty sure that is the right decision due to how well the build and Swing development tools are built into it, but am open to the idea of a VIM environment for all 3 languages if anyone has had success with it.) Thanks much"}
{"_id": "206840", "title": "What is the intention behind asking weight of plane?", "text": "I was asked this question \"How would you find weight of Aeroplane\" in an interview and I am not sure why this question was one of the two question asked in the interview. I tried to answer it using all possible ways but could not give the correct answer.(found the correct answer after google search) How much such questions decide your selection in the interview? Here was my approach: 1\\. If measurement of plane is given then i will calculate volume and multiply by density, will consider fuel weight plus other dead weight. 2\\. Using water displacement method if i can put plane in water and somehow measure how much water is displaced. But found using google search that right approach was to put place on a ship and mark the level of water on the hull, then remove plane and then ship will go up. And start putting weight on the ship till marked hull reaches the water level."}
{"_id": "31096", "title": "What's the best way to move to linux from windows for web development?", "text": "I am primarily a programmer developing on windows based OS using C# as my primary language. I am evaluating Ubuntu Linux as an alternate platform and would like to know the best stack for doing web development on this. I had gone through this thread but it doesn't answer my questions fully. Some of the points I am interested are:   * PHP/Ruby/Python (What would you recommend?)   * Is Mono mature enough for any large scale development? Has anyone any real experience using Mono.   * IDE (including debugging support, intellisense, source control integration,Unit testing)   * Unit testing framework based on the language recommended   * Web framework if any.    * Load Testing tools   * Web server (I know there are many webservers, but would like to know which one is primarily used by most people)"}
{"_id": "159274", "title": "What standard superseded 830-1998?", "text": "I have been looking into how to document software projects more formally, and I have learned about IEEE 830-1998: Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specifications. However, as you can see from that link, it has been superseded. I know that 830-1998, and probably even 830-1993, are probably just fine for use. However, if nothing else, I would like to know what standard has superseded it. In this case it may not matter, but if other standards are superseded for more technical things, I think it would be a good idea to link somewhere what standard superseded another (if it is not another one in the same line (830, in this case)). It is worth mentioning that:   1. The most recent standard when searching for \"Software Requirements Specifications\" or \"Software Requirements\" on the IEEE Standards Association website is 830-1993,   2. The 2004 (current) version of SWEBOK references 830-1993 (paragraph 2.5),   3. The document's Wikipedia article doesn't mention that the standard was superseded.  TLDR: How do you find what standard superseded another, and which one took 830-1998's place?"}
{"_id": "86006", "title": "What causes bad performance in consumer apps?", "text": "My Comcast DVR takes at least three seconds to respond to every remote control keypress, making the simple task of watching television into a frustrating button-mashing experience. My iPhone takes at least fifteen seconds to display text messages and crashes \u00bc of the times I try to bring up the iPod app; simply receiving and reading an email often takes well over a minute. Even the navcom in my car has mushy and unresponsive controls, often swallowing successive inputs if I make them less than a few seconds apart. These are all fixed-hardware end-consumer appliances for which usability should be paramount, and yet they all fail at basic responsiveness and latency. Their software is just _too slow_. What's behind this? Is it a technical problem, or a social one? Who or what is responsible? Is it because these were all written in managed, garbage-collected languages rather than native code? Is it the individual programmers who wrote the software for these devices? In all of these cases the app developers knew exactly what hardware platform they were targeting and what its capabilities were; did they not take it into account? Is it the guy who goes around repeating \"optimization is the root of all evil,\" did he lead them astray? Was it a mentality of \"oh it's just an additional 100ms\" each time until all those milliseconds add up to minutes? Is it my fault, for having bought these products in the first place? This is a subjective question, with no single answer, but I'm often frustrated to see so many answers here saying \"oh, don't worry about code speed, performance doesn't matter\" when clearly at some point it _does_ matter for the end-user who gets stuck with a slow, unresponsive, awful experience. So, at what point did things go wrong for these products? What can we as programmers do to avoid inflicting this pain on our own customers?"}
{"_id": "86004", "title": "Balancing full time work and personal coding projects", "text": "I am nearing the end of developing the major pieces of my website that I have been working on in my spare time for the last 3 months. My goal is to get it released by the end of next month and hopefully start making some money on it. Unfortunately the next step will be to write a lot of specific data handling and ui code that I can see becoming very tedious and boring. When I was first started the project I was able to find time for working on it easily, it was interesting and writing the back-end was new. Once I got to the start of writing stuff that I know and do at work (ui), it seemed harder and harder to make myself work on the project, sometimes the last thing I want to do when I get home from work is code again. Anyone in the same situation? Any tips on how to find time and effort for side projects without burning out? Any tips on staying on the right track? EDIT-Update Thanks for all the input, I really appreciate it. My and another friend are in on this website together, I'm doing all the coding he's doing the design, marketing etc. Obviously I don't have strict deadlines but our goal was to have it released by the end of July. I have no plans to lease the coding work to someone else. I am using a ui and back-end framework, the code is going to get tedious but the frameworks are both major time savers. My plan of action is to treat it like a job and really force myself to put hours in. Hopefully in a couple of months I'll be able to edit this and promote my website :)"}
{"_id": "204993", "title": "pre aggregating documents mongodb", "text": "In our current setup, most of our database calls are updates where we increment a key by 1. If all one is doing is incrementing certain keys on a document (a lot) in mongodb, and there are several application servers doing so at once, does it ever make sense to somehow aggregate these increments at the application layer and then send the pre-aggregated documents to the main mongodb database every set time interval? I understand it could be risky because if you somehow lose one of these pre- aggregated documents you can potentially lose more data, but is this technique ever used? I also understand sharding is the accepted way to scale writes, but I was just curious if this technique is ever used because it seems like it could potentially help scale if done right, I could be completely wrong here though."}
{"_id": "250833", "title": "Can a closed-source programming language survive?", "text": "A friend has written a programming language. It has a syntax reminiscent of SGML. He has written an interpreter for it, and an IDE. He and his colleagues use it in-house as a server-side language. It can also be used to write command-line tools. He wants to make it available to the public, in the expectation that people will purchase a license to use it. He wants to keep the code expressing the language implementation to himself, as there's a fair bit of intellectual property tied up in it. I keep telling him that the day of closed-source programming languages is gone. I say, \"Look at all the major languages: the vast majority are open- source. You're going to have to go open-source too if you want anyone outside the company to pay any attention to what you've built.\" Am I giving him good advice or is there still room for proprietary languages that you pay for? **LATER** Den asked, \"... could you please also explain how a language can be closed- source?\" I said, \"@Den you make a good point. What my friend wants to avoid, I suppose, is the situation where Microsoft cooks up a Java-alike language, calls it J++ and then gets into litigation with Sun about its Java-ness. How do you protect a syntax and a programming methodology from being hijacked by a company whose implementation could put you out of business?\""}
{"_id": "201311", "title": "What diagram to construct when familiarizing oneself with new code?", "text": "When I first encounter a new code base, I often find myself constructing flowchart-like-thingies-on-paper, while stepping through the code - either by reading it, or with the debugger. Another approach, that I have heard about here on SE is to add `const` everywhere and see where the compilation starts to break. I am somewhat familiar with the different families of UML diagrams and 1) don't really like them 2) feel like they are intended for design time, not system analysis time. _So, what would be a good helping tool in understanding existing code that one sees for the first time? Is creating a diagram of the execution paths a widespread practice, and which diagram exactly? Or maybe a diagram of the inheritance hierarchy (or file-contains-function for procedural programming) is a more appropriate tool. Or something else?_"}
{"_id": "201315", "title": "How is multi-threading different in a Java based Web Application vs Stand-alone Java Application", "text": "I am fairly new to Java and my experience is limited to Web Based Applications running on a Web Container (Jboss in my case). Am I correct in saying that for Web Applications the web container takes care of multi-threading? If so, can I introduce new treads in a Web Based applications? Is there any advantage in doing so and in what scenario one would need to do that?"}
{"_id": "72347", "title": "How to browse an open source project efficiently?", "text": "It is really frustrating to find that every other open source project's source code and documentation etc., follows slightly or hugely different directory structure and naming conventions.   1. How do I quickly orient my self to the directory/naming conventions?    2. Get to the overall architecture of the app without going through a bunch of source code files?    3. How do I make reaching to the relevant code (that I am interested in) quicker?"}
{"_id": "234041", "title": "What are the advantages of strictly maintaining separate data | algorithm | interface layers?", "text": "I always separate the user interface from other functionality in my programs - its the way I have been taught, and it has obvious advantages since you can change the interface but keep the same functionality. However, I've come across some programmers who strictly separate data, algorithms and interface. So the data objects which hold the data in volatile memory have _only_ fields/properties and their getters and setters. Any algorithms are kept in a separate class. In my view the main disadvantage of this is that the algorithm classes usually need full access to the data in the data classes. You might want to have a more functional class which you create with lots of data but then objects from other classes can only get at that data in specialised ways."}
{"_id": "91243", "title": "Where is java3d used?", "text": "The idea of java3d is very interesting, but I don't see any desktop or web applications built using java3d. Where is it used and what perspectives does it have?"}
{"_id": "91242", "title": "What is the best way to include JavaScript file using script tag?", "text": "I generally include JavaScript files using the script tag as below.               <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"somefile.js\"></script>      I have seen some people using the language attribute as well. Now-a-days I find many people omitting the type attribute. I have started to get a feeling that if JavaScript is the default scripting language then even I should omit the type attribute. Would it be good to omit the type attribute? Would it cause any problems?"}
{"_id": "208271", "title": "How should a REST API handle PUT requests to partially-modifiable resources?", "text": "Suppose a REST API, in response to a HTTP `GET` request, returns some additional data in a sub-object `owner`:               {       id: 'xyz',       ... some other data ...       owner: {         name: 'Jo Bloggs',         role: 'Programmer'       }     }      Clearly, we don't want anyone to be able to `PUT` back               {       id: 'xyz',       ... some other data ...       owner: {         name: 'Jo Bloggs',         role: 'CEO'       }     }      and have that succeed. Indeed, we probably aren't going to even _implement_ a way for that to even potentially succeed, in this case. But this question is not just about sub-objects: what, in general, should be done with data that should not be modifiable in a PUT request? Should it be required to be missing from the PUT request? Should it be silently discarded? Should it be checked, and if it differs from the old value of that attribute, return a HTTP error code in the response? Or should we use RFC 6902 JSON patches instead of sending the whole JSON?"}
{"_id": "234048", "title": "Is there a way to not use the Observer pattern when creating GUI systems?", "text": "In Java, the Swing library implements the Observer/Subscriber-Publisher design pattern to design the way the program responds to events on the GUI (button clicks, etc). The programmer registers `ActionListener` objects (the observers) to a GUI element (the subject/observable/publisher), and these objects get notified by the GUI element when it's state is changed, and do something accordingly. This seems a reasonable way to design a GUI system, and I can't think of any other way a framework could do this. Is there any other way to design an event-response system in a GUI? **Are there any imperative-language frameworks or libraries with a GUI event- response system not designed this way?** Does the event-response system in the most common C# GUI library implement event-response issues using Observer, or something else? What about libraries for Python, etc."}
{"_id": "177328", "title": "How can I use UML to model a relationship between two classes, where one has functions exposed as friend to the other?", "text": "I have a two classes:                 ------------                         ---------------          X                                       Y       ------------                         ---------------                           relation       ------------    ------------------   ---------------           A()                                   C()           B()                                        D()           E()       ------------                         ---------------      I want to inherit just these two functions from X class, where they are defined with the friend access modifier. My class will be:                ---------------           Y                                             ---------------           ---------------         C()         A()         D()      ---------------      Y class uses some functions of X class namely A and D. How can I model this relationship in a UML class diagram?"}
{"_id": "177325", "title": "Rest Design concerning user login", "text": "To be as restful as possible, is a user login better designed using a GET or a POST on a REST webservice? And why?"}
{"_id": "244368", "title": "How do references work in R?", "text": "I'm finding R confusing because it has such a different notion of reference than I am used to in languages like C, Java, Javascript... Ruby, Python, C++, well, pretty much any language I have ever programmed in ever. So one thing I've noticed is variable names are not irrelevant when passing them to something else. The reference can be part of the data. e.g. per this tutorial               a <- factor(c(\"A\",\"A\",\"B\",\"A\",\"B\",\"B\",\"C\",\"A\",\"C\"))     results <- table(a)      Leads to `$a` showing up as an attribute as `$dimnames$a`. We've also witnessed that calling a function like `a <- foo(alpha=1, beta=2)` can create attributes in `a` of names `alpha` and `beta`, or it can assign or otherwise compute on 1 and 2 to properties already existing. (Not that there's a computer science distinction here - it just doesn't really happen in something like Javascript, unless you want to emulate it by passing in the object and use key=value there.) Functions like `names(...)` return lvalues that will affect the input of them. And the one that most got me is this.               x <- c(3, 5, 1, 10, 12, 6)     y = x[x <= 5]     x[y] <- 0      is different from               x <- c(3, 5, 1, 10, 12, 6)     x[x <= 5] <- 0      Color me confused. Is there a consistent theory for what's going on here?"}
{"_id": "244360", "title": "Is it recommended to use more than one language at a startup?", "text": "I work for a mobile startup where, for historical reasons, our chosen language was C#. I was recently assigned to a small project to build a tool that would be used by us internally. When I explained my intention to use Python to build this tool I was heavily criticized for this because introducing new languages, and technologies (Debian, Apache, Python and Django) into our ecosystem would make it harder for other developers to maintain (because only two other people know more than one language besides C#). I countered that this project would take far longer to develop in C# (which I think is an inherent problem with the language/.NET framework) and that the project was small and designed to solve a very particular problem. Of course it is necessary that the ecosystem be as a homogeneous as possible but if your are developing tooling, infrastructure, and internal systems when there are better things to build them with than C# then you should consider using them. By using one language you exclude a lot of other great libraries and frameworks out there, and this case it was the difference between taking one week to build in Python as opposed to a month in C#. Do you think it is acceptable to understand and use only only one language at a startup or even a larger company? Am I perhaps being naive??"}
{"_id": "244363", "title": "Why is programming sometimes viewed as a second-rate role?", "text": "I've been a programmer for most of my life. I recently interviewed for a management job in a company and the interviewer looked at my CV asked me \"How do we know you're not just a programmer\". Which in my opinion is quite a rude thing to say, but it's not an isolated incident and I've heard other similar things in other settings. It does seem that for some reason being a programmer is viewed as having a lower station, especially in settings where they have a separate IT department which is viewed as a support role. Is a career in software development doomed to being a second-rate support citizen?"}
{"_id": "244362", "title": "Parsing mathematical expressions with two values that have parentheses and minus signs", "text": "I'm trying to parse equations like the ones below, which only have two values or the square root of a certain value, from a text file:               100+100          -100-100          -(100)+(-100)          sqrt(100)      by the minus signs, parentheses and the operator symbol in the middle and the square root, and I have no idea how to start off... I've got the file part done and the simple calculation parts except that I couldnt get my program to solve the equations in the above.               #include <stdio.h>     #include <string.h>     #include <stdlib.h>     #include <math.h>          main(){         FILE *fp;         char buff[255], sym,sym2,del1,del2,del3,del4;         double num1, num2;         int ret;         fp = fopen(\"input.txt\",\"r\");              while(fgets(buff,sizeof(buff),fp)!=NULL){             char *tok = buff;             sscanf(tok,\"%lf%c%lf\",&num1,&sym,&num2);                  switch(sym){                 case '+': printf(\"%lf\\n\", num1+num2);                         break;                 case '-': printf(\"%lf\\n\", num1-num2);                         break;                 case '*': printf(\"%lf\\n\", num1*num2);                         break;                 case '/': printf(\"%lf\\n\", num1/num2);                         break;                 default: printf(\"The input value is not correct\\n\");                         break;             }         }         fclose(fp);     }      That is what I have written for the other basic operations without parentheses and the minus sign for the second value and it works great for the simple ones. I'm using a switch statement to calculate the add, sub, mul and div operations but I'm not sure how to properly use the `sscanf` function (if I am not using it properly) or if there is another way, such as using a function like `strtok` to properly parse the parentheses and the minus signs. Any kind help?"}
{"_id": "185138", "title": "Best practices for unit testing methods that use cache heavily?", "text": "I have a number of business logic methods that store and retrieve (with filtering) objects and lists of objects from cache. Consider               IList<TObject> AllFromCache() { ... }          TObject FetchById(guid id) { ... }          IList<TObject> FilterByPropertry(int property) { ... }      `Fetch..` and `Filter..` would call `AllFromCache` which would populate cache and return if it isn't there and just return from it if it is. I generally shy away from unit testing these. What are best practices for Unit Testing against this type of structure? I considered populating cache on TestInitialize and removing on TestCleanup but that doesn't feel right to me, (tho it could well be)."}
{"_id": "185131", "title": "How can I plan optimization tasks in Scrum?", "text": "Recently my Scrum team has received several requests for optimizing certain parts of our code. Looking at the software with a profiler found some spots where the code could be improved. We agreed to plan mostly based on user stories to ensure that everything we do has actual benefit for an end user, but how would this story be phrased? I can't come up with a good wording for them. How would we best plan such effort? is there a good way of talking about performance optimizations in terms of user stories?"}
{"_id": "230747", "title": "Is it a good practice to wrap collection in Java?", "text": "I came across a snippet like this, and find it's over engineering. Is it a good practice?               public class SchoolList extends ArrayList<School> {     }          public class School extends ArrayList<StudentList> {     }          public class StudentList extends ArrayList<Student> {     }          public class Student {     }      Actually I prefer a straightforward option:               List<List<List<Student>>> schoolList;"}
{"_id": "237626", "title": "How and when should I design a simple mark-up language parser?", "text": "I want to write a simple markup language with its rendering engine. First, I am not completely sure **_when_** I should try this... I am only 12... But I am competent in C++ having learned through the Web and books. I am also good with JavaScript, PHP and HTML. I am currently learning Ruby and Haskell for a change. I understand all low-level and high-level concepts. But the only thing that had always confused me is how people design these parsers to understand and compile or interpret things like markup languages and programming languages. My question is when should I start writing a simple rendering engine for an even simpler markup language? More like the custom xml-like custom languages frameworks use for their interface (Qt uses a .ui file that is similar to XML to define their forms). Am I up to design something like that? Any good papers, articles or books to read? _Preferred Languages_ : C++, JavaScript, Haskell, Ruby"}
{"_id": "229492", "title": "modelling staged business process", "text": "_imagine_ given a `project` business object and such (simplified) rules:   * it's lifecycle is divided into several `stages of evaluation`;   * stages flow lineary and represent an evaluation chain;   * each stage provides its own `reward value`/algorithm;   * promotion of the project is controlled by other user's decision;   * the resulting reward is assigned to the project's initiator. _too naive, probably)_ The first thought that comes to my mind is using the `decorator pattern`; because of its structure it looks somewhat applicable. But what if you need to persist additional details provided with the current 'decorated' `state` of project? _I need an extra behavior on each stage_ I've encountered an article about `jBPM`. I believe it has much in common with `WF`. It is surely has the most of what is needed and at the same time it has (overkill) large infrastructure. _but can it be designed without incorporating this much complexity?_ What would you suggest?"}
{"_id": "224972", "title": "Why is inheritance only defined at compile-time?", "text": "I found this statement from the gang of four's \"Design Patterns\" particularly odd; for some context, the authors are comparing inheritance versus composition as reuse mechanisms [p. 19]: > \"...you can't change the implementations inherited from parent classes at > run-time, because inheritance is defined at compile-time.\" They go on to say of composition: > \"Object composition is defined dynamically at run-time through objects > acquiring references to other objects.\" I am not sure why this phase distinction is important. I am familiar with compiling and inheritance but work as a JavaScript developer, so maybe I'm missing something fundamental."}
{"_id": "130615", "title": "How to gauge a person's ability to write SQL queries?", "text": "If I am a Java certified programer, by seeing that certificate people can say I have good knowledge on Java in a snap. Is there any similar certification to know if a person can write good SQL queries? I am not talking about database administration. I am looking at MS SQL Server specifically."}
{"_id": "224976", "title": "Good practice using signals and event driven system", "text": "I am using signals (specifically Boost `signals2`) to create an event driven protocol API and model. Most elements have their own signals, and there are usually multiple of each element. Consider a basic entity, a `user`; amongst others, the user may leave the system, so I need to have a leave signal. The question is, should the user object itself be passed to the signal handler? I.e.:               class user {         signals<void(user&)> on_leave;         //...     };      If there was `std::bind` and lambda then this decision would be easier to make, but with those passing the user back seems rather redundant, i.e.:               user.connect_on_leave(         [](user& u) {             //well I could already refer to user if I wanted to         }     );      And same with binding, I could do something like this               user.connect_on_leave(std::bind(my_hander, std::ref(usr));      Also, generally speaking, is it better for each signal to just pass to the user whatever it's concerned about, or have some sort of `message` type which all signals operate with? And my final question: at what point should I stop normalising data? If several signals share the same \"payload\", is it better to have separate signals like,               on_change_name(str)     on_msg_sent(str)     on_leave(str)      or               on_action(action, str)"}
{"_id": "128827", "title": "How quickly is the silent IE upgrade likely to propagate to end users? What about managed corporate IT infrastructures?", "text": "According to this article from the BBC and this post on Microsoft's Exploring IE Blog, Microsoft has planned to automatically upgrade Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7's IE to the latest version. Microsoft has stated that they will also allow people to opt-out of this update through the use of the _The Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9 Automatic Update Blocker toolkits_ and will respect any previous declined automatic updates. I assume managed corporate IE managers can also block whatever they want. Microsoft's blog post states that the release will begin in Australia and Brazil to be \"scaled up as time goes on.\" I'm wondering, from the perspective of a web designer, how rapidly these upgrades are likely to be propagated to average end users, but also especially those in tightly-regulated corporate IT infrastructures. Given best (or common ;) practices in the corporate world, as well as average end-user behaviour, how soon can I stop investing a significant amount of time in backwards- compatibility with IE6 and 7?"}
{"_id": "125817", "title": "What is a value object in domain-driven design?", "text": "I have an entity and I've realised that there is a group of properties that work together. So, I moved them to a value object (together with their behavior) and now I have a reference from my entity to this value object. I've read \"Domain Driven Design Quickly\" (PDF) and I came across the following statement when explaining Value objects: > If Customer is an entity object, then one instance of this object, > representing a specific bank client, cannot be reused for account operations > corresponding to other clients. The outcome is that such an instance has to > be created for every client. This can result in system performance > degradation when dealing with thousands of instances. But I'm still not clear exactly what this means. Is my new object a value object or should it be an entity? I am having trouble reasoning whether it should in fact be an entity. In other words, what questions should I ask in my domain to assure me that it should be a value object?"}
{"_id": "125816", "title": "Sharing buffer between multiple threads part 2", "text": "This is a follow up to my previous not answered question, so I try to make it more clear: last question. I have a n-size buffer that is filled up from an external source, it has 2 main methods get() and add(), get() blocks (via wait()) if buffer is empty and add() blocks if buffer is full. This buffer object reference is available to multiple consumers (threads).   Each consumer reads data from buffer independently from other consumers . All Consumers must **read ALL data** from the buffer. As someone suggested, I have created A hashmap where key is an id of the consumer and value is the index within the buffer that was read by this consumer. The problem is that every consumer continues to request data from buffer. I need somehow to block it until next dataitem get available for it in buffer. Where and how should I block it?   (I can't use wait() in consumers object, because the producer can't call notify() since producer and consumer are different objects)"}
{"_id": "135069", "title": "Software testing for developer", "text": "I'm a software developer. What do I need to know about software testing (apart from TDD, unit-testing and stuff) to make my software work as it should? For example, there are cases when TDD is not applicable. Therefore, I need to do simple smoke testing of my code every time it is deployed/changed. In order to prevent silly mistakes, I probably should have some simple test cases and check manually if everything works properly. It's better to avoid bugs than fix them, right? And this is the time when basic software testing skills might come in handy. What are those basics that I need to know?"}
{"_id": "224977", "title": "Emulating communication between Android and microcontroller using threads or services or... other?", "text": "I am not sure what is the best way for the tasks below: threads, AsyncTasks, Loopers, services? Why? Are there other candidates? I need threads/Tasks/Services/other for:   * Plotting data, (refreshing should be done let's after after specific amount of data has been read)   * Generating data, (must being done during whole application runtime indefinitely)   * Reading data, (as above)   * Saving data on SD card / doing some logs   * Interacting with UX **More detailed scenario** I must emulate communication between an external device and Android. External device (I don't have access to that device for some time - I am waiting for it to arrive, that's why I want to emulate the communication - which is a control and measurement system board with ARM microprocessor) generates some data packed in frames in ASCII format. Android needs to pool? (Maybe there's a way to say: \"Hey I have generated data for you. Take it!\"? - If yes, could you advise me?) the external device to read data."}
{"_id": "224975", "title": "Handling large and small changes specific to a customer", "text": "I've been going back and forth on how to handle this best. **The problem** C# project consisting of WCF services used by a Flex application. A customer may request a functionality change that requires me to alter code to work just for them. It could be a single line of code in a method or maybe a method acts in a totally different way for customer x. **My Ideas**   1. Use branches for customers that have a customization. When a release is ready, merge to customer branches and try not to break / forget what their customization was for. We use SVN. I'm not a huge fan of this as the code base is very large.   2. Use inversion of control, dependency injection, and MEF. Create an interface for the class/s that needs to be modified. Create a new class library project (that is, customerabc), add a new class that implements the class just created, override method/s as needed for customer changes. Add a MEF export. I then place this in a customization folder and point MEF there. If it finds a DLL file in the folder, it uses that instead of the export from the executing assembly. I like option 2 ... Pros   1. Easy - normal deployment install, then drop in their DLL file.    2. Obvious - it might not be overly clear wether or not a customer is running code from their branch. With this option I could just look at the customization folder.   3. Clean - only the files that need to be customized exist. There isn't any need for a full copy of trunk. d. It promotes better SOLID for future development and refactoring (this project has little OOP). Cons   1. It will be harder to manage changes in trunk out to the customer projects.   2. It doesn't necessarily solve my problem with database changes or changes on the Flex side.   3. If the change is a single line of code in a 500 line method, I don't see any other option than to override that method, copy paste the code to the customer override and make the one line change. This isn't good use of DRY to me, but is there a good way around this?   4. OK, so better use of OOP and SOLID principles could mitigate some of this, but it also means that to implement a simple customer request, I have to do some major refactoring to the whole class... potentially many classes. What should I do?"}
{"_id": "124493", "title": "What are the disadvantages of unobtrusive script patterns in web applications?", "text": "First of all, is there a name for this as a bona-fide design pattern? Currently I've just been referring to it as \"unobtrusive javascript\". Here is a brief example of what I am talking about: 1.) Use HTML5 data-* attributes to define values that will be used in UX scripts. Something like this:               <input type=\"date\" data-app-calendar=\"datepicker\" />      2.) Use script to initialize the javscript behaviors using these data attributes               (function($) {         $.app = $.app || {};         $.app.obtruders = $.app.obtruders || {};         $.app.obtrude = function(selector) {             var obtruder, obtruders = $.app.obtruders;             for (obtruder in obtruders) {                 if (!obtruders.hasOwnProperty(obtruder)) continue;                 if (typeof obtruders[obtruder] === 'function')                     obtruders[obtruder].apply(this,                          Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 0, 1) || document);             }         };              $.extend($.app.obtruders, {             calendar: function (selector) {                 $(selector).find('[data-app-calendar=datepicker]').datepicker();             }         });              $(function () {             $.app.obtrude(document);         });          })(jQuery);      What you end up with, imo, is presentation markup that is very cleanly separated from behavioral scripts. The above example is simple, but you can extend it to more complex scriptable UX like google maps (I am working on this right now). You can even add new \"obtruders\" in separate javascript files by extending the $.app.obtruders object literal. Before we start using this pattern more widely in our app, I wanted to pick brains for opinions and try to get ideas of some potential disadvantages of an approach like this. What do you like about this pattern? What don't you like? Why would you choose not to use it?"}
{"_id": "101053", "title": "How to balance code quality vs strong developer personalities", "text": "On code reviews at work I have been seeing code & patterns that I consider \"clever\" though not necessarily adding to the overall quality or maintainability of the code base. I point this out on my feedback and am unconvinced by the counterarguments. I am a bit concerned when this code makes into into the repo and later to production. I want to maintain a cohesive team, so I dont want to create tension by being too vocal about my reservations. I also want to create a great product for our customers without being too leninent. Traditionally, who has 'veto' power on what gets checked in and how? How can code that works, but its too involved/clever be removed without stepping on toes?"}
{"_id": "240280", "title": "How to employ amatuer knowledge of software architecture and design in an agile manner?", "text": "I have a problem when designing any application that is either greenfield or a refactored brownfield due to often finding a potential flaw or an uncertainty with the design or architecture that I think up. I waste a lot of time trying to construct a design that I am confident in without a lot of time invested from the beginning. I feel that mistakes early on lead to big issues later in development (especially when refactoring brownfield apps). I want to minimize this, but am unsure how to do it without an optimal solution or bothering the senior devs or the architect. For example, there is a legacy application that needs to be refactored. I can rewrite it in a new project and reduce the lines of code from 12k to 2-3k. The application's purpose is to generate HTML pages, but is done in a console application in C#. I have not done any web development until now, but I am unsure if ASP.NET MVC would be a good choice, and even if so, if my design or architecture is a good choice. I understand when working in a team I can receive good and solid advice, but how do I become less reliant on my team's thinking and more on my own without wasting the company's time researching every technological possibility? Does this just come with time and experience? If trial and error is the true and tried way, can architecture and design really be done in an agile way with minimal time wasted?"}
{"_id": "228515", "title": "Scheduled website testing: Searching for a lightweight, simple solution", "text": "Scheduled website testing: Searching for a simple solution. One of my clients is having some tens of sites, with webform-based landing pages. He wants to daily test 3 different use-cases pre site, in order to make sure the site is working properly. I need to test the following use-cases:   1. Sanity test - check one page per site, to verify it loads and linked fields are not broken.   2. Webform test - verify that the user is redirected to the thankyou page when a webform is submitted.   3. Lead test - verify that a lead is recorded on the external CRM system when the webform is filled (the external CRM system has a web service interface which may be called from remote). The tests have to run from a remote server (the server doesn't allow for an internal cron). What is the quickest open-source tool to record such a test and run it daily from the cloud (or from my own external server, a dedicated ubuntu machine), then report if something happened?   * Is there a simple solution, where I simply record the test from a browser, then add parameters and schedule it to run daily via cron?    * Can installing BeHat on the external server up to the job?   * What about Selenium? (saucelabs, xml2selenium)?   * Can saucelabs-like cloud services do it alone, or do I need Jenkins CI as well?"}
{"_id": "93363", "title": "Accurate/recommended approachs to tracking play length of a video", "text": "I'm working on a flash player that needs to track how long a user plays a video for. In addition, I need to know the user. I can easily do that with a request to the server. What I've thought of so far is sending a request to the server when the user presses play and another when the player stops playing the video. The obvious problem with this approach is that the user can navigate away from the page with out pressing stop, before the video ends. Are there know approaches you have tried/seen and would recommend?"}
{"_id": "128791", "title": "Steps required to start programming in C++ to develop native applications", "text": "I am dealing around with C# .Net for almost around a year now. I got lots of experience (I owe most of it to guys at stackoverflow). Now I am thinking to start working with C++ as well. Mainly because I would like to be able write codes resulting in applications that are not .Net dependent so they can be executed in most of environments also having cross- platform in mind. Although I have to confess, writing code in .Net with C# and Visual Studio can not be easier nowadays. Of my other reasons I can name, since I am studying electrical engineering, who knows maybe I later need to write drivers for hardwares! My questions are: 1- Am I right with the idea of learning C++ I mean is it add to my value if say I am going to work as a developer later? 2- What tools will I need to start programming in native C++ that is perhaps compilers and IDE"}
{"_id": "201860", "title": "Interfaces, Adapters, exposing business objects via WCF design", "text": "I know there have been countless discussions about this but I think this question is slightly different and may perhaps prompt a heated discussion (lets keep it friendly). _**The scene:_**   I am developing a system as a means for me to learn various concepts and I came across a predicament which my brain is conflicting with. That is whether to keep my interfaces in a separate class library or should they live side by side my business objects. I want to expose certain objects via WCF, however refuse to expose them in its entirety. I am sure most will agree exposing properties such as IDs and other properties is not good practice but also I don't want to have my business objects decorated with attributes. _**The question:_**   Essentially, I'll be having a separate interface for each of my objects that will essentially be exposed to the outside world (could end up being quite a few) so does it make sense to create a separate class library for interfaces? This also brings up the question of whether adapters should live in a separate class library too as ideally I want a mechanism from transferring from one object to the other and vice versa?"}
{"_id": "200190", "title": "Is this a viable approach to resolving multiple matches in a lexer?", "text": "I'm writing a lexer in JavaScript. It's pretty typical - rules are specified with regular expressions and produce a token. I am unsure of the best way to handle when multiple rules are matched. The existing lexers I've looked at handle this by picking the rule with the longest match. It also seems like a viable strategy, however, to simply use the first rule that matches. This is my current strategy. Here is an example: Input: `:=` Rules:               : -> COLON     = -> EQUALS     := -> ASSIGN      The longest-match rule would return `ASSIGN`, where the first-match rule would return `COLON` and then `EQUALS`. Obviously this is not desirable, so under my implementation I would just reorder the rules to put the `ASSIGN` rule first as follows:               := -> ASSIGN     : -> COLON     = -> EQUALS      **Is this a viable approach to just use the first matching rule? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach?**"}
{"_id": "42269", "title": "Why is 2^16 a \"special\" number?", "text": "OK, I feel stupid asking this - but in Jeff's article: Getting the Interview Phone Screen Right and originally stated in the 5 essential phone screen questions: > They shouldn't stare blankly at you when you ask with 2^16 is. It's a > special number. They should know it. I've been a developer\\software engineer\\code monkey\\whatever for a little while now, and I don't think I've ever come across this. I mean, I can certainly count binary values do basic operations on them, etc, etc. But I don't see what is \"special\" about this value."}
{"_id": "200195", "title": "Will I need to use AJAX for this?", "text": "Say I have a model written in php whose properties are the columns of a table in a db and each instance of the model represents a row in the table. I also have a page ('view') where I display the contents of each column one row at a time, starting with the first row (id=1). Above this display are two buttons, one which when clicked displays the contents of the next row, and the other displays the contents of the previous row. I want the change of display to occur without reloading the page or going to a new page. My question is simply would I need to use AJAX for this?"}
{"_id": "233802", "title": "Explanation java/web (tomcat/coyote/JSP/Servlet etc..) in 'Perl-world' terms", "text": "Analyzed one web-server.   * for the `http` request i got: `apache 2.2...` what redirects to https, and   * for https got `apache-coyote 1.1`.   * and the server runs xwiki java app. Trying to understand how it is implemented. After googling a hour trying to find any **simple** page what explaining java technologies for an _java dumb person_ \\- giving up - and trying to ask here. I'm mostly using Poet / Mason / Starman (PSGI) for my needs, so trying to find equivalent perlish terms. So, from Wikipedia (shortened): Tomcat: > Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet container ... Tomcat > implements the Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) specifications > ..., and provides a \"pure Java\" HTTP web server environment for Java code to > run in. Tomcat's components: Catalina, Coyote, Jasper. > Coyote is Tomcat's HTTP Connector component ... for the web server or > application container. Coyote listens for incoming connections on a specific > TCP port on the server and forwards the request to the Tomcat Engine to > process the request and send back a response to the requesting client. It > can execute JSP's and Servlets. Jasper > Jasper is Tomcat's JSP Engine. Jasper parses JSP files to compile them into > Java code as servlets (that can be handled by Catalina). At runtime, Jasper > detects changes to JSP files and recompiles them. Catalina > Catalina is Tomcat's servlet container. Catalina implements Sun > Microsystems' specifications for servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP). So, in comparison with Poet/Mason application:   * The Mason == `Jasper` \\- it compiles my `.mc` and `.mi` files to pure perl/Moose code and manage my Mason app.   * `Catalina` is the `app.psgi`. Is is my \"container\" for Mason application and, it implements configuration, and many other things for the Mason app and it is based on   * the `PSGI` specification (something like `Java Servlet` specification) what defines the middlewares and how to write PSGI apps and so on...   * and the `Coyot` is like Starman or plackup - a PSGI compatible web server written in pure perl, what allows for perl apps to run in. and the whole things together: `Tomcat = deplyoment of my \"Starman/Poet/Mason\"`. It is plus-minus right or I completly misunderstand the java buzzwords? If I'm wrong, **please** correct me in _simple perlish terms_. :) So, the server in the top of question is like:   * on the port:80 runs apache - what redirects to   * 443 - what runs like `plackup`   * in what is runs the xwiki (like my perl application) It is more or less correct?"}
{"_id": "233807", "title": "Is it fine to make a default constructor unusable?", "text": "**Specifically asking about the default constructor** Given that the constructor initializes all the data for an object, if I create a class that can't be used without proper initialization, is it not the case that the default constructor is useless? Consider:               // A class for handling lines in a CSV file     class CSV_Entry {     private:         unsigned num_entries;         std::string string_version;         std::vector<std::string> vector_version;         ...etc     public:         CSV_Entry();         CSV_Entry(const std::string& src_line);              // returns a vector copy of the original entry         std::vector<std::string> get_vector_snapshot();     }          int main( void ) {         ...etc              CSV_Entry example = CSV_Entry();         std::vector<std::string> current_entry = example.get_vector_snapshot();              ...etc     }      That variable `current_entry` is essentially useless no? If someone tries to process it later on, they would likely get errors; then they'd create code to handle such errors... To mitigate such additional, unnecessary code: why not make the default constructor unusable? Like so,               ...etc          CSV_Entry() {         throw Verbose_Exception( \"CSV_Entry: do not use the default constructor\" );     }          ...etc      PS: on a side note, if it is fine to just make the default constructor unusable, is it fine to put that throw in the header, since no other implementation details are revealed anyway?"}
{"_id": "42260", "title": "Learning to be a good developer: what parts can you skip over?", "text": "I have set myself the goal of becoming a decent developer by this time next year. By this I mean full experience of the development 'lifecycle,' a few _good_ apps/sites/webapps under my belt, and most importantly being able to work at a steady pace without getting sidelined for hours by some should-know- this-already technique. I'm not starting from scratch. I've written a lot of html/css, SQL, javascript, python and VB.net, and studied other languages like C and Java. I know _about_ things like OOP, design patterns, TDD, complexity, computational linguistics, pointers/references, functional programming, and other academic/theoretical matters. It's just I can't say I've really _done_ these things yet. So I want to get up to speed, and I want to know what things I can leave till a later date. For instance, studying algorithms and the maths behind them is interesting and all, but so far I've hardly needed to write anything but the most basic nested loops. Investigating Assembly to have a clearer picture of low-level operations would be cool... but I imagine rarely infringes on daily work. On the other hand, looking at a functional programming language might help me write programs that are more comprehensible and less prone to hidden failures (at the moment I'm finding the biggest difficulty is when the complexity of the app exceeds my capacity to understand it - for instance passing data around was fine... until I had to start doing it with AJAX, which was a painful step up). I could spend time working through case studies of design patterns, but I'm not sure how many of them get used in 'real life.' I'm a programmer with basic abilities - what skills should I focus on developing? (also my Unix skills are very weak, and also knowledge of Windows configuration... not sure how much time I should spend on that)"}
{"_id": "6031", "title": "Is it time to use MariaDB instead of MySQL on application development? Why?", "text": "If you know MariaDB, what's your opinion about migrate applications to use MariaDB instead of MySQL? What we gain and what we lost with this change? Is it really unnecessary to change the application in any situation? Any tip to assure the application run smoothly on MariaDB?"}
{"_id": "147637", "title": "In Java, why are nextInt() and nextDouble() instance methods of Random objects?", "text": "In Java, why are `nextInt()` and `nextDouble()` instance methods of Random objects? I feel that these methods should be static methods of the Random class. What is the purpose of having to instantiate a Random object to generate random integers or double values?"}
{"_id": "121519", "title": "What to do with unfinished stories and tasks in SCRUM sprint?", "text": "We have unfinished tasks which are part of stories in sprint. They are not accepted by the PO. They must be included for the next planning of sprint. Obviously the stories must be moved, but what about the tasks? Shall they be reopened and moved for the next sprint within the stories or not?"}
{"_id": "7383", "title": "Studying more than one subject", "text": "Like all the undergraduate students, who are studying in a college. They have to learn many things in one semester. For example right now I am having Java, DBMS, Operating-Systems and Computer architecture in my syllabus. I am concentrating more on Java but DBMS and OS are also important subjects. So how can one master all the subjects? Should one go for only one subject and leave others to study only in exam time or study all subjects with same interest and give all subjects the same time. If one give same time to all subjects then he/she would not be able to be master in all but if he concentrates on only one subject then he/she can be a master in that. What do you guys suggest?"}
{"_id": "7380", "title": ".NET processing unit", "text": "Do you think we'll ever see an IL (or other bytecode) processing unit? It sounds possible and would have a major benefit, because we wouldn't need the JITter. This isn't the same as compiling .NET directly to machine code, since the bytecode here is designed to be programmed and disassembled easily, unlike the bytecode used in x86 processors which is designed to work faster. What's stopping Intel (for example) from partnering with Microsoft and making such a .NET-optimised processor?"}
{"_id": "247108", "title": "How to define item level permissions in a relational database", "text": "I need to model a database design to provide item level permissions to users based on the user's role access. I am using asp.net with sql server 2012 I am looking at similar experience on how SharePoint provides the security trimming when we access the resources with a SharePoint site (including search results)   1. Is it a best practice to model this in the database or the application programming? (I have seen SharePoint implement this, but haven't gone in to figuring out how they have done it)   2. I will also be using lucene.net for integrating with search. So even the search results should be security trimmed. Are there any best practices/resources available to suggest how to model this permission? /Sharath"}
{"_id": "121513", "title": "How to become a more organized programmer?", "text": "I am a programmer that can code. But I find that I can get thing done, but not get thing do well or like most of the open source communities do. Well, I use some of the library from git hub. I find most of the programme is well structure. Also, a read me. My question are:   1. Is that any common file structure or naming convention in the community or this is just a matter of personal taste?    2. How to become a more organized programmer, instead of writing code just work. But more organized that let other easy to get in your project?"}
{"_id": "236351", "title": "Why convert to assembly language instead of machine code?", "text": "When I compile a C program, it is compiled first to assembly code, then assembled into machine code. I'm curious why it doesn't just convert straight to machine code in the first place."}
{"_id": "253350", "title": "Dual pivot quicksort in face of expensive swaps", "text": "_I was told this is better place to ask this_   **TLDR**   Has anyone tested dual pivot quicksort performance with expensive-to-swap elements? It seems that in this case, it should massively underperform compared to standard quicksort. And yes, I know about Cycle Sort (if it is only the original array that is expensive to modify) and that I could use indices/pointers inside the array, sort them and then swap them into their correct place. However, the first is completely out of the question (Quadratic average case is just not good enough) and the second is unsuitable for implementation of general case sort. (It imposes both performance and memory consumption overhead even in cases where it is better and faster to work with the original array).    **Backstory**   Inspired by recent \"question\" on stack overflow, I decided to go and implement non trivial versions of given sorts (introsort, quicksort with 3-way partition, median of 3 pivot selection, small block insertion sort etc). During some research I also came upon dual pivot quicksort, which is the current implementation of quicksort in Java standard library. Generally it claims that it is always at least as good as standard quicksort, and empirical testing seemed to support it. (Which is the reason it is the current implementation.) However, it seems that no STL implementation uses dual pivot quicksort for the quicksort phase of introsort, which made me wonder why. After more research I found this paper. It says that while dual pivot quicksort performs on average 5% less comparisons, it performs significantly more swaps. (Approximately 80% more) Obviously, since Java has only primitives and reference types, swapping is always cheap. (Even so, it uses this sort only for primitives, because it is not stable) It also seems that at least part of the advantage of dual pivot quicksort is in its improved cache behaviour (Because it divides into smaller subarray that can fit into cache faster). So I wanted to see whether someone already tested standard quicksort vs dual pivot quicksort when elements are expensive to swap and has the numbers (and possibly source) lying around, or whether I will have to test this myself."}
{"_id": "176749", "title": "Generating Deep Arrays: Shallow to Deep, Deep to Shallow or Bad idea?", "text": "I'm working on an array structure that will be used as the data source for a report template in a web app. The data comes from relatively complex SQL queries that return one or many rows as one dimensional associative arrays. In the case of many, they are turned into two dimensional indexed array. The data is complex and in some cases there is a lot of it. To save trips to the database (which are extremely expensive in this scenario) I'm attempting to get all of the basic arrays (1 and 2 dimension raw database data) and put them, conditionally, into a single, five level deep array. Organizing the data in PHP seems like a better idea than by using where statements in the SQL. ## Array Structure                   Array of years(                 year => array of types(                                 types => array of information(                                                     total => value,                                                     table => array of data(                                                                     index => db array                                                                         )                                                             )                                     )                     )      My first question is, is this a bad idea. Are arrays like this appropriate for this situation? If this would work, how should I go about populating it? My initial thought was shallow to deep, but the more I work on this, the more I realize that it'd be very difficult to abstract out the conditionals that determine where each item goes in the array. So it seems that starting from the most deeply nested data may be the approach I should take. If this is array abuse, what alternatives exist? ## Edit I went ahead with this approach, learning and changing things as I went. But I ended up with a similar end array. What I learned in regards to the shallow to deep conundrum was this. I went into the process thinking of the outer arrays as the largest of a set of cups, containing multitudes of smaller cups which in turn contained another multitude of smaller cup until the last set which in my mind was water (this being the indexed array of database values). Arrays are not cups... The idea fell apart when I started legitimately hand drawing out the array structures and found that the base of these arrays, the water filled tiny cups I had envisioned, represented a heck of a lot more data than those big cups. This lead me to see these deeply nested arrays as towers, with the indexed data representing a base of sorts, tapering up to the tip, which was the containing array. From there, I figured out that the best way for me to process the data was to gather the bottom data, plug it into it's next layer and then go up the tower plugging each layer into it's next layer. I'm not sure if I'm right, but I do feel like I understand arrays more now than I did before. And I'm definitely still not sure if this is the best solution."}
{"_id": "219373", "title": "Should testers be equivalent to programmers?", "text": "I've been reading Joel Spolsky's old article about \"Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Don't Have Testers\". it's an old article date back to 2000, but it's insightful as most of its content make sense after a decade. I cant agree more about the importance of test in order to produce qualify software. But there is one paragraph talking about what to deal with when top testers moved on and causing tester shortage, I really can't agree with Joel, although what he stated is still the case even today. In his analysis, I clearly felt a sense that Joel is saying \"testers are inferior to programmers\". A lot of people around me have this kind of prejudice. I don't know where does this come from, but I don't think this right. even myself is not willing to be a tester( but that's not because I think testers are inferior but rather testers are treated inferior ). but I don't think this is right. The way I think to prevent the out-flow of top testers is to treat them equivalently as top programmers, are they not qualified in terms of contributions to the project ? another important aspect is that we know testers have to work intimately with devs to better fulfill their job, in a culture where Managers inherently demeaning testers how would they fulfill their job ?"}
{"_id": "160577", "title": "How can uTorrent be multi-platform while keeping such a small binary size?", "text": "Nowdays it turned into a bloated client that works in Mac, Linux, and Windows, while still keeping the whole program in a single binary file that weighs only 876 kb, while competitors that use gui libraries weigh around 6 mb. Do they create a separate native gui for each platform instead of using a multiplatform gui library? What's the best approach to achieve such a thing?   Thanks."}
{"_id": "255138", "title": "Abstract Data Access by use of Reflection", "text": "I am thinking about creating a data access API on top of Spring JDBC. The API will be able to automatically create objects from resultset, given we follow naming conventions for fields in the sql. We have lots of entities like: Patient, Disease etc. What I am thinking about is:               Patient p = (Patient)bean.fetchObject(resultSet,Patient.class);      Disease d = (Disease)bean.fetchObject(resultSet,Disease.class);      where `fetchObject()` uses reflection to read property names of entities and it generates field names and then it assigns those values to those properties. The rule I am thinking about is:   1. Give each entity a unique prefix   2. Generate column names automatically from variable names   3. Follow strict naming conventions on all sql queries Is this a good way to go about things? What are the possible pitfalls? Are there similar solutions already out there? (We are not using Hibernate)"}
{"_id": "173516", "title": "How do I avoid GPL violations?", "text": "When I'm releasing a program, I like to license it under the GPL or LGPL. I also want to stay compliant with that license. I'm not good at reading legal documents, and the GPL3 is about 10 pages long. How do I avoid GPL violations in my code?"}
{"_id": "246850", "title": "How many mistakes does a good software developer make?", "text": "I am currently in a situation where a lot of people criticized me for making bugs (on my first local try - the first time I run the code for the first locally done test - , not on a committed repo though, management look at me very closely). The majority of my bugs are most often not algorithmic (they are more like mistaking one var for another, a forgotten line, a missed method call). The people criticizing me say I need to be able to make code without bugs. Correct on first try. I have been practicing to improve my coding skills. While practicing with the USA CO set, I saw a message: > YOUR PROGRAM ('xyz') WORKED FIRST TIME! That's fantastic -- and a rare > thing. Please accept these special automated congratulations.   * Doesn't it mean it's rare to have things right right away?   * Does it mean that the people demanding correctness right off the bat are unreasonable?   * Or is it because USA CO participants code the problems in 10-15 mins? so it's normal for them to make mistakes (also they are highschoolers, professional software developers have to be better than them)? For more info: I could finish at least half of the USA CO set is about 30-60. I am not sure if that means slow or bad coding or not. Some difficult ones require about 2 hrs for improved correctness. And now, what is the way to avoid making mistakes now? (Other than practice more and focus on a particular area) EDIT: This is mainly to ask so that I know what a typical good developer would exhibit in coding error, and coding speed. I want to evaluate my performance based on that of a good developer. Sorry about the feeling of resentment or displease that this question might convey. FINAL EDIT: I come to the conclusion that this is simply a way they use to teach me their work style which then makes everything seems reasonable. In addition, a good answer was that I should use random experimentation less when I learn new things. That really makes people feel uncomfortable. The traditional approach of reading the book should be employed more and would often have many additional benefits besides just acquiring new knowledge. Thanks"}
{"_id": "246857", "title": "Understanding JAVA generic keyword 'super'", "text": "Recently some people said that I was wrong when I explained why one cannot insert a `Number` object into a list declared as `List<? super RationalNumber>`. (This assumes that `RationalNumber` is a subclass of `Number`) My explanation was that in `List<? super RationalNumber>` the `<? super RationalNumber>` stands for an unknown super class of `RationalNumber`. This means that `<? super RationalNumber>` indicates that a valid object for `List<? super RationalNumber>` is an object that extends an unknown super class of `RationalNumber`. Since an unknown super class of `RationalNumber` is really unknown (e.g. it can be an interface `X` instead of `Number`), there is not guarantee that `Number` is a sub-class of `X` i.e. implements `X`, so `Number` is not a valid substitution of `<? super RationalNumber>`. What is wrong with this explanation? Edit: Note that I am asking for what wrong with the way I explain, my explanation. Not another explanation for the original question. Thanks."}
{"_id": "246859", "title": "Is serialization better done in instance methods or static methods", "text": "Say I have a class `workStockItem`, that I wish to serialize. Which is the better style?   1. using a static method  or   2. using a non-static method (maybe even implemented as a property as seen below) Example implementations:               internal static byte[] serialiaze(workStockItem toSer)         {             IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();             MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();             formatter.Serialize(stream, toSer);             return stream.ToArray();         }          internal byte[] binaryRepresentation         {             get             {                 IFormatter formatter = new BinaryFormatter();                 MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream();                 formatter.Serialize(stream, this);                 return stream.ToArray();             }         }      Again:   Which is better style and why?"}
{"_id": "123918", "title": "Where can I find a large dataset of tweets?", "text": "I'm trying some machine learning with Twitter, and I was wondering if there were any pre-collected just massive tweet data that anyone knew about before I went and just used the API (which has a request limit anyway)?"}
{"_id": "123919", "title": "Migration strategies for deprecating in-house scripting language", "text": "We have a scripting language that we use internally for many things. It began as a simple evaluation statements for dynamic labels to become a Turing complete language used pervasively throughout our system. Problem is that it was never designed for this and it shows. Development environment is anemic, scripts produced are not testable and still to this day there is not formal definition of the language. A growing sentiment among the language's users feel that it has done it's job and it's time to let go but we are faced with a difficult challenge to migrate existing codebase to whatever new solution would be devised. This very argument is used against the idea of migrating. Have you ever faced a similar situation ? and if so what strategies did you use to stop usage of the old and promote the new ? One last thing (thanks Morons) is that many of these scripts are not documented and their original purpose is lost though they are still in active use. The scripts are also used at customer sites to customize the system so we have literally thousands of these scripts a large portion of which is not under source control or any versionning mechanism for that matter. * * * Accepted answer. Difficult choice this is. All answers were good and sound advice though I think the best lies somewhat of a hybrid of Moron's and Oliver's. I ended-up accepting Oliver's because it is the answer that stands the best chance of getting accepted higher up (ha! politics!). Packaging the old scripting environment in a callable statement that can be integrated in the new environment would provide a quick and easy upgrade path. Once done we can control better creation of new scripts by displaying warnings or disallowing all-together old scripts from being edited or created forcing to go with the new language. Thanks all for your input !"}
{"_id": "253357", "title": "Scrum: How inclusive is enough with your client?", "text": "I work in a very small team and we're about to begin implementing Scrum. As we're such a small team I'll have direct and frequent access to the clients. I'll be fulfilling multiple roles. I feel I understand the workings of Scrum itself but not how this affects aspects of communicating with clients. How do you convey to your clients deadlines or timeboxes with Scrum in mind? For instance, do you mention sprints or that every x weeks new deployable features will be available for demonstration? Do many of you include the clients at planning meetings?"}
{"_id": "253359", "title": "Should we only catch in exceptional circumstances?", "text": "Whether error handling by throwing exceptions is good or bad is contentious. Are exceptions as control flow considered a serious antipattern? If so, Why? The common line is that exceptions are for \"exceptional circumstances\". But what if a library author has decided to throw an exception? The library author cannot predict what might be an \"exceptional circumstance\" for us. Of course, if we cannot rule out an exception being thrown from a function that we must use as-is and permitting the exception to bubbling up to the top is unacceptable then we _must_ catch the exception. Often however, we can take preventative measures. With sufficient effort we might even be able to guarantee that the conditions under which the library function would throw an exception will never occur. The throw will still be there (it's not our choice) but we can eliminate the need for try and catch. An example is `std::map.at()`. (Pretend there's no `std::map.find()`.) What is the general wisdom? Is it in good taste to write code with the expectation that a library function will occasionally throw? Is client code obligated to minimize the use of exceptions? **Edit** To try and distinguish this more from past questions and be more concrete, suppose we have some library function that might throw a file not found exception. Some client code wants to use the library to access a file. The client code is being programmed with the expectation that the file sometimes will not exist, even under \"unexceptional circumstances\". The client code can be made able to check if the library function will throw an exception before being called but it's non-trivial to do so. Should client code pile additional error checking on top of the error checking within the library or should the client code use the library generated exception as control flow? In such a case adding error handling code on top of the library will almost certainly be less efficient than catching an error, will require less coding, and it could be argued that you _must_ have a try/catch anyway. On the other hand it is a decidedly unexceptional control flow mechanism."}
{"_id": "164447", "title": "Is there any Common Name for Edit,Save,Delete,Select", "text": "Can anyone suggest me a Common Name for Edit,Save,Delete,Select I want to create a Interface in C#, which will support all these methods. My Context is : I am developing an Invoice Application in which i need a Product to be Created,Deleted,Updated,Selected"}
{"_id": "170964", "title": "Are there any additional considerations to make when designing a site structure if you plan to use persistent connection technologies?", "text": "As the title states, I'm thinking of making a simple-card-game based website, using persistent connection technology (Something like signalR) for the actual game part of it. I've never planned a site to use this technology, and wondering for those who have, are there any additional things that need to be taken into consideration for the site structure? I'm planning on using the asp MVC framework for the whole thing, and starting off with some simple game (e.g. card based Rock/Paper/Scissors) for proof of concept (to see if I can get it working how I think it would in my head)."}
{"_id": "164444", "title": "What to learn after standard C++?", "text": "I switched to C++ a few months ago, learning its syntax, the main features of the STL and what you can usually find in a \"learn C++\" manual. Now I would like to go further. What would be your recommendations? I would like to know what to learn next (not only about the language, but also debugging, frameworks etc. etc.) I know probably the answer depends on the specific needs of each user, so here is a list of mine:   * Cross Platform development   * Developing GUI for my programs   * Develop extendible software, allowing the use of plugins   * Use of scientific libraries   * Interact with databases (mainly MySQL)   * Having server/client functionalities (I'd like users of my programs to interact through internet.. as you might have guessed I am not a programmer by training so I might have used the wrong terms.. if so I apologize for that). Of course I know it takes time, but I would like to have a good list of references and resources to start (both books and websites are ok). Thanks a lot for your help!"}
{"_id": "255688", "title": "Which layer should my JBehave acceptance test target in a DDD application?", "text": "Given a DDD application with a hexagonal architecture, which layer should my JBehave acceptance tests target? I want to write Features and scenarios as specifications for the overall system behavior as we are introducing **ATDD** as our development process. In my application I have these layers:   * Presentation layer   * Web services layer   * Application services layer   * Domain layer   * Infrastructure layer"}
{"_id": "84332", "title": "How to deal with the developers refusing to use certain technologies or tools?", "text": "How to deal with the developers refusing to use certain technologies or tools? **Note:** Good help is hard to find, so answer 'Let them go' doesn't work in this case. Besides, they are very good in what they do, just don't want to do what they don't want to do. Examples: \"Get away from me with this Crystal Reports stuff or you will never see me again.\" \"I am not using SSIS for anything.\" \"You can integrate sytem with MAS 500 yourself, I won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.\" **General Comment:** \"Ask developers to provide a better solution\" is not always an option as the technology / tool maybe given to us by the customer.   * Customer has people familiar with CR to tweak reports after they are delivered   * Customer already has Microsoft SQL server and don't want to invest in any other ETL   * Customer uses MAS 500 and doesn't want to switch to the other accounting package"}
{"_id": "164441", "title": "Have I mistakenly assumed that my routines are loosely coupled?", "text": "My Selenium test structures goes as - Data Object class -               public class RegistrationData {            String firstName = \"test first name\";       String lastName = \"test last name\";            // Getter Setter Here      }      Page Object class which carries out operations on a Web Page -               public class RegistrationPage {        private RegistrationData regData;             public void setRegistrationData(RegistrationData regData) {        this.regData = regData();                 public NewAccountPage fillRegForm() {          enterFirstName(\"FirstNameTextBoxLocator\", regData.getFirstName);          enterLastName(\"LastNameTextBoxLocator\", regData.getLastName);          // Some more fields are filled here          return NewAccountPage();        }     }      And test class uses them as -               public class TestRegistration extends SelTestCase {             @Test        public void testRegNewUser() {          RegistrationData regData = new RegistrationData();          RegistrationPage regPage = New RegistrationPage();          regPage.setRegistrationData(regData)          regPage.fillRegForm();          // Some assertion here        }     }      Now since fillRegForm method does not take any argument, Can I assume that it is an example of loose coupling despite I need to set RegistrationData in RegistrationPage before being able to use fillRegForm method."}
{"_id": "255684", "title": "Providing friendly URLs for a website vs. realities of database IDs", "text": "We have a database of resources, be they products, blog posts or something. We need to design a URL scheme to address them, for the public website. Here are two examples that are database ID bound:   * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPS6llqhXw   * http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000NHOMSQ Here's an example that's friendly:   * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_circuit (A little glimpse into my browsing life there) I like the friendly URLs since you have an idea about what's on the end of the URL when you hover or see it in an email or document. It's better for SEO, or it used to be. What happens when the document or product is renamed? Either because it changed (Wiki may not change but our resources could) or due to a typo, right? Our resources are very technical, long words and error prone. Also, we have a database ID, which is a number. Let's look at an idea for an address of a video using a pretend rental store:   * http://vidsyeah.com/video/sliding-doors/287171 The ID is obvious and is used in the DB look-up. Fine. The sliding-doors bit is non-unique and just generated from the video title, it could be verified on GET, so if gliding-doors was entered and doesn't match what's really in doc 287171 it responds 404. Or maybe it could be ignored, allowing humans to stick whatever they like in there, if someone ever cared to. So this URL would also work:   * http://vidsyeah.com/video/anything-at_all/287171 The issue with verifying the friendly part is, as mentioned, the problem of renaming or typo correction. If the name changed, and in our domain that does happen, we don't want to break the URLs that are out there, so should we:   * Just not verify the friendly part.   * Verify, but add a 'history' of friendly parts to the database record so any previous friendly IDs still work! Your thoughts and ideas are welcome. Luke"}
{"_id": "255685", "title": "Handling and managing error codes", "text": "I'm looking for examples of creating, handling and managing error numbers/codes. To understand what I'm takling about, let's take example scenario: (EU - end user, IT - it helpdesk)               EU: - (calls IT) something's wrong     IT: - what happened?     EU: - it says \"cannot create xyz\"     IT: - what have you done?     EU: - ummm....     (conversation continues for another gazillion years)      ... and exception that produces message `cannot create xyz` is being thrown in dozen places in whole system, so IT guy doesn't know where to look for. Another approach (which I really like and would like to use) is for example: ![example error message](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DnTp6.jpg) Now, when EU calls IT, whole conversation looks like this:               EU: - I have error 1004     IT: - ok, thanks, we'll take a look      Having error code, IT guy instantly knows where to look for error. He doesn't need to ask EU to provide loads of misleading details, he just can sit down and work or if he knows why, explain that this is intentional error because EU did something wrong. Sounds like flowers and donuts, doesn't it? But what are best practices to achieve this behaviour? Let's assume that this is Java and we're building app from scratch. What I know so far is that I cannot get error codes from database, because if Exception is being thrown, I cannot rely on external sources. This leads to problems with teamwork. Let's say that John, Paul and Adam assumed that they will use error codes while writing their app, and they will generate errors incrementaly. I see possible collision, when John wants to mark exception message in code using number `#256`, but Paul doesn't know about that and creates his own exception, also with `#256` related it, and uses this exception in few dozens of places in app. At the end of the day noone knows what error `#256` really means. So maybe there's another approach - use small but handy one-table web app that will handle generating error numbers, so John, Paul and Adam just can click \"generate\" when they want new unique error number? Above elaborate also leads to another question - what are best practices to set error codes? In exceptions themself, like this:               public class FooException extends Exception {       public FooException() { super(); }       public FooException(String message) { super(\"Error #256 - xyz is forbidden\"); }       public FooException(String message, Throwable cause) { super(\"Error #256 - xyz is forbidden\", cause); }       public FooException(Throwable cause) { super(cause); }     }      or:               try{         (some stuff)     } catch (FooException ex){         System.out.println(\"Error #256 - you cannot do xyz in here\");     }      I suspect second option is better, because it indicates unique, specific place in code in whole project, but this looks harder to manage. Any thoughts? Any practices? Advices? Thanks."}
{"_id": "127315", "title": "Telerik ASP.NET MVC components licensing", "text": "There's thread on stackoverflow about this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5524046/is-telerik-extensions-for-asp-net- mvc-free It says that it is ok for internal site, but I think it is still not clear (also in faq notice about internal site usage is gone I think). They say, as long as website is internal, you should be ok with open source license, but 1) Can I use it for site, that has closed community, I mean only logged in people will use telerik components? 2) Can I use only for site's administration part, that means that only internal staff will access it? UPDATE: It looks like same question (same license type) - Using GPL libraries without modification on a commercial website, do I need to make my source code available?, but answers are completely different? UPDATE2: I don't wish to in any way distribute site's code."}
{"_id": "170969", "title": "Assembly Language being used in Aircraft System", "text": "Today my lecturer mentioned the reason why the aircraft system is programmed in assembly language is due to the program being written have less error . Is this statement true ? Because when he asked about our opinion I said assembly can create faster program thus it is a good language for real-time oriented aircraft system program . I search around google but can't seem to find an article clarifying my lecturer's statement ."}
{"_id": "255683", "title": "What is the advantage of using Direct Web Remoting over a REST web services design?", "text": "I have an enterprise Java web application deployed in tomcat. I am looking for ways to integrate a HTML & JS UI with the mid tier java code. So far, looking around I have found that there are two ways good ways to do this which fit my requirements : 1) DWR - Direct web remoting 2) Use REST web services. I am not sure which approach to use. Edit: What is the advantage of using DWR over a rest WS design? Edit 2: I will most likely be using dojo for the UI development(Works well with REST/DWR??), and I want to keep the java code chages minimal. I understand that by using web services, I would have to write an additional WS client layer on top of the existing java code. Also, the usual enterprise needs, performance, scalability, etc."}
{"_id": "204431", "title": "What class of problem is this, and what math do I need to know to solve it?", "text": "Mushroom cultivation requires fairly precise chemical composition of substrate (a.k.a. growing medium). Let's pretend we're growing shitakes and that this is the required composition of their substrate:               Nitrogen | Benzene | Toluene | Dioxygen Diflouride     5%       | 5%      | 10%     | 80%      We want to create an appropriate substrate from materials we have on hand which we know the chemical composition of.               Material | Nitrogen | Benzene | Toluene | Dioxygen Diflouride     apples   | 5%       | 0%      | 5%      | 90%     oranges  | 20%      | 20%     | 50%     | 10%     Etc...      How does one calculate this? It reminds me of solving matrices in high school. Is this something that can be done with matrices? What is this problem called? What do I need to know to solve it?"}
{"_id": "204430", "title": "How to write unit tests for utility programs", "text": "I am working on a C# console application that loads the data from a third party and bulk inserts into tables. Basically the code consists of a static method with logging statements. In these scenarios, how does one write the unit test cases? Example code               void Main(string[] args)     {         // for loop here to read config from XML file              // initialize third party library         ReportLib objLib = new ReportLib();                   DataTable dt = objLib.Refresh(\"test\");              //call SQL bulk copy         DBHelper.BulkCopy(dt, dictmappings, destTblName);//dbhelper is static class          }"}
{"_id": "203425", "title": "Is the \u201cjQuery programming style\u201d a kind of Reactive programming?", "text": "jQuery is a Javascript library and framework, but when we are programming with jQuery into DOM problems/solutions, we can practice a style quite different of programming... We can read about jQuery at Wikipedia, _The set of jQuery core features \u2014 DOM element selections, traversal and manipulation \u2014, enabled by its selector engine (...), created a new \"programming style\", **fusing** algorithms and DOM-data-structures_ This question is similar to the \"subquestion-3\" of this question but not so generic. The focus here is about this new kind of \"programming style\"... So, the question: **Is the \"jQuery programming style in DOM context\" a new paradign?** Or it is more one example of **reactive programming** (not \"cell-oriented\" but \" _DOM- node oriented_ \") or another one? * * * We have no \"standard taxonomy of paradigms\", so, please, in your answer, indicate also your \"best choice for Wikipedia Paradign\". Example: if you understand that \"jQuery programming DOM\" is like \"awk filtering data\", your choice can be event-driven."}
{"_id": "138548", "title": "How long can I store the subscribe personal information?", "text": "In my subscription form I want to use a double opt-in method:   * First, the visitor subscribes   * Then a confirmation email is dispatched. If he replies...   * Then I add him to the system.  In the case where the user does not reply, how long can I store their email address? Are there any legal requirements with regard to that? I am from U.S. and I am also interested in the policy in European countries."}
{"_id": "105352", "title": "Why should I use an MVC pattern?", "text": "It seems everyone doing web applications nowadays wants to use MVC for everything. I find it hard to convince myself to use this pattern, however. I understand the general idea is to separate the backend logic from the frontend that represents the program. Generally, it seems that the views always depend on the controller to some extent, which ends up depending on the model. I don't see what advantage adding the controller gets me. I've read a lot of hype about \"this is the way applications should be designed\", but maybe I still don't understand what is supposed to go where. Whenever I talk to others about MVC it seems everyone has a different idea of what belongs in what category. So, why should I use MVC? What do I gain by using MVC over just separating the frontend from the backend logic? (Most \"advantages\" I see of this pattern are gained just by separating interface from implementation, and fail to explain the purpose of having a separate \"controller\")"}
{"_id": "202775", "title": "How to minimize the usage of static variables and objects", "text": "I'm trying to implement this JavaFX code where I want to call remote Java class and pass boolean flag:               final CheckMenuItem toolbarSubMenuNavigation = new CheckMenuItem(\"Navigation\");         toolbarSubMenuNavigation.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>()         {             @Override             public void handle(ActionEvent e)             {                      //DataTabs.renderTab = toolbarSubMenuNavigation.isSelected();                 DataTabs.setRenderTab(toolbarSubMenuNavigation.isSelected());                 // call here the getter setter and send boolean flag                 System.out.println(\"subsystem1 #1 Enabled!\");             }         });      Java class which I want to call:               public class DataTabs     {             private static boolean renderTab; // make members *private*         private static TabPane tabPane;              public static boolean isRenderTab()         {             return DataTabs.renderTab;         }              public static void setRenderTab(boolean renderTab)         {             DataTabs.renderTab = renderTab;             tabPane.setVisible(renderTab);         }              // somewhere below         // set visible the tab pane         TabPane tabPane = DataTabs.tabPane = new TabPane();         tabPane.setVisible(renderTab);     }      This implementation works but I want to optimize it to use less static variables and objects. Can you tell me which sections of the code how can be optimized?"}
{"_id": "221343", "title": "Why do programming languages encompass so much?", "text": "Programming languages are not just language. Each one tends to have:   * Its own IDEs,   * Its own package managers,   * Its own set of libraries,   * Its own build tools,   * Its own data formats. If you are writing Java syntax, you will be using Maven packages; if you are writing Haskell syntax, you will be using Cabal packages. What's the connection? Why does each programming language create its own world?"}
{"_id": "133577", "title": "Javascript client - which is likely to be better serverside? WCF or MVC3 controller with restful messages?", "text": "I'm looking to write a server side service, which will be accessed from a Javascript/HTML5 client. The client will likely be sending a bunch of restful messages over HTTPS. All other things being equal, which is better designed to support this kind of scheme on the serverside - WCF or MVC3 (ie., a controller with only restful messages, no real view or model)?"}
{"_id": "179537", "title": "Should I write HTML or CSS first?", "text": "There are a lot of analogies for HTML/CSS development; which can be a bit confuse for a beginner.                  HTML = foundations/house        CSS = walls/blueprint/wallpaper      Is there any best practice here? Which one should we write first?"}
{"_id": "153111", "title": "Centrally managing 100+ websites without bankrupting a small company", "text": "I'm mainly interested in opinions on the trade-offs between having a **single central server** all the websites connect to as opposed to each website mirroring a subset of the master database with all the products in it. For example, will I run into severe performance issues (or even security issues, or restrictions) making queries to an offsite database? Will we hit scalability issues we can't handle early on from the sheer bandwidth required to maintain this? If we do go with something like a script that keeps smaller databases (each containing a subset of the central master data) in sync, what sorts of issues will we likely encounter there? I would really like the opinions of people far more knowledgeable than I am regarding the pros and cons of both setups and what headaches we are likely to encounter. **CLARIFICATION** : This should not be viewed as a question about whether we should implement one database vs multiple databases. This question has been answered numerous times. The question is regarding the pros and cons for a deployment like this having the ability to manage all the websites centrally (one **server** ) vs trying to keep them all in sync if they each have their own db (multiple servers). **REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE** : We are a t-shirt company, and we have individual websites for our different kinds of t-shirts, but we're looking at a central order management integrated with our single shopping cart (which is ColdFusion + MySQL). Now, let's say we have a t-shirt that's on 10 of our websites and we change an image for it. Ideally we would change that in one place and the change would propagate, but how would we set this up?"}
{"_id": "236974", "title": "Search results that display in the form of \"1 - 20 of about 65\" - why the \"about\"?", "text": "I've noticed that Google and large search engines do not display \"proper\" paging, but display an approximation. For example, I tried to give a specific search on Google to return few results, as per below:               eating +ants in malta near the sea      This returned \"About 71 results\". However, it only showed 2 pages in the pages at the bottom. Considering 1 page contains 10 entries, the maximum this can actually be is somewhere in the range of 11 - 20. Then, I clicked on page 2, and this time the total results changed to `Page 2 of 16 results`. Just curious, any ideas why is this done? I am assuming for performance reasons, however since it did manage to get the page count right, why was the 'About 71' so off, from the actual 16 to 71, which is a huge discrepancy?"}
{"_id": "236976", "title": "Best practice for configuration files in a website", "text": "I am creating something similar to a _Content Management System_ , that can be downloaded and used by everyone that needs it. I've been working in web- development for a couple of years (mainly as a hobby, i.e. creating personal homepages for acquaintances), but have never had the need of a user to enter his own configurations (let it be database connection, meta-data about his site, desired behaviour of the website). Therefore I have no experience with custom configuration file handling. That's where my question lies: What is the best practice to handle custom website- wide configuration files and handle them in PHP? I have thought of creating INI-files, that can be customized from within the admin panel and that are hidden to the user by .htaccess for security purposes. However I don't know if INI is the best method to do this considering that the page is being developed to be extensible through plugins (which may lead to another question soon). So what is my best bet to handle configurability? For instance do I want to store database configuration in files somehow and have other configurations outsourced to the database itself? Or do I store everything in INI-files (also considering configurability for plugins: Should everyone of these have their own config-file)?"}
{"_id": "236978", "title": "What's best for a client library: userland code or schema files?", "text": "I'm building a client library that consumes a collection of OpenStack API services. I know that as time goes on more services will be added - so I want to come up with a clean and neat way of structuring my client library to minimize development time (for future new services) and avoid duplication. So far, I've thought of two solutions:   1. **Implement userland code from scratch.** Each service uses an underlying HTTP client, and for every API operation there is a concrete method in a concrete class that encapsulates logic. This is your standard application where everything exists in concrete code. Advantages are that it is straightforward and obvious for new contributors; disadvantages is that writing code is slow and there is a risk of duplicating boilerplate code.    2. **Implement some kind of service description layer** \\- similar to WADLs but lighter and written in JSON. Each description document would act similar to Google's Discovery API where the API's resources are defined using JSON Schemas; HTTP operations are defined with all their parameters, URIs, verb types, expected status codes, etc.; authentication is also defined. Advantages are that it takes less time to write, it avoids duplication, and it forms an explicit contract which is useful for end-user documentation. Disadvantages are that it's quite meta-like and difficult to understand for newcomers. There are a number of popular client libraries that use this kind of schema pattern, but I'm trying to weigh up its positives and negatives. I'm leaning towards using schemas because I think they'll save time developing and avoid duplication. OpenStack APIs seem to be also moving towards json-schema. Are there any strong reasons why relying on schemas is a bad idea for a client library, and/or why userland code is a better approach?"}
{"_id": "223271", "title": "What are some good ways to monitor team mood?", "text": "My software development team at work has various communication issues that resulted in management having the perception that the systems they have in place are working well... when they are not. While fixing the lack of communication is also something I dream of doing, I am asking specifically about both technical and social aspects of monitoring the mood of the team on various issues. The team is composed of roughly 4 groups of 5 developers at sites around the world. Each site is primarily working on separate projects that are built on some common embedded hardware and low-level libraries. There is certainly opportunity for more shared higher level libraries but they do not exist as such at present. I envision raising a topic and requesting that each team member anonymously provide feedback on two axes: how much does this affect you and how positively or negatively. This should help figure out which areas we are succeeding at and which are having a significantly negative impact. Hopefully developers could respond in less than 30 seconds. Am I heading in the right direction to figure out what the team should spend more time improving?"}
{"_id": "198285", "title": "Is there a tool that will list all dependencies of a method in Java?", "text": "Say I'm looking at some code and I see:               MessageDigestPasswordEncoder encoder = new MessageDigestPasswordEncoder(\"SHA-512\");      Now, in that file I also see:               import org.springframework.security.authentication.encoding.MessageDigestPasswordEncoder;      OK, pretty good guess that `Spring Security` is needed. But I guess, technically, `MessageDigestPasswordEncoder` could come from many different places. But, assuming I know it's Spring, then that should help. But here's what I'm after. I have many programs written by other people and sometimes, I just need to extract a small piece. For example, I needed to figure out how `CAS` was hashing passwords for an ETL job I'm working on. So I went to that very large project and just copied all of the jars over. Coded up what I needed and everything worked. However, I now have this very simple project with 60 jars in it. And I know not all are needed. So my question is, how can I \"reverse engineer\" this larger application and find out the minimum dependencies needed for that `MessageDigestPasswordEncoder` above? That's a crude example but you get the idea. I could start pulling jars out until something breaks but that would take forever. What I'd like to do is (even in the console) type `list_dependencies MessageDigestPasswordEncoder` and have a nice tree drawn. This sounds like a job for Maven but I'm not very experienced with Maven (I come from a .NET/Ruby world). Thanks."}
{"_id": "246277", "title": "Good or bad practice to mask Java collections with meaningful class names?", "text": "Lately I've been in the habit of \"masking\" Java collections with human- friendly class names. Some simple examples:               // Facade class that makes code more readable and understandable.     public class WidgetCache extends Map<String, Widget> {     }      Or:               // If you saw a ArrayList<ArrayList<?>> being passed around in the code, would you     // run away screaming, or would you actually understand what it is and what     // it represents?     public class Changelist extends ArrayList<ArrayList<SomePOJO>> {     }      A colleague pointed out to me that this is bad practice, and introduces lag/latency, as well as being an OO anti-pattern. I can understand it introducing a very _tiny_ degree of performance overhead, but can't imagine it's at all significant. So I ask: is this good or bad to do, and why?"}
{"_id": "197713", "title": "Are Compiler Directives an Antipattern?", "text": "I'm working on a legacy system that has a helper class that is symbolically linked into many different .Net projects within a solution. The logic is riddled with compiler directives that change it's internal behavior based on which .Net project it happens to be compiled in. For instance, there's a compiler directive that interogates a \"HAS_UI\" variable and if true, compiles in a frmProgress instances and displays progress to the user. I'm trying to explain to colleagues why this is a poor design by referencing specific anti-patterns. All I can come up with so far are \"positive\" patterns that should have been used, like the Single Responsibility Pattern or the Observer pattern. Can anyone suggest specific anti-patterns that might apply here? Thx"}
{"_id": "153115", "title": "The cost of longer delay between development and QA", "text": "At my current position, QA has become a bottleneck. We have had the unfortunate occurence of features being held out of the current build so that QA could finish testing. This means features that are done being developed may not get tested for 2-3 weeks after the developer has already moved on. With dev moving faster thean QA, this time gap is only going to get bigger. I keep flipping through my copy of Code Complete, looking for a \"Hard Data\" snippet that shows the cost of fixing defects grows exponentially the longer it exists. Can someone point me to some studies that back up this concept? I am trying to convince the powers that be that the QA bottleneck is a lot more costly than they think."}
{"_id": "246273", "title": "Code re-use in C++, via multiple inheritance or composition? Or...?", "text": "I originally asked this question on StackOverflow, but I was directed here, and I think my problem is perhaps as much conceptual as technical, so here goes. If you\u2019re defining a hierarchy of abstract class in C++, and then creating concrete subclasses with implementations, you could end up with abstract classes something like this, say:                 A      / \\     B1 B2      So the concrete classes then inherit like so:               B1   B2        B1   B2      |    |         |    |     C1   C2        D1   D2      And this is all fine and dandy when `Cn` and `Dn` are just implementing the interfaces of `Bn`, or where say `C1` and `C2` implement the `A` interface _differently_. However, if I want to have some _shared_ functionality in `C1` and `C2`, which comes from the `A` interface, where do I put it? It can\u2019t go in `A`, both because `A` is abstract and because `Dn` should _not_ be inheriting it. It seems like there\u2019s a notional `A_for_C` implementation, but does this belong in another ancestor class? Or in a composed sibling class?                  _____A_____                       _____A_____       /     |     \\                     /     |     \\     B1   A_for_C  B2        vs        B1     B2     A_for_C      |_____/ \\____ |                   |      |     C1            C2                  C1     C2                                         (C1 and C2 then each have an A_for_C and delegate)      The first one seems conceptually accurate, but requires `virtual` inheritance, while the second requires delegation. So both impose a performance hit despite there not being any real ambiguity. Reading around the web, on this website I find it said > Some people believe that the purpose of inheritance is code reuse. In C++, > this is wrong. Stated plainly, \u201cinheritance is not for code reuse.\u201d How then should the implementation be shared? **Further thoughts** I found some relevant discussion in these questions:   * Where does this concept of \"favor composition over inheritance\" come from?   * Interface and Inheritance: Best of both worlds?   * Is there any \"real\" reason multiple inheritance is hated? I think utnapistim\u2019s answer below is much pithier and to the point than these, and helped me mentally cut through a lot of what these other questions/answers discuss. Inheritance is about agreeing to fulfil a contract. Multiple inheritance is fine if the subclass really does guarantee fulfilling the parent contracts. Implementation, however, is only really the concern of the final object. Yes, it might be convenient to inherit the implementation sometimes, but that\u2019s actually orthogonal to the interface, and there are various techniques for pulling in an implementation other than the default v-table-based approach, including:   * CRTP as per unaptism\u2019s answer   * The template method pattern (Which are, I think, equivalent except that one is compile-time and one is run-time.)"}
{"_id": "183799", "title": "Is it ok to use static (compile-time) assertions in unit tests?", "text": "Or more generally: to trigger compiler errors in test projects if something that can be checked at compile time is wrong?"}
{"_id": "211895", "title": "Is it appropriate for interviewers to ask candidates for their Stack Exchange user name?", "text": "Would you consider it appropriate if you were asked for your Stack Exchange username in a software job interview (or as a pre-interview screening question)? To me, it seems like a very reasonable request, and one that would be extremely informative -- I'm sure I could learn more about a candidate in five minutes by looking at the questions and answers they have posted on Stack Exchange than by a 30 minute interview. But would such a question be bad form? Is it \"too personal\"? (Likewise for GitHub, or other public/online code sharing forums.)"}
{"_id": "124242", "title": "Are JavaScript MVC Frameworks only for 'single-page' apps?", "text": "I've been looking into several of the JavaScript MVC Frameworks (Backbone.js, Spine, SproutCore,etc.) and it seems to me that all of these are designed to act as 'single-page' applications. All of the examples I see have an index page that act as a front controller, and use `#` or `#!` style URLs for different pages, and handle the entire rendering of the page. I have several projects where I would like to use a more 'traditional' style of URLs, and having more structured JavaScript to handle some of the more complicated parts of the application. are JS MVC frameworks the answer here, or should I be looking for something different?"}
{"_id": "252483", "title": "Git Submodule for untracked folder?", "text": "I have a git repository with a folder in it. The folder is listed in my .gitignore file. I cloned another repository into that ignored folder from github. I may want to work inside of the new repository but I don't see any reason for it to be a part of the original repository. Perhaps I should just keep it outside of the original repository but it seems (to me anyway) like a reasonable place for it thematically (its in a place where I would know to look for it). I guess I'm having a hard time getting my head around the concept of a submodule. My specific question is \"Should I use a submodule in this situation, even when the folder is ignored?\" I noticed that \"git status\" gives me status of my original repository even though I issue the command inside of the ignored folder"}
{"_id": "70476", "title": "Should you solve programming puzzles as a routine?", "text": "At the moment, the only times I try solving programming puzzles are:   * When I'm bored   * When I happened to find an interesting puzzle, while not actually searching for such (e.g. someone asked about such a thing at SO) I would probably get better effects (become better at them) if I solved them routinely. Do you solve puzzles routinely (e.g. one problem at Project Euler or somewhere else per day) and/or would you recommend others to do so? What is your \"programming puzzle solving routine\"?"}
{"_id": "252487", "title": "Security in Transversal Layer in Domain Driven Design", "text": "I'm building a solution based on Domain Driven Design, I'm trying to implement the security system (authentication, authorization, roles, system configuration, connection strings, etc..) in a transversal layer (cross cutting concerns like Caching, Security, Logging, etc). The tiers of my application are two projects (ContractsTransversal and Transversal), where the ContractsTransversal project only exposes the services of transversal layer using interfaces (ICaching, ILogging, ISecurity,etc..) but the implementation of those interfaces are in the Transversal project. The design is based on the book \"Guia de arquitectura de Ncapas orienta al dominio\" by Microsoft, that suggests the implementation of transversal layer across IoC (Dependency Injection) and its relation with all parts of the system are decoupled. I'm doing this, I created my container to implement IoC. I have other projects which have only my business entities like UsersEntity, ProductEntity, etc. Is it correct to have a references of my business entities project to my Transaversal and ContractsTransversal project? I ask because in security project I need to know information about the user, roles, permissions, etc.. or what's the best practice to implement security in a domain driven design model?"}
{"_id": "252484", "title": "How to make sure media are used only on authorised sites?", "text": "I have a video library that I need to publish for my clients. The clients need to be able to embed a player to their sites and play the videos. I need to restrict access to my clients only so that noone else could put videos on their sites or access them programmatically. I have no idea how to accomplish this. Would appreciate any help or guidance. EDIT: I am tying to figure out how to make sure that my videos are used only on the sites of my clients, and not on any unauthorized sites. Say, myclient.com wants to have a video on their site for all their visitors. How to accomplish this? This is my understanding so far:   1. when the client's site is visited, and the page containing the video is requested, the client's server authenticates against my API that serves videos (is a full scale oauth2 provider adequate here?)   2. after that, the client's server obtains a one time token for the specific video, which in addition to being one time, has a very short TTL   3. the client server renders this token as part of the page (or a javascript).   4. then the javascript will use the token to start the video after which the token becomes expired. note that the part of the API that starts streaming videos is not protected by oauth2 mechanism, and only is protected by these one time tokens. would this work? any other ways to do this? EDIT 2: I am not asking how to prevent the end user from saving the video on the local machine. I am asking whether it is feasible to prevent a web site that is not authorized from embedding the videos on their pages, and to make sure that only the sites that are allowed to do so, can do it."}
{"_id": "175210", "title": "ASP.NET MVVM Handling multiple Data Transfer Objects on a single page", "text": "I have an asp.net mvc \"edit\" page which allows the user to make edits to the parent entity, and then also \"create\" child entities on the same page. Note: I'm making these data transfer objects up.               public class CustomerViewModel     {         public int Id { get; set; }         public Byte[] Timestamp { get; set; }         public string CustomerName { get; set; }         public etc..         public CustomerOrderCreateViewModel CustomerOrderCreateViewModel { get; set; }     }      In my view I have two html form's. One for Customer \"edit\" Http Posts, and the other for CustomerOrder \"create\" Http Posts. In the view page, I load the CustomerOrder \"create\" form in using:               <div id=\"CustomerOrderCreate\">         @Html.Partial(\"Vendor/_CustomerOrderCreatePartial\", Model.CustomerOrderCreateViewModel)     </div>      The CustomerOrder html form action posts to a different controller HttpPost ActionResult than the Customer \"edit\" Action Result. My concern is this, on the CustomerOrder controller, in the HttpPost ActionResult               [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Create(CustomerOrderCreateViewModel vm)     {         if (!ModelState.IsValid)         {             return [What Do I Return Here]         }         ...[Persist to database code]...     }      I don't know what to return if the model state isn't valid. Right now it's not a problem, because jquery unobtrusive validation handles validation on the client. But what if I need more complex validation (ie: the server needs to handle the validation)."}
{"_id": "179772", "title": "standards for technical specificaton on software+hardware system", "text": "Are there any documented standards for technical specifications within the IT industry? In theory, such a standard would be   * successfully used in practice   * deals with both software and hardware parts (we develop software and electronics)   * should be rather modern We want to stick to one standard and use it in our projects."}
{"_id": "237005", "title": "Multiple models or a single model with multiple custom data types?", "text": "I am writting a small webapp for learning. Is it better / best practice to create multiple models or one model with multiple custom data types? For example: Let's say the web app is \"PublicLibrary.\" The library would have shelves. Shelves would have books and locations. Books would have titles, authors, text and a dewey decimal number. Would it be better to have a Book model, a shelf model (couldn't come up with a better example for this), and a Library model; or a book class, a shelf class, and a Library model that holds those classes. I understand that a model _is_ a class, but hopefully my question makes sense."}
{"_id": "250806", "title": "secure offline PC storage accessible through javascript", "text": "I'm attempting to build a browser-based HTML5 application that has the ability to store data locally on a PC (not mobile device) when offline. This data is sensitive and must be secure. Of course the trick is trying to find a way to be able to access the secure data with Javascript. I've ruled out browser local storage since its not secure. Could this be accomplished with a local database? If so, where could the DB credentials be stored? Javascript obviously doesn't seem like a good option to store them since its user-readable."}
{"_id": "108812", "title": "What's the difference between CRM, CMS and ERP", "text": "I know that CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, CMS stands for Content Management System and ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planner. I would like to know what each of things does best and which scenarios they are used in. So basic understanding of the three with differences among them and the environments in which they are used. **Edit:** I read up on the Wiki a bit more and now I understand according to the ERP wiki that a CRM is a part of the ERP. My question to be more specific is:   * Why have a CRM separately if it's already a part of the ERP? Abstraction?    * To log and store the information of a call-center that calls a hundred odd people to get info, which is more better to achieve the following tasks, a CRM or an ERP? :     * Store all the information about all the people that we have been called      * Store information about which person called and how many hours a person has worked?     * Find out which employee has been more productive? My friend strongly believes a CRM will get the job done. So thought I'd ask you guys which would be better and why does it make it better."}
{"_id": "243116", "title": "Interconnect nodes in a Java distributed infrastructure for tweet processing", "text": "I'm working in a new version of an old project that I used to download and process user statuses from Twitter. The main problem of that project was its infrastructure. I used multiple instances of a java application (trackers) to download from Twitter given an specific task (basically terms to search for), connected with a central node (a web application) that had to process all tweets once per day and generate a new task for each trackers once each 15 minutes. The central node also had to monitor all trackers and enable/disable them under user petition. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xINey.png) This, as I said, was too slow because I had multiple bottlenecks, so in this new version I want to improve the infrastructure and isolate all functionalities in specific nodes. I also need a good notification system to receive notifications for any node. So, in the next diagram I show the components that I'll need in this new version: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dXCZe.png) As you can see, there are more nodes. Here are some notes about them:   * **Dashboard:** Controls trackers statuses and send a single task to each of them (under user request). The trackers will use this task until replaced with a new one (if done, not each 15 minutes like before).   * **Search engine:** I need to store all the tweets. They are firstly stored in a local database for each tracker but after that I'm thinking on using something like Elasticsearch to be able to do fast searches.   * **Tweet processor:** Just and isolated component with its own database (maybe something like the search engine to have fast access to info generated by the module). In the future more could be added.   * **Application UI:** A web application with a shared database with the Dashboard (mainly to store users information and preferences). Indeed, both could be merged into a single web. The main difference with the previous version of the project is that now they will be isolated and they will only show information and send requests. I will not do any heavy task in them (like process tweets as I did before). So, having this components, my main headache is **how to structure all** to not have to rewrite a lot of code every time I need to access any new data. Another headache is **how** can I **interconnect nodes**. I could use sockets but that is a pain in the ass. Maybe a REST layer? And finally, if all the nodes are isolated, how could I **generate notifications** for each user which info is only in the database used by the Application UI? I'm programming this using Java and Spring (at least I used them in the last version) but I have no problems with changing the language if I can take advantage of a tool/library/engine to make my life easier and have a better platform. Any comment will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "178421", "title": "On Developing Web Services with Global State", "text": "I'm new to web programming. I'm more experienced and comfortable with client- side code. Recently, I've been dabbling in web programming through Python's Google App Engine. I ran into some difficulty while trying to write some simple apps for the purposes of learning, mainly involving how to maintain some kind of consistent universally-accessible state for the application. I tried to write a simple queueing management system, the kind you would expect to be used in a small clinic, or at a cafeteria. Typically, this is done with hardware. You take a number from a ticketing machine, and when your number is displayed or called you approach the counter for service. Alternatively, you could be given a small pager, which will beep or vibrate when it is your turn to receive service. The former is somewhat better in that you have an idea of how many people are still ahead of you in the queue. In this situation, the global state is the last number in queue, which needs to be updated whenever a request is made to the server. I'm not sure how to best to store and maintain this value in a GAE context. The solution I thought of was to keep the value in the Datastore, attempt to query it during a ticket request, update the value, and then re-store it with put. My problem is that I haven't figured out how to lock the resource so that other requests do not check the value while it is in the middle of being updated. I am concerned that I may end up ticket requests that have the same queue number. Also, the whole solution feels awkward to me. I was wondering if there was a more natural way to accomplish this without having to go through the Datastore. Can anyone with more experience in this domain provide some advice on how to approach the design of the above application?"}
{"_id": "178423", "title": "Correct way to sell commercial product with GPL small scripts in it", "text": "I'm developing a commercial cms. I'm going to sell this cms. I use jQuery, also I use date and time picker jQuery plugin in my cms, I can say this is just a 1% of my big script, I don't want sell my whole program as GPL because of these two small integrations (jQuery and DateTime picker). Please ask on these questions:   1. I'm worry about license issue. What is the best way to sell my product(licensing type)?   2. Is there any way to provide some partial licenses? I mean just add small notification in my license that the jQuery and The DateTime picker is still in GPL, but other part of this CMS has commercial license?   3. If there isn't any way to sell commercial product as close source with GPL small parts, what is the most strong license for selling my product to keep it safe? Please sorry for my English"}
{"_id": "178424", "title": "Implementation ideas to store multiple files within a single file for faster access?", "text": "My requirement is to store a large number of files within a single file.The files stored could be anything like images, videos or simple text files as well. I want some ideas to implement the same. I am thinking of implementing a file system within a file, but am not sure if its a good idea. Adding in more details as requested : Platform to be developed on is Android. The idea initially was to store all the data using sqlite and provide encryption on it, but I think it will eventually lead to a slow down as the file size increases. The file is going to increase in size with time. The main area of concern here is the access time. Also I want to provide encryption for this single file. Any suggestions are welcome."}
{"_id": "122353", "title": "A good tool for browser automation/client-side Web scripting", "text": "I'm interested in adopting a tool/scripting language to automate some daily tasks connected with fighting forum spammers. A brief overview of these tasks: analyze new registrations and posts on a phpBB forum, and delete or deactivate spammers using a website/community that collects such spam reports. Typically such automation is integrated into the phpBB installation itself, which certainly has its advantages. My approach has the advantage of independent operation, etc. One way to think about this is in terms of browser automation. I've used iOpus iMacros for Firefox (the free version) in the past to respond to individual spammers, but current attacks are highly distributed. My \"logic\" for pigeonholing spammers vs. nonspammers seems beyond the easy reach of the free version of iMacros. From a more technical perspective one can think about dispensing with the browser altogether and programming GET/POST requests directed to my forum and other Web-based resources. I'm familiar with some scripting languages like Ruby and Lua, but I could be persuaded that a compiled application is better suited for these tasks. However in my experience the dynamic flexibility of interpreted environments is very useful in prototyping and debugging the application logic. So I'm leaning in the direction of scripting languages. Among browsers I favor Firefox and Chrome. I use both Windows and Linux platforms, and if the tool can adapt to an Android platform, it would make a neat demonstration of skills, yes? Thanks in advance for your suggestions!"}
{"_id": "122357", "title": "How should data be passed between client-side Javascript and C# code behind an ASP.NET app?", "text": "I'm looking for the most efficient / standard way of passing data between client-side Javascript code and C# code behind an ASP.NET application. I've been using the following methods to achieve this but they all feel a bit of a fudge. To pass data from Javascript to the C# code is by setting hidden ASP variables and triggering a postback:               <asp:HiddenField ID=\"RandomList\" runat=\"server\" />          function SetDataField(data) {           document.getElementById('<%=RandomList.ClientID%>').value = data;     }      Then in the C# code I collect the list:               protected void GetData(object sender, EventArgs e)     {           var _list = RandomList.value;     }      Going back the other way I often use either ScriptManager to register a function and pass it data during Page_Load:               ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this.GetType(), \"Set\",\"get(\"Test();\",true);      or I add attributes to controls before a post back or during the initialization or pre-rendering stages:               Btn.Attributes.Add(\"onclick\", \"DisplayMessage(\"Hello\");\");      These methods have served me well and do the job, but they just dont feel complete. Is there a more standard way of passing data between client side Javascript and C# backend code? Ive seen some posts like this one that describe HtmlElement class; is this something I should look into?"}
{"_id": "29845", "title": "Java abstract class naming", "text": "Example: You create an abstract class for Ajax actions. Different Ajax actions will all extend this class. Problem:   1. Do you name the class AjaxAction or AbstractAjaxAction?   2. When you create subclasses, do you name them:      * Action     * AjaxAction     * Just name them what they are I have not been able to find what the \"official\" convention is. I don't see a need for the \"Abstract\" prefix or any _required_ naming convention in the subclasses. (It may fit anyway, depending.) Is there an official convention? Could you link me to it? And what are your opinions on this subject?"}
{"_id": "252914", "title": "Fullstack programmers and web design", "text": "I have been looking into full stack developments and I am confused as I am getting different answers from people. I know that full stack developers are responsible for front end and back end programming, but some people say that they are also responsible for designing websites as well. Can someone clarify this? If this is true, it seems impossible that someone would be able to keep up with all of the latest design/art trends while keeping up with an insane amount of languages and frameworks which constantly change (considering they would technically be doing 3 jobs in 1) EDIT: By designing websites, I mean, are they responsible for making the template in Photoshop and then implementing it? Or will they be presented with a photoshop template which they will have to implement? It was incorrectly worded by me, so I thought I would clarify."}
{"_id": "156910", "title": "Should I create specific classes for JSON Objects or only use the container(Array/Dictionary) for accessing Data?", "text": "I'm using Foursquare to get a List of Restaurants nearby inside an iOS app. The Result is stored in an Array which consists of Dictionaries and regarding how deep the Data is, each Dictionary contains also an Array with Dictionaries and so on. The Result should be shown inside a UITableView. Should I create a Class that represents a Restaurant and then create an instance for every Restaurant which I put in an Array and use this as the Data Source for my UITableView or should I use the complete Array I got the first Time. I think, using an Array with a dedicated Restaurant class would make the handling much easier but maybe there are reasons to not do it this way? Performance maybe?"}
{"_id": "218568", "title": "How does rapid prototyping fit into an agile methodology?", "text": "I work for a large company, which dictates the use of agile processes. For example, for our projects, we use cloud-based services that are specifically targeted at managing agile development. The specific engineering group I work for has not traditionally developed software (instead we help drive projects from a much more birds-eye point of view), but that is changing. We have a wide range of upcoming/planned software projects that are mostly data-centric - e.g., we will be doing data monitoring, collection, aggregation, and some reporting. Other tasks involve automation with specialized hardware and various types of client/server (multitiered) architectures. I am to assist in the process of hiring several people, and formulating many of our plans in moving forward. My question is whether or not doing rapid prototyping (throwaway code) fits into an agile philosophy. For example, I love Python and its wide range of packages. I see the possibility of implementing many of our ideas very quickly with a Python based workflow. However, I think that there will be a lot of perceptions that Python is not \"enterprise-quality\", and much of this work would need to be rewritten in Java or maybe C++. However, creating the Python prototypes would give us a lot of bang for our buck in enabling us to quickly deliver real results. Have you been able to incorporate rapid prototyping - hopefully in Python - into a solid agile workflow in an enterprise environment?"}
{"_id": "205049", "title": "JIRA Ticket Best Practices: How to write a good JIRA ticket", "text": "We \"use\" JIRA as our ticketing system, but \"use\" is a real stretch. We have no standards, no templates, no \"best practices\" documentation for writing a proper JIRA ticket. So I'm spearheading the movement to create such a doc. It's bad. Real bad. Sometimes, the reporter just copies-n-pastes a stacktrace and submits the ticket without providing any context, backstory, or directions to reproduce. I was wondering if anybody had some good input for what format/template we could use and enforce so that I never get a lousily-written ticket assigned to me ever again! Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "212685", "title": "Recommended guidelines for declaring bash/sh variables", "text": "I have been programming in BASH for a while now and the scripts that I write are starting to get more complicated. I realized that I started to bring in some habits from C/C++ and wanted to get confirmation on if I needed to break my current habits or not. The reason being, not all programming languages are the same and they should be used to capitalize on their strengths. **Using Variables**               function()     {         #declaration block         runCommand=              for string in \"$@\"; do             runCommand=\"$runCommand $string\"         done     }      vs               function()     {         for string in \"$@\"; do             runCommand=\"$runCommand $string\"         done     }      **Which is advised for BASH/SH and for what reasons?** I have currently referred to the following websites. http://lug.fh-swf.de/vim/vim-bash/StyleGuideShell.en.pdf http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15610794/bash-coding-conventions http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/style **Edit: My question was a little unclear so I changed the code example a little bit.**"}
{"_id": "89423", "title": "Create a behavior/Component based system for games", "text": "## Background I do game development as a hobby, and am looking for a better way to design them. Currently, I am using a standard OOP approach (I have been doing enterprise development for 8 years so it comes nartually). Take for example a \"baddie\"               public class Baddie:AnimatedSprite //(or StaticSprite if needed, which inherit Sprite)     {         //sprite base will have things like what texture to use,          //what the current position is, the base Update/Draw/GetInput methods, etc..         //an AnimatedSprite contains helpers to animated the player while          //a StaticSprite is just one that will draw whatever texture is there     }      ## The problem Lets say I am making a 2d platformer, and need the baddie to be able to Jump. Usually what I do is add the appropriate code in the Update/GetInput methods. Then if I need to make the player crawl, duck, climb, etc... the code will go there. If I'm not careful, those methods get cluttered, so I end up creating methods pairs like this `CheckForJumpAction(Input input)` and `DoJump()` `CheckforDuckAction(Input input)` and `DoDuck()` so GetInput looks like               public void DoInput(Input input)     {         CheckForJumpAction(input);         CheckForDuckAction(input);     }      and Update looks like               public void Update()     {         DoJump();         DoDuck();     }      If I go and create _another_ game where the player needs to jump and duck, I usually go into a game that has the functionality and copy it over. Messy, I know. Thats I why I'm looking for something better. ## Solution? I really like how Blend has behaviors I can attach to an element. I have been thinking about using the same concept in my games. So lets look at the same examples. I would create a base Behavior object               public class Behavior     {         public void Update()         Public void GetInput()     }      And I can create behaviors using that. `JumpBehavior:Behavior` and `DuckBehavior:Behavior` I can then add a collection of behaviors to the Sprite base and add what I need to each entity.               public class Baddie:AnimatedSprite     {         public Baddie()         {             this.behaviors = new Behavior[2];             this.behaviors[0] = new JumpBehavior();             //etc...         }              public void Update()         {             //behaviors.update         }              public GetInput()         {             //behaviors.getinput         }     }      So now If I wanted to use Jump and Duck in many games, I can just bring the behaviors over. I could even make a library for the common ones. ## Does it work? What I can't figure out is how to share state between them. Looking at Jump and Duck, both affect not only the current portion of the texture being drawn, but also the state of the player. (Jump is going to apply a decrementing amount of upward force over time, while duck is just going to stop movement, change the texture and the collision size of the baddie. How can I tie this together so it works? Should I create dependency properties between the behaviors? Should I have each behavior _know_ about the parent and directly modify it? One thing I thought was being able to pass a delegate into each behavior to get executed when it is triggered. I'm sure there are more issues I am looking over, but the entire purpose is for me to be able to easily reuse these behaviors between games, and entities in the same game. So I turn it over to you. Care to explain how/if this can be done? Do you have a better idea? I'm all ears."}
{"_id": "89425", "title": "Should I use default access modifier or not -- Coding practice?", "text": "Normally when creating new global variables I do not define its access modifier. So as per java it will adopt property default access modifier. When I'm need to access that variable in out of default scope I change its access modifier else leave it as it is. So my question is \" _Am I doing it right way? Is it normal to have default access variables? or should I use private/public for them? Is it good coding practice to not to use access modifiers?_ \""}
{"_id": "229097", "title": "Need help modelling a User/Project/Task relationship", "text": "So I'm creating a very simple project/task management application in Laravel 4 and I'm not sure how these relationships would work. I have a `Project`, `Task` and `User` model. A `User` can own a `Project` or be a member of a `Project`. A `Task` belongs to a `User` and a `Project`. What is the best way to define the `User`/`Project` relationship? I could have a many to many relationship from `User` to `Project` and use a `project_user` pivot table to associate the two. If I wanted to determine if a `User` owned the project I could add a field to `Project` called `owner` and populate it with the id of the `User` who created it. This seems kind of wrong though as this relationship would normally be modeled in a belongs to relationship? Any advice is greatly appreciated :)"}
{"_id": "66828", "title": "Best practices for working with multiple programmers", "text": "I think most programmers prefer to work solo on projects, even when it's not feasible. I prefer to work alone, even outside of programming projects. When working with other developers, I typically find that   * I don't like their formatting or conventions (such as variable or method names)   * I don't have a good understanding of how the code they wrote works, which I would have if I wrote it myself   * I think there is a better or more efficient way to implement something they wrote What are the best ways to overcome these issues and any other similar team issues for a project with 4-5 programmers?"}
{"_id": "126637", "title": "How do you do to create the ViewModel part of your MVVM designs?", "text": "Sometimes, when I plan to create a program using this architectural pattern, I've got a lot of difficulties when I'm in the View Model phase. I'm using WAF Framework to develop this architectural pattern. I'm a still a newbie. Before you start, do you create all the UML design or do you use another tool to help you? How do you handle the design of your ViewModels ?"}
{"_id": "212688", "title": "What is the difference between HaXe NME and OpenFL?", "text": "On http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NME_%28framework%29 there is an info: > NME is an open-source game and application framework that supports iOS, > Android, BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Flash Player and > HTML5, with legacy compatibility for webOS. On OpenFL website ( http://www.openfl.org/about/overview/ ), is this info: > OpenFL is a software development kit that provides an environment for > building fast, native games and applications for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, > Windows, Mac, Linux, Flash and HTML5. The link to the website of HaXe NME (on wikipage), redirects to website of OpenFL, and on that website, is zero informations about HaXe NME, it looks like it doesn't have its own website and any documentation. I have impression that both do kinda the same thing - enable easy compilation to the same platforms, but are clearly two different libraries in haxelib, so - what is the difference between them? How they relate to each other?"}
{"_id": "252912", "title": "Where to place 3rd party software license information?", "text": "After a user installs my application, where in the app's install directory should I place information regarding 3rd party software (e.g. FOSS) licenses? Should I just append it to my EULA? Is there some sort of convention or standard that I should following to make it easily scan-able by license detection scripts?"}
{"_id": "215163", "title": "When should I increment version number?", "text": "I didn't learn programming at school and I do not work as a (professional) developer, hence a lot of basics are not quite clear to me. This question tries to clarify one of them. * * * Now let's suppose that I have issues `#1`, `#2` and `#3` in my Issues Tracker that are set to be corrected/enhanced for version `1.0.0` and that the last (stable) version is `0.9.0`. When should I increment to version `1.0.0` ? When a) **just one** of the listed above issues is closed or b) when **all** the issues related to version `1.0` are closed ? Which one is the _right_ way to do it ? And by the _right_ way, I mean what is currently used in the industry."}
{"_id": "127329", "title": "Benefits of rapid release development cycle adopted by the Mozilla Foundation", "text": "Which the real benefits of rapid release development cycle adopted by the Mozilla Foundation in comparison with the strategy adopted previously?"}
{"_id": "127328", "title": "How should I organize the Presenters/Views for model view presenter?", "text": "We have several hundred ASPX files (could be more than that, into the thousands, I haven't actually counted) that currently use no architecture and have all the logic/data access in code-behind files. Moving forward I want to push using `Model-View-Presenter` (probably the \"Supervising Controller\" version) to try and get some clean separation. What would be the best approach to logically lay out these files in my Presentation library? Most of the aspx files aren't organized and just thrown into the main directory, but some are grouped (or are misgrouped e.g. having customer-related files in a folder called \"orders\"). Should I try to group presenters and views by modules (e.g. have `Presentation.Views.Customers` and/or `Presentation.Customers`)? The correct approach does **not** seem to be just have hundreds of `XPresenter` and `XView` files thrown into the class library."}
{"_id": "214904", "title": "Is \"Free for non-commercial use\" license compatible with GNU GPLv3 license?", "text": "I want to ask whether any materials that has \"Free for non-commercial use\" license can be used in a GNU GPLv3 licensed software. In my opinion, it is \"free for non-commericial use\", and GNU GPLv3 is also non-commericial, so it can be used in the software, is it? I'm asking this question because there are no explicit or clear declaration about \"FREE FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE\" license out there...."}
{"_id": "168650", "title": "What's the proper term for a function inverse to a constructor - to unwrap a value from a data type?", "text": "**Edit:** I'm rephrasing the question a bit. Apparently I caused some confusion because I didn't realize that the term destructor is used in OOP for something quite different - it's a function invoked when an object is being destroyed. In functional programming we (try to) avoid mutable state so there is no such equivalent to it. (I added the proper tag to the question.) Instead, I've seen that the record field for unwrapping a value (especially for single-valued data types such as `newtype`s) is sometimes called _destructor_ or perhaps _deconstructor_. For example, let's have (in Haskell):               newtype Wrap = Wrap { unwrap :: Int }      Here `Wrap` is the constructor and `unwrap` is what? The questions are:   * **How do we call`unwrap` in functional programming?** Deconstructor? Destructor? Or by some other term?   * And to clarify, **is this/other terminology applicable to other functional languages** , or is it used just in the Haskell?   * Perhaps also, **is there any terminology for this in general, in non-functional languages**? * * * I've seen both terms, for example: > ... Most often, one supplies smart constructors and **destructors** for > these to ease working with them. ... at Haskell wiki, or > ... The general theme here is to fuse constructor - **deconstructor** pairs > like ... at Haskell wikibook (here it's probably meant in a bit more general sense), or > >     newtype DList a = DL { unDL :: [a] -> [a] } >   > > The unDL function is our **deconstructor** , which removes the DL > constructor. ... in The Real World Haskell."}
{"_id": "214903", "title": "API Wordpress & Inksoft", "text": "I am new to this whole website design and API bit. My husband has bought a license for the program InkSoft. Their site does not offer very much customization, so we decided to buy a Wordpress.org site that is hosted through godaddy. With all of that said, I am trying to figure out a way to take the products that are on InkSoft's website, which get their information from the suppliers' warehouses (for things like inventory), and put them on the Wordpress site. There is an area on InkSoft where I can access \"Store API...API feeds.\" I guess I am just confused on where to put this type of stuff in the WordPress site or how to put it in there? If I go to the \"Products\" area on this Store API, I am given a URL that deals with the product stuff and I am also given a HUGE list of stuff that contains stuff such as:               <ProductCategoryList>     <vw_product_categories product_category_id=\"1000076\" name=\"Most Popular\" path=\"Most Popular\" thumburl_front=\"REPLACE_DOMAIN_WITH/images/publishers/2433/ProductCategories/Most_Popular/80.gif\" />      How to use all this stuff?"}
{"_id": "202378", "title": "When to use inheritance or composition/aggregation?", "text": "In general, how do I decide whether to use make a class a super class, or to make it a private data member of another class? For example, given two classes, how does one decide whether to do this:               public class Sprite {         private BaseImage image;         ...      or this:               public class Sprite extends BaseImage {         ...      Functionally, I know the difference: in the second case, any method that uses an instance of the Sprite class will have access to the underlying BaseImage behavior. In the first case the behavior of the BaseImage object is hidden. But from a design perspective, which is preferable in what cases?"}
{"_id": "210531", "title": "How can I effectively manage long-term feature development and short-term bug fixing at the same time?", "text": "We have a huge C, and C++ code base. There is a plan to add a new feature into the existing system, but, this should happen only after 3 to 4 months. So, we are looking for best possible options.   1. Branching off is one option, but, this involves porting the bug fixes to the feature branch from the trunk.    2. Staying on the trunk itself, have `ifdef` to differentiate the new feature compilation   3. Split the source/header files that involve the new feature, edit the makefiles to pick the right file. I understand this question is pretty vague, and only people working on it can well decide the way forward. But, I'm looking for generalized opinions on a case like this."}
{"_id": "130816", "title": "What is the development workflow for an Android SIP application?", "text": "I want to build an Android SIP application, and I'm looking at csipsimple's source for inspiration. I am using:   * Linux,   * Eclipse 3.7,   * Android sdk & ndk,   * swig. What are the development phases or steps for such an application? And what would be an appropriate licence? I am not asking for code, but for an overview of the development workflow for such an application."}
{"_id": "163603", "title": "Figuring a max repetitive sub-tree in an object tree", "text": "I am trying to solve a problem of finding a max repetitive sub-tree in an object tree. By the object tree I mean a tree where each leaf and node has a name. Each leaf has a type and a value of that type associated with that leaf. Each node has a set of leaves / nodes in certain order. Given an object tree that - we know - has a repetitive sub-tree in it. By repetitive I mean 2 or more sub-trees that are similar in everything (names/types/order of sub-elements) but the values of leaves. No nodes/leaves can be shared between sub-trees. Problem is to identify these sub-trees of the max height. I know that the exhaustive search can do the trick. I am rather looking for more efficient approach."}
{"_id": "212533", "title": "Algorithm for determining the order of property resolution", "text": "I have a list of properties, that are bound to some string expression: > property z, expression '[x] + [y]'   >  property x, expression '[y] + 1'   >  property y, expression '1' So to solve z, I need first to solve x and y. My current approximation is this:               var solved = new List<string>();     while (properties.Count() > 0)      {        var property = properties.Dequeue();        var dependencies = FindDependencies(property)              .Where(x => !solved.Contains(x))              .ToList();             // no unsolved dependencies, solve it        if (dependencies.Count == 0)         {            property.Solve();            solved.Add(property.Name);        }         // it can't be solved now, add to the end of queue        else         {               properties.Enqueue();        }     }      This approximation has two problems: a) I think it is not optimal, because not solved property is added to the end, may be it could be solved sooner and in that case on it dependant properties would not postponed also.   b) Could not get any good exit condition, when it is unsolvable (meaning, that there's circular reference). Does anybody recognize here existing well known algorithm, or has ideas how to optimize it?"}
{"_id": "126986", "title": "where can I find an overview of known \"multithreading systems architectures\" design patterns?", "text": "Using C#, I have been doing multithreaded development for about 5 years, and consider myself quite proficient (I wrote my own lock-free queue and task parallel framework before Microsoft made TPF). However, I find it incredibly difficult to find information on practical multithreaded system design patterns anywhere. There are some good resources on low-level algorithms and collections, but not much on system design. So to the question, anyone know where this information can be found?"}
{"_id": "193244", "title": "Is the \"Gets or sets ..\" necessary in XML documentation of properties?", "text": "I am looking for a recommendation of a best practice for XML comments in C#. When you create a property, it seems like that the expected XML documentation has the following form:               /// <summary>     /// Gets or sets the ID the uniquely identifies this <see cref=\"User\" /> instance.     /// </summary>     public int ID {         get;         set;     }      But since the signature of the property already tells you what operations are available to the external clients of the class (in this case it is both `get` and `set`) I feel like the comments are too chatty and that perhaps the following would be sufficient:               /// <summary>     /// ID that uniquely identifies this <see cref=\"User\" /> instance.     /// </summary>     public int ID {         get;         set;     }      Microsoft uses the first form so it seems like it is an implied convention. But I think that the second one is better for the reasons I stated. I understand that this quetion is an adept for being marked as not being constructive, but the amount of properties that one has to comment is huge and so I believe that this question has its right to be here. I will appreciate any ideas or links to official recommended practices."}
{"_id": "128389", "title": "Use of NotImplementedException", "text": "Is it considered bad practice to throw `NotImplementedException` for code you haven't written yet? Possibly TODO comments would be considered safer?"}
{"_id": "206103", "title": "What is a good strategy for binding view objects to model objects in C++?", "text": "Imagine I have a rich data model that is represented by a hierarchy of objects. I also have a view hierarchy with views that can extract required data from model objects and display the data (and allow the user to manipulate the data). Actually, there could be multiple view hierarchies that can represent and manipulate the model (e.g. an overview-detail view and a direct manipulation view). My current approach for this is for the controller layer to store a reference to the underlying model object in the View object. The view object can then get the current data from the model for display, and can send the model object messages to update the data. View objects are effectively observers of the model objects and the model objects broadcast notifications when properties change. This approach allows all the views to update simultaneously when any view changes the model. Implemented carefully, this all works. However, it does require a lot of work to ensure that no view or model objects hold any stale references to model objects. The user can delete model objects or sub-hierarchies of the model at any time. Ensuring that all the view objects that hold references to the model objects that have been deleted is time-consuming and difficult. It feels like the approach I have been taking is not especially clean; while I don't want to have to have explicit code in the controller layer for mediating the communication between the views and the model, it seems like there must be a better (implicit) approach for establishing bindings between the view and the model and between related model objects. In particular, I am looking for an approach (in C++) that understands two key points:   1. There is a many to one relationship between view and model objects   2. If the underlying model object is destroyed, all the dependent view objects must be cleaned up so that no stale references exist While shared_ptr and weak_ptr can be used to manage the lifetimes of the underlying model objects and allows for weak references from the view to the model, they don't provide for notification of the destruction of the underlying object (they do in the sense that the use of a stale weak_ptr allows for notification), but I need an approach that notifies the dependent objects that their weak reference is going away. Can anyone suggest a good strategy to manage this?"}
{"_id": "23309", "title": "Which extreme-programming techniques are appropriate to use in a research environment?", "text": "Which (if any) extreme-programming techniques would be appropriate to use in a research environment - where the goal is to produce prototypes, patentable, and/or publishable work?"}
{"_id": "206101", "title": "How to deal with requirements and use cases in this kind of situation?", "text": "Recently I've started to work with object oriented analysis and design and it seemed very interesting to me as a way to get work done better. But I'm still in doubt with one kind of situation. If this is not the correct site to ask about it, sorry for that. Well, if I have to design a system that allows one user to register customers, sell products and so on, we have someone that will operate the system, in the sense that actor is kind of obvious for some of the use cases - the actor we will consider on the use case \"Register New Customer\" is simply the responsible for that action in the company of the customer that is purchasing the software. Now, there are sometimes that this doesn't happen. I'll give an example: I've developed once a system to manage templates for websites in PHP. In that time, I didn't develop it within an object oriented context, but I was thinking on bring this system into object orientation to practice object oriented analysis and design. The point is that the system is very simple: \"it takes some configurations written in a xml file, takes a URL and maps it to a file\". The point is that there's no interaction between the users of the websites and the system. The only thing that happens is that the user requests a URL and the system selects one html file that matches this URL in some way, and embed this html into a template specified in the xml. In cases like that, the only functional requirements I can think of are:   * The system must allow the user to specify the folders of templates into an xml file;   * The system must get the information of directories from the xml file;   * The system must load one specific file corresponding to the requested url inside one template file;   * The system must allow the replacement of placeholders into the template by values specified on code; The problem is: for instance, although I thought of them as functional requirements, all of them has to do directly with how the code must be made. Only the third one really fits what I understood of functional requirement. Also the use cases are a little complicated, every action is took by the system itself. The only use case could be \"Request Page\" with actor being \"Site Visitor\" and this would imply that the scenario would be just \"The user inputs the url into the browser window and the system loads the page.\" So, in cases like that, when we are dealing with code will simply be reused into some other code (this is an example, it's just a bunch of code that a developer can use to load pages independent of a template), how should we deal with requirement analysis, use cases and so on? As I've said, the PHP system I wrote is just an example, I'm really asking in general. Could someone give some hints or reference (some article, tutorial, something like that), that shows how to deal with this? Thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "234441", "title": "subclass QAbstractTableModel - reuse as much code as possible", "text": "in my PyQt application I am heavily using the model/view approach. For every model I create, I do the following:               class myModel(QtCore.QAbstractTableModel):         def __init__(self, parent = None):             QtCore.QAbstractTableModel.__init__(self, parent)             self.lst = [[]] #initialize                  #populate lst with custom data             #self.lst = ....              def rowCount(self, parent = QtCore.QModelIndex()):             return len(self.lst)              def columnCount(self, parent = QtCore.QModelIndex()):             return len(self.lst[0])              def data(self, role = QtCore.Qt.DisplayRole):             row = index.row()             col = index.column()             if role == QtCore.Qt.DisplayRole:                 return self.lst[row][col].getContent()                  if role == QtCore.Qt.BackgroundRole:                 return self.lst[row][col].getColor()                  if role == QtCore.Qt.FontRole:                 return self.lst[row][col].getFont()                  if role == QtCore.Qt.DecorationRole:                 return self.lst[row][col].getIcon()                  if role == QtCore.Qt.TextAlignmentRole:                 return self.lst[row][col].getAlignment()                  if role == QtCore.Qt.UserRole:                 return self.lst[row][col]      In other words, the `columnCount()`, the `rowCount()` and the `data()` method looks always the same. After a few models, the typing get's really annoying and I am asking myself If I can get rid of this repeditive typing? I know that I could create a base class, where I put the `rowCount()`, `columnCount()` and `data()`method and inherit from that class, but is this the best/cleanest solution or is there a concept in Python which suits better?"}
{"_id": "12572", "title": "How do you maximise the knowledge that you gain from a programming book?", "text": "Not because I care how long it takes someone to read a book, but more because I'm interested in how people get the knowledge from a book (or I guess other sources) into their brains in the best, most efficient way. Personally I take a multi-pass approach (from my answer to the original question):   1. Skim through contents, dip in and read anything with an interesting looking heading and finally gawp at any nice diagrams and illustrations. I won't take much in at this stage, but it gives me a mental view of the book (an hour or so at most)   2. First pass through the book, generally I'll read the opening chapters thoroughly for a book that is either very heavy going or introduces something completely new. For books that cover a subject I already know about I'll skim or skip bits that seem trivial. The remainder of the book I'll go through reasonably quickly but not so quickly that I'm just page flipping. (about a week)   3. Not all books that I read make it this far, but if I find a book interesting or useful enough I'll then study it properly. I will go through the book at a slower pace and do some or all of the examples, try out code, etc. I will often skip entire chapters here unless the book is really good (1-3 weeks depending on the book).   4. Finally when I've finished reading it and am reading other books I will often dip into it again and again to cross-reference, compare, look things up, browse, etc - so many of my favourite books don't just end up gathering dust on the bookshelf. I rarely take notes when reading (although I may do some planning on paper if I'm working through something like a code sample). I've also considered starting to use a personal kanban for organising my progress, but have never quite got around to using that technique. Mindmaps are another thing I like the idea of but rarely do. What other methods to people have? How successful do you find them? Are there any commonly recommended techniques that you feel are a waste of time?"}
{"_id": "206108", "title": "Specifying options \"hard coded\", in an interpreted language", "text": "In a language like Python or JavaScript (NodeJS), is there anything wrong with defining \"the configuration file\" as a file which essentially hard-codes the configuration settings? For example: options.py:               OUTPUT_DIRECTORY = 'out'     LOGLEVEL = 'debug'      options.js:               outputDirectory = 'out';     logLevel = 'debug';      Does this count as \"hard-coding\" options? When would it be inappropriate to expect a user to configure software this way? Is there any benefit to using a traditional configuration format (eg, ini file) which is parsed at run-time?"}
{"_id": "213484", "title": "SQL API instead of a REST API?", "text": "What are the pros and cons of exposing an SQL API instead of a REST API? Let's assume that this would be a private API \u2013 the API developer and user are on the same team. Probably the biggest problem would be security and validation. I can see two possible approaches:   1. Defining a set of allowed SQL query templates.   2. Doing some clever analysis of every incoming SQL query."}
{"_id": "213485", "title": "Authentication at my web site using other credentials", "text": "Suppose there are 2 web site: `example.com` I don't own and `example2.com` I own. I want to extend the functionality of `example.com` somehow. `example.com` doesn't have any API. I want the users of `example.com` to be able to login at `example2.com` using their logins and passwords of `example.com`. However, since `example.com` doesn't have any API, it is not easy to do, perhaps, it is even impossible. No doubt, no one would agree to enter their credentials of `example.com` at `example2.com` due to many obvious reasons. So, is there any way to authenticate the users of `example.com` at `example2.com` **(or somewhere else)** using their original credentials?"}
{"_id": "213486", "title": "Why is quantity in software still written as \"1 result(s)\"?", "text": "Lately, I've been noticing that a lot of software, be it a website, a client application, or a video game, often write a representation of quantity as follows: \"1 result(s)\". Now, I can understand why they would do that 20 years ago. But these days, shouldn't we have enough processing power and memory to be able to say \"1 result\" and \"2 results\"? Is there some sort of special reason why it's still done this way? Now before you tell me to Google it, I would. But the thing is, I have no idea what search terms to use. So even some suggested search terms would be welcome."}
{"_id": "110606", "title": "Great Programmer Productivity - Accounting for 10,000 fold difference?", "text": "\"A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.\" - Bill Gates Say there's a \"great\" software engineer and an \"average\" software engineer on the same team. How can you account for one engineer being 10,000 times more productive? I can't quite fathom this, given they're both taking on their share of features, bugs and investigations, and consistently deliver with quality. Would my description possibly justify them to be above \"average\"? \"great\"? In a corporation like Microsoft, what % of software engineers are \"average\"? What % \"great\"?"}
{"_id": "110605", "title": "Big-O for nested loop", "text": "I am reading this post on Big-O   It says that the following code is O(n^2):               bool ContainsDuplicates(String[] strings)     {         for(int i = 0; i < strings.Length; i++)         {             for(int j = 0; j < strings.Length; j++)             {                 if(i == j) // Don't compare with self                 {                     continue;                 }                      if(strings[i] == strings[j])                 {                     return true;                 }             }         }         return false;     }      But I can not understand why.   The inner loop does something constant.   So it is summation of 1....N of a constant. i.e. constant number O(1).   The outer loop is summation over the O(1).   So I would imagine it is n*O(1). I think I am misunderstanding something here.   I do not think that all nested loops mean O(n^2), right?"}
{"_id": "75476", "title": "Has anyone done CSDP certification?", "text": "I was looking at some certifications that can potentially enhance my knowledge and market value as a Software Engineer. IEEE's Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) caught my attention. When I looked on the net for any user experiences with it I couldn't find anything substantial. Doesn't seem too popular. And I certainly havent heard of anyone in my organization or friends circle who have done it. I would like to know from community members if anyone has done this certification and their experiences with the same. Was the certification useful in terms of knowledge. Did it add weight to your resume (not deadweight!)?"}
{"_id": "195626", "title": "How to compute barycentric coordinates in a systematic and efficient way?", "text": "As part of a ray tracer implementation, I need to compute the barycentric coordinates in a triangle in 3D in order to decide if a ray hits the triangle or not. In theory this could be done by simply solving a few linear equations. But due to the fact that the vertices of a triangle could have the same x, y or z coordinates, some of the coefficients in the equations would be 0, and this caused numerical error in my initial implementations. So, is there a systematic approach to find the barycentric coordinates in a more efficient way? Or I have no choice but to brutally check each possibility one by one?"}
{"_id": "213385", "title": "How to check for vulnerabilities in web application", "text": "I have developed a web application using zend framework, mysql, and other client side technologies like javascript, jquery ajax, kendo grid, and so on. I have completed development and have done several rounds of testing to make sure the functional part is correct. Now I would like to check for the vulnerabilities in my application - vulnerabilities such as                          * sql injection                 * ajax vulnerabilities                * others       which I don't know of. I would like to ask you guys how to check this and make the application secure. What methods should I use to secure my application?"}
{"_id": "16059", "title": "ASP.NET Dynamic Data", "text": "I'd like to know what people think of ASP.NET Dynamic Data. I see the project type in visual studio and have found very little about it mention on blogs and in books. I created a site using it and it is great the way it wires up the CRUD pages, but i don't understand how to modify the the pages without modifying the template that all the pages use. Do you think it will be abandoned in future versions of visual studio? I'm wondering if it's worth the effort of learning this type of application. personally i think i'd like something simpler....create the CRUD for us, but make them on seperate pages, without the whole template system."}
{"_id": "19085", "title": "Have you ever been really badly burned by VSS?", "text": "I have heard lots of anecdotal evidence that using VSS is a horrible idea because sooner or later, it will just lose/corrupt/delete all of your work. (I am even guilty of using such evidence as one of the motivating factors to switch to SVN a while back). However, though I really prefer Update/Commit to Checkout/Checkin, it is horrible over SVN and there isn't good branching support, I have never actually had a catastrophic VSS experience. Has VSS ever ruined your project/job/sanity? Old version or new? Is there truth behind the stories?"}
{"_id": "117058", "title": "\"Release Early Release Often\" for Android and iPhone Apps", "text": "I wanted to know the experiences others have about doing the Agile way of \"Release Early, Release Often\" with iPhone and Android Apps. Its not a problem with webapps as the update happens at the server and user does not have to do anything specific for updates It may not be a big problem with Android, as the approval process is smooth compared to iPhone app store. Can someone share the experiences/suggestions/examples they've for releasing early and often to Android and iPhone markets?"}
{"_id": "255915", "title": "Is this a good Visual Studio solution structure for a domain driven design RESTful web service?", "text": "I am building a .NET 4.5 C# Web API RESTful solution and I would like someone to tell me if my project solution is correct and/or wise(-enough?) for a solution designed using Domain Driven Design, please. The solution has been split into 6 projects:   * /Base (Not referenced by anything) The web project and forms the interface between the solution and the outside world. Contains the Web API controllers. Contains almost no logic beyond gathering values from request objects and asking the BizApi layer for work.   * /Biz.Api (Referenced by Base]) Provides the domain services and allows the /Base interface project to have access to the domain business logic objects in the /Biz.Domain project.   * /Biz.Domain (Referenced by Biz.Api) Provides the domain classes for the Biz.Api layer. These provide methods to manipulate the data of the business in memory.   * /Dal.Db (Referenced by Biz.Api) The database repository layer. Accesses the databases and maps returned data into internal DTO's defined in the /Interfaces layer.   * /Dal.Services (Referenced by Biz.Api) Provides a proxy layer to external dependencies like web services and maps their returned data to internal DTOs defined in the /Interfaces project.   * /Interfaces (Referenced by most projects above) Contains the DTO classes for passing data around the solution and the C# interfaces to define contracts for things like IoC."}
{"_id": "161253", "title": "Will apple approve app which internally uses library developed by Google?", "text": "I am using `GDataXML` library developed by Google as part of their Objective-C client library. As its Google\u2019s XML processing library and I heard that Apple don't allow to use any third party libraries in app, will they allow this one?. (I am using this library because many iOS geeks suggest to use this one!!). Thanks in advance. :)"}
{"_id": "255917", "title": "Wrap all external calls with flag to fight against recursion and double-entry?", "text": "Producing predictable output for each possible input is the responsibility of each module. For example (in C#):               class Logger     {         public ITextWriter Writer { get; set; }              private uint counter;              /// <summary>         /// Writes message in special format and returns the number of total messages written         /// </summary>         public uint Debug(string message)         {             if (message == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"message\");                  if (Writer == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Writer not set\");                  Writer.Write(string.Format(\"{0:HHmmss}: [DEBUG] {1}\", DateTime.Now, message));                  return ++counter;         }     }      `Logger` module is quite verbose, but it's output - exception, call to a depedency and returned value - is predictable and obvious for each argument and state. But one possible use-case bothers me. What if `Writer` was set to some weird implementation which somehow calls the `Logger.Debug` method on that same object? First possible consequence is stackoverflow due to infinite recursion. Second - unpredictable output and possible bugs. It's obvious that such situation must be controlled somehow. If we want predictable output for our logger, it should control double-entries:                   // ...         private bool enter;              public uint Debug(string message)         {             if (message == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"message\");                  if (Writer == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Writer not set\");                  if (enter) throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Double-entry\");                  enter = true;                  Writer.Write(string.Format(\"{0:HHmmss}: [DEBUG] {1}\", DateTime.Now, message));                  enter = false;                  return ++counter;         }         // ...      And it seems that every external call (a call not to it's own components) must be wrapped with such flags. That looks crazy! Is it how good code written? Or is it normal to beleive that your system has no circular calls? Am I missing something important? Please, advise. **UPDATE** It's even worse, guys:                   // ...              private bool enter;              public uint Debug(string message)         {             if (message == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(\"message\");                  if (Writer == null) throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Writer not set\");                  if (enter) throw new InvalidOperationException(\"Double-entry\");                  try             {                 enter = true;                      Writer.Write(string.Format(\"{0:HHmmss}: [DEBUG] {1}\", DateTime.Now, message));             }             finally             {                 enter = false;             }                  return ++counter;         }         // ...      I beleive that catching an exception is on duty of higher-level module (the one which created them all), so exceptions must follow their way. But the state after unsuccessfull call must remain correct. Exception is not the end of the world, and modules possibly can be re-used."}
{"_id": "245193", "title": "Expected error handling", "text": "Let's say I have a social media website. On this website, users can upload several pieces of information about themselves, including their phone number. To implement this, I have a class called `PhoneNumber` that represents the users phone number. But phone numbers are optional. I have this `PhoneNumber` class which is supposed to guarantee access to a users phone number, but it can't. How do I handle this? My current approach is to, whenever there's a problem, assign a value to an `error` variable inside `PhoneNumber` that represents the problem in question (this could be an exception, a string, or an error code, it's irrelevant for this question). I also added a method to `PhoneNumber` called `isPhoneNumberAvailable()` that should be called before any of the accessors are used. If one of the accessors is called and the user hasn't added their phone number, I throw an `IllegalStateException`. But this doesn't seem like a good solution. I'm not sure why, I'm too new at this to explain it, but it seems like this could cause me some problems down the road. Note that this question is language agnostic, the existence of an `IllegalStateException` in Java is purely coincidental. EDIT: The solution is improving the model. I have guaranteed access to something I can't guarantee access to, which is bad design. My other problem was with the use of an `error` variable in class scope but that's beyond the scope of this question. See my follow up question here."}
{"_id": "88779", "title": "ArgoUML - Learning", "text": "So I just got a copy of ArgoUML. I originally thought I'd be able to just play around with it to learn it, but it's turning out to be extremely difficult. I searched online for tutorials and videos but came up with nothing useful. The help file for ArgoUML is very incomplete as well. Does anybody know of any online resources to help me learn ArgoUML (and UML in general, I guess)? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "255918", "title": "How to limit users of a service to a specific program", "text": "I have built an android game - I would like to add a \"high score\" leaderboard to it, such that people can show off how high they managed to score. How should I design it so that people can't \"hack\" it by decompiling it and sending a fake score? I don't believe android has a TPM module yet for most devices, so I can't store a password there (even if I could, how could I insert it there without it being detected in transmission?). I could obfuscate the code, but that isn't going to prevent hacking, only deter it. I will be using a secured connection, so I shouldn't have any network-sniffing issues. I am not sure if it would be better to post it under android or security instead of here, but I think this is the correct place since I am asking for a design."}
{"_id": "245198", "title": "Are error variables an anti-pattern or good design?", "text": "In order to handle several possible errors that shouldn't halt execution, I have an `error` variable that clients can check and use to throw exceptions. Is this an Anti-Pattern? Is there a better way to handle this? For an example of this in action you can see PHP's mysqli API. Assume that visibility problems (accessors, public and private scope, is the variable in a class or global?) are handled correctly."}
{"_id": "127580", "title": "Using Memcached: is it good practice to update the cache when updating the database?", "text": "This question is about best practices in architecture. ### Our Current Architecture I have a PHP class that accesses MySQL for user info. Let's call it `User`. `User` is accessed many times, so we have implemented layers of caching to reduce load. The first layer is what we call the \"per request\" cache. After the data has been retrieved from MySQL, we store the data in a private property of `User`. Any subsequent requests for the data returns the property instead of re- requesting the data from MySQL. Since the web request lives and dies on a per-request basis, this cache only prevents the application from accessing MySQL more than once in a single request. Our second layer is Memcached. When the private property is empty, we first check Memcached for the data. If Memcached is empty we query MySQL for the data, update Memcached, and update the private property of `User`. ### The Question Our application is a game, and sometimes it is imperative that some data be as up-to-date as possible. In the span of about five minutes, a read request for the user data may happen 10 or 11 times; then an update may occur. Subsequent read requests need to be up to date or game mechanics fail. So, what we've done is implement a piece of code that is executed when a database update happens. This code sets the key in Memcached with the updated data, so all subsequent requests to Memcached are up to date. Is this optimal? Are there any performance concerns or other \"gotchas\" we should be aware of when trying to maintain a sort of \"living cache\" like this?"}
{"_id": "235591", "title": "Simple Design for Singleton function in java for Kernel", "text": "I understand that Singelton helps to instantiate only one class AT A TIME. I try to learn how to Design for Singleton function in java. I want to know it better to understand Kernel. So I try to do this following, but I like to know if it's the only way to come up with private constructor.               public class Singleton {         private static Singleton instance = null;              private Singleton() {   }              public static synchronized Singleton getInstance() {             if (instance == null) {                         instance = new Singleton ();             }             return instance;         }     }"}
{"_id": "166840", "title": "Unicode license", "text": "The Unicode Terms of use state that any software that uses their data files (or a modification of it) should carry the Unicode license references. It seems to me that most Unicode libraries have functions to check if a character is a digit, a letter, a symbol, etc. ans so will contain a modification of the Unicode Data Files (usually in the form of tables). Does that mean the license applies and all applications that use such Unicode libraries should carry the license? I've checked around, and it appears very few Unicode software do carry the license, though arguable most of those that didn't carry the license were from companies that were members of the Unicode consortium (do they get license exemption?). Some (e.g. Mozilla) are only \"Liaison Members\", and while their software do not carry the license (AFAICT), they do obviously rely on data derived from those data files. Is Mozilla in breach of the license? Should we carry the license in all apps that include any form of advanced Unicode support? (i.e. are bound to rely on the Unicode data files) Or is there some form of broad exemption? (since very very few software out there carries the license). **edit:** I've forwarded this question to the Unicode staff, I'll post the reply here when/if I get one"}
{"_id": "185231", "title": "Formatting SQL Based on an AST", "text": "I am working on my .NET open source project for generating SQL... Initially, I wrote the project so it spit out exactly one SQL format... ugly. I started using this project in the real world and decided it would be nice if I could generate pretty SQL in debug mode and ugly SQL in release mode. My first go involved a lot of if/else loops within my command generation code. It quickly got to be too much to handle. So, I started looking for another approach that would allow me to plug-in different formatting strategies. I also looked at other SQL formatting libraries but most were specific to one dialect. Right now, I am playing with the idea of generating a tree of tokens, similar to an abstract syntax tree (AST) that a compiler works with. I was hoping to navigate the tree and generate text based on where I am in the tree. Now that I've built these trees, I'm not sure how to write the code to visit these nodes. I feel like I'm going backwards. Instead of parsing SQL, generating an AST and spitting out SQL objects, I am allowing someone to build SQL objects, then generate an AST and spitting out SQL. When someone uses my library to build a SELECT statement, they specify the values to select, the tables to select from, filters, ordering, etc. But once I have generated an AST... I have less information than I originally started with! Only by asking \"Is the next token the keyword FROM?\" can I get a picture of where I'm at. I have to write a bunch of if/elif/else statements to figure out what comes next. At least when I had the SQL objects I could use polymorphism to avoid nasty branching. So, perhaps I missed a day in compiler theory or perhaps it's because I'm trying to go backwards. But, for whatever reason, my next step is really unclear to me. I think the AST route was in the right direction even if it does mean losing information. I was able to write a really stupid formatter that puts spaces between every token for now. It's really when it comes to getting fancy that I'm overwhelmed. If anyone has some good resources for going backwards, it would probably be really helpful."}
{"_id": "158180", "title": "Compiler Linking: How to handle circular references?", "text": "I'm currently writing a compiler for a new language and I'm struggling with the linking aspect of new Types when there exists a circular reference. I've created a dependency tree so that I can compile the Types in the order of their dependencies which seemed to have fixed my problem... that is until I hit circular references like an example below (posted in c#):               public class A     {       public A() {  var b = new B(); }     }          public class B     {       public B() { var a = new A(); }     }      My limitation is that I can only create 1 Type at a time, and in the case of circular references, either A needs to be created first, or B needs to be created first, both of which poses the problem that I can't create either unless it's dependencies are first created! How do compilers overcome this?"}
{"_id": "158182", "title": "How to keep track effectively of cache keys to invalidate them accordingly?", "text": "In an ordinary application, the same information may be retrieved from the database in several ways. If all those ways implement caching, you need to invalidate all those cache entries when updating an entry in the database. Some pairing between updates and selects is easy to do. Let's take an example of a product 123 in the category 9 with a price of $12.50. If you select a product by ID:               select [...] from [Shop].[Product] where [ProductId] = 123      caching it with a key `Product<Id:123>`, it's not so difficult to invalidate this cache entry after updating a price of a product identified by its ID:               update [Shop].[Product] set [Price] = 14.99 where [ProductId] = 123      Things become more difficult when you have also to remember to invalidate the cache with the key `MostExpensive<CategoryId:9>` corresponding to the query:               select max([Price]) from [Shop].[Product] where [CategoryId] = 9      What is an effective way to keep track of cache entries? How to find, during development or code review, what entries must be invalidated when one or another piece of data is changed?"}
{"_id": "244826", "title": "Can someone explain in simple terms what is the disruptor pattern?", "text": "I would like if you could explain to me in a simple way how does the disruptor patter work. This concept has been elusive to me as of know. Perhaps with your help I could comprehend it."}
{"_id": "244821", "title": "Genetic Algorithm new generation exponentially increasing", "text": "I'm programming Genetic Algorithm in C++ and after searching all kind of ways of doing GA'a operators (selection, crossover, mutation) I came up with a doubt. Let's say I have an initial population of 500. My selection will consist in getting the top 20% of 500(based on best fitness). So I get 100 individuals to mate. When I do the crossover I'll get 2 children where both together have 50% of surviving. So far so good. I start the mutation, and everything's ok.. Now when I start choosing the Next generation, I see that I have a big number of children (in this case, 4950 if you wanna know). Now the thing is, every time I run GA, if I send all the children to the next generation, the number of individuals per generation will increase exponentially. So there must be a way of choosing the children to fulfill a new generation without getting out of this range of the initial population. What I'm asking here is if there is anyway of choosing the children to fill the new generations **OR** should I choose somehow (and maybe reduce) the parents to mate so I don't get so many children in the end."}
{"_id": "65707", "title": "Ruby Koans: depth and usefulness?", "text": "Several people have suggested Ruby Koans to me over just following a book, and this seems like a much better prospect. As there is no question regarding the entirety of Ruby Koans, what do SO users think about it? Is it mostly just syntax, or can one learn much more from solving them? :)"}
{"_id": "65706", "title": "Examples of concurrent iterating scenarios needed", "text": "I'm trying to wrap my head around different concurrency solutions to several threads iterating over the same collection but I'm having difficulty coming up with good realistic (but preferably easy to model) scenarios to code against. I'm looking for realistic scenarios for:   1. A scenario where several threads can iterate over a collection simultaneously and lock each item as it comes to it and do some modification, item's can't be visible in a partially updated state   2. A scenario where different threads try to iterate over a collection but only one at a time should be allowed to   3. A scenario where several threads might iterate over a collection for reading, but only one thread might iterate for writing Any other nice concurrency iterating scenarios you might come up with are welcome as well :) thanks!"}
{"_id": "65705", "title": "How to Code Faster (Without Sacrificing Quality)", "text": "I've been a professional coder for a several years. The comments about my code have generally been the same: writes great code, well-tested, but _could be faster_. So **how do I become a faster coder,** without sacrificing quality? For the sake of this question, I'm going to limit the scope to C#, since that's primarily what I code (for fun) -- or Java, which is similar enough in many ways that matter. Things that I'm already doing:   * Write the minimal solution that will get the job done   * Write a slew of automated tests (prevents regressions)   * Write (and use) reusable libraries for all kinds of things   * Use well-known technologies where they work well (eg. Hibernate)   * Use design patterns where they fit into place (eg. Singleton) These are all great, but I don't feel like my speed is increasing over time. I _do_ care, because if I can do something to increase my productivity (even by 10%), that's 10% faster than my competitors. (Not that I have any.) Besides which, I've consistently gotten this feeback from my managers -- whether it was small-scale Flash development or enterprise Java/C++ development. **Edit:** There seem to be a lot of questions about what I mean by fast, and how I know I'm slow. Let me clarify with some more details. I worked in small and medium-sized teams (5-50 people) in various companies over various projects and various technologies (Flash, ASP.NET, Java, C++). The observation of my managers (which they told me directly) is that I'm \"slow.\" Part of this is because a significant number of my peers sacrificed quality for speed; they wrote code that was buggy, hard to read, hard to maintain, and difficult to write automated tests for. My code generally is well-documented, readable, and testable. At Oracle, I would consistently solve bugs slower than other team-members. I know this, because I would get comments to that effect; this means that other (yes, more senior and experienced) developers could do my work in less time than it took me, at nearly the same quality (readability, maintainability, and testability). Why? What am I missing? How can I get better at this? My end goal is simple: if I can make product X in 40 hours today, and I can improve myself somehow so that I can create the same product at 20, 30, or even 38 hours tomorrow, that's what I want to know -- how do I get there? What process can I use to continually improve? I had thought it was about reusing code, but that's not enough, it seems."}
{"_id": "150403", "title": "Why most job offerings are for a <language here> developer, rather than a developer in general?", "text": "**In an ideal world:** In an excellent article Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice, Patrick McKenzie explains, among other things, that language doesn't matter:   * A developer is a person who solves problems, in general. A developer is not a person who writes code in a specific language.   * Businesses don't care about the languages you know. If they need to hire a developer for a project written in a specific language, and they have a candidate who is highly experienced but never wrote a line of code in this language, he would still be hired. According to my experience both as a developer and as a person who had to hire other developers, the observation is very similar:   * The N years experience in Java or N years experience in C# doesn't matter. **What matters is that the candidate knows how to solve problems, knows the difference between spaghetti code and clean code with well-thought architecture, etc.**   * I don't care about the languages you used before. **For a C# project, I'll rather hire a professional developer who spent his life writing Java, Python and Ruby on Rails code** rather than a beginner who knows only C#, and knows it badly.   * **The knowledge and the experience you gain using one language is mostly reusable in any other language.** An experienced developer who used Ruby on Rails for web development and spent the rest of his career writing Java desktop applications using Oracle fits perfectly well for an ASP.NET MVC project using Microsoft SQL Server. Because **this person already knows everything she need for this job** , aside a few specific things and syntax differences. On the other hand, a person who have done just a few ASP.NET MVC small websites doesn't fit at all, because she may not completely understand the MVC architecture, may know know what is SQL profiling, and may lack some other essential knowledge. Don't tell me that I'm unable to fix a small problem with a PHP website which uses CodeIgniter just because I never used CodeIgniter before. **In practice:** In practice, when I search for freelance jobs and when I see the job offerings in general, they are very language-specific. Some would search for a PHP developer with two years experience in Magento. Others will be searching for a person with VB.NET experience of at least three years, and if you send them a resum\u00e9 mentioning that you've done C# development for six years, but with no mention of VB.NET, they will not bother to answer. If they ask for a person with an experience with Firebird, they will not listen about your ten years experience with Oracle. Why there is such difference between the theory and what Patrick McKenzie and I describe as being common sense, and the real world of job offerings?"}
{"_id": "121983", "title": "What web oriented language would work best with binary data?", "text": "I want to create a service where people can upload files. However, since file storage costs money, I want to compress the files so they take less space. I would want to write my own compression algorithm, however, PHP doesn't have good ways to handle binary data (which is needed for many compression algorithms). So I wondered, what would be a better language to create such a website in? I have knowledge of PHP (and Javascript, HTML and CSS) but no experience with other things like Ruby, Perl, Python, and other web development languages."}
{"_id": "158231", "title": "Modern implementation of Spring Remoting or EJB3", "text": "Im working on a \"what is possible with the latest and greatest\" prototype. One major issue that has been a big thorn in the side of myself and my AS/400 admin is when the existing system spins up, there are 35 individual applications, that each connect to 8 databases, and run a connection pool of 5 connections per. for you math wizards out there, thats 1400 individual database connections to the server on startup and over the course of a typical day maybe 40 are ever used. What I would like to do in this prototype is move all database functions to a central library (api). From that point, I would like to deploy this API individually and have the 35 applications simply open service classes remotely and pass objects back and forth. end result being the applications no longer have to create database connections, they simply call remote methods and we can tune the central api accordingly to handle the load. Back in the day, EJB3 would have been the way to go. the integration with security policies is nice, but i always had performance issues with it. Spring remoting running hessian looks promising, seeing im using spring everywhere else. but it has been YEARS since i have had to do anything like this so i was wondering what you guys suggest to use to accomplish this. thanks"}
{"_id": "119404", "title": "prism and multiple screens", "text": "OK - I am studying Prism a little because of a \"free weekend\" offer on Pluralsight. As this is proving too complex for me, I went to the Prism book and looked at the forward, and this is what it said: > What comes after \u201cHello, World?\u201d > > WPF and Silverlight developers are blessed with an abundance of excellent > books... There\u2019s no lack of tutorials on Model-View-ViewModel ... But they > stop short of the guidance you need to deliver a non-trivial application in > full. > > Your first screen goes well. You add a second screen and a third. Because > you started your solution with the built-in \u201cNavigation Application > Template,\u201d adding new screens feels like hanging shirts on a closet rod. You > are on a roll. Until the harsh reality of real application requirements sets > in. > > As it happens, your application has 30 screens not three. There\u2019s no room on > that closet rod for 30 screens. Some screens are modal pop-ups; you don\u2019t > navigate to a pop-up. Screens become interdependent such that user activity > in one screen triggers changes that propagate throughout the UI. Some > screens are optional; others are visible only to authorized users. Some > screens are permanent, while other screens can be opened and closed at will. > You discover that navigating back to a previously displayed screen creates a > new instance. That\u2019s not what you expected and, to your horror, the prior > instance is gone along with the user\u2019s unsaved changes. Now the issue is, I don't relate to this description. I've never been a UI programmer, but same as everyone else I'm using Windows apps such as MS- Office, and web sites such as Amazon, Facebook and StackExchange. And I look at these and I don't see many \"so many screens\" issues! Indeed, the only applications having many windows I can think of is Visual Studio. Maybe also Visio, a little. But take Word - You have a ribbon and a main window. Or take Facebook: You have those lists on the left (Favorites, Lists, Groups etc.), the status middle, the adds and then the Contacts sidebar. But it's only one page. Of course, I understand that in enterprise scenarios there are dashboad applications where multiple segments of the screen are updated from multiple non-related services. This I dig. But other scenarios? So - What am I missing? What is the \"multiple screens\" monster Pirsm is supposed to be the silver bullet solution for? Shoud I invest in studying Prism in addition to learning WPF or ASP.NET MVC?"}
{"_id": "214272", "title": "How can I handle clock hands using doubles that suffers at most O(log n) corrupt bits at nth frame of display?", "text": "I presently have a clock app that calculates from scratch at every iteration. This means O(1) corrupt bits in my doubles and heavy object creation and deletion as well. I am wary of running indefinite calculations with doubles or any other floats because O(n) corrupt bits normally accompany every step. I would like to know if there is an alternate way (in an iOS app) to transform and position clock hands with O(1), or maybe O(log n), corrupt bits after n steps. In particular, I was wondering what the corruption would be for \"At each step, rotate each hand back to the zero position, meaning an affine rotation transformation of -1 * the last rotation the hand received, and then rotate forward by the new angle the hand should have at this step.\" In Objective-C's floating point arithmetic, is it ever not the case (excluding exceptions like a value indicating a number is corrupt) that x - x != 0.0 exactly? The cases I've seen illustrating floating point corruption bits include Python saying that 1.1 + 1.1 + 1.1 - 3.3 != 0.0; I haven't seen textbook examples of the form x - x != 0.0. This is not exactly the question of whether a raster image transformed by angle x and then by angle -x is its original self; it may be that the preceding suggestion would work fine for O(1) error on angles but usual corruption in the image drawn and transformed. What is the minimum \"corruption complexity\", meaning fewest corrupt bits at end of n calculations, for rendering a clock? Are there O(1) or O(log n) approaches? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "214277", "title": "Is there a tool to generate multi-goal procedural instructions?", "text": "**As a user:** When I have good instructions to follow I'm sure I could do just about anything. With poor instructions I end up frustrated, wasting time and probably giving up. The type of instruction I see most is the procedure. I use multiple operating systems with different tools, so the type of procedure I usually see I call multi-goal procedures. Please let me know if there is a more correct or better term for these! I'm sure you have encountered multi-goal procedures like this before:               How to install MegaWidget for Linux      1. Download and install foo library      2. Read note below about foo      3. Download bar source      4. Compile and install bar      5. Download MegaWidget source      6. Compile and install MegaWidget          Windows installation      1. Follow steps 1, 2 and 3 above      2. Download yet_another_cross_platform_build_system and install it      3. Edit the configuration file for bar and change X to Y      4. See step 4 above. Make sure to use yet_another_cross_platform_build_system though.      5. See step 5 above.          Windows 64bit installation      Follow the 32bit Windows instructions, but you also have to install Super64Library before you install bar.          About foo:      The foo library exists only to cause you pain and suffering.          Report from users:       MegaWidget doesn't work with Super64Library version 3.x. Use version 2.x instead.      (See here for a real example of what I want to avoid) I see this all the time. Instructions that reference other instructions or items outside of the procedure. Required information that isn't referenced where it's needed. Procedures that don't end at the target/goal. ARGH! In my contrived example the Linux procedure is clear enough but the Windows instructions are progressively awful. As a user I want ONE clear procedure to accomplish my goal. If I wanted to follow the Windows 64bit instructions then they should look like this:               How to install MegaWidget for Windows 64bit      1. Download and install foo library.         NOTE: The foo library exists only to cause you pain and suffering.      2. Download and install the Super64Library         NOTE: You need Super64Library 2.x, not the newer 3.x version.      3. Download yet_another_cross_platform_build_system and install it      4. Download bar source      5. Edit the configuration file for bar and change X to Y      6. Use yet_another_cross_platform_build_system to compile and install bar      7. Download MegaWidget source.      8. Use yet_another_cross_platform_build_system to compile and install MegaWidget      The procedure that will lead me to the desired goal has everything contained within that procedure. * * * **TL;DR** : Most mutli-goal procedures are rubbish and hard to follow. **As a developer:** I am guilty of writing crap like this too. I no longer want to be someone who provides terrible instructions to my users. However writing, updating and maintaining mutil-goal procedures in a flat text file is difficult and prone to error. I need a tool that can generate the procedures for me. Perhaps I could create a flowchart like this... ![Gliffy mockup](http://i.stack.imgur.com/STemz.png) ... and the tool would export the complete procedures for the three goals. **Does such a thing exist?**"}
{"_id": "2331", "title": "Which language features are considered harmful?", "text": "Please, **explain why** and list which languages have the (mis)feature implemented As far you know. Post what you consider a harmful feature, not what you dislike."}
{"_id": "250249", "title": "Hash function for progressive changes", "text": "I am looking for a hashing algorithm that works like this. I start with a text file, and compute its hash. Now I know that I will remove one character at, say, position 67 and this character is a \"m\", and I would like to compute the new hash without reapplying the hash function to the full text, but instead using the hash of the full text and the knowledge that I removed 'm' from position 67. If I readd the \"m\" in the same place, I will again recompute with the same methodology and get the same initial hash. What is the technical name for such hash functions, so that I can search some pointers around? a CRC is not what I need I guess, because (afaik) a CRC works on a stream addition, not on arbitrary changes throughout the initial data."}
{"_id": "13623", "title": "Does giving a developer a slower development machine result in faster/more efficient code?", "text": "Suppose I give my developers a screaming fast machine. WPF-based VS2010 loads very quickly. The developer then creates a WPF or WPF/e application that runs fine on his box, but much slower in the real world. This question has two parts... 1) If I give a developer a slower machine, does that mean that the resulting code may be faster or more efficient? 2) What can I do to give my developers a fast IDE experience, while giving 'typical' runtime experiences? **Update:** For the record, I'm preparing my even-handed response to management. This isn't my idea, and you folks are helping me correct the misguided requests of my client. Thanks for giving me more ammunition, and references to where and when to approach this. I've +1'ed valid use cases such as:   \\- specific server side programming optimizations   \\- test labs   \\- the possibly buying a better server instead of top of the line graphics cards"}
{"_id": "154524", "title": "Technology/Techniques to prevent offensive images on a website", "text": "I am planing to build a website which one of its main features is the usage of pictures. I was wondering what existing techniques are used to prevent offensive pictures (i.e pornography) to get loaded by users. i.e What does Facebook or Pinterest use? As well I would like to know what your recommendations would be to control offensive pictures to get uploaded to the site (OpenSource tools maybe..) Taking into consideration this is a personal project and will be developed with a very small budget. Thank you"}
{"_id": "250243", "title": "Print the next smallest from 2^i * 5^j where i,j >= 0", "text": "I was asked this question during a technical phone screening recently and didn't do well. The question is included verbatim below. > Generate `{2^i * 5^j | i,j >= 0}` sorted collection. Continuously print the > next smallest value. > > Example: `{ 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10...}` \"Next smallest\" makes me think a min-heap is involved, but I didn't really know where to go from there and no assistance was provided by the interviewer. Does anyone have advice on how to solve such a problem?"}
{"_id": "250240", "title": "Calling same method on different object - Recursion?", "text": "I have an object that contains a reference to another object of the same type. Example in PHP:               class A {         protected $child;         public function __construct(A $child = null) {             $this->child = $child;         }              public function go() {             if($this->child) {                 $this->child->go();             }         }     }          $a = new A(new A());     $a->go();      Is the `go` method considered a recursive method? I can see it both ways myself, and I'm not sure if there is a 'correct' answer or not, but I assume that there is."}
{"_id": "201450", "title": "What are considered the definitive references for bootstrapping one's client-side expertise?", "text": "I'm a server-side junkie, and by that I mean I spend time writing code that's not visible to anyone. I'm interested in rounding out my skillset and becoming more self-sufficient with writing full-stack webapps. But, I find it difficult to work with the the sort of 'organicity' of client- side html tech. I know there is no substitute for time and experience, but if an experienced client-side dev was starting over from scratch, what would he read/do? EDIT: an example of an answer that I'd give for server-side: > Learn the best practices of the language you're working in, eg. for java, > read 'effective java'. Learn fundamentals of algorithms, application design > concepts that are useful in any language, two good sources are 'design > patterns', 'SICP'. I'm not looking for: 'Learn CSS, HTML and Javascript.' I am looking for something like: > Intent, rationale, concepts of X are well-explained in Y. Framework Z is a > good example and the source-code is enlightening and well-documented."}
{"_id": "201456", "title": "Messages from UI or from subs?", "text": "I am designing a small application that is really justa gui for a command line using vb.net. Question 1. Should messages(msgbox) to the user come from the UI or should messages come from subs and functions that the UI calls. Question 2. Should subs and functions throw new exceptions to the UI or should they be containd in the sub/function Question 3. Should if statements be used at the UI level or should users input be passed to subs and functions for if statement processing ?"}
{"_id": "193275", "title": "Best way to clear balances between payers and payees", "text": "Say some 20 people go to a shop and everyone buys something. When it comes to paying, 5 of them pay the complete amount of 10,000$ split unequally between them. Since everyone bought different things they all owe different amounts to the payers. Now there are multiple ways the payers can clear the balances with the payees precisely 20 to the power 20. My question is on what technical basis should the payers and payees contact each other for clearance? All the solutions can not be equally good, or are they? One of the ways of clearing would be to find payers and payees with equal amount so that they can cancel out each other thus reducing the total number of transfers. **UPDATE:**   1. People can transfer arbitrary amounts to anyone.   2. Minimizing total number of transfers is the main goal.    3. A payee can not pay an amount greater that what he owes and become secondary payer.   4. The output should be a list of suggested transfers. A suggested transfer would look like this `{FromUser: a, ToUser: b, ClearanceAmount: 100}`   5. The payers don't know who holds their debt.   6. The payees debt can be split across multiple payers.   7. The payees knows how much each payer paid from the total amount."}
{"_id": "56813", "title": "Do we learn better with video or text or is it personal preference?", "text": "I am constantly looking for new ways to learn and obviously in this quest it's important to understand how we learn best. As programmers and developers, do we learn best with videos or actually reading text or does it depend on the person in question? Thanks! ~Daniel"}
{"_id": "221502", "title": "Program unable to write data (read-only file) and losing it -- a bug or a feature?", "text": "I found, that some very famous app (I'm not disclosing name intentionally) has a \"problem\", when writing meta-data of a file and the file turns out to be read-only. Program doesn't handle that too gracefully. It does not check, whether a file is read only upon _opening_ meta data dialog box. Thus, it allows the user to fill out (quite long) form, enter quite large amount of data without even checking if it will be able to save it. It only checks, if the file is read-only, when _saving_ meta-data (attempting to do so). And if it finds that the file is actually read-only, it only displays a warning to a user and... **closes the dialog box** , thus causing user to lose data. For me, this is an obvious bug, that it is beyond any discussion. Since creator of that program, is my e-friend, I've immediately contacted him, writing (as usual) \" _Hey, just spotted another bug in your program_ \". His reply simply shocked me, as he claimed and started to convince me, that **this is not a bug, it can be only treated as an additional feature, that user _may_ want** (talking about my proposition to add some warning, that file is read- only and thus writing meta-data is impossible). He even went as far (I think) as writing: > read-only file is a user problem, not a bug in a program It was Saturday, a working and tiring day for me. I thought to myself, that maybe there isn't enough hot coffee in my blood system, so I contacted some of the developers, that I've been working with on a various projects. All the replies were the same: \" _A certain bug, nothing to discuss further_ \". I replied to that app's author and my friend, giving him a dumbest example I could come with: > Imagine yourself, that you are writing something in Word, save the document, > Word tells you, that it can't write file, because it is read-only and... > closes the document, losing everything you wrote since last save. Would you > called that an extra feature and no data loss? (...) > > And you call it a feature and my problem? I know many people ready to > crucify you for such feature! :) In the reply to that, I heard, that the comparison is not very good, because I don't write in meta-data so many text like in a Word document, so the \"loss\" is irrelevant. I'm **completely lost** , with both hands down! As I said, for me this is a certain bug beyond any discussion. But maybe I slept over some radical revolution in the way, how we define a bug, so maybe someone would kindly enlighten me about that. Who of us two is right, and if it is program's author -- then why?"}
{"_id": "60282", "title": "Has there been research into programming linguistics?", "text": "Programming languages are formal languages, but unlike many formalisms, they also have certain inherent _meaning_ defined by their operational semantics, or, in the case of markup languages, presentation semantics. And programming languages, though indeed formal, are very similar to natural languages, in terms of the communication they allow. While the development of programming languages is artificial, the natural- language processes of evolution, borrowing, intermixing, and mutation all have fairly clear artificial counterparts. So I'm wondering: has there ever been any large-scale, in-depth research into the evolution and behaviour of programming languages _from a linguist's perspective_ ?"}
{"_id": "57148", "title": "Most underestimated programming tool", "text": "We have many great tools which helps a lot when programming, such as good programmers text editors, IDEs, debuggers, version control systems etc. Some of the tools are more or less \"must have\" tools for getting the job done (e.g. compilers). There are still always tools which do help a lot, but still don't get so much attention, for various reasons, for instance, when they were released, they were ahead of their time and now are more or less forgotten. What type of programming tool do you think is _the_ most underestimated one? Motivate your answer."}
{"_id": "63955", "title": "What's the difference between a \"control\" and an \"element\"?", "text": "In web development, you often hear the terms \"element\" and \"control\". The term \"element\" is often associated with HTML, and you hear the term \"control\" most often in Asp.NET development... but the w3c refers to controls in the Forms in HTML documents recommendation, blurring the lines a little. What is a control and what is an element? How are they the same and how are they different? Is one a generalization of the other?"}
{"_id": "63956", "title": "C# experience for students", "text": "Where is it possible to get a real experience with C# and .net programming? Open source teams usually don't want to deal with newbies, making projects with other students is problematic too, because of the lack of volunteers. So, what's the solution for this problem?"}
{"_id": "63952", "title": "Micro-optimizing - BAD vs Game Development", "text": "In game development there is a lot of C/C++, in business applications C#. I have seen C/C++ devs express concern over how a single line of code translates to assembly. In .NET some go into IL, rarely. In C#, \"micro-optimizing\" is frowned upon, rare and usually a waste of time. This does not appear to be the case in game development. What specifically creates this inconsistency? Do games constantly push the limits of hardware? If yes, as hardware improves should we expect higher level languages to take-over the gaming industry? _I'm not looking for a debate on the feasibility of C# as a game dev lang. I know it's been done to some degree. Focus on Micro-optimization. Specifically, the difference between Game Dev vs Applications dev._ **UPDATE**   By Game I mean modern, largescale development. E.G. MMORPG's, Xbox, PS3, Wii..."}
{"_id": "235096", "title": "How to avoid excessive method overloading?", "text": "We have quite a lot of places in the source code of our application , where one class has many methods with same names and different parameters. Those methods always have all the parameters of a 'previous' method plus one more. It's a result of long evolution (legacy code) and this thinking (I believe): \" _There is a method M that does thing A. I need to do A + B. OK, I know ... I will add a new parameter to M, create a new method for that, move code from M to the new method with one more parameter, do the A + B over there and call the new method from M with a default value of the new parameter._ \" Here is an example (in Java-like-language):               class DocumentHome {            (...)            public Document createDocument(String name) {         // just calls another method with default value of its parameter         return createDocument(name, -1);       }            public Document createDocument(String name, int minPagesCount) {         // just calls another method with default value of its parameter         return createDocument(name, minPagesCount, false);       }            public Document createDocument(String name, int minPagesCount, boolean firstPageBlank) {         // just calls another method with default value of its parameter         return createDocument(name, minPagesCount, false, \"\");       }            public Document createDocument(String name, int minPagesCount, boolean firstPageBlank, String title) {         // here the real work gets done         (...)       }            (...)     }      I feel like this is wrong. Not only that we can't keep adding new parameters like this forever, but the code hard to extend/change because of all the dependencies between methods. Here are few ways how to do this better:   1. Introduce a parameter object:              class DocumentCreationParams {            String name;       int minPagesCount;       boolean firstPageBlank;       String title;            (...)     }          class DokumentHome {            public Document createDocument(DocumentCreationParams p) {         // here the real work gets done         (...)       }     }        2. Set the parameters to the `DocumentHome` object before we call `createDocument()`                @In       DocumentHome dh = null;            (...)            dh.setName(...);       dh.setMinPagesCount(...);       dh.setFirstPageBlank(...);            Document newDocument = dh.createDocument();        3. Separate the work into different methods and call them as needed:                @In       DocumentHome dh = null;            Document newDocument = dh.createDocument();       dh.changeName(newDocument, \"name\");       dh.addFirstBlankPage(newDocument);       dh.changeMinPagesCount(new Document, 10);      **My questions:**   1. Is the described problem really a problem?   2. What do you think about suggested solutions? Which one would you prefer (based on your experience)?   3. Can you think of any other solution?"}
{"_id": "235095", "title": "What do we call the process of changing hard-coded codes into soft-coded codes?", "text": "Is there a specific term to call the process of modifying hard-coded codes into soft-coded codes? I have to report what I am doing to the Project manager, shall I just put \"modifying hard-coded codes into soft-coded codes\"? Example of \"hard-coded codes\"               int random(){     return 42;     }      Example of \"soft-coded codes\"               int random(){     return Random.nextInt();     }      hard coded codes might fulfill requirements for a set of inputs, but it is not flexible. EDIT: Accepted as Code Refactoring."}
{"_id": "235094", "title": "Ensure that each class has only one responsibility, why?", "text": "According to Microsoft documentation, the Wikipedia SOLID principe article, or most IT architects we must ensure that each class has only one responsibility. I would like to know why, because if everybody seems to agree with this rule nobody seems to agree about the reasons of this rule. Some cite better maintenance, some say it provides easy testing or makes the class more robust, or security. What is correct and what does it actually mean? Why does it make maintenance better, testing easier or the code more robust?"}
{"_id": "191086", "title": "XML Documentation for IoC Classes", "text": "I'm working on an application that uses Inversion of Control to achieve loose coupling between the Data Access and Business Layers. Having an ILoanApplicationRepository and a LoanApplicationRepository, where should I store the XML Comments that document the class members? on the interface or on the concrete class? should I do it on both?"}
{"_id": "97423", "title": "Are there any real benifits to a DAO layer?", "text": "When I first started using Hibernate I heard about all the joy of using a DAO layer. Initially it made sense for my problem: I was going to experiment with Hibernate and later experiment with NoSQL and/or XML for experience. It made sense at the time Before I go any farther I want to say that my current DAO layer isn't a \"true\" dao layer. Its more of a bunch of data objects backed by interfaces and a \"Controller\" that generates new objects, queries, and cleans up when the application exits. Now though I'm picking up Spring the DAO layer is starting to make less and less sense. NoSQL is neat and all, but I'm really starting to question if its worth it. I'm not even sure if my data is fit for NoSQL, it works quite well in a relational database. The horrible XML storage seems like a hurdle I'll cross later. Besides there's a huge of code I would need to support for other storage options: My custom \"Controller\" + a zillion Spring interfaces to implement + other stuff that I'm missing. What's preventing me though from just ripping it out and merging the core and hibernate dao modules is that there's a few other projects that have a DAO layer (a real one) with only Spring and Hibernate. That means that they have all the interfaces, all the abstract classes, all the complexity with only those two frameworks. Since I'm just starting out in Spring+Hibernate world I'm hesitant to go against what others are doing with so little experience. **Question:** Are their other advantages that I'm missing with having a DAO layer? And why would other projects have a DAO layer when their only using one database?"}
{"_id": "64076", "title": "How can I learn about Distributed Software Systems as efficiently as possible?", "text": "I'm trying to learn cloud-computing, especially the idea of distributed operations (Grid Computing?) for a project I'm working on. We'll need to perform distributed fault-tolerant operations over a very large data set, which we will also be responsible for storing and maintaining in an optimized way. If I'm trying to learn from books or white-papers, what types of things should I look out for and focus on to help me gain this knowledge as efficiently and effectively as possible?"}
{"_id": "153171", "title": "What is the benefit of writing to a temp location, And then copying it to the intended destination?", "text": "I am writing an application that works with satellite images, and my boss asked me to look at some of the commercial applications, and see how they behave. I found a strange behavior and then as I was looking, I found it in other standard applications as well. These programs first write to the temp folder, and then copy it to the intended destination. Example: 7zip first extracts to the temp folder, and then copies the extracted data to the location that you had asked it to extract the data to. I see several problems with this approach:   1. The temp folder might not have enough space, while the intended location might have that much space.   2. If it is a large file, it can take a non-negligible amount of time for the copy operation. I thought about it a lot, but I couldn't see one single positive point to doing this. Am I missing something, or is there a real benefit to doing this?"}
{"_id": "116094", "title": "Domain Lookup API", "text": "I am looking to incorporate a domain name lookup facility in my website to make sure if a domain is available or not. The only api I could find on the net is http://www.domaintools.com/api/docs/domain-search/ . But this is paid. Is there any other api available which might be cheaper / free. I am working with php, jquery Thanking you"}
{"_id": "116096", "title": "What to do with .git folder and data in Xcode?", "text": "I am using Hg for my development. Recently, I upgraded to Lion and Xcode 4.2 and I have created a Xcode project in my source tree. The Xcode by default uses Git and created .git folder in the project folder. Being able to do versioning in Xcode is a plus but it is sort of redundant with both Git and Hg. The problem is, should I check in the .git (folder and files) in the Xcode project folder or not? Or should I just switch off Git in Xcode and delete .git folder? Thanks."}
{"_id": "116093", "title": "Why should one avoid cross-team (circular) merges in multiple-team version control?", "text": "![a cross-stream, or cross-team merge](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OIZ4a.png) Please excuse the artwork, I know it looks like an elongated imperial shuttle, but it's the way I visualise a multiple team (or multiple stream) version control strategy. The central core, is the trunk (or master) repository. If there were lots more streams you can imagine more planes projecting out from the trunk, in which various branching and merging is taking place within those streams (the thinner lines). The red line shows * _A_ *lice from accounting wanting to take a piece of code that * _B_ *ob from the backups team has only just forged (she needs it urgently for some reason that I can't think of). Actually, it's not like a one line change that she can just do herself. Instead you can consider that accounting are heavily blocked and need a large change set from Backups to continue. Now as I understand it, this is against best-practice, and the changes required should go through the trunk, and Alice should pick them up that way, rather than take the short cut illustrated (a version control wormhole). However, although I have seen this stated in various places, I have never seen some deep, lengthy and well-justified reasons why a cross-stream (or circular?) merge is something not to allow. The only thing I can think of is that I guess it can lead to greater manual conflict resolution. So questions are:   * Why is allowing a cross-stream merge bad? (I need some well-defined reasons to convince my various-minded colleagues why it shouldn't be done)   * Are there any justifiable reasons to go against best-practice?   * What if Alice's team is reaching a release deadline, can there be an exception?"}
{"_id": "52665", "title": "Versioning millions of files with distributed SCM", "text": "I'm looking into the feasibility of using off-the-shelf distributed SCMs such as Git or Mercurial to manage millions of XML files. Each file would be a commercial transaction, such as a purchase order, that would be updated perhaps 10 times during the lifecycle of the transaction until it is \"done\" and changes no more. And by \"manage\", I mean that the SCM would be used to not just version the files, but also to replicate them to other machines for redundancy and transfer of IP. Lets suppose, for the sake of example, that a goal is to provide good performance if it was handling the volume of orders that Amazon.com claimed to have at its peak in December 2010: about 150,000 orders per minute. We're expecting the system to be distributed over many servers in order to get reasonable performance. We're also planning to use solid-state drives exclusively. There is a reason why we don't want to use an RDBMS for primary storage, but it's a bit beyond the scope of this question. Does anyone have first-hand experience with the performance of distributed SCMs under such a load, and what strategies were used? Open-source preferred, since the final product is to be FOSS, too."}
{"_id": "102260", "title": "How can I start shipping code?", "text": "I have just started learning how to program using LPTHW, and as my skill level develops I would like to start shipping code whether or not it's ready to be shipped, just to get into the habit of always shipping code, and not having the fear of shipping code. Is there are a beginner friendly guide to shipping code?"}
{"_id": "210597", "title": "Who invented the otpauth:// URI scheme?", "text": "It seems really simple, but who invented the commonly-used `otpauth://` scheme (used by Google Authenticator and other TOTP soft tokens by scanning QR codes)? When?"}
{"_id": "152809", "title": "Why Does a Developer Need a \"Native\" Internet Access?", "text": "## Setup We have a situation where developers connect to their development boxes via Citrix terminals (that are installed on their laptops), which brings them into a Gnome session (e.g. Linux), where they do all the coding. ## Problem Until now developers had Internet Access from those Citrix environments + installed Firefox browser. Starting right now the Internet Access [from that environment] is taken away. Developers still however have the access via their IE9 browser (strictly IE9) from their laptops. This of course makes the whole development process a lot less productive. At the same time, it is _extremely_ difficult to come up with a solid explanation, reasons on why the productivity suffers from switching environments (on the same laptop) in order to use the Internet. ## Question I'm turning to SO community to help us find those reasons that can convince decision makers to give Internet Access back to developers [from the system they develop on]."}
{"_id": "235541", "title": "How to use Redis properly on big object", "text": "I have a relatively big object that is the wrapper of a HashMap that has 200 K entries. This HashMap wrapper, after being serialized, would take 67 Megabytes. Because this big object is the result of an expensive parsing from disk, I would like to store that in an in-memory database (read Redis). My first approach is to serialize this object into a byte sequence, store that as a single entry of a big value in Redis. When I need I would read that entry, deserialize it into the original big object to pass around in my Java program. But it would take 30 seconds just to convert the byte array into the original big object. I consider it slow. What do you recommend to speed up this ? Here is the code to convert byte into object               public static <T> T deserialize(byte[] bytes, Class<T> clz)     {         try {                ByteArrayInputStream bos = new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes);                ObjectINputStream in = new ObjectInputStream(bos);                return clz.cast(in.readObject());            } catch (Exception e)                e.printStrackTrace();                return null;     }"}
{"_id": "251112", "title": "Can I \u201cjust\u201d create my own media type for a proprietary web/application communication", "text": "I read this question but it doesn't fully answer mine. In the linked question, the OP asks what he must do to have his custom media type registered. I do not need that. All I'm asking is, that if I am correct in assuming that, technically, all I have to do to create a custom media type is to, well.. just use it in my communication? Basically, what I want to do is that my website offers a download of a file, described as `application/x-my-custom-thing`. On the client, the user has files ending with `.my-custom-thing` set as to open with the application I ship along. So, what should happen is that, when the user clicks on the link, my application opens and reads the file and does stuff with it. Are media types even the proper use case for this? Or, should I maybe \"create\" my own protocol in the sense of `mycustomthing://example.com/the-file-to-use`? Will that work with every (reasonably modern) browser?"}
{"_id": "152802", "title": "Is it bad practice to use an interface for categorization only?", "text": "For example: Say I have classes `A`, `B`, `C`. I have two interfaces, lets call them `IAnimal` and `IDog`. `IDog` inherits from `IAnimal`. `A` and `B` are `IDog`s, while `C` is not, but it is an `IAnimal`. The important part is that `IDog` supplies no additional functionality. It is only used to allow `A` and `B`, but not `C`, to be passed as an argument to certain methods. Is this bad practice?"}
{"_id": "152800", "title": "What is an \u201cimplementation plan\u201d?", "text": "I was recently given the task of creating an implementation plan document. When I asked for an example of one that I could look at, I was told to look at the Project Plan that had already been created an use that as a base. I'm still a bit confused on what I should be creating. Can anyone point me to a good example out there or to something that explains what this is and more importantly the details about what it should contain."}
{"_id": "251117", "title": "What is the best way for a programmer to handle being code reviewed?", "text": "I am fairly new to code review, but I have been coding for years during my PhD - which doesn't always make you a good programmer! If the reviewer changes your code and goes through it with you line-by-line, what do you do if you disagree? Sometimes you made choice X and the reviewer changes it to Y, and you had Y in your mind but decided not to do it because of the disadvantages, but the reviewer asserts that those disadvantages are not important. Should you verbalise your disagreement, or just not and listen to them? Its difficult if you are not good at accepting criticism, and if the reviewer is a more senior person in the organisation. It would not be good to come across as too defensive."}
{"_id": "220988", "title": "Design for a template class", "text": "I have an abstract class `abstract class MathFunc` that is used to implement the mathematical functions Rastrigin, Griewangk and Rosenbrock in their specific classes `final class Rastrigin extends MathFunc`, `final class Griewangk extends MathFunc` and `final class Rosenbrock extends MatjFunc`. This hierarchy of classes and how they are defined so far works flawlessly so I think there is no need to look for improvements on this area. Now I have to implement another class `Generation` that will have some `ArrayLists` in it but the thing is I need to have a Generation implementation for each mathematical function described above. So that I need something like:               ArrayList<Rastrigin> rast = new ArrayList<>();     ArrayList<Griewangk> grie = new ArrayList<>();     ArrayList<Rosenbrock> rose = new ArrayList<>();      Inside these lists I have some Rastrigin/Griewangk/Rosenbrock objects that I need to instantiate. I know from the past projects in C++ that I can use templates to specify a generic data type and I'm thinking that this is my solution. My implementation so far looks like this:               public class Generation <MathFunc> {         private final ArrayList<MathFunc> pop = new ArrayList<>();         private final ArrayList<MathFunc> nextpop = new ArrayList<>();         private final ArrayList<MathFunc> Crossover = new ArrayList<>();              Generation(MathFunc tp)         {             for(int i = 0; i < PopSize; i++)             {                 pop.add(tp);             }         }     }      But the problem is: can I use the abstract class to instantiate the objects that rely on it? Is there another way to do it? I'm quite confused about the usage of templates. But doing `Generation(Mathfunc tp)` seems a little weird to me since abstract classes are not instantiable."}
{"_id": "74421", "title": "Why would I care about the asymptotic growth of the lower bound of the worst case time/space?", "text": "In mathematics, there are notations for asymptotic lower bounds, upper bounds, and tight (within-a-constant-factor) bounds. When describing the growth of functions in general, it makes sense that all three might be relevant to some function or other. In algorithm analysis, asymptotic notation is usually used to describe the growth in time or space requirements. To me, it seems logical that I may be interested in the maximum, the minimum or the expected requirements. Ignoring the expected requirements, I might be interested in the lower bound of the best case (minimum space/time) or the upper bound of the worst case (maximum space/time). I can't imagine why I should ever be interested in the lower bound of the worst case or the upper bound of the best case. Since the lower bound is a kind of best case and the upper bound a kind of worst case, these seem like \"best case of the worst case\" and \"worst case of the best case\" mismatches to me. But on several occasions, I've had replies to answers/comments that suggest this may be a failure of imagination on my part. So - what is it that I'm failing to imagine? I won't consider a statement along the lines of \"it's quite common to say that the lower bound of the worst case of the blah algorithm is blah\" to answer the question, unless it also says why people care."}
{"_id": "220980", "title": "What if I have no good ideas to implement a feature?", "text": "I'm working on my own application and I'm stuck. I have to implement a feature but I can't find a good approach to implement this feature. I was thinking about it for a couple of days, and no good thoughts came. Searching the Internet didn't give me any inspiration. I need to move on, but I want to know, what's the best:   * Think more, wait more, and keep on searching for the best approach   * Stop wasting time and start with poor design, covering everything with tests What do you think? As I said before, I'm working on my own application. I don't have any deadlines, but I also want to finish coding the app asap."}
{"_id": "186014", "title": "More info about Poplar language originiating from Xerox Parc", "text": "Peter Weinberger in an interiview mentioned a language called Poplar > What\u2019s interesting is that at the same time that we were doing AWK, there > was a project at Xerox PARC called Poplar \u2026 maybe called Poplar. Anyway, > whatever it was called, there was this project at Xerox PARC, which had > fairly similar goals. That is they were going to take these files consisting > of a lot of characters and you break them apart in various ways and you > process them using some language and you pass them on. And they put a lot of > work into clever ideas. It was a functional programming language. ... And it > was supposed to be user friendly and in addition you wrote the program sort > of here and then you worked an example on the other side of the page and the > compiler checked that the program worked the example the same way you had. > So that you had some feeling for what the program was doing Is there more information about this language? Or it's just the Parc's internal project that never left their laboratories?"}
{"_id": "186010", "title": "How best to merge/sort/page through tons of JSON arrays?", "text": "Here's the scenario: Say you have millions of JSON documents stored as text files. Each JSON document is an array of \"activity\" objects, each of which contain a \"created_datetime\" attribute. What is the best way to merge/sort/filter/page through these activities via a web UI? For example, say we want to take a few thousand of the documents, merge them into a gigantic array, sort the array by the \"created_datetime\" attribute descending and then page through it 10 activities at a time. Also keep in mind that roughly 25% of these JSON documents are updated every day, and updates have to make it into the view within 5 minutes. My first thought is to parse all of the documents into an RDBMS table and then it would just be a simple query such as \"select top 10 name, created_datetime from Activity where user_id=12345 order by created_datetime desc\". Some have suggested I use NoSQL techniques such as hadoop or map/reduce instead. How exactly would this work? For more background, see: Why is NoSQL better for this scenario?"}
{"_id": "186013", "title": "How to dynamically add new posts once they are created", "text": "I am trying to design an application where users can make posts with Django on the backend. Right now I have to refresh the page with JavaScript every 20 or 30 seconds to check for new posts that might be available for that page. I was wondering if there are more effective ways to do this? Maybe with a JSON response? I am looking for a solution like Twitter, where they show how many new posts are available that are not on the page or even like on Facebook where they update the wall posts automatically. Is there a particular technology should I be researching in order make the updates more efficient?"}
{"_id": "95482", "title": "The difference between best practices and common sense?", "text": "There is a lot of conversation regarding best practices1 in software development. I've seen at least three major points get a lot of discussion both on SE and elsewhere:   * What qualifies as a best practice, and why?   * Are best practices even worth discussing in the first place, because it's reasonable to assert that no practice is a \"best\" practice?   * When should you forego a best practice -- or perhaps most best practices -- either because it doesn't seem applicable or because of external constraints (time, money, etc.) that make the trade-off impractical? Something that seems to come up far less often, but more than never, is a notion of **common sense** in software development. Recent experience has brought this notion to the front of my mind again. My initial impression is that it is a different discussion than best practices, but with perhaps some cross-pollination. When I think of common sense in general, I think of a set of rules that you've either picked up or been taught that give you a baseline to reason and make decisions. Following common sense is a good way to avoid you shooting your entire leg off. But beyond a pretty low baseline, common sense gives way to a need to make educated decisions, and educated decisions can even override common sense when the evidence seems compelling enough. I might be playing a little loose with the definition here, but I think it is close enough to spearhead my example. When I think of common sense in software development, I think of all of the rules of basic hygiene to prevent a codebase from rapidly decaying into an incomprehensible mess. As examples, things like: not using a single global structure to maintain and communicate state within a non-trivial program; not using variables/method/class names that are just random gibberish; things that probably resemble what we've come to call anti-patterns quite closely. Where applying best practices the practical analogue to learning patterns, applying common sense could be seen as the practical analogue of learning anti- patterns. With this in mind, I'd like to pose a few questions that seeing the answers of others for might help me reason my way through this. **Do others believe that there is a notion of common sense in software development? Would be interested knowing the reasoning either way. ** **If so, is it a notion worth discussing? Is it something we should push for as much as we sometimes do with best practices? Is it something worth pushing for even harder?** If the analogy to anti-patterns seems reasonable, the general rule is that anti-patterns are only employed if there is no other way, and even then only under very limited circumstances. **How flexible should one be in allowing a codebase to deviate from common sense?** It seems unreasonable that the answer is \"not at all,\" because sometimes expediency demands deviations. But, it seems like a different sort of argument than when to employ a \"best practice.\" Maybe it isn't; if you don't think so, I'd like to learn why. This is far more opened ended and maybe worthy of a follow-on question all its own, **what sorts of recommendations would you point at that seem like matters of common sense?** Other thoughts are also welcome. * * * 1Perhaps I would do better to call them \"commonly recurring domain patterns\", but the name \"best practices\" is common enough that everyone knows what they are, even if they don't agree that they are. If the \"best\" part bothers you, just imagine I replaced \"best practices\" with something less authoritative sounding."}
{"_id": "148788", "title": "Are nested loops always O(n^k)?", "text": "If I have a loop within another loop, yet I know the inner loop will only run once, will this algorithm still be O(n^2)?               For i = 1 to n do               For j = 1 to i do                    If (i==j) do                        For k = 1 to n                            {Do stuff}      The very inner loop will run at most 1 time, since `i` will only equal `j` once per iteration of the second loop. Is this still n^3?"}
{"_id": "108493", "title": "What are \"Metro apps\"?", "text": "While it is relatively new now (2011/09/15), are there any resources for explanations of Metro applications for Windows8? I've not seen anything at the moment that summarises an \"elevator pitch\" for them."}
{"_id": "148787", "title": "using dbus on Android", "text": "I would like to know if it is possible to use DBUS on Android using Java. From what I have been searching till now it appears like there is no DBUS programming support on Android. But then bluetooth on Android uses DBUS. I would like to confirm if it is actually the case. If so, is there a possibility that DBUS would be supported in the future."}
{"_id": "148783", "title": "What is the difference between Agile Modeling and the Agile Manifesto?", "text": "By searching for the different software development methods I found that there are two AM:   * Agile Modeling   * Agile Manifesto The problem is that I can't get the difference between them. If one is a part of another? or an update to the other?"}
{"_id": "42103", "title": "What are safe keys to remap in vim?", "text": "So far I've been trying to use Vim in as vanilla a configuration as possible, so as to save myself hassle when moving between machines. However, there are a few things I'd really like to bind keys, such as to shorten `\"_diwP` which I use often to delete the word under the cursor and replace it with one from the clipboard. Are there any particular keys that are conventionally reserved for user-defined mappings? The point of this question is mostly that I would like to avoid hassle later on when I decide to install some plugin or take my configuration files to vim on another OS and find that my key mappings clash with something else."}
{"_id": "42100", "title": "Is Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 usable as a developer workstation OS?", "text": "We're upgrading the RAM on our developer workstations and looking to move to a 64-bit OS. We've been using Windows 7 x86, but I'm wondering about using Server 2008 R2 x64 so that developers can use Hyper-V to virtualise different setups. Is anybody using Server 2008 R2 x64 as their workstation OS? If so, are there any issues running Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend 4 and so on?"}
{"_id": "198107", "title": "Way to allow inspection of java data model after exporting to file", "text": "I've refactored a program to remove its dependency on an sql database by storing all the state in a memory model. However the manager liked the ability to easily inspect the domain state just by doing an sql join/filter on the database at any time; and he wishes to maintain some similar domain inspection ability. We discussed having a call that dumps the model state to a file that can be inspected. There isn't that much state--it can all fit into memory--but the state is large enough that we need some mechanism to allow us to 'fetch' the child if a given parent better then manual inspection of the files. I need the best tool to make this doable. They are thinking of exporting everything to CSV to be read into a DB, which could work, but it seems off to be using a DB only for doing joins on data types. Plus, their old approach used Strings for joins that weren't guaranteed to be unique, and, with my addition of extra objects, thought would have to put into how to lay out the database fields to represent the new model objects (particularly child objects of parents). I've toyed with other ideas for this. One idea was to a CSV file and having some other program read in the CSV file and do 'sql like' joins, but haven't found a program that does this easily. I've also toyed with an interactive java interpreter so we can read things into our model and do calls against the model, even using linux base commands to write 'joins' with awk or similar. I'm not sure I like any option though. Does anyone have suggestions for a good way of doing this? p.s. We can SSH to the maintained systems at any time, but we can't copy files to or from them without permission when maintaining live systems. Any tool used to inspect memory has to be packaged with our release as its own jar with justification as to why we are including it."}
{"_id": "195352", "title": "MVP Pattern - Ways to restrict the user action based on security privilleges", "text": "In an MVP application, what should be the most appropriate way to implement restriction to some UI actions based on the current user's privileges? For example, in a role-based security, different roles will have different access to some UI interactions on the same view. If, for instance, we have an online store, on the products list page the customers can only view the details and add items to their cart, but an administrator must be also presented with `Add Product` buttons and `Delete` button on each item. Similar question has been asked here already, but the OP is asking for the UI making the permission checks. I am certain the UI (view) should not be responsible for permission validation, but still it has to know whether to visualize or not certain UI components. So, is there any well-defined or widely adopted pattern for telling the view which UI interactions it should disallow? I can think of a few solutions, but if there is a standard and proven one, I'd prefer to stick with that, rather than reinventing the wheel. * * * **Update** To clarify a bit further, as suggested in answers below, I am considering the approach of having the view accept the privileges information from the presenter. It is the form of that information that bothers me - if using flags as bit masks or some too-generic representation I will:   1. (+) Gain consistency in passing the permissions to the view   2. (-) Couple the view with logic for resolving the flags.  The other thing I have in mind is having the View expose all the flags it needs as settable properties for the presenter (like `view.IsDeleteItemAllowed`). So I will:   1. (+) Not have additional logic for the permissions in the view   2. (-) Add additional complexity to presenter to adapt permission flags to the view's properties. * * * So, I am thinking of using the later approach, because that way I can reuse the presenter with different view implementations; and will not rely on the view for understanding the permissions system (which may be a subject of changes). Is there anything I should worry about with that?"}
{"_id": "195351", "title": "Using industrial earmuffs while programming to filter out talking", "text": "Unfortunately I have to work in a room full of talking colleagues. In order to concentrate, I wear headphones with music on at top volume, but this makes me sick at the end of the day. I would prefer silence, but there is no chance to get a private office. I could try and find some hidden place in the building and work on a laptop, but my boss wouldn't be happy with that. And I could leave the company, but I don't want to - I really like my job here. Industrial workers working in a noisy environment usually wear special earmuffs. I'm considering to get a pair of these, but I have two problems:   1. I don't know whether industrial earmuffs really filter out the noise of talking. Maybe these are designed to isolate _very_ loud noises. Talking is not loud here, it's just irritating.   2. These earmuffs usually have a weight of approx. 250 g. I don't know if this weight on the head is tolerable for, say, 8-10 hours of coding. Has anyone ever tried to wear industrial earmuffs during programming? Thank you in advance. **=== UPDATE ===** Instead of industrial earmuffs I chose to try custom-molded earplugs. My earplugs are made of medical silicone. They fill my ears completely and dampen the chatter well enough. It's relatively slow to remove them, which is an advantage: people who would like to bother me during programming have to wait. Maybe they will understand what I want and just leave me working. Anyway, I also tried SimplyNoise. The brown noise dampens chatter better than my earplugs, but it's really exhausting. The rain sound is much better in this respect. I also found it less tiresome than listening to music."}
{"_id": "48760", "title": "Should I choose Doctrine 2 or Propel 1.5/1.6, and why?", "text": "I'd like to hear from those who have used Doctrine 2 (or later) and Propel 1.5 (or later). Most comparisons between these two object relational mappers are based on old versions -- Doctrine 1 versus Propel 1.3/1.4, and both ORMs went through significant redesigns in their recent revisions. For example, most of the criticism of Propel seems to center around the \"ModelName **Peer** \" classes, which are deprecated in 1.5 in any case. Here's what I've accumulated so far (And I've tried to make this list as balanced as possible...):   * Propel      * Pros        * Extremely IDE friendly, because actual code is generated, instead of relying on PHP magic methods. This means IDE features like code completion are actually helpful.       * Fast (In terms of database usage -- no runtime introspection is done on the database)       * Clean migration between schema versions (at least in the 1.6 beta)       * Can generate PHP 5.3 models (i.e. namespaces)       * Easy to chain a lot of things into a single database query with things like `useXxx` methods. (See the \"code completion\" video above)     * Cons        * Requires an extra build step, namely building the model classes.       * Generated code needs rebuilt whenever Propel version is changed, a setting is changed, or the schema changes. ~~This might be unintuitive to some and custom methods applied to the model are lost. (I think?)~~ \\-- Not true; custom methods aren't lost because the generated class is a base class; Propel provides an entity class specifically for extension.       * Some useful features (i.e. version behavior, schema migrations) are in beta status.   * Doctrine      * Pros        * More popular       * Doctrine Query Language can express potentially more complicated relationships between data than easily possible with Propel's ActiveRecord strategy.       * Easier to add reusable behaviors when compared with Propel.       * DocBlock based commenting for building the schema is embedded in the actual PHP instead of a separate XML file.       * Uses PHP 5.3 Namespaces everywhere     * Cons        * Requires learning an entirely new programming language (Doctrine Query Language)       * Implemented in terms of \"magic methods\" in several places, making IDE autocomplete worthless.       * Requires database introspection and thus is slightly slower than Propel by default; caching can remove this but the caching adds considerable complexity.       * Fewer behaviors are included in the core codebase. Several features Propel provides out of the box (such as Nested Set) are available only through extensions.       * Freakin' HUGE :) This I have gleaned though only through reading the documentation available for both tools -- I've not actually built anything yet. I'd like to hear from those who have used both tools though, to share their experience on pros/cons of each library, and what their recommendation is at this point :)"}
{"_id": "154510", "title": "flat files vs. RDBMS database, few read/writes, few changes", "text": "I have to handle data from long term (years, decades) climate monitoring stations. The data flow usually starts with raw data (voltages, etc.) plus quality check information (pressure, temperature, flow rate, etc.) generally recorded @ 1Hz. Then, the data are assigned a quality flag (human and/or program), processed (apply calibration curves) and flagged. So, we basically end up with 2 datasets : raw and processed data. New data are typically added once a day (~500Ko/day/instrument). Simultaneous queries are not likely to ever happen. I wanted to go for a RDBMS (we have a MySQL server) and have some experience in database design, but the IT guy keeps telling me that flat files will to the job just as well. I suspect him to try to make his life easier when it comes to backup/upgrade the MySQL. There are not so many links between data, they don't change much, but the quality flags will change. A RDBMS is easier to compare data from different instruments on a \"many days\" scale, compared to daily text files. Well, what would you advise ? Thanks."}
{"_id": "48765", "title": "how to work with people who thinks procedurally in an object oriented project", "text": "I'm working on a project which heavily uses OOP Design principles. But, one of my colleague tends to do everything in procedure oriented manner. I gets irritated by seeing procedure oriented code wrapped in a class and lose my temper. But, losing temper won't make anything better. I need some ideas, advices and tips on how to make people think in terms of objects."}
{"_id": "196610", "title": "Refactoring an existing abstract class and its parameters", "text": "I have an `abstract class A` which declares an abstract method `doStuff`. Currently there are many classes that inherit from `A` and implement `doStuff`. The class' instances are initialized at run-time via `AFactory` based on user input. Originally all the classes had the same single parameter (the user input). But now I have an additional parameter that only a new class that inherits `A` needs. So breaking it down I though of the following logic:   * The interpreter class that generates instances based on user input(using `AFactory` of course) was not aware of this extra parameter.     * Trying to push it into the class interpreter class would be really awkward because then I would have to know when to pass it to the factory which defeats the whole purpose of having a factory in the first place.     * Sending it blindly into the Factory hoping it _might_ do something with it seems quite ugly as well.   * **My current solution:** Meanwhile I've decided to refactor `A.doStuff(Param param)` into `A.doStuff(AParams params)`. `AParams` can hold what ever parameters needed and `doStuff` can ignore then if they're not interested in them. This also seems a bit awkward to me , and remids me of sending structs in WIN32API that can hold a lot of ugly useless parameters and I'm not fond of it. Is there a more elegant way to approach this problem ? Or some design pattern that I've overlooked and solves this? **Notes** :   * We're using Java 1.7   * The class' names are silly in order to emphasize the theoretical design issue they do have normal indicative, meaningful names in reality :)   * I did search quite a lot but having figured out that it's quite hard to search the web for specific abstract theoretical issues (as opposed to why is `X` throwing `Exception` in this code) I've decided to ask anyway so I'm sorry if this is a duplicate. **Edit 1** :   * **Clarification:** I need to pass a subclass-specific argument to the `doStuff` method. **EDIT 2** :   * I did not fully understand Kilian Foth's intention so I've written some Java-pseudo-code to help me better explain the problem/understand your solution. So: This is a skeleton of my problem. This is a skeleton of my solution. This is what I _think_ might be Kilian Foth's solution, but I'm not sure."}
{"_id": "108495", "title": "why getMonth() starts with 0", "text": "I was coding a function to remove a day from a date value in javascript and i was kind of surprise that javascript's getMonth() starts from 0 for January to 11 for December. Why javascript's getMonth() starts with 0?"}
{"_id": "167848", "title": "Is there a way to get the version of Ubuntu that Google uses for development?", "text": "Is there a way to get the version of Ubuntu that Google uses for development? Even better would be a full up VMWare or Virtual Box Virtual Machine image that might include a full complement of preinstalled tools as well."}
{"_id": "99689", "title": "Class Design and Separation Of Concerns", "text": "I'm working on an MVC application and am wondering about the best way to design one of my models. I have a class called RightLeftPersonToggle which represents two select list boxes on the page. The user is able to move \"persons\" between the left and right box using buttons between them. This class can represent both a vehicle driver or manager so the load and save code is different for each type. The class is below.               public class RightLeftPersonToggle     {         public RightLeftPersonToggle()         {             LeftList = new List<Person>();             RightList = new List<Person>();         }              public List<Person> LeftList { get; set; }         public List<Person> RightList { get; set; }         public string LeftListTitle { get; set; }         public string RightListTitle { get; set; }         public string PropertyName { get; set; }     }      I'm wondering what the best way to handle the loading and saving of the lists is. I've come up with two solutions but I'm not sure on which one is best. 1) The controller (or parent model) is responsible for loading and saving both LeftList and RightList. The RightLeftPersonToggle class has no knowledge of that code and remains exactly like the code above. 2) RightLeftPersonToggle gets two methods (one for save and one for load) which take functions as parameters to tell it how to do its job.               public void LoadAndFilterLists(Func<List<Person>> leftListFilter, Func<List<Person>> rightListFilter)          public void LoadSaveLists(Func<List<Person>> leftListSave, Func<List<Person>> rightListSave)      Solution number one keeps the code more simple in my opinion while solution number two seems to provide better sepration of concerns since RightLeftPersonToggle should know how to load and save itself. Keeping in mind the fact that RightLeftPersonToggle doesn't always load and save data the same way, which of my proposed solutions would be considered best practice? Do you have any other recommendations for improvement?"}
{"_id": "156277", "title": "Implementing unit testing at a company that doesn't do it", "text": "My company's head of software development just \"resigned\" (i.e. fired) and we are now looking into improving the development practices at our company. We want to implement unit testing in all software created from here on out. Feedback from the developers is this:   * We know testing is valuable   * But, you are always changing the specs so it'd be a waste of time   * And, your deadlines are so tight we don't have enough time to test anyway Feedback from the CEO is this:   * I would like our company to have automated testing, but I don't know how to make it happen   * We don't have time to write large specification documents How do developers get the specs now? Word of mouth or PowerPoint slide. Obviously, that's a big problem. My suggestion is this:   * Let's also give the developers a set of test data and unit tests   * That's the spec. It's up to management to be clear and quantitative about what it wants.   * The developers can put it whatever other functionality they feel is needed and it need not be covered by tests Well, if you've ever been in a company that was in this situation, how did you solve the problem? Does this approach seem reasonable?"}
{"_id": "167842", "title": "is there any elegant way to analyze an engineer's process?", "text": "Plenty of sentiment exists that measuring commits is inappropriate. Has any study been done that tries to draw in more sources than commits - such as:   * browsing patterns   * IDE work (pre-commit)   * idle time   * multitasking I can't think of an easy way to do these measures, but I wonder if any study has been done. * * * On a personal note, I do believe that reflection on one's own 'metrics' could be valuable regardless of (or in the absence of) using these for performance eval. I.E. an un-biased way to reflect on your habits. But this is a discussion matter beyond Q&A."}
{"_id": "167843", "title": "Design patterns frequently seen in embedded systems programming", "text": "I don't have any question related to coding. My concerns are about embedded systems programming independent of any particular programming language. Because I am new in the realm of embedded programming, I would quite appreciate responses from those who consider themselves experienced embedded systems programmers. I basically have 2 questions.   1. Of the design patterns listed below are there any seen frequently in embedded systems programming?      * Abstraction-Occurrence pattern     * General Hierarchy pattern     * Player-Role pattern     * Singleton pattern     * Observer pattern     * Delegation pattern     * Adapter pattern     * Facade pattern     * Immutable pattern     * Read-Only Interface pattern     * Proxy pattern   2. As an experienced embedded developer, what design patterns have you, as an individual, come across? There is no need to describe the details. Only the pattern names would suffice. Please share your own experience. I believe the answers to the above questions would work as a good starting point for any novice programmers in the embedded world."}
{"_id": "99687", "title": "using blocking APIs with non-blocking server", "text": "We are using Tornado for our system (behind nginx) -- and everything is working fine. Now we need to integrate a client lib (for Neo4j Graph DB) into our system. The problem is that it is blocking. My question is:   * is it OK to use blocking libs in non-blocking environment   * what are the possible ramifications if we do so   * how much work is involved if we decide to roll our own async lib I know there is Node that does everything in non-blocking fashion. But we can't go there because our core is written in Python."}
{"_id": "99680", "title": "Commit whole project or commit files?", "text": "I used to commit files which I want to group. But one of my colleague said that committing whole working project is better than committing files. I think it makes sense but if I commit like that sometimes I have to commit several different works at once. What is the best practice to commit?"}
{"_id": "167844", "title": "What is a good way to learn about multicore programming at the kernel level in Linux?", "text": "I am interested in multicore programming at the kernel level. I expect this affects many areas and is probably different for each architecture. What are some must read sections of the kernel? If I wanted to compare and contrast code for an Intel I7 and an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore where would I find the differences?"}
{"_id": "168397", "title": "Mirror virtualized development environment", "text": "I work alone in some iOS projects in a local environment. I have been thinking in a way to be able to share my development environment between my Mac Mini and my MacBook. I mostly work at home in the Mini but sometimes I need to do a demo or work outside and I would like to have the development environment mirrored in both. I have think in using a virtual machine (via VirtualBox) with just my development tools installed. Then I could synchronize that VM with some software between both computers so I will always have the exact environment no matter what computer I use. Is there any good reason not do do this way? I have not used virtualization too much so I have no background on the subject. \u00bfWhat about licenses?\u00bfIs there need to have duplicated licenses in both VMs? This are my requirements: -Don't need to setup two environments. Just setup one and have the job done in the other(installing or updating apps, change settings, etc). -Don't depend on having a connection when working away from my home. My basic setup will be:   * Mac Mini: i7 dual Core, 8Gb. OSX Mountain Lion Host OS:   * MacBook: 2.4 Core 2 Duo. 4Gb. OSX Lion Host OS.   * Virtual Box with Mountain Lion guest OS in both machines.   * XCode5, Simulator, Texwrangler, MAMP, etc."}
{"_id": "63224", "title": "Mac or Linux for a secondary work machine?", "text": "I am a freelance web developer geared towards Ruby on Rails. The main components of my current working environment are a 27\" **iMac** , **Textmate** and **git** /github (which is not going to change any time soon). What I am looking for is a nice little/portable laptop that will allow me to make a quick `get-in/fix-something/test/push/get-out` dance when not at home (home is where I work from). I am fairly familiar with Linux and Vim and I think I can easily work with both environments (OSX and Linux). Granted that the laptop will only be used occasionally and in a hurry, **is there something I should be worried about when working with OSX and Linux at the same time?** (mind you that the laptop will solely be used for work and thus there is no requirement for it to be able to manage my photo library) **Anyone had an experience with a relevant setup?** * * * **EDIT:** I would like to stress it a little more since some answers have diverged from it. **What I am looking for is help for a secondary machine for RoR, not a primary one** Thus:   * battery life is not an issue - I believe 2-3 hours is all I'm going to require of it, so the clear Mac hardware advantage evaporates   * I'm not compiling any code - no fast CPU needed (I'm not really familiar with what is needed for compiling)"}
{"_id": "168390", "title": "System that splits passwords across two servers", "text": "I stumbled upon this news article on BBC,   * RSA splits passwords in two to foil hackers' attacks **tl;dr** \\- a (randomized) password is split in half and is stored across two separate servers, to foil hackers that gained access to either server upon a security breach. Now the main question is, how would this kind of system would be made... _codespeaking_ , for PHP which I commonly develop on my web applications, the database password is normally stored in a configuration file, i.e. config.php with the username and password, in that case it is understandable that the passwords can be stolen if the security was compromised. However when splitting and sending the other half to the other server, how would this go on when making a communication to the other server (keeping in mind with PHP) since the other server password would be stored in a configuration file, wouldn't it? In terms of security is to keep the other server password away from the main one, just exactly how would the main server communicate, without exposing any other password, apart from the first server. This certainly makes me think..."}
{"_id": "29302", "title": "C++ : Lack of Standardization at the Binary Level", "text": "Why ISO/ANSI didn't standardize C++ at the binary level? There are many portability issues with C++, which is only because of lack of it's standardization at the binary level. Don Box writes, (quoting from his book Essential COM, chapter _COM As A Better C++_ ) > # C++ and Portability > >   >  Once the decision is made to distribute a C++ class as a DLL, one is faced > with one of **the fundamental weaknesses of C++** , that is, **lack of > standardization at the binary level**. Although the ISO/ANSI C++ Draft > Working Paper attempts to codify which programs will compile and what the > semantic effects of running them will be, it makes no attempt to standardize > the binary runtime model of C++. The first time this problem will become > evident is when a client tries to link against the FastString DLL's import > library from a C++ developement environment _other than_ the one used to > build the FastString DLL. Are there more benefits Or loss of this lack of binary standardization?"}
{"_id": "147321", "title": "License of current JDK", "text": "I am wondering which license the current JDK 7 ( **NOT** the OpenJDK) is using as I know it was once under GNU GPL but with the change of the Distributor License for Java I would like to know whether they changed the allover license, too."}
{"_id": "54621", "title": "What do you do when you encounter an idiotic interview question?", "text": "I was interviewing with a \"too proud of my java skills\"-looking person.   1. He asked me \" _What is your knowledge on Java IO classes.. say.. hash maps?_ \"   2. He asked me to write a piece of java code on paper - instantiate a class and call one of the instance's methods. When I was done, he said my program wouldn't run. After 5 minutes of serious thinking, I gave up and asked why. He said I didn't write a main function so it wouldn't run. ON PAPER.   3. [I am too furious to continue with the stupidity...] Believe me it wasn't trick questions or a psychic or anger management evaluation thing. I can tell from his face, he was proud of these questions. That \" _developer_ \" was supposed to \" _judge_ \" the candidates. I can think of several things:   1. Hit him with a chair (which I so desperately wanted to) and walk out.   2. Simply walk out.   3. Ridicule him saying he didn't make sense.   4. Politely let him know that he didn't make sense and go on to try and answer the questions.   5. Don't tell him anything, but simply go on to try and answer the questions. So far, I have tried just 4 and 5. It hasn't helped. Unfortunately many candidates seem to do the same and remain polite but this lets these kind of \"developers\" just keep ascending up the corporate ladder, gradually getting the capacity to pi** off more and more people. **How do you handle these interviewers without bursting your veins? What is the proper way to handle this, yet maintain your reputation if other potential employers were to ever get to know what happened here? Is there anything you can do or should you even try to _fix_ this?** **P.S.** Let me admit that my anger has been amplified many times by the facts:   1. He was smiling like you wouldn't believe.   2. I got so many (20 or so) calls from that company the day before, asking me to come to the interview, that I couldn't do any work that day.   3. I wasted a paid day off."}
{"_id": "176265", "title": "OpenGL programming vs Blender Software, which is better for custom video creation?", "text": "I am learning OpenGL API bit by bit and also develop my own C++ framework library for effectively using them. Recently came across Blender software which is used for graphics creation and is in turn written in OpenGL itself. For my part time hobby of graphics learning, I want to just create small-small movie or video segments; e.g. related to construction engineering, epic stories and so on. There may be very minimal to nil mouse-keyboard interaction for those videos, unlike video games which are highly interactive. I was wondering if learning OpenGL from scratch is worth for it or should I invest my time in learning Blender software? There are quite a few good movie examples are created using Blender and are shown in its website.   Other such opensource cross platform alternatives are also welcome, which can serve my aforementioned purpose."}
{"_id": "149783", "title": "Is having two conditions in an IF statement faster than having two separate IF statements?", "text": "I just wonder if having two conditions in an IF statement executes faster than having it separated into two like these: ### Single Statement, two conditions               if ( (conditionA == true) && (conditionB == true) )       //Do something;      ### Two statements               if ( conditionA == true )       if ( conditionB == true )         //Do something      Or are they just the same when compiled? Both of them have the same code, only the `if` statement part is different. There won't be any other code under `conditionA` in the second example (two statements), only afer `conditionB`. Does this have an effect on PHP and JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "112578", "title": "Are operators just \"special\" methods?", "text": "Here's what is meant by operators and methods. Attempting to keep the questions as simple and open ended as possible, since the question is more about the conceptual nature of operators and methods NOT how a language has decided to implement them. **Proof of Concept:** This example in Ruby is more of a proof of concept than anything else. EXAMPLE: In Ruby, \"`1+2`\" is equivalent to \"`1.+(2)`\", meaning the object \"1\" implements a method called \"+\" with object \"2\" as the method's argument."}
{"_id": "112579", "title": "What is the best way to generate an accurate release changelog?", "text": "I'm working on some projects where I'd like to supply an accurate changelog with each release, but I haven't found a method for collecting the changelog that would work without hassle. The problem is mostly when the time between versions is long and each version ships with a lot of features and bug fixes, and when the software has several branches being developed at the same time. Some options I've considered:   1. Build the changelog from commit messages and require developers to write the messages as if they would be writing a line for the changelog (which they would effectively be doing).      * Might not work when there are multiple branches and merging between branches (might be hard to know which commits have ultimately ended up in the release).   2. Require that for each change in the code there should be a corresponding ticket in the bug tracking system. The changelog could be written based on the tickets.      * The devs might find it frustrating to make a ticket for even minor changes, especially if making the ticket takes longer than fixing the bug.   3. Require that the developers always update the changelog (as a text file in project root) at the same time when they make changes to the code.      * Feels like manual labor that could be automated.   4. Have the project manager take the diff of the current version and the previous one and write the changelog at that point based on what they see that's been changed.      * Extra work for the person responsible for the release and it might not be obvious what the practical effect of a change is just by looking at the code.   5. Ship only the features that have been planned for the release; you can write the changelog even before you start coding.      * Not a real option unless you're using the waterfall model. I've used each of these or a variation of them in the past but they have been too unreliable, laborous or rigid. Does anyone have a magic bullet or good ideas on how to solve the problem?"}
{"_id": "223862", "title": "How important is to initialize a variable", "text": "How important is it to initialize variables? Does proper initializing avoid memory leaks or have performance advantages?"}
{"_id": "179431", "title": "Sublinear Extra Space MergeSort", "text": "I am reviewing basic algorithms from a book called Algorithms by Robert Sedgewick, and I came across a problem in MergeSort that I am, sad to say, having difficulty solving. The problem is below: > _Sublinear Extra Space_. Develop a merge implementation that reduces that > extra space requirement to max(M, N/M), based on the following idea: Divide > the array into N/M blocks of size M (for simplicity in this description, > assume that N is a multiple of M). Then, (i) considering the blocks as items > with their first key as the sort key, sort them using selection sort; and > (ii) run through the array merging the first block with the second, then the > second block with the third, and so forth. The problem I have with the problem is that based on the idea Sedgewick recommends, the following set of arrays will not be sorted: {0, 10, 12}, {3, 9, 11}, {5, 8, 13}. The algorithm I use is the following:   1. Divide the full array into subarrays of size M.   2. Run Selection Sort on each of the subarrays.   3. Merge each of the subarrays using the method Sedgwick recommends in (ii). (This is where I encounter the problem of where to store the results after the merge.) This leads to wanting to increase the size of the auxiliary space needed to handle at least two subarrays at a time (for merging), but based on the specifications of the problem, that is not allowed. I have also considered using the original array as space for one subarray and using the auxiliary space for the second subarray. However, I can't envision a solution that does not end up overwriting the entries of the first subarray. Any ideas on other ways this can be done? **NOTE:** If this is suppose to be on StackOverflow.com, please let me know how I can move it. I posted here because the question was academic."}
{"_id": "179437", "title": "What is thread safety?", "text": "What is it? I was reading Effective STL and came across it. I have also Googled it, but couldn't get any helpful info."}
{"_id": "251806", "title": "Reverse a queue using an extra queue", "text": "You are given 2 queues, Q1 and Q2. Q1 is already filled with n elements. Q2 is empty You have to reverse all the elements in Q1. You cannot use any other space apart from Q2. only operations permitted would be Q.enqueue() and Q.dequeue() Time complexity - O(nlogn) i found this question on a less popular website. http://www.questiondiscussion.com/questions/64/questiondiscussionchallenge- reverse-a-queue-using-an-extra-queue few answers are also there. i am not able to understand the solutions, can anyone help me with is question ?"}
{"_id": "251804", "title": "\"Immutable\" interfaces", "text": "I am confused about the notion of immutability. Consider the following structure of a simplistic calculator: ![Class diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uKV21.jpg) Here are the interfaces:               interface IOperationalInterface {         int Sum(int a, int b);     }          interface IAuditInterface {         int SumInvocations();     }      `IOperationalInterface.Sum` should compute the sum of two integers and `IAuditInterface.SumInvocations` should return the total number of received `Sum` calls. Here is a trivial implementation:               class CalculatorImpl : IOperationalInterface, IAuditInterface {         private int invocations = 0;              public int Sum(int a, int b) {             invocations++;             return a + b;         }              public int SumInvocations() {             return invocations;         }     }      Is `CalculatorImpl` immutable? Obviously not, because its state changes with each invocation of the `Sum` method. Is the `Sum` operation pure? According to Wikipedia it is not, since it changes the state of a mutable object, and that side-effect is observable through the `IAuditInterface`. Obviously the `SumInvocations` operation is also not pure, since it may return different results. In summary, `CalculatorImpl` is mutable and all of its methods are impure. However, from the viewpoint of `CalculatorClient`, who talks to it only through the `IOperationalInterface`, it appears to be immutable and the `Sum` operation appears to be pure in the sense that it could not observe any side effects _through that interface_. On the other hand, from the perspective of `AuditClient`, it is completely different: it is obvious that the object implementing the `AuditInterface` is mutable and its `SumInvocations` operation is impure, and _this follows directly from the specification of the`IAuditInterface`_. So, it is possible to partition an interface/specification of a mutable class such that some parts of it will appear mutable and some not. In this case, considering only the `Sum` operation and leaving out the requirement that the invocations should be counted, we get something that does not have any side- effects. Now, on implementing the `CalculatorClient` one can take into account the fact that the object behind the interface _appears_ to be immutable. At least one could not tell the difference. So my question is: does it make sense to talk about \"immutability\" of interfaces or is it a bad idea? How else can I communicate the fact that there will be no observable side-effects through that interface? And if it's bad, what could go wrong? **UPDATE** Thanks for your answers/comments! I see now that there is no way to say that the `IOperationalInterface` is pure; the conditions of purity are much too strong to apply in this case. However the question remains whether there is a weaker notion (maybe \"immutability\"?) which is applicable."}
{"_id": "251805", "title": "Is object oriented programming ALWAYS a good way for large projects?", "text": "Is object oriented programming always the good way for all types of projects? Is this methodology the best suited for large projects like compilers, interpreters and other large systems? Most of the compilers are written in C so I can't see any compilers written in the object oriented method. I think OOP benefits the most in places like LOB, simulations where you can consider everything as an object. But is it really useful in all places? Also OOP can lead to inefficient code than procedural code. Not to mention that design patterns sometimes increase the complexity of design."}
{"_id": "194754", "title": "Is storing types in the database an anti pattern?", "text": "A little background on where this question is coming from. In my current .NET application I'm working on some features related to archiving a certain type of business entity called a \"Project\". Depending on the situation what has to be archived, and the exact actions involved in archiving can vary wildly. My basic idea is to create an entity called an ArchiveSchedule which basically stores data saying this kind of project should be archived after this amount of time. I want to encapsulate my queries for selecting all the objects to archive and the commands for actually archiving off into their own objects that inherit from some common interfaces. There will be multiple archive queries(select items based on various properties, or whether they've been archived before and later restored, etc), and multiple archive commands(ie commands that send data to different interfaces, some that perform deletes, etc.). What I'm considering doing is including on the ArchiveSchedule, references to the actual .NET type corresponding to the query and command I want to use for this schedule. Then when I want to actually run the queries and commands I use reflection to build up the object and execute the command or query. Is this basic strategy of storing type information in the database and then using reflection to create the objects and inject dependencies an antipattern? Or is there a better way to do it? Note:I know there are some issues with just storing the type name or namespace, because those might change during refactoring, but I believe those could be mitigated fairly easily using a GuidAttribute on the class definition and storing the guid instead, so I'm curious if there are more fundamental issues beyond that."}
{"_id": "194756", "title": "Functional Reactive/Relational Programming \u2013 Is there a difference?", "text": "I've been using Reactive Cocoa (by GitHub), a Functional _Reactive_ Programming API for use with the Cocoa libraries for a while now, but have just read \"Out of the Tar Pit\", the paper that supposedly presents the concepts behind it, and I am a little confused. The paper presents (as I understand it) Functional _Relational_ Programming, where relations between data are created with conditions that should be enforced by the FRP system to reduce the amount of 'accidental' logic and state needed. My question is, are these two concepts - FR(eactive)P and FR(elational)P essentially the same thing (with the former just being an implementation of the latter) or is there a core difference between the two? Unfortunately at the moment my knowledge of the area isn't good enough for me to differentiate them enough. If there is a difference, it appears to be something to do with, as the name suggests, reacting to changes in data. Certainly, Reactive Cocoa (and Rx in C#) have the concept of creating _signals_ which are triggered on changes in data, and can be used to continuously modify a value over time. Is this the difference? If not, what is? (Please excuse the poor tagging, I can't find relevant tags and can't create them yet - please update the tags to something more appropriate if you can.)"}
{"_id": "187769", "title": "A simple algorithm for finding duplicate floats", "text": "We have N numbers(real numbers(float)).They can be positive or negative or anything we do not know except the fact that there is exactly one number which has a duplicate and the rest all are distinct. I would like to know the fastest one to find the duplicates.Can anyone help ? Thanks"}
{"_id": "187768", "title": "What the white box testers create test cases against?", "text": "I'm wondering, what are the white box testers using to create test cases? The actual code? Some kind of diagrams? I mean, if I am given a task to create test cases for complete branch coverage, is it possible they give me a code? Because I saw something like that:               Reader r=null;     if(condition)     {       r=new Reader();     }     r.toString();      There is an obvious bug as the last statement should be in the body of the If statement. It will be easily exposed by false-decision test case of the condition. But is it not more like unit tests? What is then the white box testers goal of testing? Wikipedia article on white-box testing states: > The tester chooses inputs to exercise paths through the code and determine > the appropriate outputs. I understand this as you choose inputs to reach the coverage and reveal possible bugs. But isn't it simple unit testing done by developers?"}
{"_id": "12278", "title": "Can unlimited number of vacation means the same as 0 vacation time in practice?", "text": "Programmers sometimes get a little burned out and a little vacation can help. It used to be many hi-tech companies give 10 vacation days and 10 sick days per year. But in recent years, I have seen vacation and sick days combined to become Paid Time Off (PTO). Each year may be 15 days or 12 days. (plus 1 floating and 9 fixed holidays such as Thanksgiving, Xmas, and New Year day) ( **Update** : California doesn't not require any sick day for any company at all, so companies, to stay competitive, may not want to have sicks days and end up losing to other companies) And then I know some companies have unlimited vacation time, such as Netflix or Zynga, but then an experienced programmer told me many VPs in hi-tech companies also have unlimited vacation, but because they are so busy, practically in a year, they don't take any vacation at all. It is also a bit strange that if unlimited is the policy, then what if Peter wants Dec 1 to Jan 1 for Xmas vacation, and John wants Nov 20 to Jan 1? How do people decide what is fair if they can decide the length when it is unlimited? It resembles a little bit like program such as FTP, where if the bandwidth is set to 300k/s, then it is 300k/s, but when it is set to 0, that means it is unlimited. So \"unlimited\" in this case is also the same as \"zero\". I'd like to find out how it is in different companies? Is your company or your post or what you hear about unlimited vacation and how it is like in real practice?"}
{"_id": "187764", "title": "Simple real-world PHP OOP example?", "text": "I'm trying to learn PHP OOP, but when I've followed tutorials, all the examples seem to involve things like:               class Human {         $_sex;              public function setSex($sex) {             $this->_sex = $sex;         }              public function getSex() {             return $this->sex;         }     }      (Pointless example, but hopefully you get what I mean -- An object has properties that are stored in the object.) I've never come across a web application where I've needed to create objects about humans, dogs, cars, or any of the other weird examples you find when reading tutorials about OOP... So I'm trying to find a similarly simple, but more realistic, project with which to learn OOP. I've chosen a website for an internet comic (e.g. XKCD.com). (This would allow people to view the comic, but also the author to edit and update it.) So how would this translate to real-world PHP OOP? My initial instinct would be to break the objects down thusly:   * Catalogue    * Episode  Where the `Catalogue` class would contain methods pertaining to all the episodes of the comic, e.g. `getMostRecentEpisodeID()`, `deleteEpisode($episodeID)`, `addNewEpisode($newEpisode)`, etc. etc. And `Episode` would contain methods pertaining to the individual episode, e.g. `getEpisodeComments($episodeID)` (if the website allowed people to leave comments on individual episodes), `editEpisode($episodeID)`, `getEpisode($episodeID)`, etc. Is this right, or have I made an absolute hash of what OOP is for? **Edit:** Rather than just giving me a list of examples, it would really be helpful if your answer made specific reference to the problem I'm trying to solve. Thanks."}
{"_id": "231410", "title": "Why database as queue so bad?", "text": "I've just read this article, and I'm confused. Let's imagine 1 webapp and 1 distinct application acting as \"worker\", both **sharing the same database**. Oh, I said \"sharing\"..but what does the article warns about? : > Fourthly, sharing a database between applications (or services) is a bad > thing. It\u2019s just too tempting to put amorphous shared state in there and > before you know it you\u2019ll have a hugely coupled monster. => disagree. There are some cases where distinct applications still be part of the same unit, and therefore, notion of \"coupling issue\" makes no sense in this case. Let's continue: The webapp handles client HTTP requests and may update at any time some aggregates (DDD term), generating the corresponding domain events.   The goal of the worker would be to handle those domain events by processing the needed jobs. The point is: **How should events data be passed to the worker?** The first solution, as the read article promotes, would be to use RabbitMQ, being a great message-oriented middleware. The workflow would be simple: Any time the web dyno generates an event, it publishes it through RabbitMQ, which feeds the worker.   The drawback would be that nothing guarantees the **immediate consistency** between the commit of the aggregate update and the publishing of the event, without dealing with the potential sending failures... or hardware issues; that is another main issue. Example: It would be possible that an event was published without a success of the aggregate update...resulting in an event representing a false representation of the domain model.   You could argue that global XA (two-phase commit) exists, but it's not a solution that fits all databases or middlewares. So what could be a good solution to ensure this immediate consistency? :   IMO, storing the event in database, in the same local transaction than the aggregate update.   A simple asynchronous scheduler would be created and responsible of querying current unpublished events from database and send them to RabbitMQ, which in turn populates the worker. But why needing an extra scheduler in webapp side and by the way: why needing RabbitMQ in this case?? By this solution, it appears logically, that the RabbitMQ could be unnecessary, especially because the database is shared.   Indeed, whatever the case, we saw that the immediate consistency **involves** a polling from database.   Thus, why wouldn't worker be responsible directly for this polling? Therefore, I wonder why so many articles on the web criticizes hardly database queuing, while promoting message-oriented middleware. Excerpt of the article: > Simple, use the right tool for the job: this scenario is crying out for a > messaging system. It solves all the problems described above; no more > polling, efficient message delivery, no need to clear completed messages > from queues, and no shared state. **And immediate consistency, ignored ???** To sum up, it really seems that whatever the case is, meaning database shared or not, we need **database polling**. Did I miss some critical notions? Thanks"}
{"_id": "158956", "title": "Biggest obstacles to working on a group project", "text": "I'm doing my first group project in a class where most quarters 40% of the students have failed. I believe the reason for this is the poor quality of teaching in the class. For example, the instructor did not know that scriplets in JSP was bad practice. (I learned JSP this week and I know that.) He didn't know that Swing GUIs were supposed to go on the EDT. He didn't know that static imports were bad practice. I could go on. The project is to design a web application for a quiz website. There is a lot of extra credit available, and it is possible to get 200%. This is my first group project. I am worried about the failure of most of my peers, and I want to avoid it. **What obstacles might I face when working on a project like this and how can I overcome them?**"}
{"_id": "158954", "title": "How to stop / avoid Over Time on a Scrum Team?", "text": "Actually, I'm helping a small software shop on their Scrum Implementation. Recently the Scrum Master reported me that he has a problem because the Team is working **Over Time** to achieve the Scope (Committed Backlog). So they have an **Unreal Velocity**. My formal question(s) is / are:   1. Apart from speaking about on the Retrospective Meeting; do you think that is a good idea to implement some hard-blocks to avoid Over Time?   2. If so, what techniques / tools do you suggest?      * Revision Control system (SVN, GIT, HG, etc...), blocks by hours (8 to 5)     * Work station blocks by hours (8 to 5) or cumulative hours (up to 8 hrs/day)?     * Other(s)...   3. Or, maybe, do not hard-block this kind of things; but implement some **\"Penalty System\"** for **Unjustified Extra Hours**? * * * First: Tks all for your fast responses. @Baqueta (and others with similar questions): No they are not been paid for Extra Hours. My first advise to them was to review their estimates because _maybe_ they were underestimating. This was my favorite advise: > **If they have an interest in working overtime, remove it.** Development > isn't something you can do for 60 hours a week and stay productive, and > there are numerous studies out there that prove this. If overtime pay is the > issue, get rid of it and improve their base pay so they're getting what > they're worth. Also, I think that the root problem (for this team), is a combination of the following: >   1. The developers are being told what they must achieve in a sprint/aren't > being consulted on what's achievable/are being ignored when they say there's > too much work. >   2. The developers are consistently underestimating how much time tasks > will take/how many units of work are involved in each task. > **Summary:** I'll talk to the Team to review their estimates, and with the P.O. because I feel that _they are not being consulted_ about the scope, as you mentioned."}
{"_id": "149437", "title": "What units are story points estimated in?", "text": "I am reading about a case study about a team that estimates tasks or \"story points\" as they call them based on the effort needed to complete them. What the units are these \"story points\" estimated in? I believe this notion of \"story points\" stems from a process called \"agile development.\""}
{"_id": "136717", "title": "Prepare source code handover plan", "text": "Our company is about to acquire a source code of a huge product. What are thing to take into consideration when the handover starts, to make sure we have everything and be capable to maintain that product in the future?"}
{"_id": "149433", "title": "How do companies keep websites hidden when in development?", "text": "I am new to this and also a new 19 year old PHP developer that just got hired so I am unsure as to how this works. Many companies when developing their websites keep their sites hidden from being indexed. What are some ways html5/css and then php/mysql work is hidden from search engines? If I am not wrong, these are the techniques:   1. Offline development: using local storage to render html/css; not sure how PHP/mysql would work with that.    2. Using .htaccess to prevent access   3. Using VPN to prevent access."}
{"_id": "136711", "title": "Would working for an \"adult website\" hurt my future employability?", "text": "I am considering taking a software engineering job at a pornographic website. While I have no moral objections to the industry, will it be a red flag on my resume?"}
{"_id": "67837", "title": "When to deprecate and when to delete in Java", "text": "As part of a refactoring effort or just ongoing development, a particular method or maybe an entire class may become obsolete in some sense. Java supports the `@Deprecated` annotation to indicate that there's probably a better way to handle the functionality in question. I imagine this is particularly useful in public API's where the effects of removing parts of an API might not be known. For a non-public API and a project that uses revision control systems (so deleting can be undone in some sense), when is it appropriate to deprecate rather than deleting the obsolete element(s)?"}
{"_id": "156497", "title": "Separating words in a string", "text": "How do I separate words in a string? In the following I have a random sample of words in a string extracted from text file with over a million words. Here's the string: \"intervene Pockets Jerusalemand tissues powerful days gadgets rate invention heated Stewartis find communal working lots internal They caused noise offer goand big jumps lose galaxies All Mall birth child world spin killed produced great center Dont pretend Africa solution times cursor good night professional problem refugees talk\" As you can see, the third word is \"Jerusalemand.\" My goal is to separate \"Jerusalem\" and \"and\", and do the same thing for any other words that are stuck together. Only thing that I could think of as of now is to compare every word in the string to a dictionary (SCOWL perhaps?), and if a segment of the word matches a word in the dictionary, I'll have to split the words to make them independent. As an example, for \"Jerusalemand\" I'll loop through every character until a match is found in the dictionary for \"Jerusalem,\" then I can separate that from \"and,\" in turn completing the separation. Shouldn't there be a better way to do this?"}
{"_id": "111210", "title": "Virtualized Development Environments in Enterprise Networks", "text": "We are attempting to implement a development environment using virtualization for a small team of 4 developers within an enterprise organization. This would allow us to set up separate development, testing, and staging environments - as well as allowing access to new operating systems that are requirements for systems or tools we are evaluating. We re-purposed an existing workstation- class machine, threw in 24GB RAM and RAID-10, and were doing fine until we attempted to get the machine added to the domain. Now we are beginning the war that all enterprise developers since the beginning of time have had to fight - the fight for local control of a development and testing environment. The network and IT admins' have raised concerns ranging from \"ESX Server is the enterprise standard\" to \"servers are not allowed on client VLANs\" to \"[fill-in-the-blank] is not a skill set currently possessed in the local or enterprise IT organization\". We could justify production-class hardware and formal IT support if we had to, but it would take time and involve a whole lot of headache. Even then it might take months to formally get IT resources assigned by treating this as a production system - and even if we did, we would likely lose the local control we need. I imagine that many of you have had similar struggles over developer control of non-production environments - and virtualization in particular - so my questions are as follows:   1. What strategies and arguments have helped you win over the infrastructure (IT & Network) folks to allow these types of silos to exist within enterprises which have standard network and security policies in place that would generally (and understandably) preclude this type of non-(centrally)-managed infrastructure?   2. Have you found this to be a matter of technical justification - or more of a political struggle for control and ownership?   3. If you ended up with a IT-managed development environment, how much of a roadblock has it been for day-to-day development and testing?   4. Has anyone ended up moving their development environment to a disconnected VLAN or entirely separate network to avoid these network access struggles? Also, this is not a Hyper-V vs. ESX holy war (we would be fine with either - but Hyper-V was selected since it is \"free\" with MSDN for these purposes [yes, VMWare has free tools too - but the good management tools generally aren't], and would be easier to manage by the local developers in a \"Microsoft Shop\") - so arguments for or against either are outside the scope of this question. This is also less of a virtualization vs. physical hardware - I suppose the same question could be asked without the virtualization component to the equation. Also assume that the dev team has already made assurances to either manage patch management and antivirus, or integrate with the existing enterprise systems if they will support it. This scenario, with different questions, is also posted on SF to hopefully elicit the opposing viewpoint."}
{"_id": "143377", "title": "How do I start correctly in building database classes in c#?", "text": "I am new in C# programming and in OOP. I need to dive into web applications for my company, and I need to do it fast and correct. So even that I know ASP.NET MVC is the way to go, I want to start with some simple applications with ASP.NET Webforms and then advance to MVC logic. Also regarding my db classes: I plan to create common database classes in order to be able to use them either from WinForms or ASP.NET applications. I also know that the way to go is to learn about ORM and EF. BUT I also want to start from where I am feeling comfortable and that is the traditional ADO.NET way. So about my Data Access Layer classes:   * Should I return my results in datasets or arraylists/lists?   * Should my methods do their own connect/disconnect from the db, or have separate methods and let the application maintain the connection?"}
{"_id": "228237", "title": "Implementing FUSE for deduplication", "text": "I am new to FUSE and using python-fuse for writing a file system for data deduplication. Let's say, I have a directory named \"metadata\" and in that directory, there is a file foo and a directory \"data\". Data contains a data chunks having unique names. These chunks are obtained from the process of data deduplication. foo contains a list of filenames present in data directory. I am taking a metadata directory and exposing it under the mountpoint drive. Till now, I have implemented a `readdir()` method such that If ls command is invoked on a drive, it would only display foo. Now I want to do a following thing. When foo file is read, it should display all the data(combined) from every file whose name is in foo. How do I implement a `read()` method? I have the following idea: Method has the signature `def read(self, path, length, offset, fh)`.               Open a file and read the list.          initialize empty buffer.          For everyItem in list append the content of file named everyItem to the buffer          return buffer      Am I going in right direction? As I want to write a read only fuse, is implementing only `read()` method sufficient?"}
{"_id": "209908", "title": "Access JSON object in different Languages", "text": "I have a Java code which is writing some data in string format to Messaging queue. Now any one can subscribe to this queue and fetch this data. Here the client fetching this data can be written in any programming language. I was planning to expose this data in JSON format, but then as per my understanding I have to expose my Bean Object, as the Object is needed to parse this JSON string. And in this case I am limiting client to be Java only. I don't want to have any of such a limitations, so now I am looking to expose this data as XML. Any other way so that I can still use JSON here?"}
{"_id": "209909", "title": "How to combine search words? AND or OR?", "text": "I have a basic search in my webpage. When I designed it, I chose to combine the search box inputs with OR. For example: A search for `foo bar` will be translated to `foo OR bar`, so every entry which includes foo or bar will be shown. I did this because I thought that a search should return as much as possible and leave it to the user to search with AND (a search for `foo and bar` will return only the entries that contain both). When the customer tested it, he tried a lot to search for 'foo bar' and wasn't able to find the right entry because the search returned to much. It seems confusing to him that a search for `foo bar` could return entries where one of the search inputs is included and not both. What is the best way to combine search words (when the user doesn't provide any combining info)? Should I use `foo AND bar` or `foo OR bar`?"}
{"_id": "209906", "title": "Algorithm to arrange objects so that the total length of edges between them is minimized?", "text": "We are given a list of edges between a set of N vertices. There are atmost three edges joining a vertex. We have to arrange all the vertices on a straight line with the positions numbered from 1 to N so that the sum of the length of all the edges is minimized.   The length of an edge a,b is the difference between the positions of vertices 'a' and 'b' on the line. There are atmost 12 vertices. The algorithm should work within the time limit of 1 second. This is the actual problem. I have tried solving this problem by trying all the permutations and finding out the total cost of each edge. But this work only for 8 out of the 12 test- cases to the problem. Because in the worst case the total number of operations is proportional to 12! * 18. The size of N is very small so I think the solution might be similar to trying all the possibilities.   I don't need the complete solution to this problem because I want to try to come up with it myself but only a hint on how can I optimize my algorithm so that it works within the time limit. Thanks."}
{"_id": "92681", "title": "Can I deploy a Google App Engine application to my own server?", "text": "I am getting started in web application development and am considering using Google App Engine. It's great that I can deploy the web app to the Google servers, but is that my only option? Can I use an authentication system different than the Google services?"}
{"_id": "58501", "title": "Employer admits that its developers are underpaid and undervalued. Time to part ways?", "text": "My employer recently posted an opening for a C# Developer with 3-5 years of experience. The requirements and expectations for the position were fair, up until the criteria for salary determination. It was stated clearly that compensation would depend ONLY on experience with C#, and that years of programming experience with other languages & frameworks would be considered irrelevant and not factored in. I brought up my concern with HR that good candidates would see this as a red flag and steer away. I attempted to explain that software development is about much more than specific languages, and that paying someone for their experience in a single language is a very shortsighted approach to hiring good developers (I'm telling this to the HR dept of a software company). The response: \"We are tired of wasting time interviewing developers who expect 'big salaries' because they have lots of additional programming experience in languages other than what we require.\" The #1 issue here is that 'big salaries' = Market Rate. After some serious discussion, they essentially admitted that nobody at the company is paid near market rate for their skills, and there's nothing that can be done about it. The C-suite has the mentality that employees should only be paid for skills proven over years under their watch. Entry-level developers are picked up for less than $38K and may reach 50K after 3 years, which I'm assuming is around what they plan on offering candidates for the C# position. Another interesting discovery (not as relevant) - people 'promoted' to higher responsibilities do not get raises. The 'promotion' is considered an adjustment of the individuals' roles to better suit their 'strengths', which is what they're already being paid for. After hearing these hard truths straight from HR, I would assume that most people who are looking out for themselves would quickly begin searching for a new employer that has a better idea of what they're doing in the industry (this company fails in many other ways, but I don't want to write a book). Here is my dilemma however: This is the first official software development position I've held, for barely 1 year now. My previous position of 3 years was with a very small company where I performed many duties, among them software development (not in my official job description, but I tried very hard to make it so). I've identified local openings that I'm currently qualified for, most paying at least 50% more than I'm getting now. Question is, is it too soon for a jump? I am getting valuable experience in my current position, with no shortage of exciting projects. The work environment is very comfortable, and I'm told by many that I'm in the spotlight of the C-level guys for the stuff that I've been able to accomplish during my short time (for what that's worth). However, there is a clear opportunity cost to staying, knowing now with certainty that I will have to wait 3-5 years only to be capped at what I could potentially be earning elsewhere this year. I am also aware that 'job hopper' is a dangerous label to have, regardless of the reasons. UPDATE: I've just accepted an offer at another company, paying significantly more and with even cooler projects. Thanks to all for the insightful responses."}
{"_id": "151725", "title": "Is it customary to write Java domain objects / data transfer objects with public member variables on mobile platforms?", "text": "We performed a code review recently of mobile application Java code that was developed by an outside contractor and noticed that all of the domain objects / data transfer objects are written in this style:               public class Category {         public String name;         public int id;         public String description;         public int parentId;     }          public class EmergencyContact {         public long id;         public RelationshipType relationshipType;         public String medicalProviderType;         public Contact contact;         public String otherPhone;         public String notes;         public PersonName personName;     }      Of course, these members are then accessed directly everywhere else in the code. When we asked about this, the developers told us that this is a customary performance enhancement design pattern that is used on mobile platforms, because mobile devices are resource-limited environments. It doesn't seem to make sense; accessing private members via public getters/setters doesn't seem like it could add much overhead. And the added benefits of encapsulation seem to outweigh the benefits of this coding style. Is this generally true? Is this something that is normally done on mobile platforms for the reasons given above? All feedback welcome and appreciated -"}
{"_id": "72105", "title": "Is ASP.NET MVC slow as compared to traditional approach?", "text": "I create three folders in the Project Explorer of any IDE that I use. I name them: App Layer, Business Layer and Data Layer. The App Layer holds all the UI stuff, the Business Layer holds all the classes dealing with business logic and the Data Layer holds the classes for DB connectivity and queries. I am new to MVC pattern and when I attempted it on VS2010 with ASP.NET, I found it far more complicated with all sorts of nested folders created. I was already separating the logic and the UI in my old style. What differed in the MVC is that you can use Routing to directly call methods via URL (Correct me if I am wrong), but in that case I assume the performance of the MVC application slows down. It is just an overhead to call a method via URL and than the method queries the DB. Isn't the performance of ASP.NET MVC a bit slow? Even though manageability is good but the learning curve is also very steep?"}
{"_id": "1516", "title": "Should I strictly follow every single HTML and CSS Standard?", "text": "A few years ago I considered myself somewhat of a web developer, knowing the basic 3 languages (HTML, CSS, JS) and lots of PHP. Moving on from simple text to actual websites was a pain because of the so called \"standards\" out there, which at the time were ridiculously complicated for me. It pretty much boiled down to this (minus the IE related stuff): ![Web development in a pie chart](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aVD7a.gif) Standards are there to replace old ways of doing things in a simpler way. However when trying to actually implement some of the stuff (Entirely CSS based layout for example), it took me 10x longer to actually do it then if I did the simpler and still working solution. If it rendered the same, then why should I use the more complicated example that takes 10x longer and breaks once you change browsers? This sparked many long religious debates in ##php, ##css, and ##js in Freenode IRC and actually got me banned from ##css because I messed with their little world over there. My question: Should I follow every single standard and coding conventions even if they take me 10x longer but get me the same result as the simple one? * * * For the poll tag, those of you who have websites of any size (huge or small), do **you** follow all the standards?"}
{"_id": "77555", "title": "How do I give a free copy of my iPhone app?", "text": "I'm just about done writing an iPhone application and submit it to the App Store for approval. I'm going to sell the app for a price, but I'd like to be able to give out a few free copies on occasion, kind of like a promotional offer. I know when you go to one particular coffee establishment, they have gift cards available to feature various artists. You type in a code and it immediately \"purchases\" and downloads the song for you. I'd like to be able to do something similar to this for my own app. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "255942", "title": "Dynamic programming algorithm for finding minimum spanning tree", "text": "I know cool greedy algorithm like brokuva, kruskal and prim's exists for finding minimum spanning tree but I am curious to know a dynamic programming algorithm for finding minimum spanning tree.I am not able to come up with such an algorithm. If someone already have it please let me know the explanation for your algorithm along with the code.Or can anyone argue the other way round why no such dynamic programming algorithm cannot exist."}
{"_id": "228950", "title": "How does accumulating large amounts of business logic on the model objects make building strong service contracts harder?", "text": "I heard a couple of times that putting business logic in database models is bad down the road. I just read this in blog of a Rackspace employee: _The Django ORM also tended to have us accumulate large amounts of business logic on the model objects, which made building strong service contracts even harder._ But it seems logical to me that if you have an `Invoice` model to encapsulate a lot of invoicing logic there. Seems very similar to what we've been taught in OOP. Could you show me how this is wrong? Please include a practical example if possible. **Benefit of \"put logic in models\"** What I see as a big benefit of putting logic in models is that users of the models don't have to worry about how they can use stuff, they just use it and it works, can't break anything. Let me elaborate with an example: So if you don't put logic in models, then you probably have this code elsewhere, let's say it's in `api`. If you want to change a state of an `Invoice`, what do you do? Do you do `invoice.state = new_state` or do you read the `api` code to see if there's some method there that changes the state? This is confusing and error prone. How do you fix this issue then?"}
{"_id": "35082", "title": "How to organize a larger project with several sub-projects and their dependencies?", "text": "As a software developer until now, I've mostly worked on projects that were quite \"monolithic\" with hardly any dependencies on other projects, without building automation (no Make, Ant, Maven, etc.) and kept on a simple version control system (mostly Subversion) with just a few easily managed version branches. Now together with some friends I'm planning a project that is intended to run on multiple platforms (mostly mobile: Android, iOS, Kindle, Windows, etc.), thus written in several languages and on different development platforms. This will lead to many dependencies: All projects sharing the same resources (e.g. images) or projects dependent on each other (e.g. a core Java library project used by the Android and other Java based implementations). So what I need is some basic information on how to answer questions such as: How would the VCS be structured? Would a client-base or a decentralized VCS be better? How to decide building automation system(s) to use? Since this quite an open question I guess for now it would be great if you could point me to any books or web resources that you can recommend for this topic."}
{"_id": "35087", "title": "Requirment Analysis Communication", "text": "Someday s ago we was discussing about the current project, and suddenly sir and my senior started talking about the new feature to add in the project , and i become lost :). i was not able to find how i should provide my input for the new feature. So i want to know what things should be discussed for developing new feature in project and how we can contribute in requirement talk of new features. Please suggest."}
{"_id": "90139", "title": "Are there drawbacks to taking a job where I will be using a unique programming language?", "text": "I just graduated from college with a degree in CS, so I would like to find a job where I can learn more about the field and build up some professional experience. I've interviewed at a company that uses their own in-house programming language, and I don't think any others use it. They have not mentioned using any other languages or what they use for a development environment. What should I be concerned by taking a job like this? If I were to switch jobs later, would I have to start looking for entry level positions again because I haven't gained any language-specific experience?"}
{"_id": "240733", "title": "Store history in SQL database column", "text": "We have a database that stores the process/history of particular machines. What I mean by that is that we have \"started\", \"updating\", \"shutdown\", and so on for all the computers in the company. The requirement is to have the history available in the right order. Simple enough. My approach was to have a simple database table like this:               counter  | machine | time | process | ...      1       | PC1     | ...  | started       2       | PC2     | ...  | updating      1       | PC1     | ...  | updating      The query will be very simple because I can simply sort by the counter. My colleagues suggested a very different approach. My gut feeling says it is wrong but I don't have enough arguments against it. Can you help define what is wrong with it? Instead of using multiple rows for the process of a machine, they want to write them sequentlly into the same field. Same goes for the time field. Their main arguement is that we save storage               counter  | machine | time        | process | ...      1       | PC1     | ... ... ... | started updating shutdown      2       | PC2     | ... ... ... | started updating"}
{"_id": "228230", "title": "Use of # in answers/documentation when referring to methods of a class", "text": "When looking through Java documentation or answers for Stack Overflow / programming forum questions, I often see people referring to methods like `String#format`, `Object#clone` etc, rather than `String.format`. Is this something to do with it being a non-static method, or is this just some convention? This is quite hard to search for due to most search engines ignoring the '#' symbol so I apologise if this is a duplicate question."}
{"_id": "225850", "title": "How to organize points on a sphere in bins and navigate between bins?", "text": "I'm having trouble coming up with a suitable way to navigate through a set of star coordinates in the Equatorial Coordinate System. My goal is to display those which are within a given range of horizontal coordinates. The display is square with about 10 degrees \"length\" in each direction. I thought about binning the stars in clusters of sufficiently large (but small enough) equal right ascension and declination, so I can display one or more bins at a time on the display (one if the display is showing the center of a bin, four if the display is showing the point connecting adjacent bins). The binning is simple, but how can I navigate between bins in order to select the right ones for the display? This appears to be a problem around the poles, where many bins touch each other. The application is being written in C++ and will have to run on a microcontroller, so resources (memory and CPU time) are very limited. Coordinates can be read from an SD card and the format may be custom, so if the algorithm imposes any constraints on that, that's fine. * * * **Additional thoughts:**   * The tiles that divide the celestial sphere into bins also have constant (not necessarily equal) size and are generated together with the lookup structure.   * insertion time is not important. The structure used for finding the right bin does not change during runtime and can be loaded from the SD card to RAM at startup.   * The word I was missing was \"tiles\". Gamedev SX has a [tiles] tag and there are some questions and answers there; I'll have a look at those. * * * **And another one:** Digging through the Gamedev [tiles] tag didn't reveal a lot that I could use for spherical coordinates. It also looks like I'm not familiar enough with the underlying theory to come up with a suitable solution. Another idea I had was to add information about all adjacent bins to each bin, so that when the display's view is moved I can just scan through all neighbours to find the next one that the display is \"centered\" on. I think this is similar to a graph, but decentralized."}
{"_id": "225851", "title": "Mental schema for SQL queries", "text": "While preparing SQL introductory material, I've ended asking myself about the line of thought followed by a developer when writing a query. I believe it could be too valuable from a beginner's point of view. Let me illustrate the subject with an example. For the sake of brevity, I won't include the database schema, hoping for the query to be descriptive enough by itself. Suppose we want to write a query for retrieving all _new_ customers from the last quarter. Typical. Me, the first thing I think about is the set of entities involved, beginning with the ones corresponding to the requested data. So, as I want to get customers, first of all I write the following query skeleton:                   SELECT           FROM Customers AS NewCustomer          WHERE       There immediately follow the remaining **entities**. In this fictional context, a new customer is any customer having placed an order for the first time:                   SELECT           FROM Customers AS NewCustomer     INNER JOIN Orders AS RecentOrder      LEFT JOIN Orders AS OlderOrder          WHERE             AND OlderOrder.Id IS NULL      With all the entities identified, I proceed writing the **relations** between them:                   SELECT           FROM Customers AS NewCustomer     INNER JOIN Orders AS RecentOrder             ON RecentOrder.CustomerId = NewCustomer.Id      LEFT JOIN Orders AS OlderOrder             ON OlderOrder.CustomerId = RecentOrder.CustomerId            AND OlderOrder.PlacementDate < RecentOrder.PlacementDate          WHERE             AND OlderOrder.Id IS NULL      Once I'm finished with the entities, it's time for me to define whatever **restrictions** to be applied over the resulting data set:                   SELECT            FROM Customers AS NewCustomer     INNER JOIN Orders AS RecentOrder             ON RecentOrder.CustomerId = NewCustomer.Id      LEFT JOIN Orders AS OlderOrder             ON OlderOrder.CustomerId = RecentOrder.CustomerId            AND OlderOrder.PlacementDate < RecentOrder.PlacementDate          WHERE RecentOrder.PlacementDate BETWEEN @fromDate AND @toDate            AND OlderOrder.PlacementDate < @fromDate            AND OlderOrder.Id IS NULL      Finally, I ask myself which concrete data **fields** I want the query to return, thus completing the `SELECT` clause:                   SELECT NewCustomer.FirstName, NewCustomer.LastName           FROM Customers AS NewCustomer     INNER JOIN Orders AS RecentOrder             ON RecentOrder.CustomerId = NewCustomer.Id      LEFT JOIN Orders AS OlderOrder             ON OlderOrder.CustomerId = RecentOrder.CustomerId            AND OlderOrder.PlacementDate < RecentOrder.PlacementDate          WHERE RecentOrder.PlacementDate BETWEEN @fromDate AND @toDate            AND OlderOrder.PlacementDate < @fromDate            AND OlderOrder.Id IS NULL      Of course, this is a very simple query, without aggregates, nested queries and other advanced stuff. But this is my overall train of thought, whatever the query's complexity:   1. Entities   2. Relations   3. Restrictions   4. Fields My question is, is this a suitable schema to be taught explicitly to a beginner? How could it be improved, anyway, in order to smooth her learning curve?"}
{"_id": "79489", "title": "How to approach client who started using my server to train staff?", "text": "I'm in the process of finishing and delivering a web development project. The contract specifically specified that client is responsible for adding all content and installing. The deliverables specified are the WordPress theme. I ended up using a lot of content from their existing site because I needed it to make sure everything worked as promised. I also included 30 minutes of training to show them how to use the custom dashboard I created. I did the training yesterday and gave the client an admin login so they could inspect my work. I offered to do a staff training session at an additional hourly rate ( original agreement was project priced) and also include the database to use as an example on how to add the content. The client declined and said they would handle the training. They mentioned they were going to do some training today and didn't even ask if they could use my server and installation. I just got 3 emails that new admin accounts were added and it looks like they started migrating some content. Should I tell them that it will be an extra charge for the database or bill them for using the server? This has been one of my largest projects and first time to encounter this situation. What's the professional thing to do without letting them take advantage of me and keep the relationship intact?"}
{"_id": "55173", "title": "What are the most common options for data storage in desktop applications?", "text": "When I was working as a website designer/engineer I primarily used databases for storage of much of my dynamic data. It was very easy and convenient to use this method and seemed like a standard practice from my research on the matter. I'm now working on shifting away from websites and into desktop applications. **What are the best practices for data storage for desktop applications?** I ask because I have noticed that most programs I use on a personal level don't appear to use a database for data storage unless its embedded in the program. I'm not thinking of an application like a word processor where it makes sense to have data stored in individual files as defined by the user. Rather I'm thinking of something more along the lines of a calendar application which would need to store dates and event info and such where accessing that information would be much easier if stored in a database... at least as far as my experience would indicate."}
{"_id": "79487", "title": "Quitting a small start-up where you are a primary developer?", "text": "Just curious to hear from other people who may have been in similar situations. I work for a small startup (very small) where I am the main developer for a major part of the app they are building, the other dev they have does a different area of work than I do so couldn't take over my part. I've been with the company 5 months, or so, but I am looking at going to a more stable company soon because its just getting to be too much stress, overtime, pressure, etc for too little benefit and I miss working with other developers who can help out on a project. The guy is happy with my work and I think I've helped them get pretty far but I've realized I just don't like being this much \"on the edge\" as its hard to tell what the direction of the company is going to be since its so new. Also, even though I'm the main dev for the project, I would still only consider myself a mid-level dev and am selling myself as such for the new job search. Just to add more detail, I'm not a partner or anything in the company and this was never discussed, so I just work on a W2 (with no benefits of course). I work at home so that makes it easier to leave, I guess, but I don't want to just screw the guy over but also don't want to be tied in for too long. Obviously I would plan to give 2 weeks notice at least, but should I give more? How should I bring up the subject because I know its going to be a touchy thing to bring up. Any advice is appreciated UPDATE: Thanks everyone for posting on this, I have now just completed the process of accepting an offer with a larger company and quitting the startup. I have given 2 weeks notice and have offered to make myself available after that if needed, basically its a really small company at this point so it would only be 1 dev that I would have to deal with... anyways, it looks like it may work out well as far as me maintaining a good relationship with the founder for future work together, I made it out to be more of a personal / lifestyle issue than about their flaws / shortcomings which definitely seems to help in leaving on a good note"}
{"_id": "221570", "title": "How do we pass data between two Amazon instances?", "text": "I'm trying to create a website where the user enters a few numbers, these numbers are fed into some equations, and the output of these equations is emailed to the user. I'm using Python 2.7 for everything. I'm using a cheap Amazon instance (m1.small, Ubuntu 12.04) to host the frontend, but I only want to launch a backend instance when needed (the computations are heavy and require a powerful - and expensive - instance). I can use boto to programmatically launch a backend instance, but after that how do I feed the user input into the backend? Everything is simple enough when I'm doing things manually, with SFTP and SSH, but what's the programmatic way to do it? Should I simply execute SFTP and SSH from my Python script (using, say, 'os.system')? Somehow that feels wrong; how do people actually do it? In case it matters, this is not for a commercial website. I'm in grad school and I want my committee members to be able to replicate and tweak my research, which is stats-heavy. Also, I have no security concerns - it's just academic research, I'm not storing any kind of personal info or anything."}
{"_id": "221579", "title": "Am I right to be skeptical of ASP.NET MVC \"Html Helpers\"?", "text": "ASP.NET WebForms seemed really great until that moment of realization the abstraction you'd welcomed was producing HTML that was worlds away from what you needed. Wrestling with that framework to generate HTML that matched a designers or used external libraries became a big nightmare for me and one I'd rather not have again. When approaching a simple Bootstrap form in ASP.NET MVC I copied over the basic HTML and then started the process of adding @Html.BeginForm(), @Html.EditorFor() until it hit me that I was going down the same path. Sure, you add an attribute here, define an alternate helper there, but how long until you are fighting the framework to get back to what you could have just pasted in from any Bootstrap example on the web? Is anyone else feeling that, or is it possible that the Helpers introduce enough \"sugar\" to make using them worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "114068", "title": "Steve Yegge post about platform vs product", "text": "I am reading this and I came across: > The Golden Rule of Platforms, \"Eat Your Own Dogfood\", can be rephrased as > \"Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.\" You can't just bolt > it on later. Certainly not easily at any rate -- ask anyone who worked on > platformizing MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon. If > you delay it, it'll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up > front. You can't cheat. You can't have secret back doors for internal apps > to get special priority access, not for ANY reason. You need to solve the > hard problems up front. What does that exactly mean? Can someone please explain?"}
{"_id": "216329", "title": "DOMDocument programming: a lot of little dilemmas, how to solve them?", "text": "I need elegance and performance: how to decide by the \"best implementation\" for each DOM algorithm that I face. This simple \"DOMNodeList grouper\" illustrate many little dilemmas:   * use `iterator_to_array` or \"populate an array\", when not all items need to be copied.    * use _clone_ operator, _cloneNode_ method or _import_ method?   * use `parentNode::method()` or `documentElement::method`? (see here)   * first `removeChild` or first `replaceChild`, no avoids \"side effects\"?    * ... My position, today, is only \"do an arbitrary choice and follow it in all implementations\" (like a \"Convention over configuration\" principle)... But, **there are another considerations? About performance, there are some article showing benchmarks?** * * * PS: this is a generic DOM question, any language (PHP, Javascript, Python, etc.) have the problem."}
{"_id": "145231", "title": "does one method overload an other, or are both methods \"overloaded\"", "text": "If i create this method               public void foo()      And then i create an overloaded version like this               public void foo( string bar )      Do we say that the second functions overloads the first, or are both methods equally \"overloaded\". This would imply ( i think ) , that there is a base type function, that is being overloaded, by another function. ( somewhat like inheritance, but not really ) Assuming that one method can \"overload an other\", would also imply terms like \"overloader\" and \"overloadie\", if that is a word at all. But that doesn't feel right at all, especially since you can have several overloads. I got to this question when i wanted to write down the process of creating an overloaded method and i wanted the most correct way of writing it down. Examples:   * I am overloading `foo`   * I am overloading `foo` with `foo( string bar )`   * I am creating an overloaded method    * I am making foo overloaded So yeah, this kind of got my thinking, i am not sure what to make of it. There are hundreds, if not thousand, descriptions of function overloading online, but at a first glance i couldn't find any addressing this."}
{"_id": "114063", "title": "Will perfecting my assignments help get me a job?", "text": "I am currently a student with the intention of pursuing a career as a programmer. All of my assignments are functional and complete to the letter but I feel as though there is plenty more work that could be done on these applications beyond the scope of the assessment. Will putting in the extra hours into these assignments help me land a job? Also, I was thinking of showcasing my programming skills with a video demonstration of my work. Do you think potential employers would respond well to this kind of visual resume?"}
{"_id": "145232", "title": "XP, TDD or DDD - Which one should I learn first?", "text": "I want to learn XP, TDD and DDD to improve myself. My problem is I have general ideas of what they are but I don't know which one should I learn first, do I need to learn something before other? Please suggest me which topic should I learn first, second and third."}
{"_id": "55280", "title": "How to implement instant communication between iPad and iPhone through the net?", "text": "What is the best way to implement this: 1.iphone/webBrowser user selects some products (a,b,c) to buy 2.the chosen products most appear on the iPad located in the Store. using a UITableView perhaps. 3.The store staff then decide if the products are available in 10, 20 or 30 minutes for pick up. 4.When the store staff chose the time(10,20,30 minutes) it must appear/communicate back to the users web browser or iPhone. 5.buyer comes to the store to pick up the products he buyed! Im not really good in this kind of communication stuff! I need help! what is the best way to implement this? are there external api/plugin I could use? I already have an ftp server. I can do all the graphics and User interactions. the only problem for is the communication between the devices? Thanks for help."}
{"_id": "181351", "title": "What is Developer Anarchy?", "text": "I've been reading about Developer (or Programmer) Anarchy, which seems to be billed as a post-Agile development methodology. I found a few resources on it (1, 2) but it doesn't seem to be a lot out there. I was wondering if anyone had any good resources where I could find out more about it _ how to implement it, pros and cons, comparison with other methodologies etc."}
{"_id": "51706", "title": "In transitioning to C# from Java, how can I ensure that I am not only proficient, but competent?", "text": "My biggest fear with getting back into C# (I have rudimentary .NET skills) is that although I may find the solution to a problem, it will not be the optimal solution. What is the best way to ensure that I am not just getting the job done, but that I become a competent C# programmer?"}
{"_id": "63243", "title": "How do you manage project estimation and managing your teams time", "text": "I'm thinking of things like:   * designating a developer having say 6 hours out of their normal 7.5 hour day dedicated to the project, the rest for other work/company related activity (meetings, emails, calls etc), maybe a senior dev is less.   * building in 20% contingency time to estimates. What are the best ways to produce tight estimates and at the same time shield developers from management. Addendum: I've been asked to help my current client with these types of issues. They are a really poor dev team with the business calling all the shots, scope creep, overlapping environments, priority changing at a whim etc. I want to help them get better."}
{"_id": "150895", "title": "Materialized View vs POJO View based on Objects representing Oracle tables", "text": "I have about 12 Oracle tables that represent data that's being integrated from an external system into my web application. This data is going to be used in an informational and comparative manner for the clients using my web application. On one particular page of my web application, I need to combine data from 3 - 5 Oracle tables for display as an HTML table on the page. We are NOT currently using a framework (Apache Struts for instance) and we're not in a position to move this Java web application into one at this moment (I'm trying to get us there...). I am certainly not an architect, but I see one of two ways that I can effectively build this page (I know there are other ways, but these seem like they would be good ones...): 1\\. Create an Oracle Materialized View that represents what the HTML table should look like and then create a POJO based on the View that I can then integrate into my JSP. 2\\. Create POJOs that represent the Oracle tables themselves and then create another POJO that is the View used for the HTML table and then integrate that POJO into my JSP. To me, it seems the Materialized View would possibly offer quicker results which is always what we strive for in web applications. But, if I just create 12 POJOs that represent the Oracle tables and then build POJO Views off of those, I have the advantage of keeping all the code in one place for this and possibility for creating any number of different views and reusable components in my web application. Any thoughts on which one might be the better route? Or, maybe you know of an even better one?"}
{"_id": "10865", "title": "For what common problems is functional programming not a good fit?", "text": "Functional programming is a declarative paradigm. One of the strenghts with FP is that side-effects are avoided. It's said that for some problems FP isn't a good fit. For what common problems isn't functional programming a good fit?"}
{"_id": "22219", "title": "what is a good stack for software as a service (SAAS) application?", "text": "We will be engaging large corporations to help them run various types of analysis, mostly code analysis of their applications. The storage requirements will likely be modest, hundreds of MB per client. My question is mostly aimed at finding the stack with existing frameworks, best practices and a community which will allow a rapid development process. I am comfortable with the .Net environment and am leaning towards Azure. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "130183", "title": "What is the \"architecture\" that provides functionality to application-level URI interfaces, like chrome:// and Firefox's about:config, etc?", "text": "According to Wikipedia, > `about` is an internal URI scheme (also known as a \"URL scheme\" or, > erroneously, \"protocol\") in various web browsers to display certain built-in > functions. It is not an officially registered scheme, and has no standard > syntax. my question is... what \"powers\" these \"interfaces\"? there doesn't seem to be any kind of \"application server\" running - that would conventionally support such a front-end - were it to be running remotely.. i'm sure the reason for the dearth of information out there - is that these all break the _psuedo- promise_ that anything \"you do\" in the browser - won't \"effect\" your system. these interfaces _clearly_ have access to system level resources and permissions, etc.. are they all simply custom, c-coded hooks to the internal code of the parent applications - or are they a more abstract, _ui--layer_? i admit to little knowledge of plug-in authoring, but can this type of functionality be achieved via the typical plug-in API's, or are they too limited? i have spent some time in the webkit source code poking around - but it is so massive and convoluted that its hard to deduct much... it would seem that however these vendors are implementing these features might be an appealing alternative to say, the various language-specific bridges that webkit implements on various platforms. i personally find the bridges frustrating, which is probably what led me down this train of thought... any insights appreciated."}
{"_id": "183849", "title": "Unforeseen Spike in a Sprint... what to do?", "text": "I did a look around and couldn't find a question that addresses my case, so I figured I would post. I have a situation where as a new team, we ran into 2 unforseen spikes (is there a better term?) during a sprint. We 'thought' we knew, but then we had to research mid way, so this introduced a spike. My questions are:   * If we have an outage/process issue (Jenkins craps out, requires 8 hours of debugging / setup by a dev or more), is this a spike or somethine else? Do I create a spike, throw it into Sprint (mid sprint), do I then subtract hours from overall sprint (8hr spike = minus 8hrs of planned tasks?) or just end up with undelivered items for next sprint?   * If I had an estimate of 8 hours for something, then the devs find, in fact they need to research more, do I have a spike there too? remove task times? etc; I want to make sure I have a better hand at planning out these 'unforeseen' events, and have a good idea of deliverables for the sprint. I'm looking at this from a purely Project Management perspective where I need to report up the chain on progress / burndown of tasks / deliverables."}
{"_id": "224895", "title": "What kind of object relational mapping is appropriate here?", "text": "In my database I have a table that looks like this Master(ID, Name, Attr1...). Every ID will have at least 1 entry in additional tables that have additional attributes. Those tables specialize the master table. Spec1(MasterID, Attr2,...) Spec2(MasterID, Attr3,...) ... So, not sure how to map this to object oriented design. If every ID could have just one specialization then it would be easy, master would be abstract class and specializations would be concrete inherited classes but in this scenario, single ID can have all specializations and they could be added or removed during his lifetime in the database. Each specialization has unique business rules ofc."}
{"_id": "183840", "title": "How should non-functional changes be committed?", "text": "I'm working a small-to-medium legacy codebase and when working on a ticket I will come across code that should be cleaned-up or that I _need_ to clean-up just to be able to understand the follow of the application. A real example is:               if( !a && b ){          doSomething1();          doSomething2();          doSomething3();          doSomething4();          doSomething5();     }else if( a ){          doSomething1();          doSomething2();          doSomething3();          doSomething4();          doSomething5();     }else if( !b && ( a || c )  ){          doSomething1();          doSomething2();          doSomething3();          doSomething4();          doSomething5();     }      Another is fixing typos and Engrish in comments and documentation across a dozen source files. However, often this clean-up ends up not related to the main issue and I wonder how is it best to commit the clean-up. The way I see it, there are three options:   1. Before the fix: this works chronologically since this is the order in which they occur but if they break something they complicate the fix and it makes it harder to diff the fix with what was in production. It also introduces an additional commit which is noise.   2. With the fix: but that obscures the actual replacement of defective code with files where `findGeoragphy` was correct to `findGeography`.   3. After the fix: this requires removing and clean-up you made that helped you understand the code and then retesting the fix, committing the fix, and then going back and redoing the clean-up. This allows the cleanest diff to the defective code, but duplicates effort and can lead to spurious commits as well. **tl;dr:** So, what is the best method of committing clean-up code? **Context:** We have no unit-tests and development proceeds by running changes and eye-balling them and throwing them over the wall to QA to validate through manual regression fixes. Also, if we don't do some form clean-ups the code becomes unintelligible. I know this is far from ideal, but this is real enterprise dev that puts food on my table and not my choice."}
{"_id": "224890", "title": "Should I fork a fork (on Github)?", "text": "On Github, I've run across a pull request which it implements a feature I like but feel isn't quite intuitive and could be better. The maintainers of the original repo have so far declined to accept it (or explain why). It was requested 3 months ago so I suspect they won't take it without changes. I'd like to improve upon this contributor's code but don't know the etiquette: should I fork this fork? Or do I fork the main repo and add the other fork as another upstream source? If the latter, how do ensure credit is given where due? What implications does either option have for pull requests? EDIT: While I appreciate hearing opinions and did ask about etiquette, I'm more interested in knowing about whether there is any technical or pragmatic reason to fork off the main project and add the creator of the 'cool feature' PR as an upstream versus just forking the branch of the 'cool feature' PR. Based on jan-hudec's answer I'm inclined to fork main + add new upstream. I suspect it'd be easier to keep my fork up-to-date and not reliant on this other contributor to incorporate upstream changes."}
{"_id": "183842", "title": "Initializing char array with string", "text": "I don't remember how I got to the thread, but I was reading its replies and one of them states that you should never initialize a `char[]` with a string literal. My question: Is initializing a character array with a string literal a bad practice or is that just the author's opinion? * * * Here is the original question: > **strlen vs sizeof** > > Code:               #include <stdio.h>     #include<string.h>     main()     {         char string[] = \"october\";         strcpy(string, \"september\");              printf(\"the size of %s is %d and the length is %d\\n\\n\", string, sizeof(string), strlen(string));         return 0;     }      > right. the size should be the length plus 1 yes? > > this is the output > > `the size of september is 8 and the length is 9` > > size should be 10 surely. its like its calculating the sizeof string before > it is changed by strcpy but the length after. > > Is there something wrong with my syntax or what?"}
{"_id": "183843", "title": "How to preserve order of incoming requests on a multithreaded server", "text": "I want to write a multithreaded server application which is able to process requests in a multithreaded fashion while keeping up execution order of incoming requests of the same client. For example if client A sends a message M1 and then a message M2 the muiltithreaded server must process these requests in exactly the same order, first M1 and then M2. However, there is no guarantee that threads that process these incoming requests do process these messages in the same order. For example, thread T1 consumes message M1, thread T2 consumes message M2 and completes processing the message and is able to accept further messages before T1 has finished it's job. After a message has been processed the result will be passed to some other process for further processing (of which only one exists in the whole computation), this process will schedule sending a response to the client. These mutliple threads do only exist for the purpose of preprocessing data for some other process. This particular problem sounds like a problem with pipeline characteristics, first M1, then M2, then M3, etc. However, I wanted to parallalize as much as possible to achieve a higher number of communication cycles between the server and the clients. What architecture / pattern / technique is well suited for such a task?"}
{"_id": "205101", "title": "Diving into C++ GUI Programming for the first time", "text": "I am about to start learning C++. I currently am a PHP programmer, I also know how to write Java code and create Java GUI applications. I have browsed http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ and to me it looks fairly similar to what I already know, just a few language syntax differences here and there. I want to create a C++ GUI application, and from what I researched, it sounds like using `Qt` and `Qt Creator` is a good place to start. So, is using `Qt` and `Qt Creator` a good/decent way to start to learn C++ GUI programming or should I do it some other way?"}
{"_id": "78998", "title": "Should technical debt be scheduled as a feature or a chore (or a bug)?", "text": "I've added a couple of user stories that address some technical debt to my Pivotal Tracker board. Should I consider them as features (keeping my velocity level) or as chores/bugs (lowering my velocity)? I understand it won't make any difference in the long run if I did one or the other consistently, but every time I add a technical debt story I have to make the decision. Some thoughts:   * They aren't actually bugs, they don't break anything   * The users haven't requested anything as it is low-level implementation that doesn't affect them, but it will make long term development easier   * If you define features as stories that add value to the users, well a) they don't as the users won't see any direct benefit, but then b) they do because they make future development/maintenance possible which _does_ add value, just not right now I'm not deciding whether or not to actually do the work, or when to schedule it, I just what to know what I should call technical debt in my project management tool, and why."}
{"_id": "27362", "title": "Where can I find design exercises to work on?", "text": "I feel it's important to continue practicing my problem-solving skills. Writing my own mini-projects is one way, but another is to try and solve problems posted online. It's easy to find interesting programming quizzes online that require applying clever algorithms to solve - Project Euler is one well-known example. However, in a lot of real-life projects the _design_ of the software - especially in the initial phases - has a large impact and at later stages it cannot be tweaked as easily as plain algorithms. In order to improve these skills, I'm looking for any collection of design problems. When I say \"design\", I mean the abstract design of a software solution - for example what modules will there be and what are the dependencies between them, how data will flow in the program, what sort of data needs to be saved in the database, etc. Design problems are those problems that are critical to solve in the early stages of any project, but their solution is a whiteboard diagram without a single line of code. Of course these sort of problems do not have a single correct solution, but I'll be especially happy with any place that also displays pros and cons of the typical solutions that might be used to approach the problem."}
{"_id": "205105", "title": "Alternatives to Traditional Password Authentication", "text": "The third party login is excellent function that has come in recent years that relieves the load on a programmers mind so that I have to remember less useless passwords. I don't use the same password for many sites, I use an algorithm: for instance if I make a password for StackOverflow its name starts with S so I'll put in an S and then with my secret sentence so the password for SO will be something like `i81b4uS`, e.g. my secret phrase plus some token that makes the password not the same for every since since I don't want the disaster if some site saves my password in plaintext and gets hacked (then somebody would have access to all my online material if I used the same password). Biological metrics are good but this technology is not here. In the future we will probably only have to unlock at one point all our online material, instead of providing the system so many locks. Google's 2-step verification is flexible and goo but it's not perfect. Are there other, perhaps newer, or less known, authentication methods for instance that simplifies the common use-cases of renewing a password (where it is often tedious to check your mail where you often get interrupted, and providing the old password to change it to a new etc) and reset password, which is a lot like renew a password? I'm not asking for the detail of which algorithm, but rather if there are newer and more effective flows, like third party login which made me start an account at SO where I landed with me Google account, that puts less of a burden on the user's mind and manual memory and that are also safe? At my site I offer authentication much like SO and SE, where you can login at my site just like SO with Google, FB, Linkedin, Yahoo or custom accounts. I've used webapp2's user model to facilitate my logins and the simpleauth library for GAE (python). What would especially be good would be getting rid of email altogether and not bugging users about their email address at all. Some users are hesitant to leave their email, and email is often too much of a direct contact. So many users have smart-phones and androids so that there could be one app for many sites that does the authentication via smart-phone or a desktop app or a large third-party like Google, FB or Yahoo where I can offer Google, FB, Yahoo, LinkedIn so that a user can have a choice not to make up a new password, since that can be painful if you already have memorized 40 passwords for different sites and services."}
{"_id": "198926", "title": "How to add document directory path in javascript file in iOS -MetaIO SDK", "text": "I am working on a project using **MetaIO SDK (AREL)**. It works fine with all the files in the package (ipa), but I'm trying to download an animation automatically using a web service. It will be stored in the document directory. > Since AREL uses a javascript file, I need to give the javascript file the > address for the document directory, but I don't have any access to the iOS > (because Metaio does not give me direct access to the webview as there isn't > any other http request so cant use delegate). All i need is > window.MyImagePath = \"/Users/mac/Library/Application Support/iPhone > Simulator/6.0/Applications/E02C5AE0-DFF0-4803-8C7F-134023077BD0/Documents/placeholder.png\" In my JS file which is not in the document directory. I tried sending this information through the clipboard (safari allows clip board access only when paste event occurs) and through a web service which is not helpful either. Can any suggest a better solution please?"}
{"_id": "198925", "title": "Subranges in Pascal", "text": "I'm reading some Pascal code and everything is pretty straightforward except subranges. In the program I'm reading there's a variable `d` with the following type declaration:`array[0..22] of 0..15`; there's then the following procedure:               var a:integer;     begin       a:=0;       while k>0 do         begin           k:=k-1;           a:=(a+dig[k]*two) div 10;         end;       round_decimals:=(a+1) div 2;     end;      Where `k` is a variable of type `0..63`. So since `k` can be above the range of the index of `dig` how does this code work? \u2014 It's a routine for doing fixed point arithmetic and so I would assume the array indicie overflows in some controlled manner, but if anybody could explain the exact behavior I'd be really happy. Also, do Pascal arrays assign in some known manner? There were a lot of versions of Pascal and I think this program is written in a pretty \u201cPascal-version agnostic\u201d manner, but I can't find much explanation on the subtle semantics of subrange expressions."}
{"_id": "140776", "title": "What is a constructor? And what are set/get methods in Java?", "text": "I am having difficulty understanding constructors and set/get methods. What are they being used for? If someone can explain a little more hopefully I can get the AHA moment."}
{"_id": "166498", "title": "How to measure the right time to bring a new client?", "text": "My growing company has a team of developers working on a number of separate projects. Our developers depend on us to keep them working, and we depend on them to make our clients happy. Our projects have differing start and end dates, as you can imagine. The company's responsibility to the developers is to make sure we have clients waiting in the wings so that when one project ends, another can start. For now, finding clients is not a problem and not the topic of this question. What I'm trying to think through right now is, how can I best measure/view/evaluate the end dates of projects so that I know when I need to start courting the next client. Is there a tool that does this? If it's just a spreadsheet, what might it look like?"}
{"_id": "75956", "title": "Default vs Impl when implementing interfaces in Java", "text": "After reading Should package names be singular or plural? it occurred to me that I've never seen a proper debate covering one of my pet peeves: naming implementations of interfaces. Let's assume that you have a interface `Order` that is intended to be implemented in a variety of ways but there is only the initial implementation when the project is first created. Do you go for `DefaultOrder` or `OrderImpl` or some other variant to avoid the false dichotomy? And what do you do when more implementations come along? **And most important... why?**"}
{"_id": "166496", "title": "Is a scrum sprint backlog ordered?", "text": "Currently, Wikipedia Scrum Article defines \"Sprint Backlog\" as: > A prioritized list of tasks to be completed during the sprint. It is my understanding that the \"Product Backlog\" is a prioritized list but that the \"Sprint Backlog\" does not have an order. I am looking for a definitive reference for the answer."}
{"_id": "166497", "title": "Where should \"display functions\" live in an MVC web app?", "text": "I'm using the Yii Framework which is an MVC php framework that is pretty similar to your standard web-based MVC framework. I want to display the related data from a many-to-many table as a list of strings in my view. Assuming a table schema like:               tag { id, name }     post { id, title, content, date }     post_tag { post_id, tag_id }      A post will display like:               Date: 9/27/2012      Title: Some Title     Content: blah blah blah...     Tags: Smart Funny Cool Informative      I can achieve this by doing something like this in my Post view:               <?php       echo join(' ',                array_map(function($tag) { return $tag->name; }, $model->tags));     ?>      (where `$model->tags` is an array of `Tag` objects associated with my model) My questions are:   1. Is this amount of code/logic okay in the view? (Personally I think I'd rather just reference a property or call a single function.)   2. If not, where should this code live? In the model? the controller? a helper? Potentially I may want to use in in other views as well. Ultimately I think its purely a display issue which would make me think it should be in the view, but then I have to repeat the code in any view I want to use it in."}
{"_id": "166494", "title": "Most efficient Implementation a Tree in C++", "text": "I need to write a tree where each element may have any number of child elements, and because of this each branch of the tree may have any length. The tree is only going to receive elements at first and then it is going to use exclusively for iterating though it's branches in no specific order. The tree will have several million elements and must be fast but also memory efficient. My plan makes a node class to store the elements and the pointers to its children. When the tree is fully constructed, it would be transformed it to an array or something faster and if possible, loaded to the processor's cache. Construction and the search on the tree are two different problems. Can I focus on how to solve each problem on the best way individually? The construction of has to be as fast as possible but it can use memory as it pleases. Then the transformation into a format that give us speed when iterating the tree's branches. This should preferably be an array to avoid going back and forth from RAM to cache in each element of the tree. So the real question is which is the structure to implement a tree to maximize insert speed, how can I transform it to a structure that gives me the best speed and memory?"}
{"_id": "75950", "title": "Architecting a modular service application", "text": "I'm looking at architecting a new solution that is very modular by nature and would like to create a structure that supports that design to allow for easy future expansion, clear separation of concerns, licensing by module, etc. Most of what I've found on the web about modular or composite applications are UI- centric, focused on Silverlight, WPF, etc. In my case, I am developing a WCF service application that will be consumed by other developers working on various UI projects. **Background** The goal of my project is to create a centralized source of business/domain logic to support several of our business applications that currently duplicate process, rules, etc. And while not every benefit of modularity will be achieved, I'd like to seize the opportunity to establish a framework that will leverage those parts we can take advantage of. I've started the design by looking at the API exposed by the service application. It is clear that the services can be segregated along the modular lines that I was considering. For instance, I will have FinanceService, InventoryService, PersonnelService, etc. services that group my service operations to provide high-cohesion in the API while keeping the coupling low so clients only have to consume the services that are pertinent to their application. It makes sense to me that I can then have separate modules for each of these services, such as MyApp.Finance, MyApp.Inventory, My.Personnel and so on. Cross-cutting concerns and shared types would be in the MyApp shared assembly. From here I get a little tied up. (Oh, I should mention that I'll be using an IoC container for Dependency Injection to keep the application loosely-coupled. I won't mention which one because I don't want to open Pandora's box!) In MyApp.ServiceHost, I will create a service host file (.svc) corresponding to each module, FinanceService.svc for example. The service host needs the name of the service which corresponds to the information in the configuration file that contains the interface defining the service contract. The IoC configuration is then used to map the concrete implementation of the interface to use. **1\\. Should the service layer implement the API and delegate to the modules or should the modules be self-contained (in that they contain everything related to that module, including the service implementation)?** One way of approaching the problem is to have a MyApp.Services \"module\" which contains the implementation of the service contracts. Each service class simply delegate to another class int eh appropriate module which contains the domain logic for the operation. For example, the FinanceService WCF class in MyApp.Services delegates to another interface which is implemented in the Finance module to carry out the operation. This would allow me to maintain a thin service facade and 'plug-in' the implementation to the service implementation and eliminate the need for the modules to worry about WCF, for instance. On the other hand, maybe it's preferred to have each module self-contained in that it has the interface and the implementation. The service host refers to the service contract interface found in the module and the IoC is configured to use the appropriate implementation from the module as well. This means that adding a new module can be done with no changes to the service layer other than adding a new .svc file and IoC configuration information. I'm thinking about the impact if I switch from standard WCF to a RESTful service interface or maybe go to RIA services or something. If each module contains the implementation of the service contract, then I have to make changes in every module if I change the service technology or approach. But, if the facade is its own module, then I only have to swap out that part to make a change. The modules would then have to implement a different set of contracts (interfaces), possibly defined in the shared assembly??? **2\\. What is the best way to handle sharing resources between modules and/or dependencies between modules?** Take, for instance, a Receiving operation. At first blush it makes sense that this goes into the Inventory module as receiving goods is an inventory function. However, there is also a financial aspect in that we need to generate a Receipt and authorize payment. On the one hand, I would expect to use some type of domain events / messaging to communicate the operation. The Inventory module raises a GoodsReceivedEvent which is handled by the Financial module to generate the Receipt and initiate the payment process. However, this means that the Financial module needs to know about the inventory items that were received. I can simply refer to them by ID but what if I need additional information for the Receipt, such as the name and/or description, unit cost, etc.? Does it make sense for each module to have their own version of an inventory item that is designed to suit the needs of that module? In that case, the Financial module would have to perform its own lookup of the inventory items when handling the GoodsReceivedEvent. Or do I now have to put my domain objects into a shared location (at which point I lose some cohesion)? ... I used this example on purpose because I've worked a lot with various ERP systems and know they are designed with this type of modularity - I just don't know how. I also don't explicitly mention it above, but I prefer to follow Domain Driven Design principals in architecting the solution and believe that this type of modularity fits right into that area. Any help getting my head wrapped around this is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "55823", "title": "How much effort should you put into a junior developer?", "text": "At what point should one give up? I've tried helping them out by having them shadow me. We agree to break a minute, and then they go missing in action for a while...then just go back to their desk. Even when I know they've done this, part of me feels like I shouldn't have to go get them but that they should be showing interest in learning. Frankly, it's a bunch of time I don't have explaining things as I go when I could just do it. Am I expecting too much to expect that if they want to learn they'll make sure I know they're ready and willing? They go to meetings that they were not told they had to attend...good, but then sit in the corner and sleep...bad. I don't even know what to do with that. Sometimes I give them something small to do and they do it great, so I give them something just a touch harder and they totally fail, hard. They check in things without testing them. Part of me thinks that maybe I should be spending more time with them but at the same time I don't see a lot of interest and I really, honestly don't have time teaching the same things over and over. Sometimes I get asked questions that are really, really easy to answer if you just do a little bit of your own work trying to find out. Other times I'm not asked anything. I'm sure I could be doing better but honestly...I don't really want to anymore."}
{"_id": "74395", "title": "Extremely trivial C++ phone interview question", "text": "My company is currently interviewing for a developer position, and a disturbingly high number of candidates with good resumes end up being total frauds. We do have a written technical test which works fine for that purpose (it was initially designed for interns, but we found out that even candidates interviewing for senior positions failed it abysmally), but I'd like a few questions that allows us to filter out those people with a < 10 min. time investment. I'm trying to come up with a very trivial C++ (or even just programming) question that can be easily answered on the phone. The goal is not to get tricky, or even midly complex, just to weed out the people who'd fail an \"intro to programming\" midterm. So far, the best I've come up with is \"Let's assume I'm an intern you're mentoring: can you explain to me, in simple terms, the difference between a vector and a list, and when I should use or the other\". Any other ideas?"}
{"_id": "142951", "title": "Does it make sense to write build scripts in C++?", "text": "I'm using CMake to generate my projects IDE/makefiles, but I still need to call custom \"scripts\" to manipulate my compiled files or even generate code. In previous projects I've been using Python and it was OK, but now I'm having serious trouble managing a lot of dependencies in two very big projects I'm working on so I want to minimize the dependencies everywhere. Someone suggested to me to use C++ to write my build scripts instead of adding a language dependency just for that. The projects themeselves already use C++ so there are several advantages that I can see:   * to build the whole project, only a C++ compiler and CMake would be necessary, nothing else (all the other dependencies are C or C++);   * C++ type safety (when using modern C++) makes everything easier to get \"correct\";   * it's also the language I know the better so I'm more at ease with it even if I'm able to write some good Python code;   * potential gain in execution speed (but i don't think it will really be perceptible); However, I think there might be some drawbacks and I'm not sure of the real impact as I didn't try yet:   * might be longer to write the code (that said I'm not sure because I'm efficient enough in C++ to write something that work quickly, so maybe for this system it wouldn't be so long to write) (compilation time shouldn't be a problem for this case);   * I must assume that all the text files I'll read as input are in UTF-8, I'm not sure it can be easilly checked at runtime in C++ and the language will not check it for you;   * libraries in C++ are harder to manage than in scripting languages; I lack experience and forsight so maybe I'm missing advantages and drawbacks. So the question is: does it make sense to use C++ for this? do you have experiences to report and do you see advantages and disadvantages that might be important?"}
{"_id": "142953", "title": "Is there a sequence to read through the Android developer site for a user new to Android?", "text": "To summarize: I can buy a book, people say \"Just read the developer site\", I like to be spoon-fed the early learning piece for a technology, what path through the developer site will give me that spoonfeeding I need (that is, examples tied directly to the section being discussed, a clear path, etc.). I keep seeing that I don't need to buy an Android development book, that I should just read the Android developer site, because it has everything I need to know. I see it more as drinking from a fire hose. But I'm one of those people who likes to be walked through the basics. I like to build up my knowledge, rather than being dropped into reference documentation. I also like to make sure I have see all/most of the topics covered. I'd hate to develop the wrong thing, because I don't know about Fragments, Content Providers, or whatever. So, since it's a great resource, better than any book (we don't need no stinking books), how do I traverse the site to get the information provided in the same way as a book would lay it out?"}
{"_id": "142952", "title": "Turning your code inside out (functional style) compared to a OO paradigm", "text": "I have find this article Turning Your Code Inside Out and I want to know how this approach described in article is for OO programmers/languages. Is this style of design used in OO programmers/languages? What's downsides and goodsides of this approach in a OO language? **Update:** OO objects have state and behavior, the design explained in article is stateless. Is not only Single Responsability Principle. (If I'm talking shit, please explain to me instead of only downside/close votes)"}
{"_id": "223044", "title": "Service Design approach - one generic operation, and its implications", "text": "The hot topic in our organization is Service Design Approach. First Approach - The team wants to design services which essentially have one operation, can take any XML and return response XML message. The operation and the parameters are in the request XML message. Once the message is received the service determines the action/method that is requested. Reasons cited are ease of deployment and flexibility of introducing future operations. Second Approach - The second group is adamant about well defined service contracts and specific messages. Reasons cited are better performance, message validation and versioning. This is my preferred approach as well. What are the Pros and Cons? Can there be challenges introducing an ESB later in the architecture if we have chosen the first approach?"}
{"_id": "166729", "title": "Why the bound of a linear function is same as that of a quadratic equation", "text": "I am learning algorithms, and I came across something very interesting. The asymptotic bound of the linear equation `(a * n)+b` is `O(n^2)`, for all `a` > 0. This is same bound as `a * n^2 + b * n + c`, which is surprising."}
{"_id": "56733", "title": "What approaches exist to setting up continent/country/city drop down menus?", "text": "How easy (or difficult) is it to have a Continent/Country/City drop down menu? Where one select from Drop Down Menus (for example): 1 - Europe 2 - UK 3 - London and then writes the Province/Area (for example: Essex). Realistically, how long should it take an experienced web developer to write the code of the above, as well as to link this selection to a Browse function and database storing? I do not have a geographical database yet and I am wondering what the fastest and cheapest way to add it to the drop down menu is. Is there any way to get that geographical database for free? I can see this type of geographical drop down menu in thousands of websites, but I am struggling as to how to implement it ASAP. * * * Follow Up: Tks All x your answers and comments so far. I hear what you are saying. I understand that there are rare occasions of Countries with multiple (same) name Cities and that it might be disputable whether a Country belongs to a certain Continent/Region or not (see Russia x example, Europe or Asia?). Anyway, please take a look, for instance, at this website Sign UP screen http://www.couchsurfing.org/register.html My question then is: Where do I get that list (Country/Cities) and how do I create that _array? Manually copying it somewhere else (which would take me ages) or are there ready made lists that can be downloaded from somewhere for free? * * * Follow Up n2: No way I plan to re-write the whole planisphere! I do agree, to a certain extent, that the number of Countries on this Planet is not fixed and this very issue is arguable (I've Googled: \"How many Countries are there in the world?\" and realized that there are different answers, however, I haven't got time to keep up to date with the ever shifting political landscape and engage into such debate). Irrespective of the argument between the Commentators below, all I just need is a straight and practical solution: a ready made list (database) of Countries/Cities (to use as _Array) in my DropDownMenus, exactly like the one on http://www.couchsurfing.org/register.html Has anyone got a clue where to get that list please?"}
{"_id": "101954", "title": "What is the biggest support a boss can give to his/her developers?", "text": "Buying the best hardware, paying the most precious bonus or reward, treating them politely, provide the opportunity for improvement, etc.? We want to improve the productivity of our development team. We want to see what can be regarded the biggest support (or generally a good support), so we can start from there."}
{"_id": "101952", "title": "Should I use try catch in my test methods?", "text": "I am doing unit testing. I am trying to test one function. I call it from my test component. But If remote function cannot handle the exception then my tester component will also get exception, I guess. So should I worry about getting exception in my tester component? Thanks. **EDIT:** PS: Throwing an error is good, but only for other functions, not to end users until its a last option! OMG I wrote a programming quote!!"}
{"_id": "101959", "title": "Where can I find windows via c/c++ video training?", "text": "There are plenty of windows programming online-video courses but most of them is about .net programming. But many task cannot be accomplished by .net such as API Hook. I think to be a windows programmer one must learn windows api via c/c++ sooner or later.I have the _windows via c++_ book, Is there any video course about advanced windows native programming online?"}
{"_id": "84136", "title": "Right tool for small size Content Management System Project", "text": "I'm starting a new project in my head. It will be an events calendar. It will get info from openData sources the local goverment provides and will allow registered users to add aditional events to the calendar. The project is a personal one, and will be used also as a learning tool for me. In the Web side I just know HTML+CSS+PHP, but have never used PHP frameworks like Zend or Symfony, or any CMS systems like Alfresco or LifeRay. Which will a reasonable technology for this one? I know I just can code plain php, but like to learn some new technology, even if the project size seems not to justify the use of a complex tools more apropiate for bigger projects. It's hard to figure where to start just reading and not diggin into the subject, but I will be pleased to hear your opinions."}
{"_id": "153816", "title": "Are my negative internship experiences representative of the real world?", "text": "I'm curious if my current experiences as an intern are representative of actual industry. As background, I'm through the better part of two computing majors and a math major at a major university; I've aced every class and adored all of them, so I'd like to think that I'm not terrible at programming. I got an internship with one of the major software companies, and half way through now I've been shocked at the extraordinarily low quality of code. Comments don't exist, it's all spaghetti code, and everything that could be wrong is even worse. I've done a ton of tutoring/TAing, so I'm very used to reading bad code, but the major industry products I've been seeing trump all of that. I work 10-12 hours a day and never feel like I'm getting anywhere, because it's endless hours of trying to figure out an undocumented API or determine the behavior of some other part of the (completely undocumented) product. I've left work hating the job every day so far, and I desperately want to know if this is what is in store for the rest of my life. Did I draw a short straw on internships (the absurdly large paychecks imply that it's not a low quality position), or is this what the real world is like?"}
{"_id": "203620", "title": "Best practices for merging a new version of third party source into an old version you've made changes to", "text": "A project I work on uses source code that's been purchased from a third party. The source code is delivered to us in a zip file. We store this source code in version control (TFS 2010) and routinely make modifications to it. When the third party releases a new version of the product we've purchased, I need to merge their new code into ours. Because the code I get is not under any kind over version control, it's very difficult to do this merge correctly. The last time I did this, we had not made many changes. As a result, I was able to check all the files out, copy the new files into their place, and fix up everything by hand without the help of any merging tools. Now that we've got a much larger set of changes, fixing things up by hand is too fragile to be a viable option. Are there any better ideas, or is this doomed to be painful and fragile each time?"}
{"_id": "26014", "title": "Are robotics engineers also programmers?", "text": "I am going to be a senior next year, and I have done lots in computer programming and electronics. I am thinking of studying robotics when I go to university, but I am not sure how much programming there is going to be. Are robotics engineers programmers? How much programming can I expect to do if I choose to go down this career path?"}
{"_id": "26012", "title": "Is JSF and JPA worth learning?", "text": "I'm attending a company sponsored training event for JSF and JPA that crams 10 days of training into 5 days. I plan on getting all that I can out of the class, but there is no \"final exam\"."}
{"_id": "203627", "title": "When deploying updates, do you deploy all or selected/changed assemblies?", "text": "I'm a developer and I have had several experiences in web application deployment which are the following:   1. Deploy all files then apply configuration values as appropriate to the environment. We've used this style of deployment for larger softwares with long development cycles and quick releases aren't needed or allowed unless for emergencies.   2. Deploy only what has changed; manually update configuration files with what new or updated configuration as appropriate to environment. We've used this style for web applications that tend to be more agile, i.e. fix and feature releases are almost done daily. I've had issues with this before where not all assemblies dependent on an assembly that has changed were identified (A constant value was change in assembly A and the same constant was used in assembly B and only assembly A identified as changed). Which of the 2 is a better (or best) practice? I'm starting a new medium sized project where deployments would be on a monthly basis and would like to establish this process early on."}
{"_id": "203626", "title": "How ensure secure two cloud services can only talk to each other?", "text": "**Question** Given two cloud services, Sender A & Receiver B, communicating over HTTPS, what options do I have to ensure that Receiver B only response to Sender A? For the purposes of **Background** The receiver is generating activation keys for some hardware from a serial number. Our support team is using Salesforce and we're making callouts from Salesforce to an Azure service to generate the key. Since neither are behind a firewall we want to make sure that only request from our Salesforce instance can generate an activation key. My thought was just to create a nice long key stored on both sides that could be used to validate the request, but I'm not a security expert and don't know if there is anything else I should be considering."}
{"_id": "141420", "title": "Better word for Optional Requirements?", "text": "What's a better word for an optional requirement in software engineering? The phrase is contradictory. I've used \"Non-Core Requirements\" in previous projects."}
{"_id": "134605", "title": "Designing a scalable and robust retry mechanism", "text": "**Backstory** I have an Messaging Server Application that is responsible for brokering/proxying calls made from an Application Tier to numerous external services. The purpose of this application is to abstract the technicalities of invoking these services away from the main Application Tier. This works well as the Application Server does not have to worry about http/ldap etc protocols, wcf, ftp, soap, ebxml etc etc. They simply send a \"payload\", with a few identifiers, and the Messaging Server handles the rest. It also means that if a service definition changes the Application Server does not need to be changed. Additionally the Messaging Server is back ended by an SQL 2008 database that stores an audit of all messages sent and associated responses etc. The general data flow architecture of this is as follows: Application Server(s) => Load Balancer => Messaging Server(s) => [X] => External Services **The Question** I need to implement a retry mechanism into the Messaging Application tier. The intention is to gracefully recover from situations where the Messaging Server isn't able to forward onto the target service (i.e. service down, network issues, timeouts etc), i.e issues with point [X] in the architecture above. **The high level design requirement is:** Application Server sends a request to the Messaging Server. This then attempts to forward to the external services. If the first attempt at this fails the Messaging Server responds synchronously to the Application Server stating that the message is \"in retry\" The Messaging Server then proceeds to retry the fowarding per the contract (i.e. X retries with Y seconds between each). One of two things will happen next, all contracted retries will have been performed unsuccessfully or one of the retries will succeed. In either case a message is sent back into the Application Tier to notify the state of the messaging request. **A few gothcas** The message to retry can't be held in \"memory\" as if that Messaging Server goes down the message is lost. Additionally a retry contract could be 5 times once every 12 hours, holding data in memory for that length of time isn't feasible. That said some retry contracts could be 5 times once every 5 seconds. If the forward network goes down and then recovers the load of the retries should be spread across the entire messaging tier rather than a single server. **The question** The commucation between Application and Messaging tier isn't a concern as that framework is already in place. However the architecture of the retry framework in the Messaging Tier is still up in the air. How would you implement this? **Options we have/are considering** On failure store the retry data in a database, then have a polling service that checks the database every second. If a message is found that is scheduled for retry this is push back onto the Messaging Tier via the Load Balancer On failure store the retry data in a database, use a CLR job to poll the database and push messages, scheduled for retry, back onto the Load Balancer **Other Information** May or may not be relevant:   * All code is C#   * Databases are SQL 2008   * Comms from Application to Messaging tier is performed via WCF with BasicHttpBinding.   * We have complete control over all aspects of the Messaging Server tier and no control over the Application Tier.   * The Messaging Tier currently handles around 500k transactions per hour, so you can imagine how quickly things will backup if there is a failure on one of the external services"}
{"_id": "134600", "title": "How to add personal android projects to my CV to get into Android job market", "text": "I am an experienced Java Programmer. 1 year back I started android programming and published 3 Apps into the market. But these all are my personal projects. Now I want get into the android job market. As my android experience is not corporate experience does the companies consider this? How to add these android projects to my CV to get into Android job market? Thanks"}
{"_id": "209288", "title": "How can I use icons under a CC-ND license?", "text": "I am developing an open-source Java desktop application and I would like to use some icons in the GUI to indicate various settings, external links, etc. I found a set of free icons that are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license that I would like to use. My questions are:   * Would including such an icon in my application constitute an adaptation or derivative work, and as such be a violation of the license?   * The icons are a little too big for my use case. Am I allowed to include scaled-down versions in my application? And would there be a difference between scaling them in photoshop and including these modified images versus including the original images and scaling them down programmatically?   * I would like to release my program under the Apache License 2.0. Does this have an effect on whether I can include the icons or not? Would I need to take any extra steps, other than including the original copyright and license information for the icons in my NOTICE file? Edit: An ArsTechnica article titled \"Creative Commons images and you: a quick guide for image users\" states that > More subtle alterations, like cropping an image to make it fit your page > width, might seem to be a gray area, but as long as you don't make enough > changes so that your version, when taken as a whole, qualifies as an > original, copyrightable work in its own right, then you should be safe. So the second question essentially becomes:   * Does a scaled down version of an icon qualify for copyright in its own right? And if the answer is \"no\", then it is not considered an Adaptation and therefore not prohibited under the terms of the license."}
{"_id": "134602", "title": "Which of the following data duplication options across shards is recommended?", "text": "High performance mysql book suggests that for sharding a blog application, one may want to put comments data across 2 shards: first, on the shard of a person posting comment, and on the shard where the post is stored. So this raises the question how to reliably duplicate this data. Which of the following data duplication options across shards is recommended?      _Option 1:_ Make 2 separate inserts from the PHP script.   _Pros:_ a) Logic is in application layer.   _Cons:_ a) User is held for 2 inserts. b) This logic will need to be duplicated in every client trying to insert similar data.   Conclusion: Seems reasonable. _Option 2:_ Form federated tables and use some trigger to handle the insert of duplicate.   _Pros:_ a) App layer doesn't need to worry about multiple inserts   _Cons:_ a) Every shard need to have federated connection to every other shard; b) Federation will work on machines in LAN, but what about at 2 different sites. c) what if connection to federated server fails.   Conclusion: Doesn't seem like a sound idea. _Option 3:_ Messaging such as RabbitMQ   _Pros:_ a) Different clients can insert data at one place, and all subscribers can consume the insert.   _Cons:_ a) Complex; b) may impose overhead in order to host messaging server, and clients; c) not sure how will it work with a look-up service to locate appropriate shards   _Conclusion:_ Not sure   _Option 4:_ your suggestion? I will greatly appreciate your help."}
{"_id": "159855", "title": "Design thoughts on a schema based request object for CXF endpoint", "text": "Trying to seek design suggestion on a schema based request object for a CXF endpoint. I've created a CXF SOAP endpoint which takes the following object as an input. The request object will have required fields, non-mandatory fields as well as user-defined fields.Required fields are enforced through the schema. Tag object is defined as a placeholder for user defined properties. The eventual goal of the endpoint is transform the values into Tag object and send them for processing.               public class TestServiceRequest{            @XmlElement(required = true)         protected String url;         @XmlElement(required = true)         protected String title;         protected String source;         protected List tags;              public void setUrl(String value) {             this.url = value;         }         public void setTitle(String title) {             this.title = title;         }         public void setSource(String value) {             this.text = value;         }         public List getTags() {             if (tags == null) {                 tags = new ArrayList();             }             return this.tags;         }      Tag object :               public class Tag{        public String name;        public String value;        public String weight;     }      Schema snippet:               <xsd:complexType name=\"tag\">             <xsd:sequence>                 <xsd:element name=\"name\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"1\" maxOccurs=\"1\" />                 <xsd:element name=\"value\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"1\" maxOccurs=\"1\" />                 <xsd:element name=\"weight\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"0\" maxOccurs=\"1\" />                 <xsd:element name=\"attribute\" type=\"tns:attribute\" minOccurs=\"0\" maxOccurs=\"unbounded\"/>             </xsd:sequence>         </xsd:complexType>              <xsd:element name=\"testServiceRequest\">             <xsd:complexType>                 <xsd:complexContent>                     <xsd:extension base=\"br:BaseRequest\">                         <xsd:sequence>                             <xsd:element name=\"url\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"1\" maxOccurs=\"1\"/>                             <xsd:element name=\"title\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"1\" maxOccurs=\"1\"/>                             <xsd:element name=\"text\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"1\" maxOccurs=\"1\"/>                             <xsd:element name=\"source\" type=\"xsd:string\" minOccurs=\"1\" maxOccurs=\"1\"/>                             <xsd:element name=\"tags\" type=\"tns:tag\" minOccurs=\"0\" maxOccurs=\"unbounded\"/>                         </xsd:sequence>                     </xsd:extension>                 </xsd:complexContent>             </xsd:complexType>         </xsd:element>      As you can see, Tag object has an additional field called weight, which is the crux of the issue. Weight is an optional field for each property defined as required (url, title) and optional fields (source) as well. The weights are static value defined for these properties. The reason why I inclined towards this model is firstly, property field names (url, title, etc.) conform to a standard and cannot deviate. Having defined them in a schema and generating the request based on it, allows me to impose that. The end-user is free from using the exact field name and just use the setter instead, thus reducing the scope of error. Moreover, schema validation can be integrated with cxf endpoint easily, hence maintenance is easy. Any change is restricted to the schema. Issue with this model is the service end-point explicitly needs to add the weight for the fields while converting them to Tag objects. If the client ever decides to send their own weight values specific to properties, then this model will break. The other option is to use a simplified request object instead of a schema generated one.               public class Tag{        public String name;        public String value;        public String weight;     }      The pros are that this model is simple and flexible and allows user to define weights and other metadata if required. Issue with this, I need an explicit validation code to make sure the required fields are provided and the field names are correct. That means, every time a new field is added, I need to touch the code to add it as part of the validation. I'm in a dilemma to decide which is the best possible way to design this. Maybe,there's a better way to do this instead. Any pointer will be highly appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "8391", "title": "How complex is the documentation you write?", "text": "In a book I'm reading there is a chapter on documentation for your code. The book is about PHP and described some easy methods but also going for some complicated and time consuming methods (xml, xsl) like DocBook. At my current small company (5 people) we even rarely write comments, but I'm wondering if in a big company how detailed documentation do they write? Do they use such tools like DocBook? Is it complex or simple?"}
{"_id": "182070", "title": "Should database-models (conceptual or physical) be reviewed by DBAs?", "text": "Where I work, new applications that are being developed that will use their own relational database, must have their database-models (conceptual, then physical ) reviewed and aproved by DBAs. Things looked after are normalization, antipatterns, table and column naming standards, etc. Is this really a DBA's responsability to do this ? or should it be, in a greater extend, the responsability of app designers and architects ?"}
{"_id": "147861", "title": "Including Module Source files into War file using Maven", "text": "My goal is to include modules sources files into War file. I read this explanation on the maven official site: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly- plugin/examples/multimodule/module-source-inclusion-simple.html I wonder if it's the only way to include all sources files contained within all modules. Can't the simple maven-plugin-war do the same ?"}
{"_id": "182079", "title": "How to do scalar multiplication and matrix inverse when variables are of size 1000 bits?", "text": "I am doing arithmetic operations on really huge numbers. For example, I am given six variables, a_{11}, a_{12}, a_{21}, a_{22}, x_1, and x_2. Although the above are math terms, these six variables are each 1000-bit integers. What I want to do is to calculate (1) two numbers z_1 and z_2, and (2) the matrix inverse. (1) z_1 = a_{11}*x_1 + a_{12}*x2 and z_2 = a_{21}*x_1 + a_{22}*x2 (2) if A is a matrix defined as A=[a_{11} a_{12}; a_{21} a_{22}], want to compute A^{-1} I know how to do the above when these six variables are ordinary floating points. But my question is how to compute them in C or Python when the six variables are all of size 1000-bit?"}
{"_id": "84684", "title": "Aspect Oriented Programming: When to start using a framework?", "text": "I just watched this talk by Greg Young warning people to KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. One of the things he suggested is that to do aspect-oriented programming, one _does **not** need a framework_. He starts by making a strong constraint: that all methods take one, and only one, parameter (though he relaxes this a little later by using partial application). The example he gives is to define an interface:               public interface IConsumes<T>     {         void Consume(T message);     }      If we want to issue a command:               public class Command     {         public string SomeInformation;         public int ID;              public override string ToString()         {            return ID + \" : \" + SomeInformation + Environment.NewLine;         }     }      The command is implemented as:               public class CommandService : IConsumes<Command>     {         private IConsumes<Command> _next;              public CommandService(IConsumes<Command> cmd = null)         {             _next = cmd;         }         public void Consume(Command message)         {            Console.WriteLine(\"Command complete!\");             if (_next != null)                 _next.Consume(message);         }     }      To do logging to console, one then just implements:               public class Logger<T> : IConsumes<T>     {         private readonly IConsumes<T> _next;              public Logger(IConsumes<T> next)         {             _next = next;         }         public void Consume(T message)         {             Log(message);             if (_next != null)                 _next.Consume(message);         }              private void Log(T message)         {             Console.WriteLine(message);         }     }      Then, the pre-command logging, command service, and post-command logging are then just:               var log1 = new Logger<Command>(null);     var svr  = new CommandService(log);     var startOfChain = new Logger<Command>(svr);      and the command is executed by:               var cmd = new Command();     startOfChain.Consume(cmd);      To do this in, for example, PostSharp, one would annotate the `CommandService` this way:               public class CommandService : IConsumes<Command>     {         [Trace]         public void Consume(Command message)         {            Console.WriteLine(\"Command complete!\");         }     }      And then have to implement the logging in an attribute class something like:               [Serializable]     public class TraceAttribute : OnMethodBoundaryAspect     {         public override void OnEntry( MethodExecutionArgs args )         {             Console.WriteLine(args.Method.Name + \" : Entered!\" );            }              public override void OnSuccess( MethodExecutionArgs args )         {             Console.WriteLine(args.Method.Name + \" : Exited!\" );         }              public override void OnException( MethodExecutionArgs args )         {             Console.WriteLine(args.Method.Name + \" : EX : \" + args.Exception.Message );         }     }      The argument Greg uses is that the connection from the attribute to the implementation of the attribute is \"too much magic\" to be able to explain what's happening to a junior developer. The initial example is all \"just code\" and easily explained. So, after that rather longwinded build-up, the question is: when do you make the switch from Greg's non-framework approach to using something like PostSharp for AOP?"}
{"_id": "167455", "title": "Should I have a separate method for Update(), Insert(), etc., or have a generic Query() that would be able to handle all of these?", "text": "I'm currently trying to write a class library for a connection to a database. Looking over it, there are several different types of queries: Select From, Update, Insert, etc. My question is, what is the best practice for writing these queries in a C# application? Should I have a separate method for each of them(i.e. Update(), Insert()), or have a generic Query() that would be able to handle all of these? Thanks for any and all help!"}
{"_id": "167457", "title": "Downgrading from GPL v3 to GPL v2", "text": "I have this issue with licensing. I downloaded a third-party class from GitHub and it's under the GPL v3 license. However, I used this class on another open-source project which is under the GPL v2 license, and submitting my script there, requires that everything is under GPL v2 from my side too. Am I allowed to change the license for that class, even though I am not the author?"}
{"_id": "199331", "title": "Is there a specific name for the \"Square inherits from Rectangle\" paradox?", "text": "A certain failure of OOP is shown with a class Square inheriting from Rectangle, where logically Square is a specialization of Rectangle and should therefore inherit from it, but everything falls apart when you attempt to change a Square's length or width. Is there a specific term for describing what is going wrong with that case?"}
{"_id": "70674", "title": "How can I make team Javascript development less painful?", "text": "We have a team working on an ExtJS web app. Right now, the interface and its functionality is all stuffed in one 1500-line JS file, which is of course _terrible_. It's bad form in general, of course, but it really makes merging changes a bear. Since Javascript doesn't have a #include or @require, or any other dependency- specifying mechanism, I'm at a loss how to gracefully split out functionality into smaller logical units, without requiring a great big laundry list of includes in the consuming HTML. I figure this is a common enough problem that somebody has worked out an elegant solution. Help?"}
{"_id": "232276", "title": "Should utility base classes be avoided", "text": "Knowing that C# doesn't support multiple inheritance, is it considered bad form to write a utility base class? Some initial thoughts:   * I could create an interface and a concretion, but then the implementation isn't portable   * Should the developer need to extend the class in say, a decorator pattern, they could implement this new class and inherit the base class in their new class **EDIT** : N.B. I'm not talking about vanilla inheritance here e.g. poodle<\\--dog<\\--mammal<\\--animal More this sort of thing (lifted from here):                   using log4net;         using log4net.Config;              public class LogTest2         {             private static readonly ILog logger =                    LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(LogTest2));              static LogTest2()         {             DOMConfigurator.Configure();         }              static void Main(string[] args)         {             logger.Debug(\"Here is a debug log.\");             logger.Info(\"... and an Info log.\");             logger.Warn(\"... and a warning.\");             logger.Error(\"... and an error.\");             logger.Fatal(\"... and a fatal error.\");         }     }      If I were to drop this into say, a WCF service, it would be expedient for the private member variable, constructor and perhaps some wrapper methods to sit in a base class to save cluttering up the service code (and make it reusable). So far, so dull. However: What if I wanted to add some other sort of logging not supported by log4net? E.g. Acme Corp provide some class to iMessage the support team if an issue occurs. **Base class** Had I implemented the log4net stuff in a base class, I'd then have to create some new master base class that supports both classes and inherit this. **Interface** I could implement an interface but the concretion would still be in the service code which we're trying to avoid. Acme Corp's class can of course now drop straight in but we're implementing two sets of code which do very similar things in different ways."}
{"_id": "70678", "title": "Resources to learn video/motion capturing", "text": "I'm hoping to do some programming for the Kinect for my final year University project, starting in a few months. Although I am a fairly competent C# programmer, I've no experience with motion capture, vision depth, basically all those things measured and captured by the Kinect. Could somebody recommend some reading on this subject, preferably at the novice level for now? Online resources would also be good."}
{"_id": "203191", "title": "Full Text Search Strategy For My Website", "text": "I have a website that allows users to search for items in various categories. Each category is a separate area (page) of my website. For example, some categories might be cars, bikes, books etc. At the moment a user has to search for an item by going to the page (for example, cars) and searching for the car they want. I would like to allow the user to search for anything on my site, from my main home page. At the moment, each page (category) has its own set of tables, and I don't really want to turn Full Text Search on for each table (20+ of them) and search each table individually when a search is done. This is going to be slow and tedious. What I'm thinking of doing is creating a single table that will hold all searchable information for each category of item (when an item is saved in its respective table, I would copy all searchable information over to my 'Search' table). I would then turn Full Text Search on for that table, and search that table. Does this sound reasonable? Is there a better way? I've never used Full Text Search before, so this is new to me."}
{"_id": "232275", "title": "Customizing configuration for PHP will Laravel 4 IoC be useful?", "text": "This topic has been discussed in this post: Customizing configuration with Dependency Injection However - I couldn't find one for PHP syntax and since one of the answers was to use a specific ASP.net container - I couldn't correlate. I currently have a static class App\\Config - that injects itself with a long array of configuration. the array is nothing more than array('max_select' => '10'); and other breakdowns for different objects to be initialize. Would Laravel's IoC be useful to chop this up? If so - how would I do so? Laravel code would be: `$app->make('MyClassA');` However I don't know how to correlate."}
{"_id": "209132", "title": "How to improve in code after you know many languages?", "text": "Over the past years I learned about 14 programming languages (assembler phyton delphi qbasic c++ c# ruby perl - etc etc etc). However this was all out of my own interest, I didn't went to school for it. Now without real education I am into a team with other programmers. We are into robotics with our work. In contrast to me they know about 2 languages and many frameworks I never had heard of before. I don't really feel behind them, but they can surprise me and other times I can surprise them with solutions. The largest difference is that they have worked for years in the IT, while to me the programming part, is new and I enjoy it. But after the many languages I find it a bit hard to improve. Sometimes I see code (or tools) that are new to me. I never used tools as anksvn, or did versioning or never had seen USB driver made in code, I got used to them, learned from them on projects and my colleagues. I started making money with code (without a real degree) the last 2 years. Given that I haven't found any good YouTube channel or a book, that might improve my skills, how can I improve further? My interests these days are C++ and C#. The point I loose interests if books start with the basics of \"if then while for types objects\" after 14 languages you get that."}
{"_id": "200812", "title": "Is writing software easier than reading and understanding it from scratch?", "text": "Me and a friend of mine were discussing yesterday about differences between writing a large C++ software and understanding it as a new recruit. Is it possible that since a software gets done one line at a time and this process resembles how we (humans) learn things and build a thing on top of another one, writing a large software is actually easier than reading it and understanding what it does (stepping through the code helps but you need to remember multiple classes/source files together you don't even know what they've been written for, multithreaded code adds malus points)? This sounds weird at first but after we thought a bit it seemed reasonable"}
{"_id": "18598", "title": "Source for \"Programmers combine like resistors in parallel\"", "text": "What is the origin (reference, time, author) of the following quote? For instance, is it from a book? > Programmers combine like resistors in parallel. It may be by Gerry Jay Sussman, and I can not rule out the quote comes in several variations. Optionally, **_secondary_** question: what does this quote mean?"}
{"_id": "208421", "title": "How much time should be spent with use cases?", "text": "I'm starting to work with agile iterative approach to software development and this question seems quite natural. After gathering the requirements I should write a few use cases to describe how the user interacts with the system while the requirements are being met. Now, how much time should we spent with this? Should I spent something like a week figuring out the use cases, finish then and only then move to working with each of them to find the main objects? Or should I just write a few of them and get a small number to work with? If I understood agile well, I think I should get just some of them and assure that the functionality being purposed there is indeed constructed and is already usable. Only then I should move to other use cases and review what was done in the use case finished. Am I right with this idea? Thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "208425", "title": "Should model / table names be as generic as possible?", "text": "When naming a model, should the name be as generic as possible-- even if that won't be the name displayed to users? For example let's imagine a Django model for liking another user's posts. Does it make sense to name the model 'Like' even if I plan on displaying it as Kudos, Endorsements, Ups, etc? Does it make sense to make the name as generic as possible, even if the name won't be the one displayed to the user?"}
{"_id": "14635", "title": "Why doesn't DDD consider Documents?", "text": "... that is, the inputs and outputs of service functions ? Are entities, or aggregates, allowed to leave service boundaries?"}
{"_id": "243185", "title": "is it valid that a state machine can have more than one possible state for some transition?", "text": "I have a requirement for a workflow which I am trying to model as a state machine, I see that there is more than one outcome of a given transition(or activity). Is it valid for a state machine to have more than one possible states, but only one state will be true at a given time? **Note:** This is my first attempt to model a state machine. Eg. might be: **s1->t1->s2** **s1->t1->s3** **s1->t1->s4** where s1, s2, s3, s4 are states and t1 is transition/activity. A fictitious real world example might be: For a human, there can be two states: hungry, not hungry A basket can have only one item from: apple, orange. So, to model it we will have: **hungry->pick from basket->apple found** **hungry->pick from basket->orange found** **apple found->eat->not hungry** **orange found->take juice out of it and then drink-> not hungry**"}
{"_id": "76638", "title": "C language portability", "text": "How exactly is portability of a language like C is determined? I've learned that compilers are ISA specific. If this is true, how is C portable? Or is it that just the source code written in C is portable but not the executables? Aren't the executables ISA specific for examples applications for x86 are separate from the applications for Apple (assuming Apple uses Motorola/PowerPC microprocessor)?"}
{"_id": "76637", "title": "Artificial Intelligence Code?", "text": "I took a Class in college (A.I.) and I found it pretty interesting, but didn't go much further than that (I graduated that semester so I wasn't able to take any more classes). So it's something that's been kind of coming back up as a \"side\" interest that I kinda wanted to study on my own, I have a ton of e-books and documents but the problem is they are VERY advanced and extremely math/algorithm heavy (which I can understand).....however none of them really explain how you would go about it 'code wise'......so I guess what Im asking is, is their a beginner resource to this kinda stuff (Bayesian Networks/Machine learning/Neural Networks) and such that isn't SO math heavy. I understand why the math is there, but when it doesn't really explain how you would go about 'programming' such a system.....well it gets kind of confusing to move forward with."}
{"_id": "205600", "title": "Source control and compilation tool chain", "text": "I am a single developer working on a large system. I was recently informed that there may be an opportunity to recruit another developer or maybe two. I have incorporated source control into my approach using Subverison and Tortoise SVN. I was talking to another developer who I used to work with recently and he reminded me about the concept of a compilation tool chain and specifically nightly builds for unit testing. I have two questions:   1. Is it good practice for all software development teams to use unit testing and nightly builds? Is there any criteria that identifies teams that are more suitable than others for nightly builds.   2. How do developers identify areas suitable for unit testing? I assume that you look at the use cases. I assume that these use cases could include different processing methods e.g. users interacting with a web application or a batch processing job that runs via a scheduled task each night."}
{"_id": "102702", "title": "Does agile development need a framework in place first?", "text": "We are planning a new project and we want to go with a services oriented architecture. Everyone agrees that this is the way to go but how does this fit in with starting the development using agile methodologies? I do not have any experience with SOA, although I have some experience with TDD (test driven development). The team I work with thinks that we need a framework in place before we can even start looking at developers doing work with TDD. In others we spend weeks getting a framework in place (a SOA framework) and then the developers can build on this framework to do their work. From a TDD point of view, I would have expected each developer to just flesh out the functionality using MOCKs etc whilst the framework is being developed (although I have no idea what a framework in SOA would involve). Then we could plug in the actual framework calls when we need to. Not sure if this right but it feels the correct way."}
{"_id": "102709", "title": "How should contributions to an open source project be managed by the owner(s)?", "text": "When managing an open source project (using a service like GitHub) how would one respond to the following: Somebody has kindly submitted a patch to add a new feature or address a problem. Any one of the following situations occur:   * The source code doesn't meet one or more naming conventions, etc.   * I feel that the source code could be improved in a certain way. Perhaps the same effect can be achieved with far simpler source, or perhaps another useful feature would be needed. Q1. Is it acceptable for me to alter the submitted source? (is this possible on GitHub?) Q2. Should all such submissions be rejected in accordance with submission guidelines? Q3. If yes to Q2, what about a really neat idea that was poorly implemented? Is it acceptable for me to just go ahead and create my own? I want to encourage contribution but at the same time it is important to maintain a certain standard."}
{"_id": "89620", "title": "Clean readable code vs fast hard to read code. When to cross the line?", "text": "When I write code I always try to make my code as clean and readable as possible. Every now and then there comes a time when you need to cross the line and go from nice clean code to slightly uglier code to make it faster. When is it OK to cross that line?"}
{"_id": "33840", "title": "Things to be aware of Client Relationships as a Beginner?", "text": "I'm an entry level programmer and am involved in daily client meeting about project progress, issues, deadlines etc. I have no experience of client management, could you people please suggest any common things to consider when interacting with clients both in a project and people management perspective."}
{"_id": "233633", "title": "How to simplify unit testing with higher order functions?", "text": "* this is _not_ a question on how to write unit tests   * this is _not_ a question on what to test   * this is a question on reducing the typing needed overall for a personal testing framework I know you can send function pointers as arguments to functions in C. Is there a c++98 version? Or, since c++ can work backwards, should I just use the C function pointer method? I am trying to write a function that tests functions for me. I don't want to write a long list of:               try {       func1()       out << fail     } except e {       out << pass     }          if (func2(arg2) == expected_val) {       out << pass     else       out << fail          try/catch...     try/catch...     if/else...     try/catch...     ...etc      but maybe instead:               test_this(func1, passes_on_exception)     test_this(func2, ! passes_on_exception, expected_val2, arg2)     test_this(func3, passes_on_exception)     test_this(func4...     test_this(func5...     ...etc          void test_this(func_name, pass_on_exception, expected_value, arg1, ..., argn) {       if pass_on_exception {           try {               func_name(arg1)               out << fail           } catch e {               out << pass           }       } else {           if func_name == expected_value {               out << pass           } else {               out << fail           }       }     }      Virtual functions seems out of the question since, if I recall correctly, the function names have to be overridden/hardcoded; as in, I would need to create a new class to inherit and override the functions, in which case, I would redeclare the function, and also retype all of those try/catch... the chain of try/catch/if/else seems better. If there was a way to pass function names to other functions, I think I can figure it out from there. Unless the above is actually impossible in C++, then please stop me before I start, and I'll just bear with that long list of try/catch/if/else unit testing method. So, main question: is there a way to do the above? If not, alternatives?"}
{"_id": "234942", "title": "Differentiating between Factory Method and Abstract Factory", "text": "I've been confused for a while about the differences between the patterns Factory Method and Abstract Factory. Been doing a lot of research, still confused. I have one question: Is the **only difference** between the two patterns, is that Factory Method **produces one object** , and Abstract Factory produces a **family of objects**? Or are there more differences? I read a lot on this site and the web about this, only confused me more. I know how to use the patterns, but am having trouble differentiating between the two."}
{"_id": "225440", "title": "expressing the speed of a sorting algorithm", "text": "How would I express the speed of the following sort algorithm? I know bubblesort is n^n (er, I mean n^2...as someone pointed out below). In the following the array decreases each time you call it recursively. thanks. * * *               $myarray = array(\"21\",\"4\",\"8\",\"8\",\"1\",\"2\",\"19\",\"21\");     mysort($myarray);          function mysort($myarray,$sorted = null){         if(!isset($sorted)){             $sorted = array();         }         $lowest = $myarray[0];         $lowindex = 0;         for($x = 1;$x < count($myarray);$x++){             if($myarray[$x] < $lowest){                 $lowest = $myarray[$x];                 $lowindex = $x;             }         }         $sorted[] = $lowest;         array_splice($myarray,$lowindex,1);         if(count($myarray) > 1){             echo \"calling recursively \\n\";             mysort($myarray,$sorted);         }         else if(count($myarray) == 1){                   $sorted[] = $myarray[0];             $arraystr = print_r($sorted,true);             echo \"sorting finished. Array is $arraystr \\n\";             return;         }     }"}
{"_id": "225443", "title": "How to reduce close points", "text": "input: C matrix 2xN (2D points) output: C matrix 2xM (2D points) with equal or less points.      Lets say we have C matrix 2xN that contains several 2D points, and it looks something like that:   ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1lFgN.jpg)   What we want is to group \"close\" points to one point, measured by the average of the other points. For example, in the second image, every group of blue circle will be one point, the point coordinate will be the average point off all points in the blue circle. also by saying \"close\", I mean that: their distance one to each other will be smaller then DELTA (known scalar). So wanted output is:   ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Ihekp.jpg)   About running time of the algorithm, I don't have upper-limit request but I call that method several times...   I am using Matlab, and what i have tried is this:                 function C = ReduceClosePoints(C ,l_boundry)         x_size = abs(l_boundry(1,1)-l_boundry(1,2)); %220         DELTA = x_size/10;         T = [];         for i=1:size(C,2)             sum = C(:,i);             n=1;             for j=1:size(C,2)                 if i~=j     %not same point                     D = DistancePointToPoint(C(:,i),C(:,j));                     if D < DELTA                         sum = sum + C(:,j);                         n=n+1;                     end                 end             end             sum = sum./n; %new point -> save in T matrix             T = [T sum];         end         C = T;     end      And its not working :( Also I am new to Matlab.   Thank you for your help!!"}
{"_id": "225442", "title": "SQL Update statement generator using C# Winforms?", "text": "I am trying to make an UPDATE STATEMENT generator using C# Winforms. I would like to build a statement generator which will print statements like this:               UPDATE Customers     SET ContactName='Alfred Schmidt', City='Hamburg'     WHERE CustomerName='Alfreds Futterkiste';      But my problem is, how can I let the user paste in multiple values for each `SET`? My end user is likely to build a list using a spreadsheet and will want to paste in the values into a multi-line text box. I could create 2 multi-line text boxes, but what if i have more `SET` columns i need to add?"}
{"_id": "724", "title": "Killer semi-unique programming language features", "text": "When learning a new programming language you sometimes come across a language feature which makes you wish you had it in your other programming languages that you know. What are some language feature which were at the time of learning very new to you and that you wish your other programming languages had. An example of this is generators in Python or C#. Other examples may include list comprehensions in Python, template in C++ or LINQ in .NET or lazy evaluation in Haskell. What other semi-unique language features have you come across which were completely new and enlightening to you? Are there other features of older programming languages which were unique and have fallen out of fashion?"}
{"_id": "729", "title": "How do you manage your knowledge base?", "text": "As programmers we have a lot of inputs:   1. Ebooks    2. Code snippets    3. Interesting emails    4. Documents   5. Web articles    6. Blog posts   7. StackOverflow questions   8. Podcasts ... Which tools do you use to store, organize, search and consult all of this stuff?   Is there a silver bullet solution to handle this huge amount of data?"}
{"_id": "144883", "title": "With continuous integration in .NET, is it acceptable to reference DLLs of rarely-changing assemblies?", "text": "My company is looking to implement a CI solution pretty soon, and I am worried about one thing in particular... we are scaling up, which means our solutions are growing with more projects. One thing I wanted to look into is to split off rarely changed projects into a separate project, and then having other projects simply reference the compiled DLL, rather than including the projects in their solutions. For example...   * /BLL/DataFramework   * /BLL/OrmFramework   * /BLL/OrmDataAdapter   * /BLL/...   * /WebUI/MyWebSite The Data and ORM projects would rarely be changed, but if not referenced as DLLs would add bloat to all solutions. Instead I'd like to exclude them from the project and have them build to a Libraries folder (or something similar), so that:   * /BLL/...   * /Libraries   * /WebUI/MyWebsite Where the ORM and Data assemblies .DLLs are in the Libraries folder. So the question is... **Is there any reason this would not work with Continuous Integration?** Could I have one solution with these rarely updated classes that will build to the library folder during CI, first, and followed by the other solutions? _Edit: **To be clear...** we want to keep these projects in the CI cycle, but to not directly reference their projects in every solution._"}
{"_id": "128331", "title": "several similar tables vs several one-to-one relationships?", "text": "I have a sort of blog application that I'm working on for constrained writing. The posts have several types, and share some columns in common (title, body for instance), but they also have columns that they don't share in common. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like my two database design options are:   1. Create a separate table for each type of post (and then use UNION if I ever need to select all of the various types).   2. Create one table to store all of the similar columns (and then have several one-to-one relationships to define what's different about them--like an inheritance-type situation). Which is better? Why? Are there other designs that would be better? **UPDATE** : these posts will be different types of constrained writing (I.e., poems), that are validated in specific ways based on the particular constraint technique, and may have a variety of other tables associated with them, so extensibility will be really important. That said it sounds like either the nosql or inheritance options would be best. I would just be worried about doing analytical stuff with nosql (never used it, so I just don't know anything about how to aggregate, etc, with it)."}
{"_id": "238622", "title": "How does I/O work for large graph databases?", "text": "I should preface this by saying that I'm mostly a front end web developer, trained as a musician, but over the past few years I've been getting more and more into computer science. So one idea I have as a fun toy project to learn about data structures and C programming was to design and implement my own very simple database that would manage an adjacency list of posts. I don't want SQL (maybe I'll do my own query language? I'm just having fun). It should support ACID. It should be capable of storing 1TB let's say. So with that, I was trying to think of how a database even stores data, without regard to data structures necessarily. I'm working on linux, and I've read that in that world \"everything is a file,\" including hardware (like `/dev/*`), so I think that that obviously has to apply to a database, too, and it clearly does--whether it's MySQL or PostgreSQL or Neo4j, the database itself is a collection of files you can see in the filesystem. That said, there would come a point in scale where loading the entire database into primary memory just wouldn't work, so it doesn't make sense to design it with that mindset (I assume). However, reading from secondary memory would be much slower and regardless some portion of the database has to be in primary memory in order for you to be able to do anything with it. I read this post: Why use a database instead of just saving your data to disk? And I found it difficult to understand how other databases, like SQLite or Neo4j, read and write from secondary memory and are still very fast (faster, it would seem, than simply writing files to the filesystem as the above question suggests). It seems the key is indexing. But even indexes need to be stored in secondary memory. They are inherently smaller than the database itself, but indexes in a very large database might be prohibitively large, too. So my question is how is I/O generally done with large databases like the one I described above that would be at least 1TB storing a big adjacency list? If indexing is more or less the answer, how exactly does indexing work--what data structures should be involved?"}
{"_id": "238621", "title": "Why was REST web srevice named REST?", "text": "What does the word Representational State Transfer (REST) mean actually ? Now I don seem to find any relation between its naming and its working, I have understood that it is a architectural style for programming web service and I've read all the hush hush stuff but can't find a reason behind its naming. What is `Representational` ? Who's `State`? and What do we `Transfer`?"}
{"_id": "238628", "title": "How deep is enough to represent an algorithm in UML sequence diagram?", "text": "I have three simple classes. `LoginController`, `UsersCatalog` and `User`. `UsersCatalog` has an array of `User`. I have to represent a simple process of login. `LoginController` has a method `login(username, password)` that simply calls a method `authenticate(username, password)` with the same parameters. Now, it's obvious that the method `authenticate` seeks for a matching `User` object and returns it. The question is: **Is it necesary to represent the seek algorithm?** Isn't representing the seek algorithm too much low level? In the other side, the access to `User` class is inside the seek algorithm, so if i don't represent it, then i don't represent the access to the `User` class. This is part of a wider question. There are any criteria for how deep is enough to represent an algorithm in UML squence diagram?"}
{"_id": "234366", "title": "Local Updates in Persistent/Immutable Data Structures", "text": "I'm getting into ReactJS and am intrigued but also confused about persistent data structures. I love the idea, but I'm not sure how to take my MV*, Mutable, Observable Bindings experience in designing view components and apply it in a sane way. For example, suppose I have a deeply nested structure:               Foo       Bar          Baz           someValue       Qux       Quxx      In my UI, I have a component that is an editor for `someValue`. In a mutate- observe paradigm I would do something like:               Baz.setSomeValue(newValue)  // trigger observers, etc...      As near as I can tell, though, the equivalent with persistent data structures is something like:               Foo = extend(Foo, { Bar:{ Baz:{ someValue: newValue } } });     // recompute with new value of Foo      What is the normal pattern for encapsulating a component that deals with `Baz` so that it doesn't have to know the entire structure?"}
{"_id": "234362", "title": "Where should I store and verify files manipulated by an app", "text": "I'm working on a little Ruby script to move screenshots while renaming them based on a specific convention. I'll be writing tests to confirm the behavior. Ruby has lots of conventions for where to store files (e.g. the \"spec\" and \"features\" directories for RSpec and Cucumber, respectively), but I'm not finding best practices for storing files that will be acted upon by the tests. The same goes for a destination for the final copies of the files. So, the question in two parts is:   1. Where should I store files that the test cases will use for a source input.    2. Where should tests that need to write output files send them to."}
{"_id": "234360", "title": "Decide for which class of points neurone will give output 1", "text": "We have to class of points `red` and `green`. We create neurone with discrete binary activation function. **How to choose weights so the neurone will return 1 for`red` points?** **How to choose weights so the neurone will return 1 for`green` points?** I am asking for general practice how to decide for which \"side\" the NET will be greater or equal to 0 -> if I am right about it. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UT1i3.png) NET >= 0 towards red points ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/12Kxe.png) NET >= 0 towards green points"}
{"_id": "219069", "title": "How do I get people to stop bikeshedding?", "text": "I have been tasked with teaching other teams a new codebase, but I keep running into an issue. Whenever I go to actually walk through the code with people, we don't get very far before the entire exercise devolves into a bikeshedding exercise. Since they don't know the codebase, but think they need to help improve it, they focus on the things they _can_ understand: `Why is that named that?` (2 minutes to explain why it's named that, 10+ minutes debating a new name) `Why is that an abstract base class rather than an interface?` (2 minutes to explain, 10+ minutes debating the relative merits of this decision) ...and so on. Now, don't get me wrong - good names and good, consistent design are important, but we never get to discussing what the code actually _does_ or how the system is designed in any meaningful way. I've done some meeting refereeing to get people out of these tangents, but they're gone - distracted by what the code will/should be when their pet triviality is fixed, and they miss the bigger picture. So we try again later (or with a different part of the codebase) and since people didn't get enough knowledge to overcome the bikeshedding effect, it repeats. I've tried smaller groups, bigger groups, code, whiteboarding, visio diagrams, giant walls of text, letting them just argue it to death, cutting arguments short immediately... some help more than others, but nothing **works**. Hell, I even tried having other people from my team explain it because I thought it might be that I'm just bad at explaining things. So how do you educate other programmers enough that they stop fixating on trivialities and can meaningfully contribute to the design?"}
{"_id": "47197", "title": "Are there any famous one-man-army programmers?", "text": "Lately I have been learning of more and more programmers who think that if they were working alone, they would be faster and would deliver more quality. Usually that feeling is attached to a feeling that they do the best programming in their team and at the end of the day the idea is quite plausible. If they ARE doing the best programming, and worked alone (and more maybe) the final result would be a better piece of software. I know this idea would only work if you were passionate enough to work 24/7, on a deadline, with great discipline. So after considering the idea and trying to learn a little more, I wonder if there are famous one-man-army programmers that have delivered any (useful) software in the past?"}
{"_id": "47192", "title": "Teaching programming to a non-CS graduate", "text": "I have a couple of friends interested in computer programming, but they're non-CS graduates; some of them have very little experience in software testing field (some of them took some basic software testing courses). I am going to be working with them on teaching basic computer programming, and computer science fundamentals (data structures etc). My questions are;   * What language should I start with?   * What are essential computer science topics that I should cover before jumping them into computer programming?   * What readings can I incorporate to make the topic interesting and non-overwhelming?   * If we want to spend a year on it, what topics should take priority and must be covered in 12 months? Again, these are non computer science folks, and I want to keep the learning as much fun as possible. Thanks everyone."}
{"_id": "234369", "title": "How should one handle accessing a 'local' API?", "text": "I'm currently writing a project that is using a few separate virtual machines for the database, API and front-end website (currently 1 of each). I'm writing my code in PHP, and all of these virtual machines are running within the same virtual network. What are the best practices (if any) for accessing a 'local' API like this in the front-end? Would you still use something like curl? Are there alternatives to doing so?"}
{"_id": "173339", "title": "How to make creating viewmodels at runtime less painful", "text": "**I apologize for the long question, it reads a bit as a rant, but I promise it's not! I've summarized my question(s) below** In the MVC world, things are straightforward. The Model has state, the View _shows_ the Model, and the Controller _does_ stuff to/with the Model (basically), a controller has no state. To _do_ stuff the Controller has some dependencies on web services, repository, the lot. When you instantiate a controller you care about supplying those dependencies, nothing else. When you execute an action (method on Controller), you use those dependencies to retrieve or update the Model or calling some other domain service. If there's any context, say like some user wants to see the details of a particular item, you pass the Id of that item as parameter to the Action. Nowhere in the Controller is there any reference to any state. So far so good. Enter MVVM. I love WPF, I love data binding. I love frameworks that make data binding to ViewModels even easier (using Caliburn Micro a.t.m.). I feel things are less straightforward in this world though. Let's do the exercise again: the Model has state, the View _shows_ the ViewModel, and the ViewModel _does_ stuff to/with the Model (basically), a ViewModel _does_ have state! (to clarify; maybe it delegates all the properties to one or more Models, but that means it must have a reference to the model one way or another, which is state in itself) To _do_ stuff the ViewModel has some dependencies on web services, repository, the lot. When you instantiate a ViewModel you care about supplying those dependencies, but also the state. And this, ladies and gentlemen, annoys me to no end. Whenever you need to instantiate a `ProductDetailsViewModel` from the `ProductSearchViewModel` (from which you called the `ProductSearchWebService` which in turn returned `IEnumerable<ProductDTO>`, everybody still with me?), you can do one of these things:   * call `new ProductDetailsViewModel(productDTO, _shoppingCartWebService /* dependcy */);`, this is bad, imagine 3 more dependencies, this means the `ProductSearchViewModel` needs to take on those dependencies as well. Also changing the constructor is painful.   * call `_myInjectedProductDetailsViewModelFactory.Create().Initialize(productDTO);`, the factory is just a Func, they are easily generated by most IoC frameworks. I think this is bad because Init methods are a leaky abstraction. You also can't use the readonly keyword for fields that are set in the Init method. I'm sure there are a few more reasons.   * call `_myInjectedProductDetailsViewModelAbstractFactory.Create(productDTO);` So... this is the pattern (abstract factory) that is usually recommended for this type of problem. I though it was genius since it satisfies my craving for static typing, until I actually started using it. The amount of boilerplate code is I think too much (you know, apart from the ridiculous variable names I get use). For each ViewModel that needs runtime parameters you'll get two extra files (factory interface and implementation), and you need to type the non-runtime dependencies like 4 extra times. And each time the dependencies change, you get to change it in the factory as well. It feels like I don't even use a DI container anymore. (I _think_ Castle Windsor has some kind of solution for this [with it's own drawbacks, correct me if I'm wrong]).   * do something with anonymous types or dictionary. I like my static typing. So, yeah. Mixing state and behavior in this way creates a problem which don't exist at all in MVC. And I feel like there currently isn't a really adequate solution for this problem. Now I'd like to observe some things:   * People actually use MVVM. So they either don't care about all of the above, or they have some brilliant other solution.   * I haven't found an in-depth example of MVVM with WPF. For example, the NDDD-sample project immensely helped me understand some DDD concepts. I'd really like it if someone could point me in the direction of something similar for MVVM/WPF.   * Maybe I'm doing MVVM all wrong and I should turn my design upside down. Maybe I shouldn't have this problem at all. Well I know other people have asked the same question so I think I'm not the only one. **To summarize**   * Am I correct to conclude that having the ViewModel being an integration point for both state and behavior is the reason for some difficulties with the MVVM pattern as a whole?   * Is using the abstract factory pattern the only/best way to instantiate a ViewModel in a statically typed way?   * Is there something like an in depth reference implementation available?   * Is having a lot of ViewModels with both state/behavior a design smell?"}
{"_id": "87568", "title": "How feasible would it be to not work for anyone, my entire programming career?", "text": "Assume I have enough money to live off of for 3 months. Would it be impossible to _just_ freelance my entire programming career, after sufficiently learning the language and helping open source projects? Or would clients want to see work experience. I am mostly talking about Objective-C development, so I would be publishing apps to make income. Is this possible?"}
{"_id": "173334", "title": "What are the security implications of running untrusted code on my server?", "text": "I would like to set up an app that allows users to send their code and execute it on my server. The thought of running untrusted code makes me cringe, so I am trying to set up an exhaustive list of security threats that should be addressed. I am assuming I should strip down certain features of the language executed, like file access or (maybe) networking. I also come across terms like `sandboxing` or `chroot`. I know what they mean, but how should I actually use them? In short: What security threats should I address before allowing users to run their code on my machine, and how do I do it?"}
{"_id": "109615", "title": "What factors can make mid-project join successful?", "text": "It's not entirely uncommon in IT that programmers are added to an existing project somewhere in the middle, or closer to finish. Unfortunately, I've seen that people quickly get disillusioned and leave the job. So, is there an actual problem? If there is a problem, is there some research in or are there best practices for avoiding this mid-project-join syndrome? Is this common in industry?"}
{"_id": "88571", "title": "At what point does programming become a useful skill?", "text": "This is probably a very difficult question to answer, because of its subjectivity, but even a vague guess would help me out: Now that Khan Academy is beginning to offer Computer Science lectures I'm getting an itch to learn programming again. I maybe am a bit more technical than your average computer user, using Ubuntu as my OS, LaTeX for writing and I know some small tricks like regular expressions or boolean search for google. However from my previous attempts to learn programming, I realized I do not have a natural aptitude for it and I also don't seem to enjoy the process. But I am fairly certain that a basic proficiency in programming could prove to be very beneficial for me career wise; I also often get ideas for little scripts that I cannot implement. My question is: Let's say you study programming 1 hour / day on average. At what point will you become good enough so that programming can be used for automating tasks and actually saving time? Do you think programming is worth picking up if you never have the ambition to make it your career or even your hobby, but use it strictly for utility purposes?"}
{"_id": "88570", "title": "Is it possible to take a binary compiled for ARMv7 architecture and convert it to ARMv6?", "text": "Is it possible to take a binary compiled for ARMv7 architecture and convert it to ARMv6 ? Are there any tools that can do this?"}
{"_id": "173332", "title": "Advice for Setting up an On-Call Team", "text": "I'm leading a largish development team (~35 developers). We are doing primarily Web Development work on a number of sites. Historically the knowledge on the teams has been pretty siloed. If you worked on Site A you will know how to troubleshoot it, but you would not be a lot of help on Site B. We also have a few cross-cutting concerns, i.e. common components used between sites which require specialized knowledge to troubleshoot. With all this in mind, I'm trying to understand the best way to setup an on- call team. This would be a team of programmers who would be available to deal with out- of-hours emergency issues occasionally (say one call every 2 weeks). They may be required to deploy emergency fixes. Part of me is saying we can't have a big on-call team with shallow knowledge, instead we need a smaller team with deep knowledge who can expect to be on- call more often and remunerated as such. Does anyone have any suggestions based on experience on how to setup this team? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "184182", "title": "Which Common Lisp implementation to use?", "text": "There seems to be an immediate problem with starting to develop in Common Lisp: choosing an implementation. What should one take into account, and how much weight should it bear when considering a CL implementation? Should it conform to the ANSI standard? Should it be supported by SLIME? Do certain implementations lack good libraries, documentation, etc?"}
{"_id": "177829", "title": "Why does this static field always get initialized over-eagerly?", "text": "I am looking at this excellent article from Jon Skeet. While executing the demo code, Jon Skeet says that we can expect three different kinds of behaviours. To quote that article: > The runtime could decide to run the type initializer on loading the assembly > to start with... Or perhaps it will run it when the static method is first > run... Or even wait until the field is first accessed... When I try this out (on framework 4), I always get the first result. That is, the static method is initialized before the assembly is loaded. I have tried running this multiple times and get the same result. (I tried both the debug and release versions) Why is this so? Am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "177825", "title": "In what ways can I test an image slideshow javascript code?", "text": "I have a slideshow of images (and links) on a page. These images are part of a JSON response to a request sent after the page loads. The slideshow is set to play at an interval of 2 seconds. The slideshow can be paused, played over, and all other controls a normal slideshow would have. As a Rails dev, I proposed cucumber but the javascript guys in the team are not comfortable with ruby. I saw some cucumber for javascript libraries coming up, still in experimental stage. I checked out jasmine and related tutorials but all I could get from them is how I can carry out any internal functional testing such as credit-cart validation, etc. - which I think could actually be handled in unit testing? (Screw the research I did and) How should I go about testing this and similar components?"}
{"_id": "206472", "title": "How can I look at a GitHub repository and know what version of the code to download?", "text": "I am new to GitHub and new to the open source world (coming from .NET). I have a media wiki site and want to install a Google analytics extension: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Google_Analytics_Integration The extension's documentation says to download the code from GitHub. In the GitHub repo, there are some \"reviews\" that say master and some that that say branches. I assume that I want a master and not a branch. But how do I pick which master to download? Also, the documentation says that some of the commits will be tagged but this does not seem to be the case. Without tags/documentation is there any easy way to know what commits are stable and what commits are not? I'd love some general wisdom about how to approach a repo for a project like this."}
{"_id": "206470", "title": "Is Windows Workflow Foundation appropriate for a CPU-heavy async application?", "text": "At one of the DevDays conferences a presenter said that Workflow Foundation isn't just for applications that require persistence, but they can make it easier to write and maintain Async WCF code and the corresponding error handling. (try.. catch)   * Assuming that is true, is Workflow Foundation able to use all the CPUs in a system? (Async IO)   * What WF-specific guidance is needed before writing a CPU-heavy Async WCF application within the WF framework? (only tips that are specific to Workflow Foundation)"}
{"_id": "177820", "title": "Azure website that talks to third party services", "text": "I have website that crawls data from many third party services when user browse to webpage. This can be really slow because I hit third party server and process returned data before showing it to user. I am hosting website on Azure (shared mode). I am thinking to improve my implementation. Here is what I am thinking... Run a service that crawls data from third party services, process it and then store it in database. when user browse to my site, my site pulls data from database and display them to user. But above solution is not clear to me. Should I have normal service or wcf service? If wcf service then should website talk to database or wcf service (that can access data from database)? If normal service then how can I deploy on Azure?"}
{"_id": "224798", "title": "Does anyone else feel Scrum isn't agile?", "text": "I am a big fan of agile development and used XP on a very successful project a few years ago. I loved everything about it, the iterative development approach, writing code around a test, pair programming, having a customer on site to run things by. It was a highly productive work environment and I never felt like I was under pressure. However the last few places I have worked use/used Scrum. I know it's the poster child for agile development these days but I'm not 100% convinced it is agile. Below are the two main reasons why it just doesn't feel agile to me. **Project Managers Love It** Project managers, who by their very nature are obsessed with timelines, all seem to love Scrum. In my experience they seem to use the Sprint Backlog as a means to track time requirements and keep a record of how much time was spent on a given task. Instead of using a whiteboard they all use an excel sheet, which each developer is required to fill out, religiously. In my opinion this is way too much documentation/time tracking for an agile process. Why would I waste time estimating how long a task is going to take me when I can just get on with the task itself. Or similarly why would I waste time documenting how long a task took when I can move onto the next task at hand. **Standup Meetings** The standup meetings in the previous place I worked were a nightmare. Everyday we had to explain what we had done yesterday and what what we were going to do that day. If we went over on our time \"estimate\" for a task the project manager would kick up a stink, and reference the Sprint Backlog as a means of showing of incompetent you are for not adhering to the timeline. Now I understand the need for communication but surely the tone of daily meetings should be lighthearted and focus on knowledge sharing. I don't think it should turn into a where's your homework style charade. Also surely the hole point of agile is that timelines change, they shouldn't be set in stone. **Conclusion** The idea of agile is to make the software better by making the developers life easier. Therefore in my opinion any agile process used by a team should be developer led. I don't think having a project manager use a process they have labeled \"agile\" to track a project has anything to do with agile development. Thoughts anyone?"}
{"_id": "224799", "title": "Is there a licence that let people see my code but not use it?", "text": "I'm building free games in javascript, with my code is easily accessible by looking into the html of the webpage. I really don't mind people looking at my code (for curiosity, or to learn something). But I don't want anyone to use my code to make their own games, or steal the art I've done. With this goal in mind, what software licence should I use? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "171798", "title": "How to handle monetary values in PHP and MySql?", "text": "I've inherited a huge pile of legacy code written in PHP on top of a MySQL database. The thing I noticed is that the application uses `doubles` for storage and manipulation of data. Now I came across of numerous posts mentioning how `double` are not suited for monetary operations because of the rounding errors. However, I have yet to come across a complete solution to how monetary values should be handled in PHP code and stored in a MySQL database. Is there a best practice when it comes to handling money specifically in PHP? Things I'm looking for are:   1. How should the data be stored in the database? column type? size?   2. How should the data be handling in normal addition, subtraction. multiplication or division?   3. When should I round the values? How much rounding is acceptable if any?   4. Is there a difference between handling large monetary values and low ones? **Note:** A **VERY** simplified sample code of how I might encounter money values in everyday life (various security concerns were ignored for simplification. Of course in real life I would never use my code like this):               $a= $_POST['price_in_dollars']; //-->(ex: 25.06) will be read as a string should it be cast to double?     $b= $_POST['discount_rate'];//-->(ex: 0.35) value will always be less than 1     $valueToBeStored= $a * $b; //--> any hint here is welcomed           $valueFromDatabase= $row['price']; //--> price column in database could be double, decimal,...etc.          $priceToPrint=$valueFromDatabase * 0.25; //again cast needed or not?      I hope you use this sample code as a means to bring out more use cases and not to take it literally of course. **Bonus Question** If I'm to use an ORM such as Doctrine or PROPEL, how different will it be to use money in my code."}
{"_id": "249753", "title": "Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables, Software Requirement?", "text": "When compiling with Visual Studio C++, I noticed that you need a specific MSV C++ Redist, depending on the version of Visual Studio you compile with. The required redistributable is necessary on machines without it. Otherwise without the redists missing MSVCPxxx.dll errors are prompt. Is there a way to by-pass needing the necessity of the redistributable? Or is there a way to package that inside of the program you're creating, be it DLL, executable, etc.?"}
{"_id": "35946", "title": "Is it bad code smell if private method calls public one?", "text": "Is it bad code smell to call public method in private method of same object instance?"}
{"_id": "228231", "title": "Whats the best way to parallel my problem using Java API", "text": "I\u00b4m with trouble, because I want to make faster my code using `threads`, `fork in join` or any kind of `parallel`. I did a code using `fork in join` but I saw my `arraylist` isn\u00b4t getting the correct values. I don\u00b4t know if is my implementation. But I want to take off all messages without attachments, later separate by sender. One example of my class using `fork in join`, but I\u00b4m looking for any suggestions.               package service.forkinjoin;          import java.io.IOException;     import java.util.ArrayList;     import java.util.List;     import java.util.concurrent.RecursiveAction;          import javax.mail.Message;     import javax.mail.MessagingException;          import service.EmailUtil;          public class ForkSortMessagesBySender extends RecursiveAction {              private static final long serialVersionUID = -1092415796824205832L;         private List<Message> listMessagesWithAttachment;         private List<Message> listMessages;         private String sender;              public ForkSortMessagesBySender(List<Message> listMessagesWithAttachment, List<Message> listMessages, String sender) {             this.listMessagesWithAttachment = listMessagesWithAttachment;             this.listMessages = listMessages;             this.sender = sender;         }              @Override         protected void compute() {                  List<RecursiveAction> actions = new ArrayList<>();                  if (this.listMessagesWithAttachment.size() <= Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors()) {                 try {                     this.separateMessages();                 } catch (MessagingException | IOException e) {                     e.printStackTrace();                 }             } else {                      int end = this.listMessagesWithAttachment.size() / 2;                 actions.add(new ForkSortMessagesBySender(this.listMessagesWithAttachment.subList(0, end), this.listMessages, this.sender));                 end += this.listMessages.size() % 2 == 0 ? 0 : 1;                 actions.add(new ForkSortMessagesBySender(this.listMessagesWithAttachment.subList(end, this.listMessagesWithAttachment.size()), this.listMessages, this.sender));                 invokeAll(actions);             }         }              private void separateMessages() throws MessagingException, IOException {                  for (Message message : this.listMessagesWithAttachment) {                 if (EmailUtil.getSender(message).equals(this.sender)) {                     this.listMessages.add(message);                 }             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "171790", "title": "Are nested classes under-rated?", "text": "I'm not trying to say I know something everyone else doesn't but I've been solving more and more designs with the use of nested classes, so I'm curious to get a feeling for the acceptablilty of using this seemingly rarely used design mechanism. This leads me to the question: am I going down an inherintly bad path for reasons I'll discover when they come back to bite me, or are nested classes maybe something that are underrated? Here are two examples I just used them for: https://gist.github.com/3975581 \\- the first helped me keep tightly releated heirarchical things together, the second let me give access to protected members to workers..."}
{"_id": "224795", "title": "DataSet Validation vs. ASP.NET MVC Validation", "text": "I have a general question on where to put validation. I have an asp.net mvc that gets/sets data from/to a DataSet. Currently, the fields in the form are validated by the form itself (e.g. for invalid length, range, etc.). Is it a good or better idea to transfer these validation checks into the DataSet? The downside is I need to trigger update calls to the DataSet in order to get the column with errors. In using forms, I can catch the error earlier. Or should I use validation for both of them? For additional consideration - it's possible I will be re-using this Dataset assembly with another project (a WCF service?). And I'd like to re-use the same validation code when possible."}
{"_id": "127876", "title": "Resources on Writing Efficient C Code for Micro-controllers?", "text": "Serious help needed here. I love programming. I've been reading bunch of books(such as K&R) and articles/forums online for C language lately. Even tried looking into Linux code(although, i was lost where to start but peeking into small libraries helped?). I started as a Java programmer and in Java it's pretty cut and dry; If programs gets too big, slice it in classes then further into functions. Guidelines like, keep the code readable and add comments. Use information hiding and OOP techniques. Some of which still applies for C. I've been coding in C now and so far i get programs to work one way or the other. A lot of people talk about performance/efficiency, algorithm/design, optimization, and maintainability. Some people stress one more then the other but for non-professional software engineers you often hear something like e.g: Linux kernel dev won't just take any code. My question is this: I plan on writing a code for 8-bit microcontroller **without wasting any resources**. Know that i'm coming from java background so things are not the same anymore... resources/books/links/tips will be much appreciated. Performance and size now matters. Resources/Tricks on efficient(within best practices) C code for 8-bit micro-controllers? Also, `inline assembly` plays a vital role as well sticking close to micro- controllers standard. But are there general rule of thumb to efficiency that applies to all? For example: `register unsigned int variable_name;` is preferred over `char` anytime. Or using ` uint8_t ` if you don't need big numbers. EDIT: Thank you so much for all the answers and suggestions. I appreciate everyone's effort for sharing knowledge."}
{"_id": "170440", "title": "Why use other number bases when programming", "text": "My coworkers and I have been bending our minds to figuring out why anyone would go out of their way to program numbers in a base other than base 10. I suggested that perhaps you could optimize longer equations by putting the variables in the correct base you are working with (for instance, if you have only sets of 5 of something with no remainders you could use base 5), but I'm not sure if that's true. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "177794", "title": "Client-Server connection response timeout issues", "text": "User creates a folder in client and in the client-side code I hit an API to the server to make this persistent for that user. But in some cases, my server is so busy that the request timesout. The server has executed my request but timedout before sending a response back to client. The timeout set is 10 seconds in client. At this point the client thinks that server has not executed its request (of creating a folder) and ends up sending it again. Now I have 2 folders on the server but the user has created only 1 folder in the client. How to prevent this? One of the ways to solve this is to use a unique ID with each new request. So the ID acts as a distinguisher between old and new requests from client. But this leads to storing these IDs on my server and do a lookup for each API call which I want to avoid. Other way is to increase the timeout duration. But I dont want to change this from 10 seconds. Something tells me that there are better solutions. I have posted this question in stackoverflow but I think its better suited here. **UPDATE:** I will make my problem even more explicit. The client is a webbrowser and the server is running nginx+django+mysql (standard stack). The user creates a folder in webbrowser. As a result I need to hit a server API. The API call responds back, thereby client knows API call was success. This is normal scenario. Sometimes though, server successfully completes the API request but the client-side (webbrowser) connection timesout before server can respond back. The client has no clue at this point. The user thinks the request was a fail & clicks again. This time it was a success but when the UI refreshes he sees 2 folders. I want to remedy this situation."}
{"_id": "84911", "title": "Learning PHP for an ASP.NET Developer", "text": "I am mostly developing on ASP.NET MVC and sometimes on ASP.NET WebForms. But when I hit a PHP web site, I always think that; > Should I learn PHP? Assuming answer here is yes, where would be the first place to start and where should I go from there?"}
{"_id": "131442", "title": "USB software protection dongle for Java with an SDK which is cross-platform \u201cfor real\u201d. Does it exist?", "text": "What I'd like to ask is if anybody knows about an hardware USB-dongle for software protection which offers a very complete out-of-the-box API support for cross-platform Java deployments. Its SDK should provide a jar (only one, not one different library per OS & bitness) ready to be added to one's project as a library.   * The jar should contain all the native stuff for the various OSes and bitnesses   * From the application's point of view, one should continue to write (api calls) once and run everywhere, without having to care where the end-user will run the software   * The provided jar should itself deal with loading the appropriate native library **Does such a thing exist?** With what I've tried so far, you have different APIs and compiled libraries for win32, linux32, win64, linux64, etc (or you even have to compile stuff yourself on the target machine), but hey, we're doing Java here, we don't know (and don't care) where the program will run! And we can't expect the end-user to be a software engineer, tweak (and break!) its linux server, link libraries, mess with gcc, litter the filesystem, etc... In general, Java support (in a transparent cross-platform fashion) is quite bad with the dongle SDKs I've evaluated so far (e.g. KeyLok and SecuTech's UniKey). I even purchased (no free evaluation kit available) SecureMetric SDKs&dongles (they should've been \"soooo\" straighforward to integrate -- according to marketing material :\\ ) and they were the worst ever: SecureDongle X has no 64bit support and SecureDongle SD is not cross-platform at all. So, **has anyone out there been through this and found the ultimate Java security usb dongle for cross-platform deployments?** Note: software is low-volume, high-value; application is off-line (intranet with no internet access), so no online-activation alternatives and the like. \\-- EDIT Tried out HASP dongles (used to be called \"Aladdin\"), and added them to the no-no list: here, too, there is no out-of-the-box (out-of-the-jar) support: e.g. end-linux-user has to manually put the .so library (the specific file for the appropriate bitness) in the right place on his filesystem, and export an env. variable accordingly. \\-- EDIT 2 I really don't understand all the negativity and all the downvoting: is this a **taboo** topic? Is it so hard to understand that a freelance developer has to put food on the table everyday to feed its family and pay the bills at the end of the month? Please don't talk about \"adding value\" as a supplier, because that'd be off- topic. Furthermore I'm not in direct contact with end-customers, but there's an intermediate reselling entity: it's this entity I want to prevent selling copies of the software without sharing the revenue. \\-- EDIT 3 I'd like to emphasize the fact that the question is looking for a **technical** answer, not one about opinions concerning business models, philosophical lucubrations on the concept of value, resellers' reliability, etc. I cannot change resellers, because this isn't a \"general purpose\" kind of sw, but a very vertical one and (for some reasons it's not worth explaining here) I _must_ go through them. I just need to prevent the _\"we sold 2 copies, here's your share [bwahaha we sold 10]\"_ scenario."}
{"_id": "224424", "title": "Loose Coupling Presenter to View in MVP", "text": "We work in a Java shop here and our web application uses an implementation of the MVP architectural pattern. Our manager comes from a .NET world, where he has been exposed to the MVVM design pattern. Our manager is advocating changes in our MVP implementation, including that the Presenters should be decoupled from (or loosely coupled to, depending on your interpretation) its Views via the Observer design pattern, in tradition with MVVM. I am more of the opinion that the Presenter and the View work together to achieve a common goal, and as such should be coupled. Among the arguments brought up in support of the change is the ability to unit test Presenters. If the Presenters only see the views as Observers, the argument goes, then they can be more easily unit tested. But presenters strongly coupled to their views are not necessarily difficult to test. If the View uses the Humble View paradigm, then it can be mocked. And finally, testability should be a symptom of good design, not a driver for the design. Another argument used by my manager in support of layering the Views and the Presenters is the supposed maturity of MVVM. As such, we should follow MVVM's teachings and adapt to its implementation of MVP. Correct me if I'm wrong, but MVVM imposes the (artificial) layering of views and presenters in order to facilitate its data bindings in controls. Can you please help us see the light here? Why should we use a decoupled model and pay the price for it? I'm not seeing the benefit. Occam's razor says I need arguments to use decoupling, and testing doesn't seem to be one of them. * * * **Clarification** : What I'm really looking for with this question are the arguments that can tip the balance in favor of a presenter that doesn't know about its view and shoots events in the aether or in favor of a presenter that knows about its view(s) through more direct coupling, like a humble view interface or directly to the class. Note that presenters can easily serve multiple views with both loose and tight coupling. The difference is in the interface that the presenter talks to: with loose coupling, the presenter talks to listener classes (or an event bus representative), whereas with tight coupling, the presenter talks to the view interface."}
{"_id": "69423", "title": "What's the best way to estimate story points in scrum?", "text": "I like the way planning poker works at the beginning of any project, letting you compare and discuss details of each story with one another. One of the issues I've noticed with this is that through time and as you gain more experience with the problem domain, you tend to vote less points for each story, i. e., a story that was worth a 5 or an 8 at the beginning of the project might now be worth a 3. How do you avoid or tackle this problem in the best possible way? Is there a better way to estimate? Should the stories always remain the same, or is this story points decrease ok?"}
{"_id": "240853", "title": "How do programming language translators work?", "text": "I'm a programmer and I'm looking to play around with translating one language to another. Say C# to Lua. I'm curious as to how translating languages like that works? I would think there is some kind of standard methodology that I could perhaps look into for this or is it pretty raw?"}
{"_id": "224422", "title": "Will it be a wrong idea to have <style> in <body>?", "text": "In below code i placed internal style sheet with in body tag, instead of having in head. For Single-Page-Application I am considering to do this for styles that is only applicable to that page alone, rather than having separate pagespecific.css file. Is there a scenario where this has downside as i am not putting the same in head section?               <!-- myPartial.html starts here -->      <!-- Like to keep styles unique to this html right here in this file -->      <div>       <style>         body { background-color: red; }         #myText { color: white; }       </style>            <span id='myText'>Hello</span>     </div>     <!-- myPartial.html ends here -->"}
{"_id": "184451", "title": "In what meaningful ways does Erlang prevent race conditions in concurrent programming?", "text": "Reading about concurrency in Erlang, reminds me of the Akka concurrency toolkit. Both give you tools to prevent or limit race conditions. But you can send links to mutable data to other processes using the Akka toolkit, which is still unsafe. I see Akka as a useful tool, but it does not provide _protection_ against out-of-order access to objects and data leading to race- conditions, deadlock, and/or starvation. It doesn't prevent you from writing unsafe code the way Java or C# protects you from writing most of the kinds of memory leaks you can write in C++ (you can still create memory leaks in Java by tricking the garbage collector, but it is less of a problem than having to remember to free every byte you allocate). Does Erlang guarantee a degree of correctness, performance, and robustness in concurrent programming? I think operating systems provide protection when accessing system resources (assuming the driver writers did their jobs well). ACID databases provide protection for reads and updates. So it seems this is a solvable problem. Or would a generic safe solution would erase the performance gains that concurrency provides? Do other languages or toolkits provide the kind of concurrent safety that Erlang does (or doesn't)? This is a follow-up question to @Malfist's comment on @user1249's answer to What programming language generates fewest hard-to-find bugs?."}
{"_id": "224429", "title": "Separating entities in the business logic layer", "text": "I am going to start a project, which in the `BLL` would have something like:   * Jumper    * Map   * Record I need to keep track of all those, so I will make probably classes which hold them, e.g.:   * JumperList   * MapList   * RecordList First of all, is that a good practice to hold all the objects and is it good if I separate them like: `BLL.Entity` for the `Jumper`, `Map`, `Record` and `BLL.List` for `JumperList`, `MapList`, `RecordList` * * * Okay, I may have written it in a confusing way. What I meant was, is it good to make it like that:               BLL.Entity      - Jumper      - Map      - Record     BLL.List      - JumperList      - MapList      - RecordList"}
{"_id": "240859", "title": "How to write a good mock for testing", "text": "I code in Python and I'm starting to use the Mock library. Although I've read through all of the documentation, something that I'm finding hard to understand is 'What makes a good mock'. For example, say I've got a function that makes a HTTP request:               def fetch_url(url, method=urlfetch.GET, data=''):         \"\"\"Send a HTTP request\"\"\"              result = urlfetch.fetch(url=url, method=method, payload=data,                                 headers={'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': '*'})              return result.content      What would a good mock for this function look like? Furthermore, what would then be tested? From my understanding, the characteristics of a good test are that the test checks:   1. That the code isn't broken   2. That the code acts as expected   3. That the code returns the expected output if it returns something That said, what would be the characteristics of a good mock?"}
{"_id": "184455", "title": "Does decoupling trump DRY in REST?", "text": "I am building a REST API to expose most of functionality of an existing Java API. Both APIs are for internal use within my organization; I do not have to design for external use. I have influence over both APIs but am implementing the REST one. The Java API will continue to be used for local applications (it's not being \"retired\"), but the REST API will be used for significant new development. Some of the Java API classes are simply data (beans with properties, getters, setters). And at least some of these make sense to transmit (in some form) over the REST API as data (which will be marshalled to XML or JSON). For example, a class that stores info about a server machine. I am faced with the following choice for these data classes: Do I...   1. expose the original Java class (or a subclass) directly in the REST API, or   2. make a new data transfer class (DTO pattern) specifically for the REST API? Either way I'll have REST data transfer classes; the question is whether to annotate the originals or create new ones (which may be near copies of the originals). There may be other choices, but I'll focus mainly on those two. Arguments for #1:   * DRY (don't repeat yourself)   * Faster to implement   * Easier to upgrade REST API Arguments for #2:   * What if REST API needs to be versioned separately from Java API? (This is somewhat likely.)   * What if there are significant changes to the Java data classes such as removal of properties, adding of behavior, or changes to class hierarchy? (This is also somewhat likely.) Bottom line is that it seems like a tradeoff between DRY (#1) and decoupling (#2). I'm leaning toward starting with #1 and then if problems arise moving to #2 later, following the agile guideline of not building what you can't prove you need. Is this a bad idea; should I start with #2 if I think I may end up there anyway? Are there major arguments/consequences missing from my lists?"}
{"_id": "180569", "title": "Why don't modern libraries use OOP", "text": "I'm a beginner-level C++ programmer, but I understand the concepts of the language fairly well. When I began to learn external C++ libraries, like SDL, OpenGL (maybe something else too), to my great surprise I found out that they don't use C++ concepts at all. For example, neither SDL, nor OpenGL use classes or exceptions, preferring functions and error codes. In OpenGL I've seen functions like glVertex2f, which takes 2 float variables as an input and probably would be better as a template. Moreover, these libraries sometimes use marcos, while it seems to be a common agreement that using macroses is bad. All in all, they seem to be written more in C style, than in C++ style. But they are completely different incompaitable languages, aren't they? The question is: why modern libraries do not use the advantages of the language they are written in?"}
{"_id": "249759", "title": "Should I Make my ASP.NET MVC N-tier?", "text": "I'm currently building a very small website, around 20 to 30 views, 10 controllers. I know MVC is only a design pattern and should only be the top presentation layer. I'm currently at a stage in development when you start question yourself and what you're doing. It feels like this small website don't 'need' the N-tier architecture because it's too small for that. But in the long run maybe it's worth it. Is it worth the time to migrate to N-Tier? IS there some level of abstraction when you **should** migrate to n-tier? Is there some magic point when the project grows too large? Or should it be done directly in the beginning of the development?"}
{"_id": "199627", "title": "How did Strassen come up with his matrix multiplication method?", "text": "The famous Strassen's matrix multiplication algorithm is a real treat for us, as it reduces the time complexity from the traditional O(n^3) to O(n^2.8). But of all the resources I have gone through, even Cormen and Steven Skienna's book, they clearly do not state of how Strassen thought about it. What is the rationale of Strassen's matrix multiplication algorithm? Is this a lucky accident or is there something deeper in it?"}
{"_id": "241457", "title": "Is is OK to use a non-primary key as the id in a rails resource?", "text": "I am getting ready to set up a resource for some new api calls to my rails application. I am planning on calling the resource devices ie               resources :devices      This is going to represent android mobile devices I know this will get me routes such as GET devices/:id In most cases :id would be an integer representing the primary key, and in the controller we would use :id as such:               GET devices/1     @device = Device.find(params[:id])      In this case I would like to use :id as the google_cloud_messaging_reg_id So I would like to have requests like this:               GET devices/some_long_gcm_id      and then in the controller , just us `params[:id]` to look up the device by the gcm registration id. This seem more natural, since the device will know it's gcm id rather than it's rails integer id. Are there any reasons I should avoid doing this? **\\---------------------------------------------------------------------** **UPDATE:** **_My initial concern was that seeing a route (via rake routes) of /devices/:id or looking at the controller and seeing params[:id] would be confusing since most would assume :id was the integer primary key._** **After thinking about it some more, and reading Idan Arye's answer below, my current thinking is to create routes like shown below. This will get me routes (via rake routes) that look like this:**               GET    /api/v1/android_devices/:gcm_reg_key(.:format)       **which I think makes it somewhat clear that :gcm_reg_key may not be a primary key integer**. **And in the controller the parameter would be**               params[:gcm_reg_key]      **Again, I think this makes it somewhat clear that the param may not be an integer primary key (convention would be params[:id])** **Any other thoughts or suggestions are welcome.**               match '/android_devices/:gcm_reg_key', to: 'android_devices#show' , via: :get, as: 'android_device'     match '/android_devices/:gcm_reg_key', to: 'android_devices#update', via: :post, as: 'android_device_create'     match '/android_devices/:gcm_reg_key', to: 'android_devices#update', via: :patch, as: 'android_device_modify'     match '/android_devices/:gcm_reg_key', to: 'android_devices#destroy', via: :delete, as: 'android_device_destroy'     resources :android_devices , only: [:create, :index]"}
{"_id": "241458", "title": "\"Default approach\" when creating a class from scratch: getters for everything, or limited access?", "text": "Until recently I always had getters (and sometimes setters but not always) for all the fields in my class. It was my 'default': very automatic and I never doubted it. However recently some discussions on this site made me realize maybe it's not the best approach. When you create a class, you often don't know exactly how it's going to be used in the future by other classes. So in that sense, it's good to have getters and setter for all of the fields in the class. So other classes could use it in the future any way they want. Allowing this flexibility doesn't require you to over engineer anything, only to provide getters. However some would say it's better to limit the access to a class, and only allow access to certain fields, while other fields stay completely private. **What is your 'default' approach when building a class from scratch?** Do you make getters for all the fields? Or do you always choose selectively which fields to expose through a getter and which to keep completely private?"}
{"_id": "249664", "title": "Differentiating Standalone and Client-Server architectures", "text": "I was wondering what is the exact difference between a client-server and a standalone application, particularly in following scenario. For example lets say there is a win forms application running on a PC. So that the DBMS, SQL Server also installed on the same PC as it hosts the database too. Now this is clearly a standalone setup. Now if we introduce another PC and connect it to the first PC through a local area network and we want to run the application on this new PC too but it will use the same database which is in the first PC. Now is this application considered to be a standalone app or a thick client - server? EDIT: The application communicates with SQL server to access data and processing will happen locally. SQL server hosts the data and there are few stored procedures and views too."}
{"_id": "69398", "title": "Is it recommendable to program .net apps with C++", "text": "From what I can understand, C# is the defacto language when coding .NET apps. Is it recommendable to program .NET apps [let that be ASP.NET, WinPhone 7, GUI, etc] in C++? What are the pitfalls and the drawbacks if we choose to go down this path? Thanks for sharing."}
{"_id": "240582", "title": "How can I group commits in a version control system such as git", "text": "Instead of a one long flat commit history, why isn't there a hierarchy, so at the top level you might have pull requests, then you could go down a level and look at the commits in that PR. I realise that PR's are specific to github, but you get the idea. I just mean grouping a number of commits as a feature or bug-fix, for example. Surely it would make the commit history a lot easier to navigate. I'm sure there is an obvious answer this question, but I can't seem to find it."}
{"_id": "240589", "title": "What is better to return from the DataService: Status or Exceptions?", "text": "I have a MVVM app with DataServices (using mvvmlight). Right now, i'm using it like               var answer = await myDataService.PullList(categoryId);     if (answer.Status == Ok)         ObservableListOfItems.ReplaceWith(answer.Collection); // Show results     if (answer.Status == ConnectionLost)         // Handle connection lost state, show msg window or something     if (answer.Status == ParsingError)         // Handle parsing problem      where               async Task<MyAnswer> PullList(int id)     {         // Just a wrapper around HttpWebRequest, returns String.Empty if something happened         var resultString = await NetworkManager.GetAsync(UrlGenerator.GenerateCategoryRequest(id));                if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(resultString))             return new MyAnswer {Status = ConnectionLost);              try         {             var parsedResult = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<PocoProducts>();                  return new MyAnswer {Status = Ok, Collection = parsedResult.List);         }         catch (Exception)         {              return new MyAnswer {Status = ParsingError; }         }       and               public class MyAnswer()     {         public List<Items> {get; set;}         public EnumStatuses Statuc {get; set;}     }          public enum EnumStatuses     {         Ok = 0,         ConnectionLost,         ParsingError     }      So I'm curious, did i just re-invented an exceptions, didn't i? PS: wrote a code just here, typos are possible, but general idea should be clear"}
{"_id": "201124", "title": "Design for migrating to Multitenant architecture", "text": "We are in a process of redesigning our product code in such a way so as to support multitenancy. Currently the implementation is such that one product deployment caters to only one customer. Thus the application data corresponds to only one customer. This data (which is global wrt the application) is in the form of hashtables, lists and DB. Multiple threads make use of this data. The complete code is written in C. Now, since we want to migrate to multitenant architecture, the application code would need to store data for multiple customers. Since data stored in the application should be segregated wrt customers, I want to figure out what kind of architecture would best suit this requirement. I am thinking of adopting some OOP concepts here since I can use C++ also. But not sure how good this idea would be. Modularity is a prime advantage that OOP offers over C and hence thinking on those lines. But at the same time it is going to have a humongous on the current implementation requiring lots of changes. Hence, minimizing this is also important. What would be the best approach to attain all the objectives mentioned above? Is there any other way to do this?"}
{"_id": "201126", "title": "Sync SQLite using only HTTP", "text": "I currently have a SQLite DB on my server that is needed by an android app I am currently developing. I download the DB to the android device using HTTP each time the contents are changed. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to do this more efficient. ie. when the database gets large I don't want the android user to have to download the whole database again just because one record was added."}
{"_id": "17650", "title": "C++ is easy once you know PHP", "text": "I was at work last week and one of our \"lead developers\" (who said he has programmed C++ before, but I don't believe him) was talking about C++ and how our team of developers who only know PHP would not have a hard time at all learning C++. My first reaction was pure shock and then I laughed at his comment. He gave me a bad look and i asked if he was serious. Me personally I program a lot of C and C++ for mostly school projects and coding competitions. I don't think it's at all like PHP. I asked him why they were the same and he could not give me an answer (he doesn't know C++ at all I was thinking). Then I said \"OK, yeah they both use curly braces and have conditional statements. But C++ you have to worry about memory management and all the easy to use built in functions in PHP, for example the array functions, are non-existent in C++. You actually have to know the algorithms behind them.\". There are some great C++ libraries (STL, Boost) that will make your life easier but C++ is like PHP, come on! If you already know one language it will make it a little easier to learn another because you will already be good at boolean login (if this then that) or looping but there is just so much more to C++ than PHP. Like you have to compile the language and actually have to define what type of variable you are using and returning from functions. What do you think? EDIT: Actually what he said was \"C++ is not much different than PHP\""}
{"_id": "242648", "title": "Should sanity be a property of a programmer or a program?", "text": "I design and implement languages, that can range from object notations to markup languages. In many cases I have considered restrictions in favor of sanity (common knowledge), like in the case of control characters in identifiers. There are two consequences to consider before doing this:   * It takes extra computation   * It narrows liberty I'm interested to learn how developers think of decisions like this. As you may know Microsoft C# is very open on the contrary. If you really want to prefix your integer as Long with 'l' instead of 'L' and so risk other developers of confusing '1' and 'l', no problem. If you want to name your variables in non-latin script so they will contrast with C#'s latin keywords, no problem. Or if you want to distribute a string over multiple lines and so break a series of indentation, no problem. It is cheap to ensure consistency with restrictions and this makes it tempting to implement. But in the case of disallowing non-latin characters (concerning the second example), it means a discredit to Unicode, because one would not take full advantage of its capacity."}
{"_id": "13540", "title": "Not-for-profit universities that offer computer science undergraduate degree online?", "text": "There are many masters degree programs in computer science online offered by reputable organizations. However, I've found very few bachelors only degree programs offered by non for-profit institutions. I am looking for a degree in computer science and also any programs for entrepreneurship/management or algorithmic trading. I've found only 2 programs so far that fit: http://www.regis.edu/regis.asp?sctn=cpcis&p1=ap&p2=cs&p3=ol http://depaul.edu Requirements: 100% online undergraduate non-profit Options: Bachelor of Science Bachelor of Arts Bonuses: accelerated recognized ABET cost effective Update: I've answered my question with a list. If anyone knows an online program that combines skills in entrepreneurship (getting capital, starting a business) or algorithmic trading with a computer program that would be ideal.. maybe too much to ask though"}
{"_id": "41835", "title": "How does an agile process deal with ORM?", "text": "This question was prompted by this answer, where I quote,\"agile + ORM on a large constantly changing database is brutal\". So, how can an agile process deal with a constantly changing database? I am interested in both cases:   1. Where the database design will stablelize, after using it a while to see how it works   2. Where constantly changing data schemas require that the database changes often A couple ideas I had were:   * Use a NoSQL database   * Creating key/value tables for different classes of data. This could create bigger tables, but might work well for data that is not inherently relational."}
{"_id": "202076", "title": "Dependency properties outside the realm of WPF?", "text": "Is there a more general concept or name for what WPF calls \"dependency properties\"? I imagine this is not a WPF-ism and in fact other libraries or frameworks have employed a similar approach? If so, what are these other instances and what are the similarities and differences compared to Microsoft's dependency properties? I am at a junction where I'm considering adding \"dependency properties\" to my own type system and object model (unrelated to WPF), as the construction seems appropriate for my design requirements; however, I want to consider what others have created as well, not just WPF's particular implementation."}
{"_id": "235707", "title": "Using a relational database vs JSON objects for event/activity data", "text": "I am working on a project where I am trying to decide between using a standard SQL relational database or JSON objects to store data about an event or activity. The project will store data on multiple event types so I have decided to just describe one event type for this question. The live music event (described in full using the JSON schema at the bottom of this question) is an object that stores data such as where the event will take place, the time/date of the event and the cost of the event. The live music event object has both one-to-one (event--> name, event --> description) and one-to-many (event--> venues, event--> dates, event--> ticket types) relationships. Furthermore, the event object can contain one or more performer IDs, which link to the performer object. The performer object stores data on musicians who are performing at the live music event. The data will be queried by users using both simple (\"Find me events with 'x' name\") and complex (\"Find me events with 'x' music genre and 'y' cost within a radius of 'z' from my current location\") queries. The data will be submitted by users using a web form. As you can probably tell from the defined JSON schema, I was originally going to use JSON objects to store this data but I've heard from some people who say that because my data is purely relational, I should stick to the older methods. I would appreciate any thoughts on the pros and cons of each approach given my needs. If you need anything clarified, please feel free to ask.               {         \"event\": {             \"eventID\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },               \"eventType\":{                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"eventTypeItem\":{                     \"type\":\"string\"                 }             },             \"eventName\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },                   \"eventDescription\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"eventVenueList\":{                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"eventVenueListID\":{                     \"type\":\"integer\"                 }             },             \"eventURL\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"eventTwitter\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"eventFB\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"eventInstagram\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"eventEmail\":{                 \"type\":\"string\",                 \"format\":\"email\"             },             \"eventContactPerson\":{                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"eventDoorTime\": {                 \"type\":\"string\",                 \"format\":\"date-time\"             },               \"eventPerformerIDList\":{                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"liveMusicPerformerID\":{                     \"type\":\"integer\"                 }             },               \"eventSetList\":{                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"eventPerformerID\":{                     \"type\":\"integer\"                 },                 \"eventPerformerStartTime\":{                     \"type\":\"string\",                     \"format\":\"date-time\"                 },                 \"eventPerformerEndTime\":{                     \"type\":\"string\",                     \"format\":\"date-time\"                 }                                                },             \"eventDateList\": {                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"eventDateItem\": {                     \"type\":\"string\",                     \"format\":\"date-time\"                 }                },             \"eventDateStartTime\": {                 \"type\":\"string\",                 \"format\":\"date-time\"             },             \"eventDateEndTime\": {                 \"type\":\"string\",                 \"format\":\"date-time\"             },             \"eventTicket\":{                  \"type\":\"array\",                 \"eventTicketType\":{                     \"type\":\"string\"                  },                 \"eventTicketLowPrice\":{                     \"type\":\"number\"                 },                 \"eventTicketHighPrice\":{                     \"type\":\"number\"                  },                 \"eventDatesAdvancePrice\": {                     \"type\":\"number\"                 }                }         },           \"performer\": {             \"performerID\": {                 \"type\":\"integer\"             },             \"performerType\": {                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"performerName\": {                 \"type\":\"string\"             },             \"performerAlternateName\": {                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"performerAlterateNameItem\":{                     \"type\":\"string\"                 }             },             \"performerGenreList\": {                 \"type\":\"array\",                 \"performerGenreItem\":{                     \"type\":\"string\"                 }             },             \"performerURL\": {                 \"type\":\"string\"             }                                                }     }"}
{"_id": "235706", "title": "Are (C) object files created with different compilers binary-compatible?", "text": "I understand that C++ compilers are not compatible with each other. However, I was unable to find anything on this topic for C in particular. I know that the C standard leaves a lot of room for compilers to implement things however they see fit: for example, the size and alignment of most (all?) data types is implementation-defined save for some minimal guarantees. Therefore, two compilers (or two versions of the same compiler) can disagree on numerous details. Am I correct in thinking that there's no guarantee that two object files compiled with different compilers will actually link properly? For example, the size of pointers could be 32 bits in one object file and 64 bits in the other. But if that's so, why are C libraries sometimes distributed in precompiled form? Is there an expectation that I'll use the same compiler they did (e.g. gcc), or some _de facto_ standard being used to ensure binary compatibility? And how do other languages with a Foreign Language Interface ensure things will line up properly when linking with C object files?"}
{"_id": "235704", "title": "Work released under creative common", "text": "I have some questions regarding creative common.I'm reading the documentation at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, yet I'm still confused about these licenses. Suppose there is a company which released a database or ontology about cars on creative common, say based on this license. Suppose I use this database to create a REST API and a mobile application which uses this database or ontology. My questions are:   1. Should I release all my source codes, i.e. the REST API source codes and the mobile application source codes   2. Can I limit API calls to the web service From what I've read, I've only understand that I should publish all mods I made to the current work I took on the license"}
{"_id": "137319", "title": "How to not take risks with new collaborators?", "text": "My team is going to add new team members and my manager doesn't want to take any risks. I don't think it's a large problem but my manager is concerned that a new programmer would sabotage and accidentally destroy parts of the code or the data e.g. cause data disaster. I say that probability is not very high but still I've been told that it's important to limit the rights of what new collaborators can do. But this is not practical and we can't eat the cake and have it - adding a collaborator to source control gives the new collaborator access to all the source code and even if there was a way to only let a new member in to parts of the source code (we're using bitbucket for source control) it still wouldn't work since technically the whole project is usually needed to build it so one can't just take a part of the code and expect it to work and able to build on independently. We're using Google App Engine and nor is it a working idea to create a clone of the app that my collaborator can build on. I said that we are not the first ones with this problem and that a solution that works for someone else should work for us but my manager seemed not satisfied with that answer. Can you comment on my situation or give concrete advice what could be done about the \"problem\" / scenario since it's just a scenario that a newly added developer accidentally deletes the whole datastore, but we don't want it to be possible."}
{"_id": "235700", "title": "How can I Tap into EF code creation in Visual Studio 2013", "text": "I'm use the Repository pattern along with EF at work. I'm wondering if there is a way for me to make an addon or somehow tap into the EF code generation of the table classes when the model is saved. So that I can automatically generate the repository stub as well. I'd also like to check if it already exists and if so not to regenerate (as the stub might have custom code for that EF type)."}
{"_id": "90531", "title": "How to learn an API", "text": "When I find some interesting project (e.g. on GitHub) I often would like to use it and try it out to see how it works, but if there isn't a good documentation or some kind of tutorial it's hard to figure out how to use it. So my question is: how do you approach such a situation? How do you figure out which classes are important and how to chain them to put them to use? What would you look at first? An advice I found is to look at the tests (if there are any). But if there are unit tests for every class, how do you know which ones to look at first?"}
{"_id": "235708", "title": "Creating nested functions for purely aesthetic reasons?", "text": "I've always wondered what other programmers think about the idea of creating pure aesthetic functions. Say I have a function that processes a chunk of data: `Function ProcessBigData`. Say I need several process steps, only valid for that data: `Step1`, `Step2`, `Step3`. The normal aproach I see the most in source code is to write comments like so:               Function ProcessBigData:         # Does Step1         Step1..         Step1..              #Does Step2         Step2..         Step2..      What I usually do, but always felt wrong due to the lack of such coding style by fellow peers is:               Function ProcessBigData:         Function Step1:             Step1..             Step1..              Function Step2:             Step2..             Step2..              Step1() -> Step2()      I am mainly concerned if there any drawbacks for such style in **Javascript** and **Python** Are there any alternatives that I'm not seeing?"}
{"_id": "101546", "title": "Storing hierarchical template into a database", "text": "If this title is ambiguous, feel free to change it, I don't know how to put this in a one-liner. **Example:**   Let's assume you have a html template which contains some custom tags, like `<text_field />`. We now create a page based on a template containing more of those custom tags. When a user wants to edit the page, he sees a text field. he can input things and save it. This looks fairly easy to set up. You either have something like a template_positions table which stores the content of those fields. **Case:**   I now have a bit of a blockade keeping things as simple as possible. Assume you have the same tag given in your example, and additionally, `<layout>` and `<repeat>` tags. Here's an example how they should be used:               <repeat>       <layout name=\"image-left\">         <image /> <text_field />       </layout>            <layout name=\"image-right\">         <text_field /> <image />       </layout>     </repeat>      We now have a block which can be repeated, obviously. This means: when creting/editing a page containing such a template block, I can choose between a layout `image-left` and `image-right` which then gets inserted as content element (where content for `<image />` and `<text_field />` gets stored). And because this is inside a `<repeat>`, content elements from the given layouts can be inserted multiple times. How do you store this? Simply said, this could be stored with the same setup I've wrote in the example above, I just need to add a parent_id or something similiar to maintain a hierarchy. but I think I am missing something. At least the relation between an inserted content element and the origin/insertion point is missing. And what happens when I update the template file? Do I have to give every custom tag that acts as editable part of a template an identifier that matches an identifier in the template to substitue them correctly? Or can you think of a clean solution that might be better?"}
{"_id": "220188", "title": "Why is FRACTRAN turing complete?", "text": "I've tried to google for explanation but most links only say things like \"FRACTRAN is turing complete. As an example, let's look at multiplication.\" I remember seeing an xkcd forum post say that FRACTRAN helped the poster understand Turing Completeness. I am looking for an intuitive explanation as to why this esolang is Turing complete, as it's not very obvious looking at the language mechanics."}
{"_id": "237701", "title": "Algorithm to create permutations for a given alphabet based on a sequence number", "text": "I would like to have a function that will create a word (always the same word) for a given sequence number based on a given alphabet.               word(0, [a,b,c]) = a     word(1, [a,b,c]) = b     word(2, [a,b,c]) = c     word(3, [a,b,c]) = aa     word(4, [a,b,c]) = ab     word(5, [a,b,c]) = ac     word(6, [a,b,c]) = ba     word(7, [a,b,c]) = bb     word(8, [a,b,c]) = bc     word(9, [a,b,c]) = ca     ...      I was able to recursively create all permutations of a given length but starting with length 5 it already gets quite big in memory."}
{"_id": "240324", "title": "Should I use SignalR to synchronize & cache CRUD data to a mobile app?", "text": "I'm considering using SignalR to send data to a mobile app, but need to have a way to synchronize data while it's closed or pending updates. Is it a good idea to use Backbone.js <\\--> SignalR to manage queued CRUD updates to the server? If not, what is?"}
{"_id": "237702", "title": "Lexing: One token per operator, or one universal operator token?", "text": "When lexing, what would be the best way to tokenize operators? Would one just create a `BinaryOperator` token, or a separate token for every single binary operator? Examples: `PlusOperator`, `MinusOperator`, `DivisionOperator` ... I am tended towards having a universal one, but going from the documentations and project sources I've read the vast majority of lexers are using one token per operator. Is there a particular reason for this? Does it even matter? Does it give you any advantages?"}
{"_id": "237707", "title": "Logging events for reporting purposes", "text": "Are there any design patterns or best practices around logging events for use in reporting and BI systems. For example in a system which manages orders from a website, it would be beneficial if a customer support worker could type in an order number and see that it the order was placed on a certain day, dispatched on a certain day and delivered on another. I can see 2 ways around this. I have an order object which has the fields:               OrderDate     DespatchDate     DeliveryDate      and populate them if they have happend otherwise they will be null OR log some sort of events like which are messages like:               Order Number - \"12312312\" - Ordered on '2014/01/01'     Order Number - \"12312312\" - Despatched on '2014/01/01'      and add store the events in a database. Are there any guidelines for this? For example how does the work item history in TFS work? ![TFS History](http://i.stack.imgur.com/TlnCP.png)"}
{"_id": "124757", "title": "How should semi-agile team operate during management-imposed waterfall-like \"testing phase\"", "text": "I'm not looking for advice how agile process should work. I know that part. I'm curious what the best way to adapt the process to a typical large, well- established corporation who loves its \"processes\" and gate/passport reviews. For those lucky enough not to know what they are, gates/passport things are essentially waterfall milestones presented by development teams to executives: Gate 0 - kick off, identifying positive npv projects; Gate 1 - planning work for the release, coding begins, Gate 2 - code complete/testing phase, Gate 3.... While within our team we've tried to embrace agile as much as we could (peer reviews, iterations, constant communication, doing what makes sense, continuous improvement...), these gates come from way up and there's nothing we can do about them. Of many things that bug me, one of them is that the corporate environment we are in, imposes some constraints which seem to have adverse effects on how we work. One example is that during development we only focus on new features and ignore existing bugs and even introduce new bugs. This is unfortunate and goes against agile, but we have no choice since code complete could be in 2 months, but \"testing/bug fixing\" phase can last 6 months after that. We are under constant pressure to \"finish work\" but emphasis is on completing features, not getting a stable product. This part we sorta learned to live with. My question is what strategy (successful mode of operation) other teams/companies have found for the \"testing\" phase that follows a \"code complete\" milestone? During \"new development\" we have iterations and each one gets filled in with stories and tasks. However, currently once development is \"done\", there's no more iterations and no more planning. Instead, we solely use bug tracking database to monitor how many new bugs are being found and how fast the bugs are being resolved. Personally, I don't see the difference between adding new UI feature and making existing UI feature work. To me work is work. I proposed that we continue having iterations as normal and continue to schedule work as before, but neither management nor other team members seemed to be on board with that. So 1) am I way off and is bug track database the best we can do? and 2) if there's a better approach, I'd like to explore it and maybe acquire enough ammunition to take back to my boss. At the same time I somewhat agree that a lot of times when reacting to bugs we don't have the luxury of waiting till next iteration. **\\--- Slight clarification based on first few responses ---** We just entered the testing phase. At the moment, there's no more stories, no more iterations. Only bug tracking database. That doesn't sit right with me, that's why I'm curious what other teams would do in this situation. Also some bugs are definitely the size of a medium size story, while other bugs would take 5 min to fix. Should 5-min bugs also become stories if we were to continue with iterations? The other argument we've been having is that during \"new development\" we only interact with Agile tracking tool (Rally) but in \"testing\" if we continue with iterations, we'd have to maintain paper trail in Rally as well as in bug tracking software."}
{"_id": "165776", "title": "What do ptLineDist and relativeCCW do?", "text": "I saw these methods in the Line2D Java Docs but did not understand what they do? Javadoc for `ptLineDist` says: > Returns the distance from a point to this line. The distance measured is the > distance between the specified point and the closest point on the > infinitely-extended line defined by this `Line2D`. If the specified point > intersects the line, this method returns 0.0 Doc for `relativeCCW` says: > Returns an indicator of where the specified point (PX, PY) lies with respect > to the line segment from (X1, Y1) to (X2, Y2). The return value can be > either 1, -1, or 0 and indicates in which direction the specified line must > pivot around its first endpoint, (X1, Y1), in order to point at the > specified point (PX, PY). > > A return value of 1 indicates that the line segment must turn in the > direction that takes the positive X axis towards the negative Y axis. In the > default coordinate system used by Java 2D, this direction is > counterclockwise. > > A return value of -1 indicates that the line segment must turn in the > direction that takes the positive X axis towards the positive Y axis. In the > default coordinate system, this direction is clockwise. > > A return value of 0 indicates that the point lies exactly on the line > segment. Note that an indicator value of 0 is rare and not useful for > determining colinearity because of floating point rounding issues. > > If the point is colinear with the line segment, but not between the > endpoints, then the value will be -1 if the point lies \"beyond (X1, Y1)\" or > 1 if the point lies \"beyond (X2, Y2)\"."}
{"_id": "233799", "title": "What design pattern can I use to represent processing data from any stream?", "text": "I'm reading data from a stream in buffered series of bytes (say 1024 bytes at a time) and do some comparison, checking, or processing, before writing it back to the same type of stream. Currently data comes from file. But in the future it may come from other sources (memorymapped file, TCP etc) Is there a design pattern I can implement? Or is that not necessary?"}
{"_id": "124751", "title": "Do I need to get permission to access a site's data or functionality programmatically?", "text": "I'm creating an application which will programmatically sent HTTP GET and POST requests to a site and processing the data received. If I want to release that application, do I have to get permission from the site's owners?"}
{"_id": "254456", "title": "Synchronized access to network industrial equipment", "text": "I have an industrial equipment which is controlled by a software. The software connects to it using sockets, and keeps the connection all the time alive, while from time to time sending commands to the equipment. Now, this equipment is represented by a class which encapsulates the sending and receiving of data. Next, I need to make a UI, that will show the state of the equipment, independent from the controlling software (controlling is on a different thread same solution). Refresh to the UI must be done lets say every second, but it can happen that UI wants to read data, and the controlling software wants to write. The problem is that the equipment might respond from 50 ms to 1 second, we don't know, and during the response no one must interfere! How can I best synchronize calls to the equipment communication class? There might be at least 2 solutions:   1. Using simple `lock(obj) {}` statement in C#, for each method in the common. class   2. Using events and a message queue with a subscriber concept While the first one might be simple, I assume for my case is the worst solution because it can block everything. The second one seems more OK, but the problem is that there will be for sure some delay on receiving the results if many subscribers are, or dunno, I'm not really sure."}
{"_id": "197854", "title": "Working with Multiple Versions of Websites (Git)", "text": "I have a main template like website I have made that will allow me to quickly roll out and make new websites on demand when I need them, for my personal use. I'm wondering what is the best practice when using a Git repo is for this practice. My goal is that if for example down the road I'd like to make a change to all the sites at once, I can simply change the master (Repo) and have this change applied to all other versions of the template. Currently I have my template hosted privately on BitBucket. I'm assuming it is best to git clone the repo, and then makes changes on the clone. Then when I make changes to the template I do a git pull on the sites. Is this is the ideal approach, or are there better methods to do this?"}
{"_id": "46642", "title": "Differences between messages and methods?", "text": "In Objective C you have the concept of sending messages to other objects, and, well this is very similar to method calling in languages like C# and Java. But what **exactly** are the subtle differences? How should I think of messaging when thinking about my code? Note: Just a bit of background here, I'm a C#/Java developer trying to understand some concepts about Objective C."}
{"_id": "80113", "title": "How to test a code online?", "text": "I am preparing for technical interview and would like to brush my coding skills. I have written a C++ program and would like to test it online. I don't have access to any linux compiler on my machine. Where can I do it? I have perception that I can do it in code.google.com -> Google Code Playground but I don't see where I can choose my compiler. I have written a simple C hello world program in \"edit code\" panel and have clicked on \"Run code\" but it has been a while and nothing appears in bottom output window. Please help. Thanks,"}
{"_id": "80112", "title": "My client wants me to add background music to a site. How do I tell them this is a terrible idea?", "text": "I'm having a rather Oatmealesque experience with a particular client's website. The latest 'feature' they have requested is that background music play automatically when the site loads. What should I say to gently convince them that this is a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "128617", "title": "Do Universal iOS Apps have more \"issues\" when new versions of iOS come out?", "text": "I was discussing developing an iOS App with a client and I mentioned that we should ideally have a Universal App that would perform as an iPhone App on an iPhone and as an iPad App on an iPad. The client likes the idea of an iPad-specific version of the App but prefers the idea of a separate App entirely for the iPad version. And not for some \"Angry Birds/Angry Birds HD\" type of reason (the App in question will be free, so there's nothing to be gained financially) but rather because \"other [organizations in his industry] have told him\" that \"Universal Apps have more compatibility issues with older devices when new versions of the operating system [iOS] are released\" and having discrete apps for this alleviates this issue. I believe he may have been referring to the concept of an App requiring a version of iOS that is more recent than the last one available on the phone. Or maybe the concept of releasing an App or an update that requires a version of iOS beyond the last one available on a device (original iPhone is stuck at 3.1.3 forever, iPhone 3G is stuck at 4.2.1 forever). But I presume you can still make a Universal App for 3.1.3 since the original iPad shipped with iOS 3.2 and Universal Apps existed before 4.0. And while I'm having a difficult time finding out what the minimum iOS version is for Apps submitted to the App Store, I presume that the original iPhone can still download and buy Apps or else the one guy in the office here who still has his OG iPhone would probably have complained more by now. But I really don't know. Do Universal Apps have more issues with compatibility on devices (and more specifically older devices) than individually developed separate (but otherwise pretty equivalent) Apps? Has anyone ever run into this?"}
{"_id": "48562", "title": "Are 'edited by' inline comments the norm in shops which use revision control?", "text": "The senior dev in our shop insists that whenever code is modified, the programmer responsible should add an inline comment stating what he did. These comments usually look like `// YYYY-MM-DD <User ID> Added this IF block per bug 1234.` We use TFS for revision control, and it seems to me that comments of this sort are much more appropriate as check-in notes rather than inline noise. TFS even allows you to associate a check-in with one or more bugs. Some of our older, often-modified class files look like they have a comment-to-LOC ratio approaching 1:1. To my eyes, these comments make the code harder to read and add zero value. Is this a standard (or at least common) practice in other shops?"}
{"_id": "211959", "title": "What are the different meanings of 'fixture'?", "text": "I have some difficulty understanding the concept of \"fixture\". I know what a test suite is, a test case, a test run, but what exactly is a \"fixture\"? A parameterized test case? It seems to me that the meaning or semantics of the term \"fixture\" can vary slightly by programming language or by testing framework? I think a _phpunit fixture_ > \" _the code to set the world up in a known state and then return it to its > original state when the test is complete. This known state is called the > fixture of the test._ \" is slightly different from a \"fitnesse fixture\", where > \" _Fixtures are a bridge between the Wiki pages and the System Under Test > (SUT), which is the actual system to test_ \". Is there an expert in software testing around here who can answer this question? References to other programming languages are welcome. **Updates:** I'll add more definitions of _fixture_ here as when I encounter new ones. That'll be fun. Alternative definitions   * (anything that implements the ITestFixture interface) Source: sqa"}
{"_id": "197859", "title": "Functional metrics in Agile methodologies", "text": "I'm preparing a presentation about Agile methodology for managers (not programmers) and I'm looking that, from a side, the Agile talks about **functional perspective*^ (in Scrum we have _planning game_ ) but, from other side, it lacks any (standard) definition of **functional measure**. In my opinion it's strange: how I can give a magnitude of effort by functional needs of user if Agile methodology doesn't use a formal/univocal definition of **functional needs** and doesn't adopt any formal functional measurement (Function Point, COSMIC). If you have played to _planning game_ or _User Story_ , what was your measure unit? Have you used the FP or COSMIC?"}
{"_id": "48566", "title": "Essential roles for web application team", "text": "Some friends of mine came up with an idea for a web application which we (so far) think could be great. I made the analysis and all the early stages of the development process and I'm about to start the coding. I'm talking about something that is barely a mid-level project, so I consider one developer (myself) should be enough. The thing is that we are trying to assign roles to each one of us so we can be focused on our duties and have clear our responsibilities within the team. We are a crew of four people, three of us (my friends) are business people who would do the marketing, customer relationship, management and accounting stuff and I'm basically the developer. I have in mind to get them involved into the development process by giving them documentation to write and use them as testers, all of that besides the management duties they have. Perhaps someone out there have been in the same situation, so I would appreciate if the experience is shared so we can effectively give ourselves positions in the project based on what I explained above. Which are the essential roles or the optimal team layout so the idea can be developed successfully? The question is not strictly about programming, but it's related to build a software entrepreneurship beyond the code, that is something that I'm sure plenty of us are looking. Any help is really appreciated! Regards."}
{"_id": "48568", "title": "Guidelines About Using Code Repository", "text": "I'd like to have some suggestions about using code repository. I don't need to know how to check out or how to check in or how to create a branch. What I need to know is, how to maintain the repository tree or how to structure it for optimal usage. For example, for a given project, when to create a branch? Where to create a branch with respect to the project's location? What should be done when one or more than one developer are working on same project but different features? When to merge? Where goes the bug fix? How the QA team should checkout a specific version? Etc."}
{"_id": "10387", "title": "I'm working on a PaaS similar to Heroku or Google App Engine, and was curious which pricing structure users prefer. Ideas?", "text": "My current project is a cloud deployment platform similar to GAE or Heroku. I'm trying to figure out what pricing method works best for us and the users. Assuming that I cannot _currently_ provide a free plan, here are the options: 1) Have fully unlimited scaling (GAE-like), and charge for usage ($5 per project + x cents per CPU hour the project uses on our system, also charge a certain amount for bandwidth in/out, database storage + I/O, r/w data store, memcached, etc.) This ends up being cheaper (around $20 for a moderately loaded website) and more \"fair\" for the user (pay **only** for what you use), but much more complicated with the many different factors that affect final price. This type of architecture is more resilient to what you throw at it, so if you get a traffic spike, it will work perfectly fine, you'll just get charged more. 2) Pay for \"application readiness\"/specific scalability (have a specific amount of processes per user available to accept requests, maybe $20 a month (3 cents per hour) per process), and for a specific tier of a database. No bandwidth/IO charges (within fair use, of course). Add-ons like email and memcached are extra. (Heroku-like) This option is a lot more simple, and much easier to project costs on. However, the pricing curve is rather steep. You do end up likely paying more (probably $40-$60 a month for a moderately-loaded website), but all of those miscellaneous costs are completely abstracted. Which would you more likely pay for? Also, is there another option I may be overlooking?"}
{"_id": "252855", "title": "The nature of callbacks in Node.js", "text": "In the plain javaScript world I've learned that nested functions can be problematic because the inner function is \"re-created\" every time the outer function is called:               function outer(a) {         function inner(arg1,arg2){             return arg1 + arg2;         }         return inner(a, 6);     }     myVar = outer(4);      Apparently the inner function is garbage collected and the constant re- creation of it has a cost on performance. This could be re-factored as:               function inner(arg1, arg2) {         return arg1 + arg2;     }          function outer(a) {         return inner(a, 6);     }          myVar = outer(4);      If I am correct it seems that the tradeoff lies in the changing scope of inner; the fact that function inner no longer has access to outer's own variables. If I am correct so far, lets move to Node.JS. Node is heavy on callbacks, and my question is, are asynchronous callback functions typical in Node also \"re-created\" every time they are fired? Take the following common Node construct:               http.createServer(function (req, res) {         res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});         res.end('Hello World\\n');     }).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1');      In reality the function can get pretty large; it can encompass a lot of functionality. Is the above callback \"re-created\" every time a client GETs or POSTs the server? If so, would it be better to always de-couple the callbacks as in the plain javaScript example:               function handleGET(req, res) {        res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});        res.end('Hello World\\n');     }          http.createServer(handleGET).listen(1337, '127.0.0.1');      as a related bonus question, are event functions re-created too? Would they benefit from prior declaration?               myObj.on('someEvent', function someFunction() {...});      vs.               function someFunction() {...}     myObj.on('someEvent', someFunction);"}
{"_id": "18349", "title": "The number of years experience needed to be a contract developer", "text": "Suppose you are a programmer in your mid-20's who has had several years industrial experience working for both big tech and a few internet startups but now you'd like to try contracting in the hope you'll be able to choose more interesting and varied work and be able to have a few months off between jobs to focus on things like open source, travelling and developing your own startup ideas. Now this is possibly one of those 'grass is greener' daydreams.. Even if in the workplace you manage to have the enthusiasm and skill to work equally alongside much more experienced co-workers, how realistic do you think it would be for someone with too few years of experience to appear 'specialist' or 'experienced' to compete for contracts and afford to live this lifestyle?"}
{"_id": "252852", "title": "C/C++: Which conversion warnings make sense in practice?", "text": "C/C++ implicit conversions can cause bugs. Here's one example:               int foo, bar;     scanf(\"%d\", &foo);     scanf(\"%d\", &bar);     float foobar = foo / bar;      If I input `7` and `2`, it's not `3.5` as expected - it's `3` -> bug (let's ignore the buffer overflow). gcc's `-Wconversion` warns about this kind of stuff, so I turned it on. But it just seems to me like it's going over the top with the warnings. For instance, this:               int foo;     float bar;     scanf(\"%d\", &foo);     scanf(\"%f\", &bar);     float foobar = foo / bar;      Causes a warning:               warning: conversion to 'float' from 'int' may alter its value [-Wconversion]      Even though it works as intended, returning `3.5` when I input `7` and `2`. I know that float cannot represent all possible int values precisely, but I'm questioning if adding a cast here does anything to help - other than adding more code. In the example above, casting one of the int values in the expression to float actually changed the result, replacing an implicit cast by an explicit one in this example doesn't. So much for float to int conversion warnings, but that's not all. There's also sign conversion warnings. Traditional example:               std::vector<char> chars = get_chars();     for (int i = 0; i < chars.size(); i++)         std::cout << chars[i] << std::endl;      Causes this warning:               warning: comparison between signed and unsigned integer expressions [-Wsign-compare]      I could use the more cumbersome `unsigned int` for the index variable instead - which will require further casting when I do calculations with it. All for the unusual situation that I have between `2^31 + 1` and `2^32` elements in my vector and don't do any calculations with the index variable that cast it to int. So, my question is: Which conversion warnings make sense in practice? Does adding explicit casts to fix them really improve anything?"}
{"_id": "163721", "title": "How to figure out how to write a program", "text": "I have a program that i need to do. I know what the program should do, but i dont know how to approach making it What is the best way to arrange my ideas and thoughts, layout the what the program should do, aproach doing it correctly and transform my thoughts and ideas into code?"}
{"_id": "54423", "title": "Switching to a career in Machine Learning", "text": "My day job is plain old software development. I am also doing my Masters in CS (part time, course based). I took a course on AI and found machine learning quite fascinating but like most courses it only offered a basic intro. I intend to learn more about Machine Learning and if possible get a job in that field. When I look at job postings in this field it is clear that a Phd in Machine learning (or prior experience in the field with considerable expertise) is required for most of them. I'm looking for advice on self learning to gain experience that'll useful in industry. At least, enough experience to get my foot in. I will do the obvious ones like reading text books, papers etc. Perhaps any open source efforts that I can participate in or something I could do on my own? Apologies if I'm being vague here but I hope there are at least a few of you who done a similar switch and can advise. Thanks !"}
{"_id": "173494", "title": "Best design for a \"Command Executer\" class", "text": "Sorry for the vague title, I couldn't think of a way to condense the question. I am building an application that will run as a background service and intermittently collect data about the system its running on. A second Android controller application will query the system over tcp/ip for statistics about the system. Currently, the background service has a tcp listener class that reads/writes bytes from a socket. When data is received, it raises an event to notify the service. The service takes the bytes, feeds them into a command parser to figure out what is being requested, and then passes the parsed command to a command executer class. When the service receives a \"query statistics\" command, it should return statistics over the tcp/ip connection. Currently, all of these classes are fully decoupled from each other. But in order for the command executer to return statistics, it will obviously need access to the socket somehow. For reasons I can't completely articulate, it feels wrong for the command executer to have a direct reference to the socket. I'm looking for strategies and/or design patterns I can use to return data over the socket while keeping the classes decoupled, if this is possible. Hopefully this makes sense, please let me know if I can include any info that would make the question easier to understand."}
{"_id": "176469", "title": "What is the best strategy for licensing a desktop application using a web service, when all I need to know is when people use the product?", "text": "Our company's main application is a desktop program that is used at warehouses and written in C# and Windows Presentation Forms. The next thing we want to be able to do is track when customers open up the application and when it is being used. The reason for this is so we can charge them per month, based on if they are/arn't using the application. My boss is having me research different ways to \"license\" the product under these requirements. Not having any experience doing this, a few things come to mind. I could create a web application that runs on a server, and every time the desktop application is opened and the user logs in, the application connects to the server and marks a database with the DateTime. Or is there licensing software that I can use to accomplish this? Just looking for tips/advice from people who have experience with this type of stuff."}
{"_id": "176466", "title": "How to discriminate from two nodes with identical frequencies in a Huffman's tree?", "text": "Still on my quest to compress/decompress files with a Java implementation of Huffman's coding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding) for a school assignment. From the Wikipedia page, I quote: >   * Create a leaf node for each symbol and add it to the priority queue. >   * While there is more than one node in the queue: >     * Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the > queue >     * Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with > probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities. >     * Add the new node to the queue. >   * The remaining node is the root node and the tree is complete. > Now, emphasis: >   * **Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the > queue** >   * **Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with > probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities.** > So I have to take two nodes with the lowest frequency. What if there are **multiple nodes with the _same_ low frequency**? How do I discriminate which one to use? The reason I ask this is because Wikipedia has this image: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/2yhN2.png) And I wanted to see if my Huffman's tree was the same. I created a file with the following content:               aaaaeeee       nnttmmiihhssfffouxprl      And this was the result: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DNOwz.png) Doesn't look so bad. But there clearly are some differences when multiple nodes have the same frequency. My questions are the following:   * What is Wikipedia's image doing to discriminate the nodes with the same frequency?   * Is my tree wrong? (Is Wikipedia's image method the one and only answer?) I guess there is one specific and strict way to do this, because for our school assignment, files that have been compressed by my program **should be able to be decompressed by other classmate's programs** \\- so there must be a \"standard\" or \"unique\" way to do it. But I'm a bit lost with that. My code is rather straightforward. It literally just follows Wikipedia's listed steps. The way my code extracts the two nodes with the lowest frequency from the queue is to iterate all nodes and if the current node has a lower frequency than any of the two \"smallest\" known nodes so far, then it replaces the highest one. Just like that."}
{"_id": "176463", "title": "What is the most performant CSS property for transitioning an element?", "text": "I'm wondering whether there is a performance difference between using different CSS properties to translate an element. Some properties fit different situations differently. You can translate an element with following properties: `transform`, `top/left/right/bottom` and `margin-top/left/right/bottom` In the case where you do not utilize the `transition` CSS property for the translation but use some form of a timer (`setTimeout`, `requestAnimationFrame` or `setImmediate`) or raw events, which is the most performant\u2013which is going to make for higher FPS rates?"}
{"_id": "41160", "title": "Programming and Ubiquitous Language (DDD) in a non-English domain", "text": "I know there are some questions already here that are closely related to this subject but none of them take Ubiquitous Language as the starting point so I think that justifies this question. For those who don't know: Ubiquitous Language is the concept of defining a (both spoken and written) language that is equally used across developers and domain experts to avoid inconsistencies and miscommunication due to translation problems and misunderstanding. You will see the same terminology show up in code, conversations between any team member, functional specs and whatnot. So, what I was wondering about is how to deal with Ubiquitous Language in non- English domains. Personally, I strongly favor writing programming code in English completely, including comments but ofcourse excluding constants and resources. However, in a non-English domain, I'm forced to make a decision either to:   1. Write code reflecting the Ubiquitous Language in the natural language of the domain.   2. Translate the Ubiquitous Language to English and stop communicating in the natural language of the domain.   3. Define a table that defines how the Ubiquitous Language translates to English. Here are some of my thoughts based on these options: 1) I have a strong aversion against mixed-language code, that is coding using type/member/variable names etc. that are non-English. Most programming languages 'breathe' English to a large extent and most of the technical literature, design pattern names etc. are in English as well. Therefore, in most cases there's just no way of writing code entirely in a non-English language so you end up with mixed languages anyway. 2) This will force the domain experts to start thinking and talking in the English equivalent of the UL, something that will probably not come naturally to them and therefore hinders communication significantly. 3) In this case, the developers communicate with the domain experts in their native language while the developers communicate with each other in English and most importantly, they write code using the English translation of the UL. I'm sure I don't want to go for the first option and I think option 3 is much better than option 2. What do you think? Am I missing other options? **UPDATE** Today, about year later, having dealt with this issue on a daily basis, I have to say that option 3 has worked out pretty well for me. It wasn't as tedious as I initially feared and translating in real time while talking to the client wasn't a problem either. I also found the following advantages to be true, based on my experience.   * Translating the UL makes you pay more attention to defining the UL and even the domain itself, especially when you don't know how to translate a term and you have to start looking through dictionaries etc. This has even caused me to reconsider domain modeling decisions a few times.   * It helps you make your knowledge of the English language more profound.   * Obviously, your code is much more pleasant to look at instead of being a mind boggling obscenity."}
{"_id": "179630", "title": "How to make a license apply to a whole library?", "text": "I'm creating a standard library for a programming language, and I'd like to license each and every single class or function in there under the MIT license, so they're completely FOSS. All of the files reside in a single directory. Would it be enough to put a LICENSE.txt file in the same directory, containing the MIT license? Do I need to say that the following license applies to all features of the library, or is the library itself considered to be a program?"}
{"_id": "231988", "title": "How fundamental to good development is BDD?", "text": "I am learning to be a web developer and am using rails. I have read lots of advice and books on the subject and am trying to build my own app, so learning by doing. My question is about that learning journey and the path to take. I have been convinced that BDD is a very sensible and helpful way to develop so I am studying this technique. I am using Cucumber and RSpec and am working through the RSpec book and the Cucumber book. I have now reached a point of total frustration though as I try to write features and steps because I don't know how to use rails or write code. I am new to it but wanted to make sure I built in the good habits as I learn. If I make BDD the way I code from the beginning it will be second nature to me once I am an experienced developer, but because of how slowly I am progressing and how lost I am I am thinking I should scrap BDD for now and just learn the framework. But them I am in the habit of not writing tests as I go and getting lazy. What are your experienced feelings on this matter? Should I keep plugging away at the BDD tests to build good habits? Or am I putting to much importance on it? Thank you for advice,"}
{"_id": "129053", "title": "Pseudocode for an echo using recursion", "text": "Using pseudocode, what would the code for an echo using recursion be? UPDATE: Appears I should have been more clear. By echo I mean the pattern sound exhibits when it echos, not echo as in repeatly add one to self where self equals zero. Any thought on what the code would look like for a \"real\" echo? For example, I'd thought about \"echo(reduce-volume();exit-if- silent;echo())\" but was sure if the logic made sense. UPDATE-2: Working through my own logic above an noticed it lacks a way to account for \"positive feedback\", which I'm guessing is required. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback"}
{"_id": "178328", "title": "SQL RDBMS : one query or multiple calls", "text": "After looking around the internet, I decided to create DAOs that returned objects (POJOs) to the calling business logic function/method. For example: a Customer object with a Address reference would be split in the RDBMS into two tables; Customer and ADDRESS. The CustomerDAO would be in charge of joining the data from the two tables and create both an Address POJO and Customer POJO adding the address to the customer object. Finally return the fulll Customer POJO. Simple, however, now i am at a point where i need to join three or four tables and each representing an attribute or list of attributes for the resulting POJO. The sql will include a group by but i will still result with multiple rows for the same pojo, because some of the tables are joining a one to many relationship. My app code will now have to loop through all the rows trying to figure out if the rows are the same with different attributes or if the record should be a new POJO. Should I continue to create my daos using this technique or break up my Pojo creation into multiple db calls to make the code easier to understand and maintain?"}
{"_id": "178323", "title": "Is there a perf hit using mule as a container vs. standard JEE container like Weblogic?", "text": "Our team is considering using Mule in a large scale medium volume internal facing transactional banking application. At first Mule would just be used as an application server although it is possible some of its esb/orchestration features would be used in the future. I have no experience with mule, being new on the team. But my gut says Mule would not be as performant as Weblogic or Glassfish as a deployment container. Does anyone have any comparison stories to share that might shed light?"}
{"_id": "247319", "title": "Can one always design for scale out?", "text": "When designing an application where scalability is going to be important, it would be useful if the application could be designed to \"scale out\" on cheap commodity servers. However, there are many scale up applications (see my previous question). Is it always _possible_ to design an application to scale out, or do some requirements make scale out impossible, even if all software can be designed from scratch and no legacy software is involved? I am looking for cases where scale out is an inferior solution to scale up, and where good application design could not mitigate this. In other words, the application _cannot_ be designed to scale out effectively, no matter how hard one tries. I am _not_ looking for cases where legacy software or data structures -- or even entire architectures (as in the answer to the previous question) -- were not designed to scale out and could not be changed. Alternatively, if there is reason to believe that one can _always_ scale out, if the application is well designed, I would love to know that as well. Edit: I am looking for an explicit example of such a system, if there is one."}
{"_id": "178326", "title": "Distinguishing between UI command & domain commands", "text": "I am building a WPF client application using the MVVM pattern that provides an interface on top of an existing set of business logic residing in a library which is shared with other applications. The business library followed a domain-driven architecture using CQRS to separate the read and write models (no event sourcing). The combination of technologies and patterns has brought up an interesting conundrum:   * The MVVM pattern uses the command pattern for handling user-interaction with the view models. .NET provides an ICommand interface which is implemented by most MVVM frameworks, like MVVM Light's RelayCommand and Prism's DelegateCommand. For example, the view model would expose a number of command objects as properties that are bound to the UI and respond when the user performs actions like clicking buttons.   * Many implementations of the CQRS use the command pattern to isolate and encapsulate individual behaviors. In my business library, we have implemented the write model as command / command-handler pairs. As such, when we want to do some work, such as create a new order, we 'issue' a command (CreateOrderCommand) which is routed to the command-handler responsible for executing the command. This is great, clearly explained in many sources and I am good with it. However, take this scenario: > I have a ToolbarViewModel which exposes a CreateNewOrderCommand property. > This ICommand object is bound to a button in the UI. When clicked, the UI > command creates and issues a new CreateOrderCommand object to the domain > which is handled by the CreateOrderCommandHandler. This is difficult to explain to other developers and I am finding myself getting tongue-tied because everything is a command. I'm sure I'm not the first developer to have patterns overlap like this where the naming/terminology also overlap. **How have you approached distinguishing your commands used in the UI from those used in the domain?** (Edit: I should mention that the business library is UI-agnostic, i.e. no UI technology-specific code exists, or will exists, in this library.)"}
{"_id": "121701", "title": "What is minimalistic setup for Agile Development for a small team?", "text": "I have 10 developers and 3 Testes team and I want to setup CruiseControle as CI for automated builds, tests and deployment to production server and some repository for SCM ( Source Code Management). I need something that would enable the team lead to create tickets (tasks) for each sprint in SCRUM and issue/bug tracking and task time tracking. I want to use simplest possible solution that just gets the job done with the minimum requirements specified in this SO question. I do not want to use heavy weight or feature rich software ( either free or costly), just the simplest possible setup. Each developer is using Eclipse STS IDE. So it must be something that is integrated into STS (like available as STS plugin, again to keep things as simple as possible). This is for development of Java web application."}
{"_id": "54393", "title": "What's so special about x64 and programming x86?", "text": "I know this is a little funny question, but I didn't have the chance to realize what makes any difference when programming x64 or x86 at high level languages (.NET for instance). Any explanations would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "119266", "title": "Is there a quasi-standard set of attributes to annotate thread safety, immutability etc.?", "text": "Except for a blog post here and there, describing the custom attributes someone created, but that do not seem to get any traction - like one describing how to enforce immutability, another one on Documenting Thread Safety, modeling the attributes after JCIP annotations \\- is there any standard emerging? Anything MS might be planning for the future? This is something that should be standard, if there's to be any chance of interoperability between libraries concurrency-wise. Both for documentation purposes, and also to feed static / dynamic test tools. If MS isn't doing anything in that direction, it could be done on CodePlex - but I couldn't find anything there, either. <opinion>Concurrency and thread safety are really hard in imperative and object-languages like C# and Java, we should try to tame it, until we hopefully switch to more appropriate languages.</opinion>"}
{"_id": "179982", "title": "Misconceptions about purely functional languages?", "text": "I often encounter the following statements / arguments:   1. Pure functional programming languages do not allow side effects (and are therefore of little use in practice because any useful program does have side effects, e.g. when it interacts with the external world).   2. Pure functional programming languages do not allow to write a program that maintains state (which makes programming very awkward because in many application you do need state). I am not an expert in functional languages but here is what I have understood about these topics until now. Regarding point 1, you can interact with the environment in purely functional languages but you have to explicitly mark the code (functions) that introduces side effects (e.g. in Haskell by means of monadic types). Also, as far as I know computing by side effects (destructively updating data) should also be possible (using monadic types?) even though it is not the preferred way of working. Regarding point 2, as far as I know you can represent state by threading values through several computation steps (in Haskell, again, using monadic types) but I have no practical experience doing this and my understanding is rather vague. So, are the two statements above correct in any sense or are they just misconceptions about purely functional languages? If they are misconceptions, how did they come about? Could you write a (possibly small) code snippet illustrating the Haskell idiomatic way to (1) implement side effects and (2) implement a computation with state?"}
{"_id": "179984", "title": "What is the difference between _Procedural Generation_ and _Random Generation_?", "text": "Today, I got into an argument about the term \"procedural generation\". My point was that its different from \"classic\" random generation in that _procedural generation_ is based on a more mathematical, fractal-based, algorithm leading to a more \"realistic\" distribution and the usual randomness of most languages are based on a pseudo-random-number generator, leading to an \"unrealistic\", in a way, ugly, distribution. This discussion was made with a heightmap in mind. The discussion left me somehow unconvinced about my own arguments though, so, is there more to it? Or am I the one who is, in fact, simply wrong?"}
{"_id": "236739", "title": "Class/Object with different sets of configurations, singletons etc (PHP)", "text": "I want to produce maintainable code for configuring one or multiple classes differently depending whether in a production or development environment. For example, making a `Paypal` class/object that handles API calls to Paypal, using different settings depending on some sort of global switch set to either Dev or Live. The first would connect to the sandbox account, the other the live account. I want to keep it as simple as possible - I would not be loading configuration variables from a file or database, but instead specifying them in either a subclass's constructor, one subclass for dev and one for live, or similar:               class Paypal {         private $endpointUrl;         public static function makeSandbox(){             return new Paypal('http://....');         }         public static function makeLive(){             return new Paypal('http://....');         }         // ....         public function Paypal($url){             $this->endpointUrl = $url;         }     }      However this leaves me with so many questions, like for other classes who's configuration is different between live/server, do I store the different initialisations in it's class, or should I have a class dedicated to all configuration details, should it be a singleton, and so on. The application will be rather simple, and only be maintained by myself so the idea of XML configuration files etc seems over the top, a PHP configuration file with a switch statement and global variables seems like bad form. Using a sort of global `Config` class brings a whole load of questions. I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed here. I've read around and there seem to be so many opinions. The one rule that sticks in my mind is use OOP patterns to solve a problem, not just for the sake of it. Being a very small site with just me developing it, I'm very hesitant introducing multiple extra classes or objects just for dealing with two sets of global configurations. Please help"}
{"_id": "68055", "title": "Server requests optimisation - size vs frequency", "text": "my map-like app loads data from google map API but it also loads some extra data - in the form of XML - from my server. When the app loads it really needs only small amount of data to cover the currently visible area but there is a chance of 2% (aka conversion rate) that the user will interact with the map and more data will be needed. My problem is that I can not really estimate the probability that user will need certain part of the map data, therefore I can not estimate the optimal size of the data packet. Should I sent just the minimal chunk of data that user needs right now or should I send him data for all the nearby screens, or even more? **In theory, what is the trade of between sending one big chunk of data - lots of bytes (lot bandwidth) but few server requests - or sending small pieces of data whenever needed - small but frequent server requests?** The XML chunks will be cached but the bigger chunks I generate the higher the chance I will have to update it every time something changes in the data (that will happen quite frequently). I can not quantify the sizes and probabilities yet so please treat this question as highly theoretical. I would like to hear your opinions."}
{"_id": "255499", "title": "iOS Networking/Backend : has anyone found the ultimate knowledge source ?", "text": "I have a hard time trying to find a moderne (updated), complete knowledge source (book or tutorial) that would tackle from scratch the server side of iOS App Development. My goal is to create an app in which users can talk to each others, see each others' profiles, share images... I am fairly new to backend implementation, I only know the basics of PHP (but I am good in other iOS development topics). I have been searching for a lot of books/tutorials, but I am frustrated for the following reasons : \\-- code is too old and needs to be updated \\-- a third-party library needs to be used Has anyone ever found something that would take the newbie from scratch, explaining and giving examples of backend side implementation in a modern way? I know this is a broad question, but if someone has already stumbled upon a great resource, I'd be happy to read it ! Thanks, BM"}
{"_id": "255497", "title": "Java GUI with JFrames", "text": "Today I started learning Java GUI and tried to create a simple window on my Ubuntu. I am using jre7 for now. I wrote code exactly from tutorial because from experience there are stuff that doesn't work even if it's correctly typed onto my screen. So, now I used thenewboston's first tutorial with Java GUI. Typed all syntax correctly, classes seems fine, no errors. He got window that was expected - mine only got blank window with no title and no text. Screenshot with that http://screencloud.net/v/ywtW Code in JFrames.java file:               import java.awt.FlowLayout; // import\u0113 pl\u016bsto\u0161o skatu / default layout     import javax.swing.JFrame; // dod iesp\u0113ju piek\u013c\u016bt pamata logu strukt\u016brai     import javax.swing.JLabel; // \u013cauj rakst\u012bt tekstu logos          public class JFrames extends JFrame {              private JLabel item1;              public JFrames() {             super(\"The Title Of The Program\"); // par\u0101da title bar ar tekstu             setLayout(new FlowLayout());                  item1 = new JLabel(\"This is sentence with something\");             item1.setToolTipText(\"This is tooltip on hover\");             add(item1); // pievieno logam \u0161o lieti\u0146u         }     }      Please, ignore latvian comments, that's just for my reference. So I want to know - why my window appears blank?"}
{"_id": "1752", "title": "What mistakes do your users make, and how can you update your application to handle them?", "text": "In fact this question is about cautions to be taken to enhance quality user experience and reduce avoidable support calls."}
{"_id": "255493", "title": "Repository Pattern: Exposing Data Context to Underlying Layers", "text": "My team is in the process of updating a legacy project. We've decided to incorporate the Repository Pattern along with `Entity Framework` in our Data Access layer. Below is a high-level view of this organization: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ATCVY.png) `IRepository<TEntity>` is a generic interface used to perform common operations on an entity set:               public interface IRepository<TEntity> where TEntity : class     {         ObjectSet<TEntity> EntitySet { get; set; }              TEntity Get(object key);              void Insert(TEntity entity);              void Update(TEntity entity);              void Save();     }      For example if I have an `Employee` entity, I can create the `EmployeeRepository:IRepository<Employee>` object. The `DataFactory` class is then used as a wrapper object to take care of `ObjectContext` generation, disposal, and exception handling:               public class DataFactory<TContext, TEntity> : IDisposable             where TContext : ObjectContext, new()             where TEntity : class     {         private bool _disposed = false;         private TContext _context;         private IRepository<TEntity> _repository;              public DataFactory()         {             _context = new TContext();             IRepository<TEntity> repoistory;                  bool isRepositoryFound = TryGetRepository(out repoistory);                  if (!isRepositoryFound)             {                 throw new InvalidOperationException(                     string.Format(\"Unable to find repository of type {0}.\", typeof(TEntity).FullName));             }                  _repository = repoistory;         }              public DataFactory(TContext context, IRepository<TEntity> repository)         {             _context = context;             _repository = repository;         }              public void Do(Action<TContext, IRepository<TEntity>> action)         {             try             {                 action(_context, _repository);             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 ProcessException(ex);             }         }              public TResult DoAndReturn<TResult>(Func<TContext, IRepository<TEntity>, TResult> action)         {             try             {                 return action(_context, _repository);             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 ProcessException(ex);                 return default(TResult);             }         }              private bool TryGetRepository(out IRepository<TEntity> repository)         {             Type repositoryType = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetTypes().SingleOrDefault(t =>                 typeof(IRepository<TEntity>).IsAssignableFrom(t));                  if (repositoryType == null)             {                 repository = null;                 return false;             }                  repository = (IRepository<TEntity>)Activator.CreateInstance(repositoryType, _context );             return true;         }     }      And finally to use this class in the Business Layer, we would have something like:               using (var factory = new DataFactory<MyDataContext, Employee>())     {         factory.Do((context, repository) =>         {            // Interact with the repository         });     }      My coworker and I had a long conversation about whether the data context object should be exposed to the underlying layers in the `Do()` and `DoAndReturn()` methods. While I do see cases where having direct access to the context could be useful (for example in a case where we might want to turn on/off lazy loading for a particular entity set), I think doing so defeats the whole purpose of abstracting the Data Access layer (which is achieved by providing a common `IRepository` contract) since now objects can be directly accessed/manipulated through the `ObjectContext`. He suggested having two different versions of these methods: one that exposes only the repository, and one that exposes both the context and repository. Is this an acceptable approach? Any suggestions are appreciated."}
{"_id": "1750", "title": "Is it okay to use a language that isn't supported by your company for some tasks?", "text": "I work for a company that supports several languages: COBOL, VB6, C# and Java.   I use those languages for my primary work, but I often find myself to coding some minor programs (e.g. scripts) in Python because I found it to be the best tool for that type of task. For example: An analyst gives me a complex CSV file to populate some DB tables, so I would use Python to parse it and create a DB script. What's the problem?   The main problem I see is that a few parts of these quick & dirty scripts are slowly gaining importance and:   1. My company does not support Python    2. They're not version controlled (I back them up in another way)   3. My coworkers do not know Python  The analysts have even started referencing them in email (\"launch the script that exports...\"), so they are needed more often than I initially thought. I should add that these scripts are just utilities that are not part of the main project; they simply help to get trivial tasks done in less time. For my own small tasks they help a lot. In short, if I were a lottery winner ~~to be in a accident~~ , my coworkers would need to keep the project alive without those scripts; they would spend more time in fixing CSV errors by hand for example. Is this a common scenario? Am I doing something wrong? What should I do?"}
{"_id": "119191", "title": "How to make the working environment of a programmer less shiny?", "text": "Last year I had a sport accident and since then my left eye is a little bit sensitive. Especially if looking in bright and shiny colors, I get tired very fast and can't literally focus on anything. White is the worst color ever! Unfortunately most application that I use in my work environment (Firefox, Eclipse, Visual Studio, Tetris) have a very bright white background. This really hurts my eye. So is there an easy way to generally use color schemes on the laptop so that everything isn't that bright? Obviously I could everywhere change the default color scheme, but isn't there a simpler solution to do that? Or any recommendations what are good color schemes to be less bright but still clearly readable?"}
{"_id": "119199", "title": "What are good examples of using assertions to detect bugs?", "text": "Most examples of using assertions that I find seem to be about dealing with _runtime errors_ , such as out of memory conditions. That's not what I'm after. One good example of using assertions to detect bugs is the following excerpt from the Wikipedia article about assertions:               int total = countNumberOfUsers();     if (total % 2 == 0) {         // total is even     } else {         // total is odd and non-negative         assert(total % 2 == 1);     }      Here, the programmer erroneously assumed that `i % 2` can only have two distinct values, and the assert will catch that bug. What other good examples of using assertions to detect bugs are there?"}
{"_id": "252143", "title": "Reading assembly useful for insights when writing C/C++?", "text": "While in most cases its not necessarily, recently I have taken to reading the generated assembly of my C code every so often, when I'm curious as to the kinds of optimizations my compiler is making. _Especially for low level code or functions which are called many times._ Examples include:   * Checking if a change to the C code has any impact on the generated code.   * Checking if the same expression used twice is optimized into one, or if assigning a variable makes a difference.   * Check for changes which may bloat-generated code-size. Now this is not a perfect method by any means, its possible that some difference in the generated output is a red-herring, because of all sorts of internal logic & thresholds within the compiler, but its still interesting at times. At this point while looking at the assembly I can lookup each command, but not really read the assembly _(amd64 as it happens)_. So my question is, has anyone found it useful to learn a certain amount of assembly to write better C code? (or at least get more insights into their code).   * If so, how much is useful to know?   * What kinds of issues did it help you resolve? * * * _Note, the danger here is that one writes C code targeting the assembly which is very specific to the developers own system - any advantage may be lost on a different compiler or architecture, taking that into account, Im still interested in other developers experience_"}
{"_id": "232288", "title": "How to prevent the vicious circle of testing via customer", "text": "I recently asked this question and this comment and made me ponder the whole process of releasing an update to the customers. The next update for our software is planned and the previous time it went horribly wrong because of regression, bad testing, etc... This time we want to prevent the scenario that we test via our customer and made some unit tests and other minor improvements. However, there is not enough time to make unit tests for all the features that lack unit tests or the features that need to be build yet. So the answer for this question 'Make more unit tests' is not fitting because of the lack of time, infrastructure etc... Every bug and feature will be tested/reviewed by a different developer, but that won't be done perfectly of course (we're still human :)). My question is: Once we released the update, how do we prevent the vicious circle of testing via customers while not be able to add more unit tests? * * * The previous time we tried our best to test the software before and after release. After the deadline we were still searching and fixing bugs but the customer would also find some of these. So we post an update as soon as we were confident that the patch was increasing quality. We were so busy with finding bugs and fixing them that we weren't spending any time on creating unit tests. This time we don't have a solid plan yet, hence the question. As stated before we did added some unit tests, but surely not enough. We are also looking for new colleagues but they are not easy to come by and management has rather high standards. We do have quite some candidates and it looks like we do get at least one new colleagues very soon, but it still takes time to get him/her up and running. The first thing we put the new colleague on will be creating unit tests. So the dependencies there are experience, skills and the time he/she can join the time. Another problem that comes in hand with the lack of developers is that we are so focused on getting the bugs and features fixed that we don't have much time to spend on thinking about 'how we can improve the update process'. (I ask these questions in my own spare time). * * * Summary of steps I will try to take:   * Try to get a tester before the release is done   * Add unit tests while creating the features, if there isn't enough time, schedule them for after the release.   * After releasing, if there is any regression, create unit tests when fixing the bugs.   * Release more often in smaller chunks after the release, making it easier to release features and repair bugs with a minor priority."}
{"_id": "178584", "title": "What is the mathematical model of a Python's class?", "text": "I understand that the classical model from the lambda-papers is not valid for Python. And the closures are not the mathematical model of the implementation of the Python system. So which model is it?"}
{"_id": "114673", "title": "Should a development machine be inside a VM?", "text": "This post by Rob Conery (note the slug) says that development environment should be run inside a virtual machine. I see what he's saying and tend to agree, but still feel a little uneasy. Now that virtualization is so mature that even production systems run inside VMs speed is pretty much a non-issue, but as I say something bothers me here. What's your take on virtualizing your development machine? Have you already done so? If you did, any pitfalls or gotchas along the road?"}
{"_id": "1280", "title": "What should I do to scale out a high-traffic website?", "text": "What best practices should be undertaken for a website that needs to \"scale out\" to handle capacity? This is especially relevant now that people are considering the cloud, but may be missing out on the fundamentals. I'm interested in hearing about anything you consider a best practice from development-level tasks, to infrastructure, to management."}
{"_id": "34334", "title": "Cheap programmable, portable device", "text": "Since a long time I have thrived for being able to program something I can take with me - a very small computer like a programmable calculator, gameboy, pocket PC or cellphone. However, I didn't find anything fitting yet! The thing I'm looking at is the price, because I can't afford to spend too much money on it.   * What are some cheap portable programmable devices? All I'd need is support for uploading assembler code from my computer. I don't care about the display, a simple LCD would be sufficient. Same goes for the buttons I have looked at programmable calculators, portable gaming consoles such as the PSP and more, however didn't find anything that fit :("}
{"_id": "126281", "title": "What does a \"bodyshop\" (in context of a programming job /environment) mean", "text": "I've kept on coming across the term \"bodyshop\" in terms of a programming job/environment but despite googling I can't find out what exactly this is referring to? Can someone please enlighten me?"}
{"_id": "1288", "title": "Technique to Solve Hard Programming logic", "text": "I have heard about many techniques which are used by developer/software manager to solve hard programming logic or to create flow of an application and this flow will be implemented by developers to create an actual application. Some of the technique which i know, are:   1. Flowchart   2. Screen-Layout   3. Data Flow Diagram   4. E-R Diagram   5. Algorithm of every programs I'd like to know about two facts: (1) Are there any techniques other than this ? (2) Which one is the most suitable to solve hard programming logic and process of application creation?"}
{"_id": "126285", "title": "Entity Framework and layer separation", "text": "I'm trying to work a bit with Entity Framework and I got a question regarding the separation of layers. I usually use the UI -> BLL -> DAL approach and I'm wondering how to use EF here. My DAL would usually be something like               GetPerson(id)     {         // some sql         return new Person(...)     }      BLL:               GetPerson(id)     {         Return personDL.GetPerson(id)     }      UI:               Person p = personBL.GetPerson(id)      My question now is: since EF creates my model and DAL, is it a good idea to wrap EF inside my own DAL or is it just a waste of time? If I don't need to wrap EF would I still place my Model.esmx inside its own class library or would it be fine to just place it inside my BLL and work some there? I can't really see the reason to wrap EF inside my own DAL but I want to know what other people are doing. So instead of having the above, I would leave out the DAL and just do: BLL:               GetPerson(id)     {         using (TestEntities context = new TestEntities())         {                 var result = from p in context.Persons.Where(p => p.Id = id)                                     select p;         }     }      What to do?"}
{"_id": "94944", "title": "Advice on JavaScript library for visualizing Yahoo Pipe Output", "text": "I'm currently writing a JavaScript library. It is a project for school were I need to make it easier to visualize data from Yahoo Pipes. The data format is a JSON string, which can contain anything, but mostly contains a list of items, with different attributes for each item.   This approach is quite general and now I was wondering which functionality I could insert into this library. Also how I can deal with this general flow of data to make a usable library for all kinds of data.. The data from Yahoo Pipes can be news items (title, description, postdate, images, links,..) Yahoo Pipes also has functionality for parsing CSV files, so \"data tables\" are also possible.   Also I was thinking about the structure of the library, what the best way is to implement it. In general the library needs to load in the data from the pipe (JSON string) and pass it to a visualization library like Google Chart or D3.js (formerly Protovis)   I would consider my Javascript skill level as 'Rookie' :)      Thanks for the replies, any advice is welcome!"}
{"_id": "229042", "title": "Does a batch of operations violate REST principles?", "text": "Does it violate REST principles for a REST API to support a batch of operations (perhaps with transactional guarantees) that can be added to a queue via a POST? This design seems outside the scope of REST architecture but not necessarily in violation of it, but I'm looking for authoritative sources here, and/or supporting explanations when/why to avoid or prefer this approach. For example, the Parse API supports a POST to create a batch of requests, each representing what could be a separate REST request, such as the following (quoting):               curl -X POST \\       -H \"X-Parse-Application-Id: ${APPLICATION_ID}\" \\       -H \"X-Parse-REST-API-Key: ${REST_API_KEY}\" \\       -H \"Content-Type: application/json\" \\       -d '{             \"requests\": [               {                 \"method\": \"PUT\",                 \"path\": \"/1/classes/GameScore/Ed1nuqPvcm\",                 \"body\": {                   \"score\": 999999                 }               },               {                 \"method\": \"DELETE\",                 \"path\": \"/1/classes/GameScore/Cpl9lrueY5\"               }             ]           }' \\       https://api.parse.com/1/batch"}
{"_id": "164180", "title": "Introducing a (new) test method to a team", "text": "A couple of months ago I was hired in a new job. ( **I'm fresh out of my Masters in software engineering** ) The company mainly consists of ERP consultants, but I was hired in their fairly small web department (6 developers), our main task is ERP/ecom integration ( **ERP-integrated web shops** ). The department is growing, and **recently my manager asked me to start thinking about introducing tests to the team** , I love a challenge, but frankly I'm a bit scared (I'm the least experienced member of the team). Currently the method of testing is clicking around in the web shop and asking the customer if the products are there, if they look okay, and if orders are posted correctly to the ERP. We are getting a lot of support cases on previous projects, where a customer or a customer's customer have run into errors, which - I suppose - is why my manager wants more structured testing. Off the top of my head, I though of some (obvious?) improvements, like looking at the requirement specification, having an issue tracker, enabling team members to register their time on a \"tests\"-line on the budget, and to circulate tasks amongst members of the team. But as I see it we have three main challenges:   1. **general website testing**. (javascript, C#, ASP.NET and CMS integration tests)   2. (live) **ERP integration testing** (customers rarely want to pay for test environments).   3. **adopting a method in the team** I like the responsibility, but I am afraid that I'm in a little bit over my head. I expect that my manager expects me to **set up some kind of workshop for the team** where I present some techniques and ideas and where we(the team) can find some solutions together. What I learned in school was mostly unit testing and program verification, not so much testing across multiple systems and applications. **What I'm looking for here, is references/advice/pointers/anecdotes; anything that might help me to get smarter and to improve the current method of my team.** (TL;DR: read the bold parts)"}
{"_id": "190926", "title": "Stereo images rectification and disparity: which algorithms?", "text": "I'm trying to figure out what are currently the two most efficent algorithms that permit, starting from a L/R pair of stereo images created using a traditional camera (so affected by some epipolar lines misalignment), to produce a pair of adjusted images plus their depth information by looking at their disparity. Actually I've found lots of papers about these two methods, like:   * \"Computing Rectifying Homographies for Stereo Vision\" (Zhang - seems one of the best for rectification only)   * \"Three-step image recti\ufb01cation\" (Monasse)   * \"Rectification and Disparity\" (slideshow by Navab)   * \"A fast area-based stereo matching algorithm\" (Di Stefano - seems a bit inaccurate)   * \"Computing Visual Correspondence with Occlusions via Graph Cuts\" (Kolmogorov - this one produces a very good disparity map, with also occlusion informations, but is it efficient?)   * \"Dense Disparity Map Estimation Respecting Image Discontinuities\" (Alvarez - toooo long for a first review) Anyone could please give me some advices for orienting into this wide topic? What kind of algorithm/method should I treat first, considering that I'll work on a very simple input: a pair of left and right images and nothing else, no more information (some papers are based on additional, pre-taken, calibration infos)? Speaking about working implementations, the only interesting results I've seen so far belongs to this piece of software, but only for automatic rectification, not disparity: http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html I tried the \"auto-adjustment\" feature and seems really effective. Too bad there is no source code..."}
{"_id": "190924", "title": "A* Algorithm Completeness Proof", "text": "The A* Algorithm is the optimal (provided the heuristic function is underestimated), complete & admissible (provided some conditions). I know the proofs of admissibility & optimality. But how do you prove that the A* Algorithm is complete?"}
{"_id": "160408", "title": "What are some feasible ideas for building a smart-device/console development portfolio?", "text": "I would like to start getting more contracts in the mobile, smart-device, and console development space and, having little prior work experience in the field, I need to build a portfolio of example projects. Most of my professional experience is based on the .NET stack, so that is helpful in covering Windows Phone, Windows Metro, and XBOX (non-game) development such as Kinect UI development, media applications, etc. But I also need to demonstrate that I can handle Android development, Linux development (i.e. Smart TV apps), possibly Arduino development and so forth. I have the tools and the knowledge to at least knock out some Android and Arduino examples, though iOS and Linux is stretching a bit out of my comfort zone. In any case, what are some ways in which I could demonstrate that I understand and can code for these platforms? Media search and filter apps? Kinect navigation? Android app that gets you the location of the nearest Starbucks based on GPS coordinates? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "207460", "title": "How can I use JIRA for project management with Green Hopper", "text": "I am thinking of using JIRA + GreenHopper for my project management. I have seen that Green Hopper is for making User stories, sprints. I am not able to find how do i need to add tasks, or how to break user stories in to sub stories. Do I first need to create project in JIRA and then use Green Hopper or I can use use Green Hopper standalone for project management? I am thinking of JIRA as issue tracker not project management."}
{"_id": "207464", "title": "Design Pattern dilemma. Strategy seems wrong?", "text": "I would like some help/advice on a design pattern or similar I could use for my problem. I have some shared functionality in my code and I use the Strategy pattern at present. I have a base class named \"ProjectSectionBase\" and from here I have 2 derived classes, \"ProjectSectionStandard\" and \"ProjectSectionSuperior\". Now the problem is that \"ProjectSectionSuperior\" has a lot of extra functionality than \"ProjectSectionStandard\" and I'm finding that throughout my code i am calling methods like this: DirectCast(_projectSection, ProjectSectionSuperior).DoSuperiorStuff And I am also wrapping IF statements such as IF typeof(_projectSectio) is superior then. It just feels like bad class design. Both standard and superior share a lot of common functionality but then Superior has so much more functionality. Any advice would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "178727", "title": "Why would companies allow these practices?", "text": "Here's a situation that usually happens in some companies: Announce interesting product X. Promise a release date. Release on the promised released date, ready or not. Users discover and report defects. Send patch after patch after patch after patch after patch. My question is: Ummm, what could be the factors that would lead them to tolerate these undesirable practices? So, in the name of quality, what can be practically and realistically improved in those practicies? I can think of time constraints, user feedback, sponsors pressuring the company, lack of money."}
{"_id": "110012", "title": "How do you learn Regular Expressions?", "text": "I'm not asking **where** to learn. I've found lots of good resources online, and books etc. But how the heck do I tackle them. Where is the start of it, the end? When does the regexp processor advance on the text, when does it hold its stand and tries another match? etc. I feel like trying to figure out hieroglyphs on the Egyptian pyramids."}
{"_id": "28985", "title": "Common mistakes with javascript arithmetic", "text": "I've ran into several oddities using javascripts floating point arithmetic, but I can never recall them off the top of my head! **What are some common mistakes when using JavaScript to do math?**"}
{"_id": "242647", "title": "Preferred way for dealing with customer-defined data in enterprise application", "text": "Let's say that we have a small enterprise web (intranet) application for managing data for car dealers. It has screens for managing customers, inventory, orders, warranties and workshops. This application is installed at 10 customer sites for different car dealers. First version of this application was created without any way to provide for customer-specific data. For example, if dealer A wanted to be able to attach a photo to a customer, dealer B wanted to add e-mail contact to each workshop, and dealer C wanted to attach multiple PDF reports to a warranty, each and every feature like this was added to the application, so all of the customers received everything on new update. However, this will inevitably lead to conflicts as the number of customers grow as their usage patterns are unique, and if, for instance, a specific dealer requested to have an ability to attach (for some reason) a color of inventory item (and be able to search by this color) as a required item, others really wouldn't need this feature, and definitely will not want it to be a required item. Or, one dealer would like to manage e-mail contacts for their employees on a separate screen of the application. I imagine that a solution for this is to use a kind of plugin system, where we would have a core of the application that provides for standard features like customers, inventory, etc, and all of the customer's installed plugins. There would be different kinds of plugins - standalone screens like e-mail contacts for employees, with their own logic, and customer plugin which would extend or decorate inventory items (like photo or color). Inventory (customer,order,...) plugins would require to have installation procedure, hooks for plugging into the item editor, item displayer, item filtering for searching, backup hook and such. Is this the right way to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "104445", "title": "Are RSpec and Cucumber really worth it?", "text": "I'm a quite new programmer to Rails (about a year) always trying to discover new gems, new ways of thinking, I just love this framework. The only thing that's kind of disturbing me is testing. I know the major part of the RoR programmers are testing addicts and I understand the advantages of a large testing suite but when I start testing, I never get such a large suite and I always wonder \"Am I testing the right way ? Are there really efficient ?\". I'm often dealing with integration tests testing only the way the application behave... So I have some questions to improve myself as a Rails programmer. First, is testing really worth it ? I mean, is the time spent on writing tests really worth it ? Then, I use RSpec, I've recently discovered Cucumber, used it for a while but I don't know if writing all these steps is really worth the trouble ? I know I can reuse steps but I never know if these steps are too complete or not : For instance, I've been using a `Given I am logged in as (.+)` but I don't know if I must say in its definition `Given there's a user called $1` because it can duplicate the user if ever created but that's not worthwhile always having a step before `Given I am logged in as (.+)`. It's quite a lot of code that will maybe rarely be useful. I guess there are not new bugs on the parts tested every day... So is Cucumber really worthwhile compared to RSpec ? I really want to thank you for having read me because that's the first message I post that's really long and to thank you in advance for all your answers, hoping it could help other Rails newbies just like me in the future."}
{"_id": "126860", "title": "Is there any license restriction to avoid binary translation of CIL to custom bytecode?", "text": "Prior to actual question, let me summarize what I'm trying to do. I plan to implement a small, JIT-enabled, register-based VM runtime. Instead of making a proper compiler (which is hard IMO) for a super-fancy home-brew language, I decided to implement a binary translator from a appropriate bytecode (much like Dalvik VM approach). Considering CIL vs. Java bytecode, CIL is best for my needs. As a note, I wanted to list some important things to avoid possible confusions:   1. Base Core Library (BCL) or any Microsoft specific assemblies won't be decompiled and translated. Instead, BCL references will be subject to substitution with my VM specific codes at translation phase (much like COSMOS Plugs approach).    2. All CIL opcodes won't be translated. So, directly using CIL is not an option.   3. \"Any\" .NET executable is not targetted for translation. .NET will be a tool, not target.   4. Dalvik VM is good example what I'm trying to do. In Dalvik case, programs are written in Java, but Java byte codes translated into Dalvik opcodes. In my case, programs will be written in .NET, but CIL will be translated into \"fancy\" VM opcodes.   5. Custom VM itself will be closed source and it will be in a free software initially. But, in time, it might be used in open source and/or commercial projects. So, is there any license restriction to avoid me doing this? If so, how can I avoid the restrictions? Making only non-profit applications or making it open source? **EDIT:** I won't use **CLI** , **CLR** or any other thing which is distributed from Microsoft. I won't redistribute or integrate **SSCLI** into my applications either. **The question is about translating _CIL_ code into custom byte codes which will be done with my own tools**. So, it's actually decompilation of my own custom .NET executables into a different byte codes to serve my needs in production phase. So, essentially I'll use .NET compilers as a front-end for my decompiler, but I won't redistribute .NET compilers either. **EDIT2: CLI AND CIL ARE DIFFERENT THINGS!**"}
{"_id": "253430", "title": "How to represent a graph with multiple edges allowed between nodes and edges that can selectively disappear", "text": "I'm trying to figure out what sort of data structure to use for modeling some hypothetical, idealized network usage. In my scenario, a number of users who are hostile to each other are all trying to form networks of computers where all potential connections are known. The computers that one user needs to connect may not be the same as the ones another user needs to connect, though; user 1 might need to connect computers A, B and D while user 2 might need to connect computers B, C and E. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/MeLa2.png) _Image generated with the help ofNCTM Graph Creator_ I think the core of this is going to be an undirected cyclic graph, with nodes representing computers and edges representing Ethernet cables. However, due to the nature of the scenario, there are a few uncommon features that rule out adjacency lists and adjacency matrices (at least, without non-trivial modifications):   1. edges can become restricted-use; that is, if one user acquires a given network connection, no other user may use that connection      * in the example, the green user cannot possibly connect to computer A, but the red user has connected B to E despite not having a direct link between them   2. in some cases, a given pair of nodes will be connected by more than one edge      * in the example, there are two independent cables running from D to E, so the green and blue users were both able to connect those machines directly; however, red can no longer make such a connection   3. if two computers are connected by more than one cable, each user may own no more than one of those cables I'll need to do several operations on this graph, such as:   * determining whether any particular pair of computers is connected for a given user   * identifying the optimal path for a given user to connect target computers   * identifying the highest-latency computer connection for a given user (i.e. longest path without branching) My first thought was to simply create a collection of all of the edges, but that's terrible for searching. The best thing I can think to do now is to modify an adjacency list so that each item in the list contains not only the edge length but also its cost and current owner. Is this a sensible approach? Assuming space is not a concern, would it be reasonable to create multiple copies of the graph (one for each user) rather than a single graph?"}
{"_id": "253433", "title": "How to layer if statements when order of logic is irrelevant?", "text": "Basically I have a series of logic in my website that can lead to 5 total outcomes. Basically two different if tests and then a catch all else statement. For example:               if cond1:         if mod1:             #do things         elif mod2:             #do things     elif cond2:         if mod1:             #do things         elif mod2             #do things     else:         #do things      I was thinking about rewriting it like this:               if cond1 and mod1:         #do things     elif cond1 and mod2:         #do things     elif cond2 and mod1:         #do things     elif cond2 and mod2:         #do things     else:         #do things      Is there any real difference in these two coding options/a better choice for this kind of logic testing?"}
{"_id": "253438", "title": "If I use MIT-licensed components in my software, can my customers resell it?", "text": "My amateur reading of the MIT license suggests that any software is distributed to my customers containing any MIT-licensed components can be freely re-distributed in its entirety. > Permission is hereby granted [...] to deal in the Software without > restriction, including [...] the rights to [...] distribute [...] copies of > the Software. > > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all copies or substantial portions of the Software. It's not clear whether \"the Software\" refers to the entire application, or just the individual MIT-licensed component. So which is it?"}
{"_id": "236073", "title": "Why returning XML/JSON for API requests, can't we just directly process request and return the modified web page (HTML/CSS/JS)?", "text": "Let's say that a user requests for some piece of data. Usually the data is processed via a server and then returned in XML/JSON format. Im guessing another piece of processing happens to convert it into HTML/CSS so that it could be displayed on a browser. Why do we bother returning XML/JSON for API requests? Why can't we just directly process whatever the user wants and just return the modified web page (HTML/CSS/JS)?"}
{"_id": "189756", "title": "What API is required for code completion/syntax highlighting/similar IDE features?", "text": "I've been developing a little language in my own time, and I've got a fairly bare-bones prototype that implements some of the most basic features. Now I'm looking at scaling up, and I don't want to make a nasty architectural mistake where I have to massively refactor everything to support these features. So I'd like to know about the key API features required. Right now, I have The lexer can operate on any input buffer using iterators, the tokens are available for inspection before passing to the parser, and I also provide a hook for comments. The parser can operate on any token stream (not hard coded to my lexer at all), and the AST construction can be swapped out. I also annotated my AST with location information. Also, the AST is readily available for inspection prior to analysis. Finally, many of the analysis features are lazily evaluated, so it's easy to get their semantic representation from the AST. But I'm not sure what features those semantic representations need to be readily available for such efforts. Any suggestions as to what is necessary in this regard?"}
{"_id": "213565", "title": "Activity diagram, can merge node have more than 1 output?", "text": "There is a simple system, that allows users to do 4 things: ADD, EDIT, DELETE, PRINT data. I am due to model it (I'm entirely new to UML activity diagrams) and from notation, I dont understand whether a decision node can have more than 3 inputs? It should be, otherwise how would I do that. Anyway, the user can perform the action and do it again, so there is a loop needed. But the merge node is said to have only one output, which would not be the case. The picture should be clear what I mean. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/7FqtI.png)"}
{"_id": "213560", "title": "PHP developer, how to solve javascript related issues in a program with millions of line", "text": "I am expert in PHP. There are some JavaScript related bugs in my assignment given by my supervisor. I tried to fix them using Firebug. It is time consuming. Is there any other ways?   1. Are there any good IDE's to tackle this issue?   2. Are there any other developer tools except Firebug?"}
{"_id": "151967", "title": "Logging errors caused by exceptions deep in the application", "text": "What are best-practices for logging deep within an application's source? Is it bad practice to have multiple event log entries for a single error? For example, let's say that I have an ETL system whose transform step involves: a transformer, pipeline, processing algorithm, and processing engine. In brief, the transformer takes in an input file, parses out records, and sends the records through the pipeline. The pipeline aggregates the results of the processing algorithm (which could do serial or parallel processing). The processing algorithm sends each record through one or more processing engines. So, I have at least four levels: Transformer -> Pipeline -> Algorithm -> Engine. My code might then look something like the following:               class Transformer {         void Process(InputSource input) {             try {                 var inRecords = _parser.Parse(input.Stream);                 var outRecords = _pipeline.Transform(inRecords);             } catch (Exception ex) {                 var inner = new ProcessException(input, ex);                 _logger.Error(\"Unable to parse source \" + input.Name, inner);                 throw inner;             }         }     }          class Pipeline {         IEnumerable<Result> Transform(IEnumerable<Record> records) {             // NOTE: no try/catch as I have no useful information to provide             // at this point in the process             var results = _algorithm.Process(records);                  // examine and do useful things with results             return results;         }     }          class Algorithm {         IEnumerable<Result> Process(IEnumerable<Record> records) {             var results = new List<Result>();             foreach (var engine in Engines) {                 foreach (var record in records) {                     try {                         engine.Process(record);                     } catch (Exception ex) {                         var inner = new EngineProcessingException(engine, record, ex);                         _logger.Error(\"Engine {0} unable to parse record {1}\", engine, record);                         throw inner;                     }                 }             }         }     }               class Engine {         Result Process(Record record) {             for (int i=0; i<record.SubRecords.Count; ++i) {                 try {                      Validate(record.subRecords[i]);                 } catch (Exception ex) {                     var inner = new RecordValidationException(record, i, ex);                     _logger.Error(                         \"Validation of subrecord {0} failed for record {1}\",                         i, record                         );                 }             }         }     }      There's a few important things to notice:   * A single error at the deepest level causes three log entries (ugly? DOS?)   * Thrown exceptions contain all important and useful information   * Logging only happens when failure to do so would cause loss of useful information at a lower level. Thoughts and concerns:   * I don't like having so many log entries for each error   * I don't want to lose important, useful data; the exceptions contain all the important but the stacktrace is typically the only thing displayed besides the message.   * I can log at different levels (e.g., warning, informational)   * The higher level classes should be completely unaware of the structure of the lower-level exceptions (which may change as the different implementations are replaced).   * The information available at higher levels should not be passed to the lower levels. So, to restate the main questions: What are best-practices for logging deep within an application's source? Is it bad practice to have multiple event log entries for a single error?"}
{"_id": "151961", "title": "XAML Controls in WinForms", "text": "We're considering converting our WinForms application to a WPF application. Part of the reason is that WPF/XAML seem to be the future. We are also using third party controls that we would like to be able to phase out. Making this conversion seems like a pretty big and time consuming undertaking, though. Would it make sense to develop XAML controls that could be used in our WinForms application as a first step in the process? My thinking is that the same controls would then be used in the WPF application and all of the look, feel, and functionality would be built into the controls in either environment."}
{"_id": "151963", "title": "File Upload Forms: Security", "text": "SO I'm building an application for uploading files. We're paying scientists to contribute information on pests, diseases and bugs (for Plants). We need the ability to drag and drop a file to upload it. The question becomes since the users will be authicentated and setup by us, will it be necessarcy to include a virus scanner to prevent the uploading and insertition of malicious files. How important is this?"}
{"_id": "25056", "title": "Purest functional programming language(s)?", "text": "I'm interested in better learning functional programming. To do so, it seems obvious that I should force myself to use the purest possible functional programming language. Hence, I'm here asking, more or less, for an ordering of functional programming languages according to their purity. It seems to me that it would be more practical to learn Lisp or Clojure (or Scheme, or Scala, etc.), but for what I've heard recently, Haskell would be very hard to beat at teaching functional programming principles to someone. I'm not sure about this yet, so **I'm asking you:** which is the purest functional programming language? An ordering would be great if several are competing for the magnificent title of the purest functional programming language."}
{"_id": "120427", "title": "Being prepared for a code review as a developer?", "text": "I am looking for some ideas here. I read the article How should code reviews be Carried Out and Code Reviews, what are the advantages? which were very informative but I still need more clarity on the question below. My Question is,   1. Being the target developer, can you suggest some best practices a developer can incorporate before his code is going get reviewed.     * Currently I practice the following methods        * PPT for a logical flow        * Detailed comments. **Issue: Even though I have implemented the above practices, they do not help on the review. The problem I faced is, when certain logic is referred, I keep searching for the implementation and the flow and too much time is wasted in the process and I get on people\u2019s nerve.** I think a lot of developers would be going through what I am going through as well."}
{"_id": "230423", "title": "Whose responsibility (in term of finances) are regression bugs?", "text": "Let's have a scenario like this: There is a medium-size project and you are assigned to it to add new features. The project does not have unit tests or dedicated QA person. You are the one who has to add new features and take care of fixing regression (link) bugs. When a regression bug happens, are you a responsible person (in term of finances) or a client? Or to ask another way, when you are paid to add new features in part-time job and a regression bug occurs, should you fix it for free or you should be paid since the project does not have unit tests or a dedicated QA worker?"}
{"_id": "242857", "title": "Converting large files in python", "text": "I have a few files that are ~64GB in size that I think I would like to convert to hdf5 format. I was wondering what the best approach for doing so would be? Reading line-by-line seems to take more than 4 hours, so I was thinking of using multiprocessing in sequence, but was hoping for some direction on what would be the most efficient way without resorting to hadoop. Any help would be very much appreciated. (and thank you in advance) EDIT: Right now I'm just doing a `for line in fd:` approach. After that right now I just check to make sure I'm picking out the right sort of data, which is very short; I'm not writing anywhere, and it's taking around 4 hours to complete with that. I can't read blocks of data because the blocks in this weird file format I'm reading are not standard, it switches between three different sizes... and you can only tell which by reading the first few characters of the block."}
{"_id": "165127", "title": "What is the best way to handle references in a .NET application", "text": "Recently at work we ran into a problem where we tagged/branched a project and had some compiling issues because of dll/project references that was pointing to the old folder structure. We created an 'external bin' folder for each of the projects and copied the referenced dll's to these folders. Is this the best way or is there a specific industry standard to handle this?"}
{"_id": "189945", "title": "Shared QA responsibilities on an Agile team", "text": "For many years our IT development group subscribed to the waterfall software development methodology with segregated pods of programmers specializing in database development, logic layer and presentation layer development. Of course we also had a small quality assurance group which handled all testing responsibilities. Requirements, tasks and bugs were handed back and forth electronically, very little conversation took place, and the process ground painfully on. In 2010 we made the monumental shift to Agile with Scrum and after some serious growing pains we've truly began to excel as a whole team. Communication is constant, people are growing and learning from each other every day, and our releases more stable and much more aligned with true business priorities. One area we're still trying to grow in is in sharing software QA responsibilities amongst all development team members to get away from the toss-it-over-the-fence attitude that still seems to persist when it comes time to test a feature. **Does anyone have any advice as to how to grow a development team towards collective application quality ownership?** We currently practice XP so we've begun to do more pair programming between developers and testers when creating unit and integration tests. But it still is challenging to get the whole team to proactively think about testing strategies for each sprint. Inevitably one or two \" _Write Test Cases_ \" tasks are thrown into the sprint backlog with no forethought as to what will be tested and how it will best be achieved and organized so the entire team is aware of what testing has been completed, what's currently being tested, and what's left to test. Sorry for the long-winded question, but any advice would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "206732", "title": "How to make a method synchronized across all instances of an object", "text": "Today I was asked this interview question and could not answer. : If you have two instances of a Person Object and each of them have a setAddres method that is synchronized. Now if it was only one object and multiple threads were accessing it, the nsynchronized will make sure that only one method can access it at a time. But if there are different objects, one thread will not wait on the other before entering the method. Now the question is...if I wanted to make the method synchronized across all instances of Person Objects, how to do that?"}
{"_id": "54610", "title": "Do you write common pre-conditions for a large number of unit test cases?", "text": "I have heard/read writing common pre-conditions for a large number of test cases is a bad thing, since this dependency may cause large number of test cases to fail if something changes . What are your thoughts on it ? If this is so , then what exactly is the purpose of setUp() method in Junit that runs before each test case ? If the same code inside setUp() runs before each test case , why cant it run only once before running all the test cases together ?"}
{"_id": "147353", "title": "File Processing Times", "text": "I have a very simple program in Ruby that opens a dictionary file, `sorted- words.txt` and prints out all the words in pig-latin. I tested its speed, and the first time I ran it, the program finished in about **1.6 seconds**. The second time I ran the program, it took about **2.1 seconds**. Between the two runs, there was maybe about a 10 second wait, me looking at the results and running the program again. I waited a minute, ran it again, and it ran in **1.8 seconds**. Although the variation is slight, it is still there. Why is there this variation?"}
{"_id": "96630", "title": "If a fluent coder disregards good practices, doesn't his fluency work against him?", "text": "I am working on a fairly large and buggy application - and due to the way it's written (I'll spare you details, but it violates rules in most areas you can think of), it is next to impossible developing it without major refactoring. Significant part of the app was authored by interns, n00bs etc.; but there has also been a programmer in the rank of Master Developer, and with all humility, the code he left behind is dubious as well, in a different way perhaps but still. Granted, his code tends to get the job done - most of the time - but it's typically cryptic, reinventing the wheel (eg. a big custom method accomplishing a rather ordinary SQL db backup) etc. Basically, needless confusion plus lots of overengineering And it got me thinking that being a highly skilled coder (I deliberately don't use the word \"developer\", assuming that it indicates a wider set of skills), if not accompanied by other qualities, can actually be sort of poisonous. Assuming that it's true, some of the reasons I could think of are:   * if you're coding with ease, it feels (or actually is, in short run) just quicker to snap out your own solutions on the spot, without turning to libraries, preexistent functionality etc.   * if one is experienced enough to easily maintain a mental image of a complex program, one is less inclined to split it into modules, layers etc. So my point is that if a fluent coder happens to be a bad developer, their fluency not only doesn't compensate for the latter, but it actually does even more harm instead. What do you think of that? Is it true (to what extent if so)?"}
{"_id": "96632", "title": "Have an assesment day for a company and have no clue what to expect and would like any advice please!", "text": "I am after some advice in regards to an assessment day I have coming up in 38 days time. I am a computer science graduate who graduated last year and have since been having difficulty finding work. I have had a bit of luck in being accepted (through passing a phone interview) and have now been invited to an 'assessment day'. The company involved is an IT solutions and consultancy company. The job position is titled 'graduate IT consultant'). I was wondering if anyone could give me any advice in what to expect on these 'assessment days'. Will it be a day of tests or would it be a day when we are given tasks (maybe in groups) and then observed to see how we handle those tasks to find a solution? I really haven't the slightest idea and so am wondering through people who have been through a similar experience (even with other companies) what they found. I am after advice in regards to what to study for this position. At university I was exposed to JAVA programming and some design work that was associated with that. This job being an 'graduate IT consultant' position I am after advice in what area to focus in. Would focusing in system analysis & system design be most suited or should I just continue focusing on my programming skills and maybe look into design patterns etc?"}
{"_id": "57265", "title": "Is Morton Code algorithm patented?", "text": "Synonyms: Morton Code, Morton Curve, Z-Order Curve, invented 1966 by G. M. Morton according to wiki. Not to be confused with Hilbert Curves which is closely related and have similar name. I was wondering if mentioned algorithm is patented. More generally, is there any place one can browse patented algorithms? I am quite new to all this legal stuff and I am keen to know more. The real question I have, I guess, is: Can I make money off a library that provides Morton Coding, legally?"}
{"_id": "194136", "title": "Possible Damerau-Levenshtein improvement?", "text": "I recently implemented the Damerau-Levenshtein distance algorithm from the pseudocode on Wikipedia. I couldn't find any explanation of exactly how it works and the pseudocode uses completely uninformative variable names like `DA`, `DB`, `i1`, and `j1` that left me scratching my head. Here's my implementation in Python: https://gist.github.com/badocelot/5327337 The Python implementation helped me walk through the program and figure out what was happening, renaming the variables to more helpful names. I was familiar enough with the Wagner-Fischer approach to calculating the Levenshtein distance that I had a frame of reference. At the risk of being overly lengthy, here's how I understand Damerau- Levenshtein: **The mystery variables:**   * `DA` (`last_row` in my code) is a kind of map holding the last row each element was seen on; in my code it's an actual Python dictionary   * `DB` (`last_match_col`) holds the last column where the letter in `b` matched the letter in `a` for the current row   * `i1` (`last_matching_row`) is the row number from `DA` for the current letter in `b`   * `j1` is just a copy of the value of `DB`/`last_match_col` before it's potentially updated; in my code I just moved where `last_match_col` is updated and eliminated this variable **The transposition cost:**               H[i1][j1] + (i-i1-1) + 1 + (j-j1-1)      is calculating the cost of swapping the current character in `b` with the last character in `b` known to be in `a` (the last match), treating all characters in between as either additions or deletions. _Components of the cost:_   * `H[i1][j1]` reverts the base cost to the point in the calculations before the transposition, since finding a transposition invalidates previous work   * `(i-i1-1)` is the distance between the current row and last row matching the current character, which is the number of deletions that would be required   * `(j-j1-1)` is the distance between the current column and the last column with a match, which is the number of additions   * The extra `+ 1` is just the cost of the transposition itself If this analysis is incorrect, I'd love to know where I went wrong. As I said, I couldn't find _any_ detailed explanation of how the algorithm works online. **Improved version?** Having figured that out, though, it struck me that by calculating the cost of _both_ additions and deletions between transposed letters seemed flawed: one addition and one deletion is equivalent to a substitution, which this isn't checking for. If all that's correct, the solution should be trivial: the cost of the letters between transposed letters should be the _higher_ of the additions and deletions: convert as many into substitutions as possible and add in any additions or deletions left over. So the cost would be:               H[i1][j1] + max((i-i1-1), (j-j1-1)) + 1      Here's my code for this version: https://gist.github.com/badocelot/5327427 From some simple tests, this seems correct. For example, \"abcdef\" -> \"abcfad\" gives an edit distance of 2 (transpose \"d\" and \"f\", change \"e\" to \"a\"), while the original algorithm gives a distance of 3 (either last three letters are substitutions, or 1 transposition + 1 addition + 1 deletion). Now, I **cannot** be the first person to have thought of this. So, why didn't I run across it? Did I just not search long enough? Or is there some subtle flaw that prevents this from actually working?"}
{"_id": "105196", "title": "how could I interview for a C# position if I master Java", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Interviewing a developer who's skilled in a language you don't know I must interview people for a C# position we have. I work on the java side of the project, and master it quite well. When I interview for java position, I ask some technical-questions/programming-problems so I can make sure the candidate has solid skills, not just '5 years experience'. But I don't know C# at all. I could look for some questions online (and their answers), but if I ask them these questions, I might not be able to see clearly if their response is right or wrong, maybe they have a point in some way etc. Also I won't be able to follow up in any side discussion etc. So what I am basically asking is if someone with java/C# knowledge can think of questions that:   1. are deep enough to show the guy is solid   2. I (with java knowledge but zero C#) can discern their reply is good/reasonable/well thought or not."}
{"_id": "117243", "title": "Is there a way to combat Sales perpetually overcommitting?", "text": "I seem to be repeatedly stuck in a situation where release dates are set not based on anything technical, but because someone in Sales has committed to a customer by then. Based on discussions with friends in development at other companies, the same thing seems to happen. \"Here is the committed feature set and here is the committed release date\", and it's difficult to argue because at this point there is money riding on it, and that trumps everything. **In general, is there a way to push back on this?** If not for this release, what about in future? The problem I have is that the only way I see one way of doing so, and that's by doing the best I can, but release the software 'as is', so to speak. I don't want to release bug-ridden software since it's my name attached, but doing 80 hour weeks for months at a time just vindicates the arbitrarily set release date. edit: for the record, I'm not doing 80 hour weeks now, just that comes to mind as what would be required to cover the expected feature set by the release date."}
{"_id": "117240", "title": "What scripting language to use for large file transfers on windows xp client machines", "text": "I'm a java developer that is tasked with creating some scripts that will handle large xml document file transfers by hitting some web service api's from windows xp client machines. There may be other document formats involved like .pdf, .doc, .xls or .txt, but I'm not sure on that at this point. I've looked into powershell, groovy, perl, but I'm not sure which one would be the best to use as I've not done work with any of those and there may be a better alternative than these three I've listed. So for security, ease of deployment, and maintenance for the script (not overly complicated to write or large), what would fit the best for these requirements?"}
{"_id": "16249", "title": "Are neural networks the best approach to artificial intelligence and machine learning?", "text": "I enjoy learning about artificial intelligence techniques What other techniques are useful for AI and machine learning other than neural networks?"}
{"_id": "210144", "title": "Do multiple 'helper' classes conflict with the accepted Apple design scheme?", "text": "I have a social location based application and I'm in a bit of design conflict that I can't seem to solve or find good information on. Realizing that I have multiple controllers that will similarly access the user's location and load an array of places to be displayed in a table view, I've made a class that has class methods to provide the users location (coordinates and/or reverse-geocoded address), and populate a variably sized NSArray of locations, and other methods that different controllers will use to form their data. Call it `SpotsManager`. Anticipating future complexity, I have separated `SpotManager`s duties into 2 separate classes, a `SpotLocationManager` for wrapping a `CLLocationManager` and a `SpotNetworkManager` for wrapping AFNetworking. Do all of these managers give off code smell? It seems excessive, especially compared to most of Apple's sample apps but at the same time, it also seems like beneficially strict organization. To contrast my previous approach, I've branched and made a `SpotsList` class that knows how to populate its instances with locations. But I question extending this class without creating some God-class. (And `[SpotList currentCoordinate]` doesn't sound right.) I realize high level design questions provide an opportunity for opinions, so I am specifically asking for an answers that will provide some objectivity and insight into Apple approved design."}
{"_id": "198805", "title": "Why there is much more support for closed xls format in rails (and ruby) than to an open ods format?", "text": "It is little depressive, but it seems to me that there is much more support for manipulating ugly proprietary closed format like xls in rails (and ruby) in general that to documented open Open Document format. Why it is so? (I know it is kind of philosiophical, but I just do not get the fact, that the opensource is not more inclined to write SW for open formats). For example for ruby there is a spreadsheet gem."}
{"_id": "16243", "title": "ReSharper's effect on coding interviews", "text": "Anyone who has used R# or CodeRush knows how fast you can put together simple constructs (and refactor complex ones) with a simple keyboard shortcut. However, **do these productivity plugins cause a false evaluation of ability during interviews?** Part of being a productive code writer (and making a good first impression in an interview) is writing good code - fast. If I had two candidates:   1. Doesn't use plugins. She thinks about the problem, sits down at a stock IDE at the interview PC that looks exactly like hers and types out the code in a minute or two, as usual. Done. Pass.   2. Uses plugins. He thinks about the problem, sits down at a stock IDE at the interview PC and realizes \"fe + tab\" no longer writes a foreach loop automatically, and all the shortcuts are gone. He then bumbles around the keyboard hitting his normal hotkeys and popping up strange windows and getting flustered. It takes him 3 minutes to write what normally would take 30 seconds. Done. Looked like they didn't know their way around the IDE at times. Must be new to this IDE and thus not had much experience with it or maybe the language. Pass, but a 'meh' mark beside their name. In your experience, how do you handle plugins during interviews as the interviewer or interviewee? What are the best practices to getting what the candidate really knows? There can be candidates who don't understand code, and use R# as a crutch. There can also be candidates who know the code in and out and use R# because it's just plain faster than the built in VS or Eclipse templates. Is it best to just not use an IDE at all? Let them bring their own PC? Others?"}
{"_id": "105012", "title": "How should C++ Unit Test code be organized for maximum Unit Test efficiency?", "text": "* This question is _not_ about Unit Testing Frameworks.   * This question is _not_ about writing Unit Tests.   * This question is about _where_ to put the UT code written and how/when/where to compile and run it. In Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Michael Feathers asserts that > good unit tests ... run fast and that > A unit test that takes 1/10th of a second to run is a slow unit test. I think these definitions do make sense. I also think that they imply that you have to keep a set of _Unit Tests_ and a set of _Those Code Tests That Take Longer_ separately, but I guess that's the price you pay for only calling something a Unit Test if it runs (very) fast. Obviously the **problem** in C++ is that to \"run\" your Unit Test( **s** ), you have to:   1. Edit your code (production or Unit Test, depending on which \"cycle\" you're in)   2. Compile   3. Link   4. Start Unit Test Executable( **s** ) * * * Edit (after weird close vote): Before going into the details, I'll try summarize the point here: How can C++ Unit Test code be effectively organized, so that it's both efficient to edit the (test) code and to run the test code? * * * The **first** problem then is to decide _where_ to put the Unit Test code so that:   * it's \"natural\" to edit and view it in combination with the associated production code.   * it's easy/quick to start the compilation cycle for _the unit_ your currently changing The **second** , related, problem then is _what_ to compile so that the feedback is instantaneous. Extreme options:   * Each Unit-Test-Test-Unit lives in a separate cpp file and this cpp file is compiled+linked separately (together with the source code unit file it tests) to a single executable which then runs this one Unit Test.      * (+) This minimizes startup (compile+link!) time for the single Test Unit.     * (+) The test runs super fast, because it only tests one unit.     * (-) Executing the whole suite will need to start a bazillion of processes. Can be a problem to manage.     * (-) The overhead of process starts will become visible   * The other side would be to have -- still -- one cpp file per test, but all the test cpp files (together with the code they test!) are linked into one executable (per module / per project / pick your choice).      * (+) Compile time still would be OK, as only changed code will compile.      * (+) Executing the whole suite is easy, as there's just one exe to run.     * (-) The suite will take ages to link, as each recompilation of any object will trigger a re-link.     * (-)(?) The suit will take longer to run, _although_ if all Unit Tests are fast, the time should be OK. So, how are real world C++ **Unit Tests** handled? If I only run that stuff nightly/hourly, the second part doesn't really matter, but the first part, namely how to \"couple\" the UT code to the production code, so that it's \"natural\" for developers to keep both in focus always matters I think. (And if developers have the UT code in focus, they'll want to run it, which brings us back to part two.) _Real world stories and experience appreciated!_ Notes:   * This question intentionally leaves unspecified platform and make/project system.   * Questions Tagged UT & C++ is a great place to start, but unfortunately too many questions, and especially answers, are too heavily focused on the details or on specific frameworks.   * A while ago, I answered a similar question on structure for boost unit tests. I find this structure to be lacking for \"real\", fast Unit Tests. And I find the other question too narrow, hence this new question."}
{"_id": "97325", "title": "Software Licensing", "text": "I have an application and I'm ready to release it into the wild world of the Internet. However, I am a confused of a few things. Keeping in mind that I am not releasing the source code, must I include a license If I don't want my program copied and claimed someone elses? If yes, then which one? Also, note that is a non-commercial freelance programmer's application."}
{"_id": "105017", "title": "Naming for a REST webservice", "text": "I have a rest webservice with an endpoint `www.foobar.com/service.svc/MAC` (migration authorisation code). Posting and getting to that adds and gets one MAC respectively. I now need to impliment a new enpoint for all MACs. What would that be? `www.foobar.com/service.svc/MAC/All` seems wrong. What would be correct and why?"}
{"_id": "105019", "title": "Do private static methods in C# hurt anything?", "text": "I created a private validation method for a certain validation that happens multiple times in my class (I can't store the validated data for various reasons). Now, ReSharper suggests that the function could be made static. I'm a little reluctant to do so due known problems with static methods. It would be a _private_ static method. My question is, can private static methods cause similar coupling and testing problems like public static methods? Is it a bad practice? I would guess not, but I'm not sure if there is a pitfall here."}
{"_id": "149213", "title": "TDD: Am I doing it right?", "text": "I'm a new programmer (only been learning for about a year) and in my goal to become better at it I have just recently learned about TDD. I wanted to get into the habit of using it since it seems very helpful. I wanted to check and make sure I'm using it correctly. What I'm doing:   1. Think of a new method I need.   2. Create a test for that method.   3. Fail test.   4. Write method.   5. Pass test.   6. Refactor method.   7. Repeat. I'm doing this for EVERY method I write, are there some I shouldn't bother with? Later on I usually think of a way to test my already existing methods in a different way or situation. Should I make these new tests I think of, or since each method already has a test of their own should I not bother? Can I be OVER testing my code I guess is my main concern in asking this. **EDIT** Also, this was something I was just wondering. When doing something like making a GUI, would TDD be necessary in that situation? Personally, I can't think of how I would write tests for that."}
{"_id": "193783", "title": "Am I handling my exceptions in a sensible manner?", "text": "I'm still restructuring the code I have been given to update on my current work project, and I've come to the point where I'm looking at how the code handles an 'exceptional' input, that doesn't conform to the business logic. In essence, the code stitches together various different excel spreadsheets, tarts them up and lets the user 'download' them to their workspace for later analysis. This is what I have set in the code:   If the code ends up (anywhere) trying to, for instance, import an empty spreadsheet into the final work book (something that should never happen, under the business logic) then write out to a LinkedList variable (ErrorList) in a static class (MyVariables) like so, the error:               MyVariables.ErrorList.add(\"My Specific Error Text\");      Then I throw an exception like so:               throw new PICNICException();      Then in the frame that called the trail of methods, the exception is finally caught and I can write, something like this:               catch(PICNICException Pe){         JOption.showMessageDialog(This, MyVariables.ErrorList.getLast(), \"Title Relevant to what Code is Doing\", JOption.ERROR_DIALOG)        Pe.printStackTrace();     }      I ~~have~~ feel I have to do this as, I have no way to pop up the Message Dialog (which is the desired behaviour on erroring) from within the method that's thrown this exception. Without _completely_ refactoring the entire code base, and making a singleton that can be accessed anywhere to handle these message dialogues, I don't see any other way of doing this. I can't help but feel this is a gigantic hack, and there is a better method for doing this. Am I handling my exceptions in the best possible manner, _given my situation_? What would the best practice be?"}
{"_id": "193780", "title": "Changing a server centric site to a more JS centric one", "text": "First of all, I'm not really a Javascript guy, but more towards PHP.   However, I want to move to the next level, that is taking load off the server and let the client do the processing. Hopefully to be a more JS guy. My first thought is to request of data off the server, and it just returns key-values which the client will generate the HTML and puck in the values. There are 3 problems generally:   1. I find it so much easier to generate the HTML in PHP cause data exchange between the server and HTML is fluid. Unlike returning data in JSON, which I then have to select the DOM that I want, and put in the values eg. `$('.personRecord').html(data['name'])`.   I also find looping through arrays and generating HTML easier than JS?   2. I find myself using so much of jQuery selector to select the element I'm interested to manipulate and I'm not sure if that's the correct practice (going forward to be a JS ninja). But I'm doing it cause it sure saves lots of characters.   3. In order to select the elements easily, I tend to give them unique class names as identifier. Again, I'm not sure if that's what a JS Ninja will do. Going forward (web trend), I would like to know if I should try to put more work to JS?   Also, any ideas or thoughts on how I can overcome my 3 problems stated above?   Is it a sin to return formatted HTML as part of a JSON value? Or should HTML be generated in JS and only read values off the returned JSON when it needs? Putting frameworks aside (I know there's Backbone, Angular, Can.JS and many more) does anyone really do raw JS scripting? I mean, it is possible but seems extremely wordy. Lastly, please advice how one would convert a server centric site to a JS centric one? If what I wrote doesn't make any sense, hopefully you can point some JS centric sites, and explain what approach they are using as an example. Sites that are full featured (say..maybe facebook, twitter, stackoverflow) and not just a TODO web app."}
{"_id": "149210", "title": "Can the user not manipulate html elements which are disabled for non-permitted user", "text": "With todays browser extensions/tools is it not easily possible for a user to edit the html/css settings of a website and so enable some disabled buttons etc... to gain access to not permitted areas?"}
{"_id": "69980", "title": "Is JRuby like RubyMRI but better, or are there some things it lacks?", "text": "I am considering using JRuby in a project which would need to talk to some Java. From what I am reading about JRuby I am not noticing that it is missing anything that the standard Ruby has. Is that true? Does JRuby have everything the original Ruby has and also the JVM on top of it? Or is there something missing in JRuby and using it necessitates some benefit trade-off to some degree? Thanks! Alex"}
{"_id": "250169", "title": "Is the Fork/Join framework a bad match for the Java 8 Streams API?", "text": "Today I found an article about Java8's Fork/Join-Framework and its usage for the parallel streams implementation. While I do understand the article, I'm not entirely sure what I should think of it. Basically what it says it that F/J in conjunction with streams is next to useless, and especially so in the context of JEE applications. Quite a few specific arguments are listed, such as: >   * it needs a massive volume of easily separable data (aggregate), >   * creates copious threads without regard for others, >   * has a high potential for stack overflows, >   * has a high potential for massive memory usage, >   * has a very, very narrow performance window, >   * is only designed for one request at a time. > Moreover, it gives these arguments against F/J's recursive decompostion approach: > Recursive decomposition has an even narrower performance window. In addition > to the above dynamic decomposition, recursive decomposition optimized for > dyadic recursive division only works well: > >   * on balanced tree structures (Directed Acyclic Graphs) >   * where there are no cyclic dependencies >   * where the computation duration is neither too short nor too long >   * where there is no blocking. > Since this is the only source I could find which complains about FJ, I'm not sure if this can be taken seriously. Are the above-cited, or other similar points a valid concern? More specifically, does Oracle have an official position regarding the limitations of the F/J Framework as applied to the parallelization of streams processing? If so, does it have plans to do something about them?"}
{"_id": "127624", "title": "What is MVC, really?", "text": "As a serious programmer, how do you answer the question **What is MVC?** In my mind, MVC is sort of a nebulous topic -- and because of that, if your audience is a learner, then you're free to describe it in general terms that are unlikely to be controversial. However, if you are speaking to a knowledgeable audience, especially an interviewer, I have a hard time thinking of a direction to take that doesn't risk a reaction of \"well that's not right!...\". We all have different real- world experience, and I haven't truly met the same MVC implementation pattern twice. Specifically, there seem to be disagreements regarding strictness, component definition, separation of parts (what piece fits where), etc. So, **how should I explain MVC** in a way that is correct, concise, and uncontroversial?"}
{"_id": "221971", "title": "How do MySQL joins really work?", "text": "In my case joining table inside subquery or outside subquery gives very few difference with `COUNT` **CASE 1:** about 6202 rows.   In this case `table_c` is joined inside subquery, but is only joined (No other actions for the table, not selecting any data or filtering whole query with that table). **CASE 2:** about 6235 rows.   In this case that table is joined outside of subquery but joining key (`groupCol`) is the same. Here is my self-explanatory MySQL query:               SELECT          COUNT(*)     FROM (         SELECT               a.*             , b.some             # no c columns         # main table         FROM table_a      AS a              # no mention this         LEFT JOIN table_b AS b         ON a.col = b.bcol              #### CASE 1 ###         # this is left joined, this is matter         # this is only joined, does nothing more         LEFT JOIN table_c AS c         ON c.col = a.groupCol         #### CASE 1 ###           WHERE          *** SOME statements ***          # c table not participating in WHERE, or GROUP-ing clause      GROUP BY a.groupCol       ORDER BY a.dateCol     ) AS subSelect                #### CASE 2 : table_c is joined outside of subquery ###     LEFT JOIN table_c AS c     ON c.col = subSelect.groupCol     #### CASE 2 ###          WHERE          *** SOME statements ***          # table_c still not participating of course      I also know how does MySQL `LEFT JOIN` works: if data not found on second table, row corresponding fields from that table are set to null. What what actually happens here I can't figure out. Also case 1 is faster than case 2.   Why? Also for sure, that joining in case 1, contains least double amount of rows. In case 2 it's first filtered and then joined.   I thought this should be faster way..."}
{"_id": "107528", "title": "How to handle fired listeners exceptions", "text": "This is more of a design question and i was hoping to get pros and opinions on what makes sense. BACKGROUND Imagine something that holds one or more event listeners. Every now and then the thing fires events to its listeners. PROBLEM The problem is of course that listeners that follow after a listener that throws never get to know about the event. THis means that the order of listeners thus is an issue. SOLUTION #1 Execute all listeners catching any thrown exceptions. This means all listeners are fired but in itself introduce other problems. What should be done with caught exceptions ?   * One option is to catch them all and after firing all events throw another exception which holds all the problems. ++   * The other option is to log ~~   * The last is to simply ignore these exceptions. --   * Listeners are executed in isolation which is good. ++ SOLUTION #2 This option is the simplist and simply lets any thrown exception from a listener escape, resulting in remaining listeners never getting fired. Problems with this approach mean that   * the order of listeners is significant(-)   * simple to implement(+).   * before listeners can affect the caller Q Which approach makes sense and causes the least number of problems. Does it really make sense to isolate listeners so they get events but cannot cause a running operation to abort if they throw ?"}
{"_id": "221975", "title": "Loading data for ShoppingCart item", "text": "I'm currently trying to cover our shopping cart with unit tests. Class `ShoppingCartItem` has property `Term`. It also loads available terms for this item upon object creation. Currently this is done using call to static class in constructor. **Current state:**               public class ShoppingCartItem     {         private Dictionary<Guid, ShoppingCartTerm> terms;          public ShoppingCartItem(int productID)         {             terms = SKUInfoGopasProvider.LoadAllTerms(productID);         }      }      My question is. How to make data source interchangeable? Should I introduce factory class? Obvious answer is use constructor injection but that doesn't seem somewhat right to me. I am thinking about making something along these lines.               public class ShoppingCartData     {         private readonly ShoppingCartItemFactory _factory;              public ShoppingCartData(ShoppingCartItemFactory factory)         {             _factory = factory;         }              public void AddItem(int productId)         {             var item = _factory.CreateCartItem(productId);             _items.Add(item);         }     }"}
{"_id": "9539", "title": "What trends do you see for your profession in 30 years?", "text": "Think of the profession 30 years ago. When one single guy was able to code a whole computer game alone! Will offshoring will finally take over? Will languages be so high level than our added value will be reduced to zero? Will it be a profession like lawyer or doctor? Will you still be a programmer? Please extrapolate and predict based on historical and current trends."}
{"_id": "107523", "title": "Managing software projects - advice needed", "text": "I work for a large government department as part of an IT team that manages and develops websites as well as stand alone web applications. We\u2019re running in to problems somewhere in the SDLC that don\u2019t rear their ugly head until time and budget are starting to run out. We try to be \u201cAgile\u201d (software specifications are not as thorough as possible, clients have direct access to the developers any time they want) and we are also in a reasonably peculiar position in that we are not allowed to make profit from the services we provide. We only service the divisions within our government department, and can only charge for the time and effort we actually put in to a project. So if we deliver a project that we have over-quoted on, we will only invoice for the actual time spent. Our software specifications are not as thorough as they could be, but they always include at a minimum:   * Wireframe mockups for every form view   * A data dictionary of all field inputs   * Descriptions of any business rules that affect the system   * Descriptions of the outputs I\u2019m new to software management, but I\u2019ve overseen enough software projects now to know that as soon as users start observing demos of the system, they start making a huge amount of requests like \u201cCan we add a few more fields to this report.. can we redesign the look of this interface.. can we send an email at this part of the workflow.. can we take this button off this view.. can we make this function redirect to a different screen.. can we change some text on this screen\u2026 can we create a special account where someone can log in and get access to X\u2026 this report takes too long to run can it be optimised.. can we remove this step in the workflow\u2026 there\u2019s got to be a better image we can put here\u2026\u201d etc etc etc. Some changes are tiny and can be implemented reasonably quickly.. but there could be up to 50-100 or so of such requests during the course of the SDLC. Other change requests are what clients claim they \u201cjust assumed would be part of the system\u201d even if not explicitly spelled out in the spec. We are having a lot of difficulty managing this process. With no experienced software project managers in our team, we need to come up with a better way to both internally identify whether work being requested is \u201cout of spec\u201d, and be able to communicate this to a client in such a manner that they can understand why what they are asking for is \u201cextra\u201d work. We need a way to track this work and be transparent with it. In the spirit of Agile development where we are not spec'ing software systems in to the ground and back again before development begins, and bearing in mind that clients have access to any developer any time they want it, I am looking for some tips and pointers from experienced software project managers on how to handle this sort of \"scope creep\" problem, in tracking it, being transparent with it, and communicating it to clients such that they understand it. Happy to clarify anything as needed. I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to offer some advice. Thanks."}
{"_id": "221978", "title": "How to share a file over multiple projects", "text": "I'm using Visual Studio 2010 to amend a C# project. Part of the application requires the user to be able to save and read a settings file (1 Project reads them in (as read only) from a file. The other project reads them in from the file to be shown in the GUI and when saved, the file is to be overwritten). If both of these files were in 1 project, I could share it easily (using Resources.resx for example or any other approach). The issue I have is the project that reads the settings file is different to the project that writes/amends the settings file. The 2 projects are not allowed to be referenced to each other (they apparently have to remain oblivious to each other existence) so I can't share a CONST STRING between them. Now, I may be taking the DRY principal too far, but I am worried about writing code reference the a single file in multiple projects (next OS change may break this logic etc). I'm going to assume that this decision isn't uncommon and that an approach(es) already exist to overcome this issue? Is it just a question of having the same file referenced in 2 locations (and if that file changes, having to update each reference (this seems undesired)) or is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "113545", "title": "How should I go about fixing code from a less-experienced programmer?", "text": "**A little background:** I am one of two programmers for our department of 10 people (the rest are artists and management). The two of us do all of the coding required to make things flow well, and develop any projects that come up. I've been programming for about 4 years now, where this is his first \"real\" job (as he puts it). We generally are working on different projects at any point in time. **A couple months ago** I developed a (by no means perfect) set of classes that were to be used for a later project. A large portion of that project was delegated to him (for billing reasons) to design and program a GUI interface. Since he was new, I helped a bit with the designing, and said to ask for help if he needed it with the rest. He finished up the interface a few weeks ago, which he demo'd to show that it worked, although a little slow. **The next part of that project has started** which I'm working on. I opened up the interface to start with the next steps, and immediately ran into issues (a little slow was a little understatement, errors on common actions, etc.). I looked in to the code for a few issues and am finding `O(n^n)` on calls that should be `O(n)`, type assumptions with no error checking (it's in Python), references to the GUI added to the original code, and so on. Now, I definitely would like to teach him what was wrong and how to fix it, but he's already moved on to his next project, and this was a few weeks ago. I'm afraid me saying \"Go back and do it right!\" (with help of course) is too harsh, and we still have other projects to get done in the meantime. Should I just fix the code myself for now and try to catch things in the future?"}
{"_id": "150615", "title": "Why is quicksort better than other sorting algorithms in practice?", "text": "This is a repost of a question on cs.SE by Janoma. Full credits and spoils to him or cs.SE. In a standard algorithms course we are taught that **quicksort** is O(n log n) on average and O(n\u00b2) in the worst case. At the same time, other sorting algorithms are studied which are O(n log n) in the worst case (like **mergesort** and **heapsort** ), and even linear time in the best case (like **bubblesort** ) but with some additional needs of memory. After a quick glance at some more running times it is natural to say that quicksort **should not** be as efficient as others. Also, consider that students learn in basic programming courses that recursion is not really good in general because it could use too much memory, etc. Therefore (and even though this is not a real argument), this gives the idea that quicksort might not be really good because it is a recursive algorithm. **Why, then, does quicksort outperform other sorting algorithms in practice?** Does it have to do with the structure of _real-world data_? Does it have to do with the way memory works in computers? I know that some memories are way faster than others, but I don't know if that's the real reason for this counter-intuitive performance (when compared to theoretical estimates)."}
{"_id": "150616", "title": "Return random `list` item by its `weight`", "text": "I have, for example, this table               +-----------------+     | fruit  | weight |     +-----------------+     | apple  |   4    |     | orange |   2    |     | lemon  |   1    |     +-----------------+      I need to return random fruit. But apple should be picked 4 times frequently then lemon and 2 times frequently then orange. In more general case it should be `f(weight)` times frequently. What is general algorithm to implement this behavior? _Or maybe there is some ready gems on Ruby? :)_ **PS** I've implemented current algorithm in Ruby https://github.com/fl00r/pickup"}
{"_id": "65512", "title": "How many programming languages do you work with on a daily basis and how do you effectively manage language specific tasks", "text": "Edit: **How do you manage individual tasks when working on multiple languages** In day to day task handling, how many different programming languages do you work with?   * Do you make a mental shift when working on each language?    * Do you Prioritize them and keep each task per language separately.   * Do you code in stages based on progress of each task switching seamlessly between languages/IDE/Environment    * Do you apply the same coding style/conventions on all the languages (not syntax)? Related: Is it normal for programmer to work on multiple projects simultaneously"}
{"_id": "65511", "title": "Can You Have \"Empty\" Abstract/Classes?", "text": "Of course you can, I'm just wondering if it's rational to design in such a way. I'm making a breakout clone and was doing some class design. I wanted to use inheritance, even though I don't have to, to apply what I've learned in C++. I was thinking about class design and came up with something like this: GameObject -> base class (consists of data members like x and y offsets, and a vector of SDL_Surface*      MovableObject : GameObject -> abstract class + derived class of GameObject (one method void move() = 0; )      NonMovableObject : GameObject -> empty class...no methods or data members other than constructor and destructor(at least for now?). Later I was planning to derive a class from NonMovableObject, like Tileset : NonMovableObject. I was just wondering if \"empty\" abstract classes or just empty classes are often used...I notice that the way I'm doing this, I'm just creating the class NonMovableObject just for sake of categorization. I know I'm overthinking things just to make a breakout clone, but my focus is less on the game and more on using inheritance and designing some sort of game framework."}
{"_id": "167297", "title": "Are corner and edge cases too often ignored or disregarded and why?", "text": "I have the feeling that a lot of developers disregard corner and edge cases. Often they tend to just ignore these. I was once working on a logistics project. In the order management of the application there was a case where about 5-10% of the orders had to be specially handled. One colleague said that we just shouldn't handle that case automatically, which would have lead to a high manual workload of the applications users. I think this has somewhat to do with a bad attitude. Another example I noticed shortly was in a comment to one of my answers here. Since this was just a comment, I think the reason for that was just, that the commentator did not pay too much attention for it. Have you made similiar expierences? Is this something you see very often? Is this just a matter of attitude or are there other reasons? btw: I had problems finding good tags for this question. Any suggestions would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "250286", "title": "What's the easiest way to comply with open source licenses?", "text": "I'm really confused by all the open source licensing details like _\"I wrote a web application, which should run on a computer not owned by me. My software uses the library/language xxx. Is this considered a software redistribution of xxx?\"_. Looking at the first four pieces of used software reveals four different licenses (MIT, BSD, Apache, Apache/Eclipse dual). It looks like all of them require about the same, i.e., list them and link to their license. So I thought I could simplify my life by simply voluntarily listing _all_ the software used. The list is not that long and it'd call it fair. But there are obstacles like copyrighted names, trademarks and such stuff. I've tried to google for an example, but found nothing but the EPSON list (which is for a piece of hardware). Does anyone know an example of software list for a web application? I'm especially curious what's the best solution for Java (run on a computer not owned by me)."}
{"_id": "186048", "title": "Does anyone knows a good minimal php mvc framework?", "text": "I've been developing using frameworks since the last year, and is true that those pieces of software really help me and improve my development, that's until you need to fulfill your client's dreams, like, the app needs to fly to the moon and back and collect information about the sun. Or he has an app that needs a basic crud functionality but doesn't need the other 90% of the framework. I know I can handle dependency management using composer, but what if the client has an specific need to be coded over the previously developed app? That's why I'm asking here if anyone of you guys knows a minimal MVC framework?, that can be improved as needed. I just need some base to start my new projects, and the cleanest and minimal, the better. Main charasteristics I'm looking for. \\- Obviously mvc design. \\- Database integration. \\- Built in basic Crud operations. \\- Security. \\- Code readability Would like: \\- Template engine (like smarty) integration. \\- Helper classes. Also it has to be easily expandable. I've looked at yupp, but I don't find it complete and also a little bit buggy for development purposes. Thanks."}
{"_id": "152619", "title": "Where to start when digging into an existing J2EE codebase?", "text": "I work for a company that produces enterprise applications to be used by schools and districts to manage all of their tests and standards data. Their existing application is written in J2EE and is very large. I personally am a seasoned PHP and Ruby = RoR developer and I have been asked to attempt to implement easily added but crucial features to an existing J2EE codebase. I am very familiar with Java SE and know the architecture of a web application well. What I am asking for is, will this suffice for the task ahead and what tips can you give me in digging into the code base and actually efficiently adding these new features? Is there anything important I need to know before beginning and what can I expect in terms of problems and issues coming from a Java SE, PHP, RoR background? Time isn't too much of an issue, I should have plenty of time to familiarize myself with J2EE.Please also note, syntax will not be a problem here."}
{"_id": "152617", "title": "Which would be a better way to load data via ajax", "text": "I am using google maps and returning html/lat/long from my MySQL database ## Currently   1. A user picks a business category e.g; \"Video Production\".   2. an ajax call is sent to a CodeIgniter controller   3. the Controller then queries the db, and returns the following data via JSON      1. Lat/Long of the marker     2. HTML for the popup window     3. this is approximately 34 rows in the database across two tables per business   4. the ajax call receives this data and then plots the marker along with the html onto the map The data that is returned from the controller is one big json object... This is done for all businesses that exist in the Video Production category (currently approx 40 businesses). As you can see, pulling this data for multiple categories (100s of businesses) can get very very taxing on the server. ## My question is Would it be more beneficial to modify the process flow as such:   1. a user picks a business category e.g; \"Video Production\".   2. an ajax call is sent to a CodeIgniter controller   3. the controller then queries the database for the location base information      1. lat/long     2. level (used to change marker icon color)     3. This would be a single row per business with several columns   4. the ajax call receives this data and then plots the marker on the map   5. when the user clicks a marker an ajax call is sent to a CodeIgniter Controller   6. the controller queries the database for the HTML and additional data based on business_id and if not, what are some better suggestions to this problem? **In summary this means rather than including the HTML and additional data along for each business, only submitting minimal location information and then re-query for that information when each business marker is clicked.** ## Potential Downsides   1. longer load times when a user clicks a marker icon   2. more code??   3. more queries to the database"}
{"_id": "152613", "title": "Handle all authentication logic in database or code?", "text": "We're starting a new(ish) project at work that has been handed off to me. A lot of the database sided stuff has been fleshed out, including some stored procedures. One of the stored procedures, for example, handles creation of a new user. All of the data is validated in the stored procedure (for example, password must be at least 8 characters long, must contain numbers, etc) and other things, such as hashing the password, is done in the database as well. Is it normal/right for everything to be handled in the stored procedure instead of the application itself? It's nice that any application can use the stored procedure and have the same validation, but the application should have a standard framework/API function that solves the same problem. I also feel like it takes away the data from the application and is going to be harder to maintain/add new features to."}
{"_id": "68164", "title": "How many second chances have you got in an interview?", "text": "A few days ago I had an interview for a medium company (130 people) for a developer job position, and at some point the interviewer gave me a wild bunch of question regarding TCP, Network flows and many other things that I didn't had clear on my memory. Needless to say, I failed the interview because according to them, I had to understand **in detail** how networking protocols worked to apply as a junior developer. I felt ashamed of my ignorance, and get to it, in one week I managed to refresh all the knowledge of networkings I had and even expanded them, my question is, with this in mind... How possible is to _reapply_ for a job interview, since my only problem in the interview was that part... Thanks in advance... **PS** : I think this is quite hard, but I just wanted to hear from other people with more experience..."}
{"_id": "68166", "title": "Indenting/breaking jquery chains for readability", "text": "I'm curious as to how other people indent/break long jQuery chains, as I can never decide what is more readable (particularly when using .end() to \"close\" a block of methods e.g.               $(this).not(\":has(.pointer)\").append(pointerHtml)                     .end()                 .closest(\"li\").toggleClass(\"selected\")                 .siblings().removeClass(\"selected\")                 .andSelf().removeClass(\"pre-selected\").animate({                                      left: 12                                      opacity: 0.5                                 })                     .end().end()                 .filter(\".selected\").prev().addClass(\"pre-selected\")                                 .end().children().load(\"/homepage.html\", function() {                                            //code                                  }).end().end().addClass(\"processed\");      How would YOU format this? *edit included a method with a callback to make it a bit more interesting"}
{"_id": "98854", "title": "Alternatives to Java Applet for interactive Websites", "text": "**In short** I am searching for an alternative to Java applets for making some interactive parts like minigames etc. on my website **Facts:**   I\u00b4m developing an e-learning website for children. This site has following main functions:   * practice part where children can do grammar test and receive points for good answers.   * tamagotchi like pet which moves around, has to be fed and so on   * shop in which gotchi stuff can be bought As a framework I'm using Ruby on Rails. At the moment I am using Java applets as a \"quick and dirty solution\" for nearly everything on the site as I totally freaked out over Flash after some years not using it and learning java in the meanwhile... (yes I also use applets for the practices which are not much more than some textfields an dropboxes in some text..) Now I'm searching for a cleaner solution as applets seam to me to be really slow. I already read some things in the internet but I'm searching for some opinions on my special problem. **My findings until now:**   1. JavaScript seems somehow nice, but many users deactivate it so would it be wise to use it?    2. Flash really drove me crazy, but if anyone can give me some reasons for it I will take it in mind again. Here is what happened when I tried to use it: I learned Flash some years ago and I liked it very much but now I am somehow lost as it seems to me to be not really good programming and I always mix it up with Java commands and I was missing code completion and this stuff. My main problem when I totally dropped the idea of Flash was that I wanted to read the practices out of some xml file or maybe a database (having in mind creating some programm in which teachers can produce their own practices in some later version) and it seemed somehow near to unsolveable to create some individual buttons in some sort of loop out of this extern data. also the community seemed to be more designer like than programmer like and wasn\u00b4t too helpfull on my questions (100 times yes I know I can drag it from the library but thats not at runtime possible)   3. Java applets are pretty slow I don't think I should use them in next versions I welcome all hints and ideas how to solve my task."}
{"_id": "157063", "title": "Using empty subclasses to add to the semantics of a class hierarchy?", "text": "I was wondering whether using (almost) empty derived classes to give additional semantics to a class hierarchy was a good idea (or practice) ? Because a (not so short) example is always better than a long speech, let's assume we're writing a class hierarchy for SQL generation. You want to represent a data manipulation command (INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE), so you have two alternatives : **First version, with switch statement**               enum CommandType {         Insert,         Update,         Delete     }          class SqlCommand {         String TableName { get; }         String SchemaName { get; }         CommandType CommandType { get; }         IEnumerable<string> Columns { get; }         // ... and so on     }          class SqlGenerator  {         string GenerateSQLFor(SqlCommand command)         {             switch (command.CommandType)              {                 case CommandType.Insert:                     return generateInsertCommand(command);                 case CommandType.Update:                     return generateUpdateCommand(command);                 case CommandType.Delete:                     return generateDeleteCommand(command);                 default:                     throw new NotSupportedException();             }         }     }      **Second version with VisitorPattern** _(Note that the question is NOT about whether the Visitor pattern should be used or adding new operations)_               abstract class SqlCommand {         String TableName { get; }         String SchemaName { get; }         IEnumerable<string> Columns { get; }         // ... and so on         abstract void Accept(SqlCommandVisitor visitor);     }          class InsertCommand : SqlCommand      {         overrides void Accept(SqlCommandVisitor visitor)          {             visitor.VisitInsertCommand(this);         }     }          class DeleteCommand : SqlCommand      {         overrides void Accept(SqlCommandVisitor visitor)          {             visitor.VisitDeleteCommand(this);         }     }          class SqlCommandVisitor  {         void InitStringBuffer() { ... }         string GetStringBuffer() { ... }              string GenerateSQLFor(SqlCommand command)         {             InitStringBuffer();             command.Accept(this);             return GetStringBuffer();         }              void Visit(SqlCommand command) { ... }         void VisitInsertCommand(InsertCommand command) { ... }         void VisitDeleteCommand(DeleteCommand command) { ... }         void VisitUpdateCommand(UpdateCommand command) { ... }     }      With both examples we achieve the same result, but :   * In the first version, my code feels more DRY, even though polymorphism is generally preferable over a switch statement.   * In the second version, I feel like I'm needlessly deriving SqlCommand just so that the code carries more meaning. Another similar case is deriving a class from a generic class, just to give additionnal meaning to the collection, eg :               class CustomerList : List<Customer> { }      I'm left off wondering whether this is a good idea. Are there any pitfalls to doing so ? I personally prefer the second version exactly because it adds meaning to the code, and helps me when I read my code later... But I clearly lack the experience to see any downside to this pattern."}
{"_id": "197448", "title": "Two-Dimensional vector in C++ \u2013 inefficient with dynamic-sized sub vectors?", "text": "I know that `std::vector` uses a contiguous block of memory, but I often see people use vectors of vectors, _even when they modify the number of elements in these vectors contained within an outer vector_. Won't this lead to efficiency problems when an inner vector need to be resized as all the following vectors will have to have their elements moved as well? In other words, in the following code, won't growing `lists[0]` trigger the moving of the elements of the 99 sub vectors following it too, and not just `lists[0]`?               std::vector<std::vector<int>> lists;     lists.resize(100);          // use and grow sub vectors     // ...     lists[0].push_back(88); // \u2190 !"}
{"_id": "190498", "title": "Scrum Master in the organization", "text": "I'm wondering how to set up the organization with Scrum Masters. I would prefer to see real examples of where the scrum masters are located in the organization's hierarchy and how report-to / chain-of-command issues are handled. we are service company. We have one agile project done for agile customer where team manager of developers fulfills the role of delivery responsible. So far we had matrix organization where scrum masters were assigned to the project management team consisting of people working for other projects (not agile), but this was causing that they did not have much contact with agile culture in their PM team and goals were not always aligned with project. How should we structure Scrum Masters within our organization?"}
{"_id": "49313", "title": "How to calculate the size of a project in the days-person unit of measurement?", "text": "Once in a while I have read here and there the size of a project expressed in a matter of `days-person` or `person-day`. I may understand what this means, but I don't know on what do people base themselves to calculate it.   1. What are the variables considered into this calculation?   2. How these variables are used in the calculation formula?   3. Otherwise, how to estimate it grossly, when something is missing from the formula's variables?"}
{"_id": "49310", "title": "For those of you who are senior developers what do you look for in a new company and development team?", "text": "As I move forward in my career new jobs become more difficult to choose between. When I was starting out and for the first 8 years of my career I took the jobs that I could get that would keep me programming on the general technological path that I was on. I am a job hopper, I only stay with a company for between 2 - 3 years. I think that I do this because after 2 years I get bored and unless there are new projects to keep my busy I no longer find work interesting. Now that I am becoming more experienced it is more important for me to only apply for jobs that are interesting and will move my career and my skill set forward. My problem now is that I keep finding jobs where the projects appear to be interesting during the interview but once I get in the company I find the development environment is sub-par and the development team is disjointed. I feel like I am asking the wrong questions during the interview process and don't know what to look for to make sure that the environment I will be working in will be a good one. Now my question: **For those of you who are senior developers what do you look for in a new company and development team?** I am looking for the key qualities in a company and development team that you look for when interviewing with a company. These qualities are the ones that would give you hints that the company will be a good one to work for. **Update:** Here is a list of questions that I have created based on the comments left here. There are a ton more but this will be the start of my list. **Good characteristics in a new company:**   * Ability to offer dependability and stability to an employee looking for a place to stay for the long term.   * Financially stable. **Development enviroment:**   * SDLC   * What software and/or tools are used?   * What version control system is used?   * What kind of project manangement structure is used and what tools are used to maintain it?   * How do you ensure the quality of your products? **Development team:**   * How big is the team?   * What skill levels are people at?   * Where would you fit into the team?   * What was the turnover in your team and company in the last year? Why did people leave?   * How often and for what reasons is a person expected to work overtime?   * What kind of development environment does the company have? Flexible, ridgid, laid back, etc.   * Will my personal work practices be acceptable or will I be expected to conform to the rest of the team?   * What does the team do for learning new skills? Training? Education? Shows? Conferences?    * What was the last training that the company invested in for their developers?   * How is conflict between developers handled?   * How is conflict between developers and business users handled? **Joel test** :   * Ask the questions and find out what they will admit to.   * If you can find an employee or former employee ask them to take the Joel test for the company."}
{"_id": "190493", "title": "Release Management Tools with DVCS (Mercurial)", "text": "My development team is migrating from SVN to Mercurial. Having researched DVCS best practices, it has been suggested that we develop against feature branches of the repo mainline, test them separately, then cherry-pick the features we want in each release, before merging those selected branches into the mainline and eventually releasing it. **Question** : What I'm looking for is recommendations for some sort of software tool that will make my role of \"software release manager\" easier, in that it will allow me to control (cherry-pick) which branches (features, bug fixes, etc) are merged (using Git, or Mercurial) into which software releases (in each environment), and be able to produce the binary deployment artefact. Our applications are mostly Java Web apps, with a handful of Java Applications, and the projects built using Maven (v2). I've looked around for release management tools, but nothing really fits the bill. **NB** : Not all changes are released as soon as they are completed and pass QA - some are to be released at a later date, as part of a themed release Things dismissed so far (based on recommendations in similar questions, in other SE threads):   1. Trac (seems to be just PM type stuff, which we already have with the Atlassian OnDemand offering)   2. Jenkins (plus other CI tools) - am looking for something to manage my releases, rather than a CI tool (we have used Jenkins in the past).   3. Mercurial Patch-Queues - I may well need this, but was looking at some sort of \"nicer\" interface to help me manage it.   4. ERP offerings - TBH, I didnt look too much into this option, as my initial feeling was that they were too heavy-weight.   5. BuildMaster, by Inedo - This was the closest match, by far, but was not quite suitable due to its lack of VCS branch picking/merging functionality. I would say however that this is a very nice piece of software, and would recommend it, if it fits your use-case, and is sensibly priced, even for Enterprise use. Am currently evaluating the following tools:   1. Bitbucket Feature Branch management (since we use Bitbucket for our projects, seems prudent to evaluate their approach) Since DVCS is new to us, these things may have been dismissed prematurely, so feel free to re-educate me. :)"}
{"_id": "190491", "title": "Can we pull future user stories in current sprint?", "text": "Suppose we have estimated 5 user stories to complete in a sprint and completed all of them with testing, buffer time and for expected bugs. Still we have 2-3 days left for one of the developer. Can we pull a future user story in current sprint knowing that only development or part of development can be completed in current sprint?"}
{"_id": "94161", "title": "Proxying the multitons", "text": "I have an app which acts like a TCP server and accepts multiple connections. Each connection is made by a distinct device, with a unique ID (the ID is reported by the device in two different messages according to its protocol, but that's less important). Right now, whenever a connection is established, my app creates a new list of parsers for a bunch of messages the device can send, but at that point it doesn't know yet which device has been connected. The problem is that several messages can be parsed before device's identity is established. Since devices can disconnect and reconnect during app's lifetime, there are long lived objects (device statistics and various other data) that should not be discarded whenever a device disconnects, and therefore need to be reattached as the consumers of the parser pipeline once the device ID is established. Alternatively, if a device was never connected before, its fresh instances will become long lived. Does anyone have an overall idea of how this application should be rearranged? For example, one idea was to wrap the long lived objects into proxies, and then have the possibility to change the underlying implementation with a different instance, once a new device is connected. To make it clearer, these objects are not public singletons (multitons), but there is obviously a dictionary (by ID) somewhere in the business layer to keep track of per-device data. This all feels unnecessarily complex, but the code (like it always does) obviously evolved over time and now I feel I can't see the forest through the trees."}
{"_id": "116113", "title": "Organising MVC App with virtual model using external API", "text": "I am creating a rails app with following constraints   * It has no database   * It uses a web API to store and retrieve the data   * The connection to the web API is via a custom gem.   * The Gem has a basic functionality to make a web API call based on the parameters given.   * I have 2-3 different kinds of object that I can think of ( or may be more precisely virtual model ) How should the structure of my program be ?   * Should I incorporate all the method calls within the gem ?   * Should I create models and put the api related calls in there (then through the gem's basic method)   * Should I just ignore the model and put everything in the controller . ? The second method seems most appropriate , but then all the methods from model would be static and I would be calling all methods in essence without any objects."}
{"_id": "116114", "title": "Does Node.js actually increase scalability?", "text": "I've been reading about the C10K Problem, and of particular note is the part that refers to asynchronous server I/O. http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html#aio I believe this pretty much summarises what Node.js does on the server, by allowing threads to process user requests whilst relying on I/O interrupts (events) to notify threads of jobs that are completed, rather than have the thread be responsible for the full CPU job. The thread can get on with other things (non-blocking), and be notified of when a job is done (e.g. a file is found or a video is compressed). This subsequently means that a thread is more 'available' to sockets and therefore to users on the server. Then I found this: http://teddziuba.com/2011/10/straight-talk-on-event- loops.html The writer here claims that although the event driven framework (interrupted threading), may free up threads, it doesn't actually reduce the amount of work a CPU has to do! The rationale here is that if, say, a user requests to compress a video they uploaded, the CPU still has to actually do this job, and will be blocking while it does it (for simplicity's sake, lets forget about parallelism here - unless you know better!). I'm a straightforward coder, not a server admin or anything like that. I'm just interested to know: is Node.js a gift from the gods of 'cloud computing' or is it all hot air, and won't actually save companies time and/or money by improving scalability? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "116117", "title": "Should I teach my students alloca?", "text": "How widely used is `alloca` in the real world? Should I teach my students to use `alloca` when it makes sense? Or should I teach them never to use it? Coming from a C++ RAII background, the idea of not having to call `free` manually sounds promising, especially in functions with multiple exit points."}
{"_id": "211230", "title": "Implement FBP / Dataflow programming in VBA?", "text": "Intrigued by Flow Based Programming a la J Paul Morrison. I wonder if one can implement FBP in Excel/VBA. I searched quite a bit for a Basic-Lang FBP implementation to no avail. I've looked at some FBP implementation details in Python but I'm not grokking it. VBA is what I'm most familiar with, but I'm suspicious that VBA can do FBP at all, without having coroutines or (?). Code 2 simple components, an Info-Packet Buffer Class, and a linkage between them and I would get it. I can't see where to begin. Specifically I wonder:   1. What would be the In-Ports, Out-Ports, 'bounded-buffer' graph-edges, and code to link them up look like?   2. How to do message passing? Using raised application events?   3. No way the resulting beast is inherently parallel or asynchronous, right?   4. If it just can't be done in VBA, why not?"}
{"_id": "99182", "title": "Help me deal with higher level languages", "text": "I'm trying to learn Scala (I have previously glanced at Erlang, Haskell, Ruby and had similar issues). I do enjoy it, but I feel bad about some things it does and I wonder if that's just due to all the time I've spent with C++. **1\\. Keeping it clean** I'll start with a problem of my own. With anonymous functions and loops hidden in foreach I feel encouraged to put everything in one line. I quickly end up with something hideous. It's even worse in Ruby where variables don't need to be declared. It's a mess. I wonder if there are any guidelines that can be followed to improve readability or if this is something one just has to get use to when programming in a concise language? **2\\. Basic control structures** While foreach, map, etc. methods work great in simple cases they fail me in more complex ones. Containers preserve order of objects, and in a way, these methods hide that order form me. Let's say, I want to build an array B from the elements of array A with prime indices. I could do               var i = 0     val B = A.filter( e => { i+=1; is_prime( i ) } )      but it doesn't feel right. There is a duplication of counters - one inside filter, and one of my own. I see no reason why there wouldn't be a function which knows the position of the element it is processing. Am I missing something or is there some logic behind it? Now I just feel encouraged to use the usual C style loops. **3\\. Scala's hidden inconsistency** Scala seems to boast having so much of it declared in it's libraries. With all the rules Scala needs to make those libraries feel comfortable, the language becomes as big as any other, which seems like missing the point, but that isn't what bothers me. What I dislike is Tuple. With it's special syntax, it acts like a language construct rather than an ordinary class. It feels like Scala is denying that many things are built into it. I'd appreciate it if someone could explain to me why such synthesis of library and language is so often implemented (not only in Scala). **4\\. Efficiency** Firstly, I understand the benefit of having immutable objects in parallel algorithms, but how often do you actually need the concurrency? There are issues with it other than shared mutable objects. My point is that concurrent design has it's limitations and using it everywhere, like functional languages seem to do, must be terribly inefficient.   Secondly, even if we do consider immutable state a necessity, some algorithms I've seen are ludicrous. I'm thinking about the ones that work with lists as head::tail. I find it hard to believe that an algorithm, described in that way can be efficient. Again, I feel encouraged to write more imperative code. Am I underestimating optimizations or should sensitive algorithms really avoid some concepts?"}
{"_id": "90676", "title": "Get the ball rolling on TDD", "text": "I am part of a developer team that works with many other teams to maintain and improve an application that has been in use for at least 15 years. When it was first built and designed, TDD was unheard of. The application is fairly stable, and we rarely encounter a show stopping bug, but we do average about one or two bugs a week that seriously reduces the quality of service. These bugs take forever to find and fix, largely because of finger pointing, and the only testing we have is interface testing. Because there is a lot of wasted time hunting down where the bug is before it can be fixed, me and another developer plan to propose Test Driven Development. There is a new overhaul coming soon, and we would like to see near complete unit testing done on the new modules, we also plan to suggest building test units for any code we have to alter that is legacy (i.e., bug fix or feature implementation), but not to spend time developing test cases for code that hasn't caused problems. To me, this seems reasonable. This month we had a bug that took over two weeks to fix, but could have been identified before deployed if unit testing had been done. But to our managers it just looks like they're going to spend more money. How do I convince our clients that they want to spend the money for unit testing and test driven development? Are there any studies that show the ROI of unit testing?"}
{"_id": "2699", "title": "What was your most difficult bug hunt and how did you find it and kill it?", "text": "This is a \"Share the Knowledge\" question. I am interested in learning from your successes and/or failures. Information that might be helpful... **Background:**   * Context: Language, Application, Environment, etc.   * How was the bug identified ?   * Who or what identified the bug ?   * How complex was reproducing the bug ?  **The Hunting.**   * What was your plan ?   * What difficulties did you encounter ?   * How was the offending code finally found ? **The Killing.**   * How complex was the fix ?   * How did you determine the scope of the fix ?   * How much code was involved in the fix ? **Postmortem.**   * What was the root cause technically ? _buffer overrun, etc._   * What was the root cause from 30,000 ft ?   * How long did the process ultimately take ?   * Were there any features adversely effected by the fix ?   * What methods, tools, motivations did you find particularly helpful ? ...horribly useless ?   * If you could do it all again ?............ These examples are general, not applicable in every situation and possibly useless. Please season as needed."}
{"_id": "162118", "title": "Rush to client-side in web development", "text": "In the past few months, I recognized a big excitement about client-side scripting in web development. But while server-side technologies are mature, stable and well accepted by backend-developers, client-side technologies are immature (i.e. compared to big server-side framework) and disliked by many long-established developers. Nevertheless everyone is doing client-side development these days. I personally expect those big server-side frameworks to disappear in like 2-5 years, watching the current trend. Why is that so? How could the new and \"diffuse\" client-side developing in HTML5/JS possibly be superior to big and well thought server-side solutions?"}
{"_id": "102546", "title": "Are custom DSLs still viable?", "text": "Are custom DSLs in JavaScript still viable, Specifically ones written with Antler, Boo, or the former Microsoft Oslo? With the proliferation of open source JavaScript/ECMAScript engines (V8, IronJS, etc.), does it make more sense to write the functionality needed into one of those instead of writing an entirely new language?"}
{"_id": "162112", "title": "I want to create an open data format... but I don't really know what that is", "text": "I have found a need for a standardization for storage and recording of data relating to diabetes information (I don't think there's any, but I may have missed it). To that end I made this github project because I want to create one.. but I don't really know how to go about it, or even for sure what I want to create is called. Do I need to pick a language (xml, json) or a database type (mongo, sqlite, mysql), or how 'unspecific' is possible with something like this. Is a data format as I describe here a thing? Are there other names for what I want to try to do? It's a bit of a strange task to accomplish compared to what I'm used to."}
{"_id": "162110", "title": "When designing an enterprise API, what level is appropriate for separating libraries?", "text": "Assume we are developing a REST system for an enterprise company to expose the companies resources in a Java based application. Ultimately you have one web application, and domain libraries. My question is to where components and services should live in these domain libraries and what should exist in the application itself. For a hypothetical company we may have several domain areas.   * Customer Relations   * Customer Sales Orders   * Manufacturing   * Product Structure   * Supply Chain   * Warehousing Given these domains we would have domain objects and object services for persistence. We could then further separate these into implementations   * Customer Relations   * Customer Relations - JDBC Impl   * Customer Sales Orders   * Customer Sales Orders - JDBC Impl   * Manufacturing   * Manufacturing - JDBC Impl   * Product Structure   * Product Structure - JDBC Impl   * Supply Chain   * Supply Chain - JDBC Impl   * Warehousing   * Warehousing - JDBC Impl Now it's starting to look complex only because of how many individual libraries we are managing. I'm wondering if we even need to separate to such a level and could simply have the three.   * Business - Interface   * Business - JDBC Impl   * REST Application My second part of my question relates to where service classes and management classes should live. Given our Warehousing above we need domain objects to represent pick-faces, a DAO class to manage the pick-face object and finally a service component for our rest application. For this we could see the following structure.   * Warehousing      * PickFace     * PickFaceDAO   * Warehousing - JDBC Impl      * JdbcPickFaceDAO   * ReST application      * PickFaceController On the one hand `PickFaceController` is best inside the ReST application as the application can then manage the services for this controller manually and may need to customise configuration. But, on the other hand the `PickFaceController` might be better inside the Warehousing project as it's only concerned to the warehousing module, yet the ReST application could theoretically use service locators to find services in other libraries. SO what are the successful approaches being used? When do you know when you've gone to far in separating or not done enough? How do you know the best place to put something?"}
{"_id": "198378", "title": "Apache license in non-Apache licensed software; how to distinguish?", "text": "The Apache License states: \"You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License;\" So if you've copied a bunch of functions from some Apache-licensed code (so it's not just linking, you've borrowed code) into a product _that is not itself Apache-licensed_ , what's a good way to indicate that the license you included only applies to some bits of code in your product, not to the product as a whole? (To avoid the suggestion that the product as a whole is freely copyable.) Should a list of projects you've borrowed from and their various licenses be included in the \"About\" screen for the product, _insisting_ that the licenses only apply to those bits? I'm asking because that seems to make sense, but I don't recall seeing that anywhere."}
{"_id": "198379", "title": "Standard Java Error Reporting", "text": "I am currently working on creating a toolkit for work and I've gotten to the point where I'm wondering about error reporting. Basically all of my tools, which consist of a grouping of classes, will eventually be ran from a main method. Many of these tools will be doing operations on file like reading them in and converting them into some sort of array of objects or writing an object array to a file in a certain format. Whenever you are dealing with data that your program didn't create there is always room for error and those errors need to be known. With that said what would be a good method to document all of the errors that occur during the processing and allow them to be retrieved later? Considering that I may want to send these error information out later I don't think that Log4J would be a good fit. I was considering using a string builder in each of my processing classes and append all error to that builder and retrieve it later at my leisure. I was also thinking of using some sort of arrayList or something that would hold the different types of errors but I'm a bit at a loss. Does anyone have any good methods of doing this?"}
{"_id": "198376", "title": "Are there any statistical information about what kinds of work programmers do?", "text": "I've been working as a Java developer for a while now. I usually work on business applications and I recently realized that my work mainly consists of   * writing an endless stream of _facade_ classes   * followed by an infinite array of _jpa queries_   * paired with countless hours of typing `mvn clean install -U` and waiting for the build Sometimes I get to work on more enjoyable stuff, but it's only 5-10% of my time spent at my workplace. I think that I should move on to some other segment of the industry because business application development usually lacks challenges. My problem is that after googling for a while, I couldn't find any exhaustive source about the distribution of programming jobs nor information regarding the supply/demand and/or segmentation of the industry. Does anyone know about some source of information about these matters? Even some pointers will do. I think there are others out there thinking about something like this. Don't constrain yourself to Java if you are answering because I'm willing to learn new technologies. **I do not want general information but grouped statistics across different segments of the industry.**"}
{"_id": "108721", "title": "Why do some websites allow editing a post/blog-entry for a limited amount of time only? ", "text": "There are numerous websites that allow users/visitors to post content (such as comments to blog posts or news). The published post can be edited by the poster, but only for some amount of time (typically in the order of minutes). After that, the \"Edit\" button no longer appears and the post can't be edited. My question is: what's the rationale for this behaviour? If it is technically possible to let the users editing their posts, why not offering this feature indefinitely?"}
{"_id": "78387", "title": "Naming classes becomes debilitating", "text": "I'm not sure if this is an OCD trait or not, but I find that sometimes I get completely blocked unable to continue what I am doing when naming a class (or function, or namespace etc) that I believe is to be used outside of a given project. An API for example. Or a utility class library. If the naming isn't exactly right (in my mind) I just can't continue...I get stuck trying to come up with the right name. I've tried writing little apps that would use it to see what the names look like but that doesn't seem to help... I know it shouldn't matter, and it's against any programming mindset to assume you'd get it perfect first go...I just feel powerless to it... Any tips/ideas would be greatly appreciated..."}
{"_id": "198375", "title": "Why is it impossible for Google to port V8 along with Chrome's codebase in C/Obj-C on iOS?", "text": "Google has given a reason that All apps on iOS have to run in the sandbox environment except for special apps by apple that get to tap into some private APIs. So Chrome on iOS uses whatever the UIWebView provides plus it might be doing its UI stuff and some external caching to add something extra to it. But Why does Google need access to Nitro engine that Safari on iOS has access to. Can't Chrome port the whole webkit engine and V8 for iOS ? Xamarin 2.0 manages to port mono (.net runtime) on iOS along with every app."}
{"_id": "190149", "title": "What are best practices for caching paginated results whose ordering/properties can change?", "text": "What is the best practice for caching paginated search results whose ordering/properties can be changed? Say, in my application, someone wants to see the last 20 discussion threads (out of 10,000). A request would be sent to the database, via `servlet`, to fetch the first 20 records from the discussion threads table as XML/JSON. If they then want to see the next 20, they go onto the next page of results and this fires off another request to get the next lot (limit and offset = 20, etc.). In order to reduce server load and client-waiting, I would like to cache the previous pages of results. However, I have two questions:   1. The table the results are shown in can be ordered by more than one attribute (i.e., thread-creation-date, thread-author, last-post-date). This means that a statement like 'first 20 results' makes no sense without context (i.e., what are we ordering by). How does the front-end, then, communicate to the back-end what it has already loaded? My first thought was to use IDs for each result but sending these back to the server on subsequent requests (and filtering results based on them) would just as time-consuming as sending everything back blindly. How can I do this?   2. What if an attribute of a previously returned result (i.e., most-recent-post-date) has changed? We then need a way of checking each result to see if it's been modified server-side since it was paged in. How can I do this?"}
{"_id": "104879", "title": "Are there any good tools for visualizing refactoring work?", "text": "Many of my co-workers take pride in writing complex algorithms and programs, ones which take significant time to completely grok. I (strongly) tend towards the opposite end. I'm proud when I write a program which a novice (or client) can trivially see is correct, by reading my source code. I'll often take time to mercilessly re- factor, rewrite a given piece of code over, and over, and over, again, until I'm sure that it can be read quickly, requires as little knowledge of specialized APIs (or even references to an English dictionary) to parse as possible, and is as close to natural language as I can make it. This leads to some problems, though, when it comes to convincing (non- technical) clients and employers that my work is worth the money invested. Surprisingly, few people are willing to pay the extra money it takes to obtain code that they can verify for themselves is working as they think it works. In this context: **I'm wondering if there are any good tools for displaying refactoring work**. I usually **use git as a code repository** , and have an almost nervous tick around committing even the smallest changes to my local repo. I'm **fairly sure that most of the information required to show the re- factoring effort is recorded in my git history**."}
{"_id": "58209", "title": "What are some arguments AGAINST using EntityFramework?", "text": "The application I am currently building has been using Stored procedures and hand-crafted class models to represent database objects. Some people have suggested using Entity Framework and I am considering switching to that since I am not that far into the project. My problem is, I feel the people arguing for EF are only telling me the good side of things, not the bad side :) My main concerns are:   * We want Client-Side validation using DataAnnotations, and it sounds like I have to create the client-side models anyways so I am not sure that EF would save that much coding time   * We would like to keep the classes as small as possible when going over the network, and I have read that using EF often includes extra data that is not needed   * We have a complex database layer which crosses multiple databases, and I am not sure EF can handle this. We have one Common database with things like Users, StatusCodes, Types, etc and multiple instances of our main databases for different instances of the application. SELECT queries can and will query across all instances of the databases, however users can only modify objects that are in the database they are currently working on. They can switch databases without reloading the application.   * Object modes are very complex and there are often quite a few joins involved Arguments for EF are:   * Concurrency. I wouldn't have to code in checks to see if the record was updated before each save   * Code Generation. EF can generate partial class models and POCOs for me, however I am not positive this would really save me that much time since I think we would still need to create the client-side models for validation and some custom parsing methods.   * Speed of development since we wouldn't need to create the CRUD stored procedures for every database object Our current architecture consists of a WPF Service which handles database calls via parameterized Stored Procedures, POCO objects that go to/from the WCF service and the WPF client, and the WPF desktop client itself which transforms POCOs into class Models for the purpose of Validation and DataBinding. So my question is, is EF right for this? Are there any pitfalls about EF that I am unaware of?"}
{"_id": "157395", "title": "YAML: translating free-flowing text from XML", "text": "I'm studying YAML as a replacement for XML, but I'm experiencing difficulties when dealing with elements containing free-flowing text with embedded elements. For instance, the following XML document:                   <text>         This is an example text, spanning multiple lines, and it has embedded elements         like <a p=\"value\">this</a> and <b>this</b>.  There is also a list:              <quote>                 <text>The text of the quote, spanning multiple lines, and it has                 embedded elements like <c p=\"value\">this</c> and <b>this</b></text>                 <author>The Author of this quote</author>             </quote>         Text continues here.         </text>      I don't know how to convert the embedded elements in YAML. My understanding is that the above XML document translates to something like this (except for the embedded elements):                   text: >                 This is an example text, spanning multiple lines, and it has embedded                 elements like <a p=\"value\">this</a> and <b>this</b>.  There is also a                 list:                      quote:                         text: >                                  The text of the quote, spanning multiple lines,                                 and it has embedded elements like <c p=\"value\">this</c>                                 and <b>this</b>                         author: The Author of this quote                 Text continues here.      Also, is indentation not needed in some places? Thank you."}
{"_id": "157394", "title": "How to utilize Xcode project & target to manage products?", "text": "At first, hopefully following terms project and product won't be confused. Traditionally, we used to have a code base, which usually was a main project. For our products, we created one project for each product, and these projects surly depended on main project (code base). When product was released, we created release branch for archive and maintenance. Now I'm developing iOS applications, and I noticed there were specific terms for Xcode, project and target, which were similar to project and product. At first look, it's more easier to share configuration between products, to simplify product releases by taking advantage of target and target dependencies. Compared with traditional way, on the other hand, it's more difficult to manage source code, to branch, etc, if number of products goes really large. In practice, is anyone efficiently using this Xcode built-in structure to manage code and products?   I'm quite new at iOS & Xcode and looking for good advice, thanks."}
{"_id": "104874", "title": "Creating a Django development and production app", "text": "I just got started on some web development, and got my feet wet by creating a basic facebook app using Django. I am thinking of publishing the app, and consequently now need a development app that I could make subsequent changes to and roll them out to the production app. I'm completely new to this, and would be really thankful if someone could guide me on how I could go about this, and what the best practices are. (I also plan on letting my friend contribute to the app, so I would need to integrate git or some other vcs in the process right?) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "44148", "title": "CSS practices: negative positioning", "text": "I'm somewhat of a novice to CSS. Anyway, I noticed that an extremely common method used in CSS is to have negative or off-screen positioning, whether it be to hide text or preload images or what have you. Even on SE sites, like StackOverflow and this website, have               #hlogo a { text-indent: -999999em }       set in their CSS. So I guess I have a few questions.   * is this valid CSS? or is it just a \"hack\"?   * are there downsides to doing things this way?   * why is this so common? aren't there better ways to hide content?"}
{"_id": "148624", "title": "How to roll out a feature to only a select few users", "text": "A good example of what I'm trying to ask about would be Facebook's new Timeline feature. In the beginning, only a select few were allowed access to timeline. As the feature became more solidified in how it was working and bugs were fixed in it, additional users were allowed access to the feature. At a later date, a large group of users were allowed access to the feature and now, its a general feature to all users. How does a development team manage this type of feature roll out? I've played with the idea of using configuration settings to selectively control access if something is in testing or in production via a configuration file and conditional if statements in the code. Now while this okay for simple features, I believe that if we tried to implement this in a larger feature set it would become unmanageable. What would be the best way of managing feature roll outs in this manner?"}
{"_id": "113896", "title": "Employer asking me to use API for entire website?", "text": "I'm working with an ASP.net developer, under a boss who doesn't have much technical knowledge. I'm doing the front-end work, and and a database expert doing the backend. However, recently, he said that he would be working on the API for our site- I asked why, thinking we should do the web version first, assuming the API was for mobile apps. However, he said that he would just make a single API to work for all the web and mobile apps, and I would do the front-end for that. Is it just me, or is this a little crazy? If I'm doing front-end, it means there's going to be _two back-ends_ , because I'm going to have to use PHP or something to curl his API to the site, which is twice the loading time as normal. Thank for any help in advance. Also, I happen to be \"the intern\", so I'll have some but not very much pull with this issue."}
{"_id": "113897", "title": "How can I help a 9-year-old learn to develop an application?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  What are some good tools for introducing kids to programming? My 9 year old is obsessed with developing an app, and I have no idea how to help him with this. Where/how should he start? Are there some simple yet useful online courses or tutorials? Does he need to know how to program? And if so, what type of programming courses should I look for? Thanks for any help!"}
{"_id": "102090", "title": "Why isn't Java used for modern web application development?", "text": "As a professional Java programmer, I've been trying to understand - why the hate toward Java for modern web applications? I've noticed a trend that out of modern day web startups, a relatively small percentage of them appears to be using Java (compared to Java's overall popularity). When I've asked a few about this, I've typically received a response like, \"I hate Java with a passion.\" But no one really seems to be able to give a definitive answer. I've also heard this same web startup community refer negatively to Java developers - more or less implying that they are slow, not creative, old. As a result, I've spent time working to pick up Ruby/Rails, basically to find out what I'm missing. But I can't help thinking to myself, \"I could do this much faster if I were using Java,\" primarily due to my relative experience levels. But also because I haven't seen anything critical \"missing\" from Java, preventing me from building the same application. _Which brings me to my question(s)_ : Why is Java not being used in modern web applications?   * Is it a weakness of the language?    * Is it an unfair stereotype of Java because it's been around so long (it's been unfairly associated with its older technologies, and doesn't receive recognition for its \"modern\" capabilities)?    * Is the negative stereotype of Java developers too strong? (Java is just no longer \"cool\")   * Are applications written in other languages really faster to build, easier to maintain, and do they perform better?   * Is Java only used by big companies who are too slow to adapt to a new language?"}
{"_id": "148628", "title": "How safe is it if I store passwords in app.config in C# .net 4", "text": "I am storing database passwords in app.config as plain text. I am also publishing the application. How safe is that password stored in app.config? Can I use a disassembler and find it?"}
{"_id": "102097", "title": "why is it easy to break verification images if they are not distorted to the extent that humans can get them wrong too?", "text": "I don't understand why people like to say \"Images had to be distorted otherwise they would be easily cracked\". I'm talking about those verification images that we had to type to identify that we are humans. Exactly what steps must we take to break even a simple image? like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vmPUb.png) Ok so i'm guess we had to read all the bytes of the image and try to draw some sense out of those bytes? because if that's _really_ how it is done it does seem really pretty tough (so what's with that comment that it's _easily cracked_ ), or is there a better way to crack images (that make it so easy after-all) ?"}
{"_id": "142742", "title": "what is Docking Framework", "text": "I searching for undestanding `Docking Framework` concept in web, but I don't understand its concept and benefit. I see exist several 'Docking Framework' in java such as `Netbeans Platform` or `MyDoggy` or `Sanaware` and etc but I don't understand its benefit. Do you can explain it? Thanks."}
{"_id": "132335", "title": "Which is better SICP or HTDP", "text": "I have read that SICP (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs) is hard and HTDP (How To Design Programs) is better as an introductory course. I would say I am fairly good in maths but not a genius.So how hard is SICP, is it harder than knuth or cormen."}
{"_id": "147513", "title": "How to call modern Pascal?", "text": "Should the developers who creates programs with Delphi, FPC, Lazarus agree with the name of the language? This struck me since every possible variation not only adds confusion for new programmers, also when I write or name each of them, I feel that it's not fully correct.   * Pascal. We know how Wirth dislikes OOP, so this plain naming is not correct. There were years where there were no objects in Pascal so it's also not correct to name it Pascal.    * Delphi (\"please, give me a link to the code fragment in Delphi\"). Seeing how strong fpc/Lazarus is while keeping the high level of compatibility, now it's also isn't completely correct.   * Object Pascal. Seems like a good choice, but the only places where it used noticeably is Delphi help and Wikipedia. And seems like there's even no badge \"Object Pascal\" at stackexchange/stackoverflow.  This also makes me sad because the developer of other languages don't hesitate at this moment. They can mention multiply compilers or dialects, but rarely hesitate in how to name the language."}
{"_id": "222305", "title": "Model-View-Controller -- Where does a factory class go?", "text": "I'm working (slowly) on a small Flask project. One of my models is a class called `Post`, which is a lightweight `namedtuple`. `Post` objects are created by a `PostFactory`, because creating a `Post` involves hitting a database. The `PostFactory` holds the necessary database connection, so the `Post` objects can be serialized. What part of the model/view/controller division does a factory object naturally fit in? Is it part of the models, since it's tightly coupled with `Post` objects? Or is it a controller, since it manipulates models?"}
{"_id": "222303", "title": "How do you effectively develop the same application from multiple computers?", "text": "I've already read If you use multiple computers, how do you sync everything? \\- but that was off topic... I am specifically thinking about this from a programming side. I have powerful desktops at home where I do personal projects and work where I obviously do work related projects... I also have a laptop that I use for programming when I get the chance. I use dropbox and other sync tools for the majority of my work, but, I have found no decent solution for programming projects. Recently, I started to use GIT and whilst I like it for source control, I don't like pushing in tiny changes as it feels a waste when there hasn't been many significant changes. So, I am just looking for some advice, people who work with multiple computers - how do you effectively develop on multiple machines? I am thinking at present that keeping my working folder in Dropbox may just be the easiest solution, however, I can't help but feel there is a better solution out there."}
{"_id": "222309", "title": "Which way to terminate reading loop is the preferred approach?", "text": "When you have to iterate a reader where the number of items to read is unknown, and the only way to do is it to keep reading until you hit the end. This is often the place you need an endless loop.   1. There is the always `true` that indicates there must be a `break` or `return` statement _somewhere_ inside the block.              int offset = 0;     while(true)     {         Record r = Read(offset);         if(r == null)         {             break;         }         // do work         offset++;     }        2. There is the _double_ read for loop method.              Record r = Read(0);     for(int offset = 0; r != null; offset++)     {         r = Read(offset);         if(r != null)         {             // do work         }     }        3. There is the single read while loop. _Not all languages support this method_.              int offset = 0;     Record r = null;     while((r = Read(++offset)) != null)     {         // do work     }      I'm wondering which approach is the least likely to introduce a bug, most readable and commonly used. Every time I have to write one of these I think _\"there has to be a better way\"_."}
{"_id": "140321", "title": "What is the difference between building and compiling ?", "text": "What's the difference between Building and Compiling."}
{"_id": "196798", "title": "Is it possible in C++ to define several methods at once?", "text": "Sorry for the confusing title of this question, but I can't think of an exact way to word it. I have a very long class with hundreds of similar methods and I am trying to find a way to construct it without so many lines of code and so many DRY violations. Each time I add a new property to my class I have to write two methods and update the copy function. There are already over 80 properties. Currently this class is written in Java but I was wondering if it were written in C++ if it could be done more efficiently. I think it can be done using preprocessor x-macros like described in wikipedia here but I am not a fan of macros and would prefer to do it using the language itself if possible. Here is a simplified snippet of my Java class:               class InMemoryPerson implements Person {         private HashMap<String,Object> values = new HashMap<String,Object>();              public InMemoryPerson copyFrom(Person p) {             setName(p.getName());             // more code to copy all the properties...         }              public void setName(String name) {             values.put(\"name\",name);         }              public String getName() {             return (String)map.get(\"name\");         }              // many more methods for all the different properties...         // each method may have a different type     }"}
{"_id": "99722", "title": "How do I prepare for an interview with a jack-of-all-trades CV?", "text": "I have a CV with a vast array of different technologies that I've used at my former jobs. In my experience at those jobs, I employed parts of those technologies depending on what the job required, but never enough to be a master of all the remote parts of the technologies used. But as I've been interviewing for positions, employers see that I have experience in a technology, and ask very specific technical questions that, while I might've known when using them, I can't answer now. To learn everything about each of the technologies on my CV seems to be a gargantuan task that would be overwhelming. How do I prepare for job interviews where each prospective employer focuses on a different subset of my experience in great detail?"}
{"_id": "67112", "title": "Languages and frameworks to build REST services", "text": "I'm currently in the process of developing a REST service that will be consumed by an iPhone app. Basically, the service wraps existing business logic. This business logic is written in c# and I'm writing the service in c#. From a purely curious point of view (not this project) my questions are: What other languages and frameworks exist to build REST services? If the technology choice was open which one would you choose and why? Can you wrap c# assemblies using non Microsoft languages? Would you ever do it? (If the development team was able to support it)"}
{"_id": "196796", "title": "What is a good license for community submissions to commercial partially closed source software?", "text": "I am maintaining a small code base that I am considering selling\u2013 but I want to allow developers that use it to submit code for addition to the trunk. This way they can extend the framework and the community can benefit. I want them to retain copyright to their code, but to allow me to use it however I desire, for commercial and non-commercial purposes. I don't want to be obligated to release any submitted source(although as copyright holders they may). The end user product will be binary distributions of the compiled code base. Is there a good existing license for a project of this nature? I could compromise a little to use an existing license which does not fully match this, if it will save me the legal headache."}
{"_id": "99729", "title": "Should the internal naming (classes, methods, database tables, etc) of entities be changed if the marketing and UI naming changes?", "text": "We've had a long living product for about 8 years now. Over time, the names of concepts and entities change. Should we put the work in to rename all the code base and database tables and columns to match these new names? Is there a study made on this or some best practices published? Thanks"}
{"_id": "137672", "title": "Communications regarding maintainability of code", "text": "I'm in search of good language or metaphors to discuss the maintainability of code with non-technical folks (PMs, business sponsors &c). In particular, I've recently created a few one-off, get-it-done-tonight, gets- the-job-done pieces of code. Everyone, including the internal sponsor, knew that we were saving a couple hours based on the premise that the code would be used once, for the immediate need, and not again. Then the inevitable: \"Hey, remember that thing we did? Let's do it again, but with these minor changes.\" Of course, the minor changes aren't so minor, all the more so because the code was written as a big ol' procedural nastiness hinging on assumptions about the environment. [Yes, yes, I know, avoid the problem in the first place. Don't write bad code. Write everything as if it will be maintained by someone else, or me years from now. That's a different question, though. This is after it's happened.] So what are some good metaphors for the internal sponsor (non-technical) to quickly explain why the code isn't maintenance or minor-change friendly? The walls on a movie set: There's no garage there, it's just a door. -or- The doors are welded shut on this car. How do you describe this continuum? I want to find some terms for our group that will help talk about how much effort goes in up front and how that will improve maintainability: illustrating the trade-offs in \"Do you want this tonight or do you want it maintainable?\" (In writing this up, I realize this might be the same as defining 'maintainable' for non-technical stakeholders. Seems like explaining loose coupling to non-technical types may not be the best way out of this. If you've successfully done that, how?) Edited for answer: For now I will continue to use building construction metaphors. This will turn into the size and strength of the foundation: \"Yes we can build that building on this, but we will need to rework the foundation to be larger and cover the right area.\""}
{"_id": "157933", "title": "How could one make a reasonably efficient, pointer-sized mutex?", "text": "I have my own ideas about how a pointer-sized mutex could be made: The integer is used as a set of flags, counter, index, and a spinlock that guards an entry in a table of pre-allocated kernel objects given to mutexes only when threads are contending, and released afterward (only need at most N table entries for N threads). Watching MS' SRWLOCK structure change leads me to believe they conditionally store the tail of an xor list (or a table index?) in the pointer when contested. The first 4 bits are flags of some kind. ### To clarify I was wondering if there were any other ideas about making a user mode mutex that is the size of a pointer and only requires the allocation of a kernel object if it is contested. My idea involves spinlocking, so I am hoping there exists something that does not."}
{"_id": "136105", "title": "Designing class methods: self contained or explicit calls?", "text": "I'm probably butchering the terms, if someone knows the appropriate terms - that'd be great. But my question is: should I design my classes so that their methods' parameters be accessible from the outside, or should they be all self contained? For example, I want to set a domain name for a class, which will served as the 'active' domain:               function setDomain($url){             if ($this -> domainUrl = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST)){                 $this-> domain = $this->db->get_where('domains', array('host' => $this->domainUrl));                      return $this;             }                  return false;         }      and then go the route of:               function addDomain(){             $query = \"INSERT INTO domains (host) VALUES ('$this->domainUrl')\";             $this->db->query($query);             return $this         }      or I can abandon the entire route of setDomain(), and than just call the url explicitly, such as:               function addDomain($url){             $query = \"INSERT INTO domains (host) VALUES ('$url')\";             $this->db->query($query);         }      Which would you say is preferable and I guess - what is that dependent upon, because there might be cases where I'll need to call it explicitly."}
{"_id": "136104", "title": "How can I debug a memory leak in a service", "text": "I have a windows service program that is running on one of our servers. It has a memory leak of some kind within the program. When it first starts running it is using 20,000k memory. Within a few days it is up to 400,000k of memory. It is a fairly simple program that tracks running processes and writes the information to a database. I am unsure on how I can debug a program running on a remote machine to find out where the memory leak is coming from. What methods would you suggest I use in order to try and track this down? **Update**   The program has a lot of exception handling in place already. However, it has no logging whatsoever. What information should I be logging in order to track down the memory leak?"}
{"_id": "136102", "title": "Package conventions for MVC app", "text": "Which (if either) of the below is the more conventional/acceptable way to structure packages in a J2EE app? I'm trying to follow an MVC pattern as much as possible.   * foo.bar.users      * foo.bar.users.servlets     * foo.bar.users.DAO     * foo.bar.users.Entity   * foo.bar.orders      * foo.bar.orders.servlets     * foo.bar.orders.DAO     * etc... or   * foo.bar.DAO      * foo.bar.DAO.users     * foo.bar.DAO.orders     * ...   * foo.bar.servlets      * foo.bar.servlets.users     * foo.bar.servlets.orders     * ..."}
{"_id": "196426", "title": "Delivering and caching files in asp.net", "text": "The question is - what is an effective way to deliver files to users? Consider an asp.net application which gives an ability to view various files. A kind of image library or web file directory. Key points are:   * user can upload arbitrary files of size <= 10Mb   * files are stored on disk   * files never change   * user can remove a file   * there is a certain access check procedure for accessing a file So I'd need to find some balance between availability (i.e. caching) and security (i.e. access control). Currently user issues a request in a form `/attachment/{id}`, and a controller reads a file from a disk and sends it to a client:               if(HasAccess(user)) {        var data = File.ReadAllBytes()        return new FileResult(data);     }      I suspect that's not an optimal way: it involves asp.net application pipeline and uses disks a lot. Can be this way optimized? Can I store such files in Output cache? Are there other ways (not using Controller) to deliver files which should be considered?"}
{"_id": "196421", "title": "What are the best practices to secure a web API?", "text": "I need to build a web service API for our mobile app to interact with our server & database (in ASP.Net MVC 4, but that's hardly relevant). Wile most actions do not need users to be registered with our service, we would like to restrict access only to users of our app. What are the methods to make sure that calls made from somewhere else (e.g. someone wanting all our data, or building an unofficial app) are rejected? My initial idea is for the device to ask the server for a token, which is randomly generated and sent as is. All other methods will check that the request headers contain a specific one that will be md5 hash of the salted token. The server knows the token and salt and is able to compute the hash and compares it with the one sent. In addition, the token as a limited lifespan, and the device must get another one every other hour. That seems quite easy to implement and although probably not 100% proof, that seems to be a good idea. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "109454", "title": "Would scala be a good choice instead of Java?", "text": "We will be starting a new project which will involve training all the .net developers in Java (frameworks/ECO system etc). We have a lot of code written in C# and it seems that all of this will be wasted as we have to re-write it all in Java. The problem I see is that the first year or so (probably 2 years) we will have nothing to deliver as we will spend most of the time reproducing what we had before but now in Java. Since our team is distributed in different offices around the world and we have a large number of java developers (20 to 30) and 10 developers using .net, we want to get all the developers using the same language/platform so we can start to reuse components/modules. So I can understand managements point of view. Yesterday I came across Scala and was wondering if it would be better to use this with the current product (which is written in C#) and then at least we will have a working product in a year. Also in a year we have modules that can be used in the Java world whilst we migrate other parts of the product. Would Scala be a better choice than Java considering what we are trying to achieve?"}
{"_id": "196428", "title": "Issues to be considered while loading jQuery?", "text": "1. I have seen many answers in SO regarding using Google's CDN to load jQuery instead of   loading it from the local server. In essence I understand this is the issue related with decreased latency, better caching. But I want to know the technical answer, perhaps an example mentioning why it is even an issue to just load a 30KB file. We see nowadays websites with rich multimedia features which do significant download from server, so in such light does this file size make any difference?   2. Also there are huge concerns regarding using such \"heavy weight\" library if all you are using is just a fraction of subset of features? And if you are going to use at all, it is recommended to use compressed version (30+ KB) instead of the uncompressed one(200+ KB)? I also know the usual answers to it, perhaps if someone can shed more insight to it? My both questions mentioned above are essentially trying to raise the same issue. I would be very grateful for answers that can provide the perspective to it rather than usual answers in SO?"}
{"_id": "216274", "title": "What are some efficient ways to set up my environment when working on a remote site?", "text": "Hello fellow Programmers, I am still a relatively new programmer and have recently gotten my first on- campus programming position. I am the sole dev responsible for 8 domains as well as 3 small sized PHP web apps. The campus has its web environment divided into staging and live servers -- we develop on the staging via SFTP and then push the updates to the live server through a web GUI. I use Sublime Text 2 and the Sublime SFTP plugin currently for all my dev work (its my preferred editor). If I am just making an edit to a page I'll open that individual file via the ftp browser. If I am working on the PHP web app projects, I have the app directory mapped to a local folder so that when I save locally the file is auto-uploaded through Sublime SFTP. I feel like this workflow is slow and sub-optimal. How can I improve my workflow for working with remote content? I'd love to set up a local environment on my machine as that would eliminate the constant SFTP upload/download, but as I said there are many sites and the space required for a local copy of the entire domain would be quite large and complex; not to mention keeping it updated with whatever the latest on the staging server is would be a nightmare. Anyone know how I can improve my general web dev workflow from what I've described? I'd really like to cut out constantly editing over FTP but I'm not sure where to start other than ripping the entire directory and dumping it into XAMP."}
{"_id": "216275", "title": "How do I set up pairing email addresses?", "text": "Our team uses the Ruby gem hitch to manage pairing. You set it up with a group email address (e.g. `dev@mycompany.com`) and then tell it who is pairing:               $ hitch james tiffany      Hitch then sets your Git author configuration so that our commits look like               commit 629dbd4739eaa91a720dd432c7a8e6e1a511cb2d     Author: James and Tiffany <dev+james+tiffany@mycompany.com>     Date:   Thu Oct 31 13:59:05 2013 -0700      Unfortunately, we've only been able to come up with two options:   1. `dev@mycompany.com` doesn't exist. The downside is that if Travis CI tries to notify us that we broke the build, we don't see it.   2. `Dev@mycompany.com` does exist and forwards to all the developers. Now the downside is that _everyone_ gets spammed with every broken build by every pair. We have too many possible pair to do any of the following:   1. set up actual `pair-james-tiffany@mycompany.com` email addresses or groups (n^2 email addresses)   2. set up forwarding rules for `dev+james+tiffany@mycompany.com` (n^2 forwarding rules)   3. set up forwarding rules for `james+tiffany@mycompany.com` (n forwarding rules for each of n developers) Does anyone have a system that works for them? ## EDIT I obviously missed a very important piece: we use GMail Business for all our company mail. We can add and remove users and groups, and users can create filters, but we don't have control over the MTA itself."}
{"_id": "216273", "title": "Python scripts link to GUI using an IDE", "text": "I am studying python. Now I can write python scripts(codes) to some extent. I am interested in making GUI to those written programs.I like to do it using an IDE rather than using PyGTK or Tkinter. Can anyone help me how to start with this and link my scripts to a GUI. I downloaded a IDE called \"glade\". But I don't know how to use this IDE. I need some tutorial guide also. Can anyone help me.Please.Thank you!"}
{"_id": "78655", "title": "70-506 - Silverlight Certification", "text": "I'm looking at the description for the 70-506 exam, and it looks like it doesn't count towards any MCPD exam. Is this correct, or am I looking at this incorrect? This is what I'm looking at: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-506&locale=en-us"}
{"_id": "29113", "title": "Upgrading from XP Pro to Win 7, anything I should worry about?", "text": "I do mainly .NET work so I assume that the framework is all fine and that. But have there been reports of various tools like .NET Reflector and the like not working properly with Win 7? This is a company-wide thing so there isn't much I can do about it, but once everything is reinstalled I'm hoping to not find anything shocking. Cheers."}
{"_id": "109187", "title": "Random number for HTTPS MAC", "text": "Recently I found that Netscape used quite simple algorithm to generate random number for Message Authentication Code to establish an HTTPS connection (Nestscpe used time, process identification number, and parent-process identification number). So now I wonder what source of seed do modern browsers use to guarantee true randomness?"}
{"_id": "109184", "title": "Is it common to have downtime at a programming job?", "text": "At my company, I find that there are some days that there are very few tasks to do. I make it a point to do research to learn new things about my craft on these days. I would say that on average, I have about one day per week that there is not much to do (or some combination of time over the week). I would like to know if this is a common situation in software development environments, and does the answer to this question vary between full-time and contract work."}
{"_id": "79521", "title": "My coworker is a nice guy, but his performance is sub-par. Do I tell my boss?", "text": "I was placed on a project about three months ago that was until then under development by a single, newly hired developer because it was falling behind. To be fair, the project is an interface to a medical device that has a lot of subtleties and is relatively complex, so placing one person on the project who had no experience at the company was probably a bad decision from a managerial perspective. Anyway, once I started working on it I realized that... well, it just didn't work at all. The UI looked nice, but it didn't actually do much of anything, and what it did do it was doing incorrectly. Again, to be fair, much of this was due to the fact that this developer was not properly prepared to write an interface to our device. However, I also quickly realized that the code that was in place was brittle and extremely hard to maintain. Now I do not claim to be the best programmer in the world. I work with a lot of very smart people who are better developers than I. I do however try very hard to write code that is as simple as it can be and robust. I test my checkins. If I see that my code is getting messy and hard to work with early on I change it. I have had a few talks with my coworker in an attempt to help him write better code. This is a bit tricky because a) he has 20+ years of experience in the field and I have only 5, and b) he was hired as a so-called \"UX expert\" and others view him as an experienced individual. That said, I just don't see it. He is a very nice guy and he is reasonable, yet time after time he checks in code that is fragile, works only in the most optimistic of cases, and 9 times out of 10 I end up fixing bugs in his work. His code just seems amateurish and he obviously doesn't have the level of experience that he claimed to have when he was hired. It has come to the point where the extra hours I spend refactoring his code and fixing his bugs have taken a toll on me. The way I see it I have two options:   1. Do nothing, bust my butt to make sure this product goes out on time and is robust and wait for him to fail in the future (I will not be working with him on this project after the initial release.)   2. Tell my boss about his performance. My boss is a reasonable man, but I just feel awkward taking this approach. I don't like to 'bash' (for lack of a better term) my coworkers and I don't know how he will take it. So, that's about it. I have tried to work through this with my coworker by explaining why his implementation won't work or how his code could be made to be more maintainable, but he continues to make the same mistakes. I'm very interested to hear how others have handled similar situations, especially people in management currently. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer to me."}
{"_id": "105833", "title": "How to brush up on general CS knowledge?", "text": "Just a heads up: this will be a repost from stackoverflow. As a person who's going to graduate very soon from the university (and who didn't always pay enough attention to what the teacher said) I decided to brush up my \"university\" CS knowledge (i.e. it's been 3 years since I took my Operating Systems course). I'd like to revise everything (or at least the important stuff) I learned in the past 5 years or so. The problem is that I don't really need to go through all the presentations/lectures I was given during my courses, since I already know most of that stuff and they tend to be rather lengthy and very detailed. Therefore I'm looking for a book/set of books/presentations that would, very briefly revise all the common CS problems. You know starting with the basics (the definition of an algorithm) and then moving to other topics like algorithms and data structures, programming, databases, networks, operating systems, numerical analysis, probability. Are there any such materials out there? I tried googling but I always end up finding rather detailed stuff. Obviously it won't be a 10 pages long booklet, but I'm not really looking for a set of 10 books each 1200pages long neither."}
{"_id": "231483", "title": "Slugify via helper or store slug on database?", "text": "I have a simple question: **Slugify via helper or store theslug on database?** I mean, let's suppose that I have `Guilherme Oderdenge` on database and I want to transform it into a human-readable URL such as `http://myapp.com/guilherme- oderdenge/`, what's the best way to perform this? Storing `guilherme- oderdenge` in the database or transforming `Guilherme Oderdenge` in a slug with a helper like `user.name.slugify`? I know there are some ways to reach the expected result, but which one is better? Or at least there is a better way? ### It depends of the technology that you're using -   I'm using Ruby On Rails with MySQL."}
{"_id": "131687", "title": "How to structure unit tests for a GUI app using C# and NUnit", "text": "I've been asked to do a small side-project to supply a simple application to one of our customers. Normally I would be working on back-end code where I have all of my testing needs figured out, and I've not yet had the dubious pleasure of writing tests for the GUI, so it's a little unclear to me how I should set up the testing code and tools for an EXE. My first instinct was to simply include the tests with the application code, however that would require supplying a number of test-specific dependencies, which I have been instructed to specifically not ship to the customer. I am also unable to squeeze out any cash for a purpose built test tool, so I need to use the tools I have at hand ( ** _StoryQ_** , **_RhinoMocks_** , and **_NUnit_** ), which really should be more than enough to test the behavior of a simple GUI app. So as far as I can see, this leaves me with trying to strike a good balance between keeping the design really simple, or purposefully over- engineering for the sake of the tests. It seems I'm either building the app with the business logic in a separate library and testing against the library as I usually would, or finding some other mechanism to allow me to the executable without breaking out additional modules that the application design doesn't really need. **Edit:**   Please note that this question is about how to structure the relationship between NUnit and my executable - as opposed to a DLL - and not about how to separate presentation and business logic.   **/Edit** So my question is:   1. Is there a specific/recommended method for configuring a simple GUI application with unit tests to allow me to adequately check state and behavior, using the tools I have at hand, and without resorting to over-engineering?    2. Have I missed something fundamental about the way NUnit should be invoked/configured when testing an EXE (as opposed to a DLL)?    3. Can you provide or point me in the direction of examples of how achieve all of this? I realize that there may be more than one way to do this so I'm looking for specific implementation guidelines based on your experience."}
{"_id": "34526", "title": "A bit of a blast from the past: Can RMI or CORBA operate over IP?", "text": "Question: **Can RMI or CORBA operate over IP?** _I don't think RMI can - does it not operate over IIOP?_"}
{"_id": "224222", "title": "How to score a software architecture?", "text": "When discussing different architectural styles such as 3-tier, CQRS & co. you hear a variety of reasons why X is better than Y. Besides the fact that _better_ is never absolute but depends on the actual context, the arguments often are nothing but gut feelings (or _intuition_ , to use a more professionally sounding word). Now I was wondering how to actually score a software architecture professionally. I guess that I am not the first person on this planet who thinks about evaluating different architectures and comparing them. So what should I watch out for to get a feeling which architecture is better or worse suited for my specific case? This morning I though about it for a while and I came up with a variety of questions that help me. So far I have got the following items on my list:   * How testable is an architecture (tightly integrated systems are harder to test than loosely coupled ones, and some architecture support their own style of testing)?   * How much decoupling and cohesion does an architecture favor (decoupling is usually better than tight coupling, strong cohesion is usually better than loose cohesion)?   * How well does it scale (it should work in the small, but without any changes as well in the large)?   * How does the architecture influence performance (some architectural styles may come with performance benefits / penalties in specific areas)?   * How large are the things I need to change when requirements change (the less I need to change the better)?   * How extendable is it (an extendable system has pre-defined extension points and concepts for extension)?   * How well does it integrate with 3rd-party software (a good architecture is open to being connected to other system)?   * How does it respond to faults (fault tolerance and error handling are ideally already conceptually integrated)?   * How reliable is it (the system should survive outages, crashes, \u2026)?   * How does the architecture behave with respect to the CAP theorem (at least if it's a distributed application, you may have a variety of focuses)?   * How understandable is it (the less I need to explain to someone new to the architecture, the better, in other words: strive for simplicity)?   * How well is it documented (a well-known and established solution is better than a newcomer)?   * How big is the community around it (a large community makes it easier to find people to work with, trainers, \u2026)? What do you think of this list? Are these questions reasonable? What is missing? Or is my approach completely wrong?"}
{"_id": "200466", "title": "Code Alteration During Runtime", "text": "Since Javascript is an interpreted language, entire functions can be changed during runtime. I have recently been contemplating a framework that would allow for dynamic code changes (such as UI plugins) to take effect without having to reload the page, while still providing enough information to undo the change if desired. I have begun to test this concept with small examples with success, but have not had the chance to test the idea for anything useful. Is there any common adverse side effects to changing code during runtime or is it considered bad practice?"}
{"_id": "188516", "title": "Ledger or log design for a point-based system?", "text": "Right now creating a new service that will integrate into our company's existing platform. The service will be responsible for tracking \"points\" that a user can generate over time through certain activities. I am caught between two different methods of approach. I'm not sure whether to choose one of the following structures to continually manage points:   1. Create a \"log\" of points and instead keep one running total in the database, like a key/value field, where the value is the current points balance that is simply adjusted during each transaction.   2. Create a \"ledger\" system where each time the points are recalculated after a certain condition, but the _entire_ ledger is assessed to determine the most up-to-date points balance. Don't think it's relevant, but the backend DB is Riak. Which has the least drawbacks, or is there a better way? How does the StackExchange point system work in relation to the above? Many thanks for the input!"}
{"_id": "145913", "title": "How do I write unit tests for robots (and other mechanical devices)?", "text": "I'm a member of my high school's robotics club, and am responsible for programming the robot. One suggestion I keep hearing from various adults is that I should be writing unit tests to help validate my code. The code base is getting a bit big, and I do agree that unit tests would be really helpful in helping me catch bugs quicker. However, I'm not entirely sure how I could accomplish this. To the best of my knowledge, unit testing is done by taking a function (or a subsystem of the code) and feeding it a set of input to make sure it comes out with the same output each time. The code that I currently have doesn't do any heavy data crunching, but rather directly manipulates the hardware components on the robot. Most of the complexity comes from making sure that the electronics are sound, that the code at the moment matches the actual hardware on the robot, etc. Often times, I can only see if there's a problem by loading the code to the robot itself, and attempting to run it. By extension, how can unit tests be written for code meant to operate any mechanical device? It seems to me that you can only catch errors by physically observing the operation of the machine. Or am I just misunderstanding how unit tests should work? ( _If it matters, here's thecode, it's written in C++, and I'm participating in FRC_)"}
{"_id": "180767", "title": "Pseudocode for Appel's algorithm implementation", "text": "I'm trying to implement the version of Appel's algorithm for vector hidden line removal (i.e. I'd like to avoid any form of rasterization). I found the description of this algorithm here - http://wheger.tripod.com/vhl/vhl.htm but it doesn't mention how to actually deal with implementation and I'm having a difficulty with this... To be more precise - how can I write a code (well, even at least pseudocode) that in result will yield that \"All the faces are subdivided into subfaces such that all points in the interior of this subface are either front facing or back facing\"? And - \"Hence when traversing an edge segment, the visibility increments when going under a body and decrements when coming out from underneath\" - do I have to simulate \"traversing\" an edge? What is the idea in implementation that lays behind it? And, basically, this description is a bit overwhelming for me since it has scant images and pseudocodes so if you can share with me any of those, I'll be very grateful."}
{"_id": "55326", "title": "Can you change a license once you pick one?", "text": "I am working on a product that I don't feel is completely ready but I have a set of users that are very interested in using it now as \"alpha\" testers. I would like to give them the product now for free as \"alpha\" testers, but I would like to later license the software. Is this possible? Can anyone point me to any links/books/articles/etc? Thanks. **EDIT:** Due to the lack of my clarity and the reponses to the question I thought I should add this statement. I haven't decided if I am going to close-source or open-source this project yet. The user base that wants to get their hands on it now has kind of surprised me and I was concerned about what my options are as far as being able to give it to them now as open-source and later change to closed-source, or even vice versa. Thanks to everyone who has answered and commented. I appreciate it the insights."}
{"_id": "181496", "title": "What are the advantages of expressing information in the simplest possible format?", "text": "I want to apologize in advance if my headline is not specific enough, but I think this is a general question, although I have a very concrete example: In my team we maintain a test specification which we use every time we release software. The specification is written in Word and, as a consequence, we occasionally have compatibility problems, wrong formatting in some parts of the document and sometimes people use the heading levels incorrectly. Nothing major, but annoyances none the less. But essentially our specification consists of test cases which can be described simply as a headline with some numbered instructions. I think we would be a lot happier with using a lightweight markup language (e.g. AsciiDoc or Markdown) since it would be sufficient to describe the content. We would have other concrete benefits (add it to git, use diff tools, easily convert to other formats, not needing Word). This made me think - are there any advantages, in general terms, to expressing information in the simplest possible format?"}
{"_id": "22395", "title": "How to set up a distributed version control that can commit to subversion", "text": "We have a trac server setup that works with the svn commits, so we can do things like \"fixed #183\" in the commit messages, and reference the changes involved. Right now I have eclipse with subclipse + trac plugins, and it works pretty well. But **I don't have internet all the time** and it becomes very difficult to commit to an inaccessible svn server. I would like to use some type of local repository for commits, and then push commits all at once, but individually to server. **Changing svn / trac isn't an option at this time**. Other developers can touch the svn server directly. Is there a way to cache the commits locally, and then send them when I have internet again? Take in mind that I can't just do one big commit of all my changes because it makes it a nightmare since I can't selectively merge. Basically is there **a way to do this with git/bzr/mercurialand still use svn/trac** as intended? I'd be willing to do some scripting, but I don't know where to start."}
{"_id": "187266", "title": "Multiple Display of a Document and persist each viewer change in a single document", "text": "i have a scenario where i have to make available a document for viewing and editing to multiple users, the users can edit and view the document at the same time. Now the problem arises here if for example user A and user B are viewing a document at the same time and if both the user change the state of the document and user A saves it at x instant of time and user B saves it at y instant of time where y>z in the time dimension. The changes by the user A will be overridden by changes made by the user B. Possible solutions that i have in mind (1) i'll keep a bit e.g. isViewedCurrently and only allow a single user to view/edit the document, (2) save changes of every user separately and then appoint a role who will merge those changes (impractical) please suggest some solution that i can implement, can anyone explain how google does it, the google docs are shared, viewed and edit by multiple users and changes of each user is persisted. im using SQL server 2008 R2 for persisting the application data. EDIT: google has implemented an editing surface from scratch and that too in JavaScript http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/05/whats-different-about-new-google- docs.html#!/2010/05/whats-different-about-new-google-docs.html http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/05/whats-different-about-new-google- docs.html#!/2010/05/whats-different-about-new-google-docs.html"}
{"_id": "187261", "title": "Configuration file for an API - should it be web.config?", "text": "I have a remote procedure call API where the connection parameters need to be stored somewhere that the API code can access. This API is expected to be used mainly to create web services. I originally planed to store these parameters in a separate xml file, and require users of the API to define the path to that file in code. A coworker has suggested that I should find a way to store these parameters in the web.config file instead. Without a lot of WCF experience, I am under the impression that the web.config file should not be used here, because it contains many settings necessary for a web service or web app to function. I don't want my API to mess with that file. I feel it is too risky. What is your opinion on this? Is web.config an appropriate place for storing settings for my API, or should it be left alone?"}
{"_id": "209717", "title": "How i may develop in php and html?", "text": "I am learning php from the internet on codeacademy.com. I have also learned html and css but the problem that i dont know how can i build a complete website then ! I study everything on its side. But how to put all my knowledge together its very hard! like when should i use this php code? When should i use the html code? So that i can make a full website."}
{"_id": "77296", "title": "static languages or dynamic languages?", "text": "What is the exact border between the static and dynamic languages? I mean I am told the following parameters are the deciding factors:   1. Compilation or interpretation   2. Typing   3. Runtime generation   4. Dynamic evaluation But when I see these parameters, I can find most of them (upto a major extent) in static languages too like late binding of C++, reflection in Java and C#, void or Object types etc. My question is,   * with so much of dynamicness in these static languages, is it necessary to actually learn the dynamic languages?    * I know C++, Java and C#. On the other hand, I know PHP and Javascript. My teacher recommends me to learn more dynamic languages like Python and Ruby. Is it really necessary to do so?    * What is the commercial preference between these languages? Thank you."}
{"_id": "110979", "title": "How does a programmer used to static languages cope with lack of Javascript tooling", "text": "I have programmed pretty much exclusively in compiled languages, particularly Java, for most of my career. One of my favourite things about Java is how productive you can be, and how little code you actually have to write, when using tools like Eclipse. You can:   * Easily and automatically refactor your methods and classes   * View instantly all the places where a method is invoked, or a constant is used (Open Call Hierarchy/Show References)   * Static typing means you can use code completion to show all the parameters/functions available on an object   * Control-click on a function/member/class name to go straight to its definition All these facilities make me feel like the IDE is my best friend. Writing Java code and particularly understanding other peoples' programs becomes far easier. However, I am being called on more and more to use Javascript, and my experience so far has been quite negative. In particular:   * No immediate way of finding a function's entry point (other than a plain text search, which may then result in a subsequent searches for methods further up the call hierarchy, after two or three of which you've forgotten where you started)   * Parameters are passed in to functions, with no way of knowing what properties and functions are available on that parameter (other than actually running the program, navigating to the point at which the function is called, and using console.logs to output all the properties available)   * Common usage of anonymous functions as callbacks, which frequently leads to a spaghetti of confusing code paths, that you can't navigate around quickly.   * And sure, JSLint catches some errors before runtime, but even that's not as handy as having red wavy lines under your code directly in the browser. The upshot is that you pretty much need to have the entire program in your head at all times. This massively increases the cognitive load for writing complex programs. And all this extra stuff to worry about leaves less room in my brain for actual creativity and problem solving. Sure, it's faster to just throw an object together rather than write an entire formal class definition. But while programs may be slightly easier and quicker to write, in my experience they are far harder to read and debug. My question is, how do other programmers cope with these issues? Javascript is clearly growing in popularity, and the blogs I read are about how productive people are being with it, rather than desperately trying to find solutions to these issues. GWT allows you to write code for a Javascript environment in Java instead, but doesn't seem to be as widely used as I would expect; people actually seem to prefer Javascript for complex programs. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "231136", "title": "Why does a monad use \"return\" or \"unit\" rather than \"lift\"?", "text": "This is partly genuine curiosity, and partly a check on my understanding. I'm probably missing the point. In Haskell, why does a monad use operations called `return` or `unit` to describe putting a type into the container -- lifting it into the monadic space? It seems more intuitive to call the operation `lift`. Right now, in my (probably incorrect) port of monads into my own project, I'm using (pseudocode): > MyThing. **lift** (x).bind(f)... rather than > MyThing. **unit** (x).bind(f)... because it's more intuitive for me to think of lifting x into the monadic space. Is that wrong-headed? I keep getting burned by not thinking abstractly enough, and I suspect that's the case again."}
{"_id": "74925", "title": "Let users get requirements together on their own or guide them along?", "text": "I'm sure everyone has experienced something like this. You go into a meeting with a client who has a project. They have no/few requirements in mind and the vaguest understanding of what they want/need. At this point, there seem to be two options: 1) Tell the users, \"Ok, so I can't build something for you if you cannot even describe it yet. Why don't we get back together in a few weeks when you know what you want\". 2) Meet with the users a few times and help them figure out what they want by guiding them through with the good ole Socratic method. \"Do you need to track X?\", \"How about Y?\", \"Do you need functionality Z?\" With the first option, you don't get stuck doing someone else's job, or having gain psychic powers, however, the users might never present you with a coherent specification, or they might take forever as the deadline continues to approach. With the second option, you waste a bunch of time becoming a business analyst, and have to cram a bunch of business knowledge into your head that you will probably never use again, but you will be much more likely to come out with a spec that makes any sense. To me, this is one of the most challenging aspects of development, and I have a feeling I'm not alone in this sentiment. In your experience, which of these options tends to work better?"}
{"_id": "28642", "title": "Absolute statements in IT that are wrong", "text": "I was recently in a discussion about the absolute statement \"It costs more in programming time to optimise software than it costs to throw hardware at a problem\". The general thought (of which I agree with) is that as an absolute statement this is wrong. There are too many variables to ever generalise in such a way. **What other statements do you hear about software/programming that simply do not work as an absolute and why?**"}
{"_id": "24771", "title": "How does the contribution part of \"contributing to an open source project\" take place?", "text": "Note: this question is about the general case... How things usually are. OK so I can download the code and mess around with it, but how do my changes make it into the project officially? Who decides what changes make it into the project, and how? Is there often a list of required changes/additions? What if I have a cool idea that is not mentioned there? How do I get it approved? And what if two people implement the same feature. Who chooses which implementation makes it into the project? Basically, how is the whole thing managed (in the general case)?"}
{"_id": "66794", "title": "Employee vs Contractor mentality and career", "text": "I'm trying to work something out which isn't quite covered in any of the other \"contractor vs employee\" threads. In a nutshell: Is there a natural (possibly even hard-wired and inborn) tendency for people to be meant for one or the other? A bit of background: I suffered a serious burnout over the past couple of years and am taking a sabbatical this year to think things over. With all the reflection I'm coming to the conclusion more and more that I'm just not cut out for the permanent, salaried kind of life. Essentially, I think I just don't have the \"employee mentality\". No matter how good a job is, I just seem to have some visceral, deep-seated need to move around and not be tied down to the same scenery. I'm great in the first year or two when things are fresh, but after that, it just starts to feel really boring and obnoxious to be stuck in the same routine, looking at the same code base, etc, no matter how good the job seems on paper. Most people seem to get into a groove where the stability compensates for any \"contempt of familiarity\" or boredom, but for me it's almost the opposite. This answer to one of my other questions (broadly related to this subject) really got my attention: it feels like I could basically be what they call a \"hunter\" type, a kind of \"slow motion ADHD\" case. I'm great at focusing on things I'm really interested in, and I'm not afraid of working hard. But it has to come packaged with a beginning, progression and end - on a short to midterm time frame. The typical salaried environment, which in software development generally means open-ended \"maintenance mode\", very quickly does my head in, after the first year or two in a new job. I start losing motivation and focus, and eventually slide into burnout. So basically what I'm asking is - do you think this farmer versus hunter theory is real? Not necessarily in a formal clinical psychiatric sense, but just from your subjective experiences? I'd especially like to hear from contractors, or people who have done both. Are you doing it simply because the opportunity is good, and you could do the same job permanently everything else being the same. Or do you have this feeling/mentality like me - that being tied down in the same scenery would drain your soul? **Related question** : Do people generally stick with one or the other? Or do they do both? It seems to me that most people are either employees or contractors/consultants for most of their careers, and that an overlap who do both at will is quite small. I can't find any data to back this up, it's just an impression I've got - and I find it very curious - because it seems to lend support for this idea that people just naturally/viscerally seem to have tendencies to shine in one or the other \"model\" of working. **EDIT** : Thanks for the responses. I think it's quite true that what burns me out is an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction with working for someone else in a typical \"command and control\" business environment. All the jobs I've ever had were permanent gigs which basically fit that pattern - developers treated like factory workers (some places worse than others, but always essentially true) - eg. doing what you're told without much autonomy or self-actualizing purpose. That said, I think I'll still look into doing contracting to see how it works for me compared with permanent gigs. It's probably not perfect, but I think the independence would at least keep things interesting - it took a long time in the _same_ rut before it got to this point where I burned out and became too dysfunctional to work at all. Constant lateral movement may at least keep it under control."}
{"_id": "66790", "title": "best practices for solving Object Oriented design questions during technical interviews", "text": "after getting a Object Oriented design question during technical interview - for example, design a car rental program - what would be the general steps (a.k.a best practices) that the interviewee should follow to solve the problem? what would be the possible pitfalls?"}
{"_id": "66793", "title": "Working with windows Functions for Recovering Shift+Delete files", "text": "I am making software for recovering Shift+Delete files from Windows. I know when files are deleted only links to them are cut off by Windows but the actual file remains there at the same place, so recovering them would require myself to search hard-drive or specifically a particular drive. I installed the code on an old computer with Windows Millennium Edition and works. How can I make it workable for Windows 7?? Are there any API's or references for this that will be helpful?"}
{"_id": "151570", "title": "Using PDO for Data Management", "text": "This question is more a design oriented question than a code specific question. I am new to PHP and I am planning to use PDO as a data access layer. Say for instance I have a class called CITY. Now if I need to create an instance of this class, what is the best technique.   * Should have a singleton DB access class which is used to write and read data from the db layer.    * OR should I delegate it to the individual class object. For example if I invoke city.save() (city is a class), then the city class will handle the saving of that city object's data into the database.  Excuse my ignorance but i have a java background and therefore trying to understand what is the best design principle for data management when using php."}
{"_id": "189396", "title": "Max number of items mapped to same location in hashmap", "text": "I have a question about hashmaps. If you have this hashmap with m slots, and need to map n items to it, and n > m. There will be collisions for sure. But assuming there is simple uniform hashing assumption, this means that the maximum amount of collisions in any spot is the load factor right? The load factor is n/m. But the load factor is probably going to be a decimal, does this mean its a ceiling of the n/m? So if n=6 and m=5, then load factor is 1.2, and the ceiling is 2, so that means the maximum collisions in one spot is 2. Is this right?"}
{"_id": "189395", "title": "Script to check minimum requirements for an application", "text": "Is there a well-known, trusted open source script that we could use as a starting point to build a web-based analyser tool for our application that would be similar in functionality to the Firefox check add-ons tool? For example, check against a specified version of Java, screen resolution, browser versions, etc. Thanks, Kerrin"}
{"_id": "189392", "title": "Which framework should I learn if I want to do web development in Java? Any advice?", "text": "Well, I don't have a strong background in programming. I know C, C++, some C#, some vb, and some basic java and SQL, that's it. I don't have any work experience in web development, so just consider me as a completely new starter. I would like to do web development, and I hope I can easily find a job in web development after I finish my current academic program. So I have started with asp.net MVC framework. But, at least it seems to me that many positions require java programming in web development, so I decide to learn java at the same time while learning .net. Well, there are a lot of frameworks out there. A friend of mine suggests Hibernate, some people say that play framework is good for small applications, whereas some guys recommend spring, which seems to be a very difficult one. I want to start with a framework which is relatively easy to pick up and popular in job market. So what should I start with? And aside from a framework, what else should I learn? Besides, which one is more popular in terms of web programming, .net or Java? It seems that java is required by most employers, and I haven't found many positions indicating .net experience. Which of the two is actually more popular, and what about the trend in the future?"}
{"_id": "73043", "title": "Am I wasting my time building eCommerce website?", "text": "I see a lot of companies such has ekmpowershop, volusion, eshops, prostores and so on that give customers power to build and customise their website (in detail). On the other hand I see companies such as RedTechnology (http://www.redtechnology.com/) that build eCommerce applications for customers. I had a look at How to decide between using an existing eCommerce solution and building your own? as well. Also you have big companies such as Amazon, NextPlc, that will never use the above service. I would like to be self-employed in perhaps developing eCommerce applications, but I am a little reluctant as I see some comments \"As with most Stack Exchange sites shopping recommendations are considered to be off topic as they become out of date so quickly\". Also I am unsure of the amount of competition out there. So would I be wasting my time building eCommerce application for customers? As I believe this will cost more from the customer's point of view and time constraint. In turn customers will be more favourable to the companies such as ekmpowershop, volusion, eshops and prostores? Finally going back to ekmpowershop, volusion, eshops and prostores. How would one build those kind of applications? I am from .NET side."}
{"_id": "141329", "title": "What makes C so popular in the age of OOP?", "text": "I code a lot in both C and C++, but did not expect C to be the second most popular language, slightly behind Java. TIOBE Programming Community Index I'm curious as to why, in this age of OOP, C is still so popular? Note that 4 out of the top 5 popular programming languages are \"modern\", object-oriented capable languages. Now, I agree that you can use OOP in C to some extent, but it's sort of painful and inelegant (well at least compared to C++ I guess). So, what makes C so popular? Is it efficiency; being low-level; the vast majority of libraries that already exist or something else?"}
{"_id": "73047", "title": "When designing a protocol, is it better for a method to accept a single object of a specific type, or an array?", "text": "I'm currently designing a protocol for internal use, so it doesn't make a huge difference in this particular case, but it got me wondering: Is it better for a method to accept a single object of a specific type, or an array of objects, with the documentation specifying the type it will contain? Obviously the array allows for greater flexibility in calling the method, but specifying a type gives the programmer greater clarity as to what the method will be doing. For example, my protocol has a single method (so far), called recieveDroppedItems:. It needs to accept either one or multiple NSURLs, which point at the files dropped on the sender. Thanks in advance for any advice you have! :D"}
{"_id": "144481", "title": "What is sequential code execution?", "text": "I have been looking around on the internet and have not found a good answer yet. If anyone could be so kind and supply a code sample I would greatly appreciate it. I apologize for the simplicity of the question."}
{"_id": "141322", "title": "Examples of continuous integration workflow using git", "text": "Can anyone provide a rough outline of their git workflow that complies with continuous integration.   E.g. How do you branch? Do you fast forward commits to the master branch? I am primarily working with Rails as well as client and server side Javascript. If anyone can recommend a solid CI technology that's compatible with those, that'd be great. I've looked into Jenkins but would like to check out other good alternatives. To put some context into this, I am planning on transitioning from working as a single developer into working as part of the team. I'd like to start standardizing my own personal workflow so that I can onboard new devs quickly."}
{"_id": "184510", "title": "Are there studies about foo/bar/baz and how they inhibit or facilitate comprehension?", "text": "**Preface** `foo`,`bar`,`baz` are instantly recognizable signifiers of example or pseudo code. Their popularity seems to be a strong indication that the programming community accepts them as a good way to indicate the author is showcasing a non-specific implementation of code. As this q+a reveals they are classified as metasyntactic variables. While the history of these words seems to be rooted in over 50+ years of usage I can't find any resources studying their effectiveness. **Question** Rather than take it a face value that their ubiquity is evidence for the effectiveness I'm wondering if there is **evidence** about the impact on linguistic comprehension. To clarify, I know that `foo` is understood as signifying pseudo-code, but I'm referring to comprehension _of_ what the pseudo-code means. **Why** I have re-read the FAQ many times and before I get accused of being chatty I'm not trying to elicit a discussion, I'm not looking for personal anecdotes, I'm asking a question that is relevant to the programming community at large though it's on the edge of our concerns. I realize that there may be not anything published in this area but in case there is it'd be helpful to know in either case."}
{"_id": "67281", "title": "As a software developer, have you ever published an academic paper?", "text": "My university only recognizes academic papers as valid intellectual achievements. I would like to get a sense of how many Software Architect's, Software Engineer, Software Developers and/or programmers bother to publish their findings. Or as programmer do you feel your production should have academic merit as well? (oops!) I guess this is two questions."}
{"_id": "93694", "title": "What are some good Software Engineering books for people who didn't formally study Computer Science or Software Engineering?", "text": "I'm a graduate in the electronic & telecommunication field, but working in a software company. I want to continue in this field and going for Masters in it. Can you recommend me some of the best books on software engineering, which cover almost all the topics in software engineering. I am not looking for books about coding practices such as Code Complete, Pragmatic Programmer, but rather general software engineering references."}
{"_id": "165331", "title": "What's wrong performing unit test against concrete implementation if your frameworks are not going to change?", "text": "First a bit of background: We are re-architecting our product suite that was written 10 years ago and served its purpose. One thing that we cannot change is the database schema as we have 500+ client base using this system. Our db schema has over 150+ tables. We have decided on using Entity Framework 4.1 as DAL and still evaluating various frameworks for storing our business logic. I am investigation to bring unit testing into the mix but I also confused as to how far I need to go with setting up a full blown TDD environment. One aspect of setting up unit testing is by getting into implementing Repository, unit of work and mocking frameworks etc. This mean there will be cost and investment on the code-bloat associated with all these frameworks. I understand some of this could be auto-generated but when it comes to things like behaviors, that will be mostly hand written. Just to be clear, I am not questioning the important of unit testing your code. I am just not sure we need all its components (like repository, mocking etc.) when we are fairly certain of storage mechanism/framework (SQL Server/Entity Framework). All that code bloat with generic repositories make sense when you need a generic layers with ability to change this whenever you like however its very likely a YAGNI in our case. What we need is more of integration testing where we can unit- test our code with concrete repository objects and test data in database. In this scenario, just running integration test seem to be more beneficial in our case. Any thoughts if I am missing any thing here?"}
{"_id": "165336", "title": "Alternative way of developing for ASP.NET to WebForms - Any problems with this?", "text": "So I have been developing in ASP.NET WebForms for some time now but often get annoyed with all the overhead (like ViewState and all the JavaScript it generates), and the way WebForms takes over a lot of the HTML generation. Sometimes I just want full control over the markup and produce efficient HTML of my own so I have been experimenting with what I like to call **HtmlForms**. Essentially this is using ASP.NET WebForms but without the form `runat=\"server\"` tag. Without this tag, ASP.NET does not seem to add anything to the page at all. From some basic tests it seems that it runs well and you still have the ability to use code-behind pages, and many ASP.NET controls such as repeaters. Of course without the form `runat=\"server\"` many controls won't work. A post at Enterprise Software Development lists the controls that do require the tag. From that list you will see that all of the form elements like TextBoxes, DropDownLists, RadioButtons, etc cannot be used. Instead you use normal HTML form controls. But how do you access these HTML controls from the code behind? Retrieving values on post back is easy, you just use `Request.QueryString` or `Request.Form`. But passing data to the control could be a little messy. Do you use a ASP.NET Literal control in the value field or do you use `<%= value %>` in the markup page? I found it best to add `runat=\"server\"` to my HTML controls and then you can access the control in your code-behind like this: `((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = \"blah\"`; Here's a example that shows what you can do with a textbox and drop down list: **Default.aspx**               <%@ Page Language=\"C#\" AutoEventWireup=\"true\" CodeBehind=\"Default.aspx.cs\" Inherits=\"NoForm.Default\" %>     <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN\"\"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd\">     <html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\">         <head runat=\"server\">         <title></title>     </head>     <body>         <form action=\"\" method=\"post\">             <label for=\"txtName\">Name:</label>             <input id=\"txtName\" name=\"txtName\" runat=\"server\" /><br />             <label for=\"ddlState\">State:</label>             <select id=\"ddlState\" name=\"ddlState\" runat=\"server\">                 <option value=\"\"></option>             </select><br />             <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Submit\" />         </form>     </body>     </html>      **Default.aspx.cs**               using System;     using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;     using System.Web.UI.WebControls;     namespace NoForm     {         public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page         {             protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)             {                 //Default values                 string name = string.Empty;                 string state = string.Empty;                 if (Request.RequestType == \"POST\")                 {                     //If form submitted (post back)                     name = Request.Form[\"txtName\"];                     state = Request.Form[\"ddlState\"];                     //Server side form validation would go here                     //and actions to process form and redirect                 }                 ((HtmlInputText)txtName).Value = name;                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"ACT\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"NSW\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"NT\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"QLD\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"SA\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"TAS\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"VIC\"));                 ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.Add(new ListItem(\"WA\"));                 if (((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Items.FindByValue(state) != null)                     ((HtmlSelect)ddlState).Value = state;             }         }     }      As you can see, you have similar functionality to ASP.NET server controls but more control over the final markup, and less overhead like ViewState and all the JavaScript ASP.NET adds. Interestingly you can also use HttpPostedFile to handle file uploads using your own input type=\"file\" control (and necessary form enctype=\"multipart/form-data\"). So my question is can you see any problems with this method, and any thoughts on it's usefulness? I have further details and tests on my blog."}
{"_id": "165337", "title": "Confusion related to sigwait in multiprocess system", "text": "I am having difficulty in understanding IPC in multiprocess system. I have this system where there are three child processes that send two types of signals to their process group. There are four types of signal handling processes responsible for a particular type of signal. There is this monitoring process which waits for both the signals and then processes accordingly. When I run this program for a while, the monitoring process doesn't seem to pick up the signal as well as the signal handling process. I could see in the log that the signal is only being generated but not handled at all. My code is given below               #include <cstdlib>     #include <iostream>     #include <iomanip>     #include <unistd.h>     #include <sys/types.h>     #include <sys/wait.h>     #include <sys/time.h>     #include <signal.h>     #include <unistd.h>     #include <fcntl.h>     #include <cstdio>     #include <stdlib.h>     #include <stdio.h>     #include <pthread.h>          using namespace std;          double timestamp() {       struct timeval tp;       gettimeofday(&tp, NULL);       return (double)tp.tv_sec + tp.tv_usec / 1000000.;     }          double getinterval() {        srand(time(NULL));       int r = rand()%10 + 1;       double s = (double)r/100;     }          int count;     int count_1;     int count_2;     double time_1[10];     double time_2[10];               pid_t senders[1];     pid_t handlers[4];     pid_t reporter;          void catcher(int sig) {       printf(\"Signal catcher called for %d\",sig);     }          int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {            void signal_catcher_int(int);            pid_t pid,w;       int status;            if(signal(SIGUSR1, SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {         perror(\"1\");         return 1;       }            if(signal(SIGUSR2 ,SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {         perror(\"2\");         return 2;       }            if(signal(SIGINT,signal_catcher_int) == SIG_ERR) {         perror(\"3\");         return 2;       }            //Registering the signal handler       for(int i=0; i<4; i++) {         if((pid = fork()) == 0) {           cout << i << endl;           //struct sigaction sigact;           sigset_t sigset;           int sig;           int result = 0;                sigemptyset(&sigset);                if(i%2 == 0) {                  if(signal(SIGUSR2, SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {               perror(\"2\");               return 2;             }                  sigaddset(&sigset, SIGUSR1);             sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &sigset, NULL);           } else {                 if(signal(SIGUSR1, SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {               perror(\"2\");               return 2;             }                  sigaddset(&sigset, SIGUSR2);             sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &sigset, NULL);           }                while(true) {             int result = sigwait(&sigset, &sig);             if(result == 0) {               cout << \"The caught signal is \" << sig << endl;             }           }           exit(0);              } else {           cout << \"Registerd the handler \" << pid << endl;           handlers[i] = pid;         }       }            //Registering the monitoring process       if((pid = fork()) == 0) {         sigset_t sigset;         int sig;         int result = 0;              sigemptyset(&sigset);         sigaddset(&sigset, SIGUSR1);         sigaddset(&sigset, SIGUSR2);              sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &sigset, NULL);              while(true) {           int result = sigwait(&sigset, &sig);           if(result == 0) {             cout << \"The monitored signal is \" << sig << endl;           } else {             cout << \"error\" << endl;           }          }            } else {         reporter = pid;       }                 sleep(3);       //Registering the signal generator       for(int i=0; i<1; i++) {         if((pid = fork()) == 0) {                if(signal(SIGUSR1, SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {             perror(\"1\");             return 1;           }                if(signal(SIGUSR2, SIG_IGN) == SIG_ERR) {             perror(\"2\");             return 2;           }           srand(time(0));           while(true) {             volatile int signal_id = rand()%2 + 1;             cout << \"Generating the signal \" << signal_id << endl;             if(signal_id == 1) {               killpg(getpgid(getpid()), SIGUSR1);             } else {                   killpg(getpgid(getpid()), SIGUSR2);             }                  int r = rand()%10 + 1;             double s = (double)r/100;               sleep(s);           }                exit(0);          } else {           cout << \"Registered the sender \" << pid << endl;           senders[i] = pid;              }             }                 while(w = wait(&status)) {         cout << \"Wait on PID \" << w << endl;       }          }                    void signal_catcher_int(int the_sig) {       //cout << \"Handling the Ctrl C signal \" << endl;       for(int i=0; i<1; i++) {         kill(senders[i],SIGKILL);       }            for(int i=0; i<4; i++) {         kill(handlers[i],SIGKILL);       }            kill(reporter,SIGKILL);            exit(3);     }      Any suggestions? Here is a sample of the output as well In the beginning               Registerd the handler 9544     Registerd the handler 9545     1     Registerd the handler 9546     Registerd the handler 9547     2     3     0     Registered the sender 9550     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 10     The monitored signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 10     The monitored signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 10     The monitored signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 10     The monitored signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 2     The caught signal is 12     The caught signal is 12     The monitored signal is 12     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     The caught signal is 12     The caught signal is 12     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 12     The monitored signal is 10     The monitored signal is 12     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     The caught signal is 12     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     10     The monitored signal is 10     The caught signal is 12     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 12     The monitored signal is GenThe caught signal is TheThe caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 2      Later on               The monitored signal is GenThe monitored signal is 10     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     The caught signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     The caught signal is 12     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     The caught signal is 12     The caught signal is 10     The caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 2     The caught signal is 10     Generating the signal 2     Generating the signal 1     Generating the signal 1      As you can see initially, the signal was generated and handled both by my signal handlers and monitoring processes. But later on the signal was generated a lot, but it was not quite processes in the same magnitude as before. Further I could see very less signal processing by the monitoring process Can anyone please provide some insights. What's going on?"}
{"_id": "208398", "title": "Inner workings of the IF() function - why aren't expressions evaluated?", "text": "# Short version How does the **`IF()`** function cause the passed expressions to NOT be evaluated prior to being passed in as parameters? # Detailed version I am part of a standards committee, and a discussion was initiated which, in general, is trying to **ban** the use of the **`IIF()`** function. The general consensus is that if you want to do a short line-length assignment **`IF()`** is okay. And if you for some reason want to evaluate two expressions, don't try to accomplish that all on one line, explicitly and purposefully evaluate the expressions on seperate lines, then do an **`IF()`** call with the results in the **`If True`** and **`If Else`** parameters. I'm asserting that before a **`Function(param1, expression)`** is stepped into, any expressions are evaluated. Then, their evaluated value is passed as a parameter. That being asserted, this makes sense:               Sub Main()         Dim intTest As Integer = 0         Dim blnResult As Boolean = IIf(2 = 2, Integer.TryParse(\"3\", intTest), Integer.TryParse(\"4\", intTest))         'intTest = 4     End Sub        * As expected, **`blnResult`** is **`True`**.   * Because the conditional of the **`IIF()`** function is **`True`** , the value of the expression in the **`\"If True\"`** parameter is the resulting assignment.   * But **BOTH** the **`If True` AND `If Else`** expressions were evaluated (in written order) prior to even stepping into the **`IIF()`** function, so **`intTest`** became **`4`**.   * As far as I'm concerned, that is programatically expected, but not the results desired. On the reverse side of the coin, we have this:               Sub Main()         Dim intTest As Integer = 0         Dim blnResult As Boolean = If(2 = 2, Integer.TryParse(\"3\", intTest), Integer.TryParse(\"4\", intTest))         'intTest = 3     End Sub      As the inverse of the previous issue, we now have:   * As expected, **`blnResult`** is True.   * Because the conditional of the **`IF()`** function is **`True`** , the value of the expression in the **`\"If True\"`** parameter is the resulting assignment.   * But **ONLY** the **`If True`** (in this case) is evaluated, so **`intTest`** became **`3`**.   * As far as I'm concerned, that is the results desired, but not programatically expected. I'd like to see a custom function that does the same thing as **`IF()`**."}
{"_id": "208394", "title": "Strategy for normalising and interpreting location data", "text": "I'm a bit stuck with a problem involving the normalisation of location input data from the user (which comes from a third party). ## Aim To logically breakdown and interpret the user location input field and understand if it is listing single or multiple locations, from one or more countries. * * * ## The Problem The type of data that I am receiving from the user input is messy and has no logical structure or consistency as show below. Daily geocodes are limited from google, so I have to use them sparingly. I want to efficiently process the location input from the user and send the correct geocoding query to google to get the right result. * * * ## Data Sources Data is irrational and irregular and could be supplied in some of the following formats:               London, UK                              Alternative format     England, London                         Reversed order     London                                  Generic location                 London Sheffield, Newcastle             Three separate locations in the same country without consistent commas     London, Sales, Sales Assistant          Non location content inserted     London [NOT SPECIFIED]                  Other non location content inserted with non alphabet chars not separate with commas     London, Washington, Brazil, England     Mix of unrelated locations, including cities and countries     Washington, London, Kent                Mix of places within a single country         * * * ## Proposed Solution **Step 1: Breakdown data**   * Put each separated word in an array **Step 2: Sanitize data**   * Strip out invalid chars, commas, additional spaces etc   * Strip out any words against a stoplist.txt (like job, sales, in, at, etc) **Step 3: Deterimine if valid location**   * See if each individual array item has been geocoded before, if not, geocode and store   * Log any words which have been geocoded with no result \u2013 add these into the stoplist file to avoid pointless geocodes **Step 4: Interlink values**   * Compare if a places coordinate value falls within the range of another array item. If it does, we know they are parents and we treat them as a single item   * London + England -> London coordinates falls within the co-ordinate range of England so we know it is a single location, not two separate ones. * * * ## Issues **Issue 1: Kent, London, Sussex** Technically, there is a Kent in the USA, and it is the first one that comes up when you type it into google maps. However since all the results are in England it is extremely unlikely that the result we want is the USA one **Issue 2: England, Washington, New York** There is a Washington in England, but this doesnt seem likely to be the one in England * * * ## Question Is my proposed solution of breaking the words down into separate entities and relinking them the most logical solution? Any help or advice would be much appreciated, I know it's not any easy problem."}
{"_id": "208395", "title": "Is this a good use case?", "text": "I've been studying object oriented analysis and, so to get started with this in practice I've decided to first of all build my own management system to have my customers data and so on. Trying to gather requirements for the first time and write use cases for the first time led me to some doubts. I want to ask here about some doubts regarding the use cases. One of the requirements I've thought of was \"manage customers\". From this requirement I've obtained some use cases:   1. Register new legal person as customer;   2. Register new natural person as customer;   3. Update and correct customer data;   4. Remove a customer from the system;   5. Read customer's summary; Now, I'm greatly in doubt about all of this. First, is this right: take one single requirement and from it derive many different use cases? Or should be just _one_ use case \"Manage Customers\" containing everything? Second, I'll give an example about what I did. I choose to start by the first one. So I wrote the following use case: **Title:** Register new legal person as customer; **Actor:** User; **Scenario:** The user chooses to register a new company as customer. The user informs the company data and the system validates the data informed. The user is then prompted to inform the data of the responsible for the company and the system validates the data informed. The user is then taken to the list of all legal person customers. Now, I'm pretty sure I'm not doing this right. First, this seems to simple, it's just like if we said \"well, the user goes and register the data\". Second, all of the others use cases would be exactly like that, so I can't see how this is going to help me out. Third, from this use case I could obtain just three possible objects \"legal person customer\" and \"responsible for the company\", so I really think this is not enough. Also, usually there are many requirements like that \"manage customers\", \"manage employees\" or \"manage suppliers\" and it seems at first tha they will always be like that. Is this correct? Those kind of requirements always end up with this kind of uses cases that are simple like this? Am I doing this right? Is there something wrong with the uses cases I've figured out and the way I wrote that particular use case? How do we work with this kind of use cases that are so simple that the scenario is almost like just stating again the objective of the use case? I know there are many questions there, but any kind of help is appreciated. I'm starting now to work with this kind of thing and I'm unsure if I'm doing things right. Thanks very much in advance!"}
{"_id": "98446", "title": "Should I be wary of signing a non-disclosure agreement with someone I just met?", "text": "**1/22/12 update** in case you were puzzled as to why I haven't accepted an answer: Pretty much all of the answers make the obvious point that working for him would have been silly, but none of them seemed to answer the question. **tl;dr** : Some guy I just met says he wants me to join his company. Before he shows me what they do, he wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Is this weird? I'm traveling right now. Someone who saw me coding seemed to think I was smart or something and started talking with me. He explained that he owns a software company, told me a bit about what it does and told me that he was looking for a programmer who would work for a stake in the company. He explained that the company's product is being developed rather secretly, so he couldn't tell me much. But he did tell enough about the product to convince me that he's not completely making this up, which is a decent baseline. He suggested that he show me more of what he's been working on and, after seeing that, I decide whether I want to join. Because of the secrecy behind the product, he wants me to sign a non-disclosure agreement before we talk. I'm obviously somewhat skeptical because of the random nature by which we met. In the short term, I'm wondering if I should be wary of signing such an agreement. He said it would be easier to show me the product in person rather than over the internet, and I'm leaving town tomorrow, so I'd have to figure this out by tomorrow. If I decide to talk with him, I could decide later whether I trust that it's worth spending any time on this company. The concept of being able to avoid telling a secret seems strange to me for the same reason that things like certain aspects of copyright seem strange. Should I be wary of signing a non-disclosure agreement? Is this common practice? I don't know the details of the agreement of which he was thinking, (If I end up meeting with him, I'll of course read over the agreement before I decide whether to sign it.) so I could consider alternatives according to the aspects of the agreement. Or I could just consider the case of an especially harsh agreement. This question seems vaguely related. Do we need a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)? Thanks"}
{"_id": "98441", "title": "How safe it is to do minor JVM upgrades?", "text": "I have been working on the JVM for years and I have very rarely experienced a JVM crash ... that is until approx 6 months ago. Since that I have experienced approximately 5 JVM crashes resulting from 2 JVM defects. The solution from Oracle was always the same ... upgrade. Each upgrade is always to and from a point release ... i.e. and Oracle's latest suggestion (after confirming that they did fix the bug) was to upgrade from 1.6u20 to 1.6u26. How concerned should I be upgrading minor versions of the JVM? Is this a big event that necessitates enormous amount of regression testing or are they safe upgrades that should be embraced?"}
{"_id": "145005", "title": "How to keep Free/Paid version of the app separate in subversion", "text": "I have a paid application on the android marketplace, however, I want to release a free ad-supported version. The easiest way I thought to do this was to set up a branch on my subversion repository that has the additional code to add the ads. However, when I went to submit this to the android marketplace, they require unique package names. This solution no longer works for me because I'd have to change the package of every class file, which would make merging the trunk and branch very painful. What is the best way I can keep these two projects together, sharing patches, but with a different package?"}
{"_id": "224914", "title": "How to introduce Scrum in a company accustomed to Scrumbutt or Scrumfall?", "text": "A colleague of mine works as a consultant. He is recently asked to help a software development company to improve their processes. The company is aware of some of the issues, like the number of bugs or the fact that they can't release their lead product more often than once per year, but nobody there knows what to do. My colleague identified that they have a primitive in-house process which they call Scrum, but which isn't. My colleague wants to suggest moving to \u201cthe real Scrum\u201d. If he does that, he will encounter two issues:   * Managers will reply that they already use Agile, and that it wasn't helpful.   * It would be particularly tricky\u00b9 to explain both to the managers and to the CEO of the company that it was not the real Scrum which was used until now, but rather a mix between Scrumfall and Scrumbutt. What to do? * * * \u00b9 In this company, two of the three managers claim they know perfectly well Agile and Scrum and apply it flawlessly to their respective teams. Claiming that they know nothing about any of those two subjects would create a hard to handle situation. My colleague's role is also not only to give his opinion, but to apply the \u201cgood\u201d methodology for the next three months within this company. Starting by claiming that managers are incompetent in this context is not a solution."}
{"_id": "145009", "title": "How to perform code review of visual code?", "text": "Lately, I've been writing code in SAS Enterprise Guide, which produces \"code\" that looks like this (screenshot from the linked page): ![SAS Enterprise Guide screenshot](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Vozla.jpg) My question is twofold:   1. Do you think it's necessary to perform code review on this type of code? My gut feeling is **yes** , given that (1) it's still code, just visually laid out, and (2) errors = big problems.   2. If \"yes\" to above, how to perform the review? Are there standards for visual code? I'm really open to any ideas, comments, and suggestions here. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "101033", "title": "What is an effective way to convert a shared memory-mapped system to another data access model?", "text": "I have a code base that is designed around shared memory. Each process that needs to access the memory maps it into its own address space. The data structures in the shared memory are directly accessed, that is, there is no API. For example: Assume the following:               typedef struct {       int x;       int y;       struct {         int a;         int b;       } z;     } myStruct;          myStruct s;      Then a process might access this structure as:               myStruct *s = mapGlobalMem();      And use it as:               int tmpX = s->x;      The majority of the information in the global structure is configuration information that is set once and read many times. I would like to store this information in a database and develop an API to access the database. The problem is, these references are sprinkled throughout the code. I need a way to parse the code and identify global structure references that will need to be refactored. I've looked into using ANTLR to create a parser that will identify references to a small set of structures and enter them into a custom symbol table. I could then use this symbol table to identify which source files need to be refactored. It looks like a promising approach. What other approaches are there? Of course, I'm looking for a programmatic approach. There are far too many source files to examine each one visually. This is all ordinary ANSI C. Nothing else."}
{"_id": "101032", "title": "Parallel programming library? (+ some features)", "text": "**Note** : this is a reposting as the question has been considered non- suitable for the Stack Overflow forum and should have been posted here. The original topic is there. I'd like to talk of multithreading, parallelism and the libraries available today to achieve that work. I'm especially wondering whether an easy-to-use library to achieve this concept (given below) already exists, or whether it would have to be written, and how hard it would be. **The purposes of the library** I'm looking for:   * accessible to most developers, not only to engineers or highly graduated persons (this should mean developers WANT to use it, not being afraid of it)   * available to C++ developers    * portable (start with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, then extend to mobile devices)    * lightweight    * easy-to-use (related to accessibility)  **The most important features** I'm looking for:   * task parallelism    * task cancellation (in a soft and abrupt manner)    * task dependencies  **The existing related libraries** :   * **Thread Building Blocks** : really complicated to use, and rather restrictive licence (GPL / commercial), it's the only library that I've found and that includes all of the features I'm looking for    * **Grand Central Dispatch** : currently not portable, not too complicated, no task cancellation (once started), no task dependencies, no automatic dependency support (only manual)    * **PFunc** : Unix only, still a bit complicated, no task dependency, no task cancellation    * **Microsoft Task Parallel Library** : MS platform and .NET only, no hard cancellation, restricted and manual task dependencies (one task cannot wake up more than one other task)    * **OpenCL** : not currently available on all platforms, not much more that an GPU parallel task library (not as high level as I would wish)    * **OpenMP** : widely supported except free versions of Visual Studio, no task cancellation nor automatic task dependencies  So what are your thoughts about all of these? Why do you think there are so few libraries corresponding to these needs? Or did I miss some great library? And do you think it would mean too much work to achieve one? Or not interesting enough? Note that the lacks I wrote are those I found out with some searches, I'm not a expert in any of these libraries. The final purpose of this library, even if it's rather a dream, would be programming in a parallelized way as easily as you usually do with sequential programming. Ceylo"}
{"_id": "130221", "title": "Is there really such a thing as \"push\"?", "text": "Once you escape the realm of electrical signals and are dealing with software, is there really such a thing as a \"push\" architecture where there isn't periodic polling? I can't think of any design where it's not polling at _some_ level. It seems like it's always just a level or two beneath the actual abstraction/API you are dealing with. Sockets at the receiving end of most \"push\" connections just poll for incoming requests, etc."}
{"_id": "130224", "title": "Are buffer overflows no longer a threat these days?", "text": "After following buffer overflow examples and reading on them in various books/websites it seems there are lots of preventative measures in place to protect against them these days. ASLR, /GS flag security cookie, stack- protector in linux, etc, etc... Some of the examples I have looked at give instructions on how to disable certain security features so that the examples will run...This seems like a really stupid idea to me - when running code against a real system you are not going to have the luxury of disabling its security features. So what is the deal with buffer overflows these days, have them been rendered redundant by advances in security or are they still of use?"}
{"_id": "101038", "title": "What is understood under \"unit\" in unit testing", "text": "As I understand in theory under \"unit\" people mean method (in OOP). But in practice tests which verify some method in isolation are very fragile behaviour tests (verifying not the result but the fact that some dependency method was called). So I see a lot of people who by unit understand a small set of closely related classes. In this case only outer dependencies are mocked/stubbed and for dependencies which are inside unit real implementations are used. In this case there are more state, meaningful (according to specification) and not so fragile tests. So the question is how do you feel about these approaches and is it valid to call the second approach unit testing or may be it is some kind of low-level integration testing? If you see some specific considerations about applying TDD by one of these ways of testing, I would be thankful for your thoughts."}
{"_id": "51133", "title": "Why job postings always looking for \"rockstars?\"", "text": "I have noticed a recent trend in requesting programmers who are _rockstars_. I get it, they're looking for someone who is really good at what they do. But why (pray) make the reference to a rockstar? Do these companies really want these traits as a real rockstar?   * Party all night and wake up to take care of quick business in the morning?   * Substance abuse,   * Narcissism with celebrity,   * Compensation well exceeding their management,   * Excellent at putting on a short-lived show,   * Entertainment instead of value,   * 1 hit (project) wonders or single-genre performers,   * Et cetera What is wrong with _Senior_ or _Principal_ Software Engineer who has an established and proven passion for the business? Rather do we mean quite the opposite, someone who:   * rolls up the sleeves and gets to work,   * takes appropriate direction and helps influence teams,   * programs in lessons' learned and proper practices,   * provides timely communication to the whole team,   * can code and understand multiple languages,   * understands the science and theory behind computation, Is there a trend to diversify the software engineering ranks? **How many software rockstars can you hire before your band starts breaking up?** Sure, there are lots of folks doing this stuff on their own, maybe even a rare few who do coding for show, but I wager the majority is for business. I don't see ads for rockstar accountants, or rockstar machinists, or rockstart CFOs. What makes the software programmer and their hiring departments lean towards this kind of job title?"}
{"_id": "181140", "title": "Am I allowed to create closed-source software with open-source code?", "text": "I was using a popular music package (Ableton Live) when I opened the legal section of the helpfile and saw that the program contained code licenses that appeared to be both free as in freedom and free as in beer. I cannot find an online copy, alas, but if necessary I can list the licensed packages. As far as I can see there are 3 possibilities here:   1. A fairly large company is violating code licensing - highly unlikely, if that were so why would they include the license text?   2. It's actually legit for some reason to charge money for and close source of a package that contains opensource code - this is news to me, definitely.   3. I am misunderstanding something - highly probable."}
{"_id": "188982", "title": "How to run an applet like a desktop application without installing entire JDK?", "text": "I want to make a desktop application- an analog-clock with the option of setting alarms using java. For rendering all the graphics and the button features, a Swing applet is the answer. But the problem is that I want to run the applet onto the desktop and so need an applet viewer like thing. Applet viewer comes with the JDK and I think installing entire JDK on a system for running just a simple alarm clock is really not a good idea at all because it will take a lot of space. Is there a way out? Can I get just the applet viewer (or anything similar to that) instead of entire JDK so that I can run my applet? Or is there any other way I can do my project using Java?"}
{"_id": "140635", "title": "when to introduce an application services tier in an n-tier application", "text": "I am developing a web based application whose primary objective is to fetch data from the database, display it on the UI, take in user inputs and write them back to the database. The application is not going to be doing any industrial strength algorithm crunching, but will be receiving a very high number of hits at peak times (described below) which will be changing thru the day. The layers are your typical Presentation, Business, Data. The data layer is taken care of by the database server. The business layer will contain the DAL component to access the database server over tcp. The choices I have to separate these layers into tiers are:   1. The presentation and business layers can be either kept on the same tier.   2. The presentation layer on a separate tier by itself and the business layer on a separate tier by itself. In the case of choice 2, the business layer will be accessed by the presentation layer using a WCF service either over http or tcp. I don't see any heavy processing being done on the Business layer, so I am leaning towards option 1 above. I also feel for the same reason, adding a new tier will only introduce the network latency. However, in terms of scalability in case I need to scale up or scale out, which is a better way to go? This application will need to be able to support up to 6 million users an hour. There will be a reasonable amount of data in each user session, storing user's preferences and other details. I will be using page level caching as well."}
{"_id": "140633", "title": "How can I refactor a code base while others rapidly commit to it?", "text": "I'm on a private project that eventually will become open source. We have a few team members, talented enough with the technologies to build apps, but not dedicated developers who can write clean/beautiful and most importantly long- term maintainable code. I've set out to refactor the code base, but it's a bit unwieldy as someone in the team out in another country I'm not in regular contact with could be updating this totally separate thing. I know one solution is to communicate rapidly or adopt better PM practices, but we're just not that big yet. I just want to clean up the code and merge nicely into what he has updated. Would using a branch be a suitable plan? A best-effort-merge? Something else?"}
{"_id": "253379", "title": "GIT workflow for web development", "text": "Long ago the small team of web developer I work with started using git for web development. Back then we just committed to staging or master directly and then merged frequently between the two. It was better than nothing, but it was also a mess. Not too long ago we adopted the gitflow work flow. While it's certainly better than the chaos that came before it seems somewhat cumbersome and excessively release/milestone oriented. My fellow devs are frequently ask me to clarify how it's supposed to work and what should merge and shouldn't. In general it seems ill suited for web development work where we're deploying code frequently and without tracking specific milestones for release. On a friends recent suggestion I've begun looking at GitHub Flow. Reading Scott Chacon's post here hits the pain point perfectly with this: > So, why don\u2019t we use git-flow at GitHub? Well, the main issue is that we > deploy all the time. The git-flow process is designed largely around the > \u201crelease\u201d. We don\u2019t really have \u201creleases\u201d because we deploy to production > every day \u2013 often several times a day. FWIW, I've also looked at this nice round up of workflows on Atlassian's site: https://www.atlassian.com/git/workflows#!workflow-feature-branch However they ALL look like poor choices for web development in a small team and again geared towards major application releases not frequent/daily releases. The is a question over on SE asking to compare git-flow to github-flow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18188492/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-git- flow-vs-github-flow That's a good answer in general, but as I mentioned in my comment below meta.programmers.SE seems to indicate that questions about general best workflow practices belong here and I was hoping for a broader list of possible answers than just git-flow and github-flow, while being specific to web development. Hence I think it warrants a new question here. With that, what do you find is the best/prefered git based workflow for a small web development team working on projects with fairly continuous deployment? Is it github-flow or something else?"}
{"_id": "141588", "title": "What is an effective way to organize tasks for a new project?", "text": "Is there a practical solution to organizing the initial tasks for a new project? To elaborate, imagine the features/stories/goals are laid out for a project. How might one go about organizing those into sane tasks for the first few versions? The scenario I typically have in mind has the features listed as a high-level reference for what the end user-experience should involve. The tasks for constructing such features are then broken down into chunks (such as \"create interface for X component\"). Such a task is not necessarily \"tied\" to only that feature and may be useful when building subsequent features. Is breaking features down into small, code-able solutions valid? Or should they be slightly removed from any specific implementation? I do not expect that there is one \"right\" answer to this question, but I am looking for a fairly pragmatic and unobtrusive approach. As a note, I'm looking for solutions that are independent of any tools or \"systems\" used for managing the tasks themselves."}
{"_id": "141586", "title": "Using \"prevent execution of method\" flags", "text": "First of all I want to point out my concern with some pseudocode (I think you'll understand better) Assume you have a global debug flag, or class variable named \"debug\",               class a :        var debug = FALSE      and you use it to enable debug methods. There are two types of usage it as I know: first in a method :                method a :           if debug then call method b;           method b :      second in the method itself:                method a :             call method b;           method b :           if not debug exit      And I want to know, is there any File IO or stack pointer wise difference between these two approaches. Which usage is better, safer and why?"}
{"_id": "246427", "title": "Can this code be made more concise?", "text": "I came across some code recently where in many, many places, expression evaluations were being assigned to different arrays one index at a time. A psuedo-code example:               array[0] = item1[0] + item2[0];     array[1] = item1[1] + item2[1];     array[2] = item1[2] + item2[2];      or               array[0] /= variable;     array[1] /= variable;     array[2] /= variable;      My instinct would be to first create a function for iterating through an array and assigning an evaluation using a single for loop. Then secondly, just call that function with arguments for the array, a number defining how many indices to loop through and the items to be evaluated.   * Obviously, one obstacle to that method is the fact that the expressions being evaluated are arbitrary - they can be additions, subtractions, divisions, multiplications.   * And for another, the expression operands can be either variables or arrays, and of course in statically typed languages, the types could be varied.   * Also, the number of operands may be varied. Is it possible to make this code more concise taking into account all possible cases, and what would the solution be called in technical terms?"}
{"_id": "36311", "title": "Consistency of an object", "text": "I tend to keep my objects consistent during their lifetime. In some cases, setting up an object requires multiple calls to different routines. For example, a connection object may operate in this way:               Connection c = new Connection();     c.setHost(\"http://whatever\")     c.setPort(8080)     c.connect()      please note this is just a stupid example to let you understand the point. In between calls to setHost and setPort the object is inconsistent, because the Port has not been specified yet, so this code would crash               Connection c = new Connection();     c.setHost(\"http://whatever\")     c.connect()      Meaning that it's a requisite for connect() to have previous calls to both setHost and setPort, otherwise it won't be able to operate as its state is inconsistent. You may fix the issue with a default value, but there may be cases where no sensible default may be devised. We assume in the later example that there's no default for the port, and therefore a call to c.connect() without first calling both setHost and setPort will be an inconsistent state of the object. This, to me, points at an incorrect interface design, but I may be wrong, so I want to hear your opinion. Do you organize your interface so that the object is always in a consistent (i.e. workable) state both before and after the call ? **Edit** : Please don't try to solve the problem I gave above. I know how to solve that. My question is much broader in sense. I am looking for a design principle, officially or informally stated, regarding consistency of object state between calls."}
{"_id": "167", "title": "How can I avoid the Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?", "text": "Using the keyboard, and the mouse for long time is probably one of the causes of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. How can I avoid it?"}
{"_id": "163", "title": "Language agnostic programming books", "text": "Are there any great programming or software development books that are language agnostic? Why should I read it?"}
{"_id": "146678", "title": "Standardized Data Structure Interface", "text": "I want to work with a variety of data structures (arrays, singly/doubly linked lists, sorted structures, etc.) on a plug-and-play basis. For example, I want to be able to easily swap in and out the sorted list and the array (which is re-sorted after every insertion/deletion), to test which one has better performance. In every language I know of, the public interface to such data structures is very inconsistent. So changing the implementation requires a lot of work. Is there a language, or a language-agnostic design pattern, that makes it easy to define a generic public interface that works with any data structure? Of course, I understand how different performance would be (e.g., binary search in a sorted array vs linear search in a regular array). All I ask is that the performance of the data structure doesn't degrade asymptotically or by a large constant factor due to the use of the standard interface. Example problem: iterate through the container of numbers, find the two numbers that are nearest each other, and remove the pair of them. (If several pairs are equal distance, pick an arbitrary pair). I'd like the code to solve the problem to be unchanged as I switch in and out different containers."}
{"_id": "85452", "title": "is requiring a video player download acceptable", "text": "Our site currently is going to require our users to download a player to view videos they will want to view on our site. The videos get uploaded by users from various sources (smartphones in 3gp format for example). However most people have Flash on their machines. I am trying to 'make a gentle stand' and tell the team that requiring a download of a video player is not acceptable. My thinking is this:   * instead of allowing people to upload 3gp and other formats then re-serving the exact format on REQUESTs from our site's users   * we will instead use a video converter such as FFMpeg to convert every uploaded video to FLV for viewing on flash.   * so when a user requests to view one of the videos on our site -- boom they probably already have Flash installed so we just play the video in their Flash player. I feel serving up FLV flash video is best. Does it ring true that requiring, say, a 3gp player download just to view a video is the wrong approach?"}
{"_id": "185640", "title": "My most cherished dream project seems to resemble a product that already exists. What shall I do?", "text": "I guess this is more of a \"comfort seeking\" question than legality one. You see, for the past couple of months I have been brainstorming and developing a product, all by myself. I was planning to release it under some kind of free license. While I know no idea is ever a unique one, I was quite happy to note that the way I had visualized my software, in its form and purpose, was one of its kind, albeit bits and pieces resembling others. That private project was quite cherished one. Now I find there is a product, at least a decade old, that is so close to mine that mine looks plagiarized. While with the rest of them I had a 8:2 in my favor, feature wise, with this product it seems transposed, including the philosophy. I admit I can vaguely recall hearing the name of it but never thought of reading about it - the name didn't seem to invoke interest etc - until now. I read about it and now I am distraught and agonized. There is no risk of any legal action as that software is in \"free\" domain and mine is still a private project, and I don't know if it will be ever make any money from any buyer which will then lead to trouble, but that is not the point of the question. The point is how to stay focused and enthusiastic as before? I have about a month of work pending, mainly programming and complete testing, and this has completely left me drained. I am in a fetal position. I am telling myself about Newton-Leibniz, Faraday-Henry kind of independent activities with similar to same results but that isn't helping. I don't want this to spill over to my regular life and work life. I can sense two issues that are pricking me. (1) I wanted praise for my creativity. (2) I was harboring a small desire of a possible chance of making good money by attracting a buyer. This might be a casual and almost an inconsequential problem for the citizens of the business world, but I am from a different world. Help."}
{"_id": "146673", "title": "foreach($items as &$item) considered harmful?", "text": "Is it considered bad practice to pass items in a PHP array by reference instead of by value? Relevant documentation: http://php.net/manual/en/control- structures.foreach.php"}
{"_id": "146674", "title": "Is there an infinite amount of knowledge in a programming language?", "text": "I can program in Java, C#, C, Scala, and Javascript fluently. I'm comfortable with Objective-C, but I don't remember the conventions used for memory management. I can read Python and Ruby and I've written scripts in Ruby. I was given the task of writing a job posting. Our application (Hansen) was built in C# (not by us) and it uses some event triggers written in Visual Basic. My group has used C# to build programs that interacts with Hansen through Hansen's web services. I wasn't specific on the technologies we need. I felt listing specific skillsets (knowledge of C# and IIS and Oracle) were a barrier to entry that wasn't necessary. My junior co-worker (by two weeks) felt that we should be focused on .NET only. Our managers are hiring for an entry level position. It started an argument where he takes the belief that we need C# and that a Java trained guy couldn't possibly adapt. I counter that there's not an infinite amount of knowledge in a programming language and that there's new languages out there and that it's fairly easy to pick up a programming language if one has knowledge of the functional programming world (C# added anonymous functions and generics and Java added anonymous classes and generics because of pressure from that world). Our code is better off by having it. I've had this discussion before when I was working in a Java group within my department. I just don't think there's an infinite amount of knowledge in a programming language or a programming platform. I think someone comfortable the JPA can adapt to LINQ and to ADO.NET. Am I missing something in assuming that programming languages don't have any infinite amount of knowledge and that four years of experience dedicated solely to C# doesn't automatically make one a better programmer?"}
{"_id": "205710", "title": "What is the advantage of determining scopes statically and using them dynamically in case of Python?", "text": "Firstly let me clarify that I know C and am learning Python. So my OOPS is kind of bad. I was reading the official tutorial and found this > Although scopes are determined statically, they are used dynamically. At any > time during execution, there are at least three nested scopes whose > namespaces are directly accessible: > >   * the innermost scope, which is searched first, contains the local names >   * the scopes of any enclosing functions, which are searched starting with > the nearest enclosing scope, contains non-local, but also non-global names >   * the next-to-last scope contains the current module\u2019s global names the > outermost scope (searched last) is the namespace containing built-in names > I understand namespaces. I think scopes are the same thing. But I couldn't figure out what does the sentence about scopes mean? What is the advantage of such an arrangement? I understand the sentence but couldn't visualize that. So please don't say that this is problem with my English."}
{"_id": "97985", "title": "Should I plan ahead, or figure out programs as I'm writing them?", "text": "I was thinking today about Paul Graham's book \"Hackers and Painters.\" More specifically, these two paragraphs: > \"I was taught in college that one ought to figure out a program completely > on paper before even going near a computer. I found that I did not program > this way. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of a computer, > not a piece of paper. Worse still, instead of patiently writing out a > complete program and assuring myself it was correct, I tended to just spew > out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape. > Debugging was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights... > [It] seemed like programming consisted of debugging. > > ... As far as I can tell, the way they taught me to program in college was > all wrong. You should figure out programs as you're writing them, just as > writers and painters and architects do.\" That's how it's taught in my college and I'm pretty sure most other colleges as well. You figure out what your program will do, and then you figure out how to do it, then you type and debug. Sometimes you make a basic version and add functionality, but the idea is that you think through and then type. This sort of reminds of that chapter in Feynman's book called \"He Solves Radios By Thinking!\" where he paced around thinking of how the radio could be broken, and then fixes it. To me, that's what programming is about - thinking and then finding a solution. Is this the prevalent approach to coding? If so, why don't more people just hack away and put a program together without having a preconceived idea of what it's going to look like? What are the advantages and disadvantages of think & type vs. spew & beat?"}
{"_id": "139227", "title": "Browser parsers vs Stand-alone parsers", "text": "Firefox/Chromium have well implemented(?) parsers. Then why are parsers like lxml and other such parsers being developed with so much effort put into it? Aren't they re-inventing the wheel? Or are they solving a different problem? Can't parsers in browsers be made into standalone libraries?"}
{"_id": "135762", "title": "Learning Asynchronous programming", "text": "Asynchronous non-blocking event driven programming seems to be all the rage. I have a basic conceptual understanding of what this all means. However what I'm not sure is when and where my code can benefit from being asynchronous, or how to make blocking IO, non-blocking. I'm sure that I can simply use a library to do this, but I'm more interested in more in depth concepts, and the various ways to implement it myself. Are there any comprehensive/definitive books, or other resources on this subject (like GoF for Design Patterns, or K&R for C, tldp for things like bash)? (Note: I'm not sure if this is actually functionally an identical question to my question on Learning event driven programming)"}
{"_id": "139222", "title": "Storing translation data as JSON column", "text": "We're deciding on how to store translations of some descriptions of database items. We could go the traditional way and keep a translations table (and a language table and an object_translation linking table) OR we thought it might be better to just have a Description column that contains JSON like the following:               {          \"EN\": \"This is the translation in English\",          \"EE\" : \"See on kirjeldus eesti keeles\"     }      Are there any serious downsides as to why we shouldn't use this? (I haven't seen it being used anywhere else)"}
{"_id": "203018", "title": "How do people get rid of conditional branches in Functional Programming?", "text": "Long running switch cases or if-else-if constructs are avoided in OOP using polymorphism wherever it is applicable. instead of branching by matching a value, branching is done at class-level itself. How can similar approach be applied in Functional Programming paradigm, Clojure specifically ?"}
{"_id": "203014", "title": "Author has inserted copyright into code with gnu public license notice - implications?", "text": "I've found a project on Github that I'm interested in contributing to which claims to be open source and has a GPL license included with it. But the original author has added a copyright notification to each source file. I'm not sure why but I don't feel right contributing to a project that's always going to have someone else's name on it. It really breaks the community-created feel, and makes me uneasy about what the author might choose to do with the project next. What are the implications of copyrighting open source GPL code as so? What power does this give the original author over a contributor?               # Copyright (C) 2012, 2013 __AUTHORNAME__     # This file is part of __PROJECTNAME__.     #     # __PROJECTNAME__ is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify     # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by     # the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or     # (at your option) any later version.     #     # __PROJECTNAME__ is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,     # but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of     # MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the     # GNU General Public License for more details.     #     # You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License"}
{"_id": "45863", "title": "Resources for developers to help them create better bug reports", "text": "Are there any good articles or videos available that developers could use to learn to create more informative bug reports? Often times I have to verify cases that were opened by developers where the title is the only information available, so I would like to help the devs become better bug reporters for both our benefit."}
{"_id": "45864", "title": "How do you conquer the challenge of designing for large screen real-estate?", "text": "This question is a bit more subjective, but I'm hoping to get some new perspective. I'm so used to designing for a certain screen size (typically 1024x768) that I find that size to not be a problem. Expanding the size to 1280x1024 doesn't buy you enough screen real estate to make an appreciable difference, but will give me a little more breathing room. Basically, I just expand my \"grid size\" and the same basic design for the slightly smaller screen still works. However, in the last couple of projects my clients were all using 1080p (1920x1080) screens and they wanted solutions to use as much of that real estate as possible. 1920 pixels across provides just under twice the width I am used to, and the wide screen makes some of my old go to design approaches not to work as well. The problem I'm running into is that when presented with so much space, I'm confronted with some major problems.   * How many columns should I use? The wide format lends itself to a 3 column split with a 2:1:1 split (i.e. the content column bigger than the other two). However, if I go with three columns what do I do with that extra column?   * How do I make _efficient_ use of the screen real estate? There's a temptation to put everything on the screen at once, but too much information actually makes the application harder to use. White space is important to help make sense of complex information, but too much makes related concepts look too separate.   * I'm usually working with web applications that have complex data, and visualization and presentation is key to making sense of the raw data. When your user also has a large screen (at least 24\"), some information is out of eye sight and you need to move the pointer a long distance. How do you make sure everything that's needed stays within the visual hot points?   * Simple sites like blogs actually do better when the width is constrained, which results in a lot of wasted real estate. I kind of wonder if having the text box and the text preview side by side would be a big benefit for the admin side of that type of screen? (1:1 two column split). For your answers, I know almost everything in design is \"it depends\". What I'm looking for is:   * _General principles you use_   * _How your approach to design has changed_ I'm finding that i have to retrain myself how to work with this different format. Every bump in resolution I've worked through to date has been about 25%: 640 to 800 (25% increase), 800 to 1024 (28% increase), and 1024 to 1280 (25% increase). However, the jump from 1280 to 1920 is a good 50% increase in space--the equivalent from jumping from 640 straight to 1024. There was no commonly used middle size to help learn lessons more gradually."}
{"_id": "203013", "title": "Structuring Access Control In Hierarchical Object Graph", "text": "I have a Folder entity that can be Moderated by users. Folders can contain other folders. So I may have a structure like this:               Folder 1         Folder 2             Folder 3         Folder 4      I have to decide how to implement Moderation for this entity. I've come up with two options: **Option 1** When the user is given moderation privileges to Folder 1, define a moderator relationship between Folder 1 and User 1. No other relationships are added to the db. To determine if the user can moderate Folder 3, I check and see if User 1 is the moderator of any parent folders. This seems to alleviate some of the complexity of handling updates / moved entities / additions under Folder 1 after the relationship has been defined, and reverting the relationship means I only have to deal with one entity. **Option 2** When the user is given moderation privileges to Folder 1, define a new relationship between User 1 and Folder 1, _and_ all child entities down to the grandest of grandchildren when the relationship is created, and if it's ever removed, iterate back down the graph to remove the relationship. If I add something under Folder 2 after this relationship has been made, I just copy all Moderators into the new Entity. But when I need to show only the top-level Folders that a user is Moderating, I need to query all folders that have a parent folder that the user does not moderate, as opposed to option 1, where I just query any items that the user is moderating. **Thoughts** I _think_ it comes down to determining if users will be querying for all parent items more than they'll be querying child items... if so, then option 1 _seems_ better. But I'm not sure. Is either approach better than the other? Why? Or is there another approach that's better than both? I'm using Entity Framework in case it matters."}
{"_id": "87341", "title": "Ready to Open source the software, but want to make some money out of it", "text": "I'm an UG Student and an Entrepreneur. I have started a small company with which I'm trying to provide solutions, to various companies in my city, through my software. I put in 30-40 hours of coding and development. I've been a huge fan of Open Source projects and I've also built by software on python. But now when it comes to selling my software to my customers, I expect money. (Am I being a Hypocrite?)   1. Is there any OSS license under which I can make money and also make my source open? Please suggest.   2. Or any other way to make money with my softwares? (I guess I deserve some credit. If not the code, atleast the ideas? :D )"}
{"_id": "146583", "title": "Displaying the number of registered users to a website", "text": "I am building an online game much like Mafia Wars. I was thinking of displaying the number of registered users on the home page, but then I thought: > \"What if a new user sees that the total number of registered users is > **5**?!\" :D That would be too embarrassing to my _still growing_ game. Then another thought came by: > \"Why don't I display **500** instead?!\" ;) Nobody would know if there is actually 500 users registered to my website unless of course they start actually playing and interacting with other players. However, I just have a feeling that this isn't ethical. What if this generates a negative publicity to my website?!! What's your opinion should I fake the number? or should I honestly display it? or should I wait till I have 1000 real account then start displaying the number? And most importantly is this legal?! :D"}
{"_id": "146586", "title": "Merits of a \"Message Passing\" system vs. an \"Event Based\" system", "text": "My question is coming from an somewhat uneducated perspective. What are the relative merits of a \"message passing\" system vs an \"event based\" system. Why would one choose one over the other? What are their strengths and weaknesses? I would like to know not just \"in theory\", but also \"in practice\". EDIT: _Specific problem_ : I want to build system of plug-able components which behave as small scale services (each performing some small task and or providing some piece of information). The services can:   * be layered so that the output of one service can act as one of the inputs to another   * have containment hierarchies so that one service can be contained by another without a specific input-output relationship as mentioned in the previous sentence The goal of the system is to translate a single flow of low level events in another system into higher level information and functionality, and in addition provide a channel back to the other system providing a single series of events. I can provide more detail if this isn't enough. After looking around some more. This and this probably describes my situation better. This looks like it may be a good fit for my situation: http://akka.io/"}
{"_id": "202941", "title": "Effective way of keeping past projects with their working development environment?", "text": "I find that whenever I want to go run a past project, it will take a long time before I can find it and before I have everything set-up again for it to be able to run. For example, I have python projects I created in Linux, and it depends on software packages that are easily installed in Linux, yet I no longer have the Linux VM I was using. And some of my other projects depend on other variables like web server configuration, PATH variables, sdk, IDE, OS version, device, etc. Does someone have an effective way of handling this issue? As of now I have only concerned myself with keeping the source code backed up yet **it is difficult re-establish the working development environment and it is also difficult to keep the working development environment around as well**."}
{"_id": "105353", "title": "Using HBase or Cassandra for a token server", "text": "I've been trying to figure out how to use HBase/Cassandra for a token system we're re-implementing. I can probably squeeze quite a lot more from MySQL, but it just seems it has come to clinging on to the wrong tool for the task just because we know it well. Eventually will hit a wall (like happened to us in other areas). Naturally I started looking into possible NoSQL solutions. The prominent ones (at least in terms of buzz) are HBase and Cassandra. The story is more or less like this:   1. A user can send a gift other users.   2. Each gift has a list of recipients or is public in which case limited by number or expiration date   3. For each gift sent we generate some token that uniquely identifies that gift.   4. For each gift we track the list of potential recipients and their current status relating to that gift (accepted, declinded etc).   5. A user can request to see all his currently pending gifts   6. A can request a list of users he has sent a gift to today (used to limit number of gifts sent)   7. Required the ability to \"dump\" or \"ignore\" expired gifts (x day old gifts are considered expired) There are some other requirements but I believe the above covers the essentials. How would I go and model that using HBase or Cassandra? * * * Well, the wall was performance. A few 10s of millions of records per day over 2 tables kept for 2 weeks (wish I could have kept it for more but there was no way). The response times kept getting slower and slower until eventually we had to start cutting down number of days we kept data. Caching helps here but it's not an ideal solution since a big part of the ops are updates. Also, as I hinted in my original post. We use MySQL extensively. We know exactly what it can and can't do both in naive implementations followed by native partitioning and finally by horizontally sharding our dataset on the application level to reside on multiple DB nodes. It _can_ be done, but that's not really what I'm trying to get from this. I asked a very specific question about designing a solution using a NoSQL solution since it's very hard to find examples for designs out there. Brainlag, not trying to come off as rude. I actually appreciate it a lot that you are the only one who even bothered to respond. but I see it over and over again. People ask questions and others assume they have no idea what they're talking about and give an irrelevant answer. Ignore RDBMS please. The question is about nosql."}
{"_id": "105351", "title": "What are the most relevant books on software project estimation?", "text": "Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices and other helpful information about software project estimation? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "231914", "title": "When is the private key given to the client?", "text": "http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/designing-a-secure-rest-api-without-oauth- authentication/ I've been reading the article and I haven't really grasped it yet. When is the private key given to the client? **Say I have a JavaScript client - where would I store this private key (once assigned) - a cookie?** I think that this maybe is done when authenticating a user, if a JavaScript client makes a post request and authenticates a user, the server validates the input and gives back user id ( a public key ) and then some generated string (stored in a table) = the private key? And then just follow the approach (quoted) from article:               [CLIENT] Before making the REST API call, combine a bunch of unique data together (this is typically all the parameters and values you intend on sending, it is the \u201cdata\u201d argument in the code snippets on AWS\u2019s site)     [CLIENT] Hash (HMAC-SHA1 or SHA256 preferably) the blob of data data (from Step #1) with your private key assigned to you by the system.     [CLIENT] Send the server the following data:         Some user-identifiable information like an \u201cAPI Key\u201d, client ID, user ID or something else it can use to identify who you are. This is the public API key, never the private API key. This is a public value that anyone (even evil masterminds can know and you don\u2019t mind). It is just a way for the system to know WHO is sending the request, not if it should trust the sender or not (it will figure that out based on the HMAC).         Send the HMAC (hash) you generated.         Send all the data (parameters and values) you were planning on sending anyway. Probably unencrypted if they are harmless values, like \u201cmode=start&number=4&order=desc\u201d or other operating nonsense. If the values are private, you\u2019ll need to encrypt them.     (OPTIONAL) The only way to protect against \u201creplay attacks\u201d on your API is to include a timestamp of time kind along with the request so the server can decide if this is an \u201cold\u201d request, and deny it. The timestamp must be included into the HMAC generation (effectively stamping a created-on time on the hash) in addition to being checked \u201cwithin acceptable bounds\u201d on the server.     [SERVER] Receive all the data from the client.     [SERVER] (see OPTIONAL) Compare the current server\u2019s timestamp to the timestamp the client sent. Make sure the difference between the two timestamps it within an acceptable time limit (5-15mins maybe) to hinder replay attacks.         NOTE: Be sure to compare the same timezones and watch out for issues that popup with daylight savings time change-overs.         UPDATE: As correctly pointed out by a few folks, just use UTC time and forget about the DST issues.     [SERVER] Using the user-identifying data sent along with the request (e.g. API Key) look the user up in the DB and load their private key.     [SERVER] Re-combine the same data together that the client did in the same way the client did it. Then hash (generate HMAC) that data blob using the private key you looked up from the DB.         (see OPTIONAL) If you are protecting against replay attacks, include the timestamp from the client in the HMAC re-calculation on the server. Since you already determined this timestamp was within acceptable bounds to be accepted, you have to re-apply it to the hash calculation to make sure it was the same timestamp sent from the client originally, and not a made-up timestamp from a man-in-the-middle attack.     [SERVER] Run that mess of data through the HMAC hash, exactly like you did on the client.     [SERVER] Compare the hash you just got on the server, with the hash the client sent you; if they match, then the client is considered legit, so process the command. Otherwise reject the command!      On second note, I believe it would be more readable from the article itself... Am I getting this right?"}
{"_id": "231915", "title": "How can you decompose a constructor?", "text": "Lets say I have a Enemy class, and the constructor would look something like:               public Enemy(String name, float width, float height, Vector2 position,                   float speed, int maxHp, int attackDamage, int defense... etc.){}      This looks bad because the constructor has so many parameters, but when I create an Enemy instance I need to specify all of these things. I also want these attributes in the Enemy class, so that I can iterate through a list of them and get/set these parameters. I was thinking maybe subclassing Enemy into EnemyB, EnemyA, while hardcoding their maxHp, and other specific attributes, but then I'd lose access to their hardcoded attributes if I wanted to iterate through a list of Enemy (consisting of EnemyA's, EnemyB's, and EnemyC's). I'm just trying to learn how to code cleanly. If it makes a difference, I work in Java/C++/C#. Any point in the right direction is appreciated."}
{"_id": "231910", "title": "How to avoid duplicating the domain model in a multi-language distributed application?", "text": "My team is currently working on a web platform and we are planning to divide the application in a set of independent services written in different languages, the problem is that these services rely on a domain model layer that will need to be duplicated across the different languages(C# and Java). The Domain layer is heavily cohesive and cannot be easily splitted out. Given that working with multiple languages is a requirement **what is a good architectural style that will allow a positive approach for this problem?**"}
{"_id": "231911", "title": "How can I interact with a client-side sound device through a web application?", "text": "I'm trying to find something that will allow a web application to analyze the line or microphone input from a client and transmit that data to the server. I've looked briefly at WebRTC and, although I find it to be the most compelling answer 'future-wise', it is (at the time of writing) far from being complete and/or standardized as a protocol. This would be my first web application that would require such functionality. Ideally, part of the sound signal processing could be handled by client-side code to reduce the impact of device latency (say, the time it takes for a sound to travel from instrument to computer, go through digital-to-analog conversion, and then be sent to the app) and internet 'lag'. The signal would, at some point, need to make it back to the server for analysis. It might be a bit high-concept, but perhaps there is a way using an existing plugin - I just thought I would turn to some folks who have spent more time in this realm than I have. Thanks in advance for your time."}
{"_id": "15842", "title": "Are XAML UI designers common today?", "text": "I am thinking about creating a silverlight application, and I lack the skills to create a good looking UI.   Today's graphic designers usually know HTML and CSS and thus save me the trouble of doing something I am not very good with.   Is this the same case with XAML?   Do I have to hire two employees for this job?"}
{"_id": "137994", "title": "Does Object Oriented Programming Really Model The Real World?", "text": "I've seen it commonly repeated the object oriented programming is based on modelling the real world, but is it? It seems to me that is not true of anything outside of the business layer. My GUI classes/data access classes aren't modelling anything in the real world. Even in my business layer I've got classes like observers, managers, factories, etc. which aren't real world objects. I try to design my classes to take advantage of things like encapsulation but is the real world encapsulated? While some objects I create are modelling real world objects, would not pre- OOP code do the same? I doubt that OO was the first people to include concepts like Customer in their code bases. But OO is really about how to model things, and that method of modelling doesn't seem inspired by the real world to me. So: does object oriented programming really model the real world? **EDIT:** If your going to post yet another answer telling me how awesome OO is, you haven't understood the question. The question is about how we describe OO, not OO's merits."}
{"_id": "236141", "title": "When is it worth NOT using a Factory?", "text": "I'm employing TDD quite a bit these days and really enjoying myself - everything seems to flow better and be naturally better constructed and organized. However, while writing a bit of IO code, utilizing `System.IO.Stream`s, and I was wondering - when is it ever worth not using a factory? Because in `Stream`s case, it certainly seems better to not use a factory. Generally, for more complex types that I have defined, such as a class that controls the authentication of something and interfaces with a database, you would probably use a dependency injection container and have this resolved at runtime without ever needing to _actually_ create one. However, in some circumstances, when you need to create a lot of these instances, you would create a Factory to construct that type - such as:               class Foo       Foo(Bar bar, Foobar foobar, Fuzz fuzz)       ...     end      Here, because you don't want to expose how to directly create this object to the clients that need it, you expose a Factory that will create them and inject that into the client instead. This has the benefit of allowing you to replace the factory at any time you want with something else and is generally used for creating instances of types which have derived types.               class FooFactory        void Create(Bar, Foobar, Fuzz)     end      However, back to my `Stream` point - would it even be worth creating a Factory for a decorator around a Stream? For example, in my project I have `BinaryDataStream`, which reads my data from a Streeam. The BinaryData is in a custom format, and takes a Stream argument in it's constructor. Using `new` seems to violate everything I know that I've learned since I started using TDD, **because I am giving the dependent in which it needs to know explicitly about how to get it's collaborator** However a factory seems overkill. Thoughts? EDIT: I think I need to clarify. I don't mean avoiding new() all the time, as obviously it has it's use in tying up dependencies and the like. **however** , I meant in the following situation (copy-pasta from comments): > What I meant was that I have been told it is intrinsically evil to use the > new() operator to a collaborator from inside the type that uses the > collaborator, and that it is better to either a) pass an injected type or b) > pass a factory (if you need to create an unknown number of those types). By > using new() inside the collaborator you tie how to create that object and > where to create it directly to the thing that requires it, and that it is > better to inject a preconfigured instance into the constructor if you need > one instance of it, or inject a factory into the constructor if you need to > create multiple/undetermined number of instances"}
{"_id": "137999", "title": "What is the pattern name for using method chaining to build an object?", "text": "I frequently use a pattern where I using method chaining to setup an object, similar to a `Builder` or `Prototype` pattern, but not creating new objects with each method call, instead modifying the original object. **Example:**               new Menu().withItem(\"Eggs\").withItem(\"Hash Browns\").withStyle(\"Diner\");      Just wondering if there is a name for this pattern and whether it is considered an anti-pattern, because although it can read more fluently, it can lead to long method chains."}
{"_id": "18945", "title": "Android vs iPhone development", "text": "Which is a better career Android vs iPhone app development. Android has the advantage of beingopen source while iPad/iPhone is one of the best product in the market and Apple is leading the mobile industry now. What would be pros and cons of each career and can iPhone developers move into Android easily? Please let me know if anyone has a experience in either of these areas"}
{"_id": "71190", "title": "Does code generation increase the code quality?", "text": "Arguing for code generation, I am looking for some examples of ways in which it increases code quality. To clarify what I mean by code generation, I can talk only about a project of mine: We use XML files to describe entity relationships in our database schema, so they help us generate our ORM framework and HTML forms which can be used to add, delete, and modify entities. To my mind, it increases code quality because human error is reduced. If something is implemented incorrectly, it is broken in the model, which is good because the error might appear sooner since more generated code is broken too. Since I was asked for the definition of **code quality** , let me clarify this, what I meant is **software quality**. **Software Quality** : It is not one attribute but many, e.g. efficiency, modifiability, readability, correctness, robustness, comprehensibility, usability, portability etc. which impact on each other."}
{"_id": "147988", "title": "Data structure for file search", "text": "I've asked this question before and I got a few answers/idea, but I'm not sure how to implement them. I'm building a telecom messaging solution. Currently, I'm using a database to save my transaction/messages for the network stack I've built, and as you know it's slower than using a data structure (hash, linkedlist, etc...). My problem is that the data can be really huge, and it won't fit in the memory. I was thinking of saving the records in a file and the a key and line number in a hash, then if I want to access some record then I can get the line number from the hash, and get it from the file. I don't know how efficient is this; I think the database is doing a way better job than this on my behalf. Please share whatever you have in mind."}
{"_id": "231153", "title": "Is it a good idea to develop website that only has little access to DB? CRUD will be done by calling API provided by separate internal backend system", "text": "I'm going to start developing an application in near future. This application consists of :   1. Back-end system. This system provides API to be used by client. This system connects to data store and 3rd party API.   2. Data Store : Can be relational or nosql data store.   3. Client : Client will be a website and mobile applications. My reasons are below :   1. I want to prevent duplicated SQL query and 3rd party API call in website application side. The application and website will be developed by different developers. Only back end system developers that can make query or call 3rd party API. All website developers should only use API provided by back-end system   2. In my opinion, the website is also a client just like the mobile application. If the mobile apps get their data from back-end system API, why the website shouldn't be the same.    3. I heard twitter is using similar idea (I can be wrong though). Its website is using twitter API just like their mobile application. My primary concern to this architecture is that the website performance will be lower compared than If the website can make query or 3rd party API call directly. Is there any other pros and cons that I should think about ?"}
{"_id": "147982", "title": "Is there any technology for dynamic assignment of execution context for programs that target many platforms with widely varying runtime performance?", "text": "This may very well be nothing new and probably exists, but I've never learned about it and would like to. The simplest way to be more specific is just to give an example. I was on the bus and downloaded a Text to Speech appliation onto my Android phone. I know that the speech synthesizer might run on my phone but probably runs on a remote server. In the near future I bet the processors in phones will go up and some people will have phones that could do the work but some will not. In the scenario I just describe, the ideal situation might be if the execution environment dynamically pulled code to locally execute and/or pushed code back to be remotely executed. I realize there are plently of frameworks for remote object calling, but do any of them pre-suppose the above?"}
{"_id": "232752", "title": "Use of separate threads or singe thread", "text": "In my project, on a security system, I was using a socket to get the details of the client and then store it in a database (his IP and port he connected from and service he accessed). I was wondering if the fetching of the details and storing them in a database should be done in separate threads or a single thread. Which is the more advantageous approach?"}
{"_id": "86434", "title": "Looking for recommendations for a database design 101 class", "text": "I've been tasked to train a new MS Access developer that's moving into my department in a couple weeks. I'm not completely certain what his knowledge level is, but from what I've seen he knows very little if anything about basic design concepts like normalization. I don't think he even knows much VBA and is still primarily macro/wizard driven. There's no budget in my department for training, so free options are the only ones I could use. What resources could be recommended to help me teach him some of the basics and start developing a foundation to build on to get him up to speed?"}
{"_id": "86432", "title": "Web security course?", "text": "I'd like to do a course about web security. I've seen some certifications that could be interesting:   * CIW Web Security Professional   * CISSP\u00ae - Certified Information Systems Security Professional   * Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional What do you know about these certifications? are they recognized? I'm not trying to become a hacker, I just want to ensure I have enough knowledge about web security to cope with today internet. From my inexpert point of view, \"Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional\" looks exactly as I want, the problem is that it cost more than 500 bucks! Why certification? well, I want to learn but I would like also have a way to demonstrate to a future employer/customer that I had to study and pass exams, not only attend to a course. Regards."}
{"_id": "86431", "title": "Tips/Process for web-development using Django in a small team", "text": "We're developing a web app uing Django and we're a small team of 3-4 programmers \u2014 some doing the UI stuff and some doing the Backend stuff. I'd love some tips and suggestions from the people here. This is out current setup:   1. We're using Git as as our SCM tool and following this branching model.   2. We're following the PEP8 for your style guide.   3. Agile is our software development methodology and we're using Jira for that.   4. We're using the Confluence plugin for Jira for documentation and I'm going to be writing a script that also dumps the PyDocs into Confluence.   5. We're using `virtualenv` for sandboxing   6. We're using `zc.buildout` for building This is whatever I can think of off the top of my head. Any other suggestions/tips would be welcome. I feel that we have a pretty good set up but I'm also confident that we could do more."}
{"_id": "132814", "title": "User Stories about Automated tasks, who is the user?", "text": "Following the formal user story style: > As `<user>`, I want `<goal>` so that `<benefit>`. How can stories be written when there isn't an obvious user-interaction taking place, as in the case of automated processes like nightly invoicing?"}
{"_id": "132813", "title": "Who's the author/creator of the Repository Pattern?", "text": "I\u00b4m pretty sure it\u00b4s not the gang of four. I have a feeling this is a newer pattern. Where was it first published/mentioned?"}
{"_id": "132810", "title": "How do I format negative user stories?", "text": "Following the formal user story style: > As `<user>`, I want `<goal>` so that `<benefit>`. Our team has found difficulties in expressing things where there is a desire by the system's owners to do something which negatively affects the user. As an arbitrary example, let's say owner wants to have the system charge customers every time they check their email. Following the formal style of user stories, you might write this as follows: > As a customer, I want to be charged every time I check my email so that the > system owner can increase their revenue. Obviously the customer has no desire to be charged; the story becomes jarring to read and the language is getting in the way of the facts. How could the requirement be written differently?"}
{"_id": "212014", "title": "When opening pdf's in browser, why is \"inspect element\" available and \"view source\" not?", "text": "When opening pdf's in Chrome and Firefox, the \"view source\" button is greyed out. \"Inspect elemet,\" however, reveals HTML. Are the browsers simply downloading the file and generating html to display it?"}
{"_id": "212017", "title": "How should I handle two crons that update the database?", "text": "I'm working on a Bitcoin-clone block explorer (specifically Mincoin) which has a block timer of about 1 minute. For those unfamiliar with Bitcoin, basically a new data structure called a block is propagated to the network about every minute. A block itself holds a lot of information, but three things are the most important:   * The previous block before it   * The next block in the chain   * A data structure containing transactions on the network So sometimes in Bitcoin there is a \"reorganization\" which means the network finds that some of the most recent blocks are not valid and it switches over to another miner's branch. At the moment every 1 minute I get all of the new blocks from the network and I store them into my database. However when a reorganization happens I was previously unable to delete and re-do the block structure of my database. Now that I've written that functionality in, I'm encountering a new problem. I've got a function that looks in the past 100 blocks and checks if the hash of the block is the same as what my Mincoin client reports. If there was a reorganization, then some blocks will be different. I find the first block that is different and I delete from the database the block before it (so that block can point to the correct new one that will be found), the block itself, and all records of all blocks and transactions that happen after it, then rebuild from there. The problem is the process of finding and deleting each transaction within the deleted blocks takes more than one minute because of the large amount of data, even though the fields I'm searching on are indexed. So I'm worried that the 1 minute cron I've put on the program will cause a problem where it starts to write again from the database at the same time the process of deleting from the rebuilding function is happening. I'm using PHP and PDO so I have a PDO transaction for the rebuilding function, but this just adds more confusion. If the PDO transaction starts deleting records, then during that process a new cron finds some new blocks and writes them to the database, then the PDO transaction ends, which data will be stored? Will it cause an error? How is the best way to handle this -- should I write some field into the database that controls the regular cron (simply put a switch 0 or 1 for on and off) and keep the switch disabled while the rebuilding function is doing its thing? I'm not sure how to structure the flow of this program to ensure I am not causing my database to have inaccurate data in it."}
{"_id": "37191", "title": "What's missing in ASP.NET MVC?", "text": "I think that most people would agree that ASP.NET MVC is one of the better technologies Microsoft has given us. It gives full control over the rendered HTML, provides separation of concerns and suites to stateless nature of web. The last version of the framework gaves us new features and tools and it's great, but... what solutions should Microsoft include in new versions of framework? What are biggest gaps in comparison with another web frameworks like PHP or Ruby? What could improve developers productivity? What's missing in ASP.NET MVC? Why is this missing feature important? How do you do without it now?"}
{"_id": "219043", "title": "Static factory vs factory as a singleton", "text": "In some of my code, I have a static factory similar to this:               public class SomeFactory {              // Static class         private SomeFactory() {...}              public static Foo createFoo() {...}              public static Foo createFooerFoo() {...}     }      During a code review, it was proposed that this should be a singleton and injected. So, it should look like this:               public class SomeFactory {              public SomeFactory() {}              public Foo createFoo() {...}              public Foo createFooerFoo() {...}     }      A few things to highlight:   * Both factories are stateless.   * The only difference between the methods are their scopes (instance vs static). The implementations are the same.   * Foo is a bean that does not have an interface. The arguments I had for going static was:   * The class is stateless, therefore doesn't need to be instantiated   * It seems more natural to be able to call a static method than to have to instantiate a factory The arguments for the factory as a singleton was:   * Its good to inject everything   * Despite the statelessness of the factory, testing is easier with injection (easy to mock)   * It should be mocked when testing the consumer I have some serious issues with the singleton approach since it seems to suggest that no methods should ever be static. It also seems to suggest that utilities such as `StringUtils` should be wrapped and injected, which seems silly. Lastly, it implies that I'll need to mock the factory at some point, which doesn't seem right. I can't think of when I'd need to mock the factory. What does the community think? While I don't like the singleton approach, I don't seem to have a terribly strong argument against it."}
{"_id": "219040", "title": "Abstracting complexity of transactional key value store", "text": "Our application stores settings in the platform's \"transactional key-value store\".               prefs.edit().putInt(\"a\", 1).commit();      int a = prefs.getInt(\"a\");      I'd like to refactor our code for the following goals:   * Better type safety (ex.: int a = prefs.getA(); prefs.setA(1);)   * Hide away the complexity of storing values It looks like I need a Preferences class and a class to translate it to/from storage.               public class Preferences {         private int a;              public int getA() {             return a;         }              public void setA(int a) {             this.a = a;         }     }          public class PreferencesMapper {         IValueStore valueStore;              public PreferencesMapper(IValueStore valueStore) {             this.valueStore = valueStore;         }              public void save(Preferences prefs) {             this.valueStore                     .edit()                     .putInt(\"a\", prefs.getA())                     .commit();         }              public Preferences load() {             Preferences prefs = new Preferences();                  prefs.setA(this.valueStore.getInt(\"a\"));                  return prefs;         }     }      Now the weak typing is concentrated in that single class and the rest of the application is more robust. However, the code still leaks load/save complexity and I wonder if it's necessary.               Preferences p = preferenceMapper.load();     p.setA(1);     preferencesMapper.save(p);      I think the ideal situation, with respect to single responsibility design, is to have a single Preferences class that knows how to load/save (or delegates to something else on its own). I'm looking for direction on making this situation better."}
{"_id": "37192", "title": "What is the path to become a manager/CIO/CTO?", "text": "From your experience, what must be taken or done to become a manager/CIO/CTO when your background is computer science/programming? Do I need to take a management degree (MBA) in order to become a manager or to have career in management level? Anybody care to share?"}
{"_id": "199543", "title": "Does SOA service composition actually work in practice?", "text": "One of the main SOA service design principles is Service Composability principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_composability_principle). The idea is that by composing new services using existing ones as building blocks, one can rapidly develop new services. Kind of analogously to how you call exising methods of objects when you implement new methods. This is where much of productivity boost from SOA is supposed to come from. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xsmJJ.jpg) Does someone really do this in practice? I have seen this repeated endlessly in written text, but have not experienced working real world implementations myself. Most of the text also omits any mention of **transaction handling** , which seems to me to be the biggest obstacle in realizing composable services. First, you really do need to tackle the transactions problem before you can compose any non-trivial services. Sure, if the example has services \"findCurrentTime()\" and \"writeLogMessage()\" its easy to not worry about transactions, but not when having real world examples such as \"depositMoney()\" and \"withdrawMoney()\". I know of two options:   1. Implement real transactions with WS-Atomic Transaction or such   2. Implement compensation-based solution which compensates call to A with \"cancelA()\" or somesuch if call to B fails Both of these seem very problematic / close to unusable to me:   * WS-Atomic Transaction      * a _lot_ of complexity, most advice that I found just warns \"pain in the ass, dont do it\"     * support is limited, for example if you take open source ESBs, main alternatives ServiceMix, Mule or WSO2 do not support it   * compensations      * implementing the handling of compensations seems very complex to me. What do we do if service A succeeds and we never get an answer from service B and do not know if it failed or succeeded? Handling such logic manually (as implementor of compositing services) makes me want to slit my wrists - this is the kind of work some tool should do for me!.     * I also dont see how you can have compensation methods in non-trivial services. Say your service A is \"depositMoney()\" and that succeeds, some other action quickly transfers the money elsewhere, and then we receive \"compensateDepositMoney()\", what do we do now? Seems like a big can of worms. To me it seems that **service composition is such a fundamental SOA principle that you really do not get the benefits of SOA if you cannot (conveniently) compose services**. What's the reality? 90% of SOA users use \"criplled SOA\" without real service componsition? Or most users do in fact use service composition and I am exaggerating the difficulty of it?"}
{"_id": "84490", "title": "What algorithms would be useful for designing a stock market simulator?", "text": "We are in the process of building a stock market simulation game. The frontend design is ready but we are clueless about how exactly the back-end algorithms are to be designed. What algorithms should we be looking at implementing in order to get this working? We're coding in PHP/RoR/Python. If there's an open source system that already exists that we could look at that would be an added bonus."}
{"_id": "84491", "title": "How long should we generally spend writing unit tests for a new feature or bug fixing?", "text": "When I have to implement a new feature or fix a bug, I usually try to recreate the situation with a test. I sometime spend around 3 hours coming up with fixtures and writing the test. The actual feature implementation or bug fixing takes less than 1 hour. Does anyone else out there spend at least 3 times longer to write a test compared to actually implementing a feature or fixing a bug? What's the acceptable ratio of time spent writing test to writing code?"}
{"_id": "83149", "title": "Should I be looking up the answers to programming exercises?", "text": "I have recently started my journey to learn programming, and got my self a book on Objective-C. The thing is though: I get stuck quite often, trying to figure out how to solve the different exercises. I am quite new, currently on chapter 5 and trying to figure out how to do the different exercises. I get stuck and can't solve the exercise, so I look up the solution on the official forum and try to understand how they solved it. Then I keep thinking that the authors intention must to be able to do the following exercises, so I get a little worried about not being able to do all exercises. So I was wondering: is it bad learning behaviour to look up the solution online, and try to understand the method behind the solution, or should I keep sticking with that method, and learning it somehow sooner or later? What did you do when you were in the same learning process as me?"}
{"_id": "76875", "title": "Is timing exactly how much time each team member spends on a story useful in Scrum?", "text": "One of my colleagues has suggested timing how much time each team member spends on each user story. This seems to me likely confusing for the dev team during the iteration, and misleading as a metric for story estimation in future planning meetings. Do any of you have experience with such a system and any thoughts on how useful or disruptive it might be?"}
{"_id": "81419", "title": "Do I really need oop for my kind of job? After 10 years I think I don't", "text": "After 10 years of writing something like business logic for my company I realized that for 95% of my code I just don't need any special OO techniques. For years I tried to get better with all that OO stuff. But with every book or article I got more confused and the resulting code was uglier and harder to maintain. And it always felt wrong and much to complicated. The point is, that my job is very easy from an technical point of view. Read stuff from a database (not really SQL), do some calculations and maybe write something back to the database. Handling errors and transactions correctly is the biggest issue. I found out, that the easiest way to express myself in c++ for what I have to code is to write plain functions. Maybe handling parameters with structs from time to time. But that's almost it. I wrote some helper classes, that I need on a regular base, but that is not necessary very often. But in the past I surrounded every little or large peace of code with a class. And that is also what my co-workers from the c# department are doing and telling me all the time. My question is, what is going wrong with us, that we think, that we can solve every software development problem by throwing just more OO techniques on it? I needed 10 years to figure out that less is more. I looked through the book written by this guy from Romania who does a lot of magic with templates. And I thought: \"Man, this looks so interesting - why are you just not needing it??\" Since this here is for Q&A: How much OO do you need to get your job done? And how often do you think, that you are doing something more complicated that necessary just because you have read about a new cool idea. And what do you do to not get into the overdesigning trap?"}
{"_id": "178871", "title": "Is it appropriate for a class to only be a collection of information with no logic?", "text": "Say I have a class `Person` that has instance variables `age`, `weight`, and `height`, and another class `Fruit` that has instance variables `sugarContent` and `texture`. The `Person` class has no methods save setters and getters, while the `Fruit` class has both setters and getters **and** logic methods like `calculateSweetness`. Is the `Fruit` class the type of class that is better practice than the `Person` class. What I mean by this is that the `Person` class seems like it doesn't have much purpose; it exists solely to organize data, while the `Fruit` class organizes data and actually contains methods for logic."}
{"_id": "137339", "title": "Term for Performance Issues Due to Looping", "text": "Is there a term for performance issues caused by someone creates a loop that performs hundreds or thousands of actions that could have been done in bulk? My example is that I keep running into loops that loop through a group of IDs and then perform a single query for each ID to retrieve the associated row instead of creating a single query."}
{"_id": "178878", "title": "Organizing ASP.Net Single Page Application with Nancy", "text": "As a personal project, I'm creating a single page, asp.net web application using Nancy to provide RESTful services to the single page. Due to the complexity of the single page, particularly the JavaScripts used, I've think creating a dedicated project for the client side of web development and another for service side will organize and simplify the development.               solution       |       +-- web / client side (single html page, js, css)       |    - contains asp.net project, and nancy library        |      to host the modules in application project folder       |       +-- application / service (nancy modules, bootstrap for other layer)       |       .       .       . and other layers (three tier, domain driven, etc)       .      Is this a good way of organizing a complex single page application? Am I over- engineering the web app, incurring too much complexity?"}
{"_id": "108445", "title": "Will Metro-style Apps replace Desktop Apps?", "text": "Microsoft Windows8 supports new Metro-style apps, and Metro apps don't use Win32; they run on WinRT. I wonder if the Metro-style Apps was invented for only tablets. Does Microsoft hope that Metro-style apps eat all old Desktop Apps finally, or will they go with the two platforms until 2020?"}
{"_id": "108447", "title": "On what basis would you split donation money among your open source team members without any strife?", "text": "I am a developer of an open source project which is hosted in SourceForge. It started out as a little app then after some releases, it got more and more popular and it started consuming more time and responsibility from me. So I have enabled the donation option in SourceForge. I'm passionate to continue developing it for free but if (ever) any money comes in, how should I split it with my team?   1. Should I split the amount equally among the number of team members? (50-50 as it is two-member team now)   2. Number of classes, commits or any other valuable submissions by team members?   3. Any other idea? What would you do in such situation? Please give your opinions.   I hope this question will be useful for others."}
{"_id": "108443", "title": "What's the reasoning behind the \"I\" prefix naming convention for interfaces in .NET?", "text": "I know the \"I\" convention has been around since COM, but I've never understood why it hasn't been reconsidered like every other naming convention before .NET has. Consumption wise, the only thing that separates an interface from, say, an abstract class, is that they can be multiply inherited. But everything after Visual Studio 2003 has shown type signatures in tooltips, so it's as useless as all the other Hungarian notations that have been discarded. I also thought it might be so that you can have a basic implementation of the interface with the same name, e.g. `Message` inheriting `IMessage`, but most of the .NET libraries have gone for adding the word \"Base\" at the end (e.g. `System.Collections.ReadOnlyCollectionBase`) instead -- and this makes more semantic sense. COM interop seems to be another possible reason -- but it's not as if the wrapper classes that it generates are perfectly idiomatic .NET, so I doubt that that was an aesthetic consideration. In one of my newer projects I've forgone the convention entirely, and it feels just fine. Is there something I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "202051", "title": "What should I include in my repositiory from IDE projects", "text": "I want to add a project which in this case is created in Netbeans but this question is general for most IDE's. It's simply, what should I include in my repository. For example Netbeans creates a nbproject folder, eclipse creates a .settings folder etc. should I include these in my repository, what are the advantages/disadvantages of including or not including project specific settings. In this case it's a personal project so I don't imagine that other people will start working on it, but it would be nice to add the bare minimum of project settings so the project itself will be easy to start work on different machines."}
{"_id": "199545", "title": "Verification for value of test standards", "text": "We are currently developing a concept for our tests standards. Up until now, we don't have standards. All we do is to tell the developer to write tests. Now we have the following basic idea: We will use the coverage metric described in Developer Testing blog article Selecting Developer Testing Metrics to visualize the status quo. We won't make demands how much percent the code has to be covered. Nonetheless we want some kind of control. Therefore we will check if the coverage has significantly reduced over time. If this is the case the whole team will be informed. There should be no personal blaming. To encourage the developer to write more tests we will ask them to do the estimate of a feature with the tests in mind, so that they have enough time do write the tests. We don't have much experience in test standards. Is this a good approach? Is this metric useful? And what do you think about our strategy to control the team members? **EDIT** Some additional information regarding Sklivvz's post. We have nearly no code covered. Overall it is about 25%. Some components are just not covered. Our problem is, that our developers - mostly people with 10+ years experience - don't write tests at all. Therefor we invests much time in fixing bugs found by our testing team. What we want, is to have more assurance that we don't break something by implementing another thing and that we don't make the same bugs. Additional it would be nice to let the tests guide our team members to make a better architecture in their components. I personally have seen it in a component where I came in later and had refactored the whole component at some point, because it was not even a little bit testable. We develop a software platform which grows several years now. Therefor we have much code which is not covered by tests. Like I said above we want to motivate our team members to write tests for their components which they are currently developing."}
{"_id": "108449", "title": "Why are so many HTML tables used in page markup?", "text": "I'm trying to get into web development, so I started learning HTML, CSS, and javascript. I've been coming along really well with javascript, but I still can't make anything with HTML and CSS to save my life. I was going to ask for some places or tips to improve, but I know the question has been asked countless times and would just get deleted, so I figured I would just view the source of some other people's websites. What I keep seeing is tables left and right. Is there a valid reason to use tables?"}
{"_id": "207665", "title": "Haskell memory efficiency - which is the better approach?", "text": "We are implementing a matrix compression library based on a modified two dimensional grammar syntax. Now we have two approaches for our data types -which one will be better in case of memory usage? (we want to compress something ;)). The grammars contain NonTerminals with exactly 4 Productions or a Terminal on the righthand side. We will need the names of Productions for equality checks and grammar minimization. The First:               -- | Type synonym for non-terminal symbols     type NonTerminal = String          -- | Data type for the right hand side of a production     data RightHandSide = DownStep NonTerminal NonTerminal NonTerminal NonTerminal | Terminal Int          -- | Data type for a set of productions     type ProductionMap = Map NonTerminal RightHandSide          data MatrixGrammar = MatrixGrammar {         -- the start symbol         startSymbol :: NonTerminal,         -- productions         productions :: ProductionMap             }       Here our RightHandSide data saves only String names to determine the next productions, and what we do not know here is how Haskell saves these strings. For example the [[0, 0], [0, 0]] matrix has 2 productions:               a = Terminal 0     aString = \"A\"     b = DownStep aString aString aString aString     bString = \"B\"     productions = Map.FromList [(aString, a), (bString, b)]      So the question here is how often is the String \"A\" really saved? Once in aString, 4 times in b and once in productions or just once in aString and the others just hold \"cheaper\" references? The Second:               data Production = NonTerminal String Production Production Production Production                     | Terminal String Int           type ProductionMap = Map String Production      here the term \"Terminal\" is a bit misleading because its actually the production that has a terminal as right hand side. The same Matrix:               a = Terminal \"A\" 0     b = NonTerminal \"B\" a a a a     productions = Map.fromList [(\"A\", a), (\"B\", b)]      and the similar question: how often is the production a saved internally by Haskell? Possibly we will drop the names inside the productions if we don't need them, but we are not sure right now about this. So lets say we have a grammar with about 1000 productions. Which approach will consume less memory? Finally a question about integers in Haskell: Currently we are planning on having name as Strings. But we could easily switch to integer names because with 1000 productions we will have names with more then 4 chars (which i assume is 32 bit?). How does Haskell handle this. Is an Int always 32 Bit and Integer allocates memory that it really needs? I also read through this: Devising test of Haskell's value/reference semantics \\- but I can't figure out what that exactly means for us - I'm more of a imperative java child then good functional programmer :P"}
{"_id": "219590", "title": "How to manage potentially outdated data from WikiMedia API", "text": "I am writing a web application that pulls small parts of articles from Wikipedia and presents them to users. I do not wish to delete entries of the articles because I do not want to be sending a ridiculous amount of requests to the WikiMedia API, putting unnecessary load on them. My question is, since Wikipedia is by nature, collaborative and dynamic, what would be the best way to serve reasonably updated content to users (the content does not have to reflect the current article 100%, but it shouldn't be too far behind) without constantly querying their servers? I'm leaning towards storing the snippets of the articles in my database along with a timestamp and whenever an user requests an article with a timestamp over x days, I would re-query the API and update the entry in my database. The other problem with that is I am grabbing the articles via client-side Javascript, then calling an API on my server to store it. Updating an article would look like: User queries article -> my server returns article -> client-side checking decides the timestamp is too old -> client-side re-queries WikiMedia and displays the content to the user -> client-side fires request to my server to store the data. This seems like it could be done better, but I do not want to be querying WikiMedia directly from my server... How could I make this better? Architecture: SlimPHP framework, RethinkDB + PHP driver, jQuery/JS, HTML, CSS"}
{"_id": "228028", "title": "Using python to parse log files?", "text": "My first useful projects as a programmer has been python scripts that parse out relevant information from log files and do some analysis. I've bumped around and found my way to some functional solutions, but have a sneaking suspicion there are more efficient approaches. I will outline my current process with the 4 basic steps:   1. Clean up the source data: In the more involved scenarios I have a text file that is generally some sort of CSV variant. \"Generally\" because it might require a first pass to clean up outlier situations before I can effectively use the CSV module.    2. Write clean data to temporary text file: After cleaning up each line, I write the line to a fresh text file.   3. Read in clean formatted temp text file using the CSV module: I've assumed that reading the data in using the standard CSV module would be reasonably efficient method and ideal because then I can easily extract values from specific columns in each line.   4. Extract relevant values: Now I can easily traverse the whole file grabbing relevant data. I append the data to lists which I use to do the actual analysis.  The big red flag for me is that I'm traversing all of my data so many times. Maybe I should spend more time trying to find patterns in the data so I can extract the important values on the first pass? Also with larger logs (20,000+ lines) one of my scripts takes 15-30 seconds. That seems rather slow. What are areas of optimization? Be it a modification of the current design, or a completely different approach."}
{"_id": "14461", "title": "SaaS maturity level 2, how i can build configurable SaaS?(Technics and patterns)", "text": "According SaaS maturity model a SaaS is level 2 if is configurable, but how i can get started in this concept?how patterns and Technics, i can use to enable my SaaS?"}
{"_id": "14467", "title": "Where has Cloud Computing gone?", "text": "I have been hearing about this term for close to 5 years now. I have read about services from Microsoft (Azure), but I have never saw it adopted in the mainstream usage. The thing I am trying to understand is this:   1. What happened to cloud computing? Is the infrastructure at present insufficient to implement this?   2. Is it still in its infancy?   3. Is it being used in other forms, like all the services Google seems to provide (plus Plus Google OS, etc)?   4. If it has failed, then why?"}
{"_id": "237983", "title": "Creating an automated test framework for UI smoke testing", "text": "I am doing my thesis on the subject of automated UI testing at a company that applies continuous integration to their projects. The company builds intranets in Microsoft SharePoint 2013 and my task is to create an automated test framework that can be used on any project as a smoke test, and that integrates with the continuous integration model. The company uses Team Foundation Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2012. All the builds are done on a separate build server that is specified in the build definition. I have set up CI for my own demo server, and I have access to a separate server that I intend to use as a Test Controller and Agent, that will run all the tests on the deployed projects. I have a few, perhaps not very clear, questions that concern this.   1. My idea is to write test methods using Selenium, and package them into a DLL-file that can be loaded to all new projects when they are set up. The tests will only apply to standard SharePoint UI's. Together with this I will include a `config.xml` that specifies which site is to be tested. I'm using Selenium with the standard unit testing tools of Visual Studio. Are there any other options that might be better suited for my intentions?   2. I have understood that I can specify DLL-files that contain tests in the build definition for TFS, would that be possible for the way I plan to write the tests, or does that option only apply to DLL-files that are created in the solution? If not, can I add them as a reference and expect them to be run by the testserver, assuming they match the pattern for test assemblies?   3. The company would like to let developers add in separate custom tests, and have suggested me to write the test framework in such way that they can implement an interface or something similar. They want to be able to write fully customized Selenium tests, and my thoughts on this is that it would be easier just to let them add a separate DLL with their own tests and let the test server run them separately? Are there any other good ways of \"merging\" an existing test suite with custom written tests?"}
{"_id": "237982", "title": "Embedding XACML PDP?", "text": "I need to implement a flexible Access Control system for a framework used by a couple of .NET applications. I have looked into Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and XACML and this seems to provide the necessary flexibility to make decisions not only based on the user identity, but also on information about the requested resource. Typicial scenario where I need this: > Allow access to patient files only to doctors who are assigned to the > patient. However externalizing the authorization to a third party provider or another PDP server because would mean a network call every time the PEP (the application) performs an action that has to be authorized. **Does it make sense to use XACML with an embedded PDP?** I.e. the application transforms authorization decisions to XACML requests, then calls an embedded PDP module with the request which resolves it, queries the DB for resource and policy information and generates a XACML response. Or is XACML only useful in distributed Access Control scenarios? Is it generally more useful to implement a custom access control system if I don't plan to externalize the decision making point?"}
{"_id": "237988", "title": "Is it possible to go back to a previous statement c++", "text": "So I'm learning the basics with C++, and I've created a small text based shopping mall which asks the user if they'd like to buy an item. If the user responds with yes, or any variant of yes, it'll list an array of items, from which you can then type in the name of the item you want to buy and it'll say \"thanks, you've bought x item, goodbye\" and the program will stop. If you decide to put no, it'll say \"you have selected no, are you sure you wouldn't like to go back and buy an item\". If you put yes, it'll list the array of items again for you to select, however, what i'd like for it to do is to then 'abide' by the previous if statement (as if you were saying yes to the first question). Hopefully you catch what i'm on about! Thanks. EDIT: unsure what's so unclear about the question 'what i'd like for it to do is to then 'abide' by the previous if statement (as if you were saying yes to the first question).' I'm asking if it's possible to go back to a previous if statement that's mentioned earlier on in the code, however, I realise that it's probably not possible and I'm now trying to figure out another way of doing so. Thanks."}
{"_id": "238454", "title": "If this isn't a user story, what is it?", "text": "I'm with an org that is trying to transition to Agile. One thing that I've been struggling with is what they call user stories. In my experience, a user story would be this: > Use should be able to accomplish task x using tool y During the sprint, we'd then design a solution to enable this. However, this is what we're writing: > User should click on button A to go to page B to read text C where they will > then select option D which will then redirect them to page E. Data F will be > saved to the database. To me, this reads as a solution, which is what the sprint is for. Are the scenarios where the latter is actually a proper user story? Or, if not, is there a proper term for that type of detailed \"solution description\" within an Agile process?"}
{"_id": "31567", "title": "Important non-technical course for programmers?", "text": "What kind of non-technical training course do you suggest for a programmer? Example could be public speaking course, presentation skill, English, business writing, or anything not related to programming or software engineering itself."}
{"_id": "171612", "title": "Where does the git flow release message go?", "text": "When creating a release with git flow like:               git flow release finish <branch_name>      I'm prompted for a release message. I grepped around to see where this go, but no succes. Any idea?"}
{"_id": "171615", "title": "Refactoring obscurely commented code", "text": "In refactoring code, I came across code that had comments. Looking closer at the comments, I could see that the code was clearly not doing what the comments said. **Without access to the coder nor documentation** , and without clear direction regarding the code (i.e. defects as to the fact that the code is operating incorrectly), is the best practice to assume that the code is correct, and clean up the comments?"}
{"_id": "171618", "title": "Is there any evidence that drugs can actually help programmers produce \"better\" code?", "text": "I just read this quote from Steve Jobs: \"Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life.\" Also a quote from that article: > He was hardly alone among computer scientists in his appreciation of > hallucinogenics and their capacity to liberate human thought from the prison > of the mind. Although **I am aware of the fact that Jobs was not a programmer** , this quote got me thinking if there's any evidence to support the theory that drugs can help make a \"better\" programmer.   * Has there ever been a study where programmers have been given drugs to see if they could produce \"better\" code?   * Is there a well-known programming concept or piece of code which originated from people who were on drugs? EDIT So I did a little more research and it turns out Dennis R. Wier actually documented how he took LSD to wrap his head around a coding project: > At one point in the project I could not get an overall viewpoint for the > operation of the entire system. It really was too much for my brain to keep > all the subtle aspects and processing nuances clear so I could get a > processing and design overview. After struggling with this problem for a few > weeks, I decided to use a little acid to see if it would enable a > breakthrough, because otherwise, I would not be able to complete the project > and be certain of a consistent overall design[1] There is also an interesting article on wired about Kevin Herbet, who used LSD to solve tough technical problems and chemist Kary Mullis even said > \"...that LSD had helped him develop the polymerase chain reaction that helps > amplify specific DNA sequences.\" [2] EDIT 2 Sadly the question was closed again but there was a great discussion on HackerNews. From HN user pchivers: > From what I understand there is only one study on the relationship between > creativity and LSD: Psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving: a pilot > study. Harman WW, McKim RH, Mogar RE, Fadiman J, Stolaroff MJ. Psychol Rep. > 1966 Aug;19(1):211-27. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelics_in_problem- > solving... The results suggested that LSD has a positive effect on creative > problem solving. I think it is a shame that no follow-up experiments have > been conducted."}
{"_id": "31568", "title": "How to deal with a CEO making all technical decision but with little technical knowledge?", "text": "Question posted anonymously for obvious reasons. I am working in a company with a dev group of 5-6 developers, and I am in a situation which I have a hard time dealing with. Every technical choice (language, framework, database, database scheme, configuration scheme, etc...) is decided by the CEO, often without much rationale. It is very hard to modify those choices, and his main argument consists in \"I don't like this\", even though we propose several alternative with detailed pros/cons. He will also decide to rewrite from scratch our core product without giving a reason why, and he never participates to dev meetings because he considers it makes things slower... I am already looking at alternative job opportunities, but I was wondering if there anything we (the developers) could do to improve the situation. Two examples which shocked me:   * he will ask us to implement something akin to configuration management, but he reject any existing framework because they are not written in the language he likes (even though the implementation language is irrelevant). He also expects us to be able to write those systems in a couple of days, \"because it is very simple\".   * he keeps rewriting from scratch on his own our core product because the current codebase is too bad (codebase whose design was his). We are at our third rewrite in one year, each rewrite worse than the previous one. Things I have tried so far is doing elaborate benchmarks on our product (he keeps complaining that our software is too slow, and justifies rewrites to make it faster), implement solutions with existing products as working proof instead of just making pros/cons charts, etc... But still 90 % of those efforts go to the trashbox (never with any kind of rationale behind he does not like it, again), and often get reprimanded because I don't do exactly as he wants (not realizing that what he wants is impossible)."}
{"_id": "230662", "title": "Are Calls to a WCF Service via JSONP Secure?", "text": "I am looking at developing a complete `HTML5/JS` mobile app that can be deployed to Android, iOS and Windows platforms. I am using `DevExtreme` tools to help me do that. I already have a WCF service that serves me with everything I would need for this app. I want to reuse the same and found out how I could use JSONP (since I would be doing cross domain calls) and GET calls to get result from my service. I have implemented the service and have started using the same. I am now second guessing my approach. Is it safe enough to use JSONP calls for all service requests? Especially for things like user authentication, If I send the username and Password over the URL is it safe? I have the service calls secured using SSL but does it really help? If not, what would be a more standard way to do it? ****UPDATE:**** Another issue that I ran into was sending special characters in the GET JSONP call. Something like '\\' or '*'. `EncodeURI()`, `EncodeURIComponent()`, `escape()` neither would owrk for these characters. I always got errors for the same and assuming the users will have secure passwords with special characters in them, the whole concept of using GET with JSONP seems to be useless"}
{"_id": "186062", "title": "NoSQL use cases", "text": "I am developing an application for my universities student research symposium around the idea of polyglot persistence. I have read Martin Fowlers book and done some other research online about the verious different types of NoSQL db's. I am curious as to what the different use cases are for the different NoSQL databases? Currently I have what Fowler has pointed out (other research was mostly done into API's). Key/Value:   * session data   * user profile   * shopping cart   * basically anything that has a single unique key that can be easily generated and replicated Document:   * event logging   * CMS/blogging   * e-commerce (after the transaction has been completed)   * web analytics Column Family:   * event logging   * CMS/blogging   * counters   * expiring usage Graph:   * connected data   * location based services   * recommendation engine So what other use cases are there? More specifically what are the use cases for each type of NoSQL db that are better than a relational model?"}
{"_id": "230666", "title": "How to prepare for rewriting an application's glue", "text": "Assume you have a project that (in your opinion) is mostly decently well written, modularized, etc. and you want to keep much of it's functionality. However, an essential portion of this project is not well designed, and it can't easily be fixed with minor changes. The only way to fix it is to rip out a lot of the code; it's not so bad that you need (or should) start from scratch, but it's very pervasive. Assume that the code is something like 20,000 lines of non-whitespace, non- single curly brace, non-comment Java, C++, C#, PHP or Ruby code. You estimate about 2000-3000 lines need to be thrown out or changed. In the case of something like Java or C#, one of your packages/namespaces will probably be entirely rewritten from scratch, and many of the references to those classes will change. Here's the challenging part: the code that needed to change was the GLUE within the system. Here's a very simple picture that summarizes the problem: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bdhY9.png) This is the situation I was in that led to this question: What should I do when I've already waited too long between commits? As you can see, it's not only the parts of the code that were doing the internal processing, but also the parts that were communicating with the other parts of the system. Both the APIs and the internal data structures were insufficient. Attempting to keep both sets of APIs working for incremental changes would have been woefully redundant. I, of course, branched before I did anything, but every change I made produced a product that simply did not work. In many cases I created compile errors. This led to me continually putting off commits, because I thought \"yes, I wired these pieces back together, but I still need to implement this other new interface, write this essential functionality, etc.\" This resulted in the cardinal sin of not checking anything in, a mistake I'd prefer not to repeat should I be in this situation again. This was mitigated by the fact that all my APIs were internal, except that I had to conform to the APIs of the outside world and third party modules, but my wrappers to those sections were changing. One obvious alternate solution would be to just accept the fact that each change will result in a broken overall product, but since you're checking into a branch, it's okay. Especially since I am the only developer working on this code and using these APIs. So maybe that's the right thing to do. Or maybe the right thing to do is try to first refactor the API to the new one, without actually changing the functionality (if possible), even if some arguments are dummy or will eventually be removed, and then incremental changes are a lot more self contained. Or maybe there's a better way entirely?"}
{"_id": "201620", "title": "How to reconstruct this application using design pattern", "text": "I am engaging in redesigning a linux c++ server application. The application acts as file relayer in the form of receiving file packets (incuding control packets and data packets) from client A, writing these packets into a local data file then create and update index file, finally start many threads to read the file data and forward these data packets to its receivers such as client B, client C, client D, etc. Flow chart is like: Client A -> Server -> Client B, Client C, Client D, ... Currently the application is using Producer-Consumer pattern to pass data packets among modules, here are some modules we have: SocketModule(contains a thread for listening and reading incoming data of all sockets), SessionModule(for managing user tcp sessions), FileRelayModule(contains many threads for doing jobs like processing incoming packets and writing into local data file, reading local data files and updating index files and forwarding these data packets to receivers via TCP sockets). The problem is that its performance is so bad, take an example, it takes about 15 minutes for Client A to send a file of size 200M to Client B, but I did a p2p file sending and receiving between different machines it takes only 20 seconds. We think the main cause of bad performance is that we store sockets information in a global std::map, then every thread who wants to send out data (to clients) needs to wait for the lock for std::map, thus the application acts like single-threaded application. As the original design of this application doesn't follow principles of design pattern and this results in many issues, so we want redesign it using MVC pattern, adding roles of thread manager and file manager. The first item I think of is to use a ThreadPool, then dispatch every accepted socket into the thread who has the least clients(sockets number). Is this possible or reasonable for this application? What would you do if you were the designer of this project? **[update]**   1\\. I will check the project and figure out which part is the real bottleneck of performance   2\\. No matter which part is the real bottleneck, we need to reconstruct the application for it to manage the resources such as threads and memory and be easy to maintain. I am gonna do things like following:   1\\. Create many classes: CSessionManager for managing tcp session data (contains a thread), CFileManager for doing file relaying and managing all data files and index files (contains a ThreadPool with 32 threads of which contains a sockets map, and a listening socket), CFileServer(contains the CSessionManager and CFileManager). Here CFileServer acts as Controller, the CFileManager acts as Model.   2\\. The CFileManager will create a thread pool with 32 threads initialized at the startup. The CFileServer creates a listening socket and puts every accepted socket to CFileManager where the the new accepted socket is set to a thread in the threadpool by querying who has the least sockets. **[update2]**   The threadpool will be designed as following(is it reasonable?):                              std::list<CThread*> workers;                    //each thread would be                    class CThread{                        public:                           PostMsg(CMessage*);                          static void Run();                         private:                          map<int, socketinfo*> sockets;                          std::deque<CMessage*> messageQueue;                    };                         ...                    Other objects will call PostMsg to inform message                    to this CThread and in the run function:                    void CThread::Run(){                          ....                          while(1){                              ....                              //firstly process all messages                              //these messages includes adding socket,                              //deleting socket, or go offline                              CMessage* msg = messageQueue.pop_front;                              if (msg != NULL) {                                 process(msg);                              }                                   //after processing the messages,                              //now read/write the sockets data                              //set readfd and writefd                              ret = select(max, readfd, writefd, NULL, timeout);                                   //now process readfd and writefd                              //read data from readfd, then write to local                               //file read data from local file then write                               //to wirtefd or post a message to controller                             // to remove fd from array.                              ......                          }                    }"}
{"_id": "89012", "title": "What do you call this pattern/technique?", "text": "Lately I've used this technique a few times, and I'm trying to figure out if it has a name, if it's one of the patterns, etc. In complicated situations where I might normally have a number of giant select case statements, I've been experimenting with a more plugin-style approach. I create an interface, let's called it IProblemHandler, and maybe that interface exposes a property enumerating the kinds of problems it can handle (IProblemHandler.HandledProblems), or even better, maybe the problem it handles is embedded in the class name - convention over configuration. Then, instead of a select case statement, I call some code that reflects through all the classes in a certain assembly and pulls the ones that implement the interface, then it determines which one is appropriate for the problem at hand, instantiates it, and solves the problem. In the past I've used it as a plugin architecture, but it's turning out to be really useful as a way to handle certain kinds of complexity. It seems like maybe this is the domain of IoC containers and so on. I know the managed extensibility framework does some of this stuff. So... Do you know of a name for this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "136747", "title": "Why don't schools teach about bad code?", "text": "I realized there could be a lot of bad code in a system while writing Java. I wonder why schools don't teach what programming practices are bad. For example, in Java, using a big try/catch block that catches `Exception` is bad, but no one told me. And we see the typical \"String + String\" concatenation appear in every corner of a program. Isn't it the job of schools, assuming most programmers are taught at a school and not self-taught, to warn students away from the pitfalls in a programming?"}
{"_id": "88948", "title": "Do / how do the various flex frameworks work with Flash Builder", "text": "I have been reading about various Flex frame works, Robot Legs, Swiz, Cairgnom (spelling error) and a few others. What I am missing is how they actually work with Flex / Flash Builder. Are they simply libraries that you can use with the Flash Builder IDE? Why should I learn to use one of them instead of just using the IDE as it is?"}
{"_id": "225632", "title": "Benefits of EJBs over POJOs for Jersey JAX-RS Resources", "text": "I'm writing a Jersey 1.9 JAX-RS application. I have to use 1.9 because it's the only supported version. I'm trying to decide if there is any benefit to using EJBs as my Jersey Resources, rather than POJOs. My Resources are strictly for my REST API; they delegate to my business service EJB as soon as the domain translation is complete. At present, I'm leaning towards POJOs because it's simpler and I only have a single EJB lookup for my business service that I can centralise in a single utility Class. Either way I'm going to have to do an InitialContext lookup, either for my business service from my JAX-RS Resources, or for the (potentially) EJB Resources from the Jersey Application Class. Is there any performance or architectural benefit to using EJBs as my Resources given that the only thing using them is the Jersey servlet?"}
{"_id": "245305", "title": "Is it better to draw my own graphics or import images?", "text": "I am about to start a Tetris clone using Java as my programming language. While I was designing how it'd be done, I've stumbled upon this question: What would be better, if any difference at all, regarding performance 1, to draw my game? For a matter of simplicity, I will use a background grid as an example. The following code will be running in the graphics update loop: 1) To perform the drawing using my `graphics g` variable, such as this               g.setColor(Color.DARK_GRAY);                                                            for(int x = 0; x < COL_COUNT; x++) {                                                        for(int y = 0; y < VISIBLE_ROW_COUNT; y++) {                                                g.drawLine(0, y * TILE_SIZE, COL_COUNT * TILE_SIZE, y * TILE_SIZE);                     g.drawLine(x * TILE_SIZE, 0, x * TILE_SIZE, VISIBLE_ROW_COUNT * TILE_SIZE);         }                                                                                   }         or 2) pre-load an image like this:               BufferedImage img = null;     try {         img = ImageIO.read(new File(\"grid.jpg\"));     } catch (IOException e) {     }      and then use my graphics to draw it using Graphics drawImage:               g.drawImage(img, x, y, null)      1 \\- _I know that a Tetris game isn't that performance-hungry, but I believe that this doesn't invalidate the question._"}
{"_id": "88947", "title": "How to get rid of fear of not able to solve complex program?", "text": "Whenever I start to solve some complex problem and try to solve it by program. I feel demotivated. Instead of feeling excited about it I feel like I wont be able to solve this program its very difficult. I know I can solve it but because of these feelings its takes long time to solve it. Whenever I get a change to solve some tough problem this fear will come to my mind and it will stop me from thinking or will tell me you wont be able to do this etc. This fear has taken over me since long time. I know this is psychological fear but it disturbs me a lot. It stops me from becoming the best programmer I always wanted to be. Please help."}
{"_id": "228009", "title": "How to add contributors to LICENSE file?", "text": "I am the main developer of a library, licensed under the MIT license, and hosted on Github. The Github repository includes a LICENSE file. When someone sends me a pull request, do I have to list those as copyright holders in the accompaning license.txt, or should I list these in a special section there? Am I required to do it? Can I assume, that contributors agree to include their code with the license specified in LICENSE, when they send a pull request?"}
{"_id": "136740", "title": "Which statically typed languages support intersection types for function return values?", "text": "> **Initial note:** > > This question got closed after several edits because I lacked the proper > terminology to state accurately what I was looking for. Sam Tobin-Hochstadt > then posted a comment which made me recognise exactly what that was: > programming languages that support intersection types for function return > values. > > Now that the question has been re-opened, I've decided to improve it by > rewriting it in a (hopefully) more precise manner. Therefore, some answers > and comments below might no longer make sense because they refer to previous > edits. (Please see the question's edit history in such cases.) Are there any popular statically & strongly typed programming languages (such as Haskell, generic Java, C#, F#, etc.) that support intersection types for function return values? If so, which, and how? (If I'm honest, I would really love to see someone demonstrate a way how to express intersection types in a mainstream language such as C# or Java.) I'll give a quick example of what intersection types might look like, using some pseudocode similar to C#:               interface IX { \u2026 }     interface IY { \u2026 }     interface IB { \u2026 }          class A : IX, IY { \u2026 }     class B : IX, IY, IB { \u2026 }          T fn()  where T : IX, IY     {         return \u2026 ? new A()                    : new B();     }      That is, the function `fn` returns an instance of some type `T`, of which the caller knows only that it implements interfaces `IX` and `IY`. (That is, unlike with generics, the caller doesn't get to choose the concrete type of `T` -- the function does. From this I would suppose that `T` is in fact not a universal type, but an existential type.) **P.S.:** I'm aware that one could simply define a `interface IXY : IX, IY` and change the return type of `fn` to `IXY`. However, that is not really the same thing, because often you cannot bolt on an additional interface `IXY` to a previously defined type `A` which only implements `IX` and `IY` separately. * * * > **Footnote: Some resources about intersection types:** > > Wikipedia article for _\"Type system\"_ has a subsection about intersection > types. > > Report by Benjamin C. Pierce (1991), _\"Programming With Intersection Types, > Union Types, and Polymorphism\"_ > > David P. Cunningham (2005), _\"Intersection types in practice\"_, which > contains a case study about the Forsythe language, which is mentioned in the > Wikipedia article. > > A Stack Overflow question, _\"Union types and intersection types\"_ which got > several good answers, among them this one which gives a pseudocode example > of intersection types similar to mine above."}
{"_id": "218881", "title": "Modules and themes", "text": "A module is a collection of files that together build a feature. A feature could be a login, viewing a User profile etc. A theme would contain template files and assets (img, css etc). The problem is how these will work together, say a module has been created and it does exists different themes, I am not interested in having to make template files specifically for a module, how can this be accomplished in a flexible way of still having a decent look. One way could be to use template inheritance, this way the User would only need to make one template file to have the module customized by the look. Anyother ideas on how this can be done?"}
{"_id": "218882", "title": "Should we be completely honest to our clients about a time frame for a project?", "text": "I have been having this experience for sometime now, when a client needs a software product and contacts me, the client usually wants to know the time frame on which this product will be accomplished. Usually as a software developer I might not be able to fully determine how long it will take me to finish the job since I may encounter an error that may take me weeks (sometimes months) to solve. If I tell the client the expected time frame based on my analysis i.e. no matter how bad it gets, I should be able to finish the job in lets say 6 months maximum (for example). My client usually says NO! six months is too long, I need it urgently, maximum should be one month. If I refuse to accept the time frame given by the client he may give the contract to another developer who accepts the short time frame of the client and yet does not execute the job in time. On the other hand, if I accept the short time frame of the client and get the contract (knowing fully well that it will be impossible to finish it in time), I will only succeed in getting the contract and then later come up with excuses as to why the job is not completed in time. This now seems to be a norm, but deep down I feel I am learning how to be dishonest in order to get contracts. So is it a bad thing or is it just a business strategy?"}
{"_id": "155643", "title": "Architecture of a \"website generator\" web application", "text": "What is the most maintainable and efficient way to architect a web application who's purpose is to host and generate websites which can be customized to a certain degree? There are a lot of these style of applications in the wild that generate all kinds of sites, from sites that host World of Warcraft guilds to other sites that do wedding site hosting. My question is, what is the basic architecture that these sites operate on? I imagine there are two ways of thinking about this. A central set of code that all sites on the host run against, and it acts differently based on which site was visited. In this manner, when the base code is updated all sites are updated simultaneously. Or, the code for an individual site exists in a silo, and is simply replicated to a new directory each time a site is created. When an update needs to be applied, the code is pushed out to each site silo. In my case, I am working in PHP with the CodeIgniter framework, however the answer need not be limited to this case. Which method (if any) creates a more maintainable and efficient architecture to manage this style of web application?"}
{"_id": "155645", "title": "Better way to search for text in two columns", "text": "Here is the scenario. I am making a custom blogging software for my site. I am implementing a search feature. It's not very sophisticated - basically it just takes the search phrase entered and runs this query:               $query=\"SELECT * FROM `blog` WHERE `title` LIKE '%$q%' OR `post` LIKE '%$q%'\";      Which is meant to simply search the title and post body for the phrase entered. Is there a better way to do that, keeping in mind how long it would take to run the query on up to 100 rows, each with a post length of up to 1500 characters? I have considered using a LIMIT statement to (sometimes) restrict the number of rows that the query would examine. Good idea?"}
{"_id": "82434", "title": "Any news on the Next version of WPF?", "text": "I've heard of Silverlight 5 from Microsoft. But what about WPF? Is Microsoft planning to discontinue WPF or will there be a new version? We just switched from winforms to WPF and now another transition is going to be tough. Please point me with any links with information on the next version of WPF. Thank you."}
{"_id": "82435", "title": "Should experienced programmers know database queries?", "text": "There are so many programmers out there who are also an expert at Query writing and Database design. Should this be a core requirement to be an expert programmer or software engineer? Though there are lots of similarities in the way queries and codes are developed, my personal opinion is, **Queries** seem to have a different _Structure_ than **Code** and it can be tough to Master both simultaneously due to the different approaches."}
{"_id": "155648", "title": "svn usage advice", "text": "I need an advice about SVN usage. I use Tortoise SVN on my client to deal with a project I am working on. The probjem is that I have two set of bugs top fix on the project. One to deploy till 5 days, and one to deploy till 10 days. I am going to solve all the bugs before the 5fth days but I do not want to deploy the last 5 before the release date (till 10 days). How can I work on two separate codes and the merge all the modification? Is it possible? I have to create a branch?"}
{"_id": "103594", "title": "What's a good way to store/load a word list with thousands of entries?", "text": "I'm working on a project that requires a simple dictionary for checking spelling; it will be large, but will lack definitions. The solution we're currently working on has the base word list in a text file, and customizations (extra words, excluded words) in the DB. The entire list needs to be loaded (best cached I think) for paginated display and customization using an existing JS widget, so what's the best way to store and load the base word list? My initial thought was to have a text file with one word per line and write my own loader and cache object, but my boss suggested using a ResourceBundle to leverage the built-in caching. I'm thinking that could be done by using the words as keys with empty values and using the keyset of the bundle. What would be the best solution to this?"}
{"_id": "255070", "title": "Is randomly refactoring code allowed in scrum", "text": "Background   * My team uses scrum   * I have currently no task assigned   * There are no more pending task in the backlog   * Today is Labor Day for my client. Not having many things to do today I wanted to start refactoring some code I keep on seeing in the project I am working on, but currently I am not assigned to any sprint task to do any large scale refactoring. Is it OK in **Scrum** if I start randomly refactoring code that I have and have not written that always bother me but don't have time other days to fix it because of other days assignments? What about other days that I have spare time between sprints. I actually do and believe in continuous refactoring. I always do it on the pieces of code that I am working when assigned a story but what about some other code I see that is not currently related to what I am working on at that moment?"}
{"_id": "206538", "title": "necessary to migrate to Web API from MVC controller", "text": "Since the released of Web API, I've been wondering whether it's necessary or helpful to migrate/change MVC controllers to use Web API calls. Since it's hard to describe code I'll show an example of what I mean: Current controller, the `_userService` is basically the `Business` layer of the application that is then calling the repository and getting all users.               [HttpGet]     public ActionResult List()     {         var list = _userService.GetAll();         if(list.Any())             return View(\"List\",list);         return View(list.ToList());     }      Would it be better to use Web API, and get the list of the users as JSON object and then bind it to the view with some JavaScript? (possibly knockout if applicable). Not sure if my question is clear enough, so let me know if I have to explain something."}
{"_id": "206539", "title": "Unit-Tests and databases: At which point do I actually connect to the database?", "text": "There are answers to the question on how test classes that connect to a database, e.g. \"Should service test classes connect ...\" and \"Unit testing - Database coupled app\". So, in short let's assume you have a class A that needs to connect to a database. Instead of letting A actually connect, you provide A with an interface that A may use to connect. For testing you implement this interface with some stuff - without connecting of course. If class B instantiates A it has to pass a \"real\" database connection to A. But that means B opens a database connection. That means to test B you inject the connection into B. But B is instantiated in class C and so forth. So at which point do I have to say \"here I fetch data from a database and I will not write a unit test for this piece of code\"? In other words: Somewhere in the code in some class I **must** call `sqlDB.connect()` or something similar. How do I test this class? And is it the same with code that has to deal with a GUI or a file system? * * * Edit: So far there are some nice answers but I have the feeling that I have not made myself very clear. One final approach: I want to do Unit-Test. Any other kind of test is not related to my question. I know that I will only test one class with it (I so agree with you Kilian). Now, some class has to connect to a DB. If I want to test this class and ask \"How do I do this\" many say: \"Use Dependency Injection!\" But that only shifts the problem to another class, doesn't it? So I ask, how do I test the class that really, really establishes the connection? Bonus question: Some answers here boil down to \"Use mock objects!\" What does that mean? I mock classes that the class-under-test depend upon. Shall I mock the class-under-test now and actually test the mock (which comes close to the idea of using Template Methods, see below)?"}
{"_id": "206536", "title": "How to create better OO code in a relational database driven application where the database is poorly designed", "text": "I am writing a Java web application that consists mainly of a bunch of similar pages in which every page has several tables and a filter that applies to those tables. The data on these tables comes from an SQL database. I am using myBatis as ORM, which may not be the best choice in my case, since the database is poorly designed and mybatis is a more database oriented tool. I am finding that I am writing a lot of duplicate code because, due to the database's poor design, I have to write different queries for similar things as those queries can be very different. That is, I cannot easily parametricise the queries. This propagates into my code and instead of populating rows on columns in my table with a simple loop I have code like: get _A_ Data (p1, ..., pi); get _B_ Data (p1, ..., pi); get _C_ Data (p1, ..., pi); get _D_ Data (p1, ..., pi); ... And this soon explodes when we have different tables with different columns. It also adds to the complexity the fact that I'm using \"wicket\", which is, in effect a mapping of objects to html elements in the page. So my Java code becomes an adapter between the database and the front end, which has me creating a lot of wiring, boilerplate code with some logic intermingled in it. Would the correct solution be wrapping the ORM mappers with an extralayer that presents a more homogeneous interface to the db or is there a better way to deal with this spaghetti code I'm writing? EDIT: More info about the database The database holds mainly phone calls information. The poor design consists of: Tables with an artificial ID as primary key that has nothing to do with the domain knowledge. No unique, triggers, checks or foreign keys whatsoever. Fields with a generic name that match different concepts for different records. Records that can be categorised only by crossing with other tables with different conditions. Columns which should be numbers or dates stored as strings. To sum it up, a messy / lazy design all around."}
{"_id": "225243", "title": "Is printing to console/stdout a good debugging strategy?", "text": "Let's say we have a function like this:               public void myStart()     {         for (int i = 0; i<10; i++) myFunction(i);      }               private int myFunction(int a)     {              a = foo(a);         a = bar(a);         return a;      }          private int foo(int a)     {         //do something here              //something gnarly here              //etc         return aValue;     }          private int bar(int a)     {         // do something here         //return aValue;     }      Now for whatever reason, our code isn't working. Perhaps it's throwing an error, perhaps it's returning the wrong value, perhaps it's got stuck in an infinite loop. The first thing any first year programmer, is print to console/std out, (having learned how to print Hello World before learning to use a debugger). For example to debug this code they might do the following:               private int myFunction(int a)     {         print(\"before foo: a=\" + a);          a = foo(a);         print(\"before bar: a=\" + a);         a = bar(a);              return a;      }          private int foo(int a)     {         //do something here         print (\"foo step1: a=\" + a);               //something gnarly here         print (\"foo step2: a=\" + a + \" someOtherValue=\"+ someOtherValue + \" array.length= \" + someArray.length());          //etc         return aValue;     }          private int bar(int a)     {         // do something here         //return aValue;     }      Now they run the code, they get a big console print out, which they can go through to trace where things are going wrong. An alternative of course, is to set breakpoints and step through the code at each point. One major advantage of printing to console, is that the developer can see the flow of the values in one go, without having to click through steps etc. But the disadvantage is, your code is then riddled with all these print statements that then need to be removed. (Is it possible perhaps to tell the debugger to print only certain values out to a log?, the breakpoints can then easily be added or removed without actually modifying the code.) I do still use console printing as a primary debugging method, I'm wondering how common/effective this is in comparison to something else out there."}
{"_id": "201088", "title": "How do I (php developer) work with an asp.net developer?", "text": "I'm a php developer working on a startup, and my friend, my partner(a developer also), who is building the startup with me, is an asp.net/C# developer. How do we work together collaboratively, as we program in two distinct languages? I know you can use Mono http://mono-project.com to design android applications, (which is java based) by writing C# codes and iOS. Is there any platform or framework we can use to create php apps by writing codes in C# or a framework that can convert C# codes to php, just like Mono?"}
{"_id": "233815", "title": "How to Ignore Bracketing Style in Code Comparison / Diff", "text": "How to ignore bracketing styles when doing code comparisons or diffs? We have several formats of bracketing and I would like:               function foo(){     }      to be considered the same as               function foo()     {     }      Right now I use Araxis merge which does a direct line-by-line comparison and we are getting a lot of \"false positive\" changes."}
{"_id": "201083", "title": "Is a data service API a good idea?", "text": "We currently have a monolithic Rails application that is really three separate applications that make use of the same data. In trying to figure out how to properly compartmentalize and break the mono-app into smaller pieces, it seems apparent that we need to have a central data service that the various pieces can communicate with, because I don't want to have to redefine a model layer for each application and/or copy models between the various applications (DRY). The idea is that since the database/persistance (including concepts like validations) are going to be the same for each component, it would make sense to have a service that can be used to query for data and create/update/delete it. What I'm picturing is essentially a JSON API that sits between the database and my application layer. The API will not immediately be exposed to the \"outside world\" (although that may be something that occurs in the future); for now, it would just be communicated with internally (ie. to/from a public- facing Rails (or other) app). This API would essentially just abstract persistence logic.   1. Is this a good idea? Are there any pitfalls that I'm not thinking of?   2. If this is a good idea, does anyone know of a Rails ORM or a gem that can be used to coordinate this sort of endeavour? My vision is that once a data service is running, the actual Rails application wouldn't be using ActiveRecord anymore, but rather _something_ which would handle querying the data API."}
{"_id": "201082", "title": "What makes Common Lisp \"big\"?", "text": "I've been learning both Common Lisp and Racket, and one thing that I consistently hear is that Racket is a much \"smaller\" language than Common Lisp. I was wondering what this really meant. As far as I can tell, the syntax for Common Lisp isn't that much bigger than for Racket. Basically, I'm wondering what exactly about common lisp is bigger. Does it have more syntax that I just don't know about? Does it have bigger environments? Bigger executables? Bigger libraries? Or some combination thereof? Please, this is not a \"which one is better\" thread, I would just like to know exactly what \"bigger\" means."}
{"_id": "201080", "title": "Dividing monopoly streets in groups", "text": "I'm new to object-oriented programming, to java, and to programming in general, and as my first real project I'm trying to program the board game Monopoly. What I've got so far is an array that can store objects of the class _Square_ (which has various subclasses, like properties, the railroads, chance cards etc.). Player objects take turns in moving around on the board, calling a _landedOn()_ method for whatever square they land on. Properties can be marked with an owner, and thus this owner will receive money if someone lands on his property. Everything is going good so far, but there is one little thing that bugs me. I'm unsure about how to elegantly divide the houses in groups, or colors. There are a couple of groups of streets on the board, and you can only buy houses if you own all properties in the group. I can imagine how to program this, but the solution seems a bit dirty and \"non-general\" to me. How do I make a nice general solution? To clear up: I want to be able to check whether all properties of one type are owned by the same player, in a general way, so that if the groups are changed, a property is added, or changes group, etc., I would not have to change a lot of code."}
{"_id": "247267", "title": "What is a helper? Is it a design pattern? Is it an algorithm?", "text": "Maybe a little tongue-in-cheek, but as I can't find this answer anywhere through Google, so to ensure Programmers Stackexchange has the answer: **What is a helper?** I see the name being used everywhere (module names, class names, method names), as if the semantics were deep and meaningful, but in the context of Computer Science (although I don't have a degree in it), I've never seen a description or definition anywhere! Is it a design pattern? Is it an algorithm? I once worked on a program in which the module and class were both called _somethingsomethinghelper_ (where _somethingsomething_ was fairly generic too) and I promptly renamed it to something that made sense to me, but I feel like I'm missing something here!"}
{"_id": "231131", "title": "Web Development: is there an oasis to the chaos?", "text": "I started my programming career a long time ago when I was 14 years old, and I started with a book by James Lee, suggested by a Unix Systems Administrator I met in Barnes and Noble. In a month I had digested that sucker, bought a set of carrier grade servers, and had an AMP stack running -- but never used PHP. The wonder of Perl absolutely captivated me, and I loved it. After learning everything I needed to know about HTML and hosting websites, and making that HTML content dynamic with Perl, and parsing input with regular expressions -- and, admittedly, that also included hacking a couple of HTML files with regular expressions, blissfully ignorant to grammars, let alone Chomsky hierarchies -- cutting my teeth on that stuff was _fantastic_ , especially after I learned to make money with it. It got better and better, but before long; alas, I discovered a new baby. Yes, the evil of the evil, C# and it occupied my attention for a very long time. Oh the _joys_ of static application development captivated me, and before long I had forgotten the whole motivation for me to program: it was no longer about money, but about the intellectual desire and will to hack at problems, and most importantly, make pretty much every single math problem my ... well, not so much. I got out of the whole thing and it wasn't too long before all these standards changed and a boxed website -- which was really never acceptable -- was absolutely positively, well, done. I worked in my field doing everything from botting apps to scraping html webpages regular expressions, and doing computer repair too. I wanted to do this for a living. So I went to college for it, B.S. Computer Science, yep, that's me. Junior year I found out that I was basically a math major, and lo I wasn't frightened because Computer Science reinforced the math and vice versa: I learned to appreciate the _same_ abstraction and formality that I absolutely **loathed** when I first cut my teeth with Perl -- \"object orientation?! who needs it!\" In a year I'm going to leave this school and seek employment in my field, and I've come to the crude and harsh realization that not _if_ but _when_ I go back out there, less blissfully ignorant of what it _means_ to compute, people are going to want me to develop webpages. I've dodged the bullet so far, but some of my peers haven't -- they seem to actually enjoy coding in the non- homogeneous, parse-html-with-regex, hack modules, PHP wonderland of rubbish and javascript, ..., **nonsense** that is all contained in that whole world. There's answers everywhere: \"use joomla,\" \"use wordpress,\" \"heroku/ruby on rails,\" ..., all of which gets some of these people super excited. Perl is the outlier, and it is such a wonderful language. They're going to want me to make the logo their 8 year old drew in MS Paint look gorgeous when I get stuck trying to vectorize that sucker and plug it into a website and clean it up; they're going to want me to change specifications at every possible turn; and they're all going to want some PHP/ASP.NET nonsense to construct it. I'm just absolutely cringing at the thought of being made to develop websites, my brain is just `nop` sliding me into the financial dooms of programmer hell. I need to know how people at my level or higher console themselves into creating gorgeous and clearly well thought out websites. How do I start over and fall in love with website development, again? Is there a python `from website import awesome` utility or something that I can use? Where do I go? * * * Edit: I've read a lot of comments about this thread, and yes it is long, but I can't think of any material to cut -- I'm really trying to voice my frustration here. Let me clarify a few points though. I don't loathe object orientation, or PHP, and I sure don't have any problem with the more mathematical and formal portion of programming. As far as my math stuff, I'm up to snuff with it. It's funny that one of you mentioned quantitative finance because I have a client with a passion for futures trading; however, at the end of the day my company hired a programmer capable of generating gobsmacks of garbage code so it can be put on a website. To make matters worse, the magnitude of garbage code ... to put it in car terms, it is like riding in the passenger seat with a newly licensed 15 year old driver -- with a manual transmission -- somehow we all get to the grocery store. Yes it works, but the transmission is shot and I need a shower by the end of it all. Web development just seems, well, so unnatural. Going about writing a webpage is as painful for most programmers as reading this post: long, verbose, roundabout the point, and at the end of the day some clever parser figures out what it all means and puts the discombobulated mess into a format the browser can understand. Cheeky, right? Gears are ground down to stubs by the time Javascript lubes it all together. How verbose? Well, let's say that six Linux kernel have less code that your grandma's 6 page website at this point -- there's a Joomla module for that, but you have to have a commercial license to post more than 6 cat pictures at a time. Something as simple as email address validation can perhaps only be compiled into a regex (by the way, which totally is not a regex) by extended Perl compatible regular expressions -- and indeed, that thing is at least 3 pages long and would make a drunk Ken Thompson blush. The worst part of it all is that there has got to be way better languages and frameworks for doing this kind of work. I want round boxes and edges that are beautiful, but I don't want to have to hack in illustrator for half an hour to do it just so I can load it in some div that arbitrarily positions it, according to browser specifications, in a combination that not even Bruce Schneier could enumerate. I need closure, and the functional definition of closure would be nice, but no host will well-support anything but PHP -- assuming PHP can be well-supported in the first place. At one point I was hoping that C# would be my panacea, nope. Maybe I'm not getting a fundamental element of web design. I attempted to get involved in the middleware side of web development, but that didn't work either. A polyglot of perl, python, and some regular expressions later and I had scraped his webpage, only to have a Joomla module butcher my beautifully normalized table. Feel free to mercilessly edit my post at will. ## **Links** ClojureScript: http://himera.herokuapp.com/synonym.html   Dancer: http://www.perldancer.org/documentation"}
{"_id": "97124", "title": "How easy should a language development framework be to use?", "text": "> This is part of a series of questions which focuses on a project called the > Abstraction Project, which aims to abstract the concepts used in language > design in the form of a framework. > > Another page associated to it related to structural typing can be viewed > here. The meta-topic associated to an inquiry about the framework and the > proper place to post can be found here. How easy should it be to use a Language Development Framework? I've written large scale code generation frameworks which also included the ability to send the result to the language-specific compiler. The topic of ease of use comes up from one such framework example: CodeDOM, or the Code Document Object Model. It is a framework written by Microsoft that describes common code structures, but generally left a lot out (expression coercions) and tended to be a bit abstract in its representation of certain constructs, to downright emitting bad code based upon what you were doing: earlier CodeDOM poorly handled emitting `PrivateImplementationType` on `CodeMemberMethod`, when the type used was a generic interface. CodeDOM was my original reason for writing my first code generator. One thing I'm trying to do, to simplify the framework, is reduce the amount of work you need to do something, and focusing on actions versus the specific types that make up those actions. Here's a side by side comparison of how the framework I'm writing works:               //Truncated...     /* *      * From a project that generates a lexer, this is the       * state->state transition character range selection logic.      * */     var nextChar = nextMethod.Parameters.Add(new TypedName(\"currentChar\", typeof(char).GetTypeReference()));     //...     char start = rangeElement.B.Value.Start;     char end = rangeElement.B.Value.End;     /* *      * 'start' <= nextChar && nextChar <= 'end'      * */     currentExpression = start.LessThanOrEqualTo(nextChar).LogicalAnd(nextChar.LessThanOrEqualTo(end));      Versus CodeDOM:               //Truncated...     var nextChar = new CodeVariableReferenceExpression(\"nextChar\");     //...     var start = new CodePrimitiveExpression(rangeElement.B.Value.Start);     var end = new CodePrimitiveExpression(rangeElement.B.Value.End);     currentExpression = new CodeBinaryOperatorExpression(new CodeBinaryOperatorExpression(start, CodeBinaryOperatorType.LessThanOrEqual, nextChar), CodeBinaryOperatorType.BooleanAnd, new CodeBinaryOperatorExpression(nextChar, CodeBinaryOperatorType.LessThanOrEqual, end));      The focus of the framework is language enthusiasts, as well as those interested in generating code or applications. Given its focus on compilation, code generation, and language development, should the framework focus on ease of use or raw power? My primary goal is to increase the availability of such tools, so those interested in the domain don't require a lot of experience in the language theory domain before they can start to work on their own language-centric projects. Given that I'm the author of the framework, my view of \"usability\" is biased. Thus, I must ask another if the focus and goal make sense to others who aren't associated to the project."}
{"_id": "200977", "title": "Certifications for software development companies - CMMI, ISO etc", "text": "What are the certifications that software development companies usually get? One example would be CMMI, or ISO 9000. What other certifications are out there for software development companies, and how important having them really is for attracting clients?"}
{"_id": "39021", "title": "Writing or extending existing emacs packages: is it worth or should I move to Netbeans/Eclipse?", "text": "I'm finishing my master degree course in CS and I've almost become addicted to Emacs. I've used it to write in C, Latex, Java, JSP,XML, CommonLisp, Ada and other languages no other editor supported, like AMPL. I'd like to improve the packages I've been using the most or create new ones, but, in practice, I find that the implementation of Emacs leaves a lot to be desired. There are a lot of poorly-featured/poorly-maintained packages with either overlapping functionalities or obscure incompatibilities, and Elisp just seems to foster the situation by lacking the common features modern lisps have. In contrast Eclipse and Netbeans are actively improved and it does seem they can be effective for non-mainstream languages. I tried Hibachi for Ada in Eclipse and it worked well, there's CUPS for Lisp in Eclipse and LambdaBeans built using NetBeans components. On the other hand those plugins seem to be less active than their Emacs' counterparts, for example Hibachi was archived last year. What's your opinion on this? Which editor should I write extension for? **EDIT:** To answer Larry Coleman (see comment below):   1. I like Emacs as a _user_ because it is efficient both for me and the computer I'm using. It's fast and the textual interface (i.e. minibuffer) allows for quick interaction. It's solid and packages are usually small and easy to manage. If I need to correct or remove something I usually just have to change a row in my .emacs or an elisp file, or delete a directory. Eclipse plugins rely on a more complicated process that screwed my Eclipse configuration a couple of times, forcing me to do a clean reinstall. Emacs works as long as I use the basic packages. If I need something more complicated the situation gets pretty hairy. As a \"power user\" I think that the best I can hope for is to write a severely crippled version of the extensions I'd actually like to have; in other words, that it's not worth the trouble.   2. I'd like to write extensions for the things I'd like to have automated in Emacs, for example project support with automated tag-table update on file writing. There are a few projects on this that lack integration, documentation, extensibility and so forth. The best one is probably CEDET, for which I believe the Greenspun's 10th rule can be applied. **EDIT:** To comment Larry Coleman's answer I'm pretty sure I can pick elisp programming but the extensions I have in mind don't exist yet despite their relative simplicity and the effort more knowledgeable people poured into related projects.This makes me wonder whether it is so because of the way emacs is developed, i.e. people tend to write their own little extensions without coordination, or its implementation, its extension language not being able to keep up with the growing complexity."}
{"_id": "73905", "title": "How can a maintenance-only programmer get a raise?", "text": "I have been working as a maintenance programmer for a couple of years and am wondering if there is such a thing as a raise for maintenance programmer? I ask because responsibilities don't get wider, you're still doing almost the same things, maybe a little faster as time passes. If it's possible, then what would be the path to get it?"}
{"_id": "229369", "title": "Avoiding Packages with High Efferent Coupling", "text": "I use java language to develop android application, after static analysis, the tool warns about high efferent coupling. What is the reason of this warning? Is it about AComModel which is extended by other class? There are 4 classes below which the tool warns us about them. I hope I asked logical question, but I really don't understand what is the problem?               public class AComModel {             public String GetComBusinessKey() {             return \"none\";         }     }               @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)     public class StepOneCom extends AComModel {              public View vi;         public ArrayList<SummaryViewModel> lstSmr;              @Override         public String GetComBusinessKey() {             return \"shvi\";         }          }               @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)     public class StepTwoCom extends AComModel {              public ArrayList<AccViewModel> lstAcc;         public SummaryViewModel c1;                   @Override         public String GetComBusinessKey() {             return \"shvi\";         }          }               @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)     public class StepThreeStepTwoCom extends AComModel {              public StepFourCom stepFourCom;              @Override         public String GetComBusinessKey() {             return \"cashadvi\";         }     }"}
{"_id": "177610", "title": "Where are the Interface information stored?", "text": "I would like to know whether the information in an interface such as the variables which are final and the methods which are abstract and static would all live in method area ??? And what would be there order in case of initialization? Would they be initialized before any of the non static variables or methods?"}
{"_id": "222855", "title": "Company name already taken at github", "text": "My research-based company's name is already taken on github (mailed the owner without any luck), what is the most recognized naming conventions for company github accounts besides the name directly? the only ones I found was `ibm-dojo` and `ibm-research`"}
{"_id": "177615", "title": "SpecFlow/Cucumber - Documenting available steps", "text": "Our company is looking at implementing BDD in our .NET application. Specifically, SpecFlow. We can foresee a large number of common steps being created ('Given a customer', etc), so what methods have been used to document these, so that the business can reference them? Is XmlDoc on the step definition classes sufficient, or have others found better methods of documentation?"}
{"_id": "16734", "title": "What are some conventions that are often mistaken for language features?", "text": "Some programming languages have constructs that because of their frequent use are often mistaken for language features. For example, many people think that `self` is a keyword in Python, but it's just the conventional name for the first argument to a method (you can use any variable name you want):               class Complex:         def __init__(self, realpart, imagpart):             self.r = realpart             self.i = imagpart      Another example: when I was learning R, I thought the syntax for filtering a vector was kind of weird:               d[d %% 2 == 0] # even elements only      At first I thought `d %% 2 == 0` was some sort of lambda that gets magically applied to every element of `d`, until I realized that this is a straightforward application of R's vectorized operations: `d %% 2 == 0` returns a vector like `[TRUE, FALSE, FALSE, ...]`, and then `d` just uses that list to filter values that are at positions marked as `TRUE`. What are some other constructs that may first appear to be specially designed language features, but are just straightforward applications of the language's core syntax & semantics?"}
{"_id": "16735", "title": "Best place to put classes that extend the .net framework?", "text": "I have no clue where to put the following class and I've noticed I just keep putting them in a helpers folder which isn't much helpfull towards reusability in future projects. **Example:** I want to have the ability to use the `DisplayNameAttribute` together with resource files. In order for this to work I made a `LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute` which inherits the \u00b4DisplayNameAttribute\u00b4 and adds the following properties `DisplayNameResourceName` and `DisplayNameResourceType`. In which namespace/location would you place such a class which is likely to be reused in future projects?"}
{"_id": "250078", "title": "Keep or discard tests that use methods now private", "text": "When writing object-oriented code from scratch, I try to follow these steps:   1. Write a test that fails.   2. Write a **function** that makes the test pass.   3. When enough tests and functions are complete, refactor functions with similar signature into a **class**.   4. When the class functionality is complete, **make private** as many of the class methods as possible. The last step seems sound to me, since object orientation is all about hiding complexity behind abstractions, and keeping the public part of those abstractions as small as possible. However, this leads me to discard many of the tests that I wrote when still working with plain functions -- since they are now testing the private part of a class' API. This makes me uncomfortable because:   * remaining tests are suddenly forced to **\"cover more complexity\"**.  For instance: if I wrote a method to `swap_rows` in a matrix while inverting it, but that method is now private and only used from the public method `invert`, then the `test_invert` has to somehow convey to the reader that \"swapping rows happens while inverting\". More importantly, that remaining test possibly will not pinpoint that it is the swapping of rows that has been broken by a careless change (and not any other part of the inverting process).   * private class methods may **become public again** when writing client code that has a reasonable cause to access their results. This is difficult to foresee. Recovering the tests from a previous commit is possible but it feels like wasted time. A solution would be to refactor the methods out into a helper class that is package private. However, this looks like abusing object-oriented principles for the sake of TDD principles; also, it makes me wonder if there will ever be a good reason to make something private at all. I realize I am asking here about \"how to grow an architectural design\", and that this cannot be done in a completely \"bottom-up\" approach; but I would like practical advice on keeping or discarding such early tests while still figuring out the shape of a piece of software. This question is similar, but here I do not question that it is possible to get an initial public API right with TDD: I seek for good advice on how to get there. This answer is useful, but I do not think I am trying to adapt my coding to my tests, but rather my tests to my -- still uncertain -- design. To summarize: should I keep or discard early tests while writing object- oriented code from scratch? Should I still strive to make as many methods as possible private, or is this leading me to a bad design and the forced removal of tests is just a symptom thereof?"}
{"_id": "222853", "title": "Decorator Pattern in Head First Design Patterns", "text": "I'm trying to teach myself some design patterns using a book that I was recommended, Head First Design Patterns. I came to the chapter on the Decorator Pattern, and although I understand the purpose of it, I'm a bit fuzzy on it's layout. Here is their basic UML of the Decorator pattern: Imgur (Sorry for the link, but SE won't let me upload a photo here for some reason) Here is how they wrote out the code:               public abstract class Component {         String description = \"Unknown Description\";              public String getDescription() {             return description;         }              public abstract double cost();     }          public class ConcreteComponent extends Component {         public ConcreteComponent() {             description = \"I am a concrete component\";         }              public double cost() {             return 1.99;         }     }          public abstract class Decorator extends Component {         public abstract String getDescription();     }          public class ConcreteDecorator extends Decorator {         Component component;              public ConcreteDecorator(Component component) {             this.component = component;         }              public String getDescription() {             return component.getDescription() + \" with a decorator\";         }              public double cost() {             return .20 + component.cost();         }     }      My question is, what is the need for a Decorator class in this situation? Why not leave getDescription() abstract and let ConcreteComponents and ConcreteDecorators implement it the way they need? As a follow up, are there actual benefits to creating a Decorator class? This example doesn't seem to cover why it's useful or how it could be useful."}
{"_id": "246795", "title": "Rails Google Cloud Messaging with heroku", "text": "I'm looking at using GCM to send notifications from my rails app to an Android app. The getting started guide says:               In the resulting configuration dialog, supply your server's IP address.      I'm using Heroku, so the IP address is changing frequently correct? Can I still use GCM? Was looking at using the rails gem and I couldn't find any documentation related to Heroku."}
{"_id": "119833", "title": "Does HTML5 have a feature that enables a user to add an icon to the Apps screen when \"installing\", and if not, when are they planning to add it?", "text": "I know that the mobile bookmark bubble might sort of work for iOS, but it isn't going in the same section. And for Android, bookmarking is really not going to cut it for a mobile HTML5 application install since users just don't think to go to their bookmarks and that bookmark process takes two or three steps. To me this issue of getting the application (bookmark) installed pretty much makes the rest of the HTML 5 features aimed at mobile HTML much less useful. I can't realistically expect users to prefer the bookmark install and launch process over regular apps, so I can realistically expect them to ignore my mobile HTML5 application and use a native app. The groups behind mobile HTML 5 features do seem to be pushing for HTML 5 apps adoption with things like Application Cache etc. To me it seems obvious that the bookmark bubble is not going to cut it. Someone please tell me they have addressed this or at least are working on it?"}
{"_id": "119836", "title": "Is there a language or design pattern that allows the *removal* of object behavior or properties in a class hierarchy?", "text": "A well-know shortcoming of traditional class hierarchies is that they are bad when it comes to model the real world. As an example, trying to represent animals species with classes. There are actually several problems when doing that, but one that I never saw a solution to is when a sub-class \"looses\" a behavior or properties that was defined in a super-class, like a penguin not being able to fly (there are probably better examples, but that's the first one that comes to my mind, having seen \"Madagascar 2\" recently). On the one hand, you don't want to define for every property and behavior some flag that specifies if it is at all present, and check it every time before accessing that behavior or property. You would just like to say that birds can fly, simply and clearly, in the Bird class. But then it would be nice if one could define \"exceptions\" afterward, without having to use some horrible hacks everywhere. This often happens when a system has been productive for a while. You suddenly find an \"exception\" that doesn't fit in the original design at all, and you don't want to change a large portion of your code to accommodate it. So, is there some language or design patterns that can cleanly handle this problem, without requiring major changes to the \"super-class\", and all the code that uses it? Even if a solution only handle a specific case, several solutions might together form a complete strategy. [EDIT] Forgot about the Liskov Substitution Principle. That is why you can't do it. Assuming you define \"traits/interfaces\" for all major \"feature groups\", you can freely implement traits in different branches of the hierarchy, like the Flying trait could be implemented by Birds, and some special kind of squirrels and fish. So my question could amount to \"How could I un-implement a trait?\" If your super-class is a Java Serializable, you have to be one too, even if there is no way for you to serialize your state, for example if you contained a \"Socket\". So one way to do it is to always define all your traits in pair from the start: Flying and NotFlying (which would throw UnsupportedOperationExceiption, if not checked against). The Not-trait would not define any new interface, and could be simply checked for. Sounds like a \"cheap\" solution, in particular if used from the start."}
{"_id": "97691", "title": "Can the concept of Entropy be used to analyze source code in a useful way?", "text": "It seems logical to me that one could define a context for static source code analysis that included rules to produce a relative value of complexity. I know it is not like in the physical sense because souce code doesn't have \"Energy\" but I'm betting there have been efforts, at leat academic, to draw a parallel. Has anyone any knowledge of this and if so, to what end has it produced useful results?"}
{"_id": "88051", "title": "Getting My Head Around Immutability", "text": "I'm new to object-oriented programming, and one concept that has been taking me a while to grasp is immutability. I think the light bulb went off last night but I want to verify: When I come across statements that an immutable object cannot be changed, I'm puzzled because I can, for instance, do the following:               NSString *myName = @\"Bob\";     myName = @\"Mike\";      There, I just changed myName, of immutable type NSString. My problem is that the word, \"object\" can refer to the physical object in memory, or the abstraction, \"myName.\" The former definition applies to the concept of immutability. As for the variable, a more clear (to me) definition of immutability is that the _value_ of an immutable object can only be changed by also changing its location in memory, i.e. its reference (also known as its pointer). Is this correct, or am I still lost in the woods?"}
{"_id": "245877", "title": "Rewriting/decoupling important service of the Django website in Erlang", "text": "We have application written entirely in Django, which consist of three separate components. Admin, Service for generating invoices + API and UI for users. Problem is, that they are very tightly coupled (even they're kind of split, each components has it's own settings, and can run 'standalone' - well, this is often not really true, since they all share same models and some functionality from the views, ie. error on the UI means most of the time that invoice generating service is down also. Problem is, that generating invoices is very crucial part of our business. We also push some data to the client, and we use AMQP, websockets, tornado and celery to do this. I looked on Erlang and found out, that it's exactly perfect fit for our invoice generating service. We could exchange Celery, Tornado and AMQP (it is written in Erlang anyhow as far as I know), just for Erlang. We are at very early stage, where only one invoice is created every few hours, so it's not that big of a deal now, but I can imagine how big problems this might cause in the future. My question is, whether it's good to do such decoupling now (when the problem really does not exist), or focus on the adding new features to the product and start to solve this once this will start being an issue? Part of the problem is, that quite big part of the application logic is in the Django models itself. We use quite a lot signals, pre/post save hooks etc., so we would lost this functionality by for instance writing to the database directly from Erlang, but I feel, that this might save us a lot of pain in the future."}
{"_id": "120151", "title": "Inversion of Control in ASP.NET MVC", "text": "I was going to refactor my ASP.NET MVC application and inject some IoC. Last time I was using IoC, Unity was all the rage, but I hated it. It was difficult to setup and had very nondescript errors. Does anyone have any suggestion or preferences?"}
{"_id": "215353", "title": "Buzzword for \"performance-aware\" software development", "text": "There seems to be an overabundance of buzzwords for software development styles and methodologies: Agile development, extreme programming, test-driven development, etc... well, is there any sort of buzzword for \"performance- aware\" development? By \"performance awareness\", I don't necessarily mean low-latency or low-level programming, although the former would logically fall under the blanket term I'm looking for. I mean development in which resources are recognised to be finite and so there is a general emphasis on low computational complexity, good resource management, etc. If I was to be snarky, I would say \"good programming\", but that doesn't seem to get the message across so well..."}
{"_id": "215350", "title": "Understanding Visitor Pattern", "text": "I have a hierarchy of classes that represents GUI controls. Something like this:               Control->ContainerControl->Form      I have to implement a series of algoritms that work with objects doing various stuff and I'm thinking that Visitor pattern would be the cleanest solution. Let take for example an algorithm which creates a Xml representaion of a hierarchy of objects. Using 'classic' approach I would do this:               public abstract class Control     {         public virtual XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document)         {             XmlElement xml = document.CreateElement(this.GetType().Name);             // Create element, fill it with attributes declared with control             return xml;         }     }          public abstract class ContainerControl : Control     {         public override XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document)         {             XmlElement xml = base.ToXML(document);             // Use forech to fill XmlElement with child XmlElements             return xml;         }     }          public class Form : ContainerControl     {         public override XmlElement ToXML(XmlDocument document)         {             XmlElement xml = base.ToXML(document);             // Fill remaining elements declared in Form class             return xml;         }     }      But I'm not sure how to do this with visitor pattern. This is the basic implementation:               public class ToXmlVisitor : IVisitor     {         public void Visit(Form form)         {         }     }      Since even the abstract classes help with implementation I'm not sure how to do that properly in ToXmlVisitor? The reason that I'm considering Visitor pattern is that some algorithms will need references not available in project where the classes are implemented and there is a number of different algorithms so I'm avoiding large classes."}
{"_id": "69219", "title": "Connecting to users local machine from my WebApp", "text": "I have a Web App that i have developed I am looking to develop a plugin for this app so that i can pull information from the users accounts package such as sage or quickbooks(offline version). Ideally I would like to do this without them having to have a static ip etc. Unfortunately this is way over my head I currently have no idea on how to do this. Please can some one guide me in the right direction I will probably use json data between the webapp and the client service that I will make and im fine with that part its just the initial connection that I am confused about. Any help would be really really appreciated I hope this makes sense. Thanks Ash"}
{"_id": "86399", "title": "Is PHP-GTK widely used?", "text": "Is PHP-GTK widely used for desktop application? Is it recommended to use? Is there a big company who uses PHP GTK?"}
{"_id": "100024", "title": "Do programmers need to know about graphic designing?", "text": "I want to know your opinion. Do programmers (like me) need to know about design? For example drawing, web design, image manipulation etc.               Edited      Actually, I like web, enterprise and mobile programming. Thanks :D"}
{"_id": "153720", "title": "Does it make sense to use jQuery in modern-webkit-only web applications?", "text": "I'm lately working on a few mobile web apps for Android (2.3+) and iOS (4+). Their browsers support most of ECMAScript5, which is very powerful, and I wanted to use language features where possible, resorting to jQuery only when I had to. Turns out the only thing I use jQuery for is to have a shorter alternative for `document.querySelectorAll`. Might as well get rid of it. If I only have to support modern WebKit browsers, is it a good idea to get rid of jQuery (and other general-purpose libraries)? They are a layer of indirection, after all. (The apps don't have to make AJAX calls so far, I guess that's one thing that's going to get ugly. But is it worth keeping jQuery just for that?)"}
{"_id": "254399", "title": "The ViewController design in iOS vs MVC in tradiational web apps design", "text": "As I came from the background of webapps and move to iOS programming, I am wondering why we can't just apply the MVC design approach to native apps, i.e. in iOS, the view and controller are tightly coupled, are there any reason?"}
{"_id": "49557", "title": "Computer science curriculum for non-CS major?", "text": "I would like to have some ideas for building up my foundation CS skills. I have started programming computers 10 years ago and have made a pretty good career out of it. However, I cannot stop thinking that the path that brought me here was very particular, and if something goes wrong (e.g. I get laid off) it would be harder to find a job here in the US on the same salary level, OR in a top company. The reason I say that is that I am a self-learner; my degree is not in Computer Science so although I master C/C++/Java, I do not have the formal CS and mathematical background that many other software developers (esp. here in the US) have. When I look at job interview questions from Apple, Google, Amazon, I have the impression that I'd flunk those technical interviews at some point. Don't get me wrong, I know my algorithms and data structures, but when things dive too deeply into the CS realm I am in trouble. What can I do to close the gap? I was thinking about a MSc in CS, but will I even UNDERSTAND what's going on there if I'm not a CS undergrad? Should I go back to basics and get a BSc in CS instead? I always tend to go into self-study mode when I want to learn new stuff, but I have the impression that I will need more formal education in CS if I want to have a shot at working at those kinds of companies. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "247431", "title": "Choosing between the view and the controller for my code", "text": "I'm aware there are a lot of topics about MVC design but it's hard to find good explanations: what I should do, what are the consequences of the different possibilities... So I'm working on an ASP .NET MVC application with a HTML/Javascript front- end. Currently there is a view which allows the end-user to edit some objects like the others users. The form is automatically generated based on some meta- data. But these objects are rather complex, with many system properties and need to be edited by non-expert users. As we don't want to spend much time on the view, we decided to just hide all the input fields except the most simple ones like first name, last name, phone... My question is, does this filtering should be done in the controller or in the view ? Should I Ignore the most complex input fields in the view or only returns the needed fields from the controller ? Also my controller returns the data from the model without any post- processing. So it is done in the view. I could do it in the controller in order to save some ajax-calls and a little bandwith but I don't know if I should adapt the controller to the view or the view to the controller."}
{"_id": "21623", "title": "How to improve skills in software architecture", "text": "What is the best way to improve your skills in software architecture? We were taught design patterns in university, and I see plenty of books with simple and straight forward examples, but aside from them, how can you learn good architecture? In other words, how does one evolve into a great architect? What are the prerequisites?"}
{"_id": "254390", "title": "protect purchased games to be downloaded on other pc", "text": "I want to make a downloads managing system on my website, that when you purchase a download, you can always re-download it again for free. (i have read that Steam does something similar) The problem is, that someone would be able to create a account, purchase something and then give the account password to friends and family, so they can all download copies for free. Is there a way to prevent this? Or is it impossible."}
{"_id": "49559", "title": "Is there any reason lazy initialization couldn't be built into Java?", "text": "Since I'm working on a server with absolutely no non-persisted state for users, every User-related object we have is rolled out on every request. Consequently I often find myself doing lazy initialization of properties of objects that may go unused. `protected EventDispatcher dispatcher = new EventDispatcher();` Becomes...               protected EventDispatcher<EventMessage> dispatcher;          public EventDispatcher<EventMessage> getEventDispatcher() {         if (dispatcher == null) {             dispatcher = new EventDispatcher<EventMessage>();         }         return dispatcher;     }      Is there any reason this couldn't be built into Java? `protected **lazy** EventDispatcher dispatcher = new EventDispatcher();` * * * As mentioned below in the comments, I realize a language could theoretically evolve to include most anything you want. I'm looking for a practical measurement of possibility. Would this conflict with other features? Is the implementation simple enough to work well with the JVM as it exists? And even, is it a good idea?"}
{"_id": "152453", "title": "Are \"backwards\" terminators for if and case unique to shell scripting?", "text": "In bash at least, `if` and `case` blocks are closed like this:               if some-expr     then         echo \"hello world\"     fi          case $some-var in     [1-5])         do-a-thing         ;;     *)         do-another-thing     esac      as opposed to the more typical close of `end` or `endif`/`endcase`. As far as I know, this rather funny convention is unique to shell scripting and I have never seen such an odd block terminator anywhere else. Sometimes things like this have an origin in another language (like Ruby's `elsif` coming from Perl), or a strange justification. Does this feature of shell scripting have a story behind it? Is it found in other languages?"}
{"_id": "219865", "title": "Further decoupling using static libraries", "text": "I've been thinking for a while about reasons that prevent a lot of programmers \u2014 myself first of all \u2014 from writing clean, modular and expressive code while developing, for example, CocoaTouch apps. What I discovered is that my top-three of reasons are following:   1. **UI code.** Device-specific UI/UX, general clutter, 'quick fixes and workarounds' and so on.   2. **Poor Controller-View decoupling.** Sometimes Controller ends up doing job that the View is responsible for.   3. **Sparse test harness.** Of course, those problems stem from lack of discipline or habit to write clean code. But it is difficult to discipline yourself if the _environment allows you not to do that_. It is easy to sort laundry if you have a set of dedicated drawers, but if you have one drawer, it will slowly turn into mess \u2014 unless you are very disciplined. And then I tried to apply that idea of 'sorting drawers' to address my code problems \u2014 and I thought that it is possible to sort MVP components as follows:   1. **Model** is actually a framework of classes responsible for dealing with data. Model is reusable, as it is a set of routines to work with data.   2. **View** is actually a framework of classes responsible for presenting information graphically. It doesn't depend _that_ much on environment and it definitely can be reused.   3. **Controller** is a framework of classes responsible for coordination of aforementioned layers and working with user interaction paths. Application itself is something like (?) a big controller. Since it glues together a defined set of models to a defined set of views, it is not reusable and depends heavily on those + platform etc. So given the M and V are somewhat reusable, and C is not \u2014 maybe it makes sense to force separation of M and V? The best way to ensure they are separated is to put them in static libraries. After that they can be linked to the app, which contains only controller code. This approach seems to me quite good because:   * only controller depends on something here   * developer can write separate test suites for those modules   * user interface classes can be reused in other apps easily   * model classes can be extracted to cross-platform codebase while maintaining the old facade   * commits are limited to three really distinct modules \u2014 what's more distinct than a separate library? What do you think? Does this sound like an idea to follow?"}
{"_id": "219867", "title": "Find product using summation C# Problem?", "text": "I am trying to write a simple program to find the product of two numbers (X, Y) without using multiplication. Meaning that I will only use summation to find the product. I am trying to use the \"Divide-and-Conquer\" technique, and am using the obviously known concept that: 5*6 = 5+5+5+5+5+5               Multiply(uint X, uint Y)     {              if (Y < 1)             return 23423432453; //any very big random number              if (Y == 1)             sum = sum + X;              else // if (Y != 1)         {             halfY = Y / 2;             if (Y % 2 == 0) // if Y is even #                 return Multiply(X, halfY);             else //if Y is odd #                 return Multiply(X, halfY) + Multiply(X, 1);         }         return sum;     }      **EXPLANATION** 1) I see the problem as (for example) a 5x6 grid. My idea is to keep recursively dividing the number of columns Y until I reach that Y=1 (Y=1 is the base case). When Y=1, the number of rows in each column would be simply \"X\" and I can just add X+X+X ... according to the #of columns Y, and save the result in the variable               sum      , then I just return \"sum\" at the end. 2) In this part of the code,                else //if Y is odd #            return Multiply(X, halfY) + Multiply(X, 1);      I added \"Multiply(X, 1)\" to compensate for the \"1\" that will be lost due to the integer division operation. \\----- As an illustration: For example 5*6, where X=5, Y=6:                                               Multiply(X,Y)                            //Y=6                               /                       \\                    Multiply(X, Y/2)                   Multiply(X, Y/2)       //Y=3, Y=3                  /         |        \\               /      \\          \\        Mult(X,Y/4) Mult(X,Y/4) Mult(X,1)  Mult(X,Y/4) Mult(X,Y/4) Mult(X,1) //Y=1,1,1,1,1,1             |           |           |           |            |        |     //BASE CASE!      sum= X + X + X + X + X + X = 5+5+5+5+5+5 = 30 * * * The code seems pretty logic to me, but it won't give me the right output. Is the idea incorrect? Any help in what is wrong would be greatly appreciated. Thanks."}
{"_id": "176050", "title": "How to start learning Spring framework with all its associated functionalities?", "text": "I am going to delve into the nuances of Spring. I have a little information about this framework. So I am not going in blind. But still I will like to start it as a beginner and then move up the levels to all the associated functionalities. I have RAD and apache tomcat installed. Does anyone know of any good sites or pdfs that will give me a good bottom up approach with proper examples?"}
{"_id": "176054", "title": "Why Firefox caching work will reset in version 3 but version 16 don't?", "text": "I am developing a web application and have the app deployed into Tomcat server. Tested on IE and Firefox and are working fine. Meaning when I close the browser and reopen the app, the data will be reset. When deploy to Websphere, the data is reset only in IE but Firefox don't. Meaning Firefox will cache the old data. I did try to clear the cache in FF but still failed. I did a test in FF3 and FF16, FF3 will reset the value but FF16 doesn't, I am just so curious why this could happened? Now I don't know whether this is my code problem or is actually the FF caching problem. Any clue on this?"}
{"_id": "45419", "title": "Advantages of Scala vs. Groovy with JAVA EE 6 Applications", "text": "Please let me first emphasize that I am not looking for flame wars. I just want advice from people who have real experiences. I started learning JAVA EE 6 as real newbie and am having a difficult time choosing what tools to use. The first question I have is - what are the advantages of using Scala vs. Groovy with Java EE 6 apps over Java? I've seen on some blogs people mentioning Scala can mean writing less code but as a newbie I don't know what other advantages and disadvantages there are. The second question is whether I'm better off choosing Netbeans 6.9 or Helios 3.6.1? I realized that with eclipse I can easily mix EE 6 applications with Groovy or Scala without any problems (I only did this by displaying a String message from Scala and Groovy classes.). With Netbeans the only advantage I can think of is having separate Java project libraries and using the jars in my web app. But I also realize to the extent of my little knowledge Netbeans has better support for Java EE 6. Please need your expert advice. Thanks."}
{"_id": "90479", "title": "What are your recommendations for porting a huge VC++6 project to later VS version?", "text": "We have a huge legacy C project which runs in VC++6. And I hope this will be ported to later versions of visual studio. But I think it will be a huge work. Actually, I just tried to recompile the project with VS2005 and got so many errors. So, do you have any experience of this type of porting? Any recommendations?"}
{"_id": "90478", "title": "What are the various premature optimizations traits / types?", "text": "For code review technique training, I have to cover various topics. One of them is premature optimization. I found 3 traits of it as:   1. It's generally evil; causing **inverse effects**.   2. It's an **unnecessary pain** , causing no gain.   3. It demands lot of effort to achieve **little benefits** Is there any other trait which am I missing ? Also, to illustrate them, I usually get a good examples for only 1st scenario. Can someone suggest any solid example for 2nd and 3rd scenario also ? Example for 1st scenario: > Using char instead of int for smaller loops to save bytes!               for(char c = 0; c < 20; c++) {} //Evil: Accessing 'char' costlier than 'int'      [Note: I am not worried about the fact that compilers usually itself takes care of premature stuff. This training is meant just for illustration.] This question is not about, \"What optimizations are premature?\""}
{"_id": "124380", "title": "Should I use an aggregate root when designing my repository?", "text": "I have an entity that is called Master which is composed of a number of Slave entities. There can only be one Master in my database and I want to query repositories to get the Slave for a given id. I initially created a SlaveRepository and queried that by id. That seems fine and works and other developers could use my repository. Then I thought about aggregate roots and created a MasterRepository and returned the Master and then did a loop on that to get the required Slave entity. The problem I felt here is once I expose this to other developers they would have to do the same, so I through about having a method on the MasterRepository called GetSlaveByID(string id) and then I could get the Slave directly (hides the loop functionality). Now, should my repository return a Slave even though it is called a MasterRepository? And more importantly which is the right way to go? I am in the early stages of trying to apply DDD and TDD so there are probably lots of things I need to think about before deciding which is the correct way I guess."}
{"_id": "162357", "title": "Less vs Stylus vs Sass", "text": "I'd like to start using a CSS pre-processor to cut down development time. Which one of these is the fastest from this perspective?"}
{"_id": "162352", "title": "What are the advantages of programming to under an OS as opposed to bare metal executive?", "text": "Assume you are presented with an embedded system application to program, in C, on a multi-core environment (think a Cavium or Tilera) and need to choose between two environments: Code the application under Linux in SMP mode or code the application under a thin bare metal executive (something like a very minimal RTOS), perhaps with a single core running UP Linux that can serve control tasks. For the purpose of this question, assume that both environment provide the same level of performance guarantees in any measurable aspects of run time performance, including number of meaningful action per second, jitter, latency, real time considerations - the works. (and yes, I realize this is by far not a trivial assumption at all, bare with me). How would you justify going with a Linux SMP based solution rather then a bare metal thin executive solution? The question may seems silly. It certainly seems obvious to me - but I have to convince someone that does not think the same. Could you help make a list of arguments in favor of choosing a real SMP aware OS (Linux) vs. a bare metal executive assuming performance guarantees are NOT an issue? Many thanks"}
{"_id": "46850", "title": "Business person turned into coder? How and why? Inspire the non-technical", "text": "I graduated with a Business degree. Two years later, I finally realized the power of programming - the power to \"invent.\" I wish I realized this in high school. Nevertheless, I tried to self-teach C# but found it difficult. Then I pivoted to learn PHP two months ago and I have been able to build things I thought was beyond my abilities. Has anyone had the same experience? Or self-taught programming? What lessons did you learn?"}
{"_id": "190306", "title": "Are these good reasons for moving to Microsoft web development platform?", "text": "**Background** I do PHP and Ruby on Rails development in my spare time, and have learned quite a bit on my own. I chose those technologies because of the low cost of entry, since everything is open-source and freely available. I develop on Linux and have been learning that from using it too. **Problem** Now I'm at a place where I want to get deeper in my knowledge of web development, but I'm personally having a hard time learning, because:   * I'm finding that since everything is community-maintained there is no real \"structure\" to advancing knowledge.   * So far I've learned from doing, and looking up specific problems as I encounter them. I don't know if that's the right way to do it in general, or if it's just not the best way for me. What I don't like about this approach is that you don't get any insight into the problem, because you just need to fix it and get moving with the project you're actually working on! As an example, working in Rails hasn't given me more than just basic knowledge of Ruby, because I can't learn both Rails and Ruby to an advanced level at the same time (maybe that's just my brain's limitation?)   * I find that a significant portion of my time gets spent just getting set up, resolving LAMP-stack issues for PHP/MySQL, or Ruby gem dependencies and conflicts **Question** I am considering trying out C# and the .NET world for a few reasons, and I would like _more experienced developers' thoughts on whether my thinking is sound or flawed_. My main reasons for wanting to switch are:   * it seems like a more structured environment, I guess specifically because it's not community-driven. Does that make for a more linear learning experience?   * I personally prefer working in visual environments, and Microsoft has Visual Studio. I've used several IDEs for PHP and Ruby and they're quite good, but just going by what I've heard Visual Studio is excellent to work with.   * Microsoft has free \"Express\" versions of their software to try out, so there's a low cost of entry there now too   * since Microsoft's is a \"closed\"/integrated environment, do you save time in the initial set up? I.e., do you spend less time setting up Apache/nginx, MySQL, MongoDB, version control, etc."}
{"_id": "163089", "title": "Should an image be able to resize itself in OOP?", "text": "I'm writing an app that will have an `Image` entity, and I'm already having trouble deciding whose responsibility each task should be. First I have the `Image` class. It has a path, width, and other attributes. Then I created an `ImageRepository` class, for retrieving images with a single and tested method, eg: `findAllImagesWithoutThumbnail()`. But now I also need to be able to `createThumbnail()`. Who should deal with that? I was thinking about having an `ImageManager` class, which would be an app-specific class (there would also be a third party image manipulation reusable component of choice, I'm not reinventing the wheel). Or maybe it would be 0K to let the `Image` resize itself? Or let the `ImageRepository` and `ImageManager` be the same class? What do you think?"}
{"_id": "160262", "title": "Best way to remove list items from an existing record", "text": "Ok more of a conceptual question here: Say I have an existing record of type Meeting. When I go to edit the meeting I have a listbox with all current meeting participants, and one with all employees. I then add a few employees from the master list and remove a couple from the meeting list. What is then the best approach to update my MeetingParticipant database with the new roster? The add records are no problem, but when I go to update, my callback doesn't know which items I have removed. Here are the solutions I've considered/implemented so far, but I'm hoping someone has a better answer :).   1. Immediately resolve the record deletion when the employee has been removed from the list. (this is what I usually implement, but I'd rather find a way where I can simply update the entire collection upon form submission)   2. Remove all MeetingParticipant records for the meeting and repopulate with the new list. (could possibly cause some referential integrity problems for employees who's status did not change)   3. Iterate through each of the MeetingParticipant records, searching the new list to see if it's still on the list or not. (seems like a lot of overkill) If it matters, we're working w/in the .Net framework using MVC & LINQ."}
{"_id": "163082", "title": "Using XML as data storage", "text": "I was thinking about the XML format and the following quote: > \u201cXML is not a database. It was never meant to be a database. It is never > going to be a database. Relational databases are proven technology with more > than 20 years of implementation experience. They are solid, stable, useful > products. They are not going away. XML is a very useful technology for > moving data between different databases or between databases and other > programs. However, it is not itself a database. Don't use it like one.\u201c > -Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML by Elliotte Rusty > Harold (page 230, Part 4, Item 41, 2nd paragraph) This seems to really stress that XML should not be used for data storage and should only be used for program to program interoperability. Personally, I disagree and .NET's `app.config` file that's used to store a program's settings is an example of data storage in an XML file. However for databases rather than configurations etc XML should not be used. To develop my point, I will use two examples:   A) Data about customers with fields that are all on one level i.e. there are a number of fields all relating to one customer with no children   B) Data about configuration of an application where nested fields and properties make a lot of sense So my question is, Is this still a valid statement and is it now acceptable to store data using XML? EDIT: I've sent an email to the author of that quote to ask for his input/extra context."}
{"_id": "125474", "title": "Why does shared state degrade performance?", "text": "I've been working under the share-nothing principle of concurrent programming. Essentially, all my worker threads have immutable read-only copies of the same state which is never shared between them ( _even by reference_ ). Generally speaking, this has worked really well. Now, someone has introduced a no-lock singleton cache ( _e.g. a static dictionary_ ) that all the threads are accessing concurrently. Since the dictionary is never altered after startup there are no locks. There haven't been any Thread-Safety issues, but now there is a performance degradation. The question is... since there are no locks why does the introduction of this singleton create a performance hit? What exactly is going on under the covers that could explain this? To confirm, accessing this new singleton is the only change and I can reliably recreate this simply by commenting out the call to the cache."}
{"_id": "160269", "title": "User Stories with design elements in Scrum", "text": "We're implementing a Scrum workflow and I'm trying to wrap my head around user stories, when they're completed, iterations, etc. One thing we often do is work on a story during an early iteration, get it fully working but \"ugly\". We use plain buttons, no images, just the text to show that it's working the way they should. We show our customer, make sure they are happy with how it's working, then we usually use images they provide to finish up the design of the feature and complete it. In this instance, would we complete the user story when it's functionally complete, and make a second user story that says something to the effect of \"as a user I want xyz to be visually appealing\" to take care of the design phase? Or would we just move the user story from the first iteration to later on in the project once we get the design elements and can complete it? If that's the case, I can see us only completing maybe one or two stories in the first few iterations and completing a TON of stories in the final few iterations. How do you all handle this scenario?"}
{"_id": "160268", "title": "How to implement a simulation pattern for a repository?", "text": "Let's say I have a repository of functions. These functions work with business objects within a database, CMS or other third party API. For example, my repository interacts with virtual files and documents in a document management system. I want to be able to implement a simulation mode in my repository such that when I execute commands, I want to see the result of it without it actually doing anything. This is to reduce the risk of someone executing a series of commands in my repository and doing something dangerous. I want them to first see the output and confirm before executing. My question is, what are some good patterns to implement a simulation mode for a repository? I can think of a few off the top of my hat: Wrap all business objects in another class, such that when you would call File.Delete, your actually calling the wrapper class and it checks in simulation mode is enabled. The problem is that many third party libraries and SDKs don't let you subclass their business objects. How would you pass in the the simulation mode (everytime an object is instantiated?). Another option would be to implement a SimulatedRepository. However, I don't want to duplicate any existing code in the repository. Meaning, I don't want to simulate everything to the point that it does nothing, I only want to simulate create, update and delete commands, not the business logic. Perhaps I need to implement another layer in my application? Suggestions would be appreciated. I also wonder if this design philosophy is popular in most enterprise environments and how its done. I would think that allowing administrators to run a simulation and measure results before actually executing them is vital in a mission critical scenario where you are working with another client's data."}
{"_id": "158763", "title": "Is restricting sessions to an absolute IP likely to have a wide impact on mobile networks?", "text": "Our website currently restricts a cookie-based session to the IP address that was originally sent the Set-Cookie HTTP header. In the past a user's IP would rarely change, so this didn't present much inconvenience. However, some of our clients accessing via 3G devices are experiencing session failures due to this IP restriction. I know little about the network infrastructure used for mobile networks. Do the majority of providers attempt to route connections to a common public IP in order to maintain compatibility with websites like ours, or should I consider restricting sessions to an IP range instead?"}
{"_id": "158768", "title": "Software design by pseudocoding?", "text": "Do you know a good way to design (i.e. write down) software with a method based on pseudocode? I'm new to software design and read some information about UML. My humble class hierarchies are good so far, however, after it gets complex I notice that with \"seeing the whole\" picture I could have used a different structure for more future extendability. As Python is good to prototyping I'm almost fine with just starting to write, but not quite. So I tried UML class diagrams, but they don't seem to help me much. The problems I solve there I can trivially do in my head. But I do notice additional design requirements once I start to pseudocode the actual methods. So if you wanted to design by pseudocode, how would you do it? I believe for me a method which is roughly 1-to-1 with code works best. But most UML software doesn't even show the method's code (as opposed to pictures in e.g. GoF). Someone claimed UML is for documentation and presentation only and not that great for design? I also get that feeling. I thought pure UML and some simplistic whiteboard sketches were the way to design software until googling I found Envision APDT. So is agile development something I should look out for or do they randomly call that agile - I thought agile is about schedule only? Or am I designing incorrectly (with UML) - does anyone design by pseudocode? How can I find a good tool for that?"}
{"_id": "162685", "title": "Proper Data Structure for Commentable Comments", "text": "Been struggling with this on an architectural level. I have an object which can be commented on, let's call it a `Post`. Every post has a unique ID. Now I want to comment on that Post, and I can use ID as a foreign key, and each PostComment has an ItemID field which correlates to the Post. Since each Post has a unique ID, it is very easy to assign \"Top Level\" comments. When I comment on a comment however, I feel like I now need a PostCommentComment, which attaches to the ID of the PostComment. Since ID's are assigned sequentially, I can no longer simply use ItemID to differentiate where in the tree the comment is assigned. I.E. both a Post and a Post Comment might have an ID of '5', so my foreign key relationship is invalid. This seems like it could go on infinitely, with PostCommentCommentComment's etc... What's the best way to solve this? Should I have a field in the comment called \"IsPostComment\" or something of the like to know which collection to attach the ID to? This strikes me as the best solution I've seen so far, but now I feel like I need to make recursive DataBase calls which start to get expensive. Meaning, I get a `Post` and get all PostComments `where ItemID == Post.ID && where IsPostComment == true` Then I take that as a collection, gather all the ID's of the `PostComments`, and do another search `where ItemID == PostComment[all].ID && where IsPostComment == false`, then repeat infinitely. This means I make a call for every layer, and if I'm calling 100 Posts, I might make 1000 DB calls to get 10 layers of comments each. What is the _right_ way to do this?"}
{"_id": "232893", "title": "can I sell a software that uses a GPL library and another BSD licensed library?", "text": "This is the first time I have dealt with licensing issues so I am sorry if I am making any stupid assumptions. My issue is that I have written a program in Python that uses PyQT for the GUI and also uses another library licensed under BSD. PyQT comes with GPL v2 and GPL v3 as well as a commercial license. From what I have read until now (including the GPL license), I understand that you can sell a software that is licensed under GPL. However, there is an issue if you're not the original author and you are reusing source code that is licensed under GPL. So here are my questions:   1. In my case since I am using PyQT I believe that I should license my program under GPL as well? Also if this is the case I can sell my software provided that I release the source code as well right?   2. If PyQT is released under GPL which as far as I understand gives you freedom to sell your software if you use the library why do they also provide a commercial license? Is it only for the case where you do not want to release the source code?   3. Since I am also using a library that is licensed under BSD it is OK to license my software only under GPL and mention that my program uses this library in the License.txt and the About section of my program?"}
{"_id": "53747", "title": "Is rotating the lead developer a good or bad idea?", "text": "I work on a team that has been flat organizationally since it's creation several months ago. My manager is non-technical and this means that our whole team is responsible for decision-making. My manager is beginning to realize that there are several benefits to having a lead developer, both for his sake (a single point of contact and single responsible party for tasks) and ours (dispute resolution, organized technical guidance, etc.). Because the team has been flat, one concern is that picking one lead developer may discourage the others. A non-developer suggested to my manager that rotating the lead developer is a possible way to avoid this issue. One developer would be lead one month, another the next, and so on. **Is this a good idea? Why or why not?** Keep in mind that this means _all_ developers -- All developers are good, but not necessarily equally suited to leadership. And if it is **not** , how do I recommend that we avoid this approach without seeming like it's merely for selfish reasons?"}
{"_id": "180075", "title": "Fixed window size app development for Mac OS X", "text": "I am developing a rather eye-candy application which is to be released on Mac App Store. Due to its graphics intensive use, it would save a great deal of time on UI end if the app could be released with a fixed size main frame-dialog. I did try doing a search regarding App Store policies on the matter but could not find anything. Is the distribution of fixed-size frame [productivity] apps are allowed within the App Store if they conform with other design guidelines?"}
{"_id": "160191", "title": "Why is SQL's BETWEEN inclusive?", "text": "Semi-open intervals (`[a,b)`, where `x`belongs to the interval iff `a <= x < b`) are pretty common on programming, as they have many convenient properties. Can anyone offer a rationale that explains why SQL's `BETWEEN` uses a closed interval (`[a,b]`)? This is esp. inconvenient for dates. Why would you have `BETWEEN` behave like this?"}
{"_id": "14856", "title": "What popular \"best practices\" are not always best, and why?", "text": "\"Best practices\" are everywhere in our industry. A Google search on \"coding best practices\" turns up nearly 1.5 million results. The idea seems to bring comfort to many; just follow the instructions, and everything will turn out fine. When I read about a _best practice_ \\- for example, I just read through several in Clean Code recently - I get nervous. Does this mean that I should _always_ use this practice? Are there conditions attached? Are there situations where it might _not_ be a good practice? How can I know for sure until I've learned more about the problem? Several of the practices mentioned in _Clean Code_ did not sit right with me, but I'm honestly not sure if that's because they're potentially bad, or if that's just my personal bias talking. I do know that many prominent people in the tech industry seem to think that there are no best practices, so at least my nagging doubts place me in good company. The number of best practices I've read about are simply too numerous to list here or ask individual questions about, so I would like to phrase this as a general question: **Which coding practices that are popularly labeled as \"best practices\" can be sub-optimal or even harmful under certain circumstances? What are those circumstances and why do they make the practice a poor one?** I would prefer to hear about specific examples and experiences."}
{"_id": "160197", "title": "Explanation of satellite data from a programmers perspective", "text": "I have started reading Part 2 of Introduction to Algorithms and in the section **The structure of the data** the author/authors says in the context of sorting a sequence of numbers: > In practice, the numbers to be sorted are rarely isolated values. Each is > usually part of a collection of data called a record. Each record contains a > key, which is the value to be sorted, and the remainder of the record > consists of satellite data, which are usually carried around with the key. > In practice, when a sorting algorithm permutes the keys, it must permute the > satellite data as well. If each record includes a large amount of satellite > data, we often permute an array of pointers to the records rather than the > records themselves in order to minimize data movement. Can some one explain what the authors mean here ? Why the term _satellite data_ ? What is the intuition behind this concept ? And also how this concept relates to a higher level programming platform like Java ?"}
{"_id": "229882", "title": "What does &callback= do", "text": "I am trying to create a timer that ever x minutes it will call to a server, get a JSON file and do something with it. The merits of that system are not in question right now, the question involves getting the JSON file. Currently I am using kimonify from KimonoLabs to create a JSON file from some other site. They suggest I use               function kimonoCallback(data) {         // do something with the data         // please make sure the scope of this function is global       }            $.ajax({         \"url\":\"http://www.kimonolabs.com/api/9ey3ljcs?apikey=d753b0c5546495826e7aaa5422f59e30&callback=kimonoCallback\",         \"crossDomain\":true,         \"dataType\":\"jsonp\"     });      At the same time I was pursuing other methods and was getting a parse error, and I found this solution. So far both used `&callback=` what is so special about `&callback=` that makes it more preferable to something like `.done()` or `success:` I am guessing it has something to deal with Access-Control-Allow-Origin."}
{"_id": "164683", "title": "Which Continuous Integration for Selenium 2 with TestNG", "text": "So I have a Selenium Automation project (using Maven). I'd like to be able to set my tests to run overnight and possibly email a report daily to the team. Which CI would be most suitable for TestNG.xml suites? I tried Hudson but I couldn't figure out a way to execute TestNG files from the build? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "246740", "title": "What are the implications of the cache when using notifyDataSetChanged?", "text": "I use Volley to return JSON from an API. I parse this JSON and add `StoreItem` objects to a List, then use an adapter to display in a listview. I use the cache functionality in Volley, and I'm wondering how I can approach the issue of deleting/adding items. I know I'll need to make a POST/DELETE request with Volley to actually save/destroy the items in the database, but for user experience purposes I don't want to have to reload the view with a fresh Volley request. I also don't want the cache to update the view without recognizing the item that was just added/destroyed. The android documentation for notifyDataSetChanged says: > Notifies the attached observers that the underlying data has been changed > and any View reflecting the data set should refresh itself. In this case is the underlying data the cache, my server database, or the Items in the list? Please let me know if I can clarify this question."}
{"_id": "246742", "title": "Best datatype to store a ternary, or three-state variable", "text": "_Disclaimer: I know that datatypes are a little bit subjective to which scripting/programming language you are using, I like to write in Python as a matter of preference; though I am happy to hear about any lanugage/implementation._ What is the best datatype to store a three-state variable? Something capable or representing Positive, Neutral, and Negative. Example: Integers `-1`, `0`, `1`.   * Pro: Very concise.   * Pro: Potentially efficient, Could be stored as a single 2-bit signed integer.   * Pro: could be used as a scale, such as a floating point multiplier. Example 2: `0`, `null`, `1` (or any permutation)   * Pro: Non-neutral use case can be binary.   * Con: Requires dynamic datatype    * Con: Potentially not concise. Example 3: `+`, `` (empty string), `-`   * Pro: Very concise.   * Con: May utilize string logic to determine state.   * Pro?: Intuitive graphical representation.  Perhaps there is some clever binary logic that can do something clever that I can't even imagine, perhaps there relies too much considerations of the use case. Also, are there any considerations when adapting a ternary state to store in a database engine? Like Innodb for reference."}
{"_id": "229762", "title": "Methods to keep an external service up to date that polls your service periodically?", "text": "Sorry if the title is hard to understand, it is easier if I describe the scenario to get the question across. I have a service that collects data, performs business logic and does all the normal stuff. I now have to perform an integration that will provide a set of data (for sage accounts) via an endpoint (`http://example.net/import-feed`). This endpoint can be polled by the external service at any time to pull the latest changes. When a piece of data is updated, say a payment or a date this needs to be added to the feed. This payment or date could be changed multiple times before the service gets polled. The question is what is the best methods to keep track of **all** or the **last change (probably best)** made to the record/row/data and pull all of these changes into the feed. The external service will then send notifications back to my service letting me know if adding that update was successful or not. Currently the only method I can think of is track the last modified time and the last time it was imported, and a status saying if it needs to be imported/updated. These imports/updates would then be pulled from the feed. I hope you understand the problem, I have had a hard time trying to find information on this type of integration. It may just be me not using the correct terms. So, what are the methods for this?"}
{"_id": "179283", "title": "What is meant by 4 GL?", "text": "I came across the term 4GL(generation language) in reading about Oracle ADF Busniess components . I want to know what exactly is 4GL ? This is the actual quote from the book Oracle Fusion Guide: > Oracle ADF Business Components is the business services layer of choice in > Oracle Fusion application development. Compared to other persistence layers, > ADF Business Components provides exceptional built-in business application > functionality and maximally declarative experience that makes it a perfect > match for those who seek an end-to-end fourth generation language (4GL) Java > EE development architecture."}
{"_id": "175501", "title": "RESTful API design - should a PUT return related data?", "text": "I have an API which allows a user to update their system status; and a separate call to retrieve system status updates from other users. Would it make sense to unify them under a PUT request where a user would request a PUT update with their own status update, and they would receive the status updates of other users? My solution would allow the PUT request to call the GET request method internally. The reason behind this is that when a user updates their system status they should be informed of other users status immediately, and I don't feel that having 2 seperate requests is necessary - and should be optional. I intend to keep the GET request for other users status as a status update for a user is not necessarily required in order to retrieve other users status', but once they update their own status is it vital that they get information about other users."}
{"_id": "179281", "title": "Different database for Membership and our web data or use just one?", "text": "Is better to keep our Membership stuff on the DefaultConnection and create another connection (another database) for our data? Or just one database for all? If I have a _MyAppContext_ and I want migrations for that context, It seems that I cannot have migrations for _UserContext_ (In other words, I can just migrate one context) So, having two different databases I can migrate or the users (maybe membership migration is weird) or the web data. Or, I can mix the _UserContext_ and _MyAppContext_ in one _UserAndAppContext_ and migrate all in one place, but this mixing also seems weird. What's the normal way to do this, one or two databases and what should be migrated?"}
{"_id": "175504", "title": "Immutable Method in Java", "text": "In Java, there is the `final` keyword in lieu of the `const` keyword in C and C++. In the latter languages there are mutable and immutable methods such as stated in the answer by Johannes Schaub - litb to the question How many and which are the uses of \u201cconst\u201d in C++? > Use const to tell others methods won't change the logical state of this > object. >   >   >     struct SmartPtr { >         int getCopies() const { return mCopiesMade; } >     }ptr1; >   >     ... >   >     int var = ptr.getCopies(); // returns mCopiesMade and is specified that > to not modify objects state. >   How is this performed in Java?"}
{"_id": "179285", "title": "Why does Javascript treat days and months differently?", "text": "I've noticed that in JavaScript, when creating a `Date`, months are zero based, and days aren't. For example:               var foo = new Date(2012, 1, 1)      produces February 1st 2012 Why is this?"}
{"_id": "125247", "title": "Handling REST Response Formats", "text": "It seems that newer websites (and API's especially) make use of request formats by adding the expected format to the end of the URL path.               /path/to/resource.html     /path/to/resource.json     /path/to/resource.xml      Are their any problems with this approach? Are there any studies or outlines of the pros and cons of doing this instead of just listing the resource without a file type extension?"}
{"_id": "152180", "title": "What is the point of dynamic allocation in C++?", "text": "I really have never understood it at all. I can do it, but I just don't get why I would want to. For instance, I was programming a game yesterday, and I set up an array of pointers to dynamically allocated little enemies in the game, then passed it to a function which updates their positions. When I ran the game, I got one of those nondescript assertion errors, something about a memory block not existing, I don't know. It was a run-time error, so it didn't say where the problem was. So I just said screw it and rewrote it with static instantiation, i.e.:               while(n<4)     {     Enemy tempEnemy = Enemy(3, 4);     enemyVector.push_back(tempEnemy);     n++;     }     updatePositions(&enemyVector);      And it immediately worked perfectly. Now sure, some of you may be thinking something to the effect of \"Maybe if you knew what you were doing,\" or perhaps \"n00b can't use pointers L0L,\" but frankly, you really can't deny that they make things way overcomplicated, hence most modern languages have done away with them entirely. But please-- someone -- What _IS_ the point of dynamic allocation? What advantage does it afford? Why would I ever not do what I just did in the above example?"}
{"_id": "254649", "title": "Using ng-init to initialize data in Angular controller", "text": "Recently I came across the following in one of our projects. In one of our mvc views they are passing model data to an Angular controller through ngInit directive               In xxx.cshtml          <div ng-controller=\"AssessmentController\" ng-init   =\"Init('@Model.Status','@Model.ARN','@Model.AssessmentID','@Model.AssessorID',@Model.Contents, @Model.Date_of_Assessment.ToJsonTicks(),'@Model.HouseReferenceID',@Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(Model.House))\">      I pointed out that according to Angular documentation ngInit directive is not to be used to to initialize controllers. https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/ngInit Instead what I suggested was to send the ID in ngInit directive and               <div ng-controller=\"AssessmentController\" ng-init   =\"Init('@Model.AssessmentID'\">      Then after that use $http [https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/service/$http] service to get the remainder of data from the Angular controller. The developer is refusing my idea saying it's faster to just send all the data through ngInit directive instead of having to do another call to get the data inti the Angular controller. What do you guys think about this scenario? The only point I have right now is that this code is FUGLY and it not according to standards. How would you convince a developer to follow the path I suggested. Or am I completely wrong here?"}
{"_id": "254648", "title": "Delphi IcmpPing Exception only in release, ok in debug", "text": "The following code is a test of the IcmpPing routine called from the icmp dll. In debug it works fine but in release it throws an error. The error is caused by the \"IcmpCloseHandle\" call because calling IcmpSendEcho has somehow changed the handle. It has the feel of a memory problem but so far the only fix I have found it to take a copy of the handle and use that for the close handle call. I have trimmed the code to down to minimum including having the ip address as an integer (127.0.0.1 = $0100007F little endian). What am I doing wrong? I have tested this problem on 2010, XE2 and XE4 all with the same problem. Any ideas * * *               unit icmptest1;          interface          uses     //  Windows, Messages, SysUtils, Variants, Classes, Graphics,     //  Controls, Forms, Dialogs, StdCtrls;       Winapi.Windows, Winapi.Messages, System.SysUtils, System.Variants, System.Classes, Vcl.Graphics,       Vcl.Controls, Vcl.Forms, Vcl.Dialogs, Vcl.StdCtrls;          type       TSunB = packed record         s_b1, s_b2, s_b3, s_b4: byte;       end;            TSunW = packed record         s_w1, s_w2: word;       end;            PIPAddr = ^TIPAddr;       TIPAddr = record         case integer of           0: (S_un_b: TSunB);           1: (S_un_w: TSunW);           2: (S_addr: longword);       end;           IPAddr = TIPAddr;            PICMP_ECHO_REPLY = ^ICMP_ECHO_REPLY;       ICMP_ECHO_REPLY = packed record         Address : IPAddr;         Status : ULONG;         RoundTripTime : ULONG;         DataSize : WORD;         Reserved : WORD;         Data : Pointer;       end;            PIP_OPTION_INFORMATION = ^IP_OPTION_INFORMATION;       IP_OPTION_INFORMATION = packed record         Ttl : byte;         Tos : byte;         Flags : byte;         OptionsSize : byte;         OptionsData : Pointer;       end;          type       TForm34 = class(TForm)         Button2: TButton;         procedure Button2Click(Sender: TObject);       private         { Private declarations }       public         { Public declarations }       end;          function  IcmpCreateFile : HWnd; stdcall; external 'icmp.dll';     function  IcmpCloseHandle(const IcmpHandle : HWnd) : longbool; stdcall; external 'icmp.dll';     function  IcmpSendEcho(const IcmpHandle: HWnd; const DestinationAddress: IPAddr ;const RequestData: Pointer;const RequestSize : WORD;const RequestOptions : PIP_OPTION_INFORMATION;const ReplyBuffer : Pointer;const ReplySize : DWORD;const TimeOut : DWORD) : DWORD; stdcall; external 'icmp.dll';          var       Form34: TForm34;          implementation          {$R *.dfm}     {$T+}          function IcmpPing1(): Boolean;     var       dwSize : DWORD;       DW: DWord;       IPAddr: TIPAddr;       EchoReply: ICMP_ECHO_REPLY;       hICMP : HWnd;       Hc: HWnd;          begin       Result := False;       hICMP := IcmpCreateFile;       Hc := hICMP;            if hICMP <> INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then       begin         try           dwSize := SizeOf(ICMP_ECHO_REPLY) + 8;                IPAddr.S_addr := $0100007F; // 127.0.0.1                ShowMessage(Format('1: %x',[hICMP]));           DW := IcmpSendEcho(hICMP, IPAddr, nil, 0, nil, @EchoReply, dwSize, 500);           hICMP := Hc;           ShowMessage(Format('2: %x',[hICMP]));                Result := (EchoReply.Status = 0);         finally           try             IcmpCloseHandle(hICMP);           except             on e:exception do               ShowMessage(e.Message);           end;         end;       end;     end;          procedure TForm34.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);     begin       ShowMessage(IntToStr(Byte(IcmpPing1())));     end;          end."}
{"_id": "255513", "title": "How do people write so many lines of code per day?", "text": "I know that many websites, video games and other software contain thousands of lines of code while being developed by a single person in a short amount of time. How are those people able to write thousands of LOC day after day? For me, it seems a huge number: I rarely write more than a few hundred lines per day, and often spend my time _removing_ code instead of adding LOCs. Is it really written by hand, or do they use some code generators?"}
{"_id": "255515", "title": "Question I was asked during a job interview", "text": "I was asked during a job interview the following question, to which I couldn't find an answer then, and this thing is still bothering me. I was hoping someone might know the answer here: Consider two banks that communicate through an encrypted channel, where you are able to listen to the communication between them: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rUNov.png) Bank A is about to send some credit card numbers to Bank B (you can refer to the credit card numbers as decimal or binary number of some length of your choice - it doesn't matter). Now, suppose that you somehow gained access to Bank A's database, where it holds credit card numbers, and you are given a chance to plug your dok into it, and run any code you'd like on it. How will you then be able to steal Bank A's credit card numbers? I hope I didn't omit any important details (I should've write that down). Is it doable?"}
{"_id": "255517", "title": "GDI + double rendering", "text": "I know that GDI custom controls are usually implemented as window controls and they receive WM events as a normal window, if a control receives the WM_PAINT it needs to repaint itself. My question is: if I were to render with GDI my window client area and create all the controls there by rendering them on (without using window controls) in double buffering, will there be problems regarding \"which area needs to be redrawn\"? There would be no more WM_PAINT events to redraw a specific control"}
{"_id": "255518", "title": "R chart in a C# windows form", "text": "I see that R has very nice plotting capabilities that I would like to use in a C# windows form. There is some integration between C# and R but is it also possible to have a R chart in a windows form? Basically doing all calculations in C# and pasding results to R to plot and see everything in the windows form app. Any idea to help me on this? Thanks."}
{"_id": "255519", "title": "Multi-lingual support implementation in a website", "text": "I'm developing a **Multi-lingual** website which is being developed in custom `PHP` and using `MySql`. To implement the multi-language support, I've come to think of this approach (steps below). Please criticize and give your opinion and suggestions on the implementation technique. You can also suggest any better solution, if any. **METHOD 1**               1- Store the user preferred language id/code in `Cookie` (on first visit, the default language code).     2- The **database** will have a table named `languages` with the following columns:          ---------------------------------------------      lang_id | language | lang_place | lang_text     ---------------------------------------------         1    | eng      | menu[1]    | Home         2    | eng      | menu[2]    | Options         3    | eng      | menu[2][1] | My Account         4    | eng      | menu[2][2] | Settings         5    | eng      | menu[2][3] | Logout         6    | eng      | menu[3]    | Orders                              .                         .              So on for other languages      **METHOD 2**               1- Same as of method 1     2- The **database** columns will be:          ---------------------------------------------      lang_id | language | lang_data      ---------------------------------------------         1    | eng      | {                               \"menu1\":\"home\",                             \"menu2\":{                                   \"name\":\"options\",                                 \"button1\":\"my account\",                                 \"button2\":\"settings\",                                 \"button3\":\"logout\"                              }                           }                              .                         .              So on for other languages      I highly appreciate your help in this regard."}
{"_id": "59794", "title": "What Things are Most Conducive to a Productive Programming Environment?", "text": "Many of us have worked in multiple environments over the years, and have found that some are more productive than others. In many cases, it's not directly related to the abilities of the developers, but instead to their environment. I myself have experienced this, being in places where I seemed to develop faster, and better. And yet other places I seem to be dragging time, and developing less thoughtfully. What do you think creates a productive development environment?"}
{"_id": "216072", "title": "Should mock objects for tests be created at a high or low level", "text": "When creating unit tests for those other objects, what is the best way to create mock objects that provide data to other objects. Should they be created at a 'high level' and intercept the calls as soon as possible, or should they be done at a 'low level' and so make as much as the real code still be called? e.g. I'm writing a test for some code that requires a `NoteMapper` object that allows Notes to be loaded from the DB.               class NoteMapper {              function getNote($sqlQueryFactory, $noteID) {             // Create an SQL query from $sqlQueryFactory             // Run that SQL              // if null              //     return null             // else             //    return new Note($dataFromSQLQuery)         }     }      I could either mock this object at a high level by creating a mock NoteMapper object, so that there are no calls to the SQL at all e.g.               class MockNoteMapper {              function getNote($sqlQueryFactory, $noteID) {             //$mockData = {'Test Note title', \"Test note text\" }             // return new Note($mockData);         }     }      Or I could do it at a very low level, by creating a MockSQLQueryFactory that instead of actually querying the database just provides mock data back, and passing that to the current NoteMapper object. It seems that creating mocks at a high level would be easier in the short term, but that in the long term doing it at a low level would be more powerful and possibly allow more automation of tests e.g. by recording data in an out of a DB and then replaying that data for tests. Is there a recommended way of creating mocks? Are there any hard and fast rules about which are better, or should they both be used where appropriate?"}
{"_id": "216070", "title": "How to conciliate OOAD and Database Design?", "text": "Recently I've studied object oriented analysis and design and I liked a lot about it. In every place I've read people say that the idea is to start with the minimum set of requirements and go improving along the way, revisiting this each iteration and making it better as we continuously develop and contact the customer interested in the software. In particular, one course from Lynda.com said a lot of that: we don't want to spend a lot of time planning everything upfront, we just want to have the minimum to get started and then improve this each iteration. Now, I've also seen a course from the same guy about database design, and there he says differently. He says that although when working with object orientation he likes the agile iterative approach, for database design we should really spend a lot of time planning things upfront instead of just going along the way with the minimum. But this confuses me a little. Indeed, the database will persist important data from our domain model and perhaps configurations of the software and so on. Now, if I'm going to continuously revisit the analysis and design of the model, it seems the database design should change also. In the same way, if we plan all the database upfront it seems we are also planning all the model upfront, so the two ideas seems to be incompatible. I really like agile iterative approach, but I'm also looking at getting better design for the database also, so when working with agile iterative approach, how should we deal with the database design?"}
{"_id": "156608", "title": "What are the qualifications for working with development of operating systems?", "text": "I always saw a lot of ads of programming jobs before. But I never saw an ad of operating systems development job before. I also never met personally someone who worked as operating system's programmer or something related to osdev before (I once saw a teacher at college talking about it, but I can't remember if she was talking about osdev). I would like to know:   1. What are the qualifications for an osdev position (years of experience, college/university, languages, etc)?   2. What a beginner that wants to work in this area should do?   3. How the work a of an OS developer looks like?"}
{"_id": "156609", "title": "Alternative to XML / XSLT for artifact generation?", "text": "## The scenario: A system needs to produce a variety of artifacts to present to end-users during the normal course of business. Examples of these artifacts would be permits, invoices, or receipts -- imagine any online app that gives you one of those \"print this page for your records\" pages. I'm working on a system that produces artifacts like this, but we're expected to be able to recall a previously-generated artifact and present it again when it's needed. Currently, the system retains transactional data and recreates the \"artifact\" page as needed from that online data. This presents a number of problems:   * More data is needed during transactional processing than is used in artifact generation. Once the transaction is complete, though, we're unable to archive the transactional data because it may be needed to reproduce the artifact at some point in the future.   * Artifact generation is slightly more expensive than it needs to be, because each time we pull up one of these artifacts, we're re-generating it. Frankly, this isn't a huge deal in practice, but it bugs me.   * If we ever change the way a specific artifact is generated, an old artifact will be \"upgraded\" if it's reproduced. Although this seems like a virtue, I maintain that since the whole objective is to show the artifact as it was originally generated, this is a detriment. The two most reasonable design fixes that leap to mind are PDF generation and XML / XSLT. I'm not very excited about the PDF option because I really don't think I need to store the static portions of each artifact over and over again. The XML / XSLT option still seems to have merit. In this approach, I'd need to assemble an XML document for each artifact containing only the data needed for that artifact plus a reference to the proper XSLT document. New versions of the artifact would be deployed with a new XSLT, such that old XML uses old XSLT, and new XML uses new XSLT, and so on. ## The question: Is there another killer design or technology I'm missing that would fit this need? This is a .Net system, for what it's worth."}
{"_id": "216074", "title": "Software Architecture and MEF composition location", "text": "**Introduction** My software (a bunch of webapi's) consist of 4 projects: Core, FrontWebApi, Library and Administration. Library is a code library project that consists of only interfaces and enumerators. All my classes in other projects inherit from at least one interface, and this interface is in the library. Generally speaking, my interfaces define either Entities, Repositories or Controllers. This project references no other project or any special dlls... just the regular .Net stuff... Core is a class-library project where concrete implementation of Entities and Repositories. In some cases i have more than 1 implementation for a Repository (ex: one for azure table storage and one for regular Sql). This project handles the intelligence (business rules mostly) and persistence, and it references only the Library. FrontWebApi is a ASP.NET MVC 4 WebApi project that implements the controllers interfaces to handle web-requests (from a mobile native app)... It references the Core and the Library. Administration is a code-library project that represents a \"optional-module\", meaning: if it is present, it provides extra-features (such as Access Control Lists) to the application, but if its not, no problem. Administration is also only referencing the Library and implementing concrete classes of a few interfaces such as \"IAccessControlEntry\"... I intend to make this available with a \"setup\" that will create any required database table or anything like that. But it is important to notice that the Core has no reference to this project... **Development** Now, in order to have a decoupled code I decide to use IoC and because this is a small project, I decided to do it using MEF, specially because of its advertised \"composition\" capabilities. I arranged all the imports/exports and constructors and everything, but something is quite not perfect in my \"mental- visualisation\": **Main Question** _Where should I \"Compose\" the objects?_   I mean: Technically, the only place where real implementation access is required is in the Repositories, because in order to retrieve data from wherever, entities instances will be necessary, and in all other places. The repositories could also provide a public \"GetCleanInstanceOf()\" right? Then all other places will be just fine working with the interfaces instead of concrete classes... **Secondary Question** _Should \"Administration\" implement the concrete object for \"IAccessControlGeneralRepository\" or the Core should?_"}
{"_id": "29753", "title": "What type of Password Reset/Forgot Password (verification) mechanism would you recommend", "text": "I am looking for ways to verify the user in order to reset their passwords. 2 commonly used ones:   * Email verification   * Secret question I wonder which will you recommend? I am trying to avoid having to use email at all (users won't need to provide emails, most hosts limit emails sent). But Secret Question alone seems a little unsecure. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "129157", "title": "Are there any notable programmers that started late in life?", "text": "So I'm starting to get disgruntled... I'm 25 and trying to learn programming and am having trouble grasping some of the concepts and I feel its because I'm getting started so late in life. So I'm just curious if there were any notable programmers that got their start late in life?"}
{"_id": "129154", "title": "Parallel computing and mobile computing", "text": "I have been working as software developer for past 4 years on a variety of software products (Financial ERP system, Online Web development, Trading software and now a Supply Chain mgmt software). Most of the work has been in Core Java. Lately, I do feel that I should start looking into specific technical \"principles\" and/or domain such as Parallel Computing and Mobile Computing and not be working for long just on a software solution for the sake of working as a software developer. In short, I want to give a direction to my existing skill set so that I know more than just the programming language. Can anyone please guide me on how I should go about learning these domains? I am really interested in parallel computing, but I am not much aware of other such domains I can look into."}
{"_id": "129152", "title": "Are there open source alternatives to Bitbucket, Github, Kiln, and similar DVCS browsing and management tools?", "text": "I am aware of several tools/services that provide DVCS browsing and management such as Bitbucket, Github, Kiln, SCM-Manager and Rhodecode. However, the use case I am considering is one such that:   1. Any source code must reside on an employers internal servers.   2. The solution must be open source.   3. It should provide a Bitbucket or Github like experience, including a project wiki, repository browsing and management, and social coding aspects such as code review.   4. The solution should have mercurial support (if not support for other DVCSs). Of these, only SCM-Manager and RhodeCode come close as they can be installed on your own servers and are open source. However they do not have the Bitbucket or Github experience. There is no issue tracker or wiki and the UI, while functional, is not up to par with Github or Bitbucket. I can get close with Trac or Redmine with their repository browsers but unfortunately they do not have any repository management capabilities. Are there other open source tools out there that would provide a similar experience to Bitbucket, Github or Kiln?"}
{"_id": "156601", "title": "Is it recommended to use DocBlock even if I'm not using phpDocumentor?", "text": "I'm developing a simple website for a client. I have read about **phpDocumentor** and **DocBlocks** , and I thought that documenting my classes and functions will be very useful. I'm almost sure I will **not** generate any documentation for the site, since it's a pretty simple website, and guess what? It doesn't have an API... But is it still recommended to write DocBlocks in my code? From what I know many programmers even don't write simple comments, but DocBlocks.   I'm not going to generate any readable documentation by the client/ next programmer but I still think that making some comments that are more than just simple text will be better. _edit -_ If you think that DocBlocks are redundant in my case, are there any other \"standards\" for writing comments / documentation?   The last time everything that doesn't have a standard makes me feel stupid, that I'm not sure if it's better to write `if(){` or `if () {`, `/* */` or `//`, etc. I'm new to the documentor and DockBlocks, and I'm still not sure if I have to write this question here or in StackOverflow. Thank you very much anyway!"}
{"_id": "163552", "title": "What to put in a Stored Procedure documentation?", "text": "I was tasked to document our stored procedures.   * Target audience: Technical    * Purpose: To have a good documentation in preparation for migration. I'm assuming someone has already done it."}
{"_id": "235747", "title": "Difference in orientation of Sobel mask gives different edge detector result", "text": "I am implementing a Canny Edge detector for a class which I have based off the code found here. For the first derivative mask that I will convolve with the image, I am using the Sobel mask, although the website uses the Prewitt. As you can see in the samples on the website, the code is perfectly functional. However, I noticed different results when I changed the \"orientation\" of the Sobel gradient mask as I explain below. The typical mask for taking the derivative in the x direction in my class notes is shown to be:               [-1 0 1]     [-2 0 2]     [-1 0 1]      For the y direction it is:               [-1 -2 -1]     [0 0 0]     [1 2 1]      For an experiment, I changed the orientation for the x direction to:               [1 0 -1]     [2 0 -2]     [1 0 -1]      And for the y direction:               [1 2 1]     [0 0 0]     [-1 -2 -1]      Oddly enough, this gives me two different results, which I did not expect, since I don't think the \"direction\" that I am using for taking the gradient should give me a different result. First result:   ![Default_mask_orientation](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rFD0y.jpg) Second result:   ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HroFv.jpg) Why am I getting this different result? Where should I investigate next?"}
{"_id": "163559", "title": "Why is Adobe Air so underrated for building mobile apps?", "text": "I've worked with Adobe Flash-related technologies for the past 5 years. I've seen small bugs in some apps, but I don't understand why many big companies don't consider Adobe Air for their mobile apps. I've seen many mobile developer job postings that require Android or iOS expertise, but not too many that require Adobe Air expertise. This puzzles me because you can deploy Adobe Air apps to Blackberry, iOS **and** Android. Also, in my opinion, it's much easier to develop a game with Flash, than it is with the Android SDK, for example. Does Adobe Air really have weaknesses that I've never seen?"}
{"_id": "97900", "title": "How to develop on Windows and test and run on Linux?", "text": "I am one of two developers for some internal software (written in python) in my company. Software is a server application designed to run on a dedicated Linux box. Currently, we have one box holding our SVN repository and this box is also used for testing. The problem is that I am developing it on my workstation using Eclipse on Windows and this app can't run on Windows. How to properly organize such environment so that you can don't lose valuable time on transferring the project and code around so that you can test it? Currently I am doing svn checkout, change some code and then upload it to the development server for testing (not via svn). Test it on the server, change something, test it again etc. After all of that comes the commit. This constant uploading and testing is driving me crazy. I've tried to keep the project on the server (checkout to home dir) but this causes a whole lot of problems with Eclipse. Obviously I don't have a lot of experience in this, so I am asking what are the best practices concerning this kinds of problems?"}
{"_id": "179863", "title": "Performance: recursion vs. iteration in Javascript", "text": "I have read recently some articles (e.g. http://dailyjs.com/2012/09/14/functional-programming/) about the functional aspects of Javascript and the relationship between Scheme and Javascript (the latter was influenced by the first, which is a functional language, while the O-O aspects are inherited from Self which is a prototyping-based language). However my question is more specific: I was wondering if there are metrics about the performance of recursion vs. iteration in Javascript. I know that in some languages (where by design iteration performs better) the difference is minimal because the interpreter / compiler converts recursion into iteration, however I guess that probably this is not the case of Javascript since it is, at least partially, a functional language."}
{"_id": "236681", "title": "Why is there a new() constraint in C# but no other similar constraint?", "text": "In C# generics, we can declare a constraint for a type parameter `T` to have a default constructor, by saying `where T : new()`. However, no other kinds of constraints like this are valid - `new(string)` for example, etc. **From a language design and/or implementation perspective, what is the reason for this?** Is there something in the way constructors work or in the way the type system is implemented that forbids this (or at least makes it harder)? If so, what is it? I recall reading somewhere that `default(T)` actually compiles to `new T()` for `T : struct`. Is it related to this, maybe? Or is it simply a design decision made in order to avoid making the language too complicated?"}
{"_id": "179860", "title": "Why the name 'continue'", "text": "The 'continue' keyword in Java (and probably in many other programming languages) is used to skip further execution of the current iteration. Why was the name 'continue' chosen? Why not something more straightforward like 'skip' ?"}
{"_id": "191957", "title": "Developer name in the copyright notice of files contributed to open source project?", "text": "I am developing a small application which I want to make open source. Currently only my work is on the application, and so in all the files I have put up a copyright notice in my name. Now when I make the project open source and say a developer Sam does some enhancements to some existing files. Then should he be allowed to put up a copyright notice in his name as well? And what if a new file is added by Sam which is entirely his work. So should he add his copyright or mine? I feel that all files should have only my name as copyright irrespective of the work done by anybody. This is because say I have added some code which depends on Sam's copyrighted code and the application is running on it. Now in future if Sam is approached by some organization then he can sell the code under his copyright. If this happens then my application will stop working because I will have to remove Sam's code and all the depending code of mine. This is just what I feel. What is the common practice in the Open Source Community? Note I want to use GNU LGPL as my license. I am maintaining a list of contributors which can be viewed by clicking a button in the About Dialog."}
{"_id": "191950", "title": "Course Map Generator", "text": "My university lists the rotation of courses each semester/year. Therefore, it is possible to predict when every class will be taught. I am trying to create a JavaScript (language is irrelevant, really) program that will have the user select all the courses they would like to take, for how many semesters, and the max (or maybe exact) number of classes they'd like to take during each one of those semesters. So, for instance, my university offers: 12 courses in Fall (varies between even and odd years) 10 courses in Spring (varies between even and odd years) 6 courses in Summer (varies between even and odd years) essentially, 6 different semester patterns Basically, the user will choose their preferred 16 or so courses, enter 6 semesters, the semester they would like to start in, and the max number of courses per semester. From there, I would like to generate all the possible course maps the user could take in order to graduate in 6 semesters. I want them to be able to vary the number of courses in each semester--like 3 courses one semester, 2 courses in another, etc. I also want to check previous classes to make sure classes aren't duplicated, as well as ensure that the classes meet their respective pre-requisites. My instincts say to go with recursion in order to do this, but I'm not exactly sure how I would go about it. So far, I have only been able to come up with: generate all the sets per semester based on home many courses the user would like in that semester (if the user picks 3 courses for the first semester, then create all the sets of 3 out of the 12 courses). Do this for each semester. Then, loop through all these combinations to see which ones work. Seems very inefficient and slow to me. As this is Programmers SE, I'm not really looking for any code, but maybe an algorithm or a more efficient approach to this problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I can post a link to my university's course rotation if that would help."}
{"_id": "238843", "title": "When should I use ZeroMQ and when should I use Akka?", "text": "My _understanding_ of Akka is that it allows you to define groups of mini- threads (\" **Actors** \") and then have them communicate with each other (and do work) using events. My _understanding_ of ZeroMQ is that its a TCP socket library that allows threads to communicate with each other over TCP/ports. My question: these seem like very similar concepts. However, I'm sure that in reality, they are meant to solve entirely different problems. So: **Intention-wise, what is the difference between these two tools?** What different problems do they solve? Are there clear/concrete use cases where one is preferable to the other?"}
{"_id": "238842", "title": "Why is Software Development so far from being an engineering discipline?", "text": "I'm a strong advocate for Software Engineering, but even I must admit that we do not have many of the same tools, priniciples, and laws as other engineering disciplines. Why is this? And, what should we do to get there?"}
{"_id": "238841", "title": "Forking an application for an \"enterprise\" customer", "text": "_Note: this is mostly a technical question but I have to explain the business background first._ **THE BUSINESS PART** I have a really interesting situation on my hands, at least interesting for me. For the last 3.5 years I've been building a business/application called Snip Salon Software. It's scheduling software for hair salons. Significantly, I've specifically targeted _hair_ salons as opposed to nail salons or tanning salons, which have different needs. The business has experienced a certain level of success but nothing spectacular so far. I have 6 salons in my local area using the product. Some time ago I was approached by a couple of entrepreneurs in the _lash_ salon industry, which has different scheduling needs from hair salons. (The beauty industry is a surprisingly complex space!) These guys would basically like me to white-label my product for them so they can sell it as part of a \"business in a box\" type package they offer to start-up lash technicians. **THE TECHNICAL PART** So the challenge I'm faced with is:   * I don't want to have one application that serves both hair salons and lash salons. I think it would quickly turn into a nightmare.   * I don't want to have applications running mostly the same code. That would be silly. And it's not just the features - all the branding, etc. will almost certainly be different for each version. So what I think I want to do is first fork the codebase and set up separate hosting, etc. for the lash salon application. Then, over time, maybe I want to factor out the common parts (e.g. appointment reminder emails) into modules (I'm using Ruby on Rails, so I'm talking Rails engines) and then let each fork of my application use the same copy of each module. I would of course situate it so that each engine only contained functionality that was common to the two forks of the application. **My question: from a technical perspective, how would you handle this situation?** Feel free to chime in on the business side, too."}
{"_id": "8511", "title": "How should older programmers respond when interviewed", "text": "How should older programmers respond when interviewed and 'confronted' with questions similar to \"we are a young bunch, will you be able to fit into our culture?\". What about the experience an older programmer packs? (says it all really) [edit] Read this on slashdot \\- whoo-haa - we're like wine! ;)"}
{"_id": "204613", "title": "Recommended Abstraction to transfer data over a nework than byte[] array?", "text": "I was curious, why do we prefer byte[] array to transfer data over the network and not anything else? Or if I am missing anything, what are the other ways to transfer the data over a network."}
{"_id": "213027", "title": "Generics vs IoC", "text": "One of the \"Service Locator\" pattern drawbacks is that a caller can be misleaded about dependencies of a callee. Ok, but what if I put dependencies as generic parameters at a class level:               class Node<T> where T : ISomeInterface, new()     {       ISomeInterface obj       public Node()       {          obj = new T();       }     }      I have found a couple of opinions here. But I want a discussion to be continued. The most significant counterargument is that dependency injecting using generics makes late binding unavailable. But who cares in most cases? What if my app does not need this feature? I want to find some solid counterarguments. p.s. new() constraint is not necessary, as you understand."}
{"_id": "119018", "title": "Why am I seeing so many for(;;) constructs?", "text": "To my way of thinking, a for loop is used to iterate over a known or determinable range.               String[] names = //something;     for ( int i = 0; i < names.length; i++ ) { //do stuff }      which is equivalent (scoping of i aside) to :               String[] names = //something;     int i = 0;     while (i < names.length )     {        // do stuff        i++;     }      In other words, the `for` loop is simply a (highly useful) syntactic sugar for a commonly used `while` construct. However, I'm seeing a lot of `for(;;)` constructs on the web which are functionally equivalent to `while(true)` What is the reasoning for this? Why would the infinite for loop be preferred over the infinite while loop? // I even saw a java textbook that didn't use while loops at all! Leading to such monstrous constructs as:               String input = getInput();     for( ; !inputIsValid(input) ; )     {        //redo;     }"}
{"_id": "119019", "title": "Avoiding inline JavaScript with dynamic content", "text": "I read here that you should avoid coding JavaScript inline (see item #1). It sounds like a great idea; however, I'm not sure how to use js to select dynamic content without setting the id in the function call inline. For example, I have a simple blog. The comments are hidden, but can be displayed by clicking an anchor (generated dynamically) that calls a JavaScript function to toggle the comments for that specific post:               $commentsButton = \"<a name='comments\" . $post->id . \"' href='#comments\" . $post->id . \"'> comments (\" . count($comments) . \")</a>\";      `toggleComments()` function:               function toggleComments(id) {         $('#' + id + ' .commentsContainer').toggle(500);     }      How do you keep from doing this kind of thing? Is it always appropriate to avoid inline JavaScript? Or is this a case where it's necessary? **Update:** I ended up using this:               $('.commentButton').each(function() {         $(this).click(function() {             $(this).parents('.post').find('.commentsContainer').toggle(500);         });     });      with this:               $commentButton = \"<a class='commentButton'> comments (\" . count($comments) . \")</a>\";"}
{"_id": "50463", "title": "What are the best patterns/designs for stateful API development?", "text": "I am about to implement a API for my TCP/IP server written in Java. Right now I have a temporary method that takes a String, executes a command based on the String and returns a String basically like the following.               public void communicate(BufferedReader in, PrintWriter out) {         while(true) {             out.println(handleCommand(in.readLine()));         }     }          private String handleCommand(String command) {         if (command.equals(\"command1\") {             // do stuff             return \"Command 1 executed\";         } else if (command.equals(\"command2\") {             // do some other stuff             return \"Command 2 executed\";         }     }      I really want to do something more extensible, smarter and stateful, so I could handle more complex and stateful commands and without the method/class getting bloated. How would you start? Suggestions, ideas, or links for further reading are very welcome."}
{"_id": "50460", "title": "What is the best aproach for coding in a slow compilation environment", "text": "I used to coding in C# in a TDD style - write/or change a small chunk of code, re-compile in 10 seconds the whole solution, re-run the tests and again. Easy... That development methodology worked very well for me for a few years, until a last year when I had to go back to C++ coding and it really feels that my productivity has dramatically decreased since. The C++ as a language is not a problem - I had quite a lot fo C++ dev experience... but in the past. My productivity is still OK for a small projects, but it gets worse when with the increase of the project size and once compilation time hits 10+ minutes it gets really bad. And if I find the error I have to start compilation again, etc. That is just purely frustrating. Thus I concluded that in a small chunks (as before) is not acceptable - any recommendations how can I get myself into the old gone habit of coding for an hour or so, when reviewing the code manually (without relying on a fast C# compiler), and only recompiling/re-running unit tests once in a couple of hours. With a C# and TDD it was very easy to write a code in a evolutionary way - after a dozen of iterations whatever crap I started with was ending up in a good code, but it just does not work for me anymore (in a slow compilation environment)."}
{"_id": "184196", "title": "Declaring Clean Data", "text": "$clean = array();          $email_pattern = '/^[^@\\s<&>]+@([-a-z0-9]+\\.)+[a-z]{2,}$/i';          if (preg_match($email_pattern, $_POST['email']))      {      $clean['email'] = $_POST['email'];      }      The example code above (Source) uses an array called `$clean` to store the filtered value from `$_POST`. It's considered a security good practice. What are the advantages of using such an approach?"}
{"_id": "154937", "title": "Writing cross-platforms Types, Interfaces and Classes/Methods in C++", "text": "I'm looking for the best solution to write cross-platform software, aka code that I write and that I have to interface with different libraries and platforms each time. What I consider the easiest part, correct me if I'm wrong, is the definition of new types, all I have to do is to write an hpp file with a list of `typedefs`, I can keep the same names for each new type across the different platforms so my codebase can be shared without any problem. `typedefs` also helps me to redefine a better scope for my types in my code. I will probably end up having something like this:               include     |-windows     | |-types.hpp     |-linux     | |-types.hpp     |-mac       |-types.hpp      For the interfaces I'm thinking about the same solution used for the types, a series of hpp files, probably I will write all the interfaces only once since they rely on the types and all \"cross-platform portability\" is ensured by the work done on the types.               include     |     |-interfaces.hpp     |     |-windows     | |-types.hpp     |-linux     | |-types.hpp     |-mac     | |-types.hpp      For classes and methods I do not have a real answer, I would like to avoid 2 things:   * the explicit use of pointers   * the use of templates I want to avoid the use of the pointers because they can make the code less readable for someone and I want to avoid templates just because if I write them, I can't separate the interface from the definition. What is the best option to hide the use of the pointers? I would also like some words about macros and how to implement some OS- specifics calls and definitions."}
{"_id": "154939", "title": "What is the rationale behind Apache Jena's *everything is an interface if possible* design philosophy?", "text": "If you are familiar with the Java RDF and OWL engine Jena, then you have run across their philosophy that everything should be specified as an interface when possible. This means that a _Resource_ , _Statement_ , _RDFNode_ , _Property_ , and even the RDF _Model_ , etc., are, contrary to what you might first think, _Interfaces_ instead of concrete classes. This leads to the use of Factories quite often. Since you can't instantiate a _Property_ or _Model_ , you must have something else do it for you --the Factory design pattern. My question, then, is, what is the reasoning behind using this pattern as opposed to a traditional class hierarchy system? It is often perfectly viable to use either one. For example, if I want a memory backed _Model_ instead of a database-backed _Model_ I could just instantiate those classes, I don't need ask a Factory to give me one. * * * As an aside, I'm in the process of writing a library for manipulating Pearltrees data, which is exported from their website in the form of an RDF/XML document. As I write this library, I have many options for defining the relationships present in the Peartrees data. What is nice about the Pearltrees data is that it has a very logical class system: A tree is made up of pearls, which can be either Page, Reference, Alias, or Root pearls. My question comes from trying to figure out if I should adopt the Jena philosophy in my library which uses Jena, or if I should disregard it, pick my own design philosophy, and stick with it."}
{"_id": "95220", "title": "Is a programmer's gut instinct an acceptable answer with regard to design decisions?", "text": "There are times where I can immediately recognize and suggest a fix for a problem design pattern. However, there are other times where putting it into words just isn't possible. I know something isn't right based upon my experience and \"gut instinct\", but it might not be possible to pinpoint and refactor the offending code without writing tests or some R&D. For example, someone might say there are performance issues, or, the application is \"slow\". I know where to start looking, and I might even make a recommendation, but it's almost a subconscious effort. When is this acceptable (if ever)?"}
{"_id": "221322", "title": "which sorting algorithms is using OrderBy", "text": "I am litle curious about what sorting algorithm is using OrderBy (linq to objects). quicksort? heapsort? introspective sort ? As i see in MSDN documentation List.Sort is using introspective sort: see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b0zbh7b6.aspx Maybe OrderBy use the same? If we go to order by documetation i don't see much information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/system.linq.enumerable.orderby(v=vs.110).aspx"}
{"_id": "151379", "title": "Architecture for interfacing multiple applications", "text": "Let's say you have a Master Database and a few External/Internal applications that use WebServices to interface data. What would be your preferred architecture to interface data from and to those applications? Would you put some sort of Enterprise Service Bus in between? Like BizTalk? Or something cheaper? We don't want to block applications while they are interfacing, but we do want to use return codes from the interfaces to determine if we need to take some actions in the originating application or not."}
{"_id": "151374", "title": "Relationship between Repository and Unit of Work", "text": "I am going to implement a repository, and I would like to use the UOW pattern since the consumer of the repository could do several operations, and I want to commit them at once. After read several articles about the matter, I still don't get how to relate this two elements, depending on the article it is being done in a way u other. Sometimes the UOW is something internal to the repository:               public class Repository     {         UnitOfWork _uow;              public Repository()         {            _uow = IoC.Get<UnitOfWork>();         }              public void Save(Entity e)         {             _uow.Track(e);         }              public void SubmittChanges()         {             SaveInStorage(_uow.GetChanges());         }     }      And sometimes it is external:               public class Repository     {         public void Save(Entity e, UnitOfWork uow)         {             uow.Track(e);         }              public void SubmittChanges(UnitOfWork uow)         {             SaveInStorage(uow.GetChanges());         }     }      Other times, is the UOW whom references the Repository               public class UnitOfWork     {         Repository _repository;              public UnitOfWork(Repository repository)         {            _repository = repository;         }              public void Save(Entity e)         {             this.Track(e);         }              public void SubmittChanges()         {            _repository.Save(this.GetChanges());         }     }      How are these two elements related? UOW tracks the elements that needs be changed, and repository contains the logic to persist those changes, but... who call who? Does the last make more sense? Also, who manages the connection? If several operations have to be done in the repository, I think using the same connection and even transaction is more sound, so maybe put the connection object inside the UOW and this one inside the repository makes sense as well. Cheers"}
{"_id": "151371", "title": "An alternative to multiple inheritance when creating an abstraction layer?", "text": "In my project I am creating an abstraction layer for some APIs. The purpose of the layer is to make multi-platform easier, and also to simplify the APIs to the feature set that I need while also providing some functionality, the implementation of which will be unique to each platform. At the moment, I have implemented it by defining and abstract class, which has methods which creates objects that implement interfaces. The abstract class and these interfaces define the capabilities of my abstraction layer. The implementation of these in my layer should of course be arbitrary from the POV view of my application, but I have done it, for my first API, by creating chains of subclasses which add more specific functionality as the features of the APIs they expose become less generic. An example would probably demonstrate this better:               //The interface as seen by the application          interface IGenericResource     {         byte[] GetSomeData();     }          interface ISpecificResourceOne : IGenericResource     {         int SomePropertyOfResourceOne {get;}     }          interface ISpecificResourceTwo : IGenericResource     {         string SomePropertyOfResourceTwo {get;}     }          public abstract class MyLayer     {         ISpecificResourceOne    CreateResourceOne();         ISpecificResourceTwo    CreateResourceTwo();              void UseResourceOne(ISpecificResourceOne one);         void UseResourceTwo(ISpecificResourceTwo two);     }          //The layer as created in my library          public class LowLevelResource : IGenericResource     {         byte[] GetSomeData()         {}     }          public class ResourceOne : LowLevelResource, ISpecificResourceOne     {         int SomePropertyOfResourceOne {get{}}     }          public class ResourceTwo : ResourceOne, ISpecificResourceTwo     {         string SomePropertyOfResourceTwo {get {}}     }          public partial class Implementation : MyLayer     {         override UseResourceOne(ISpecificResourceOne one)         {             DoStuff((ResourceOne)one);         }     }      As can be seen, I am essentially trying to have two inheritance chains on the same object, but of course I can't do this so I simulate the second version with interfaces. The thing is though, I don't like using interfaces for this; it seems wrong, in my mind an interface defines a contract, any class that implements that interface should be able to be used where that interface is used but here that is clearly not the case because the interfaces are being used to allow an object from the layer to masquerade as something else, without the application needing to have access to its definition. **What technique would allow me to define a comprehensive, intuitive collection of objects for an abstraction layer, while their implementation remains independent?** (Language is C#)"}
{"_id": "22623", "title": "How do Text User Interfaces (TUI) work?", "text": "Hello   I have recently been assigned to port and old cobol programm.   I am used to GUI and it i cant understand how TUI work!! I searched a lot through google but could find something....   I knew that console applications could output line by line but how colors etc draw to the terminal screen????How all this stuff is being drawn? .. Do terminals support it somehow?? Is there a standard??? I am really confused !"}
{"_id": "245461", "title": "Should \"tests\" be kept out of the main merge pipeline?", "text": "We all know sometimes a e.g. merge can go wrong. If our [unit / integration] tests are in the same repository as the merge, is there then a weakness there that if the tests have merged incorrectly and do not appear in the final code then \"we don't know what we don't know\". Should the unit test project then instead be a complete separate item? In many ways I'd say no as it could litter a master branch with feature tests which are not yet relevant. In compiled languages then the compilation will fail if the test's reliant code is missing, so will help to a certain degree. But perhaps a non-compiled language is better as it would highly specific missing items when running the test. Does anyone have a workflow which it is possible to know which features may of merged incorrectly?"}
{"_id": "127298", "title": "Would you choose a database or a dvcs as storage for a documentation wiki?", "text": "I'm about to start coding a documentation oriented wiki, as a pet project. The core features are:   * Extremely easy grouping of documents per version    * Markdown syntax (subset of)   * Multiple authors & projects I'm still undecided on storage options. The obvious approach would be a database. Since this is a pet project, I will probably go with a NoSQL solution, probably MongoDB. Most work related projects are based around MySQL, and I want to keep this fun, i.e. not do the same stuff I do at work all day. The less obvious approach would be Mercurial, in similar fashion to git-wiki. Mercurial would offer obviously tighter integration with the code and I won't have to build versioning. I still need some sort of database, to store repository info and possibly other stuff, but Mercurial would be the main storage for texts. I've compiled a small list of the major points for each approach: **Database**   * Can shape it as I want, without caring for Mercurial workflow.   * Code integration could be as easy as putting a link to the repository (but nothing more).   * Quite easy to switch databases at any point, if need be (abundance of native tools).   * Natural choice (more people are used to it, not coupled to a vcs). **Mercurial**   * Versioning and diff by default.   * Tight integration with code means lots of cool stuff are possible, like a code review plugin.   * I'll have to write a wrapper, I'm not happy with every ready made library I've evaluated (not necessarily a bad thing).   * Some sort of database still needed.   * Several valid workflows, the one I choose for the tool might not be very compatible with those people will choose for their code. I want to make this as small and fun as possible, and I am a little bit stuck on the two approaches. Thoughts? Is there something obvious I'm missing? If this is too fuzzy to decide, what should I better define before I choose?"}
{"_id": "189150", "title": "Reinventing the wheel, or the technology that drives it?", "text": "I recently asked a question on StackOverflow that was related to string splitting and pattern matching in .NET. Some beady eyed developers that viewed the question said: \" _It looks like you're trying to parse a JSON string...why don't you just use JSON.NET or JavaScriptSerializer_ \". The conversation went off at on a tangent, (and was voted down, most likely because they could not see the point of writing some functionality, which has already been done.) I have my reasons for writing this functionality...my implementation so far is slick, and super-fast (though suffers a little with string splitting, hence the StackOverflow question). I think the point these developers were trying to make was, \" _why reinvent the wheel?_ \" I might equally argue: \" _Why bother developing NHibernate, when Microsoft have built a perfectly good Entity Framework?_ \", or \" _Why bother building Windows 8, when Windows 7 is a perfectly suitable desktop operating system?_ \" The same principle applies, does it not? When an automobile company designs a new car, they are not re-inventing the wheel; rather, they are improving on the technology that drives it. Similarly, my JSON parser is a nice, neat and fast implementation (although, as states above, suffers a little on string splitting), therefore, when my parser is ready, should I be shunned for writing something that has already been done, or praised for doing it better? **EDIT:** Consider the following Q/A : Is reinventing the wheel really all that bad?"}
{"_id": "178691", "title": "So we've got a code review tool, now what can we use for software documents?", "text": "We're using Subversion as a full CM for code and also for related project documents. We have JIRA and Fisheye. When we wanted to add a peer review tool, we looked at and tested several candidates. Our weighted requirements included both code and document review, but ultimately, the integration with JIRA slanted the scores in Crucible's favor. Atlassian has slammed the door on ever supporting Word or PDF in Crucible. I've tested several workaround methods to make Crucible work for documents without success. (The Confluence/Crucible plug-in was deprecated by Atlassian, so that option is out, too.) I haven't found a plugin for Crucible that adds this functionality, so short of writing my own plug-in, Crucible for documents is unworkable. Word Track Changes doesn't provide a method for true collaboration and commenting. Adobe PDF Comment and Markup is interesting, but doesn't provide a great way to keep a permanent quality record of the conversation. We can't go cloud-based, our documents must be locally hosted on our own server only. We're only on Sharepoint 2007. Help! Anyone have a suggestion?"}
{"_id": "216920", "title": "How to avoid code duplication for a system which has logic that may change year wise?", "text": "What would be the way to design a system which has logic that may change year wise? There is an application which conducts online exams. There are five questions for a particular subject. The questions may (or may not) change year wise. As per my current design, the questions in database are stored year wise. There are some year specific code logic as well. In order to enable the application for another year, the year specific database records and code will be copied or duplicated. How to avoid this code duplication?"}
{"_id": "26530", "title": "Why do some projects not use generics", "text": "I've been looking at a number of OSS java projects and a number of them still have not adopted generics. They're using raw types (e.g. `List foo`) instead of generic types (e.g. `List<string> foo`). Other projects have only begun using generics in the last few years even thought they've been around for a long time. I'm interested to know why people and projects eschew the use of generics when there appears (to me) to be now downside in using them instead of rawtypes. For those of you who use java, but not generics, what (if anything) would make you switch?"}
{"_id": "216923", "title": "Testing my model for hybrid scheduling in Embedded Systems", "text": "I am working on a project for school, where I have to analyze the performances of a few fixed-priority servers algorithms (polling server, deferrable server, priority exchange) using a simulator in the case of hybrid scheduling, where we have both hard periodic tasks and soft aperiodic tasks. In my model I consider that:   * the hard tasks have a period equal to their deadline, with a known worst case execution time (wcet). The actual execution time could be smaller than the wcet.    * the soft tasks have a known wcet and random interarrival times. The actual execution time could be smaller than the wcet.  In order to test those algorithms I need realistic case studies. For this reason I'm digging in the scientific literature but I am facing different problems:   * Sometimes I find a list of hard tasks with wcet, but it is not specified how the soft tasks parameters are found.   * Given the wcet of a task, how can I model its actual execution time? This means, what random distribution should I use considering the wcet?   * How can I model the random interarrival times of soft aperiodic tasks?"}
{"_id": "216928", "title": "Is sending data to a server via a script tag an outdated paradigm?", "text": "I inherited some old javascript code for a website tracker that submits data to the server using a script url:               var src = \"http://domain.zzz/log/method?value1=x&value2=x\"     var e = document.createElement('script');                       e.src = src;      I guess the idea was that cross domain requests didn't haven't to be enabled perhaps. Also it was written back in 2005. I'm not sure how well XmlHttpRequests were supported at the time. Anyone could stick this on their website and send data to our server for logging and it ideally would work in most any browser with javascript. The main limitation is all the server can do is send back javascript code and each request has to wait for a response from the server (in the form of a generic acknowledgement javascript method call) to know it was received, then it sends the next. I can't find anyone doing this online or any metrics as to whether this faster or more secure than XmlHttpRequests. I don't know if this is just an old way of doing things or it's still the best way to send data to the server when you are mostly trying to send data one way and you need the best performance possible. **So in summary is sending data via a script tag an outdated paradigm? Should I abandon in favor of using XmlHttpRequsts?**"}
{"_id": "52822", "title": "How to set up a multi-developer iOS environment?", "text": "Let me explain my need: I'm having a networked environment with 3 computers connected to a server which will be running full-time. The server also runs a FTP server. I would like to create an environment where 3 developers will be able to work on the same project. For example, if I'm creating a CRM app, I would like to split the project into modules so that each one will be working on each module like Developer A will be working on authentication, Developer B will be working on saving/retrieving data and Developer C will be working on User Interface programming. If I use Revision Control, can anyone please guide how to set it up ? Can the development of the entire app run **simultaneously** since each of the developers will be working on different areas ? How can I create such type of **multi-developer** iOS environment ?"}
{"_id": "73683", "title": "Does the advent of the SSD have any implication for database optimization?", "text": "Today I was browsing through a book on SQL Server optimization and it seemed that a certain amount of the ideas were based on a linear model of storage. As SSDs have a completely different storage model, do they in any way change the game in regards to how one thinks about database tuning or optimization?"}
{"_id": "181487", "title": "Are immutable/stateless singletons bad?", "text": "Lately there have been some kind of revolution against singletons, but is there something wrong with them if they are stateless? I know the overuse talk and all... this applies to everything not just singletons."}
{"_id": "207346", "title": "How would I go about having an editable file to transform an object on a webpage?", "text": "I have some code that creates objects on a webpage by using draw on HTML5 canvas. In my aspx file I have functions like:               function drawLine(x, y, w, h, width) {       var canvas = document.getElementById('cpMainContent_myCanvas');       var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');       ctx.moveTo(x, y);       ctx.lineTo(x + w, y + h);       ctx.lineWidth = width;       ctx.stroke();     }     function drawShape(x, y, listOfPoints, fill, width, colour) {       var canvas = document.getElementById('cpMainContent_myCanvas');       var ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');       ctx.beginPath();       ctx.moveTo(x, y);       for (var i = 0; i < listOfPoints.length; i++) {         ctx.lineTo(listOfPoints[i][0], listOfPoints[i][1]);       };       ctx.fillStyle = fill;       ctx.fill();       ctx.closePath();       ctx.lineWidth = width;       ctx.strokeStyle = colour;       ctx.stroke();     }     etc...      On the server side I generate a string 's' which forms my script and then I call it by using:               ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(GetType(), \"Test\", s.ToString(), true);      When the page is displayed it produces something like:               <script type=\"text/javascript\">     //<![CDATA[     function Test(){drawLine(680,409.5,19,0,1);drawSemiCircle(699,409.5,8,0);drawRectangle(700,422.5,68,-26,'#000000',1,'#FFFFFF');drawText('K1D',703,415.5,'14pt Arial Narrow');}Test();//]]>     </script>      And I get a web page displaying line drawings depicting certain objects. My question is, is it possible to have an external file to describe how these objects are created? I have only had a brief look at XSLT and I can't seem to find if it can support bespoke line drawings. I would like the ability to have a file for each object type, then in the file define what it is made of. E.g. in the file I can declare: drawLine(x,y,19,0,1); drawSemiCircle(x + 19, y,8,0); Or something similar. I think I need to use SVG. The reason I used HTML5 canvas was because I thought this was the latest technology and would do pretty much what SVG does. But it seems to use XSL to create a line drawing on my web page, I would need to use SVG. Am I interpreting this correctly?"}
{"_id": "207342", "title": "Un selectable content using CSS", "text": "I have found a website where the text is select protected. How can i make this without JavaScript. I think it is possible by using CSS. A set of paragraph is protected with non selectable contents. But i don't know how to do."}
{"_id": "207340", "title": "Document Storage Repository - Open Source / Design Pattern", "text": "I currently have several web applications that offer document upload and storage. I am now trying to create a central document management service that these application can leverage to store and retrieve these documents. Currently the documents are stored on disk. The file name is a Guid and its real file name and datatype are stored in a database. Am I following the right approach whereby I have a database table that stores the documents information (Name, ContentType, CreatedDate, CreatedBy, SystemId etc), and then store the document in a folder on the local file system of the server ? When I started storing documents, they were originally blobs in the database. This I found an unfavourable approach. My database was suddenly MASSIVE and impossible to backup and restore. Be separating the documents into the local file system the database is now far simpler and my backup strategy easier. (Backup database, File Diff backup from folder) Is there a more sensible way to do this I am missing? Is there some open source project that I can leverage to improve the design of my new service that I am now making from scratch ?"}
{"_id": "207348", "title": "Additional class for objects construction when working with database", "text": "I have a class derived from `SQLiteOpenHelper` which is all about working with a database, i.e. tables creation, insertions, data selections. All methods which deal with data selection return a `Cursor`. What I really want is to get a list of objects rather than a `cursor`, at the same time I don't want my class to do a lot of things. Is it a good idea to add another class who get selections from a database and construct objects from the selection? Thank you."}
{"_id": "235481", "title": "Do commercial statistical calculators calculate with a high degree of arbitrary precision or just floating point precision?", "text": "Do commercial statistical calculators like Minitab or SAS (and open source like R) perform statistical analysis with very high precision? Or do they just use floating point (or double) precision? I want to write a statistical calculator that professional statisticians can use for any purpose. I've written a program that currently performs or calculates standardized z-score, hypothesis tests, confidence intervals, and descriptive statistics. Right now 90% of the calculations use an arbitrary precision library (C++) or Java's BigDecimal class. I'm almost certain now that this is a mistake because even if the statistic is for monetary values, a statistic is usually rounded and the individual values that form the composition of the statistic are also rounded by four decimal places (or temporary shifted to appear as integers). However, I suspect that there is a flaw in my logic and I can't really say why precision is important. I suspect that with double precision in a standard library, even the calculation of mean could be wildly inaccurate. Perhaps I want to know the mean of a set of very small number that has too many decimal places to be supported by floating point precision."}
{"_id": "127749", "title": "Does the MIT open source license implies work derivatives to be made public (under MIT license)?", "text": "I am looking for an open source license for a library I want to publish. Ideally, one should be allowed to use this library in free or commercial applications without paying me a fee, but if any derivative work from the library is created (any improvement of the library for example), it should be made available to everyone under that same license. In other words, I want to put the following ethics: \"You benefit from this piece of work for free, and if you improve it, I can benefit from your improvement for free too\". It's a type copyleft license I am looking for. The MIT license looks like a possible solution, but it is unclear to me whether derivative works of the code covered by this license MUST be made available PUBLICLY to everyone. Can anyone clarify/confirm this? If there is another more appropriate open source license covering my needs, I am interested too. Thanks."}
{"_id": "214569", "title": "ExtJs License for free application", "text": "I read much about GPL license. But it couldn't clear my doubt. I want to develop a small web application using ExtJs because of its features. I won't use much of it. But some features are very good. Now, as my understanding I think I can give this app to my friend for free for his business needs, right? Or should I take commercial license for ExtJs?"}
{"_id": "127740", "title": "How much code should I be responsible for?", "text": "Through colleagues and exit interviews, I have heard that at my small company I am \"responsible\" for anywhere from 3-10 times more code than I would be at another job. I'm trying to look for some sort of fuzzy metric that I can use to compare my workload with others in my field. By \"code responsibility\", I don't mean \"I'm the only one who knows area X of the code base\" (though sadly, it's often true in a startup environment), but rather am referring to a number like \"code_base_size/number_of_developers\". Are there any resources I can use to help me more accurately measure my work load than just counting lines of code?"}
{"_id": "186703", "title": "Using double dot notation in URL link", "text": "I've recently been working on a project and I've been seeing two different forms of url's being used.               src=\"../MyLinkUrl\"      and               src=\"/MyLinkUrl\"      We are using MVC .NET and the times I have seen the .. usages have been in Javascript code files and not when it's been generated by the MVC URL helpers. Typically the usages range from specifying a controller action to specifying images. Both seem to work but I'm wondering which is the better practice or if it depends on the context. Some questions I have are:   1. What benefits/pitfalls does one have over the other   2. Is one better practice than the other   3. Does it depend on context and if so what context?"}
{"_id": "205797", "title": "TDD / one test representing the whole scenario ? or should I split it?", "text": "While practicing TDD, I came across this specification: _**A user should be created with its password hashed, be persisted and an activation token should be returned._** Should my first unit test, (aiming to begin to test this scenario) should encompass the whole needs? :               shouldPersistTheNewlyCreatedUserWithAHasedPasswordAndReturnACorrespondingActivationToken      Or rather, splitting its main parts into several smaller tests, and testing incrementally:               shouldCreateAUser     shouldReturnAUserActivationToken     shouldReturnAnActivationTokenBasedOnNewlyCreatedUserEmail     shouldPersistTheNewlyCreatedUser     shouldHashTheUserPersistBeforePersistingIt      To put in a nutshell, should I rework the same test until a whole scenario passes? Or should I proceed incrementally by specifying additional features in other small tests. IMHO, the benefit of the first solution is that the **spec** is defining in one place, no need to gather some chuncks of features to figure out the whole. On the other hand, the number of assertions and expectations might be huge, therefore the test **code** would be less readable."}
{"_id": "209414", "title": "What would be negative test case for this scenario?", "text": "Let's say we have some requirements   * **Req1** : User name will accept 6-10 character alpha value.   * **Req2** : On click of Submit button, application will show error message \"Please enter value or character between 6 to 10 including\" for invalid boundary value. In this case if we are designing test cases for invalid boundary values of 5 and 11, those would be positive test cases, since we are also verifying the error message, which is mentioned in requirement. What would be negative test case for this scenario?"}
{"_id": "96240", "title": "GUI: Setting options in two different places and having them stay in sync?", "text": "Programming in Windows with Visual Studio 2010 C++ and MFC. My question is about how best to store, update, and pass around program settings or options. I have a simple main GUI window/frame/dialog. On that main window I have an options button. When I click the options button I create an Options Dialog. Inside the options dialog I get a reference to the \"application\" (an MFC concept, globally available) and grab a reference to my custom settings class (an instance is stored in the application class. From there, I can populate my options dialog and save my options back. Perhaps I should be using Dependency injection to inject the settings into my option dialog? Or perhaps I should not even be accessing the settings from within the dialog class? MaybeI should expose the settings via set/get on the dialog class? Also, now I want to show some options right there on the main window, while still keeping them settable on the original options dialog. So now I'm wondering what a good design is for this. If I set an option on my options dialog I want it to update the options displayed on the main window. I guess this is a good spot for the Observer pattern but I'm trying to figure out how to piece it altogether in a MFC context (which as best as I can tell is basically pretty much the same as any other GUI toolkit in any other language, so if you're not into MFC I still want your comments)   1. How should I be passing my settings around?    2. How do I keep the GUI display of the settings in sync with each other? Such that after clicking OK on the options dialog box, the options directly shown on the main window are updated?"}
{"_id": "26284", "title": "Best way to handle delimited files", "text": "So typically a CSV file uses a comma and the return character as it's field and line delimiters. This runs into obvious problems with text which can contain both these characters. Obviously there are options there (escaping them) but how do people handle this? Use different characters - pipes or tildas? Escape them? Not use delimited files, after all it's 2010 and we have XML now? Looking at least effort for a decent chance of not seeing problems. (Just to be clear, this is a question out of curiosity rather than something more solid - it's something I've come up against time and time again playing with data, always got round it but it normally feels a bit, well, dirty, and wondered what other people's experience was)."}
{"_id": "250557", "title": "If we could get a file's binary form, would this method of file compression work?", "text": "I'm not quite sure how easy it is to fetch the binary composition of a file, but suppose we have some file with this representation: 010011 We could make 2 arrays. One which stores the position of the 0s: ['x', '', 'x', 'x', '', ''] And another which stores the position of the 1s (which is simply the opposite of the previous array): ['', 'x', '', '', 'x', 'x'] Then we can persist these two arrays into a file, and voila? I don't know, is there something i'm not realizing? I'm not an expert in compression, was just wondering if this would work."}
{"_id": "110199", "title": "Unit testing methods that call suppliers webservices", "text": "I have a class with one public method `Send()` and a few private methods. It calls a couple of webservices and processes the reponse. The processing is done in private methods. I want to unit test the code. My understanding is that unit tests should test my code in isolation (ie mock up supplier responses). I also believe that private methods should not need to be unit tested But if I just test the Send() method my code isnt being tested in isolation and is dependent on the supplier resonse. Should I then make my private methods public so I can test them with mock responses? It seems bad practice since I only the class should need to call them. Apologies if its a basic question, im fairly new to unit testing. Im using c# and VS2010"}
{"_id": "148045", "title": "Programming language with pattern matching in trees", "text": "I'd like to prototype a computer algebra system. An equation would be represented by a tree and rules would be defined - similarly to mathematical axioms - by specifying a pattern (in the tree) and a restructuring rule for the matched part of the tree. Can you suggest a programming language I could experiment with to test this approach (ideally not too experimental language)? Basically it should support high level data structures like lists (or actually trees) and make it easy to match the tree against a pattern and also replace part of a tree by a substitute. So it's about high level data structure pattern matching and easy modification of that. EDIT: Of course I could take any programming language to write the program in the end, but I'm looking specifically for something which makes it easy to do first idea prototyping. I don't mind learning a new language (for fun)."}
{"_id": "93105", "title": "Recommended way to start with Javascript for client- and server-side", "text": "I'm thinking about to switch in middle term to node.js for server-side and mostly jQuery and scriptaculous for client-side web development. For the scripting I'm planning to use coffeescript.   * do you think it's okay to use coffeescript or should I learn \"plain\" Javascript?   * What resources e.g. books, e-books, mailinglist, papers etc. would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "93107", "title": "How to decide maintenance cost/terms for freelance work?", "text": "I am a JavaScript programmer and am planning to take Freelance projects related to JavaScript effects for the web. Recently a potential client approached me to create a JavaScript effect for his website. The effect was quite complex and it was not generic. That is, every time the design of the website would change the JavaScript code would have to be modified. Due to this nature of the code, I told the client that I will not be able to provide maintenance for this project. I will be happy to modify the code in the future but I will be doing the cost estimation each time there is a modification. The client was not happy with this. I thought of calculating the probability of the modifications the client may ask per year and multiply the initial estimate by that so that the maintenance becomes free. For example, if the cost of the initial project is $100 and I assume that the client will ask me to modify the code 4 times a year I would charge him $ (100 + 4*100). But I think this would be way too much and the client would deny to pay such a high amount. I have just started freelancing and the cost estimation part related to maintenance confuses me a lot. What is a good way to estimate maintenance cost. Also suggestions on maintenance terms like what should be the scope would be useful."}
{"_id": "93101", "title": "Best way to share / \"donate\" a C# software - and what license?", "text": "Some years back I have developed a little C# class library, which is still frequently downloaded. Since I do not have the time to support the project any more, I would like to donate it. What is the best place to do so? Some remarks:   1. I will not be the owner of that project any more, I just \"want to hand it over\"   2. It has to be \"free of charge\", non commercial, ...   3. Best would be if others could make changes and also re-distribute them   4. It must not be a legal hazard for me, so no obligations etc. Have you done something before, what would you recommend...? Update: I got excellent feedback in virtually no time, **so I have to choose a license**. I am not so much in that legal stuff, also it is not my main interest. What do you recommend for this? In plain words, I only have little demands (clarifying my intentions):   1. People can use it for commercial and non commercial software   2. I do not want to be in any kind of liabilities   3. All improvements (fixes etc.) should be also available for me and the public under the same license as in 4.   4. I do not want force people to publish their whole source code when they deploy the library as part of a bigger project. But I want them to re-publish any direct improvements or bug fixes.  There are too many licenses to read them all...."}
{"_id": "165644", "title": "Is there a way to publish IOS app from windows/Linux?", "text": "I have been using Linux (especially, Ubuntu) and Windows 7 for a long time. I want to publish iOS apps, but I don't have a Mac or an iPhone. I don't have anyone near me who will lend me a Mac, and I don't actually want to buy them either. So my question is: how do I publish my iOS app from Windows or Linux? I am not referring to publishing programs for jailbroken iPhones, I want to publish through the Apple Store. My search results indicate that there is no fool-proof way of publishing an iOS app from Windows or Linux. I also want to make it a paid app, and not give it away for free. Does anyone know of a way to publish iOS apps from Windows or Linux?"}
{"_id": "148042", "title": "Should program behavior be modified using a config file or environmental variables?", "text": "I'm referring to *nix command line applications primarily, where you want to permanently modify the behavior from defaults. Environmental variables are easily understood and implemented, usually requiring the user to modify their `~/.bashrc` for a permanent change. However, namespace collision might be a problem (but unlikely if you're careful). On the other hand, a lot of programs use `~/.programrc` config files. Is it simply verbosity? If your program only has 2 configuration settings, then a simple `export APP_SETTING=1` works just fine. However if you're starting to offer 5+ options then it should be time to start looking into a config file?"}
{"_id": "165649", "title": "Is \"convention over configuration\" not violating basic programming principles?", "text": "I was looking at the WPF MVVM framework Caliburn.Micro and read that a lot of standard things are based on naming conventions. For example, automatic binding of properties in the View to properties in the ViewModel. Although this seems to be convenient (removes some boilerplate code), my first instinct reaction is that it isn't completely obvious to a new programmer that will read this code. In other words, the functionality of the application is not completely explained by its own code, but also by the documentation of the framework. **EDIT:** So this approach is called convention over configuration. Since I could not find any questions concerning this, I altered my question: **My question is:** Is convention over configuration a correct way of simplifying things, or is it violating some programming principles (and if so, which ones)?"}
{"_id": "148049", "title": "How to deal with static utility classes when designing for testability", "text": "We are trying to design our system to be testable and in most parts developed using TDD. Currently we are trying to solve the following problem: In various places it is necessary for us to use static helper methods like ImageIO and URLEncoder (both standard Java API) and various other libraries that consist mostly of static methods (like the Apache Commons libraries). But it is extremely difficult to test those methods that use such static helper classes. I have several ideas for solving this problem:   1. Use a mock framework that can mock static classes (like PowerMock). This may be the simplest solution but somehow feels like giving up.   2. Create instantiable wrapper classes around all those static utilities so they can be injected into the classes that use them. This sounds like a relatively clean solution but I fear we'll end up creating an awful lot of those wrapper classes.   3. Extract every call to these static helper classes into a function that can be overridden and test a subclass of the class I actually want to test. But I keep thinking that this just has to be a problem that many people have to face when doing TDD - so there must already be solutions for this problem. What is the best strategy to keep classes that use these static helpers testable?"}
{"_id": "104249", "title": "Best practices for releasing an open source PHP application", "text": "I'm a PHP developer for a living but have never worked on or contributed to any open source projects before. I am developing a CMS for my own use. I have a working prototype and I think that once it's ready (probably a couple of months time) this could be something the PHP community would be interested in. I'm a fairly confident developer but there are areas where my knowledge is lacking, especially when it comes to open source issues:   * What's the best way to publicise the project and/or find others who might be interested in collaborating   * My CMS is powered by CakePHP and basically sits as a layer on top of it. I've forked the CakePHP project on GitHub: I've used version control systems (SVN) before but I'm fairly new to GIT so want to be sure I'm doing things in \"the best way\"   * How can I find out about licensing issues? Which open source license would be best for my app? Also, my project borrows from a lot of other open source projects, for example I have sections of code (which I have heavily modified) but which had copyright/licensing notices in place- I've no idea what my obligations are in terms of keeping these in These are just a couple of examples of the questions I have, but I feel like there must be some resources out there which would be useful to me. Where's the best place to get started, what are the best communities/sites out there which cover these issues? I've had a look around but haven't been able to come up with much..."}
{"_id": "55651", "title": "How can large data handling be a special requirement for job?", "text": "I chanced to see some job requirements of Oracle SQL programmer or C# developer jobs, who want a person who can handle terabytes of data in ETL or data migration. I have worked on data migration to move data from one system to the other. As a C# developer or Oracle SQL programmer, I am not able to understand how things will be different if large data is involved. (Oracle documentation says that it can easily handle even 8000 terabytes, why do I have to worry about volume then?) Can someone please advice what is special about handling data migration of large volumes?"}
{"_id": "51338", "title": "Programming in other writing systems such as those who write right-to-left", "text": "How do programmers in countries whose writing system is, say, right-to-left write their code? Say if they were using C# compiler, do they follow the left- to-right approach or do they have a different IDE that allows them write C# code right-to-left?"}
{"_id": "220056", "title": "Best place for a factory interface", "text": "What's the best place for a factory interface to create an instance of another interface? **OptionA** : a separate class               public interface InterAFactory {         InterA createInterA();     }          public interface InterA {         void doStuff();     }      **OptionB** : a subclass               public interface InterA {         public interface Factory {             InterA createInterA();         }              void doStuff();     }      I notice that guava has tended to use B for the immutable collections, but that's for builders, which are slightly different to factories. I also tend towards optionB, as it reduces the number of top-level classes in the package, and it strongly associates the factory with the thing it creates. However, implementations will not be bound or affected by this, and it will make implementations of the factory slightly more verbose. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "220050", "title": "Procedural programming?", "text": "I'm about to set off on a journey to create a new report-generator for our in- house software. Our old generator is made in VB6, remotes Word, and pixelpushes images. And its slower than a sloth on a flypaper. The language I'm most fluent in is C#, so preferably I'll want to make it in C#. I'm open for other languages though, of which I probably know Javascript the best. My question really is how I should proceed in setting up my app. The data it's reporting on is survey data. It's separated into questions and questiongroups. Today this goes a bit like this:   * Create report score for complete report   * Create report score for each questiongroup   * Create report score for each question   * Create report score for each question group I addition there might be several extra steps to get scores by variable filter and such. My problem is that I can't really wrap my head around any other way to do it than this \"procedural\" way. How would you go about in solving this? Any suggestions? More data:   * Data is stored in MSSQL   * The environment is Windows"}
{"_id": "220053", "title": "Why did Java make package access default?", "text": "I'm asking this question because I believe they did it for a very good reason and that most people do not use it properly, well from my experience in industry so far anyway. But if my theory is true then I'm not sure why they included the private access modifier...? I believe that if default access is properly used it provides enhanced testability whilst maintaining encapsulation. And it also renders the private access modifier redundant. The default access modifier can be used to provide the same affect by using a unique package for methods that need to be hidden from the rest of the world, and it does this without compromising testability, as packages in a test folder, with the same are able to access all the default methods declared in a source folder. I believe this is why Java uses package access as 'default'. But I'm not sure why they also included private access, I'm sure there is a valid use case..."}
{"_id": "222564", "title": "Are there alternatives to stack+heap+static memory model?", "text": "All programs I have seen organize their data memory into one or more call stacks (usually fixed size, but sometimes not), the heap, and static memory. Lately thread-local static storage has been added to this as well. Have there been any attempts to organize data memory layout in a radically different way, e.g. without the call stack? Or organize memory in a different way that accomplishes the same thing?"}
{"_id": "222568", "title": "Do we have any special design considerations for maintaining anonymity in an application?", "text": "This is an open-ended question which I am analysing while doing some fun projects in leisure. Websites like Google, Facebook do store user activities and perhaps sell them or use them for advertisements. But I believe anonymity is maintained. For instance, I need to expose that there are 5 people between age 45-50 who are drug-addicts in a given area... but I don't want to offer the names of the people. In fact I want to be sure that noone can access their names, otherwise resulting in privacy violation (Sorry for the weird example !) Is there some tool/standard which everyone(especially smaller organizations) follow to limit legal complications due to identity theft like this ? I am tagging MongoDB and Java, as I am using these technologies and answers specific to them would be easier to implement."}
{"_id": "110223", "title": "How a .NET dev team should be designing and delivering greenfield projects?", "text": "Some of the hottest topics in the software world atm are:   * Domain-Driven Design   * SOLID principles    * Agile methodologies    * ORM  Now assuming that you are not currently using all of these in your team, if you were to go and ask your team (individually, not as a group) what they knew about the topics they were not applying - how much do they know about those other topics - they've probably \"heard about it/read it somewhere once\". The problem is that, increasingly, tech is changing so fast that a lot of people (average Joe programmers) just can't keep up with the latest thinking. Now while those that are academically gifted can read 20+ books on the above subjects every year and combine it into some kind of order in their heads in order to apply it to a new software project, most of us will not be inclined to do all that studying. Personally, I sit at a desk all day programming, and so the last thing I want to do is go home and do the same. I want to go play sport, see friends, spend time with the gf, and generally have a life. So, given a nice shiny new greenfield project, many of us (make that most, if we are honest) are still pretty confused about how to tackle a new project with the latest, greatest thinking that is most commonly accepted by our more academically inclined piers. So my question - I was wondering if there was any book out there present or future, that combines the latest thinking into something more manageable for the average mortal to digest and apply? (preferably using .net and the most popular current related tech) From my experience in the market, it would look something like this to be relevant to most real developers:   1. Examples based on some kind of internet website, so all tiers can be involved.   2. Explain how to identify and map the real business objects, this would currently be done with domain-driven design as the latest commonly-accepted thinking, while obeying SOLID principles.   3. Explain how (2) goes from model to database schema, using latest ORM tech (this might be the biggest section).   4. Use MVC (or whatever tech that becomes) as a platform for the examples.   5. Very briefly explain TDD, then show you how to plug-in unit testing, probably visual studio testing/nunit or latest tech.   6. When to use IoC.   7. Show you how to write a couple of very simple integration tests using whatever the current tool of choice is (Fitnesse or whatever).   8. Show you (in no more than one chapter) how to set-up TFS for continuous integration. The book would then be revised every year to reflect the latest and most agreed concepts, so software teams always knew the best way to handle a new project, without wading through this year's mountain of new books themselves to try and identify the common themes for this year's hottest topics. It would be important that the revisions did not reflect the author's own opinion, but rather the general opinion of the majority of his piers, so it built an accepted, uniform approach to .net development projects. The real key to this book is that it would be a \"How to\" book, not a \"Why you should\" book. It could (and probably should) reference the \"Why\" books for those that wanted to be better programmers or just needed to know more, but it wouldn't have the space to explain it anything more than briefly, given the target of the book. Perhaps the book could more accurately be called \"How to correctly and practically apply the current state of the art .NET software development design and technology to real world projects this year (for idiots)\" but I guess the title needs work ;-) So, to fit into the sites \"ask a question\" directive - is there any book out there even vaguely similar to this? (although I doubt it gets revised regularly). Right, I'm off to read another dry, theoretical book, on my week off to try and keep up :( It's a shame that I'll probably have forgotten all the content by the time I come to use it, and for all I know it might be out of date already... Oh btw, where's the best place to kick this off as a discussion as opposed to a question? reading the FAQ only suggested the real-time chat, which I had a quick look at, but tbh it's pretty dead and seems to be mostly one-liners, not suitable for something long-winded (another website would be fine)."}
{"_id": "245365", "title": "Why is the \u201capp\u201d folder now a (more) common pattern in web projects?", "text": "It might be related to the Yeoman project, or they might have adopted this from somewhere else, but it seems to be the default for all of their generators. Aside from Yeoman generators I've also noticed it in other projects that have nothing to do with Yeoman (this one for example). Where did this convention come from, and what are the reasons for using this over a `src` folder, for example (which used to be more common)? Or is it just random preference? * * * p.s.: As far as I can tell it doesn't seem to be strictly related to it being a web-app instead of a web-site (which is rather subjective anyway)."}
{"_id": "110227", "title": "Writing robust code vs. overengineering", "text": "How do you guys know that you are writing the most robust code possible without overengineering? I find myself thinking too much about every possible path that my code can take, and it feels like a waste of time sometimes. I guess it depends on the kind of program you are writing, but I don't want to use too much of my time taking situations into account that will never happen."}
{"_id": "167647", "title": "Time tracking and payment registration architecture", "text": "\u0422itle might be a little bit incorrect. :) Anyway, I'm building a software where employees input time they worked per day (work hours) and employer \"pays\" for this time. \"Payment\" is done outside this system, so employer just \"confirms\" (checkbox or something like this) which work hours are paid. So the question is - what is the best way (both UI and data storage wise) to implement this? At the moment I have this idea:   * Employee selects week and manually (with some Javascript helpers, like \"fill the same time for all days\") inputs work hours in every day of the week. Employer confirms payment the same way employee inputs data (selects week, confirms each day). Data is saved in DB as unix timestamp (one day per table row).  Problem is 14 inputs (7 days * (\"hours from\" + \"hours to\" input), yet this approach seems kinda easy to implement. Maybe I'm overlooking something and this can be done differently and better? Maybe someone has any example of already working software?"}
{"_id": "220582", "title": "How can I learn about typography, fonts, glyphs, etc.?", "text": "I know so little about this that I'm having trouble formulating the question. Apparently due to technical limitations, nastaleeq style of writing Urdu is very difficult, perhaps impossible, given current standards used on the web. I'd like to do a deep dive into why this is so (the technical aspects, at least). My, very rough, understanding is this: Unicode is the standard right now, but it doesn't define how characters look, it only define the names of characters and a numbering system to represent them. \"Fonts,\" such as Halvetica or Times New Roman, actually define the look of characters. What is True Type then, and how is it different from Open Type or Postscript or LaTex? If a language requires that shapes of characters, _and how the connect to each other_ (think cursive), change, based on their location in text...how is that handled? If Unicode is only a representation system and fonts only concern themselves with single characters, where do these location based algorithms go? Is the current set of standards too limited to handle complex cursive style typography? If so, can HTML's canvas be used to create an alternative/experimental \"font system?\" If I do need to \"roll my own\" is Knuth's work on digital typography still relevant or are there more modern references?"}
{"_id": "57651", "title": "Open-Source, Consensus-Based Development", "text": "**Question:**   Is there an open source license that requires that my name (or a name that I want to promote) will always be associated with a project and derivations of it? (Either within the copyright notice (\u00a9) or other.) **Motivation:**   \\- My main motivation is reputation/career advancement. If it gained wide use, it could look very good on resume (I understand this is a long shot).   \\- An additional benefit is that it would explicitly state to prospective employers that this code was used by myself before I started with the company and will continue to be used when I leave. **It is my understanding:**   I am aware that 99.9% of open-source projects never take off, and that I am taking a long shot in regard to advancing reputation/career. I understand that many don't read/respect licenses. I understand that open source projects take a lot of time to manage. I understand that 'Concensus-Based Development' is the best chance at motivating a community and that I may/will loose substantial control."}
{"_id": "57653", "title": "How can I register in the iOS developer program as a minor?", "text": "Recently, I started learning about iOS application development, and while the simulator is fine for starting out, I've gotten to the point that I really should be testing the Apps I write on an actual device. To do this, you must be a member of the $99/year iOS developer program, which also allows you to publish on the App Store. I'm more than happy to pay the fee, but my problem is that I'm still a minor, and to join the developer program you must be over 18 in the U.S. (I'm not sure how it works in other countries). I've talked to a few others that were in a similar position, but their responses have been varied. From what I've gathered, the best course of action is to register in the name of one of my parents. My problem with this is that if I were to ever publish an App on the store, it would be ideal to have my name as the seller instead of my dad's. It wouldn't be the end of the world if this happened, but as I said, this wouldn't be ideal. Have any of you been in this position or known somebody who has? How have others solved this problem? Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "57657", "title": "How would you present your software development progress to your stakeholders?", "text": "We use bugzilla to track bugs and feature requests, and we also require developers to write to a separate release notes should they finish coding a feature. Old fashion, I know. One problem we have with the above arrangement, is that while it works great for software that we are already selling, it is completely useless when comes to track the progress of a new software development project. The reason is that at the point of developing new software, we don't,or rather, we can't, use bugzilla to trace the features simply because bugzilla is not suitable to represent the complicated intricacy of feature dependency ( To complete a new software application, there are just too many features to code and we just don't feel like putting them in bugzilla, and even if we did, we had no way of knowing which features depend on which, and we won't be able to get an accurate prediction of the shipping date anyway). Then, our stakeholders will get concerned about our development progress ( or lack of) and start banging on the team lead ( yours truly)'s door on the estimates, which I can't answer because tragically, I also honestly don't quite know how far is the new application from completion. How would you present your software development progress to your stakeholders?"}
{"_id": "150136", "title": "From where do financial firms obtain the stock data to analyze", "text": "I've been thinking about the subject and I've always wondered, from where do they obtain the data that is analized in applications, I've looked at Nasdaq's website and they do not seem to have any sort of APIs, do the firms parse yahoo's finance section, or are there special contracts, agreements in places with the different stock markets?"}
{"_id": "82371", "title": "Should MVC/REST return a 403 or 404 for resources belonging to other users?", "text": "When working with a resource-based site (such as an MVC application or REST service), we have two main options when a client tries to `GET` a resource that they don't have access to:   * **403** , which says that the client is _unauthorized_ ; or   * **404** , which says that the resource _does not exist_ (or couldn't be located). Common wisdom and common practice seems to be to respond with the truth - that is, a 403. But I'm wondering if this is actually the right thing to do. Secure login systems never tell you the reason for a login failure. That is to say, as far as the client is concerned, there is no detectable difference between a non-existent user name and an incorrect password. The purpose is of this is to not make user IDs - or worse, e-mail addresses - discoverable. From a _privacy_ standpoint, it seems a lot safer to return a 404. I'm reminded of the incident wherein someone reportedly found out the winners of a reality show (Survivor, I think) by looking at which resources _didn't_ exist on the site vs. which ones did. I'm concerned about a 403 potentially giving away sensitive information like a serial number or account number. Are there compelling reasons _not_ to return a 404? Could a 404 policy have negative side effects elsewhere? If not, then why isn't the practice more common?"}
{"_id": "253608", "title": "How is the correct way of writing TDD for a void API?", "text": "Ok so my scenario is this: I have a third party component that offers an API for communicating with an external system. The method calls for commanding the external system to do stuff, all return void. So what I have done is I have created a wrapper interface and have mocked out the external system. But since I have no real logic or checks in my code that calls stuff on the external API, the code is just procedural. I can't really test anything else than that the methods are being called.               _systemWrapper.DoStuff(a, b ,c , d);     _systemWrapper.DoStuff2(e, f);     _systemWrapper.DoStuff3(g);      I can't configure the external system from my tests, so integration tests are out of the question. So what I have done to test this, is that I have mocked out my \"_systemWrapper\" and am just verifying that the parameters I call on the mock contain the correct parameters. Is this a common way to solve this particular problem? To me it seems to be a bit exhaustive to have a test to make sure you have this and this line of code present. The problem is that this system is getting BIG and writing tests that assert that this and this line is present is getting out of hand, and refactoring is becoming real hard with all the tests failing if we change a call to the third party."}
{"_id": "155321", "title": "Is there a single book that covers the breadth of computer science fundamentals?", "text": "When I did my undergraduate studies in elecrical engineering, there was this book called \"Basic Electricity\" by Van Valkenburgh. If you read that book cover to cover, your fundamentals in electrical engineering would be bulletproof. I would recommend it all my juniors and I absolutely loved it. Is there such a book in the field of computer science? I am not so concerned about the algorithms. I am looking more into something that tells me how does everything work beneath the covers. TCPIP, memory management, DNS, routing, SSL, buffer, queuing etc."}
{"_id": "253606", "title": "Design for object with optional and modifiable attributtes?", "text": "I've been using the Builder pattern to create objects with a large number of attributes, where most of them are optional. But up until now, I've defined them as final, as recommended by Joshua Block and other authors, and haven't needed to change their values. I am wondering what should I do though if I need a class with a substantial number of optional but non-final (mutable) attributes? My Builder pattern code looks like this:               public class Example {         //All possible parameters (optional or not)         private final int param1;         private final int param2;              //Builder class         public static class Builder {             private final int param1; //Required parameters             private int param2 = 0;   //Optional parameters - initialized to default                  //Builder constructor             public Builder (int param1) {                 this.param1 = param1;             }                  //Setter-like methods for optional parameters             public Builder param2(int value)             { param2 = value; return this; }                  //build() method             public Example build() {                 return new Example(this);             }         }              //Private constructor         private Example(Builder builder) {             param1 = builder.param1;             param2 = builder.param2;         }     }      Can I just remove the `final` keyword from the declaration to be able to access the attributes externally (through normal setters, for example)? Or is there a creational pattern that allows optional but non-final attributes that would be better suited in this case?"}
{"_id": "253604", "title": "Is goto to improve DRY-ness OK?", "text": "My code has many checks to detect errors in various cases (many conditions would result in the same error), inside a function returning an error struct. Instead of looking like this:               err_struct myfunc(...) {         err_struct error = { .error = false };              ...              if(something) {             error.error = true;             error.description = \"invalid input\";             return error;         }              ...                  case 1024:                 error.error = true;                 error.description = \"invalid input\";  // same error, but different detection scenario                 return error;                 break;  // don't comment on this break please (EDIT: pun unintended)                 ...      Is use of `goto` in the following context considered better than the previous example?               err_struct myfunc(...) {         err_struct error = { .error = false };              ...              if(something) goto invalid_input;              ...                  case 1024:                 goto invalid_input;                 break;              return error;              invalid_input:             error.error = true;             error.description = \"invalid input\";             return error;"}
{"_id": "253603", "title": "Console App error An object reference is required for the non-static field, method, or property", "text": "Hey all I am trying to get the following code to work but currently I am getting this error: > An object reference is required for the non-static field, method, or > property 'fetchFeedData.Program.txtUsername' The code is:               class Program     {         private string appDataPath = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData) + \"\\\\feedReader\";         internal static extern IntPtr GetCurrentProcess();         private WebClient imageClient;         private String txtUsername = \"xxxxxx@xxxxxx.com\";         private String txtPassword = \"xxxxxxx\";         private Boolean chkDownVideo = false;         private Boolean chkIsHD = false;          [STAThread]     static void Main(string[] args)     {        bool isNew;        Mutex mtx = new Mutex(true, \"FacebookNewsfeedReader\", out isNew);             if (isNew) {          InitializeXul();          LoadSettings();        } else          MessageBox.Show(\"Already one instance is running.....\", \"Facebook Newsfeed Reader\");     }          static void LoadSettings()     {        imageClient = new WebClient();        imageClient.Headers.Add(\"Accept\", \"image/webp,*/*;q=0.8\");        imageClient.Headers.Add(\"User-Agent\", \"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36\");        imageClient.Headers.Add(\"Referer\", \"https://www.zzzzzzzz.com/\");        imageClient.Headers.Add(\"Accept-Encoding\", \"gzip,deflate,sdch\");        imageClient.Headers.Add(\"Accept-Language\", \"en-US,en;q=0.8\");             string[] vals = data.Split('\\n');        if (vals.Length < 3)           return;        txtUsername = vals[0];        txtPassword = vals[1];        txtBrowseFolder = vals[2];        chkDownVideo = bool.Parse(vals[3]);        chkIsHD = bool.Parse(vals[4]);     }      It shows that same error on the following lines:               imageClient = ...     imageClient.Headers.Add(...     imageClient.Headers.Add(...     imageClient.Headers.Add(...     imageClient.Headers.Add(...     imageClient.Headers.Add(...          appDataPath + ...     txtUsername = ...     txtPassword = ...     txtBrowseFolder = ...     chkDownVideo = ...     chkIsHD = ...      I searched a little and found continued suggestions to make sure both had the same function calls (static, void, etc) but that did not seem to fix the issue. Any help would be great!"}
{"_id": "153444", "title": "Writing selenium tests, should I just get it done or get it right?", "text": "I'm attempting to drive my user interface (heavy on javascript) through selenium. I've already tested the rest of my ajax interaction with selenium successfully. However, this one particular method seems to be eluding me because I can't seem to fake the correct click event. I could solve this problem by simply waiting in the test for the user to click a point and then continuing with the test but this seems like a cop out. But I'm really running out of time on my deadline to have this done and working. Should I just get this done and move on or should I spend the extra (unknown) amount of time to fix this problem and be able to have my selenium tests 100% automated?"}
{"_id": "153441", "title": "Recognizing text fields according to their label value", "text": "I have an application who has **text fields** (not select, not checkbox or other types) where an user can enter some value, like this: ![*ISBN* and *E-Mail* are the label of each input](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nKf2O.png) _ISBN_ and _E-Mail_ are the **label** of each input. Now I have to automatically test these inputs according to their label. The question is: how to recognize that, for example, the first input requires an ISBN code? I programmed something like this:   1. turn the label value to lowercase   2. check if the label value contains _isbn_   3. if so set the field value to a random _ISBN code_ (i.e.: 1234567890), else set it to a random value (default) For the email field:   1. turn the label value to lowercase   2. check if the label value contains _e-mail_ or _email_ or _mail_   3. if so set the field value to a random _email_ (i.e.: abcd@abcd.com), else set it to a random value (default) And so on for each text field I encounter. Is that reliable? How can I improve the \"recognizing part\"? I know only the _label value_ and the _field value_ (what is already written in the field by default) for each text input."}
{"_id": "120213", "title": "When is the right time to join open source project for programmer?", "text": "Most of the newcomers in programming start with basic projects to start with programming. Most of the C++ progammers spend some time with puzzles and contests but this is not always helpful. Sometimes you've to spend some time on real projects. Starting your own open source project could be a problem in self-learning for newbie cause of lack of mentors and peers who can't look at your code and give suggestions. Open source projects can solve this problem, some projects could be best suited for new programmers. Besides everybody is newbie at some point. So i'll try and make this question a bit from beginners perspective. I tried few questions on stack overflow before asking this like How do i join & Bare minimum you need and how to get involved with open source and what level of programming etc. But this is not helping me when it comes to self- evaluating with skills. How to find that out ? How can i check what it takes to join open source project and am i really that comfortable with huge source code etc. My question is _when to consider yourself comfortable joining open source programming ?_ I mean how will you test yourself that you're ready to take burden of big/small projects of open source ? how will you test yourself to see if you could work with version control/other programmers/tight schedule etc ?"}
{"_id": "222696", "title": "Should I merge from the same branch or from a merge?", "text": "Kind of a _best practices_ question: is it better to merge directly from the source to other branches or is it OK to merge from a merge? Using Subversion for source control. **Scenario** :   * Branch A has changes made and committed.   * Branch B and the Trunk both need updates. **Case 1**   Merge from A to B and again from A to Trunk. or **Case 2**   Merge from A to B and then merge from B to Trunk. I may also be missing a Case 3 where you merge to B and Trunk Simultaneously (not sure if that is dependent on the source control being used?). Note that there could be any number of branches that need merging to, such that you could \"cascade\" the merge (A to B to C to D...)."}
{"_id": "222698", "title": "Writing my own blog engine using PHP/JavaScript - am I doing it 'right'?", "text": "First, apologies in advance if this is in the wrong place - I wasn't sure if it should be here or in Code Review, but as I'm not actually asking for anyone to review my code . . . Here's my project: Mostly as a learning exercise I am writing my own blog engine. Here's how it works: Admin writes post - > post is saved to .html file, and details of post are written BOTH to a MySQL database and a JSON file using PHP - > posts are loaded onto site via iframes, determined by JavaScript using the details in the JSON file. Thus for loading posts onto the site, no PHP or access to the database is required. The only reason for the database at all is to have an editable record so that if the admin needs to delete a post, the entry can be removed from the database and the JSON file re-written from the database. What I want to know: 1) This seems a bit cumbersome. Would people recommend doing away with the JSON and making more use of the database? How do I integrate this with JavaScript stuff? 2) Is storing each post as a separate .html file and loading as an iframe a reasonable way of doing things? 3) Is there any way to cut out the PHP entirely? I am not keen on it really. I am starting to learn Python, but it seems an awful palaver for a small blog engine. As you can probably tell, I am VERY new to programming! I have looked into TaffyDB, which in theory could get rid of the database entirely - I load the JSON with Taffy, remove one record, and re-write the JSON . . . except I'd still need PHP to write to file I think? Also, I am worried that relying entirely on JSON files will make things very slow (I understand speed issues increase exponentially with JSON size?) Any advice/feedback would be welcome, and again I apologise if I'm posting in the wrong bit of StackExchange."}
{"_id": "38302", "title": "What are the best strategies for selling Android apps?", "text": "I'm a young developer hoping to sell my apps I made for Android soon. My applications are basically 99% finished so I'm investigating what would be the best marketing strategy to use to sell my apps. I'm sure the brilliant minds here can give me some great advice. I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on the following points (especially from experienced Android developers):   * Is it more profitable to sell an app for free with ads or to sell an app without ads for a price? Perhaps a combination of a free ad version and a paid ad-free version?   * If you give away an app for free with ads on it is it ethical to decline bending over backwards to support it?   * How much does piracy actually affect potential sales? Should any effort be put towards preventing it?   * Can you still make a profit off your application if you make it open source? Could you perhaps make more of a profit from the attention you would get by doing so?   * Is Google's Android Marketplace really the best place to release Android apps?   * It is worthwhile enough to maintain a developer blog or website to keep users updated on your development progress and software releases? Any other suggestions you could give me to maximize profit meanwhile keeping users happy and coming back for more would also be greatly appreciated. While I appreciate general tips and tricks, I'd like to ask that if possible you please go the extra step and show how they specifically apply to selling Android apps. Marketing statistics, developer retrospect, and any additional experience you can share from your time selling Android apps is what I would love to see most. Thank you very much in advance for your time. I truly appreciate all the responses I receive."}
{"_id": "153448", "title": "how to create java zip archives with a max file size limit", "text": "I need to write an algorithm in java (for an android app) to read a folder containing more folders and each of those containing images and audio files so the structure is this: `mainDir/subfolders/myFile1.jpg`   * It must be in java, something like perl script is not an option. It would preferably be for the compressed archive in order to squeeze as many files as possible before mailing the zip. Just a normal zip (no jar). My problem is that I need to limit the size of the archive to 16mb and at runtime, create as many archives as needed to contain all my files from my main `mainDir` folder. I tried several examples from the net, I read the java documentation, but I can't manage to understand and put it all together the way I need it. Has someone done this before or has a link or an example for me? I resolved the reading of the files with a recursive method but I can't figure the logic for the zip creation. **EDIT:** FileNotFoundException (no such file or directory) this was my initial post at Stack Overflow. I've got an answer to it, but I can't set the size of the ZipEntry and the logic doesn't work and also when extracting the my files from the zip I get the `compression method not supported` error."}
{"_id": "186399", "title": "Application deployment with Puppet", "text": "I've been researching puppet lately, and I think it could be useful to integrate into my deployment pipeline. Currently, I deploy my apps by manually adding users, creating vhosts, setting directories, and then git cloning my repo from GitHub. I deploy changes with a simple Git pull (Git hooks take care of database migrations, clearing the cache, etc). With puppet, I could setup a manifest to do the directory creation, permissions and virtual host management for me. To deploy an app to a dev/prod environment, I'd pull the manifest from GitHub and run it locally. I was also thinking about adding the puppet manifest process to the Git hook so every pull, Puppet could ensure directory permissions are OK. Are there issues with this approach? Things I could do better?"}
{"_id": "186398", "title": "Design Pattern For Util Classes and General Static Variables", "text": "I am developing a Mojo(think it as just a usual class) for my custom Maven Plugin. There is an Abstract Mojo at top. I have some other custom Mojos in example which makes server side includes. I have some static variables and some util methods in example get operating system name, fix file separator in order to used operating system etc. I have created an abstract Base Mojo that extends Abstract Mojo and put every common things inside it. When I create a Mojo (i.e. server side includer) I extend it from my Base Mojo. However should I think that I should separate variables and util methods or not and what kind of pattern I should follow. To make it clear there is:   * **AbstractMojo** at top by default (I can not change it)   * **BaseMojo** an abstract class that extends **AbstractMojo** that has util methods and static system variables   * **CustomMojo** extends **BaseMojo** and does its responsibility. Any ideas how to implement a design for my needs?"}
{"_id": "53880", "title": "Stuff you should have learned in school but didn't pay attention to at the time", "text": "This question made me think that there was a better question to ask. What did you learn in school that you didn't care about at the time, but turned out to be useful or you had to relearn in the workplace because you had it in school, but didn't retain the information and you needed it? (I mean for software related jobs.) I think this might help college students identify some of what they really should be paying attention to while they are in school."}
{"_id": "246135", "title": "Could taking design lightly be a pitfall of agile methodologies causing constant rework or is it a misunderstanding of the methodology?", "text": "I've been working for a year now in an agile project to redesign an insurance application. I really like working in an agile environment, although management and analysts I work with still have waterfall thinking ingrained and makes it a little complicated to embrace the new paradigm shift to agile. From a developer standpoint sometimes I feel like since we're doing \"agile\" we don't over-think or think enough our designs and just go with the flow and refactor later. Many times that ends up in rework because we never put enough though to certain pieces of the application. As far as I understand, agile is like having small waterfalls and deliver small pieces at a time (iterations), but sometimes we lose the big picture and end up paying for it later with rework. Are agile methodologies encouraging or tolerating procrastination more than traditional waterfall? Is this constant rework for pieces of software with defined requirements acceptable? Is anyone else experiencing something similar in their projects?"}
{"_id": "117160", "title": "Resource for common ballparks in development projects?", "text": "Does anyone know of any resource which gives some man-hour ballparks for common types of development projects? I realize it's going to vary wildly by framework/language/the skill levels of the developers, but I'm just looking for something that comes within 50% of the mark. Facing a classic build vs buy vs use open source and I don't want to pick the wrong path. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "117161", "title": "Best way to parse optional grammar rules?", "text": "I started to write a hand written parser just for fun. For simple rules it is working, but I have problem with the optional grammar rules. I marked the optional rules with a question mark. Here is a simple rule:               rule1:  \"AA\"? \"AB\"? \"AC\"? \"AD\"      So AA, AB and AC string is optional, but AD is required. ex.: \"AAABAD\" is matching, \"AAAD\" is matching, \"AAAB\" is not matching, \"AD\" is matching, ... I need an algorithm and not a regex tool or something like that. I can solve this with brute force method (so trying every possible combination of the rules) but I think there is a better way to do this."}
{"_id": "251601", "title": "Filtering a List", "text": "I will try to simplify my problem. Let say I have a collection (more specifically a List) with different types of elements, for explanation purpose let say we have objects \"Person\" with different age of birth and an ID. I will represent a person like this: `{<id>,<year>}` At some point, I want to get a sub list of all the persons born on 1988 and 1989, and **if** there is **no** persons born on that years, I want all the persons born in 1990:               [{1,1988},{2,1988},{3,1982},{4,1995},{5,1989},{6,1989},{7,1990}] ==>      [{1,1988},{2,1988},{5,1989},{6,1989}]               [{1,1990},{2,1981},{3,1983},{4,1993},{5,1981},{6,1989},{7,1990}] ==>     [{6,1989}]          [{1,1990},{2,1981},{3,1983},{4,1993},{5,1981},{6,1985},{7,1990}] ==>     [{1,1990},{7,1990}]      ## Option 0 At first I though about using the filter method on the apache commons library, but this wouldn't work as I would need to know about all the element on the list to decide if a particular element goes on the sub list or not, so I ruled this option out. ## Option 1 Then, the simplest way I can see to do this is loop through the list looking for elements that match the first condition (1988 or 1989), and then, if I can't find any, loop again to look for elements that match the second condition (1900). But I don't like this because you have to loop through the list more than once. ## Option 2 The other option I can think about is to loop through the list only once, and to have two different sub list, one with the elements that match the first condition and another with the elements that match the second condition. At the end, if the first sub list is empty, we return the second sub list. Which one of these two is better (more efficient)?   Which would you use and why?   Do you think there is a better solution than these?"}
{"_id": "251603", "title": "Good practice for returns in Python", "text": "I was recently working on some prototype code in Python. The code worked great, then I realized that I needed a little more feedback from one of my functions so I changed the return statement from               return x      to               return (x,y)      Then going back to refactor existing code I realized that unless I search for invocation of this function across entire of the code base I won't know of any problems until run-time (and if this is some marginal case) barely ever and risking the program crashing due to uncaught exception resulting in operations on mismatched types. I contrast this with statically typed languages, where at compile time I get told about all places where the return doesn't mismatches expected type. So I was wondering whether there is some conventional wisdom associated with the return types in Python to avoid this grepping through code nonsense. P.S> Obviously better design patterns would solve this problem or not using duck typed language, but sometimes one comes across a case when you got to change the return type."}
{"_id": "251605", "title": "Preferred method for handling Failed CRUD operations in Entity Framework (6)?", "text": "I am using EF 6 as my ORM. I am trying to decide how to handle CRUD failures. ### Option 1: Use exceptions (custom or built-in) to inform the web layer that an item didn't correctly save. Handle the exceptions at the Web Layer as either error messages to the user or to trigger an AJAX post to try again depending on the reason for the failure. ### Option 2: Use some sort of object as a wrapper for CRUD operations. Return an enum and a message. Writer an object parser at the Web Layer as either error messages to the user or to trigger an AJAX post to try again depending on the reason for the failure. I am also open to other ideas. These are the two that I have come up with. I am using DB first on a legacy database. This database structure is poor at the very best. The current way issues are handled, is by returning an object that holds an enum and message. The majority of the applications hitting the database is used in winform apps. I just happen to be writing the web applications that hit them."}
{"_id": "193622", "title": "Will the Facebook apps I build still be available if I deactivate my account?", "text": "I have no desire to have a personal Facebook account, I do have one but it has been deactivated for awhile. A client of mine would like me to port over a few web apps to Facebook that are hosted on his domain, and it looks like I am unable to with my business account which makes absolutely no sense to me seeing as it is for a software development company that I own and operate. If I were to temporarily activate my personal Facebook account to create a few apps, will they still be available in the marketplace, I believe it's called \"App Central\", if I then later deactivate the account used to create them?"}
{"_id": "193629", "title": "Objective-C class cluster pattern", "text": "I have many sublcasses of one class. I choose concrete class based on type (simple enum). I like idea of class cluster. Should i use it or just create factory class (but each class in objective-c is actually a factory)? What is the difference between factory pattern and class cluster pattern. When to use it in your code and why?"}
{"_id": "199742", "title": "RESTful API design. What should I return if there are no rows?", "text": "I'm currently coding an API for a social network with the Slim Framework. My question is: What are the best practices when there are no rows to return in the json structure? Lets say that this call **/v1/get/movies** returns 2 rows from the table movie names:               [         {\"name\": \"Ghostbusters\"},         {\"name\": \"Indiana Jones\"}     ]      But, then I call **/v1/get/books** and there are no rows in that table. Should I just return an empty structure?               [     ]      ...or would it be better a message and an error code?               [         \"errors\": {             \"message\": \"no matches found\",             \"code\": 134         }     ]      Which is a better practice? (the API will be used in iOS and Android apps) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "199743", "title": "Is it worthwhile to create a knowledge map for software?", "text": "Basically, the objective is to create a visual representation of the software specification document. This visual representation would capture various scenarios involved in the software. Benefits:   * Picture speaks louder than words   * Catch scenarios so that they need to be handled by the developer   * Becomes a knowledge map for others   * Can be used as a reference   * Can be used for knowledge transfer as well. Ideas:   * If possible, we can dynamically modify the visual representation to add scenarios when site issues are found and they were not identified initially. I do not know how to do this. But I would like to invest time to find out how to do this. But is it worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "191170", "title": "Software failure due to maintenance oversights example/case study", "text": "I'm doing some investigation into the role of maintenance in software development and the use of metrics within the development cycle. What I am asking is for a point in the right direction or possibly a direct example in which there has been software failures due to the oversight of maintenance costs. More specifically I am looking for a case in which an implemented system has failed as the costs/effort for maintenance has been far too great as there has been poor or no projections from metrics. I understand this is a very specific question, but I've been racking my brains thinking of all the software failures I know of and none of them fit the criteria."}
{"_id": "141871", "title": "False friends? Keyword \"static\" in C compared to C++, C# and Java", "text": "To me, the use of the keyword `static` in C and languages like C# and Java are \"false friends\" like \"to become\" in English and \"bekommen\" in German (= \"to get\" in English), because they mean different things. In C `static` means, that the function or variable is only accessible via functions inside the same source file, comparable to `private` functions and members in C++, Java and C#. In C++, Java and C# `static` means, that the methods are not members of a class instance, but effectively are more or less like C functions plus namespace. IMHO these two concepts are quite different, so why did the designers of C++ and later Java and C# choose the `static` keyword for that behaviour? Is there a logical connection that I miss? **EDIT** I know, that `static` in C does not govern accessability in a way similar to `private` in C++, but can be used in that way, see http://stackoverflow.com/a/1479639/124983"}
{"_id": "116528", "title": "How to keep .Net assemblies relevant through high-flux period", "text": "How much do you, as .Net developers, consider the changes between Windows XP, 7, & 8 when choosing your development environment and libraries? We are nearing the end of Windows XP; Windows 7 is noticeably and aggressively making it's mark; Windows 8 (Win R/T) is on the horizon. Granted, **flexibility** is completely expected from the customer's perspective. But we are faced with developing to the current OS, Windows 7 ( _understandably, some may argue the current OS is still XP_ ) ...and maintain legacy code for the outgoing OS, WinXP. So, Windows 8 and all the Win R/T goodness flares the imagination and you can't help but ask yourself, \" _what will still be relevant in 5 years?_ \" Well, at least I can't help but ask the question. During periods of rapid evolution of an OS, what considerations do you plan for in application design, libraries, frameworks, and choosing development environments; and, in doing so, how do you determine the length of relevance a particular design will have?"}
{"_id": "38905", "title": "What makes a large and complex software product slow?", "text": "For a reason that is largely irrelevant, I installed Delphi 7 once again in such a long time. I have to say, I was completely blown away - in a way I haven't been for rather a while. This is not how I remember things at all. The installation took around 30 seconds. Launching it took 2 seconds, and it was immediately usable. I can press \"Run\" the second after it started, and less than a second later the blank program is already visible and running. Hurray for computers getting so much faster! But the reason I've been blown away like this is because usually I use Visual Studio 2010, that doesn't feel snappy like this at all. Granted, Delphi 7 is a much smaller system than Visual Studio 2010, but it does have the _appearance_ of having all the really necessary things there: a control palette, a form designer, a code editor with code completion. I realise that the language might be simpler, and the code completion might be a lot less powerful, and the IDE might not be nearly as extensible and feature-rich, but still: I do not understand how (i.e. through what mechanism) does having a lot of extra features (that I might not have even triggered yet) cause a system like Visual Studio to always feel sluggish in comparison. I would like to ask people experienced in working with systems the scale of Visual Studio: what is it that makes them slow? Is it the layers upon layers of abstractions required to keep the codebase within the human comprehension capabilities? Is it the sheer amount of code that needs to be run through? Is it the modern tendency towards programmer-time-saving approaches at the (mindbogglingly huge) expense in the clock cycles / memory usage department?"}
{"_id": "232130", "title": "What is the best pattern for adding an existing item to a collection in REST API?", "text": "I'm designing a pragmatic REST API and I'm a little stuck on how best to add existing entities to a collection. My domain model includes a Project that has a collection of Sites. This is a strict many-to-many relationship and I have no need to create an entity that explicitly models the relationship (i.e. ProjectSite). My API will allow consumers to add an existing Site to a Project. Where I'm getting hung up is that the only data I really need are ProjectId and SiteId. My initial idea was:               1. POST myapi/projects/{projectId}/sites/{siteId}      But I also thought about               2. POST myapi/projects/{projectId}/sites      with a Site entity sent as JSON content. Option 1 is simple and works but doesn't feel quite right, and I have other relationships that cannot follow this pattern so it adds inconsistency to my API. Option 2 feels better but leads to two concerns:   * Should I create a Site or throw an exception if a new Site is posted (SiteId = 0)?   * Because I only need ProjectId and SiteId to create the relationship, the Site could be posted with wrong or missing data for other properties. A 3rd option is to provide a simple endpoint solely for creating and deleting the relationship. This endpoint would expect a JSON payload containing just ProjectId and SiteId. Please help me break out of this analysis paralysis!"}
{"_id": "53223", "title": "What can we learn from esoteric languages?", "text": "Esoteric languages are intriguing and can make you go 'Hmmm...', but what can we really learn from them? Is there a benefit to spending more than 5 minutes trying to write an application in an esoteric language? Have you tried one, and if so, what did you learn?"}
{"_id": "222738", "title": "Global constant values throughout MVC site", "text": "My MVC (.NET) has some constant values through out the site, such as the phone number, physical address, email address etc. I'd like to store this value once, so future updates are easier for when they change their details. To make my question simpler, I've only focused on phone number. My question is where and how to store this number and a problem I'm facing with my decision. At the moment, I've chosen to store it in the Global.asax file as a static method, eg               public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication     {         protected void Application_Start()         {            //logic         }              public static string GetPhoneNumber()         {             return \"012345 678 910\";         }     }      This works very well, in my controller I can add references to this method and assign it to a ViewBag                 public ActionResult Contact()       {             ViewBag.Phone = MvcApplication.GetPhoneNumber();       }      As per many sites, the phone number will be visible at the top of every page and as such, placing it in the `_Layout.cshtml` is logical. The problem I have is there is no controller (not that I know) for the _Layout.cshtml and the only way I can pass the value is to have a ViewBag.Phone set up for every view, EG               public class HomeController : Controller     {         //         // GET: /Home/              public ActionResult Index()         {             ViewBag.Phone = MvcApplication.GetPhoneNumber();             return View();         }              public ActionResult About()         {             ViewBag.Phone = MvcApplication.GetPhoneNumber();             return View();         }              public ActionResult Contact()         {             ViewBag.Phone = MvcApplication.GetPhoneNumber();             return View();         }      This is messy and smelly but I have no idea how I can improve this. Should I be storing my global variables in a different place or is there a better approach for this as I'm sure this is a common problem."}
{"_id": "187445", "title": "Is is acceptable to create mediocre code now in preparation for new language features?", "text": "I'll be specific: Java 8 is promised to bring lambda expressions as well as method and constructor references among other things. As a Java developer I'm super psyched about that. In my day to day programming I see more and more opportunities where using these features would greatly simplify code that would otherwise be very verbose and tedious. In lieu of method and constructor references I started using more and more reflection and plan to migrate those code paths to Java 8 as soon as possible. I use special comments (like the well known TODO comments: JAVA8) that can be used by the IDE or grepped easily in order to find the relevant places. I also test all those cases extensively to make sure they work. But still I have to wonder whether it's good to do it like that. Is it acceptable to produce a little more brittle code now that will eventually become robust again? GA for Java 8 is September 2013 so it's not too far in the future (provided the release date doesn't slip). A kinda general example would be something like this: I want to create some container objects and fill them with data from a database. If I were to use the standard Java approach, it could look like this:               class ContainerService {       private Database database;       private final Map, ContainerInitializer> INITIALIZERS = new HashMap();            {         INITIALIZERS.put(Foo.class, new FooInitializer());       }            public Container getContainer(Class cls) {         return INITIALIZERS.get(cls).create();       }            interface ContainerInitializer {         Container create();       }            class FooInitializer implements ContainerInitializer {         Container create() {           return new Container(database.getFoo());         }       }     }      The reflective code is               class ContainerService {       private Database database;       private final Map, String> INITIALIZERS = new HashMap();            {         INITIALIZERS.put(Foo.class, \"getFoo\");       }            public Container getContainer(Class cls) {         Method m = Database.class.getMethod(INITIALIZERS.get(cls));         return new Container(m.invoke(database));       }     }      Note how all the intermediate interfaces and classes fall away. The Java 8 variant is something along the following lines:               class ContainerService {       private Database database;       private final Map, ContainerInitializer> INITIALIZERS = new HashMap();            {         INITIALIZERS.put(Foo.class, database::getFoo);       }            public Container getContainer(Class cls) {         return new Container(INITIALIZER.get(cls).create());       }            private interface ContainerInitializer {         Container create();       }     }      This is slightly longer again but has type safety. Also it's trivial to get from the prepared code to the final code using method references. Of course the example is a bit simple. Imagine having a lot of types the container could contain. In the first method, there would be an extra class for each of them. In the other two methods, only data has to be added. It keeps everything so much simpler."}
{"_id": "63538", "title": "My university doesn't provide php courses because it is an \"easy\" programming language?", "text": "I've met a student from the computer science department and I discovered that they only teach java and aspx. I asked him why they didn't teach php since it is the top one programming language on the net. He says that it was a \"easy\" (or hobbyist's) programming language. I'm not sure what that means. What's your opinion?"}
{"_id": "112264", "title": "Which programming methodology would be a good fit for us?", "text": "Unfortunately, somebody has taught our upper management the word \"Agile\" and now they want us to move towards it. I have a peripheral understanding of agile (in principle) but have never used it in practice. From what I know, it will not be a good fit for our organization. Right now, things are pretty grungey. Here's how it is; We're a very small team - two developers, one DBA, one designer. The company I work for makes a disproportionately large amount of money relative to its size, and nearly 95% of that is pure online sales. From a development perspective, we are subjected to many desk invasions during a typical day (we're tech support as well as dev), work can regularly just fall out of the sky at a moments notice if a sales team member promises something to someone. We do undertake larger projects too, and they're a nightmare with the constant interruptions. Some of us are starting to tear our hair out! Project plans are drawn up by non technical managers in excel spreadsheets, where they try and break the task down into bite-sized sentences that they can understand and put a date beside each one. These dates are always hideously unrealistic and often missed, and our meetings (which we have around weekly) are regularly filled with awkward moments with people asking \"why hasn't this been done yet\". I am pretty sure Agile isn't the one for us. Now, given that (and i have tried) this company _will not change its ways_ , and only the dev team is willing to change, is there a development methodology that we could adopt which is a good fit for just saving us some sanity?"}
{"_id": "223775", "title": "Violating SQL principles", "text": "I have to write a decent size database, 1GB more or less. I have only taken an introductory semester regarding SQL databases. During the course we learned that the relational model under SQL has no implied order and that therefore when querying we should always have a variable that sets the correspondant order in the table. However, when doing practical work I find 'convenient' to make already ordered small, infinite number of tables. For example, lets say that you have 5 clients and that their info will never join their data together. Is it admissible to have a potentially infinite number of tables with a table per client? For example, I append new rows already ordered to the database. The database is already ordered. Is it admissible to make an unordered query and just assume that is implicitly ordered? All this violates the principles that I know. My boss, who does not know about databases says that if it works it works and that speed is important. What shall answer to him?"}
{"_id": "223770", "title": "Using partially implemented interfaces", "text": "Consider the following hierarchy in C++ notation:               class A         {         public:             virtual void doStuff()=0;             virtual void doOtherStuff()=0;         };          class B:public A         {         public:             void doStuff();             void doOtherStuff();         };          class C:public A         {         public:             void doStuff();             void doOtherStuff();         };      Now, assume that the code for doStuff is identical in B and C. What is the best practice of   * implementing doStuff in a class D:public A and let B and C derive from A   * Let the real task be performed in a function that is called from doStuff in both B and C Somehow the latter seems more clean, is it? It should be noted that there are other methods in B and C with common implementations as well, and that in the underlaying model, the concept of D does not exist."}
{"_id": "67090", "title": "What does it mean to be a game developer?", "text": "I'm a .NET developer and mostly builds GUI's but of course also pure C# due to architecture and database level needs. To me, developers of games in discussions often being simply referred to as \"gaming developers\". I find that a little too shallow and I'm curious what a \"gaming developer\" really stands for. What would we, in turn, be to a gaming developer? Are there ever conversions from one direction to another and what are the main differences in a regular development process?"}
{"_id": "67095", "title": "Thinking of simultaneously coding the same project in two languages. Good Idea?", "text": "Is this a good way to learn a new language? Or to develop a preference of one language? I was thinking of coding a project in both Python and Java. The only foreseeable problem is trying to transfer solutions that should be rethought for each language. Or is this unnecessary? (My intentions aren't to benchmark.)"}
{"_id": "244728", "title": "Best strategy to discover a web service in a local network?", "text": "I am currently doing some research for a project. The setup is simple, I have a computer running a service in my home network and any device connected to that same network should be able to discover the service automatically and use it. I have no specific technology requirement whether it is on the server or client side. The client knows about the service definition. Other than that I have no idea what strategy to use, what technology to look at or whether I should go for a SOAP or a HTTP based service. I think going HTTP with REST API is the best for targeting all devices but I am opened to any suggestions. Thanks."}
{"_id": "108683", "title": "SLF4J vs LOG4J Which one to prefer?", "text": "I have seen this question but does not answer me. It have a brand new project. I have almost always used Log4J but now I am seeing SLF4J making some waves. What is it that Log4J could not do and we needed SLF4J? Is it really an upgrade. Should I use it in a project which will also have an API for other to extend upon?"}
{"_id": "108689", "title": "How can I find the root of confusing problems?", "text": "Several times after posting over at Stack Overflow, I have found that the problem I have is somewhat specific, and may have issues rooted elsewhere in my code. These are very difficult to solve with a question, and I often end up getting poor or irrelevant answers. When a problem is just too localized or to complex for Stack Overflow to be any use, what should I be doing to break down the problem so it can be solved? How can I approach peers or user groups about problems like these?"}
{"_id": "108688", "title": "New PHP project, how to best architect it", "text": "I have already done a PHP project, and I did a number of things pretty wrong :) I just had all pages as scripts with php mixed in with html. I also wasn't using a framework like cakephp. And I didn't really use objects, nor had any sort of test suite. :) This time around I want to get it right. What should I do in terms of good practice approaches? And what am I ok not using? Any suggestions? Tips?"}
{"_id": "71970", "title": "What should I study to be able to join a C++ open source project?", "text": "I am learning C/C++/Oracle/Unix. I am thinking of developing some application on my own, but I have no Idea what else is required. If you take an example of C++. I have very basic knowledge of it (data types, OOP concepts, vectors, file handling, exception handling, etc). I am not an expert though. I have just read one book about C++ and don't know much about graphics in C++. I went to codeplex.com (an open source website for programming and development) they had some projects in C++ that are looking for developers. Now this looks way beyond my knowledge but I want to buld something. If not, I want to learn more to do it but I have no clue where to begin and what material topics, books to read. There so many things involved with an application: .exe files, .dll files and many more 1) Am I thinking in the right direction? 2) Is it possible to do it alone or be a part of such big open source projects online? What are the things that I need to collect online and study? Please help, if possible please provide the topics, books, websites that might help me to study and proceed to achieve my goal."}
{"_id": "157214", "title": "Does \"Property\" in C# cost much?", "text": "I have a class created in some namespace, like `SomeNameSpace.SubNameSpace.StaticClassName` Here is a code snippet from other code file where I want to use this class many more times, so I created a property in the code file like this               //Just to provide an Alias for long name \"SomeNameSpace.SubNameSpace.StaticClassName.PropertyName\"     public StaticClassName ServerProxyAlias     {         get         {             return SomeNameSpace.SubNameSpace.Instance.PropertyName;         }         set         {             SomeNameSpace.SubNameSpace.Instance.PropertyName = value;         }     }      **Is there any problem in doing like this ?**"}
{"_id": "101316", "title": "What good reasons are there to capitalise SQL keywords?", "text": "There seem to be a lot of developers who write their SQL by capitalising the keywords:               SELECT column     FROM table          INNER JOIN table          ON condition     WHERE condition     GROUP BY clause     HAVING condition      I'm wondering why people stick to this approach? Clearly, it's a long established convention - but I've never run into a RDBMS that _requires_ capitalisation. Personally, I find KEYWORDS THAT SHOUT to be calling attention to exactly the wrong part of the query, which is why I write the keywords in lowercase. Still, enough people use this convention that I figure I might be missing something, hence this question."}
{"_id": "197638", "title": "How do you cope with \"brain farts\"?", "text": "From the Jargon File: _brain fart: n.   The actual result of a braino, as opposed to the mental glitch that is the braino itself. E.g., typing dir on a Unix box after a session with DOS._ I've been working with JavaScript and Python lately and have made errors like typing, in Python,               function foo(argument1, argument2):      This isn't pure JavaScript, but it also doesn't work in Python. One of my recent posts, http://serverfault.com/questions/506403/why-is-my- root-url-serving-up-a-404-under-apache/506452?iemail=1&noredirect=1#506452, was about why a pure, simple, working, and rather small DocumentRoot contents were not showing. The answer was that I made a mistake that I do not remember making in years of dealing with Apache: I had included commas betweek ServerAlias entries, and that was why the (perfectly appropriate) DocumentRoot was giving a ServerError. (And did I mention that I've been spending a lot of time coding where separating by \", \" was the appropriate way of separation?) Is this sort of thing just non-negotiable? Or are there ways to mitigate and compensate for them?"}
{"_id": "136808", "title": "What will generate an adjacency matrix file with a specified topology for me?", "text": "I am writing an application that takes some file specifying an adjacency matrix and uses this to construct a graph (in this case, a directed social network). What I would like to do is specify the size of the matrix and then have it generate an adjacency matrix with one of these topologies: ring, hierarchical, fully-connected, random and smallworld (every node x degrees of separation from each other). Ideally a text file would be the output. I can't create these files manually because the size is in the thousands^2... Fully-connected and random aren't 100% required but they would be nice, I can just implement them in code. I read a dissertation which specified it used an application located at http://ww2.cs.mu.oz.au/~tmill/graphtastic.tgz ...but it does not seem to exist anymore so I am not sure what to do. I thought there would be loads of applications such as this out there, but I can't see any. So, is there an program out there that could generate an adjacency matrix with a configurable topology into a text file ?"}
{"_id": "197630", "title": "Agile User Stories and acceptance criteria", "text": "I am writing some agile user stories and acceptance stories for the first time, and was hoping for some feedback from an experienced product manager or developer. I only need to capture the main points in the acceptance criteria. ## User Story AS A registered jobseeker, I WANT TO create and edit my CV on the user interface on my mobile device SO THAT employers and recruiters can view my career summary and contact details ## Acceptance Criteria   1. The user must sign into a registered account to create a CV   2. The user cannot save a CV unless all the mandatory fields on the form are complete    3. The user should be able to edit and delete the form at any time   4. Data from the saved form is stored in the CV database   5. Only registered Recruiters and Employers can view the users CV and contact details    6. The jobseekers user account is linked and synchronised on both mobile and desktop versions Does this acceptance criteria sounds suitable for the given user story? Is there any way they can be more focused, and if so how?"}
{"_id": "157218", "title": "Are there any valid ways of eliminating/reducing state?", "text": "For definitions and examples of \"state\", see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_state , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_state_machine , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_diagram A diagram showing a very easy example, notice how the current state changes how the turnstile operates when the same input (inserting a coin, pushing on the turnstile) is given twice in a row: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turnstile_state_machine_colored.svg I thought about this question for a bit and came up with nothing other than:   1. Reduce the scope/features of the project/software.   2. Push the burden of making intelligent decisions to the user and/or supply the program with a \"cheat sheet\" that makes decisions easier (for example: instead of trying to write a program that drives a car using only two webcams, you could embed waypoint markers in the road every 100 ft, place special reflective markers in between lanes, and use a database of terrain maps to help the program make decisions; one would require the work of a Tesla/Newton -level genius [assuming the program can do things like (1) dodge animals, the remnants of exploded tires, etc. while taking less drastic measures for things like cardboard and plastic bottles, (2) deal with the occlusion of landmarks and indicators caused by other vehicles, (3) adjust to weather, etc. conditions, and so on] vs. someone who can write a \"connect the dots\" algorithm) PS: I would classify these two methods as \"cheating\" because you are significantly changing the input/output of the program. In the first case, you are whittling away your program to nothing, and in the second, you are shifting much of the burden of decision-making onto whoever maintains the database and transit system. Are there any valid ways of eliminating/reducing state?"}
{"_id": "157219", "title": "Using \"Context-based\" CSS Class Names", "text": "This morning I found a note on my desk with some tips from a higher up developer who had been looking over some HTML/CSS I had put together. One of his suggestions was for me to \"stay away from context-based class and ID names like 'left' or 'right.' Never use colors as names. Stick to semantic names based on the content.\" Is this valid advice? Why?"}
{"_id": "136802", "title": "Suggestions for tree (as a visualization tool) editing software?", "text": "I'm trying to generate a call tree for code I'm working on (I didn't write it) to help me understand it. I want to be able to manually enter each function and the functions it calls (as children), thus building the tree. But I'd like it to automatically organize and position the chart so that nothing overlaps without my having to move everything around every time I add something. For example, here's the structure of the kind of data I'd want to put in, in crappy Lispesque format:               ( initAll //root node       ( //root node's children - functions it calls         ( initDisplay () ) //this child is a leaf         ( initControlBar            ( //initControlBar's children - functions it calls              ( addButtons () )              ( setUpControlBarEvents () )            )         )         ( alertUserSystemReady () )       )     )      I guess it could be a graph tool (trees being a subset of graphs, of course), but I don't imagine a graph tool would have the ability to automagically put things on the right level. What I like about organizing this data as a tree is that there are distinct levels, which helps me visualize what's going on. I've tried yEd and LucidChart, but both were too manual for me. Since the tree is going to go pretty deep, I need something that can automatically restructure with the tree data. I also tried GraphViz, but couldn't get it working (I'm on Windows and didn't know what to do after the install). Google isn't helping much on the tree editor end - it's giving me pages like http://bioinfo.unice.fr/biodiv/Tree_editors.html which just have way too many to choose from. In this case I think using others' experience would be better, so I came here. So, anybody know of any tools that would get me closer to my goal? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "251550", "title": "how to reduce or stop duplication of relation's entry in treeview", "text": "I want to create tree-view for display or show family member's relation. For this I created 3 tables i.e following.               familyDetails->[f_id,fname,lname]     relations -> [r_id,relation] .....//e.g father,mother,son,etc.     familyRelations ->[fr_id,fk_f_id1,fk_r_id,fk_f_id2]      //to show A is Father OF b.      Here problem is, if I say A is father OF B and C than it'll make one entry in `familyRelations` table. But here it will also create one more entry for B is daughter of A. So in opposite relation (e.g father->son or son->father, etc ) it'll create entry for all case. So if there are N no of people in family then it'll create N * N entries in familyRelations table. How to define relationship with other members. This flow is right or need to change? I am confused in this. So how to solve this problem. Or is there any another way?"}
{"_id": "230562", "title": "Package software separately from content that is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license", "text": "I have content that is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/), can software that uses it still be produced commercially and just let the user download the content separately? In other words, if I have commercial software that uses the content with CC license, can the software still be distributed as commercial and just not be distributed with that content... OR, would that still violate that CC license and the software therefore can't be commercially sold? If someone knows the answer or can point me to a place to find out the answer, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "211008", "title": "How do I learn the right approach to implement half a feature?", "text": "I lead a development team and I want to release our product as often as possible (Continuous Delivery). In many cases, we have to implement a feature that takes longer to implement than the time between releases. I still want people to commit their code on a daily basis (Continuous Integration). Many times implementing a new feature requires existing feature to be changed and the existing features, of course, still need to work, even if the new feature is not finished yet. If the developer uses the **right approach** , they can adjust existing features carefully and all of the above is not a problem. However, what IS the right approach actually? My own programming attuned mind tells me what to do for each individual case, but I need to learn more and I need some reading material that I can read and refer team members to read. Or any other method of learning the right way to learn this approach will do. So that's the question. **How do I make sure team members learn the right approach to implement half a feature?** I've searched for people claiming to have strategies regarding this, but haven't found it yet, except people writing a few random thoughts on the topic. Perhaps I'm not using the right search words or perhaps no one has made any authoritative guidelines on this. **UPDATE** I selected the best answer, but the nature of the question made it difficult to make one clear all-covering answer."}
{"_id": "211002", "title": "Business Equity for Code. Is it advisable to enter into such agreements?", "text": "I have been considering this approach for a project I am about to embark upon and would like to hear from other programmers about their experience in contributing code for equity. Has anyone been truly successful in such an endeavour."}
{"_id": "65384", "title": "What are bit operators good for?", "text": "Programming languages often come with various bit operators (e.g. bitwise left- and right shift, bitwise AND, OR, XOR...). These don't get used though very much, or at least such has my experience been. They are sometimes used in programming challenges or interview questions, or the solution migh require them, e.g.:   * Without using any equality operator, create a function which returns `true` when two values are equal   * Without using a third variable, swap the value of two variables These then again, probably have few **real world** uses. I guess that they should be faster because they directly manipulate memory on a low level. Why are such found in most programming languages? Any real world use cases?"}
{"_id": "211087", "title": "Bits manipulation in C", "text": "I am now studying computer system in my college, and now we are learning about bits manipulation in C. And I am just curios, how can by learning bits manipulation can help us to make a reliable code ? what is it for when it comes to the real world problem? and in what way it is very useful in our program ? thank you"}
{"_id": "112482", "title": "Advantage of using Swing over AWT", "text": "Why is Swing preferred over AWT? Which Swing component could be used for playing a video on it?"}
{"_id": "251693", "title": "Are there any (free) video formats that include channels for arbitrary time-dependant data?", "text": "I'm in the process of writing an image analysis pipeline and I've hit a bit of a roadblock. Here's the 30,000-ft view:   1. Images arrive as base64-encoded PNG images over standard input   2. Images are decoded, and processed. I don't think the details are particularly relevant, but I am happy to offer specifics in the form of an edit.   3. When the analysis is complete, the **entire stream** must be concatenated into a seekable, timestamped format (that is, a video file of some sort) and saved to disk. My question pertains to `stage 3`. At this final stage of the pipeline, each frame will have a set of associated features that were extracted via the image analysis performed in `stage 2`. I would like for the final output format (the video format) to preserve this information alongside the frame that \"owns\" it. In other words, one should think about this as a separate channel that evolves alongside the video data, locked to the same time reference. This would notably allow me to treat features as time-series. Here's a simple diagram to further illustrate what I'm trying to achieve.               -0 ms--16 ms--32 ms--48 ms--64 ms- ... n ms ->  # time channel     -F1----F2-----F3-----F4-----F5---- ... Fn --->  # video channel     -1.1---3.6----5.0----2.6----3.1--- ... 11.2 ->  # data channel 1     -100---105----120----96-----101--- ... 52 --->  # data channel 2      As you can see in the above schema, there are two data channels (although, ideally, the format should support an arbitrary number of channels) whose values evolve over time. Note that the `time` channel need not be an actual channel, _per se_ , but was illustrated as such simply to show that video and data channels are represented as a function of time. At the very least I'd like to be able to populate each \"index\" of each channel with an int or a float. Ideally, however, I would like to be able to hold a reference to some binary data of arbitrary length. In addition to providing the above functionality, this hypothetical codec should support some form of modern video compression. Does such a thing exist?"}
{"_id": "169974", "title": "\"Viral\" license that only blocks legal actions of user and developer against each other", "text": "I was thinking a lot about software licensing lately, because I would like to do some coding. I'm not an expert in all those licenses, so I came up with my own idea, and before I will put in on paper, I would like to make sure that I didn't reinvent a wheel, so maybe I would be able to use something that exists. Main idea behind my license is to guarantee freedom of use the software, but not \"freedom to\" (positive) (e.g. freedom to having source code), but \"freedom from\" (negative) (strictly from legal actions against you). It would be \"viral\" copyleft license. You would be able to without fear do everything you want with the software (and binaries e.g. reverse engineering), as long as You will include information about author and/or authors, and all derivative works will be distributed with the same license. I'm not interested in anything that would restrict a freedom of company to do something like \"tivoization\". I'm just trying to accomplish something that would block any legal actions of user and developer, targeted against each other, with the exception of basic attribution. Does exist something like that?"}
{"_id": "234516", "title": "What is the best solution for an API class that could have different end points? (iOS)", "text": "What is the best approach for creating a singleton API class, where different requests could call different api providers and how to manage this? For instance you might have a singleton class 'API' that could have a couple of methods such as               getProduct     getImage     getUser      What is the best way to manage this, but in theory getProduct needs to call api.website1.com getImage needs to call api.website2.com/v1/ getUser needs to call api.website2.com/v2/ But there's nothing to say that getImage might end up using website1.com in future or that getUser might end up using /v3/ I'm trying to think of a good way to manage this where the endpoints (and credentials) could potentially change for the different request, but for a developer just consuming the singleton API class, they aren't fussed where it actually comes from. I think the right approach is to make sure the requests conforms to a particular interface (regardless of where it comes from e.g type User) but I think it's the config around instantiating the correct API request type and the right credentials that I'm struggling to get my head around. I'm guessing a factory that returns the correct provider would be a good way to go, but instructing that factory to return the correct provider is proving difficult. This is iOS based, but any conceptual ideas would be appreciated thanks"}
{"_id": "220877", "title": "When should var be used instead of declaring an explicit type?", "text": "var Id = from value in Enumerable.Range(0, 100)                                   select value;                  IEnumerable<int> ids = from value in Enumerable.Range(0, 100)                                   select value;                            foreach (var v in Id)             {                 Console.WriteLine(v.ToString());             }                  foreach (var x in ids)             {                 Console.WriteLine(x.ToString());             }      Both will do the same job, but what is the difference?"}
{"_id": "220875", "title": "Design Application to \"Actively\" Invite Users (pretend they have privileges)", "text": "I am designing an application where users message one another privately, and may send messages to any `Entity` in the database (an `Entity` may not have a user account yet, it is a professional database). I am not sure how to best design the database and the API to allow messaging unregistered users. The application should remain secure, and data only accessed by those with correct permissions. Messages sent to persons without user accounts serve as an invitation. The invited person should be able to view the message, act on it, and complete the user registration upon receiving an `InviteMessage`. In simple terms, I have:               User         misc user fields (email, pw, dateJoined)          Entity (large professional dataset):        personalDetails...         user->User (may be null)           UserMessage:        sender->User         recipient->User        dateCreated        messageContent, other fields.....          InviteMessage:        sender->User        recipient->Entity        expiringUrl        inviteeEmail        inviteePhone      I plan to alert the user when selecting a `recipient` that is not registered yet, and inform that he may send the message as an invitation by providing email, phone where we can send the invitation. Invitations will have a unique, one-time-use URL, e.g. `uuid.uuid4()`. When accessed, the invitee will see the `InviteMessage` and details about completing his/her registration profile. When registration is complete, `InviteMessage` details to a new instance of `UserMessage` (to not lose their data), and assign it to the newly created `User`. The ability to interact with and invite persons who do not yet have accounts is a key feature of the application, and it seems better to separate the invitation from the private, app messages (easier to keep functionality separate, better if data model changes).   * Is this a reasonable, good design?   * If not, what would you suggest?    * Do you have any improvements?   * Am I correct to choose to create a separate endpoint for creating invitations via the API?"}
{"_id": "169979", "title": "Are there such thing as assembly SDK's?", "text": "I've never worked in assembly, but I was just curious if SDK's exist for assembly programming. For instance, if I wanted to create a linked list, are there libraries available that have already done this, or is everything typically done from scratch?"}
{"_id": "144964", "title": "What to include in a report on software implementation and how?", "text": "I am currently writing an extended report on a software library I have written. The reviewer will be a professor at my univeristy. He knows basically what I had to do, but the report will be evaluated. I have produced some samples results with the library which I already plan to include in the work. What I want to know know is :     * What should I write about the library itself?   * How should I structure it?   * Which points need to be emphasized? Also, the professor is as allergic to mundane implementation details as a business manager."}
{"_id": "229514", "title": "How to teach pointers to beginners in C?", "text": "I'll hold a little presentation about C-Pointers in a small group of people with beginners programming skills, with no CS background. Just people who would like to learn something about coding and prefer a practical hands-on approach. In fact, they are using the C-Language to do so. We are about to introduce pointers and I am very careful about the scope for the first introduction, since pointers can be quite overwhelming and confusing for the uninitiated. So I am wondering, how would you approach this topic to make it fun and interesting? Do you have great examples that really help people to understand the concept of pointers? Hint: The audience doesn't know about strings and arrays yet. Scope-wise, here is what I've got so far:   * Example: A problem that shows the limitation C without pointers and why we need something more elaborate.     * Call by reference vs Call by value example?   * Very short introduction what a pointer is and how it is denoted in C. (* and & operators )   * The difficult part: How does a pointer work? Or: How to explain a technical problem to non-technical people?     * Looking for a real work example for a referencing system. Is a library a good example?     * What is memory and how does it interact with our code and variables?     * How does a variable look like in memory? (memory allocation)     * How is this variable accessed? (address referencing)     * How can I use a pointer to access memory?   * In dire hope, people can follow this train of thought:      * Live example and practice Things I would like to omit for a part2:   * Null-Pointer   * Pointer on Pointers   * Pointer arithmetic   * Adresses vs. Pointers   * Structs   * Arrays"}
{"_id": "228640", "title": "Estimation of your backlog", "text": "How far in advance should you estimate stories in your backlog? My concern is that estimates that are 6 months out will become out of date as you develop features in the current sprint. I thought that with agile you re- estimate your current sprint."}
{"_id": "31011", "title": "How common are circular references? Would reference-counting GC work just fine?", "text": "How common are circular references? The less common they are, the fewer hard cases you have if you are writing in a language with only reference counting- GC. Are there any cases where it wouldn't work well to make one of the references a \"weak\" reference so that reference counting still works? It seems like you should be able to have a language only use reference counting and weak references and have things work just fine most of the time, with the goal of efficiency. You could also have tools to help you detect memory leaks caused by circular references. Thoughts, anyone? It seems that Python uses references counting (I don't know if it uses a tracing collector occasionally or not for sure) and I know that Vala uses reference counting with weak references; I know that it's been done before, but how well would it work?"}
{"_id": "147708", "title": "Are trees organised by a \"firstchild, nextsibling\" structure? If not, why not?", "text": "Usually, tree data structures are organised in a way that each node contains pointers to all its children.                      +-----------------------------------------+            |        root                             |             | child1            child2         child3 |            +--+------------------+----------------+--+               |                  |                |     +---------------+    +---------------+    +---------------+     |    node1      |    |     node2     |    |     node3     |     | child1 child2 |    | child1 child2 |    | child1 child2 |     +--+---------+--+    +--+---------+--+    +--+---------+--+        |         |          |         |          |         |      This seems natural, but it comes with some problems. For example, when the number of child nodes varies, you need something like an array or list to manage the childs. By using only (first)child and (next)sibling pointers instead, we get something that looks like that:                      +-------------------+            |        root       |            | child    sibling  +--->NULL            +--+----------------+               |                  +----------------+    +----------------+    +----------------+     |    node1       |    |     node2      |    |     node3      |     | child  sibling +--->| child  sibling +--->| child  sibling +--->NULL     +--+-------------+    +--+-------------+    +--+-------------+        |                     |                     |      Oviously, this kind of structure can represent trees just as well, but it also offers some advantages. Most important is that we don't have to worry about the number of child nodes any more. When used for a parse tree, it offers a natural representation for a term like \"a+b+c+d+e\" without becoming a deep tree. Do collection libraries offer tree structures like that? Do parsers use such a structure? If not, what are the reasons?"}
{"_id": "188491", "title": "Testing Java as Groovy", "text": "We're looking into improving our testing process for some of our applications, and the idea that's been put forward it to write unit tests in Groovy and automatically run them with Maven. The first application to get this treatment is written in Java, but I've been told that some of the classes being tested need to be renamed as \".groovy\" files * and they will then be compiled as Groovy classes, not as Java classes. This renaming can all be done using Maven and Ant, but I'm concerned that if we compile our classes as Groovy classes, we're not actually testing them as Java classes, which is how they will be deployed. During the demo, it was also shown that Groovy does not compile to the same bytecode that Java does. There was at least one Groovy-specific member that was added, called \"metaClass\" (there were others, I didn't get a good enough look at the screen). Apparently this is necessary for the testing framework they want to use, which is named Spock. Am I right to be concerned about this? Does it matter? * I've been told this is for technical reasons that have to do with the way the application is built. I've been told that this does not apply to _all_ classes, but to some."}
{"_id": "147703", "title": "Is C#-4.0 an open standard?", "text": "The Ecma-334 (ISO/IEC 23270:2006) standard corresponds to the version 2.0 of the language. Specification of version 4.0 is freely available from Microsoft, but Microsoft's open specifications list only lists the Ecma (version 2.0) version. So what about all the good features added in the later versions (LINQ, lambda functions, etc)? Can one implement them in his compiler?"}
{"_id": "188497", "title": "Applications with duplicate data - keep separate or combine into one set?", "text": "We currently have 3 similar, but slightly different applications that use the same data. We load the (same) data into each application that uses it. The applications are similar and use the same technology (Ruby on Rails) but were developed by different programmers. In consolidating this data, our management seem the benefit to using the same tools (gems, modules, etc) but does not seem aware of many other reasons why we should consolidate things centrally. I've worked in several different organizations including one position in Data Warehousing so the centralization of data seems like a no-brainer to me. The life-cycle of the data is the following year for the current paying customer, but then also longer term as we get the data from the various organizations that have it, over the years, and we'll want to compare one org and one year to others. However I want to put together a list of all the reasons to centralize (or not) this set of data. So far I have:   * reduce duplication of effort. When we implement a function we currently may have to do it in two places, increasing both the effort to implement the function in two places and also the cost of writing it twice.   * Quality of data. Creating two data set that have similar but different contents will lead to discrepencies between the two that will grow over time, reducing the value of the data. I am looking for a list of other reasons, particularly those that relate to the overall cost."}
{"_id": "188495", "title": "Unit testing on visualization (3D graphics) frameworks", "text": "This is a follow up to this question. There I was asking how to do unit testing when you have a library of scientific algorithms. I have a similar problem now but with a different project. I'm working on a 3D graphics engine framework abstraction for DirectX, OpenGl, WebGl, Silverlight, WPF, and basically whatever 3D API is out there, on C#, called Rendering .NET. The scenario is the following, the project is being developed by a small team of colleagues of mine, all working in the same office. We are all computer scientists, not much into the software engineering community and practices. I even had a hard time to convince to switch from Subversion to Git, and to publish the project on Codeplex. The project is getting big (around 80K lines of C#), and it now covers most of DirectX and OpenGl up to Shader Model 5.0, so its not a one man's project like the one described in the linked question. We also want to encourage the open source community to collaborate. So far we've been testing by writing small applications that involve initializing all devices and resources, setting up a scene, and drawing. The thing is, I don't know how to make it different, I mean, how to design small test cases that test specific features of the framework, like resource allocation, primitive tessellation, shader compilation, etc., without having to recreate the entire engine initialization. For some of these cases I can think of useful mocks, but in general, how can I test the correctness of a rendering algorithm when the output is visual (an image, or an animated scene)? Right now the most clever thing we have come up is to render the same scene to a software renderer, DirectX and OpenGl, and compare them pixel by pixel, but tiny variations of the APIs make the resulting images different enough to fail the tests without being actual bugs. So, what is the \"correct\" testing approach here?"}
{"_id": "225343", "title": "Why are the Java 8 java.time classes missing a getMillis() method?", "text": "Java 8 has a whole new library for dates and times in the package java.time which is very welcome thing to anyone who has had to use JodaTime before or hassle with making it's own date processing helper methods. Many classes in this package represent timestamps and have helper methods like `getHour()` to get hours from timestamp, `getMinute()` to get minutes from timestamp, `getNano()` to get nanos from timestamp etc... I noticed that they don't have a method called `getMillis()` to get the millis of the time stamp. Instead one would have to call method `get(ChronoField.MILLI_OF_SECOND)`. To me it seems like an inconsistency in the library. **Does anyone know why such a method is missing, or as Java 8 is still in development is there a possibility that it will be added later?** http://download.java.net/jdk8/docs/api/java/time/package-summary.html > The classes defined here represent the principal date-time concepts, > including instants, durations, dates, times, time-zones and periods. They > are based on the ISO calendar system, which is the _de facto_ world calendar > following the proleptic Gregorian rules. All the classes are immutable and > thread-safe. > > Each date time instance is composed of fields that are conveniently made > available by the APIs. For lower level access to the fields refer to the > `java.time.temporal` package. Each class includes support for printing and > parsing all manner of dates and times. Refer to the `java.time.format` > package for customization options... Example of this kind of class:   http://download.java.net/jdk8/docs/api/java/time/LocalDateTime.html > A date-time without a time-zone in the ISO-8601 calendar system, such as > 2007-12-03T10:15:30. > > `LocalDateTime` is an immutable date-time object that represents a date- > time, often viewed as year-month-day-hour-minute-second. Other date and time > fields, such as day-of-year, day-of-week and week-of-year, can also be > accessed. Time is represented to nanosecond precision. For example, the > value \"2nd October 2007 at 13:45.30.123456789\" can be stored in a > `LocalDateTime`..."}
{"_id": "103758", "title": "What \"business things\" should a programmer know about their company and team?", "text": "I spend a fair amount of time reading programming blogs, and it seems to be a popular belief that having business knowledge adds value to a programmer. I can see the reasoning for this:   * Understanding the business helps programmers make wise decisions   * Might encourage less \"taking too long making everything perfect\" and more \"getting things done\"   * etc. I'm currently an intern at a major company. I've learned loads of great technical things during my time here and I've definitely developed as a programmer. However, I feel like I don't understand my team's place in the ecosystem as well as I understand the technical stuff I'm actually doing. To remedy this problem, I'm planning a meeting with my manager. This seems like a great opportunity to learn about my company/team and become a more valuable contributor. I'm trying to come up with a list of questions to ask. So far I'm thinking of things like:   * Who are all of our customers?   * Could you describe our company's relationship with other companies? I want to make the most of this time to learn about the company and my team's role in it. So, what \"business aspects\" of my team are most important for me to learn about? What kinds of things should I ask about? Notes about my team:     * Much of my team's work is for internal use in the company   * Not a \"customer oriented\" team in that sense, though our customers are other teams in the company   * Much of my team's work consists of enhancing tools (adding features rather than developing whole new products) p.s - this question is similar to this question, but is different in the sense that I'm not asking what I need to know about business in general, but what I should learn about my specific company and team"}
{"_id": "106501", "title": "What are the advantages of showing line numbers in a text editor?", "text": "I feel weird when I'm editing code in an IDE that does not have line numbers in the text editor. The questions I have are:   1. Are line numbers visually excessive, particularly when a find by line function exists in your IDE of choice?   2. What are the uses of showing line numbers?"}
{"_id": "33713", "title": "Is there an alternative to HTML Web Sockets, now that Firefox 4 has disabled them?", "text": "I've been checking out some of the latest multiplayer engines in HTML all supporting multi-user games (Very nice) - I believe all these engines use Web Sockets for communication. > That\u2019s why we\u2019ve decided to disable support for WebSocket in Firefox 4, > starting with beta 8 due to a protocol-level security issue. Beta 7 of > Firefox has support for the -76 version of the protocol, the same version > that\u2019s included with Chrome and Safari. Beta 8 of Firefox 4 will remove that > support. Anne van Kesteren of Opera also announced that Opera are dropping > Websocket support. We are confident that other browser developers will > follow. Source: Websockets Disabled in FireFox 4 I've just come accross the above, so no sockets in Firefox 4 or Opera.... thats big. Is anyone aware of an alternate or is it Chrome or do we need to just sit and wait for the next release of the major browsers. More info : Rocket Engine appears to work with all browsers including IE8 (http://rocketpack.fi/engine/) what will it be using as a method of communication?"}
{"_id": "186478", "title": "\"I have been put into testing, what is wrong with me?\"", "text": "I don't have much real life experience with project development and testing, apart from small collegeprojects. During my software engineering lecture, from a bunch of notes, a simple statement caught my eye: > Myths of testing: > >   1. I have been put into testing, what is wrong with me? >   2. .. >   3. .. > I was like: Is this really a myth? Is this not for real? Don\u2019t people in testing team want to be developers? Won\u2019t they think why I am into testing, but not in development? Or people in development are better than me? **Why I think in this way:** because after all these years, in the end if I don't get to write my own software, but have to debug other people's code, won't someone be disappointed? But, on the other hand, maybe I am wrong. It's not just only to sit and debug other's code... There's much more. **Am I missing something?**"}
{"_id": "67322", "title": "benchmarks for quasi real-time software", "text": "I'm wondering if there is any benchmarks which can help to understand real- time characteristics (response time) of non-real-time software. For instance C# application on Windows or MSSQL Server. I know that Windows is not real-time OS, however it does not prevent us to use it in Real-time system if there some additional real-time layer. Let's say we have some real-time system, which reads and store data from some ADC. Data are read from ADC and timestamped on FPGA w/ some real-time Firmware. That part of the system is responsible for taking samples from ADC with some precise interval (let's w/ 10kHz frequency) and for timestamping the data. Afterwards firmware pack samples into data package (let's say 0.1 sec) transfer data via TCP/IP to application on Windows machine. Windows machine should store the data and display it. Yes, application on windows is not real- time as well as TCP/IP connection does not guarantee data delivery in fixed time. For instance   * in some case data transfer might take 0.01sec and 1 sec in another case.    * Windows may interrupt application's threads for a few second.   * application might interrupt itself when garbage collector is working so as a result we may have a few second interrupt in the part of the system which is beyond Controller/Firmware. I.e. response time from non real-time subsystem is varying in some range. However this issue could be solved if there is buffer big enough on controller, so it can accumulate data waiting for response from non real time subsystem. In order to be sure that buffer on real-time subsystem is big enough to support non-real-time subsystem we need to understand response time probability distribution. Something like:   * response time <1sec in 80% cases   * 1sec    * 2sec    * 5sec    * 10sec  That is basically the question. Any benchmarks for Windows, C# or MS SQL? Any methodic? TPC does nice benchmarks for SQL Servers performance however they total performance, and do not consider response time AFAIK."}
{"_id": "111902", "title": "What's the difference between static and dynamic binding?", "text": "We are learning about methods in class, and I am having trouble especially with the concept of static vs. dynamic. Wikipedia says this: > Methods can be bound to a class at compile time (static binding) or to an > object at runtime (dynamic binding). Can anyone describe what they mean here?"}
{"_id": "54231", "title": "What do you do to get your software design robust, flexible and clear?", "text": "I am still getting mature as a software engineering/designer/architect, as you may want to call. At this point in time, I am getting small projects, private projects and so on. What I noticed is that even though I think about the SW structure, design some diagrams, have they really clear in my mind when I start coding, at the end, my software is not flexible and clear as I would like to. I would like to ask you what kind of approaches, mechanisms or even tricks do you use, to get your software (and SW design) flexible, robust and clear (easy to understand and use). So.... Any ideas to give to a beginner?"}
{"_id": "115283", "title": "Programming language popularity: Is there data on migration trends?", "text": "I'm looking for historical statistics showing approximately how many developers of some language X switch to language Y. It should be the kind of data that answers question such as:   * Are former VB6 developers using mainly C# or VB.NET now?   * Have many Java developers switched their main development language to Scala so far?   * etc. I'm not doing a study, I'm mainly curious. Is there some website or institution that collects and publishes such data?"}
{"_id": "188727", "title": "Azure Storage Table design with multiple query points", "text": "I have the following Azure Storage Table. **PositionData table:**               PartitionKey: ClientID + VehicleID      RowKey: GUID      Properties:  ClientID, VehicleID, DriverID, Date, GPSPosition      Each vehicle will log up to 1,000,000 entities per year per client. Each client could have thousands of vehicles. So, I decided to partition by `ClientID` \\+ `VehicleID` so to have small, manageable partitions. When querying by `ClientID` and `VehicleID`, the operation performs quickly because we are narrowing the search down to one partition. **PROBLEM:** The problem here is that sometimes I need to query on only `ClientID` and `DriverID`. Because it's not possible to perform partial PartitionKey comparisons, every single partition will need to be scanned. This will kill performance. I can't have a PartitionKey with all `ClientID`, `VehicleID` and `DriverID` because queries will only ever query on `VehicleID` OR `DriverID`, never both. **SOLUTION 1:** I considered having a value stored elsewhere which represented a VehicleID and DriverID pair, and then having a `ClientID + VehicleDriverPairID` PartitionKey, but that would result in hundreds of thousands of partitions and there will be much unioning of data between partitions in my code. **SOLUTION 2:** Have a partition for `Client + VehicleID` and another partition for `Client + DriverID`. This means that updating the table is twice as much work (two updates) but both queries will be fast. Also there will be redundant data. Do any of these solutions sound viable? Other solutions?"}
{"_id": "130929", "title": "What are your advice, methods, or practices to take out the most from a day on-site at a customer?", "text": "We just deployed a large software that affects the way the user work-day looks like in many aspects. It changes a lot of things in the way they interact between eachothers. The developers of the team are taking rounds and spending one day at the customer's site to understand better what is a typical day for our user, and the learning process they go through. In this context, what How would you approach that day, what kind of questions do you ask, how do you observe the user. Are there defined practices that exist? Also what wouldn't you do? Did you have some bad experience out of this?"}
{"_id": "188721", "title": "When do you use float and when do you use double", "text": "Frequently in my programming experience I need to make a decision whether I should use float or double for my real numbers. Sometimes I go for float, sometimes I go for double, but really this feels more subjective. If I would be confronted to defend my decision, I would probably not give sound reasons. When do you use float and when do you use double? Do you always use double, only when memory constraints are present you go for float? Or you use always float unless the precision requirement requires you to use double? Are there some substantial differences regarding computational complexity of basic arithemtics between float and double? What are the pros and cons of using float or double? And have you even used long double?"}
{"_id": "130925", "title": "Should we test all our methods?", "text": "So today I had a talk with my teammate about unit testing. The whole thing started when he asked me \"hey, where are the tests for that class, I see only one?\". The whole class was a manager (or a service if you prefer to call it like that) and almost all the methods were simply delegating stuff to a DAO so it was similar to:               SomeClass getSomething(parameters) {         return myDao.findSomethingBySomething(parameters);     }      A kind of boilerplate with no logic (or at least I do not consider such simple delegation as logic) but a useful boilerplate in most cases (layer separation etc.). And we had a rather lengthy discussion whether or not I should unit test it (I think that it is worth mentioning that I did fully unit test the DAO). His main arguments being that it was not TDD (obviously) and that someone might want to see the test to check what this method does (I do not know how it could be more obvious) or that in the future someone might want to change the implementation and add new (or more like \"any\") logic to it (in which case I guess someone should simply test that **logic** ). This made me think, though. Should we strive for the highest test coverage %? Or is it simply an art for art's sake then? I simply do not see any reason behind testing things like:   * getters and setters (unless they actually have some logic in them)   * \"boilerplate\" code Obviously a test for such a method (with mocks) would take me less than a minute but I guess that is still time wasted and a millisecond longer for every CI. Are there any rational/not \"flammable\" reasons to why one should test every single (or as many as he can) line of code?"}
{"_id": "145700", "title": "The Wikipedia animation for Maze generation using DFS isn't consistent wrt the written algorithm given there, isn't it?", "text": "Please have a look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_generation#Depth-first_search Here, the theoretical algorithm given is: > Consider the space for a maze being a large grid of cells (like a large > chess board), each cell starting with four walls. Starting from a random > cell, the computer then selects a random neighbouring cell that has not yet > been visited. The computer removes the 'wall' between the two cells and adds > the new cell to a stack (this is analogous to drawing the line on the > floor). The computer continues this process, with a cell that has no > unvisited neighbours being considered a dead-end. When at a dead-end it > backtracks through the path until it reaches a cell with an unvisited > neighbour, continuing the path generation by visiting this new, unvisited > cell (creating a new junction). This process continues until every cell has > been visited, causing the computer to backtrack all the way back to the > beginning cell. But I don't think the animation on it's right uses the same algorithm to generate the maze, though it's not incorrect. I feel the animation uses this algorithm:   1. Start with any unvisited cell, make it a part of the maze and mark it visited.   2. Add the unvisited neighbours of that cell to the set of cells that can be considered next   3. Choose any one of cells from the set and mark it visited.   4. Check if that cell does not have any neighbours that are visited except ONE (the one which caused this cell to be added to the set in the first place). Else go to 3.   5. Continue till all cells are visited. Am I wrong?"}
{"_id": "188729", "title": "Documents to use on project development", "text": "I am lost on how to plan the development of a iphone mobile app, when building a specific mobile app for a client, i need to make a questionnaire for that same client and i also need to have a document to accompany the project development, something like a bug report file, and a app features document. My question is, for the experienced developers, what do you guys use to plan your entire development process? do you have any doc templates that you use to address these issues?"}
{"_id": "58971", "title": "Using version control in an IDE", "text": "I write all (well, most) of my programs in an IDE, mostly it's netbeans. Should I just use Mercurial through the IDE, or is it better if I used the CLI instead? and why?"}
{"_id": "72695", "title": "My first SLA(Service level agreement ) as a freelancer", "text": "I started to work freelance just a couple of months ago. My first client asked me to create a web app, to improve his business. I made a little specification about what i was able to do and also an approximation about how long it will take to prepare the application. We just have some no formal agreement where i told him a deadline when i will present the progress of the project. Also we did not agree any payment at all, since he said to me that he will pay me when the program is live. What is happening now, is that the program did not meet the deadline and i will present the progress one month after what we agreed. As you see we both made a mistake(myself first), but i hope it is not to late to fix it. I want to make an SLA, to include the amount i want to get paid for my work, and also detailed information about what he will get. I would appreciate if someone more experienced than me could give me some tips on what should i include in the SLA documment and also if can i get some recommendations for not making the same mistake in the future."}
{"_id": "72694", "title": "How do I weigh quality of code versus quality of product when deciding whether to add my open source app to my resume?", "text": "I've made significant, well written code contributions to an open-source project. Unfortunately, the project as a whole is both unpopular, and, to put things mildly, not particularly flashy. Unlike the poster of this HN message, I'm in the opposite boat - I'm proud of my contributions, but embarrassed by the end product. How would you weigh the quality of your contributions versus the quality of the end product versus the popularity of the end product when deciding if you should include it on your resume/portfolio or not?"}
{"_id": "132697", "title": "How to deal with the MPL in a pragmatic way?", "text": "Until recently I always avoided the use of open-source code in my applications, because of the legal headache it gives me. I rather spent a fair amount of money and not worry about attribution (since most commercial components don't require that), than paying nothing, but spending a lot of time reading legal texts, never to be sure whether I was fully compliant. However, there is a ton of code out there that would be a shame to ignore. Also, sometimes the open-source solutions are of better quality than their commercial counterparts. The license I encounter most and find hardest to grasp, is the MPL. All FAQs state that it is no problem to compile the code into a closed-source application, as long as changes to the code are made available. Assuming that I will not make changes to the code, what other things are there to keep in mind? For example, copyright notices and attribution; am I required to include a bunch of files with all the different copyright notices? Should I double- size my About dialog and list all open-source components with their vendor website and so on? How do you deal with this? Please note that I have no problem with giving authors of code the credit they deserve. I would simply like to know what is reasonable, so I can take care of it in a pragmatic way, and no longer fear at least the MPL. Hoping for your experiences. ## Update To make my question more clear, I will use an analogy. Let's say I am going to write a book A, and I would like to use some parts of a book B that someone else has written. The author of B is fine with this, as long as I credit him (very much like a clause in the MPL). But how should I do that? Am I to put his name on the cover of mine and/or in the margin of every page where I use full paragraphs from him and/or where I use full sentences from him and/or where I use a couple of words from him and/or in a dedication section with sources? Or perhaps it would suffice to print his name in black letters on a black page, or in font size .00001? Luckily, for books there aren't as many ways to do it as with software, and there is some established practice. In the field of software, I have yet to discover any, so I'm asking here if I missed something.The point is not to give as little attribution as possible, but I'm looking for what's acceptable and fair; you wouldn't like to write a book in which each page is half-filled with attributions either... Attribution is only one of the terms that I find hard to concretize. What about making the code and the license texts available if I changed nothing? Do I link to the authors website, or mirror it on my own and link to that, or put it in my installer? And, **for example** , from the Firebird Project I have most files in one place, but a couple of DLLs are spread over the folders of my application. Would you suggest just to make a single folder with license texts and list which files are relevant to each? Is that enough? Is there a better way? A complete answers addresses all requirements of the MPL. :)"}
{"_id": "132690", "title": "How to find out what Hackathons are coming up near me?", "text": "I just went to my first hackathon (London GreenHackathon) and I want to go to lots more. Specifically, hackathons that have a theme of helping people or making the world a better place in some way. I know about Random Hacks of Kindness and a couple of others but is there some central aggregator that will help me find out about hackathons? Also, if anyone else can suggest specific hackathon initiatives I should check out that would be handy too. I'm in London but obviously for other people reading this question other locations will be of interest."}
{"_id": "87939", "title": "Java API vs. Other APIs", "text": "I'm more at the novice end of the software developer spectrum, but nevertheless I've had exposure to quite a few programming languages and frameworks. From all the technologies I've used, I haven't found any with an API as well-structured and user-friendly as Java's. Why is this? Why is it that robust languages such as C++, Perl and Python do not have APIs that come even close to Java's?"}
{"_id": "105974", "title": "C++ wrapper for \"releasing\" a singleton object", "text": "I have a class like this                   template <typename T, typename Policy>         AutoObjectRelease {     public:         AutoObjectRelease(T& obj):obj_(obj){}              ~AutoObjectRelease(){ Policy::Release(obj_); }     private:         T&  obj_;     }      I wonder how one would you name this class, as it seems to me this could be quite a common pattern. I also wonder in which other situations you would use such a class. In my case I use the singleton object only sporadically and I wanted to make sure it doesn't remain loaded for the duration of the application. What are your thoughts on this ? Another idea would be to make the singleton object reference counted, but don't know exactly what would be the benefits for a singleton object - it might only complicate the implementation (need to make it thread safe also)"}
{"_id": "109229", "title": "How do you manage refactoring with a large code base and many developers?", "text": "I would like to prevent a situation where two developers refactor the same code simultaneously without talking about it first, probably using a tool of some kind, maybe an Eclipse plug-in. Can you help? We've got 4.5 million lines of code, and more than 20 teams of developers on four continents. Ideally I would like the second of the developers mentioned earlier to notice that someone else is working on the same piece of code and talk to the first one before modifying anything. Do you know of a solution?"}
{"_id": "109222", "title": "Can Google search results be reused?", "text": "I am trying to develop an application much like a search engine and I will like to use Google search results and refactor them in my application. Can I re-issue Google search results my own way and should I expect some legal troubles doing that ?"}
{"_id": "234392", "title": "Dealing with an often occuring dependency that is not related to the class", "text": "I'm using view classes for my templating. These view classes often require the Routing class to get URI's from other pages. You could actually say that the Routing should be available to every view class. What I'm wondering how would you deal with the dependency injection. Injecting it through the constructor would mean that you will have to include it with every view class in many controllers. This would seem wrong to me. You would also include it trough class extending but I don't think all views deserve a base class for just the routing library and it would able break the SOLID rules you do it because of a dependency that is not directly related to the child class. My last option would be injecting it trough a public variable that injects it at a single place just before the template rendering. How did you guys solve this problem? I'm looking for a clean non repetitive way."}
{"_id": "177452", "title": "Are monolith and microkernel design patterns or strategies?", "text": "What's the difference between a design pattern and a strategy? Is the monolith actually an anti-pattern?"}
{"_id": "72526", "title": "Writing code vs Figuring out the answer to a problem?", "text": "Why is writing code when you encounter a tricky problem considered \"bad\" programming practice? And why is thinking a problem completely through on paper or in your head before you write code \"good\" ? From what I've been working with, I'm able to see problems in multiple different ways or special cases I didn't think of at first by typing out code and debugging than solving the problem completely first ? Also, I can't really find any appropriate hashtags for this. So any help is much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "140282", "title": "How much time do you spend actually developing vs. infrastructure activites?", "text": "When I'm working I feel like most of the time I'm not doing actual work. For example after making a change to the code in order to test it, I have to first build the project, and start the server(say JBoss). Upon testing, I find that there is another small issue. So I bring down the server, make the changes, build again and start up the server again.The building and bringing the server up/down is not very useful work. Also, the IDE (let's say Eclipse) does things such as updating Maven indexes and building the workspace which take some more time to get things done. Have you come across this kind of situation? Do you have tips on how to overcome/bypass this? Any features on the IDE/build tools that can be helpful? Any architecture/application design/technology that attempts to overcome this?"}
{"_id": "72529", "title": "Hiring a programmer much more qualified & experienced than yourself?", "text": "My employer is hiring a programmer - more specifically, I am interviewing and selecting the person who will fill the position. The best candidate right now is far more qualified than I am, older, and a lot more experienced. Other people I've talked to have said that hiring someone more qualified than myself is a really bad idea (my family included). And I get the feeling that other technical staff here have a similar attitude (considering that this applicant is also more qualified than they are). They're saying, or thinking, that hiring someone better qualified is going to hurt my and my current colleague's efforts to move up in the company, or are afraid that a Johnny-come-lately is going to steal the spotlight and current staff will be left behind as promotions are given out and new positions open up. Personally I'd love to work with this applicant, and learn from them. I'm confident enough in myself to not be afraid that someone new and more experienced is going to come in and start making me look bad. I'd like to use this as an opportunity to grow, and I don't think that being afraid of competition or of new people like this is rational or beneficial. Or maybe I'm just being naive. What do you think? And have you ever had an experience similar to this? How did it work out for you?"}
{"_id": "225968", "title": "Relationships in a Chen ERD", "text": "I am working on a Chen ERD to model our organizations merchandise. Our central entity is a Style. We have supplemental entities of Color and Season. I am defining our assortment as the relationship between these three entities, and this relationship itself will have attributes and is defined by the three entities which participate in the mandatory relationship. The rules are;   * Many Styles can be offered in a Season, and a Style can be offered in many Seasons.   * Within a Season, a Style can be offered in Many Colors. I then have 2 other entities, one of which I believe is a weak entity, Climate, and the other may be weak, but I am not sure, this being Transaction Channel. I am thinking of these as relationships off of a relationship? Meaning, for a given Style/Color combination offered in a Season, it can be available through 1 or more Transaction Channels. Additionally, within a season, a given Style/Color combination can be intended for 1 or more Climates. Is it valid to have relationships off of relationships? Or does this requirement dictate that I should think of this Style/Color/Season relationship as an entity itself, and define the relationships to Climate and Transaction Channel off of this entity?"}
{"_id": "20116", "title": "Are Ruby on Rails / Grails the fastest frameworks for getting sites up quickly?", "text": "I'm considering using Grails for a new website, but am open to other/new programming languages and frameworks. I have done development using J2EE/JSF2, ASP.NET, and PHP. Is Grails or Ruby on Rails pretty much the best way to get functionality up and running quickly? Some initial thoughts:   * DJango looks similar to RoR/Grails and I'd consider it   * GWT is an interesting concept but it doesn't seem like turnaround time is quite as fast Thanks, -Jon"}
{"_id": "60557", "title": "Resources for Test Driven Development in Web Applications?", "text": "I would like to try and implement some TDD in our web applications to reduce regressions and improve release quality, but I'm not convinced at how well automated testing can perform with something as fluffy as web applications. I've read about and tried TDD and unit testing, but the examples are 'solid' and rather simple functionalities like currency converters, and so on. Are there any resources that can help with unit testing content management and publication systems? How about unit testing a shopping cart/store (physical and online products)? AJAX? Googling for \"Web Test Driven Development\" just gets me old articles from several years ago either covering the same examples of calculator-like function or discussions about why TDD is better than anything (without any examples)."}
{"_id": "232652", "title": "How would you collect the ideas that needs to be discussed during time", "text": "What is the best way of collecting and/or keep tracking of ideas/issues that needs to be discussed in details and during the time? As an example, imagine within the team you're brainstorming about going for NoSQL, or you're discussing if Node.JS is an option for your team or not? Or some people are in favor of going for Erlang but others don't. Something that needs time and lot's of discussions to be finally decided in the end. Currently we're keeping everything either on email threads or on paper, but is there any better way that you can actually extract data later on in a simpler or more intuitive way? Something like what we have as Todo/Task Managers but with discussion abilities? P.S. One option is to use a private _forum_ software, but nobody likes it in our team. Maybe because most of them look old."}
{"_id": "221047", "title": "help me understand Rails and attributes as class methods", "text": "This is from the _Hartl Rails tutorial_. We are automatically logging in a user in the process of creating that user with a callback to `#create_remember_token`. It works great but there are some things, I am not clear on. Please bear with me as I'm thoroughly confused to the point that I don't even know how to ask my question. I have a user model:               class User<ActiveRecord::Base     ...     ...          before_create :create_remember_token     def User.new_remember_token       SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64     end          def User.encrypt(token)       Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(token.to_s)     end          private            def create_remember_token         self.remember_token = User.encrypt(User.new_remember_token)       end      ... I am confused about the `::new_remember_token` and the encrypt being methods attached to `User`. It looks as though they are attributes of `User` like `name`, `email`, `password` etc, because they are being accessed with dot notation. But they are defined like methods and seem to return a computed value. I don't understand, why an attribute of the `User` model is referred to with `self` for assigning `self.remember_token` and `User.encrypt` for accessing the class method. * * * **My question** What's the difference between the above and the following where `User`, is replaced with `self`. ?               class User<ActiveRecord::Base     ...     ...          before_create :create_remember_token     def new_remember_token       SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64     end          def encrypt(token)       Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(token.to_s)     end          private            def create_remember_token         self.remember_token = self.encrypt(self.new_remember_token)       end      ... I'm a novice in the _ruby_ language, but pretty good with javascript, so if there's a _js_ analog it might help me to put it in those terms."}
{"_id": "35242", "title": "Template for Knowledge Transfer", "text": "I have been working for more than a year for this company. Now they want me to create a KT Document for reference. Is there any template available for me to document the coding done by me.."}
{"_id": "221043", "title": "How to Deal With The \"Automation is Easy\" Mindset?", "text": "The title says it all. Some employees in our company believe that automated tests are \"easy\" and that it \"should take a day\" to write suites of COM and UI tests. What can be done to counter this? Note: I'm not asking about how to promote automation. That isn't the problem. Automated testing and processes are being promoted and requested all the time here. The issue is that some individuals don't understand that automation is not \"easy\" nor is it \"fast\"."}
{"_id": "100227", "title": "Best practices working with frameworks that invent their own types [more of a C/C++ question]", "text": "Is there a correct way to handle APIs that invent their own types? For example, WinAPI, QT, Boost. Many frameworks have their own integer and boolean types, along with more complicated data-types. So, is it better to use native C/C++ type like `bool` or alternatives like `QBool/BOOL/etc`., and native container types like `std::map/std::set/std::vector` vs reinvented ones like `QList/boost::something/ATL::map/etc`. And how do those choices respond to cross platform portability. TL;DR Which one `QBool IsInteresting(const QString &str)` vs `bool IsInteresting(const std::string &str)`?"}
{"_id": "92777", "title": "Best practice for mapping between data/business/model and etc", "text": "What is the best approach to mapping between Entity, View Model or dataContract. For example I've seen the following modelling structures for SOA. **WCF** -> DataContract distributed to client. **Middle-tier** -> Models and Interface with then mapped to repository type and eventual a concrete class which implements a ORM. In some cases I've seen reflection used, others just setting the properties and third-party libraries like AutoMapper for C#. What is the most effective way to keep your system \"easy to maintain\" and functional or horses for courses? **EDIT:** Question wasn't focused on Microsoft, I've used SOA for java and the same problem happens regarding mapping. I'm asking about direct mapping vs. reflection and etc? Its really got nothing to do with ORMs. e.g.                   thesolution.models.interfaces         public interface IProduct { //bundle of properties and method signatures }              thesolution.models         public abstract class Product  implements IProduct { //implementation }              thesolution.repositories.sapMD         public class Product extends Product implments IProduct { //implements and do stuff}              thesolution.repositories.sapCRM         public class Product extends Product implments IProduct { //implements and do stuff}              thesolution.controllers           public class ProductController          {           public IActionResponse Save(IProduct product)           {               //save to sapMD repository               IAction actionMd = ((thesolution.repositories.sapMD.Product)product).Save();                     //save to sapCRM repository               IAction actionCrm = ((thesolution.repositories.sapMD.Product)product).Save();                    IActionResponse response = new thesolution.message.product.ActionResponse();                response.Actions.Add(actionMd);               response.Actions.Add(actionCrm);               return response;           }               }                thesolution.DataContracts           //XSD JAXB or etc.               thesolution.Services          //your service method          public class ProductServices ... {            public thesolution.DataContracts.ResponseAction Save(thesolution.DataContracts.Product product){              // so now how do you map back to IProduct manually, reflection or etc.          }          }"}
{"_id": "100221", "title": "Should one test for algorithmic complexity? If so, how?", "text": "Let's say I am implementing something simple like searching a sorted list/array. The function (in c#) would look similar to:               static int FindIndex(int[] sortedList, int i);      I could implement and test this in terms of functionality, but for obvious reasons I would usually prefer a binary search over a linear search or something intentionally stupid. So my question is: Should we attempt to write tests that gaurantee performance in terms of algorithmic complexity and if so, how? I have started making arguments on both sides of the \"should you\" part of this question, but I'd like to see what people say without my arguments to prompt them. In terms of \"how\", that gets very interesting:) You could see parameterizing the comparison operator and having a test whose comparison operator counts comparisons or something like that. But just because you can doesn't mean you should... Has anyone else considered this (probably)? Thanks."}
{"_id": "35248", "title": "Best refresher material on Java Garbage Collection?", "text": "I haven't looked at Java Garbage Collection for a while and feel the need for a refresher on it. Anyone recommend a resource or two?"}
{"_id": "32733", "title": "Does it help to be core programmer of a product (meant for social good) for getting into a PhD program at a top university?", "text": "I am working upon a product as core developer which will be launched in USA market in few months if successful. Can this factor improve my chances for getting accepted into a PhD program at a top university (say top 20 in US)? Normally good universities like CMU, Standford, MIT, Cornell are more interested in student's profile like research work, undergraduate school, etc. I am now passed out from very good university it's ranked in top 20 of India only. Neither did I do research work till now. But being one of founding member of company and developing product for same, I want to know if this factor can help and to what extent."}
{"_id": "181260", "title": "Should I rewrite the git history of a non-GPL project to remove GPL code that was later removed?", "text": "I have an MIT-licensed project that used to include a GPL JavaScript library which has since been removed. Is there any legal necessity to rewrite the revision history to completely remove this code?"}
{"_id": "55519", "title": "Didactic approaches to teach versioning with Git", "text": "I have already taught versioning with Git, but I think it could be more enjoyable for the guys I teach if I use another approach to teach them. The guys I mentioned before were used to working with SVN and I tried to teach Git based on SVN. Not such a good idea. It seems that some guys/teams which use SVN need a re-education on version control when they're learning Git or another DCVCS. In another attempt, I tried to show a scenario where a development team try to work without a (D)VCS and then I showed how their lives could be easier if they used a (D)VCS. I had the impression that part of the audience left the presentation without a clue what I was talking about. I've taught other classes on other subjects without problems, so I think this is not a issue with me as a teacher, but with my method. I know Git and versioning as well I know the other subjects I've presented to the other classes. So, basically, how to teach Git/DCVCS? Start with some diffs/patches and manual versioning and then teach how it can be more productive with Git? Start with Git object model? Or try to start with some pretty commands and try to save some time? To be clear: I'm looking for approaches on how to teach DCVCS (focusing on Git) effectively, based on real experiences."}
{"_id": "55518", "title": "Where can I get the Petshop application implemented in WPF and ASP.NET (.NET 4)?", "text": "I need the famous Petshop application implemented in WPF and ASP.NET (.NET 4). An older version can be found here. Where can I obtain it?"}
{"_id": "181268", "title": "finding the time complexity of the following program", "text": "I need to find the time complexity in terms of Big Oh notation for the following program which computes the factorial of a given number: The program goes like this:               public int fact(int n){            if (n <=1)         return 1;       else       return n * fact (n-1);     }      I know that the above program uses recursion but how to derive the time complexity for the above program? Please explain."}
{"_id": "189455", "title": "How can robots beat CAPTCHAs?", "text": "I have a website e-mail form. I use a custom CAPTCHA to prevent spam from robots. Despite this, I still get spam. Why? How do robots beat the CAPTCHA? Do they use some kind of advanced OCR or just get the solution from where it is stored? How can I prevent this? Should I change to another type of CAPTCHA? * * * I am sure the e-mails are coming from the form, because it is sent from my email-sender that serves the form messages. Also the letter style is the same.      For the record, I am using PHP + MySQL, but I'm not searching for a solution to this problem. I was interested in the general situation how the robots beat these technologies. I just told this situation as an example, so you can understand better what I'm asking about."}
{"_id": "231030", "title": "Usage of mix licensies in commercial use", "text": "I'm developing a CMS, inside it I use many various plugins/addons wich licenses mostly like MIT, GNU, GPL (such as jQuery, nivoSlider, DataTables and so on..). After reading those licenses I believe I can use them inside my CMS and charge users for my CMS. In my project I have a specific folder where I store all these plugins with their license and all notices. Is this the correct way? Or should I somewhere on my site notice the all plugins Im using with the path where they can be found in my project folder? What about if I would use my CMS as SaaS? The end users would not have the access to source files so I would not exactly be distributing it. Is it posible? And lastly, can I protect my own source files with the license? Wouldnt it collide with the other ones? I would like to protect it as much as I can at least in a legal way as I cannot really protect it as all PHP files are easy accessible. Thank you for any help. Also note that I have read a lot about license, but these are things I would like to confirm or to see if I misunderstood something."}
{"_id": "215129", "title": "Will JVisualVM degrade application performance?", "text": "I have doubts in JVisual VM profiler tool related to performance. I have requirement to implement a JVM Monitoring tool for my enterpise java application. I have gone through some profiling tools in market but all them are having some kind of agent file which we need include in server startup. I have a fear that these client agent will degrade my application performance will more. So I have decided to JVisual VM because this profiler tool comes with JDK itself but before implementing JVisualVM, does anybody faces any issues with JVisualVM profiler tool? As well as, is this safe if I implement in application?"}
{"_id": "189450", "title": "How to avoid a singleton in this example?", "text": "I have a class Image and another one ImageStore. The Image it's just a value object containing the package name and the image name. The ImageStore does all the actual work: calculates the real path of the image (based on the package and image name) and loads it from the server. Now I have a quite big (and deep) hierarchy of nodes (this is a render engine for a game) so for example now I am in a group and I want to insert a new Image. I do:               var image = new Image(\"packageName\", \"imageName\");      At this moment the Image doesn't have any size yet, as I don't want to hard code the image size (in this case this can be a tile, which is not always 64*32 for example) in my game view.   * when the Image is added to the Group _(I suppose the group is already attached to the Renderer)_ then the Group will be invalidated   * the Renderer will request a new frame render.    * it will parse the hierarchy tree of node and when it finds the Image I've added before    * it will ask the ImageStore _(or TileImageStore, this one not only stores the width and height but also the bottom center point of the tile. This only when the bottom center of the tile doesn't match the bottom center point of the real image.)_ for the ImageData;   * the ImageStore now loads the package, which also has the info about the width and height;   * it will apply the new width and height to the image and will set a flag as loaded. I would like to have somehow the ImageStore detached from the render. To be able to use only the Image and ImageStore without the need of the renderer. **Edit:** I want to do this because I would like to know the size of a image even when the image is not rendered. In order to get the image it has to ask the ImageStore for the size, anchor and imageData. The packages are like this:               package = {image01: {base64: \"very very long string\", width: 10, height: 20, anchorX: 1, anchorY: 10}}      Only after the ImageStore loads this big file is able to know the image width/height;"}
{"_id": "182405", "title": "Computer science jobs that don't let you develop software outside of that job?", "text": "I'm 15, and I was talking to my friends about what we wanted our future careers to be. I told them that I would like to have a job in the computer science industry (more specifically software development), and in my free time develop indie games that I could sell on the Android store to pull in a bit more cash. They told me that the contract for lots of jobs will say something like: \"As long as you are working for us, you cannot develop anything outside of what you are developing for us\", or, even worse, \"You can no longer develop anything by yourself for the REST OF YOUR LIFE!!!\". I'd never heard anything like this before and it has me a little concerned. So my question would be, do lots of careers in the computer science industry make you have to accept this kind of stuff? About how many jobs would make you sign this contract? And perhaps a little more specific info. on what this contract really means? EDIT: Right now I live in Ontario, Canada. Let's assume this is also where I will be living when I become an adult. I do not in fact live in an igloo ;)"}
{"_id": "186723", "title": "Using akka actors with service spring beans", "text": "Do you think that using akka actors in front of transactional service beans, is a good idea ? Actors are waked up by a facade used by a client application, and actor use a message to handle right service call. Is it a good practice ? This article (http://honeysoft.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/akka-actor-dependency- injection-using-spring/) is talking about using spring beans with akka actors. But I could not see the gain to use actors in front of (singleton) spring beans."}
{"_id": "131344", "title": "Developing a mobile interface for Website", "text": "I have a website developed in ASP.NET MVC. Now, I am looking forward to getting up a mobile interface for it. My knowledge in this regard isn't that great, so I will explain what is needed to be done. It's much like on the lines of StackOverflow or Programmers and following are the few points that need to be addressed.   1. Much like Stack Overflow, if a site is visited from mobile, auto-detection should happen and the mobile version should be displayed.    2. Do I need to setup some sub-domain like `m.mysite.com` and should I have the mobile site installed for this domain (SE sites don't do this now but Facebook does that)   3. Lastly, How to design the website that is easily readable on all sized of screens for mobile."}
{"_id": "186727", "title": "How to convince my coworkers that doing things right will save them time", "text": "I recently started at a new company, with a handful of programmers. Its a medium sized company, with around 70 employees, but IT only has 9-10, and there are 3 \"programmers\" beside myself. However, these guys have very limited experience and are doing a lot of stuff really terribly. For example, one of our projects is a PHP website. The majority of the code is stored in a 20,000 line PHP controller, with ~6000 lines of JavaScript embedded in the PHP. I keep making small suggestions here and there but nobody has been listening, everyone says they are too busy to implement my suggestions. The thing is, they shouldn't be that busy, and wouldn't be if things were done right. They spend most of their time fixing things that keep breaking. If each project was built correctly, I could do it all myself. What approach should I take to convince these guys or the manager that things need to change, and that changing things will save a bunch of time? Should I skip trying to convince my coworkers and go straight to the manager, with a business-y proposal on how the company will save a bunch of money if they start doing things correct?"}
{"_id": "130694", "title": "What is the difference between routed events and attached events?", "text": "I am just going through the WPF concepts I came across these routed events, dependency properties and attached events. What are the concepts behind them and why are they called instead of .NET ordinary methods?"}
{"_id": "205696", "title": "Should the search engine return a dictionary or strongly typed objects?", "text": "I'm building a search engine using Lucene.NET / Solr.NET, and I'm wondering should search hits be returned as a dictionary or strongly typed object.               public class SearchResult     {         public string SearchTerm { get; set; }         public List<Dictionary<string, object>> SearchHits { get; set; }         ...     }          // where search hit looks like this     Dictionary<string, object> searchHit = new Dictionary<string, object>     {         { \"Name\", \"John Doe\" },         { \"Address\", \"Some street\" },     };      vs               public class SearchResult     {         public string SearchTerm { get; set; }         public List<Foo> SearchHits { get; set; }         ...     }          // where search hit looks like this     var searchHit = new SearchHit     {         Name = \"John Doe\",         Address = \"Some address\"     };      I will be indexing different types of objects (People, Web pages, Files, etc.). Each object has a different set of properties (people have name and address, while web pages have URLs and titles), and search hits don't have the same set of properties as original objects (`WebPage` class has the `MainContent` property, but after indexing, the search hit that represents this object will have the `PreviewText` property (the first 300 characters of `MainContent` property with stripped HTML tags). I don't want to duplicate the code all over the place and have: `IPeopleSearchService`, `IWebPagesSearchService`, `IFilesSearchService`, etc. and corresponding search results: `PeopleSearchResult`, `FileSearchResult`, etc.               interface IFooService     {         FooSearchResult Search(string text);         void Index(Foo foo);         ...     }          interface IBarService     {         BarSearchResult Search(string text);         void Index(Bar bar);         ...     }     ...      I would like to have a more generic solution, but I don't like over- complexity. It should be readable and easily understandable by junior developer.               interface ISearchService<TEntity, TSearchHit>     {         SearchResult<TSearchHit> Search(string text);         void Index(TEntity entity);     }      How would you design such a system? Any help would be greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "148093", "title": "Understanding C++ for windows desktop application", "text": "I've been programming C++ for almost a year, and I've written complex programs however there are a couple of programming features of C++ which I didn't cover up (Classes & pointers), however I felt ready to develop a desktop application. I didn't get any books nor did I find any REAL documentation. I said to myself \"Practicing is the most important thing in programming. I'll do that\". Obviously I didn't learn much. After 4 months of programming in Visual studio C++/CLI I barely understand what I'm doing. I know how to do very basic operations, converting data types, but I am clueless on how the program works, how I add anything except events or how I change my GUI in code and not in the GUI builder. What should I do? Practice didn't really help, I only know some very easy things since I started working with Visual Studio, but the rest of the concepts leave me clueless. Should I hit the books, or should I just keep practicing?"}
{"_id": "85393", "title": "Price Updates via database logic", "text": "How do the big price comparison services allow to send emails directly if the price of a product meets your targeted price. They will email you automatically. Is it a cron job that scans a table, or is it something compounded into the database?"}
{"_id": "247180", "title": "Confused on how to properly employ a Repository Pattern with Service/Business Layer on top", "text": "I'm building a ASP.NET Web Api 2 solution for learning purposes, and I've hit a snag. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what exactly it is that I'm missing. My Web Api solution has 4 Layers:   * Data, which contains the Data Models ( POCOs ), Fluent API Mappings, EF Context, Migrations and Seeding   * Repository, which implements CRUD for all Data Models and returns the business Models   * Domain / Service / Business which supplies the IRepository interface, and should hold services which implement the application's business logic. Also contains the Business Models.   * Web, the Web Api controllers and DI / IoC to tie everything together. References are as follows: Data < Repository > Domain Web references all 3 layers for DI. The idea behind the separate domain layer is that it is completely oblivious to anything that happens in the Data or Repository layer. It simply outlines its requirements by providing the IRepository for the Repository layer, and the Business Models that it wants to get as a result. It's up to the Repository layer to meet the Domain Layer's requests. **Here is my connundrum** :   * Since Domain has no ties to Data, it does not know anything about the structure of the Data model. This means that the repository layer needs to convert everything to the Business Model before returning it. - I suppose I could return it as a generic object, and then map the generic object to the business model inside the Domain Layer. Would that be more appropriate?   * Again, since Domain does not know anything about the Data Model, I can't pass any expressions to apply on the data set to my Repository. This means that for every property I want to WHERE, I'd have to create a POCO specific Repository with matching IBussinessModelRepository which outlines it's requirements, and then implement that requirement. This quickly gets tedius though, as it calls for a bunch of \"GetByProp1\", \"GetByProp2\" - monkey code central.   * What if I want to create a composite business model that requires a complex query to hydrate? Is my only option to create yet another IBusinessRepository with a matching Repository and then write the complex query in the repository layer? If that is the case, then it feels like the service layer is mostly just another step that passes along non-crud requests to specific repositories.   * ~~Is it proper for web api controllers to send requests directly to the repository? It would seem pretty silly to route all CRUD requests through the service layer, which just passes the request to the repository layer anyway.~~ No, it's not as the service layer should be the entry point for all operations. ( With Web just acting as a consumer of the services offered. )   * I currently don't use a Unit of Work because there is a lot of mixed opinions when it comes to UoW + EF. I'm not yet experienced enough to be on either side of the fence. Would a UoW be helpful in this scenario? I feel like I am missing a vital part in what makes this pattern / layer approach tick. I know that I could easilly proceed by cheating ( i.e. give service access to data specific stuff like the context ), but I'm more interested in learning how to do it the proper way. The research I have done so far yielded results that vary wildly:   * From the Repository using AutoMapper to change the type to the business model without actually executing the query, allowing the service layer to pass Business Model Expressions which can then be applied and then running the query, returning the mapped result -- sounds great, except that approach does not seem to work for me due to AutoMapper not being able to deal with my Models having recursive nav properties.   * To the service layer just interfacing directly with the POCOs. ( And thus having direct access to the DAL ) What am I missing? Edit to explain more about my code: **My Generic Repository on Github** contains CRUD methods like this one:               public abstract class RepositoryBase<TData, TDomain, TId> : IRepository<TDomain, TId> where TDomain : EntityBase<TId>, new() where TData : class, IDataEntity<TId>, new()     {         private readonly ShortStuffContext _context;              public RepositoryBase(ShortStuffContext context)         {             _context = context;         }              public IEnumerable<TDomain> GetAll()         {             return _context.Set<TData>().BuildQuery<TData, TDomain>();         }     }      BuildQuery is a LINQ Extension which either grabs all entities, or can take a expression to fetch a single entity and then uses ValueInjecter to map the Data Model to the Domain Model. The repository methods are requested by the Domain Layer via Interface:               public interface IRepository<TDomain, TId> where TDomain : EntityBase<TId>     {         IEnumerable<TDomain> GetAll();     }      The RepositoryBase is extended by Repositories for the individual POCOs, which currently sit empty, only providing TData, TDomain and TId to the Repository Base:               public class UserRepository : RepositoryBase<Data.Entities.User, User, decimal>     {         public UserRepository(ShortStuffContext context)             : base(context)         {         }     }      Which can be requested by the Domain Layer via Constructor Injection `IRepository<User, decimal> UserRepository` through a ninject `InRequestScope` binding."}
{"_id": "205699", "title": "The line between ByRef Parameters and Module Variables", "text": "This question was brought up during a Standards discussion, which should revolve around SOLID Principles for Object Oriented Development. In your experiences, have you seen benefits or drawbacks in either code readability or performance based on whether variables are passed ByRef vs Module-Level Variable? Obviously: If a method calls a submethod, which will not only use but also modify a parameter, it should be passed as a reference pointer (aka: ByRef). Based on this logic, some in my discussion are very strict to never use module-level variables. In response, I say we have a toolbox and should know when to use what tool. For example, a sub declares a variable. That sub calls a function, which calls a sub, which calls a function, which calls a sub, etc etc, and eventually that variable is changed 10 methods down the line. I'd say make that variable a module level, whereas some say pass it ByRef through your tree of methods. So where is the line when examining SOLID OOP Principles? Do you go with an extreme?:   Never use ByRef, or Never use Module-level Variables. Or do you set a routine depth?:   1-method, always ByRef; 2 deep, consider it; 3-depth, Module-level Variable. Or maybe a Branching Principle?:   If, in your list of methods, the variable is really only updated in one place then passed ByRef all the way back up to the original... ByRef them all. But if the variable is changed during multiple stages in multiple branches of the tree of methods, make it a module level. If the latter is the case, should that also mean 20 methods down the line, ByRef all the way back up to the original is still fine? Or maybe a hybrid of these possible rules. What's your take on it?"}
{"_id": "253628", "title": "How is Devise's secret_key used?", "text": "I've been using Devise for a while now and have wondered how the secret key is used. I looked through the source for references to `secret_key`, but it wasn't clear to me exactly what we do with it. It seems to me that it might be related to session security?"}
{"_id": "25796", "title": "Source of this quote about code reusage?", "text": "does someone know where this quote comes from? I don't know it literally, but I know what is is about. Something like: > Writing code more than once is a waste of energy and creativity. I think that it was in some article about the definition of hacking or so, but I can't find it."}
{"_id": "203930", "title": "Must-have tools and practices for an agile start-up", "text": "I've been working in the software industry for a few years now. I've seen Waterfall in practice, and I've seen several projects attempt Agile with varying degrees of success... which got me thinking. What are the bare-minimum requirements for an Agile startup to be successful? I'm thinking in terms of tools, practices, team roles (e.g., source control, automated testing, BA role). I'd like to be able to draft a list of tools/practices/etc that are absolutely essential for the long term sustained success of a startup wanting to do Agile. I ask because I'd like to start my own software company eventually. Most of my experience is in SCRUM so I'm naturally biased towards it and I've already developed an opinion of what the minimum requirements for a SCRUM team to function are. But, being only human, and being only one sample, I wouldn't be surprised if my opinion was flawed or incomplete. I'd appreciate any and all insight and experience. Thanks"}
{"_id": "203932", "title": "Should I fork in case the upstream deletes", "text": "I'm creating an open source PHP project that reuses other open source code instead of reinventing the wheel. I'm using composer to pull these projects into my vendor folder. What happens if these vendors delete their repository & all traces of their code from the internet? Now composer can't download the project. Should I fork every project I'm depending on, and depend on the fork? Seems like a pain, but the only 'safe' way to ensure the vendor can't delete things my project needs to run."}
{"_id": "203936", "title": "Where to put interface in .Net", "text": "I have VB.Net project, with a class with a couple of abstract (mustoverride) properties, that I am thinking about moving into an interface. My question, is structurally how do I do this? Currently all of the classes that would be implementing this are derived from this base class, so it might make sense to put it in the same file. Or I could create a separate interface file and put it in the same directory as the base class. Another option, would be to create a separate directory for interfaces (of which the project currently has zero) and put the file the. After writing this up, I'm strongly inclined towards the second option. I've looked around, but haven't found any guidance on this. What would be the best option and why?"}
{"_id": "184724", "title": "Is 'using' appropriate in a context where there is nothing to dispose?", "text": "In C#, `using` statement is used to dispose in a deterministic manner the resources without waiting for garbage collector. For example, it may be used to:   * Dispose SQL commands or connections,   * Close streams, freeing the underlying source like a file,   * Free GDI+ elements,   * etc. I noticed that `using` is used more and more in cases where there is nothing to dispose, but where it's just more convenient for the caller to write a `using` block rather than two separate commands. Examples:   * MiniProfiler, written by Stack Overflow team, uses `using` to denote blocks to profile:              using (profiler.Step(\"Name goes here\"))     {         this.DoSomethingUseful(i - 1);     }      One alternative approach would be to have two blocks:              var p = profiler.Start(\"Name goes here\");     this.DoSomethingUseful(i - 1);     profiler.Stop(p);      Another approach would be to use actions:              profiler.Step(\"Name goes here\", () => this.DoSomethingUseful(i - 1));        * ASP.NET MVC also picked `using` for forms:              <% using (Html.BeginForm())        { %>            <label for=\"firstName\">Name:</label>            <%= Html.TextBox(\"name\")%>            <input type=\"submit\" value=\"Save\" />         <% } %>      **Is such usage appropriate?** How to justify it, given that there are several drawbacks:   * Beginners would be lost, since such usage doesn't correspond to the one which is explained in books and language specification,   * The code should be expressive. Here, the expressiveness suffers, since the appropriate usage of `using` is to show that behind, there is a resource, like a stream, a network connection or a database which should be released without waiting the garbage collector."}
{"_id": "134333", "title": "Do threads use virtual memory or real memory?", "text": "I was trying to optimize my Linux server to handle 10,000 threads per process while it does just 382 right now. As per this article the following formula is used to find out total possible threads:               number of threads = total virtual memory / (stack size*1024*1024)      This means threads store all their data in virtual memory. And to the best of my knowledge, virtual memory is swap space in a Linux machine which is stored on harddisk than RAM or cache. So my question is does our threads uses harddisk to store for processing/store its data. If yes, then doesnt this effect performance? Can we enhance the performance by putting in them on RAM or cache? How? If no, how exactly do threads works? **Update:** According to **useless's answer**, virtual memory is a system comprising roughly:   * physical memory (RAM)   * any swapfiles you have attached   * hardware support for translating virtual to physical addresses and issuing page faults when a virtual address isn't available in physical memory   * (kernel) software support for: managing the lookup tables used by that hardware handling those page faults by pulling pages in from swap on demand Thus, Everything that is on virtual memory is collectively on RAM(Real Memory) and Hard Disk(Swap Files). And as **James explain in his answer** decision on Ram vs HDD is taken by Kernel using algorithims such as LRU."}
{"_id": "205524", "title": "Client-side javascript: How to include third party frameworks?", "text": "When developing web apps you often build your app on top of some frameworks like Twitter's bootstrap. These frameworks come with `less/sass/stylus`, `javascript`, images and sometimes webfonts. I'm wondering how to embed these frameworks in my app. Most of my apps are build using some grunt tasks that compile my `coffeescript` and `stylus` to `javascript` respectively `css`. Because I'm not shipping third party code (e.g. frameworks) with my app I add them as a dependency. This allows me to install e.g. frameworks using a package manager like `npm` or `volo`. Handling small javascript libraries (which consist only of _one_ file, no assets) is easy. I install them in a vendor dir and update my require.js conf. But if the library has images or `less/sass/stylus/css` files attached I'm always struggling how to handle them:   * Paths to assets in the `css` files or `javascript` files of these libraries are often hardcoded (relative)   * `less/sass/stylus` has to be compiled (which I can do with a grunt task)   * Copy all third party assets into my folder structure?   * Should I include third party assets (`stylesheets`, `javascript`) in my own files and minimize them together?   * If I use `stylus` and the framework uses `sass` I have to install a lot of further dependencies I think I'm not the only one who has these problems so I'm looking for solutions, best practices or some general tips."}
{"_id": "198917", "title": "Shouldn't Location be a Value Object?", "text": "Eric Evan's DDD book, Cargo Shipping Example, pg. 168: > Location > > Two places with the same name are not the same. Latitude and longitude could > provide a unique key, but probably not a very practical one, since those > measurements are not of interest to most purposes of this system and they > would be fairly complicated. More likely, the Location will be part of a > geographical model of some kind that will relate places according to > shipping lanes and other domain-specific concerns. So an arbitrary, > internal, automatically generated identifier will suffice. Reason why author made `Location` an entity is because two different places could have the same name. But since it appears that `Location` is _immutable_ and thus won't change over time, wouldn't it be better if it was instead a Value Object? Thus: a) Why couldn't we ( instead of automatically generated identifier ) introduce an additional attribute describing an actual charasteristic of a location, which would help distinguish between the two places with the same name? Then we could make `Location` a VO. b) Even if we don't introduce an additional attribute describing an actual characteristic of a location, but instead we use an automatically generated identifier, couldn't we still consider `Location` as a VO, since the fact still remains that it is _immutable_ and that application would work the same even if it tracked several instances representing the same `Location`? c) From the quote it seems that author would designate `Location` as an _entity_ even if instead of automatically generated identifier we'd use _latitude_ and _longitude_ to help distinguish between different locations. Why? Thanks"}
{"_id": "249554", "title": "Assigning strings to pointer in C Language", "text": "I am a new learner of C language, my question is about pointers. As far i learned and searched pointers can only store addresses of other variables, but cannot store the actual values(like integers or characters). But in the code below the char pointer c actually storing a string. It executes without errors and give the output as 'name'.               #include <stdio.h>     main()     {     char *c;     c=\"name\";     puts(c);     }      can anyone explain how a pointer is storing a string without any memory or if memory is created where it is created and how much size it can be created. I tried using it with the integer type pointer               #include <stdio.h>     main()     {     int *c;     c=10;     printf(\"%d\",c);     }      but it gave an error               cc     test.c   -o test     test.c: In function \u2018main\u2019:     test.c:5:3: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast   [enabled by default]     c=10;     ^     test.c:6:2: warning: format \u2018%d\u2019 expects argument of type \u2018int\u2019, but argument 2 has type \u2018int *\u2019 [-Wformat=]     printf(\"%d\",c);     ^      Pointers stores the address of variable then why is integer pointer different from character pointer. If there is something i am missing about of pointers plz explain. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "249559", "title": "Why does this method return 2 values if I only ask for one and there is no sort of conditional statement anywhere?", "text": "I'm writing this very simple program from this one PDF called Think AP Java, and I can't seem to wrap my head around this: When I write               public static double method_1(double x)     {         double result =( x*(Math.exp(-x)  )    ) + (Math.sqrt(1-Math.exp(-x) )    );              System.out.println(result);              return result;       }      I get the output of: 1.1629395387920924 But when I write:               public static double multAdd(double a, double b, double c)     {              double result = (a*b) +c;              System.out.println(result);         return result;     }      and               public static double method_2(double x)     {              double result_1 =  (multAdd(1.0,  (Math.exp(-x)), 0.0)) ;         double result_2 = (Math.sqrt(1.0-Math.exp(-x)));              double final_result =  result_1 + result_2;         System.out.println(final_result);              return final_result;     }      The output for method_2 is: 0.36787944117144233 AND 1.1629395387920924, printed directly over one another. What can explain the cause of this? Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I'm only just a beginner."}
{"_id": "246588", "title": "Redirection methods for webpages", "text": "(This is question involving user experience, but I am primarily interested in the best practice technical solution to this common problem.) * * * There are several places in my website where users are redirected: login screens, pay walls, etc. Sometimes these can be stacked. For example, login, then pay, then land on a particular page. (But I can't just hardcode them...sometimes they would login, pay, and the go to another page.) And the flow for users is dynamic, e.g. perhaps during the login flow the user may start an OAuth flow. * * * I can keep a \"stack\" of redirects. I could chain the redirects in the URL:               http://my.website.com/login?return_url=%2Fpay%3Freturn_url%3D%252FfinalUrl      or I could keep track of them in a cookie (e.g. serialized JSON array). * * * Is one of these two ways that is better of keeping track of redirects, or is one of these ways commonly used?"}
{"_id": "251475", "title": "Why are there so many CSS properties which are essentially the same?", "text": "This answer really made me wonder. I've written CSS before and (usually) I don't really bother to support browsers other than recent firefox and chrome, but in researching I've noticed that, for the exact same CSS property, there are usually at least three different forms which behave identically, and can have the same values, but which all simply have different prefixes for the specific library that implements them. Here, for example:               -webkit-touch-callout: none;     -webkit-user-select: none;     -khtml-user-select: none;     -moz-user-select: none;     -ms-user-select: none;     user-select: none;      With the sole exception of the first one, these only differ by prefix. Why don't maintainers simply change the lexer rule which matches the string \"-moz- user-select\" to also match \"user-select\"? Sure, there's the possibility that the author of the original CSS wanted different behavior for Firefox v. other browsers, so \"user-select\" won't be the same as \"-moz-user-select\", but the risk of that weird corner case is far outweighed by the advantage, and there are other, arguably better ways to accomplish the browser-specific goal. If this is already occurring, why do people still use all of these? If they stopped:   * there would be fewer bits clogging the metaphorical pipes of the internet (network latency would go way down, plus individual pages would load faster), and   * people using ancient browsers would be given the impetus they need to update (which they should do for security reasons, anyway) ## TL;DR What would the disadvantage be of everyone using the same naming convention? Why haven't things normalized by now?"}
{"_id": "70163", "title": "How much better is Apache Solr than its non-Java competition?", "text": "How much better is Apache Solr than its non-Java competition? Is it so much better than other solutions, e.g. this one (Sphinx with PHP API) or Zend_Search_Lucene that it would be worth suggesting that a client move to a different hosting provider than the one they are working with now? The current host does not support Java. If there are other decent solutions for indexed database search which are more palatable to typical web hosts, I'd like to hear about them. It is A Big Deal for them to change hosting providers, so I would like to know if the move would be justified."}
{"_id": "251474", "title": "JavaScript Compression and Caching of Assets", "text": "I'm working on an idea that i can't seem to find a good answer though hours and hours of searching, I'm planning a small Canvas/WebGL Application this application will be using WebSockets to talk to a game server for syncing data to and from so think of it as a MMO type service so im planning to have a queuing system to load assets E.G I make a request to get model1 and it's texture so that will quee               Mthd | Data                   | q | p | s     GET  | /asset/model_1/model   | 0 | 0 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_1/texture | 0 | 0 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_1/model   | 1 | 1 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_1/texture | 1 | 1 | 0     ...     GET  | /asset/model_1/model   | 5 | 5 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_1/texture | 5 | 5 | 0      **Key**               q = quality modifier      p = priority lower is better     s = status `0 not started, 1 downloading, 2 complete`      so my client is processing that download que however while this is going on another player has come into my view so i need that players model and texture so i add them to the que and end up like so               Mthd | Data                   | q | p | s     GET  | /asset/model_1/model   | 0 | 0 | 2     GET  | /asset/model_1/texture | 0 | 0 | 2     GET  | /asset/model_2/model   | 0 | 0 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_2/texture | 0 | 0 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_1/model   | 1 | 1 | 1     GET  | /asset/model_1/texture | 1 | 1 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_2/model   | 1 | 1 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_2/texture | 1 | 1 | 0     ...     GET  | /asset/model_1/model   | 5 | 5 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_1/texture | 5 | 5 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_2/model   | 5 | 5 | 0     GET  | /asset/model_2/texture | 5 | 5 | 0      Now i'm wanting to cache these file into the browser cache so i'm tied between using the database and compressing using something like LWZ, or putting the assets online and using appCache and loading them. So My Questions. If i load an asset though the browser normally (http request) will the browser will keep that image in memory once it's no longer being rendered. If i use Javascript to hold the base64 string should i then remove the string from the javascript variable (delete) i know it would free up the memory holding the string but would it free it all the memory used or would the browser still keep a copy of the image generated from base64 in memory. Is it possible to write content loading through WebSockets into the appCache E.G the base64 string from the WebSocket Server. Has any one found a better string compression system for Javascript other than LWZ i'm planning on compressing using a application at the server side so the only limit on compression is javascript supporting it."}
{"_id": "125673", "title": "Android, OpenGL and extending GLSurfaceView?", "text": "This question is part-technical, part-meta, part-subjective and very specific: I'm an indie game dev working on android, and for the past 6 months I've struggled and finally succeeded in making my own 3D game app for android. So I thought I'd hop on SO and help out others struggling with android and openGL- ES However, the vast majority of questions relate to extending `GLSurfaceView`. I made my whole app without extending `GLSurfaceView` (and it runs fine). I can't see any reason at all to extend `GLSurfaceView` for the majority of questions I come across. Worse, the android documentation implies that you ought to, but gives no detailed explaination of why or what the pros/cons are vs not extending and doing everything through implementing your own `GLSurfaceView.Renderer` as I did Still, the sheer volume of questions where the problem is purely to do with extending `GLSurfaceView` is making me wonder whether actually there is some really good reason for doing it that way vs the way I've been doing it (and suggesting in my answers to others to do). So, is there something I'm missing? Should I stop answering questions in the meantime? Android openGL documentation"}
{"_id": "55493", "title": "Delphi to Java change - career advice", "text": "I'm a Delphi developer with aprox 5 years of experience. But now, Delphi seems to be dead, and the job opportunities are smaller. So, I want to begin learn Java, because I like it, and the job market is bigger(and competition also...). Until now I've searched for opinions about the best Java books and I've founded several books(Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel,\"Java 6 The Complete Reference \" , complete JAVA for SCJP, etc - you can provide more examples if you want). Now, what I'm asking you: when you start to learn a new programming language (in this case Java) which are the steps you're following? How do manage the learning curve? (how you allocate time for different chapters and technologies) Thank you in advance"}
{"_id": "122025", "title": "How to interview a natural scientist for a dev position?", "text": "# Original Question I already did some interviews for my company, mostly computer scientists for dev positions but also some testers and project managers. Now I have to fill a vacancy in our research group within the R&D department (side note: \u201cresearch\u201d means that we try to solve problems in our professional domain/market niche using software in research projects together with universities, other companies, research centres and end user organisations. It\u2019s not computer science research; we\u2019re not going to solve the P=NP problem). Now we invited a guy holding an MSc in chemistry (with a lot of physics in his CV, too), who never had any computer science lesson. I already talked with him about half an hour at a local university\u2019s career days and there\u2019s no doubt the guy is smart. Also his marks are excellent and he graduated with distinction. For his BSc he needed to teach himself programming in Mathematica and told me believably that he liked programming a lot. Also he solved some physical chemistry problem that I probably don\u2019t understand using his own software, implemented in Mathematica, for his MSc thesis. It includes a GUI and a notable size of 8,000 LoC. He seems to be very attracted by what we\u2019re doing in our research group and to be honest it\u2019s quite difficult for an SME like us to get good people. I also am very interested in hiring him since he could assist me in writing project proposals, reports, doing presentations and so on. He would probably fit to our team, too. The only question left is: **How can I check if he will get the programming skills he needs** to do software implementation in our projects since this will be a significant part of the job? Of course I will ask him what it is, that is fascinating him about programming. I\u2019ll also ask how he proceeded to write his natural science software and how he structured it. I\u2019ll ask about how he managed to obtain the skills and information about software development he needed. But is there something more I could ask? Something more concrete perhaps? Should I ask him to explain his Mathematica solution? To be clear: I\u2019m not looking for knowledge in a particular language or technology stack. We\u2019re a .NET shop in product development but I want to have a free choice for our research projects. So I\u2019m interested in the meta- competence being able to learn whatever is actually needed. I hope this question is answerable and not open-ended since I really like to know if there is a default way to check for the ability to _get_ further programming skills on the job. If something is not clear to you please give me some comments and let me improve my question. # Update to reflect the answers given until 2011-12-01 ## What answer I accepted and why Thank you all for your answers, most of them are quite helpful, so I upvoted a lot! Although Tom Squires' answer got the most votes, I'm going to accept the answer given by Prince Goulash. Of course Tom is objectively correct, but Prince's answer is just more helpful for me and I double-checked the FAQ that _this_ is the criterion to accept an answer. ## What I am going to ask him during the interview   * I'll let him explain some simple assignments like the example in The Camel Has Two Humps mentioned by Chris Burt-Brown   * I'll ask him to explain some more advanced control flows maybe in a graphical notation.   * I'll check his understanding of recursion using a math example.   * I'll let him explain an algorithm of his choice in natural language.   * I'll let him explain his Mathematica solution, in particular I'll ask for his procedure model, usage of tools, structuring of code and software in general as well as different abstraction layers.   * To check his motivation I will ask for his software development fascination.   * I'll ask him if he is aware of what he will need to learn about enterprise software development. Especially I want to turn the discussion into the direction of working in teams, pair programming, TDD since I expect him not to know a lot about this after working on his MSc alone. Sounds like it's going to be a long interview ;) # Update after the interview 2011-12-09 Again thank you all for your good answers. He passed the interview with flying colours. I never was more satisfied with an applicant. His Mathematica solution seems to be structured quite well. He was able to explain where he used higher-order functions, although he didn't know that these are referred like this. He answered my math-based recursion questions as well as simple assignments and control flow things from The Camel Has Two Humps. When he was explaining some algorithms I learned a lot about non-linear fitting ;) Also he honestly said that of course he can't guarantee that he will be able to learn things about professional software development that he doesn't know so far. But he believably statet that he was always good in learning new concepts -- even by himself -- and is really interested in software development. He also asked for the technology stack of the project, he would be applied to first, to have a look at it at home. He was curious about pair programming and team work, too. Now I hope that the employment contract will be concluded."}
{"_id": "122023", "title": "Backward compatibility with event-sourcing", "text": "How do you stay backward compatible with event-sourcing? Let say you release a version that has one kind of event, let call it X. You know how to handle that event in all the systems that extracts the events from the event source. In a later release you make a change to event X or delete it, how do you stay backward compatible with that? To have a fully functional system you need to be able to handle the old event as the same time as you need to handle the updated version. Or if you delete that event type, then you will be stuck with code that is only there to handle legacy events which in my head can be a little bit messy in the long run."}
{"_id": "122022", "title": "Where can I get a definition of how the code is laid out in VB.NET 2010?", "text": "I am just starting out learning Visual Basic 2010. I have books and videos. The books all seem to be written for people who have some programming experience, even the books that say they are for beginners. The videos were great until they started talking about variables. I got the basics of them but they started into complicated variables and I don\u2019t see the need for them right away. Where can I go to see code for fairly intricate applications written out, with an over lay of definitions of which part of the code is a method as opposed to a class and so on? Also, I am working at a company that does not use SQL. So I need to use Access 2007 for all of my tables. Is there much of a difference to the coding?"}
{"_id": "122020", "title": "How do you end up with event-sourcing if you use a xDD approach?", "text": "When working in a TDD or BDD manner your unit tests are supposed to drive your design. But how do you end up with event-sourcing using a xDD techniques? As I see it event sourcing is something you need to adopt early on to take full advantage of it. Lets say that you start without event-sourcing and do a release. Later on when you are releasing version 2.0 you realize that it would be great to use event- sourcing, but at that point you alread have missed all the events from version 1.0 so it makes it much harder to implement. Or do you take some kind of backup of your db from before event-sourcing and use that as base line and then add event-sourcing on top of that?"}
{"_id": "218295", "title": "Finish feature reverted commits from develop", "text": "I am using git as a version control system, and using git-flow as the branching model. I started a feature branch some weeks ago in order to maintain the system in a clean state while developping that feature. The main development continued on the `develop` branch, and changes from develop were merged periodically into the feature, to keep it up to date as much as possible. However came the time where the feature was finished, and I used git-flow's `finish feature` to merge the feature back into develop. The merge was successfully done, but then I found out that some of the commits I made in develop were reverted by the merge commit! Nowhere in `develop` or in the feature branch were these changes reverted, I can't see any commit that overwrote them. I just can't find anything. The only theory I have for the moment is that git is failing on me, but that would be extremely unlikely. Maybe I did some kind of wrong manipulation that made this situation come true? I can trace back in the history when the commit was made. I can see that the changes from that commit were reverted by the merge commit. Nowhere in the branch I see a commit that reverts those changes. Yet they were reverted. How is this even possible?"}
{"_id": "36122", "title": "Has anyone used OpenCalais succesfully in a project?", "text": "In a previous question here on programmers, the OpenCalais system has been referenced as a solution. Has anyone used OpenCalais? Can you identify pros and cons of the system ?"}
{"_id": "218293", "title": "Should package structure closely resemble class hierarchy?", "text": "Pretty simple question. Should package structure closely resemble class hierarchy? If so, how closely? Why or why not? For instance, let's say you've got class A and class B, plus class AFactory and class BFactory. You put class A and class B in the package com.something.elements, and you put AFactory and BFactory in com.something.elements.factories. AFactory and BFactory would be further down the hierarchy package-wise, but they'd be further up class-wise. Is this sort of thing a good idea or a bad idea?"}
{"_id": "252407", "title": "Why is the complexity of fetching a value from an array be O(1)?", "text": "How come the complexity of fetching a value from an array by it's index is O(1)? I thought the algorithm has to go through all the indexes, find the correct index, and then know what value to return. So that means the complexity is O(n/2) on average. Why is it actually O(1)?"}
{"_id": "218299", "title": "What Functional features are worth a little OOP confusion for the benefits they bring?", "text": "After learning functional programming in Haskell and F#, the OOP paradigm seems ass-backwards with classes, interfaces, objects. Which aspects of FP can I bring to work that my co-workers can understand? Are any FP styles worth talking to my boss about retraining my team so that we can use them? Possible aspects of FP:   * Immutability   * Partial Application and Currying   * First Class Functions (function pointers / Functional Objects / Strategy Pattern)   * Lazy Evaluation (and Monads)   * Pure Functions (no side effects)   * Expressions (vs. Statements - each line of code produces a value instead of, or in addition to causing side effects)   * Recursion   * Pattern Matching Is it a free-for-all where we can do whatever the programming language supports to the limit that language supports it? Or is there a better guideline?"}
{"_id": "146428", "title": "Should I Leave off the Currency Symbol?", "text": "I'm upgrading a desktop application that currently displays the currency symbol anytime money values are displayed or printed. A friend of my from the UK told me \"Whenever British people see software with the American Dollar Sign ($) it automatically turns them off.\" Given the fact that we (developers) only have one shot at making a favorable first impression, wouldn't it make more sense to simply format all money values without a currency symbol?"}
{"_id": "128176", "title": "Best Practices for Redesigning a Database", "text": "I'm aware of some general best practices when designing a database for an application, but what about redesigning? I'm on a team tasked with re-designing an internal business application, though despite me saying \"internal,\" I'm unfortunately many, many layers of people away from contact with the actual users of the system. The current program is in Oracle Forms, scattered across a bunch of non- normalized tables, sometimes with multiple near-duplicate tables holding slight variants on each others' data. The constraints are often in the form of poorly-enforced stored procedures. Even the types don't seem to be stored right. I've encountered all sorts of bad data that Oracle seems to ignore but gave fits (and rightly so) to SQL Server's Import/Export Wizard. (For example, two digit integers do not constitute a complete datetime!) The original program probably goes back twenty years, and all of the original developers have retired so long ago that even the older people here have no idea who they were. As a result, there also aren't really any clean requirements to go off of--we're just supposed to duplicate the existing application's functionality and keep its existing data. The end result of the rewrite is going to be a web-based version running on ASP.NET with MS SQL Server for the back end. My other two developer teammates are much, much older than me, both with business/MIS backgrounds whereas mine is CS. The senior member's experience has been almost exclusively Oracle forms and the other member has mostly done business applications work in Visual Basic. Although my database background has been limited to designing new databases for projects in MySQL or SQLite, mostly for my undergrad classes, I seem to be the only one with experience actually designing databases at all. I've already written a little program in C# that reads in all the existing data to a neutral format, ready to be re-cast and placed into a new database. I plan to write the load-in code after the destination database is designed, so that data can be properly split across the new normalized tables, added in the correct order to follow new constraints, etc. The same program could then be run again later to copy the production data to the real newly deployed finished redesign. This leaves the actual redesign of the database as the main thing to figure out. **So the heart of my question:** what are some best practices for doing a redesign from the database level up of an existing application?"}
{"_id": "133646", "title": "Designing a web app that will be used from distant geographic locations", "text": "I have designed/built a number of small web apps. Most have been used by clients who operate in a specific geographic area, mostly within the same state/province. For these I would follow best practices but normally didn't worry too much about issues caused by distance from the server. I have a potential client whose locations are spread out in several countries around the world. What specific considerations should I make in designing an app that will be used in locations that are not near each other? Some of the more obvious ones I've thought about:   * i18n/localized strings   * Static content delivery via CDN   * Reducing instances where the client needs to communicate with the server   * Communicating with the server in the background while the client is doing other things I feel that list should be longer, but I don't have the breadth of experience to be sure. I am mostly concerned about the marginal issues presented by serving a geographically-distributed userbase that would not otherwise be high-ranking concerns for clients in closer proximity."}
{"_id": "133643", "title": "How do I share my jQuery plugin with the world?", "text": "I made a plugin for jQuery, which I think is quite useful. It combines an animated colours plugin with an easings plugin, and adds a completely new feature of being able to refer to colours numerically (more useful in hex notation, so 0xff00cc for example) and therefore manipulate them mathematically more easily. I created a repository on github, and it sits there, nobody looks at it. Mostly, I would like people to look at it, use it, and improve it, so I can use the improvements and so on. I think this idea of numerically manipulating colors could be interesting. It makes it easy to change the hue without changing the saturation for example. Combined with animated colors, I think something interesting could be done, but I don't know what exactly. How do I let people know it (or any other project) is there..? I was going to post it on http://plugins.jquery.com which is currently down. Are there any other outlets for this kind of code?"}
{"_id": "146426", "title": "MVC: View-Controller Interaction", "text": "I have a Java application that I am implementing following the MVC pattern. I want to have a window (view) that contains a form which allows the user to add several text fields. There will also be a button that will allow the user to add more text-fields to the form. I have several questions about this. Will the code for adding new text-fields be considered part of the controller or the view?   1. If controller, then this controller will not do anything to the model, it will just modify my view, so is this a violation of MVC?   2. If view, then will it be a violation of MVC as the changes in view were not directed from the model?"}
{"_id": "132993", "title": "Is it possible to compile Java into machine code? (Not bytecode)", "text": "Can you have Java compiled straight into machine code? I want to do this so I have control over what platforms it's used on, and don't know C,C++ etc."}
{"_id": "132991", "title": "Determining the right amount of documentation", "text": "Where I currently work the general approach is - **avoid documentation as much as possible** **Only document if a different team will need it** just for clarification, I don't mean code-documentation - this we do, I mean all the documentation surrounding the design process - if it's UML or DB Schemas, class diagrams and word documents with specifications and the likes. I will list my Boss' reason to not document:   1. it's time consuming - focus on implementing   2. if design change - then the documentation should change, double trouble   3. in the end you just get hundreds of pages nobody wants to read, and nobody really edits so by time it will get out of date   4. Its a pain - nobody really wants to do it Now I realize we do work faster, but I also remember the time getting here and diving straight to some old code, not understanding anything. Actually, I still don't get most of this old code, and sometimes when I get in I see many patches from different developers trying to make small tweaks. I really think lack of documenting promotes these kind of patches and lack of system understanding in a broad sense. my question is: **How can we balance documentation so that we will promote continuous knowledge among the team and still be fast and efficient?**"}
{"_id": "132995", "title": "Modern Java implementation of Blackboard Pattern?", "text": "Is there room for a practical modern application in Java of the Blackboard Pattern detailed in **\"The Pragmatic Programmer\"**? Is there any particular library that attempts to assist in the implementation of this concept? What is the general consensus on this pattern in the present software community (especially Java)? Though the idea is intriguing, I have a feeling that this portion of the book may be outdated. In case you are not familiar with this concept: http://flylib.com/books/en/1.315.1.55/1/"}
{"_id": "70787", "title": "What's the most polite way to handle library dependencies when hosting code online?", "text": "Let's say you've written nifty JavaScript library that requires jQuery, and you want to host this project on github. Do you include the jQuery source with your project? Do you direct users to a download link for jQuery?"}
{"_id": "200302", "title": "How should I manage short-term user preferences, to simplify data cleanup?", "text": "When rolling out a new feature, sometimes it makes sense to notify the end user what it is, and give them an opportunity to provide feedback whether the software should get them to 'try something new' or 'put it off'. ![Gmail new feature, \"Try it now\", \"Not now\"](http://i.stack.imgur.com/6jWVc.png) In a cloud software, how should user preference data such as this be managed? A small piece of information would have to be stored to save the preference, but eventually, it becomes irrelevant. (The old way is phased out.) The simple thing to do is just leave that data there. After all, it doesn't take much space. Eventually, as more features and changes come and go, and more messages are added, dismissed, and removed; there would be many items in the data storage that is no longer used, and there would be cost in the form of programmer hours in preserving or separating that data. Are there coding and software maintenance patterns that would make sense to get rid of old data structures along with removal of old features? Is there a common solution to this data cleanup?"}
{"_id": "203205", "title": "Distinction between API and frontend-backend", "text": "I'm trying to write a \"standard\" business web site. By \"standard\", I mean this site runs the usual HTML5, CSS and Javascript for the front-end, a back-end (to process stuff), and runs MySQL for the database. It's a basic CRUD site: the front-end just makes pretty whatever the database has in store; the backend writes to the database whatever the user enters and does some processing. Just like most sites out there. In creating my Github repositories to begin coding, I've realized I don't understand the distinction between the _front-end back-end,_ and the _API_. Another way of phrasing my question is: **where does the API come into this picture?** I'm going to list some more details and then questions I have - hopefully this gives you guys a better idea of what my actual question is, because I'm so confused that I don't know the specific question to ask. Some more details:   * I'd like to try the Model-View-Controller pattern. I don't know if this changes the question/answer.   * The API will be RESTful   * I'd like my back-end to use my own API instead of allowing the back-end to cheat and call special queries. I think this style is more consistent. My questions:   * Does the front-end call the back-end which calls the API? Or does the front-end just call the API instead of calling the back-end?   * Does the back-end just execute an API and the API returns control to the back-end (where the back-end acts as the ultimate controller, delegating tasks)? Long and detailed answers explaining the role of the API alongside the front- end back-end are encouraged. If the answer depends on the model of programming (models other than the Model-View-Controller pattern), please describe these other ways of thinking of the API. Thanks. I'm very confused."}
{"_id": "205156", "title": "XML/HTML: Do we need the element name in closing tags?", "text": "Compared to other serialization languages, one of the main criticisms directed at XML is its verbosity; JSON's more terse and readable for most cases, but not all. But it seems to me that we could cut a lot of the excess from XML simply by stripping away the names from the closing tags. With proper indentation readability shouldn't be an issue (it should be an improvement, if you ask me), and since they're not structurally required any decent XML editor/viewer could easily be made to strip/hide or add them. **As such, the two formats should be completely equivalent and interchangeable.** Compare the following (source taken from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/simple.xml):               <breakfast_menu>         <food>             <name>Belgian Waffles</name>             <price>$5.95</price>             <description>                         Two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup             </description>             <calories>650</calories>         </food>         <food>             <name>Strawberry Belgian Waffles</name>             <price>$7.95</price>             <description>                         Light Belgian waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream             </description>             <calories>900</calories>         </food>         <food>             <name>Berry-Berry Belgian Waffles</name>             <price>$8.95</price>             <description>                         Light Belgian waffles covered with an assortment of fresh berries and whipped cream             </description>             <calories>900</calories>         </food>         <food>             <name>French Toast</name>             <price>$4.50</price>             <description>                         Thick slices made from our homemade sourdough bread             </description>             <calories>600</calories>         </food>         <food>             <name>Homestyle Breakfast</name>             <price>$6.95</price>             <description>                         Two eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, and our ever-popular hash browns             </description>             <calories>950</calories>         </food>     </breakfast_menu>      and               <breakfast_menu>         <food>             <name>Belgian Waffles</>             <price>$5.95</>             <description>                             Two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup             </>             <calories>650</>         </>         <food>             <name>Strawberry Belgian Waffles</>             <price>$7.95</>             <description>                             Light Belgian waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream             </>             <calories>900</>         </>         <food>             <name>Berry-Berry Belgian Waffles</>             <price>$8.95</>             <description>                             Light Belgian waffles covered with an assortment of fresh berries and whipped cream             </>             <calories>900</>         </>         <food>             <name>French Toast</>             <price>$4.50</>             <description>                             Thick slices made from our homemade sourdough bread             </>             <calories>600</>         </>         <food>             <name>Homestyle Breakfast</>             <price>$6.95</>             <description>                             Two eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, and our ever-popular hash browns             </>             <calories>950</>         </>     </>"}
{"_id": "172867", "title": "How can I port msvc++ code with non-dependent names in templates to Linux?", "text": "I can deal with porting platform dependent functions. I have a problem that the compilers I tried on Linux (clang and g++) do not accept the following code, while the msvc++ compiler does:               template <class T>     class Base {     protected:         T Value;     };          template <class T>     class Derived : public Base<T> {     public:         void setValue(const T& inValue){             Value = inValue;         }     };          int main(int argc, char const *argv[])     {         Derived<int> tmp;         tmp.setValue(0);         return 0;     }      g++ error:               main.cpp: In member function \u2018void Derived<T>::setValue(const T&)\u2019:     main.cpp:11:3: error: \u2018Value\u2019 was not declared in this scope      I believe this due to the use of a non-dependent name (`Value`) in the second class. More information. The problem is that I have a very large code base, in which this type of code is used very often. I understand that it is wrong when looking at the standard. However it is very convenient not having to write `this->` or `Base<T>::` in front of every use of `Value`. Even writing `using Base<T>::Value;` at the start of the derived class is problematic when you use ~20 members of the base class. So my question is: are there compilers for Linux that allow this kind of code (with or without extra compiler switches)? Or are there **small** modifications that will allow this code to compile on Linux?"}
{"_id": "172861", "title": "Patterns for a tree of persistent data with multiple storage options?", "text": "I have a real-world problem which I'll try to abstract into an illustrative example. So imagine I have data objects in a tree, where parent objects can access children, and children can access parents:               // Interfaces     interface IParent<TChild> { List<TChild> Children; }     interface IChild<TParent> { TParent Parent; }          // Classes     class Top : IParent<Middle> {}     class Middle : IParent<Bottom>, IChild<Top> {}     class Bottom : IChild<Middle> {}          // Usage     var top = new Top();     var middles = top.Children; // List<Middle>     foreach (var middle in middles) {         var bottoms = middle.Children; // List<Bottom>         foreach (var bottom in bottoms) {             var middle = bottom.Parent; // Access the parent             var top = middle.Parent; // Access the grandparent         }     }      All three data objects have properties that are persisted in two data stores (e.g. a database and a web service), and they need to reflect and synchronise with the stores. Some objects only request from the web service, some only write to it. **Data Mapper** My favourite pattern for data access is Data Mapper, because it completely separates the data objects themselves from the communication with the data store:               class TopMapper {         public Top FetchById(int id) {             var top = new Top(DataStore.TopDataById(id));             top.Children = MiddleMapper.FetchForTop(Top);             return Top;         }     }          class MiddleMapper {         public Middle FetchById(int id) {              var middle = new Middle(DataStore.MiddleDataById(id));              middle.Parent = TopMapper.FetchForMiddle(middle);              middle.Children = BottomMapper.FetchForMiddle(bottom);              return middle;         }     }      This way I can have one mapper per data store, and build the object from the mapper I want, and then save it back using the mapper I want. There is a circular reference here, but I guess that's not a problem because most languages can just store memory references to the objects, so there won't actually be infinite data. The problem with this is that every time I want to construct a new `Top`, `Middle` or `Bottom`, it needs to build the entire object tree within that object's `Parent` or `Children` property, with all the data store requests and memory usage that that entails. And in real life my tree is much bigger than the one represented here, so that's a problem. **Requests in the object** In this the objects request their `Parent`s and `Children` themselves:               class Middle {         private List<Bottom> _children = null; // cache         public List<Bottom> Children {             get {                 _children = _children ?? BottomMapper.FetchForMiddle(this);                 return _children;             }             set {                 BottomMapper.UpdateForMiddle(this, value);                 _children = value;             }         }     }      I think this is an example of the repository pattern. Is that correct? This solution seems neat - the data only gets requested from the data store when you need it, and thereafter it's stored in the object if you want to request it again, avoiding a further request. However, I have two different data sources. There's a database, but there's also a web service, and I need to be able to create an object from the web service and save it back to the database and then request it again from the database and update the web service. This also makes me uneasy because the data objects themselves are no longer ignorant of the data source. We've introduced a new dependency, not to mention a circular dependency, making it harder to test. And the objects now mask their communication with the database. **Other solutions** Are there any other solutions which could take care of the multiple stores problem but also mean that I don't need to build / request all the data every time?"}
{"_id": "215074", "title": "Store data for multiple User Type", "text": "I am developing an app where four types of user share same module. So is it a good idea to create:   1. one table and user_type and user_id (something like that)   2. table prefixes basically 4 diff tables of same columns   3. your own suggestion (keeping in mind its a CakePHP App so joins and contain will be there)"}
{"_id": "18751", "title": "Tools to produce & manage specifications/requirements (not ticket trackers)", "text": "I'm interested if there are any websites or software out there to aid in initial project design, and then management of the project's design over time as features are implmented, bugs are found, etc... My design will include requirements (functional & non-functional), use cases, and basic database schema design. Most sought-after feature:   * Being able to define requirements and track their changes over time (i.e. how is version 1.5 different than 1.0?) Nice-to-haves:   * Being able to collaborate with other project managers and the team when putting together the specifications What I'm _not_ looking for:   * Ticket trackers (JIRA, fogbugz, etc...)   * Software version control systems   * Wikis (unless they are built with requirements management in mind) Thanks."}
{"_id": "89931", "title": "PHP Frameworks That Don't Use a Front Controller?", "text": "Just like the title says, are there any PHP web application frameworks that don't use a front controller? > The Front Controller Pattern is a software design pattern listed in several > pattern catalogs. The pattern relates to the design of web applications. It > \"provides a centralized entry point for handling requests.\" > > The front controller may be implemented as a Java object, or as a script in > a script language like PHP, ASP, CFML or JSP that is called on every request > of a web session. This script, for example an index.php, would handle all > tasks that are common to the application or the framework, such as session > handling, caching, and input filtering. Based on the specific request it > would then instantiate further objects and call methods to handle the > particular task(s) required. > > The alternative to a front controller would be individual scripts like > login.php and order.php that would each then satisfy the type of request. > Each script would have to duplicate code or objects that are common to all > tasks. But each script might also have more flexibility to implement the > particular task required."}
{"_id": "89936", "title": "Syntax-highlighting color scheme studies", "text": "Most programmers have their own personal preferences for syntax-highlighting color schemes, but I've been wondering, has anyone ever done an actual scientific study on what the best color scheme would be? I imagine such a study would look at things like the readability of the code, whether the programmer's eyes are drawn to the most important parts, etc. Perhaps this was already done for something like the default Visual Studio theme, but I'd like to know if there are any publicly available studies out there, and what they found."}
{"_id": "18755", "title": "Are you allowed to manage your own time and if so, do you sometimes abuse this?", "text": "The title is a bit vague so let me elaborate: I develop both hardware and software, and I'm in a position where I get a list of 'large' tasks/projects to do but not on a regular basis. Sometimes there's 10 new things to do in one month, other times months pass by without any real deadlines. This gets combined with 'small' tasks/projects/bugs that are extremely urgent. Basically no one but me is in a good position to decide how much time I spend on what, and when I do that: the basic philosophy is 'you do whatever you want, whenever you want, just make sure the things that are urgent or have a deadline are done in time'. Firstly I'd like to hear from others if they are working in a similar environment? The reason I'm asking is that I do not know many other programmers in person, and the ones I do talk to are more in a typical '9 to 5' job and their time is rather managed by, erm, managers. Secondly, for those that are in a such a situation, did you ever find yourself spending huge amounts of time on something that was not really necessary, hereby kind of abusing your freedom? I'll give some examples: about a year ago I spent at least a month on writing a build server application, only to abandon it last month in favour of Hudson. Which again took several days to setup. Sometimes I find myself losing huge amounts of time refactoring a core library for the xth time although it's not really needed. Once I spent weeks studying the ins and outs of digital filters, while the actual task was making a basic bandpass filter that anyone could probably do in a day or so. Then I changed my mind and went with an analog implementation after all. Please share similar stories."}
{"_id": "182181", "title": "Most flexible UI Framework for Windows endpoint?", "text": "I am tasked with designing and implementing a flexible UI solution for deployment across a series of \"kiosk\"-ed Windows endpoints. There is some debate about what is the considered to be the best technology solution for the actual UI itself. The requirements are:   * Must be hardware accelerated   * Must play WMV video (for licensing reasons)   * Must be skinnable/themeable.   * Must support off-screen rendering."}
{"_id": "226088", "title": "How to deal with bad versioned software as SCM", "text": "I have been asked to be the SCM (Software Configuration Manager) in my company. I've read online documentation to learn what SCM is, what SCM does, etc. Currently, the company works with a version control system (Bazaar), so the software is versioned correctly, but there are old programs that are not well versioned (some of them not versioned at all), some of them are in CVS, the old version control system used at first, but they are not updated. I'm asking for your help, based on experience more than theoretical information, to know how to deal with this, how to be a good SCM even with all these issues."}
{"_id": "108895", "title": "What programming jobs would be best for a mathematician?", "text": "I'm a math professor that is losing his job, and I'm trying to gain programming skills, since academic jobs are scarce these days. Are there particular types of programming jobs that I should try to work towards, in order to leverage my math Ph.D? What particular skills should I try to obtain for those jobs? **Update, 6 months later:** For those that are curious, I went the certification route, and it worked for me. I learned Java, then studied for the SCJP test, then obtained a job that is technically an internship, but is full time and pays comparably to being a math professor at a private school with tough finances. I recommend certifications for anyone without a CS degree or IT experience, it is the fastest and cheapest way to get _something_ objective on your resume."}
{"_id": "33578", "title": "What do you wish language designers paid attention to?", "text": "The purpose of this question is not to assemble a laundry list of programming language features that you can't live without, or wish was in your main language of choice. The purpose of this question is to bring to light corners of languge design most language designers might not think about. So, instead of thinking about language feature X, think a little more philisophically. One of my biases, and perhaps it might be controversial, is that the softer side of engineering--the whys and what fors--are many times more important than the more concrete side. For example, Ruby was designed with a stated goal of improving developer happiness. While your opinions may be mixed on whether it delivered or not, the fact that was a goal means that some of the choices in language design were influenced by that philosophy. **Please do not post:**   * Syntax flame wars. Let's face it, we have our preferences, and syntax is important as it pertains to language design. I just want to avoid epic battles of the nature of emacs vs. VI (which a great number of people these days know nothing about).   * \"Any language that doesn't have feature X doesn't deserve to exist\" type comments. There is at least one reason for all programming languages to exist--good or bad. **Please _do_ post:**   * Philisophical ideas that language designers seem to miss.   * Technical concepts that seem to be poorly implemented more often than not. Please do provide an example of the pain it causes and if you have any ideas of how you would prefer it to function.   * Things you wish were in the platform's common library but seldom are. One the same token, things that usually are in a common library that you wish were not.   * Conceptual features such as built in test/assertion/contract/error handling support that you wish all programming languages would implement properly--and define properly. My hope is that this will be a fun and stimulating topic. **Edit:** Clarified what I mean by Syntax Flame Wars. I'm not trying to avoid all discussion of syntax, particularly because syntax is a fundamental part of program language design."}
{"_id": "229250", "title": "OOP in C: which of these two approaches is closer to a cannonical solution?", "text": "Here are the two approaches to writing OOP (as in \"we have objects and we can instantiate any number of them, each having it's own private data\"). The language is C and the platform is embedded bare-metal. Simply, which is better. Is any of the two approaches sensible at all? Or, is there a third, canonical, way to do this in C? ## Approach I: Module.c               struct inputs{};     struct outputs{};     struct scratchpad{};     struct module{         struct inputs i;         struct outputs o;         struct scratchpad private;     }      main.c               main(){         struct module obj;         module_init(obj);         module_do_fancy_stuff(obj);     }      ## Approach II: Module.c               #define OBJ_COUNT 5     struct inputs{};     struct outputs{};     struct scratchpad{};     struct module{         struct inputs i;         struct outputs o;         struct scratchpad private;     }          static struct module obj[OBJ_COUNT];      main.c               #define COOL_MODULE 3     #BORING_MODULE 4     main(){         module_init();         module_do_fancy_stuff(COOL_MODULE);     }"}
{"_id": "229254", "title": "Why doesn't VB.NET allow unnamed, one-line objects to be used?", "text": "Why isn't this allowed in VB.NET:               New SqlCommand(\"some string\", someSqlConnection).ExecuteNonQuery()      Why would the language have been designed to require that this be used instead:               Dim com As New SqlCommand(\"some string\", someSqlConnection)     com.ExecuteNonQuery()      It doesn't seem to me like it would have taken much time at all to implement. Am I wrong? Is there some theoretical advantage this would give a language? **EDIT** Please read: I thought this language feature was not supported in VB.NET. I had forgotten that I had used it in the past, and so when lines like the first one above would break, I did not expect there would be a work-around like in the accepted answer. ...Although, looking back at it again, there seems to be trouble doing this when it's off by itself on a line of code, and not used as a function argument or something. I bet that's probably part of why I originally posted this. I wonder why this in particular wouldn't be allowed, but I'm asking a question on SO to see if there's a similar work-around for that... This is _not_ a question about how to use unnamed objects on a single line; this was a question about why a language designer would intentionally choose to forgo such a feature in a language like this. Was there a lingual advantage to not allowing this feature, or would it just take unexpectedly long to implement? There was a misunderstanding, but that does not change the conceptual nature of the original question, and it does not change the fact that it was searching for a logical reason to omit such a feature. The bottom line is this: This is a site about \"conceptual questions about software development\". This almost immediately implies trace amounts of opinion, subjectiveness, etc - as specifically noted in the very same flag this question was put under. The rule is to not push it too far, and my question did not. Please remove the flag. Thank you."}
{"_id": "76250", "title": "Optimal organizational structure for IT?", "text": "There are many approaches to how to structure a company's IT shop to better fit the needs of the core business. In my scenario, developing web and mobile access is central to the the needs of the organization of which I am thinking. It is structured such that development is done by one group of worker bees, another for maintenance, another still for testing, etc. etc. It seems this structure tends to lend itself to adversarial relationships because each area has its own measure of what success is: Development --> Time To Market   Maintenance --> Stability of the environment   Testing --> Making sure they don't get spanked if something goes wrong. There are many other organizational groups (for lack of a better term) for analysts, project managers, designers, etc. In a perfect world, these groups would create checks and balances against one another, but in the end priority invariably gets placed on TTM, sometimes to the detriment of the other players. This creates a lot of tension whenever releases come because an attitude of 'throwing code over the wall' prevails as the MO. What other organizational structures have you observed in industry that better lend themselves to a greater sense of cohesiveness amongst the players?"}
{"_id": "76254", "title": "Most effective way to increase programmer salary besides just doing your job?", "text": "If you have the time and resources, what would be the most effective way to increase your salary as a full-time _programmer_ , outside of just doing your job? By \"salary\" here, I mean salary (adjusted for location cost-of-living) coming from a _single_ programming job."}
{"_id": "40666", "title": "Help finding good documentation for C/C++?", "text": "I have programmed in Java, PHP, C# and a little bit in C in an OS course I have taken recently in college. For all of these languages, I've found decent documentation except C. I couldn't find a good source for it. Any thoughts ?"}
{"_id": "206182", "title": "How does a non-technical manager add value to team of self-motivated software developers?", "text": "I am seeing a lot of programmers turning away from management and administration roles. They want to build stuff. And as a result, a lot of these positions are filled by non-technical people. I fail to see how they add value. Is scheduling meetings, booking offsites and other administrative work enough to justify their role? **Edit:** Thanks for the wonderful answers. I do know that administration details are important, but that is why we have a dedicated HR team, recruiting teams and other teams dedicated to support developers. This is different from a non-technical manager being in a important position."}
{"_id": "123082", "title": "Help in deciding on approach/language for Web App", "text": "I have a personal project - a web application I wanted to develop - but I'm confused on which route to take. I know a little programming, and have dabbled in Pascal, C, HTML, CSS and Actionscript (for Flash). And I don't mind learning a new language (PHP, Python, mySQL, etc). I am not under any time constraint. **About the App:** The best I can describe it is as a kind of expert system (but not AI) that needs to find the best workflow for a process, given a set of initial and final parameters. E.g. a 'capsule' of data must pass through many 'tools' or 'environments' to reach a desired output - something like a very complicated car wash. Let's say there are many tools that can be used at various stages in the process. I have estimated there are at least 500 tools as of now, and it is bound to grow in the future as newer tools are introduced. Existing tools will also have version updates. Each tool, on average, has at least 100 properties that define the tool. Some of them have as high as 1000 unique properties. Some of these tools are linked to each other - e.g if one tool is selected, there are only n tools that can correspond to it for the next step in the process. I also have the problem of 'matching' the tools for analysis. E.g. Tool A might have only three fixed rpms - 100, 200 and 500, but Tool B might have rpms from 20 to 2000. I'm not sure how I can construct a database without spelling out each number, as in the example above. The total number of tools needed for the process can be defined at the beginning, however, it will change as the application becomes more complex in the future. I plan to address every contingency in the process. The idea is - if the user inputs the initial parameters and the desired outcome (another set of parameters), the app must find the 'best' path - sort of like a decision tree. The best path can be the fastest, cheapest, etc. I would like the user to choose what is best for him/her. Unfortunately, parameters might change, relationships might change (but not regularly) - the 'rules' I will be using might be revised for better accuracy in prediction. I also need to track each user's path and solutions' for future reference (but no personal details except username and email address for logging in). Maybe when the app is up and running, I'd like to make it more democratic, with users contributing to refining the logic/rules involved. If possible, I would also like the app to output a graphical flowchart at the end showing the workflow with all tools grouped in an easy to understand layout. **My questions:**   1. Will the app be better served with a relational DB like mySQL or an Object database?   2. Can I make this work with PHP+AJAX+CSS+mySQL? Is there a better alternative? I would prefer free programs - I intend this app to be free, but I might want to make it commercial later on. I need this program to run on any device that can connect to the internet, including tablets and mobiles, etc.   3. Do I need a framework? CodeIgniter/Symfony vs Django/ZOPE? Which is the best way for me to begin, considering I might have to scale it up in the future - with more data, more users simultaneously logged in, and more algorithms? I don't want to change solutions later on - if I have to invest time and effort I'd rather do it the right way from the beginning. I would appreciate any help in getting started. Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "207586", "title": "What does it mean to \"promote\" a file?", "text": "I hear this term around the office, and know it's relevant to software development lifecycle. What does \"promote\" mean? Context: e.g. to promote a file."}
{"_id": "226559", "title": "Where to show copyright messages?", "text": "In my Android application, I am using a couple of open source libraries. The only requirement these libraries have is that I must show their respective copyright notices in my application. I am trying to understand where would one typically display third-party copyrights. I could probably create a menu item \"About\" and display an about dialog box that has all the copyrights listed. However, I would appreciate your feedback on what the standard practice is."}
{"_id": "74363", "title": "Why most people change from being a contractor to full time at my companies, but not the other way around?", "text": "I have seen most people changed from being a contractor to being a full time employee, but not the other way around. And that happened in startups that had maybe 20% chance of IPO or being acquired, and another that had maybe a 50% chance. As far as I know, the rate (even for a 3 year experience graphics designer, or a programmer), can be $75 to $80 an hour. While a programmer with 15 years of experience may get $120,000 per year. So, the programmer with 15 years of programming experience earns $10,000 per month. At the same time, the programmer with 3 year of experience or the graphics designer will get $14,000 per month ($80 x 22 days x 8 hours). I know I have to buy my own insurance, but I can't imagine buying those for $4,000 each month... maybe $200, $300 at most. I probably need to pay Social Security (FICA) both way (myself and as self-employed = $210 x 2), but still, each month there will be extra $3,000 of income. So is the above calculation correct? But most often, I do see contractors wanting or becoming full time, but not full time employees becoming a contractor. Does somebody know what the reason is?"}
{"_id": "219655", "title": "Flexible / Dynamic object creation or Alternative to list of lists", "text": "I have a xlsx file, that has some tabs with different data. I want to be able to save each row of a tab in a list. The first thing that comes to mind is a list of lists, but I was wondering if there is another way. I'd like to save that information in a object, with all its benefits, but can't think of a way to generate/create such diverse objects on the fly. The data in the xlsx is diverse and ideally the program is agnostic of any content. So instead of e.g. create a list for each row, than put that list in another list for each tab and each tab in another list, I'd like to store the information that each row represents in a single object and just have a list of different objects. The question can be summarized as : **What is an alternative to list of lists ?** A small graphic to visualize the problem :               +--------------------------------------------------------------------+     |LIST                                                                |     |                                                                    |     |    +------------------+ +------------------+ +-----------------+   |     |    | Class1           | | Class2           | | Class3          |   |     |    |------------------| |------------------| |-----------------|   |     |    | var1             | | var1             | | var5            |   |     |    | var2             | | var2             | | var6            |   |     |... | var3             | |                  | | var7            |...|     |    |                  | |                  | |                 |   |     |    |                  | |                  | |                 |   |     |    |                  | |                  | |                 |   |     |    |                  | |                  | |                 |   |     |    +------------------+ +------------------+ +-----------------+   |     |                                                                    |     +--------------------------------------------------------------------+"}
{"_id": "219652", "title": "Handling one code base for multiple clients, with their own custom code", "text": "I am working on a CMS, in which we have multiple clients that use it, so the code is stored on their servers. Each client has the default code (user manager, pages manager etc), but every client also has it's own set of code (themes, scripts, custom modules). I am trying to figure out a way to maintain an up-to-date code base for all the clients without having to make every single change to the core to every single client. We are using GitHub for version control, so I was think of having all the clients as different branches, but how can I keep the core up to date with the master? Am I think about this all wrong? What are my options?"}
{"_id": "212602", "title": "Plugin naming based on GPL v2", "text": "I'm programming a plugin for a software under GPL v2. I'm using an unique name for my plugin, but I'm considering to rename it. I would like to take another plugin's name which has been abandoned and isn't currently being developed. Am I allowed to take up that name without asking for permission from the author beforehand?"}
{"_id": "214768", "title": "Is excessive indirection and/or redundant encapsulation a recognized concept?", "text": "I'm curious if there's a series of tendencies or anti-patterns when programming whereby a developer will always locally re-wrap external dependencies when consuming them. A slightly less vague example might be say when consuming an implementation of an interface or abstract, and mapping every touch-point locally before interacting with them. Like an overcomplicated take on composition. Given my example, would the interface not be reliable enough and any change to it never be surmountable any any level of indirection? Is this a good or a bad practice? Can it ever go too far? Does it have a proper name?"}
{"_id": "158100", "title": "How much Ruby should I learn before moving to Rails?", "text": "Just a quick question.. I can never get a definitive answer when googling this, either. Some people say you can learn Rails without knowing any Ruby, but at some point you'll run into a brick wall and wish you knew Ruby and will have to go back to learn it..and some say to learn the \"basics\" of Ruby before learning Rails and it will make your life that much easier.. My current knowledge is low. I'm not a beginner, but I'm not pro, either. I went through the Learn Python The Hard Way online book in about a month, but I stopped once I got to the OOP side of Python (I know booleans, elif/if/else/statements, for loops, while loops, functions) I agree with learning the \"basics\" of Ruby before learning Rails, but what exactly are the \"basics\" of Ruby? Would I need to learn the whole OOP side of Ruby before I went on to Rails? Or would I just need to learn the Ruby syntax up to where I learned Python (booleans, elif/if/else/statements, for loops, while loops, functions) before I went on to Rails? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "245119", "title": "Should state machine with synonym states be shown explicitly?", "text": "I am new to state machine modeling and while trying to model a system, I have a question. An example will explain it better: Considering a system that does calling (probably a customized cell phone device) with possible states: **idle->calling->signal-dropping->handle->call ended** **idle->calling->OS problem->handle->call ended** **idle->calling->battery drained->handle->call ended** **idle->calling->some other problem->handle->call ended** Above example is in form state1->transition1->state2->transition2->state3 Question is: Is there any significance of these intermediate states? Should they be shown/ modeled explicitly in UML or even programming? **Note:** It would be helpful if anyone can mention (some existing if applicable) technical term used to describe this scenario"}
{"_id": "158109", "title": "What are the advantages of myBatis over Hibernate?", "text": "I've done some research on my own and understand the basic concept. But some insights can only be gained through actual experience. What are the advantages of myBatis that would make it worth learning a new framework?   In what case would you avoid using it?"}
{"_id": "245114", "title": "Why is it called a memory leak?", "text": "I am a hobbyist programmer, bit of a stickler for terminology, currently learning C and recently came across the concept of _Memory Leak_. Now, I do understand what it means. Dynamic memory allocated to a program is not returned by the program. But where does the term ' _leak_ ' come from? Is it coming from the fact that other programs cannot access the dynamic memory, since one is already hogging it, and thus total memory available from the OS to the heap is reduced and therefore \" _leaked_ \" to the one hogging it? Basically, are we see the memory leak from the OS's perspective? And therefore saying that it is leaked to the program?"}
{"_id": "245117", "title": "Technical example of modeling a domain with OOD?", "text": "Considering favoring composition over inheritance and looking at various design patterns there are multiple approaches to modeling a domain. Say you have some Entities which are very similar in some respects, yet differ widely when it comes to technical implementations. To try portray the scenario here is the classic car example.               (Vehicles)     Car     Truck     Van      From a user perspective, they are all pretty much the same (all vehicles). From a **DDD** perspective, car, truck, van all share certain common state (number of tires, engine, ...) and certain behaviors (steering, changing speed, ...). However, they also have various state and behavior that is unique such as the Truck's bed, the van's internal storage, or the cars 5 seats. As time progresses there will be a fair amount of change. Validation would be different for certain things, and similar for others. Change speed, steer, etc. are similar, yet pull trailer is optional and even that differs between e.g. the Van and Truck. How would you design this to cope with change, yet remain DRY and adhering to the **DDD** mindset? Please explain how you would go about it (pseudo code?) and mention any design patterns or strategies you would try implement to model this (simple, yet dynamic) domain and which OO principles are being applied etc."}
{"_id": "245110", "title": "Understanding Tarjan's Bridge-finding algorithm", "text": "Tarjan's algorithm for finding bridges in a graph is found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_(graph_theory)#Tarjan.27s_Bridge- finding_algorithm. However, I don't understand the condition for checking if an edge is a bridge. I get that L(w) = w is a necessary condition, but I think that the condition for H(w) < w + ND(w) is redundant, since you're always guaranteed for that to be true (when doing the pre-order traversal, all the vertices in the subtree of w are visited consecutively and are numbered consecutively, and H(W) has to be in the subtree of w, making H(W) < w + ND(W) always true). So I'm curious if the H(W) < w + ND(W) condition is even necessary, and if so, can you provide an example case where it is needed?"}
{"_id": "245112", "title": "acceptance test driven development in c++", "text": "Was put on hold at stack overflow: hopefully it has value here. I want to use a BDD / TDD / ATDD approach in c++. However I really want to emphasize vertical slices of end to end functionality rather than unit tests. There are plenty of unit testing frameworks. How would you go about in c++ authoring an approach that emulates a user story based testing framework. If you can avoid reinventing the wheel great otherwise i have no idea how to go about writing one from scratch. An example from another language would be specflow. The specific question is - if someone has done it lets use their work - otherwise how would you go about writing a framework like specflow in c++?"}
{"_id": "235357", "title": "For professional designing company, what is the key to design an app elegantly?", "text": "I am coding and found it's pretty hard to come up with an elegant design for my app at the first attempt.   * First time I'm only about 40% happy, then I refactor it to code the same app a second time (almost start from scratch).   * Second time coding, I'm only happy about 60% happy, so I refactor it once more to code the same app a third time (not start from scratch but I made a lot of changes).   * Third time coding, I'm only happy about 80%. Here I am quite happy but I think if I can start over I can do much better and it should be very solid. But I am running out of time now. So I just leave it like it is. 80% Happy.  So my key word is \" **to keep re-factoring** \". But this is my point of view as an indie developer so I don't know how a design company would design an application. Suppose I give my idea to a professional designing company, will they keep refactoring like that many times to achieve an elegant design? Or because they are a big design company, are they able to design everything well at the first attempt? Do you work for a software design company? If you do then how does the professional designing company design applications elegantly?"}
{"_id": "154837", "title": "How to devise instruction set of a stack based machine?", "text": "Stack based virtual machines like CLR and JVM has different set of instructions. Is there any theory behind devising the instruction set while creating a virtual machine? e.g. there are JVM instruction sets to load constants from 0-5 onto the stack               iconst_0     iconst_1     iconst_2     iconst_3     iconst_4     iconst_5      whereas in CLR there are instruction set to load number from 0 to 8 onto the stack as follows               ldc.i4.0     ldc.i4.1     ldc.i4.2     ldc.i4.3     ldc.i4.4     ldc.i4.5     ldc.i4.6     ldc.i4.7     ldc.i4.8      why there is no ldc.i4.9 and if ldc.i4 is there why we need the above opcodes? And there are others like these. I am eager to know what is the reason behind this difference between opcodes of different VMs? Is there any specific theory to devise these opcodes or it is totally driven by the characteristics of the VM itself or depends on the high-level language constructs?"}
{"_id": "154839", "title": "Why is HTML/Javascript minification beneficial", "text": "Why is HTML/Javascript minification beneficial when the HTTP protocol already supports gzip data compression? I realize that Javascript/HTML minification has the potential to significantly reduce the size of Javascript/HTML files by removing unnecessary whitespace, and perhaps renaming variables to a few letters each, but doesn't the LZW algorithm do _especially_ well when there are many repeated characters (e.g. lots of whitespace?) I realize that some Javascript minification tools do more than just reduce size. Google's closure compiler, for example, also tries to improve code performance by inlining functions and doing other analyses. But the _primary_ purpose of Javascript minification is usually to reduce file size. I also realize there are other reasons you might want to minify aside from performace, such as code obfuscation. But again, that reason is not usually emphasized as much as performance gain and file size reduction. For example, Closure Compiler is not advertised as an obfuscation tool, but as a code size reducer and download-speed enhancer. So, how much performance do you really gain from Javascript/HTML minification when you're already _significantly_ reducing file size with gzip compression?"}
{"_id": "154838", "title": "After how much line of code a function should be break down?", "text": "While working on existing code base, I usually come across procedures that contain **Abusive use of IF and Switch statements**. The procedures consist of **overwhelming code** , which I think require re-factoring badly. The situation gets worse when I identify that some of these are **recursive** as well. But this is always a matter of debate as the **code is working fine** and no one wants to wake up the dragon. But, everyone accepts it is very expensive code to manage. I am wondering if are any recommendations to determine if a particular Method is a culprit and needs a revisit/rewrite , so that it can broken down or polymophized in an effective manner. Are there any Metrics (like no. of lines in procedure) that can be used to identify such segment of code. The checklist or advice to convince everyone, will be great!"}
{"_id": "111920", "title": "Why is the formal definition of Big O notation formulated as such?", "text": "Consider the formal definition: > f(n) = O(g(n)) Why is it not: > f(n) = O(f(n)) or > f(n) = O(c*f(n)) since for the Big O analysis, `f(n)=2n` and `g(n)=n` are identical? I am confused by the function `f(n)` using another function. * * * ### Update Why isn' t the definition as follows: > f(n) <= c*abs(g(n)) What does the formal `O(g(x))` add to the definition? It seems like it overcomplicates things."}
{"_id": "230143", "title": "Why do some embedded projects shun cross-compiling?", "text": "As I've been getting into embedded systems I've noticed that some projects (Arch Arm and OpenBSD for example) frown upon cross compiling. What is the reasoning for this? Is a cross-compiled binary somehow different from a natively compiled one? OpenBSD suggests that building on the hardware ensures that the system is fully functional (and also self-hosting) and that makes complete sense. But do people actually develop and compile kernel drivers on the hardware they are developing for? It sounds very time consuming. **From OpenBSD FAQ:** \"Cross-compiling tools are in the system, for use by developers bringing up a new platform. However, they are not maintained for general use.\" -http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#ProbXComp I'll see if I can hunt down the IRC log where a developer from ArchLinux Arm told me that they don't cross compile, though they seem to have updated their info on cross-compiling with DistCC: http://archlinuxarm.org/developers/distcc-cross-compiling"}
{"_id": "160838", "title": "How to create a cool user interface for an excel file in java or C#?", "text": "I have an excel file with many sheets and relations between theme (ie, formulas that relates sheets to each other). I wanna create the user interface for this excel file.in other words I wanna create desktop application that has many tabs and menus and user by selecting tabs or menus,sees corresponding sheet from excel file in the form (in the application interface) and can data entries and see the results in other tabs from other sheets.also I wanna create cool ui for the application. How I can do this? Note: I am using Eclipse-jee-indigo for java and Microsoft visual studio 2010 for C#. Microsoft visual studio has also toolbox to create GUI for C# applications. and also there are many GUI designer like jgoodies as eclipse plugin and dotnetbar for C#."}
{"_id": "160839", "title": "Best Practices when extending a project", "text": "I have to extend a web application for a customer, there is no documentation of the current app, no analysis and even worse, there is no technical support or management. The client gives me a list of his expectations and nothing more. What's best practice to begin such a project?"}
{"_id": "230148", "title": "Search technique - multiple hits, prioritise results", "text": "I have developed a search algorithm, which basically matches records on 3 different criteria types. Name, Address, and Keyword(s). \"doh\" , will find:   * Name: doh    * Address: re    * Keywords: me * * *   * Name: re   * Address: doh    * Keywords: me * * *   * Name: re   * Address: me   * Keywords: doh Now, when two or more records have a match, I am basically prioritising a single found entity, by means of checking how many times it was found. My problem is, a single query will always only find one record, even it it matches on more than one criteria, so no prioritization can take place. I am currently building a single query, including all the keywords, for all 3 criteria fields. (Multiple `AND / OR` statements) My current query looks like this: **Search Term:** something somewhere shiny **Formulated Query:**               select * from table where ((cl_address LIKE @something OR cl_name LIKE @something     OR cl_key_words LIKE @something) OR (cl_address LIKE @somewhere OR cl_name LIKE     @somewhere OR cl_key_words LIKE @somewhere) OR (cl_address LIKE @shiny OR cl_name LIKE      @shiny OR cl_key_words LIKE @shiny))      To solve this, I would have to run a query for every criteria, for every keyword, for every address field, for every name... This can result in multiple of 10 queries per search... although it \"would\" work... How do the big boys do this? P.S. The above is my own brain child... and not based on anything other than my own logic.. which may, or may not, be flawed :-)"}
{"_id": "208801", "title": "Is it a row or a record (or a tuple)", "text": "1. If I look at a database table for editing - is it made up of rows or records?   2. If I write some sql and then look at the result is this made up of the same elements as the answer to 1.?   3. Is it the case that they are all rows but in very specific circumstances they are also records? * * * **EDIT**   A recent article by Itzik Ben-Gan prompted my question and I see quite a **_discussion on dba.stackexchange_**. In that article Aaron Bertrand brought up the same Itzik quote from his \"Training Kit (Exam 70-461): Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012\" > As an example of incorrect terms in T-SQL, people often use the terms > \u201cfield\u201d and \u201crecord\u201d to refer to what T-SQL calls \u201ccolumn\u201d and \u201crow,\u201d > respectively. Fields and records are physical. Fields are what you have in > user interfaces in client applications, and records are what you have in > files and cursors. Tables are logical, and they have logical rows and > columns."}
{"_id": "234652", "title": "Why can't a User Story be attached to more than one Feature?", "text": "I'm using Features to document the features as we originally communicated them to our client at proposal stage. I now want to create User Stories that relate to the features so that I can easily map our stories back to the proposal. Many of the stories naturally map across features, but Team Foundation Server (TFS) doesn't let me give a Story more than one Parent feature. Is this because I'm \"doing it wrong\" or is it more a limitation of TFS at the moment?"}
{"_id": "38238", "title": "What are arguments for Commercial Off the shelf (COTS) products?", "text": "* Why should a company invest in a Commercial Off the shelf (COTS) product?   * Is it the cost of in-house development, support or are there other reasons to not buy an COTS product?  By Commercial Off the shelf (COTS) products I mean products such as SharePoint, SAP, MS Dynamics. Not Word/Excel/Outlook. By company I refer to a large enterprise."}
{"_id": "233168", "title": "Is a programmer professionality bound to the language?", "text": "I hear people saying that _\"a true programmer is not bound to a programming language, because programming goes beyond that\"_ , and albeit agreeing on the premise, i consider my professionality pretty bound to the languages i know. So i would say that this statement is practically false. Before this question goes closed, what is your opinion?"}
{"_id": "43367", "title": "Are programmers tied to their code?", "text": "Assuming you are working for a company or in a team of developers, is the code bound to the person who did it? When someone develops a particular functionality or an area of the application, is this person the only one who can, is allowed or is just able to make changes to it? I personally think that a well-done piece of code or program should be easily modified by any programmers, but what about what you see in your environment? At my work, I'd say that the majority of the code can be modified by anyone (that's what coding standards are for right?). There are some things though that are 'property' of some coworkers like the module that handles the pay or some important functionality of the production module (we are developing an ERP system). What about your work place? Am I the only one living this?"}
{"_id": "174836", "title": "Grid Game Algorithm", "text": "Problem Link - http://www.iarcs.org.in/inoi/2009/zco2009/zco2009-1a.php You have to find the path with the maximum weight, from the top-left cell to the bottom-right cell. It could've been solved with a simple Dynamic Programming approach, if it were not for the special condition - you are allowed at most one move that can be either to the left or up. How do I now approach the problem with this special case? Also, I'm looking for a time-efficient approach. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "124881", "title": "Why are .NET ports called Iron*?", "text": "The C program Prog when ported to Java would be called JProg, a port to C++ would be Prog++ and a port to Python would be called PyProg. These names are all quite obvious. But the C# port would be called IronProg, which strikes me as strange. Why is it that programs ported to Visual Basic or C# are often called Iron*? Examples: IronPython, IronScheme, IronRuby, etc."}
{"_id": "124886", "title": "Do you find references invisible when you scan code, and are there any coding guidelines for their usage?", "text": "I have developed a habit of using safe C++ constructs where possible, but there is one place where I'm always not sure if it's better to use references or resort to good ol' pointers. Example code:               int FillFancyPointer(char *&ptr)     {         ptr = NULL;              char *tmp_ptr = static_cast<char*>(calloc(...));         if(!ptr)             return -1;             ptr = tmp_ptr;        return 0;     }      Later in code:               char *ptr = nullptr;     if(FillFancyPointer(ptr)>=0 && ptr)        Nice();      The problem with this, IMHO, is that the ptr appears to be read only variable when looking at the code, while in reality it is modified. The COM approach `ISmthn *ptr;`, `CoCreate(..., &ptr)` seems more pronounced. But it's also more error prone, as there is this `**` stuff everywhere. Come to think of it, output variables like `std::string` will also be masked with such approach. `int Foo(const string &in, string &inout)` Do you find references confusing in such places?"}
{"_id": "192112", "title": "Online stores service design", "text": "I am designing an online store service app with rails. Everyone who wants to make his/her own store can do it with this app by just signing up and choosing a domain. I want to make it as SaaS as it can be. Should I copy all store's files every time someone creates a new shop, or can I somehow keep these files in one place and just let every new store access them?"}
{"_id": "224160", "title": "How to structure integration tests per environment", "text": "I have a set of integration tests written using MSTest. I want to deploy my application to various environments and run my integration tests on that environment. There are certain configuration values that change per environment which are not contained in a config file. I am delivering a COM component on a legacy machine that doesn't support per application config files. I had thought to use TestCategories to split the tests into their various environments, and only running the tests in the appropriate category. However, I am running into difficulties when attempting to set up my test dependencies with the appropriate configuration values. For instance, I have the following code in my test class:               Private Property ObjectToBeTested as BusinessObject          Protected Sub New()         ObjectToBeTested = New BusinessObject(\"URL to my web service.\")     End Sub      Then my tests are split up like this:               <TestMethod()>     <TestCategory(\"DEV\")>     Public Sub MyDevTest()         ' code here     End Sub          <TestMethod()>     <TestCategory(\"SIT\")>     Public Sub MySitTest()         ' code here     End Sub      But doing it this way I have to change my URL and recompile for each environment I want to test in. I'm trying to figure out a better approach. I've thought to somehow use ClassInitialization, but I can't determine if I'm in a DEV or SIT test at that point. I'd like to have the initialization take place once at the class level based on the environment I'm in. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "150332", "title": "Quantum computers and Turing Machine", "text": "As far as I know, a Turing Machine is the widely used model in computational theory to know whether something could be computed and if computed can they can be computed in finite time (P, NP, NPSpace). But I have the following doubts:   1. Is a Turing Machine essentially a black-box model where a set of inputs give a set of outputs such that there could be no interaction during computation? By no interaction, I mean that during computation the variables wouldn't be altered by an external factor.   2. As an extension to the above question, are non-deterministic functions Turing complete?   3. Is Turing Machine an efficient model for Quantum Computing? Going by what I have learned so far, my answers are:   1. Turing Machines cannot handle interaction and random behavior and it's not guaranteed even by Turing in his original paper.    2. Non-deterministic functions may bring Turing machines to a halt.   3. No since Turing machines cannot efficiently support the superposition of bits. **Note** I am not well-versed in either Computational Theory or Quantum Computing. So a lot of links and some beginner's stuff would be a lot helpful and reading this article inspired this question."}
{"_id": "228569", "title": "Is it normal for developers to suggest feature ideas to product owners?", "text": "I've started working as a developer fairly recently, having worked as a systems administrator before. My understanding of how a software development team using Agile functions is that the \"what we need to implement\" communication happens mostly in one direction, from the product owner to the developers. Developers can express their concerns to the product owner about technical debt, but coming up with feature ideas should not be one of their main responsibilities. The company I'm working at has a different view. To them, developers should not only go to the product owners of their own team to suggest feature ideas, but also to the product owners of other teams if they think they have something to contribute to that team's product. The idea is that we're all one big Team <company name>, and all developers should use their expertise to push features they think will be useful. Is such an approach \"normal\", for lack of a better word? Am I being too passive, should I take the initiative and start pushing ideas to product owners? Conversely, has the company got it completely wrong and I should look for employment elsewhere?"}
{"_id": "19008", "title": "Is it appropriate to offer a \"finders' fee\" to existing staff when looking for new staff?", "text": "A lot of big companies use recruiters to find new hires, and there's obviously an associated cost. Existing staff are likely to know people looking for work through their professional networks. The company could potentially save significant money if they found people this way. Obviously there are conflict-of-interest concerns to consider, but in general, **do you think it's appropriate for a company to offer a finders' fee for referring new hires?**"}
{"_id": "150336", "title": "Using \"off-paradigm\" coding practices in an existing codebase", "text": "Let's assume, for a second, that you're \"the boss\", or architect, or whatever position would permit you the authority to decide on the following question: You work on a product that's existed for a number of years and it's developed entirely in an imperative style/language. Let's also say that there is a feature or subsystem to be implemented that would benefit from a functional language/approach. A hypothetical example might be that the product is implemented in C# and the subsystem/feature could be implemented in F#. So your dev, who's a proficient F# developer, comes to you and says \"I want to write this subsystem/feature in F#\". Do you say yes, or no? Why or why not?"}
{"_id": "103250", "title": "What kind of degree do I need to become a mobile application developer?", "text": "I am interested in changing careers and becoming a mobile app developer. I've been trying to teach myself how to build mobile apps using HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and appmobi. I really want to become a mobile application developer, but need some guidance as to what kind of degree and/or certificate I should get in order to get a good job. I already have an undergraduate degree - Bachelors of Science in Experimental Psychology."}
{"_id": "65037", "title": "How useful is UML if you are a developer working alone in a project", "text": "How useful is UML if you are a developer working alone in a project?"}
{"_id": "64781", "title": "Which layers should reflect the domain language (if a domain language can strictly exist)?", "text": "This question relates to a one I asked earlier: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5448574/under-what-conditions-could-we- justify-an-attempt-to-introduce-a-one-size-fits-al When re-reading \"Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software\" by Eric Evans, I noticed that the possibility of achieving a common terminology (domain language) is taken for granted. Where does a domain language begin? Which code layers (or whatever the grouping) should reflect this domain language?"}
{"_id": "64785", "title": "What are the advantages of using eScrum?", "text": "Why should I use this software instead of, say, Microsoft Project? What kind of level of familarisation with TFS does it demand? Is there anything similar I could use with SVN instead?"}
{"_id": "94351", "title": "If an \"either/or\" algorithm is \"Boolean\", what's a \"zero, one, or many\" algorithm?", "text": "In programming what do you call a choice that is not Boolean? ie. a Boolean condition is a true/false, either-or possibility. What do you call a condition with one or more possibilities? And, is there any difference if the condition is zero or more versus one or more? Thanks! \\--EDIT-- To add some clarity: Specifically I'm having a hard time when describing certain types of algorithms to non-programers. I'm a hobbyist programmer so I lack a lot of the vocabulary that comes with a computer science degree. If I present a user with an \"either-or\" choice, I find the users understand what I mean if I call this a \"boolean\" choice, even if it has more than two possibilities. For example: \"Pick a color: red, yellow, green, or blue.\" If I have something that's a \"one or more\" choice I don't know what to call that. For example: \"Select any colors that you like: red, yellow, green, blue.\" How do you (knowledgeable programmers) refer to these kinds of choices when you talk about them? \\-- SECOND EDIT -- As was pointed out in the comments I shouldn't even be saying \"Boolean\", I should be saying \"Binary.\" That makes perfect sense... So, is there such a thing as \"polynary\"?"}
{"_id": "153688", "title": "IT Consulting from US and German VAT Tax", "text": "I'm an independent IT consultant in the US, and I just completed some work for a German company, all done remotely from the US. I've sent them an invoice, but they are now asking if I have a VAT registration ID, which I don't have of course not being in Europe. Do I have to do anything about the German VAT tax? Is it up to the company I worked for to sort this out?"}
{"_id": "90848", "title": "Is outsourcing (offshoring) disloyal?", "text": "I ask this from everyone's perspective. If you are in America and you outsource to offshore programmers, are you disloyal to your countrymen? If you are in India and you outsource to offshore programmers, are you disloyal to your countrymen? This question applies to all programmers and people in a position to hire programmers. I happen to be American, and so for me this means outsourcing to other countries like India and Mexico. With unemployment so high here at home, am I being disloyal to my fellow programmers, my countrymen, by outsourcing to other countries? This is a real dillema for me. Yes, either way I am providing for someone's family (either the American's or the Indian's). But if I outsource to offshore programmers, am I contributing to the problems here at home? As my business grows, hiring questions like this are becoming more urgent for me to figure out. I want to do the right thing. Also note that this question is _NOT_ asking \"Is outsourcing effective\". This question is \"all things being equally effective, is it disloyal\" . . . Also note that disloyal might not be the best word, but you get my meaning. Feel free to edit or make suggestions to make this question better."}
{"_id": "11785", "title": "Is it ethical to duplicate user licenses if the same person is going to be using it?", "text": "I was talking with someone today and this discussion came up. Suppose you purchase some software and X user licenses for it. You then want to install another instance of the software, however the company tells you that you need to buy another X licenses to use the 2nd installation. Is it ethical to duplicate the licenses since the same X users are going to be using them? (the security on the program we were talking about is not very good) **EDIT** Licenses are per-concurrent-user. In this situation users would (generally) not be logged into both installations at once. Regardless, we would keep the number of users logged in between the two installations limited to the number of licenses we purchased."}
{"_id": "235010", "title": "Inheritance vs 'specification' by fields", "text": "I'm currently reading 'Head first design patterns', and already the first chapter threw some questions towards me. This chapter introduces the 'prefer composition over inheritance' design principle, by explaining the 'Strategy- Pattern'. My question isn't about the pattern, but about a much more 'simple' thing. In the book there is an abstract Duck class, from which a hand full of other duck classes are (like e.g. 'Rubber-' or 'Redhead-Duck') inheriting. All of these ducks got a 'display' and 'quack' method. The 'display' method is what should be differernt in every special duck class (because every duck looks different, as the book says).               abstract class Duck     {         public void display();         public void quack()         {             //Quack here         }     }          class RubberDuck extends Duck     {         @Override         public void display()         {             //Display a 'Rubber-Duck'         }     }          class RedheadDuck extends Duck     {         @Override         public void display()         {             //Display a 'Redhead-Duck'         }     }      But my question is: Wouldn't it make much more sense to have a field inside a (non-abstract) Duck class, which contains the displaying information (a picture or a 3D-model for example) rather than inheriting from an abstract duck class?               class Duck     {         private String duckName;         private Picture duckPicture;              public Duck(String name, Picture picture)         {             this.duckName = name;             this.duckPicture = picture;         }              public void quack()         {             //Quack here         }         public void display()         {             //Show duck here, according to the 'duckPicture' field         }              //More methods here, maybe a getter for the 'duckName' field     }      What do you think about this? Does it make sense to have a abstract duck class and inherit from it or would you prefer my second attempt?"}
{"_id": "90844", "title": "Would you keep convincing your management some better practices if he keeps screwing things up", "text": "My manager, an enthusiastic programmer, is full of good energy to program. But he has a ... habit were he will be negligent in meetings if he can't understand the issue or argument. As a result, he screws up a couple of things. For example: * * * When we were talking about the design process for REST web services, I suggested that we write down the specification of REST web services first and then start implementing. He insisted that if we could use JAX-RS to implement the reusable component, then documentation for the specification would not be a priority. I said that reusable components would be a problem if we changed the specification of REST web service and tried to upgrade the systems which uses these components. He didn't understand or care what I was talking about. After the JAX-RS API was released and used in other projects, he realized that something was wrong in design of the Java classes. He wanted **to change the Java interface of the client API (annotated with JAX-RS)** but didn't know how to upgrade systems that used it, so he decided to write a whole new API. The new API was a disaster because of lack of documentation and building with his intuition. Finally, the API of REST web service he finished did not correspond with the specification of REST web service on the server. We modified our projects to use the new API. Our projects broke, we found the problems and he fixed them; end of story. * * * This may be a problem of communication (always communication), but he doesn't care about technical things that he is not familiar with - yet he used to write code intuitively. Should I keep convincing him of better practices I am experienced with or just do my work? This is not an isolated incident."}
{"_id": "215497", "title": "Why isn't there a typeclass for functions?", "text": "In a learning problem I've been messing around with, I realised I needed a typeclass for functions with operations for applying, composing etc. Reasons...   1. It can be convenient to treat a representation of a function as if it were the function itself, so that applying the function implicitly uses an interpreter, and composing functions derives a new description.   2. Once you have a typeclass for functions, you can have derived typeclasses for special kinds of functions - in my case, I want invertible functions. For example, functions that apply integer offsets could be represented by an ADT containing an integer. Applying those functions just means adding the integer. Composition is implemented by adding the wrapped integers. The inverse function has the integer negated. The identity function wraps zero. The constant function cannot be provided because there's no suitable representation for it. Of course it doesn't need to spell things as if it the values were genuine Haskell functions, but once I had the idea, I thought a library like that must already exist and maybe even using the standard spellings. But I can't find such a typeclass in the Haskell library. I found the Data.Function module, but there's no typeclass - just some common functions that are also available from the Prelude. So - why isn't there a typeclass for functions? Is it \"just because there isn't\" or \"because it's not so useful as you think\"? Or maybe there's a fundamental problem with the idea? The biggest possible problem I've thought of so far is that function application on actual functions would probably have to be special-cased by the compiler to avoid a looping problem - in order to apply this function I need to apply the function application function, and to do that I need to call the function application function, and to do that... **More Clues** Example code to show what I'm aiming for...               {-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-}     {-# LANGUAGE FlexibleInstances #-}     {-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-}          --  In my first version, Doable only had the one argument f. This version     --  seemed to be needed to support the UndoableOffset type.     --     --  It seems to work, but it also seems strange. In particular,     --  the composition function - a and b are in the class, but c isn't,     --  yet there's nothing special about c compared with a and b.     class Doable f a b where       fwdApply :: f a b -> a -> b       compDoable :: f b c -> f a b -> f a c          --  In the first version, I only needed a constraint for     --  Doable f a b, but either version makes sense.     class (Doable f a b, Doable f b a) => Undoable f a b where       bwd      :: f a b -> f b a            bwdApply :: f a b -> b -> a       bwdApply f b = fwdApply (bwd f) b          --  Original ADT - just making sure I could wrap a pair of functions     --  and there were no really daft mistakes.     data UndoableFn a b = UFN { getFwd :: a -> b, getBwd :: b -> a }          instance Doable UndoableFn a b where       fwdApply = getFwd       compDoable f g = UFN ((getFwd f) . (getFwd g)) ((getBwd g) . (getBwd f))          instance Undoable UndoableFn a b where       bwd f    = UFN (getBwd f) (getFwd f)       bwdApply = getBwd          --  Making this one work led to all the extensions. This representation     --  can only represent certain functions. I seem to need the typeclass     --  arguments, but also to need to restrict which cases can happen, hence     --  the GADT. A GADT with only one constructor still seems odd. Perhaps     --  surprisingly, this type isn't just a toy (except that the whole thing's     --  a toy really) - it's one real case I need for the exercise. Still a     --  simple special case though.     data UndoableOffset a b where       UOFF :: Int -> UndoableOffset Int Int          instance Doable UndoableOffset Int Int where       fwdApply (UOFF x) y = y+x       compDoable (UOFF x) (UOFF y) = UOFF (x+y)          instance Undoable UndoableOffset Int Int where       bwdApply (UOFF x) y = y-x       bwd (UOFF x) = UOFF (-x)          --  Some value-constructing functions     --  (-x) isn't shorthand for subtraction - whoops.     undoableAdd :: Int -> UndoableFn Int Int     undoableAdd x = UFN (+x) (\\y -> y-x)          undoableMul :: Int -> UndoableFn Int Int     undoableMul x = UFN (*x) (`div` x)          --  With UndoableFn, it's possible to define an invertible function     --  that isn't invertible - to break the laws. To prevent that, need     --  the UFN constructor to be private (and all public ops to preserve     --  the laws). undoableMul is already not always invertible.     validate :: Undoable f a b => Eq a => f a b -> a -> Bool     validate f x = (bwdApply f (fwdApply f x)) == x          --  Validating a multiply-by-zero invertible function shows the flaw     --  in the validate-function plan. Must try harder.     main = do putStrLn . show $ validate (undoableAdd 3) 5               putStrLn . show $ validate (undoableMul 3) 5               --putStrLn . show $ validate (undoableMul 0) 5               fb1 <- return $ UOFF 5               fb2 <- return $ UOFF 7               fb3 <- return $ compDoable fb1 fb2               putStrLn $ \"fwdApply fb1  3 = \" ++ (show $ fwdApply fb1  3)               putStrLn $ \"bwdApply fb1  8 = \" ++ (show $ bwdApply fb1  8)               putStrLn $ \"fwdApply fb3  2 = \" ++ (show $ fwdApply fb3  2)               putStrLn $ \"bwdApply fb3 14 = \" ++ (show $ bwdApply fb3 14)      The application involves a kind of unification where unified values aren't equal, but are related via those invertible functions - Prolog-style logic but with `a = f(b)` constraints rather than `a = b`. Most of the composition will result from optimizing a union-find structure. The need for inverses should be obvious. If no item in a unified set has an exact value, then a particular item can only be quantified relative to another item in that unified set. That's why I don't want to use \"real\" functions - computing those relative values. I could drop the whole function aspect and just have absolute and relative quantities - I probably only need numbers/vectors and `(+)` \\- but my inner architecture astronaut wants his fun. The only way I break the links apart again is via backtracking, and everything is pure - union-find will be done using keys into an `IntMap` as \"pointers\". I have simple union-find working, but as I haven't added the invertible functions yet, there's no point listing it here. **Reasons I can't use Applicative, Monad, Arrow etc** The main operations I need the function abstraction class to provide are application and composition. That sounds familiar - e.g. the `Applicative` `(<*>)`, `Monad` `(>>=)` and `Arrow` `(>>>)` are all composition functions. However, the types that implement the function abstraction in my case will contain some data structure that represents a function, but which isn't (and can't contain) a function, and which can only represent some limited set of functions. As I mentioned in the explanation of the code, sometimes I can only quantify one item relative to another because no item in a \"unified\" cluster has an exact value. I want to be able to derive a representation of that function, which in general will be the composition of several provided functions (walking up to a common ancestor in the union/find tree) and of several inverse functions (walking back down to the other item). Simple case - where the original \"functions\" are limited to integer-offset \"functions\", I want the composed result as an integer-offset \"function\" - add the component offsets. That's a big part of why the composition function needs to be in the class as well as the application function. This means I cannot provide the operations `pure`, `return` or `arr` for my types, so I can't use `Applicative`, `Monad` or `Arrow`. This isn't a failure of those types - it's a mismatch of abstractions. The abstraction I want is of a simple pure function. There's no side-effecting, for example, and no need to build a convenient notation for sequencing and composing the functions other than an equivalent of the standard (.) that applies to all functions. I _could_ instance `Category`. I'm confident that all my functiony-things will be able to provide an identity, though I probably don't need it. But as `Category` doesn't support application, I'd still need a derived class anyway to add that operation."}
{"_id": "121908", "title": "Template Functions and Function templates in C++", "text": "I came across a question which asked the difference between Function Templates and Template Functions in C++ and also Template Classes and Class Templates. I was under the impression that Function Templates and Template Functions were the same thing. Is there any difference between the two, if so what is it?"}
{"_id": "82609", "title": "How To Choose Between Different Methods of Handling/Raising Events?", "text": "In situations where I need to write observer/subscriber code, how would I choose between the following approaches? A) Declaring an event that simply notifies a client something happens but requires the client to make a query for data e.g.               class SoothSayer{              int DaysUntilApocalypse{get;}              event EventHandler<EventArgs> TheEndIsNigh;          }      B) Declaring an event with specific _XXXEventArgs_ containing the event data e.g.               class SoothSayer{              event EventHandler<ApocalypsePendingEventArgs> TheEndIsNigh     }          class ApocalypsePendingEventArgs:EventArgs{         int DaysLeft{get;}     }      C) Using a callback rather than an event e.g.               class SoothSayer{              public SoothSayer(Action<int> endIsNighCallback){             _endIsNightCallBack = endIsNighCallback;         }     }"}
{"_id": "150489", "title": "Filesystem like permissions for C++ type-members", "text": "## Abstract ( **tl;dr** ) _Please read the full question, this is awfully simplified:_   How can unix file permission style restrictions be applied to inter-type data/control flows, allowing fine-grained access to some class-members for some groups of classes? ## Background information If you think about unix file systems and permissions, there is a diverse way of encoding file-access privileges of users (especially if you also consider FACL). For example, if a directory contains 3 files, they could belong to several users, and different other users may have restricted permissions:               -rwxr-xr--  jean-luc  staff    engage.sh     -rw-r-----  william   crew     roster.txt     -rw-------  beverly   beverly  patients.txt      ## Core idea As you can see, depending on the groups a particular user is in, different access levels are allowed. For example, `crew`members are allowed to read `roster.txt`, which belongs to `william`, but guests who presumably do not belong to `crew` cannot. More importantly, the group `crew` can contain many people. So I was thinking that there is some similarity to access permissions inside object oriented languages like C++ if you think of types (classes) as users. Although a function can only be executed, but not read, the `rwx` flags represent meaningful descriptions for class members. A data member can be read (`r`) and written (`w`) to, perhaps via accessors, while member functions may be executed (`x`) or not. However, in C++ and other object oriented languages (I know of), this is more or less an all or nothing thing, if we leave out inheritance for a second; If class `William` makes his member `Txt roster;` public, everybody will see it. If he makes it private, nobody except himself will see it. He may add one or more friends, `friend JeanLuc;` but then they will see all his private members (the equivalent of granting `user:jean-luc:rwx` to all his files, in FACL lingo).   This is entirely orthogonal to inheritance -- `JeanLuc` and `William` are not part of the same hierarchy, they are not related. **So the main idea would be to allow group-based access restrictions, as a generalisation of private/public. Allowing finer grained inter-class access to member functions and member data.** I believe this idiom could help maintainability/readability, as it adds additional facets to restrict interaction permissions. As with operating systems, where this adds an important layer of security to the system, the same familiar pattern could add safety to a C++ project. ## Thoughts about representation in C++ However, I'm at a loss of thinking of a good way to represent this. You could decompose `William` objects into several objects of subtypes: `William_Crew`, `William_William` and so forth, representing the respective groups. This seems to be horribly ugly. Another idea could be dedicated types with forwarder functions, representing the individual groups, like this:               class Crew { // group class       // in this group are:       friend JeanLuc;       friend Geordi;       friend Beverly;       // ...       static Txt getRoster(William*);     };     class William {       friend Crew; // Problem: Crew has full access (rwx)       Txt roster;     };      But each group would have to be tailored to a particular class to be used with, which would seem to be massively redundant, if the group is used by several users/classes. ## Question The approaches I provided are not great (to put it mildly), and I'm sure they wouldn't work as intended. I'm not sure if this is a novel/stupid/well-known idea, but **I wonder how you could implement this with the features provided by the C++ language**. Are there objective arguments why this would or would not be useful/helpful?"}
{"_id": "65783", "title": "How much does your company spends on books?", "text": "It seems to me that buying and reading books is one of the most important investments a developer can make, and one of the most important investment a company can spend on a developer. There were a lot of times when I was confronted with a tricky problem, and what I did was to flip through an algorithm book and I would stumble upon an answer. And there were a lot of times when I tackled a problem head-on without first doing a literature search, only to find out later that my solution sucked and a proper solution had already been written down elsewhere. But it also seems to me that a lot of companies view books as an expense and thus must be cut down and \"budgeted\". Sad, but true. How much your company spends on books?"}
{"_id": "213269", "title": "How to refer to <% in asp.net", "text": "I've realized that I refer to `<%@` as 'angle bracket percent at' and `<%$` as 'angle bracket percent dollar', But this is very clumsy. I think `<%$` should be referred to as some sort of bind, I'm not 100% sure what `<%@` does, and Google doesn't like that as a search term. How do programmers normal label these terms?"}
{"_id": "150482", "title": "Interfacing application code with unit tests", "text": "I am working on a project in which we have to implement and unit test some new module. I had a quite clear architecture in mind so I quickly wrote down the main classes and methods and then we started writing unit tests. While writing the tests we had to make quite a few modifications to the original code, such as   * Making private methods public in order to test them   * Adding extra methods to access private variables   * Adding extra methods to inject mock objects that should be used when the code runs inside a unit test. Somehow I have the feeling that these are symptoms that we are doing something wrong, e.g.   1. the initial design was wrong (some functionalities should have been public from the beginning),   2. the code was not designed properly for being interfaced with unit tests (maybe due to the fact that we started to design the unit tests when quite a few classes had been designed already),   3. we are implementing unit tests the wrong way (e.g. unit tests should only directly test / address the public methods of an API, not the private ones),   4. a mixture of the above three points, and maybe some additional issues I have not thought about. Since I have some experience with unit testing but I am far from being a guru, I would be very interested to read your thoughts regarding these issues. Beside the above general questions, I have some more specific, technical questions: **Question 1.** Does it make sense to directly test a private method m of a class A and even make it public in order to test it? Or should I assume that m is indirectly tested by unit tests covering other, public methods that call m? **Question 2.** If an instance of class A contains an instance of class B (composite aggregation), does it make sense to mock B in order to test A? My first idea was that I should not mock B because the B instance is part of the A instance, but then I started to doubt about this. My argument against mocking B is the same as for 1: B is private wrt A and only used for its implementation, therefore mocking B seems like I am exposing private details of A like in (1). But maybe these problems indicate a design flaw: maybe we should not use composite aggregation but a plain association from A to B. **Question 3.** In the above example, if we do decide to mock B, how do we inject the B instance into A? Here are some ideas we had:   * Inject the B instance as an argument to the A constructor instead of creating the B instance in the A constructor.   * Pass a BFactory interface as an argument to the A constructor and let A use the factory to create its private B instance.   * Use a BFactory singleton that is private to A. Use a static method A::setBFactory() to set the singleton. When A wants to create the B instance it uses the factory singleton if it is set (the test scenario), it creates B directly if the singleton is not set (the production code scenario). The first two alternatives seem cleaner to me, but they require changing the signature of the A constructor: changing an API just to make it more testable seems awkward to me, is this a common practice? The third one has the advantage that it does not require changing the signature of the constructor (the change to the API is less invasive), but it requires calling the static method setBFactory() before starting the test, which is IMO error-prone (implicit dependency on a method call for the tests to work properly). So I do not know which one we should choose."}
{"_id": "215143", "title": "How does TDD address interaction between objects?", "text": "TDD proponents claim that it results in better design and decoupled objects. I can understand that writing tests first enforces the use of things like dependency injection, resulting in loosely coupled objects. However, TDD is based on unit tests - which test individual methods and not the integration between objects. And yet, TDD expects design to evolve from the tests themselves. So how can TDD possibly result in a better design at the integration (i.e. inter-object) level when the granularity it addresses is finer than that (individual methods)?"}
{"_id": "215140", "title": "Entity Framework and distributed Systems", "text": "I need some help or maybe only a hint for the right direction. I've got a system that is sperated into two applications. An existing VB.NET desktop client using Entity Framework 5 with code first approach and a asp.net Web Api client in C# that will be refactored right yet. It should be possible to deliver OData. The system and the datamodel is still involving and so migrations will happen in undefined intervalls. So I'm now struggling how to manage my database access on the web api system. So my favourd approch would be us Entity Framework on both systems but I'm running into trouble while creating new migrations. Two solutions I've thought about: **Shared Data Access dll** The first idea was to separate the data access layer to a seperate project an reference from each of the systems. The context would be the same as long as the dll is up to date in each system. This way both soulutions would be able to make a migration. The main problem ist that it is much more complicate to update a web api system than it is with the client Click Once Update Solution and not every migration is important for the web api. This would couse more update trouble and out of sync libraries **Database First on Web Api** The second idea was just to use the database first approch an on web api side. But it seems that all annotations will be lost by each model update. Other solutions with stored procedures have been discarded because of missing OData support and maintainability. Does anyone run into same conflicts or has any advices how such a problem can be solved!"}
{"_id": "154309", "title": "Structuring a rails application with static data", "text": "I'm working on a rails application, and so far I've focused on the api and the functionality. But now I'm more and more reaching a point where I will want to add static content, descriptions of the software and help information. Information that is generally in a CMS system. How do I in the best way structure this so I can still work with the application. Yet maintaining the look and feel of the rails application? Do write a CMS in my app? That seems a bit far fetched. Are there any Gems that do this? What is the de facto standard for architecting this scenario?"}
{"_id": "69005", "title": "Is programming in Python faster than in C, C++ or Java?", "text": "There's a widespread belief among programmers that the more dynamic and loosely typed the language, the more productive the programmer will be in it. Guido van Rossum wrote about programming productivity using python in 1998 and searching around the web I still see people referencing this exact claim: > Syntactically, Python code looks like executable pseudo code. Program > development using Python is 5-10 times faster than using C/C++, and 3-5 > times faster than using Java. In many cases, a prototype of an application > can be written in Python without writing any C/C++/Java code. Often, the > prototype is sufficiently functional and performs well enough to be > delivered as the final product, saving considerable development time. Other > times, the prototype can be translated in part or in whole to C++ or Java -- > Python's object-oriented nature makes the translation a straightforward > process. Has this issue been properly scientifically evaluated? If not for python then perhaps for sibling scripting languages like ruby, perl or php? I'm not looking for rationalizations, analogies, or explanations why it could potentially be hard to answer, unless it's the opinion of researchers or experts that has taken the time to look into the issue. I initially asked this question over at skeptics.SE, and someone suggested I should ask it here too."}
{"_id": "154305", "title": "Where does a scrum master draw the line with blocking issues?", "text": "I understand the concept that a Scrum Master should remove impediments. However I'd like to know where exactly the line should be drawn. For example a team member might have an impediment whereby they need to get support to log onto a live server and get some details. They can't progress a bit of work until this is done. Its a blocking issue essentially. But should it be the Scrum master that goes to the Ops department and does this for the developer or if the developer can do it themselves should they just do it themselves. At what point does an issue become a blocking issue?"}
{"_id": "124263", "title": "How good is The Algorithm Design Manual 2nd edition compared to the 1st edition for a beginner?", "text": "I'm looking for a good book on algorithms and data structures for a beginner. I was reading some reviews of these two books: Introduction to Algoritms and The Algorithm Design Manual. Introduction to Algorithms is widely recognized but at the same time many people consider a great book but only as a bible/reference/encyclopedia. The Algorithm Design Manual seems to be considered too basic, \"a shopping catalog of algorithms\" and some people recommend against it. The thing is those kind of opinions seems to be based on the 1st edition. According to author of the book: > \"This newly expanded and updated second edition continues to take the > \"mystery\" out of designing algorithms, and analyzing their efficacy and > efficiency. Expanding on the first edition, the book now serves as the > primary textbook of choice for algorithm design courses while maintaining > its status as the premier practical reference guide to algorithms for > programmers, researchers, and students.\" > > \"The second edition contains enough material to serve as the textbook for a > standard Introduction to Algorithms course. I assume the reader has > completed the equivalent of a second programming course, typically titled > Data Structures or Computer Science II.\" So my question is, what do you think about The Algorithm Design Manual 2nd edition for a beginner that wants to learn about algorithms and data structures? Is it actually better than the 1st edition for the task? Or do you think CLRS is a better option?"}
{"_id": "154301", "title": "Ways to break the \"Syndrome of the perfect programmer\"", "text": "I am probably not the only one that feel that way. But I have what I tend to call \"The syndrome of the perfect programmer\" which many might say is the same as being perfectionist but in this case it's in the domain of programming. However, the domain of programming is a bit problematic for such a syndrome. Have you ever felt that when you are programming you're not confident or never confident enought that your code is clean and good code that follows most of the best practices ? There so many rules to follow that I feel like being overwhelmed somehow. Not that I don't like to follow the rules of course I am a programmer and I love programming, I see this as an art and I must follow the rules. But I love it too, I mean I want and I love to follow the rules in order to have a good feeling of what im doing is going the right way.. but I only wish I could have everything a bit more in \"control\" regarding best practices and good code. Maybe it's a lack of organization? Maybe it's a lack of experience? Maybe a lack of practice? Maybe it's a lack of something else someone could point out? Is there any way to get rid of that syndrome somehow ?"}
{"_id": "191778", "title": "using ant colony algorithm to create cross word game", "text": "I have difficulty to learn about ant colony algorithm (ACO), I have read about generating crossword game using (genetic algorithm) GA.I Know both of GA ant ACO usually used for optimization, but my question is Is possible if create crossword game generator using ACO and how it can work for optimization in this case?"}
{"_id": "191777", "title": "Problems for Sample Code", "text": "I was recently asked to write some sample code that solves a difficult technical problem. I've been mulling over what kinds of problems might be good to solve in code to demonstrate my skills in such a situation. I've seen similar posts discussing what reviewers are looking for in the context of code interviews, but I'm interested in the specific problems that might be good to solve. For example, this blogger offers the following sample code ideas:   * A utility class for logging events and errors either to a file or the system event logs with a configurable level of verbosity.   * A set of stored procedures for maintaining and searching data in a hierarchical tree structure.   * An implementation of the singleton design pattern to serialize access to a resource file.   * A calculator function that takes a single string of input that includes numbers and operators and returns the numeric result of the equation. Don\u2019t forget input validation, error handling (divide by zero), and operator precedence concerns!   * A method that takes a URL to a web site and a local path and downloads all image files based on tags.   * Create a method that takes a keyword, message, and login credentials and uses the Twitter API to respond to post the message as response to any friends of the account specified. I'd like to see these types of examples, perhaps with a harder technical problem. Ideally example problems would support demonstrating understanding of Java constructs/data structures and the Mode-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm. **UPDATE** I was able to find a nice website called Project Euler which has all kinds of neat problems, many of which could fit this need. It has some great brain food to go along with whatsisname's answer. Obviously the goal here is to find samples of the kinds the problems that would be good to solve in this situation, _not_ to copy and paste code (especially if it is not yours!)."}
{"_id": "148477", "title": "How do I document necessarily complex code structures?", "text": "If I have a piece of code that is mathematically or structurally quite complex and irreducibly so, how would I go about documenting this piece of code? In particular, how can I ensure that someone who may not have the mathematical or architectural skills that I do can understand it from the documentation? Should I document all of the math too? Link to a tutorial? Do some visual aid linkage in the case of complex structures?"}
{"_id": "148471", "title": "Are comments considered a form of documentation?", "text": "When I am writing small scripts for myself, I stack my code high with comments (sometimes I comment more than I code). A lot of people I talk to say that I should be documenting these scripts, even though they are personal, so that if I ever do sell them, I would be ready. But aren't comments a form of documentation? Wouldn't this:               $foo = \"bar\"; # this is a comment     print $foo; # this prints \"bar\"      be considered documentation, especially if a developer is using my code? Or is documentation considered to be outside of the code itself?"}
{"_id": "118352", "title": "Good techniques to speed up database execution", "text": "I have an ASP.Net application that is using a MySQL database. My queries are not executing as fast as I would like them too. Are there some standard ways to increase the speed of a MySQL database short of putting it on a faster PC. For example, (I'm not sure if these are true or not) using prepared statements over transactional SQL. Using foreign keys if applicable? Things along those lines. EDIT: The database is on a remote machine"}
{"_id": "123886", "title": "Is CRTP used much? and why it is/isn't?", "text": "I'm thinking about curiously recurring template pattern. I find it quite useful, and it's pretty well adjustable for many tasks. But I have to admit, I don't see much of CRTP code in the wild. Is it hard to grasp? Are virtual functions easier overall? Shouldn't it be used for 90% of cases where virtual keyword appears?"}
{"_id": "195465", "title": "SOA - The four tenets", "text": "I'm reading about SOA and the four tenets required to make a SOA application. I have tried different sources, but the explanations are twisting. I'm searching for something that is a bit less abstract. Is my interpretation correct? The four tenets is:   1. Services have explicit boundaries   2. Services are autonomous   3. Services share schema and contract, not class   4. Services interoperate based on policy My interpretation is:   1. The methods that a client may use shall be easy to use and well defined.   2. Services shall not be dependent on others. Change of one service shall not affect another in any way.   3. A scheme represent the data that will be sent, contract contains the defined methods for a service. To make a system loosely coupled, you share scheme and contract instead of classes and objects.   4. A policy to use a service may be that a particular type of binding is required so it may be used. Anyone that wants to use this service must connect to it with this type of binding."}
{"_id": "195464", "title": "Approach to use for user email address change in application?", "text": "As the title says, if the user wants change their email address in the application, in terms of programming, what approach (process) to use? Where do you store the new email address until the user will confirms it?"}
{"_id": "80607", "title": "Why are programming salaries higher than most other common \"educated\" careers?", "text": "I have wondered about this for a long time, and I haven't been able to find a suitable answer, even on this website. When comparing an average programmer's salary to other common careers, where education is mostly required, the salaries programmers receive is usually much higher. At least in the entry & mid-levels of the job scale. Even for programmers which don't have any sort of academic degree, the salary is very high. Try to compare it to beginning & mid-experienced lawyers, doctors, and teachers, for example. And it's not that programmers are a rarity nowadays. Programming resources are much more abundant than Law and Medicine. What do you think is the cause of this? ## EDIT: Just some statistics to backup my statement. **Please try to write a full, thorough answer, and not just \"ROI\" or \"Supply- and-Demand\". These simple answers don't cover the whole issue.**"}
{"_id": "52370", "title": "What is the etiquette in negotiating payment for a software development job?", "text": "The reason I'm taking a general business question and localize it to software development is that I'm curious as to whether there are certain trends/etiquette/nuances that are typical to our industry. For example, I can imagine two different attitudes employers may generally have to payment negotiations:   1. we'll give you the best offer so we can't really be flexible about it because we already pretty much gave you everything we can give you,      2. we'll give him an average offer and give in to a better one if forced to.  If you try to play hard ball in the first attitude it'll probably cost you the job because you ask for more than they can give you, however if you don't insist on better payment in the second one you'll get a worse offer. In short, when applying to a typical job in our industry what are the typical attitudes from employers on the offers they give, what is the correct way to ask for a better payment, do these things differ between different types of companies (for example startups vs well entrenched companies), and how do these things differ between different kinds of applicants (graduate vs student)?"}
{"_id": "97716", "title": "What to do when your \"failing\" project is actually \"successful\"?", "text": "What would you do if you were in a situation where the project you are working on is obviously built poorly and will have failures in the future and be a nightmare to maintain...but it is considered a \"success\" by management because the clients are happy? Should I just not care? Is it ok that the clients don't even realize they could have a better application than this? At what point do I stop caring about building it right and just go with the flow?"}
{"_id": "225015", "title": "How do I integrate a browser-based JavaScript unit testing framework into my workflow?", "text": "I'm wondering how I seamlessly include a JavaScript unit testing framework into my workflow. The context is, we have an existing data processing algorithm + webapp to display it, with no automated testing or continuous integration. We use Eclipse as our IDE. For the webapp JavaScript modification, it would be nice to add some unit tests, and qUnit looks straightforward, plenty of community support etc. Here's how I'm currently thinking the workflow would go:   * Branch the JavaScript code, check it out, modify it. Refactor it to make it more testable if needed.   * Write qUnit unit tests in accordance to the above tutorial.    * Start Tomcat in eclipse, run the qUnit test page.    * Open the browser, check that all the tests have passed.   * Commit the code back to the branch.    * Merge the branch back into to trunk.    * At this point there might have been a merge conflict, and so unit tests would need to be run again for the trunk to check that they're still working.  The issue here, it still seems a little cumbersome to be running the unit tests, several clicks involved to run and check the results. Now with the merge back to trunk issue, clearly a continuous integration solution like Jenkins would be good here, but given that that's out of the question for now, let's just focus on how we can make it easy to run the tests as a developer. Do you think I'm missing something here, or is what I'm proposing reasonable sensible?"}
{"_id": "193363", "title": "Distributed Issue Tracking", "text": "Distributed issue tracking seems like a belting idea to me, but it has never really taken off in a big way. Is there a good reason for that? ## I am aware of:   * bugz everywhere      * too complex to set up     * too many requirements     * reasonably successful, used by some large projects   * fossil      * tries to integrate too many things, and ends up being a slightly worse version of all of them - except maybe for the distributed issue tracking part, which is decent (probably best I have seen)   * several other smaller projects      * none of which have gained any traction I am thinking about making my own, but before I begin, I would like to know why none of the others have taken off in a big way. ## Anticipated issues: (I think they can all be overcome)   * merging distributed issues as they are updated is complex, as is merging any code files   * conversation continuity can be destroyed, as comments can come in at any time, perhaps not in the correct flow   * expectation of central server with issues up-to-date"}
{"_id": "162524", "title": "How to Properly Make use of Codeigniter's HMVC", "text": "I have been having problems wrapping my brain around how to properly utilize the modular extension for Codeigniter. From what I understand, modules should be entirely independent of one another so I can work on one module and not have to worry about what module my teammate is working on. I am building a frontend and a backend to my site, and am having confusion about how I should structure my applications. The first part of my question is should I use the app root controllers to run modules, or should users go directly to the modules by urls? IE: in my welcome.php               public function index()     {       $this->data['blog'] = Modules::run( 'blog' );       $this->data['main'] = Modules::run( 'random_image' );       $this->load->view('v_template', $this->data);     }          public function calendar()     {       $this->data['blog'] = Modules::run( 'blog' );       $this->data['main'] = Modules::run( 'calendar' );       $this->load->view('v_template', $this->data);     }      My second part of the question is should I create separate front/back end module folders               -config     -controllers       welcome.php       -admin         admin.php     -core     -helpers     -hooks     -language     -libraries     -models     -modules-back       -dashboard       -logged_in       -login       -register       -upload_images       -delete_images     -modules-front       -blog       -calendar       -random_image       -search     -views       v_template.php       -admin         av_template.php      Any help would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "16945", "title": "Is a Ruby 'Web App' designed differently than a PHP 'Web Site'?", "text": "From my understanding, Ruby is a language that can be used to creat desktop applications. How does this get converted into a 'Web App' - and is a 'Web App' really any different than a Web Site with interactivity?"}
{"_id": "95400", "title": "How do build time and unit test time compare?", "text": "Does this depend heavily on the type of project (e.g. scientific software vs banking system vs game)? If so, in which areas is the difference the highest and lowest? In your experience, is it safe to say that as a rule, the time it takes to run unit tests is at least one order of magnitude larger than that of building the software in the first place?"}
{"_id": "95407", "title": "What does Symfony Framework offer that Zend Framework does not?", "text": "I have professionally working with Zend Framework for about a year. No major complaints. With some modifications, it has done a good job. I'm beginning to work on a side project where I want to heavily rely on MongoDb and Doctrine. I thought it might be a good idea to broaden my horizons and learn another enterprise level framework. There seems to be a lot a buzz about Symfony. After quickly looking over the site and documentation, I must say I came away pretty underwhelmed. I'm woundering what, if anything, Symfony has to offer that Zend doesn't? What would the advantage be in choosing Symfony?"}
{"_id": "12252", "title": "Should universities put more emphasis on teaching their students about design patterns?", "text": "While I've heard about design patterns being mentioned in a few courses at uni, I know of only a single course which actually teaches design patterns. In almost all other areas (algorithms, parallelism, architecture, dynamic languages, paradigms, etc), there are several, often a basic course and an advanced course. Should universities put more emphasis about teaching their students about design patterns and provide more courses in design patters? Are lack of knowledge about design patterns common in just-graduated junior developers?"}
{"_id": "42185", "title": "Feeling a bit... under-challenged in my university course", "text": "I'm currently a sophomore at my university, majoring in Computer Science. Obviously, there are some programming courses as part of my curriculum. However, I'm feeling very underwhelmed by its progress. I've self-taught myself a lot and like to code in my spare time as a hobby. I'm currently in Computer Science II. I never took CS 1 because it seemed rather basic -- I asked someone in the department if they would override my CS 1 requirement if I passed their final (which I did with flying colors). Anyway, the class is going by quite slowly. It seems like the rest of the class has a hard time understanding some basic concepts, which the professor needs to keep going over to help them understand. Is this normal? Looking at the class schedule, I seem to know everything except for one or two things near the very end of the semester. Is there a different perspective I can look at this through so it doesn't seem so boring?"}
{"_id": "21186", "title": "Microsoft SDE Interview vs Microsoft SDET Interview and Resources to Study", "text": "I have always heard that SDE interviews are much harder to crack than SDET. Is it really true? I have also heard that if candidate doesnt do well in SDE interview he is also sometimes offered SDET position. How much truth is there into these talks? I would highly appreciate if someone would put good resources and guidelines for how to prepare for Microsoft interviews..which books to read, which notes, online programming questions websites, etc. Give as much info as possible. Thanks in advance to everyone for your valuable help and contribution."}
{"_id": "250825", "title": "Relation between projects and solutions in VS", "text": "We're about to start with a new software and there are mixed opinions on the organization of software. I'd be delighted to hear what others might have to say in regard to the presented options as well as what other consideration one might refer to when making such a decision.   1. Hierarchical approach   2. Interchangeable approach Approach #1 would consist of a single solution in VS with a number of projects connected to it (such as _Utilities_ , _Service_ , _Exporter_ , _Gui_ etc.). Everything would be in a single collection and the same root directory (for the solution file) and subdirectories (for the project files), so to speak. Approach #2 would be constituted primarily of a set of projects, not related to each other (other than the references, of course), while the solution's (or solutions', would we desire to create different setups for different deliveries) purpose would be solely to refer to the (external) projects collecting them in the GUI. There would be n+1 directories (one for each project's file and an additional one for the solution's file, or solutions' files later on). We've discussed the matter and listed the advantages of each approach and, although agreed on the facts, the team's members are not on the same page regarding which one to choose. We're a very democratic organization, so the decision needs to be persuasive to everybody (or at least a vast majority) and there won't be any from-above order from the boss. There's no prior code base and the financial consideration needs not to be addressed. Which approach is preferable? Which is more of a commonly applied standard in the industry? What considerations might one take to ensure the rigidity of the choice? # Edit It's also fully possible that our current project will be subject to the situation described in this question \\- both being the one that \"borrows\" projects from elsewhere as well as being the one that the projects are \"borrowed\" from."}
{"_id": "17099", "title": "Design Pattern Books, Papers or Resources for Non-Object Orientated Paradigms?", "text": "After viewing this video on InfoQ about functional design patterns I was wondering what resources are out there on design patterns for non-object orientated paradigms. There are plenty out there for the OO world (GOF, etc, etc) and for architecture (EoEAA, etc, etc) but I'm not aware of what's out there for functional, logic, or other programming paradigms. Is there anything? A comment during the video suggests possibly not - does anyone know better? (By the way, by design patterns I don't mean language features or data structures but higher level approaches to designing an application - as discussed in the linked video)"}
{"_id": "254562", "title": "In Perl, best way to insert a char every N chars", "text": "I would like to find the best way in Perl to insert a char every N chars in a string. Suppose I have the following :               my $str = 'ABCDEFGH';      I would like to insert a space every two chars, so that I get:               my $finalstr = 'AB CD EF GH';      The innocent way would be:               my $finalstr;     while ($str =~ s/(..)//) {         $finalstr .= $1.' ';     }      (But the last space does not make me happy.) Can we do better? Is it possible using a single substitution pattern s///, especially to use that same string $str (and not using $finalstr)? * * * The next step: do the same but with text before and after patterns to be cut (and to be kept, for sure), say for example '<<' and '>>':               my $str       = 'blah <<ABCDEFGH>> blah';     my $finalstr1 = 'blah <<AB CD EF GH>> blah';     my $finalstr2 = 'blah << AB CD EF GH >> blah';  # alternate"}
{"_id": "90152", "title": "JAVA IDE - Conditional Breakpoints", "text": "Does anyone know if there are any IDE's that can hit breakpoints on a condition? For example, if I'm looking through a large list or iterating through a map or something, I may want to only suspend execution when an ID == \"foo\" 1.) Is this even possible to implement for IDE's   2.) Are there any plugins available for Eclipse to do this now?"}
{"_id": "126910", "title": "Is recursive forking considered an anti-pattern?", "text": "I'm starting to tinker with process forking, just to get a feel for it. I thought I'd write an example where work is distributed among child processes and the results handed back to the parent; this way, it could be run in parallel on several processors. In my first attempt, I'm forking in a loop, which means that each time through, all the existing processes (the original, children, grandchildren, etc) produce another fork. This is causing me problems (memory consumption, rapid growth of the number of processes, keeping track of the pipes to hand data back up the chain, etc), and I'm wondering if I've stumbled on an anti-pattern. I **could** simply fork N children directly from the parent. I realize that it's common to fork and exec multiple times; for instance, terminal forks a shell, and the shell forks an editor. But **is it considered bad practice to fork \"recursively\" when the children are all of the same type?**"}
{"_id": "21456", "title": "Emacs-as-OS: obsolete?", "text": "In an attempt to reach at least beginner status with such a legendary editor, I have been coding in Emacs for the last two months. I try to keep an open heart, but I find myself continally disagreeing with one core design choice: that Emacs allow its users to never have to leave. In a 2010 world, I just think that every side feature of Emacs is hopelessly behind dedicated software:   * I would never use its built-in browser; Chrome is years ahead.   * I would never use its dired feature; Path Finder (Mac OS X) suits my needs.   * I would never use its built-in email; the Gmail web interface has more relevant features like Priority Inbox.   * Etc. Sure, I might occasionally dip into Emacs to use regexps, etc. for one of the above tasks, but other than regexps, I really see no reason to ever touch those side features. I'm a completely newbie, yet I have a strong gut feeling that Emacs-as-an-OS is obsolete. Emacs experts, do you think that Emacs' choice to be a comprehensive environment is the right choice for 2010 and the future? Are there particular peripheral features that are still at or ahead of their time compared to alternatives?"}
{"_id": "46956", "title": "What are your suggestions on learning how to think?", "text": "First of all, this is not the generic 'make me a better programmer' question, even though the outcome of asking this question might _seem_ similar to it. On programmers.SE, I've read and seen these get closed here, here, here, here, and here. We all know there are a multitude of generic suggestions to hone your programming skills (e.g reading SO, reading recommended books, following blogs, getting involved in open-source projects, etc.). This is **not** what I'm after. I also acknowledge the active readership on this web site and am hoping it works in my favour by yielding some great answers. From reading correspondence here, there appears to be a vast number of experienced people who are working, or have worked, programming-related fields. And most of you can convey thoughts in an eloquent, concise manner. **I've recently noticed the distinction between someone who's capable of programming and a programmer who can _really_ think**. I refuse to believe that in order to become great at programmer, we simply submit ourselves to a lifetime of sponge-like behaviour (i.e absorb everything related to our field by reading, listening, watching, etc.). I would even state that simply knowing every single programming concept that allows you to solve problem X faster than everyone around you, if you can't _think_ , you're enormously limiting yourself - you're just a fast robot. I like to believe there's a whole other face of being a great programmer which is unrelated to how much you know about programming, but it is how well you can intertwine new concepts and apply them to your programming profession or hobby. I haven't seen anyone delve into, or address, this facet of the human mind and programming. (Yes, it's also possible that I haven't looked hard enough too - sorry if that's the case.) So for anyone who has spent any time thinking about what I've mentioned above - or maybe it's everyone here because I'm a little behind in my personal/professional development - **what are your suggestions on learning how to think?** Aside from the usual reading, **what else have you done to be better than the other people in your/our field?**"}
{"_id": "121019", "title": "How to layout class definition when inheriting from multiple interfaces", "text": "Given two interface definitions ...               IOmniWorkItem = interface ['{3CE2762F-B7A3-4490-BF22-2109C042EAD1}']       function  GetData: TOmniValue;       function  GetResult: TOmniValue;       function  GetUniqueID: int64;       procedure SetResult(const value: TOmniValue);     //       procedure Cancel;       function  DetachException: Exception;       function  FatalException: Exception;       function  IsCanceled: boolean;       function  IsExceptional: boolean;       property Data: TOmniValue read GetData;       property Result: TOmniValue read GetResult write SetResult;       property UniqueID: int64 read GetUniqueID;     end;          IOmniWorkItemEx = interface ['{3B48D012-CF1C-4B47-A4A0-3072A9067A3E}']       function  GetOnWorkItemDone: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       function  GetOnWorkItemDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       procedure SetOnWorkItemDone(const Value: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate);       procedure SetOnWorkItemDone_Asy(const Value: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate);     //       property OnWorkItemDone: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate read GetOnWorkItemDone write SetOnWorkItemDone;       property OnWorkItemDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate read GetOnWorkItemDone_Asy write SetOnWorkItemDone_Asy;     end;      ... what are your ideas of laying out class declaration that inherits from both of them? My current idea (but I don't know if I'm happy with it):               TOmniWorkItem = class(TInterfacedObject, IOmniWorkItem, IOmniWorkItemEx)     strict private       FData              : TOmniValue;       FOnWorkItemDone    : TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       FOnWorkItemDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       FResult            : TOmniValue;       FUniqueID          : int64;     strict protected       procedure FreeException;     protected //IOmniWorkItem       function  GetData: TOmniValue;       function  GetResult: TOmniValue;       function  GetUniqueID: int64;       procedure SetResult(const value: TOmniValue);     protected //IOmniWorkItemEx       function  GetOnWorkItemDone: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       function  GetOnWorkItemDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       procedure SetOnWorkItemDone(const Value: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate);       procedure SetOnWorkItemDone_Asy(const Value: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate);     public       constructor Create(const data: TOmniValue; uniqueID: int64);       destructor Destroy; override;     public //IOmniWorkItem       procedure Cancel;       function  DetachException: Exception;       function  FatalException: Exception;       function  IsCanceled: boolean;       function  IsExceptional: boolean;       property Data: TOmniValue read GetData;       property Result: TOmniValue read GetResult write SetResult;       property UniqueID: int64 read GetUniqueID;     public  //IOmniWorkItemEx       property OnWorkItemDone: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate read GetOnWorkItemDone write SetOnWorkItemDone;       property OnWorkItemDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate read GetOnWorkItemDone_Asy write SetOnWorkItemDone_Asy;     end;      As noted in answers, composition is a good approach for this example but I'm not sure it applies in all cases. Sometimes I'm using multiple inheritance just to split read and write access to some property into public (typically read-only) and private (typically write-only) part. Does composition still apply here? I'm not really sure as I would have to move the property in question out from the main class and I'm not sure that's the correct way to do it. Example:               // public part of the interface interface     IOmniWorkItemConfig = interface       function  OnExecute(const aTask: TOmniBackgroundWorkerDelegate): IOmniWorkItemConfig;       function  OnRequestDone(const aTask: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate): IOmniWorkItemConfig;       function  OnRequestDone_Asy(const aTask: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate): IOmniWorkItemConfig;     end;          // private part of the interface     IOmniWorkItemConfigEx = interface ['{42CEC5CB-404F-4868-AE81-6A13AD7E3C6B}']       function  GetOnExecute: TOmniBackgroundWorkerDelegate;       function  GetOnRequestDone: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       function  GetOnRequestDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;     end;          // implementing class     TOmniWorkItemConfig = class(TInterfacedObject, IOmniWorkItemConfig, IOmniWorkItemConfigEx)     strict private       FOnExecute        : TOmniBackgroundWorkerDelegate;       FOnRequestDone    : TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       FOnRequestDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;     public       constructor Create(defaults: IOmniWorkItemConfig = nil);     public //IOmniWorkItemConfig       function  OnExecute(const aTask: TOmniBackgroundWorkerDelegate): IOmniWorkItemConfig;       function  OnRequestDone(const aTask: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate): IOmniWorkItemConfig;       function  OnRequestDone_Asy(const aTask: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate): IOmniWorkItemConfig;     public //IOmniWorkItemConfigEx       function  GetOnExecute: TOmniBackgroundWorkerDelegate;       function  GetOnRequestDone: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;       function  GetOnRequestDone_Asy: TOmniWorkItemDoneDelegate;     end;"}
{"_id": "152223", "title": "Test a simple multi-player (upto four players) Android game in single developer machine", "text": "I'm working on a multi-player Android game (very simple it is that it doesn't have any game-engine used). The game is based on Java `Socket`. Four devices will connect the game server and a new thread will manage their session. The game server will server many such sessions (having 4 players each). What I'm worried about is the testing of this game. I know it is possible to run multiple android emulators, but my development laptop is very limited in capabilities (3 GB RAM, 2 Ghz Intel Core2Duo and on-board Graphics). And I'm already using Ubuntu to develop the game so that I have more user memory available than I'd have with Windows. Hence, the laptop will burn-to-death on running 4 emulator instances. I don't have access to any android device, neither I have another machine with higher configuration. And I still have to develop and test this game. **P.S. :** I'm a CS student, and currently don't work anywhere, and this game is college project, so if there are any paid solutions, I cannot afford it. What can I do to test the app seamlessly? ability to test even only 4 clients (i.e. only 1 session) would suffice, its alright if I can't simulate real environment with some 10-20 active game sessions (having 4 players each)."}
{"_id": "121015", "title": "Unit testing - getting started", "text": "I am just getting started with unit testing but I am not sure if I really understand the point of it all. I read tutorials and books on it all, but I just have two quick questions:   1. I thought the purpose of unit testing is to test code we actually wrote. However, to me it seems that in order to just be able to run the test, we have to alter the original code, at which point we are not really testing the code we wrote but rather the code we wrote for testing.    2. Most of our codes rely on external sources. Upon refactoring our code however, even it would break the original code, our tests still would run just fine, since the external sources are just muck-ups inside our test cases. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of unit testing? Sorry if I sound dumb here, but I thought someone could enlighten me a bit. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "121011", "title": "Typically how many programmers on svn?", "text": "I've started implementing svn in my school projects. In the industry, typically how many programmers are sharing the same svn? Are the version numbers related to how many programmers are working on a program? Also, would svn be considered to be a part of Agile development?"}
{"_id": "149708", "title": "Is it bad coding practice to create something in a get if it does not exist?", "text": "So I have a webservice that has something like a `getAccount` where it would return an identifier to the account if it got it, else throw an exception. The client will always want to create an account if an exception is thrown with the same info the get is done with. I am creating a convenience library for clients that will be handling all of the webservice calls inside so they don't need to know how to do the calls themselves. What I am wondering is in this library if I were to create a `getAccount(accountName)` that will get the account if it exists, and if it does not then create it and return the info, is that a bad thing to do? Should I leave it to the client to handle the exceptions or simply name it something like getOrCreateAccount? Does it matter? Is it bad practice to create something in a get operation?"}
{"_id": "158483", "title": "Is functional spec a \"design document\"?", "text": "So I have been a bit lost in the terms, so first of all I present you what I have learned so far:   System requirements specification - what users want, what the system should do Functional requirement - how the things, which users want, will actually work in the application Also I would say that the latter is a design document. Is that right or is there another document in addition to these?"}
{"_id": "149706", "title": "Using WCF as an API for Database access by the GUI, or no?", "text": "Originally I asked this question on Stackoverflow but I was suggested to move the question here. I've asked this question a while ago in MSDN forums but I'd like a second opinion from StackOverflow since I tried this route and found some CONS, but I'd like to hear more opinions as well. Scenario: I have a windows service program, extracting data from files and inserting the extracted data into a MS SQL database. There is a GUI program which does some filtering and calculations and displays the SQL data in realtime. So the GUI basically displays selective records from the database at any moment. It should be also possible for the GUI to insert and update records based on rules. Also The data fetched from the Database can be huge and it would be also nice to allow remote access to the data by the GUI (not critical) So my question in more details: 1 - should I create a WCF service in my Service program which provides some API to the GUI to access and update records? PROS:   * I can change the backend database and wouldn't need to update the GUI app.   * The GUI would be sql free.   * allow the GUI to directly access the Database and fetch and update itself. 2 - allow the GUI to directly access the Database and fetch and update itself. PROS:   * security already in place faster than option 1 easier to implement   * changed in records can trigger data change rather than polling for new data for real time display.   * The GUI can access data remotly if SQL database access is setup to be accessable remotely (a possible security risk?) here is the original question: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/pl- PL/architecturegeneral/thread/8ef537c5-9a79-42b5-a6a0-f7278d3f506e"}
{"_id": "236092", "title": "How can I re-use object from another project?", "text": "I have a first project has a feature to viewing, inserting and updating an employee record, with this possibly I will create a java class for the UI and another for the database connection with commands for viewing, inserting and updating a record. Then I have a second project that will compute the salary of employee. How can I re-use object from the first project? Should I get the Java or the class file or both of the first project and saved it to the project folder of the second project? How can add a feature of object from the first class?"}
{"_id": "142135", "title": "git, maven and jenkins - versioning, dev and release builds workflow", "text": "What is the preferred way to do the following with git, maven and jenkins: I am developping an application, which I would like to maintain \"dev\" and \"release\" branches. I would like jenkins to build both. It could be so that the release-artifacts would have versions like 1.5.2 and the dev-builds would just be 0.0.1-SNAPSHOTs. I would like to not have to have 2 different pom.xml files. I looked into profiles, but they don't seem to be able to change artifact versions. One way I looked at could be adding a 'qualifier' to the test- builds. Of course I could just rename the file, because the real artifact- information on this is not important, because the app is a standalone one. What would be the preferred way to doing this? Or how would you do this?"}
{"_id": "8890", "title": "Boss Asking To Work Overtime But Under the Radar", "text": "So the other day my boss (let's call him Colfax) asked me to work on a project, but that I should not discuss it with anyone (including the other programmers on my team) and that it would have to be done outside of normal work hours. In exchange, Colfax offered me \"off-the-book\" vacation days equal to the hours spent on the project. When I asked Colfax if his boss (let's call him Schuyler) knew what he was offering, Colfax said that Schuyler does not know and implied that he (Colfax) would get into trouble if Schuyler found out. My boss also said that if I were to go along with this, my efforts would be remembered for \"future consideration\". The work is for our employer so everything there is on the up-and-up. However, I have an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. Part of me wants to work on the project -- as it's you know -- coding and coding something cool and fairly simple. On the other hand, the whole thing seems seedy and underhanded. Would I be a \"bad employee\" for refusing extra work? Or am I morally justified to not do the work? **UPDATE** I know it's been a while since I posted this question, but I thought the folks who participated in the discussion might be interested to know that Colfax quit a couple of months after this conversation. So, if I had followed along, it would have probably been for nothing. Regardless, thanks for the comments everyone."}
{"_id": "48272", "title": "Recommended process for code reviews with mercurial", "text": "We typically used Perforce and SmartBear's Code Collaborator at `Big Corp` and now we're also going to be using Mercurial for certain projects. Code Collaborator support Mercurial (we are using version 5) and I'm trying to determine when the best time (during the commit/push to server) process is the best/efficient time for a code review thanks"}
{"_id": "113079", "title": "Alternatives to oDesk.com for contract work? or is oDesk already one of the best?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Where can I find programming work online? I saw oDesk.com being mentioned in one thread here for contract work and freelance work, and the people listed for hire is asking for $15/hour and up to $80 or $100/hour -- of the ones that I saw for development jobs. I wonder what alternatives there are besides using oDesk.com for programming contract work? (The fee it charges seems somewhat high, that for $80 / hour that I bill, it charges $8.89 / hour to the employer, so the employer needs to pay $88.89 / hour.)"}
{"_id": "20586", "title": "How should I start with Lisp?", "text": "I've been programming for years now, working my way through various iterations of Blub (BASIC, Assembler, C, C++, Visual Basic, Java, Ruby in no particular order of \"Blub-ness\") and I'd like to learn Lisp. However, I have a lot of intertia what with limited time (family, full time job etc) and a comfortable happiness with my current Blub (Java). So my question is this, given that I'm someone who would really like to learn Lisp, what would be the initial steps to get a good result that **demonstrates the superiority of Lisp in web development**? Maybe I'm missing the point, but that's how I would initially see the application of my Lisp knowledge. I'm thinking \"use dialect A, use IDE B, follow instructions on page C, question your sanity after monads using counsellor D\". I'd just like to know what people here consider to be an optimal set of values for A, B, C and perhaps D. Also some discussion on the relative merit of learning such a powerful language as opposed to, say, becoming a Rails expert. Just to add some more detail, I'll be developing on MacOS (or a Linux VM) - no Windows based approaches will be necessary, thanks. **Notes for those just browsing by** I'm going to keep this question open for a while so that I can offer feedback on the suggestions after I've been able to explore them. If you happen to be browsing by and feel you have something to add, please do. I would really welcome your feedback. **Interesting links** Assuming you're coming at Lisp from a Java background, this set of links will get you started quickly.   1. Using Intellij's La Clojure plugin to integrate Lisp (videocast)   2. Lisp for the Web   3. Online version of Practical Common Lisp (c/o Frank Shearar)   4. Land of Lisp a `(+ (+ very quirky) game based)` way in but makes it all so straightforward   5. Install Clojure and Sublime 2 on MacOS an **excellent** getting started guide   6. Look at the Clojure in Action book. Worked for me."}
{"_id": "45606", "title": "How to manage an issue tracker's backlog", "text": "We've been dutifully using Trac for several years now, and our \"active tickets\" list has grown to almost 200 items. These include bugs that are too low priority and too complicated to fix for now, feature requests that have been deferred, issues that have never really generated complaints but everyone agrees ought to be fixed someday, planned code refactorings and other design infelicities that we don't want to lose track of, etc. As a result, with almost 200 of these issues, the list is almost overwhelming; it's no longer useful as a source of what needs to be worked on right now. What's the best way to keep track of issues of this sort? Part of the problem is that some of these issues are such a low priority that they may never get done. I hate to lose track of these items (similar to not wanting to throw something out of my house in case I might need it someday); do I need to throw them out regardless (by marking them as wontfix) and assume I can find them in the future if I ever do need them?"}
{"_id": "211647", "title": "Switch Parent Children relationship in C#", "text": "Using C# and WPF I have a situation where my data is organized hierarchically. I am using a treeview to represent this :   * Group_01      * Object_01        * Material_01          * Texture       * Material_02          * Texture_02   * Group_02      * Object_02        * Material_03          * Texture_03 I would like to be able to switch the order of the hierarchy, for example be able to create the data starting from the Materials and know all the objects that use that particular material   * Material_02      * Object_01        * Group_01     * Object_02        * Group_02 What is it the recommended data structure to organize the data? And how I could switch easily between any of these visualizations?"}
{"_id": "48278", "title": "What should a C programmer know?", "text": "What are some concepts/techniques/language features that every decent C programmer should know/be aware of (exclude general software engineering and similar and focus only on C specific stuff). I would like to know so that I would be able to fill in some possible gaps in my C knowledge."}
{"_id": "211646", "title": "How to Track File Uploads and Return Upload Status with REST?", "text": "The users for our software will want to upload potentially large amounts of files in bulk to our servers. It is then desired that we display the upload status any time the user views the upload screen. This doesn't have to be any more fancy than a progress bar with a percent status. ![Our user will want to upload many files at once and to see the status of their upload.](http://i.stack.imgur.com/04DEU.png) My question is, how can I keep track of the uploaded files and return them at any possible time with a simple GET request at '/upload/status'. A first solutions aims to keep track of the uploads requested and those processed in a database table. That way, it is as easy as querying the database any time the user wants to see his upload status. ![the uploaded files are saved to a database](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KHf7v.png) Is this a viable- and correct- solution to handling the state of file uploads in a REST service? Should I be looking for solutions elsewhere?"}
{"_id": "26866", "title": "What are the most necessary non-language specific things a programmer needs to know?", "text": "I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Right now I work at a little web company, am almost done with school, and have written an iPhone app, but I'm not sure what else I need to focus my learning energies on. I've decided I want to do software programming, so I've been actively reading everything I can get my hands on that deals with Objective-C / C++ (Cocoa, OpenGL, etc). But those are not the things I'm talking about. I know I need to \"master\" a language or two. What I'm talking about are the other \"things\". Things such as learning and using source control, design patterns, etc. What thing (or things, just one per response), would you say I should concurrently be focusing on? You can consider in your answer that I'm wanting to do the aforementioned career path, but you don't have to. I just want a nice list of things to research, and actually use in my career. NOTE: I asked this question on Stackoverflow, and after a few good answers, it got closed, and I was told i should move it here. Here is the original: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4452857/what-are-the- most-necessary-non-language-specific-things-a-programmer-needs-to-kn One thing is, a lot of the answers were about people skills, which is fine, and I do agree, but I was looking more for programming specific kind of things, like, i don't know, learning Hexadecimal, or design patterns (maybe specific), etc."}
{"_id": "160018", "title": "Where do I place my example implementations in my framework?", "text": "I've created a pretty simple templating framework and have default implementations for some of my interfaces used for passing around information. I store these in MyFramework.Default namespace However, I am unsure of where to place example implementations, such as a template that creates a concrete class. This template seems like it would be useful to people who use my framework, but I am not sure if it belongs in a separate assembly, or perhaps a namespace within the framework. If it's a namespace, is there any convention for its name?"}
{"_id": "68667", "title": "Avoid becomming a \"Theoretician\" programmer", "text": "I have found this article in several posts on SO. I find myself falling into the 6th archetype; the \"Theoretician\". It defines the \"Theoretician\" as: > The Theoretician knows everything there is to know about programming. He or > she can spend four hours lecturing about the history of an obscure > programming language or providing a proof of how the code you wrote is less > than perfectly optimal and may take an extra three nanoseconds to run. The > problem is, The Theoretician does not know a thing about software > development. When The Theoretician writes code, it is so \u201celegant\u201d that mere > mortals cannot make sense of it. His or her favorite technique is recursion, > and every block of code is tweaked to the max, at the expense of timeliness > and readability. > > The Theoretician is also easily distracted. A simple task that should take > an hour takes Theoreticians three months, since they decide that the > existing tools are not sufficient and they must build new tools to build new > libraries to build a whole new system that meets their high standards. The > Theoretician can be turned into one of your best players, if you can get him > or her to play within the boundaries of the project itself and stop spending > time working on The Ultimate Sorting Algorithm. Even when working on what should be a simple project, I tend to get bogged don in trying to over engineer everything from scratch(This probably explains why I wasted about 2 years trying to make an operating system from scratch. But even I saw that it was pointless eventually). What can help me to avoid doing this? And stick to KISS principles? Thanks"}
{"_id": "68666", "title": "Best place to start a blog", "text": "I want to start writing a programming blog and that way to market myself in addition to CVs. Can you recommend me good site that will be easy to start a blog and it has a high light syntax functionality built in. saw blogger and wordpress.com and not sure were to get started payed sites can be an option too. Thanks for help."}
{"_id": "68662", "title": "How should i set up my source folder?", "text": "I have /src/main/ with all my code (i also have /src/online, /src/prvlibs, /src/test, etc) but now i am thinking about moving a few non active projects out of the folder. Sure i could go in and delete all objs, (some) project files, etc so it doesnt take 200mb of generated data. But i think it might be nice for only 20projects or less instead of dozen of prototypes that aren't throwaway test. I use git for source control (but i'm sure all scm do the same thing). They dislike files are missing and if i delete them they aren't easy to browse. I like how i can commit all of my source by going to /src/main and commiting. And i can push all of them just as easily. But moving folders (to my external HD and keep history) is the problem. Should i have every folder have its own repo? or is there some kind of workaround i can use? If every folder has its own repo is there an easy way to push all my folders to my HD (or website) for backup?"}
{"_id": "68661", "title": "What background is needed to understand The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4A?", "text": "I recently made the investment in the newly-printed four-volume set of Donald Knuth's _The Art of Computer Programming._ Like this poster, I probably do not have the time right now to read the entire set, with a full-time programming job, spending time with my girlfriend, doing housework, etc., though I have no doubt I would find it fascinating. Public transit is not available for my commute, and unless there is a \"books-on-CD\" version, consuming the material during my commute is probably out of the question. After reading this review of Volume 4A, I realized that at least some of the information may be of great help in my thesis. Incidentally, the thesis is for my doctorate in music, which has been on the back burner for a little longer than I would like. It sounds like, from the reviewer's description, combinatorial algorithms could be of great help in solving the problem I am attempting to solve. Am I going to need to read the first three volumes to understand the fourth? While I have no computer science degrees per se, I do have a reasonable amount of experience, and I have succeeded in graduate coursework in algorithms, compilers, and databases. Have any of you read some or all of Volume 4A? What background did you feel you had (or lacked) that helped (or would have helped) you understand the material?"}
{"_id": "179128", "title": "Architecture Best Practice (MVC): Repository Returns Object & Object Member Accessed Directly or Repository Returns Object Member", "text": "Architecturally speaking, which is the preferable approach (and why)?               $validation_date = $users_repository->getUser($user_id)->validation_date;        * Seems to violate Law of Demeter by accessing member of object returned by method call   * Seems to violate Encapsulation by accessing object member directly `$validation_date = $users_repository->getUserValidationDate($user_id);`   * Seems to violate Single Responsibility Principle as $users_repository no longer just returns User objects"}
{"_id": "13121", "title": "System Decoupled in the Wrong Places: Meta-Problem?", "text": "At a meta level, I often find that when I grow a codebase organically, parts of the system that I eventually find need to know about each other (at least through some interface) have been mercilessly decoupled. This often occurs in research prototype code, where one tends to frequently think of tweaks and small improvements that weren't planned for in the original codebase. Usually, some setting or piece of data needs to be plumbed through about 15 zillion layers of function calls in ways that I never anticipated when I designed the code. This leads to a very ugly dilemma:   1. Use an ugly hack. This can be yet another global variable, bolting the data onto a class that it clearly doesn't belong in, putting a bunch of print statements in the middle of code that previously had nothing to do with I/O logic, doing a seemingly straightforward task in a very roundabout way to make it fit in my original codebase, etc.   2. Shotgun surgery refactoring. This almost never gets done in practice because the code will likely have to be rewritten anyhow if it is to become production quality, was hard to get working the first time, is hard to test, or I just plain have higher priorities than writing clean, maintainable code when either I have a deadline or I know it's just a prototype for now. Furthermore, the next tweak may break whatever nice abstractions I come up with. Are there any good meta-tips or design principles that will help me avoid situations like this in the first place? I am **_NOT_** looking for answers that simply recommend refactoring after the fact, as a nightmarish shotgun surgery refactoring session is exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid."}
{"_id": "179125", "title": "Should the 12-String be in its own class and why?", "text": "This question is regarding a homework project in my first Java programming class (online program). The assignment is to create a \"stringed instrument\" class using (among other things) an array of String names representing instrument string names (\"A\", \"E\", etc). The idea for the 12-string is beyond the scope of the assignment (it doesn't have to be included at all) but now that I've thought of it, I want to figure out how to make it work. Part of me feels like the 12-String should have its own class, but another part of me feels that it should be in the guitar class because it's a guitar. I suppose this will become clear as I progress but I thought I would see what kind of response I get here. Also, why would they ask for a String[] for the instrument string names? Seems like a char[] makes more sense. Thank you for any insight. Here's my code so far (it's a work in progress):               public class Guitar {               private int numberOfStrings = 6;     private static int numberOfGuitars = 0;     private String[] stringNotes = {\"E\", \"A\", \"D\", \"G\", \"B\", \"A\"};     private boolean tuned = false;     private boolean playing = false;          public Guitar(){         numberOfGuitars++;     }          public Guitar(boolean twelveString){         if(twelveString){             stringNotes[0] = \"E, E\";             stringNotes[1] = \"A, A\";             stringNotes[2] = \"D, D\";             stringNotes[3] = \"G, G\";             stringNotes[4] = \"B, B\";             stringNotes[5] = \"E, E\";             numberOfStrings = 12;         }     }          public int getNumberOfStrings() {         return numberOfStrings;     }          public void setNumberOfStrings(int strings) {         if(strings == 12 || strings == 6) {             if(strings == 12){                 stringNotes[0] = \"E, E\";                 stringNotes[1] = \"A, A\";                 stringNotes[2] = \"D, D\";                 stringNotes[3] = \"G, G\";                 stringNotes[4] = \"B, B\";                 stringNotes[5] = \"E, E\";                 numberOfStrings = strings;             }             if(strings == 6)                 numberOfStrings = strings;         }//if         else             System.out.println(\"***ERROR***Guitar can only have 6 or 12 strings***ERROR***\");     }          public void getStringNotes() {             for(int i = 0; i < stringNotes.length; i++){                 if(i == stringNotes.length - 1)                     System.out.println(stringNotes[i]);                 else                     System.out.print(stringNotes[i] + \", \");             }//for     }"}
{"_id": "13128", "title": "Algorithm development in jobs", "text": "I have a mathematics background but also consider career in some form of software development. In particular I'm interested in finding out what sort of industries are most likely to have more algorithm development/mathematical and logical problem solving slant rather than pure application development etc. Obviously, I'm assuming that some subset of the canonical data structures and associated algorithms (trees, lists, hash tables, sets, maps with search, insert, traversals etc.) are mostly going to be present in software development. However, where am I more likely to encounter problems of more discrete maths nature (combinatorial, graph theory, sets, strings, ...) explicitly or more likely in disguise. Any pointers much appreciated (including possible open source projects that I could use for my further search for applications and also possibly contribute to)."}
{"_id": "168572", "title": "Distance from point to n-dimensional line", "text": "The solution for the 3-d case can be found here; I would like to get the generalized version. There's no simple generalization of the Mathworld algorithm since the cross product is defined only for 3 and 7 dimensions, so I understand."}
{"_id": "178297", "title": "Extracting useful information from free text", "text": "We filter and analyse seats for events. Apparently writing a domain query language for the floor people isn't an option. I'm using C# 4.0 & .NET 4.0, and have relatively free reign to use whatever open-source tools are available. </background-info> If a request comes in for \"FLOOR B\", the sales people want it to show up if they've entered \"FLOOR A-FLOOR F\" in a filter. The only problem I have is that there's absolutely no structure to the parsed parameters. I get the string already concatenated (it actually uses a tilde instead of dash). Examples I've seen so far with matches after each:   * 101WC-199WC (needs to match 150WC)   * AAA-ZZZ (needs to match AAA, BBB, ABC but not BB)   * LOGE15-LOGE20 (needs to match LOGE15 but not LOGE150) At first I wanted to try just stripping off the numeric part of the lower and upper, and then incrementing through that. The problem I have is that only some entries have numbers, sometimes the numbers AND letters increment, sometimes its all letters that increment. Since I can't impose any kind of grammar to use (I really wanted [..] expansion syntax), I'm stuck using these entries. Are there any suggestions for how to approach this parsing problem?"}
{"_id": "178296", "title": "Location of development solutions on disk - Common or upto the individual", "text": "In our team meeting today a senior member brought up the proposal that we should be having a common location/structure for our development solutions. A couple of his points were:   1. Making it common meant when talking about projects and emailing stuff everyone is on the same wavelength and knows where to look.   2. If there is ever the need to hard code a location path then it will work across all developers pc's. He had a more few points to back up his suggestion but I unfortunately got distracted during the discussion and so didn't hear all of them. I have no issue with the idea and can see it's merits but I was wondering if it is common or even recommended that all developers place their code in the same folder structure. Or do developers like to have the flexibility of location solutions where-ever they want? We currently use **SVN** for our version control. In this case his recommendation was to place all code in:               c:\\Work\\Development\\<Customer>\\<project>\\Code\\<solution>\\ the code      I guess actual path is irrelevant for this question but added for completeness."}
{"_id": "178294", "title": "KISS principle applied to programming language design?", "text": "**KISS** (\"keep it simple, stupid\" or \"keep it simple stupid\", see e.g. here) is an important principle in software development, even though it apparently originated in engineering. Citing from the wikipedia article: > The principle is best exemplified by the story of Johnson handing a team of > design engineers a handful of tools, with the challenge that the jet > aircraft they were designing must be repairable by an average mechanic in > the field under combat conditions with only these tools. Hence, the 'stupid' > refers to the relationship between the way things break and the > sophistication available to fix them. If I wanted to apply this to the field of software development I would replace \"jet aircraft\" with \"piece of software\", \"average mechanic\" with \"average developer\" and \"under combat conditions\" with \"under the expected software development / maintenance conditions\" (deadlines, time constraints, meetings / interruptions, available tools, and so on). So it is a commonly accepted idea that one should try to keep a piece of software **simple** (or **simple stupid** , in case you omit the comma) so that it easy to work on it later. But can the KISS principle be applied also to programming language design? Do you know of any programming languages that have been designed specifically with this principle in mind, i.e. to \"allow an average programmer under average working conditions to write and maintain as much code as possible with the least cognitive effort\"? If you cite any specific language it would be great if you could add a link to some document in which this intent is clearly expressed by the language designers. In any case, I would be interested to learn about the designers' (documented) intentions rather than your personal opinion about a particular programming language."}
{"_id": "178290", "title": "Why can't WARs share session info?", "text": "I have seen several developers looking for a solution for this problem: **accessing session information from a different WAR** (even when inside the same EAR) - here are some samples: Any way to share session state between different applications in tomcat?, Access session of another web application, different WAR files, shared resources, Tomcat: How to share data between two applications?, What does the crossContext attribute do in Tomcat? Does it enable session sharing? and so on... From all I have searched, there are some specific solutions depending on the container, but it is somehow ' **contrary to the specification** '. I have also looked through Java EE specification without any luck on finding an answer. Some developers talk about coupling between web applications, but I tend to disagree. What is the reason one would keep WARs inside the same EAR if not coupling? EJBs, for instance, can be accessed locally (even if inside another EJB JAR within the same EAR). More specifically, one of my WARs handles authentication and authorization, and I would like to share this information with other WARs (in the same EAR). I have managed to work around similar problems before by packaging WARs as JARs and putting them into a singular WAR project (WEB-INF/lib). Yet I do not like this solution (it requires a huge effort on servlet naming and so on). And no solution has answered the first (and most important) question: **Why can't WARs share session information?**"}
{"_id": "54008", "title": "What information must never appear in logs?", "text": "I'm about to write the company guidelines about what must never appear in logs (trace of an application). In fact, some developers try to include as many information as possible in trace, **making it risky to store those logs, and extremely dangerous to submit them** , especially when the customer doesn't know this information is stored, because she never cared about this and never read documentation and/or warning messages. For example, when dealing with files, some developers are tempted to trace **the names of the files**. For example before appending file name to a directory, if we trace everything on error, it will be easy to notice for example that the appended name is too long, and that the bug in the code was to forget to check for the length of the concatenated string. It is helpful, but **this is sensitive data, and must never appear in logs**. In the same way:   * **Passwords** ,   * IP addresses and network information (MAC address, host name, etc.)\u00b9,   * Database accesses,   * Direct input from user and stored **business data** must never appear in trace. So what other types of information must be banished from the logs? Are there any guidelines already written which I can use? * * * \u00b9 Obviously, I'm not talking about things as IIS or Apache logs. What I'm talking about is the sort of information which is collected with the only intent to debug the application itself, not to trace the activity of untrusted entities. * * * **Edit:** Thank you for your answers and your comments. Since my question is not too precise, I'll try to answer the questions asked in the comments:   * What I'm doing with the logs? The logs of the application may be stored in memory, which means either in plain on hard disk on localhost, in a database, again in plain, or in Windows Events. In every case, the concern is that those sources may not be safe enough. For example, when a customer runs an application and this application stores logs in plain text file in temp directory, anybody who has a physical access to the PC can read those logs. The logs of the application may also be sent through internet. For example, if a customer has an issue with an application, we can ask her to run this application in full-trace mode and to send us the log file. Also, some application may sent automatically the crash report to us (and even if there are warnings about sensitive data, in most cases customers don't read them).   * Am I talking about specific fields? No. I'm working on general business applications only, so the only sensitive data is business data. There is nothing related to health or other fields covered by specific regulations. But thank you to talk about that, I probably should take a look about those fields for some clues about what I can include in guidelines.   * Isn't it easier to encrypt the data? No. It would make every application much more difficult, especially if we want to use C# diagnostics and `TraceSource`. It would also require to manage authorizations, which is not the easiest think to do. Finally, if we are talking about the logs submitted to us from a customer, we must be able to read the logs, but without having access to sensitive data. So technically, it's easier to never include sensitive information in logs at all and to never care about how and where those logs are stored."}
{"_id": "58584", "title": "How can I change my career from Windows server administration to software development?", "text": "I am an Engineering Graduate in Telecommunication Engineering. I got into a server support job soon after finishing college. I have a total of 2 years experience in Windows server support. However, I want to move into software development and away from server administration. What courses or certifications can I take to move into a software development role?"}
{"_id": "235259", "title": "UML class diagrams: How to show dependency", "text": "Please consider a program with four classes: Class A, B, C and D. Classes A and B are subclasses of abstract super-class C. Class D is dependent on C. Meaning: It holds a `C objectOfTypeC` field. As we know, polymorphically the `objectOfTypeC` reference may hold objects of class\u05d3 A and B. The value of this reference may change dynamically during runtime. This kind of situtation is very common in OOP. A common example is the Strategy pattern, where several classes all inherit or implement the abstract-class or interface `SuperType`. Another class `SomeClass` holds a reference of type `SuperType`, and is able to dynamically hold different instances of `SuperType` subclasses in that reference. My question is this: I have two ideas how this can be shown in a UML class diagram, but I'm not sure which one is correct. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/G8lkt.png) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aswgA.png) _(Please note: in these examples, the super type is an interface, but it could also be an abstract class, or even a regular super class)._ Which option is more correct?"}
{"_id": "256050", "title": "Python - How To Get Cursor Position in Tkinter Text Widget", "text": "I want to get the cursor position (line and column) of the insertion point of a Tkinter.Text, but for the specific situation below. PROBLEM: My text editor project requires a custom undo/redo for Tkinter.Text. I put in the same string for both Test One and Test Two below, but undo does not act consistently due to a inconsistent column variable in KeyRelease event handler given by Tkinter. The problem seems to be that I type too fast for second test which produces a bad column value. Can you help me find the problem? TWO TEST PROCESS TO REPRODUCE THE ERROR: TEST ONE   *     1. Type this string slowly: 'one two three'   *     2. Press F1 to see each word undo.   * Result: Works fine. (For me atleast. Ephasis: type slowly.) TEST TWO   *     1. Type the same string as fast as you can: 'one two three'   *     2. Press F1 to see each word undo.   * Result: Gets the wrong column and does not undo properly. (Restart script and repeat this step if you don't see the error at first, it sometimes works fine with fast typing. I usually get it with 3 to 4 tries at the most.) QUESTION: Is this a bug in Tkinter, or am I not understanding something specific within Tkinter that would produce consistent columns for my undo/redo records?               from Tkinter import *          class TextView(Text):              def __init__(self, root):             Text.__init__(self, root)                  self.history = History(self)             self.bind(\"<KeyRelease>\", self.keyRelease)                  # used to capture a char at a time in keyRelease.  If space char is pressed it creates a Word object and adds it to undo/redo history.             self.word = \"\"              def keyRelease(self, event):             if event.keysym == \"space\":                 self.word += \" \"                 self.makeWordRecord()             else:                 self.word += event.char              def makeWordRecord(self, ):             if len(self.word):                 index = self.index(INSERT)                 wordEvent = Word(index, self.word)                 self.history.addEvent(wordEvent)                 self.word = \"\"              def undo(self, event):             self.makeWordRecord()             self.history.undo()              def redo(self, event):             self.history.redo()          class History(object):         def __init__(self, text):             self.text = text             self.events = []             self.index = -1                  # create blank document record, line one, column one, no text             self.addEvent(Word(\"1.0\", \"\"))              def addEvent(self, event):             if self.index +1 < len(self.events):                 self.events = self.events[:self.index +1]             self.events.append(event)             self.index +=1              def undo(self):             if self.index > 0:                 self.events[self.index].undo(self.text)                 self.index -=1              def redo(self):             if self.index +1  < len(self.events):                 self.index +=1                 self.events[self.index].redo(self.text)          class Word(object):         def __init__(self, index, word):             self.index = index             self.word = word              def undo(self, text):             line = self.index.split(\".\")[0]             column = int(self.index.split(\".\")[-1])             startIndex = line + \".\" + str(column - len(self.word))             endIndex = line + \".\" + str(int(column))             text.delete(startIndex, endIndex)              def redo(self, text):             line = self.index.split(\".\")[0]             column = int(self.index.split(\".\")[-1])             startIndex = line + \".\" + str(column - len(self.word))             text.insert(startIndex, self.word)          if __name__ == \"__main__\":         root = Tk()         root.geometry(\"400x200+0+0\")              textView = TextView(root)         textView.pack()         root.bind(\"<F1>\", textView.undo)         root.bind(\"<F2>\", textView.redo)              root.mainloop()"}
{"_id": "256052", "title": "Best way to learn to code?", "text": "I decided I wanted to learn to program so that I could one day make videogames of my own, so I set out to learn c++. I used a website called learncpp.com. First half of the lessons, I have a lot of fun, and I understand it mostly. About halfway through the lessons, I get incredibly bored. I plow through the lessons thinking that it will sink in eventually. Soon enough I realize that I have no idea what these lessons are talking about. Don't get me wrong, I love puzzles and logic and such, but I'm just not getting it. I feel like there was no way to actually work with the things I learned. There were no exercises. I didn't learn to code, I learned what code looked like. I've found that I learn best when I do it myself, and things aren't put on a platter for me. What is a practical way for me to learn code?"}
{"_id": "236264", "title": "Adding field to the class at runtime - design pattern", "text": "Imagine your customer want's to have a possibility to add new property (e.g. color) to product in their eshop in their CMS. Instead of having properties as fields:               class Car extends Product {        protected String type;        protected int seats;     }      You would probably end up doing something like:               class Product {        protected String productName;        protected Map<String, Property> properties;     }          class Property {        protected String name;        protected String value;     }      That is, creating own type system on top of existing one. It feels to me like this could be seen as creating domain specific langauge, or couldn't? Is this approach a known design pattern? Would you solve the problem differently? I know there are languages where I can add a field in runtime, but what about database? Would you rather add/alter columns or used someting as shown above? Thank you for your time :)."}
{"_id": "94439", "title": "MVVM or MVC? Want to use the same set of classes for WPF and ASP.NET", "text": "I am a newbie in terms of Design Patterns. I just started learning MVC when I am hearing a new buzz, MVVM. I want to learn the insights of both of these by redesigning an old inventory and invoicing application I developed for a client. I want to write both a Windows based WPF application and a Web based version. I want to use the same set of classes if possible, if not, then at least with little modification. I read a couple of articles, but I am not following the architecture and the high-level concepts of .NET 3.5 & 4 discussed there. I want to move step-by- step by designing only what I really need in my real-life project. Is there any easy step-by-step reference to MVVM? Is MVVM a super-set or a sub-set of MVC? Which pattern is modern and which one should I choose for Windows & Web versions of my application? There are certain classes which I rarely need to connect with the View. In that case, designing the same class in the MVVM way will prove to be an added labor."}
{"_id": "256056", "title": "Lead Programmer or What?", "text": "I was on a project where I did 80% of the programming. My boss said what he wanted and how he wanted the code structured, but I am the one who actually wrote the code (in the way he told me). Am I the \"lead programmer\"? Or something else?"}
{"_id": "256057", "title": "What is the most concise solution for text and file processing?", "text": "I need to do text processing in files such as `\"replace the second column of the third line of all files in the current folder with the string 'hello'\"` or `\"list all files in folder ./Hello and write the output into the file ./Hello.txt\"`. I thought Python would be a good solution but in fact it is not since you can't directly overwrite files. But I might be wrong since I'm beginner. Here is a working example with Python : I have a list of names of files in `listRef.txt` and I want to write in another text file `list.txt` all the names of files that ARE NOT present the folder `C:\\interface\\output` :               import os          symbolsRef = []          #List of files to python list     for line in open(r'C:\\interface\\listRef.txt', \"r\"):         symbolsRef.append(line)          #Remove from the listRef all lines that contain the names of existing files     for symb in os.listdir(r'C:\\interface\\output'):         symbolsRef.remove(symb[0:-4]+'\\n')          #Write list of files in folder to text file     with open(r'C:\\interface\\list.txt', \"w\") as presentList:             for filenames in symbolsRef:                 print(filenames[0:-1], file = presentList)      As you can see I have to create a list, work with the list then write it back to my output file. I might be wrong but I'm confident that you can do better with other solutions. I am giving this working example so an experienced programmer can compare the length of the same program but coded with an other solution. So what is, from your experienced point of view, the solution that -in general- requires the least number of line of code to do a wide variety of tasks in text and file processing : use of regex, index dependant line and column replacement, folder listing, file creation-deletion-replacement. Is it shell scripting with sed and awk, Perl, special libraries in Python or maybe some dedicated softwares ?"}
{"_id": "256058", "title": "How can I verify a Wordpress hashed password using a Delphi application?", "text": "I have a Delphi application (D2007) which connects to a Wordpress installation (V4.0, PHP V5.3) and retrieves hashed passwords. I would like the application to be able to verify whether or not input passwords match the stored hashed password. As far as I understand it, the hash is Blowfish using randomly generated salts, which are concatenated into the hash..? **Pass** : newnewnew **Hash** : $P$BA8BEfC.y9WjbpiRqLQHbKrc2sQfbk0 I have been playing around with **DCPcrypt** but yet to make any real progress and I am not sure if what I am trying to achieve is possible Thank you"}
{"_id": "62170", "title": "Should I be a professional in C# programming in order to build good web applications using ASP.NET?", "text": "I do not know if there is special programming in C# for the web or it is the same?. If it is the same then what are the topics that I should focus on in C# in order to use it building web application by ASP.NET (Web forms or MVC). For example, if I want to build a website for one of the health centers, will I need a lot of knowledge in C#? So,   * What are the topics that I should focus on in C# so I have enough confidence to build small - medium websites?"}
{"_id": "79772", "title": "New cloud development workflow using Github, Cloud9ide and CloudFoundry", "text": "So time is changing towards cloud development/computing. I'm trying to get the new \"cloud\" workflow based on the services I'm going to use: Github, Cloud9ide and CloudFoundry. Here is what is on my mind:   * Github acts like a central (main repo) just like yesterday's local filesystem. Every service will base it service upon this main repo. Workflow:   1. Github: I create a new Github repo served as main repo for the project.   2. Cloud9ide. I open my Github repo and write my tests and implementation (BDD/TDD). When I'm ready I save (commit) it to main repo on Github.   3. X: A running instance of Jenkins detects someone has committed and fetches the latest commit, builds, deploys, tests (yeti and/or selenium) and reports if the tests were passed or not. If not, I make another commit til all tests are passing.   4. X: I run the CloudFoundry commands to push the main Github repo to CloudFoundry's server and it will deploy my app automatically. What I'm still confused about is where this X environment will be. On a local server where I have to install Jenkins? Or could I install it on Cloud9ide (when java is supported) or will it be on another cloud service? Also, that X environment has to be able to fetch (clone) the Github repo and run the build scripts. And since the concept of Cloud9ide is very new and there haven't been any other predecessors I really wonder how the workflow will look like. We all know Github's workflow. We now know CloudFoundry's workflow (deploy/scale with a restful API/command line tool). But how Cloud9Ide will operate is still somewhat unclear to me. Someone on Cloud9ide mentioned that there will be buttons like deploy so I can deploy with one click. But that I guess will depend on what services that deploy process will hook up into etc. Could someone enlighten this cloud workflow topic and fill in the gaps. Thanks."}
{"_id": "94433", "title": "Starting a game website. Sanity check (Jetty, WebSockets, Java, etc)", "text": "I'm starting a new game website. This is a project to help me learn additional technologies. My background is very much Microsoft and Apple technologies / languages / IDEs. This project I would like to use some Google technologies. The game website will be a simple site; html5 game board; muliplayer; for the sake of simplifying my example let's just say it is a poker game. Everyone sits at the table and the game begins; it is turn based etc. I've been thinking that the best route to go would be html5 w/ websocket communication back to the server. I'm also very interested in using GWT. So I figured a website built using GWT + HTML5 Gameboard would be the client side. Now for the server side; I did some research and I found a bunch of things like Jetty, jWebSockets, Atmosphere; etc. My thinking at the moment is that the server side would be hosted on Jetty (is Atmosphere worth using for server encapsulation?) and would basically be a WebSocket server. Does all this stuff make sense? Am I completely off base here?   Are there examples of this out there to help me along the way? I'm also interested in gaining information about how to host something like this? Any services out there that would host both the socket server and the website on one box? Is this the right thing to do? Anyway definitely looking for experienced knowledge on this topic to help my studies into this new area (google technologies)."}
{"_id": "175719", "title": "Can notes/to-dos in code comments sent to code-reviews result in an effective refactoring process?", "text": "I want to start/improve a culture of collective code ownership at my company but at a geographically distributed level... I'd say there is some current collective code-ownership mentality, but only at single geographical sites. This is a follow-up to this question: What is the politically correct way of refactoring other's code? I'm just wondering if submitting ***just code comments*** for code reviews (we have ReviewBoard, possibly upgrading to Crucible) could actually be an effective mechanism to get the conversation started on improving code, without having others feel territorial about their code. For example, if I add:               //ToDo: Refactor this code and that code because of reasons X and Y      Then, submit it for code review, and it gets accepted... it could be considered as an agreement (which I think is sometimes harder to get with new code up front). At the same time, the author (and others) might have an easier time digesting and accepting the proposal; rejecting a proposal because it might break things will not longer be a valid reason and therefore the fear of making a change is lost... and at the same time, do not invest 10 hours optimizing something that no one thinks it is worth it and opposes to it just out of fear. This is all conjecture, but I'm feeling something like this (submitting refactoring notes in code comments at the code-review process) would work. **Has anyone done something like this in practice?, if so, what have been the results?**"}
{"_id": "115048", "title": "Would I be in violation of these icons free license on my Android application?", "text": "Since there isn't yet a Q&A site for legal issues and since this is related to an Android app, I'm posting it here, instead of Stack Overflow cause this is not code related. I want to separate this question into 3 sub-questions which are all related though. These questions are about the Free, Commercial and Extended licenses of DryIcons. **1)** Generally speaking, would I be in violation of the free license if I used some icons in my paid version of an Android app? I'm a bit confused... The free license has the following in the \"Grant of Rights\" section: > b. You may use the Licensed Material in any personal **or commercial project > unlimited number of times** according to the DryIcons Free License Terms and > Conditions; From this I take that yes, I can use their icons in my paid Android app. But then I read this in the commercial license under \"Restrictions\": > e. Licensee may not use Licensed Material in electronic items for resale, > such as website templates, electronic devices (i.e. computer, iPhone, > phones, etc.) **software applications** , document templates, wallpapers, > screensavers, e-cards or similar products that Licensee intend **to sell or > distribute** ; Which one assumes the extended license is the one we need for a paid app. But isn't this a little bit contradictory? Doesn't that point in the free license allows me to simply use their work in paid apps? **2)** Now, let's assume I really need to buy a commercial/extended license to use their work on my paid/commercial Android app, something I'll be in fact selling to an unlimited number of users. Would I fall under the commercial/extended or the free license if I used In- app Billing in my Android app? With In-app billing I wouldn't be selling their work **at all**. My app would be free with a bunch of features and I would be also using their work. But since my app is free I'm also free to use their work as long as I give proper credits with a link to their website as they state in the free license (no problem doing that, I'm all for it). Then, with In-app Billing I would actually be selling **extra features** to my app (by providing an upgrade to a \"Pro\" version), not their work. Do you think I would be in violation of the free license like this? **3)** And now a similar situation as the previous point. What if, instead of In-app Billing, I would have 2 apps. One completely free using their work as the free license allows me. And another which is nothing more than an \"unlock app\", something that would unlock **extra features** on the **free** app. The \"unlock app\" is the real paid app and this app does not use their work **at all**. Do you think this is exactly the same situation as in the previous point and that I'm just playing with semantics? What's your opinion on that? Do you think I would be in violation of the free license like this?"}
{"_id": "67525", "title": "Introducing design concepts/patterns/principles to co-workers", "text": "I've read Joel's article about getting things done when you're a \"grunt\", several times in fact, but I've never been able to do any of the things it mentions. I work as part of a small development team; we are now 5 strong (they recently expanded; started with two guys for a few years, and then added the rest of us - I have been here about 3 months now and two others were added after me) with a web designer that is kind of part of our group. The app we work on started out as an in-house system and was recently retrofitted to be software-as-a- service. From what I've been told, it went through several revisions and was outsourced twice, then brought entirely in-house. I come from environments that focus heavily on the use of design patterns, bits of Agile design, and a strong desire to write quality code. Because the current environment has changed so often, the code is a bit of a mess; logic is often just copied and pasted across various files (this includes HTML, Javascript and C# code). Almost everything is done in code-behind files with very little separation of logic. There is a common set of classes but they tend to just incorporate various mismatched logic that only slightly relates to the class. There are no coding standards and developers write code as they please (for instance, some code uses Hungarian notation, some doesn't, some classes begin with underscores, some don't). There is little object- orientation used; all the data is passed around as raw Datasets executed via stored procedures. The few domain objects have misleading and confusing names. We are almost always working on new features, and have no time to refactor since refactoring code isn't viewed as adding business value in lieu of adding new things. I have raised some issues with the manager about taking the time to go back and fix the application, extract and refactor code to be more modular and reusable, but he expressed concern that management wouldn't allow us to spend days (or more if necessary) working on old features instead of new. My co-workers don't seem too concerned with this and seem to not be as concerned as I am about the quality of the code we are producing. Also there are no unit tests (testing is done manually by poking around the app) and I wouldn't be able to take the time to test everything. This produces a dilemma for me because I find it frustrating to fix code in one place, only to be reminded it also needs to be fixed in several other places due to being copied across files, and I find it increasingly hard to stay enthusiastic about the code since I have to continually drop back to the existing style (or lack thereof) when fixing bugs; for new modules I write I try my best to keep the code as modular as possible within reason and without introducing radical changes (e.g. trying to incorporate Linq to Sql). Even this causes some concern because I am introducing a different architectural style (albeit one that is better than the style we have now) than the other developers are using. How, if at all, should I go about explaining these things to my co-workers and try to introduce some order to chaos? I look at the code and see how much better it can be with application of design patterns and real code re-use, but it seems like a daunting task because we are constantly inundated with new tasks and cannot just take a week or two out to refactor the code smells away. I know that I cannot ever get us to fix all the code that needs to be fixed since it would be a total rearchitecting of the application (and management would never approve that), but I feel that the code could be much more stable and robust for the future if _something_ was done."}
{"_id": "237329", "title": "Finding all subsets of a set running time", "text": "Given a set {1,2,3} output { {}, {1}, {2}, {3}, {1,2}, {1,3}, {2,3}, {1,2,3} } I have only been able to find as fast as O(2^n), is there any techniques for achieving faster results (besides parallelizing)"}
{"_id": "115040", "title": "Ramping Up On Legacy Code", "text": "When starting to work on a project with an existing code base, the first thing that needs to be done is usually to understand the application & existing code. Let's assume that the existing code is legacy code; referring to Michael Feathers' definition of \"code with no tests\". I am sure that there are many different ways to handle this ramp-up phase. The most straightforward way is to go through the UI of the application (if there is one) and simultaneously debug the application to understand what is happening at the code level. This is a very time-consuming approach and also it is very easy to forget what you learn in a debugging session. Furthermore, there is no real way to share (among the team) what you learn during debugging. Understanding the down-sides of this approach, I have tried another approach for my most recent project. What I did was to write a kind of API layer that sits on top of the existing code base. This API contained the functionality of pretty much what a user would do in the UI. To be more specific, let's assume that the existing application is a typical transactional application with orders, items and shopping carts. My API turned out to something like this:               public class OrderAPI{         public Order createOrder(customerName);         public boolean deleteOrder(orderID);         public List<Order> getOrdersForCustomer(customerName);     }          public class OrderItemAPI{         public OrderItem createOrderItem(order);         public boolean deleteOrder(orderID);         public List<OrderItem> getItemInOrder(order);     }          public class ShoppingCartAPI {         public ShoppingCart createCart(customer,order);         public boolean addItemToCart(cart, item);         public boolean removeItemFromCart(cart, item);     }      The methods in the API correspond to the actions that the user would perform at the UI level. Within these methods, the calls to the existing codebase are made. Writing this API by itself, of course, doesn't mean much. So, I have written tests (I guess they automatically become integration tests) to ensure that the API works well; proving that I got an understanding of how the legacy code works. After all this introduction, comes my question: Can you define (possibly in software engineering terms) what I have done? When taking this approach, I have gone completely with my intuition. At some point, I remember being extremely confused; working on the API, then working on my tests, fixing my API, then my tests. I wasn't sure anymore if my main objective was to learn the existing code base or come up with a stable API layer. I would greatly appreciate any kind of explanation; I am sure that this must be a practice that other people have already experimented with. I just need the right guidance to point me to the appropriate discussions/resources."}
{"_id": "175714", "title": "What is a useful pattern to maintaining an object state in a one to many relationship?", "text": "I am looking for a design for my application, here are the players(classes) involved.               struct Transform {         // Uses a matrix to transform the position.         // Also acts acts as the state of a Dialog.         Position transform(Position p);              //other methods.     };          struct Dialog {          // There are multiple dialog for the user to transform the output.               Transform& t;          void ChangeTranformation(){t.rotate(360);}     }          struct Algorithm {         //gives us a position based on an implementation. For example this can return points on a circle or line.              Transform& t;         Position m_p;         Dialog& d;         Position GetCurrentPosition(){ return t.transform(m_p);}              //other methods.     }      **Properties I need:**   1. Each algorithms has one dialog and each dialog can have many algorithms associated with it.   2. When the user selects an algorithm a dialog associated with that algorithm is displayed.   3. If the user selects a different algorithm then re-selects back the state is restored in the dialog. Basically I want a good design pattern to maintain the state of the dialog given that many algorithms use it and they can be switched back and forth. Does anyone have any suggestions? * * * **Here is a use case:** **Dialog1** has a single edit box to control the radius. **Algorithm1** generates points on a unit circle. **Algorithm2** is the same as Algorithm1. The user has selected **Algorithm1** and entered **2** into the edit box. This will generate points on a circle of radius 2. The user then selects **Algorithm2** and enters **10** into the edit box of **Dialog1**. This will generate points on a circle of radius 10. Finally **Algorithm1** is selected again. The edit box of **Dialog1** should show **2** and points on a circle of radius 2 should be generated."}
{"_id": "175717", "title": "Trying to implement pre/post method code: better to use methods or a parent class?", "text": "I'm finding it difficult to frame this question so ... I want to execute code both before and after a method runs in PHP. There are, as far as I know, two ways to implement this: ### Method One: pre and post methods               class Model     {       function find($id)       {         $this->_precode();         // ... do stuff         $this->post_code();       }     }      Add the calls to `_precode()` and `_postcode()` to each method where I need this functionality. ### Method Two: __call and method naming               class Model extends PrePost     {       function prepost_find($id)       {         // ... do stuff ...       }     }          class PrePost      {       function __call($method,$param)        {         $method = \"prepost_$method\";         // .. precode here ..         $result = $this->$method($param);         // .. postcode here ..       }     }      This relies on naming a method in a specific way in the inheriting class. Is there a preferred way of doing this? The call method can be made to only handle its specific cases and even defer to a child class's call if there is one. I'm not looking for opinions; I'm looking to find out if there are valid reasons to choose one way over another."}
{"_id": "71765", "title": "Best online reference guide for gcc", "text": "My box is configured: Ubuntu, Code::Blocks IDE, GNU gcc compiler. I'm not very experienced in C. I am having some difficulty seperating what functions are available to me. Evidently there's a few different compiler versions and they have different libraries available. Is there an official GNU gcc compiler reference for C? I've considered buying K&R, but I think that is too much for someone at my skill level. Do you have any other tips for free C references considering my setup?"}
{"_id": "66697", "title": "Does MS Visual Studio 2010 contain icons for source files?", "text": "I'm just wondering because the `.js` (JavaScript source files) on my computer have an icon from Windows Scripting Host which looks so Windows 95. I tried to look into `devenv.exe` but there aren't any differently colored icons for different languages' source files in it. Even better, of course, would be icons where the extension or something language specific (`++` or so) is featured in the icon. Do any of the DLLs or EXE files in the Visual Studio 2010 installation contain good icons or do you know of any other good source?"}
{"_id": "241201", "title": "Can an object call a method on it's immediate descendant?", "text": "I have an inheritance hierarchy three deep : an abstract base class, from which I derive another abstract class, call it the intermediate class, from which will derive possibly a large variety of derived classes. At one point, the base class calls a `this.GenerateXml()` method, implemented in the derived class, that returns nothing, but writes xml to a public property. At this point, I would like the intermediate class to do some stuff, without the base class or the derived class having to call a specific method on the intermediate class. Is this possible in OO languages? Constructors call each other up the chain of inheritance. Can methods? Can an object call a method on it's immediate descendant? The language in this case is C# The obvious solution is to call a method, perhaps a same named method, from the derived class, using \"base\". This is less than ideal, because every derived class has to remember to make the call."}
{"_id": "188128", "title": "Java Xml intraction in Android", "text": "I'm working on Android application development. There is a question that always comes to my mind that: How XML interacts with Java code?. I mean `Button` inside XML is a view, but `Button` inside Java is a class. For populating and XML layout we use `setContentView(R.layout.name)`. What I want to know is how this XML code interacts with Java, what technique is used and what code is behind this. If any know please tell me in brief."}
{"_id": "178746", "title": "Design backward and forward button operations of a browser", "text": "If you were asked to design the backward and forward button operation (as a library) in a browser, how would you do it? What will be your APIs and parameters to them? what data structure will be best suitable for this usecase?"}
{"_id": "59186", "title": "Hiring a Junior Developer, What should I ask?", "text": "We are currently hiring a junior developer to help me out, as I have more projects than I can currently manage. I have never hired anyone who wasn't a friend or at least an acquaintance. I have a phone interview with the only applicant that actually stood out to me (on paper), but I have never done this before. Our projects are all high scalability, data intensive web applications that process millions of transactions an hour, across multiple servers and clients. To be language/stack specific, we use ASP.Net MVC2, WebForms and C# 4, MSSQL 2008 R2, all running atop Windows Server 2008 R2 What should I ask him? How should I structure the phone call?"}
{"_id": "111293", "title": "Understanding how audio/video chat works in the iPhone SDK", "text": "I am really looking forward on creating a **chat application** which features basic implementation of text chatting, as well as advanced features of **audio/video** chatting. I have clearly understood how to implement text chatting feature using **push notification**. Now I am heading towards implementation of audio/video chatting in my application. I Googled around to see some samples for the same. I found **Voice chatting**, **idoubs** and a couple of more sources, but ended on a negative note. What I realized is I am not sure of what actually happens during a audio/video chat. What are the background activities which take part when user is chatting. I believe, if I understand the process behind the **audio/video** chat, I may implement it in a way I too understand. So, if anyone among you has a brief/detail knowledge regarding audio/video chat, kindly share it with me."}
{"_id": "59184", "title": "How to for non-programmer : formulate web-programming requirements", "text": "How to for non-programmer : formulate web-programming requirements for designing a website by a third party how to ask and what to ask Example : I want to hire someone to design or implement any existing \" Photo Voting Contest \" with some extra features. How do I formulate my needs for a web-programmer to understand me ? Are there any templates ? Books ?"}
{"_id": "111296", "title": "Checking members and instantiating in properties", "text": "Consider this:               public MyClass     {         private Resource _myResource;              public Resource MyResource         {             get             {                 if(_myResource == null)                 {                     _myResource = new Resource();                 }                      return _myResource;             }         }              public void UseResource()         {             MyResource.DoSomething();         }     }      Is this a recognised pattern, or possibly an anti-pattern? I've never seen it suggested in any books, but it does come up time and time again in code I see. I think the logic of this is that _myResource is instantiated 'just in time'. To me, it seems a bit smelly. UserResource() is accessing a public property from within the class, and the resource can never really be accessed through the private member - if someone did, _myResource could be null. Maybe performance reasons may sometimes necessitate, but I would generally favour instantiating in the constructor, or just having an instance of Resource local to the method. So is this an accepted pattern, or should it be avoided?"}
{"_id": "222889", "title": "What is the relation between clojure reducers and loop fusion", "text": "I just stumbled upon Clojure reducers library. It looks a lot like loop fusion. However the term is not mentioned anywhere on the page. Is there a difference between the two?"}
{"_id": "161762", "title": "Confused on selling GPL. How is it consistent with this section?", "text": "(Written against GPLv2.) It is always said that GPL does not prohibit selling the software, as long as its source code is provided under the same license (GPL). Now, I do not understand how it is consistent with Section 2b: > You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in > part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be > **licensed as a whole at no charge** to all third parties under the terms of > this License. I don't get it. Does not this clause prohibit selling the software? If not, then what exactly does it trying to say? **EDIT:** Following the answers below, I wish to note that answering a question \"everyone says that GPL says A but this part of GPL says B, how is it?\" with \"everyone says A so GPL must mean A\" is not an answer."}
{"_id": "222881", "title": "When to use non-embedded databases over embedded databases", "text": "We are trying to start a web base project that need to develop based on MS technologies such as C#,.net, IIS etc. This is a web application suppose to sell as a product with a single installer. Now we are discussing which kid of database we are going to use. Some says `non-embedded database` (Ms Sql) Some of them idea is to use `embedded databases`. So we are in a bit of confusion stage for a batter decision. Can you guys give some feedback according to your experience. then that will help us to come up with a good decision. In simply what is need is **When to use non-embedded over embedded databases?** **Edit :** Anyway We have technical understanding about how to use Non- embedded database such as MS Sql Server or Embedded database. What I need is, Conceptually in which situations usually we prefers each type of databases and what are the pros and cons of using each types."}
{"_id": "156417", "title": "Is this method of writing Unit Tests correct?", "text": "I have created a small C# project to help me learn how to write good unit tests. I know that one important rule of unit testing is to test the smallest 'unit' of code possible so that if it fails you know exactly what part of the code needs to fixed. I need help with the following before I continue to implement more unit tests for the project: If I have a `Car` class, for example, that creates a new `Car` object which has various attributes that are calculated when its' constructor method is called, would the two following tests be considered as overkill? Should there be one test that tests all calculated attributes of the `Car` object instead?                   [Test]         public void CarEngineCalculatedValue()         {             BusinessObjects.Car car= new BusinessObjects.Car();             Assert.GreaterOrEqual(car.Engine, 1);         }              [Test]         public void CarNameCalculatedValue()         {             BusinessObjects.Car car= new BusinessObjects.Car();             Assert.IsNotNull(car.Name);         }      Should I have the above two test methods to test these things or should I have one test method that asserts the Car object has first been created and then test these things in the same test method?"}
{"_id": "156410", "title": "Confusion of scope of a variable: Is Global Variable a solution?", "text": "I am newly learning C Programming. When we have a C Program with lot of functions, parameter passing, calling and all - It becomes a great problem as to which variable must be declared where. My question is: If I declare all the variables (or atleast the variables that are confusing me) as Global Variables - my problem will be solved - but is that a Good Practice?"}
{"_id": "126377", "title": "How to license programming code as open-source to say I am the author?", "text": "I am just wondering. I've never licensed any code before and there is so many separate information about that I am a little bit confused; I watched the codes which are published in the Internet and some of them contain their author name and license info so that makes the code some kind of personalized; So my question is... what author should do to be able to : A) License his code B) Say he is the code author C) Place the code in Internet (apache web site or something in this direction) D) Say it is under apache/GNU license or something? I am talking about open-source and non-commercial licenses; And the most important thing is... should I patent the code before to prove I am the code owner to license it? And what organization(s) I should join? In music it is something like ASCAP ( but in my case I don't mean commercial purposes); but what about programming? Are there some societies which I can join to be sure I can prove the code I published (on their official site etc) is really mine? Thanks"}
{"_id": "126370", "title": "Best practice modelling an active record entity using Linq-To-SQL as DAL", "text": "Currently I'm starting a new system on my company, and we are using a good separation between models, views and controllers, basically using Asp.Net MVC 3 for the user UI, and a C# class library for the model. The question is about \"modelling a model\". We are using Linq-to-SQL as a Data Access Layer, and modelling entities over this DAL. Example:                   // DAL, an autogenerated .dbml file         ...         public System.Data.Linq.Table<TB_USER> TB_USERs {            get {               return this.GetTable<TB_USER>();            }         }         ...      And we are mapping this table on an entity, like below:                   public class User {            // Entity, mirroring a .dbml table            public static IEnumerable<User> GetAll() {                var db = new MyDataContext();                var userList = (from u in db.TB_USERs select u).ToList();                IEnumerable<User> retorno = lista.ConvertAll(u => (User)u);                return retorno;            }                 // Active Record ?            public static User Save(User user) { ... }         }      Is this kind of modelling correct ? It feels like I'm repeating myself by having 2 entities meaning the same thing (User and TB_USER), but TB_USER is the raw representation of the database table that persists the User entity. And the GetAll method, a static method created on the entity with the sole purpose of retrieving all of them. That means that if I want to retrieve data using a filter, for example, I have to create another `GetDataBy...` method. And what about the Save method ? I know it's supposed to save the state of one User, but what if I have to save some random User object along with other objects to make a transaction ? Shouldn't this kind of transaction control be in the database ?"}
{"_id": "51789", "title": "Does your workplace allow the use of multiple, interoperable programming languages?", "text": "Since now there are several good languages that target the JVM and can interop with Java with varying degrees of painlessness, and likewise for the CLR (especially with the recent addition of F# as an \"official\" language for the platform), it seems to me like more places could take advantage of this but are afraid to. In my own workplace, we can only write our components in C#. It's a good language, and I don't mind programming in it, but I'd really prefer to be able to use F# sometimes. I'm sure if we were in Java-land things would be similar, where I'd prefer Clojure or Scala. This is probably selfish of me, as I'm sure it's safer to stick with a lowest-common-denominator. What are your thoughts on this issue? Should more people take advantage of the great interoperability on these platforms?"}
{"_id": "150812", "title": "Web workflow solution - how should I approach the design?", "text": "We've been tasked with creating a web based workflow tool to track change management. It has a single workflow with multiple synchronous tasks for the most part, but branch out at a point to tasks running in parallel which meet up later on. There will be all sorts of people using the application, and all of them will need to see their outstanding tasks for each change, but only theirs, not others. There will also be a high level group of people who oversee all changes, so need to see everything. They will need to see tasks which have not been done in the specified time, who's responsible etc. The data will be persisted to a SQL database. It'll all be put together using .Net. I've been trying to learn and implement OOP into my designs of late, but I'm wondering if this is moot in this instance as it may be better to have the business logic for this in stored procedures in the DB. I could use POCO's, a front end layer and a data access layer for the web application and just use it as a mechanism for CRUD actions on the DB, then use SP's fired in the DB to apply the business rules. On the other hand, I could use an object oriented design within the web app, but as the data in the app is state-less, is this a bad idea? I could try and model out the whole application into a class structure, implementing interfaces, base classes and all that good stuff. So I would create a change class, which contained a list of task classes/types, which defined each task, and implement an ITask interface etc. Put end-user types into the tasks to identify who should be doing what task. Then apply all the business logic in the respective class methods etc. What approach do you guys think I should be using for this solution?"}
{"_id": "150811", "title": "What is the algorithm for expiring items in key-value storage?", "text": "I was thinking on how current key-value storages implement \"expire date\" for items. Currently I have 2 variants for that in my mind:   1. they don't do anything (keep expired data), and only do check when you do, for example, GET by some key. The problem here is that if you are limited in memory, expired items won't be deleted.   2. they keep additional data structures to be able to get \"earliest to expire\". I see it can be done with something like this:              storage_data = dict(key -> [value, expire_timestamp])     expire_tree = SomeBinaryLikeTree(expire_timestamp -> [keys])"}
{"_id": "253106", "title": "Entity Framework with no direct table access", "text": "There are some similar questions I've found here, but none of them fully answer the question I'm asking. Similar questions: here and here In my company, I develop C# .NET applications and our Server Admins in IT don't allow direct table access so we're required to use stored procedures to insert, update, and delete from a table. In the past I've been using DataSets and TableAdapters to access the tables of a database, but I'm starting to realize that everything is starting to use Entity Framework. Herein lies my issue. There is another developer here that uses the Entity Framework, but he doesn't actually use entities. He uses Entity Models that have no tables or views, only stored procedures. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the _Entity_ Framework, or am I crazy? Also, I realize that you can map the insert, update, and delete functionality to stored procedures and this article mentions some interesting ways of implementing that, but creating views for every table would be a major pain. Are there any more practical or easily implemented alternatives?"}
{"_id": "253108", "title": "Unable to understand linked list example", "text": "Could someone please explain this code to me..               #include <iostream>          using namespace std;          struct link     {         int data;         link* next;     };          class linklist     {         private:             link* first;         public:             linklist() : first(NULL)             {}             void additem(int);             void display();     };     void linklist::additem(int d)     {         link* newlink = new link;              newlink->data = d;         newlink->next = first;         first = newlink;     }     void linklist::display()     {         link* current = first;              while( current != NULL )         {             cout<<current->data<<\"\\n\";             current = current->next;         }     }          int main()     {         linklist li;              li.additem(25);         li.additem(36);         li.additem(47);         li.additem(58);              li.display();              return 0;     }      i get most of the code but i don't understand the following:   1. What is happening when `additem(int)` is called?   2. How does one object create 4 ints and loop through them?   3. How is the while loop working in this code sample?"}
{"_id": "88510", "title": "Test interface implementation", "text": "I have a interface in our code base that I would like to be able to mock out for unit testing. I am writing a test implementation to allow the individual tests to be able to override the specific methods they are concerned with rather than implementing every method. I've run into a quandary over how the test implementation should behave if the test fails to override a method used by the method under test. Should I return a \"non-value\" (0, null) in the test implementation or throw a UnsupportedOperationException to explicitly fail the test?"}
{"_id": "221282", "title": "What is the best implementation strategy for this html + javascript widget?", "text": "**The Problem**   I came up with this select-box variant in answer to a question on UX.SE: http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/48951/16187 ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/w2hEC.png) However, working out how to implement it has been driving me mad ever since I wrote that post. **What I've tried**   Initially I figured it would be easy enough to do. The strategy I would have taken would be to model all the options in a javascript object, with their own name and selected properties, and then write a view function to display them as an unordered list or something. I could then create the button as another javascript object, modelling it's own state, and have a view function spiting it out a representation of it into the widget. Maybe throw in some event code for transitioning between button states and I'm done. **Where I'm Stuck**   The more I thought about that approach, the more I realised that having all of the state sitting in javascript objects was a terrible idea. I figured that I should probably store the state in the dom, and mutate it with javascript. However I have no clear idea what that sort of architecture would look like, or how I should go about coding it. Can you help me work out what a better high level implementation strategy for this sort of widget looks like?"}
{"_id": "145545", "title": "Where to put Spring configuration file?", "text": "I want to integrate Spring framework in my project especially into server side. So, I don't want to put it within WEB-INF folder of war file. Should I put an applicationContext.xml it into each layer (means each project since divided in distinct projects? (Services, Domain, and DAO) What is the good practice ?"}
{"_id": "221286", "title": "Iterative process modelling on a kanban board", "text": "Kanban does assume a more-or-less linear flow. Most of the time this models software development quiet well: we crate a user story, we code it, we test it, and we deploy it. However, some internal stages are iterative in nature and thus not so obvious. Take this (simplistic) board:               ||   Planning   ||  Development ||     Test     ||     Deploy   || Done ||     || doing | done || doing | done || doing | done || doing | done ||      ||     ||       |      ||       |      ||       |      ||       |      ||      ||      Let's focus on the Planning column. If this is where user stories are developed, clearly some sort of iteration is needed: write story, refine/conversation, improve story, customer feedback, etc ... These stages are not modelled on the board at all. Let's focus on the Test column. Once a story (or task/whatnot) is being tested: some tests will pass, some will fail. Thus the story needs more work. Should it go back into the develop column? Stay in a special test/development? Should there be Test/Fail and Tests/Pass columns? Over complicating the board is not an optimal solution. _Should you model iterative processes using Kanban?_ If so, how? If not, why not?"}
{"_id": "92179", "title": "Does it make sense to ask, \"What is the difference between Design Pattern and Algorithm?\"", "text": "From Wikipedia: > In mathematics and computer science, an **algorithm** is an effective method > expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a > function. > > In software engineering, a **design pattern** is a general reusable solution > to a commonly occurring problem in software design. By description(assuming they are correct on Wikipedia), it appears that Algorithm and Design Pattern are somewhat similar/same. They both achieve the task of solving a problem and both are certainly reusable if properly implemented. Does it make any sense to compare them to evaluate differences between them?"}
{"_id": "92174", "title": "What does \u201cS\u201d stands for in OOPS?", "text": "I have searched for the full form of \" **OOPS** \" in Google, but unfortunately, there are many ambiguous answers. Some say it's \" **Systems** \", and some say it's \" **Structure** \", and some have even mentioned it as \" **Synopsis** \". Can anybody please enlighten me, to find the full form of OOPS, with some proper & correct reference? Many thanks to everyone, helping me out."}
{"_id": "92175", "title": "Starting up in a basement and scaling", "text": "So I have this 'great' idea in my head that I want to start working on and build a company around it. Been working on desktop development for 5+ years and the idea revolves around the web. My exposure to web development is purely academic(a few database driven websites etc). I know I have the wherewithal to get started and build something that works but am also sure that I don't have the expertise to scale whatever I build to huge numbers. Looking at how some of the web majors started in dorm rooms etc, I am wondering how most web startups approach this problem (I'd find it difficult to believe that all the major startup founders had something that would scale to millions of users in their first jab). Do you think its wise to run with whatever I can and then worry about scaling if and when its necessary? Or do you think its a sign that I am trying to bite more than I can chew?"}
{"_id": "73637", "title": "Feeling well out of my depth", "text": "I have just started a new job as a front end web developer, this is my second day and I have just been handed quite a big project that involves lots of javascript which I dont know, this is leaving me extremely stressed (last night I couldnt get to sleep with worry) basically I got the job from the boss of the company phoning me up and asking me for a chat which then ended up in a job offer which I accepted, my previous role was just css and html with the odd little piece of jquery here and there and now this is way outside my comfort zone. What should I do? Against my name in here it says my name + DHTML, CSS and JQuery?"}
{"_id": "78914", "title": "Include years experience on CV?", "text": "I have been programming in C# .Net for nearly three years, and only C# .Net. I'm filling in my CV/resume and it looks a bit rubbish because I don't know any other languages (that I'm confident enough to include anyway). As I can't put my age/DoB on it I'm a little worried that employers won't take a second glance. I'm very good at OO design, TDD, etc... And so a graduate level job is probably a little low but with only one language under my belt I'm not sure I'll be considered for 'regular' level developer. Is it a good idea to include years of experience? Or should I just big up the cross cutting concerns (TDD, OO...)? Or any other suggestions to get to interview?"}
{"_id": "78919", "title": "How can I complete a project as a single web developer?", "text": "I am a PHP 'developer' who codes for fun. My problem is I have never completed my large projects. Please I would like to know how experienced programmers like you are able to complete projects single-handedly. My problem is I tend to allow frustration get me. I think this is because I do all of the coding and the graphics alone and this is really challenging for me coming from a country where electricity is epileptic(In Nigeria - You would have to do things quickly, because power will be cut short after certain times that are sometimes unpredictable). So a very picky person like me finds it hard to immediately make design(graphics) decisions. What am asking from you is a formula that works for you. A formula that gets the work done. Right now, I am thinking of a formula that involves the coding of a 'dirty' prototype of my idea. Then, when am done, I'll just focus on the graphics aspect. Is this really a good idea? Please I need your advice because I may never get to complete any project of my own. Note: I have no problem coding with PHP. Thanks"}
{"_id": "196173", "title": "Will I learn more from changing other people's code?", "text": "I am currently trying to break through the intermediate coder stage to advanced and needless to say it's been tough. I have been working through several books with example code. I have felt lately that taking the example code, changing it to fit my own similar project, breaking it, and fixing it, is more effective for learning than simply re-coding line after line of example work. Does anyone else similar or contrasting opinions? Will this method pay off in the long term? Thoughts on this method of learning? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "189291", "title": "Codeigniter/MVC workflow", "text": "Bit of a workflow question. I'm just staring with MVC and wondered how other people usually work in MVC? The 2 options I see is to code the model and controller completely first and then work on the views after. The other option is to code all parts at the same time. I'm looking for what might be the quickest most efficient way to code in MVC? We don't have inhouse designers or designated jobs so everyone does the same tasks (coding, designing, testing, db, etc). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "196177", "title": "What is the difference between a procedure-oriented and a problem-oriented programming language?", "text": "This is one of the questions given to us an assignment and I've tried to search for this on the internet but didn't get the required answers. Would be great if examples are provided too :)"}
{"_id": "8301", "title": "What hat should a programmer not wear?", "text": "In my experience, software developers tend to wear multiple hats and fill multiple roles with different responsibilities. From not only coding, but sometimes also writing SQL, designing the user-interface, designing the database, graphics manipulation, to even QA testing. **If the primary role is to write software/code, what roles should the developer not take on?** Are there any? The intention of this question is not because a developer is incapable of filling another role-- but having the additional role actually _works against the primary role_ , or should really be a dedicated role of someone who does not primarily program."}
{"_id": "189294", "title": "Are we developers mere tools in the hands of visionaries and business people?", "text": "Dear fellow programmers I'm the CTO and the lead programmer at our start-up. Our CEO came into office with hurry and asked me to reschedule so we can pick a very important customer at the airport. When at the airport, I realized the customer is actually more of a business man, a visionary (and a quite successful one) than a programmer. I knew from somewhere else that he was a programmer once so I asked him what happened? After a long humiliating look at my expense he replied : \"-What happened ? I have people to code for me !\" I have been thinking about what he said since that moment. I am bit by bit losing my interest in development and feel like we are all kinda 2nd class citizens in the IT industry. I can't help feeling like programmers and technical people in general are mere tools in the hands of more visionary people. Your insights are most welcome. EDIT: As it appears, to some the question is unclear. What I'm asking is a comparison between technical and visionary people and to give evidence that technical people are not replaceable work-units in the big scheme of things. The story is just to give the reader a picture of the problem."}
{"_id": "166419", "title": "Is it bad practice to pass instances through several layers?", "text": "In my program design, I often come to the point where I have to pass object instances through several classes. For example, if I have a controller that loads an audio file, and then passes it to a player, and the player passes it to the playerRunnable, which passes it again somewhere else etc. It looks kind of bad, but I don\u00b4t know how to avoid it. Or is it OK to do this? EDIT: Maybe the player example is not the best because I could load the file later, but in other cases that does not work."}
{"_id": "119605", "title": "Programming to ANSI standards (for engineering)", "text": "I am currently tasked to write a software to help engineers design standard compliant designs. If there is a bad design, software will report an error or warning. Maybe it's just me, but anyone who has done this should be familiar with the massive amounts of ANSI standards tables like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_Pipe_Size Computers are, as its name suggest, computing machines, not lookup machines. I feel that feeding formulas into computers and churning out standard compliant designs is much more efficient than doing memory intensive data lookups that are prone to human input errors and susceptible to \"data updates\". I actually think that there are formulas to calculate all those numbers, but nobody so far could give me that information. Anyone been through this before? What is **THE** best approach to this? Thanks for sharing."}
{"_id": "56403", "title": "What quality standards to consider for software development process?", "text": "i'm looking for metrics/standards/normatives to evaluate a given \"Software Development Process\". I'm NOT looking to evaluate the SOFTWARE itself (trough SQUARE and such), i'm trying to evaluate software development PROCESS. So, my question is if you could give me some pointers to find this standard, considering that \"evaluation objetives\" would be documentation quality, how good is the customer relation, how efective is the process, etc. Very much like a ISO 9000, and like CMMI on a sense, but much lightweight and concrete and process oriented, not company oriented. Please help, i'm trying to stablish the advantages of our development process as formal as i can."}
{"_id": "107923", "title": "What to do with obsolete code?", "text": "Code that we no longer use builds up. So what should one do when one doesn't need it anymore? Deleting it feels wasteful, especially large chunks, and there's always the chance the exact same thing will be needed again later. Commenting the code out is nice because it leaves it in place for later, but then the code can start to get cluttered. Version control keeps everything clean and in the right place without the fear of deleting anything, but finding the right code in the version histories is often a project of its own. It's also not great practice to commit code that doesn't work just because you might need it later. **Q:** Does anyone have a good solution to managing obsolete code?"}
{"_id": "107922", "title": "How does Python work?", "text": "This question may seems a little bit silly, but what the heck. I started to learn Python. I know basic syntax, etc. When I work with HTML, PHP, etc., I simply write code, put it inside .html or .php file and double click this file. Then my code runs. I can work with databases and other stuff - it's just simple. But how does Python work? I'm working inside Eclipse or Python command line and I can run this code, but what if I want make website with Python for example? I don't think it's like I put .py file on my server, so what I need to do? I understand I need to install Python on my webserver through some server command line (I've never used it, but I will find some tutorials day I will need it) but what's next? How can I combine my Python knowledge with HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.? Python may also be used to create desktop apps, what then? Can I export .exe file with Python code or what? Any links with content describing my concerns are welcome!"}
{"_id": "56404", "title": "What do you think are the biggest software development issues, in small to medium businesses?", "text": "I own a small software development company that developes Web software to other small and medium companies in Chile. The business process is very complex and it is hard to stablish where to put the efforts to make our company better, more efficient, and give better solutions. I'm also a TI master's degree student and i'm making a paper about this subject, so any help would be great to help my company and my paper. I have considered 3 areas for the problems: 1) Software development problems   2) Web development problems   3) Small and Medium companies problems I don't know about you, but at least this \"business formula\" in Chile has not received very much support but it is getting better, but today my company is far from being self-sufficient. UPDATE: Thanks guys for your support so far, i'm updating because i have somewhat enough information so i decided to go deeper within the subjects, wish i would like you to consider for your next answers/commentaries on the subject: 1) Software development problems (3) 1.1 Incomplete problem picture   1.2 Useless delivered software   1.3 Unrealistic or inadequate schedule 2) Web development problems (3) 2.1 Apparently non-viable implementation   2.2 Unefficient module construction design   2.3 Reduced result system inter-operability 3) Small and Medium companies problems (3) 3.1 Very specific, but narrowed requerired system characteristics   3.2 Developed system is not used   3.3 Positivist demand for activities in project execution There are only 3 problems for category, to deliberately keep a thiner scope. Also, i have considered that it would have been apropiated to separate the third clasification on two, but won't be doing it just now: 3) Small and Medium software developement providers problems 4) Small and Medium software developement clients problems In that case, i think i would have made the scope of the problem wider and it is not what i want to do now, until at least i'm very trough with the other two clasifications. What you think?"}
{"_id": "107929", "title": "Next in Concurrency", "text": "For past year I have been working a lot on concurrency in Java and have build and worked on many concurrent packages. So in terms of development in the concurrent world, I am quite confident. Further I am very much interested to learn and understand more about concurrent programming. But I am unable to answer myself what next? What extra should I learn or work on to inherit more skills related to Multi-core processing. If there is any nice book (read and enjoyed 'concurrency in practice' and 'concurrent programming in java') or resource's related to Multi-core processing so that I can go to the next level?"}
{"_id": "9936", "title": "Do you obfuscate your email address in open-source code to prevent spamming?", "text": "I've been thinking of releasing a few projects, and most authors in the community leave their email address right in the code, often as is or using commonly used schemes like \"meATNOSPAMgmail.com\", which sort of gets my paranoia flag up... When releasing source code publicly, does it often lead to your email address being parsed by spam bots, and if so how do you obfuscate it ?"}
{"_id": "117552", "title": "How to have two different programmings with two different languages interact?", "text": "I don't know if this is too broad or not, but I am a youngish programmer still in college, its my Junior year. I feel like I have a pretty good grasps for different languages and have a pretty good base. But I am stumbling to think how if for example, I am trying to create a program and say I wrote one part in python just because its easy, and does the job, but this program would need to get output from another program that I wrote in C and I am using C because of its speed. I am not sure how to have the two different programs and languages interact with each other to create an overall one total program. I am thinking of like sure you can write to a file, but then what if python and C programs both accessing a file I would need to think of locks. Most times I have done this was with importing files into a program, but in that case they are the same language so that is easy I just use the import function, but with two languages/programs interacting to create one cohesive output I am having trouble. I was thinking about this question because I was thinking of diving into creating some basic web applications just to learn but I have no idea how to have say javascript file interactive with something that I wrote in python or vice-versa. I feel like I am missing something really easy here and just not understanding. Sorry if this question is too broad but I couldn't really find a clear answer online, I was trying to look through an opensource webapp, but couldn't really grasp an answer from it, again pardon me if the question seems dumb I thought this be a good place to ask I love reading on stackexchange. Thank you for any reply."}
{"_id": "123436", "title": "Is `catch(...) { throw; }` a bad practice?", "text": "While I agree that catching `...` **without rethrowing** is indeed wrong, I however believe that using constructs like this:               try     {       // Stuff     }     catch (...)     {       // Some cleanup       throw;     }      Is acceptable in cases **where RAII is not applicable**. (Please, don't ask... not everybody in my company likes object-oriented programming and RAII is often seen as \"useless school stuff\"...) My coworkers says that you should always know what exceptions are to be thrown and that you can always use constructs like:               try     {       // Stuff     }     catch (exception_type1&)     {       // Some cleanup       throw;     }     catch (exception_type2&)     {       // Some cleanup       throw;     }     catch (exception_type3&)     {       // Some cleanup       throw;     }      Is there a well admited good practice regarding these situations?"}
{"_id": "227935", "title": "Separate domain entity in small ones", "text": "I have the Customer entity, this entity has a huge list of attributes, so you are thinking in separate in small entities (for example: \"basic info\", \"document\", \"declarations\", etc). This approach will be used in the view layer, where the user can fill your info, step by step, making possible stop and comeback later. But I'm no sure if make sense to reflect this fragmentation in others layers. Because, we will have a lot of controllers in client and server side (since we are using express.js and angular.js). Follows an overview of the complexity in terms of fields, remembering each \"partial\" must be valid and once valid, it is saved in the database:               - info for generate the customer       -- name       -- email     - basic info       -- dob       -- gender       -- hometown       -- state       -- country     - phone info (just one phone)       -- prefix       -- phone number     - bank info (can be more than one)       -- bank       -- agency       -- account number     - etc      Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "227934", "title": "Form cancellation. Where should any data rollback occur?", "text": "You have a form that has an object injected into it. The user interacts with the form and updates the injected object via the UI. If the user then 'Cancels' the form, whose responsibility is it to undo those changes? Should the form have created a clone of the object passed in, and return that to the client? Or should the client watch for the 'Cancel' action and perform the undo action? Is there a 'best practice' for this?"}
{"_id": "250458", "title": "Am I doing TDD wrong when multiple tests can fail for the same reason?", "text": "Assume a method with the following declaration               public IList<Location> GetLocations() { ... }      I write (at least) the following tests   1. Check to see if the method returns an empty collection if no locations are found.   2. Check to see if the method returns the correct number of locations.   3. Check to see if the data in the locations the method return is correct. However, all the tests above will fail if the method returns null. I feel like a single error should only result in one unit test failure, but at the same time I do not see how to avoid it in a scenario like this. Is this just the way it works; sometimes multiple tests will fail for the same reason?"}
{"_id": "250455", "title": "Why does the new ADT create a static inner class Fragment by default?", "text": "Honestly, I can't help but feel that this is done merely to confuse newcomers. Most of the errors on Stack Overflow by complete Android newbies mostly stem from that they have a static inner class Fragment that they don't understand how it works, why it's there, and try to use Activities even though they don't fully understand the concept behind what is happening. I must admit, I had trouble understanding the \"PlaceholderFragment\" approach too, and using static inner classes isn't really extensible at all. The first thing you'd have to do is create an actual class outside - but why do newbies have to do that? I think this could be much more efficient if they used a project structure similar to the following simple fragment-based android project structure:   * src      * wholepackagename        * activity          * MainActivity       * fragment          * FirstFragment         * SecondFragment   * res      * layout     * values     * ... With the code of src/wholepackagename/activity/MainActivity:               public class MainActivity extends FragmentActivity implements FirstFragment.Callback     {         @Override         protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)         {             super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);             setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);                  getSupportFragmentManager().addOnBackStackChangedListener(new OnBackStackChangedListener()             {                 public void onBackStackChanged()                 {                     int backCount = getSupportFragmentManager().getBackStackEntryCount();                     if (backCount == 0)                     {                         finish();                     }                 }             });                  if (savedInstanceState == null)             {                 getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction().add(R.id.main_container, new FirstFragment()).addToBackStack(null).commit();             }         }              @Override         public void firstFragmentCallback()         {             getSupportFragmentManager().beginTransaction().replace(R.id.main_container, new SecondFragment()).addToBackStack(null).commit();         }     }       src/wholepackagename/fragment/FirstFragment.java:               public class FirstFragment extends Fragment implements View.OnClickListener     {         private Callback callback;              private Button firstFragmentButton;              public static interface Callback         {             void firstFragmentCallback();         }              public FirstFragment()         {             super();         }              @Override         public void onAttach(Activity activity)         {             super.onAttach(activity);             try             {                 callback = (Callback) activity;             }             catch (ClassCastException e)             {                 Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), activity.getClass().getSimpleName() + \" must implement Callback interface!\", e);                 throw e;             }         }              @Override         public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState)         {             View rootView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_first, container, false);             firstFragmentButton = (Button) rootView.findViewById(R.id.fragment_first_button);             firstFragmentButton.setOnClickListener(this);             return rootView;         }              @Override         public void onClick(View v)         {             if(v == firstFragmentButton)             {                 callback.firstFragmentCallback();             }         };     }      src/wholepackagename/fragment/SecondFragment.java:               public class SecondFragment extends Fragment implements View.OnClickListener     {         private Button secondFragmentButton;              public SecondFragment()         {             super();         }              @Override         public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState)         {             View rootView = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_second, container, false);             secondFragmentButton = (Button) rootView.findViewById(R.id.fragment_second_button);             secondFragmentButton.setOnClickListener(this);             return rootView;         }              @Override         public void onClick(View v)         {             if(v == secondFragmentButton)             {                 Toast.makeText(getActivity(), \"This is an example!\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();             }         };     }      Android-Manifest.xml:               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>     <manifest xmlns:android=\"http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android\"         package=\"wholepackagename\"         android:versionCode=\"1\"         android:versionName=\"1.0\" >              <uses-sdk             android:minSdkVersion=\"8\"             android:targetSdkVersion=\"19\" />         <application             android:allowBackup=\"true\"             android:icon=\"@drawable/ic_launcher\"             android:label=\"@string/app_name\"             android:theme=\"@style/AppTheme\" >             <activity                 android:name=\"wholepackagename.activity.MainActivity\"                 android:label=\"@string/app_name\">                 <intent-filter>                     <action android:name=\"android.intent.action.MAIN\" />                     <category android:name=\"android.intent.category.LAUNCHER\" />                 </intent-filter>             </activity>         </application>          </manifest>      res/layout/activity_main.xml:               <FrameLayout xmlns:android=\"http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android\"         xmlns:tools=\"http://schemas.android.com/tools\"         android:id=\"@+id/main_container\"         android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_height=\"match_parent\" />      res/layout/fragment_first.xml:               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>     <RelativeLayout xmlns:android=\"http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android\"         android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_height=\"match_parent\" >              <Button             android:id=\"@+id/fragment_first_button\"             android:layout_width=\"wrap_content\"             android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"             android:layout_centerInParent=\"true\"              android:text=\"@string/first_button\" />          </RelativeLayout>      res/layout/fragment_second.xml:               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>     <RelativeLayout xmlns:android=\"http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android\"         android:layout_width=\"match_parent\"         android:layout_height=\"match_parent\" >              <Button             android:id=\"@+id/fragment_second_button\"             android:layout_width=\"wrap_content\"             android:layout_height=\"wrap_content\"             android:layout_centerInParent=\"true\"             android:text=\"@string/second_button\" />          </RelativeLayout>      res/values/strings.xml:               <?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>     <resources>         <string name=\"app_name\">Application name</string>         <string name=\"hello_world\">Hello world!</string>         <string name=\"action_settings\">Settings</string>         <string name=\"first_button\">First Button</string>         <string name=\"second_button\">Second Button</string>     </resources>            To me, it seems that the static inner class Fragment doesn't really support any kind of maintainability, it's hard to see what is going on, and the overall functionality is not obvious as the Activity and Fragment (display of fragment and logic) are mixed together, which makes it hard to see and oversee for a newbie. I believe it would provide an easier entry into developing for the Android platform to have an example like above. Are there any benefits to the current approach, providing a static inner class as a Fragment?"}
{"_id": "215930", "title": "How to build an API on top of an existing Rails app with NodeJs and what architecture to use?", "text": "## The explanation I was recently hired by a company that has an old RoR 2.3 application with more than 100k users, a strong SEO strategy with more than 170k indexed urls, native android and ios applications and other custom-made mobile and web applications that rely on a not so good API from the same RoR app. They recently merged with a company from another country as an strategy to grow the business and the profit. They have almost the same stats, a similar strategy and mobile apps. We have just decided that we need to merge the data from both companies and to start a new app from scratch since the RoR app is to old and heavily patched and the app from the other company was built with a custom PHP framework without any documentation. The only good news is that both databases are in MySQL and have a similar structure. ## The challenge I need to build a new version that:   * can handle a lot of traffic,   * preserves the SEO strategies of both companies,   * serve 2 different domains,   * and have a strong API that can support legacy mobile apps from both companies and be ready for a new set of native apps. I want to use RoR 3.2 for the main web apps and NodeJs with a Restful API. I know that I need to be very careful with the mobile apps and handle multiple versions of the API. I also think that I need to create a service that can handle a lot IO request since the apps is heavily used to create orders for restaurants at a certain time of the day. ## The questions With all this in mind:   * What type of architecture do you recommend me to follow?   * What gems or node packages do you think will work the best?   * How do I build a new rails app and keep using the same database structure?   * Should I use NodeJS to build an API or just build a new service with Ruby? I know that I'm asking to much from you guys, but please help me by answering any topic that you can or by pointing me on the right direction. All your comments and feedback will be extremely appreciated! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "224772", "title": "Combining version numbers of app components", "text": "I have an app that is made up of multiple different components, each with their own version number and history. I would like to create a version number of the entire application, preferably somehow based on the version numbers of the components. I am not sure if this is possible at all, but I would like:   * The version number be unique for each version of the components, so that when I upgrade the version number of one of the components, the version number of the whole app will change as well, and the number must not be ambigous so that it could refer to some other constellation of components.    * It would be nice if there was a way to reverse the process to go from a combined version number to see what versions of components it consists of.    * It is also nice if the combined version number is not too long to remember   * It's a plus if the combined version number always increases with the increase of a component version number.  I am aware that some of these desires are not possible to accomodate together (such as short AND reversable since you would lose information when shortening) The easiest approach is of course to just add the version number together in a long row, but that would be too long to be practical. Another is to create some kind of hash, but it would not be very readable. Is there a standard way of doing this? Or will I have to name the major version manually and take note of what component versions it consists of?"}
{"_id": "46820", "title": "Are the National Computer Science Academy certifications worth it?", "text": "I have a question regarding the real value of having NCSA's certifications. Today I reach their site and I easily passed the JavaScript certification within minutes, but I never reach questions related to Literal Javascript Notation (Json), closures or browser specific APIs. This facts let me to doubt a bit of the real value of the test (and the proper certification you can have if you pay them $34), but maybe Im wrong and just earned a respected certification within the States for easy questions... in which case I can spend some time doing other certifications on the same site. Did you have an NCSA certification and think is worth having it in your resume, or you know of a better certification program?"}
{"_id": "8364", "title": "Opera for web development", "text": "Many developers recommend Firefox for web development for a variety of reasons. But, after looking at Opera, it seems to me that Opera has all of the same web development functionality that Firefox has built into it. So what is wrong with Opera for web development?"}
{"_id": "21845", "title": "Should I start a project I am hoping to recruit others to?", "text": "I have an idea for a program that I think is a good one (Don't we all?). I am an amateur programmer and would like to recruit some more advanced programmers onto the project since there are some aspects that I am not skilled enough to do myself. Is it better to a) Develop the software on my own as much as I can, even though it will be amateurish, and then show a demo to potential recruits or b) Try and recruit some more advanced programmers and seek their advice and guidance before I get started so that it is done correctly from the beginning? I would especially love it if someone has any experience of being in a similar position, but sage speculation is welcome too."}
{"_id": "24834", "title": "Not Invented Here - what does it take to not succumb to it?", "text": "I will start with one, which however did not work the way I wanted. Vendor Evaluation:   In the beginning of the project, we spent some time to do a survey of existing open-source libraries that can be used as building blocks for a larger library. Despite our efforts, there were a number of libraries which we did not come across until several months into the project. Had we found out those missed libraries earlier, we might have made our design decisions differently. Architecture Compatibility:   It was understood from the very beginning that no single library could have satisfied all requirements, so several existing libraries are needed, along with some custom implementation to fill the gaps. These libraries would have to be wrapped into a single architecture so that the users will not need to know the internal construction of the library. Efficiency (in multiple aspects; can be summarized as \"no CPU time, RAM nor Disk space can be wasted\") was the main driving force in the architectural design; so the wrappers need to be equally efficient. In the beginning we did not know which open-source library would be _compatible_ with the design (in the sense that the wrapper does not introduce any inefficiency of its own), as that would have required some pioneering work to find out. Code quality:   One of the open-source library was about 20 years old. Another library was about 10 years old. In the prevailing thinking of open-source library, the older library is supposed to be more stable and have fewer bugs. Eventually we discovered that the opposite was true, and we ended up having to fix a number of bugs in the older library. My original hypothesis is that \"Does it take a lot of intelligence to not succumb to it? Does it take a lot of experience?\" but after reviewing the project, I came to the conclusion that software reuse is like matchmaking - any notion of \"missed opportunity\" occurs naturally due to chance, and no amount of intentional effort will reduce missed opportunities. What does it take to not succumb to Not Invented Here syndrome, in order to achieve the highest degree of software reuse and at the same time satisfying the software requirements perfectly? **Added (2010/12/18)** One of the reason we missed a good candidate library was that it was ruled out very early in the process. When there are more than 10 libraries in the initial list, there is some pressure to find rules that can quickly eliminate some of the candidates, because otherwise we would have spent too much time analyzing (analysis paralysis). However, this fast-track elimination caused the undesirable effect of rejecting one good library. (just like hiring?)"}
{"_id": "253812", "title": "Is this a valid implementation of the repository pattern?", "text": "I've been reading up about the repository pattern, with a view to implementing it in my own application. Almost all examples I've found on the internet use some kind of existing framework rather than showing how to implement it 'from scratch'. Here's my first thoughts of how I might implement it - I was wondering if anyone could advise me on whether this is correct? I have two tables, named CONTAINERS and BITS. Each CONTAINER can contain any number of BITs. I represent them as two classes:               class Container{         private $bits;         private $id;         //...and a property for each column in the table...              public function __construct(){             $this->bits = array();         }               public function addBit($bit){             $this->bits[] = $bit;         }              //...getters and setters...     }          class Bit{         //some properties, methods etc...     }      Each class will have a property for each column in its respective table. I then have a couple of 'repositories' which handle things to do with saving/retrieving these objects from the database:               //repository to control saving/retrieving Containers from the database     class ContainerRepository{              //inject the bit repository for use later         public function __construct($bitRepo){             $this->bitRepo = $bitRepo;         }              public function getById($id){             //talk directly to Oracle here to all column data into the object                   //get all the bits in the container             $bits = $this->bitRepo->getByContainerId($id);             foreach($bits as $bit){                 $container->addBit($bit);             }                  //return an instance of Container         }              public function persist($container){           //talk directly to Oracle here to save it to the database             //if its ID is NULL, create a new container in database, otherwise update the existing one                  //use BitRepository to save each of the Bits inside the Container             $bitRepo = $this->bitRepo;             foreach($container->bits as $bit){                 $bitRepo->persist($bit);             }         }     }          //repository to control saving/retrieving Bits from the database     class BitRepository{         public function getById($id){}         public function getByContainerId($containerId){}         public function persist($bit){}     }      Therefore, the code I would use to get an instance of Container from the database would be:               $bitRepo = new BitRepository();     $containerRepo = new ContainerRepository($bitRepo);     $container = $containerRepo->getById($id);      Or to create a new one and save to the database:               $bitRepo = new BitRepository();     $containerRepo = new ContainerRepository($bitRepo);          $container = new Container();     $container->setSomeProperty(1);     $bit = new Bit();     $container->addBit($bit);     $containerRepo->persist($container);      Can someone advise me as to whether I have implemented this pattern correctly? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "21843", "title": "Where did Java go wrong on the client?", "text": "Not talking about the recent Java/Oracle debacle here, but something I've been wondering recently. When I first started programming, Java was the big thing client-side, however these days you hardly ever see a Java applet whereas Flash and Javascript are ubiquitous. Where did Java go wrong? Did Sun decide to concentrate on the server-side and let client-side stagnate? How did Flash become dominant over Java? Flashy (no pun intended) graphics? Marketing? Never having been a Java developer, I've not followed this closely so I'm interested to hear your thoughts."}
{"_id": "3678", "title": "Does anyone else feel that iterator syntax sugar is a must have in a modern language?", "text": "I work with C# professionally and I write code like this all the time.               private IEnumerable<Something> GetAlotOfSomething()     {         if (somethingA.IsReady)             yield return somethingA;          if (somethingB.IsReady)             yield return somethingB;          if (somethingC.IsReady)             yield return somethingC;               // ... More complex logic     }          var specialSomethings =          GetAlotOfSomething()         .Where(s => s.IsSpecial);       Then one day I have to write a bit of VB6 or JScript and I end up writing so much boilerplate just to get things done. Anyone thoughts?"}
{"_id": "75334", "title": "How much does the calibre of a Masters program matter to an employer?", "text": "The following two examples are hypothetical, but have a possibility of both becoming real (I'm a recent graduate with no CS work experience). In both situations I would be going for my Masters in computer science. **A** : I work for a pretty well-known insurance company writing software. They pay for me to go to school, and the school I would be going to does research in fields I'm interested in (though, with a full time job, I'm not sure how much research I'd be able to participate in), but they are not ranked highly (in fact, I can't find their ranking at all). **B** : A decently ranked school (top 75) offers a research or TA position that covers tuition and a stipend. The school does research in areas that I am interested in. In both situations tuition isn't a problem. The benefit of A is that I get work experience, but the school isn't highly ranked in CS (although it is quite well-known for other majors) and I'm not sure how much research I'd be able to participate in while working full time. With B I would get to do research, and the school is more well-known, but I would forfeit work experience. If my ultimate goal is to end up working for a high-end software developer (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.), would option A or B be better?"}
{"_id": "99964", "title": "How important is membership in industrial or professional organizations?", "text": "I recieved free membership to the Australian Computer Society when they granted me a scholarship/arranged an internship. With that internship, I have my first real world experience as an software engineer. I haven't yet taken advantage of my membership in any real way, other than enjoying their periodical, which is semi-nontechnical. Now, I'm considering joining something more international and/or serious, such as the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) or IEEE. How important is it as a software engineer to be a member of an industrial or professional organization? What benefits do such memberships grant you, in terms of exposures to new technologies and connections with future employers?"}
{"_id": "114605", "title": "How will C# 5 async support help UI thread synchronization issues?", "text": "I heard somewhere that C# 5 async-await will be so awesome that you will not have to worry about doing this:               if (InvokeRequired)     {         BeginInvoke(...);         return;     }     // do your stuff here      It looks like the callback of a await operation will happen in the original thread of the caller. It has been stated several times by Eric Lippert and Anders Hejlsberg that this feature originated from the need to make UIs (particularly touch device UIs) more responsive. I think a common usage of such feature would be something like this:               public class Form1 : Form     {         // ...         async void GetFurtherInfo()         {             var temperature = await GetCurrentTemperatureAsync();             label1.Text = temperature;         }     }      If only a callback is used then setting the label text will raise an exception because it's not being executed in the UI's thread. So far I couldn't find any resource confirming this is the case. Does anyone know about this? Are there any documents explaining technically how this will work? Please provide a link from a reliable source, don't just answer \"yes\"."}
{"_id": "99962", "title": "Would a computer engineering degree involve complex event processing?", "text": "I've recently discovered the awesomeness of Complex event processing. Just reading the wikipedia page gave me chills on how this technology could be used and evolved into something very powerful. I'm currently a second year computer engineering student, and I was wondering if what I'm doing could ever get me a job involving complex event processing. If not, can one \"have\" omplex event processing as a hobby or does it require way too much power and resources?"}
{"_id": "153896", "title": "What kinds of projects is SCRUM considered to be suitable for?", "text": "I have been using SCRUM in three different projects over the last four years. One of SCRUM's advantages seems to be its flexibility and adaptability, e.g. wrt to changing customer requirements. Another advantage is that management can easily track the progress of a project. SCRUM's flexibility can be an advantage e.g. when implementing a web application, where the requirements change very fast and the customers really understand what they want after they've seen a prototype. On the other hand there are other kinds of software projects (e.g. in aerospace industry) where the requirements are pretty fixed: you get a requirement specification document and you have to come back six months later with working software and complete documentation. For this kinds of projects I doubt that the flexibility offered by SCRUM is needed (in the sense that you do not need to build prototypes and show them to the customer to get feedback on the requirements): you rather need a very structured and systematic approach, which is probably repeated over and over again for each project with little room for surprise. So is SCRUM considered by its proponents a general-purpose software development methodology or is it considered especially suited for certain categories of projects or application areas? For example, I recently looked at the website of a company producing software for the aerospace industry and noticed that they are using the V-model. Would a SCRUM proponent say that SCRUM is less suited for this kind of projects or rather suggest that this company should try switching to SCRUM? **Note** that I am not asking for the opinion of the readers of this forum, but I want to know what is the established opinion among SCRUM proposers: is SCRUM considered general-purpose or rather suitable for certain classes of projects only? In the latter cases, for what kinds of projects?"}
{"_id": "64994", "title": "What makes resources \"expensive\"?", "text": "I am reading hibernate and I came across statements like \"JDBC connections open across multiple requests is not a good thing because it is an expensive resource \". What is meant by expensive resource ? Edit : I am adding what user unknown has added as a comment below . If establishing a database connection is expensive , then why not use the same thing again and again (not caching) , instead of closing it and opening it everytime ?"}
{"_id": "64997", "title": "Serverless protocol", "text": "Ok programmers, here's one for you. I'm writing an open source IM client/protocol as a learning exercise and to scratch my itch about some problems with current protocols. However, I'm poor. I do run a server but off the back of my own low-bandwidth residential connection (which I would rather -not- saturate by running an IM server on it). I was thinking about the problem and looked into various alternatives (this was before I considered writing my own client/protocol) but there's nothing which doesn't require -any- server hardware. The reason for this is fairly obvious, in order to keep contact lists persistent and synchronous, the simplest solution is to store them remotely and have the user download their contact list each time they log in. One solution I did consider was storing the contact list information on USB flash drives but that is far from ideal (not least because I don't have one myself). Another option would be to implement a peer discovery network similar to bonjour, but that would not provide a contact list of your friends, just a contact list of everyone else who's online. More feasible than the USB idea, but the function isn't ideal in this case. Does anybody have any other ideas for a serverless IM protocol?"}
{"_id": "135594", "title": "Generic decorator implementation", "text": "I have the following pattern, which I would like to implement using some kind of generic programming, but I do not see how I can do it. I have an interface I containing many methods with different signatures. Each method has a return type of some class type and any implementation should return null on failure, or a concrete object on success. Now I have a concrete implementation A of I, and a decorator class D of A. For each method               T m(T1 p1, ..., Tn pn)      defined by the interface I, the implementation of m in D follows a fixed pattern:               class D     {         private A impl = ...;              ...              T D.m(t1 p1, t2 p2, ..., tn pn)         {             init();                  T result = impl.m(p1, ..., pn);             if (result != null)                 successCode();             else                 failureCode();                  return result;         }     }      The calling code uses the decorator as follows:               I instance = DecoratorFactory.createIDecorator();     T r        = instance.m(p1, ..., pn);      Question: Is there a way to implement this kind of decorator in a generic way (without writing the same boilerplate for each method)? Can this be done in Java? If it is not possible to implement this pattern in Java, is there an elegant way to implement it in another language?"}
{"_id": "204636", "title": "Non-trivial get function, should it be named differently", "text": "For example I have this code.               class Command {              var $responseFactory;         var $service;              /**          * Returns the class name of the responseFactory if it is set           * or the default class name for the responseFactory of the service if it is set.           */         public function getResponseFactory(){             if ($this->responseFactory != null) {                 return $this->responseFactory;             }                  if ($service != null) {                 return $service->getResponseFactory();             }                  return null;         }     }      Although it is fine by itself it could lead to someone being surprised in the future if they cloned a Command object, changed it's `service` property which then 'magically' changes the results of `getResponseFactory`. The counter argument for why it should be named just `getResponseFactory` is 'duh, of course the internal behaviour of the class should be a black box`. Should non-trivial `get` functions be called differently to indicate that they are not a trivial getter? _Edit_ Just to clarify the return type is the same if it is the `Command` responseFactory that is returned or the `Service` responsefactory."}
{"_id": "165852", "title": "bug: deviation from requirements vs deviation from expectations", "text": "I am not clear on this one. No matter the terminology, in the end the software fault/bug causes (according to a lot of sources): > Deviation from requirements   >  Devation from expectations But if the expectations are not in requirements, then stakeholder could see a bug everywhere as he expected it to be like this or that..So how can I really know? I did read that specification can miss things and then of course its expected but not specified (by mistake)."}
{"_id": "96128", "title": "Creating experimental database", "text": "This question is about databases but I prefer to post it here and not in dba.stackexchange. The reason is that I have concerns with the application as well as database design. Programmers can better assist in this regard. My four year old .NET application is using MySQL 5.1 database server as back- end. The database is running well. There are no performance issues to make us worry about. But I want to try out advanced database features like Partitioning, Replication and Clusters. I have never used these concepts before and I can definitely give these features a try on existing database, but I have some other plans. I want to use IBM DB2 express-C as an experimental database. Records from MySQL need to be synchronized into DB2 database and I want to use the DB2 database for reports in my application. Is there any free tool to synchronize the two databases? Do I need to use two connection strings, the first one involving MySQL for Inserts/Updates/Deletes and the second one involving DB2 for Reporting? Is this type of foolish approach used in real world in certain scenarios?"}
{"_id": "105784", "title": "Is it okay to use a short EULA?", "text": "I need to add an EULA to my (commercial) software but I cannot afford a lawyer. Also I had a look at various EULA examples on the internet but they are all for specific software or countries, and are probably copied from other commercial software. So I'm thinking about using a short custom EULA which would just mention the essential. Something like:   * You may redistribute the trial version of this software   * If you buy a license, you may not redistribute it or sell it   * You may not sue me for any financial or material loss arising from the use of this software   * This software is copyright XXX, all rights reserved. Would that kind of EULA protect me in most cases? Also do you know of any company that use short EULA?"}
{"_id": "255322", "title": "BDD based on 1-liner requirements", "text": "In our team, the product owner only gives us a 1-liner summary. The developers then come up with a PoC, which the product owner reviews and the cycle repeats. The challenge here is 2-fold:   1. Time: We have to create the PoCs asap, so that they can be reviewed   2. The Developers are actually defining the look and feel of the product - a lot of UI PoC and some controller development to back it up. But BDD doesn't gel into the \"creative\" process of product envisioning. Typically, BDD requires you to take a product specification, and then codify it using Jasmine etc.  Can any BDD experts please suggest a way to blend the creative thinking process with BDD?"}
{"_id": "196829", "title": "What needs to change for Software Engineering to become a formal profession?", "text": "Unlike other professions (such as Accounting, Law, Medicine, etc.), there is no profession-wide certification for Software Engineering. I am well aware of the multitude of technology and methodology specific certifications that aim to serve as proof of specialisation and experience, but there is no public Software Engineering society / governing body that sets (and has the power to legally assess) generally accepted professional standards. I understand that software is a dynamic beast - that is part art, part science - but I'm wondering whether Software Engineering has the potential to become a formal profession. What needs to change for this to happen, and would it even be a good thing? (If anybody knows of formal research into this topic I'd greatly appreciate references)       ## Update I agree with many of the good points raised below regarding the current level of certification in Software Engineering. I also find it very interesting that some countries treat Software Engineering as a profession whilst others don't. There does however seem to be a bit of shroud surrounding the term \"formal profession\", and how it would apply to Software Engineering. I think the key issue with Software Engineering - and the primary reason it is not a full- blown profession - is that if you're a certified Software Engineer, and - for example - some software you wrote for an elevator malfunctions and kills people, your certification and / or membership to a formal professional body won't get revoked. Sure, your company might get sued for millions, and you personally might lose your job and earn a bad reference, but generally speaking, you personally are protected by the shield of limited liability as a result of being employed by said company. In other words, and as far as I know, there is no legal assessment / enforcement in place (unlike other formal professions and their governing societies) which have the mandate to officially bar you from trading once you've made a colossal stuff-up. I quite liked the answer that touched on the fact that Software Engineering - as it stands - is a meritocracy, which doesn't need to be a formal profession, and that this is a good thing that shouldn't change. At the same time, I think we need to make a clear distinction between Software Engineers of mission- critical software versus developers of miscellaneous / non-critical software. To those of you who work / have worked on mission-critical software - is there any personal liability? Surely there is a need for formal repercussions in the event of the Software Engineer making a costly mistake?"}
{"_id": "222717", "title": "Optimal \"if-else\" tree algorithm to minimize duplicate code", "text": "I'm having trouble formulating this problem as an algorithm: I have a set of conditionals (combined with `&&`) and operations, for example:               if (A && B)         execute C     else if (D && A)         execute E      I want an algorithm to find the optimal \"if-else\" tree that minimizes the amount of duplicate code. The optimal branching for the example above would be:               if (A){         if (B)             execute C         else if (D)             execute E     }      The cost of duplicate conditionals will be different for each conditional, but it is at least `1`. The cost for duplicate operations (e.g. `execute C`) is `3`. This smells like a minimum spanning tree problem, to me. Or maybe some other known graph theory problem. But I can't figure out how to represent the problem as a graph to begin with. Here is a comparison of the two \"if-else\" trees from the example: ![example graph](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nOEkQ.jpg)"}
{"_id": "186218", "title": "Helper static methods in TDD", "text": "I am creating an application which will be testable(unit + integration). In this application I have a FileHelper static class,               public static class FileHelper     {         public static void ExtractZipFile(Stream zipStream, string location)         {             ..................................         }          public static void CreatePageFolderIfNotExist(string directory)         {             .................................................         }              .......................................................         .......................................................     }      But due to static I think it is not testable. How to make this class testable?"}
{"_id": "255325", "title": "How to access clipboard data in chrome and firefox using flex", "text": "I want to access the clipboard data in flex appication. How to implement this functionality in Chrome and FF?"}
{"_id": "186210", "title": "Choosing a suitable language and framework", "text": "I'm writing a small webpage that will allow the user to download small tools to run locally, I'm thinking what might be a suitable choice of language for the small tools. There will be a rather large amount of fairly specific small tools, so I'm interested in cutting down the development time for each one as much as possible. Requirements:   * The tools will have graphics, nothing fancy mainly 2D-shapes.   * Can be run offline.   * Preferably no installation at all, just run. Some of the users will not be very technically at all.   * Cross-platform, primarily Windows and OSX but also a bit of Linux. My current thoughts:   * Python. Easy to write in but can be a hassle for the user to get to run if using libraries like PyGame. I can't count on the user already having python installed on windows or osx.    * I'm discounting .NET and Mono for more or less the same reason as Python, they'd need installers, or is there a way to ship everything needed in the same folder?   * C++. Takes a slightly longer time to write things in, but does support the requirements. I thought about using a scripting language(Lua, Angelscript or similar) on top of SDL to get the benefits of both c++ and shorten the development time once the middleware is well developed enough. Do you have any other suggestions? EDIT: Please leave a comment as to why if you vote negatively."}
{"_id": "231278", "title": "Whats an Ideal way to pass rules/options to methods that build SQL", "text": "We're trying to come up with a way to handle code that builds dynamic SQL for our application, which is very database centric. Things like Linq to SQL and Entity Framework are out of the question, so please no suggestions of that sort, our path has been defined for us. Our main goal is seperation of the SQL from the rest of the code (business logic etc). Right now, we're thinking of using extension methods to house the SQL, and coming up with some sort of configuration object that developers can use to define how the query should be built (dictated by business logic, outside of the Extension class) So for example, I have some prototype code below. The developers would setup the Configuration Struct (as per business rules), and pass that to GetSQL.               public static class LocationSql2Extension     {              public enum SelectFields         {             Default,             DefaultAnd_Description_LocationSize         }              public enum FilterBy         {             Default,             DefaultAnd_Description         }              public enum OrderBy         {             Default,                         DefaultAnd_LocationType_LocationID_Description         }              public struct Configuration         {             public SelectFields SelectFields;             public FilterBy FilterBy;             public OrderBy OrderBy;         }                   public static string GetSQL(this LocationService2 service, Configuration config)         {                  string sqlSelectFields = string.Empty;             string sqlWhere = string.Empty;             string sqlOrderBy = string.Empty;                  if (config.SelectFields == SelectFields.DefaultAnd_Description_LocationSize)             {                 sqlSelectFields = \", Description, LocationSize\";             }                  if (config.FilterBy == FilterBy.DefaultAnd_Description)             {                 sqlWhere = \"WHERE L.Description = ?\";             }                  if (config.OrderBy == OrderBy.DefaultAnd_LocationType_LocationID_Description)             {                              sqlOrderBy = \", L.LocationDescription\";             }                  string sql = string.Format(@\"                                            SELECT L.LocationType, L.LocationId                                                   {0}                                            FROM Location AS L                                            INNER JOIN GroupLoc AS GL                                            ON  L.LocationType = GL.LocationType                                                 AND L.LocationId = GL.LocationId                                                 AND GL.SecLocLevel >= 4                                                 AND GL.GroupId = ?                                            {1}                                            ORDER BY L.LocationType||L.LocationId                                            {2}                                           \", sqlSelectFields, sqlWhere, sqlOrderBy);                  return sql;              }            }      and to call the above code, we have this:               public class LocationService2     {         public string BuildSql()         {             var config = new LocationSql2Extension.Configuration();                  //TODO: Add Business Logic to drive these values             config.SelectFields = LocationSql2Extension.SelectFields.Default;             config.OrderBy = LocationSql2Extension.OrderBy.DefaultAnd_LocationType_LocationID_Description;             config.FilterBy = LocationSql2Extension.FilterBy.DefaultAnd_Description;                  return this.GetSQL(config);                          }     }      Developers would be free to setup the Enum's any way they like, and this is just a simple example. We're not comfortable with this Enum/Struct approach, and are looking for something more generic thats easy for developers to work with, but isn't so generic that it won't catch any errors at design time. This is a simple example, and we have some very large and complex queries in our system. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "104788", "title": "How can I improve my technical writing?", "text": "Writing documentation is part of programming, and writing _well_ is part of what makes the documentation useful. So, what are some hints or guidelines for good writing in the technical realm? What are some resources (on-line or on dead trees) which might help me to improve my documentation?"}
{"_id": "104786", "title": "Having a Git repo and mercurial in the same directory", "text": "Ill explain my problem, I am currently using an in-house install of gitorious using git. I would like to begin testing FogBugz and Kiln from Fog Creek which uses mercurial. I would like to for at a least a short while continue development using both solutions. Does anyone know of any long term serious effects of having a git and a mercurial repo in the same directory. Or is there a better way of keeping git and mercurial server in sync. Ive tried it with a test repo and I haven't seen any issues. Thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "113074", "title": "How can I translate ML code to F#?", "text": "Recently I found a book, _Purely Functional Data Structures_ and all the examples in this book are given in ML with Haskell versions in its appendix. But I only know one programming language with the functional paradigm: F#. And after a bit of research, I found out that F# is (or was) the .NET port of CAML, which is derived from ML. I've heard it mentioned that CAML is just a dialect of ML. Given that, is it possible to translate ML to F# without a lot of knowledge of ML? What are the key differences from the languages? Or is my best bet to just learn ML instead?"}
{"_id": "142661", "title": "Shared memory multiprocesses", "text": "I'm building an multi processes application and I need to save session ID, the sessions ID is 32 bit, and of course it can't be used twice in its lifetime, I'm currently using DB that saves all the ID in a table, and I do the following, ID table is (int key, char used(1)) //1 is used, 0 is not 1\\. lock table 2\\. get one key for one sessions 3\\. update used field in it to used 4\\. unlock After the session is finished the process use below to free key, 1\\. lock table 2\\. update used field in it to not used 4\\. unlock I'm really wondering whether this is a good/fast implementation. and please note it's multi processes application."}
{"_id": "58918", "title": "Which tool to use to manage a project?", "text": "Some time ago I watched these video casts, and I liked how the project was managed. Is there a tool for linux similar to target process (target process's webpage)?   If not, what tool are you using for managing an agile project (linux, or cross platform)? Thanks"}
{"_id": "112383", "title": "What is a \"Process Canary\"", "text": "In the book \"Hard Code\" by Eric Brechner, he states, > Lying is one of a handful of valuable process canaries that can warn you of > trouble. I've heard a dev or two toss around the old \"canary\". What is it? [Google didn't answer it for me. Perhaps my keywords were a poor choice.]"}
{"_id": "134869", "title": "Ignoring unit tests - good and bad reasons when and why?", "text": "Recently I began a new project to re-implement a core part of automation. Since it is very important, I'm TDDing it so that I can tests various basic scenarios as well as things we know the old system doesn't do. In doing this, I find myself creating a few \"sandbox\" tests, which exercise \"candidate\" algorithms in complete isolation so I can choose the one that best meets requirements. I've also created some tests to figure out why other tests are failing, which again are coded in a \"sandbox\" manner and don't test actual production code (they instead have a simplification of the production environment that I can alter until I find the problem/cause/solution). Neither of these has continuing value for regression; once I pick an algorithm I may never use the others, and once a test shows why another test is failing, I can correct the initial test (or its exercised production code) and verify correctness, and I no longer care that the other test's hard-coded exercise environment still fails. When learning TDD I was taught that you NEVER delete a unit test; even if the test's original purpose has become irrelevant, the code within the test can be of use to other developers as a model, or the test can be refactored for some other purpose later. Instead, if a test has become redundant or irrelevant and should no longer be run, pass or fail, it should be ignored. Is this the \"generally-accepted\" stance on ignoring tests? Does this have the potential for abuse (e.g. \"I don't _think_ it matters anymore, and it fails, so I'll just ignore it\")?"}
{"_id": "134861", "title": "How can I explain the difference between NULL and zero?", "text": "Working on a problem that uses the percent change formula:               percent change =  100 * [(new value - old value) / old value]      How would I explain the difference if `new value or old value = NULL`, rather than `0` to someone who might not be a programmer? My boss is wondering why there is an empty string in the TextBox rather than a value, because we have the old value, but not the new value."}
{"_id": "188913", "title": "Is there any static analyzer for code contracts for Java 1.6?", "text": "I have used Java Modeling Language (JML) with its runtime assertion checker jml4c for writing code contracts in java. However, it would have been great to have a static checker in place as well that provides suggestions as to where a contract is possibly broken during the build process, something like the code- contracts library developed for the .NET platform. Esc/Java2 does this for java version 1.4. Is there any such tool that supports java 1.6?"}
{"_id": "194082", "title": "Attempt at understanding the double-dispatch pattern", "text": "I've been trying to grok the double-dispatch pattern and having a hard time. I finally attempted a sample program to help myself understand. Here's the gist. But then I decided to attempt it without Double dispatch and the solution didn't look any more terrible than usual. What am I doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "113381", "title": "What's the difference between \"use case\", \"User Story\" and \"Usage Scenario\"?", "text": "Is there an exact, but simple and understandable defintion of the distinction between \"use case\", \"User Story\" and \"Usage Scenario\"? there are quite a bunch of explanation, but right now, I see no one that explains the differences in a single sentence, or two... (e.g. http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?UserStoryAndUseCaseComparison very long and hard to get, full of discussion)"}
{"_id": "146154", "title": "What are the Agile initial conditions?", "text": "First let me say that I think that an agile process can work because of the following underlying principles:   * It brings focus   * Limits the noise which really brings focus Secondly I am wondering what are the initial conditions needed so that an Agile process can succeed? For example do we need to have:   * No existing bugs   * Fully automated test process or at least a highly automated test process   * People dedicated to the project   * More clearly defined new development   * Development that is not _make it faster or more stable_   * ? So what do you need to make it successful? Are there different Agile implementations that better handle not having some of these initial conditions?"}
{"_id": "83400", "title": "usefulness of PNG checksum vs. lack thereof in other FourCC formats", "text": "PNG is one of a family of container formats generally called FourCC or OSType. [A]IFF and WAV are two other common instances of the format. I want to develop a new format for a specialized data type. I modeled the format closely on PNG. PNG is unusual for the FourCC family in that each block ends with a checksum. In theory this can be used to check for corrupted data. Is that checksum useful for practical cases? New formats, like Google's WebP (based on RIFF), don't have a checksum. I can't find guidelines on what to do with it, including:   * should all readers verify the checksum, or do most readers ignore it?   * what should a reader do if it's wrong? Since I'm not convinced it's useful, and supporting the checksum makes things more complicated, I'm going to omit the checksum in the next revision. But since it's in PNG, I figure there's a good reason, I wanted to get some feedback about how people actually use that field and its relative importance."}
{"_id": "102784", "title": "Is it possible to make something open-source without publishing it?", "text": "I've been working on some piece of software while being \"employed\" by company A. I now want to continue working on the same software while being employed by company B. Company B wants the software to become open-source to prevent any future legal issues between company A and them. I will consult company A's lawyer to make sure it's fine by them, but I suspect it will be alright as company A is actually a public university which looks favorably on industry connections. However, I am concerned by potential competitors getting access to that code before we make its results public. **Is it possible to make the software open- source without sharing it with anyone but company B** (neither in binary nor source form), **or do I have to publish the software the minute it is made open-source or shared with anyone?** If the answer depends on the specific open-source license used, please be kind and provide details about the differences."}
{"_id": "83405", "title": "Software Lifecycle Methodologies for One Man Teams", "text": "I am building a software system for my masters project and was looking for advice on particular methodologies that would suit a \"one man team\"..."}
{"_id": "102787", "title": "Does writing a programming blog reduce your learning speed, compared to reading other people's blogs only?", "text": "If I want to concentrate on improving my skill or knowledge, should I be writing my own programming blog in order to consolidate my knowledge or I should I just concentrate on reading other people's blogs/videos/podcasts/books?"}
{"_id": "193864", "title": "What are the practical benefits of LISP like syntax which Clojure uses over Java like syntax of Scala?", "text": "I spent couple of months learning Scala and got overwhelmed by number of different constructs it had, After looking at partial functions, partially- applied functions, pattern matching, actor syntax, I gave a thought to learning Clojure which doesn't have too much in terms of syntax but looking at the how Java inter-operability is handled, it looks very difficult to get use to. for example: things like `doto, new and .` Every time I start typing a function, there are times I write `(1 + 2)` instead of `(+ 1 2).` It looks like I will have to completely forget how I write regular programs to get use to this syntax. Also finding it difficult to deal with side-effects that do and let form have. Aren't they similar to what functions with void type are ? Things like registering a callback,things normal I/O, how can such things be side-effects free. Till now all I really liked about Functional Programming is that, immutability makes concurrency easier when dealing with shared data, functions as first class objects and having higher-order functions, apply,map and reduce with functions and lists . I wanted to know, are there practical benefits I will get once I am use to this syntax ? I f I continue to learn Scala and avoid using var, and always use recursion instead of loops. I can do all the above things and still write understandable code."}
{"_id": "210255", "title": "What are the cases where keeping source code secret is justified?", "text": "When I worked as a freelancer, I encountered lots of cases where customers were protecting their ideas and source code of their projects (such as web applications) as much as possible, no matter how unimportant, uninteresting and unoriginal were the projects and the concepts behind. I've already posted a question about keeping the ideas secret, and received many great answers. Now, my concern is more about source code secrecy. According to my observations of:   * The codebases I had to work on during my career,   * My own willingness to keep some of my own source code secret, and:   * A few articles like, for example, Open response to Simon Stuart by the popular Programmers.SE contributor Mason Wheeler, I conclude that source code is kept secret mostly for those reasons:   1. Because the author is ashamed of the code of such a bad quality, or the company fears losing reputation if somebody sees such bad codebase, or that given the low quality of the codebase, it will not bring anything useful to anybody to open source it: even if somebody would be interested, he would hardly be able to run the solution (or, often, even compile).   2. Because parts of the code are stolen (mostly from open source projects covered by a license which restricts its usage in a given situation),   3. Because the code relies on security by obscurity and the author doesn't care about Kerckhoffs's principle.   4. Because the product is so breakable that showing the code would cause too much harm: if a closed-source app with all those security leaks would withstand a newbie hacker, the same open sourced app would have far smaller chances, because even the beginner hacker would just have to study the code to discover all the holes. If it's not clear what I'm talking about, here's an example:              if (credentials.password === 'masterPassword12345')     {         isLoggedIn = true         currentUser = credentials.userName     }     else     {         authenticate(credentials)     }        5. Because the author over-estimated the source code (and his own skills and expertise). Example: believing that a home-made cryptography-related algorithm (which was never reviewed by anybody) is better than any well-known one.   6. Because the author believes that the idea behind the code is great, and that it would be stolen.   7. Because of the \"It's not perfect enough\" syndrome. In other words, the developer is willing to release the source code to public when the code is \"good enough\", but day after day, there are still things to improve, so the code would never be released. All of those reasons give a rather negative image of people who are against publishing the source code. Are there valid cases to not release to the public the high-quality code which follows Kerckhoffs's principle?"}
{"_id": "182282", "title": "Developing on a production server", "text": "Today I got yelled at for developing an application on a production server. Quote, \" _developing on a production server is not acceptable - ever!_ \" Here is the situation.   1. I set up a development instance: `http://example.com:3000`   2. The production instance is: `http://example.com`   3. I complete all my development work on `http://example.com:3000` and when the client is pleased with the changes, I move them over to `http://example.com`. The application I am working with is an old Ruby on Rails application, and I have to say that initially, I did try to set up an development environment locally, but I could never get it running. After trying for a while, I gave up and decided to develop on the production server. Again, am I an idiot? Probably so, but I've been doing web development for a couple of years now, and I have never encountered a situation like this. Who is right and why?"}
{"_id": "251414", "title": "Is this a candidate for Singleton?", "text": "I have an external thermometer connected via USB that is controlled by my SW. Different parts of my system will use it but never at the same time (all in one thread). However, it is a single device communicating over an established connection so for some reason I think either its method (GetTemperature) should be static or I could do it as Singleton. I will be happy for suggestions. Thanks"}
{"_id": "153490", "title": "Is there a difference between \"self-plagiarizing\" in programming vs doing so as a writer?", "text": "I read this Gawker article about how a writer reused some of his older material for new assignments for different magazines. Is there any similar ethical (societal?) dilemma when doing the same thing in the realm of Programming? Does reusing a shared library you've accumulated over the years amount to self-plagarizm? What I'm getting at is that it seems that the creative world of software development isn't as stringent regarding self-plagarism as say journalism or blogging. In fact on one of my interviews at GS I was asked what kind of libraries I've developed over the years, implying that me getting the job would entail co-licensing helpful portions of code to that company. Are there any cases where although it's legal to self-plagarize, it would be frowned upon in the software world?"}
{"_id": "99032", "title": "How to approach the ol' \"this will just be a small application\"? Yeah right?", "text": "Ok I have run into this many times, but here is the worse case scenario slightly exaggerated. **A client says** \"hey can you make us this small module to do this small task\"?   **Me:** \"Sure no problem\". So based on budgets and constraints etc., I skip some of the architecting and dive right in and make it no sweat. Then they ask for another module. And another. And some enhancements. And this all happens very slowly mind you, over years. And before you know it, you have this monster application that is horribly architected. What do you do when you are asked to do something small? You don't know if it will keep growing...if the client will keep asking for additions (and neither do they). You can't over-architect the thing, because it's just a small application after all, and they will go somewhere else if you say (in that I know all voice) \"Well just in case, let's architect this thing into layers with top-o- the-line security and separation of concerns. In fact let's go with a dependency injection tool that will really make this thing fantastic blah blah blah\". They will say \"yeah right\" and go to someone else. Budget, time, and perception are as important as architecting the application itself. How should this be approached? I guess the question really boils down to \"When you don't have all the information for the final outcome of what appears to be a small application, how do you avoid (or mitigate) making architecural and design decisions early on that will be completely innapropriate later?"}
{"_id": "233147", "title": "Can I use GPLd code I wrote on the job as code samples without permission?", "text": "I'm currently employed by a business to do website development in Wordpress. I've written a number of custom plugins specifically for a number of clients over the time of my employment. Today, I asked my boss what I would be allowed to use as code samples because I'm quitting. My boss has forbidden me from taking any of the custom plugins I coded (which is all of the programming work I've done). However, all of those custom plugins I coded are currently licensed under the the GPL (though they were never released or shared). If I was to take this custom code that I wrote under the GPL (but never released) and provide it as code samples anyway, would my current employer be able to take any kind of legal action against me?"}
{"_id": "233145", "title": "Architecture for a template-building, WYSIWIG application", "text": "I'm building a `WYSIWYG` designer in `Ember.js`. The designer will allow users to create campaigns - think MailChimp. To build a campaign, users will choose an existing template. The template will have a defined layout. The user will then be taken to the designer, where he will be able to edit the text and style, and additionally change some layout options. I've been thinking about how best to go about structuring this app, and there are a few hurdles. Specifically, the output of the campaign will be dynamic: eventually, it will be published somewhere, and when the consumers (not _my_ users, but the people clicking on the campaign that my user created) visit the campaign, certain pieces of data will change, depending on the type of consumer viewing the campaign. That means the ultimate output of the designer will be a dynamic site. The data that is dynamic for _this_ site - the end product - will not be manipulated by the user in the designer. However, the data that will be manipulated by the user in the designer are things like copy, styles, layout options, etc. I'll call the first set of variables server-side data, and the second client-side data. It seems, then, that the process will go something like this:   * I'll need to create templates for this designer that have two dynamic segments. For instance, the server-side data could be `Liquid` expressions, and the client-side data `Handlebars` expressions.    * When the user creates a campaign, I would compile the template on the back end using some dummy data for the server-side variables, and serve up a `handlebars` template to the `Ember` app.   * The user would then edit the template, and the `Ember` app would save all his edits to the JS variables that were powering the template. This way he'd be able to preview the template.   * When he saves, he'll send back the selected template, along with all the data and options he's made.   * When it comes time to publish, the back-end system will have to do two things:      * compile the template with `Handlebars` using the campaign data, and then     * compile the template with `Liquid` using the server-side data * * * Is my thinking roughly accurate about this, or is there a simpler way?"}
{"_id": "194559", "title": "Best practice for remotely resetting a mobile app's content/settings", "text": "What would be the best approach to reset a mobile app's content/settings? Lets say the app is cross platform: apple/android using javascript/phonegap. The current way this is designed is to have an admin area that can see mobile devices (users which have logged in). The admin has the ability to flag a device for reset. The app regularly polls the server to see if it should be reset. Resetting will be rare, but the polling is not. The polling doesn't cause any performance issues but it seems off to constantly be asking the server whether or not to blow up the app. A push rather than a pull method would be nice but I'm not sure what this would look like. Does anyone have any alternative design suggestions? Are there any drawbacks to the current design?"}
{"_id": "107498", "title": "Does dress code affect your programmers performance", "text": "Do you believe forcing programmers to not wear what they like affects their performance? I can extend the question to what they want put on their desk or hung on their wall. Do you have experience that proves giving programmers more freedom in personal matters can increase their productivity? Personally, I feel it should have an impact."}
{"_id": "194552", "title": "What is the difference between Quantum annealing and simulated annealing?", "text": "In both algorithms objective functions, that will be executed with non quantum computers, are used. Both algorithms are methods for finding the global minimum of a given objective function. From wikipedia: > Quantum annealing can be compared to simulated annealing (SA), whose > \"temperature\" parameter plays a similar role to QA's tunneling field > strength. What is meant by \"tunneling field strength\"? The choice of next candidate state seems to be the only difference between the algorithms, is that correct? Finally, what are the advantages of Quantum annealing? Is it faster, or is it just better at handling local minima?"}
{"_id": "145687", "title": "optimizing webapp workflow", "text": "I have a debug and a live server running a LAMP setup with some python scripts. By now I'm working with eclipse and Expandrive (via SSH) on the debug server. Whenever I want to release new code on the live server, I copy and paste the code via windows explorer from debugdrive to livedrive. I think this environment really sucks, what are good alternatives?"}
{"_id": "18512", "title": "Refactoring code smells in ASP.NET Web Forms Code Behind Files: Is it risky? Is it wise? Is it a waste of time?", "text": "Given a long method with Pac-Man ifs, would it be wise to:   1. Break down code blocks into regions.   2. Then refactor code blocks into methods. Or would it be best to leave it alone? Would it be risky?   Would it be a waste of time? In the absence of automated unit-tests, I'm trying to understand the risk- reward relationship associated with this manuever."}
{"_id": "33777", "title": "Inspecting the model in a Rails application", "text": "I am learning some Ruby on Rails, and am a newbie. Most of my background is in ASP.net MVC on the back end. As I play with a basic scaffold project, I wonder about this case: you jump into an established Rails project and want to get to know the model. Based on what I have seen so far (again, simple scaffold), the properties for a given class are not immediately revealed. I don't see property accessors on the model classes. I do understand that this is because of the dynamic nature of Ruby and such things are not necessary or even perhaps desirable. Convention over code, I get that. (Am familiar with dynamic concepts, mostly via JS.) But if I am somewhere off in a view, and want to quickly know whether the (eg) Person object has a MiddleName property, how would I find that out? I don't have to go into the migrations, do I?"}
{"_id": "37099", "title": "I do not have a degree but have 7 years of experience with ASP.NET, C#, can a institute offer me a degree?", "text": "I couldn't find time and money to study due to financial issues,however I managed to land some good jobs and projects and 2 multinational and my portfolio now has good clients on it too, however I still feel that I lack something important so was wondering if someone knows an college/university that offers degrees if you are a qualified professional, I'm also willing to study for few weeks if required. _Update_ Thanks for the answers guys, in my area as far as I have looked, there are no evening or weekend classes for undergrad studies, however there are some for Masters and few of my working friends are studying on weekends (thats actually where my motivation came from)."}
{"_id": "198466", "title": "The emperor's new code, or: how to communicate code efficiencies", "text": "So you've made some code changes that should hopefully speed up some part of an application. But there is just one problem - you don't know how it will perform in live. Different networks, different machines, different memory, different configuration, different times of day, different users, different server loads etc etc etc So... (a) Do you ask them if that bit of the application has got faster? (b) Do you ask them to monitor that part of the application? Or... (c) Do you just ask them to see if they notice any difference in the application in general? After all, you can't be 100% sure you haven't affected something else. Each of these approaches would seem to have problems (I know this as I've tried them all): (a) You're asking a leading question. Before such a fix goes life, there is an emperor's new clothes scenario. The developer believes the code should be faster so there is some kind of crusade to get everyone believing it before it goes live. So...it goes live. Some people say it is faster, some slightly slower and others about the same. What then? (b) Again: Some people say it is faster, some slightly slower and others about the same. What then? (c) You're no longer asking a leading question, but you start getting hit with a whole torrent of issues that people have known about for months (maybe years) but you've now opened Pandora's box. How can you be sure which if these (if any) are new issues? Or maybe I should be asking different questions entirely. Any thoughts? **EDIT:** No doubt there are processes leading up to this point that could potentially be improved. But the nub of the question is this: The change is tested and has been put live. You have a myriad of stats to prove the changes should improve performance. Your boss has given the stats a once over but now wants to make sure the users are happy before signing off the release. What question(s) should you be asking the users?"}
{"_id": "71547", "title": "Bridging the gap between computer science research and software engineering", "text": "Do you believe there is a gap between computer science research and software engineering problems? For example, do software engineers ever have to worry about \"factoring and graph isomorphism\" or some complex computer science problems if they have to....say build a shopping cart website? Probably not. And if there is a disconnect between computer science and the engineers that build applications? Is that the way that engineering and science should exist? Will engineers dive through years and years of research papers to solve a particular problem that they have? Edit-1: After thinking about it, general science probably has the same problem. I am sure there are top chemists working at companies like McDonald's and Taco Bell that are tasked with making a better, easier to manufacture burger."}
{"_id": "113923", "title": "As an iOS developer, what type of technical interview questions should you be prepared with?", "text": "I just finished a technical interview yesterday and the interviewer asked about graph theory, data structure, and traversals. This has nothing to do with iOS stuff. So I came un-prepared. This was actually for a social mobile gaming company, is this the reason why they ask these kind of stuff instead of iOS stuff? Now it seems to me that I am just overwhelmed by the materials to review and study for future interviews, I have to review the whole data structure/traversal/searching algorithm and at the same time iOS/objective-C fundamentals as well. Can someone guide me on how to prepare? Is my past experience just a special case as it was a gaming company?"}
{"_id": "113928", "title": "What is the acceptable failure rate for software?", "text": "Say I produce some software with a genetic algorithm. In order to be certain that the software works correctly in all situations, I would need to test all situations, which could be prohibitively (or infinitely) many. So I evolve the software with evolving test input (some fixed, some inherited, and some random). Now, with each generation, the probability measurably increases that the fittest functions will be general solutions, not just solutions for the known data at hand. As developers, we are flawed, and our software may fail, in fact quite often. Generally speaking, we have no idea of the probability of failure at any given point, though we may be able to discern specific cases in which the software will fail. All we can do to reduce the failure rate is test thoroughly and practice good software development. But logically, we distribute flawed software all the time. Would it make you uncomfortable as a developer to know _how often_ your software might fail, but to know nothing about the specific cases in which it might? What failure rate is acceptable? 0.01%? 0.0001%? Would you hold a genetic algorithm to a higher standard than a human when it comes to failure rates?"}
{"_id": "192098", "title": "Best way to build a hierarchy CLI menu?", "text": "I want to build a command line interface with menus and sub-menus and eventually the leafs of the tree should be operations like.. bank management -> account management -> add acount (insert account info) And I'm looking for a good way which works with the OO principles... Thanks for any piece of advice!"}
{"_id": "31736", "title": "Is there a better strategy than relying on the compiler to catch errors?", "text": "I've been programming in C and C++ for some time, although I would say I'm far from being an expert. For some time, I've been using various strategies to develop my code such as unit tests, test driven design, code reviews and so on. When I wrote my first programs in BASIC, I typed in long blocks before finding they would not run and they were a nightmare to debug. So I learned to write a small bit and then test it. These days, I often find myself repeatedly writing a small bit of code then using the compiler to find all the mistakes. That's OK if it picks up a typo but when you start adjusting the parameters types etc just to make it compile you can screw up the design. It also seems that the compiler is creeping into the design process when it should only be used for checking syntax. There's a danger here of over reliance on the compiler to make my programs better. Are there better strategies than this? I vaguely remember some time ago an article on a company developing a type of C compiler where an extra header file also specified the prototypes. The idea was that inconsistencies in the API definition would be easier to catch if you had to define it twice in different ways."}
{"_id": "31733", "title": "As a code monkey, how to discuss programming with a guy who almost has a doctorate in computer science", "text": "A friend of my wife's is coming over for dinner tonight and he is a lot smarter than me. What do we have in common, well... A Bachelor's in Computer Science, and that should be enough of a conversation starter. But he's nearly completed his doctoral studies and is light years ahead of me in his particular area, which I find fascinating but don't have any legit reason to care about (except for maybe a better way through heavy traffic - he's a combinatorics guy specializing in that I think) and I got married and had some kids and am a professional programmer for medical records software. We've got a lot in common, but there's a point where neither of us care or understand each other - although I really want to learn from him and I'm not certain he'd even want to talk about his work. So for all you doctors or code monkeys, what's a good conversation starter!"}
{"_id": "142278", "title": "Are nullable types preferable to magic numbers?", "text": "I have been having a little bit of a debate with a coworker lately. We are specifically using C#, but this could apply to any language with nullable types. Say for example you have a value that represents a maximum. However, this maximum value is optional. I argue that a nullable number would be preferable. My coworker favors the use of zero, citing precedent. Granted, things like network sockets have often used zero to represent an unlimited timeout. If I were to write code dealing with sockets today, I would personally use a nullable value, since I feel it would better represent the fact that there is NO timeout. Which representation is better? Both require a condition checking for the value meaning \"none\", but I believe that a nullable type conveys the intent a little bit better."}
{"_id": "112038", "title": "What was SOAP invented for?", "text": "This question is inspired by this one. What was the initial goal of inventing SOAP? Why was it invented when we had old kind HTTP and REST?"}
{"_id": "231789", "title": "Disadvantages of scoped-based memory management", "text": "I really like scope-based memory management (SBMM), or _RAII_ , as it is more commonly (confusingly?) referred to by the C++ community. As far as I know, except for C++ (and C), there's no other mainstream language in use today that makes SBMM/RAII their main memory management mechanism, and instead they prefer to use garbage collection (GC). I find this rather confusing, since   1. SBMM makes programs more deterministic (you can tell exactly when an object is destroyed);   2. in languages that use GC you often have to do manual resource management (see closing files in Java, for example), which partly defeats the purpose of GC and is also error prone;   3. heap memory can also (very elegantly, imo) be scope-bound (see `std::shared_ptr` in C++). Why is not SBMM more widely used? What are its disadvantages?"}
{"_id": "115566", "title": "Can a Code Review help in learning the code-flow and/or technology of a large code-base?", "text": "I'm new to VC++, and so am not very familiar with COM, ActiveX, IDL etc. When I mentioned this to my tech-lead, he assigned me the task of doing the code review of files he felt were important, in terms of the code that I'll soon be working with.   The actual code-base is approx. 10000 files. I'm a bit skeptical that doing a code review can help in understanding VC++ (I've already worked with C++ on Linux extensively for 2 years and have plenty of experience in Actionscript, Processing and many other languages). Since the code yet has to be built and run on my system (I'd prefer putting breakpoints and finding the code-flow), my tech-lead gave me the code review work. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "231783", "title": "Are there programming languages that their programs don't run on a VM or natively, but rather on an interpreter?", "text": "In this question I presented an idea I have for a simple programming language. The way programs written in this language will be run, is inside an interpreter written in Java, which will interpret the source code directly and execute it. I would say that there is no doubt that this language would be considered a 'programming language'. It is capable of producing programs that can run, and there exists a platform for them to run on (the interpreter). However, most answers on my question said that this interpreter won't be considered a VM. I am used to thinking that all programming languges create programms that are most commonly either compiled to machine code and executed natively, or compiled to some kind of bytecode or IL and interpreted (executed) on a VM. (Or like in the rare case of the Dart language, interpreted and executed by a VM which interprets the source-code directly, no IL or bytecode). But in my case - **if it's true that my interpreter isn't considered a VM** \\- programs written in my language do not run on a VM, and do not run natively, but rather run on an interpreter. My question: Are there programming languages in existence, that their programms are most commonly executed similarly? Not on a VM, and not natively, but **rather run on an interpreter? (which is not considered a VM** \\- _although I must add I still don't understand why an interpreter that's used as a platform for other programs to run on isn't considered a VM_ )."}
{"_id": "229722", "title": "Is it okay to hire a programmer of an open source software for a (closed source) fork?", "text": "I want to fork an existing open source project to implement a certain major feature based on a research project. I am not sure yet if the changes will end up being open or closed source (the original project is BSD licensed). The point is that I can provide the code for the new feature, but it would take me quite some time to dive into the project and design the interface between the existing application and my new feature. So it would be cool to have a programmer who knows the project already. The question is now if I should just ask among the current developers (dev mailing list) if one of them would be willing to implement the fork (on a paid basis). Is this a generally accepted practice in the open source community? Do you know case histories / examples? (Where has it been known to happen? Where was it known to be refused, and why?)"}
{"_id": "34012", "title": "What subject do you discuss with your manager during a one-on-one?", "text": "Every week, I have a 30 minutes meeting scheduled with my manager to talk about pretty much anything. So far, I haven't taken those one-on-one very seriously. As a new year resolution, I would like to take more seriously my one-on-ones with my manager. One way I though I could do that is to plan in advance (come up with a list of questions and/or agenda) my one-on-one. With the exception of the status report, what subject do you discuss with your manager during a one-on-one? Have you ever seen an agenda for one-on-one?"}
{"_id": "229724", "title": "Feedback on a Kanban Board for Solution Architectects", "text": "Before I get started I need to issue a pre-emptive apology: > _It is very likely that some of the terminology / vocabulary I use in this > post is plain wrong there is also a good chance I have entirely > misinterpreted some of the keys aspects. I am new to this so don't be too > critical, more than welcome constructive feedback ;)_ # Background We are currently transitioning a development department of 200 people from multi-methodology into \"Agile\". The whys, wherefores, pros and cons of this are well beyond the scope of this question. This development department contains an Architecture Service team that is made up of 10 people that are officially known as \"Solution Architects\". In reality they cover more than just the solution, these are technical people that cover every technical architectural aspect of a project (i.e. hardware, software, security, governance etc). They also provide ad-hoc functions to the development team (code reviews, standards guidance etc) and wider business (technical input into tenders, pre contract technical preview of customer requirements) As part of this transition I have been tasked with creating a Kanban board for the purposes of getting a view of the work activities that the Architecture Service team are accountable for. There are a myriad example boards for development / coding teams, but none that I can find for Architecture. So I have taken from various sources and created \"something\", I would really appreciate genuine feedback on it. It is also worth noting that this will be presented to the team as a starting point / work in progress. It is their board and I want them to own it, all I am doing is setting a foundation for the guys to build on (and change if necessary) So far I have something like this # The Main Board The main board is where we hold all active / backlog projects - all active work will be on this board. This will be short reviewed in the daily architectural scrum with a more in-depth review at the end of every week.                          ------------------------------------------------------------------------                | Evaluation            | Implementation       | Ad- Hoc               |                | Todo  | Doing  | Done | Todo  | Doing | Done | Todo  | Doing  | Done |         -------------------------------------------------------------------------------         Person |       |        |      |       |       |      |       |        |      |         --------       -----------------       ----------------       -----------------         Person |       |        |      |       |       |      |       |        |      |         --------       -----------------       ----------------       -----------------         Person |       |        |      |       |       |      |       |        |      |         --------       -----------------       ----------------       -----------------         Person |       |        |      |       |       |      |       |        |      |         -------------------------------------------------------------------------------      The column descriptions / purposes are: **Evaluation** : Projects where the person is doing an initial technical analysis, i.e. running through technical options with a product owner, determining the size of the project. As an example an Evaluation project may be the Architect evaluating a new technology or working with a customer to produce a mutually agreed technical solution. **Implementation** : Projects that are actively in development (coding, testing etc) and the person is acting in an SA function for the wider project team. As an example this could be the development of coding aspects of the \"mutually agreed technical solution\" mentioned above, equally it could also be architecturally overseeing the implementation of some new hardware. **Ad-Hoc** : All the weird and wonderful stuff that comes up that can't be put into the other two columns. As an example in a strange recursive world there is a card for me in the ad-hoc column to create a KanBan board :). **Person** : Fairly self explanatory, the person who \"owns\" the cards in that row. To make things a little more fun this actually contains an avatar of that persons choice. **Todo** : Is effectively our backlog, the cards in here are ordered top to bottom in priority. As space in a persons doing cell becomes available we take from the top of todo. **Doing** : Fairly self explanatory **Done** : Items that have been completed since the last full board review (Friday afternoon every week) ## WIP Limits Rather than do what we do now (i.e. give out work until somebody squeals), I would like the main board to work with objective / evidence based WIP limits. The intention is to size each of the board cards with:   * XS (Extra Small) : 3 points   * S (Small) : 5 points   * M (Medium) : 8 points   * L (Large) : 13 points   * XL (Extra Large) : 21 points The size is very much from an Architects workload perspective, for example a project that requires 1 year of coding for 10 people but minimal Architectural input would be XS or S. However a project that has massive Architectural input but minimal coding could be an XL. Over time we should be able to work out the WIP limit for each person. So we know that Jonny Smith can work with a velocity of 42 points and therefore allocate projects up to that level. As we have not done this before my intention is to set the initial limit high, the idea being that when a person squeals we can (as a team) look at this objectively and determine if it is genuinely too much or is it because our processes etc are too onerous and should be streamlined.   * **NOTE** : Of everything here these WIP calculations are the bit that \"feel\" the least right* # The Funnel Board In order to keep track of all the random things that fly through the team we also have a funnel board. This is a relatively simple board that looks like this:                   ------------------------------------------------------------------------         | Evaluation            | Implementation       | Ad- Hoc               |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------         |                       |                      |                       |         |                       |                      |                       |         |                       |                      |                       |         |                       |                      |                       |         |                       |                      |                       |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------      As the team is made aware of a \"project\" but this is not yet officially sanctioned (i.e. can be put into the Todo columns on the Main Board) then it goes onto the funnel board. Items here are not allocated to a person. The idea being that we can track those random things that come through and ensure they are not forgotten. Also, as the person completes an evaluation project this then moves from Main Board Evaluation Done to the Implementation funnel board (unless it immediately becomes an implementation project) A member of the team will occasionally be tasked with following up everything on the funnel board, i.e. quick phone call to the product owner asking if this is still relevant (this would be an ad-hoc project on the main board) # The Successes Board This is just a simple board to track what we have done over the last X months. It holds the cards that have been through the Funnel and / or Main boards                   ------------------------------------------------------------------------         | Successes                                                            |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------         |                                                                      |         |                                                                      |         |                                                                      |         |                                                                      |         |                                                                      |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------      The idea being that we can occasionally get around this board and give each other mutual pats on the back :) # Board Cards The cards that are on the boards contain the following information:                   ------------------------------------------------------------------------         | SIZE (XS,S,M,L,XL)          | OWNING TEAM MEMBER             |  RAG  |          ------------------------------------------------------------------------         |                                                                      |         |                         PROJECT TITLE                                |         |                                                                      |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------         |                                  |                                   |         |        DEPENDENTS                |          DEPENDENCIES             |         |                                  |                                   |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------         |                                                                      |         |                         MISC INFORMATION                             |         |                                                                      |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------         |                WIDER PROJECT TEAM (AS APPLICABLE)                    |         | Other Architects, Project Manager, Principal Developer, Business     |         | Analyst, Scrum Master                                                |         ------------------------------------------------------------------------      As you will notice the granularity of the card is at a fairly high \"Project\" level, I am not planning on doing a developer style board that is split into tasks (thoughts on this welcome). Also worth mentioning that depending on where the card is not all sections will be applicable. I am also planning on colour coding the cards, as a first stab I have: Yellow : Anything that is customer contractual Pink : Anything that is internal (i.e. not end user facing) Green : Anything that is a company group project The cards will be magnetic rather than post-it, I am hoping to find some that are like mini white boards as this will make life easier as things change # Other Stuff   * If its not on a card on a board then as far as the team is concerned it doesn't exist   * The boards themselves are Whiteboards with Wheels, we can take them wherever we want   * We may consider going to a virtual whiteboard in the future (physical whiteboards are easier to change when we decide that the X column is best on the left of Y not the right) # Questions   1. After reading my newbie Kanban War and Peace what are your thoughts? (please go easy on me :))"}
{"_id": "231784", "title": "Designing interfaces and async", "text": "Suppose I have created interface `IFolderRepository` with methods like that:               IEnumerable<Folder> GetAllFolders();     Folder GetFolderWithId(int id);     void AddFolder(Folder newFolder);     void ModifyFolder(Folder folderToModify, Folder folderAfterModification);     void RemoveFolder(Folder folderToRemove);      and I've implemented `DatabaseFolderRepository` and lets say `CacheFolderRepositoryDecorator`. Now 'hundreds of lines later' I'd like to add SkyDrive folders functionallity so I'm ready to add `SkyDriveFolderRepository`. Unfortunately while `DatabaseFolderRepository` implementation used synchronous methods to talk with database, skydrive one uses a lot of `async` and `await`. What to do in such case? In case of void methods marking it async is not a solution (need to exception handling). Should I change interface to return `Task<T>`? Sure it will work in above example but they're just 2 interface implementation classes. Or should most of my interfaces have `Task` return types (against you aren't gonna need it rule)?"}
{"_id": "184109", "title": "Replacement for instanceof Java?", "text": "So I'm fairly new to programming in the real world (outside of academic projects) and have come across lots of posts saying that using `instanceof` is a bad thing to use to determine what class a specific object is. My situation is that I have three classes, a base product class, one that extends off that and another that extends off that. These are all stored in the same table in a database and I have some code that needs to use the methods on each to pull data off them. What is the best practice to get around this way of doing it? I have read some things about polymorphism but I can't find any examples that fix the issue I have. They all usually override a method which for me won't work as I need to pull different things from the different objects. Is there a better way to do this or am I stuck with using `instanceof` or some sort of reflection to get the fields specific to the objects?"}
{"_id": "224711", "title": "TDD workflow for (implementation specific) edge cases", "text": "When developing features with TDD, I create a test for each combination of feature and case. So, one test for creating user successfully, one for validation errors, and one for database errors. I don't test each one with many different types of data, in general, as I write the tests to flesh out features, less to catch errors. I don't think it's time-effective to write out several cases (even with a \"data provider\") for every single feature I develop in order to validate that the feature works correctly in all cases. Sometimes, though, there are certain implementation specific bugs to be wary of when implementing the feature. After writing the feature test that allows me to write the implementation, I'll notice that certain edge cases need to be tested more carefully because of the implementation. How does one organize these tests with the rest of the feature-specific tests? Are the tests I'm describing regression tests? **Edit:** I guess I wasn't clear about what I meant with \"different types of data\" and \"works well in all cases.\" My main issue is in writing implementation-specific tests--specifically the workflow and organization. We _are_ testing the interface. We're specifically testing the feature only, at first. But a certain implementation requires more tests."}
{"_id": "137745", "title": "Software requirements analysis or requirements engineering?", "text": "I've been looking around for some articles regarding to requirements analysis, but I'm a bit confused with the term, because based on Wikipedia requirements analysis is a stage of requirements engineering. But once you search more, many of the websites use them interchangeably as in they mean the same, can you please help me clarify this?"}
{"_id": "137748", "title": "Custom search engine", "text": "I have made a web application and now I would like to add a search option to it. Since it is a learning project, I can't afford to buy some Google license. That is why I consider creating my own search engine. From what I have read, there are two major ways to do it: using `Apache Lucene` or using `Apache Solr`. I have read a bit about both, but I really don't understand what is the difference between them. Which one should I choose? I am looking for something free which is easy to learn and use, so you have other suggestions please let me know."}
{"_id": "137749", "title": "Test bed application for executing LinQ queries against AdventureWorks", "text": "I am looking for a \"test bed\" application which will help me to learn Linq by writing queries and immediately executing them against the AdventureWorks database. Why AdventureWorks? Because it is a sample database Microsoft uses in their documentation?"}
{"_id": "215682", "title": "How to draw a class diagram where a class contains either 6 other classes or mupltie different", "text": "I know the basics but do not how to model this (it is an exercise with no solution provided): > An order can contain 1 or more cartons of beer. Each carton contains 6 beers > of the same kind but there are some consisting of 3 different beer types > (still 6 in total) Also having a \"Carton\" class, how can I make it the way it either 6 beers (same ones) OR 6 beers of 3 various types?"}
{"_id": "184107", "title": "My boss has a bad case of \"Not Invented Here\"", "text": "My department specializes in converting customer data into our database schema so that they can use our software. Right now, we have C# applications that take an `IDataReader` (99% of the time it is a `SqlDataReader`), perform some cleaning and mapping, insert it into a `DataRow` object, and then use a `SqlBulkCopy` to insert it in to our database. Sometimes (especially when the source database contains images as `varbinary` objects), this process can really bog down with a SQL transfer from the server to the app to just then turn right around and go back to the server. I feel that if we re-wrote some of the conversions as SSIS packages it could speed things up a lot. However the biggest stonewall I keep running into is when my boss, in Not Invented Here fashion, pushes back and says \"What if Microsoft drops support for SSIS? We will have all this obsolete code and we will be screwed.\" This is not the first time that I have hit a \"What if they remove that feature...?\" answer from my boss. I don't have the time to write the conversion the old way, self-teach myself SSIS, and also write it the new way to demonstrate/test the benefits (None of us have used SSIS so there would be a period where we would have to learn how to use it). What should I do in this situation? Stop pushing the new technology? Wait till he leaves the department (I am the 2nd most Sr. person in the department after him, but it could be years before he quits/retires)? Find a new way of getting him to stop being afraid of 3rd party tools?"}
{"_id": "192095", "title": "Architecture change from using disk to RAM to read and write key/value pairs coming over a network", "text": "A WebApp writes a stream of data coming over a network to disk as key/value pair and then reads & send it over network again after few milliseconds in 99% of case. In 1% of cases write/read can be few hours to days apart (really don't know). Latency is strict \"no\" in the app and we have to serve 100% of customers therefore I am planning to put data into RAM and later read and send it over network and only write to disk if the data is not read from RAM within a certain prefixed interval. What could be possible solution to this problem? P.S - Memcached looks like a good solution for using RAM instead of disk but Can memcached read/write of disk after time_to_live? I also looking at Couchbase but I don't want to write to disk in all cases as 99% write/read happens in the matter of milliseconds. Is it possible that after time_to_die Memcached could write the key/value to Couchbase instead of removing it from RAM and read it on demand? **[Edit 1]** After spending last few trying to explore various options. The following looks like a possible solution   1. Write the data stream simultaneously to the RAM (using Memcached) and disk using (GlusterFS).   2. In case the data is demanded by the application layer check it first in the RAM (Memcached) if it return the data ok, if it does not check the data on disk GlusterFS.   3. Remove data stream from RAM if data is demanded by application or when time_to_live is reached whichever is earlier. Suggestion most welcome."}
{"_id": "157405", "title": "Css design skills", "text": "I have seen this article: **CSS3 Loading elements** at HTML5 and CSS3 Tutorials pages. How did someone made this calculations? what angle, how much space, how much rotation to give? If I do it with hand, starting number one, I fear it takes too long as a process to complete. Is there some tool, or some trick that do this or is it based on some technique that I am unaware somehow? [EDIT] I am trying to tweak the width and height of this CSS, in order to make it smaller, and is broken. It seems to be calculated as is and you can't touch it."}
{"_id": "68507", "title": "Are there any surveys regarding Scrum efficiency?", "text": "Years passed since Scrum had been widely adopted in software world. I\u2019m wondering if there is any efficiency survey done by more or less independent people/institutes. Obviously scrums gurus who travel around the globe giving lectures and training always find numbers of excellent showcases, however I\u2019d rather listen someone who doesn\u2019t sell Scrum. By efficiency I mean total productivity (delivered value/cost), but not some internal characteristics like communications inside teams and so on. Update based on discussion in comments: One of the ways to do such survey/analysis could be based on comparison of similar projects developed with Scrum and without Scrum. I believe even 10 years ago there were projects similar to some current. Of course, it does not make sense if applied technologies are completely different, so these projects have to be implemented on same/similar technology."}
{"_id": "157407", "title": "Best practice on if/return", "text": "I want to know what is considered better way of returning when I have `if` statement. Example 1:               public bool MyFunction()     {        // Get some string for this example        string myString = GetString();             if (myString == null)        {           return false;        }        else        {           myString = \"Name \" + myString;           // Do something more here...           return true;        }     }      Example 2:               public bool MyFunction()     {        // Get some string for this example        string myString = GetString();             if (myString == null)        {           return false;        }             myString = \"Name \" + myString;        // Do something more here...        return true;     }      As you can see in both examples function will return `true/false` but is it a good idea to put `else` statement like in first example or it is better to not put it?"}
{"_id": "68505", "title": "Naming convention for associative entity", "text": "When designing Many-to-Many relationship on a database, we need to put another table in the middle so it become 3 tables with 1-to-many relationship. Wikipedia told me that it's called associative entity I always have problem naming these kind of tables. Is there any convention for them? or how do you name these tables?"}
{"_id": "68503", "title": "A software architecture document should present the technology used?", "text": "When writing a software architecture document, should we present the technology used and how it connects to the system qualities we want achieve? For example, we chose .NET because arg1, arg2 .. My feeling is NO, architecture should be stable in change; but the concrete realization of some modules can change in respect to the technology used."}
{"_id": "234499", "title": "Primes and multi-threading", "text": "I use to compute primes using linear code which took a long time. As I've an 8 cores processor I thought about multi-threading. At first I use to put a huge number of int in a vector then share the vector between the threads which takeout each number which is not a prime. The first thread processed the 1st/ _nthread_ part, the second processed the 2nd/ _nthread_ and so on. Which leads me to a resource issue due to concurrent access. Then I tried to split the vector in _nthread_ vectors to give one vector to each thread, removing concurrent access issue. But I'm not convinced that it's the best way to do it since processing the primes from 1 to 10 000 is faster than processing primes form 10 001 to 20 000.   * Is there a better way to take profit of the multi-threading ?   * If no, what is the best way to split vectors so the thread would take the same time ?"}
{"_id": "206965", "title": "Trying to get first software job...Having tremendous difficulty (BS degree from top state school)", "text": "I have years of Java coding experience, but no apps or code samples of my own. 1)Will an Android/iOS app help me get into Enterprise Java work, or because the fields are so different will it be irrelevant? 2)If (1) is irrelevant, what else can I do to avoid becoming a front end(HTML/CSS) web developer/designer. Thank you"}
{"_id": "206967", "title": "Unit Tests work but there are still bugs?", "text": "**Brief History** I am new to Automated Unit Testing and Mocking objects world; previously we used to do Unit Testing (including Integration Testing and we mistakenly referred that as Unit Testing) manually, but now ~~we have planned to change all of that to~~ I am pushing our organization to do Automated Unit Testing. **Problem is:** I have a component for which I have written unit Tests (note: I am not using any TDD here, code is written first and then Unit Tests are written) covering each and every branch(if/ else or loops) of code. If I run the Unit tests suite it says that every method works as expected. That's good; but when I try to traverse the entire flow, I see there are many bugs( missing method) that should have been added. Is there a way to check this automatically? **Update** As per the below Answers from KeithS and Schleis, it seems that I need Functional tests (or integration tests). Are there some useful links on automated functional tests? I tried it on Google but they are all showing generic results talking about manual testing."}
{"_id": "183655", "title": "How to become an expert in C++", "text": "I have some experience in Java programming and enterprise application development. I have done OOP, data structures in C++ for my undergraduate studies. But I couldn't touch C++ for years. Now I am interested in C++ again and I would like to polish my C++ knowledge and become an expert in C++ . How do I start my journey in C++ again? In this journey would like to learn some advanced concepts in C++ like network programming, distributed computing,.. etc."}
{"_id": "206963", "title": "Which child process will inherit threads of parent process?", "text": "What happens when one process have child threads and child process , will child process inherit all child threads of parent process.? Assume OS is Linux . Let it be Java Threading model."}
{"_id": "206962", "title": "Should multi-threading be used for tasks which does not involve IO operation?", "text": "I was reading a book on OS and got confused between different terminologies. I hope i will get my doubt cleared here. These questions might be very basic for some experts, but i find this platform best suitable for such clarifications. Processes are run by CPU and this whole operation is managed by OS. For Single core CPU, at any instant only one process will be running. CPU saves the state of a process to Process Control Block and starts running another process which was waiting and this switching is so fast that it feels like all processes are running simultaneously. Need of different threads in a process was felt to get more fine-grained control over process , that means if process is waiting because of some I/O bound operation then even if this process is selected by CPU, it will not do anything. So, if multiple threads are running under one process, then if one thread takes care of I/O activity , other threads can do some real computation, provided this process is selected by CPU. Here are my questions: Is Multi-threading effective only if task involved I/O activity? Why is Multi-threading preferred over Multi-processing ? (is it because threads will share same memory space? ) Why Multi-core processors are better for multi-threading? (I think they will be better even if you don't use multi-threading, why so excitement in name of multi-threading?). And anyway threads in different processes will not share same memory, so two threads running in different processes on different cores are like running different processes. It is just that they will be parallel, and the real parallel, not the pseudo parallel."}
{"_id": "108348", "title": "What are the benefits of using comments", "text": "I just accepted a new job. Our application is in the 50,000 lines of code area. None of which is commented. I am finding it difficult to understand how the application works. Id like to prevent this for the next person that joins the project by getting the team to start to use comments. Forget about if you support comments or consider them code duplication. What are some of the benefits of using comments that I can use as reasons for the team to start using them. What arguments are there in favor of comments (Not looking for opposing arguments). Are there any publications or studies done that show that using comments improves code quality or something like that?"}
{"_id": "108349", "title": "Why is the 'final' keyword used so little in the industry?", "text": "Since I discovered the powers of the `final` keyword in Java a few years ago, it helped me to make my codes a lot more readable, since people can easily see what are read-only variables. It may also provide a little boost to the JIT, and while that's a very limited one, it can't harm, especially when targeting embedded devices such as android platforms. But more than everything, it contributes to make a design more robust to changes, and guide other committers when they need to modify the code base. However, while browsing some of the JDK source code, I never stumbled upon this keyword, either for classes, methods, or variables. The same applies for various systems I had to review. Is there a reason? Is it a common design paradigm to let everything mutable from the inside?"}
{"_id": "108340", "title": "Why is the dollar sign used to abbreviate the description of a cache?", "text": "What's the historical significance of abbreviating say, an L1 cache as L1$?"}
{"_id": "108347", "title": "Where can I find high-quality resources for programmers who are not-English speakers?", "text": "I've recently reviewed a resume for a very promising student who is not a native English speaker (I believe his native language is Bengali). His academic record has some gaps, too - he could use a couple of solid data- structure and algorithms type courses. Where would you advise this student to look, in order to find programming/training resources that are likely to be good quality, and in his native tongue? He is far from fluent, and has indicated that the language barrier is too high for him to try a course that's taught in English. Is it even possible for him to both study English and fill in the gaps in his training at the same time, or would you advise that he just do the two serially?"}
{"_id": "103493", "title": "Ideas on making potential customer trust the web-site database", "text": "I'm developing a site for a potential customer who will need a lot of features for members and the various roles they will have, but also wants to have confidence in the \"database\". It is this latter item that makes them want to purchase a canned system from someone \"established\", that is both rather expensive, and is generic / not as customizable to what is needed. Do you have any thoughts or ideas on what I can do to inspire confidence in them that the database will be solid? I've thought about generating test data to fill the database, doing database backups, and readily being able to switch between database, and ? I'm implementing the web-site using Grails and am currently using a MySql database. Customer is very small ... just worried about the scenario of their stuff really \"taking off\", becoming large fast. I guess I'm just looking for high level thoughts from some of you experts out there (but specifics/references don't hurt either! :-) Thanks, Ray P.S. The Grails Security Core and UI plugins look really cool for all the user / role / security stuff, got all that plugged in and working in a couple hours yesterday ... thanks Grails framework and plugin developers!!"}
{"_id": "72222", "title": "Why do certain code elements (classes, methods etc.) in public APIs get deprecated over time?", "text": "Today our professor discussed with the class that what \"class X or method X get deprecated\" means? From what I understood, it means, for example, that we are not going to get that method or class in the Java API in the future so we better use another method or class instead of this class. Then comes another question, why do they get deprecated? My guess for this question was that it is because the Java API developers may find those classes or methods are using an algorithm which is not efficient and they replace them with another class(es) or method(s) which are more efficent. But the professor wasn't happy with my answer and told me to google. And I couldn't find anything. Can you please tell me why the classes get deprecated?"}
{"_id": "103496", "title": "Is it i normal for a programmer to be maverick? or is it considered as an attitude issue?", "text": "Dictionary Says that a **maveric** is someone who is >   * Someone who exhibits great independence in thought and action >   * Unorthodox >   * Rebel (A person who takes part in an armed rebellion against the > constituted authority, **especially in the hope of improving conditions** ) > None of those are bad things but good in fact, I see. But people use the term rebel or maverick with a negative connotation w.r.t programmers. Is it justifiable? In fact, I personally feel that a programmer should be a maverick bringing in new ideas and improvements over the existing. also being orthodox a sin in the realm of programming. My environment is that, if your superior looking at sun says that it is night then , it IS night; you dont deserve to be a skeptic! If you turn skeptic that qualifies you to be a Maverick/Rebel and no managers will entertain you in their project. I just am curious to know if this is same across all organizations, To know how much rebel you can be."}
{"_id": "239177", "title": "Why is time complexity of k-way merge sort O(nk^2)?", "text": "I'm comparatively new to algorithm analysis and am taking a related course on coursera where I came accross k way merge sort. The time complexity of 2 way merge sort is `n log2 n`, of 3 way merge sort is `n log3 n` and of 4 way merge sort is `n log4 n`. But, in the case of k-way the complexity is nk^2. This is because we pay attention to the merge part of the algo; `(2n + 3n + 4n...kn)`. But, in case of 2, 3 and 4-way algorithms, we pay attention to the recursive call of one function; `(2T(n/2) + c.n)`. Can anybody please explain why this is so? Or correct my approach to this question."}
{"_id": "170734", "title": "What is the usage of Splay Trees in the real world?", "text": "I decided to learn about balanced search trees, so I picked 2-3-4 and splay trees. What are the examples of splay trees usage in the real world? In this Cornell: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs3110/2009fa/recitations/rec-splay.html I read that splay trees are 'A good example is a network router'. But from rest of the explanation seams like network routers use hash tables and not splay trees since the lookup time is constant instead of O(log n)."}
{"_id": "239171", "title": "Why do we put private member functions in headers?", "text": "The answer to why we put private member variables in C++ headers is that the size of the class must be known at points where instances are declared so that the compiler can generate code that appropriately moves about the stack. Why do we need to put private members in headers? But is there any reason to declare private functions in the class definition? The alternative would be essentially the pimpl idiom but without the superfluous indirection. Is this language feature more than a historical error?"}
{"_id": "109699", "title": "How \"commercially savvy\" should software developers be?", "text": "I have been watching answers to many questions on this site, and have come to the conclusion that commercial pragmatism does not factor into many software development discussions. As a result, I seriously wonder at the commercial skills within the industry, specifically the ability to deliver projects on time and to a budget. I see no indication from the site that commercially successful project delivery is a serious concern, yet the industry has a reputation for poor performance in this. Rarely, if ever, does the cost of time factor into discussions. I have never seen concepts such as opportunity cost, time to market, competitive advantage or cash flow mentioned, let alone discussed in technical answers to questions. How can you answer virtually any question without understanding the commercial background on which it is asked? Even Open source projects have a need to operate efficiently and deploy their limited resources to providing the most value for effort. Typically small start-ups have cash flow issues that outweigh longevity concerns, yet they are typically still advised to build for a future they probably won\u2019t have if they do. Is it fair to say that these problems are solely the Managers and Project managers to solve, or are we, as developers, also responsible for ensuring successful on time, within budget delivery of projects, even if those budgets do not allow use to achieve engineering excellence?"}
{"_id": "77053", "title": "Adaptative interface with Open GL and machine learning in C#", "text": "For my Semester project I have to go for any Adaptative Interface Design. My language is C# and I have to Use OpenTK (wrapper for OpenGL). I have an idea that I should show two points and some obstacles and my subject (user) would drag an object from one place to the final place avoiding the Obstacles. Also (s)he can place obstacles randomly. My software should be able to learn some paths by doing test runs and then after learning it should be able to predict the shortest path. I do not know how stupid this idea sounds but it is just an idea. I need help regarding any ideas for adaptative interface possible small projects or if my idea is ok then please can you tell me what should be used to implement it? I mean that along with OpenGl for the Graphics what can I use for machine learning?"}
{"_id": "244491", "title": "blurry lines between web application context layer, service layer and data access layer in spring", "text": "I Originally asked this question in SO but on advice I have moved the question here... I'll admit I'm a spring newbie, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, this one liner looks kinda fishy in a best practices sort of way:               @RepositoryRestResource(collectionResourceRel=\"people\"...) public interface PersonRepository extends PagingAndSortingRepository<Person, Long>      For those who are unaware, the following does many things: It is an interface definition that can be registered in an application context as a jpa repository, automagically hooking up all the default CRUD operations within a persistence context (that is externally configured). and also configures default controller/request-mapping/handler functionality at the namespace \"/people\" relative to your configured dispatcher servlet-mapping. Here's my point. I just crossed 3 conceptual layers with one line of code! this feels against my seperation-of-concern instincts but i wanted to hear your opinion. And for the sake of being on a question and answer site, I would like to know whether there is a better way of seperating these different layers - Service, Data, Controllers - whilst maintaining as minimal configuration as possible"}
{"_id": "132713", "title": "Attachment handling for web application with Jackrabbit", "text": "I need to manage attachments on my Spring web application and I thought to use an open source repository. My app it's a job approval system using **J2EE / SPRING 3 Framework** and **Postgress DB** to allow user to tracks the job,right through every step of the approval process. It is a fully managed, collaborative system that operates from a central server and is accessed by a standard internet browser. An user should be able to add an attach to a request or an approval step, so, I though to use **Jackrabbit** with **Postgres database persistence manager**. I took a look to this post: http://onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2006/10/04/what-is- java-content-repository.html?page=1 It's really interesting but, I've some question about this kind of solution :-   * I seen that Jackrabbit standalone as a Derby database embedded solution for persistence, is it enough for a professional use of the repository with more than 50 request / days (with attachment) ?    * Is there a reason for which I should use another database manager for persistence instead of the default one ?"}
{"_id": "132717", "title": "Can a client sue you for \"broken\" software if you're a contractor paid hourly?", "text": "I've been working for a client for over a year and a half at an hourly rate. He's been pretty happy with the work thus far, and he has paid all invoices without objection, but his business has started to decline recently, causing him a lot of stress, expense resentment, and strained relations between us. I quit the project a few days ago (for a host of reasons) and he was not happy about it. He basically said that I need to continue working or he would sue me for some amount of money he has paid me as he doesn't feel the work is \"what he paid for\" (that is completely not the case, but irrelevant here). We do not have a signed agreement. The only \"agreement\" we have is a verbal / email one, stating that I will provide services to him at the rate of X an hour. I have copies of all the invoices I've sent him that have been paid, and they are broken down by hourly charges. His business also sends me a 1099 every year. Also, I did not leave anything \"broken\" or even in an un-finished state (for what it's worth). I don't think he has a leg to stand on, but I've never been sued before, and so I'm really worried. I know now that I should have insisted on getting something in writing before starting. Does anyone have any advice? **Does he have a legitimate case?** DISCLAIMER: I realize that any legal advise given is pretty much worthless here and I should consult a lawyer :)."}
{"_id": "241102", "title": "Inheritance vs containment while extending a large legacy project", "text": "I have got a legacy Java project with a lot of code. The code uses MVC pattern and is well structured and well written. It also has a lot of unit tests and it is still actively maintained (bug fixing, minor features adding). Therefore I want to preserve the original structure and code style as much as possible. I aim to inject a new behavior into an existing class. Like a Duck that was trained to jump. Then I ask all my Ducks to jump. Those who can - jump. Those who cannot do nothing which is perfectly OK with me. The new feature I am going to add is a conceptual one, so I have to make my changes all over the code. In order to minimize changes I decided not to extend existing classes but to use containment:               class ExistingClass     {        // .... existing code                  //  my code adding new functionality        private ExistingClassExtension extension = new ExistingClassExtension();        public ExistingClassExtension getExtension() {return extension;}     }           ...     // somewhere in code     ExistingClass instance = new ExistingClass();          ...     // when I need a new functionality     instance.getExtension().newMethod1();      All functionality that I am adding is inside a new ExistingClassExtension class. Actually I am adding only these 2 lines to each class that needs to be extended. By doing so I also do not need to instantiate new, extended classes all over the code and I may use existing tests to make sure there is no regression. However my colleagues argue that in this situation doing so isn't a proper OOP approach, and I need to inherit from `ExistingClass` in order to add a new functionality. What do you think? I am aware of numerous inheritance/containment questions here, but I think my question is different. EDIT: Most of people replying to my question presume that a containment relationship looks like that:               class NewClass     {        OldClass instanceOfOldClass;        void oldFunctionality() { instanceOfOldClass.oldFunctionality();}             void newFunctionality() { // new code here }     }      But isn't this a kind of a containment relationship too?               class OldClass     {        void OldFunctionality();        NewClass instanceOfNewClass;             void NewFunctionality {instanceOfNewClass.NewFunctionality();}     }"}
{"_id": "241107", "title": "Wrong encoding in DataReceivedEventArgs", "text": "I start cmd.exe process and redirect stdin to pass script to it and redirect stdout and stderr to read cmd's output. Here is the code of my DataReceivedEventHandler:               (o, a) => {         if(!String.IsNullOrEmpty(a.Data)) {             bw.Write(a.Data.ToUTF8());             bw.Write((byte)'\\n');         }     }      In the code `bw` is instance of BinaryWriter, `ToUTF8` is string extension method, that converts a string to UTF8 encoded byte array. When I use this code in a separate process it works well, however when I use this code as a shared library inside some other process a.Data doesn't contain valid localized characters (like russian characters for example). So how should I convert characters? How to get cmd's OEM encoding? Why does the code works well in a separate process and doesn't work as a shared library inside some other process?"}
{"_id": "241104", "title": "Programming Language vs Markup Language vs Scripting Language", "text": "Up until now I don't know the **KEY** differences between these three. When someone asks me about this, I only tell them that C# is a programming language, HTML and XML are Markup Languages, and JavaScript and VBScript are scripting languages. But what are the key differences that distinguish them from one another?"}
{"_id": "241109", "title": "Is backing up a MySQL database in Git a good idea?", "text": "I am trying to improve the backup situation for my application. I have a Django application and MySQL database. I read an article suggesting backing up the database in Git. On the one hand I like it, as it will keep a copy of the data and the code in sync. But Git is designed for code, not for data. As such it will be doing a lot of extra work diffing the MySQL dump every commit, which is not really necessary. If I compress the file before storing it, will git still diff the files? (The dump file is currently 100MB uncompressed, 5.7MB when bzipped.) Edit: the code and database schema definitions are already in Git, it is really the data I am concerned about backing up now."}
{"_id": "244550", "title": "After HTML and CSS", "text": "I want to create dynamic professional websites. I have finished learning HTML and CSS, but as I understand, those two technologies allow to create static websites only. I heard about PHP and JavaScript as something which enables to create dynamic websites. Is that true? What is the difference between both? Are there other languages?"}
{"_id": "211307", "title": "Placing images into Git for a CRM", "text": "I have built this CMS that has the option to add entries to the database. Each entry that is created has about 5 to 10 new images showing the product for sale. Each image is about 150Kb in size. I already know that images should always be stored in Git however my problem is that the sales team users that add new entries in the CMS are obviously working on the production server using the master branch. Our normal development is development code in your \"dev environment\" on a branch, then push those changes to the \"staging environment\" for QA and lastly if all the tests pass, push those changes to \"production/live server\". What will be the best way to get those new images that are uploaded on a daily basis into our repository seeing as those images are already on the live server?"}
{"_id": "124065", "title": "Is using the new System.Tuple class bad design?", "text": "I like the concept of System.Tuple in that it allows me to return multiple parameters in a single function call without instantiating a new class, however does this defy any good programming practices such as Microsoft Patterns & Practices, SOLID Principles, etc. I'm just trying to gauge how liberally I should use this feature or if I should only use it in edge case scenarios when necessary."}
{"_id": "244559", "title": "Code base migration - old versioning system to modern", "text": "Our current code base is contained in a versioning system that is old and outdated (Visual Sourcesafe 5.0, mid 1990's), and contains a mix of packages that are no longer used, ones that are being used but no longer updated, and newer code. It is also a mix of 4 languages, and includes libraries for some of our systems (Such as Dialogic, Sun Tzu {clipper}) implementations. This breaks down into the following categories:   1. Legacy code - No longer used (Systems that have been retired or replaced, etc)   2. Legacy code - In current use (No intentions for upgrades or minor bug fixes, only major fixes if needed)   3. Current code - In current use, and will be used for future versions/development   4. Support libraries - For both legacy and current code (Some of the legacy libraries are no longer available as well) We would like to migrate this to a newer versioning system as we will be adding more developers, and expanding the reach to include remote programmers. When migrating, how do you structure it? Do you just perform a dump of all the data and then import it into the new system, or do you segregate according to type before you bring it into the new system? Do you set up a separate area for libraries, or keep them with the relevant packages? Do you separate by language, system, both? A general outline and methodology is fine, it doesn't need to be broken down to individual program level."}
{"_id": "124060", "title": "What should be included on an About page/form?", "text": "I was looking to add a simple form that states my project's build number on a form to quick identify what version I am running. Then I realized I'm not sure what fits on an about page. In my highschool projects I would make silly splash screens with this info, with images and other unnecessary information. What are standard/appropriate elements to include on an \"About\" page in an application?"}
{"_id": "180309", "title": "Is this a good way to compare two numbers?", "text": "If we have double numbers, let's say I want to see if some double parameter is equal to zero that is passed as double:               public bool AlmostEqual(double x, double y)     {         double epsilon = Math.Max(Math.Abs(x), Math.Abs(y)) * 1E-15;         return Math.Abs(x - y) <= epsilon;     }      considering double shows 15 accurate digits. So do you think what I wrote is good? or it has issues? well then I just wrote a simple method like this:               public bool ReallyEqual(double x, double y)     {         return (x == y);     }      and then I couldn't find a case that return values of those two methods are different. they were always returning the same result. :("}
{"_id": "130712", "title": "Introduce the work of a software developer to school children using a social network", "text": "I often represent my software development company at conferences and other events. However this time I got assigned to introduce school children (12-18) years to the job of a software developer. Now the problem is that our PR guys told me to use Facebook (\"use the cool stuff kids know\") to leave a good impression. Now I'm stumped and have no idea how to bridge the gap between presenting the role of a software developer, requirements engineers, and programming in general to Facebook. I intend to give a 5 minute talk and then let them \"do something\" that invovles Facebook. Has anyone got an idea how to do something like that? Is it possible to let them develop a simple facebook app?"}
{"_id": "130710", "title": "What is the best way to access multiple child properties?", "text": "I have a situation where I have to access several \"sub-properties\" of an object and find it quite appalling to write such code. I was wondering how best to deal with this situation:               void Main()     {         MyAClass aClass = new MyAClass();         aClass.BClass.CClass.DoSomething();     }      In addition to it being an eyesore, there are no null checks, and if one were to do them, the code would look even more cluttered. At the moment I create shortcuts, but they are a bit of a code smell too:               public class MyAClass     {         public MyBClass BClass { get; set; }              public void DoSomething()         {             if (BClass == null || BClass.CClass == null)                 throw new Exception();                  BClass.CClass.DoSomething();         }     }      What's the best way to access multiple properties like this?"}
{"_id": "130711", "title": "Should I pass an object into a constructor, or instantiate in class?", "text": "Consider these two examples: ### Passing an object to a constructor               class ExampleA     {       private $config;       public function __construct($config)       {          $this->config = $config;       }     }     $config = new Config;     $exampleA = new ExampleA($config);      ### Instantiating a class               class ExampleB     {       private $config;       public function __construct()       {          $this->config = new Config;       }     }     $exampleA = new ExampleA();      Which is the correct way to handle adding an object as a property? When should I use one over the other? Does unit testing affect what I should use?"}
{"_id": "76907", "title": "Can I market an application I wrote at work?", "text": "I work at a bank and I developed an in-house web application that helps keep track of past due loans and all the interaction between the bank and the customers. I was recently told by an outside consultant, who frequents many different banks, that each one of these banks would die to have a loss mitigation system like the one I built. I just read Joel's response to a similar question about copyright ownership. In his example he said that even though **_Joe was hired to write the code, he still owns the copyright._** So, do I own the copyright to this app and can I resell it to other banks? ### Update 05/20/2011: Thank you all for your honest feedback on this issue. I have always understood that software written at work by an employee as belonging to the employer. I was stunned when I read scenario described by Joel, and thought I would ask your opinions. It's nice to know that I have always held the same beliefs as you... the code belongs to the employer."}
{"_id": "86835", "title": "Help deciding on the appropriate software license type", "text": "I'm working on a piece of software which i'd like to sell; however i'd like to keep the source 'open' in the sense that I see no reason why people should be not able to browse it for educational purposes. Most of my personal learning process involves looking at similar examples of other people's work. I'd like to protect my intellectual property, but also give something useful to the programming community (without which many of us wouldn't have gotten too far). I'm not super worried about theft of my 'algorithm' since what i'm doing isn't all that profound. I'd likely wait until the software was ready for release before publishing the source anywhere. Are there any licenses which are appropriate for this sort of thing? Alternatively, are there better resources than this site that I should direct my search toward? Thanks, brian"}
{"_id": "74500", "title": "Allow Administrator users to login as other users", "text": "Do you think it's a good practice to implement a possibilty to allow an administrator user to login in as another user, by-passing password? This could by implemented by a master password or a function inside the user administration, \"Login as this user\". Administrators are asking for a such function to be able to try to reproduce a reported problem or to check if grants are ok, for example."}
{"_id": "128696", "title": "Suggestions for search methodology requested", "text": "I am throwing this question out to the 'greater creativity' for some suggestions on search methodology that might solve this problem. I have come up with a somewhat contrived example to attempt to explain the problem well enough that some solution(s) might be recommended. The problem: We are using a relational DB (MSSQL), and need to search across products with the following constraints:   * Availability   * Market   * Price We also need to group and sort on price, market, and larger entity roll-up. Let me see if I can explain using semi-real world entities: Think of an application that allows users to search for hotel rooms that they can book. The following criteria might be available for the search: days that the rooms would be booked for, the market in which they want a hotel room (e.g. NYC, Boston), amenities that the hotel room(s) might have (hot tub, fireplace, number of beds, suite or not). In all cases, the search criteria above may or may not be selected. So, a very broad search is possible (on these dates, I don't care which market), or varying the levels of specificity (in NYC, 2 beds, with fireplace). To add complexity, we also need to return the prices of the hotel rooms for the selected criteria. Obviously, special pricing, different prices for the different days of the stay (one price on Thursday night and a different price on Friday and Saturday nights for a weekend stay). Some of the things we've played around with are: Solr, Endeca, SQL querying, implementing in C# code and optimizing when/where necessary (think of the decorator pattern). What I'm looking for here is some suggestions from the community on: which of the above is NOT suited for this problem, which might be well suited for this problem, which other technology might work better that we haven't thought about, techniques that others have used on similar problems that worked well (non-technology specific)."}
{"_id": "42349", "title": "How do Java tests by IKM compare to Sun certifications?", "text": "Is the IKM test more difficult when compared to Sun certifications? Can you share your experience taking the test for Java/J2EE? What types of questions are asked?"}
{"_id": "205225", "title": "Is there real value in a portable language targeting very different runtimes?", "text": "Another question over on SO introduced me to Oxygene, formerly Chrome before the browser of the same name came to prominence. It's in the Pascal syntax family, but brings in a lot of object-oriented grammar and elements from the C family, notably Java/C#. One of its big advertised strengths is that the language is implemented as runtime-independent; programs written in Oxygene can target .NET, J2EE, Android, or Cocoa, making it a memory-managed language almost as portable as C/C++ is in unmanaged-land. However, my question is whether that kind of independence is really useful, given that the frameworks and environments it targets are so different (and incompatible). There are a host of problems inherent in writing one program that can be compiled as-is to target all three of these runtimes, and a common language is only the tip of the iceberg. Java doesn't have a System.Windows.Forms namespace; it has java.swing, and the classes underneath are totally different. Similarly, Java's database interop is via JDBC, while .NET has the ADO.NET sub-framework. While having a common language is nice, being fluent in a \"language\" is as much (more, IMO) about being fluent in the targeted libraries as it is with the syntax of the language. Does anyone have a common example of where runtime-independent languages have been leveraged to create truly portable programs across all supported runtimes?"}
{"_id": "135296", "title": "Can a GPLv2 program rely on Apache-licensed libraries?", "text": "Can a software program licensed GPL (version 2) rely upon libraries licensed under APLv2 without running afoul of the GPL? The language here suggests to me perhaps not. In my specific case I'm looking at a daemon that uses some APLv2-licensed external libraries. **UPDATE** (In response to answers/comments.)   1. For the purpose of this question, I cannot relicense the main program (the daemon)   2. The main program has been extended with functionality that uses `apr-util` and perhaps other APLv2 components My question is, can I release the extended daemon under the GPLv2, or is this something I need to keep to myself (no distribution) and/or re-implement without APLv2 if I am committed to **(a)** releasing this extension, and, **(b)** keeping the daemon GPL'd?"}
{"_id": "183887", "title": "Realtime (almost) bidrectional communication in Java", "text": "I will explain the context of the problem first. For a University project I'm going to implement an Android application. The Android application (and others) will be able to send data to a remote source, that remote source will also be able to send messages to the Android applications. For example the messages may be \"apply configuration x\", \"what is your status\". I want the remote source to be able to send these messages to:   1. Reduce overhead. I don't want the Android devices sending data when its not necessary. This uses data and power.   2. So that I can scale it, for example version 1 might allow you to check what value x is on the Android applications, version 2 might let you check what y is etc. I have looked at implementing this using Sockets in Java. Having the Android application talk to the remote source is easy. I configure the router (port forward) and everything is OK. The problem is having the remote source to talk to the Android application. They may be using public WiFi hotspots, have their 3G on etc, I wouldn't be able to address the device directly via sockets right? The approach to solving the problem is not that common I believe, which makes me believe I'm trying to do something that shouldn't be done. Can anyone shed some light on this and offer me some guidance? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "233927", "title": "Write to stdout and redirect or write directly to file?", "text": "I can see two ways to fill an empty file with data:               $ run_program arg1 > data_file      or, specifically write code that manages a file and write to it? ie. a file stream? **Which is better to implement?**"}
{"_id": "177179", "title": "Web App vs Portal Platform - convincing the customer", "text": "We're evaluating a set of requirements for a customer who wants Liferay which mainly has AAA and Web CMS requirements, and allowing user to upload their own content. Also all inetgration is via web services. However there is no need for other features such as actual \"portlets\", i18n, mashups, skins, themes, tagging, social presence, no collaboration etc So we feel we can do this as a standard JEE web app and not use Liferay (or any other portal product) since these are overheads we dont need. The customer feels the **Web CMS requirements + user upload justify the \"portal\" product.** Can anyone help me with some points to convince the customer? Assuming our point of view is right."}
{"_id": "242812", "title": "Session serialization in JavaEE environment", "text": "Please consider the following scenario: We are working on a JavaEE project for which the scalability starts to become an issue. Up until now, we were able to scale up but this is no longer an option. Therefore we need to consider scaling out and preparing the App for a clustered environment. Our main concern right now is serializing the user sessions. Sadly, we did not consider from the beginning the issue and we are encountering the following excetion:               java.io.WriteAbortedException: writing aborted; java.io.NotSerializableException: org.apache.catalina.session.StandardSessionFacade      I did some research and this exception is thrown because there are objects stored on the session which does not implement the `Serializable` interface. Considering that all over the app there are quite a few custom objects which are stored on the session without implementing this interface, it would require a lot of tedious work and dedication to fix all these classes declaration. We will fix all this declarations but the main concern is that, in the future, there may be a developer which will add a non `Serializable` object on the session and break the session serialization & replication over multiple nodes. As a quick overview of the project, we are developing using a home grown framework based on Struts 1 with the Servlet 3.0 API. This means that at this point, we are using the standard `session.getAttribute()` and `session.setAttribute()` to work with the session and the session handling is scattered all over the code base. Besides updating the classes of the objects stored on session and making sure that they implement the `Serializable` interface, what other measures of precaution should we take in order to ensure a reliable Session replication capability on the Application layer? I know it is a little bit late to consider this but what would be the best practice in this case? Furthermore, are there any other issues we should consider regarding this transition? Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "70081", "title": "Can you choose your tools or do you take what you get?", "text": "I often see questions about what tools to use for a particular problem, or suggesting that one tool is preferable over another, and that it says something about the quality of the programmer who uses the subpar tool. Some of that is religious arguements, but some tools generally are considered less than ideal. In every job I've had, the environment and tools are already bought and in use. I start using what they have, and while I might have some small say in a future direction, have no say in the current environment. Is it common for a company to allow the programmer to choose the tools they will use? Or is it more common that a programmer is dropped into an existing environment, and they make use of what they are given? I'm guessing a contract programmer has more say than a FT programmer -- true? (For an example, at my previous job we used Access for a database, Visual C++ for a programming language, and Visual Studio for an IDE, with WinXP for an OS. We also had Source Safe and Test Track. So, that's what I used. In my current job I get SQL Server and Oracle instead of Access, more ColdFusion than C#.net and VB.net, and we're moving from XP to Win7.)"}
{"_id": "70086", "title": "Why are C++ template error messages so horrific?", "text": "C++ templates are notorious for generating long, unreadable error messages. I have a general idea of why template error messages in C++ are so bad. Essentially, the problem is that the error isn't triggered until the compiler encounters syntax that is not supported by a certain type in a template. For example:               template <class T>     void dosomething(T& x) { x += 5; }      If `T` doesn't support the `+=` operator, the compiler will generate an error message. And if this happens deep within a library somewhere, the error message might be thousands of lines long. But C++ templates are essentially just a mechanism for compile-time duck typing. A C++ template error is conceptually very similar to a runtime type error that might occur in a dynamic language like Python. For example, consider the following Python code:               def dosomething(x):        x.foo()      Here, if `x` doesn't have a `foo()` method, the Python interpreter throws an exception, and displays a stack trace along with a pretty clear error message indicating the problem. Even if the error isn't triggered until the interpreter is deep inside some library function, the runtime-error message still isn't anywhere near as bad as the unreadable vomit spewed by a typical C++ compiler. So why can't a C++ compiler be more clear about what went wrong? Why do some C++ template error messages literally cause my console window to scroll for over 5 seconds?"}
{"_id": "113161", "title": "Could I learn more about programming from deconstructing drupal rather than continuing with ZF?", "text": "When I was deciding how to go about learning to design PHP web applications, it made sense to sort of shoot toward the middle and go with Zend Framework so that I could be closer to the lower level, but I would be able to get down to business fairly easily, too, while learning about design patterns, etc. That seemed to work out pretty well, but now I'm wondering if I wouldn't have learned more about design from a more top-down approach, like creating a drupal site and deconstructing it. I realize that the degree of topness vs. bottomness in this context is pretty negligible in the spectrum of all programming experiences, but I think it matters very much where you start, especially at the very beginning, because your world is small; it's home base, and how you develop your personality there \"at home\" can determine how you approach other problems in the future--I believe people tend to try to repeat their successes, which often means adopting a preference for what's familiar to them. I didn't want to \"learn myself into a corner,\" so to speak, so I tried to aim for a level that would prepare me for the greatest amount of other experiences. LAMP with ZF seemed like a well-rounded, holistic choice, because I'd be learning about database design, patterns, web app development, server configuration, and a C-based programming language all at once. Okay, great, but I haven't really progressed as far as I had hoped I would, honestly. And now I'm starting to wonder if I've done myself a disservice for wanting to start nearer to the bottom vs. learning to produce as much as possible right away. My instincts at the time were that, \"sure, a CMS will get you up and running, producing stuff right away, but you'll eventually hit a wall and need to learn the lower-level stuff anyway, and you'll probably hit it sooner than later so you might as well start there. Don't eat dessert first.\" But now I'm thinking \"what would have stopped me from digging into the gears of a CMS?\" Maybe I would have learned more from seeing a more complete implementation and deconstructing it rather than reinventing the wheel. Or, I could be exactly where I should be having only started in December? And I just don't know the answer. I want to start a new project (redoing my website--I'm actually a composer (of music)). I know the basics of Zend Framework, and I'm fairly sure I could code a simple CMS for myself for my purposes, but would I learn more from deconstructing an out of the box CMS like drupal?"}
{"_id": "221610", "title": "If we only know that a video is 720P, 480P or 240P can that unambiguously tell us of the resolution?", "text": "The main issue I have here is are the 720P, 480P, 240P... classes for defining video quality or do they unambiguously define the resolution of the video? For example, the wikipedia article about 240P refers to a family of resolutions."}
{"_id": "121252", "title": "Open source and updates", "text": "I have found an open source library that can work fine with my project, but I have noted that It's not frequently updated and I'm afraid of not having the necessary support. Is the frequency of updates a proper criterion for choosing an open source library rather than another?"}
{"_id": "182232", "title": "c++ exceptions vs. preliminary error condition checks", "text": "## Preamble One of the concepts used in writing Python code is \"Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission\", aka _EAFP_. Literally this means that instead of doing checks, whether an operation is possible, you do the operation and \"ask forgiveness\" if what you do fails. Technically this means (just an example with no particular meaning):               try:         obj.x = 10         obj.y = 20     except AttributeError:         pass      This technique is oftenly used when the code in `try..except` block is known to run without any errors in most cases, or if the code is rearly executed. The same code with preliminary checks would look as follows:               if hasattr(obj, 'x'):         obj.x = 10          if hasattr(obj, 'y'):         obj.y = 20      ## C++ practices While generally not an issue in Python, C++ has a \"heritage\" flame war of \"function returning error status\" vs. \"throwing exceptions\". This has been discussed a lot, but I can't find any good source of information which describes whether the Pyhton-like EAFP is applicable in Python. E.g. consider the following:               if (node.has_element('x')) {         node['x'] = 10;     }      versus               try {         node['x'] = 10;     }     catch(ElementNotFoundException e) {         // pass     }      Which approach is generally used in C++ code? If performance is not the issue, would you write EAFP-fashioned code? Thank you."}
{"_id": "182236", "title": "Finding developers for collaboration in enterprise open-source project", "text": "I am a founder and only developer of an open-source software designed for a small subset of enterprises. It was originally developed for and now runs at one of businesses of the type it was designed for. It's my biggest project and I wanted to make something even bigger of it. Creating a software developing company and selling the product is not an option to me, so I decided to make the project open-source and sell the deployment and support services to enterprises in my area. The problem I faced is that I can't find developers to contribute to the project. Most articles and books on growing open-source community state that developer arrive from the users base, however my project's users base is small and is not related to IT. So it's really unlikely that one of my customers will happen to be an opensource enthusiast who happen to know the stack of technologies I use. I have been thinking about it for a long time, and seems like the only way to attract someone to collaboration is to look for programmers in my area and offer them to cooperate in both development and commercialization of the project. No one else would be interested in contributing to my project. _Is that correct and no other option exists?_ The generalized question is: **How do opensource projects with small, non-IT users base (like enterprise software projects) find developers to collaborate?**"}
{"_id": "182237", "title": "Use Windows Store controls in a Windows 8 desktop app?", "text": "Is it possible to use the Windows 8 Store controls in a Windows 8 desktop app? Controls like the FlipView and SemanticZoom would be useful. I haven't found any information about this and would presume the answer is no, but thought someone would have a more definitive answer."}
{"_id": "236256", "title": "Best and safest API for a function which fills a buffer with variable-length data", "text": "I have a function which receives a buffer and returns some data in the buffer. The data can be smaller than the buffer capacity. Which is the best and safest API for this?   * `int fn(void *buffer, size_t buffer_len)`: the size of the data written to `buffer` is returned by the function. Downside: the return value must also have a way to indicate that some error occurred (in-band error indicator).   * `errno_t fn(void *buffer, size_t *buffer_len)`: in this case, `buffer_len` works both as input (the buffer capacity) and output (the data size). The function can return an error code. I think this is OK, but somewhat awkward.   * `errno_t fn(void *buffer, size_t *data_len, size_t buffer_len)`: like the previous, but with input/output separated in two arguments. Also returns error code, but is also awkward due to too many arguments. (Any other options?)"}
{"_id": "236251", "title": "Would using a hash table in garbage collection solve the stop the world problem of mark and sweep?", "text": "In mark-sweep-compact garbage collection algorithm you have to stop-the-world when relocating objects because reference graph becomes inconsistent and you have to replace values of all references pointing to the object. But what if you had a hash table with object ID as a key and pointer as value, and references would point to said ID instead of object address... then fixing references would only require changing one value and pause would only be needed if object is tried to be written into during copying... Is there a mistake in my line of thought?"}
{"_id": "173416", "title": "Ideal \"intermediate\" file format to use for structured/styled text?", "text": "I have files that I want to make available in an variety of formats:   * HTML   * PDF   * EPUB   * Plain Text (maybe) Most of the files will be _sourced_ in doc, docx, or rtf format, so that needs to be considered. So I need some kind of format that converts well from docx, doc, and rtf and has plenty of libraries for converting into PDF, EPUB, HTML etc. Ideally libraries in Python, but Java is also okay."}
{"_id": "199894", "title": "What is the best/most standard way to measure server load?", "text": "I'm a bit green to web applications although I am in the final phases of developing one for a client. I'm using Django with Gunicorn/Nginx on an AWS m1.medium. The database (MongoDB) is on a separate instance. The client is paranoid about scaling and so I threw together a crude monitoring server which has the ability to spin up new AWS instances, install the app code and load balance (I know, I know, I could have used ELB. I said I was green, and it was fun writing it anyway). The question is, I don't really know what metrics I should be aware of. How will I know when my app server is under 'high load'? CPU? RAM? Request latency? All of the above? Any guidance in this area would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "81822", "title": "Are there new API's in Windows Phone 7 (Mango) which need new phone hardware?", "text": "Are there new API's in Windows Phone 7 (Mango) which need new phone hardware? Gyroscope stuff? BTW, is AppHub the only Microsoft's official forum for WP7? Registration page is asking for 'Publisher name', website and payment? I just want to ask questions in the forum."}
{"_id": "246954", "title": "why the terms used in Scrum are so strange?", "text": "I'm not a native English speaker, currently I'm reading some articles about Scrum. I was wondering if the English terms used in Scrum seem strange to you? For example, backlog instead of todo; artifact instead of element; retrospective instead of review; even the name of Scrum, it make no sense to me as a process name. Can anyone give some hint to me? For example, I don't see the relationship between a scrum in football and iteration process. Fei"}
{"_id": "184686", "title": "Non-lvalues as function parameters in C++", "text": "I'm reading Accelerated C++ and in Chapter 4 they bring up the concept of lvalues. There's an example of something that _shouldn't_ work, but after trying it myself I found that it does indeed work. Specifically they state that, given these functions:               // return an empty vector     vector<double> emptyvec()     {       vector<double> v;       return v;     }          // read things from an input stream into a vector<double>     // (I'm leaving out the function body here because it's irrelevant)     istream &read_things(istream& in, vector<double>& hw);      This should not be allowed:               read_stuff( cin, emptyvec() );      Because emptyvec() is an expression and returns a temporary object (a _non- lvalue_ as they called it in the book). However, this not only compiles but actually runs (Windows 7/VisualStudio 2010). So, what's going on? Was this just a bad example on the authors' part, or is there something else happening that I don't understand. Thanks."}
{"_id": "246957", "title": "How can we make a certain thing inbuilt in c language with our own header file?", "text": "I want to make the basic trigonometric functions in maths inbuilt functions using my own header file . so as the users can do trigonometry in c language compilers."}
{"_id": "184683", "title": "Designing a list class with filtering and sorting", "text": "The app I'm developing needs to display lists of items. Simple enough, but there are a number of things which can change based on user input:   * Items can be added to/removed from the list.   * The items in the list can be updated. Multiple items can be updated simultaneously!   * The filters can be updated. Multiple filters can be updated simultaneously!   * The sort order of the items can change. Possibly relevant info:   * It's a multiplatform Java app.    * One of the platforms we distribute on is MIDP, so that limits which language features/libraries/etc we can use.   * The implementation is currently split into a model class (in the common code) and device-specific view/controller classes. I've tried a couple of approaches to designing a suitable list implementation, but both have drawbacks: **Approach 1:** The platform-specific controller implementations are responsible for calling a `refresh()` method whenever anything happens which could change the list. This approach keeps the list class (model) implementation fairly straightforward, but leaves much of the responsibility up to the platform- specific controller implementations. The more logic there is in these classes, the greater the chance of bugs creeping in. It also encourages the controllers to directly notifying the view of updates, which feels like poor design. **Approach 2:** The model is entirely responsible for raising events to notify the platform- specific views of changes. The list items, filter, and sorters notify the model when they change, which then notifies the views of changes. This keeps the platform-specific classes much simpler, and feels like a stronger design (less coupling between the classes, etc). However, the list class implementation becomes much more complicated. My main problem with this approach is dealing with a proliferation of events when multiple items/filters are updated in a single operation. **My questions:**   1. Is there other approaches I could/should be trying?   2. Is there a recognised way to manage/avoid the explosion of events in approach #2?"}
{"_id": "121786", "title": "Should developers do their own software releases (if there is a prod support team in place)?", "text": "I know there are going to always be differences depending on the particular size, staff etc, but i wanted to get feedback in general around: **In an environment where you have a production support team doing first line support and release management, is it better to simply have developers manage their own releases instead? In this case, its internal software at an insurance company but the question should be valid at any company, size, etc I think.** Currently, we have our production team do releases but there is an argument that its inefficient and that if you allowed developers the ability to do it, they will focus more on making it simple and efficient and avoid basically passing on scripts, etc to run to another team. The counter argument is that if you don't have a check and balance, you could get a software team (or an individual) that doesn't a very hacky job about getting their software out there (making on the fly changes, not documenting the process, etc) and that by forcing the prod support team to do the actual release, it enforces consistency and proper checks and balances. I know this is not a black or white issue but I wanted to see what folks thought on this so the discipline and consistency is there but without the feeling that an inefficient process is in place."}
{"_id": "125003", "title": "How to deal with asynchronous functions when you really just want things synchronized", "text": "I am fairly new to NodeJS and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the asynchronous nature of functions when I really want one call to follow the other in a synchronized way. Say for instance I am calling web service methods. Every method has a callback function. But what if I want to call 10 of them in a specific sequence? Do I really need to chain / embed all the functions in the first callback? What if the second time the chain is slightly different? Are there any elegant patterns to deal with situations where you actually do want things to be synchronous? Or should I really let go of this kind of programming get used to a different way of thinking? If that's true maybe someone can point me to a clean example of a longer chain of functions using callbacks..."}
{"_id": "11624", "title": "hiring a web designer: design task", "text": "I need to hire a web designer. How do I test his creativity and skills before I hire him. Ideally I'd like to give him a fairly open-ended task i.e. I give him a problem statement and ask him to design a PSD file. Any suggestions on the problem statement I might give him? Also, is there a better way to hire /test a web designer?"}
{"_id": "128038", "title": "How to properly validate your code?", "text": "I have about 4000 lines of code for a web-application in JavaScript / PHP / CSS / HTML. How can I test it properly? I only support the latest version of IE and Safari. I've worked out all the bugs. Is there a good way to test it so that I could go so far as to call the code robust? I've considered using perl Mechanize to auto fill in forms or do something similar. I also have a PHP test class to test the inner working of my PHP classes. However is there some sort of standard or conformance guidelines to be met? Is there a way to say this code passes IEEE xxx foo standards for code robsustness etc.? I have validated my HTML using W3 validators and I've validated my JavaScript using jslint.com. Here is list of dilligence items:   1. HTML / CSS passes W3 validation   2. JavaScript passes jslint   3. PHP passes internal PHP Test Class User Testing   1. Create a set of User Actions and Implement using perl mechanize or similar. Are there standards or procedures for releasing code to the web?"}
{"_id": "247398", "title": "Testing Facades, Is it a good idea?", "text": "I stumbled across a need to create a thin I/O Layer interface to abstract away a class from the need to know about I/O               public interface IFileIOProvider {         Task WriteFileAsync(String contents, String path);         Task<String> ReadFileAsync(String path);     }      Is it a good idea to test a default implementation that _only_ falls back to standard .Net System.IO classes, no logic attached?. I think it might be overkill, but just want to get my strategy checked out by more experienced programmers"}
{"_id": "200473", "title": "How does the concept of a class change when passing data to the constructor instead of method parameters?", "text": "Let's say we're making a parser. One implementation could be:               public sealed class Parser1     {         public string Parse(string text)         {            ...         }     }      Or we could pass the text to the constructor instead:               public sealed class Parser2     {         public Parser2(string text)         {            this.text = text;         }              public string Parse()         {            ...         }     }      Usage is simple in both cases, but what does it _mean_ to enable parameter input to `Parser1`, compared to the other? What message have I sent to a fellow programmer, when they look at the API? Also, are there any technical advantages/disadvantages in certain cases? Another question comes up when I realize that an interface would be quite meaningless in the second implementation:               public interface IParser     {         string Parse();     }      ...where an interface on the first one could serve at least some purpose. Does that signify anything in particular, that a class is \"interfaceable\" or not?"}
{"_id": "135877", "title": "If Instance is for Class, what's for Template?", "text": "I am not able to find the right technical term to mention child or instance of a template.   What's the right one, child or instance or something else I am not aware of? Sorry for my unclear original question.   Its not related to any language. The Template I am talking about is a business concept in my application. Say for example, I have a \"chair\" template. I would set a few property values to it to create it's usable instances. I need this for naming and documentation stuff.   Shortlisted 3 terms: Instance, Definition, Child. Whats suits better?"}
{"_id": "226440", "title": "Is it okay to make coding style changes on an open source project that doesn't follow best practices?", "text": "Recently, I came across a number of open source Ruby (or majority of it was Ruby) projects on GitHub that when checked with a code analyzing tool like Rubocop, create a lot of offenses. Now, most of these offenses include using double quotation marks instead of single quotes (when not interpolation), not following the 2 spaces per level rule, exceeding the 80 character line length rule, or using `{` and `}` for multi-line blocks. > [The] Ruby style guide recommends best practices so that real-world Ruby > programmers can write code that can be maintained by other real-world Ruby > programmers. ~ Source: Ruby Style Guide Although they are small and easy to fix, is it appropriate to change the coding style of an open source project by fixing the offenses and making a Pull Request? I acknowledge that some projects, like Rails, do not accept cosmetic changes and some are just too large to \"fix\" all at once (Rails for example generates over 80,000 offenses when Rubocop is run - regardless, they have their own small set of coding conventions to follow when contributing). After all, the Ruby Style Guide is there for a reason together with tools like Rubocop. People appreciate consistency so making these kinds of changes is kind of doing a good thing for the Ruby community in general, right? > [The author(s) of the Ruby Style Guide] didn't come up with all the rules > out of nowhere - they are mostly based on my extensive career as a > professional software engineer, feedback and suggestions from members of the > Ruby community and various highly regarded Ruby programming resources, such > as \"Programming Ruby 1.9\" and \"The Ruby Programming Language\". ~ Source: > Ruby Style Guide Isn't not following community coding style conventions and best practices basically encouraging _bad_ practices?"}
{"_id": "208260", "title": "How does a program process concurrent executions", "text": "I have a console application that is run by taking the input parameters. It can be configured by passing report name parameter, for e.g. `reportgen.exe sales.xml`. It hits the database and retrieves the data into xml file and sends to sftp site. Whole of this process is logged and the `xml files` are being saved in a directory. This `exe` needs to be scheduled on daily basis, so what happens if the exe is scheduled at same time with different parameters. Is it thread safe and can be considered as independent execution doing what it supposed to do? **Edit:** It uses log4net for logging the debug info. into a file. So, how does it write log statements into single file for concurrent executions."}
{"_id": "255769", "title": "FRC Robotics Laptop? Windows 7 or 8?", "text": "I\u2019m mentoring FRC Robotics team and we\u2019re buying a new computer. I\u2019m looking at Lenovo Thinkpad W540. We\u2019ll be using C++/WPILIB and SolidWorks for design. Anyone out there have experience with this laptop? Should we stick with Windows 7-64bit or go to Windows 8? I\u2019m also curious to know whether anti-virus software interferes with performance \u2026 errr ... should that be separate discussion? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "208263", "title": "How much should we spend on improving software security?", "text": "Is there a \"scientific\" method to determine how much resources/money should be spent on improving the security of a piece of software? I work in a team where our work is prioritized by a product owner (ala Scrum). The product owner is kind of sales driven and focuses on new functionality requested by customers and less on the infrastructure. I think I need a way to convince him that we need to spend more time on improving the security. Of course I don't want to convince him by spreading fear and I'm not sure myself how much money we should spend on improving security. Of course, the security of our software is improved all the time but I suspect - without knowing for sure - that it would be sane to double the efforts in the area. I have a weak memory reading about this, where something like the following was suggested:   1. Think about a weak point in the security in the system   2. Estimate what a succesfull attack would cost in terms of lost/dis-satisifed customers (X)   3. Estimate how likely that it is that this would occur in a given year. (Y)   4. Calculate how much should be spend on fixing the weak points, based on X and Y. We don't have to solve the issue immediately, but we should spend Z percent on it."}
{"_id": "208266", "title": "How to handle assumptions while designing any system?", "text": "I have been going through various system design examples to understand how we approach any system design question. Here is what I have understood till now.   1. Know the system first and find out how it works.   2. Think of all use case.   3. Identify key components and their responsibilities.   4. Connect all the components so that they can communicate to each other.   5. Use all standard practices while integrating components and if possible use standard design patterns. Sometimes we make assumptions about the system, so those assumptions should be used to remove one use case or to add a variation. I will put this question in context of Parking Lot design. If I assume that Parking Lot is not commercial, and it is free parking lot, then design of parking lot should handle free parking lot as one of use cases , and it should be generic. OR Simply design parking lot which will never work for Commercial parking lot. Main idea is that if someone asks you to design a parking lot and that is free parking lot, then design should be generic or specific?"}
{"_id": "255766", "title": "How do you make the node_modules folder read/write in WebStorm", "text": "I'm using WebStorm on a Node.js project and want to edit the files in the node_modules folder but WebStorm won't allow this. I found the padlock at the bottom right on the IDE but switching that between lock/unlock makes no difference. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "255765", "title": "What is the best computer programming content that an aspiring technical cofounder (for a 2-person team) can consume?", "text": "**My background is as follows:** I have almost no programming experience to speak of (I programmed a game mod in Jr. High and have since been dormant for 15 years). I'm quite comfortable with both vim and emacs (having used them general purpose text editing in the past). I have a graduate degree in mathematics with research experience in logic. I've read from cover to cover _The C Programming Language_ (doing about 1/4 of the exercises) and _The Pragmatic Programmer_. I felt that the concepts discussed in these books came quite natural to me, although I suspect _reading_ about programming is akin to reading about how to have sex (i.e., next to worthless in practice). **My primary programming goal is to be able to construct rough software prototypes as rapidly as possible.** I'd also like to understand the big picture of how things are operating at the software level. Unfortunately, I don't yet know if our first prototype is going to involve an iOS application or a web app. With this in mind, what's the best technical content I can consume in the short-run (with an eye towards rapid prototyping) before I know what it is I'm actually trying to build and test?"}
{"_id": "866", "title": "Is video game programming usually physics related?", "text": "I know this is obviously not true for some games, minesweeper, card games, etc. But what about any game involving simulating the real world environment. Obviously these games have some form of a physics engineer powering the graphics. For someone like me who personally did not enjoy physics but loves video games, do I have a chance at ever getting involved in the development cycle of a video game such as this while disliking physics?"}
{"_id": "141749", "title": "What are some best practices for minimizing code?", "text": "While maintaining the sites our development team has created, we have come across include files and plugins that have proven to be very useful to more then one part of our applications. Most of these modules have come with two different files, a normal source file and a min file. Seeing that the performance and speed of a page can be increased by minimizing the size of the file, we're looking into doing that to our pages as well. The problem that we run into is a lot of our normal pages (written in ASP classic) is a mix of HTML, ASP, Javascript, CSS, and include files. We have some pages that have their JS both in include files and in the page, depending on if the function is only really used in that page or if it's used in many other pages. For example, we have a common.js and an ajax.js file, both are used in a lot of pages, but not all of them. As well as having some functions in a page that doesn't really make sense to put into one master page. What I have seen a few other people do online is use one master JS file and place all of their javascript into that, minify it, gzip it, and only use that on their production server. Again, this would be great, but I don't know if that fully works for our purposes. What I'm looking for is some direction to go with on this. I'm in favor of taking all of our JS and putting it in one include file, and just having it included in every page that is hit. However, not every page we have needs every bit of JS. So would it be worth the compilation and minifying of the files into one master file and include it everywhere, or would it be better to minify all other files and still include them on a need-to-use basis?"}
{"_id": "204572", "title": "PHP Simplest XML tokenizer for string processing?", "text": "I need to do some _text processing tasks_ with _short XML fragments_. The section \"details\" shows an example... My solution is to use a _tokenizer_ based on _regular expresions_ , but it is not elegant and not uses any build- in function. The candidate build-in functions (that others indicates to me) are strtok and SimpleXML. So, my question have two parts:   1. **My assumptions are correct?** There are no other \"candidates\", only strtok and SimpleXML? Is correct to think DomDocument as an \"elephant\" (with big CPU overhead) for a simple _text processing task_?   2. **How to use SimpleXML to do the same (illustred) task?** PS: I not need all algorithm or implementation, only some clues. * * * # Details PHP offers a tokenizer, strtok, very simple, and I not see how to use it with XML string. The option, SimpleXML, is perhaps heavy for tasks like ''text processing'' (see this example and the below), and is more than a tokenizer. What exactly I whant to say with \"tokenizer\" and \"text processing\"? See example below. I used a \"regex parser\", but **I would like an algorithm based on some built-in function like SimpleXML, if it is simpler and faster**.                $xmlFrag = '        <p align=\"center\">&nbsp; Hello world!</p>         <p class=\"test\"><i>&nbsp; Beautiful</i> day today.</p>';           // TOKENIZING TAGS AND ENTITIES:      $reg=array();      $xmlFrag = preg_replace_callback(         '/<!\\-\\-.+?\\-\\->|<.+?>|&[a-z0-9]+;/is',          function ($m) {             global $reg; $reg[]=$m[0]; $n=count($reg)-1;             return \"##$n#\";         },         $xmlFrag      );      echo $xmlFrag;     // results:      //  ##0###1# Hello world!##2#  ##3###4###5# Beautiful##6# day today.##7#           // PROCESS THE TEXT: any, in one step. Example: lower, upper, change orthography, etc.      $xmlFrag = strtoupper($xmlFrag);      echo $xmlFrag;      //  ##0###1# HELLO WORLD!##2#  ##3###4###5# BEAUTIFUL##6# DAY TODAY.##7#           // EXPAND TOKENS:      $xmlFrag = preg_replace_callback(         '/##([0-9]+)#/is',          function ($m) { global $reg; return $reg[$m[1]]; },         $xmlFrag      );      echo $xmlFrag;      //  <p align=\"center\">\u00a0 HELLO WORLD!</p>       //  <p class=\"test\"><i>\u00a0 BEAUTIFUL</i> DAY TODAY.</p>      * * * ## Using SimpleXML How to implement a SimpleXML algorithm to resolve the illustrated problem (code above)? PROBLEMS:   * Load a XML with named entities (as `&nbsp;` in the example).   * Traverse XML to get only text nodes. With `$sx->xpath('//text()');` I can not edit the nodes. ## Using DomDocument It is out of context, because my XML fragments are short and DomDocument imposes a big CPU overhead (? is this a preconception?) for the simple text processing."}
{"_id": "204575", "title": "Should I open pull requests from a branch on the official repo or my fork?", "text": "I have commit access on an open source project named Foo hosted on GitHub (there are many other committers if that is relevant). I would like to make a change via pull request so that someone else reviews it before it gets committed to the master branch of the Foo codebase. To make this pull request, I can either make a branch on the official Foo repository or I could fork Foo and commit to a branch on my fork. What issues should I consider when I'm deciding whether to make my pull request on the official repo or my fork?"}
{"_id": "204576", "title": "What is the best way to store configurations of shell/script code to execute later?", "text": "I am working on a tool (Python, may or may not be important) that will allow a user to maintain a configuration file containing arbitrary shell and/or language code to be executed on particular events and intervals. The code will potentially involve multiple statements. I understand there are potential behavioral and security risks associated with executing arbitrary code from a file, but I don't think this is a concern because the configuration file is managed only by the end user. However, let me know if I'm overlooking something major. My main question: what is the best way to store this code in a configurable way? * * * Some concepts I'm considering to store the code... In a shared config file (which many Python libraries already look for):               # setup.cfg     [my_program]     command_1 = cd /tmp && touch foobar      In a YAML file:               # my_program.yaml     command_1: cd /tmp && touch foobar      In a source file as arguments to `subprocess.call()`:               # settings.py     command_1 = [['cd', '/tmp'], ['touch', 'foobar']] # requires special handling of 'cd'      In a source file as a function:               # settings.py     import os     import subprocess     def command_1():         os.chdir('/tmp')         subprocess.call(['touch', 'foobar'])"}
{"_id": "141741", "title": "Store HighRes photos in Database or as File?", "text": "I run a site which has a couple of million photos and gets over 1000 photos uploaded each day. Up to now, we haven't kept the original file that was uploaded to conserve on space. However, we are getting to a point that we are starting to see a need to have high-res original versions. I was wondering if its better to store these in the filesystem as an actual file or if its better to store them in a database (ie: mysql). The highres images would be rarely referenced but may be used when someone decides to download it or we decide to use it for rare processes like making a new set of thumbnails sizes/etc."}
{"_id": "141740", "title": "C++ and function pointers assessment: lack of inspiration", "text": "I've got an assessment to give to my students. It's about C++ and function pointers. Their skill is middle: it the first year of a programming school after bachelor. To give you something precise, here's a sample of a **solution** of one of **3** exercices they had to do in 30 minutes (the question was: \" _here's a version of a code that could be written with function pointers, write down the same thing but with function pointers_ \"):               typedef void (*fcPtr) (istream &);     fcPtr ArrayFct [] = { Delete , Insert, Swap, Move };          void HandleCmd (const string && Cmd)     {         string AvalaibleCommands (\"DISM\");         string::size_type Pos;         istringstream Flux (Cmd);              char CodeOp;         Flux >> CodeOp;              Pos = AvalaibleCommands.find (toupper (CodeOp));              if (Pos != string::npos) {             ArrayFct [Pos](Flux);         }     }      * * * Any idea where I could find some inspiration? Some of the students have understood the principles, even though it's very hard for them to write C++ code. I know them, I know they're clever, and I'm pretty sure they should be very good project managers. So, writing C++ code is not _that_ important after all. Understanding is the most important part (IMHO). I'm wondering about maybe break the habits, and give half of the questions about the principle, or even better, give some sample in _other_ language and ask them why it's better to use function pointers instead of classical programming (usually a big `switch case`). Any idea where I could look? Find some inspiration?"}
{"_id": "141744", "title": "Actor based concurrency and cancellation", "text": "I'm reading about actor based concurrency and I appreciate the simplicity of actors sequentially processing messages on a single thread. However there is one scenario that doesn't seen possible. Suppose that actor A sends a message to actor B, who then performs some long running task and returns a completion message to actor A. How can actor A force actor B to cancel the long running task after it has started? If actor B is running the task in its message queue thread, it won't pick up the cancellation message until it had completed the task; if actor B runs the task in a background thread then it seems to be violating the principle of actors. Is there a common way that this scenario is handled with actors? Or does each actor language/framework take a different approach? Or is this not a suitable problem to tackle via actors?"}
{"_id": "184976", "title": "What is a good script language for writing server administration tasks?", "text": "I am administering hundreds of RHEL servers. There are many daily tasks to perform. Right now I am working with bash scripting and python. I was wondering if other languages such as Erlang, Lua, Ruby, Haskell, or Clojure."}
{"_id": "133438", "title": "What are the steps involved in creating a testing process?", "text": "I've been asked this question as part of an assignment. The question is a bit vague, and after searching the Internet, I cannot seem to find any particular set of steps related to this question. The best I could find are the following:   1. Design test cases   2. Prepare test data   3. Run program with test data   4. Compare results to test data Are these valid steps which can be done to create a test process? Or am I misinterpreting the question?"}
{"_id": "93169", "title": "Can initial inefficient solutions INSPIRE better ones and thus lead to faster problem solving?", "text": "When faced with writing an algorithm to solve a small project/problem is it better to come up with pseudo code that isn't efficient/optimum but solves the problem and then try to use the inefficient code to **inspire** a better/good solution? The solution must be acceptable, not necessarily \"super-amazing-out- of-this-world\" type. The answer is subjective, but I am looking for a general opinion or consensus from experienced programmers in order to develop a better algorithm generation/problem solving process. _The reason I ask this is that I often start composing the most intuitive algorithm but then get derailed thinking about how inefficient it is and if I should be using a better data structures etc etc._"}
{"_id": "133437", "title": "How to find siblings of a tree?", "text": "On my interview for an internship, I was asked following question: > On a whiteboard write the simplest algorithm with use of recursion which > would take a root of a so called binary tree (so called because it is not > strictly speaking binary tree) and make every child in this tree connected > with its sibling. So if I have:                      1           /   \\            2     3           / \\     \\          4   5     6         /           \\      7             8      then the sibling to 2 would be 3, to four five, to five six and to seven eight. I didn't do this, although I was heading in the right direction. Later (next day) at home I did it, but with the use of a debugger. It took me better part of two hours and 50 lines of code. I personally think that this was very difficult question, almost impossible to do correctly on a whiteboard. How would you solve it on a whiteboard? How to apprehend this question without using a debugger?"}
{"_id": "122788", "title": "Is this a correct situation to use a constant?", "text": "So my professor was giving back some feedback on a project I've been working on. He docked a few marks for this code:               if (comboVendor.SelectedIndex == 0) {       createVendor cv = new createVendor();       cv.ShowDialog();       loadVendors();     }      This is in a combobox \"index changed\" handler. It's used when the user wants to create a new vendor, my top option (index 0, that never changes) opens the \"Create a new Vendor\" dialog. So the content of my combo box ends up looking like this:               Create New Vendor...     Existing Vendor     Existing Vendor 2     Existing Vendor 3      His problem is with the first line code:               if (comboVendor.SelectedIndex == 0)      He claims that the 0 should be a constant, and actually docked me marks because of that. He claims I shouldn't use literals in my code at all. The thing is, I don't understand why I would want to make that code in that situation a constant. That index will never change, nor is it something that you would need to tweak. It seems like a waste of memory to keep a single 0 in memory that's used for a very specific situation and never changes."}
{"_id": "138377", "title": "How can I test a parser for a bespoke XML schema?", "text": "I'm parsing a bespoke XML format into an object graph using .NET 4.0. My parser is using the `System.XML` namespace internally, I'm then interrogating the relevant properties of XmlNodes to create my object graph. I've got a first cut of the parser working on a basic input file and I want to put some unit tests around this before I progress on to more complex input files. **Is there a pattern for how to test a parser such as this?** When I started looking at this, my first move was to new up and XmlDocument, XmlNamespaceManager and create an XmlElement. But it occurs to me that this is quite lengthy and prone to human error. My parser is quite recursive as you can imagine and this might lead to testing the full system rather than the individual units (methods) of the system. So a second question might be **What refactoring might make a recursive parser more testable?**"}
{"_id": "122782", "title": "Instantiating a class implementing an interface", "text": "I have an interface called `Cell`. In the start of the code, I read input data from which I can come to know the implementing class (not as a class object but I can know for example the string). And after that I need to call the constructor for the implementing class to initialize an object. What would be the best way to implement that. The first thing in my mind is to do something like this (`Cell` is an interface, `Sphere` and `Rectangle` implements `Cell`. I can set a boolean flag called `sphere` after reading the input data):               Cell startcell;     if (sphere)         startcell = new Sphere(0);     else         startcell = new Rectangle(0);      But is this good design?"}
{"_id": "164277", "title": "Parallel Threading in Multi-Language Software?", "text": "I'm developing a software that contain many modules/Daemon running in parallel manner, what i'm looking for is how to implement that, i cannot use Thread because some of those modules/Daemon are perhaps implemented in other languages (C,java,C#...). For example I'm using C for Hooking Messages exchanged between Windows kernel and top level applications, Java/C# to use some free library to simply parse XML(for example) or to accept and execute commands over the network..this can be done by C Language but just to improve productivity... Finally for GUI I'm using Ultimate++ (c++) that is like the main process that call and monitor(activate/deactivate/get state) of all other modules/Daemon through an interface. I admit that the development of each module/Daemon in a separate language greatly facilitates maintenance, but especially I am obliged to do that.. What is the best practice way to do that ? All helps will be appreciated."}
{"_id": "164271", "title": "What is preferred for file I/O in Java?", "text": "Of the three   * BufferedReader/Writer  * Binary Streams  * Channels     which is more preferred **in real life** for file I/O in Java and why?   I prefer channels for binary data to be put into file or read from and BufferedReader/Writer for String data"}
{"_id": "164273", "title": "Does Dart have any useful features for web programmers?", "text": "http://www.dartlang.org/ I've checked out the site very briefly, and got curious. Is there any advantages of using Dart? Is it just a replacement for JavaScript? It looks like simpler Java. Writing quite a lot of C# at work, the language feels very much like what I'm used to, so learning the syntax looks like a breeze to learn. Has anybody any opinions or experiences with the language? (Compared to CoffeeScript (= I'm not doing Ruby syntax) the syntax looks more familiar to me)."}
{"_id": "237124", "title": "Why do browsers these days ship with dev tools", "text": "I just read a question asking how Facebook blocks console-based script attacks. The reason for this block was to prevent a recently famous \"hack\" where one would trick a user to inject a malicious script through the console with the promise of something (instant likes, who viewed me etc). And then I wonder: _Why do browsers these days ship with dev tools anyways?_ Now, some thoughts:   * Not everyone is a developer, and one wouldn't have any need for these tools just to surf the web and read some email.    * If one really would want to debug a page, they could have just shipped it as a separate add-on, much like how Firefox had Firebug before it also had its own dev tools.   * If troubleshooting was the concern, then wouldn't an error console, like in Firefox 3, suffice? And browsers in the older days didn't have debugging tools, only some interface to show the errors (IE had the status bar. Firefox had an error console).   * Wouldn't it be an additional weight to the browser if it had those tools tucked in? So why is this the trend in browsers these days? Is there something I missed that makes vendors push with shipping the tools along with the browser."}
{"_id": "237126", "title": "How did programmers implement Linked list ideas before the object oriented paradigm?", "text": "Linked lists, as far as I have seen, are largely implemented using object- oriented ideas. (having an object that holds some information and the address of the next link). How were Linked-lists implemented before the object- oriented paradigm came out? Were they only invented(?) once the OOP was developed?"}
{"_id": "237123", "title": "How to make consistent progress towards the goal of becoming better, as opposed to just coding for fun?", "text": "I'm in senior year in high school. I enjoy programming (Java) very much and aspire to do it as a career in the future. However this isn't the topic of this question. My question is: how can I start making **consistent progress towards the goal** of becoming a great programmer? What I mean is this: I work on my own projects, enjoy doing so and feel like I'm slightly improving with every project I finish. However, I don't feel like I'm consistently moving towards 'the goal of becoming a great programmer'. I want to have a sense of 'working towards the goal'. What I feel right now is more like \"I'm coding stuff which is a lot of fun and I'm improving, but I don't feel like I'm **'making progress towards my goal'** \". \"Slightly improving over time because I'm coding stuff\" doesn't really feel like \"making progress towards a goal\". To those of you who are experienced developers: **what advice can you give me on making consistent progress towards the goal of becoming great at programming,** as opposed to just coding stuff for fun?"}
{"_id": "207173", "title": "Localizing an app whose data is tied to one language", "text": "I develop a mobile app that displays information about the bus system in one U.S. city. The de facto official language is English, but there are many students from other countries\u2014China and South Korea, especially\u2014and I\u2019d like to internationalize and localize my app, both to make it more appealing to non-native English speakers and because I want the experience of localizing an app. I\u2019m a little hazy on where I should draw the line between strings that should be localized and those that should stay in English. The bus system itself uses only English names. It was easy for me to decide not to localize the stop names: there are thousands of them, meaning that translations would be expensive, and moreover most of the stop names are proper nouns that wouldn\u2019t necessarily _have_ Chinese translations (for example), making localization pointless. Since the stops will only ever be displayed in English, is it reasonable that the app\u2019s list of all stops should only ever use English collation? The bus system uses colors to name most of its routes. It _would_ be possible to translate these, but should I? The sign on the front of the bus is only ever going to display the English name of the route. With that in mind, is there any benefit to my app displaying a translated name that the user will just have to mentally convert back into English anyway? (I\u2019m leaning toward \u201cno\u201d.)"}
{"_id": "207179", "title": "Why is asynchronization so popular in Javascript?", "text": "Asynchronized programming seems to be natural in Javascript - it is the \"first choice\" to do many things. But in most other programming languages, asynchronization is more like a second choice rather than first choice. What makes asynchronizated programming so popular and natural to Javascript?"}
{"_id": "51311", "title": "Code checking role", "text": "Consider there is a manager and a programmer in a project. A manager crates a task which a programmer performs. In this situation who should check that a programmer didn't make some non- testable mistakes like using non thread-safe map in a singleton service? And who checks the overall project code structure?"}
{"_id": "87052", "title": "Need recommendation for transferring ASP.NET MVC skills to PHP", "text": "I am looking to translate my skills in .NET to PHP - specifically in regards to ASP.NET MVC. At work I am currently using .NET MVC 2.0 on a variety of projects and thoroughly enjoy the platform. Specifically I enjoy the very minimal configuration required to get a project up and running (just create the project, define routes, and start coding), as well as the ability for controller actions to return different items (i.e. `ActionResult`, `JsonResult`). Another piece I really like is the way the view/model interaction can be handled. For example I like being able to call return View(model) and having a view page (.aspx) load and having the full model object available to the view, regardless of the model type. I'm looking for a PHP implementation of MVC that is the most similiar to what I am already familiar with. I don't anything apart from the MVC functionality. I've looked at Zend, Symfony, CodeIgniter, etc. and, while they look like they'll be fun to play with in the future, they provide much more functionality than I need. I'd prefer to write my own DAL, form helpers, delegate handlers, authentication/ACL pieces, etc. In short, I just need something to handle the routing and view interactions and will worry about the model implementation myself. Can someone please point me to some lightweight code that accomplishes or comes close to accomplishing my objectives above. Or, can someone identify just the portions of a larger framework that do the same (again, I'm not currently interested in implementing something on a big framework, just the MVC portion and want to implement the model portion myself as much as possible)."}
{"_id": "87054", "title": "What skills should I learn in order to move into a permanent systems analysis role?", "text": "I have been with a software services firm for 5 years and have fallen into a \"jack of all trades\" role, which I am looking to move out of. I've spent about 1 year each in programming (VB/VB.NET), application support, systems analysis, and most recently, software testing, which in my current position is all manual. I've really lost interest in the programming and testing roles; I would prefer a position where I get to work more with _people_ , such as systems analysis. I even got a chance to be a trainer at the same company for a few months, a temporary position which I enjoyed very much. Given that most of my real experience is with software, support, and testing, what knowledge areas and skills should I focus on learning and mastering in order to make myself an attractive candidate for a permanent position as a business/systems analyst?"}
{"_id": "45957", "title": "How to talk a client out of a Flash website?", "text": "I have recently been doing a bunch of web side projects through word of mouth recommendations only. Although I am much more a of a programmer than a designer by any means, my design skills are not terrible, and do not hate dealing with UI like many programmers. As a result, I find myself lured into a bunch of side projects where aside from a minimal back end for content administration, most of the programming is on front end interfaces (read javascript/css). By far the biggest frustration I have had is convincing clients that they do not want Flash. Aside the fact that I really do not enjoy Flash \"development\", there are many practical reasons why Flash is not desirable (lack of compatibility across devices, decreased client accessibility, plug-in requirements, increased development time, etc.). Instead of just flat out telling the clients \"I will not build you a flash website\", I would much rather use tactics to convince/explain to them that this is not what they actually want, ie: meet their requirements any better than standard html/css/js and distract users from their content. **What kind of first hand experience do others have with this? How do you explain to someone that javascript/css/AJAX is usually a better option for most websites? Why do people want to use Flash so bad to begin with?** This question pertains to clients who do not have any technical reasons for wanting flash, but just want it because they think it makes pretty websites."}
{"_id": "246045", "title": "Is this database design sound and fully normalised?", "text": "I'm creating a database to store words. The intended usage is to query the database to find a word matching a set of filters. E.g. if I wanted to find a word with < 10 letters, < 3 syllables, rhymes with 'at' and matches the tag 'animal', it would return 'cat', 'bat', 'wombat'... Unnormalised, the table would look like this: (primary key is marked by PK, contextual information is given in square brackets)               Word(         WordID PK,         Word,         AltSpelling, [another accepted variant e.g. \"color\"/\"colour\"]         Rhyme, [the rhyme part of the word, e.g. for \"wombat\" the rhyme is \"at\"]         Pronunciation, [how the word is pronounced in IPA]         SyllableCount,         Tags, [tags relate to meaning of the word, e.g. \"apple\" would have the tags \"round\", \"fruit\", \"plant\" etc.]         Categories, [categories are how the word would be hierarchically categorised, e.g. cat comes under the category \"animal\"]         WordClasses [the word class that a word can be used as, e.g. \"rest\" can be Noun and Verb]     )      This is the Entity-Relationship diagram to describe how the database should work: ![Word database Entity-Relationship diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/isopb.png) And finally, this is the solution I've come up with for a normalised database design. FK indicates foreign key, CPK is Composite Primary Key.               Word(WordID PK, Word, OtherSpelling, RhymeID FK, SyllableCount)     Rhyme(RhymeID PK, Rhyme)     Pronunciation(PronID PK, WordID FK, Pron, DialectApplicable [the dialect in which the pronunciation is used, e.g. RP, SE, BrE, AmE])     Tag(TagID PK, TagName, TagReferentCount [the number of words to which the tag applies])     WordTag(WordID CPK FK, TagID CPK FK)     Category(CategoryID PK, CategoryName, CategoryReferentCount [cf. TagReferentCount for categories])     WordCategory(WordID CPK FK, CategoryID CPK FK)     Class(ClassID PK, ClassName, ClassReferentCount [cf. TagReferentCount for word classes])     WordClass(WordID CPK FK, ClassID CPK FK)      The question is twofold: is this database design fully normalised? And more importantly, is it sound? I have no practical experience with databases, so I'd like to know if I've made any mistakes, or if the design can be improved/optimised."}
{"_id": "123780", "title": "Development Cost of Google Chrome", "text": "How much money did Google throw at the development of Chrome ? The actual figure is probably not public knowledge. An educated guess would be fine. _Bonus points_ for time-series data :D"}
{"_id": "146213", "title": "Combining source files, like header files", "text": "I have a project where my files have gotten out of hand because of the volume of them. I have started to combine classes of similar types in single header files because you can, and it still is good practice, now can i do the them same for those classes functions, that are declared in the source files. Is it a good idea to combine several classes functions in a single source file, if the classes are say all sub classes of the same super class?"}
{"_id": "123787", "title": "Should I develop a product with minimal use so I can say I developed it?", "text": "I appear to have done something wrong here, so let me try to rephrase this more simply so I stop giving the wrong impression. I'm in the planning stages of a project right now, on my own time; I'm currently defining the scope of the project. I can see this application also releasing an Android app; furthermore, I've long wanted to get into Android development, and being able to list an actual project on my resume seems likely to be beneficial. However, the application itself is far more useful on a PC than a tablet and almost useless on a smartphone; odds are, very few (if any) people would _want_ to use this on Android. I want to develop it, but I anticipate almost no demand. Should I do so under the idea that the experience is useful, or should I either keep it private or not do it under the idea that an app nobody uses looks bad to future employers? * * * Original Question: I'm planning out an open-source project, mostly to beef up my resume (ETA: Okay, I'm doin it mostly because I want to do it, but I'm releasing it as open-source rather than keeping it to myself so I can list it on my resume easier). I'm considering doing an Android version, intended to run on tablets. But it's not the most useful thing to have on a tablet; neither I nor my partner can really conceive of anyone wanting the product. However, adding \"developed for Android\" to my resume seems to be a good selling point, and I'd like to get into mobile development. Should I make an app nobody wants so I can say I made an app? Or should I hold off until I have a better idea? Edit: I must have phrased things badly, some of the answers seem to have the wrong idea. I'm doing the entire project for the hell of it; if I don't do an Android version of this particular project, I'll complete it sooner and plan something else and do that. It's a given that I'm always going to be doing a project and that I want to do this project. The question is, should I instead do something more useful as a \"let's play with Android\" project? Will making something nobody wants hurt me in the long run?"}
{"_id": "218489", "title": "How to explain to my manager the importance of separation of concerns?", "text": "I'm an extremely novice web programmer working at a 2 person shop building websites, and we're in the process of writing a simple website template system in PHP from scratch. My manager is entirely self taught. He has been insisting that we put our HTML directly quoted in variables, mixing our back end code with the front end stuff.               $foo = \"<html>             <body>                 <div class=\\\"bar\\\">\" . $bar . \"</div>             </body>             </html>\";          echo $foo;      He claims that it is easier to work with this way. I insisted that we should at least use PHP tags in our HTML, rather than the HTML in the PHP.               <html>     <body>         <div class=\"bar\"><?php echo $bar; ?></div>     </body>     </html>      I feel like this is a real pain in the ass to read and it just looks like a mess. I think it would be a lot easier to separate the logic from the presentation, but he is certain that his way is best. How can I explain the importance of this so that he will understand? I can't put it into words, exactly. EDIT: Think you guys could leave a comment when you're down voting me? I have no idea how to fix my question if you just down vote it and leave without suggesting improvements."}
{"_id": "254961", "title": "What does it mean when some technology is a \"standard\"?", "text": "I started learning Java EE 7 and I am frequently coming across this term \"standard\", and I don't understand what it means. So, for example, here is a quotation from this book: > Contrary to SOAP and the WS-* stack, which rely on W3C standards, REST has > no standard and is just a style of architecture with design principles. REST > applications rely heavily on many other standards: HTTP, URI, URL... I have some idea of what that might mean, but I'm not sure. The best explanation that I have come across is the definition from here."}
{"_id": "118538", "title": "Is a book about MySQL 5.1 still relevant, with the release of MySQL 5.5?", "text": "I am considering purchasing High Performance MySQL (2008). This book discusses MySQL 5.0 and 5.1. Is this book still relevant today, or is it too old?"}
{"_id": "254967", "title": "I have an unordered list of rectangles and their neighbors on four sides with no origin. How can I efficiently convert this into a grid?", "text": "I am writing a GtkGrid-like container for my GUI library for Go, and I'm trying to write the actual layout part of the code. Basically, I have an unordered list of controls. Each control is a rectangle, and each list entry contains a pointer to the control to its north, south, east, and west. What I don't know is how to convert this back into a grid efficiently. At first I thought I could use \"the top-left control\" to mark (0, 0) on the grid. But what's the top-left of               [ ][ ][X]     [ ][X][X]     [X][X][X]      Any other solution I can think of runs in at least O(n^k) time, since I need to traverse the list multiple times to figure out what each row is, etc. So what other approach can I use? Thanks. The algorithm will need to be able to start from any control in the list. (Go programmers: the reason for this is that the list is a map.) I can say that there will be no freestanding controls (all controls must be attached to another control, but can be attached on any side at any time). (Except, of course, if there is only one control at all, but I imagine this scenario falling out of the solution.) (I hope this is in the right subdomain...)"}
{"_id": "254964", "title": "Displaying Fibonacci sequence", "text": "wrote a program to calculate and display the first 20 fibonacci numbers, the sequence goes as follows: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13... (each number is the sum of the previous two numbers) The problem is that the numbers that get displayed are from 2 onwards , the first and second numbers of the sequence do not get displayed , could someone tell me what needs to be done to correct this? Code:                       private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             int previousNumber = 1;             int currentNumber = 1;             int nextNumber = 1;                  while (currentNumber <= 11000)             {                 nextNumber = previousNumber + currentNumber;                 previousNumber = currentNumber;                 currentNumber = nextNumber;                 textBox1.AppendText(Convert.ToString(nextNumber) + \" \");                     nextNumber++;                  }         }"}
{"_id": "254965", "title": "Client / Server dependencies with Continuous Integration", "text": "I'm starting to use continuous integration for one of my projects and had some questions about structure and architecture. It's basically a multi-device webservice that is split into one server repository and multiple device-specific client repositories. My question is the following:   * Since clients are dependant on the server to run their tests, does it make sense to split them into another repository ? I did some builds with Travis CI as examples and it worked great but now that I want to add tests, it's raises the issue of being dependent on the server project. Server that itself also has it's own build and tests. From a project architecture side it makes sense to split server and client repositories but I have troubles looking at the big picture and the CI server integration."}
{"_id": "222504", "title": "Usefulness of \"milestones\" in agile development", "text": "A lot of issue trackers support something called \"milestones\". I've never found a use for them. It seems that milestones are only useful when you do big, scheduled pushes, but not if you roll out new features and bug fixes as they're completed. When/how would you use milestones to organize agile development?"}
{"_id": "129634", "title": "How should I handle application settings in C#?", "text": "I am pretty new to the .NET framework so please bare with me. I am writing a time counter in C#, that counts the amount of time that has elapsed since a particular moment in time. That moment in time, as of right now, is hard coded. I would like that to be configurable. That and a couple of other values. So, I have created a windows form and it has two user controls on it: one that is the main screen, and another that is the config screen. The application opens on the main screen and I can then use a button to get to the config screen. What I want to do is to go into the config screen, enter my name and age in a textbox, enter a certain date (possibly with the date-time picker) and click a save button. Those values that I entered should then display in the appropriate places on the main screen, until I go back to the config screen and enter new values and save them. How would I go about doing that?"}
{"_id": "213874", "title": "Java \"module\" size", "text": "Is it sensible to have micro-modules, say with only a very few (perhaps one) class in it? Or should I store things in bigger repositories? I am long-time Java developer with a software-engineering background. I try and write well encapsulated, focussed OO code. I have previously written code in large modules/projects/repositories with main module depending upon \"common\" modules. \"Common\" modules seem to be a code-smell in the same way as common/util classes - a sign that someone hasn't thought what the real, clean encapsulation is. I am now wanting to publish some articles on a blog and back them up with code on BitBucket, with 1 article with its own module & repository. I like clean dependencies, hate duplication, etc and there are natural downward dependencies from 1 module to \"common\" code. Java doesn't make dependency management very easy (hopefully fixed in Java 9 with Jigsaw), but interestingly Google Dart has a very nice mechanism and seems to recommend small, tight modules (and presumably repository per module). I'm thinking of small modules of Java, with Maven dependencies. Each module in its own repository. Jar's published on some maven site. EDIT: 1) I want to write some blog posts. Each post will be about a different topic. Each topic will relate to a cohesive module of code. I want readers to be able to download the module of code for the post. 2) I am using Bitbucket as my git repository. Point 1) implies (?) that I need a repository per module/blog article. 3) I'm trying to do things **reasonably** correctly: don't need perfection 4) Blog articles are only part of it: I want a good decomposition into modules for sound software engineering reasons. 5) I'm not ready to make my repositories public yet, they are incomplete, but these are the modules I currently plan: - 5a) Validation - just a single class with useful validation (I like DbC-like stuff!) 5b) HTML generator - nice module to generate HTML from Java - depends on Validation 5c) Swing \"panning\" component - again depends on Validation 6) Each of the modules in 5) depend upon Validation and are also discrete modules. So, should I have 6a) 3 x repositories (allowing people to easily pick and mix) 6b) 1 x repository building a single jar 6c) 1 x repository building 3 x jar, 1 per \"module\""}
{"_id": "245637", "title": "Understanding Arithmetic In C", "text": "I have an embarrassingly simple question, but I need to make sure I understand this correctly. I have a *.c file with the following line:                   CSRConstant = 2*macroParticleCharge*particleCharge/pow(3*rho0*rho0, 1./3.)/(4*PI*epsilon_o*particleMass*sqr(c_mks));      Is this interpreted as: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yT3MG.png)"}
{"_id": "245630", "title": "How to ideally calculate profit margin with zero sales", "text": "How do you handle the following scenario without null? You have this problem (In Java):               BigDecimal sales = ...;     BigDecimal cost = ...;     BigDecimal profit = sales.subtract(cost);     // Profit Margin = profit / sales     BigDecimal profitMargin = profit.divide(sales, 20, RoundingMode.HALF_UP);      Because `sales` is sometimes zero, we turn the last line into:               BigDecimal profitMargin = sales.compareTo(BigDecimal.ZERO) == 0 ? null : profit.divide(sales, 20, RoundingMode.HALF_UP);      In which case if `profitMargin == null`, then we know what that means. If you make `profitMargin` = 0, that isn't really correct, nor is `infinity` a good value either. It seems best that it would remain **undefined**. Yet, it is an \"unexploded bomb.\" So, what's the best way to handle this? This questions as originally asked on Stack Overflow, and also referred me to the question Are null references really a bad thing?"}
{"_id": "213870", "title": "Best techniques for an AI of a card game", "text": "I\u2019m trying to develop an AI for a card game and I\u2019m a bit stuck about the technique/algorithm I should use. Here are a few assumptions about the game:   * After the cards are distributed to players, there is no randomness. I mean here that every player can choose which cards he plays but no random process occurs as when distributing the cards at the beginning of the game.   * There is restriction about the cards which can be played when a card was already played.   * The player which wins the trick, plays then first. E.g. Player 1 plays a card, Player 2 plays a card and wins. Then Player 2 plays a card and then Player 1 plays. I know a lot of hints/rules (e.g. if I know the player has cards A, B, C then I should play D) which helps me to win to the game. Thus I first wanted to use a Bayesian network to describes those rules. The problem is that I don\u2019t know any probabilities to assign, but I could compute an heuristic using the history of played games (against a human). Second problems, it is very likely that I don\u2019t know all rules and that there is some implicit rules which are needed by the AI to find the optimal play. I\u2019m unsure if this would be a good way to develop an AI for such a card game? I am also wondering if there is others techniques which would best fit to the problem. For instance, I had a look at minimax (maybe with a pruning algorithm), but would be a good option for this problem? I\u2019m quite unsure since the most important plays are at the beginning of the game when there is the highest unknown parameters (most of cards are not played yet)."}
{"_id": "178505", "title": "Pass structure as an argument in c# method", "text": "I want to know if it is possible to pass a Structure as a parameter in c# method and if possible, is it a good practice to do so? I have a c# method which is taking six arguments, i really hate that. I could create a carrier class for that and pass it as an argument, but i want to know if structure could do the job. I want to mention here that few arguments to that method are of ref type and few are of value type."}
{"_id": "178504", "title": "When should we use weak entities when modelling a database?", "text": "This is basically a question about what are weak entities? When should we use them? How should they be modeled? What is the main difference between normal entities and weak entities? Does weak entities correspond to value objects when doing Domain Driven Design? To help keep the question on topic here is an example taken from Wikipedia that people can use to answer these question: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/KTj4v.png) In this example `OrderItem` was modeled as a weak entity, but I can't understand why it can't be modeled as a normal entity.   Another question is what if I want to track the order history (i.e. the changes in it status) would that be a normal or weak entity?"}
{"_id": "40255", "title": "How important is to be able to write code like you would write prose", "text": "Recently I heard of a company that, for interviews, asks potential employees to stand up and write out code on a whiteboard. Apparently that freaked alot of interviewees out. This got me thinking and even though I consider myself a reasonable programmer, I would be hard pressed to write lengthy code out without referring to previous code I had written or doing a quick Google search. How many programmers could safely say \"Yes I could write all my code out just like I was writing an email\"?"}
{"_id": "178501", "title": "Future of desktop applications on Windows 8", "text": "There are a lot of threads discussing existence of WPF/Silverlight/HTML5 on Windows 8, I just need to clarify the picture about desktop applications only, I have following queries to the experts   1. What are the technologies available for developing desktop applications on Windows 8?   2. What are the technologies I can use for creating rich multimedia applications. Currently I have an application with DirectX 9 and WPF. If I am to develop something like that for Windows 8 then what options are available to me, and what are the pros and cons of these.   3. Is it a good idea to continue with the same DirectX 9 code on Windows 8 as well? What is the best option equivalent to DirectX, Is it XNA or is it DirectX 11 or something else? Performance an extensibility are critical points to me. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks in Advance."}
{"_id": "40257", "title": "Resources for Internationalisation", "text": "We're looking at internationalisation for our application and are looking for any good resources please can recommend to help us out. Books, blog posts, articles, you name it, I'd be interested. The application is Java / SQL Server / Oracle with both web (HTML / JavaScript) and Java forms user interfaces. Internals include XML / XSL-T. Anything from high level \"these are things to think about\" pieces to detailed assessments of character sets, sort orders and date formats would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "177152", "title": "What's a good length for Javadoc for a class that is say 800 lines long?", "text": "I'm doing a code-review on someone's code for class. The class is about 800 lines long, contains a good dozen of functions but the description is like 1 line long. I'm wondering, generally speaking, how long should the description of a class be? (in Java)?"}
{"_id": "47706", "title": "Can MS Visio Class Diagrams be used to generate classes?", "text": "I'm fairly new to Visio, and was wondering if there's a way I could auto- generate the code from Visio diagrams. I was looking to generate either C# classes, SQL statements for building the database layer, or EntityFramework objects. I am using MS Visio Professional 2010"}
{"_id": "195938", "title": "What is the most appropriate testing method in this scenario?", "text": "I'm writing some Objective-C apps (for OS X/iOS) and I'm currently implementing a service to be shared across them. The service is intended to be fairly self-contained. For the current functionality I'm envisioning there will be only one method that clients will call to do a fairly complicated series of steps both using private methods on the class, and passing data through a bunch of \"data mangling classes\" to arrive at an end result. The gist of the code is to fetch a log of changes, stored in a service- internal data store, that has occurred since a particular time, simplify the log to only include the last applicable change for each object, attach the serialized values for the affected objects and return this all to the client. My question then is, how do I unit-test this entry point method? Obviously, each class would have thorough unit tests to ensure that their functionality works as expected, but the entry point seems harder to \"disconnect\" from the rest of the world. I would rather not send in each of these internal classes IoC-style, because they're small and are only made classes to satisfy the single-responsibility principle. I see a couple possibilities:   1. Create a \"private\" interface header for the tests with methods that call the internal classes and test each of these methods separately. Then, to test the entry point, make a partial mock of the service class with these private methods mocked out and just test that the methods are called with the right arguments.   2. Write a series of fatter tests for the entry point without mocking out anything, testing the entire functionality in one go. This looks, to me, more like \"integration testing\" and seems brittle, but it does satisfy the \"only test via the public interface\" principle.   3. Write a factory that returns these internal services and take that in the initializer, then write a factory that returns mocked versions of them to use in tests. This has the downside of making the construction of the service annoying, and leaks internal details to the client.   4. Write a \"private\" initializer that take these services as extra parameters, use that to provide mocked services, and have the public initializer back-end to this one. This would ensure that the client code still sees the easy/pretty initializer and no internals are leaked. I'm sure there's more ways to solve this problem that I haven't thought of yet, but my question is: what's the _most appropriate_ approach according to unit testing best practices? Especially considering I would prefer to write this test-first, meaning I should preferably only create these services as the code indicates a need for them."}
{"_id": "235866", "title": "Using factory pattern when classes have little in common", "text": "I have used Factory pattern where I have multiple classes which does similar sort of work, but I don't want client to worry about class instantiating and return types. So Instantiate the necessary class dynamically depending on input and pass the values. These classes have similar methods but does slightly different work and these classes inherit the same common interface. Is this the correct way or can I improve it further?"}
{"_id": "12435", "title": "In the Aggregate: How Will We Maintain Legacy Systems?", "text": "> NEW YORK - With a blast that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam > pipe sent a powerful message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath > New York and other U.S. cities are getting older and could become > dangerously unstable. July 2007 Story About a Burst Steam Pipe in Manhattan * * * We've heard about software rot and technical debt. And we've heard from the likes of:   * \"Uncle Bob\" Martin - Who warned us about \"the consequences of making a mess\".   * Michael C. Feathers - Who gave us guidance for 'Working Effectively With Legacy Code'. So certainly the software engineering community is aware of these issues. * * * But I feel like our aggregate society does not appreciate how these issues can plague working systems and applications. As Steve McConnell notes: > ...Unlike financial debt, technical debt is much less visible, and so people > have an easier time ignoring it. If this is true, and I believe that it is, then I fear that governments and businesses may defer regular maintenance and fortification against hackers until it is too late. [Much like NYC and the steam pipes.] * * * My Question:   * Is there a way that we can avoid the software equivalent of NYC and the steam pipes?"}
{"_id": "230537", "title": "Why do expressions print variable value using System.out.print?", "text": "Why does java print the value of the variable that is assigned it in the code below? I want understand what is happening here. My thought is that the expression inside println() method is evaluated first. For the first example, 5 is assigned to int x. At that point, does x become available for the println() method to print its value? This code confuses me. I wouldn't have thought expression like x=5 could return a value. Thank you. Examples:               int x;     System.out.println(x=5); //prints 5          boolean isValid;     System.out.println(isValid = true); //prints true          String fruit;     System.out.println(fruit=\"Orange\"); //prints orange"}
{"_id": "123126", "title": "Is it good design to require class users to use Rvalue reference", "text": "I have the following situation where I have a base class and multiple polymorphics derived classes:               #include <iostream>          class Base {         public:             virtual void foo() = 0;     };          class Derived1 : public Base {         public:             virtual void foo() { std::cout << \"Derived1::foo()\\n\"; };     };          class Derived2 : public Base {         public:             virtual void foo() { std::cout << \"Derived2::foo()\\n\"; };     };      I want to make sure that my class users will _always_ use the base class to use object of this hierachy. I got the idea to provide a factory methods returning the good object. From now, the methods look like this:               Base&& make_base(int i) {         if(i == 1)             return Derived1();         else             return Derived2();     }      The client can then use it that way:               int main() {         Base&& b = make_base(1);         b.foo();     }      Assuming C++03 compatibility is **not** needed, is this considered a good practice? PS: Sorry for my writing, I am not an english native person. # Edit AS _DeadMG_ point out, my initial make_base have undefined behaviour. If I can't require clients to only use Base class, I which I could recommand it. Is this kind of factory a better idea?               #include <type_traits>     #include <string>          template <class Derived>     Derived make_base() {         static_assert(             std::is_base_of<Base, Derived>::value,             \"'Derived' must derived from 'Base'.\");              // Default behaviour         return Derived();     }          template <>     Derived2 make_base<Derived2>() {         // Specialise behaviour         // Do something         return Derived2();     }          int main() {         auto b = make_base<std::string>(); // Error, 'Derived' must derived from 'Base'.         Base&& b1 = make_base<Derived1>(); // call make_base()         Base&& b2 = make_base<Derived2>(); // call make_base<Derived2>()         b1.foo();         b2.foo();     }"}
{"_id": "123121", "title": "Is it necessary to read every single byte to check if a copied file is identical to the original?", "text": "I recently learned of a program called Total Commander. It's a Windows Explorer replacement and has its own stuff to copy files. To check whether the files are identical, instead of calculation a CRC, it literally checks every single byte, one at a time, on both the original and the copy. My question is: Is this necessary? Can CRC or any other such technique go wrong? Should you, as a programmer, try and implement this perfect but slow system, or is it too extreme?"}
{"_id": "115177", "title": "How to decrease errors before testing?", "text": "During last year, several of the projects of the company where I work failed. We develop web software, that are not especially complicated (the most are CRUDS and search form about this data). One of the problems that management has identified is the test phase. Putting simple, our protocol is:   1. Analysis of the requeriments    2. Development   3. When construction is over, upload the executable to a server    4. Execute test plan    5. Repair the errors    6. Execute the test plan, to check if errors persist.    7. If all is ok -> Send to the client. The problem is that when we finish phase 3 and start phase 4, the number of errors is to damn high, that the execution plan takes to much time, and we get an interminable list of things that we have to repair. Until arrive to the test plan we are on time, but after this we spend more hours that were planned and then \"fail\" the project. We deliver with enought quality for the client but spend more hours repairing bugs. The management is looking for a solution, and is planned a meeting to ask us for ideas to improve the quality before the first test plan. Any idea?"}
{"_id": "206224", "title": "Information protection when registering on web sites", "text": "Up until now it seems that when you register on a random web site you do so with blind trust. You assume that the site isn't harvesting information and passwords. You assume the site is reasonably secure. And you also assume that the information you've submitted isn't used in an undesireable way. More recently, it's become possible to connect up to a site with a Google+ or Facebook account. But that brings along another problem. Anyone that has access to the social account can access anything that's linked to it. So, has any thought gone into making something that's truly independant ? Something like an information locker a person could set up themselves. Do any relevant projects exist ?"}
{"_id": "206223", "title": "gtkmm manage/add vs smart pointers:", "text": "gtkmm provides lifetime management of widgets using               Gtk::Widget* aWidget = Gtk::manage(new Widget());           Gtk::Widget.add(*aWidget);      This delegates lifetime management of aWidget to its container widget. We also have several types of smart pointers, particular the C++ 11 smart pointers templates, which I use everywhere. I find the manage/add syntax easier and cleaner to use, but it's not part of the C++ Standard, it's a gtkmm specific feature, which makes me think I should stick to std::shared_ptr, etc. So I'm wondering what are the advantages/disadvantages of smart pointers vs the gtkmm manage/add model (aside from cases where you need the reference after the owner container has been deleted, or when you have a top level widget that has no containing widget)."}
{"_id": "27145", "title": "Should a newcomer to Perl learn both Perl 5 and 6?", "text": "I have started playing around with Perl 5 lately, and it seems very interesting. I would like to spend some time learning it more in depth when I can. My question, since Perl 6 is slowly taking place (I believe...) and is said to break backward compatibility, is this: am I better learning Perl 5 and then Perl 6, or is learning Perl 6 directly a better time investment according to you? If the changes from Perl 5 to 6 are making it hard to understand Perl 5, I should certainly start with Perl 5 to be able to read \"old\" scripts, then check Perl 6. There is also the \"Perl 6 is not yet completely released\" problem. I know there's an early adopter implementation for Perl 6, but if Perl 6 isn't officially released before some more years, I'll stick to 5 for now. I would certainly like some insight on this. Feel free to discuss related stuff. My interest in scripting languages is fairly new. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "110721", "title": "What qualifies \"too many database requests\" in code?", "text": "This is a discussion myself and some of my colleagues are having and thought I'd come out here and see what if there's a general consensus on it. It basically comes down to the following 2 opinions on database calls: 1\\. Make one large call to get everything that may be needed to reduce database the number of DB calls 2\\. Make smaller separate calls based on what is requested to reduce the size of DB calls Where this is especially coming into play is in common code. We'll use the example of an Employee class as that's fairly straight forward. Let's say that your Employee class has 10 value attributes (first name, last name, hiredate, etc.) and then 2 class attributes ... 1 pointing to a Department class and then 1 supervisor that points back to another Employee object. In mindset #1, you'd make one call that returns the Employee data as well as the fields needed to populate the Department and Supervisor attributes ... or at least the fields that most often used from those sub objects. In mindset #2, you'd only populate the Employee object at first and then only populate the Department and Supervisor objects if and when they are actually requested. 2's stance is pretty straight-forward ... minimize the size of the requests and how many database objects need to be hit each time one of those requests is made. #1's stance is that even if it could be implemented properly, the sheer fact that the code would have to make multiple connections is going to cause more strain on the connection between the webserver and the database as opposed to reducing it. The driving force behind researching this is that the amount of traffic between our webserver and database server is getting out of control."}
{"_id": "7720", "title": "What are the Pros and Cons of the GPL?", "text": "I'm looking at licensing some open source software and am looking at the GPL. What are the pros and cons of using this license?"}
{"_id": "238349", "title": "Unique ID algorithm", "text": "I've got a route that contains objects. Each one has value 0 or 1. I need unique route ID which will identify any objects order. Currently I'm doing it using binary number that is converted to decimal (see picture). ![Objects](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Rvbom.png) The problem is, that amount of objects in route is up to 15. So, decimal number will be very big (up to 32767) with many values, that will never be used.   How to convert that number, to another unique value, but much smaller (<255)? I need to do that, only by using simple arithmetical operators (+,-,*,div)."}
{"_id": "117716", "title": "The dreaded C# programming interview test - any advice?", "text": "I have a possible C# dev job lined up but before I can interview, I need to pass a test with the employment agency. Now even though I am a senior developer with over 10 years of programming experience and more than 3 of these years with c#, I am really not looking forward to this test and I think there is a good chance I will fail it. In my experience these tests are unpredictable asking you stuff you seldom use in everyday work situations. I need your best advice on what I should be revising on - a good book or website for example. I have less than 1 week to prepare and it is essential I pass this. Thanks in advance. EDIT: To further justify my concerns of writing such tests - Consider the following question: 12) An Event is :                  a) The result of a users action - correct answer        b) The esult of a party        c) code to force users action      The correct answer according to the test is A, but since I've been doing SOA development (often when events can be based on system events (not user actions) I'm 100% sure an event doesn't have to be driven by a user action. This was also a C# question (not an ASP.net question). Based on my understanding, I couldn't really spot a correct answer but B seems the best of the lot (if the definition of party is : any entity that can trigger an event. These kind of questions scare me."}
{"_id": "245095", "title": "Research on common problems that people have when learning programming?", "text": "Is there any research into the most common mistakes or conceptual errors that people with no previous exposure to computer programming make when attempting to learn or being taught programming? This question may be a dup, but in order to help reduce that possibility:   * This question is not about people who can't learn to program or find it too difficult, but about problems or mistakes that even the ones who do learn, and perhaps even find easy, are more likely to have or make at first.   * This question is not about errors that programmers who already know how to program make, only about clean slate beginners.   * It is not about teaching or how to teach, it is about what, even after \"proper teaching\", some percentage of a introductory class's students might, at first, still think or do in (perhaps even surprising to the teacher) contravention to the teaching material. This question is also not about programming style or patterns, but about the type of mental errors in beginners that prevent any code solution, even if not using the current thought in best practices."}
{"_id": "245096", "title": "Efficiently storing and parsing client's browser details", "text": "Do there exist browser fingerprinting API's that instead of running browser information (e.g. the user agent, installed plugins, screen resolution, system fonts etc.) through a hash function, instead encode the information with a lossless data compression algorithm to produce a string that can later be decompressed to receive the original information? I've been looking for an efficient way to compress all the system fonts, plugins, etc. from a given browser into a small string so that it's easier for me to store them and then read back particular strings when I need to in there original format, but I haven't been able to find anything that even partially does this."}
{"_id": "161356", "title": "What's the difference between the insert methods and why one is faster", "text": "I have insert 14.485 lines on MySQL like this:               INSERT INTO `bairros` (`id`,`cidade_id`,`descricao`) VALUES (1,8891,'VILA PELICIARI');     INSERT INTO `bairros` (`id`,`cidade_id`,`descricao`) VALUES (2,8891,'VILA MARIANA');     ...      It took around 5 minutes. I had to insert in another table 16.021 lines, same database, so for test I did this:               INSERT INTO `bairros` (`id`,`cidade_id`,`descricao`) VALUES (1,8891,'VILA PELICIARI'),(2,8891,'VILA MARIANA');     ...      It took just a few seconds. What is the difference, for the database, between the scripts? And why one is faster than the other?"}
{"_id": "80566", "title": "How does production server and staging Server actually work in production", "text": "I have one Linux VPS server for my company and we develop PHP sites. What i normally do is just make the subdomain of main site like test1.mainsite.com and work on that till it finishes. and then chnage the domain name. I have heard that big companies have the staging server and production server. I just want to know how that system works and when site is complete how do they transfer the site via FTP , SSH , RSYNC , what they do with old staging server. I jsut want to implement the enterprise strategies in my company and want to know how to proceed Thanks"}
{"_id": "110093", "title": "How would one handle external dependencies in an open-source project?", "text": "When one writes an open-source project and uses Google Code or GitHub, and wants to use a library like Lua, how should one do this?   * Should the dependency be included in the repository?   * Should the dependency be built from within the same build script as the rest of the project, or from a separate build script? Given that the library doesn't need installation before compilation."}
{"_id": "198791", "title": "Should an integration test be used in place of a unit test involving personal data?", "text": "I am trying to develop a series of unit tests for a production system that are dependent on a person's social security number. While I am more than comfortable hard coding a clearly bad social security number to test for failure, I'm uneasy about including one that is good for proper (and passing) results. The following is a simplified test that I'm using:               [TestMethod]         public void API_Hours_Get()         {             var controller = new HoursController();             var employee = new EmployeeController();             var badResult = controller.Get(123124569);             var goodResult = controller.Get(employee.GetEmployeeByUserId(\"Username\").First().SSNumber);             Assert.IsFalse(badResult.Any());             Assert.IsTrue(goodResult.Any());         }      This test passes just fine and gives me the results I want. But, from my understanding, it is an integration test. From a best practices perspective, is this substitute okay for my test suite and just ignore the fact that I don't have a 'pure' unit test for the SSN-dependent modules or is there a better approach for situations like this?"}
{"_id": "195727", "title": "Naming of related classes and interfaces", "text": "I have created an `ObjectParser` class which parses data into strongly typed objects using an `IObjectParserDataSource` as the data source (the data could be an Excel file, text file, array, query string, etc). Examples of my implementations of `IObjectParserDataSource` are:   * `TextFileObjectParserDataSource`   * `ExcelFileObjectParserDataSource` These class names feel really long and convoluted to me. I could name them:   * `TextFileDataSource`   * `ExcelFileDataSource` But this introduces a level of ambiguity and they don't became as clearly related to `IObjectParserDataSource` at first glance. This becomes important because defining these data sources will happen in client code and I wish to minimize potential confusion and uncertainty. **How would you name these classes in such a scenario?**"}
{"_id": "255287", "title": "Notepad++ For Normal Text and Syntax Highlight?", "text": "I want to use Notepadd++ for taking notes on python programming language. I want to write some normal sentences and also write codes on same page simultaneously. I don't want to show line numbers for the normal texts but I want to show line numbers for programming codes. Is this possible? I mean normal lines should be without syntax highlighting and line numbers which usually show on left hand side of each line. And syntax highlighting for the codes written in the same file? For example... To print strings in Python we should use single or double quotations after print keyword. For example... 1 print \"Hello World!\" (this line should be with line number and syntax highlighting)"}
{"_id": "149299", "title": "Should I refactor single letter variables for constructs like pointer/structure names?", "text": "And No, i am not referring to single variables in loops or exceptions. Lets say pointer/struct names in large c ,c++ programs . Are there any languages where this type of naming is acceptable or is the norm. Or any constructs in c/c++ ( not iterators,loops) where it is implicit. what is the general practice in handling such naming conventions ? would you change it? if so how would you change it? If you are a team-project lead and some one raises an issue with regards to the naming convention how would you view it?"}
{"_id": "163845", "title": "Compiling OpenGL Assembly Language (ARB) assembly code", "text": "I have two questions to ask.   1. If I want to code in ARB, what are the prerequisites I need to write the code?   2. I have been using OpenGL and DirectX lately. I want to compile and run the ARB code. What compiler should I use to compile and run the code?"}
{"_id": "214134", "title": "How to create a use case diagram for board game played on PC", "text": "I'm struggling with a task as I was given to practice UML and use cases. The problem is that I should model computer version of a board game so I am unsure about a few things. obviously it does not matter if you play against the PC or another player, the actions are the same. The game is simply like tic tac toe. E.g. > Actor Player ---(Place a diamond)-----include---->(Check for a > row)---include-->(Swap players) But the game is played on the PC, so is Check for row really a use case? And the same with Swap players? Because the system would do that. On the other hand, if it was not, how could I continue?"}
{"_id": "214137", "title": "Is it good practice to put bug analysis and fix code in bug report?", "text": "When I fix a bug I mention briefly what was the issue and in which revision its fixed. But this way nobody would know how much tricky the issue was and how much effort went in analysis and findings. What is the best practice for a developer to show such things to higher management to get noticed?"}
{"_id": "13746", "title": "What are hooks?", "text": "I keep coming across this term hooks in various programming articles. However I don't understand what they are, and how can they be used. So I just wanted to know what is the concept of hooks; if someone could link me to some examples, particularly in the context of web development, it would be great."}
{"_id": "215843", "title": "What would you do to improve the working of a small Development team?", "text": "My company is having a reshuffle and I'm applying for my boss' job as he's moved up the ladder. The new role would give me a chance to move our development team into the 21st century and I'd like to make sure that:   1. I can provide sensible suggestions in the interview to get the job so I can fix the team   2. If I get the job I can actually enact some changes to actually improve the lives of the developers and their output. I want to know what I can suggest to improve the way we work, because I think it's a mess but every time I've suggested a change it's been shot down because any time spend implementing the change would be time that isn't spent developing software. Here is the state of play at the moment:   * My team consists of 3-4 developers (Mainly Java but I do some .Net work)   * Each member of the team is usually works on 2-3 projects at a time   * We are each responsible for the entire life cycle of the project from design to testing.   * Usually only one person works on a project (Although we have the odd project that will have more than one person working on it.)   * Projects tend to be bespoke to single customer, or are really heavilly reliant on a particular customer environment.   * We have 2-3 \"Products\" which we evolve to meet customer requirements.   * We use SVN for source control   * We don't do continuous integration (I'd like to start)   * We use a really basic bug tracker for internal issue tracking (I'd like to move to an issue/task management system) Any changes that bring a sudden dip in revenue generation will probably be rejected, the company isn't structured for development most of the rest of the technical team's jobs can be broken down to install this piece of hardware, configure that piece of hardware and once a job is done it's done and you never have to look at it again. This mentality has crept into development team because it's part of the company culture."}
{"_id": "152728", "title": "Private Wiki vs Google Doc to share specifications for a team?", "text": "My team is debating whether to put the specifications on a private wiki or in a google document. Can someone provide me with a summarized list of pros/cons for using a private wiki vs google docs for team specifications? My gut feeling is the google-docs is heavier and slower to use, but easier, while private wikis, like mediawiki, seem to be harder to set-up and run."}
{"_id": "69745", "title": "Is TOS Necessary?", "text": "Let us say that someone is hosting a web application where others can come and register and use for free(like stackoverflow or stackexchange). Is a terms of service agreement necessary? Like this TOS for stackexchange ? If there is no TOS agreement, are there any implied(default) legal conditions?"}
{"_id": "201798", "title": "How do I convert a list of Requirements into Constraints?", "text": "I am trying to prepare my first software design document. I am self-taught and have no formal training in CS. Having done a wee bit of reading up on it beforehand, I have created a list of Requirements, Qualities and Non-Qualities for the system, which provide an overview from a managerial viewpoint on what the project is tasked with providing. The intent was for these to be convertible into design Constraints, which in turn would guide justifiable design decisions. So far they do not get into many specifics of what resources are to be provided, but are general in that they should apply to all resources present in the system. I am having difficulty, however, in proceeding to the next step. What exactly is a Design Constraint supposed to look like? How specific or general should it be? How do I convert domain Requirements into Constraints? Have I already gone nuts and over-specified things? :-) **Background**   I am the only programmer at a small service company. We have a current HTML with PHP PIs application which grew organically and has no test infrastructure. Editing one bit has repercussions and unintended consequences in far flung parts of the app. I want to replace it with a more professionally designed (in fact, any kind of designed) one, object-based with a test suite. Management doesn't know about programming and I need to know which of the current features are cruft, which workflows are bogged down, etc. This is intended to be my guidance both during a perpetually postponed design meeting and during implementation. * * * So far, I have the following: **Terminology**   * \"Owner\" refers to a company or division running their own deployment of the Software, with data independent of any other deployments.   * \"Developer\" means an individual who is either a programmer with write access to the source code, or a database admin working for an Owner.   * \"User\" means an individual who has authenticated access to a deployment.   * \"Staff\" means a User who works for an Owner.   * \"Client\" refers to a User who is a customer of an Owner. **REQUIREMENTS**   What features _must_ the service exhibit?   * **Platforms** : Access to the service must be available via a variety of recent-to-modern, general business computing devices. (i.e. desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphones as of 2013).   * **Mobility** : Reasonable efforts at providing access to the service for all Users must be made, regardless of their physical location.   * **Secure** : All data must require authentication and authorization to access, and non-safe requests must come with sufficient confirmation that they were initiated by user intent.   * **Access Controls** : Resources and sets of resources must have variable authorization permissions.   * **Admin Powers** : Read and write authorization to individual resources and sets of resources must be seperate.   * **Unbreakable** : The system must not be able to be put into a \"broken\" state by Users.   * **No Clobber** : A User should not be allowed to overwrite another user's changes unknowingly.   * **Off-line** : A User's scheduled events for the current day must be readable off-line.   * **Rapid Bootstrap** : New Staff must be able to get up to speed on the internal side of the system quickly.   * **Owner Agnostic** : Nothing specific to one Owner should be present in a new, clean deployment for another Owner.   * **Brandable** : An Owner must be able to configure the system to exhibit their branding and corporate specifics.   * **Safe Data** : A frequent and reliable back-up of all data must be easily scheduled. **QUALITIES**   What other features would we _like_ the end product to exhibit?   * Fast developer turn-around for bug fixes.   * Fast prototyping for new features.   * Error-free implementation of new features.   * Regression-free changes.   * Attractive Client UI.   * Efficient Staff UI.   * Widest device and OS support reasonably achievable.   * All accountability/blame data (who did what, when?) should be involatile.   * All other data should be editable by a user with sufficient authorization, without needing a Developer.   * Data back-ups should be creatable on demand by a sufficiently authorized user.   * Data back-ups should be restorable on demand by a sufficiently authorized user. **NON-QUALITIES**   What features are _not important_ and will allow flexibility of design?   * Programming language choice   * UI monolingualism   * We do not need a generic resource import or export system.   * [this list is incomplete]"}
{"_id": "201796", "title": "How can I salvage my internship?", "text": "I'm currently working as an intern at a very large, non-software development company. The position I applied for wasn't specifically a development position, but the team that hired me wanted a CS major to help try to develop some internal projects for them. I've been here for four weeks and the initial bewilderment is starting to wear off. However, I'm the only CS major in the entire office -- no one on my team, in the building, or even in the neighboring locations has any background in software development. The best I've got is a database manager, and their department is too busy to support me with my projects. My teammates are helping me learn how they do their jobs (which is important for me to do my job), but there's no one to help my do _my_ job i.e. development. The projects they've given me are larger in scope than anything I've done in school. That, combined with the fact that I'm working alone, trying to develop applications from scratch with no form of guidance or even clearly defined goals, has me very worried about my ability to be successful. I barely know where I should be begin, and now I have probably less than two months remaining. I feel like I should be learning the software development process, but right now it's like I'm feeling my way through the dark. This is especially troubling for me since I'm not very confident with my development skills in the first place. I've been researching and teaching myself, but I'm only getting bits and pieces. They have high expectations from me, but I'm unsure of my ability to deliver. Obviously, I need to sit down and talk with my managers about the position I'm in and I intend to do that as soon as possible (they're often travelling and out of the office). How should I deal with this? This internship will be over before I know it, and I don't want to leave with nothing to show for my time here. They don't want that either, and they're always available to help me but without knowledge of programming there's only so much they can do. I'm afraid to tell them that I'm incapable of producing what they want. How should I relate this to them? I see the engineering interns getting help from other engineers, learning how to do their jobs, and I feel like I'm just sitting here biding my time. Any advice on how to rectify my situation would be greatly appreciated. **Update** I appreciate all the helpful feedback from everyone, it's helped put my mind at ease. The first thing I did was meet with my managers and supervisors. We discussed what was expected from my time here. They understand that I don't have that much time as an intern, and this helped put a scope on the type of framework we want to accomplish, which will allow future interns or employees to hopefully build off of what I leave. I also addressed my concerns regarding my capabilities with the allotted time, which they understood and expected. I received a call from the database administrator at another location - my manager talked with his supervisor and they're going to support my project, which will now give me a resource to use so I'm not sitting around with no idea what I'm doing. That's only one half though. Out of all the possible projects, we narrowed it down to the two most important to work on. As for my other project, as someone mentioned I'm essentially the lead software architect which is a unique situation for an intern. If things go at least semi-successfully, I think I'll have gained a good deal of knowledge and experience that can help me with future employers. For now, I think I have some solid footing to start researching and developing my projects. Thanks again for the responses from everyone!"}
{"_id": "150699", "title": "How do certain iPhone apps allow purchases without IAP?", "text": "According to section 11.2 of the App Store Review Guidelines,               Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP)      to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected.      Various apps like JetSetter, Gilt, and Kayak include in-app purchasing flows that either collect credit card information directly, or use a UIWebView to direct the user to a third-party website to purchase goods and services. What provision allows apps to do this, and what are the limitations to purchasing physical goods and services in an iPhone app without using IAP?"}
{"_id": "65597", "title": "How dependent on Rich Hickey is Clojure?", "text": "I was just asked this question by my company who is investing in a Clojure application and I did not have a good answer? Can anyone, in all seriousness tell me what would happen to Clojure if Rich left the project?"}
{"_id": "150693", "title": "In need of a divide and conquer approach for re-writing small open-source utilities", "text": "Preamble (Skip if you don't like to read) I've been learning C/C++ in school for a year now and all the assignments in the book, after reading through the chapters, were not too difficult to implement. Some examples of programs I've written are abstract data types like binary trees, queues, stacks, lists, and other types of programs were palindrome searching, encrypting and decrypting files, and other similar first-year type programs. As stated, after reading the chapters, I was easily able to implement and understand the algorithms used to solve many of the problems. So I feel comfortable with the syntax and logic of these small manageable problems. Background (You can skip this part) In preparation for my transfer to UCSD in the fall, I installed Linux on my machine and switched to using Vi -- definitely a change from Visual Studio. To keep my mind sharp and venture into real-world programs, I decided to download the source for a famous Linux console utility called Wget (http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/), with the intentions of re-writing the program as a C++ object-oriented version. The challenge I am facing is the program, while being a simple single-purpose utility, is still quite enormous when staring at the code. ...The Question (You CAN'T skip this part) How does one begin to look at a program they didn't write and study it in order to try to re-write it, change it, etc? I guess I'm looking for advice/guidance on a divide and conquer type approach to studying a program written by other people in order to try to re-write it. I understand massive programs like OpenOffice, the Linux kernel, Gnome, etc. don't fall into this \"I'm going to re-write them\" sort of thinking. But small utilities I would imagine do. Thanks for reading, I hope I asked a thoughtful question and I hope it sparks some useful answers which can be found helpful to others as well."}
{"_id": "65591", "title": "An event that raises itself - is it too complicated?", "text": "I have a little problem. I'm writing a resource loading and caching system, in which user can request a resource, and set a callback to be called when resource is loaded (and/or wait for load to finish). This leads to code like this:               var waitobj=Loader.RequestObject(\"foo\");     waitobj.LoadFinished+=delegate{ Bar(); };      However, since resources are cached, the call to `RequestObject` may actually complete synchronously. This means that when callback is set, request is already finished, and callback is never called. I thought up a clever trick: let's just check the state of request in the event adder itself!               public event LoadFinishedHandler LoadFinished {         add {             if(Finished)                 value();             else                 m_LoadFinished+=value;         }     }      This will call the callback function no matter what.. but my coworkers said that this method is too complicated and no one will be able to maintain this code. I like this trick anyway, but I'm obviously biased. What do you think, is this trick too clever for its own good?"}
{"_id": "155300", "title": "Are proofs worth the effort?", "text": "I bought the de-facto book for learning about data structures and algorithms (CLRS). The book is though quite good but the singularity is in the proofs. The book is filled with Lemmas, theorems, peculiar symbols and unimaginable recurrence relations which are very hard to understand. I am able to somehow get the algorithms but the discrete mathematics just not for me. So should I leave them out and just concentrate on algorithims?"}
{"_id": "254699", "title": "Is routing a site with RESTful not the best when you have very long URLs?", "text": "I've read a lot about RESTful, but I have always had a hard time figuring out how I'd use it with a very long query string. This is an in-house project, and it won't always have a simple /someAction or someController/12/14/my-article- I-want-indexed. I'm not worried about SEO because the application is not on the Internet. My querystrings are long sets of ?somevar=123456&x=4785&y=394958....... Most examples for REST I have seen are for SEO and simple web apps like a blog, maybe a CMS. Is REST not the best practice for a situation where having long URLs with lots of variables in the querystring is the norm? Here is an example of what looks to me like a non-RESTful way: http://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=bicycle&category=0%7CAll%7Cmatchallpartial%7Call+categories&lnk=snav_sbox_bicycle Is this link an illustration bad practice and design? It's not a super long URL, but it illustrates that not everyone uses REST, if I understand REST. I know the reasons for REST, pretty URLs, hackable URLs, etc. I'd like to design my application well but feel like it would be shoehorned into a pattern I don't need. What is the best practice here?"}
{"_id": "43134", "title": "Types of ER Diagrams", "text": "I'm currently taking a class for database design, and we're using the ER diagram style designed by Peter Chen. I have a couple of problems with this style:   * Keys in relationships don't seem realistic. In practice, synthetic keys like \"orderid\" seem to be used in almost all tables, including association tables, but the Chen style diagrams heavily favor (table1key, table2key) compound keys.   * There is no notation for datatype.   * The diamond shape for associations is horrible, and produces a cluttered diagram. In general, it just seems hard to capture some relationships with the Chen system. What ERD style, if any, do you use? What has been the most popular in your workplaces? What tools have you used, or do you use, to create these diagrams?"}
{"_id": "253825", "title": "Does this factory method pattern example violate open-close?", "text": "In Head-First Design Patterns, they use a pizza shop example to demonstrate the factory method pattern.               public abstract class PizzaStore {       public Pizza orderPizza(String type) {         Pizza pizza;              pizza = createPizza(type);              pizza.prepare();         pizza.bake();         pizza.cut();         pizza.box();              return pizza;       }            abstract Pizza createPizza(String type)     }          public class NYPizzaStore extends PizzaStore {       Pizza createPizza(String item) {         if (item.equals(\"cheese\") {             return new NYStyleCheesePizza();         } else if (item.equals(\"veggie\")) {             return new NYStyleVeggiePizza();         } else if (item.equals(\"clam\")) {             return new NYStyleClamPizza();         } else if (item.equals(\"pepperoni\")) {             return new NYStylePepperioniPizza();         } else return null;       }     }      I don't understand how this pattern is not violating open-close. What if we require a beef Pizza, then we must edit the if statement in the NYPizzaStore class."}
{"_id": "201240", "title": "c#/java or c++ (Personal question)", "text": "First of all this is not a comparison between the languages. So I've asked a question before telling that I am a beginner programmer (hardest thing done is a chat server/client when I was reading about threads, and I've used twitter api, which is somehow very easy.). My goal is to become a better programmer and understand more things since I'm only 14 years old. I read that learning c++ will make me understand more things in programming, and help me in future becoming a better programmer but, I think, at the moment, that I'm improving in c#, creating more programs and enjoying... do you think I should continue and become better in c# and java and forget learning c++ till I go to the university and I will be forced to learn c++? Personally I think I'm wasting time in c++ focusing more on theoretical things rather than programming itself."}
{"_id": "201245", "title": "JS Framework for server-heavy and/or client-light pages", "text": "I've been reading articles such as this one that indicates web development has evolved to use JS frameworks. Where I work, we have a massive website with many existing web applications that are already established and are server side heavy. One article I read said that the DOM manipulation/jQuery method leads to unmaintanable spaghetti code, and that you should strive to use a JS MV* framework. However, sometimes I just have a fairly simple list of items generated from the server; something like:               <div class=shower data-id=1>show</div>     <ul><li class=hider data-id=1>one</li></ul>     //js     $(\".shower\").on(\"click\", function () {         $(\".hider[data-id=\" + $(this).data(\"id\") + \"]\").show();     });      ...and that would pretty much be the extend of the JS on that page. According to the MV* framework disciples, the need to reference specific classes or attributes in the JS is a problem and models should be used instead. However, it seems like overkill to include a massive library for creating rich applications to handle some fairly trivial DOM manipulation and animations. Is there a JS framework in existence that bridges the gap between complete front-end stack frameworks and tightly coupled HTML/JS? If not, how could I write such code to avoid this coupling? Additionally is there any reason to push strongly for making the switch to such a framework for established server-heavy applications (especially in cases where we have to support JavaScript being turned off)?"}
{"_id": "235194", "title": "Is a popular site like www.google.com served up by one computer?", "text": "In basic networking, we talk about DNS servers, that they resolve human readable addresses (www.google.com) into an actual IP address. As far as I understand, at least using the basics, an IP address refers to a single device (say a router). Surely, www.google.com cannot be served up by one computer? How is www.google.com distributed across multiple servers?"}
{"_id": "235195", "title": "Is it wrong to have HTML strings within PHP objects, or is it only wrong in controllers?", "text": "I've always thought that in typical MVC design it is bad practice to build & concatenate HTML strings in any PHP file or class that isn't strictly a template. I'm working on a large project with strict guidelines in place, and while it is forbidden to put any HTML code in the PHP _controller_ , it is fair game to have PHP sub-objects that might generate lots of HTML code strings which then get passed into the template. These \"sub-objects\" contain additional logic that could change the HTML depending on conditions. **Thus my 2 main questions are:**   1. Is this considered MVC?    2. Are these objects considered part of the View, or are they a frankenstein of the Model and the View? **Example:**               <?php     /* controller.php */     class KittenController {              protected $view = 'view.html';              public function render (Request $request) {             $data = $this->getDynamicData(); // get some data             $object = $this->getObject();  // get a PHP object             $this->setField('foo', $data['bar']);             $this->setField('baz', $object->render());         }     }                    <?php     /* object.php */          class Object {         public function render () {             $html = '';             $html .= '<div class=\"my-cool-html\">';             if ($this->hasDuck()) {                 $html .= '<p>I have a duck...</p>';             }             else {                 $html .= '<p>No duck here...</p>';             }             $html .= '</div>';                  return $html;         }     }                    <!-- an html template -->     <html>     <body>     <div class=\"blah\">         [[foo]]     </div>     <footer>         [[baz]]     </footer>     </body>     </html>"}
{"_id": "17111", "title": "What is the best way of storing centralised data for (and from) translation?", "text": "We are starting the process of internationalizing our software. To do this we will be writing a series of filters to convert all of our different resource files (resx, text, java resource, etc) into a common format. We will then be outputting xliff files for translation. After translation the process will run in reverse. We would like to keep the central store updated with any changes that developers make to the resource files ideally using ant during the build process, maintaining knowledge of which branch or version of the software is using which resources. We'd also like to keep track of which version of software the resources were taken from which are sent for translation, the dates when the files were sent and received back and also who translated them. The idea then being we apply the translations to the correct branch, we can take diffs of the central store in future to send partial resources for translations and we can report on quantity of translation at a point in time. We are considering storing all of this data within the svn repository as a tree of xliffs, perhaps branched in a mirror of the main code repository. Is this sufficient or would we be better off just using a database to maintain this information?"}
{"_id": "97506", "title": "Checking at javascript level vs checking in PHP?", "text": "Setup: We've got a form with default text values present within the text box itself which \"goes away\" when I click on them and enter a value (not if I dont enter a value). Currently the 'default' value or the user inputted value gets POSTed to the PHP script. Should I have the javascript code check if the value being submitted is the default one and set it to \"\" (blank string) OR should I perform this check in PHP where I'll have to do a check if its \"\" OR if its to the default value. Which is more efficient, having javascript clean up the data before sending it to PHP, or having PHP do the check itself? One reason to keep it within PHP (though not a consideration for us at the moment) is so that we can display the default text labels in multiple languages, and check if the user has left them blank. That would be easier in PHP, I imagine?"}
{"_id": "215266", "title": "How should I evaluate the Database Solution for Large Data Application", "text": "**_Background_**   I have been tasked to write an application that will be a combination of document and inventory management in VB.net which will be used to store document images in TIFF, PDF, XPS, TXT, DOC, PPT and so on as binary data that can be retrieved for viewing, printing, and possible OCR to be searchable as well along with meta data such as sender, recipient, type of document, date, source, etc. So the table would probably be something like: DOC_NAME, DOC_DATE, NOTES, ... DOC_BINARY (where the actual document will be put inside) **_Help Please_**   I need help with understanding how to evaluate my database options. What my concern is finding a database solution that will not become unstable due to size restrictions, records limitations and performance. Some of the options are MS_SQL, SQL Express, SQLite, mySQL, and Access. Now I can pretty much eliminate Access right off the bat as it is just too limiting and not scalable. I can further eliminate SQL Express because of the 2 GB limit and again scalability. So I believe that leaves me with MS_SQL, SQLite and mySQL (note, I am open to alternatives). And this is where I need help in understanding how to evaluate those databases. The goal is that the data is all in one place (a single file) that will make backup and portability easier. For small volume usage, pretty much any solution will hold for a while, but my goal is to think ahead and make sure its able to withstand heavy large volume usage as well. Another consideration is also the interoperability with .NET and stability of such code to avoid errors and memory leaks. How should I evaluate my database options for this scenario?"}
{"_id": "215265", "title": "Subclassing to avoid line length", "text": "The standard line length of code is 80 characters per line. This is accepted and followed by the most of programmers. I working on a state machine of a character and is necessary for me follow this too. I have four classes who pass this limit. I can subclass each class in two more and then avoid the line length limit.               class Stand          class Walk          class Punch          class Crouch      The new classes would be _StandLeft_ , _StandRight_ and so on. _Stand_ , _Walk_ , _Punch_ and _Crouch_ would be then abstract classes. The question if there is a limit for the long of the hierarchies tree or this is depends of the case."}
{"_id": "162193", "title": "Common for programmer to be asked to maintain code in a different language?", "text": "I was hired ~1 year ago to write Java code (actually, to re-write a legacy codebase - I suspect the company would be happy no matter what language I was writing it in). Just yesterday I was tasked with fixing bugs in a VB6 program - I have never used Visual Basic before. My question is, is it common for a programmer to be asked to maintain/debug/fix code in a language completely unknown to him on the drop of a hat? I should clarify, I have no problem doing so, I'm simply wondering if this is a common experience for corporate programmers."}
{"_id": "215263", "title": "How bad is it to have two methods with the same name but different signatures in two classes?", "text": "I have a design problem related to a public interface, the names of methods, and the understanding of my API and code. I have two classes like this:               class A:         ...         function collision(self):             ....          ...          class B:         ....         function _collision(self, another_object, l, r, t, b):             ....      The first class has one public method named _collision_ , and the second has one private method called _ _collision_. The two methods differs in argument type and number. As an example let's say that _ _collision_ checks if the object is colliding with another object with certain conditions _l_ , _r_ , _t_ , _b_ (collide on the left side, right side, etc) and returns _true_ or _false_. The public _collision_ method, on the other hand, resolves all the collisions of the object with other objects. The two methods have the same name because I think it's better to avoid overloading the design with different names for methods that do almost the same thing, but in distinct contexts and classes. Is this clear enough to the reader or I should change the method's name?"}
{"_id": "162199", "title": "How does a garbage collector prevent the whole memory from being scanned on every collect?", "text": "Some (at least Mono's and .NET's) garbage collectors have a short term memory area which they scan often, and a secondary memory area which they scan less often. Mono calls this a nursery. To find out which objects can be disposed of, they scan all objects starting from roots, the stack and the registers and dispose all objects that aren't being referenced anymore. **My question is how they prevent all in use memory from being scanned on every collect?** In principle, the only way to find out what objects aren't in use anymore is to scan all objects and all their references. However, this would prevent the OS from swapping out memory even though it isn't in use by the application and feels like a huge amount of work that needs to be done, also for \"Nursery Collection\". It doesn't feel like they're winning much by using a nursery. **Am I missing something or is the garbage collector actually scanning every object and every reference every time it does a collection?**"}
{"_id": "59073", "title": "How might one teach OO without referencing physical real-world objects?", "text": "I remember reading somewhere that the original concepts behind OO were to find a better architecture for handling the messaging of data between multiple systems in a way that protected the state of that data. Now that is probably a poor paraphrase, but it made me wonder if there is a way of teaching OO without the (Bike, Car, Person, etc.) object analogies, and that instead focuses on the messaging aspects. If you have articles, links, books, etc., that would be helpful."}
{"_id": "251257", "title": "Implementing distributed Semaphore for AWS workload", "text": "We have a messaging gateway in AWS (Amazon Cloud) that comprises of a number of nodes (Linux servers) responsible for receiving, routing, despatching and escalating messages (emails, SMS' and voice calls). They all talk to a backend MySQL database on a dedicated machine. Every few minutes we run a maintenance script - escalating stale messages, etc. The problem is that we shouldn't run the maintenance on multiple nodes at the same time - hence I want to implement some sort of _Distributed Semaphore_ that would be raised by the first node and if any other node attempts to run the script before the first one finishes it should simply exit. At the moment we run the script only on one node and have the cron job disabled on the others, but we prefer to have all the nodes with the same configuration. On a single host I would probably use a lock file but how do I do that across multiple hosts? They don't have a shared filesystem and pretty much the only thing they share is the MySQL database. Also - if the process or node dies halfway through the processing the semaphore should eventually release or time out. I prefer to use the database as the Semaphore holder but am also quite happy to use any other AWS service. FWIW The script is written in Python. Not that I think it matters... Thanks for any ideas!"}
{"_id": "966", "title": "What non-programming books should a programmer read to help develop programming/thinking skills?", "text": "There are a lot of questions about what programming books should be on the programmer's bookshelf. How about non-programming related books that can help you become a better programmer or developer? It would also be interesting to know why they would help. My first choice would be Sun Tzu's \"Art of War\" (however clich\u00e9), because it made it obvious that the success of any project depends on the strength of its weakest link (and warfare is a big project)."}
{"_id": "253623", "title": "Implementation of instance testing in Java, C++, C#", "text": "For curiosity purposes as well as understanding what they entail in a program, I'm curious as to how instance testing (`instanceof`/`is`/using `dynamic_cast` in c++) works. I've tried to google it (particularly for java) but the only pages that come up are tutorials on how to use the operator. How do the implementations vary across those langauges? How do they treat classes with identical signatures? Also, it's been drilled into my head that using instance testing is a mark of bad design. Why exactly is this? When is that applicable, instanceof should still be used in methods like `.equals()` and such right? I was also thinking of this in the context of exception handling, again particularly in Java. When you have mutliple `catch` statements, how does that work? Is that instance testing or is it just resolved during compilation where each thrown exception would go to?"}
{"_id": "235221", "title": "What is a simple explanation for the reinterpret_cast expression?", "text": "I see that it is a compiler directive which instructs the compiler, but what does that mean?"}
{"_id": "251250", "title": "Why do executables depend on the OS but not on the CPU?", "text": "If I write a C program and compile it to an `.exe` file, the `.exe` file contains raw machine instructions to the CPU. (I think). If so, how is it possible for me to run the compiled file on any computer that runs a modern version of Windows? Each family of CPUs has a different instruction set. So how come any computer that runs the appropriate OS can understand the instructions in my `.exe` file, regardless of it's physical CPU? Also, often in websites in the \"download\" page of some application, you have a download for Windows, for Linux, and for Mac (often two downloads for each OS, for 86 and 64 bit computers). Why aren't there many more downloads, for each family of CPUs?"}
{"_id": "152927", "title": "What is the difference between channel-based I/O and stream-based I/O in java?", "text": "What is the difference between stream-based Input and Channel-Based Input? The java API provides both stream-based in \"java.io\" package and channel-based in \"java.nio\" package. Which one of the two is better in performance and reduced run-time errors?"}
{"_id": "152920", "title": "How to hide the python code from users?", "text": "I am developing a paid application in python. I do not want the users to see the source code or decompile it. How can I accomplish this task to hiding the source code from the user but running the code perfectly with the same performance."}
{"_id": "62816", "title": "How to conduct a good tech workshop", "text": "I am currently trying to organize a small workshop for several people to generate interest in android. I intend to conduct a hands-on workshop, taking everyone through various components and features by building an app. One way I can think to do this is to write an app before hand, share it with everyone and then try to develop in group the same code again, understanding the nuances. However, I am not sure how well that'll work out. I am curious to hear other methodologies or ideas which will help me make this workshop fruitful and engaging for everyone. I am guessing some of you have experience with similar stuff, can you please suggest what would be a good way to go about it? PS - Using possibly irrelevant tags, as my reputation won't allow me to create new ones."}
{"_id": "64248", "title": "If you could pose a question to a Turing test candidate, what would it be?", "text": "How would you distinguish the man from the machine?"}
{"_id": "152697", "title": "Optimize strategies for xml parsing?", "text": "I am looking for general optimization tips and guidelines for xml parsing. One of the optimization strategies is of course selecting the \"right\" parser. A detailed comparison between the available parsers for ios can be found here http://www.raywenderlich.com/553/how-to-chose-the-best-xml-parser-for-your- iphone-project. However, I am currently trying to investigate general guidelines and tips on how to optimize by payloads to increase the performance as possible. This question is similar to (a question I have posted in the context of ios) but I have not got a sufficient answer. So this question is not in the context of any particular programming language."}
{"_id": "254150", "title": "Changing CSS classes when different strings are displayed in a text element with jQuery", "text": "I'm just wondering if this method would be possible using jQuery HTML and PHP. Basically I have a filtering system were products are listed, some have different attribute values such as Hatchback for example. The text element that holds these PHP echo's also have a css class that implements an icon. I'm just wondering can I alter class's that are added to a html element just by looking at the string? So for example if the string displays \"Pick-up\" then jQuery alters the class and adds the one associated with the \"Pick-up\" string? Thanks sorry if this is a little confusing, I can explain more if needed."}
{"_id": "153467", "title": "Forking project on Github process", "text": "There is a project on Github that I mostly like and want to use. There are a few things I want to do differently/remove that doesn't make sense for what I want/need. Also I want to add a few things as well. As I understand it, I should fork the project and I can make whatever changes I want and push back to my fork. From there, I also want to occasionally pull into my fork the changes from the original project so I get the latest bug fixes/features. Am I off-base of how I think it should work? How would bring in the changes from the original project?"}
{"_id": "46564", "title": "Delivering estimates and client expectations?", "text": "When a client asks for an estimate on how long it would take to develop different sections of an app, is it best to give them a total amount or what it would take for each section? Is it better/more common to give a range of hours/days or just a single number? Do you think most clients feel that if a programmer says it should take 50 hours that they should be billed for 50 hours? If I say it would take 50 and it actually takes 60, do I tell them in advance that I'm going over on my estimate or just charge what was originally quoted?"}
{"_id": "190412", "title": "Architecture suggestions on a multi-project multi-database 'intranet'", "text": "Here is the situation I have inherited:   1. We have approximately 10 websites (Asp.net web forms) that each have their own database.   2. Each of these databases houses some site specific data, and each has some form of a user table that will map to what is called a User Service.   3. The User Service is just another website that has a database with one table (User) that have about 3 different unique identifiers for a user: a UserId guid, an internal desktop application id (third party app, needed to map back to it), and a username.   4. On all the different websites the databases have the User table, sometimes called Person, or Student, or whatever else, and they are inconsistent in which UserService.User.[IdentifyingColumn] they map to. The Problem: It is getting to a point where these application are now needing to share some data with each other, and I see that need increasing as the departments are streamlined even more. With this current set up, it is a lot of hoop jumping to get the right UserId column to match to the right UserId column in the UserService. Confused yet? Me too.. **The Question:** How to approach correcting the issue? I have a few different ideas, some I like more than others, but in order to implement them I need some solid benefits I can bring up to the head of IT, as well as justify the programming time taken for the re-write. Idea 1: Create a true intranet application. One web application with one database. This way they all live in the same project, and sharing data between the various departments is very simple and quick. Idea 2: Create a \"Master Key\" identifying field that will be the end all to identify a user. Make this key available on each database and so there will not be any odd mapping and the various sites can talk to each other. To me this one solves one problem, mapping each db to the next one. It is still very fragmented and there is very little code re-use. Idea 3: Work with it in the current form trying to continue the present fashion of many small databases and sites. **Which of the above options would you suggest, and why?**"}
{"_id": "198661", "title": "Base64 decode and SH1 decryption of Sec-WebSocket-Accept value example from Websocket RFC", "text": "I am planning to implement the Websocket protocol and currently learning how handshake headers must be structured. According to this link http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6455/?include_text=1 > To prove that the handshake was received, the server has to take two   >  pieces of information and combine them to form a response. The first piece > of information comes from the |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header field   >  in the client handshake: > > Sec-WebSocket-Key: dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ== > > For this header field, the server has to take the value (as present in the > header field, e.g., the base64-encoded [RFC4648] version minus any leading > and trailing whitespace) and concatenate this with the   >  Globally Unique Identifier (GUID, [RFC4122]) \"258EAFA5-E914-47DA-   >  95CA-C5AB0DC85B11\" in string form, which is unlikely to be used by   >  network endpoints that do not understand the WebSocket Protocol. A   >  SHA-1 hash (160 bits) [FIPS.180-3], base64-encoded (see Section 4 of   >  [RFC4648]), of this concatenation is then returned in the server's   >  handshake. > > Concretely, if as in the example above, the |Sec-WebSocket-Key| header field > had the value \"dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==\", the server would concatenate the > string \"258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11\" to form the string > \"dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA- C5AB0DC85B11\". The server > would then take the SHA-1 hash of this, giving the value 0xb3 0x7a 0x4f 0x2c > 0xc0 0x62 0x4f 0x16 0x90 0xf6 0x46 0x06 0xcf 0x38 0x59 0x45 0xb2 0xbe 0xc4 > 0xea. This value is then base64-encoded (see Section 4 of [RFC4648]), to > give the value \"s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo=\". This value would then be > echoed in the |Sec-WebSocket-Accept| header field. So when I actually decode \"s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo=\" in base64 decoder on decoder, it gives me @:e^qlk Which I do not think it is going to decrypted into original value using SHA-1 properly. So far, my understanding is 1) Server received Sec-WebSocket-Key value from client and combine that with GUID generated from the server So it becomes like: dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11 2) then server applies SHA-1 and base64 encoding onto it and the key becomes: s3pPLMBiTxaQ9kYGzzhZRbK+xOo= to send back to the clinet. So in order to turn Websocket-accept value into the original \"dGhlIHNhbXBsZSBub25jZQ==258EAFA5-E914-47DA-95CA-C5AB0DC85B11\", I need to decode the above value using Base64 and decrypt it with sha-1 and I must receive the original value back. However, when I actually attempt it, it gives me the weird value I have mentioned above. Could you please correct me which part I am doing wrong? Thank you."}
{"_id": "125943", "title": "Data replication patterns / algorithms", "text": "I have a series of systems that need to be distributed to a variable number of nodes ( _at least two, but more likely 8 - 10_ ). For performance reasons, any one piece of state needs to be maintained in memory and replicated to at least two nodes although as demand increases this may be replicated to more nodes as dictated by the _manager_. Unfortunately, we cannot buy commercial data grids which are already very good at this. **The question** : Assuming the state is immutable, what are some patterns and/or algorithms I can use to facilitate this process? I've supplied a sample to facilitate the discussion, but I'm not tied to this. Really!... I'm wide open on picking a new direction to meet these requirements. If you could point me to pictures or code samples that would be much appreciated. As it stands, one of the nodes will self-promote and will orchestrate who should replicate and when ( _i.e. the manager_ ). **Other assumptions:**   * List item   * Systems will communicate via TCP/IP and Multicast    * No databases    * No file transfer... just byte arrays   * All components are currently C#, and I can change almost anything    * Eventual consistency will be fine _Note: I realize this sample does not handle fail cases. At this point I thought it would over-complicate things_ ![Possible sequence](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yRCLX.png)"}
{"_id": "210723", "title": "Is there a good name for \"classic\" .NET?", "text": "So, as Microsoft has created many forks and branches off of .NET, there have been a few different product names come up:   * Silverlight   * .NETCore/WinRT/.Net for Windows Store Apps   * .NET for Windows Phone/CoreCLR   * .NET Micro Framework   * .NET Compact Edition However, what do you call the traditional .NET we all know and love? You can't call it Desktop .NET probably, because it also runs on servers, and that might imply you're using that client-profile thing. .NET for PC seems unusual. You can't really just say \"this is a product for .NET\" because then people might assume that includes support for one of the other frameworks Does Microsoft have an official \"name\" for the traditional .NET that runs in Windows PCs?"}
{"_id": "125944", "title": "How to architect enterprise desktop applications for Windows 8", "text": "I think I have a grasp on the expectations of consumer application development for Windows 8. Create a new Metro-based UI on top of WinRT, deploy it to your customer via the Marketplace, and everyone wins. Seems simple enough. Unfortunately, I'm not in that business. I work on internal, line-of-business applications for a large enterprise. We currently use .NET technologies such as WPF and Silverlight in order to create rich UIs that can be easily deployed to our users via the web or ClickOnce. The applications can support WinXP and Win7 without too much headache, and our developers get to use XAML which is a very solid UI technology. It seems like WPF and Silverlight have questionable futures at this point, so it is a bit worrisome to continue investing in those. But a Metro UI doesn't seem appropriate for enterprise applications, and the WinRT API is quite limiting with regards to \"typical\" things that enterprise applications need to do. **How should I be architecting my XAML-based applications, currently being deployed to WinXP and Win7, so that they will be supportable and evolvable on Win8?** Assume for the purposes of this question that the features provided by HTML5 on top of ASP.NET are not adequate for the applications I'm looking to create. I understand that I can use HTML5 for some applications, but I'm trying to figure out what I should do when that isn't enough. **Edit #1:** This is in response to @Emmad Kareem's comment. I do agree that Silverlight/WPF are viable in the short term (2-5 years). However, the applications we produce have potentially very long lifetimes (10-20+ years). So survivability in the long term for a given technology is a concern for us. Also, we have some concern that it will be more and more difficult to find developers that are interested in Silverlight / WPF development if those technologies are considered \"dead\" by the community. I just want to understand my options and make a decision with my eyes open."}
{"_id": "198666", "title": "php templating with codeigniter", "text": "I am currently develop a website application in codeigniter, and I'd like to do something in PHP / CodeIgniter where I can make a common template for separate sections of the website. I was thinking that I would keep the header / footer in a separate php files & include them separately. The thing I'm not sure about is the content beneath the header and above the footer. This website application will contain a lot of different pages, so I'm having a hard time figuring how what's the best way to do this."}
{"_id": "198667", "title": "Passing an object between different handlers or a Superclass that contains most of the logic", "text": "I'm going to try to make this as concise and concrete as possible, but apologies since I can think of multiple ways to make it work. This question might also relate to handling production workflows or manufacturing, but I have no experience in these areas. I have a problem where I need to move an Object, O, from different states to other states (like a Nondeterministic finite automata). The problem is the Object can be in different states at the same time, and the interaction sometimes matters. For example say there are 10 states, O can be in up to 3 of those states at the same time. I'm a bit lost as to what type of code design I should use to model this. The two ideas I am thinking about are   1. Pass O from handler to handler, and manage the transitions between states, and keep some sort of info in O saying which states they are in, so that each state can figure out what to do based on what other states O is in.   2. Have a larger Superclass that handles which states O is in, and handles the interactions. I'd normally say 1. but handling all the interactions between handlers in each handler sounds messy. What would be the better option between these 2? Or is there another method that is preferred? ** Update and Clarification ** As a concrete example. The Object can be in one of many physical locations, while it can also be in one of several stages of processing (The object might move back and forth between locations, or back and forth between the stages of processing). As additional complexity each physical location might have sublocations, but I think I can ignore that for now. So if it's clearer, it can be considered to be two independent automata, but choosing the edge to move to the next state in either automata depends on it's state from both automata."}
{"_id": "45033", "title": "Can I minify Javascript that requires copyright notice?", "text": "I guess this is actually a legal question, but it relates to software. I'm about to include a JS plugin in a project. The comments include: >   * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in > binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of > conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other > materials provided with the distribution. >   1. Is using this in my web site \"redistribution?\"   2. If I minify this to conserve bandwidth, I assume it will strip all comments. **If the answer to #1 is yes, doesn't that imply I'm legally not allowed to minify it?** (That would stink, since I was planning to auto-minify all JS as part of the deploy process.)"}
{"_id": "45031", "title": "how to prove the complexity of an algorithm mathematically", "text": "I know the fundamental algorithms and it's complexities. for e.g if Binary Search has Complexity O(log n), then how I can mathematically prove this?"}
{"_id": "81805", "title": "Which of these 3 languages is easiest to convert to Delphi?", "text": "I am intending to purchase some source code for my Delphi program. It is not too big an algorithm, but it is not available in Delphi and I'll have to translate it to Delphi. However, I have not worked in any of the languages it is offered in and I don't know which I should buy. I want the one that will translate to Delphi most easily and accurately. The three languages are: C++, Java, and C#. Which one would be easiest to convert?"}
{"_id": "196718", "title": "In a functional requirements document, is the Assumptions section dangerous?", "text": "I am currently a reviewer on a Best Practices document for Developers or Business Analysts in writing a Functional Requirements document. This document is not necessarily a template for functional requirements documents, but a guide to what elements are necessary, optional, and dangerous to include a Functional Requirements document. The author of the document states that: > Functional Requirements documents should NEVER have an Assumptions secion! > Do not assume anything about what people know about this application or any > external issues surrounding it. I am not sure that I agree with this sentiment but don't really have the words to refute it either. In a perfect world the analyst will have time to properly analyze every stakeholder input and every possible external issue but inevitably due to time constraints and other issues some assumptions need to be made. Is this a bad idea because it is too easy for the intellectually lazy to declare assumptions rather than requirements? If not then why do you think Assumptions are a good idea? **EDIT:** To clarify, I am not asking about the Assumptions section of technical documentation but of an Assumptions section in a requirements document written by a non-technical business analyst."}
{"_id": "59889", "title": "How are we supposed to deal with Customers who don't give a damn?", "text": "I have some customers who expect everything for next to nothing. They also want things to behave a certain way, or look a certain way, but when explaining to them why it's not a good idea to implement a certain feature and offering suggestions, they don't listen. When things go wrong, they get moody, and demand I change/recode the entire feature to their liking, but when told that it's because they wanted it that way, they don't listen. I've found that after years of being around these types of people, it's had a major impact on the way I deal with people I can't stand, and I've seriously run out of ideas. How do you deal with people who never listen, never learn, and want everything for free?"}
{"_id": "216763", "title": "How to depict Import a file action in the Sequence diagram", "text": "Everyone says sequence diagrams are so easy but I just cannot figure this out. Basically user clicks on an 'Import from temp folder' button, the program opens a window with a list populated with filenames, user clicks on a filename, clicks on OK and the document is imported. I know the order of the actions but how to depict e.g. populating a list, or selecting an item from a list? So I assume the objects would be like:               [USER]  [ImportDialogWindow]    [ListOfFiles:STRING]   [?where to go with selected file]"}
{"_id": "216760", "title": "Packaging PHP/Python files inside android .apk files?", "text": "I am developing an android app using HTML5. I want to make it work completely offline. I know that it is possible to package the .html, .css and .js files inside the .apk file itself in the \"resources\" but is it possible to also package PHP or Python files inside the .apk file itself? So that no internet connection would be required to run the app?"}
{"_id": "216761", "title": "unit testing on ARM", "text": "We are developing application level code that runs on an ARM processor. The BSP (low level code) is being delivered by a 3d party so our code sits just on top of this abstraction layer (code is written in c++). To do unit testing, I assume we will have to mock/stub out the BSP library(essentially abstracting out the HW), but what I'm not sure of is if I write/run the unit test on my pc, do I compile it with for example GCC? Normally we use Realview compiler to compile our code for the ARM. Can I assume that if I compile and run the code with x86 compiler and the unit tests pass that it will also pass when compiled with RealView compiler? I'm not sure how much difference the compiler makes and if you can trust that if the x86 compiled code pass the unit tests that you can also be confident that the Realview compiled code is ok."}
{"_id": "10462", "title": "Why are HDL IDEs so user-unfriendly when compared to generic-purpose language (like Java/C) IDEs?", "text": "I've been programming for a while now, and I've covered a lot of languages. And this trend that I noticed is that all HDL languages have so painful IDEs! In general, any development environment having some Hardware related development has very crappy UI. I'm talking about uVision, ModelSim, VHDL Simili, Xilinx etc, compared with Netbeans, Eclipse, Visual Studio etc. Why do hardware-guys hate their developers? NOTE: There are exceptions (LABView is awsome!). Can you think of any more?"}
{"_id": "156336", "title": "Why a static main method in Java and C#, rather than a constructor?", "text": "I\u2019m Looking for a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source for why (notably) Java and C# decided to have a static method as their entry point, rather than representing an application instance by an instance of an `Application` class (with the entry point being an appropriate constructor). * * * ### Background and details of my prior research This has been asked before. Unfortunately, the existing answers are merely begging the question. In particular, the following answers don\u2019t satisfy me, as I deem them incorrect:   * _There would be ambiguity if the constructor were overloaded._ \u2013 In fact, C# (as well as C and C++) allows different signatures for `Main` so the same potential ambiguity exists, and is dealt with.   * _A`static` method means no objects can be instantiated before so order of initialisation is clear._ \u2013 This is just factually wrong, some objects _are_ instantiated before (e.g. in a static constructor).   * _So they can be invoked by the runtime without having to instantiate a parent object._ \u2013 This is no answer at all. Just to justify further why I think this is a valid and interesting question:   * Many frameworks _do_ use classes to represent applications, and constructors as entry points. For instance, the VB.NET application framework uses a dedicated main dialog (and its constructor) as the entry point1.   * Neither Java nor C# technically _need_ a main method. Well, C# needs one to compile, but Java not even that. And in neither case is it needed for execution. So this doesn\u2019t appear to be a technical restriction. And, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, for a mere convention it seems oddly unfitting with the general design principle of Java and C#. To be clear, there isn\u2019t a specific _disadvantage_ to having a static `main` method, it\u2019s just distinctly _odd_ , which made me wonder if there was some technical rationale behind it. I\u2019m interested in a definitive answer from a primary or secondary source, not mere speculations. * * * 1 Although there is a callback (`Startup`) which may intercept this."}
{"_id": "167962", "title": "Good technologies for developing a modular server component in .net?", "text": "I am using WPF, Prism and Unity to develop the user interface for a .net application. The UI will run from a PC, but I also need to develop a separate complex server component that will provide services to the PC component via WCF. Prism and Unity have proved to be of great value in creating a modular application, at least as far as the user interface is concerned. I would also like to make the server component modular, but I cannot find anywhere what techniques, patterns and technologies are suitable. I have considered:   * Unity or one of the other DI containers    * Selected parts of Prism, such as modules and events Are these suitable for developing a modular server component? Or are these UI technologies only and should I be looking at something completely different?"}
{"_id": "29268", "title": "Do you check in bin or debug folders (and dlls) into your TFS?", "text": "Quick question about TFS - Do you guys check-in bin/debug folders into TFS? (if so, why?) Since the content of those folders are dynamically generated is it better to leave them out so that the programmer will not run into read-only issues?"}
{"_id": "167964", "title": "When does 'optimizing code' == 'structuring data'?", "text": "A recent article by ycombinator lists a comment with principles of a great programmer. > `#`7\\. Good programmer: I optimize code. Better programmer: I structure > data. Best programmer: What's the difference? Acknowledging subjective and contentious concepts - does anyone have a position on what this means? I do, but I'd like to edit this question later with my thoughts so-as not to predispose the answers."}
{"_id": "78300", "title": "How are software licenses applied?", "text": "I have created a small and helpful project that I'd like to upload to a public repository and share under the FreeBSD license. What are the common steps I should make to apply the license to my code? I mean, what are the technical actions that should be done to apply the chosen license. More specifically:   1. Should I put the licensing information in the header of every file?   2. If yes, should I put the whole license text or there is an acceptable short version?   3. Should I have a specific file (e.g. in the root directory) that deals with the licensing? Is putting the license text in it enough?   4. If a project is a cooperative effort by various people on-line, that are not part of any organization, what should be written in the copyright clause? Are there any other technical issues I should know?"}
{"_id": "95611", "title": "Should I work for free while applying for a job?", "text": "An employer usually asks a candidate to do a small project at home (\"homework\") as a part of applying for a job. Last time I applied for a job (as a web developer), there were aproximately 10 applicants who were all given different tasks. Despite the fact that there was only one vacancy, the company used the work of all of the candidates in one of its projects. Actually, it is quite plausible for a company to create these \"vacancies\" just to make people work for free - I estimate, that aproximately 2 weeks of programmer's work was saved with all of the job applications that company had on one vacancy. Is this a common practice and how can you protect yourself from working for free in the future?   Have you seen this during your career?"}
{"_id": "163248", "title": "How to create distinct set from other sets?", "text": "While solving the problems on Techgig.com, I got struck with one of the problems. The problem is like this: > A company organizes two trips for their employees in a year. They want to > know whether all the employees can be sent on the trip or not. The condition > is that no employee can go on both the trips. Also to determine which > employees can go together the constraint is that the employees who have > worked together in past won't be in the same group. Examples of the problem: > >   1. Suppose the work history is given as follows: {(1,2),(2,3),(3,4)}; then > it is possible to accommodate all the four employees in two trips (one trip > consisting of employees 1& 3 and the other having employees 2 & 4). Neither > of the two employees in the same trip have worked together in past. >   2. Suppose the work history is given as {(1,2),(1,3),(2,3)} then there is > no possible way to have two trips satisfying the company rule and > accommodating all the employees. > Can anyone tell me how to proceed on this problem?"}
{"_id": "95615", "title": "At what point is it good to try to reinvent a standard?", "text": "Take a look at this picture from XKCD.com ![Hey, some mouse-hover text. Wonder if it says something about USB devices?](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png) Browsers are a good example of this. While I develop websites for them, I have to search through the unique 'standards' for each to make sure my sites are fully compatible. When developing a new program (to compete with existing products), I can see people thinking that their idea is worth putting there in a final product that other products will see the advantages and include it as well. Obviously this isn't always the case (browsers, are once again a good example). Some features are ignored by Webkit browsers and some by Gecko browsers and yet IE tends to just ignore everything quite frankly. In truth, these new 'ideas' or implantation tend to just cause problems for the end-user. Now, sometimes these ideas are important to include. Without ideas, there would be no change and without change, no advancement or positive improvements. At what point is an idea/feature worth implementing. What decides if a feature is worthy of becoming 'standard'?"}
{"_id": "112631", "title": "Modern languages and the JVM", "text": "Many modern programming languages (Scala, Erlang, Clojure, etc.) are targeting the JVM. What are the main reasons behind that decision?   * JVM's maturity?   * Portability?   * Because JVM simply exists, and the language designers were not willing to write a new VM/interpreter?"}
{"_id": "112632", "title": "How can I secure a short-term programming job or internship abroad?", "text": "I am planning to go to the UK or Ireland (but it could be any location, generally speaking) for 3-6 months in about a year or so and would like to be part of a software development team there. I am not necessarily looking for a full-time job, but given that several areas around there are known to be \"programmer paradises\", I'd rather benefit from it to broaden my horizons and also share what knowledge I have. What I would like to do is:   * to spectate and take part in the knowledge exchange and decision making strategies. To see how people think of different problems, how they tackle them, how they subdivide and distribute the work etc.    * to experience best practices in action, rather than trying to make them work for me as a lone developer or work for yet another company, that wants me to just get it done.   * to get in touch with technologies and languages that are new to me, although this is really optional, because it's something I can do myself (although I rarely seem to find the time).  I like to think, that I have a lot of things to bring to the table, but I would also like to learn, or better yet to experience, a lot. So what I am looking for an internship for a developer with work experience. Basically something like as a journeyman's stay: to work with somebody, who I can turn to, when in obvious need of wisdom. How can I go about doing this?"}
{"_id": "58286", "title": "Commitment level to the project?", "text": "You've quoted your time that it will take certain time to produce a piece of software. When you have started the project, is it better to go hard at the beginning and cruise later? or to try to maintain a consistent effort throughout the project?"}
{"_id": "8917", "title": "Git & project backups", "text": "I've been using SVN for sometime and have been making an awkward, but soon to be rewarding transition over to git. Theres quite a few side / small projects that I'm working on which 90% will never see the light of day. As well - I also have my weekly school assignments / projects, and finally client projects that I have on the go. I've been rolling the idea or question of how or what the best way would be to back up my projects. The solutions I've sought out so far: **github** which offers an outstanding service - I'm ok with my work being open source, however It's the school work and client work I might not want the public to be open to. github, of course has a payment plan - but let's face it, im a poor colleage student doing what I can to at least put KD on the table! Theres the **USB thumbstick** that I can take around with me, work off of or back up, but that requires it to be around constently. Theres **Dropbox** , but thats a little overkill since it already is a form of a version control system, as well - I have quite a few things on the go - putting everything within dropbox would eat a lot of space Finally, theres a **private server**. I have a mac mini setup as a media server and I was thinking that I could backup to that. Anyways - what are your guys thoughts, how do you handle backing up projects, not only for version control but for the everyday backups."}
{"_id": "176349", "title": "Tried teaching myself to program before college, accidently overwhelmed myself, tips?", "text": "I'm sixteen, I'm overly interested in programming, and I'm currently taking IT classes during my mornings in high school. Last year, I tried teaching myself to code. It was quite exciting, but all I did was watch TheNewBoston's videos on YouTube for Python. After his tutorials, I just did research, made some CMD programs, and that's it. After that, I got cocky and got my feet wet in many other languages. Java, C++, C#, Perl, Ruby... and it overwhelmed me. Which made it less fun to code. I want to go to college for a 2 year programming course. And I want to make writing code my profession. But how do you recommend I attack re-learning it all again? Start with Python? Don't even try? Also, I'm not 100% in math, but I'm good friends with a lot of programmers, who say they suck at math, but manage to code just fine. I'm not looking for negative feedback. I just want the proper head-start on things before college."}
{"_id": "216657", "title": "Why do we use to talk about addresses and memory of variable in C?", "text": "Why do we use to talk about addresses and memory of variable in C, where in other languages (like in Java, .Net etc) we do not talk about variable address and memory in a program, we will directly use the variables. But in C Language we are listening the word address and memory. How to explain this? I hope C is high level language designed over the assembly language. So C is a thin layer over assembly language (in assembly language we will use memory locations to store a variable and track a variable). But in other languages these addresses and memory related things are wrapped in that specific language, so that we will not listen these words."}
{"_id": "176347", "title": "Should adapters or wrappers be unit tested?", "text": "Suppose that I have a class that implements some logic:               public MyLogicImpl implements MyLogic {         public void myLogicMethod() {             //my logic here         }     }      and somewhere else a test class:               public MyLogicImplTest {         @Test         public void testMyLogicMethod() {             /test my logic         }     }      I also have:               @WebService     public MyWebServices class {         @Inject         private MyLogic myLogic;              @WebMethod         public void myLogicWebMethod() {             myLogic.myLogicMethod();         }     }      Should there be a test unit for `myLogicWebMethod` or should the testing for it be handled in integration testing."}
{"_id": "142077", "title": "How to deal with transactions when creating a database connection for each query", "text": "In line with this post here I am going to change my website to create a connection per query to take advantage of .NET's connection pooling. With this in mind, I don't know how I should deal with transactions. At the moment I do something like (psuedo code):               GlobalTransaction = GlobalDBConnection.BeginTransaction();     try     {         ExecSQL(\"insert into table ..\")         ExecSQL(\"update some_table ..\")         ....         GlobalTransaction.Commit();     }catch{         GlobalTransaction.Rollback();         throw;     }      ExecSQL would be like this:               using (SqlCommand Command = GlobalDBConnection.CreateCommand())     {         Command.Connection = GlobalDBConnection;         Command.Transaction = GlobalTransaction;         Command.CommandText = SQLStr;         Command.ExecuteNonQuery();     }      I'm not quite sure how to change this concept to deal with transactions if the connection is created within `ExecSQL` because I would want the transaction to be shared between both the insert and update routines."}
{"_id": "54906", "title": "What is the technical reason that so many social media sites don't allow you to edit your text?", "text": "A common complaint I hear about Facebook, Twitter, Ning and other social sites is that once a comment or post is made, it can't be edited. I think this goes against one of the key goals of user experience: giving the user **agency** , or the ability to control what he does in the software. Even on Stackexchange sites, you can only edit the comments for a certain amount of time. **Is the inability for so many web apps to not allow users to edit their writing a technical shortcoming or a \"feature by design\"?**"}
{"_id": "54901", "title": "App in Mac app Store free for those who already have downloaded the iphone version?", "text": "I want the people who are using my iphone app to be able to download the Mac version(From the Mac app store) for free? and others pay for it! possible? any Ideas how to implement this?"}
{"_id": "236758", "title": "Testing in procedural programming code", "text": "I have designed and implemented, for my final year in college, an autonomous robot with Arduino board microcontroller. The robot wanders around an area, avoids obstacles and tries to detect intruders. I have to do some testing for this project . Could anyone help me by telling what test procedures I can perform in procedural code? Observation of the behavior of robot could be one of them?               Servo servoLeft;          // Define left servo     Servo servoRight;         // Define right servo     const int trigPin = 5;     const int echoPin = 2;     int buzzerPin = 6;               // choose the pin for the LED //buzzer     int inputPin = 9;              // choose the input pin (for PIR sensor)          int val = 0;       Timer t;     boolean pirSense = false;     long xronos=0;          void setup() {      Serial.begin(9600);      servoLeft.attach(4);      // Set left servo to digital pin 10      servoRight.attach(3);     // Set right servo to digital pin 9           pinMode(buzzerPin, OUTPUT);      // declare LED as output      pinMode(inputPin, INPUT);     // declare sensor as input           pinMode(trigPin, OUTPUT);      pinMode(echoPin, INPUT);      t.every(30000,monitoring);       }             void loop() {         long duration, distance;       digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);       delayMicroseconds(2);       digitalWrite(trigPin, HIGH);       delayMicroseconds(10);       digitalWrite(trigPin, LOW);       pinMode(echoPin, INPUT);       duration = pulseIn(echoPin, HIGH);       distance = microsecondsToCentimeters(duration);        delay(100);        Serial.println(distance);        if (distance >= 40){            moveForward();          }           else {              stopMove();         int x = random(0,2);           if(x == 0 ){          turnRight();              delay(500);        }        else{          turnLeft();                delay(500);        }       }      t.update();      }                void monitoring(){       xronos = now();      while( xronos+5 >now() ){       stopMove();      delay(1000);      pirSensor();      }          }                 // Motion routines for forward, reverse, turns, and stop       void reverse() {       servoLeft.write(0);      servoRight.write(180);       }           void moveForward() {      servoLeft.write(180);      servoRight.write(0);      }            void turnRight() {      servoLeft.write(180);      servoRight.write(180);       }      void turnLeft() {       servoLeft.write(0);       servoRight.write(0);       }           void stopMove() {      servoLeft.write(90);      servoRight.write(90);       }           long microsecondsToCentimeters(long microseconds)      {      // The speed of sound is 340 m/s or 29 microseconds per centimeter.      // The ping travels out and back, so to find the distance of the      // object we take half of the distance travelled.      return microseconds / 29 / 2;      }"}
{"_id": "115368", "title": "Why do we need to write a header file?", "text": "Before you whip out your snarky comments, I know -- this is a nooby question. This is my first time using a C based language. I'm an undergrad student learning Objective C for a computer science course on mobile development. I know that, in an academic setting, a lot of real-world considerations aren't necessary since you're building smaller projects, work in smaller teams, etc. But our professor demands -- and XCode supports -- .h header files for every .m implementation file. To me, it kind of seems like busy work. I have to make sure I copy every method signature and instance variable over to the other file. If I change one file, I have to make sure it's consistent with the other file. It seems like just a bunch of small annoyances like that. But I know there has to be _some_ real-world use for header files. A great answer would address both:   1. What is a header file useful for that an implementation file isn't suited for? What is its purpose?   2. Why do we as programmers have to manually write our header files? It seems like they could easily be generated automatically. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "179376", "title": "How to test a localized WPF application in visual studio 2012", "text": "I am trying to create a localized application in C# / WPF in Visual Studio 2012. For that I created two resource files and changed one string in a (XAML) window to use the resource files (instead of a hardcoded string). I see the English text from the resource file, which is correct. However, I want to check if the other resource file (fr-FR) also works but I cannot find a setting or procedure how to change my 'project' to run in French. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "179372", "title": "Command Line Tool to generate a method usage report", "text": "Is there a command line tool (preferred) that'll generate a report of Java methods within a class and where they are used within a few project folders. Kind of how Netbeans does a \"Find Usage\" on open projects but as an automated approach. I have a utility class that contains lots of static methods, but I have no idea which ones are dead code [ignoring test case usages]"}
{"_id": "115361", "title": "Integration of routes that are not resources in an MVC REST style application", "text": "I would like to keep my application relatively REST-pure for the sake of consistency, but I'm struggling philosophically with the relatively few views (maybe just one) that I'll need to build that don't relate to resources directly, and therefore do not fit into a REST style. As an example, take the home page. Ruby on rails seems to bail on their otherwise RESTful approach for this very basic need of all web sites. The home page appears special:   * You can get it, but a get at the resource level is supposed to give you a collection of elements. I can imagine this being the list of routes maybe, but that seems a stretch, and doesn't address anything else.   * Getting the home page by id doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense - what's the element of a home collection? Again, maybe routes, but a get on a route would do what? Redirect? This feels odd.   * You can't delete it (arguably you could allow this for administrators)   * Adding a second one doesn't make sense except possibly if the elements were routes   * Updating it might make sense for administrators, but AFAIK REST doesn't describe updates on the resource directly, only elements of the resource (this article explicitly says \"UNUSED\" for PUTS on the resource) Is the \"right\" thing to do just to special case these types of things? At the end of the day, I can wrap my head around most of applications being gathered around resources...I can't think of another good example other than a home page, but since that's the start of an application, I think it warrants some thought."}
{"_id": "29191", "title": "What principles does your software engineering or development organization follow?", "text": "What principles does your software engineering or development organization follow? I am very interested in seeing a list of principles from someone who works at a company where these principles are discussed, published, followed, etc. The closest I have seen to a principles-based engineering organization are companies which are agile and follow the agile principles. Here is a list of Marick's values/challenges: http://www.agilejourneyman.com/2010/02/4-challenges-and-5-guiding-values- of.html I am looking for pointers to more stuff like this. Ideally, I'd like to hear from people who have actually implemented a principles-based approach in their organization."}
{"_id": "194412", "title": "Using scoped enums for bit flags in C++", "text": "An `enum X : int` (C#) or `enum class X : int` (C++11) is a type that has a hidden inner field of `int` that can hold any value. In addition, a number of predefined constants of `X` are defined on the enum. It is possible to cast the enum to its integer value and vice versa. This is all true in both C# and C++11. In C# enums are not only used to hold individual values, but also to hold bitwise combinations of flags, as per Microsoft's recommendation. Such enums are (usually, but not necessarily) decorated with the `[Flags]` attribute. To make the lives of developers easier, the bitwise operators (OR, AND, etc...) are overloaded so that you can easily do something like this (C#):               void M(NumericType flags);          M(NumericType.Sign | NumericType.ZeroPadding);      I am an experienced C# developer, but have been programming C++ only for a couple of days now, and I am not known with the C++ conventions. I intend to use a C++11 enum in the exact same way as I was used to do in C#. In C++11 the bitwise operators on scoped enums are not overloaded, so I wanted to overload them. This solicited a debate, and opinions seem to vary between three options:   1. A variable of the enum type is used to hold the bit field, similar to C#:              void M(NumericType flags);          // With operator overloading:     M(NumericType::Sign | NumericType::ZeroPadding);          // Without operator overloading:     M(static_cast<NumericType>(static_cast<int>(NumericType::Sign) | static_cast<int>(NumericType::ZeroPadding)));      But this would counter the strongly typed enum philosophy of C++11's scoped enums.   2. Use a plain integer if you want to store a bitwise combination of enums:              void M(int flags);          M(static_cast<int>(NumericType::Sign) | static_cast<int>(NumericType::ZeroPadding));      But this would reduce everything to an `int`, leaving you with no clue as to which type you're supposed to put in the method.   3. Write a separate class that will overload operators and hold the bitwise flags in a hidden integer field:              class NumericTypeFlags {         unsigned flags_;     public:         NumericTypeFlags () : flags_(0) {}         NumericTypeFlags (NumericType t) : flags_(static_cast<unsigned>(t)) {}         //...define BITWISE test/set operations     };          void M(NumericTypeFlags flags);          M(NumericType::Sign | NumericType::ZeroPadding);      (full code by user315052) But then you have no IntelliSense or whatever support to hint you at the possible values. I know this is a subjective question, but: **What approach should I use? What approach, if any, is the most widely recognized in C++? What approach do you use when dealing with bit fields and _why_?** Of course since all three approaches work, I'm looking for factual and technical reasons, generally accepted conventions, and not simply personal preference. For example, because of my C# background I tend to go with approach 1 in C++. This has the added benefit that my development environment can hint me on the possible values, and with overloaded enum operators this is easy to write and understand, and quite clean. And the method signature shows clearly what kind of value it expects. But most people here disagree with me, probably for good reason."}
{"_id": "194415", "title": "Understanding the meaning of \"multiple lifecycles application development\"?", "text": "Some Agile job posts have a requirement \"strong understanding of multiple lifecycles application development\", what does it means ? So my question would be: what's that field for, and what would I need to learn, knowing that I got Java EE experience and Agile more than 2 years. Sorry if my question isn't constructed well, nor I putted some time searching the meaning :) my self, but all my research yielded job posts :D."}
{"_id": "49936", "title": "C# Multithreading Interview questions for a senior developer/designer position", "text": "I wonder what sort of interview questions were asked to a senior developer or technical consultant on multithreading. Kindly provide me some of the interview questions which were asked in the interview on multithreading if possible kindly put the scenario based questions with some theoretical questions. As I came to know after disscusion with some of the people that some time interviewer might give you a scenario and ask you to implement it? @ Kindly add the specific questions which you have ever faced or asked to the other person in the interview other than only mentioning the concepts because people go through the concepts and still find it difficult to handle the interview questions.so any effort to add the specific question could actually help person to get a head start for the d-day"}
{"_id": "149578", "title": "Is unit testing procedural code effective?", "text": "On a current project, the powers that be want to have unit testing incorporated into our development cycle to avoid the constant amount of bugs that seem to seep into our code. The problem is that the spaghetti code is 95% percent procedural, which I've never done unit testing with (all my experience with unit testing has been with OOP code) So my question in a nutshell is would it be wise to proceed with unit testing with our current codebase, or suggest that it be postponed until the application has been migrated to a proper OOP framework? PS: While I tried to style this question as language agnostic, I feel that stating the application in question uses PHP and javascript will help provide more specific answers that could answer this question since from experience this occurrence occurs most with such applications."}
{"_id": "255204", "title": "Should I continue stressing development standards?", "text": "I've been with my software team for about three years now, and just recently I brought up the concept of variable naming conventions (across all languages, but C#/VB.Net specifically). We really don't have any solid naming conventions. I was met with serious resistance - so what?, does it really matter?, blank stares, etc. I was able to get the others to agree to at least be consistent on a given code file (not ideal, but with this group, any standards that is based around anything other than SQL is a step forward). My question is this - I've always received resistance to developing standards.   * Should I just stop pushing standards and accept the fact that everyone seems to be doing their own thing when they code?"}
{"_id": "255205", "title": "Large Scale Application Development in Android", "text": "Since, I am fairly new to large scale app development in Android and Java, I though I would ask for your advice guys. My team was faced with developing a prototype of a fairly complex medical software. Although it is only a prototype, I think it might be a good opportunity to learn new platform and get into some good habits. Our design requirements are fairly simple: a set of common files: themes, styles, objects, static methods for database etc. and then a set of smaller \"apps\" like a: digital tests, games etc. Each one is fairly unique. Our initial thought was to create a set of smaller applications that will be lunched from \"the main screen\". Each application would be a separate project in Eclipse and then we would modify the build path to include the \"common files\". This way: each developer could work on their own projects without bothering others. The problems that I find with this approach:   1. Deploying the application (having a bunch of applications instead of one big one)   2. Testing the application    3. Use of strings to lunch another application i.e. worrying whether the application has been installed   4. Silly human errors e.g. modifying common files and forgetting to commit changes Another solution would be to create one big application/project with each developer working on a separate package which would represent each app. However, this introduces common resources (e.g. unique string names) etc. What's your advice? How to tackle this problem? Which one is better in the long run? Are there any other approaches that are more sensible?"}
{"_id": "255207", "title": "How do developers deal with \"where to start\" problem in a context of overwhelming difficulties caused by too much heterogeneous information?", "text": "A friend of mine, a beginner PHP programmer, needs to link the product his company develops with a third-party product (a set of web services). He received the \"relevant\" documentation (a few hundred of pages of unreadable stuff) from this third-party, have read the PHP documentation related to SOAP client, have read about SOAP and WSDL, but **doesn't have a slightest idea where to start**. Instead of a step-by-step tutorial, he has lots of overly verbose documentation. I suggested him to use prototyping:   1. Imagine the most basic scenario where the third-party web services can be used,   2. Select the relevant documentation,   3. Build (from scratch) the simplest PHP script which will play this scenario,   4. Once the prototype works, integrate the functionality into the existing product,   5. Refactor,   6. Expand the existing product with additional features. While this may help pushing this person to the right direction, I feel that my suggestion is only partially helpful. I imagine myself six years ago knowing nothing about WSDL and SOAP and having to search inside hundreds of pages of documentation: I would be already discouraged at steps 2 and 3. Experienced developers have a bunch of patterns, practices and processes which help solving basic problems frequently encountered in software development:   * The technical aspects of a feature are uncertain? Use prototyping.   * The application \"feels unresponsive\"? Use profiling to find bottlenecks.   * The requirements are subject to frequent change? Use Agile.   * Programmers need to be sure their code doesn't contain omissions? Use code reviews.   * The successive versions of a product are not deployed fast enough? Use DevOps. While those patterns and practices help developers solving purely technical/organizational issues (such as \"I know how to implement Web Sockets in Java, Python and Node.js, but now I need to do it in Haskell.\"), the same patterns and practices are not helpful for less experienced programmers who need to solve more substantial and less technical problems (such as \"I believe Web Sockets are a sort of HTTP but it happens the other way, something like that; now lead developer asked me to implement that in my app, but I'm not sure why do we need it.\") Inviting the programmer to spend three years in college or twelve months reading programming-related books is not always an option: some people need to work to pay their bills, need to finish the project for the next deadline, and are not paid to read books. So what are other options?"}
{"_id": "255208", "title": "Is there a better way to update NoSQL records in bulk?", "text": "When we started our application we had the choice of going with the traditional MS-SQL normalized database or with a NoSQL database (RavenDB is what we tried out). Here is a simplified version of our schema:               <Order OrderNumber=\"1000\" OrderVersion=\"1\" ...>       <Products>         <Product Code=\"X58\" Price=\"$5.50\" Quantity=\"3\" ... />         <Product Code=\"X70\" Price=\"$9.99\" Quantity=\"1\" ... />       </Products>       <Contacts>         <Contact ... />         <Contact ... />       </Contacts>     </Order>      While we could have went with a MS-SQL database, we didn't because we wanted all of our data for an order to be kept historically; we did not want to FK the contact even if they had the same name and address because while it might change, the order should have the contact info at the **time of purchase**. Also, yes, we could have FK our Products instead of using the **Code** to reference the product, but Products never get deleted, and again... if they are updated we want to capture their information at the **time of purchase**. Basically, every Order seems to be a self-contained document that should never rely on FKs. OrderVersion is just to keep track of our process version when the order was created, we could easily just have used OrderDate to track versioning. * * * Anyways, so our decision was to go with RavenDB. We built out our application and website, and internally we are testing it out. The one scenario we are running into problems is: _\"How do you do a bulk update on records as good as SQL does it?\"_ For example, if we had just pushed our code to production during offline maintenance and somehow all records from MA with ZipCodes that have a leading zero (0) had the zero trimmed off (i.e. the zip code now read 1234 instead of 01234)? Normally, we would patch things immediately on one fail-over server at a time, and updating records would be easy:               UPDATE c     SET c.ZipCode = ...     FROM Contact c         INNER JOIN Order o ON c.OrderId = o.OrderId     WHERE o.Version = 1       AND ...      But, it seems that the best solution we could come up with if we use RavenDB is to get all documents, then programmatically update the records through a custom C# console app. It seems that TSQL is much easier/faster. I'm not sure if there is a better way that we are unaware of, or is this a common shortcoming of using RavenDB (or any NoSQL document store)? My biggest worry is, while our console app seemed to run just fine enough with a sample of 100K orders, what happens if we get to the point of 50M+ orders!? Or, is that also an issue with T-SQL that we would eventually run into with the example I gave?"}
{"_id": "149570", "title": "Scheduling Thousands of *Recurring* Jobs", "text": "I'm looking for general approaches and ideally libraries/tools for scheduling many thousands of recurring jobs. A simple example is a feed aggregator, where I'd want to repeatedly poll thousands of feeds. I would never want to poll a website more than once an hour (overuses everyone's resources), but I could deal with polling websites less than once an hour if there isn't time to finish everything in an hour (and worry later about sharding the process or whatever to make it faster, if this keeps happening). So I'd basically want a framework where I can say \"run this task as often as possible, but no more than once an hour\". An additionally nice feature would be for such a framework to exponentially decay unsuccessful tasks, i.e. if a feed URL was broken, it would be scheduled for 2 hours, then 4 hours, etc. I've heard of an approach involving a binary tree which acts as a kind of giant cronjob-like data structure. The system would constantly trawl through this tree to see if any tasks are overdue. I don't have much more information than this. I've looked at tools like Resque, but they don't really seem to cover this use case."}
{"_id": "216186", "title": "Non-trivial functions that operate on any monad", "text": "I'm looking for examples of interesting methods that take an arbitrary monad and do something useful with it. Monads are extremely general, so methods that operate on monads are widely applicable. On the other hand, methods I know of that can apply to any monad tend to be... really, really trivial. Barely worth extracting into a function. Here's a really boring example: `joinTwice`. It just flattens an `m m m t` into an `m t`:               join n = n >>= id     joinTwice n = (join . join) n          main = print (joinTwice [[[1],[2, 3]], [[4]]])     -- prints [1,2,3,4]      The only non-trivial method for monads that I know of is `bindFold` (see my answer below). Are there more?"}
{"_id": "216185", "title": "How to overcome network latency when using data as a service like Cloudant?", "text": "I just can't understand, no matter how good and scalable of Cloudant (data as a service), how one can overcome network latency issue? Even the data center is located within the same country, 100ms is way too slow compare to a local network. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "156597", "title": "How can I create a software patcher for OS X?", "text": "I'm building some software for OS X that isn't distributed through the Mac App Store. My software allows users to download different modules uploaded by various people too. How can I create a software patcher to patch my software, as well as update modules that users might be uploading when necessary? I've looked a bit into diff and patch, which come with OS X but they seem to be largely for plaintext. Any ideas? I've been googling but I'm a bit stumped which is surprising since software patching seems to be in most applications."}
{"_id": "143030", "title": "CI tests to enforce specific development rules - good practice?", "text": "The following is all purely hypothetical and any particular portion of it may or may not accurately describe real persons or situations, whether living, dead or just pretending. Let's say I'm a senior dev or architect in charge of a dev team working on a project. This project includes a security library for user authentication/authorization of the application under development. The library must be available for developers to edit; however, I wish to \"trust but verify\" that coders are not doing things that could compromise the security of the finished system, and because this isn't my only responsibility I want it to be done in an automated way. As one example, let's say I have an interface that represents a user which has been authenticated by the system's security library. The interface exposes basic user info and a list of things the user is authorized to do (so that the client app doesn't have to keep asking the server \"can I do this?\"), all in an immutable fashion of course. There is only one implementation of this interface in production code, and for the purposes of this post we can say that all appropriate measures have been taken to ensure that this implementation can only be used by the one part of our code that needs to be able to create concretions of the interface. The coders have been instructed that this interface and its implementation are sacrosanct and any changes must go through me. However, those are just words; the security library's source is open for editing by necessity. Any of my devs could decide that this secured, private, hash-checked implementation needs to be public so that they could do X, or alternately they could create their own implementation of this public interface in a different library, exposing the hashing algorithm that provides the secure checksum, in order to do Y. I may not be made aware of these changes so that I can beat the developer over the head for it. An attacker could then find these little nuggets in an unobfuscated library of the compiled product, and exploit it to provide fake users and/or falsely-elevated administrative permissions, bypassing the entire security system. This possibility keeps me awake for a couple of nights, and then I create an automated test that reflectively checks the codebase for types deriving from the interface, and fails if it finds any that are not exactly what and where I expect them to be. I compile this test into a project under a separate folder of the VCS that only I have rights to commit to, have CI compile it as an external library of the main project, and set it up to run as part of the CI test suite for user commits. Now, I have an automated test under my complete control that will tell me (and everyone else) if the number of implementations increases without my involvement, or an implementation that I did know about has anything new added or has its modifiers or those of its members changed. I can then investigate further, and regain the opportunity to beat developers over the head as necessary. Is this considered \"reasonable\" to want to do in situations like this? Am I going to be seen in a negative light for going behind my devs' backs to ensure they aren't doing something they shouldn't?"}
{"_id": "143036", "title": "As a tooling/automation developer, can I be making better use of OOP?", "text": "My time as a developer (~8 yrs) has been spent creating tooling/automation of one sort or another. The tools I develop usually interface with one or more API's. These API's could be win32, WMI, VMWare, a help-desk application, LDAP, you get the picture. The apps I develop could be just to pull back data and store/report. It could be to provision groups of VM's to create live like mock environments, update a trouble ticket etc. I've been developing in .Net and I'm currently reading into design patterns and trying to think about how I can improve my skills to make better use of and increase my understanding of OOP. For example, I've never used an interface of my own making in anger (which is probably not a good thing), because I honestly cannot identify where using one would benefit later on when modifying my code. My classes are usually very specific and I don't create similar classes with similar properties/methods which could use a common interface (like perhaps a car dealership or shop application might). I generally use an n-tier approach to my apps, having a presentation layer, a business logic/manager layer which interfaces with layer(s) that make calls to the API's I'm working with. My business entities are always just method-less container objects, which I populate with data and pass back and forth between my API interfacing layer using static methods to proxy/validate between the front and the back end. My code by nature of my work, has few common components, at least from what I can see. So I'm struggling to see how I can better make use of OOP design and perhaps reusable patterns. Am I right to be concerned that I could be being smarter about how I work, or is what I'm doing now right for my line of work? Or, am I missing something fundamental in OOP? **EDIT:** Here is some basic code to show how my mgr and api facing layers work. I use static classes as they do not persist any data, only facilitate moving it between layers.               public static class MgrClass     {         public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName)         {             // Perform logic to validate or apply biz logic             // call APIClass to do the work             return APIClass.PowerOnVM(VMName);         }     }          public static class APIClass     {         public static bool PowerOnVM(string VMName)         {             // Calls to 3rd party API to power on a virtual machine             // returns true or false if was successful for example         }     }"}
{"_id": "50372", "title": "Variable names: underscores, no underscores, or camel case?", "text": "Variable names can be written in many ways, but the most common that I'm familiar with are:   * thisisavariable,   * this_is_a_variable, and   * thisIsAVariable. Which of these are preferred, and why?"}
{"_id": "187153", "title": "C# dynamics and Expando object", "text": "Under which application development scenarios C# dynamics and ExpandoObject can be used or when to consider using c# dynamics and ExpandoObject"}
{"_id": "187150", "title": "CMS updates into subversion -> review process", "text": "We manage a range of client sites built in Wordpress and Joomla and these require regular updates to the core CMS and extensions. We keep these sites in subversion and place updates in subversion. We try to use a single revision for this. We face some difficulties in making this process efficient, over time we would like to automate it, so we can offer the process on a fixed price basis The process is currently as follows   1. make copy of whole folder   2. svn status |grep '^!' |sed 's/^!\\s*/svn delete \"/g' |sed 's/$/\"/g' |sh   3. svn update   4. svn status |grep '^?' |sed 's/^?\\s*/svn add \"/g' |sed 's/$/\"/g' |sh   5. svn ci -m \"Commit message\"   6. svn remove -m\"temporarily remove\" http://subversion.repository.com/svn/automatem/projects/client/trunk/project/foldername Steps 5-6 are usually repeated multiple times. What I'm looking for help with   * we are using subversion version 1.6 and 1.7, because there are no .svn folders in 1.7 in subdirectories, I wonder if the process is much easier on 1.7?   * we've added step 3 because it reduces the number of repeats in steps 5-6. However this was just trial and error and I can't quite get my head around why this is   * As I understand it, the issue in step 5-6 is that when the an extension is updated, it may delete a whole folder and then re-insert that folder with changed files. In subversion 1.6, this would remove the .svn folder, which causes a 405 Access denied error (the folder gets added, but already exists in svn). What I would need is something that inserts all .svn folders back into my working copy if the folder already exists in svn. Is there a way to accomplish this?   * Any other improvements of course appreciated."}
{"_id": "187155", "title": "What is the most cross-browser/system compatible option for 3d graphics on a web page?", "text": "I would like to develop a bit of functionality for a web site that involves a bit of 3D - the user can move around objects, rotate them and texture them. So far I've looked into:   * WebGL (in particular three.js) and it looks great, but it's not supported in IE nor IOS.   * IOS supports the `<canvas>` tag, but only 2d. It looks like three.js has an unsupported hack to make a 3d thing use the 2d canvas instead without textures, but this looks like a hack.   * I also considered resorting to Flash which works on most browsers, but that won't work on IOS.  What's my best option for doing 3d web graphics on the vast array of browsers and interfaces? At the moment I'm thinking WebGL for web (and ask people to use chrome or firefox, and take the hit on IE) and then maybe write a native app for IOS, but I am not sure if there are better alternatives available that I don't know of."}
{"_id": "187159", "title": "How does if/else work internally in all programming languages?", "text": "if(true/false){          //if condition is true      }else {          // if condition is false     }      Everyone knows about the structure of `if-else`. But what is `if` actually? Is it a class method, static method or keyword? I'm little confused about this."}
{"_id": "168439", "title": "Any good resource on running a service software company?", "text": "A service software company is like an outsource company. You give us the requirements, we band the result for you. This is a unique situation where each project is short lived and vastly different from one to another. I'm interested to learn if anybody is successful in running this kind of company and any good resource of setups like this. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "58425", "title": "WHat are the benefits of placing the concatenation character at the end or beginning of a line", "text": "Considering multiple lines of say SQL query strings:               $sql = \"select * from table \".     \"where a=5\";      What do you think are the benefits and downsides of putting the concatenation character at the end or beginning of the line? This is to revise a coding guidelines document, we have 2 people here that \"feel\" it should be either way"}
{"_id": "58420", "title": "What makes a good developer / system documentation?", "text": "Much time is wasted to get new developers started with existing software systems, because there is no good documenation. But what makes a system documentation good? One thing is a good API documentation like the Java API doc, but how to transfer the \"bigger picture\" and other things that cannot be placed in the API doc? One constraint is that it should not be to hard and time consuming to write the docs, because that is one reason why it is omitted so often. So, what makes documentation good?"}
{"_id": "160602", "title": "Debugging: understanding details on why certain fixes worked?", "text": "When debugging, I sometimes find that I make some changes and I am not 100% sure why those changes correct some bug in the program. Is it essential to understand every single detail about why some bugs were occurring and why certain changes eliminated those bugs? Or is it common among developers to sometimes get the program working without really knowing the details about why the fix worked?"}
{"_id": "160609", "title": "Why would it take hours to decode transmissions from Curiosity rover via MRO?", "text": "This video clip by NASA says that data from Curiosity relayed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) would be stored for a few hours, then transmitted to Earth (apparently taking about 14 minutes), after which it would take _hours_ for engineers to decode the data. From what I've read, it seems that the MRO can be used as a backup communication device for Curiosity if needed. In the case of Curiosity's landing, I figure the MRO would have store the data until it orbited around the red planet and had a direct line of sight with Earth before transmitting it (then again, I'm only speculating here), which I can understand. But then why would it take NASA engineers hours to decode the signal relayed by MRO after it is received here on Earth? ( _Bonus point: Does it normally take hours to decode MRO signals?_ )"}
{"_id": "1419", "title": "Guiding Non-Programmers in Hiring of a Programmer", "text": "A friend of mine has a developer (possibly the \"mad genius\" type) that has built a substantial system on which their small business is critically dependent. They'd like to get away from their current guy and replace him with someone more reliable, but the question comes up of how to know that the person they replace him with is a competent developer himself. As a developer, I know what questions _I_ would ask and how to interpret the responses, but how would you advise a company void of development background to go about identifying the ones who know their stuff?"}
{"_id": "72027", "title": "can a regex search engine for the web be done and if so, how?", "text": "I think it would be a great idea if we had a regular expression search engine, but can it be done? It seems impossible since there's no feasible way of indexing such a huge amount of data properly and displaying results in the order of relevance from what I can think of. I'm curious what the answer to this one would be."}
{"_id": "209797", "title": "Confusion with Factory pattern regarding Liskov's Substitution Principle, code maintainability and Unit Testing?", "text": "I have a confusion regarding Factory Pattern there are basically two ways You can implement that. Approach 1:               public interface IProductFactory     {         IProduct GetProductA();         IProduct GetProductB();         IProduct GetProductC();     }          public class ProductFactory : IProductFactory     {         public IProduct GetProductA()         {             //some implementation goes here         }         public IProduct GetProductB()         {             //some implementation goes here         }         public IProduct GetProductC()         {             //some implementation goes here         }     }      Approach 2:               public enum ProductType     {         ProductA = 1,         ProductB = 2,         ProductC = 3     }          public interface IProductFactory     {         IProduct GetProduct(ProductType productType);     }          public class ProductFactory : IProductFactory     {         public IProduct GetProduct(ProductType productType)         {             switch (productType)             {                 case ProductType.ProductA:                     //return IProduct with specific implementation                     break;                 case ProductType.ProductB:                     //return IProduct with specific implementation                     break;                 case ProductType.ProductC:                     //return IProduct with specific implementation                     break;                 default:                 //return null             }         }     }      **Pros of both approaches** Approach 1:   1. benefit of compile time checks that the implementation class will be forced to provide the corresponding methods. Approach 2:   1. Implementation will have a benefit of shorter no. of lines of code.   2. Interface does not become fragile, it won't change as the new products keep on adding. **Cons of both approaches** Approach 1:   1. Lines of code becomes large.   2. As more number of Products are implemented, the interface changes and hence it is hard to follow Liskov's Substitution Principle. Approach 2:   1. Since it is hiding internal details of GetProduct, it is hard to tell what the Factory will return when a specific type of enum is passed.    2. You might get into run time exceptions **I am still struggling to decide on which approach to use?** * * * **Note:** I am only aware of these two approaches, there might be different approaches also."}
{"_id": "209796", "title": "Cogent arguments for 'semantic css' over 'object oriented css'", "text": "[Context - I'm a Java developer, having a discussion with a designer who works in the html/css space] I was having a discussion with a co-worker today about the merits of 'semantic css'. His response was, \"Oh we're not interested in semantic css, we use object oriented css\" I understand what he means, ie that they're using the 'inheritance' properties of css and SASS mixins to describe styles. But I feel like he has not tried to understand 'semantic css'. I'm trying to construct a cogent argument about why 'object oriented css over semantic css' is flawed. This is my reasoning so far:   * \u201ccss isn\u2019t object oriented\u201d http://stackoverflow.com/a/7431746/15441   * Write html code with semantic components http://css.dzone.com/articles/object-oriented-css-crap-long   * Examples of layout out your page with semantic components http://woork.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/css-coding-semantic-approach-in-naming.html   * Examples of non-semantic naming http://css-tricks.com/semantic-class-names/ My question is \"what are some cogent arguments explain semantic css to someone who thinks that 'inheritance', 'classes' and 'mixins' make something object oriented and that he doesn't need to worry about good naming?\""}
{"_id": "209790", "title": "In a declarative language, specifically in the context of modelling, can we make a clear distinction between code and data?", "text": "For declarative languages, specifically (but not limited to) in the field of modelling, it's not obvious to me whether code can be considered to be separate from data. This line of reasoning may only apply to non-turing complete languages such as NeuroML. Say for instance I had a very domain specific declarative language which I used to described the positions of planets and their velocities, and I described a system of three orbiting bodies:               satellite planet_earth,moon,sun {          planet_earth.position = [6,0,0]          planet_earth.velocity = [0,23,-32]          planet_earth.mass = 1e3          moon.position = [6,0,0.0001]          moon.velocity = [0,0,3]          moon.mass = 1e2          sun.position = [0,0,0]          sun.velocity = [0,0,0]          sun.mass = 1e12 }      This language could be passed to a simulator which then simulated the motion of the planets. From one perspective this is code - It is describing initial conditions and consequently within the constraints of the language a sequence of steps for a computer to run. From another perspective it is 'data' - it is a description of a physical system. Is this concept (is something code or data) something which has been studied much? I've looked into it"}
{"_id": "73771", "title": "What determines when an application requires mvvm?", "text": "I'm developing mobile applications for Windows Phone 7. This application calls some web services and occasionally sends responses out via web services. I recently started looking into MVVM and noticed that, although it is suggested when developing applications in WP7, alot of developers say only to use it if its necessary. Along with that they said that if the application is \"small\" enough or \"simple\" enough then it probably isn't worth the time. Hence my question. When should we use MVVM? Is it possible to build larger scale applications without it?"}
{"_id": "197148", "title": "Distributed system command and control", "text": "I have an application that consists of a set of Java and C++ of processes running on one or more systems and need to ability to monitor and control the components as if they were one complete system. My requirements:   1. runtime statistics (messages per second etc..)   2. log of events   3. control: \"service X set rate to 1000 mps\" or \"all services stop\"   4. ambient configuration so all services can start up and discover the working mode (etc..) Since data plane messaging is 0MQ based, I am currently doing this with 0MQ based messaging and a message distributor to fan out the control messages. However, I am interested in how others have tackled the problem. Thanks."}
{"_id": "197146", "title": "Priority queue for Kruskal's algorithm with running time O(E lg V)", "text": "I'm reviewing my notes on Kruskal's algorithm and have a question about getting the runtime down to O(E lg V). By using a PQ with _edges_ and a boolean array of which vertices we have added to our tree _T_ , the running time is O(E lg E), but in my notes there is also a variant with running time O(E lg V), by using a PQ with vertices instead of edges. However, this requires the PQ to support updating weights (important part highlighted): > Maintain a PQ of vertices connected by an edge to T, togethether with the > edge that connects it to T. The priority of this tuple is the weight of the > min-weight edge connecting it to T. When adding a new vertex to the tree, we > add all vertices adjacent to this new vertex to the PQ unless it's already > in the PQ. **If it is in the PQ and the new edge connecting it to T is of > lower weight, we update its weight and the edge associated with it** , if > not, we do nothing. When thinking about how to actually implement this, I realized that all priority queues I have seen have O(n) updates, since the ordering is too weak for us to be able to find an element faster. I tried searching a bit but couldn't find any PQs that support updating in O(lg n) time, except some references to fibonacci heaps that can do it in O(1) time, but looks like a much more complex data structure. Is there a simple way to get O(lg n) updates of a priority queue? I could insert keys and references to elements in a hash table and use that to quickly find and update elements, is this a viable solution? (I realize that this will require O(n) extra space.)"}
{"_id": "72797", "title": "FreeType font patent issue and Apple platform", "text": "As I know, FreeType restrict some features by patented font technology from Apple. So, if I develop a program for Apple platform _only_ , can I enable and use the features?"}
{"_id": "206673", "title": "Who should be responsible to write test cases?", "text": "Should tests in some project be written by the actual person that does the coding (usually senior in our team) or it can be done by junior coders with less experience?"}
{"_id": "35615", "title": "What programming skills have provided you the best return on investment?", "text": "What are the things that took you only a little time to learn, but had a big payoff? And how long did it take to learn enough before the they began to pay off? For instance, I\u2019m not a master of regular expressions, but it probably took a couple of hours to understand the basics enough for to start using them and they come in handy on a regular basis."}
{"_id": "114109", "title": "Distributed transactions and queues, ruby, erlang", "text": "I have a problem that involves several machines, message queues, and transactions. So for example a user clicks on a web page, the click sends a message to another machine which adds a payment to the user's account. There may be many thousands of clicks per second. All aspects of the transaction should be fault tolerant. I've never had to deal with anything like this before, but a bit of reading suggests this is a well known problem. So to my questions. Am I correct in assuming that secure way of doing this is with a two phase commit, but the protocol is blocking and so I won't get the required performance? It appears that DBs like redis and message queuing system like Rescue, RabbitMQ etc don't really help me a lot - even if I implement some sort of two phase commit, the data will be lost if redis crashes because it is essentially memory-only. All of this has led me to look at erlang - but before I wade in and start learning a new language, I would really like to understand better if this is worth the effort. Specifically, am I right in thinking that because of its parallel processing capabilities, erlang is a better choice for implementing a blocking protocol like two phase commit, or am I confused?"}
{"_id": "93616", "title": "Correct echoing of html in js?", "text": "A colleague and I were discussing how to echo HTML inside of javascript code. Specifically, in a situation similar to this:               new Element('div', {         html: '{long string of HTML goes here!}'     }.inject($('content'));      Short snippets seem to work well in this situation, but what if we were echoing a large set of data? The line would then become very long, and hard to debug (because who horizontally scrolls?!) A problem also lies in the fact that besides its length, all quotes used need to be escaped, especially if the javascript code is being echo'd from the server side, in which case one of the quote marks would be \"used up\", per se. One solution would be to break up the long line of HTML code:               new Element('div', {         html:   '{long string of HTML goes here!}' +                 '{some more HTML goes here}' +                 '{and even more...}'     }.inject($('content'));      Another solution provided involved including an addslashes()'d server-side include, which involves a second file. Although I suppose it is also possible to define all of the to-be-included HTML in a php variable, and echo it when it is needed:               <?php         $html = addslashes('{html content}');     ?>          new Element('div', {         html: '<?=$html?>'     }.inject($('content'));      Which method is best in terms of code readability, efficiency, and security?"}
{"_id": "130553", "title": "Keep it simple now, or program with the future in mind?", "text": "I'm currently coding a new application for my company that is rather involved. To meet the deadline, the functionality has been toned down quite a bit so that we can have something ready to go for launch. I've been given the task of getting version 1 up and running by the end of the month. I'm about halfway through development and I've come to the point now that there is an end in sight. Yesterday, I spent some time coming up with a very nice easy solution for one of the requirements and am quite proud of how it turned out. This morning the version 2 document was sent out, and there is a requirement in there that will require the code I wrote yesterday to be either gutted, or severely changed. It would require a lot of work in the future if I leave it the way it is. I can take an extra day now to make my current solution more robust so that the v2 feature will be able to be added with a lot less effort, but that will put me a bit behind for the extra coding it would require. I don't know if I'll be doing v2. It might be me or it might be a co-worker, or even an intern. If you were in my shoes, would you spend the time now to make it easier in the future, or would you leave your solution and deal with it when the time comes?"}
{"_id": "130556", "title": "In PHP, how do you code with scalability in mind?", "text": "I know this may be a general question, but what exactly goes into scaling for all the users you will encounter, even if not in the next few months? I did some research and most of what is done is server side, with caches and other similar stuff. Any points in the right direction would be helpful."}
{"_id": "51429", "title": "What programming languages should every computer science student be taught?", "text": "What languages (or classes (as in paradigms) of programming languages, plus a recommended language of that class) should every computer science student be taught in college according to you? Motivate your answers; why that language? What use will one have from it? What concepts does it teach (better than language X does)? **Note/clarification** : This question is about computer science with heavy focus on software engineering, not pure computer science. It is still computer science education and not software engineering education which is the focus."}
{"_id": "181414", "title": "How we call an RPC that not only calls external functions but also updates data structures?", "text": "I have a simple C++ RPC that lets you have remote class instances that support live members (data structures) update as well as method calls. For example I had a class declared like this (pseudocode):               class Sum{     public:         RPC_FIELD(int lastSum);         RPC_METHOD(int summ(int a, int b))         {          lastSum = a + b;          return lastSum;         }     };      On machine `A` I had its instance. On machines `B` and `C` I had created its instances and connected them to machine `A`. So now they actually do all processing on machine `A` but machines `B`, `C` get `lastSum` class field updates automatically (and can subscribe to update event). How to call (`Nice Name`) such a functionality when we have binding over network done automatically by RPC library? How RPC library creator can announce such feature?"}
{"_id": "181416", "title": "What can a company do to restrict offsite contract developers from redistributing GPLv2-licensed code modifications?", "text": "My company uses a mix of onsite and increasingly offsite contractors for development of websites and online applications. Our platform uses a mix of open source software and libraries that we've made a number of modifications to over the years. Some of the modified software is licensed GPLv2 without the linking exception. For various reasons, we do not want the source to be made public. The concern is that if we supply the binaries to our platform for our offsite developers, we are obligated to supply the source code upon request. Additionally, there will be times when we need to distribute the source of our modified libraries. From there, nothing would seem to preclude the contractor from redistributing the work. The GPL FAQ states: > . . . when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or > individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to > contractors for use off-site is distribution. Furthermore, the GPL states: > You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of > the rights granted herein. The question is: **what can be done to restrict offsite contractors from redistributing our modified code?** A note, that I think the GPLv3 addresses this concern with the following clause. So my question is specifically about GPLv2-licensed modified code: > You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose of having them > make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you with facilities for > running those works, provided that you comply with the terms of this License > in conveying all material for which you do not control copyright."}
{"_id": "32964", "title": "Abstraction: The War between solving the problem and a general solution", "text": "As a programmer, I find myself in the dilemma where I want make my program as abstract and as general as possible. Doing so usually would allow me to reuse my code and have a more general solution for a problem that might (or might not) come up again. Then this voice in my head says, just solve the problem dummy its that easy! Why spend more time than you have to? We all have indeed faced this question where Abstraction is on your right shoulder and Solve-it-stupid sits on the left. Which to listen to and how often? What is your strategy for this? Should you abstract everything?"}
{"_id": "231732", "title": "Difference between class clusters and abstract factory in cocoa", "text": "I have read that Obj-C class clusters are an implementation of the abstract factory. Can anyone explain if there are any differences between the 2 as design patterns. I read somewhere that there are certain restrictions on class clusters that don't apply to traditional abstract factory but it did not give more details."}
{"_id": "22314", "title": "What is the role of an Information Architect?", "text": "I've heard this term bandied about, especially in reference to web development, but I'm having trouble getting a clear understanding of what an Information Architect actually does. Any ideas what their role or deliverables would be?"}
{"_id": "61737", "title": "Using an Apt Repository for Paid Software Updates", "text": "I'm trying to determine a way to distribute software updates for a hosted/on- site web application that may have weekly and/or monthly updates. I don't want the customers who use the on-site product to have to worry about updating it manually I just want it to download and install automatically ala Google Chrome. I'm planning on providing an OVF file with Ubuntu and the software installed and configured. My first thought on how to distributed software is to create six Apt repositories/channels (not sure which would be better at this point) that will be accessed through SSH using keys so if a customer doesn't renew their subscription we can disable their account:   1. Beta - Used internally on test data to check the package for major defects.   2. Internal - Used internally on live data to check the package for defects (dog fooding stage).   3. External 1 - Deployed to 1% of our user base (randomly selected) to check for defects.   4. External 9 - Deployed to 9% of our user base (randomly selected) to check for defects.   5. External 90 - Deployed to the remaining 90% of users.   6. Hosted - Deployed to the hosted environment. It will take a sign off at each stage to move into the next repository in case problems are reported. My questions to the community are:   1. Has anyone tried something like this before?   2. Can anyone see a downside to this type of a procedure?   3. Is there a better way?"}
{"_id": "210600", "title": "Risks of maintaining codebase C++ Builder 6?", "text": "My company has a large software application written in C++ Builder 6. I am a junior developer only one year out of college. My question is:   1. How much technical debt are they in? What are the hazards of working in such an IDE that is no longer supported?"}
{"_id": "183925", "title": "software design interview questions", "text": "I am preparing for an interview at google, and it will involve programming questions as well as design questions. I have done interviews with facebook and amazon, and I didn't do well in the design part of the interview for both companies. I was asked to design a restaurant reservation system, an array of caches, and the facebook friends list. The questions vary in very different ways. Can anyone give me suggestions on how to prepare for this kind of interviews and how to get better at this in general? I wonder if there are places like careercup.com which is very helpful preparing for algorithm interviews, it has some design problems as well, but not nearly enough."}
{"_id": "221745", "title": "Efficient solution for dictionary updates", "text": "Let's start with the problem: There is a large dictionary X that contains {key, value} pairs, i.e.:               X = [{100, 10}, {101, 0}, {103, 0}, {106, 2}, {110, 1}]      Every t seconds, X has to be updated with values from sub dictionary U and 0 set to each value for a key that is not present in new updated U, but was in the previous update. The most important requirements is, that an update has to be performed in such a way, that the minimum number of update operations of each {key, value} pair in dictionary X have been performed, ie. X updated by U where               U = [{100, 10}, {102, 5}, {103, 0}, {105, 1}, {110, 0}]      would become:               X = [{100, 10}, {101, 0}, {102, 5}, {103, 0}, {105, 1}, {106, 2}, {110, 0}]       but only following pairs have been updated/added in X:               {102, 5}     {105, 1}     {110, 0}      To make things a bit more interesting, there are few constraints:   * it is very costly to iterate over dictionary X. Assume X is very large.   * it is very costly to make an update to {key, value} pair so the task is to minimize this cost. So that was the problem stated. Here is my solution: First idea I had was to save the dictionary U after updating X. On the next update I take each key from Uprev and set it to 0 in X.               foreach (var pair in Uprev)     {         X[pair.Key] = 0;     }      After this has been done, I would do a loop to set new values for keys present in new dictionary U:               foreach (var pair in U)     {         if (X.ContainsKey(pair.Key))            X[pair.Key] = pair.Value;         else            X.Add(pair.Key, pair.Value);     }      So ... the question: is there a better solution for the problem I described above? Is it possible to better manage the updates? Any ideas are welcome, so feel free to post anything that comes to mind. Thank you for contribution"}
{"_id": "231734", "title": "Is Java Bytecode interpreted?", "text": "The definition of interpretation (correct me if I'm wrong) is parsing code like so: **1-** Translate currently parsed line to some intermediate language. **2-** Run the translated line. **3-** Move to the next line. **4-** Translate it. **5-** Run it. And so on. If so, why do people say that the JVM **interprets** the Java Bytecode? What it does is **execute** it. The Bytecode is already translated Java source code, so there's no need to translate further. Than why is the term **interpretation** involved? If this term is used because the JVM **executes** the Bytecode **line by line** , well I'd say that any execution does that. Executes the runnable code from top to bottom. Than why use the term **interpretation**? _**Interpretation** as opposed to what?_"}
{"_id": "74741", "title": "How to apply OOP, SOLID principles and Design Patterns in a library which does parallel processing without the caller's knowledge?", "text": "I want to explore the contentions between the two hot topics: Clean code vs. Good performance. (In progress ... please post comments to help me flush out the details of this question. Thanks.) Examples which may help me define the question:   * Windows GDI+ is known to perform work on separate threads, which would have happened in parallel to user's code if run on a multi-processor machine.   * Component Object Model (COM) is a framework which gives class developers the choice to provide parallelizable implementations of interfaces, however bugs which arise from that is not unheard of.   * One way of providing parallelized safety is to ensure that the parallelized work only happen within a single call to the object's method at the outermost API level; the method shouldn't return to the caller until the parallelized work is finished. (Objects and methods which aren't visible to the outside can be parallelized.) Does this make it necessary to build an entire set of flyweight objects just to separate the \"Public Objects\" from the \"Private Objects\"?   * SOLID principles encourage extensibility by allowing library users to provide their own implementations of interfaces (through Dependency Injection). How does the library ensure that the user's implementation satisfies the thread-safety requirements?      * Component Object Model uses \"thread models\" which was an attempt on this issue, however most of the time it only results in deadlocks or failed function calls for the reason that \"you are calling from the wrong thread apartment\"."}
{"_id": "27240", "title": "how often do we need to do appraisal for a developer?", "text": "I have this question since my friend told me that if we have frequent appraisal such as 4 months or 6 months once, people will be turned to a money minded. But I am thinking this in another aspect like, people will be getting feedback and boost quickly than one year appraisal. We do not need to increase the salary much. But the token advancement would help them to get some refreshment."}
{"_id": "205020", "title": "UML sequence diagrams - include", "text": "I'm currently doing my OCPJEA assignment. I have to draw several sequence diagrams for the use cases presented in the documentation. One of the use cases (A) state that after some interaction, the system executes another use case (B). I've already drawn the diagram for B, is there any way in UML2 to show inclusion, or do I have to duplicate all those interactions into A?"}
{"_id": "78890", "title": "Anyone code at a treadmill desk?", "text": "have been thinking about getting a treadmill desk for awhile now but I just don't know if it is possible to code at one. I can see doing a normal computer job while walking very slow but I just don't know if you can write code do it. Like a lot of people I could stand to lose weight and I am just not in shape anymore. I sit at my computer for at least 12 hours a day and then I am on my laptop for a few more hours. I need to do something to help my health. I also have been seeing a lot of reports about the long term health issues related to desk jobs. Like this. Before I drop a few hundred dollars on a new desk I am wondering if anyone has tried a treadmill desk and if so which one?"}
{"_id": "78893", "title": "Project Management Software / 1 maybe 2 developers", "text": "I am looking for software that I can use to \"manage\" multiple projects (5 - 10). Here are the features I would like but any recommendation is welcome.   1. Bug/Feature tracking on a per project basis.   2. Some way to keep all documents, diagrams, specs, requirements, in one place with the project. Better yet a tool where all these things or most of them could be authored.   3. Task management during the development phase with milestones and estimates/actuals.   4. Git integration I have been doing contract work and i have been doing really well for myself as far as getting projects but its becoming VERY hard to manage everything in an efficient manner. I am trying to learn about best practices when it comes to software programming methodologies and the more I read the more i realize that I am just managing these projects poorly. I am getting things done but the more I take on the less \"solid\" everything is. I am afraid if I don't get some good solid tools/practices in place I am going to do my customers and myself a disservice. The problem is that there are SO many options that its hard to weed through them all. I was at a point today where I had decided that I would just code my own (there is some irony here)! Obviously everyone has their likes dislikes I would love to hear from some of you lone programmers and how you manage everything since our needs aren't exactly the same thing that a large team might need. I also want a solution that can scale to 2 maybe 3 developers if I end up hiring some people to help with my work load. Thanks again for your usual insights!"}
{"_id": "78892", "title": "When developing a MVC web application should views or models be created first?", "text": "I have to build a new application from scratch, so I want to implement it using MVC3 and try to follow general best practices as closely as possible. However, I'm developing it as a one man army. Does it make more to create the views first so I have some \"Mockup screens\" then build the Models and controllers? or the other way around?"}
{"_id": "65928", "title": "Is job hopping the best way to keep moving and learning at work?", "text": "Leaving aside anything you could do outside of work like OSS or self study, do you think job hopping is a good way of continuously learning new skills. In this context, my definition of job hopping is every 2-3 years, move companies, possibly even domains. By changing to the right jobs you could in theory learn a new language/framework and get exposure to other domains of knowledge. A quick update: This is not my current situation, nor is it an approach I have followed. The thought just struck me and I thought it was a good question."}
{"_id": "214859", "title": "How do I decide to which class a method should belong", "text": "I have `TopicBusiness.class` and `PostBusiness.class`. I have no problem with deciding into which class methods such as `addPostToDatabase()` or `getAllPostsFromDatabase()` should go. But what about `getAllPostsFromTopic(TopicEntity topic)` or `getNumberOfPostsInTopic(TopicEntity topic)`? Should the parameter be the deciding factor? So when the method takes TopicEntity as parameter it should belong to `TopicBusiness.class`? I am quite puzzled by this. EDIT: Some more info as requested. `TopicBusiness.class` and `PostBusiness.class` are classes holding all the business logic of the application concerning topics and posts respectively - that is fetching the data from database and/or performing some operations on them. `TopicEntity` is data (in this case representing single topic) fetched from database. `getAllPostFromTopic(TopicEntity topic)` gets all posts from database that belong to particular topic, while `getNumberOfPostsInTopic(TopicEntity topic)` performs database query and returns the number of posts that topic passed as parameter consists of."}
{"_id": "214850", "title": "Would a model like this translate well to a document or graph database?", "text": "I'm trying to understand what types of models that I have traditionally persisted relationally would translate well to some kind of NoSQL database. Suppose I have a model with the following relationships:               Product  1-----0..N  Order     Customer 1-----0..N  Order      And suppose I need to frequently query things like All Orders, All Products, All Customers, All Orders for Given Customer, All Orders for Given Product. My feeling is that this kind of model would not denormalize cleanly - If I had `Product` and `Customer` documents with embedded `Orders`, both documents would have duplicate orders. So I think I'd need separate documents for all three entities. Does a characteristic like this typically indicate that a document database is not well suited for a given model? Generally speaking, would a document database perform as well as a relational database in this kind of situation? I know very little about graph databases, but I understand that a graph database handles relationships more performantly than a document database - would a graph database be suited for this kind of model?"}
{"_id": "214851", "title": "Ruby - when to use instance variables vs parameters between methods?", "text": "I'm writing several methods that call other methods. To pass the information I have a couple of choices:   1. Pass the information as parameters   2. Set instance variables so that other methods can access them When should I choose one option over the other? It seems that the first option is good as it is very specific about what is being passed. the downside seems to be that a lot of values are being passed around. The second method doesn't require passing all the values around but seems to lead to a lot of magic where methods set instance variables 'somewhere' Should I always be very explicit about gets passed to other methods in the class? Are there exceptions so this?"}
{"_id": "214855", "title": "Strategies for browser compatibility on web applications in a corporate environment", "text": "With the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 technology, web applications have gained a lot of new tools for a better UI (user interface) interaction, beautiful templates and even responsive layout to fit into tablets and smartphones. Within a corporate environment, those new technologies are required so the company can \"follow\" the IT evolution and their concurrent, but they also want that those new web applications supports old browsers. How should I deal with this situation? By one side we are asked to follow the the evolution of technology, create responsive layouts and use a lot of cool jQuery plugins. On the other hand, we are asked to support old browsers that do not support those new responsive features, plugins or components.   * I would like advice and strategies on how to create \"modern\" web applications that are also supported on old browsers.   * How does your company deal with this situation?   * Is it possible to have the same web application run well and beautifully on old browsers, and be responsive and interactive on newer browsers?"}
{"_id": "165950", "title": "Subset whose sum gets closest to saturating some bound", "text": "I have a problem that boils to down having a set of integers and wanting the subset of those integers whose sum is closest to some target without going over. What's a good algorithm for doing this? Maybe it's even a well known problem whose name I don't know?"}
{"_id": "117456", "title": "I feel sleepy and tired when I encounter problems during a working day, is that normal?", "text": "I think it is kinda strange but I just noticed that I have this odd habit of feeling tired, sleepy and dizzy when I encounter a (programming) problem that I can't solve after a while of trying. It generally shows up when I'm dealing with svn, reading someone else's code or resolving regression issues (old bug reappearing again). To my understanding, this has nothing to do with being exhausted or tired because I just felt brilliant like 30 minutes ago and now, after 30 minutes of wrestling with a problem that I can't (apparently) solve, I suddenly feel an urge to go to sleep. And I really can go to sleep when I feel like that. If I shift my focus to something else or just leave it, then after like 10 minutes or so I feel normal again and am ready to continue. I finally managed to talk about it to a colleague who sits just next to me and he sometimes feels the same way in some extreme cases of constant failures and he also finds it strange and new but there is another person who sits a little farther but he isn't feeling anything like this when he encounters difficulty :-? Ideas? EIDT: I realized the fear of failing the whole project seems to play an important role. Since I'm the agile manager in the team, when I face a problem I can't immediately solve, subconsciously I start to tell myself : this is gonna make the whole thing fail. Specially when regressions happen."}
{"_id": "117455", "title": "BDD to replace the test teams work - how best to do it?", "text": "The system we are developing, using .NET, is extremely large, complex, and some modules are poorly written. We have a large user acceptance test team that is aiming for 100% business scenario coverage, which takes about 6 weeks. Can we use behavior driven development to replace some of the manual tests being done by the test team? How would that information be readable to the test teams so they can be sure it's working? Does BDD replace our integration tests?"}
{"_id": "117452", "title": "What qualifications are most important for an outsourcing manager?", "text": "I am considering hiring someone exclusively to manage outsourcing of relatively small projects on Guru.com or VWorker.com. The person should be located close to me so I can have face-to-face communication and also that he/she gets domain knowledge. The projects will be in a wide variety of technologies and ranging from mission-critical to completely experimental projects. Sometimes deadlines will also be extremely tight. My question is what kind of candidates would be the best at undertaking such a job? Are recently graduates the best? Expert technicians who can recognize and communicate with other experts? Experienced project leaders? An aspect of this is that I want the best cost/benefit ratio, given that experienced project leaders are likely to be much more expensive than recently graduates. I also believe that one aspect of this is that this is quite an unusual organizational structure, so I am not sure that people who are used to the bureaucracy project management in big companies would be able to adapt to such a working environment."}
{"_id": "166603", "title": "Triggering Data Changes in N-Tier", "text": "I've been studying n-tier architectures as of late, particularly in VB.NET with Entity Framework and/or LINQ to SQL. I understand the basic concepts, but have been wondering about best practices in regard to triggering CRUD-type operations from user input/action. So, the arcitecture looks something like the following: [presentation layer] -> [business layer] -> [data layer] -> (database) Getting information from the database into the presentation layer is simple and abstracted. It's just a matter of instantiating a new object from the business layer, which in turn uses the data layer to get at the correct information. However, saving (updating and inserting), and deleting seem to require particular APIs on the relevant business objects. I have to assume this is standard practice, unless a business object will save itself on various operations (which seems inefficient), or on disposal (which seems like it just wouldn't work, or may be unwieldy and unreliable). Should my \"savable\" business objects all implement a particular \"ISavable\" or \"IDatabaseObject\" interface? Is this a recognized (anti-)pattern? Are there other, better patterns I should be using that I'm just unaware of? The TLDR question, I suppose, is **How does the presentation layer trigger database changes?**"}
{"_id": "142854", "title": "Starting software projects", "text": "Always, when I try to start new project, with what I think new ideas, first of all I search the web to try to find some thing same, most of the time (if not all) I find that my ideas of new project have been implemented hundred of times. I think everyone in software industry feel this every day. The question is:   * when should I approve an idea and start building it, although it's implemented hundred of times around the world?    * how I can make my way in trying of build something new?"}
{"_id": "166605", "title": "How do Tortoise svn handle concurrent file updation", "text": "I don't know much about Tortoise SVN, but have been using it for a while. I understand that it is capable of managing concurrent users on same file, but how does it do that? I am working on a file that another user is using concurrently and he committed couple of times before me, Now my files doesn't have the changes he made. Every time i end up in such a situation I gets a conflict and I am stuck. So is there something else I should do instead of just `committing` and causing `conflict`? Is it safe to do a `update` first and then `commit` ? Will I lose my local changes in this case? Please don't beat me up if this is something basic, a link to some tutorial will be useful in that case :)"}
{"_id": "39225", "title": "When is C a better choice than C++?", "text": "I can't imagine that there's any reason not to use the OOP features of C++. It's is just as fast as C, and - what's more important to me - it's transparent, just as C. (I mean \"transparent\" that I know, what is my source is compiled to. Or, I think, I know.) Is there any reason not to use the power of OOP in C programming? I accept only embedded systems or other restricted platforms as exceptions, where no such memory management is available, which is required by C++. I also accept operating system development. Or programs started writing before C++. Okay, that's all. **UPDATE:** the question is just about C vs C++, not C/C++ vs other languages. I'm using C/C++ just in \"final case\"."}
{"_id": "205796", "title": "What should a proper Ready for Sprint definition contain?", "text": "Teams in our company deal with Product Owners who are in such a position that they cannot spend as much time with us, as we would like, to do proper Backlog Grooming. Thus in order to alleviate some of the time constraints we have begun implementing the art of getting stories \"Ready for Sprint\" or in other words getting them into a state where we know/understand enough to take them into a sprint. Unfortunately we are still new to what would be a proper definition of 'Ready For Sprint' and so the question of what would be good to keep in mind when getting a story in the backlog Ready for Sprint? [EDIT] In response to answers and comments by Ryathal and Donal Fellows i would like to try explain that we do not intend to actually build the stories. We would like to apply the practice of getting existing stories \"Ready for Sprint\" as explained by this Blog Post. Product owners should probably be adding to this but as mentioned we are not in a prime position with our product owners (as yet). We have read that you can make definitions such as a story is in Ready state if its effort points are 5 or less, or the story must have Minimum Acceptance Criteria defined, or it must have a Balsamiq Mockup etc. My question is geared towards finding what others have used in their definitions and what has worked for them. :)"}
{"_id": "39878", "title": "How common is pair programming in the workplace?", "text": "I've always been intrigued by pair programming, but in 12 years development I've never worked in a place they have employed this practice, so I have always been sceptical as to how people see it. I wonder whether this is because of money/time (Pointy haired boss spotting two people at one computer working on the same code!!!! how dare they!) or for other reasons?"}
{"_id": "104627", "title": "Why is JavaScript not used for classical application development (compiled software)?", "text": "During my years of web development with JavaScript, I come to the conclusion that it's an incredible powerful language, and you can do amazing things with it. It offers a rich set of features, like:   * Dynamic typing   * First-class functions   * Nested functions   * Closures   * Functions as methods   * Functions as Object constructors   * Prototype-based   * Objects-based (almost everything is an object)   * Regex   * Array and Object literals It seems to me that almost everything can be achieved with this kind of language, you can also emulate OO programming, since it provides great freedom and many different coding styles. With more software-oriented custom functionalities (I/O, FileSystem, Input devices, etc.) I think it will be great to develop applications with. Though, as far as I know, it's only used in web development or in existing softwares as a scripting language only. Only recently, maybe thanks to the V8 Engine, it's been used more for other kind of tasks (see node.js for example). Why until now it's only be relegated only to web development? What is keeping it away from software development?"}
{"_id": "57547", "title": "How do you manage frequent software releases to multiple clients?", "text": "we have a cross-platform middleware product which we typically end up customizing/bug fixing on a per client basis. In some cases, providing updates as often as once/twice per week. We have a lot of trouble efficiently managing and releasing the updates to our clients. I've done some digging, but I can't find anything to specifically address this problem. Can anyone share their experiences - how do you deal with this scenario, or do you know of a good software delivery cms?"}
{"_id": "57542", "title": "What's the *ISTQB* and are they trustable?", "text": "I heard that my co-worker want to get ISTQB certification. But I heard it first time. So it's hard to trust it. In fact I can't understanding the concept of qualification for testing software.   1. What is the organization. What's the value of the certification?   2. How do you think about it? Is it trustable publicly?   3. How many company recognize the certification?"}
{"_id": "223674", "title": "Lead developer unable to do INNER JOIN", "text": "I had worked in the past for a small company developing web applications. Back then the ~~current~~ lead developer, who is also one of the bosses, told me that he is incapable of making a `JOIN` inside a `SQL` query. I was amazed how a person who has developed and maintain big ecommerce site is incapable of doing that. Are database normalization and functional dependencies a waste of time? Are they only necessary in big demanding projects?"}
{"_id": "223671", "title": "Is checking count/size/length less than 0 necessary in modern languages?", "text": "Is checking count/size/length less than 0 necessary in modern languages anymore? For instance, in C# I quote often will check if a collection's count is less than or equal to 0. I assume that this was done in older languages, like C, where you could potentially have a size of less than 0. Is there ever a case where you can have the size/length/count of an object or primitive type be less than 0?"}
{"_id": "227745", "title": "Best way to hide API key in source code", "text": "I need some ideas on how to protect a private API key in an application, specifically in a c# .NET application. Firstly, I understand that it is theoretically impossible to hide anything in the source code, so I came up with another idea, but I'm not sure how plausible it is. Anyway, would it be possible to somehow communicate with a web server to verify the private key and then talk back to the application to confirm that it is a legitimate handshake? I'm have two keys to work with: a public key (as the name suggests, it doesn't have to be treated with the same care as the private), and a private key, which needs to be kept secure from others. Any ideas on how I could do this would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "141505", "title": "Does SRP with ORM provoke SOA?", "text": "Sorry about the many abbreviations in the title... My observation is that applications built with an object-relational mapping like Hibernate tend to follow a service-oriented architecture instead of an object-oriented one. Some people (e.g. here) say the Single Responsibility Principle suggests that dealing with reading/writing attributes of persisted objects as well as creating and finding these objects is enough responsibility for one class. Any business logic using such an object should go to separate classes. That leads us to a design with two separate types of classes: state-full but dumb record keeping ones, and logic bearing but state-less ones. Here's why I don't like this kind of design: (1) To me, this separation of data and code is not a goal of object-oriented but is the design of service-oriented architecture. OOD says that operations should go to the classes where the attributes it uses are defined at. (2) Also, it's a bogus solution: whenever the structure of one of the state- full classes changes, I'll have to change all the service classes that use it, too. If I had the logic inside those classes, the change would stay in one class. (3) I'm using an ORM framework which pretty much generates all the code necessary for accessing the persisted data for me into a class. If I wasn't adding the business logic to it, the class would stay rather \"empty\", i.e. it would contain the generated code only. I know that many programmers follow the service-oriented design, especially when using frameworks that suggest this, like Spring. If I were using such a framework, I'd go with the separation of code and data, too. I don't want to provoke a discussion whether SOA is good or not. I'm interested in the question whether it's good OOD (as per SRP) to separate business logic from classes representing entities."}
{"_id": "250644", "title": "SQL scripts in TFS without putting them into solutions?", "text": "I am working on adding existing SQL scripts to version control. I have Team Foundation Server 2012 set up with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 with the MSSCCI. I am fairly new to TFS so I do not know if I am missing an easier way of doing things. Managing SSIS projects and even SSRS projects makes perfect sense with TFS, as a project is needed to use or modify it in Visual Studio/BIDS. You add the project to source control then check in much like saving a solution/project normally on your local machine. SQL scripts seem a little more cumbersome to use with TFS. It seems like I have to create SQL Server solutions to add any sort of sql script to my source control from SQL Server Management Studio (the add to source control functionality). While I can create new solutions in SSMS and add them to source control quite easily, it is a little annoying to have to add all of my existing scripts, which are simply .sql files, to new solutions. Ideally I would like some way to just add the scripts to source control, be able to modify them in SSMS, then check them back in somewhat easily. If this were subversion, I could just commit and check in the single file in Windows Explorer and be done with it, managing and modifying the file however I want. Is there an equivalent in TFS to this?"}
{"_id": "204773", "title": "What makes JVM so much versatile to support so many JVM languages?", "text": "JVM supports so many languages other than Java like `Groovy,Clojure,Scala` etc which are functional languages unlike Java(I am referring to _Java before Version 8_ where `Lambda's` are not supported) that doesn't support functional capabilities.On a high level what makes the JVM so versatile that it can support both Object Oriented as well as Functional languages?"}
{"_id": "187974", "title": "How bad would it be to obtain a lock on every object?", "text": "Imagine a hypothetical programming environment that is largely like Java or .NET, i.e. object-oriented, garbage-collected, etc., but with one small change: Every time you call a method on an object, a lock is obtained so that no two threads can execute methods on the same object at the same time. The lock is relinquished when the method returns. The lock is also temporarily relinquished when you call Thread.Join (this is just to prevent certain kinds of deadlock situations). How severe would the performance impact of that really be? How badly would this interfere with concurrency? Are there any algorithms/programs that it would be impossible to parallelise in this kind of environment? In my previously posted question, a link was given to this page about the GIL in CPython which claims severe performance and concurrency problems with this. However, it also states that this environment uses reference counting and the increment/decrement of that reference count is an operation that obtains such a lock. Let's not assume that; .NET's GC is mark-and-sweep, not reference- counted."}
{"_id": "216796", "title": "How to estimate tasks in scrum?", "text": "Let's say we have a backlog of User Stories, each with an estimated number of Story Points, and now we're doing the Sprint Planning. Now, the Stories should be broken down into tasks and many Scrum resources suggest that each task should be estimated in person-hours. Since all questions have been discussed by the team at this point, estimating a task should not take longer than a minute. However, since a task should not be longer than a day, assuming a three week sprint with 8 developers means 120 tasks, and taking two hours only for estimations seems to be a bit much to me. I know that experienced teams can skip or short-cut task estimations, but let's say we're not at that stage yet. In your experience, how many tasks are there in a sprint and how long should it take to estimate all of them? (Estimating only half of them doesn't make much sense, does it?) Clarifications: I know the answer depends on sprint length and team size, so let's assume 8 developers and three weeks. The numbers mentioned might be rules of thumb, but even if they are off (eg, more tasks, less time needed to estimate each) we will end up with about 2 hours for the estimation. So maybe the question should be \"What percentage of the planning meeting should be reserved for pure task estimation, and don't we have better things to do?\""}
{"_id": "187979", "title": "Is there a formal enumeration of the ways that components can be coupled / depend on eachother?", "text": "Say you have               class A {     }          class B {     }      One type dependency is \"method parameter\":               class A {     }          class B {       public void M(A a) {       }     }      Another is \"method returns\":               class A {     }          class B {       public A M() {       }     }      Then C, an adapter from A to B, could be identified by a class that exhibits both of the above dependency characteristics:               class C {       public B M(A a) {       }     }      I just seems like something that could be approached with some formal methods and I'd be interested to read about them if they are out there?"}
{"_id": "182337", "title": "Is Neo4j graph database sufficient to itself for all query types?", "text": "Neo4j eases relationship traversals => especially useful for a social network for instance. But are there any scenarios when it's advised to associate an additional relational database (or other NoSQL database that isn't specifically oriented graph) for specific query types. In short, can Neo4j be sufficient to itself for all query tasks?"}
{"_id": "37440", "title": "Learning high level languages", "text": "I've been actively programming with assembly but now I'm losing motivation. My productivity is simply ridiculously low compared to what others seem to have with high level languages. I know I should start using high level languages but I always return to assembly for some reason. How could I get used to higher level languages and finally become productive? I'd really want to master at least one."}
{"_id": "249928", "title": "How to make a good bug report for a bug that does not appear on every user?", "text": "I found a bug on my XFCE and some other can't repeat the bug, namely http://askubuntu.com/questions/495947/a-logo-disappear-in-xubuntu . How should I report it to the developers if those can't repeat is as well?"}
{"_id": "138175", "title": "Getting A Logo And Graphics For An Open Source Project", "text": "I have been working on an open source project for about 2 years. I would like to create a web site, but I am on essentially a zero budget. I also need a logo. My question: How should an open source developer go about improving the project's \"visual appeal\" without spending a lot of money? Are there graphic designers willing to donate time? How does one find them (if they exist). With a project you spend so much time on - you want to give it a nice looking web site so that it will grab people's eye. On the other hand, you don't want to spend money on something you are giving away for free. Has anyone had any personal experiences they can share?"}
{"_id": "249925", "title": "Pros and cons for choosing between different return types", "text": "This is in context of a client-server architecture, although I don't think the architectural setting is needed to put up the problem. I have a function whose output can be classified into different categories:               function makeCar() { /* make a car */ }      Now, in order to decide the structure for the return value of `makeCar`, I have several options: ## Option 1 Return integer values and have a data structure that maps the integer values to different types of cars. Example:                   codeToCar = {                      \"1\": {                            \"model\": \"Jaguar XJS\",                             \"color\": \"Black\",                             \"year\": \"1975\"                           },                       \"2\": {                            \"model\": \"Chevrolet Camaro\",                             \"color\": \"Blue\",                             \"year\": \"1966\"                           }                       ...                     }      In this case, the function `makeCar` would return the keys of `codeToCar`. ## Option 2 Return the car object itself and do away with the integer codes. ## Option 3 Return a hybrid structure with some integer codes and some specific values. Example:                   codeToColor = {                        \"1\": \"Black\",                         \"2\": \"Blue\",                         ...                       }               codeToMaker = {                        \"1\": \"Jaguar\",                         \"2\": \"Chevrolet\",                         ...                       }       In this case, the function `makeCar` could return                  {         \"color\": 2,          \"maker\": 1,          \"model\": \"Camaro\"         }      What are the pros and cons of using the different options? ## Edit: I guess I should have elaborated the context more. So basically the function `makeCar` executes on a client browser and the return value of the function is passed to the server in an HTTP request. Any representation for the return type of `makeCar` on the client side would ultimately be translated to a full object representation ( **option 2** ) on the server. The two parameters I chose for comparing between the different options are:   1. Number of bytes transferred over HTTP   2. Extensibility in case new properties are added to cars or new values are added to an existing car property. I, however, would also be interested to know what other parameters could be used ( _in the current context_ ) to compare the options available, alongwith choosing between the different options based on the chosen parameters."}
{"_id": "84762", "title": "How should I keep track of an elements' state within a window/view?", "text": "I am trying to implement a view that contains many elements, whose state change depending on the actions you perform on it. I guess this is something that people often run into so I would like to know what approach works best for you. What I usually do is define several states for my view: {Loaded,Initialized,...} and then set the state of each element for that state. The thing is even the most trivial event,a click on a button for example, makes the state change, so I need a lot of different states, with many of them containing duplicate information since they are very similar to each other. This seems very repetitive and unefficient but has worked for me up until now, when I need a better way of doing this kind of stuff. This issue must have been around for quite a while, so it would be nice to know people's tricks & tips, best-practices, and documents of reference."}
{"_id": "84764", "title": "Could an internal rep, voting and badges encourage good programming practices?", "text": "Just thinking out aloud - we programmers love all this voting/badges/rep stuff so could a scheme like this be introduced into a companies code review process to encourage better coding. Something like   * You (or others on your behalf) can post a review (could be snippet, single commit or series of) for a code review   * Others can comment on it (would be similar to answers in SE)   * Badges can be given/suggested (some would be good, some would be bad like \"Comment Desert\" or some such)   * You can vote up/down on the code itself and the comments and badges (e.g. if someone suggested a badge and you did/didn't agree) The aim of a scheme like this would be   * Introduce a bit of fun to encourage the use of code reviews   * Improve quality (in this scheme both code reviewee and reviewers are likely to learn)   * Reduce the chance of code reviews sparking 'ego wars'   * Give some metrics to _help_ measure individual performance Could this work? Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "249921", "title": "Have there been studies on the effectiveness of OOP in managing software complexity?", "text": "OOP is often regarded as an effective strategy of managing complexity in software, as opposed to non-OOP procedural programming. Have there been any studies testing this notion? Is it proven that OOP often helps manage complexity in large projects?"}
{"_id": "3425", "title": "Which programming languages doesn't use operator precedence besides Lisp like languages?", "text": "And what do you think about operator precedences? Would be harder programming in language where the operations are executed in sequential order? Ex.: 2 + 3 * 4 == 20 2 + (3 * 4) == 24 Ok, Lisp family has not precedences by definition. Let's gonna talk about procedural and object oriented languages using this \"feature\"."}
{"_id": "70533", "title": "Costs of Switching to Java", "text": "I'm a C# dev and I have plans of starting to develop apps targeting Android, which of course means Java. I have heard good things about Mono for Android and the idea of reusing my skill set is appealing, however the licensing cost (for now) is a bit prohibitive to me. On the other hand, from what I can see, Java is very similar to C#, so I'm predicting that shifting my skills to it will be more or less easy (easier than shifting to Obj-C I guess). Am I wrong in assuming that? Are there any hidden costs I'm blind to?"}
{"_id": "167556", "title": "In a team practicing Domain Driven Design, should the whole team participate in Stakeholder meetings?", "text": "In my experience, a Software Development Team that comprises:   * 1 Project Manager   * 1 Tech Lead   * 1 - 2 Senior Dev   * 2 - 3 Junior Dev (Fresh grad) Only the **Tech Lead & PM (and/or Senor Dev/s)** will participate in a meeting with **Clients, Domain Experts, Client's technical resource**. I can think of the ff potential pitfalls:   * Important info gets lost      1. Human error (TL/PM might forgot to disseminate info due to pressure or plain human error)     2. Non-verbal info (maybe a presentation using a diagram presented by Domain Expert)   * Maintaining Ubiquitous language is harder to build since not all team members get to hear the non-dev persons   * Potential of creative minds are not fully realized (Personally, I am more motivated to think/explore when I am involved with these important meetings) Advantages of this approach:   * Only one point of contact   * Less time spent on meetings? Honestly, I am biased & against this approach. I would like to hear your opinions. Is this how you do it in your team?"}
{"_id": "199278", "title": "Binary Search Programming implementation", "text": "Binary Search, as we all know requires the elements to be sorted. But we have to take care of unsorted elements too, in the worst case. If the input size is very large, is it a good idea to sort the elements everytime? Can we not just check the elements that they are not sorted or not and proceed to sorting and proceed to sorting only if they are unsorted?"}
{"_id": "167559", "title": "Estimation Techniques for Linux Kernel Development", "text": "I am working in Linux Kernel area and my work includes: code study / Understanding Porting (say from one kernel version to another kernel version) Implementation of new kernel module / Device driver How to do estimation in such Linux Kernel assignments? Is there any technique? How the community is doing?"}
{"_id": "70538", "title": "Is Ubuntu workable as a laptop for an IT consultant?", "text": "I work as a consultant programmer, typically in large businesses. I use a Windows Laptop, and many of my colleagues use a Mac. My personal preference would be to run Ubuntu if I could have complete control over my development environment. But I will have occasional need for Microsoft specific products, especially IE. My colleagues that use a Mac often run Windows on a virtual machine for these situations. My question is: Is Ubuntu a workable solution for the laptop of an enterprise programmer? For example, is it as easy to run Windows on a VM on Ubuntu as it is on a Mac? Has anyone out there tried this? Is there any particular reason why Ubuntu would not serve as well as a Mac for development in this environment? Note that I am not doing .NET development, so I am typically dealing with Java that is going to be run on an Apache server and used by clients running Windows."}
{"_id": "70539", "title": "What language does Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen use?", "text": "![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3ZXno.jpg) What language, if any, is used in this book? My school is currently using a terrible book for the algorithms course that I have to take next year and I'd like to convince the department head that Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen is a much, much better book."}
{"_id": "209074", "title": "Is it legal to imitate how an API looks?", "text": "I want to make an open-source graph thing which looks and behaves very similarly to Google Visualization API, but it would be based on Flot. Is this legal, or must I not imitate Google Visualization API?"}
{"_id": "108992", "title": "What does a company typically expect from a Perl developer?", "text": "Are there any **common expectations** from perspective employers when they hire a Perl developer? For a student who likes Perl and Linux and would like to get a job as Perl developer, what would you recommend to learn? **I am looking for things that are generic and applicable to most/all Perl positions** , as opposed to specific details of a given company's requirements. In other words, what are the things I should be able to to/know to become more attractive to ANY company looking for a Perl developer."}
{"_id": "14176", "title": "How Does Download Size Affect Potential Users of Your Product", "text": "Does anyone know (or, I guess, I have gut feeling about) how the download size of a software product affects potential users, bandwidth not withstanding? For example: Does a bigger download make them believe that is it more full- featured than it is (like huge .NET Runtimes if deployed with your package)? Reason is, I'm developing a VSTO add-in where there is my add-in (small MB), the VSTO run-time, .NET runtime, and Primary Interops. This could make it more than 70 MB in total size, just for an add-in that does a couple of things well. _But that's all they are - just a couple of things._ With VSTO deployments, I know I could deploy a smaller package size by assuming they've got the .NET runtime (and when they don't, initialize the download/install of that, but it seems like a clunky way to make just an ass out of me). What I really want is for people to just download the app (the trial version) to see if they like it. Is there some kind of magic happy threshold - like users of non-big name apps are more likely to download something that is under 20 MB than 50 MB?"}
{"_id": "71663", "title": "How to get GPS enabled device angle", "text": "I am planning to buy a GPS enabled android phone and develop an Augmented Reality application (which will point the locations in front of camera). All i found about GPS is that it just tells the location of the device, how do i get the direction where camera is pointing, and height of device? how to make compass (2D, 3D) with GPS enabled phone? Is responsibility of phone to tell the direction? **(please correct, if i asked this question at wrong place)**"}
{"_id": "182218", "title": "Stack and heap - dynamic allocation question", "text": "Sources usually mention that dynamically created variables are allocated on the heap, while functions' variables on the stack. Also the ones on the stack cease to exist automatically when e.g. the function which contains the variable exits. If I understand correctly, data fields of class are on the heap. I do not understand, what is meant by 'dynamic'? As I see it, when the code is running, anything being created is created dynamically on the fly, be it function variables or objects with variables inside them. I would be glad for simple explanation. Thanks"}
{"_id": "232426", "title": "A module which is used by most other modules", "text": "I am pursuing object oriented design. So we don't want to use globals but yet sometime we have a module that most other modules use. This means we have to just pass it to all other modules and this can be literally all modules!               class Logger     {     public:         Logger(void);         ~Logger(void);     };               class Calculator     {     public:         Calculator(Logger *logger);         ~Calculator(void);     };               class Taxation     {     public:         Taxation(Logger *logger);         ~Taxation(void);     };      So the idea is that the `Calculator` and `Taxation` modules use the `Logger` module to log everything. Similarly most other modules will use it too, and logging is required everywhere. Is this method okay or should `Logger` be global instead?"}
{"_id": "232425", "title": "What Is The Process of Creating A Bug Bar?", "text": "In my company, we're working on adopting the Microsoft Secure Development Lifecycle, and part of the MSDL process involves establishing security and privacy bug bars at the onset of a project. I've heard the concept of a bug bar prior to MSDL, and I understand that it's essentially a definition of what level/amount of bugs you're willing to accept in a final product, but I've never understood how to creating a bug bar for a project. Are there any well documented processes for establishing bug bars that I can learn from? I've tried doing some Googling for examples or real world scenarios of projects defining bug bars at the onset of a project, but I can't seem to get any good results or tips on the process of establishing a bug bar. There are MSDL examples of what appear to be completed bug bars, but I'm interested in learning about the process of defining something like this. For example, for those that have done something like this before, have you defined bugs bars in a very specific way (e.g. saying \"There shall be no unauthorized file system access: reading from the file system\"), or have you taken a deferred approach of saying when we find bugs we'll rate them on a 1 to 5 scale (5 being the most severe), establish now that no bugs above a 3 shall be shipped, and leave your ranking of bugs until they're discovered? I feel like the trying to do the former is a foolish and impossible activity, but the later is prone to bias towards leniency when a project is coming down to the wire. Again, to wrap all of that up into a succinct question, can anyone provide me with a well documented approach for defining/creating bug bars?"}
{"_id": "232422", "title": "How to completely avoid business logic in DAL?", "text": "In our ASP.NET MVC application, we try really hard to separate concerns to each layer (we use DDD). Nevertheless, it seems that we can't avoid having at least some business logic in DAL. For instance, there are named objects, where business requirement is that each name must be unique (but the name isn't a key). If there is a request to create new named object, the service checks whether some object with that name exists in repository, if it doesn't, factory creates new object and repository persists it (we use EF for repositories and stored procedures for query objects). The problem is with race conditions - if two requests come concurrently (it's unlikely, but possible), both requests want to create new object under the same name, in this case both checks come out negative and two objects with the same name would be created. So far, we handle that with constrains in SQL database, so if something like this happens, an exception is thrown in repository - but this approach is simply wrong, since such requirement is strictly business requirement and it shouldn't bubble to persistence layer; if we change such requirement, e.g. that names become case sensitive, such constrain would also have to be changed, etc.). How to implement such scenario correctly? Thanks."}
{"_id": "106176", "title": "What is the best way to validate the following data?", "text": "Lets say I receive an xml request that is sent to my web service and this request contains some data in it such as Hotel Room/Rate pairs (Room = Double Queen, Rate = 10%). The database has all of these Room/Rate pairs stored, so when the xml request comes in, I have to validate them to see if the request contains both the room and the rate in the database. If I receive one room/rate pair and it is not in the database, I fail the message and send back an error response, but if I receive 3 room/rate pairs for example, and 2 are found in the database, but one is not, I would process the succussfull ones and send back warnings for the ones that were not found. The other scenario is if I receive 3 room/rate pair and they all are not found in the database, then I want to send back an error message. What is the best way to approach these scenarios?"}
{"_id": "232429", "title": "Progress bar for unknown number of items", "text": "I am working on a survey-based feature in our application and the survey has branching points at any given question depending on the answer given. Each path that a branch can take may not have the same number of questions. So if we evaluated each possible path that can be taken, you may end up with a different number of total questions answered each time. I've been told a progress bar is required for the survey, however I can't imagine how a progress bar could provide meaningful data in this context. We do not know how many questions must be answered until the survey ends without hindsight. Can anyone recommend a good logical solution to implementing a progress bar for such a feature? I don't need specifics. The UI system I'm using, the language I'm using, all of that is irrelevant. I want a strictly mathematical solution to this problem, should one exist. If not, then using things like estimations, averaging, or other \"guesstimates\" are also good but last resorts. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "247079", "title": "How can I cancel all running mysql queries in a web application?", "text": "I am running a web application which has to scan (mysql query on a particular column) a huge MySQL table, which has over 100,000 records. The problem I find that when a user requests another page from the same web application while the results are being fetched from the scan, the browser takes a long time to display the page. How can I cancel the scan (or the mysql query) while the new page is being requested?"}
{"_id": "188895", "title": "Using natural language grammar in fluent API", "text": "I'm tinkering with a query abstraction over WebSQL/Phonegap Database API, and I find myself both drawn to, and doubtful of, defining a fluent API that mimics the use of natural English language grammar. It might be easiest to explain this via examples. The following are all valid queries in my grammar, and comments explain the intended semantic:               //find user where name equals \"foo\" or email starts with \"foo@\"     find(\"user\").where(\"name\").equals(\"foo\").and(\"email\").startsWith(\"foo@\")          //find user where name equals \"foo\" or \"bar\"     find(\"user\").where(\"name\").equals(\"foo\").or(\"bar\");          //find user where name equals \"foo\" or ends with \"bar\"     find(\"user\").where(\"name\").equals(\"foo\").or().endsWith(\"bar\");          //find user where name equals or ends with \"foo\"     find(\"user\").where(\"name\").equals().or().endsWith(\"foo\");          //find user where name equals \"foo\" and email is not like \"%contoso.com\"     find(\"user\").where(\"name\").equals(\"foo\").and(\"email\").is().not().like(\"%contoso.com\");          //where name is not null     find(\"user\").where(\"name\").is().not().null();          //find post where author is \"foo\" and id is in (1,2,3)     find(\"post\").where(\"author\").is(\"foo\").and(\"id\").is().in(1, 2, 3);          //find post where id is between 1 and 100     find(\"post\").where(\"id\").is().between(1).and(100);      * * * **Edit based on Quentin Pradet's feedback** : In addition it seems, the API would have to support both plural and singular verb forms, so:               //a equals b     find(\"post\").where(\"foo\").equals(1);          //a and b (both) equal c     find(\"post\").where(\"foo\").and(\"bar\").equal(2);      For the sake of question, let's presume that I haven't exhausted all possible constructs here. Let's also presume that I can cover _most_ correct English sentences - after all, the grammar itself is limited to the verbs and conjuctions defined by SQL. * * * **Edit regarding grouping** : One \"sentence\" is one group, and the precedence is as defined in SQL: left to right. Multiple groupings could be expressed with multiple `where` statements:               //the conjunctive \"and()\" between where statements is optional     find(\"post\")       .where(\"foo\").and(\"bar\").equal(2).and()       .where(\"baz\").isLessThan(5);      * * * As you can see, the definition of each method is dependent on the grammatical context it is in. For example the argument to \"conjunction methods\" `or()` and `and()` can either be left out, **or** refer to a field name **or** expected value. To me this feels very intuitive, but I would like you hear your feedback: is this a good, useful API, or should I backpedal to more straighforward implementation? For the record: this library will also provide a more conventional, non-fluent API based on configuration objects."}
{"_id": "188892", "title": "What is the preferred way of communicating between applications on the same system?", "text": "I'm designing a system that is built on several small applications written in python, some of these will be services and others will be programs that only run during special situations. What I need to achieve is to let the server communicate to a service when a certain event occurs with some small amount of data. So that the service knows about the new situation and can take the appropriate action, sometimes immediately and sometimes in the future. I've been looking at memcached, but it seems like an overkill solution for my system (which is just a few separate applications running on a raspberry pi), or writing to files and using something like pyinotify but I don't think that is very elegant and finally I've been thinking about storing state in a database which I also don't like very much. Are there any preferred ways to handle this sort of communication between processes that I haven't thought of(I'm sure there is) or which of the above mentioned ones would be the smartest to go with?"}
{"_id": "76500", "title": "How do cloud platforms-as-a-service measure CPU time?", "text": "I'm currently assessing Google App Engine, and one of the answers from Hidden limitations of Google App Engine? stated: > Performance will surprise you. GAE is optimized for many tiny queries and > you get warned if a query takes any CPU time at all. You get 6.5 (at last > check) free hours per day, but it's a mystical number and you should test. > > You'll find that time as you measure it doesn't relate to the CPU or > datastore CPU time, because (for example) under the covers there might be > multiple machines updating indexes during deletes/updates. Some users have > found huge CPU usage when uploading bulk data - many hours of usage for e.g. > 20 min of real time. > > Your Java instance might need to be powered-up if it hasn't been hit in (I > think) 20 minutes. The benefit is that they can pass their smart management > on to you as cheaper costs, but it does mean you'll experience a short > delay, and see a high CPU warning on the first request in a while. > > For many cases, Python datastore access is faster than Java JDO. You'll > likely find that using the low-level API for Java faster. > > Some developers seem to have experienced more datastore errors thank you > would expect (around 0.4-1% maybe?). I haven't yet. I'm wondering what factors go into determining a PaaS's CPU time (like, in this case, the 6.5 hours free that you get with GAE). For example, does it include the total time it takes for the database to transfer data over to the client? Do the costs under this model increase dramatically as you get more users?"}
{"_id": "200843", "title": "SMTP traffic forward/relay?", "text": "We have three different networks. Regular, Trusted, Secure. Regular has access to the internet and trusted. Trusted has access to regular, internet and Secure. Secure has access to Trusted. We used to have a local SMTP server but the powers that be decided to move it, externally. Now the secure network does not have access to it. For my own home grown code that runs in secure I have written a .Net Web service to send email. This works great. The problem is that we cannot modify canned applications the best we can do is change the server address and the port of the SMTP server. I set out to write my own SMTP server that basically forwards the message to the external SMTP server. Probably easy enough but it will take some time. I am hoping someone out there knows of a solution that we can purchase or another way of doing what we need."}
{"_id": "188898", "title": "Will a program ever crash if the main loop is put in a try/catch block", "text": "If we have a class main and the constructor of main constructs our setupclass and we put this class in a try catch in main. Theoratically Will all errors go into catch? If they will how will it effect the performance and mantainability? Will the application be crash free?"}
{"_id": "33920", "title": "Does your team develop their supporting tools or this should be outsourced out of it?", "text": "By supporting tools, I mean:   * **reference data manager** , like virus definition for anti-virus software   * **test data generator**   * **level builders** for games   * **simulators** or advanced mocking systems > Does the team building the `core product` (in the case above, the game or > the anti-virus) should be part of the development of the `supporting tools` > significantly, or this is a task you would outsourced out of the team to > help it focus on the product? I don't have enough experience to evaluate the pros & cons of each, so I'm hopping you would come up with personal experiences to share, or even studies or papers you read on the subject."}
{"_id": "230370", "title": "ASP.NET MVC SoC when dealing with back end objects (design decision)", "text": "I had a discussion with some peers and even some technical leads in the team around this and Im all for the purist MVC approach. Especially when the project is in its infant stages (its easy to implement a pattern going forward). Im a firm believer that anything to do with the back end should be kept separate from the Views, Models and also the View-Models. A final decision was made to go with using the objects deemed pass-through because they are used everywhere, from the UI all the way back to the back end platform which handles the actual request. Here is a sample illustration of what is going to be implemented: MVC stack <-> Back end platform <-> Can either talk to a database or another 3rd party service And in the above example, a back end request object can be made in the controller level and passed through the the back end platform and there it can get adapted to suit either a database or another service. And when the database/3rd party service responds, its response is taken and adapted to one of our own types. This type will then be returned to the MVC stack. The Views and the ViewModels just use these back end platform types. What Id like to see done: Id like for the controller to pass on the responsibility to an adaptor or indeed a service layer which is responsible for taking in POCOs and creating back end platform objects. Create the request, send it off to the Back end platform. And when it responds, adapt the response into a View or a ViewModel and send it back to the controller. Objects are injected into the controller so its simply a matter of passing the POCOs to another layer to take responsibility of creating requests, sending it off and then returning a response which consists of a View or a ViewModel. Pros and cons. With the current implementation, its convenient and given that we (my company) owns the code that goes from front-end to the back end that gets used. It saves time. Which we don't have much of to get the job done. I don't see the separation of layers here. With the implementation that Id like to see done, I believe it approaches the SoC a bit more and adds down on another layer of adaptation. This is a bit more work. And, from a pure MVC point of view, its using the back end platform objects which are being used in the back end (although it was assumed that these objects will also be used in the front end). I realise this is long and doest have pretty pictures. Apologies. Id like to know what you out there would have done. Cheers."}
{"_id": "230374", "title": "Test Data in a Distributed System", "text": "A question that has been vexing me lately has been about how to effectively test (end-to-end) features in a distributed system. Particuarly, how to effectively manage (through time) test data for feature testing. The system in question is a typical SOA setup. The composition is done in JavaScript when call to several REST APIs. Each service is built as an independent block. Each service has some kind of persistent storage (SQL Server in most cases). The main issue at the moment is how to approach test data when testing end-to- end features. Functional end-to-end testing occurs through the UI, and it is therefore necessary for test data to be set up before the test run (this could be manual or automated testing). As is typical in a distributed system, identifiers from one service are used as a link in another service. So, some level of synchronization needs to be present in the data to effectively test. What is the best way to manage and set up this data after a successful deployment to a test environment? For example, is it better to manage this test data inside each service? Or package it together with the testing suite? Does that testing suite exist as a separate project? I'm interested in design guidance about how to store and manage this test data as the application features evolve."}
{"_id": "184404", "title": "NodeJS as an avenue towards learning JavaScript", "text": "I'm a backend programmer who works mainly in Python. I'll probably never want to be a full time front end developer, but with the goal of growing my skill set, I would like to become at least passably proficient in JavaScript. It seems like a language that is wearing a lot of hats nowadays, and if nothing else, I'd like to a little more knowledgable about 'their world' when I'm working with front end guys. We're using NodeJS for some server side work at my company, and I was curious about it. I've found a few good tutorials and it seems interesting. It seems like it might be a good way to familiarize myself with JavaScript, since it comes at it from an angle that I understand -- server side programming. But I am also a little worried that if I learn both at once, I won't be able to keep track of what's 'Stock JavaScript' vs features that are particular to NodeJS. What do you guys think? Is bootstrapping myself into JavaScript familiarity by learning NodeJS a good idea? Or will I just confuse myself if I jump into Node without a solid understanding of the fundamentals of JavaScript?"}
{"_id": "143189", "title": "I can't program because the code I am using uses old coding styles. Is this normal to programmers?", "text": "I have my first real job as programmer, but I can't solve any problems because of the coding style used. The code here:   * Does not have comments   * Does not have functions (50, 100, 200, 300 or more lines executed in sequence)   * Uses a lot of `if` statements with a lot of paths   * Has variables that make no sense (eg.: `cf_cfop`, `CF_Natop`, `lnom`, `r_procod`)   * Uses an old language (Visual FoxPro 8 from 2002), but there are new releases from 2007. I feel like I have gone back to 1970. Is it normal for a programmer familiar with OOP, clean-code, design patterns, etc. to have trouble with coding in this old-fashion way? **EDIT** : All the answers are very good. For my (un)hope, appears that there are a lot of this kind of code base around the world. A point mentioned to all answers is refactor the code. Yeah, I really like to do it. In my personal project, I always do this, but... I can't refactor the code. Programmers are only allowed to change the files in the task that they are designed for. Every change in old code must be keep commented in the code (even with Subversion as version control), plus meta information (date, programmer, task) related to that change (this became a mess, there is code with 3 used lines and 50 old lines commented). I'm thinking that is not only a code problem, but a management of software development problem."}
{"_id": "112179", "title": "Developing scalable applications using Agile methods", "text": "Maybe someone can share from his experience about developing an application that is meant to scale big time where just throwing more money at better hardware isn't a realistic option using development methodologies such as SCRUM and XP.   1. Did you need to rewrite substantial parts of your app because of current framework couldn't scale enough to fit current sprint's stories? how do you avoid that?    2. When do you do stress (or load) testing?    3. In what stage did you make your SMART(TM) design concerning bleeding edge requirements?    4. Did you add more stages to the dev-cycle of write-a-test, code-to-pass-test, refactor?    5. Did you just refactor everything in the end to meet demands?"}
{"_id": "234861", "title": "Does design by contract imply correct output?", "text": "Design by Contract says, in terms of the function talking: \"you give me all the right parameters and I'll give you exactly this kind of data\" ...in essence. So, given that, should I use up resources checking the output? I should check for properties that the function does not guarantee its output possesses, but the properties the function guarantees need not be checked, right? Here's an example:               class Transition_Manager {         string str = generate_non_null_string();         process_using_a_function_that_can't_handle_null_strings( str );     }"}
{"_id": "234860", "title": "Are there flavours of OOP where some or all of the SOLID principles are antithetical to clean code?", "text": "I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine about OOP in video game development. I was explaining the architecture of one of my games which, to my friend's surprise, contained many small classes and several abstraction layers. I argued that this was the result of me focusing on giving everything a Single Responsibility and also to loosen the coupling between components. His concern was that the large number of classes would translate to a maintenance nightmare. My view was that it would have the exact opposite effect. We proceeded to discuss this for what seemed like centuries, eventually agreeing to disagree, saying that perhaps there were cases where SOLID principles and proper OOP didn't actually mix well. Even the Wikipedia entry on SOLID principles states that they're _guidelines_ that help to writing maintainable code and that they are part of an overall strategy of agile and adaptive programming. So, my question is: **Are there cases in OOP where some or all of the SOLID principles do not lend themselves to clean code?** I can imagine right away that the Liskov Substitution Principle could possibly conflict with another flavour of safe inheritance. That is to say, if someone devised another useful pattern implemented through inheritance, it is quite possible the LSP might be in direct conflict with it. Are there others? Perhaps certain types of projects or certain target platforms work better with a less SOLID approach? **Edit:** I'd just like to specify that I'm not asking how to improve my code ;) The only reason I mentioned a project in this question was to give a little context. My question is about OOP and design principles in _general_. _If you're curious about my project, seethis._ **Edit 2:** I imagined this question would be answered in one of 3 ways:   1. Yes, there exist OOP design principles which partially conflict with SOLID   2. Yes, there exist OOP design principles which completely conflict with SOLID   3. No, SOLID is the bee's knees and OOP will forever be better with it. But, as with everything, it's not a panacea. Drink responsibly. Options 1 and 2 would have likely generated long and interesting answers. Option 3, on the other hand, would be a short, uninteresting, but overall reassuring, answer. We seem to be converging onto option 3."}
{"_id": "234867", "title": "Can a Java interface declaration enforce parameter properties?", "text": "As far as I know, declaring an interface is like so:               public interface Roots_Squares {         public double square_root( double value );     }      Now... how do you enforce value to have non-negative values? Such a function should avoid negative values right? If someone creates a class that implements this, and that implementation does not handle negative values, and then I use their class with a negative value... well, things break. It then becomes my responsibility to check for negatives when I'm pretty sure the implementor should do the checking."}
{"_id": "208670", "title": "Web programming most effort?", "text": "To create a website   * I create Psd Files for the design (Phase 1)   * I Convert these Psd's to html/css static webpages (Phase 2)   * I add some javascript to these webpages (Phase 3)   * I start the IDE \"visual web developper\" to start developping (Phase 4) I have studied computer programming for the past five years and now I noticed that the corresponding phase (phase 4) of creating a website takes the least amount time and effort in entire process. All the hard work and effort seems to be focused on the graphical design and especially on converting this design to html/css. My question is, is this a common case? Do I do something wrong in my development steps ?"}
{"_id": "208677", "title": "How to handle divide by zero in a language that doesn't support exceptions?", "text": "I'm in the middle of developing a new programming language to solve some business requirements, and this language is targeted at novice users. So there is no support for exception handling in the language, and I wouldn't expect them to use it even if I added it. I've reached the point where I have to implement the divide operator, and I'm wondering how to best handle a divide by zero error? I seem to have only three possible ways to handle this case.   1. Ignore the error and produce `0` as the result. Logging a warning if possible.   2. Add `NaN` as a possible value for numbers, but that raises questions about how to handle `NaN` values in other areas of the language.   3. Terminate the execution of the program and report to the user a severe error occurred. Option #1 seems the only reasonable solution. Option #3 is not practical as this language will be used to run logic as a nightly cron. What are my alternatives to handling a divide by zero error, and what are the risks with going with option #1."}
{"_id": "229023", "title": "How does Branch Target Prediction differ from Branch Prediction?", "text": "I do not understand how BTP differs from BP? Yes I understand BP evaluates whether a conditional is true/false, but surely implicitly this also determines the \"target\" instruction? If I predict the first branch of an IF to be true, then surely I have just determined the branch target too (the code within the predicted IF branch)??"}
{"_id": "229024", "title": "Am I allowed to use text(snippets) from the iOS Developer Lib for my documentation?", "text": "At the moment, I create a Java-Wrapper for Apples *.pkpass-Files (Passbook). Since I need to parse a JSon-File, I planned to add java doc to every field, so one know what exactly this field is in the pkpass and how it should be displayed. (There are some other meta data which are interesting). At https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Reference/PassKit_Bundle/Chapters/TopLevel.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012026-CH2-SW1 you can see a description of this file format. So, my question is: am I allowed to use text snippets (or the whole text) from the description column when I add also the link to the page into the java doc?"}
{"_id": "202324", "title": "Memento with optional state?", "text": "**EDIT:** As pointed out by Steve Evers and pdr, I am not correctly implementing the Memento pattern, my design is actually State pattern. ## Menu Program I built a **console** -based menu program with multiple levels that selects a particular test to run. Each level more precisely describes the operation. At any level you can type back to go back one level ( **memento** ).               Level 1: Server Type?                  [1] Server A [2] Server B      Level 2: Server environment?               [1] test [2] production     Level 3: Test type?               [1] load [2] unit     Level 4: Data Collection?               [1] Legal docs [2] Corporate docs     Level 4.5 (optional): Load Test Type               [2] Multi TIF [2] Single PDF     Level 5: Command Type?               [1] Move [2] Copy [3] Remove [4] Custom     Level 6: Enter a keyword               [setup, cleanup, run]      ## Design ![Design](http://i.stack.imgur.com/BnufH.png) ## States ![States](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OFIvU.png) ## PROBLEM: **Right now the STATES enum is the determining factor as to what state is BACK and what state is NEXT yet it knows nothing about what the current memento state is.** Has anyone experienced a similar issue and found an effective way to handle mementos with optional state?               static enum STATES {         SERVER, ENVIRONMENT, TEST_TYPE, COLLECTION, COMMAND_TYPE, KEYWORD, FINISHED     }      ## Possible Solution (Not-flexible) In reference to my code below, every case statement in the Menu class could check the state of currentMemo and then set the STATE (enum) accordingly to pass to the Builder. However, this doesn't seem flexible very flexible to change and I'm struggling to see an effective way refactor the design.               class Menu extends StateConscious {         private State state;         private Scanner reader;         private ServerUtils utility;              Menu() {             state = new State();             reader = new Scanner(System.in);             utility = new ServerUtils();         }              // Recurring menu logic         public void startPromptingLoop() {                  List<State> states = new ArrayList<>();             states.add(new State());                  boolean redoInput = false;             boolean userIsDone = false;                  while (true) {                 // get Memento from last loop                 Memento currentMemento = states.get(states.size() - 1)                         .saveMemento();                 if (currentMemento == null)                     currentMemento = new Memento.Builder(0).build();                      if (!redoInput)                     System.out.println(currentMemento.prompt);                 redoInput = false;                      // prepare Memento for next loop                 Memento nextMemento = null;                 STATES state = STATES.values()[states.size() - 1];                      // get user input                 String selection = reader.nextLine();                      switch (selection) {                      case \"exit\":                     reader.close();                     return; // only escape                      case \"quit\":                     nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento,                             selection).build();                     states.clear();                     break;                      case \"back\":                     nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(previous(state),                             currentMemento, selection).build();                     if (states.size() <= 1) {                         states.remove(0);                     } else {                         states.remove(states.size() - 1);                         states.remove(states.size() - 1);                     }                     break;                      case \"1\":                     nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento,                             selection).build();                     break;                      case \"2\":                     nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento,                             selection).build();                     break;                      case \"3\":                     nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento,                             selection).build();                     break;                      case \"4\":                     nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state), currentMemento,                             selection).build();                     break;                      default:                     if (state.equals(STATES.CATEGORY)) {                         String command = selection;                         System.out.println(\"Executing \" + command + \" command on: \"                                 + currentMemento.type + \" \"                                 + currentMemento.environment);                         utility.executeCommand(currentMemento.nickname, command);                         userIsDone = true;                         states.clear();                         nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento,                                 selection).build();                     } else if (state.equals(STATES.KEYWORD)) {                         nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(next(state),                                 currentMemento, selection).build();                         states.clear();                         nextMemento = new Memento.Builder(first(), currentMemento,                                 selection).build();                     } else {                              redoInput = true;                         System.out.println(\"give it another try\");                         continue;                     }                     break;                 }                      if (userIsDone) {                          // start the recurring menu over from the beginning                          for (int i = 0; i < states.size(); i++) {                         if (i != 0) {                             states.remove(i); // remove all except first                         }                     }                     reader = new Scanner(System.in);                     this.state = new State();                     userIsDone = false;                 }                      if (!redoInput) {                     this.state.restoreMemento(nextMemento);                     states.add(this.state);                 }             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "202321", "title": "Two contradicting definitions of Interface Segregation Principle \u2013 which one is correct?", "text": "When reading articles on ISP, there seem to be two contradicting definitions of ISP: According to first definition ( see 1, 2, 3), ISP states that classes implementing the interface shouldn't be forced to implement functionalities which they don't need. Thus, fat interface `IFat`               interface IFat     {          void A();          void B();          void C();          void D();     }          class MyClass: IFat     { ... }      should be split into smaller interfaces `ISmall_1` and `ISmall_2`               interface ISmall_1     {          void A();          void B();     }          interface ISmall_2     {          void C();          void D();     }          class MyClass:ISmall_2     { ... }      since this way my `MyClass` is able to implement only the methods it needs ( `D()` and `C()` ), without being forced to also provide dummy implementations for `A()`, `B()` and `C()`: But according to the second definition ( see 1 , 2, answer by Nazar Merza), ISP states that `MyClient` calling methods on `MyService` shouldn't be aware of methods on `MyService` that it doesn't need. In other words, if `MyClient` only needs the functionality of `C()` and `D()`, then instead of               class MyService      {         public void A();         public void B();         public void C();         public void D();     }          /*client code*/           MyService service = ...;     service.C();      service.D();      we should segregate `MyService's` methods into _client-specific_ interfaces:               public interface ISmall_1     {          void A();          void B();     }          public interface ISmall_2     {          void C();          void D();     }          class MyService:ISmall_1, ISmall_2      { ... }          /*client code*/     ISmall_2 service = ...;     service.C();      service.D();      Thus with the former definition, the goal of ISP is to \" _make the life of classes implementing IFat interface easier_ \", while with the latter the goal of ISP is to \" _make the life of clients calling methods of MyService easier_ \". Which of the two different definitions of ISP is actually correct? **@MARJAN VENEMA** **1.** > So when you are going to split IFat into smaller interface, which methods > end up in which ISmallinterface should be decided based on how cohesive the > members are. While it makes sense to put cohesive methods within the same interface, I thought with ISP pattern the needs of the client take precedence over the \"cohesiveness\" of an interface. In other words, I thought with ISP we should lump within the same interface those methods needed by particular clients, even if that means leaving out of that interface those methods that should, for the sake of cohesiveness, also be put inside that same interface? Thus, if there were lots of clients that will only ever needed to call `CutGreens`, but not also `GrillMeat`, then to adhere to ISP pattern we should only put `CutGreens` inside `ICook`, but not also `GrillMeat`, even though the two methods are highly cohesive?! **2.** > I think that your confusion stems from the a hidden assumption in the first > definition: that the implementing classes are already following the single > responsibility principle. By \"implementing classes not following SRP\" are you referring to those classes that implement `IFat` or to classes that implement `ISmall_1` / `ISmall_2`? I assume you're referring to classes that implement `IFat`? If so, why do you assume they don't already follow SRP? thanks"}
{"_id": "40015", "title": "How long for a java developer to be able to start programming in C#?", "text": "I am working on a project that will be acquiring four new Java developers (mid-to-senior level). They will be responsible for writing code for web services and an event-driven UI. This is a .NET project using C# and WPF. We have ten weeks to create a substantial amount of new functionality. Project management has called our time line \"aggressive but achievable.\" The new developers have limited to no experience in .NET. Assuming the new developers are very-talented, how many weeks before they can begin contributing to the project? Or are we doomed? I realize I'm giving very few details, but I would welcome even the roughest of estimates."}
{"_id": "83233", "title": "How do you phrase \u201cit's open source, submit a patch\u201d so that it's friendly?", "text": "In the answers of _What's the canonical retort to \"it's open source, submit a patch\"?_, many people voiced the opinion that simply asking people to submit a patch is arrogant and rude. But it seems to me that as a developer on any open source project, you will see many more feature requests on the mailing list than you could possibly implement. So when a user says, \"I would like to see feature X\", the truth of the matter is usually that the chances of it getting implemented are pretty slim unless they submit a patch themselves. Also, sometimes a little encouragement might be all that's needed to turn a user into a contributor. On the other hand, you don't want to scare (potential) contributors away by coming off as rude. So how would you say \"please submit patches instead of asking for features\" in a friendly manner? **Update:** Thanks for all the suggestions! I see most of them require pretty lengthy explanations. But since I'd rather avoid either (a) explaining the same thing every other day (it just takes too much time), or (b) using snippets that I paste into email (it gets impersonal real quick), I wonder: Has anyone written this up in a document that I can link to? (Project-specific things like how to write tests, compile the code, and submit the patch still need to be documented of course, but I think those technical issues should go into CONTRIBUTING.txt anyway.)"}
{"_id": "133148", "title": "Need help with algorithm for sorting list", "text": "The answer is probably obvious but not to me at this moment, so I was wondering if somebody who is better with sorting algorithms can help lead me in the right direction. This is not homework, I am legitimately trying to work within an existing design for something work related. Essentially I start with an unordered list of data objects that represent something similar to forum comments. These objects MAY explicitly have one and only one direct parent. In other words > Parent (1...*) ----------- (1...1) Child A child has a reference to its parent, however a parent cannot see its children (explicitly). Typically when sorting a list one would pass a comparator which given any two data objects in the collection should return an integer number that represents the distance between the two objects in a graph. The distance between two completely unrelated comments will be based on the Timestamp value of the data object. The issue is that any two data objects can and should only be compared by timestamp with other data objects from the same parent branch. Here is an example: > DO1 - Time(1000ms) > > |___DO3 - Time(5000ms) > > DO2 - Time(2000ms) DO1 and DO2 compared will result in a negative number so those two are sorted correctly relative to each other. DO3 to DO1 is likewise correct because I can assume that any branch above a comment must be less than. The problem comes with comparing DO3 to DO2. I thought that I should compare the highest order parent to DO2 in this case and that works until there are DO children under DO3. I am trying to figure out if the current object graph is even enough information for a comparator to correctly return an appropriate number for any two comparisons. Perhaps the comparator needs to be initialized with the unordered list first so that it can build a tree structure where I can see a list of children from any given parent explicitly? Or perhaps I need to refactor? At this stage I am not concerned about performance. Thank you."}
{"_id": "147016", "title": "Should a programmer worry about the technology stack of the shop?", "text": "This question might only be applicable to entry/junior level positions. Question:   * Let's say you're a Java/Open Source developer. Should you consider positions where the technology stack of the shop is C++/.NET?   * Lets assume that the shop is interested in hiring you because they are impressed by your strong algorithmic skills. And the fact that you are a Java programmer does not matter to them at all. The question is - Should this be an issue that should bother an entry/junior level developer? Should the applicant then make an acceptance decision based on other criteria such as the domain that one would be working on? Perks? Salary? Career growth? etc.?"}
{"_id": "147015", "title": "Alternative IDEs", "text": "After seeing http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ibdknox/light-table I'm wondering if anyone has come across other alternative methods of developing. When working on embedded things Notepad++ was ample, which isn't necessarily an IDE but it is a different way of handling things from using Xcode, Visual Studio, or Eclipse. And even JDeveloper follows the same design as those. As OS X and other OSes change, along with website methodologies, app structures, frameworks, can we start changing how we develop? I've also seen quite a few \"code on your iPad\" apps. Will we eventually move away from coding as we know it? Will there be a split? Can something like Light Table bring even low level C++ coding into the next generation of enterprise or embedded level development? Especially since I feel like a small minority who even takes advantage of some non-default IDE settings such as custom syntax coloring (once you go Zenburn you don't go back)"}
{"_id": "138822", "title": "How to determine the priority and severity of a \"code improvement\"?", "text": "We have \"priority\" and \"severity\" fields in our bug tracking system. We define severity as \"how it impacts the user\" and priority as \"how it impacts the product\". My question is about how to categorize a \"code improvement\" task in severity and priority. Suppose the improvement does not change any behavior but makes it a \"better code\". We anticipate a long term maintenance improvement overall but it's hard to quantify. When we use our definitions for priority and severity, a code improvement gets the lowest values for both unless you introduce some hard to predict long term benefits into the picture. Therefore it implies that code improvement is a frivilous task and should never be attempted. However I believe it's cruical to constantly improve and refactor the code, because:   * Software development is itself a continuous learning process and without improving the code you can't get better at it.   * A team should be proud of their code.   * Future maintenance will take less time and over the long run savings will be significant. Or do you think such tasks should never be created and such improvements performed only \"on demand\", \"when associated with a bug\"? Even if it's associated with a bug, wouldn't that be a discussion point on a code review, e.g. \"why did you do this drastic change in structure?\"."}
{"_id": "103048", "title": "Why is it unrealistic to expect all browsers to support the same standards?", "text": "Ideally, we would have different browsers supporting the same standards and same code producing the same result on all browsers. That hasn't happened yet. What are the reasons why?"}
{"_id": "138826", "title": "Which spoken languages should I try to support in my android application?", "text": "I'm developing a small android app, which is regional independent. I'm curious, which language should I try to support? At the moment I'm only sure to support the languages I speak fluently. This is German and English. But what about French, Spanish or Japanese...? Are there any statistics out there to help determine which to support? P.S.: Should I use maybe crappy automatic translation, if I don't know a native speaker, or should I forget about it otherwise?"}
{"_id": "18975", "title": "How to deal with necessary workarounds in software?", "text": "Even with detailed specifications for exchanging data between computer programs, chances are that data generated by older versions of programs do not conform 100% to the specification, or that they use old obscure features which few people know how to implement them. As a result, companies have to keep a library of \"odd specimens\" for testing their software. In good software design, these quirks can be confined into a small layer of libraries called \"Abstraction Layer\". However, most abstraction layers cut off too many functionalities (in order to prevent the higher level software from touching the unstable parts of the lower level software). Sometimes it is not possible to completely hide away the unstable parts. What are the strategies for coping with such necessary workarounds? _((Please pardon my poor language skills.)_"}
{"_id": "238100", "title": "Is converting/casting a boolean to int a good idea?", "text": "**Note:** Even though this contains Python, it's not specifically about Python. It's more generally about expecting a certain behaviour from a language which is not necessarily the same across compilers/interpreters. * * * So I came across this question: > How do I convert a boolean to int in Python? Can I just do `int(mybool)`? My response was to write:               1 if mybool else 0      My reasoning was that blindly \"casting\" to `int` would rely on the internal implementation of the compiler/interpreter. And who knows, if running through a different interpreter `int(mybool)` might return something else. Explicitly stating the value for a \"truthy\" value and for a \"falsey\" value will always yield the expected behaviour. This is surely something which one can consider for most languages. Am I too picky about this? I know that I have written `int(mybool)` myself in the past. And that question made me think: Was that okay? Given that this is a very common case, are the compilers/interpreters smart enough to to \"the right thing\" for bool -> int conversions? Now, for the special case for duck-typing languages like Python, `int(mybool)` might certainly be a really bad idea, but other languages are a bit clearer on their typing."}
{"_id": "238106", "title": "Is there a good way to communicate the intent that a class only contains referentially transparent methods?", "text": "My workplace mostly uses C# for writing code. I'm trying to figure out a good way to indicate that a class with referentially transparent methods is intended to be referentially transparent (i.e., given the same set of arguments, you will always get the same return value) for future maintainers. I've considered just using static classes for classes that are intended to only contain referentially transparent methods but received pushback from my colleagues as they prefer an approach to unit testing where all classes depending on are stubbed out which they use constructor DI to accomplish. I don't see a disadvantage to not stubbing out referentially transparent functions for unit testing since they are almost always in-memory anyway but I've been unable to convince my colleagues of that. Our class names use typical OO pattern names like DTO or Factory or Controllers and Models for namespaces. I'm not aware of any pattern names in OO that would indicate the sort of intent I am going for (i.e., to not introduce side-effecting operations or depending on things that read out of the db or filesystem)."}
{"_id": "171342", "title": "Syncing objects to a remote server, and caching on local storage", "text": "What's the best method of sycing objects (as JSON) to a remote server, with local caching? I have some objects that will pretty much just be plain-text with some extra meta-data. I was thinking of perhaps including a \"last modified date\" for both Local storage and Remote storage. This could then be used to determine which object is the most recent. For example, even though objects will be saved to both local and remote when they are saved, sometimes the user may not have internet access, or the server may be down, or any other number of things. In this case, the last modified date for remote storage would be reverted to its previous date. Local storage would remain as it is. At this point, the user could exit the application, and when they reload the application would then look at the last modified dates of the local and remote storages, and decide. Is there anything I'm missing with this? Is there a better method that I could use?"}
{"_id": "171343", "title": "How important is using the same language for client and server?", "text": "I have been evaluating architecture solutions for a mobile project that will have a web-service/app in addition to native apps and have been looking at various libraries, frameworks, and stacks like Meteor, this being a sort of \"open stack package framework\", is tightly bound with Node.js. There is a lot of talk about the benefits of using the same language both client and server side, and I'm not getting it. I could understand if you want to mirror the entire state of a web application on both client and server but struggling to find other wins... Workflow efficiency? I'm trying to understand why client/server language parity is considered to be a holy grail. Why does client/server language parity matter in software development?"}
{"_id": "234284", "title": "Contradiction of layered design and global data access for analytics reporting", "text": "While developing an application (mobile app for Android), our team always strives to use best development practices such as interfaces, layering and separation of concerns. When it comes to reporting analytics events from our app, the requirements sometimes force us to send events with data that is stored and managed by multiple different app \"components\". Some of this data is not directly available at the component/layer that does the reporting, **nor at any central location** in the application. To me, this seems like it contradicts all the efforts of architecture and design that were made during the development of the application. **My question is** : What is the correct way to deal with this issue? Is the problem in the requirements we received, or is it a common issue that a layered/modular application sometimes needs to make things \"global\" ? if so, what is the way to solve this issue while still reaping the benefits of development best practices?"}
{"_id": "47090", "title": "How to deal with or survive with the information overload", "text": "I will better explain my question. I have been struggling with this for long time Everytime i want to read something for e,g book on java , then i find so much stuff like many tutorials , many ebooks that i am not able to decide which one to choose. I spend some time reading one , then 2 and so on and in the end i leave and gain nothing. I like the old days when we had only few resources like one hard book and at least i finish that from start to finish and gained much but now days there is so much information that mind jumps from one source to other and gain nothing what should i do"}
{"_id": "136466", "title": "Why multiple calls to same classes' Constructor from within a Constructor wouldn't work?", "text": "Please have a look at following snippet:               public class Foo {     int digit;     String name;          Foo (int d, String n) {         this(d);         // cannot do following.         //compile-time error: Constructor call must be first statement in a Constructor          //this(n);     }          Foo (int p) {         digit = p;     }          Foo (String q) {         name = q;     }      What would be the reason of this restriction? I understand why call to Constructor (both in a Constructor or in a method) has to be first statement - the object should be initialized properly before it is used. What I don't get is compiler not allowing calling multiple constructors of the same class from within a constructor. I don't see any problem with this construct - both regarding initialization and invarients. It'd be great if someone can shed some light on what I am missing here... Thanks!"}
{"_id": "26708", "title": "How to explain DependencyProperty using real world analogy?", "text": "1. How to explain DependencyProperty using real world analogy?   2. Why is it needed?"}
{"_id": "47094", "title": "When creating an library published on CodePlex, how \"bad\" would it be for the unit-test projects to rely on commercial products?", "text": "I have started a project on CodePlex for a WebDAV server implementation for .NET, so that I can host a WebDAV server in my own programs. This is both a learning/research project (WebDAV + server portion) as well as a project I think I can have much fun with, both in terms of making it and using it. However, I see a need to do mocking of types here in order to unit-testing properly. For instance, I will be relying on HttpListener for the web server portion of the WebDAV server, and since this type has no interface, and is sealed, I cannot easily make mocks or stubs out of it. Unless I use something like TypeMock. So if I used TypeMock in the unit-test projects on this library, how bad would this be for potential users? The projects are made in C# 3.5 for .NET 3.5 and 4.0, and the project files was created with Visual Studio 2010 Professional. The actual class libraries you would end up referencing in your software would of course not be encumbered with anything remotely like this, only the unit- test libraries. What's your thoughts on this? As an example, I have in my old code-base, which is private, the ability to just initiate a WebDAV server with just this:               var server = new WebDAVServer();      This constructs, and owns, a HttpListener instance internally, and I would like to verify through unit-tests that if I dispose of this server object, the internal listener is disposed of. If, on the other hand, I use the overload where I hand it a listener object, this object should not be disposed of. Short of exposing the internal listener object to the outside world, something I'm a bit loath to do, how can I in a good way ensure that the object was disposed of? With TypeMock I can mock away parts of this object even though it isn't accessed through interfaces. The alternative would be for me to wrap everything in wrapper classes, where I have complete control."}
{"_id": "228797", "title": "Cloning of website", "text": "I'm a freelancer in a freelance job site and I started the work with a client in a project with a contract on this freelance job site. Until now all is OK.Firstly I started but developpement of some issues and I guessed he want relooking a site already exist on line,today in the next task of job I found that the client wants to clone the site from another one not relooking and he is not the admin of the site to clone. He will provide me a different template (not the same logo and color) but with the content about the same. My questions are:   * If this method of cloning is illegal, will it be his responsibility to deal with the legal issues? Maybe I'll create for him just the server side code. Will that mean I'll have any responsibility if the admin of the other site asks him about the copyright violation?   * Can I do this in a painless way? I'll make him the code, and when the contract is done, will it be OK for him to launch the site by his own name and domain? Please I make some modifications,can I have a serious answer and please reply just if you are sure and maybe you had the same issue..."}
{"_id": "231427", "title": "Should I refactor large functions that mostly consist of one regex?", "text": "I just wrote a function that spans approximately 100 lines. Hearing that, you are probably tempted to tell me about single responsibilities and urge me to refactor. This is my gut instinct as well, but here is the issue: The function _does_ one thing. It performs a complex string manipulation, and the function body consists mostly of one verbose regex, broken up into many lines that are documented. If I broke up the regex into multiple functions, I feel like I would actually _lose_ readability, since I am effectively switching languages, and won't be able to take advantage of some features regexes offer. Here now is my question: **When it comes to string manipulation with regular expressions, are large function bodies still an anti-pattern?** It seems like named capture groups serve a very similar purpose to functions. By the way, I have tests for every flow through the regex."}
{"_id": "229685", "title": "What's the best way to hold features in a database?", "text": "taking for example an application that holds **Companies** and as we move along time, more and more features are needed. I do tend to hold everything in the `Companies` table, but I rather get some input as I'm starting a new project and was wondering if I should keep those in a `CompanyFeatures` table: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4qCrV.png) Should I have 2 tables, or this flow is enough? I have the same for users, each user has it's own on/off feature (when a feature can be user specific), should I continue to keep them there, or should also create a `UserFeatures` table to hold such information? Every time I get a company, all of their associated features information needs to be \"glued\", but it's an easy join and the query will be cached for the next request... Querying the DB should never be a problem, my question is more about design patterns and if such information should have it's place."}
{"_id": "173273", "title": "Is it possible to build a single game to run in Facebook & Google+?", "text": "I was asked by my customer to build a Facebook game. The game would be something similar to Mafiawars.com where the game is hosted on a server and run through a frame on Facebook. The thing is after several days of negotiations with the customer and near the finalization of the requirements he mentioned something strange. He said that if the game was successful on Facebook then we may add it to Google+ too. I thought he meant that we'll develop a new version for Google+, but he refused as he argued that the game should be able to support both sites and he won't pay for the same game twice. Now I haven't developed neither Facebook nor Google+ games before, so I don't know if it is possible to build a single Facebook/Google+ game.   How would you react to such requirement? How would you design such an application? **Notes**   1. I confirmed with the customer that he wasn't talking about using Open ID he wanted full integration (sharing post, friend requests,..etc.)   2. I really don't want to lose that customer for numerous reasons (He even agreed to extend the project time to compensate for the time I need to learn Facebook/Google+ APIs)"}
{"_id": "229683", "title": "When to use Interface variable = new class variable OOP", "text": "I saw often people use this code like               interface IAnimal      {         void die();     }          class Cat : IAnimal      {         void die() { ... }         void meow() { ... }     }          IAnimal anAnimal = new Cat();     Cat aCat= new Cat();      C# knows for sure anAnimal.die() works, because die() is defined in IAnimal. But it won't let you do anAnimal.meow() even though it's a Cat, whereas aCat can invoke both methods. Why and when we should write this kind of code:               IAnimal anAnimal = new Cat();      What is the advantage?"}
{"_id": "87446", "title": "Using a GPLv3 Python module, will my entire project have to be GPLv3 licensed?", "text": "I'm working on a small project right now that I plan on releasing under an open-source license (haven't decided which yet). The question I have is that one of the Python modules I use is licensed under GPLv3. Since I'm not making any modifications to the library (using it as-is), can I still license my project under a license of my choosing or will I be forced to also make it GPLv3?"}
{"_id": "231421", "title": "How to measure the success of a small software project?", "text": "I'm part of a 7 person software development team which supports a company with a few thousand staff. Our team is putting together a quick review process for measuring the success of a software project. Projects are mostly internal, which means our \"customers\" are more often than not other staff. Projects are reasonably small (generally 100 to 1000 hours). Our review process will need to have a few aspects to it, probably including:   * A questionnaire sent to the customers (filled in by people in a variety of roles if possible, such as managers who may not be users of the software, and users), looking at the ease of use, quality of documentation, incident response, value for money, reliability.   * Cost compared with the budget. Estimated development time compared with actual time would be looked at here too.   * Security, if applicable.   * Maintainability, such as how easy it is to log in as a particular user to replicate problems, and how easy the code is to follow.   * Technical documentation, such as instructions on setting up development environments and test data. Is there anything glaring I've missed, or anything that should have a particularly strong (or weak) focus?"}
{"_id": "178994", "title": "Why do Core Data sqlite table columns start with 'Z'?", "text": "I was looking at the sqlite table that Core Data generates and noticed that all table columns start with 'Z'. I realize this is an implementation detail, but I was curious as to why that's the case and if there was a design decision involved in this. Anyone happen to know or guess why? Here's a sample schema output of Core Data sqlite database:               sqlite> .schema     CREATE TABLE ZPOST ( Z_PK INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_ENT INTEGER, Z_OPT INTEGER, ZPOSTID INTEGER, ZUSER INTEGER, ZCREATEDAT TIMESTAMP, ZTEXT VARCHAR );     CREATE TABLE ZUSER ( Z_PK INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_ENT INTEGER, Z_OPT INTEGER, ZUSERID INTEGER, ZAVATARIMAGEURLSTRING VARCHAR, ZUSERNAME VARCHAR );     CREATE TABLE Z_METADATA (Z_VERSION INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_UUID VARCHAR(255), Z_PLIST BLOB);     CREATE TABLE Z_PRIMARYKEY (Z_ENT INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Z_NAME VARCHAR, Z_SUPER INTEGER, Z_MAX INTEGER);"}
{"_id": "228790", "title": "Which Web API routing attribute style is preferred?", "text": "You can do it this way:               [Route(\"api/DeliveryItems/{ID:int}/{CountToFetch:int}\")]      ...calling it like so:               http://localhost:28642/api/deliveryitems/N/N      ...which has the benefit of the routing attribute documenting exactly which args the methods needs. Or you can do it this way:               [Route(\"api/DeliveryItems\")]      ...calling it like so:               http://localhost:28642/api/deliveryitems?ID=N&CountToFetch=N      ...which has the benefit of having a clear \"separation of concerns\" (or perhaps \"separation of context\" or \"separation of intent\"), so that path info is one thing, args are another, and never do the twain meet (in the routing attribute string, at any rate). Any powerful reasons to opt for one style over the other?"}
{"_id": "233482", "title": "Does the GPL allow anyone to obtain GPL software without paying for it?", "text": "I've spotted a nice WordPress (GPL) theme for sale. I know somebody who bought it. I have 2 questions:   1. Has the company selling it the obligation to send the source code to whoever (customers or not) ask it?   2. Can the person who bought it give me a copy for free which I could use in production?"}
{"_id": "173186", "title": "Ways of Gathering Event Information From the Internet", "text": "What are the best ways of gathering information on events (any type) from the internet ? Keeping in mind that different websites will present information in different ways. I was thinking 'smart' web crawlers, but that can turn out to be extremely challenging, simply because of the hugely varied ways that different sites present their information. Then I was thinking of sifting through the official twitter feeds of organisations, people with knowledge of events .. etc and look for the event hash tag, grab the tweet and dissect it to grab the relevant information about the event. Information I am interested in gathering is: **Date** and **Time** of Event, **Address** where Event is being held, and any **Celebrities (or any famous people) attending** the event (if any). The reason to ask here is my hope that experienced folk will open my eyes to things I've missed, which I am sure I have."}
{"_id": "173187", "title": "Is there a limit on the number of threads that can be spawned simultaneously?", "text": "Yesterday I came across this question: How can i call robocopy within a python script to bulk copy multiple folders?, and I though it might be a good exercise for multithreading. I though of spawning as many threads as files needed to be copied, each routine having an exception handling system to prevent the whole copying process from crashing (and log -using mutex on the log file - if there was an error). My question: **Is there a limit on the number of thread you can spawn almost simultaneously? If yes, what is the limiting factor?** My question is focused on PC desktop, but I welcome any answer on different hardware (embedded systems, calculus clusters, etc.)."}
{"_id": "234137", "title": "What is the order analysis of the following (using a list of primes)", "text": "I have the following program: Iterate `x` from 1 to `N`. Check to see if `x` is prime. If it is, add it to a list of primes. The way I check to see if it is prime is iterating through the current list of primes, and seeing if they can divide `x` evenly. What is the order analysis of this program? I don't think it is `O(n^2)`, because the growing list of primes certainly doesn't increase at the rate of `n`. I don't it is `O(nlog(n))`, either. How would I perform order analysis of the function?"}
{"_id": "170560", "title": "What is the difference between functional relational programming and functional programming?", "text": "After reading both this thread and the linked paper, I don't understand how FRP (functional relational programming) is different from (FP) functional programming. Does FRP augment or replace FP? Can FRP be implemented as a library in an FP language?"}
{"_id": "173189", "title": "Is comparing an OO compiler to a SQL compiler/optimizer valid?", "text": "I'm now doing a lot of SQL development at my new job where as before I was doing Object Oriented desktop app stuff. I keep running across very large scripts (thousands of lines) and wanting to refactor in some way. I am seeing that SQL is a different sort of beast and it's probably fine to have these big scripts for the most part but while explaining this to me people are also insisting that the whole _idea_ of refactoring is bad. That stuff like the .NET compiler are actually burdened by refactored code and that a big wall of code is more efficient and better design than code designed for reuse, readability and scalability. The other argument is that OO compilers are almost dangerously inefficient and don't have efficient memory management or runs too many CPU instructions compared to older \"simpler\" compilers and compared to SQL. Are these valid complaints? Even _if_ some compiler like a C compiler is modestly more \"efficient\" (whatever that means on this high of a level without seeing code) would you want to write applications in C over C# or Java? Is comparing an OO compiler to a SQL compiler/optimizer even valid?"}
{"_id": "88328", "title": "Do software developers know what engineers actually do?", "text": "Software development is often contrasted with the traditional branches of engineering, most commonly civil or mechanical engineering. For example:   * \"Software development isn't like engineering, it's like craftsmanship!\"   * \"Software development isn't like engineering, but it should be!\" Do software developers understand what it is that engineers do and how they do it? At least, do they understand it well enough to be able to make an informed comparison with what software developers do?"}
{"_id": "88329", "title": "Is it normal for a company to have programmers on such a rigid schedule?", "text": "So I've been working at this job for a couple of months. I'm a little frustrated because I do my best work from 2 to 7. In previous jobs, I've come in at 9:30-10:00 and leave at 7. Some companies have been okay with this, others have not. But my current company insists on my being there at 8:30. Any deviation from this is a big deal. Is this typical? I have colleagues who are more 9:30 to 6:30, 10:00-7:00 guys...but maybe that is just startup culture? I don't see why, given that I don't meet clients, etc. what the advantage to having things be so rigid could be. I also don't see why if there is 15 to 20 minute variation sometimes in coming in, why people don't just assume that I will adjust when I leave... Are these unreasonable expectations as a developer or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "234131", "title": "Authentication with If/Else", "text": "For keeping the \"Administration Panel\" secure to those who are logged in, for my web application, is the best practice to use an If/Else Statement?               if($_SESSION['logged_in'] == true) {        include '../styles/templates/admincp/header.php';        include '../styles/templates/admincp/content.php';        include '../styles/templates/admincp/footer.php';     }     else {        include '../styles/templates/login.php';     }      Is this how the \"professionals' (such as CMS creators, etc) do this authentication style? OR is there a completely better route and method to the If/Else statement to authenticate pages for logged in users to access?"}
{"_id": "177693", "title": "How to get familiar with \"what happens underneath of Java\"?", "text": "I did not study CS nor IT. I just became a developer, now working with Java. Actually, since I now work with a big company writing high-scalable web applications, I think I need to be better with details. I have no understanding of what happens underneath of Java. Java Performance, Server-Side Java might be the buzz words?!! I am very poor with those more of low-level details but I do not know where to look honestly. I started looking for some keywords in Amazon, ended up reading books like \"pragmatic programmer\", \"clean code\", \"code complete\" which IMO they are not what I am looking for. Could you please give me some learning resources (books, articles, blog posts, online trainings) for this matter? I also read this post as well: Approaching Java/JVM internals But I think I need a pre-step before jumping into the OpenJDK, right?!"}
{"_id": "229972", "title": "What is the difference between dependent typing and contracts?", "text": "What is the difference between dependent typed languages and languages like Spec# and Eiffel that allow you to specify \"contracts\" for functions in your code for pre/postconditions? Is dependent typing basically the purely functional version of Eiffel's \"contracts\"? From what I understand, dependently typed languages let you specify your function's pre and post conditions using predicate logic as part of the type. Eiffel's concept of contracts seems to be similar, but based on imperative programming, not functional programming."}
{"_id": "184319", "title": "Core data syncing (deletion) using a custom REST web service", "text": "I need to sync my local core data stack against a server running a persistent data storage underneath the covers. (I've gone through other posts here and on SO on similar topics) My requirements:   1. One way syncing. Meaning my server is always updated and my clients just merely need to be fed incremental deltas which they feed into their core data stack.   2. The server could arbitrarily insert new records, modify existing ones or even delete them. I would rather not use RestKit because I can do the work of making queries and updating local state myself. I don't need an extra library to do this. My solution: I keep a last updated date (UTC) locally. I send this date to my server periodically and my server responds with the data I need to update or insert, based on a server timestamp for each record. **My problem:** I don't know how to handle deletes. How would I handle deletes in such a scenario? If I delete the record from the server, how will clients know to delete that record as well. Thoughts? I can think of a number of complicated ways to do it (e.g. don't really delete the record, or keep track separately of deleted records, etc.), but I'm looking for the simplest."}
{"_id": "224501", "title": "Why are pointers to literals not possible?", "text": "Reference to a literal is possible only if the reference is declared as constant. But why is a pointer to a const object not possible in case of literals? i.e.               int const& ref = 5;//      But why is the same feature not available for a pointer, pointing to a constant object?"}
{"_id": "216555", "title": "Best practice for comments above methods in a grails application?", "text": "I'm writing a grails application and am not sure what the best practice is with regard to comments outside of method blocks. I've done a bit of research and there seems to be conflicting views on how and when these sort of comments should be used. In lots of source code I have seen there seems to be comments above every method detailing what that method does. I'm not sure if grails should be differnet? My question is should I have a comment above each method in my controllers, services and domain objects? i.e               /*     * This method displays the index page     */     def index(){     render view : \"index\"     }"}
{"_id": "228085", "title": "Is it ever justifiable to write code without tests when doing TDD?", "text": "Is it ever justifiable to write production-code without also writing tests for it when doing Test Driven Development?"}
{"_id": "100534", "title": "What are the most common mistakes and anti-patterns NHibernate user programmers make?", "text": "What are the most common mistakes and anti-patterns NHibernate user programmers make? Please explain why those are bad practices or give link to resource for further reading. **For example:**   * One anti-pattern common for new NHibernate programmers is to use identity/native POID's instead of ORM style onces. Read more here..."}
{"_id": "100537", "title": "Is it a code smell if an object knows a lot of its owner?", "text": "In our Delphi 2007 application we are using a lot of the following constructs               FdmBasic:=TdmBasicData(FindOwnerClass(AOwner,TdmBasicData));      The FindOwnerClass travels the Owner hierarchy of the current component upwards to find a specific class (in the example TdmBasicData). The resulting object is stored in the Field variable FdmBasic. We use this primarily to pass datamodules along. Example: When generating a report, the resulting data is compressed and stored in a Blob field of a table accessed through a datamodule TdmReportBaseData. In a separate module of our application, there is functionality to show the data from the report in a Paged form using ReportBuilder. The main code of this module (TdmRBReport), uses a class TRBTempdatabase to convert the compressed blob data into different tables that are usable in the Reportbuilder runtime reportdesigner. TdmRBReport has access to TdmReportBaseData for all kinds of report-related data (type of report, report calculationsettings, etc). TRBTempDatabase is constructed in TdmRBReport but has to have access to TdmReportBasedata. So this is now done using the construction above:               constructor TRBTempDatabase.Create(aOwner: TComponent);     begin       inherited Create(aOwner);            FdmReportBaseData := TdmRBReport(FindOwnerClass(Owner, TdmRBReport)).dmReportBaseData;     end;{- .Create }      My feeling is that this means that TRBTempDatabase knows a lot of its owner, and I was wondering if this is some sort of code smell or Anti-pattern. What are your thoughts about this? Is this a code smell? If so, what is a better way?"}
{"_id": "218801", "title": "Why do so many websites prefer \"git rebase\" over \"git merge\"?", "text": "One of the advantages of using a DVCS is the **edit-commit-merge** workflow (over **edit-merge-commit** often enforced by a CVCS). Allowing each unique change to be recorded in the repository independent of merges ensures the DAG accurately reflects the true pedigree of the project. Why do so many websites talk about wanting to \"avoid merge commits\"? Doesn't merging pre-commit or rebasing post-merge make it more difficult to isolate regressions, revert past changes, etc.? **EDIT:** Point of clarification: The default behavior for a DVCS **is** to create merge commits. Why do so many places talk about a desire to see a linear development history that hides these merge commits?"}
{"_id": "218804", "title": "Design advice for building pluggable componentry in AngularJS", "text": "I'm currently working on a team that's developed several, extremely similar web applications in flash, and wants them ported into JavaScript. They also want a single application harness to host all of these applications, since they're all very similar. The application(s) are fairly standard. Each application consists of a set of selection/filter widgets, and a set of display(visualization) widgets. Selecting things in the \"sidebar\" will change what is displayed in the visualization area. Sometimes selecting things in the visualization area will affect what is in the selection/filter widgets. Both the set of selections, and the set of display widgets, may change from app to app, so they all have to be written to be pluggable. I've been working on this and have come up with the idea that a JSON based configuration file will be loaded into my next-gen application, and will essentially specify what the application will contain, and what interactions are permitted. I load an \"application\" file into my JavaScript application- harness, and that file tells my app what selections widgets to select from a set of pre-defined selection widgets (applications may share the same selections widgets). That's about as far as I've gotten as far as the implementation goes. it works, but I think the harder challenge lies ahead. Now I have to begin getting my display-visualization widgets working together, communicating with each other, and doing it in a way that's configuration based so that new applications can be created without writing any code for the client. My current plan is to define my display-visualization widgets in the same application file I currently define my selection widgets in, and for communication between these dynamically loaded components, I'll have a set of callback mappings from each selection widget to each display-visualization widget and vice-versa. Selection widgets will look through the file, see which functions they're supposed to call in an application-level namespace on certain events, and set those functions as callbacks for widget events. Display-Visualization widgets will do the same. So here are my questions:   1. Does this sound like a sane approach? Is there a better way to do something like this? Is there some kind of design pattern that people use in these situations that I might not be aware of?   2. I'm doing this in AngularJS, but I don't REALLY know AngularJS. I understand scoping, and some directives, but I'm very new to the framework, and I don't know what the AngularJS \"way\" of implementing this would be, so an angular-based design sketch would be very useful.  For instance, one thing that worries me is the design I have above is heavily based on eventing and callbacks, which I understand is really not the Angular way. On the other hand, many of the widgets (both types) cannot be angular. They'll be line graphs, data-grids, maps, bubble charts etc. I don't have the experience necessary to really understand how and whether my design should change based on my framework."}
{"_id": "42989", "title": "Why doesn't my IDE do background compiling/building?", "text": "Today I develop on a fairly complex computer, it has multiple cores, SSD drives and what not. Still, most of the time I'm programming the computer is leasurely doing nothing. When I need to compile and run/deploy a somewhat complex project at best it still takes a couple of seconds. Why? Now that we're living more and more in the \"age of instant\" why can't I press F5 in Visual studio and launch/deploy my application instantly? A couple of seconds might not sound so bad but it's still cognitive friction and time that adds up, and frankly it makes programming less fun. So how could compilation be instant? Well, People tend to edit files in different assemblies, what if Visual Studio/The IDE constantly did compilation/and building of everything that I modified anytime that it might be appropriate. Heck if they wanted to go really advanced they could do per-class compilation. The compilation might not work but then it could just silently do nothing (except adding error messages to the error window). Surely todays computer could dedicate a core or two to this task, and if someone found it annoying it could be disabled by option. I know there's probably a thousand technical issues and some fancy shadow copying that would need to be resolved for this to be seamless and practical but it sure would make programming more seamless. Is there any practical reason why this scenario isn't possible? Would the wear and tear of continually writing binaries be too much? Couldn't assemblies be held in memory until deployed/run?"}
{"_id": "255743", "title": "Indexing data in C++. Could a constructor make a new entry if needed, or increment an existing one elsewhere in the larger object containing it?", "text": "I am indexing a file of key pairs, and counting number of appearances. The file goes: A B C A B A D E B F and so forth. Seems like a struct or object being pushed back into a vector is a good place to start, sortable on the first or second entry, etc. Once I have a relationship, A B or B A, I figure I can start counting when a pair is repeated, because what pairs with what and the frequency that they appear are the interesting thing I'm trying to find. If I had a very clever constructor for a class or struct containing the right hand entry and a count, I could have a meta object that looks like               struct entry     {       valueAndCount ID;       vector\"<\"valueAndCount\">\" pairsWith;     };       Which would then, itself, be used in a vector               class indexObj     {       vector\"<\"entry\">\" index;       bool exists( value );     };      In a given vector pairsWith pushback, if I gave the valueAndCount constructor a value, would it be proper for it to check if an entry for that value already existed? If not, go ahead and create a new one with count = 1. If it already exists, increment that (other) count, then free itself as redundant? Or is looking up from the instance constructor to the structure that contains it too messy?"}
{"_id": "255742", "title": "Is it correct to keep version numbers of all components always the same?", "text": "We are planning to use a setup that uses several modules to complete a whole application, example modules include:   * The core (code shared by all other modules)   * The server   * The client (Windows, OS X, Linux)   * The client (iOS)   * The client (Android)   * Tool #1   * Tool #2 And now while we preparing to deliver our first release, it is a good time to think about the numbering scheme. We have defined to use a major.minor.patch format, but we are struggling about one question: **Should every module have the same version number as newest release, and consequently, should we bump version numbers if there has been no update to them?** Example to illustrate: 1) Assume all our components are running on version 0.1.0 (early development), once we do a significant update, should then all components be bumped to version 0.2.0? It also works the other way around: 2) Assume again every component is running 0.1.0 initially, and now we introduce a signifcant update (could be a GUI rework) on the Android client, should we then release a version 0.2.0 for _every_ component, even though the other versions have not received any update? And perhaps the most tricky one: 3) Assume that we still run 0.1.0 one very component in the start, and we figure out Tool #2 has a bug and we need to hotfix it to 0.1.1, should we also then update every component to 0.1.1? * * * I am currently doubting whether we should pursue correct versioning, or should go for compatability? People outside to the development team will most likely expect that all modules run on version 0.3.0 for example, while we as developers are a bit confused and perhaps feel uneasy with bumping a version number up, while the module did not have any change to it. What is the best way to deal with this? * * * **Edit** , something I have forgot to mention, but which may change opinions is that all releases will be done in automated way. On Github/git a specific commit will be tagged being version major.minor.patch and after that the build system (here: Travis CI) will pick up the tag and automatically build every release and publish it somewhere if necessary and/or wanted."}
{"_id": "43732", "title": "Design Patterns in Delphi", "text": "Delphi has a few problems implementing some design patterns because some features it lacks, like multiple inheritance and no pure abstract classes. Are there any good resources or \"Adaptation-Patterns\" to convert some or all of the Design Patterns in the GoF book, to Delphi applications?"}
{"_id": "43733", "title": "Who organizes your MATLAB code?", "text": "After reading http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2326609/how-to-organize- matlab-cod, I had a follow up question. If you work in a group of MATLAB programmers, who enforces the organization of the shared MATLAB code and project matfiles? For example do you have a dedicated MATLAB IT person, or does the most senior programmer issue guidelines that everyone must follow, or does everyone agree to follow a system? In my small group, each person has their own 'system'. MATLAB code and project matfiles are either piled into a shared drive or tucked away on people's own computers. Hard to recreate work done by another person, or even to locate their code. There were lots of good suggestions on how to get organized. But it seems like someone has to make the trains run on time. Who does it in your group?"}
{"_id": "201003", "title": "Better server to client communication mechanism over HTTP", "text": "I have a single server with several clients. I want to push messages to a particular client at a given time. Clients should not polling to the server. what are good patterns and practices to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "201000", "title": "Equating multiple new variables with an old one", "text": "Sometimes I run into a situation where I need to equate two new variables with an old one. Which of the following (if any) is a good practice (w.r.t. code readability or any other factor), under what conditions?               a=b;     c=b;      or               a=b;     c=a;      Note, `a`,`b` and `c` are just the names chosen in this example."}
{"_id": "232997", "title": "why is len not a reserved keyword in python", "text": "why is functions like **`len`** and **`max`** not a reserved keyword in python. Following are the only reserved words http://docs.python.org/2/reference/lexical_analysis.html#keywords"}
{"_id": "188427", "title": "How to synchronize client and server model objects?", "text": "We have a client-server application with a thick client (GWT). There are client-side MVP presenters (MVC controllers) which hold references to some objects viewed in the GUI. Some user actions cause these objects to be updated on the server. After that we can send updated objects back to the client and reassign them to the presenter. The problem is that there are usually a few references to an object on the client (Lists, HashMaps, etc.) and it is hard to update all of them. Another approach is not to update the references but update the object itself, e.g. copy all the properties from the server object to the client one. But if an object is complex it is not easy too. Which approach is better? Or maybe I miss something?"}
{"_id": "86311", "title": "How do libraries such as DirectX relate to drivers?", "text": "I've always been curious, how libraries such as DirectX, OpenGL and OpenAL are implemented. Do they use some sort of unified API provided by OS? Talk directly to kernel? Maybe hardware drivers provide unified API? Or vendors provide their own backends to such libraries? Even entire implementations of such libraries? Or such libraries handle different drivers on their own?"}
{"_id": "232993", "title": "Is doing an assignment inside a condition considered a code smell?", "text": "Many times I have to write a loop that requires initialization of a loop condition, and an update every time the loop executes. Here's one example:               List<String> currentStrings = getCurrentStrings();     while(currentStrings.size() > 0) {       doThingsThatCanAlterCurrentStrings();       currentStrings = getCurrentStrings();     }      One things I dislike about this code is the duplicate call to `getCurrentStrings()`. One option is to add the assignment to the condition as follows:               List<String> currentStrings;     while( (currentStrings = getCurrentStrings()).size() > 0) {       doThingsThatCanAlterCurrentStrings();     }      But while I now have less duplication and less code, i _feel_ that my code is now harder to read. On the other hand, it is easier to understand that we are looping on a variable that may be changed by the loop. What is the best practice to follow in cases like this?"}
{"_id": "232990", "title": "What is the word to describe languages that have classes and inheritance?", "text": "What is the word used to describe the type of programming languages that provide explicit syntax for defining classes and that support inheritance? For example: \"A ______ language, such as C++, Java, C#, or D.\" I keep thinking \"object oriented\", but that also includes languages like Lua and JavaScript, which aren't quite what I'm thinking of. I am sure there is a definitive term for this group of languages, I just do not know what it is."}
{"_id": "19457", "title": "Do system background services affect languages benchmarking?", "text": "Today I was looking at some blogs on Ruby and Python. A Python loyalist wrote a few lines of code with a loop to show how Python is faster than Ruby, with a similar code. I also found a blog of a Ruby disciple who says that it is wrong and he too submitted a code sample and benchmarking results. I am wondering whether background programs or background processes may sometime hinder the results and we may not get exact benchmarking scenario. Please correct me if I am wrong."}
{"_id": "19451", "title": "How do you manage the testing of your Android software on physical devices?", "text": "I'm in charge of managing mobile application development at my company, and I am currently building a mobile device \"library\" for testing. Essentially, we want to have a representative device in-house for each of the OSes we are developing for, currently iOS (iPhone-only), Blackberry, and Android. Simulators only go so far, but I'm placing into the process a step to test software on the devices themselves. The problem we're finding is with Android. I don't think any of us here ever really understood just how fragmented the whole platform is until we started looking at devices to acquire. We are going to wait until v2.3 of Android is released, but which products to choose? Do we go by the most popular by market share? Do we get a small range of products by specs from least to most powerful overall? We're trying to avoid having to manage a dozen different devices to test each app, if not because of cost if only for the repeated time sink. How do you manage the testing of your Android software on physical devices? UPDATE: To bring some context to what I am asking, the applications being created are for educational purposes only, and there are no plans to use any of the hardware features of the devices themselves. We are simply displaying content in a variety of ways: eBooks, test questions, flash cards, etc. that may or may not be downloadable content. So, no cameras, GPS, user-driven content management, or anything like that; just as device-agnostic as we can possibly make it."}
{"_id": "177037", "title": "Scala as a language for Generic Programming", "text": "In the paper \u201cAn Extended Comparative Study of Language Support for Generic Programming\u201d by Garcia et al. an interesting comparison of programming languages features for generic programming is given: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/8kNzR.png) with the brief explanation of terminology: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LuQLi.png) Can anyone test Scala support for generic programming inside this framework? I.e. add a column in the first table with explanations if possible."}
{"_id": "177030", "title": "Security issue about making my code public in GitHub", "text": "I'm developing a big community/forum website and I'd like to upload my code to GitHub to have at least some sort of version control over it (because I have nothing other than a .rar file as a backup, not even SVN), to let others contribute to the project, and also perhaps using it to let my potential future employers see some of my code as some sort of curriculum. But what I'm wondering now, and I'm suprised I haven't seen anyone mention it before is the security aspect of it. Isn't publishing the code of a website a **_HUGE_** security hole? Is like giving a potential hacker or anyone who would like to find any potential exploit possible, even considering that the critical files aren't uploaded (database passwords, authentication scripts, etc.). Of course that there are millions of projects uploaded to GitHub and no one will find mine just 'by chance'. But if they look for it, it would indeed be there. Bottomline: my problem is not about copyright or licenses, but others finding exploits in my website. I'm I missing something here?"}
{"_id": "177031", "title": "Is it appropriate to run a complex enterprise-system configuration and migration project in a similar way to a Scrum development project?", "text": "I'm just starting out on the implementation of a large enterprise-wide system, which has complex requirements and many stakeholders. The company has been through high-level evaluation and tender process and determined to purchase a highly configurable \"off-the-shelf\" product rather than building an entirely bespoke system. The system will replace several existing systems and will require a significant amount of data migration. I'm thinking that the implementation of this system (which is expected to take over 2 years) could be run in a similar way to a Scrum software development project. With the first sprints targeted at building the minimal possible functionality needed (across all functional areas), and then iteratively deepening the level of functionality according the stakeholder feedback. I think this will de-risk the project and help ensure a balance of stakeholder needs within the available time. The user stories are still the same, it's just that to implement them we have work within the constraints of the pre-purchased system. When it comes to 'building stuff', instead of writing custom code the team will be configuring the off-the-shelf package, writing data conversion scripts and the like (and it should be a lot quicker!). Does this sound like a sensible approach? Does the Agile approach makes sense here?"}
{"_id": "185046", "title": "How to improve efficiency with functional programming?", "text": "I've recently been going through the Learn You a Haskell for Great Good guide and as practice I wanted to solve Project Euler Problem 5 with it, which specifies: > What is the smallest positive number that is evenly divisible by all of the > numbers from 1 to 20? I decided to first write a function determining whether a given number is divisible by these numbers:               divisable x = all (\\y -> x `mod` y == 0)[1..20]      Then I calculated the smallest one using `head`:               sm = head [x | x <- [1..], divisable x]      And finally wrote the line to display the result:               main = putStrLn $ show $ sm      Unfortunately this took about 30 seconds to finish. Doing the same thing with the numbers 1 to 10 yields a result almost immediately, but then again the result is much smaller than the solution for 1 to 20. I solved it earlier in C and there the result for 1 to 20 was also calculated almost instantly. This leads me to believe I'm misunderstanding how to interpret this problem for Haskell. I looked through other people's solutions and found this:               main = putStrLn $ show $ foldl1 lcm [1..20]      Fair enough, this uses a built-in function, but why is the end result so much slower when doing it yourself? The tutorials out there tell you how to use Haskell, but I don't see much help with transforming algorithms into fast code."}
{"_id": "185043", "title": "How to remove duplicate exception block code", "text": "I have good number of Service and DAO classes which has the same set of 30 line exception code block which gets repeated and it shows up in Code Duplication report. The approach which i can think of is to   * Extract the common exception code block to a common method and call   the method in one shot Re-organize the methods to ensure there is always one entry and exit point to Services or DAOs which will have just one set of exception code. Are there any better ways to approach this scenario?"}
{"_id": "204557", "title": "generic chaining technique for overloaded method", "text": "A common operation in JavaScript is to replace an object method with a new one while still calling the original method. This is often done like this:               var originalMethod = obj.method;     obj.method = function(arg) {         // call original method         originalMethod.call(this, arg);         // do my stuff new stuff     }      I'd like to create a utility function for a specific object method that handles the chaining part so that the user doesn't need to be concerned about it. One option is to use the above design, in which each added function is wrapped in a new function that calls the previous one. Another option is to create an array of functions and make the object method just iterate over the array, calling each function in turn.               function addXyzMethod1(fn) {         if (obj.method) {             var previousMethod = obj.method;             obj.method = function(value) {                 value = previousMethod.call(this, value);                 return fn.call(this, value);             };         } else {             obj.method = fn;         }     }          function addXyzMethod2(fn) {         if (obj._methodList) {             obj._methodList.push(fn);         } else if (obj.method) {             obj._methodList = [obj.method, fn];             obj.method = function(value) {                 for (var i = 0, n = obj._methodList.length; i < n; i++) {                     value = obj._methodList[i].call(this, value);                 }                 return value;             };         } else {             obj.method = fn;         }     }      At this point, I can't decide which method to use since I feel the trade-offs of each are about even. So my question here is: Which of these method is better (more natural, or accepted, or quicker) or is there another method that improves on both of these?"}
{"_id": "181755", "title": "Branching breaks continous integration?", "text": "I think this article, A Successful Git Branching Model, is very well known among experienced DVCS users. I use `hg` mostly, but I would argue this discussion is fine for any DVCS. Our current workflow is each developer clones the master repo. We write code on our own local repo, runs tests, and if all goes well pushes to the master. So we want to setup CI servers like Jenkins and improve our workflow with the future provisioning system (chef, puppet, ansible, etc). **Real part** Well, the model presents above works nice but branches can break CI. The feature branch should sync with the origin (according to the article, it would be `development` branch) to make CI and merging smooth, right? Say Alice and Bob are working on two features. But Alice is done the next day. Bob's feature takes a week. By the time Bob is done, his changes are out of dated (maybe Alice refactored/rename some classes). One solution is each morning developers must pull `master/origin` to check if there's any changes. If Alice commited, Bob should pull and merge into his workspace so his feature branch is up-to-date.   1. Is this a good way?    2. Should these branches exist in the master repo (not local clone?) Meaning should every developer has commit privilege to the master repo on GitHub/Bitbucket so they can create a new branch? Or this is done locally?   3. Lastly, the model presents by the article should break CI if branches are not sync with the `origin/master`. Since we want to do nightly build, should developers pull and merge before they leave work, and have CI runs on each feature branch as well? Thanks."}
{"_id": "189771", "title": "Re-writing a large web application - alternatives to LAMP", "text": "We have a very large, 10 year old LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) web application that is out of control and poorly written due to a large number of patches and possible hundreds of programmers. If we were to do a re-write, what are alternatives to the LAMP stack? One of the reasons behind LAMP was that it's easy to develop and cheap. Now the company can afford to spend more time/effort/money on a new system. I thought about Java or C++ with Oracle? Is there a common 'Enterprise' stack companies use? Many thanks."}
{"_id": "38862", "title": "If I were to build a website just like this one for programming practice, what specific knowledgebase would I need?", "text": "I learned C++ in college (now we are moving to Java.) On the side I learned basic scheme, php and javascript. However my knowledge is basic enough that I wouldn't even know how to start building a website such as this. The reason I ask is I want to further develop my web-development skills/knowledge by doing a project and I REALLY love the design of this website so I thought I could build a variant of it. Can someone point me to guides or what I need to learn next to start moving in that direction? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "229451", "title": "What are some good ways to represent relationship among three numbers", "text": "I'm trying to find a clean, intuitive way to implement this problem. Basically, I have three numbers, and based on relationship (less than, greater than, and equal to) among these numbers would change how I execute the next set of code. For example, if there are numbers A, B, and C. Here are some examples of relationships among them:   * A < B < C   * A = B > C   * A = B = C   * B < A = C A consumer of my framework would build this kind of relationships between the three numbers and would pass into a class that would process the relationships. So far, I could think of one way to implement that is relatively simple but not clean. I would represent relationships between the three numbers in flags. So, there would three different flags (A to B, B to C, and A to C). Each flag would have LessThan, EqualTo, and GreaterThan options. I would have to run through many checks to make sure that the 3 given flags are valid. If A < B and B < C, then A cannot be greater than C. If A = B and A < C, then B cannot be greater than C. The list goes on. Is there a better way to design this?"}
{"_id": "207904", "title": "What are the good practices for including namespaces in C++ that avoid more typing?", "text": "I am starting out with C++ and almost everywhere I see there is these 2 sentences at the top.               #include <iostream>     using namespace std;      As I understand namespaces are something to keep names separate and have same identifiers in different namespaces. So isn't including `std` in the beginning undoing all the hard work of creating namespaces? Isn't it better to have something like `std::cout` when I need a certain function from a particular namespace? Would including the namespace in the particular function that uses it a good tradeoff between less typing (`std::cout` vs. `cout` everywhere) and avoiding the name conflicts(abc in foo and abc in bar avoided using `foo::abc` and `bar::abc`)? Something like               int function_using_abc_namespace(int a)     {         using namespace abc;         //Rest of the function     }      I wanted to know because avoiding name conflicts is necessary but avoiding more typing is also important. If this isn't good way to get a middle ground then what are the alternatives?"}
{"_id": "244745", "title": "Face Recognition(OpenCV) with MySQL and PHP", "text": "First of all I have asked this question on stackoverflow and got down vote for question being not belonging to the site. I am trying my luck se now(more suitable to se I guess) and I hope I will not get down vote from here too I want to develop a face recognition app that searches the database for an image. I looked at opencv a little. I really liked it and I want to use it but the problem is I am planning to use PHP for server backend and OpenCV is in C++. My app will require lots of communication between PHP and C++ and also I will have to connect to the database and fetch images from them. Basically what I am planning to do is :   * PHP will get the request which includes the desired image file   * PHP will pass this image to my C++ code   * C++ will search the database to find the person   * C++ will pass the result to PHP   * PHP will return the result to client However this approach makes me really scared because there are lots of gray areas for me to how to do it. Should I use sockets to do the communication or IPC (POSIX Messages etc if possible) or should I use entirely C++ for my project(C++ server could be very difficult) or should I use PHP extensions(I know almost nothing about it). How can I use OpenCV with a Database and how can I perform a fast search(Hash values for grayscale cropped images maybe?). I also have to detect faces to train some images for a user which also requires the steps above. What are the suggestions you can make? Which way would be easiest for me to implement this application? Excuse me for the language and disorganized structure question but I am really worried about almost everything about the project and I really want to do it. Any guidance will be appreciated"}
{"_id": "13376", "title": "When there are multiple scrum teams, how often should the 'scrum of scrums' meet and who should attend?", "text": "When there is too much work for one scrum team to manage, multiple teams are created. A scrum team has a stand up meeting everyday. How often should the intra-scrum team meeting occur and who should attend? What should they talk about?"}
{"_id": "244748", "title": "Algorithm to Copy data faster than windows default copy provider", "text": "I need an algorithm which can copy data(files/folder) from one place to another, faster than windows default copy/paste option. I'm working in vc++. Is there any algorithm by which I can do copy/paste faster.   Or _Is there is any other suggestion to perform this task?_   Thanks"}
{"_id": "13371", "title": "Workflow Foundation to seperate data from business logic on a mid-sized App?", "text": "We are currently developing a .net app in WPF, that will be a desktop app with a good bit of data-access to local (and some remote) servers. The business logic here is very complex, and currently it is built into the code along with the data access and whatnot (being WPF the UI is seperated pretty nicely).      Now I have been tasked with reorganizing this system to make it more maintainable in the longrun as certain logic changes. I know that workflows are supposed to seperate the logic out pretty nicely and allow you to visualize it a bit. Is workflow a good choice for an app that does not need to be run over long periods? (since workflows CAN wait in idle for months) What has been your experience with the platform? Is it slow for dealing with a mid- sized company; around 150 simultaneous users? If you liked it, do you know of any good online tutorials(preferably not MSDN) that can give me a taste for the platform and do some testing before I commit to implementing it on a huge app?"}
{"_id": "254311", "title": "What is the difference between Callback<T> and Java 8's Supplier<T>?", "text": "I've been switching over to Java from C# after some recommendations from some over at CodeReview. So, when I was looking into LWJGL, one thing I remembered was that every call to `Display` must be executed on the same thread that the `Display.create()` method was invoked on. Remembering this, I whipped up a class that looks a bit like this.               public class LwjglDisplayWindow implements DisplayWindow {         private final static int TargetFramesPerSecond = 60;         private final Scheduler _scheduler;              public LwjglDisplayWindow(Scheduler displayScheduler, DisplayMode displayMode) throws LWJGLException {             _scheduler = displayScheduler;             Display.setDisplayMode(displayMode);             Display.create();         }              public void dispose() {             Display.destroy();         }              @Override         public int getTargetFramesPerSecond() { return TargetFramesPerSecond; }              @Override         public Future<Boolean> isClosed() {             return _scheduler.schedule(() -> Display.isCloseRequested());         }     }      While writing this class you'll notice that I created a method called `isClosed()` that returns a `Future<Boolean>`. This dispatches a function to my `Scheduler` interface (which is nothing more than a wrapper around an `ScheduledExecutorService`. While writing the `schedule` method on the `Scheduler` I noticed that I could either use a `Supplier<T>` argument _or_ a `Callable<T>` argument to represent the function that is passed in. `ScheduledExecutorService` didn't contain an override for `Supplier<T>` but I noticed that the lambda expression `() -> Display.isCloseRequested()` is actually type compatible with both `Callable<bool>` **and** `Supplier<bool>`. My question is, is there a difference between those two, semantically or otherwise - and if so, what is it, so I can adhere to it?"}
{"_id": "254313", "title": "Solving a probabilistic problem", "text": "So I am interested in Computational Investing and came across this problem on a wiki page: > Write a program to discover the answer to this puzzle:\"Let's say men and > women are paid equally (from the same uniform distribution). If women date > randomly and marry the first man with a higher salary, what fraction of the > population will get married?\" I don't have much knowledge in probability theory, so I'm not really sure how to implement this in code. My thinking:   1. Populate two arrays(female,male) with random salary values from a uniform distribution.    2. Randomly pair one female and one male array element and see if condition of higher salary is met.   3. If it is, increment a counter.   4. Divide counter by population and get percentage. Is this the correct logic? Do woman continually date until there is no males left with higher salaries than women?"}
{"_id": "218118", "title": "Strategies for Indexing Custom Fields in RavenDB", "text": "In the relational database world, if I was developing a CRM system and wanted to have the user add their own custom fields that are searchable, I could have tables that store the name of the new column, the data type and the value, etc. (which would be less inefficient to index) or I could use the less elegant (but more searchable) solution that software like Dynamics and SharePoint use, whereas I create a load of columns on my aggregate root called CustomInt1, CustomInt2, etc. (which looks dirty and has a limit of how many custom fields a user can have, but has indexing advantages). But my questions is this, in NoSQL databases, what would be the best way of achieving the same thing? My priority would be for searchability. So what would be the best way to store this data? If I used a predefined set of properties (i.e. CustomData1, CustomData2, etc.), because these are all stored as JSON (i.e. strings) in the database, does this make it simpler because I don't have to worry about data types?"}
{"_id": "254319", "title": "Overloading methods that do logically different things, does this break any major principles?", "text": "This is something that's been bugging me for a bit now. In some cases you see code that is a series of overloads, but when you look at the actual implementation you realize they do logically different things. However writing them as overloads allows the caller to ignore this and get the same end result. But would it be more sound to name the methods more explicitly then to write them as overloads?               public void LoadWords(string filePath)     {         var lines = File.ReadAllLines(filePath).ToList();              LoadWords(lines);     }          public void LoadWords(IEnumerable<string> words)     {         // loads words into a List<string> based on some filters     }      Would these methods better serve future developers to be named as `LoadWordsFromFile()` and `LoadWordsFromEnumerable()`? It seems unnecessary to me, but if that is better what programming principle would apply here? On the flip side it'd make it so you didn't need to read the signatures to see exactly how you can load the words, which as Uncle Bob says would be a double take. But in general is this type of overloading to be avoided then?"}
{"_id": "218111", "title": "Multiple Instantiate of 1 class affects memory?", "text": "I am currently struggling with memory handling. I have an if statement and each `case` instantiate a new object from a class. Does this affect the memory allocation in java?               switch()     {     case 1:     test t1 = new test();          case 2:     test t2 = new test();          case 3:     test t3 = new test();          case 4:     test t4 = new test();          case 5:     test t5 = new test();          case 6:     test t6 = new test();          }"}
{"_id": "218110", "title": "Who controls the npm registry?", "text": "NPM's docs say that anyone can call `npm-publish` and add his own NPM package to the \"official\" registry. Who controls this registry? How reliable is it for production deployment scenarios? What's preventing people from spamming this registry? Is there any moderation/QA process?"}
{"_id": "209627", "title": "What is a reasonable way to structure relationships in MongoDB", "text": "I am also using Node - which I am not the most familiar with - if the articles/books/tutorials pertained to this also - that would help even more. I come from a mostly MySQL background - but in this api, all data is going to be served as JSON - so at first glance, using Mongo made a lot of sense (I could be wrong). One thign I have been unable to wrap my head around though, is relational models. e.b. `Object has many Assets`. To use some examples most people would be familiar with, let's assume I am trying to do something like:   * Select a blog post and all of its comments. **or**   * Select a photo gallery and all of its photos Is it as simple as storing a call back inside of my assets like this?:               Photo {         __id: 5,         content: '...',         gallery_id: 9      }      And performing a `.find({ gallery_id: 9 })`? I know this would _work_ , but is that best practice? I am **very** new to Document Databases, and have not seen much on this particular topic."}
{"_id": "140375", "title": "Has Javascript developed beyond what it was originally designed to do?", "text": "I've been talking with a friend about the purpose of Javascript, when and how it should be used, etc. He quoted that: > JavaScript was designed to add interactivity to HTML pages > > [...] > > JavaScript gives HTML designers a programming tool > >   * HTML authors are normally not programmers, but JavaScript is a scripting > language with a very simple syntax! Almost anyone can put small \"snippets\" > of code into their HTML pages JavaScript can react to events >   * A JavaScript can be set to execute when something happens, like when a > page has finished loading or when a user clicks on an HTML element > JavaScript can read and write HTML elements >   * A JavaScript can read and change the content of an HTML element > JavaScript can be used to validate data >   * A JavaScript can be used to validate form data before it is submitted to > a server. This saves the server from extra processing >   * JavaScript can be used to detect the visitor's browser - A JavaScript > can be used to detect the visitor's browser, and - depending on the browser > - load another page specifically designed for that browser. >   * JavaScript can be used to create cookies - A JavaScript can be used to > store and retrieve information on the visitor's computer. > However, it seems like Javascript's getting used to do a lot more than these days. My friend also advocates against using Javascript's OOP functionality, claiming that \"you shouldn't be processing data, merely validating.\" Is Javascript really limited to validating data and making flashy graphics on a web page? He goes on to claim \"you shouldn't be attempting to access databases through javascript\" and also says \" in general you don't want to be doing your heavy lifting in javascript\". I can't say I agree with his opinion, but I'd like to get some more input on this. So, my question: Has Javascript evolved from the definition above to something more powerful, has the way we use it changed, or am I just plain wrong? While I realize this is a subjective question, I can't find any more information on it, so a few links would be good, if nothing else. I'm not looking for a debate, just an answer."}
{"_id": "140374", "title": "Higher coding standards for dynamic languages?", "text": "Due to the inherent risks associated with using dynamic languages (e.g. Python, Ruby) carelessly, what (if any) standards should be imposed on production code written in these languages?"}
{"_id": "140373", "title": "How is a software backdoor implemented?", "text": "The wikipedia article on Limewire says that \"LimeWire 5.5.11 and newer have been disabled using a backdoor installed by the company\". How are such backdoors implemented? Is it as simple as the the program going out and checking a web service and disabling itself? If it's in fact so simple, it has to be stored somewhere on the user's drive (in a plist, or in the registry for example). It's hard to imagine no one has in fact figured out a way to turn that flag off and use the program."}
{"_id": "140370", "title": "What should I \"forget\" when going to Javascript?", "text": "I went from C=64 Basic and assembler to FORTRAN and C to C++ and Java. Professionally I started in Visual Basic for applications then to Visual Basic 4, 5, 6. After that VB.NET AND C# with some Java here and there. I have played with Ruby and Python and found both fun. During each step I never felt like I had to forget what I had learned before. I always felt like I was just learning better and/or _slightly_ different ways of doing things but the difference was not major. The difference was like the difference between American, Australian and British English. (Maybe assembler was Latin and FORTRAN was Spanish.) But now I am using JavaScript to do real, actual work. (Before used it as a \"Scripting\" language pure a simple.) And I just feel like I have to forget some things to become proficient in it. It feels like some old Egyptian language. What should I forget? Is it just that code organization is different (no real classes so no one class one file)? Or is it something more basic? *Edit. Even though closed I think the few answers provided have been very helpful. I thought about it today and looked at, and wrote, some code. I may be wrong but I think the major things are:   1. Scope is not to be so tightly controlled or maybe it can't be as tightly controlled? Anyway I can't think of scope in JavaScript as I do in class based system. I have to forget those ideas.   2. Classes/Interfaces are not the basic unit of functionality. Not sure what is the basic unit actually is yet (the function? the prototype? TBD) but at least I know not to try to think about classes. (This is probably the basic one.)"}
{"_id": "155131", "title": "Is it important to obfuscate C++ application code?", "text": "In the Java world, it seems to sometimes be a problem, but, what about C++? Are there different solutions? I was thinking about the fact that someone can replace the C++ library of a specific OS with a different version of the same library, but full of debug symbols to understand what my code does. IS tt a good thing to use standard or popular libraries? This can also happen with some dll library under Windows replaced with the \"debug version\" of that library. Is it better to prefer static compilation? In commercial applications, I see that for the core of their app they compile everything statically and for the most part the dlls (dynamic libraries in general) are used to offer some third party technologies like anti-piracy solutions (I see this in many games), GUI library (like Qt), OS libraries, etc. Is static compilation the equivalent to obfuscation in the Java world? In better terms, is it the best and most affordable solution to protect your code?"}
{"_id": "48608", "title": "How to manage Agile developers working with traditional (serial) business persons?", "text": "Good afternoon, My work environment has some problems. Our IT team is trying to be more agile, but we're not really getting buy-in from the business. They attend our daily stand-ups and sprint reviews, and they help with sprint planning, but then they turn around and do 4 months of requirements gathering for a project before moving forward with a (mostly) serial development style. The sprint goals are things like \"get XX% closer to release\". For the IT team, they've turned the Sprints into a sort of death march. We end a Sprint one day and start a new Sprint the very next day. There's no reflection or changes done between sprints, only during. Having never done any of the agile methodologies before, I haven't had a very pleasant introduction to them. So my questions are: 1) Should there be some time (perhaps a week or so) between sprints to do the reflection/introspection/changes/etc.? Or are back-to-back-to-back sprints the norm? 2) Is there any chance for survival for an agile team with no agile business counter-parts? If not, are there some transitional methodologies or even tips for moving the business towards an iterative if not necessarily agile mindset? 3) Should your entire team be on every sprint? We have almost 20 programmers on a single sprint but working on completely different projects (typically teams of 3-5, sometimes larger). Is it normal to have a single sprint or should we be trying to manage multiple independent sprints? Should we be trying to keep the multiple sprints in concurrent lockstep or should their timetables be allowed to overlap and be flexible? Any thoughts or advice is appreciated. This is my first time coming over from SO for a question, so please let me know if there are better ways to phrase these kinds of questions (faq was rather helpful, but still not sure I'm following it perfectly). Thanks!"}
{"_id": "256222", "title": "Undefined behavior, in principle", "text": "Whether in C or C++, I think that this illegal program, whose behavior according to the C or C++ standard is undefined, is interesting:               #include <stdio.h>          int foo() {         int a;         const int b = a;         a = 555;         return b;     }          void bar() {         int x = 123;         int y = 456;     }          int main() {         bar();         const int n1 = foo();         const int n2 = foo();         const int n3 = foo();         printf(\"%d %d %d\\n\", n1, n2, n3);         return 0;     }      Output on my machine (after compilation without optimization):               123 555 555      I think that this illegal program is interesting because it illustrates stack mechanics, because the very reason one uses C or C++ (instead of, say, Java) is to program close to the hardware, close to stack mechanics and the like. However, on StackOverflow, when a questioner's code _inadvertently_ reads from uninitialized storage, the most heavily upvoted answers invariably quote the C or C++ (especially C++) standard to the effect that the behavior is undefined. This is true, of course, as far as the standard goes--the behavior is indeed undefined--but it is curious that alternate answers that try, from a hardware or stack-mechanical perspective, to investigate why a _specific_ undefined behavior (such as the output above) might have occurred, are rare and tend to be ignored. I even remember one answer that suggested that _undefined behavior_ could include reformatting my hard drive. I didn't worry too much about that, though, before running the program above. My question is this: _Why is it more important to teach readers merely that behavior is undefined in C or C++, than it is to understand the undefined behavior?_ I mean, if the reader understood the undefined behavior, then would he not be the more likely to avoid it? My education happens to be in electrical engineering, and I work as a building-construction engineer, and the last time I had a job as a programmer _per se_ was 1994, so I am curious to understand the perspective of users with more conventional, more recent software-development backgrounds."}
{"_id": "45231", "title": "Does learning a functional language make a better OOP programmer?", "text": "As a Java/C#/C++ programmer I hear a lot of talk about functional languages, but have never found a need to learn one. I've also heard that the higher level of thinking introduced in functional languages makes you a better OOP/procedural language programmer. Can anyone confirm this? In what ways does it improve your programming skills? What is a good choice of language to learn with the goal of improving skills in a less sophisticated language?"}
{"_id": "256225", "title": "Properly design program database to reflect organization structure", "text": "I'm having trouble setting up my program's database the 'right' way. I was hoping you guys could give me suggestions on doing it properly. I am creating a database+client for a non-profit organization that runs all across Canada. I'll describe how it works below to give you guys a better understanding of what I'm trying to do. ## First off, What are you using? - - - - - > ** _Laravel_** I've started to create it already with a web based (PHP with **_Laravel_** , HTML, CSS [bootstrap]) frontend and a MySQL based backend. ## How the organization is setup? Currently the organization I am making this database for has 3 main tiers; Main Management ({MM}) > Sub-Management ({SM}) > and Local ({L}). {MM} has multiple {SM}, {SM} has multiple {L}.   ![Diagram of Org. Structure](http://i.imgur.com/kqurrsW.png)   Currently I am focusing on the _last 2 tiers_ , {SM} and {L}. {SM} makes sure {L} is running properly and {L} regularly submits different paperwork and reports to {SM}. ## What kind of data do you need to keep track of? I am looking to store some Personal information; address, email phone, etc. As well as class/instruction results (marks included). Some inventory management (who has what, very simple). Some positional information (who has what job). And some Attendance info (Who did what, where, for how long). ## So what's your actual question? Currently, I am assigning every {L} an id and using that as a foreign key in all the inventory/personnel/positional tables, but it's getting ridiculous to do the 'where' call everywhere in my queries; tough to keep track of when doing more complex queries.   I was wondering if it would be better to _separate_ each {L} into it's own database and access each depending on which user is logged in? I'm not sure what would be best or what is accepted as best practice. I could **really** use your help! I've been having a **lot** of fun so far learning laravel and amazed at the features it has to offer. **Thanks so much for any and all suggestions,   Chris** **If you need a better explanation or have any questions please ask!** **Edit:** Sorry, I thought about this after... I also (probably) want to be able to allow different members of different {L}s to communicate or transfer member/information between {L}s. Would this be more difficult if they were split up? Maybe I should keep everything together in one database? Yeah. I'm just lost and confused... :)"}
{"_id": "48600", "title": "Encoding issues from MySQL database to PHP page", "text": "So I've been working on a small, small side project to learn a bit more about PHP database interactions. I bought a small, cheap database of \"Inspirational Stories\" and set to work on turning it into a web site that no one will ever remember. :P I've worked out a number of issues so far and learned a fair bit, however, one issue that I can't seem to pinpoint is issues with entities. I'm not entirely sure if this issue is arising from the initial database encoding, or perhaps I'm pulling in the data wrong from the database, or something... I'm not quite sure what's wrong, and on top of it, I don't really know how to pinpoint it. For an example of what I mean, see here. Any hints or clues on this would be appreciated. I'm not even sure if I'm using the correct terminology here."}
{"_id": "201915", "title": "What does scannerless parsing have to do with the \"Dangling Else Problem\"?", "text": "I do not understand this sentence from the Wikipedia article on the Dangling Else problem: > [The Dangling Else problem] is a problem that often comes up in compiler > construction, especially scannerless parsing. Can someone explain to me how scannerless parsing techniques might exacerbate this problem? It seems to me that the problem is with the grammar -- since it's ambiguous -- not with the choice of parsing technique. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "201913", "title": "Is this really necessary for solving this problem?", "text": "I came across the following article which presents the problem: > A group of people walk into a restaurant and want to spend exactly $15.05 on > appetizers. They also want them as fast as possible. This leaves waiter with > an NP-hard problem to solve, a variation of knapsack problem. The article goes on to create some sort of \"genetic algorithm\" to solve the problem. My question is, is that really necessary? First of all, no programming solution would be possible if no combination of existing appetizers could equal $15.05. Right? Also, if I were approached with this problem, I would do something like this:               // loop through appetizers       // deduct price from total amount ($15.05) until the difference <= zero       // add to new array of appetizers          // sort the new appetizers array by \"time to make the appetizer\"     // return new appetizers array      Isn't it that simple? Thanks for your review."}
{"_id": "221098", "title": "Ways of developing for small system. What is expedient?", "text": "I'm developing a small system for internal automation. I use asp.net webforms and faced with a choice:   1. develop a system architecture in an object-oriented style (development becomes more difficult and time-consuming) or   2. just put controls on forms and write sql queries in control handlers (high speed development, the complexity of testing) \u0421urrently I'm using the first method, but starting to have doubts that my choice is correct. What way is expedient?"}
{"_id": "77365", "title": "Priority value meaning", "text": "The library that I'm working on has a parameter which defines priority of a certain process. I want the interface to be as clear as possible, but it seems that different people have opposite interpretations of priority values.               1. Lowest number has highest priority (1 - highest priority, 10 - lowest priority)     2. Highest number has highest priority (1 - lowest priority, 10 - highest priority)      Which way do you think is more natural/logical?"}
{"_id": "163004", "title": "What is the opposite of initialize (or init)?", "text": "The term will be used as a method name. The method is called when a part of the user interface is hidden (or removed), and it is used to reset values to default and dispose objects that will not be used any more. Possible names are: release, remove, dispose, clear etc. Which do you think is the most appropriate?"}
{"_id": "85157", "title": "What is the most appropriate top level domain for a programmer's personal home page", "text": "Say you're a programmer and you have your personal home page (blog, about me, contacts, cv and so forth). Several top-devel domain names could apply to this situation. **.com** : This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register. Though originally intended for for-profit business entities, for a number of reasons it became the \"main\" TLD for domain names and is currently used by all types of entities including nonprofits, schools and private individuals. Domain name registrations may be challenged if the holder cannot prove an outside relation justifying reservation of the name, to prevent \"squatting\". **.pro** : Currently, .pro is reserved for licensed or certified lawyers, accountants, physicians and engineers in France, Canada, NL, UK and the U.S. A professional seeking to register a .pro domain must provide their registrar with the appropriate credentials. **.info** : This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register. **.name** : This is an open TLD; any person or entity is permitted to register; however, registrations may be challenged later if they are not by individuals (or the owners of fictional characters) in accordance with the domain's charter. Then, you obviously have the geographically local domains ( **.it, .co.uk** , etc.). Other domains are also often misused (for example **.me** , being Montenegro), just because they sound appropriate for a personal home page and they are usually cheaper than others. What would be the most appropriate choice for this situation?"}
{"_id": "44724", "title": "Is it relevant to warn about truncating real constants to 32 bits?", "text": "I'm toying around with LLVM and looking at what it would take to make yet another strongly-typed language, and now that I'm around the syntax, I've noticed that it seems to be a pet peeve of strongly typed language to warn people that their real constants won't fit inside a `float`:               // both in Java and C#     float foo = 3.2;     // error: implicitly truncating a double into a float     // or something along these lines      Why doesn't this work in Java and C#? I know it's easy to add the `f` after the `3.2`, but is it really doing anything useful? Must I really be _that_ aware that I'm using single-precision reals instead of double-precision reals? Maybe I'm just missing something (which, basically, is why I'm asking). Note that `float foo = [const]` is not the same thing as `float foo = [double variable]`, where requiring the cast seems normal to me."}
{"_id": "86384", "title": "What is a clean Agile (Scrum) Sprint Presentation?", "text": "Suppose someone of your development team is presenting a sprint to the customer but he is having web connection problems such that a complete story cannot be presented. For the sake of the cleanness of the presentation, do you help your colleague suggesting possible solutions and try to fix it in the moment? Or is it kind of messy? May be the customer (who is \"part\" of the team) will understand? Why?"}
{"_id": "236196", "title": "Flexible authorization design in ASP.NET pages?", "text": "I'm developing an ASP.NET webforms application with pages which displays information based on the authorization level of the authenticated user (very typical). I will write a simple example of the issue I'm facing: Let's pose I want to have a page with 4 buttons: 1- \"OnlyForAdmins\" button. 2- \"OnlyForManagersAndAdmins\" button 3- \"Guest\" button 4- \"Authenticated\" button Depending on the permission level of the visitor, one or several buttons must be displayed. Right now in code behind buttons are handled in the following way:               public void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         if (HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)             Athenticated.Visible = true;         if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole(\"Admins\"))             OnlyForAdmins.Visible = true;         if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole(\"Manager\") || HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole(\"Admins\"))             OnlyForManagersAndAdmin.Visible = true;     }      While this works, honestly I think that this approach is rather inflexible, having to add more \"ifs\" for every new role I introduce. I wonder if there exist approaches to handle this kind of problems. I'd be grateful if someone can enlighten me. Thank you."}
{"_id": "236195", "title": "Http meta tag for refreshing/redirecting", "text": "I am not doing web programming usually, but while looking at the generated source of a webpage learned that a standard way to refresh a web page is to use `<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"_sec\">`. I find this an abuse of \"metadata\" which for my understanding is supposed to be only \"data about data\" and not something to affect user experience (in this case I cannot imagine how often a page is refreshed qualifying as \"data about data\"). My questions are 1) Was this way of redirecting, a workaround because early days of html/browsers did not provide another standard way to redirect/refresh? 2) Is my idea/definition of \"metadata\" as strictly being a description of what the data is all about (like charset, type, keywords etc.) too narrow ?"}
{"_id": "236194", "title": "Does it make sense to choose UTF-32, based on concern that some basic rule will be broken for UTF-8?", "text": "I'm working on an cross platform C++ project, which doesn't consider unicode, and need change to support unicode. There is following two choices, and I need to decide which one to choose.   * Using UTF-8 (std::string) which will make it easy to support posix system.   * Using UTF-32 (std::wstring) which will make it easy to call windows API. So for item #1 UTF8, the benefit is code change will not too many. But the concern is some basic rule will broken for UTF8, for example,   * string.size() will not equal the character length.   * search an '/' in path will be hard to implement (I'm not 100% sure). So any more experience? And which one I should choose?"}
{"_id": "139703", "title": "Getting started with ClojureScript and Google Closure", "text": "I would like to investigate whether ClojureScript, with the associated Google Closure library is a reasonable tool to build modern, in-browser, Javascript applications. My current Javascript stack consists of jQuery, Backbone and RequireJS with the possible additions of some widgets libraries like jQueryUI or KendoUI. So it will be quite a big leap (I already know how to work in Clojure, although I have little experience). What is a good roadmap to do so? Should I learn the Google Closure library first, or can I grasp it together with ClojureScript? One thing I am concerned about is the overall application structure. Backbone is rather opinionated on how to organize your application. I am not sure whether Google Closure also includes some components to help with the design of the application. And, if this is the case, I do not know how to tell whether this structure will port to ClojureScript or a ClojureScript application will require a different organization anyway, and only use - say - the widgets and DOM manipulation features of Closure."}
{"_id": "139700", "title": "What standards to use in Business Process Modelling?", "text": "There are several approaches on how to model a business process in software applications (BPM software). For instance, a processes can be described in BPMN, EPC, IDEF0, SOMF, etc. Additionally, different process execution languages such as BPEL, RPC, Wf-XML are available. If I were to develop software for the BPM-market, which standards should I implement or focus on? Which standards are most suitable if my BPM software was going to be implemented in my client's IT-System?"}
{"_id": "135486", "title": "Is MySQL viable for small-medium business applications", "text": "After having worked with a Microsoft stack - VB.Net, ASP.Net, SQL Server - for the past 10 years, we are now faced with having to develop an application for both Windows and Mac environments. It has been suggested that MySQL, for the database, is available on both platforms. I've been under the impression that MySQL is an open source project, but has recently been bought? / taken over? by Oracle. The MySQL web site seems to indicate that unless it is being used in another open source project, there are licencing fees to be paid, and the fees are in the order of other database costs - eg. SQL Server, Filemaker. Somebody has suggested that MySQL is free to use in a LAMP environment (but what about for a Windows Server?). Can somebody with deployed MySQL experience confirm or explain this, along with any other gotchas that might be pertinent?"}
{"_id": "135480", "title": "Rewriting a Procedural PHP App - Should we use a framework?", "text": "We have an app that's currently only got about 120 users. The userbase will probably grow by 50% over the next 12 months - but we're going to have to separate storage etc. because we're looking at several TB of data. Later this year, we will move to cluster based hosting. The app will also be provided in multiple languages. I'm at a stage with the project now where we sometimes need to add additional features rather quickly, and whilst the building the app the way it is was a business decision (time and money was short then and we had to have something running fast), now we need to have multiple developers working on the application, and it's a little tough, even though we have everything templated and documented well. I have the opportunity to rewrite the application - we can build one team to simultaneously redo the codebase, whilst one team manages the existing application. Once the new version is caught up, we'll switch over to it. The question is- should we use a framework for this application. I've looked at Symfony and CodeIgnitor, and obviously the latter is easier with a smaller learning curve for our team. On the other hand, if we just re-architecture the application and build our own 'framework' and classes (I know, no need to reinvent the wheel, but we already have hundreds of functions written which seamlessley talk to our database). Now I've seen comments like 'if you want have an app you want to make a living with, use Symfony', but I just don't know how that works. I've made a living with WordPress websites before too, so that statement is, well, not helpful! Any advice, please. Developer resource is not a problem for us, but I don't particularly like the restrictions Symfony imposes in terms of directory names, etc. (but I guess this is just a matter of getting used to things). The thing is, I now have to make a business decision, ultimately, and I'd like to be able to justify it to my team. At this point, from my point of view, the only major benefit is that when we hire new developers, if they are familiar with the framework, their learning curve will be less. This logic supports Symfony, but to me it is not enough. Qualified opinions will help, please. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "139704", "title": "Right Amount of Security on Machine", "text": "I am basically asking this question to see if I am being unreasonable. My current employer has locked down the machines of all developers so that we do not have access to the root or c: drive. For example, I cannot write a directory under C:. I also cannot install any software which touches the registry. Is this an extreme action or am I overreacting to common security measures? What is the extent of security on your company provided machine? To add some scope to this question, I am a web application developer and I'm talking about a laptop owned by the company."}
{"_id": "70270", "title": "What is your suggestion to write clean and well organized php code?", "text": "I am a php beginner coder. I always find myself in a mess when I try to alter or add something to my scripts. Because they are not well organized. So, I want to learn how to organize my code, so it becomes easy later on to change it. Also, there is a lot of code snippets that I use frequently in all of my scripts. Like the database codes. Is there is a way to arrange those snippets?"}
{"_id": "179575", "title": "License for available for free, but closed source web app", "text": "Anyone know of a free license that offers the user the right to use the software freely, but not modify it or share it? In other words, it is closed source, but it's free. And since it's gonna be a website it can only be used on this one website. What would be a good simply license for this? If possible that it's not too long, simple as the MIT license for example."}
{"_id": "134754", "title": "Is it a good practice to use branches to maintain different editions of the same software?", "text": "We have a product that has a few different editions. The differences are minor: different strings here and there, very little additional logic in one, very little difference in logic in the other. When the software is being developed, most changes need to be added to each edition; however, there are a few that don't and a few that needs to differ. Is it a valid use of branches if I have release-editionA and release-editionB (..etc) branches? Are there any gotchas? Good practices? Update: Thanks for the insight everyone, lots of good answers here. The general consensus seems to be that it is a bad idea to use branches for this purpose. For anyone wondering, my final solution to the problem is to externalize strings as configuration, and externalize the differing logic as plugins or scripts."}
{"_id": "179572", "title": "Should I use a config file or database for storing business rules?", "text": "I have recently been reading The Pragmatic Programmer which states that: > Details mess up our pristine code\u2014especially if they change frequently. > Every time we have to go in and change the code to accommodate some change > in business logic, or in the law, or in management's personal tastes of the > day, we run the risk of breaking the system\u2014of introducing a new bug. > > Hunt, Andrew; Thomas, David (1999-10-20). The Pragmatic Programmer: From > Journeyman to Master (Kindle Locations 2651-2653). Pearson Education (USA). > Kindle Edition. I am currently programming a web app that has some models that have properties that can only be from a set of values, e.g. (not actual example as the web app data confidential): light->type = sphere / cube / cylinder The light type can only be the above three values but according to TPP I should always code as if they could change and place their values in a config file. As there are several incidents of this throughout the app, my question is: Should I store possibly values like these in:   * a config file: 'light-types' => array(sphere, cube, cylinder), 'other-type' => value, 'etc => etc-value   * a single table in a database with one line for each config item   * a database with a table for each config item (e.g. table: light_types; columns: id, name)   * some other way? Many thanks for any assistance / expertise offered."}
{"_id": "10113", "title": "Would I gain enough by reading these books or would you recommend some other?", "text": "I've been on this job for mere 5 years now. I feel like I've learned a lot in that time, and I continue to challenge myself whenever I can, even though my job doesn't allow that very often. Still, I feel like I've just started my professional career as a developer, and there is still much to learn. This is obviously true, being a developer is all about learning. So I've decided to order a book or two from this list: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/recommended-reading-for- developers.html These guys (Jeff et al.) must be doing something right, so I'm guessing Jeff's recommendations have some weight. I'm considering buying Code Complete and The Mythical Man Month since they are on top of the list, but I am not sure these two are the right choice. Would you recommend these two as a good learning/self-improvement books? Regardless of your answer, please state your reasons. I'm just curious if these two have a good ROI or should I just keep my money and buy tons of ice- cream. Some of the questions would be: are they still relevant? Will they _really_ make me a better developer? Feel free to recommend other books, or argue about other books on Jeff's list, but keep in mind my question about these two in particular :)"}
{"_id": "121428", "title": "What's the best way to acknowledge many FOSS sources in a single project?", "text": "I have a project which uses a large number of LGPL, Artistic and other open- source licensed libraries. What's the canonical (i.e. the \"standard\") way of acknowledging multiple sources in a single project download? Also, some of the sources I've used are from sites where using the code is okay, but publishing the source isn't. What's the usual manner of attribution in that case, and the usual manner of making the source available in an open- source project?"}
{"_id": "176632", "title": "Does The College Matter?", "text": "Does it matter all that much about what college you go to, to get a degree in computer programming/computer science? I didn't do all that well in high school, I actually barely graduated with a general High School Diploma. So getting into a decent college could be difficult. Companies won't deny you just because you got your degree at a college they have never heard of or a community college will they?"}
{"_id": "247217", "title": "Databases and the single responsibility principle", "text": "Can the single responsibility principle be applied to databases? relational databases I mean. I'm asking this because a typical database will have several tables and we may find something like that between them:   * Tables handle ACL and permissions.   * Tables handle user authentication.   * Tables relating to cron jobs and scheduled tasks.   * Tables relating to the domain itself.   * Tables relating to emails and invitations and so on.   * Look ups. Moreover the tables relating to the domain might be divided according to the application module they back up. In code we usually divide our code base to modules/packages/namespaces, but that concept is absent from relational databases as far as I know. so what I'm asking should the database be divided somehow to smaller databases? or maybe database (modules?!) Or should we just lump everything together and hope for a good naming convention if any?!"}
{"_id": "121422", "title": "How to document and teach others \"optimized beyond recognition\" computationally intensive code?", "text": "Occasionally there is the 1% of code that is computationally intensive enough that needs the heaviest kind of low-level optimization. Examples are video processing, image processing, and all kinds of signal processing, in general. **The goals are to document, and to teach the optimization techniques,** so that the code does not become unmaintainable and prone to removal by newer developers. (*) _(*) Notwithstanding the possibility that the particular optimization is completely useless in some unforeseeable future CPUs, such that the code will be deleted anyway._ Considering that software offerings (commercial or open-source) retain their competitive advantage by having the fastest code and making use of the newest CPU architecture, software writers often need to tweak their code to make it run faster while getting the same output for a certain task, whlist tolerating a small amount of rounding errors. Typically, a software writer can keep many versions of a function as a documentation of each optimization / algorithm rewrite that takes place. How does one make these versions available for others to study their optimization techniques? Related:   * Clean readable code vs fast hard to read code. When to cross the line?"}
{"_id": "121423", "title": "How much C/C++ knowledge is needed for Objective-C/iPhone development?", "text": "First, a little background. I'm a .Net developer (C#) and have over 5 years experience in both web development and desktop applications. I've been wanting to look into iPhone development for some time now, but for one reason or another always got side tracked. I finally have a potential project on the horizon, and I'm now going full steam ahead learning this stuff. My question is this: I haven't done any C/C++ programming since my schooling days, I've been living in managed land ever since. How much knowledge if any is needed to be successful as an iOS developer? Obviously memory management is something that I'll have to be conscious about (although with iOS 5 there seems to be something called ARC which should make my life easier), but what else? I'm not just talking about the C API (for example, in order to get the sin of a number, I call the sin() function), that's what Google is for. I'm talking about fundamental C/C++ idioms that the average C# developer is unaware of."}
{"_id": "176639", "title": "Why put the business logic in the model? What happens when I have multiple types of storage?", "text": "I always thought that the business logic has to be in the controller and that the controller, since it is the 'middle' part, stays static and that the model/view have to be capsuled via interfaces. That way you could change the business logic without affecting anything else, program multiple Models (one for each database/type of storage) and a dozens of views (for different platforms for example). Now I read in this question that you should always put the business logic into the model and that the controller is deeply connected with the view. To me, that doesn't really make sense and implies that each time I want to have the means of supporting another database/type of storage I've to rewrite my whole model including the business logic. And if I want another view, I've to rewrite both the view and the controller. May someone explain why that is or if I went wrong somewhere?"}
{"_id": "255048", "title": "How do I keep my classes in MVC from becoming bloated?", "text": "I'm not sure how I should have worded the question. If I have a Student and Classes database, and I have queries that involve both. Where do I put my queries? In one case, someone wants student information, and I query Students and Classes in my Student class, if I put it in Classes, I cross over to the Students, [edit] violating single responsibility. I thought I should only have queries for Students and queries for Classes in each class of this part of the Model layer, each utilized by services. Also, What do I do when I need new queries? I have this set of queries, then someone comes along and wants some special query. I then copy and paste and change one thing or add an if then or a switch, this gets multiplied across the class in my model _layer_ in multiple objects, giant switch statements, etc. That does not seem to be what Model layers should be composed of, giant Models with code everywhere, violating DRY. I have a service in one object in Students, `findAllClassesByStudent($student_id)` I call in my View perhaps, and another in Classes, `findAllStudentsInAParticularClass($class_id)`. Those are pretty close. I realize I can abstract yet more layers and isolate logic in some other layer, but I can't abstract forever, sooner or later I have what appears as some violation of OOP's encapsulation. ViewModel View, Abstracted Data Access Layer, the services, etc. and so on. If I do too little, then my objects are anemic. I've been reading a lot and while there is a lot of interpretations, I'm assuming I'm leaving all the business logic in the Model layer, not on the controller or the View. * * * Pseudo examples:               class Student extends Model {          private $student          public function __construct() {          }          public function getStudentByID($student_id){     ...SQL     }          public function getStudentClasses($student_id){  //first time          }                    }          class Classes extends Model {          public function __construct(){          }          public function findAllStudentsInAParticularClass($class_id){  //feels like bloat     ...SQL     }          }      This seems like duplication to me. Perhaps I haven't thought it through enough. I just know from experience there's always someone that wants slightly different queries, and I end up copying and pasting."}
{"_id": "255047", "title": "Why is Akka being marketed as reactive? Is Actor Model reactive?", "text": "As far as I understand the Actor Model and the Reactive Programming are separate concepts. Actor Model does not seem to be inherently reactive to me. However the Akka framework which is an Actor Model implementation is being described as reactive: > \"Java and Scala program logic lives in lightweight Actor objects, which send > and receive messages in a reactive fashion.\" > > \"We Are Reactive\" Is it a case of misusing the term or they are completely correct? Is any actor model implementation (e.g. Erlang) already reactive? Is simply generating messages as a response to other messages considered reactive as well? Some related reading where the approaches are contrasted: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20740114/rx-vs-messaging-queues-like- rabbitmq-or-zeromq http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/9038/how-do-functional-reactive- programming-and-the-actor-model-relate-to-each-other http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2203"}
{"_id": "255045", "title": "Is there a design pattern for splitting up files into smaller files?", "text": "I am developing a project where I have to load very large files (upto 50 MB). Currently I am loading these files completely into (consecutive) memory. This has the advantage that I can very easily change bytes at certain locations, because I do not know the structure of all bytes. However, my intention is to also change the structure, e.g. removing/adding 'chunks'. Now I have the idea to remove the 'known' parts out of it, store them in classes with a data chunk only containing those parts and make a sort of reference list to those chunks. E.g.: Original file:   * Header   * ChunkA 1   * ChunkA 2    * Intermediate   * ChunkB 1   * Footer The result will be: ChunkA 1 and ChunkA 2 instance. ChunkB 1 instance 'File' instance and a reference with base offsets + reference to all chunks. At the end I have to 'recreate' or write the original file (with changes) back. Is this in general a good idea or is there some design pattern helping me in this?"}
{"_id": "255041", "title": "Calculating NPath Complexity", "text": "I'm trying to calculate the NPath Complexity within a function, but I'm unsure what parts I count. My understanding is that it'll sum:   * If   * Else   * Else If   * Switch   * Case   * Default   * Do   * While Is this correct? Or am I missing something?"}
{"_id": "97980", "title": "any document which says exactly what range of numbers are .NET BigIntegers designed for?", "text": "I'm playing around with the .NET BigInteger and basically I'm wondering what number _\\--an estimated answer would be fine--_ is the point of deviation of the curve of (the graph of (increase of time required for operations) vs (value of BigInteger))? or are they designed with no such deviation such that if we plot the increase of time required for operations vs value of BigInteger from 1 to infinity, we will have a smooth curve all the way? for example, assuming arrays are designed with capability of handling 50 items . this means that if i have 1 item, operations are f(1) time. and when i have 2 items, operations are f(2) time. if i have 50 items, operations are f(50) time. but since it is designed for handling 50 items only, the operations done when we have 51 items will be g(51) where g(51) > f(51). > If implemented properly the complexity of BigInteger arithmetic should be a > smooth curve. For example the time complexity of multiplication should be > O(NM) where N is the number of digits in the first multiplicand, and M is > the number of digits in the second multiplicand. Of course there are > practical limits in that you could pick N and M so large that the numbers > wouldn't fit in your machine. Are there any / does anyone know of any documents claiming that it is implemented as such?"}
{"_id": "80925", "title": "Security for data produced by ASP.NET web serivce", "text": "I'm developing an ASP.NET 2.0 web service that serves XML data from a database. Almost all data traffic is one-way, from server to client, and there is no user-specific data. All clients will receive the same data. But I only want approved clients to be able to consume the data. In this situation, what are the best options for encrypting the data produced by the web service?   * I've looked at SSL, but I've been told by management to find another way, so that we can either avoid the hassle of setting up an SSL certificate on the site or implement both SSL _and_ my solution.   * SOAP encryption has been suggested, but I want to have good support for iOS clients, and there does not appear to be SOAP support built into the iOS SDK or available open-source.   * Because no data is being modified server-side, and we have no user-specific data or user accounts, I don't think OAuth is necessary. It will become necessary in the future, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Am I wrong here?   * I've suggested encrypting the content of the XML data so that `<Prop1>StringData</Prop1` becomes `<Prop1>EncryptedGarbageHere</Prop1>`, but I've been told that's not as secure an approach as SOAP encryption. EDIT: In either case, I'm also planning on adding a sort of \"password\" parameter that is required by all WebMethods in the web service, and will be required of each unique client application."}
{"_id": "80922", "title": "How to deal with low level guys?", "text": "Recently I have started working for company which is developing mainly low level stuff (like device drivers, system level apps etc.). I was hired as high level programmer to develop a machine learning system (details of this system are not so important). My problem is that my coworkers, that are all low level programmers, do not respect my job, because I am using high level techniques. They think that high level programming is easy and only low level requires skill and knowledge. This is quite unfair for me because writing a scalable machine learning system only by myself is not trivial task. How can I convey them that my work is also valuable? Or maybe I am wrong and low level programming is so hard that only gods can handle it? ;) What are your opinions about that?"}
{"_id": "108664", "title": "What's the proper way to organize ViewControllers and XIB?", "text": "I am developing a very simple iPhone game with this view hierarchy:               Main Menu View       \u2514> New Game View       |    \u2514> Player vs Computer Game View       |    |    \u2514> Pause View       |    |    \u2514> End Turn View       |    |    \u2514> End Game View       |    |        |    \u2514> Player vs Player (offline) Game View       |         \u2514> Pause View       |         \u2514> End Turn View       |         \u2514> End Game View       |       \u2514> Information View      My current implementation has a single **`ViewController`** that controls every aspect of the user interface and a single **`XIB`** file that contains every **`View`** of the game.   Is this correct? It looks a bit confusing...   Should i have more **`ViewControllers`** and more **`XIB`** files? And what's the proper way to make them cooperate?"}
{"_id": "208970", "title": "Authenticating users for a website", "text": "I'm working on a website and I want to validate that an individual is an employee at one of a large number of companies (probably using their company's email address, which I don't know before hand). The idea being some users are the general public and others are from these companies. And I need some way to authenticate that the users claiming to be employees are being honest while still having a friendly enough UI. I did an informal survey of people I know and the domains and emails will match in a majority of cases but they might not always match exactly so you might have a company with a website foo.com and an email billy@foobar.com (although foobar.com did redirect back to foo.com). And while I can easily check that I'm not sure what other variations might be out there (maybe fooLA.com and email billy@foolosangeles.com, etc.)"}
{"_id": "103588", "title": "Should Unit Testing be used in Prototypes?", "text": "When constructing prototypes, should we also create appropriate unit tests as if we were writing production code? Would it make a difference if we knew in advance that the code **was** or **wasn't** going to be re-used for the final solution?"}
{"_id": "84203", "title": "Coding standards and coding style, is it that much important?", "text": "There are a lot of ways of typing code, but I can't understand what is the good reason to adopt a certain standard or style if it does not change the way the code can be read and understood. Everyone can type code the way (s)he thinks it's better, but is there a really good reason to force all programmers for a certain style ? Does it really make a difference in the end ? Is it for pleasing the managing folks, or the control freaks ? Apart from this post about those very stupid coding standard, are there companies who encourage employees to choose what works for them ? EDIT: Wow thanks for the answers, the thing that made me post this is the BSD vs K&R brace style: this is a big issue, and this really made me rant."}
{"_id": "255597", "title": "What is the difference between a function and a component?", "text": "I just listened to Software engineering Radio podcast on components. Their description of components were very vague, they made them sound like lower level versions of functions. I am trying to figure out what components mean in the context of the composite pattern.   1. What is the difference in purpose between a function and a component?   2. What does a component have to do with the composite pattern?   3. Can you describe what a component is by using a funny metaphor? For example, explain how creating a component like baking an apple pie."}
{"_id": "119095", "title": "Why don't we store the syntax tree instead of the source code?", "text": "We have a lot of programming languages. Every language is parsed and syntax checked before being translated into code so an abstract syntax tree (AST) is built. We have this abstract syntax tree, why don't we store this syntax tree instead of the source code (or next to the source code)? By using an AST instead of the source code. Every programmer in a team can serialize this tree to any language they want (with the appropriate context free grammar) and parse back to AST when they are finished. So this would eliminate the debate about the coding style questions (where to put the { and }, where to put whitespace, indentation, etc.) What are the pros and cons of this approach?"}
{"_id": "156862", "title": "Is it bad to learn multiple programming languages?", "text": "I started learning PHP and I was able to get myself familiar with it. Now, i want to explore other programming languages like PERL so that i can compare it myself to PHP. Will I be confused to learn two language? Or are there any disadvantages?"}
{"_id": "252067", "title": "Learning to write DSLs utilities for unit tests and am worried about extensablity", "text": "I'm trying to simplify our unit tests with hand written DSL's. So far I have DSL's that walk developers through processing a service after setting up all preconditions and the construction of an monster object that has a huge constructor and setters that conflict. The monster is one of the many preconditions of processing the service and they constructed by hand over and over as developers write unit tests for new services in our system. So it would be worth putting considerable effort into making constructing them easier. I'm tried of watching people copy and paste the \"life support system\" from unit test to unit test. I'm making a separate new classes, one who's job it is to build the monster class and one that walks them through the steps to process the service. These will be used by many developers. This means once it's used widely changes will be difficult. That's why I'm worried about extendability. Rather than a simple fluent interface builder (where every method returns a `this` and is always available) I've decided to use an internal DSL that returns a different nested class. This is a very powerful choice. It lets me limit the methods available at any one step to only the valid ones. It also lets me change what the return type of a method is based on the \"state\" previous choices put the DSL into. Briefly, the way it works is the first method returns the first nested class that has the next valid method that could not have been called before. This limits the choices intelisense will offer making writing the DSL's calling code easier.               //Final build() method doesn't exist on PersonBuilder.  Its on a nested class.     public class PersonBuilder {         public GotRequired doRequired() {             return new GotRequired();         }              //One of many nested classes          public class GotRequired {             public GotFirstName addFirstName(String firstName) {                 mFirstName = firstName;                 return new GotFirstName();             }         }              public class GotFirstName {             public GotMiddleName addMiddleName(String middleName) {                 mMiddleName = middleName;                 return new GotMiddleName();             }         }              ...          }      This can be used to ensure methods are called in some order and ensure that preconditions have been met. The inner classes can be thought of as states the DSL is in. More than one state change path can be supported. Simply being in a state can tell you what states came before so long as no state merges two state paths into one. This all just means if you're careful you can know every needed method was called before building or returning a result. Fair warning, what follows is java verbose boiler plate at it's finest. The full listing is here: Monster builder code. The monsters DSL code looks something like this:               public class PersonBuilder {          // -- Required -- //          private String   mFirstName;     private String   mMiddleName;     ...          // -- Required Alternatives -- //            //Not both; not neither     private int      mBeersToday;     //One or     private String   mHowDrunk;       //the other               // -- What all the fuss is about -- //          private Person   mPerson;          /** Call each required method in order offered.*/     public GotRequired doRequired() {         return new GotRequired();     }          public class GotRequired {         public GotFirstName addFirstName(String firstName) {             mFirstName = firstName;             return new GotFirstName();         }     }          public class GotFirstName {         public GotMiddleName addMiddleName(String middleName) {             mMiddleName = middleName;             return new GotMiddleName();         }     }          ...          /*        Client code example                   .doRequiredAlternatives()   //Either x or y. a, b, or c. etc.             .addBeersToday(3)       //Now can't call addHowDrunk(\"Hammered\");             .addFavoriteBeer(\"Duff\")//Now can\u2019t call addJobTitle(\"Safety Inspector\");          .addBuild();                 //Calls different constructors based on alternatives          */         /** Now the interesting forking bit */         public class GotRequiredAlternatives {             public GotPerson addBeersToday(int beersToday){                 mBeersToday = beersToday;                      //Got enough for constructor                 mPerson = new Person(                         mFirstName,                         mMiddleName,                          mLastName,                              mNickName,                                                 mMaidenName,                          mEyeColor,                            mHairColor,                           mDateOfBirth,                         mBeersToday, //GotBeersToday                         mAliases);                      return new GotPerson();             }                          public GotPerson addHowDrunk(String howDrunk){                 mHowDrunk = howDrunk;                      //Got enough for constructor                 mPerson = new Person(                         mFirstName,                         mMiddleName,                          mLastName,                              mNickName,                                                 mMaidenName,                          mEyeColor,                            mHairColor,                           mDateOfBirth,                         mHowDrunk, //GotHowDrunk                         mAliases);                      return new GotPerson();             }                 }              //Could have created GotHowDrunk and GotBeersToday          //but we're past the constructor choice so we can          //forget the path that brought us here.              public class GotPerson {             /** Build Person object leaving optional fields set to default values */             public Person doBuild() {                 return mPerson;             }             /** Call any or none of these optional fields */             public GotOptional doOptional() {                 return new GotOptional();                     }         }              //Since person is not immutable the only thing gained here is confidence that these were set according to persons whacky rules         class GotOptional {                  /** Build Person object */             public Person doBuild() {                 return mPerson;             }                  public GotOptionalAlternatives doOptionalAlternatives() {                 return new GotOptionalAlternatives();             }                  public GotOptional addClothing(String clothing) {                 mPerson.setClothing(clothing);                 return this;              }                  public GotOptional addTatoo(String tattoo) {                 mPerson.setTattoo(tattoo);                 return this;              }                  //Add any number of setters that have good default values and do not conflict with each other              }              //Ideally person wouldn't allow this anyway but person is set in stone so at least this provides a safer interface         public class GotOptionalAlternatives {                  /** Build Person object */             public Person doBuild() {                             return mPerson;             }                  //Optional but conflicting setters. Might never be called.  Must never be called together.                       public GotFavoriteBeer addFavoriteBeer(String favoriteBeer){                 //mFavoriteBeer = favoriteBeer;  //TODO remove                 mPerson.setFavoriteBeer(favoriteBeer); //GotFavoriteBeer                      return new GotFavoriteBeer();             }                  public GotJobTitle addJobTitle(String jobTitle){                 //mJobTitle = jobTitle;  //TODO remove                 mPerson.setJobTitle(jobTitle); //GotJobTitle                      return new GotJobTitle();             }         }              //These are not strictly needed.  They are like one-statement {}'s after an 'if'.  Simply there if more gets added.              public class GotFavoriteBeer {             /** Build Person object */             public Person doBuild() {                             return mPerson;             }         }              public class GotJobTitle {             /** Build Person object */             public Person doBuild() {                             return mPerson;             }         }     }      I'll spare you the service code that uses the same nested class technique to mix optional methods and required methods. It is also able to return different result types based on previous alternate method choices since even though the result() method has the same name and params it's coming off a different inner class. Despite the unreal amount of typing required to create these DSLs I've found the results to be very powerful. However, I expect people will want new features added, new preconditions for processing the service. If I use this style is there any hope of reuse or would it be better to just write a whole new DSL each time something needs to change? Cause once it's working and being used I do NOT want to dive back into the existing DSL classes and mess with them. If you can see other issues please let me know. I'm hoping for a peer review but I appreciate any feedback."}
{"_id": "252066", "title": "Is my 'variable-storing area' basically a 'heap'?", "text": "I'm planning to implement a simple VM/interpreter kind of thing for a simple language I'm making. The compiler of the language emits mostly stack-oriented instructions to be executed by the VM. The structure of the program will be something like this:   * The execution part (for lack of a better term): interprets the opcodes and executes them.   * The call stack: to keep track of function calling, and for parameter passing and return values.   * The data stack: for none function-calling-related computation, such as arithmetic.   * The variable-storing area, where variable names are matched with values. The \"variable-storing area\" will be implemented basically with a HashTable/dictionary thing. When the programmer creates a variable (assuming for now only numeric variables), a new entry is added to the table. When he/she assigns a value to a variable, the entry with the matching name in the table is assigned this value. When the programmer accesses a variable, again we fetch the value from the table. I'm pretty sure that's the only data-storing part I need in the application, aside from the data stack and the call stack. I don't see why I'd need anything else. Now, I looked at what a 'heap' is in Wikipedia and other sources online. I found mostly technical terms that I'm having trouble understanding. But in simpler non-very-technical terms, if I understand correctly, the heap is where the 'constant' data is saved, things that aren't local computation such as arithmetic. So if my understanding is correct, is my 'variable-storing area' basically a 'heap'? Why or why not? If my understanding of what a heap is is wrong please explain it."}
{"_id": "162848", "title": "Performing user authentication in a CodeIgniter controller constructor?", "text": "In \"The Clean Code Talks -- Unit Testing\" (http://youtu.be/wEhu57pih5w), Mi\u0161ko Hevery mentions that \"as little work as possible should be done in constructors [to make classes more easily testable]'. It got me thinking about the way I have implemented my user authentication mechanism. Having delved into MVC development through CodeIgniter, I designed my first web application to perform user authentication for protected resources _in controllers' constructors_ in cases where _every_ public function in that controller requires the user to be authenticated. For controllers with public methods having mixed authentication requirements, I would naturally move the authentication from the constructor to each method requiring authentication (though I don't currently have a need for this). I made this choice primarily   1. to keep the controller tight, and   2. to ensure that all resources in the controller are always covered. As for code longevity and maintainability: given the application structure, I can't foresee a situation in which one of the affected controllers would need a public method that didn't require user authentication, but I can see this as a potential drawback _in general_ with this implementation (i.e., requiring future refactoring). Is this a good idea?"}
{"_id": "162846", "title": "microsoft .Net license", "text": "Am about to start coding using microsoft .Net technologies, am just worried about the license, so if I compile my code using the .Net compiler \" **not visual studio** \" can I distribute, sell or use my product freely or I should have some sort of \"microsoft license\", same thing for sql server express installed(depolye) with my application"}
{"_id": "162842", "title": "Learning basic algorithms - better C or C++?", "text": "I'm studying fundamental algorithms (quicksort, mergesort, binary trees, etc..) and I'm going to re-code every algorithm by scratch to learn how they work. Should I code them in C or C++? I think with C++ I should use STL, in C everything should probably be longer Is there a reason why I should pick one over another?"}
{"_id": "5405", "title": "Setting up a new developer system - how to speed up the process?", "text": "When I get a new laptop, it usually takes me about two weeks to reinstall all my developer programs, utilities and tweak the O/S settings to how I like them. I know there are utilities out there to backup/restore systems, but this is usually if it is on the same hardware. What would you recommend?"}
{"_id": "219452", "title": "Implement Haskell typeclass with C# interface", "text": "I'm trying to compare Haskell's type classes and C#'s interfaces. Suppose there is a `Functor`. Haskell:               class Functor f where       fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b      How to implement this type class as interface in C#? What have I tried:               interface Functor<A, B>     {         F<B> fmap(Func<A, B> f, F<A> x);     }      This is invalid implementation and I'm actually stucked with generic `F` type that should be returned by `fmap`. How it should be defined and where? Is it impossible to implement `Functor` in C# and why? Or maybe there is another approach?"}
{"_id": "219456", "title": "How can a potential customer find \"best\" offer in agile software development?", "text": "If you have fixed-price software projects a potential customer can choose a software development company by the price to get best value for money. The software development company with the lowest price wins the contract. In agile software projects there are no fixed software-featuresets with fixed prices. Featuresets can change after every sprint. So how can a customer choose which software development company is best for him? (in price, quality or something else) [update] Lowest price is just an example how a customer _can_ choose a contractor. Background: Last week I was at a seminar about agile development. We found out that new customers often want fixed price price projects because that makes it easy for them to compare possible contractors. Customer and Contractor need a certain level of trust to agree to do agile development. If Customer and potential Contractor do not know each other what can a customer do to choose a contractor?"}
{"_id": "114346", "title": "Algorithm for formating SQL code", "text": "I need a tool (for in house usage) that will format SQL code (SQL Server/MySQL).   There are various 3rd party tools and online web sites that do it but no exactly how I need it. So I want to write my own tool that will fit my needs. First question is there any standard or a convention for how the SQL code should be formatted? (the tools that I tried format it differently) The second question, how should I approach this task? Should at first convert the sql query into some data structure like a Tree?"}
{"_id": "114345", "title": "Should I use a relational datamodel or Cassandra with ColumnFamily based indexes?", "text": "Currently we are working on some storage problems for log data from various servers and communication message logs (HTTP(S), XMPP). There will be many write operations and for read operations we will use search queries with filters. Should we stick with the classic relation database schema solution or concentrate on Cassandra with ColumnFamily based indexes?"}
{"_id": "160720", "title": "DI: Can a stable dependency have a volatile dependency?", "text": "I've recently been reading through Mark Seemann's _Dependency Injection in .NET_ and have been attempting to apply some of what I've learned in a new project I'm working on, and I'm stumped on a particular scenario trying to determine what dependencies I should and should not inject. I've read several other questions on SO and elsewhere that discuss similar scenarios but in a roundabout manner, and I think I've narrowed the underlying conceptual question to that which is in the title: Can a stable dependency have a volatile dependency? Put another way: If a stable dependency has a volatile dependency, is the stable dependency really stable? A quick example:               public class MyClass     {         private IVolatileDependency1 _one;         private StableDependency _stable;              public MyClass(IVolatileDependency1 one, IVolatileDependency2 two)         {             _one = one;             _stable = new StableDependency(two)         }     }          public class StableDependency     {         private IVolatileDependency2 _two;              public StableDependency(IVolatileDependency2 two)         {             _two = two;         }     }      In this situation, `MyClass` has a stable dependency which I've chosen not to inject but instead instantiate internally and hold via composition. However, that stable dependency has a volatile dependency, which I'm injecting into `MyClass` and passing through to `StableDependency`'s constructor. For whatever reason, this smells a little bit to me. It's fairly straightforward in such a simple contrived example, but I can see things getting out of hand quickly in a more complicated real-world situation. Is `StableDependency` really stable, or should I be composing/resolving it prior to constructing `MyClass` and injecting it from there? I really don't foresee `StableDependency` changing or being replaced by another implementation, but on the other hand the practice of passing dependencies down through parent classes to their children (parent/child in the composition sense) seems to expose the details of the children up through the parent, which would be a violation of the Law of Demeter. **EDIT:** Changed VolatileDependency1 and VolatileDependency2 to interfaces to clarify that they are intended to be satisfied by multiple possible implementations (LSP-compatible). **EDIT 2:** Thinking on this some more, and reading KeithS's answer and default.kramer's comment below, make me realize that maybe I shouldn't have named `StableDependency` as I did, because I don't think it's a dependency in the first place. It's not something I ever expect to have multiple implementations for; it's merely an implementation detail that `MyClass` uses composition to contain a `StableDependency`, so `MyClass`'s knowledge of how to construct a `StableDependency` isn't a problem I don't think. The big question is, `StableDependency` _does_ have a dependency on `IVolatileDependency2`, so how do I inject that dependency? Do I reason that for all intents and purposes `MyClass` has a dependency on `IVolatileDependency2`, and the fact that it just passes that dependency down to `StableDependency` is an implementation detail unrelated to DI?"}
{"_id": "160726", "title": "How to introduce code to a colleague", "text": "How do you go about introducing the codebase, which may be rather complex and tangled with a lot of \"gotchas,\" to a new member of your team? I think the easiest way would be to have the overall architecture laid out with diagrams, and take a couple weeks (or months) giving the new person well defined (and well scoped) tasks as he becomes more accustomed to the code. However, as a consultant (and junior employee, at that,) I can't always have that either due to time constraints or team role designations. (I have been on this particular project twice as long as anybody else, so \"junior\" is in no way \"knows less about the code/project.\") I've been tasked quite a few times now to introduce a new member to the project and code, and sadly each time I find I'm not much better at it than the one before. I love diagrams and pictures, but often feel that they don't adequately account for the complexity in a system. (What about all the little's \"gotchas\"?) The project is getting to a point where we will be handing it off to the client, and to make things more challenging, the person I'll be doing a knowledge transfer with is essentially just out of college. (Not that I'm much better when doing knowledge transfers with senior developers.) I attend a user group once a month and other opportunities as they arise, so I'm not unused to be being introduced to new topics, but feel my ability to replicate effective knowledge sharing woefully inadequate. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I am looking mostly for a guideline I can follow. For example: Where do you start? How do you proceed? How do you cover unfamiliar technologies or patterns on the listener's part without taking all day? Where do you tie in business logic vs. code-structure? Thank you! (As always, please feel free to edit the question as you see fit.)"}
{"_id": "163360", "title": "Test-Driven Development with plain C: manage multiple modules", "text": "I am new to test-driven development, but I'm loving it. There is, however, a main problem that prevents me from using it effectively. I work for embedded medical applications, plain C, with safety issues. Suppose you have module `A` that has a function `A_function()` that I want to test. This function call a function `B_function`, implemented in module `B`. I want to decouple the module so, as James Grenning teaches, I create a Mock module `B` that implements a mock version of `B_function`. However the day comes when I have to implement module `B` with the real version of `B_function`. Of course the two `B_function` can not live in the same executable, so I don't know how to have a unique \"launcher\" to test both modules. James Grenning way out is to replace, in module `A`, the call to `B_function` with a function pointer that can have the value of the mock or the real function according to the need. However I work in a team, and I can not justify this decision that would make no sense if it were not for the test, and no one asked me explicitly to use test-driven approach. Maybe the only way out is to generate different a executable for each module. Any smarter solution? Thank you"}
{"_id": "254889", "title": "sanity checks: when do they become paranoid checks", "text": "I normally add lots of sanity check clauses in my code. In other words, lots of assertions where the code is instructed to \"panic\" (usually print as much information as possible when a certain condition doesn't hold and then exit). The point is, many of these sanity checks are obviously redundant one way or the other. On the other hand I've often been bitten by situations were I didn't add a sanity check judging it to be fairly obvious that it can't fail and was proven wrong. So the question is: are there any guidelines / best- practices to decide how much sanity checking is reasonable? Too much sanity checking obviously clutters the code and is a pain to maintain when assumptions change."}
{"_id": "254880", "title": "Software licence giving full non-profit use", "text": "Are there any software licenses that explicitly allow somebody (a developer or otherwise) to have full access to source and/or assets of a project as long as it is for completely non-profit and/or personal use and otherwise needs to pay a commercial licensing fee?"}
{"_id": "254884", "title": "class hierarchy with structurally different subclasses", "text": "I want to implement a protocol layer which sits on top of the TCP/IP stack. There is a limited set of PDUs that can be sent and for each PDU there is a class which represents it in a structured form. Each class has a function to serialize the structured data into a ready-to-transmit form, and deserialize them into a structured form. These PDUs are structurally very different, for example:               struct a_associate_ac : property      {           a_associate_ac() = default;           void from_pdu(std::vector<unsigned char> pdu) override;           std::vector<unsigned char> make_pdu() const override;           pdu::TYPE type() const override;                     std::string called_ae;           std::string calling_ae;           std::string application_context;                struct presentation_context           {                 enum class RESULT                 {                    ACCEPTANCE = 0x00, USER_REJEC = 0x01,                    PROV_REJEC_NO_REASON = 0x02,                    ABSTR_CONT_NOT_SUPP = 0x03,                    TRANFS_SYNT_NOT_SUPP = 0x04                 };                      presentation_context() = default;                 unsigned char id;                 RESULT result_;                 std::string transfer_syntax;           };                std::vector<presentation_context> pres_contexts;           std::size_t max_message_length;     };      compared to:               struct a_associate_rj: property     {           a_associate_rj() = default;           void from_pdu(std::vector<unsigned char> pdu) override;           std::vector<unsigned char> make_pdu() const override ;           pdu::TYPE type() const override;                enum class SOURCE : unsigned char           {              UL_SERVICE_USER = 0x01, UL_SERVICE_PROV_ACSE = 0x02,              UL_SERVICE_PROV_PRESREL = 0x03           };           enum class REASON : unsigned char           {              NOT_SPECIFIED = 0x01, APPL_CONT_NOT_SUPP = 0x02, CALLING_AE_NOT_RECOG = 0x03,              CALLED_AE_NOT_RECOG = 0x07           };                REASON reason_;           SOURCE source_;     };      All these classes inherit from an abstract superclass property. property is used by the layer class, which implements the protocol, in two member functions:               void send(const property* p);     std::unique_ptr<const property> receive();      This means if the user of the layer class receives a property and wants to access its members, they must check what kind of property was received using `property::type()` and downcast it to that type, which I find is quite irritating. What can be done to solve this problem?"}
{"_id": "138359", "title": "How can I demonstrate my productivity to management?", "text": "My university has a module for software development with a real client. Some of my team members work in the computer lab all the time, which is an extremely noisy environment with lots of interruptions and distractions. There are about 30 people always talking. People always go on Facebook, YouTube, or tell jokes to each other in addition to doing \"work\". Some of my team members work 3 hours every day in this environment. I attend our weekly team meetings and use our online project management system extensively. I address all emails and have a chat client on busy, but I do get messages. I use online resources a lot when solving my problems. However, outside the team meeting and pair programming sessions, I do most of my work in a quiet environment where I can focus and concentrate and I block out all external as well as internal interruptions. I focus on my task 100%. I find that I'm about 10 times more productive this way than in the lab and I can get a lot of work done. The problem is that our tutors or \"management\" don't see me doing work in the lab. Thus, I do not appear to be working to them. Thus they think I do no team work. How can I convince them that I do team work because I have lots of communication with my team, but at the same time I like to work on my own? I would like to prove that, just because I work alone a lot and don't necessarily do all of my work in the lab, I'm still a productive member of the team. * * * **UPDATE** Management told me that the problem was that I spend working in a team 60% of my time, and I work alone 40% of the time. They told me I should spend 99% of my time working with my team face to face in the lab, aka office. * * * Some relevant comments of some answers, that some might miss: _\"Problem is I don't really need to ask my team anything, because I rather google it myself. And I trust Google a lot more than my supervisor or team members for some reason. Hence I often disagree with them. I'm not doing team work, because essentially I'm doing \"web\" work.\"_ _\" I trust information that I find online (i.e. SE) more than my supervisor's or team mates' expertise.\"_ * * * **UPDATE 2** I stopped doing any serious work at home, I just stay in the lab now and have fun with my team while also do some work occasionally. As the accepted answer shows, this isn't about me being productive but rather fulfilling my managers' and team mates' expectations. If I and my manager have different beliefs about how to do software development, it's the manager's that counts because they have the power to fail/fire me. In my opinion face to face meetings aren't as effective as online conversations, and working in a noisy lab isn't as productive as working in a quite environment. I think team mates shouldn't be able to interrupt me any time they want, while I'm in the middle of a task. I think one needs at least 50% of the time to do productive work alone and 50% of the time to synchronize with the team. Anyway, this is just my opinion, and that doesn't count in this case."}
{"_id": "8592", "title": "Optimal table shape for pair programming?", "text": "As the title suggests, what is a good shape of a table when doing pair programming ? Are there shapes that should be avoided? What are the reasons a certain shape is good or bad? (I _do_ have my own thoughts on this, but would like not to bias the discussion with that input just yet)"}
{"_id": "110117", "title": "\"Do Whatever You Want\" License With Attribution", "text": "I'm looking for an open source license that lets people do whatever they want - just like the MIT license - just as long as they attribute the original author, i.e. me. Does a common license exist for this? If so, what is it?"}
{"_id": "93347", "title": "How should I mention those sites in portfolio that have changed since I worked on them?", "text": "I have built many web sites and I would like put them in my portfolio. But now when I am checking I see that most of them are changed as they switched to another company. Now I am confused what should I do   1. Do I put old thumnail or screenshot of site or new one? (I have old screenshots)   2. If interviewer checks the site and ask me what part I have done, what should I say?   3. Does the interviewer or company contact the site owner to confirm that?"}
{"_id": "244581", "title": "What's the proper way to merge two projects in source control software", "text": "I'm using Fossil-SCM to maintain my projects. Since I don't work in a team I usually have just a very linear branch of development: 1.0 -> 1.1 -> 1.2 I'm wondering what the procedure is when you have one project who's task is about to be given to a related project. And thereby rendering the first project obsolete. Although I tend to rewrite most of my code if I don't remember having already written it, I still would like to keep the code archived. And I'ld rather not have a fossil repo that just is dead. Can I merge it? Is that the proper way of handling this? For example the code was extracting data from an excel file in order to format an HTML page. Now, I've convinced my employer to move their excel spreadsheet into a database to decrease redundancy, increase efficiency and yaddy yadda. Since I can now make logical queries that don't have to jump hoops to preform using the database I won't need the extra vbs files that originally manipulated the excel file. Technically I would be porting part of the existing code into the current new project. Since it already has it's own trunk, would it be advisable to combine the trunk of a different project to this one, and how would I do that exactly?? SO I guess my tree would look like this, and I haven't seen examples of software branching that resemble this inverted tree before so I'm wondering what the norm for a situation like this? ![It merges at 1.8!!](http://i.stack.imgur.com/G4RXX.jpg)"}
{"_id": "89517", "title": "Can map-reduce say \"Hello World\"?", "text": "Gathering that map-reduce is being used to process huge amounts of data, I set out to understand it. My queries were:   * What class of problems does it aim to solve?   * How does it help breaking down of complex problems?   * Can I write a sample app, (locally!) to get started? After a lot of googling, blogs and wikipedia, I know who is using it, who is selling infrastructure for it. But, I am still clueless about the above queries. The closest I got is this tutorial on Amazon: \" _Contextual Advertising using Apache Hive and Amazon Elastic MapReduce with High Performance Computing instances_ \" http://aws.amazon.com/articles/2855?_encoding=UTF8&jiveRedirect=1 This tutorial assumes understanding of online advertising and map-reduce, hence, tough to follow. Anybody have any clues to how a programmer can get started on map-reduce?"}
{"_id": "127213", "title": "Agile product planning alternatives to aid goal-oriented feature quality", "text": "What do I mean by _high-level plan_? The kind of plan that outlines product's functionality that needs to be developed but not going into too many details that are done afterwards. This kind of plan helps deciding functionality development order (priority) or even eliminating non-necessary ones. A great high level plan isn't just a set of functional requirements, but rather a product vision with obvious goal in mind. In Agile terms these kind of functionality documentation is the Backlog. We're used to its content - user stories - as defined by Mike Cohn that go: > As a _role_ I want _functionality_ so that _benefit_. But as we know from experience this may lead to:   * **unusable stories**   Like: _As a visitor I want to login so that I'm allowed to do stuff._   But how would one improve this user story? What other benefits can we describe that are more relevant than _...do stuff_?   * **flat list of unmanageable seemingly unrelated stories**   Hard to see which ones are related or not (they shouldn't be but I don't think we can totally avoid this), or even which ones provide means for achieving the same high-level goal.   * **too many unrelated goals/benefits**   Goals just because we need to write them but without actual business value benefit - the high level business goal in mind. ## The problem As I have experienced there are more ways to write bad/unusable user stories than writing really good ones. And it's easy to get to the _wrong_ tracks even if you're careful. And how can one write better user stories when they are working on their own product, so they don't have means to learn from other fellow team members, and they have to provide user stories now. Not after 6 months of learning. That's why I would like to know about alternatives to planning a project on the high level that ensures better feature description and relevancy. I've heard of **Effect mapping** that seems very good in keeping goal focus and filtering relevant from irrelevant but I don't have any experience with it. I can imagine that setting a goal can be crucial. So if you set it wrong, everything else is wrong as well. Or better said _irrelevant_. The main question is: **Can we follow some easy to understand and narrow guideline that will lead us to a great high-level plan**. A guideline that allows less errors and better leads to valuable plan/results. I can see myself writing user stories afterwards that describe features to implement. The problem with user stories is that it's easy to get lost in them. If you don't have lots of experience with user stories that may hinder your product because they distract you from the actual goal. All you can see are product features described in user stories. Something else above that would allow us to create better stories and also easily filter out those that are extremely relevant. What are other more reliable approaches that simple user stories planning that are used in agile planning? ## Focus of this question I have been writing user stories on several projects in the past and know exactly how hard and vague this task is. I've also seen that writing these is even harder when you're writing them for your own project/product. You can easily over-design your product or incorrectly prioritise/evaluate features. So I would like to write feature set for my coming product in a way they are actually relevant and prioritise them accordingly to reach my goal as reliably as possible. So **feature relevancy and quality** along with **goal-oriented prioritisation**. And I'm talking about measurable quantitative goals like > **20% month over month income increase** or   >  **5% sale conversion rate of user visits** and not something vague like _increase users_ or _increase sales_. We can see that writing relevant features that support these goals is much harder."}
{"_id": "244583", "title": "How to use event weights in TMVA ROOT", "text": "I'm trying to train and perform classifiers from TMVA. My data set contains event weights besides event data. In the _TMVA::Factory_ there's a method _setWeightExpression_ to specify event weights. What are the event weights good for? Why it doesn't exist similar possibility to set event weights in _TMVA::Reader_? Regards, Vladimir"}
{"_id": "129847", "title": "Is it bad practice to create new objects without storing them?", "text": "I've seen objects created in Java code without storing a reference to the object. For example, in an eclipse plugin I've seen a SWT Shell created like so:               new Shell();      This new Shell object is not stored in a variable, but will remain referenced until the window is disposed which [I believe?] happens by default when the window is closed. Is it bad practice to create objects like this without storing a reference to them? Or was the library poorly designed? What if I don't have need of a reference, but only want the \"side effects\" of the object? Should I store a reference anyways? UPDATE: Admitedly, my above example is poor. While I have seen UI elements created like this, creating a SWT Shell like this would probably be pointless because you need to call the open method on the Shell instance. There are better examples provided by aix such as the following from the Java concurrency tutorial:               (new HelloThread()).start();      This practice is seen in many contexts, so the questions remains. Is it good practice?"}
{"_id": "138354", "title": "MFC and WPF similarities", "text": "What are the similarities between MFC and WPF? Is it worthy to learn MFC before WPF?"}
{"_id": "151845", "title": "Design help with parallel process", "text": "I am re-factoring some code and an having an issue with retrieving data from two parallel processes. I have an application that sends packets back and forth via different mediums (ex: RS232, TCP/IP, etc). The jist if of this question is that there are two parallel processes going on. I hope the picture below displays what is going on better than I can word it:![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QCbX8.jpg) SetupRS232() class creates a new instance of the SerialPort by:               SerialPort serialPort = new SerialPort();      My question is, what is the best way that the Communicator() class, which sends out the packet via the respective medium, get access to the SerialPort object from the SetupRS232 class? I can do it with a Singleton but have heard that they are generally not the best design to go by. I am trying to follow SRP but I do feel like I am doing something wrong here. Communicator() will need to go out of it's way to get access to SetupRS232() to get access to the SerialPort class. I actually haven't found a way to even get access to it. Would designing each medium class, for example, SetupRS232(), SetupTCPIP, as a singleton be the best way to approach this problem?"}
{"_id": "195744", "title": "REST vs RPC for mobile development", "text": "As many know, mobile development is skyrocketing these days and, I believe, it affects what we code. To be specific, I am interested in developing web services for a mobile application. I see two possible architectures - RPC and REST. I have developed both, REST and RPC services and what I have observed is that RPC services are way easier to code, especially in languages like PHP. The problem with it seems to be scalability - server-side can easily turn into a mess when many procedures are present. REST, on the other hand seems to be a lot more structured, server-side becomes relatively easy to maintain but it has a potential to break data into multiple resources which is bad for mobile applications (for multiple reasons). From what I have experienced, RPC seems a bit better in most cases:   * Both, client- and server- sides, are concerned to minimize number of procedures available and calls made.   * Following architectural rules does not counter with optimizations otherwise possible. I don't really expect someone to explain me what REST and RPC are, the web is full of that. **I want people who has experience developing mobile apps express their opinions about using these two architectures on the server- side.** Tips are also welcomed (who doesn't love tips, huh?)."}
{"_id": "69970", "title": "Pure vs Applied Math For Programmers", "text": "Math has always been my thing in that I've always found the subject easy. Computer Science is my second love, though. Given the choice, I would prefer to major in Math. Since the only careers one would usually go into with an undergraduate degree in math are not appealing at all, I would be very content spending my days as a software developer. My question is this: Which math discipline would a future programmer reap more benefits from? Applied math or pure math? I enjoy teaching myself and I am confident that I can teach myself how to be a great programmer, but I still plan on getting a minor in CS!"}
{"_id": "195740", "title": "Is this an MVC framework?", "text": "I have built a framework for my applications that has been working well, and I have always referred to it in my mind as an MVC. However, after reading some more on what an MVC is (not that I didn't to start with, but I gave it a very brief overview, and looked at other frameworks that used the mvc pattern), and it has given me pause for thought. The structure is as follows: The framework has a bootstrap that loads the required files for the framework and the initiation file for the application (`app_bootstrap.php`). The `app_bootstrap.php` file has three functions. First, it creates constants for the framework to use (i.e. Database connection setup, profiling setup, base url path, and internal file paths). Second, it requires all the files that would be pertinent to the application, primarily, what I have called \"model\" classes which contain information on the name and structure of tables in the database, validation rules, associations to other \"models\", etc. These \"models\" extend an abstract class that contains static functions for selecting and creating rows from the database, which will create instances of an entity class that deals with the row, such as `__get`, `__has`, `__set`, `__unset` for fetching columns and associations, and `save` and `delete` for saving the row changes to the database. Third, it calls functions within the `router.php` file that will setup bindings for environmental data (like the url, user login status, ssl, ajax, cookie existence, etc) to \"controller\" classes. The framework then runs an execution function within `router.php` that will go through the defined environmental data rules, and determine which \"controller\" to load, if it finds one, it will `require` the file (from the application/controllers directory, throwing an error if not found) and call the class with the appropriate entry point function (index is none defined), or throw a 404 error. Once the \"controller\" has been started, there are no more functions that the framework will execute, and once the \"controller\" has finished, the program will end (unless the profiling has been activated, where it will output the data, then end). But the framework provides functions to the \"controller\", and to name a few, an `input` class (for dealing with all input, such as `$_GET`, `$_POST` or `$_SERVER` variables, cookies, user agent, remote ip, etc, as well as providing a sanitized interface), an `output` class (for headers, cookies, status messages, etc), a `queryBuilder` class (for creating queries to the database in the event functionality that can't be done within the \"model\"), and a `view` class (for parsing variables into a view for rendering and returning to the client). But after reading some more information on MVC's, it appears that the `router.php` acts similarly to a Controller, the \"controller\" acts like the model, the \"model\" acts like an ORM, and the view is pretty much correct. So, would this framework still be classed as an MVC, or does it fit under another pattern (if there is such a pattern)?"}
{"_id": "161099", "title": "Why do developers need to keep up to date with technologies and methodologies?", "text": "I am always given the advice that developers need to stay up to date with the latest in technology - things like webrtc, updates on html5 and css3 and new js libraries, software methodologies like TDD, DDD, and BDD. The question is _why_? Why do we need to constantly update ourselves? Can't we just stick with what we know and become better with it?"}
{"_id": "95802", "title": "Do mixins create coupling with Ruby?", "text": "Let's say I have the following architecture:               module Keyring         @keyring = Keyring.new         class Keyring             def key             def add_key             def update_key             def remove_key         class KeyStorage         class Encryptor             class AesEncryptor     class Connection         def id         def user_id         def protocol         def name     class FtpConnection         include Keyring         def host         def port         def username_encryption_id         def passsword_encryption_id         def is_passive         def username             # Return the decrypted value given an encryption key id.             return @keyring.key(self.username_encryption_id)         def password             # Return the decrypted value given an encryption key id.             return @keyring.key(self.password_encryption_id)      As you see, FtpConnetion uses Keyring. Now, isn't Keyring coupled to the Keyring module (by name)? If I want to use FtpConnection in another project, I'd have to bring along Keyring or implement another module with exactly that name, right? Isn't this bad design?"}
{"_id": "174900", "title": "What is the difference between development and R&D?", "text": "I was asked by a colleague to explain clearly the difference between ordinary development and research and development (R&D) and was unable to do it. After reading Wikipedia, I still don't have the precise answer. According to Wikipedia (slightly modified): > There are two primary models: > >   * In one model, the primary function is to **develop new products** ; > >   * in the other model, the primary function is to discover and **create new > knowledge about scientific and technological topics** for the purpose of > uncovering and enabling development of valuable new products, processes, and > services. > > The first model is confusing. Does it mean that development (not R&D) consists exclusively in adding new features to a product, solving bugs and doing maintenance? What if something which was previously developed as a new feature becomes a separate product? The second model is less confusing, but still, how to qualify whether something is new knowledge or existent knowledge which is just rediscovered? Later, Wikipedia adds that ordinary development is different from R&D because of its: > nearly immediate profit or immediate improvement. It's still not clear enough. How to qualify \"nearly immediate profit\"? What if a task has an immediate profit but requires heavy research? Or if it is basic but has uncertain profit, like the enforcement of a common style over the codebase? For example, does it belong to development or R&D to:   * Develop an engine which abstracts the access to the database, simplifying and shortening enormously the code of other applications (existent or ones which will be written in future) which should access to the database?   * Establish a new service-oriented architecture for the entire organization of company resources, in order to move from a bunch of separate and autonomous applications to a set of well-organized, interconnected web services, like what is used by Amazon?   * Design a new communication protocol to allow faster replication of data between two data centers of the company?   * Conceive a new type of software testing while working on a specific product, knowing that this type of testing will improve/simplify the testing process?   * Prove that Functional programming is more appropriate than OOP for a specific application, based on evidence, logic and previous experience?   * Enhance the existent application by adding gestures on tactile screens, after doing studies and testing that shows that those gestures improve the productivity of the users by a ratio of at least 1.4 for a precise set of tasks?   * Find a way to strongly enhance the Power usage effectiveness (PUE) of a data center?   * Create a Domain-Specific Language (DSL)? In short, how could I determine whether I'm doing R&D while working on something?"}
{"_id": "206073", "title": "Find out whose turn it is to buy the croissants, accounting for possible absences", "text": "A team has decided that every morning someone should bring croissants for everybody. It shouldn't be the same person every time, so there should be a system to determine whose turn it is next. The purpose of this question is to determine an algorithm for deciding whose turn it will be to bring croissants tomorrow. Constraints, assumptions and objectives:   * Whose turn it is to bring croissants will be determined the previous afternoon.   * On any given day, some people are absent. The algorithm must pick someone who will be present on that day. Assume that all absences are known a day in advance, so the croissant buyer can be determined on the previous afternoon.   * Overall, most people are present on most days.   * In the interest of fairness, everyone should buy croissants as many times as the others. (Basically, assume that every team member has the same amount of money to spend on croissants.)   * It would be nice to have some element of randomness, or at least perceived randomness, in order to alleviate the boredom of a roster. This is not a hard constraint: it is more of an aesthetic judgement. However, the same person should not be picked twice in a row.   * The person who brings the croissants should know in advance. So if person P is to bring croissants on day D, then this fact should be determined on some previous day where person P is present. For example, if the croissant bringer is always determined the day before, then it should be one of the persons who are present the day before.   * The number of team members is small enough that storage and computing resources are effectively unlimited. For example the algorithm can rely on a complete history of who brought croissants when in the past. Up to a few minutes of computation on a fast PC every day would be OK. This is a model of a real world problem, so you are free to challenge or refine the assumptions if you think that they model the scenario better. * * * Origin 1: Find out who's going to buy the croissants by Florian Margaine.   Origin 2: Find out who's going to buy the croissants by Gilles.   This question is the same version as Gilles', and has been re-posted on Programmers as an experiment to see how the different communities address a programming challenge."}
{"_id": "191249", "title": "How much of a setback is a change of industry for a programmer?", "text": "My question is about changing industries as a developer, after having spent half a decade in one. Let's say I'm a full-stack web and mobile app developer, I use a good variety of languages and paradigms out there and have been around the block for a few years, both at a very large corp and as a startup founder in a mostly technical role. Hypothetically, let's say I'd like to see if I can make as a AAA game developer, perhaps start out as a gameplay programmer and go from there. I interned at a large game company before, but ended turning down their offer at the time as I didn't see the project going very far (it didn't). I could probably easily get a role in server-side development, but that would be close-ish to what I'm already doing. I know that because of my breadth of experience I won't have a particularly hard time ramping up fast in whatever technologies and paradigms the game will be using and will do great on the long run, but I'm not sure what the short term will look like. What kind of setback can I expect? Will I have to re-climb the totem pole from the ground up? Is there anything I can do to hit the ground running? Also, what has your experience been with changing industries (doesn't have to be the same industries as the ones I mentioned)? Did you end up regretting not being able to carry over your domain knowledge?"}
{"_id": "162940", "title": "How do I implement the bg, &, and fg commands functionaliity in my custom unix shell program written in C", "text": "I am extending the functionality of a custom unix shell which I wrote as part of my lab assignment. It currently supports all commands through execvp calls, in-built commands like pwd, cd, history, echo and export, and also redirection and pipes. Now I wanted to add support for running a command in background e.g. $ls -la& I also want to implement bg and fg job control commands. I know this can be achieved if I execute the command by forking a new child process and not waiting for it in the parent process. But how do I again bring this command to foreground using fg? I have the idea of entering each background command in a list assigning each of them a serial number. But I don't know how do I make the processes execute in the background, then bring them back to foreground. I guess wait() and waitpid() system calls would come handy but I am not that comfortable with them. I tried reading the man pages but still am in the dark. Can someone please explain in a layman's language how to achieve this in UNIX system programming? And does it have something to do with SIGCONT and SIGSTP signals?"}
{"_id": "210028", "title": "Should user stories be assigned to team members?", "text": "We are using JIRA to manage the scrum process. What I'm curious about is whether the User Story issue type should be assigned to a team member, the PO, or remain unassigned. My gut tells me it should remain unassigned to be assigned to the PO since the team should only be working on Task issues, but I wanted to see if I'm missing anything."}
{"_id": "255861", "title": "Struts action invoked without clicking the submit button on IE8", "text": "I use Struts 1 and my application only supports IE browsers. The following straightforward code works fine on IE9 and above, i.e. when click on action1button, action1 is invoked; click on action2button, action2 is invoked.               <html:submit property=\"someaction\" styleId=\"action1button\" styleClass=\"button\">       <bean:message key=\"someaction.action1\" />     </html:submit>          <html:submit property=\"someaction\" styleId=\"action2button\" styleClass=\"button\">       <bean:message key=\"someaction.action2\" />     </html:submit>      But on IE8 and below, when action2button is clicked, both action1 and action2 are invoked. Though action1button still only invokes action1. I am very confused. Does anyone have any idea what's going on here?"}
{"_id": "166379", "title": "Why does Java have a \"bad rap\"", "text": "I hear a lot of people speak poorly of Java, especially the ones coming from C/C++. Is there a historical reason why? Is it because it used to be machines were too slow to run the JVM without lag?"}
{"_id": "149319", "title": "Test Driven Development, has it reduced stress for developers?", "text": "I understand the benefits of test driven development, but have there been any studies that reveal the level of satisfaction with the product or stress levels of the authoring developers with the introduction of unit testing? I'm looking for case studies, or preferably research papers."}
{"_id": "105114", "title": "Should the gating question in hiring a web developer be  \"Have you by yourself, or with one or two partners, ever brought a product to market?\"", "text": "I've just met a guy, an engineer but a software naif, who's designed, produced, and is now selling a very nice product, a backyard zip line. He devised a new braking system for the thing and has a patent pending. He conceived and put together two zip-line kits and he's selling them on the web. I am guessing that he's put in at least 6,000 hours and $50K (counting the legal fees for the patent app), all on his own. Not the least bit unusual for starting a biz. The issue has been that the web developers (sic! plural -- you can imagine) he's contracted with have, out of immaturity or ignorance, just taken him right over the coals: he's spent, he says, many many more bucks than he should have bringing up his e-commerce site. I don't want to say how many bucks, but a lot. I think that if any of those developers had gone through the endless excruciating ass-pain of bringing up a business from scratch, it would have been a lot different and a lot happier all around. So I ask you: should the gating question in hiring a web developer be _\"Have you by yourself, or with one or two partners, ever brought a product to market? I don't care if it succeeded or failed, but tell me about it.\"_"}
{"_id": "184727", "title": "Class structure/pattern for validating several different Excel templates?", "text": "I'm trying to validate the contents of Excel sheets that follow several different templates. For each one, there are three possible validation actions for various cells:   * Regex (e.g. \"XYZ-123\" fails because it doesn't fit pattern \"[A-Z]{4}-\\d{3}\")   * Date/Time format (e.g. \"Jan 24, 2013\" fails because it's not mm/dd/yyyy)   * Data type (e.g. \"xyz\" fails because it's not an integer) My first thought was to use the following class:               public class Validator     {      Excel.Worksheet vSheet;      List<Tuple<string,string,string>> cellActions=new List<Tuple<string,string,string>>();           //populates the list of cellActions based on the template type      public Validator(Excel.Worksheet sht)      {       this.vSheet=sht;       string templateType=templateCheck(sht);       switch (templateType)       {        case \"type1\":         cellActions.Add(new Tuple<string,string,string>(\"C5\",\"regex\",\"[A-Z\\d]{6}\");         cellActions.Add(new Tuple<string,string,string>(\"D3\",\"datatype\",\"long\");         //and so on for another 30 list items         break;        case \"type2\"         cellActions.Add(new Tuple<string,string,string>(\"A3\",\"date_time\",\"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm\");         cellActions.Add(new Tuple<string,string,string>(\"A6\",\"regex\",\".+\\s[ACGT]{3}\");         //etc.       }      }           private string templateCheck(Excel.Worksheet sht)      {       //return template type as string based on contents of worksheet      }           public void validate()      {       foreach(Tuple<string,string,string> cellAction in cellActions)       {        //check the contents of the cell in the vSheet property according to cellAction's rules       }      }     }      } Is this a case where Strategy Pattern would be appropriate? There are several different types of sheets, each with a different list of cells and rules for those cells, so maybe it would be right to think about each template as a strategy to be implemented as a class. Or is this not a situation where the pattern applies, given that each of the 3 validation action types is always the same regardless of which template it's applied in?"}
{"_id": "149310", "title": "Visualizing temperature levels across a city", "text": "I have a list of temperature levels (0 - 30 degrees) in different parts of a city. I would like to visualize the different temperature levels in the different parts of the city. Hot places should be displayed in red and cold ones blue. If the user zoom out he will get the avarage temperature color of the city and if zoomed in he will get the average color of the temperate color of that place. I think that what I need is referred to as _heatmaps_. Is that the correct? I am not too expert in visualization techniques and would appreciate explanatory pseudocode to illustrate the internal workings and main building blocks for heatmap algorithms, and how I could handle the zooming."}
{"_id": "105117", "title": "What Types of Stories Should Be In a Sprint Review?", "text": "This is sort of a follow-up to my previous question Should We Quit Trying to Do Agile if QA Takes 12 Weeks? For the second time in as many sprints, we've set a sprint review that is scheduled to feature just a single issue that essentially amounts to an obscure bug fix or at most an esoteric enhancement to some small portion of our product. The only real stakeholders for this issue are the single developer and the customer who opened the issue. It seems to me that given these parameters, we are probably better off just not doing a sprint review. Is there a general consensus on what types of stories should be discussed during a sprint review and what should be left out, or should everything be fair game? We haven't been doing retrospectives at all unfortunately, so unless that changes, that reason is kind of out as a reason to go ahead with the review."}
{"_id": "105112", "title": "Testing Data : Should I Create a bogus test case?", "text": "I've written an Integration program that produces files from a source set of data and converts it to a target data file. These files contain field/record information that must be validated by our clients using their validation methods. I plan to create numerous test cases and expect to receive information on how well the data validated so I can tweak my program. I want to create a test case that I know will not pass their validation, however I need to know if their validation methods are picking up basics such as the file structure and layout. I am trying to prevent the situation if all my test cases pass, but later on the files were not in the correct format the client needed. Do you feel this is a good idea and would I get any valid information from it?"}
{"_id": "153992", "title": "Why is there no service-oriented language?", "text": "**Edit:** To avoid further confusion: I am _not_ talking about web services and such. I am talking about structuring applications internally, it's not about how computers communicate. It's about programming languages, compilers and how the imperative programming paradigm is extended. **Original:** In the imperative programming field, we saw two paradigms in the past 20 years (or more): object-oriented (OO), and service-oriented (SO) aka. component- based (CB). Both paradigms extend the imperative programming paradigm by introducing their own notion of modules. OO calls them objects (and classes) and lets them encapsulates both data (fields) and procedures (methods) together. SO, in contrast, separates data (records, beans, ...) from code (components, services). However, only OO has programming languages which natively support its paradigm: Smalltalk, C++, Java and all other JVM-compatibles, C# and all other .NET-compatibles, Python etc. SO has no such native language. It only comes into existence on top of procedural languages or OO languages: COM/DCOM (binary, C, C++), CORBA, EJB, Spring, Guice (all Java), ... These SO frameworks clearly suffer from the missing native language support of their concepts.   * They start using OO classes to represent services and records. This leads to designs where there is a clear distinction between classes that have methods only (services) and those that have fields only (records). Inheritance between services or records is then simulated by inheritance of classes. Technically, its not kept so strictly but in general programmers are adviced to make classes to play only one of the two roles.   * They use additional, external languages to represent the missing parts: IDL's, XML configurations, Annotations in Java code, or even embedded DSL like in Guice. This is especially needed, but not limited to, since the composition of services is not part of the service code itself. In OO, objects create other objects so there is no need for such facilities but for SO there is because services don't instantiate or configure other services.   * They establish an inner-platform effect on top of OO (early EJB, CORBA) where the programmer has to write all the code that is needed to \"drive\" SO. Classes represent only a part of the nature of a service and lots of classes have to be written to form a service together. All that boiler plate is necessary because there is no SO compiler which would do it for the programmer. This is just like some people did it in C for OO when there was no C++. You just pass the record which holds the data of the object as a first parameter to the procedure which is the method. In a OO language this parameter is implicit and the compiler produces all the code that we need for virtual functions etc. For SO, this is clearly missing.   * Especially the newer frameworks extensively use AOP or introspection to add the missing parts to a OO language. This doesn't bring the necessary language expressiveness but avoids the boiler platform code described in the previous point.   * Some frameworks use code generation to produce the boiler plate code. Configuration files in XML or annotations in OO code is the source of information for this. Not all of the phenomena that I mentioned above can be attributed to SO but I hope it clearly shows that there is a need for a SO language. Since this paradigm is so popular: why isn't there one? Or maybe there are some academic ones but at least the industry doesn't use one."}
{"_id": "197307", "title": "Web Application Licensing - Open Source vs Proprietary", "text": "I am developing a web application based on a proprietary (but free) JavaScript API. My company is considering releasing our application as \"Open Source\", but we are unsure of the different licensing options and how they will work considering we are using a third-party proprietary API. Can anyone help me with the following questions?   1. If we cannot release the third-party API as open source, can we release the code that we have written as open source?   2. Are we, as the original developers, held to the same license that we release our code with? For instance, if we release our code under a \"copy-left\" license like GPL, would that restrict us from building on the original code base and releasing it in another product that is not open source?   3. What is the best resource for learning the difference among all the different license types? I looked at opensource.org, which listed all the licenses, but I have trouble understanding all the legalese of the licenses themselves."}
{"_id": "153999", "title": "Get income on a free app, offline?", "text": "I have an Android app which I added adMob ads to. They only work though when the user is online. Now the problem is, the app is specially made for offline use, so pretty much nobody will ever get to see one. The app is free to download, but I would still like to make a few cents out of it. It currently has around 300, which I guess will look at it about twice per workday. Any help on how to make some money with this free, offline app?"}
{"_id": "16471", "title": "4x as much work as I can actually do, what now?", "text": "I work for a web development firm and currently have 9 projects in the programming phase waiting for me to do them, and deadlines are flying past quickly without the projects getting done in time. We have two designers who are underworked and just me as a developer. My boss keeps piling on the work and I don't know what to do, and they aren't happy I'm missing deadlines. Any ideas that don't involve me working a lot of unpaid overtime?"}
{"_id": "93897", "title": "What exactly is \"Binary Form\"?", "text": "I am asking in the context of the licenses on code that one sees all over the place. Typically, they say something along the lines of \"if you release a product containing this in binary form, it must contain X, Y, and Z.\" Does that mean that if I use the code in an app, the app has to have a screen somewhere that contains X, Y, and Z in human-readable form?"}
{"_id": "221836", "title": "Is TDD viable in collaborative open source projects", "text": "Let's say I wanted to start an open source project that I hope/expect to have many people submit patches and whatnot. Is it viable to take a strict TDD approach? Can/should I expect/trust collaborators to write quality tests whenever they submit a patch? One thing I've been thinking about is writing test suites for individual bug reports and feature requests and requiring that all patches/pull requests make the tests pass, but at that point it seems like it would be better just to write the feature/bugfix myself. As far as I can tell, most of the major open source projects that use TDD (or at least write tests) seem to be mostly written purely by an individual or team, where it's easy to enforce practices such as TDD."}
{"_id": "221831", "title": "Detecting travel patterns in geospatial data", "text": "I need to analyze data uploaded from vehicle GPS devices to detect travel patterns and then attempt to learn about the normal travel patterns for that vehicle so that predictions can be made about maintenance, refueling etc. Some vehicles are domestic (exhibiting normal home->work->home travel patterns) and some are commercial with scheduled routing. I have loaded the GPS lats and longs to a database, and then constructed an ST_LineString with the data points for each vehicle (approx 1k points per vehicle per day). Vehicles will never have identical travel patterns (GPS accuracy, irregular ping times etc) and the patterns will be visible as subsets of pings - for example a one hour commute between point A (home) and point B (work) between 8am and 9.30am each morning, Mon-Fri. Now the difficult part - I am considering the options. I have to write this in a database procedural language using the usual toolbox of procedures, cursors, iteration etc. I could use Python if it is helpful - I'm a database guy trying to think laterally and spatially. A travel pattern could be identified by (i) a similar sequence of points that can differ by a tolerance (say +/- 300 meters) (ii) parking locations - if a car is parked at the same location for 8 hours a day (iii) temporal- the vehicle starts at trip at 0830 every day, +/- 10 minutes. I am planning to write a procedure that checks for each of these patterns for each point (or set of n points) by comparing it with all other points (or set of points) by iterating through the pings for each day in sequence. The easiest use case is to find recurrences of a vehicle parked at the same place each day. Detecting similar movement patterns is more complex. What could be a technique for this?"}
{"_id": "214306", "title": "As a soon-to-be-grad, will my skills and/or career suffer if I join a startup where I'll be the (equal) senior-most developer?", "text": "**tl;dr** : I'm a grad, worried about not learning a lot and improving my skills if I join a startup where I won't have senior devs mentoring and helping me. I do have other offers. I'm in my final year of study, and I'm lucky enough to be in a course where all students do a final-year project with real-world commercial clients. So since March, 5 of my good friends and I have been building a system for a startup which is currently seeking funding, and planning to launch early next year. I should note that the product is not finished yet, and without it there is no business. We have already been told that, assuming they get the funding they're after, they want to bring all of us on-board ASAP, to continue building this thing. The reasons are obvious: we're all familiar with both the client and the product, and we're cheaper than more experienced devs. **If they get enough of us to sign on, we'll be the only developers involved.** So my question: **ignoring all of the usual startup issues of job security, pay, and all that** , I'm concerned about the issue of my continuing education and improvement as a programmer. I'm pretty confident in my skills, and most of what I know I taught myself rather than learnt in the classroom, because I'm passionate about coding, but I'm not so foolish to think that any grad doesn't have a hell of a lot left to learn. I already have a couple of offers from other larger companies, where I know that I'll be working under developers with a lot of experience, who hopefully can and will teach and mentor me, and I'm conscious of stagnating this early in my career by being at a company where it's only me and other grads, and **no one with 10+ years of experience to tell me when I'm totally wrong.** Is this an issue? Or can I learn just as much on my own if I'm really committed to it?"}
{"_id": "61975", "title": "What are the benefits to a dev team for taking on an intern for the summer?", "text": "My Dev team is entertaining the idea of taking on a summer intern or two. It's clear the benefits the intern gets out of such an engagement, but what benefits would the Dev team hosting the intern for a couple of months benefit? Does anyone have first hand insight into this?"}
{"_id": "65414", "title": "When to use PHP or ASP.NET?", "text": "I have worked extensively in developing web applications using PHP and ASP.NET, but one of the questions that I'm constantly asked by customers is whether to move forward with a php website or an asp.net website. So naturally the first thing that comes to mind is to answer the question like this: > PHP is open-source and ASP.NET is from Microsoft. Usually after something like that is said the customer has a blank look on there face. Apparently the fact that one is open source and the other isn't doesn't really faze them. And for good reason, because when I first heard it, it really doesn't tell me much. I know from working with both that each have their differences when it comes to developing websites. My question is what are differences between ASP.NET and PHP as far as   1. Features   2. Security   3. Extendability   4. Frameworks   5. Average Development Time I am trying to compile a list of facts to be able to compare with the customer so that an informed choice on the appropriate development platform can be made."}
{"_id": "250334", "title": "Building software with version numbers", "text": "This is not a question about how to number versions. We have an application with a certain version numbering scheme. We also have a Jenkins CI server (soon to be replaced with Atlassian's Bamboo) that regularly builds our software. The application displays the version number, so it's written in one of the files in our code base. We don't want to manually change the version number before releasing a version. Our current solution is that we have a Jenkins job that changes the version number in our code base, commits it, tags the repository with the version number, pushes it and then packages the application for distribution. The problem with that is that we have to decide to release a version before the build succeeds or fails. What we want to do is this: have Jenkins regularly build our product and run the unit tests. Afterwards, we want to select a passing build and release it with a certain version number. In summary, this is the process I want:   * Jenkins builds and tests our product regularly.   * When we want to release a version, we can select the last passing build from Jenkins and check to release it.   * The resulting release should include the version number.   * The commit that was built and released should be tagged with the release number. What is the best practice for releasing product versions? Is there a process that will meet my demands?"}
{"_id": "231822", "title": "Git commit not finished but can't continue on that machine", "text": "So I was wondering what is the typical way that people handle working on a project with git and getting to a point where the work you have done is not committed and not in a form that should be committed but you won't be able to work on it at that location anymore? Is the best thing to do just to transfer your working tree files over to a new location and continue work then commit and wipe the working tree and pull the changes, or is there some git utility that I do not know about that would allow me to do something like a soft commit, or something where I didn't have to alter the history when the commit is ready."}
{"_id": "250331", "title": "Desktop client server application, limiting text area field compromise with customers", "text": "We have a textarea field in a desktop client server application which in the end stores all the data in a database server, this text area is used to take notes and similar text areas have been put throughout our application as a marketing choice so that users can never blame the application for missing some fields and the marketing department can always answer \"put it in the notes field\". Recently however we realised some customers use the notes area heavily to write letters or copy paste documents, so we had to increase the notes field in the database from 1024 to 10240, we are realising however that this way the desktop application takes always more time to download all this backlog of information. What is the compromise between giving practically no limit to user input length and letting the users use it as they deem necessary and putting a strict limit justifying the choice as \"performance mandated\"?"}
{"_id": "250330", "title": "Organizing solution / project structure and classes for Line of Business Application (LOB)", "text": "The question how-do-you-organize-your-projects already has a few good answers. I would like to get a better understanding about this suggested structure:               MyApp.Core     MyApp.Model     MyApp.Presenter     MyApp.Persistence     MyApp.UI     MyApp.Validation     MyApp.Report     MyApp.Web      Assuming `MyApp` is a winforms rich client to administer students, courses, rooms and teachers Lets say i have a winforms user control to edit course information (name of the course, who teaches it, in which room and which students did register for the course). The class below reflects all the information i need for the user control               public class CourseDetails{         public int Id{ get; set;}         public Course Course{ get; set;}         public Teacher Teacher{get; set;}         public Room Room{get; set;}         public List<Student> StudentList{get; set;}     }      Where would you put this class? ### Methods of MyApp.Model I would like to know how complex or simple the classes inside the namespace `MyApp.Model` shoud be. Should the project `MyApp.Model` only contain very simple classes like               public class Course{         public int CourseId{ get; set;}         public string CourseName{ get; set;}         public int CategoryId {get; private set;}          }     public class Teacher{         public int TeacherId{ get; set;}         public string TeacherName{ get; set;}     }      or should `MyApp.Model` contain also   * complex classes like `CourseDetails`   * additional methods for each class like `Save()` or `GetById()` ? ### Additional topics Where (in which project) should interfaces be implemented and where should base classe be used. When should this additional methods (`Save()`, `GetById()`) be inherited from a base class or be contained in the class which implents an interface that has all the methods for saving and selecting.               public class CourseDetails: ModelBase{         ...     }          public class ModelBase{         public bool Save() {             Console.WriteLine(\"do something clever to save each entity\");             return true;         }     }      Sorry for not beeing more clear; I would like to understand what kind of things (classes, interfaces, ressources, etc) should be put in which project and why. I hope you get the idea."}
{"_id": "236288", "title": "how to process document state transition?", "text": "Imagine there is an _application_ (`ASP.NET MVC`) that processes some documents. The `document` must be revised several times by _different group of users_. state/role rules:   * **simple user** can only **publish** document; (priority: **low** )   * **userGroup1** can switch it to **next state** or **reject** it; (priority: **higher** )   * **userGroup2** can **confirm** previous state and switch it to **next gradual** state or **reject** it; (priority: **highest** )     1. How to implement such a workflow in `ASP.NET MVC`? How to impelement `UI`, `views` so that group with lower priority can both visually/technically perform only `allowed transitions`? Can I somehow extend that system: link?     2. Do I need extras like service bus, event sourcing for that? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WoeKR.png)"}
{"_id": "158523", "title": "Use a partial in a partial?", "text": "I'm a Rails newbie, so bear with me. I have a few places, some pages, some partials that use:               <%= link_to \"delete\", post, method: :delete,                                      data: { confirm: \"You sure?\" },                                      title: post.content %>      Would it make sense to make this a partial since it is used repeatedly, sometimes in other partials too? Is it o.k. to put partials in partials?"}
{"_id": "190273", "title": "Would Python be too slow for client-side use in Browsers?", "text": "I've heard the statement that Python would be too slow to be of any use in browsers. I reckon Javascript is only superior in this aspect because of companies like Google who need it fast (and made it fast) because they need it to survive, but I could be wrong. Are there any differences in how Python and Javascript are designed that have an impact on how they (would) perform in browsers? Since as of now there isn't a client side Python implementation, my question comes from the statement someone made, so maybe it has something to do with the languages itself (although I don\u2019t believe that)."}
{"_id": "81648", "title": "Python programming patterns and practices?", "text": "What are the best python programming patterns and practices you are using every day? I don't mean only design patterns (there are lot of OO design patterns that can be used in python), I mean pure coding patterns and practices like:   * the best way to organize modules   * the best way for data parsing (performance wise)   * usage of private functions (does this make sense, because you can access private functions outside the class)   * what are the best modules for GUI, database etc.  Are there any new books or other kind of literature on this matter (2010/2011)? Of course question can not be answered in one answer or one book, I thought of this question like a discussion on this matter because there is not really much written about python programming patterns and it is a very powerful language."}
{"_id": "154419", "title": "How do employers measure \"strong or solid knowledge of programming language\"?", "text": "Yesterday I had received a great job opportunity. In requirements section I had seen the words:   * solid knowledge of python;   * solid knowledge of java;   * good technical background; Could you give me an answer, what does it mean? How to test my current knowledge? What type of measure will be actually accepted by employer?"}
{"_id": "120299", "title": "Is it okay to call exception-triggered debugging \"post-mortem debugging\"?", "text": "I heard the term \"post-mortem debugging\", and Wikipedia says it's debugging done after the program has crashed. I often debug Python apps using a debugger that stops execution once an important-enough exception has been raised. Then I can use the debug probe to investigate. Does this count as \"post-mortem debugging\"? Because the program doesn't really crash. **EDIT:** If the answer is no, then what name would you use for the kind of debugging that I described?"}
{"_id": "69714", "title": "What deters developers from using automated refactoring tools?", "text": "I was having a discussion with my colleagues about using the automated refactoring tools in IDEs (Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ, Xcode, Visual Studio, etc) and was _surprised_ that many of them were uncomfortable using such tools. One of them is a seasoned developer (Smalltalk, C/C++, Java, Javascript) for 20 years and he seldom uses an IDE and _even_ when he does, he doesn't use the automated refactoring tools. He does a lot of refactorings, but he does them **all** by hand. Personally, I rely a lot on refactoring tools. Whenever I work on a project, I try to pick an IDE that supports automated refactorings and use those refactorings whenever possible. I am interested in finding out if professional developers here at Stack Exchange use automated refactoring tools. And, if you don't, why not? To get things started, here are some reasons why my colleagues don't use the automated refactoring tools:   1. _Trust_ \\- Sometimes they don't trust what the tool is doing especially if it is a complex refactoring like Pull-Up which might affect multiple files; they are worried that the tool might introduce subtle bugs.   2. _Discoverability_ \\- Sometimes they don't even realize that such a refactoring is available in the IDE because it is not immediately obvious   3. _Flexibility_ \\- Sometimes the tool is too rigid and they always feel like they have to configure it too much to get it to work the way they want. **Updated - summary** Based on the responses so far, I think I can summarize three things:   1. Developers don't have the time to try out all the different refactorings available. And because they can't try them out, they are suspicious of what they will do to the code (all the corner cases). This suspicion is warranted for production code under time pressure (even if you have tests to check). Perhaps better UI tools can alleviate this.   2. Developers have also been frustrated by the limitations of the refactoring tools especially when they use metaprogramming/reflection or have external files (xml, configuration, properties). Automated refactoring tools keep on improving but there will always be limitations. Sometimes the limitations are acceptable and other times they are not. I've spoken to several other colleagues and some of them are more tolerant of the limitations. For instance, if rename refactoring doesn't rename all the files but does a good job of renaming 90% of it, they are still happy to use the tool and fix up the remaining 10% by hand because it still _saves_ time and effort.   3. [In my opinion from what I have gathered], developers feel that refactoring tools are _nice-to-have_ features so if it doesn't work the first time (or does something unacceptable), they seem to be more incline to abandon them and make changes by hand. Compare this to other tools like compilers/debuggers which also have limitations and bugs. Developers are likely to stick with them despite their limitations because they are _essential_ features that you can't just abandon in your workflow. Thanks for all the responses. If this topic is of interest to more people, I suggest turning it into a Community Wiki. It would be interesting to find out whether the size of the project, the availability of tests, the maturity of the IDE affect people's decision to use automated refactoring tools."}
{"_id": "124976", "title": "Why are SQL databases still used with ORM?", "text": "ORMs and persistence ignorance make perfect sense: if I am programming in a language, then I want to use the language's native implementation of objects and data structures to drive my program. I shouldn't need to worry about SQL or a database, and I always thought that inline SQL strings in a program was very cumbersome. Why is SQL still used as a backend? Why doesn't the ORM just persist objects to XML or a binary file(s) and avoid all the overheads and difficulties of administering a database server?"}
{"_id": "120295", "title": "How to choose an agile methodology?", "text": "I'm working in a little firm about 10 developpers, we are working a kind of agile way but knowledgeless and without formalism. I think be aware of what are agile method, what can they afford to us, may render more productive our products. However there is a lot of agile method, which could be the simplest to \"learn\"?   * Rapid Application Development   * Dynamic systems development method   * Scrum   * Feature Driven Development   * Extreme programming    * Adaptive software development   * Test Driven Development   * Crystal clear"}
{"_id": "120292", "title": "Big table with referential integrity or field typification?", "text": "I'm using an ORM (Propel) and PHP to create Objects and store them in a database. So, I'm facing a recurrent problem and I'm pretty sure this happened to someone before. My data model looks something like this: ![Strategy pattern situation](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UsMIc.jpg) So class A needs a reference to something from the hierarchy of `Clase Parent` (abstract class), this is not the problem. The idea behind this solutions is that in the future it would be very easy to create new strategies. But remember I said I'm using an ORM to store info in the database? Well, the database has 3 tables: `A_table`, `B_table` and `C_table`. So here comes the situation: `A_table` needs to be related to the strategy. Whats the best way to go?   1. Create a strategy type reference table, assosiate a type to the A_table and have a relation_id thats just an intenger with a value (no referential integrity whatsoever)   2. Create one field per strategy in the A_table, and allow them to be null Really looking forward for opinions and why its best one or the other."}
{"_id": "69711", "title": "Any ideas about puzzles and recruitment with Coderloop?", "text": "Does anybody have any experience with Coderloop? It is supposed to be community of developers solving programming puzzles, and they use that information to help companies recruit. Has anybody been hired through them?"}
{"_id": "154410", "title": "What are the differences between Castle Monorail 3 over ASP.Net MVC?", "text": "I have been using Castle Monorail for some years now with great success, although I haven't bothered to update the version I'm using (2 or 3 year old). Now I'm making a decision on go to ASP.Net MVC 3 or update to the latest Castle version. I have been looking documentation on the newest version of Castle projects (specially Monorail), but there is really little or no info around (I may be wrong). Does someone knows what are the differences between Castle Monorail version 3 over ASP.Net MVC3? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "24190", "title": "Commenting/In-Code Documentation Styles", "text": "This might be a stupid question, but it's been in the back of my head for a while and I can't find a decent answer anywhere else. I have a teacher who says we should explicitly list each parameter with a description, even if there's only one. This leads to a lot of repetition:               double MyFunction(const int MyParam);     // Function: MyFunction     // Summary: Does stuff with MyParam.     // Input: int MyParam - The number to do stuff with.     // Output: MyParam with stuff done to it.      When writing in-code documentation, how detailed are you?"}
{"_id": "49215", "title": "What management/development practices do you change when a team of 1-3 developers grows to 10+?", "text": "My team built a website for a client several years ago. The site taffic has been growing very quickly and our client has been asking us to grow our team to fill their maintenance and feature request needs. We started with a small number of developers, and our team has grown - now we're in the double digits. What management/development changes are the most beneficial when team grows from small \"garage-size\" team to 10+ developers?"}
{"_id": "49212", "title": "Am I making the right decision to take Information technology/system as my course in college?", "text": "I am a student who just ended my high school last year. I will be entering college any time between march to August. And.. I am thinking of studying Information technology/System as my course in college. The problem is, I am unsure if this is the right path for me. I don't know if this is what I really want for my future later on! Yes, I do love learning more about computers (prefer software to hardware). But what if I don't find them interesting later on when studying? I'm worried about that as I don't wanna regret later on. To add to that, my knowledge of programming and other software development is actually quite low. Can someone advise me on what should I do? Or tell me more about Information technology (what will I study later on in college and the career path)?"}
{"_id": "152716", "title": "Communication between state machines with hidden transitions", "text": "The question emerged for me in embedded programming but I think it can be applied to quite a number of general networking situations e.g. when a communication partner fails. Assume we have an application logic (a program) running on a computer and a gadget connected to that computer via e.g. a serial interface like RS232. The gadget has a red/green/blue LED and a button which disables the LED. The LEDs color can be driven by software commands over the serial interface and the state (red/green/blue/off) is read back and causes a reaction in the application logic. Asynchronous behaviour of the application logic with regard to the LED color down to a certain delay (depending on the execution cycle of the application) is tolerated. What we essentially have is a resource (the LED) which can not be reserved and handled atomically by software because the (organic) user can at any time press the button to interfere/break the software attempt to switch the LED color. Stripping this example from its physical outfit I dare to say that we have two communicating state machines A (application logic) and G (gadget) where G executes state changes unbeknownst to A (and also the other way round, but this is not significant in our example) and only A can be modified at a reasonable price. A needs to see the reaction and state of G in one piece of information which may be (slightly) outdated but not inconsistent with respect to the short time window when this information was generated on the side of G. What I am looking for is a concise method to handle such a situation in embedded software (i.e. no layer/framework like CORBA etc. available). A programming technique which is able to map the complete behaviour of both participants on classical interfaces of a classical programming language (C in this case). To complicate matters (or rather, to generalize), a simple high frequency communication cycle of A to G and back (IOW: A is rapidly polling G) is out of focus because of technical restrictions (delay of serial com, A not always active, etc.). What I currently see as a general solution is:   * the application logic A as one thread of execution    * an adapter object (proxy) PG (presenting G inside the computer), together with the serial driver as another thread   * a communication object between the two (A and PG) which is transactionally safe to exchange  The two execution contexts (threads) on the computer may be multi-core or just interrupt driven or tasks in an RTOS. The com object contains the following data:   * suspected state (written by A): effectively a member of the power set of states in G (in our case: red, green, blue, off, red_or_green, red_or_blue, red_or_off...etc.)   * command data (written by A): test_if_off, switch_to_red, switch_to_green, switch_to_blue   * operation status (written by PG): operation_pending, success, wrong_state, link_broken   * new state (written by PG): red, green, blue, off The idea of the com object is that A writes whichever (set of) state it thinks G is in, together with a command. (Example: suspected state=\"red_or_green\", command: \"switch_to_blue\") Notice that the commands issued by A will not work if the user has switched off the LED and A needs to know this. PG will pick up such a com object and try to send the command to G, receive its answer (or a timeout) and set the operation status and new state accordingly. A will take back the oject once it is no longer at operation_pending and can react to the outcome. The com object could be separated of course (into two objects, one for each direction) but I think it is convenient in nearly all instances to have the command close to the result. I would like to have major flaws pointed out or hear an entirely different view on such a situation."}
{"_id": "152717", "title": "what is the term for the class in the bottom of a class hierarchy?", "text": "You have a class hierarchy: D extends C which extends B which extends A, for example. A would be the top class, but how about D? I am looking for a short and concise way of describing the position of D within the hierarchy Is it the most specific class? the deepest class in the hierarchy? the last subclass? final class? The class might or might not be final (java) or sealed (c#). what matters is that it is the last one of the hierarchy at a particular moment. If a newer class (E) appears that extends D then the proposed term would apply to it. Also, there might be more than one class that fit this description (both D and E extends C), the term should apply to both classes."}
{"_id": "26829", "title": "Would a statically typed alternative to JavaScript on webpages be practical?", "text": "Preference for dynamic and static typing is largely a matter of taste, and different people find them more or less suitable in different situations. My question is, would it be technically possible to have a statically-typed alternative to JavaScript for client-side web page augmentation etc.?"}
{"_id": "166959", "title": "Drop in service for account management, authentication, identity?", "text": "I'm building an Android app and associated set of web services for uploading/downloading data. I need a basic (no frills) solution for account management (register, login, logout, verify credentials/token). What open source / third party solutions exist for this scenario? I need:   * create a new account db based on a salt   * simple web service to create a new account   * simple web service to authenticate supplied credentials and return some sort of token That's it, I can get by without 'fancy' email activation or password reset for the time being. And then moving beyond simple account management, I will need some sort of 'token' based authentication for a web service. Are there off-the-shelf components for this? Should I just use a 'blank' django or rails app to get this done? Seems crazy for everyone to be doing CREATE TABLE user_accounts ... Thoughts? Thank you."}
{"_id": "190593", "title": "Why does Go have a special case for abs(0)", "text": "I was playing around with Go, and found this particular interesting code for the abs function in the math package: http://golang.org/src/pkg/math/abs.go               14 func abs(x float64) float64 {     15      switch {     16      case x < 0:     17          return -x     18      case x == 0:     19          return 0 // return correctly abs(-0)     20      }     21      return x     22  }      Why do we need to have the special case of x == 0? What will happen if I delete line 18 and 19?"}
{"_id": "190590", "title": "Test planning for an Agile sprint", "text": "Can anyone offer any tips or experience on developing a test plan for an Agile sprint? Most of the time our team simply creates a \"Test Feature X\" task and goes about writing ad-hoc test cases. There typically isn't much strategic forethought put into how features will be tested and how we'll communicate the expectations and results to the rest of the development team and our users. Is it common to just write high-level testing tasks without making the actual test cases transparent to the development team? What sort of methodologies have you used when developing a test plan and what does it look like both at the beginning of a sprint and at the end? Any advice or tips on what comprises an effective and transparent test plan as well as a means of developing the test plan would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "166954", "title": "How to check any undocumented methods provided by apple?", "text": "The following tools is provided by Apple   * dlopen   * dlsym   * objc_getClass   * sel_registerName   * objc_msgSend Those are listing Objective-C selectors, or strings. Objective-C selectors are stored in a special region of the binary, and therefore Apple could extract the content from there, and check if you've used some undocumented Objective-C methods.   * How to utilize these tools to find undocumented Objective-C methods? **EDIT:** Recently, one of my App rejected due to using one undocumented methods. > -[UIDevice setOrientation] Since, selectors are independent from the class you're messaging, even if my custom class defines `-setOrientation`: irrelevant to UIDevice, there will be a possbility of being rejected."}
{"_id": "166952", "title": "Dependency injection and IOC containers in a closed project", "text": "Does it make sense to assemble my project with dependency injection containers if I am the only one who will use the code of that project? The question came up when I read this IOC Article http://martinfowler.com/articles/injection.html The justification for using dependency injection in this article is that friends can **reuse** a class, and replace depending classes with their own classes because they get injected and not instantiated in the class. I would only use it to inject objects where they are needed instead of passing them through layers to their target. (Which is not so bad I learned here: Is it bad practice to pass instances through several layers?) (Maybe I will reuse parts of the project, who knows, but I don\u00b4t know if that is a good justification)"}
{"_id": "166951", "title": "How to run any cronjobs using Objective-C at iOS Platform", "text": "Is there any way to run schedulers / schedule programs for example Cron Jobs using Objective-C at iOS Platform? I need to create a schedule update to my ios, lets say for example every five days my app will fetch something to the internet and update the database I also want user to set the interval. I think for this purpose cron jobs can be a vital part. Is there any suggestions or other ways?"}
{"_id": "222081", "title": "How much of my time will be taken in planning sprints etc?", "text": "I am senior developer/architect who knows the business domain really well. My new manager wants me to manage a team (yet to recruit of around 5 people) and in the past I have worked in an agile environment but as a developer. So I was involved in the writing user stories, working with stake holders, estimating via story points and all the development work involved in getting to the end of a sprint/project. I would like to carry on working as a developer and spend most of my time in the depth of writing code but my manager believes only 10% of my time will involved in the management side (i.e. creating product logs, agile estimation etc). He has never worked on an agile project. I am still reading up on all that involved in managing an agile project so it is hard for me to say how much of my time will be involved. My question is how much of my time will be spent on working on the side of managing an agile project? This is something I would like to do but I am not sure if I want to do this if I spend all my time on the management side."}
{"_id": "60595", "title": "Did Your CS Program Prepare You Well?", "text": "For those of you who received undergrad degrees in Computer Science, do you feel like your school prepared you well for the actual day-to-day work of being a programmer? I've often felt that my school prepared me really well to go on to a Master's Degree program, but that was at the expense of learning basic working concepts like how software shops are commonly structured and what is typically expected of a professional developer. Also, it would have been nice to learn more about the latest trends in software development so I could have known which skills were most in demand in which industries. I am not dismissing the value of the more theoretical classes I took, and I do see how they have benefited me. However, I think any CS programs that aren't already doing it should offer a half semester class in this area. It could aim for practical and up-to-date information about what should be expected from the real-world software industry. **UPDATE** : If you disagree with me and you feel that your school prepared you for real- world experience, please say so. What kind of classes did you think helped you out? As I said in the comments below, I'm not suggesting that a university's first responsibility is to prepare you for the working world. I do, however, think there can be a compromise between their goals of getting their students to embrace new ideas and helping to get them ready for life after graduation."}
{"_id": "211379", "title": "Auto - incremental ID in Domain Object", "text": "I read a lot about auto-incremental id (guid, interlocked.increment, ObjectIdGenerator...) but don't find nothing for my situation. In my domain model user ask to have an automatic progressive numeric Id for each Activity they create. Since it's a user request I want to put it in my domain model, but the mode I usually do it in older application without good architecture ) is accessing database, retrieve the max and add 1; so I can't do it in my object since domain layer must not be aware of db. Don't like db identity for lack of control (sometimes db administrator have to change the id for user error on creation of activity). interlocked.increment look fine but my application is installed on every user machine so I can't use it Since it must be intelligible and progressive I can't use guid I find a good idea in Lev Gorodinski article about Service Domain in Domain- Driven-Design: define the interface of a GenerateActivityId in domain layer as a Domain Service, but I don't find a way to make a good implementation of it. Any suggestion? EDIT: Lev Gorodinski idea:               public class Activity {       public int Id {get; private set;}       public string Description {get;set;}            public Activity (string description){         this.Description = description          this.Id = generator.GenerateId()       }     }          public interface IIdGenerator{       int GenerateId()     }      but i don't see where \"generator\" is defined and don't found IIdGenerator implementation: where should i put the implementation? In ActivityRepository? If yes i can omit IIdGenerator for the IActiviryRepositoryInteface ?"}
{"_id": "94045", "title": "Prolog in current research world", "text": "i've a doubt about using Prolog for my grad school research. Recently, i've presented a small part of my research work which is discussed about logic and prolog in a conference. I got a comment from an audience that questioned me \"why i chose prolog\". He said that prolog is an outdated languages (popular usage around '80s) and people are rarely talk about prolog now. Is there any risk if i use prolog in my research study because of its old-fashioned language? or maybe i should prolog as only a part of my study. This is confusing me as i know that prolog is still be using in academia now.."}
{"_id": "246027", "title": "Architecture of large-scale API (User Management)", "text": "We are currently designing an API that will hide different services (Product, Content, User etc) that will be used by our own website, our own apps etc. It is not a public API. We are looking into using ServiceStack as a foundation, and that might be right. However, the biggest concern is how to manage the users (each user has 30-50 attributes) and hopefully 100 000+ users. As I've understand AspNet Identity is nothing for Production so therefore we need to create our own implementation of AspNet Identity.   1. What is your experience of creating a Custom Identity Provider (any examples)?   2. We would like to use several external auth services (OpenId, twitter etc), how should that be managed?    3. How will that then affect the structure of the API (Lets say we are using WebApi instead of ServiceStack). I would like to use as much standard UI as possible. Any ideas, solutions or examples are appreciated."}
{"_id": "60599", "title": "What constitutes \"Proper use\" of the javascript Eval feature?", "text": "Eval is a notoriously controversial language feature. Douglas Crockford flat out rejects it. I'm wondering what specific risks Eval brings about. According to this question, `Improper use of eval opens up your code for injection attacks`. What are some improper uses of the Eval command, and what security holes do they open up?"}
{"_id": "56927", "title": "What are the real life implications for an Apache 2 license?", "text": "I want to use SVG Edit for project. This software is distributed under the Apache 2 license. I've seen that:   * all copies, modified or unmodified, are accompanied by a copy of the licence   * all modifications are clearly marked as being the work of the modifier   * all notices of copyright, trademark and patent rights are reproduced accurately in distributed copies   * the licensee does not use any trademarks that belong to the licensor Do these pertain to the code or should I display the license somewhere in the GUI? The orignal software displays a \"powered by SVG Edit\", is it ok if I remove this? And most importantly: what is the correct etiquette for doing this? I don't want to be an asshole, but at the same time I want to simplify the UI as much as possible and removing the link will be part of it if it's not considered _rude_."}
{"_id": "211377", "title": "What is the gain from 64-bit architecture?", "text": "I played with 8-bit machines (C64), I used 16-bit machines (Win 3.1), I enjoyed flat 32-bit address space (Linux). Every time as a user (which was also means being a developer for fun or profit) I felt the need for more bits and welcomed the next wider bit architecture. Accessing to bigger memory space got easier, graphics got better and sound was a bliss after 8-bit. However when marketing drums started to kick in for 64-bit some years ago I thought, \"ok, this is Internet age, they can use this kind of power to do more calculations easier and commodity hardware manufacturers want to spread their portfolio for this kind of market\". Professionally I became a \"system programmer\" working for mobile devices which some what means being an \"embedded programmer\" as well. Working mostly on 32-bit from the start ARM architecture based products, it was a while I forgot about different architectures other than being 32-bit. Also when ARM announced a new 64-bit architecture towards end of 2011, I read it as ARM wants to go into server market, increasing their portfolio. Which makes sense. Now with new iPhone 5S claiming to be the first 64-bit processor ever used on a smartphone, thoughts became a little bit unsettled in my head again. Mobile devices, being the ultimate personal devices are becoming 64-bit. So I wonder, is there something I'm missing? What does being 64-bit offers to the users including programmers?"}
{"_id": "234533", "title": "Should performance tests be instrumented by build tools?", "text": "Should performance tests be instrumented by build tools as part of the build process, or should they live completely outside? If outside, then where in the deployment pipeline should they live? I currently see performance tests being attached to integration testing lifecycle phases. While it's fine for now, I know this doesn't seem quite right, and I'm having difficulty finding an actual answer as to where we should be attaching and running these performance tests. For the sake of the question, we can assume an environment utilizing Jenkins for CI, and Maven as a build tool. We can also assume a scrum SDLC."}
{"_id": "57032", "title": "When should I decline to make a requested change?", "text": "I work on the software side of a company that provides custom hardware with software running on top of it. Often times the hardware is not engineered well. In those cases, I am often asked first to troubleshoot the problem - of course the symptom is always \"your software crashed\" or something along those lines. Just recently we had another one of these incidents where power on a USB line is not reliable, and it causes a USB device to fail. This causes a usability problem in one of our applications. I have been asked by upper management to handle this better - continually monitor the USB device, and if it disappears, then reboot, or try to reset it. Doing either of these is not guaranteed to fix anything. Ultimately, the real fix is to correct the reliability of the device from the hardware side. I could improve performance, but not to 100%, and of course I would be using my already limited time to bloat code and add yet another device monitoring thread. So with all that said, how do I make a good decision about when to say that this needs to be a hardware fix, and only a hardware fix? Can I approach this quantitatively, and come up with some sort of definitive yes/no test? I'm sure its not that easy."}
{"_id": "234532", "title": "Mobile IOS Application to Server interaction design?", "text": "I've built a set of what will be server-side programs in python. Essentially they crawl the net and index news articles. The iOS mobile application will be what the user interacts with. So it needs to query the server somehow to get the results back. I.e. if the user types in 'Google' or 'GOOG' it will return news articles concerning Google. I'm assuming the server needs to be sent the query, the server produces the results by going over the hosted data and then sends it back, but how does it all work? I'm looking for a set of basic design principles for this sort of thing. Although if you would like to give a breakdown that would be even better."}
{"_id": "162010", "title": "How do I debug a cluster running Microsoft server 2003?", "text": "I'm sole developer of a complex critical software system, written in Visual C++ 2005. It's deployed on a classical Microsoft cluster scenario (active/passive), that has Windows Server 2003 R2. If a server A goes down, the other one (B) starts and take the ownership of its duties. You have to know that:   * Both servers have the same Microsoft patches/fixes, same hardware, same everything.   * Both servers use the same memory storage (a RAID-6 through fiber channel).   * This software has a main module that launches the peripheral modules. if a peripheral module crashes, the main module restarts it. When I switch the application in one of the two servers (let's say the B server) two of the peripheral modules of the main applications just started to crash apparently without reason about 2 seconds after the start of the peripheral module. **What could I do to analyze/inspect/resolve this weird situation?**"}
{"_id": "210978", "title": "My client's QA folks are shafting me. What can I do?", "text": "Backstory:   As the single developer with experience in the chosen technology, a month ago I drafted a component that for all extents and purposes worked within acceptable levels according to the demos that were had. Four weeks and assorted developers later (that\u00b4d be more or less last Thursday), the feature entered QA and since then I\u00b4ve been given 8 showstopper bugs, around 25 critical ones, 47 majors and a single minor one. I\u00b4m beginning to harbor a grudge against this people, but then, they're making their best to actually improve the quality of the product, so I really shouldn\u00b4t. At the same time, I also think I have a right to sleep/eat without having nightmares of showstoppers appearing on my inbox. What\u00b4s a polite way of handling this situation? I\u00b4ve gotten most of the former developers on board with this, but the QA folk continue to report all their bugs to me and upper management keeps asking me what I\u00b4m doing about them, so I\u00b4m growing considerably more anxious each day that passes by. * * * More details: About one in thirteen bug reports are actually addressable by me (about one in three of those is actually caused by code I wrote), the rest of them lay in code that is honestly foreign to me at all. Yet I\u00b4m the one getting the reports and being ad-hoc in charge of distributing them to the right developers. I\u00b4m not the team lead. Judging by the amount of work I\u00b4ve been given someone seems to think I\u00b4m actually a team of people under my name. All jokes aside, the actual team lead is on extended leave without an explicit replacement, and the most senior dev in the project is actually spearheading another module for the project, and I\u00b4ve made it abundantly clear that I\u00b4ve had 0 involvement in the project for about four weeks already. The reason I\u00b4m posting this is because I\u00b4m running out of options for reals, not just imagining things."}
{"_id": "210970", "title": "Do I need to learn Javascript to make decent websites?", "text": "Hello I have been using C++ and Java for years. For better or for worse, I have always looked at JavaScript as not as powerful as these languages and therefore probably not worth my time and effort to learn. However, I have recently been more interested in web development. I have researched Rails, MySQL databases, Html5, etc. I have been working a lot with GWT. I like GWT, but I have read that people feel too constrained by Google and that you probably have to know JavaScript anyway for making anything worthwhile. I don't have any specific kinds of websites in mind at the moment, just learning as much as I can. I really want to become proficient with setting up and querying databases, and using them to provide user generated content to a webpage. My question is, can I get away with not learning JavaScript, or do I have to bite the bullet? I know I am being lazy, but there are just so many tools out there that it is hard to know which are worth learning sometimes. I have also been researching languages like DART, but since it also compiles to JScript, and currently only Google implements it, I can't see a great reason to learn it. Sorry my question is so long, and thank you."}
{"_id": "210972", "title": "What is the best solution for using NetBeans on different computers and keeping them in sync?", "text": "I am using NetBeans IDE for PHP programming. What is the best solution for using NetBeans on two different computers and keeping them in sync? I am currently using the FTP upload on save feature. But when I open NetBeans on another computer, it doesn't re-download all the change files."}
{"_id": "190628", "title": "Why OTServs have an item cloning problem if the server crashes?", "text": "OTServs are open source MMORPGs with a huge community. Mostly all of them have a serious problem: if the server crashes, people can clone items. This is a dirty trick that can be executed because the state of a player is saved to the SQL database when the player logs out. This means the the database is not always in valid state. If 5 different players logged out with the same item, the item would be saved five times on the DB! So a crash would effectively clone the items. The OTServ core is several years old and the main branches still don't provide a solution. As online games, they consist of a world of dynamic data that changes at a very fast pace. There are thousands of online players and millions of registered players. The data is stored in MySQL. There are tables such as `players`, `player_items`, `player_skills`, `player_storage` and so on, some with millions of rows. I believe the problem could be that overhead brought by SQL makes it impossible to save all the data at the same pace it happens - hundreds of updates per player per second. Why OTServs have that problem, what's the impact of the use of SQL databases on the issue and how could it be solved?"}
{"_id": "210974", "title": "How to lock a script or web application to be used for the licenced user?", "text": "I built a web application using PHP. Now, I want to sell this web application online for customers but I want to guarantee that only one customer (only one website) use this. Is there a way to make the script under a license (which I provide)?"}
{"_id": "198036", "title": "Websocket protocol server development", "text": "I am interested in building a custom Websocket server for college project. I have a good familiarity about HTTP 1.1 and knows quite well of how it works. I am asking this question assuming that Websocket clients (browsers) have their protocol specification since Websocket clients connects to Websocket server through URL begins with ws://. In addition, can Websocket server implemented without single threaded and event based environment feature of language? Thank you."}
{"_id": "17700", "title": "Why do so few large websites run a Microsoft stack?", "text": "Off the top of my head, I can think of a handful of large sites which utilize the Microsoft stack   * Microsoft.com   * Dell   * MySpace   * PlentyOfFish   * StackOverflow    * Hotmail, Bing, WindowsLive However, based on observation, nearly all of the top 500 sites seem to be running other platforms.What are the main reasons there's so little market penetration?   * Cost?    * Technology Limitations?   * Does Microsoft cater to corporate / intranet environments more then public websites? I'm not looking for market share, but rather large scale adoption of the MS stack."}
{"_id": "62994", "title": "Differences between \"Java OOP\" and \"Pythonic OOP\"?", "text": "I started with ActionScript 2.0 and then went on with Java. I have learned, or at least used, a bunch of languages since then, including Python (probably my favorite). I'm afraid that my style of object oriented programming is very unpythonic though, and more like Java OOP with Python syntax. What makes Java like and Pythonic OOP differ from each other? What things do Java programmers often do \"unpythonically\" when writing object oriented code in Python?"}
{"_id": "68397", "title": "Is it practical to retroactively write specifications documenting a system via automated acceptance tests?", "text": "If a project was coded without much (or any) formal documentation and is without unit tests, does it make any sense to use tools like Fitnesse and SpecFlow to write automated acceptance tests as the documentation, the specs, for the code? To use unit tests as the means of being specs would come at too high a cost. I'm all for adding them as new functionality comes or bugs get fixed, but not for retroactively \"spec-ing\" and testing a system. Could such an approach with Fitnesse, SpecFlow, or other tools work with what amounts to the BDD approach in reverse? Or would it be a BAD idea (pun semi-seriously intended: **B** ehavior **A** fter **D** evelopment)"}
{"_id": "62999", "title": "What benefits should an intern look for aside from pay?", "text": "What things should an intern look for in an internship outside of the amount paid?"}
{"_id": "68394", "title": "How well defined should a software product be before starting to code?", "text": "I wanted to know how well people generally define a software product before actually beginning to code and how well it has worked for them? I am referring to defining use cases, analyzing risk, drawing class diagrams, etc. I know that it is a good idea to have a good enough idea of what the final product will be to be able to avoid risks in the future, but it is also important to not define a product so well that it is hard to adapt to change. Other more specific questions would probably be:   1. **What percentage of a project's time is normally spent in the planning stages before development?**   2. **Do you have certain measurable criteria you try to meet before starting to code or is more of a gut thing?**   3. **Do you diagram all classes before beginning to code, or is it mostly trying to create a dynamic design from the beginning expecting that things will change?** Any experience you are willing to share would be awesome!"}
{"_id": "113751", "title": "What task did Dijkstra give volunteers, which was mentioned in his paper \"The Humble Programmer\"?", "text": "In Dijkstra's paper \"Humble Programmer\", he mentions that he gave some volunteers a problem to solve: > \u201cI have run a little programming experiment with really experienced > volunteers, but something quite unintended and quite unexpected turned up. > None of my volunteers found the obvious and most elegant solution. Upon > closer analysis this turned out to have a common source: their notion of > repetition was so tightly connected to the idea of an associated controlled > variable to be stepped up, that they were mentally blocked from seeing the > obvious. Their solutions were less efficient, needlessly hard to understand, > and it took them a very long time to find them.\u201d What was the problem Dijkstra gave to the volunteers? What were the solutions?"}
{"_id": "254052", "title": "How to make the members of my Data Access Layer object aware of their siblings", "text": "My team currently has a project with a data access object composed like so:               public abstract class DataProvider      {          public CustomerRepository CustomerRepo { get; private set; }          public InvoiceRepository InvoiceRepo { get; private set; }          public InventoryRepository InventoryRepo { get; private set; }          // couple more like the above     }      We have non-abstract classes that inherit from DataProvider, and the type of \"CustomerRepo\" that gets instantiated is controlled by that child class.               public class FloridaDataProvider      {          public FloridaDataProvider()           {               CustomerRepo  = new FloridaCustomerRepo(); // derived from base CustomerRepository               InvoiceRepo = new InvoiceRespository();               InventoryRepo = new InventoryRepository();          }     }      Our problem is that some of the methods inside a given repo really would benefit from having access to the other repo's. Like, a method inside InventoryRepository needs to get to Customer data to do some determinations, so I need to pass in a reference to a CustomerRepository object. Whats the best way for these \"sibling\" repos to be aware of each other and have the ability to call each other's methods as-needed? Virtually all the other repos would benefit from having the CustomerRepo, for example, because it is where names/phones/etc are selected from, and these data elements need to be added to the various objects that are returned out of the other repos. I can't just new-up a plain \"CustomerRepository\" object inside a method within a different repo, because it might not be the base CustomerRepository that actually needs to run."}
{"_id": "148545", "title": "How to act when you get the last warning?", "text": "I'm a software developer, currently working on web development. We are a small company a team with 2 persons, a developer and a designer and we have no-one to test our applications. From the last week I was somehow rushed to finish a task within a project programmed by someone else and I released it with a bug which I did not see. Today I got the last warning and if there is a release with a bug I will be fired. So is this fair enough to get fired because releases with bugs without any testers around or should I really improve my skills on testing?"}
{"_id": "113757", "title": "Are version control systems a form of design pattern?", "text": "I'm having some trouble understanding what a design pattern is and isn't, particularly with respect to version control systems like CVS and Git. Is \"push, pop, stack\" a \"design pattern\"? If yes, is CVS the same design pattern? > ...clients connect to the server in order to \"check out\" a complete copy of > the project, work on this copy and then later \"check in\" their changes. If yes to both, then are DVCSes like Git a different pattern? Which one? If these aren't design patterns, why aren't they? What should they be called?"}
{"_id": "9788", "title": "How does language [X] handle indeterminate forms like 0^0?", "text": "As x goes to 0, the limits of x^0 and 0^x go to 1 and 0, respectively. Some say that the best value for 0^0 depends on context, others say that the value of 0^0 should be 1. I'm interested in knowing what your language implementers say. There doesn't seem to be a consensus. For example, in ActiveState Perl 5.12.0:               C:\\>perl -e \"print 0**0\"     1 While in Mathematica 6.0:               In[1]:= 0^0             During evaluation of In[1]:= Power::indet:             Indeterminate expression 0^0 encountered. >>     Out[1]= Indeterminate I'm also interested in knowing your opinion on the matter: What should 0^0 be? And also whether you have ever introduced a bug into a program you were writing (or had a hard time debugging a program) because of the way your language handles indeterminate forms?"}
{"_id": "246980", "title": "How do two applications communicate?", "text": "Say I had a PHP page with a calculator interface, but I want to transfer the sum to Windows Calculator.exe and then get a reply from the application back to my PHP page, how do you go about doing this? I understand that the sum could easily be done in PHP and it would be pointless using another application, but I just wondered how it would be done and will be helpful to know for my next project. I couldn't find any relevent exisiting questions but the search criteria for this isn't easy! Thanks"}
{"_id": "223999", "title": "How should one debug a PHP web application securely without exposing secrets to competitors?", "text": "Recently I made a program. I forget to delete 2 line of codes. That mistake cost me $800 per day every day. I was programming with PHP. If a visitor uses proxy it redirect somewhere else. Using debugger was impossible because some code contains ioncube. Because the program simply redirect somewhere else no matter what, it's hard to see which part of the code is executed. So I put a bunch debugging info everywhere. I thought I'll delete them latter anyway. The most natural way to debug is of course to put debugging info into a file. The problem is I often use proxy. So after I change the program, I often have to download the text file with filezilla. Often the text file does not show what I think it should show. Finally I decided to just display error on the web. I considered having debugging mode. However, I am afraid I will forget to delete debugging info. I considered having debugging mode if user do ?debuggingmode=1 for example. However, I was paranoid that somehow my competitor can guess the secret keyword. I deleted most debugging info. I forget to delete one and that one only show up if users use proxy from the right country. Turns out I do not have proxy from the right country and didn't realize that. After the program works for 24 hours, I uploaded that to my main domain. My competitor, using proxy, see the debugging code. He copy the idea and that's how I lost $800 per day. In retrospect, I really have a hard time seeing where I went wrong. I have been super careful. Yet it happened. How should one debug a PHP web application securely without exposing secrets to competitors?"}
{"_id": "54718", "title": "why there is no power operator in java / c ++?", "text": "While there is such operator - ** in Python , i was wondering why java and c++ havent got one too. It is easy to make one for classes you define in C++ with operator overloading ( and i believe such thing is possible also in java) , but when talking about primitive types such as int, double and so on , you'll have to use library function like Math.power (and usaully have to cast both to double). So - why not define such operator for primitive types ?"}
{"_id": "223991", "title": "Is it sufficient to use acceptance and integration tests instead of unit test?", "text": "Short introduction to this question. I have used now TDD and lately BDD for over one year now. I use techniques like mocking to make writing my tests more efficiently. Lately I have started a personal project to write a little money management program for myself. Since I had no legacy code it was the perfect project to start with TDD. Unfortunate I did not experience the joy of TDD so much. It even spoiled my fun so much that I have given up on the project. What was the problem? Well, I have used the TDD like approach to let the tests / requirements evolve the design of the program. The problem was that over one half of the development time as for writing / refactor tests. So in the end I did not want to implement any more features because I would need to refactor and write to many test. At work I have a lot of legacy code. Here I write more and more integration and acceptance tests and less unit tests. This does not seem to be a bad approach since bugs are mostly detected by the acceptance and integration tests. My idea was, that I could in the end write more integration and acceptance tests than unit tests. Like I said for detecting bugs the unit tests are not better than integration / acceptance tests. Unit test are also good for the design. Since I used to write a lot of them my classes are always designed to be good testable. Additionally, the approach to let the tests / requirements guide the design leads in most cases to a better design. The last advantage of unit tests is that they are faster. I have written enough integration tests to know, that they can be nearly as fast as the unit tests. After I was looking through the web I found out that there are very similar ideas to mine mentioned here and there. What do you think of this idea? **Edit** Responding to the questions one example where the design was good,but I needed a huge refactoring for the next requirement: At first there were some requirements to execute certain commands. I wrote an extendable command parser - which parsed commands from some kind of command prompt and called the correct one on the model. The result were represented in a view model class: ![First design](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nA1me.png) There was nothing wrong here. All classes were independent from each other and the I could easily add new commands, show new data. The next requirement was, that every command should have its own view representation - some kind of preview of the result of the command. I redesigned the program to achieve a better design for the new requirement: ![Second design](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Sdb58.png) This was also good because now every command has its own view model and therefore its own preview. The thing is, that the command parser was changed to use a token based parsing of the commands and was stripped from its ability to execute the commands. Every command got its own view model and the data view model only knows the current command view model which than knows the data which has to be shown. All I wanted to know at this point is, if the new design did not break any existing requirement. I did not have to change ANY of my acceptance test. I had to refactor or delete nearly EVERY unit tests, which was a huge pile of work. What I wanted to show here is a common situation which happened often during the development. There were no problem with the old or the new designs, they just changed naturally with the requirements - how I understood it, this is one advantage of TDD, that the design evolves. **Conclusion** Thanks for all the answers and discussions. In summary of this discussion I have thought of an approach which I will test with my next project.   * First of all I write all tests before implementing anything like I always did.   * For requirements I write at first some acceptance tests which tests the whole program. Then I write some integration tests for the components where I need to implement the requirement. If there is a component which work closely together with another component to implement this requirement I would also write some integration tests where both components are tested together. Last but not least if I have to write an algorithm or any other class with a high permutation - e.g. a serializer - I would write unit tests for this particular classes. All other classes are not tested but any unit tests.   * For bugs the process can be simplified. Normally a bug is caused by one or two components. In this case I would write one integration test for the components which tests the bug. If it related to a algorithm I would only write a unit test. If it is not easy to detect the component where the bug occurs I would write an acceptance test to locate the bug - this should be an exception."}
{"_id": "147254", "title": "Security Concerns with password storage in Scripting Languages (VBA)", "text": "The team I work with handles large amounts of consumer survey, and internal company metric data. Primarily the data is stored in a database, and we utilize various platforms and to work with that data, including MS Excel. My peer has developed a suite of Excel/VBA files to take the raw data we get and upload it into a database. Unfortunately, after a code review we identified that the database password was displayed in the VBA code, in plain text, in several places per file. Being in a large enterprise organization we had a number of concerns about those files being available to more than just our team, and the database password being compromised. * * * The problem is, I feel the _solution_ is just as bad, if not worse than the original problem. The plaintext passwords have been removed in the code of all of the VBA files, and an ancillary, helper file was created that requires the user to authenticate through our organizations LDAP system before gaining access to the database password. Being a scripting language (and being Excel), I feel there really aren't adequate precautions in place to secure the users password in the helper file. I feel that now instead of compromising access to a single database, we are potentially compromising access to the logins of anyone who uses these files. To be fair, my peer has implemented a number of security minded techniques for securing the data in helper file. I just feel each one can easily be circumvented:   * locking the VBA code _[google search for vba password recovery]_   * using a custom \"masked\" password entry box _[the password box may be masked, but it is still passed out of the box as plaintext]_   * not actually storing the user password in the file itself (he passes it on directly to the LDAP call) _[a break point or`stop` statement can easily reveal the contents of what was passed]_   * setting the sheets to `VeryHidden` to prevent direct access _[append`.zip` to filename, and ALL data in ALL worksheets is accessible]_ * * * As I'm not one to complain without a solution in mind, our organization already employs Active Directory/LDAP for authentication into our individual machines. My thought is that checking the logged in user (not a full user/password, just the user) against a white list of users on the database should be a sufficient alternative for authentication. **So My Question...**   Am I being too paranoid about this? Is there another, more appropriate solution? I am pushing back fairly hard on this _fix_ and I just wanted a sanity check before I start to involve others in yet another solution."}
{"_id": "112404", "title": "If multitenancy is a priority, should I store site content in the database?", "text": "I have a multi tenant ASP.NET MVC website and all client specific text is stored in resource files. Every time someone wants to change text I have to jump through hoops and fill out forms and let someone else put it in production. This was fine with 2 clients, but now we have 6 and are looking to roll out to 40+. **I can't spend all day making text changes!** Does anyone have any advice on how to make life eaiser? I was thinking a CMS may not work because as far as i know most CMS's idea of multitenancy is to add an additional independent site. We frequently roll out new features and I fear I'll be in the same boat adding modules and updating 40+ sites. I prefer one site with different text if I can. Any help is most appreciated!"}
{"_id": "54717", "title": "Are there reasons other than budget for hiring \"entry-level\" programmers?", "text": "Are there reasons other than budget for hiring \"entry-level\" programmers?"}
{"_id": "147251", "title": "Corporate Framework: good or bad?", "text": "For a company that makes the same type of software over and over again, a custom MVP/MVC-like framework has been built. The obvious advantage is that it enables them to create their software faster, easier and cheaper. However, what worries me is that such framework ( and this in particular ) hides a lot for the developers who use this framework but not actively develop it. Those developers:   1. do not learn the itty gritties of the framework behind it ( ASP.NET MVC/WPF/Silverlight/... )    2. cannot transfer this knowledge to other companies, which might cause devs who have become less motivated to stay anyway So, my question: do the benefits of a corporate framework outweigh the disadvantages for your developers in the long run? Are there yet other things that must be considered? **EDIT (for clarity)** The key difference here is   * frameworks that are industry standards, if only a little bit (.NET, Ruby, assembler, C#, ...)   * frameworks that are not, **ie** : limited to a single corporation, proprietary, non-OSS, ... I'm talking specifically about the latter."}
{"_id": "112403", "title": "Tips/advice on how to reduce the use of \"manager\" classes?", "text": "I sometimes hear that having too many \"manager\" classes in your program's design is code smell and add an unnecessary layer of complexity. To me it makes sense that people want to use manager classes for manipulating and controlling objects from a context that makes sense to them, but figuring out how to make a solution work without them can be confusing. Should one really avoid manager classes as much as possible? Also, what articles/papers should I read on how to implement an alternative work around for general/common cases where these managers can be removed?"}
{"_id": "223997", "title": "Weight-maximizing (weighted vertices) path algorithm", "text": "I am looking for description (name of algorithm, code, pseudocode, etc.) that can help me frame this problem and find the appropriate recursion and the most efficient solution. **Problem** :   Given a graph with weighted nodes and a starting node, I want to generate a weight-ordered list of nodes that are lying on a path that starts at the starting node and then proceeds by jumping to the next adjacent unvisited highest-value node, then to the next etc. until it can no longer continue (e.g. no adjacent nodes, no unvisited adjacent nodes, or all nodes were visited already once). Am I correctly assuming that this is a variation on the traveling salesman problem? Any suggestions or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Algorithms just aren't my area of expertise... * * * _Update from comments_ : This is not a homework question. ... There's actually years of empirical research behind simply being able to frame seemingly random mammalian behavior as an algorithmic problem. ... Without tackling these group dynamics algorithmically I will not be able to expand testing beyond my initial sample and unfortunately, regression analysis just won't do the trick."}
{"_id": "147252", "title": "Is it bad practice to name an unused variable with a single underscore?", "text": "Often when the syntax of the language requires me to name a variable that is never used, I'll name it `_`. In my mind, this reduces clutter and lets me focus on the meaningful variables in the code. I find it to be unobtrusive so that it produces an \"out of sight, out of mind\" effect. A common example of where I do this is naming subqueries in SQL.               SELECT *     FROM     (         SELECT *         FROM TableA         JOIN TableB             ON TableA.ColumnB = TableB.ColumnB         WHERE [ColumnA] > 10     ) _ --This name is required, but never used here     ORDER BY ColumnC      Another example is a loop variable that isn't used.               array = [[] for _ in range(n)] # Defines a list of n empty lists in Python      I use this technique very sparingly, only when I feel that a descriptive name adds nothing to the code, and in some sense takes away from it by adding more names to remember. In some ways I view it as similar to the `var` keyword in C#, which I also use sparingly. My coworkers disagree. They say that even having a single (alphabetic) character name is better than `_`. Am I wrong? Is it bad practice to do this?"}
{"_id": "27422", "title": "Confused about ASP.NET Ajax, jQuery and JavaScript", "text": "Yesterday, I read couple of chapters on ASP.NET Ajax and jQuery from my ASP.NET 4 book and I found those frameworks pretty interesting and decide to learn more about them. Today, I borrowed some books from library on Ajax and JavaScript. It seems ASP.NET Ajax is different from Ajax and jQuery seems like the \"new\" JavaScript. Does it mean that I can skip JavaScript and learn jQuery directly? On the other hand, the non-ASP.NET Ajax book I borrowed seems to apply to the client side web programming only and looks quite different from what I learned from ASP.NET Ajax. If I'm an ASP.NET developer, I guess I should stick with ASP.NET Ajax instead of client side Ajax right? What about PHP? Is there a \"PHP Ajax\" similar to ASP.NET Ajax? It's not that I'm lazy to learn other tools, but I just want to focus on the right ones."}
{"_id": "186183", "title": "What is a good algorithm for priority allocation of work duties?", "text": "I am currently doing a project (in PHP) that has the following requirements:   1. There is a list of people, sorted in a certain priority. Work should be allocated to them by this priority. e.g. If the list is T1, T2, T3, T1 should be allocated work, before T2. And T2 is allocated work before T3. In the event that are only 2 pieces of work, only T1 and T2 are allocated.   2. Each piece of work has certain time requirements. So even if it is T1's turn to be allocated work, if none of the work is suitable for T1, T1 will be skipped and no work will be assigned to T1.   3. Some work is more suitable for some people. E.g. There are two work, W1 and W2. If T1 is more suitable for W2, W2 will be assigned to T1. My current idea is to allocate work based on the people list, and use a A* Search to identify what is the best way to allocate the work to each person. But I thought that my reqt 1 and reqt 3 seems to have some conflicts. Is this a sensible algorithm or are there problems with it that I don't see at this point?"}
{"_id": "62662", "title": "Does anyone work in / know much about programming jobs for scientific / medical research?", "text": "Sometimes I get a bit disillusioned with the types of projects that I work on as they are just basically business apps that aren't exactly groundbreaking and are usually redundant as far as other applications already existing that do similar things. I have thought that it would be nice to possibly eventually get into working as a programmer for a company that is doing medical research or some other type of scientific research to where I would feel I am working towards something that I feel is potentially beneficial to a wide number of people, this relates to some recent life experiences but I won't get into that here. Also, I'm not really interested much in doing computer science research, more research for other fields that make use of programming. I currently work as a Java web application programmer and I don't know much about jobs of the type that I would be looking for in this field. I would be interested to hear from anyone with experience in this who could possibly point me towards resources or tell me a bit about what working in this field would be like, I assume it would be quite different than working for the types of businesses I have worked for so far. Thanks for any info"}
{"_id": "91132", "title": "3rd party hosted solution for project management & source control?", "text": "I am looking for a SAAS solution that offers project management, time tracking, invoicing and file sharing (to share with clients) as well as source control, work item management and team management for a programming team. In other words, a complete solution for a consulting programmer/programming team.   I am looking at aceproject.com, zoho, basecamp, etc, but they all miss one of more of these features. Do you know any solution to recommend?"}
{"_id": "48168", "title": "How do you deal with translating theory into practice?", "text": "Being a computer scientist in a research field I am often tasked with working alongside professionals outside of the software domain (think math people, electrical engineer etc), and then translating their theories and ideas into real-world implementations. I often find it difficult when they present a theoretical problem which appears to be somewhat disconnected from reality. I am not saying that the theory is bogus, only that it is difficult to translate into real-world situations. For example, recently I have been working with software defined radios. We are exploring many different areas, but often the math specialists in my group would present a problem which is heavily grounded in theory (signal processing, physics, whatever). I often struggle at times where it is hard to draw direct parallels between the theory and the real-world implementation that I need to develop. Say we are working on an energy detector, the theory person in my group would say \"you need to measure the noise variance with no signal present.\" This leads me to think \"how the hell do I isolate noise from a signal in reality?\" There are many examples, but I hope you see where I am going. So, my question is how does one deal with implementation of theoretical concepts when the theory seems detached from reality? Or at least when the connections are not so clear. Or perhaps, the person with the 'theory' may be ignorant of real restrictions? Note: I found this to be a hard question to ask - hopefully you are following me. If you have suggestions on how I could improve it, by all means let me know! Thanks for looking! EDIT: To be a bit more clear, I understand in situations like this that I must learn that specific domain myself to an extent (i.e. signal processing), but I am more concerned with when those theoretical concepts do not appear to be as grounded in practice as one would like."}
{"_id": "91130", "title": "Chatbot Conversation Objects, your approach?", "text": "I'm a nub programmer, using python, and my current project is a chatbot for an irc channel I reside in. I wish to make it capable of keeping conversations organized, primarily between its self and one other person. Right now, I'm creating a conversation object when the bot is initially addressed. The object has the attributed of _peer_ (the other conversation member), _topic_ (the basic topic of the conversation), _log_ (a log of past messages to and from the peer), _lastsent_ (super-simplified forms of the most recent 10 messages sent to the channel by the bot), and _lastrecv_ (the last 10 messages received sent to the channel by the peer, also super-simplified). As messages are received, the bot checks the topic and runs through a list of expected replies. If one is matched, the bot chooses a response and send it to the channel. It then updates the topic if needed and the bot's conversation dictionary. The bot has a conversation dictionary list, the key is the user's nickname, and the definition is the conversation object. I feel this is unnecessarily excessive. I was wondering what some other approaches to keeping track of conversations were. Are there any simpler, easier approaches?"}
{"_id": "186169", "title": "Programming principles with regard to software (computational) efficiency and the use of variables", "text": "I'm classically trained psychologist, not a programmer, so sometimes the more advanced aspects of programming escape me, in particular regarding program efficiency and/or certain best practices, in this case with regard to the use of variables. Here is some pseudo-code:               var a;     var b;     var c;     function GetSomeInformation() {         returns \"XYZ\";     }          a = GetSomeInformation();     b = GetSomeInformation();     c = GetSomeInformation();      So my question is:   **Is it more or less efficient (or the same) to store data into a variable once and reference that as opposed to repeated calls to the same function?** I.E., is this code more efficient?               var results = GetSomeInformation();     a = results;     b = results;     c = results;      If so, is this gain or loss in efficiency generally the same across languages, or does it vary by language? Are there **thresholds** where it becomes better to name a variable as opposed to using a repeated function call or vice versa? What aspects might change its efficiency (e.g., is there a difference whether it's a member function of a class vs. a regular function in the global scope)? etc. If possible, I'd like to know specifically how such a notion applies to C++/MFC dialogs, as it arose when I was writing some code in that framework.               // define pointers to the items in my form     CListBox *pLISTBOX = (CListBox*) GetDlgItem(LISTBOX);     CStatic *pSTATIC_A = (CStatic*) GetDlgItem(STATIC_A);     CStatic *pSTATIC_B = (CStatic*) GetDlgItem(STATIC_B);     CEdit *pEDIT_BOX_A = (CEdit*) GetDlgItem(EDIT_BOX_A);     CEdit *pEDIT_BOX_B = (CEdit*) GetDlgItem(EDIT_BOX_B);     int SelectedIndex = pLISTBOX->GetCurSel();     pSTATIC_A->SetWindowText(pLISTBOX->GetItemData(SelectedIndex));     pSTATIC_B->SetWindowText(pLISTBOX->GetItemData(SelectedIndex));     pEDIT_BOX_A->SetWindowText(pLISTBOX->GetItemData(SelectedIndex));     pEDIT_BOX_B->SetWindowText(pLISTBOX->GetItemData(SelectedIndex));"}
{"_id": "146351", "title": "How much important understanding how a web framework works under the hood?", "text": "I'm using Symfony2 PHP framework to build a product. I got most of the features working and a satisfied client. Now I have to maintain this project. So I was wondering, is understanding how the framework works under the hood and how it handles requests really important to not run in troubles in the future? Also, which parts of the framework, that I should wrap into my head?"}
{"_id": "186160", "title": "Deliverables in a software development project", "text": "Following a standard framework of project management, for a software development project we will provide deliverables (documents and software) at the end of each month : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Bf945.png) My question is:   * From May to June, while software is in development, what would be the deliverable for each month?   * Each document starts as version 1.0. Is it possible to deliver same document one or two months later as version 2.0? Because it could happen changes on the way.  Users and clients ask me they want to see something as deliverable for each month, so they won't feel that the project is going without direction."}
{"_id": "102907", "title": "Is score from Oracle MySQL 5 Certified Associate Exam given on the certificate?", "text": "I will be passing Oracle MySQL 5 Certified Associate Exam and I want to know, if my percentage score will be given on the certificate? And will it be given to me at all? Or I will just know if I passed? On Zend exams for example score is not known to the taker."}
{"_id": "216683", "title": "Compatibility of Enum Vs. string constants", "text": "I was recently told that using `Enum`:               public enum TaskEndState { Error, Completed, Running }      may have compatibility/serialization issues, and thus sometimes it's better to use const string:               public const string TASK_END_STATE = \"END_STATE\";     public const string TASK_END_STATE_ERROR = \"TASK_END_STATE_ERROR\";     public const string TASK_END_STATE_COMPLETE = \"TASK_END_STATE_COMPLETE\";     public const string TASK_END_STATE_RUNNING = \"TASK_END_STATE_RUNNING\";      Can you find practical use case where it may happen, is there any guidelines where `Enum`'s should be avoided? **Edit:** My production environment has multiple WFC services (different versions of the same product). A later version may/or may not include some new properties as **Task end state** (this is just an example). If we try to deserialize a new `Enum` value in an older version of a specific service, it may not work."}
{"_id": "216682", "title": "How can I tell if I am overusing multi-threading?", "text": "I currently feel like I am over-using multi-threading. I have 3 types of data, A, B and C. Each `A` can be converted to multiple `B`s and each `B` can be converted to multiple `C`s. I am only interested in treating `C`s. I could write this fairly easily with a couple of conversion functions. But I caught myself implementing it with threads, three queues (`queue_a`, `queue_b` and `queue_c`). There are two threads doing the different conversions, and one worker:   * `ConverterA` reads from `queue_a` and writes to `queue_b`   * `ConverterB` reads from `queue_b` and writes to `queue_c`   * `Worker` handles each element from `queue_c` The conversions are fairly mundane, and I don't know if this model is too convoluted. But it seems extremely robust to me. Each \"converter\" can start working even before data has arrived on the queues, and at any time in the code I can just \"submit\" new `A`s or `B`s and it will trigger the conversion pipeline which in turn will trigger a job by the worker thread. Even the resulting code looks simpler. But I still am unsure if I am abusing threads for something simple."}
{"_id": "137137", "title": "Generating code documentation", "text": "I want to generate code documentation in a simple format. The key items are Method Signature, members, constructors, methods. I am taking various applications in .NET and creating documentation for them. I will be adding notes to each item. The end result should look similar to MSDN or Java API documentation. So, I want to take my source code and have some kind of template generated that I can append notes to. I want to pick and choose certain classes and not others across various applications. I'm not talking about intellisense documentation. This documentation will be used for reference outside of visual studio. AFAIK, that's all the XML comments are good for in .NET. I'm documenting various interfaces and entry points for writing extensions for a 3rd party application. We do not own their code, so I can't just go in and append XML comments to their interfaces, classes etc. Instead, I need to implement the interface and comment it up. Then document it on the web. Documentating each implementation just to explain their architecture is redundant. They do not document their stuff...that's the core issue here. Is there any tool that can assist with this process? What do you suggest?"}
{"_id": "216686", "title": "Why \"OOP\" and not simply \"Object Programming\"?", "text": "Why do we say \"Object-oriented programming\" and not simply \"Object programming\"? Why do we speak of orientation in just this case, and not \"Functionally-oriented programming\" and so?"}
{"_id": "157870", "title": "Documentation degrading - how to deal with it?", "text": "**Important** : we have **no issues** whatsoever with _source code documentation_. This belongs to regular code audit and is kept up to date. Our problem is with developers documentation (or, \"external\" if you like), little blog-like tips from programmers to programmers which tend to be once written, often left behind. * * * We use wiki-like system to produce _programmers documentation_ \\- articles wrote **by programmers for programmers** describing in a bit more details how particular piece of code works. Those wiki-pages usually include:   * motivations behind design decisions for parts of API (for example; we did this _ugly thing_ because this particular 3rd party library wants stuff to be done this way, because this other library ..., because ...)   * explanation of how we deal with particular common tasks (for example; displaying trivial popup, which needs to reference appropriate application styles, register itself in registry component, and implement some interface in order to be automatically \"scanned\" by other component)   * good practices (subjective as it is, we do actually write this stuff down)   * environment configuration, required tools and its setup In general, primarily stuff related to writing code that doesn't fit regular code-documentation due to its size and blog post/article-like nature. ### The Problem As far as introducing this system seemed like a good idea few months ago, nowadays I feel like it's causing more problems than it solves. For example:   * people **do** write articles... but once code changed, wiki update rarely follows   * lot of _scratch_ articles, wrote by somebody in hurry and left like that   * even though article-request usually comes from project lead, it's hardly ever verified for correctness/composition - which sometimes results in poor quality The usual degradation. Code changed, wiki stays the same. Next time somebody looks for information, what he usually finds is bunch of outdated, low quality stuff - and is wondering what's going on, whether stuff that he found is accurate or (even worse) which parts of it are. And what was supposed to help, ends up doing the opposite. At the moment it seems people are aware of the problem, project lead included, but apparently nobody seems to be bothered to do anything with it (or has more interesting stuff to do). My initial thought was to throw it all into the oblivion (after I got bitten by outdated \"tips\" few times in a row), but I suppose that might be too extreme. Some information is worth noting and good read sometimes, but the problem is still the same: **how you deal with its _\"up-to-dateness\"_?** Have it linked to source code _somehow_ (so when updated version of file is checked into, author of article gets notified that he might need to revise code/article)? Have designated person \"watching over\" it on daily basics? Do regular cleanups?"}
{"_id": "136669", "title": "Syntax for goto labels", "text": "In C, C++ and some dialects of BASIC, goto labels are declared with the syntax `label:`. I'm working on a language that uses `name: type` as the syntax for variable declarations, so I'd prefer if possible to use something a bit more distinctive for labels. I am or at some point was passingly familiar with many languages that use that syntax for variable declarations, but off the top of my head I can't recall a single one of them that doesn't ban goto (not looking to argue about whether that's a good or bad design decision, just noting it did take place in those cases), so I'm trying to figure out where to look for precedent on labels. What other forms of syntax has been used for goto labels? Are there any criteria I might be overlooking in choosing one over another? (I just remembered Ada is an exception. But it uses `<<label>>`, which doesn't mix well with the use of those symbols as C-style shift operators.)"}
{"_id": "237773", "title": "How to not let anyone inspect elements of a webpage?", "text": "I was thinking to make some jQuery functions that will use ajax to control mysql. The whole idea is to make separate files of PHP (e.g query.php, addRow.php, update.php and delete.php) provide data to them via the `GET` variables like `query.php?sql=SELECT * FROM table` and then control them with jQuery AJAX functions that I'll make later. Expected code:               $(element).click(function (e) {         mysql.query(\"DELETE row FROM table WHERE name = 'John Doe'\");     });      And then it'll send query through AJAX and the query will be performed.   So the problem is **SECURITY** . I mean anyone can just change javascript from browser's inspector or use console to control my databases. What can be done for this problem. Is there anyway to not let anyone change elements in the browser console. If not is there **ANYWAY** to overcome this security problem?"}
{"_id": "157875", "title": "Hardware programming for kids. What is the good way to start?", "text": "I am thinking about introducing my 12 year old son to hardware programming. I built a robot with the .NET Micro Framework and while he was fascinated with controlling the robot, his eyes glazed over when I attempted to explain how the code worked. And to be fair, it's quite complex for a beginner, requiring knowledge of OOP, interrupts, etc... So I was thinking what is the best way for a kid to get into hardware programming? I've heard of Basic Stamp, Arduino and Lego Mindstorms. It seems like Arduino can do pretty much everything, but it's C and it sounds like the learning curve is really high. Basic Stamp seems interesting and it is using BASIC from what I can see, but I can't tell whether it can do anything more complex than messing with the breadboard. For instance, could I build a web server on it? And finally, Lego Mindstorms looks impressive, but I don't understand how it's programmed, if you want to do anything out of the box. Ideas?"}
{"_id": "68974", "title": "Static classes and/or singletons -- How many does it take to become a code smell?", "text": "In my projects I use quite a lot of static classes. These are usually classes that naturally seem to fit into a single-instance type of thing. Many times I use static classes and recently I've started using some singletons. How many of these does it take to become a code smell? For instance, in my recent project which has a lot of static classes is an Authentication library for ASP.Net. I use a static class for a helper class that fixes ASP.Net error codes so it can be used like               CustomErrorsFixer.Fix(Context);      Or my authentication class itself is a static class               //in global.asax's begin_application     Authentication.SomeState=\"blah\";     Authentication.SomeOption=true;     //etc          //in global.asax's begin_request     Authentication.Authenticate();      When are static or singleton classes bad to use? Am I doing it wrong, or am I just in a project that by definition has very little per-instance state associated with it? The only per-instance state I have is stored in `HttpContext.Current.Items` like so:                   /// <summary>         /// The current user logged in for the HTTP request. If there is not a user logged in, this will be null.         /// </summary>         public static UserData CurrentUser{             get{                 return HttpContext.Current.Items[\"fscauth_currentuser\"] as UserData; //use HttpContext.Current as a little place to persist static data for this request             }             private set{                 HttpContext.Current.Items[\"fscauth_currentuser\"]=value;             }         }"}
{"_id": "132563", "title": "Problem with understanding \"seam\" word", "text": "I'm reading \"Dependency Injection in .NET\" of Mark Seemann (it's fantastic, and must have) and author often uses word \"SEAM\", but I can't understand what does it means? Here is an example of using this word:               Chapter 7 explains how to compose objects in various concrete frameworks     such as ASP.NET MVC, WPF, WCF, and so on. Not all frameworks support DI     equally well, and even among those that do, the ways they do it differ a lot. For     each framework, it can be difficult to identify the SEAM that enables DI in that     framework. However, once that SEAM is found, you have a solution for all applica-     tions that use this particular framework. In chapter 7, I have done this work     for the most common .NET application frameworks. Think of it as a catalog of     framework SEAMS.      I would be gratefull for helping me with understanding this word."}
{"_id": "136667", "title": "Maintaining Organization When Designing Software", "text": "I've been trying for years to come up with a good way to organize the massive amounts of notes and material I generate when designing, coding, and testing software. My desk is usually overflowing with tons of sheets of paper with notes scrawled all over them. I've usually got at least the following items spread out all over these sheets of paper:   1. To-Do lists   2. Required features   3. Bug Descriptions   4. Program flowcharts   5. All sorts of design documents and diagrams, ranging from function design to overall program architecture   6. Use cases   7. List of test cases to design   8. Design questions that need to be answered in certain parts of the program I'm pretty good at coding, but haven't learned how to manage my projects yet, since I'm still a student in school. I want to learn these skills, however, because I know I'll need them in future jobs that require greater organization skills. What techniques, programs, methodologies, etc. can I use to become better organized when designing software? If you suggest any programs, I would prefer free software, since I'm a poor college student. :) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "196502", "title": "How did they debug segmentation faults before protected memory?", "text": "Now, when I make a programming mistake with pointers in C, I get a nice segmentation fault, my program crashes and the debugger can even tell me where it went wrong. How did they do that in the time when memory protection wasn't available? I can see a DOS programmer fiddling away and crashing the entire OS when he made a mistake. Virtualization wasn't available, so all he could do was restart and retry. Did it really go like that?"}
{"_id": "145173", "title": "Where should you put constants and why?", "text": "In our mostly large applications, we usually have a only few locations for constants:   * One class for GUI and internal contstants (Tab Page titles, Group Box titles, calculation factors, enumerations)   * One class for database tables and columns (this part is generated code) plus readable names for them (manually assigned)   * One class for application messages (logging, message boxes etc) The constants are usually separated into different structs in those classes. In our C++ applications, the constants are only defined in the .h file and the values are assigned in the .cpp file. One of the advantages is that all strings etc are in one central place and everybody knows where to find them when something must be changed. This is especially something project managers seem to like as people come and go and this way everybody can change such trivial things without having to dig into the application's structure. Also, you can easily change the title of similar Group Boxes / Tab Pages etc at once. Another aspect is that you can just print that class and give it to a non-programmer who can check if the captions are intuitive, and if messages to the user are too detailed or too confusing etc. However, I see certain disadvantages:   * Every single class is tightly coupled to the constants classes   * Adding/Removing/Renaming/Moving a constant requires recompilation of at least 90% of the application (Note: Changing the value doesn't, at least for C++). In one of our C++ projects with 1500 classes, this means around 7 minutes of compilation time (using precompiled headers; without them it's around 50 minutes) plus around 10 minutes of linking against certain static libraries.   * Building a speed optimized release through the Visual Studio Compiler takes up to 3 hours. I don't know if the huge amount of class relations is the source but it might as well be.   * You get driven into temporarily hard-coding strings straight into code because you want to test something very quickly and don't want to wait 15 minutes just for that test (and probably every subsequent one). Everybody knows what happens to the \"I will fix that later\"-thoughts.   * Reusing a class in another project isn't always that easy (mainly due to other tight couplings, but the constants handling doesn't make it easier.) Where would you store constants like that? Also what arguments would you bring in order to convince your project manager that there are better concepts which also comply with the advantages listed above? Feel free to give a C++-specific or independent answer. PS: I know this question is kind of subjective but I honestly don't know of any better place than this site for this kind of question. ### Update on this project I have news on the compile time thing:   Following Caleb's and gbjbaanb's posts, I split my constants file into several other files when I had time. I also eventually split my project into several libraries which was now possible much easier. Compiling this in release mode showed that the auto-generated file which contains the database definitions (table, column names and more - more than 8000 symbols) and builds up certain hashes caused the huge compile times in release mode. Deactivating MSVC's optimizer for the library which contains the DB constants now allowed us to reduce the total compile time of your Project (several applications) _in release mode_ from up to 8 hours to less than one hour! We have yet to find out why MSVC has such a hard time optimizing these files, but for now this change relieves a lot of pressure as we no longer have to rely on nightly builds only. That fact - and other benefits, such as less tight coupling, better reuseability etc - also showed that spending time splitting up the \"constants\" wasn't such a bad idea after all ;-)"}
{"_id": "111988", "title": "How would a non-game-related employer see someone who makes games?", "text": "Like I plan to build up my portfolio with games. If I don't get a job in gaming or if frankly I don't want to, how would an employer who wants nothing to do with games see me as a potential future employee? Would he see it as impressive and consider me? Or would he think it's nice but irrelevant and thus be somewhat detrimental?"}
{"_id": "216531", "title": "Improving the performance of a db import process", "text": "I have a program in Microsoft Access that processes text and also inserts data in MySQL database. This operation takes 30 mins or less to finished. I translated it into VB.NET and it takes 2 hours to finish. The program goes like this:   1. A text file contains individual swipe from a corresponding person, it contains their id, time and date of swipe in the machine, and an indicator if it is a time-in or a time-out.    2. I process this text, segregate the information and insert the time-in and time-out per row.    3. I also check if there are double occurrences in the database.   4. After checking, I simply merge the time-in and time-out of the corresponding person into one row only. This process takes 2 hours to finished in VB.NET considering I have a table to compare which contains 600,000+ rows. ~~Now, I read in the internet that python is best in text processing, i already have a test but i doubt in database operation. What do you think is the best programming language for this kind of problem?~~ How can I speed up the process? My first idea was using python instead of VB.NET, but since people here telling me here on PSE that this most probably won't help I am searching for different solutions. Here is a link to the test i've done."}
{"_id": "216536", "title": "Is spreading code with refactoring comments a good idea?", "text": "I am working on a \"spaghetti-code\" project, and while I am fixing bugs and implementing new features, I also do some refactoring in order to make the code unit-testable. The code is often so tightly coupled or complicated that fixing a small bug would result in a lot of classes being rewritten. So I decided to draw a line somewhere in the code where I stop refactoring. To make this clear, I drop some comments in the code explaining the situation, like:               class RefactoredClass {         private SingletonClass xyz;              // I know SingletonClass is a Singleton, so I would not need to pass it here.         // However, I would like to get rid of it in the future, so it is passed as a         // parameter here to make this change easier later.         public RefactoredClass(SingletonClass xyz) {             this.xyz = xyz;         }     }      Or, another piece of cake:               // This might be a good candidate to be refactored. The structure is like:     // Version String     //    |     //    +--> ...     //    |     //    +--> ...     //          |     //    ... and so on ...         //     Map map = new HashMap<String, Map<String, Map<String, List<String>>>>();      Is this a good idea? What should I keep in mind when doing so?"}
{"_id": "66925", "title": "general question regarding ecommerce development", "text": "I hope it is appropriate to ask this question here. I was going to ask at stackflow. A very general question. There are loads of ecommerce web based applications about, such as prostores, eshop, exactabacus.com etc. It appears a lot of them already have atemplate ready (with few options). I am just wondering if there are developers out there that offer custom built ecommerce applications,for both b2c and b2b? Thanks"}
{"_id": "78511", "title": "Re-skilling to java help needed", "text": "Mid-level PHP programmer here. I plan on teaching myself Java. I'm already familiar with the basic concepts like MVC, ORM's etc.. so I'm not a beginner programmer. As such, I'm looking for the best way to begin familarising myself with the nuances of a languange I am inexperienced with. For starters, I have begun coding up a simple login/logout mechanism using JSP and have enjoyed making some decent progress. So, my question to any and all Java gurus: What aspects of Java should I delve into first? My plan is currently to continue with a simple app in JSP, then introduce Spring and Hibernate before moving onto concurrency and Swing. If you had to re-learn java from scratch, what path through the different technologies and concepts is the best to take?"}
{"_id": "91792", "title": "Should public code libraries I have written stay free and open after using them in a contract / commercial product?", "text": "I have written a small library of classes in my preferred language (PHP, but it doesn't really matter), and typically use them in most of my projects. Until now, the projects have been personal, or small stuff at my part time job that isn't really a commercial product. Neither of these things worry me as far as the freedom I have to reuse those same libraries later. [On that note, should I be worried about the part time job uses? Could those cause issues with my libraries later?] Soon, however, I expect to enter into more serious free-lance/contract work that I have no doubt will use the libraries I've written. Do I need to make sure the contract or work terms explicitly allows me to use my previous code in the project and - more importantly - **after** the project, or is a Github history showing that it was clearly developed long before any contract enough? What are the legal troubles with code like this (libraries, code reuse, open- source, etc.)?"}
{"_id": "91797", "title": "A Question about using different data access layers for different database providers", "text": "I have a question about whether we should use different Data access layers for different database providers like SQL Server, MySQL Server, Oracle etc.. Is it not better to use a single data access layer with the ORM or like mappings so that the database specific activities are taken care of with less coding than complete duplication of code across different data access layers. Give me your suggestions along with references to use in case of C# programming language in .NET platform."}
{"_id": "91799", "title": "Why aren't there explicit access modifiers in Python:", "text": "If 'explicit is better than implicit', why aren't there explicit access modifiers in Python: Public, Protected, Private, etc.? I know that the idea is that the programmer should know what to do through a hint - no need to use 'brute force'. But IMO 'Encapsulation' or 'information hiding' isn't just to keep people out, it's a question of organization and structure: your development layers should have self-defining, clearly delimited scopes and borders, just like physical systems do. Can someone please help me out here with a solid explanation as to why access restrictions are implied rather than explicit in Python, a language that otherwise seems close to perfect? **Edit: So far I have seen 3 proposed answers, and I realized that there are 2 parts to my question:**   1. Why aren't there key words, for example               private def myFunc():          dostuff....      instead of IMO the ugly and hard to type underscores. But that's not the important point.   2. More importantly:  Why are these access modifiers only 'recommendations' or hints and not enforced. It will be hard to change later? It's very simple to change 'protected' to 'public' - and if you have a convoluted inheritance chain that makes it difficult, you have a poor design - your design should be refined rather than relying on a language feature that makes it easy to write poorly structured code. When access modifiers are enforced, your code is automatically compartmentalized - you KNOW that certain segments are out of scope so you don't have to deal with them except if and when it's necessary. And, if your design is no good and you find yourself constantly moving things into and out of different scopes, the language can help you to clean up your act. As much as I love Python, I'm finding this 2nd point to be a serious deficiency. And I have yet to see a good answer for this."}
{"_id": "79648", "title": "Code reuse: Reusing complex method vs. cherry-picking parts", "text": "I am currently facing a situation where I am not quite sure how to best proceed. **Background** I am planning a new data import process, which will import personnel and salary information from a text file produced by a different system. We already have an import process for the data in question, but the format of the import file will change completely. Thus, while the data that is read will remain the same (employee names, pay grades, past salary payments...), it is expressed very differently in the new file format (different format, different fields, different coding of data, different representation of special cases such as unpaid leave or retroactive changes of salary). **How to reuse?** Now I would like to re-use as much of the existing import code as possible. The problem is that most of the existing classes and methods have parts that could be reused (mostly the parts that deal with writing the data into our own database, which has not changed), but also have many details of the old import format hardcoded, so direct reuse is impossible. I now see two alternatives:   1. try to refactor and rework the existing code to be more independent of the particular import format, so it can handle both old and new format   2. cherry-pick the parts of the old code that still apply (extract them to separate methods or similar) and reuse that **My problem** I'm finding it difficult to judge which approach is best. On the one hand, I believe reuse is important, and 1) seems to allow me to reuse more. On the other hand, from looking through the code I have a gut feeling that at least 30%-50% of the code no longer apply, so I fear 1) might be a lot of refactoring work, and in the end I'd only reuse little more than with approach 2). The problem is (I feel ) that I'll have to decide this upfront, because it's difficult to switch approach once I have started: If I start with 1), and after a few day of refactoring I find that little actual \"meat\" remains in the generalized functions, I have to throw away all the refactorings and start afresh with separate code that calls the old code as needed. **So how do you go about solving new problems when you have code that is broadly similar, but differs in many details to what you need? How do you judge which approach to code reuse makes more sense?**"}
{"_id": "72610", "title": "Framework / platform for a .NET user group", "text": "I am preparing the creation of a dot net user group. One of the step is to have a website to :   * Exchange and discuss between members, using a forum (or just a mailing list?).   * Share a common calendar   * Have a survey ready for its opening (asking people what they are expecting)   * Present activities to visitors   * Be a showcase for encouraging people to come.   * ... As I am a SharePoint developper/trainer, my first thought was to use SharePoint. However, it is bad for forum, and customizing it (to make it a showcase) requires lot of work. I looked over existing dot net groups. Lot of them are based on Dot net nuke. However, DNN seems a bit old-school. Am I right ? Maybe a State of Art asp.net MVC application might be great. Using Orchard or Umbraco as a start might be a good solution. But they seem to lack community functionnalities... If you were asked to create the Web site for a dot net user group, which framework/plateform/tool would you use ?"}
{"_id": "144787", "title": "What kind of problems does MapReduce solve?", "text": "I have been reading about MapReduce for a while -- but what I can't understand is how someone would make a decision to use (or not use) MapReduce. I mean, what are the problem patterns that signal that MapReduce could be used."}
{"_id": "220326", "title": "is it really necessary for python to differentiate between tuples, lists, dicts, ordered dicts and sets?", "text": "i have been learning python over the past month or so. i like many of the things about the language, but i find the differentiation between tuples, lists, dicts, ordered dicts, and sets to be cumbersome. i know these each have their own performance benefits and tradeoffs, but it seems to me that it would be far simpler to combine them all into a single data structure - maybe a dict but which maintains the order originally specified - pretty much like json... would this be a massive performance hit, or could the optimizer fully compensate to maintain equal performance? i'm guessing the answer is that it could not be done more simply and efficiently any other way - otherwise the language would already have been written that way. this being the case, can anyone explain why not? also, would there be any other downsides to replacing tuples, lists, dicts, ordered dicts and sets with a single json type data structure?"}
{"_id": "26771", "title": "How do you respond to a request for 'emergency contact information' for when you are on vacation?", "text": "I want to go on vacation and not think about work at all but they want me to provide them a contact number in the event of an emergency (server goes down, web service malfunctions, etc). I am afraid that it will be abused (they will contact me before trying everything for example) but I also think that if I am on vacation I should not be bothered even if there is an outage. Does anyone have experience with situations like this? What's the tactful approach? Any creative solutions?"}
{"_id": "26777", "title": "how to effectively manage multiple occurrences of one application", "text": "I have developed a web application for a client which is live to their customers. Recently, the application has been sold in such as way that it is replicated to other domain names so there are 4+ instances of the application which I am to develop and maintain. At the moment, each copy of the app has it own SVN repository and when it comes to making changes to the application that effects all instances, I update one and then use Beyond Compare to merge changes over to the other copies. Would it be a better solution to use svn branches to maintain a core system and to merge out to sub branches and visa versa for bugs? Each application may have changes made to it that are client specific, such as logos, colours etc. Are Branches the best way to go or continue to have each in their own repository and use BC to merge where necessary?"}
{"_id": "26775", "title": "Is there still a need for writing SQL?", "text": "With so many ORM tools for most modern languages, is there still a use case for writing and executing SQL in a program, in a language/environment that supports them? If so why? **For clarity:** I'm not asking about if programmers need to know SQL, or if I should have a SQL tool on my desktop. I'm asking specifically why I might have it _in code_ (or config, or whatever) as opposed to an ORM."}
{"_id": "173292", "title": "Should you ever re-estimate user stories?", "text": "My current project is having a 'discussion' which is split down the middle- _\"this story is more complex than we originally thought, we should re- estimate\"_ vs _\"you should never re-estimate as you only ever estimate up and never down\"_. Can anyone shed some light on whether you ever should re-estimate? IMHO I'd imagine you could bring up an entirely new card for a new requirement or story, but going back and re-estimating on backlog items seems to skew the concept of relative sizing and will only ever 'inflate' your backlog."}
{"_id": "53816", "title": "If an employee is certified by Oracle for Java, can the whole company then be called certified - or how does it work?", "text": "Two quesitons: 1) Lets say I have a one-man company, and I am personally Java certified by Sun/Oracle. Is it then OK to say that my company is also certified to help me get more customers? 2) What if a large company with 50 employees and at least one is Java certified by Sun/Oracle. Is it OK to say that the company is Java certified as well? How does this work?"}
{"_id": "92444", "title": "Polymorphism and the potential security issues", "text": "I just read an article on MSDN about reasons for declaring classes as `sealed`. In the last paragraph, Eric Lippert says: > 4) Secure. the whole point of polymorphism is that you can pass around > objects that look like Animals but are in fact Giraffes. **There are > potential security issues here**. I tried to look on the Google about this topic, but I didn't manage to find anything other that OOP tutorials, so if anybody could point me in the right direction where to look, or even say a few words on this topic, it would be great. Thanks."}
{"_id": "194625", "title": "High performance and/or real time java open source applications", "text": "Which open source java projects do you know to be **high performance** or **real time performance**? I tried hard to find them on github or google, but couldn't find suitable.   I want to learn from this projects, so will not be as a newbie on my interviews ;)   So far I am going to stick to Play Framework project. Are there better options? P.S. I've seen possible duplicate, but I am looking for a very load intensive applications. As people in Deutsche Bank write."}
{"_id": "187690", "title": "Shouldn't SVN warn me if I'm about to commit files which have newer versions in the repository?", "text": "We use SVN and PhpStorm at work. Recently our team has grown a bit so there are several people working on the same project at a time, sometimes on the same file. We've run into the problem where people don't update before comitting and overwrite the changes that were made by someone else. This is a hassle. I don't know SVN very well, but it seems like this shouldn't even be possible. What are we doing wrong?"}
{"_id": "188418", "title": "How to represent calculated deadline is reasonable?", "text": "As a Lead Programmer my responsibilities include calculating the deadlines of the projects. To do this I have discussion with related team players and calculate a deadline estimation. Sometimes, I got a scared voice from CTO saying that the estimated deadline is too much. Then I have to shorten the deadline. With a shorter deadline, programmers have to work with extra pressure. How can I represent (points) to the CTO that the calculated deadline is reasonable?"}
{"_id": "114804", "title": "In what situations is it a bad idea to use open source code for a corporate project?", "text": "Are there any situations where it may not be a good idea to use the code of an open source project, even if your company might allow you to do so? Some cases that I think might be valid include:   * The code may be implemented in a different languages.   * It is not portable   * It may need some other close-source libraries What might be some other reasons?"}
{"_id": "114806", "title": "ternary or something similar for choosing function?", "text": "I posted this question on stackoverflow and it got a poor reception. In reality, the problems I'm facing are minor and any workaround can be considered impractical. However, I believe it might be of general interest in the abstract computer science domain, so I'm giving it a go here. I'm working with Drupal's automated testing in PHP. It's a class that has two methods I'm concerned about: `pass()` and `fail()`. Each one produces a separate line on a results page indicating whether a particular operation passed or failed, e.g.               if ( $value == \"expected_value\" ) {       $this->pass(\"Name of Test\");     } else {       $this->fail(\"Name of Test\");     }      (The reason drupal does it this way is so that in the results, you can see \"Name of Test\" in a green bar if it passed, and in a red bar if it failed. In other words \"Testing Feature A: failed\" or \"Test of Feature A: passed\". Of course you can put two different messages in there, but in my situation, I want to put the same message in) What I notice about the above is that it seems verbose, in that I repeat the same message twice. It seems to me that there should be a way of expressing this where I only declare the message once. Of course I could put it in a variable, but that takes up extra space and I pass it twice, also. I'd like to do something like ternary assignment, only instead where I decide which function to call. Is there a way I can define this logic while only expressing `Name of Test` one time? Something like:               $function = ($value == \"expected_value\") ? \"pass\" : \"fail\" ;     $this->$function(\"Name of Test\");      Is this the most concise, elegant way I can phrase this logic? I tried               $this->(($value == \"expected_value\") ? \"pass\" : \"fail\")(\"Name of Test\");      But I got a parse error. Is there a way to get it down to one line, like ternary assignment? **Edit** Here's the best formulation of my question to date: \"What's a syntax I can use, in any language or pseudo-code , to express this without saying `Name of test` twice?\" I feel like I should be able to express this logic without saying `Name of Test` twice (anywhere -- including within another function that I call elsewhere in code). It seems that PHP does not allow me to express this in this way, so I'm looking for examples in other languages (and people have already posted C, javascript, and python examples) that allow you to concisely express this without repeating yourself."}
{"_id": "114807", "title": "Are 70% of programs/business applications/something based in COBOL?", "text": "I heard this number and a quick google search reveals a whole lot of touting this number and absolutely zero data (honestly most articles promoting COBOL read like 95% propoganda). Perhaps it's true in an extremely limited context of banking software or something, but with millions of applications coded in dozens of languages and near-zero new COBOL projects I don't see how this is possible. Is this a myth from the 70s (when it would have seemed entirely plausible) or is there some limited definition where this is actually true? I know there is a great deal still being maintained and I'm sure a large % of _businesses_ have at least one COBOL program around, but this invisible 70% seems absurd."}
{"_id": "143205", "title": "Reflection: Is using reflection still \"bad\" or \"slow\"? What has changed with reflection since 2002?", "text": "I've noticed when dealing with Expressions or Expression Trees I'm using reflection a lot to set and get values in properties and what have you. It has occurred to me that the use of reflection seems to be getting more and more common. Things like DataAnotations for validation, Attribute heavy ORMs, etc. Have me wondering: **What has changed since the days years and years ago when I used to be told to avoid reflection if at all possible?** So what, if anything has changed? Is it just the speed of the machines? Have there been changes to the framework to speed up reflection? Or has nothing really changed? Is it still \"bad\" or \"slow\" to use reflection?"}
{"_id": "144250", "title": "NoSql databases - Decent tutorial/book that covers the concepts", "text": "Am looking for a good resource on learning the concepts behind NoSql databases. Most things I find are related to a specific technology (MongoDb, CouchDB etc) but I'm after all the concepts behind NoSql instead of focusing on a specific area (some are graph DBs, some key-value etc). Can you share from your experience and point me to a good resource?"}
{"_id": "34775", "title": "Correct definition of the term \"Yak Shaving\"", "text": "The wiktionary has two different definitions: >   1. Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome > intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem. >   2. The actually useless activity you do that appears important when you > are consciously or unconsciously procrastinating about a larger problem. > This post defines it as: > yak shaving is what you are doing when you're doing some stupid, fiddly > little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you're supposed to be > working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you're > doing to the original meta-task. I personally prefer the final definition because it contains the word \"fiddly\" which I think perfectly describes a typical yak shaving task. What is the best definition you've come across or can provide?"}
{"_id": "144252", "title": "Are there currently any modern, standardized, aptitude test for software engineering?", "text": "## Background I am a working software engineer who is in the midst of seeking out a new contract for the next year or so. In my search, I am enduring several absurd technical interviews as indicated by this popular question I asked earlier today. Even if the questions I was being asked weren't almost always absurd, I would be tired nonetheless of answering them many times over for various contract opportunities. So this got me thinking that having a standardized exam that working software professionals could take would provide a common scorecard that could be referenced by interviewers in lieu of absurd technical interview questions (i.e. nerd hazing). ## Question Is there a standardized software engineering aptitude test (SEAT??) available for working professionals to take? If there isn't a such an exam out there, what questions or topics should be covered? ## An additional thought Please keep in mind, if suggesting a question or topic, to focus on questions or topics that would be relevant to contemporary development practices and realistic needs in the workforce as that would be the point of a standard aptitude test. In other words, no **clown traversal** questions."}
{"_id": "143201", "title": "Justification for learning/implementing newer Microsoft technologies", "text": "I work at a large healthcare organization as a mid-level software developer. I have over 10 years experience in the IT industry using Microsoft technologies (ASP.NET & SQL Server). When I go to conferences, code camps, .net user group meetings, I hear of all kinds of new tools and technologies: MVC, LINQ, Entity Framework, WCF Web Services, etc. I guess you could say I'm in my comfort zone using the same old stuff from asp.net 2.0. I use typed datasets for my data access layer. I use web forms and feature rich server controls with master pages. I know how to use plain old SQL and create queries in my typed datasets to get at data my applications need. Throughout my career, I'm always sensitive to not become obsolete with my skill set. What I currently use works fine and my development time is fast. But I'm concerned that if I were to be laid off, I would be asked in interviews how many MVC apps I've written. Or how I am with LINQ or WCF web services. I know that it doesn't matter how many conferences, books, or videos I watch on some new technology...I have to implement/use it or it simply won't sink in. Also, managers who interview don't care how much someone reads up on something, only real use and experience with a technology. I have a new project to write. I've gone to my manager and have asked for additional time for the project for learning/implementing technology I may not be familiar with. Our organization encourages its employees to \"learn and grow\" and to continue are education. But I always get resistance when I ask for more time to ramp up on something new to implement. My manager is asking for concrete business reasons for implementing these new technologies. I don't have business reasons. My reasons are because I don't want to become obsolete. I could say it would make the project more maintainable in the future by other developers since at some point people could stop using these older technologies, but that' about all I can think of. Does Linq/Entity Framework/MCV apps perform better? So much so that the customers (users in departments I'm creating this app for) need? I doubt it. I'm interested in you guy's thoughts on this. Do many of you have similar plights with trying to use newer upcoming technologies? I doubt I'm on the bleeding edge of technology, either. Are there \"business reasons\" that you would bring to light for using these technologies? Thanks in advance! Sorry for the long wall of text."}
{"_id": "91864", "title": "How do you handle bug tracking in a manner friendly to programmers and non-technical staff?", "text": "We're actually using Mantis for our projects. Or should I say \"we try to use\". The problem with all bug trackers I know is that they're made by programmers, for programmers. So the design is non existent or totally absurd. Of course, as a programmer, I can use mantis without problem, but how useful is a bug tracker when all the people _involved_ ** in a project find them so badly designed and so hard to use that they prefer making Google document with bullet list of the bugs they found or suggestion they might have. I'm about to install a forum, it seem to me like a \"in the middle\" solution between a bug tracker and plain bullet list. At least a forum allow to monitor, and to centralize a discussion about a suggestion. In case my concern is not clear, my question can be summarized to: How do you handle you bug&suggestion report toward the non-technical user ? ** By involved, I DON'T mean the actual client or the end-user. I'm thinking about our integrator, project managers, and those who are involved with the QA."}
{"_id": "143208", "title": "GPL vs plugin interfaces not designed with a specific application in mind", "text": "_I am not seeking or in need of legal advice, but an interesting though experiment came to my mind._ Imagine the following situtation (I cannot really think about a concrete example and I am unsure if a real manifestation even exists): there is a free (libre) api A licensed under some permissive license or even LGPL. Non-free application B implements this api in order host plugins, but there are other free software doing the same thing. Moreover, there is plugin C acting as a plugin under api A. It links to library D, that is under GPL, so C is also under GPL. Plugins using A are loaded into hosts via a `dlopen`-like mechanism and use complex data structure for host-plugin communication. Neither B nor C distribute any files that may be required for A to function properly (like headers containing the structure definitions of A or dynamic libraries containing helper functions for A written by the authors of A), but such things may exist. Now some user installs application B and plugin C on his machine, along with anything that may be required for api A to function properly. Then he proceeds and loads C into B and creates some intellectual property with B which is not a piece of software. Did a GPL violation happend at some point, and if so, who violated GPL and why?   * The authors of C violate D's license by making C possible to be used in non-free host B? This is a possibility because they can't give and exception of GPL (like one described in http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPluginsInNF or http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingOverControlledInterface) due to D's license terms.   * The authors of B violate C's and D's license by making C possible to be loaded in B? This is a possibility because http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NFUseGPLPlugins disallows the mechanisms A uses for communitation between the free and non-free modules.   * The authors of A, because the api may be used (and in this case, was used) for communication between GPL'd and non-free software. This would be extremely absurd.   * The user, because at the moment of loading B into C, he made a derived work of C. I think this is impossible, because he does not distribute it. But would the situation change is he decided to release a configuration file of B which makes B load C as a plugin?   * Nobody, because A counts as a 'system library', and both B and C directly interact only with A, not eachother. In a sane world, this would happen... A concrete example of A could be some kind of audio (think LADSPA) or image processing api. However, I could find no such interface (that is free software, generic and is also implemented by commercial tools). A real-world example could also be quite enlightening."}
{"_id": "67903", "title": "Learning Test Driven Development", "text": "If I want to learn TDD on my own, where would I start apart from the usual Google Search? Are there any books that you would recommend or any method that you followed to learn it on your own? I am a C# Developer if in case that made a difference."}
{"_id": "131039", "title": "What should I be looking for when evaluating unit testing libraries and tools?", "text": "I'm in the process of choosing new unit testing tools for soon to be started project. There are plenty of them! The basic requirements I have would be that it can run tests on at least Windows and Linux, it is C++/C++03 compatible, it can execute tests in parallel (e.g., to take advantage of multi-core processors), and it is able to be run from the command line. But these are pretty broad requirements, and haven't narrowed down the field. To try and do that, I'm looking into potential gotchas and pitfalls of different types of implementations. For example, if I wanted to use a unit testing engine in higher level language like Python, would it still produce output formatted like C unit tests? My main intent here is to use the same storage and report tools for both C++ and Python results tests. I'm also wondering if it's necessary to have a specific engine to run the tests, or is it enough to have them integrated into our continuous integration engine (buildbot). Are these two concerns above valid? What else should I be concerned about when evaluating unit testing engines?"}
{"_id": "107233", "title": "Young C++ student lacking direction", "text": "I was hoping for some direction or guidance regarding my C++ learning experience. I have now read two books, from cover to cover, twice. The first was Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++ 2010 and Starting out with C++ Early Objects (7th Edition). At this point and after several months I feel like all I know how to do in C++ is create a basic class, define some methods, use the STL, and read and write info to and from the console buffer (cin/cout). But simple things like saving data to a file, reading from a file, printing, connecting to an FTP site, doing some basic graphic manipulation on the screen (not even DirectX/OpenGL), and so-on I can't do or don't even know where to start. I feel I still haven't learned C++ thoroughly. I think you guys get where I'm going with this. I tried downloading SFML and compiling it in Visual C++ 2010 Professional. After quite a bit of time, I got it, but then I was lost. I followed the tutorials and one didn't work. I kept getting an error regarding a missing symbol and after an hour or so on Google, I couldn't figure it out. Can anyone point me in a direction of where one goes from here? I would imagine others have been at this point sometime during their early days."}
{"_id": "77390", "title": "What's the HTML5 3D canvas? How is it different with WebGL?", "text": "I heard about _3D canvas_. It's strange for me. Because I know there's already a industrial standard 3D API _WebGL_. What's that? How is it different with WebGL?"}
{"_id": "67908", "title": "How to represent an agile project to people focused on waterfall", "text": "Our team has been asked to represent our development efforts in a project plan. No one is unhappy with our work or questioning our ability to deliver, we are just participating in an IT cattle call for project plans. Trouble is we are an agile team and haven't thought about our work in terms of a formal project plan. While we have a general idea of what we are working on next we aren't 100% sure until we plan an iteration. Until now our team has largely operated in a vacuum and has not been required to present our methodology or metrics to outside parties. We follow most of the practices espoused in Extreme Programming. We hold quarterly planning meetings to have a general idea of the stories we are going to work on for a quarter. That said, our stories are documented on 3x5 cards and are only estimated at the beginning of the iteration in which they are going to be worked. After estimation we document the story in Team Foundation Sever. During an iteration, we attach code to stories and mark stories as completed once finished. From this data we are able to generate burn down and velocity charts. Most importantly we know our average velocity for an iteration keeping us from biting off more than we can chew. I am not looking to modify the way we do development but want to present our development activities in a report that someone only familiar with waterfall will understand. In _What Does an Agile Project Plan Look Like_ , Kent McDonald does a good job laying out the differences between agile and waterfall project plans. He specifies the differences in consumable bullets: >   * An agile project plan is feature based >   * An Agile Project Plan is organized into iterations >   * An Agile Project Plan has different levels of detail depending on the > time frame >   * An Agile Project Plan is owned by the Team > Being able to explain the differences is great, but how best to present the data?"}
{"_id": "131036", "title": "Why is 'void' not allowed as a generic type in C#", "text": "What were the design decisions that argued in favour of `void` not being constructable and not being allowed as a generic type? After all it is just a special empty `struct` and would have avoided the total PITA of having distinct `Func` and `Action` delegates. (C++ allows explicit `void` returns and allows `void` as a template parameter)"}
{"_id": "131037", "title": "What are the things that you consider in reviewing an iOS source code?", "text": "We're going to do some peer reviews for our iOS projects. We're kind of inexperienced at reviewing each other's codes. The iOS developers attending the reviews will be from other projects, since generally one person handles one client project in the company. I know there are some questions on SO about the things you're looking for when you're reviewing someone else's code. I want to ask this question specifically for iOS projects. I mean, besides the general points for code quality, what are the things that you consider when reviewing an iOS code?"}
{"_id": "187341", "title": "Distributing cron-like tasks over multiple servers", "text": "Currently I'm using something like a master-cron server, which starts the tasks on the slave-worker servers. But there are so many tasks, that the timing gets lost entirely. Is there a an algorithm, which eliminates the single master?"}
{"_id": "187347", "title": "creating simple states for a stateless input", "text": "Given an input device (basically a keyboard) that reports keyup and keydown, how may I most efficiently store and retrieve information about _which keys are currently depressed_? My first thought was a dynamic array, but maintaining and searching a dynamic array seems like a serious drain on resources. Many thanks in advance for any help Joe"}
{"_id": "224073", "title": "UML diagram for an existing implementation", "text": "I have some code, which I want to present in UML, but I've stuck at one point. Let me tell you something about code's functionality. I have a workspace in which I can place some `Component`s, select them, delete, add new, move etc. I can also connect them according to some rules (there are different types of `Component`s available). In order to determine if a group of `Component`s can be connected or not, I've implemented some easy mechanism. In this mechanism the following parts appear: **`ConnectionRule`** \\- get the type of connection, and checks if a collection of `Component`s given as a parameter can be connected according to this `ConnectionRule`. **`ConnectionRulesSet`** \\- has many rules inside. Client asks a set with rules like this: \"according to which rules definied in a set, components given as a parameter, can be connected\"? `ConnectionRulesSet` gives a list of `ConnectionRules` as a response. A concrete Connection rules set are exposed only throug interface - Client cannot create an instance of a concrete RulesSet. **`RulesSetFactory`** \\- depending on many circumstances, application can use different `ConnectionRulesSet`s. That's why I've created a factory which gives a proper implemetation of `ConnectionRulesSet` interface depending on specified circumstances. And now let's take a look at the Client's code:               // list of components which should be verified in terms of connection plausibility:     List<Component> selectedComponents = ... ;     // Get set of rules for normal conditions:     ConnectionRulesSet setOfRules = RulesSetFactory.getRulesSet(NORMAL_SET);     List<ConnectionRule> fulfilledRules = setOfRules.getFulfilledRules(final selectedComponents);     // Do something with fulfilled rules:     for(PlausibilityRule rule : fulfilledRules){        addToAvailableRulesList(rule.getConnectionType().getName()); // display names of connetion types...     }       My problem is, that I'm not sure how to create an UML class diagram for such solution from Client's perspective... How to expose relationships between presented solution and a Client. Client uses actually all: ConnectionRule, RulesSet, RulesSetFactory... There is one of my ideas below... What do you think? Have you got any better solution? ![Sample UML class diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/gyPMc.png)"}
{"_id": "224077", "title": "How to conceptually consider and implement user interface rules for numerous controls and data inputs?", "text": "I have a user interface with numerous controls and data inputs on it. Buttons, text fields, and checkboxes, etc. Imagine the following \"rules\" exist for a sample UI with 2 of those controls:   * B2 cannot be used until TF1 and TF2 both have values   * TF2 cannot be entered until TF1 has a value   * CB2 cannot be checked unless TF1 has a value   * CB2 cannot be checked unless CB1 is checked These rules are arbitrary here, but I have a variety of business rules which will ultimately govern the UI functionality. I would like to implement logic for this in my UI code to enforce these rules. However, I am having a hard time determining a good way to do so. I can think of two primary ways but I'm not really a fan of either. ### Method 1 - adding logic to each control callback One way to do this would be to add the logical check(s) to each method callback. So for the first rule, in the code associated with B2, include hard coded checks like `if TF1 == \"\"` and `if TF2 == \"\"`. I am not a fan of this idea because I'm going to scatter any sequencing/logic everywhere in my UI and it seems inevitable sometime this process will result in obscure and impossible to track down bugs. Also seems like maintenance will be impossibly complex. ### Method 2 - build collection of all rules The way I'm leaning towards is building a collection of rules. The first step would be defining a set of rules for \"passing\" for each type of control and its associated lookups, such as:   * For checkboxes, \"passes\" check for true, \"fails\" if false   * For textboxes, \"passes\" if not empty, \"fails\" if = \"\" I can then create a collection of all the prerequisite pass/fail checks for each UI component and its associated components. This can be abstracted into a single check method called in each UI action like:   * myChecker(mControlName) where myChecker is a method which iterates through the list of all matching rules, checks them, and returns true/false based on whether the rules pass. This method could be called from each UI control before any control-specific logic takes place. This is nice, but it seems creating the rules and not forgetting any might be even more complex than the first method. Additionally, all control types have to have a \"pass/fail\" criteria or the myChecker method might become ridiculously complex with lots of hard to read if statements. * * * Am I missing something? There has to be a more clearly defined pattern or some better strategy for incorporating these sorts of validation/rules into a UI."}
{"_id": "224075", "title": "Is there a way to efficiently allow a user to upload multiple content at once for e-commerce type sites?", "text": "Sellers on large sites like Amazon and Newegg need to provide names, descriptions, and images for their products to be displayed on the e-commerce sites. These sellers could have 10000+ products to sell, each with their own unique name/descriptions/images. I can't imagine that e-commerce sites would have their sellers upload each product individually through some standard HTML form. Especially when a product can have multiple images, this method of uploading just seems too inefficient. I'm guessing these sites allow sellers to upload via an API that the e-commerce site provides so that the uploading task may be automated with a script, but how exactly is this accomplished? Through JSON? JSON works great with text strings, but JSON doesn't allow for file uploads (so images can't be uploaded?)."}
{"_id": "182488", "title": "Multitasking in C#", "text": "I would like to use a timer in my C# program with millisecond accuracy to keep a camera in sync with some events and keep shooting a picture every 250ms (or 1/4 sec, or I might adjust it to even shorter times like 200ms or 100ms). The normal timer event can be used for this. But I wonder what would be the best way to do this. Also I think I should NOT write the whole capture routine in it, but instead just raise another thread (multi-threading) to process the image with some vision logic on it, as my vision logic takes about 1 seconds, so I will get some queue here. If my vision algorithms would take 1 seconds per thread, would this mean that on a multicore (12 cores) PC that such code thread would go to the next available free processor or am I thinking to easily about multitasking?"}
{"_id": "22106", "title": "C++ code navigation on OS X", "text": "Other than using Emacs / Vim with ctags or cscope or both, are there alternatives to C++ code navigation of an existing code base? I used to use Source Insight on Windows and it worked for me fairly well. The main functionality I am looking for is quickly find definition of macros, variables and functions and places a function is referenced."}
{"_id": "144493", "title": "Lazy Processing of Streams", "text": "I have the following problem scenario:   * I have a text file and I have to read it and split it into lines.   * Some lines might need to be dropped (according to criteria that are not fixed).   * The lines that are not dropped must be parsed into some predefined records.   * Records that are not valid must be dropped.   * Duplicate records may exist and, in such a case, they are consecutive. If duplicate / multiple records exist, only one item should be kept.   * The remaining records should be grouped according to the value contained in one field; all records belonging to the same group appear one after another (e.g. AAAABBBBCCDEEEFF and so on).   * The records of each group should be numbered (1, 2, 3, 4, ...). For each group the numbering starts from 1.   * The records must then be saved somewhere / consumed in the same order as they were produced. I have to implement this in Java or C++. My first idea was to define functions / methods like:   * One method to get all the lines from the file.   * One method to filter out the unwanted lines.   * One method to parse the filtered lines into valid records.   * One method to remove duplicate records.   * One method to group records and number them. The problem is that the data I am going to read can be too big and might not fit into main memory: so I cannot just construct all these lists and apply my functions one after the other. On the other hand, I think I do not need to fit all the data in main memory at once because once a record has been consumed all its underlying data (basically the lines of text between the previous record and the current record, and the record itself) can be disposed of. With the little knowledge I have of Haskell I have immediately thought about some kind of lazy evaluation, in which instead of applying functions to lists that have been completely computed, I have different streams of data that are built on top of each other and, at each moment, only the needed portion of each stream is materialized in main memory. But I have to implement this in Java or C++. So my question is which design pattern or other technique can allow me to implement this lazy processing of streams in one of these languages."}
{"_id": "61502", "title": "How to explain that full automation of a spreadsheets data sources isn't a good idea?", "text": "Have an Excel spreadsheet that summarizes various key metrics for the business. The source data for these metrics comes from various sources including other spreadsheets, and web/ERP systems. A suggestion was made to completely automate the whole data retrieval/population into the spreadsheet. For this type of tool (only a few users) I prefer a copy-paste approach so that the users are actually looking at the data and making sure it is correct. What reasons can I give that a full automation is not a good idea?   * linking Excel spreadsheets requires that the source spreadsheet doesn't change   * Excel can export CSV files from the ERP system but this would require a macro -> can the users maintain the macro   * ? **UPDATE1:** Forget to mention that this process is a stop-gap until a data warehouse is built later this year. Following the suggestion of the accepted answerer it appears that the full automated answer would take weeks more effort then the few hours per month that the copy-paste method would take."}
{"_id": "245610", "title": "Gitlab workflow, forcing code review or merge request on branch", "text": "I'm working towards implementing Gitlab at my company with a workflow strategy. My idea is that developers will be given access to repositories but, anytime they try to commit, their code must be reviewed. I know I can have them create a branch before committing, and then create a Merge Request after it's been pushed to the repo. I'm still unclear about certain things... The idea that we rely on people to create a branch and then a merge request seems faulty, is there a solution that forces some sort of policy that the master branch can stay clean unless an \"admin\" approves the code that's about to merge into it. I've read \"github team workflow\" but it doesn't seem to offer a viable solution. Any advice about process or your own best practice is appreciated. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "35798", "title": "Fixing a bug that has never caused a problem until now", "text": "I recently made a change that caused some code to be run far more often than it used to. This lead to the discovery of a bug. This bug had the potential to happen any time that code was run but because it was run so seldom it never surfaced. When I brought this to the lead developer's attention he wanted me to undo the change that exposed the bug rather than fix the bug quoting the adage, \"If it ain't broke, don't fix it\". Its clear to me that we were just lucky up until now but he won't listen to reason. Should I fix it anyway? **Update** The lead technically doesn't have any authority over me. Just tenure. He's been the sole developer on the project for a number of years until a year ago and I think he doesn't take constructive criticism very well. For what's worth, I didn't criticize him. I just pointed out that just because the bug never showed up didn't mean it wasn't there."}
{"_id": "150570", "title": "Is writing software in the absence of requirements a skill to possess or a situation I should avoid?", "text": "I find that some software developers are very adept at this, and often times are praised for their ability to deliver a working concept with abstract requirements. Frankly, this drives me crazy, and I don't like \"making it up\" as I go. I used to think this was problematic, but I've started to sense a shift, and I'm wondering if I need to adjust my thought (and programming) process when given very little direction. Should I begin to acquire this ability as a skill, or stick to the idea that requirement's gathering and business rules are the first priority?"}
{"_id": "241239", "title": "Why is it an issue that it takes 2 digits to represent the number 10 in decimal?", "text": "So we use hexadecimal which has the advantage of going up to 15 in single digits A-F, but why is it an issue that it takes 2 digits to represent the number 10 in decimal? I was reading up about hexadecimal and I came across these 2 lines: > Base 16 suggests the digits 0 to 15, but the problem we face is that it > requires 2 digits to represent 10 to 15. Hexadecimal solves this problem by > using the letters A to F. My question is, why should we care how many digits it takes to represent a number? - Is it slower for the computer to deal with a number with 2 digits compared to 1?"}
{"_id": "181591", "title": "Is personal branding necessary as a programmer?", "text": "I work as a Ruby developer/dev lead at a small startup company. I end up splitting my time between writing code, helping the team use more agile methodology and working with the product manager to get stories ready for the dev team. I enjoy my work and generally rate my enjoyment of work on these criteria:   * Good boss (no pointed haired managers)   * time is allowed to maintain the codebase (refactor code/write unit tests/etc.)   * get paid competitive salary   * no stupid deadlines   * work normal hours I am in no hurry to change jobs, but at least in the Ruby community it seems that everybody and their brother has their own blog, open source projects, or some other form of personal branding. I can just not get into these things. I really enjoy my work but when I go home I am ready to do something else and not spend hours writing blogs or writing more software. Is a requirement to write, blog, or engage in other forms of personal branding to keep myself marketable?"}
{"_id": "208059", "title": "Do MVC web frameworks favor anemic domain model in order to avoid duplication?", "text": "Binding directly the form to your model helps a lot to get rid of boiler plate code, but that means that your model must have a getter/setter for each property otherwise it wouldn't be possible. Another choice would be to create another layer (DTO) only to carry the data to/from the form and then you can have a rich domain model not necessarily with getter/setter for each attribute but that means duplication of fields and validation code. For instance, right now I'm doing a web mail application. We know that we already have the Java Mail API, a good rich domain model. However, the way it is designed makes it impossible to bind my web form to that model. I am forced to create a DTO to capture the data and then pass it to the Java Mail API. Just like this example if my domain model would be like this one, the same would happen. From Spring MVC documentation: > Instead, it is often preferable to bind directly to your business objects. > > Reusable business code, no need for duplication. Use existing business > objects as command or form objects instead of mirroring them to extend a > particular framework base class. Do MVC web frameworks such as **Spring MVC and Struts 2** , favor anemic domain model in order to avoid duplication?"}
{"_id": "208058", "title": "C Equivalent of Perl Unpack & Pack", "text": "I have some perl code that uses pack and unpack to transform the data in a way that I don't understand.               $unpacked_data = pack('b*', join('', unpack('(b7)*', $packed_data)))      Where $packed_data = a Byte Array of say, 2341 bytes, and with the above perl statement, unpacks to 2048 bytes of data. Can someone explain this statement to me in terms of C? So far, I know this:   * b = A bit string (ascending bit order inside each byte, like vec()).   * If the repeat count is * , the offset is relative to the start of the packed string."}
{"_id": "208052", "title": "Maintaining log stream after file name change", "text": "I'm trying to log to a file and move it about every 30 seconds. I'm using the os.rename function (which I do from a supervisord process) in python to move the current log to a timestamped log (which will then be processed by another python script) and then I continue to log to the old stream from my uwsgi server. I've also tried the RotatingFileHandler and the timed version, but they don't seem to work properly. I wasn't sure if that was a function of using it with the uwsgi server or not. My question is, what is the simplest and most efficient way to continue logging to the same file name after the file it was \"pointing to\" has been moved?"}
{"_id": "75820", "title": "Can anyone suggest a project for me write to help me understand threading", "text": "I am currently a C# developer with a pretty shaky understanding of threading. Both of these links have been suggested in other posts: http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/threads/ http://www.albahari.com/threading/ Should I go back to basics and maybe look at some computer science texts on the subject? I really feel that if I jump in and use the c# libraries I won't really have a solid foundation of knowledge to build on. I think I need to learn this subject from scratch like a com sci student, then use the C# libraries. Can anyone suggest an approach to learning threading, maybe some links and or project ideas? Thanks in advance! Edit, thanks for all the replies. Some people have mentioned that a book might be a good idea, can anyone suggest one? I'd prefer something language agnostic. Does anyone know what class would this stuff be covered in in a Computer Science degree? I'm trying to google for some free online notes and assignments."}
{"_id": "145120", "title": "How should I refactor so that responsibility for a geocoding service is shared appropriately?", "text": "First, some background. I have an application that requires the use of several external geocoding providers which I don't control. It uses a central service layer inside the application to dispatch to the appropriate provider. I have a number of classes that are arranged in this way:   * **GeocodingService** : Responsible for dispatching a request to geocode something to an appropriate provider.     * Has one public method, `geocode`, that accepts a **GeocodingService::Request** and returns a **GeocodingService::Response**.     * Each response includes: the latitude of the geocoded query, the longitude of the geocoded query, and a list of address components for the address where the query was found (e.g., an address component for \"123\", one for \"Main Street\", one for \"Paris\", and so on).   * **GeocodingService::AddressComponent** : A single segment of an address that contains the segment's name, its abbreviation, and its kinds. For example, France has a name of `France`, an abbreviation of `FR`, and is a `country` and a `political` segment.     * AddressComponent is responsible for checking that the types an instance is set with are not outside the boundaries of certain tracked types.   * **Address** : Domain model for addresses, containing both a preferred mailing address (a list of string lines) and a list of address components (a list of GeocodingService::AddressComponents). My question is: **where should AddressComponent live -- as a service class (like it does now), or with my other domain models?**   * If it lives **in the service** , then life is straightforward. But that seems wrong, because now a domain model has to depend on a service's definition of an address, and it seems like they should be independent.   * If it lives as a **full-fledged domain object** , then doesn't that mean that the service is now coupled to a domain object? That also seems undesirable. How do I resolve this impasse?"}
{"_id": "145128", "title": "Do programmers need computer eyewear", "text": "I am an programmer with great eyesight who stares at multiple computer screens 8-10 hours a day, usually in deep concentration. A day would not go by that I my eyes did not burn and have redness in them. I knew it was from the daily exposure to lcd monitors that caused the issues because on the weekends I would not have the same experience. Does any one try computer glasses? Is that work?"}
{"_id": "137487", "title": "Java or Python for Google App Engine not knowing either language?", "text": "I have a few project ideas that I'd like to deploy on GAE. I'm interested in developing a logging application for amateur radio contacts, shortwave, and utility monitoring. More complex projects include satellite tracking, audio streaming from multiple radios, and radio remote control including transmitting and receiving. I'm taking Java and Python languages through my local junior college, so I don't know which language is suitable for these projects. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each language for developing on GAE specifically, especially audio and number crunching for the tracking app? I'm not asking for a general comparison between the two languages, only as they are used on GAE. The end result is to tie them into my website which is hosted on Google, with some of the apps publicly available, some privately available to friends. If it helps, I have the most experience with Perl, bash, followed by C."}
{"_id": "165560", "title": "Learning Arlgorithms particularly graph algorithms (java)", "text": "I have a hard time learning algorithms (Particularly graphing algorithms). Do you know of any good free resources that make some of the more harrowing algorithm concepts such NP-Complete, Traveling salesman, and other algorithms, A* heuristics, particularly graphing algorithms, simpler to learn?"}
{"_id": "23851", "title": "What percent of your college course work is unit-tested code?", "text": "As a college student do you write unit-test for the project code you write? Do you know how to properly use TDD? Have you been taught to use testing frameworks (jUnit for example)? I've just recently heard that a major company's project team was delivering software to User Acceptance Testing group that had only 7% line code coverage for unit testing. While that shocks me, it just tells me that this company's software engineering practice are immature. However I wonder if they could just hire a few recent graduates and raise the bar on the teams practices - assuming that these newly minted programmers were trained in the best practices. Are you 2008 - 2010 CS graduates using best practices of unit testing your code?"}
{"_id": "165566", "title": "Resolving equivalence relations", "text": "I am writing a function to label the connected component in an image (I know there are several libraries outside, I just wanted to play with the algorithm). To do this I label the connected regions with different labels and create an equivalence table that contain information on the labels belonging to the same connected component. As an example if my equivalence table (vector of vector) looks something like:               1:    1,3     2:    2,3     3:    1,2,3     4:    4      It means that in the image there are 2 different regions, one made of elements that are labelled 1,2,3 and an other made of elements labelled 4. What is an easy and efficient way to resolve the equivalences and end up with something that looks like:               1: 1,2,3     2: 4      that I can use to \"merge\" the different connected regions belonging to the same connected component? Thanks a lot for the help!"}
{"_id": "165564", "title": "Is it bad form to change multiple tables in a single Rails migration file?", "text": "I wrote a migration file with the following code:               class AddScheduleIdToPlayers < ActiveRecord::Migration       def change             add_column :players, :schedule_id, :integer             add_column :schedules, :coach_id, :integer       end     end      Is it bad form to not create two migration files, one for each change, or is this fine?"}
{"_id": "165568", "title": "So, \"Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features\"?", "text": "I saw, here on Programmers, the answer to this question: How does thinking on design patterns and OOP practices change in dynamic and weakly-typed languages? There I found a link to an article with an outspoken title: Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features. But where I found snippets that to me seemed very catchy and that can be probably verified against experience given there is an incentive for that , like: > PaulGraham said \"Peter Norvig found that 16 of the 23 patterns in Design > Patterns were 'invisible or simpler' in Lisp.\" or another sentence that confirms what I recently seen with people trying to simulate classes in JavaScript: > Of course, nobody ever speaks of the \"function\" pattern, or the \"class\" > pattern, or numerous other things that we take for granted because most > languages provide them as built-in features. OTOH, programmers in a purely > PrototypeOrientedLanguage? might well find it convenient to simulate classes > with prototypes... I am also taking into consideration that design patterns are a communcation tool. Because even with my limited experience participating in building applications I can see as an anti-pattern(ineffective and/or counterproductive) for example, forcing a small PHP team to learn GoF patterns for small to medium intranet App. I am aware that scale, scope and purpose can determine what is effective and/or productive, but still I didn't managed to find an technical overview about that. I saw small commercial applications that mixed functional with OOP and still be maintainable, and I don't know if many would need for example in python to write a singleton , but for me a simple module does the same thing. ### So are there studies, exhaustive articles or other form of exposition that takes into consideration design patterns vs. workarounds vs. simpler ways to do it, or replacements by language features ?"}
{"_id": "23859", "title": "Metrics for architecture complexity", "text": "Just like we can measure complexity of code and algorithm, are there any metrics for measuring architecture/design/solution space complexity."}
{"_id": "27164", "title": "How to earn team members respect as team lead", "text": "If you were hired into a new company as a team lead (say a team of 10) one of the important things to do is to earn the respect of the members of the team. In the early days the new team lead may know nothing of the team culture, code base and business domain: in other words, is a complete neophyte. How does one go about this? What are the do's and don'ts?"}
{"_id": "117865", "title": "ORM Tools and advantages of circular references in entities", "text": "Let me demonstrate a simple example, > Class Organization > >   * ID type Number, >   * Name type String, >   * HAS A -> Collection > > > Class Facility > >   * ID type Number, >   * Name type String, >   * Location String , >   * HAS A -> Organization > I am demonstrating a simple circular reference between two objects of an anemic data model. Assuming they are mapped to an ORM tool, a collection of Facility can be fetched lazily from an Organization, and likewise an Organization can be fetched lazily from a Facility. I understand the convenience of this, at least on the middle tier. With a single Facility I can immediately obtain information about its Organization from code. My question then is: _Are there ANY other advantages to circular references in ORM mapped entities?_ Despite my intense emotions on this subject right now, I am trying my best to not load the question... The prime infuriating disadvantage I am sufferring through at this moment is when I am trying to serialize these objects into XML and send them across a web service, far from the lofty comforts of its benevolent ORM session. I can't serialize them as is because the ORM proxies cannot be sent, I must either eagerly fetch the child entities and send a MASSIVE object tree, or strip out the proxies from the graph. Fair enough, so I wrote a utility to simply remove proxies, Great! It serializes and performance is salivatingly good, however when I get this object back from an UpdateEntity web service, it is missing the rest of the object graph, and now if I were to update this entity through the ORM, it thinks I have deleted all of these objects missing from the tree. No good. I can't help but feel that circular references present a massive disadvantage in this scenario and I can't really seem to think of a good way to overcome this problem and the crippling performance problems I am tasked with solving without a data model redesign and massive refactoring. What are your opinions on this? Is this indeed a design-smell?"}
{"_id": "140574", "title": "What are some ways to reliably test for browser support for HTML5 features such as Geolocation?", "text": "HTML5 introduces a wide variety of tools such as Geolocation. Many browsers support them, but some do not yet. Should web developers rely on them to build professional applications for industry? The features are powerful, but not all browsers support these features. What are some ways (perhaps Javascript libraries?) to reliably test for browser support for HTML5 features such as Geolocation?"}
{"_id": "117869", "title": "GPL and closed-source licensing for selling my script", "text": "I am working on a PHP script that I plan to sell without giving the user the ability to distribute it to anyone else. I have heard about GPL being viral and I have quite a few libraries that are being used in my script that are under the GPL. (for example : jquery, phpthumb etc) Does this mean that if a user who has bought my code can freely distribute it because a part of my code is under GPL so it becomes viral and my whole project becomes GPL ? **Can i not use any GPL code in my project ?** Thanks for any help."}
{"_id": "143468", "title": "What precautions should be taken when joining a software company?", "text": "I am joining a software company very soon as a fresher. But I am afraid that no one knows me and also every one there will be professional. So I want to know, what precautions should be taken in communication, behavior and other things?"}
{"_id": "51670", "title": "Why do programmers use or recommend Mac OS X?", "text": "I've worked on both Mac and Windows for awhile. However, I'm still having a hard time understanding why programmers enthusiastically choose Mac OS X over Windows and Linux? I know that there are programmers who prefer Windows and Linux, but I'm asking the programmers who would just use Mac OS X and nothing else, because they think Mac OS X is the greatest fit for programmers. Some might argue that Mac OS X got the beautiful UI and is nix based, but Linux can do that. Although Windows is not nix based, you can pretty much develop on any platform or language, except Cocoa/Objective-C. Is it the applications that are only available on Mac OS X? Does that really make it worth it?   Is it to develop iPhone apps?   Is it because you need to upgrade Windows every 2 years (less backwards compatible)?   I understand why people, who are working in multimedia/entertainment industry, would use Mac OS X. However, I don't see what strong merits Mac OS X has over Windows. If you develop daily on Mac and prefer Mac over anything else, can you give me a merit that Mac has over Windows/Linux? Maybe something you can do on Mac that cannot be done in Windows/Linux with the same level of ease? I'm not trying to do another Mac vs. Windows here. I tried to find things that can be done on Mac but not on Windows with the same level of ease, but I couldn't. So, I'm asking for some help."}
{"_id": "140573", "title": "Long term plan of attack to learn math?", "text": "I am a web-developer with a desire to expand my skill-set to mathematics relevant to programming. As 2nd career, I am stuck in college doing some of the requirements while working. I was hoping the my education will teach me the needed skills to apply math, however I am quickly finding it to be too much easily-testable breadth-based approach very inefficient for the time invested. For example in my calculus 2 class, the only remotely useful mind expanding experience I had was volumes and areas under the curve. The rest was just monotonous glorified algebra, which while comes easy to me, could be done by software like wolfram alpha within seconds. This is not my idea of learning math. So here I am a frustrated student looking for a way to improve my understanding of math in a way that focuses on application, understanding and maximally removed needless tedium. However I cannot find a good long term study strategy with this approach in mind. So for those of like mind, how would you go about learning the necessary math without worrying too much about stuff a computer can do much better?"}
{"_id": "56025", "title": "Mobile Development- Obtaining development hardware - best practices?", "text": "I'm looking to get into smartphone development, but there a quite a few options out there for platforms right now. (iOS/Android/WebOS/Bada/Symbian/MeeGo/WindowsMobile/JavaME) I'd like to have development hardware to test my code and the overall functionality of the devices. What is the best way to obtain and/or borrow hardware for development and testing? Are there rules of thumb to follow which apply to all companies and platforms? In this situation, I'm a single developer. Does this process change for a startup? A hackerspace? A small business? A large business?"}
{"_id": "246506", "title": "Store Arbitrary values related to mysql record", "text": "I have created an app that manages a Data cleansing workflow. Each row imported needs to store an arbitrary number of key value pairs in addition to our standard mysql schema. The key values need to be searchable. I am using rails + mysql currently. What are my options? As of now, I am just adding a new fields to the rails schema as new requirements arise, I need a way to store extra data for each row that might not apply to any other rows."}
{"_id": "60482", "title": "MVC, WCF, EF, LINQ - Is it just me?", "text": "...or are things getting more complicated? It seems to me that you need to know a lot of stuff to 'properly' develop an MS web app these days. In the bad old days when we didn't know any better we had database tables, ASP.NET, ADO.NET and you constructed a web app using relatively simple concepts. These days there seems to be a lot of framework around to 'help' you do it 'right', but I'm not convinced this makes it all easier and better. I've got a feeling I'll be in a pretty small minority with this sentiment, but is there anyone else out there who thinks that things have gone a bit mad?"}
{"_id": "130077", "title": "Nulls in every type and checked exceptions in Java?", "text": "I know that null being added to every type in Java is a source of much frustration regarding the language's type system. At the same time I generally hear complaining about checked exceptions - that they clutter interfaces, encourage exception swallowing, etc. It seems to me like null inhabiting every type is a way around the language - like I want the type of this to be `X`, but it's actually `X or null`; it just doesn't look like that and is easy to forget. Don't checked exceptions provide a way for the type of something to be `X or throws Exception` instead of it appearing to just be `X`? It provides an in-code way to specify how something can fail. Nulls in every type and unchecked exceptions seem like they are dual concepts, but one is scorned and the other praised. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "25458", "title": "What to learn to become freelancer?", "text": "I have around 8 years experience in software development. I have worked on application development all these years using C++ /win32. I few years from now I want to become a freelancer . I tried to look into some freelance sites and I am not able to find any projects on C++/win32. I feel C++/Win32 wont help me much and I need to learn new skills . But my job require me to still work on C++ , so I cann't learn any new skills. I can still learn some new skills but without good project , it won't make any sense. I have shortlisted few skills   1. php   2. jquery   3. perl   4. python   5. android I am still confused which one to start and how to get expertise in them.Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "186906", "title": "Keeping tech support on the latest software version", "text": "I'm the only software developer maintaining a subset of products at a small company. The main product I'm concerned with here is a web app which is installed on various clients' machines, with a database and background processes. I make changes on a need-to basis for this program. It's not the company's flagship product, it's not my main project, but it needs maintenance. I have 2 and a half support technicians who take in questions from customers. When they don't know how to fix things, I'm their support. Because I do some maintenance here and there, I release updates irregularly. However, the idea is that I'm fixing the software, and on a client's request, the support technicians can update said software to fix an issue or as good measure (there's no built-in update function). The support technicians also keep a copy on their machine, or rather, various copies of past versions. This is where it gets ugly. I get, irregularly, reports of bugs for things I might have already fixed on previous versions. When they find a bug, the support techs spend a lot of time going _backwards_ in versions, trying to get to a version where the bug isn't there. At this point they either throw it in my face (\"Why did you break this?\") or install older versions at the clients'. **Which can obviously break other things**. In order to resolve this I've:   * pleaded with them   * pleaded with their supervisor   * pleaded with the CEO   * refused to work on older versions until new versions are installed, even if they demonstrate the bug is still present   * threatened to remove support altogether (which is moot, since it's still my job) No dice. The last option I see is to setup something with SVN where they can only get the latest version and not revert (if that's doable)... And hope they don't learn to make copies. Is there some other approach, human, organizational, technical, or otherwise that can help me and keep these guys on the latest version?"}
{"_id": "85317", "title": "Is it bad habit not using interfaces?", "text": "I use interfaces rarely and find them common in others code. Also I create sub and super classes (while creating my own classes) rarely in my code.   * Is it a bad thing?   * Would you suggest changing this style?   * Does this style have any side-effects?   * Is this because I have not worked on any large projects?"}
{"_id": "74155", "title": "How secure is localstorage?", "text": "The question says it all really. I want to provide a service but I do not want to store any of the data myself in a database. With all the recent news of hacking etc it seems to me that it is nicer that clients have complete control over their data. The problem is that the data stored is potentially sensitive. What I was going to do was... when a client visits the website there would be a question asking 'are you on a personal computer or a public computer'. If they are on a public computer the site would refuse access. If they were on a personal computer it would then prompt them to set a password. All their data would then be encrypted with this password. Now obviously this is not too secure. The encryption method would be in JavaScript and their password in plain text so I assume it would be possible for a savvy user to locate the password in the localStorage and access the data. I feel though that this isn't too much of a problem. If you are using a personal computer the chances of this happening are remote as... someone else would need access to their specific user account on the computer, someone else would need to know about the site... someone else would need to understand localStorage and how to access it. The sensitive data isn't any that will compromise their identity or much else. It just records something most people wouldn't like publicly published. So really the question is, is localStorage secure enough? Additional question.. how difficult is to wipe your localStorage? I wouldn't want users to accidentally wipe their data. Finally - is it even worth encrypting / decrypting their data as if you have the password you can access the site.."}
{"_id": "200228", "title": "Which algorithms typify Lisp's power?", "text": "Similar question here (but not the same) because I am interested in which specific algorithms work particularly well in Lisp. Lisp tutorials always give the example of finding factorials, but wanting to find factorials is not a good enough motivation to use Lisp. I've heard that Quicksort has a particularly elegant implementation in Lisp. Can you give examples (and code samples too) of examples of algorithms that are best implemented in a language like Lisp?"}
{"_id": "253527", "title": "Where to save something between invocations?", "text": "The 2nd time I run this program I'd like it to start in the same HDD location as the previous instance. How should I save, or remember, where I was so the program starts in the same place? I'd like to persist my previous location the same way across MAC, Linux, Windows, ... Where is a good place to save my location so it's available to me the next time I run?"}
{"_id": "139141", "title": "hosting website from home", "text": "If I want to host a website from my home, I buy a domain name. Then, I get a static IP from my ISP. Next, I point it to the IP address of my home system. I can even use the SQL server installed in my system and not worry about the size. I am not talking about piles of servers here. Just one server. I was wondering if it is that easy, why not do it? Is there something that I am missing here? I am talking about moderately simple website. But does it matter?"}
{"_id": "135640", "title": "Databinding to an Entity Framework in WPF", "text": "Is it good to use databinding to Entity Framework's Entity in WPF? I created a singleton entity framework context:   1. To have only one connection and it won't open and close all the time.   2. So I can pass the Entity around to any class, and can modify the Entity and make changes to the database. All ViewModels getting the entity out from the same Context and databinding to the View saves me time from mapping new object, but now I imagine there is problem in not using the newest Context: A ViewModel databinding to a Entity, then someone else updated the data. The ViewModel will still display the old data, because the Context is never being dispose to refresh. I always create new Context and then dispose of it. If I want to pass the Entity around, then there will be conflicts between Context and Entity. What is the suggested way of doing this ?"}
{"_id": "200220", "title": "Is Node.js correct choice for JSON parsing and IO driven", "text": "My program should perform following task: It listen on http port after getting request it does following things.   1. Connect to gearman    2. Parse gearman payload to JSON (Upto 100 bytes)   3. Connect to Redis    4. Parse redis payload to JSON (256 bytes to 10KB. 80% cases it will ~256 bytes)   5. Put some data in MySQL   6. Put data in Redis server  As my program seems to be IO driven. I have chosen nodesjs for developing. But after developing I am facing CPU hike related issue with nodejs. My program taking 70%-100% cpu with 20 parallel clients. First I thought JSON parsing could be the issue. I was targetting near about 1K-3K request. As my redis server is able to process that may request in one second. But for profiling I have started with one sample http server in node Example code:               var http = require('http');     var url = require(\"url\");     http.createServer(function (req, res) {         var uri = url.parse(req.url).pathname;                   var body = \"\";              req.on('data', function (chunk) {             body += chunk;         });              req.on('end', function () {                  res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain'});                                 res.end('hi vivek');         });               }).listen(9097, \"127.0.0.1\");      **Now my concern is with this hello world http server. Node CPU usage is spiking b/w 17%-20%.**               My node version is v0.10.0     My OS is ubuntu 12.04      My cpu information is               processor   : 0     vendor_id   : GenuineIntel     cpu family  : 6     model       : 23     model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E8400  @ 3.00GHz     stepping    : 10     microcode   : 0xa07     cpu MHz     : 2992.491     cache size  : 6144 KB     physical id : 0     siblings    : 2     core id     : 0     cpu cores   : 2     apicid      : 0     initial apicid  : 0     fpu     : yes     fpu_exception   : yes     cpuid level : 13     wp      : yes     flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority     bogomips    : 5984.98     clflush size    : 64     cache_alignment : 64     address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual     power management:          processor   : 1     vendor_id   : GenuineIntel     cpu family  : 6     model       : 23     model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E8400  @ 3.00GHz     stepping    : 10     microcode   : 0xa07     cpu MHz     : 2992.491     cache size  : 6144 KB     physical id : 0     siblings    : 2     core id     : 1     cpu cores   : 2     apicid      : 1     initial apicid  : 1     fpu     : yes     fpu_exception   : yes     cpuid level : 13     wp      : yes     flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority     bogomips    : 5984.96     clflush size    : 64     cache_alignment : 64     address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual     power management:      My questions are:   1. Is node correct choice for my problem description?   2. If nodejs is not correct choice for my problem description. What will be better alternative? As thread based approach will not scale for IO driven application.    3. How to find out what is causing that much CPU hike in complete integrated application and simple http program?   4. According to some node blog, I can support upto 10K parallel request with nodejs. But with if with only simple http server node is spiking b/w 20% cpu. How I will be able to support 10K user?"}
{"_id": "196088", "title": "how to convince team and project manager that post-launch deployments are okay for new features", "text": "We have a site that launched and is \"feature-complete\", we've done all that the client has asked for and fixed a few bugs post-launch. However, I noticed that our site's home page is using 100 SQL queries, and there's _no_ caching. I took half a day to add caching and did it in a branch. Now I'm wondering how I can convince the project manager and other team members and gain support for a post-launch deployment of this optimization. What reasons can I give that it won't harm the project to do this? Or do I just wait until the next project launches to make these sorts of improvements? More details:   * I can't very well tell future employers that I implemented caching and saw an increase in performance without actually deploying it and capturing the improvement (through google analytics or Page Speed or some other method), or can I?   * This is an agency environment, none of our projects use any caching or any other performance optimization   * The site has 50k visitors   * The site is only live with full functionality for 1 month, around the end of May it will be replaced with a static page (marketing campaign site)   * local testing reducing page load from ~3 seconds to ~700ms"}
{"_id": "205611", "title": "Creating Set Subclasses or Allowing Outside Configuration", "text": "I have a `TriggerCaller` and a `TriggerAction` class. The Caller \"calls\" the `do()` method on the action, which is set with the `TriggerCaller`s `setAction()` method. The rest of the program should deal with the `Trigger` class, which contains the caller and the action. I have two options: 1) Give the `Trigger` class the methods `setAction` and `setCaller`. This seems to make sense because it means I won't have to redefine things for each subclass (see option 2) and I won't favor one object over the other (see option 3). 2) I can define `Trigger` subclasses for each Caller-Action combination. This seems to \"feel\" better for some reason I can't articulate, but is impractical. There are simply too many combinations of TriggerCallers and TriggerActions to make. 3) Define a `Trigger` subclass for each `TriggerCaller`, for instance `TriggerMIDI` for the `MIDICaller` and give that class a `setAction()`. This seems to make sense from a GUI perspective, because in the interface people select the `TriggerCaller` type from a \"Create\" menu and then config it with an action in a dialog (along with other things). I feel that (1) makes the most sense, but somehow it just feels... wrong. I think that I'm exposing too much of the classes inner workings. I'm also putting the burden on the GUI code of setting the class up (sort of). Is there a better solution? Which one should I choose?"}
{"_id": "87229", "title": "Building a company and want to know how ethical to put samples from projects I did before on the new company website", "text": "I built a lot of websites and applications during my life, I can put them under the following categories:   * Did all the project as a freelancer -> For other companies    * Did part of the project as a freelancer -> For other companies    * Did all the project my self while was working for another company    * Did the project with team members while was working for another company    * Did all the project my self and for my self Now I am creating a company with a new brand and have my own employees, My question is: Is it ethical, and normal to put on my new company website, screenshots and info about these projects I created my self before? which to put and which not put from the previous categories?"}
{"_id": "203758", "title": "Verification of requirements in a closed system", "text": "I'm on my first real software project following the whole SDLC and am a bit confused. We have a requirement that states something like \"The battery will be monitored each second\" which needs to be verified. This is something that can't really be checked in the system since it happens \"inside\", i.e. there's no output that would show that the battery was checked each second. It is my understanding that at this phase the verification is done on a closed system, so you can't just use a debugger to verify something like this. Is this assumption wrong? Or can the requirement be considered to be ambiguously defined."}
{"_id": "134511", "title": "In what areas of programming is algorithm run time actually an important issue?", "text": "Sometimes I hear people say that because of the speed of processors and the amount of memory available, algorithm efficiency and runtime aren't, in practice, of major concern. But I imagine there are still areas where such considerations do remain of paramount importance. Two that come to mind are in algorithmic trading, where thousands of transactions must be conducted in fractions of a second, and embedded systems programming, where memory and power are often scarce. Am I right about these examples ? and what other areas would also be examples?"}
{"_id": "203757", "title": "Database Schema for Pricing Products (packages, promotions, qty based, limited time offer...)", "text": "I'm working on a new point of sale for a company that products for different prices depending on the product mix. All products have a base price. To explain my problem, I will use the following info:               Product         Category        Price     A               1               45     B               1               70     Q               2               20     R               2               27     S               2               15     X               3               17     Y               3               22     Z               3               16      The company has Packages, for example Package \"Combo\": for product A or B, if you choose 1 of Q or R and 1 of X, Y or Z you get a $20 discount. **Case A:** Sometimes customers add on to a base product when placing an order, for example: They wan't one of Product A, and they add Product Q and Product P to that to create a package that has a discounted price. Then they might add that they want 1 of product B with 1 R and 1 Z. **Case B:** Sometimes customers will add 1 A and 2 B, 2 Q, 1 S, 2 X and 1 Z. According to the rules set forth by \"Combo\" Package, only 2 combos would apply because S is not a combo item. Other promotions are dependent on quantity, so if you buy 2 of B you get 20% off and/or dependent upon time, it is only valid after 5 PM or before 10% off if before 10am. Another promotion might depend on when your last purchase occured or if you have purchase more than $X in Y timeframe. **My Problems:** 1) How do I structure the tables so I my create the different packages or promotions in a way that is very flexible to add different types of promotions with different requirements? 2) When they order like Case B (or a mix of Case A and Case B) how do I structure my query so that I can test to see what product mix(es) are in the order, and update the prices/descriptions accordingly? Ultimately, the best result for this query would return which packages and promotions have requirements fulfilled in order of which gives the most benefit to the customer (i.e. maybe what they ordered fulfills requirements for promotion 1 and 3, but promotion 3 is less expensive. This must work with multiple promotions). Thanks in advance for the help! **UPDATE #1** To better describe the problems at hand and to update the work done thus far to solve them I'm incluiding an ERD of the Product Model limited to the entities and attributes that affect the issue (i.e. inventory is not at play here, so no inventory entities are present). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/JaKxi.png) I'm also including sample data from the entities and attributes that affect this question (to simplify reading the data, I'm putting in name/descriptions in place of Foreign Keys): Here is a link to a flow chart giving an example of a combo, a fast and visual way to understand the table structure.               PRODUCT     ---------     ID  Name     ================================     1   Hamburger     2   Cheeseburger     3   Bacon Hamburger     4   Bacon Cheeseburger     5   Orange Juice     6   Apple Juice     7   Coffee     8   Coke     9   French Fries     10  Onion Rings     11  Soup du Jour     12  Hamburger Combo     13  CheeseBurger Combo     14  Bacon Hamburger Combo     15  Bacon Cheeseburger Combo     16  Combo Side     17  Combo Beverage     18  Small Orange Juice     19  Large Orange Juice     20  Small Apple Juice     21  Large Apple Juice     22  Add Extra Patty     23  Add Avocado          PRODUCT COMPONENT     ------------------     productFrom                 productTo            ===================================================     Hamburger Combo             Hamburger     Hamburger Combo             Combo Side     Hamburger Combo             Combo Beverage     CheeseBurger Combo          Cheeseburger     CheeseBurger Combo          Combo Side     CheeseBurger Combo          Combo Beverage     Bacon Hamburger Combo       Bacon Hamburger     Bacon Hamburger Combo       Combo Side     Bacon Hamburger Combo       Combo Beverage     Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Bacon Cheeseburger     Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Combo Side     Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Combo Beverage          PRODUCT FEATURE     ----------------     ID  Description     =======================     1   Combo Side Option     2   Combo Beverage     3   Juice     4   Orange Juice Size     5   Apple Juice Size     6   Extras          PRODUCT FEATURE APPLICABILITY     ------------------------------     product                     productFeature  ProductFeatureApplicabilityType     ============================================================================     Hamburger Combo             Combo Side      Required     Hamburger Combo             Juice Flavor    Required     Cheeseburger Combo          Combo Side      Required     Cheeseburger Combo          Juice Flavor    Required     Bacon Hamburger Combo       Combo Side      Required     Bacon Hamburger Combo       Juice Flavor    Required     Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Combo Side      Required     Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Juice Flavor    Required               PRODUCT FEATURE APPLICABILITY     ------------------------------     productFeature  product             ProductFeatureApplicabilityType     ============================================================================     Combo Side      Hamburger Combo             Required     Combo Beverage  Hamburger Combo             Required     Extras          Hamburger Combo             Optional     Combo Side      Cheeseburger Combo          Required     Combo Beverage  Cheeseburger Combo          Required     Extras          Cheeseburger Combo          Optional     Combo Side      Bacon Hamburger Combo       Required     Combo Beverage  Bacon Hamburger Combo       Required     Extras          Bacon Hamburger Combo       Optional     Combo Side      Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Required     Combo Beverage  Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Required     Extras          Bacon Cheeseburger Combo    Optional                         OPTIONAL FEATURE     ------------------     productFeatureFrom  Product             ProductFeatureTo             =============================================================     Combo Side Option   French Fries     Combo Side Option   Onion Rings     Combo Side Option   Soup du Jour     Combo Beverage                          Juice     Combo Beverage      Coffee     Juice                                   Orange Juice Size     Juice                                   Apple Juice Size     Orange Juice Size   Orange Apple Juice     Orange Juice Size   Orange Apple Juice     Apple Juice Size    Small Apple Juice     Apple Juice Size    Large Apple Juice     Extras              Add Extra Patty     Extras              Add Avocado      So, with the research and support provided by the community up until know, I have been able to solve Problem #1. In fact, I have done so with more flexibility than I thought I could do in the first deployment of the system. All though there have been advances with Problem 2, it is not solved to satisfaction. There have been some ideas on how to do this, Neil McGuilgan asked a great question leading towards a possible solution using Relational Division (dba.stackexchange.com/questions/45829/what-is-the-name-of-this-type- of-query-and-what-is-an-efficient-example) and this book (www.amazon.com/books/dp/0471380237) helped a lot. However this solution at present, and as I understand it, only works with \"one\" record (combo) at a time. If a customer Walks up and says he wants 2 cheeseburgers, 1 hamburger, 1 small Apple Juice, 1 Coke, 1 French Fries and 2 onion Rings, I need a way to detect that there is only one combo in the mix and add the other products at base price. If there are multiple combo combinations, I'm looking (ideally for an sql query) that can prioritize combo combinations by largest savings. One idea I've come up with to solve problem two is to add and attribute to PRODUCT COMPONENT flaggin the main product for the combo (i.e. hamburger). Then when running the pricing process, query what products in the order are main products in a \"package\", relating the query to the discount given by the PRICE COMPONENT table and ordering by that value (descending), and in that order of packages check to see if you can create a \"package\" with the remaining non-main products with a query and loop the process until there are no more main products or there are no more non-main products in the remainder."}
{"_id": "134514", "title": "Moving from a CVCS to a DVCS in a big company, what is the right way to do it?", "text": "**Major Edit: Added more info about how the devs are setup and how a DVCS would help, so you don't have to second guess the DVCS (but you are still welcome to do it =P).** I just started a new job and I'm currently at the process of trying to introduce a DVCS (mercurial, but the actual DVCS is not really a matter of discussion at this point, it could also be git) to the company (big, multinational). So far I've gotten nothing but positive attention, even at managerial and directive level, but I want to make sure I'm not at all disruptive to the organization or anyone's jobs. **The way the developers are setup is in a team room, so there's a lot of communication going on. There is also an integrator, that communicates on a daily basis two or three times with the team leader. Also, there are more dev teams on other parts of the world, maybe 20 offices in 6 or 7 countries.** Company culture is open and there would be no problem pilot testing the tool (thanks for the answer below, already +1d)... but **the real question is** (in capital letters): **HOW DO YOU CONVINCE MANAGEMENT _AROUND ALL THE OFFICES OVER THE WORLD_ THAT ITS A SANE THING TO DO AND WILL ACTUALLY BRING HAPPINESS AND PRODUCTIVITY TO DEVELOPERS?** (say pilot testing and showing it works is just one part of the answer). Elaborating on the context... Does it make sense to make the switch?, yes (note: current SCM is Perforce). I've witnessed several sources of frustration classic to centralized source control management, including:   * People accidentally breaking other's builds or stepping on each others' toes while submitting code revisions.  **This is not often as the responsible must wear a pink hat (hilarious stuff) until the build is fixed, but the hat is still there, and when builds get broken it affects the other offices around the world.** **DVCS to the rescue** : Builds are now broken in a single office, people lose the fear to use version control and can actually second-guess themselves after or check with a peer by sharing their changes easier and not necessarily with the rest of the group.   * Unnecessary bureaucracy when it comes to granting access (e.g. looks like everyone is granted access to most of the code). **There is a dedicated group of admins who take 1 to 3 days to grant access to the code, meanwhile other devs must ask their peers for the code just to look at it... but AFAIK, the often wait instead.** **DVCS to the rescue:** Administration does not have to be centralized on a little group of overwhealmed people, new employees get the code from the project's responsible (1st level) or a peer with repository access (2nd level) who could even review their code and submit it along with his/her changes.   * Complaints with regards to slowness due to network latency. **Not that directly, but sometimes a) The perforce server is down, b) Internet is down, c) Internet or perforce server is slow. Yes, not that often, but it is annoying enough to kick you off your train of thought sometimes.** **DVCS to the rescue** : When using the DVCS you obviously don't need a network connection. Worst case scenario?, share your changes over LAN or sneakernet (with patch queues).   * Trouble when trying to collaborate with external providers that do not necessarily belong to the organization. **This happens often enough and security is a concern here AFAIK, and clients suffer from the access bureaucracy**. **DVCS to the rescue** : So granting access to a subrepo here would be the ideal solution here... also, clients themselves could use version control among themselves without needing to setup their own server and they would be able to integrate better to the internal workflow as currently Perforce access access to the local network, and thus more bureaucracy which is not necessarily security here, as external collaborators still have access to thumbdrives and email. Actual security would be having externals work in situ... in a dungeon or something, and grope them \u00e0 la TSA on their way out to make sure they are not getting the code out.   * Workaround to integrate modules from other repositories. Requires additional maintenance/effort from the developers. * _These guys actually wrote themselves (I think) a plugin to make perforce fetch files from other repositories in other parts *_ **DVCS to the rescue** : Their solution looks a lot like the mercurial subrepo feature, wich uses a file (.hgsub) to indicate what code goes where, but they have to maintain the other repositories' states in the same file (which is done separately and automatically by mercurial in the .hgsubstate file).   * Working with the source code requires to mark files for edit in advance. This adds an annoying extra step IMHO. **If you don't do this the file will be in read only mode and you will not be able to edit it on your IDE, also, this IMHO makes the local copy prone to low integrity. This trait of perforce makes me think there was a lazy developer that didn't want to make the client check the files against the repo before versioning the changes. It also makes me think/personify Perforce as an idiot paranoid that says** _**\"DONT CHANGE THE FILES WITHOUT TELLING ME OR THE SQUIRRELS WILL COME AND EAT ME!!!\"_**.  **DVCS to the rescue** : Well... I guess any other SCM software knows there are no carnivore squirrels.   * Little project integrity in developers' machines (see previous point; its harder to add changes without previously indicating them to Perforce). **You don't need a DVCS for this... but if you make changes locally and for some reason forgot to add them, you are going to have a hard time detecting it**. Once you detect it there is a two step command line instruction thing I saw somewhere to detect changes you did without telling Perforce. Given that context **what would you say is the best way to... ?** :   1. Know/demonstrate if the migration would actually benefit the employees and the company.   2. Ease the embracement of change, or at least make it look like its worth the effort   3. Not complicate others' jobs.   4. Convince management worldwide.   5. Avoid making the integrator's job a royal pain. My second question (and focusing on the last point) I've always been a DVCS evangelist mainly because it eases the work and collaboration between developers... but up to this point I've never been faced with having to consider the integrators' perspective (the one in charge of coordinating teams' source code, creating and releasing the builds... from across the globe) who at some point might have to face two SCM sources or at least the migration itself. Then, **how can the migration process affect integrators the least?**."}
{"_id": "87226", "title": "Develop secureness first or as a later step?", "text": "The question Do you actively think about security when coding? asks about security mindset while programming. Obviously, a developer does need to think about security while coding -- SQL injection, password security, etc. However, as far as the real, fully-formed security, especially the tricky problems that may not be immediately obvious, should I be concerned with tackling these throughout the development process, or should it be a step of its own in later development? I was listening to a podcast on Security Now and they mentioned about how a lot of the of the security problems found in Flash were because when Flash was first developed it wasn't built with security in mind (because it didn't need to) -- therefore Flash has major security flaws at its core. I know that no one would want to actively disagree with \"think security first\" as a best practice, but many companies do not follow best practices. **So, what is the correct approach to balance between needing to get the product done and developing it securely?**"}
{"_id": "185451", "title": "Should my small software library avoid using other libraries?", "text": "I've just released a small Java library that offers only a few classes and methods. Since I built the project with Maven, I immediately used several third-party libraries to achieve my goals, specifically:   * **commons-lang3** (for some general Java stuff)   * **slf4j-api** (for logging)   * **commons-io** (for a tiny bit of file stuff - literally reading a file once, I think) I don't want my library to appear bloated in the eyes of others. Should I be trying to remove my reliance on these libraries to minimise my footprint? Any advice on what types of libraries would be best to avoid when considering using more in the future?"}
{"_id": "185452", "title": "In MVC, can/should basic data retrieval from the Model be done in the View?", "text": "Given the concept of _'skinny controllers, fat models'_ and the general acceptance that Views can directly call on Models when requiring data for output, should one consider handling the 'get and display' parts of requests within the Views and not the Controller? For example (attempted to keep code fairly generic): **Controller**               <?php          class Invoice extends Base_Controller {              /**          * Get all the invoices for this month          */              public function current_month() {                  // as there's no user input let's keep the controller very skinny,             // DON'T get data from the Model here, just load the view                  $this->load->view('invoice/current_month');              }          }      **View**               <?php          // directly retrieve current month invoices here          $invoices = $this->invoice_model->get_current_month();          // get some other display-only data, e.g. a list of users for a separate list somewhere on the page          $users = $this->user_model->get_users();          ?>          <h1>This month's invoices</h1>          <ul>     <?php foreach ($invoices as $invoice) { ?>          <li><?php echo $invoice['ref']; ?></li>          <?php } ?>     </ul>      To me, this makes at least some sense in the cases where a request is essentially just a View. Why should the Controller have to collect and pass on the data to the View when it can just retrieve it itself? This leaves the Controller open for purely 'Application level' processing (e.g. handling GET/POST requests, managing access rights and permissions etc.) as well as keeping the Models reusable and all the other good stuff. If this example was extended to allow a user to filter the results, the Controller would just handle the POST from the form and pass the filters to the View, which would then request the data again, this time with the filters. Is this a valid approach to developing an MVC application? Or am I overlooking an important part of the role a Controller should play?"}
{"_id": "39939", "title": "How to move ahead in Project/Product Management after 3 yrs of Programming Experience?", "text": "For being a better programmer there are ways to get started like:   1. Get some open source project and start contributing to it.   2. Solve some `Project Euler` or `Yodacode` Excercise. But if someone wants to move in the direction of `Project/Product Management` then in what direction he/she should move and what available options are out there to get started in that direction. Background: I mid level Programmer with 3 yrs of Programming Experience and I want to get started in `Project Management/Product Management` Role but my resume shows programming experience and so my question is how to break into Project/Product Management line with 3 yrs of Programming Experience. Do we have similar options available for `Project/Product Management` as we have for Programming like one's mentioned above ? _I know it's`chicken and egg` situation but what is the best way to get out of it ?_"}
{"_id": "218217", "title": "Liskov principle: violation by type-hinting", "text": "According to the Liskov principle, a construction like the one below is invalid, as it strengthens a pre-condition. I know the example is pointless/nonsense, but when I last asked a question like this, and used a more elaborate code sample, it seemed to distract people too much from the actual question.               //Data models     abstract class Argument     {         protected $value = null;         public function getValue()         {             return $this->value;         }         abstract public function setValue($val);     }     class Numeric extends Argument     {         public function setValue($val)         {             $this->value = $val + 0;//coerce to number             return $this;         }     }     //used here:     abstract class Output     {         public function printValue(Argument $arg)         {             echo $this->format($arg);             return $this;         }         abstract public function format(Argument $arg);     }     class OutputNumeric extends Output     {         public function format(Numeric $arg)//<-- VIOLATION!         {             $format = is_float($arg->getValue()) ? '%.3f' : '%d';             return sprintf($format, $arg->getValue());         }     }      Why would this kind of _\"violation\"_ be considered harmful? So much so that some languages, like the one I used in this example (PHP), don't even allow this? I'm not allowed to strengthen the type-hint of an abstract method but, by overriding the `printValue` method, I _am_ allowed to write:               class OutputNumeric extends Output     {         final public function printValue(Numeric $arg)         {             echo $this->format($arg);         }         public function format(Argument $arg)         {             $format = is_float($arg->getValue()) ? '%.3f' : '%d';             return sprintf($format, $arg->getValue());         }     }      But this would imply repeating myself for each and every child of `Output`, and makes my objects harder to reuse. I understand why the Liskov principle exists, don't get me wrong, but I find it somewhat difficult to fathom why the signature of an _abstract_ method in an _abstract_ class has to be adhered to so much stricter than a non-abstract method. Why I'm not allowed to hind at a child class, in a child class? The way I see it, the child class `OutputNumeric` is a specific use-case of `Output`, and thus might need a specific instance of `Argument`, namely `Numeric`. Is it really so wrong of me to write code like this, when I _am_ allowed to write this:               abstract class Output     {         public function printValue(Argument $arg)         {             echo $this->format($arg);         }         public function(Argument $arg)         {             throw new RuntimeException(__METHOD__. ' Has to be overridden by child class');         }     }     class OutputNumeric extends Output     {         final public function format(Numeric $arg)         {             $format = is_float($arg->getValue()) ? '%.3f' : '%d';             return sprintf($format, $arg->getValue());         }     }      This sort of acchieves the same thing, but it's just hacky and, to my eye, horrid code..."}
{"_id": "251349", "title": "Generally speaking, is it better to make all the functional parts or get UI working first - or a mix of the two?", "text": "Generally speaking, is it better to make all the functional parts or get UI working first - or a mix of the two? Assuming you're working on something large, is it generally accepted practice to get all the functional data harvesting blobs working before any UI, get all the UI working one piece at a time as you go, or something in the middle? We all know to break work down in to manageable pieces, but the question is ultimately whether UI is included in manageable pieces I suppose. For the case of the example, consider a GUI application with one root window, but over a dozen tabs in various docks to separate different data components. Each individual tab has a relatively complex set of moving parts behind it from a functional units perspective. The example application in this particular question is here with the accompanying blog and the original commercial product."}
{"_id": "166037", "title": "How to explain why design choices are good?", "text": "As I've become a better developer, I find that much of my design skill comes more from intuition than mechanical analysis. This is great. It lets me read code and get a feel for it quicker. It lets me translate designs between languages and abstractions much easier. And it let's me get stuff done faster. The downside is that I find it harder to explain to teammates (and worse, management) why a particular design is advantageous; especially teammates that are behind the times on best practices. \"This design is more testable!\" or \"You should favor composition over inheritance.\" go right over their heads, and lead into the rabbit hole of me trying to clue everyone in to the last decade of software engineering advances. I'll get better at it with practice of course, but in the mean time it involves a lot of wasted time and/or bad design (that will lead to wasted time fixing it later). How can I better explain why a certain design is superior, when the benefits aren't completely obvious to the audience?"}
{"_id": "166038", "title": "Is it possible to keep only one Database for both web and desktop applications?", "text": "I'm experiencing a trouble with my business model, let me explain better. I'm developing a software for 1 year and few months, it's for the food industry, more exactly a software to: _Delivery, Take Way, Table Reservation, POS, Accounts Payable and Receivable, Prints(receipt), Kitchen Monitors Orders, Customers Orders Control and Fiscal Area._ Well, I had separated the software mainly in two areas, one is web area and the other is desktop area (Used by Admins only) and local installed. 1 - Web Area (Basically do the follow:)   * Show Catalog with the products   * Customers Make Orders   * Customers Pay for the Orders   * etc ... as mentioned above 2 - Desktop Area   * Manage Orders   * Manage Customers   * Manage Suppliers   * Manage Accounts Payable and Receivable   * etc ... as mentioned above The web area is hosted in an online web server (scripts and database are online). The Desktop area is hosted locally in a Linux machine with a local database and local scripts files. My question is: Is it possible to keep **only one Database** for both applications? If YES, please what is the best approach? ## Follow my technical specification environment _Database: Actually I have two databases working and I would love to keep only one._ Operating System: Linux (Kernel 2.6.X and above) or Windows (XP and above) For the Web Area   * Apache, PHP, Python, Java Script, Shell Script and MySQL. For the Desktop Area:   * PHP-GTK2, Apache, PHP, MySQL and Shell Script. * * * ## Addtional Information about the system [EDITED] The main purposes to have a Desktop environment is:   1. I need to print and give out Tax Coupon on each new order.    2. I have the drawer.    3. I have a serial reader (Bar code).    4. I have a terminal to query for information.    5. and few other stuffs that is so hard if not impossible to do in the web environment. **Desktop relational schema: 104 tables. Web relational schema: 42 tables.**   1. Permissions is assigned based on: Deny all by default, and assigns as needed.    2. (Validation / Sanitization) has already been done in the web application.   3. Until now performance is not a problem, since every fiscal year part of my database will be archived. (Also customer, suppliers and all related data about them will be archived after 3 years of inactivity).  My real problem is I have 2 environments today and I would love to have only 1. Then \"merge\" the both worlds into one is an option, but not sure about. I would love to read here a lot of ideas about this matter. **Observation about the process:** Today it is in operation and it works fine, but I feel like waste time in some process. Take a look in the scenario:   1. The order is made in the internet, then stored in my Web database.   2. The \"order\" is sent to the kitchen and prepared.   3. Print a receipt (Tax Coupon), put it with the order and delivery to the customer.   4. A Tax Coupon is generated by my Desktop Environment and it need a call to the orders table, but it is not the Web Order Table but a Desktop Order Table. _In few words I need to generate again the order to fill up the Tax Coupon. The same happen to Customer Register, Supplier Register and few other stuffs._ I hope this information turn my question more readable. Thanks Again!"}
{"_id": "70708", "title": "Will hand-written assembly disappear?", "text": "Last week I was wondering, with compilers getting better and better at optimizing, will there be a point when there is no need for hand written assembly? Are there still specialized fields where the compilers aren't smart enough to produce code that rivals hand-written assembly?"}
{"_id": "232382", "title": "How can Scrum be adapted to allow for support obligations?", "text": "Scrum's great for new development and proactive tasks. But I've never been sure how to use it when the department's obligations also include analyzing/answering/fixing customer support questions, which come in unpredictably, typically have high enough priority to interrupt what we planned on doing, and whose complexity ranges from trivial to major. The books I've seen so far don't seem to cover that situation. So how are other folks handling it?"}
{"_id": "204253", "title": "Is where a link goes part of a view use case?", "text": "Say I got a minimal use case such as \"view home page\" or \"view banner ad\". Should it be included or exluded in the use case actually following the link? What I mean is that whether it belongs to the use case \"view page 1\" if a report is that \"The link from page 1 to page 2 is not working\" in the common case of a \"link not working\"."}
{"_id": "204252", "title": "What is the value of OOP in ASP.NET MVC?", "text": "As a C++ developer from the 90s during the great OOP wars, I put high value to OOP as a basis for hiring new C# developers into the company. However, there are plenty of frameworks today like ASP.NET MVC that handles most of the OOP heavy lifting. Programmers without deep knowledge of OOP can just as easily follow the paradigm and still be able to complete their projects. OOP may not be as compelling as it was before for us application developers, especially with a framework like MVC. I can see a few instance where OOP will be really handy, like for example developing a workflow type of a project. Or those with state-machine requirements. But really, most projects that really come by (at least to us here anyway) are just CRUD functionalities. Below is my list when hiring. Is it fair to have OOP there as the number one item?   1. OOP and Design   2. Server side programming: C#, ASP.NET MVC and EF   3. Client side programming: JQuery, CSS, HTML, etc.   4. Database design"}
{"_id": "204255", "title": "HTML5 canvas performance and performance monitoring tool for Javascript", "text": "I have made a program in Javascript and HTML5 canvas and I am wondering what happens when you draw a shape on a certain location of canvas then draw another shape on top of that same object. Does it consume more memory because I am drawing new object on top of each others? (Currently, rendering process of my program is not that fast, I am assuming it is due to I am drawing new object on top of old object, is that right?). Also, I want to know what kind of performance monitoring tools available out there for Javascript programs. I want to figure out which fragment of my program consumes the most memory so I can optimise that particular process to be faster. Thank you."}
{"_id": "101822", "title": "Is there an analogue to \"FizzBuzz\" for choosing clients?", "text": "This is for the freelancers. In my past life as a full-time employee, I was involved in hiring and interviewed a good number of developers. I learned that it was much more valuable to see a developer work through a problem, however small, than to talk about experience, etc. Now I'm working as a freelancer/consultant. One of the nicer things is the freedom to choose what I want to work on. But now, a few years in, I've learned (the hard way) that some clients are not worth the money. They can be fickle, unreasonable, demanding, and difficult to work with in a very demoralizing way. So I've been wondering: is there a better way to \"interview\" clients? Obviously any method would have to be subtle, as the client probably isn't expecting to be tested. But is there an analogue to \"FizzBuzz\" that will tell me whether I should sign on, or back away slowly?"}
{"_id": "205623", "title": "Can we illustrate a CPU pipeline with a UML sequence diagram?", "text": "I study multicore pipelining and the diagrams are not UML sequence diagrams for instance ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/WQrP1.png) Why not remake this diagram like an UML sequence diagram, would not that be more clear so that we can see both how time progresses as well as the data paths since I do not think it is clear distinction between data path and time? In UML time goes downward and the data path goes right and left. Can you comment or answer why pipelining generally is not illustrated with UML?"}
{"_id": "39680", "title": "How does one meaningfully measure maintainability?", "text": "Context: I'm an enterprise developer in an all-MS shop. Can anyone recommend a good way of **objectively measuring maintainability** of a piece of code or an application? **Why maintainability** : I'm tired of \"quality\" metrics in my group revolving only around number of bugs and code coverage. Both metrics are easy to game, especially when you're not measuring maintainability. Shortsightedness and deadlines result in huge amounts of technical debt that never really get addressed. **Why the ability to measure objectively** : I work in a big enterprise group. If you can't objectively measure it, you can't hold people accountable for it or make them get better at it. Subjective measurements either don't happen or don't happen consistently. I'm looking at VS2010 code metrics, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other recommendations."}
{"_id": "39687", "title": "Interesting or unique types in programming languages?", "text": "We have all seen integer, floating point, string, and the occasional decimal type. What are some of the most strange or unique or useful types you have encountered, useful or not?"}
{"_id": "71259", "title": "Code reviewing in the presence of strong type inference and basic editors", "text": "I\u2019m curious to know how folks deal with comparative code reviews (version x against y of a file) in the presence of strong type inference, that is when \u2018var\u2019 (in C#) or \u2018auto\u2019 (in C++ 0x) is used in place of the older more verbose (explicit) type declaration. When IntelliSense is available one can just float the mouse over the keyword to determine (if necessary) the inferred type \u2013 but what do folks do when viewing such sources in Notepad or Code Collaborator etc. Of course strong type inference predates C# and C++ by decades, so how do folks in other languages that have had the feature for years cope? I\u2019m inclined to think that the right hand side of the assignment expression is where most bugs are to be found."}
{"_id": "163715", "title": "Ambiguous program requirements", "text": "it seems that most of the programming exercises that I am currently doing, are a little bit ambiguous when it comes to specifying what should I do. When programmers work with clients, are the clients ambiguous as well about what they want and I should learn to guess?"}
{"_id": "18865", "title": "Is there any place to find real-world usage-style tutorials for programming languages?", "text": "Let's face it. When you want to learn something completely new, be it mathematics or foreign languages, it's easiest to learn when you get real world scenarios in front of you, with theory applied. For example, trigonometry can be extremely interesting when applied to creation of 2D platform games. Norwegian can be really interesting to learn if you live in Norway. When I try to look at a new programming language, I always find these steps the hardest:   1. What tools do I need to compile and how do I do it   2. Introduction-step: Why is this programming language so cool? Where and how is it used? (The step I am looking for, real-world scenarios) The rest, deep diving into the language, pure theory and such, is often much easier if you have completed step 1 and 2. Because now you know what it's all about, and can just read the specification when you need to. What I ask is, do you have any recommendations for places I can find such material for programming languages? Be it websites or companies selling books in this style, I'm interested. Also, I am interested in all languages. (If I had found a \"real-world usage\" explained for even INTERCAL, I would be interested). In some other thread here, I found a book called \"Seven Languages in Seven Weeks\". This is kind of what I am looking for, but I believe there must be \"more like this\"."}
{"_id": "71250", "title": "Small refactorings on a poor codebase?", "text": "In the last two years I have worked with a poorly written codebase of nearly 40K lines of code. Over that time I have made many small refactorings to improve it and made some bigger, as time permits. Unfortunately, I still view the codebase as poorly written. What's your experience? Do you think many small fixes can take me somewhere, or I have to stop and allocate a big chunk of time to fix things (of course, management won't be happy if I do this while we're working on the current \"very important\" new feature)."}
{"_id": "33068", "title": "What's the best Open Source code you've ever seen?", "text": "Part of the value of Open Source is to provide great example code to people getting started with a new platform or language. What's the best Open Source code you've encountered, and why do you like your choice? Any language will do, but I'm particularly interested in the best examples of Objective-C you can point out. Obviously this is an open-ended question, so I'll leave the question open for a while and see what kinds of answers we get. Thanks! EDIT: For \"best\" I was thinking of code that follows the idioms in the given language or platform, as well as including the parts that make code \"professional\" - good documentation, a testing suite, etc. Code that is concise, but not overly clever is preferred to very terse or chatty code."}
{"_id": "18868", "title": "What are you thoughts on GWT?", "text": "Since I'm learning Java in this period and I just finished with the tutorials I think I'm ready to start contributing to a project (since I know from experience this is the best way to really learn). I've seen GWT, looks interesting so I thought I should give it a try. I'm thinking however, since GWT deploys Java applications in JavaScript why should I learn GWT when I could learn the actual thing instead (this being JavaScript). My question: is it worth it? Wouldn't someone be better of learning JavaScript if they want to build JS applications, instead of using Java and GWT? I realize that it might be easier to build certain things with GWT but in the end is it worth it? Thanks."}
{"_id": "249887", "title": "What is a class library?", "text": "I'm working on a lawsuit and I need a definition of a 'class library' that I can reference. Every book and all the documentation I can find seems to assume the reader already knows what a library is. Even the wikipedia entry on 'Library (computing)' is low on references. And the references it does have are from the 80s or earlier. So, in the context of C#, what is a class library? (with references) I have been getting a decent number of definitions from 'Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software' but it also assumes the reader knows what a library is."}
{"_id": "41248", "title": "How to be a zero-bug programmer?", "text": "My boss has always told me that a good programmer should be able to ensure that the code he or she changes is reliable, correct, and thoroughly self- verified; that you should completely understand all the results and impacts your changes will cause. I have tried my best to be this kind of programmer\u2014by testing again and again\u2014but bugs are still there. How can I be a zero-bug programmer and know what every character of my code will cause and affect?"}
{"_id": "113415", "title": "Coding to interfaces", "text": "I understand why it is a good idea to code to an interface rather than to a concrete class. I find it hard to implement though as other methods generally need to use properties of the given object. Have I got the wrong end of the stick?"}
{"_id": "123375", "title": "Programming paradigms and the maintenance developer", "text": "I was reading, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering, which has a section of maintenance. Since, I'm have been a maintenance developer for years now, I was very interesting facts presented. Here's three.   * Fact 41: Maintenance typically consumes 40 to 80 percent (average, 60 percent) of software costs. Therefore, it is probably the most important life cycle phase of software.   * Fact 42: Enhancement is responsible for roughly 60 percent of software maintenance costs. Error correction is roughly 17 percent. Therefore, software maintenance is largely about adding new capability to old software, not fixing it.   * Fact 45: Better software engineering development leads to more maintenance, not less. This one was counter-intuitive, turns out that good software has more maintenance, because it's easy to change. Hence, it stays in use longer, leading to, yes, more changes. Which paradigm (such as functional, object-oriented, procedural) has the best maintainability, and is there any research to back this up?"}
{"_id": "113418", "title": "Methodologies commonly used for embedded software development?", "text": "I am doing research on software development methodologies are commonly used for embedded software development, and how they differ from their non-embedded software development counterparts. I am having a hard time finding good resources on this topic so if you can recommend me some papers, websites or other material, I will be very grateful."}
{"_id": "233381", "title": "Given n distinct keys, how many different 2-3/Red-black trees can be constructed?", "text": "## Memory refresher/My understanding: A 2-3 tree is a balanced search tree that allows two types of nodes.   1. 2-node: Normal node with two children.      * LChild < Parent and RChild > Parent   2. 3-node: Node with two parents and three children.      * Parent1 < Parent2     * LChild < Parent1, Parent1 < MChild < Parent2, RChild >Parent2 A 2-3 tree is always balanced, and grows when the root raises the height of the tree by one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%E2%80%933_tree My question is then as follows, **given n distinct keys, how many different 2-3 trees can one construct?** My math skills are poor, so if anyone knows how I should \"math\" in order to approach an answer, then that would be awesome! :)"}
{"_id": "159929", "title": "parsing terminology: comments+whitespaces vs actual code", "text": "In languages like c/c++ spacing and comments are ignored and only actual code gets into compiler. I'm interested if there is accepted way of naming these two things?   * comments & spacing   * everything else (actual code) Referring to comments & spacing as \"comments & spacing\" is quite annoying. Any ideas?"}
{"_id": "202488", "title": "Are there mainstream general-purpose non-Turing complete languages available today?", "text": "Non-Turing complete languages offer a great advantage over Turing-complete languages as they are much more analyzable and, thus, offer much broader optimization possibilities. Yet they are barely used and Turing-completeness is actually sold as a good feature. Are there any mainstream non-Turing-complete languages available today that are made for general-purpose programming?"}
{"_id": "233386", "title": "Implementing the Interface Segregation Principle", "text": "Does this `IConvertible` interface satisfy the Interface Segregation Principle (ie. the \"I\" in SOLID)? Here is the definition:               public interface IConvertible     {         TypeCode GetTypeCode();          bool ToBoolean(IFormatProvider provider);         byte ToByte(IFormatProvider provider);         char ToChar(IFormatProvider provider);         DateTime ToDateTime(IFormatProvider provider);         decimal ToDecimal(IFormatProvider provider);         short ToInt16(IFormatProvider provider);         int ToInt32(IFormatProvider provider);         long ToInt64(IFormatProvider provider);         sbyte ToSByte(IFormatProvider provider);         float ToSingle(IFormatProvider provider);         string ToString(IFormatProvider provider);         object ToType(Type conversionType, IFormatProvider provider);         ushort ToUInt16(IFormatProvider provider);         uint ToUInt32(IFormatProvider provider);         ulong ToUInt64(IFormatProvider provider);     }      So if I would like to have a class which will implements this `IConvertible` interface the I have to implement all of those methods, right? Or if I don't implement all of them, then I have to at least make an empty method or throw an Exception, right?. In my opinion, the better way is to make more interface with fewer methods, for example:               public interface IConvertibleInt     {             short ToInt16(IFormatProvider provider);             int ToInt32(IFormatProvider provider);             long ToInt64(IFormatProvider provider);     }      Or even:               public interface IConvertibleInt16     {             short ToInt16(IFormatProvider provider);     }          public interface IConvertibleInt32     {                         int ToInt32(IFormatProvider provider);     }          public interface IConvertibleInt64     {             long ToInt64(IFormatProvider provider);     }      Is my reasoning correct?"}
{"_id": "159920", "title": "A good way of creating XML files at run time", "text": "Please stare at this structure for a second :) ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/uZaWg.png) I should create such a thing all at run time. What are the values that we pass in at run time? the string values you see after \"#\" are passed in so for example AnimalBio, ClinBio, HumanGenome,etc... So I am thinking of declaring some methods like               void AddDeclaration(string str) ;     void AddSubClass(string parent, string child);      such that when I call them they will create those XML-ish tags for me with the values I pass in such as HumnaBio. These are around 15000 items that I am gonna add... What is the best approach that you would suggest for doing this? Do you think using XMLDocument class is the best way of doing it? or do you think I should go with StringBuilder class and add these as strings, or other ways of doing it? Thanks."}
{"_id": "202483", "title": "What is a license and how may I use code under a license?", "text": "(Let me edit this question to try to better get across what I am asking.) I don't understand what a license is and how I may \"use\" it. From the little that I do understand, there are two situations:   1. One writes a program/source code and _puts_ a license on it. The license says how other people may (are allowed) to use the program/source code.   2. I find a program/source code and would like to use it. The program comes with a license and the license tells me how I am allowed to use the program/source code. It is this second point that I am confused about. I have no experience with \"using\" licenses. I see some previous questions about licenses being closed, so just to make it clear: I am not asking for legal advice. I just want to make sure that I am doing it \"right\". I just want to know how one can use a license. To given a concrete real world example of what I am asking: I want to use the library CryptoJS 3.1 to make a web page (to put online for the whole world to see) using this library, but I am uncertain about how I may do this. From what I understand: according to the page about the library, the the library is offered under a license called the New BSD License. But I don't understand what this license is telling me about how I am allowed to use the source code. Specifically, I would appreciate if someone could explain (as if I was a 12 year old): _What do I need to do to use this library on my web page?_ For example: Do I need to give tribute with a link or something like that? One specific thing that is confusing me is that on the page of CryptoJS 3.1 it actually doesn't tell me what the license is verbatim. It says that the license is the New BSD license. There is a link to this page. And one that page is a _template_ for a license. So how do I make sense of this? In summary: I would like to use CryptoJS 3.1, but I don't know how I may do that. * * * (I have figured out the export regulations requirement, so that isn't an issue for me.)"}
{"_id": "159926", "title": "For csv database extracts, how do map keys not create a dependency?", "text": "A lot of my work is done with .csv extracts (reports) from databases. As I have been programming in Clojure, I've received comments that relying on vector indexes creates dependencies. I understand why, and concur. I am rewriting one of my programs to take advantage of the fact that each report's first row contain the column headings, and I could go after each row of data I want by map key. I am rewriting some code to zipmap the headings made into map keys and one row of data (at a time) so I can access the data I want. Here is an example.               (def bene-csv-inp  (fetch-csv-data \"benetrak_roster.csv\"))     (def bene-csv-cols (first bene-csv-inp))     (def bene-csv-data (rest bene-csv-inp))     (def zm1 (zipmap           (map #(keyword %1) bene-csv-cols)                              (first bene-csv-data)))     (zm1 :EmploymentStartDate)     \"21-Jun-82\"      Does a higher level of extraction exist, and if so, what is it that would allow my code not to have to have to hard-code `:EmploymentStartDate` ? If my code has to know these keys, then how is that also not a dependency like an index? Personally, I like going after the data with map keys, because it's less confusing and more informative than indexes. However, I believe I still have a dependency. Thanks."}
{"_id": "132915", "title": "S.O.L.I.D., avoiding anemic domains, dependency injection?", "text": "Although this could be a programming language agnostic question, I'm interested in answers targeting the .NET ecosystem. This is the scenario: suppose we need to develop a simple console application for the public administration. The application is about vehicle tax. They (only) have the following business rules: 1.a) If the vehicle is a car and the last time its owner paid the tax was 30 days ago then the owner has to pay again. 1.b) If the vehicle is a motorbike and the last time its owner paid the tax was 60 days ago then the owner has to pay again. In other words, if you have a car you have to pay every 30 days or if you have a motorbike you have to pay every 60 days. For each vehicle in the system, the application should test those rules and print those vehicles (plate number and owner information) that don't satisfy them. What I want is: 2.a) Conform to the S.O.L.I.D. principles (especially Open/closed principle). What I don't want is (I think): 2.b) An anemic domain, therefore business logic should go inside business entities. I started with this:               public class Person     // You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.     {         public string Name { get; set; }              public string Surname { get; set; }     }          public abstract class Vehicle     {         public string PlateNumber { get; set; }              public Person Owner { get; set; }              public DateTime LastPaidTime { get; set; }              public abstract bool HasToPay();     }          public class Car : Vehicle     {         public override bool HasToPay()         {             return (DateTime.Today - this.LastPaidTime).TotalDays >= 30;         }     }          public class Motorbike : Vehicle     {         public override bool HasToPay()         {             return (DateTime.Today - this.LastPaidTime).TotalDays >= 60;         }     }          public class PublicAdministration     {         public IEnumerable<Vehicle> GetVehiclesThatHaveToPay()         {             return this.GetAllVehicles().Where(vehicle => vehicle.HasToPay());         }              private IEnumerable<Vehicle> GetAllVehicles()         {             throw new NotImplementedException();         }     }          class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             PublicAdministration administration = new PublicAdministration();             foreach (var vehicle in administration.GetVehiclesThatHaveToPay())             {                 Console.WriteLine(\"Plate number: {0}\\tOwner: {1}, {2}\", vehicle.PlateNumber, vehicle.Owner.Surname, vehicle.Owner.Name);             }         }     }      2.a: The Open/closed principle is guaranteed; if they want bicycle tax you just inherit from Vehicle, then you override the HasToPay method and you're done. Open/closed principle satisfied through simple inheritance. The \"problems\" are: 3.a) Why a vehicle has to know if it has to pay? Isn't a PublicAdministration concern? If public administration rules for car tax change, why Car has to change? I think you should be asking: \"then why you put a HasToPay method inside Vehicle?\", and the answer is: because I don't want to test for the vehicle type (typeof) inside PublicAdministration. Do you see a better alternative? 3.b) Maybe tax payment is a vehicle concern after all, or maybe my initial Person-Vehicle-Car-Motorbike-PublicAdministration design is just plain wrong, or I need a philosopher and a better business analyst. A solution could be: move the HasToPay method to another class, we can call it TaxPayment. Then we create two TaxPayment derived classes; CarTaxPayment and MotorbikeTaxPayment. Then we add an abstract Payment property (of type TaxPayment) to the Vehicle class and we return the right TaxPayment instance from Car and Motorbike classes:               public abstract class TaxPayment     {         public abstract bool HasToPay();     }          public class CarTaxPayment : TaxPayment     {         public override bool HasToPay()         {             return (DateTime.Today - this.LastPaidTime).TotalDays >= 30;         }     }          public class MotorbikeTaxPayment : TaxPayment     {         public override bool HasToPay()         {             return (DateTime.Today - this.LastPaidTime).TotalDays >= 60;         }     }          public abstract class Vehicle     {         public string PlateNumber { get; set; }              public Person Owner { get; set; }              public DateTime LastPaidTime { get; set; }              public abstract TaxPayment Payment { get; }     }          public class Car : Vehicle     {         private CarTaxPayment payment = new CarTaxPayment();         public override TaxPayment Payment         {             get { return this.payment; }         }     }          public class Motorbike : Vehicle     {         private MotorbikeTaxPayment payment = new MotorbikeTaxPayment();         public override TaxPayment Payment         {             get { return this.payment; }         }     }      And we invoke the old process this way:                   public IEnumerable<Vehicle> GetVehiclesThatHaveToPay()         {             return this.GetAllVehicles().Where(vehicle => vehicle.Payment.HasToPay());         }      But now this code won't compile because there's no LastPaidTime member inside CarTaxPayment/MotorbikeTaxPayment/TaxPayment. I'm starting to see CarTaxPayment and MotorbikeTaxPayment more like \"algorithm implementations\" rather than business entities. Somehow now those \"algorithms\" need the LastPaidTime value. Sure, we can pass the value to the constructor of TaxPayment, but that would violate vehicle encapsulation, or responsibilities, or whatever those OOP evangelists call it, wouldn't it? 3.c) Suppose we already have an Entity Framework ObjectContext (which uses our domain objects; Person, Vehicle, Car, Motorbike, PublicAdministration). How would you do to get an ObjectContext reference from PublicAdministration.GetAllVehicles method and therefore implement the funcionality? 3.d) If we also need the same ObjectContext reference for CarTaxPayment.HasToPay but a different one for MotorbikeTaxPayment.HasToPay, who is in charge of \"injecting\" or how would you pass those references to the payment classes? In this case, avoiding an anemic domain (and thus no service objects), don't lead us to disaster? What are your design choices for this simple scenario? Clearly the examples I've shown are \"too complex\" for an easy task, but at the same time the idea is to adhere to the S.O.L.I.D. principles and prevent anemic domains (of which have been commissioned to destroy)."}
{"_id": "226000", "title": "Handling array passed to object at creation", "text": "When creating my object I pass it an array of a row from my database. (everything in the array we will need, disregarding unnecessary elements at sql query level) When I need to access certain array elements from within my class, I do so like               $this->row['element']      However, As I continue development, I sometimes forget what exactly is in this passed array.(this itself doesn't seem good) I am wondering if their is a professional approach to dealing with this, Or am I the only one who has these \"I wonder whats in the array\" thoughts. One approach to tackling this could be that when we originally pass the array, in the constructor, we assign each element of the array to its own variable, but is this considered professional practice? Additionally by doing this, we could make those variables constants, in a attempt at immutability. Overall I am trying to adhere to good software craftsmanship. Regards."}
{"_id": "226002", "title": "Why should passwords be encrypted if they are being stored in a secure database?", "text": "I have a web service. Right now, I have passwords stored in plain text in a MySQL table on my server. I know this isn't the best practice, and that is why I am working on it. Why should passwords be encrypted if they are being stored in a secure database? I realize that if someone hacks in to my database they will get everyone's password. But I have other problems if someone gets in my database, for example, deleting data. The scenario I can think of is that you are hacked. You restore a database from a couple of hours ago and everything is well. However, if your passwords are plaintext... The thief has all the passwords and you have to reset them all. Hassle to your users. If the passwords were encrypted, you could just restore to previous database. Is this correct thinking?"}
{"_id": "182103", "title": "Is a Unique ID column needed in a many-to-many (junction) table?", "text": "Getting a few projects started with EF, but I had some questions about join tables and keys etc. Lets say I have a table of applications and a table of permissions. Applications have many permissions and each permission can belong to many applications (many-to-many). Now, the Application and Permission tables are easy:               Applications     --------------     PK  ApplicationID         Name          Permissions     --------------     PK  PermissionID         Name      But what's the BEST way to do the join table? I have these two options:               ApplicationPermissions     -----------------------     PK  ApplicationPermissionID     CU  ApplicationID     CU  PermissionID      OR               ApplicationPermissions     -----------------------     CPK ApplicationID     CPK PermissionID          PK = Primary Key     CPK = Composite Primary Key     CU = Composite Unique Index      Have you ever been burned doing it one way over the other? is it strictly preference? It has occurred to me that a lot of the \"differences\" will be abstracted away by my repository pattern (for example, i would almost never create an entire permission object and add it to an application, but do it by ID or unique name or something), but I guess I'm looking for horror stories, one way or the other."}
{"_id": "203286", "title": "Getting started with object detection - Image segmentation algorithm", "text": "Just getting started on a hobby object-detection project. My aim is to understand the underlying algorithms and to this end the overall accuracy of the results is (currently) more important than actual run-time. I'm starting with trying to find a good image segmentation algorithm that provide a good jump-off point for the object detection phase. The target images would be \"real-world\" scenes. I found two techniques which mirrored my thoughts on how to go about this:   1. Graph-based Image Segmentation: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~dph/papers/seg-ijcv.pdf   2. Contour and Texture Analysis for Image Segmentation: http://www.eng.utah.edu/~bresee/compvision/files/MalikBLS.pdf The first one was really intuitive to understand and seems simple enough to implement, while the second was closer to my initial thoughts on how to go about this (combine color/intensity and texture information to find regions). But it's an order of magnitude more complex (at least for me). My question is - are there any other algorithms I should be looking at, that provide the kind of results that these two, specific papers have arrived at? Are there updated versions of these techniques already floating around? Like I mentioned earlier, the goal is relative accuracy of image segmentation (with an eventual aim to achieve a degree of accuracy of object detection) over runtime, with the algorithm being able to segment an image into \"naturally\" or perceptually important components, as these two algorithms do (each to varying extents). I found these two papers after a couple of days of refining my search terms and learning new ones relevant to the exact kind of techniques I was looking for. I have just about reached the end of my personal Google creativity, which is why I am finally here! I do not know if this is a better fit for cstheory.stackexchange (or even cs.stackexchange). I looked, but cstheory seems more appropriate for intricate algorithmic discussions than a broad question like this. Also, I couldn't find any relevant tags there either! But please do move if appropriate."}
{"_id": "84599", "title": "What do you believe is a better of method of learning languages: using books or jumping straight into a project?", "text": "Do you find that it is better to learn through reading books or to just jump straight into a project and pick up what you need to know using the web, or some combination of both?"}
{"_id": "84598", "title": "Object Oriented \"normalization\"", "text": "In database programming there's a technique called \"normalization\" that you do to data you want to store. Has anyone tried to apply this concept to object design? How did you? How did it work out? Edit: To expand/clarify, database normalization is more than a set of principles to reduce redundancy. There's actually steps and stages you go through and at least moderately objective measures that tell you which stage you are in. Object design has its own principles, and there's the concept of smell, but is there any way to do something similar that would tell you that you're in XX-form0,1,2...etc...and methods to move to the next most \"normalized\" level?"}
{"_id": "203282", "title": "Use Case Diagrams - should I create a diagram just for a view business rule?", "text": "I'm modeling a UCD where I have two actors ( a content producer and a developer).. the content producer is going to create and specify details of a storyboard functionality, and the other actor (developer) will only be able to view this storyboard ( he'll log in the application and read the storyboard to start developing what it says, outside the application..) I'm working on the specification of this storyboard functionality and I'd like to know it would be like a best-practice if I describe something like \" > actor- developer\", \"UCD - read scenes of storyboard\" . This is the specification of an application I developed for my thesis and they asked me to add some specification..."}
{"_id": "84592", "title": "Why don't databases have good full text indexes", "text": "Why don't any of the major RDBMS systems like MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc. have good full text indexing support? I realize that most databases support full text indexes to some degree, but that they are usually slower, and with a smaller feature set. It seems that every time you want a really good full text index, you have to go outside the database and use something like Lucene/Solr or Sphinx. Why isn't the technology in these full text search engines completely integrated into the database engine? There's lot of problems with keeping the data in another system such as Lucence, including keeping the data up to date, and the inability to join the results with other tables. Is there a specific technological reason why these two technologies can't be integrated?"}
{"_id": "203289", "title": "Why do some opensouce libraries lack comments?", "text": "I don't know if this happens to most Opensource libraries, but many of I know and use (for example OpenSSL, Webkit, ...) they all lack comments, or contain very few comments. Not to mention their very few documents, it is hard to read their source code. We can hardly understand what a member variable means, or what this function does. This seems to be against coding standard practice Why is that? How can people collaborate to these opensource with very few comments?"}
{"_id": "568", "title": "Do you think managed OSes are a good idea?", "text": "Managed OSes like Microsoft Singularity and JNode are quite an interesting concept. Essentially, the OS is bootstrapped with code written in a low-level language (C/C++/Assembly), which essentially implements a virtual machine. The rest of the OS (and all userland apps) run on the virtual machine. There are some great things about this. For example, you suddenly make arbitrary pointers obsolete. And if well written, you get rid of a ton of legacy crud that most modern OSes currently have. However, as a disadvantage, you're that much farther away from the hardware, and as a developer, you lose the ability to drop down to a lower level of abstraction and get your hands dirty. What are your opinions on this?"}
{"_id": "137271", "title": "Is programming an art or a desk job?", "text": "Developing software needs a clear mind, full of creative ideas (art) & good knowledge in computing, software domain and logic (science). Still many companies consider programming as a desk jobs, where you have tasks you have to finish. But it's not just paper filing, developers are more creative on few days than others, more keen to solve the software issues and problems one day and the other day they don't feel like even if they try hard to do so. How should IT department management concider this issue? Should developers be considered as artists and given full time to do what they like to do (many will not deliver software on time like that) or should developer be treated as assembly workers who have to finish their specific tasks no matter how they feels about it (will not get quality results)? I think it should be somewhere in the middle, but where exactly?"}
{"_id": "137273", "title": "Users creating instances from a template - is there a software pattern that corresponds to this use case?", "text": "I am looking into designing a system where users build a template item and then create many instances based on this template.They then need to be able customise each instance but I also need for them to be able to make changes to the template and have all instances updated. These items are fairly complex, each consisting of many components that will be stored in numerous database tables. I see two implementation paths.   1. Store complete copies of the templates to create the instances and migrate updates to the instances.   2. Store records only for the changes and build each instance from a combination of the template and instance changes. I believe the first option would create a lot of unneeded extra data however the 2nd way introduces complexities in querying the data. This seems like it has probably been implemented many times before but I am having trouble finding much reading material. Are there common names for data models or pattern options used in implementations of such systems? Any advice on benefits or pitfalls of each option, other options, or implementation guidance would be useful too. **edit:** Sorry I may not have been clear. I was looking more for a name for the general architecture not a design pattern. It is the end users who create instances not developers. For example the system might allow users to define templates to model manufacturing processes of many items. Then at different sites where facilities or requirements are different, the end user would would use one of these templates to define a process specific for that site. Things will be added, removed and modified for each site. I believe I will go with option two mentioned above - storing only delta changes, not complete copies."}
{"_id": "178936", "title": "script engine with no global environment (java)", "text": "I am curious about how global variables are handled by script engines. I am looking for a script engine that does not preserve the state of global variables upon invocation. Are there such engines out there? We are looking for a scripting language we can use under the script engine API for Java. When making multiple invocations of a script engine, top-level calls to eval() or evaluate() method preserves the state of global variables, meaning that consequent calls to eval() will use the global variables as they were left by the last invocation. Is there a script engine that does not preserve the state, or provides the ability to reset the state, so that global variables are at their initial state every time the script engine is invoked?"}
{"_id": "202151", "title": "How do you visually represent programming skills?", "text": "I had a discussion with a recruiter recently that made me wish I could visually represent programming skills. In trying to explain how skills relate, **what are the important properties of those skills?** Would a tagging model work (i.e. \"Design Pattern,\" \"Programming Language,\" \"IDE,\" or \"VCS\")? Are they really hierarchical? Clarification: The real problem I see is communicating the level of granularity among skill sets. For instance saying someone \"knows Java\" is a uselessly broad term in describing what someone can DO. However saying they know how to write web services with the Java Programming language is a bit better. To go even further, saying they know Spring as a tool under all that is probably specific enough. What should we call those levels of granularity? What are the relationships between the terms we use? i.e. Framework to Language, Tool to Language, Framework to Solution(like web services), etc."}
{"_id": "137278", "title": "Should I use title case in URLs?", "text": "We are currently deciding on a consistent naming convention across a site with multiple web applications. Historically, I've been an advocate of the 'lowercase all the letters!' when creating URLs:               http://example.com/mysystem/account/view/1551      However, within the last year or two, specifically since I began using ASP.NET MVC & had more dealings with REST based URLs, I've become a fan of capitalizing the first letter of each section/word within the URL as it makes it easier to read (imho).               http://example.com/MySystem/Account/View/1551      We're not in a situation where people _need_ to read or be able to understand the URLs, so that's not a driver per se. The main thing we are after is a consistent approach that is rational and makes sense. Are there any standards that declare it good to do one way or another, or issues that we may run into on (at least realistically modern) setups that would choose a preference over another? What is the general consensus for this debate currently?"}
{"_id": "86688", "title": "What is a dedicated Linux box used for?", "text": "So this is probably a very basic and obvious question for most people, but my google-fu is failing me and it just seems something is going over my head. I've heard numerous people refer to having a 'dedicated linux box' as a central part of a developer's setup. I have been doing web-dev programming for about a year and understand the benefits of programming on a Unix/Linux system. But I seem to be missing what role a 'dedicated linux box' plays in the development process. I would assume that it is used as a server of some sort, but I am yet to run across any needs to have a computer dedicated to running a linux server. Am I just being nieve and mistaking the commonality of programmers preferring to work in linux for a tool used by developers? What do most developers use their 'dedicated linux box' for?"}
{"_id": "83060", "title": "how to write a scalable/flexible php system?", "text": "I am trying to write a joomla type system in PHP to improve my coding/programming skills i need guidelines/rules of thumb to do that. what i basically want to do is create a index.php file which will act as a front controller and will redirect to the request transparently to \"extensions/plugins\" (no need for them to follow MVC and hence it will be more flexible) what are your recommendations on that? **EDIT** i meant i am trying to create it using CORE PHP (no frameworks), but existing libraries are acceptable"}
{"_id": "83064", "title": "GUI, BLL, DAL Organization In A Project", "text": "I'm reading about application layers, and want to use this design in my next project (c#, .Net). Some questions:   1. Is the separation of layers done through namespaces? Project.BLL.Whatever, Project.DAL.Whatever   2. Is it more appropriate to separate by layers, then components (Project.BLL.Component1), or by components, then layers (Project.Component1.BLL)   3. For my DAL, is this layer further organized using different classes? If all database calls are put into a single class, there is no organization. Would it be better to split these up with different classes or namespaces?   4. Are DAL classes typically static? It seems cumbersome to instantiate a DAL object before calling one of its methods each time.  Any other tips for doing things the correct way with these layers would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "18282", "title": "Why do people say that VB gives you bad programming habits?", "text": "Why do people say that VB gives you bad programming habits? What do they mean by this?"}
{"_id": "18288", "title": "Are asserts or unit tests more important?", "text": "Both asserts and unit tests serve as documentation for a codebase, and a means of discovering bugs. The main differences are that asserts function as sanity checks and see real inputs, whereas unit tests run on specific simulated inputs and are tests against a single well-defined \"right answer\". What are the relative merits of using asserts vs. unit tests as the main means of verifying correctness? Which do you believe should be emphasized more heavily?"}
{"_id": "47979", "title": "How to explain my 5 burnt-out years off to a new employer?", "text": "Five years ago, I lost my ability to concentrate long-term, and therefore ability to code with professional efficiency. I know why it happened, I understood how it happened, and on top of being able to re-create my calm and thus relaxed focus, I overcame the original (rooted in childhood) reason why my mind tilted on the overall situation back then; My understanding isn't rooted in words that a psychologist told me, I actually grokked them first-hand. I'm pretty much confident to be able to churn out productivity, possibly even more so than pre-burnout. I also never lost my interest in code nor did I stray from trying to get my abilities back; I kept my knowledge up to date (I could always relatively painlessly learn things coding-related, just not apply them) and thus can say that I'm a better developer than before, even if my average LOC-count over those years is abysmally low. On the other hand, now I have a biography that includes more time on the dole than in a job. What would convince you, as an employer, to give my application a chance? I don't believe I should just keep the whole topic out of it. **EDIT:** I think I should add that I didn't start searching my childhood for causes, it was the solution that pointed me to the cause. Alas, not doing my best to fix the company (which was disintegrating as I left, and completely disbanded a year later) is deeply rooted in the fact that in my childhood I, at one point, gave up on fixing my parent's relationship, misattributing it to my own failure at empathy instead of them being an utterly hopeless case, and I don't really see a way to explain that without referring to childhood. I'm perfectly able to say that without breaking out into tears, though. That said, yes, I'm aware that I'm writing to you guys as friends, not employers, right now, that's the reason why I show my distrust in you by using a one-time account .oO( ... ) Yes, I'm planning to release some OSS code before I apply anywhere. **EDIT 2:** I'm German and going to apply at a German company, so \"creative truth\" is definitely not an option. **As to the chosen answer:** I chose Renesis over Pierre because, while the latter did an awesome job at motivating, getting across that I shouldn't give up and giving me points to beef up my social skills section with, Renesis actually answered my question by summing up the involved key factors."}
{"_id": "208731", "title": "Is an atomic action supposed to be deterministic?", "text": "I was reading about the _at most once_ property that defines what an atomic action is and I've been curios about this example:               x = 0, y = 0     x = y + 1 || y = y + 1      If we use the 'at most once' definition, we can say that, indeed, `x = y + 1` is atomic because   * `y` is only referenced in an another thread and   * `x` is not being read by any thread But the result of this action is not deterministic, it could be 1 or 2 depending on which operation is being computed first. I might be wrong from the start, isn't atomicity suppose to grant some kind of determinism?"}
{"_id": "232655", "title": "Making server logic independent of client interaction", "text": "I'm trying to make a realtime multiplayer web-game in node.js with express framework and socket.io library. But I can't seem to make my server-side logic independent of client interactions. I want client to interact only when I (server side logic) want but I can't seem to be able to do that. For example: I want 2 users to start playing a game. I have to first initialize the game, like set up environment, variables and stuff.. all in a separate, call it: The Game Logic. Only then can I \"allow\" the clients to interact. But how am I supposed to carry on with my Game logic when my `socket.on` event is \"calling the shots\"? With socket.io you have to define triggers like               io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {         socket.on('event', function(data) {             //supposed this is fired when client hits an \"interact with X\" button         });      }      All my logic seem to be dependent on these triggers. I only wanted client to be able to fire that event when _I want_ (after I've set up the game env etc), but defining it like so, separated from my game logic, it creates problems like **how am I supposed to transfer the execution control from socket into my game logic**? And even if I managed to, there's that whole client \"calling the shots\" problem. I then have no control when client could want to interact. Any advice what should I do?"}
{"_id": "76709", "title": "Writing High Quality Software Proposals", "text": "I've been reading over some proposals for software projects recently and I'm a little concerned by what I've seen. Often I feel that proposals have been rushed and/or poorly thought out. It's very possible that proposals don't need to look like a basket of fruit, but if your pitching for work or seeking approval for funding, there has to be some guidelines available for what constitutes a \"decent\" proposal. I was wondering if anyone was aware of good guidelines for writing software proposals or could possibly point me at books/websites etc?"}
{"_id": "175874", "title": "Bluetooth push application", "text": "I am considering the technical viability of software that I want to write. Is there a way that I can push data to a phone (iPhone or Andriod) via Bluetooth without pairing with it? I want to be able to walk into a room and have a computer push data to my phone when I get a certain distance from it, or push data to any phone automatically when it comes within a certain distance to a Bluetooth-ready device?"}
{"_id": "175877", "title": "Developing a DVR software using a hardware KIT", "text": "I'm currently thinking about a project for my masters degree graduation. I start researching for options to make my own video streaming software based on a premade hardware kit having not much knowledge about what I'll exactly need that will match my needs. My search led me to the `DVR` `(Digital Video Recorder)` cards which seems to be the closest to what I need, but still I can't find out a few basic things so I decide to ask for them here. Currently I haven't find a lot of manufacturers that offers such kits so where I can look and have some options to choose from? There are a lot of `DVR` products on the market but they already have a software written for them and even if I buy one they just don't give any documentation or sdk's so buying such is not an option I need a DVR card made exactly for software programers and not end users. Are there a preferred manufacturers that provide such kind of devices with good and developer-friendly documentation? Also - I prefer to do all this with Java, is this an option (I think I will make it with .NET too but really prefer Java as a language of choice)"}
{"_id": "31683", "title": "How can I design an anti-spam algorithm based on a web usage profile?", "text": "I've looked at other anti-spam algorithms, notably Reddit's, but they seem to be inadequate and naive: for example, only banning specific words (like \"spam\") that appear in the title of a post. How can one approach this problem? Are there any tools that would help in this case, and for high-activity online community websites in general?"}
{"_id": "233524", "title": "Web-app DAO and server architecture design for service outside LAN", "text": "i just need a suggestion what path should i take to educate myself further. Situation:   We've got in our company internal (LAN only) application that, among other things, serves something like ordering app. Main functionality is - people can schedule some service(eg. technical consultation, fixing electronics etc.) for a particular date. Today outside customers have to personally come to the employee who will create their ticket. Boss said that we can no longer live in caves so we have to develop web app for scheduling orders.      Background:   \\- our internal system is based on Java(swing) + DB(postgres)   \\- DB server is on dedicated machine   \\- data in DB is fragile (in sense of security)   \\- because this is a little legacy code, most of logic is in stored procedures on DB   \\- we would like to use Vaadin to develop web-app   \\- host web-app on other machine         Main tasks:   \\- separate internal server (DB) from outside world   \\- serve only portions of data from DB required to create a ticket from web- app   \\- find and secure or eliminate weakest link between internet web-app and internal DB system in chosen solution   \\- web-app has to be synchronized with internal ordering app (no condition race for scheduling for particular date)         So how to make it right?:   \\- host web-app on local machine (other than DB, and in DMZ) or use external commercial hosting   \\- create Web-Service which will proxy web-app requests with customers orders to DB and then process them?   \\- use maybe JMS for user requests and then poll from JMS to DB (using maybe Apache Camel to process and store to DB)?   \\- create second database instance just for web-app, and then synchronize master-DB and web-app-DB in some sophisticated way?   \\- in web-app data access layer we would like to develop high abstraction just in case we will have to switch from one of above to another         What are your suggestion, which of these, or maybe something completely different should we consider in this project?"}
{"_id": "238711", "title": "Why does storm not supply a mechanism for supplying topology necessary dependent jars other than the fat jar?", "text": "Following is a question that I had posted at the incubator-storm-user mailing list (verbatim). I had decided to open up the question here as well, because it also contains a conceptual side to it, which might be answered by non-storm users. > I am no python expert and am also a newbie to storm. > > I have gone over the storm source code in order to see how to add jars to > the classpath. Obviously, the preferred mechanism is the fat jar (as > specified in Micheal Noll's tutorial and another post on the storm-user > mailing list). The second seemingly available mechanism is via the > `USER_CONF_DIR` which amounts to `os.path.expanduser(\"~/.storm\")` but this > does not allow for topology independent versioning of the same jars (e.g. > `apache-commons-aaa` version x and version y). There does not seem to be a > third way. Many other Java based technologies do give a way to amend the > classpath. Why doesn't storm? To generify the question a bit, why would a (clustered) java software framework/container not supply a mechanism for adding app specific dependent jars, but force you to use fat jars?"}
{"_id": "13958", "title": "How do you manage feature requests and software changes?", "text": "I am a Software Engineer and over the past few years I have become the de- facto software project manager simply because there isn't one. So to keep our sanity in the R&D/Engineering department, customers have become accustomed to coming to me with their requests. I have no experience in this realm so it is my first time acting as a project manager for software projects. I have managed other things but not software. So, how do you manage software projects and mark priorities? Requests come in at infrequent intervals so we very well could be working on something for someone else and then another person comes in with a \"rush\" job that needs working on. Is it easier to just say First Come, First Serve or is it the person with the most money?"}
{"_id": "171557", "title": "How does one handle an incorrect resource file?", "text": "I'm starting the parser that will handle one of the key features of my app and realizing exactly who easy it would be for me to screw up a resource file that is provided to the application. For example, a simple resource that I provide to my app is a JSON file that contains an entity layout (name, fascia, location etc...). It would be easy for me to leave out the name of the entity or misspell the JSON key. Obviously catastrophic failures during parsing are to be handled in a try/catch, but how would subtle failures (such as a dyslexic spelling of name) be handled?"}
{"_id": "13956", "title": "TDD for batch processing: How to do it?", "text": "I like \"red/green/refactor\" for RoR, etc. just fine. My day job involves batch processing very large files from third-parties in python and other custom tools. Churn on the attributes of these files is high, so there are a lot of fixes/enhancements applied pretty frequently. Regression testing via a known body of test data with expected results does not exist. Closest thing is running against the last batch with new test cases hand coded in, make sure it does not blow up, then apply spot-checking and statistical tests to see if data still looks OK. Q>> How to bring TDD principles into this kind of environment?"}
{"_id": "242977", "title": "Is ASP.NET MVC too much overhead for smaller projects?", "text": "I will be honest I don't really know much about MVC other than the stuff you can read online in 5 minutes. Unfortunately this doesn't really tell me whether its suited to smaller projects or not. I also read this related question and its chosen answer, but the business perspective is not a concern in this case for me as I am the only one making it. The next answer proceeds to say why it is more flexible. Sure, that's great. But my question is again, if its an ideal choice for a small project. For example I would rather use winforms to make a simple mockup of a small desktop program than do it on WPF because of the overhead of custom styling. So I have a project that will essentially have about 6-8 pages that read excel files and user input use that to pull a bit of data from databases and output resulting excel files. I will be the only one working on this project. If I used webforms I would expect it to take no more than 2-3 weeks. Now I am 100% comfortable with webforms. And I know its easy to do a small project in webforms. But I have only heard good things about MVC so I am seriously considering it."}
{"_id": "18137", "title": "Web development advice for a distributed development team", "text": "I am a web developer. Worked in many projects. Now I have changed my work place. It is big organisation. I and my group are thinking about new project. There is no difficulty to write project but our organisation is big and it's has little offices in many places (within the country). There is no any problem about internet in center. But there is problem with internet in remote areas sometimes. My question is: is there any solution to solve problem as it? If anybody has create project such this please tell little about what technologies you have used. Thanks"}
{"_id": "18131", "title": "Divisional/Sectional comments, good or bad?", "text": "I know the general trend against comments explaining how something works, and how it's a good idea to use them only to explain why you're doing what you're doing, but what about using comments as a means of dividing up the code? Assume you have a script that does a preamble, searches through a bunch of records, prints the records, then closes everything:               // Preamble     ... preamble code, say about 10-15 lines ...          // Find records     ... sql query ...     ... put records into array ...     ... some other stuff ...          // Print records     ... printing records, 20-30 lines a record ...          // Close everything     ...      More of a way to visually divide the code, make it easier to find a certain section. Like if in a month you need to fix the printing code, rather than reading through a couple hundred lines to try and find the right spot, just look at the comments to see where it is. What actually happens in each section being fairly straightforward and easy to tell what's going on, **would this approach to comments be considered good or bad**? **Edit:** I'm working mostly with PHP scripts, where you either can't put code into functions, or it's impractical to do so. However, the same sort of thing would apply to large class files, with several methods that do related things, like getters/setters, database updates, etc."}
{"_id": "89750", "title": "Testing BI (Business Intelligence) systems on the MS stack", "text": "I'm placing my first steps in the Business Intelligence sector and **I'm looking for good ways to test BI systems.** I'm going to try to explain what my system consists of so that people unfamiliar with BI systems could also pitch in some advice. **For those of you who are rather unfamiliar with BI systems, here's how a BI system typically looks like on the MS stack:**   1. Data is in MS SQL DBs, text files, XML files, etc    2. The data is put into a single MS SQL DB ( **the data warehouse** ) using (an) **Sql Server Integration Services (SSIS)** package(s). (ETL, Extract - Transform - Load)    3. A 'Cube' containing Measurements, KPIs etc is processed on the data warehouse, using **Sql Server Analysis Services (SSAS)**   4. Reporting can be built on the cube using excel, Reporting services, etc. **There are multiple things you can/should test:**   * Is the data put into the data warehouse correctly   * Are the measurements and calculations done correctly I think a test environment could be made in .NET using empty databases with the same structure as the production databases and data warehouse. **Tests could be written like this:**   1. Insert dummy data in the production databases of which you know that they should produce certain measurements, KPI values. For example: Insert a car with cost 100 and profit 110 sold in 2008. another car with cost 100 and profit 120 sold in 2009. markup in 2008 should be 10% and in 2009 20%.   2. Run the SSIS package(s). I looked this up and its possible in .net   3. Run the SSAS calculations. Still have to look up how to do it, but should be possible.   4. Retrieve the KPI data from the Analysis Services database and test if it matches the expected results. **Some downsides I expect to this approach:**   1. Setting up test databases, security for the test script, ... will take quite some time.   2. Changes to production databases and the data warehouse will have to be copied to the test environment.   3. Creating the insert statements for the test data could be difficult. In my car example it is simple but for more complex calculations this could be quite time consuming   4. Tests will most likely run quite slow   5. The tests are error prone, either in the INSERT statements or in the part where you retrieve the KPI data. Figuring out what went wrong could be difficult. So summarized, writing **and** maintaining these tests could be quite consuming. On the other hand, you would have a nice **test-driven approach** where you write the test first, plus your business logic is explained and documented in the tests. Since I have not much practical experience with BI development I'm unsure if this is the way to go and what alternatives there are. Perhaps someone more experienced could explain how BI systems are usually tested and documented?"}
{"_id": "171126", "title": "Check-list to avoid vendor lock-in?", "text": "Is there a set of industry approved rules to avoid vendor lock-in? I mean something one can show to a manager or other decision maker that is easy to understand and easily verifiable.   * Are there any universally accepted set of rules, checklist or conditions that help detect and prevent vendor lock-in in an objective, measurable way?   * Have any of you warned a manager about the risk of vendor lock-in during the initial stages of a project?"}
{"_id": "191531", "title": "Why does Cem Kaner consider a test not revealing a bug a waste of time?", "text": "What about confirming the functionality in positive tests, proving it is working - should I say it is a waste of time? What kind of concept is behind this quote? > Unsuccessful tests, i.e. tests that do not find errors are a waste of time. Web Engineering: The Discipline of Systematic Development of Web Applications quoting Cem Kaner."}
{"_id": "72937", "title": "How do people make money by writing programming languages?", "text": "Why will anyone even attempt to write a programming language? It seems to be a tedious task and the alternative (simply using an existing language) seems to make much more economical sense. Microsoft may hire people to write .NET because they have too much spare money to burn. But why will anyone else write a language if they aren't paid for it?"}
{"_id": "256201", "title": "How to delete .tmp file in fileupload struts2", "text": "I have used `file-upload` (common fileuplod) in `strtus-2.3.15.3` . There is one Form in my `.jsp` with multiple field with many diff type(textfield,textarea,hidden,file) including `FILE` and obvious `SUBMIT`. When i submit form by selecting one file and enter some text in all other field its generated `.tmp` file in mention temp folder . Only `.tmp` file related to file field is going to delete after uploading my file to myfolder but rest of `.tmp`(with 1kb size) file is remaing as its .               List items = upload.parseRequest(servletRequest);       This line in below code generate `.tmp` file for all field which have some value (if you do not enter any text in text field it not generated) . `MonitoredMultiPartRequest.java` **:**               public void parse(HttpServletRequest servletRequest, String saveDir)                 throws IOException         {                  System.setProperty(\"java.io.tmpdir\", \"D:\\\\ankit\");                  UploadListener listener = new UploadListener(servletRequest);             // Create a factory for disk-based file items             FileItemFactory factory = new MonitoredDiskFileItemFactory(listener);             // Create a new file upload handler             ServletFileUpload upload = new ServletFileUpload(factory);              }      `MonitoredDiskFileItemFactory` :               public class MonitoredDiskFileItemFactory extends DiskFileItemFactory     {         HttpServletRequest request;              public MonitoredDiskFileItemFactory(OutputStreamListener listener, HttpServletRequest request)         {             this.listener = null;             this.listener = listener;             this.request = request;             setTrackers();         }              public void setTrackers()         {             FileCleaningTracker fileCleaningTracker = FileCleanerCleanup.getFileCleaningTracker(request.getServletContext());             File repository = new File(System.getProperty(\"java.io.tmpdir\"));             DiskFileItemFactory factory = new DiskFileItemFactory(DiskFileItemFactory.DEFAULT_SIZE_THRESHOLD, repository);             factory.setFileCleaningTracker(fileCleaningTracker);             super.setFileCleaningTracker(fileCleaningTracker);             super.setRepository(repository);         }              public MonitoredDiskFileItemFactory(int sizeThreshold, File repository, OutputStreamListener listener)         {             super(sizeThreshold, repository);             this.listener = null;             this.listener = listener;         }              public FileItem createItem(String fieldName, String contentType, boolean isFormField, String fileName)         {             MonitoredDiskFileItem result = new MonitoredDiskFileItem(fieldName, contentType, isFormField, fileName, getSizeThreshold(), getRepository(), listener);             FileCleaningTracker tracker = getFileCleaningTracker();             if (tracker != null)             {                 tracker.track(result.getTempFileOfDistFileItem(), result);             }                  return result;         }              private OutputStreamListener listener;     }      `MonitoredDiskFileItem` :               public class MonitoredDiskFileItem extends DiskFileItem     {              public MonitoredDiskFileItem(String fieldName, String contentType, boolean isFormField, String fileName, int sizeThreshold, File repository, OutputStreamListener listener)         {             super(fieldName, contentType, isFormField, fileName, sizeThreshold, repository);             mos = null;             this.listener = listener;         }              public OutputStream getOutputStream()                 throws IOException         {             if (mos == null)                 mos = new MonitoredOutputStream(super.getOutputStream(), listener);             return mos;         }              public File getTempFileOfDistFileItem()         {             return super.getTempFile();         }              private MonitoredOutputStream mos;         private OutputStreamListener listener;     }      `UploadListener` :               public class UploadListener implements OutputStreamListener, Serializable     {         private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;         private int totalToRead = 0;         private int totalBytesRead = 0;         private int percentDone = 0;         private int previou_percentDone = 0;         private long uploadspeed = 0;         private long starttime;         private long stTime, EndTime;         HttpSession session;         private int count = 0;              public UploadListener(HttpServletRequest request)         {             totalToRead = request.getContentLength();             session = request.getSession();         }              public void start()         {             session.setAttribute(\"percentageDone\", 0);             session.setAttribute(\"speed\", 0);             starttime = System.currentTimeMillis();             stTime = starttime;              }              public String getMessage()         {             return \"\" + totalBytesRead + \" bytes have been read (\" + percentDone + \"% done)  \";         }              public void bytesRead(int bytesRead)         {             totalBytesRead = totalBytesRead + bytesRead;                  if (100.00 * totalBytesRead > totalToRead)             {                 previou_percentDone = percentDone;                 percentDone = (int) Math.round(100.00 * totalBytesRead / totalToRead);                 if (previou_percentDone < percentDone)                 {                     long speed = 0;                     try                     {                         double TimediffInSecond = (System.currentTimeMillis() - starttime) / 1000;                         if (TimediffInSecond > 0)                             speed = Math.round(((totalBytesRead) / TimediffInSecond) / 1048576);                         else                             speed = totalBytesRead / 1048576;                          }                     catch (Exception e)                     {                         System.err.println(e.getMessage());                     }                 }             }                   }              public void done()         {             EndTime = System.currentTimeMillis();             session.setAttribute(\"percentageDone\", 100);             session.setAttribute(\"speed\", 100);         }              @Override         public void error(String message)         {             // System.out.println(message);         }              public long getUploadspeed()         {             return uploadspeed;         }              public void setUploadspeed(long uploadspeed)         {             this.uploadspeed = uploadspeed;         }          }      `EDIT` **:** 1> Why this `.tmp` file is generated for fields (textarea ,hidden,textfield) . How can we prevent this ? 2> i want to stop generating `.tmp` file for all field except where `type='file'`(file field) . 3> Otherwise, how can i delete this all `.tmp` file ?"}
{"_id": "171122", "title": "Proper response for a REST insert - full new record, or just the record id value?", "text": "I'm building a REST API which allows inserts (POST, not idempotent) and updates (PUT, idempotent) requests to add/update database to our application. I'm wondering if there are any standards or best practices regarding what data we send back to the client in the response for a POST (insert) operation. We need to send back at least a record ID value (e.g. your new record is record #1234). Should we respond with the full object? (e.g. essentially the same response they'd get back from a \"GET /object_type/1234\" request) Should we respond with only the new ID value? (e.g. \"{ id: 1234 }\", which means that if they want to fetch the whole record they need to do an additional HTTP GET request to grab the full record) A redirect header pointing them to the URL for the full object? Something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "89283", "title": "What's the meaning of \"the Sun defect\" and how does it differ from the more generic \"NIH syndrome\"?", "text": "I hear people talking about the \"Sun defect\", often giving the whole mess around logging as an example. How is it different from the not-invented-here syndrome, which means uselessly duplicating existing work?"}
{"_id": "228127", "title": "Is Python suitable for a statistical modeling application looking over thousands of past events?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project with a partner where we analyze large datasets of past sporting events. There are approximately 30,000 events per year and we have historical data for five years. Thus, we're looking at analyzing 150,000 events. I wrote our first version in Python with a heavy reliance on Pandas (great tool, by the way). However, each time I add a \"factor\" or calculation to the process it slows down by quite a bit. Simply put, it can read all the various data files and data queries we need at a rate of 25-events-per-second. The problem is once I start working with the data, it drops fast. If I add a simple calculation, it drops to 24... and each calculation after that it drops again. With just 10-12 \"factors\" calculated from the data (we're not talking complex loops or anything crazy), it's now down to 6-events-per-second. ... and we're barely scratching the surface. At this rate, it'll take this thing days to work through all 150k events! I've optimized our data queries, flat file reads etc. Those really aren't the issue. I can live with doing 15-20 events per second. However, I can't live with such drastic slowdowns each time a new factor calculation is added. I've read a lot where Python as an interpreted language is slow etc., but my question to the experts out there - what language should this project be done in? **EXAMPLE...** One of the key \"DataFrames\" I am using through Pandas is fairly large. 350 rows x 70 columns, as an example. Even when trying to simply multiply one column's value by another...                data['value'] = data['col1'] * data['col2']      ...I see what I could consider significant drop in performance. It's very puzzling, and very frustrating. I understand this is a large set of data, but I can't believe this is anything so crazy that Python would be slowing to a crawl. If I just read the data files and do no calculations on them at all, it reads 67 events in 2.807 seconds. If I add one simple calculation where I execute code like the example above, it slows to 2.877 seconds. Based on our research, we're needed to add upwards of 100 calculations on the data.... so 7 seconds worth of slowdown? Seems too hard to believe."}
{"_id": "228126", "title": "I am developing an app for iPhone - does it matter which iPhone I buy?", "text": "It's a basic application - nothing majorly fancy (i.e. not a game) I have the option to buy iPhone 5 iPhone 5c iPhone 5s Just wondering if it matters which iPhone I buy to test out my App or should I just go for the most common? I guess the real question is do people see any bugs based on the phone type (less so the OS type)."}
{"_id": "132009", "title": "Is IoC feasible in winforms?", "text": "I'm coming back into the winform world after being in the web world for a while. Is it common or otherwise feasible for developers to use IoC in winform? My concern is mainly with performance. I envision that I will need to \"bootstrap\" or initialize all my inverted items that are required by a given form instance on form initialization. If this initialization becomes expensive, I can push the task off to a thread, but that requires that I get the created objects back to the main thread where they will be used at some point."}
{"_id": "225063", "title": "How to fit requirements into MVC", "text": "Let's say we have a website requirement to allow User functionality. Simple! We create the UserModel, UserController and UserView. Works perfectly. However, let's assume that User has a `many-to-one` relational table connected to it titled `Child` which also has its own MVC components: ChildModel, ChildController, ChildView. Now if we had a requirement to create a CSV file for download containing a few details from the `User` and a few details from its `Child`, how would we go about designing this requirement? \"DownloadCSV\" could essentially have its own CRUD methods, it's own Controller, it's own View but its Model is based on the details from other tables, so should it have its own Controller, View, Model(/DB View) or should it just be another method besides CRUD in `User` or `Child` controller?"}
{"_id": "6543", "title": "What are the benefits of using database abstraction by ORM?", "text": "I'm starting to use the ORM recommended by the framework I choose, and though I like the idea of the added layer of abstraction the ORM provides, I'm starting to realize what this really means. It means I'm no longer working with my database (mysql) and any mysql-specific features are gone, out the window, like they don't exist. The idea the ORM has is that it's trying to help me by making everything database agnostic. This sounds great, but often there is a reason why I choose a specific database system. But by going the database agnostic route, the ORM takes the lowest common denominator, which means I end up with the smallest set of features (the ones supported by all databases). What if I know that for the long term I won't be switching the underlying database? Why not access the database-specific features, too?"}
{"_id": "155129", "title": "The design of a generic data synchronizer, or, an [object] that does [actions] with the aid of [helpers]", "text": "I'd like to create a generic data-source \"synchronizer,\" where data-source \"types\" may include MySQL databases, Google Spreadsheets documents, CSV files, among others. I've been trying to figure out how to structure this in terms of classes and interfaces, keeping in mind (what I've read about) composition vs. inheritance and is-a vs. has-a, but each route I go down seems to violate some principle. _For simplicity, assume that all data-sources have a header-row-plus-data-rows format. For example, assume that the first rows of Google Spreadsheets documents and CSV files will have column headers, a.k.a. \"fields\" (to parallel database fields)._ _Also, eventually, I would like to implement this in PHP, but avoiding language-specific discussion would probably be more productive._ Here's an overview of what I've tried. * * * # Part 1/4: ISyncable               class CMySQL implements ISyncable         GetFields()     // sql query, pdo statement, whatever         AddFields()         RemFields()         ...         _dbh                    class CGoogleSpreadsheets implements ISyncable         GetFields()     // zend gdata api         AddFields()         RemFields()         ...         _spreadsheetKey         _worksheetId                    class CCsvFile implements ISyncable         GetFields()     // read from buffer         AddFields()         RemFields()         ...         _buffer                    interface ISyncable         GetFields()         AddFields($field1, $field2, ...)         RemFields($field1, $field2, ...)         ...         CanAddFields()  // maybe the spreadsheet is locked for write, or         CanRemFields()  // maybe no permission to alter a database table         ...         AddRow()         ModRow()         RemRow()         ...         Open()         Close()         ...      **First Question:** Does it make sense to use an interface, as above? * * * # Part 2/4: CSyncer Next, the _thing that does the syncing_.               class CSyncer         __construct(ISyncable $A, ISyncable $B)         Push()          // sync A to B         Pull()          // sync B to A         Sync()          // Push() and Pull() only differ in direction; factor.                         // Sync()'s job is to make sure that the fields on each side                         // match, to add fields where appropriate and possible, to                         // account for different column-orderings, etc., and of                         // course, to add and remove rows as necessary to sync.         ...         _A         _B      **Second Question:** Does it make sense to define such a class, or am I treading dangerously close to the \"Kingdom of Nouns\"? * * * # Part 3/4: CTranslator? ITranslator? Now, here's where I actually get lost, assuming the above is passable. Sometimes, two `ISyncable`s speak different \"dialects.\" For example, believe it or not, Google Spreadsheets (accessed through the Google Data API \"list feed\") returns column headers _lower-cased and stripped of all spaces and symbols_! That is, `sys_TIMESTAMP` is `systimestamp`, as far as my code can tell. (Yes, I am aware that the \"cell feed\" does not strip the name so; however cell-by-cell manipulation is too slow for what I'm doing.) One can imagine other hypothetical examples. Perhaps even the data itself can be in different \"dialects.\" But let's take it as given for now, and not argue this if possible. **Third Question:** How would _you_ implement \"translation\"? Note: Taking all this as an exercise, I'm more interested in the \"idealized\" design, rather than the practical one. (God knows _that_ shipped sailed when I began this project.) * * * # Part 4/4: Further Thought Here's my train of thought to demonstrate I've thunk, albeit unfruitfully:   1. First, I thought, primitively, \"I'll just modify `CMySQL::GetFields()` to lower-case and strip field names so they're compatible with Google Spreadsheets.\" But of course, then my class should really be called, `CMySQLForGoogleSpreadsheets`, and that can't be right.   2. So, the _thing which translates_ must exist outside of an `ISyncable` implementor.   3. And surely it can't be right to make each translation a method in `CSyncer`.   4. If it exists outside of both `ISyncable` and `CSyncer`, then what is it? (Is it even an _\"it\"_?)   5. Is it an abstract class, i.e. `abstract CTranslator`?   6. Is it an interface, since a translator only _does_ , not _has_ , i.e. `interface ITranslator`?   7. Does it even require instantiation? e.g. If it's an `ITranslator`, then should its translation methods be `static`? (I learned what \"late static binding\" meant, today.) And, dear God, whatever it is, how should a `CSyncer` _use_ it? Does it \"have\" it? Is _it_ , _\"it\"_? Who am I? ...am I, \"I\"? * * * I've attempted to break up the question into sub-questions, but essentially my question is singular: **How does one implement an object`A` that conceptually \"links\" ( _has_ ) two objects `b1` and `b2` that share a common interface `B`, but where certain pairs of `b1` and `b2` require a helper, e.g. a translator, to be handled by `A`?** Something tells me that I've overcomplicated this design, or violated a principle much higher up. Thank you all very much for your time and any advice you can provide."}
{"_id": "225065", "title": "Should you write down a list of issues, or fix issues as they arise?", "text": "I have observed a strange trend in the company I work at. There are people who insist that there should be a list of tasks. They estimate those tasks, implement them, and try to meet their commitments. However, while they are coding, the requirements are likely to change. The priorities shift, the tasks increase or decrease, and the scope may just down right change, causing the whole work to get discarded. And then, there is another team, who meet issues and fix them as they arise. There are no estimates, there are no priorities, there are no set deadlines, and mission statements for sprints go something like, \u201cFix the bugs in the [insert subsystem name here]\u201d. Now, which is the right way to go about being agile when you have technical sprints that focus only on stabilizing the system? Should you try and gather a list of issues, only to have them change, or should you try and fix-as-you-go, without saying when you\u2019ll be done?"}
{"_id": "213159", "title": "A* search for Sudoku", "text": "I have a homework problem for an Artificial Intelligence course that I am having trouble answering. > Consider solving the Sudoku problem using A* search. The start state has > some number of cells filled in, and the successors of each state are all > legal ways an additional cell can be filled in. At any time we know exactly > the number of cells that remain to filled. > > Therefore, if K cells remain to be filled at node n, we know that h(n) = K. > Thus if we set our heuristic function h(n) to be h(n)=K, we will have > perfect heuristic knowledge in A. > > Explain the mistake in the above statement. I understand that this heuristic is entirely pointless since if there was some function that could find legal successors you might as well run a depth first search but what exactly is wrong with the above statement."}
{"_id": "206671", "title": "Pre-screening coding test - How long is reasonable?", "text": "**EDIT** After a good amount of thinking and self-reflection on the topic, I realised that most of the issues I raised in this question was coming only from a personal, rather than a professional perspective. Hence the moderators put this question on hold because of the highly personal, subjective nature of the problem I tried to talk about. I was thinking about rephrasing the question but I could not really find a possible way to manifest the question in more objective way so it can be the subject of a discussion where answers can be back up with some sort of evidence or references. For the sake of those who are still interested, I am trying to give a summary of the discussion emerged from this question:   * a 4 hours pre-interview, offsite programming test is not usual but   * many people pointed it out that for some companies you would interview for much-much longer than that all together   * it is our personal decision if we take a test or not, and we can evaluate this based on our circumstances and the perceived benefits of getting hired for the company   * all companies are different, as people are, and it can be perfectly reasonable for a company to employ a longer pre-interview offsite test, if that is what fits their needs or circumstances I wanted my original question to be about how _reasonable_ to expect 4 hours from me, and how _ethical_ to give out a problem so the solution (not the code, but the design) can be possibly used for the company. As I can now see both of these questions can only (at best) be explored in a forum discussion, rather than using a question-answer type community tool like stackexchange. However, I found all your answers valuable and thanks for sharing. **ORIGINAL POST** I am interviewing for several positions, and most of them include a pre- screening phase where I have to submit a coding test before the telephone interview or the onsite interview would take place. I have pretty much got used to this idea, and find it quite reasonable that companies expect me to do this so they can check what type of work I can produce on my own. Generally, my experience is that these type of coding exercises are mostly small programming tasks. Do some logic, maybe implement a small algorithm, open a file and read/write data, stuff like that. Even the most simple task can be implemented with nice separation of logic, testable components, etc, to see how the candidate is coding, generally how well he is prepared for the type of job a company want to fill in. Recently I came across a company who sent me a coding test with a whole page long description of their exercise, asking me to solve a real life problem of their business (I don't want to say specifics to protect the company, but the test was pretty much about what they do). They described a pretty complex system to implement, included real data, and in the end they concluded that the coding test should not take more than **4 hours**. Is it reasonable from a company to expect me to spend 4 hours working on their dummy assignment in my free time, even before they would say hi to me? (the recruiter sent me the coding test) Don't get me wrong, I am motivated to find a new job and new challenges, but most companies expect me to spend maximum 1-2 hours on a task like that, and such tasks has always been far less complicated. What I came up as a conclusion with this company is that either: 1) My motivation is not good and probably they are looking for someone else 2) They do not respect their future employees to expect such a long coding tests to do even without saying hi to them 3) They just want to give out one of the problems they work on and see if there is an enthusiastic young fella who would solve it for them for free (again, don't get me wrong I am not a conspiracy theorist but I have heard such stories ...) How much do you think is reasonable for a company to expect candidates spend time on their dummy coding tests without talking to them? What is your experience generally?"}
{"_id": "239045", "title": "What is the relationship between data structures and algorithms?", "text": "I have been searching for a good online course in data structures but have found that Google also returns results for algorithms courses, which say stuff like: > In this course you will learn several fundamental principles of algorithm > design: divide-and-conquer methods, graph algorithms, **practical data > structures (heaps, hash tables, search trees)** , randomized algorithms, and > more. [source] and > By the end of this class you will understand key concepts needed to devise > new algorithms for graphs **and other important data structures** and to > evaluate the efficiency of these algorithms. [source] and > This course provides an introduction to mathematical modeling of > computational problems. It covers the common algorithms, algorithmic > paradigms, **and data structures used to solve these problems**. [source] My question is: are algorithms and data structures intimately linked, meaning that they must be understood together or is one topic more foundational than the other? _EDIT: For those voting to close this question, can you please tell me why and maybe how to improve this one? Learning to ask the right questions is part of the educational process._"}
{"_id": "239047", "title": "Release management with Azure and Visual Studio Online (Cloud TFS)", "text": "What strategy would you use to manage the releasing of versioned software to Azure cloud services (web and worker roles)? We are not looking for continuous integration. We are using Visual Studio 2013 and Visual Studio Online (Cloud TFS). At one point, we were releasing straight from Visual Studio using the Azure Cloud Project Publish tool. This is really bad practice in my opinion as you can never be sure what you are really releasing. Additionally, there is no automated control on the labeling or branching of code, or the running of unit tests and code analysis checks. Next, we employed Release builds on Visual Studio Online. Before deployment, one would edit the appropriate Build Definition (whether it be for Test or Production by and filling in the code label (under the \"Get Version\" build property) that is to be released. This would then get the appropriate code (by the label specified), build it, and release it to whatever cloud service is specified in the targeted Cloud Project profile (this is using the AzureContinuousDeployment.11.xaml template). There is still a degree of manual intervention involved. Also, the fact that a version of code is built every time before it is released is not ideal (as far as I understand it would be better if it was packaged once). Microsoft Release Management tools look ideal for the job, but are not supported with Visual Studio Online. Is there a better way of handling our releases?"}
{"_id": "173029", "title": "The Written Roles of Chief Technology Officer", "text": "A follow up to this question: The Written Roles of Software Development Manager What is the role and what are the responsibilities of a CTO when it's done well, with particular reference to how it might pertain to a programmer with aspirations towards this sort of position? (Reason for asking - it's one potential career destination for programmers looking to move away from a purely hands-on role and for those with this sort of ambition it's worth knowing what it actually entails)."}
{"_id": "231678", "title": "Converting event-based asynchrony to C#5 async", "text": "We currently have an interface for an asynchronous video decoder that runs on its own thread. Basically you feed it some data and it'll eventually call you back on its thread through some events, like so (not real code):               interface IDecoder {         void Decode(parameters);         event FrameReady;         event FrameDropped;         // lots of other possibilities     }      It's a bit messy and I'd like to convert it to a C#5, async-based version, something like:               interface IDecoder {         async Task<DecodeResult> DecodeAsync(parameters);     }      Where DecodeResult will have all the information that would have otherwise been transmitted via events, and the client code can be written cleanly with async/await rather than a mess of event handlers and thread dispatching. It is my understanding that Tasks are scheduled on the ThreadPool by default. We want all Decode operations to happen sequentially on a single, decoder- specific thread. Can this be achieved using Tasks, if so, how? Are Tasks even appropriate for this use or is there a more obvious pattern I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "173021", "title": "Using dot to Access Object Attribute and Proper abstraction", "text": "I have been programming in python and Java for quite a number of years and one thing I find myself doing is using the setters and getters from Java in Python but a number of blogs seem to think using the dot notation for access is the pythonic way. What I would like to know is if using dot to access methods does not violate abstraction principle? If for example I implement an attribute as a single object and use dot notation to access, if I wanted to change the code later so that the attribute is represented by a list of objects, that would require quite some heavy lifting which violates abstraction principle."}
{"_id": "173025", "title": "Designing exceptions for conversion failures", "text": "Suppose there are some methods to convert from \"X\" to \"Y\" and vice versa; the conversion may fail in some cases, and exceptions are used to signal conversion errors in those cases. Which would be the best option for defining exception classes in this context?   1. A single `XYConversionException` class, with an _attribute_ (e.g. an `enum`) specifying the _direction of the conversion_ (e.g. `ConversionFromXToY`, `ConversionFromYToX`).   2. A `XYConversionException` class, with two _derived classes_ `ConversionFromXToYException` and `ConversionFromYToXException`.   3. `ConversionFromXToYException` and `ConversionFromYToXException` classes _without_ a _common_ base class."}
{"_id": "254735", "title": "Are C static libraries frowned upon?", "text": "There are 2 arguments for having shared libraries:   1. It helps reduce disk space.   2. When a shared library is updated, all the binaries depending on it get the update. There is mainly one drawback for shared libraries:   * They (can) introduce dependency hell. * * * On desktop computers, the 1st advantage doesn't really hold anymore. Wasting disk space isn't much of an issue these days. Having static binaries would allow us to get way better package managers -- I mean, the dependency hell would be a thing of the past. Adding a program would be just adding a binary; eventually a folder to let it handle its files. Deleting a program would be simply deleting this file. Dependencies? Gone. The 2nd advantage still stands, but I think the advantage of static binaries on desktop computers outweighs it. I mean, even new languages like Go compile all their binaries in spite of the shared libraries advantages, because of the convenience. * * * Since one of the main advantages of shared libraries is not a big deal anymore, are C static libraries are still frowned upon? If so, why?"}
{"_id": "74839", "title": "Ruby on Rails Development Process", "text": "We are a small team that is about to start developing a localized version of a successful US web app in Korea, using RoR. Our question is: What process would you recommend we use to go about developing the app? Should we start with the data models? The views in HTML and then code them? Take a single feature, develop it and then add additional features as necessary? A few more details about the project:   1. it is a web app for small business owners   2. it includes the usual crm-reporting-dashboard-user admin-document mgmtfeatures that most small biz apps tend to have   3. team size is initially 2 people: a programmer and a designer/CSS guru (just one coder)   4. experience level is medium. good knowledge of Git, Ruby, Rails and XHTML/CSS, less experienced with deployment issues. this is the first project of its kind that we are doing together as a team"}
{"_id": "88159", "title": "\"Don't do programming after a few years of starting career\". Is this a fair advice?", "text": "I am a little experienced developer having approximately 5 years experience in PHP and somewhat less in Java, C# and trying to learn some Python nowadays. Since the start of my career as a programmer I have been told every now and then by fellow programmers that programming is suitable for a few early years of a career (most of them take it as 5 years) and that one must change the direction after it. The reason they present include headaches and pressures associated with programming. They also say that programmers are less social and don't usually like to give time to their families, etc. and especially \"Oh come on, you can not do programming your entire life!\" I am somewhat confused here and need to ask others about it. If I leave programming then what do I do?! I guess teaching may be a good option in this case, but it will require to first earn a PhD degree perhaps. It may also be noteworthy that in my country (Pakistan) the life of a programmer is not very good in that normally they must give 2-3 extra hours in the office to accomplish urgent programming tasks. I have a sense that situation is somewhat similar in other countries and regions as well. Do you think it is fair advice to change career from programming to something else after spending 5 years in this field? UPDATE * * * Oh wow... I never knew people can have 40+ years of experience in this field. I am both excited and amazed seeing that people are doing it since 1971... That means 15 years before my birth! It is nice to be able to talk to such experienced people, we don't get such a chance here in Pakistan. * * * Thanks again for all the help and sharing. It has been a nice experience getting your thoughts on this."}
{"_id": "161373", "title": "Javascript simple code to understand prototype-based OOP basics", "text": "I know Javascript for some time, although I am not a heavy user, I know it the first from the time when Netscape was my browser. I pretty much understand the main things, but since JavaScript approach to OOP is prototypical I have some problem grasping it. One problem to add to this it seems that things can be done in more than one way, and here is where books don't help much because they put all the examples on the table making it hard to keep the pace. What I need for start is only one way of doing it, if someone can help me with the simplest code possible an example where I can see how the prototypal OOP model works? To be helpful the code should have an inherited object, to access a parent's property and its inherited properties and a parent's function, to overwrite a parent's function and and have an instance of a multiple inheritance where an object inherits two other objects."}
{"_id": "64709", "title": "Best practices for cloning bugs", "text": "I'm trying to think of a nice and easy way to do this, but I thought I'd run it past some people for a second opinion: Say you've got 8 clients (one project for each customer) and each project derives from a core project. If a bug is raised that has to be fixed in core, our current approach is to create a bug and clone it for each customer (using Bugzilla). A lot of developers are finding it time consuming to manually clone the bugs across all clients and ensure that they are placed on each release tracker per customer. I suppose this is a workflow problem, so does anyone have suggestions on the best way to handle cloning bugs for multiple customers? Perhaps Bugzilla isn't the best tool for this. Most of us believe that it can not be fully automated and will require some manual intervention regardless of what tool we use. One idea I did have was to create a single bug issue. If it is a core bug and when assigning it for one release, we don't mark it as completely resolved as it has not been tested for all client projects that stem from the core project. The problem with this is that I would need a way to link the single bug to all customers and have it know when to automatically set it to resolved once the last customer has had a release. I don't believe Bugzilla has such a feature. Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome."}
{"_id": "224332", "title": "Is JavaScript \"write once run everywhere\"?", "text": "I have a business requirement for a javascript \"write once run everywhere\" App. I did research and discovered that there are a few options between: FireFox OS, ChromeOS, NodeOS, Tizen, and Dart. What I do not know - is if 1) this software is truly capable of allowing a single website to be written once and exported to Hosted or Packaged Native Apps. 2) Can a single JavaScript Website really traverse device-platform as a Native App via this breed of JavaScript Operating System or not? 3) Is it simple, or is it painful? Has anyone seen a full implementation first hand in at least a test environment or production? Also - are the upsides expected or unexpected - and what are the downsides? Overall: is JavaScript write once run everywhere - or not? To the point it isn't 'Native' - I found these. Apple iOS7 JS first-class citizenship. Last month. http://fluentconf.com/fluent2014/public/schedule/detail/32624 It is called JavaScriptCore framework. I installed a FireFox OS Open WebApp with emulator. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Quickstart/Build/Your_first_app I don't know what these are, but it was easy and it looks cool. Like a website packaged into a Native App. Has any one reviewed this class of JavaScript Architecture?"}
{"_id": "224333", "title": "N-Tier MVC4 Web Application with console application", "text": "I've built an MVC web application and I need to run several tasks at different time intervals. So I've also made a console application to schedule these tasks through task manager in windows. For example, the application needs to send out an email every week summarizing the program's data. I've chosen to use the Nuget RazorEngine package to format the emails because I already have to show the same data on a webpage too, so by using the RazorEngine package, I can re-use my viewmodel for both the email and the UI of the web project (just use it in a template formatted for email instead of web). But therein lies the problem, the ViewModel is in the UI project. I don't think the right thing to do here is for my console application to take a dependency on my UI layer. The logical decision to me at first was \"just make another layer, App.ViewModelBuilders (maybe also help me with a better name?), and take a dependency in both App.UI and App.ConTasks\" But I've never seen that done before, so I'm not sure if that is a wise choice or not... Here's my current layers (projects) for the solution:   * App.DAL (No Dependencies - Unit of Work and Repository pattern)   * App.Service (Depends on DAL - uses DAL for business operations, such as getDataWithCondition() which returns the relevant objects (it's actually an IQueryable)   * App.UI (Depends on Service - gets the data back from service and runs it thru a ViewModelBuilder to map the business objects to the appropriate view model, and then renders a view using that view model)   * App.ConTasks (SHOULD depend only on service, but still needs ViewModels - uses data returned from service to render view formatted for email and send the email) What Layer should my View Models and View Model Builders go in?"}
{"_id": "224338", "title": "How do I architect zip code & distance calculation functionality?", "text": "I am building an app using MVC 4/Razor and EF 4/ .NET 4 in which it is possible to search items by zip code and thus retrieving items only a certain distance from your current zip code. I have a class that calculates distance using census gazetteer files (zip, lat, and lon) and the Haversine formula. My specific problem deals with the SQL portion of my code. I have a view that uses a pager (20 results per page) and has hyper links that order the columns in asc and desc order. I also have 3 drop down lists that can further filter the results down: Manufacturer, Category, Distance. When I am filtering by say 50 miles my class retrieves an IEnumerable of zipcodes that are within the requested distance. At times this can be in the 10,000 - 30,000 area. Each `Item` object contains an `int ZipCode` ![Relationships](http://i.stack.imgur.com/OQRfd.jpg) The problem EF generates when I try to grab item objects from the database using a list of acceptable zip codes is _One of your queries is too deeply nested. Try breaking them up_. I am assuming that it is because you can not have a where clause with thousands of conditions. This makes sense. I had found a link a few days ago that basically dealt with creating a temporary table to use as the list in the where condition but can not find the link anymore. It also applied to raw ADO.NET as opposed to EF. **My question is basically, how can I implement the functionality that I want without having make huge changes?**                using (var context = new JDMExchangeEntities())             {                      var results = context.Items.Include(P => P.Manufacturer).Include(P => P.Category)                     .Include(P => P.VehicleMake).Include(P => P.VehicleModel).Include(P => P.VehicleYear);                               //Category logic                 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Categories))                 {                     results = results.Where(P => P.Category.Name == Categories);                 }                      //Manufacturers logic                 if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Manufacturers))                 {                     results = results.Where(P => P.Manufacturer.Name == Manufacturers);                 }                      //Vehicle logic                 if (Vehicle > 0)                 {                     results = results.Where(P => P.YearId == Vehicle);                 }                      if (acceptableCodes.Count > 0)                 {                     List<int> codes = acceptableCodes.Keys.ToList();                     results = results.Where(P => codes.Contains((int)P.ZipCode));                              //return _UoW.tblcoursebookingRepo.All        //.Where(cb => AttendanceIDs.Contains(cb.Attended))        //.ToList();                 }                 ////Take out items that are not in the ManualQueryResults Dictionary                 //if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(ManualQuery))                 //{                 //    var all = listB.Where(b => listA.Any(a => a.code == b.code));                 //    results = results.Where(r => ManualQueryResults.Any(a => a == r.id));                 //}                      ////Take out zips not in the closeCodes variable                 //if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(DistanceLimit))                 //{                 //    results = results.Where(P => closeCodes.Any(z => z.ZipCode.Code == P.ZipCode));                 //}                      switch (sortOrder)                 {                     case \"Price_desc\":                         results = results.OrderByDescending(P => P.Price);                         break;                     case \"Price\":                         results = results.OrderBy(P => P.Price);                         break;                     case \"Date_asc\":                         results = results.OrderBy(P => P.PostDate);                         break;                     default:                         results = results.OrderByDescending(P => P.PostDate);                         break;                      }                 int pageSize = 20;                 int pageNumber = (page ?? 1);                           IPagedList<Item> cc = results.ToPagedList(pageNumber, pageSize);      I could call `.ToList()` somewhere before I hit the `.ToPagedList()` but then I will be returning back thousands of entries and thus lagging the response time by a few seconds. After that I could easily make a paged list from the IEnumerable list. I want to try and minimize response time and so I think the area I need to fix is in the SQL code so as to not pull unnecessary data and then filter it out."}
{"_id": "64701", "title": "Balance between \"right tool for the job\" and familiarity", "text": "So when choosing what language to use for a project, in an ideal world the language is chosen because it's the right tool for the job. However, I often prefer to use a language that I am _fluent_ in rather than one I would have to learn or that I am only conversational in. Of course language fluency also entails knowledge of the applicable libraries in the language. Just because I really like a fairly general-purpose language like Java doesn't mean I should always use it, but at the same time it doesn't mean I should break out something like Perl every time there's some text processing to be done. How does one find the balance here?"}
{"_id": "154657", "title": "What is the best way to approach visualization projects?", "text": "I work on several areas related to information visualization, linked data, computer vision and other stuff, so mainly front-end. I am not really happy with the fact that visualizations take lots of iterations and lots of time from first prototype to production ready code. So here is the question: what can I do to improve that? Sometimes we do a prototype in few hours, add something, do another prototype, rewrite it to use jQuery instead of Prototype because it's a better fit and so on and so forth, but almost all visualizations go trough 15-20 iterations (sometimes taking up to few months of development time - the code will also go from the 300 lines of the initial prototype to 2000 or 3000 lines due to evolving requirements and iterations). Since I am working at multiple projects, from my point of view the fact that sometimes it can take months is not a problem, just that I am not really happy, as I could do 40 visualizations per year instead of 15 for example, if I would only be able to improve this process by reducing the number of iterations or by any other means. If somebody with a higher score wants to add information visualization to tags and edit my question after, I would not mind. Best regards!"}
{"_id": "120050", "title": "Software development life cycle in the industry", "text": "I am taking a module called \"Requirements Analysis & Design\" in a local university. Common module, I'd say (on software development life cycle (SDLC) and UML). But there is a lot of things I wonder if they are actually (strictly) practiced in the industry. For example, will a domain class diagram, an not anything extra (from design class), be strictly the output from Analysis or Discovery phase? I'm sure many times you will think a bit about the technical implementation too? Else you might end up with a design class diagram later that is very different from the original domain class diagram? I also find it hard to remember what diagrams are from Initiation, Discovery, Design etc etc. Plus these phases vary from SDLC to SDLC, I believe? So I usually will create a diagram when I think will be useful. Is it the wrong way?"}
{"_id": "153606", "title": "What are the benefits of using geospatial datatypes?", "text": "We currently store points as three floats (lat,lon,alt) and support only one type of query (points within a given radius) but look forward to support more queries. We are using PHP and MySQL. What are the benefits of using geospatial types?"}
{"_id": "154653", "title": "Is it reasonable to concentrate on one topic of CS for one semester at university?", "text": "As usual, I need to do courses from several different areas of Computer Science for my Master's degree. I'll focus on Algorithms, Theoretical Computer Science (Computability and Complexity, the foundations,...) and Parallel/High Performance computing plus maybe a bit of Programming Languages at the side. To finish in time, I have to do 5-8 courses per semester. Is it reasonable to focus on one topic per semester? E.g., I'll do about 5 courses on Algorithms. My assumption is that if I do all of these in one semester, I'll get a deeper understanding of the topic. Or would it be more beneficial for me to do 1-2 courses form each area per semester?"}
{"_id": "164158", "title": "Breaking 1NF to model subset constraints. Does this sound sane?", "text": "My first question here. Appologize if it is in the wrong forum but this seems pretty conceptual. I am looking at doing something that goes against conventional wisdom and want to get some feedback as to whether this is totally insane or will result in problems, so critique away! I am on PostgreSQL 9.1 but may be moving to 9.2 for this part of this project. To re-iterate: Does it seem sane to break 1NF in this way? I am not looking for debugging code so much as where people see problems that this might lead. # The Problem In double entry accounting, financial transactions are journal entries with an arbitrary number of lines. Each line has either a left value (debit) or a right value (credit) which can be modelled as a single value with negatives as debits and positives as credits or vice versa. The sum of all debits and credits must equal zero (so if we go with a single amount field, sum(amount) must equal zero for each financial journal entry). SQL-based databases, pretty much required for this sort of work, have no way to express this sort of constraint natively and so any approach to enforcing it in the database seems rather complex. # The Write Model The journal entries are append only. There is a possibility we will add a delete model but it will be subject to a different set of restrictions and so is not applicable here. If and when we allow deletes, we will probably do them using a simple ON DELETE CASCADE designation on the foreign key, and require that deletes go through a dedicated stored procedure which can enforce the other constraints. So inserts and selects have to be accommodated but updates and deletes do not for this task. # My Proposed Solution My proposed solution is to break first normal form and model constraints on arrays of tuples, with a trigger that breaks the rows out into another table.               CREATE TABLE journal_line (         entry_id bigserial primary key,         account_id int not null references account(id),         journal_entry_id bigint not null, -- adding references later         amount numeric not null     );      I would then add \"table methods\" to extract debits and credits for reporting purposes:               CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION debits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric     LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$     SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount < 0 THEN $1.amount * -1 ELSE NULL END; $$;          CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION credits(journal_line) RETURNS numeric     LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE AS $$     SELECT CASE WHEN $1.amount > 0 THEN $1.amount ELSE NULL END; $$;      Then the journal entry table (simplified for this example):               CREATE TABLE journal_entry (         entry_id bigserial primary key, -- no natural keys :-(         journal_id int not null references journal(id),         date_posted date not null,         reference text not null,         description text not null,         journal_lines journal_line[] not null     );      Then a table method and and check constraints:               CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION running_total(journal_entry) returns numeric     language sql immutable as $$     SELECT sum(amount) FROM unnest($1.journal_lines); $$;          ALTER TABLE journal_entry      ADD CONSTRAINT CHECK (((journal_entry.running_total) = 0));          ALTER TABLE journal_line     ADD FOREIGN KEY journal_entry_id REFERENCES journal_entry(entry_id);      And finally we'd have a breakout trigger:               CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION je_breakout() RETURNS TRIGGER     LANGUAGE PLPGSQL AS $$      BEGIN        IF TG_OP = 'INSERT' THEN           INSERT INTO journal_line (journal_entry_id, account_id, amount)           SELECT NEW.id, account_id, amount             FROM unnest(NEW.journal_lines);           RETURN NEW;        ELSE           RAISE EXCEPTION 'Operation Not Allowed';        END IF;      END;     $$;       And finally               CREATE TRIGGER AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON journal_entry      FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE_PROCEDURE je_breaout();      Of course the example above is simplified. There will be a status table that will track approval status allowing for separation of duties, etc. However the goal here is to prevent unbalanced transactions. Any feedback? Does this sound entirely insane? # Standard Solutions? In getting to this point I have to say I have looked at four different current ERP solutions to this problems:   1. Represent every line item as a debit and a credit against different accounts.   2. Use of foreign keys against the line item table to enforce an eventual running total of 0   3. Use of constraint triggers in PostgreSQL   4. Forcing all validation here solely through the app logic. My concerns are that #1 is pretty limiting and very hard to audit internally. It's not programmer transparent and so it strikes me as being difficult to work with in the future. The second strikes me as being very complex and required a series of contraints and foreign keys against self to make work, and therefore it strikes me as complex, hard to sort out at least in my mind, and thus hard to work with. The fourth could be done as we force all access through stored procedures anyway and this is the most common solution (have the app total things up and throw an error otherwise). However, I think proof that a constraint is followed is superior to test cases, and so the question becomes whether this in fact generates insert anomilies rather than solving them. If this is a solved problem it isn't the case that everyone agrees on the solution...."}
{"_id": "34711", "title": "Looking for tips on managing complexity with SCM repositories", "text": "I am a solo developer in my department and I have a lot of individual projects, all created and managed by me. I started using SVN at ProjectLocker via Versions on the Mac a couple years ago when the variety of projects started getting unwieldy. _Scenario 1_ : Now I have a process that is of reasonable complexity it can be broken up into multiple smaller applications and they all share files. In one phase, there is a single shared file\u2014a constants file\u2014that is shared between a Cocoa app and an iPhone app framework. In the second phase, the iPhone app framework will be used to create individual apps of the same ilk\u2014controller classes and what not will all be the same\u2014but with different content in each. The problem that I am running across is that the file in the first phase is in one repository with the application that started it, and the app framework is in a second, separate repository. _Scenario 2_ : I have another application framework that partially relies on code from an open source project. This is all internal, non-commerical work, but again, the application framework is going to be used to create a variety of unique products and processes. So, now I have an internally managed repository and an externally managed one out of my control. I make little changes to the open source code to meet the needs of my framework when there is an update I download, but I never commit back into the external repository (though, now that I think about it, I don't think I'm committing it to mine either. Oops). **The Problem** I have all of this set up on my production Mac quite nicely, but duplicating and subsequently maintaining that environment on my laptop has been challenging. For Scenario 1, I've thought of merging these two projects together into the same repository because they are, for all intents and purposes inextricably linked. But, Scenario 2, I think I'm stuck just managing files as best I can. **The Question** I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on how to manage either of these situations, as well as other complex SCM scenarios when it comes to linking various files from various repositories together. My familiarity with SVN only comes from my work with Versions. It's been great, but I'm a little out of my depth here."}
{"_id": "152555", "title": "Number of lines of code in a piece of software", "text": "Our manager has asked for a report on on the number of lines of code in our software. What should we do?"}
{"_id": "46488", "title": "What are some good Object Oriented Design (OOD) interview questions?", "text": "I'm looking to prepare for a job interview and I wanted to go over some good Object Oriented Design (OOD) questions. Here are some of the OOD concepts that should give a good starting point:   1. inheritance    2. multiple inheritance    3. encapsulation    4. abstraction   5. composition    6. polymorphism    7. overriding polymorphism Would you please suggest any other OOD question(s)/topics that should be reviewed?"}
{"_id": "241521", "title": "Benefits of porting C library to C++", "text": "Say we take any C library such as libpng or libvorbis and convert it so that it compiles as C++ (only the minimum changes to make it compile as C++ code). Can the compiler do extra optimizations when its C++ code? Is there **any sort** of benefit to be gained by porting the code to C++? What are the downsides that might cancel out these benefits?"}
{"_id": "241522", "title": "Confused about implementing Single Responsibility Principle", "text": "Please bear with me if the question looks not well structured. To put you in the context of my issue: I am building an application that invoices vehicles stay duration in a parking. In addition to the stay service there are some other services. Each service has its own calculation logic. Here is an illustration (please correct me if the design is wrong):               public abstract class Service     {        public int Id { get; set; }        public bool IsActivated { get; set; }        public string Name { get; set }        public decimal Price { get; set; }     }          public class VehicleService : Service     {           //MTM : many to many        public virtual ICollection<MTMVehicleService> Vehicles { get; set; }     }          public class StayService : VehicleService     {          }          public class Vehicle     {        public int Id { get; set; }        public string ChassisNumber { get; set; }        public DateTime? EntryDate { get; set; }        public DateTime? DeliveryDate { get; set; }        //...        public virtual ICollection<MTMVehicleService> Services{ get; set; }     }      Now, I am focusing on the stay service as an example:   I would like to know at invoicing time which class(es) would be responsible for generating the invoice item for the service and for each vehicle? This should calculate the duration cost knowing that the duration could be invoiced partially so the rule is as follows: not yet invoiced stay days * stay price per day. At this moment I have InvoiceItemsGenerator do everything but I am aware that there is a better design."}
{"_id": "219946", "title": "Search Substring in String collection", "text": "I have a big collection of strings _a[1], \u2026, a[N]_ where _N_ is about several millions. I am provided a string _m_ and I need to iterate over all the strings _a[i]_ that contain _m_. In other words, I need to find all the strings _a[i]_ having _m_ as substring. What would be the most efficient data structure for that problem? I need to be very careful with memory as I am working with a big number of strings."}
{"_id": "236540", "title": "What do these cocoonJS terms of use mean", "text": "I was looking at the terms of use for CocoonJS and noticed this section > License Grant. By uploading User Content via the Services, you expressly > grant, and you represent and warrant that you have a right to grant, and do > so grant, to Ludei, a royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use, > reproduce, modify, publish, list information regarding, edit, translate, and > make derivative works of all such User Content and your name, voice, and/or > likeness as contained in your User Content, if applicable, in whole or in > part, and in any form, media or technology, whether now known or hereafter > developed, solely for use in connection with the Services. I am not too clear on the legal jargon, but to me this sounds like I'm basically giving someone unrestricted access to any intellectual property that I have submitted to their servers, and the ability to use my identity in any form as they wish. Can someone clarify what the excerpt means?"}
{"_id": "236542", "title": "long lines in git or svn", "text": "I am coding a program which has persistent data (the MELT monitor, related to GCC MELT). The data is persistent because it is expected to be read and overwritten by most executions. (That data is in particular made of abstract syntax trees) Currently, this persistent data is an Sqlite database. Of course, I am backing up it in textual format, obtained by sqlite dump, and I want to manage this textual dump with a version control system (probably git, but perhaps also subversion ....). Unless I take special precautions, these SQL dumps will probably have quite long lines (e.g. several dozens of kilobytes). Wide SQL columns would probably contain JSON text of many kilobytes. Would `git` (and `svn`) be more happy with shorter lines (in particular would they perform slower with long lines, or have repositories using much more disk space)? I'm probably not mostly interested in the `diff` commands (e.g. `git diff` or `svn diff`), because I expect that using them for such textual dump is not very interesting for the human developers. I am coding the persistency routines, so I am able to change slightly the format (e.g. to add newlines in some JSON text, which `sqlite3 dump` is dumping verbatim). If you are curious, my current code snapshot is on http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/monimelt-bgc-21apr2014.tar.bz2 and contains a `state-monimelt.sql` dump file (which will of course become much larger, perhaps near or above a megabyte)"}
{"_id": "219940", "title": "Extreme Programming for a single developer", "text": "I've been working with some basic extreme programming concepts for the last two weeks, for a small scale, for-profit, multiplayer, arcade game. I've spent a week developing user stories and determining requirements to create a release plan. I've also spent a week coding and applying the first iteration plan I came up with. I've identified a few of the obviously useful concepts for a single developer.   * Continuous Integration   * Never Add Functionality Early   * Test Driven Development   * Choose a System Metaphor   * Use a single Integration Point   * Test out all bugs   * Constantly refactor   * Set a sustainable pace   * Simplicity   * Frequent Releases I'm curious if I'm missing anything in particular that might be suited to working with a single developer project? Also, in this light given the idea of simplicity and test driven development, is it better to use established, feature-rich, ready made platforms? Or should I work from the ground up, when feasible, to avoid running into the issues presented with rules such as constantly refactoring and never adding functionality early?"}
{"_id": "81330", "title": "What are the Characteristics of a Software \"Center of Excellence\" (CoE)?", "text": "Recently a new director of my department came in and expressed his wish that we become a \"center of excellence\". I expected that since he is my first boss who actually has a programming background that there would be some description of this. However, it was left at that. As I reflected on this over the last few days, I am coming up empty on what a CoE actually means beyond just \"being effective\" at delivering the product. Here are the main items I am struggling with:   1. Is this just a term that is thrown around by management types?   2. What qualities make a group of software developers and testers excellent?   3. How do you measure excellence in this context?"}
{"_id": "69083", "title": "What is an algorithm?", "text": "What exactly is an algorithm, as in what does Algorithm mean? The little I understand the word, is that it's not specific to a particular language, or design pattern, rather it's one the most basic principles (so I guess this question makes me look stupid). One of the \"options\" I have of understanding it, is that it means the method of getting something done, that could be written as a list in pseudocode. When I write more complicated code, I think what needs to be done, with what, and how I would get there (not in a programming language), then write that in code. Is that good way to go about it, and is that anything to do with algorithms? (I wanted to ask here rather on Stackoverflow, because it's not about a specific problem/language plus I get the feeling that the majority of people here know the 'why', or at least the answers here are more detailed, rather than on Stackoverflow where it's different, I'm sorry if I should have asked over there)"}
{"_id": "229566", "title": "How do you work out timings for larger projects?", "text": "I work for a small company that hasn't done much work in bespoke development. It's something we're growing into. With all our projects, whether a bespoke development piece of work, or a simple brochure website, we plan out how long we expect the job to take us and then multiply that by our daily fee to give us a quote for the customer. That has always worked well for us with the smaller projects, the CMS sites, the eCommerce sites, where we know the systems well and don't come across many issues. We have timings down well and can predict costs accurately. However with these larger bespoke projects we're starting to find that no matter how much we plan ahead, no matter how much we nail the specifications of the system, our timings are always out. We've started adding in a considerable buffer for bespoke pieces of software, but even then a couple of nasty bugs can really set things back and push us beyond what we expect by quite a long way. How do you quote for these larger projects? Is it simply a case of keep going and eventually we'll get it right? Or are we missing something here as it seems almost impossible to nail pricing down for bespoke websites that fall outside our standard CMS or eCommerce site. * * * **Update** As @Zeroth pointed out there's probably a few things missing out about the team. We don't run sprints. We have one large project on the go and have milestones and just set goals based on our estimates of how long things should take. As for the team, currently it's made up of 4 people, although 2 new people are being trained up at the moment. The 4 people make up a salesman and designer (he's also the office manager), a designer and website builder, a website builder who also deals with content for the sites and day to day customer facing issues, and me, the developer. I deal with development of custom projects and improving / fixing our CMS and eCommerce platforms. The two people being trained up are another designer and website builder, and a junior developer. Once a project reaches certain milestones, everyone pitches in to test it as thoroughly as we can. I always put in as much logging and debugging information as I can think of to help track down the inevitable bugs as quickly as possible, but no matter how much we do, we can't test every situation. I understand this is a complex and widely varying answer, I guess I'm mostly after some advice and also some pointers to resources (thank you @MichaelT for the link to the book) that can help us improve. We need to be able to pull a profit from custom work as we're currently fully booked until June for development work and we need to make this work for us. Over the last year, it just seems no matter how much we learn from each project we work on, we still get it wrong with our estimates."}
{"_id": "159151", "title": "Inheritance using non-abstract base class", "text": "This post is based on the question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49002/prefer-composition-over- inheritance/11758048#comment15634305_11758048. Some people said - check whether there is \u201cis-a\u201d relationship. If it is there use inheritance. What I think is there should be a second check for using inheritance. Use inheritance only if the base class is abstract. If the base class need to be instantiated then use composition; not inheritance. E.g 1. Accountant is an Employee. But I will not use inheritance because a Employee object can be instantiated. (When you talk to business people, they will tell you - Accountant is an Employee. But in OO world Accountant is not (should not be) an employee) E.g 2. Book is a SellingItem. A SellingItem cannot be instantiated - it is abstract concept. Hence I will use inheritance. The SellingItem is an abstract base class (or interface in C#) What I am looking for here is an example that will challenge my argument \u2013that is a scenario in which inheritance is better than composition even though the base class is non-abstract (base class can be instantiated). Can you please provide such an example? Note: It would be more helpful if you can provide a scenario based on Bank domain, HR domain, Retail domain or any other popular domain. Note: In the design, please assume that we have full control of the code. That is we are not using any external API. Also we are starting from beginning. I will mark as answered if there is an example that explains a scenario that proves my argument is wrong. It is not a mere discussion on whether to use Composition or Inheritance. I support @anon answer in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3351666/why-use- inheritance-at-all?lq=1 > The main reason for using inheritance is not as a form of composition - it > is so you can get polymorphic behaviour. If you don't need polymorphism, you > probably should not be using inheritance. @MatthieuM. says in Code Smell: Inheritance Abuse > The issue with inheritance is that it can be used for two orthogonal > purposes: > > interface (for polymorphism) > > implementation (for code reuse) **REFERENCE**   1. Employee- Accountant Example http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11759120/issue-in-using-composition-for-is-a-relationship   2. Selling Item Example - http://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/14077/is-it-proper-tpt-inheritance   3. Programming SOLID Principles   4. Code Smell: Inheritance Abuse"}
{"_id": "43506", "title": "Is it bad to have an \"Obsessive Refactoring Disorder\"?", "text": "I was reading this question and realized that could almost be me. I am fairly OCD about refactoring someone else's code when I see that I can improve it. For example, if the code contains duplicate methods to do the same thing with nothing more than a single parameter changing, I feel I have to remove all the copy/paste methods and replace it with one generic one. Is this bad? Should I try and stop? I try not to refactor unless I can actually make improvements to the code performance or readability, or if the person who did the code isn't following our standard naming conventions (I hate expecting a variable to be local because of the naming standard, only to discover it is a global variable which has been incorrectly named)"}
{"_id": "162256", "title": "In C and C++, what methods can prevent accidental use of the assignment(=) where equivalence(==) is needed?", "text": "In C and C++, it is very easy to write the following code with a serious error.               char responseChar = getchar();     int confirmExit = 'y' == tolower(responseChar);     if (confirmExit = 1)     {         exit(0);     }      The error is that the if statement should have been:               if (confirmExit == 1)      As coded, it will exit every time, because the assignment of the `confirmExit` variable occurs, then `confirmExit` is used as the result of the expression. Are there good ways to prevent this kind of error?"}
{"_id": "135360", "title": "How to create an Intelligent Agent", "text": "I am currently doing my Honours in Computer Science and taking Artificial Intelligence as a subject. As part of completing the subject I have to develop my own basic intelligent agent. I have yet to wrap my head around what I actually have to do for this project. I am not the most technically gifted programmer and I have no idea of what to do or where to start Could someone please point me in the right direction as to where to start learning how to develop an Intelligent Agent as well as any possible idea's of what to actually do for a project? The requirement for the project are very vague as we were not told how technical or big the project should be. (Hopefully not too big as I have another 8 subjects who require projects as well). Any VB.net references would be appreciated as well. (I know it's not the best language to develop an IA with, but due to my time constraints this is the programming language I 'feel' most comfortable with)."}
{"_id": "190023", "title": "Is a \"build\" assembly?", "text": "In an old book I have, they say that \"build\" is either a process of converting source code into executable or the actual result - assembly. Is that correct? Is a build actually the assembly, I mean from terminological point of view."}
{"_id": "190021", "title": "How to have quicker launch and lesser memory footprint using IntelliJ Idea?", "text": "I am trying to move from Eclipse to IntelliJ Idea. I am trying out various dev plugins cases for IntelliJ Idea - android, clojure, scala, python, javascript, java, gwt, dart, jboss, spring etc. The start time increases as more plugins are installed (as mentioned by IntelliJ Idea wiki). _I am keen to learn different aspects of programming_. I am trying to find out how developers use IntelliJ Idea when working with multiple language environment. 1) Do they have different IntelliJ Idea installations to work with different language environments i.e the above scenario have 5-6 different IntelliJ installations with only appropriate plugins installed only. 2) Does IntelliJ Idea provide a mechanism to turn off different plugins within a single installation?"}
{"_id": "200140", "title": "Sorting and averaging the highest values of pixel data", "text": "Currently, I am using Android/Java. I am looking for the most efficient means to determine the average of the highest 100 pixel values taken from a greyscale preview. The preview part I am more or less okay with; however, it determining which sorting methodology is the most efficient. The other option is to apply a threshold, which will eliminate most of the data. Which sorting algorithm would be most efficient for an unsorted data set of over 3 million values?"}
{"_id": "200142", "title": "Anything beneficial from ORM for a NodeJS project already plain-SQL-implemented?", "text": "Well, actually it's a assignment project and I've already implemented a simple yet functional forum with NodeJS. But now we've been required to **use ORM frameworks to refactor part of your code worth refactoring**. As I use Node.JS, there's no such _type-safe_ benefits from ORM I could get. Besides, the code is already functional and I just don't see what good ORM could bring to it... (Requests are handled pretty swiftly and independently... I don't think I would like to cache tons of `Object`s from database to `request.session`...) My question is, what possible benefits will an ORM bring to a stable NodeJS project?"}
{"_id": "49765", "title": "I need a public cryptography system that works on small keys", "text": "I just need it to support signing and signature verification. I need it to have public and private keys that fit _each_ in 16 bytes. The signature itself must fit 16 bytes. I don't really care about cryptographic strength, as this is part of something bigger. Is there such a thing?"}
{"_id": "200148", "title": "Giving a double type for sqrt library function in C", "text": "_The C Programming Language_ by Ritchie says that: > The library routine `sqrt` expects a double type and will produce nonsense > if inadvertently handled something else. So if `n` is an integer, we can use > `sqrt((double) n)` to convert the value of `n` to double. But the following code works fine on my system:               printf(\"%f\",sqrt(9));      Then also it is giving the same result as `sqrt((double)9)`. Why is my compiler not following the book?"}
{"_id": "158404", "title": "How often should I be compiling?", "text": "For the longest time I've just done small app development. Building and debugging took a matter of seconds (or should I say - second?). I got fairly used to just debugging to test literally everything (and it's nice to see my stuff working - like a programming high almost). The problem is that as of late I've been working on a much larger project. The single solution contains 4 (and probably more soon) projects each very large. As it expands, compile times naturally increase making debugging a real pain. I'm stuck in my \"compile every update\" mode and it has wasted quite a bit of my time. Every visible update I want to see it. **So...** How can I get out of this irrational compile/debug habit and how often should I actually be compiling and debugging my application? **EDIT:** I'm utilizing Visual Studio. My compile times I realize are minuscule to what most of you are used to I realize, but it is still wasting my time :)"}
{"_id": "158407", "title": "When using Hibernate can we forget about Database Design?", "text": "We started (just me and my friend) working on a website. As a part design phase we have finished the drawing a Site Map, decided on the content in each of the web page and the navigation. As we want to use the Spring MVC and Hibernate we want to start on Classes design (domain classes) first so that the database part is taken care by Hibernate (Except for some tables for static data). Does our approach correct? Is my understanding correct that when we use Hibernate the 80% of the database design can be forgotten?"}
{"_id": "141699", "title": "SQL DB design to support user feeds (in application like facebook)", "text": "I have a social network server with a MySql DB. I want to show the users feeds like done in Facebook. Example - UserX now Friend with userY, userX did like on postX etc. Currently I have table: C1 : UserId C2 : LogType (now friend, did like etc) C3 : ObjectId (Can be userId or postId) - set depending on the LogType. Currently to get all related logs to show to the user I do the following queries: 1. Get All user Friends userIds 2. Query all rows which C1 is in userIds (I query completed) 3. Scan the DB and see - if LogType equals DidLike, check if post's OwnerId is the userId - if yes add it to logs. And so on. Obvious this is not efficient at all. I am looking for a better way. I thought I had in mind: Create a new table (in addition to the Log table) C1 : UserId C2 : LogId (from Log table) C3 : UserID of the one who did the action When querying logs - look in the table and get related Logs (by LogId) from LogTable. Updating the table: Whenever user doing action that should be in the log: 1. Add the Log entry to LogTable. 2. Scan the DB and see which users are interested with the Log (Who my friends are, Who is the owner of the post) and add related entries to the new table. (must be done in BG). 3. If user UNFRIEND another user - then look in the logs for all rows where C3 == UNFRIENDED user id and delete them. Any opinions? Other suggestions?"}
{"_id": "90226", "title": "How do you handle multiple projects that form the same product(s)?", "text": "I have limited experience when it comes to build and version control systems. I feel like I've run into a common problem but I'm having trouble uncovering how it is typically handled. Say you have four source code projects:   * fooLib - Shared library   * fizzLib - Shared library   * buzzApp - Application that depends on fooLib   * barApp - Application that depends on fizzLib and fooLib Now, say you have two products:   * ProductA - only needs buzzApp   * ProductB - only needs barApp If my task were to make bug fixes to ProductB, how would I go about checking out the projects? Am I supposed to figure out the dependencies (or look them up) or is there some automated way of doing this? Also, how could this be automated for nightly builds for each product?"}
{"_id": "90221", "title": "Dealing with under performing co-worker", "text": "I'm going to try to keep this topic as generic as I can so the question isn't closed as too specific or whatever. Anyway, let's get to it. I currently work on a somewhat small project with 15-20 developers. We recently hired a few new people because we had the hours and it synched up well with the schedule. It was refreshing to see hiring done this way and not just throwing hours & employees at a problem. Alas, I could argue the hiring process still isn't perfect but that's another story for another day. Anyway, one of these developers is really under performing. The developer is green and has a lot of bad habits. Comes in later than I do and leaving earlier than I am. This in and of itself isn't an issue, but the lack of quality work makes it become a bit frustrating. When giving out tasking the question is no longer, what can realistically be given but now becomes - How much of the work will we have to redo? So as the project goes on, I'm afraid this might cause issues with the schedule. The schedule could have been defined as a bit aggressive; however, given that this person is under performing it now in my mind goes from aggressive to potentially chaotic. Yes, one person shouldn't make or break a schedule and that in and of itself is an issue too but please let's ignore that for right now. What's the best way to deal with this? I'm not the boss, I'm not the project lead but I've been around for a while now and am not sure how to proceed. Complaining to management comes across as childish and doing nothing seems wrong. I'll ask the community for insight/advice/suggestions."}
{"_id": "244461", "title": "Improving the running time of Breadth First Search and Adjacency List creation", "text": "We are given an array of integers where all elements are between 0-9. have to start from the 1st position and reach end in minimum no of moves such that we can from an index i move 1 position back and forward i.e i-1 and i+1 and jump to any index having the same value as index i.   Time Limit : 1 second   Max input size : 100000 I have tried to solve this problem use a single source shortest path approach using Breadth First Search and though BFS itself is O(V+E) and runs in time the adjacency list creation takes O(n2) time and therefore overall complexity becomes O(n2). is there any way i can decrease the time complexity of adjacency list creation? or is there a better and more efficient way of solving the problem?               int main(){              vector<int> v;         string str;         vector<int> sets[10];              cin>>str;         int in;         for(int i=0;i<str.length();i++){             in=str[i]-'0';             v.push_back(in);             sets[in].push_back(i);         }              int n=v.size();         if(n==1){             cout<<\"0\\n\";             return 0;         }         if(v[0]==v[n-1]){             cout<<\"1\\n\";             return 0;         }                   vector<int> adj[100001];         for(int i=0;i<10;i++){             for(int j=0;j<sets[i].size();j++){                 if(sets[i][j]>0)                     adj[sets[i][j]].push_back(sets[i][j]-1);                 if(sets[i][j]<n-1)                       adj[sets[i][j]].push_back(sets[i][j]+1);                 for(int k=j+1;k<sets[i].size();k++){                     if(abs(sets[i][j]-sets[i][k])!=1){                         adj[sets[i][j]].push_back(sets[i][k]);                         adj[sets[i][k]].push_back(sets[i][j]);                     }                 }             }         }              queue<int> q;         q.push(0);              int dist[100001];         bool visited[100001]={false};         dist[0]=0;         visited[0]=true;              int c=0;         while(!q.empty()){             int dq=q.front();             q.pop();             c++;                  for(int i=0;i<adj[dq].size();i++){                 if(visited[adj[dq][i]]==false){                     dist[adj[dq][i]]=dist[dq]+1;                     visited[adj[dq][i]]=true;                     q.push(adj[dq][i]);                 }             }              }              cout<<dist[n-1]<<\"\\n\";              return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "45681", "title": "Writing a job requirement for a web application developer", "text": "I'm currently writing a job requirement for a software engineer position for my company, in which we are looking for a developer to work on client-side web application work. How should I title the job title / position? I don't necessarily want to call it a \"Web Developer\", for fear that it might attract more designer-y types. On the other hand, \"Software Engineer\" doesn't really give the indication that the work, while application based, will be web-based. Is \"Web Application Software Engineer\" a valid position title? Also, I'm somewhat torn on what the required skills set should be. I don't necessarily think that the ideal candidate should have x years of experience in say, JavaScript or ActionScript, but rather am just looking for someone who has experience in developing client-side applications, and is willing to learn and develop web applications. My current attempt at this, is that I have a section in which I state: > Experience in the following frameworks and technologies are a plus, but not > necessarily required for the position:"}
{"_id": "204022", "title": "Must I think about compiled machine code when I write my code?", "text": "For example I've got following code:               auto z = [](int x) -> int {         if (x > 0) {             switch (x) {                 case 2: return 5;                 case 3: return 6;                 default: return 1;                 }             }         return 0;         };      And later I call this several times. In asm code I see external calls with lambda....something... It's becoming not easy to read and I think it also can cause performance. So maybe I win in meta-programming but do I lose in asm debugging and performance? Should I avoid modern language features, macros and other meta programming aspects to be sure in performance and debugging simplicity?"}
{"_id": "254296", "title": "Map multiple functions over a single data item", "text": "I'm in the process of learning Scala and I came across a scenario today where I need to map multiple functions over a single piece of data and wondered if there was a formal name for this. It sort of feels like the inverse of map. I'm not sure this is the correct way of expressing it, but this is what I did:               dmap(x: Object, fns: List[Function]) = fns.map(_(x))      Is there a built in way to do something similar? Is there a formal name for this function?"}
{"_id": "254290", "title": "Ranking players depending on decision making during a game", "text": "How would I go about a ranking system for players that play a game? Basically, looking at video games, players throughout the game make critical decisions that ultimately impact the end game result. Is there a way or how would I go about a way to translate some of those factors (leveling up certain skills, purchasing certain items, etc.) into something like a curve that can be plotted on a graph? This game that I would like to implement this is League of Legends. Example: Player is Level 1 in the beginning. Gets a kill very early in the game (he gets gold because of the kill and it increases his \"power curve\"), and purchases attack damage (gives him more damage which also increases his \"power curve\". However, the player that he killed (Player 2), buys armor (counters attack damage). This slightly increases Player 2's own power curve, and reduces Player 1's power curve. There's many factors I would like to take into account. These relative factors (example: BECAUSE Player 2 built armor, and I am mainly attack damage, it lowers my OWN power curve) seem the hardest to implement. My question is this: Is there a certain way to approach this task? Are there similar theoretical concepts behind ranking systems that I should read up on (Maybe in game theory or data mining)? I've seen the ELO system, but it doesn't seem what I want since it simply takes into account wins and losses."}
{"_id": "254292", "title": "Expected time for lazy evaluation with nested functions?", "text": "A colleague and I are doing a free R course, although I believe this is a more general lazy evaluation issue, and have found a scenario that we have discussed briefly and I'd like to find out the answer from a wider community. The scenario is as follows (pseudo code):               wrapper => function(thing)     {         print => function()         {             write(thing)         }     }          v = createThing(1, 2, 3)     w = wrapper(v)     v = createThing(4, 5, 6)     w.print()     // Will print 4, 5, 6 thing.     v = create(7, 8, 9)     w.print()      // Will print 4, 5, 6 because \"thing\" has now been evaluated. Another similar situation is as follows:               // Using the same function as above     v = createThing(1, 2, 3)     v = wrapper(v)     w.print()     // The wrapper function incestuously includes itself.      Now I understand why this happens but where my colleague and I differ is on what should happen. My colleague's view is that this is a bug and the evaluation of the passed in argument should be forced at the point it is passed in so that the returned \"w\" function is fixed. My view is that I would prefer his option myself, but that I realise that the situation we are encountering is down to lazy evaluation and this is just how it works and is more a quirk than a bug. I am not actually sure of what would be expected, hence the reason I am asking this question. I think that function comments could express what will happen, or leave it to be very lazy, and if the coder using the function wants the argument evaluated then they can force it before passing it in. So, when working with lazy evaulation, what is the practice for the time to evaluate an argument passed, and stored, inside a function?"}
{"_id": "53026", "title": "How to report a bug to developers? A programmers quest to educated on bug reporting", "text": "I'm hoping to get some tips and advice on how to educate the rest of the company on how to submit proper bug reports. Currently we get tickets like:   * When I click this link I get a 404. (They include the page that 404s and not the page that caused it)   * Sometimes the right column flows into the button column. (no screenshot or additional information)   * Changes to xxx does seem to be working right. (EOM) Does anyone have a bug submission process/form that guides users into submitting as much information as possible?"}
{"_id": "53021", "title": "Interview question: how much would you test before you stop?", "text": "This was a question I got in an interview. After asking the coding question, the interviewer asked how I would test the function. I answered with writing unit tests and test cases to try to cover every edge case. The follow-up was how much would I test before I stop? What's the interviewer looking for in these questions? and what are some good answers?"}
{"_id": "96973", "title": "What's a schr\u00f6dinbug?", "text": "This wiki page tells : > A schr\u00f6dinbug is a bug that manifests only after someone reading source code > or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have > worked in the first place, at which point the program promptly stops working > for everybody until fixed. The Jargon File adds: \"Though... this sounds > impossible, it happens; some programs have harbored latent schr\u00f6dinbugs for > years.\" What is being talked about is very vague.. Can someone provide an example of how a schr\u00f6dinbug is like (like with a fictional / real-life situation)?"}
{"_id": "160097", "title": "Where Should I Put Configuration Files?", "text": "I'm creating a project that I want to be able to distribute across platforms. I'm writing in Java and AWT which already gives me a pretty large range of devices, but I'm mostly interested in Windows and Linux (Debian/Ubuntu). I'm trying to determine where I should put config files. I have application- wide configuration files and user-specific files. Where are common directories to put these files? Here's my current setup: ## Windows: App Config: `%PROGRAMDATA%\\MyApp\\config\\` User Config: `%USERPROFILE%\\AppData\\Local\\MyApp\\` ## Other: App Config: `/opt/MyApp/config` User Config: `$HOME/.MyApp/`"}
{"_id": "54553", "title": "What obligations do highly public developers have to their users? (Or,  _why the lucky stiff's tale)", "text": "Why the Lucky Stiff removed most of his online profile on Aug. 19th, 2009. The author of Why's (poignant) guide to Ruby, Hpricot, and many other projects left behind many confused and upset users. Zed Shaw called it a \"dickhead thing to do\". John Resig called his work a \"Sand Mandala\". Do developers have an unwritten obligation to their users? Does their obligation increase with their prestige?"}
{"_id": "164965", "title": "Calling MSSQL stored procedure from Zend Controller ? Any other approaches?", "text": "_MSSQL and DB, Zend as PHP Framework_ , I am using this way to call SP with I/P Parameters and to get O/p Parameters. It seems I am writing SQL code in PHP. Any other good approaches?                $str1 = \"DECLARE @Msgvar   varchar(100); DECLARE @last_id int;          exec DispatchProduct_m_Ins $DispatchChallanId,'$FRUNo',$QTY,$Rate,$Amount,     \".$this->cmpId.\",\".$this->aspId.\",\".$this->usrId.\",@Msg = @Msgvar OUTPUT,@LAST_ID = @last_id OUTPUT;          SELECT  @Msgvar AS N'@Msg',@last_id AS '@LAST_ID'; \";//Calling SP               $stmt = $db->prepare($str1);          $stmt->execute();     $rsDispProd = $stmt->fetchAll();               $DispatchProductId   = $rsDispProd[0][\"@LAST_ID\"];//get last ins ID as O/p Parameter"}
{"_id": "62466", "title": "In reference to .NET development and startups", "text": "Not posting a question of my own per se, but I am a \".NET developer\". I read the following article about one startup CEO's opinion of hiring .NET experienced developers. He has some comments on the blog but not much of a discussion format as what's possible here. I also know nothing about this man, or am promoting his blog in any way, but the article did throw me off some, and I would like to hear some feedback from developers. Personally, I see his point as it's very easy for some people to create a basic ASP.NET website or some other automated solutions without much knowledge of anything beyond that, and thus would not make them good programmers. But I also think he largely ignores the reality that while many pieces of the framework have been automated and work just fine, you can come up with some very advanced solutions if you really have the know-how and the drive to explore the full capabilities of the framework. Much of their automated tools are \"black box\", but I've never had a problem where if I needed to get more \"low-level\" or extend some base class to give me what I really needed in a way that wasn't already available. What's your opinions for or against? CEO Friday: Why we don\u2019t hire .NET programmers"}
{"_id": "164962", "title": "HTML5 and gaming practices", "text": "I am trying to build an app with HTML5. Is there a certain syntax to follow when making objects for games? Anyone tried that and what are good practices to follow?"}
{"_id": "237635", "title": "As an interviewer, asking a candidate to find errors in small sample code. Is this fair?", "text": "We've been interviewing on and off for about two years, and I've run this by about 30 candidates. I wrote some 20 lines of code which perform a relatively basic operation, but has a bunch of errors in it. None of them are syntax errors. Errors range from bad memory management, incorrect data types, multithreading problems, misuse of keywords, and a couple functional errors that would give undesired output. People get _really nervous_ during this question. Is it a fair question to be asking? The goal is to get an idea of their comfort level with the language (Objective C has some very strange behaviors, and most applicants we get are relatively inexperienced in ObjC specifically as compared to other languages), as well as see their ability to recognize logical problems in otherwise foreign code. Once a candidate has made a first pass, I often will point to specific lines that have remaining errors on them and see how much hand-holding it takes to get a correct identification and/or fix from them. At our company, this is a real world scenario, as programmers would be thrust straight into a 100k line app and given bugs to fix, and we need people that are comfortable with working with the code of 6 other programmers. However, today, another of our interviewers told me he hated this problem (I didn't quite understand what his reason was, admittedly). Is this something I should continue asking, or should I look for alternate avenues?"}
{"_id": "237631", "title": "How to enforce implementation of interface to behave a certain way", "text": "Suppose you had the following interface               public interface IUserRepository     {         User GetByID(int userID);     }      How would you enforce implementers of this interface to throw an exception if a user is not found? I suspect it's not possible to do with code alone, so how would you enforce implementers to implement the intended behavior? Be it through code, documentation, etc.? In this example, the concrete implementation is expected to throw a `UserNotFoundException`               public class SomeClass     {         private readonly IUserRepository _userRepository;              public SomeClass(IUserRepository userRepository)         {             _userRepository = userRepository;         }              public void DisplayUser()         {             try              {                 var user = _userRepository.GetByID(5);                 MessageBox.Show(\"Hello \" + user.Name);             }             catch (UserNotFoundException)             {                 MessageBox.Show(\"User not found\");             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "121097", "title": "Agile (scrum) and UML round-trip tools", "text": "How effective are automated round-trip tools for UML modeling? Do they help in coding quick, clean, efficient code? In what ways do these tools fit into the Agile methodology?"}
{"_id": "128724", "title": "When is it appropriate to develop a gui application, as opposed to a web application?", "text": "I've been thinking about an application that I want to develop for a while now. In short, I want this application to perform some crud operations. The application will be for a law firm so overall security is going to be very important. My primary programming language is php but I wouldn't mind learning some Java or possibly Objective C to make my application os-x and iOS native. Back to my question, what are the pros and cons to developing a gui application as opposed to just developing an app for the browser? The reason I ask is because if there are some benefits to developing an gui app in, say, objective c, then I guess I need to start focussing on learning the language. Important considerations about the application I want to develop:   * Database connectivity   * Security(Very important)"}
{"_id": "118933", "title": "What elements of my JUnits should I mock?", "text": "My classes are following this structure Service Tier (creates and maps InputDTO to DB Data) -> DAO Tier (actually executes DB calls) When I write the service tier JUnits, and when it calls DAO Tier, it expects an actual DB connection and getting data from the DB. Should I be mocking the DAO tier completely from the service tier, or should I be mocking the DB connection and data received from the DB? Secondly, the app expects certain data from a Cache. For JUnit run time, there is no Cache, so how should this be handled - since the service tier method includes looking up the cache to get the details."}
{"_id": "125538", "title": "Worth of Algorithm Challenges and event?", "text": "I'm interested in knowing whether it is advisable for computer science students to spend their major chunk of time on the online judges practising programming(like Topcoder and codeforces) or it's more worth to develop a software or contribute to open-source ?"}
{"_id": "122540", "title": "Saying \"I don't know\" in a technical interview", "text": "If asked a series of technical questions in a programming interview, does it look bad to admit when you don't know the answer to a question? In other words, does admission make you look incompetent or ill prepared? Or, is it assumed that no one will know the answer to every question? Does admitting it instead of taking a shot in the dark make you look honest or like you're a know-it-all?"}
{"_id": "122543", "title": "MVC Validation with ModelState.isValid through a wizard", "text": "I'm working on a small educational project on MVC 3, and I'm facing a small problem, when attempting to handle validation in my application through a wizard. I tried to get benefit from the ability of MVC3 to deliver content of a different view using the same URL, when handling an `[HttpPost]` method on a page. I my case,my main model's class contains about ten `[Required]` properties, that I would like to expose through a small wizard in 3 steps , So I want that the user may be able to enter his personal informations in the first step, then respond to some questions in the second stepp and finally receive a confirmation mail from the web application whit his credentials in the last step. I can't access the last step, because of the ModelState.isValid method that I use to handle validations, and which can't perform properly if I define some properties as `[Required]`, but don't put them on the first view. As the replies to those questions remain in a couple of choices, I've thinked that I may use some nullable `bool?` for in order to avoid validation issues, but know that it's not the proper way. Are there someone who would like to help me find a way to extend my validation to those three steps ? Thanks in advance and sorry for my english, I'm not a native speaker."}
{"_id": "255657", "title": "Help finding the tilde of the following algorithm", "text": "Suppose I have an algorithm that takes N^100/2^N to complete. Would the tilde of this be 0? But then that does not make sense. However, since the alogrithm tends to 0 as N increases, what should the tilde approximation be? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "255655", "title": "Estimating the time it takes for this quick find algorithm to complete", "text": "I am trying to run an estimate on how long this quick find algorithm takes on Union Find type problems. Here is the code:               public int find(int p) {       return id[p];     }          public void union(int p, int q) {       int pID = find(p);       int qID = find(q);       if (pID == qID) return;            for(int i = 0; i < id.length; i++) {         if (id[i] == pID) id[i] == qID;       count--;     }      Note: count variable is based on the id length. So basically, what is the minimum time this algorithm would take (in days) that be able to solve a problem with `10^9` sites, `10^6` input pairs, on a computer capable of executing `10^9` instructions per second? Assume that each iteration of the inner for loop takes 10 instructions. My Work: Since there are `10^6` input pairs and `10^9` sites, I just multiplied them together and got `10^15` instructions that needs to be completed. After dividing by 10 and the number of seconds in a day, I got roughly around 11 days to complete. Is there any variables that I am missing? I have noticed that it said \"minimum\". I guess in minimum case, the array would be accessed `(N + N-1 + N-2 ... 1)` (Input Length)."}
{"_id": "122548", "title": "Benefits of Masters of Engineering Professional Practice for the lowly (yet aspiring) programmer", "text": "I've been looking into in state online degree programs 'to fit my busy lifestyle' (i.e. three children, wife and hour and a half commute). One interesting one I've found is that Master of Engineering in Professional Practice. It looks more useful and practical than a MBA in project management. I'll contact the admission dept there about the specifics. But here I'm just asking in general. Do the courses in this degree apply to software engineering/development in even an abstract sense. The university I'm looking at does not have a Software Engineering major in the school of engineering. I'm not interested in architecture astronomy, but I am interested in helping my company succeed and being able to communicate technical information at a high and effective level as well as being able to lead my co-programmers toward a more robust end product. So my multipart question is:   1. What might be the real benefit to me and my brain and    2. How do I convince my boss (the owner of the company, who does do some tuition reimbursement) that just because it doesn't say anything about software that it might still do us some good?   3. Oh, and how do I get past the fact that a masters degree would make me more qualified to be the project manager than... the project manager? (who is my supervisor)"}
{"_id": "255652", "title": "String send to web not support utf 8", "text": "I try to send some text to web and this is my codes , but it's not support utf8 For example `\u0622\u0631\u06cc\u0646 Show ????` how can I delete this problem?!               FragmentForm                     package com.kamalan.phpandroidapi;          import java.io.BufferedReader;     import java.io.IOException;     import java.io.InputStreamReader;     import java.net.HttpURLConnection;     import java.net.MalformedURLException;     import java.net.URL;          import android.app.Activity;     import android.app.ProgressDialog;     import android.content.Context;     import android.content.Intent;     import android.net.Uri;     import android.os.AsyncTask;     import android.os.Bundle;     import android.provider.Settings.Secure;     import android.support.v4.app.Fragment;     import android.util.Log;     import android.view.LayoutInflater;     import android.view.View;     import android.view.ViewGroup;     import android.widget.EditText;     import android.widget.ImageButton;     import android.widget.RatingBar;     import android.widget.TextView;     import android.widget.Toast;          public class FragmentForm extends Fragment {              // An interface to display or dismiss of ProgressBar          public interface OnSendingRequestToServer {             public void DisplayLoding(boolean setVisibility);         }              private final String TAG = \"FragmentForm\";              private OnSendingRequestToServer onRequestToServer;         private Context context;         private EditText etName;         private EditText etComment;         private RatingBar ratingBar;         private ImageButton ibSubmit;                   @Override         public void onAttach(Activity activity) {             super.onAttach(activity);                  try {                 onRequestToServer = (OnSendingRequestToServer) activity;             } catch (ClassCastException e) {                   throw new ClassCastException(activity.toString() + \" must implement OnConnectingToServer interface.\");             }                  context = activity.getApplicationContext();                  Log.d(TAG, \"Fragment attached to activity.\");         }              @Override         public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, ViewGroup container, Bundle savedInstanceState) {             super.onCreateView(inflater, container, savedInstanceState);                  View view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_form, container, false);                  etName    = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.etName);             etComment = (EditText) view.findViewById(R.id.etComment);             ratingBar = (RatingBar) view.findViewById(R.id.ratingBar);             ibSubmit  = (ImageButton) view.findViewById(R.id.ibSubmit);             //TextView tvcm  = (TextView) view.findViewById(R.id.tvComment);                  Log.d(TAG, \"Fragment created.\");             return view;         }              @Override         public void onActivityCreated(Bundle savedInstanceState) {             super.onActivityCreated(savedInstanceState);                  ibSubmit.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {                      @Override                 public void onClick(View v) {                               String strName = etName.getText().toString().trim();                          if(strName.length() <= 0) {                         Toast.makeText(context, \"\u0646\u0627\u0645 \u062e\u0648\u062f \u0631\u0627 \u0648\u0627\u0631\u062f \u06a9\u0646\u06cc\u062f\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();                         return;                     }                          String strComment = etComment.getText().toString().trim();                     if(strComment.length() <= 0) {                         Toast.makeText(context, \"\u0645\u062a\u0646 \u062c\u06a9 \u0631\u0627 \u0648\u0627\u0631\u062f \u06a9\u0646\u06cc\u062f\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();                         return;                     }                          int rate = (int) ratingBar.getRating();                     if(rate <= 0) {                         Toast.makeText(context, \"\u0627\u0645\u062a\u06cc\u0627\u0632 \u062c\u06a9\u062a\u0627\u0646 \u0631\u0627 \u0648\u0627\u0631\u062f \u06a9\u0646\u06cc\u062f\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();                         return;                     }                          String deviceId = getDeviceId();                          new SendFormTask(deviceId, strName, rate, strComment).execute();                                          }                      private TextView findViewById(int tvcomment) {                     // TODO Auto-generated method stub                     return null;                 }             });         }              private String getDeviceId() {             return Secure.getString(context.getContentResolver(), Secure.ANDROID_ID);         }              /*----------------------------------------------------------------------------          * This method is responsible for creating another thread in parallel with          * main UI thread in order to send a request to server and get data (if any).          * ---------------------------------------------------------------------------*/         public class SendFormTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, Boolean> {                   String deviceId, name, comment;             int rate;                  SendFormTask(String deviceId, String strName, int rate, String strComment) {                 this.deviceId = deviceId;                 this.name = strName;                 this.rate = rate;                 this.comment = strComment;             }                  @Override             protected void onPreExecute() {                 Log.d(TAG, \"SendFormTask is about to start...\");                      onRequestToServer.DisplayLoding(true);             }                  @Override             protected Boolean doInBackground(Void... params) {                 boolean status = false;                  HttpURLConnection urlConnection = null;                      try {                     URL url = new URL(LinkManager.getFormAPI(deviceId, name, rate, comment));                     Log.d(TAG, \"Try to open: \" + url.toString());                     urlConnection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();                     int responseCode = urlConnection.getResponseCode();                     Log.d(TAG, \"Response code is: \" + responseCode);                          if (responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {                         BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(urlConnection.getInputStream()));                         if (in != null) {                             StringBuilder strBuilder = new StringBuilder();                             // Read character by character                                           int ch = 0;                             while ((ch = in.read()) != -1)                                 strBuilder.append((char) ch);                                  // get returned message and show it                             String response = strBuilder.toString();                             Log.d(\"Server response:\", response);                                  if(response.equalsIgnoreCase(\"1\"))                                 status = true;                         }                              in.close();                     }                 }                 catch(MalformedURLException e){                     e.printStackTrace();                 }                 catch (IOException e) {                     e.printStackTrace();                 }                 finally {                     urlConnection.disconnect();                 }                      return status;             }                  @Override             protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result) {                 Log.d(TAG, \"SendFormTask finished its task.\");                      onRequestToServer.DisplayLoding(false);                      if(result)                     Toast.makeText(context, \"\u062c\u06a9 \u0634\u0645\u0627 \u0627\u0631\u0633\u0627\u0644 \u0634\u062f, \u0645\u0646\u062a\u0638\u0631 \u062a\u0627\u06cc\u06cc\u062f \u0622\u0646 \u0628\u0627\u0634\u06cc\u062f\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();                 else                     Toast.makeText(context, \"\u062c\u06a9 \u0634\u0645\u0627 \u0627\u0631\u0633\u0627\u0644 \u0634\u062f , \u0645\u0646\u062a\u0638\u0631 \u062a\u0627\u06cc\u06cc\u062f \u0622\u0646 \u0628\u0627\u0634\u06cc\u062f\", Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();             }         }     }      and `LinkManager.java`               public class LinkManager {              private final static String API_FORM = \"http://jimmy.ir/jimmy/sendjoke.php?p1=#@#&p2=#@@#&p3=#@@@#&p4=#@@@@#\";         private final static String API_Comment = \"http://jimmy.ir/jimmy/index.php?p1=#@#\";              public static String getFormAPI(String deviceId, String name, int rate, String comment) {             String url = API_FORM;             url = url.replaceAll(\"#@#\", deviceId);             url = url.replaceAll(\"#@@#\", name);             url = url.replaceAll(\"#@@@#\", Integer.toString(rate));             url = url.replaceAll(\"#@@@@#\", comment);             url = url.replaceAll(\" \", \"%20\");                  return url;         }              public static String getCommentAPI(String deviceId) {             String url = API_Comment;             url = url.replaceAll(\"#@#\", deviceId);                  return url;         }     }      Sry My English is bad."}
{"_id": "255651", "title": "How to lock/unlock a button based on tweeting", "text": "I have a button that will be disabled until you send out a tweet that I have crafted. Only users with twitter accounts will have access to this, and I will require users to sign-in to be able to access this button. What kind of tools are available for me to check whether   1. The user has actually tweeted it   2. The user has not deleted the tweet afterwards Now, there is no way to actually stop the user from deleting the tweet, but I would like to disable the button if the user has actually chosen to delete it afterwards."}
{"_id": "175793", "title": "What is a good use case for scala?", "text": "In a current project we have setup the build so that we could mix Java and Scala. I would like to use more Scala in our code base to make the code more readable and concise. In the process also learn the language by handing over real features. So I plan to use Scala for some classes to showcase its benefits and convince other devs to look into using Scala too. For a rest based web server or a program in general what kind of code structures lend themselves to Scala's functional programming style."}
{"_id": "175794", "title": "What are the caveats of the event system built on Messenger rather than on classic .NET events?", "text": "MVVM Light and PRISM offer messenger to implement event system. the approximate interface looks like the following one:               interface Messanger     {         void Subscribe<TMessageParam>(Action<TMessageParam> action);         void Unsubscribe<TMessageParam>(Action<TMessageParam> action);         void Unsubscribe<TMessageParam>(objec actionOwner);         void Notify<TMessageParam>(TMessageParam param);     }      Now this model seems beneficial comparing to classic .net events. It works well with Dependency Injection. Actions are stored as weak references so memory leaks are avioded and unsubscribe is not a must. The only annoyance is the need to declare new TMessageParam for each specific message. But everything comes at a cost. And what I'm really worried about is that I see no shortcomings of this approach. Has anoyne the experience of some troubles with this design pattern? **Update**   We tried it and the most unpleasant thing with messages is their implicitness from the point of view of interface. Messages contrary to Events are not exposed explicitly in the interface so additional documentation must be provided.   As Laurent said below very loose coupling comes at a cost of vagueness."}
{"_id": "213972", "title": "Reconciling contradictory programming advice: get something working and iterate vs. really think it through before coding", "text": "I am an intermediate programmer with a few years of professional experience who is halfway through a masters degree. In learning to program I've often heard two pieces of seemingly contradictory advice. The first piece of advice was get something working quickly, see how it works (either through prototyping or informal testing), improve the version , see how it works again, improve it again...and then repeat the cycle until you're done. This is sometimes called \"spiral development\" or phrased as \"release early, release often.\" The second piece of advice was: really think a project through before ever writing any code. I've had success with both methods and I would say that I agree with each philosophy. But now I'm starting to tackle much more complex projects that I have no idea how to complete (like distributed applications and performance-driven graphics programming). How do I go about these projects? Do I just start coding SOMETHING and learn (platforms/methods/languages/architectures) as I go -- or do I hold off from coding and do a ton of research/reading before I even open the IDE? How do I reconcile these contradictory pieces of programming advice?"}
{"_id": "48419", "title": "Method chaining vs encapsulation", "text": "There is the classic OOP problem of method chaining vs \"single-access-point\" methods:               main.getA().getB().getC().transmogrify(x, y)      vs               main.getA().transmogrifyMyC(x, y)      The first seems to have the advantage that each class is only responsible for a smaller set of operations, and makes everything a lot more _modular_ \\- adding a method to C doesn't require any effort in A, B or C to expose it. The downside, of course, is weaker _encapsulation_ , which the second code solves. Now A has control of every method that passes through it, and can delegate it to its fields if it wants to. I realize there's no single solution and it of course depends on context, but I would really like to hear some input about other important differences between the two styles, and under what circumstances should I prefer either of them - because right now, when I try to design some code, I feel like I'm just not using the arguments to decide one way or the other."}
{"_id": "216330", "title": "How can a collection class instantiate many objects with one database call?", "text": "I have a `baseClass` where I do not want public setters. I have a `load($id)` method that will retrieve the data for that object from the db. I have been using static class methods like `getBy($property,$values)` to return multiple class objects using a single database call. But some people say that static methods are not OOP. So now I'm trying to create a `baseClassCollection` that can do the same thing. But it can't, because it cannot access protected setters. I don't want everyone to be able to set the object's data. But it seems that it is an all- or-nothing proposition. I cannot give just the collection class access to the setters. I've seen a solution using `debug_backtrace()` but that seems inelegant. I'm moving toward just making the setters public. Are there any other solutions? Or should I even be looking for other solutions?"}
{"_id": "216332", "title": "How can I unit test that a class uses a trait in the expected manner?", "text": "A `class` has a `trait`. The `class` is expected to call a function provided by the `trait` during a certain `method` invocation. How do I write a `unit test` to ensure that that happens? The difficulty, to me, comes from the fact that a `trait` is part of the `class definition`, so I cannot mock the trait in the test, as I could if the `trait` was instead an `object` that was passed in to the `class` constructor."}
{"_id": "216335", "title": "What are common patterns for handling possible pluralization in message properties?", "text": "Obviously users like to see text properly pluralized, and pluralization schemes vary in the various written languages one may encounter. When internationalizing an app, what pattern(s) are useful for handling messages with possible pluralization? What about messages with multiple possible pluralization? For example: \"N review(s):\" One pattern would be               reviews.title.singular=\"{0} review:\"     reviews.title.plural=\"{0} reviews:\"      And this may not support all languages. Or a more complicated case: \"Found M question(s) with N comment(s).\" This would be difficult to support even in English."}
{"_id": "243164", "title": "Why are there two different kinds of linking, i.e. static and dynamic?", "text": "I've been bitten for the n-th time now by a library mismatch between a build and deployment environment. The build environment had `libruby.so.2.0` and the deployment environment had `libruby.a`. One ruby was built with RVM, the other was built with `ruby-build`. The reason I ran into a problem was because zookeeper was compiled in a build environment that had the shared library but the deployment environment only had the static library. In all the years I've been writing application code I have never once wished that the binaries I was using where linked against shared objects. What is the reason the dichotomy persists to this day on modern operating systems?"}
{"_id": "10094", "title": "How does office bureaucracy affect code quality", "text": "I'm interested in stories where **office bureaucracy** has had direct effect on the final **code quality** result. For example, a friend just told me that at his previous work place the version control system was so bulky that programmers were not allowed to create new \"modules\" (root directories in the source tree) without asking permissions from the VCS gods. The result was that programmers were unwilling to go through the extra bureaucratic step and instead of properly componentizing their services they ended up piling unrelated functionality on top of existing modules even when functionality was just remotely related to the current definition of the module or the module's name was way in the past. (not to mention renaming a module...) I'm interested in similar stories of office, operational or any other bureaucracy that eventually, perhaps unintentionally affected software quality"}
{"_id": "243168", "title": "Penny auction concept and how the timer works", "text": "I am creating a penny auction site using PHP yii framework. The main consideration of the system is to update the database records of all active auctions (max 15 auctions) with the current ticker timer. I am seeking for advice on how I should design the system where every auction item will have its own countdown timer stored in the database. When someone bids the auction item, the counter should reset to 2 min. All users who are connected to the system should see the same countdown timer for that particular auction. I am little confused on how I should design the system. Will there be a performance issue if there are frequent updates to the database (Mysql)? If there are 15 active auctions, and they are updated every second, the countdown timer decreases by a second in the database table for the particular auction. My first idea for the underlying schema, for a table called `auction_lots`:               Auction_id,startdatetime,counter_timer,status      I am seeking for advice on how I should design this."}
{"_id": "163613", "title": "Selling your services when you use uncommon technologies", "text": "I took a look in Stack Overflow most popular profiles, and then I did the same in several other sites, and then I took a look in job postings in several boards, mostly out of curiosity, because I noticed this: If you work with Java, .NET or other managed languages, or you work with stuff that is popular for web development (Ruby, JavaScript, etc...) you can get lots of points on Stack Overflow, find lots of jobs and clients, find forums, friends, colleagues, etc... But how a programmer of uncommon languages (Lua, pure C, Lisp, D, ADA, Haskell, etc...) find information, sell his services, and so on? EDIT: This also applies to fields: You work with web, corporate software, database, etc... it is great... You dislike those previous 3, no one ever will hire your services..."}
{"_id": "168644", "title": "Naming conventions for newtype deconstructors (destructors?)", "text": "Looking into Haskell's standard library we can see:               newtype StateT s m a = StateT { runStateT :: s -> m (a, s) }          newtype WrappedMonad m a = WrapMonad { unwrapMonad :: m a }          newtype Sum a = Sum { getSum :: a }      Apparently, there (at least) 3 different prefixes used to unwrap a value inside a `newtype`: _un-_ , _run-_ and _get-_. (Moreover _run-_ and _get-_ capitalizes the next letter while _un-_ doesn't.) This seems confusing.   * Are there any reasons for that, or is that just a historical thing?   * If I design my own `newtype`, what prefix should I use and why?"}
{"_id": "168647", "title": "Best practices for versioning project after dependency upgrade", "text": "Say, my project have dependency N with version 1.0.0. Then something have changed, and I should depend on newer version - let it be 1.0.1. OK, I'm incrementing dependency version, nothing else changes in my code. It looks like I should increment my own projects' version, but how exactly I should increment? Should I increment only third number (so-called revision), or best practices here are more complicated. For example, may be, if we are changing projects' dependency minor value, we should do the same thing in the project itself?"}
{"_id": "163619", "title": "Is Operator Overloading supported in C", "text": "Today when I read about the LCC (Windows) compiler, I found out it has the implementation for operator overloading. I'm puzzled because after a bit of Goggling, it has been confirmed that operator overloading ain't supported in standard C, but I read some people's comment mentioning LCC is ANSI-compliant. So my real question is, is LCC really standard C or it's just like objective-c, a C variant with object-oriented features?"}
{"_id": "164345", "title": "What makes Erlang suitable for cloud applications?", "text": "We are starting a new project and implementing on our corporations's instantiation of an openstack cloud (see http://www.openstack.org/). The project is security tooling for our corporation. We currently run many hundreds of dedicated servers for security tools and are moving them to our corporations instantiation of openstack. Other projects in my company currently use erlang in several distributed server applications, and other Q/A point out erlang is used in several popular cloud services. I am trying to convince others to consider where it might be applicable on our project. What are erlang's strengths for cloud programming? Where are areas it is particularly appropriate to use erlang?"}
{"_id": "164347", "title": "Method flags as arguments or as member variables?", "text": "I think the title \"Method flags as arguments or as member variables?\" may be suboptimal, but as I'm missing any better terminology atm., here goes: I'm currently trying to get my head around the problem of whether flags for a given class ( _private_ ) method should be passed as function arguments or via member variable and/or whether there is some pattern or name that covers this aspect and/or whether this hints at some other design problems. By example (language could be C++, Java, C#, doesn't really matter IMHO):               class Thingamajig {       private ResultType DoInternalStuff(FlagType calcSelect) {         ResultType res;         for (... some loop condition ...) {           ...           if (calcSelect == typeA) {             ...           } else if (calcSelect == typeX) {             ...           } else if ...         }         ...         return res;       }            private void InteralStuffInvoker(FlagType calcSelect) {         ...         DoInternalStuff(calcSelect);         ...       }            public void DoThisStuff() {         ... some code ...         InternalStuffInvoker(typeA);         ... some more code ...       }            public ResultType DoThatStuff() {         ... some code ...         ResultType x = DoInternalStuff(typeX);         ... some more code ... further process x ...         return x;       }     }      What we see above is that the method `InternalStuffInvoker` takes an argument that is not used inside this function at all but is only forwarded to the other private method `DoInternalStuff`. (Where `DoInternalStuff`will be used privately at other places in this class, e.g. in the `DoThatStuff` (public) method.) An alternative solution would be to add a member variable that carries this information:               class Thingamajig {       private ResultType DoInternalStuff() {         ResultType res;         for (... some loop condition ...) {           ...           if (m_calcSelect == typeA) {             ...           } ...         }         ...         return res;       }            private void InteralStuffInvoker() {         ...         DoInternalStuff();         ...       }            public void DoThisStuff() {         ... some code ...         m_calcSelect = typeA;         InternalStuffInvoker();         ... some more code ...       }            public ResultType DoThatStuff() {         ... some code ...         m_calcSelect = typeX;         ResultType x = DoInternalStuff();         ... some more code ... further process x ...         return x;       }     }      Especially for deep call chains where the selector-flag for the inner method is selected outside, using a member variable can make the intermediate functions cleaner, as they don't need to carry a pass-through parameter. On the other hand, this member variable isn't really representing any object state (as it's neither set nor available outside), but is really a hidden additional argument for the \"inner\" private method. What are the pros and cons of each approach?"}
{"_id": "191858", "title": "Keep a programming language backwards compatible vs. fixing its flaws", "text": "First, some context (stuff that most of you know anyway): Every popular programming language has a clear evolution, most of the time marked by its version: you have Java 5, 6, 7 etc., PHP 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 etc. Releasing a new version makes new APIs available, fixes bugs, adds new features, new frameworks etc. So all in all: it's good. But what about the language's (or platform's) problems? If and when there's something wrong in a language, developers either avoid it (if they can) or they learn to live with it. Now, the developers of those languages get a lot of feedback from the programmers that use them. So it kind of makes sense that, as time (and version numbers) goes by, the problems in those languages will slowly but surely go away. Well, not really. Why? Backwards compatibility, that's why. But why is this so? Read below for a more concrete situation. * * * The best way I can explain my question is to use PHP as an example: PHP is loved thousands of people and hated by just as many thousands. All languages have flaws, but apparently PHP is special. Check out **this blog post**. It has a very long list of so called flaws in PHP. Now, I'm not a PHP developer (not yet), but I read through all of it and I'm sure that a big chunk of that list are indeed real issues. (Not all of it, since it's potentially subjective). Now, if I was one of the guys who actively develops PHP, I would surely want to fix those problems, one by one. However, if I do that, then code that relies on a particular behaviour of the language will break if it runs on the new version. Summing it up in 2 words: backwards compatibility. What I don't understand is: why should I keep PHP backwards compatible? If I release PHP version 8 with all those problems fixed, can't I just put a big warning on it saying: \"Don't run old code on this version !\"? There is a thing called deprecation. We had it for years and it works. In the context of PHP: look at how these days people actively discourage the use of the `mysql_*` functions (and instead recommend `mysqli_*` and PDO). Deprecation works. We can use it. We should use it. If it works for functions, why shouldn't it work for entire languages? Let's say I (the developer of PHP) do this:   * Launch a new version of PHP (let's say 8) with all of those flaws fixed   * New projects will start using that version, since it's much better, clearer, more secure etc.   * However, in order not to abandon older versions of PHP, I keep releasing updates to it, fixing security issues, bugs etc. This makes sense for reasons that I'm not listing here. It's common practice: look for example at how Oracle kept updating version 5.1.x of MySQL, even though it mostly focused on version 5.5.x.   * After about 3 or 4 years, I stop updating old versions of PHP and leave them to die. This is fine, since in those 3 or 4 years, most projects will have switched to PHP 8 anyway. My question is: **Do all these steps make sense? Would it be so hard to do? If it can be done, then why isn't it done?** Yes, the downside is that you break backwards compatibility. But isn't that a price worth paying ? As an upside, in 3 or 4 years you'll have a language that has 90 % of its problems fixed.... a language much more pleasant to work with. Its name will ensure its popularity. **EDIT** : OK, so I didn't expressed myself correctly when I said that in 3 or 4 years people will move to the hypothetical PHP 8. What I meant was: in 3 or 4 years, people will use PHP 8 if they start a new project."}
{"_id": "226628", "title": "What are the advantages of next-iterator over this-iterator?", "text": "I don't work too often with Java/C# iterators directly but when I do I always wonder what was the reason to design iterators in \"next\" fashion. In order to start you have to move iterator, in order to check if there is some data you have to check if there is next element. More appealing concept for me is this-iterator -- it \"starts\" from the beginning, and you can check this state, let's say `isValid`. So the loop over entire collection would look like this:               while (iter.isValid())     {       println(iter.current());       iter.next();     }      As you here in order to check if there is next element, you go there, and then you check if the state is valid. YMMV but anyway -- is there any advantage of next-iterator (as in Java/C#) over this-iterator? **Note:** this is conceptual question, about the **design** of the language."}
{"_id": "178213", "title": "Are there any algorithms for resource scheduling of courses-teachers-classes?", "text": "I'm developing an application to help school principals in dedicating teachers to classes and courses over the hours of a week (scheduling). The scenario is roughly something like this:   1. User enters the list of teachers and their free times into the system   2. User enters the list of courses for this semester   3. User enters the list of available classes into the system Well, up to here, there is no big deal. Just simple CRUD operations and nothing extraordinary. However, now what makes this system useful is that the application should **automatically** and **based on an algorithm** create the semester scheduling. I think you've got the main idea here. For example application should suggest that teacher A should go to class 1 for mathematics, and at the same time teacher B should go to class 2 for physics. This way all of the classes would be dedicated to lessons and teacher times won't overlap each other. Piece a cake for school principal. However, I can't find a good algorithm for this resource dedication. I mean it seems hard to me. Searching Google resulted in articles from different websites, but they are of no help and use to me. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_allocation or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduling_(production_processes) Is there any algorithm out there, or any application or engine which can help me here? Does this requirements have a known name, like for example _time scheduling engine_? Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "255466", "title": "can we use C programming now a days to build a game?", "text": "Can we use C programming to build a game or it has certain limitations may be it is not graphically rich i guess. can we build games like temple run your candy crush using C programming."}
{"_id": "191856", "title": "What is a static method compared to instance/class/private/public methods?", "text": "I'm learning programming in Objective-C and I can't understand what a static method is. I know what class/instance/private/public methods are. Can someone explain what it is using an example and comparing it to the others I mentioned? And in what situation would someone use it? From what I read on Wikipedia, it sounds like a class method that can't access anything in `self`. This sounds to me like its a stand-alone function - that shouldn't be associated with any class in the first place, since it can't access `self`."}
{"_id": "178218", "title": "for vs. foreach vs. LINQ", "text": "When I write code in Visual Studio, ReSharper (God bless it!) often suggests me to change my old-school for loop in the more compact foreach form. And often, when I accept this change, ReSharper goes a step forward, and suggests me to change it again, in a shiny LINQ form. So, I wonder: are there some _real_ advantages, in these improvements? In pretty simple code execution, I cannot see any speed boost (obviously), but I can see the code becoming less and less readable... So I wonder: is it worth it?"}
{"_id": "176843", "title": "Point me to info about constructing filters (of lists)", "text": "I would like some pointers to information which would help me understand how to go about providing the ability to filter a list of entities by their attributes as well as by attributes of related entities. As an example, imagine a web app which provides order management of some kind. Orders and related entities are stored in a relational database. And imagine that the app has an interface which lists the orders. The problem is: how does one allow the list to be filtered by, for example:-   * order number (an attribute)   * line item name (an attribute of a n-n related entity)   * some text in an administrative note related to the order (text found in an attribute of a 1-1 related entity) I'm trying to discover whether there is something like a standard, efficient way to construct the queries and the filtering form; or some possible strategies; or any theory on the topic; or some example code. My google foo fails me."}
{"_id": "47425", "title": "For an open source project, is it legal and acceptable to link to commercial libraries?", "text": "For an open source project, is it legal and acceptable to link to commercial libraries? For example, an open source application I'm involved in would benefit from using commercial 3rd party user interface library."}
{"_id": "95305", "title": "Design: Method that loads data from one of two file formats?", "text": "Say I have a class Person:               class Person     {       string FullName;       int Age;     }      And I need to load a list of Person's from a plain text file. The text file could be in one of two formats. I want a method such as LoadFromFile(string path) that will 1) detect the file format 2) parse appropriately for the file type and 3) return a list of Persons. The quick and dirty solution would be to have a single method LoadFromFile where I read the header of the file, I can determine which file type it is, and then, keeping the file open, switch on the type and read it appropriately. On the other hand, the fact that it's two different \"types\" of files makes me think it's a good candidate for polymorphism. This would be especially good if there was a third file type. However, having separate classes makes it seem like it would be harder to keep the file open from the \"type detection\" phase to the \"parse phase\". Though maybe wanting to keep the file open is just premature optimization. I want the client code to simply call LoadFromFile(path) and have it detect the file type and load appropriately. What is a good design for this (in terms of class names and method names)?"}
{"_id": "95302", "title": "Is UTF-16 fixed-width or variable-width?  Why doesn't UTF-8 have byte-order problem? ", "text": "1. Is UTF-16 fixed-width or variable-width? I got different results from different sources: From http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/26/UTF: > UTF-16 stores Unicode characters in sixteen-bit chunks. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16/UCS-2: > UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding for > Unicode capable of encoding 1,112,064[1] numbers (called code points) in the > Unicode code space from 0 to 0x10FFFF. It produces a variable-length result > of either one or two 16-bit code units per code point.   2. From the first source > UTF-8 also has the advantage that the unit of encoding is the byte, so there > are no byte-ordering issues. Why doesn't UTF-8 have byte-order problem? It is variable-width, and one character may contain more than one byte, so I think byte-order can still be a problem? Thanks and regards!"}
{"_id": "158314", "title": "Take screenshot of inactive workspace", "text": "I am trying to write a program that will take a screenshot of each workspace and then display them together to create an expo type effect. I am currently using gtk and I can only take a screenshot of the active workspace (using gdk_get_default_root_window and gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable). The only method I have currently found of taking a screenshot of an inactive workspace is to switch to it, take the screenshot and then switch back, but this will make the screen flash. So my question is, is there way of capturing the workspaces without flashing the screen?"}
{"_id": "221208", "title": "How to do simple natural language categorization", "text": "How would you go about parsing a sentence like \"Bought two kilos of steak from Acme supermarket\" into a data structure like the following JSON representation:               {       item: {name: \"steak\", tags: \"meat,beef\" },       quantity: { value: 2, unit: \"kg\"},       source: \"ACME Supermarket\"     }      ? I'm looking for a high-level conceptual overview of where to start e.g. some papers or introductory material that don't require PhD level knowledge. For context, this is part of the preliminary investigation for a personal expense tracker I'm planning to build. To break it down a little further, I'm interested in basic named entity recognition, and categorization strategies. I don't have a CS education, so you may want to keep that in mind when answering :) Thanks in advance. Not interested in 3rd party web services, since this is a learning exercise, and is intended to work offline."}
{"_id": "221201", "title": "How to verify if 3rd party payment succeeded?", "text": "A more specific version of this question was kicked off of StackOverflow so I hope this is now the right place for this question. I'm working on a payment processing website that will function like PayPal does on many e-commerce websites. The idea is for the customer to fill their shopping cart and click checkout, then be directed to the payment page on a secure site. After the payment page processes the payment, it directs the customer back to the original website. So far, I think I'm ok up to the point of receiving the payment, but what mechanism do sites like PayPal use to allow the original website to verify whether the payment was successfully received? * * * My Current Process:   * Customer click's checkout   * Store cart items as a pending order in database   * Post merchant ID, payment amount, the return URL, etc. to secure payment page. This uses SSL and I have also posted a hash of the other posted values to ensure they are not tampered with in transit.   * Customer enters card info and clicks \"Pay\"   * Secure site redirects to the specified return URL with a query string of relevant transaction information including a flag indicating success or failure. For the last step, the original site needs to be sure the request came from the payment site so that a user can't just navigate to that URL, providing the query string themselves, to complete an order. I currently have the same hashing mechanism in place to make sure the query string variables are not tampered with. It is very crude. I append the variables into one long string and then append a shared secret key to the end, hash that whole string, send it. The receiving end does the same thing and compares the hashes."}
{"_id": "50703", "title": "Data migration - dangerous or essential?", "text": "The software development department of my company is facing with the problem that data migrations are considered as potentially dangerous, especially for my managers. The background is that our customers are using a large amount of data with **poor quality**. The reasons for this is only **partially related to our software** quality, but rather to the history of the data: Most of them have been **migrated from predecessor systems** , some bugs caused (mostly business) **inconsistencies** in the data records or **misentries** by accident on the customer's side (which our software allowed by error). The most important counter-arguments from my managers are that **faulty data may turn into even worse data** , the data troubles may **awake some managers at the customer** and some processes on the **customer's side may not work anymore** because their processes somewhat adapted to our system. Personally, I consider data migrations as an integral part of the software _development_ and that data migration can been seen to data what refactoring is to code. I think that data migration is an **essential for creating software that evolves**. Without it, we would have to create painful software which somewhat works around a bad data structure. _**I am asking you:_**   * What are your thoughts to data migration, especially for the real life cases and not only from a developer's perspecticve?   * Do you have any arguments against my managers opinions?   * How does your company deal with data migrations and the difficulties caused by them?   * Any other interesting thoughts which belongs to this topics?"}
{"_id": "231018", "title": "Pattern for multiple datasources", "text": "I've already read this question on CodeReview. I was hoping for general advice. I'm writing a service which will go to numerous data sources. Each source requires getting copious amounts of data and changing it to a single format. What is the best pattern for a task like this? I currently have a \"base\" class which exposes a static `GetData` method, which the other classes inherit from and implement. This doesn't seem like the cleanest approach, so I was wondering what other approaches might suit my needs?"}
{"_id": "142002", "title": "When should JavaScript generate HTML?", "text": "I try to generate as little HTML from JavaScript as possible. Instead, I prefer to manipulate existing markup whenever I can and only generate HTML when I need to dynamically insert an element that isn't a good candidate for using Ajax. This, I believe, makes it far easier to maintain the code and quickly make changes to it because the markup is easier to read and trace. My rule of thumb is: HTML is for document structure, CSS is for presentation, JavaScript is for behavior. However, I've seen a lot of JS code that generates mounds of HTML, including entire forms and content-heavy modal dialogs. In general, which method is considered best practice? In what circumstances should JavaScript be used to generate HTML and when should it not?"}
{"_id": "66613", "title": "Is the Lisp \"family\" of languages any more closely related than the \"C-like-syntax\" family?", "text": "I was recently thinking about the large variety of lisp languages, specifically the fact that while they all have similar syntax, and could all in theory be implemented from the same small set of primitive functions, the way in which one typically uses each lisp can vary widely compared to all the others. I realized that one could plausibly make the same statement about the family of languages with \"C-like\" syntax. Yet, most \"C-like\" languages are commonly distinguished from each other, while it is common to refer to \"lisp\" in general, and not any specific variant of lisp. So, are C-like languages really more different from each other than lisp-like languages? Or do they just appear so because they have greater variability in syntax? Why are lisp-like languages more frequently lumped together into just \"lisp\"? No one would ever refer to C, C++, C#, Java as just \"C\"."}
{"_id": "66616", "title": "How can I prevent a client from seeing my code written in an interpreted language?", "text": "I'm building a fairly complex interpreted program in Python. I've been working on most of this code for other purposes for a few months, and therefore don't want my client to be able to simply copy and try to sell it, as I think it's worth a fair amount. The problem is that I need the script to run on a server that my client is paying for, so is there any way I can secure a particular folder on the machine from root access, or make it so only one particular use can access the directory? The OS is Ubuntu."}
{"_id": "245781", "title": "In general: guard pages or heap checks?", "text": "I would like to know the advantages and disadvantages of using guard pages with bump-pointer allocation versus heap checks with bump-pointer allocation, including performance as a consideration. In a modern implementation, which would be the most appropriate?"}
{"_id": "189219", "title": "Where does the reporting function fit into Enterprise Software development Best Practices", "text": "At my company, I develop and maintain all the operational reporting used by management to run the business. There is no reporting position on the application development team. I've taken it upon myself to step in and attend design review meetings to give input to the development team on how changes will impact reporting, consult on how modify designs to avoid impacting existing reports and what I will need in new development to be able to report on the data. It's been my experience that reporting is a key functional position on an enterprise application development team. I'm hoping to find some documentation that supports that concept as an industry standard or Best Practice. Can anyone help me there?"}
{"_id": "127399", "title": "Why does HTML TextArea have its own HTML tag?", "text": "<input id='input1' type='text'></input>     <input id='input2' type='button'></input>     <input id='input3' type='checkbox'><input>     <textarea id='myTextArea'></textarea>      In HTML markup, most places where the user can interact with the page are denoted with the `<input>` tag. Why is it that textarea has its own tag, `<textarea>` as opposed so, say, `<input type='textarea'>`"}
{"_id": "245784", "title": "Efficient development process for Golang (or any backend) and JavaScript?", "text": "I am developing a web application. The frontend is a mix between JavaScript and server-side generated html. The backend is written in Golang. Might not be very important, but if somebody made a similar experience with that language, it could be of help. As of now, everything was written in vim, and \"debugged\" in the browser (mostly Chrome). As the project gets larger I run into difficulties using my vim-chrome development stack. The backend development is not so hard, because Golang has a nice testing suite, which doesn't need much boilerplate to run. However, the mix between data-driven structs in the Golang templates, the Html and the JavaScript logic are getting somewhat complex:   * I find myself recompiling templates almost all the time when doing frontend development.   * I switch all the time between browser, vim (cygwin), web developer tools of the browser, and reloading pages, making sure caches are cleaned. So, my question is, how could I make myself more efficient? How should I change my development-testing cycle to make the work more pleasant, especially the switching between server (development) and client (debugging). (I am not looking for ONE SPECIFIC TOOL. I know this results in stupid answers. I am looking for development approaches, which happen to be accompanied by tools. So, offtopic, but might be interesting: Which tool combination has worked for you, if you ever encountered such a problem, and how did you use those tools?)"}
{"_id": "189479", "title": "Why there are no compound assignment operators for logical operators (such as ||, && etc)?", "text": "According to ECMA-262, part 11.13, following is the exhaustive list of compound assignment operators: `*= /= %= += -= <<= >>= >>>= &= ^= |=`. According to the part 11.11, `var c = a || b` will put `a` value into `c` if `ToBoolean(a)` is true and will put `b` value into `c` otherwise. As such, the _logical OR_ is often used as the coalesce operator, e.g.               function (options) {         options = options || {};     }      Frequently enough, coalesce is used to specify the default value for the variable, as was shown above: `a = a || b`. It seems that compound assignment operator `||=` would be really useful, allowing to write the code above in a shorter and cleaner fashion: `a ||= b`. However, it is not there (although `*=`, `+=` and other compound assignment operators are). The question is, why?"}
{"_id": "127390", "title": "Publishing an internal web app on the internet to a much larger group of users than before", "text": "My company has developed a web application based on GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and Ext GWT in the browser, JBoss application server and Oracle in the backend. The app allows users of different departments of the same company, working in different locations, to collaborate in order to employ a fairly complex approval process for really expensive technical equipment. Let's call this app app 1. The app is dialog-based, using Ext GWT's Desktop component to provide an MDI app within a browser window. It's been used productively for more than a year now. Another app, app 2, also has been developed which offers a specific subset of the functionality of App 1. By subset I mean that \\- some dialogs are not provided (like those for administration of master data or system settings) \\- some dialogs are reused but some input or display fields are missing \\- some data are filtered (users will only see a subset of the information that is available to users of app 1) \\- some dialogs are completely identical Currently, app 2 is there but nobody uses it, because it has not been officially published to anyone and nobody has an account to log in. The goal for 2012 is to open app 2 to a host of new users. These will be working at different companies in different locations all over Germany and potentially neighboring countries (Austria, Switzerland, France, ...) as well. It is not possible to get all new users together and give them a training of several days in order to learn how to use the app and the process. The documentation that exists so far is a user manual, a PDF file of more than 100 pages, to be found through a \"?\" menu. Both apps have been developed by my company for another company. None of these two have very much experience with providing and supporting a public web application for the rest of the world. So, what can we do in order to provide people with information and assistance on how to use this app? Here are the measures that I've come up with so far:   * Provide a start page (just static HTML) before the login screen that describes (shortly!) what this app is and why users would want to log in and use it. Also, how to obtain a login and where to find support   * Create a guided tour of short videos (created with Camtasia Studio) of at most 3 minutes each. Those will guide through the most important use cases step by step. I'm thinking of something like this https://sourcing.thyssenkrupp.info/lvportal/external/guidedtour/tk_uk_files/uk_html.html which was created a couple years ago in a very similar situation   * A start screen, which will pop up immediately after login. It will show a list of command links with a short explanatory text for the most frequent use cases. Also, it will provide a direct link to the guided tour and the user manual   * A task-oriented list of item counts for the user (like on every line something like \"Items on which you have to do X\", \"Items on which you have to do Y\" etc). This list will be either integrated into the background of the desktop-in-a-browser-window or put into a docked area to the left of the desktop itself   * I'm also considering an FAQ page. But of course there haven't been any questions asked yet so we don't know what to put there. So the idea is to have ab easily updatable page of static HTML content. Or maybe a miniature CMS integrated into the app itself. Any comments on those measures and any further suggestions are welcome."}
{"_id": "214158", "title": "How would I implement a \"self-destruct\" feature into the free trial version of my software?", "text": "There is the ongoing argument of free trial versus a freemium model (that is, a free-for-life version of their software with restricted and/or stripped down features) for allowing potential customers and users to test run their product. Upon my research, I can conclude that the free trial is the way to go on both for the benefit of the user experience of the individual using the software and for the benefit of the vendor in both aspect of sales and maximizing usage. There are many factors for a free trial software that can greatly maximize user usage like the length of the free trial. One keyword that reoccurs on my research for \"freemium\" is \"frustrating\". Many individuals chose to uninstall the software instead of having to use a piece of software where some features were unavailable to them. At the same time, these users never had the chance to use the \"paid\" features. Unbeknownst to them, and hidden by the very own vendors who are selling the software, they don't know and cannot know what benefits the Pro features will bring. Without first having to use them, a user will not know they have the feeling of \"needing\" something. Which brings me onto my next point of a free trial model. Some opinions of a free trial user is \"I cannot imagine using this software without the Pro features.\" This goes back to the point of \"the user not knowing they need something until they first understanding the feeling of have.\" Those that have had 14 days to use a the \"full\" version features said they cannot imagine not having or using the features provided there. So when fourteen days were over, they were more likely to dish out money than someone who's never experienced the full features. The length of the free trial is also an important factor is creating a lasting impression on users. In an experiment conducted by Visual Website Optimizer, they noticed that for a 14 day free trial versus a 30 day free trial, while the number of sign ups and installs were the same, the usage for the 14 day trial increased 102%. This, of course, in turn increased their revenue as well. Another very important point to mention is that \"offering a useful and fully functional free version of the product\" is VERY IMPORTANT. Fully functional free trials are effective in getting media coverage, and this publicity for new software and/or software vendors are fairly crucial. One other relevant aspect is the importance for users to give feedback. Consider, in the fully functional time-limited free trial, the ability for users to give feedback. One other feature important for our software is the need for telemetric data, that is, quantitative and comprehensive data on how a user uses our software. Some of usage statistics may fall into a legal grey area, as laws are different depending on the location in the United States, and the world. One way to combat this legal issue is to have an opt-in feature for gathering anonymous usage statistics. An opt-in feature would mean giving the user an option to turn off statistics gathering and at the same time, the user must be very well aware of what the gathering of anonymous usage information does. It is important to make it CLEAR to the user what data will be collected, what \"we\" will be doing with it, and make it easy to turn off any time, including allowing them to change their mind for turning it on or off. For more detailed statistics, like tracking individual activities of users, it could lead to legal issues. The Eclipse IDE logs detailed usage statistics, but it does it by the full consent of the user. We may have to potentially prepare a consent form with our legal team. The Eclipse Usage Information Collection collects this information: 1\\. Plug- ins that are started by the system. 2\\. Commands accessed via the keyboard shortcuts and actions invoked via menus or toolbars. 3\\. When the \"view\" of the editor is given focus. 4\\. System information like the version of the software being used, the operating system being used. 5\\. Description of internal errors. Kill Switch A kill switch for our software can be managed logging the initial data, encrypting it with a salt, and whenever it's an invalid date, that is, the user tried to change it, it would disable the software. Another option is to have internet authentication on install, log that date to a central web database, and check the date every time the application is opened. On disabling the software, we can delete vital DLLs. The option of having to pay to generate a report cannot be considered. * * * I am interested in implementing a free trial version to my existing software. I plan on having the trial last 14 days. Upon the 14th day, my software would prompt the user to either pay for the paid version, or have the consequence of not being able to use it. The free trial version is entirely unlocked, meaning all paid features are there. However, my dilemma is about the \"best\" way to implement what to do for an end-of-trial solution. Do I delete vital DLLs? Have a user authentication system upon installation or use? Encrypt the initial time and date of use with a salt, and if it's an invalid date (AKA they try to change their initial date), disable the software? I am interested in knowing what are some effective measures of disabling software."}
{"_id": "127396", "title": "What's a RESTful url for a linked item?", "text": "This is going to be a web service that returns a JSON object. Currently, I'm using C# technology and simply using ASP.Net MVC to create the calls. This is not a web page, so SEO is not a concern. I've come across a number of instances where I want to get the \"next\" or \"previous\" item in a list. For example, I've got a service that returns a featured photo. http://myservice.com/photos/123 which returns a JSON               {\"name\": \"At_The_Concert\", \"id\": \"123\", \"src\": \"http://myservice.com/photostore/123.jpg\"}      The client (Ajax, Mobile device, etc.) of this service wants to know what the \u201cnext\u201d item is going to be. I\u2019m struggling about what the url should be.   * http://myservice.com/photos/123/next   * http://myservice.com/photos/next/123   * http://myservice.com/nextphotos/123 or maybe the id property should just be a parameter http://myservice.com/photos/next?photoId=123 Or maybe this is entirely wrong and it should be like http://myservice.com/photos/?method=getNextPhoto&photoId=123 though with .Net's routing, it might be easier to write it as http://myservice.com/photos/method/getNextPhoto?photoId=123 I\u2019m relatively new to web services and REST. I get the basic CRUD for REST, but I don\u2019t know what is the best practice for creating more custom urls, in this case the \u201cnext\u201d photo. Is there an accepted RESTful practice?"}
{"_id": "189215", "title": "Leaving \"Else\" comments", "text": "Let's say I have a not-so-intuitive `if` statement in my code, but only if you're new to the codebase:               def set_markets(markets=None):         \"\"\"         Will accept 'all' as markets to set all markets on.         For individual markets, pass in a list of ints.         \"\"\"         if markets:             if type(markets) == list:                 markets = ','.join(map(str, markets))             self._set_markets(markets)      For those of you wondering: The existing system I'm interacting with (a database) expects a list of integers from the front end interface. This code does it from the backend, so a list of ints was chosen since it best represents what a user might feed in otherwise. The `markets` stuff is handed down from another class, so even though it appears like it's taking place over 5 lines, it's more like ~50 lines. My question is, would you consider this more readable? Why or why not?               def set_markets(markets=None):         \"\"\"         Will accept 'all' as markets to set all markets on.         For individual markets, pass in a list of ints.         \"\"\"         if markets:             if type(markets) == list:                 markets = ','.join(map(str, markets))           # else:               # markets are set to \"all\"             self._set_markets(markets)      EDIT: This code looks worse than it is because I left off a detail: if `None` is fed in for `markets` (the default parameter), then it will not modify the markets settings the database. Here's what I have now:                   if markets is not None:             if isinstance(markets, list):                 markets = ','.join(map(str, markets))             else:                 markets = 'all'             self._set_new_header_markets(markets)"}
{"_id": "212972", "title": "Optimizing code generation for expressions in a compiler", "text": "I don't know if this question has a simple answer or not, but I just have to ask. I'm reading this tutorial (I don't know if this is a well-known series, but it's name is 'Let's build a compiler!' by Jack Crenshaw). It's a nice series where you gradually learn how to construct a compiler (it is a learn-by-doing thing, really). In the second chapter already, I felt the need to optimize some things. In the series, some concessions are made, in order to keep things simple: there is no difference between lexical scanner (although I believe it is introduced later in the series) and the code generation: they are done in one go. Also, the author heavily relies on the stack to create the code to handle expressions. (Also, the output is assembly code, I don't know if this is normal for compilers, so I just thought I'd mention it...) For example, parsing the expression 5 + (7 * 3 - 21 / 3) (and storing the result in eax) results roughly in the following code (I use x86 asm, as opposed to the series, so this is the assembly code my compiler gave):                   push 5   ; These lines is generated by a simple number parser         push 7   ; This parser pushes its result to the stack         push 3   ; (like most other parsing functions)              pop eax  ; Code for multiplication         pop ebx         mul ebx         push eax              push 21  ; Result of parsing these numbers         push 3              pop ebx  ;  Division code         pop eax         div ebx         push eax              pop ebx  ; Subtraction code         pop eax         sub eax, ebx         push eax              pop eax  ; Addition code         pop ebx         add eax, ebx         push eax      As you can see, the code for handling the addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. can stay the same each time the operation is used. This is very convenient, but of course, the assembly code generated is very slow and esoteric. When writing by hand, one would rather write something like:                   mov eax, 21         div 3         mov ebx, eax         mov eax, 7         mul 3         sub eax, ebx         add 5      My question is if there is any way to optimize the compiler output. Of course there is, but is there any specific way to make my code more like the second, ie: not using the stack so intensively, but instead relying on registers to pass values. I myself have been thinking about parsing the whole expression and representing it internally as a tree-like structure (I supposethis is the kind of thing a lexical parser does) before generating the code, but I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. On the other hand, there is peephole optimization and the possibility to optimize the assembler code after it has been generated, but I have no idea how effective this will be. Generating better code in the first place seems logical and more feasible to me. I know there are many techniques available to optimize my code (for example, constant folding, which would reduce the whole expression to 19. I have deliberately not used this kind of optimization to bring my point across better), I am hoping for a single technique that is well-suited for this kind of stuff."}
{"_id": "210926", "title": "Greenfield vs. brownfield revenue? (attempting to get an idea of measure of effort expended on the two)", "text": "The big question I have in my mind: how many developers are brownfield (\"enterprise\") compared to greenfield (all new code, from the ground up). I'm constantly reading breathless articles about the latest technology, only to find out that It Just Won't Work On Our Enterprise Software codebase. People aren't ready for automated testing (because the logic is in the click- handlers and/or database). People aren't ready for ORM tools because we have horrendous amount of logic in stored procs and triggers. People aren't ready for WPF because our existing stuff is all WinForms. We can't get the latest version of Reactive Extensions because existing code used RX 1.0 and there are breaking changes that will require more testing effort than is justified by the return. Etc., etc., etc. Very few articles seem to be oriented toward the brownfield developer, for whatever reason (can't sell ads for articles that start off with \"you probably can't use this, but...\"?). So, I'm truly wondering: is the software development industry just chock full of greenfield developers, developing new projects for clients which are then released and enjoy a short existence until complete replacement for whatever reason? Or are there hordes of brownfield programmers silently laboring away in the ADO.NET T/SQL VB.NET software mines, looking wistfully up at the sunshine of Entity Framework 5.0 and Haskell, et cetera? How do we even measure that? Salaries (wages??) paid to software engineers* in the two categories? How do we measure THAT? Maybe... revenue generated from selling said software? (There's an assumption that the crappy old software sold by XYZ Corp. actually has maintainers). **My question: Does anybody have any numbers that speaks to how much of the industry is green field vs. brown field?**"}
{"_id": "119685", "title": "Is there a proven concept to website reverse certificate authentication?", "text": "We're looking at exposing some of our internal application data externally via a website. The actual details of the website aren't that interesting, it'll be built using ASP.NET/IIS etc, that might be relevant. With this, I'm essentially I'm looking for a mechanism to authenticate users viewing my website. This sounds trivial, a username/password is typically fine, but I want more. Now I've read plenty about SSL/x.509 to realise that the CA determines that we're alright, and that the user can trust us. But I want to trust the user, I want the _user_ to be rejected if _they_ don't have the correct credentials. I've seen a system for online banking whereby the bank issues a certificate which gets installed on the users' computer (it was actually smartcard based). If the website can't discover/utilise the key-pair then you are immediately rejected! This is brutal, but necessary. Is there a mechanism where I can do the following:   1. Generate a certificate for a user   2. Issue the certificate for them to install, it can be installed on > 1 machine   3. If their certificate is not accessible, they are denied all access   4. A standard username/password scheme is then used after that   5. SSL employed using their certificate once they're \"in\" This really must already exist, please point me in the right direction! Thanks for your help :)"}
{"_id": "216803", "title": "Using MS-PL licensed library for internal company use", "text": "I want to use a MS-PL licensed library in a proprietary software, but it'll run inside my company, with no external distribution. Does the license allows this kind of usage or it constitutes a violation of the license?"}
{"_id": "119680", "title": "Suggestion for setting web application parameters", "text": "I'm creating a web application on GWT. I'm using MVP pattern with activities and places. I have a xml config file containing some parameters to be used by the application. Content of this xml file is sent to the client using HttpRequest; I'm using a singleton class to hold the information from the xml file. Right now, the application is getting the data when the user starts the application in the home page, that is working well. Now, since I'm using activities and places, a user can bookmark a page and starts the application in any other page (Place). And here comes the problem: Since I'm using some of the information from the xml file to set some ui widgets, I have to check if the xml config file was read and the application already has the parameters (I do this by checking the singleton class). But the xml file is read by using an HttpRequest, so I got errors 'cause the application needs some parameters to initialize some ui widgets, but these parameters aren't ready on time. I was thinking on using an synchronous request to fix the problem, but it seems complicated and not recommendable to do that. So, I'd like to hear some other suggestions. Thanks."}
{"_id": "119682", "title": "Better control on code updates", "text": "I will briefly explain my situation. I have a website in PHP, this website is powered by a custom framework + some \"plug-in\" made ad hoc for it. I am the only developer of this. Until now I just test locally any changes than I upload the php files via FTP. I don't feel confortable anymore with this. The code base has grown quite a lot and I need some sort of system that helps to keep track of changes (line by line) and can restore to an old version easly if something goes wrong. Are there any good solution for this? Note: I never used something like version control or subversion because I think they are too much for this situation (I am the only developer and I just need basic feature) Note2: Something with a nice web interface would be perfect, I can pay for a good service too As now I found:   * http://beanstalkapp.com/   * http://github.com/   * http://www.codespaces.com/   * http://codesion.com/   * https://bitbucket.org/"}
{"_id": "151142", "title": "Why design pattern is not named as implementation pattern?", "text": "I find that most of the design patterns are concerned with implementation of a model like mvc, or how to change the implementation with less cost. These are all happened in the implementation phase of a software. So why not call them implementation patterns?"}
{"_id": "151143", "title": "exact answer for \u201cwhat is j2ee?\u201d - job interview", "text": "I'd like to ask if someone of you knows the exact meaning of JEE. That's because a collegue of mine was asked this question in a job interview, and was \"unable to answer properly\"... to speak with his interwiewer's words. And when he told me what he said to his interviewer I got really surprised, since it was more or less what I would have answered myself - in a concise form, the first paragraph of this article. > J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) is a Java platform designed for > the mainframe-scale computing typical of large enterprises. Sun Microsystems > (together with industry partners such as IBM) designed J2EE to simplify > application development in a thin client tiered environment. J2EE simplifies > application development and decreases the need for programming and > programmer training by creating standardized, reusable modular components > and by enabling the tier to handle many aspects of programming > automatically. That seems not to be enough, since the interviewer asked for \"more precise and less general definition\". Is there really a more precise definition for JEE? Or did my colleague just find the fussiest-interviewer-ever? :)"}
{"_id": "214154", "title": "How can I unit test a class which requires a web service call?", "text": "I'm trying to test a class which calls some Hadoop web services. The code is pretty much of the form:               method() {         ...use Jersey client to create WebResource...         ...make request...         ...do something with response...     }      e.g. there is a create directory method, a create folder method etc. Given that the code is dealing with an external web service that I don't have control over, how can I unit test this? I could try and mock the web service client/responses but that breaks the guideline I've seen a lot recently: \"Don't mock objects you don't own\". I could set up a dummy web service implementation - would that still constitute a \"unit test\" or would it then be an integration test? Is it just not possible to unit test at this low a level - how would a TDD practitioner go about this?"}
{"_id": "151146", "title": "Question about a simple design problem", "text": "At work I stumbled uppon a method. It made a query, and returned a String based on the result of the query, such as de ID of a customer. If the query didn't return a single customer, it'd return a null. Otherwise, it'd return a String with the ID's of them. It looked like this:               String error = getOwners();     if (error != null) {         throw new Exception(\"Can't delete, the flat is owned by: \" + error);     }     ...      Ignoring the fact that getCustomers() returns a null when it should instead return an empty String, two things are happening here. It checks if the flat is owned by someone, and then returns them.   I think a more readable logic would be to do this:               if (isOwned) {         throw new Exception(\"Can't delete, the flat is owned by: \" + getOwners());     }     ...      The problem is that the first way does with one query what I do with two queries to the database.   What would be a good solution involving good design and efficiency for this?"}
{"_id": "207267", "title": "Do I need a database to implement AJAX functionality for my app?", "text": "I am new to the construction and design of a web app so I'd like some advice please (Django is my framework). I'm trying to code up a \"how-to\" website instructing users the step-by-step process for doing a certain task. I'd like the navigation of the website to be something like this... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa991542.aspx ...in which there is a tree-like navigation on the left-pane that lists each step (e.g. Step 1, Step 2, etc...) that expands and loads the instructions for each step into the right-pane. I don't want to reload the page each time so that leads me into AJAX. At this point, I'm not sure how to implement this. Do I store the HTML/CSS into a database to be pulled when the user clicks on certain links? Or do I write the HTML/CSS into my template files with `display: hidden` to be changed to `display: block` when corresponding links are clicked?"}
{"_id": "212369", "title": "How to deal with the notion of time in UI/Integration tests", "text": "There are some well-known techniques for dealing with the notion of time in unit tests. These allow you to write unittests that always work with a specific time so the outcome of the test is predictable and can be verified. However, these techniques do not work with integration tests/UI test as the test and the application itself are separated (very much so in web applications where your application under test could be deployed on a separate server). For example, let's assume we are developing an appointment system that needs to implement a 'suggest the first available appointment date'-button. If the button is clicked, it needs to suggest the first available timeslot for the next business day. This means that if the button is clicked on any given day of the week except friday it should suggest a slot in the next day, BUT on friday and saturday it should suggest a slot on monday. How would one go about testing this requirement? _(I know it is possible to work around the issue for this specific example but bear with me - there are always situations where the test cannot supply the data to work from. I didn't want to supply an overly complicated example.)_"}
{"_id": "250001", "title": "Cannot explain to the customer that he is taking the project wrong way", "text": "Being a junior developer in need of some money for new hardware, I have stumbled upon many of the freelancing websites, and really soon, I have gotten my first customer. Complete Project Management, CRM and simple accounting website for small business. As we have been discussing the terms, I have proposed GAE/Python/Bootstrap/NDB as that is something I am really familiar with, as I have been working on GAE projects for the past two years at my internship place. We discuss the pay, terms, non-disclosure and I offer my approach to the project (followed the path of what I learned closely). I propose working on the backend first in three phases:   * Company/User System + Project management    * CRM   * Analytic/Simple Accounting (intuit integration as he later added) I followed up with a 2 week period of the UI developing and testing. At first I have asked him, what are the functions you would like me to develop in all the three phases. His reply was that he doesn't have the time to prepare the document I asked him for, which I found ridiculous, and asked me to prepare one and he will edit it. Of course he never did edit. Okay, first sign of the client that doesn't have a clear picture of what he wants. He bought a template and asked when do we start testing. So I deployed the app with just PM and Company/User login after two weeks, only to be told he cannot test on anything that is not that template. I made a replica of the theme, literally, as we cannot use the stuff that the actual theme does have (fancy inbox, calendar etc) I told to myself whatever. The first approach I took was to create a base.html and base-nav.html and extend them in other templates, in order for the code and other stuff to be tested easily. I did made this via bootstrap. He repeated he cannot test on that. Now I am struggling with an html page that is 4 thousand line long I have to trim to create a base.html I will extend in other templates, with all the ridiculous amounts of static files that are completely unorganized in the template files and with a boss that wants to test. He doesn't even know what he wants to test. I have sent screenshots, deployed the app, chatted daily, but it just isn't enough to convince him we should be focusing on the backend instead of the frontend first. It's like building a car - first he wants to built the outside parts and limit the engine, instead of first building the engine then adjusting the outside to it. Do you have any tips on how to approach this and resolve it? template - http://www.keenthemes.com/preview/index.php?theme=metronic_admin"}
{"_id": "212361", "title": "Generic repository unit testing best practice?", "text": "How can I unit test my generic repository? Unit testing code:               [TestClass]     public class UnitTestLanguage     {         private IUnityContainer _unityContainer;         private IUnitOfWork _uow;         private IGenericRepository<Language> _languageRepository;              [TestInitialize]         public void TestInitialize()         {             _unityContainer = new UnityContainer();             _uow = _unityContainer.Resolve<UnitOfWork>();             _languageRepository = _uow.GetRepository<Language>();         }              [TestCleanup]         public void TestCleanup()         {             _uow = null;             _unityContainer = null;             _languageRepository = null;         }                   [TestMethod]         public void TestMethodInsertLanguage()         {             var newLanguage = new Language { Name = \"test_language\" };             _languageRepository.Insert(newLanguage);             var insertedRowCount = _uow.SaveChanges();                  var insertedLanguage = _languageRepository.Find(newLanguage.Id);             _languageRepository.Delete(newLanguage);             var deletedRowCount = _uow.SaveChanges();                  Assert.AreEqual(insertedLanguage.Name, newLanguage.Name);             Assert.AreEqual(1, insertedRowCount);             Assert.AreEqual(1, deletedRowCount);         }     }      I use something like above. But I dont know this is the correct way to test repository. I cant find useful tutorial/article. How should be unit testing with generic repository CRUD operations?"}
{"_id": "242780", "title": "Should a Parent with Children have a DefaultChild, or should a Child have a Default property?", "text": "Which of the following two models makes more sense? I'm leaning towards the first one because there can only be one default child. The examples are in C# but I think it can apply to other languages too. Here `DefaultChild` holds one of the items in `Children`.               class Parent     {         int ID { get; set; }              Child DefaultChild { get; set; }              IEnumerable<Child> Children { get; set; }     }          class Child     {         int ID { get; set; }     }      Here one of the items in `Children` has `Default` set to `true` while the others have it set to `false`.               class Parent     {         int ID { get; set; }              IEnumerable<Child> Children { get; set; }     }          class Child     {         int ID { get; set; }              bool Default { get; set; }     }      * * * A concrete situation: a `User` in our system has one or more `Customer`s attached. When logging in, if said `User` has a default `Customer`, they are immediately working under this `Customer`. If they don't, they have to select a `Customer` to work under. While logged in, they can switch between `Customer`s."}
{"_id": "212364", "title": "C# basic window content convention", "text": "I'm learning C# using visual studio express 2012, and I cannot find a source online that explains window content convention. What I mean by this is, what's the appropriate way to change the context / pass variables from the main window to different contexts? I've been able to change the content of my window by creating and editing new UserControl classes. As for parameter passing, I've experimented with having a static mainwindow with public fields and passing mainwindow field values through action functions (with little success). Is the appropriate way to handle changing the main window's context creating multiple usercontrol classes? If this is the case, should I be creating a tree with the main window as the root and the usercontrol classes as child elements? Most of the questions I find when searching for an answer revolve around forms or new windows, which lead me to question whether usercontrol is the correct item for changing context. If I'm missing a tutorial or simple explanation I apologize in advance :D"}
{"_id": "209363", "title": "web spider for facebook", "text": "I just subscribed to a facebook page which post links to different open source projects or code archives. I'll like to save those links and descriptions to a local db. How can I do that? I heard something about the concept of web spiders and I know some php and java but I don't know how can I solve the problem from above. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "214408", "title": "What's wrong with this approach to CSS?", "text": "I have a static Jekyll website. The website is constructed _once_ , on my computer, and then sent to the server in the form of plain HTML, image, and CSS files, to be served by a regular HTTP server. This construction process involves a template engine that has to glue various components together. For example, this is the template for my posts and pages (the only other template I have is for the main page, which shares quite a lot with this one):               <!DOCTYPE html>     <html>         <head>             {% include head.html %}             <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"/css/main.css\">             {% if page.title == \"Tautological Cascade\" %}                 <title>Tautological Cascade</title>             {% else %}                 <title>Tautological Cascade: {{ page.title }}</title>             {% endif %}         </head>              <body>             <div class=\"site\" >                 {% include header.html %}                 {{ content }}                 {% include footer.html %}             </div>         </body>     </html>      The most important part to notice here is the `body` section. It basically sandwiches a processed markdown file between two HTML files. Currently, I only have one, main CSS file, which is used by ALL pages. I find this approach a bit unpractical. Everything is defined in there, and it's getting messy. Couple that with my general ignorance of anything but the basic CSS, and you get something close to a nightmare. My idea is this: inline CSS for all of these parts that I glue together. So header.html would have its CSS in its file, footer.html would have its CSS, and the file that describes the content int its own. **Is this the correct solution to my problem? Is there something wrong with this approach?**"}
{"_id": "214404", "title": "Is it bad practice to check object types with an identifying member variable?", "text": "**Preamble:** I am making a simple board game in C++, in which AI characters move around squares on the board. There are different types of squares, each inherited from an abstract class, each with different effects on the AI character. For example, some are shops where the character can buy stuff, others are workplaces where characters get money, etc. Likewise, there are different AI characters (also inherited from an abstract class), which make different kind of decisions. Some work more than others, some eat more than others, etc. The problem is that the AI character needs to know the square type in order to make a decision about what to do. At the moment checking the type using a type-name string as a member variable is the easiest solution, but it feels horribly inelegant and not very helpful when it comes to adding new types of squares and AI characters. **Question:** Is it bad practice to check the type of an object by asking it for an identifier which is placed into its class for this purpose? Is it bad practice to use other methods of run time type identification such as dynamic_cast and typeinfo for purposes of controlling the flow of execution? **Example:** Below the Square class (accessed through currentSquare() has a member function getType() which returns a string with the name of the type:               //Normal AI character     void decide() {         if(currentSquare()->getType()==\"HOME\") {             watchTV();             sleep();         }          if(currentSquare()->getType()==\"WORKPLACE\") {             work();         }      }          //Party animal AI     void decide() {         if(currentSquare()->getType()==\"HOME\") {             moveTo(getGameBoard()->closestBar());         }          if(currentSquare()->getType()==\"WORKPLACE\") {             sleep();         }      }"}
{"_id": "245255", "title": "How much information about an error should be shown to the user?", "text": "Applications can always throw errors. If such an error occurs, the user should be notified, because what he asked the application to do has not succeeded. However, how much information should the user be given? I think most of us agree on not showing a stack trace (Should a stack trace be in the error message presented to the user?), but I can't find a question about the rest of the error contents or what to show to the user. For example, a language supporting exceptions (.net, java) has the exception type to share, where the exception occured, and a somewhat clarifying message to go along with the exception. Should this also be hidden from the user? Or should we show this anyway? Or should we show a generic message? or should we show one of a number of messages based on what the underlying exception is?"}
{"_id": "26368", "title": "Advanced subversion techniques, what am I missing?", "text": "I started using SVN about 9 months ago and it's been a game changer to say the least. Although, I feel I'm still a bit lost. I feel like there is a lot more I need to take advantage of to really step up my application development. **For example** I would like to be able to quarantine any volatile/major changes into some kind of 'sub-repository' or something. I'm finding that major changes are impeding minor bug fixes that are quite urgent. How can I push one simple update without pushing incomplete or broken code?"}
{"_id": "93223", "title": "Design Pattern For UI Control and Provider to Call Control's Events", "text": "I have a UI control that uses a provider class to implement the actual logic of a complex task. So the control delegates to the provider to do some work. But the provider needs to work with the control too; it needs to fire some events on the control. I was looking for a good design pattern of how the two could work together, but wasn't sure of any. I didn't want the provider to directly invoke events on the control. I thought about methods on the control that it could call, but I don't know that I quite like that either. Any ideas, thoughts? What is a good design pattern that the provider can use to fire a notification through the control? Each event may also need to pass custom parameters too."}
{"_id": "93225", "title": "How to tackle the outside party developement", "text": "Currently I'm working on a social networking project whose design is developed by the another company we are dealing with. We informed them that we need a task to be done on high priority to finish the project ASAP. We told them that what we need in the task and the party said, \"What you do code or design?\"? Is it their concern that I do design or code? When we have given them task, how can he ask a question that what I do? So I ask my boss what to do, and he said to tell him that \"We need HTML and CSS\". He the did the task. What exactly is this guy asking? I don't want to get into this kind of situation again. I want to handle these situations myself without talking to my boss. What am I missing here?"}
{"_id": "190816", "title": "Make the lines hide (logically speaking) in applets", "text": "I am developing an application where I draw large number of lines (color is given as black) and update them where I need to remove them from screen. I thought of making their color to match with the background so that I can make them hide. It seems to be simple and works but in the practical sense I have 10000 points and almost more than 20000 lines to be drawn and as most the line overlap or cross each other it is so disgusting the view. So I need some kind of function to actually remove those selected lines between two known points from screen. Even I have a problem with the background color I can match the exact background default color of the applets. Can anyone suggest me solution or the color?"}
{"_id": "93227", "title": "Helping a new programmer become more self-proficient and not ask me so much?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project with a new programmer. How do I help him speed up his work? He often asks me questions, and I pair programmed with him in backbone.js (a part of the project). Now I want him to handle the project himself so I can concentrate on other things to speed up the process. He doesn't want to Google things or ask on a forum if a problem comes up. He just comes to me. What should he do? What should I do? When I force him, then he does things quickly. How can I motivate him to do more work on his own?"}
{"_id": "118488", "title": "Interacting With Data Using Multiple Databases/Servers", "text": "All of the projects that I've had to deal with so far have only required a single database on a single server. I'm interested in learning more about how projects that need to scale move to multiple databases and/or servers to help manage the load. I'm aware of High Scalability, but I'm particularly interested in some code examples or additional resources where I could read more on the subject. For instance:   * How are joins constructed between two tables on multiple databases? (A code example here would be helpful).   * Are there any special strategies for tracking which tables are in which database?   * Does the application code need to know that one or more databases are spread across multiple servers? If not, at what level are the requests filtered?   * When is it time to move beyond a 1 database/1 server setup? How common is it to need to do this?"}
{"_id": "118489", "title": "Does it make sense to standardize including a created date and last updated date field on all DB tables?", "text": "My boss is currently attempting to apply some development standards to our team, so we had a meeting yesterday to discuss the standards which was mostly going well until she brought up:   * All DB tables will have a CreatedDate and LastUpdatedDate column, updated by triggers. At this point our team suffered an opinion schism; one half of us think that doing this on all tables is a large amount of work with little benefit (we work on fixed-budget projects so any cost comes from our company's profits); the second half believe it will help with support of the projects. I am firmly in the former camp. While I appreciate that some outside cases would cause the extra columns to improve supportability, in my opinion the amount of work that would be required to add the columns in the first place, as well as maintenance, would cause us to spend less time on more important things like Unit- or Load-Testing. Also, I'm fairly sure that these extra columns would make it more awkward to use an ORM - bearing in mind that we mainly use C# and Oracle, which isn't very ORM-happy to start with. So, my question is twofold:   * Am I in the right camp? I don't claim to have world-renowned database skills, so this might be a trivially easy addition with no adverse side-affects.   * How would you deal with a situation where a meeting about standards devolves into a slagging match? How can I really sell that this standard is not going to help us in the long term?"}
{"_id": "120787", "title": "Need to figure out Timesheet via Email", "text": "So we are thinking that we might want to make timesheet submission easier by having our timesheet system send out a person's timesheet via email to the employee. The employee then should fill out the timesheet and send it back via email for it to be processed. Anybody know of some write up on how other's have done this? I've googled but without luck. Thanks for any thoughts/input."}
{"_id": "202908", "title": "How do functional languages handle random numbers?", "text": "What I mean about that is that in _nearly_ every tutorial I've read about functional languages, is that one of the great things about functions, is that if you call a function with the same parameters twice, you'll **always** end up with the same result. How on earth do you then make a function that takes a seed as a parameter, and then returns a random number based on that seed? I mean this would seem to go against one of the things that are so good about functions, right? Or am I completely missing something here?"}
{"_id": "220159", "title": "Modelling Login and Authentication on an iOS mobile client", "text": "I'm about to start working on a V2 of a mobile application and I'd like to adopt a more object-centric approach. Primarily because I think it makes for more maintainable code, but a secondary benefit is easier testability. V1 of the app is pretty controller-centric. The Login ViewController has its login fields and it hits the backend via AFNetworking, reports errors if necessary, and receives a token which gets stored away securely for later use. There's only ever a single user. When the user logs out, all local data is deleted, so essentially the current user is 'global' and can either be nil (need a login) or not (doesn't). The situation is complicated of course by the idea of token expiry. Essentially any network request (either explicit GETs or asynchronous, delayed POSTs) can fail because the token expired and we want the user to re- authenticate. The V1 model of a login screen at startup if there's no current user doesn't easily extend to this model, and I feel,I'm missing an object somehow I'd route everything through. An Authenticator that provides a token, or throws up the login screen if it doesn't have one. Then we could do something like - when any request fails, we delete the current token and retry the request. The request asks the authenticator for the token, and the authenticator asks the user. Or something. How this could be better modelled? I feel like the code needs to be centralised, but that's hard as requests are used throughout the apps. Its almost like a filter layer is needed to handle auth errors centrally, but other errors / successes wherever they're needed (in a success/fail block)."}
{"_id": "224661", "title": "Where do I put the changelog to display the recent changes to the user?", "text": "I want to create a changelog for my application to display the set of recent changes to the user. But I'm not sure where I put it. Do I create a text file and write in it? Where do I put this text file then?   Or do I use an action in the menubar and display the changelog in a new window when clicking on the action?"}
{"_id": "51076", "title": "Best way to handle nulls in Java?", "text": "I have some code that is failing because of NullPointerException. A method is being called on the object where the object does not exist. However, this led me to think about the best way to fix this. Do I always code defensively for nulls so that I future proof code for null pointer exceptions, or should I fix the cause of the null so that it won't occur downstream. What are your thoughts?"}
{"_id": "32533", "title": "CS subjects that an undergraduate must know", "text": "In college, I was never interested in theory. I never read it. No matter how much I tried, I was unable to read stuff and not know what was actually happening practically. Like for example, in my course on automata theory, my professor told me everything possibly related to the mathematical aspect of it, but not even once did he mention where it would be used practically. This is just an example. I managed to pass my college and interned with a company also, where I did a project and thankfully they didn't bother about my grades, as they were above average. Now, I am interested in knowing what subjects should a CS student must absolutely and positively be aware of? Subjects that can have relevance in the industry. This is because I have some free time on my hands and it would help me better to have a good understanding of them. What are your suggestions? Like for one, algorithms is one subject."}
{"_id": "32534", "title": "What is the best marketplace for freelance programmers?", "text": "I need a really talented, hardworking programmer who knows Cocoa and Objective C for my Iphone App. I'm looking for a partner and not just a programmer. It's a pretty big project that takes a talented programmer. What would you say is the best marketplace for someone like this. I've checked out digitalpoint and sitepoint but they are really for smaller projects."}
{"_id": "55752", "title": "How to have an improved relationship with recruiters?", "text": "I personally, always have problems with recruiter's and their constant spam.. I usually get tons of emails for jobs, not related to what I do. Or they have no idea what I do. Or they say they have a job in my field, but make me go thru hours of paperwork, only to find out they had no real job lead. Or my resume contained a keyword, that they searched for, but that keyword is like 1-10% of what I do, not my main job skill set. My point being is that I want to have a more polite, more accurate, less waste of each other's time. So I want to come up with a form letter, I can create in gmail to automatically send to all recruiter's, to help inform, educate and train them to deal better with me. That way, they know exactly what to send to me, so as to not waste my time. We don't play email/phone tag, just to find out they have no idea what I do, or how to find a job lead that matches that. I want this to be an improvement in my relationship and experience with recruiters, because honestly most of them waste my time. They call me at work, not considering I can't take phone call's at work, and they already had my email address. Mostly they annoy me, but I am tired of having to be rude to get my point across. I want them to immediately make sure they know what I can and have done, (Have you read my resume?) and have actual leads ready to be hired/interviewed soon or now. Any suggestions to how to improve the communication, to avoid wasting each other's time. I certainly hate having to come across as rude or improper, but when they just waste so much of my time, I don't know what else to do. So thank you for your time. Just to be clear, I want your help to write a form letter, that I can send to every recruiter that email's me, how to best work with me, and other people in IT/Web careers."}
{"_id": "159951", "title": "Is there a different usage rationale for abstract classes/interfaces in C++ and Java", "text": "According to Herb Sutter one should prefer abstract interfaces (all pure virtual functions) to abstract classes in C++ to decouple the implementation as far as possible. While I personally find this rule very useful, I have recently joined a team with many Java programmers and in the Java code this guideline does not seem to exist. Functions and their implementations are very frequently located in abstract classes. So did I get Herb Sutter all wrong even for C++ or is there a general difference in the usage of abstract functions in C++ compared to Java. Are abstract classes with implementation code more sensible in Java than in C++ and if yes why ?"}
{"_id": "250107", "title": "Why can you have statefulness inside a static class in java?", "text": "I was playing around with Java today and I read about static inner classes. Why can you have 'statefulness' inside of a static inner class. For instance:               class outerClass {              static class Test {              private String a;                   String getA() { return a; }                   void setA( String newA) {a = newA; }               }     }      Am I misunderstanding something? It seems like you should not be able to keep mutable state inside of a class that is labled at static. Moreover it seems like you should not be able to instantiate something that is a static class, it should be a static singleton. Perhaps someone could correct me if I am making an incorrect assumption or enlighten me to why the Java authors decided to make this possible. EDIT: I feel as if I am confusing the keyword `final` and `static` in java, as `final` variables do not have state. It still seems _very_ strange to be able to instantiate a static class, though."}
{"_id": "116934", "title": "Is it normal to want some appreciation and acknowledgement?", "text": "I work for a Multi-national product development organization. I work directly for the person who established the Indian wing of the organization. I work incredibly hard and try to do the best possible work I can. But after 6 months of working here I am finding it hard to stay motivated to do my best because no matter how hard I try I do not get any acknowledgement that I did something right or wrong. Often times what I find that I need to do to get things done are not in the conventional wisdom of how software is made. The problem is bothering me so much that I am considering moving to a different company. I don't know if expecting an occasional \"good job\" is wrong. But it feels like a little sincere appreciation will help make things better for me. Is it just wrong to need it? Have you had a similar experience?"}
{"_id": "116933", "title": "Is there any well known project to VBify C and make C as RAD language?", "text": "I have two questions: `Question #1`: Is there any well known project to **VBify** C? **VBify** here means **to make it as easy as in VB.NET** and to make C well supported in IDE just like VB.NET, i.e. with following features: word completion, function's argument description and everything just as with VB.NET development using Visual Studio. `Question #2`: Is there any well known effort to make C as **RAD (Rapid Application Development)** language?"}
{"_id": "56220", "title": "Is there any scholarly research on the detrimental effects of a noisy workplace on productivity?", "text": "I work in an open office with typical office noise (people talking and walking by). It is simply too noisy and restless for me to work in. I've been trying and trying to get some change, to no avail. I'm at a point of starting to look for a new job, but thought I'd give it one more shot, and try to argue my case with research. I remember reading about research on how noise and disruptions affect knowledge work and software development in particular. Maybe I'm bad at searching, but I just can't find research papers that deals specifically with noise and work that requires high concentration. PS: While I appreciate tips on how to cancel the noise (music, white noise, etc.), please limit your answer to links to research papers. Thanks."}
{"_id": "167723", "title": "What should and what shouldn't be in a header file?", "text": "What things should absolutely never be included in a header file? If for example I'm working with a documented industry standard format that has a lot of constants, is it a good practice to define them in a header file (if I'm writing a parser for that format)? What functions should go into the header file?   What functions shouldn't?"}
{"_id": "110304", "title": "How to create and publish a useful Java library", "text": "I've recently worked on a Java class that generates permutations per list of objects. In any case, I would like to have this library offered to the public, so I have several questions:   * Most libraries I see have this complicated package naming, specifically including `com`/`org`. Is there a convention for these or is a `permutations` package enough?   * Is there a specific format to publish these? Should I include separate WARs for source code / javadoc?   * I have the files on a GitHub repository. I guess I can serve the files there, but how do I get people to find my repo?"}
{"_id": "167726", "title": "Steps to maintain a good bug database", "text": "Maintaining bug database is an important for every project. I am used to store the followings at bug database   * Issue date time   * Who is assigned to   * Whether it has been solved or not   * If solved then, solved date time Is those enough to maintain a good bug database?"}
{"_id": "114681", "title": "what is the purpose of arrows?", "text": "I am learning functionnal programming with Haskell, and I try to grab concepts by first understanding why do I need them. I would like to know the goal of arrows in functional programming languages. What problem do they solve? I checked http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Understanding_arrows and http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~rjmh/afp-arrows.pdf. All I understand is that they are used to describe graphs for computations, and that they allow easier point free style coding. The article assume that point free style is generally easier to understand and to write. This seems quite subjective to me. In another article (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/StephensArrowTutorial#Hangman:_Main_program), a hangman game is implemented, but I cannot see how arrows makes this implementation natural. I could find a lot of papers describing the concept, but nothing about the motivation. What I am missing?"}
{"_id": "118158", "title": "What is exactly the meaning of \"portability\"?", "text": "I know very well that java is a portable language..and it is the byte-code that makes it portable.. However I've studied also that C is a portable language. **\"The programs written in C are portable i.e. programs written for one type of computer or operating system can be run on another type of computer or operating system.\"** Then what is the difference between C portability and Java's portability? can we say that C is also a portable language like java? I know that java portability may be in terms of different application such as mac, PC, mobile phone..and C can't be used in such cases..But my question is still as how portability is different in both language? Please clear my confusion. Thanks in advance.."}
{"_id": "104474", "title": "Chat room for Ruby on Rails app -- should I do it with EventMachine or Node.js?", "text": "I have a chat room for a Rails app is implemented the old-fashioned way, using Ajax Polling. This is not scaling, and it is cluttering my log, so I want to reimplement using either EventMachine + HTML5 websocket/degrade to flash, or Node.js. Given that the rest of the app is in Rails, what are the the pros and cons of each of these two alternatives?"}
{"_id": "127027", "title": "Finding an A* heuristic for a directed graph", "text": "In a previous question, I asked about finding a route (or path if you will) in a city. That is all dandy. The solution I chose was with the A* algorithm, which really seems to suit my needs. What I find puzzling is heuristic. How do I find one in an environment without constant distance between 2 nodes? Meaning, not every 2 nodes have the same distance between them. What I have is nodes (junctures), streets with weight (which may also be one- way), a start/finish node (since the start and end is always in the same place) and a goal node. In an ordinary case, I would just use the same way I got to goal to go back, but since one of the streets could have been a one- way, that may not be possible. ### The main question How do I find a heuristic in a directed graph?"}
{"_id": "127021", "title": "How do you train freshers?", "text": "Training freshers has become my responsibility. I work in a good small company and they want me to train freshers (MCA/BCA students). But I am not an expert in training field. So can anyone please help me in this? Few hints/tips and something that is new/different to train them. What care should be taken while communicating them? How to clear their mind covered with college environment? Please help me."}
{"_id": "127023", "title": "Why is #include <iostream.h> bad?", "text": "I was reading another thread where a guy asked about C++ books for beginners, and one of the programmers answering wrote this: > Some warnings: avoid all books that present an \"hello world\" stating with >   >   >     #include <iostream.h> >   I opened my C++ book and sure enough it included the iostream header like the example above. Why is that bad? What other pointers should I keep in mind when learning C++? Background: I am proficient with C and I'll start to learn C++ this next semester."}
{"_id": "253721", "title": "Falsey values vs null, undefned, or empty string", "text": "I've worked with jQuery over the years. However, recently, I've found myself getting deeper into the JavaScript language. Recently, I've heard about \"truthy\" and falsey values. However, I don't fully understand them. Currently, I have some code that looks like this:               var fields = options.fields || ['id', 'query'];      I need to identify if fields is null, undefined, or has a length of 0. I know the long way is to do:               if ((fields === null) || (fields === undefined) || (fields.length === 0)) {      ...                         }      My question is, is the following the same:               if (!fields)  {      ...     }      Thank you!"}
{"_id": "215756", "title": "Session in RESTful web services, how it works?", "text": "In a web services, how does the server know which request belongs to which session? I know that for a web application, the web server inspects the cookie (or the sessonId query parameter in case cookies are disabled) so it knows which session the request is associated with. But for a request that comes from a rest client, how do the server know?"}
{"_id": "186293", "title": "Why are actual parameters called \"arguments\"?", "text": "Where does the word \"argument\" (in the programming sense) come from?   i.e. Why are actual parameters called \"arguments\"? The meanings don't seem related, and I haven't found any explanation of it anywhere. * * * **Note** on the terminology:   * \"Formal\" parameters (also known simply as \"parameters\") are the \"placeholder\" names (say, `x`) -- the _declared_ parameters of a function.    * \"Actual\" parameters (also known as \"arguments\") are the _actual values_ which are _passed_ to a function (say, `5`), hence I used this term above to prevent any confusion."}
{"_id": "60123", "title": "Moving from Employee to Business Owner smoothly", "text": "I currently work for a company, a big company. I have a contract that states that I need to ask for permission to have another job. Very standard I suppose. I'd like to start trying out some ideas for start ups. Some of them work without moving money (write a program, release it as shareware or something like that and see if people is interested), that's easy. But some ideas need to move money. One is, in some way, like Amazon's Turk Machine, where money should be involved since day 1. Without having to request permission from my current employer and having to set up a company, how can I give that idea a try?"}
{"_id": "120551", "title": "Is there a version control system that can show changes to a specific method or function?", "text": "Sometimes it would be nice to be able to say something like:               (git|svn|hg|etc) diff Foo.c:main     (git|svn|hg|etc) log log Foo.c:main      to see the changes made to a specific function within a source file since the last commit, or the complete history of changes. My question is two-fold:   1. Does something exist that does this?   2. Would such a tool be practical? It would have to do some simple parsing of the code at each revision in order to compare different versions of the function; would the overhead be too much for it to be efficient?"}
{"_id": "186297", "title": "In MVP, should presenters instantiate and control other presenters?", "text": "I've implemented an application using MVP with GWT, which is working out very nicely for views that have a single purpose. Now, it has evolved into views that are achieving multiple purposes in a single window. So now I have a view of views with each view having its own presenter. I used this example as my model for building out the application, take a look. The \"view of views\" also has its own presenter, which instantiates (or receives) the presenters for each of the other views it needs to fulfill its purpose. I reveal event interfaces through those presenters for the \"view of views\" presenter to hook into and listen and react to what's going on inside those other presenters & views. My questions are:   * Am I still following MVP principles or have I violated the separation of concerns somewhere by having presenters create/receive and control other presenters? aka Should I be doing this?   * What are some other design patterns for creating interfaces that are also composed of other complex interfaces? ## Update In response to Robert Harvey's question, there is difficulty with passing objects from a presenter of a view to the presenter of the \"view of views\" when an event is triggered. For instance, a button will flag a ClickEvent and the handler attached to this will need to pick up the data object related to the ClickEvent through another method revealed by the view's presenter. So this works, but do feel it will cause more problems later on as this kind of object handling grows in complexity."}
{"_id": "186294", "title": "Is there a license for selling a software with the sources so buyer can make modifications without claiming ownership of the code or distributing it?", "text": "I would like to sell a software that has some open source competitors. Therefore I would like to include the source code with the binaries so that the company buying it can modify it as it wishes. The only catch is that the source code will NOT belong to the company, in other words, I would like to maintain the copyright and ownership over the code so I can sell to other companies, etc. Is there a license name for this kind of model? The buyer can see the code, modify it for its needs, but it cannot take ownership over the code, in other words, it is licensed for a particular use/need and **he cannot give or show the code to anyone else**. Buyers are more likely to be companies in that model, in other words, they will be able to take control of the product by modifying the source code, but they will not be able to take ownership of the original code or do anything with it besides the initial purpose they bought it for. It is still closed source. **Only the companies that buy the product are entitled to see and modify the code but never to distribute it.**"}
{"_id": "222794", "title": "Will interns and entry level positions care more about algorithms or projects/experience", "text": "I am 3 months into learning java, read head first java and made 4 things on my github + many small things. I also started learning android this month, but now am tossing and turning not knowing my next step. I applied to a few jobs and no call backs but have been getting noticed at least. My background is business and I have experience in QA. I have taught myself a lot but never really saw a need to learn algorithms or big o notation, I noticed that most people talking about this go to university and are applying to google or a big fortune 500 company. I have read so many success stories of people teaching themselves programming in 1 year with no background and they never talked about algorithms and still got jobs, but yeah most of them were web developers or android. I also hear that they mainly ask algorithm questions to students because they know students might not have much of a portfolio, so if I have a good portfolio would that negate the need to focus on algorithms? I don't know what kind of career I want so I am applying to anything java/android but no web related jobs as I am not interested. I know html/css/rdmbs/sql. TBH, I just really want to spend the next month or 2 learning more android and than apply for jobs after I put some apps on the market. I also want to finish making java projects to learn core java. The problem is time, I am unemployed and every month goes by looks bad to an employer. I don't want to spend 2 months learning android than 2 months playing with java, if after all that I still have to spend a few months learning algorithms. I feel if its THAT necessary, should I drop everything and focus on interview algorithms and such? I am hesitant to learn something I won't use much JUST for an interview, at least at my current intern level. I studied javascript and jquery before but I never used them, and its as if I never studied them when I think about it. I am aiming for small companies or startups who want an intern to grow with and train. Are these algorithm questions mainly asked for people aiming at the big four? thanks for any tips, I have currently a few pdfs on algorithms and MIT free course to look at...not sure where to start..."}
{"_id": "222793", "title": "Is my understanding of abstract datatypes correct?", "text": "After reading lots of pages on various sites, I came to the conclusion that abstract datatype helps to separate the use of datastructure from its implementation. We can easily map the data into a datastructure by using an already available abstraction. And this abstraction is called ADT. Please tell me if I have understood this correctly. Also if you can give a small example, it will be very helpful. If you prefer to give any code in your example, C or Python would be helpful for me. **Addition:** They are a very special implementation of data abstraction. What separates them from other instances of abstractions is that ADTs are theoretical constructs. Theoretical constructs that help map or represent data in a desired data structure. They have attributes or operations associated with them. These operations may be applied on the data that has been mapped into the ADT. How the data is actually stored inside the ADT or how the operations work are kept hidden. EDIT: I had previously said, \"ADT is like the blueprint of a datastructure\". A few of the answers have explained why it's not. I didn't have a clear comprehension of what a 'blueprint' is and that was the reason for using the term. So, I've now removed it from my original text."}
{"_id": "251760", "title": "Multiple classes with the same name, but different namespaces?", "text": "I've run into some code (C# if it matters) that has classes which have the same name, but differ in their namespaces. They all tend to represent the same logical thing, but often are different \"views\" of the same object. The different namespaces are at times part of the same solution, and even the same dll. I have my thoughts, but couldn't find anything definitive about this practice to be considered a clever use of the tools available or a pattern to avoid. This question on smurf naming touches on this, but from the other direction. Disambiguating the names would likely require an arbitrary and pervasive prefix, which that question wanted to eliminate. What are the guidelines around this practice?"}
{"_id": "25123", "title": "How does your team approach technical code QA?", "text": "For the first time, our team is taking a rigorous approach to technical code QA. We identify work to QA by picking out top level classes and QA'ing it and everything it calls or uses below it (and what they call/use etc.). I reckon our QA code coverage to be reasonably close to 100% and its an eye opener for me in terms of improvements both in code and design as well as catching bugs early. I'll definetly be promoting this in the future, but wondered how other teams approach techincal code QA. Do you have a rigorous approach? Do you aim to QA everything? Does one or two people tend to do it or is it spread evenly about the team? What do you look for when QA'ing? Any thoughts appreciated!"}
{"_id": "253897", "title": "API always returns JSONObject or JSONArray Best practices", "text": "I'm making an API that will return data in JSON. I also wanted on client side to make an utility class to call this API. Something like :               JSONObject sendGetRequest(Url url);     JSONObject sendPostRequest(Url url, HashMap postData);      However sometimes the API send back array of object `[{id:1},{id:2}]` I now got four choices ():   * Make the method test for `JSONArray` or `JSONObject` and send back an `Object` that I will have to cast in the caller   * Make a method that returns `JSONObject` and one for `JSONArray` (like `sendGetRequestAndReturnAsJSONArray`)   * Make the server always send `Arrays` even for one element   * Make the server always send `Objects` wrapping my Array I going for the two last methods since I think it would be a good thing to force the API to send consistent type of data. But what would be the best practice (if one exist). Always send arrays? or always send objects?"}
{"_id": "253895", "title": "Why does Linq to Entity Sum return null when the result set is empty?", "text": "There are quite a few questions on Stack Overflow about the Linq to Entity / Linq to SQL Sum extension method, about how it returns null when the result set is empty: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and many more, as well as a blog post discussing the issue here. I feel it is an inconsistency in the Linq implementation. I am assuming at this point that it is not a bug, but is more or less working as designed. I understand that there are workarounds (for example, casting the field to a nullable type, so you can coalesce with `??`), and I also understand that for the underlying SQL, a NULL result is expected for an empty result set. But because the result of the Sum extension for non-nullable types is also non-nullable, **why does the Linq to SQL / Linq to Entity Sum behave this way?**"}
{"_id": "253893", "title": "Decoupling software components via naming convention", "text": "I'm currently evaluating alternatives to refactor a drivermanagement. In my multitier architecture I have Baseclass   * `DAL.Device` //my entity Interfaces   * `BL.IDriver` //handles the dataprocessing between application and device   * `BL.IDriverCreator` //creates an `IDriver` from a `Device`   * `BL.IDriverFactory` //handles the driver creation requests Every specialization of `Device` has a corresponding `IDriver` implementation and a corresponding `IDriverCreator` implementation. At the moment the mapping is fix via a type check within the business layer / `DriverFactory`. That means every new driver needs a) changing code within the `DriverFactory` and b) referencing the new `IDriver` implementation / assembly. On a customers point of view that means, every new driver, used or not, needs a complex revalidation of their hardware environment, because it's a critical process. My first inspiration was to use a caliburn micro like nameconvention see Caliburn.Micro: Xaml Made Easy   * `BL.RestDriver`   * `BL.RestDriverCreator`   * `DAL.RestDevice` After receiving the `RestDevice`within the `IDriverFactory` I can load all driver dlls via reflection and do a namesplitting/comparing (extracting the xx from xxDriverCreator and xxDevice) Another idea would be a custom attribute (which also leads to comparing strings). My question: is that a good approach above layer borders? If not, what would be a good approach?"}
{"_id": "253892", "title": "Prevent indent when formatting CSS", "text": "In Visual Studio 2013 when I format my CSS code (`Ctrl`+`K`+`F`) it will sometimes indent my CSS properties into a hierarchy. For example: .a { color:red; } .a .b {color:blue; } Becomes:               .a {       color:red;     }             .a .b {          color:blue;        }      When I would prefer:               .a {       color:red;     }          .a .b {       color:blue;     }      Is there a way of modifying Visual Studio to prevent this indentation?"}
{"_id": "253890", "title": "How to manage security of these self hosted web apis, to ensure that the request coming for accessing data is authenticated?", "text": "Let's pretend I am going to work on an enterprise application. Say I have 11 modules in the application and I would have to develop **Dashboards** for every role in the organization for whom I are going to develop application. We Decided to use **Asp.Net Web Api** and return json data from our apis. We are going to include 11 Self hosted web apis projects in our application (one **self hosted web api** ) for every module. All 11 modules are connected to one **Sql server 2012 Database.** Then once api is ready we would have to create Business Dashboards (Based upon roles in Organization). So Now my web api client is Asp.Net Mvc application.Asp.Net mvc will consume those web apis. Here is the part for whom all explanation is done. How should I manage Security of all 11 self hosted web apis? How should I only authenticated request is coming? If I authenticate user by login and password and then redirect user to appropriate Dashboard designed for the role that user have and load data by consuming web apis. How should I ensure that the request coming for accessing data is authenticated?"}
{"_id": "193542", "title": "Models structure in PHP/MVC", "text": "I have some classes that are composed with ORM generated Models. example1: For example the Report.php (Model) is using a Document.php Model generated with ORM. Based on the document object a report is created. I would like to know some name suggestions for the Report.php folder path. It clearly belongs to the /Model folder but in what subfolder? example2: The CustomTagFilter.php will remove some html tags from a html string. I wish to find a clear path name for this kind of Models. Any suggestions ?               /Models/[SUGGESTION]"}
{"_id": "193547", "title": "Architecting related products for different markets: MEF?", "text": "Hopefully, this question is not too open-ended... I have been tasked with taking a 3 year old application (.NET 4.0, WPF, WCF, EF 4, SQL 2008) that was designed for a very specific market X and \"re- purposing\" it for a another very specific market Y. To further complicate things, the company has also mentioned a third market Z, but that may be a year+ down the road. But it\u2019s definitely coming. The deadline for getting the application Y ready for market is aggressive. It might be negotiable, but just assume it\u2019s a matter of 2-3 months. I have been working at the company for a while, and I was very intimately involved with the initial creation of application X, and I am still involved with the maintenance. The new \u201capplication\u201d Y is interesting because there is some \u201coverlap\u201d between the features required for X and Y. For example, let A, B, C, D, and E be features and let \u2018 (prime) denote an enhancement to a feature. All of the following scenarios are valid:               ---X---|---Y---  \u2026  ---Z--- (down the road)        A   |   A        B   |   B\u2019        C\u2019  |   C            |   D        E   |      Some features can be merged from X to Y as-is (A). Some features from X must be enhanced before they can be merged into Y (B). Some features in X will not be in Y at all (E), and Y will contain features that are not in X (D). You get the idea. Here are my questions: (1) In the eyes of upper management, they ultimately see 3 different applications - one for each market: X, Y, Z. Moreover, they see 3 different copies of the same feature A that will need to go into each application. As discussed, there may be some enhancements that will make it to select products, but at the core, they are nearly identical. Sometimes I'm guilty for finding excuses to use the latest programming trends, BUT I think there's a strong business case here for utilizing the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF). Why have 3 different physical applications (and hence 3 code bases) when it could really be one \u201cnext generation\u201d application with plug-able features through something like MEF? There are several benefits that something like MEF could bring to the table. Does an extensibility solution like MEF seem valid in a case like this? (2) Given the limited time to get application Y to market... (a) Should I go with a conservative approach and simply give management what they\u2019re asking for, i.e. make a deep copy of X and modify it for Y? Perhaps there will be time after Y goes to market to develop a more ideal and extensible solution? My past experience with this company has seen demos become fully-fledged products within no time \u2013 if you get my drift ;) It could very well be more difficult to modify X code to make it work for Y rather than it would be to create Y from scratch and import X features. (b) Leaving X alone for now, should I create Y with MEF in mind. Features from X can easily be imported into Y. If this is done properly, Z should be easy to implement. It will probably be a risky undertaking to go back and address X to fit into this framework since it's so widely used, but it could be done on the side with no specific deadline. I have to pitch this to upper management. Any advice or thoughts?"}
{"_id": "166234", "title": "Do any OO languages support a mechanism to guarantee an overriden method will call the base?", "text": "I think this might be a useful language feature and was wondering if any languages already support it. The idea is if you have:               class C       virtual F          statement1          statement2      and               class D inherits C       override F          statement1          statement2          C.F()      There would be a keyword applied to C.F() such that removing the last line of code above would cause a compiler error because it's saying \"This method can be overridden but the implementation here needs to run no matter what\"."}
{"_id": "166235", "title": "Finishing an iteration early", "text": "I'd like some input on this on those working with agile methodologies... A current project is finding that development on our planned user stories is finishing some time before the end of the iteration, and that the testing effort and business acceptance is what's actually dragging us out longer towards the end. This means that the devs in question have spare time, and they're essentially going out to the iteration+1 backlog and starting work on cards there before our current iteration cards are 'done'. As iteration manager, I want to put a stop to this - I want a more team-orientated approach where the group takes ownership of getting all the cards done, as opposed to \"Well, dev's done so what do I dev next?\" The problem I face is convincing the team of this. On one hand, I understand why the devs don't want to test the code they've written (there are unit tests they write of course, but the manual testing to be done could be influenced by their bias). The team sees working ahead as making our next iterations easier, because a lot of the work is done before we start. I see this as screwing with the whole system of planning/actuals - but it's difficult to convince the team as to why this matters. What advice can you guys and girls give? How do we stop devs reaching ahead? What should they be doing instead? How much of a problem is this in the scheme of things, if things are still getting done?"}
{"_id": "167189", "title": "Resources on securing domain models?", "text": "I'm have good resources on both security, domain modelling, and architecture patterns. I've noticed a distinct lack of any suggestion of how and where to integrate security into the systems I build. I imagine the thing that applies the most is Access control, as Authentications and many other security forms would seem to be obviously a layer above the model and is pretty easy to separate and find a place for. Access Control to actions seems more of a grey area. Are there any good resources on this? I prefer well written books, but other resources are also welcome."}
{"_id": "167188", "title": "How to use TFS as a query tracking system?", "text": "We already use tfs for managing defects in code etc, etc. We additionally need a way to \"understand the domain & requirements of the products\". Normally, without tfs we exchange emails with the consultants and have the questions/queries answered. If it is a feature implementation we sometimes \"find\" conflicts in the implementation itself. And when that happens the userstory is modified and the enhancement/bug as per that is raised in TFS. Sometimes it is critical we come back to decisions we made or questions we wanted answers to. Hence we need to be able to track how that \"requirement idea\" or that \"query in concern\" evolved. Hence how is it that we can use TFS to track all of this? Do we raise an \"issue\" item for this? Or do we raise a \"bug\" item? The main things we'd ideally look in a query tracking system are as follows:   1. Area: Can be a module, submodule, domain. Sometimes this may be \"General\" - to address domain related stuff, or, event more granular to address modules, sub-modules. Take the case for the latter, if we were tracking this in excel sheets, we'd just write `module1,submodule2`; i.e. in a comma separated fashion. The things I would like here is to be able search for all queries relating to `submodule2` sometime in the future.    2. Responses: This is a record of conversations between the consultant and any other stakeholder. For a simple case, it would just be paragraphs. Each para would start with a name and date enclosed in brackets and the response following that...each para would be like a thread - much like a forum thread   3. Action taken: We'd want to know how the query was closed, what was the input given, what were the changes that took place because of that, etc etc.  These are fields I think I would need in such a system apart from some obvious ones like status, address to, resovled by, etc. I am open for any other fields which are sort of important. To summarise my question: how can we manage \"queries\" in the system? Where should we ideally store data pertaining to those three fields I have mentioned above (for e.g. is it wise to store responses in the history tag assuming we are opening a bug for the query)?"}
{"_id": "167185", "title": "What reasons are there for not using a third party version control service?", "text": "I've recently noticed a bit of a trend for my projects as of late. I use to run my own SVN server on my VPS, but recently the nail went in the coffin for that when I got my last project migrated from my server to a Mercurial repo on Bitbucket. What are some of the ramifications to this? (disregarding the change in version control systems) It seems like there has been a huge explosion in version control hosting, and companies like Bitbucket even offer private repos for free, and Github and other such services are extremely cheap now. Also, by using them you get the benefit of their infrastructure's speed and stability. What reasons are there these days to host your own version control? The only real reason I can think of is if your source code is super top secret."}
{"_id": "167184", "title": "Setting source IP with posix sockets", "text": "Is it possible for an application to request a socket (tcp) and have it set the source address without using raw sockets? (the addresses would be bound to the interfaces. [no spoofing]). This would be a tcp client connection, not bind()ing to a specified address."}
{"_id": "191032", "title": "Microsoft's coding standards for ASP.NET controls", "text": "I cannot find any naming standards/conventions in MSDN for naming ASP.NET controls. One of the following standards tends to be used by programmers:   * `lblAddress`   * `AddressLabel`   * `Address` According to MSDN's Name of Type Members, should we be treating ASP.NET controls as fields, hence using Pascal Case (e.g. `AddressLabel`)?"}
{"_id": "191033", "title": "Are there any reasons not to accept a software deliverable as a virtual machine?", "text": "This is a question about logistics, not a technical question. My company has outsourced some embedded software work. Specifically, we have payed a contractor to develop an embedded system for us since we do not have adequate in-house knowledge to do it ourselves (we only have desktop application developers). So, the contractors have finished the software and they have asked if they may deliver it to us in a virtual machine. The VM is a Windows 8 machine containing the pre-configured CodeWarrior IDE with the source code as a CodeWarrior project. The idea is that this will allow us to make code changes within the VM that is already configured for further development of this project. Are there any drawbacks to doing this as opposed to having them walk us through how to configure our own development machines to make code changes to the project? The only problem I can foresee is the VM running slowly and it taking a long time to rebuild the project when we make code changes. But on the other hand, I like the idea of getting a pre-configured embedded system development environment so I don't have to add yet another IDE on my desktop application dev machine. I can't really think of a good reason why not to accept a VM deliverable, but I just wanted to run it by this community in case there's something I'm missing."}
{"_id": "188990", "title": "Lambda Calculus Free Variable", "text": "Here's something from Slonneger's \"Syntax and Semantics of Programming Languages\": > A variable may occur both bound and free in the same lambda expression: for > example, in \u03bbx.y\u03bby.yx the first occurrence of y is free and the other two > are bound. I assume the free variable is the y right after the \u03bbx. and the bound y's are the \u03bby.y which I can sort of intuitively grasp. So ((\u03bbx.y\u03bby.yx)a)b) would reduce to (y\u03bby.ya)b) then to bba ? Can someone explain how this came to be? In the end it's the expression b twice. Can someone perhaps provide more examples of bound and free variables?"}
{"_id": "194004", "title": "Why have a wrapper constructor when storing a function in a data type?", "text": "I can never do too many Haskell tutorials. There is always something to refine and learn. So, I am working through chapter 10 of Real World Haskell, and everything makes sense. _but_ Why do               newtype Parse a = Parse { runParse :: ParseState -> Either String (a, ParseState) }          identity :: a -> Parse a     identity a = Parse (\\s -> Right (a, s))          getState :: Parse ParseState     getState = Parse (\\s -> Right (s, s))          putState :: Parse ()     putState = Parse (\\s -> Right ((), s))      Why not simply do               type Parse a = ParseState -> Either String (a, ParseState)          identity :: a -> Parse a     identity a = \\s -> Right (a, s)          getState :: Parse ParseState     getState = \\s -> Right (s, s)          putState :: Parse ()     putState = \\s -> Right ((), s)      In other words, what is the purpose of the wrap and unwrap pattern in here (which I see used in a lot of different places in Haskell)? We get the same `Parse Whatever` data type, but without the extra indirection."}
{"_id": "188994", "title": "Analogy of a class being a cookie cutter and objects being cookies", "text": "I came across the analogy of the _class being a cookie cutter and the cookies being objects_ while reading Code Complete. I fail to see why this analogy was drawn.How is it related to the concept of objects being run time instances of their classes?"}
{"_id": "61830", "title": "Refactoring: Isn't it just a fancy word for clean up your code?", "text": "Before Martin Fowler's book \"Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code\" came out, we used to call major changes to code \"rearchitecture\" and minor changes \"cleanup\". IMO, refactoring techniques are all common sense / obvious things we've been doing forever. Do you think refactoring was ever anything new? Perhaps just a way to trick management into allocating time for code cleanup?"}
{"_id": "141930", "title": "Why does IIS default to Recycling the Application Pool every 1740 minutes?", "text": "Why does IIS default to recycle the app pool after a given time? Is there some specific reason other than perhaps most web apps are not managing the memory prudently? Given that you are managing your application's memory properly, is is safe to go ahead and turn this off? What are some potential down sides, up benefits to turning off recycling or keeping it on?"}
{"_id": "141936", "title": "Is programmatically clearing the browser's history an accepted best practice?", "text": "A colleague is pushing clearing the client browser's history (i.e. back- button) when they logout of our web application. Is this considered a good practice? It strikes me as a really intrusive. If only conditionally, what conditions need to be in place for this practice to be useful?"}
{"_id": "141937", "title": "Designing a large database with multiple sources", "text": "I have been tasked with redesigning, or at worst optimising the structure of a database for a data warehouse. Currently, the database has 4 other source databases (which is due to expand to X number of others), all of which have their own data structures, naming conventions etc. At the moment an overnight SSIS package pulls the data from the various source and then for each source coverts the data into a standardised, usable format. These tables are then appended to each other creating a 60m row, 40 column beast!. This table is then used in a variety of ways from an OLAP cube to a web front end. The structure has been in place for a very long time, and the work I have been able to prove the advantages of normalisation, and this is the way I would like to go. The problem for me is that the overnight process takes so long I don't then want to spend additional time normalising the last table into something usable. Can anyone offer any insight or ideas into the best way to restructure or optimise the database efficiently? Edit: All the databases are MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Thanks in advance CM"}
{"_id": "97215", "title": "How to create a centralized update mechanism for a hosted CMS?", "text": "We're a team developing a hosted CMS (something like WordPress.com, but in .NET platform), and we want every site to get updates as we update our software. Our CMS is not **multi-tenant** , i.e. each site is an entire copy of a site template and has an individual database, files and folders, and would be **deployed across many servers** (2000 sites per server). Now our problem is that we can't figure out how to update all these sites in a centralized way, without users firing the update process (because this is a hosted solution, not on-premise). For example, imagine that we want to add a module to these sites and imagine that we have over 10,000 sites over 5 servers. It's **really really really** horrible to install this new module on 10,000 sites. Or imagine that we want to add a new template. Again it's not practical to copy template files to 10,000 sites. Is there any known pattern for such a **distributed hosted solution update/upgrade**?"}
{"_id": "97217", "title": "Class Versus Struct", "text": "In C++ and other influenced languages there is a construct called Structure (`struct`), and another called the `class`. Both are capable of holding functions and variables. Some differences are:   1. Class is given memory in the heap and `struct` is given memory in the stack   2. Class variable are private by default and in `struct` they are public My question is: was the `struct` somehow abandoned for Class? If so, why? Other than the differences above, a `struct` can do all the same things that a class does. So why abandon it?"}
{"_id": "107416", "title": "When should I be offloading work to a GPU instead of the CPU?", "text": "Newer systems such as OpenCL are being made so that we can run more and more code on our graphics processors, which makes sense, because we should be able to utilise as much of the power in our systems as possible. However, with all of these new systems, it seems as if GPUs are better than CPUs in _every way_. Because GPUs can do parallel calculation, multi-core GPUs actually seem like they'd be much better than multi-core CPUs; you'd be able to do many calculations at once and really improve speed. Are there still certain cases where serial processing is still better, faster, and/or more efficient than parallel?"}
{"_id": "199550", "title": "Does software in a professional environment need to be licensed?", "text": "**Background** : I'm writing in-house software - it has absolutely no contact with the world outside the company - but I'm using various libraries, which themselves do have some license structure. So for example GPL requires that software that re-uses the a GPL-licensed piece of code, to also be under GPL- license. Does that require my in-house application to have an explicit GPL- license, or is this understood implicitly? Does using AGPL-licensed code, require my code to be available to co-workers who use the in-house system? **Question** : Does my in-house software need to have an explicit license, to be compliant with the licenses of such libraries? In what cases does in-house software need to have its own license?"}
{"_id": "199554", "title": "How do I collect a list of rss feeds?", "text": "I am developing a rss reader where users search and follow blogs. But, how will I collect and store the feeds of thousands of blogs? Manual process of adding individual feeds is painful. Is there an easier way to add or import site feeds?"}
{"_id": "82838", "title": "Use the terms \"vector\" or \"array\" in high level discussion of C++ code", "text": "When I write high-level documentation about what an algorithm does, I use the term \"array\" to refer to the data structure on which the algorithm operates even though the actual data structure is an `std::vector`. I feel that using the term \"vector\" in this context does not (to me) best convey the meaning I'm after which is \"a sequence of elements with constant-time random access\" or perhaps more generally \"a dynamic array\". Is there a convention or common documentation standard for this distinction of similar terms?"}
{"_id": "187525", "title": "How to convince my teammates to follow some basic rules", "text": "I have a problem with my teammates. Long story short: We are three students working at a project for a competition. The project consists of 2 separate applications: one for Windows (that I develop) and one for Android (my colleagues are responsible for developing it). Our code bases will never intersect, the apps will communicate via third party tools. The problem is as follows: I have some experience working in teams as I made an internship at a big company last year, and I try to enforce some coding standards for our code. I also set up a git repository / wiki / collaboration software that we can use to push code / write ideas, document protocols and so on, but it seems that I am the only one that uses these tools. I tried to tell them that writing quality code and documenting every step will benefit us in the long run, but they don't seem to see the advantage of it. Also I was thinking to add some integration tests but from what I can see, as long as they don't use current tools to make their life easier, I don't think I can convince them the usefulness of integration tests. Most of the peer's code resides on their computers, they don't share a common code base and as I found out, they integrated their pieces by meeting and sharing code via usb stick. My question is: am I too harsh on this matter? Do I enforce some absurd rules? Keep in mind that this is a small project, the requirements are very clear(I created documents specifying what should the applications do), three skilled developers could do this in 3-4 days, so they might not see the added complexity of writing quality code as long as their current method just works. Is there any way that I can show them the benefit of documenting code, using git and so on?"}
{"_id": "9621", "title": "Teach Linux programming to home-schooled 15-year old", "text": "I am home schooling a 15-year-old and would like to teach him programming. Our home computers are all running Ubuntu. What are some good options? So far I am leaning toward Scratch, but I also recently found out there is a free Basic project in the Ubuntu repo geared toward teaching, although I haven't checked it out yet. I also have thought of jumping straight to Mobile development, since he has an Android phone and that would be a pretty impressive conversation starter if he could learn to develop his own apps. I'm very open minded on this... sky's the limit!"}
{"_id": "58990", "title": "How to improve algorithms studying?", "text": "I'm currently studying computer science at the Institute, and I have some problems with course which is named Algorithms, I've just begun to study it, but I'm already feeling, that I'm going to fail it, my problem is that while understanding different algorithms on graphs I need to keep in my mind a lot of info, and usually I can't do it, I forget some points of the exercise or can't proceed to final result, I'm very desperate about it cause I like programming very much. Did somebody feel the same while studying in the University? P.S. I began to program only two years ago, may it be the problem?"}
{"_id": "112302", "title": "Does a project using proper TDD have a lot of code without tests?", "text": "Most (all?) TDD resources show you how the cycle goes:   * Write Test   * Check Test   * Write Production Code   * Check Test   * Clean up Production Code   * Check test They also - to me - seem to imply that _all code is covered by tests_. However, reading posts like Writing Great Unit Tests: Best and Worst Practices (for example, linked to here) it's said that > **TDD is a robust way of designing software components (\u201cunits\u201d) > interactively so that their behaviour is specified through unit tests** To fill in some more context: > At the other end of the scale, **integration tests** contain no knowledge > about how your codebase is broken down into units, but instead make > statements about how the whole system behaves towards an external user. This makes perfect sense to me. However, it implies that **large parts** of the applications **code** are **not covered by tests**. Why? Because if you have units (and you need a lot of units to get your Unit Tests right) you need code that wires the units together. This code, IMHO, _will_ get complicated enough that it deserves to be tested on a more granular level that integration tests while it probably falls into \"Dirty Hybris\": > Anywhere in between, it\u2019s unclear what assumptions you\u2019re making and what > you\u2019re trying to prove. Refactoring might break these tests, or it might > not, regardless of whether the end-user experience still works So to sum up:   * I easily see the value of _Unit_ Tests with TDD   * Some code is needed to wire the units together   * This code will be complex and integration testing will/may not be enough.   * TDD resources on the net seem to imply 100% code/test coverage, yet   * looking at TDD with True Unit Tests will leave some code untested * * * Edit: wikipedia says: > Integration testing takes as its input modules that have been unit tested but somehow I feel there's still quite a bit of wiring code missing from the picture. (except if \"module\" means \"class or function\" because that is what's unit tested in isolation) * * * Insights?"}
{"_id": "112308", "title": "Managing cross-thread communication on issue/bug reports", "text": "On my current project we have two or three engineers who are tagged as Tier 2 or Tier 3 support. We often work directly with customers to gather detailed information about bug and issue reports. Frequently we get cross-talk in the email threads and conversations about issues. While discussing Issue #1, someone pipes up \"Oh by the way we found Issue #2\". Or having resolved Issue #1 we get asked \"Thanks for fixing that. Where are you with Issue #3\". I find this incredibly annoying and it can make it tricky to unravel threads when reviewing the history of a bug report because the threads are all mixed up. Can anyone suggest any strategies to manage this communication? Is there a polite way to address this and keep things single task focused? Is there a disadvantage to a single issue focus?"}
{"_id": "58998", "title": "Python: Future as a major programming language?", "text": "After reading some Python material and seeing some Python code a few years back I decided to give it a whirl. I decided to start with Python to solve the problems on Project Euler and was throughly impressed with the language. Since then I've went on to learn Django, and now use it primarily for my web applications. I would love to have a career programming in this language, however I fear the future of the language is currently in a state of uncertainness. With Google and other major companies embracing it there may be some hope, what are your thoughts on Python, do you see many job opportunities out there?"}
{"_id": "37013", "title": "Motivating developers in a project perceived as dull?", "text": "As a manager, I can't always end up generating work that'd be cutting edge. Some of the projects do run on maintenance mode, and generate a healthy free cash flow for the company. As a developer what would it take for you to stick around in this project? I have been thinking of re-branding the work, but I could do with a lot of help here. EDIT: Thank you all for the suggestions. So far here's what we've got:   1. Rotation of work as per developer interest   2. Flexible working environment   3. Allot time to work on pet projects   4. Socials and fun    5. Branding of the project    6. Use this as a stepping stone for other projects"}
{"_id": "137078", "title": "Getting involved on Github (how to find projects)", "text": "I want to contribute to open source projects on Github. Mostly, I'd like to just start out fixing small bugs or adding features. I don't have a particular project in mind. I'd like to work on C, C++, Python, .NET, Java, etc projects. However, my problem is I can't figure out how to find anything on Github. I did find a page on Explore Github, that lists C projects. Basically, it lists the top 5 \"watched\" C projects. OK, that's fine, but I want to see more than 5. Sourceforge was/is great because you can browse projects by programming language. Also, SourceForge has or used to have a forum for finding projects that are asking for help. I can't find any of that on Github. There is a \"Search\" feature that, seems fairly useless for finding projects to contribute to. I tried the advanced search, setting it to \"Repositories\" and \"C\" for the programing language. However, you have to put something int he search; although I just want to browse titles and descriptions of projects. So, I tried putting \"network\" just to see what comes up. It gives just a list of everybody's fork of every project there is. Is there any way I can search, say through a third party or something, for projects in a sane way? It seems like Github should have such a thing; I would just choose from Sourceforge since I can search there, but I want to establish a Github profile, since that is the flavor of the month and there are all these fanboys on Hacker News that seem to think a Github profile is better than a Resume/CV. :)"}
{"_id": "157650", "title": "Parsing excel data in java, before saving it to database", "text": "I'm working on some project where I have to make a database for data which is currently kept in excel files, so I have to do some changes before writing the data into the database. I'm going to read those files using Java, and write them from Java into the db. Should I use Hibernate for that job? Or how else can I connect to those Excel sheets, read data in Java, with database? I'm new in this, so I don't have any experience. Also english isn't my native language, so I'm sorry because of grammar errors."}
{"_id": "137072", "title": "How to name event types?", "text": "Clean code recommends to name methods to be a verb, and classes to be a noun. I am developing an c++ application using boost::signal as some kind of event framework, and have defined various events, but naming them to make the code cleaner seems to be problematic. So, how to name event types?"}
{"_id": "223544", "title": "Is it possible to loosely couple an application to its framework?", "text": "Let's say I'm developing a web application. My first choice is to use PHP with Fat-Free Framework (F3) and MVC pattern. Next year, I might decide I want to switch to Zend Framework, or maybe even ASP.NET MVC. Does it make sense to try and design my application in such a way that it is loosely coupled to its framework, or is the framework too integral to make this realistic? The only reason I ask is because it came up in conversation with a peer recently, who criticized my pie in the sky idea of loosely coupling my application to F3."}
{"_id": "223545", "title": "What am I missing in my (mis)understanding of IoC/DI/Castle Windsor?", "text": "Okay, so here's how I understand IoC and DI in Web API to work when using Castle Windsor. Note, though, that my confidence that I understand it as I should, though, falls somewhere between my confidence I could best Dennis Rodman in a one-on- one basketball game and my confidence in his sanity. Another way to put it is to say that I have spent the last several days reading up on IoC/DI/Castle Windsor with Web API and experimenting with it, but I still feel like wearily responding, \"All down but nine, pard; set 'em up on the other alley.\" I have several more specific questions on Stack Overflow about it, such as this one, but am not yet much clearer about it. So I'm going to \"talk out loud\" and hope that somebody responds with something that will refine my understanding, shed some light on this opaque (to me) subject, or help unravel this Gordian knot. Point: The basis of IoC/DI lies in passing interfaces to constructors, so that the class with the constructor does not have to instantiate its own objects; in fact, has no need to know the concrete component/class. Point: To set this up, you need code like so in your Controllers:               private readonly IDepartmentRepository _deptsRepository;          public DepartmentsController(IDepartmentRepository deptsRepository)     {         if (deptsRepository == null)         {             throw new ArgumentNullException(\"deptsRepository is null\");         }         _deptsRepository = deptsRepository;     }      Point: Some class that implements IDepartmentRepository is passed to the DepartmentsController constructor Point: The coder doesn't do that explicitly - the IOC container (Castle Windsor, in this case) does that \"automatically\" by intercepting the Web API routing mechanism with its own, as with code like this, in global.asax.cs:               GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services.Replace(                     typeof(IHttpControllerActivator), new WindsorCompositionRoot(_container));      Point: global.asax.cs' Application_Start() gets the ball rolling and calls the Installer/Registrar with code such as:               protected void Application_Start()     {                     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();              WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);         FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);         RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);         BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);              ConfigureWindsor(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);     }          public static void ConfigureWindsor(HttpConfiguration configuration)     {         _container = new WindsorContainer();         _container.Install(FromAssembly.This());         _container.Kernel.Resolver.AddSubResolver(new CollectionResolver(_container.Kernel, true));         var dependencyResolver = new WindsorDependencyResolver(_container);         configuration.DependencyResolver = dependencyResolver;     }         Point: Lots of other Castle Windsor scaffolding has to be set up for this. Specifically, classes need to be \"installed\" (registered - I think registered would have been a better/more easily grokkable term for it). This is one of my major \"say what?\"/headscratching areas. I don't know if that registration code should look like this:               public object GetService(Type serviceType)     {         return _container.Kernel.HasComponent(serviceType) ? _container.Resolve(serviceType) : null;     }          public IEnumerable<object> GetServices(Type serviceType)     {         if (!_container.Kernel.HasComponent(serviceType))         {             return new object[0];         }              return _container.ResolveAll(serviceType).Cast<object>();     }      ...or like this:               public class ApiControllersInstaller : IWindsorInstaller     {         public void Install(Castle.Windsor.IWindsorContainer container, Castle.MicroKernel.SubSystems.Configuration.IConfigurationStore store)         {             container.Register(Classes.FromThisAssembly() // should it be Types instead of Classes?              .BasedOn<ApiController>()              .LifestylePerWebRequest());         }     }      ...or like this:               public class ServiceInstaller : IWindsorInstaller     {         public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store)         {             container.Register(                 Component.For<IDeliveryItemRepository>().ImplementedBy<DeliveryItemRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest(),                 Component.For<IDeliveryRepository>().ImplementedBy<DeliveryRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest(),                 Component.For<IDepartmentRepository>().ImplementedBy<DepartmentRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest(),                 Component.For<IExpenseRepository>().ImplementedBy<ExpenseRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest(),                 Component.For<IInventoryItemRepository>().ImplementedBy<InventoryItemRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest(),                 Component.For<IInventoryRepository>().ImplementedBy<InventoryRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest(),                 Component.For<IItemGroupRepository>().ImplementedBy<ItemGroupRepository>().LifestylePerWebRequest());         }     }      ...or elsewise... Point: Once all this is set up, and the Controllers (and Repositories? Is there more that do I have to about them, to make them safe for CW?) have been registered by the Castle Windsor routing engine, a call to my Web API app like:               http://platypus:28642/api/Departments      ...will be resolved to a \"component\" (concrete class) that implements IDepartmentRepository. CW will be able to figure that out, as long as I have one class that implements IDepartmentRepository, that that is the one to silently pass to the Controller's constructor which takes an arg for a class that implements IDepartmentRepository. But...what if there are are N classes that implement IDepartmentRepository? How does CW know which one to pass to the Controller's constructor? How can I, the lowly human in this meeting of silicon and pink squishy stuff, designate which of the N I want CW to pass to the constructor?"}
{"_id": "193971", "title": "How do I get my first job at a freelancing website?", "text": "I am new to freelancing websites. The problem is I have zero rating and I can't get any projects even if I bid the lowest amount. I tried bidding aggressively. I even tried bidding the lowest possible amount to get my first project but still people having higher ratings get the project. This in turn prevents me from getting any rating which prevents me from getting any new projects. I am stuck in this cycle."}
{"_id": "203833", "title": "Synchronization in the given Code", "text": "I had an interview few weeks back, and I was asked to write a code with Setters and Getters. I had written the following code;               // Just an example          Class ABC{         private int num;              public void setNum(int givenNum){             this.num = givenNum;         }              public int getNum(){             return num;         }              public ABC(){             num = 0;         }                   public static void main(String [] args){             ABC object1 = new ABC();             ABC object2 = new ABC();                  object1.setNum(5);             System.out.println(object1.getNum());             System.out.println(object2.getNum());         }      } Now I was told, that \"object1\" can change the value for \"object2.Num\". But I was not in agreement with this, I believe another thread which has access to object2 can change the value of object2.Num but not object1. In the above case, I would have synchronized the setter method, or use the synchronized block inside the setter method while setting/changing the value, but I could not understand the concept of object1 changing the value of object2.Num. I was just curious if I was missing on something. If so I would really appreciate any help regarding the same."}
{"_id": "211120", "title": "How does MVC work with the principle \"Tell, Don't ask\"?", "text": "> Procedural code gets information then makes decisions. Object-oriented code > tells objects to do things. \u2014 **Alec Sharp** So, when a view wants to display some information that is suppose to be derived from properties of a model it is displaying, should the calculation be part of the model or the view? Ideally the view should tell the object about the information it needs, and model should do the calculation and return the result. But now, should the model start having new methods every time a new type of view wants to display extra information which is derived out of the model's property? Should such methods be in the view or in the model? Or in such cases should we subclass the model, add the required methods, and then assign it to the view? I am an Objective-C developer, I can also add a category to the model for the view but in languages where we don't have features where we can add methods to objects and classes at runtime, what is the ideal design? Or are models in MVC meant to be just information in key-value pairs instead of real objects to be passed around, where a view reads each value based on a getter?"}
{"_id": "198204", "title": "Issue deploying Asp.Net MVC 4 website to Azure", "text": "How do you deploy your website in Azure so that it looks exactly like when you run it in your localhost? This is a very simple website that I created following the ASP.NET MVC4 tutorials. However, I added a new background image and it doesn't show. Is there anything else I need to do to make sure all of my files are being deployed? Here is the code that \"should\" be on my site. This is the pone in my solution.                <head profile=\"http://gmpg.org/xfn/11\">      <title>LOTUS Marketing Solutions</title>      <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\" />      <meta http-equiv=\"imagetoolbar\" content=\"no\" />      <link href=\"~/favicon.ico\" rel=\"shortcut icon\" type=\"image/x-icon\" />      <meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width\" />      <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"Content/Site.css\" type=\"text/css\" />      <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"Scripts/jquery-1.4.1.min.js\"></script>      <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"Scripts/jquery.jcarousel.pack.js\"></script>      <script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"Scripts/jquery.jcarousel.setup.js\"></script>      @Styles.Render(\"~/Content/css\")      @Scripts.Render(\"~/bundles/modernizr\")      </head>      this is what I \"actually\" showing on the site view source code                 <head>         <meta charset=\"utf-8\" />         <title>Home Page - LOTUS Marketing Solutions</title>         <link href=\"/favicon.ico\" rel=\"shortcut icon\" type=\"image/x-icon\" />         <meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width\" />         <link href=\"/Content/css?v=Zxt_kvPMVcEtaCRbYJCSpGOy25BUARXyn8EetggjSF01\" rel=\"stylesheet\"/>              <script src=\"/bundles/modernizr?v=qVODBytEBVVePTNtSFXgRX0NCEjh9U_Oj8ePaSiRcGg1\"></script>            </head>      clearly, something is wrong. The contents are not remotely alike! I was able to pull this out **CA0058 Error Running Code Analysis CA0058 : The referenced assembly 'DotNetOpenAuth.AspNet, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2780ccd10d57b246' could not be found. This assembly is required for analysis and was referenced by: C:\\Users\\lotusms\\Desktop\\LOTUS MARKETING\\ASP.NET\\WebsiteManager\\WebsiteManager\\bin\\WebsiteManager.dll, C:\\Users\\lotusms\\Desktop\\LOTUS MARKETING\\ASP.NET\\WebsiteManager\\packages\\Microsoft.AspNet.WebPages.OAuth.2.0.20710.0\\lib\\net40\\Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth.dll. [Errors and Warnings] (Global)** **CA0001 Error Running Code Analysis CA0001 : The following error was encountered while reading module 'Microsoft.Web.WebPages.OAuth': Assembly reference cannot be resolved: DotNetOpenAuth.AspNet, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2780ccd10d57b246. [Errors and Warnings] (Global)** Could this have something to do with the problem?"}
{"_id": "198205", "title": "Why isn't there a private deployment option for the .NET framework?", "text": "Here are reasons why one would want this: 1) We often don't use all the dlls but we force customers to install the entire .NET framework. It would be great to just deploy the dlls we need. 2) We often want to update our application and the framework but that sometimes requires a machine reboot because other applications are using it. 3) A full .NET installation usually takes quite a bit of time. An xcopy type private deployment could be much faster. It seems to me that mono allows private deployment which solves all these issues. Thanks"}
{"_id": "198208", "title": "Solution looking for a problem (learning design patterns, school)", "text": "I'm enrolled in grad school and this summer we're tasked with a series of projects that should include implementations of design patterns from a couple of textbooks. Our first project is for one of a handful of system architecture patterns, and I can't seem to come up with a project to work on outside of examples involving object metaphors that do no real work. Which is probably fine, given the time frame (2 projects & a report a week). Still, we have more time in the Fall and Spring, and I'd like to... well, just be more creative in coming up with projects. **The ability to come up with a kind of actual problem to solve that fits a particular solution, without being contrived** , seems like a difficult skill to develop to me. With so many programmers being self-taught, however, I just figured I'd ask: When teaching yourself new skills in a hands-on manner, how does one find inspiration for projects? Edit: This is unconstructive. Above, I bolded what I wanted, but I've been thinking today about how that's really not necessary and I forgot what school was supposed to be. What it really comes down to is doing the best job of meeting a goal within the allotted constraints. Ideally for a goal like gaining experience using a system architecture design pattern you'd want an actual software system to develop and more than a week after-hours to do the actual designing, development, and documentation. None of that is actually necessary in terms of actually meeting that goal. When it comes down to the constraints of a school assignment I'm simply going to be doing the best with what I have, which unfortunately is going to have to be some hokey console app with lots of `<component> <verbed> <component>` lines of output, and a solid report explaining how I met the goal."}
{"_id": "197067", "title": "Does change the license under which Linux is released need the permission of all the copyright holders?", "text": "As far as I know Linus holds the copyright to Linux. While looking around in the kernel sources, I see that almost every file has it's own copyright holders. For example the file `module.c` in the Linux kernel contains:               Copyright (C) 2002 Richard Henderson Copyright (C) 2001 Rusty Russell, 2002, 2010 Rusty      And the COPYING file in the root directory contains:                  NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel      services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use      of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of \"derived work\".      Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software      Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux      kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.           Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel      is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not      v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.                      Linus Torvalds      So if Linus would want to change the license under which Linux is released, wouldn't he need the permission of all the copyright holders, which are probably 1000's of people?"}
{"_id": "199115", "title": "Should I parse an email template before or after placing it in the queue?", "text": "I have a web application that sends out transactional (triggered) emails to users. We've setup a message queue for the web application to write to when it needs to send out an email (best practices reasons etc.). The question I'm struggling with is when to have the email template parsed into text:   1. Parse the template and place the entire email body into the queue     * Pro: can keep the business logic and template close by     * Con: more data over the wire to the queue (email body vs email type/ids etc.)   2. Parse the template as part of the queue processing (before it's sent to the transactional email service)     * Pro: less data over the wire to the queue, less processing on the messaging logic     * Con: queue processor needs to have business logic I like option #1 because I don't see data over wire ever getting too big and keeping the email logic in a central location makes more logical sense from a development standpoint. Is there a best practice in this situation?"}
{"_id": "108035", "title": "Master, Slave: Politically Correct Version", "text": "What other tech synonyms are there for a master-slave relationship? The situation is a knob that controls other knobs, or a button that controls other buttons."}
{"_id": "58338", "title": "When porting code, must I follow the original license?", "text": "I'm an iOS developer and I've found myself porting code from several other languages recently for various projects and it got me thinking about code licensing. When porting code, is that considered to be \"use\" of the existing code, or since I'm not copying and pasting anything, is the code a new entity?"}
{"_id": "58339", "title": "What tips can you offer to someone porting code?", "text": "What advice (tips, techniques, gotchas, et cetera) do you have for someone who is porting a code library from one language to another, or rewriting it to work in a different compiler, environment?"}
{"_id": "157488", "title": "Data architecture for event log metrics?", "text": "My service has a large ongoing number of user events, and we would like to do things like \"count occurrence of event type _T_ since date _D_.\" We are trying to make two basic decisions:   1. What to store? Storing every event vs. only storing aggregates     * (Event log style) log every event and count them later, vs.     * (Time-series style) store a single aggregated \"count of event _E_ for date _D_ \" for every day   2. Where to store the data     * In a relational database (particularly MySQL)     * In a non-relational (NoSQL) database     * In flat log files (collected centrally over the network via `syslog-ng`) What is standard practice / where can I read more about comparing the different types of systems? * * * Additional details:   * The total event stream is large, potentially hundreds of thousands of entries per day   * But our current need is only to count certain types of events within it   * We don't necessarily need real-time access to the raw data or aggregation results * * * IMHO, \"log all events to files, crawl them at a later time to filter and aggregate the stream\" is a pretty standard UNIX Way, but my Rails-y compatriots seem to think that nothing is real unless it's in MySQL."}
{"_id": "157485", "title": "I want a distributed queue. Never used the 3rd-party tools before", "text": "I need to have a queue mirrored in two distributed servers with WAN between them. Does the RabbitMQ suit for my situation? Or should I start with another AMQP solution? Which? Or non-AMQP? What about Redis? **Some more details:** Script at server \"A\" sends the \"x\" command locally. Script at server \"B\" receives the \"x\" command locally too. And vice versa with another queue. If there's a problem with availability of server B, it still receives the \"x\" command, just a bit later, when it becomes available. But my program does not need to watch that. Queue broker must control the cross-machine delivery."}
{"_id": "68587", "title": "What is the proper way to handle this workflow in TFS", "text": "A client of mine is using TFS and asks people to operate in this manner:   * The developer in India writes the first draft of code   * The code is published to a workspace (eg 10.1.1.1\\TFSName Project:FromIndia Folder:\\My.Assembly.Name)   * The code is reviewed by an internal employee   * To help ensure a full comprehension of code, the code is copied to a new workspace (eg 10.1.1.1\\TFSName Project:InternalCode Folder:\\My.Renamed.Assembly Now the client wants to allow India to reference the code located in 10.1.1.1\\TFSName InternalCode for support purposes. They also want them to propose changes to the running {production} code. Is this an effective use of TFS server? What is a better approach?"}
{"_id": "234410", "title": "Application access layer vs data access layer: taking a choice between distinct 'fast' and 'big' stores served by Redis protocol", "text": "_background story:_ So, we want to have a distributed cache available to all applications. (Non- concurrent writes, concurrent reads). In ideal case, the cache must be persistent and kept in RAM _(that's what Redis does..)_ , and the older data must be available at request, and the whole thing must not be implemented as an application-level partitioning/sharding (this is considered bad because such code would be scattered around the whole project). Due to short timeframe for the project and other reasons, a number of strange solutions is getting reviewed/evaluated here; one of them is redis_fdw, a Foreign Data Wrapper or PostgreSQL. (We understand that, while SQL/MED specifications covers a vast number of situations, it doesn't fits our 'fast cache' scenario) * * * There are Redis fork/clones working with persistent storage without loading whole dataset into RAM, and they are protocol compatible. This allows to implement either 'fast' or 'large' store (we have ~20GB workset and a 10x to 100x larger history read-only set).. So, a decision on retrieving historical data should be made; how should it be decided to implement data source selection in such situation: in application layer, or in data layer? (By data layer, here I mean a caching/HA solution simular to twenproxy) Of course, if there are better solutions than Redis/RDMBS or Redis/edis (Erlang fork of Redis with large on-disk dataset support), let me know too."}
{"_id": "220937", "title": "How do I approach a serious F# project without C# knowledge?", "text": "So, essentially the project I wish to undertake is an SVG editor. I would prefer to use WPF because then I can leverage XAML for my application layout (that designer is so nifty). Unfortunately, I have only been using the .NET framework for just a few months, and am still unfamiliar with most of the class names. The goal was to use F# because it is a functional programming language and F#'s recursion and wonderful list operations combined with tuples will work well for what I am trying to achieve. And the goal is to use .NET because of its huge library of available and documented classes with examples. I have already looked at this question. Is there a canonical book on F#? But the answers are just for F# in general and assume you already know C# , which is not particularly useful for me. The top book as an answer for the question referenced above was Real-World Functional Programming: With Examples in F# and C#. However, the 3 star amazon review on this book while quite harsh and perhaps exaggerated correctly illustrates my problem. > If you're interested in functional programming, but you're not a C# looking > to learn F#, you can safely skip this book. I have looked on online for WPF F# examples, there are various code snippets here and there, but nothing substantial or demonstrating it being used outside a single file script .fsx, and nothing really enterprise-level or even at least professional grade. So even Microsoft doesn't really have a lot of examples on how to do .NET stuff in F#. The examples I have found are usually only features unique to F#. Take a look at F# 's basic and advanced sections, and you'll find they are guilty of only teaching syntax. For example, the MSDN on WPF for the Line class does not have any code examples in F#. When you scroll down the the code sample tab for F# it just says               No code example is currently available or this language may not be supported.      With so few available code examples, I am finding it hard to undertake this project. **My question**   I would appreciate help with understanding how I should approach this project using F# when I don't know C# all that well."}
{"_id": "157482", "title": "Is it common to use partial classes to achieve 'modularity'?", "text": "I recently encountered a situation in our codebase where a different team created a 'god class' containing around 800 methods, split across 135 files as a partial class. I asked the other team about this. While my gut reaction was to nuke it from orbit, they insist that it's a good design, a common practice, and that it promotes 'modularity' and 'ease of implementation' because new developers can bolt on functionality with almost no knowledge of the rest of the system. Is this actually a common practice or in any way a good idea? I'm inclined to take immediate steps to bring this beast down (or at least prevent it from growing further) but I'm willing to believe I'm wrong."}
{"_id": "102165", "title": "Am I Over-Engineering If I Consider User's Intentional Wrongdoing?", "text": "Is it over-engineering if I add protection against a user's intentional wrongdoing (to put it mildly), if the harm the user can incur is not related to my code? To clarify, I'm exposing a simple JSON RESTful service like this:               GET /items - to retrieve list of user's items     PUT /items/id - to modify an item     POST /items - to add a new item      The service itself is not meant to be used trough a browser, but only from third party applications, controlled by the user (like phone apps, desktop app, etc.). Also, the service itself should be stateless (i.e. session-less). The authentication is done with Basic Authentication over SSL. I'm talking about one possible \"harmful\" behavior like this: The user enters the GET url in a browser (no reason but...). The browser asks for Basic Auth, process it, and stores the auth for the current browsing session. Without closing the browser, the user visits malicious web site, which has a malicious CSRF/XSRF javascript which makes a POST to our service. The above scenario is highly unlikely, and I know that from a business perspective I should not worry too much. But for the sake of improving the situation, do you think that if the username/password are required in the JSON POST data as well, will help? Or should I drop Basic Auth altogether, get rid of the GET, and use only POST/PUT with authorization information in them? As the information retrieved trough GET can be also sensitive. On the other side, does using custom headers considered pure REST implementation? I can drop the Basic Auth, and use custom headers. That way, at least CSRF attack from a browser can be avoided, and the applications which use the service will set the username/password in custom heather. Bad for this approach is, that now the service can not be consumed from a browser."}
{"_id": "102160", "title": "Ethics behind opening and editing a jar file", "text": "What are the ethics behind unjar-ing a jar file from the industry standpoint when let's just say you weren't given the implicit OK to use and edit? I don't want this to be an open-ended question. Is it unethical and should this be avoided at all costs? Or can this be used as \"inspiration\"? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "115659", "title": "Software testing automation documentation", "text": "What document types could be used when describing software testing automation (on any phase, automation planning, test design, implementation, reporting)? Is there any standard types of documents? If someone could provide any examples and templates for different types of documents? What is the difference between manual testing documentation and automated?"}
{"_id": "115657", "title": "Is Entity Framework the way to go for our situation?", "text": "A little overview about what my group does ... I work in a development team in a fairly large insurance company. My group's responsibility consists mostly of building applications for our employees. Stuff like tracking systems, scheduling applications, contact directories, etc. Of course we have a decent amount of \"shared data\" that all applications usually reference. Stuff like states, employees, and a slew of elements that pertain to our particular business (agents, lines of business, rating companies, etc). Currently, we have a set of common code that all the applications can leverage to retrieve most of that common data. Most requests that we get in require either tweaks to the current database objects or creation of many new database objects. Our group is fairly small, but we still probably have 3-4 sets of database changes going through our Change Management System at any one given time and, depending on priority, some newer changes can leap-frog others on their way to production. I understand all the benefits EFL brings but I also have a few concerns given our setup: Since there is the element of shared data, it seems like it'd make sense to have one Data Model for our entire database (which contains all the objects for all the different applications). Is that a safe assumption? Or is it possible to build separate Data Models and have them interact with each other? In the end, we want one class that is called \"Employee\" and we want that to be able to constant through any application so it seems like we either need to make one mega Data Model so that applications A-Z all have access to the Employee data and all reference the Employee class. Unless the class can sit in a GAC DLL and then each Data Model can reference .... or, like I asked, separate Data Models can interact with each other. Then ... if we do go with one mega data model, how difficult would it be to have different individuals making separate changes to that unified data model and then moving it up through a change management system? I can see the benefits of using such a technology in a silo-ed application ... especially one with minimal maintenance ... but I'm having a hard time envisioning whether the time savings would still be there on a large scale with tons of different data model maintenance happening ... all at the same time. Any advice given would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "115654", "title": "Is there a canonical book on functional design specifications?", "text": "I have seen and read quite a few books about software design (using UML, etc.), and others about user experience, GUIs, etc. but I'm looking for books that describe the process that happens before all of that. I'm looking for the pre-development stuff. How to develop a cohesive and comprehensive plan for what the application is functionally supposed to do, leading to flow-charts and a functional specification, etc. So I guess my question is in two parts: Is there a book out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information about functional requirements analysis? What about that book makes it special?"}
{"_id": "179051", "title": "What are abstract classes and abstract methods?", "text": "I got several explanations but so far I'm not able to understand that what are the abstract classes and methods in Java. Some said it has to do something with the security of the program, other said it isn't anything like that. Even from the Dietel & Dietel's book I don't get it's purpose. When, where and why do we use it?"}
{"_id": "30245", "title": "How are head first books?", "text": "I have never read any of them but I find their style interesting and unique. I am not sure if they are worth giving money/time?"}
{"_id": "78722", "title": "How to avoid micro management from a client? [Design Job]", "text": "Hello fellow designers, I need your help yet again. As you all know from my last question that I am new to the design industry (and a recent graduate). This is turning out to be an obstacle in my profession. The client I am working with now, insists on changing everything I ever present to him. I am working on redesigning his website, making a new brochure designs, visiting cards, new logo and new advertisement that would go on newspapers once the job is complete. I started with the logo, as that was the most basic block of any business. I did a lot of research, put a lot of time on it thinking and rethinking about what the business represents and came up with one that would represent the business in all its entirety. As I am a freelancer, I usually meet up with clients every tuesday morning to show them the progress and changes etc. Thats where the problem comes in. My client feels the need to change everything I have ever done. Color of the logo, size of it, font (he wanted papyrus font and failed to convey him the point of why it should be avoided) and so on. Thats only the beginning of the problem. Once we finish the discussion, he shows it to his wife (a sweet lady in her late 30's) and their 4 kids (17, 13, 10 and 8 year olds) and each of them have their own opinion and he changes his mind and emails me - forcing me to redo a lot of stuff. Now, I have read the queen and the duck problem and such and I even tried adding a \"duck\" once but it back fired when the client went all shaky and blamed me for having no design sense. So, how do I convince him to let me do my job? is there any article on this world wide web that I could make him read that conveys him the point? let me assure you, he thinks that he is a general public and so if he likes the public will like it too, which is why he is holding me as a hostage to his desires. thank you. edit: also, I have read few articles like the ones on smashing magazine but they are all in the point of view of web-designers and not for the clients. I dont want to show my client articles like those. thanks."}
{"_id": "78726", "title": "Crash and error report to developer [from user perspective]: Some questions", "text": "I have some questions regarding whether to crash or report errors to the user. We are developing a web site and mobile clients in which we allow our users to report any bugs and crashes through e-mail. We require the user to send the e-mail from their e-mail account, so they can be identified. Here are some questions regarding it:   1. We used to send the last stacktrace of java when user presses \"send error report\" button. As it has only technical details that user may not understand or care about, is it necessary to show this stacktrace to the user?    2. What if the user is concerned about privacy? Is it good practice to collect stacktraces of crashes and unusual behavior keeping user's privacy in mind? If it's not what are the other alternatives?   3. For mobile devices what if the user wants to send an error report to the server but there is not any network connectivity, is it necessary to have a record of this type of common errors that is not related to application?"}
{"_id": "132240", "title": "Advanced JavaScript design patterns", "text": "I'm looking for books, online resources or suggestions about how to structure big projects or build a framework in JavaScript. I'm not looking for books explaining how inheritance or closures work. I'm more looking for design patterns and techniques to organize (and develop) complex applications. At the moment I found:   * this old topic Advanced javascript guidance   * the pdf Building A JavaScript Framework   * the article Let's Make a Framework: Library Architecture Any other suggestion?"}
{"_id": "168446", "title": "Node.js Or servlets?", "text": "I have heard a lot and read about the Javascript server side language i.e Node.js, and saw many comparisons in favor of Node. I don't understand what makes it better or faster, or how it even relates to something as mature as Java Servlets. But Servlets are built on top of a multithreaded programming language as opposed to Node.js. Then how can node.js be faster? If suppose 1000K users query for a database records, then shouldn't Node.js be slower than Servlets. Also Don't servlets have better security compared to Node.js?"}
{"_id": "225263", "title": "A Server sending data to be processed to clients", "text": "About a year ago I had an idea in mind which was using my friends computers to help me process my data, so I programmed a socket server application with `boost::asio`, and gave the client part of it to my friends. When they connect they send the server (my machine) a message containing their computer specs (available cores, memory), based on that the server application decides how much data they can handle at a time and whenever they finish processing a batch they send a \"ready for more messages\" to my server, and the client applications keep sending data about the state of the process, and there is a lot of handling going in the background, whatever happens on the client machines its up to the server to take the right decision, if the connection with a client machine is lost and it has not been back in 5 minutes, the server keeps track of the data that has been sent to that machine and asks about it whenever that client reconnects. I started this project and I only had some basic knowledge in network programming and I didn't read about any patterns that could be used and I just used my guts but I found it really useful, I would like to expand it but I want to know if there is a known pattern for doing the same thing using TCP sockets, if yes what's the name of that pattern? I think of it as a super computer with its components spread around the world.   So I would appreciate some resources about this kind of thing."}
{"_id": "183524", "title": "Does Web Accessibility have something to do in server side languages?", "text": "I want to understand how web accessibility experts deals with websites if they want to confirm that those sites are compatible with accessibility guidelines. Do they have to understand any server-side language? or just HTML and CSS? For example, if there is a company website which provides services for other sites to ensure the accessibility for them, do they have to have a look at the server side code or only the output HTML and CSS?"}
{"_id": "34095", "title": "Charging by the hour/project", "text": "This is related to a question I asked earlier - How to end a relationship with a client without pissing them off? What are your obligations when charging by the hour vs charging by project? If you agree to take on a project, give a rough estimate that it might take 10 days for you to work on and charge \u00a3X per hour - are you obligated to work for free after those 10 days are up and you have still not managed to complete your project due to unanticipated issues? What if you have delivered the project but bugs are found - should you fix these bugs for free if the 10 days are up or should you charge your client? Also, for the above project, what should be the result when you start on the project, but after the 10 days for whatever reason you have to give up and tell your client that you cannot do it anymore? I realise that this does nothing to build your reputation and relationship with the client but are you obligated to pay back the money paid to you or do you just deliver the half/nearly completed source code and help them find someone else to complete it? The reason I am asking the above questions is because I am very new to freelancing and would like to know how to deal with the above situations if they ever crop up. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "225264", "title": "Too many technologies ... too little time to learn them all", "text": "I like to learn everything about computer technologies, but if you look at the popular list of tags of StackOverflow for example: ![Stack Overflow popular tags](http://i.stack.imgur.com/yfbDk.png) There's no way on earth i'm ever going to understand them all. I more or less know what each is about (except for ruby-on-rails, ajax, javascript, php and jquery), but I don't know the _details_ , although I'd like to, **just to have an idea of how it works and what it is useful for**. So I think, \"let's narrow it down\". I'm interested in web development, but I don't work in this, so I need to learn on my free time. However, if you go this post How to Get Started with Web Development You'll see that people suggest a **huge** number of technologies: PHP, JavaScript, MySWL, DJango, Ruby, HTML, CSS, ASP.NET, jQuery And... well, I don't even know what each technology is about, or even **how they relate to each other**. (Why do people suggest using PHP + MySQL all the time?) So my question is this: given a particular topic (\"web development\" for example), and given a particular problem, or maybe just an _idea_ (\"I want to build a website that asks anonymous users for input and then let other users rate that input\" for example), how do I get started? How do I know what technology is best for my problem? I can't just start with, say, PHP, and then realise midway \"oh wait, this technology is useless for my problem\"."}
{"_id": "103412", "title": "In what category should WPF be placed on a resume?", "text": "I'm updating my CV and I'm wondering what category is the best to place WPF under. Since I wouldn't really recognize it as a programming language like C# or such. The general description is: > The Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF) is a computer-software > graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based > applications. Hopefully this is the right place to ask. Thank you in advance."}
{"_id": "106420", "title": "Should you refactor existing code that is not broken in a project focused on new features?", "text": "Given a small project that aims to add new functionality to application, the changes introduced touch some existing code, involving updating these in certain areas. During implementation, I've found some of these code which were updated have candidates for refactoring. Is this an appropriate time to refactor which in turn would require regression testing for those components affected (thus possibly introducing scope not originally part of the project)? Or should I defer, complete the functionality and perhaps have a separate project for refactoring (although I'm a bit hesitant as business users might not fully sponsor a project that does not add any functionality, unless they value code maintainability...)?"}
{"_id": "143509", "title": "Techniques for getting off the ground in any language", "text": "When I start learning a new language, I have a couple of simple implementations that I like to complete to familiarise myself with the language. Currently, I write:   1. **Fibonacci and/or factorial** to get the hang of writing and calling methods, and basic recursion   2. **Djikstras shortest path** (with a node type) to get to grips with making classes (or whatever the language equivalent is) with methods and properties, and also using them in slightly more complex code. I was wondering: **does anybody else have any techniques or tools they like to use when getting off the ground in a new language?** I'm always looking for new things to add to my \"start-up routine\"."}
{"_id": "156281", "title": "Algorithm to figure out appointment times?", "text": "I have a weird situation where a client would like a script that automatically sets up thousands of appointments over several days. The tricky part is the appointments are for a variety of US time zones, and I need to take the consumer's local time zone into account when generating appointment dates and times for each record. Appointment Rules:   * Appointments should be set from 8AM to 8PM Eastern Standard Time, with breaks from 12P-2P and 4P-6P. This leaves a total of 8 hours per day available for setting appointments.   * Appointments should be scheduled 5 minutes apart. 8 hours of 5-minute intervals means 96 appointments per day.   * There will be 5 users at a time handling appointments. 96 appointments per day multiplied by 5 users equals 480, so the maximum number of appointments that can be set per day is 480.   * Now the tricky requirement: Appointments are restricted to 8am to 8pm in the **consumer's local time zone**. This means that the earliest time allowed for each appointment is different depending on the consumer's time zone:     * Eastern: 8A     * Central: 9A     * Mountain: 10A     * Pacific: 11A     * Alaska: 12P     * Hawaii or Undefined: 2P     * Arizona: 10A or 11A based on current Daylight Savings Time Assuming a data set can be several thousand records, and each record will contain a timezone value, is there an algorithm I could use to determine a Date and Time for every record that matches the rules above?"}
{"_id": "67203", "title": "Best way to deal with a system without a user acceptance / testing phase", "text": "Historically I've been able to get away with making small changes to an in- house helpdesk system riding on a LAMP stack and just making a backup prior to editing. This has no user acceptance / testing phase and I work on the live .php files directly. However now the requirement has arisen that will require a bit more coding done, and I'm obviously not particularly happy about making these changes without a framework to support me. What would the best way forward be? I could just make another backup I suppose."}
{"_id": "67206", "title": "Should I try to do practice problems in assembly?", "text": "I was looking at Project Euler Problem 48: > The series, 11 \\+ 22 \\+ 33 \\+ ... + 1010 = 10405071317. > > Find the last ten digits of the series, 11 \\+ 22 \\+ 33 \\+ ... + 10001000. In Python I can do this with a single line :               sum((x**x for x in xrange(1,1001))      But the assembly equivalent of this would be 100 lines and a real challenge. Should I be doing some of these puzzles in assembly to gain some insight into low-level programming and understand how the computer actually works?"}
{"_id": "216471", "title": "How does copyrights apply to source code header files?", "text": "It seems I heard that header files are not considered copyrightable since they can only be written one way (like a list of ingredients or facts). So a header file for a specific DLL will always look the same when written in a given programming language. Unfortunately I can't find any resources to back this up. So if a vendor provides an SDK with headers in one programming language, and then those headers are translated into another programming language by a third party. Does the 3rd party need permission from the vendor to provide the header translation? Who owns the copyright on the translation? Isn't it a derivative work still owned by the vendor, or is there no copyright, like a list of ingredients? Does this vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction?"}
{"_id": "111821", "title": "Why do we tend to make things too complicated?", "text": "The fact that principles like KISS and YAGNI are so popular, speaks clearly about our inclination to make things too complicated. Is this inclination a part of our nature or is it a part of our culture?"}
{"_id": "131912", "title": "Software licensing for reusable chunks of code", "text": "On a fairly regular basis, I run into problems that have already been solved by open source projects. Let\u2019s say, purely for the sake of example, that I\u2019m adding functionality to a piece of open source software which lets it line wrap some information in your terminal. It needs to know the width of the user\u2019s terminal to do so. libuv (Node.JS\u2019s platform layer) has already solved the problem (under *nix and Windows!) (so have a number of other projects, FWIW). It turns out that libuv is licensed under something which looks suspiciously like the MIT license: > >     Copyright Joyent, Inc. and other Node contributors. All rights >     reserved. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person >     obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files >     (the \"Software\"), to deal in the Software without restriction, >     including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, >     publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, >     and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, >     subject to the following conditions: >   >     The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be >     included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. >   >     THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, >     EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF >     MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. >     IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY >     CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, >     TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE >     SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. Is there a right (legal and respectful) way to use the window-sizing logic from libuv in another project? Here are the options that I can think of:   1. Nothing is required, since this doesn\u2019t constitute a \u201csubstantial portion of the Software\u201d (but including attribution in the source code would be nice).   2. A full copy of the license should be included in the source code.   3. A full copy of the license should be included in the source code and distributed with binaries. ### Bonuses:   1. What if the destination project is closed-source?   2. What if the borrowed code gets modified heavily (now or in the future)?   3. What\u2019s the best way for authors of open source code to encourage reuse of bits of it by other programmers, with reasonable restrictions (e.g. require attribution in the source code, but don\u2019t require the license to be distributed with binaries which include it)?"}
{"_id": "111822", "title": "How could I implement a cross-platform drag and drop?", "text": "I just found a video online that shows files being dragged from a Mac to a PC and vice versa. I'm developing a backup and sync application, and I'd like to see if I could implement this. How is this accomplished? What libraries are available to do this, and what has been your experience with implementing this? Are there any gotchas to incorporating functionality like this?"}
{"_id": "186735", "title": "Good library for combining .net stack traces", "text": "I currently report my production exceptions to a mysql database, where they have been collecting dust for the most part. The problem I faced is grouping the stack traces. I would like to be able to see kind of an aggregate of the stack traces that are the same, so that I can work them into the workflow. I know one issue I have is I get stack traces in different languages, which throws things off, otherwise I'd just do a group by sql command. Does anyone know of any libraries that could assist me with this? As long as I have something where I can put in a collection of stack traces and get out the result, I'm fine. I don't need any direct sql interaction, or reporting or anything like that(but I'll take any suggestions you guys have) Thanks"}
{"_id": "186737", "title": "What approaches should be considered for user experience in asp.net mvc 4?", "text": "I'm a new ASP.NET MVC programmer. I've done asp.net webforms extensively and I used the Ajax Control Toolkit and update panels to provide a smoother user experience. What paradigms should I be considering from a user experience standpoint in asp.net mvc 4? I've noticed a few approaches ranging from simply injecting partial views through jQuery all the way to single page applications. There seems to be some Ajax baked into ASP.NET MVC 4 as well. What are the preferred approaches for line of business applications? Where would you point a new MVC developer to for creating responsive UIs? What are the tradeoffs of the various approaches?"}
{"_id": "216479", "title": "Are post conditions of a routine a subset of precondtions?", "text": "Like the title says. The post conditions of a routine must be a subset of the preconditions for the routine? The way I understand post-conditions is that they are entirely independent of preconditions, so my understanding leads me to think that they are not a subset of preconditions. Any input would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "185273", "title": "dechex(4000) - Why is it not signed?", "text": "Why does PHP's `dechex(4000)` not return a signed hexadecimal value? It returns:               fa0      As opposed to:               0xfa0      And is `signed` the correct term to use in describing this problem? Or is there a better term to describe the `0x` portion? Is that called a prefix?"}
{"_id": "188600", "title": "How should my web application handle common errors such as incorrect password, session timeout, etc.?", "text": "How should my web application handle common errors such as incorrect password, session timeout, etc.? I have a class called Hotmail that contains various method such as login, logout etc. To illustrate the confusion, I have a login method that logs the user into Hotmail via my software. The login method returns a HttpWebResponse object. But, within the login method any number of things could happen such as wrong credentials being entered or a timeout. I'm in some confusion about how, and where to handle such errors. In the case of the wrong credentials being entered, or a timeout, it would be pointless, or sometimes not possible to return a HttpWebResponse object. What would be the best way to handle such errors? Should I create custom Exceptions so the code that's calling the method can check for such errors and handle them? What's the conventional way to handle these sorts of errors as I'm sure this is a common point of confusion?"}
{"_id": "66157", "title": "Helping junior programmers get past their shortcomings?", "text": "What are your common gripes about junior developers that join your team or whom you have to work with? Obviously they are inexperienced so you can't expect them to know everything, but what skills are often inexplicably missing -- and how, specifically, can we help them build up these missing skills? I don't mean inter-personal skills like 'listening to advice,' I mean technical matters like (if applicable):   * 'you've never done SQL?'   * 'you've never written a unit test?'   * 'you don't know how to use a Unix command line?' Things which you _do_ expect - I'd like to hear your observations and techniques for teaching new programmers to get past these specific shortcomings."}
{"_id": "185276", "title": "Why is it so difficult to know where to use interfaces,generics in program design?", "text": "I am attempting to learn c# from the head first series, in addition i also consult other books such as Pro C# by Andrew Tolson. Now the thing is that i perfectly understand the interface,generics syntax and can also use it for the programs given in the exercises. What i find difficult is using these concepts into my own programs. For example the other day i was making a twitter account managing client and despite my best efforts i was unable to use any of the aforementioned concepts in code. I was even having difficulty in making useful classes. What are some guidelines I can use to decide what classes I need to create for my program, assuming I know the syntax of _how_ to create a class, but not the idea of _when_ to do so?"}
{"_id": "132798", "title": "What are the practical uses of Windows Services?", "text": "I am new to working with Windows Services. Although I have learnt to create Windows Services in VS2010  I would like to know some practical ways in which windows services could be used? I tried Googling with the current context in mind only to find more tutorials on how to create Windows Services. **EDIT on Bounty Offer:** All the answers are great but I was looking for more **practical examples** on windows services and their implications? This will help developers know when it is appropriate to use them with the case study."}
{"_id": "201227", "title": "Why use test runners?", "text": "I'm currently designing an automated testing framework for doing embedded systems testing on an embedded Linux system. There exists an old system, but it is particularly hard to use, mainly because it wasn't designed as a framework and was originally designed to test one product only. What this means is that the framework changes with each new product to test, which would take a lot of time spent simply understanding where to modify the system and how. Now, I've been given the opportunity to create a new system from the ground up, with the goals of making it much more easy to use and a lot more intuitive. One of the things that I noticed in both the old system and other test systems I used was the idea of setting up all the tests and verification conditions, and **then** running the test so that the set up and test running were two different paths that occurred sequentially. One of the downsides to this is that any print statements would occur outside the flow path of the actual tester, so printing out failed variables needs to be added into the tester somehow. Now that it falls on me to redesign the system. I'm wondering what added benefits are presented by going with a test-runner style architecture over simply setting things up, with checking variables and reporting back all at the same time."}
{"_id": "181965", "title": "Establishing an API to provide end-user apps/scripts access to multiple types of databases", "text": "# Question and Context I am currently working on a project where the main question is, how do we insert an API between the database and end-users who may develop applications/scripts of their own that will work with or on top of the database? The database type I am working with is Postgresql, and this project is in- house, so the end-users are users in other development groups. # Aims What I am looking to satisfy are the following:   * Avoid a wide-interface.   * Require authentication from the application that is to use the API - provide end-user a single unique token or key to access the application. No user/password management.      * Have the option to make it open - no authentication required.   * Allow users to create and read records.   * Restrict users from deleting and updating existing records.   * (Optional) Track who is using the API - number of requests, records, etc.   * (Optional) Track amount of time spent completing a request. # Some Thoughts My initial thought is to establish a RESTful API by building my own servlet to handle the requests, and of course, customize it to meet my aims. However, I have a feeling there are already many versions of this wheel out there so I would like to avoid reinventing it. An additional question to this would be, what is this kind of API/layer called (aside from DAL)? # Update How would the advantages of putting a common API in place be if there are multiple databases of varying types e.g. postgres, ms sql, oracle, etc.?"}
{"_id": "136037", "title": "How much experience on average should a Sr. developer have to be competent with a framework or library?", "text": "If you are a Senior developer with say 8+ years experience, how much time spent doing programming is reasonable for competency on average? Specifically working with some library or framework associated with the core language they have worked with. For example, 2 years of Spring or Hibernate for a java developer. I understand that this is based on the complexity of the toolkit, framework or library, plus the competence of the individual developer, however, I'm sure there are reasonable ranges based on time with a language (hence the reference to Senior) that a Senior developer should be able to get competency and be productive. The reason I ask the question is IT Managers should know this when writing requirements for a position and as a developer, I would like to have a better idea as to what criteria is involved for this type of experience = competency formula that has to exist. Even if it's a rule of thumb only. What prompted this question is that I've found recruiters, who generally don't have a technical background, are trying to place technical people and they just look at technology buzzwords on a resume and how much experience for each the dev has. The hiring manager oftentimes doesn't have a technical background and does the same thing with the resume and uses his architect or other technical expert to screen the candidate to make sure the resume matches the person in the interview. The problem here is the perception of \"competency\" in the mind of the hiring IT manager, whether or not the dev can really pick things up and run with it. They rely on some formula in their mind as to how much experience the dev has with a technology will work for what they want."}
{"_id": "196331", "title": "Find how the data has been processed", "text": "Well this has been a question I have puzzled about for a long time: Suppose I have a dictionary of `input:output` like:   1. This              {2: 6,      5: 15,      20: 60,      26: 78,      ...      982: 2946,      997: 2991}      where `output = input*3`.   2. or This              {0: 5,      3: 8,      17: 22,      19: 24,      ...      991: 996,      996: 1001}      where `output = input+5` or something else.   In short where there is a **definite relation between input and output**.   How can a program **find the relation between the input and output** , such that, given another input, the output can be calculated?? Is it possible to do the same with more complex calculations like `output = 5*((input*5)+3)`"}
{"_id": "196338", "title": "Can we take ideas from GPL programs in developing any commercial app", "text": "I am developing a commercial application. There are several GPL programs which have some common features with my applications. Can I take an idea from those GPL applications and implement them myself without copying the code. Does this violate GPL."}
{"_id": "196339", "title": "How should subsytem in different locations interact and communicate?", "text": "Apologies for the long post... Where I work we have a system with many subsystems which are located in different locations. All the subsystems process some data and write the result on _A_ database. In case any other subsystem needs the output f other subsystems it gets connected to the database and read from it. And that is how subsystems are communicating together. Also there is GUI which get connected to the DB and shows information to the end user. The interaction between database and subsystems are very high, and although I argued that this is not a very good choice of design, I have been told that due to lots of reasons (mainly \"business-wise\" and short deadlines) we cannot change anything in the system for now. Now we want to add a new feature where user can add notification-alert system where in case something happened in any subsystem, it notifies the user via GUI. And of course depend on different subsystem there would be different items that should be considered. And based on these items user can specify a rule for the alert. For example, On different server we have software which get the server information like CPU and RAM usage and etc. SO these could be _items_ for user to set a rule for a notification alert. Like if memory used space exceed X percent. The only way I can think to solve this is, to create new tables in the database. When user add a new rule for a subsystem, insert the rule into the data base. And every subsystem reads the data base to see if any rule has been specified for it. But this means every subsystem should read from database every minute at the most, and I think this would break our system... And then subsystems write the result on the DB and GUI also reads the DB to see if any notification should be shown to user...... any thought on how to overcome this?"}
{"_id": "194788", "title": "Why doesn't git merge adjacent lines without conflict?", "text": "I recently learned that when merging two branches in git, if there are changes on two _adjacent_ lines git declares this a conflict. For example, if file `test.txt` has this content:               Line 1: A     Line 2: B     Line 3: C     Line 4: D      and in branch `master` we change this to               Line 1: A     Line 2: B1     Line 3: C     Line 4: D      while in branch `testing` we change this to               Line 1: A     Line 2: B     Line 3: C1     Line 4: D      and then attempt to merge `testing` into `master`, git declares a merge conflict. My naive expectation was that the merge would happen without conflict and yield this:               Line 1: A     Line 2: B1     Line 3: C1     Line 4: D      I am sure there is a good reason why git doesn't merge this way. Can someone explain this reason?"}
{"_id": "194783", "title": "Where's the separation between Presentation and Logic in Javascript MVC frameworks?", "text": "I had learned that following piece of code is bad because it is obstrusive javascript and mixes presentation with logic:               <a href=\"\" onclick=\"archive()\">archive</a>      The best practice was to add some sort of identifier to the link element and then bound an event to it on a separate file. Something among those lines               $(\"#archive\").click(function() {         //do stuff     });      See: Why is using onclick() in html a bad practice How come now most Javascripts MVC frameworks like Backbone.js, Angular.js, etc now encourage pieces of code like this:               <a href=\"\" ng-click=\"archive()\">archive</a>       Taken from: http://angularjs.org/#todo-html Why is this now ok?"}
{"_id": "73863", "title": "Complexity point of no return. What do you call that?", "text": "As a software developer, one of my main tasks is to keep complexity under control. However, in some projects, there is a moment when the complexity level grows so high that it reaches some kind of \"no return\" point. Past this moment, you can never return the project to an acceptable level of complexity in less time than you would need to rewrite everything from scratch. Does this particular moment have a name in programmers dialect (something similar than the Godwin's law for trolls)? \\--edit-- Sorry if I'm not clear. I don't think this \"moment\" has an official name, or is a serious metric. I was thinking about something in the spirit of the \"Ballmer peak\" in xkcd."}
{"_id": "28507", "title": "Where to find Developers to work for a Start-Up with the pay being shares", "text": "So I'm literally just starting a start-up in the Education Industry. A very broad summary that leaves out the vast majority of the idea is that it's a true education management system, one that doesn't just act as a fancy (and very expensive) agenda but helps them along the way. And one that works with school, rather than instead of it. **But my question is where could I find developers who will work for shares of the company, regardless of my age (I'm 15)?** I've begun some very minimal work on the idea itself, designed some of the Teacher Client and part of the database I can't do a whole lot very quickly, and this needs to get going fast because I'm sure there's already people out there doing something very similar. I'm aware of current solutions such as Blackboard or WebAssign and it's very different from those, however for reasons I cannot say without the other party signing a NDA edit: Holy shit I was not expecting this many replies, after posting this question and asking around a few more places the general consensus seems to be that I should do it myself, because at this point I'm in the same boat as those business-types who have good ideas but they just need programmers, however I don't think I have the knowledge to go as far as I want with it by myself, especially in the beginning. What I was really hoping for was finding people who have some free time alongside their primary job who would want to work on an idea on the side but those kinds of people seem to be scarce. I can do this by myself but just not really quite as well as I want On a sort-of-unrelated note to this question, could I also get some help finding some decent Software Design guides? I really don't have a structured plan at all and it's sort of been start programming and design as I go"}
{"_id": "3824", "title": "Is software testing actually done on professional projects?", "text": "I've been involved with many projects in several companies because I've been a developer for a long time and I'm a contractor. I estimate that **less than 20%** of projects are methodically tested. With methodically tested I mean any testing beyond ad-hoc no plan testing. I also estimate that **less than 10%** of projects are thoroughly methodically tested where they have dedicated testers as part of the team, test plan document, where developers write automated tests and then they also track test coverage and measure results. ## Two questions   1. What are your percentage estimates about this issue?   2. What's your professional experience regarding software testing? ## Additional note Since methodical testing question may get quite biased answers (people like to brag about being superior to others) I **encourage** other developers (those that're not exposed to methodical testing) to provide their answer as well, because otherwise it will look like testing is being done everywhere... except at your company."}
{"_id": "109073", "title": "Should I start developing code before planning out the interface?", "text": "I'm starting a gaming project on the side of my normal school/work projects and I'm wondering if I should start planning out the user interface before starting an actual project in code. I see some pros/cons to doing both first and was wondering what advice some seasoned developers could suggest."}
{"_id": "109077", "title": "Which technology stack to use for car pooling over web and mobile", "text": "I want to start working on a project where I want to build a intranet website and mobile app for people working in my office for car pooling. The basic idea is that if anyone is interested in looking for someone to carpool with should make a posting of going from A to B at time X.People can then reply to it. I've narrowed down my option to Scala+Lift+MongoDB or Node.JS+Redis/MongoDB+HTML5. I don't know which one is better or worse for the problem I have mentioned. Also looking at developing mobile apps for the same application where people can send carpool request over their phones.Looking for a stack which can complement the mobile development also. I know there are various solutions for this, but I'm looking to learn something new and exciting and have fun while developing it."}
{"_id": "72409", "title": "Learning new topics which rely on previous knowledge - How much is enough?", "text": "I'm a computer programmer by trade for about 6 years now, and most of my jobs haven't really exercised my mathematical abilities much. As a result, they've atrophied quite remarkably. I took the basics in college (calc, discrete, linear algebra, linear programming, probability/stats) and although I remember some of the material, most of it is either known superficially or just plain forgotten. As a result, I'm constantly faced with the question above - I feel that my foundation of knowledge is weak and that I need to \"brush up\" and relearn a bunch of subjects before I can tackle some problem that I'm currently working on. For example, I've never done 3D programming and it's something I've been recently getting more interested in, but when I opened a book on it I immediately became anxious at the amount of formulas and knowledge they assume you have. I cracked open my old linear algebra book, however, and found it to be way too basic (and boring, honestly, maybe bc I still kind of know some of these things). I'm always of two minds about whether to just jump right in and learn things just-in-time, or prepare by going back to more basic topics. Do I need the whole of linear algebra to understand 3D programming? Probably not. The question is, how much do I need? (Same question goes for physics - I assume refreshing mechanics is enough, in the sense of being able to code basic mechanics demos). Another field I got interested in lately is DSP, and I run into the same type of doubts. Do I need to go back and go through my entire calculus and discrete math books? If not, which parts do I pick up? When I do so I usually end up going through the first few chapters and just stopping, because I'm not getting much in the realm of application and honestly I get bored. Then I get frustrated with myself because I'm getting bored. It's become somewhat of a vicious cycle. Am I just making much ado about nothing? What learning styles/methodologies have worked well for you?"}
{"_id": "72407", "title": "Delegate Pattern : Delegate or Delegator?", "text": "I've a simple question about the terminology used in the Delegate pattern; Let's say I create an object that will be responsible to download something from the Net and when it is finished, will call me back with the result. I guess we can call the downloader object the \"delegate\", since he is doing work on the behalf of my main object. If I'm right 'til here, then, I've a problem with the sample codes I read. The property in the Downloader Class is often named \"delegate\", and put to Self by the creator of this downloader. Am I wrong or it should effectively be called \"delegator\" instead ?"}
{"_id": "76982", "title": "Why don't some open source libraries provide binaries?", "text": "Why don't some open source libraries provide binaries? I have noticed that some projects defer to third-parties who maintain current builds of the software, especially for Windows builds. I ask because it seems like a barrier for adoption of a library. It's more work for the developer since he must set up his environment to build it. A developer also has to worry that he introduced bugs by building the library incorrectly. * * * **EDIT** : Some updates to address comments and answers. I've removed the examples since they're not central to the discussion. Also rephrased my question as \"some open source libraries provide\" rather than \"open source libraries tend to provide\"... didn't realize people would take offense to that."}
{"_id": "177245", "title": "What is the best way to compose an object with components across two assemblies?", "text": "In my project, I have a collection of classes. These classes for the most part contain data which is updated infrequently or not at all - that is they don't really _do_ much - their purpose is to be passed around consumer objects that do do things, seperating data from functionality. I would like to continue this model, by allowing the user to treat them as such - i.e. they can be serialised/deserialised with no special code, can easily be used to compose larger classes, subclassed, etc. The catch is, as many control things like the GPU, they aren't _really_ decoupled or stateless at all, because for every one there are a whole load of resources that need to be created and disposed of during the life of the application - but the user doesn't need to worry about that. I would like to know the preferred way to attach all the information to the simple object in a way that is safe, maintains the illusion of statelessness, but is also clear to anyone else looking at the code what is going on (also, the objects are defined in different assemblies). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/5xAzd.png) Q. Why not just put A in B and pass around Object B?   A. Because the user creates Object A, and works with Object A only, and shouldn't need to know Object B exists at all. Q. Why not use factories and create Object C?   A. Because then Assembly A can't contain classes composed of a whole load of Object-A-like-objects (because the factory would be defined in Assembly B so they wouldn't be able to be instantiated). Q. Then how is Object B created?   A. Object B is created and populated on demand, when Object A is passed to a method that needs it. Note - I know this problem isn't 'hard' and there are many ways to do it (at the moment I have an abstract member added to all of them which is casted in the consumer and it works OK), I just want some new ideas/opinions on what is the best way - _what would you like to see if you inherited the code?_"}
{"_id": "194879", "title": "What is the real point of an \u201coracle\u201d in the SW testing?", "text": "I know the definition of an testing oracle but to me, it seems to be overrated. I have a specification, why should I bother with thinking about oracles? I just compare what the spec wants and what the program does. Or I have the use cases, whatever. When I read about oracles in books, it looks as if it a science on its own. Is there anything more behind this concept? Maybe I just did not understand its point. An oracle consists of a generator and a comparator. What is the meaning of the comparator if you just check whether an actual output equals to an expected output? How else could it be checked?"}
{"_id": "35323", "title": "Code snippets in interview", "text": "Recently I went to an interview for a C development position. Instead of asking me questions, they just gave me 20 code snippets to find out two logical errors on each one. I just couldn't complete all of the 20 since it took me time to go through each of these code snippets. My question is: Is this the right way to judge a candidate? If yes, how can I improve over my error detection skills so that I don't need to waste a lot of time in the next interview? If possible, please, suggest me some links where I could find lots of samples of such questions (mainly in C). Thanks and regards, Maddy"}
{"_id": "35325", "title": "I've had some free time at work during maintenance releases, but all I do is surf the Internet", "text": "I'm really having trouble with this, since it is the perfect opportunity to learn something new, begin a personal project... essentially do just about anything, but all I do is surf the Internet. I find that I don't want to look at anything programming related, and I'm seriously wondering if I'm letting boredom get the best of me, I'm depressed, or experiencing burnout? Any suggestions for how to go about taking back this unproductive time would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "187060", "title": "Features that encourage use of project management software", "text": "I'm a student and I work as an undergrad in an IT department. They are very effective programmers, but as far as documenting what they do and tracking what time is spent on specific tasks - not so much. I was put in charge of setting up project management software. So far, I've created a satisfactory solution with Trac. But still, programmers use it because \"the boss says so\" and do so grudgingly. No one likes having to go to a separate webpage, logging what they did, checking boxes, and what not - so my question is this: As a programmer, what incentives or features in project management software would encourage you (or least make it more bearable) to use it?"}
{"_id": "228459", "title": "How do I effectively address code-review feedback about class and method names without a suggestion for a better or alternate name?", "text": "Part of code review feedback is suggesting better names for methods and classes. How can I address feedback about class and method names which does not suggest an alternative? For example, I might create the class > public class FooBar { } My reviewer would then say, \"Try to think of a better name than this.\" or \"This name isn't helpful.\" without suggesting an alternative name. I have already thought through the class name and `FooBar` is really the best I can come up with. How can I actually address the feedback from this review?"}
{"_id": "54353", "title": "How to separate development process and configuration management aspects of SVN?", "text": "I am looking into an alternative for the combined utilities of SVN, as both a development tool and configuration management tool. Instead, I would like to investigate the approach of having a dedicated Configuration Management (CM) tool and a separate development tool. The reason for this is that I work in a company where a lot of non-programmers use the SVN for CM, and I think it becomes confusing to them when the programmers use SVN for development alongside of CM. Additionally they get frustrated with the overlap of capabilities, and don't like the prospect of reverting to non-working versions. Separating these functionalities into two separate tools may provide ease-of-use for the non-programmers, that only use SVN as a CM tool. So what approach would you suggest to achieve this? If you have experience with this what utilities have been useful to you and what were your results regarding clarity of processes and general workflow? Note: IMO using SVN for both is best, but since the programmers only make up 20% of the usage for SVN, producing a more widely accepted process throughout all groups may be worthwhile (or at least worth looking into, hence this post). Thanks **Edit-** The typical non-programmer commits their working loads to the SVN repository. Then, as the customer deems a version to fix/not-fix the issue, the versions are reverted or updated. They don't want files that result in non-working exectuables to ever be in the SVN. Hence, reverts would most likely be done one revision at a time... not from revision 142 to 89, for example. So essentially they want a utility that only has the /tag work."}
{"_id": "224132", "title": "Why do so many languages treat numbers starting with 0 as octal?", "text": "I've read Where are octals useful? and it seems like octals are something that were once upon a time useful. Many languages treat numbers preceding with a 0 as octal, so the literal `010` is actually 8. A few among these is JavaScript, Python (2.7), and Ruby. But I don't really see why these languages need octal, _especially_ when the more likely use of the notation is to denote a decimal number with a superfluous 0. JavaScript is a client-side language, octal seems pretty useless. All three are pretty modern in other sense, and I don't think that there would be much code using octal notation that would be broken by removing this \"feature\". So, my questions are:   * Is there any point of these languages supporting octal literals?   * If octal literals are necessary, why not use something like `0o10`? Why copy an old notation that overrides a more useful use case?"}
{"_id": "181384", "title": "How does Django turn field name strings to field name variables?", "text": "I'm very new to python and (coming from Java) am trying to think in a \"pythonic\" way. I'm having trouble understanding how Django turns a function (or variable) name given in string to the actual function. Example from Django tutorial: If we give:               list_display = ('question', 'pub_date', 'was_published_recently')      Django reads the function and some related properties from the code:               def was_published_recently(self):             return self.pub_date >= timezone.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1)         was_published_recently.admin_order_field = 'pub_date'         was_published_recently.boolean = True         was_published_recently.short_description = 'Published recently?'      **So, my question: How does the string get turned into the actual function name?**"}
{"_id": "32674", "title": "Why do good programmers have ugly websites?", "text": "Is this some kind of Murphy's law? Maybe if I want to hire a very good programming ninja I should check out his website as in \"Show my your website and I will tell how good you are\" EDIT: Go stackoverflow top users tab and you will see"}
{"_id": "74583", "title": "Good questions to ask the CEO and CTO of a start-up during an interview", "text": "There are numerous questions on this site regarding questions to ask a potential employer during an interview. However, I was wondering if there were specific questions that should be asked when having an interview at a small start up? Working at a new start-up is different from any employer I've had to date, and I wanted to know if there was anything that one should consider asking the CEO and CTO of a start-up during an interview. I'll be interviewing for a statistician/analyst position. EDIT: I've had two one hour phone conversations with both the CEO and CTO. These weren't referred to as interviews, but we talked about why I wanted to work there, how my skills could contribute to the company, and so on. We also talked about some things on my resume, including my education, work experience, and programming knowledge. After the second phone talk, they bought me a plane ticket to fly out to their company, which is headquartered in a different state. I assume they wouldn't fly me out to their company in a different state if I wasn't a serious candidate."}
{"_id": "224520", "title": "Looking for a specific Benefits of TDD Diagram", "text": "I'm looking for a specific diagram I saw recently. It was a combination of three diagrams, showing   1. A project with Test First Unit Tests having less bug fix time / system testing   2. A project with Test Last Unit Tests having a reduced amount of bug fix time / system testing.   3. A project with no unit tests having most after care  It looked roughly something like this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/bFVdq.png) I would like to find this again. I know I could tidy up that visio mock up but I would like to be able to present it in context. I think it's from a book I've read recently, but equally could be from an article on the web. Scanning my bookshelf and google images and my history has not been able to pin it down. Books I can recall reading (but I couldn't see it in any just now) in the last couple of months:   * Clean Code / Clean Coder by Bob Martin    * Art of Unit Testing (2nd)   * Dependency Injection in .Net"}
{"_id": "74585", "title": "What is Real time application in c#?", "text": "I am looking for a job and I often come across \"Real time experience needed\", What does a real time application from a c# prospective entail? Arent we just talking about multithreading? if not is there a difference between multithreading and real time? is this stuff hard to master if you have not done multithreading? thanks for your time"}
{"_id": "189554", "title": "How do I prove to management that our programmers could work more productively?", "text": "**Backstory** I graduated less than a year ago with a degree in Computer Science (with extra courses in software engineering), and another degree in Software Engineering. I'd like to think that I'm familiar with modern software development methodologies (CI, Scrum, XP, etc). **The problem** I got my first (and current) job at a medium sized game development company. The company has been around for several years, has multiple successful titles under its belt, and is full of talented and dedicated people. However, software development happens in an entirely ad hoc way. We use SVN and a bugtracker, but beyond that there's very little planning, no automated testing, and you'd be hard pressed to find a UML diagram anywhere in the office. I can think of two possible reasons for this:   1. Programmers are simply not given enough time to do things properly. Sadly, upper management has a tendency to set deadlines without consulting the programmers, which has led to many an all-nighter.   2. The programmers themselves lack the education / motivation to employ proper techniques. **The question** I recently spoke to management about this, and I was encouraged to suggest alternatives. I figure the first thing to do would be to rule out the second possibility listed above: that is, give management some evidence that if the programmers were given more breathing space, they could become much more productive. However, I'm not quite sure how to go about that. My best idea so far is to conduct a survey among programmers about what software development methodologies they know, as well as their attitudes towards code quality and such. **tl;dr** **How can I assess whether our programmers are able/willing to employ modern software development methods, and prove to management that this would lead to increased productivity?** * * * **EDIT** I obviously failed to bring my point across properly, so let me elaborate on the situation a little. **First** , I am fully aware that this looks like a bright-eyed fresh grad trying to save the world with his l33t education and changing the wicked ways of those grumpy old fossils who just don't know any better. I also understand that there is always a difference between theory and practice, and what they teach you in school is never what happens in real life. That is exactly why I'm being incredibly cautious here, trying to get a feel for the current situation instead of charging in going _\"Hai guise, let's all do teh unit tests from now on!\"_ **Second** , @psr raises a very good point. Let me name some of the reasons why I think that there is room for improvement:   * Our senior developer, who's a bit of a maverick but ultimately a skilled and reasonable guy, agrees that at this point in the company's history, we should have more sophisticated and repeatable development processes in place.   * One of the programmers who's much more experienced than me and has used modern methods agrees with me that we could be more productive if we used some of them.   * In some cases, throwing features together during an all-nighter and then hunting down all the bugs takes a ridiculous amount of time; I cannot imagine that doing things any other way could be any worse.   * The lack of planning, design, refactoring and documentation leads to poor code quality. Perhaps more importantly, it leads to programmers forgetting how their own code works in a matter of months (while they're still working on the same project!), and no way to find out apart from trial and error or wading through the spaghetti.   * **Even management suffers** , as the only quantifiable measure of progress in a project is the number of unresolved bugs. But since anything is liable to break at any time (due to the reasons above), this is a very unreliable figure. **Third** , I don't actually believe that my colleagues lack the knowledge of modern methods or the willingness to use them, it's just that at this point, I cannot rule it out as a possibility. Which is kind of the reason why I came here asking what's the best way to find out what they know (besides lengthy personal interviews, obviously). **Fourth** , don't take those comments about UML and automated testing too seriously, they were just examples. The fact is, code is produced on the immediate whims of designers/upper management without any kind of software design, and only ever tested by a couple guys pressing buttons to see if anything breaks. Perhaps I'm still wearing my university-issued rose tinted glasses, but that strikes me as garage-development at its finest. **tl;dr** **I'm trying really hard not to be arrogant about this, but both my fellow programmers and management seem to be expressing a desire for more predictable and productive ways of developing software. How can I find a solution that could make for an easy transition?**"}
{"_id": "189555", "title": "What are the most popular sorting algorithms in practice?", "text": "Although I suspect the answer to this question may be something along the lines of \"popularity is irrelevant; each algorithm has its trade-offs\", I'm interested in a list of popular sorting algorithms used in practice. I was browsing Wikipedia's page on sorting algorithms and while there are not that many algorithms listed there, I still don't see all of them being used. For example, surely selection sort wouldn't be used in practice since it has a `O(n^2)` right? So, which are used in practice a lot?"}
{"_id": "55411", "title": "When designing an application around Model-View-Controller (MVC), what is in your toolbox?", "text": "There are a lot of great explanations for what the Model-View-Controller design pattern is, but I am having trouble finding good resources showing how to use it in practice. So, when you are starting a new application (doesn't matter what it is), what is in your toolbox? For example, it was suggested that using UML collaboration diagrams ( http://www.objectmentor.com/resources/articles/umlCollaborationDiagrams.pdf ) can be useful when designing an application around MVC, although, I am not certain exactly how or why this might be the case...? So, what is in your toolbox for MVC?"}
{"_id": "6177", "title": "How can I expand my web programming knowledge?", "text": "Been out of school for about 3.5 years and in the .NET environment doing C# UI work (WinForms/WPF/Silverlight) as well as some Java work, server side. All in all I have done no real web development. I am wanting to expand my knowledge to include some web knowledge. My company makes use of the Spring stack so I was going down that path so that it had value at my current place of employment. They make absolutely no use of Ruby/Rails however that would allow me to learn a language versus a stack. I have thought of going the ASP route which the company also makes heavy use of, since I am familiar with C# and the .NET environment. I am in favor of what MS has brought to the table so me stepping out of the .NET environment feels both interesting and exciting. I'm not sure if I am avoiding ASP to simply broaden my knowledge bank...so based on the above knowledge what route would you all take? What has the most value long term? ASP? Spring stack? Ruby/Rails? Something else I am ignoring...? All input is greatly appreciated, thanks."}
{"_id": "131265", "title": "GitHub: Are there external tools for managing issues list vs. project backlog", "text": "Recently I posted one of my the projects1 on GitHub and as I was exploring capabilities of the site, I noticed they have a rather decent issue tracking section. I want to use that section as a) other people can report bugs if they'd like and b) other people can see which bugs I'm aware of. However, as others have noted, issues list cannot be prioritized in order to create a project backlog. For now my backlog has been a text file, but I'd like to be able to have it integrated so the same information isn't maintained in different places. Having a fully ordered list, which is something we also practice at work, has been very useful as I can open one file, start with line 1 and fire off 2 or 3 items in one sitting without having to go back to a full issues/stories bucket. GitHub doesn't offer this. What GitHub does offer is a very nice and clean API so issues can easily be exported into anything else. I've searched to see if there are other websites (like Trello) that integrate with GitHub issues, but did not find anything. Does anyone know of such a product, service or offline tool? Those that use GitHub, what is your experience in managing backlog? I kinda hate the idea of manually managing two disconnected lists like some people seem to be doing with Wiki project pages. * * * 1 - are shameless plugs allowed no this site? Searched but didn't find a definite answer. If it's bad practice, STOP and don't read further As a developer I got sick and tired of navigating to same set of folders 30 times a day, so I wrote a little, auto-collapsible utility that gets stuck to the desktop and allows easy access to the folders you constantly use."}
{"_id": "24605", "title": "Third-party repositories in Subversion; local mods?", "text": "I'm building a small app as an interface to support functions, monitoring, web-based running of unit tests, etc. This will be checked into Subversion. I want to include a third-party app which is also available via Subversion. Thus far I prefer to reference the remote repository to ease upgrades, particularly when I have made local modifications. Now, I want the third-party app to be distributed alongside the parent app. Subversion externals are out, since I can't commit my local mods. `git svn` seems like it has potential, but I'm not sure on the details. (Seems dirty to have a .git directory with svn metadata stored in an svn repository.) So how do you handle modifications to Subversion projects you can't commit to? I'm pretty open to any combination of git and svn, preferably allowing the code to live in our existing Subversion repository. **Update:** I'm currently exploring vendor branches, which is more convention than feature. There is a tool called `svn_load_dirs.pl` to assist with the process."}
{"_id": "24606", "title": "Best practice for generating referral codes?", "text": "I'm implementing a referral program on a site and was wondering if there was a best practice in terms of what the referral codes should look like. I assume since we don't want overly long referral codes, we can't just use GUID or anything like that, so I'll have to do checks on the referral codes generated to ensure uniqueness?"}
{"_id": "130797", "title": "How to deal with the trail of bugs?", "text": "Every release, our trail of bugs keeps on increasing. These are valid bugs however, we also have to write new features to stay in the competition. Also, those features will be more used than the bugfixes; and provide better ROI. How are other engineers and product owners handling this situation?"}
{"_id": "130794", "title": "How to use code from abandoned github projects", "text": "I've recently come across github projects that I could really use, but appear to have been abandoned, with lots of issues and important pull requests, perhaps 100+ forks. Often, there isn't an alternative project. Do I use the code as is? Do I pick a fork and ignore the others? Do I manually pull in code from the pull requests? How? Is there any chance I or anyone else could somehow organize and take off where the original coder left off?"}
{"_id": "240633", "title": "Is licensing an issue for Git Submodules?", "text": "For example: an MIT-licensed project wishes to simplify the build process for its users by including part of the GNU toolchain (which is of course GPL) as a Submodule.   * Could that be interpreted as making the MIT project a \"derived work\" of the GNU toolchain?    * Does including a project as a Git Submodule (or some similar mechanism - maybe even just a Bash script that downloads it) count as \"redistributing\" that project?    * What about if the Makefile also built the sub-project? In my opinion (and probably most peoples') the answer to those questions is a clear \"no\". I'm more interested in hearing the precedents and norms surrounding this issue than discussing our own interpretations of copyright law. Do you know of any open-source projects that have Submodules under incompatible licenses? Do you know of anyone who has deliberately avoided them, and why they did that? * * * Just to clarify for non-Git-people: Submodules don't cause the actual content to be included, they're like \"pointers\" to a different repo. In the example I gave, when you cloned the MIT project and ran `git submodule init`, Git would automatically download the GNU code from a GNU repo."}
{"_id": "207455", "title": "How can I replicate the behaviour of IntelliJ + JIRA + SVN using Eclipse?", "text": "IntelliJ's inability to keep up with SVN updates has become a showstopper for me. My main reason for using IntelliJ is its integration with JIRA and SVN changelists. My preferred workflow is like this:   1. Identify a JIRA issue to work on   2. Start Work on the JIRA issue using the Atlassian plugin   3. The IDE/plugin automatically creates an SVN changelist for this task. It uses the issue number and title as the changelist name   4. Do work on the issue   5. Get pulled away to work on another issue.    6. Stop work on the first issue start on the second   7. A new changelist for the second issue is created How can I replicate this workflow in Eclipse?"}
{"_id": "24608", "title": "Best Mechanism for Generating License Keys", "text": "What methods / libraries / tools would people suggest for generating license keys (those lovely AAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA things you put in when you register software)? Any gotchas to look out for when implementing them? (At the moment I'm interested in this as a general thing rather than language specific so just state what language you're using if your solution is language specific)."}
{"_id": "240635", "title": "Designing unit tests for a stateful system", "text": "## Background Test Driven Development was popularized after I already finished school and in the industry. I am trying to learn it, but some major things still escape me. TDD proponents say lots of things like (hereafter referred to as the \"single assertion principle\" or **SAP** ): > For some time I've been thinking about how TDD tests can be as simple, as > expressive, and as elegant as possible. This article explores a bit about > what it's like to make tests as simple and decomposed as possible: aiming > for a single assertion in each test. Source: http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=35578 They also say things like this (hereafter referred to as the \"private method principle\" or **PMP** ): > You generally don't unit test private methods directly. Since they are > private, consider them an implementation detail. Nobody is ever going to > call one of them and expect it to work a particular way. > > You should instead test your public interface. If the methods that call your > private methods are working as you expect, you then assume by extension that > your private methods are working correctly. Source: How do you unit test private methods? ## Situation I am trying to test a stateful data processing system. The system can do different things for the exact same piece of data given what it's state was prior to receiving that data. Consider a straightforward test that builds up state in the system, then tests the behavior that the given method is intended to test.   * SAP suggests that I should not be testing the \"state build up procedure\", I should assume that the state is what I expect from the build up code and then test the one state change I'm trying to test   * PMP suggests that I can't skip this \"state build up\" step and just test the methods that govern that functionality independently. The result in my actual code has been tests that are bloated, complicated, long, and difficult to write. And if the state transitions change, the tests have to be changed... which would be fine with small, efficient tests but extremely time consuming and confusing with these long bloated tests. How is this normally done?"}
{"_id": "180381", "title": "Network computation", "text": "I'm pretty sure that someone has already thought about it and researched it extensively, but I'm having trouble finding any materials or even keywords to look for, for the idea that I was thinking about recently. I thought about this concept, where in distributed systems, actual computation and processing would happen on the network, rather than on nodes (server or client) on their way from the source to the destination. Where network routers in addition to routing network packets to the next node until delivered to the destination, they would also execute some embedded instructions in those packets. So for example a network packet would be split into two areas: data and instructions (+ some headers) And when a router routes a packet to the next router, it would send a transformed packet according to the embedded instructions:               +----------------------+     |Network Packet Headers|     +----------------------+     | DATA SLOT 1          |     | DATA SLOT 2          |     | ..........           |     | DATA SLOT N          |     +----------------------+     | Increment slot1      |     | SLOT3 = SLOT1 + SLOT2|     +----------------------+     | instruction ptr      |     +----------------------+      So that by the time those network packets would get to their destination, a portion of it (depending on how many hoops it had to go through) would already be computed (say audio decoded, etc..) offloading both endpoints. Routers are technically capable of doing this. They do process data based on network packet's values - like choosing where to send the packet next basing on the IP header. There is nothing stopping them from being utilized as \"the real cloud\", right? Each router would execute one packet or a couple of instructions from that packet (and update the instruction pointer) depending on it's HW resources and capabilities. So a network packet would be a stack frame rather than just a network packet. Of course, there is a whole class of problems associated with this model, like properly partitioning data (or even the ability to do so.), but it's all based on old concepts from heterogeneous computing and functional programming. Could someone please point me to any research, materials or projects that deal with similar concepts? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "200382", "title": "Experimenting with \"big data\" and map reduce", "text": "I was thinking about experimenting a bit with using mapreduce and such on a dataset we have to see if we can benefit from it in any way. What route should I go if I want to be able to instantly, without any major modification, deploy my findings to some kind of grid/cloud-system to see if there is any extra benefit to have it scaled in the cloud."}
{"_id": "247068", "title": "Persistent storage for Apache Mesos", "text": "Recently I've discovered such a thing as a Apache Mesos. It all looks amazingly in all that demos and examples. I could easily imagine how one would run for stateless jobs - that fits to the whole idea naturally. Bot how to deal with long running jobs that are stateful? Say, I have a cluster that consists of N machines (and that is scheduled via Marathon). And I want to run a postgresql server there. That's it - at first I don't even want it to be highly available, but just simply a single job (actually Dockerized) that hosts a postgresql server. How would one organize it? Constraint a server to a particular cluster node? Use some distributed FS?"}
{"_id": "135566", "title": "How to write Requirements for a specific module", "text": "I am familiar with writing Software Requirements Specification, but not quite sure how to write the requirements for a specific module. Let's say I need to develop a Reservation System and there will be a module to perform validation. Now, an SRS is already available for the entire system, but prior to designing(API Specification and Class Diagrams) the Validation module, what would be the format of writing Requirements for this module."}
{"_id": "247062", "title": "AJAX or web sockets for client-server communication?", "text": "I recently took a course on AngularJS, and quite frankly I loved the concepts of a website that fetches json to handle subsequent requests, however I still feel like Javascript is far too slow for what I want to do on a server. I have recently been hired to build an online auction website. I built two mockups, one with AngularJS and one in PHP. The PHP website is much faster on initial load and handling large requests, but the AngularJS-powered site is much more responsive on simultaneous requests, and writing JavaScript and HTML frontend is much easier, so I got to thinking that I might just make a counterpart to AngularJS using PHP, JS, and HTML, giving me the best of both worlds. As I go forward in implementing the design, I started to question if AJAX was the right tool for the job. It seems like I could use a simple node.js websocket server as an intermediary to between the client-side JS and PHP, passing commands from the client over websockets to the server, then passing the data back. Would you consider this premature optimization, and if not, would removing the HTTP overhead really make much difference at all in terms of bandwidth and request size?"}
{"_id": "181035", "title": "Would it be better to have extra checks, or would it be a waste of time?", "text": "In your opinion, do you think it is a waste of time to make checks that you know there is no possible way of it being there/not being there, or would you just put it there just in case there is a bug or something? For example, below checks to see if a button is visible, then music is playing, but there is no way for that button to be shown without the music playing:               if (buttonVisible)         if ([music playing] == true) //is always true if the button is visible             [music stopPlaying];"}
{"_id": "135565", "title": "Need help with clarifying the design of an Android game", "text": "I'm going to develop a Kakuro (Cross-Sums) game for Android, and have got the algorithm right. But I can't seem to get the user-interaction part right- i.e. The puzzle is very large. So only a portion is shown at a time to a user _depending_ on their device (eg: HVGA smartphone vs XGA tablet). It should be scrollable. To make it more clear, see the images below: ![Grid as rendered on a smartphone](http://i.stack.imgur.com/4FuiJ.png) ![Grid as rendered on a tablet](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rZPWy.png) So what I'm asking for: Do you know a suitable method to approach this? I mean, like a design or a structure that will achieve this kind of behavior? Please note that I'm completely new to game programming and do not know anything about canvases, etc (but have got experience in application development). So any help really appreciated."}
{"_id": "135560", "title": "How do I maintain states", "text": "I have a winforms application with a display window that can show 3d geometry. I have another control on which I have a series of options to turn on/off different items in my display window. However the display state of these items is changed a lot of places in my code. Does a design pattern or some other example of how to structure code to maintain states exist?"}
{"_id": "247064", "title": "Storing archived index data", "text": "We use RavenDB as our data store for transactional information, and it works well for data that is currently \"in use\". We also collect audit events as people use our application, where each event looks something like:   * Type, date, summary, etc. - pretty standard   * Related document IDs (could be one, could be 5) As a document store, Raven does a great job of indexing these so that we can ask questions like \"find all events related to document XYZ\". Unfortunately as the data builds up over time, these audit events can account for 90% of the data stored in our database - and it's rarely used. We'd like to get this data out of Raven, and into some kind of storage that might be better suited. What other storage solutions exist for storing hundreds of thousands of audit- type events? We're happy to sacrifice speed to save storage and indexing costs."}
{"_id": "141215", "title": "Should Business Interfaces be part of the Model layer?", "text": "In an oriented-services enterprise application, isn't it an antipattern to mix Service APIs (containing interface that external users depends on) with Model objects (entities, custom exceptions objects etc...) ? According to me, Services should only depends on Model layer but never mixed with it. In fact, my colleague told me that it doesn't make sense to separate it since client need both. (model and service interfaces) But I notice that everytime a client asks for some changes, like adding a new method in some interface (means a new service), Model layer has to be also delivered... Thus, client who has not interested by this \"addition\" is constrained to be concerned by this update of Model... and in a large enterprise application, this kind of delivery is known to be very risked... What is the best practice ? Separate services(only interfaces so) and model objects or mix it ?"}
{"_id": "208154", "title": "\"Everything is a Map\", am I doing this right?", "text": "I watched Stuart Sierra's talk \"Thinking In Data\" and took one of the ideas from it as a design principle in this game I'm making. The difference is he's working in Clojure and I'm working in JavaScript. I see some major differences between our languages in that:   * Clojure is idiomatically functional programming    * Most state is immutable  I took the idea from the slide \"Everything is a Map\" (From 11 minutes, 6 seconds to > 29 minutes in). Some things he says are:   1. Whenever you see a function that takes 2-3 arguments, you can make a case for turning it into a map and just passing a map in. There are a lot of advantages to that:      1. You don't have to worry about argument order     2. You don't have to worry about any additional information. If there are extra keys, that's not really our concern. They just flow through, they don't interfere.      3. You don't have to define a schema   2. As opposed to passing in an Object there's no data hiding. But, he makes the case that data hiding can cause problems and is overrated:      1. Performance     2. Ease of implementation     3. As soon as you communicate over the network or across processes, you have to have both sides agree on the data representation anyway. That's extra work you can skip if you just work on data.   3. **Most relevant to my question. This is 29 minutes in:** \"Make your functions composable\". Here's the code sample he uses to explain the concept:              ;; Bad     (defn complex-process []       (let [a (get-component @global-state)             b (subprocess-one a)              c (subprocess-two a b)             d (subprocess-three a b c)]         (reset! global-state d)))          ;; Good     (defn complex-process [state]       (-> state         subprocess-one         subprocess-two         subprocess-three))      I understand the majority of programmers aren't familiar with Clojure, so I'll rewrite this in imperative style:              ;; Good     def complex-process(State state)       state = subprocess-one(state)       state = subprocess-two(state)       state = subprocess-three(state)       return state      Here are the advantages:     1. Easy to test     2. Easy to look at those functions in isolation     3. Easy to comment out one line of this and see what the outcome is by removing a single step     4. Each subprocess could add more information on to the state. If subprocess one needs to communicate something to subprocess three, it's as simple as adding a key/value.      5. No boilerplate to extract the data you need out of the state just so that you can save it back in. Just pass in the whole state and let the subprocess assign what it needs.  Now, back to my situation: I took this lesson and applied it to my game. That is, almost all of my high level functions take and return a `gameState` object. This object contains all the data of the game. EG: A list of badGuys, a list of menus, the loot on the ground, etc. Here's an example of my update function:               update(gameState)       ...       gameState = handleUnitCollision(gameState)       ...       gameState = handleLoot(gameState)       ...      What I'm here to ask about is, **have I created some abomination that perverted an idea that is only practical in a functional programming language?** JavaScript isn't _idiomatically_ functional (though it can be written that way) and it's really challenging to write immutable data structures. One thing that concerns me is he _assumes_ that each of those subprocesses are pure. Why does that assumption need to be made? It's rare that any of my functions are pure. Do these ideas fall apart if you don't have immutable data? I'm worried that one day I'll wake up and realize this whole design is a sham and I've really just been implementing the Big Ball Of Mud anti-pattern. * * * Honestly, I've been working on this code for months and it's been great. I feel like I'm getting all the advantages he's claimed. My code is super easy _for me_ to reason about. But I'm a one man team so I have the curse of knowledge. # Update I've been coding 6+ months with this pattern. Usually by this time I forget what I've done and that's where \"did I write this in a clean way?\" comes into play. If I haven't, I'd really struggle. So far, I'm not struggling at all. I understand how another set of eyes would be necessary to validate its maintainability. All I can say is I care about maintainability first and foremost. I'm always the loudest evangelist for clean code no matter where I work. I want to reply directly to those that already have a bad personal experience with this way of coding. I didn't know it then, but I think we're really talking about two different ways of writing code. The way I've done it appears to be more structured than what others have experienced. When someone has a bad personal experience with \"Everything is a map\" they talk about how hard it is to maintain because:   1. You never know the structure of the map that the function requires   2. Any function can mutate the input in ways you'd never expect. You have to look all over the code base to find out how a particular key got into the map or why it disappeared.  For those with such an experience, perhaps the code base was, \"Everything takes 1 of N types of maps.\" Mine is, \"Everything takes 1 of 1 type of map\". If you know the structure of that 1 type, you know the structure of everything. Of course, that structure usually grows over time. That's why... There's one place to look for the reference implementation (ie: the schema). This reference implementation is code the game uses so it can't get out of date. As for the second point, I don't add/remove keys to the map outside of the reference implementation, I just mutate what's already there. I also have a large suite of automated tests. If this architecture eventually collapses under its own weight, I'll add a second update. Otherwise, assume everything is going well :)"}
{"_id": "155879", "title": "Developing an Interface to a Dynamic System", "text": "I work for a small company and have been designing a GUI to interface our embedded system. The problem with this embedded system is that it is not a finished product (may never be) and is constantly under development and being tweaked and updated for different customers and applications in small volumes. So to deal with this I made a program that can export all the data from a spreadsheet where most of the embedded system variables are sourced from and throw them into a small database for the GUI application to use. This database program I made also spits out a cross reference file for the embedded system which allows the GUI to look up all the variables. This system works pretty well so far, and is even integrated with version control among the GUI, database, and embedded system. The big problem is that there is constant development on several projects that use this system and it gets terribly tedious to keep the system up to date and bring in new changes. This has gotten to the point to where I have had to code the GUI to dynamically (generically) generate all interfaces since I am never guaranteed to find the same data the same way. I have not been able to come up with a good way to uniquely identify the data I import from excel since all fields are able to be changed (due to engineering stubbornness, code re-factoring and/or excel issues) and I cannot assign a fixed reference within the sheet itself. So, are there any good methods or ideas on how to handle the chaos?"}
{"_id": "75981", "title": "What is a good tag management system?", "text": "I work for a publishing company where we have to track converts, etc. Suffice to say we have tags for different areas of the world, and the list can get very large. We need to find a systemt that can give tag `A` to country `B` and so on, and I need to make it so my less technical gifted can manage it. Does anyone know of a good solution?"}
{"_id": "184608", "title": "Implementing a sort of navigation system", "text": "So I am undertaking a project which does navigation sort of thing. So here is how the problem statement looks like. Say, given a map of a floor, with different rooms, now somehow, this information is provided to the program and what the program does is, it takes two more inputs, The starting location. The final location. Now having had these two locations, the program draws out the best possible route from starting to ending location. I will be using C language for the implementation of code. Now, the problems:   1. How do I provide the information about the floor, i.e. whether there's a wall or a door or just empty space, to my program. Here's my take on it. I will have a 2-D matrix, where in the 1 in the matrix shows an empty space, and a 0 signifies a wall. But now I am not sure, how to mark a cell as 0. i.e how the dimensions of the matrix shall be chosen? For example, say my floor is 8 by 8 (length units). Now shall my matrix be 8 by 8 or 16 by 16 or what? And what if, having chosen the dimension of a single cell, if some part of the cell is wall and the other is empty space, shall it be a 0 or a 1? But I guess, it would be a manual input after all? But I dont expect someone to create this kind of matrix for me manually? So, some help in this direction will be appreciated? Is this way of representing the data allright, or shall I go about in a different direction?   2. Say, If I go by the above way of data representation, what do I do next? I was thinking, somehow, I will have to convert that matrix of data into a graph and after that it will be an easy problem to deal with. I am not quite sure, how I will do it but I will appreciate some sources, wherein I can read about something similar.   3. Are there any other tips, that I shall go by, for this project? PS : By Navigation I mean, given the starting and end point, and considering the starting point to be the same as the current location of the device, it shall move to the final location on its own. Thanks."}
{"_id": "195666", "title": "How to authenticate an archive", "text": "Background: I have a updator feature in my program which will downloads updates to a directory specified be the user. Then user can install these updates whenever he/she wants by just opening them. These updates are nothing but a compressed archive file which is associated to be opened by my app. Problem: Now, I want when the user install the updates, my program should ensure that they are original updates created by me and are not modified by someone else. How can I ensure that? I have heard about Winrar authenticity verification. but I'm unsure whether it is good or not? Edit: User have two ways to install the updates. A) User download the updates from the server. An update file will get saved on user PC. User will open the update file to install it. B) This is for user who don't have internet connectivity on his PC User download the update on a cyber cafe, copy it to his own PC and then install them. Since in option B, user don't have internet connectivity in his PC, so my program can not check the base value on update server."}
{"_id": "165245", "title": "Is there any professional way to illustrate difference between 2 diagrams?", "text": "I made a documented which is to describe the difference between the same logical structure from different version ( e.g Structure A from version 8 and Structure A from version 9 ). Luckily I've got the logical structure diagram from the 2 functional specification. I've managed to copy the image of each logical structure and paste them in MS Word and compare the 2 version side by side. I don't know if there is a standard way to illustrate the difference. I simply draw a cross over the removed logical member from the previous version and draw a rectangle around the new logical member of the next version. I know my way is kinda childish. I am wondering how to present them professionally. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/UpGFG.png) In addition, You won't believe this, but MS Word doesn't have a shape of CROSS, so I am actually using a multiplication sign that look like a giant monster: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/h5Lim.png) This is why I hate myself. Unlike 2 separated lines, this shape is easy to use, draw and resize. I am wondering if MS Word would care about a normal cross."}
{"_id": "230886", "title": "DSL enabling users to reference forms and records to display?", "text": "There are three main \"unique\" components to my system:   1. Visual form builder (AngularJS backed);      * generates an `id`     * CRUD automatically available for it at `/form_type/id`   2. \"Aggregate page\"; with a form contain a title and **DSL input area**     * specify an `id`; which will present CRUD for forms created in `1.`     * can specify read-only     * CRUD \"Aggregate page\"   3. Search * * * With the DSL; I was thinking to use Markdown with an additional braces syntax, for example:               Heading      =======          Lorem ipsum          {2_columns: [{form_type:id}, {form_type:id read-only}]}      Alternatively I could provide a simple drag-drop interface; so you drag text boxes and widgets around a predefined template (e.g.: two columns). * * * Suggestions on this approach and/or my DSL syntax would be greatly appreciated. Note that I will likely FOSS this once it's ready."}
{"_id": "138661", "title": "How can I find trends relating to the adoption of different programming technologies?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Statistics of language use per industry I'm looking for data on programming technology adoptions rates. I'm curious to find data of job demand and programmer supply across a number of different technologies. So far, I've been looking at LinkedIn's Skills and Google Trends, but these only track programmer interest. Any suggestions on finding the data that I'm looking for?"}
{"_id": "249458", "title": "Given known inputs and outputs, can we generate candidate functions that will map the inputs to outputs?", "text": "I've run into a problem where I have a set of inputs, as well as a couple known input-output pairs. I am interested in the output, but in order to get that, I need to figure out how the input is used to generate the output. So for example, I might have the following input strings along with a few known output strings               char001 --> dasjudash2 // known input/output     char002 --> ef2y789e2y // known     char003 --> jnjxf9823d // known     char004 --> ?          // unknown output     char005 --> ?          // unknown output      I believe that there may exist some algorithm that takes an input and produces the given output, but this algorithm is unknown. It is very possible that the pairs are randomly generated as well (eg: look at the sky, randomly pick a string of characters). I could stare at it long and hard and try to think of how they are related, but computers can probably help me out. Basically, given known inputs and outputs, is it possible to come up with potential functions that will take known inputs and generate known outputs, and then use that to take the rest of the inputs and generate the corresponding outputs? Given that the solution may be one of an infinite possibilities (including the possibility that no solution exists, in the case that someone did just look at the sky and pick random characters out of a hat), I would quickly dismiss it as a computationally infeasible task, but perhaps my intuition is wrong and there is research evidence to show that this problem is solvable?"}
{"_id": "246099", "title": "Is Microsoft Solver capable of solving such complex scheduling problems", "text": "I'm writing a application that will decide the scheduling plan for a few dozen people according to their occupation (role) and availability (week day and hours). I've used a excel spreadsheet to help solve this problem, I was then able to devise a logical and decision based approach to assign these people to shifts and roles, following a few set of constraints. When I was about to write this into code, I was suggested to try Microsoft Solver. I've read a while about it's capabilities but I'm unfamiliar with some terminology encountered. Well, suffice it to say that I never used Microsoft Solver and I do not even know if the following scheduling problem can be solved with it or not. So far I've found very few examples about scheduling problems and even those are simple by comparison. So my question is, can Microsoft Solver solve the following scheduling problem? * * * **Scheduling problem** Assign people to shifts for an entire week based on their availability and what role they are qualified to fill following a few set of constraints and goals. **Structure**   * Weeks are composed of seven days.   * Days are composed of shifts (dawn, morning, afternoon and night sifts are the most common). Shifts are specified in this way:      * Dawn: 00:00 AM -> 08:00 AM     * Morning: 08:00 AM -> 12:00 AM     * Afternoon: 01:00 PM -> 07:00 PM     * Night: 07:00 PM -> 00:00 AM   * There are some weekdays which might not have any shifts while others can have one, two or more.   * Each person has a weekly availability following the same week day / shift structure.      * Example: Peter is only available on Monday night's (Monday 07:00 PM -> 00:00 AM).   * Sometimes people have two or more days on which they are available and would like their schedule to rotate through these.      * Example: Kyle is only available on Wednesday night's and Thursday morning's, also he would like to rotate them. One week Wednesday another week Thursday.   * Each person has a set of roles he or she can fill (one or more).      * Driver     * Medic     * Doctor **Goals**   1. Each shift must have at least: two drivers, one doctor and three medics.   2. Every person with availability must be assigned to a shift, it does not matter if one shift has three drivers while another only has two. **Constraints**   * A person can only fill one role per shift.   * A person can only be assigned to a shift if he or she has availability to perform it.   * A person can only be assigned to a role if he or she is qualified to perform it.   * A person can only be assigned to one shift per week, unless when the organization is understaffed _(by understaffed means we need more people to fill shifts to meet goal #1)_. If thats the case one additional condition applies when assigning people to shifts after the first one.      * A person assigned to a second shift in the same week must be the person that hasn't performed a second shift for the longest time, while still meeting the person's availability and role capability. _Moderator note: Could not find the appropriate tags._"}
{"_id": "183899", "title": "How do I evaluate an IDE?", "text": "I don't want to know which IDE is best, because that's subjective. I'd like to know how to evaluate an IDE. I'm primarily a `vim` user, and realistically happy there, but occasionally look at languages that have powerful IDE's and I consider using them. The problem I run into is that they mostly seem the same to me. Certainly any of them will work, but when trying to decide which IDE to invest time in how do I decide? What features should I be testing to see if I like the way A or B works better? Obviously some IDE's are specifically tailored to a language, but given a choice between say Netbeans, Eclipse, and Intellij IDEA, how would I decide? as a novice they seem the same. When evaluating I generally try the editor, a few configuration options, file browser. I think my colleagues all basically the same as me and don't use IDE. I also doubt I'd end up using the IDE for work, because Perl shop, and I'm happy with vim for that, I'm simply trying to figure out how to use them in the context of languages that aren't day job and have solid IDE support."}
{"_id": "183896", "title": "How to manage releases with multiple features at different states?", "text": "We have a branching structure of:   * multiple dev branches for each major new feature   * Main branch, merged into from a dev branch once a feature is ready for testing   * Release branch, merged into from Main once a feature is ready for production We often have new features completed at around the same time that end up in Main, with some of the same source code changed. Then Feature A may be declared ready for production and need to be deployed, while Feature B requires more work. Once changes are incorporated in Main, particularly with multiple revisions to Feature A and B, **their identity as separate features is lost**. It then becomes risky and difficult to promote just one of them to production. We use TFS and I don't know if this is one of its limitations. What is the best way to resolve this? Should we be using a different branching strategy, or would a DVCS fix it?"}
{"_id": "183893", "title": "Refactoring: Two big chunks within a function", "text": "I am designing an API which mostly involves refactoring the original code. So Right now I have a method which has two big chunks which are seperated by an If-else condition, which in my opinion is not exactly the best idea. The code looks like               do_something():          if (isTrue):              #Large block of statements.          else:              #another large block of statements.      The reason I have them both under a single function is because both the chunks do the same thing but with some slight variations, which introduces the ugly if-else block. I wanted to know what would be the best idea to refactor this code in a better way, if it is possible to do that using OOP, that would be even better. I am not going with the obvious defining two methods way because at the moment both the chunks are doing the same thing."}
{"_id": "4522", "title": "Does anyone use virtual machines for web development, and why?", "text": "I see a few developers that like to use virtual machines for web development. Are there others that do this? If there are, why do you do it? Are there any pros / cons to developing on a VM rather than in a non virtualised environment? I would think things are slower in a VM."}
{"_id": "125736", "title": "Project managers: Do you encourage any sort of task division between morning and afternoon?", "text": "I haven't read about this anywhere, but here are my thoughts: programming is inherently intellectually hard. I remember reading in Code Complete something that stuck with me: the author pushing and working on something long hours only to spend the rest of the week fixing it. This is something managers don't understand. For example, in the last company I worked in, we were expected to switch between tasks and projects as if we were switching from tightening bolts to painting in an assembly line. Getting into a project or fixing a bug, especially with the terrible code we had to maintain, has a lot of momentum and takes a while to get all the needed information in your head and start getting things done. I was thinking it would be good to concentrate design and coding in the early hours when we tend to stay more alert and do training, administration or meetings in the afternoon. Has anyone thought about this before? any studies?"}
{"_id": "85290", "title": "Meta-programming", "text": "I have just started my journey as a C++ developer, and I have recently been researching a topic called meta-programming. So far, I have gone through a lot of information on the topic, and have few questions.   1. Usage of Reflection in c++: Is it possible? As per my understanding reflection is a meta-programming technique which has the ability to manipulate a state of a program, and its manipulation can be introspection or introcession.   2. What is the difference between reflective architecture and meta-level architecture? In which category does meta-programming architecture fall in?   3. Meta-programming comes in two levels: meta level and base level. In my understanding, the object program or the system under investigation is the base level, and the meta program that is going to operate over the system under investigation is the meta level. Am I correct? Also help me by providing some guidelines about working on template metaprogramming in C++.   May you suggest me some workable examples I can look for to get hands-on in this programming technique?"}
{"_id": "236839", "title": "'Save' button in our web app ( 20-30 textboxes), client is worried that users will forget to click it and lose their data", "text": "I am in a meeting with a client later on, regarding an ASP.NET web app we are creating for him. The app includes a lot of 'form' style screens with 20-30 textboxes, and of course a 'Save' button that posts back to the server and saves the data. The client really does not like this as he is worried users will forget to click 'Save' and lose their data. While I obviously understand that we can use AJAX to save as the user goes along, I believe this is beyond the scope of the project and is prone to error. Has anyone dealt with clients like this?"}
{"_id": "122707", "title": "I want to write a 2-player web-based board game. Which framework should I use?", "text": "I am a C# software developer. I was recently approached by a client to develop a multiplayer board game (max 4 players). I fiddled around with WCF, WPF and EF 4.1 to get something going but I keep running into small stumbling blocks. It certainly does appear that integrating all these technologies into one solution is problematic. I do not have extensive experience in WPF/WCF but I find the concepts easy to grasp. It's just that I keep running into little problems which are huge stumbling blocks. My thoughts were to first create a WCF service to manage the boards and rules. I would then turn to the UI (possibly Silverlight/WPF). I am actually at the point where I think I should try a framework or even venture to PHP/Ruby/Python. The requirements are simple:   * Web based   * Turn based   * Board game   * Database backend As a C# developer (possibly a poor one), what would you suggest?"}
{"_id": "5298", "title": "Specializing in a Vendor Software Package - am I putting my career at risk?", "text": "So, I have this opportunity to specialize in a vendor software package (like SAS, SAP, PeopleSoft, Pega, Lombardi BPM...). You know the deal - they need a coder to learn their package and _\"there's all this demand for the skill\"_ ; _\"big growing companies are using it\"_ , etc, etc. And (now, at least), the money's better. I'm worried about whether or not I'll be able to keep my \"normal\" programming skills current.   I'm worried about what it will look like on a resume if I switch back to \"normal\" programming in a couple of years.   I'm worried about whether or not it will be fun. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "33182", "title": "Do you test your SQL/HQL/Criteria?", "text": "Do you test your SQL or SQL generated by your database framework? There are frameworks like DbUnit that allow you to create real in-memory database and execute real SQL. But its very hard to use(not developer-friendly so to speak), because you need to first prepare test data(and it should not be shared between tests). P.S. I don't mean mocking database or framework's database methods, but tests that make you 99% sure that your SQL is working even after some hardcore refactoring."}
{"_id": "5297", "title": "Am I programming too slow?", "text": "I've only been a year in the industry and I've had some problems making estimates for specific tasks. Before you close this, yes, I've already read this: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/648/how-to-respond-when- you-are-asked-for-an-estimate and that's about the same problem I'm having. But I'm looking for a more specific gauge of experiences, something quantifiable or probably other programmer's average performances which I should aim for and base my estimates. The answers range from weeks, and I was looking more for an answer on the level of a task assigned for a day or so. (Note that this doesn't include submitting for QA or documentations, just the actual development time from writing tests if I used TDD, to making the page, before having it submitted to testing) My current rate right now is as follows (on ASP.NET webforms):   * Right now, I'm able to develop a simple data entry page with a grid listing (no complex logic, just Creating and Reading) on an already built architecture, given one full day's (8 hours) time.    * Adding complex functionality, and Update and Delete pages add another full day to the task.   * If I have to start the page from scratch (no solution, no existing website) it takes me another full day.   * (Not always) but if I encounter something new or haven't done yet it takes me another full day. Whenever I make an estimate that's longer than the expected I feel that others think that I'm lagging a lot behind everyone else. I'm just concerned as there have been expectations that when it's just one page it should take me no more than a full day. Yes, there definitely is more room for improvement. There always is. I have a lot to learn. But I would like to know if my current rate is way too slow, just average, or average for someone no longer than a year in the industry."}
{"_id": "231827", "title": "Where to put external libraries in a Qt project?", "text": "I create many small Qt Creator projects (.pro file based, not CMake) and sometimes need to use external libraries in them. Up until now I used to have a project structure like below:               project folder     |- project.pro     |- (project .cpp and .h files, possibly in subfolders)     |- lib        |- include        |  |- library1        |  |  |- (all library1 header files)        |  |- library2        |     |- ...        |- win32        |  |- library1.dll        |  |- library2.a        |  |- ...        |- unix           |- library1.so           |- library2.a           |- ...      The whole `lib` folder (with binaries) was included in my repository (git). This approach was okay when using small libraries, but since I started using some large libraries, I put them into separate repositories (per library) and used git submodules. Still, that solution is imperfect, since I'd use up a lot of additional space after updating my libraries and generally putting them in a repository is considered a bad idea. I was thinking about a solution where you could have a system variable for manually installed libraries or have it defined in qmake, but that would require additional work and reading documentation to configure the project. Another approach would be to simply download/compile libraries and put them into an ignored (in git) `lib` folder, but then we'd end up with duplicate libraries everywhere (and a problem to update them to newer versions across projects). How can I organize my Qt project to minimize amount of work and documentation reading needed to set it up and to maximize its maintainability?"}
{"_id": "246338", "title": "How does the experience of any tester count?", "text": "A developer learns a lot of stuffs at work. For eg. Lets think of a Java or C++ developer, as years pass by he learns a lot about the technology, design patterns, new frameworks and etc ... This I think adds his work experience a good score to his profile, but               What makes a testers work experience important ?      I'm into Web Application testing an intern in a product based company for the past four and a half months. At my office employees who are two or three years ahead of me don't do the work in any way different than I do, They don look like they have learned anything great from their from work experience. _Is this the fate of a tester or is this happening only at my office ?_. I would love to hear answers from any of my fellow testers who have walked the path of testing :)"}
{"_id": "246339", "title": "Translating views in MVC", "text": "What is the best practice, when it comes to views' translation in MVC design pattern, in multilingual website:   1. Always have only one view file and translate its particular strings with a framework translation function.   2. Always have as many views as website supports, directly translated, one for each language, and let framework internals load particular language-specific view file for language currently selected by user. Which of these two options should I use (if there isn't any third one) and why?"}
{"_id": "246332", "title": "Working with Javascript classes the right way", "text": "Comparable questions have surely been asked before but I'd like to hear some words about my specific way of implementing Javascript classes. Let me first start with a Javascript example taken from a real-life application I've been working on recently. **Example**               PageControl= new function() {       var self= this;            // example additional control bound to page control       var grid= new GridControl();            self.initialise= function() {         // initialise form fields, controls etc.       };            // example function       self.load= function(id) {         // reloads form with new data       };            $(document).ready(function() {         self.initialise();       });     };      Each page has its own PageControl instance with specific tasks solely relevant for the given page. **Question:** I'm not looking for alternative ways of how to implement it, I'd just want to know if the above example is bad or wrong code. The above structure has worked great so far, even if I work with sub controls like `PageControl.grid.reload();` but I don't want to stick to error-prone code."}
{"_id": "246336", "title": "DTO - service layer - statelessness best practices interfering with each other", "text": "I am designing a REST API coupled with a service layer that takes DTOs as input and produces them as output. This works fine for most service calls where the DTO is used to access an underlying library (an embedded OLAP server) that does the work. There is one service, however, where something seems wrong. The service is responsible for creating, manipulating, and optionally storing objects that represent reports (think excel reports). It does this through the underlying library, which does not expose reports as a resource. Since the reports don't represent a server-side resource unless they are persisted (persistence being my own implementation, not a concept in the library), the service needs to take a report object that holds all the information necessary to construct a report from scratch to be stateless. I decided that the report service methods should take a ReportDTO, manipulate it, and return the modified version. (This would include operations such as swapping the row and column axes, sorting an axis, and filtering an axis.) My thinking was that since I have all the information available in the ReportDTO necessary to perform all these operations, I might as well perform them on the DTO and return a modified version rather than duplicate the DTO as a domain object. That is not to say the server doesn't interface with any model. Indeed, the server-side code involves validating the report using a third party library (i.e., the validation model is not my own -- i don't have a domain model for the report itself, just DTOs), saving the report if the user so chooses, and executing the report against a database to obtain fresh data. So there is work to be done besides manipulating DTOs, it's just that it's not work tied to a domain model I needed to design myself, but rather one provided to me. After I implemented the aforementioned operations, I realized something. The operations are business logic operations, are they not? A DTO should not have this. I then had numerous other thoughts: \"Okay, that's fine, I'll do the operations in the service layer... Oh, wait. The service layer should only coordinate domain objects that contain business logic, not have business logic itself. Alright, I'll make the ReportDTO a bonafide domain object. Crap, now I am exposing my domain objects from the service layer. This is an API, I should really stick with DTOs as the input and output for the service layer so that changes in my domain model (or changes in the 3rd party domain model I utilize) do not affect the contract with service clients. Fine, I'll have a Report and a ReportDTO.... that have exactly the same members because the ReportDTO already has all the necessary information to manipulate a report (just not execute, validate, or save it) due to the transient report decision I made for the sake of a RESTful API.\" Clearly I have countered my every proposed solution. So, what the heck do I do? I don't want to make reports stateful because I really don't see them as a resource until they are actually saved. If I make them stateful I'll need to manage a map or cache of them in my service and deal with multiple clients trying to give their report the same name, implement security to ensure that a user can only see his own reports, etc. All these problems go away with a stateless approach. The side effects, however, are the aforementioned issues. Did I go wrong somewhere? Please help me tackle this design issue before it becomes a permanent part of my API. Thanks."}
{"_id": "145315", "title": "Does Git have a \"safe mode\" to prevent rewriting history?", "text": "When you're kind of fresh with Git (and DVCS in general), and you start exploring history-rewriting changes, you're safe if the repository is only local, but you might run into problems if you work with remotes and try to push such changes. A feature that I'd expect is the ability to enable a \"safe mode\" which would basically stop me from doing whatever I shouldn't do... And what do I mean by that? I mean history-rewriting changes for things already pushed to an origin. I can't define it precisely, but this would include such cases as:   * `commit --amend` when HEAD has been already pushed   * `rebase` of a non-local branch   * `reset` of a branch that has been pushed These are examples of situations which will will probably make the next `push` fail (because it wouldn't be fast-forward, IIRC). I've made some of that by accident and had to re-create the branch on the remote. And I still was lucky to do this fast enough so that nobody pulled the history I've rewritten. I believe it's possible to identify this type of changes and, on demand, prevent the user from making them. Is there perhaps an option for that? If there isn't, do you think it's worthwhile to attempt to create it? Would you try to define precisely how to identify such a \"dangerous change\"?"}
{"_id": "242940", "title": "Significant amount of the time, I can't think of a reason to have an object instead of a static class. Do objects have more benefits than I think?", "text": "I understand the concept of an object, and as a Java programmer I feel the OO paradigm comes rather naturally to me in practice. However recently I found myself thinking: Wait a second, what are actually the practical benefits of using an object over using a static class (with proper encapsulation and OO practices)? I could think of two benefits of using an object (both are significant and powerful):   1. Polymorphism: allows you to swap functionality dynamically and flexibly during runtime. Also allows to add new functionality 'parts' and alternatives to the system easily. For example if there's a `Car` class designed to work with `Engine` objects, and you want to add a new Engine to the system that the Car can use, you can create a new `Engine` subclass and simply pass an object of this class into the `Car` object, without having to change anything about `Car`. And you can decide to do so during runtime.   2. Being able to 'pass functionality around': you can pass an object around the system dynamically. **But are there any more advantages to objects over static classes?** Often when I add new 'parts' to a system, I do so by creating a new class and instantiating objects from it. **But recently when I stopped and thought about it, I realized that a static class would do just the same as an object, in a lot of the places where I normally use an object.** For example, I'm working on adding a save/load-file mechanism to my app. With an object, the calling line of code will look like this: **`Thing thing = fileLoader.load(file);`** With a static class, it would look like this: **`Thing thing = FileLoader.load(file);`** **What's the difference?** Fairly often I just can't think of a reason to instantiate an object when a plain-old static-class would act just the same. But in OO systems, static classes are fairly rare. So I must be missing something. **Are there any more advantages to objects other from the two that I listed?** Please explain. **EDIT:** To clarify. I do find objects very useful when swapping functionality, or passing data around. For example I wrote an app that makes up melodies. `MelodyGenerator` had several subclasses that create melodies differently, and objects of these classes were interchangable (Strategy pattern). The melodies were objects too, since it's useful to pass them around. So were the Chords and Scales. **But what about 'static' parts of the system - that aren't going to be passed around? For example - a 'save file' mechanism. Why should I implement it in an object, and not a static class?**"}
{"_id": "42924", "title": "How to price code reviews to encourage good behavior?", "text": "I work for a company that has a hosted .net internet application with many clients. Those clients often want to write customizations for our application. We have APIs to hook into the app, but the customizations themselves are written in .net. This is a shared, secure hosting environment and we have to code review these customizations before we can deploy them in our datacenter to ensure that they don't degrade performance, crash our servers, or open any security vulnerabilities. We charge for these code reviews. The current pricing model is simply a function of the number of lines of code. I think this is a bad idea for a variety of reasons, but primarily because, if we are interested in verifying that the code works as expected, we should be incentivizing good, readable code, not compaction. I would like to propose a pricing model that incorporates some, or all of the following as inputs:   * Lines of code   * Cyclomatic complexity   * Avg function length   * # of functions Are there any other metrics I should incorporate, or other ideas for how we can reasonably create pricing for code reviews that encourages safe and understandable code?"}
{"_id": "125084", "title": "Multiple Dispatch vs. Function Overloading", "text": "I'm trying to understand the difference (if any) between the two. According to the Wikipedia page for Multiple Dispatch it is synonymous with Function Overloading, but then later on goes on to say: > In a language with only single dispatch, such as Java [\u2026] which seems like a contradiction, since Java does support function overloading. So which is it? Is Multiple Dispatch different from Function Overloading, or is the article wrong in claiming that Java does not support Multible Dispatch?"}
{"_id": "125080", "title": "Emphasizing the importance of TDD to customers", "text": "The importance of TDD needs to be propagated but there's always a gap in the project timeline and time needed for developing a TDD project. Customers usually do not understand the importance of code maintenance or TDD and want the project to be finished as soon as possible. The result would be a Test After Development which would be very basic minimal tests to please the coverage tools and let the project analyzers have a great Graph. Do projects developed using TDD take longer, or is that just an unfounded fear?"}
{"_id": "138084", "title": "How to visualise Git commits on a video like a process?", "text": "There is a nice video which shows the development more like a process here. How can I visualise my own projects similar to this? Is there an open-source software to create this kind of visualisation? I think they would be quite useful to explain things to new developers before they start programming and perhaps I can also see the bigger picture."}
{"_id": "138081", "title": "Question about state and domain objects", "text": "Suppose I create a domain object called UserAdministration, if i have a method called CreateUser how would i pass state to this method, would I create properties on the UserAdministration object and have a CreateUser method or would i pass all the info for CreateUser method in a poco? Also how do I identify my domain objects?"}
{"_id": "84656", "title": "I need some pointer tasks/challenges", "text": "I struggle with learning. I have to practice, and keep practicing, in order for something to stick. I don't do much C++ (once every month maybe) so I am constantly going over the same stuff. I need some tasks to do so I can really understand pointers and their uses in the real world, rather than reading scenarios. I've created my own link list, but I want more advanced stuff like using pointer arithmetic and pointers and functions. If anyone could provide some real world tasks to deepen my knowledge and experience with pointers I would be thankful. I'm ok with data types because of my Java experience. Look forward to some challenges (not too hard mind)."}
{"_id": "84650", "title": "Styling compound AND / OR if statements", "text": "How do you style complex compound AND / OR if statements for maximum readability? How do you indent and where do you place the line breaks? My particular situation is something like the following. It's definitely better than smashing everything into one line, but still looks messy.               if (         (             x == y             && a != b             && p.isGood()              && (                 i + u == b                 || q >= a             )         )         || k.isSomething()         || m > n     ) {         doSomething();     }"}
{"_id": "195984", "title": "Which code is better for branch prediction optimization?", "text": "Given branch prediction, and also the effect of compiler optimizations, which code tends to offer superior performance? Note that bRareExceptionPresent represents an uncommon condition. It is not the normal path of logic.               /* MOST COMMON path must branch around exception if */          bool SomeFunction(bool bRareExceptionPresent)     {       // abort before function       if(bRareExceptionPresent)       {          return false;       }           .. function primary body ..           return true;     }          /* MOST COMMON path does NOT branch */          bool SomeFunction(bool bRareExceptionPresent)     {       if(!bRareExceptionPresent)       {         .. function primary body ..       }       else       {         return false;       }       return true;     }"}
{"_id": "203120", "title": "How are design-by-contract and property-based testing (QuickCheck) related?", "text": "Is their only similarity the fact that they are **not** xUnit (or more precisely, not based on enumerating specific test cases), or is it deeper than that? Property-based testing (using QuickCheck, ScalaCheck, etc) seem well-suited to a functional programming style where side-effects are avoided. On the other hand, Design by Contract (as implemented in Eiffel) is more suited to OOP languages: you can express post-conditions about the _effects_ of methods, not just their return values. But both of them involve testing assertions that are true in general (rather than assertions that should be true for a specific test case). And both can be tested using randomly generated inputs (with QuickCheck this is the _only_ way, whereas with Eiffel I believe it is an optional feature of the AutoTest tool). Is there an umbrella term to encompass both approaches? Or am I imagining a relationship that doesn't really exist."}
{"_id": "83929", "title": "Permissions/right model/pattern for .NET application", "text": "I need to implement flexible AND simple (if such thing exist) and at the same time utilize built-on means if possible So far I have MembershipProvider and RoleProviders implemented. This is cool but where do I go next? I feel like I need to add term \"Priviledge\" and than hardcode those inside application. Users will configure roles to add Privilidges to Roles and assign Roles to users. Does that sound like a good model? Should I think about adding priviledges at User level on top of adding them to Roles? I might but I envision problems with setup (confusing) and following support. If I don't do that and some specific users will need lesser priviledges - admin will have to create another role, etc.. Any silver bullet for system like this? And why Microsoft didn't go further then just Membership and Role providers? Another idea: Leave Roles as \"priviledge\" holder and hardcode them. Then I can code to those roles inside app using all available markups/attributes, etc - all Microsoft. Add new entity \"Group\" and create relationship like this   * Users    * UserGroups    * Groups    * RoleGroups   * Roles This way I can collect Roles into groups and assign those groups to Users. Sounds great and matches other software patterns. But then I can't really implement things inside RoleProvider like:   * AddUsersToRoles   * RemoveUsersFromRoles And some things do not really make sense anymore because they will be hard- coded   * DeleteRole    * CreateRole"}
{"_id": "83928", "title": "Gathering application architecture", "text": "Suppose there is system for gathering info about system activities. There is a client part with an interface and there are agent parts that are installed on each machine. I estimate that there could be max 20 computers now. Later could be more like 50. My solutions:   1. Agent stores data into local database e.g. sqlite. There is also a service which can be used by a client to query data. So if a client wants to display data for 50 computers, he sends a query to 50 computers. I'am on that solution now but maybe it's totally wrong.   2. Agent stores data into local database (I don't known good one for that). There is also server (main database) and local databases are synchronized with the server. In this case, a client connects to the main database to display data.   3. Agent sends data in realtime to main database. So same as point 2, but there is no sync.   4. Like in point 3, but agent buffers data in local database and sends it in small chunks to main database. What is the best approach?"}
{"_id": "202832", "title": "How do you plan your asynchronous code?", "text": "I created a library that is a invoker for a web service somewhere else. The library exposes asynchronous methods, since web service calls are a good candidate for that matter. At the beginning everything was just fine, I had methods with easy to understand operations in a CRUD fashion, since the library is a kind of repository. But then business logic started to become complex, and some of the procedures involves the chaining of many of these asynchronous operations, sometimes with different paths depending on the result value, etc.. etc.. Suddenly, everything is very messy, to stop the execution in a break point it is not very helpful, to find out what is going on or where in the process timeline have you stopped become a pain... Development becomes less quick, less agile, and to catch those bugs that happens once in a 1000 times becomes a hell. From the technical point, a repository that exposes asynchronous methods looked like a good idea, because some persistence layers could have delays, and you can use the async approach to do the most of your hardware. But from the functional point of view, things became very complex, and considering those procedures where a dozen of different calls were needed... I don't know the real value of the improvement. After read about TPL for a while, it looked like a good idea for managing tasks, but in the moment you have to combine them and start to reuse existing functionality, things become very messy. I have had a good experience using it for very concrete scenarios, but bad experience using them broadly. How do you work asynchronously? Do you use it always? Or just for long running processes?"}
{"_id": "146297", "title": "Interview assignment: how long is reasonable?", "text": "So I'm hiring for a senior developer/team lead role for an ASP.NET MVC3 project. This is a big deal position for our team as this person will lead one of our two main products--a product that hasn't seen much developer love in a while. So I need to ensure that my candidates do smart things with controllers, views, view models, DALs, unit tests, etc. I use some trivial programming challenges during interviews but I want to give the folks who have trouble in whiteboard coding a chance to shine. The best assignment I can think of: implementing a trivial log in page, is probably more than an hour of work and even if I cap it at 2 hours, it is unlikely to be 100% finished. Is this fair? I'm trying to strike a balance between keeping the assignment reasonable and giving the applicant a chance to show off the wide range of skills being a tech lead requires."}
{"_id": "202839", "title": "Type dependencies vs directory structure", "text": "Something I've been wondering about recently is how to organize types in directories/namespaces w.r.t. their dependencies. One method I've seen, which I believe is the recommendation for both Haskell and .NET (though I can't find the references for this at the moment), is:               Type     Type/ATypeThatUsesType     Type/AnotherTypeThatUsesType      My natural inclination, however, is to do the opposite:               Type     Type/ATypeUponWhichTypeDepends     Type/AnotherTypeUponWhichTypeDepends      **Questions:**   * Is my inclination bass-ackwards?   * Are there any major benefits/pitfalls of one over the other?   * Is it just something that depends on the application, e.g. whether you're building a library vs doing normal coding?"}
{"_id": "202838", "title": "Tester/Doer pattern: Assume the caller conforms to the pattern or be defensive and repeat the check?", "text": "Assume a simple class that implements the Tester/Doer pattern:               public class FooCommandHandler : ICommandHandler     {         public bool CanHandle(object command)         {             return command is FooCommand;         }              public void Handle(object command)         {             var fooCommand = (FooCommand)command;             // Do something with fooCommand         }     }      Now, if someone doesn't conform to the pattern and calls `Handle` without verifying the command via `CanHandle`, the code in `Handle` throws an exception. However, depending on the actual implementation of `Handle` this can be a whole range of different exceptions. The following implementation would check `CanHandle` again in `Handle` and throw a _descriptive_ exception:               public void Handle(object command)     {         if(!CanHandle(command))             throw new TesterDoerPatternUsageViolationException(\"Please call CanHandle first\");              // actual implementation of handling the command.     }      This has the advantage that the exception is very descriptive.   It has the disadvantage that `CanHandle` is called twice for \"good\" clients. Is there a consensus on which variation should be used?"}
{"_id": "51248", "title": "Have you read \"Free Software Programmed in Haskell\"? What did you think?", "text": "Does anyone know anything about this book? There are no reviews and it doesn't look like it's still in print or something?"}
{"_id": "172986", "title": "Scripting custom drawing in Delphi application with IF/THEN/ELSE statements?", "text": "I'm building a Delphi application which displays a blueprint of a building, including doors, windows, wiring, lighting, outlets, switches, etc. I have implemented a very lightweight script of my own to call drawing commands to the canvas, which is loaded from a database. For example, one command is `ELP 1110,1110,1290,1290,3,8388608` which draws an ellipse, parameters are 1110x1110 to 1290x1290 with pen width of 3 and the color `8388608` converted from an integer to a `TColor`. What I'm now doing is implementing objects with common drawing routines, and I'd like to use my scripting engine, but this calls for `IF/THEN/ELSE` statements and such. For example, when I'm drawing a light, if the light is turned on, I'd like to draw it yellow, but if it's off, I'd like to draw it gray. My current scripting engine has no recognition of such statements. It just accepts simple drawing commands which correspond with `TCanvas` methods. Here's the procedure I've developed (incomplete) for executing a drawing command on a canvas:               function DrawCommand(const Cmd: String; var Canvas: TCanvas): Boolean;     type       TSingleArray = array of Single;     var       Br: TBrush;       Pn: TPen;       X: Integer;       P: Integer;       L: String;       Inst: String;       T: String;       Nums: TSingleArray;     begin       Result:= False;       Br:= Canvas.Brush;       Pn:= Canvas.Pen;       if Assigned(Canvas) then begin         if Length(Cmd) > 5 then begin           L:= UpperCase(Cmd);           if Pos(' ', L)> 0 then begin             Inst:= Copy(L, 1, Pos(' ', L) - 1);             Delete(L, 1, Pos(' ', L));             L:= L + ',';             SetLength(Nums, 0);             X:= 0;             while Pos(',', L) > 0 do begin               P:= Pos(',', L);               T:= Copy(L, 1, P - 1);               Delete(L, 1, P);               SetLength(Nums, X + 1);               Nums[X]:= StrToFloatDef(T, 0);               Inc(X);             end;             Br.Style:= bsClear;             Pn.Style:= psSolid;             Pn.Color:= clBlack;             if Inst = 'LIN' then begin               Pn.Width:= Trunc(Nums[4]);               if Length(Nums) > 5 then begin                 Br.Style:= bsSolid;                 Br.Color:= Trunc(Nums[5]);               end;               Canvas.MoveTo(Trunc(Nums[0]), Trunc(Nums[1]));               Canvas.LineTo(Trunc(Nums[2]), Trunc(Nums[3]));               Result:= True;             end else             if Inst = 'ELP' then begin               Pn.Width:= Trunc(Nums[4]);               if Length(Nums) > 5 then begin                 Br.Style:= bsSolid;                 Br.Color:= Trunc(Nums[5]);               end;               Canvas.Ellipse(Trunc(Nums[0]),Trunc(Nums[1]),Trunc(Nums[2]),Trunc(Nums[3]));               Result:= True;             end else             if Inst = 'ARC' then begin               Pn.Width:= Trunc(Nums[8]);               Canvas.Arc(Trunc(Nums[0]),Trunc(Nums[1]),Trunc(Nums[2]),Trunc(Nums[3]),                 Trunc(Nums[4]),Trunc(Nums[5]),Trunc(Nums[6]),Trunc(Nums[7]));               Result:= True;             end else             if Inst = 'TXT' then begin               Canvas.Font.Size:= Trunc(Nums[2]);               Br.Style:= bsClear;               Pn.Style:= psSolid;               T:= Cmd;               Delete(T, 1, Pos(' ', T));               Delete(T, 1, Pos(',', T));               Delete(T, 1, Pos(',', T));               Delete(T, 1, Pos(',', T));               Canvas.TextOut(Trunc(Nums[0]), Trunc(Nums[1]), T);               Result:= True;             end;           end else begin             //No space found, not a valid command           end;         end;       end;     end;      What I'd like to know is what's a good lightweight third-party scripting engine I could use to accomplish this? I would hate to implement parsing of `IF`, `THEN`, `ELSE`, `END`, `IFELSE`, `IFEND`, and all those necessary commands. I need simply the ability to tell the scripting engine if certain properties meet certain conditions, it needs to draw the object a certain way. The light example above is only one scenario, but the same solution needs to also be applicable to other scenarios, such as a door being open or closed, locked or unlocked, and draw it a different way accordingly. This needs to be implemented in the object script drawing level. I can't hard-code any of these scripting/drawing rules, the drawing needs to be controlled based on the current state of the object, and I may also wish to draw a light a certain shade or darkness depending on how dimmed the light is."}
{"_id": "12929", "title": "How to approach web app development?", "text": "I have been going through Flask and it seems that now I have a decent understanding to go ahead and build a web application. However I want to know how would I approach the problem. For eg: I decide to build a blogging application. The first thing I do is write down all the things that come to my mind, from user registrations to posting data on the blog to publishing it on the site But after that I just get into coding. I know that is not the right approach. I have heard of UML diagrams, workflow diagrams and stuff. It would be great if someone could just outline the steps they would follow for building a large application and then I could go ahead and learn more about them.For eg,it could be something like the below:-   1. Collect requirements   2. Draw UML diagrams   3. Draw workflow diagrams   4. Start coding Please suggest an exhaustive list so that I can make my approach much more systematic. Thanks"}
{"_id": "70911", "title": "Opinion and help of the following job interview questions", "text": "I'm not familiar with job interview and software development terminology. So my questions are: what's your opinion of the following job interview questions and what is the best way to respond, especially the last question he asked? The new employer offered me a job consisting in building very rich interactive web apps in Paris. The questions on which I like to know your opinions are: 1) What kind of salary do you expect? 2) Are you ok to work in a Startup? (What does it means?) 3) Do you know about iterative development processes? (What does it means? maybe working with many developers.) 4) Lean methodology? (What does it means?) 5) We are building a strong web culture, how can you help? Thanks for your help."}
{"_id": "180811", "title": "Design question about a concurrent forking server", "text": "I'm in the early stages of designing a client/server application. The clients will be batch programs that read a file of customer contact data (name, address, email address, phone no's) and pass these components to the server, which will add them (if not already present) to corresponding mySQL tables and return id's for each component. In order to boost performance, the server will have spawned four \"manager\" servers, each tasked with looking up and possibly adding a new row, and will pass the four components via IPC to those managers so that they can work concurrently. In other words   * One \"master server\" that does nothing but listen for a connection from a batch job, and fork/exec a \"slave\" process,    * Four \"managers\" that read from a socket, do a table lookup and possibly add a row, and write back an id,   * One \"slave\" process for each connected client, spawned by the master when a new connection arrives from a client, which converses with the batch job: receiving a customer contact record, sending components to each of the managers, waiting for all of the managers to respond with the id's they've computed, and sending a summary record back to the client before looping back to receive the next record. (The processing is a bit more involved than I've described- there are actually _eight_ managers, and the results from the first four need to be completely gathered before invoking the next three managers, which in turn must all complete before calling the final manager. But that's just a simple process with several sequential stages, each of which involves farming out concurrent work and waiting for it all to finish.) In discussing this with another member of the team, I was asked \"why have the master server and the slave servers? why not have the client make separate connections directly with those manager processes?\" I haven't got a really good objection: each client _could_ essentially implement the slave logic directly and create eight simultaneous connections to the manager servers. I have a feeling that's not the best approach - that somehow it might be important to have some centralized control to robustly deal with failures and errors, or to accumulate statistics about the server as a whole. But I've no prior experience building a full-scale, production-worthy client/server app. I'd be very interested in hearing the opinions of those with prior experience building apps of this nature. **UPDATE 1:** One advantage: If the client process abruptly crashed or was canceled, the slave process would stay alive, could detect that the client had gone away, would have complete knowledge of the job state, and could ensure data integrity by completing (or backing out) the current unit of work. It could bring an orderly end to a failure."}
{"_id": "159885", "title": "Does multiple inheritance violate Single Responsibility Principle?", "text": "If you have a class which inherits from two distinct classes, does not this mean that your subclass automatically does (at least) 2 things, one from each superclass? I believe there is no difference if you have multiple interface inheritance. Edit: To be clear, I believe that if subclassing multiple classes violates SRP, then implementing multiple (non-marker or basic interface (e.g. Comparable)) interfaces violates SRP too."}
{"_id": "159884", "title": "Developing software for a company outside a company", "text": "I work for an IT company as a developer. We are currently working on a large software project, a multi-vendor automatic database clustering solution. We've upheld good coding standards and as a result our code is highly modular and reusable. Many of the modules we've developed could be of great benefit to the open-source community. There are quite a few developers on our team that contribute to various open- source projects but so far we have not been successful with persuading the employer to consider open-sourcing some of the modules. A few of us decided that we'd like to contribute code to open-source community while at the same time develop code for the company. Since our employer is not sympathetic towards this cause, contributing code we write during work hours is probably not an option. We have decided to take an alternate approach, write code during our spare time that we can use for both the company and open-source community. We would like to know what are the caveats of this approach, pottential legal issues and whether someone has a similar experience so we could elaborate our plan further before putting it on the table at work."}
{"_id": "7057", "title": "How should I be keeping track of php script version/changes?", "text": "How should I be keeping track of a php script's versions/changes when it pertains to a single script in one file? Should I have a separate changelog, and if so (1) what should it be named, (2) how should the contents of the log be formatted, and (3) how should the log be associated with the php script/file? Or, should I include the changes in a comment at the top of the php file? Currently, I have the following comments at the top of the file: `               /**      * @author    John Doe <contact@John Doe.com>      * @version   1.0      * @copyright Copyright (c) 2010, John Doe      */      ` Thanks in advance for your response!"}
{"_id": "180818", "title": "Mingling DB transactions and logging from a design perspective", "text": "Say we have a view page where users perform actions in multiple steps, some of these actions would involve DB operations with transactions (the snippets are in pseudo-code like from):               View 1:         Step 1:             ...              Step 2:             ...             Call ActionX              Step 3:             ...              ActionX: # can be called from different points in the view         ...         Begin Transaction         DB ops         End Transaction      Say we want to log the user progress in the view (or save some states) in a persistent manner in the DB, so that if the program/app is interrupted we can re-establish the state to the last user action inside a view:               View1:         Step 1:             ...             Logger.log('view1-step1-done')              Step 2:             ...             Call ActionX             Logger.log('view1-step2-done')              Step 3:             ...             Logger.log('view1-step3-done')      Now ideally, we would want to have the persistent logging and the DB based transactional actions to be both done in the same DB transaction, because we don't want to create an inconsistent state where an action is performed but is not reflected in the log state, or vice versa. The question is: how to achieve the said goal with minimum inter-dependency and SOC. Some suggestions for example:               View 1:         Step 1:             ...              Step 2:             ...             Begin Transaction             Call ActionX    # begin/end transaction statements will be removed from ActionX             Logger.log('view1-step3-done')             End Transaction              Step 3:             ...      Don't like this because the handling of transactions belongs naturally in the action itself. Or, another one:               View 1:         Step 1:             ...              Step 2:             ...             Call ActionX (logMsg='view1-step3-done')               Step 3:             ...          ActionX (logMsg):          ...         Begin Transaction         DB ops         Logger.log(logMsg)         End Transaction      Don't like this one either. The log message handling doesn't belong in the actions."}
{"_id": "159880", "title": "Why fewer IRQLs in 64-bit, even though an APIC has more interrupt lines?", "text": "As x86 computers shifted from 32-bit to 64-bit, they also shifted from using 8259-style Programmable Interrupt Controllers with 8 interrupt lines. (Or two multiplexed PICs for a total of 15 interrupt lines.) Then, if you were to install 32-bit Windows for an operating system, Windows would implement 32 software IRQLs (Interrupt Request Levels) with IRQLs 3 through 26 (or so) being reserved for devices. Then the x64 platform came along. You need a machine with an APIC, which has 256 interrupt lines, in order to install 64-bit Windows on it. However, 64-bit Windows only implements 16 IRQLs. So my question is, does anyone know why 64-bit Windows would implement fewer IRQLs than its 32-bit counterpart even though it has many more hardware interrupt lines at its disposal?"}
{"_id": "37751", "title": "Support / Maintenance documentation for development team", "text": "I'm working in the Development dept (around 40 developers) for a large E-Commerce company. We've grown quickly but have not evolved very well in the field of documenting our work. We work with an Agile / Scrum-like methodology with our development and testing but documentation seems to be neglected. We need to be able to make documentation that would aid a developer who hasnt worked on our project before or was new to the company. We also have to create more high level information for our support department to explain any extra config settings and fixes of known issues that may arise, if any. Currently we put this in a badly put together wiki, based on an old Sharepoint / TFS site. Can anyone suggest some ideal links or advice on improving the documentation standard? What works in other companies? Has anyone got avice on developing documentation as part of an agile process? Many thanks, ben"}
{"_id": "33235", "title": "Should debug code be left in place, always, or added only when debugging and removed when the bug has been found?", "text": "I, for one, only add debug code (such as print statements) when I'm trying to locate a bug. And once I've found it, I remove the debug code (and add a test case which specifically tests for that bug). I feel that it's cluttering the real code and therefore has no place there unless I'm debugging. How do you do it? Do you leave the debug code in place, or remove it when obsolete (which may be difficult to judge when that is)?"}
{"_id": "237876", "title": "What should plugins use: hooks, events or something else?", "text": "Consider an app that allows plugins to react to its program flow. I know 2 ways to achieve this: **hooks** and **events** **1\\. Hooks** Use calls to empty functions inside the main program flow. These functions can be overriden by plugins. For example, Drupal CMS implements hooks which are available to modules and themes. Here's an example of how hook is implemented in a file_copy function.               function file_copy(stdClass $source, $destination = NULL, $replace = FILE_EXISTS_RENAME) {         // ... [File copying routine]              // Inform modules that the file has been copied.         module_invoke_all('file_copy', $file, $source);              return $file;         // ...     }      A module can implement a `modulename_file_copy($file, $source)` function which will be called by the `module_invoke_all` in `file_copy`. After this function finishes, the `file_copy` will resume execution. **2\\. Events** Have the app dispatch events, which can be listened to by the plugins. After receiving an event that it's been subscribed to, a plugin will intercept the program flow and perform neccessary operations. For example, a jQuery gallery plugin Fotorama implements several events. As an example, here's a part of its `show` method that fires the `fotorama:show` event.                 that.show = function (options) {         // ... [show the new frame]              // [fire the event]         options.reset || triggerEvent('show', {           user: options.user,           time: time         });              // ... [do lots of other stuff with navigation bars, etc.]       };      A script can listen to this event and do something when it fires:               $('.fotorama').on(       'fotorama:show',       function (e, fotorama, extra) {         console.log(e.type + (extra.user ? ' after user\u2019s touch' : ''));         console.log('transition duration: ' + extra.time);       }     );      **QUESTION**   1. Are there other mainstream ways to implement such plugin behaviour?   2. If not, when should one use hooks, and when should one use events? Considering the ultimate goal is to make the code **more maintanable and readable, from both the app and the plugin developer's perspective?**"}
{"_id": "30764", "title": "What are important things to remember when reengineering a legacy application?", "text": "About to embark on the initial phases of a project to rewrite a legacy application from the ground up (existing business rules will change somewhat, and be extended to incorporate a large number of new requirements that the existing infrastructure cannot handle). I am looking for items that are important to remember when working to reengineer an existing application."}
{"_id": "8142", "title": "From programmer to programmers coach", "text": "Coming from a \"standalone\" programmer job, which methods or tools do you use when the time has come to have to drive a team of programmers as project manager (but still coding with the crew) to explain, prepare and distribute the work to be done by the team ? So a big project is coming, you're chosen as Lead Programmer, what do you use as method and tools to have the job done by the team ?"}
{"_id": "8145", "title": "Does Agile force developers to spend more time actually working?", "text": "Looking at common Agile practices it seems to me that they (intentionally or unintentionally?) force developers to spend more time actually working as opposed to reading blogs/articles, chatting, coffee breaks and just plain procrastinating. In particular: 1) Pair programming - the biggest work-forcer, just because it is inconvenient to do all that procrastination when there are two of you sitting together. 2) Short stories - when you have a HUGE chunk of work that must be done in e.g. a month, it is pretty common to slack off in the first three weeks and switch to OMG DEADLINE mode for the last one. And with the little chunks (that must be done in a day or less) it is exact opposite - you feel that time is tight, there is no space for maneuvering, and you will be held accountable for the task pretty soon, so you start working immediately. 3) Team communication and cohesion - when you underperform in a slow, distanced and silent environment it may feel ok, but when at the end of the day at Scrum meeting everyone boasts what they have accomplished and you have nothing to say you may actually feel ashamed. 4) Testing and feedback - again, it prevents you from keeping tasks \"99% ready\" (when it's actually around 20%) until the deadline suddenly happens. Do you feel that under Agile you work more than under \"conventional\" methodologies? Is this pressure compensated by the more comfortable environment and by the feeling of actually getting right things done quickly?"}
{"_id": "229191", "title": "How does BASIC locate an out-of-order NEXT statement when the loop body is skipped", "text": "Set the WABAC machine, Sherman. This question is about BASIC in general, and Microsoft's BASIC-80 in particular. Old school basic. With line numbers. How do (or, rather, did) old-school BASIC interpreters handle FOR...NEXT loops when the loop body was not executed, and the NEXT statement appeared out of order? # An out-of-order NEXT statement from the before time: Here's a subroutine from the game Awari out of David H. Ahl's \"101 Basic Computer Games\":               200 K=M:GOSUB 600     205 E=0:IF K>6 THEN K=K-7     210 C=C+1:IF C<9 THEN F(N)=F(N)*6+K     215 FOR I=0 TO 5:IF B(I)<>0 THEN 230     220 NEXT I     225 RETURN     230 FOR I=7 TO 12:IF B(I)<>0 THEN E=1:RETURN     235 GOTO 220      and here it is with everything except the flow control redacted:               200 GOSUB 600     215 FOR I=0 TO 5:IF ... THEN 230     220 NEXT I     225 RETURN     230 FOR I=7 TO 12:IF ... THEN RETURN     235 GOTO 220      Does that bring back not-so-fond memories? Can you hear Dijkstra rolling over in his grave? Here are the interesting part of what's happening in this fragment:   * The second FOR loop, since it uses the same loop variable, replaces the first FOR loop   * The two FOR loops share the same NEXT statement   * _The second FOR loop's NEXT statement comes before it, in source order, but after it, in execution order_ You might suppose, then, that the interpreter, having started a FOR loop, simply runs statements until it happens across the NEXT loop. The order of the statement in the source does not matter in this case. But let's see what the basic80 manual has to say about FOR loops: # The basic-80 manual says \"moo...\" > The body of the loop is skipped if the initial value of the loop times the > sign of the step exceeds the final value times the sign of the step. So, the loop body can be skipped entirely. We have evidence, in the form of published programs, that at least some versions of BASIC were dynamically locating their NEXT statements. This is easy enough to do when the loop body is being executed. However, in the case where the body of the FOR statement should be skipped, as BASIC-80 permits, how did BASIC locate the NEXT statement, given that it might be _before_ the FOR statement in source order?   * Did the version of BASIC used in \"101 Basic Computer Games\" always execute the loop body at least once?   * Did BASIC-80 require a FOR loop's NEXT statement to occur after the FOR statement, in source order? PS: Yes, I'm writing a BASIC interpreter for old school BASIC. It's a sickness."}
{"_id": "159779", "title": "Which programming designs leads to more problems?", "text": "As a fresh programmer, one of the first thing for me to learn was to learn language and its syntax. Now my next training issue is to design my code heirarchy in such a way it is simple to maintain over time. One example I just encountered is below. It is in VBA for Excel but the concept extends to other languages too. As someone with very little experience, it seems to me that the 2nd option is much clearer and I should use that style. However, I know sometimes that to a beginner programmer what seems like a relatively benign choice can end up hurting their development in the long run. Are either of these two styles the better? I am not talking about personal 'stylistic' choices, I am talking about which one leads to more problems down the line, likely through over-complicating things.               For ws in Worksheets         remove duplicates         append remaining data to separate workbook     Next ws      versus               For ws in Worksheets         remove duplicates     Next ws          For ws in Worksheets         append remaining data to separate workbook     Next ws      Thankyou! EDIT: By the way, it is not important if the less-readable design style is faster. A small increase in performance is not worth a loss of readability for my purposes at the moment."}
{"_id": "86722", "title": "Challenging Job after Graduate Studies", "text": "I worked with an M.N.C developing web applications in Java/J2EE related technologies(includes JSF,struts,hibernate etc.) now I quit my job to pursue Graduate Studies in the U.S.A. So I am a student in the middle of my Graduate studies. I had enough of developing mere CRUD applications in J2EE now I want to work in something exciting. The problem is I can't say what exactly but I can give you an examples. Say developing new JDK libraries or writing a kernel for some O.S. or something like that. So I have five questions here.   1. Is it true that people in R & D often use C++ because of higher performance in that case should I consider switching my platform to C/C++?   2. How should I use my time I have one year to graduate to prepare myself for Jobs Interviews for such positions? (e.g. Reading books on Algorithms etc.)    3. How do I know about these jobs and how do I apply to those Jobs?   4. Is it the right time for me to think about Jobs?   5. Am I over ambitious because I am not in a Ivy League, just a normal school? (My GPA is not so high unfortunately)."}
{"_id": "159770", "title": "How To Handle Login For An Unofficial API?", "text": "I am building a tool to access some data on a site (Fitocracy) and I would like to turn it into an unofficial partial API, as no official API exists. If you are not logged in, you cannot get access to any data, so my tool uses Ruby's mechanize to log in (with my account) and scrape some data from a page. How should I handle this when I turn it into an API? I am worried that people won't feel comfortable sending their login credentials through an unofficial API and I don't want to just circumvent the login to the site by giving everybody access through a dummy account."}
{"_id": "159772", "title": "Extreme Programming - documenting implementation?", "text": "In extreme programming methodology, what artifacts/ can be used to document the implementation? I have used an activity diagram to document the design steps for each activity. I have read that for XP, the implementation chapter is the code itself. I am developing an android application which consists of the GUI and java coding."}
{"_id": "171184", "title": "What methods of requirements elicitation are suitable when I do not have direct access to the user base?", "text": "I am working on an application to create invoices. There are some features that are required based on the type of the application and are common to all invoice applications. However, we still need to determine what unique needs the user base might have. We do not have direct access to the users to obtain requirements or user stories. What techniques are most suitable for eliciting high-quality requirements from users when direct or frequent access is not possible?"}
{"_id": "171187", "title": "How would one go about reading memory from a process? Is it different by OS?", "text": "As an experienced web-developer, but a novice \"low level\" programmer, this stuff is sort of voodoo to me still. I'm curious about how one would even begin to go about finding a memory block, and then reading it (for example, reading the timer in a game of mines)? Is this different by OS / OS version? I've spent quite a bit of time Googling and unfortunately, other than some vague mentions of memory readers and `ReadProcessMemory` in Windows with C/C++, there's not a whole lot out there. Would be very happy if someone could shed some light on this subject so that I could get off on the right foot with respect to memory reading."}
{"_id": "47838", "title": "Why do we keep using CSV?", "text": "Why do we keep using CSV? I recently made a shift to working the health domain and despite the wonderful work in data transfer standards, all data transfer is in **CSV** , both for reporting to external organisations, and for data migrations when implementing new systems. Unfortunately the use of CSV is the cause of the endless repetition of the same stupid errors, with the same waste of developer time. (bad escaping, failing to handle null fields etc.) I know we can do better, and anything between JSON and XML (depending on the instance) would be fine. (Most of the time this is data going from one MS SQLserver 2005 to another!) I feel as if each time I see this happening I am literally watching one developer waste anothers time. So why do we keep shafting each other? When will we stop?"}
{"_id": "212162", "title": "How do I support interfaces for different devices in the same input scenario?", "text": "I asked this question on SO but someone pointed out that I would be better off here. He's most likely right. So here I go! So I just wanted an opinion. I have 2 different ways to approach the problem. Okay so I have a system that I wanna design toward the future. I have some types of objects wich takes as parameters an object implementing an Interface wich can itself contain another object Implementing another interface and so on. In this way i have               A(InterfaceB B)->B(InterfaceC C)->C(InterfaceD D) ... Until i get to a point where the object does not contain another one. Every interfaces implement a common interface. So I have               Parent->InterfaceB   ---   Parent->InterfaceC   ---   Parent->InterfaceD But InterfaceD does not necessarily implement InterfaceB. Because an interface does not have only one implemention, I have multiple possible trees.               A(InterfaceB B)->B(InterfaceC C)->C(InterfaceD D)->... and               A(InterfaceB B)->B(InterfaceC Y)->Y(InterfaceZ Z)->... So my question is this : If i want to manage the possible trees, Am I better off using reflection to generate the possible trees on startup? Or would I be better off to hold the different trees in a xml file that I would parse on startup? I have to keep in mind that those Interface types and their implementations will keep coming on. So every time I add a new type, it has to be managed. I know both solution will work. My question is more like this : What would be the best approach to orient the system toward the future. To add some context to the situation, here's an example of a case All those interfaces expose an adaptor. Each adaptor may need another one to do its task. For instance, I have an adaptor wich parse some data. But then this data has to be communicated with a remote target. To do this it can use ethernet, serial port, etc... So I could have a generic parser wich takes a generic communicator. That's one of the different possibilities. If you need some clarifications dont hesitate!"}
{"_id": "212163", "title": "Generate complex (non-convex) polyhedron UV mapping", "text": "I need to find an approach to the problem of generating texture maps for non- convex polyhedrons without using a design tool like Maya. Specifically, I am mapping simulation results data onto a 3D surface, and I need to write code which generates the maps. One generic approach uses a gradient color brush as an overall texture to just map colors, but if the facets in the polyhedron are very narrow or the mapped (u,v) coordinates are very far apart on the same facet, the image gets noisy. Another approach employs Phong or Gouraud Shading, but those features are missing in some 3D libraries which favor texturing over specifying colors at each vertex. So, I'm looking for a way to get a good texture map generated. If it helps in identifying a correct algorithm, all of the surfaces entirely enclose a 3-D space, there is no facet normal data, and I'll be able to identify a \"parting line\" which segregates one part of the surface from the other, as one might in order to create a mold for the shape."}
{"_id": "226217", "title": "Detect Order Changes in a List", "text": "Let's say you have a list of values that are   1. a   2. b    3. c   4. d   5. e The order on the list might be changed.   1. a    2. c   3. d   4. **b**   5. e How would you detect this change? We needed something like this when we were building a revision history page for our online form building tool. We found a quick and dirty solution but I am looking for a more elegant solution for this. Here is what the revision descriptions look like: ![jotform revisions page](http://i.stack.imgur.com/QKuTx.png) Here is the tough part: **Elements can be removed/added from/to anywhere on the list.** So, the algorithm should be able to ignore those changes."}
{"_id": "213698", "title": "Deploying Qt-based app on Mac OS X", "text": "I wrote a cross platform application and I distributed it successfully for Windows and Linux (and tested them on \"clean\" virtual systems, with no other additional software and/or libraries installed). I have already compiled my application on my Mac computer, but I don't know if my application will work on other Mac computers. I don't have two Macs, also, (as far as I know) it's difficult to install Mac OS X on a virtual machine with \"legal\" discs or without having to perform a process similar to building a Hackintosh, this means that I cannot test my app on a virtual machine (in VirtualBox). So may question would be: Is there any way of making sure that my application will actually run on other Mac systems (without the need of using another computer)? As an additional note, I wrote my application by using the Qt framework."}
{"_id": "245011", "title": "How to cleanly write a multi step process with user feedback and multiple callback", "text": "When you have some process that has several steps and you multiple entry points the code gets ugly pretty fast. I encountered this with Facebook integration in my mobile app: User wants to share something. Before that can happen, I need several things:   1. a session (if there's no FB session, start one, get access_token ...)\u00a8   2. load permissions I have (or take from cache)   3. check if I have publish permissions for this user (if not, ask for it) With all these ready I can finally make the call to Facebook. The way I want this functionality to work ideally is just call something like `Facebook.post( ... , successCallback, failureCallback)` But with these four asynchronous operations it just looks really messy. Do you have any good patterns that might be useful in this situation?"}
{"_id": "229443", "title": "Mixing declarative & imperative code (Implicit 'unit tests' ?)", "text": "Well I'm no expert, but as a student, I'm curious about languages and their design patterns / goals. **I'd like to know, whether there are any points I miss in the following examples, and why techniques like this are not widely used in popular languages. Why is it a better idea in a real-life program to explicitly define all unit tests, instead of using some declarative code. why don't languages use some declarations as tests and implementation as well in general? Why split these thing into two parts?** Suppose you have the following unit tests:               assertRaises(avg([]), ValueError)     assertEquals(avg([1], 1)     assertEquals(avg([1, -2]), -.5)     assertEquals(avg([1, 2]), .5)      If you take this pseudocode,               def avg(items):         if len(items) == 0:             raise ValueError         else if len(items) == 1:             return items[0]         else:             return sum(items)/len(items)      most parts of `avg` seem to do nothing, or very little more than just declaring the way to pass some unit tests. In other words, for me it feels a little like code duplication. Especially the first test seems to be superfluous in this example. I wonder if it would be a good design to get rid of some unit test this way:               def avg(items) {         len(items) == 0 => raises ValueError         len(items) == 1 => items[0]         len(items) > 1 => sum(items)/len(items)         (test) items == [1, -2] => $avg == -.5         (test) items == [1, 2] => $avg == .5         (test) avg(items) <= sum(items)     }      In this example, (test) indicates when a specific test case is not a useful definition (though maybe these could even be used for optimization in rare cases). Of course, this pseudocode is not well designed because it's less readable than the first implementation, but I think it's a more convenient way to declare unit tests. Actually the unit tests seem to be wrong here, since they do nothing but test the definition. And the last test is not trivial to perform. But it can be performed for example, when another test is run, which tests a code that has `avg` in it, so chances are, that it gives a useful set of test parameters. Also, for example, the last unit test has a secondary role too! If I have a code like this:               if avg(a) <= sum(a)      It's not necessary at all to evaluate the complex definition, since at runtime one of the test cases implies it directly. OK, in this case, it's not a real optimization (though an IDE could notify the user, that the expression will always be true, which is useful). However, I can imagine, that there are many complex examples, that can be optimized this way, without making the developer explicitly test for special cases at every single place where they are relevant. Maybe a better example for this optimization               def power(a, n) {         n == 0 => 1         n == 1 => a         n > 1 => a * power(a, n - 1)         (test) for any (x) power(a, n) % x == power(a % x, n) % x     }      It's not secret I think, that a clever compiler could use it in many cases, and a clever interpreter/just-in-time compiler could use these in much more cases. In order to understand tests and languages better, I'm curious whether my thoughts are useful, and if not, what am I missing, or if so, why popular languages don't implement such patterns."}
{"_id": "229447", "title": "Is there any difference learning OOP on different programming languages?", "text": "I want to learn OOP. I know Python and I know very little things about OOP. But when I search for \"learn OOP\" in forums I saw a guy saying that \"Python is so new that's why you can't learn OOP on Python. you should learn Java then understand OOP on Java\" Is it true? Is there any difference understanding OOP on different programming languages? like learn it on Java, C#, C++, Perl or Python?"}
{"_id": "238690", "title": "Find number of occurrence of a word in a 2D matrix of Characters", "text": "Given a two dimensional matrix of alphabets, search the given word in all directions. Below is an example to search for the word `\"TEAM\"`: No of occurrences is 4 in matrix below. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vj6us.png) What is the best approach to solve this? Its not a dictionary word. Its simply sequence searching in all the directions."}
{"_id": "238691", "title": "Fixed duration Jobs need to be scheduled across fixed number of queues", "text": "* Say I have 9 jobs with estimates of how long they will take to complete, and 3 queues that process these jobs - this constitutes one batch. Note that all the jobs are allocated to a queue beforehand and not at run-time. So with poor-scheduling, some queues may remain idle while others continue to process a job.    * All these jobs should be distributed across the queues in such a way that the total time to complete all the queues is nearly equal.  Consider: 1.Below Q2,Q3 complete in 15mins and remain idle while Q1 takes another 10mins to complete. Batch1:               +------+----+----+----+     |  #   | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |     +------+----+----+----+     | 1    |  5 |  5 |  5 |     | 2    | 15 |  5 |  5 |     | 3    |  5 |  5 |  5 |     +------+----+----+----+     | Time | 25 | 15 | 15 |     +------+----+----+----+     | Total| 25           |     +------+----+----+----+      2.Now ideally the jobs should be distributed as...               +------+----+----+----+     |  #   | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |     +------+----+----+----+     | 1    | 15 |  5 |  5 |     | 2    |  - |  5 |  5 |     | 3    |  - |  5 |  5 |     | 4    |  - |  5 |  5 |     +------+----+----+----+     | Time | 15 | 20 | 20 |     +------+----+----+----+     | Total| 20           |     +------+----+----+----+      * * * This seems to be a straightforward scheduling problem, but I am dealing with hundreds of such jobs, divided into multiple batches. Where each batch will start only on the completion of the first. So I would require some algorithm to decide the schedule. Any ideas..? Thanks * * * **Update:** _Adding more information based on feedback..._   * The jobs in a batch are fixed.    * There are no dependencies between jobs within a batch, but there are dependencies between batches. _So we can look at solving the problem for a single batch and the solution will apply across all batches._   * Real-world problem: I am modelling a problem on loading data (ETL) and the entire load process takes 5-6hrs, which has several batches. Looking for ways to reduce the overall time."}
{"_id": "14516", "title": "Work opportunities in OpenOffice.org development", "text": "What is the market like for custom apps or scripts using the OpenOffice.org API? I started delving into it a while back. I found it a fairly painful environment to work in. Is there any demand for this skill set? I might keep at it if it seemed like there was money to be made."}
{"_id": "230060", "title": "Exceptions catching clutter code and make it hard to read", "text": "When I read well written code that checks to make sure all the input is of the correct format and type, and also catches all the things that possibly could go wrong, I find it difficult to understand the core of what the program is doing. It seems protection against the non-normal case obscures the normal case. This includes beginning and ending of array special cases, try-catch, using, handling null, 0, \"\", and all the other strange things. How can I write code that is clear, but isn't cluttered by non-normal events?? To make this a little more concrete, how can I do this in C#?"}
{"_id": "219463", "title": "Alternative to Singleton when D.I. is not an option", "text": "I have been researching this extensively, and I am stuck. I am writing a Drupal module that uses a class that I have created. This class is a classic Singleton - it only needs to be instantiated once, since it is assembling a bunch of data from a database. Note that my potential Singleton will not update any data in the database - it will just read from existing data. Also, note that processes outside the context of my program may update the data. I know the take home answer here is 'use Dependency Injection'. However, I can not use Dependency Injection - Drupal uses hooks, and these hooks accept certain parameters. I.e., I can't (to my knowledge) insert a object that way. I should point out that testing is a concern of mine as well (although testing my module in Drupal has had its own series of challenges). However, I am willing to accept that a Singleton may be the lesser of two evils here. Here is an example:               function mymod_block_view($var) {         //$var is required by drupal         $obj = new Object()         ....     }          function mymod_block_info() {         ...          $obj = new Object()     }      My options right now are to use a global variable (not ideal) or a Singleton (according to my research, also not ideal, but may be my only option). Do I have any other options, besides declaring a new variable object inside each function?"}
{"_id": "215892", "title": "How to help keep track of identifiers used both in the application and in the database?", "text": "For example:   1. I have an ACL (access control list) with keys in the database like `create_user` and `allow_booking_for_past_dates`. Each ACL entry has a corresponding method or function name in the application.   2. I have several 'controller' classes for a web application each of which may have one or more references in a 'pages' table in the database. In both cases whenever a change is made to the application, someone has to remember to update the database and vice versa. Updating the application after a database mod can be relatively pain-free by naming the keys such that they can be easily found by search-replace. Finding instances of an identifier in the database can be similarly pain-free. Everything else usually is either contained completely in the application (sub-classing, configuration files, etc) or entirely in the database (primary keys, foreign keys, indexes, etc). How to keep track of these identifiers that bridge the two domains? We currently have a Word document (of all things) with a table neatly describing the key name, where to find it and a description of what it is. This seems to work better than the \"commit it to the application, create the entry in the db and cross your fingers for the future\" approach."}
{"_id": "230069", "title": "Logging in a distributed system", "text": "We have several application servers (and different applications) running on Amazon AWS and our main method of logging is a combination of statsd, carbon/graphite, and an alert system based off of the metrics coming into carbon. This has been working great for a lot of different situations but I feel we need something else to complement this type of logging. Something that is not as much for streaming or visualization like graphite, but allows easy lookup by time/date, error type, etc... What are some techniques that make reviewing your logs quick and effective? My initial thought is to UDP all logging messages to a central server and insert them into a database (likely MongoDB). Is this a reasonable approach?"}
{"_id": "219469", "title": "Unit Testing Wrapper (Facade?) Method", "text": "I have to write unit tests for some classes my group is developing. The classes are fairly simple, and I'm not sure how to best test them.               public class MyObjectRegistry     {         private myDataSetMapper = new MyDataSetMapper();              public boolean StoreObjects(list<MyObject> myObjectList)         {             myDataSetMapper.StoreObjects(myObjectList);         }     }          public class  MyDataSetMapper     {         public boolean StoreObjects(list<MyObject> myObjectList)         {             for(MyObject myObj: myObjectList)             {                 boolean result = StoreObject(myObj);             }         }              private boolean StoreObject(MyObject myObject)         {             //Store the object in a database         }     }      So my question is how to test the `MyObjectRegistry.StoreObjects` and `MyDataSetWrapper.StoreObjects` methods since there's no real logic other than a `foreach` loop and calling out to another method. I've looked around the web and found that I think I'm looking at a \"facade\" class/method, but I'm still unclear on what would I should test/assert in the test method."}
{"_id": "234995", "title": "How important is it to learn UML for an OO developer?", "text": "When studying OOP by myself I often encounter UML class diagrams. I understand them, but don't completely know how to write them. Meaning, I don't entirely know what each kind of arrow means, and things like that. 1- How important is it to learn the 'language' of UML class diagrams? If it is something worth the time, could you forward me to a good, cohesive yet sufficient source? 2- If/when I do learn to draws UML class diagrams: Are all the little nuances important, or is it that every developer draws UML diagrams a little differently?"}
{"_id": "72874", "title": "What is better, MBA vs MIS, right after grad or gap?", "text": "Generally speaking, if a recent Computer Science / Software Engineering grad (bachelors) wants to be project manager in 5 years, what should he or she go for? A. An MBA part-time straight out of graduation (at the same time, working as a programmer) B. Wait three years and go for a masters in Computer Information Systems (which has the 3 year gap requirement) Thank you for the advice. I wanted to make this as applicable to as many gonna-graduate-soon students in our field."}
{"_id": "234996", "title": "Algorithm for inserting into sorted subset", "text": "`A` is a sorted list. `B` is a sorted list, and a subset of `A`. If an element is inserted into `A` at index `i` what's the most efficient way to determine the correct index `i'` for it's position in `B`? Given the fact that both lists are sorted, and that we know `B` is subset of `A` I would think we should be able to devise quite an efficient algorithm, but I'm not happy with what I've come up with so far. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "72872", "title": "Could Go work with other user interfaces than Web?", "text": "Go seems to be made for doing server side stuff for the web. What could I do if my boss suddenly dictated that he wants a Windows GUI for a Go application?"}
{"_id": "208967", "title": "Generally speaking can a Javascript-based application (iUI) be deployed without a webserver?", "text": "Suppose I have a Javascript based application written in iUI or Kendo UI. Can it be packaged in such a way they can run locally without a webserver? I have a few web applications, that with some rework and HTML5 LocalStorage, can possibly work offline (in an airplane or subway). My mobile development experience is limited to Blackberry Playbook, which I only did so I can get a free one a few years ago. That platform supports \"mobile applications\" based on HTML, and an additional out-of-band packaging set of tasks. **Question**   * Are other platforms (iPhone, Android, etc) similar in that I can simply package an iUI based application so that it can run offline or on a webserver?"}
{"_id": "47781", "title": "What are the bundling/naming conventions for source-based packages?", "text": "Are there any conventions to use if I were to distribute the source for a C++ library I built? The plan is to use CMake as a build system, but for the rest I was wondering what are the standards in terms of file/folder/subfolder naming, inclusion paths etc. What I got so far:   * Put everything in the `$prefix` folder under `$prefix/bin`, `$prefix/include/libname` and `$prefix/lib`.   * Don't use caps for libname. Should all internal includes contain the `libname` folder? E.g. say there are two files in the project: `principal.h` and `secondary.h`. In `principal.h`, should the inclusion statement for `secondary` be : `#include \"secondary.h\"` or `#include \"libname/secondary.h\"`? Are there other standards that should be followed? Why?"}
{"_id": "208964", "title": "How do I go about debugging a PHP error?", "text": "I am coming from .NET to PHP. I am playing around with a long file written by someone else (called \"cryptographp.inc.php\"). It builds and returns an image to the browser. I want to show the image that the file returns on my Cryptocode/index.php page --like this:               <?php     include './cryptographp.inc.php';      ?>      But when I load the page, firefox returns an error saying               \"The image http://localhost/Cryptocode cannot be displayed because it     contains errors\"      How would I go about debugging an error like this in PHP? I am used to stepping through code in visual studio. What techniques would people use in the PHP world?"}
{"_id": "207710", "title": "What are examples of comments that tell you why instead of how or what?", "text": "First of all, in this question I'd like to stay away from the polemic on whether source code commenting is good or bad. I'm just trying to understand more clearly what people mean when they talk about comments that tell you WHY, WHAT or HOW. We often see guidelines like \"Comments should tell you WHY; code itself should tell you HOW\". It is easy to agree with the statement on an abstract level. However, people usually drop this like a dogma, and leave the room without further explanation. I've seen this used in so many different places and contexts, that it looks like people can agree on the catchphrase, but they seem to be talking about different things entirely. So, back to the question: if comments should tell you WHY, what is this WHY we are talking about? Is this the reason why that piece of code exists in the first place? Is this what that piece code should be doing? I would really appreciate if someone could give a clear explanation, and then add some good examples (bad examples are not really needed, but fell free to add them for contrast). There are many questions on whether comments are good or bad, but no one that addresses the specific question of what are good examples of comments that tell you WHY."}
{"_id": "207712", "title": "changing value of a private member of a class in c++ without using member or friend function", "text": "Using pointer, I am able to modify the private value of the class in the code below. Does it violate the C++ concept that private member can only be modified by member or friend functions?               #include<iostream>     using namespace std;          class demo     {             private: int info;                  public:                      demo()                      {                              info=10;                      }                           void print_info()                      {                            cout<<info;                      }     };          int main()     {               demo ob;          int* ptr=(int*)&ob;               *ptr=20;               ob.print_info();               return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "129099", "title": "Do you get the benefits of a B-Tree in a managed language?", "text": "My understanding is that one of the key features of a B-Tree (and a B+Tree) is that it is designed such that the size of its nodes are some multiple of the block size of whatever media the data is stored on. Considering that, in a memory managed language like java/c#, we don't really have access to _how_ , _when_ and _what order_ , data is accessed from the drive... can we still predictably benefit from the major advantage of this data structure?"}
{"_id": "43203", "title": "Number of Classes in a Namespace - Code Smell?", "text": "I have a C# library that's used by several executables. There's only a couple namespaces in the library, and I just noticed that one of the namespaces has quite a few classes in it. I've always avoided having too many classes in a single namespace because of categorization, and because subconsciously, I think it looks \"prettier\" to have a deeper hierarchy of namespaces. My question is: does anyone else consider it a \"code smell\" when a namespace has many classes - even if the classes relate to each other? Would you put in a lot of effort to find nuances in the classes that allows for subcategorization?"}
{"_id": "43200", "title": "Team Organization for Small Team", "text": "Few friends (3) and I started a small company. But we weren't shure how to organize ourselves since everyone will work from their homes and in different hours of the day. How should we organize in terms of work to do, bugs, etc? Should we use an agile methodology like \"adapted\" for our small team?"}
{"_id": "39990", "title": "Should an IDE include a gaming element?", "text": "As of recent I have becomne very interested in serious gaming. Today I ran into this little gem: visual studio achievements and it got me thinking. I actually think it could be very helpfull and stimulating to add such a gaming component to an IDE to improve code quality and basically make it more interesting to write better code and put your IDE to good use. Any thought on this? **Edit:** Just to be clear here: the link contains a funny take on it. I'm interested in the entire notion of adding a gaming element to an ide, with for instance achievements that stimulate the use of best programming practises. Not so different from what StackOverflow is doing."}
{"_id": "174973", "title": "How to use PostgreSQL on AWS - Ubuntu 11.10", "text": "I'm extremely new to cloud-computing, Linux, and PostgreSQL, so if this is a stupid question, I apologize. I've managed to create an m1.large instance running Ubuntu 11.10, connect via Putty SSH, and install PostgreSQL (`sudo apt-get install postgresql`), but that is as far as I've gotten. My goal is to run several python web-scraping scripts that I've written on this instance (so as not to eat up all of our bandwidth (smaller company at the moment)) and insert the scraped data into a PostgreSQL table on the instance and later retrieve that data to store on our local server (as I've heard AWS EBS is unreliable and I don't want to take chances). How can I configure PostgreSQL on my AWS instance? How can I access the data from my machine? I currently use PgAdmin3 to manage PosgreSQL on our local server. Can I use this same interface to manage PostgreSQL on my AWS instance? Any suggestions, solutions, links, etc is greatly appreciated. And again, if this is a dumb question, I apologize. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "174971", "title": "Dealing with curly brace soup", "text": "I've programmed in both C# and VB.NET for years, but primarily in VB. I'm making a career shift toward C# and, overall, I like C# better. One issue I'm having, though, is curly brace soup. In VB, each structure keyword has a matching close keyword, for example:               Namespace ...         Class ...             Function ...                 For ...                     Using ...                         If ...                             ...                         End If                         If ...                             ...                         End If                     End Using                 Next             End Function         End Class     End Namespace      The same code written in C# ends up very hard to read:               namespace ... {         class ... {             function ... {                 for ... {                     using ... {                         if ... {                             ...                         }                         if ... {                             ...                         }                     }                 }                 // wait... what level is this?             }         }     }      Being so used to VB, I'm wondering if there's a technique employed by c-style programmers to improve readability and to ensure that your code ends up in the correct \"block\". The above example is relatively easy to read, but sometimes at the end of a piece of code I'll have 8 or more levels of curly braces, requiring me to scroll up several pages to figure out which brace ends the block I'm interested in."}
{"_id": "89128", "title": "Why do I need SCRUM vs. a less formal, more lightweight process for my team?", "text": "I'd like to begin my question by saying that I understand that SCRUM or some derivative of it is probably a good way to go for managing software development. It seems all the big companies and my managers use it or have used it, and I can't really argue with all that experience. However I'm struggling to understand the \"whys\" and all the reading and even my official SCRUM training at work is not doing the job for me. It's just all rhetoric. So I come here seeking answers. Until now, I have developed in teams of 4-5 members very effectively, completely self-organized and without the need for any training, methodology, or special software. Just discussions in cubes, ad hoc meetings, and one-on- one code reviews. I am now in a position at work where we're being told SCRUM is the way to go, and everything that comes along with it. When they describe SCRUM to me, I read stuff like this:   * Individuals and interactions over processes and tools   * Working software over comprehensive documentation   * Customer collaboration over contract negotiation   * Responding to change over following a plan That's great, but all of it seems like common sense to me. Why did this need codified? Then I'm told the methodology helps us respond to change. What **specific** aspects of SCRUM are allowing me to be so flexible that I was not previously achieving with my ad hoc meetings, cube discussions, and developer planning meetings? They explain the need to have a working deliverable every two weeks, or sprint. In my particular project, there is no \"client\", the software won't be finished for a year or more, and in the meantime I will probably only be demoing to upper management every month or less. So why the explicit need for a deliverable every other week? They emphasize the importance of the sprint planning meeting where the entire team lays out the stories and tasks for the next sprint. This is no different than the impromptu planning meetings I've had in the past. Why must it occur every other Monday, and why does the entire team have to be involved? I understand the concept of every member \"owning\" the product, but the fact is, only a few individuals can ever really contribute to breaking each story up into tasks, while the rest just watch idly. Again, I understand that the majority of people are behind this process, and so it must work, and I need to get on board. I'd just like to understand why. Is my issue that I already practice these things and just don't like unnecessarily codifying them? Or perhaps I've yet to see the advantages of these techniques because they're being done improperly? Any **real** , personal information or advice on this, as opposed to the spiel I'm used to receiving, would be extremely appreciated."}
{"_id": "127620", "title": "Can you learn OO programming without procedural?", "text": "I've seen a number of question asking whether someone should learn procedural or OO first. But is this even possible? Can you learn OO programming without first having an understanding of procedural programming? Obviously, they can learn to program in an OO language like Java or Python first. But you can write Fortran in any language. My impression is that such beginning programmers write procedural code in an OO language at least at first. But what do you think?"}
{"_id": "88830", "title": "Can Powershell do anything that Iron Ruby can't?", "text": "I am torn between learning myself some Powershell or just leveraging my existing Ruby knowledge for the various Windows scripting things that I do from time to time. Powershell does look incredibly powerful, but from initial impressions the syntax is fairly ugly. Is there anything that Powershell can do that I couldn't just do with Iron Ruby?"}
{"_id": "103355", "title": "Pros and cons of working truly remotely", "text": "Will I hurt my career as software developer/entrepreneur if a move to a remote location? Do I have better career prospects if I am based in a developed country or if I live in a remote end of the world with just an internet connection and laptop?"}
{"_id": "170270", "title": "Why are some data types Deprecated while others Obsolete?", "text": "Why are some data types or functions made Obsolete in a newer version of an API and others are marked as Deprecated? Why not make them all Obsolete or why not make them all Deprecated?"}
{"_id": "60322", "title": "As a programmer, do you care what method the development process uses?", "text": "I'm in the job market and I have a set of priorities for my next job including salary, line of business, etc. One thing that is nowhere on my list of requirements however, is the development process methodology. I feel my job is to create software and I view the process structure as something I can adapt to whether it's scrum or waterfall or whatever. Is the development process methodology a priority for you?"}
{"_id": "120391", "title": "Is '@' Error Suppression a Valid Technique for Testing for an Optional Array Key?", "text": "_Rarst_ and I were debating offline about the use of the '`@`' error suppression operator in PHP, specifically for use to test for existence of _\"optional\"_ array keys, i.e. array keys that are being used as a switch here a their lack of existence in the array is functionally equivalent to the array having the key with a value equaling `false`. Here is pseudo-code for this scenario:                function do_something( $args = array() ) {        if ( @$args['switch'] ) {           // Do something with this switch        }        // continue on...      }      vs. this approach:                function do_something( $args = array() ) {        if ( ! empty( $args['switch'] ) && $args['switch'] ) {           // Do something with this switch        }        // continue on...      }      Of course in most use-cases, suppressing errors would not be _A Good Thing(tm)_. However in _this_ use-case where an array is passed with an optional element, it seems to me that it is actually a very good technique but I could be wrong and would like to hear other's opinions on the subject before I make up my mind. I do know that there are alleged performance hits for using the former approach but I'd like to know how they compare with the alternative and if they performance hits really matter in real world scenarios? P.S. I decided to post this because, after debating this offline with Rarst, he asked a more general question here on Programmers but didn't actually give a detailed example of the specific use-case we were debating. And since I'm pretty sure he'll want to use the out-of-context answers on that other question as justification for why the above is _\"bad\"_ I decided I needed to get opinions on _this specific use-case_."}
{"_id": "60321", "title": "Suggestions for a GUI library in Haskell", "text": "As the Haskell Wiki itself states: > There is a large number of GUI libraries for Haskell. Unfortunately there is > no standard one and all are more or less incomplete. In general, low-level > veneers are going well, but they are low level. High-level abstractions are > pretty experimental. There is a need for a supported medium-level GUI > library. A professor at my college asked me and three other computer science majors to consider working on a GUI library for Haskell. His initial idea for the project was to write a layer on top of OpenGL that mimicked the morphic library found in Smalltalk; however, this is just a suggestion and other system are definitely worth consideration. This brings us to the actual, multi-part question.   1. For what level of abstraction should our library strive? The Haskell Wiki seems to indicate strongly that a medium-level GUI library would be preferred; however, a high-level library would still be welcome.   2. Upon what should our library be built? (Ex. OpenGL)   3. What existing GUI library would you like to see our library mimic (if any) and why? (Ex. PyGame, Morphic, Swing, etc)   4. What features would you like to see our library implement or avoid? For example, the good people at Gnome might argue that the minimize button is unnecessary.   5. Do you have any general suggestions?   6. What clever name would you give this imaginary library? (Ex. HOT - Haskell Opengl Toolkit; HAWT - Haskell Advanced Windowing Toolkit)"}
{"_id": "60324", "title": "Moving from a small to a large company", "text": "Does anyone have any tips, thoughts, warnings, or general wisdom for a application/database developer who is moving specifically from a start-up sized company to a large organization? Examples thoughts would include things such as:   * How might I interact differently with the management chain?   * Do you see trends in quality or speed of development that differ between large and small?   * Thoughts on team developent.   * Social Aspects.   * Anything else. **Addition:** Does anyone have any personal stories and experiences to share with a similar move? Please let me know if I can clarify in any way. I appreciate any thoughts!"}
{"_id": "120399", "title": "Threading models when talking to hardware devices", "text": "When writing an interface to hardware over a communication bus, communications timing can sometimes be critical to the operation of a device. As such, it is common for developers to spin up new threads to handle communications. It can also be a terrible idea to have a whole bunch of threads in your system, an in the case that you have multiple hardware devices you may have many many threads that are out of control of the main application. Certainly it can be common to have two threads per device, one for reading and one for writing. I am trying to determine the pros and cons of the two different models I can think of, and would love the help of the Programmers community.   1. Each device instance gets handles it's own threads (or shares a thread for a communication device). A thread may exist for writing, and one for reading. Requested writes to a device from the API are buffered and worked on by the writer thread. The read thread exists in the case of blocking communications, and uses call backs to pass read data to the application. Timing of communications can be handled by the communications thread.   2. Devices aren't given their own threads. Instead read and write requests are queued/buffered. The application then calls a \"DoWork\" function on the interface and allows all read and writes to take place and fire their callbacks. Timing is handled by the application, and the driver can request to be called at a given specific frequency. Pros for Item 1 include finer grain control of timing at the communication level at the expense of having control of whats going on at the higher level application level (which for a real time system, can be terrible). Pros for Item 2 include better control over the timing of the entire system for the application, at the expense of allowing each driver to handle it's own business. If anyone has experience with these scenarios, I'd love to hear some ideas on the approaches used."}
{"_id": "47302", "title": "How To Teach Independence", "text": "In my IB Computer Science class I am routinely asked by... pretty much everyone how to do X or implement Y. I'm the only person with any significant programming experience in the class and I do not necessaries mind teaching people about programming but so many of the questions could be simply solved by doing a little investigating. What are some ways I could try to teach my fellow students how to be self- reliant programmers? All I can really think of is being a Google ninja & learning how to use an API."}
{"_id": "19292", "title": "Best language or tool for automating tedious manual tasks", "text": "We all have tasks that come up from time to time that we think we'd be better off scripting or automating than doing manually. Obviously some tools or languages are better for this than others - no-one (in their right mind) is doing a one off job of cross referencing a bunch of text lists their PM has just given them in assembler for instance. What one tool or language would you recommend for the sort of general quick and dirty jobs you get asked to do where time (rather than elegance) is of the essence? Background: I'm a former programmer, now development manager PM, looking to learn a new language for fun. If I'm going to learn something for fun I'd like it to be useful and this sort of use case is the most likely to come up."}
{"_id": "213343", "title": "Is it a bad idea to create a class which will only have one instance?", "text": "Is it bad coding practice/design to make a class which will only be instantiated once? I have some variables and functions that can be grouped together under a class to \"look good\" (for a lack of a better description) since they are somewhat related, but they can just be global variables and global functions. (Btw, I am using JavaScript, AngularJS, Express, MongoDB.)"}
{"_id": "213340", "title": "Marking specific pieces of drastically changed open source code", "text": "I have taken a small chunk of open-source code, around a hundred lines, and found that for whatever reason, I have modified it so drastically that my end result has essentially no resemblance to the original. Maybe a line or two, and a few variable names, are carried over, but the diff is just one or more big chunks of `-` followed by big chunks of `+`. If I'm now distributing my code, it seems clear to me that I should globally credit the original author for providing a foundation, and include the license under which I acquired the code. I'm wondering what my responsibilities in the social or technical dimensions are to mark specific changes, though. Am I rudely misrepresenting the original author's work when I say that mine is derived from it without pointing out the particular lines that were carried over? Is it helpful for another coder looking at my version if I include comments annotating what I've kept and why? I've used someone else's code as a starting point, taking primarily the ideas and not the substance. Ignoring any legal aspects,* what kind of precise, targeted change documentation should I ideally provide? * * * What is proper etiquette for releasing a complete rewrite of an existing project? is closely related, but I've already chosen option 1. Ethics and best practices when forking code base is also related but doesn't address the specificity of attribution. * * * *Various aspects of which have already been covered here."}
{"_id": "241226", "title": "Designs for outputting to a spreadsheet", "text": "I'm working on a project where we are tasked to gather and output various data to a spreadsheet. We are having tons of problems with the file that holds the code to write the spreadsheet. The cell that the data belongs to is hardcoded, so anytime you need to add anything to the middle of the spreadsheet, you have to increment the location for all the fields after that in the code. There are random blank rows, to add padding between sections, and subsections within the sections, so there's no real pattern that we can replicate. Essentially, anytime we have to add or change anything to the spreadsheet it requires a many long and tedious hours. The code is all in this one large file, hacked together overtime in Perl. I've come up with a few OO solutions, but I'm not too familiar with OO programming in Perl and all my attempts at it haven't been great, so I've shied away from it so far. I've suggested we handle this section of the program with a more OO friendly language, but we can't apparently. I've also suggested that we scrap the entire spreadsheet idea, and just move to a webpage, but we can't do that either. We've been working on this project for a few months, and every time we have to change that file, we all dread it. I'm thinking it's time to start some refactoring. However, I don't even know what could make this file easier to work with. The way the output is formatted makes it so that it has to be somewhat hardcoded. I'm wondering if anyone has insight on any design patterns or techniques they have used to tackle a similar problem. I'm open to any ideas. Perl specific answers are welcome, but I am also interested in language-agnostic solutions."}
{"_id": "213345", "title": "How to refactor an OO program into a functional one?", "text": "I'm having difficulty finding resources on how to write programs in a functional style. The most advanced topic I could find discussed online was using structural typing to cut down on class hierarchies; most just deal with how to use map/fold/reduce/etc to replace imperative loops. What I would really like to find is an in-depth discussion of an OOP implementation of a non-trivial program, its limitations, and how to refactor it in a functional style. Not just an algorithm or a data structure, but something with several different roles and aspects - a video game perhaps. By the way I did read Real-World Functional Programming by Tomas Petricek, but I'm left wanting more."}
{"_id": "213344", "title": "Integrate a Python Project with a Visual Studio C++ Console Application?", "text": "I now have **a Python project** that is in charge of generating the simulation data and visualizing the simulation and processed data. **A C++ console application** is already available in my Visual Studio. The **processing sequence** is as follows:   1. Python project generates the raw data into `data.txt`.   2. Visual Studio C++ console application takes in `data.txt` and processes the data, and finally outputs `results.txt`.   3. Python project takes in `results.txt` and visualizes it with `matplotlib`. I am now doing it manually, and it works perfectly ok for one run. However, it becomes extremely troublesome when I want to have multiple runs. **Questions:**   1. How may I integrate them together? Integrate Python project into Visual Studio or integrate C++ console application into Spyder (my Python IDE)?   2. Currently, I manually enter the debugging parameters in the C++ console application debugging property. How may I make it automatic? i.e. After Python project generates `data.txt`, the `data.txt` gets automatically taken in as parameters by the C++ console application?"}
{"_id": "126245", "title": "Are there any reasons not to cache an entire site permanently?", "text": "I am writing an uber simple blogging platform. The application reads a set of static files that are the articles in the blog, and serves them up. The **only** time any content on the site will change is when a new article is added, or an existing article is changed. I intend to load 100% of the content into the applications memory, and only update it if the static files are changed. I.e. a permanent cache. For a simple blog, the static files are never going to amount to more than a few MB, so application memory wont be a problem. Are there any reasons not to do this? And why do blogging (/other) platforms with content that only changes at set intervals not use this method?"}
{"_id": "65667", "title": "Recommended solutions for integrating iOS with .NET, at the service tier", "text": "I'm developing an application, in iOS, that is required to connect to my Windows Server to poll for new data, update, etc. As a seasoned C# developer, my first instinct is to start a new project in Visual Studio and select _Web Service_ , letting my bias (and comfort level) dictate the service layer of my application. However, I don't want to be biased, and I don't base my decision on a service which I am _very_ familiar with, at the cost of performance.   * I would like to know what other developers have had success using, and if there is a default standard for iOS service layer development?    * Are there protocols that are easier to consume than others within iOS?    * Better ones for the size and/or compression of data?    * Is there anything wrong with using SOAP?  I know it's \"big\" in comparison to protocols like JSON."}
{"_id": "69328", "title": "How to choose a the correct license for a project?", "text": "The applications that I develop on my free time are getting bigger and I'm planning to launch some other projects that I'm currently developing, so I want to know how to choose the correct license for freeware and open source projects for this and some of my future projects."}
{"_id": "154029", "title": "How to get feedback from the community on large chunks of code?", "text": "Code Review.SE is great when you need feedback on a precise, short piece of code. But where to get similar feedback about the code itself when:   * you have thousands of LOC,   * don't have colleagues in your workplace ready or willing to review the code\u00b9,   * don't have thousands of dollars to spend for a professional review by a third party developer?\u00b2 Places like CodePlex are a good idea to get your project known\u00b3, but from what I've seen, the feedback you get on known projects are consumer feedback, i.e. concerns the bugs and feature requests, not the quality of the source code itself. What are the social way to get the community involved in the code review of the codebase of a certain size for an open source project which doesn't have the scale of Firefox or similar products? * * * \u00b9 Which is the case for most personal and open source projects, or projects done in companies where the practice of regular and complete code review is nonexistent. \u00b2 Which is, again, the case for most personal and open source projects. \u00b3 Even if too many projects published on CodePlex never get known, either because nobody cares or because they are presented not very well."}
{"_id": "170828", "title": "Distinguishing repetitive code with the same implementation", "text": "Given this sample code               import java.util.ArrayList;     import blackjack.model.items.Card;          public class BlackJackPlayer extends Player {              private double bet;              private Hand hand01 = new Hand();         private Hand hand02 = new Hand();                   public void addCardToHand01(Card c) {             hand01.addCard(c);         }              public void addCardToHand02(Card c) {             hand02.addCard(c);         }              public void bustHand01() {             hand01.setBust(true);         }              public void bustHand02() {             hand02.setBust(true);         }              public void standHand01() {             hand01.setStand(true);         }              public void standHand02() {             hand02.setStand(true);         }              public boolean isHand01Bust() {             return hand01.isBust();         }              public boolean isHand02Bust() {             return hand02.isBust();         }              public boolean isHand01Standing() {             return hand01.isStanding();         }              public boolean isHand02Standing() {             return hand02.isStanding();         }              public int  getHand01Score(){ return hand01.getCardScore(); }              public int  getHand02Score(){ return hand02.getCardScore(); }          }      Is this considered as a repetitive code? providing that each method is operating a seperate field but doing the same implementation ? Note that hand01 and hand02 should be distinct. if this is considered as repetitive code, how would I address this? providing that each hand is a seperate entity"}
{"_id": "64132", "title": "Interesting interview question", "text": "Today I was asked this question. We have 2 cases with code blocks A, B and C. These code blocks don't share any resources except an iterator (`int i`). Please give 3 possible reasons why case 1 could be faster than case 2, and 3 possible reasons why case 2 could be faster than case 1: **case 1**               for (i=0; i<N; ++i){      A;      B;      C;     }      **case 2**               for (i=0; i<N; ++i){      A;     }     for (i=0; i<N; ++i){      B;     }     for (i=0; i<N; ++i){      C;     }"}
{"_id": "69327", "title": "What kind of Web development projects benefit from using ORM?", "text": "I'll start by saying that I've done 95% of my database work using SQL. Recently, I did some investigation of various ORMs, such as NHibernate and Doctrine. I can see the advantages of not needing to know much SQL and the database portability that an ORM provides. But I can also see that knowing SQL will make working with an ORM more effective and I can only think of one time in my career that an application's biggest change would be the database vendor. Because I'm very comfortable writing SQL and am apparently not realizing the often taught benefits of using an ORM, my question to heavy ORM users is this: **What kind of Web development projects benefit the most from using ORM?**"}
{"_id": "153037", "title": "Best way to update UI when dealing with data synchronization", "text": "I'm working on a bug at work. The app is written in Objective-C for iOS based device, for the iPad. I'm the new guy there and I've been given a hard task. Sometimes, the UIButton text property does not show the correct state when syncing. Basically, when the app is syncing, my UI control would say \"Syncing\" and when its not syncing it'll display \"Updated @ [specific date]\". Right now there is a property on the app delegate called \"SyncInProgress\". When querying / syncing, occurring on background thread, it updates a counter. The property will return a bool checking expression 'counter > 0'. There are three states I need to deal with. Sync has started. Sync is updating tables. Sync finished. These items need to occur in order. My coworker suggested to take a state based approach instead of just responding to events. I'm not sure about how to go about that. Would it be best to have the UI receive a notification to determine what state its in or to pull every so often if state changed? Here are two posts that I put on stackoverflow, in the last few days, that relate to this. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11025469/ios-syncing-using-a-state- approach-instead-of-just-reacting-to-events http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11037930/viewcontroller-when- viewwillappear-called-does-not-always-correctly-reflect-stat Any ideas that anyone might have to very much appreciated. Thanks, developerDoug"}
{"_id": "80763", "title": "Objective-C and C++", "text": "Awhile back I posted a question about a kid I know and his dilemma about getting a college degree. He has decided to go for it and apparently already has some credits in computer science and math already (AP or something?), so he gets to move on to more interesting stuff. One of his choices as an elective programming class is to either take Objective-C for Mac or C++ programming. I am guessing that these classes won't teach programming concepts like a CS 101 course or something would but probably more how to build programs out with a specific toolset. He asked me which he should go for; he wants to do the Objective-C because he has a Mac and an iPhone and it would be a good way to get his feet wet, I think he should do C++ because it's more standardized and widely used in industry. Then again, maybe it doesn't really matter since it's all just experience anyway and that never hurts. Any thoughts about this? I always hate giving advice to aspiring programmers because I am always afraid that I'm just passing along what my ideals are and what I think is important when it might not be. It's been a long time since I did CS classes and I'm not sure what the curriculum is like these days. When I went to school it was C and then Java for OO later on; I never had a choice really it was what it was."}
{"_id": "254173", "title": "Instantiating objects in Java", "text": "I'm learning now Java from scratch and when I started to learn about instantiating objects, I don't understand - in which cases do I need to instantiate objects? For example I'm studying from TutsPlus course about it and there is example about \"Rectangle\" class. Instructor says that it needs to be instantiated. So I started to doubt about - when do I need to instantiate those objects when writing Java code?"}
{"_id": "118015", "title": "What could be some pitfalls in introducing a style guide and documentation generating software in a development team?", "text": "I'm considering using appledoc, a flavor of Doxygen for use in generating Objective-C code documentation, in order to create documentation for my company's iOS apps. The idea is that a server will generate the docs on a post-commit hook, then publish the documentation on an internal network. Right now we have very little documentation of any kind, even comments in the code itself, so I'm expecting I will have to ask people to begin writing more documentation as they code. In this vein, I will also collaborate with my team in order to create a \"style guide\" for Objective-C code (like Google's), which will lay down some ground rules on how to write and document code. What are some potential pitfalls in the above plan? Are style guides effective? I see the benefits in adopting a coding standard, but will developers find it restrictive? And do documentation projects such as this one work? And if not, why do they fail? _(I've posted on Stack Overflow a few times with moderate success, but this is my first time posting here. Please let me know if I could improve my question in any way. Thanks!)_"}
{"_id": "173616", "title": "Will it be okay to use Amazon Glacier for everyday data retrieval?", "text": "I am planning to use cloud storage for my app. What my app will do is retrieval of users data and user authentication and have the ability to sync data continuously. Is it a good idea to use Amazon Glacier? Is there a bandwidth limitation or request or any downside of using it?"}
{"_id": "82896", "title": "Why is Tortoise SVN case sensitive?", "text": "I've recently encountered this using TortoiseSVN, but I assume it will be the same for CVS based programs (correct me?). Out of pure curiosity, is there any reason why the CVS filesystem is case- sensitive? I.e. the following URLS are different:               svn://repo/branches/PROJECT     svn://repo/branches/project      Is there some legacy reason for this? It gets more intriguing on a file basis. If 2 files exist in a directory, lets say `ProjectOne.vbp` and `projectone.vbp`, one will overwrite the other in a normal Windows filesystem (or, as I have encountered, throw a cryptic TortoiseSVN database error), but can co-exist peacefully in the repository. Now obviously it's up to the user to not use ridiculous naming such as the above, but are there any advantages that I'm missing to having case- sensitivity?"}
{"_id": "173615", "title": "Graphically intensive silverlight design", "text": "I'm designing a silverlight application for showing sheet music from a midi file. I want to create a horizontally scrolling musical staff. At my job I maintain a winforms application that is a scrolling Gantt chart of airplane schedules, and it basically has a rows collection, and it maps the left-most pixel and right-most pixels of the control to datetimes. Then the paint method loops through what it determines will be the visible rows, and draws a screen that shows the schedule information between the two dates. Would I be correct in assuming that I would need to something similar in silverlight for my sheetmusic, or would it be better to just create a horizontal scrollviewer containing a canvas that I have drawn programmaticially on. Am I headed in the right direction? I havent seen any articles on designing such a custom control: can you point me at any?"}
{"_id": "173613", "title": "Creating a Application in Winrt that requires Internet", "text": "I am making a paid App for Windows 8, c#. I am wondering which is better?     1. If my application doesn't need internet connection normally but does requires internet connection for the first time to download content data. --Makes my life easier   2. Load the default data when installing. Then ask the user if he wants to update in app. -- Making the default data will be pain. Now my big question is, is it safe to assume user has access to internet now- a-days when using application that shouldn't require internet?"}
{"_id": "177726", "title": "How to get lookahead symbol when constructing LR(1) NFA for parser?", "text": "I am reading an explanation (awesome \"Parsing Techniques\" by D.Grune and C.J.H.Jacobs; p.292 in the 2nd edition) about how to construct an LR(1) parser, and I am at the stage of building the initial NFA. What I don't understand is how to get/compute a lookahead symbol. Here is the example from the book, the grammar:               S -> E     E -> E - T     E -> T     T -> ( E )     T -> n      `n` is terminal. The \"weird\" transitions for me are is the sequence:               1)   S -> . E        eof     2)   E -> . E - T    eof     3)   E -> . E - T    -     4)   E -> E . - T    -     5)   E -> E - . T    -      (Note: In the above table, the state numbers are in front and the lookahead symbol is at the end.) What puzzles me is that transition from (4) to (5) means reading `-` token, right? So how is it that `-` is still a lookahead symbol and even more important why is it that `eof` is no longer a lookahead symbol? After all in an input such as `n - n eof` there is only one `-` symbol. My naive thinking tells me (5) should be written as:               5)   E -> E - . T    - eof      And another thing -- `n` is terminal. Why it is not used at all as a lookahead symbol? I mean -- we expect to see `-` or `(`, it is ok, but lack of `n` means we are sure it won't appear in input? **Update** : after more reading I am only more confused ;-) I.e. what is really a lookahead? Because I see such state as (p.292, 2nd column, 2nd row):               E -> E . - T      eof      Lookahead says `eof` but the incoming input says `-`. Isn't it a contradiction? And it is not only in this book."}
{"_id": "161933", "title": "Running software as a service using unmodified GPL(v2+) program as a core dependency: must the SaaS source code be released?", "text": "I'm designing a software as a service project which will only be accessed online. I may have a hard dependency on an executable which is covered by GNU GPL (v2 or later). I understand that my code, if I were ever to distribute it, must be distributed under the GPL terms as well. I am pretty sure that running the service over the network is not conveying/distributing the code. Thus, am I correct in thinking that I may use the GPL dependency without having to disclose all my code? * * * Just so I can provide a concrete example: Let's say I'm designing on online document processing system, kind of like Google Docs. I want to be able to upload basically any file type into the system and have it get converted to whatever internal format. Instead of trying to scratch out a converter, I'd rather use an existing program I know about that allows for the conversion. This program is an executable with GNU GPL v2 (or later) licensing. Can I legally have a software-as-a-service without providing my source code?"}
{"_id": "161935", "title": "Job at a Testing Solution Company", "text": "I have an option to join a company which is going to develop solutions to do load/stress testing . Its a startup and product is still under development . How do you think market for load/stress testing based product is now a days ."}
{"_id": "53181", "title": "What is the difference between instantiating and loading a class in Java?", "text": "In Java world, there are some scenarios where I see developers used to load the class rather than instantiation. What is the difference between instantiating and loading a class?"}
{"_id": "95567", "title": "How to prevent people from playing with your website?", "text": "I have designed my first website recently. I created my own blog like thing in PHP. I write articles and below the articles there is a place to add comments. Sometimes I get random comments something like 'sd$^&(87&(*2d10hsdasko' with no meaning. There are hundreds of them. I think some silly person with lots of time must be playing with my website for fun. I am thinking of finding his IP address and blocking it. Has someone faced such a problem? How do you prevent people from playing with your website?"}
{"_id": "191546", "title": "What is an XML protocol?", "text": "I've been asked to provide something for a client and I'm not really sure on what they want. I wondered if anyone has heard the term used before. The situation is that we have a program which receives .xml files from a host system (the files are put in a directory and our program picks them up every x mins). The files contain various bits of information. The IT manager for the company who has the host system has requested some details about the XML protocol which is being used. I assumed he wanted an XML schema and some example xml files which I sent through to him. However he said he didn't want this and reiterated that he wanted to know what XML PROTOCOL was being used. Could anyone tell me what an XML Protocol is? I think I'm probably being really stupid about all this but I don't know what he means. Thanks everyone"}
{"_id": "90580", "title": "What tools can be used to get a reference like document.frames.item(0).document.innerhtml?", "text": "I want to scrape things from a web page. The way I want to do this is to extract the text of a DOM element (I believe this is the correct description). This means that I will to retrieve the text of an element like document.frames.item(0).document.innerhtml. Now I am looking for a tool to do this quickly by clicking on the element in a web page. IE DOM Inspector can do this, but is not free and requires admin rights on the computer. I have not been able to get the reference to the DOM element using DOM inspector plug-in for Firefox. Are there any other alternative tools?"}
{"_id": "191548", "title": "Developing a cross-platform interface for writing to hardware like PicKit OR USB over the web?", "text": "I thought long and hard on weather to put this question in programmers or stack overflow. Please let me know if this is not the right place and I will post it to SO. My friend and I am developing a display board that would need some configuration every now and then. e.g. setting contrast / backlight etc. Now this setting needs to be user controlled and we have prior experience of using PicKit2 in past. The way we programmed it was with use of command line / binaries available for both linux and windows. A front end would get the user input and then write to the pickit2 using these command line interfaces. Our target is to try and achieve this through a web interface. Now we want to discuss with the community if there is a real possibility of developing such a cross platform interface? As a backup option we are thinking of developing native application for all needed platform and using pickit2 with command line. Ideal way would be to just have the USB HID to do this. I looked into java USB libraries and ActiveX but nothing promising. Similar discussions around this topic are quiet old on StackOverflow so I thought I will ask this community to shed some light on possibility and limitations. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3503244/controlling-a-usb-device-from-a- web-application http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2219378/control-a-users- usb-device-via-a-webpage-possible Is there any option we are not thinking about? Should we be happy that pickit2 is the backup solution and start developing different native apps."}
{"_id": "90584", "title": "Can I license parts of my code under different licenses", "text": "Can I license different parts of my code (different classes) under different licenses? E.g. I have downloaded and modified a class which licensed under the BSD 3 point. Can I then say, file AObject.class is BSD, and BObject.class is LGPL (or MIT, or MPL, or PD, etc etc)"}
{"_id": "195250", "title": "Best approach how to create custom fields - dynamic forms", "text": "I'm wondering how can I create functionality of custom fields. Below I described what I want and solution which I consider. Case study: Let\u2019s assume that we have 2 roles: Admin and User. Admin has possibility to \"add custom fields to forms\". User can open that form in add/edit/read-only mode. In addition User can see a grid with columns from that custom fields. Now I want to do following things as an admin: I add new textbox and this control should be available on add/edit/read-only view and value should be available in the grid(sorting functionality is required). Below I place problems which I see to this feature:   1. Where store form configuration \u2013 xml or custom tables for storing form view    2. Where store results \u2013 xml or custom tables for storing results    3. How to make grid with paging and sorting \u2013 If I\u2019m going to use SQL Server then I will probably build some Views.    4. How to build UI \u2013 I will use MVC and I think this is the easiest step. Have you ever made something like this? Can you share with me some solution? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "195258", "title": "Detecting areas of isotropic vs anisotropic diffusion in a flood-fill (or similar) operation", "text": "Hello fellow programmers! I have a 2D graph which is best described as a Cartesian grid with traversible and non-traversible cells. I'd like to be able to detect subsets of this graph where the diffusion behaves anisotropically, i.e.: it is constrained by corridor-like passages. I initially turned to diffusion tensor imaging in neuroscience, but I'm having a great deal of trouble digesting the material. I'm wondering if any of this has already been distilled into a usable algorithm, or if there are other approaches that could be fruitful. Specifically, I'd like to be able to determine the following:   1. Areas in which diffusion is _anisotropic_ : highly constrained to two directions (think of water flowing through a 2D slice of a straw).   2. Areas in which diffusion is _isotropic_ : largely unconstrained (i.e., water is diffusing through a large, **though irregularly-shaped** space. Since the graph only contains very narrow or open areas, it would be sufficient to determine **either** anisotropic **or** isotropic diffusion and deduce the other one with a simple contrast. **TL;DR** : How can I find the \"average\" _direction_ of a diffusion in a flood-fill or similar operation? **EDIT:** Here's an example of my graph as an image: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/LICSO.png)"}
{"_id": "7834", "title": "Will getting a degree in mathematics help in game development?", "text": "I'm two months away from getting my degree in systems engineering, which is to say, I learned how to code and code well using managed languages. The only reason I got into this career was because I wanted to create video games. I know now that with my current skillset, I won't be able to create some of the things I have in my head. Would getting a second degree in pure mathematics would help me with this goal?"}
{"_id": "97587", "title": "Reaction time of big companies to bug reports", "text": "I have submitted a bug report over a month ago to one of the biggest software companies about one of their flagship development products (I deliberately not include any more details about this bug report, so that the question doesn't turn into a rant). I only received an templated assurance that \"we're working on it\".   * Is it normal for big companies to react to bug reports at such pace?   * Can one define a \"typical\" reaction time?   * Is it typically longer than the reaction time of large & actively maintained Open Source projects, or not?   * Is there a cultural difference in the way they react?   * For example, maybe the commercial companies try to avoid engaging in discussions about the bugs in fear of bad PR?"}
{"_id": "245903", "title": "Architecture for maintaining/executing multiple versions of same strategy / functionality in live application", "text": "So I am working with a customer who has an older application that has quite a few interesting quirks. Among other things, it has its own code version system for business functions, by storing the entire algorithm version in a database. The data is then retrieved and compiled on request (this is a web application, and yes, it compiles a ton of code each time you try to buy something). For obvious reasons, this isn't exactly fast. I am looking into migrating the code into normal code projects, but as you can imagine, this creates an interesting challenge in regards to versions of the algorithms. It is a business requirement that old quotes / deals that are up for review must use the same algorithm that was used when it was first created. Said quote should then be able to recalculate, with changed input etc (so we can't just store the results). How would you approach this problem? They are having such massive issues in production now that I have simply decided we will create a hot-fix by moving all the code to actual libraries and calling functions with name versioning (someAlgortihm6Jun2014 or whatever) which will solve the problem of immense bandwith use and wasted compilation time, but it is far from elegant. While I will be looking to implement much larger architectural changes in the future, for now I am simply looking for a good way to maintain multiple versions of the same algorithm in static code, without resorting to this naming convention. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "52588", "title": "Setting coding priorities", "text": "In the dev shops I've worked in, nobody has ever mentioned \"coding priorities\". I read this in a book or site somewhere, and sets the expectation of what priority should be first in the code. In places where this is not specified, what should the first priority be? It may sound simple to say \" **do what the business need requires** \", but that could be at the expense of performance/maintainability. Many people say maintainability first, regardless, some say fulfill the need regardless. I am a young developer, so I am probably missing the point somewhere. Of course, programming is engineering and tough because you can never have the perfect solution. Thanks"}
{"_id": "119946", "title": "Is it bad idea to use flag variable to search MAX element in array?", "text": "Over my programming career I formed a habit to introduce a flag variable that indicates that the first comparison has occured, just like Msft does in its linq Max() extension method implementation               public static int Max(this IEnumerable<int> source)     {         if (source == null)         {             throw Error.ArgumentNull(\"source\");         }         int num = 0;         bool flag = false;         foreach (int num2 in source)         {             if (flag)             {                 if (num2 > num)                 {                     num = num2;                 }             }             else             {                 num = num2;                 flag = true;             }         }         if (!flag)         {             throw Error.NoElements();         }         return num;     }      However I have met some heretics lately, who implement this by just starting with the first element and assigning it to result, and oh no - it turned out that STL and Java authors have preferred the latter method. Java:               public static <T extends Object & Comparable<? super T>> T max(Collection<? extends T> coll) {     Iterator<? extends T> i = coll.iterator();     T candidate = i.next();              while (i.hasNext()) {         T next = i.next();         if (next.compareTo(candidate) > 0)         candidate = next;     }     return candidate;     }      STL:               template<class _FwdIt> inline     _FwdIt _Max_element(_FwdIt _First, _FwdIt _Last)     {   // find largest element, using operator<     _FwdIt _Found = _First;     if (_First != _Last)         for (; ++_First != _Last; )             if (_DEBUG_LT(*_Found, *_First))                 _Found = _First;     return (_Found);     }      Are there any preferences between one method or another? Are there any historical reasons for this? Is one method more dangerous than another? **UPDATE** : Please note, that the java version is capable of throwing exceptions with the line `T candidate = i.next();`and it's possible to get the same behavior in C# with the guard clause as it's shown in the second part of @ratchet freak's answer."}
{"_id": "254481", "title": "How do I resolve $ref in a JSON object?", "text": "I have written a single page application that uses rest services to retrieve JSON objects. The JSON objects being returned are C# objects serialized using the Newtonsoft.JSON library. The returned JSON object contains $ref pointers to specific $id objects within the same JSON object (The question here shows an example). I need to access the actual data that the $ref points to, but I do not know how to access it without locating the original source. I've found solutions such as writing a new contract serializer and writing my own implementation of resolving the references. I feel like there should be an easier solution than these two. I've also explored the Newtonsoft JSON serialization settings; I've tried setting PreserveReferenceHandling to None, but I haven't had any success there. I'm looking for solutions other than the ones I've mentioned. I'm hoping there's a simple solution that requires very little code to implement and no additional frameworks. UPDATE I've been reading some more about this and discovered that $ref is a JSON Pointer fragment. The reference number is an ID that references an item from a different schema. That appears to be the solution, but a schema needs to be defined for it to work. RFC for JSON Pointer Fragments Info about JSON Pointer Fragments References:   Resolve circular JSON references   Serialization Settings"}
{"_id": "254480", "title": "Issues regarding new instances of controllers on view pages", "text": "Is there any issue with creating a new controller within the ascx view pages. I don't want to create a model, are there any issues with doing it this way. Normally, the controllers control variables within the model, and the model is the middle point between them, but I am creating a new instance of a controller class within the ascx page itself. Is this ok? **EDIT I want to know the implications of putting an instance of a controller class directly into the asp.net ascx code on a view page Thanks"}
{"_id": "9354", "title": "Should a test plan account for configuration values?", "text": "Should a test plan for internal software account for the error states of all possible configurations? Ie: I have an app.config with some file paths. Should the test plan have steps for testing what happens when those values are incorrect?"}
{"_id": "235808", "title": "distribution, release and version", "text": "1. Linux is packaged in a format known as a Linux distribution for desktop and server use. Linux distributions include the Linux kernel, supporting utilities and libraries and usually a large amount of application software to fulfill the distribution's intended use. I wonder if there is also a similar concept for a software application? A \"distribution\" of a software application? How is it defined?   2. For a Linux distribution can have many releases and versions. I wonder What is the difference and relation between release and version, for either a OS distribution or a software application? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "46698", "title": "Separate trackers for features and defects?", "text": "At my company we use JIRA for new feature requests and then the QA department logs any bugs/defects in Quality Center. I find Quality Center to be very non- userfriendly as it requires IE because it uses ActiveX. Is this a common practice to use separate trackers for feature requests and defects? Is there any advantage to having separate trackers?"}
{"_id": "149068", "title": "How to avoid context switching while developing full stack web apps?", "text": "To give some context, I've been a Ruby & Rails developer for the past few years, and just recently started doing quite a lot of JavaScript to add more responsiveness to the apps. When programming backend, it is quite easy (at least for me), to do most of the stuff test driven and just keep hammering out a bunch of code that works, while being able to focus. But I found that as I'm moving more towards the frontend, I am constantly context switching. Some JavaScript is easy to test (models), but the parts that are directly connected to the GUI seem just impossible to reasonably test automatically. This isn't as much of a deal when I first start with the GUI part with dummy data, but once it all gets connected, and the GUI is created based on data from a an external API and my machine is running two apps at the same time and I'm basically debugging both, it just seems like I'm constantly context switching, not really being able to focus on one thing. An example here might be a Node.js chat server that connects to another Rails application via some API. Now if the API was already done and set in stone, I could easily just focus on the Node.js part ... but trying to do the whole thing in some agile fashion, I just built the API as I build the Node.js app, which has a side effect on working on both Rails and Node (both backed up by different databases etc, ...). If I compare this to working on one small library or just some deep backend stuff, I find that my productivity basically non-existent, because I constantly switch around and find bugs in 50 different places, instead of just focusing on one. **Is there something that I'm fundamentaly doing wrong?**"}
{"_id": "149069", "title": "Interpretation of DRY principle", "text": "Right now I'm struggling with this concept of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) in my coding. I'm creating this function in which I'm fearing it's becoming too complex but I'm trying to follow the DRY principle.               createTrajectoryFromPoint(A a,B b,C c,boolean doesSomething,boolean doesSomething2)      This function I have say takes 3 input parameters, and then the function will do something slightly different given the boolean combinations `doesSomething` and `doesSomething2`. However the problem I'm having is that this function is growing in complexity greatly with every new boolean parameter that's added. So my question is, is it better to have a bunch of different functions that share a lot of the same logic (therefore violating the DRY principle) or one function that behaves slightly differently given a number of parameters but making it much more complex (but preserving DRY)?"}
{"_id": "149060", "title": "\"continue\" and \"break\" for static analysis", "text": "I know there have been a number of discussions of whether break and continue should be considered harmful generally (with the bottom line being - more or less - that it depends; in some cases they enhance clarity and readability, but in other cases they do not). Suppose a new project is starting development, with plans for nightly builds including a run through a static analyzer. Should it be part of the coding guidelines for the project to avoid (or strongly discourage) the use of `continue` and `break`, even if it can sacrifice a little readability and require excessive indentation? I'm most interested in how this applies to C code. Essentially, can the use of these control operators significantly complicate the static analysis of the code possibly resulting in additional false negatives, that would otherwise register a potential fault if break or continue were not used? (Of course a complete static analysis proving the correctness of an aribtrary program is an undecidable proposition, so please keep responses about any hands-on experience with this you have, and not on theoretical impossibilities) Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "212903", "title": "What is the best procedure to setup real-time data transfers with Redis?", "text": "I have setup a RESTful API using Ruby on Rails for an iPhone application.There are some instances, however, that I would like to use Real-Time Pub/Sub data- transfers, I have drawn up 2 potentials:   * Connect the Rails API to a RealTime Node/Socket.io application using Redis. Where the iOS clients subscribe to the Node App through a socket connection.   * Interface Redis-rb (Ruby) and ObjCHiredis (iOS) directly - circumventing the Node application. (Is this even possible?) Would either of these be workable/recommended solutions? Disclaimer: I have never used Redis before."}
{"_id": "212900", "title": "Is open source development considered \"commercial use\" of software?", "text": "## The Software Setup: I am currently planning on creating a new software product. I have never commercially launched an application, nor am I doing this for a company. It's more for fun than anything, but it _may_ bring in some cash too. :P Anyway, there are going to be two \"core parts\" of the software:   * **Part Number One:** This one I am going to release open source. It's basically an installer/launcher/patcher that automatically checks for updates, it can handle error reporting, etc. Blah, blah, blah.    * **Part Number Two:** This is going to be the actual software. Closed source, but freeware. It's linked to an account, which can be either free or paid. * * * ## The Problem: So that's all fine above... until I realise my development computer has a lot of \"freeware for non-businesses and paid for businesses\" software. (Office, antivirus, and who knows what else?) I know I will _definitely_ have to do something about the software for the for-profit part, but **how about the open source part?** It is free, but the whole intention of developing it is for adding it to a bigger, paid software."}
{"_id": "212904", "title": "Larger Code is Still Faster", "text": "When compiling C code with `gcc`, there are compiler optimizations, some that limit code size and others create fast code. From the `-S` flag, I see that the `-O2/03` generates more assembly than the `-Os` code. How is more assembly still faster than less assembly?"}
{"_id": "45525", "title": "Open office arrangement with non-programmers (sales, etc) talking all day?", "text": "Just curious about this, I'm about to leave this job for a variety of reasons but one thing is that the office I work in is a full open office with a few non-programmer employees in close proximity talking nearly all day on the phone, making sales calls etc. This is obviously terrible for concentration and in my opinion laughable that someone thinks this is a proper way to run a business where the core aspect of the business is software development. I'm just curious how common this would be, if anyone else has had a situation like this. It seems to me this is an obvious sign of a bad employer, I should have probably realized this earlier but I needed a job right away so I took it. I understand that programmers may have a shared room or space, but I would think that it would be the norm to keep things separated as far as people who talk on the phone for a living vs those who have to concentrate on a programming task."}
{"_id": "45524", "title": "How to bag online side projects related to Web development?", "text": "Basically, I want to know how people bag side projects related to Web Development online to make the extra buck. I'm looking for websites or portals that allow web developers to pick up new interesting projects that they can do in their free time."}
{"_id": "213161", "title": "Do you have to ban atomics to get good tool support for race detectors?", "text": "It seems that Helgrind treats atomics the same way as normal read/write operations. So, using atomics will result in lots of false positives. I don't know exactly how ThreadSanitizer deals with atomics, but I have found a method called tsan_atomic32_load. I assume that it can distinguish between atomics and normal read/write operations. In practice, however, the best way seems to be to avoid atomics in order to use tools to detect race conditions. Otherwise, you end up with to many false positives. There are specialized tools to verify concurrent data structures, e.g., Spin. Although it looks powerful, it seems to be out-of-scope for regular applications. **How do big projects deal with the problem of false-positives?** Do they disencourage the use of atomics, do they use suppression files, or do they simply not bother with race detectors?"}
{"_id": "243089", "title": "What's the best way to expose a Model object in a ViewModel?", "text": "In a WPF MVVM application, I exposed my model object into my viewModel by creating an instance of Model class (which cause dependency) into ViewModel. Instead of creating separate VM properties, I wrap the Model properties inside my ViewModel Property. My model is just an entity framework generated proxy class:               public partial class TblProduct     {         public TblProduct()         {             this.TblPurchaseDetails = new HashSet<TblPurchaseDetail>();             this.TblPurchaseOrderDetails = new HashSet<TblPurchaseOrderDetail>();             this.TblSalesInvoiceDetails = new HashSet<TblSalesInvoiceDetail>();             this.TblSalesOrderDetails = new HashSet<TblSalesOrderDetail>();         }              public int ProductId { get; set; }         public string ProductCode { get; set; }         public string ProductName { get; set; }         public int CategoryId { get; set; }         public string Color { get; set; }         public Nullable<decimal> PurchaseRate { get; set; }         public Nullable<decimal> SalesRate { get; set; }         public string ImagePath { get; set; }         public bool IsActive { get; set; }              public virtual TblCompany TblCompany { get; set; }         public virtual TblProductCategory TblProductCategory { get; set; }         public virtual TblUser TblUser { get; set; }         public virtual ICollection<TblPurchaseDetail> TblPurchaseDetails { get; set; }         public virtual ICollection<TblPurchaseOrderDetail> TblPurchaseOrderDetails { get; set; }         public virtual ICollection<TblSalesInvoiceDetail> TblSalesInvoiceDetails { get; set; }         public virtual ICollection<TblSalesOrderDetail> TblSalesOrderDetails { get; set; }     }      Here is my ViewModel:               public class ProductViewModel : WorkspaceViewModel     {         #region Constructor         public ProductViewModel()         {             StartApp();         }              #endregion //Constructor              #region Properties              private IProductDataService _dataService;         public IProductDataService DataService         {             get             {                 if (_dataService == null)                 {                     if (IsInDesignMode)                     {                         _dataService = new ProductDataServiceMock();                     }                     else                     {                         _dataService = new ProductDataService();                     }                 }                 return _dataService;             }              }              //Get and set Model object         private TblProduct _product;         public TblProduct Product         {             get             {                 return _product ?? (_product = new TblProduct());             }             set             {                 _product = value;             }         }              #region Public Properties              public int ProductId         {             get             {                 return Product.ProductId;             }             set             {                 if (Product.ProductId == value)                 {                     return;                 }                      Product.ProductId = value;                 RaisePropertyChanged(\"ProductId\");             }         }              public string ProductName         {             get             {                 return Product.ProductName;             }             set             {                 if (Product.ProductName == value)                 {                     return;                 }                      Product.ProductName = value;                 RaisePropertyChanged(() => ProductName);             }         }              private ObservableCollection<TblProduct> _productRecords;         public ObservableCollection<TblProduct> ProductRecords         {             get { return _productRecords; }             set             {                 _productRecords = value;                 RaisePropertyChanged(\"ProductRecords\");             }         }              //Selected Product         private TblProduct _selectedProduct;         public TblProduct SelectedProduct         {             get             {                 return _selectedProduct;             }             set             {                 _selectedProduct = value;                 if (_selectedProduct != null)                 {                     this.ProductId = _selectedProduct.ProductId;                     this.ProductCode = _selectedProduct.ProductCode;                 }                 RaisePropertyChanged(\"SelectedProduct\");             }         }              #endregion  //Public Properties              #endregion  // Properties              #region Commands              private ICommand _newCommand;         public ICommand NewCommand         {             get             {                 if (_newCommand == null)                 {                     _newCommand = new RelayCommand(() => ResetAll());                 }                 return _newCommand;             }         }              private ICommand _saveCommand;         public ICommand SaveCommand         {             get             {                 if (_saveCommand == null)                 {                     _saveCommand = new RelayCommand(() => Save());                 }                 return _saveCommand;             }         }              private ICommand _deleteCommand;         public ICommand DeleteCommand         {             get             {                 if (_deleteCommand == null)                 {                     _deleteCommand = new RelayCommand(() => Delete());                 }                 return _deleteCommand;             }         }              #endregion //Commands              #region Methods              private void StartApp()         {             LoadProductCollection();         }              private void LoadProductCollection()         {             var q = DataService.GetAllProducts();             this.ProductRecords = new ObservableCollection<TblProduct>(q);         }                   private void Save()         {             if (SelectedOperateMode == OperateModeEnum.OperateMode.New)             {                   //Pass the Model object into Dataservice for save                   DataService.SaveProduct(this.Product);             }             else if (SelectedOperateMode == OperateModeEnum.OperateMode.Edit)             {                  //Pass the Model object into Dataservice for Update                   DataService.UpdateProduct(this.Product);             }             ResetAll();             LoadProductCollection();         }                   #endregion  //Methods     }      Here is my Service class:               class ProductDataService:IProductDataService     {         /// <summary>         /// Context object of Entity Framework model         /// </summary>         private MaizeEntities Context { get; set; }              public ProductDataService()         {             Context = new MaizeEntities();         }              public IEnumerable<TblProduct> GetAllProducts()         {             using(var context=new R_MaizeEntities())             {                var q = from p in context.TblProducts                        where p.IsDel == false                        select p;                      return new ObservableCollection<TblProduct>(q);             }         }              public void SaveProduct(TblProduct _product)         {             using(var context=new R_MaizeEntities())             {                 _product.LastModUserId = GlobalObjects.LoggedUserID;                 _product.LastModDttm = DateTime.Now;                 _product.CompanyId = GlobalObjects.CompanyID;                 context.TblProducts.Add(_product);                      context.SaveChanges();             }         }              public void UpdateProduct(TblProduct _product)         {             using (var context = new R_MaizeEntities())             {                 context.TblProducts.Attach(_product);                      context.Entry(_product).State = EntityState.Modified;                 _product.LastModUserId = GlobalObjects.LoggedUserID;                 _product.LastModDttm = DateTime.Now;                 _product.CompanyId = GlobalObjects.CompanyID;                 context.SaveChanges();             }         }              public void DeleteProduct(int _productId)         {             using (var context = new R_MaizeEntities())             {                 var product = (from c in context.TblProducts                         where c.ProductId == _productId                         select c).First();                      product.LastModUserId = GlobalObjects.LoggedUserID;                 product.LastModDttm = DateTime.Now;                 product.IsDel = true;                 context.SaveChanges();             }         }               }      I exposed my model object in my viewModel by creating an instance of it using new keyword, also I instantiated my DataService class in VM. I know this will cause a strong dependency. So:   1. What's the best way to expose a Model object in a ViewModel?   2. What's the best way to use DataService in VM?"}
{"_id": "26949", "title": "What are your opinions on \"Gamification\"?", "text": "I watched an interesting Google Talk video (warning about an hour of your time) about Gamification of whatever you are doing. It's clear that the StackExchange set of sites employ quite a few of these principles. There's something compelling about making work fun, but I wonder how many problem domains can incorporate these ideas? They definitely apply to social applications, but is that all? The concept of a virtual loyalty program is also quite compelling. Short description of Gamification: There is a system of scoring and reward. For example, Reputation in StackExchange is a type of scoring. Badges are a type of reward. The additional priviledges you gain as your reputation goes up are also a type of reward. An example of a loyalty program with no real redemption would be a promotion that a convenience store did a while back where you buy their products and get FarmVille credits in return. No real money or goods exchange hands, and the costs to the retailer are minimal at best. Yet it brings in real money for these virtual paybacks. Shameless use of JohnL's link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification **NOTE:** The speaker refers to four classes of users which seem to have become the archetypes. They are Achievers, Socializer, Explorer, and Killers. The Achievers would most likely apply to all of us programmers--we like to get things done. Apparently 80% of people are socializers and like light, non- confrontational interactions. Explorers go to every corner of a game/application to discover whatever easter eggs and hidden features they can. Killers not only want to win, they want you to lose and get praise/status for beating you."}
{"_id": "163793", "title": "Should I listen to my employer and use CASE tools?", "text": "My employer (Not a Developer) thinks that CASE tools will help us improve our development process and documentation. I am not sure about that, we are a small team of 5 developers building mobile banking solutions for local clients. I think CASE tools will be a waste of time and money as they need to be purchased and we will need some time before we get used to them and be efficient working with them for modeling and stuff. Code generation is another issue, I really think that the CASE generated code won't be as good as code written by good developers. I think that if we stick with agile principles, design patterns, use TDD, and keep our code clean. we should be good. And as far as Analysis and Design, I think simple UML diagrams on whiteboard should do the trick. Documentation is good and important, but should be made as little as possible and we should not focus on Docs and forget the code. This is what i think. Am I correct? or should I listen to my employer and start researching for an appropriate CASE Tool?"}
{"_id": "254737", "title": "Does an Rcpp-dependent package require a GPL license?", "text": "I'm writing a commercial package that uses R (GPL) for its computation. The GPL FAQ clearly states that GPLed programming language interpreters do not impose licensing restrictions on the \"program\" (text file with R code). So far, so good. Part of the package is compiled using Rcpp, which also uses the GPL. The next paragraph in the FAQ reads: > However, when the interpreter is extended to provide \"bindings\" to other > facilities (often, but not necessarily, libraries), the interpreted program > is effectively linked to the facilities it uses through these bindings. It can be interpreted that R is providing a binding to the Rcpp libraries (`Rcpp.dll` in the windows package). The safe assumption is that this taints my code with the GPL, but is this really the right conclusion? Part of my uncertainty is the tightness of the link between my code and `Rcpp.dll`. There are references to Rcpp in the dll, but I'm not proficient enough to know if these are references to the development environment or to calls being placed to symbols within the Rcpp library. If the former, then I believe that the Rcpp library is being linked by R and not by my library. I suspect the latter, though, since Rcpp provides a glue (sugar, actually) to simplify code-writing and execution. There are countless related discussions related to the GPL in code distribution. To name a few:   * Inside a virtual machine   * Exposure of intellectual property   * Consequences of GPL dependencies   * Using a GPL library in commercial software NB: I'm generally a big supporter of OSS and have participated in development and distribution in the past. Questions of \"protecting code\" often raise hackles of open-source programmers, frequently resulting in heated debates over software philosophy. I recognize value on both sides and want to ensure that I'm meeting the letter and (if possible) spirit of the laws. I'm not fishing for a loop-hole in the license; I'm looking for help interpreting and placing it into context. **Are R packages that depend on Rcpp required to use the GPL?**"}
{"_id": "26942", "title": "Release cycle as a game", "text": "I thinking about how increase developer's commitment to release and create release cycle as a game for more fun in office. Current suggestions   * Building tower from bricks   * Climbing on some hypothetical everest, where each camp is release stage   * Some badges system, like StackExchange system"}
{"_id": "152078", "title": "What are Some Real World Usage Scenarios for node.js", "text": "i would like to begin tinkering with Node.js but i am unsure of some \"Real- World\" situations where node.js would be considered the proper thing to be used. The last thing a developer wants is to learn a new technology and use it in-properly.. Can you provide real-world examples of where node.js would be used properly"}
{"_id": "163799", "title": "Scrum: How to work on one story at a time", "text": "I was nominated as scrum master in a new formed scrum team. We have already done some sprints. In the beginning I tried to make my team to work on one story at a time. But it didn't work. My team had difficulties to distribute the tasks in a way that they can work simultaneously on one story. Maybe we are doing something wrong? For example: we have a story to create a new dialog. We create the following tasks:   * Create Model classes   * Read model data from database   * Connect model classes with view   * Implement dialog handling   * Save data on close   * Test Documentation   * Solution Description Can theses tasks be done by more than one person at a time? The tasks - more or less - build upon each other. Or do we design the tasks in a wrong way?"}
{"_id": "99749", "title": "What criteria should be used to determine a programmer's salary?", "text": "Recently, I was a part of a discussion about which criteria should be used when determining a salary for a programmer: arguments varied from \"it is a matter of employer's choice\" to other arguments that took into account one's education, experience, understanding of technologies, etc. Not so long ago, I read a great post on the Stack Exchange blog on the subject and I couldn't agree more with it, but not many employers follow the described logic. In your experience, which elements are the most important ones when determining salary for a programmer? Which criteria are most often applied in those situations? Which criteria _should_ be most often applied? And finally, to which extent is formal education (college, university) important in determining salary?"}
{"_id": "240298", "title": "C++ raw pointers for storage", "text": "I'm seeing a lot of people say you should never use raw pointers. What about in the case where you store the raw pointer in a class but how they get populated is from getting the pointer of an object that wasn't dynamically created? I'm curious about if this is bad practice and if so how to make it better. This seems ideal to me as I'm not required to delete anything myself so limited/no chance for a memory leak? The idea of \"if you didn't create it you don't delete it\". I can control everything by the scope of the variable I'm passing in right? If it goes out of scope then what it points to won't be valid anymore and it'll throw an exception if I try to access it and I'll be able to catch it and handle it. Curious on thoughts/comments/concerns on this.               class Object     {     private:        Object* object;     public:        void Object() { object = NULL; }        void AddObject(Object* obj)        {           object = obj;        }            Object* GetObject()       {          return object;       }     };               int main()     {        Object obj1;        Object obj2;             // obj2 wasn't dynamically created so no need to use a smart pointer        obj1.AddObject(&obj2);             return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "211451", "title": "Where can I find an authoritative comparison of computer languages?", "text": "I've reached a point in my career where I want to consider myself less \"an {x} engineer\" where {x} is a specific programming language, and I want to be more of a language-agnostic software engineer. The obvious next step is to start learning as many languages as possible to build experience, but there's only so many hours in the day and I'd rather go about this in a more efficient way. Also, my end goal is not to be practically proficient in 20 languages, but rather to understand more deeply the variation among programming languages and what tradeoffs and design choices they made and why. I tend to learn better when I can see an overview of the topical landscape first, before diving into the details. Is there a good, long-form (i.e., not a blog post) work on comparative language analysis that does a good job exploring the variations in programming language features? Or maybe, alternately, a good coverage text on programming language design?"}
{"_id": "169830", "title": "Taking a Projects Development to the Next Level", "text": "I have been looking for some advice for a while on how to handle a project I am working on, but to no avail. I am pretty much on my fourth iteration of improving an \"application\" I am working on; the first two times were in Excel, the third Time in Access, and now in Visual Studio. The field is manufacturing. The basic idea is I am taking read-only data from a massive Sybase server, filtering it and creating much smaller tables in Access daily (using delete and append Queries) and then doing a bunch of stuff. More specifically, I use a series of queries to either combine data from multiple tables or group data in specific ways (aggregate functions), and then I place this data into a table (so I can sort and manipulate data using DAO.recordset and run multiple custom algorithms). This process is then repeated multiple times throughout the database until a set of relevant tables are created. Many times I will create a field in a query with a value such as 1.1 so that when I append it to a table I can store information in the field from the algorithms. So as the process continues the number of fields for the tables change. The overall application consists of 4 \"back-end\" databases linked together on a shared drive, with various output (either front-end access applications or Excel). So question is: **Is this a common way how data driven applications work?** Each back-end database is updated with fresh data daily and updating each takes around 10 seconds (for three) and 2 minutes(for 1). **Project Objectives:** I want/am moving to SQL Server soon. Front End will be a Web Application (I know basic web-development and like the administration flexibility) and visual-studio will be IDE with c#/.NET. Should these algorithms be run \"inside the database,\" or using a series of C# functions on each server request. I know you're not supposed to store data in a database unless it is an actual data point, and in Access I have many columns that just hold calculations from algorithms in vba. The truth is, I have seen multiple professional Access applications, and have never seen one that has the complexity or does even close to what mine does (for better or worse). But I know some professional software applications are 1000 times better then mine. I have been completely on my own and need some guidance on how to approach this project the right way. **What would be a good approach to follow ?**"}
{"_id": "169833", "title": "Is it a bad practice to write shell script with many if-else statment and for loops?", "text": "I am maintaing several data process shell scripts which are full of if-else statements and for loops . I try to make the scritps tidy and easy to debug. When I read some suggestions about shell code best practice, it seems that is is not a best practice to have many if-else and for loop statements. So what should I do, to write a python or c++ script instead of those logical process?"}
{"_id": "158618", "title": "Pros and cons of intrusive and non-intrusive serialization?", "text": "I am interesting in the pros and cons of serialization: intrusive and non- intrusive. On the one hand it seems non-intrusive is easy to use - class to be serialized should not be updated. It seems convenient for simple cases. E.g. XStream.Net implements such approach. But the issues can appear if this class is connected in some way with other classes, e.g. stores indices of global objects which should be serialized as well. In this case non-intrusive approach looks dangerous. Concerning intrusive implementation. It is good that developer can directly specify what and how to serialize (of course if serialization technology is flexible enough).   E.g. Microsoft .Net has intrusive approach implemented for XML serialization \\- attributes should be specified for classes and members. Other ideas?"}
{"_id": "158615", "title": "why is a naturally ordered set generated at 9 but not 10 digits", "text": "code found at: fatal error...Java Runtime Environment: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION Presuming that the problem indicated above is due to the test app and not due specifically to method generateRandomDigits(). When NUMBER_OF_DIGITS_TO_ORDER is <= 9, I do get a naturally ordered sets (just trying to prove that it is possible), but when it is set to 10 I never get such a set and I've run it many times. Why? I am more than open to suggested improvements to method generateRandomDigits() - it seems a bit convoluted."}
{"_id": "255284", "title": "Benefits of Java ByteArrayInputStream vs byte array?", "text": "I have a scenario where my Java process will be receiving a stream of binary data:               public class DataHandler {         public void handleData(DATA data) {             // TODO: Do something with data         }     }      I am trying to figure out the proper typing for `DATA`. I could use a `byte[]`:               public class DataHandler {         public void handleData(byte[] data) {             // TODO: Do something with data         }     }      Or a `ByteArrayInputStream`:               public class DataHandler {         public void handleData(ByteArrayInputStream dataStream) {             // TODO: Do something with dataStream         }     }      To me, \"`ByteArrayInput` **`Stream`** \" implies a continuous **stream** of data that is constantly being modified. Based on that, it _feels_ like `ByteArrayInputStream` is better suited for my use case as it probably adds a bunch of bells and whistles on top of a plain 'ole `byte[]`. But then I see that its constructor takes `byte[]` and doesn't allow you to add more `byte`s to it post-construction, which might not necessarily do anything for me in this particular case. So my questions:   1. In my use case, are there any benefits to `ByteArrayInputStream` over `byte[]`? Why/why not? What are the factors that drive this decision (in general)?   2. Is there a better way to represent a true _stream_ of flowing data (which ultimately comes in as bytes) besides the methods I've recommended here?"}
{"_id": "158613", "title": "Am I right about the differences between Floyd-Warshall, Dijkstra's and Bellman-Ford algorithms?", "text": "I've been studying the three and I'm stating my inferences from them below. Could someone tell me if I have understood them accurately enough or not? Thank you.   1. Dijkstra's algorithm is used only when you have a single source and you want to know the smallest path from one node to another, but fails in cases like this   2. Floyd-Warshall's algorithm is used when any of all the nodes can be a source, so you want the shortest distance to reach any destination node from any source node. This only fails when there are negative cycles **(this is the most important one. I mean, this is the one I'm least sure about:)** 3.Bellman-Ford is used like Dijkstra's, when there is only one source. This can handle negative weights and **its working is the same as Floyd-Warshall's except for one source, right?** If you need to have a look, the corresponding algorithms are (courtesy Wikipedia): Bellman-Ford:                procedure BellmanFord(list vertices, list edges, vertex source)        // This implementation takes in a graph, represented as lists of vertices        // and edges, and modifies the vertices so that their distance and        // predecessor attributes store the shortest paths.             // Step 1: initialize graph        for each vertex v in vertices:            if v is source then v.distance := 0            else v.distance := infinity            v.predecessor := null             // Step 2: relax edges repeatedly        for i from 1 to size(vertices)-1:            for each edge uv in edges: // uv is the edge from u to v                u := uv.source                v := uv.destination                if u.distance + uv.weight < v.distance:                    v.distance := u.distance + uv.weight                    v.predecessor := u             // Step 3: check for negative-weight cycles        for each edge uv in edges:            u := uv.source            v := uv.destination            if u.distance + uv.weight < v.distance:                error \"Graph contains a negative-weight cycle\"      Dijkstra:                1  function Dijkstra(Graph, source):      2      for each vertex v in Graph:                                // Initializations      3          dist[v] := infinity ;                                  // Unknown distance function from       4                                                                 // source to v      5          previous[v] := undefined ;                             // Previous node in optimal path      6                                                                 // from source      7            8      dist[source] := 0 ;                                        // Distance from source to source      9      Q := the set of all nodes in Graph ;                       // All nodes in the graph are     10                                                                 // unoptimized - thus are in Q     11      while Q is not empty:                                      // The main loop     12          u := vertex in Q with smallest distance in dist[] ;    // Start node in first case     13          if dist[u] = infinity:     14              break ;                                            // all remaining vertices are     15                                                                 // inaccessible from source     16               17          remove u from Q ;     18          for each neighbor v of u:                              // where v has not yet been      19                                                                                 removed from Q.     20              alt := dist[u] + dist_between(u, v) ;     21              if alt < dist[v]:                                  // Relax (u,v,a)     22                  dist[v] := alt ;     23                  previous[v] := u ;     24                  decrease-key v in Q;                           // Reorder v in the Queue     25      return dist;      Floyd-Warshall:                1 /* Assume a function edgeCost(i,j) which returns the cost of the edge from i to j      2    (infinity if there is none).      3    Also assume that n is the number of vertices and edgeCost(i,i) = 0      4 */      5      6 int path[][];      7 /* A 2-dimensional matrix. At each step in the algorithm, path[i][j] is the shortest path      8    from i to j using intermediate vertices (1..k\u22121).  Each path[i][j] is initialized to      9    edgeCost(i,j).     10 */     11     12 procedure FloydWarshall ()     13    for k := 1 to n     14       for i := 1 to n     15          for j := 1 to n     16             path[i][j] = min ( path[i][j], path[i][k]+path[k][j] );"}
{"_id": "34154", "title": "How does one rein in the complexities of web development?", "text": "I have been a server-side programmer for most of my career and have only recently started spending more time on web development. I am amazed at the number of things I need to master in order to write a decent web application. Just to list down a few tools/technologies I need to learn,   * Server side programming language (Java/JSP, ASP, PHP, Ruby or something else)   * A decent web framework (for any medium to big size application).    * HTML & CSS   * Javascript   * Javascript library (JQuery/ExtJS etc. primarily for AJAX). Good to know even if not necessary.   * At least a basic knowledge of web design - layouts, colors, fonts etc.   * A good understanding of web security.   * A good understanding of Performance/scalability issues.   * Testing, browser compatibility issues etc. The list goes on. So, my question to seasoned web developers is - How do you guys manage to learn and keep yourself updated on so many things? While developing a web application, how do you handle the complexities involved in these areas and yet manage to write an application that is well designed, user friendly, secure, performant and scalable. As a web developer, does one have to be a jack of all trades or should one specialize in one or two areas and leave the rest to other members of the team ?"}
{"_id": "162773", "title": "Is it safe to use LAST_INSERT_ID() in a system like Point of Sale", "text": "Is it safe to use `LAST_INSERT_ID()` in a system using `MySQL` like Point Of Sale when there are multiple users using the system at the same time?"}
{"_id": "90052", "title": "Why is there so much buzz about closures?", "text": "Why is there so much buzz about closures among developers? In my career I never intentionally used them, though don't clearly understand what they are. UPD: just to clarify. The question is about why the closure concept became so talky these days."}
{"_id": "203829", "title": "ado.net or EF for a point-of-sale system", "text": "We have a point-of-sale system that was developed using ado.net, our current concern is to make the application real fast in creating transactions (sales). Usually there are no performance concerns with high end PCs but with with low end PCs, the transactions take really slow. The main concern is on saving transactions which usually calls a lot of stored procedures for inserting records within a single transaction. This usually takes time on low end PCs. We need to improve the performance since most clients will only use low end PCs to act as cashier machines. One solution we are thinking is to use entity framework for data access. The entire project is written using ado.net and development time if we shift to entity framework would be alot. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "90050", "title": "Should an XML Schema be specified in a software specification?", "text": "Would you include an XML schema for a new file format in a software specification document or would you consider this too specific? Or would it be already too specific to require XML at this point?"}
{"_id": "179047", "title": "What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a subdomain for each user account?", "text": "I notice two types of design used in web applications, some with a particular subdomain for users contents, and some with same URL structure for all the accounts. Ex: `unique.domain.com` and `another_unique.domain.com` for subdomains for sites like blogspot, wordpress, basecamp etc. while in the other approach `domain.com/action1` and `domain.com/action2` the content is shown according to the user logged in, but the URL is same for every user. What are main differences between both of these kind of design?"}
{"_id": "193947", "title": "What does using ZeroMQ in Erlang offer that Erlang already didn't?", "text": "I'm only passingly familiar with either, but it seems like most of what ZeroMQ offers is already built into Erlang, yet there's an Erlang-ZeroMQ binding that's fairly active according to its github page. What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "203822", "title": "One web service multiple sites", "text": "I don't know whether this is even possible or I imagine (according to my habit of over thinking) will bring through numerous issues but let me give it a go. I have an idea where I would like a single web service which a user will send a request to, for example logging in. The response back dictates a URL where they get redirected too so essentially this means for me less maintenance in updating web services etc as its all in one place. What I am trying to do is have a single service that routes people to the correct server to get data from instead of having the end user to have knowledge of the endpoint address etc. For example, I have a system on the web and want it visible to my windows, android and apple devices but there is a specific site for each client. Ideally, I only want the user to enter their login credentials and the web service does the rest, i.e. fetches data from the correct data source. I imagine this is common practice for many systems but I guess is there a risk factor in that a user being sent data from another request if they happen at the same time? Obviously this is a huge flaw and perhaps I am going completely the wrong route here. I would appreciate any resources to links, books etc. I was unsure of what to search for on the web so thought this is the best place for such questions. This is a system I am developing to help me understand web services better in general. A little project I am working on to help me explore different techniques and approaches towards development :)"}
{"_id": "90059", "title": "New Team Lead - How to deal with a resentful former peer", "text": "I've been told that I am to be a team lead of an upcoming project. I've not ever been team lead before but the responsibilities are what you would typically expect, with revolving door of 3 to 4 other developers through the 8 or 9 months it takes to complete the project. My problem is this: one of the developers who will no doubt be working on this project will be a problem. He has more experience than me, has called me an idiot several times in the past, and has told me that he has taken this job because he is a natural leader. He has expected to be promoted to a leadership position with every new project (which has not happened to date), and even once told me that I was to report to him, even though the actual team lead was under no such illusion. Moreover, I've both observed and heard from others that he is extremely unprofessional (watches non-work videos at client sites - with no head phones, dresses unprofessionally, comes to work late, makes inappropriate jokes, etc.) He took or attempted to take credit for my work or insights multiple times while I worked with him as a peer. My current team lead told me that she threw out 1/2 of this guy's code once he left her project because the quality was no good. I could go on. My fear is that this guy will actively work against me, because he will resent having to report to someone that he considers an inferior, especially since I have been given this opportunity before him. I've successfully dealt with this type of personality as a peer or even reporting to managers like this in the past. I've not dealt with, or ever thought about, having to deal with this type of character who is reporting to me. My question is: what kind of strategies can I use to effectively and professionally deal with this? Especially now, before it has become a problem, is there any way to cut it off before it gets out of hand etc. If anyone has a similar experience how did they deal with it?"}
{"_id": "203820", "title": "Paradigm Diagram", "text": "Does anyone have a diagram showing all significant programming paradigms. Something like this but with paradigms as titles would be ideal: ![help page image](http://i.stack.imgur.com/rARsG.png)"}
{"_id": "163427", "title": "How to Convert HTML to PDF Using PHP?", "text": "PDF or Portable Document Format is a popular file type that is often used for online documents. It's great for distributing downloadable written content, and is frequently used by governments and businesses alike. Because it's a format that's familiar to all, many applications allow the user to convert other document types to the PDF format. PHP is one programming language that has a built-in ability to convert to PDF. PHP scripts can be used to transform file types such as HTML into PDF files."}
{"_id": "178394", "title": "What should be stored in UserContext?", "text": "From my general understanding I believe UserContext for a web application is supposed to hold user authentication and authorization (user roles) information. As part of user roles, there are definitions on who can access what data and accordingly the corresponding reference data is loaded into the UserContext as well. Is this a good practice to load and use reference data from UserContext? Does this have any impact with the number of sessions vs size of data it is holding inside JVM? I am thinking we use UserContext only for authentication and authorization but load the reference data from cache on demand and use it if required."}
{"_id": "160689", "title": "Is it a better practice pre-initialize attributes in a class, or to add them along the way?", "text": "I'm sorry if this is a ABSOLUTELY sophomoric question, but I'm curious what the best practices are out there, and I can't seem to find a good answer on Google. In Python, I usually use an empty class as a super-catchall data structure container (sort of like a JSON file), and add attributes along the way:               class DataObj:         \"Catch-all data object\"         def __init__(self):             pass          def processData(inputs):         data = DataObj()         data.a = 1         data.b = \"sym\"         data.c = [2,5,2,1]      This gives me a tremendous amount of flexibility, because the container object can essentially store anything. So if new requirements crop up, I'll just add it as another attribute to the DataObj object (which I pass around in my code). However, recently it has been impressed upon me (by FP programmers) that this is an awful practice, because it makes it very hard to read the code. One has to go through all the code to figure out what attributes DataObj actually has. **Question** : How can I rewrite this for greater maintainability without sacrificing flexibility? Are there any ideas from functional programming that I can adopt? I'm looking for best-practices out there. **Note** : one idea is to pre-initialize the class with all the attributes that one expects to encounter, e.g.               class DataObj:         \"Catch-all data object\"         def __init__(self):             data.a = 0             data.b = \"\"             data.c = []          def processData(inputs):         data = DataObj()         data.a = 1         data.b = \"sym\"         data.c = [2,5,2,1]      Is this actually a good idea? What if I don't know what my attributes are a priori?"}
{"_id": "199184", "title": "When to build(code) vs buy(download plugin)", "text": "Recently I have been working with a large set of talented programmers that lead to a discussion on when should we start building our own components (web js/css) vs downloading and modifying existing components that don't quite fit the needs of a project. Does anyone know or could suggest best practices for this type of conundrum?"}
{"_id": "54320", "title": "Database fuzzy search concept", "text": "I thought about this, and have been trying to come up with solutions on how to fuzzy search a database, if for say example a user types a spelling mistake. Any glaring problems with the logic behind this? Will it work and has it been done before? Our table we wish to search:               **tblArticles**     Body - Soundex_Body - CharacterCoded_Body      So we store the raw text body for physical display. The other 2 columns are used for searches which are precomputed the following way: **Soundex** Body is split into it's words, and translated to it's soundex version. IE, resulting body might be something like:               H252 B54 C23 E33... etc      So someone might enter 'dinosore', and the article body reads 'dinosaur' these both evaluate to B26. We then run a LIKE on the soundex value of search term. **Character Coded** Given a character mapping that maps chars to prime numbers, IE:               h = 2     e = 3     l = 5     o = 7     p = 11     c = 13          help = 2*3*5*11     =   330     hello = 2*3*5*5*7   =   1050     hell = 2*3*5*5      =   150     hlep = 2*5*3*11     =   330     cello = 13*3*5*5*7  =   6825      If a user meant to type 'hello' but they switched two or more characters around for example 'hlelo', they would evaluate to the same number. Split raw body into words, prime encode every word and store in database giving you a field that looks like:               330 6825 330 1050... etc      We can then like search on this value to match mistypes. **Benefits**   * Typos protected against   * Phonetic incorrect spellings protected against   * More non native english speaking friendly   * Will work in any language (where soundex works) Comments and thoughts? A sort of multilayered search. You can of course weight return values to make it even better (IE a literal text body match is worth more), but is this a good solution for spelling errors and non native english speakers doing searches?"}
{"_id": "160681", "title": "Side-by-side Configuration on Linux/ELF", "text": "One of the best/worst Microsoft software innovations (great for compatibility; terrible for efficiency) has been Windows' Side by Side Configuration. This allows, among other things, for different components of a program to have multiple versions of the C/C++ runtime libraries loaded into the same process. This has always impressed me because of the excellent backwards compatibility that it affords. For example, you can run an ancient program that links against very old C/C++ runtimes, and link it against or dynamically inject a new DLL that depends on a new C/C++ runtime, and all the separate instances of the runtimes will coexist simultaneously within the address space and will be called by the assembly that references them. On Linux, however, binaries for which the source is not available tend to \"rot\" over time -- rather quickly. The reason is that most interesting programs eventually have to link back into libraries that are installed in your system directories (`/usr/lib`, etc). But since the C/C++ runtimes and the system libraries frequently change ABI, your program just stops working when you upgrade your distro. This can also be caused, for example, by software with \"backends\" that eventually link to your system libraries. An example is OpenGL, which due to the variety and volatility of the implementations, cannot be provided by binary distributions. They simply must depend on the system's OpenGL implementation. But if your system OpenGL links against `libstdc++`, you could potentially be dead in the water. What happens is that the old executable loads its local copy of `libstdc++`, and the OpenGL shared library loads the system's copy of `libstdc++`. The two conflict, and one of them refuses to load, and usually this means that OpenGL refuses to work and the program comes crashing down. For a \"mere\" application developer, is something like WinSxS achievable on Linux without major architectural changes to the ELF binary format and Linux kernel ABI? Or is this something that would have to be built into the system libraries at compile-time and deployed over a long period of time by making changes to ELF, glibc, libstdc++, compilers, and so on?"}
{"_id": "160683", "title": "How are objects modelled in a functional programming language?", "text": "In an answer to this question (written by Pete) there are some considerations about OOP versus FP. In particular, it is suggested that FP languages are not very suitable for modelling (persistent) objects that have an identity and a mutable state. I was wondering if this is true or, in other words, how one would model objects in a functional programming language. From my basic knowledge of Haskell I thought that one could use monads in some way, but I really do not know enough on this topic to come up with a clear answer. So, how are entities with an identity and a mutable persistent state normally modelled in a functional language? **EDIT** Here are some further details to clarify what I have in mind. Take a typical Java application in which I can (1) read a record from a database table into a Java object, (2) modify the object in different ways, (3) save the modified object to the database. How would this be implemented e.g. in Haskell? I would initially read the record into a record value (defined by a data definition), perform different transformations by applying functions to this initial value (each intermediate value is a new, modified copy of the original record) and then write the final record value to the database. Is this all there is to it? How can I ensure that at each moment in time only one copy of the record is valid / accessible? One does not want to have different immutable values representing different snapshots of the same object to be accessible at the same time."}
{"_id": "20040", "title": "btnBack vs backButtonField", "text": "For blackberry GUI developement. I am using the name convention like backButtonField and some of my colleagues are using btnBack. But sometimes I stuck with the names like loginVerticalFieldManager its a very long name. At that time vfmLogin looks better So for GUI components names what convention should I follow?"}
{"_id": "48595", "title": "Should I avoid or embrace asking questions of other developers on the job?", "text": "As a CS undergraduate, the people around me are either learning or are paid to teach me, but as a software developer, the people around me have tasks of their own. They aren't paid to teach me, and conversely, I am paid to contribute. When I first started working as a software developer co-op, I was introduced to a huge code base written in a language I had never used before. I had plenty of questions, but didn't want to bother my co-workers with all of them - it wasted their time and hurt my pride. Instead, I spent a lot of time bouncing between IDE and browser, trying to make sense of what had already been written and differentiate between expected behavior and symptoms of bugs. I'd ask my co-workers when I felt that the root of my lack of understanding was an in-house concept that I wouldn't find on the internet, but aside from that, I tried to confine my questions to lunch hours. Naturally, there were occasions where I wasted time trying to understand something in code on the internet that had, at its heart, an in-house concept, but overall, I felt I was productive enough during my first semester, contributing about as much as one could expect and gaining a pretty decent understanding of large parts of the product. I was wondering what senior developers felt about that mindset. Should new developers ask more questions to get to speed faster, or should they do their own research for themselves? I see benefits to both mindsets, and anticipate a large variety of responses, but I figure new developers might appreciate your answers without thinking to ask this question."}
{"_id": "94777", "title": "C++ TDD open source projects", "text": "Are there any open source projects out there that are written in C++ in an agile way (TDD maybe?). I am trying to contribute to a C++ open source project in order to catch up with the language and I am not sure where to look for since the language is no longer mainstream amongst the hipsters :P **Edit** : I don't think I made myself clear (sorry about this, English is not my native language) - I want to contribute to an open source project written in C++ which follows TDD rules and such, not TDD frameworks implemented in C++ (though that might be an option)."}
{"_id": "94772", "title": "Is reliance on parametrized queries the only way to protect against SQL injection?", "text": "All I have seen on SQL injection attacks seems to suggest that parametrized queries, particularly ones in stored procedures, are the only way to protect against such attacks. While I was working (back in the Dark Ages) stored procedures were viewed as poor practice, mainly because they were seen as less maintainable; less testable; highly coupled; and locked a system into one vendor; (this question covers some other reasons). Although when I was working, projects were virtually unaware of the possibility of such attacks; various rules were adopted to secure the database against corruption of various sorts. These rules can be summarised as:   1. No client/application had direct access to the database tables.   2. All accesses to all tables were through views (and all the updates to the base tables were done through triggers).   3. All data items had a domain specified.   4. No data item was permitted to be nullable - this had implications that had the DBAs grinding their teeth on occasion; but was enforced.   5. Roles and permissions were set up appropriately - for instance, a restricted role to give only views the right to change the data. **So is a set of (enforced) rules such as this (though not necessarily this particular set) an appropriate alternative to parametrized queries in preventing SQL injection attacks? If not, why not? Can a database be secured against such attacks by database (only) specific measures?** **EDIT** Emphasis of the question changed slightly, in the light of the initial responses received. Base question unchanged. **EDIT2** The approach of relying on paramaterized queries seems to be only a peripheral step in defense against attacks on systems. It seems to me that more fundamental defenses are both desirable, and may render reliance on such queries not necessary, or less critical, even to defend specifically against injection attacks. The approach implicit in my question was based on \"armouring\" the database and I had no idea whether it was a viable option. Further research has suggested that there are such approaches. I have found the following sources that provide some pointers to this type of approach: http://database-programmer.blogspot.com http://thehelsinkideclaration.blogspot.com The principle features I have taken from these sources is:   1. An extensive data dictionary, combined with an extensive security data dictionary   2. Generation of triggers, queries and constraints from the data dictionary   3. Minimize Code and maximize data While the answers I have had so far are very useful and point out difficulties arising from disregarding paramaterized queries, ultimately they do not answer my original question(s) (now emphasised in bold)."}
{"_id": "237402", "title": "Exception when logging exception: is it correct to ignore them?", "text": "My question is specific to php, but i think it can be useful in other languages. I log into a table all the exception a code can throw:               try{      //Some code      } catch (Exception $e) {           $log = new Log(basename($_SERVER['PHP_SELF']), $_SESSION['id'], LogType::EXCEPTION, $e);           try {                $log ->addLog();            } catch (Exception $e2) {                     //            }      }      The function addLog insert the exception informations into a database. But (by example if the connection with the database is lost) this function can throw an exception. I can't see what i have to do with this exception except ignoring it. I know ignoring exception is a bad practice, but what can i do in this particular case? If there is no problem to ignore it, is there a better way to indicate that this exception should not be taken into account?"}
{"_id": "252884", "title": "Reconstructing a huffman tree using minimal information in the header", "text": "I'm writing a huffman encoding program in C. I'm trying to include the least amount of information in the header as possible, I know the simplest way to decompress the file in the header would be to store the frequencies of each character in the file, but for a large file with 256 characters it would take 2304 bytes ((1 byte for character + 8 bytes for `long` frequency) * 256), which I don't think is optimal.   I know I can reconstruct a tree from a preorder scan and an inorder scan of it, but that requires having no duplicate values. That is bad because I now have to store each node in the tree (in a huffman tree: `n*2 - 1` with `n` being the number of unique characters), twice, having each node be a `long` value (which could take `((256*2 - 1) * 2) * 8 = 8176` bytes. Is there a way I'm missing here, or are those my only options? Thanks."}
{"_id": "237407", "title": "What interface does python use to implement sockets?", "text": "When I programmed in python, I believe I interfaced with the transport layer using sockets. If python was programmed by humans, they must have used an interface that was \"lower\" than sockets, to provide _us_ with the interface to sockets. I assume firewalls, also programmed by humans, use interfaces of lower layers in the same manner, so is there a way to access such lower layers, in terms of programming?"}
{"_id": "252881", "title": "When running PHPUnit tests - is it common to use a separate database for testing?", "text": "I'm running tests from the same database as I use in development. I recall using Rails and I used a separate database for testing (mainly coz the tutorial I was going by said so). Made sense though. I was wondering it this was the common way to do things or whether there was an alternative. Can anyone shed a little light on this?"}
{"_id": "237405", "title": "cx_Freeze'd application license", "text": "I have a python program packed to .exe using cx_Freeze. I am trying to understand licensing implications:   * do I have to reproduce cx_Freeze license agreement?   * do I have to reproduce python license (PSF)?   * as python has standard modules incorporated into it, which might have yet another license, do I have to attach them (this is because cx_Freeze will pack them probably too, even if I don't use them)? Any hints would be appreciated!"}
{"_id": "161481", "title": "A study shows that lines_written/time is language-independent for most programmers. Where can it be found?", "text": "A study shows that lines_written/time is language-independent and application- independent for most programmers. If this were true it would imply that the most terse a language is, the more productive a programmer can be on it. Where can this study be found?"}
{"_id": "161483", "title": "Use cases for \"private\" interfaces?", "text": "I was wondering if there was a valid use case for being able to properly define the specific internal properties and functions of a class in a way similar to how an interface defines the public properties and functions of a class. Imagine the task that you have to build a class that describes a human being. Obviously, each human is a humanoid creature but not every humanoid creature is a human so you'd probably have an interface IHumanoid with functions like these (since it isn't useful to hardcode the body plan into the class):               public interface IHumanoid {         function get head():IHead;         function get torso():ITorso;         function get leftArm():IArm;         function get rightArm():IArm;         function get leftLeg():ILeg;         function get rightLeg():ILeg;     }      Further and also obviously, each human is a mammal but not every mammal is a human, so there's probably another interface IMammal with two definitions for males and females floating around somewhere:               public interface IMammal {         function procreate(partner:IMammal):void;     }          public interface IMaleMammal extends IMammal {         function inseminate(female:IFemaleMammal):void;     }          public interface IFemaleMammal extends IMammal {         function conceive(partner:IMaleMammal):Boolean;         function giveBirth():IMammal;         function nurse(offspring:IMammal):void;     }      Thus our class probably looks something like this now:               public class Human implements IHumanoid, IMammal {         private var _head:IHead;         private var _torso:ITorso;         private var _leftArm:IArm;         private var _rightArm:IArm;         private var _leftLeg:ILeg;         private var _rightLeg:ILeg;              public function Human() {             // ctor...         }              public function get head():IHead {             return _head;         }              public function get torso():ITorso {             return _torso;         }              public function get leftArm():IArm {             return _leftArm;         }              public function get rightArm():IArm {             return _rightArm;         }              public function get leftLeg():ILeg {             return _leftLeg;         }              public function get rightLeg():ILeg {             return _rightLeg;         }              public function procreate(partner:IMammal):void {             // \"abstract\" function         }     }          public class MaleHuman extends Human implements IMaleMammal {         override public function procreate(partner:IMammal):void {             if (partner is IFemaleMammal) {                 inseminate(partner);             }         }              public function inseminate(female:IFemaleMammal):void {             female.conceive(this);         }     }          public class FemaleHuman extends Human implements IFemaleMammal {         override public function procreate(partner:IMammal):void {             if (partner is IMaleMammal) {                 conceive(partner);             }         }              public function conceive(partner:IMaleMammal):Boolean {             // ...         }              public function giveBirth():IMammal {             // ...         }              public function nurse(offspring:IMammal):void {             // ...         }     }      From this we can implement our classes further and everything's working nice and fine until we get the task to use the existing interfaces to implement some other classes. Perhaps a gorilla, an orca and a platypus. Ignoring the massive issue the platypus will pose to our current interface structure (*cough* egg laying mammal *cough*), we have the \"problem\" that nothing prevents us from giving the gorilla 2 brains, the orca 8 lungs and the platypus half a dozen livers. And while we might be disciplined enough to follow the structure mammals typically have we cannot guarantee the same if we open the API for other developers who might code some seriously screwed up things which still look okay to the outside world. Therefore I was wondering if there was a valid use case to create something like a \"private interface\" which defines non-public functions and properties. Perhaps something along these lines:               public structure SMammal {         function get brain():IBrain;         function get liver():ILiver;         function get leftLung():ILung;         function get rightLung():ILung;         function get leftKidney():IKidney;         function get rightKidney():IKidney;     }          public class Human implements IHumanoid, IMammal follows SMammal {         private function get brain():IBrain {             // ...         }              private function get liver():ILiver {             // ...         }              // etc. etc.     }      Does such a feature exist in any programming language? Can abstract classes be used to solve this? Or shouldn't we care about this at all as long as the public interface somehow works as expected?"}
{"_id": "198399", "title": "Is it possible to create a single tokenizer to parse this?", "text": "This extends off this other Q&A thread, but is going into details that are out of scope from the original question. I am generating a parser that is to parse a context-sensitive grammar which can take in the following subset of symbols: `,`, `[`, `]`, `{`, `}`, `m/[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9]*/`, `m/[0-9]+/` The grammar can take in the following string `{ abc[1] }, }` and parse it as (`{`, `abc[1]`, `},` `}`). Another example would be to take: `{ abc[1] [, }` and parse it as (`{`, `abc[1]`, `[,`, `}`). This is similar to the grammar used in Perl for the qw() syntax. The braces indicate that the contents are to be whitespace tokenized. A closing brace must be on its own to indicate the end of the whitespace tokenized group. Can this be done using a single lexer/tokenizer, or would it be necessary to have a separate tokenizer when parsing this group?"}
{"_id": "161488", "title": "Why are errors named as \"Exception\" but not as \"Error\" in programming languages?", "text": "I've been thinking about that for quite a while actually. I am not a native english speaker myself but still I have years of programming experience and I always asked me this. Why is it named as Exception but not Error since they are errors. It could be `PageNotFoundError`instead of `PageNotFoundException`."}
{"_id": "222960", "title": "Proper way to \"compile\" a javascript project?", "text": "I'm developing a small open-source javascript library, and I was wondering about the proper method for compiling the source into one javascript file. It's easier to develop if the code is split into multiple files, but libraries are included as one large file when used in another application. My current \"compilation\" method involves using a makefile to copy each submoudle into the main file and then minify it. What is the proper way to do this?"}
{"_id": "156518", "title": "TFS non-chronological deployment?", "text": "We have the following scenario: Changeset #1 is some unfinished buildable checkin   Changeset #2 is a completed small task   ..   Changset #5 completes the work done at CS#1 They all affect the same output dll. How do we deploy changes done at CS#2 without the other work? Also how can we avoid this situation happening again in the future?"}
{"_id": "156519", "title": "Managing multiple people working on a project with GIT", "text": "I'm very new to GIT/GitHub (as new as starting yesterday). I would like to know what is the best way to manage multiple people working on the same project with Github. Currently I'm managing one project with four developers.   1. How do I go about the workflow and making sure everything is in sync? (Note: All developers will have one universal account.)   2. Does each developer need to be on a different branch?   3. Will I be able to handle 2 people working on the same file? Please post a detailed answer, I'm not a shy reader. I need to understand this well."}
{"_id": "156512", "title": "How to find an error in a tcp server application for which there is no source code", "text": "I have a c++/cli tcp client application sending a data in a specific format like **`L,20100930033425093,-5.929958,13.164021`** to a main application on port 9000.The main application is actually done by the other vendor and I dont have the source code for that. Now,I can communicate to the desired application using the IP and Port No.But the data supposed to be visible on the Main Application GUI is not showing up. But I used a different socket server demo application with same IP as the main application to receive the data I am sending.It works perfectly fine. Now I do not know where the error is or whether the stream is received on the other side. How can I effectively solve this situation. I am asking this in a broader picture to get some ideas. Any suggestions or discussion on this will be helpful?"}
{"_id": "67773", "title": "Is there any online video giving a useful insight on programming in certain languages or in general?", "text": "Recently I begun to watch the series of lecture Douglas Crockford made on Javascript and other topics. I've been wondering: is there also such lectures/lecturers for other other languages? **EDIT:** Thanks for the few answers I'll be sure to check them. But I must say, that personally, I have an interest on languages and technology relative to web development, or any kind of video which content could apply to more than one language. Of course, any good online video resource are still welcome, as I want this question to be as useful as possible for other people. Also bonus points if the content is downloadable and viewable on iTunes."}
{"_id": "142091", "title": "What is a non commital approach to software analysis", "text": "When I think about software analysis the first thing which comes to mind is SSADM and the UML. But, what I want is a high level view of the system before I commit to a programming paradigm. Where am I going wrong? How do I approach a problem in a high level and generic way before I commit to a paradigm? What are the diagrams/tools available to support me? Edit: Some examples of tools that appear to be what I'm after are... A block diagram - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_diagram A data flow diagram - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_flow_diagram"}
{"_id": "66429", "title": "How to submit a bug/fix for jquery unobtrusive validation?", "text": "I found a small bug in the microsoft mvc3 remote validation, concerning the clientside javascript implemented in jquerys unobtrusive javascript. The problem/bug can be fixed by adding a few lines to jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js which is bundled in the microsoft mvc3 installation. I can't seem to find a bug repository on jquery.com or in its plugins area. Am i not seeing the tree in the forest, or am i not going insane - where should i go with this problem - i already have the fix ready, but i'm afraid the next time jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js is updated (new version) and it's being applied to my project, my fix is overwritten. I also fooled around with adding some javascript that replaces the adapter (that has the bug) with my own version after jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js has been loaded - the problem is, that it's pretty ugly and What to do?"}
{"_id": "112651", "title": "File naming convention for images stored in version control?", "text": "My application has an icon file which is stored in version control. Now tomorrow I might decide to change the icon. I'm debating between two possible naming conventions for the icon file:   1. Keep the filename fixed, e.g., application.ico   2. Have the filename reflect the nature of the image, e.g., happyface.ico Option 1 doesn't say what the file is. It could give the illusion that two wildly different images are somehow different \"versions\" of the same thing. With option 2, I'd not only have to add a new file and delete the old one, I'd have to modify the resource file to reflect the new icon filename. On a related but different angle: A website with a header image. Is the filename header.jpg or sunrise-family- smiling.jpg? Should image file names reflect their function in the application or their content? What would be a best practice for this?"}
{"_id": "89824", "title": "What's it like to program without eyesight?", "text": "At the urging of my father, I recently signed up for disability insurance. It got me wondering, if I were to become blind, what would it be like to write code without eyesight? An old question on Stack Overflow deals with the tools that are available, but I'm more interested in the experience, especially of someone who lost their vision after learning to program. I know that my own style is very visual: when writing code for the first time, I often write a big block of code, look it over to see what makes sense to split out, and then refactor it into separate functions by cut/paste. It seems like it would be hard to do that without _seeing_ the code. After learning to work with tools like a screen reader, is the experience basically the same? Or does it affect how you write code in a more substantial way?"}
{"_id": "126233", "title": "Determining whether two binary search trees have the same set of values", "text": "This is an interview question: > Given two Binary Search Trees, write a program to determine whether they > contain the same set of values. Assume there are no duplicates. My idea is to perform an in-order traversal for both trees and compare each element one by one. It takes `O(n)` time and `O(n)` space. How could I do it in `O(lg(n))` time and `O(1)` space?"}
{"_id": "188370", "title": "Finding subtree in a tree", "text": "I have a tree:                   a        / \\       b   c      / \\     d   f        / \\        g   h      And the pattern:                   x        / \\       y   z      / \\     q   p      As output I would like to have:               x: a     y: b     z: c     q: d     p: f      and               x: b     y: f     z: c     q: g     p: h      Is there any algorithm I could look at?"}
{"_id": "188377", "title": "How to write user stories for a framework API", "text": "I need help understanding what user stories should look like for a web testing framework we are building for our organization's QA department. We are trying to run this project using Scrum. The product will have 3 layers:   1. utility classes to make working with underlying web automation tool easier.   2. a page-object API layer which will allow our testers to write tests from the perspective of what services our web pages offer, instead from the perspective of the web automation tool.   3. a declarative layer, which will allow writing of tests in an English-type language--perhaps Cucumber-like scenarios. This layer will be mapped to the page-object API layer, so that if a test can't be performed declaratively, the test author can drop down into the page-object API layer. The end-user of this framework is our QA group who will be writing tests either at declarative level, or if they need to, the page-object API level. My question is what should our user stories look like? Currently we have stories that cover what the web automation should be able to do (ie. find elements on the page, wait for elements to appear), but that can't be right. Firstly, we could deliver this kind of stuff already by giving the QA group the underlying automation tool. These stories are clearly not worth demonstrating in a sprint review. Secondly, stories should indicate business value, which in this case is not in finding elements on a page, it's in:   * having tests based on an up-to-date, popular and effective web automation tool.   * having readable tests   * having the actual tests separated from the web automation tool which is driving them. Fine, but how do I break the product up into more specific user-stories?"}
{"_id": "205351", "title": "Addition of double's is NOT Equal to Sum of the double as a whole", "text": "I am aware of the floating point errors as I had gained some knowledge with my question asked here in SE Floating Point Errors. What I am finding it difficult to understand is, the output of the following program.                       double d1 = 0 + 1.123 + 2.456;             double d2 = 3.579;                  float f1 = 0f + 1.123f + 2.456f;             float f2 = 3.579f;                  long l1 = (long)(0 + 1.123 + 2.456);             long l2 = (long)3.579;                  System.out.println(d1==d2);  // Output = false;             System.out.println(f1==f2);  // Output = true;             System.out.println(l1==l2);  // Output = true;      > Why is the output \" **false\" for double** and **not for float** , even when > float is single precision 32 bit and double is double precision 64 bit. > Oracle docs Any help with this would be highly appreciated."}
{"_id": "188375", "title": "What are some guidelines for submitting test cases with the code for an interview question?", "text": "I was interviewed by a big internet company. After describing the problem to solve, the interviewer requested that I also submit test cases with the code via email. I'm not sure if I should reveal the problem, but it was related to binary search trees. I wrote 4 test cases, varying from 0 to 10 nodes. I was rejected. What are some guidelines to writing test cases for interviews?   (How big a case do interviewers expect? How many cases do interviewers expect? etc.)"}
{"_id": "143734", "title": "Catching an error?", "text": "Is catching an error with `try ... catch` a better practice than catching an error with proper analysis/error check? For instance, removing from an empty list: Does surround with a try catch clause considered as a more efficient way than testing if the list is empty beforehand?Or is it the same? Thanks. P.S: If a similar question was previously asked on the forum please feel free to refer it."}
{"_id": "150913", "title": "Tasks, jobs, activities, operations... which term to use when?", "text": "My application has a number of different asynchronous 'things' that it performs:   * There are things that fire off a schedule (every 5 minutes)   * There are things that are fired when a user clicks a button   * There are things that are triggered by an incoming web service call I use the terms like this:   * Scheduled things = Jobs   * User-triggered things = Tasks   * Web service-triggered things = Operations Tasks are quite complicated, so they're implemented using a hierarchy of different objects which I call Activities (operations and jobs may also begin to use these Activities as their building blocks). I feel like I might be using the wrong terms - for example, would you expect something that happens every 5 minutes automatically to be a Job or a Task? Is there an industry standard for this? All of the words seem to mean the same thing."}
{"_id": "6005", "title": "What programming/software sub-cultures exist? What defines them? Which do you belong to?", "text": "To the outside world, programmers, computer scientists, software engineers, and developers may all seem alike, but that's far from the case for the people who create software for a living. Any single programmer's ability and knowledge can range very widely, as well as their tools (OS, language, and yes, preferred editor), and that diversity spawns many sub-cultures in software - like programmers who actively use Stack Overflow and this site, versus many more who don't. I'm curious to hear from others what software sub-cultures they've encountered, belonged to, admired, disliked, or even created. For starters, I've encountered:   * **Microsoft-driven companies and developers** : their entire stack is from Redmond, WA. E-mail is Outlook is e-mail. The web is IE and IIS. They have large binders of their MS Developer Network subscription full of multiple versions of VB, .net, Visual Studio, etc. Avoids working with a shell/command-line. Don't see what the fuss with open-source and such is all about. MS-centric companies tend to be 9-5 and quite corporate (driven by business managers, not software people). Nowadays (given the wide availability of non-MS tools), this is the antithesis of hacker culture.   * **Old-school CS people** : they often know Lisp and Unix extremely well; sometimes, they may have written a semi-popular Lisp themselves, or a system utility. Few, if any, \"software engineering\" things are new to them, nor are they impressed by such. Know the references, history, and higher-level implications of programming languages like Lisp, C, Prolog, and Smalltalk. Can be bitter about AI outcomes of the 80's and 90's. Tend to be Emacs users. Can type out multi-line shell commands without blinking an eye. Their advice can by cryptic, but contains gold once understood.   * **New-school web developers** : played with computers and video games growing up, but often only really started programming in the late '90s or early '00's. Comfortable with 1 to 1.5 scripting/dynamic languages; think C and languages outside of Ruby/Perl/Python are unnecessary/magical. May have considered HTML as programming initially. Tend to get a Mac and be fanatical/irrational about it. Use frameworks more than build them. Often overly-enthusiastic about NoSQL and/or Ruby On Rails.   * **New-school CS** : lots of training in statistics, Bayesian models and inference; don't say \"AI,\" say \"machine learning.\" More Java than Lisp, but could also be expert Haskell programmers. Seeing major real-world successes by experts in their field (Google, finance/quants) often makes them (over) confident. But big data, and the distributed processing of such, really are changing the world. The examples above are by no means complete, correct, orthogonal, or objective. :) Just what I've seen personally, and provided to spark some discussion and outline of the broader question. Feel free to disagree!"}
{"_id": "150915", "title": "Can a language support something like \"Retry/Fix\"?", "text": "I was just wondering if a language could support something like a Retry/Fix block? The answer to this question is probably the reason it's a bad idea or equivalent to something else, but the idea keeps popping into my head.               void F()     {       try       {         G();       }       fix(WrongNumber wn, out int x)       {          x = 1;       }     }          void G()     {       int x = 0;       retry<int>       {         if(x != 1) throw new WrongNumber(x);       }     }      After the fix block ran, the retry block would run again..."}
{"_id": "196982", "title": "Abstract methods being used as static methods in java?", "text": "In an attempt to write some generic code I find myself putting, in my abstract class, a method that returns some static information about how the class should be treated. This method doesn't use any state data and would be static, except that static abstract methods aren't allowed. Is this a code smell? is there something one should do to avoid this? I haven't writtent he real code yet. Here is a quick example, conceptually. Little slopy programing wise to make to make it a quick read. basically a way for the code to return information to the model, in this case, about how it should be treated within the generic functions of the model. Assume the enum stored whatever configuration state in this case.               public abstract modelObject{              public abstract ModelGroup getModelGroup;              public final void addToModel(){             Model.store(this.getModelGroup, this);         }     }               public class myObject extends modelObject{         public ModelGroup getModelGroup(){             return ModelGroup.MyGroup;         }     }          public class DifferentClass extends ModelObject{         public ModelGroup getModelGroup(){             return ModelGroup.differentGroup;         }      }"}
{"_id": "129570", "title": "How to react to wrong/not answered questions during interview?", "text": "Today I have held my first interview with potential interns. While this has been mostly open questions, I have had some trivial programming tasks for them:   * Write a function that returns true if triangle sides (all integers) a, b and c can represent a right triangle.   * FizzBuzz.   * Calculate the Nth element of Fibonacci using recursion (if they didn't know what Fibonacci was, I would even write them the definition F(n) = F(n-1) + F(n-2); F(1) = 1; F(0) = 1).    * Implement structure List for integer and write function to reverse it. These are obviously very easy tasks and I was not prepared for someone not to solve them. How should I act when they struggle with these questions? Should I give up the answer? Give tip by tip (I did that and ended up solving the problem myself)? Or just move on (or maybe just stop) with the interview? ps. By having problems with questions, I don't mean like having a bug, I mean if they can't even get started. This was a case with Fibonacci and List questions."}
{"_id": "97874", "title": "Why should I write all the Statements within Try-Catch?", "text": "My company head says that I must write all , i.e. ALL my code within Try-catch statements. Now, I can understand the 'better be safe than sorry' approach here, but isn't it too chicken-hearted to think that there will be an exception when the Labels are created, form's position is set. has there been instances where Exceptions in Such simple operations."}
{"_id": "163266", "title": "Inheritance vs composition in this example", "text": "I'm wondering about the differences between inheritance and composition examined with concrete code relevant arguments. In particular my example was Inheritance:               class Do:         def do(self):             self.doA()             self.doB()              def doA(self):             pass              def doB(self):             pass          class MyDo(Do):         def doA(self):             print(\"A\")              def doB(self):             print(\"B\")          x=MyDo()      vs Composition:               class Do:         def __init__(self, a, b):             self.a=a             self.b=b              def do(self):             self.a.do()             self.b.do()          x=Do(DoA(), DoB())      (Note for composition I'm missing code so it's not actually shorter) Can you name particular advantages of one or the other? I'm think of:   * composition is useful if you plan to reuse DoA() in another context   * inheritance seems easier; no additional references/variables/initialization   * method doA can access internal variable (be it a good or bad thing :) )   * inheritance groups logic A and B together; even though you could equally introduce a grouped delegate object   * inheritance provides a preset class for the users; with composition you'd have to encapsule the initialization in a factory so that the user does have to assemble the logic and the skeleton   * ... _Basically I'd like to examine the implications of inheritance vs composition_. I heard often composition is prefered, but I'd like to understand that by example. Of course I can always start with one and refactor later to the other."}
{"_id": "129578", "title": "Change Management Standard", "text": "Is there any Change Management Standard which is widely accepted in software and other industries? I worked at several companies with absolutely different target domains (investment banking and telecommunications). Companies had very similar Global Change Management (GCM) organization and processes. More specifically:   1. There was **GCM department** responsible for all IT-related changes, such as company wide firewall changes, databases allocation/support, version control system support, etc.   2. There was such notion as **change freezes**. It was not possible to get my changes implemented if change implementation date was the same as change freeze date.   3. There was **GCM meeting** (conference call) when everybody discussed necessity and importance of their changes. It was hosted by GCM department representative every week at the same time (Tuesday, 17:00 GMT, for example).   4. Changes should have been approved by **Change approvers**. There were different kind of request which have their own list of mandatory approver groups. Groups had several members working at different time zones. At least one such member must have approved the GCM in order to have whole group approved the change. It was required that approves for all mandatory approver groups had been collected before scheduled implementation time came. Otherwise there was 100% guarantee that it will not be implemented.   5. **Bureaucracy** of GCM processes was remarkable. It was pure _bureaucratic hell_. Tools were awful, people slow and stubborn. It was nearly impossible to implement even minor changes. Sometimes I failed to get one last approve before implementation time or suddenly it turned out that implementation time is scheduled on the time of change freeze. I would like to have a look at it, so that I would have general understanding of GCM processes and how they work at different companies. I would like to know whether it is so _damn awful_ everywhere, or it was just poor GCM processes implementation at one specific company."}
{"_id": "97873", "title": "Designing a Technical Interview", "text": "The startup company that I'm employed at is looking to open an office overseas, and I've been tasked with coming up with some reasonable questions that will be used use to help find/hire some suitable candidates to kickstart the new office. We are primarily looking for Android and iPhone developers, as well as a couple of team-leaders (preferably with Android/iPhone experience). However, I'm really not a fan of using domain-specific questions as part of the interviewing process, so I'd very much like to avoid quizzing people about `CoreData` or `Activity`'s or other platform-specific aspects. Instead I prefer Google's general approach of looking for people with solid knowledge of CS fundamentals. With that in mind I've drafted up the following set of questions, and was hoping to get a bit of a peer review: **Language Agnostic Questions** (A candidate is expected to do well on _all_ of these)   1. Write a function that will convert a string to a double without calling any built-in utilities such as Double.parseDouble() or atof() or similar methods. You can assume that you input will always be well-formed, will always include a decimal point, and will always include at least one digit after the decimal point. You can implement your solution in the language of your choice, or using pseudo-code if you prefer. Java template: http://ideone.com/clone/y2Q6S   Objective-C template: http://ideone.com/clone/JcOR5 Free hint: To convert from a character to its integer value, you can do:              int charValue = character - '0';        2. Write a function that will reverse a given string. You can assume that you input will not be null or empty. You can implement your solution in the language of your choice, or using pseudo-code if you prefer (This is a basic sanity-check type question. Any engineer with any sort of expreience should be able to come up with some bit of code that reverses a string. If they can't then that should be an indicator that they are not very good at all.). Part 2: Write a function that uses the function you implemented above to test whether or not a given string is a palindrome (the same forwards as backwards). Java template: http://ideone.com/clone/36BlH   Objective-C template: http://ideone.com/clone/GZbha   3. You are reviewing the following code snippet submitted by a fellow engineer:              long fct(long n) {         int q;         int r = 1;              while (n != 1); {             r *= n;             n--;         }              return r;     }      What feedback would you give them? Are there any errors in this code? If so, what are they, and can you provide some test-cases that will highlight them? **Language Specific Questions** (A candidate is expected to do well on _at least one_ of these)   1. Consider the following Java code snippet:              public static synchronized int add(int num1, int num2) {         return num1 + num2;     }          public synchronized int add2(int num1, int num2) {         return num1 + num2;     }          public int add3(int num1, int num2) {         synchronized(this) {             return num1 + num2;         }     }      What is the difference between each method? Is one style preferred over the others? If so, which one, and why? What are the pros and cons of each style presented?   2. Consider the following Objective-C code:              @interface TestObj : NSObject {         NSString* string1;     }          @property(nonatomic, assign) NSString* string2;     @property(nonatomic, retain) NSString* string3;     @end               @implementation TestObj          @synthesize string2, string3;          - (void) processStrings {         string1 = @\"A new string\";         string2 = [[[NSString alloc] initWithString:@\"String 2\"] autorelease];         self.string3 = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@\"String 3\"];              [string1 release];         [string2 release];         [string3 release];         self.string2 = nil;         string3 = nil;     }     @end      What is the difference between string1, string2, and string3? Are there any problems with the way the strings are used in the processStrings method? If so, what are they, and how would you fix them? For people who do well on these questions I also have a set of open-ended discussion questions that aren't posted here and which deal with things like complexity analysis, algorithms, hashing, optimization, and similar topics. I've used the open-ended questions on a number of candidates already and know that they do a good job of separating the talented engineers from the not so good ones. Anyways, does that all seem reasonable?"}
{"_id": "253388", "title": "Setting permissions issue for admins and lower users in project", "text": "I am working in a jsp project an got stuck in a big problem. My project consist of accounts table for super admin, reseller, admin and users for executives and manager mapped in the account **Permission** **Super admin can see or add details of reseller, admin, executives and manager, and edit its own account** **Reseller can see or add details of admin,executives and manager ,and edit its own account but unable to create reseller** **Admin can see or add details of executives and manager ,and can see or edit its own account but unable to create admin** **Executives can see only his details and edit it** So the highest priority is for super admin account which have access of everyone,then comes reseller account which have access to the admin account and lower account that he created,then admin account can access manager and executives users ,then manager user can access executives and then executive can see only his information I have accounts and users table,Accounts can be super admin, reseller, and admin they all have an account_id and users are manager and executives which has a user_id My problem is that how to do that ,how to map these id because reseller have account_id and can add account id ( admin) so to fetch details of reseller i have to also fetch details of lower admin account In the same way for every type of account or user which login i have to apply a different sql query For ex if i have an extra table of call-details which have details on which user(user_id) receive call and which account(account_id) the user is mapped so i have to apply different sql query for different accounts and users login like for super-admin `select * from call-details` for reseller `select * from call-details` of reseller and call-details of account associated with it for admin `select * from call-details` where call receive on that account. and so on and i have more table and more pages then it is very difficult to apply this approach. Is there any approach by which i can solve this problem with a less difficult way. I tried my best to explain my problem please ask again if you have any doubts understanding my problem. Any help would be appreciated."}
{"_id": "78811", "title": "I've taken a job where there is no work to do!", "text": "This is related to the (closed) question New job - not got any work to do. I'm a week and a half into a brand new job and despite asking for work to do I keep being brushed off. The set-up here is just an aggregate of of services, which are then provided to the outside world, so any bugs that do occur are usuaully with the service provider so as far as I can tell there's very little to do. In my first week a contractor actually quit (after a month of just sitting there) and a co-worker (6 weeks in) was discussing leaving, am I destined to go the same way? I moved cities for this job, and would hate to think of the impact on my cv of a short stint at a big company - may look like I can't 'hack' it to future employers?"}
{"_id": "78819", "title": "How often do you review and validate your practices/process?", "text": "We currently drive changes to our process through the following mechanisms:   * Weekly wrap-up meeting   * Project postmortem  We discuss what isn't working, what is working, etc. I use these settings to introduce new practices, and eliminate ones that aren't working. We usually only make 1 change at a time and try it for 2 weeks to a month. To validate our change we look at:   * our velocity and std. deviation (work accomplished week over week)   * dialectic   * our opinion/perception of the practices effect and effectiveness Those practices which seem to work for us we keep. Everything else is removed. This has worked pretty well for us, but I'm always interested in better ways to do this. **How often/When do you review you development process?** **How do you validate the changes in your process are effective?**"}
{"_id": "231088", "title": "How do I create single object that changes functionality based on programmer input?", "text": "I have several classes that all behave according to one interface. But in each class there are additional functions defined that give each class slightly different behavior. What I want to do is have th programmer using this API to simply create one instance based on some parameter which generates the correct class type. And then he/she would only see the methods available to that type while programming So for example My interface               interface IChange     {         string Change(string inputString);     }      And say I have two classes that implement this interface               class Changer1 : IChange     {            public string Change(string input){            ...       }            public void DoSomethingSpecial1(){            ///code that does something specific to Changer1 class       }          }          class Changer2 : IChange{            public string Change(string input){            ...       }            public void DoSomethingSpecial2(){            ///code that does something specific to Changer2 class       }               }      Then I would have a wrapper that sets the appropriate Changer based on an enumeration or some other user input.               public enum ChangerType     {         Type1,         Type2     }          class MasterObject{                  public MasterObject(ChangerType type)             {                 if (type == ChangerType.Type1)                     SetChanger(new Changer1());                 if (type == ChangerType.Type2)                     SetChanger(new Changer2());             }                  private IChange _change;                  private void SetChanger(IChange change)             {                 this._change = change;             }               }      Then as a user of this, in my main program I want to do something like the following where the user creates the main object but it gets created in such a way that they only have access to the appropriate functions. I.e. Have available only DoSomethingSpecial1 or only DoSomethingSpecial2 based on the type you created.               class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             MasterObject obj1 = new MasterObject(ChangerType.Type1);             obj1.DoSomethingSpecial1();             string result1 = obj1.Change(\"test\");                  /// OR                  MasterObject obj2 = new MasterObject(ChangerType.Type2);             obj2.DoSomethingSpecial2();             string result2 = obj2.Change(\"test\");              }          }      I have a feeling this is Factory type pattern or maybe Abstract factory, but I'm not sure how to fix my code to implement it correctly."}
{"_id": "117989", "title": "Which areas( I.T.) are mostly affected by Outsourcing?", "text": "My parents complain about me choosing a career in IT instead of business since most companies outsource IT nowadays. I always thought IT/Desktop supports are the ones who got outsourced, but it seems programmers are being outsourced to India as well. I need to choose the most secure area (less affected by outsourcing) in order to convince my parents. Which areas in IT are mostly affected by outsourcing?"}
{"_id": "196231", "title": "Is there a way to use a higher level language in a competition that only has C, C++ and Java by default?", "text": "On that competition, you gain access to a system with gcc, vim, emacs and Java. You can't take any file with you and there's no internet access, but you can do whatever you want inside that system. You're presented a set of problems and have some ours to send the results. I wonder if there's any way I can hack a higher level language into it? Maybe there's something useful hidden within Java default libs, or linux? Or maybe I can take a paper (not illegal) and type a compressed lightweight JS/Scheme/Clojure/Whatever interpretator and running it? Or anything really. Ideas?"}
{"_id": "196235", "title": "GitHub access to repo: only with URL?", "text": "I'm finishing my dissertation and want/need to provide the source code of some analysis scripts I've used. I did all the version control with `git`. Because I want to publish the results generated with these scripts, I don't want to just put them in a public repository on GitHub. Is it possible to provide an \"URL-only\" access to a GitHub repo, meaning it is not publicly listed but only visible to persons who have the URL? If not with GitHub, is this possible with another service? I would like to have some kind of GUI to see the code, which is why I don't want to make a zip file with just the source code in it. Edit: To make that point more clear: There should not be any login or registration involved! Type in the URL printed in the dissertation and boom, there's the source code!"}
{"_id": "8467", "title": "Example of an open source project using Spring", "text": "I'm trying to learn a bit about the Spring framework and I'm wondering if anyone can recommend an open source project using it so that I can have a look through the source. Any other recommendations around learning Spring would be helpful too."}
{"_id": "111773", "title": "why use a form object when you can get needed data from view object's html?", "text": "I am working with server side code. I have a request object that handles request data validation and filtering. I have a view object that uses template files to generate html for output. the template files are mostly html. you can put one view object inside of another view object in order to assemble a page piece by peice. for instance you might have a page layout view, and you might put a form view inside the page layout view. One of the features of the request object is that it can automatically build validations using an html5 string containing a form. It parses the html string and grabs input types and other tag attributes that determine HTML5 validation, then matches this validation server side. I get this html string from a view object. This way no matter what the designer puts in the view's template file, it will automatically get validated according to the html5 attributes server side. i create and use the same view that was originally used to generate the page, to build validations for the request when the page is then submitted back to the server. I would like to get feedback on this idea. Pros/Cons/Other Concerns."}
{"_id": "196236", "title": "Why does Donald Knuth write TAOCP using assembly language?", "text": "I don't hate using assembly language, since I have written some in my os course. But obviously, assembly language lacks abstraction, you have to pay more attention to the details. Is assembly language really essential to write TAOCP?"}
{"_id": "196487", "title": "What is the convention regarding class names that may already exist in the ORM?", "text": "This is a generic question about class names and ORMs, but for context; I'm working on a Flask web app in Python using SQLalchemy. I'm struggling with naming a new class that will contain the business logic to process reminders. In the database there is a table named \"reminders\" that contains data I need. The ORM has created a class 'Reminders' to access it. Of course, for the business-logic class, the only good name I can think of is also \"Reminders\", but as I said, there already is a class with that name in my models. I was thinking this could potentially lead to confusion. My question is; is this still the way to go, two different classes with the same name (but with a different path), or is there a better way/convention to tackle this? PS: There is one limitation on what I can do; the database is legacy and used by other software, so renaming the table would be 'problematic' at best."}
{"_id": "119160", "title": "Some advice in open sourcing objective-c code?", "text": "I've been working on an iPhone app for the past month and am interested in open sourcing some of its code. I built a few categories that others might find useful for generating filler data during testing and debugging, and I also made a view controller for displaying images that others might like to include in their own projects. How do you go about packaging these types of things (categories, view controllers, etc.) for sharing? What are some naming conventions I should keep in mind? Is it standard practice to preface open source code with initials (EGOTableViewPullRefresh, MGImageUtilities, etc.)? Should I make an example xcode project which shows how they can be used? Should I make a webpage to document and/or promote these things? Is automated documentation generated from comments a good way to go? What sorts of licensing should I be considering?"}
{"_id": "92344", "title": "Where should code refactoring and optimization fit within both an agile and waterfall process timeline?", "text": "There appears to be this notion among the project management team that stating that \"it works\" means it should then be deemed 100% complete. Most programmers know that isn't always the case. If I'm trying alternative approaches to get a piece of functionality working, that doesn't necessarily mean I found the best solution, or it won't require some rework after reviewing with other developers. I'll often get done with something, step back, and then ask myself what I can do better after the business rules are satisfied. Should this \"I can do better\" time actually fit somewhere within the timeline? I'm of the opinion that the best approach is that you always leave code better than when you found it (to a degree), which could mean post launch refactoring. However, project teams are often extremely uncomfortable with this approach because again, if it works, and has been tested, then why fix it?"}
{"_id": "119166", "title": "Unit testing external dependencies", "text": "When writing a program, should I write tests that ensure that the dependencies I use are working? Those might help to check my assumptions about them, and may also help when deciding to upgrade said deependencies. Also, are there any established opinions or schools about whether or how one should go about that?"}
{"_id": "114181", "title": "Tools for managing a complicated project setup with many frameworks and no documentation", "text": "We have to extend a huge java project that makes use of frameworks like maven, spring, struts, freemarker and closure templates. We do have access to source code but barely any documentation, and we have to extend this system. Our only solution is to find the place in the existing code, where something similar is already done. To find this place, we try to start from the action that is called and then with the help of the debugger try to find out which classes and Spring beans are involved. The stack traces from the debugger are quite hard to understand, since a lot of reflection is being used. Does anybody had a similiar setup and could provide a few tipps how to manage such a complicated setup?"}
{"_id": "114183", "title": "Type-clarifying comments and type checking in dynamic languages", "text": "I often feel that there's something wrong when I code blocks such as:               function foo (arg){ // arg: a SomeClass object         ...     }      or               function foo (arg){         if (Object.prototype.toString.apply(arg) !== '[object Array]')             throw new Error(\"Parameter must be an array\");         ...     }      . With a statically typed language I wouldn't have to either clarify the expected argument type or check compliance to this expectation. In addition, the possibility of specifying a return type makes the code even more descriptive. OTOH some cases lend themselves to self-documenting code:               function parse (json){         ...     }      . In the example above, it's reasonable enough to suppose that your API consumers will know both what the function is supposed to do, and what argument values will be acceptable. However other times clarifying the code intent by choosing \"clarifying\" names would yield long, awkward names that mix the expected type of a variable and its _role_. Am I using dynamic languages with the wrong mindset? What conventions, techniques, patterns can save one from having to write ugly type-checking code and/or excessively depending on comments?"}
{"_id": "145378", "title": "Scrum, DDD, and front-end development in an enterprise environment", "text": "So, I've been working for a bank for the past 4 years. My main responsibility has been online banking. Over the past year, we've been implementing the scrum methodology. We've also changed to domain driven design. Now, my problem is regarding what management is planning on doing. They want to split the online banking team between the domain teams, so one developer from the online banking team will go into each domain team and work on online banking projects that are part of the domains. For example, if software development gets a project to create a new loan overview in the online bank, the loan team will handle it all the way from from database to UI. My problem with this is that there is no focus on the online bank as a product anymore. There is no way to veto any new feature. The product owners in the domains can just dump any obscure new feature into the online bank that they want to. There is also no work happening to revamp core features that our users use all the time. Every project is to make something new and once it's release, developers have to start working on a new project immediately. There is no teamwork, each web developer has to work on a separate UI for a separate domain. No hardening. Our suggestion to management is that the online banking team be it's own scrum team focusing on the online bank as a product. That team would have it's own scrum master and the online bank would have a product owner. That product owner would coordinate with the product owners of the domains and prioritize projects that have to happen in the online banks. If a project from one domain has higher priority than a project from another domain, he would explain to the domain PO that we have to work on the higher priority one first. Management hasn't listened to us. My question is, what is the right way to do this?"}
{"_id": "35691", "title": "Been doing .NET for several years and am thinking about a platform change. Where do people suggest I go?", "text": "I've been programming in .NET for several years now and am thinking maybe its time to do a platform switch. Any suggestions about which platform would be the best to learn? I've been thinking about going back to C++ development or just focusing on T-SQL within the Microsoft stack. I'm thinking of switching because: a) I feel that the .NET platform is increasingly becoming commodified--meaning that its more about learning a GUI and certain things to click around than really understanding programming. I'm concerned that this will lend itself to making developers on that stack increasingly paid less. b) It's very frustrating to spend your entire day essentially debugging something that _should_ work but doesn't. Usually, Microsoft releases something that suggests _anyone_ can just click here and there and _poof_ there's your application. Most of the time it doesn't work and winds up sucking so much more time than it was supposed to save. c) I recently led a team in a small startup to build a WPF application. We were really hit hard with people complaining about having to download the runtime. Our code was also not portable to any other platform. Added to which, the ram usage and slowness to load of the app was remarkable for its size. I researched it and we could not find a way to optimize it. d) I'm a little concerned about being wedded to the Windows platform. What are the pros and cons of adding another platform and which platform do people suggest? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "145373", "title": "When should an Aggregate Root contain another AR (and when should it not)", "text": "_Let me begin by first apologizing for the length of the post, but I really wanted to convey as much detail up-front so I don't take your time going back and forth in comments._ I am designing an application following a DDD approach and am wondering what guidance I can follow to determine whether an Aggregate Root should contain another AR or if they should be left as separate, \"free-standing\" ARs. Take the case of a simple Time Clock application that allows Employees to clock themselves in or out for the day. The UI allows them to enter their employee ID and PIN which is then validated and the current state of the employee retrieved. If the employee is currently clocked-in, the UI displays a \"Clock Out\" button; and, conversely, if they are not clocked-in, the button reads \"Clock In\". The action taken by the button corresponds to the state of the employee as well. The application is a web client that calls a back-end server exposed via a RESTful service interface. My first pass at creating intuitive, readable URLs resulted in the following two endpoints:               http://myhost/employees/{id}/clockin     http://myhost/employees/{id}/clockout      _NOTE: These are used after the employee ID and PIN have been validated and a \"token\" representing the \"user\" is passed in a header. This is because there is a \"manager-mode\" that allows a manager or supervisor to clock-in or out another employee. But, for the sake of this discussion, I'm trying to keep it simple._ On the server, I have an ApplicationService that provides the API. My initial idea for the ClockIn method is something like:               public void ClockIn(String id)     {         var employee = EmployeeRepository.FindById(id);              if (employee == null) throw SomeException();              employee.ClockIn();              EmployeeRepository.Save();     }      This looks pretty straight-forward until we realize that the Employee's time card information is actually maintained as a list of transactions. That means each time I call ClockIn or ClockOut, I am not directly changing the state of the Employee but, instead, I am adding a new entry into the Employee's TimeSheet. The current state of the Employee (clocked in or not) is derived from the most recent entry in the TimeSheet. So, if I go with the code shown above, my repository has to recognize that the persistable properties of the Employee have not changed but that a new entry was added into the Employee's TimeSheet and perform an insert into the data store. On the other hand (and here's the ultimate question of the post), TimeSheet seems like it is an Aggregate Root as well as it has identity (the employee ID and period) and I could just as easily implement the same logic as TimeSheet.ClockIn(employeeId). I find myself debating the merits of the two approaches and, as stated in the opening paragraph, wonder what criteria I should be evaluating to determine which approach is more suited for the problem."}
{"_id": "223368", "title": "C# dynamically linking different libraries and/or external classes", "text": "## tl;dr Is it possible to include an external library (and create instances of objects represented within that library) based on some condition? This must be done at compile-time, so separate builds? ## Background information ### Warning: Wall of text. If I have some code that requires a link to an external class:               using myExternalLibrary;     namespace myNamespace     {       public class Engine       {          public Engine()          {            // external class is contained            // within myExternalLibrary            public externalClass instanceOfExternalClass                   = new externalClass();          }       }     }          // external class     namespace myExternalLibrary     {       public class externalClass       {          public externalClass()          {            // constructor logic          }       }     }      By providing references to myExternalLibrary in the project that contains myClass and providing a using statement in a relevant place, I can create an instance of externalClass as and when I need it within myClass. This I am fine with. If I have some very common code that requires several different external libraries, I can do the same thing but with each of the external libraries that are required (i.e add a reference and a using statement for each one of the external libraries). However, due to the design of the software I am working on, I am required to use an external library only when certain conditions are met. I am also not to include references to those external libraries if they are not required. ## Class Detail I can't go into specifics about the class design, but this is basically what I have: I have a class (this is the Engine class) that is required to act as a bridge between the GUI and some hardware. The Engine class requires external libraries to allow it to communicate with external hardware. I have two external libraries for two separate types of hardware:   * InternallyDevelopedHardwareControlLibrary (our internally developed hardware library for controlling our internally developed hardware)   * LicensedHardwareControlLibrary (a library that we have licensed for controlling some hardware we have bought in). By default, the Engine will communicate via InternallyDevelopedHardwareControlLibrary to our internally developed hardware. However, Engine also needs to be able to communicate via LicensedHardwareControlLibrary to the licensed hardware, if (and only if) the end-user has licensed our software to run along side the externally developed hardware. LicensedHardwareControlLibrary will be licensed to the end-user with our software to some of our end-users. In this instance, LicensedHardwareControlLibrary is required to be shipped with our software. However, if the end-user has is not licensed to use LicensedHardwareControlLibrary, we are not permitted to ship that library with out software. Since Engine is taking the place of communicating with the external hardware via InternallyDevelopedHardwareControlLibrary by default, it requires a reference to it. However if a user is licensed to utilise LicensedHardwareControlLibrary, I need to add a reference to that, but only if the user is licensed to use that library. ## Question Since Engine is required to be generic, I need to figure out a way of conditionally including this second library. My initial thought was to move all of the elements of Engine to an abstract class, and to have two separate Engines (one for each of the libraries) that extend the abstract Engine class. Something like:               public class Engine     {       // all common code for each Engine       // type in here     }          public class StandardEngine : Engine     {       // the engine that will utilise       // InternallyDevelopedHardwareControlLibrary     }          public class LicensedEngine : Engine     {       // the engine that will utilise       // LicensedHardwareControlLibrary     }      The StandardEngine code will make use of an instance of the objects represented in InternallyDevelopedHardwareControlLibrary, and LicensedEngine will make use of an instance of the objects represented in LicensedHardwareControlLibrary. Or more simply put: Each of the less-abstract versions of Engine require to operate on a representation of an object that is contained within either InternallyDevelopedHardwareControlLibrary (StandardEngine) or LicensedHardwareControlLibrary (LicensedEngine). The standard build will only contain the StandardEngine class, however for some users we will need to run a separate build which also contains the LicensedEngine class. However, I feel that this will not be optimal because LicensedEngine will need to be external from the main project/library because it cannot be shipped in our standard build. What are the ways in which I can achieve this?"}
{"_id": "115389", "title": "When do you drop old technologies from your resume?", "text": "I have been reviewing several resumes we have for a new position. I noticed that a few of them had many old programming language versions and old applications on their resume (e.g. SQL 4.2, VB5, Lotus 123, Novell). This left their list of computer experience very long. Do you keep it fresh? Do you show your depth of experience even though you will never use that techology again? When should you drop old technology on your resume? By keeping old technology on your resume does that do any harm in getting hired?"}
{"_id": "166688", "title": "Why to say, my function is of IFly type rather than saying it's Airplane type", "text": "Say, I have two classes: Airplane and Bird, both of them fly. Both implement the interface IFly. IFly declares a function `StartFlying()`. Thus both Airplane and Bird have to define the function, and use it as per their requirement. Now when I make a manual for class reference, what should I write for the function `StartFlying`? 1) `StartFlying` is a function of type IFly . 2) `StartFlying` is a function of type Airplane 3) `StartFlying` is a function of type Bird. My opinion is 2 and 3 are more informative. But what i see is that class references use the 1st one. They say what interface the function is declared in. Problem is, I really don't get any usable information from knowing `StartFlying` is IFly type. However, knowing that `StartFlying` is a function inside Airplane and Bird, is more informative, as I can decide which instance (Airplane or Bird ) to use. Any lights on this: how saying `StartFlying` is a function of type IFly, can help a programmer understanding how to use the function?"}
{"_id": "52913", "title": "How big of a team do you need to benefit from bug tracking software?", "text": "My development team just grew by 100% (from 1 developer to 2). My new cohort want to invest in bug tracking software. Is there benefits to such software for such a small team?"}
{"_id": "166683", "title": "What is the Reluctant ideas at Extreme Programming (XP)", "text": "Regarding Software Engineering, there are several obstacles for Extreme Programming, one of them is reluctant ideas. Not to accepting certain kind of idea. What is the exact meaning of the term \"reluctant ideas\""}
{"_id": "189022", "title": "Software agreement for farming out development work", "text": "I'm looking for guidance from someone who has successfully hired a freelancer to assist with writing software they later marketed publicly. Simply, what kind of software agreement should I have the freelancer sign so I have full rights over the code and cannot be sued later. I'm currently independent but have plans to launch a software company once I've perfected my software products."}
{"_id": "149807", "title": "What are requirements for a successful SOA?", "text": "I\u2019m an EA in an organisation with 10000+ employees. Strategically we are heading towards SOA. Currently I\u2019m researching about SOA\u2019s and creating a road map and I have come over many blogs that talk about \u201cSOA is dead\u201d. We can all agree that SOA is not just web-services. The problem is that I have hard to find any information on the reason behind SOA-fail stories in enterprises. What went bad and what went right? My question is: **What are common SOA mistakes in enterprises that make SOA fail in long term? Is the any best practice for SOA? What are the most important requirements for a successful SOA in an enterprise?** It would be good feedback towards our SOA strategy in this organisation. I have tried to narrow down the question, but it\u2019s hard due to the nature of the question."}
{"_id": "189026", "title": "Why is the usage of string keys generally considered to be a bad idea?", "text": "This has been bugging me for a while. Most of the time, when it comes to storing data in structures such as hashtables, programmers, books and articles insist that indexing elements in said structures by String values is considered to be bad practice. Yet, so far, I have not found a single such source to also explain WHY it is considered to be bad practice. Does it depend on the programming language? On the underlying framework? On the implementation? Take two simple examples, if it helps: An SQL-like table where rows are indexed by a String primary key. A .NET Dictionary where the keys are Strings."}
{"_id": "149805", "title": "Are external configuration files considered an antipattern?", "text": "Many times I have been in a situation where an application is apparently broken, only to find that an external configuration file has been at fault. Typically this is because the wrong file is there, or that it contains incorrect data. Is there a better way to allow an external user/process to modify the runtime characteristics of an application, or is this the best known solution to the problem? I'd like to see discussion on the general case rather than focusing on, say, Unix `/etc` or Java JNDI and so on."}
{"_id": "190992", "title": "Task Scheduler shared hosting", "text": "I am using a shared host that which doesn't support CRON/TaskScheduler (it is a windows Godaddy server). I need to search on email server for new emails on each 1 hour, I have the script on PHP. Can I use `PERL` to emulate a task on certain times, or is there any other alternatives?"}
{"_id": "190993", "title": "Programming interview: on sorted arrays, algorithm proof", "text": "The following is a programming interview question: Given 3 sorted arrays. Find(x,y,z), (where x is from 1st array, y is from 2nd array, and z is from 3rd array), such that Max(x,y,z) - Min(x,y,z) is minimum. This question is discussed here: http://www.careercup.com/question?id=14805690 One possible solution discussed in the career cup page is the following: \"Take three pointers. Each to the first element of the list. then find the min of them. compute max(xyx)-Min(xyz). If result less than till now result change it. increment the pointer of the array which contains the minimum of them\" My question is, how can we prove the correctness of this algorithm? If not, can we come up with cases where the algorithm fails. And if so, what is a correct algorithm to solve this problem with the proof."}
{"_id": "165483", "title": "OS choice for functional developing", "text": "I'm mainly a .NET developer so I normaly use Windows/VisualStudio (that means: I'm spoiled) but I'm enjoying Haskell and other (mostly functional) languagues in my spare time. Now for Haskell the windows-support is ok (you can get the Haskell-Platform) but latley I tried to get a basic Clojure/Scheme environment set up and it's just a pain on windows. So I'm thinking about trying out another OS for better tooling and languague support. Of course that leaves me with MacOS or some Linux distribution. I never used MacOS before and of course Linux would be cheaper (free) and I don't think I can parallel-boot MacOS on your normal PC-Hardware (can you?). PLUS: I don't have a clue about the tools you can use on those (to me) forign OSs. To make it short: I want to explore more Haskell, Clojure, Scala, Scheme and of course need at least good tooling for JavaScript/HTML5/Css. Support for .NET/Mono/F# would be great but for this I will still have my Win7 boot. So I like to know: \\- what is your prefered OS, Distribution (is Ubuntu viable?) \\- what Editor/IDE are you using Thank you for your help! PS: I'm not sure if this is the right place for this question but I surely hope so - if not please let me know where I should move this to (StackOverflow don't seem to be the right place IMHO)"}
{"_id": "221101", "title": "How should web development design patterns differ from software development design patterns?", "text": "I want to become a better developer, and so have been dedicating most of my free time outside of work to learning design patterns, and when to implement them (since I feel learning general patterns is a better starting point than learning specific libraries or tools). One issue is, that the majority of highly regarded design patterns I'm reading about tend to described in terms of their applications in software development. I was wondering what should be considered when applying them to web development rather than software development? For reference, these(Reference1 Reference2) is what I've been using as a reference when picking out what design pattern would be best applied for my current project."}
{"_id": "194291", "title": "Immutable vs mutable object as returned parameter for class method", "text": "There is a class method (static method) in which I create and build some object. And for filling that object, I create it as mutable object. My mutable object is a subclass of immutable object. So i can return it as super Class type. That object is just created in class method and returns. It is not a part of object or class state. **Should I return mutable object or it immutable copy?** (what solution will be correct in concept of **encapsulation** ) For example there is some pseudo code:               // MutableArray is subclass of Array     MutableArray : Array;          // Another class          static (Array *)getEngineers {        Array *employees = Array.arrayWithContentsOfResource(\"employees.txt\");        MutableArray *engineers = new MutableArray;        for (Employee *employee in employees) {           if (employee.profession == \"Engineer\") {              engineers.addObject(employee)           }            }        return engineers; // should I return Array.arrayWithArray(engineers) instead of engineers ?     }       **Update:** I mean, if I have a mutable array that is a member of the object, then it makes sense to return immutable copy in getter method (to provide access control and encapsulation). But if I have method like in example. I need only immutable object for using. But creating immutable copy of array is additional operations. Does it make sense to make it immutable?"}
{"_id": "253919", "title": "How to cleanly add after-the-fact commits from the same feature into git tree", "text": "I am one of two developers on a system. I make most of the commits at this time period. My current git workflow is as such:   * there is `master` branch only (no develop/release)   * I make a new branch when I want to do a feature, do lots of commits, and then when I'm done, I merge that branch back into `master`, and usually push it to remote. ...except, I am usually not done. I often come back to alter one thing or another and every time I think it is done, but it can be 3-4 commits before I am really done and move onto something else. **Problem** The problem I have now is that .. my feature branch tree is merged and pushed into master and remote master, and then I realize that I am not really done with that feature, as in I have finishing touches I want to add, where finishing touches may be cosmetic only, or may be significant, but they still belong to that one feature I just worked on. **What I do now** Currently, when I have extra after-the-fact commits like this, I solve this problem by rolling back my merge, and re-merging my `feature` branch into `master` with my new commits, and I do that so that git tree looks clean. One clean feature branch branched out of `master` and merged back into it. I then push --force my changes to origin, since my origin doesn't see much traffic at the moment, so I can almost count that things will be safe, or I can even talk to other dev if I have to coordinate. But I know it is not a good way to do this in general, as it rewrites what others may have already pulled, causing potential issues. And it did happen even with my dev, where git had to do an extra weird merge when our trees diverged. **Other ways to solve this which I deem to be not so great**   * Next best way is to just make those extra commits to the `master` branch directly, be it fast-forward merge, or not. It doesn't make the tree look as pretty as in my current way I'm solving this, but then it's not rewriting history.   * Yet another way is to _wait_. Maybe wait 24 hours and not push things to origin. That way I can rewrite things as I see fit. The con of this approach is time wasted waiting, when people may be waiting for a fix now.   * Yet another way is to make a \"new\" feature branch every time I realize I need to fix something extra. I may end up with things like `feature-branch` `feature-branch-html-fix`, `feature-branch-checkbox-fix`, and so on, kind of polluting the git tree somewhat.  Is there a way to manage what I am trying to do without the drawbacks I described? I'm going for clean-looking history here, but maybe I need to drop this goal, if technically it is not a possibility. **Sample After-the-Fact Commit Messages**               Main commits:  alter module behavior to give user more information      Here I thought I was done, check out, & merge to master, then oops, forgot this (OFT):               OFT:  (enhancement) added better error messages      Okay, now I am done! Later, user comes back and asks for an enhancement/feature. Turns out a certain input number for an order can have a revision associated with it. So it's really two numbers, not one.               OFT:  (feature-add):  fix up order input to accept revisions      Now I'm done ...               OFT:  (bug-fix) there was a bug with the two-number input method, fix SQL for that      okay now I'm done ...               OFT:  (enhancement) oh wait, improved error messages again, for clarity!"}
{"_id": "253910", "title": "How can if (sscanf(buf, \"%i\", &mode) != 1 || TRUE) be rewritten to if (TRUE)?", "text": "I got lost in the opening of this post on reddit. How can `if (sscanf(buf, \"%i\", &mode) != 1 || TRUE)` be rewritten to `if (TRUE)`? Does this assume that the `sscanf` never fails?"}
{"_id": "253911", "title": "What is the problem git submodules are supposed to solve?", "text": "What is the problem that git submodules solve well? When should I use them? Or rather what is their use case? The only use of submodules that I have seen 'in the wild' has been when used to share code between multiple repositories. From what I have experienced, submodules do not appear to be ideally suited to this use case. You run into `git update submodule` woes and your history gets filled with `updating submodule pointer` commits. If the 'sharing code' use case is not best solved by submodules, what problems are?"}
{"_id": "75479", "title": "Why is every programming language \"powerful\"?", "text": "Every time I check out a web page dedicated to some programming language I always see the word _\"powerful\"_ in the list of idiosyncrasies / attributes. If every programming language is powerful why do they put that word in the tutorials / documentations?"}
{"_id": "253915", "title": "Version hash to solve Event Sourcing problems", "text": "The basic examples I have seen about Event Sourcing do not deal with out of order events, clock offsets in different systems and late events from system partitions. I am wondering if more polished Event Sourcing implementations rely on a version stamp of modified objects? For example, assuming that the system is rendering the entity **Client** with version id _ABCD1234_. If the user modifies the entity, the system will create an event with the modified fields AND the version id reference to which version it applies. Later the event responder would detect out of order events and merge them."}
{"_id": "191667", "title": "Recruiter asking for help understanding JEE5 or JEE6 and J2EE. (NOT A JOB POSTING NOT LOOKING FOR CANDIDATES)", "text": "I am a recruiter. I want to learn as much as I can about JEE5/JEE6 so when I try and find these types of candidates I can at least talk intelligently with them. What I need to understand is what goes without saying? So for example, if you were a J2EE or had experience with JEE5 or JEE6, could I assume you had spring and hibernate? Could I assume you had Jboss and Jboss admin? I guess it would be helpful if I posted a job description and let you guys tell me what is wrong with it? Candidate must have the following skills:   * Extensive experience with Java/J2EE Development   * Experience with various Development Tools (Eclipse, SVN, etc.)   * Database design and SQL expertise   * Web Services   * JavaServer Faces (JSF)   * Model-View-Controller (MVC)   * Comfortable working in a Unix/Linux environment   * Maven   * JBoss Deployment and Administration   * Swing/AWT   * Scrum/Agile   * TeamForge So if I was a certified J2EE would i have all these skills? Are these skills even grouped right? If you were writing this job description for a J2EE what would you change? I am trying to learn. I am not posting this to find candidates for a job. I am posting this to try and get a handle on what a hiring manager is asking for and be able to tell him, there is no way a J2EE has all these skills or, no problem, all J2EE's have these skills. Am I making sense?"}
{"_id": "92969", "title": "Working as a sole developer: getting code looked over", "text": "I have _no choice_ but to work on my own, and can't find an adequate solution for getting my work looked over, sanity checked, having someone to brainstorm ideas with, discussing best practices and so on. I thought I'd get an answer via Jeff Atwood's article: In Programming, One Is The Loneliest Number, the best I could find on the subject, but it turned out to just reiterate my question. I know stack exchange sites such as this, and Code Review are an obvious potential answer, but as many would appreciate, it's FAR from ideal: While I can't list all the pitfalls, often, formulating a question and boxing it up into a self-contained problem often takes so much work that by the time you've prepared it sufficiently, you've answered your own question in more time than it would have taken otherwise. Also, hiding away details to ask a well defined question eliminates the possibility of someone spotting problems you hadn't thought of. Also, while I can't quite put my finger on it, the responsiveness of free conversation can't be matched by the any form of textual internet discussion that I can think of. Last but not least, I don't want to post my whole project for the world to look at for the rest of eternity, for obvious reasons. Are there any answers other than paying a consultant to look over my code?"}
{"_id": "114725", "title": "How to get familiarized with certificate generation", "text": "I am supposed to work on web Services (using Apache CXF and Spring ) I was asked to get familiarized with certificate generation, as we will need to generate certificates going forward for the web services. One thing I knew is that they are using Glassfish server. I googled , but I didn't understand anything. I know that the information I provided is not sufficient, to expect a relevant answer But Could anybody please let me know , what will be the best starting point on this ?? and what other information should we need from the client to make it clearer ??"}
{"_id": "114728", "title": "Why is naming a table's Primary Key column \"Id\" considered bad practice?", "text": "My t-sql teacher told us that naming our PK column \"Id\" is considered bad practice without any further explanations. Why is naming a table PK column \"Id\" is considered bad practice?"}
{"_id": "253306", "title": "Why is build.number an \"abuse\" of semantic versioning?", "text": "I was explaining a proposed build system (Gradle/Artifactory/Jenkins/Chef) to one of our senior architects, and he made a comment to me that I _sort of_ disagree with, but am not experienced enough to really weigh-in on. This project builds a Java library (JAR) as an artifact to be reused by other teams. For versioning, I'd like to use the semantic approach of:               <major>.<minor>.<patch>      Where `patch` indicates bug/emergency fixes, `minor` indicates backwards- compatible releases, and `major` indicates either massive refactorings of the API and/or backwards-incompatible changes. As far as delivery goes here is what I want: a developer commits some code; this triggers a build to a QA/TEST environment. Some tests are ran (some automated, some manual). If all tests pass, then a production build publishes the JAR to our in-house repo. By this point the JAR should be versioned properly, and my thinking was to use the `build.number` that is automatically generated and provided by our CI tool to act as the patch number. Thus, the versioning would actually be:               <major>.<minor>.<build.number>      Again, where `build.number` is provided by the CI tool. The architect dismissed this, saying that using the CI build number was an \"abuse\" of semantic versioning. My question is: is this correct, and if so, why? And if not, why not?"}
{"_id": "96049", "title": "When a developer should change technology or framework?", "text": "I'm an ASP.NET developer since 3 years ago and I'm now pretty powerful in WebForms. But now it seems that everybody is moving or shifting towards ASP.NET MVC, and my company is also taking this shift. The question is, when and how can you feel that it's the time to shift to a newer technology. For example, when and how can you feel that you have to go from HTML4 to HTML5, or CSS2 to CSS3, or ASP.NET WebForms to ASP.NET MVC, etc.?"}
{"_id": "196905", "title": "Which design pattern is typically used when designing a WCF data services driven Winforms application?", "text": "Please excuse me as I am a bit new to the following technologies and practices. I have been given the task to create a management suite utilizing an MDI GUI. This suite will be the front end to a WCF data service. My question is, what design pattern is typically used by most professionals when designing such an application. At the moment, I have been looking into both MVC and 3-tier design patterns. If the MVC route tends to be taken, I'm assuming that because the WCF service is added as a service reference which provides visibility to all it's classes, the model part of MVC is pretty much covered? Would it make sense to generate an interface from the WCF class? If the 3-tier pattern is used, would it make sense to create datalayer objects for every visible WCF class (ex. PropertyDAL), and on top of that, business layer objects for each datalayer object? If this is the case, with there being over 114 classes which would be made visible, this would mean 228 additional classes which seems a bit bloated to me and not necessary. Here is the link to the usage of MVC design pattern which has lead me to my question."}
{"_id": "106244", "title": "Should development methods squash a developer's individualism?", "text": "I'm in my final semester of college and am taking a software engineering course. In the class we learn about various software development methods. The one we focused on, and used to develop our project, was the waterfall method. I feel like the instructor may have implemented it wrong. In our class diagrams, we had to list ALL properties and methods including private ones. I have read a few books, namely Clean Code, that say to keep functions as short and focused as possible. It seems tedious to list every little function in our diagrams if they don't help other developers out (they're private, no one else will use them). Plus, I may not think of every tiny function when designing the program, they may come along when refactoring. Did the instructor tell us wrong by asking us to list every function? And, do these design methods squash the developer's individualism to write code how they can best understand it?"}
{"_id": "2082", "title": "Guiding Management to the Correct Decision", "text": "My supervisor (also a developer) and I have a running joke about writing a book called \"Managing From Beneath: Subversively Guiding Management to the Right Decision\" and including a number of \"techniques\" we've developed for helping those who make the decisions to make the right ones. So far, we've got (cynicism warning!):   * **BIC It!** BIC stands for \"Bury In Committee.\" When a bad idea comes up that someone wants to champion, we try to get it deferred to a committee for input. Typically it will either get killed outright (especially if other members of the committee are competing for you as a resource), or it will be hung up long enough that the proponent forgets about it.   * **Smart, Stupid, or Expensive?** When someone gets a visionary idea, offer them three ways to do it: a smart way, a stupid way, and an expensive way. The hope is that you've at least got a 2/3 shot of not having to do it the way that makes a piece of your soul die.   * **All-Pro**. It's a preemptive pro/con list in which you get into the mind of the (pr)opponent and think what would be cons against doing it your way. Twist them into pros and present them in your pro list before they have a chance to present them as cons.   * **Dependicitis**. Link pending decisions together, ideally with the proponent's pet project as the final link in the chain. Use this leverage to force action on those that have been put off.   * **Preemptive Acceptance**. Sometimes it's clear that management is going to go a particular direction regardless of advice to the contrary, and it's time to make the best of it. Take the opportunity to get something else you need, though. Approach the sponsor out of the blue and take the first step: \"You know, I've been thinking about it, and while it's not the route I would advise, as long as we can get the schedule and budget for Project Awesome loosened up, I can work some magic to make your project fly.\" So ... what techniques have you come up with to try to head off the problem projects or make the best of what may come?"}
{"_id": "25087", "title": "do you allow people to work late?", "text": "I came across this link Parkinson Law where it says like \"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.\" Do you agree with this? If yes, how do you enforce this with the people? In our case, if we ask the people to complete the task sooner and ask them to leave, some people they feel it as demotivate. What is your opinion to avoid the demotivate feel as well as complete & leave from work soon?"}
{"_id": "2086", "title": "Should one write Big Oh complexity in the documentation of algorithms?", "text": "When writing or using an algorithm, should the Big Oh complexity be mentioned?"}
{"_id": "25082", "title": "Applied vs fundamental programming", "text": "My boss just let me choose what I want to do: program core that will be used by other programmers, or program applied systems that will use that core. What are pros and cons of both? What career opportunity will each one give me? What is interesting in each one?"}
{"_id": "220472", "title": "How do I get fluid gesture motion in third party maps app on iOS?", "text": "There are a couple of apps on the App Store that use external map sources, for various reasons, to display map data. Some even have multiple sources for bike traffic and so on. However some of them are quite cumbersome to use, when panning and zooming they have a jerky motion while they keep loading and they are not as fluid as Apple's Maps app. However I did encounter some that are quite fluid and they app seem to wrap the actual \"map\" in a 3D sphere object that goes flat as you zoom in closer and closer. **How is this behavior achieved? Does apple provide a special class to get this kind of interaction?** I've also seen a similar solution in a Mac App Store app called Planito, the motion is very fluid and they can even display Bing Maps that way."}
{"_id": "220476", "title": "Greek philosophers, stone tablets and dumb slaves problem", "text": "This is one of the questions that I came across while preparing for a programming interview. > Design a system for Greek philosophers to exchange messages using stone > tablets carried by dumb slaves. Well, the guys who had this question have suggested to use analogy of a TCP/IP protocol to describe the communication and some suggested packet data communication to explain the design. Here is what I think of it going by the clues:   1. The Greek philosophers would act as 'machines' that are trying to communicate.   2. The dumb slaves would be the message carrier which is the 'network' in our analogy.   3. Stone tablets would be messages carried like the 'data packets'.   4. May be the slaves would reach philosophers by asking for the route from some random guys that will lead them to the philosopher's place just like the packets arrive at a destination using routers in the network.   5. And the message could be split in to multiple tablets and so, a message could be eventually carried by more than one slave who might take different paths and arrive in any order. There shall be a way to arrange the message in the correct order on their arrival at the receiver's end. (sequence number in the tablets?)   6. The system should also be able to handle missing tablets and in which case should the sender philosopher try and send the entire message again after a timeout?  **EDIT:**   I would like to ask the following questions:   1. Am I thinking on the correct lines?   2. Are there any important things that I am missing in the things that I have listed above?   3. This question to design a system looks vague to me. How would someone depict such a system in an interview ? Using diagrams to show interactions between entities?   4. Am I handling the missing tablets issue correctly (Mentioned as point 6. above)?"}
{"_id": "134942", "title": "Should Sequence Diagrams be Specific or Abstract?", "text": "I'm creating a sequence diagram for a simple program I'm working on for work. The diagram I'm currently working on is very high level - it defines the interface with lots of alt paths, but does not exemplify any specific use cases. I was wondering whether would it be more appropriate to instead make several diagrams which demonstrate specific examples. I'm not familiar with the way that these diagrams are intended to be used, and I've seen both specific examples and abstract examples. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "134940", "title": "Can a company deny that you teach people how to use a software under MIT License?", "text": "There's a way that a company/foundation that own an specific MIT licensed software (framework) deny or prevent you from teaching it to other programmers and make profit from it? And what if this company have it's own courses/classes about it? Can they prevent \"anyone else\" from teaching it too?"}
{"_id": "105570", "title": "How to pick a web application software engineer?", "text": "How should I pick a web application software engineer? The (permanent) position is to rewrite the client of an existing desktop client server application. The pages will not be generated dynamically on a server, but the server will expose a full API in whatever way is needed, for example JSON RPC calls, and can make static files available. It will replace a client that people have to download and install, so requiring a decent browser with reasonable settings (e.g. JavaScript enabled) is fine. Almost all use cases are for a desktop P.C. It will not be accessible to search engines (it is an enterprise application). We can go so far as to write the whole thing in a single page, but don't have to. It would pretty much all be written by the web application software engineer in question. The exact open source libraries to use is also up to the engineer, within reason. I'm specifically looking for advice on what qualifications to look for/verify in an interview, since picking a web application software engineer in general is just too broad a topic. Edit - The position would be purely in-browser JavaScript programming (and be responsible for HTML and CSS) - other developers would develop the server but this position could request facades over the API. There is no Ruby, ASP, JSP, etc. because the web server layer is very thin and just translates calls to the business layer API and returns them as JSON (or whatever, but JSON seems easiest)."}
{"_id": "105575", "title": "How do you organise your git repositories?", "text": "I'm struggling to phrase this question correctly, hence the poor title. Basically I have a simple Chrome extension that I am developing for work. It is in use at the moment and as I am using it regularly I am constantly thinking of improvements or extra features it could have. My file structure is like this (I'm on a mac) `~/Sites/Chrome_extensions/{my employers name}/CharCounter/` `CharCounter/` contains all the files needed for the Chrome extension. Whenever I am happy with a new version of my extension I pack it in Chrome and the resulting .crx file is called `CharCounter_{version number}.crx` So for example, the most recent is called `CharCounter_1.3.3.crx`. However, the development folder currently always has the same name. If I want to roll back and continue developing a previous version I can't. I have decided to start using git however I'm unsure how to tackle my version control. Should I set up my git repository in `~/Sites/Chrome_extensions/{my employers name}` then when I decide I am making a big enough change to the extension to warrant a new version number I duplicate the CharCounter folder and add `_{new version number}` to it? Thereby having several CharCounter folders each with a different version number appending to them. or should I set it up in `~Sites/Chrome_extensions/{my employers name}/CharCounter/` and never duplicate the CharCounter folder but just make a new commit every time I make a new version? How do you tackle version control? Does using git do away with having to keep multiple versions (current and legacy) of your code in folders called `folder_version_X.Y.Z` or is that still a good idea?"}
{"_id": "221900", "title": "Writing simple executable script on Windows", "text": "I'm a Mac user, but I need to write a script on Windows, and I'm not sure how I should go about that. Here's the scenario: Someone adds photos to a USB drive. The drive is then inserted into a digital picture frame. In order for the photos to autoplay, a 'playlist.asb' file must be present on the drive. **I want to create a script that can be clicked on and executed to auto create the playlist file based on the image files added to the USB.** The script would do something like this:   1. Check if there are images in the 'slideshow' folder.   2. Check if file called 'playlist.alb' exists, if not create it. If so, overwrite it.   3. Loop through available images.   4. Add each image name and extension on a new line.   5. Save (and overwrite any existing playlist file) and exit. I'm comfortable with AppleScript for Macs, but I'm not sure if a Windows equivalent would make sense, or if some kind of command line script would work better. Any help is greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "222185", "title": "How to design application with rollback capability", "text": "I am currently working on an application (basically its a kind of execution engine capable of running user defined jobs and generate output in real time) that needs to handle rollback functionality, it might sound crazy but is it possible to have such thing at the application level? e.g. imagine some user tries run a job J1 and once it is started to execute he wanted to Edit/Modify it ,      \\- that means the current running job has to be killed,   \\- all the action taken so far must be reverted and   \\- re-run the job J1 again few things that comes in my mind is we must anyhow store or maintain application states somehow, somewhere and then call the rollback stuff along with the previous save points. I was reading few articles on DB level rollback but the scenario does not fit in this case as it need to work on a real time environment. But I am unable to find a proper approach as to how to proceed and what else should be taken into considerations. Please let me know if this sounds unclear, I shall try to provide more info if possible. Any help or advice?"}
{"_id": "222184", "title": "If mutual exclusion is not implemented, how would we detect a race condition?", "text": "Suppose we are in a distributed environment, and mutual exclusion is not implemented yet. So how would we be able to detect race conditions? When I researched, use of non-blocking algorithms was found as a solution. That is using datastructures like stack, queue, etc. So that we could avoid mutual exclusion. But how do we detect it?"}
{"_id": "36579", "title": "How much time do you give an interviewee to prepare before the actual meeting?", "text": "I thought giving 3-4 working days was fine. But now I am not so sure. The candidates these days seem to be researching me on LinkedIn, trying to hazard a guess probably on what I could ask them as opposed to brushing the fundamentals up, and taking some challenging exercises from SPOJ etc. I am just thinking should I make it a day or max. 2 days now?"}
{"_id": "87506", "title": "Choosing an open source license such that maximum value is added to a startup", "text": "There are many companies that produce open source software products, and many business models that these companies can use. I'm particularly interested in companies like 280 North, the company behind Objective-J and Cappucino frameworks. My understanding of this organization's business model is that they:   1. worked to develop a tool which added significant value to developers,    2. released the tool under an open source license,    3. built a community around the tool (which was helped by the project's open source licensing),    4. created interesting demos illustrating the project's value All of these things added value to the project, and the company that owned it. Finally, 280 North was sold to Motorola. My question has to do with the role of software licensing in this particular business model. 280 North licensed their software projects under the LGPL, which gave them some proprietary control over how the project could be used. I believe that the LGPL is what's known as a \"weak copyleft\" license, meaning that the project can be linked to, without the linking code also being licensed under the LGPL; but software derived directly from the project would need to be licensed under the LGPL. For web-oriented libraries in particular, weak copyleft, or non-copyleft licensing seems to be quite common; I can't think of a single example of a popular or well-known web-oriented library that is licensed under the GPL (or AGPL). The question then, is, how much value would a weak copyleft license like the LGPL add to a software venture like 280 North, versus a non-copyleft license, such as the BSD license or the Apache Software License? I'd really appreciate any insight anyone can offer into this, but I'd be most interested in answers that can cite other companies as case studies or examples."}
{"_id": "154695", "title": "How do we set a link to a Paid version of app if we don't have the app in App Store ?", "text": "If we don't have the free and the paid apps on the Apple app store yet, how would we program in the free version to link to the paid version because the link is not there yet? Do we have to have a webpage as a placeholder to do the forward, for this first, initial case? Is this the only solution and what if we don't have a website?"}
{"_id": "188819", "title": "Redmine (or Trac) integration with customer issue-tracking system", "text": "I'm working in a software development area in my university, and we've noticed we need some system to track errors and bugs, who and when it is dealt with. I've researched some software management/bug tracking applications, with Redmine being the one that appeals to me the most because of its simple UI (actually I discovered that our server has one system, Trac, already installed, but it has never been used at its time and my colleagues told me it would take the same time to use any). However, a colleague told me also that he has the idea of implementing a _customer issue-tracking system_ in the medium/long term (he told me about creating tickets for users' problem, search into a knowledge base of common problems, and mark frequent problems to deal with them. It seems that things like OTRS are close to what he was thinking about. He's also researching about ITIL). As far as I know, the developer issue-tracking system and the client problem- tracking system are different, and they must have some kind of integration between them. **Or aren't they?** In case it does, my question is: Is it possible to integrate Redmine (or Trac, if it's easier, or in general a project management/bug-tracking system) with this kind of customer issue- tracking systems? Do I have to worry about changing my project management system in the future to implement that? Or is the implementation easier with some of them?"}
{"_id": "36571", "title": "Do certain corporations hold more weight on a resume?", "text": "Would a developer/tester position at Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. (any large tech. company of which most people have heard) be more valuable on a resume than working as a developer/tester somewhere where tech. isn't the main objective (shipping company, restaurant chain, insurance company, etc.)? Let's say you have two offers, and you only plan to stay with whichever company for 5 years, before trying to get a better position at a different company. One at Google that has a starting salary of $60,000, and one at some insurance company that has a starting salary of $80,000. I guess what I'm trying to say is... with university's, if someone graduates from MIT or Carnegie Mellon, they can pretty much get a job anywhere. Does someone seem more valuable after having worked at a company like Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.? In other words, would taking the lower paying job be better in the long run since it's at Google, or would it be better to take the higher paying job at the insurance company?"}
{"_id": "185820", "title": "Shift Javascript framework - What pattern is this? MVP, MVC or something else", "text": "I have created a very tiny framework to be able to get away from all the clutter while developing. The point of the framework is not to replace any library of choice but simply segregate the code to it's correct logic. You can see the source on github along with a few code examples: https://github.com/erik-landvall/shift While I try to describe the pattern I'm using I'm starting to wonder how this should be defined. And that's my question for you. What would you say the following chart symbolizes? ![Flowchart of the shift framework](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3TAXX.png) I like to think of it as an MVP pattern, but would like to hear your opinion. Also, if you feel that the flowchart poorly resampling the code, give me a comment about it and I will attempt to fix it."}
{"_id": "251519", "title": "How should data transfer between a client and a web API for normalized data be designed?", "text": "I want to design an API backed by some database (doesn't really matter which, but to make the discussion more interesting, let's say it's Mongo - explanation below) which sends data to a client. The database contains several types of records. Some of them reference other types of records.   It's not uncommon for a record to be referenced by several other records from different types. Thus the data on the DB is normalized. **What are the considerations in designing an API server which sends records to the client?** Two options come to mind (you're invited to suggest more or correct me on those):   1. The API is granular. Send normalized data. Let the client ask for more records based on what it receives. The client may have a cache, it may decide it doesn't need to ask the server for everything.   2. The API sends all the records the client might possibly need based on the requested data. Thus effectively denormalizing the data. With option 1, the client may make more HTTP requests so it can have the complete data it needs. It means more network communication, which may make the total data transfer slower. The server is simpler though, and the client can selectively ask only for the records it doesn't already have. With option 2, less HTTP requests. But we may send the client data it already has (maybe it already received, and cached, some of the records in a previous request). The server is more complicated. Especially if it's not RDBMS. No joins in Mongo, so we have to query the DB more than once to get all the data. Further assumptions:   1. The data changes every few days (2-3 times a week). So the client can potentially have a persistent cache.   2. The Mongo queries are a bit slow (millions of documents in each collection).   3. In each such session about 2MB of data will be sent to the client."}
{"_id": "36577", "title": "Are these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?", "text": "Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? >   1. No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work > hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully > concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees > to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that > sense). -> So sort of agreed. >   2. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed > there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad > (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep > and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim > rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was > working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay > well, when compared to the peanuts I get. >   3. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully > dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment > is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 > in Joel's test. > So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?"}
{"_id": "139846", "title": "design for supporting entities with images", "text": "I have multiple entities like Hotels, Destination Cities etc which can contain images. The way I have my system setup right now is, I think of all the images belonging to this universal set (a table in the DB contains filePaths to all the images). When I have to add an image to an entity, I see if the entity exists in this universal set of images. If it exists, attach the reference to this image, else create a new image. E.g.:               class ImageEntityHibernateDAO {             public void addImageToEntity(IContainImage entity, String filePath,                     String title, String altText) {                 ImageEntity image = this.getImage(filePath);                      if (image == null)                     image = new ImageEntity(filePath, title, altText);                      getSession().beginTransaction();                     entity.getImages().add(image);                 getSession().getTransaction().commit();                  }     }      My **question** is: Earlier I had to write this code for each entity (and each entity would have a Set collection). So, instead of re-writing the same code, I created the following interface:               public interface IContainImage {         Set<ImageEntity> getImages();     }      Entities which have image collections also implements `IContainImage` interface. Now, for any entity that needs to support adding Image functionality, all I have to invoke from the DAO looks something like this:               // in DestinationDAO::addImageToDestination {     imageDao.addImageToEntity(destination, imageFileName, imageTitle, imageAltText);          // in HotelDAO::addImageToHotel {     imageDao.addImageToEntity(hotel, imageFileName, imageTitle, imageAltText);      It'd be great help if someone can provide me some critique on this design ? Are there any serious flaws that I'm not seeing right away ?"}
{"_id": "210193", "title": "Is allowing voting without sign-in always a bad idea?", "text": "I have a mobile app from which I'd like to allow voting on Things. I don't want to force all the users to have to sign up using email/Facebook/etc. just so that I can properly limit voting. Is it really a bad idea to leave voting to be an \"open\" process where anyone can vote? I know theoretically that this allows improper voting techniques, etc. but on the other hand getting more votes really don't offer any kind of financial motivation. \\--Edit-- Perhaps there are some ways to limit vote-faking? I know theoretically nothing is unbreakable, but maybe I can limit the amount of votes something can get in a minute/hour/day? \\--Edit 2 -- Think of it as \"views\" on a video. It is a simple measure of popularity that requires no login. What are ways to limit view tampering, and when is it necessary?"}
{"_id": "210190", "title": "No microsoft-official C# documentation generator?", "text": "I was unable to find any \"official\" documentation generator for C#. I am aware of projects like DOxygen, Sandcastle or NDoc. But for me these are more third- party tool. You could argue that javadoc is an external tool but it's part of the java dsitribution. What is Microsoft option, if any ?"}
{"_id": "255121", "title": "Command execution structure for graph database", "text": "We're building an application which uses complex data with rich relationships. In order to allow us to make the most of this data and easily extend the model, we have decided to use a graph database (Neo4j with Cypher). I'm exploring the use of a CQRS-based application architecture (without event sourcing) to allow us to fully utilize the flexibility of the graph via varied commands and a flexible, almost ad-hoc read side. What I am currently wrestling with is how to structure the persistence part of the command side in such a way that we retain the flexibility of the graph but don't lose too much structure in the application (e.g. via repetition in Cypher queries or large, overly verbose interfaces). I've considered a few options:   1. Use repositories and aggregates, persisted either via reflection or accessors. The benefit here is that the interfaces are simple, the downside is that the repository itself could become complex for aggregates including many relationships (there are no well-maintained .NET ORMs for Neo4j). Another downside to this is the potential to load lots of unnecessary \"aggregate fluff\" into the domain for simple commands that don't necessarily need it (this problem applies even if I eventually steer away from CQRS).   2. Specialist repositories that expose more constrained commands (e.g. `AddThingToOtherThing`) that are invoked from command handlers. The benefit here is that there's no unnecessary querying. The downside is potentially large, clumsy repository interfaces (maybe there's a nicer way to break this up?)   3. Use _events_ (not event sourcing) and use event handlers to explicitly execute graph DB commands. The good thing here is I only ever execute the DB commands that I need to but my DAL becomes dispersed and more coupled to the application - thus, potentially harder to maintain. Is there a middle ground/alternative pattern (or even simplification) that I haven't considered?"}
{"_id": "255123", "title": "Helping with creating own PHP MVC - how to write good router", "text": "1 year ago I created wannabe-MVC in PHP (some parts procedural, some in classes), now I'm intending to expand it a further to be more like real MVC. Folder/files structure:               html/     html/images/     html/css/     html/js/ (my JS)     html/js/lib/ (jquery...)     app/     app/controller/     app/include/ (special functions)     app/lang/ (languages - en.php, de.php...)     app/lib/ (php mailer, image resize class, facebook sdk...)     app/log/ (error log)     app/model/     app/view/     app/view/include/ (part of views that repeat - navigation, pagination..)     app/config.php     app/ini.php     index.php      In index.php I call router class where I find what controller and view to load, but it's written in switch case way. Have problems with autoload because it's dependence on the Database. **URL structure (fixed router):**               / (homepage) -> homeController.php     /error404/ (error page) -> error404Controller.php     /users/ (list all users) -> usersController.php     /users/2/ (page 2 of all users)     /users/login/ (login page) -> usersController.php?action=login     /users/login/facebook/ (when logging in, facebook redirects to this page) -> ??     /users/some-username-{ID}/ (user profile - a-Z-0-9 username and ID of that user) -> usersController?action=single      **URL structure (custom router - DB dependent):**               /categ/ (default router, getting categ from DB and list news of that category) -> categController.php     /categ/2/ (2nd page of category list of news)     /categ/news-title-{ID}/ (get single -> newsController.php     /categ/subcateg/ (get categ and subcateg from DB) -> subcategController.php     /categ/subcateg/2/ (2nd page of subcateg)     /categ/subcateg/news-title-{ID}/      and its goes to level 4 - categ/subcateg/subsubcateg/news-title-ID/ **userController.php (simplified)**               userController extends mainController{         function index(){             $users = new user();             $users->limit = 10;             $users->where = \"is_active='1'\";             $users_list = $users->loadAll();         }     }      **userModel.php (simplified)**               userModel extends mainModel{         public $tableName = \"users\";         public $limit = 20;         public $where = '1=1';              function loadAll(){             global $db;                  $load = $db->fetch_all('SELECT * FROM $tableName WHERE $where LIMIT $limit');                  return $load;         }     }      Questions:   1. How to create **Router class** to match this mix of **fixed and custom urls** ? Now is simple **switch case** where **custom router** is in **default: case**   2. Where can I put **user data** \\- check if user is logged in or not so i can pull data based on that ? **init.php, userModel.php, userController.php** or ? I need this info before view loads...   3. Where to put querys that repeats like getting top navigation or footer data when it loads on every page ? in some **master controller or model** that loads automatically no matter on what page user is.   4. Is this good start or am I something wrong about, if yes, what ? I readed many MVC tutorials and someone says you need **fat Model** , someone says **fat Controller** so what is good practice here ?"}
{"_id": "20909", "title": "Method vs Function vs Procedure", "text": "Simple question, but I often hear these three terms defined with such ferocity, but which have been known to me to mean different things over the years. What are the \"correct\" definitions of \"Procedures\", \"Methods\", \"Function\", \"Subroutines\", etc? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "103828", "title": "Code Style for XAML", "text": "I started coding WPF applications a several months ago and now I am asking myself if there are some style guides for XAML. I do not need to get explained the benefits of Binding, Converters, Styles, Templates etc. My question is more basically. Is there an official (or unofficial) \u201ebest practice\u201c about the order of attributes etc: For instance:               <ComboBox Grid.Column=\"0\" Grid.Row=\"0\"               Name=\"CellType\"               ItemsSource=\"{Binding EditorTypes}\"               SelectedItem=\"{Binding EditorType}\">      Is there something like   * always attached properties first [last]   * always declare a column [row] in a Grid, even if there is only one  Are there some rules/guides I should read to make my code look more common?"}
{"_id": "99179", "title": "What technologies are needed to be a freelance web developer / designer targeting small businesses?", "text": "First off, I'm not looking for this answer: \"learn PHP/MySQL, JQuery, HTML/CSS....\" My background, I wear many hats, and do many things. Currently I manage investment accounts with a business partner who is also a friend. He happens to be attending business / law school perusing a joint JD and MBA. As a result, we're putting our into \"coast\", maintaining our current clients, but not acquiring more. Recently I've picked up some freelance graphic design / web development / online marketing side work (Photoshop, HTML/CSS, WordPress) through some personal networks. The work is enjoyable; now I'm thinking about expanding it into a larger business with these primary goals:   1. augment my finances (I'm shooting for about $1,000-2,000 per mo.),   2. learn new technologies,   3. involve myself with meaningful work. As an entrepreneur I don't mind the aspects of running a business that hassle other freelancers...   \\-- the marketing   \\-- the billing   \\-- etc. I'm considering targeting the small to middle market businesses and organizations where I can contribute in marketing, design, and development building projects from the ground up. Thus I'll have freedom to decide the specific technology (I won't have to work with an existing code base). **What kinds of projects should I focus on? What technologies are a good fit for this style of work?** For example: It might be fun to develop with Ruby on Rails. However, maybe a lot of projects would be rolling out e-commerce solutions. Thus, I should focus on PHP due to more shopping cart options, skipping ROR entirely."}
{"_id": "194219", "title": "Term for accidental features", "text": "Despite the best intentions of programmers; oftentimes, in the real world, software systems contain \"accidental features\" that are accepted as part of a working system. For example, there may be some process that runs out of memory and crashes before the process exceeds its quota for calls to an external system (which will cost the company money). Though the software team acknowledges that this is an issue, there is simply not enough perceived business value to fix the problem. Advantageous accidental behavior like this is often lost in any type of significant technical migration. My question: **Is there a term for this type of \"feature\" that can serve to differentiate it from a run-of-the-mill bug?**"}
{"_id": "221982", "title": "Providing an agnostic authorization system", "text": "I'm trying to design a small web platform that would host several \"applications\", with a common user pool. My reflection is now focused on the authorization system. I define an application as an interface that allows users to perform CRUD and more custom operations on a set of resources. I tend to prefer to model an application as a collection of RESTful webservices to be consumed from various front ends. I really would like to generalize the authorization system and to make it application agnostic; I'm thinking of implementing it as a webservice, leveraging unstructured document databases. Assuming that:   * A users and groups management service is available to the application developer;   * The scope of any application would be limited to perform CRUD and more custom operations on resources, as stated previously; My idea is to provide to developers read/write access to a structure like this:               [{         \"Application\":\"Application1\",         \"Ressource\":\"ResourceType1\",         \"id\":\"123\",         \"read\":{             \"whitelist_group_ids\":[ 2 ],             \"whitelist_user_ids\":[ 1 ],             \"blacklist_users_ids\":[ 2 ]         },         \"CustomOperation1\":{             \"whitelist_group_ids\":[ * ],             \"whitelist_user_ids\":[ 1, 2 ],             \"blacklist_users_ids\":[ 3 ]         }     },{         \"Application\":\"Application1\",         \"Ressource\":\"ResourceType2\",         \"id\":\"13\",         \"read\":{             \"whitelist_group_ids\":[ * ],             \"whitelist_user_ids\":[ 1 ],             \"blacklist_users_ids\":[ 2 ]         },         \"CustomOperation2\":{             \"whitelist_group_ids\":[ 2 ],             \"whitelist_user_ids\":[ 1, 2 ],             \"blacklist_users_ids\":[ 3 ]         }     }]      They would then be able to store, check and update their access restrictions on demand; What would be the flaws of such an approach? Is there any standard strategy to achieve something close to what I described?"}
{"_id": "33596", "title": "How do you choose a programming/data structure/algorithm book?", "text": "I really should not be mentioning the name of the book, but the first time I read it (during my under-grad days) I almost concluded that data structure was a bad course to pick. Which brings me to the question I am asking here. What makes a programming or data structure or algorithm book tick? Clearly, lucid explanation is one. But I also realize that organization of the material is very important and so is diagrams. What else? Some pointers would obviously help when I hang out in my neighborhood computer book shop the next time."}
{"_id": "221986", "title": "Inheritance in test classes", "text": "I have an interface `Serializer` with methods `serialize` and `isSerializerFor`. I created a first implementation of this using TDD, and ended up with a nice clean test case fully covering a nice clean implementation. To get a more concrete idea, here is one relevant commit. Now someone else (who is not used to doing TDD) started with writing the second implementation of this `Serializer` interface. This person figured the test needed for the second implementation would have some overlap with my initial test. So an abstract base class for serializer tests was created, holding the methods that are suspected to be common to all serializer test cases. I'm not happy with this for two main reasons. First of all, the only reason inheritance is used here is for code reuse, which is a big code smell. Secondly, this breaks the TDD cycle. If I now want to create another implementation of `Serializer`, and create a derivative of the base test class, I end up having to implement all production code in one step. On the other hand, simply duplicating the common code in the test classes seems rather odd as well. I'm hoping composition can be used here in a sane way to avoid these problems. This seems like a reasonably common situation. How would you solve this? What would you do differently?"}
{"_id": "107597", "title": "Observer pattern over HTTP and TCP/IP (Server-Client)", "text": "I have a server and many clients (around 50 clients) who connect to that server based on a web application, which is of course based on HTTP protocol, which in turn uses TCP/IP (correct me if I'm wrong, cause I'm not really good at networking). The problem is that, I should develop an alert mechanism, in which, when somebody submits a form with dangerous values, the manager (who is also connected via the same web application) should receive an alert pop-up on his screen, almost real-time (instantly). However, since the HTTP protocol is stateless, I' a little puzzled here. I don't know how I can implement this. One of the solutions could be to use JavaScript alongside `setInterval()` function to **pull** data each second from server. But this seems a little dirty to me and unprofessional. Do you guys have any idea of implementing another solution?"}
{"_id": "194216", "title": "NDIS Driver Filter VS API Hooking", "text": "I've seen many developers asking for \"How to intercept in/out HTTP packets \", \"How to modify them on the fly\". The most \"clean\" answer I've seen is to make a kernel-mode-driver filter from the scratch (TDI for XP and earlier winx9 or NDIS for NT systems). An other way, is to use a user-mode-driver like Windivert, also Komodia has a great solution (without writing any single code). The idea behind this introduction is just I want to know is API Hooking can be considered as alternative of writing of whole of driver-filter? writing a driver from the scratch is not an easy task, why just not Hooking the HttpSendRequest or any other API used by the browser? There are many free/commercial libraries to do this in a safe manner (eg: EasyHook, Mhook, Nektra..). I'm not the first who ask, there already Sockscap that uses Hook(DLL injection) to change behavior to other applications and force them to use a Socks proxy, also Form grabbing attack ' _used by keylogger.._"}
{"_id": "198509", "title": "Program modules separated in different DLLs", "text": "We have an existing ERP system written in VB 6 that we are converting to .Net incrementally. Now, every module in the system is being separated into DLLs so that the product becomes customizable and flexible. I'm not sure if this is the way to do this. I think this will cost a lot of maintenance in the future. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "210443", "title": "Where should I place my interface?", "text": "I have an interface to communicate with a DB (actually it is not a database, but this is to give a concrete example):               interface DbInterface{         Result sendQuery(Query q);     }      And I am trying to improve reusability by separating specific components into individual projects:   * App1, an application that requires access to a database   * App2, an application that requires access to a database   * DB1, a concrete implementation of DbInterface (let's say SQL)   * DB2, a concrete implementation of DbInterface (let's say using some NoSql database) How do you typically design such an architecture and where should `DbInterface` be located?   * in one of the applications? but that means all other three component depend on that project to access the interface - does not sound right   * in one of the DB implementations? same - does not sound right.   * in both DB implementations? code duplication.   * in a separate project, which would only contain that interface? seems abusive to include a dependency for one interface only. For reference, this is Java + maven, but the issue is fairly generic I suppose."}
{"_id": "198502", "title": "New PHP Project - Should I still be supporting PHP 5.2?", "text": "I'm about to start working on a new commercial PHP project with a friend that will be licensed and sold as a script to run on your own shared hosting account or server. Looking at the statistics (http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl- php/5/all) 50.3% of PHP 5 installations are still PHP 5.2 or lower (43.5% being php 5.2). With this in mind, is it wise to ensure new software still supports PHP 5.2 given that such a high proportion of installations arent going to support modern PHP features such as namespacing and the likes of Composer."}
{"_id": "198507", "title": "Pass around record ids in the url in PHP", "text": "I'm doing a PHP application with CodeIgniter and most of my controllers accept record ids as parameters for retrieving purposes. I also pass record ids in my forms action. Like this: www.sample.com/records/save/sFKu=4 Is this the right way to do this? Note that the record ids are encrypted."}
{"_id": "15628", "title": "How can I maintain proficiency in multiple languages?", "text": "How can I maintain proficiency (if not expertise) in multiple languages? In any large organization it seems necessary to know more than one language. For example, this week I've looked at if not written code in the following languages.   * VBA   * C   * C#   * Java Thankfully they're all imperative languages, or I would have lost my mind. I struggled for a day or so with the C as it's been a while (read: years) since I've used it seriously. What tips, habits, and training is there for keeping up your knowledge in so many languages?"}
{"_id": "205881", "title": "Single sign on if you do not have control of one or more of the client/web apps?", "text": "I have a customer who has a client app and when they log in to their client app, they will see a link to my website. When they click on the link, it should log in them in automatically to the website without asking for the credentials. Is this only possible if the username/password are the same between the client app and the website? Also, what if the username/password is not known for the client app? How is this handled? I have heard of technologies such as openId, oAuth, etc, but these don't seem to fit my scenario where there is an existing client app that already has a membership base and it not needs access to my website. I am not sure what approach to make take here? If the above is confusing, I will give a scenario:   1. User A logs into there desktop application.   2. User A clicks a link to go to wwww.mysite.com.   3. User A is authenticated and authorized for www.mysite.com, so they do not need to provide credentials."}
{"_id": "15623", "title": "FizzBuzz - really?", "text": "When it comes to \"interview test\" questions, the subject of FizzBuzz often comes up. There is also a Coding Horror post about it. Now, if you bother reading sites such as this, you are probably less likely to be in the demographic of programmers who would find FizzBuzz anything but trivial. But is it really true that 99% of programmers will struggle with it? Really? What is the evidence to back this up? Some real-life examples would be very helpful in answering this question."}
{"_id": "205885", "title": "Why does Android's Bundle API accept ArrayLists rather than Lists", "text": "I'm new to Android and while going through a tutorial on saving `Activity` state to a Bundle, I noticed that instead of accepting the more generic `List` interface, `Bundle`'s put methods are expecting `ArrayLists`. Example:               Bundle.putCharSequenceArrayList(key, value)     Bundle.putIntegerArrayList(key, value)     Bundle.putParcelableArrayList(key, value)     Bundle.putStringArrayList(key, value)      Most of us are familiar with item 52 of Effective Java suggesting that objects must be refered to by their interface, so I am wondering what was the reason behind this API decision. Is `ArrayList` perhaps the preferred list implementation in Android?"}
{"_id": "107624", "title": "Find the average speed for roads", "text": "I am working on a mobile application and I would like to ask you a question. Is there an API or a method to get/calculate the average speed that a car should have in a road. I am working on a GPS like application and I want to calculate the average time that it will take a user to cover a certain path. Thanks."}
{"_id": "113844", "title": "Is Systems Hungarian notation still a useful practice?", "text": "I searched the forum, but I couldn't find the answers why it should be avoided, only why it's not a silver bullet. So I don't think this question is a duplicate. Is there a **VALID** reason why I should unlearn Systems Hungarian I'm used to? So far I see the following benefits in using it:   * Consistent variable naming   * You see type without searching (intellisense is dead/indexing half of the time, so it's still a valid reason)   * Semantics can still be packed into second part of the name And following downsides:   * It annoys some people (no idea why)   * If type is changed, the type might not match the naming of the variable (I don't think it's valid reason, types are changed rarely, and you have \"rename all\") So why:               vector<string> vecCityNames;     wstring strCity = L\"abc\";     //more code here     vecCityNames.push_back(strCity);      is worse than:               vector<string> cityNames;     wstring city = L\"abc\";     //more code here     cityNames.push_back(city);//Are we pushing back int on a queue? Float on a stack? Something else?"}
{"_id": "113841", "title": "How can we verify that software meets specifications meets requirements?", "text": "So we're pretty good at eliciting requirements from our end customers, business division and sales/marketing. We plan projects to add/enhance features to meet those requests and prioritize tasks to meet deadlines in most profitable order. Over time, the software product has grown, the market has changed and the original customers are less of a priority compared to some new opportunities. So, the requirements, and therefore specifications, have changed, although all the requirements of all the stakeholders can co-exist (there are no conflicts). We've also had some churn in the development team with people moving up, across or out and so now there's nobody who was there \"at the beginning\". This has led to some customer outages where we removed what looked like unused code paths (the logic was unfamiliar to everyone) only to find the customer that needed that logic happened to run through the application a couple of months later. We know that we could put in Unit Tests to verify that behaviour does not change accidentally (as in the case above), but this is a large code-base so it is taking time to unit-test everything. What non-manual techniques/technologies/best-practices are available to us to verify that the software (still) meets the specifications and requirements? I've heard agile/iterative proponents say something like \"the Unit Tests are the specification\". Is there any thing we could use to marry the unit tests to the original requirements? * * * _Footnotes_ (I saw this other post, but that is less about verification and more about usability testing) We already do iterative development, releasing every two weeks or less. The source base is mostly C++ on Unix. Requirements and specifications currently documented in Wiki, Word, ticketing systems and MS Project."}
{"_id": "9013", "title": "How can I track quality attributes on my team's Kanban?", "text": "My team uses a Kanban system for tracking day-to-day progress and it's worked out really well for understanding progress on features (captured as user stories). We have largely allowed our system design to emerge as we develop features which worked out well until recently. In the last two week we've had several discussions about architectural trade-offs specifically related to performance and modifiability quality attributes. I think what's happening is as we implement features and design the system, we're implicitly making decisions about the architecture but not considering those decisions in terms of our known quality attribute requirements. It would be really great if I could track/capture/visually depict how these important design decisions are being made so team members have a better chance to not create additional tension with in the system's architecture as it is being implemented. And of course, to complicate things more, features on our board aren't _exclusively_ functional and sometimes hide architectural complexity! How can I track progress on quality attributes (or other architecturally relevant decisions) visually on my team's kanban?"}
{"_id": "131624", "title": "Which arguments pass by value and which pass by reference in Java?", "text": "I am starting to learn Java with the Java Trails tutorials offered by Oracle. I am in the section where it talks about passing arguments to methods (http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/arguments.html). It says that primitive types are passed by value, which makes sense to me. Right after that it says: > Reference data type parameters, such as objects, are also passed into > methods by value. This means that when the method returns, the passed-in > reference still references the same object as before. However, the values of > the object's fields can be changed in the method, if they have the proper > access level. Now this doesn't make sense to me. If an object is passed by value, then changing the fields of that object will change the fields of the copy inside the method, not the original one. When testing with the program below:               class Point{             int x;             int y;                  public static void movePoint(Point p, int x, int y){                     p.x+=x;                     p.y+=y;             }     }          class App{             public static void main(String argv[]){                     Point p1;                          p1 = new Point();                     p1.x = 2;                     p1.y = 3;                          p1.movePoint(p1,2,2);                          System.out.println(\"x = \" + p1.x +  \" y = \" + p1.y);             }     }      It worked as if the object was being passed by reference (it prints out x = 4 y = 5 after all). So what exactly did Oracle mean in the passage above? Also, can anyone summarize what's passed by value and what's passed by reference in Java?"}
{"_id": "226455", "title": "When to store Date/DateTime?", "text": "I'm working on a social network website and I'm not quite sure when I should store the date/datetime. The service includes some of the following events:   * Register/Login   * Follow   * \"Like\" (images & comments)   * Post a comment   * Post an image In my eyes, I would use `DateTime` for all of them... Although I'm not sure if that's professional or maybe it's just a waste of space. When should I store the time of an event? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "226453", "title": "Naming of type parameters in java", "text": "We all know that it is good to use descriptive identifier names. However, the convention in java is to use a single letter for a type parameter identifier. The default most people go to is `T`, but if you are dealing with elements in a collection, you often see `E`. Now I can see how it makes sense to use single letter identifiers for unbounded type parameters, since they can really be anything, so you have no information to be represented by the identifier. But suppose you had two bounded type parameters, say `T extends Iterable<Integer>` and `S extends Consumer<Integer>`, wouldn't it make more sense to use more descriptive identifiers than `T` or `S` so you don't confuse them? You might be able to get away with using, say, `I` and `C`, but people would never (in my ideal world) be so terse with variable identifiers. So why are people so terse with type parameter identifiers? Or is the convention of single character type parameter identifiers not as pervasive as I imagine?"}
{"_id": "226450", "title": "Should I use automatic properties?", "text": "I'm new to C# coming from a Java background. I'm working on a take home assignment for a coding interview. I normally write my code as following(Java):               public class Test {             //fields             private string fieldA;        private int fieldB;             public Test () {           //.....        }             public String getFieldA() {           return fieldA;        }             //ETC.     }      The point is that I use getters/setters like above. Now, I have a coding assignment to do for a job interview, and using C# I have stumbled across automatic properties. I was initially slightly confused about it but understand what it does now and have used it. So for fields I would write               public string fieldA {get; set;}      It feels weird declaring fields public like that and doesn't it violate some OOP encapsulation principles ? My question is, should I just go ahead and use automatic properties to show interviewers that I know what it is? In case I want to prevent setting a field I could just use:               public string fieldA {get; private set;}      But would it appear like I don't follow encapsulation \"rules\", I obviously wouldn't want to risk that. I could write it out as I do in Java. In general what is your view on using automatic properties ?"}
{"_id": "233776", "title": "Mutable cursor in readonly object?", "text": "I've been searching for the different uses of the keyword `mutable`. I've found that it is generally used for caching, lazy computing, mutex, ... But I'm wondering if it is coherent to use it for a cursor on a readonly object. For example, I have a sound class, and I want each sound to be able to keep track of a play cursor, for play/pause use, but I don't think this is part of the state of the sound. A const sound cannot be modified, but it can be read. Is it ok to make the cursor attribute mutable?"}
{"_id": "233770", "title": "Automated GUI tests take too long because of doing same steps before the \"main test action\" can proceed", "text": "We are developing a desktop application and I am responsible for GUI testing. Currently we have around 500 tests which take 8 hours to complete. The tests are testing almost every button/menu/field etc. in the application. Some functions are taking 3 - 15 minutes because the application is actually measuring something, but most of the tests takes around 2 minutes. The biggest problem I see is that a lot of tests are doing same steps before the \"main test action\" can proceed, for instance start with import of documents to use for testing, which takes several seconds. How to reduce this time? Parallel testing or some fancy execution environment is probably not a solution or what I ask for. I am more interested in the design of the test or some tips for decreasing the repetition of work."}
{"_id": "246868", "title": "Freeing Memory: Observer Pattern?", "text": "I am building a scientific application in matlab which handles several hundred large matrices (large as in 'very few of these will fit into ram'). Each matrix is contained within a dedicated object to handle its metadata (the property's name is .data). I use the getter method to load the data from file into ram as soon as it is needed. How do I decide when to unload? Most access to the object's data will be bundled, thus I don't want to unload every time I am done with getting data. Furthermore, I might need to use one or two more often than others. I do not think I can solve this within each object, so I thought I could implement a public function to clear the matrix from ram, called by an external object that decides when (and possibly, which) object is too much right now. Does this make sense or is it a recipe for disaster? Does this count as observer, or is there something else I could use? How to identify 'good' decision criteria? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "37220", "title": "What to do about \"Failure Driven Development\"?", "text": "At our shop, we strive to be agile. And I'd say we are making great strides. That said, a few of us have spotted a pattern we have started calling \"Failure Driven Development\". Failure Driven Development can basically be desribed as an agile release/iteration cycle where the bugs/features are guided not by tasks and stories with acceptance criteria, but with defects entered in the defect tracking software. Our team has a great Project Manager who strives to get the acceptance criteria from the customer(s), but it's not always possible. From my development chair, this is due to the customer either not knowing _exactly_ what they want or (and this is the kicker) two different \"camps\" at the customer's main office conflict with how a story should be implemented. Camp A will loosely dictate that Feature X works like _this_ , then Camp B will fail it due not functioning like _that_. Hence, the term \"FDD\". The process is driven by \"failures\". This leads to my question: Has anyone else encountered this and if so, any tips/suggestions for dealing with it? We have, of course, tried to get Camp A and B to agree prior, but everyone knows this isn't always the case. Thanks"}
{"_id": "37225", "title": "Learning About Languages", "text": "I'm interested in learning more _about_ programming languages. In particular, I'd like to look at some of the new developments in programming languages (even the really obscure ones that only academics care about). I need to learn to read grammar specifications, as well. Where should I begin?"}
{"_id": "115445", "title": "What are other technologies that are capable of creating Websites with Animation, Load Detailed Images & Cross Browser", "text": "I am a Junior Web Programmer who is tasked with redesigning our website. Right now the website is made in ActionScript using the FLEX API(so its Flash based). **I am looking for advice on what technologies I can use to create interactive websites.** The website requirements I have been given are:   \\- must work & look the same on iOS browsers   \\- should include animation, element movement & show detailed graphics   \\- look exactly the same across browsers _What technologies are available to me to create a website with these features?_ I know of so far:   \\- Flash based websites can achieve this (ActionScript)   \\- JQuery can create rich dialogs (not sure if it does graphic animation or has cross browser compatibility, does it?)   \\- Can I use .NET for this? Would that mean I write the website in ASP .NET? \\- Raphael.js - can rotate & animate images, is it cross browser?   \\- Any others that you know of? What other technologies are out there that I dont know of?"}
{"_id": "115444", "title": "What is the purpose of arrays in C, when pointers could have done the job?", "text": "Arrays and pointers are not the same thing in C, although they are related and can be used similarly. So far we all agree. However, I don't see why arrays were included in C, when pointers could have done their job perfectly. I am not saying to remove the array notation (e.g, a[5] or int a[4] = {0,1,2,3};), which is quite useful and convenient. But you could have that same notation working on top of pointers (as is the case), as a cosmetic measure. So the array notation is not a reason to have arrays, just the notation! The only difference I see is that arrays are constant pointers, and the size of memory they point to can't be changed. But this can be achieved with pointers as well, exactly by making them constant (the memory wouldn't be of fixed size, but I am not sure if this is an issue). So why not have only pointers and let the programmer decide how the pointer should behave (i.e., constant, not constant, fixed size, variable size, etc)?"}
{"_id": "184069", "title": "terminology for upward devolution from modules to framework", "text": "Is there a word for the problem of a framework becoming married to the software modules it supports, for example adding methods to a base class that may apply only to certain subclasses or use cases? It's a particular kind of violation of separation of concerns. The words that come to mind are \"upward devolution\" or \"feature capture,\" but these seem to belong to politics, not engineering. Wikipedia has an article on \"subsidiarity\" which mentions politics and object-oriented programming in the same sentence, but I'm still not sure."}
{"_id": "184068", "title": "Java Logfile Parsing Assistance", "text": "I'm writing a log parser that continuously looks for specific patterns and then fires off events to another system when it finds these matches. The firing of the event is time critical to catch errors or ensuing problems. This part is non-negotiable in terms of design. The log files belong to Applications and the Operating System; thus they can be rapid in logging, large in size and rotate based on time, or size. What is a better approach to reading these log files, detecting when they change, and reading from their last read location as I wrote code to do this using a RandomAccessFile which kept the last read location for every file. For dealing with large files and rapid logging I did this:   1. DataProducer - would get last read point in file and then find any changes then add to a Queue    2. DataConsumer - any changes to the Queue by way of size, would then cause this thread to wake and start parsing all the items in the Queue for that log file. Deleting what it has parsed. I am looking for some suggestions (in light of what I have done) that may improve the current way I manage reading a file, and picking up when there are changes, and parsing the file efficiently (considering size and rotation). Code or an API will do."}
{"_id": "180957", "title": "typical way to share database connection for open-source project, without revealing too much", "text": "I have an open source project for `mydomain.com` which requires connections to a database (...as is tradition). What is the standard practice for allowing others to work on the site, without giving them full access to the database's credentials? For example: If I have a `connect.php` page that connects to the database. I don't want someone to be able to read that file, or simply write `<?php include(\"http://mydomain.com/connect.php\")` because then they will have full access to the database. If I put the file in my `.gitignore` file, sure the file won't be in the repo, but it'll still be visible in the source code. Do I just make a read-only user and give them access to that, and then put the full read-write connection file and follow the guidelines of this answer?: Making sure database connection information is secured What is standard practice here? or what can I research to learn more about this?"}
{"_id": "246864", "title": "What is selection and what is projection", "text": "I am working on Android with the query() method of the ContentResolver class and it accepts 6 parameters, `(uri,projection,selection,selectionArgs,sortOrder,cancellationSignal)` for selection and projection parameters. I am little bit confused with the selection and projection part of query. In below example, what is selection and project part in the query?               select * from Person     where name='zeus';"}
{"_id": "180953", "title": "Unit Testing DatabaseOpenHelper class in Android", "text": "I've written several unit tests for an already existing `DatabaseOpenHelper` class. I covered the creation scenario and migration from old schema to new one. Unfortunately, I don't feel that my tests are good. For example, for DB creation I check that `SQLiteDatabase. execSQL()` was called three times (we have three tables so far) and check that query string is in set of specified SQL strings. The issue so far - if someone changes order of columns the test will fail. Probably this is OK. But what are other ways of SQL schema unit testing? Or don't you have unit tests for that, and rely only on the integration one?"}
{"_id": "146940", "title": "Using Exception Emails as a System Status Indicator", "text": "I'm working through our bug list today and I'm trying to clear up/fix issues that we commonly receive exception emails for. Although all the exceptions (so far) are handled, some don't actually represent an error in the code. For instance, if a third party service goes down temporarily, our code fails, handles the exception and sends us an email. This can be especially useful during business hours because it allows us to quickly see if something is down and react to it. However, there are also scheduled down times and the exception emails can quickly fill an inbox. My question is, is there a best practice for gaining insight into your system status? Is an exception email as I've outlined here an acceptable practice or should exception notifications only ever be unexpected?"}
{"_id": "146941", "title": "How can I express recursive composition in UML class diagrams?", "text": "I have one class called \"Institution\" which represents a public institution (with properties like id_inst, name_inst, tel_inst, fax_inst...). The institution can have affiliated institutions, for example a university is composed of different faculties (which are also institutions with the same properties and methods). Theses faculties can also have affiliated institutions : laboratories, annexes, etc. How can I express this concept in a UML class diagram?"}
{"_id": "180959", "title": "What is proper etiquette and recommended GitHub workflow for simultaneously contributing to and diverging from upstream repo?", "text": "I'm new to GitHub and VCS in general. I've been programming in various languages for years, but I've always worked solo on custom projects (no public releases). I recently started using a jQuery UI widget I downloaded from GitHub in a project I am working on. The repo is no longer maintained by the original author. Another fork has incorporated some of the original pull requests. This is the one I forked from. I found a couple of bugs and have come up with the fixes for them. I'd like to contribute these fixes, but I also have a whole lot of other changes I want to make, for our own use, that will break some of the existing features. Plus, I'd like to incorporate an idea from another fork. I'm still learning GIT and GitHub and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about everything. I've done a lot of reading (here, SO, GitHub help pages, Pro Git) about different concepts/tasks: workflows, merging, pull requests, cherry picking, rebasing, branching. My grey matter is swimming and I need to start _doing_ so I can better understand what I've read. ### Main Issues:   1. I think I read (somewhere) that you can only have one pull request on a branch at a time. So does that mean I should have a separate branch for each bug and then do a separate pull request for each one?   2. I want to clean up whitespace issues and I seem to remember reading that it's best to do this in a separate commit. Should I do this in my master or a separate branch? I don't want to do a pull request for something so _trivial_ , but if I make whitespace changes before branching, will that affect the pull request for the bug fixes? Some forks did whitespace cleanup and it effectively made the diff pretty useless.   3. I was thinking of creating issues against my fork as a way of documenting the bugs even though I already have the fix for them. Is that a good idea? How do I go about linking together the issue, the commit, and the merge to master? If I do a pull request upstream, will my issue appear upstream as well or will that documentation link be lost? I can't open an issue against the upstream repo (there is no issue tab).   4. What's the best way to give credit to the other fork author for the idea of his that I want to use? I can't use his code exactly, especially since his change is applied against an older version of the upstream and is not compatible with my other changes as is. But I want to use the idea and I want to give credit where credit is due. Should I just link to his repo (or profile or specific commit) in my commit message?   5. What is the etiquette regarding changing the readme file and the DocBlock at the top of the main file? Is it ok to make changes, add my name, add links to my repo and demo, remove links to the original demo (since my fork will end up being incompatible with the original)? Of course, I will leave the original author name and license information. For the record, it's licensed under the MIT license. As a solo developer who's never used VCS, I am accustomed to _rewriting history_. I'm a perfectionist and like things to be neat and tidy. The idea of recorded history is making me a little nervous and I want to _do it right the first time_. I've created a new repo to play/learn with, but I am anxious to get moving on fixing up the jQuery UI widget so I can move on with my project."}
{"_id": "147097", "title": "Build a native dll or .net dll to be used independently in either set-up", "text": "Here's a simple question (kind of), but I'm having a hard time taking a decision. First, a history on how I came to have this problem. In my new job, we need to use a third party API to communicate with their proprietary database (this is manufacturing technologies). This API only comes with very simple c example (not simple syntax ;) ) on how to use this API. Functions have no documentations and the syntax is thick, since it was probably build sometime in the last century, so parameters have short non significant names same with the functions names. Very few help is found on the web and the company itself can't really help us. Over the web, the small crumb found are about people not able to translate it into simpler language call (like VB6). People before me here tried to use it, without success. The good news is I have been able to make the example work and modified them to fit our basic needs to send or read data. I have wrapped these new version in a c++/CLR assembly dll, to use it in c#, which is our almost current language(Yeah , it moves slow in this world) Depending on the version of the software we use (every client we have can have different setup, from legacy to brand new setup). This can have an influence an what language we use. So I was asked to try and make my dll available in native & managed setting. So, here lies my question. Should I leave my dll to have a managed signature and if it needs to be use in vb6, make sure it is understood how to make it work in native mode (which I need to learn), or should I make a native dll and make it P/Invoke in managed setting? Or should I build two distinct dll? IMO, I would keep it as a managed dll, but I was wondering if it's the best way to do it? On a last note, the current version is a v.1 build to showcase how we can use it,and start using it fast. Writing this makes me realize I need to build an interface!:). I plan to rebuild the whole program, but the API's calls will always be to their native dll, unless they have .net SDK coming, but no word about it yet."}
{"_id": "71888", "title": "managing a remote programmer", "text": "We have an opportunity to hire an awesome web dev for our team. Problem is, he is leaving for S. America in 6 months. We will still have him onsite for six months. We are thinking of having him work remotely after that, but we have our concerns. Ours is a 4 person Chicago-based team that uses scrum. Our office is a war room where we are in constant collaboration. How could we include a remote worker in such a process? What technologies and techniques can make this work? Or is it a lost cause? This thread lists some tools, but I'm hoping for some real world experiences."}
{"_id": "197745", "title": "How does MySQL blob actually work?", "text": "This is a question driven by curiosity. I am learning Oracle database and Oracle database handles Blob data in a separate tablespace, which I believe reduces overhead while trying to read large Blob data. I am wondering how MySQL handles Blob? I am actually planning to start a project and I wish to give a try on saving images in MySQL databases instead of standard approach of saving files in the file system. Thank you."}
{"_id": "147090", "title": "Unit testing: about easy- and hard-first strategies", "text": "I've never written a unit test. I'm reading _The art of Unit Testing_ by Osherove, and he explains a way to choose where to start when you're writing tests for legacy code. Basically you end up with two kinds of tests to write: **easy** (on components with few dependencies) and **hard** (on components with many dependencies). Then he says that starting from the hard ones you have to be more experienced, but that it lets you refactor and make testable a wide part of the system, making later work much easier. But isn't it true the way around too? I mean, if you start from easy tests, shouldn't you end up making hard tests easier?"}
{"_id": "211716", "title": "Sort rectangles in a grid based on a comparison of the center point of each", "text": "If I have a grid of rectangles and I move one of the rectangles, say above and to the left of another rectangle, how would I resort the rectangles? Note the rectangles are in an array, so each rectangle has an index and a matching tag. All I really need to do is set the proper index based on the rectangles new center point position within the rectangle, as compared with the center point position of the other rectangles in the grid. Here is what I am doing now in pseudo code (works somewhat, but not accurate):               -(void)sortViews:myView {     int newIndex;     // myView is the view that was moved.     [viewsArray removeObject:myView];     [viewsArray enumerate:obj*view]{         if (myView.center.x > view.center.x) {             if (myView.center.y > view.center.y) {                 newIndex = view.tag -1;                 *stop = YES;             } else {                 newIndex = view.tag +1;                 *stop = YES;             }         } else if (myView.center.x < view.center.x) {             if (myView.center.y > view.center.y) {                 newIndex = view.tag -1;                 *stop = YES;             } else {                 newIndex = view.tag +1;                 *stop = YES;             }         }     }];     if (newIndex < 0) {         newIndex = 0;     } else if (newIndex > 5) {         newIndex = 5;     }     [viewsArray insertObject:myView atIndex:newIndex];     [self arrangeGrid];     }"}
{"_id": "189858", "title": "Can I start with a passing unit test?", "text": "Uncle Bob's rules for TDD are specified here.   1. You are not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a failing unit test pass.    2. You are not allowed to write any more of a unit test than is sufficient to fail; and compilation failures are failures.    3. You are not allowed to write any more production code than is sufficient to pass the one failing unit test. But, is it ok to write a bunch of tests that pass as soon as the test compiles? For example, a test that asserts null and the default impl of a method I'm testing returns null. Am I doing something wrong by doing this? Should I skip to the first test that will fail or is it ok to write tests that automatically pass first?"}
{"_id": "211713", "title": "How to write comments to explain the \"why\" behind the callback function when the function and parameter names are insufficient for that?", "text": "How should I approach writing comments for callback functions? I want to explain the \"why\" behind the function when the function and parameter names are insufficient to explain what's going on. I have always wonder why comments like this can be so ordinary in documents of libraries in dynamic languages:               /**      * cb: callback    // where's the arguments & effects?      */      func foo( cb )      Maybe the common attitude is \"you can look into source code on your own after all\" which pushes people into leaving minimalist comments like this. But it seems like there should be a better way to comment callback functions. * * * I've tried to comment callbacks in Haskell way:               /**      * cb: Int -> Char      */     func foo(cb)      And to be fair, it's usually neat enough. But it gets into trouble when I need to pass some complex structure. The problem being partly due to the lack of type system:               /**      * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char }  // too long...      */     func foo(cb)      Or I have tried this too:               /**      * cb: Int -> { err: String -> (),      *              success: () -> Char }  // better ?      */     func bar(cb)      The problem is that you may put the structure in somewhere else, but you must give it a name to reference it. But then when you name a structure you're about to use immediately looks so redundant:               // Somewhere else...     // ResultCallback: { err: String -> (), success: () -> Char }          /**      * cb: Int -> ResultCallback    // better ??      */     func foo(cb)      And it bothers me if I follow the Java-doc like commenting style since it still seems incomplete. The comments don't tell you anything that you couldn't immediately see from looking at the function.               /**      * @param cb {Function}  yeah, it's a function, but you told me nothing about it...      * @param err {Function} where should I put this callback's argument ??      *                       Not to mention the err's own arguments...      */     func foo(cb)      These examples are JavaScript like with generic functions and parameter names, but I've encountered similar problems in other dynamic languages which allow complex callbacks."}
{"_id": "189852", "title": "How to achieve N-Tier type in Codeigniter MVC", "text": "I know that N-Tier intended to separate layers on different network but I would like to have the same code separation in codeigniter I got this idea to have **Model** : for database CRUD - > Data layer **REST** API : for business logic\u2014> Business layer that calls CRUD method from models **Controller** & **View** are going as before and flow will be **View** <\u2014> **Controller** <\u2014> **API** (with Business classes) <\u2014> **Model** I wanna know what kind of drawbacks it can be such architecture"}
{"_id": "189856", "title": "Is garbage collection needed for implementing safe closures?", "text": "I recently attended an online course on programming languages in which, among other concepts, closures were presented. I write down two examples inspired by this course to give some context before asking my question. The first example is an SML function that produces a list of the numbers from 1 to x, where x is the parameter of the function:               fun countup_from1 (x: int) =         let             fun count (from: int) =                 if from = x                 then from :: []                 else from :: count (from + 1)         in             count 1         end      In the SML REPL:               val countup_from1 = fn : int -> int list     - countup_from1 5;     val it = [1,2,3,4,5] : int list      The `countup_from1` function uses the helper closure `count` that captures and uses the variable `x` from its context. In the second example, when I invoke a function `create_multiplier t`, I get back a function (actually, a closure) that multiplies its argument by t:               fun create_multiplier t = fn x => x * t      In the SML REPL:               - fun create_multiplier t = fn x => x * t;     val create_multiplier = fn : int -> int -> int     - val m = create_multiplier 10;     val m = fn : int -> int     - m 4;     val it = 40 : int     - m 2;     val it = 20 : int      So variable `m` is bound to the closure returned by the function call and now I can use it at will. Now, for the closure to work properly throughout its lifetime, we need to extend the lifetime of the captured variable `t` (in the example it is an integer but it could be a value of any type). As far as I know, in SML this is made possible by garbage collection: the closure keeps a reference to the captured value which is later disposed of by the garbage collector when the closure is destroyed. My question: in general, is garbage collection the only possible mechanism to ensure that closures are safe (callable during their whole lifetime)? Or what are other mechanisms that could ensure the validity of closures without garbage collection: Copy the captured values and store it inside the closure? Restrict the lifetime of the closure itself so that it cannot be invoked after its captured variables have expired? What are the most popular approaches? **EDIT** I do not think the example above can be explained / implemented by copying the captured variable(s) into the closure. In general, the captured variables can be of any type, e.g. they can be bound to a very large (immutable) list. So, in the implementation it would be very inefficient to copy these values. For the sake of completeness, here is another example using references (and side effects):               (* Returns a closure containing a counter that is initialized        to 0 and is incremented by 1 each time the closure is invoked. *)     fun create_counter () =         let             (* Create a reference to an integer: allocate the integer                and let the variable c point to it. *)             val c = ref 0         in             fn () => (c := !c + 1; !c)         end          (* Create a closure that contains c and increments the value        referenced by it it each time it is called. *)     val m = create_counter ();      In the SML REPL:               val create_counter = fn : unit -> unit -> int     val m = fn : unit -> int     - m ();     val it = 1 : int     - m ();     val it = 2 : int     - m ();     val it = 3 : int      So, variables can also be captured by reference and are still alive after the function call that created them (`create_counter ()`) has completed."}
{"_id": "184397", "title": "How can I present some printed Visual Basic source code in an aesthetically pleasing manner?", "text": "Right now I'm interning at a major engineering company. I'll be leaving in a few months though, so my project manager has requested a print out of my source code for a VBA project I've been working on. He would like to have it reviewed to make sure I didn't do anything ridiculous, and to make sure it's organized well enough for someone to maintain easily enough once I'm gone. I'm not really sure why he would want a print out instead of files, but since the VBA editor is ugly as sin this is probably a good thing. I would like to make an impression with this - however minor - so my question is how can I make this look professional? I.e., maybe there are certain fonts that make sense here, perhaps I could apply a color scheme to the words, etc?"}
{"_id": "184396", "title": "MVCS - Model View Controller Store", "text": "I recently decided to start learning iOS Development, and to this end I\u2019ve been reading iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide. In the book the authors describe a design pattern _MVCS - Model-View-Controller-Store_ , the basic idea being that since many applications make use of multiple external sources of data keeping the request logic in the controller can get very messy, instead the authors propose that moving all the request logic out of the controller and into a separate object. In short to quote the book > Model-View-Controller-Store puts request logic into a separate object, and > we call this object a store (Figure 28.4). Using a store object minimizes > redundant code and simplifies the code that fetches and saves data. Most > importantly, it moves the logic for dealing with an external source into a > tidy class with a clear and focused goal. This makes code easier to > understand, which makes it easier to maintain and debug, as well as share > with other programmers on your team. And > The cool thing about asynchronous stores is that even though a lot of > objects are doing a lot of work to process a request, the flow of the > request and its response are in one place in the controller. This gives us > the benefit of code that\u2019s easy to read and also easy to modify. I wanted to find out more about this pattern and to see what others might have to say about it, but while searching online the only references I could find were to that same book (is the pattern perhaps known by some other name?). To me the author\u2019s logic seems to make sense, and it seems like a logical extension of the regular MVC pattern, but perhaps that's because I don\u2019t really have much experience with the MVC pattern in practice (aside from foray into iOS development I have sort of used MVV with backbone.js (that is, if you consider it MVC)). I was hoping that perhaps someone with more experience can shed some light on whether there are any obvious flaws/problems with the _MVCS_ pattern that I\u2019m missing."}
{"_id": "180480", "title": "For a front-end application broken down in a MV* manner, should I have models dedicated to UI logic?", "text": "I am not talking about simple UI logic like clicking a button directs you to another page, but where one action may result in several different of behavior depending on current application state, and may also trigger response in other parts of the application. Currently my view publishes all UI event so the response can be delegated to other parts. The problem is which other part? In order to avoid writing 'fat' controllers that hold arbitrary amount of domain logic, I thought it might be nice to have a non-persistent object that models UI behavior, but am not sure if this makes sense or if I am just pushing the problem around and being object-happy?"}
{"_id": "180482", "title": "What tools or techniques are useful for describing an unfamiliar codebase?", "text": "When manually inspecting unfamiliar code (to review or modify), I seem to have three options.   * A **top-down read** of the code, choosing each next source file by how fundamental the filename seems. _I usually end up reading nearly everything. Some files twice._   * A **breadth-first read** , where I find and read all of the invoking method with minimal understanding. Then read all the functions that function called, and so on. _My mental stack tends to overflow if I make it a few calls deep._   * A **depth-first read** , where I step through all the code in a debugger, unsure of whether this will take 8 minutes or 8 hours. Once I've read enough of the code to have a fairly solid understanding of what it's doing, I often reflect that **I've read 80% or more of the codebase, while the fundamental code is 20% or less**. I've wasted a lot of time. What tools are useful for getting a quick grasp of unfamilar code? Are there any tools that can give a \"big picture\" of the critical code path and allow me to drill down to the details of any one part?"}
{"_id": "180487", "title": "WCF service as a proxy for publishing real-time data to a WPF/MVVM clients", "text": "I've been tasked with creating a dashboard application to show real time updates for our servers. The raw data comes in from an XML file on our intranet which I need to parse and present to the user. It is not an option to have every user of the dashboard pull this XML file at the same time for their updates. From what I have been reading, I need to use a WCF service to consume the XML file server side and then have it push updates to all clients who are looking at the service. I need it to be scalable, there will be around 20 concurrent users at the start but I will need to scale to hundreds in the future. I will need to update from the XML file every 30 seconds to 1 minute. Am I on the right track with WCF? Are there other options that I should consider?"}
{"_id": "224583", "title": "Design for a tree using a visitor pattern, how to implement different kinds of traversal?", "text": "I've been asked a theoretical design question with an eye upon the GoF patterns.: \"Given a design for a tree using a standard visitor pattern, how would your design look to allow a user to choose between om pre-order, in-order or post- order traversals?\" I'm thinkin of just letting the visitor be, but give the traversal over to an Iterator object following the Iterator Pattern. The idea would be to implement 3 iterators that enable the desired traversal. They have an interface and the Visitor only needs to interact with this interface, giving itself as an argument to the iterator which provides traversal. The user can choose which iterator to use when giving one to the visitor. Does this sound like an elegant solution? Any better ideas?"}
{"_id": "180488", "title": "Should I fix small issues or let them go?", "text": "I ran into the following issue where a keyboard shortcut I was used to was no longer working in Ubuntu. That's just an example. For programming, this kinds of thing happens a lot, but it also happens in any aspect of work and life. I'm always tempted to fix it right away because I have an idea of what might fix it in a few minutes. Of course, a lot of times the idea is wrong, and much more effort is required. I basically go through an optimization process where I continuously ask myself \"Did I spend too much time looking for a fix already?\" in trying to decide whether to abandon the effort. I think any one issue can be abandoned, but I think that if I do it for all of them, my life will be a mess of inefficiencies. **Question:** How do you effectively approach this temptation of small problems? As I wrote up in the above rambling blog post the pros and cons for the decision to pursue any one individual issue are: **Pros:**   * I fix the small problem the \"right\" way, so I don\u2019t have to settle for a half-ass sweep-under-the-rug solution.   * I get to spend an hour being open to the possibility of learning new things relevant to my work and exchanging information with the community of fellow Linux users. The computer world evolves on a daily basis, with new technologies, approaches, ideas constantly emerging. So, it\u2019s important to stay connected to the latest developments.   * I get to practice persevering in dealing with frustrating issues. **Cons** :   * It is not guaranteed that I find a solution.   * It always takes longer than you thin. At first, it seems like the fix would not take more than 5 minutes, and when it does (50+% of the time), I become progressively more invested in it as time goes on. It\u2019s the same principle that keeps you gambling in a Casino until all your money is gone.   * Perfectionism is an addiction. We live in a world of inefficiencies that could be easily optimized if you just give it a few minutes. Sometimes it does take minutes, but sometimes it may take days. The more you feed this addiction, the harder it becomes to exist peacefully in an inefficient world."}
{"_id": "137552", "title": "Can thesaurus items have more than one USE relation?", "text": "I want to model a Thesaurus using the ANSI/NISO standard relation description like \"broader term\", \"narrow term\", etc. (see this Wikipedia article for details). Is it valid for a Thesaurus item in this description standard to have more than one \"use\" relationship?"}
{"_id": "4341", "title": "Are programming skills and computer knowledge taught at university sufficient for industry?", "text": "I am student currently attending my fourth year at a Swedish university and will, if all goes well, take my Master's degree in Computer Science in winter of 2011. It is a respectable university, at least here, and am overall satisfied with my choice - both of university and major. While I've learned much in the courses I've attended, I am a bit concerned if what being taught is sufficient when moving from the safe practice grounds of the university to the volatile battlefields of industry. In truth, I would say more than half of my programming skills and soft- and hardware knowledge have been self-taught on my own spare time - either through projects initiated on my own accord or studying non-mandatory topics of material in conjunction with courses. Indeed, sometimes these \"off-topics\" have proven more interesting and valuable than the course material itself. In terms of programming skills, even less have been learned directly through university courses. To my knowledge, I don't know of a single course at my university which covers how to program efficiently. Sure, there are many courses in how to program in a particular language, several in how to write algorithms for solving a particular problem, as well as one in how to program under pressure, but none in how to _think_ about programming and how to approach problems in an efficient manner. Also, I encounter many students who have never concerned themselves with C or C++: languages heavily used in industry. Even after having written code in one form or another for 15 years, I still feel I have so much left to learn. In truth, the more I learn, the more ignorant I feel. All this leave me with a concern that, had I relied solely on what I've been taught at university, I would not be adequately equipped for facing the working market; and even with my spare time learning I am not sure my skills are adequate. Is this a common problem? Are programming skills and knowledge taught at university sufficient for industry? What experience have you employers had with new workers fresh from univeristy in terms of their knowledge and skills? Do you feel that they are adequate, or should the universities improve or revise their teachings? **NOTE:** I originally asked this question on SO (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3720486/are-programming-skills-and- computer-knowledge-taught-at-university-sufficient-for), but it was closed as it wasn't suitable for a Q&A website such as that. But I was recommended to post it here instead so I've simply copy-pasted the question."}
{"_id": "170070", "title": "What's the best way to manage reusable classes/libraries separately?", "text": "When coding, I naturally often come up with classes or a set of classes with a high reusability. I'm looking for an easy, straight-forward way to work on them separately. I'd like to be able to easily integrate them into any project; it also should be possible to switch to a different version with as few commands as possible. Am I right with the assumption that git (or another VCS) is best suited for this? I thought of setting up local repositories for each class/project/library/plugin and then just cloning/pulling them. It would be great if I could reference those projects by name, not by the full path. Like `git clone someproject`. edit: To clarify, I know what VCS are about and I do use them. I'm just looking for a comfortable way to store and edit some reusable pieces of code (including unit tests) separately and to be able to include them (without the unit tests) in other projects, without having to manually copy files. Apache Maven is a good example, but I'm looking for a language-independent solution, optimally command-line-based."}
{"_id": "170078", "title": "Multi-platform Map Application", "text": "I'm working on a web project (PHP, jQuery) which currently using Google Maps powering up the map functionality of the application, however we need to make it multi-platform like you can go to the dashboard and choose one from 5-10 map providers (which Goolge Maps is just one of them) to underlying your map functionality. So, as the application is supposed to show the data on map, almost in every single place we have to deal with the API provided by that specific map provider. Currently we are thinking about revising our modular structure and/or making something like an adapter for each provider to deal with their native syntax but via our standard methods. I wish to have your ideas and your experiences, specially if you ever made an interface for dealing via 2-3 different map providers. That would helps much and I really appreciate that. If you need any further information, just ask me to update the question. **Update:** As `Vicky Chijwani` suggested **Mapstraction** , now I'm also wondering which one is more better (pros & cons), having an adapter implemented on Javascript or PHP?"}
{"_id": "109790", "title": "Is there a symbol or shorthand for \"and is increasing/decreasing\"?", "text": "This usually happens when I'm writing to developers or other IT professionals. The context would be something along the lines of \". . . measured at 100 MB/s (and is increasing).\" On paper or a whiteboard, I've always drawn a bold up/down arrow. This situation mostly shows up when I type comments in email, code or revisions. I didn't not know if there was a symbol or shorthand in Unicode that could help out."}
{"_id": "234205", "title": "Smallest and Largest contiguous repeating sub-sequence in a sequence", "text": "I am trying to solve a outdated quiz problem.   I am tasked to find the smallest and largest contiguous sequence of repeating numbers in a larger sequence.   e.g.               {1,3,6,17,19,3,6,5,4,2,5,6,17,19,3,6,7,5,78,100,101}      For the sequence above, the smallest (non-zero element sequence) and largest non extensible sub sequence would be `smallest - 3,6` and `largest - 6,17,19,3,6`   Could not get started with an algorithm. Any help to get me started would be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "234201", "title": "Design for running active x components from local server", "text": "I have a requirement where some of the training scripts (active x components) needs to be rendered on the client application (IE 8). Till now the server was hosting these scripts using IIS and IE was used render these using HTTP protocol. However in some new customer scenarios I am required to look at the possibility of not having a server hosting this content due to bad network connectivity. The different options I am looking at are   1. Inside the LAN have a local server and use IIS within that to host these training scripts   2. Host the training scripts on each users local drive Option (1) may not be suitable to all customers since it requires an additional server and since my customers are banks they may not be OK with it. Option (2), playing the content from local file system will be considered as security threat and elevating the security privileges on browser in banking environment is a strict no-no. Also pushing updates on the training materials is cumbersome where I might need to push updates to say 30000 teller machines instead of 1 server machine. If i choose to go with option (2) is there any possibility of using any temporary local webserver? Are there any other alternatives to achieve this?"}
{"_id": "234203", "title": "To use or not to use a backing app for website?", "text": "By suggestion in comments, I'll try to rephrase my question to better reflect my problem: I have to present users (few at first, as many as possible later) with a website. There they will be able to browse various data. The data will be served from a local \"cache\" db. Users should be always presented with data as fresh as possible. The source for most of the data will be external services with possible limits, long response times etc. The process of processing data from those sources to the schema of local db is also not straightforward (conversion, calculations, decoupling, recreating relations etc.) Is putting all that data mining and processing code ok (and doing all that work in the time between users click a link and receive data), or is my second idea - another, constantly running data-miner application - better? Or is there another option? Old text: I'm currently developing a website that will present both its own data (user profiles, their submited content) as well as data obtained from various external sources (e.g. via webservice calls). Varied sources will have varied limits of allowed calls, will respond with varied speed etc. No, the data user is presented with should be, by default, as fresh as possible with an option to request refresh (unless refreshed very recently). I started development in ASP.NET (for better or for worse), with some templates and some customization, and quite a lot of coding I ended up with a workable proof of concept. But then I started to think about large-scale operations. Displaying cached data is quick and easy, I didn't mess that up. Refreshing though is a problem. a) Requesting data for one user is fast, but it will eat through allowed api calls quickly. b) Requesting data for multiple users (for apis that allow that) saves potentialy great amount of api calls, but takes linearly longer (not 1:1, but still, it takes time to request, receive and parse tens of times more data than single request). There also comes the problem of exceeding the limits. Usually that would force the app to either cancel refresh, or wait few seconds for new allowance. But I don't really see the user happily waiting for several seconds for the page to load. I am currently concidering gutting the data-gathering part of the website and moving it into a single managing application, sharing a db with the website. The website would provide info which users need their data to be refreshed, the app would load-balance the external services to use them efficiently (not limited to \"when a user opens a website\"), and keep the data as fresh as possible - also possibly keeping part of the allowance for forced refreshes. Now, the main problem I see with this is cost of hosting not just website, but also a background running .NET application. But let's assume that the cost is not that relevant. What I actually fear is that I overcomplicate the solution. I might just put more of the website in Ajax and just wait for the request to complete in the background (when calls become available). So, does anyone has any simillar experience? I'm especially interested in the scenario where it is all scaled up, that is we can assume that there will always be deficit of available calls. PS I also worry about keeping website (which can be triggered independently by many users) from trying to refresh the same records twice etc. - I guess I should put some additional safeguards, lock or at least mark the records undergoing refresh etc. - a lot of code just to solve the problem that wouldn't exist with a single-backend...."}
{"_id": "142194", "title": "myeclipse: can I customize templates like sysout in jsp", "text": "Myeclipse's java code templates like _sysout_ make coding easier, and they can also be customized. But seems it's jsp editor has no such capability. Is it possible to create and customize some templates like _sysout_ in myeclipse jsp editor, and if yes, how?"}
{"_id": "224340", "title": "How to schedule large numbers of user-defined tasks?", "text": "Say you're running a website which generates a large number of tasks that should be run at particular times (e.g. reminder emails). You could run a cron which SELECTs a database table for unprocessed events before the current time (or even a long running process that polls the table), but this seems messy. On the other hand, as far as I know most producer/consumer messaging systems don't support arbitrary priorities. How to approach this?"}
{"_id": "241021", "title": "Is using partial classes for supporting multiple versions of data entities for continuous delivery scenarios a bad idea?", "text": "When you want to have continuous delivery any data schemas that you have must support multiple versions of your application at the same time (as you may have multiple version deployed when new versions are rolling out) In my specific case I have entities stored in Azure table storage. When I am making changes to my entities I am usually having to add properties (as removing or renaming them is a bad idea as old versions of the application will potentially break), but once a new version is completely rolled out I don't need the old versions properties anymore as all the servers out there are using the new version, which means in the next rollout I can remove some of the old properties. I'm wondering if this problem can be solved more easily by having partial classes for each version of the entity. This ensures that one version will always be accumulative for a previous version (ie will never take anything away or change anything) but will allow delegation to an existing property if something just needs to be renamed. Once a version has been completely rolled out and the old version will never be needed then the partial classes could be consolidated into a single class again (and any unneeded properties removed). If you know that you are only going to have a couple of versions 'live' at anyone time then you could perhaps use a 'current' version and a 'vNext' version explicitly. I've not tried this as a solution yet but wondered if anyone else has tried an approach like this and has any feedback, or if anyone has thoughts on whether this is a good or bad idea?"}
{"_id": "144546", "title": "Is Debug.Assert obsolete if you write unit tests?", "text": "Just like the question asks, is there a need to add Debug.Assert into your code if you are writing unit tests (which has its own assertions)? I could see that this might make the code more obvious without having to go into the tests, however it just seems that you might end up with duplicated asserts. It seems to me that `Debug.Assert` was helpful before unit-testing became more prevalent, but is now unnecessary. Or, am I not thinking of some use case?"}
{"_id": "144540", "title": "IntelliJ with Maven compilation", "text": "I have a project that needs Hibernate jars. I added them as dependencies in the pom.xml and Maven compiles my project well. However, in the IDE, all annotations and calls to Hibernate API are marked as unresolved (red). How could I get IntelliJ being able to resolve them ? Is there a way to use Maven when I click on Build Project ? (ctrl+F9) Also, I am confused with the concept of facets within IntelliJ. Do I need them, let's say JPA facets to enable Persistence assistant etc... or there's an option to let Maven take care about ?"}
{"_id": "186503", "title": "Why does the backing store of an array bind to the smallest type?", "text": "In C# it is legal to write               Animal[] a = new Giraffe[4]; //with obvious relationships      Because arrays are covariant. However, this is a breaking relationship. It's a runtime exception to then apply a different type of Animal to this array because the backing store is a `Giraffe`.               a[0] = new Cat(); //KABOOM      Why doesn't the language create a covariant backing store? This doesn't appear to be a limitation of the language because I can create this type of data structure myself:               class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             A[] a = new B[2];             a[0] = new B();             a[1] = new C();//runtime exception                  var containerLegal = new Container<B, A>();             containerLegal.Add(new B());             containerLegal.Add(new C());//works fine         }     }          class A { }          class B : A { }          class C : A { }          class Container<T,S> where T: class, S     {         S[] s = new S[4];         int currentIndex = 0;              public void Add(S t)         {             s[currentIndex] = t;             currentIndex++;         }     }      I'm cheating a little bit cause I'm not using `T` in `Container<>`...but I think its a fair relationship anyhow."}
{"_id": "183753", "title": "Temporary variables vs line length requirements", "text": "I've been reading Martin Fowler's _Refactoring_. It is generally excellent but one of Fowler's recommendations seems to be causing a little trouble. Fowler recommends that you replace temporary variables with a query, so instead of this:               double getPrice() {         final int basePrice = _quantity * _itemPrice;         final double discountFactor;         if (basePrice > 1000) discountFactor = 0.95;         else discountFactor = 0.98;         return basePrice * discountFactor;     }      you pull out into a helper method:               double basePrice() {         return _quantity * _itemPrice;     }          double getPrice() {         final double discountFactor;         if (basePrice() > 1000) discountFactor = 0.95;         else discountFactor = 0.98;         return basePrice() * discountFactor;     }      In general I agree except that one reason I use temporary variables is when a line is too long. For example:               $host = 'https://api.twilio.com';     $uri = \"$host/2010-04-01/Accounts/$accountSid/Usage/Records/AllTime\";     $response = Api::makeRequest($uri);      If I tried inlining that, the line would go longer than 80 characters. Alternately I end up with chains of code, which are themselves not that much easier to read:               $params = MustacheOptions::build(self::flattenParams($bagcheck->getParams()));      What are some strategies for reconciling the two?"}
{"_id": "145634", "title": "Are using <<include>> and <<extend>> relationship in this use-case diagram actually same?", "text": "I am trying to draw a UML use-case diagram to model requirements for a software project. The two requirements I have issue to model are:   1. `TravelAgent` creates a booking for a [old] client who is requesting a home.   2. When a new client wishes to make a booking, the `TravelAgent` register him/her to the system before doing the booking. I have two approaches to model these requirements:   1. Modeling the first use-case as a sub-procedure of the second use-case (Figure 1).    2. Extending the first use-case (Figure 2). Both approach imply that the first use-case could be perform independently, but when the second use-case is executed, the first one MUST be executed too. Are they actually same and both correct? P.S. As another question, since the `NewClient` converts to a `Client` after the registration, should I show the `NewClient` as subclass of `Client` or something? Figure 1 ![Figure 1](http://i.stack.imgur.com/hGSC4.png) Figure 2 ![Figure 2](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Lg39Q.png)"}
{"_id": "200723", "title": "naming convention for different types of functions (use prefixes or suffixes?)", "text": "Does anyone have suggestions for naming conventions for different types of functions, particularly wrapper functions that need to connect to and disconnect from the database vs. wrapper functions that are passed a db link and don't need to connect and disconnect? The project on which I am working has these types of functions (among other types):   * wrapper functions that need to connect to the database, then call other functions, then disconnect   * wrapper functions that are passed a db link and call other functions (these functions don't need to connect to the db, that has already been done) Has anyone worked in a similar environment? Did you follow any naming conventions to distinguish between these wrapper functions that need to connect vs. being passed a db link, such as using a particular prefix or suffix?"}
{"_id": "145632", "title": "Pattern for select case on object type (of interface)", "text": "I have read that doing a select case is often a code smell. There are cases however where an interface cannot solve my problem. For instance, I have a set of date filter objects (last 7 days, last year, ect.) that implement a IDateFilter interface. In another part of the code, I need to determine the type of date filter so that the chart properties can be set. I may want to use a different chart tick interval for instance depending on the date filter. The problem is I do not want to store this information in the date filter object as it is interface related and I do not want to couple the two. How could a select case be avoided in this instance? Other than using select case on gettype or creating some enumeration for all the types and then exposing the type and doing a select case on that, I do not see a clean way to do this? The decorator pattern comes to mind but even then I would still need a select case. Any ideas?               if (type = last 7 days)      set this property      else if (type = last year)      set this property to something different      I'm using asp net c# in case that makes a difference."}
{"_id": "240774", "title": "In voice recognition programs, what methods are generally used to separate voice from noise?", "text": "I think voice recognition is cool, and I might start studying it soon, but one big question that I've always wondered about is \"How do the programmers separate the noise from the voice?\" I mean, if you've watched \"Her\", you'll notice the main character uses voice commands commonly in quiet places, but today, voice recognition is mostly used in the car, amid a LOT of background noise, and even possibly background voices. I've used Siri in these loud situations, and I'm always impressed that the program still understands me over the noise. So, without going into detailed specifics, **I'd like to know what methods or concepts are generally used by programmers to do this.**"}
{"_id": "188030", "title": "How to use Dependency Injection in conjunction with the Factory pattern", "text": "Consider a module that is responsible for parsing files of any given type. I am thinking of using the strategy pattern to tackle this problem as I have already explained over here. Please refer to the linked post before proceeding with this question. Consider class B that needs the contents of the product.xml file. This class will need to instantiate the appropriate concrete implementer of the Parser interface to parse the XML file. I can delegate the instantiation of the appropriate concrete implementer to a Factory such that class B \"has-a\" Factory. However, class B will then \"depend\" on a Factory for instantiating the concrete implementer. This means that the constructor or a setter method in class B will need to be passed the Factory. Therefore, the Factory and class B that needs to parse a file will be tightly coupled with each other. I understand that I may be completely wrong about whatever I have explained so far. I would like to know whether I can use dependency injection in a scenario where the dependency to be injected is a Factory and what would be the right way to implement this so I can take advantage of areas such as mocking the Factory in my unit tests."}
{"_id": "188033", "title": "Using testing branches in Git", "text": "We have someone (let's call him Ted) that is responsible for testing new features and bug fixes. We're using Git and GitHub. `master` should be/is always deployable and `development` is where we commit/merge new features or bug fixes, but only after they have been tested by Ted. The project is in PHP. I'd like the testing process to go like this:   1. A developer wants to work on a new feature (let's say the feature/bug #123 as Ted documented in the issue tracker), so he pulls `origin/development` to `development` on his local repository and creates a new branch (let's say `issue-123`) from there.   2. Once he's happy with his work, he commits and pushes his new branch to `origin`.   3. Ted connects to `test.ourproject.com/choose-branch` and sees a list of the branches on `origin` and chooses to switch on `issue-123` (it should be doable through the webpage). He then goes on `test.ourproject.com`, tests the hell out of the web application (he's really pitiless) and after some back and forth with the developer, he's happy with the feature.   4. Ted tells the developer that he can merge `issue-123` onto `development` on `origin`.   5. Rinse and repeat. For the third step, I could hack something that does the job (showing and switching branches from a specific page), but I feel that what I've described is a very common pattern. So my question is: **Is this a good / sustainable / maintainable workflow for branching?** Can you back up your answer by citing some examples of other projects following this workflow?"}
{"_id": "230458", "title": "How should my AngularJS \"wizard\" be structured?", "text": "For brevity's sake, consider the following scenario: Part of my application is a wizard for bringing on new clients and it's a dynamic page. One step contains billing information, another step is setup information, etc. Because it's one page, in my mind I have one controller for the entire wizard, but that also means I have models and functions for each step in one **controllername.js** file in addition to using a bunch of ng-show directives to \"show\" steps. This doesn't feel quite right..have I overlooked something in the docs? Edit: To exapnd a bit, I feel like I'm violating the SRP and I feel dirty."}
{"_id": "136208", "title": "Rails - to use STI or not...that is the question", "text": "Six months ago, I asked a question about modeling data for my app, and received some advice pointing me towards STI (see Rails data model - best practices question for the details). I played around with it, got it working somewhat, and then got distracted and put the project on hiatus. I just started developing it again from scratch, with the benefit of 6 more months of programming/ROR experience, and I have once again hit this wall when it comes to modeling ingredients for my beer recipes. To give a quick summary, assume I have three ingredient types (malt, hops, and yeast) - each one shares a few attributes (name, price, vendor) but each also has attributes specific to that ingredient type. They are all related (they are all ingredients) but they do have different \"behavior\" (for example, grains are mashed and there would be logic to deal with that which wouldn't apply to hops/yeast, etc...) The ingredients are just different enough that I am contemplating just having three separate tables in the db...but what about controllers? Could I use a single Ingredients controller to manage the separate models? I've read about alternatives to STI (class table inheritance, and multi table inheritance) but all the solutions seem kludgy. Are there any alternatives that give me the convenience of STI (such as getting all ingredients, regardless of type, with a single table query) without the drawbacks (null fields, unwieldy tables when you keep adding subclasses and fields, etc) Sorry, I know this question is a bit fuzzy, but I feel like I can't find a clean solution and I'm now trying to figure out which method out there is the lesser evil. I'm sure others have dealt with this, and I'd love to hear the pros/cons of different solutions. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "76825", "title": "Is writing dead code useful?", "text": "Do you find writing dead code useful? Some says \"If you have 2 logic to do some operation then instead of making other logic code commented or removing code make it dead code as it will not affect the operation.\" Example:-               if(true){         // logic - 1     } else {         // logic - 2  // dead code     }      Is it true? * * * I usually do not write dead codes instead I just remove the second logic."}
{"_id": "76822", "title": "I need a true random number generator web service", "text": "I need a way to get non-deterministic random numbers on demand for my application. However i do not wish/have the capabilities to build the hardware myself, thus I'm looking for a web service which does just that. Basically I'm looking for a non-deterministic random number generator for my application. Apparently my requirements is that it definitely have to take the analog world as input. I've found one at http://random.org. It is good enough for me, However it has a cap of 200k bits (only 6250 32-bit integers!) on each IP per day. 6250 integers per day is definitely not enough for my app. So I'm searching for one that gives a better quota. I don't mind paying to use the service (but obviously a free one would be better). I'm not asking a useless question. In fact, applications like online Casinos will need many non-deterministic random numbers on demand. In my situation, my economics/investment game requires a true random number for good simulation. A pseudo-random number is just \"not good\" enough for a \"good\" simulation you see. Btw please do not tell me that a pseudo-random number generator would \"be good enough\" for my application. It apparently isn't good enough for my situation here, which is the first, last, and only reason why I'll need a non- deterministic random number generator. Anyway, I'm aware that any data sent through HTTP/HTTPS has risks of being eavesdropped. I'm perfectly fine with that. I need a true random number. After I've gotten the number, I'm happy. A spy can eavesdrop all he wants and I won't mind a bit."}
{"_id": "76821", "title": "Copyright and porting an application", "text": "I was wondering who owns the copyright of the sourcecode if you port an opensource project from one language to another. Is there a clear answer, or does it 'depend'? edit: I'm aware that a license choice is bound to the license the original sourcecode is released under, but I'm strictly wondering about the IP/copyright. As in, could I change copyright (c) 2011 original author to copyright (c) 2011 my name in all source files."}
{"_id": "232335", "title": "Difficulty implementing algorithms from abstract understanding", "text": "I've got decent programming experience for an undergraduate. I just started the study of algorithms. I read the description and saw visual examples that make perfect sense in my head. But when it comes time to write them down in code, I'm unable to implement them. I'm talking about basic algorithms like insertion sort. I'm starting to feel that I'm just stupid. I love programming and the study of algorithms actually really fascinates me even though I haven't really gone into too much depth. But not being able to implement simple algorithms has really stopped me from getting past the beginner stage. I'm starting with Intro to Algorithm books/tutorials so I don't see how I go down a level. Is there anything else one can do while in this situation?"}
{"_id": "140041", "title": "Alternate approaches to creating custom forms in a web application", "text": "We are putting together some distribution software, selling about 150K SKU's. Some of our items have additional requirements in order to be sold that are dictated by our vendors. For instance one type of product that we sell are prosthetic feet. Some vendors require that we capture the users weight, activity level, and some other information. This is just one example there are many different kinds of products that might have this kind of requirement (a custom set of information collected from the customer to complete the sale). The direct approach is to just create custom forms for each requirement and create new forms when new requirements are needed. This works. It's straightforward, but its also a PIA. I would like to be able to kick this back to our product team that handles entering in new items rather than having to have them always come back to us. The project is a web application based on python (Turbogears). Not sure if this was relevant as the question is more general than this but put it here just in case. How would you approach this situation to minimize or remove your involvement with creating/adding these forms after site moves to production?"}
{"_id": "109138", "title": "Is it bad practice to use short-circuit evaluation instead of an if clause?", "text": "I'm working on an installation script, and especially there I have many things that need to be checked and actions that only need to be performed in case of related outcomes. For example, a folder only needs to be created if it doesn't exist:               MyDesktopFolderPath := AddBackslash(ExpandConstant('{commondesktop}')) +                              'My Folder';     if not DirExists(MyDesktopFolderPath) then     begin       ForceDirectories(MyDesktopFolderPath); //Create full path     end;     if DirExists(MyDesktopFolderPath) then     begin       //Perform other actions      Instead of this, I could use (exploit?) short-circuit evaluation to make it more compact:               MyDesktopFolderPath := AddBackslash(ExpandConstant('{commondesktop}')) +                             'My Folder';     IsMyDesktopFolderExisting := DirExists(MyDesktopFolderPath) or                                    ForceDirectories(MyDesktopFolderPath);     if IsMyDesktopFolderExisting then     begin       //Perform other actions      This would work too, but I wonder if it is bad practice, mostly because it is less obvious that actions might be performed. Any opinions on that? **Edit:** As pointed out by Secure, the code is not completely equivalent, but the discussion topic still stands for other cases."}
{"_id": "72040", "title": "How many skills should I list on my resume, CV?", "text": "I'm a maintenance programmer, and I work with a rather large list of technologies on a monthly if not daily basis. For example I'm competent (obviously not expert) in the following languages:   * Java (including J2EE)   * C#   * VB6   * ASP Classic When I go to work on my resume, how many of the technologies should I list? It seems pointless, or even a problem, to list them all. I don't like reading vast lists of technologies when I read resumes. How many should I list, and how should I choose?"}
{"_id": "218194", "title": "What is the advantage to using a factor of 1024 instead of 1000 for disk size units?", "text": "When considering the disk space of a storage medium, normally the computer or operating system will represent it in terms of powers of 1024 - a kilobyte is 1,024 bytes, a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes, a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes, and so on. But I don't see any practical reason why this convention was adopted. Usually when disk size is represented in kilo-, mega-, or giga-bytes, it has to be converted into decimal first. In places where a power-of-two byte count actually matters (like the block size on a file system), the size is given in bytes anyway (e.g. 4096 bytes). Was it just a little aesthetic novelty that computer makers decided to adopt, but storage medium vendors decided to disregard? Whenever you buy a hard drive, there's always a disclaimer nowadays that says \"One gigabyte means one billion bytes\". It would feel like using the binary definition of \"gigabyte\" would artificially inflate the byte count of a device, making drive-makers have to pack 1.1 terabytes into a drive in order to have it show up as \"1 TB\", or to simply pack 1 terabyte in and have it show up as \"931 GB\" (and most of them do the latter). Some people have decided to use units like \"KiB\" or \"MiB\" in favour of \"KB\" and \"MB\" in order to distinguish the two. But is there any merit to the binary prefixes in the first place? There's probably a bit of old history I'm not aware of on this topic, and if there is, I'm looking for somebody to explain it. (Apologies if this is in the wrong place. I felt that a question on best practice might belong here, but I have faith that it will be migrated to the right place if it's incorrect.)"}
{"_id": "253961", "title": "What strategy to follow while matching sql server datatypes in C# Code First approach while using Entity Framework", "text": "While matching SQL Server datatypes with C# Code First Approach in Entity Framework, what are specific points that we should keep in mind so that our C# datatype should match exactly our SQL Server datatype? Specifically, while we have to match SQL Server datatype to C# datatype, let's say for particular datatype hierarchyid, which exists in SQL Server but not in C#, how can we make it possible?"}
{"_id": "128957", "title": "Inc/dec vs +=/-=", "text": "I'm looking at a programming language design decision that's difficult to make precisely because there seems to be no objective basis for choosing one option over the other. The question is, given that a language doesn't have a `++` operator, would the better choice for an increment operator be as in C:               a += 1     a += b      or as in some versions of Pascal:               inc a     inc a b      (And similarly with `-=` vs `dec` of course.) Considerations I can see for `inc`:   * Slightly shorter for the typical case where the delta is 1.   * Less familiar to most programmers.   * Eliminates the corresponding `*=` etc operators, which are much less commonly used. Is there anything I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "74460", "title": "Why does Ubuntu have a 6-month release cycle?", "text": "Why has Ubuntu committed to a 6-month release cycle? Why should it have a fixed cycle at all? Doesn't that go against the \"if it ain't broken don't fix it\" saying?"}
{"_id": "139478", "title": "What code smell best describes this code?", "text": "Suppose you have this code in a class:               private DataContext _context;          public Customer[] GetCustomers()      {         GetContext();              return _context.Customers.ToArray();     }          public Order[] GetOrders()      {         GetContext();              return _context.Customers.ToArray();     }          // For the sake of this example, a new DataContext is *required*      // for every public method call     private void GetContext()     {         if (_context != null)          {             _context.Dispose();         }              _context = new DataContext();     }      This code isn't thread-safe - if two calls to `GetOrders`/`GetCustomers` are made at the same time from different threads, they may end up using the same context, or the context could be disposed while being used. Even if this bug didn't exist, however, it still \"smells\" like bad code. A much better design would be for `GetContext` to always return a new instance of `DataContext` and to get rid of the private field, and to dispose of the instance when done. Changing from an inappropriate private field to a local variable feels like a better solution. I've looked over the code smell lists and can't find one that describes this. In the past I've thought of it as temporal coupling, but the Wikipedia description suggests that's not the term: > _Temporal coupling_   >  When two actions are bundled together into one module just because they > happen to occur at the same time. This page discusses temporal coupling, but the example is the public API of a class, while my question is about the internal design. Does this smell have a name? Or is it simply \"buggy code\"?"}
{"_id": "84326", "title": "Protect freelance work", "text": "I have developed some PHP and HTML code for a freelance project, I want to make my contractor able to use my code commercially, since they will sell my project to their own client (an enterprise), but I want to disallow them from recycling my code for further projects, could this be achieved by some GNU license? Also I want to be able to use my code for another clients I could have (since I'm freelance), and sell them projects with some snippets of my today's created code, 'cause I could use some of this libraries."}
{"_id": "135151", "title": "Query language for JSON", "text": "I have a server which is returning very big JSON message and my client application is only dependent on part of this response. Client application needs to check if \"xyz\" property exist in JSON message and depending on the result run a specific usecase. For this requirement converting the whole JSON message to object sounds bit expensive to me and hence this question. Is there a standard JSON query language like one we have for XML? If yes what are best know implementation of this query language in java. FYI : Changing or adding new service on server side is not an option."}
{"_id": "255693", "title": "What is the integration architecture used by Github for its web interface?", "text": "I am amazed by the way Github integrates with different systems like Travis. They are separate companies, but yet Travis builds blend seamlessly everywhere in the Github interface. Yes, i am asking _mainly_ about integration on the user interface level, there is enough electronic ink around about service integration. Usually web interfaces get blended via embeds, like for Disqus. On Github however, seems like the interface parts related to Travis are rendered on the server side. Do they enforce a markup structure, or specific style sheets, or do they require to describe the interfaces with a domain specific language?"}
{"_id": "255691", "title": "Custom Video Player", "text": "I have a custom file type **.mft** which is basically a zip that has video inside (mpg,mp4,etc) that is encrypted/protected. My ideia is to create a custom video player which will read those **.mft** files, for a private group of users (users provide user and password), and the custom player will not allow to save the video, so that no one can re-share it, and can only view it. I saw that VLC has this library http://vlcdotnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/121099, so my player would use it. My question is : Is it really possible to block users from not saving the video? I don't think so, because there are several software to record desktop activity. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "101084", "title": "What is an effective way to familiarize yourself with a new application in a new language (and still look productive at a new job)?", "text": "I started a new job working on an application I'm vaguely familar with, and it's in Perl! I come from a PHP and Java background, so while I understand the basics, there are lot of nuances in Perl that make it troublesome. _updated_ < Im supposed to be a UI developer, but the smallness of the office requires me to learn and do a lot more than just javascript. So that was slightly unexpected in some aspects and I'm just thinking about what approach to take with this > / _updated_ So far I've been sifting through the code to understand what each part does, printed out copies of code and try to lookup APIs I'm not familiar with, and so I dunno how effective this process is -- I feel like it's gonna take some time -- and I dont want my new employers to feel like I'm not being productive. Anyone have some ideas or approaches for this kind of situation? I read some of the questions about learning new languages, but I'm curious to see if anyone's had experience with this with Perl. **Thanks you guys for all the awesome feedback!**"}
{"_id": "201994", "title": "Is it a Single Responsibility Principle violation?", "text": "I'm designing an OO graph library and at the moment I'm trying to figure out the design for a `GraphEdge` class. I've added setters and getters for it's nodes, direction and weight. This seemes perfectly reasonable. Then I've started working on the `Graph` class and I've come to the need of knowing if the particular edge is adjacent to the particular node. And now I doubt if I should add a `isAdjacentTo(Node)` method to the `GraphEdge` class or I should create a `GraphUtil` class(*) and add static `edgeIsAdjacentToNode(Edge,Node)` method to it. On the one hand, I can not see any additional reasons for changing `GraphEdge` if I stick to the first option. On the other hand, this seems to me like kind of second responsibility added to the class. Also if I stick to the first option this will probably violate the `Open-Close Principle`. The `GraphEdge` is not closed for changes, since later I will need to add `linksNodes(Node,Node)` method to it and maybe some others later. The questions are:   * Does adding `isAdjacentTo(Node)` method to the `GraphEdge` class violates the SRP?   * Why? (*) I stick to pure OO style with no free functions"}
{"_id": "201996", "title": "How can NodeJS be \"non-blocking\"?", "text": "I'm learning NodeJS and just wanted to clarify something. In several introductory tutorials and books so far, very early on they've described Node's \"non-blocking\" architecture - or rather that it's possible (and recommended, the entire point) to code in a non-blocking manner. So for example, this example was given in a book I'm reading of an asynchronous way to get data from a database.               http.createServer(function (req, res) {       database.getInformation(function (data) {           res.writeHead(200);           res.end(data);       });     });      What happens (as I understand it) is Node makes the call to the database, then continues processing whatever may be next on the call stack. When the database request is complete, the data variable in the anonymous callback function will be populated and that function added to the call stack (and subsequently executed when Node gets to it). My question is, _what exactly is **processing** the database request?_ Surely Node has to block whilst it does that? What is taking care of the database request? Or if Node is waiting on an asynchronous HTTP GET request to an external resource, what is taking care of that request that allows Node to continue processing the call stack and be \"non-blocking\"?"}
{"_id": "101088", "title": "How can/should a microsoft dev approach an android project?", "text": "I am a dev who mostly uses the Microsoft stack (C#/Silverlight/WPF/ASP MVC/.net framework) Although I am adding HTML5/CSS3/shivs/jQuery when using ASP.net MVC. I have the opportunity to do some Android mobile phone work but am unsure if/how my current skillset would apply. Anyone out there made this crossover transition? What new skillset is involved? What IDE development software would I need? # UPDATE: Thanks everyone for pointing me in a good directions! As a result, I took a couple of hours to check out Eclipse & the Android sdk plugin. So far, I find many comforting similarities between android and the MS stack that I\u2019m used to. ## These are my discoveries (maybe help some noobs like me!): \\--The Eclipse+AndroidSDK development environment is complete, understandable and is very much like visual studio. \\--Java is very \u201cc#-like\u201d. \\--Android separates the code (.java) from the layout markup (.xml). \\--Android\u2019s layout markup is very much like silverlight. \\--Android has built-in basic controls with basic styling. \\--Android has some really useful built-in widgets! (I\u2019m guessing it accepts custom add-in widgets also?) \\--Android Activities are like c# classes: methods/local properties + class- wide properties. Create instance & use them. \\--Activity lifecycles are understandable: Overrides -- onCreate(), onStart(), onResume(), onStop(), onRestart(), onDestroy(). \\--Android connects user events with event-handlers through the use of Listeners. \\--Android uses a lot of \u201cmagic string\u201d references in both .xml and .java (Oh- noooooo!) \\--Found a great YouTube series \u201candroid tutorial & lessons\u201d by CornBoyzAndroid (more than 30 informative episodes!) \\--Android does try/catch/finally for error catching similarly to c# ## I\u2019m still exploring, and I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll find answers to my further questions, like: \\--How does android deal with remote and local data? (database access, local storage, Linq). \\--How does android do asynchronous or long-lasting work? (callbacks, polling, sockets). \\--I see android exposes threading\u2026possibly useful, but I need more info. \\--Does android have frameworks like MVVM or MVC and what about unit testing? Again, thanks everyone for your help!!! -- Mark"}
{"_id": "139784", "title": "How to keep user's guide in lockstep with branches for a non-developer?", "text": "Our current user's guide is built using `asciidoc`. The documentation is managed by a non-technical person, but we keep the source text files as well as generated HTML in source control. Issues arise when they are making doc updates for version `x.z` in the `x.y` branch. Typically, one of the developers will update their environment, but they can be very forgetful. I know there has to be a better way to do this. How do you manage users' guides in a versioned manner without actually depending on non-technical users to learn VCS?"}
{"_id": "121354", "title": "How do I choose a package format for Linux software distribution?", "text": "We have a Java-based application that, to date, we've been distributing as a tarball with instructions for deploying. It's mostly self-contained so deployment is fairly straight-forward:   1. Untar on the disk you'd like it to live on;   2. Make sure Java is in your path and a suitable distro and version;   3. Verify ownership and group on all the files   4. Start up the server processes with our start script If the user wants to get in to start-on-boot stuff with SysV we have some written instructions and a template init file for it in our tarball. We'd like to make this installation process a little more seamless; take care of the permissions and the init script deployment. We're also going to start bundling our own JRE with the application so that we're mostly free of external dependencies. The question we're faced with now is: how do we pick a package format for distribution? Is RPM the standard? Can all package management tools deal with it now? Our clients primarily run RHEL and CentOS, but we do have some using SuSE and even Debian. If we can pick a distro-agnostic format we'd prefer that. What about a self-extracting shell script? Something akin to how Java is distributed. If we're dependency-free would the self-extracting script be sufficient? What features or conveniences would we lose out on going with the script versus a proper package format meant for use by a package manager?"}
{"_id": "236113", "title": "Just one class - Java", "text": "I've written a program in Java, it's only fairly small and I started programming and ended up just building one big class with everything inside it. The program works fine and exactly how I wanted it to, however, when writing up the documentation I've realized that it doesn't follow any sort of architecture pattern like MVC or 3-tier and seems most like a monolithic system. Is this likely to be detrimental? Maintainability is fairly important but the code is well commented and could be extended fairly easily if somebody wanted to add an extra algorithm for example. I'm just wondering if this is bad practice and whether it will be looked down upon? It is for part of a project so it will get assessed, I do have time to split it up into classes but it could be unnecessary work I feel and I wouldn't really know how to split it up. When I say a big class, its all relative but its about 1750 lines of code. I guess the main question is; it works as it is so is there any need to split it up into classes? Are monolithic systems particularly bad (not sure if it even is a monolithic system!)?"}
{"_id": "124655", "title": "Efficient coding in Visual Studio (or another IDE), with touch typing", "text": "Moving the cursor to another position in code is one of the most frequent actions when coding. I don't write my programs from the beginning to the end, like a letter. However, moving the cursor requires me to move my right hand to the key arrows or to the mouse, which feels like an interruption to my writing rhythm, since I'm using touch typing. I want my hands to rest on the keyboard. It's difficult to explain what I mean, but I think every coder using touch typing knows what I mean. I tried many things, like defining some shortcuts as surrogate arrow keys (Shift+Alt+J, K, L, I), or buying a keyboard with a Trackpoint, Trackpad, or Trackball on it, but I have not yet found a satisfying solution to the problem. What is the best solution you know of, regardless of which IDE you use? **Edit** : Thank you for your answers. I am using a lot of shortkeys, but I think using a Vim plugin in Visual Studio would interfere too much with the shortkeys I am used to. Also, I have a keyboard with a built-in mouse, but I'm still looking for a better solution."}
{"_id": "141391", "title": "Creating a shared library that might be used with desktop applications and web projects", "text": "I have been involved in a number of MVC.NET and c# desktop projects in our company over the last year or so while also managing to kept my nose poked into other projects (in a read-only learning capacity of course). From this I've noticed that across the various projects and teams there is a-lot of functionality that has been well designed against good interfaces and abstractions. Because we tend to like our own work at times, I noticed a couple of projects had the exact same class, method copied into it as it had obviously worked on one and so was easily moved to a new project (probably by the same developer who originally wrote it) I mentioned this fact in one of our programmer meetings we have occasionally and suggested we pull some of this functionality into a core company library that we can build up over time and use across multiple projects. Everyone agreed and I started looking into this possibility. However, I've come across a stumbling block pretty early on. Our team primarily focuses on MVC at the moment and we have projects mainly in 2.0 but are starting to branch to 3.0. We also have a number of desktop applications that might benefit from some shared classes and basic helper methods. Initially when creating this DLL I included some shared classes that could be used across any project type (Web, Client etc) but then I started looking at adding some shared modules that would be useful in our MVC applications only. However this meant I had to include a reference to some Microsoft Web DLL's in order to leverage some of the classes I was creating (at this stage MVC 2.0). Now my issue is that we have a shared DLL that has references to web specific libraries that could also possibly be used in a client application. Not only that, our DLL referenced initially MVC 2.0 and we will eventually move onto MVC 3.0 for all projects. But alot of the classes in this library I expect to still be relevant to MVC 3 etc Our code within this DLL is separated into it's own namespaces such as:   * CompanyDLL.Primitives   * CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc   * CompanyDLL.Helpers etc etc So, my questions are:   1. Is it OK to do a shared library like this, or if we have web specific features in it should we create a separate web DLL only targeted at a specific framework or MVC version?   2. If it's OK, what kind of issues might we face when using the library that references MVC 2 in a MVC 3 project for example. I would be thinking that we might run into some sort of compatibility issue, or even issues where the developers using the library doesn't realize they need MVC 2.0 libraries. They might only want to use some of the generic classes etc The concept seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm starting to think maybe it's not really a practical solution. But the number of times I've seen copied classes and methods across projects because they are **proven** tested code is a bit unnerving to be perfectly honest! **UPDATED** : Further to Bernards answer which I have taken on board and seems good advice. However I want to create some shared classes that will probably be useful in both MVC 2 and MVC 3 projects. However my shared assembly will have to reference one of the MVC frameworks in order for me to create my shared classes in the first place. So further to expand on my Q2 above.   1. If I wanted a MVC 3 web solution would I have to have a shared CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc3 project that would then specifically be referencing MVC 3? Would that mean copying over all the code from my CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc2 solution to this new Mvc3 shared project? It seems I'm missing some **fundamental** designing skills in the creation of shared assemblies and building and referencing against different framework versions. Or it might just be as simple as we suck it up and create a _CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc2_ , _CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc3_ , _CompanyDLL.Web.Mvc4_ etc etc libraries..."}
{"_id": "141397", "title": "Is this common amongst many languages?", "text": "In C++, the integer variable `bar` evaluates to 1 in this code               int foo = 0;     int bar = ++foo;      and 0 in this code               int foo = 0;     int bar = foo++;      Is this behavior prevalent in most popular languages?"}
{"_id": "141395", "title": "A new mission statement for my school's algorithms class", "text": "The teacher at Eastern Washington University that is now teaching the algorithms course is new to eastern and as a result the course has changed drastically mostly in the right direction. That being said I feel that the class could use a more specific, and industry oriented (since that is where most students will go, though suggestions for an academia oriented class are also welcome) direction, having only worked in industry for 2 years I would like the community's (a wider and much more collectively experienced and in the end plausibly more credible) opinion on the quality of this as a statement for the purpose an algorithms class, and if I am completely off target your suggestion for the purpose of a required Jr. level Algorithms class that is standalone (so no other classes focusing specifically on algorithms are required). The statement is as follows: > The purpose of the algorithms class is to do three things: > >   * Primarily, to teach how to learn, do basic analysis, and implement a > given algorithm found outside of the class. >   * Secondly, to teach the student how to model a problem in their mind so > that they can find a an existing algorithm or have a direction to start the > development of a new algorithm. >   * Third, to overview a variety of algorithms that exist and to deeply > understand and analyze one algorithm in each of the basic algorithmic design > strategies: Divide and Conquer, Reduce and Conquer, Transform and Conquer, > Greedy, Brute Force, Iterative Improvement and Dynamic Programming. > The Question in short is: do you agree with this statement of the purpose of an algorithms course, so that it would be useful in the real world, if not what would you suggest?"}
{"_id": "85487", "title": "Programmer / Developer Personal Organization", "text": "What tools / methodologies / strategies do you use to keep organized in doing your work as a developer? Can you provide details?"}
{"_id": "128376", "title": "Benefits/Pitfalls of include", "text": "Do web pages load faster or load slower when all headers, footers and basic functions are placed in external files and called using the statements below? Are there any other benefits to separating such content?               <?php include(\"includes/functions.php\"); ?>     <?php include(\"includes/header.php\"); ?>                     <?php require_once(\"includes/functions.php\"); ?>"}
{"_id": "128371", "title": "Are there any \"enterprise ready\" functional programming languages?", "text": "By \"enterprise ready\" I am referring to availability of tools: dependency management, build management, message servers, databases, application platforms and servers, and are secure and scale well? For example, is there a lisp (or ML) alternative to j2ee? Please exclude FP's ported to JVM or .NET CLR. EDIT: I know that one could use an FP jvm port i.e. clojure or F# on .NET CLR however I am curious to know if it is possible to develop a purely functional application for the enterprise without the JVM or CLR?"}
{"_id": "85488", "title": "Bachelor degree in Software engineering in distance (online) in Europe", "text": "Currently I wish to expand my professional skills with Bachelor degree. However, I am not able to study full time abroad, but looking for University where I could study in distance (online from home), coming just several times in a semester to the University to pass exams, complete papers and so on. I am **looking for Software Engineering or Computer Science programs**. **Fully in distance** (online) **in English in Europe** , because I am living in Central Europe. Any suggestions?"}
{"_id": "247298", "title": "How are Rust Traits different from Go Interfaces?", "text": "I am relatively familiar with Go, having written a number of small programs in it. Rust, of course, I am less familiar with but keeping an eye on. Having recently read http://yager.io/programming/go.html, I thought I'd personally examine the two ways Generics are handled because the article seemed to unfairly criticize Go when, in practice, there wasn't much that Interfaces couldn't accomplish elegantly. I kept hearing the hype about how powerful Rust's Traits were and nothing but criticism from people about Go. Having some experience in Go, I wondered how true it was and what the differences ultimately were. What I found was that Traits and Interfaces are pretty similar! Ultimately, I'm not sure if I'm missing something, so here is a quick educational rundown of their similarities so you can tell me what I missed! Now, let's take a look at Go Interfaces from their documentation: > Interfaces in Go provide a way to specify the behavior of an object: if > something can do this, then it can be used here. By far the most common interface is `Stringer` which returns a string representing the object.               type Stringer interface {         String() string     }      So, any object that has `String()` defined on it is a `Stringer` object. This can be used in type signatures such that `func (s Stringer) print()` takes almost all objects and prints them. We also have `interface{}` which takes any object. We must then determine the type at runtime through reflection. * * * Now, let's take a look at Rust Traits from their documentation: > At its simplest, a trait is a set of zero or more method signatures. For > example, we could declare the trait Printable for things that can be printed > to the console, with a single method signature:               trait Printable {         fn print(&self);     }      This immediately looks quite similar to our Go Interfaces. The only difference I see is that we define 'Implementations' of Traits rather than just defining the methods. So, we do               impl Printable for int {         fn print(&self) { println!(\"{}\", *self) }     }      instead of               fn print(a: int) { ... }      **Bonus Question:** What happens in Rust if you define a function that implements a trait but you don't use `impl`? It just doesn't work? Unlike Go's Interfaces, Rust's type system has type parameters which let you do proper generics and things like `interface{}` while the compiler and the runtime actually know the type. For example,               trait Seq<T> {         fn length(&self) -> uint;     }      works on any type and the compiler _knows_ that the type of the Sequence elements at compile time rather than using reflection. * * * Now, the actual question: am I missing any differences here? Are they really _that_ similar? Is there not some more fundamental difference that I'm missing here? (In usage. Implementation details are interesting, but ultimately not important if they function the same.) Besides syntactic differences, the actual differences I see are:   1. Go has automatic method dispatch vs. Rust requires(?) `impl`s to implement a Trait      * Elegant vs. Explicit   2. Rust has type parameters which allow for proper generics without reflection.      * Go really has no response here. This is the only thing that is significantly more powerful and it's ultimately just a replacement for copying and pasting methods with different type signatures. Are these the only non-trivial differences? If so, it would appear Go's Interface/Type system is, in practice, not as weak as perceived."}
{"_id": "247299", "title": "Do serialization functions belong in a model or a controller?", "text": "I'm developing an application where:   * Models keep data as a multi-dimensional array, which are saved as-is to a MongoDB database. The model is used to provide methods to manipulate the data, and outside of those methods, the data properties are read-only.    * The model factory instantiates each object in a standardized way and allows shorthand \"queries\" to look up a database entry and instantiate an object with it at once.   * The \"view\" is Javascript, and all it does it ask the controller for certain things, and the controller responds over HTTP with JSON.    * The controller uses the model factory to instantiate model objects and do whatever the view is requesting, if possible. It always returns JSON. Generating that JSON is currently in a \"helper\" class, which I'm trying to eliminate. The serialization of MongoDB data involves converting MongoDates, MongoIDs, and other Mongo objects to strings. It's needed in the controller to output these to the browser as strings - for the most part, the controller knows how to output data to the view. But in some cases, it's needed in the model to tabulate multi-dimensional array data into a list before the controller gives it to the browser. The controller doesn't know enough about the model to do that tabulation. Is a helper class unavoidable here? Or should 100% of serialization take place inside of the model? Should I leave the serialization function in the abstract model and use it from the controller with a static call?"}
{"_id": "219247", "title": "Highly available web service design?", "text": "I was wondering if any design gurus out there could help me understand how large web companies design their services to be highly available. The scenario I'm thinking of is:   1. Client A connects to Service A   2. Client A sends N requests   3. On the N+1 request, Service A blows up   4. Client A reconnects to Service B   5. Service B services requests N+1 onwards The only design I could think of was using a \"metadata\"/\"discovery\" service that the Client could be statically aware of. This service would give information on the best available Service, which the Client would then connect to and begin his requests, and re-query the \"metadata\" service when he realizes Service A went down. The application service is now highly available, but... ...the glaring problem is that the \"metadata\"/\"discovery\" service is static, will come under high load, and is not highly available, which kind of defeats the whole purpose. I suppose I could throw a lot of hardware under this service, but that's not a very good solution. How should I go to design a real highly available web service?"}
{"_id": "219242", "title": "Would adding an @beta doc-comment tag be useful?", "text": "When a function has reached the end of its life, we add a `@deprecated` tag into its doc-comment to notify other developers that they should stop using this function, and then a couple years later it's removed. I was just thinking about an `@beta` tag to signify this method is brand new and hasn't been tested in a variety of use-cases yet. You might be thinking \"you can write use-cases to ensure its correctness!\" Of course you can, but its the API that concerns me, and how it behaves in edge- cases. Sometimes these decisions are not obvious until you have tried out the function in a variety of situations. Sometimes new parameters need to be added to cover more use-cases. Sometimes re-ordering them makes sense if you find that an argument is actually optional and needs to be moved to the end (or vice versa). By adding the `@beta` tag, you are warning other developers that the API of this method might change yet, and they should use it with extreme caution. This gives you more granular control over your API instead of making the entire project 'beta'. To get the most use out of this, however, IDEs and documentation-generators would need to pick up on this tag. What do you guys think? Could you see this as being useful, is it a waste of time, or do you have other ways of dealing with this? In the past, I have made such methods 'private' where possible, or prefixed them with an underscore."}
{"_id": "219243", "title": "Code repetition vs multi responsible method", "text": "I try to follow the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) and also to omit Code Repetitions. However there are often places where there are code repetitions that are nothing more than code blocks of invocations that are resistant to extracting them into at least meaningfull named method:               DoAction1();     DoAction2();          if (value)         DoAction3();          DoAction4();      What is the best way to extract such code into a method and how to name it?"}
{"_id": "247293", "title": "Guidance on android type app to connect to sql-server", "text": "Excuse my ignorance but we've got an application that we'd like to sample out on a mobile app The app is a C#/asp.net application connected to our sql server database. If we are going to write an android application for this app how exactly does one connect to the sql server instance? I've tried to find many articles, some say via a web service others say jdbc drivers, etc. I don't know too much about this because we've never done mobile development. If we were to write up a web service, is the web service simply responsible for connecting to the database layer and fetching records? Any examples would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "184834", "title": "How do we make unit tests run fast?", "text": "We have reached the point in our project where we have almost a thousand tests and people have stopped bothering with running them before doing a check in because it takes so long. At best they run the tests that are relevant to the piece of code that they changed and at worst they simply check it in without testing. I believe this problem is due to the fact that the solution has grown to 120 projects (we usually do much smaller projects and this is only the second time we do TDD properly) and the build + test time has grown to about two-three minutes on the lesser machines. How do we lower the run time of the tests? Are there techniques? Faking more? Faking less? Maybe the bigger integration tests shouldn't run automatically when running all the tests? **Edit:** as a response to several of the answers, we already use CI and a build server, this is how i know the tests fail. The problem (actually a symptom) is we keep getting messages about failed builds. Running partial tests is something that most people do but not all. and regarding the tests, they are actually pretty well made, they use fakes for everything and there is no IO at all."}
{"_id": "141026", "title": "Why can't I implement an interface which has a bounded generic type in this code in java?", "text": "I have the following interfaces:               public interface Successorable<E> extends Comparable<E>          E suc();     }      and               interface IInterval <E extends Successorable<E>> {         E min();         E max();     }      I'm trying to implement IInterval by doing:               public class Interval<E> implements IInterval<E> {      ....      However eclipse complains that the type E is not a valid substitute for the bounded parameter `<E extends Successorable<E>>` of the type `IInterval<E>`. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "154310", "title": "Options for Application Registry", "text": "I work for a small software company (about 200 people building 8-10 applications) and I was hoping to get some advice on products that might be out there to manage the information of which clients are using which versions of our products? The most fundamental relationship would be that a \"product\" has \"versions\" and a given \"version\" is used by a \"client.\" Uses would be:   * Determine which clients use which products   * Determine which clients are on which versions of a product   * Determine which clients are exposed to which vulnerabilities because of the version they use   * Determine which clients cannot move to a new version because of a vulnerability in the new version that they may hit   * Determine which clients should be approached for an upgrade Any thoughts or product reviews would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "184833", "title": "Purpose of Base Address?", "text": "What's the purpose of a base address in an executable? For example, in Microsoft Visual C++'s linker, you can set a base address, or use the default of `0x1000000`. But with virtual memory, why would a base address be needed? Why would you not just link it to `0x0` and put the initialization routine (`mainCRTStartup` on Windows) there which would make it so writing to NULL (`0x0`) would just overwrite the startup routine (a method that will never be called again). Plus, you could just set the code's pages to execute only on an x86 processor so writing will cause an exception."}
{"_id": "208346", "title": "Class structure to implement a Stack Exchange-like review system", "text": "I was reviewing some threads on Stack Overflow and started asking myself how I would design my classes and relationships to create such a system. ### My Goal - **I want to build a review system like the Stack Exchange review system.** * * * Let's take a look at how the review system works on Stack Exchange. I will only refer to the Suggested Edits functionality to keep it simple.   1. Un-experienced user (less than 2000 rep) edits someone post   2. Add an entry to the \"review\" system tagged 'suggested-edit'   3. Experienced user (more than 2000 rep) can review \"suggested edits\" one by one As an experienced user I can:   * See the diff between the original content and the edited content   * Approve the edit   * Reject the edit   * Improve the edit   * Skip to the next review Final note about other review types. We could imagine \"tagging\" the reviews with the corresponding types since the actions are the same. ### Design I would start with a `Review` model. We could have one sub-class for each review type, allowing custom attributes and methods for each type in the future. `ruby`               class Review     class Review::SuggestedEdit < Review     class Review::FirstPost     < Review     class Review::LateAnswer    < Review     class Review::LowQuality    < Review      A `Review` object would have 2 references:   * Original Content   * Edited Content Approve   1. Replace original content by edited content.   2. Mark the review as approved.   3. Move to the next review. Reject   1. Log the reason for rejection.   2. Mark the review as rejected.   3. Move to the next review. Improve   1. Directly edit edited content.   2. Approve.   3. (We could imaging creating a new Review for this improvement.)   4. Move to the next review. Skip   1. Move to the next review. * * * **How should I structure my classes in order to build such a review system?**"}
{"_id": "208343", "title": "Modelling REST endpoints with data that not all users have access to", "text": "I am trying to figure out the best way around a small problem i have with a design for a Hypermedia API i am currently building. I have a notion of a site, very simple doesn't have much going on and it is accesible via:   * /sites   * /sites/{id} Sites have a bunch of properties and none is all too sensitive. However, a site has the notion of a budget, its nothing too exotic, in fact for the offset it will be a simple object that holds a decimal field and a pointer to a currency, but this should not be visible to every person requesting the resource as it is deemed as sensitive information that project managers should have. Some options:   1. Just sent it - problem here is i don't know what the clients consuming the API will do with it and this is just a terrible option all round   2. Send down an empty object i.e. `Budget:{}`   3. Make `Budget` a sub-resource of `Site` and only give users with the appropriate access level access to it As this is a hypermedia API i am leaning towards option 3, as i could(or not) as the case may be provide the link and also protect that endpoint separately, but at the same time this feels a little wrong, not sure why. Item 3 could look like this:   * /sites/{id}/budget Anyone out there with some helpful advice on something like this?"}
{"_id": "208341", "title": "Why not a standard rendering engine to solve cross browser problems", "text": "Why do browsers use different rendering engines, this causes the problem I hate the most \"make your HTML/CSS compatible with all major web browsers\". Why don't they use one rendering engine as a standard and this will save a lot of time and effort for all developpers. In fact this is what I hate about IT industry \"Concurrence at the expense of the user\". We can say the same about Operating systems. Why not only one ?"}
{"_id": "209554", "title": "Doesn't single-assert unit testing break the DRY principle?", "text": "Whenever I write unit tests I have always tried to have a **single assert per test** to make debugging easier when tests fail. However as I follow this rule I feel like I am constantly copying the same code in each test and by having more tests it becomes harder to go back to read and maintain. _So does single-assertion testing violate DRY?_ And _Is there a good rule to follow_ to find a good balance, like just having **one test per method**?* *I realize there probably isn't a one-size fits all solution to this but is there a recommended way to approach this?"}
{"_id": "138783", "title": "Industry consortium for wider C# adoption?", "text": "**Are there any software consortium to promote C# as a language?** I'm aware of Mono and see it as a sincere, valiant attempt. However, its unlikely they can continuously outrun Microsoft inside a 'catchup' model. A wider consortium means the roadmaps are joint and not 'catchup'. I compare C# to C++. C++ is incredible in that it can run on almost anything from ARM RTOSes, Linux, BSD, Windows etc etc. Of course, the expansive nature of the runtime platform (.NET) makes this a huge challenge. Not to mention that the language (C#) and the runtime have almost become synonyms. But I digress, back to the main question above ..."}
{"_id": "134203", "title": "How should an iPhone app connect to a .NET service?", "text": "I need to accept text and photo data from an iPhone app. Normally I would write a web service or a windows service with WCF for client server connections. I'm not familiar with iPhone apps, what is a good way to handle the communication layer to use for iPhone to windows service?"}
{"_id": "138784", "title": "What are the monetary benefits of going agile?", "text": "Why go agile? This is the first question that comes to my mind when I think of going agile. What are the possible financial benefits one can achieve from going agile? Most of us certainly like to think of customers and clients as someone who doesn't know what they wants. So why help them at all? Why not suck their money being a parasitic company and make them stupider by the day. Traditional software development isn't bad and are probably (mostly as far as I have seen) a lot easier environment to work in rather than agile projects. So why go agile at all? What can agile give extra (I mean financially) that traditional software development can't?"}
{"_id": "138786", "title": "Are time restrictions on technical tests a good thing?", "text": "So we're having an internal debate on whether the time restriction that we have in place for our technical test a good thing. I thought I would open it out to the community. So what are your thoughts on this restriction, do people accept it as standard practice or is it an artificial restriction? A little background, for all our positions, we expect candidates to complete a coding exercise and we set a time limit which we think is reasonable to at least layout the design (we don't expect a fully working solution), and it is this time limit which is under debate. The current time limit is 2 hours (which I frankly think is generous.)"}
{"_id": "85734", "title": "Design Patterns: Should I learn them?", "text": "So it's kinda weird asking two questions back-to-back, but they aren't very related and I didn't want to combine them, but I'm not spamming questions, I promise! Anyway, I'm a recent college grad, and my education only touched on design patterns...we implemented a few simple ones, touched on the fact that there were more complicated ones, and were instructed to turn to the GoF book if we wanted to learn more. My question is, is it worth learning the patterns in the GoF book? To me, it's always seemed counter-intuitive to try and make a problem fit a classic pattern, but obviously the book, and the patterns, are famous for a reason. Do they show up enough that I should be learning them? Thanks again!"}
{"_id": "200643", "title": "Can you close branches in Git?", "text": "In Mercurial you can close a branch like this: `hg commit --close-branch`, this means the the branch will not be listed anymore but will still exist, and can still be listed if you use `hg branches --closed` I have learned that in Git generally branches are not kept, they disappear, specially when doing fast-forward merges. So my question is: can you keep branches in git but in a way that you don't list them anymore? **Edit** : Some additional context: In Mercurial branches are metadata, so each commit always knows it's branch. In Mercurial if you want to delete a branch, you strip the base branch revision. You can also rebase and end up with the same result as with Git. Mercurial Bookmarks are pointers, so they have the exact same behavior than a Git Branch."}
{"_id": "200640", "title": "Does the WTFPL free the author from liability?", "text": "A group of us were wondering whether or not to go with CC0 or WTFPL because the CC0 explicitly states lack of liability. Does the WTFPL, if used properly, also free the author(s) from liability of usage?"}
{"_id": "200647", "title": "Why is the factory method design pattern more useful than having classes and calling them individually?", "text": "From the \"Gang of Four\" design patterns, there's the Factory method:               class Factory(product)       case product       when a         new A       when b         new B       when c         new C     end          new Factory(a)      Why is this more useful than having three classes, `a`, `b`, and `c` and calling them individually?"}
{"_id": "200645", "title": "Where is Waterfall failing us and can Scrum help us have success in our projects?", "text": "Let me explain our situation. We are small company with about 20+ staff and all the while we have been practicing the standard waterfall model with not much success (due to frequent changes of requirements and lack of direction). So one day our CTO came in and he briefed us about SCRUM and all of us were convinced that this model will work great for a small team like us. Unfortunately all of us do not have any experience practicing SCRUM and we have been relying mostly on online resources and books. Then we come to a new project that we are about to get started and we are doing something like:   1. Gather requirements from business domain user   2. Prepare a requirement spec with UI and features (this already took us like weeks)   3. Meet up again business domain user to see if there is any changes required   4. Once the business user agrees to the specs we will key in those feature in to product catalog   5. Break those features into tasks and assign to sprint Should we instead take the more agile approach? like   1. Gather requirements from stakeholders   2. Start to create epic user stories and run through with stake holders   3. Break those epic stories into smaller stories (supported with some ui) and assign to a short sprint(2 weeks)   4. We show them what we have done for the 2 weeks, get their feedback and plan for the next sprint Given the nature of our projects where we are constantly faced with the challenges of volatile requirements and a lack of direction, where will the above Scrum/Agile points benefit us and why are the above Waterfall methods failing us?"}
{"_id": "84288", "title": "Documentation utility for OpenEdge ABL", "text": "I have a large system in OpenEdge ABL that could use some documentation-love. Currently a team member is working on a utility that can find methods and functions and make some \"Javadoc-esque\" html pages out of it. It's pretty rough around the edges. Okay, it's like sawblades around the edges. I'm trying to find something like Javadoc or Doxygen that is capable of parsing OpenEdge ABL to generate some kind of API documentation. I know the market for OpenEdge isn't the best, but there is a lot of stuff that's passed along by word of mouth. It's difficult to search for because it used to be called \"Progress\" which throws off your search queries with non-relevant information. I'm also open to a system that lets you define the regex's to look for to define your own syntax. Then it parses and gives you an output based on that."}
{"_id": "203592", "title": "Banking Applications - Saving Account Balance", "text": "From what I know, most banking applications periodically store the account balance at a certain point in time as it would not be plausible to calculate it over the entire history of transactions every time it is needed. In order to find the account balance, the application would first load the latest balance saved and add transactions that occurred after that point. What is this process of saving account balances called? What are some common techniques used in this process?(e.g., run it on every weekend night)"}
{"_id": "41084", "title": "How is software used in critical life-or-death systems tested?", "text": "An airplane, as opposed to, for example, a website, is a system where any failure in certain systems is completely unacceptable, since errors in e.g. flight monitoring can cause the autopilot to malfunction and do a dive. Obviously, this doesn't happen since the brilliant engineers at Boeing and Airbus have checks in the autopilot to make sure it doesn't suddenly decide a dive is a perfectly acceptable and safe maneuver. Or perhaps the computer crashes, and the pilots in the newer fly-by-wire aircraft can no longer actually fly the plane. Of course, there are various safety procedures and redundancies built into these systems to prevent a crash (of both the software and the aircraft). However, on the other hand, it's quite obvious that software isn't perfect\u2014both open source and closed source software do crash regularly, and only the simplest \"Hello World\" program doesn't fail. How can the engineers who design the software systems in the aeronautic, medical, and other life-or- death industries manage to test their software so that it doesn't fail (and if it does fail, at least fail gracefully)? I'm desperately hoping that you're not all going to go: \"Oh, I work for Boeing/Airbus/(some other company) and it's not! Have fun on your next flight/hospital visit.\""}
{"_id": "203590", "title": "Is there an effective way for creating complex forms?", "text": "While creating a 'search' form I've been faced to an overwhelming complexity and I was wondering whether there is a well-known way to accomplish such task. Fields of the form in question can be seen here: http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/artist.html#search Here are a few issues I've been faced to and tried to solve with simple solutions though it led to a lot of copying and pasting in the end :   * When the user can select multiple choices for a field or not, I systematically had to create a collection of them, adding a 'null' value for the ability of ignoring that field. Also, as these are enumeration values they are not _user-friendly_ to read and therefore needed an extra description field that will be shown instead on the UI. And at the end all this _user-friendly_ values need to be converted back to the original object.   * Selection being made by the user, these choices need to be retrieved and for this, unfortunately in my case WPF data binding shown its limits. Example : when a user chooses items from a collection, there is no way to update the target object with these selections. (Obviously this is unrealistic as the object serves as a data source) In the end it resumes to a lot of manual fetching from combo boxes, list boxes etc ... a _middle-man_ object to receive all that and to this you have to add validation as well. A strategy therefore becomes imperative as I will have to realise a couple of these complex forms. I've been searching the web for solutions but beside extremely simple examples I found nothing relevant. So the question is, is there an effective way that helps when creating complex user forms ?"}
{"_id": "170811", "title": "How to design data structures for sharding?", "text": "When designing data structures for an application, what are some best practices to make sure it can be sharded? In particular, which of the following is better:   1. Creating relationships in databases   2. Establishing relationships in SQL queries as necessary?"}
{"_id": "41089", "title": "What quantitative metrics do you use to measure the quality of an offshore testing team?", "text": "Are developers are in the US, our testers are in India. How do we measure their ability, quality, success? Some possibilities: \\- Coverage at the UI level \\- Total time needed to run regression tests"}
{"_id": "164534", "title": "Memory concerns while plotting escape from DLL Hell in Delphi", "text": "I work on a program with about 50 DLLs that are loaded from one executable, it's an old organically grown program where the only rationale for creating a new DLL is that one previously didn't exist to fill a given need. (and namespaces didn't exist in Delphi so it never crossed our mind to make dll1.main.pas, dll2.main.pas or something even more unique) What we want to do is consolidate all these DLLs into one executable, since none of them are used out of the program, there shouldn't be much of a problem. The concern my boss has is that if we did this, the memory overhead for terminal server clients would go through the roof. So, I've stepped through enough initialization code to know that lots of stuff is done every time a DLL is loaded in to memory, but say I've got a project with about 4000 files, and 50 dlls, 10 of which are probably utilized by any one user in any one session of the program. The 50 dlls are about 2/3rds form files, if not more, but beyond that there's not a lot of other resources being loaded (only a few embedded pictures, icons, cursors, etc..). If I loaded all these files in to memory, how much memory is used per unit? how much is used per class? How do I keep the overhead down? and what is the biggest project one can reasonably expect to build with Delphi? This tidbit won't help answering, but I think it might clarify what my boss is worried about, we currently start our program at about 18megs, normal working conditions are usually less than 40 megs, he thinks it could climb as high as 120 megs."}
{"_id": "237247", "title": "Using LGPL Library with Java static or Dynamic linking", "text": "I've searched and read many posts about LGPL and C, and when I was able to find one that related to Java, my mind still didn't rest with ease, so I'll try to be more specific and hopefully get a viable guide lines, and I would eventually consult a lawyer obviously! Setup:   * There is a LGPL library, lets call it **Lib-B**   * I have My Library which is based on **Lib-B** lets call it **My-Lib** In my opinion **Lib-B** architecture is not well formulated, and I want to apply in **My-Lib** my own architecture and use **some** of the functions of **Lib-B**. Problem is, that **Lib-B** , wraps the functions I want to access in a manner that does not suit the architecture of **My-Lib** so I've changed **Lib-B** and encapsulated (duplicated) the code lines I wanted/needed within a couple of objects still inside **Lib-B** and call these functions from **My-Lib**. That is my current static setup... ===================== The second thing I can do is to make my setup dynamic, so:   * I could create a Library that would define an interface with the functions **My-Lib** needs lets call it **Lib-A**. Later, I will compile and link **My-Lib** with **Lib-A** , and let **Lib-B** implement the interface from **Lib-A** , and load **Lib-B** dynamically in **My-Lib**. I understand that in both cases I must release my changes of **Lib-B** as LGPL as well and allow my end users access to the code etc... what about **My- Lib**? Thanks, Adam."}
{"_id": "33377", "title": "Information Spilling Across Object Boundaries", "text": "Many times my business objects tend to have situations where information needs to cross object boundaries too often. When doing OO, we want information to be in one object and as much as possible all code dealing with that information should be in that object. However, business rules do not follow this principle giving me trouble. As an example suppose that we have an Order which has a number of OrderItems which refers to an InventoryItem which has a price. I invoke Order.GetTotal() which sums the result of OrderItem.GetPrice() which multiples a quantity by InventoryItem.GetPrice(). So far so good. But then we find out that some items are sold with a two for one deal. We can handle this by having OrderItem.GetPrice() do something like InventoryItem.GetPrice( quantity ) and letting InventoryItem deal with this. However, then we find out that the two-for-one deal only lasts for a particular time period. This time period needs to be based on the date of the order. Now we change OrderItem.GetPrice() to be InventoryItem.GetPrice( quatity, order.GetDate() ) But then we need to support different prices depending on how long the customer has been in the system: InventoryItem.GetPrice( quantity, order.GetDate(), order.GetCustomer() ) But then it turns out that the two-for-one deals apply not just to buying multiple of the same inventory item but multiple for any item in a InventoryCategory. At this point we throw up our hands and just give the InventoryItem the order item and allow it to travel over the object reference graph via accessors to get the information its needs: InventoryItem.GetPrice( this ) TL;DR I want to have low coupling in objects, but business rules often force me to access information from all over the place in order to make particular decisions. Are there good techniques for dealing with this? Do others find the same problem?"}
{"_id": "71146", "title": "What do I ask previous programmer for in web maintenance takeover?", "text": "I am taking over the maintenance of a simple commercial website, images and information are displayed. I have experience with html, php, word press, javascript, java, and such. What should I ask the previous dev for when it comes to taking over the maintenance, hosting, files, testing, deployment, etc? Also how much should I charge to maintain and expand the site?"}
{"_id": "71147", "title": "Metaobject protocol:Why is it known as an important concept", "text": "Metaobject protocol is protocol for metaobjects in a programming languages. Although I understand it on simple terms, I want to know the reason and a summary of real world usage patterns of this protocol. So, why exactly is metaobject and more importantly metaobject protocol is such a good idea. I want to know the problem which led to its evolution and also, its high power usage. Opinions as well as general overview/description/alternate explanations are also welcome."}
{"_id": "33378", "title": "What's Your Method of not forgetting the end brackets, parentheses", "text": "_disclaimer: for simplicity sake, brackets will refer to brackets, braces, quotes, and parentheses in the couse of this question. Carry on._ When writing code, I usually type the beginning and end element first, and then go back and type the inner stuff. This gets to be a lot of backspacing, especially when doing something with many nested elements like:               jQuery(function($){$('#element[input=\"file\"]').hover(function(){$(this).fadeOut();}));      Is there a more efficient way of remembering how many brackets you've got open ? Or a second example with quotes:               <?php echo '<input value=\"'.$_POST['name'].'\" />\"; ?>"}
{"_id": "71143", "title": "How do I get my open-source idea started?", "text": "I have an idea for an open source project. It's about building developing tools for software developers. Yet I have never joined a development team and now I don't know much about these teams except the fact that they exist ;) My questions are:   1. Is there c# open source projects team? Where?   2. How can I offer my idea / code   3. If the groups exist ... should I be the project manager in the sense of offering the scope , versions etc. or let others do it? I know that java and other languages are better starting point for open-source but... I feel more comfortable with C# and the vs developing environment."}
{"_id": "113637", "title": "Is web application startup time really that important?", "text": "Had a conversation with someone about adding some initialization code on application startup and he complained about that causing an increasing in the startup time. He couldn't really state a reason (gut feeling or something, don't know). This is not a heavy use application and starts in about a minute or so, we deploy a few times a year. I remember reading such advice on questions on SO some time ago, people advising to initialize on startup instead on access of page with the \"if you can afford the penalty\" stamp on. I've worked with web apps that started from 30 seconds to 4-5 minutes but once online they rocked. So what am I missing? Unless it's a vital application like... I don't know... for the financial market, medical applications, space exploration etc, is it really that important the startup time? P.S. I'm strictly referring to web apps, desktop apps are bound to start lightning fast."}
{"_id": "122116", "title": "iOS Guidelines for Free vs. Paid apps", "text": "A few months back, I was doing some recreational reading at the iOS Dev Center, and I came across a small list of guidelines for free vs. paid apps. It included guidance along these lines:   * How not to promote a paid version within a free version   * Not displaying \"placeholder\" buttons in a free version that \"work\" in a paid version I can't remember much more than that, and I cannot find it anymore on the iOS Dev Center. It's possible I imagined it entirely, but I doubt it - does anyone have a link to this information, or have a set of guidelines for free vs. paid apps in the App Store?"}
{"_id": "207034", "title": "BDD and behavior based on complex state", "text": "I'm wondering how to write BDD test cases for a real system. All examples I can find are trivial and do not answer the question. Sample use case/story basically goes like that:   1. User is on the main application page   2. He clicks retrieve to fetch some order to work on   3. He fills 4 textboxes and hits submit.   4. Something happens   5. The next order is presented to the user So, point 4 is a little vague, but there is a lot of logic involved, there's a workflow underneath, etc. You could basically define it this way:               Given order of types A+B+C+E+F (20 possible values with arbitraty combination)       and subtype a1 and the order has attribute X = 1, attribute Y=asdasd, (and much more)     When user enters some specific kind of value in here, and other in here and clicks submit     Then order does this, this, this, this, this, this and that      It does not look good... So the other way is to write:               Given the order with type A (and the rest is \"default\")     When user does ...     Then the order does things-depentant-only-on-A      Seems nicer, but - is it really the right approach to define that \"default state\" of the system? It cannot be arbitrary because \"things-dependant-only- on-A\" are not really independant - they might not even get a chance to kick in if do-not-take-A-into-account-flag is on, or any other weird special case. (yes, my current project is: some not too complex logic + man-years of special cases) A note - when we describe requirements we sometimes specify parameters required for the story to make sense, sometimes not - it works for us, because we know other stories. But in BDD it seems that the test case should be specific and unequivocal."}
{"_id": "175368", "title": "Criteria for a programming language to be considered \"mature\"", "text": "I was recently reading an answer to this question, and I was struck by the statement \"The language is mature\". So I was wondering what we actually mean when we say that \"A programming language is mature\"? Normally, a programming language is initially developed out of a need, e.g.   * Try out / implement a new programming paradigm or a new combination of features that cannot be found in existing languages.   * Try to solve a problem or overcome a limitation of an existing language.   * Create a language for teaching programming.   * Create a language that solves a particular class of problems (e.g. concurrency).   * Create a language and an API for a special application field, e.g. the web (in this case the language might reuse a well-known paradigm, but the whole API must be new).   * Create a language to push your competitor out of the market (in this case the creator might want the new language to be very similar to an existing one, in order to attract developers to the new programming language and platform). Regardless of what the original motivation and scenario in which a language has been created, eventually some languages are considered **mature**. In my intuition, this means that the language has achieved (at least one of) its goals, e.g. \"We can now use language X as a reliable tool for writing web applications.\" This is however a bit vague, so I wanted to ask what you consider the most important criteria (if any) that are applied when saying that a language is mature. **IMPORTANT NOTE** This question is (on purpose) language-agnostic because I am only interested in general criteria. Please write only language-agnostic answers and comments! I am not asking whether any specific \"language X is mature\" or \"which programming languages can be considered mature\", or whether \"language X is more mature than language Y\": please avoid posting any opinions or reference about any specific languages because these are out of the scope of this question. **EDIT** To make the question more precise, by **criteria** I mean such things as \"tool support\", \"adoption by the industry\", \"stability\", \"rich API\", \"large user community\", \"successful application record\", \"standardization\", \"clean and uniform semantics\", and so on."}
{"_id": "87399", "title": "What screen resolutions should we test on when developing for mobile devices?", "text": "If I wanted to make a mobile version of a website, what are the most common screen resolutions that I should be testing on?"}
{"_id": "232143", "title": "Strategy to store/average logs of pings", "text": "I'm developing a site to monitor web services. The most basic type of check is sending a ping, storing the response time in a `CheckLog` object. By default, `PingCheck` objects are triggered every minute, so in one hour you get 60 `CheckLogs` and in one day you get 1440 `CheckLogs`. That's a lot of them, I don't need to store such level of detail, so I've set a up _collapsing mechanism_ that periodically takes the uncollapsed `CheckLogs` older than 24h and _collapses_ (averages) them in intervals of 30 minutes. So, if you have 360 `CheckLogs` that have been saved from 0:00 to 6:00, after collapsing you retain just 12 of them. The problem.. well, is this: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vnX8p.png) After averaging the response times, the graph changes drastically. What can I do to improve this? Guess one option could be narrowing the interval duration to 15 min. I've seen the graphs at the GitHub status page and they do not seem to suffer from this problem. I'd appreciate any kind of information you could give me about this area."}
{"_id": "87396", "title": "name origin of \"WebService\"", "text": "WebServices are one possible implementation of a SOA, so there comes the name \"Services\" from. But why are they called * _WEB_ *Service? Is it because they use web technologies and protocols (HTTP, XML, ...) for the implementation?"}
{"_id": "246162", "title": "GUI code implementation for specific Window/Form class", "text": "**Terminology** Element/Form Element -> Fields such as text list, combo_boxes, push buttons, etc. **Problem** I have a program that is basically a fat client that interfaces into a system that keeps track of traffic lights. In this program exists a form. The form contains several subforms. As it is right now, some of the subforms have their own classes, and some of the subforms are just controlled completely from the class of the main form. The main form class has a validate method which is called when the form is submitted and calls validation methods within the subforms, as well as performing validation on some of the form elements that don't have their own classes. I'm not sold on this architecture, as I feel that it should be consistent (every subform should have its own class, or no subform should have it's own class. My problem lies in the implementation of handling warnings. Right now, when an element is validated against, the validation results in an error or a warning. If it is an error, the user must correct the box to meet the forms validation requirements. If it is a warning, the user must be notified of that warning, and then submit the form a second time. If a warning occurs, I have created a flag that will be set. Before the information within the form elements can be accepted, the form first checks if any errors were thrown. In the event there are no errors, it checks for warnings. If the warning flag is set, it displays the warning. The next time this method is called, the warning flag is toggled within the validation method. I don't really like this implementation, as it basically means you have this rogue flag that should be cleared based on the requirements. I've thought about implementing it as a state machine, however you run into the same problem where the state of the form would be set in various spots within the class based on the requirements (One of the fields changed, reset to the starting state, etc). The other problem that I ran into is that the warning flag is owned by the main forms class. I can create a pointer to the parent form from the subform, and then set the flag from there. This all feels very clunky, and I feel like it could create a lot of confusion. To me there has to be a better way to architect this. **EDIT: Adding some code for context**               bool MainForm::callback_pushbutton_submit_clicked( const FormEvent&)     {         if ( validate_all_forms() )         {             //display error         }         else if ( get_warning_displayed_flag() )         {             //display warning         }         else         {             //submit form         }          }          bool MainForm::validate_all_forms()     {            bool error = false;         bool display_warning = false;         error |= subform1.validate();         error |= subform2.validate();         //...              //perform some validation on subforms that are controlled within the main form         if ( !(my_date_field.validate() )         {             display_warning = true;         }         //....              if( error )         {             //format error message             //clear warning flag         }         else if ( display_warning )          if ( !get_display_warning_flag() )          {             //get warning message          }          invert_warning_display_flag()     }     return error;"}
{"_id": "232148", "title": "How to you achieve flow in web programming?", "text": "I really like programming simple things, like solutions for Project Euler, where you can concentrate, write an algorithm, instantly execute, test, verify and change the program until it works. Even for bigger projects I feel I can maintain flow and be very productive as long as I can stay in one IDE (e.g. Eclipse) and everything compiles and starts fast, for example, if it is a Swing GUI. With the growing focus on web applications and smart phones however, I am forced to set up a web server, juggle a big amount of programming and markup languages (e.g. Javascript, Java, HTML, CSS), different kinds of editors and wait while something is deployed (web server), compiled (GWT, Vaadin) or virtualized (Android). Are there solutions that allow to circumvent those problems? I know this questions may sound subjective but it is an important issue for me and I think it can benefit many others as well. P.S.: What I am looking for is a solution to web development which allows staying in one IDE and which allows testing and executing without long waiting for long compiles, deploys, ect."}
{"_id": "246167", "title": "Why would a C executable be smaller when compared to C++ executable", "text": "I'm trying to understand why the output file sizes are significantly different when using a C and a C++ compiler. I was writing a small hello world program in C and C++, I noticed that in C version, the size of the executable was 93.7KB and in C++, the size of the same hello world program was 1.33MB. I am not sure why that is. I think it may be because C++ has more libraries and namespaces to use so I removed the `using namespace std` line and simply used `std::cout` and still the result was the same. **C**               #include <stdio.h>          int main()     {         printf(\"hello world\");         return 0;     }      // size 93.7KB **C++**               #include <iostream>          int main()     {         std::cout<<\"Hello world\";         return 0;     }      // size 1.33MB There doesn't seem to be much difference in the code above. Is there some sort of compiler difference that creates the differing file sizes?"}
{"_id": "252578", "title": "Confused about javascript module pattern implementation", "text": "I have a class written on a project I'm working on that I've been told is using the module pattern, but it's doing things a little differently than the examples I've seen. It basically takes this form:               (function ($, document, window, undefined) {              var module = {             foo : bar,                  aMethod : function (arg) {                 className.bMethod(arg);             },             bMethod : function (arg) {                 console.log('spoons');             }         };         window.ajaxTable = ajaxTable;          })(jQuery, document, window);      I get what's going on here. But I'm not sure how this relates to most of the definitions I've seen of the module (or revealing?) module pattern. like this one from briancray               var module = (function () {         // private variables and functions         var foo = 'bar';              // constructor         var module = function () {         };              // prototype         module.prototype = {             constructor: module,             something: function () {             }         };              // return module         return module;     })();          var my_module = new module();      Is the first example basically like the second except everything is in the constructor? I'm just wrapping my head around patterns and the little things at the beginnings and endings always make me not sure what I should be doing."}
{"_id": "146550", "title": "Can 'Agile' be applied to Healthcare IT teams?", "text": "Can Agile be employed in a field like Healthcare IT, where so much of patient care depends on the quality and timely delivery of systems?"}
{"_id": "83882", "title": "Why is a lightning bolt used to represent events in IDEs?", "text": "I was just curious if anyone knew why the lightning bolt was selected to represent events in various IDEs? or when it was first used? From the top of my head the lightning bolt is used in visual studio, delphi and axure prototyping."}
{"_id": "123863", "title": "Bug tracker that integrates with source control", "text": "I thought this would be easy, but its been sort of a disaster. I want to set up a bug tracker that integrates with source control. At a minimum, when you commit to source control, it should notify the issue tracker and if the comment is set up correctly, push a commit reference to the issue tracker, so you can navigate back and see what happened. This works very well with github using its integrated issue tracker, but this requires github as the place where the source goes, and the issue tracker is VERY basic (which is good and bad). We work with multiple clients, and about 50% use SVN. We _could_ do round trips to github, but that's a mess. I tried Jira, multiple times, using their ondemand service. It was a huge waste of time. They integrate subversion, and everything else feels like its taped on after the fact. Documentation and everything else is comically bad. I still haven't gotten github to work with Jira, after multiple attempts, and the setup seems to be OK, but nothing ever comes over. Tried FogBugz, but that seems to include its own source control. Can't connect to outside repos. Tried plan.io for redmine. You can have subversion or git, which was very exciting, till I found out you can have either, but THEY host them, which totally doesn't work. Ideally I'd like Jira, or something similar, able to point at outside repos. Also looked at youtrack, and although it seems to mention github integration, from the demo it looks like it doesn't hook back into the repo on commits. They also have a link for hosted Youtrack, but when you get there its no longer live. Would download/install locally if I thought it would solve the problem, but I'd rather not go through that exercise without knowing if it has the features I need first. I'd also like some code review features, but we'll just start with issues hooked into source control. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "254800", "title": "Deeper understanding of event loops and timers", "text": "I have a basic grasp of accepting clients without creating a thread for each connection using tools such as `select` and modern equivalents (kqueue, epoll). But where do I go from here? e.g async I/O and (periodic) timers. I could crack open the source to libev and friends but that's a little overwhelming to me to say the least. I've looked around for textbooks on this subject but didn't come up with anything useful. The basic objective is to write a small _toy_ implementation of an evented library with timers and async I/O. Just for getting a better grasp on the subjects. _I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel. This is solely for learning/educational purposes. (not homework either)_"}
{"_id": "129777", "title": "How to teach basic principles to programmers", "text": "In order to get experience as a team lead, I was recently given the task of supervising a programmer. What I found out is that he is having a problem in writing a simple `if` condition. He has issues with `string`. And he doesn't know how to pass a variable in the `addClass` function of jQuery with an `if` condition. And he doesn't know when to use a `for` loop. Or even what a `for` loop is used for. **How to make him understand these basic concepts quickly?** I told him to Google for how to use `if` condition for `addClass` variable. But he didn't find it, then I told him to do it quickly in the early morning, when discussing he was giving reasons that it is what that, then I told him I show you how to do that, then he told me, you should have done it before. **What should I reply to him?** He is telling me that you should tell me everything or **Should I do it and show him every time?** It may take lot of time, and every time I have to do a task. I want him to be independent."}
{"_id": "129775", "title": "How far is the trail from Java to C / C++?", "text": "I want to find out how easy or hard the transition to C / C++ is for a mid- experienced Java programmer. I've already read the questions about \"C++ for Java Programmers\" and \"Is it necessary for Java programmers to learn some C/System programming?\". Everything sounds very interesting, but I want to specifically add the aspect I have experience in Python programming as well. I'm aware that you are able to run python on the JVM with jython, but I think it will provide better experience to get exposed to new concepts and to explore Python's origins. My target environment is mainly Linux. Could you estimate (perhaps even tell from your own experience) how hard it would be and especially give a hint as to whether it would be better to go with C or C++ in order to interact with Python?"}
{"_id": "137960", "title": "Exporting huge data into XLS in a web application", "text": "I am developing a web application in Java/J2EE, in which I have export functionality. I have used Jasper for the same. The issue is when trying to export a huge set of data it is consuming a lot of time. Is there any design approach for export functionality so that I can improve the performance? I had tried JExcel API earlier and then moved to DynamicJasper API."}
{"_id": "202645", "title": "Why do certain sites don't allow Back / Forward / Refresh?", "text": "This has been a cause of frustration for me on many sites like IRCTC, Online Banking sites which wont allow Back, forward or refresh. If you do you would be logged out and you have to login again. What I don't understand is what concern had there been in their mind to have such terrible \"feature\"."}
{"_id": "178620", "title": "Fitting an established site into a CI framework", "text": "I manage a rather large, feature full nightmare of a site which has no end of feature creep settings/options/etc. Up to now its been coded in a procedural/functional way and would like to move to an OO,MVC setup. I'm quite new to it all but have done alot of research and feel that CodeIgniter is a code choice of framework to use to help quicken the transfer. Before looking at a framework, I started constructing a list of objects to create classes out of:   * photos   * users   * forum topics   * forums   * blogs   * blog posts   * comments The trouble I have now, is I do understand where these generic/universal objects fall into the CI MVC setup. What is the best way to organise this kind of stuff? These classes can generally be used on multiple models/views/controllers."}
{"_id": "218679", "title": "Does changing the name of a namespace count as a MAJOR change in semantic versioning?", "text": "I'm writing a C++ library, and according to this site here: http://semver.org/,   I should increment the MAJOR version when I make incompatible API changes. Is changing the name of a namespace considered an incompatible change in the API? I'm not quite sure. I don't know whether I should increment the MAJOR or MINOR version number."}
{"_id": "133267", "title": "What are good ways to organize input files (Makefiles, SConstruct, CMakeLists.txt, etc.) to build automation software?", "text": "One thing I like to do with my code is make sure that it's refactored into manageable pieces. However, when it comes to building the software, I find that whatever build automation software I end up using (lately it's been GNU Make or SCons) ends up becoming a complete mess. The input files look like long scripts that seem to defy easy refactoring. I'd like to be able to refactor them in some way, but the concept of \"function\" doesn't quite behave the same way in some build automation software as it does in a programming language, so I find it difficult to write manageable Makefiles or SConscript files for any projects that are moderately complicated. Does anyone have any advice on writing manageable input files for build automation software? Software-agnostic advice would be best, but even advice about a specific build automation tool would be helpful, particularly Make or SCons, since that's what I've been using for projects. **Edit:** As Thorbj\u00f8rn has pointed out, I should add some context and usage examples. I'm finishing up my PhD in chemical engineering and I do research in computational science. (I'm a pro tem mod over at SciComp.SE, for those of you who visit.) My projects typically involve a mix of compiled languages (C, C++, Fortran) that do some of the heavy lifting, scripting languages (Python, Perl) for prototyping, and occasionally, domain-specific languages for prototyping or technical purposes. I've added two examples below, roughly in the 250-line range. The problem for me is generally a lack of modularity. Some of these projects can be organized into modular units, and it'd be nice to abstract the parts of the build along those lines to make it easier for me and future maintainers to keep track of. Breaking each script up into multiple files has been one solution I've been toying around with in my head. The second example is particularly important, because I'm going to have to a large number of files to it soon. Here's what a 265-line `Makefile` might look like for me, taken from an actual project, and organized as best I can:               #!/usr/bin/make     #Directory containing DAEPACK library folder     daepack_root = .     library = $(daepack_root)/lib     wrappers = $(daepack_root)/Wrappers/DSL48S     c_headers = parser.h problemSizes.h     f77_headers=problemSizes.f commonParam.f     f90_headers=problemSizes.f commonParam.f90     includes = -I. -Iinclude -I/usr/include/glib-2.0 \\         -I/usr/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/usr/include/libxml2 \\         -I/usr/include/libgdome -I/usr/include/gtest/          #Fortran 77 environment variables     f77=gfortran     fflags=-ggdb -cpp -fno-second-underscore --coverage -falign-commons \\         -mcmodel=large -fbacktrace -pg      flibs=          #Fortran 90 environment variables     f90=gfortran     f90flags=-ggdb -cpp -fno-second-underscore --coverage -falign-commons \\         -mcmodel=large -fbacktrace -pg      f90libs=          #C environment flags     cc=gcc     cflags=-ggdb --coverage $(includes) -mcmodel=large      clibs=          #Libraries for linking     libs=-L$(library) -ldaepack_sparse -lblas -llapack -ldl -lg2c \\         -lgdome -lxml2 -lgtest -lcunit -lcholmod -lamd -lcolamd -lccolamd \\         -lmetis -lspqr -lm -lblas -llapack -lstdc++ -lpcre          #Object files     objs=main.o $(dsl48sObjs) $(gdxObjs)     gdxObjs = gdxf9def.o gdxf9glu.o gamsglobals_mod.o      commonObjs=libdsl48s_model.sl cklib.o parser.o $(gdxObjs)     originalModelObjs=originalModel.o dsl48sChemkinModule.o $(commonObjs)     cspSlowModelObjs=cspSlowModel.o dsl48sChemkinModuleSlow.o cspModule.o \\         $(commonObjs)     orthoProjModelObjs=orthoProjModel.o dsl48sChemkinModuleOrthoProj.o \\         orthoProjModule.o basisModule.o spqrUtility.o $(commonObjs)          #Shell environment variable definitions for FUnit     FCFLAGS := $(f90flags)     LDFLAGS := libdsl48s_model.sl cklib.o gdxf9glu.o parser.o spqrUtility.o \\         $(libs)          misc=*table *size.f      output=*.out          #Ftncheck flags for static analysis of Fortran 77 code     ftnchekflags= -declare -include=. -library -style=block-if,distinct-do,do-enddo,end-name,goto,labeled-stmt,structured-end          all: ckinterp.exe parserTest.exe originalModel.exe cspSlowModel.exe \\         orthoProjModel.exe spqrUtilityTest.exe     #Check code style with lexical analyzer         @echo Checking program style...         ftnchek $(ftnchekflags) rhs.f         ftnchek $(ftnchekflags) resorig.f         ftnchek $(ftnchekflags) res.f     #   ftnchek $(ftnchekflags) cklib.f     #   ftnchek $(ftnchekflags) ckinterp.f     #Set up baseline coverage data file         @echo Set up baseline coverage data file         lcov -c -i -d . -o conpDSL48Sbase.info     #Run unit test on cspModule.f90         @echo Running unit tests on cspModule.f90...         funit cspModule     #Generate test coverage data for cspModule.f90         @echo Generating test coverage data from cspModule.f90 tests...         lcov -c -d . -o conpDSL48ScspTest.info     #Run unit test on orthoProjModule.f90         @echo Running unit tests on orthoProjModule.f90...         funit orthoProjModule     #Generate test coverage data for orthoProjModule.f90         @echo Generating test coverage data from orthoProjModule.f90 tests...         lcov -c -d . -o conpDSL48SgenProjTest.info     #Run unit tests on the parser C library         @echo Running unit tests on parser in C...         -G_SLICE=always-malloc G_DEBUG=gc-friendly valgrind -v --tool=memcheck \\         --leak-check=full --show-reachable=yes --leak-resolution=high \\         --num-callers=20 --log-file=parserTest.vgdump \\         ./parserTest.exe > parserTest.log     #Generate test coverage data for the parser wrapper C library         @echo Generating test coverage data for the parser in C...         lcov -c -d . -o conpDSL48SparserTest.info     #Run unit tests on the SparseQR C library         @echo Running unit tests on SparseQR library in C...         ./spqrUtilityTest.exe     #Generate test coverage data for the SparseQR C library         @echo Generating test coverage data for the SparseQR C library...         lcov -c -d . -o conpDSL48SsparseTest.info     #Run unit test on basisModule.f90         @echo Running unit tests on basisModule.f90...         funit basisModule     #Generate test coverage data for basisModule.f90         @echo Generating test coverage data from basisModule.f90 tests...         lcov -c -d . -o conpDSL48SbasisMod.info     #Combine test coverage data         @echo Combine baseline and test coverage data...         lcov -a conpDSL48Sbase.info \\         -a conpDSL48ScspTest.info \\         -a conpDSL48SgenProjTest.info \\         -a conpDSL48SbasisMod.info \\         -a conpDSL48SparserTest.info \\         -a conpDSL48SsparseTest.info \\         -o conpDSL48Stotal.info     #Post-process to remove coverage statistics from automatically      #generated source code.         @echo Removing coverage statistics for automatically generated source...         lcov -r conpDSL48Stotal.info basisModule_fun.f90 \\         ckinterp.f cklib.f cspModule_fun.f90 davisSkodjeAd.f90 \\         davisSkodjeJac.f90 davisSkodjeRes.f90 davisSkodjeRhs.f90 \\         davisSkodjeSp.f90 gdxf9def.f90 gdxf9glu.c orthoProjModule_fun.f90 \\         jac.f jacorig.f resad.f resadp.f resorigad.f resorigadp.f ressp.f \\         resorigsp.f senrhs.f senrhsorig.f TestRunner.f90 \\         -o conpDSL48Stotal.info     #Generate HTML report of coverage data         @echo Generate HTML report of coverage data...         genhtml conpDSL48Stotal.info         @echo Open \"index.html\" in browser for coverage results!          originalModel.exe: $(originalModelObjs) $(f90_headers) $(f77_headers) \\         $(c_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -o originalModel.exe $(originalModelObjs) $(libs)          originalModel.o: dsl48sChemkinModule.o $(commonObjs) $(f77_headers) \\         $(f90_headers) $(c_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o originalModel.o originalModel.f90          cspSlowModel.exe: $(cspSlowModelObjs) $(f90_headers) $(f77_headers) \\         $(c_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -o cspSlowModel.exe $(cspSlowModelObjs) $(libs)          cspSlowModel.o: dsl48sChemkinModuleSlow.o cspModule.o $(commonObjs) \\         $(c_headers) $(f77_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o cspSlowModel.o cspSlowModel.f90          orthoProjModel.exe: $(orthoProjModelObjs) $(f90_headers) $(f77_headers) \\         $(c_headers) resOrthoFast.o         $(f90) $(f90flags) -o orthoProjModel.exe $(orthoProjModelObjs) \\         resOrthoFast.o $(libs)          orthoProjModel.o: dsl48sChemkinModuleOrthoProj.o orthoProjModule.o $(commonObjs) \\         $(c_headers) $(f90_headers) $(f77_headers) resOrthoFast.o basisModule.o         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o orthoProjModel.o orthoProjModel.f90          dsl48sChemkinModule.o: dsl48sChemkinModule.f90 cklib.o problemSizes.h \\         parser.o $(c_headers) $(f90_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o dsl48sChemkinModule.o dsl48sChemkinModule.f90           dsl48sChemkinModuleSlow.o: dsl48sChemkinModuleSlow.f90 cspModule.o cklib.o \\         problemSizes.h parser.o $(c_headers) $(f90_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o dsl48sChemkinModuleSlow.o \\         dsl48sChemkinModuleSlow.f90          dsl48sChemkinModuleOrthoProj.o: dsl48sChemkinModuleOrthoProj.f90 \\         orthoProjModule.o basisModule.o cklib.o problemSizes.h \\         parser.o $(c_headers) $(f90_headers)         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o dsl48sChemkinModuleOrthoProj.o \\         dsl48sChemkinModuleOrthoProj.f90          basisModule.o: basisModule.f90 cklib.o spqrUtility.o commonParam.f90         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o basisModule.o basisModule.f90          spqrUtility.o: spqrUtility.h spqrUtility.c         $(cc) $(cflags) -c -o spqrUtility.o spqrUtility.c          spqrUtilityTest.exe: spqrUtilityTest.o spqrUtility.o         $(cc) $(cflags) -o spqrUtilityTest.exe spqrUtilityTest.o \\         spqrUtility.o $(libs)          spqrUtilityTest.o: spqrUtilityTest.c spqrUtility.o         $(cc) $(cflags) -c -o spqrUtilityTest.o spqrUtilityTest.c          cklib.o: cklib.f ckstrt.f         $(f77) $(fflags) -c -o cklib.o cklib.f          ckinterp.exe: ckinterp.o         $(f77) $(fflags) -o ckinterp.exe ckinterp.o          ckinterp.o: ckinterp.f         $(f77) $(fflags) -c -o ckinterp.o ckinterp.f          #Recursive makefile inherited from previous graduate students     libdsl48s_model.sl: $(f77_headers) cklibDAEPACK.f         cp $(wrappers)/makefile model.mk         make -f model.mk          resOrthoFast.o: libdsl48s_model.sl         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o resOrthoFast.o resOrthoFast.f90          problemSizes.f: problemSizes.fpp problemSizes.h         cpp problemSizes.fpp problemSizes.f         perl -p -i.bak -we 's/# /! /;' problemSizes.f          commonParam.f90: commonParam.f         perl -p -i.bak -we 's/^#/!/;' commonParam.f         echo \"commonParam t f t fpp\" | pref77tof90         echo \"commonParam /\" | f77tof90         perl -p -i.bak -we 's/integer a/!integer a/;' commonParam.f         perl -p -i.bak -we 's/END   //;' commonParam.f90          commonParam.f: commonParam.fpp problemSizes.h         cpp commonParam.fpp commonParam.f         perl -p -i.bak -we 's/^#/!/;' commonParam.f          cspModule.o: cspModule.f90         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o cspModule.o cspModule.f90          orthoProjModule.o: gamsglobals_mod.o gdxf9def.o gdxf9glu.o orthoProjModule.f90 \\         formatLabels.f90         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o orthoProjModule.o orthoProjModule.f90          gdxf9def.o: gdxf9def.f90         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c -o gdxf9def.o gdxf9def.f90          gdxf9glu.o: gdxf9glu.c gdxf9def.o     #64-bit version of wrappers (with underscores)         $(cc) $(cflags) -DCIA_LEX -DAPIWRAP_LCASE_DECOR -c -o \\         gdxf9glu.o gdxf9glu.c     #64-bit version of wrappers (without underscores, for C interoperability)     #   $(cc) $(cflags) -DCIA_LEX -DAPIWRAP_LCASE_NODECOR -c gdxf9glu.c     #32-bit version of wrappers     #   $(cc) $(cflags) -DAPIWRAP_LCASE_DECOR -c gdxf9glu.c -Iinclude          gamsglobals_mod.o: gamsglobals_mod.f90 gdxf9def.o gdxf9glu.o         $(f90) $(f90flags) -c gamsglobals_mod.f90          parser.o: parser.c $(c_headers)         $(cc) $(cflags) -c -o parser.o parser.c           parserTest.exe: parserTest.o parser.o         $(cc) $(cflags) -o parserTest.exe parser.o \\         parserTest.o $(libs)          parserTest.o: parserTest.cpp parser.o         $(cc) $(cflags) -c -o parserTest.o parserTest.cpp          clean:         -rm *.bak         -rm *.f77         -rm *.log         -rm commonParam.f90         -rm problemSizes.f         -rm commonParam.f         -make clean -f model.mk         -rm model.mk         -rm *.o         -rm *.mod         -rm $(misc)         -rm *.exe         -funit --clean         -rm *.gcno         -rm *.gcda         -rm *.info         -rm *.png         -rm *.html         -rm *.css         -rm -rf html         -rm *.pyc         -rm *.lst      Here's a 245-line `SConstruct` file that I'm currently trying to organize for a project that's roughly as complex:               ## \\file SConstruct     #  \\brief Compiles the library and compiles tests.     #          import SCons          ## \\brief Build up directory names of each COIN library from package names     #         and versions.     #          ## Overall SCons environment     #     env = Environment();          flags = []          ## Compile using debug versions?     #     debug = True     debugString = '-debug'     debugFlags = ['-ggdb']          dynamicLinkFlag = '-Wl,-rpath,'          if debug:         flags += debugFlags          ## Compile Google Test from scratch.     #     GTestVersion = '1.6.0'     GTestStem = 'gtest-' + GTestVersion     GTestBuildIncDir = [GTestStem,                         GTestStem + '/include',                         ]     GTestAllLib = env.Library('lib/libgtest.a', 'gtest-1.6.0/src/gtest-all.cc',                           CPPPATH = GTestBuildIncDir,                           CXXFLAGS = flags)     GTestMainLib = env.Library('lib/libgtest_main.a',                                'gtest-1.6.0/src/gtest_main.cc',                                CPPPATH = GTestBuildIncDir,                                CXXFLAGS = flags)          GTestIncDir = GTestStem + '/include/gtest'     GTestLibDir = 'lib'     GTestLibFlags = ['gtest', 'gtest_main', 'pthread']          ## Armadillo matrix library     #     ArmadilloLibFlags = ['armadillo'];          ## Quick reminder of SCons flags:     #  CPPPATH = path of headers (include directories)     #  LIBPATH = path of libraries     #  LIBS = flags of libraries     #  CXXFLAGS = C++ compilation flags     #                         ## Locations of libraries installed on system in standard locations     #     StdIncDir = '/usr/include'     StdLibDir = '/usr/lib'          ## Configuration information for COIN libraries     #     CoinUtilsVersion = '2.6.4'     ClpVersion = '1.12.0'     OsiVersion = '0.103.0'     CbcVersion = '2.5.0'          ## Some standard directory locations of COIN libraries, with slashes added for     #  for convenience.     #     CoinLibLocation = '/usr/local/COIN/'     StdCoinIncDir = '/include/coin'     StdCoinLibDir = '/lib'          CoinUtilsStem = 'CoinUtils-' + CoinUtilsVersion     ClpStem = 'Clp-' + ClpVersion     OsiStem = 'Osi-' + OsiVersion     CbcStem = 'Cbc-' + CbcVersion          if debug:         CoinUtilsStem += debugString         CbcStem += debugString         ClpStem += debugString         OsiStem += debugString               ## Build up include directory names for COIN projects from constituent parts.     #     CoinUtilsIncDir = CoinLibLocation + CoinUtilsStem + StdCoinIncDir     ClpIncDir = CoinLibLocation + ClpStem + StdCoinIncDir     OsiIncDir = CoinLibLocation + OsiStem + StdCoinIncDir     CbcIncDir = CoinLibLocation + CbcStem + StdCoinIncDir          ## Build up library names from COIN projects from constituent parts     #     CoinUtilsLibDir = CoinLibLocation + CoinUtilsStem + StdCoinLibDir     ClpLibDir = CoinLibLocation + ClpStem + StdCoinLibDir     OsiLibDir = CoinLibLocation + OsiStem + StdCoinLibDir     CbcLibDir = CoinLibLocation + CbcStem + StdCoinLibDir          ## CPLEX     #     CpxStem = '/opt/ibm/ILOG/CPLEX_Studio_Academic123/cplex/'     CpxIncDir = CpxStem + 'include/ilcplex'     CpxLibDir = CpxStem + 'lib/x86-64_sles10_4.1/static_pic'          ## Gurobi     #      GrbStem = '/opt/gurobi460/linux64/'     GrbIncDir = GrbStem + 'include'     GrbLibDir = GrbStem + 'lib'          OsiLibFlags = ['Osi', 'CoinUtils']     ClpLibFlags = ['Clp', 'OsiClp']     CbcLibFlags = ['Cbc', 'Cgl']     OsiCpxLibFlags = ['OsiCpx']     OsiGrbLibFlags = ['OsiGrb']     CpxLibFlags = ['cplex', 'ilocplex', 'pthread', 'm']     GrbLibFlags = ['gurobi_c++', 'gurobi46', 'pthread', 'm']          milpIncDirs = [CoinUtilsIncDir,                    ClpIncDir,                    OsiIncDir,                    CbcIncDir,                    CpxIncDir,                    GrbIncDir,                 GTestIncDir,                    ]     milpLibDirs = [CoinUtilsLibDir,                    ClpLibDir,                    OsiLibDir,                    CbcLibDir,                    CpxLibDir,                    GrbLibDir,                    GTestLibDir,                 ]     milpLibFlags = [OsiCpxLibFlags,                     OsiGrbLibFlags,                     CbcLibFlags,                     ClpLibFlags,                     OsiLibFlags,                     CpxLibFlags,                     GrbLibFlags,                     GTestLibFlags,                     ]     ##milpSolver = env.Object('milpSolver.cpp',                 ##                         CPPPATH = milpIncDirs,     ##                         LIBPATH = milpLibDirs,     ##                         CXXFLAGS = flags)     milpSolverTest = env.Program('milpSolverUnitTest',                                       ['milpSolverTest.cpp',                                        'milpSolver.cpp'],                                       CPPPATH = milpIncDirs,                                       LIBPATH = milpLibDirs,                                       LIBS = milpLibFlags,                                       CXXFLAGS = flags,                                       LINKFLAGS = ['-Wl,-rpath,' + OsiLibDir])     env.Depends(milpSolverTest, [GTestAllLib, GTestMainLib])          ## Chemkin source directories and files     #     ChemkinSourceDir = '/mnt/hgfs/DataFromOldLaptop/Data/ModelReductionResearch/Papers/AdaptiveChemistryPaper/AdaptiveChemistry/NonOpenSource/ChemkinII/';     ChemkinSourceList = ['cklib.f', 'pcmach.f','tranlib.f']     ChemkinSourceList = [ChemkinSourceDir + FileName                          for FileName in ChemkinSourceList]     env.Depends('cklib.f','ckstrt.f')          ## Cantera include directorie     #     CanteraStem = '/usr/local/cantera'          if debug:         CanteraStem += debugString          CanteraIncDir = CanteraStem + '/include/cantera'     CanteraLibDir = CanteraStem + '/lib'     CanteraTestingFlags = ['kinetics', 'thermo', 'tpx', 'ctbase', 'm',]     CanteraLibFlags = ['user', 'oneD', 'zeroD', 'equil', 'kinetics', 'transport',                         'thermo', 'ctnumerics', 'ctmath', 'tpx', 'ctspectra',                         'converters', 'ctbase', 'cvode', 'ctlapack', 'ctblas',                         'ctf2c', 'ctcxx', 'ctf2c', 'm', 'm', 'stdc++']          CxxFortranFlags = ['g2c', 'gfortran'];           chemSolverIncDir = [CanteraIncDir,                         StdIncDir,                         '/usr/local/include',                         GTestIncDir,                         ]     chemSolverLibDir = [StdLibDir,                         CanteraLibDir,                         GTestLibDir,                         ]     chemSolverLibFlags = [GTestLibFlags,                           CxxFortranFlags,                           CanteraLibFlags,                           ArmadilloLibFlags,                           ]          chemSolverTest = env.Program('chemSolverUnitTest',                             ['chemSolverTest.cpp',                              'chemSolver.cpp',                              'ckwrapper.f90'] + ChemkinSourceList,                             CPPPATH = chemSolverIncDir,                             LIBPATH = chemSolverLibDir,                             LIBS = chemSolverLibFlags,                             CXXFLAGS = flags,                             FORTRANFLAGS = flags,                             F90FLAGS = flags)     env.Depends(chemSolverTest, [GTestAllLib, GTestMainLib])          #env.AddPostAction(milpSolverTest, milpSolverTest[0].abspath)     testAlias = env.Alias('test', [milpSolverTest, chemSolverTest])     AlwaysBuild(testAlias)          ckInterp = env.Program('ckinterp', ChemkinSourceDir + 'ckinterp.f')          canteraGTestLibFlags = CanteraTestingFlags + GTestLibFlags          #canteraGTestLibFlags = ['kinetics', 'thermo', 'tpx',     #                        'ctbase',  'm', 'gtest', 'gtest_main', 'pthread']          canteraGTest = env.Program('canteraGTest',                                'canteraGTest.cpp',                                CPPPATH = chemSolverIncDir,                                LIBPATH = chemSolverLibDir,                                LIBS = canteraGTestLibFlags,                                CXXFLAGS = flags)     env.Depends(canteraGTest, [GTestAllLib, GTestMainLib])          canteraMemTestLibFlags = CanteraTestingFlags          canteraMemTest = env.Program('canteraMemTest',                                  'canteraMemTest.cpp',                                  CPPPATH = chemSolverIncDir,                                  LIBPATH = chemSolverLibDir,                                  LIBS = canteraMemTestLibFlags,                                  CXXFLAGS = flags)"}
{"_id": "178625", "title": "Is a functional spec a part of the System requirement spec?", "text": "I wonder, sources like wikipedia or templates I found shows that Functional spec **is** a part of System requirement documents. I always thought that SRD is just overall decsription of the system, with all functional and non functional requirements. Yet I thought that Functional spec is more detailed and it is a separate document, while SRD is high level customer-created description (how is this one called then?) Could anyone help to make this clear for me?"}
{"_id": "72952", "title": "Licensing solutions for closed-source software running on Linux?", "text": "I'm looking for a simple licensing software solution that works on Linux - a library that can generate and consume license keys. From what I was able to find were some behemoth license servers, something that is just way above what I require. Are there libraries in particular you can recommend?"}
{"_id": "133268", "title": "What are the effects of including build tools in a code repository when those tools have different licenses than your code?", "text": "What effect does including another open-source utility in your source repository have upon your code if they use different licenses?   * I tend to use more permissive licenses such as the Apache and MIT.   * To allow others to use a project with as little setup as possible I want to include utilities used by the build scripts in the repository (documentation generator, JavaScript minifier, etc).   * I understand that things generated by these utilities (documentation, minified JS files) are **not** derivative works.   * What is not as clear to me is the question of whether including some utilities which have more restrictive licenses will create conflicts with my code?   * Does the \"viral\" nature of the GPL threaten to \"infect\" my code by including GPL utilities in my repository and referencing them from my build scripts? None of the code will be intermingled, appropriate licenses will remain with each item. I should mostly just be using binaries from the outside sources (.jar, etc). I just want to make sure that \"distributing\" them in my repository when I upload it to GitHub won't taint everything else."}
{"_id": "200110", "title": "Adding new objects to a clientside array - best practices?", "text": "Say you have a list of \"vehicles\" - you have an observableArray of these ko.observable()s. You let your user add a new vehicle with the following:               var emptyVehicle = {         \"make\": \"chevrolet\",         \"model\": \"corvette\"     };     app.on('CLICKED_ADD_VEHICLE', function () {                 var vehicle = new vehicleViewModel(emptyVehicle);                 vehicle.hasWheels(true);                 innerModel.sets.push(set);             });      If they save the vehicle, you get a real vehicle from your dataservice, and then replace the blank one with this:               app.on('CLICKED_SAVE', function (oldVehicle) {                 var newVehicle = new vehicleViewModel(dataservice.createVehicle(oldVehicle));                         innerModel.vehicles.remove(oldVehicle);                         innerModel.vehicles.push(newVehicle);             });      I know I'm leaving some code out here, but this is more of a practices/approach question than a code question. Is this an acceptable approach to adding new items to a list? New up a temporary template, and throw it away in place of an actual item if the user saves?"}
{"_id": "212738", "title": "Should I combine similar functions even though they are slightly different?", "text": "On an application I've been working on I have a function, connecting to a virtual machine, that can be performed two ways. The user can either select a machine from a list and click the \"Connect\" button. Or can double click on the machine in the list. Currently they are two separate event handlers because they function slightly differently. If a user is already connected, clicking the button will disconnect them, and double clicking will bring the window back up. ///edit The logic is essentially               button     if(connected)     Disconnect()     else     ConnectAndShowWindow()          List     ConnectAndShowWindow()      My question is should I keep the methods separate or combine the two methods even though they are slightly different and then, for the disconnecting/reconnecting switch them based on the sender?"}
{"_id": "195871", "title": "Is deep nesting of control flow in code a studied problem?", "text": "I made the case to coworkers that deep levels of control flow was harmful to the readability of code. Example, taken from the relevant stack overflow question If you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed?:               for(int i=0; i<10; ++i){       Object val = repeat(i, someVar);       if(val.value > 3){         switch(val.item){           case DOG:             if(mProcess){               outputToUser(val);               doMoreThings(val, mMoreThingDoer);               if(mRepurpose){                 addExample(val);               }               // and so on, and so on...      As with most things, it's trivially easy to find opinions on this topic. I'm wondering however if someone can contribute more to it than that. Has there for example been done an actual study relevant to the problem? Or can other arguments be made that go beyond \"I like X better\"?"}
{"_id": "195874", "title": "Unit Test code generation", "text": "We have a project that was written over a period of 2 years, but has a poorly designed architecture and not unit tests. The software works well, but we're at the point where we want to refactor some core modules. The budget is also limited so we can not hire a sufficient number of developers to write unit tests. Would generating unit test code automatically to cover (as an example) integration scenarios via some too be a viable strategy? An assumpion is that considering the system works fine right now, and the its output can be converted into XML data for unit testing? This approach gives us a possibility of quickly starting to refactor existing code and receieve immediate feedback if some core functionality is broken because of those changes."}
{"_id": "234677", "title": "Lazy Loading, DAL and BLL abstraction", "text": "I'm asking myself a question to code the right way on a new fresh project. I have a designed database and I mapped tables to equivalent POCO classes using Entity Framework 6 Code First. Then, I thought \"wait, if some day I want to switch from EF to another Framework for whatever reasons, or even say let's go for direct coding because of performance reasons, I must NOT use EF directly in the BLL. So, EF is NOT a DAL. I started implementing a DAL that encapsulates EF calls. Then, I implemented a BLL consoming the DAL. For some tables this is like a direct mapping because these are \"parameters tables\" (countries, currencies and so on). But for others there is a good part of business logic, which is fine. BUT Then it comes to Lazy Loading, attaching entities etc. Let's talk only about Lazy Loading. 1) Use Lazy Loading : when I'm so far in the BLL, I don't know any more about the underlying DAL internals. I just consume my objects, and I think \"hey, every property will come just when I need it\". But OMG! I'm outside the DAL, the Datacontext is not there anymore, so nothing can load anymore. Should I keep the EF data context open for the whole life of the application ? I've read it's not a good practice, even more when it comes to a eBusiness website keeping alive forever... 2) Don't use Lazy Loading but eager loading. Right, I load all the properties of my object, so every data is available for my consuming BLL. Ahem, do I really need, when loading a customer, to load all his orders, comments, addresses, countries and properties of the countries, currencies etc.etc.etc... This seems really overkill and can't live in a web application... But, the DAL should NOT know about what the BLL needs. The DAL is here to provide data access, then the BLL will do what it needs to load just what it needs. So should I provide DAL methods to include/not include any combination possible of foreignkeys ? Seems not possible ... Should I wait for the BLL developper to tell me what methods he needs for each of his requirements? Seems too much coupled... Should the BLL be able to tell the DAL exactly what it needs? How to do that without being too much coupled? Seems like Lazy Loading is not applicable in a multi-layer application..."}
{"_id": "212735", "title": "How to approach scrum task burn down when tasks have multiple peoples involvement?", "text": "In my company, a single task can never be completed by one individual. There is going to be a separate person to QA and Code Review each task. What this means is that each individual will give their estimates, per task, as to how much time it will take to complete. The problem is, how should I approach burn down? If I aggregate the hours together, assume the following estimate: 10 hrs - Dev time 4 hrs - QA 4 hrs - Code Review. Task Estimate = 18hrs At the end of each day I ask that the task be updated with \"how much time is left until it is done\". However, each person generally just thinks about their part of it. Should they mark the effort remaining, and then ADD the effort estimates to that? How are you guys doing this? **UPDATE** To help clarify a few things, at my organization each Task within a story requires 3 people.   1. Someone to develop the task. (do unit tests, ect...)   2. A QA specialist to review task (they primarily do integration and regression tests)   3. A Tech lead to do code review. I don't think there is a wrong way or a right way, but this is our way ... and that won't be changing. We work as a team to complete even the smallest level of a story whenever possible. You cannot actually test if something works until it is dev complete, and you cannot review the quality of the code either ... so the best you can do is split things up into small logical slices so that the bare minimum functionality can be tested and reviewed as early into the process as possible. My question to those that work this way would be how to burn down a \"task\" when they are setup this way. Unless a Task has it's own sub-tasks (which JIRA doesn't allow) ... I'm not sure the best way to accomplish tracking \"what's left\" on a daily basis."}
{"_id": "212734", "title": "Is it good practice to not filter values according to nullability?", "text": "Sometimes when I create an API that should enable getting a single value or all values I use the following pattern (passing `NULL` to the API, means get all rows): @Usernames - comma separeted list of users               CREATE PROC GetUsers (@Usernames VARCHAR(100) = NULL)     AS     BEGIN         SELECT *         FROM Users         Where @Usernames IS NULL OR dbo.in_list(@Usernames,Username) = 1      END      Is this a good practice to use the OR condition the get both functionalities, or should i write something like this:               CREATE PROC GetUsers (@Usernames VARCHAR(100) = NULL)     AS     BEGIN         IF(@Username IS NULL)         BEGIN             SELECT *             FROM Users         END         ELSE         BEGIN             SELECT *             FROM Users             Where dbo.in_list(@Usernames,Username) = 1          END     END      * **Note:** This is only SQL for example, **this is not a specific coding language question**. Thanks."}
{"_id": "212736", "title": "Validation and data persistence in a domain model", "text": "My (first and current) workplace (a .NET shop) suffers from an over-abundance of anemic domain models, to the extent that I don't really know how validation and data persistence should be handled in a proper domain model. ### Data Persistence One option would be to give the domain model a way to do persistence itself. You could, for example, inject an `IFooRepository` via constructor injection, and have that resolved by an IoC container to ensure you don't create a dependency on it (\u00e0 la onion architecture). But I'm not sure if the code that uses the domain model should be responsible for calling methods to save the data, etc., or if it should be done implicitly behind the scenes on a background thread. Perhaps this breaks that purity of the domain model and is more along the lines of the active record pattern. The other option I see is to not tie the domain model to data persistence at all and instead have a coordinating service layer responsible for that aspect. What are the best practices for data persistence in the domain model pattern? ### Validation Another problem I don't know how to solve with a proper domain model is how to indicate to the UI _why_ the current model state is invalid without coupling to (or at least catering to) the UI. For example, let's say I have a form an user fills out with various fields. We want to validate that input, and if something is wrong, indicate an error on that specific field with a message. How would we handle validation with that level of granularity without adding significant complexity to the domain model, or doing hack-ish stringly-typed things (like throwing an validation exception with the property's name and a message)?"}
{"_id": "175941", "title": "How to customize web-app (pages and UI) for different customers", "text": "We have an ASP.NET web-application which has become difficult to maintain, and I'm looking for ideas on how to redesign it. It's an employee administration system which can be highly customized for each of our customers. Let me explain how it works now: On the default page we have a menu where a user can select a task, such as Create Employee or View Timesheet. I'll use Create Employee as an example. When a user selects Create Employee from the menu, an ASPX page is loaded which contains a dynamically loaded usercontrol for the selected menuitem, e.g. for Create Employee this would be AddEmployee.ascx If the user clicks Save on the control, it navigates to the default page. Some menuitems involve multiple steps, so if the user clicks Next on a multi-step flow then it will navigate to the next page in the flow, and so on until it reaches the final step, where clicking Save navigates to the default page. Some customers may require an extra step in the Create Employee flow (e.g. SecurityClearance.ascx) but others may not. Different customers may use the same ASCX usercontrol, so in the AddEmployee.OnInit we can customize the fields for that customer, i.e. making certain fields hidden or readonly or mandatory. The following things are customizable per customer:   * Menu items   * Steps in each flow (ascx control names)   * Hidden fields in each ascx   * Mandatory fields in each ascx   * Rules relating to each ascx, which allows certain logic to be used in the code for that customer The customizations are held in a huge XML file per customer, which could be 7500 lines long. Is there any framework or rules-engine that we could use to customize our application in this way? How do other applications manage customizations per customer?"}
{"_id": "175943", "title": "Is this possible to re-duplicate the hardware signal on Linux?", "text": "Since that every things is a file on the UNIX system. If I have a hardware, for example, a mouse, move from left corner to right corner, it should produce some kinds of file to communicate with the system. So, if my assumption is correct, is this possible to do following things:   1. Capture the raw data, which is about moving mouse cursor from left corner to right corner?   2. Reduplicate the raw data, using a program, same producing speed, and data, in order to \"redo\" moving mouse cursor from left corner to right corner"}
{"_id": "237932", "title": "Handling ignorable failure conditions in a method", "text": "I'm working on a coarse API for performing higher level business functions. Under many conditions these functions may fail in a way that is expected (not exceptional), ie. the function may not be able to complete because of failing a validation condition of some kind. In many cases, what I want to do in these \"failure\" scenarios is to alert the user and give them the option to \"override\" the failure. ie, \"Warning: transferring warp power to the shields will damage the emitter array, are you sure you want to proceed?\" Many of these functions may have a list of quite a few validation rules and I may want to override all of them. What I'm envisioning right now is to create a custom MyResult class that is returned by the functions that includes whether or not the function succeeded and if it failed, perhaps a list of validation rules that failed for the function. Then add a parameter to the function for \"overrides\" that allows these validation rules to be bypassed in a subsequent call. I'd like feedback on this approach. Is there a pattern for this? The functions in the API may be called from multiple platforms and the API itself is in C#."}
{"_id": "48900", "title": "How do you verify that your prototype/application meets the requirements?", "text": "Recently I wrote an small prototype that uses some relatively new technology. Now I wanted to verify if this prototype is usefull and could be used in real world example. But now I have a problem, how can I do that?   * Normally, it would be a good thing to compare the prototype with already existing similar applications and compare if you perform better, provide better usability, etc. Since I'm not aware of something similar, this is quite difficult   * Normally, I would see if the requirements of the customers are met. But there aren't any real requirements and no real customers. It as just an idea. So the problem is, how can I get feedback on my prototype to see how it is accepted by potential users and what should be improved in a real implementation?"}
{"_id": "206345", "title": "Distance calculation and data normalization", "text": "I'm designing a system which needs to report basic distance between zip codes. It will use the **Google Distance Matrix API** but I want to cache the results in the database so that multiple requests for the same data points don't result in duplicate API calls. A basic `Distance` class might look like this: ![YUML Distance thingy](http://i.stack.imgur.com/aPG4x.png) A basic data structure for the cache might look like this: ![YUML DB table](http://i.stack.imgur.com/HHQ6y.png) Since I'm not using fine-grained detail concerned with changes due to one-way streets or divided highways, interchanges, etc., it therefore doesn't matter to me whether I'm getting the data from point A to point B or from point B to point A. But I'm not sure how to express this with full normalization in the database. With this primary key, it would be perfectly legal for the same distance to exist in two separate row, i.e.               var row1 = new Distance(\"00001\", \"00002\");     var row2 = new Distance(\"00002\", \"00001\");      It would probably be a good idea for me to require a `SortedList` parameter in the constructor, but is there a way I can design it from the database side to enforce full normalization?"}
{"_id": "206344", "title": "Incrementally releasing software under the GPL", "text": "We have a Javascript codebase that we want to open-source in an incremental fashion. That is, we want to release the full code to some of our core modules first, keeping the rest of the \"application\" code in minified format. Eventually, we will also release the whole application code in full (although that may take a few months to happen). We have determined that the GPL (v3) is the best license for our software project. However, we're concerned that it cannot be used in the way that I've described. Specifically, since our application code depends on the aforementioned core modules to function, it would become bound by the GPL the moment these modules are released under the GPL. If I understand correctly, this means that we would have to release a non-minified version of the application code from day one. Is my understanding correct? And if so, is there a \"next best\" license that we could use for our core modules, which would provide us with similar protection against non-free derivatives, without the requirement that we release the whole application code in full from the start?"}
{"_id": "211799", "title": "Best practice in application design / SQL authentication", "text": "I am currently involved in the implementation/design of an existing application for a large scale customer. The application has a similar model as e.g. vCenter Server whereby a number of components store information in and extract information and workflows form a central database. The environment is managed from a console application which uses a windows service to connect to the database. Due to security considerations SQL Authentication is not an option, but the application does support Windows Authentication. However when using windows authentication it passes the credentials of the user who is using the management console application on to the database in stead of using the service account under which the service runs. This results in the situation where the security roles as they are defined within the application (AD users/groups mapped to certain permissions) requires these AD objects to also have a SQL Server login and certain permissions on the database (db-writer for certain tables, depending on the specific permissions in the app). Apart from the additional administration, this also creates a security risk imo because the whole point of the application security roles in this specific application is to allow users access to only a part of a certain table (e.g. a subset of the objects). But since they now have a SQL login and db_writer on that entire table they could bypass the app and with a direct connection to the database they could read/alter records they would not be allowed to view/manipulate through the application. This risk could then (partly) be mitigated by restricting access to the database on a network level, or possibly use triggers to check the calling hostname and program name, but as far as I know that is not completely safe. The only benefit as is presented to me is there is now a full audit trail available in SQL server on exactly who did what. But this is already implemented in the application as well so it seems kind of moot to me. I have been frantically searching for any info on this and what would be the best practice. I can only find ASP / Web based stuff but nothing regarding this type of application. Is it really the best way to go with passing through authentication to SQL server or should the app handle authorisation and send all database requests using the service account? Thanks in advance for any information. P.s. this is my first question on stackexchange, I fi posted on the wrong sub- site or you find my question inappropriate, pls just let me know."}
{"_id": "238221", "title": "What concrete steps can I take to assess PHP framework(s) without having to go to the extent of getting to know each framework in intimate detail?", "text": "This question is about what methodology to follow when evaluating one or more PHP frameworks to see which one would suit the needs of my project best. In other words, given the time pressures that every developer faces, what concrete steps can I take to assess one or more PHP frameworks without having to go to the extent of getting to know each framework in intimate detail? I know that some of the considerations would be subjective such as, which is my preferred language or my style of coding, but assessing your preferred language and style of coding would be a concrete step towards defining your chosen framework. I'm narrowing this down to PHP just to assume that the choice of language has already been made."}
{"_id": "233239", "title": "To make a class function or not?", "text": "I'm wondering about functions used like this:               object1->objectMethod1(arg1, arg2);      if `objectMethod1`:   \\- does not change the object state   \\- does not use the object's state at all   \\- is used by the class extensively   \\- logically fits as being used by the class should it be made into a member function? example:               class CSVFile {     private:       filestream stream       string header       int num_columns     public:       CSVFile(string filename)       CSVFile() throws DefaultConstructorException()     ...     CSVFile::initHeader() {       header = stream.getLine()       assert(isInCSVFormat(header)) <-- that      should isInCSVFormat(string) be a member function or not?"}
{"_id": "88844", "title": "Is anybody using JavaFX", "text": "I'm very tempted to use it purely because of its neat Binding APIs, and now that you're able to use it in conjunction with Swing it feels like a natural progression. The only thing that I can seem its lacking off the bat is a GUI builder (But then according to who you speak to, this isn't necessarily a bad thing!) Does anybody have any experience with using JavaFX 2.0?"}
{"_id": "117610", "title": "Are there any studies on the relationship between software testing practices and developer productivity?", "text": "Are there any studies on the relationship between software testing practices (unit and/or integration tests) and developer productivity?"}
{"_id": "205251", "title": "Are there any programming languages that make use of adjectives?", "text": "Are there any languages where something like the following might be possible?               people = [ ... a list of people ...]     Person jake = Person(\"Jake\", 165, ...)     jake is Tall     people.add(jake)     for Person person in people where Tall:         // ... do something terrible to them     jake is not Tall // ... Jake no longer wishes to be tall      I hope that makes sense - basically, dynamic adjectives that affect something about an object's properties or methods."}
{"_id": "193332", "title": "Why is Option/Maybe considered a good idea and checked exceptions are not?", "text": "Some programming languages like e.g. Scala have the concept of `Option` types (also called `Maybe`), which can either contain a value or not. From what I've read about them they are considered widely to be a superior way of dealing with this issue than `null`, because they explicitly force the programmer to consider the cases where there might not be a value instead of just blowing up during runtime. Checked Exceptions in Java on the other hand seem to be considered a bad idea, and Java seems to be the only widely used language that implements them. But the idea behind them seems to be somewhat similar to the `Option` type, to explicitly force the programmer to deal with the fact that an exception might be thrown. Are there some additional problems with checked Exceptions that `Option` types don't have? Or are these ideas not as similar as I think, and there are good reasons for forcing explicit handling for Options and not for Exceptions?"}
{"_id": "161016", "title": "Order of learning sort algorithms", "text": "I have already studied bubblesort, insertion sort and selection sort and can implement them in C pretty much from knowledge of the algorithm. I want to go on to learn shellsort, merge sort, heapsort and quicksort, which I guess are a lot harder to understand. What order should I take these other sort algos? I am assuming a simpler sort algo helps learn a more complex one. Don't mind taking on some others if it helps the learning process."}
{"_id": "86115", "title": "Alternatives to OAuth?", "text": "The Web industry is shifting / has shifted towards using OAuth when extending API services to external consumers & developers. There is some elegance in simple....and well, the 3-step OAuth process isn't too bad ... i just find it is the best of a bad bunch of options. Are there alternatives out there that could be better, and more secure? The security reference is derived from the following URLs:   * OAuth 2.0 bad for the web?   * OAuth 2 without signatures bad for the web I've come across this over on the IT Security stack exchange and thought it was poignant from a security point of view:   * OAuth / OpenID / Facebook Connect .. Crazy? Maybe SAML 2.0 is an alternative? What about OpenID? The purpose of this question is from a programming point of view. Is OAuth the **best** option that exists today ...? Do alternatives options exist which allow me to extend my Web Application to consumers that are better from a security point of view, implementation point of view, longevity (wont require rework in a few months), and enabling the support of mobile applications consuming my web application."}
{"_id": "86117", "title": "I want to learn and explore cloud computing, what technologies should I be aware off for the same?", "text": "I want to get into Cloud Computing. Before I choose a particular vendor platform I want to learn: What are the underlying technologies, tools and paradigms that I should be aware off to make myself comfortable at working in a cloud platform? Are there any recommended books or other resources to get my feet wet with Cloud Computing?"}
{"_id": "86116", "title": "Chess as a team building exercise for software developers", "text": "The last place I worked wasn't a particularly great place and there were more than a few nights where we were working late into the evening trying to meet our sprints. The team while stressed out got pretty close and people started bringing in little mind teasers and puzzles, just something we would all play around with and try to solve while a build/deploy was running for the test environment, or while we were waiting for the integration test run to finish. Eventually it turned into people bringing chess boards in and setting them at their desks. We would play by email sending each other moves in chess notation, but at a very casual pace, with games lasting sometimes two or three days. Management tolerated this when we were putting in overtime, but as things were being managed better and people weren't working much more than 40/wk, they started cracking down on this and told us that we weren't allowed to have chess boards at our desks, although they were okay with the puzzle games. What are the pros and cons in your opinion of allowing chess during software development lull time?"}
{"_id": "44810", "title": "Relationship between C#, .NET, ASP, ASP.NET etc", "text": "I'm really unclear on the difference between C#, C#.NET and the same for ASP and other '.NET' languages. From what I understand, .NET is a library/framework of... things. I think they're essentially access to Windows data such as form elements etc, but that doesn't seem to apply for ASP.NET. In addition, I see people calling themselves '.NET' developers. Does this mean they're fluent in C#, ASP and other languages? Finally, I never see C# without .NET attached. Is C# tied that closely to .NET as to be unusable without it? In summary: what exactly does .NET provide? How does it relate to C# and ASP etc? What does 'a .NET developer' mean? And finally, why do you never see C# without .NET? [As an aside, I realise these are multiple questions, but I think they are very inter-related (or at least that is the impression that browsing Programmers / SO etc has given me)]."}
{"_id": "126740", "title": "Version control programs for XML-files - merge/diff tool", "text": "My programming environment / language (gamemaker) gives the source files as \"XML-files\". Each resource has its own XML file. Where the properties (code is a property) are stored inside xml tags. Is there a source control which can handle these? With subversion collisions don't seem to be handled correctly: when a collision happens, subversion breaks the XML structure. Which in turn breaks Gamemaker when updating. EDIT (editing here as comments don't seem to handle newlines :P), an example of a source file that got \"destroyed\" by subversion:               <object>       <spriteName>sprBall</spriteName>       <solid>0</solid>       <visible>-1</visible>       <depth>0</depth>       <persistent>0</persistent>     <<<<<<< .mine       <parentName>self</parentName>     =======       <parentName>objExplosion</parentName>     >>>>>>> .r16       <maskName>&lt;undefined&gt;</maskName>       <events/>     </object>      EDIT2: because of lack of experience with these tools, I asked the wrong question. So here a better wording: In the example above an xml-file-reader will crash when trying to read the file. However manually resolving the conflict is \"hard\". (And in extreme cases impossible). \"\" doesn't say anything in itself. - As the first question becomes \"parent name of what?\"- An object? - which object? In this case one can see it quickly. However if the xml file reaches 100+ lines with 6-7 layers of tags it becomes a mess just looking through it. Especially as many tags are not named the same as they are in the IDE. What I hoped to have is that the conflict to be changed in such a way an xml- reading library can read it. - For example that the .r16 change is displayed into a comment (or subtag/attribute).               <parentName>self      <!--.r16: objExplosion--></parentName>      From that point on I can program a tool to help analyzing the conflict. - I can use one of the many xml libraries to write a simple application visualizing the tree. Well I'm just surprised this hasn't been a problem to anyone else :/."}
{"_id": "89599", "title": "Preparing for TaoCP", "text": "I've tried to read this series of books many times. I recently bought Vol. 4 to add to my shelf. I do actually hope to one day read and understand it. I only seem to be able to get the most surface understanding of any of it though. When I was in college I did one of those design your own courses. I decided for myself to get through the initial part of Vol. 1, hoping I'd come out with the ability to read the rest. Was the one class I ended up pestering professors about on a daily basis and I still didn't get it. The proofs blew me away for the most part and though I could look at an answer in the back and usually, through many hours of struggling and help, figure out how it was derived...I could never actually do it. I know of the book Concrete Mathematics, and I've read parts of it. Still though, I think I need more foundation to put these topics in perspective and actually DO some of the exercises myself. What other things can I do in order to better myself enough to begin facing this mountain?"}
{"_id": "213066", "title": "Providing popups in an asp.net web application that contain server controls", "text": "What is the best way to provide popups that contain asp.net server controls? I am working on a .net site. I have search functionality where if someone presses a button a panel appears where they can input the search information. I would like this to be a popup instead. Normal JavaScript won't work because the controls operate server side. So how do I go about creating a popup that is interacted with via server side?"}
{"_id": "88645", "title": "Is dynamic language always interpreted?", "text": "Looking at most (if not all) dynamic languages [i.e Python, PHP, Perl and Ruby], they are all interpreted. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is there any example of dynamic language that goes through compilation phase? Is dynamic language identical with interpreted language?"}
{"_id": "213063", "title": "HasMany RESTfull Implementation", "text": "So I've been reading a lot on RESTfull design - specifically dealing with resources. Taking the canonical example of **Users** , **Posts** , and **Comments** , with relationships as: > Users ---(hasMany)---> Post ---(hasMany)---> Comment One may initially think to expose something like:               GET /users               GET /posts               GET /comments      POST /users              POST /posts              POST /comments      GET /users/id            GET /posts/id            GET /comments/id     PUT /users/id            PUT /posts/id            PUT /comments/id     DELETE /users/id         DELETE /posts/id         DELETE /comments/id      But then, say I want all _Comments_ of a certain _Post_ made by a particular _User_. I'd need to do something like:               GET /users/id        > someUser        > var postIds = someUser.posts()     GET /posts?id=<postIds[0]>&id=<postIds[1]>&...        > somePosts        >  **application user inspects posts to see which one they care about**        > var postOfInterest = somePosts[x];         > var postId = postOfInterest.id;     GET /comments?id=postId        > someComments (finally)      Suppose though I only care about a _Post_ or _Comment_ in the context of it's owner. Suppose a different resource structuring which may (or may not?) be more natural:               GET /users     POST /users       GET /users/id        PUT /users/id     DELETE /users/id          GET /users/id/posts     POST /users/id/posts     GET /users/id/posts/id     PUT /users/id/posts/id     DELETE /users/id/posts/id          GET /users/id/posts/id/comments     POST /users/id/posts/id/comments     GET /users/id/posts/id/comments/id     GET /users/id/posts/id/comments/id     GET /users/id/posts/id/comments/id      Which to me, is probably a better representation of what the resources are. Then all I need is:               GET /users/id/posts        > somePosts        > **application user inspects posts to see which one they care about**        > var postOfInterest = somePosts[x];        > var postId = postOfInterest.id;     GET /users/id/posts/postId/comments        > someComments      This just seems more like navigating a file system than the previous method - but I don't know if its RESTfull at all (perhaps this is what REST was trying to _get rid of_ ) because in order to access a _Comments_ resource, I need to know which _User_ and which _Post_ it belongs to. But the former requires 3 requests, while the latter requires just 2. Thoughts?"}
{"_id": "65146", "title": "Quick update of what's new in Java in the last 5 years?", "text": "It's been 5 years since I worked with Java, but I'm in the job market again and there seem to be more Java positions than C/C++ where I live now. Are there any resources to quickly come back up to speed? The last Java I developed with was 1.3. Also what are the good resources for java technologies like springs and struts?"}
{"_id": "215962", "title": "Refactoring this code that produces a reverse-lookup hash from another hash", "text": "This code is based on the idea of a Form Object http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/10/17/7-ways-to-decompose-fat- activerecord-models/ (see #3 if unfamiliar with the concept). My actual code in question may be found here: https://gist.github.com/frankjmattia/82a9945f30bde29eba88 The code takes a hash of objects/attributes and creates a reverse lookup hash to keep track of their delegations to do this.               delegate :first_name, :email, to: :user, prefix: true      But I am manually creating the delegations from a hash like this:               DELEGATIONS = {         user: [ :first_name, :email ]     }      At runtime when I want to look up the translated attribute names for the objects, all I have to go on are the delegated/prefixed (have to use a prefix to avoid naming collisions) attribute names like :user_first_name which aren't in sync with the rails i18n way of doing it:               en:       activerecord:         attributes:           user:             email: 'Email Address'      The code I have take the above delegations hash and turns it into a lookup table so when I override human_attribute_name I can get back the original attribute name and its class. Then I send #human_attribute_name to the original class with the original attribute name as its argument. The code I've come up with works but it is ugly to say the least. I've never really used #inject so this was a crash course for me and am quite unsure if this code effective way of solving my problem. Could someone recommend a simpler solution that does not require a reverse lookup table or does that seem like the right way to go? Thanks, \\- FJM"}
{"_id": "215967", "title": "what is the task of a coach in acm programming contests?", "text": "In the university that I am working they have decided to participate in the ACM regionals for the first time, they would like to appoint me like a coach. I have never been into that situation before and have not found so much information about it, so what is the real work of a coach in those contests? Sometimes I have found experienced programmers like coaches, but others are just people with no so good programming skills; so what is all about?"}
{"_id": "69827", "title": "Why does not thinking about a bug sometimes help you solve it?", "text": "Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon trying to fix a bug, which I thought to be trivial. I was going around in circles, not having a clue what was wrong. Rewriting large parts of the code. Checking on SO. Still no joy. So I went home, walked the dog, watched a little TV and just before I went to sleep, bingo I realized the obvious mistake I was making. This morning it took about 10 minutes to fix. While I was home, I wasn't actively thinking about the problem. Yet taking myself out of the situation enabled me to solve it. It isn't the first time it has happened, and I know that it is a fairly common way to solve a programming problem. I have even heard of people dreaming the answers. Why does this work? Perhaps more importantly, is there a good guide as to when you should take a break from a problem, how long should the break be, and after how long does leaving a problem stop being effective? I suppose I am trying to work out how to optimize this subconscious processing (or whatever is going on)"}
{"_id": "120741", "title": "Rewarding open-source contributors", "text": "Is there a service which could help me reward (pay) the contributors of an open-source project by their contribution to the project (Maybe using data from where the code is hosted GitHub)? Maybe by getting them to map their bank/paypal account to their account on a service like GitHub? How do projects currently reward their contributors? If I were to develop such a service, what would I need?"}
{"_id": "96282", "title": "Advertising clause in Apache License", "text": "The Apache 1.0 license includes an advertising clause: **Apache** : > All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this *   >  software must display the following acknowledgment: * \"This product > includes software developed by the Apache Group * for use in the Apache HTTP > server project (http://www.apache.org/).\" I find the phrase \"mentioning features or use of this software\" unclear if I distribute Apache 1.0 licensed code with other code. Does \"this software\" mean the Apache licensed component or the whole software package. For example, if I am only using Apache licensed code for encryption, does the advertising clause only appear if an advertisement mentions encryption or does it apply even if the advertisement doesn't mention any functionality provided by the Apache licensed code?"}
{"_id": "201699", "title": "Generic and type safe I/O model in any language", "text": "I am looking for an I/O model, in any programming language, that is _generic_ and _type safe_. By _genericity_ , I mean there should not be separate functions for performing the same operations on different devices (`read_file`, `read_socket`, `read_terminal`). Instead, a single `read` operation works on all `read`-able devices, a single `write` operation works on all `write`-able devices, and so on. By _type safety_ , I mean operations that do not make sense should not even be expressible in first place. Using the `read` operation on a non-`read`-able device ought to cause a type error at compile time, similarly for using the `write` operation on a non-`write`-able device, and so on. Is there any generic and type safe I/O model?"}
{"_id": "160949", "title": "Why do we need to separate classes which have different functionality?", "text": "Why do we need to separate classes which have different functionality? For example, why should we separate a car class from a paint class. What would be the OOD concept behind this? Is there anything else apart from code reuse and modularity?"}
{"_id": "160946", "title": "Running time insensitive to input?", "text": "I read the following in Algorithms 4th Edition by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne: > Our first qualitative observation about most programs is that there is a > problem size that characterizes the difficulty of the computational task. > Normaly, the problem size is either the size of the input or the value of a > command-line argument. Intuitively, the running time should increase with > problem size, but the question is by how much it increases... and > Another qualitative observation for many programs is that the running time > is relatively insensitive to the input itself; it depends primarily on the > problem size. If this relationship does not hold, we need to take steps to > better understand and perhaps better control the runnig time's sensitivity > to the input. But it does ofter hold, so we now focus on the goal of better > quantifying the relationship between problem size and running time My question is, if the input size (problem size of the program) increases, and thus the running time also increases, **why** would the running time of the program be relatively **insensitive** to the input? I'm confused."}
{"_id": "160947", "title": "Should session variables be avoided?", "text": "I used to heavily rely on session variables in the past, but have recently found many of them to be unnecessary, using things like query string parameters instead. A colleague of mine refuses to use session variables. Is this a realistic goal and should session variables be avoided for any practical reasons? Can session variables be avoided completely (except for session cookies to allow logins) and would this result in better designs? Some of the reasons my colleague has for not using them:   * Untyped nature of session variables    * Session time-outs causing loss of state    * Global scope nature of session variables    * Load balancing servers losing sessions (.Net specific?)    * Application pools/servers restarting   * They are unnecessary"}
{"_id": "160941", "title": "Choosing the right license for a testing framework", "text": "I've finished a first working, releasable version of a testing framework. Prior to release, I want to apply a proper license to it. Normally I'd choose something like GPLv3 but here I am pretty unsure. If I put the testing framework under GPLv3, does that mean users won't be able to test their commercial applications without also putting them under the GPL? Would a license like the MIT be a better fit? I've just had a look at several popular testing frameworks (JUnit, Jasmine) and none of them uses the GPL. **EDIT** Forgot to mention the project is open sourced."}
{"_id": "150798", "title": "On what name should I claim copyright in open source software?", "text": "When I want to use the Apache 2.0 licence in my project, I should include this in the comments of my source code:               Copyright [yyyy] [name of copyright owner]          Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the \"License\");     you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.     You may obtain a copy of the License at              http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0          Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software     distributed under the License is distributed on an \"AS IS\" BASIS,     WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.     See the License for the specific language governing permissions and     limitations under the License.      What name should I fill in for `[name of copyright owner]`? I am currently working alone on this project, but I'm going to release the source code so there might be other contributors in the near future."}
{"_id": "155549", "title": "How to learn Cloud Computing and Big Data at home?", "text": "I want to learn Cloud Computing and Big Data at home.   1. Is it possible to learn these technologies on home PC?      2. Which technologies to learn in Cloud Computing?    3. Which technologies to learn Big Data (Hadoop)?"}
{"_id": "150795", "title": "How to store cache?", "text": "The data in my website is stored in many different tables(friends,relatives,etc) and every-time I have to query each and every table. But all this data is subject centric. E.g. data for a person is of the form               data[301]={             \"pid\"=>301,             \"friends\"=>array(),             \"relatives\"=>array(),             \"interests\"=>array()             }      So I want to store it in a cache in the db (and hence query only one table). But how do I store such data? should I be using blobs?"}
{"_id": "214380", "title": "OO way to gather together data from multiple objects without getters", "text": "I'm writing a system that has a number of objects with data in them. For example one object has a user name attribute, another has a date, another shopping cart item etc. I'm making an object that generates a MD5 hash based on a concatenated string of these values. So for example `md5(username + date + special_number + cart_id)`. The way I was going to do this was pass the md5_generator object to each other the other objects in turn allowing them to call an `add_x` method (eg `add_username`) on the generator to add their specific piece of data. This avoids pulling the data out of each object, which I want to avoid. I'm wondering if this is the best idea or if there is some simpler OO pattern I'm missing?"}
{"_id": "154497", "title": "Is it necessary to memorize code?", "text": "I am a new developer, who just got hired at a big company. I don't know how but I guess they are desperate. However, I am well-versed with HTML5/CSS3 though things change and new things are released and I keep up with as much as I can. But this job required me to hand-code Javascript, know Jquery and Ajax. I have been exposed to this a bit but I am not sure if I can hand-code Javascript. My question is, is it necessary to memorize all there is about Javascript or are there a few key things that I should know how to hand-code because looking at javascript code it seems there are lots of lines code! Please point me in the right direction."}
{"_id": "154494", "title": "Efficient way to compare scene-graph trees", "text": "I'm designing a scene graph system, where it is required to compare two trees. The trees are populated with individual objects, each with varied number of children; and they have a root.   Eg: Parent: Scene, Children: Bullet1, Bullet 2, Player What is a good way to compare two such tree? I'm using C++ for the code.   Also, this question is an off-shoot from this question"}
{"_id": "234603", "title": "Blocks of Javascript in Web Pages", "text": "I'm trying to find the best patterns for javascript usage in my sites, and in doing so I tend to look at source code at some sites (meetup.com, facebook.com, etc). One thing that sticks out at me is the fact these sites seem to compress all of their javascript and place it in the actual page rather than using a `<script src=\"....\" type=\"text/javascript\">` My question(s): 1: How are they compressing (or how would one compress) the javascript? Should I use YUIcompress on every page call? 2: What is the benefit of doing things this way rather than importing separate scripts? I would think the separate scripts would make the page itself load quicker. Thanks"}
{"_id": "154498", "title": "GCC: assembly listing for IA64 without an Itanium machine", "text": "I need to try the following thing: I would like to compile some simple C code samples and see the assembly listing generated by GCC for IA64 architecture, i.e. I just want to run GCC with the -S switch and see the resultant .s file. I don't have an Itanium machine, so in order to do it myself I'll probably need a cross-compiling version of GCC built for x86 RedHat. I'm not interested in full cross-compilation, meaning that I don't need to generate the binaries at all. The easiest way, of course, would be to find an Itanium machine with with GCC and just try it there. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have access to any. Another option is to build a cross-compiling version GCC on my RedHat, but apparently that's quite an endeavor for someone who hasn't done it before (I assume that the fact that I only need .s output doesn't make it simpler). What other options are there, if any? Maybe there's some sort of a web front to an Itanium GCC compiler on the Net (something like Comeau Online or ideone.com, but with .s output)? Anything else? I would appreciate any help."}
{"_id": "192068", "title": "Why many web developers use java programming language for web development?", "text": "I know a lot of programming languages \u200b\u200bthat can be used to web development like PHP, ASP, etc. but why many web developers use java programming language for web development?"}
{"_id": "240988", "title": "Why isn't Haskell able to optimize infinite lists?", "text": "Lets say you've got a list `l = [0, 2..]` and you want to get the `n`th number when `n` is pretty large, say `n=123456789`. So you call `l !! 123456789`. On my machine, this results in `out of memory`. So why aren't Haskell capable of realizing that the number at index `n` is `2n`, and making a call such as `l !! 1230981237` trivial? Or a more extreme example, `[1..] !! 123456789`. Shouldn't Haskell be able to realize that every number in `[1,1..]` is `1`?"}
{"_id": "192062", "title": "I have made extensive use of Apache Commons libraries. I am now to release my (non-profit) application. Is there anything I should worry about?", "text": "I have developed a Java program for academic purposes (non-profit, non-open- source). In the process, I made extensive use of many apache common libraries. The program is now to be set free on the net, so I was wondering what my precautions should be. My program will (preferably) consist of a single .jar file, having all the apache commons .jar files living inside it (I didn't modify them in any way). Is the described approach just enough? Or do I have to take any more steps such that I don't commit an infraction? Thanks"}
{"_id": "192063", "title": "Converting 'char*' to 'char'. Am I passing this array correctly?", "text": "So my CS professor gave the whole class a simple assignment. \"Write a recursive function that will swap the order of a section in an array of chars.\" I thought to myself, \"Easy. I'll finish this up in about 5 minutes and I'll get to work on my Trig homework before I leave.\" This is not what happened. An hour later, the professor and I are both wondering what on Earth is going wrong.               #include<iostream>     void swap(char charList, int start, int stop);          int main()     {         char myList[] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j'};         int size = 9;         printCharList(myList, size);         swap(myList, 3, 5);           //<--- It doesn't seem to like this call         return 0;     }          void swap(char charList[], int start, int stop)     {         char temp         if(start < stop)         {             temp = charList[stop];             charList[start] = charList[stop];             charList[stop] = temp;             swap(charList, start+1, stop-1);         }         else             std::cout << \"start > stop\\n\";     }      The code is stupidly simple, so you can imagine my confusion when it refused to compile. It keeps throwing up an error message suggesting that I am trying to convert a pointer to a char, but I'm almost positive that I've done no such thing. I'm sure the problem is right in front of my face, but I have had no luck in finding it. Could you help a guy out?"}
{"_id": "201528", "title": "Architecture for writing add-ins for closed-source software", "text": "currently I'm designing an add-in for the modelling tool Enterprise Architect. The general architecture is shown in the picture below. ![General add-in architecture](http://i.stack.imgur.com/PoJaJ.jpg) Basically every action where the add-in can react to is triggered by PreDefinedEvents for which the add-in can provide callback functions. These callback functions are the starting point for building whatever application someone would like to put on top EA. One has access to the Model Database (.mdb file) through the API (which uses closed-source algorithms) or by direct access, which can cause of course inconsistencies and is not safe against DB structure changes. The current approach from previous projects was to build monolithic classes called EA_XXX_Utilities containing a huge amount of static methods. All of these methods get as argument a reference to the model repository which is stored inside the Closed Source and work with it. I think that this approach is not very handy related to maintainability and extendability, which will have high priority in future projects, so I'm trying to find the best way which let's me fulfill the requirements according to these quality aspects. Every requirement basically consists of two parts:   * modify the underlying model   * present parts of the model in a custom way This smells for me like a kind of MVC architecture, but my major problem is that if I stored the reference the the Model Repository somewhere in my application then I would have to somehow get notified of all changes which the closed source algorithms do to the database. But not all of them are forwarded to the add-in, so at some time the model stored in the add-in will get inconsistent. This leads to the question: **How can I design the add-in, so that it has some architecture in it at all and even better satisfy the quality aspects?**"}
{"_id": "192066", "title": "Programming methodology - best way to level up?", "text": "Ok, so I'm at a point where I think I have my basics down. I'd like to think I'm just starting to become an intermediate dev. So, how do I level up here? It feels like I have reached my threshold, but I really want to break it, and move ahead, do more crazy stuff (for context, I'm talking about programming). So, what would be the best strategy to achieve this? I'm working on multiple side projects of my own (I'm a student). How should I approach learning to program from here? What I currently do is, if I'm unable to understand a how to solve a problem, Google or SO it, find an answer, modify it as required and use it. It this the correct way to go? Is there a better way? How do I go about learning about new concepts, new classes etc. in an organized manner, one that doesn't overload my brain? I know it's practice, practice, practice, but the question is what to practice? There's just so much and only so much I can do. Share your knowledge! PS: My primary field is Java, so I tagged it for some specific advice as well. **EDIT** : As I said, I'm a student, NOT in CSE major, so I don't have any clients or \"requirements\" per se. So what's best strategies to develop my own projects? I have done a few projects and learned a lot from them, but is there a guide about standards or conventions about projects? How do I structure my projects? How do i build them efficiently?"}
{"_id": "240982", "title": "Can JSP Expression Language provide type safety like scriptlets in Eclipse IDE?", "text": "Almost everywhere you can read that you should use EL instead of scriptles in JSP. And **I agree that you should not use any JAVA code in JSP except for calling getter methods on model objects**. This is quite obvious for me and I don't need any clarification here. But there is this one thing that I really cannot understand is the lack of support for EL in Eclipse IDE. Let's start with comparing some code. First EL example:               ${user.name}     ${user.surname}      And now some scriptlet/JSP expression example:               <jsp:useBean id=\"user\" class=\"com.mycompany.User\">         <%= user.getName() %>         <%= user.getSurname() %>     </jsp:useBean>      It clearly visible that EL is more elegant. However, Eclipse doesn't provide any autocompletion nor refactoring support for EL. And for JSP expressions it works like a charm. If you delete getName() method from Java class, JSP validator will show you an error during compilation. If you rename the method, all the connected JSP files will update automatically. Moreover, even when you are looking for references to method getName(), Eclipse will show you all calls across Java/JSP files (provided you used JSP expressions/scriptlets). And none of these features are available for EL. Some of the programmers might say that they don't really care and EL syntax is much better for them, period. But I work with a quite complex legacy code (that I didn't write) in my current project and believe me that the refactoring of EL/model objects is a nightmare. There are a lot of DTO objects extending and composing other DTO objects that are being used on multiple JSP views. Every change is difficult, because I cannot tell at compile time if I didn't break anything. Based on that experience I just cannot understand how anybody could suggest using EL instead of JSP expressions. Please tell me that I'm missing something and that either using JSP expressions is correct (in my example) or that there is a way to enable all the advantages of using type safety with EL. EDIT:   I know that IntelliJ has better support for JSP, but I would like to focus on Eclipse first. I hope that there are still some people working on JSP projects on Eclipse/Spring Tool Suite."}
{"_id": "19317", "title": "How do you keep from running into the same problems over and over?", "text": "I keep running into the same problems. The problem is irrelevant, but the fact that I keep running into is completely frustrating. The problem only happens once every, 3-6 months or so as I stub out a new iteration of the project. I keep a journal every time, but I spend at least a day or two each iteration trying to get the issue resolved. How do you guys keep from making the same mistakes over and over?   I've tried a journal but it apparently doesn't work for me. * * * [Edit]   A few more details about the issue: Each time I make a new project to hold the files, I import a particular library. The library is a C++ library which imports `glew.h` and `glx.h` GLX redefines `BOOL` and that's not kosher since `BOOL` is a keyword for ObjC. I had a fix the last time I went through this. I `#ifndef` the header in the library to exclude GLEW and GLX and everything worked hunky-dory. This time, however, I do the same thing, use the same `#ifndef` block but now it throws a bunch of errors. I go back to the old project, and it works. New project no-worky. It seems like it does this every time, and my solution to it is new each time for some reason. I know `#defines` and `#include`s are one of the trickiest areas of C++ (and cross-language with Objective-C), but _I had this working_ and now it's not."}
{"_id": "16165", "title": "Why is Java the lingua franca at so many institutions?", "text": "**EDIT: This question at first seems to be bashing Java, and I guess at this point it is a bit. However, the bigger point I am trying to make is why any one single language is chosen as the one end all be all solution to all problems. Java happens to be the one that's used so that's the one I had to beat on here, but I'm not intentionality ripping Java a new one :)** I don't like Java in most academic settings. I'm not saying the language itself is bad -- it has several extremely desirable aspects, most importantly the ability to run without recompilation on most any platform. Nothing wrong with using the language for Your Next App ^TM. (Not something I would personally do, but that's more because I have less experience with it, rather than it's design being poor) I think it is a waste that high level CS courses are taught using Java as a language. Too many of my co-students cannot program worth a damn, because they don't know how to work in a non-garbage-collected world. They don't fundamentally understand the machines they are programming for. When someone can work outside of a garbage collected world, they can work inside of one, but not vice versa. GC is a tool, not a crutch. But the way it is used to teach computer science students is a as a crutch. Computer science should not teach an entire suite of courses tailored to a single language. Students leave with the idea that all good design is idiomatic Java design, and that Object Oriented Design is the ONE TRUE WAY THAT IS THE ONLY WAY THINGS CAN BE DONE. Other languages, at least one of them not being a garbage collected language, should be used in teaching, in order to give the graduate a better understanding of the machines. It is an embarrassment that somebody with a PHD in CS from a respected institution cannot program their way out of a paper bag. What's worse, is that when I talk to those CS professors who actually do understand how things operate, they share feelings like this, that we're doing a disservice to our students by doing everything in Java. (Note that the above would be the same if I replaced it with any other language, generally using a single language is the problem, not Java itself) In total, I feel I can no longer respect any kind of degree at all -- when I can't see those around me able to program their way out of fizzbuzz problems. Why/how did it get to be this way?"}
{"_id": "97628", "title": "Is there any reason not to let your group of developers install third party Visual Studio add-ons?", "text": "Is there any risk in allowing your team of developers to install whatever Visual Studio Add-ons they want? Is it a good idea to allow them this freedom?"}
{"_id": "90935", "title": "Isn't functional paradigm too divergent with underlying hardware to be generally efficient?", "text": "Inspired by a question from SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6623391/how-to-gain-control-of-a-5gb-heap- in-haskell It can be a long debate about FP's numerous advantages and disadvantages, but for now, I'd like to narrow the scope to _principal efficiency_ of FP on modern hardware. Thesis: > Functional paradigm implies immutability and statelessness (?), but the > hardware we run functional programs on are stateful finite automata. > Translation of 'pure functional' program to a 'stateful hardware' > representation leaves little control to programmer, brings overhead (?) and > limits the use of hardware capabilities (?). Am I right or wrong in the questioned statements? Can it be proven that FP does / doesn't imply principal performance penalties on modern general-purpose computer architecture? **EDIT:** As I've already stated in response to some comments, the question isn't about implementation performance and details. It is about **presence or absence of principal overhead** , which running FP on stateful automata may bring."}
{"_id": "60519", "title": "Application internal API", "text": "I am currently building a small python `CLI` (Command Line Interface) application with ambition. In the first development phase I would concentrate on making it work through the `CLI` interface only, but in the second phase I will make it work through a `GUI`. To avoid a lot of refactoring of the functionnalities and to keep both version running on a similar code base I was thinking of developping my own internal API to handle processing. IE:   * Loading the config file   * Saving the config file   * Logging info (through `CLI` or log files)   * And the general process of the application I was wondering where to start and what to keep in mind while building an internal API? I already watched the following presentation : How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters or and read the text version ** What I mean by `API` is : If i want to load the configs I would only have to do something like `config = api.load.config(path/to/config/file)` and i would get a `dictionnary` (or `object`, yet to be determined) without having to detect the type of file and if the file exists, that part would be handled by the internal `API`'s framework"}
{"_id": "215380", "title": "Is ROA a specific form of doing SOA?", "text": "I have read somewhere that ROA (Resource Oriented Architecture) is SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) with specific constraints added. SOA is the abstract concept of combining discrete pieces of software and ROA is an implementation of SOA with all of the constraints of RESTful services applied to it: > SOA = the concept > > ROA = the concept + specific implementation details I also had my share of posts saying that ROA is different than SOA, then simply fallback to statements like \"ROA is REST\" and \"SOA is SOAP\" and presenting the same more or less pertinent comparisons and differences between SOAP and REST. So just to clear up my confusion: **Is ROA a specific form of doing SOA?**"}
{"_id": "215382", "title": "Browser-based GUI for a python application", "text": "I want to create a web/browser-based GUI for a command-line python application. The goal is to make use of HTML/JS technologies to create this GUI. As the application itself, it needs to run on Linux and Windows, and the interface will be accessible only from localhost (not exposed to internet). The GUI will contain 5 to 10 pages. I don't want a traditional desktop GUI that includes HTML/JS, but just a bunch of html files and some kind of controller between those and the application. I also want to make use of asynchronous programming (ajax like) so I can load and print data in the GUI without refreshing the whole page. I'd probably use jQuery for that and a couple other things. How would you recommend to design this? Performance is not the key here, I'm rather looking at reliability, portability and simplicity. I'm thinking of using a lightweight python HTTP server / framework (like CherryPy) and maybe later a Python templating system (at the begining it will just be a couple pages). **EDIT:**   I'm looking for ideas/recommendations how to build this, not for alternatives to browser/web-based GUI."}
{"_id": "60515", "title": "Is it better to have C developers learn Flash, than hire Flash guys?", "text": "Last year, my department developed web based gaming, and needed Flash. It was difficult to manage. The Flash guys didn't fit in regardless of skill or popularity in the office. Maybe it's prejudice from the AS 2.0 days, or C programmers do things differently in my department. I don't get it! **EXAMPLE**   They hired a BAD Flash Guy used Tweener and Keyframes (they hated him). Then they hired a GOOD Flash Guy that was expert at AS 3.0 and followed best OOP standards (they liked him). The result was the same, the C programmers overwrote all of they're code, even the GOOD Flash Guy's code. **QUESTION**   **Is it better to have C developers learn Flash, than hire Flash guys?** No offense to Flash guy's, I'm trying to understand this on a project management level.   Thanks,"}
{"_id": "203199", "title": "Suggestion for a Non-CSE developer", "text": "Due to financial problems, I couldn't go for CSE in my country and had to settle for a BCIS honors degree. Now, after quite some time, when I want to go for a higher position in software development then I get asked about algorithms and basics that I have missed back in uni. This is affecting my chances of getting selected and I cannot afford that any longer. My question would be that what you would suggest smn like me to do in order to cover the 'basics' without any university or educational institute e.g. books,learn C++,etc? Any suggestion (including -ve) is welcomed and appreciated."}
{"_id": "90938", "title": "Anti Identity Column", "text": "I recently came across some code which generates an _identity_ value for a key:               DECLARE @ID INT;          SELECT @ID = MAX(ID) + 1 FROM Person;          INSERT INTO [Person]         ([ID], [FirstName], [LastName])     VALUES         (@ID, @FirstName, @LastName);      I brought this to the attention of a coworker who claimed that not using a built in auto incrementing field is a perfectly reasonable approach to database design and in some circles a best practice. The coworker's rational is that it gives you more control over the values and allows you to manipulate the data more easily. I could only counter by pointing out that it just seems silly to do implement your own version of a feature that is supported by the server. And it is extremely error prone should someone decide to use a different method to insert a record. Are there really any good reasons not to use an Identity column when all you need is an artificial key on a table?"}
{"_id": "60512", "title": "VS2010 SP1 & Resharper - flickering editor?", "text": "I have VS2010 (Ultimate), plus Resharper, and since SP1, I've noticed a regular and really irritating bug where the editor tab that I'm working on temporarily disappears, suddenly reappearing a second or two later. Has anyone else noticed anything similar? Is it a Resharper issue? Appreciate any advice."}
{"_id": "148278", "title": "Ajax race conditions", "text": "Is there a pattern or standard way to handle Ajax race conditions? Take the following example. You have two tables. Clicking a row on table 1 removes the data from DB and then updates table 2 (which would now be showing all the rows of table 1 less the row that was clicked). If someone where to click a bunch of rows in fast succession you could get a scenario where table 2 doesn't update for all the clicks do to timing/lag issues. What might be a good way to approach this? I was thinking of using a possible queue but that kind of defeats the purpose of doing it asynchronously. However I would still have the benefit of the UI not locking."}
{"_id": "235304", "title": "Tracking translations in localized software", "text": "I created and maintain an open source Android app. Recently someone offered to translate my app into several other languages. At the same time, development continues on the app which can sometimes add string resources which need to be translated. How can I ensure that the additional string resources are translated with as little pain as possible? In particular, the translator doesn't seems to have very minimal technical skills. I think that teaching him version control won't be very helpful. Also asking him to manually comb through the updated English resources for changes can be error prone. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "121831", "title": "What are the essential things one needs to know about UML?", "text": "I want my scribbles of a program's design and behaviour to become more streamlined and have a common language with other developers. I looked at UML and _in principle_ it seems to be what I'm looking for, but it seems to be overkill. The information I found online also seems very bloated and academic. How can I understand UML in plain-English way, enough to be able to explain it to my colleagues? What are the canonical resources for understanding UML at a ground level?"}
{"_id": "250913", "title": "What are the boundaries of Domain Events?", "text": "As I get it, domain events imply loose coupling and separation of responsibilities. That's fine. But if domain events are allowed to cross aggregate's boundaries then it is a question how to guarantee that all concerned entities are materialized from persistence storage? For now it looks like events can only bubble through aggregate to the root or be handled by services triggering in-transaction scripts. In the letter case I believe the targeting specifics of the event is lost. Again and again My questions arise from the fact that the whole model does not live in the memory."}
{"_id": "250910", "title": "Observing progress of a distributed system", "text": "For a distributed system, there is a requirement of observing the progress of smaller applications on distributed computers (runtime 5 - 20 minutes). There is a web fronted, which right now only shows a list of those smaller applications (called jobs), with the state of each of them, like `preparing`, `running`, `finished` So in web-ui, an administrator can see:   * name   * state   * starting time   * call parameters from any computer in the network, possibly for the whole system. Each of the properties is stored in the database, so each state change leads to a call to write to the database. There might be thousends of those jobs at a time. **Description of the distributed system:** Central components, served at one location only:   * Database server (holding results of the jobs to runs statistics, have an overview of jobs run the last three month etc)   * Application server (glassfish, java, runs central server software) Distributed components, each site has at least one, connected via internet / WAN area: (probably about 20 sites, each has 1..4 Job controllers, each job controller runs about 20 jobs in parallel)   * Job-controller component (windows, c#, wcf, starts and observes small jobs)   * Small applications running tasks, started by Job-Controller (the jobs) So, for a vague estimation:               20 sites * 4 Job-controllers * 20 jobs = 1600 jobs in parallel          each of which runs from 0 to 100 percent in about 5 minutes on average,     resulting in a progress update each 3 seconds.          giving 533 progress updates per second (over the internet)      Now the customer wants to see something like a progressbar for each of these jobs. At first, I thought this might lead to a high network traffic and to a vast amount of traffic on the database server. I do not think that writing progress like 1%, 2%, 3% to the database is a good idea. The runtime of those jobs is not very easy to be estimated good (so it is near enough to a real result), but each job can tell very well what his progress is. **What would be a good architectural approach to observe progress of possibly thousends of those mini-jobs?** (Please note that a mixed infrastructure is given. There is the constraint that the system will be built upon that. so: Central glassfish + java and per site Windows + WCF + C#) Right now I think that each Job-controller could update the progress of all jobs it controls every 10 seconds at once. Would that be an acceptable approach?"}
{"_id": "52798", "title": "Good books on how to manage yourself and tackle programming tasks?", "text": "There seem to be a lot of programming books on coding style and best practices and then of course a lot of books on organizational or team process e.g. agile/scrum/kanban, etc. I'm looking for books that discuss the process and method of solving programming problems."}
{"_id": "27935", "title": "Ways for beginner programmer to practice with C++", "text": "So i just finished my first semester of college. In my intro to programming class we made a bunch of super interesting ( _sarcasm_ ) console applications. Any suggestions on ways other than just messing around with console applications for a beginner C++ student to improve?"}
{"_id": "62917", "title": "API Design Question", "text": "I am currently designing a API and have come to a slight design issue and was hoping for a few other opinions. My url structure for accessing basic data from the API is: /clientName/appName/methodName/. Basically each client may have a different set of methods for each application, so the base application class is extended through each client if the file exists. My question is with limiting the data pulled back through a GET request. Should the limiting number be appended to the URL or is that something that should be handled through POST request only? Should it even be a option? Looking for best practices in this scenario, thanks."}
{"_id": "62915", "title": "Test task : real tasks or not?", "text": "Just had a discussion with coworkers about test tasks for programmers. Is it morally appropriate to ask programmers do some helpful work for the project in their test tasks or such company just uses the job applicants to do job for free? Is it ethical to do it?"}
{"_id": "64362", "title": "Does TDD formally use black box testing to supplement unit tests?", "text": "Unit tests are never perfect at capturing functionality, particularly in certain parts of an application (such as the GUI), so everyone needs some measure black box testing. **Does TDD have anything to say regarding black box testing?** If it does not say much, could it be true that while writing unit tests is the developers job, functional black box tests fall into a different domain like that of a business analyst or a dedicated tester?"}
{"_id": "215034", "title": "Test Doubles : Do they go in \"source packages\" or \"test packages\"?", "text": "I've got a couple of data access objects (DefaultPersonServices.class, DefaultAddressServices.class) which is responsible for various CRUD operations in a database. A few different classes use these services, but as the services requires that a connection is established with a database I can't really use them in unit tests as they take too long. Thus, I'd like to create a test doubles for them and simply do FakePersonServices.class and FakeAddressService.class implementations which I can use throughout testing. Now, this is all good (I assume)...but my question relates to where I put the test doubles. Should I keep them along with the default implementations (aka \"real\" implementations) or should I keep them in a corresponding test package. The default implementations are found in **Source Packages : com.company.data.services**. Should I keep the test doubles here too, or should the test doubles rather be in **Test Packages : com.company.data.services**?"}
{"_id": "153265", "title": "iOS: Versioned static frameworks vs Git Submodules and included code", "text": "For the last couple of years I've been building static frameworks of common APIs for my iOS projects. I can build a universal binary containing all the architectures (i386, armv6, armv7) and wrap it up in a .framework directory structure. I then stored this in a directory based on the version of the framework. For example `..../myAPI/v0.1.0/myAPI.framework` Once I have this framework I can then easily add it to a project and if I want to advance the version, merely change the framework search paths to the later version. This works, but the approach is very similar to what I would use in the Java world. Recently I've been reading about using Git submodules and static framework sub projects in XCode 4. Im wondering if my currently approach is something that I should consider retiring and what the pros/cons are of the new approach. I'm weary of just including code because I've already had issues in a work project which had (effectively) multiple versions of a third party API. Any opinions?"}
{"_id": "153264", "title": "Integrating different branches from external sources into a single Mercurial repository", "text": "**Edit** : Making this even clearer as the bounty is about to expire: is there a way of importing history (pulling from different SCM) directly into a specific branch with Mercurial? * * * I'm currently working in a company using Perforce and am making way for distributed version control with Mercurial. I've had success importing Perforce history using the **perfarce** (quite a suitable name, I laugh every time I see/say it) however, this only works with a single branch at a time. Here's how my P4 integration setup works:   * In perforce, create a \"client\", which is kind of a description of what you will be constantly updating/checking-out. This can only address one branch at a time (trunk or other).   * Once you do this, run `hg clone p4://<server>/<client_name>`   * Go to .hg/hgrc and put the perforce path line: `perforce = p4://<server>/<client_name>`   * Work normally with the code under mercurial, do `hg pull perforce` to sync up, `hg push` to export a changelist What I'd like to be able to do is have a perforce path per branch and have everything work in the same repository. Now, pushing is not a problem, however, if I pull the history from another branch it would end up at the default branch. I'd like to be able to do something like `hg pull perforce-R5` and have it land in mercurial's R5 branch. Even if I have no merging history, it would be sweet enough to be able to preserve the branch's history. There are also other plugins for CVCSs that let you integrate mercurial, but AFAIK the subversion one has the same problem. I don't think there is a straight-through way of doing this, but as long as I could automate the process with some hooks and scripts in a single Mercurial machine, that would be good enough. * * * **Edit** : To make things a little clearer:   * Perforce **trunk** is mapped to Mercurial's **default** branch   * Perforce **R1** branch should be mapped to Mercurial's **release-1** branch (same for R2, R3, etc.)   * When I tell Mercurial to pull from perforce (i.e. `hg pull perforce`, where \"perforce\" is the name of the path pointing to the Perforce client) it should pull the Perforce trunk into Mercurial's default.   * When I tell Mercurial to pull from perforce-R1 (i.e. `hg pull perforce-R1`, where \"perforce-R1\" is the path to the R1 client) it should pull the Perforce R1 branch to Mercurial's \"release-1\" branch. **THIS IS THE PART I'M ASKING ABOUT**."}
{"_id": "153266", "title": "What operating systems are used in airplanes, and what programming languages are they developed in?", "text": "I was wondering if anyone knows what is the operating system used in commercial airplanes (say Boeing or Airbus). Also, what is the (preferred) real-time programing language? I heard that Ada is used in Boeing, so my question is - why Ada? what are the criteria the Boeing-guys had to choose this language? (I guess Java wouldn't be a great choice if exactly on lift-off the garbage collector wakes up)."}
{"_id": "80516", "title": "Long-Term Strategy For Implementing a QA System?", "text": "I have been given the task of implementing some QA testing into a massive existing system. We're going to start out with system-level tests and might add unit tests if it is deemed necessary. I don't really know where to start. I'm thinking of creating a new project in the main solution dedicated entirely to QA testing. From there, I'll just add system-level NUnit tests that can be run automatically from that project. How does that sound? I want to make sure that I make the right decisions now so that the QA system doesn't get messy and overly complicated in the future. Since it will be running alongside a big system, I anticipate that it too will grow to be a big system, which makes it vulnerable to becoming a cumbersome mess of code. Any suggestions would be great!"}
{"_id": "80515", "title": "How to make a training session effective?", "text": "In recent months I've been working on a project, and two weeks from now I'm leaving the company. I've scheduled a 4-hour training session next week in order to train my colleagues (the team leader and fellow programmers) on this project. One of the programmers has already written some code in it, so I'm not leaving the team with zero knowledge, but I'd like the others to be experts as well. The project has a few thousand lines of code, it includes some concepts which are new to the team (such as ORM and IoC), and due to its central role it will probably be heavily maintained in the future. So far I've written two presentations about different modules of the project, so these presentations can be used both for the current session and for training programmers that will come to the team in the future. From your experience, how can I make this session fun and effective? I really want this application to be maintained well, I'd like to leave a \"fine legacy\", so that the code will be maintained in the same spirit that I intended it to be. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "198743", "title": "Run Time Type Identification using Composition", "text": "It is said that programmers should prefer composition over inheritance. I was wondering if RTTI can be achieved as easily using composition."}
{"_id": "251069", "title": "In a REST service project, where should we put code that calls a third party REST API?", "text": "My project is organized in layers like   * Configuration   * Controller   * Service   * Repository   * Domain Our REST Controller is in the Controller layer. We need to connect to another API via REST calls and I'm not sure if I should make a new Controller or do it in the Service layer. I'm going to implement the REST calls with Spring's RestTemplate. The way our API will be used is like this:   * REST call is made that goes through our REST endpoint.    * Our REST endpoint will call the third party API (either by calling another controller method or a service method).   * We will then do a conversion between our format and the third party format   * Then we will return the JSON of our format back to the client"}
{"_id": "152795", "title": "PHP Parallel Requests and Session Stability", "text": "I've experienced a lot of issues that were the result of the nature of PHP living within the bounds of a stateless HTTP request, especially considering the asynchronous environment expected of modern web applications. Namely, regeneration of session handles can cause session self-destructs if parallel requests are occurring. Additionally, unless a request locks the session for its duration, session updates on parallel requests are at risk of conflicting and being overwritten by the other. If they do lock the session, it forces serialization of the requests. What did you find to be the most effective response to this problem? Do you just live with it and implement workarounds? Did you ultimately migrate to a different platform that didn't have this flaw? Or is there a PHP solution to this problem I'm not aware of?"}
{"_id": "118222", "title": "Preparing for algorithm-related interview questions", "text": "So, I've just realized that some employers may ask an interview question that is relative to some complex mathematical algorithm. It seems like answering these questions is a skill in its own right. After all, I'm quite good at developing algorithms when the need arises, such as graphical algorithms, generic problem solving, or basic pattern matching, but I am not a mathematician. These problems require a completely different type of algorithmic thinking not necessarily had by most programmers, so where do I develop these skills? Is there a book I can read on this subject?"}
{"_id": "251062", "title": "How many bytes can I fit into a QR code, with low error correction?", "text": "I need to fit at least 300 bytes (or much much more) into a QR code and think I can do this by mapping each byte into the associated ISO/IEC 8859-1 character located here. Since each byte (1-255) will only have one character associated with it, I can test the utility of the idea with this demo (the Email link has the dense QR I'm referring to) Since I know that camera resolution plays a factor here, among other things I'm unaware of, I'd like to get a sense of how many individual characters I can put into a QR code before running into issues. Any sizing, or resolution tips would be helpful. The other assumption I have is that a QR reader can read every ISO/IEC 8859-1 character and pass it to my app"}
{"_id": "234606", "title": "How to choose between different open-source libraries?", "text": "Recently, I found multiple GitHub repositories that would allow me to perform the same task. (In my case, assess the readability of text strings.) It made me wonder, what are the best practices for programmers to choose between different open-source libraries, and in particular, libraries hosted on GitHub? GitHub statistics of users who watch, star, or fork a repository are one option, but are there others?"}
{"_id": "190513", "title": "How to create an automated email in several languages (multipart/alternative)?", "text": "I need to send automated emails to customers whose language I am not sure about. 90 % are french and would probably not be able to read mails in english. The other 10 % would probably be able to read in english and clearly not in french. I don't know what their language is. I investigated the multipart/alternative that looked promising, give the mailer several variants and he selects the best one. ( see: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1766.txt ) Unfortunately no mailer seems to care about that, they always show the last part... did someone manage to make multi-lingual mail with automatic selection of the best version for the users? Is there some kind of trick to know? Do you have another solution?"}
{"_id": "190511", "title": "Designing a loosely coupled app -> stored proc interface for PostgreSQL. A couple of questions", "text": "I am in the middle of designing a next generation database access class for one of the programs I am building. We use PostgreSQL exclusively. Our current approach is procedural (largely inspired believe it or not by RESTful web services, but paying attention to discoverability as well). The database defines (rather loosely) an API which the application discovers. The API is designed to be both readily useful and readable for computers and DBA's. You can read about our current approach at http://ledgersmbdev.blogspot.com/2011/10/introduction-to-soda.html but the basic point is that we look up _names_ only of data and generate procedural calls that are easily mapped to methods. Our Perl classes support a call interface like:                $recon_report->exec_method({ funcname => 'cash_recon__approve' });      This would re-use object properties to fill in the expected arguments for cash_recon. This allows the API to be changed to a small extent without breaking the basic contract with the application, and thus allows the worst of the stored procedure woes to be avoided. The above might generate a sql query like:                SELECT * FROM cash_recon__approve(134);      The function definition in PostgreSQL would look like:                CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cash_recon__approve(in_id int) returns ...      One of the big problems with this approach though is that it is very had to manage large numbers of function names in this way, so I am looking for a more object-like interface around the database. We currently manage this by using double underscores, but this creates about as many problems as it solves. It is slightly better than using nonstandard characters and requiring every function name to be quoted when a dba types it or in test cases though. The new interface I am looking at would be different. Instead of identifying the type by the portion before the underscore it would be the type used by the first argument. The equivalent to the above would be the much more annoying looking:               SELECT * FROM approve('(35,65,1111111,f,f,2011-10-06,\"2011-10-07 13:11:24.324195\",186,chris,f,,,,f)'::cash_recon);      The function definition here would look something like:               CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION approve(obj cash_recon) RETURNS ....      Such an interface would also be discoverable but it would rely on discovery. It is not as likely that individuals could read the call and understand exactly what it did right away. The major advantage however is that it would allow complex data structures to be passed in, and this would be necessary for procedures that expect to be able to determine whether a transaction is balanced before writing it to the database so there are cases where this is clearly preferable. It requires though that test cases would need to be dynamically generated from the database. Manually written test cases would likely be quite brittle. So the example above strikes me as a case where the existing stored procedure interface is probably preferable, while posting a journal entry strikes me as one where the approach under development is significantly preferable. So my first question is, given that these two API's have different strengths and weaknesses, does it raise any red flags to support both and assume that stored procedures may be written to either spec? Or is it generally better to have a smaller spec with only one API approach supported. In other words should the old API be deprecated or used alongside the new one? I am leaning towards the latter but would like to get feedback. The second question is, assuming we do support both, is it better to discover the form of the API at run-time or to require a different call for the old vs the new style? I am leaning here towards discovery because it allows the functions in the db to be rewritten and remain call-compatible if need be."}
{"_id": "190516", "title": "How to set up a Java project with unit tests, references and something like a VS .sln using IntelliJ", "text": "I do a lot of c# development work. Recently, our company decided it was important for webservices to be able to run on Unix machines, and decided that we should write new services in Java as a result. We've got licenses to IntelliJ, so I'll probably start with that as an IDE. I've found it pretty easy to find resources about the Java language and the standard libraries. There are several low level details that are harder to find.   * How do I (how should I?) setup a new project with unit tests?   * How do you manage references? (I spent hours trying to figure out classpath stuff in eclipse a couple years ago)   * How do you setup something equivalent to a .sln file? So I need pretty low-level help, but without it focusing on code (I don't need help learning to write Hello World, or a for loop)."}
{"_id": "190517", "title": "Is map-reduce the basic factor that makes NoSQL more scalable than SQL?", "text": "I'm studying the differences between NoSQL and SQL, and what makes the first more scalable. I think I got the point, so I'll try to explain: Suppose an app has a list of billions of users, each with a quantity of money, and it wants to display the sum of the money of them all. In SQL, it'd have to `SELECT SUM(money) FROM users`, which would cause the engine to iterate through every user (O(n)) to compute the sum, which is slow. In NoSQL, on other hands, it could previously set up a map reduce function such as `nosql_engine.mapReduce(get_money,sum)`. This would cause the retrieval of the sum to be instantaneous (O(1)) as it would be cached, and updating that computation drops to O(log(n)), because of the associability of the reduction operation. So, in general, this map-reducing capacity is the basic underlying principle that makes NoSQL more scalable than SQL. **Is this correct to some extent?**"}
{"_id": "190514", "title": "Programming Discrete Wavelet Transform", "text": "I am trying to program Discrete Wavelet Transform in Matlab. I do understand that their are various libraries available, but my project requires that I must implement it from scratch. I am taking a vector of length N. I then provide this vector as input to my my Low Pass and High Pass Filters. My first question is, what must be the cut-off for these two filters? Once I am done passing my signal through these two filters, I have S_LowPass and S_HighPass. I now down sample these vectors. Once I have down sampled these vectors, the size of my vector has been reduced. Now when I use Matlab's Wavelet toolbox, the sizes remain the same on each level. My second question: Why are the sizes remaining the same?"}
{"_id": "49298", "title": "What would be a best way to code a rudimentary LIMS?", "text": "I hope that I am asking the right question at right place. If not, please do not hesitate to point me to the right place. I am working in a laboratory, where computers/programming/programmers are all used only as support. But I believe that we need better information organization and management. Given the diverse information generated in the lab I believe that we need some sort of Laboratory Information Management System. Is there a good starting point to do this? I am myself not a trained programmer. I can code reasonably well in `python` and `R`, and if necessary I can learn `MySql`, `php`."}
{"_id": "195590", "title": "How to use lists in equivalence partitioning?", "text": "I have read that equivalence partitioning can be used typically for intervals or lists, e.g. I assume it can be used for every set of inputs. Anyway if the requirement says that allowed colors are (RED,BLUE,BLACK, GREEN), I cannot treat them like a list, right? I mean, testing one of them would not be enough because developers most likely used some switch-case and thus it is not real \"set\" where one could represent also the others. So how it is meant with lists? Also what is not that clear to me, I do not think it is always possible to do the initial partioning and then design the test cases.   What about checking two lines intersection: Y=MX+C. (two inputs) 1) The lines are paraller. M1=M1 but C1 must be different from C2.   2) Lines are intersecting. M1 must be different from M2.   3) Coincident. The are the same. How can I use partitioning here? THis is actually taken from a book and it says that these sets are eq.classes."}
{"_id": "49291", "title": "What grammatical tense should I write my specifications in?", "text": "We are currently writing functional and technical specifications in a two column format; summary sentence and technical detail. The details often refer to an appendix with diagrams, layout designs ect. However I am struggling with what tense to write it in: With past tense as if the work is done I struggle to show highlight extensions of exiting work. Future tense as in it needs to do X starts to sound like a to do list or Tense neutral very hard as it has either going to be done or is done. To add further confusion this specification may be read by people who do not have English as a first language."}
{"_id": "195596", "title": "Structure vs. programming", "text": "Is it bad that I often find myself spending more time on program structure than actually writing code inside methods? Is this common? I feel I spend more time laying the foundation than actually building the house (metaphorically). While I understand that without a good foundation the house will cave in, but does it legitimately need to take half of the project to finalize code structure? I understand design patterns, and I know where to go if I need help on choosing one, but often I find myself doubting my own choices."}
{"_id": "162631", "title": "I am a beginner. Can I directly start learning C++11? or I have to learn old C++?", "text": "I'm a beginner and have only little knowledge in programming. Would it be good if I directly learn C++ from books which cover new C++11 or should I study through the old best C++ books? Should I have little knowledge about C++ before learning C++11? or I can start directly from there? Would it cause problem if I directly start from C++11? If no, then suggest some books on C++11."}
{"_id": "45776", "title": "Why do business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?", "text": "We have to admit that programming is much more difficult than creating documentation or even creating Gantt chart and asking progress to programmers. So for us that are naives, knowing that programming is generally more difficult, why do business analysts and project managers get higher salary than programmers? What is it that makes their job a high paying job when even at most times programmers are the ones that go home late? **UPDATE** Excuse my ignorance, from some of the response it seems that the reason why BAs and PMs gets higher salary because they are the ones that usually responsible for the mess programmers make. But at the end of the day, it is programmers that get their hands dirty to fix the mess and work harder. So it still does not make sense."}
{"_id": "245130", "title": "Usage of raw pointers", "text": "So from the top-voted answer to this question, it appears that using raw pointers for storage isn't frowned upon so much. However, then what is the point of a `std::weak_ptr`? I thought that storage was the exact purpose of that class. If so, is there any circumstance in which a raw pointer is considered good, valid code? If there isn't any, what is the point of having them in the language? Is it simply historical artifact?"}
{"_id": "216605", "title": "How do web servers enforce the same-origin policy?", "text": "I'm diving deeper into developing RESTful APIs and have so far worked with a few different frameworks to achieve this. Of course I've run into the same- origin policy, and now I'm wondering how web servers (rather than web browsers) enforce it. From what I understand, some enforcing seems to happen in the browser's end (e.g., honoring an Access-Control-Allow-Origin header received from a server). But what about the server? For example, let's say a web server is hosting a Javascript web app that accesses an API, also hosted on that server. I assume that the server would enforce the same-origin policy --- so that only the javascript that is hosted on that server would be allowed to access the API. This would prevent someone else from writing a javascript client for that API and hosting it on another site, right? So how would a web server be able to stop a malicious client that would try to make AJAX requests to its API endpoints while claiming to be running javascript that originated from that same web server? What's the way most popular servers (Apache, nginx) protect against this kind of attack? Or is my understanding of this somehow off the mark? Or is the cross-origin policy only enforced on the client end?"}
{"_id": "105501", "title": "What are the most relevant books on software task estimation for individuals?", "text": "What books have you read that helped you, as a programmer, learn to estimate time for completing small-to-medium programming tasks, such as bug fixes or implementing new features? Which have you the most helpful? Please describe how it helped you, citing its strengths and weaknesses."}
{"_id": "21696", "title": "Motivation for programming in a specific language", "text": "I'm 21 and didn't go to University and hence completely self-taught from tutorials, screencasts, books etc, but when it came to the decision of what languages to specifically learn, I thought, what's going to the most beneficial to learn, ie. for money, exposure, etc... So I did the Sun Certified Java Programmer course, but have never used it since, I learned Objective C to make iPhone apps, I have used it lots, I used PHP for web stuff, I've used it lots. So my question is, if you chose to learn a specific language, was it for money or for a certain job or because your employer needed you to get up to speed on a language for a specific project? I cant really think of any other motivations to be a programmer? Is that shallow??"}
{"_id": "78225", "title": "Using JOIN keyword or not", "text": "The following SQL queries are the same:               SELECT column1, column2     FROM table1, table2     WHERE table1.id = table2.id;          SELECT column1, column2     FROM table1 JOIN table2      ON table1.id = table2.id;      And certainly result in the same query plans on every DBMS I've ever tried. But every so often, I read or hear an opinion that one is definitely better than the other. Naturally, these claims are never substantiated with an explanation. Where I work, the second version seems to be favored by the majority of other devs, and so I also tend toward that style to minimize surprise. But In my heart, I'm really thinking the first one (since that's how I originally learned it). Is one of these forms objectively better than the other? If not, what would be the reasons to use one over the other?"}
{"_id": "163328", "title": "How to document requirements for an API systematically?", "text": "I am currently working on a project, where I have to analyze the requirements of two given IT systems, that use cloud computing, for a Cloud API. In other words, I have to analyze what requirements these systems have for a Cloud API, such that they would be able to switch it, while being able to accomplish their current goals. Let me give you an example for some informal requirements of Project A:   1. When starting virtual machines in the cloud through the API, it must be possible to specify the memory size, CPU type, operating system and a SSH key for the root user.   2. It must be possible to monitor the inbound and outbound network traffic per hour per virtual machine.   3. The API must support the assignment of public IPs to a virtual machine and the retrieval of the public IPs.   4. ... In a later stage of the project I will analyze some Cloud Computing standards that standardize cloud APIs to find out where possible shortcomings in the current standards are. A finding could and will probably be, that a certain standard does not support monitoring resource usage and thus is not currently usable. I am currently trying to find a way to systematically write down and classify my requirements. I feel that the way I currently have them written down (like the three points above) is too informal. I have read in a couple of requirements enineering and software architecture books, but they all focus too much on details and implementation. I do really only care about the functionalities provided through the API/interface and I don't think UML diagrams etc. are the right choice for me. I think currently the requirements that I collected can be described as user stories, but is that already enough for a sophisticated requirements analysis? Probably I should go \"one level deeper\" ..."}
{"_id": "12322", "title": "Would this be an effective use of the Subject/Observer pattern, or is there a better way?", "text": "TBH: I've never used an observer pattern. But it looks pretty useful for this situation: I'm developing a very simple strategy game. It involves two combatants who simultaneously bludgeon each other over a short period of time, the winner being the combatant with the most health remaining in the end. Now, there's a lot of configurable strategies for the combatants, different pieces of equipment that can change how often they attack, etc. I'm also planning on including some \"outside\" factors like weather that will affect the combatants. So.... I could create a Fight object that is the subject. It keeps track of the time and notifies the observers every \"tick\" of the clock. The observers are two instances of a Combatant object and one Weather object. It seems like a good idea, but where are the pitfalls? Actually, as I'm typing this I think one problem is that observers are probably ignorant of each others' parameters. Or must they be? Has anyone used an effective design pattern to do something like this?"}
{"_id": "245139", "title": "Bug root cause analysis", "text": "In our group we usually don't ponder too much about what kind of design or implementation decisions caused a bug, we just fix it. Of course if some module constantly produces bugs people start to notice it, and sometimes this leads to major refactoring. But we don't have a process where bugs are routinely analyzed for their root causes. My question is whether a formal process of bug root cause analysis is common in software development, and if not why not."}
{"_id": "237667", "title": "What happens when both heap and stack are full?", "text": "Suppose I am using a very heavy applications(or you can say that it is a very bad code which keeps on allocating memory on heap and won't free it and also uses recursion) Now after some point of time both heap and stack will have no space to expand. Now In this situation heap and stack don't have any free space in between them and if I try to allocate some memory on heap then what will happen? will it overflow over stack? And also what happens if we make a recursive call and stack needs to expand then will it overflow over heap?"}
{"_id": "196589", "title": "parallel computing list of objects", "text": "I have a list of objects that all require the exact same filtering, basically a set of conditionals in a function which outputs if the object is \"good\" or \"bad\". I want to keep all of my \"good\" objects in the list. Lets say I have 1000 objects in this list and the function I want to filter on in written. What languages/functionality would maximize how parallel this operation could be? I have played with python's multiprocessing, which does improve performance, but still left me unsatisfied. I suppose this is an \"embarrassingly parallel\" problem as no state needs to be shared."}
{"_id": "196583", "title": "UML communication diagrams, implementation details or not?", "text": "After reading Applying UML and Patterns (Larman) and looking around on the Internet it still seems ambiguous to me if a UML communication diagram should depict implementation details (such as GUI related function calls) or be more bound to the analysis. What is the correct answer? Does UML even specify it?"}
{"_id": "196580", "title": "Should I not try to emulate private class data in javascript?", "text": "So I have been building this ORM style library for AngularJS (JavaScript) and since I come from a C++/PHP/C# background, I always try to make sure that private things stay private. While this can be accomplished in JavaScript, I keep running into issues that I have to work around probably because JavaScript really does not have the transitional class system that I am used to. Should I just take the python approach and allow people to access private methods/data if they think they know what they are doing? Is this type of approach common in the JavaScript world?"}
{"_id": "196586", "title": "better method to revert state if failure occures during add/delete", "text": "So I have a generic framework with a concept of children and parent objects, the objects don't have to be the same type, and I can add or remove any of them. Adding calls add on all the children, and informs the parents, inverse for remove. the concept of Parent is generic enough that there can be a loop across classes. A may be a parent of B which is a parent of C which is a parent of A. This still works, since I mark an object as added or removed as the first step in the abstract class; so even if a circular dependency calls Add a second time on the same object the second time through the add will return without doing anything (because the added boolean is already set) and we halt our recursion. If some unexpected exception occurs I want to revert my state back to what it was before the exception occurs. I was doing this with exception handling, if I catch a run time connection I remove objects I added and update parents before throwing the exception. This is where my logic can fail. As of now I 'revert' the AddObject method by calling removeObject and vice versa. If my state somehow ended up in a truly bizarre state I could keep throwing exceptions, add throws and calls remove, remove throws and calls add, etc etc. I think this still has a chance for infinite recursion; though admittedly something would already have to be pretty messed up in my state for it to happen. Is there a cleaner way to do my rollback logic to avoid this potential? At a point like this what should I say my state should be once I recover anyways?"}
{"_id": "179235", "title": "Reuse Business Logic between Web and API", "text": "We have a website and two mobile apps that connect through an API. All the platforms do the exactly same things. Right now the structure is the following:   * Website. It manages models, controllers, views for the website. It also executes all background tasks. So if a user create a place, everything is executed in this code.    * API. It manages models, controllers and return a JSON. If a user creates a place on the mobile app, the place is created here. After, we add a background task to update other fields. This background task is executed by the Website. We are redoing everything, so it's time to improve the approach. Which is the best way to reuse the business logic so I only need to code the insert/edit/delete of the place & other actions related in just one place? **Is a service oriented approach a good idea?** For example:   * Service. It has the models and gets, adds, updates and deletes info from the DB.   * Website. It send the info to the service, and it renders HTML.   * API. It sends info to the service, and it returns JSON. Some problems I have found:   * More initial work? Not sure..   * It can work slower. Any experience? The benefits:   * We only have the business logic in one place, both for web and api.   * It's easier to scale. We can put each piece on different servers. **Other solutions**   * Duplicate the code and be careful not to forget anything (do tests!)   * DUplicate some code but execute background tasks that updates the related fields and executes other things (emails, indexing...) A \"small\" detail is we are 1.3 person in backend, for now ;)"}
{"_id": "152136", "title": "Are the criticisms against Dart valid?", "text": "According to this Wikipedia article, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, and others criticize Dart, a programming language Google introduced to work in web browsers, because they feel \"it seems harmful (cf. VBScript in IE)\". But Dart also compiles to Javascript, so a web application written in Dart can run on any modern browser. So are their concerns valid? Can Dart really be a threat to the web's openness?"}
{"_id": "53448", "title": "\"Imprinting\" as a language feature?", "text": "## Idea I had this idea for a language feature that I think would be useful, does anyone know of a language that implements something like this? The idea is that besides inheritance a class can also use something called \"imprinting\" (for lack of better term). A class can imprint one or several (non-abstract) classes. When a class imprints another class it gets all it's properties and all it's methods. It's like the class storing an instance of the imprinted class and redirecting it's methods/properties to it. A class that imprints another class therefore by definition also implements all it's interfaces and it's abstract class. So what's the point? Well, inheritance and polymorphism is hard to get right. Often composition gives far more flexibility. Multiple inheritance offers a slew of different problems without much benefits (IMO). I often write adapter classes (in C#) by implementing some interface and passing along the actual methods/properties to an encapsulated object. The downside to that approach is that if the interface changes the class breaks. You also you have to put in a lot of code that does nothing but pass things along to the encapsulated object. A classic example is that you have some class that implements IEnumerable or IList and contains an internal class it uses. With this technique things would be much easier ## Example (c#)               [imprint List<Person> as peopleList]     public class People : PersonBase      {         public void SomeMethod()         {             DoSomething(this.Count); //Count is from List         }     }           //Now People can be treated as an List<Person>      People people = new People();      foreach(Person person in people)      {       ...      }      peopleList is an alias/variablename (of your choice)used internally to alias the instance but can be skipped if not needed. One thing that's useful is to override an imprinted method, that could be achieved with the ordinary override syntax               public override void Add(Person person)     {          DoSomething();         personList.Add(person);      }      note that the above is functional equivalent (and could be rewritten by the compiler) to:               public class People : PersonBase , IList<Person>     {         private List<Person> personList = new  List<Person>();                   public override void Add(object obj)         {            this.personList.Add(obj)         }             public override int IndexOf(object obj)         {            return personList.IndexOf(obj)         }             //etc etc for each signature in the interface     }      only if IList changes your class will break. IList won't change but an interface that you, someone in your team, or a thirdparty has designed might just change. Also this saves you writing a whole lot of code for some interfaces/abstract classes. ## Caveats There's a couple of gotchas. First we, syntax must be added to call the imprinted classes's constructors from the imprinting class constructor. Also, what happends if a class imprints two classes which have the same method? In that case the compiler would detect it and force the class to define an override of that method (where you could chose if you wanted to call either imprinted class or both) So what do you think, would it be useful, any caveats? It seems it would be pretty straightforward to implement something like that in the C# language but I might be missing something :) **Sidenote - Why is this different from multiple inheritance** Ok, so some people have asked about this. Why is this different from multiple inheritance and why not multiple inheritance. In C# methods are either virtual or not. Say that we have ClassB who inherits from ClassA. ClassA has the methods MethodA and MethodB. ClassB overrides MethodA but not MethodB. Now say that MethodB has a call to MethodA. if MethodA is virtual it will call the implementation that ClassB has, if not it will use the base class, ClassA's MethodA and you'll end up wondering why your class doesn't work as it should. By the terminology sofar you might already confused. So what happens if ClassB inherits both from ClassA and another ClassC. I bet both programmers and compilers will be scratching their heads. The benefit of this approach IMO is that the imprinting classes are totally encapsulated and need not be designed with multiple inheritance in mind. You can basically imprint anything."}
{"_id": "53441", "title": "Are C++ templates just a kind of glorified macros?", "text": "From different comparisons among C++ templates and C#/Java generics like this one- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31693/what-are-the-differences-between- generics-in-c-and-java-and-templates-in-c/31929#31929 I got a perception that, C++ templates are implemented by some kind of preprocessing(plain text replacement prior to parsing), not compiling. Because the type checking in C++ templates resembles C macros. I mean, if there are some errors, they are errors from the generated code after processing templated code blocks, not from the templates themselves. In other words, they are just a kind of upper version of macros in C. Then I found some other facts supporting this-   * I thought, if C++ templates are implemented by preprocessing, there will be issues with dynamic linking(using .dll). And a quick googling supported this.   * Another point is, integer constants can be passed as arguments to the templates. And it even supports some kind of recursion. But this recursion is not found in the compiled assembly/machine code. The recursion thing is managed in compile time by generating a functions for every recursive call and thus having a larger but faster executable binary. Though unlike C macros, it has some superior abilities. But isn't C++ template implemented with some kind of preprocessing? How is this implemented in different C++ compilers?"}
{"_id": "27513", "title": "What are good interview questions for a Software Tester with focus on automation?", "text": "Today's testing is not much like yesterday's testing. More services, more distributed systems, more automation. I want the kind of testers that are self-starters and will constantly work themselves out of the job by writing test code. What are good interview questions for the modern software tester?"}
{"_id": "223911", "title": "How to create html pages which don't change very much and not very often?", "text": "I have a Rails server that connects to a json API on another server to get data to build the pages dynamically. These pages, however, don't change very much and not very often. I was thinking I could cut down the page load time, also, cut down the calls to the JSON API significantly if I just periodically called the JSON API and wrote the html files as static html pages. What is a way for building the html files in ruby / rails from scratch?"}
{"_id": "176576", "title": "What's the benefit of the Nothing constructor in Haskell?", "text": "I'm new to Haskell and I'm not really sold on the `Nothing` constructor. It sounds like just another silent fail that's going to create headaches down the line. It seems much more useful to throw an error so I'll have a clue what's happening. Why am I wrong here?"}
{"_id": "237669", "title": "Beyond Object Oriented Programming", "text": "Is there something beyond OOP? In today's world, almost any problem can be solved with OOP as the basis. But how many of them are really effective? For example, Java is purely Object Oriented. It generates the byte code and interprets it. Now, obviously the execution time is greater in Java when compared with C and C++. Problems are of various nature. Some are really computationally intensive, some others are GUI Programming, some want to reduce the response time. So, globally can OOP solve all these or is there a life beyond it?"}
{"_id": "21526", "title": "Differences between Software Quality certification levels?", "text": "First off, thanks for reading the question. I understand that this would theoretically be best asked in the SQA stack area \\- but - seeing as how that doesn't officially exist yet, maybe this was the most appropriate place for it for now. I'm looking into tracking down a certification in Software Quality, however, there are so many different awarding bodies and certifications that telling the difference between them is difficult. So far I've found:   * Six Sigma - a QA process, originally founded by Motorola & not limited to software. (in fact I'm not sure if it even covers software development). Based on a series of 'belts' (black being the best, I assume it starts at green? or white?)   * ASQ - American Society of Quality - offers numerous certifications in quality     * CQA - Quality Auditor     * CQE - Quality Engineer     * CQIA - Quality Improvement Associate     * CQI - Quality Inspector     * CQPA - Quality Process Analyst     * CQT - Quality Technician     * CRE - Reliability Engineer   * QAI Global     * Software Testing     * Software Quality Assurance     * Process Engineering     * Process Management With all the different designations and levels, I'm having trouble understanding the differences and the 'start point' and progression between the levels. (Are they a hierarchy or are they in parallell?)"}
{"_id": "223917", "title": "Etymology of 'virtual' (method/method table/inheritance)", "text": "As far as I know, it generally refers to _late_ or _dynamic bindng_. So why a word like _late_ or _dynamic_ wasn't used?"}
{"_id": "49874", "title": "What are the great unsolved challenges (or recent promising breakthroughs) of enterprise programming?", "text": "My experience with programming came from a field, computational linguistics, where there LOTS of unsolved problems (computationally modeling natural language, or having effective statistical approximations). This is not an exception: many other fields (like computational biology) have big unsolved problems, and promising breakthroughs. Yet, most of the programming that is done (and most of the money made from it) seem to be in areas like Enterprise Resource Planning, Client Relation Management..etc. Companies seem to be able to churn out new versions of such software and make more money year after year, and clients keep spending money upgrading to newer versions..etc. So, as an outsider to that world, I am wondering: What are the great advancements spurring this growth? Were there some grand challenges that got solved or are getting solved?"}
{"_id": "78590", "title": "Does a method to check the file type being uploaded belong in the controller?", "text": "If I create a controller that has a method `ActionResult UploadFile(HttpPostedFileBase file)` Where is the best place to add the code that will verify that this is a good and useable file? The reason I ask, is I will have to do more checking than just the file extension. For instance; check number of columns in spread sheet, check column names, etc.."}
{"_id": "223918", "title": "Is it better to put the JS code on the html file or in an external file?", "text": "If I'm designing a one page website, is it better to create external file for my JS code, or just put it in the html code? Is putting it on the page faster to load? Can I change the permissions to deny the users requests for the code, but the html page can still call the code?"}
{"_id": "78593", "title": "Why are null references shunned while throwing exceptions is considered okay?", "text": "I don't quite understand the consistent bashing of null references by some programming language folks. What's so bad about them? If I request read access to a file that doesn't exist then I'm perfectly happy to get an exception or a null reference and yet exceptions are considered good but null references are considered bad. What's the reasoning behind this?"}
{"_id": "176579", "title": "Is passing the Model around in this way considered bad practice?", "text": "If I have a view called, for example, `ViewDetails` that displays user information in labels and has a Model called `ViewDetailsModel` and if I want to allow the user to click a button to edit some of these details, is it considered bad practice is I pass the entire Model in the markup to a controller method which then assigns the values for another model, using the values stored in the Model that was passed in as a parameter to that action method? If so, should there instead be a service method that gets the data required for the edit view? For example: In the `ViewDetails` view, the user clicks the edit button which calls an action method in the controller (and passes in the Model object). The action method then uses the data in the Model object to populate another model which will be used for the `EditDetails` view that will be returned."}
{"_id": "142629", "title": "Is there a case study that convincingly demonstrates that clean code improved development?", "text": "I'm in my first real job as programmer and what I see is just the \"Big Ball of Mud\" code (without useful comments too), but I like to do clean code, and it's really hard for me to code in a worse way. I'm searching for some study case where the usage of clean code (I see various definitions here of what is clean code) improved the development and maintainability."}
{"_id": "158790", "title": "best practices for NoSQL database design", "text": "I have just started using a NoSQL document based database (MongoDB) and i'm curious about the best practices for designing databases. I presume the architecture should be different from relational databases? Should I still aim for a normalized database? For example I have a particular use case; > I have a user with a rental history (array of addresses) should that array > be an array on the user or as a separate collection with a shared key?"}
{"_id": "158791", "title": "How to implement a software development process in an existing project?", "text": "My question involves setting up a Software Development process. If you came in to an existing project that had no formal methodology or process set up, and then were asked to set one up yourself, how would you handle it? I have looked into various methodologies like Agile, or subsets thereof like XP, but these are primarily aimed at how to set up new projects. I am rather unsure how to implement them into an existing project. Also, many of these are aimed at web or desktop applications. My software project is an embedded system, so while many aspects of them are applicable, it is a bit overwhelming trying to figure out which one to use and how to convert it for use in an embedded system. Unit testing on embedded hardware (especially with a Single Board Computer for which no simulator exists) is incredibly difficult, particularly if the software is very far along, and to add a hardware abstraction layer to aid unit testing would involve tearing up the code dramatically. What tips would you have for setting up a Software Development Process for an existing project, for a programmer that knows how to program, but is new to software development process management?"}
{"_id": "88691", "title": "Are there any examples of implementing and effectively responding to a \"Chaos Monkey\"?", "text": "Jeff Atwood recently wrote a blog post about Netflix's implementation of a \"Chaos Monkey\". It is a very high level article. I am curious if anyone has actually implemented this technique for testing a system. I guess what Im really trying to ask is: What strategies do you implement to ensure your architecture can survive a part of the system crashing ?"}
{"_id": "68469", "title": "Why would you use built-in WebDev instead of local IIS", "text": "Since starting developing ASP.NET projects I find myself familiar just touching F5 for debugging. I think most of us are learned that way? From then and much later I learned to live with the spooky port number dedication, xx multiple instances of WebDevXX.exe in my notification bar and the relatively slow loading time. Partly by the start-up and partly also the browsing and testing. Who avoided any kind of issues with erroneous PDB file locations? (Breakpoint could not be hit) Not me! I never had a real reason to dispute this. But the project settings tab has always been there. \"Web\" tab, \"Servers\". I never touched it. Sometimes I manually entered a port number and or a start page path. Custom IIS Web Server? Custom Web Server? That option looked too spooky to touch. I've now taken the step to kick this absurd thing \"WebDev\", freshen up my local IIS installation and hooked it into my Visual Studio environment to see and decide what I will loose on this... Surprisingly, I just press F5. The web page opens surprisingly quick (compared to webdev). The breakpoints were hit immediately. Browsing and testing the web app is nearly the same speed as deployed. I thought, \"OK I'm Lost with IIS when it came to debug client side content\" Again, I was surprised. I put breakpoints in a line of JavaScript. I got a superquick break of code and second later Visual Studio showed the breakpoint to me. My question for discussion is, why are we so automatically using Cassini and what are the drawbacks of local IIS? I say we because I know lot of developers do this - including a few really experienced ones."}
{"_id": "122873", "title": "How do I go from being able to write code to being a good developer?", "text": "I'm frustrated by the lack of concrete explanations on how to go from being able to script (bash, awk) and write simple applications (c, php, python) to designing and developing larger, more complicated software. It seems that on one side there are programming language books and on the other side there are the software engineering/project management books designed for teams of programmers. I've read plenty of both. I've read the XP/Agile classics and have a decent _theoretical_ understanding of the software development process. I like to read other people's code and can follow it fairly well. But when I have an idea for a project or want to go from \"here's the problem/need\" to \"here's the solution\", my mind draws a blank and I don't know where to begin. Do I just hack it out? Are there any structured workflows for individual developers that don't work in teams or for a big software house? I really don't have any desire to get a PMP or work for a software company. I'm just looking for an effective, efficient, practical workflow."}
{"_id": "255366", "title": "Why are the <b> and <i> tags deprecated?", "text": "This question came up in one of my college classes. The professor only gave the answer that it was more descriptive, but it seems as though `<b>` and `<i>` are rather explicit in their meaning and is easier to type than `<strong>` and `<em>`. **What were the official arguments for the deprecation of these tags?**"}
{"_id": "255365", "title": "Lying to get a job", "text": "I've been looking for a way to get into programming for about a year now. I have about 2 years experience with scripting and programming at home and have been working for an 'IT' company for nearly 2 years. I say IT company loosely. They are an IT company but literally anybody could do the job. My trouble is finding a job without any professional experience (I'm sure most people can relate to this). I've had several interviews this year for help desk roles and devops roles all with the same outcome, \"you are good but we need someone with more professional experience\". I'm about to apply for a junior software engineering role but want to do things a little differently. I am rubbish at lying and far too honest when it comes to interviews. But I feel like I am needing to lie about my current job to include the things I do at home. I know I can do the jobs I'm applying for, but with no relevant education or proper experience I'm finding it impossible to prove I can do what they need me to do. I recently set up a website which I'm using as a platform to present my work and what I'm doing. I've not really had a chance to show it off to any potential employers yet though. I will definitely work in software development one day and I have no doubts about that because I am so determined. I just want to know if its OK to lie to take a short-cut. In short my question is. Is it OK to lie about what you do at work in an interview as long as you know you are capable of doing it. I've also been looking at going back into education for something computer science related. I already have a degree in Structural Engineering so it's not a decision I want to take lightly considering I'd have to fund it myself, but if it was going to get me a job then I would definitely think it would be worth while. P.S. references aren't a problem for me."}
{"_id": "255364", "title": "Which type of query do wide column stores optimize", "text": "I have some experience with document based stores (MongoDB and CouchDB) and I am interested in exploring wide column databases. Based on my initial exploration I can grasp a basic understanding of how wide column stores are different, but I do not really understand in which type of operations they are a better fit than an indexed document store. My initial impression is that column stores are better if the column combinations for the queries are highly dynamic (no indexed view really required) and/or if there is a high rate of writing (that triggers map-reduce indexes in a document store). Performance wise, it seems that column stores might be better if I have documents with many properties but not all of them are needed. Document stores seems to promote that the whole document will be retrieved, but not sure how much impact this really has. Maybe the document needs to have many filtered columns to make a difference? Also I got the impresion that column stores \"might\" be more performant for multi-tenant systems which shared database where one of the columns holds the tenant id and maybe another one the roles. **In which type of queries wide column stores are a better fit against document stores?** **UPDATE** : After reading my own question, I am getting the feeling that wide column stores are very good for the queries done by data analysis applications, where there is a large set of collected data for each entry, only few fields must be extracted and the combination of columns is totally random."}
{"_id": "255362", "title": "How to manage client expectations when working with a BDD type framework?", "text": "I've recently been investigating SpecFlow and can see the value of it for writing client/stateholder specs which can show a feature's progress however I'm nervous of introducing them to a client... Imagine a feature:               Given I'm on the \"MyAccount\" page        And I enter \"Liath\" into the \"Name\" textbox     When I click \"Save\"     Then my username should be \"Liath\"      We write these features, show the client a set of red icons and set the developers to work. If our developer completes the happy path then the icon will go to green and the client will see that feature is complete. However our developer knows that they've still got to consider things like:   1. Checking the username to see if it's in use   2. Checking the username for profanity   3. Handle errors from the database   4. Some form of validation to ensure the username uses only valid characters Clearly if a client sees a row of green lights they will be reluctant to continue paying for the rest of the development, it will look like we're trying to stretch out the work. What is the value of these tests as a progress indicator if they indicate work is completed long before it is? What techniques would we need to use to give a more accurate example of progress?"}
{"_id": "149636", "title": "replacement for fanfold paper printouts", "text": "Back in university, we were able to print \"unlimited\" printouts on wide fanfold paper, (perhaps 128 characters wide or maybe more). I could then unfurl the printed code out across the desks or the room and get a great overview of my code, draw circles and arrows and a paragraph on each one in the wide margin, see if this code matched that code, tweak variable names by seeing their brethren, etc, and I loved it. Right now I'm using xcode for iOS programming, but the question comes up no matter what editor I've used: how can I get a good code overview that's bigger than my screen?"}
{"_id": "120035", "title": "Framework for developing front-end with back-end as REST", "text": "Currently I'm developing the back-end of a PHP application using Recess Framework. I'm almost done and I now need to do the front-end. I have many alternatives and I prefer a CMS. The alternatives in my knowledge are Drupal or Wordpress. The problem is that I've never used Drupal and Wordpress(or any better). Thus I don't which one to choose to develop the app to interact with the REST interface.Can you help me in choosing the best CMS for interacting with the REST interface"}
{"_id": "168770", "title": "Predicting advantages of database denormalization", "text": "I was always taught to strive for the highest Normal Form of database normalization, and we were taught Bernstein's Synthesis algorithm to achieve 3NF. This is all very well and it feels nice to normalize your database, knowing that fields can be modified while retaining consistency. However, performance may suffer. That's why I am wondering whether there is any way to predict the speedup/slowdown when denormalizing. That way, you can build your list of FD's featuring 3NF and then denormalize as little as possible. I imagine that denormalizing too much would waste space and time, because e.g. giant blobs are duplicated or it because harder to maintain consistency because you have to update multiple fields using a transaction. Summary: Given a 3NF FD set, and a set of queries, how do I predict the speedup/slowdown of denormalization? Link to papers appreciated too."}
{"_id": "24342", "title": "Should I be worried if I solve a lot of my problems the same way?", "text": "I really enjoy programming games and puzzle creators/games. I find myself engineering a lot of these problems the same way and ultimately using similar technique to program them that I'm really comfortable with. To give you brief insight, I like to create graphs where nodes are represented with objects. These object hold data such as coordinates, positions and of course references to other neighboring objects. I'll place them all in a data structure and make decisions on this information in a \"game loop\". While this is a brief example, its not exact in all situations. It's just one way I feel really comfortable with. Is this bad?"}
{"_id": "187616", "title": "Should I create a new open project to replace an existing one?", "text": "Recently I was looking at an open source project to contribute to however after going through the ugly code base (which seems to break quite a bit) and reading some things about the current maintainer I decided it would be a good fit for me. Right now my thinking is to just start a new project with the same goal but using a different set of technologies that I think fit the problem better, the only reason stopping me is avoiding second system effect given the fact the system is live and works. I could contribute to the other project and in doing so avoid essentially creating two different solutions to the same problem or I could solve the problem the way I think it should be solved and then see which system gets more traction. Is there some prior art to these circumstances that I should be aware of when considering this decision?"}
{"_id": "187618", "title": "Value of frameworks for mobile web applications", "text": "**Longer version, see below for the TL;DR** As a developer with a strong background in the development of \"classic\" web applications I have been thinking about mobile web application architectures. One question that I cannot really seem to answer is: why do you need a framework like Sencha Touch (maybe even jQuery mobile, although it seems way more lightweight)? Let me elaborate on this: For me, mobile web apps seem highly similar to \"classic\" web apps with client side MVC. OK, you need to be extra careful when it comes to efficient DOM manipulations, transfer of (static) resources, offline support and a few more things, but apart from this, the only notable difference seems to be the user experience. Users are expecting typical mobile widgets that preferably behave like the native ones. For this reason, I am thinking that frameworks and libraries for client-side MVC, that are used for \"classic\" web apps, are also sufficient for mobile web apps and that the only necessary addition is a set of mobile-like widgets. **TL;DR** What is the value of frameworks for non-trivial mobile web applications (think enterprise-level with years of development...) over existing frameworks for \"classic\" (desktop) web application development? What about \"classic\" web application frameworks + mobile widget sets?"}
{"_id": "160167", "title": "Discussions of simplicity", "text": "Recently at my company we've had a bit of a debate about abstraction vs. simplicity. One school of thought I'd characterize as \"DRY and abstraction can do no harm,\" and leads to code like this:               def make_foo_binary(binaryName, objFiles, fooLibsToLinkAgainst)         make_exe_task(binaryName, objFiles.ext('.o'), fooLibsToLinkAgainst)     end      and this:               class String         def escape_space             return self.gsub(' ', '\\ ')         end     end      My point of view is that creating an abstraction like this, that's only used in one place, makes the code less readable, since you're replacing a function call that the reader is familiar with (gsub) with another that they've never seen before (escape_space), which they'll need to read if they want to understand how the code actually works. The replacement is essentially described in English (\"escape space\") and english is notoriously vague. For example, without looking at the definition, you don't know whether it escapes all whitespace, or just the space character. There's lots of writing that sings the praises of DRY and abstraction. **Is anybody aware of sources that describe abstraction's limits? That sing the praises and discuss the pragmatics of keeping code simple?** Edit: I can find texts that encourage simplicity in life or in (English) writing, e.g. Thoreau's \"Simplify, Simplify!\" or Strunk and White's \"Vigorous writing is concise.\" Where's the equivalent for programming?"}
{"_id": "160168", "title": "Abstracting away the type of a property", "text": "In Python luckily most of the times you don't have to write getters and setters to get access to class properties. That said sometimes you'll have to remember that a certain property is a list or whatnot and a property would save you there by abstracting the type and providing a setter to add something to such list for example rather than exposing the list directly. Where do you draw the line between exposing the type directly or wrapping its access in a property? What's the general \"pythonic\" advice?"}
{"_id": "66325", "title": "\"As\" Naming Convention", "text": "I'm experimenting with a naming convention I've devised and am seeking opinion. It involves the use of an \"As\" infix, and at this point I am envisioning it in the context of JavaScript, C# and C++ coding to assist with clarity of data format/contract when dealing with conversions or multiple representations of the same inherent data or object. Examples:               // ex 1. receive and convert user input.     string userInput = \"123\";     float userInputAsFloat = float.Parse(userInput);     int userInputAsInt = (int)Math.Round(userInputAsFloat);          // ex 2. prepare an object for json transport.     Dictionary<string,object> packet = new Dictionary<string,object>();     string packetAsJson = packet.ToJson();          // ex 3. interface with a component from various angles.     IUnknown foo = MyObjectFactory.CreateFoo();     IVisualizer fooAsVisualizer = (IVisualizer)foo;     ILocator fooAsLocator = (ILocator)foo;      Thoughts for/against? Does this convention have a name?"}
{"_id": "164671", "title": "conventions for friend methods in Perl", "text": "Perl doesn't support a friend relationship between objects, nor does it support private or protected methods. What is usually done for private methods is to prefix the name with an underscore. I occasionally have methods that I think of as friend methods. Meaning that I expect them to be used by a specific object, or an object with a specific responsibility, but I'm not sure if I should make that method public (meaning `foo` ) or private ( `_foo` ) or if there's a better convention? is there a convention for friend methods?"}
{"_id": "158869", "title": "Should java developers know about garbage collection algorithms?", "text": "I have been recently asked in an interview if I know about any garbage collection algorithms. I knew what garbage collection is but I never really thought about learning about garbage collection algorithms since as a developer I never had to worry about it and the Garbage collector does all the hard work for me. Do you guys think that Java developers should know about garbage collector algorithms? If yes can you tell me which ones should I look into?"}
{"_id": "37961", "title": "What can I do? How would you react? HELP!", "text": "I'm trying to lead a software team that is falling behind. One of the main problems is that whenever something is mildly difficult, I end up having to assign it to myself. I had one other developer with moderate skills and half an intern. Unfortunately, the other developer's skills do not include design. So I begged my boss for one of the guys on one of the other teams, he's been working here longer than I have (5 years). He can't compete with me on design OR the language we use, but I thought he was the most competent besides myself. Today he gave me a piece of code that did something not in the least bit dissimilar to:               object const& my_class::get_object() const      {        return *std::unique_ptr<object>(new object());     }      He asked me if that was a problem! I said the only thing I could think of, \"Yes. That's a problem.\" Then he comes over to my desk asking me how to fix it!! I said, \"Use an object that survives the call of the function.\" Then he starts freaking out, \"Yeah, but how, the only thing I can think of is to make a member variable.\" I was a bit busy at this time because I was already trying to stuff in extra work I had to take over for the other guy on the team because he couldn't figure it out...I told the guy to go away because I was busy and to go figure it out himself. Then he leaves in a huff talking about how it's not his fault if he screws things up. He's been freaking out since he came on the team and I don't think it's getting better. I feel like I'm drowning here. WTH can I do? What was the right way to deal with that? Would it have been more reasonable to go help this guy who's been writing C++ for 7 years figure out how to correctly return a reference to an object that isn't destroyed the moment it's returned? I feel like that's just ridiculous to have to do and wonder how the hell I'd get anything done that way. Sometimes I think they're doing it on purpose but that seems to me to just be whack...but then again, so does the question I was just asked today. This isn't some kid sitting at home trying to figure out his first program, having his brain blown by pointers."}
{"_id": "79174", "title": "how to convince manager to allow stack overflow", "text": "At my company we have strict limits on internet use. I often must use the poor mobile interface only for StackOverflow. However, the site is very useful for work. How do I convince a manager to un-block StackOverflow? Is there a summary of benefits available online for managers to look at?"}
{"_id": "79173", "title": "Does a high correlation between burning out and programming exist?", "text": "Yesterday I asked a question about burning out. It did receive a high number of comments and answers and left me thinking if programmers are more prone to burning out than other professions. I'd be specially interested in academic studies, if any. Example of questions about burning out here on Programmers.SE: Burned out on programming and given up? What to do when coding begins to feel boring, like it is all just more of the same? What are advisable career options for a burnt-out programmer? There's also a burnout tag. Do you believe there's a high correlation between burning out and being a programmer, or at least, a correlation higher than burning out and other professions?"}
{"_id": "209693", "title": "Best Practices To Create Error Codes Pattern For an Enterprise Project in C#", "text": "I'm working on an enterprise project which will be deployed in many SMBs and Enterprises.   The support for this project would be struggling and so I want to create a coding pattern for errors ( _Like HTTP status Codes_ ). This will enable help desk people to refer to documents and troubleshoot the problems as soon as possible. **What are the best practices and recommendations to do this?**   Any help to do this will be useful."}
{"_id": "67988", "title": "Using SSIS, any good tutorials", "text": "I was look for a good resource to learning SQL Server business Studio and in particular SSIS packages, any sugguestions?"}
{"_id": "77319", "title": "Starting Linux Programming", "text": "I am a long time .NET developer and I have worked with Mono but I now want to start programming for Linux, what would be a good source to start native Linux development?"}
{"_id": "67982", "title": "Is it ever a good idea to hardcode values into our applications?", "text": "Is it ever a good idea to hardcode values into our applications? Or is it always the right thing to call these types of values dynamically in case they need to change?"}
{"_id": "77313", "title": "If your unit test code \"smells\" does it really matter?", "text": "Usually I just throw my unit tests together using copy and paste and all kind of other bad practices. The unit tests usually end up looking quite ugly, they're full of \"code smell,\" but does this really matter? I always tell myself as long as the \"real\" code is \"good\" that's all that matters. Plus, unit testing usually requires various \"smelly hacks\" like stubbing functions. How concerned should I be over poorly designed (\"smelly\") unit tests?"}
{"_id": "62006", "title": "In ASP.NET MVC3 controllers, where do you instantiate your DataContext?", "text": "In your ASP.NET MVC 3 applications that use a DataContext or DbContext, where do you instantiate your data access object? Here is a non-exhaustive list of where I've seen it done:   * Individually within each method of the controller   * In the controller's constructor   * As a property (lazy-initialized) of the controller   * In an ActionFilter, shoved into ViewBag   * In Global.asax Application_BeginRequest   * In an HttpModule  I can't identify a clear front-runner amongst all of those. What's worse, whenever I start a brand-new project, I tend to change it up, _just because_. Does anyone have any battle-tested advice?"}
{"_id": "147675", "title": "REST & Grails- A solution in search of a problem?", "text": "Over the past week, I've been struggling to adapt a Grails application to use the REST architecture. Problem is, I've had nothing but trouble throughout. For this application, the choice between using XML and JSON literally came down to a coin flip. Neither format offered much over the other, so I went with XML. Writing the URL redirects and the controller methods was relatively easy and got me interested. The problems came when actually doing stuff with the new controller functions. Specifically, two major issues came to light First, the list view of an object works with the regular CRUD method. Adapting to REST required executing a query to get all objects, count them up and render the output as both HTML and XML using the withFormat method. HTML view shows absolutely nothing in the way of listings, but the XML tree shows up when I comment out the HTML section in withFormat. So I know that part's working. Secondly, what to do when a premature end of XML file exception comes at you when its the machine creating the XML in the first place? At this point, to me at least, REST seems like more of a solution in search of a problem. It essentially co-opts the HTTP functions for its own use, when controller redirects seem to work fine. Is it a scalability adaptation?"}
{"_id": "115136", "title": "Should we use Entity Framework?", "text": "We currently have the following stack :   * VS 2005   * Web forms   * SQL Server 2005   * IIS 6 We are planning on transitioning to this :   * VS 2010   * MVC and Web Forms   * SQL Server 2008   * IIS 7 My question is, when we move to MVC with VS 2010, should we use Entity Framework( or another ORM), a micro ORM (like Massive), or just plain SQL? All the tutorials I've read about VS 2010 are all geared towards using Entity Framework for data transactions, but is that going to be around for the foreseeable future (5+ years)? If it matters, our client's applications can have anywhere from 10 - 1,000 active users."}
{"_id": "144701", "title": "Is the creation of brand new software generally a major part of most programming jobs?", "text": "I have worked in software development for over 10 years now, and it's dawning on me that I rarely get to create anything \"new\". I realize that \"new\" is a vague term, but I would define it as anything from an obvious new large-scale project to a new large feature in an existing project (say something that would require some thought into its design, and that might take 2 weeks or more to complete). Maybe a rough guideline is something is new if it requires a written spec. I think most programmers know what I'm talking about - you're in the zone, writing a ton of code at a fast pace. Anyway, thinking back to what I've done, I'd estimate that less than 10% of my time is spent on \"new\" work. There are things like \"adapt this existing system to work in this new environment\", which certainly requires a lot of planning, but the actual coding and \"new stuff\" comes down to making tiny changes in many places throughout the code. Likewise for small feature requests - if I know what to do, these can often be finished in under an hour, and if I don't, it's just a lot of reading code and figuring out what to do (which frustrates me because I learn much better by doing, not by reading). In general I feel like I am not really creating anything most of the time. I kind of assumed that this was the case at most places - a new product would come out rather quickly and at that point everyone would be excited and banging out the code at a fast pace, but then once live it moves into maintenance mode, where few of the subsequent changes would be considered \"new & creative\". Am I wrong? Am I accurately describing most programming jobs, or do most programmers feel like they are often creating new things?"}
{"_id": "34445", "title": "BDD/TDD vs JAD?", "text": "I've been proposing that my workplace implement Behavior-Driven-Development, by writing high-level specifications in a scenario format, and in such a way that one could imagine writing a test for it. I do know that working against testable specifications tends to increase developer productivity. And I can already think of several examples where this would be the case on our own project. However it's difficult to demonstrate the value of this to the business. This is because we already have a Joint Application Development (JAD) process in place, in which developers, management, user-experience and testers all get together to agree on a common set of requirements. So, they ask, why should developers work against the test-cases created by testers? These are for verification and are based on the higher-level specs created by the UX team, which the developers currently work off. This, they say, is sufficient for developers and there's no need to change how the specs are written. They seem to have a point. What is the actual benefit of BDD/TDD, if you already have a test-team who's test cases are fully compatible with the higher-level specs currently given to the developers?"}
{"_id": "106850", "title": "Injecting properties/settings into an application", "text": "In applications that I write at work, I often need to have an external properties/settings file so that certain parameters can be configurable after the application is deployed with the end-user. The file will usually be text or XML and I will usually be implementing in C++ or Java. In the past, I have created Singleton classes to manage the injection of these properties/settings into my application. The class would be initialised with the path to a file, be hardcoded with the property keys it is looking for in the file, read it in and store all the attributes. Other classes in the application would then perform a call such as `propertySingleton::getInstance().getMyParameter()`. The more I read and learn about software engineering, and design, the more this approach feels clumsy and inherently wrong. I was wondering if anyone had to perform similar tasks, and how they would approach this in a well-thought object-oriented fashion?"}
{"_id": "144708", "title": "Session Flash vs TempData C# MVC 3", "text": "A little background. A developer I used to work with insisted on disabling Tempdata and using Session Flash for passing data in the return view. Question is, is there any advantage to doing it this way? using a flash message is great for returning data to the user but I've had headaches with passing data from one post to the next with tempdata disabled. Is there any problem with using flash and tempdata together or is this a major coding faux paus?"}
{"_id": "175008", "title": "Round Table - Minimum Cost Algorithm", "text": "Problem Link - http://www.iarcs.org.in/zco2013/index.php/problems/ROUNDTABLE > It's dinner time in Castle Camelot, and the fearsome Knights of the Round > Table are clamouring for dessert. You, the chef, are in a soup. There are N > knights, including King Arthur, each with a different preference for > dessert, but you cannot afford to make desserts for all of them. > > You are given the cost of manufacturing each Knight's preferred dessert- > since it is a round table, the list starts with the cost of King Arthur's > dessert, and goes counter-clockwise. > > You decide to pick the cheapest desserts to make, such that for every pair > of adjacent Knights, at least one gets his dessert. This will ensure that > the Knights do not protest. What is the minimum cost of tonight's dinner, > given this condition? I used the Dynamic Programming approach, considering the smallest of `i-1` & `i-2`, & came up with the following code -               #include<cstdio>     #include<algorithm>     using namespace std;          int main() {     int n,i,j,c,f;     scanf(\"%d\",&n);     int k[n],m[n][2];     for(i=0;i<n;++i) scanf(\"%d\",&k[i]);     m[0][0]=k[0]; m[0][1]=0;     m[1][0]=k[1]; m[1][1]=1;     for(i=2;i<n;++i) {                      c=1000;                      for(j=i-2;j<i;++j) {                                         if(m[j][0]<c) { c=m[j][0]; f=m[j][1];}                      }                      m[i][0]=c+k[i]; m[i][1]=f;     }     if(m[n-2][0]<m[n-1][0] && m[n-2][1]==0) printf(\"%d\\n\",m[n-2][0]);     else printf(\"%d\\n\",m[n-1][0]);        }      I used the second dimension of the `m` array to store from which knight the given sequence started (1st or 2nd). I had to do this because of the case when `m[n-2]<m[n-1]` but the sequence started from knight 2, since that would create two adjacent knights without dessert. The problem arises because of the table's round shape. Now an anomaly arises when I consider the case - `2 1 1 2 1 2`. The program gives an answer 5 when the answer should be 4, by picking the 1st, 3rd & 5th knight. At this point, I started to doubt my initial algorithm (approach) itself! Where did I go wrong?"}
{"_id": "225400", "title": "Pros and Cons of Facebook's React vs. Web Components (Polymer)", "text": "What are the main benefits of Facebook's React over the upcoming Web Components spec and vice versa (or perhaps a more apples-to-apples comparison would be to Google's Polymer library)? According to this JSConf EU talk and the React homepage, the main benefits of React are:   * Decoupling and increased cohesion using a component model   * Abstraction, Composition and Expressivity   * Virtual DOM & Synthetic events (which basically means they completely re-implemented the DOM and its event system)      * Enables modern HTML5 event stuff on IE 8     * Server-side rendering     * Testability     * Bindings to SVG, VML, and `<canvas>` Almost everything mentioned is being integrated into browsers natively through Web Components except this virtual DOM concept (obviously). I can see how the virtual DOM and synthetic events can be beneficial today to support old browsers, but isn't throwing away a huge chunk of native browser code kind of like shooting yourself in the foot in the long term? As far as modern browsers are concerned, isn't that a lot of unnecessary overhead/reinventing of the wheel? Here are some things I _think_ React is missing that Web Components will care of. Correct me if I'm wrong.   * Native browser support (read \"guaranteed to be faster\")   * Write script in a scripting language, write styles in a styling language, write markup in a markup language.   * Style encapsulation using Shadow DOM      * React instead has this, which requires writing CSS in JavaScript. Not pretty.   * Two-way binding"}
{"_id": "35715", "title": "If most of team can't follow the architecture, what do you do?", "text": "I'm working on a greenfields project with two other developers. We're all contractors, and myself and one other just started working on the project while the orginal one has been doing most of the basic framework coding. In the past month, my fellow programmer and I have been just frustrated by the design descisions done by our co-worker. Here's a little background information: The application at face value appeared to be your standard n-layered web application using C# on the 3.5 framework. We have a data layer, business layer and a web interface. But as we got deeper into the project we found some very interesting things that have caused us some troubles. There is a custom data access sqlHelper type base which only accepts dictionary key/valued entries and returns only data tables. There are no entity objects, but there are some massive objects which do everything and then are tossed into session for persitance. The general idea is that the pages (.aspx) don't do anything, while the controls (.ascx) do everything. The general flow is that a client clicks on a button, which goes to a user control base which passes a process request to the 'BLL' class which goes to the page processor, which then goes to a getControlProcessor, which at last actually processes the request. The request itself is made up of a dictionary which is passing a string valued method name, stored procedure name, a control name and possibly a value. All switching of the processing is done by comparing the string values of the control names and method names. Pages are linked together via a common header control that uses a combination of javascript and tables to create a hyperlink effect. And as I found out yesterday, a simple hyperlink between one page and another does not work because of the need to have quite a bit of information in session to determine which control to display on a page. My fellow programmer and I both believe that this is a strange and uncommon approach to web application development. Both of us have been in this business for over five years and neither of us have seen this approach. My question is this, how would we approach our co-worker and voice our concerns and what should we do if he does not want to accept the criteic? We both do not want to insult the work that has been done, but feel that going forward will create a nightmare for development. Thanks for your comments."}
{"_id": "47989", "title": "Developing a mobile application, how to show help if it contains too much data?", "text": "I am developing a mobile application which has many functionality, and I am pretty sure that the design will confuse the user about how to use some functionality so we decided to include some help as we can see them regularly in desktop applications, but later we found that the help text is too long. We don't think that one screen is enough to describe what a user can do. Moreover the project itself is subjected to evolve based on beta stage and user reports. After a lot of thinking and meetings we have decided three options to show the users what they can do.   1. Create the website or blog, so we can let the users know what they can do with this application, the advantage is that it can provide us a good source of marketing, but for that they have to access the site while most part of the application can be used while being offline in earlier versions.   2. Create a section in the application called demos to show the same thing locally, but we are afraid that it will increase the size, that we think can be avoided (and we are planning to avoid if there is any option)   3. Show popups, but we discarded this thinking that pop ups annoys user no matter what the platform is. I want to know from community that which option will you choose, we are also open to accept other ideas if you have."}
{"_id": "228827", "title": "Is it possible to perform mutual exclusion of threads without OS support?", "text": "I suppose you could adapt distributed mutual exclusion algorithms (Ricart/Agrawala, etc), but aside from these more exotic approaches, are you required to use primitives provided by the OS in order to achieve mutual exclusion? For example, in C# you would use something like lock:               lock (myobject)     {         // Do something     }      Lock then uses a condition variable provided by the operating system (I think?). From everything I've read about monitors, they all rely on certain sections of the monitor implementation being executed atomically. And the only way (that I can think of) to guarantee that is if the kernel explicitly made it so. Is this right?"}
{"_id": "93711", "title": "Should sales staff interfere in application analysis and design?", "text": "We're working on a kind of CMS, a fast, hosted, centralized website builder like Weebly. We also use Scrum development model. But there seems to be some problems here. Our sales manager always come to us, complaining about the design of the application, or UI elements, or stuff like that and hinder development process by making re-works again and again. Examples are:   1. Why do you have item actions like delete and edit in grid items? Just have list actions as a toolbar on top of grids. No item action.   2. Why red color? Use green. That's what people like.   3. Use tree for contents, not grid. My question is really simple. Is it considered productive, or even normal for sales staff to interfere in application analysis and design?"}
{"_id": "197352", "title": "Object Orientation done right with PHP", "text": "I've started to work with web development using PHP as server side programming language. In that time I didn't know the benefits of object orientation and had a hard time trying to write more maintainable code (for instance, spliting presentation from logic, and etc). After some years I knew about ASP.NET MVC and I gave it a try. I've learned how to work with the .NET plataform using C# programming language and I really found awesome how better structured my applications could be using good object orientation (dependency injection for instance was something that when I saw it for the first time I thought: \"that's everything I always needed\"). The point is that although I'm happy working with ASP.NET MVC, I still need in some projects to work with PHP, however I was wondering if it's possible to bring all the benefits from object orientation to PHP. I didn't find a way to do so on my own because for instance, PHP is not strongly typed so that it becomes a little complicated to make use of dependency injection as I've learned when working with ASP.NET MVC. Also, many of the things I've learned when working with MVC in ASP.NET although very cool and useful I didn't find a way to do the same in PHP. Now here comes the question: does anybody know about resources to learn how to take benefits of all that cool things from OOP to PHP? I'm interested in any resources: books, tutorials, videos, etc. Thanks very much in advance, and sorry if this question is silly."}
{"_id": "62705", "title": "What is the best way to discern an excellent programmer in a job interview?", "text": "In the setting of an interview: What is the best way to reliably identify when somebody is an **excellent programmer**. By this I mean he is one of those that is 10-15 times more efficient / rapid / better than his peers towards the lower end of the spectrum. Many of us have heard of the FizzBuzz Problem as a way to weed out the weak ones. Certainly, taking 5-10 minutes to solve that problem is a serious indicator that an applicant is a weak candidate. I posit that a good indicator is being able to solve that as quickly as you can write. This doesn't seem sufficient, though. Is it maybe something like giving him a moderately complicated buggy program, and seeing how fast he can grok it and identify all the problems with it?"}
{"_id": "188239", "title": "Accessing the history of a `ref` in Clojure", "text": "The documentation for ref shows a :max-history option and states that \"refs accumulate history dynamically as needed to deal with read demands.\" I can see that there is history at the REPL, but I don't see how to find previous values of a ref:               user=> (def the-world (ref \"hello\" :min-history 10))     #'user/the-world     user=> (do               (dosync (ref-set the-world \"better\"))               @the-world)     \"better\"     user=> (let [exclamator (fn [x] (str x \"!\"))]               (dosync                (alter the-world exclamator)                (alter the-world exclamator)                (alter the-world exclamator))               @the-world)     \"better!!!\"     user=> (ref-history-count the-world)     2      Presumably the-world has had the values \"hello\", \"better\", and \"better!!!\". How do I access that history? If it is not possible to access that history, is there a datatype that keeps a history of its values that can be queried afterwards? Or is that why the datomic database was created?"}
{"_id": "188237", "title": "How can my code structure be improved?", "text": "I am looking for advice on the neatest way to structure my code.               class Password     {         private string cipher;              Password(string cipher)         {             this.cipher = cipher;         }              public string HashPassword()         {              }              public bool VerifyPassword()         {              }     }      The idea behind the class is to abstract away the password hashing process. The class will present two functions to the user, `HashPassword()` and `VerifyPassword()`, which will perform completely different hashing algorithms depending on the value of the `cipher` variable. Currently, I am using a set of `if/else` conditional statements within the two functions itself to determine which hashing algorithm to perform. However, it felt quite inelegant to me. Is there a better way of structuring my code?"}
{"_id": "188521", "title": "Is the term 'Front-End' synonymous with 'Client-Side'? If so, is this always the case?", "text": "As a relatively new (self-taught) web developer, I've heard the terms _front- end_ , _client-side_ , _back-end_ , and _server-side_ quite often. To me, front-end and back-end were always synonymous with client-side and server- side, respectively. However, as I've begun working with MVC frameworks like CodeIgniter, I've come across a few instances of front-end referring to basically anything the end user sees (including server-side code), while back-end has referred to anything the end-user doesn't see (including CMSs). Client-side and server- side, to me, are much more concrete in their meanings; they have a very distinct line separating them. Front-end and back-end, on the other hand, do not. In a conversation I remember having with another web developer, he referred to CodeIgniter (in its entirety) as a front-end, and this threw me for a loop. I wasn't sure whether to correct him and say that CodeIgniter was my back-end, or if my definitions of the two terms were completely wrong. Searching for definitions of front- and back-end confused me a bit more in some respects, though they did clarify a few things. I'd just like to know where the lines are drawn between these four terms, and how they piece together in the context of web development (specifically on a LAMP stack)."}
{"_id": "66583", "title": "Should I prepare to compete with a company that doesn't hire me?", "text": "I've been interviewing with a software company lately, and in my most recent (and final) interview I learned some more about the project I'd be working on: how it's architected, what needs maintenance, and what their primary concerns are for improving it in the future. The thing is that I've done some independent research that would be perfect for integrating into their system, but I don't yet know how they feel my interview went. Should I prepare for the possibility that I'm not hired by beginning to develop my idea, which is tantamount to a direct competitor to their product? It would be a significant time investment, but has two possible positive outcomes: I make bank on my idea on my own, or they eventually hire me anyway, giving me something to show for myself. The most likely negative outcome is the same as for any failed speculative software project: lost time that could've been spent on less risky ventures. Just curious as to what I should do. I'm a busy guy and it's important I be decisive."}
{"_id": "55047", "title": "What is the greatest design flaw you have faced in any programming language?", "text": "All programming languages are having their design flaws simply because not a single language can be perfect, just as with most (all?) other things. That aside, which design fault in a programming language has annoyed you the most through your history as a programmer? Note that if a language is \"bad\" just because it isn't designed for a specific thing isn't a design flaw, but a _feature_ of design, so don't list such annoyances of languages. If a language is illsuited for what it is designed for, that is of course a flaw in the design. Implementation specific things and under the hood things do not count either."}
{"_id": "55046", "title": "How do you compare programming job offers from companies in different countries?", "text": "_This isn't really a programmer-specific question, but I'm not sure of a more appropriate place, and I think the users of this site are best able to answer the question in the context of programmers._ Relocating to the US seems fairly common in the programming industry. I live in the UK, and maybe one day, I might do it too. So, if that day comes - how would you go about comparing job offers? Benefits are fairly easy to compare, but given the differences in cost of living, how would you go about comparing salaries and the quality of living you'll have? In a country where the cost of living is lower, you might be able to accept a lower salary (based on exchange rate) and still have the same quality of living. But what can you do to ensure this? In some cases, you may even take a \"pay rise\" in terms of exchange rate, but end up far worse off. How can you compare job offers across different countries to get an idea of the salary you would need in order to not feel you've gone \"backwards\"?"}
{"_id": "55044", "title": "I have heard \u201cdynamic\u201d changing during Runtime? Whats that?", "text": "i heard that these(say for example Groovy) languages have the capability of changing the variable name or call methods dynamically in runtime! What you meant by **dynamic** languages? And what is the real need for changing any values during runtime? Is that doen't lead to confusion, because at runtime if you change any value(or your programming constriants change anything), then whats the need for compilation(because it decides and confirms these values will be used, then there is no meaning of changing it in dynamically)? And i know there should be something useful, so only people have introduced these concepts! I guess i'm clear about my question! And i need some brief explanation :)"}
{"_id": "163173", "title": "ISTQB terminology question (Defect)", "text": "According to ISTQB (and few more sources + wiki ), a defect/bug is the actual cause of error in software, e.g. incorrect statement, logical or semantic error. The actual definion is: a flaw in the system or component that could lead to the failure. But what about specification bugs? I cannot relate to it. Specification bugs are quite common but if the programmer implements software according to spec with a bug, it is not his fault (IMHO). But then the definion could not apply and I am sure it must have been addressed somehow. Could you help me to understand this?"}
{"_id": "143286", "title": "Visual Basic link to SQL output to Word", "text": "I am in need of some advice/references. I am currently trying to develop a legal document interface. There are certain fields in which I need to query out of my sql db and have those fields output into a document that can be printed. I am trying to develop a user interface where people can enter fields that will output to a document template but at the same time I need the template to be able to pull data from the SQL database. This is the reason why I think that VB might be my best choice and because it is one of the only OOP languages I am familiar with presently. Does anyone know that best way to be able to handle this type of job?? I know that you can use VBA within MS Word and have the form output variables to a word template. But, is there a way to have the word document also pull information from the SQL db? Is the best option to use VB linked to SQL and run queries to get the information from the database and then have it output to a for within VB? Is it possible for VB to be linked to a SQL db and output variables and SQL fields to a Word Template? I have looked into Mail Merge and I see that it allows users to pull data from an Access query but I dont think it would be easy to automate and it seems that users would need to have an advanced knowledge of MS Word and Access to handle this. I am not finding much useful information online so I came here. Any advice or references would be greatly appreciated. If there is a better way please let me know."}
{"_id": "130343", "title": "How to know what technologies to use?", "text": "I'm new grad of a SW Engineering school, and I want to create a small program. For example, the program might be a Web program, with or without a client that is not a browser (Mobile or Desktop). My question is, how do I know what technologies and languages to use? There are so many buzz words."}
{"_id": "130342", "title": "Is iterative documentation development possible, and does it deliver effective documentation?", "text": "I have a project for university which I won't be starting immediately, but have been thinking about for a reasonably long amoung of time. I understand that University project development isn't like industry (I'm currently an intern myself) so the situation that I'll be pointing out at the moment will probably seem somewhat ridiculous to actual software developers. ^^' The project itself requires that we document a lot of our work. So, besides delivering code, which counts toward some of the marks, we have to deliver documents including:   * A Requirements Analysis Document   * A Project Plan   * A planned list of Use Cases, Object and Dynamic Models and Acceptance Tests   * Documentation of the testing process and how successful the tests were   * Some other discussions and analyses of time usage, etc. These deliverables are to be delivered in the following manner:   * RAD first   * Followed by Project Plan, Use Cases, Models and Tests (approximately 3 weeks later)   * Lastly, the documentation of the actual program, the testing process, etc. + the actual programming itself (approximately 5 weeks later) So, from what I understand, this is really geared towards a Waterfall-style approach to the project. The only problem (in my opinion) is that this is a University project, and students already have enough pressure as it is with trying to develop projects at the end of semester during project week. I don't really want to be coding/developing/testing everything at the end of semester, when I'll be panicking with however many other assessments I have to deal with. I'd like to at least try and do some sort of iterative development cycle that means we can start coding/prototyping early, have a continuous development cycle that isn't focused on doing everything at the last minute and not have so much pressure at the end of the semester to finish this project. And now comes my actual question(s):   * Can I somehow reconcile having to deliver all that documentation with a fast, iterative/prototyping development cycle?   * Are there strategies for generating documentation in an iterative manner?   * Am I being entirely unreasonable asking this and expecting it to be do-able in University? Also, I understand that this question is extremely localised, so I'd like to ask the same questions that I asked above in terms of industry, and whether or not a lot of these kind of problems that agile processes face are different for each team or company. Anyway, sorry about how long this is, and if you have finished reading all the way down, thank you! If you could take the time to answer, I'd be very grateful! Thank you!"}
{"_id": "221665", "title": "How to mock method with hard coded object?", "text": "I am working on an application which have multiple layers. Data access layer to retrieve and save data from data source, business logic to manipulate data, user interface to show the data on screen. I also doing unit testing of the business logic layer. The only requirement is to test the flow of business layer logic. So I use Moq framework to mock the data access layer and unit test the business logic layer with MS Unit. I am using interface programming to make the design decouple as much as possible so that unit test can be done. Business layer call data access layer through interface. I am facing a problem when I am trying to test one of the business logic method. That method does some work and create an object and pass it to data access layer. When I am trying to mock that data access layer method then it can not successfully mock. Here I am trying to create a demo code to show my problem. Model:               public class Employee     {         public string Name { get; set; }     }      Data access layer:               public interface IDal     {         string GetMessage(Employee emp);     }          public class Dal : IDal     {         public string GetMessage(Employee emp)         {             // Doing some data source access work...                  return string.Format(\"Hello {0}\", emp.Name);         }     }      Business logic layer:               public interface IBll     {         string GetMessage();     }          public class Bll : IBll     {         private readonly IDal _dal;              public Bll(IDal dal)         {             _dal = dal;         }              public string GetMessage()         {             // Object creating inside business logic method.             Employee emp = new Employee();                   string msg = _dal.GetMessage(emp);             return msg;         }     }      Unit test:               [TestMethod]         public void Is_GetMessage_Return_Proper_Result()         {             // Arrange.             Employee emp = new Employee; // New object.                  Mock<IDal> mockDal = new Mock<IDal>();             mockDal.Setup(d => d.GetMessage(emp)).Returns(\"Hello \" + emp.Name);                  IBll bll = new Bll(mockDal.Object);                  // Act.                  // This will create another employee object inside the              // business logic method, which is different from the              // object which I have sent at the time of mocking.             string msg = bll.GetMessage();                   // Assert.             Assert.AreEqual(\"Hello arnab\", msg);         }      In unit test case at the time of mocking I am sending an Employee object but when invoking the business logic method, it is creating different Employee object inside the method. That is why I can not mock the object. In that case how to design so that I can solve the problem?"}
{"_id": "221664", "title": "What are some examples of inverted classical inheritance?", "text": "Are there any examples of inheritance in languages where classes call their subclasses' methods rather than their super classes' methods? It should not behave like traditional inheritance like the following.               Parent.method = function () {         // Do things     }     Child.method = function () {         // Do things         super.method()         // Do things     }      It should instead behave like this.               Parent.method = function () {         // Do things         sub.method()         // Do things     }     Child.method = function () {         // Do things     }      Does this pattern have a name?"}
{"_id": "220392", "title": "Queries in three tier architecture", "text": "I am wondering where should the DB queries need to be in the three tier architecture.   The first association that think is in the DAL. But then if the BL want to search for an object, the DAL need to publish methods for each possible search (Unrealistic - a lot of work). The second option, is in the BL. But then the BL need to know how the DB designed... (Encapsulation is not good) The third option, is that the DAL will publish some object like \"QueryBuilder\" or something similar, and the BL build the query with weak association (but still needed) to the DB. What is the best option to allow BL to do a search?"}
{"_id": "220391", "title": "Help me think in C++", "text": "I mainly use dynamic languages. For many years I see statically typed hello world examples like               const int STACK_SIZE = 100;      And I will think \"wow, I can't think like that\". I understand memory management, syntax, pointers (mostly). Please let me into your brain for a second and analyze this use case with me. Let's say we have a command line application that's going to let us manage employees (exciting!). Let's just focus on adding new employees. We're a trendy new startup that's going to do a moonshot so our employee list size is going to start at 1 but we're eventually going to add 7 billion co-founders and maybe more (aliens? dogs? cats?). In ruby/python/javascript, I'd just create an array and suffer/refactor later when performance is terrible. Of course, you'd use a database in either C++ or some other language. But let's entertain this for a second. Would a C++ person break the problem down past one data structure? I think of this problem as \"an array\" problem. But maybe someone with more low-level experience thinks like this?   * Create a buffer to hold the list as the user adds in names, this can be fixed size   * Periodically flush the buffer to a file or something like that. Is that realistic? I understand the requirements here are contrived and vague. But let's say a C++ developer was creating this small application for themselves. Would they just use a smart pointer or something that would grow over time or would they create a `std::string*`? Let me give another example. Let's say you write a problem to loop through a file and do something with each line. Some people (including myself) start thinking with a small example file. Then later, you find that your problem can't handle large files. Whoops. Sometime I feel like lower level programmers would naturally pre-optimize out of discipline or experience to read the file in a buffer or something like that. Do you agree?"}
{"_id": "140652", "title": "Understanding Data Binding for Windows Phone 7", "text": "I want to develop a simple app for the Windows Phone 7 platform. It's basically a vocabulary based game that involves the user moving word tiles from one area to another to score points. I want to know what is the best way of tying the UI to the game's backend? I saw the Windows Phone 7 jumpstart videos, there they touch up on Data Binding but don't really go into any depth. I'm a newbie and don't have any experience with designing the architecture for a phone app, It'd be great if someone could explain what steps I should be taking or guide me to a resource from where I could learn more."}
{"_id": "74669", "title": "Which technology for cross-platform web/desktop-based hotel management software", "text": "hope I am in the right place to ask this. A client, for whom I developed a group management software (in Flex) is now asking me to develop a fully- fledged hotel management software (tailored to his specific needs, that's why he does not use an existing one). However, he wants to access it on the Web and have a Desktop only version (if the internet won't work for any reason). Further more it should work on Mac and Windows. The software should be able to do some accounting, room management, template editing, creating pdfs, exporting excels, composing HTML Emails, lots of Reports etc. etc. This poses a real problem for me, as I know that most of those apps are written with .NET or similar, to have easy access to all Office components, Outlook, etc. However, we need Mac support as well. I was thinking of using Flex/Air, which would give me cross platform, web and desktop, but I am afraid that Air does not come with all the possibilities of Excel Export, Templated Editing, Outlook Integration, etc. And also the development time might be much higher than in .NET i am afraid. Any suggestions how you would tackle this problem? Thanks, Martin"}
{"_id": "61586", "title": "Can \"Junior\" be used in a resume?", "text": "I don't know if \"Junior\" is a useful title. Can the title Jr. Developer be used in a resume? I want to be a good fit for something that is entry level, but still challenging. Examples: Jr. Web Developer, Jr. Developer, Jr. Software Engineer"}
{"_id": "253037", "title": "Java's Object.wait method with nanoseconds: Is this a joke or am I missing something", "text": "I was checking out the Java API source code (Java 8) just out of curiosity. And I found this in `java/lang/Object.java`. There are three methods named `wait`:   * `public final native void wait(long timeout)`: This is the core of all wait methods, which has a native implementation.   * `public final void wait()`: Just calls `wait(0)`.   * And then there is `public final void wait(long timeout, int nanos)`. The JavaDoc for the particular method tells me that, > This method is similar to the wait method of one argument, but it allows > finer control over the amount of time to wait for a notification before > giving up. The amount of real time, measured in nanoseconds, is given by: >   >   >     1000000*timeout+nanos >   But this is how the methods _achieves_ \"finer control over the amount of time to wait\":               if (nanos >= 500000 || (nanos != 0 && timeout == 0)) {         timeout++;     }          wait(timeout);      So this method basically does a crude rounding up of nanoseconds to milliseconds. Not to mention that anything below 500000ns/0.5ms will be ignored. Is this piece of code bad/unnecessary code, or am I missing some unseen virtue of declaring this method, and it's no argument cousin as the way they are?"}
{"_id": "73121", "title": "Company sends debug versions of software to clients", "text": "Hey, I'm a Junior Programmer working at a company. I just found out that they've been releasing a debug build of their product to clients for the past four years because the release version is broken (and has been for several years). My initial reaction was to be aghast, and I still am, but is this common? Is this not as big of an issue (both business and code-wise) as I think it is? Thanks in advance for your answer, and apologies if I've tagged this wrong."}
{"_id": "22183", "title": "Does Open Source lead to bad coding?", "text": "I have a thought that I tried asking at SO, but didnt seem like the appropriate place. I think that source sites like Google Code, GitHub, SourceForge... have played a major role in the history of programming. However, I found that there is another bad thing to these kind of sites and that is you may just \"copy\" code from almost anyone, not knowing if it is good(tested) source or not. This line of thought has taken me to believe that source code websites tend to lead many developers (most likely unexperienced) to copy/paste massive amounts of code, which I find just wrong. I really dont know how to focus the question well, but basic thought would be: Is this ok? Is Open Source contributing to that or I'm just seeing ghosts... Hope people get interested because I think this is an important theme."}
{"_id": "210287", "title": "Incremental seek on MySQL result", "text": "When outputting data in a large file, I try to make it a habit to incrementally output data in chunks, to prevent reading the entire large file into memory. As an example to show what I mean:               $fp = fopen('path/to/file.txt', 'r');     while (!feof($fp)) {         echo fread($fp, 8192);     }     fclose($fp);      Would this same practice be possible when fetching values from a database result? If so, how? As far as I'm aware, the ability to fetch unbuffered results from MySQL only applies to a row-by-row basis - and not per column. A basic example is shown below (I am aware that the mysql extension is deprecated - this is merely for illustrative purposes):               $q = mysql_incremental('SELECT `filedata` FROM `large_files` WHERE `id` = 1');     while (!mysql_incremental_eof($q, 'filedata')) {         echo mysql_fetch_incremental($q, 'filedata');     }     mysql_free_result($q);      A possible solution that I thought of is to combine multiple queries for portions of the file, making use of the `SUBSTRING()` function available in MySQL. I would imagine that although this might be more memory efficient, I'm wondering what the effect would be on network usage as well as disk activity?"}
{"_id": "165697", "title": "What are general guidelines and advices to estimate how much you should charge for a project, being a novice freelancer?", "text": "I am an experienced programmer but completely new to the market. Someone wants me to do a project for them, but I do not know how much it is worth. What are general guidelines/advices for finding what a project is worth on the market? If I can ask here about this particular one, it is a HTML5 site with a login/register form and a video player that has to play a lecture video and powerpoint slides synchronized. They'll give me the video, the audio the powerpoints. I should also do some editting on the video before."}
{"_id": "165692", "title": "What are the advantages of a $ SKU of VS2012 over Express?", "text": "I will be using Visual Studio only for creating C#/XAML Windows Store apps. Is there any reason for me to purchase a \"Professional\" SKU of VS 2012 rather than just using the Express (free) \"Metro apps with C#/XAML\" version? The only thing I can think of is that I won't be able to use Resharper in the Express version (which I've already purchased a license for, but I use it at work, so that won't be a waste of money if I can't use it at home) - plus, I believe that even the Express SKU of VS 2012 will have similar code quality utility built in."}
{"_id": "213286", "title": "How to handle licensing of Ruby on Rails code, which contains a LGPL library?", "text": "My company wants to release the code for a Ruby on Rails demo app, which includes our own LGPL'd library code. It it legally kosher for me to state that the contents of the entire repo are released under the LGPL, although it includes \"stock\" Ruby on Rails files which are generated with every app, like `boot.rb` and `application.rb`?"}
{"_id": "254433", "title": "Are there any scenarios where the 'Dispose Pattern' shouldn't be used on an Object which contains managed and un-managed resources?", "text": "MSDN says that to properly clean up an object which contains managed and un- managed resources, you need to implement the 'Dispose Pattern'. Given that the class implements the IDisposable interface, and overrides the Object.Finalize() method (has a destructor), **is there any reason why the compiler shouldn't automatically implement the pattern for you?** For instance, compiling:               public class Example : IDisposable     {         public void Dispose() {             //Disposing managed objects implementation         }              ~Example() {             //Disposing unmanaged objects implementation         }     }      As if it were typed as follows:               public class Example : IDisposable     {         private bool previouslyDisposed = false;              private void CleanResources(bool safeToCleanManagedResources)         {             if (!this.previouslyDisposed)             {                 _finalize();                 if (safeToCleanManagedResources) {                     _dispose();                 }                 this.previouslyDisposed = true;             }         }              public void Dispose() {             CleanResources(true);             GC.SuppressFinalize(this);         }              ~Example() {             CleanResources(false);         }              private void _dispose() {             //The contents of the Dispose() method are moved here.         }              private void _finalize() {             //The contents of the ~Example() method are moved here.         }     }      From what I understand, this should **always be safe and valid**. I can not think of any scenarios where these rules would need to be broken. I know this isn't the most pressing feature the C# team is working on, but asides from that: **Are there any scenarios where an object containing managed and un-managed resources wouldn't want to follow the 'Dispose Pattern'?** I'm talking about the compiler generating a method which functions like `CleanResources()`, and moves the `Dispose()` and `~Example()` methods to anonymous backing methods (similar to how auto-properties generate private backing fields). This would mean that any calls to `Dispose()` or `~Example()` would automatically implement the 'Dispose Pattern'."}
{"_id": "214839", "title": "Some hint to program a webservice \"by subscription\"", "text": "I have some web sites programmed, I know to do it with python and PHP basically. Normally they are simple web sites, but now I want to provide REST web services but only for allowed users (allowed by me). I saw that a lot of services uses the \"KEY\" and \"SECRET_KEY\" concepts, which seems to be what I need (if I understand it right). My suppositions are:   1. If I only do a GET service to retrieve, e.g., all my clients, without anymore, anyone can retrieve my clients without limitations.   2. I will need some KEY generator to provide keys for my allowed users, so they can use my webservices.   3. Only with a KEY is not enough: someone can steal a KEY and supplant my user (and this is the reason because exists a SECRET_KEY, right?). If all this is right, how can I make/use a system like that in my web services? Some open source example? Or maybe there are another easy solutions I'm not considering? My objective is to allow some users to use my web services."}
{"_id": "223288", "title": "conditional expressions, correct usage", "text": "I've recently become quite taken with conditional expressions in Python. Apparently some people consider it unpythonic and whether or not conditional/ternary expressions are even A Good Thing seems to be up for debate -- but I've been digging them lately.               x if C else y      So far I've noted there are two ways Python will appear to 'let' you use this syntax, though I only see a pointer to the first in its official docs, so I'm a little uncertain if the second method (which I've not used, yet) is considered a good practice or not. The first, being:               myvariable = x if C else y ##also, \"return x if C else y\"      Seems fairly common; one finds it in JavaScript and Ruby and basically any other language where you'd be impelled to drop a one-liner instead of three lines of               if C:         myvariable = x     else:         myvariable = y      However, I do see that Python will let you 'get away' with a line such as this, without assigning anything:               foo() if C else bar()      I'm a fairly new programmer, really, and so I try to hesitate implementing the wrong tool for the job. This to me looks like an interesting method for controlling the flow of a program, if not the typical way for doing so. For example, if we get the high score on Stick's Asteroid's Clone v.001:               record_score() if currentscore > highestscore else display_scores()      I find it readable (others may not) and descriptive. _However_ , in my non- exhaustive independent research of being able to use conditional expressions in a way besides assignment, I don't really see a whole lot of precedent for it. That leads me to think that one wouldn't really use it in this way in the first place, regardless of the language you're in, because it just isn't the right way to handle the state of your program. Additionally, I recognize that the difference between a 'good' implementation of this and a 'bad' one may just be to make use of `return` and reconsider the relevant code.               return record_score if currentscore > highestscore else display_scores ##and then the state machine takes over      That's fine too, but the question still stands in my mind if the suggested wording would ever be acceptable in the first place. So I ask, is it even good practice to use conditional expressions apart from assignment? Or to put a finer point on it, is it acceptable to use it as a means of controlling the flow of a program?"}
{"_id": "98764", "title": "Database with version history?", "text": "I'm developing a game with a component-based architecture. I want to store entity descriptions in a SQLite database for compactness and convenience. Obviously the backend code is (and the database schema will be) under version control. Since important behaviour is in the database, and because multiple people will be working on it, I feel that it too should be properly versioned. So far my only solutions are:   * **Make periodic backups of the database.**   This would be out of line with the existing version control setup, and thus error-prone.   * **Dump the database to a diffable format and version that.**   This requires importing said format, which is akin to compiling, which should be avoided. I'd like cleaner alternatives within the existing setup, or a compelling reason to switch to another. Is there a nice C++ library for manipulating a text-based (i.e., diffable, and preferably not XML) database?"}
{"_id": "196009", "title": "What is the preferred method for an application to get settings which should not be stored in version control?", "text": "Let's say an application I'm writing requires a password for something but I don't want that password to be saved in version control (so no hard-coding the password). What I've been doing is creating a file called `PASSWORD` which is read in once by the application and ignored by version control. Is there a more preferential method to handle this situation?"}
{"_id": "166526", "title": "Create association between informations", "text": "I deployed a project some days ago that allow to extract some medical articles using the results of a questionnaire completed by a user. For instance, if I reply on questionnaire I'm affected by Diabetes type 2 and I'm a smoker, my algorithm extracts all articles related to diabetes bubbling up all articles contains information about Diabetes type 2 and smoking. Basically we created a list of topic and, for every topic we define a kind of \"guideline\" that allows to extract and order informations for a user. I'm quite sure there are some better way to put on relationship two content but I was not able to find them on network. Could you suggest my a model, algorithm or paper to better understand this kind of problem and that helps me to find a faster, and more accurate way to extract information for an user?"}
{"_id": "189186", "title": "Is there a device still being sold that requires efficient programming? What is it?", "text": "**Edit:** As a lot of you have pointed out, efficient can mean a lot of things. I guess when I say that the device 'requires efficient programming', I mean that the device does not have lots of memory or a very high CPU clock rate, and therefore needs to be programmed with these limitations in mind. **Original Question:** Sometimes, to train themselves, athletes will work in higher altitude places to workout. This is because there is less air, meaning working out is much more difficult. Once athletes have gotten used to exercising in these conditions, they find doing physical work in normal altitude places much easier. I want to do this same thing, except with software development, and more specifically, game development. I want to find some system with a low amount of RAM (in the kilobytes), low CPU clock speed, and few registers. I figure learning to program games on this kind of system would be very useful in teaching me to write efficient code. Also, it would be very fun :) The systems that I have thought about programming are the old Nintendo ones; GBA, NES, SNES. But I have learned the hard way that obtaining these, then obtaining the flash cards for them are very difficult, and on the border of being illegal. So, my question is is there a crummy device that will teach me to write efficient code that is still out there and being sold? I would like it to be a _physical_ device, looking at my programs run on physical machines would be a lot more satisfying then watching it on an emulator, and also, emulators can be buggy."}
{"_id": "189185", "title": "CRM 2011 - Workflows Vs JavaScripts", "text": "In the Contact entity, I have the following attributes               Preferred email - A read only field of type Email     Personal email 1 - An email field     Personal email 2 - An email field     Work email 1 - An email field     Work email 2 - An email field     School email - An email field     Other email - An email field     Preferred email option - An option set with the following values       {Personal email 1, Personal email 2, Work email 1, Work email 2,        School email and Other email).       None of the above mentioned fields are required. **Requirement** When user picks a value from Preferred email option, we copy the email address available in that field and apply the same in the Preferred email field. **Implementation** The Solution Architect suggested that we implement the above requirement as a Workflow. The reason he provided was - most of the times, these values are to be populated by an external website and the data is then fed into CRM 2011 system. So, when they update Preferred email option via a Web Service call to CRM, the WF will run and updated the Preferred email field. **My argument / solution**   * What will happen if I do not pick a value from the Preferred email Option Set? Do I set it to any of the email addresses that has a value in it? If so, what if there is more than one of the email address fields are populated, i.e., what if Personal email 1 and Work email 1 is populated but no value is picked in the Option Set?    * What if a value existed in the Preferred email Option Set and I then change it to NULL?   * Should the field Preferred email (where the text value of email address is stored) be set to Read Only?      * If not, what if I have picked Personal email 1 in the Option Set and then edit the Preferred email address text field with a completely new email address     * If yes, then we are enforcing that the preferred email should be one among Personal email 1, Personal email 2, Work email 1, Work email 2, School email or Other email [My preference would be this]   * What if I had a value of helloworld@yahoo.com in the personal email 1 field and personal email 2 is empty and choose value of Personal email 1 in the drop down for Preferred email (this will set the Preferred email field to helloworld@yahoo.com) and later, I change the value to Personal email 2 in the Preferred email. It overwrites a valid email address with nothing. I agree that it would be highly unlikely that a user will pick Preferred email as Personal email 2 and not have a value in it but nevertheless it is a possible scenario, isn\u2019t it?   * What if users typed in a value in Personal email 1 but by mistake picked Personal email 2 in the option set and Personal email 2 field had no value in it.  **Solution**   1. The field Preferred email option should be a required field   2. A JS should run whenever Preferred email option is changed. That JS function should set the relevant email field as required (based on the option chosen) and another JS function should be called (see step 3).   3. A JS function should update the value of Preferred email with the value in the email field (as picked in the option set).    4. The JS function should also be run every time someone updates the actual email field which is chosen in the option set.  The guys who are managing the external website should update the Preferred email field - surely, if they can update Preferred email option via a Web Service call, it is easy enough to update the Preferred email right? **Question** Which is a better method? Should it be written as a JS or a WorkFlow?   Also, whose responsibility is it to update the Preferred email field when the data flows from an external website? I am new to CRM 2011 but have around 6 years of experience as a CRM consultant (with other products). I do not come from a development background as I started off as a Application Support Engineer but have picked up development in the last couple of years."}
{"_id": "196003", "title": "Custom functions in a REST API", "text": "Looking at two of our entities `Company` and `Address`. A company has a `billingAddress` and a `profileAddress`. I'm unsure of how to implement a function to set the billing address versus the profile. Here are the options I can see:   1. Create a new address using a `POST` to `/address`. Update the company object at `/company` with `profileAddress = {/* the new id of the address */}`   2. Execute `/company/:id?function=updateBillingAddress&{/* rest of parameters go here */}`   3. Execute `/updateBillingAddress?company={companyId}&{/* rest of parameters go here */}`   4. Execute `/company/:id?billingAddress={ /* address data here */ }` The first method requires two calls and more responsibility on the part of the developer hooking up to the API. However, I'm not sure the second two methods are appropriate structure. The last one seems like it might be okay, it gives flexibility for updates without holding the responsibility of managing pointers or executing two calls.. still unsure. Has anyone seen use of methods 2 or 3 before. Are they okay to use? Why / why not? Which would you suggest to use and why?"}
{"_id": "166520", "title": "Does the Head(start) pointer of Doubly Linked list points previously to the tail(last) node", "text": "I have one question in my mind that in case of circular doubly linked list the head pointer of the doubly linked list also logically point to the next pointer of the tail node of the linked list and tail's next pointer also point to the previous pointer of head. Please Answer me this question I am a bit confused."}
{"_id": "166521", "title": "Design application to send messages by marking circle on the map where you want to send message?", "text": "> Design application to send messages by marking circle on the map where you > want to send message ? This is a question that was asked of me by an interviewer. > Given a map of the world, Select the country you want to send message to by > marking the area with a circle then send the message to all the people in > that area. Visual Link to the Question : Design this application > **The approach that I told him** : > > Firstly build whole person's data (contacts , place information and all). > Then where you mark on the map, just build a cluster of that country using > Hadoop and fire the message to all the person's contact comes in that > cluster. please help me to better understand this problem, and if there is a better approach to the problem (all back-end and front-end)."}
{"_id": "213280", "title": "When should one use composition instead of re-writing the functionality?", "text": "Say, I have a class A which has methods m1,m2,m3,m4,m5.... m100. I am making another simpler class B and I require only m2,m3 and m5 in B. Should I be ideally using compositions and put a reference of A inside of B and just delegate the functionality ? or I should just re-write[copy=paste] those 2-3 methods out of class A ?"}
{"_id": "56536", "title": "Why did SVG lose to Flash?", "text": "There's alot of buzz going around that HTML5/Canvas will eventually be a flash killer. But upon some research I'm learning that HTML5/Canvas is just bitmap graphics. The real competitor with Flash is actually SVG. SVG was released a few years back. My question is, why didn't SVG turn out to be a flash killer?"}
{"_id": "52893", "title": "Which software development methodologies can be seen as foundations", "text": "I'm writing a small research paper which involves software development methodologiess. I was looking into all the available methodology's and I was wondering, from all methodologies, are there any that have provided the foundations for the others? For an example, looking at the following methodologies:   Agile, Prototyping, Cleanroom, Iterative, RAD, RUP, Spiral, Waterfall, XP, Lean, Scrum, V-Model, TDD. Can we say that:   Prototyping, Iterative, Spiral and Waterfall are the \"foundation\" for the others? Or is there no such thing as \"foundations\" and does each methodology has it's own unique history? I would ofcourse like to describe all the methodology's in my research paper, but I simply don't have the time to do so and that is why I would like to know which methodologies can be seen as representatives."}
{"_id": "52895", "title": "When should I release/announce my open source library?", "text": "I am developing `python` library for database inspection. When is good time to announce/release it? Obvious answer is that when it's ready to be used. But I would like to get some feedback on the API, on what would be useful and act accordingly to `release early` rule. Any advice on what I should consider before releasing?"}
{"_id": "196475", "title": "What's the meaning of term context in programming", "text": "I was looking through some Objective C docs.. and got this : > UIGraphicsBeginImageContext : Creates a bitmap-based graphics context and > makes it the current context. Also, the same term is used in Robotlegs : > (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/actionscript/articles/intro-robotlegs-pt1.html) > Context: Context is the bootstrapping mechanism that initializes dependency > injection and the various core utilities that Robotlegs uses. Dictionary meaning of context as i googled, doesnot seem to match the way it's used in programming : > con\u00b7text /\u02c8k\u00e4ntekst/ Noun The circumstances that form the setting for an > event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood > and assessed. > > The parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow > a word or passage and clarify its meaning. Anybody can throw some light pls! V."}
{"_id": "52896", "title": "How to use external file comparer in MS TFS", "text": "I don't like ms diff that integrated into Visual Studio 2008 TFS Edition. Is it possible to change this file comparer to external one (Beyond Compare, for example)?"}
{"_id": "220536", "title": "Why use REST with PHP?", "text": "I am developing an app in Android, i need get information from a external database in mysql and i read about Rest.. REST is using HTTP verbs GET, POST, PUT, DELETE to respectively get, insert, update, delete resources on a server. E.g. GET with url: controller/customer/{id} But why not use a simple Php ? is really necessary to use REST? i dont understand why i must use Rest if a simple PHP will do the same. Rest with php is a RESTFul?"}
{"_id": "220537", "title": "How do you build debugging messages into your programs/scripts?", "text": "General, high-level question for people who work with code regularly. I was repurposing some old, outdated Javascript code into a Chrome extension, and to help me understand it, I wrote some quick code to help (see below). I regularly put messages in my code such as `dbmsg('Begin function loadDefaults()');` or `dbmsg('Settings saved to storage');` and the message is sent to the console. Whenever I need to debug something where the standard console messages aren't helping, I just turn on debugging. I figure this method is pretty simple and can be ported to other languages. **What other ways do you build debugging into your programs?** I'm self- taught, so I don't know the standard practices, but I'm more interested in unique ways you've found to do this sort of thing.               /** Debugging Tools      *      * Set debugMode to 1 to show error messages, 0 to hide messages.      */     var debugMode = 1;     function dbmsg(message) {         if ( debugMode == 1 ) {             var date = new Date();             var time = date.getHours() + ':'                  + date.getMinutes() + ':'                  + date.getSeconds();             console.log('DBM - ' + time + ': ' + message);             if ( chrome.runtime.lastError ) {                 console.log('DBM lastError - ' + chrome.runtime.lastError);             }         } else if ( debugMode == 0 ) {             return;         }     }     if ( debugMode == 1 ) {         console.log('Debug mode is currently ON. Each debug message is preceeded with \"DBM\" and the time the message was generated.');              // Listen for changes in storage         chrome.storage.onChanged.addListener(function(changes, namespace) {             for (key in changes) {                 var storageChange = changes[key];                 dbmsg('Storage key \"%s\" in namespace \"%s\" changed. ' +                       'Old value was \"%s\", new value is \"%s\".',                       key,                       namespace,                       storageChange.oldValue,                       storageChange.newValue);             }         });     }"}
{"_id": "220534", "title": "DTOs matter on ASP.NET MVC JSON Action?", "text": "I recently came across an internal project where they were using DTOs throughout the solution, and when I sat down to implement a new MVC controller with a JSON REST endpoint I decided to use an anonymous object convention instead of declaring a discrete DTO class solely for the purpose of this API endpoint.               public JsonResult GetSomeSuch()     {         // .. do work              return Json(new {             PropA = domainObj1.PropA,             PropB = domainObj2.PropB         });     }      .. as opposed to the team convention, ..               public JsonResult GetSomeSuch()     {         // do work ..              return Json(new SomeSuchDTO2 {             PropA = domainObj1.PropA,             PropB = domainObj2.PropB         }     }          // in some other file off in some other project and folder     public class SomeSuchDTO2 {         public int PropA { get; set; }         public string PropB { get; set; }     }      Setting aside that I should have used a DTO here purely because it was already a team convention, team conventions trump best practices until team conventions change by team leadership, of which I was not yet a part. I'm not concerned about the social / team dynamic and consistency aspects so much as the technical value of details in specifically that point at which an action in C# becomes serialized to Javascript, as I have since moved on from that company. The team convention was to return only DTOs and the DTOs were managed in a completely different project (among about 50 projects in the solution), I felt that in this case perpetuating that pattern was excessive and difficult to maintain. Further, my belief is that DRY must correlate with YAGNI; only refactor when you're repeating the same thing twice, as such you would only refactor to use a DTO if that same return object structure reflecting the same context is in fact needed elsewhere, not just possibly but actually, but since this is being serialized to Javascript where it will be consumed anyway there is really no point anyway. I suppose a case can be made for DTOs as specification documentation, but when it becomes more of a maintenance chore to declare them and to look them up in their special folder in a project I would argue that there are more appropriate places and means to document the interface; indeed the anonymous object declaration seems to be documentation enough. I should also add that in our case everything was internal, this was a standalone project, so it's not like this was an externally exposed API. I was wondering if there are other angles to this that I didn't consider as to why I should use DTOs, something reasonably convincing?"}
{"_id": "220535", "title": "Semantic CSS class names", "text": "I always read articles that suggest to not use presentational CSS class names. Currently I'm working on a small website project. The footer on this website looks like this: ![Footer](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FTdZl.jpg) Although it's pretty simple, I'm not exactly sure how to name the class names. At the moment, I'm using this grid system, which uses class names like \"one- quarter\", \"one-half\" and so on. Easiest way would then probably be to use a HTML structure like this:               <footer class=\"footer\">             <div class=\"grid\">                 <div class=\"grid__item one-quarter\">                     <h5>Adress</h5>                     Lorem Ipsum<br>                     Lorem Ipsum                 </div><!--                 --><div class=\"grid__item one-quarter\">                     <h5>Adress</h5>                     Lorem Ipsum<br>                     Lorem Ipsum                 </div><!--                 --><div class=\"grid__item two-quarters\">                     <nav class=\"nav--meta\">                         <!-- UL / LI for the navigation -->                     </nav>                 </div>             </div>         </footer>       But for several reasons I'll have to use SASS silent classes instead of using those classes like \"one-quarter\" directly in my HTML structure:               .classname {          @extend %grid__item;          @extend %one-quarter;          // ...     }      So I'm not sure how to name my different columns inside my footer. \"footer_ _left\" / \"footer_ _right\" are very presentational, so is \"footer_ _adress\" (content might change in future) / \"footer_ _nav\". Are there any best practices around or an article about CSS class naming in general? And I'm aware that this is mostly personal opinion, but I would still like to hear from others how they deal with it."}
{"_id": "220530", "title": "How to handle when one user deletes the object while the other has it opened in edit mode in a webapp?", "text": "I am developing a CRUD type web application. It is a project management system having projects, milestones, tasks, employees etc. Each employee has his/her own account to login and view the system. The problems come here:   1. If one user deletes a task while the second has it opened at the same time, the second user will get a null pointer exception if he tries edit and save, because the object doesn't exist.   2. The same problem in a bit different situation. One user has a task window opened. The second user deletes one employee. The first user tries to assign a task to deleted employee (because it is already in the list in a combobox) and gets null pointer exception.   3. If someone deletes the object and the other user tries to open it at the same time (will be a null pointer exception when trying to get an item) I am trying to leave technical details of the project because it is up to that. But if it helps, I'm using Vaadin framework based on Java. The database is MySQL. I thought two possible solutions but not sure about them:   1. Catch null pointer exception and print a general warning to the screen (\"Some objects are missing...). But it wouldn't be clear for the users that exactly has happened.   2. Check every commit of the object and if it was deleted catch the exception and give more detailed explanation. But it won't help in the 3rd situation. I am really looking for any guiding points, advice, or tips you can provide on how to properly deal with these situations. Thank you in advance!"}
{"_id": "25858", "title": "Best way to organize SQL queries stored in your code ? (or should you?)", "text": "I am sure I am not the only one who gets frustrated when they see a page of code littered with SQL queries. The ActiveRecord and other ORM patterns help mitigate a good amount of SQL used in a project, but in many cases of complex queries, the use of SQL is seemingly unavoidable. I am looking for opinions on how SQL queries should be organized with the rest of the code (or externally to it) to keep it from being scattered all over the place? One obvious idea is the use of Views, but often Views can be a source of performance issues when dealing with multiple large indexed tables, etc. **EDIT 1 - I am assuming you've already got it separated into the model layer**"}
{"_id": "141623", "title": "Good books or tutorials on building projects without an IDE?", "text": "While I'm certainly under no illusions that building software without an IDE is possible, I don't actually know much about doing it well. I've been using graphical tools like Visual Studio or Code::Blocks so long that I'm pretty well lost without them. And that really stinks when I want to change environments or languages. I couldn't really do anything in D until someone made a Visual Studio plugin, and now that I'm trying to do more development on Mac, I can't use D again because the XCode plugins don't work. I'm sick of being lost when I see a .make file and having no idea what I'm supposed to do with a folder full of source files. People can't be compiling them one by one using the console and then linking them one by one. You'd spend more time typing file names than code. So what are the automation and productivity tools of the non-IDE user? How do you manage a project when you're writing all the code in emacs or vim or nano or whatever? I would love it if there was a book or a guide online that spells some of this out."}
{"_id": "141624", "title": "How to improve designer and developer work flow?", "text": "I work in a small startup with two front end developers and one designer. Currently the process starts with the designer sending a png file with the whole page design and assets if needed. My task as front end developer is to convert it to a HTML/CSS page. My work flow currently looks like this:   1. Lay out the distinct parts using html elements.   2. Style each element very roughly (floats, minimal fonts and padding) so I can modify it using inspection.   3. Using Chrome Developer Tools (inspect) add/change css attributes while updating the css file.   4. Refresh the page after X amount of changes   5. Use Pixel Perfect to refine the design more.   6. Sit with the designer to make last adjustments. Inferring the paddings, margins, font sizes using trial and error takes a lot of time and I feel the process could become more efficient but not sure how to improve it. Using PSD files is not an option since buying Photoshop for each developer is currently not considered. Design guide is also not available since design is still evolving and new features are introduced. Ideas for improving the process above and sharing how the process looks like in your company will be great."}
{"_id": "186983", "title": "Algorithm for picking reasonable min/max vals given a single value", "text": "I am making a simplistic in-browser IDE for some very domain-specific coding. Because I like Bret Victor's thoughts on Learnable Programming so much I thought I'd throw in some draggable numbers ala Tangle.js (click here to see what I'm talking about). My implementation is a much simpler slider input control but the idea is the same. One issue comes up however. The dragging slider needs values for min, max, and step. Since the values are user-entered I cannot hard code them. Currently I do `{min: currentValue/10, max: currentValue*5}` but this is so simplistic that it fails to make sense in a large class of cases. What I would like is an algorithm (which I imagine would be just a simple calculation) that given a value for a number would make good guesses on min, max, and step values. (Or any 2 of those since getting the third would be trivial). eg.                  fn(15) -> {min: 0, max: 35, step: 1}        fn(1.478) -> {min: -2, max: 5, step: .2}        fn(-7034) -> {min: -35000, max: -500, step: 100}      Obviously it need not and cannot be perfect but I'm wondering if anyone has an idea for an algorithm or something mathy that makes sense here."}
{"_id": "186980", "title": "Mutual exclusion over network - pattern?", "text": "I want to do the following: I have a number of computers. On each computer a programm will run. There is no centralized server. The program can choose by defined criteria to give another computer specified data. While doing so, the other computer should not do the same. (A sort of 2 way synchronize) Let's make an example. (C1 .. Cn are the programs running on different computers) C1 sends C2 updated data. While processing is active, C2 should not ask C1 for update something else. The idea was: C1 sends a message to C2: PauseExecution() C1 sends to C2 items to be processed (updates some data on C2) C1 sends a message to C2: ResumeExecution(). C2 sends a message to C1: PauseExecution() C2 sends to C1 items to be processed (updates some data on C1) C2 sends a message to C1: ResumeExecution(). But now the biggest problem arises. If C1 sends a message to C2 to Pause, and C22 sends at the same tiem a message to C1 to Pause, both would block. There is no centralized server / shared memory for keeping a semaphore. Is there another pattern which can be used, so that n computers will not block? So this question is about algorithmic exclusion. Or is there another workaround for this problem, if no semaphore or mutex can be used?"}
{"_id": "186986", "title": "Use Cases with respect to downstream systems", "text": "Use cases are primarily meant for interaction between user and a system. It could be used for interaction between system and another system. The actors are primarily roles. It is easy to document the use cases for a front end application like a portal where in all the activities and role performing the activity could be defined. However if the system is an order management or provisioning system which a downstream system how could the use cases be documented? For eg: An order management application may responsible for processing orders for type new install , change of service , cancel , reschedule , suspend , restart etc.These transactions could be triggered by from different sources by different means (service call , entry placed in db which OM application polls , order placed in jms queue - however I assume these have no relation to use case). Once an order is received Order Management application might have to interact with different applications (credit check , shipping , provisioning , activation , billing etc) depending on the order type. **EDIT: ADDED MORE INFO** I have an application that receives data from an upstream application. My application consumes webservices exposed by multiple other applications in order to fulfill a task. The data flows through multiple applications before reaching the upstream system which sends messages to my application. The activities that my application does are install, disconnect , suspend, restore etc using multiple services that it consumes. When I read posts on having system as actors, the primary aim seems to be demarcating and defining the interfaces properly. In the scenario above assuming the upstream system is A, my application is B and the applications that my application consumes are C, D, and E. 1) My aplication performs install , disconnect , restrat and suspend. Are these the activities? 2) Will the primary actor be the system sending messages to my application? I can't think of this as a role and also there no interaction between the upstream application and my application after the point when my application recieves a message. 3) How can I define the external applications that my application consumes? as actor or activity? or i need not care about these in use case diagram? When you take an interaction between user and a system for shopping a product - you will list the series of interations between you and the software. However what software does internally is not specified. Here in my case , since it is a downstream system , the upstream system sends only one message and there is no series of interaction. Hence I am in a quandry as to how I should define the scenarios."}
{"_id": "75201", "title": "Reports from the front lines: VS Lab Management", "text": "I'm looking into Lab Management right now for our test environment for manual and automated testing. I'm just getting started on the process of putting together various servers to host/support it and then I'll be making some dummy projects and working through the process. Currently, we are using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to create VMs and we build systems on them. Our workflow for manual testing is more-or-less like this:   1. Build VMs with supported platform (OS, Pre-req software, etc.)   2. Install latest build, or any build noted in a bug that we're trying to repro   3. Snapshot the VM   4. Test or Repro   5. Snapshot when bug is seen   6. Create bug in TFS, gets assigned to Dev   7. Dev usually asks to see the VM, they login and do what they need   8. While the Dev is working on a fix we write automation to perform the repro (using internal tools - this is a bit of a weak point) or move on to a different bug retest or something   9. Doc anything important that the team might need to know in the future in our wiki   10. When we get a fix, we basically return to the snapshot created in step 5 and run the automation (if it was completed - sometimes they can take time that isn't available) I was wondering if anyone else has used lab management or is currently using it in a production environment. I would like to ask those people: Test Side:   * What tangible benefits have you seen from using lab management? What's easier? What's harder? (compared to what you were doing before)   * Considering what we're using now, where can you see weak points being that lab management will help significantly?   * How does writing automation compare to any other methods you've used? Dev Side:   * Do the bugs created using lab management provide everything you need? The marketing for lab management shows lots of info auto-generated and being able to hop into a snapshot seems to help, but I can't see how you would be able to easily step through anything in a debugger without having pulled down the code base and having a dev environment setup on the VM (not likely in our case, codebase is quite large)."}
{"_id": "250075", "title": "Confusing project dependencies", "text": "I have a project for my main application and some projects for modules that are used by this application. Following I will reduce it to the main project and one module project. Both projects share some dependencies, but the module project is also a dependency of the main project. I thought that it would be best to create a parent pom that includes all shared dependencies. Additionally I wanted to create Project Aggregation as described on http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the- pom.html, to build everything in one step. But I would also have to declare the module project as a dependency of the main project. I don't think that this is a good approach and I am getting confused because the projects are referenced at many places. Do you have any solutions for creating a clean structure?"}
{"_id": "204125", "title": "Sprint item takes longer then expected to be completed. What should we do?", "text": "What should we do if a item in scrum takes longer then expected? i am asking this because i have been noticing items that developers is struggling to complete as it is much tougher then initially thought. In such situation should we   * remove the item from sprint back to product catalog so that we can meet the sprint timeline?   * move to easier sprint item and leave problematic sprint till the end of timeline   * justify at sprint review why the item cant be completed at current sprint to stakeholders? How can we avoid such situation in future? Is it due to lack of upfront planning or we did not make an effort to break down the sprint item into smaller item?"}
{"_id": "204124", "title": "How to properly conduct a feature development meeting?", "text": "I am a Product Manager, under me I have about 10 developers, UX designers and marketers. Marketers research about the demands of features, UX designers providing UI mockups, and develkopers write code. Now, we want to do our feature development monthly meeting (sprint) in a more structured manner ( previously, feature priority is decided in a somewhat adhoc manner, we want to change this). The goals of the meeting are   1. To set the priority ( urgent, important, normal, not important) of each feature   2. To make sure that everyone knows what to do for this coming milestone after the meeting is over. But given that we have 10 people on the team and usually, we have more than 50 features to discussed, I afraid that the whole meeting will drag on for a long time. Also, for the second step, I would need to allow time for everyone to check their schedule, as not everyone is fully available to work on the features ( some would need to fix bugs, provide technical supports etc), so if I ask them to do this in the meeting, then there will be some lull time and disrupt the flow of the meeting. Is there any well-established meeting procedure that is fitting to my situation above?"}
{"_id": "199325", "title": "Two libraries connecting to the database, leading to code smell?", "text": "In the current company that I work for there is a very large Utilities library. It was written a few years back (long before I joined) and has grown ergonomically over time to now do everything:   * Sending Emails   * Exporting Files in different formats, i.e. CSV, tab delimited   * Receiving data from 3rd party providers, i.e. Bloomberg, Facset   * Sending files to SFTP sites   * Generic database connection The list goes on and it is pretty ugly really. The original developer here used it in every application that he wrote for convenience sake and added to it as necessary. The utilities library itself has references to 3rd party API\u2019s to do some data receiving from Bloomberg/Factset. Using these 3rd party API\u2019s means that any project that wants to reference the large Utilities library also then needs to have the Bloomberg API\u2019s and Facset API\u2019s with it. The list is starting to grow too and it is becoming very unmaintainable and unnecessary to have all these 3rd party DLL\u2019s accompanied with this large Utilities project but are required to compile it. I want to rewrite this entire library it to more manageable libraries. i.e:   * CompanyName.Email   * CompanyName.FileExporter   * CompanyName.Bloomberg Each project will then only reference the necessary projects it needs to get its job done. i.e. reference the CompanyName.Email to send emails. I have no issues doing that, but the complication facing me is that some of the new libraries will require their own database connection and queries. The example below is:               [HolidayChecker]     [HolidayChecker.DAL]      We store a list of holiday days in the database. What I would want the HolidayChecker project to do is expose a method (amongst others) to check if a particular date is a holiday.               public interface IHolidayChecker     {         bool IsHoliday(DateTime dateToCheck);     }     public class HolidayChecker : IHolidayChecker     {         public bool IsHoliday(DateTime dateToCheck)         {             //Query database for date logic...         }     }      Many applications will then reference this HolidayChecker project and use the IsHoliday method. These applications will also have their own connection and queries to the database to perform their own tasks.               [GenericApplication (References HolidayChecker)]     [GenericApplication.BusinessLogic]     [GenericApplication.DAL]      If the application and the HolidayChecker project both access the database and query the data, this comes across heavily as code smell. Is anyone aware of a tidier way of achieving this? Or is there? Is this something I will just have to live with? # EDIT: Thinking about this overnight, I don't think it is a bad as first thought. Projects like ELMAH are stand alone that also connect to the database and do their own queries. As @Allan pointed out, it is just a matter of designing my HolidayChecker project correctly."}
{"_id": "250073", "title": "How to work with large aggregate roots?", "text": "I'm learning DDD and yet I have more questions than answers. Let's consider a model of a directory containing enormous number of files.   Here is how I see it: Directory is an Aggregate root.   This entity should have the validation logic of checking file name uniqueness when it is added or just renamed. And File entity contains the 'SetName' logic, notifying Directory via Domain Event about name changes.   But how should Directory then work?   It is not always possible to load all files into memory. Should in this case Files repository have adhoc logic for checking name uniqueness? I suppose it is a viable decision.   However, what if some files have been already added or renamed withing current not yet commited transaction? (nothing prohibits that. Transaction boundaries are set externally in relation to business logic). Probably repository should take into account both in-memory and persisted states (merging these states can be nontrivial task.) So, when aggregate root with all its children fits in memory - everything is fine. And as soon as you can not materialize all entities there are troubles. I'd like to know what are the approaches for such situations. May be there is no problem at all and it is just because of my misunderstanding of the subject."}
{"_id": "138238", "title": "Unit testing - Database coupled app", "text": "What would be the best approach at unit testing a model that integrates into an application that is tightly coupled to database? The specific scenario here is a shopping cart - I'd like to be able to test the adding removing and retrieving of items from the cart as well as pricing logic etc. This in my mind all requires database access though I have read several times that database access should be avoided."}
{"_id": "249800", "title": "Strategy game, how do I calculate the parallel actions?", "text": "I am building a strategy game where multiple units(5 - 20) fighting each other. I have a game logic that calculate all the actions that been done on each turn, and send it to the game engine to animate. Those are the possible actions:   * perform attack   * perform taking damage   * perform moving   * perform missing   * perform removing your self(dying) ## How can I find what actions I can perform in parallel and what are not? Those are the limitations that I have:   * units can only perform one action at a time.   * each action may have different times, even if its the same action   * Unit can perform the action `attack`, only if the other unit performing the action `taking damage` or `removing your self`   * after unit performed the action: `removing your self`, he cannot perform any other action. **Edit:** Those are the situations that might happened:   * one unit is attacked by multiple units at once   * one unit taking damage while no units are attacking him   * all the units move at the same time   * all the units perform miss at the same time This question is not about game design, but a programmatic solution to how I can find those parallel tiles of actions? * * * Reply to **FrustratedWithFormsDesign** , answer Hi man, you took it to completely different direction, so I want to reply you here to clear things up. This questions is not about how to make units to move in parallel. I also don't think that your suggestion is a good idea. What you did with your own game this is actually, the right direction. It will be also wise to work in MVC and separate the view and game logics. So to implement a game engine I would use a game thread that will dispatch tick events, based on chosen frame rate. Only the views should be listening for that thread and implement they view logic based on it. In my game I am using **Adobe Air** framework with some native Java and Objective-C support for mobiles, but it's **Air** mostly. So all my animations are listening to onEnterFrameEvent, this would be tick in your example, and implement their animation logic. My game logic is using a different worker(air threads implementations, it's more like a process) to generate all the actions on particular turn. And than it sands it to the game engine to animate. I do not ask how to implement the animations, it's handled by **Air** apis, and it doesn't meter in here. Think about those problems: > unit a attacks unit b while unit b attacks unit c, while unit c is moving. This will resolute with a mess on the screen.   I want it to be: > unit a attack unit b, unit b waits for a to finish attacking him to start > attacking unit c, while unit c is moving. After a finish attacking unit b, > unit b attacks unit c. So the input of actions I received was:   * A attack   * B take damage   * B attack   * C take damage   * C move And the output was two sets of animations   * A attack, C move, B take damage   * B attack, C take damage This was a very simple example of how I would like to parallel my actions. I hope now it is more clear."}
{"_id": "250079", "title": "Are the over-usage of delegates a bad thing?", "text": "Good day. I have been told that a good practice for writing methods is to make the method only responsible for doing one thing. It made sense to me now that I look back upon it in retrospect. There are a couple of reasons I like coding in such a way - to me they are:   1. Code is Manageable   2. Code is more human readable   3. Better understanding of what the method does is maintained But here comes the issue which concerns me. Sometimes performing a task requires more than 1 action to be performed. A lot of developers' code which I look at every day does 7 to 8 things per method, where it could have been broken up and assigned to a delegate to run the methods sequentially. Working on huge projects, what will the implications be of using a lot of delegates to run methods sequentially? Should I be concerned for using a lot of delegates in my code? Example-               private delegate void Factory();         Factory factory = null;         protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             try             {                 factory += SetCatalogClientProxy;                 factory += SetHelper;                 factory += GetAccessToken;                 //factory += GetCatalog;                 factory += GetToken;                 factory.Invoke();             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 AddToResult(ex.Message + NEWLINE + ex.StackTrace.Replace(\" at \", \" at \" + NEWLINE).Replace(\" in \", \" in \" + NEWLINE));             }         }              #region Test Process Methods              private void SetCatalogClientProxy()         {             catalog = new JAM.CatalogClientProxy();             AddToResult(\"CatalogClientProxy Successfully initialized\");         }              private void SetHelper()         {             helper = new JAM.HelperClass();             AddToResult(\"HelperClass Successfully Intialized\");         }              private void GetAccessToken()         {             accessToken = JAM.CatalogClientProxy._accessToken;             if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(accessToken))             {                 catalog.GetACSClaim();                 accessToken = JAM.CatalogClientProxy._accessToken;             }             AddToResult(\"Accesstoken Retrieved.\" + NEWLINE + accessToken);         }              private void GetCatalog()         {             catalog.CallCatalogService(\"fullcatalog\", utcTime, country, \"2\", false);             AddToResult(helper.Catalog(baseUrl, utcTime, page, country, accessToken));         }              private void GetToken()         {             var Fulfillment = new JAM.FulfillmentServiceProxy(Guid.NewGuid().ToString());             ClassImport.FulfillmentInfo result = Fulfillment.GetToken(\"ABC-11111\", \"123456\", \"ZA\", \"123456\", \"123456\", JAM.CatalogClientProxy._accessToken);                  if (result != null)             {                 var output = \"Products\" + NEWLINE;                 foreach (var p in result.Products)                 {                     output += \"    \" + p.ProductName + \"<br/>\";                     foreach (var l in p.Links)                     {                         output += \"        \" + l.Uri + \"<br/>\";                     }                 }                 AddToResult(output);             }             else             {                 AddToResult(\"No products Found\");             }         }         #endregion              #region Logging To Page              private void AddToResult(string text)         {             result.InnerHtml += String.Concat(\"<strong>[\", DateTime.Now.ToString(), \"]</strong> \", text, NEWLINE);         }              #endregion      This is from one of my test pages. There is only 1 delegate here, but on other projects I work on I sometimes have 5 or 6 delegates set up similarly to perform methods sequentially, where I try to keep the methods at 1 action each."}
{"_id": "204129", "title": "External id for every relational table", "text": "Should I add an external id for **every** table? For example if I have these tables :               Customer     =======================================     Id       Name      Gender     ---------------------------------------     1        John      M     2        Doe       M     ---------------------------------------          CustomerPurchase     ==========================================================================     Id       ExternalId      CustomerId            TotalQty     --------------------------------------------------------------------------     1        PO0313-0001     1                     10     --------------------------------------------------------------------------      In that example, I understand that ExternalId is required in CustomerPurchase table (for printing, etc). But I don't see any reason why Customer table should need one as well. FYI, the reason I asked this because a friend of mine said that SAP uses ExternalIds in their tables. Should I use ExternalId in every table? Am I missing any ExternalId's other usage besides for user's eye friendlier identification? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "249804", "title": "Should arguments always be passed to an Action in a MVC controller", "text": "I have a number of controllers that take a 'site' as a parameter within their actions, like so:                   [AuthoriseSite]         public ActionResult Index(string site) {             var model = gvmFactory.CreateAnIndexViewModel(site);             return View(\"Index\", model);         }      I have been passing the site as a parameter but I could also calculate it from a user's Membership profile, so my code could look like:                   [AuthoriseSite]         public ActionResult Index() {             string site = UserProfileService.GetUsersSite();                var model = gvmFactory.CreateAnIndexViewModel(sitename);             return View(\"Index\", model);         }      The site parameter can vary according to the role a user is in. Users that are admins can choose many different sites, whilst non-admins can only use the one they belong to. **My question is, which is the better practice?** I favour the first, it feels more like MVC, although this could just be I've always tended to do this. The second has some advantages in that URLs can not be adjusted so as non-admins get to see sites they shouldn't. However, the filter [AuthoriseSite] prevents this."}
{"_id": "167699", "title": "What does using (vec col) or (vector arg1 & args) cost?", "text": "I am working through some Lisp exercises using Clojure. If I were to convert Lisp lists to Clojure vectors, solving some of the problems would be simpler, so here is my question: Does using `vec` or `vector` cost a lot in terms of time and/or processing? Does using either function cause a meta state change, or are the values converted and moved to a vector?"}
{"_id": "209331", "title": "Is doing some work for credit worthwhile?", "text": "Not sure how to title this as it's not just about that. But suppose that there is a software like .NET BCL, and you notice some places where you can make things much faster. It's not a great example but imagine you made several types like `List<T>`, etc much faster, i.e. 10x to 200x for each operation separately. Let's say you told Microsoft about it, and asked if they would consider adding your changes. What would you do if they give you only one of these options from this list:   1. They will add the code, you will no credit or money.   2. They will add the code, and give you credit, no money.   3. They won't add the code, but try to make the same changes that you showed or explained or use your code as an \"inspiration\", but not credit or money.   4. They won't do anything and you will just publish your code as your own library somewhere. Considering this would be something you could use in your resume, would you consider any of these? Because if you say you helped Microsoft to optimize/improve X, Y, Z 100x, etc, it should help you in getting a job, right? I mean not solely but something that might not be found in almost no other resumes. If they offer #1 or #3, what does that tell you about the company? Should you go for #4 then? I mean #4 is fine but if .NET has 10 million users, you can maybe reach a couple thousands by publishing your stuff as 3rd party since most people don't download extra libraries I think. Also this thing I am describing is not a full-time thing but more like \"along the way\" effort to increase your value since you did the work anyway. So it's not like you are doing it for them. Or do you think companies can take this kind of stuff as hostile or offensive since you basically showed their software engineers, they can't write performant software with all their engineering degrees which you might not have. It's fair to assume they aren't trying to be loose on performance for .NET The reason I am asking about this is because some companies seem very hesitant on giving credit where credit is due. But credit is free, so why would they resist? If all it takes is typing your name somewhere, why would they refuse? Any ideas on this?"}
{"_id": "2164", "title": "How to deal with the \"programming blowhard\"?", "text": "(Repost, I posted this in the wrong section before, sorry) So I'm sure everyone has run into this person at one point or another, someone catches wind of your project or idea and initially shows some interest. You get to talking about some of your methods and usually around this time they interject stating how you should use method X instead, or just use library Y. But not as a friendly suggestion, but bordering on a commandment. Often repeating the same advice over and over like a overzealous parrot. Personally, I like to reinvent the wheel when I'm learning, or even just for fun, even if it turns out worse than what's been done before. But this person apparently cannot fathom recreating ANY utility for such purposes, or possibly try something that doesn't strictly follow traditional OOP practices, and will settle for nothing except their sense of perfection, and thus naturally heave their criticism sludge down my ears full force. To top it off, they eventually start justifying their advice (retardation) by listing all the incredibly complex things they've coded single-handedly (usually along the lines of \"trust me, I've made/used program X for a long time, blah blah blah\"). Now, I'm far from being a programming master, I'm probably not even that good, and as such I value advice and critique, but I think advice/critique has a time and place. There is also a big difference between being helpful and being narcissistic. In the past I probably would have used a somewhat stronger George Carlin style dismissal, but I don't think burning bridges is the best approach anymore. Maybe I'm just an asshole, but do you have any advice on how to deal with this kind of verbal flogging?"}
{"_id": "167691", "title": "What's the opposite of cohesive?", "text": "I was talking with my architect about some concerns with a particular approach that may result in very low level of cohesion in a set of classes. However, I couldn't think of the word that represents a low level of cohesion. I said something along the lines of \"Obviously, we want cohesive classes not... uh ... not cohesive classes\" What's the correct word I should have used?"}
{"_id": "225560", "title": "How do programs generally get information from the OS?", "text": "In many languages there are libraries, either built into the language itself or built separately outside of the language, which allow information to be taken from the operating system at some level. Examples are metadata about a file, current memory usage and the OS version itself. How is this information generally accessed? At the moment the only way I can see it working is through executing command line functions and parsing the answer. For example, to list the files in a current directory on Linux your application would execute 'ls' at the specified directory and then parse the output to produce the required format. Is this the only way? This example assumes you are using no libraries which do it for you of course (or maybe you're building a library for this purpose."}
{"_id": "222660", "title": "Separating front end from back end - Tomcat", "text": "I'm currently working with a company that uses Java / Tomcat / Spring for the back end of our web applications. As a front-end developer, I'm feeling more and more strongly that the back end should be a separate project from the front end, for a few reasons: 1) **Building the project** \\- many modern projects build with grunt and other front-end tools. The front-end build goals (concatenation, minification, front end tests, pre-processing CSS) are completely different from the back end goals (compiling java code, passing back end tests, deploying to a continuous integration server) 2) **Deployment:** When I commit a javascript or html file to our git repo, it doesn't make sense that our continuous deployment tool should rebuild and redeploy the whole project, but it has no way to tell the difference between a front-end commit and a back-end commit. So, **how would you restructure a project** that previously automatically deployed from a single war file, living in a single git repo, to make a separate back end and front end? Can I actually do this, given that we use Spring framework? Right now, my files live in a mixture of the `/webapp/WEB-INF` directory (for html pages / velocity templates) and the `/webapp/resources` directory for everything else (js, css, images). I'm slightly confused about how I should go about this when tomcat deploys a huge bulk of files to the `/target` directory, as well? If I keep a separate git repo for front end files, won't it be wiped out if I re-deploy the back end project? (Originally I come from an Apache background, where it seemed so nice and simple...)"}
{"_id": "143917", "title": "Can defect containment metrics be readily applied at an organizational level when there is only a consistant organizational process framework?", "text": "Defect containment metrics, such as total defect containment effectiveness (TDCE) and phase containment effectiveness (PCE), can be used to give a good indicator of the quality of the process. TDCE captures the defects that are captured at some point between requirements and the release of a product into the field, indicating the overall effectiveness of the entire process to find and remove defects. PCE provides more detail at each phase of the software development life cycle and how the defect detection and removal techniques are working. Applying these metrics makes sense at a level where you have a well-defined process and methodology for product development, often a project. However, some organizations provide a process framework that is tailored at the project level. This process framework would include the necessary guidance for meeting certifications (ISO9001, CMMI), practices for incorporating known good techniques (agile methods, Lean, Six Sigma), and requirements for legal or regulatory reasons. However, the specific details of how to gather requirements, design the system, produce the software, conduct test, and release are left to the product development teams. Is there any effective way to apply defect containment metrics at an organizational level when only a process framework exists at the organizational level? If not, what might be some ideas for metrics that can be distilled from each project (each using a tailored process that fits into the organizational process framework) that captures defect containment metrics to discuss the ability of the process to find and remove defects? The end goal of such a metric would be to consolidate the defect containment practices of a large number of ongoing projects and report to management. The target audience would be people in roles such as the chief software engineer and the chief engineer (of all engineering disciplines) for the organization. Although project specific data would be available, the idea is to produce something that quantifies the general effectiveness of all tailored processes across all ongoing projects. I would suspect that this data would also be presented as part of CMMI, ISO, or similar audits to demonstrate process quality."}
{"_id": "186324", "title": "Which HTTP status codes are really OK?", "text": "I am writing an application to report to the user(devs) when their website _fails_. And what I mean by _fails_ which is unfunctional or needs to report the problem to devs.   I do understand that status code 2XX means 'Success' according to wiki. But does that really do? I have access my website once and returned 204 'No- Content', which is unfunctional to me. So the question is, what are the list of status codes return should It be considered \"website is functional\"?"}
{"_id": "222663", "title": "How to evaluate CLR / C++ vs native C++?", "text": "How should I go about evaluating the performance or execution time of C++ with CLR versus native C++? My personal bias is that I believe C++ with CLR to be slower since it has to run on a virtual machine. I will also admit that I have never really been a fan of Visual C++ due to the syntax that has been added, so I wanted to know how to evaluate the performance of the two approaches and determine which is provably faster instead of relying only on my biases."}
{"_id": "222666", "title": "What shoud MainWindow of a WPF contains", "text": "I am making a WPF application following MVVM model. I have seen some approaches for applying MVVM. I am concerned about my MainWindow.xaml. In some tutorials I have seen that MainWindow is only hosting a ContentControl, and in some first main page of the application. I am making a wizard type application. There are multiple views with next and back buttons. There is one WelcomeView which is going to be the first view. So my question is that what approach should I use. My window should contain a ContentControl pointing towards MainView or I copy paste all UI elements from WelcomeView to my MainWindow and get rid of WelcomeView. Which is more suitable? What are Pros and Cons of each approach?"}
{"_id": "222668", "title": "Teaching a course on intro to programming, in C++: Do I teach C-style casts?", "text": "I'm currently redesigning a college level first semester graduate course on Intro to Programming, in C++. Note the comma; the course is introduction to programming, and C++ just happens to be the vessel used to teach it. Note that I don't have any decision power at the moment over the language selection, so arguments about whether or not C++ is a good introductory language are moot. Over the past 3 years, I've taught this class as a intro to C++ course, which is how the course was taught previously. However, I have come to realize that teaching things like pointers, C-style strings and arrays, and etc. early in the course does a disservice to the students, who will very likely go on to program in other languages. This semester, I am leading with references, smart pointers, C++ strings, and vectors, and only covering raw pointers, C strings, and C arrays towards the end of the course as \"advanced C++.\" The goal is to teach programming concepts first, not the intricacies of C/C++. However, I'm hung up on casting. Based on my previous statement, it would seem logical to dump C-style casts until the end of the semester (if at all, since Stroustrap has indicated they're to be avoided) and to introduce `static_cast` up front, `dynamic_cast` when we get to polymorphism, and `reinterpret_cast` when we're dealing with raw pointers. However, given that most C-derived languages such as C# and Java perform casting using syntax similar to C-style casts, am I preparing students to be confused when they try to work in another language? (Although, the C# `as` operator does do approximately the same thing as a C++ `dynamic_cast`.)"}
{"_id": "106031", "title": "JavaScript's prompt, confirm and alert considered \"old-fashioned\"", "text": "Lately I've been developing a web-based management system for a gym. Their previous app was developed in Visual Basic. For the new app, all the front-end scripting uses jQuery, the server is running PHP & MySQL... you know, the typical el-cheapo linux based stack. Anyways, I was wondering why JavaScript's prompt, confirm and alert message dialogs are so underused nowadays. There a lot of jQuery plugins for modal windows and alert messages that try to mimic something that the language already offers and every browser is forced to support properly. Using hand-made or plugin-based solutions is ok for complex forms and special needs, but if you just need to ask for a single value or confirm the deletion of a record, why would you add such overhead to your web app? Furthermore, iOS and Android offer nicely adapted message dialogs when you use prompt, confirm and alert."}
{"_id": "143918", "title": "Why is it called a 'Here Document'?", "text": "(Let me know if this is the wrong SE for this) Why is a Here Document (or Heredoc) called that? Wikipedia didn't have anything to say on that particular subject. I did find unix docs describing a \"Here is document\", is that the original form?"}
{"_id": "106035", "title": "Term for domain specific business object?", "text": "This question might be a little vague. I have seen an acronym referring to a business object in a software system. It's usually mentioned when discussing such design patterns as Java EE's DAO pattern."}
{"_id": "146392", "title": "Project estimates for unreal tasks", "text": "I'm a developer in large IT company that is centered around providing services to clients (by that I mean development department is <20 people and not a major part of organisation). I'm solving different tasks relevant to current problems, and everything is fine so far, but management somehow came up with idea to implement some application that replicates most of features in industry award-winning products like MS's Visio or Autodesk's AutoCad. They want to do that using available resources I've described above. My first answer was \"that's impossible even in your most bold fantasies\" because project of such measure is made by dozens of teams of developers/architects/testers, costs millions of dollars and develop-from- scratch period is at least 1,5-2 years. They consider that, but have few counterarguments such as we don't have any deadlines on this project (legislation behind subject area is not yet done and may not be adopted in next few years) nor detailed specification so each implemented functionality can be considered as minor release that will be delivered to client and tested \"on the field\". And of course, we don't need 1:1 copy of Autocad, just \"few major features like 10% of whole product functionality\". That arguments doesn't help in estimation at all, on the contrary it means we'll have a lot of uncertain requirement changes like \"look at this feature of AutoCad and implement it\" and test by customers and not professional QA department is (politically correct synonym for idiocy). Any ideas how to reason and estimate such task? Though some numbers would be helpful, but all development costs/details of large projects are unavailable, I can operate only with such ambiguous facts as average known salary say of Microsoft SDE and timeline of MS Office releases i.e. talking about Visio."}
{"_id": "210459", "title": "Unit Test passing conditions as well as failing conditions?", "text": "Should unit tests test passing all cases as well as all failing cases? For example, imagine I have a test `Widget_CannotActiveWidgetIfStateIsCancelled`. And let's say there are 25 possible states. Can I get away with testing only that I cannot activate my widget when State == Cancelled, or do I have to also test that I CAN activate it in each of the other 24 states?"}
{"_id": "146397", "title": "When to use Advanced Message Queuing Protocol like RabbitMQ?", "text": "Can somebody explain me in what use-cases I should consider using AMQP like e.g. RabbitMQ? What are the pros and cons?"}
{"_id": "57370", "title": "Dark themes in IDE with multiple monitors", "text": "There has been numerous posts about developers that prefer a dark color scheme in their IDE. Most of the themes at studiostyl.es are dark themes. Back when I had a single monitor, I did enjoy using a dark theme since it was easier on the eyes. But now that I utilize multiple monitors, I find dark themes actually hurt my eyes. Most of the time I have my IDE open on one monitor and a browser/email/documentation open on my other monitors. Only my IDE has a dark theme and most of websites/documentation have a white background. This forces my eyes to constantly adjust between my dark IDE and the white website, which puts strain on my eyes. I'm sure I'm not the only person who tries to use a dark theme for the IDE and have multiple monitors. How do other people deal with this issue?"}
{"_id": "36430", "title": "Dependency analysis from C# code through to database tables/columns", "text": "I'm looking for a tool to do system wide dependency analysis in C# code and SQL Server databases. It's looking like the only tool available that does this might be CAST (CAST software), which is expensive and it does **lots** more besides that I don't really need. C# code through to database column dependency would be hugely useful for many reasons, including: \\- determining effects of database changes throughout the system \\- seeing hot spots in the database schema \\- finding dead stored procedures, tables, etc. \\- understanding the existing code base Do such tools exist?"}
{"_id": "223380", "title": "What do you deliver in the first couple of iterations in Agile?", "text": "As I understand, the idea with Agile methodologies is that you deliver something functional and you deliver it often. The application gets into its final shape increment after increment. But in the early iterations you might build the framework or foundations on which the application will stand so it's something important but not visible to users. What gets delivered to the client in these first iterations? How do you show progress in the right direction when you build scaffolding code?"}
{"_id": "14789", "title": "What is the appeal of Systems Hungarian?", "text": "In What naming guidelines do you follow?, the author says: > Also I prefer to code using hungarian notation from Charles Simonyi. I've run in to several programmers who still prefer to use Hungarian, mostly of the Petzold/Systems Hungarian flavor. Think `dwLength = strlen(lpszName)`. I've read Making Wrong Code Look Wrong, and I understand the rationale for Apps Hungarian, where domain-type information is included in the variable names. But I don't understand the value in attatching the compiler type to the name. Why do programmers still persist on using this style of notation? Is it just inertia? Are there any benefits that outweigh the decreased readability? Do people just learn to ignore the decorators when reading the code, and if so, how do they continue to add value? EDIT: A lot of answers are explaining the history, or why it is no longer relevant, both of which are covered in the article I cited. I'd really like to hear from anyone out there who still uses it. Why do you use it? Is it in your standard? Would you use it if it wasn't required? Would you use it on a new project? What do you see as the advantages?"}
{"_id": "230236", "title": "How does one regrade a development team appropriately?", "text": "We have a team of 20+ developers, of mixed skills and varying levels of ability in each. Some are C#/MVC4/.Net 4.5 developers cutting new code, some are VB6-ers maintaining our critical legacy apps. For each, we have a 'Career Progression Framework' - an internally available list of what you need to do in order to move from Trainee Analyst Programmer Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, to Analyst Programmer Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4, into Senior Analyst Programmer Levels 1, 2, 3 and 4. Admittedly, the CPF we use is well out of date and needs reworking, which is a straightforward process itself. With new technologies coming out in the .Net field all the time, this framework almost needs to be akin to walking up an escalator as in moves downward, as the newer stuff should be known to the top of the 'tree' before the trainee gets to it. One thing to bear in mind here, is that at each stage, the developer is given a small pay increase, as a reward for their efforts, but in most cases, this is the incentive to 'climb' the ladder in the first place; if they've received an increase for getting the new stage, HR might have issues with it being removed! I know developers should be keen on keeping their axes sharpened, but in reality, not all developers are like that, unfortunately, and they are what they are. The problem is I am trying to determine the best way to grade our developers based on their specific skills and framework knowledge and am wondering the flaws with my specified approach. **Please keep in mind that answers should be pertinent and exclusive to the unique challenges in grading software developers in the organization**. EDIT: On-site and off-site training is offered to developers."}
{"_id": "33606", "title": "Automated build platform for .NET portfolio - best choice?", "text": "I am involved with maintaining a fairly large portfolio of .NET applications. Also in the portfolio are legacy applications built on top of other platforms - native C++, ECLIPS Forms, etc. I have a complex build framework on top of NAnt right now that manages the builds for all of these applications. The build framework uses NAnt to do a number of different things:   * Pull code out of Subversion, as well as create tags in Subversion   * Build the code, using MSBuild for .NET or other compilers for other platforms   * Peek inside AssemblyInfo files to increment version numbers   * Do deletes of certain files that shouldn't be included in builds / releases   * Releases code to deployment folders   * Zips code up for backup purposes   * Deploy Windows services; start and stop them   * Etc. Most of those things can be done with just NAnt by itself, but we did build a couple of extension tasks for NAnt to do some things that were specific to our environment. Also, most of those processes above are genericized and reused across a lot of our different application build scripts, so that we don't repeat logic. So it is not simple NAnt code, and not simple build scripts. There are dozens of NAnt files that come together to execute a build. Lately I've been dissatisfied with NAnt for a couple reasons: (1) it's syntax is just awful - programming languages on top of XML are really horrific to maintain, (2) the project seems to have died on the vine; there haven't been a ton of updates lately and it seems like no one is really at the helm. Trying to get it working with .NET 4 has cause some pain points due to this lack of activity. So, with all of that background out of the way, here's my question. Given some of the things that I want to accomplish based on that list above, and given that I am primarily in a .NET shop, but I also need to build non-.NET projects, is there an alternative to NAnt that I should consider switching to? Things on my radar include Powershell (with or without psake), MSBuild by itself, and rake. These all have pros and cons. For example, is MSBuild powerful enough? I remember using it years ago and it didn't seem to have as much power as NAnt. Do I really want to have my team learn Ruby just to do builds using rake? Is psake really mature enough of a project to pin my portfolio to? Is Powershell \"too close to the metal\" and I'll end up having to write my own build library akin to psake to use it on its own? Are there other tools that I should consider? If you were involved with maintaining a .NET portfolio of significant complexity, what build tool would you be looking at? What does your team currently use?"}
{"_id": "18202", "title": "Architecture(structure)-oriented vs. feature-oriented project structure", "text": "The project, I have involved, has an architecture-oriented project's file/folder structure:               Root     |____ Node1         |____ Event Handlers         |         |___ <all event handlers of project>         |____ Events         |         |___ <all events of project>         |____ Request Handlers           |         |___ <all request handlers of project>         |____ Requests         |         |___ <all requests of project>         |____ ...      It is a clear from the architectural point of view of system (has been proposed by development team). It is a feature-oriented structure has been proposed by designer team:               Root     |____ Feature #1         |____ Event Handlers         |         |___ <all event handlers of Feature #1>         |____ Events         |         |___ <all events of Feature #1>         |____ Request Handlers           |         |___ <all request handlers of Feature #1>         |____ Requests         |         |___ <all requests of Feature #1>         |____ ...      This variant is closer to designers and it describes clearly a feature to be implemented. Our teams have started a holy war: what is the best approach. Could somebody help us and explain cons and pros of the first and second ones. Maybe there is a third one that is more useful and beneficial for both of us. Thank you."}
{"_id": "230231", "title": "How to represent one special related record", "text": "I have two tables, `project` and `photo`. `photo` has `ID`,`projectID`,`path` : each `project` has multiple `photo`s. Now one of these `photo`s is the one that has to be displayed. The question is how to represent this in the database. Earlier, I used descending order of `ID` numbers and chose the latest one, but that failed and caused problems. Now I am not sure which way to go :   * Create a new table `projectPhotoDisplayed` that holds `project`.`ID` and `photo`.`ID`(those that are to be displayed only) numbers.   The bad : too much work, as well as replicating the information that `photo` table already has (`photo`s associated with `project`s ).   * Create a new binary field in the `photo` table. If true, then display, else not.   The bad : Structurally does not prevent multiple `photo`s being marked to display. I want radio button behavior   * Create a new field in the `project` table that stores the `photoID` of the `photo` to be displayed.   The bad : Does not ensure that the particular `photoID` is actually linked to this `project`. Also does this information belong here?   * Any approach with foreign keys so that referential integrity is maintained..? Using PHP and MySQL InnoDB database, though I'm sure it won't matter. Which is the best way to store this info?"}
{"_id": "33603", "title": "Building a Java CMS - What Existing Product Should I Use?", "text": "I'm a Java developer and in need of a CMS. I've spent a lot of time reading about, and tinkering with Liferay but am concerned that it doesn't cover two of my **three major concerns**   * I need to have many sites with individual domains   * HTML/CSS designers need to be able to design the website templates, look and feel, and layouts in their own tools without having to worry about writing scripts   * Site and page building APIs must be understandable so that a custom builder interface can be created and harness the CMS as opposed to hacking it Liferay nails the first bullet point, but the second two appear to be unsolved. Does anyone have experience with a Java CMS that does all three? Or have any idea how to approach the problem if none exists? Has someone has used a Java CMS and has been able to add this functionality give some insight?"}
{"_id": "230233", "title": "HTTP Session: A single object or multiple?", "text": "I tested two approaches to store session data:   * The classic: 1 key, 1 object (And every key as `static final String` in a class) > \"user\" --> UserObject > > \"preferences\" --> List > > ...   * An approach with only 1 object  > \"sessionObject\" --> SessionObject And my `SessionObject` contains `UserObject` and the list of preferences as attributes. This is a fairly simple example but imagine it with 20+ attributes. The advantage I see in the second approach is that :   * You only have to delete one key to ensure session is empty   * You don't have to create the bothersome set of `final static String` to create the keys   * You'll know what type of object to retrieve (Using key you have to `cast`) Do you see any problem I might went over? Or does anything go against best practices?"}
{"_id": "38725", "title": "Is there a good resource to see clear language comparisons. E,g: Scope in C++ vs Javascript", "text": "When I am learning a new language, I often don't need much more then simple comparison to languages I already know. For example each language uses its own Scope rules and Dynamic vs Static typing etc... Is there a good way to keep track of it? Are there good organized resources for finding out this information? I find that going through 500 pages of a book when 10 pages would suffice is very inefficient."}
{"_id": "198510", "title": "Protect Database Design - SQL", "text": "Perhaps a bit of an odd question but I can't think of a way to achieve what I want. I produce a product which ends up installed on-site at clients premises. It is a business critical and high availability application, and has to handle processes very quickly. While obviously most of the work goes into the actual application (Windows Services) part of the reason why the product is so good is intelligent database design. Until recently I usually provided the servers and I was the only person to have access to the database and SQL Server instance. However more recently customers have asked to run the application on their production server, usually VMWare, and use their SQL Farm for the database. This is fine for the application, however I am worried about who will have access to the SQL server and if they would be able to have a poke around in my application's database. Is there anything I can do to prevent access to it? Or is it a case of if they're hosting it there is nothing I can do? Thanks EDIT: If I am hit by a bus, company folds etc. there is an escrow agreement which will give them the source code of everything they need. As to why I am worried I have seen examples in the past of people making changes to data tables and reports, and no they did not have the nous to do so. This meant that someone had to go in and fix everything, while of course we charge for this I was wondering if there was a way to avoid it all together, or at least minimise the risk."}
{"_id": "83575", "title": "Customizing configuration with Dependency Injection", "text": "I'm designing a small application infrastructure library, aiming to simplify development of ASP.NET MVC based applications. Main goal is to enforce convention over configuration. Hovewer, I still want to make some parts \"configurable\" by developpers. I'm leaning towards the following design:               public interface IConfiguration     {         SomeType SomeValue;     }          // this one won't get registered in container     protected class DefaultConfiguration : IConfiguration     {         public SomeType SomeValue { get { return SomeType.Default; } }     }          // declared inside 3rd party library, will get registered in container     protected class CustomConfiguration : IConfiguration     {         public SomeType SomeValue  { get { return SomeType.Custom; } }     }      And the \"service\" class :               public class Service     {         private IConfiguration conf = new DefaultConfiguration();              // optional dependency, if found, will be set to CustomConfiguration by DI container         public IConfiguration Conf { get { return conf; } set { conf = value; } }              public void Configure()         {             DoSomethingWith( Conf );         }     }      There, the \"configuration\" part is clearly a dependency of the service class, but it this an \"overuse\" of DI ?"}
{"_id": "83577", "title": "How can we maximize our value and get paid?", "text": "I live in Hong Kong. I just heard one of my friend who studies English in university, just graduated and found a job of 20k HKD as a teacher for English. I started my career as a programmer with 10k HKD salary, and after a 1/2 year, it is raised to 11.5k HKD. I got my Computer Science degree. I don't understand why there is a gap so big between different types of jobs. I don't have any ideas about how to change my job and quit to be a programmer. My question is, can we maximum my value quickly so that my salary can be raised to a similar range, respective to other job such as: Teacher, Lawyer, Doctor?"}
{"_id": "34874", "title": "Monitor aspect ratio; Does the difference matter?", "text": "So, I'm looking ordering myself a new development desktop soon and setting up a PROPER office environment by the end of this year. To boost productivity, I'm going to purchase three new monitors. I find that two just isn't enough when I'm debugging or doing something intensive. That said, I had something pointed out to me the other day that I never really noticed nor cared about before - _is the difference between a 16:10 and a 16:9 monitor noticeable when programming?_ Do you really miss those few extra lines, or is it something that you don't notice at all. I notice HP only seems to sell 16:9 monitors (as far as I have found). Is this becoming something of a new standard with the recent growth and cleaver marketing of of \"HD 16:9\"? **To summarize** : Has anybody made the switch from 16:10 to 16:9 (or vise- versa) and actually noticed the difference while programming?"}
{"_id": "133063", "title": "reverse engineering js/html controls as part of development", "text": "I'm starting a project with a big client that has several websites across the world, and they want to integrate them into a single Sitecore codebase/structure. All good in principle, but there are certain navigation controls that we have to use but, due to organizational complexities, _we don't have the other sites sources available_ (not that they don't have it somewhere, just that our team will have a difficult time getting a hold on it). So we are left with the task of going site by site (each site is in a different language), looking at the navigation controls, and more or less copy html and js and use that. Something that doesn't sound impossible, but i've never tried to do this before and i feel somewhat confused about how to go about this task. **Edit** to reiterate, we aren't concerned about translations nor do we want to grab the display text from the other sites, what we are after is obtain the controls code so we can use it locally. And with code i mean html/css and js. The controls need to look exactly the same as those already on production Do you have any general or concise recomendations to offer?"}
{"_id": "251308", "title": "What is the best practice for designing a system supporting many languages, 1 central dictionary for all languages or seperated dictionary?", "text": "I want to build a system which uses dictionary of many different language. There are 2 options: Build 1 central dictionary `Table` & each language is identified by `langType` (ex 1 for German & 0 for English):               CentralDict     word - meaning - langType     car  - ....    - 0     auto - ....    - 1      or 2 separated Tables               EngDict     word - meaning     car  - ....           GerDict     word - meaning     auto - ....      If the option is 2, then when do the coding               String DictTable=\"\";     String locale=getLocale();     if (\"gm\".locale){        DictTable=\"GerDict\";     }     else if(\"en\".locale){        DictTable=\"EngDict\";     }      Then when we query from               String sql=\"select * from \"+DictTable;     //access data from table here      If option 1 is selected,                   int langType=0;         String locale=getLocale();         if (\"gm\".locale){            langType=1;         }         else if(\"en\".locale){            langType=0;         }         String sql=\"select * from CentralDict where langType=\"+langType;         //access data from table here      I am guessing the 2 option is more elegant, but not sure I am right? With option 2 we can create a 1 to 1 relationship between 2 languages easily. Note: It is not the internationalization issue as my system can handle internationalization very well. While internalization deals with text of the Gui like the text of the button or the message info, it does not deal with the data that was pulled out from DB. My Dictionary System helps user to see the explanation terms such as \"car\", \"phone\".... for teaching purpose. Currently, it works fine in English language, but I want to support German & many be French or any other languages in the future. I don't know whether I should create a complete separated table for each language or I just need 1 centralized dictionary for all languages & has a `langType` field for identifying the language that need to be used based on the user requirement. Ex: WHen user enters `mydomain.com/locale=de` then the system will show the exact Gui ( as in English) but all the text of the Gui will be in German. Also when user searches for data , it should pull out the German data from DB. not English data."}
{"_id": "193237", "title": "Big project with many external libraries - source code organisation", "text": "I was wondering what is the best way to organize my source code. I was researching on SO and found http://stackoverflow.com/a/1398594/137261 but this source code layout is library specific and doesn't cover my situation. **My situation:**   * 10 own modules (100k lines of code)   * 15 external libraries (e.g. boost, sqlite, zlib, etc.)   * 2 critical modules have to be available for selected developers only (maybe separate git repos ?)   * project is multiplatform (Linux and Windows)   * Git as version control system   * cmake used to build project **Question:**   * does it make sense to incorporate all libraries into my project e.g. in _3rd_party_libs_ folder ?   * how to handle lib include paths in my modules (environmental variable, relative paths, git submodules, etc. ) ?   * should I always build external libs from source or just use their binaries ?"}
{"_id": "175290", "title": "Setting up Clojure Project And Sub Projects", "text": "This is primarily a lein question about setting up a major project and its sub-projects, and is not intended to be a discussion question. Instead, I am interested in either a pointer to documentation or to a Clojure/lein best practices link. I have a municipal property assessments application that splits two master flies into different subset files, depending on whether a billing transfer is taking place or we want to batch update new accounts, rather than making our assessment department enter new accounts once in their system and then again in the tax collection system. My application is going to be large enough, that I can see a common library lein project with support functions, like splitting apart the files, and then individual lein projects that use the common library. Should the lein projects be set up at the same level and support included through the project.clj/core.clj files? Is there an advantage to creating `lein new` projects underneath a major project? Is there a problem with combing all functions in one project? I can probably make my one core.clj contain all flavors of the program, but coming from a C/C++ and Python background, I would prefer to have a lot of little projects."}
{"_id": "112725", "title": "Recommended ways for getting a good grasp of inherited software", "text": "So you've inherited a large codebase that you need to make substantial changes to and you wish to get a pretty complete understanding of the software before starting. Would you diagram it? If so, which tool do find most suited for a large codebase? Ideally I'd want expandable nodes representing major concepts in the flow that could be drilled down into for a sub-concepts, and sub-sub-concepts. Preferably UML based, but not essential. Are there decent automatic source diagramming tools, in particular, PHP->UML?"}
{"_id": "147111", "title": "What is wrong with the Unlicense?", "text": "I have often heard that I should not use the Unlicense because of issues regarding putting things into the public domain. However, I do not understand why this would be an issue for the Unlicense. The Unlicense attempts to put whatever is being unlicensed into the public domain, and if that works, awesome! However, the author of the Unlicense understands that putting something into the public domain is not so simple, it may even be impossible, and therefore the Unlicense contains a backup clause (the 2nd paragraph) which clearly states that everyone is free to do whatever they want with the Unlicensed software. The Unlicense even includes a disclaimer containing the usual \"this software is provided as-is blah blah\" legalese. Is the Unlicense bad because it is short and doesn't define who the \"unlicensor\", the \"unlicensee\" and Santa Claus is? If yes, then what about the MIT/BSD-style licenses? They are generally considered to be valid, so why isn't the Unlicense? Is the opposition to public domain waivers with permissive license backup clauses, such as the Unlicense, and even the Creative Commons CC0, just FUD or are there really major legal issues with them? Here is the full text of the Unlicense: > This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. > > Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute > this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any > purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means. > > In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of > this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the > public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at > large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this > dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present > and future rights to this software under copyright law. > > THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED \"AS IS\", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR > IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, > FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE > AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN > ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION > WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. > > For more information, please refer to http://unlicense.org/"}
{"_id": "147115", "title": "How to Gauge Junior Developer Knowledge", "text": "I've started mentoring a junior developer. I've read the community wiki on how to mentor and have been following many of the suggestions in there. The developer has a couple years experience, mostly with modifying existing programs or transitioning code from our legacy system to our new system (a lot of cut and paste). I'm teaching her about our infrastructure which has much more complex programming inside of it, eg: reflection, pointers, multi-threading, dynamic objects. Once I have explained to her what needs to be done she is able to write working code, usually copying similar code and modifying it. I'm concerned that she doesn't understand why or how the code is doing what it is doing. When I ask her to explain the code to me she usually paraphrases the requirements that I originally gave her. So my question is: how can I measure how well she actually understands the business logic and programming structures being used? What should I be asking, what should I be looking for?"}
{"_id": "15781", "title": "Which approach to follow for developing applications targeting multiple platforms?", "text": "For applications targeting multiple platforms, I see mainly two development approaches-   * Go for some JAVA-like development platform. Have one code solution and let the intermediate runtime handle different platforms. If something goes wrong in any platform, tweak the code a bit. But keep it same for all.   * Make modular code separating core logic and UI. Develop separate UIs for respective platforms which will be calling same core libraries. Build the application separately for each of the target platforms. So, which one to follow? I know, the answer will start with \" **It depends** \". But I want to hear your opinions on these approaches and the factors to be considered to choose any of them."}
{"_id": "140364", "title": "Are web designers programmers", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is a Front-End Web Developer a \"Programmer\"? Is it accurate to classify web designers as programmers? Should they be classified as such?"}
{"_id": "103123", "title": "What ever happened to the Google AJAX Search API", "text": "I am looking to query the main Google search however all references including stackoveflow point to the Google AJAX Search API. The odd thing is that it does not seem to exist any more not even a note to say it is depreciated? The old links point to main Google code site. If I look at the list of API's on that site the API it replaced is there Web Search API (Deprecated) which links back to same page but not the Google AJAX Search API. Further Google searching is not being helpful either, many blog posts pointing to the same Google site (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/) that has no content and redirects to the same place? Just to prove it did exist I have found it on the way back machine however the last snapshot did not show any special unusual message."}
{"_id": "227893", "title": "Does it make sense to write tests for legacy code when there is no time for a complete refactoring?", "text": "I usually try to follow the advice of the book _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_. I break dependencies, move parts of the code to `@VisibleForTesting public static` methods and to new classes to make the code (or at least some part of it) testable. And I write tests to make sure that I don't break anything when I'm modifying or adding new functions. A colleague says that I shouldn't do this. His reasoning:   * The original code might not work properly in the first place. And writing tests for it makes future fixes and modifications harder since devs have to understand and modify the tests too.   * If it's GUI code with some logic (~12 lines, 2-3 if/else block, for example), a test isn't worth the trouble since the code is too trivial to begin with.   * Similar bad patterns could exist in other parts of the codebase, too (which I haven't seen yet, I'm rather new); it will be easier to clean them all up in one big refactoring. Extracting out logic could undermine this future possibility. Should I avoid extracting out testable parts and writing tests if we don't have time for complete refactoring? Is there any disadvantage to this that I should consider?"}
{"_id": "238028", "title": "RESTful composition/inclusion of other resources", "text": "I have a few HTTP resources, and i'm wondering if including the models of one in the other is acceptable or if there is a cleaner method. In this example, we have a ton of \"news\" resources, and users can subscribe via a resource called \"subscription\":               ==>/news-items/{id}/     {         \"id\": 987,         \"url\": \"http://example.com/foo/bar\",         \"title\": \"Wow! A Headline\",     }      And               ==> /users/{user-id}/subscriptions/     [         {              \"id\" : 123              \"keywords\": \"Mr Celebrity\"         },         ...     ]      And then the endpoint that includes the models of both resources ...               ==> /users/{user-id}/my-news/     [         {             \"id\": 987,             \"url\": \"http://example.com/foo/bar\",             \"title\": \"Wow! A Headline\",             \"matched_by\": [                 {                     \"id\": 123,                     \"keywords\": \"Wow\",                 },                 ...             ]         },         ...     ]      The usecase is fairly self explanatory for this: A feed of news with 'matched by \"Mr Celebrity\"' next to it. It feels a bit weird to have an endpoint that consists only of nested/composite models from other endpoints ... Is this acceptable practice or problematic? The endpoint will be read-only, and the other options seem to be:   1. HATEOAS-style: \"matched_by\" and the news item are URLs pointing to a news item and subscription. Would require more HTTP requests.   2. Some kind of multi-payload response with a HATEOAS primary payload then 'related' payload of the referenced resources. Not seen this done before.   3. ??? some other options? If my approach is sound, great, but I want to hear what others would do if there is a better alternative. Thanks :)"}
{"_id": "205896", "title": "Python - Importing modules and visibility", "text": "Consider the following code: a.py               import os          def print_rand():         print os.urandom()      And another module: b.py               from a import *      In this code, I end up with an `os` variable getting imported from `a`. I could prevent this with a small change: a.py               import os as _os          def print_rand():         print _os.urandom()      Since `from a import *` does not pick up on members beginning with an underscore, `b` wouldn't import the `os` module from `a`. I've thought about doing this in some of my code. I never use `import *`, but logically, it makes some sense anyway. (Not to mention I don't work alone on my code.) `os` is a member that `a` uses internally; it's not there to be exposed to the outside world. (Yes, I'm aware that it can be accessed anyway, but I just mean in the sense that the underscore conventionally means \"private\".) Is this something I should do? Would it be considered \"Pythonic\", or is it something I should particularly avoid doing? Does it even matter? (Should I have asked on StackOverflow? It seems too conceptual for there to me.)"}
{"_id": "171263", "title": "How can I create my own software license?", "text": "I have seen numerous licenses for any kind of software such as the GNU GPL, BSD License, MIT License, and LGPL. What is the process for creating a new software license, such as \"John Doe's generic license\"?"}
{"_id": "136508", "title": "Re-inventing system design for Scala", "text": "Many, many, moons ago, I did my masters in Object Orientated Software Engineering. I covered everything: project initiation, requirements, analysis, design, architecture, development, etc, etc. My favourite IT book of all time was Developing Object Oriented Software, an Experience Based Approach (IBM-1996). A book created by a group of true experts of their time. It describes a work product centric approach to object oriented analysis, design and development methods. I designed and developed and was happy and at the top of my game, but I started to feel a little dated: Agile movements became fashion of the day and re-branded some well known iterative and incremental approaches with new hip words. Suddenly inexperienced developers started frowning when I said \"requirements\" or \"architecture\" as if these things were superseded by magic. Design and development lost it's fun and I was about to leave the whole IT industry behind me. Then I discovered Scala. Oh, like soft rain on a dusty road. Everything just became clear, the air became sweet again and the little light of my hard-drive would flicker deep into the night, merrily keeping me company in my world of discovery. I like system design. I'm an architect at heart, more than a programmer. I love analyzing, designing, thinking, arguing, improving - I just love simple, clean and crisp designs. **How do we design pure Scala solutions?** Surely conventional sequence diagrams, interaction diagrams, object diagrams, etc, could all be replaced or improved for the goodness of blending imperative and functional object orientated systems. Surely there is an opening for something totally different! I'm not looking for bloated complexity - I'm looking for flexible simplicity. Much like Scala is actually simple and easy (albeit different), but can be extended to fit your requirement like a pair of Yoga pants. There must be a design system for this lovely language that will start simple, and can be extended to fit your requirements and your domain. Surely UML can not be it! So how do we design pure Scala systems? Imagine for a moment, you have the luxury to design a complete system from scratch, and know that you will only be using Scala - _How will your models look?_ What types of diagrams would you have to describe structure and behaviour? How would you model Options, matches, mixins, singleton Objects, etc. without being drawn into the complexity of extending existing modeling techniques rather than a fresh, light-weight, innovative tool-set. _Does such a design/process/solution exist_ , or **is it time to invent one?**"}
{"_id": "132084", "title": "How to handle onsite interviews with multiple companies?", "text": "I currently live in Thailand now. I have done phone interviews with few companies in San Francisco and passed all of them. Now the problem is I have onsite interviews with 3 companies, and they are willing to pay for the flights and the hotels. I have no idea what to do right now. I don't want to fly back and forth between Thailand and San Francisco 3 times. I believe I have 2 choices:   1. Lie to the first company that I want to do sight-seeing for some days, and ask them to move the flight back a little bit further.   2. Tell the HR directly that I will have an interview with other companies as well, and ask the first company to pay for the flight to SF and the second company to pay for the flight back to Thailand. (The third company gets a free pass) The flight between Thailand and San Francisco should cost like 1,500 dollars. (round-trip) What should I do?"}
{"_id": "205891", "title": "ternary operator usage within IF brackets", "text": "could you please help me understand this ternary operator               public static <E> void replace(List<E> list, E val, E newVal) {         for (ListIterator<E> it = list.listIterator(); it.hasNext(); )             if (val == null ? it.next() == null : val.equals(it.next()))                 it.set(newVal);     }      i thought the part after ? is just a regular statement, so how is == being used here?"}
{"_id": "231548", "title": "Include ignored file in the git repository", "text": "Suppose I'm setting up a website, and there are loads of images. These images won't change. But I would like that when any members of the team clone the project, they get the images so that they run the website immediately. Does this mean that I should add track the images as well? I'm just taking an example, it could be a jar in a java project or something else."}
{"_id": "95920", "title": "What is each time through a loop called?", "text": "while ( true )     {         // what is each time through this loop called?     }"}
{"_id": "231541", "title": "finding lowest cost path - dynamic", "text": "I have to write a dynamic algorithm for finding lowest cost path. So I have a points that I have to visit. I can jump only between points by distance - 5 I have an array of distance from 0-point for example (1 3 5 10 15 20 21 22). Each move cost me 1. So the best path will be to move 1->5->15->20->22 (3 and 21 I can skip). Can you guys give me so hints, how to program it dynamicly? I was thinking to make something like this: Find the solution for array[0] and array[1] (that's easy there is only one solution from to 1 (1->3)) then add array[2], and find the best solution(1->5 also there is a solution 1->3->5 but that's gonna cost me 2 moves) then for 4 points, 5 etc. But don't know how to start to make my algorithm to be written correct and dynamic. I know I can make greedy algorithm, but that's not the point of the task... Can you give me any hints? How to start? How to keep solutions? and find the best ones?"}
{"_id": "31609", "title": "Windows Mobile Interview Question Categories", "text": "I need to set categories for interviewing candidates for Windows Mobile Development. Like for ASP.NET, we can have   1. OOPS    2. .NET Framework (CLR, BCL, MSIL etc)   3. Javascript, jQuery   4. Data Controls    5. ADO.NET   6. SQL Server For Windows Mobile, which are categories that should be included? Being specific to our current product, it has not UI and will run in background. Security is the first thing to take into account. It is a SPY kind of application that will keep track of user activity. It can be used by companies to monotor their employees."}
{"_id": "31603", "title": "Why does Microsoft have such a bad reputation with the people involved in open source?", "text": "Are there any particular incidents which are responsible for the low reputation Microsoft (and Bill Gates) has in the eyes of the open source community? Microsoft is clearly not the only proprietary company. Companies like Apple have done a lot worse when it comes to restrictions on software. Why does Microsoft get most of the hatred from the open source community?"}
{"_id": "225395", "title": "Overloading Methods With Different Behavior - Style", "text": "I have a style question about overloading methods/constructors. I have a constructor which does something very simple, and then calls a method with some side effects. Sometimes however I don't want the side effects so I made a separate overloaded constructor. I show two versions here. Version 1 is simple: if I pass any bool then TrickyFunction won't be called. But maybe that's confusing, because the value of no_tricks does not affect the behavior (only that no_tricks exists). Version 2 actually does process no_tricks and makes a decision to run TrickyFunction based on that. Which version, or another version, is more stylistically \"correct?\"               public foo MyFunction(string a)     {         variable = a         TrickyFunction(a)     }          #Version 1     public foo MyFunction(string a, bool no_tricks)     {         variable = a     }          #Version 2     public foo MyFunction(string a, bool no_tricks)     {         variable = a         if (notricks == true)         {             TrickyFunction(a)         }     }"}
{"_id": "225394", "title": "Should IoC container be part of portable library?", "text": "I am seeing the benefits of Portable Class Libraries for centralizing Models and ViewModels to a single code-base. Where should dependency injection management (IoC container) take place, though? My Models have dependencies that I believe would benefit from being supplied through injection. I'm not sure how to go about \"bootstrapping\" to set up the container in the portable library, and I also saw some suggestions that a portable library shouldn't have a dependency on a DI framework. Those points have me thinking maybe the DI should be set up in the applications that use my portable library. This seems rather backwards though, requiring someone using the library to add the bootstrapping portion to their application, as well as it would be duplicated in every app that uses the library. **Should the library or the application handle DI?** Some specifics on what my environment in question is like: c#, WPF application referencing PCL with Models, ViewModels and core logic. Considering using Autofac for my IoC container."}
{"_id": "229836", "title": "Programming conundrum - most efficient path", "text": "I have a non-language-specific problem which I'm having trouble finding a workable answer for. I have a 10x10 grid containing integer values from 1-10. Each value represents the cost of travelling across that square, moving north, east, south or west (cost is incurred while stepping off a square rather than onto it). I need to find a method to navigate the cheapest path from a starting square to an end point. I was using a recursive javascript function whereby each square could ask an adjacent square what the cost was if the journey went that way; the square asked would then ask its neighbours etc. until the cheapest route was found. However, as might be expected this takes far too long, even if each square was marked as busy so it couldn't be asked again (in order to prevent circular routes which might never end). I'm sure this must have been done before. Does anyone have a method they feel would work? Thanks for your help :)"}
{"_id": "88405", "title": "Why is XML not called EML?", "text": "From Wikipedia > Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a set of rules for encoding documents in > machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification[4] > produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis > open standards.[5] What are the historical reasons for calling the shorthand XML rather then the more natural EML?"}
{"_id": "34120", "title": "How often do CPUs make calculation errors?", "text": "In Dijkstra's _Notes on Structured Programming_ he talks a lot about the provability of computer programs as abstract entities. As a corollary, he remarks how testing isn't enough. E.g., he points out the fact that it would be impossible to test a multiplication function f(x,y) = x*y for any large values of x and y across the entire ranges of x and y. My question concerns his misc. remarks on \"lousy hardware\". I know the essay was written in the 1970s when computer hardware was less reliable, but computers still aren't perfect, so they must make calculation mistakes _sometimes_. Does anybody know how often this happens or if there are any statistics on this?"}
{"_id": "229832", "title": "Building a site with internalization support", "text": "When a user browses some page and then switches a language, then the following actions should occur:   * If there's a translation for a page he's browsing now, then do redirect to that page.   * If there's no translated version of that page, then do redirect to a home page. So for example, a user browses `/about-us` page then he switched to German language, then he should be redirected to `/uber-uns` if a translation of `/about-us` in german exists. Currently I have a structure like this,               CREATE TABLE `pages` (            `id` INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT       `language` varchar(3),       `urlSegment` varchar(250),        `content` TEXT          ) DEFAULT CHARSET=UTF8;      What relationships/columns should be added to achieve that?"}
{"_id": "234070", "title": "MVC & 3 tier architecture in game - What is the business layer", "text": "I am making a game and have been following examples which use the MVC architecture pattern. I am now trying to get my head around how this would fit in with a 3-tier architecture. From what I have gathered so far:   * MVC and 3-tier are separate ideas and are compatible   * MVC has a triangular communication structure, whereas 3-tier is a stack   * MVC can be used within the 3-tier structure, with the MVC parts contained in the UI layer as in the diagram:  ![MVC in 3-tier](http://i.stack.imgur.com/VsBMG.jpg) My Model for the game contains all the classes describing the abstract game world - all the items, characters, their positions and velocities in the world, the score, etc. But now what would constitute the business tier below this? As this is all the things I would normally associate with the business layer. Should the diagram in this case perhaps show the View and Controller in the UI layer, with the Model contained in the Business layer below them?"}
{"_id": "103782", "title": "The fees/rates when hiring a company to assist you with programming", "text": "I work for a small development shop doing server and occasionally desktop apps for customers. We were thinking about developing a product and contacted two studios that have experience with what we like to do. One didnt get back to us. The other listed how many hours each features would take and at the end put a 15% fee for testing and 'unknown'. While this doesn't strike me as odd, their hourly rate is. They charge $150 USD. For 160 man hours we have a bill of 24k (USD). Some programmers make that amount in 6months, this company/person wants it for one month work. Now the programmers in my studio make about $35 an hour. If we put a guy on it, it MIGHT take us 4-5months which is roughly what our bill comes to be. But i still think its ridiculous. Is this standard? should i try to find another company? what should i do? What he is doing is specialized however the SDK required is well document and a microsoft product (so we have faith in the documentation, but its still specialized). The company is located in california. What are you thoughts?"}
{"_id": "234074", "title": "Where to put variables needed across classes?", "text": "I have 3 classes: a JButton extension, FButton; a JTextField; and a JPanel extension, FPanel, that would contain one instance of both. The FButton is supposed to open a file, and make the file name and directory for the file available. The JTextField is meant to display the file name and directory provided by FButton. I figured FPanel should be the one containing the file name and directory. If I make FButton and JTextField private classes of FPanel, problem solved with public variables. How about if I want to separate them into a public FPanel class, a package visible FButton class, and a package visible JTextField class, within the same package? **How can I make the file variables available to all classes in the package?** Should I be doing it that way?"}
{"_id": "72313", "title": "What Haskell interesting topics, tips, and examples I should not miss on my presentation?", "text": "I have to make a presentation about Haskell, and I'm looking for interesting Haskell examples, tips, and topics in general I should not miss in my presentation. The purpose of the presentation is to give a general idea about the language. I'm still writing what I'll say, but the following topics are already included:   * Lazy evaluation   * Ways of defining functions (pattern matching, lambda expressions, etc)   * Higher order functions and currying What do you think that **must** be explained when doing a talk about Haskell?"}
{"_id": "39185", "title": "Will I be majorly disadvantaged learning Ruby with Rails version prior to 3?", "text": "I'm on a shared hosting account which runs cPanel, pretty standard unless you have your own VM. cPanel currently doesn't support Rails 3. My flat mate who has been working with ROR for the last year strongly suggests I set up my own development VM on my machine and learn ROR with Rails 3, and when it comes to putting stuff live on my hosting, work round any issues with Rails versions. I'm not 100% convinced by this, as I don't really want to maintain a local VM myself due to limited experience / time. I still haven't really started looking at ROR and have only done a few simple interactive on-line tutorials. What are your thoughts / feelings / suggestions on this? If I stick with my hosts version of Ruby and Rails, will I be at a major disadvantage when it comes to working in industry or should it not make a huge amount of difference? Background: I'm still a uni student."}
{"_id": "184216", "title": "Is there something like a polymorphic Singleton?", "text": "I have a resource loader object that loads objects from the disk or from a ZIP archive, depending on the platform. It has state (e.g. the path to the directory or the ZIP archive, and possibly some caching in the future), so it needs to be a single instance. So normally, a Singleton would do. But my problem is that this resource loader has multiple implementations, of which one is chosen at initialisation. So turning the resource loader into a Singleton won't do. All I can think of is to have a Singleton that holds a reference to the single resource loader. But isn't there a nicer pattern for this?"}
{"_id": "184210", "title": "Resources for Novice Developer", "text": "I have a buddy who's expanding/overhauling a modestly successful web-based game that he runs. He's not exactly a newbie with the language it's written in, PHP -- he's been doing this for years. But he IS a novice when it comes to general software development principles. This is a one-man operation (so he doesn't have any superiors/co-workers to bounce ideas off of), and he's never had formal training or a day job as a developer. He'd like the overhaul to be more modular and use concepts like object- oriented programming (both to make the code base easier to maintain and because that stuff sounds really cool), but he's having some trouble with the basic concepts and how to apply them to his project. I'd like to help, but there's only so much one veteran nerd can do in his free time. What's the best on-line resource for something like this, a place where he could go to ask a lot of questions and get patient answers? StackOverflow.com is obviously not the best fit; he'll be asking a lot of questions that are, to a veteran, 101-level stuff, and having your questions closed/deleted as redundant/off-topic/not-a-real-question is discouraging as hell. If this guy was your friend, where would you send him?"}
{"_id": "177954", "title": "Is there a rule of thumb for what a bing map's zoom setting should be based on how many miles you want to display?", "text": "If a map contains pushpins/waypoints that span only a couple of miles, the map should be zoomed way in and show a lot of detail. If the pushpins/waypoints instead cover vast areas, such as hundreds or even thousands of miles, it should be zoomed way out. That's clear. My question is: is there a general guideline for mapping (no pun intended) Bing Maps zoom levels to a particular number of miles that separate the furthest apart points? e.g., is there some chart that has something like: Zoom level N shows 2 square miles Zoom level N shows 5 square miles etc.?"}
{"_id": "177957", "title": "Which industries use the most high-quality, measurable, reliable approach to software?", "text": "What sections of the software industry (i.e. healthcare, aerospace, games, etc) are most likely to practice software engineering with the engineering rigor + depth and breadth defined in the SWEBOK?"}
{"_id": "184219", "title": "Is function overloading in general considered Evil?", "text": "Recently I found about two new programming languages(Vala and google's GO) which don't support method or function overloading and intend on not supporting them in the future ever! The creators of these languages say that overloading is evil and should not be used!(in system programming?) I was told that the creators of Go Language even say that ~~classes~~ inheritance are evil as well and Go doesn't support that! My question is: Are they really that bad that the new languages are omitting them? Or Is there a specific field of usage for that languages which makes them evil? What could be the disadvantage of using such facilities at all?"}
{"_id": "35833", "title": "Ways to use your skills as a developer to give back to the community/charities", "text": "Recently I came upon a community event called GiveCamp. > GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals from > designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web > strategists donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit > organizations. Since its inception in 2007, the GiveCamp program has > provided benefits to over 150 charities, with a value of developer and > designer time exceeding $1,000,000 in services! Coming from a very rural part of the country where there is a huge opportunity for charity events like this, it got me wondering. Are there other large movements like GiveCamp that are out there? GiveCamp is sponsored by Microsoft, so of course most are run through .NET user groups. Are there other flavors of it? Different types? Java/Python/other open source charity movements? If not, how do you give back?"}
{"_id": "35834", "title": "'Other' Features in a programming language", "text": "Online (i cant remember where) i saw someone mention he wishes programming language has more built in features for tools like documentation and source control. Now i dont understand what needs to be built in for source control since tools like git (sorry but i dont have much experience with others) has everything i need and is very easy to use. Documentation i can understand, perhaps the ability to generate remote procedures calls from source to some kind of IDL would be cool. But really i dont understand what features a programming language can/should have that isnt tied with code generation and syntax (except the two i mention when it comes to libraries). What ideas do you guys have? What is your wishlist?"}
{"_id": "27335", "title": "How to approach refactoring an existing web application?", "text": "I've been reading and thinking a lot lately, and I've come to the conclusion that I maybe I should rethink my web development strategy. I'm doing a lot of on-the-fly programming, and in the 2 years I've been working on a PHP web application, what might have begun as a little tool became quite the big project. But there is a ton of _legacy_ code from me and my predecessor, snippet of code that might have make sense at the time, but now I'm questioning the usefulness of said code in the form it is actually. Furthermore so such things like unit testing and Test-Driven Development wasn't in my scope until quite recently. So how would you approach refactoring the web application? What would be the things I should look for and in which order? What about browser game versus functional web app? Would there be then difference in the approach?"}
{"_id": "133935", "title": "Where can I find good example of techniques to compact data in-memory?", "text": "I'm writing a Java framework to manipulate a large amount of data in-memory, where many \"cells\" that are near each other will have the same value. I'm looking for algorithms and/or techniques specially designed to eliminate those duplication _while maintaining fast in-memory read access speed_. That is, techniques that keeps an O(1) _read_ -access speed. My data is store in immutable objects, to allow fast multi-threading. The data itself can be anything, from 4 bits-per-cell to doubles to arrays of beans, etc."}
{"_id": "224279", "title": "Best approach for propagating errors in service access layer of a multiplatform mobile app", "text": "We've started working on a mobile app using Xamarin. There's a core library that is to be shared among Android and iOS apps. In the core library there will be several functions for communicating with a web service. I've had a discussion with my brother on what the best approach would be, we both have a different opinion, so we'd like to hear your views on the matter. And perhaps there's an even better approach we both didn't think of yet. The web service we talk to has some predefined HTTP status codes for certain errors. For example when performing verification of an account and information is incorrect, the web service could return a status code 400 and some other errors might result in a different status code. My approach was the following:               public async Task<string> VerifyAccountAsync (string email, string password) {             // prevent null values             email = email ?? \"\";             password = password ?? \"\";                  var queryString = String.Format (\"/VerifyAccount?email={0}&password={1}\", email, password);             var request = WebRequest.Create (_accountUrlString + queryString);             string result = null;                  try {                     using (var response = await request.GetResponseAsync ()) {                             using (var stream = response.GetResponseStream ()) {                                     using (var reader = new StreamReader (stream)) {                                             result = reader.ReadToEnd ();                                     }                             }                     }             } catch (WebException ex) {                     // a protocol exception means we got a response, but the status code implies some error occured.                     if (ex.Status == WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError) {                             var httpResponse = (HttpWebResponse)ex.Response;                                  switch (httpResponse.StatusCode) {                             case HttpStatusCode.BadRequest: // 400                                     throw new DepotServiceException (httpResponse, \"User could not be found.\");                             case HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError: // 500                                     throw new DepotServiceException (httpResponse, \"Some error\");                             default: // TODO: use the response stream to set the error message.                                     throw new DepotServiceException (httpResponse, \"Undefined error ...\");                             }                                                                                     } else {                             // some other exception occured, we'll just rethrow it (should not be ignored)                             throw ex;                     }             }                  return result;     }      My reasoning was the following:   * Since the web service uses some predefined status codes for certain errors, we should use a typed exception (DepotServiceException) to make it more clear for the consumer of the core library what's the origination of the error.   * Handling exceptions this way in the core library, will prevent having to use if/else constructions in the iPhone / Android visual layers. In the visual layer we won't have to check what the status code was, to show the appropriate error message. My brother's approach is the following:               public async Task<DepotServiceResult> RetrieveUrl(string url) {             DepotServiceResult serviceResult = new DepotServiceResult();             WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create(url);                  try {                     using (var response = await request.GetResponseAsync()) {                             var webresponse = (HttpWebResponse)response;                             using (var stream = response.GetResponseStream()) {                                     serviceResult.statuscode = webresponse.StatusCode;                                     using (var streamReader = new StreamReader(stream)) {                                             serviceResult.response = streamReader.ReadToEnd();                                     }                             }                     }             } catch (WebException ex) {                     serviceResult.errorDescription = ex.ToString();             }                  return serviceResult;     }               public async Task<DepotServiceResult> VerifyAccountAsync(string email, string password) {             var url = _urlBase + \"api/account/VerifyAccount?email={0}&password={1}\";             email = WebUtility.HtmlEncode (email);             password = WebUtility.HtmlEncode (password);                  url = String.Format (url, email, password);             return await RetrieveUrl(url);     }          public class DepotServiceResult {          public string errorDescription;          public HttpStatusCode statuscode;          public string response;     }      My brother prefers his approach because he doesn't want the core layer of the app to handle the error. He prefers to handle the error in the UI layer of the app. So for his approach he choose to create a `DepotServiceResult` object that contains the whole result of the operation, including errors if any occurred. Personally, I believe my approach is the best, though I have difficulty in explaining why it's the better approach. So if anyone would agree with me, could I get some solid reasons on why it's the better approach? Of course, my brother prefers his approach and if his approach is better, I certainly would like to hear good reasoning on why it's the better one. If there's an even better approach compared to our preferences, we'd like to hear it as well."}
{"_id": "103871", "title": "Website Planning Help", "text": "There are a lot of posts on this but I'm kinda looking for specific help, I've typed many different queries into Google but the majority of page returns seem to be dominated by beginner tutorials, planning, generators, and lots of other rubbish related information, It may have something to do with that fact that I'm rubbish at searching for content on search engines, but that's besides the point! I'm just about to endeavour on an adventure to create a pretty stylish looking, very functional, adaptable website. But I don't want to miss anything out. Its happened too many times where I've come up with an idea, planned, planned, designed, implemented, then realised I've missed something, or something's wrong and I've had to turn the website on its head in order to compensate. Im sure other people have had similar situations. My Question is: What is everything I need to consider before actually coding my website? I'm talking from coding standard, implementation, design aspect,abstract point of view. Currently, I have:   * designed the look of the website.   * Made storyboard like diagrams for every page, action, event.   * invented content.   * designed a style guide.   * mapped animation.   * modularised my functions.   * considered audience.   * considerend diversity (including cross-browser compatibility, screen resolution and font size)   * created a nice directory       AND FINALLY...   * have included my frameworks (css reset, jQuery, images, wordpress, etc) Is There anything else? What am I not considering? I just wanted to make sure I've covered every aspect before I sit down (with my brand new coffee machine) and code like a fairy on crack. If anybody has come across any worthy articles... Please share. But please, no \"how to make a website\" beginner articles. Purely in the context of the question. Personal preferences and responses are preferred! What planning/design steps do you take before embarking on a monster website mission? Thank you for reading this long ~~ASS~~ boring question Alex"}
{"_id": "103872", "title": "Are there any .NET based framework for working with English language?", "text": "I'm writing a web application in which I need to analyze words (now just in English, but maybe in future in any language). I tried to write a framework to do the job, but it soon proved to be something really really hard. Finding stems, understanding part of speech, finding consonants, determining morphological patterns, etc. It's really getting harder with each new requirement. Is there any framework out there (preferably compatible with .NET or PHP frameworks) for working with human languages (English for example)? Some common methods of such framework could be:               List<Synonym> synonyms = SynonymFinder.FindSynonyms(\"Help\");     Stem stem = MorphologyAnalyzer.GetStem(\"Determining\");     Pronunciation pronunciation = Phonetics.Transcribe(\"Speech\");"}
{"_id": "87987", "title": "Using automated bdd-gui-tests to keep user-documentation-screenshots up do date?", "text": "Are there developpers out there, who (ab)use the `CaptureScreenshot()` function of their automated gui-tests to also create uptodate-screenshots for the userdocumentation? Background: Whithin the lifetime of an application, its gui-elements are constantly changing. It makes a lot of work to keep the userdocumentation uptodate, especially if the example data in the pictures should match the textual description. If you already have automated bdd-gui-tests why not let them take screenshots at certain points? I am currently playing with webapps in dotnet+specflow+selenium, but this topic also applies to other bdd-engines (JRuby-Cucumber, mspec, rspec, ...) and gui-test-Frameworks (WaitN, WaitR, MsWhite, ....) Any experience, thoughts or url-links to this topic would be helpfull. How is the cost/benefit relation? Is it worth the efford? What are the Drawbacks? See also: Is it practical to retroactively write specifications documenting a system via automated acceptance tests?"}
{"_id": "131578", "title": "Scientific evaluation of programming methodologies", "text": "There are now a a variety of programming methodologies: Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban to just name a few. Most of them combine several more basic techniques (for example frequent iterations). However, nearly all of them state that their combination of technics is the only way to write good software. I don't think that there is one way that's best for each and every project. Instead I'm interested in independent scientific evaluations.   * What basic techniques work best for which kind of project?   * Is there any advantage in the combination of certain techniques? As I don't have time to go through primary literature I'm especially looking for a book. I know that there is Peopleware, but it is a bit old. There are already several related questions (Are there any scientifically rigorous studies of coding style principles?, Scientific evidence that supports using long variable names instead of abbreviations?...)"}
{"_id": "159223", "title": "Efficient Summary calculation method or approach?", "text": "I have an object hierarchy with a number of leaf nodes that will contribute to summary values for the parent object (specifically: project cost and square footage). What's the most efficient way to tally up those values while the project is being designed? ### Additional details                Parent        ListOne          NodeA            NodeA.1            NodeA.2 ...          NodeB            NodeB.1            NodeB.2 ...        ListTwo ...        * There will only be one dot-# leaf node selected at a time, so it will be either NodeA.1 OR NodeA.2 but not both being selected.    * Whether or not NodeA and NodeB are selected are independent of each other. So I could have any combination of selected / active Nodes A -> Z One approach is simply to iterate through each List, each Node, and each Leaf Node and only sum the values when the leaf node is selected. Another approach would be to create an event handler for the parent project variables that each child can then fire against when their values change. The wrinkle here is that I'll have Node specific values that I'll want to track as well. In other words, I'm tracking Project Cost, List Cost and Node Cost. Another approach would be a hierarchy of event handlers that fire as the selected item changes and then notify their parent of the change. So the change in a leaf node would eventually cascade back up to the Project after a number of events having been fired. Right now, the overall project structure is pretty small - only three or four Lists, each with about six Nodes that have four to six Leaf Nodes each. Because of the smaller size, I'm not worried as much about computation time as I am about maintaining this and being able to extend it in the future as more Lists, Nodes, etc... are added. _Edit:_   The project driving this question is written in C# and actually has one more layer between the List and the final leaf nodes. I think the question is relevant to C++ and Java programmers since it's dealing with the responsibilities between children and parent objects when a value of the parent depends upon its children and grand-children. An answer tailored to C# would be gravy, but I'm looking for the most robust / maintainable approach in this case."}
{"_id": "86052", "title": "Is CodeFirst intended for large scale applications?", "text": "I've been reading up on Entity Framework, in particular, EF 4.1 and following this link ( http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/16/code-first- development-with-entity-framework-4.aspx) and it's guide on Code First. I find it neat but I was wondering, is Code First supposed to be just a solution for rapid development where you can just jump right in without much planning or is it actually intended to be used for large scale applications?"}
{"_id": "206890", "title": "What would the general design for an XSD to C# class converter look like?", "text": "I am looking to create a simple code generator to convert XSD definitions to C# classes. This is partly as a learning exercise, but I would also like to get some practical use out of it eventually. What would the general design of such an application look like? I assume that I will need to use one of the XML parsers in the .NET framework, but which one? And what will the resulting data structure look like? Will it be an expression tree? From there, what happens? Do I generate code by concatenating strings, or are there better, more sophisticated ways to do it? **Important:** I'm not looking for someone to write code for me (although very brief code samples are welcome, if they are applicable), and I don't need someone to do the research for me. I'm perfectly capable of reading about parsers, expression trees and code generators myself. I just need someone to help me with the broad brush strokes, so that I don't walk into too many blind alleys. I'm also aware of open source projects like XSD2Code, but I'd rather make the attempt myself first, for learning reasons, and because the resulting tool is likely to be highly specific to my particular scenario."}
{"_id": "131576", "title": "Expected sprint completion rate and load in scrum?", "text": "Recently at work there have been increased focus on completion rate and load on the developers in our sprints. With **completion rate** I mean, if we plan 20 user stories for a sprint, what percentage of these user stories are closed at the end of the sprint. And with **load** I mean, if we have a sprint with 3 developers of 60 hours each, i.e. 180 hours for the sprint, how many hours worth of user stories do we schedule for the sprint. So I am really interested in others experience with this, I guess this is something everybody working with scrum deals with. My question is, what completion rate and load are expected/usual, and how are your team doing with respect to these parameters?"}
{"_id": "228550", "title": "How to enrich a simple two endpoint SOAP application to become enterprise level?", "text": "Imagine you have some exchange of data between two endpoints (webservices or let's call URL). Data can travel in any way (Xml, Json, GET, POST) it doesn't matter. I've got the source code of the first endpoint (I drawed it on the left). The second one is from a third party and will call back my infrastructure on a third endpoint (which is also part of my infrastructure). ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/nZI3k.png) I would like to implement some session / state to relate the first call to their callback. And I would also like to add distributed logging, support for problem solving in a production environment, configuration, performance monitoring, a dashboard, and so on. **What kind of consideration should I do in facing the design of this kind of architecture?** Let me clarify with an example (which answers to @SparKot\u0950 comment) I should **log** the first call and understand if the third party is calling me back or not. I can do this only if my \"3rd party\" caller Class (the white box higher on the lef) and the Class called from the \"3rd party\" (the white box lower on the lef) shares some logging infrastructure. How would you implement this? Possibilities are:   * Share a database    * Share a message queue   * Share a WCF service   * Share some AppFabric cache   * What else?   * Pipeline? Which consideration would you make about this tracking service? Should both my class being hosted on the same server? What kind of question would drive you to design the architecture which transform two simple WebClient.Open request into something which is more traceable and fault tolerant?"}
{"_id": "201329", "title": "Coding Convention: C++ Header/Interface Files", "text": "I'm reading through a PDF on C++ programming from this page on Stanford's site. It says that when you're creating a C++ header file for a library interface, use a `#ifndef` preprocessor command to make sure you don't compile the same interface twice. So, your header would look something like this:               /**       MyFile.h     */          #ifndef _MyFile_h     #define _MyFile_h          // Function prototypes          #endif      But, I've always heard people say that using preprocessor commands like `#define` is (or quickly leads to) bad coding practice. I'm just starting to learn C++, so I don't want to get something ingrained that is bad. **Question: Is it \"proper\" coding style to use preprocessor commands as above?**"}
{"_id": "178244", "title": "In which cases Robolectric is a relevant solution?", "text": "As you may now, Robolectric is a framework that provides stubs for Android objects, in order to make tests runnable outside the Dalvik environment. My concern is that, by doing this, one can fake a third party library, which is, I believe, not a good practice (it should be encapsulated instead). If you make assumptions about an interface you don't own, which is changed once your test has been written, you won't be always noticed about the modifications. This can lead to a misunderstanding between your implementations and the interface they depends on. In addition, Android use mostly inheritance over interfaces which limits contract testing. So here's my question: Are there situations when Robolectric is the way to go? Here are some links you can check for further information: test-doubles-with-mockito in-brief-contract-tests"}
{"_id": "170601", "title": "Enforcing Constraints Upon Data Documents of Various Formats", "text": "This seems like the sort of problem that must have been solved elegantly long ago, but I haven't the foggiest how to google it and find it. Suppose you're maintaining a large legacy system, which has a large collection of data (tens of GB) of various formats, including XML and two different internal configuration formats. Suppose further that there are abstract rules governing the values these files may or may not contain. EXAMPLE: File A defines the raw, mathematical data pertaining to the aerodynamics of a car for consumption of the physics component of the system. File B contains certain values from File A in an easily accessible, XML hierarchy for consumption of a different component of the system. There exists, therefore, an abstract rule (or constraint) such that the values from File B _must_ match the values from File A. This is probably the simplest constraint that can be specified, but in practice, the constraints between files can become very complicated indeed. What is the best method for managing these constraints between files of arbitrary formats, short of migrating it over to an RDBMS (which simply isn't feasible for the foreseeable future)? Has this problem been solved already? To be more specific, I would expect the solution to at least produce notifications of violated constraints; the solution need not _resolve_ the constraints. ==============================   Sample file structures File A (JeepWrangler2011.emv):               MODEL JeepWrangler2011     {         EsotericMathValueX 11.1         EsotericMathValueY 22.2         EsotericMathValueZ 33.3     }      File B (JeepWrangler2011.xml):               <model name=\"JeepWrangler2011\">       <!--These values must correspond File A's EsotericMathValues-->       <modelExtent x=\"11.1\" y=\"22.2\" z=\"33.3\"/>       [...]     </model>      EDIT: Reflecting on this issue, it seems to me that a software solution would require something like the following:   1. Develop an abstract language to describe the structure of arbitrary formats.   2. Develop an abstract language to describe constraints between files.   3. Develop a tool that consumes format-structure-descriptions (item 1), constraint-declarations (item 2), and a file that maps various files (pointed to by file paths) to a format-structure-declaration and produces a list of violated constraints. It's a fascinating, non-trivial problem."}
{"_id": "170602", "title": "Ruby on rails not popular in big international IT companies?", "text": "Is the ROR used only in startups or also in bigger companies as well? What should be the reasons of their preference of Java over ROR?"}
{"_id": "170609", "title": "Can you use Pi as a crude random number generator?", "text": "I recently saw this question over at math.SE. It got me thinking. Could Pi be used as a crude random number generator? I mean the results are well known(how long has pi been computed to now?) but, Pi does seem to be quite random when taken 1 digit at a time. Does this make any sense at all?"}
{"_id": "152276", "title": "Is it common for a programmer not to know the difference between C and C++?", "text": "During an interview, I was asked whether I knew the difference between C and C++. I was wondering why such question being asked?"}
{"_id": "177373", "title": "Where does the \"mm\" come from in GTKmm, glibmm, etc", "text": "I understand that the \"mm\" suffix [in various GTK-associated C++ binding libraries] _means_ \"minus minus,\" but where exactly does it come from? I understand that there is a _programming language_ called \"C--,\" but if there were bindings (and I'm pretty sure I've seen some), they would be suffixed \"--\". TL;DR: **Is there some page ongnu.org that explains the \"mm\" suffix in various C++ bindings or is it just a _de facto_ standard adopted by the open source community with no reasoning behind it?**"}
{"_id": "177379", "title": "Migrating from VSS to TFS. What is the benefit of creating separate projects?", "text": "We have a Visual SourceSafe installation that 4 developers collaborate on. Inside that there are 30 or so independent projects in different top level folders. Is it necessary for us to create a new TFS \"Project\" for each of those 30 items, or can we simply place them in the same overarching project folder... possibly assigning permissions to each? The reason I ask is because I'm demo-ing the migration now and it takes a long time to migrate and create the \"New Team Project\" within Visual Studio in order to create a 1:1 correlation. What are the other benefits I may get from using separate projects in TFS?"}
{"_id": "244393", "title": "What are the differences between a while loop and a for loop?", "text": "What are the differences between a while loop and a for loop? It seems to me that they are the same."}
{"_id": "185166", "title": "Best Practices Returning Read-Only Object", "text": "I have \"best practices\" question about OOP in C# (but it sort-of applies to all languages). Consider having library class with object that is to be exposed to public, say via property accessor, but we do not want the public (people using this library class) to change it.               class A     {         // Note: List is just example, I am interested in objects in general.         private List<string> _items = new List<string>() { \"hello\" }              public List<string> Items         {             get             {                 // Option A (not read-only), can be modified from outside:                 return _items;                      // Option B (sort-of read-only):                 return new List<string>( _items );                      // Option C, must change return type to ReadOnlyCollection<string>                 return new ReadOnlyCollection<string>( _items );             }         }     }      Obviously the best approach is \"option C\", but very few objects have ReadOnly variant (and certainly no user-defined classes have it). If you were the user of class A, would you expect changes to               List<string> someList = ( new A() ).Items;      propagate to original (A) object? Or is it okay to return a clone provided that it was written so in comments/documentation? I think that this clone approach might lead to quite difficult-to-track bugs. I remember that in C++ we could return const objects and you could only call methods marked as const on it. I guess there is no such feature/pattern in the C#? If not why would they not include it? I believe it is called const correctness. But then again my main question is about \"what would you expect\" or how to handle Option A vs B."}
{"_id": "222548", "title": "What's the difference between a macro and a script?", "text": "Aren't both just a set of instructions that get executed by some interpreter? (contrary to a full-fledged program, which runs (gets executed) at some computer system?"}
{"_id": "185160", "title": "Velocity does not plateau over time, why?", "text": "I have plotted my team burn up chart and its velocity per iteration. To me it looks really bad (velocity fluctuates a lot). What should I be looking for to diagnose the root cause of this behaviour? ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/68Duo.png)"}
{"_id": "181892", "title": "Data representation with C# and WPF", "text": "I'm developing an application handling DB parts. I retrieve the data from the DB with stored procedures and prepared statements. Now I want to display the data in the GUI. What is the current technology used for that? Does one still use DataSet and DataTable for that?"}
{"_id": "181898", "title": "How to learn to explain and differentiate types of design pattern concepts", "text": "What I have done   1. Identified important patterns to learn   2. Read the books    3. Implemented the patterns using favorite programming language    4. Identified pros/cons    5. Practiced some design patterns in real world projects   6. Found some example in Framework libraries Having done that I still struggle to   1. Explain them to seasoned interviewers   2. Clearly differentiate between structural and behavior design patterns. I believe my communication skill is not that bad, but somewhere I have not understood the concepts clearly. How to learn the design pattern concepts to become capable of what I miss now? (If that matters, I am talking about popular GOF design patterns like Strategy, Decorator, Observer, Command, etc)"}
{"_id": "101787", "title": "How to best approach planning and budgeting of software performance optimization efforts?", "text": "There is a software system that has been with the client for some time now. If is feature-rich, mature, complex enterprise application that client uses in production. Due to the rapid expansion of the client's business the software system in subject cannot handle the volumes efficiently and overall performance does not satisfy the customer anymore. So the customer asks the vendor of the software system for improvements in performance and efficiency of the system. The customer also expects the vendor to prepare a plan and ballpark budget so the cost of such optimizations is roughly known upfront. What do you think is the best approach for such plan and high level budget that one could prepare for the customer? I'm asking the question because I've seen some of this kind of plans before and they are usually very vague and imprecise mainly due to the fact that such exercise is kind of chicken and egg dilemma. In order to know what exactly should be optimized and tuned in complex system the benchmarking, profiling and research is required. And that investigation is also the part of the planned project, so it is impossible to know upfront what efforts can such benchmarking results require to implement improvements."}
{"_id": "130625", "title": "Randomly generate directed graph on a grid", "text": "I am trying to randomly generate a directed graph for the purpose of making a puzzle game similar to the ice sliding puzzles from Pokemon.   This is essentially what I want to be able to randomly generate: http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Crunching_the_numbers:_Graph_theory. I need to be able to limit the size of the graph in an x and y dimension. In the example given in the link, it would be restricted to an 8x4 grid.   The problem I am running into is not randomly generating the graph, but randomly generating a graph, which I can properly map out in a 2d space, since I need something (like a rock) on the opposite side of a node, to make it visually make sense when you stop sliding. The problem with this is that sometimes the rock ends up in the path between two other nodes or possibly on another node itself, which causes the entire graph to become broken. After discussing the problem with a few people I know, we came to a couple of conclusions that may lead to a solution.   * Including the obstacles in the grid as part of the graph when constructing it.   * Start out with a fully filled grid and just draw a random path and delete out blocks that will make that path work.  The problem then becomes figuring out which ones to delete to avoid introducing an additional, shorter path. We were also thinking a dynamic programming algorithm may be beneficial, though none of us are too skilled with creating dynamic programming algorithms from nothing. Any ideas or references about what this problem is officially called (if it's an official graph problem) would be most helpful. Here are some examples of what I have accomplished so far by just randomly placing blocks and generating the navigation graph from the chosen start/finish. The idea (as described in the previous link) is you start at the green S and want to get to the green F. You do this by moving up/down/left/right and you continue moving in the direction chosen until you hit a wall. In these pictures, grey is a wall, white is the floor, and the purple line is the minimum length from start to finish, and the black lines and grey dots represented possible paths. Here are some bad examples of randomly generated graphs: http://i.stack.imgur.com/9uaM6.png Here are some good examples of randomly generated (or hand tweaked) graphs: i.stack.imgur.com/uUGeL.png (can't post another link, sorry) I've also seemed to notice the more challenging ones when actually playing this as a puzzle are ones which have lots of high degree nodes along the minimum path."}
{"_id": "130621", "title": "Strategy for building an application to replace a large spreadsheet", "text": "I'm working on an application that is going to replace a rather large spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is used to budget purchases and things like that. It is the largest spreadsheet I have ever seen, and it required a lot of manual data entry, so this application is going to automate much of that. But as I'm working on this I've noticed its slow going. And I got to thinking this must be a common thing to do many companies will start with something like a spreadsheet, then when they get too big to maintain that, they will get a custom application built. So is there anything out there ( a framework or similar ) that does this sort of thing, migrating a spreadsheet to a custom application. I've had a quick Google but not really seen the kind of thing that I'm looking for. It's too late for this project, but I thought it would be worth having a look for next time. How do you guys tackle this problem?"}
{"_id": "124193", "title": "How can Continuous Delivery work in practice?", "text": "Continuous Delivery sounds good, but my years of software development experience suggest that in practice it can't work. (Edit: To make it clear, I always have lots of tests running automatically. My question is about how to get the confidence to deliver on each checkin, which I understand is the full form of CD. The alternative is not year-long cycles. It is iterations every week (which some might consider still CD if done correctly), two weeks, or month; including an old-fashioned QA at the end of each one, supplementing the automated tests.)   * Full test coverage is impossible. You have to put in lots of time -- and time is money -- for every little thing. This is valuable, but the time could be spent contributing to quality in other ways.    * Some things are hard to test automatically. E.g. GUI. Even Selenium won't tell you if your GUI is wonky. Database access is hard to test without bulky fixtures, and even that won't cover weird corner cases in your data storage. Likewise security and many other things. Only business-layer code is effectively unit-testable.    * Even in the business layer, most code out there is not simple functions whose arguments and return values can be easily isolated for test purposes. You can spend lots of time building mock objects, which might not correspond to the real implementations.   * Integration/functional tests supplement unit tests, but these take a lot of time to run because they usually involve reinitializing the entire system on each test. (If you don't reinitialize, the test environment is inconsistent.)   * Refactoring or any other changes break lots of tests. You spend lots of time fixing them. If it's a matter of validating meaningful spec changes, that's fine, but often tests break because of meaningless low-level implementation details, not stuff that really provides important information. Often the tweaking is focused on reworking the internals of the test, not on truly checking the functionality that is being tested.   * Field reports on bugs cannot easily be matched with the precise micro-version of the code."}
{"_id": "19093", "title": "What are some of the more useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Visual Studio?", "text": "I keep learning new keyboard shortcuts for Visual Studio and I find some of them increase my productivity a lot. I was wondering what keyboard shortcuts in VS you found useful and why. I know I could find a list of shortcuts online somewhere, but I don't think that would be as beneficial to me as asking here since there are so many shortcuts and I think my eyes would just glaze over trying to read that list. Here are some that are extremely useful to me: **F12** \\- Goes to the definition of any class or method. It has saved me so much time searching code files once I found that one out. **Ctrl+M, O|L** \\- Expands/Collapses regions in C# or tags in XAML files. I love this feature in XAML files since I can't use Regions in them to make my code easier to read **Ctrl+R, E** \\- Builds a property's Get/Set methods for me. That, combined with a few macros, makes building accessor methods a lot less painful **Ctrl+E, D** \\- Fixes the whitespaces in code files I also created my own keyboard shortcut to CloseAllOpenFiles since VS2010 moved the Close button on open files and I can no longer keep my mouse in one place and spam-click to close all my open files. Why would they they think its a good idea to put the close button on each tabs and make the tabs various widths...."}
{"_id": "112109", "title": "Name for WS pattern where a generic object is returned?", "text": "Two part question:   1. I am working on a project where the webservices all return a generic object. On success, that object then contains the data returned from the webservice along with additional information such as status messages or qualifiers. On failure, the object contains no data and error messages. What is the name for this pattern?   2. When I think that something I am working on is a common pattern and has a name, what strategies can I use to learn what that name is? I frequently see things that look familiar or common and suspect they have a name and are a common pattern. How can I find those on my own without asking StackExchange?"}
{"_id": "124196", "title": "Offline data that will need imported later", "text": "My existing application is a .NET 3.0 winform app that talks to a WCF service which in turn updates a MS SQL Server database; I can make changes at all spots (Windows client, WCF, server). I've had an inquiry into the possibility of allowing users to work offline and later sync their data back up. I have concerns about stale data mostly as the data is not \"owned\" by them and another user could have updated the same record while they were offline. I also use NHibernate for my ORM. What are your thoughts as to the best implementation to add a sync feature?"}
{"_id": "125822", "title": "How important are design patterns in programming?", "text": "I'm a university student and I've just started learning about design patterns and im struggling to understand the purpose of them. I have tried researching them but all the resources I have found seem to talk about them in an academic, not professional, way. What is their purpose and are they important to learn?"}
{"_id": "101431", "title": "How to handle storing the login data for various projects and web servers?", "text": "Hello and I'm apologizing in advance if this question doesn't fit programmers section of stackexchange. I'll try to clarify what the problem is by telling a story where the problem originates from. I'm working in a small company (8 people) where we have developers, sys admins and staff that handles day to day calls. The problem is the logins. There are various logins, for example web server root login. Then there's MySQL login, login for apps that we develop and to make the thing even more complex - logins differ from local development and testing versions to the ones that are actually deployed which makes the whole thing even more messier. What's happening is that no one knows all of the logins, and they're either written down somewhere deep on cryptically named files or certain people know them by heart. If someone who knows the login for the thing we need to work with is away (say holiday), the process of retrieving the login becomes a huge mess. Now, we are aware how terrible that is and we're looking into improving our login / project management. The other problem is that not everyone should know all the logins. My question is: how do you (or how would you) handle storing logins such as web server root information, web app admin login etc. in such a way that it's available to everyone within the company, but with restricted access (say, a secretary cannot obtain root details, no offence to secretaries)? P.S. I just spent 3 hours obtaining the login details to change a simple spelling mistake on a project which took exactly 1 second after I had the info. Seeing I can't afford losing any more nerves or time over such seemingly trivial things, I'm begging experienced and smart guys for help. Thanks in advance :)"}
{"_id": "101434", "title": "Given C++ '11 Was Approved, Does This Change How A C++ Beginner Learns The Language?", "text": "I've wanted to learn C++ for awhile and took AP Computer Programming in High School (back when it was C++ and not Java). I enjoy C and just haven't found the time to learn C++ or I'll just fall back on C# where I'm much more productive. My question is this: given that C++ '11 has been approved (although I know not fully implemented) does this change the way I should approach learning C++? I own C++: The Complete Reference By Herb Schildt which is from 1998. Does the newly approved standard make learning from such books less important than some of the newer tutorials/books that include things from the standard? Is there any benefit from learning from the older books?"}
{"_id": "254214", "title": "Languages on embedded systems in aeronautic and spatial sector", "text": "I know that my question is very broad but a general answer would be nice. **I would like to know which are the main languages used in aeronautic and spatial sector.** I know that the OS which run on embedded systems are **RTOS** (Real time OS) and I think that, this languages must be checked correctly by different methods (formal methods, unit tests) and must permit a **sure verification of whole process of a program**."}
{"_id": "218013", "title": "What exactly is bootstrap admin-template and how it is supposed to be used", "text": "So this is my second ASP.NET MVC 4 project. It's decided that for this one we will use this template and it was said in a way that I felt really stupid for not knowing how exactly this template will help us and what exactly we gain by using it. I'm used to using HTML/CSS for the UI combined with jQuery. Now it seems that instead of jQuery we will be using bootstrap which as far as I understand is just another JS library created from twitter, so if that's it then this part is clear. What I really need to clarify for myself is what exactly this theme is used for, what is offering, why one would want to use such a theme? From what I see in the live demo maybe it's just a stack of premade controls that you can use in the front end along with bootstrap.js and maybe I'm just confused because on the page is shown as much as possible just for presentational purposes. If that's right, still I wonder where I can find info for the current theme, the controls that it offers and the functionality that I get and not least - how to use it. But still those are just my assumptions. What I really need is a clarification on what exactly is this theme for, what is the advantage using it, is there a good tutorials about how to use such themes in the context of ASP.NET MVC 3+. Also any additional info about this theme and generally on using themes in ASP.NET MVC will be much appreciated."}
{"_id": "218011", "title": "How accurate is \"Business logic should be in a service, not in a model\"?", "text": "**Situation** Earlier this evening I gave an answer to a question on StackOverflow. _The question:_ > Editing of an existing object should be done in repository layer or in > service? > > For example if I have a User that has debt. I want to change his debt. > Should I do it in UserRepository or in service for example BuyingService by > getting an object, editing it and saving it ? _My answer:_ > You should leave the responsibility of mutating an object to that same > object and use the repository to retrieve this object. > > Example situation:               class User {      private int debt; // debt in cents      private string name;           // getters           public void makePayment(int cents){       debt -= cents;      }     }          class UserRepository {      public User GetUserByName(string name){       // Get appropriate user from database      }     }      _A comment I received:_ > Business logic should really be in a service. Not in a model. **What does the internet say?** So, this got me searching since I've never really (consciously) used a service layer. I started reading up on the Service Layer pattern and the Unit Of Work pattern but so far I can't say I'm convinced a service layer has to be used. Take for example this article by Martin Fowler on the anti-pattern of an Anemic Domain Model: > There are objects, many named after the nouns in the domain space, and these > objects are connected with the rich relationships and structure that true > domain models have. The catch comes when you look at the behavior, and you > realize that there is hardly any behavior on these objects, making them > little more than bags of getters and setters. Indeed often these models come > with design rules that say that you are not to put any domain logic in the > the domain objects. Instead there are a set of service objects which capture > all the domain logic. These services live on top of the domain model and use > the domain model for data. > > (...) The logic that should be in a domain object is domain logic - > validations, calculations, business rules - whatever you like to call it. To me, this seemed exactly what the situation was about: I advocated the manipulation of an object's data by introducing methods inside that class that do just that. However I realize that this should be a given either way, and it probably has more to do with how these methods are invoked (using a repository). I also had the feeling that in that article (see below), a Service Layer is more considered as a fa\u00e7ade that delegates work to the underlying model, than an actual work-intensive layer. > Application Layer [his name for Service Layer]: Defines the jobs the > software is supposed to do and directs the expressive domain objects to work > out problems. The tasks this layer is responsible for are meaningful to the > business or necessary for interaction with the application layers of other > systems. This layer is kept thin. It does not contain business rules or > knowledge, but only coordinates tasks and delegates work to collaborations > of domain objects in the next layer down. It does not have state reflecting > the business situation, but it can have state that reflects the progress of > a task for the user or the program. Which is reinforced here: > Service interfaces. Services expose a service interface to which all inbound > messages are sent. You can think of a service interface as a fa\u00e7ade that > exposes the business logic implemented in the application (typically, logic > in the business layer) to potential consumers. And here: > The service layer should be devoid of any application or business logic and > should focus primarily on a few concerns. It should wrap Business Layer > calls, translate your Domain in a common language that your clients can > understand, and handle the communication medium between server and > requesting client. This is a serious contrast to other resources that talk about the Service Layer: > The service layer should consist of classes with methods that are units of > work with actions that belong in the same transaction. Or the second answer to a question I've already linked: > At some point, your application will want some business logic. Also, you > might want to validate the input to make sure that there isn't something > evil or nonperforming being requested. This logic belongs in your service > layer. **\"Solution\"?** Following the guidelines in this answer, I came up with the following approach that uses a Service Layer:               class UserController : Controller {      private UserService _userService;           public UserController(UserService userService){       _userService = userService;      }            public ActionResult MakeHimPay(string username, int amount) {       _userService.MakeHimPay(username, amount);       return RedirectToAction(\"ShowUserOverview\");      }           public ActionResult ShowUserOverview() {       return View();      }     }          class UserService {      private IUserRepository _userRepository;           public UserService(IUserRepository userRepository) {       _userRepository = userRepository;      }           public void MakeHimPay(username, amount) {       _userRepository.GetUserByName(username).makePayment(amount);      }     }          class UserRepository {      public User GetUserByName(string name){       // Get appropriate user from database      }     }          class User {      private int debt; // debt in cents      private string name;           // getters           public void makePayment(int cents){       debt -= cents;      }     }      **Conclusion** All together not much has changed here: code from the controller has moved to the service layer (which is a good thing, so there is an upside to this approach). However this doesn't look like it had anything to do with my original answer. I realize design patterns are guidelines, not rules set in stone to be implemented whenever possible. Yet I have not found a definitive explanation of the service layer and how it should be regarded.   * Is it a means to simply extract logic from the controller and put it inside a service instead?    * Is it supposed to form a contract between the controller and the domain?    * Should there be a layer between the domain and the service layer? And, last but not least: following the original comment > Business logic should really be in a service. Not in a model.   * Is this correct?     * How would I introduce my business logic in a service instead of the model?"}
{"_id": "218016", "title": "Does C++ support subtyping?", "text": "I know it might be a silly question to ask, but I didn't quite get an a absolute clear answer on this matter, so I thought I'd put it here. Does c++ support the subtyping in the sense that it fulfills Liskov's principle fully? I understand how parametric polymorphism, inclusion polymorphism(subclassing and overriding) work in c++ but I'm not entirely sure or understand if subtyping exists in the context of C++. Could you please explain?"}
{"_id": "235674", "title": "What is the pattern for a safe interface in C++", "text": "_Note: the following is C++03 code, but we expect a move to C++11 in the next two years, so we must keep that in mind._ I'm writing a guideline (for newbies, among others) about how to write an abstract interface in C++. I've read both articles of Sutter on the subject, searched the internet for examples and answers, and made some tests. ## This code must NOT compile!               void foo(SomeInterface & a, SomeInterface & b)     {        SomeInterface c ;               // must not be default-constructible        SomeInterface d(a);             // must not be copy-constructible        a = b ;                         // must not be assignable     }      All the behaviors above find the source of their problem in _slicing_ : The abstract interface (or non-leaf class in the hierarchy) should not be constructible nor copiable/assignable, EVEN if the derived class can be. ## 0th Solution: the basic interface               class VirtuallyDestructible     {        public :           virtual ~VirtuallyDestructible() {}     } ;      This solution is plain, and somewhat naive: It fails all our constraints: It can be default-constructed, copy-constructed and copy-assigned (I'm not even sure about move constructors and assignment, but I have still 2 years to figure it out).   1. We can't declare the destructor pure virtual because we need to keep it inline, and some of our compilers won't digest pure virtual methods with inline empty body.   2. Yes, the only point of this class is to make the implementers virtually destructible, which is a rare case.   3. Even if we had an additional virtual pure method (which is the majority of the cases), this class would be still copy-assignable. So, no... ## 1st Solution: boost::noncopyable               class VirtuallyDestructible : boost::noncopyable     {        public :           virtual ~VirtuallyDestructible() {}     } ;      This solution is the best, because it is plain, clear, and C++ (no macros) The problem is that it still doesn't work for that specific interface **because VirtuallyConstructible can still be default-constructed**.   1. We can't declare the destructor pure virtual because we need to keep it inline, and some of our compilers won't digest it.   2. Yes, the only point of this class is to make the implementers virtually destructible, which is a rare case. Another problem is **that classes implementing the non-copyable interface must then explicitly declare/define the copy constructor and the assignment operator if they need to have those methods** (and in our code, we have value classes that can still be accessed by our client through interfaces). This goes against the Rule of Zero, which is where we want to go: If the default implementation is ok, then we should be able to use it. ## 2nd Solution: make them protected!               class MyInterface     {        public :           virtual ~MyInterface() {}             protected :           // With C++11, these methods would be \"= default\"           MyInterface() {}           MyInterface(const MyInterface & ) {}           MyInterface & operator = (const MyInterface & ) { return *this ; }     } ;      **This pattern follows the technical constraints we had** (at least in user code): MyInterface cannot be default-constructed, cannot be copy-constructed and cannot be copy-assigned. Also, it imposes **no artificial constraints to implementing classes** , which are then free to follow the Rule of Zero, or even declare a few constructors/operators as \"= default\" in C++11/14 without problem. Now, this is quite verbose, and an alternative would be using a macro, something like:               class MyInterface     {        public :           virtual ~MyInterface() {}             protected :           DECLARE_AS_NON_SLICEABLE(MyInterface) ;     } ;      The protected must remain outside the macro (because it has no scope). Correctly \"namespaced\" (that is, prefixed with the name of your company or product), the macro should be harmless. And the advantage is that the code is factored in one source, instead of being copy pasted in all interfaces. Should the move-constructor and move-assignment be explicitly disabled the same way in the future, this would be a very light change in the code. ## Conclusion   * Am I paranoid to want the code to be protected against slicing in interfaces? (I believe I'm not, but one never knows...)   * What is the best solution among the ones above?   * Is there another, better solution? _Please remember that this is a pattern that will serve as a guideline for newbies (among others), so a solution like: \"Each case should have its implementation\" is not a viable solution._ ## Bounty and results I awarded the bounty to coredump because of the time spent to answer the questions, and the relevance of the answers. My solution to the problem will probably go to something like that:               class MyInterface     {        DECLARE_CLASS_AS_INTERFACE(MyInterface) ;             public :           // the virtual methods     } ;      ... with the following macro:               #define DECLARE_CLASS_AS_INTERFACE(ClassName)                                \\        public :                                                                  \\           virtual ~ClassName() {}                                                \\        protected :                                                               \\           ClassName() {}                                                         \\           ClassName(const ClassName & ) {}                                       \\           ClassName & operator = (const ClassName & ) { return *this ; }         \\        private :      This is a viable solution for my problem for the following reasons:   * This class cannot be instantiated (the constructors are protected)   * This class can be virtually destroyed   * This class can be inherited without imposing undue constraints on inheriting classes (e.g. the inheriting class could be by default copiable)   * The use of the macro means the interface \"declaration\" is easily recognizable (and searchable), and its code is factored in one place making it easier to modify (a suitably prefixed name will remove undesirable name clashes) Note that the other answers gave valuable insight. Thank you to all you who gave it a shot. Note that I guess I can still put another bounty on this question, and I value enlightning answers enough that should I see one, I would open a bounty just to assign it to that answer."}
{"_id": "131107", "title": "Handling extremely large numbers in a language which can't?", "text": "I'm trying to think about how I would go about doing calculations on extremely large numbers (to infinitum - intergers no floats) if the language construct is incapable of handling numbers larger than a certain value. I am sure I am not the first nor the last to ask this question but the search terms I am using aren't giving me an algorithm to handle those situations. Rather most suggestions offer a language change or variable change, or talk about things that seem irrelevant to my search. So I need a little guideance. I would sketch out an algorithm like this:   1. Determine the max length of the integer variable for the language.   2. If a number is more than half the length of the max length of the variable split it in an array. (give a little play room)   3. Array order [0] = the numbers most to the right [n-max] = numbers most to the left  Ex. Num: 29392023 Array[0]:23, Array[1]: 20, array[2]: 39, array[3]:29 Since I established half the length of the variable as the mark off point I can then calculate the ones, tenths, hundredths, etc. Place via the halfway mark so that if a variable max length was 10 digits from 0 to 9999999999 then I know that by halfing that to five digits give me some play room. So if I add or multiply I can have a variable checker function that see that the sixth digit (from the right) of array[0] is the same place as the first digit (from the right) of array[1]. Dividing and subtracting have their own issues which I haven't thought about yet. I would like to know about the best implementations of supporting larger numbers than the program can."}
{"_id": "226446", "title": "Can I use dynamic packages in Delphi if I plan to build my application for cross platform usage?", "text": "Now I am thinking about architecture of my program. I plan to provide one not only for Desktop usage, but for mobile platforms as well. I want to create a bpl package as separate file. That is I want to have in Windows version next files: program.exe + logic.bpl. It can be usefull because logic.bpl may be often modified, as it is a very important part of my program. Besides other programmers (my friends) will be able to develop their own logic and replace the logic.bpl file to their own. So, there are next questions:   1. Will I have any problems with compiling the program for Android, iOS?    2. How can I build the program with packages for Windows and without packages for mobile platforms with minimal changes in the code?   3. In the case of dll use instead of bpl, are there any advantages/disadvantages for cross platform programming? P.S. English is not my native language, sorry for possible mistakes."}
{"_id": "135059", "title": "Using a column to store the company or a separate database?", "text": "I am writing an system for the company to put their promotion material on the site, which is like some kinds of CMS. So, I need a database that store their data, but I am considering how to store their data.... First approach is use a single table to store their data, but use a column, like 'company_code' to distinguish the company, another approach is create a separate database for a company.... (Of course, will check the company_code or company table name is existed or not, if yes, will assign a new company_code or company table name by programme.) So, which approach is better? Thanks....."}
{"_id": "140233", "title": "How to prove a Dynamic programming strategy will work for an algorithm?", "text": "How can I prove that a dynamic programming (dp) strategy for a problem will work or not? For greedy algorithms, we can prove by showing the sub problems exhibits matroid property. Is there any such methods for dp algorithms?"}
{"_id": "140230", "title": "How are RDF and RDFS related?", "text": "I've been reading about Semantic Web technologies such as RDF/RDFS and \"ontology\", but was wondering how each of these are related? At the moment the terms all seem interchangeable, or I'm not understanding a fundamental concept here."}
{"_id": "46404", "title": "Does this have a name? DRY overloading?", "text": "public int foo(int x)     {         int defaultValue = 0;         return foo(x, defaultValue);     }          public int foo(int x, int y)     {         return x + y;     }"}
{"_id": "140235", "title": "Need to test .properties one by one in every possibility?", "text": "For example, there are some key-value configuration in .properties file. Such like `someFeatureEnable=true`. It must be bool type value which will be parsed by framework, in my case it's typical Java Spring configuration. Spring will handle the configuration and throw Exception when users set `someFeatureEnable=123`. My question is: if there many properties in .properties file, Is it worth testing them one by one? It's quite troublesome and low priority. The .properties file is always configured by tech administrator stuff. Limited chances that they will mess up the configuration. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "81911", "title": "What open source license is best when releasing a framework or library?", "text": "I am thinking of releasing libraries and frameworks which I have written in Java to other developers. I've spent a lot of time researching what open source licenses are available, and the differences between them, however some advice from real people specifically on this matter would be nice. Basically, I want something that is.. .. easy to understand for other developers .. it's ok for developers to use and modify the code as they wish .. keep my copyright notice in the source code, even though the code gets modified and/or redistributed .. No need to put my copyright notice on the final product in any way, only in the source code as mentioned above .. it's ok to use the framework in a commercial solution, without forcing the commercial solution to be open source as well (for example if Microsoft Windows would use my library, it wouldn't force Microsoft to release Windows as open source) .. You are not allowed to sell the libraries or framework alone (however it is ok to bundle it in your own commercial solution, as mentioned above) .. includes basic \"as in\" warranty Three questions: 1) Are there any other important license topics that could be good for a library/framework? 2) Which open source license should I pick and why? (I assume the candidates are MIT, GPL and LGLP) 3) With the license, is it ok to distribute the binaries alone (without the source code, to minimize size) or does that go against the \"open source\" idea?"}
{"_id": "124441", "title": "What should I do to get started with Windows 8 app development?", "text": "I'm looking to get into Windows 8 app development, and from what I understand I should be mastering XAML and C#. Now, there aren't any good tutorials on the internet about Windows 8 yet, but there are a lot of tutorials about WPF, which uses XAML. So what's the best starting point: learning WPF? Or is there something else I should be looking at?"}
{"_id": "124447", "title": "Are there any Web Frameworks for beginners?", "text": "I was wandering if there are any frameworks like Google Web Toolkit to create Web Apps? (Apps like Evernote, Spring Pad, Google Docs, etc.). I am fluent in Java but could learn a new language without much problem. So is there any kind of framework that would allow me to write Web Apps without worrying much about UI element design and client-server communication? I have heard of one-- Vaadin. Is it something like what I am looking for? If yes, are there any alternatives? I'm hoping to make a Web App similar to this: Gantter. Mostly the UI and smooth usability."}
{"_id": "124446", "title": "DDD with ORM where should the business logic go?", "text": "I have used an MDA (model driven architecture) tool in the past where we modeled via UML and this generated the business entities (our domain model) and the ORM (mapping etc) amongst other things. A lot of the business code and services working on the domain were part of the model and our repositories were returning the business entities (so it would have been impossible to switch out to another ORM (not that we wanted to)). However, now I am starting a project and I want to think in terms of DDD. So far it feels as though I put my business logic in my domain model and via repositories I would work with the ORM (which ever I chose). However, if I wanted to continue to use the MDA tool for the ORM part of the application, the model created here would be very anemic (i.e not contain any business logic). Similarly if I used Entity framework (.net) or NHibernate for my ORM it too would be an anemic model.? I am not sure where you would put the business logic if I just used NHibernate. Am I correct in thinking this way, in other words with DDD all the business logic in the domain and just use the ORM for persistence via repositories?"}
{"_id": "81919", "title": "Is there a source for user opinions on commercial enterprise software?", "text": "It seems like a lot of my clients get roped into buying less-than-adequate enterprise software then dumping it on us (as consultants) to implement. I've seen some of these slick vendor demos where they show off a heavily customized demo app and pass it off as an off-the-shelf solution that does exactly what you need while cleverly hiding the fact that it took thousands of developer hours to build and conveniently ignoring the operational gotchas that will cost you a fortune in maintenance even after you pay them for licenses. I know of sites like Gartner and Real Story Group that will sell you an expert analysis, but I'm looking for a site more like Stack Exchange or Yelp where developers, users, admins, etc give honest feedback on the quality of commercial software and maybe give some insight into pricing and value. Does such a thing exist?"}
{"_id": "20632", "title": "Dangers of two Jobs? Violating Company Policy?", "text": "I'm working for a company full-time and myself part-time. I started learning the Mac OS/Cocoa/Objective-C at work, and then I got the \"Brilliant Idea\" that I'd like to program for the iPhone. The iPhone stuff is going well, but I'm earning money there because I'm applying skills I learned on the job. What is commonly considered violating company policy on things like this? Is there any danger of the company claiming 'ownership' of my side-job? If I leave the company, could they ask me to stop working at my side business? The company and my iphone stuff are in completely different \"areas\" but I'm still concerned. What can I do to make sure? What else should I be wary of? Has anyone run into bad stuff like this before? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "131103", "title": "How can I reuse generic code for consulting between companies?", "text": "I am employed full time for company X and approached by company Y to do consulting services to write embedded C for them. While I know the basics of conflicts of interests and the big no-no's of sharing proprietary information, company knowledge and proprietary algorithms, I do have some questions regarding basic generic items that I need to reuse:   * Software architecture: I have a personal preference of layering application, abstraction layer and hardware drivers. I don't want to have to do something different and it is not proprietary to the company. Would this be a problem if shared?   * Generic functions: table look ups, sine/cosine functions, parsers, etc. I wrote all this code myself. Can I copy-paste this or do I have to rewrite, insert random spaces, change indentation, var names, table sizes, etc?   * Function naming: I use a specific naming convention, e.g. MATH_Sin(). However, compiled to a DLL, company X can find a MATH_Sin() function available in company Y's DLL and assume that I copied their code. Do I need to rename all functions to hide any similarities?   * Public knowledge turned into source code: say you find an algorithm on an paper that describes how to search for a pattern in a string and you turned the paper content into source code. Again, would a copy-paste be a no-no here too? Rewrite changing a few things or completely dismiss and find for another way to do it? In the end it is an implementation of public knowledge. I asked around my peers and I cannot get a straight answer on what to do. Software is digital and very traceable and can always be traced back to the developer. Thanks. **Update** : I have approached my manager and HR and they strongly discouraged me to pursue this. They claimed that by using the same skill set (embedded programming or programming in general) for another company, there will be always the opportunity for company X to challenge myself or company Y. I asked then what would NOT be considered a conflict of interest and they answered \"You could invest in a restaurant...\". Seriously? Company X is a very large corporation. There is no negotiation between employer and company, there is no acceptance of open source/licensed code and it seems they believe they own me and my skill set. While I do agree with some of their reasoning, I do not agree that they own my education and, while employed for them, I can't make use of my basic skills for other endeavors. Therefore I have decided to follow the advice below and open source all my personal code that does not belong to the company nor was written using company equipment or company time. I won't be making money or signing contracts, but at least I can keep my personal code and continue developing my career outside this restrictive environment. Thanks for all answers. Hope this serves as a reference for others pursuing the same goal."}
{"_id": "201814", "title": "Can I perform a code review although I am very inexperienced?", "text": "I have been teaching myself Python as a first language for 2 years now. So far I have done some online courses (NLP, Design of a Computer Program etc.) and solved some puzzles but never worked with big applications. Yet right now I have the opportunity to do some real work with Python on a project at my university. It's a web app using the Pyramid framework, currently at about 8000 lines. And they are using quite a few tricks that I have never encountered before - stuff like `__metaclass__`, lots of OO stuff that I have no prior experience with. Do you believe that I could still do useful work for the project? And what could I do to prove my worth? **Edit:** The developers on the project are at a different university. The job available at my university seems to be a classic code review job: Check the code for security flaws, style, coherence, efficiency etc."}
{"_id": "240255", "title": "What is the responsibility or benefit of a Tokenizer?", "text": "Suppose I had a grammar like:               object          { members }      members          pair     pair         string : value      value          number         string     string          \" chars \"      chars          char         char chars      number         digit         digit number      I could parse the following example: `{ \"one\" : 1234 }` As far as I understand, I should have the tokens `object`, `members`, `pair`, `value`, `string` and `chars`. Tokenizing the example should produce               object         ->members             ->pair                 ->\"one\"                 ->\"1234\"      Parsing the tokens should produce               object         ->pair             ->\"one\"             ->1234      It seems to me like the tokenizer is either useless or I don't fully understand what a it should do. What is the responsibility of a tokenizer? What is the benefit of a tokenizer over parsing the original string?"}
{"_id": "250760", "title": "Omitting \"destructors\" in C is taking YAGNI too far?", "text": "I'm working on a medium embedded application in C using OO-like techniques. My \"classes\" are .h/.c modules using data structs and function pointers structs to emulate encapsulation, polymorphism, and dependency injection. Now, one would expect a `myModule_create(void)` function to come with a `myModule_destroy(pointer)` counterpart. But the project being embedded, the resources that are instantiated realistically should never be released. I mean, if I have 4 UART serial ports and I create 4 UART instances with their required pins and settings, there's absolutely no reason to ever want to destroy UART #2 at some point during runtime. So following the YAGNI (You ain't gonna need it) principle, should I omit the destructors? This seem extremely strange to me but I can't think of a use for them; resources are freed when the device powers-off."}
{"_id": "163121", "title": "Would I benefit changing from PHP to Node.js (in context)", "text": "The situation: We are about to roll out what is essentially a logging service. As we are rather PHP heavy, the current implementation use it. We will have about 200 computers (most on the same network) that will each send, via HTTP POST, around 5000 requests/day. With each request containing about 300 bytes of data. The receiving end is hosted at Amazon and is a very simple PHP form with some simple validation that puts everything in a database. Now, I've recently been introduced to Node.js and I'm curious as to if it would be a good fit for the backend here. Granted I could easily build something to test this. But since I haven't fully grasped the async-methology I would really like someone with experience to explain it to me."}
{"_id": "233854", "title": "Programmer-to-Programmer, what would you ask?", "text": "I can't discuss specifics but let me begin by inserting you into a fictitious scenario that closely mimics the one I'm in. You have just been brought in as a engineering consultant to help finish an application fairly large in scope and addressing a problem domain you are unfamiliar with. For fun, lets just say its a flight control system for an alien spacecraft that crash landed on earth a few years ago. The current developer and his team have been working on this alien FCS for some time now, but have not meet the contractual obligations, or the timelines set forth, and the company that has brought you on has decided to not renew the contract with the current developer. You have only a few days (maybe one or two phone calls worth of time actually) to pick his (the developer) brain on everything and anything he and his team has done up to this point on the project before the contract expires. The problem is you don't know enough about implementing flight control systems in alien spacecraft to really know what to ask. You know the following things about the project and the developer:   * It is fairly well documented, both in code and wiki-documentation, eliminating the need for many technical questions   * The developer isn't always truthful and/or goes on tangents about unrelated things when asked simple questions SO - what kinds of questions do you spend the precious little time you have on to get the most out of this developer when you don't really understand all the ins and outs of the system you have been hired to assist with? Seriously, any feedback would be great on this. **EDIT:** I really appreciate the feedback so far, some good suggestions have been made and I have already begun the process of formulating some good questions based on the advice given. One thing I forgot to mention is that there are team members from both sides on any given phone call so it's not really possible to ask questions where fingers would get pointed. Unfortunately, this implied requirement of delicacy will surely cause some issues to remain hidden."}
{"_id": "80069", "title": "Is it ethical to teach teens about software viruses?", "text": "I volunteered to instruct an after school computer club at my son's middle school. There has been a lot of interest in computer viruses. I was thinking about showing them how to create a simple batch file virus that will infect other batch files in the same directory. Also show how creating a batch file with the same name, but that is closer in the path, can replace another program. It could also allow for discussion of anti-virus techniques - recognizing viruses and virus like behavior. I mentioned the idea to my wife and she thought it was a terrible idea. Compared it to giving them loaded weapons. I don't see it as dangerous since this technique wouldn't be immediately applicable for any real mischief on any modern operating systems. Am I being too cavalier or is she being too concerned? This isn't a settle this argument for me question, I am just trying to get another opinion. **Update** : I don't plan to cover moving between systems (or even directories) or any malicious behavior. And lest anyone think I am revealing any deep dark secrets, here is a book from 1996 I found at the library that goes into a lot more detail than I planned to cover. If some is motivated to be malicious they will find a way."}
{"_id": "80068", "title": "Good game that has scripting support", "text": "I've volunteered to lead a programming club at my son's middle-school. We've covered a lot of fun topics, including showing them how to use a game engine to build 3D interactive environments. One thing they said they would like to see is how to use scripting languages to enhance and extend games. I know I have heard that a lot of games use Lua as an embedded scripting language, and we have talked about Lua previously. I've found that the kids like to see something fun and flashy and are less interested in practical things. Of course I try to sneak in some learning too. What game can be recommended that would be fun to extend via scripting? It doesn't have to be Lua scriptable, but that would be nice. Bonus points if the game is free or open source so the kids can download it at home. I prefer Windows, but Mac is fine too. Game needs to be teen friendly."}
{"_id": "163128", "title": "How do I make code bound to an ORM testable?", "text": "In Test Driven Development, how do I make code bound to an ORM testable? I am using a Micro-ORM (PetaPoco) and I have several methods that interact with the database like: AddCustomer UpdateRecord etc. I want to know how to write a test for these methods. I searched YouTube for videos on writing a test for DAL, but I didn't find any. I want to know which method or class is testable and how to write a test before writing the code itself."}
{"_id": "233859", "title": "Maximize the visibility of an ad to a maximum of people in an automatic advertising system", "text": "I have N different ads that I want to display at the same time to M people in an automatic advertising system. Some people will never see some ads because they only check some specific criteria on the GUI, which are used like filters. Some ads will never be displayed at all, if nobody looks for them. The goal is to maximize the visibility of an ad to a maximum of people looking for specific criteria (filters) at the same time. The system refresh the ad every minute. Once the system choose the moment and the users who will see the ad, he stores the values in a queue (a database). I am looking for a solution to avoid starvation and deadlock. I mean, all ads corresponding to the criterias must be displayed, even if the waiting time is long. It can also be a typical scheduling algorithm corresponding to my problem."}
{"_id": "204796", "title": "How do I test this?", "text": "I've attempted test first in Ruby on Rails using Test Unit and RSpec. I'm wondering how to do test first in situations that are more closely tied to the OS/filesystem. **Problem:** Building a USB stick of MP4 files. **Inputs:**   1. List of mp4 file name, destination directory pairs.   2. List of source directories   3. List of destination directories **Output:**   1. USB stick with a directory structure of mp4 files. Here is some code that does what I want. Written using puts debugging:               #!/bin/env ruby     # encoding: utf-8          require 'fileutils'          files = [         [ 'Keynote_ Architecture the Lost Years by Robert Martin.mp4', 'dev' ],         [ 'The Oak Beams of New College, Oxford.mp4', 'arch' ],         [ '1. How Buildings Learn - Stewart Brand - 1 of 6 - \u201cFlow\u201d.mp4', 'arch/how_buildings_learn' ],         [ 'Hexagonal Rails by Matt Wynne.mp4', 'dev' ]     ]          dirs = [         'arch',         'arch/how_buildings_learn',         'dev'     ]          sources = [         '/home/gnoll110/dwhelper',         '/home/gnoll110/Downloads',         '/home/gnoll110/GNUstep/Downloads',         '/home/gnoll110'     ]          dest = '/media/Lexar'          dirs.each do | dir |         if !File.exist?( dest+'/'+dir )             system( 'mkdir '+dest+'/'+dir )         end     end          files.each do | file |         actual_source = false         sources.each do | source |             res = File.exist? source+'/'+file[0]             actual_source = source if res         end              if actual_source             FileUtils.cp(actual_source+'/'+file[0], dest+'/'+file[1] )         end     end.      What the best approach?   * Junk the existing code. After all, I'm trying to do test first.   * Write a test(s) that invokes a Command Pattern object. Dependence inject the data arrays in the constructor.   * Then inject the 'file exist' and 'fileutils copy' as stub/mocks, to get separation from the OS/filesystem.   * Build, assert and refactor the run method within an inch of its life. All suggestions and ideas welcome."}
{"_id": "6042", "title": "What are some good practices when trying to teach declarative programming to imperative programmers?", "text": "I offered to do a little bit training in F# at my company and they seemed to show some interest. They are generally VB6 and C# programmers who don't follow programming with too much passion. That being said I feel like it is easier to write correct code when you think in a functional matter so they should definitely get some benefit out of it. Can anyone offer up some advice on how I should approach this? **Ideas**   * Don't focus on the syntax, instead focus on how this language and the idioms it promotes can be used.   * Try and think of examples that are a pain to write in an imperative fashion but translates to elegant code when written in a declarative fashion."}
{"_id": "205319", "title": "Am I covered with GPL If I want to share open source code of project developed in my company?", "text": "I'm working in a company and in my job contract there are confidential clauses concerning code, documents, etc... In the company we are working on an open source project (GPL V3). The project is not shared yet to the public. Do I have the right to share the code of the project with people (out from the company)?"}
{"_id": "6045", "title": "Can fixed scope + fixed deadline + fixed price contract ever be made to work with \"agile\"?", "text": "Some projects we run internally using scrum, whilst still being \"fixed everything\" to the customer. Mixed success on our part (the customer likes the visibility of the burndown chart). Any experiences on doing fixed price with agile?"}
{"_id": "139620", "title": "How to deal with frequent requirements changes?", "text": "I'm dealing with pretty stressful (in my opinion) situation in my current work place. We've started developing new project, get some requirements, implemented it and then show to someone you can call a 'business advisor' (person who knows business requirements but will not use the program). That person is supposed to evaluate application from customers point of view, test it etc. Here how the 'process' looks:   1. business advisor talks in the evening with my boss for hour or two on windows messenger   2. the next day I receive email with copy of that conversation. I am supposed to choose tasks from that, check reported bugs (which often aren't bugs, just poor testing and forgetting about past establishments)   3. I implement changes, implementation gets accepted and then in a week or two it turns out that isn't want they want (they talked with some potential client that have seen software for 5 minutes and he suggested changes) - I have to do new changes Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes requirements change. What upsets me is how often the change occur in my workplace and how easy for 'management' is two give new requirements or sometimes fundamental changes to existing features. At the same we working on tight deadlines and I have impression that instead of going forward with our software we're running circles. I seek advise from you how to deal with this situation? Is this normal situation and I'm just hypersensitive about it?"}
{"_id": "139624", "title": "Why is the Flyweight Pattern practical?", "text": "I was reading up on design patterns, to better my understandings of ones I know and reveal ones I didn't. One of the last ones I looks at was the Flyweight Pattern. It preaches about shared common function, and I understand this. Keeping with the game example (in the link), sharing functions for units in an RTS I'm sure would save on memory. But would this not sacrifice a great deal of [speed] performance? Keeping with the RTS theme, suppose you have 300 units on the field, all sharing the same run function, would this not be an asynchronous nightmare? And if one was do perform this in-line (via maybe a step/render style engine), would this not bog the the CPU?"}
{"_id": "250844", "title": "Is a book that teaches how to build compilers good for learning to implement interpreters?", "text": "I'm looking for a book to learn how to implement interpreters for programming languages. Thing is there are much more 'compiler books' than 'interpreter books'. So my question is: can I read a book that teaches how to build compilers, to learn how to build interpreters (at a very beginner level)? Is this a good idea? If so, what do I need to keep in mind while reading?"}
{"_id": "203416", "title": "ROA on top of SOA", "text": "I already have a stable Service Oriented Architecture for my application which exposes services as API calls. (the verbs) Now, I need to build a Resource Oriented Architecture to expose a RESTful API to interact with the application objects. (the nouns) What are the best practices to reuse the existing services:   \\- without any persistence inside my new code.   \\- without putting unnecessary logic into the REST layer i.e. it should ideally just leverage the services provided by SOA API. I want this layer to be as thin as possible.   \\- without modifying the existing SOA API   \\- allow easy extension of the REST API i.e. it should be easy to add more resources without changing the (yet to be written) core code. (I want to make resource names and their associated actions configurable so more contributors can easily add resources without a need to understand my module) Any advices/suggestions how to achieve this? **Edit: Adding more info**   **My Stack:**   * My existing stacks is in Java. But since I plan to just use the services, I don't think that should affect the design of new REST code.    * I am planning to implement the new REST code in PHP.  **How well the services map to resources?**   Some services are mapped well i.e. there are services for creating, updating application objects.   But for other application objects, there are no direct services available. _More importantly_ , there are actions beyond just create, update etc. that apply to application objects. And I would like to provide some way for these actions to be exposed through REST. Since these are verbs, how do I deal with them? **Where exactly I need help?**   I would appreciate any help towards high level design to accomplish the task along-with making the framework extendible. For instance, tomorrow there are some new services added to my SOA layer, I want to make sure it is easy for a fresh developer to write a REST call by simply registering a new resource (in a config file/db) and write code for connecting it with SOA calls. Just like plugin."}
{"_id": "203751", "title": "Configuring DI in a decoupled app", "text": "I'm reading through Mark Seeman's _Dependency Injection in .NET_ (excellent read so far) and something is escaping me. If the application's architecture is like `[DAL] => [BLL] <= [UI]`, with the Business Logic Layer free of dependencies upon Data Access and UI layers (and both dependent upon the BLL), and if the _composition root_ is located in the UI layer, then how on Earth are we supposed to be able to bind the interface of a type in the BLL with an implementation that's in the DAL? Mark Seeman gives a nice, typical example: abstract class `ProductRepository` lives in the BLL and class `SqlProductRepository` in the DAL. This may sound like a silly question but how is the UI layer supposed to be able to bind `ProductRepository` to `SqlProductRepository` without a reference to the DAL? > I move all the Controllers and ViewModels from the User Interface Layer to > the Presentation Model layer, leaving only the Views (the .aspx and .ascx > files) and the COMPOSITION ROOT in the User Interface layer. Thing is, I'm pretty sure this guy knows what he's talking about, so what part have I missed? Also where would I have to put the composition root in the case of a class library project? At first I thought the BLL would be perfect (given `[DAL] <= [BLL] => [UI]`), but now that I've refactored my project to literally reverse the dependencies, I don't know anymore - I used to have a BLL that knew about both the DAL and the UI layer so binding the types of these layers was easy, now nobody knows about everyone anymore, it's like I don't have anywhere I could possibly put a composition root. Help me out here, I feel like I'm missing a fundamental cornerstone..."}
{"_id": "176776", "title": "How should I compress a file with multiple bytes that are the same with Huffman coding?", "text": "On my great quest for compressing/decompressing files with a Java implementation of Huffman coding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding) for a school assignment, I am now at the point of building a list of **prefix codes**. Such codes are used when decompressing a file. Basically, the code is made of zeroes and ones, that are used to follow a path in a Huffman tree (left or right) for, ultimately, finding a byte. In this Wikipedia image, to reach the character `m` the prefix code would be `0111` ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/ah9kI.png) The idea is that when you compress the file, you will basically convert all the bytes of the file into prefix codes instead (they tend to be smaller than 8 bits, so there's some gain). So every time the character `m` appears in a file (which in binary is actually `1101101`), it will be replaced by `0111` (if we used the tree above). Therefore, `1101101110110111011011101101` becomes `0111011101110111` in the compressed file. I'm okay with that. But what if the following happens:   * In the file to be compressed there exists only one unique byte, say `1101101`.   * There are 1000 of such byte. Technically, the prefix code of such byte would be... **none** , because there is no path to follow, right? I mean, there is only one **_unique_** byte anyway, so the tree has just one node. Therefore, if the prefix code is **none** , I would not be able to write the prefix code in the compressed file, because, well, there is nothing to write. Which brings this problem: **how would I compress/decompress such file if it is impossible to write a prefix code when compressing?** (using Huffman coding, due to the school assignment's rules) This tutorial seems to explain a bit better about prefix codes: http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/computersciencetheory/huffman.html but doesn't seem to address this issue either."}
{"_id": "247158", "title": "How can I perform a logical test to ensure that MY CUSTOM ERROR gets thrown instead of the NumberFormatException?", "text": "I am working on something that should be fairly simple. I have 95% of my program working, but one piece is still not fulfilling the requirement. (FYI, this is for a homework assignment, but I will prove that I have put good effort into it before coming here.) The piece of the assignment: * The ProductionWorker class should throw an exception named InvalidPayRate when it receives a negative number for the hourly pay rate or if the data entered is not numeric. I have my InvalidPayRate logic for catching negative numbers, but I am not too sure how to ensure that the input is numeric. Here is the relevant code: InvalidPayRate.java               public class InvalidPayRate extends Exception {         public InvalidPayRate(){             super(\"Error: Invalid Pay Rate.\");         }     }      ProductionWorker.java               void setHourlyPayRate(double rate) throws InvalidPayRate         {             if (rate < 0.0){                 throw new InvalidPayRate();             }                  this.hourlyPayRate = rate;         }      test.java (this is within a main function)               //Set Rate details     try{         worker.setHourlyPayRate(-15.00);         System.out.println(worker.getHourlyPayRate() + \": Valid HourlyRate\");       } catch (InvalidPayRate e) {         System.out.println(e.getMessage());     }          try{         worker.setHourlyPayRate(20.00);         System.out.println(worker.getHourlyPayRate() + \": Valid HourlyRate\");       } catch (InvalidPayRate e) {         System.out.println(e.getMessage());     }          String testRate = \"1v2.65\";     try{         double rate = Double.parseDouble(testRate);         worker.setHourlyPayRate(rate);         System.out.println(worker.getHourlyPayRate() + \": Valid HourlyRate\");       } catch (InvalidPayRate e) {         System.out.println(e.getMessage());     }      Right now, 2 of the 3 tests are working... the Valid entry, the negative number entry (returns my custom error) but my non-numeric entry is not working... it gives the standard NumberFormatException error. How can I perform a logical test to ensure that MY CUSTOM ERROR gets thrown instead of the NumberFormatException?"}
{"_id": "247154", "title": "Is there any software development methodologies for small teams?", "text": "I'm working in a big software company and I'm developing a big enterprise- level web-solution with a team of about 25 people (2 architects, ~15 developers, 5 QA engineers, couple BAs, project manager). We are following agile methodology and scrum and it seems to be pretty convenient for such big team in circumstances of frequent requirement changes. I also have one pet project - I have basic idea and I've started development. Currently I'm working alone, but I plan to propose to couple of my friends participate in my project. Some time ago I've faced with a problem of proper task-tracking and formalizing requirements. My first thought was to use agile methodology as we used it with my team at work. While it is very convenient for my job, I have found it too much time-consuming for team with 1-3 people. Is there any software development methodologies for really small teams? Or I should overcome myself and formalize all my thoughts into user stories and tasks and use iterations? I don't want my project become just another folder on my disk, but I'm also don't want to waste time on unnecessary formalizations."}
{"_id": "247151", "title": "Track performance numbers", "text": "I have a (large) software project in a git repository. There is a benchmark suite that spits out lots of numbers (time per benchmark, allocations done per benchmark) I\u2019d like to track. What is the best way to get a grip on intended and unintended performance changes in such a setup? (Ideally, I think, there is a piece of free software that takes a git repository, a script to obtain the numbers, schedules jobs for new commit, also checks old commits when idle and presents a slick web interface with lots of graphs and analysis tools.)"}
{"_id": "255168", "title": "Is doing Parent.call from the child object a right way to implement Inheritance in JavaScript?", "text": "I came across this piece of code it didnt look that right to me. Is it the right way to implement SUPER in javascript. if not what is the right way?               function Person(name){      this.name = name;       }          function Student(name){     Person.call(this, name);     }          Student.prototype = new Person();      var a = new Student('test');     var b = new Student('test2');"}
{"_id": "255165", "title": "Is using Git Stash as a workflow an antipattern?", "text": "I've recently been looking at how me and my team uses Git and how our workflows work. We currently use a feature-branch workflow which seems to work well. I've also seen some individuals on our team use workflow based on git stash. The workflow goes something like this:   * Work on a main branch (like `master`)   * Make commits as you go   * If you need to get changes or switch branches, push your uncommitted changes onto the stash   * Once your updating is done, pop the changes off the stash. I should mention that this workflow is used _instead of_ a feature branch workflow. Instead of taking a branch and working on it, developers here only ever work on a single branch and push/pop off the stack as they see fit. I actually don't think this is a great workflow, and branching would be more appropriate than using git stash in this way. I can see the value of git stash as an emergency operation, but not for using it in a daily, regular workflow. Would using git stash regularly be considered an anti-pattern? If so, what are some specific problems that could arise? If not, what are the benefits?"}
{"_id": "255164", "title": "Should putting html tags into localization files be avoided?", "text": "We are localizing all parts of our website to many languages. We use XML localization files. I think this scenario is so common, and even there should be a standard solution to this, but still I couldn't find any good advice, and every developer here has different opinion about it, so I'm asking you. **Suggest the following example:** _If you have question, please ask our`<a href=\"blabla\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Our nice Customer Support + boilerplate SEO bullshit\">`Customer support`</a>` or write an email to `<a href=\"mailto:XXX\">`Jane Doe `</a>` our specialist._ **Or a long, formatted text:**                <p>A very long, marketing blah-blah. A very long, marketing blah-blah. A very long, marketing blah-blah concluding in a list:</p>      <ul>        <li>1</li>        <li>2</li>        <li>3</li>     </ul>      **1) Would you put html tags into the localization XML file?** My concern is the View is **separated into 2 files** : your page and your localization file. People will forget to check the localization file. Also, **there's logic and style embedded in html** as well (see `target=\"_blank\"`, or the fact that the above mentioned list is unordered...) **2) Or splitting it to smaller parts?** `<msg id=\"IfYouHaveQuestion\">`If you have question, please ask our`</msg>` `<msg id=\"CustomerSupport\">`Customer support`</msg>` `<msg id=\"OrWrite\">`or write an email to`</msg>` ... Now, View can contain all the markup and style. It's easy to change it, flexible. But. There's absolutely **no guarantee** that the **word order will be the same** in all languages. Also, this would make the **translator's work a nightmare** , making it a puzzle. **3) Or introduce BB-style markdown?** `<msg id=\"HaveQuestion\">`If you have question, please ask our `[link url=\"{customersupportlink}\" title=\"{{CustomerSupportTitle}}\">`Customer support`[/link]` or write an email ...`</msg>` But probably this is over-complicating the issue, and also we have to write our own parser for this (though, I think it wouldn't be so hard). And probably does not solve the long, formatted text problem. **4) ??? (Your golden solution here) :)**"}
{"_id": "255161", "title": "In MVC design, do I use a base class over an interface?", "text": "In _web_ MVC most designs I've seen, (just choosing model layer as an example) the domain problem class, say students, always inherits the superclass \"Model.\" The name is irrelevant, but why do they always inherit classes instead of interfaces? I've seen others that have interface -> abstract class -> concrete class. But, I don't know why I'd choose a class over an inteface.   * Will I need to execute something in the constructor of the superclass in MVC? Some other method?    * I know of no mutual functionality that needs an implementation beforehand, but that is probably inexperience? I don't now.    * Why not just an interface to enforce my API? I have seen other answers. I have not seen it in the _specific context of MVC **design_** , however. Using PHP if it matters."}
{"_id": "255162", "title": "In Node.js, are non-blocking constructs usually preferable to blocking ones?", "text": "Is the following a statement of best practices in Node.js with regard to web applications? If not, how could it be improved? **The statement** The lifecycle of any web app has at least two phases: a setup phase, and a ready phase (when the application is ready to respond to requests.) In the ready phase,   1. IO operations (disk access, database calls, etc.) should always be asynchronous/non-blocking.   2. Even operations that occur purely in memory should be asynchronous, when possible. This is especially true when the operations involve iteration, and especially^2 true when the upper limit on the number of iterations is unknown.   3. Synchronous/blocking operations should never be performed in response to a request. In my opinion, the question of whether or not something is part of the best practices for developing in a certain programming language can be answered decisively based on experience and objective criteria."}
{"_id": "70421", "title": "Essential Technologies for Senior (.NET) Developer", "text": "I was recently laid off, and now I'm looking to take this opportunity to add new technologies to my resume. I don't mean just padding with keywords; I mean developing _real_ (albeit possibly small), _useful_ applications that require me to, in the process, learn a new technology. My choice of platform is a little confused, because I have about 1-2 years of experience with 10 or so languages/platforms (C++, Ruby, C#, Java, JEE, ASP.NET, Ruby, Rails, PHP, ...). I'm hoping this question will be generic to at least C#/Java, or maybe wider. **What are some absolutely essential technologies I should learn about, for Java and for .NET?** As an example, I would say based on my experience, a JEE example would be: Hibernate, Spring, Struts, EMMA, Ant, BEA WebLogic, and Hudson. (Note that they span the entire gamut from writing and compiling code to building and deploying applications.) **Edit:** I will probably end up in a .NET web development job (ASP.NET, MVC2 if I'm lucky). That's what I'm looking for."}
{"_id": "125314", "title": "In C++, were SFINAE and metaprogramming intentional or just a byproduct of templates?", "text": "SFINAE and `template` metaprogramming can do wonderful things and many libraries also use them considerably. Historically both of these \"magic concepts\" were intentionally introduced/supported in C++ ? Or they were just later discovered as useful byproducts (side products) of original `template` programming ?"}
{"_id": "121679", "title": "Workflow of sharing code for small teams", "text": "Problem is, we have developed a small CMS, that is different per implementation (currently). Of course development of this is never complete. Sometimes, we are working on more than one project that implements it (by copying-pasting the code files of the CMS to each project), and we add a new feature that we want to share on other projects as well (these can be small ones too, ie a custom ajax JSON controller - we use MVC) What we want to do is quickly and uniformly share the code with all other projects, via a version control system (or something similar), and generally organize the workflow as we know this isn't a very good workflow that we have. What would you suggest? Also, at the momment, the software we use is Visual Studio 2010, so we are strongly considering TFS, but even if we get it we still don't know the ideal workflow, or even if TFS supports what we want to do. **Edit:** Also note, we have specific implementations that have modifications over the CMS base that we want to KEEP only in the project area. (ie: a specific feature that we DONT want to share with the base CMS code)"}
{"_id": "152278", "title": "Can I use metro style interface in my own web application?", "text": "I am wondering if I would need to license the Metro style or if I can just freely use it in my own applications. I mean, is it patented or protected in any way that would prevent me from building my own implementation? I effectively would like to copy the visible part of it. I like to idea of being able to:   * Provide an interface which is used somewhere else (as in 1 less to learn)   * Use the interface that has been tested for usability (I personally like it)   * Have the possibility of getting free publicity because of implementing full Metro style web application while not associated with Microsoft, etc."}
{"_id": "185882", "title": "How to setup TDD environment", "text": "In TDD, is it good practice to keep the tests in the same directory as the code its testing or is it better separate the tests in either a different directory or a separate project. Would it be the same for a web site where you have the aspx/c# pages in one directory?"}
{"_id": "84364", "title": "Programming language for simple program?", "text": "I am wondering about which programming languages people see fit to create a program idea that I had. I am looking to create a fairly simple program whose main functions are adding to, managing, and searching through a database of people, all through a polished GUI. It will be for use in the business world, so I think Windows would be the priority, but Mac and Linux support wouldn't be bad. Also, eventually I would like to add the ability for an instance of one program on a computer to interact with other instances on the same network, mainly through the sharing of a database. Most of my experience is in Java, but I don't particularly like the appearance of Java GUIs, so I'm looking for an alternative. I noticed that a lot of people have suggested C++ or C# in similar posts, so what are some of the advantages/disadvantages of one or both if that is your suggestion. Thanks for any help in advance."}
{"_id": "164472", "title": "Declaring interface in the same file as the base class, is it a good practice?", "text": "To be interchangable and testable, normally services with logic needs to have interface, e.g.               public class FooService: IFooService      { ... }      Design-wise, I agree with this, but one of the things that bothers me with this approach is that for one service you will need to declare two things (the class and the interface), and in our team, normally two files (one for the class and one for the interface). Another discomfort is the difficulty in navigation because using \"Go to definition\" in IDE (VS2010) will point to the interface (since other classes refer to the interface), not the actual class. I was thinking that writing IFooService in the same file as FooService will reduce the above weirdness. After all, IFooService and FooService are very related. Is this a good practice? Is there a good reason that IFooService must be located in its own file?"}
{"_id": "138579", "title": "Is security a real argument for centralized version control?", "text": "I'm trying to understand if security is a real concern, or if distribution actually does a better job with security. See, the access to the main source repository could be layered and inherently managed by a network of trust, and could still have centralized user management integrating users from an LDAP/Active Directory, while the centralized version control system just relies on the later. With distribution, access could even be given to less users per repository in different countries and maintained easier. I can see why it is easy to think that having tight & centralized access management to a code repository translates to security, however, that doesn't mean that code cannot be accessed or redistributed other ways. But, is there a real argument/use case/scenario for security where the centralized model is just better than the distributed one?. **Some context** : I'm trying to make the case (with a whitepaper) to my company to switch to a DVCS (I already have other problems identified that are successfully addressed by most DVCSs) and security is one of the arguments I'm expecting to have to justify. My company is open minded though; they currently use perforce and are distributed geographically."}
{"_id": "119353", "title": "What do you do if you reach a design dead-end in evolutionary methods like Agile or XP?", "text": "As I was reading Martin Fowler's famous blog post Is Design Dead?, one of the striking impressions I got is that given the fact that in Agile Methodology and Extreme Programming, the design as well as programming is evolutionary, there are always points where things need to get refactored. It may be possible that when a programmer's level is good, and they understand design implications and don't make critical mistakes, the code continues to evolve. However, in a normal context, what is the ground reality in this context? In a normal day given some significant development goes into product, and when critical change occurs in requirement isn't it a constraint that how much ever we wish, fundamental design aspects cannot be modified? (without throwing away major part of the code). Is it not quite likely that one reaches _dead-end_ on any further possible improvement on design and requirements? I am not advocating any _non-Agile_ practice here, but I want to know from people who practice agile or iterative or evolutionary development methods, as for their real experiences. Have you ever reached such _dead-ends_? How have you managed to avoid it or escaped it? Or are there measures to ensure that design remains clean and flexible as it evolves?"}
{"_id": "119352", "title": "Does the ActiveRecord pattern follow/encourage the SOLID design principles?", "text": "I'm interested in whether ActiveRecord pattern, made famous from Ruby on Rails, encourages or discourages the use of SOLID design principles. For example, it seems to me that ActiveRecord objects both contain domain logic, and persistence logic, which is a violation of Single Responsibility."}
{"_id": "130856", "title": "Jump into Android or learn Java basics first?", "text": "I am quite proficient in C and know some C++, but never touched Java. Recently I got an idea for an app which I think has potential, and I want to develop it. I am planning to go Android first, cause it doesn't require a mac/iPhone. So my question is: can I go straight to learning Android development, picking up the Java syntax as I go along and need it (after all I don't think it's much different from C/C++), or should I take a couple of weeks to learn the basics of Java first and then start with Android development?"}
{"_id": "119357", "title": "What are Silverlight, WCF RIA services or applications?", "text": "I asked a question here on programmers yesterday about learning HTML & CSS and the community was pretty generous to provide great answers. One of the answers was given by Emmad Kareem and that was : \"if you can't do HTML, don't give up. Consider using Silverlight\". This answer made me visit Silverlight.net and I came across the terms WCF RIA Services, Silverlight applications. After going through the website and some articles on website i am unable to draw a conclusive understanding on what this is all about. Is this another way of building websites using .NET, and is just like another framework like ASP.NET MVC3. What scenario's and requirements are basically targeted to silverlight applications or we are free to use either of Asp.net MVC or Silverlight in any web-application requirements."}
{"_id": "29870", "title": "How do you look for programmers when your project's not in a particularly popular language?", "text": "So, we've got a product, written in Perl. Mind you, it's _good_ Perl, pretty well object-oriented, with a strong functional-programming influence, extensive test suites, and it's an agile environment doing Extreme Programming with elements of Scrum. We also have about 4 open headcount that we're trying to fill sooner rather than later, and we've historically had trouble filling even just one or two. I've been taking a look at the sort of candidates that our existing postings seem to be attracting, and they're not particularly impressive. Most of them have a background in QA automation or something similar. We know that we can take good OO software engineers who know Python or Ruby or even just C++/Java and bring them up to speed quickly enough. We're pretty good at being able to pitch the actual job itself to qualified candidates if we have their ear. What we're not good at, it seems, is attracting these people to our postings in the first place.   * What sort of things can we do to market ourselves to these engineers?   * What sort of things should we be careful to avoid in job postings and the like? (The posting is omitted since I don't want to get in any trouble by doing an end-run around the job-board. Also, our current in-house recruiter isn't helping much.... rumors are his days are numbered and I'm not at all surprised...)"}
{"_id": "1040", "title": "What needs to be done to sell software to the government?", "text": "I'm making software that could be of use by businesses and the US Government, but I hear that dealing with the government is a huge hassle business-wise. Why do they have such a bad reputation among ISV's? How difficult is it to sell my software to them?"}
{"_id": "122092", "title": "What's the key innovation in the realization of the \"cloud?\"", "text": "I'm trying to figure out what are the key technological innovations or inventions that the \"cloud\" introduces as an improvement over web pages; or maybe over SAAS. Seems to me that \"cloud\" is merely a new marketing word for technology that's been around for a while."}
{"_id": "147965", "title": "What is meant by \"native support for a feature\" in a programming language?", "text": "I went through a line somewhat like this \"PHP has no native support for Unicode\". Also i read that Python has native support for Unicode. Now you can call a function `utf8_encode()` in PHP to encode a string into Unicode and you can use a function `unicode()` in Python to convert a string to unicode. So what does it mean to support Unicode natively? _Also some languages have native support for concurrency while some dont have a native support._ So what is meant by > X language natively supports feature Y"}
{"_id": "249627", "title": "What is a good strategy for decoupling a web service that uses ACORD XML messages?", "text": "I work for an insurance company and we're getting ready to use a new vendor tool for creating insurance illustrations. The tool has a web service that accepts an ACORD XML message. We want to put a web service in front of the vendor web service to abstract it away, but the complexity of the data model makes it hard. Our first method on the custom web service will probably just pass through an ACORD XML message to the vendor service and return the result. But, I'd like to have methods on our service that are more succinct. I'm not sure if that is possible yet as we're still doing analysis. Is there a way to create simpler data models for ACORD? The ACORD message is a TXLife 111. Edit: We are a mixed shop with .NET and Java, so I need to consider that Java clients might, at some point, be requesting illustrations through our .NET web service."}
{"_id": "179746", "title": "Should developers be responsible for tests other than unit tests, if so which ones are the most common?", "text": "I am currently working on a rather large project, and I have used JUnit and EasyMock to fairly extensively unit test functionality. I am now interested in what other types of testing I should worry about. As a developer is it my responsibility to worry about things like functional, or regression testing? Is there a good way to integrate these in a useable way in tools such as Maven/Ant/Gradle? Are these better suited for a Tester or BA? Are there other useful types of testing that I am missing?"}
{"_id": "179744", "title": "How to implement Scrum in a company with three similar web-based products", "text": "I am somewhat familiar with the concepts and benefits of Scrum. With that in mind, I am trying to improve the failing Scrum product management structure of a company I'm now working for that has three separate B2C products, catering to the same demographic and accessible on the same website. Each product has a product owner and a unique development team (5 - 9 people in each) behind it. Given that the target audiences are similar (not sure if it should matter) and the 3 web products are similar in nature, what are the potential benefits/risks associated with merging the teams and having just one product owner/scrum master/dev team? Some questions that come to mind are: does it make sense to have 3 product owners and three distinct backlogs if your website has three distinct products? Also, if you only have one product owner, what is the best metric off which to choose who that will be?"}
{"_id": "147963", "title": "Is it normal to feel like you forgot many things in language after a lapse?", "text": "I'm coming back to C++ after a month. I still didn't start practicing but seeing my old code gives me nauseous feeling like I'm seeing something new even with simple small code. Is this normal? Will I retain everything as I'll start writing code back?"}
{"_id": "221176", "title": "Readability vs benefits of polymorphism", "text": "We are dealing with a lot of CRUD operations in our application. Each database table has one or more corresponding SQLContainer instances to perform various types of operations. All of these SQLContainers are stored in one helper class, so that you could perform any type of CRUD operation anywhere from the program (once you have the reference to that helper class). Now that the scale of the application is growing rapidly, this database helper class has also grown immensely (5+ KLOC). The growth of this helper class was impacted by the fact, that every SQLContainer has a seperate set of methods for performing the same operations, e.g. if you had to commit employeesContainer, you would call commitEmployeesContainer() and so only reading the method name gives a clear idea of the action. (You could call getEmployeesContainer().commit(), but we also perform some additional operations after commiting, like returing the status code of the commit which is almost the same for each container except for few containers) Now we are considering to add some polymorphism to this helper class and create general purpose methods, e.g. for committing records the commitContainer(getEmployeesContainer()) could be used, but such polymorphism will have no typesafety whatsoever and if some table will have few different containers you could accidentally pass a wrong container. One of the benefits is that you won't have to add new sets of methods when new SQLContainers will be added, and also modifications to the committing algorithm would be easier to adapt. **Question:**   Which approach would ease the maintenance whilst keeping the readability or is there an alternative solution for this type of problem?"}
{"_id": "65712", "title": "Free/low-cost online resources to study for certifications", "text": "So I am interested in working towards are few specific certs. Namely Oracle 11g, MySQL, and Java. I know there are tons of books out there, and I do plan to hit up my local library on these subjects in the near future. However, I find myself wanting to get some digital info, and was wondering if anyone knows of a repository that would have pdf books on these subjects, or knows of a better way to pursue the knowledge. Seeing as how I don't have $3k a pop for the classes, I'm looking for ways to get my knowledge a little cheaper? Thanks for the help in advance."}
{"_id": "11050", "title": "What's a neat project to help me get used to the modern environment?", "text": "I haven't been programming for almost a decade. I used to be able to program in QBasic, Turbo Pascal, C, C++, Visual Basic and Assembly. I have no knowledge in any other programming language (other than HTML). I want a project (in _some_ programming language) to help me acquaint myself with the new environment (unix, python, perl, java, flash?) in a way that would give me the feeling that I've gained a mini-super-power. By that I mean something that give me the feeling of hacking (not actually learn about hacking, but just like learning C for the first time feels like hacking). Something that would put my programming skills to use in a way that the programming languages I do (did) know don't."}
{"_id": "143077", "title": "Why would you use data structures (ie Binary Trees, Linked Lists) in your jobs/side projects?", "text": "It seems to me that, for everyday use, more primitive data structures like arrays get the job done just as well as a binary tree would. My question is how common is to use these structures when writing code for projects at work or projects that you pursue in your free time? I understand the better insertion time/deletion time/sorting time for certain structures but would that really matter that much if you were working with a relatively small amount of data?"}
{"_id": "17843", "title": "How is Agile different from XP?", "text": "I read few articles on web to find out how Agile, XP, Scrum, pair programming are different from each other / related to each other and I derived the following line:   1. Scrum and XP are almost same. XP has shorter period of releases than Scrum   2. Pair programming is employed in both Agile and XP methodologies But I was unable to identify how Agile is different from XP. More than providing a URL, I would be happy to read your experience and thoughts on this."}
{"_id": "252306", "title": "A possible loophole on the 3-Clause BSD license", "text": "In a license.txt file, this:                Part of this program uses the following clause           2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in       the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.      is definitely different from this:                2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in       the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.      When applying the second clause of a 3-clause BSD license without \"Part of this program uses the following clause\", does bundling the library mean that my created application has to be governed by the 3-clause BSD license also? E.g. my program should have no warranties, etc?"}
{"_id": "156944", "title": "Lazy loading can lead to stale data, violates IoC?", "text": "Trying to be a better programmer I have an application that keeps track of Roles and Permissions, I had classes for Role and Permission which were just value objects.               class Role     {       int RoleID       string RoleName     }          class Permission     {       int PermissionID       string PermissionName     }      If I wanted to get the permissions for a Role I would do               List<Permission> permissions = PermissionDAL.GetPermissions(RoleID)      But for convenience (it's a Desktop application) I had to move the permission collection to the Role class so I could just do               permissions = roleInstance.GetPermissions();      and the Role class becomes               class Role     {       List<Permission> permissions = null;       int RoleID       string RoleName            public List<Permission> Permissions       {          get          {             if(permissions == null)                permissions = PermissionDAL.GetPermissions(this.RoleID);                  return permissions;          }       }     }      **Question 1** : the challenge - here is the scenario               Role r = getARole();        //for user to see     display(r.Permissions);              //user adding permission to role     RoleDAL.AddPermission(RoleID, PermissionID);             //display new permissions     display(r.Permissions);         //But no, data is not refreshed because of the null check.         //Do I need to call a new instance of this Role?      **Question 2** : I think this violate Inversion of Control? **Question 3** : How would you do an IoC for `List<Role>`, setting the permissions for each Role in the collection, if one were to use IoC. Thanks"}
{"_id": "252303", "title": "java best practice to look for project essential files?", "text": "Usually when you do a new java project, there are several essential file such log4j properties file, other properties file and log file and you need to tell java where they are and where do you want to save the log file. I don't want to hardcode the absolute path to these file because I am putting the projects in different machines at different development stages. For example, I using Eclipse/PC in dev stage, Ant/Unix in UAT and Production machine. Here is my usual setup: Project: \\--src \\--build \\--conf \\--log \\--output In my understanding, src and build directory are included in the classpath and could be read right away by `this.getClass().getClassLoader().getResource(\".\").getPath()` . However, there is not a logical method to locate the Project directory programmatically. If I could locate the Project directory programmatically, I could tell the program that the files are at ${Project}/conf and save the log file in ${Project}/log. Should I just use a shell script to define these variable before running the program?"}
{"_id": "252308", "title": "How to replace inheritance with composition in this case?", "text": "I've recently read several articles about the advantages of the composition over inheritance. Their authors said that you can always replace inheritance with composition (to be precise, they say they don't know such situations where it can't be done). However, I can't think how to do this in the following case:               abstract class Reader     {         public Int32 ReadSum()         {             return this.ReadValue() + this.ReadValue();         }              public Int32 ReadSub()         {             return this.ReadValue() - this.ReadValue();         }              public Int32 ReadMul()         {             return this.ReadValue() * this.ReadValue();         }              public Int32 ReadDiv()         {             return this.ReadValue() / this.ReadValue();         }              public abstract Int32 ReadValue();     }          class RandomSource: Reader     {         public Int32 ReadValue()         {             return Math.RandomInt32();         }     }          class UserSource: Reader     {         public Int32 ReadValue()         {             return Console.ReadInt32();         }     }      Is this at all possible?"}
{"_id": "156949", "title": "What is a good toy example to teach version control?", "text": "I am looking for practical examples to use when teaching version control. Breaking down the material to basic concepts and providing examples is an obvious way to teach version control, but this can be very boring, unless the examples are really practical or interesting. One idea I have is customizing a wordpress theme. I use wordpress a lot and no theme is ever perfect, so I typically just put the theme directory in version control using any dvcs and start recording changes. The problem with this example is that not many people in the audience may be familiar with wordpress, let alone have shell access to a wordpress site to try out the commands. Preparing a mock site and giving access to everyone is also not an option for me. I need a \"toy example\" that can be interesting to a broad audience of software developers, and something they can try on their own computers. The tutorial will use a dvcs, but the practical example I'm looking for is only to teach the basic features of version control, ignoring the distributed features for the moment. (Now that I think of it, instead of a mock site, a customized live cd might do the trick...) Any better ideas? **UPDATE** Thank you all. I ended up using textual data: dinner party planning with plain text files for guests, menu, invoices, and venue directions with images for some binary data. For teaching more advanced VCS features I later moved on to a collection of \"hello world\" implementations in different languages. Thanks again!"}
{"_id": "110658", "title": "How do I know if the compiler broke my code and what do I do if it was the compiler?", "text": "Once in a while C++ code will not work when compiled with some level of optimization. It may be compiler doing optimization that breaks the code or it may be code containing undefined behavior which allows the compiler to do whatever it feels. Suppose I have some piece of code that breaks when compiled with higher optimizations level only. How do i know if it's the code or the compiler and what do I do if it's the compiler?"}
{"_id": "110657", "title": "Dedicated graphics needed for developing 3D Android apps?", "text": "Intel 3000 graphics should be decent enough for developing 3D Android apps, correct? I mean, if the phone can handle it, so can onboard graphics?"}
{"_id": "66879", "title": "How do we know to favour composition over generalisation is always the right choice?", "text": "Whether an object physically exists or not, we can choose to model it in different ways. We could arbitarily use generalisation or composition in many cases. However, the GoF principle of \"favour composition over generalisation [sic]\" guides us to use composition. So, when we model, for example, a line then we create a class that contains two members PointA and PointB of the type Point (composition) instead of extending Point (generalisation). This is just a simplified example of how we can arbitarily choose composition or inheritance to model, despite that objects are usually much more complex. How do we know that this is the right choice? It matters at least because there could be a ton of refactoring to do if it is wrong?"}
{"_id": "118409", "title": "What language should an 11-year old start with to learn game programming?", "text": "I have a 11-year old son who wants to do game programming. I've started him on C++ (C++11) and he's learned iostreams, looping, functions, logic and flow control. I'm using the standard library and no memory management at all. But I would like to ask: What language would you suggest for a pre-teen (Python, ...)? What books would you suggest? We looked at one book that was just for console ASCII games. I liked the C++ that it taught but I think he'll get bored without some graphics at some point."}
{"_id": "160573", "title": "Arrow => in Perl", "text": "What does the `=>` mean in Perl?               my $CreateArray = [     objectClass => [ \"top\", \"person\", \"organizationalPerson\", \"inetOrgPerson\" ],     cn => \"Jane User\",     uid => \"0000001\",     sn => \"User\",     mail => \"JaneUser@mycompany.com\"     ];      produces               CreateArray:     0  'objectClass'     1  ARRAY(0x104ef40)       0  'top'       1  'person'       2  'organizationalPerson'       3  'inetOrgPerson'     2  'cn'     3  'Jane User'     4  'uid'     5  0000001     6  'sn'     7  'User'     8  'mail'     9  'JaneUser@mycompany.com'      It seems that even numbers are keys and odd numbers are values. Why don't they use hashes? Because they aren't ordered? Is there a name for this strange structure? Thank you."}
{"_id": "190891", "title": "Joda Time vs Java Time", "text": "Although Joda is feature rich and more sophisticated than standard Java time, it may not always be the best thing to use. How do I decide if I should use Joda Time or Java Time in any Java code? Is there some kind of guideline which tells us how to pick the right one depending on our requirements?"}
{"_id": "89417", "title": "Build management: does this exist?", "text": "I want something that I haven't so far been able to find in anything but theoretical papers and books. If it doesn't exist I'm rather dumbfounded because it sounds like a lot of people use these kinds of systems and that they work very well. Maybe what I need is some sort of combination of things, I'm not sure. Here are my requirements for the system:   * Can hook into SVN to be triggered via checkin's.   * Can configure independent components as project \"pipelines\"      * I mean that a checkin to a component triggers that component to build, run unit tests, and spit out a distributable.   * Can configure components that depend on other components      * If I check in to component A and component B depends on component A, component B has its A dependency updated and rebuilds upon completion of component A.   * Uses native build processes like msbuild or make.      * I don't have to configure something totally new just for this.   * If a dependency fails the upstream components do not update it, but they will update other components that did not fail. That's the build server end. I want developer side integration as well.   * A new developer should be able to run a command that gets everything and builds it all for the first time.      * This would include all components for some given project.   * The same build, update, build process happens on a developer's machine.   * Use of any IDE All of the above is **automated**. My team currently has this but does almost everything by hand :( What I'm describing is described in many places including the book Continuous Delivery and the paper titled Continuous Release. The closest I seem to be able to find so far is Maven, but it doesn't seem to have the \"can use native build system\" feature (you tell it each file you want built and the compiler/linker....like an XML make file). It also seems very much geared toward Java and I want something language agnostic...in fact I want something that doesn't necessarily even build programs, it could be building anything that needs some form of compilation. So, how? What? Where? and How much?"}
{"_id": "127312", "title": "Job title on Curriculum Vitae", "text": "Right now I'm preparing my CV. I think it's relevant to mention that I'm not native English speaker and my question is half-linguistic, half-programming related. I've been professionally hired as _software developer_ for nearly 5 years, some of the projects required designing small-scale applications architecture, I'm a MS in computer science. I have trouble figuring out how to call myself in professional light:   * a programmer   * a software developer   * a software engineer? Being translated all those notions have the same meaning in my mother's tongue, but I doubt, if they have a more specific usage. Can you help me figure out what's the difference between all three? Which one would you prefer the put in CV and why?"}
{"_id": "127313", "title": "big gap in my resume - advice on getting back on the job market", "text": "My story in a nutshell: Some time after college, after many months of working on my portofolio and job hunting, I got a junior programming position in the games industry. But since I had to move to an expensive city in another country, my financial situation became quite terrible. Also I wasn't happy with the job itself. So, when after 1.5 year something unpleasant happened, I decided to leave, without securing next job. A day after I handed in my resignation, the news broke out about mass layoffs in the industry... I still managed to land a few interviews, but they were rather strange and not successful - it's like they weren't really interested in evaluating me. Also I got the impression that they suspected me of being fired (because I was already out of job) and therefore - not good enough. Since I wasn't happy about how the interviews were conducted and they were a big strain on my time and money, I gave up with job search. Over the last two years I had some non-development related, part-time jobs, that I would be ashamed to put on my resume. But I didn't give up on programming. I started a project, that turned out to be very difficult on many levels. Working on it got me burned out and depressed a few times, but I overcame everything and now I'm in beta phase. I believe I can monetize it, but I don't expect big income. Still, the experience made me think that I would rather have a \"proper\" career in a company and climb the ladder, than work for myself. I'm thinking about applying again for some positions, but I fear this may not be easy:   1. The HR people are very predictable. I'm sure they very much dislike 2 year gap on my resume.   2. The project that I have been working on, is quite unique. It takes very specific expertise to understand what problems I had to solve, how complex and laborious it gets, how many areas it spans. I fear the devs, who are going to interview me, will automatically assume it's something that they can complete in a 2 months time (I believed that too...), therefore - not impressive.   3. I do poorly in interview chats, both over the phone and face to face. Well, that is consistent with how bad I am at conversations in general life. Do you have any advice on what can I do to improve my chances of getting a job, under the circumstances? The thing that worries me most is the 2 year employment gap - is it a deal breaker?"}
{"_id": "214952", "title": "Why \"Fork me on GitHub\"?", "text": "I understand how GitHub works, but one thing I've been confused about is, why almost every OSS project lately has a \"Fork me on GitHub\" link on their homepage. For example, http://jqtjs.com/, http://www.daviddurman.com/flexi-color-picker/, and others. Why is this so common? Is it that they want/need code validation, checking for security/performance improvements that they may not know how to do? Is it meant to show that this is a collaborative project - you're welcome to add improvements? Do they work for GitHub, or want to promote their service? Oddly enough, I don't think I've seen a \"Fork project on Bitbucket\" logo recently. My first reaction to that logo was that the project probably needs to be modified (forked) in order to integrate it with anything useful - or that they are encouraging fragmented codebase, encouraging everyone to make their own fork of the project. But I don't think that is the intent."}
{"_id": "127314", "title": "Accessing the same service more than twice in the nick of time", "text": "I have an application that will access interface service A which is to run from windows startup. This service is used by program B and my application functions on B's presence after getting a pointer to A. The scenario is translated as follows,               public interface A{}     ///my program     public class MyProgram     {         public MyProgram()         {           ProgramB.DoA();         }         public A GetA(){}     }          public class ProgramB     {        void DoA(){}     }      The translated source is not true, but that seems to be what I am looking for. In order to eliminate the overhead of allocating and realocating dynamic accesses to the same service used by other processes, would you please provide an actual solution to the problem ?(I am all out of any idea now)"}
{"_id": "189348", "title": "Switching from ActionScript to JavaScript, tips for writing code?", "text": "I am quite comfortable with using actionscript3 and flash. I also have some experience with Java. But recently, I started learning JavaScript and node.js. I ultimately want to make a 3d game in threejs, but for now I simply want to make a chat application. I want to get into the habit of using JavaScript. Unfortunately, I am finding it very difficult to start using JavaScript. The difficulties I am facing are   * No suggestions for different methods and properties pop up, like they do in the Eclipse IDE and Flash Builder IDE. Like when you press dot after object, it shows all the methods and properties relating to that object and it becomes really easy to see what the parameters are and needed to be passed and stuff.   * How to organize code? In ActionScript3, I could simply make different classes in different packages. I could then import and use those classes in one main file. How does it work in JavaScript?   * Functions. I have seen people use anonymous functions in javascript. But I am compelled to write external functions as I am in the habit of it. What is better in JavaScript workflow? What do you advice?   * How is code executed within a HTML file? So if I have several `<script></script>` tags and I declare a variable in one of them, can the tags below it and above it access that variable?"}
{"_id": "216887", "title": "Business Logic Layer in MVC Application", "text": "In my ASP MVC application I decided to add another Business Layer and made the model only to have properties. All other functionality like save to db, get from db is done on this new Business layer. So now the controller will be calling this business layer and model for various operations. Is it a good approach to design like this? I decided not to use model for this purpose because I would need a number of models for different actions. (for eg, one for edit and other for create)"}
{"_id": "216885", "title": "Convention for using super class functions and members", "text": "Is there a Convention or common way for using super class functions and members? For example the super class has the function `protected void Foo()` and `protected int myInt;` In subclass would I want to refer to those simply as the `Foo()` and `myInt` or as `super.foo()` and `super.myInt` . Or some other way."}
{"_id": "129920", "title": "UserControl inside Placeholder good/bad? + Postback problem", "text": "Currently I'm working a bit with ASP.NET and trying to find the best way to navigate through pages. Right now I have an `UpdatePanel` which has a `Placeholder` inside it. This `Placeholder` will then add the `usercontrol` I need. I've been looking around on the internet and some say that this is a really bad thing to do, while others use it without trouble. Is this whole `UserControl` inside `Placeholder` inside `updatepanel` good/bad? While I've been trying to implement this I run into a problem with `postback`. When I click a button on my \"Main page\" to add a new `UserControl` to the `Placeholder`, the Page. `IsPostback` is of course the same on the `UserControl` and therefore it will always be true here. Am I doing something wrong or do I need to use a session variable to keep my `UserControlPostback` perhaps? I'm open to all options, just need to find the preferred way."}
{"_id": "216883", "title": "Why use link classes in oql instead of classes that contain links", "text": "itop abstracts its very complex database design with an object query language (oql). For this there are classes definded, like 'Ticket' and 'Server'. Now a Ticket usually is linked to a Server. In my naive way I would give the Ticket class an attribute 'affected_server_list', where I could reference the affected servers. itop does it different: neither Servers nor Tickets know of each other. Instead there is a class 'linkTicketToServer', which provides the link between the two. The first thing I noticed is that it makes oql queries more complex. So I wondered why they designed it this way. One thing that occured to me is that it allows for more flexiblity, in that I can add links without modifying the original classes. Is this allready why one would implement it this way, or are there other reasons for this kind of design?"}
{"_id": "245703", "title": "MVC Best practices (view acquiring data directly from model) and Yii Framework", "text": "I'm using Yii for a few years and only right now I realized, that their demo application (empowered by CRUD auto-generation tool -- Gii) seems to be breaking key MVC architecture pattern. I'd like to discuss this here. As long as I've been using MVC (about four years), I was always told, that _view should not acquire data directly from model_. Every piece of text about MVC, I've read so far, was always underlining, that both view and models should be completely separate and the controller is the only element, that spins them together. If I need any model data in view (most often used mechanism) I should let my controller to retrieve it and feed view with it. Correct me, if I'm wrong, but finding this question and an answer to it makes me sure, that I'm right: while it is technically possible, it should be avoided. So, in terms of Yii, that would be:               $probes = Probes::model()->getAllProbesForCurrentUser;          $this->render('index', array     (         'probes'=>$probes     ))      (quite obvious, I think -- controller retrieves data from model and renders view, feeding it with that model) If all above is right, then how should I explain this:               <?php $this->widget('CGridView', array     (         'id'=>'users-grid',         'dataProvider'=>$model->search(),         'columns'=>array         (             'name',             'email',             'level'         )     )); ?>      (a widget placed **in view** acquires data _directly_ **from model** ) What am I missing?"}
{"_id": "126952", "title": "What machine learning algorithm[s?] would be applicable here?", "text": "I have documents that contain an arbitrary amount of key/value fields. The value can be a primitive or a list. Completed documents all have an associated state (such as passed, failed, halted, etc.). Using completed documents as training data in a machine learning algorithm, my goal is to pass the system an incomplete document and determine the probable outcome. Is it more likely that the incomplete document I'm currently looking at will pass, fail or halt? The identifying information I'm looking to compare here consists mostly of unique keys. So a document could look something like:               id: 1     keys_of_type_x: [x1, x2, x3, ..]     keys_of_type_y: [y1, y2, y3, ..]     key_z: \"sample text field\"     etc.      I am not necessarily looking for a concrete answer, but more for a push in the right direction with information regarding what algorithm is best suited for this sort of multi-value based classification."}
{"_id": "212503", "title": "Equivalence partitioning understanding A<5 and B<5", "text": "I do not understand the following example. It says that a function X will be executed if either of A and B variables will be lower than 5. The go on and explains that there are three valid equivalence classes for inputs:               A<5, B<5     A=>5 B<5     B>=5 A<5      Why there is no class for A>5 and B>5? Is it because this would not be valid class? But why A<5 and B>5 is valid, is it because the function is still dependent on that?"}
{"_id": "126959", "title": "Why is there both a short-circuit OR as well as unshort-circuited variation of that operator in C#?", "text": "Periodically, I wonder about this: The short-circuit OR would always return the same value that the unshort- circuited OR operator would? I expect that the short-circuit OR would always evaluate more quickly. So, was the unshort-circuited OR operator included in the C# language for consistency? What have I missed?"}
{"_id": "195623", "title": "Testcase runner for parametrized testcases", "text": "Let me explain my situation. I'm planning a kind of test case runner for doing testcases on **external** devices, which are microcontroller based. Lets consider the devices:   * Device 1   * Device 2 There exist a lot of test cases which can be run with one of the devices above. For example:   * Testcase 1   * Testcase 2 The main reason that all the testcases can be run with any device is, that the testcases validates some standard and this software should be extensible for future devices. The testcases itself must be runnable with changing parameters. For example `Testcase 1` does some **Timing Verification** the testcase needs as input parameter the `datarate`: `4800`, `9600`, `19200`. Now hoping you understand the situation, let me explain my design questions. For implementing the test cases I thought about an `Attribute` based approach, like `nunit` does it. The more complicated problem is, how to define the parametrized testcases? Like this:               Device 1:        Testcase 1:            datarate: 4800, 9600, 19200        Testcase 2:            supply: 1, 2, 3          Device 2:        Testcase 1:            datarate: 9600, 19200, 38400        Testcase 2:            supply: 3, 4, 5      How would you design such a framework? I've done a similar desin in `python` where I had for every device a `XML` containing the testcase definitions like:               <Testcase=\"Testcase 1\" datarate=4800/>     <Testcase=\"Testcase 1\" datarate=9600/>     <Testcase=\"Testcase 1\" datarate=19200/>"}
{"_id": "163907", "title": "software architecture (OO design) refresher course", "text": "I am lead developer and team lead in a small RAD team. Deadlines are tight and we have to release often, which we do, and this is what keep the business happy. While we (the development team) are trying to maintain the quality of the code (clean and short methods), I can't help but notice that the overall quality of the OO design&architecture is getting worse over the time - the library we are working on is gradually reducing itself to a \"bag of functions\". Well, we try to use the design patterns, but since we don't really have much time for a design as such we are mostly using the creational ones. I have read Code Complete / Design Patterns (GOF & enterprise) / Progmatic Programmer / and many books from Effective XXX series. Should I re-read them again as I have read them a long time ago and forgotten quite a lot, or there are other / better OO design / software architeture books been published since then which I should definitely read? **Any ideas, recommendations on how can I get the situation under control and start improving the architecture. The way I see it - I will start improving the architectural / design quality of software components I am working on and then will start helping other team members once I find what is working for me.**"}
{"_id": "163906", "title": "Best strategy for supporting multiple server communication from iPhone/android app?", "text": "I'm making an app that will be used in multiple hospitals in the US. As per `HIPAA` compliance requirement, every hospital will have its own server that complies with these requirements of ensuring patient data security, etc. Now the task is that the app should communicate with a particular server based on the login info. An additional requirement is that new hospitals(servers) are likely to be added along the way, even after the app is available on the market. So basically, according to some login credentials, the app should communicate with the server of the hospital assigned to that person. One pretty crude way is to set up our own server which links the hospitals with the login info and accordingly, provides a `base-url` for data exchange. Is there a more efficient way to handle this?"}
{"_id": "195625", "title": "Are programming books in other languages useful for Python?", "text": "I'm a self-taught intermediate Python programmer; I frequently come across popular books on software development and programming written in other languages (often Java). Typical examples:   * Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code   * Design Patterns, Gang of Four   * Test Driven Development: By Example   * The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .NET Generally speaking, how useful is it to read a book written for another language? Specifically, what about Python? Should one stick to language specific books? For example, a lot of people praise _Design Patterns_ by the GOF, I've never read it because the model applies to other languages (after all Python is about anti-patterns, right?) yet I feel the urge to because of it's place in the CS literature cannon. Likewise, would _The Art of Unit Testing: With Examples in .NET_ help a Python programmer learn unit testing even though the examples are in .Net?"}
{"_id": "195628", "title": "Is equivalence partitioning part of negative testing?", "text": "I assume that negative testing is an approach to design the test cases and so is equivalence partitioning. But I am not sure if NT is a part of ET. An example:   A field can accept a numeric value from the range 0-10. So I have three partitions: to 0, from 0-10 and more than 10. Another invalid partitions would represent letters which is also negative testing, isn't it?"}
{"_id": "189343", "title": "Write data to SQL Server directly from BizTalk or use external service?", "text": "An external source will be sending us XML data that BizTalk will pick up and transform into an internal schema. We need this data to be loaded into a SQL Server database as we're going to expose some of the data to our web front-end via a custom WCF service. The question is: what is the recommended approach for doing something like this? Options we're considering are having BizTalk write to the database directly or having BizTalk call a custom WCF service which would handle the save operation. Another briefly considered idea was having BizTalk write to an MSMQ and have a custom service pull from there and store it in the database. What are some of the guidelines or questions that should be asked in assessing these options? There are concerns related to overhead from calling the extra service, duplication of efforts if the schema is modified in the future (which it will be to some extent), and simply the best way to design within a service-oriented architecture that we're struggling with."}
{"_id": "28834", "title": "Does knowing Latin or other logical languages contribute to being a better programmer?", "text": "I'm currently studying Latin at school, and what I've learned is that it's a very logical language. I feel this has contributed to my programming ability, as it makes it my code easier to understand. Is there any relation between knowledge of a very logical language such as Latin and the comprehension of code?"}
{"_id": "70554", "title": "Is there an appropriate use for #define for constants?", "text": "All over the Internet I see people advocating for the use of enum or const rather than #define for constant definition. Are there times when #define is more appropriate or equally appropriate? Please explain. Are there times when #define is just awful? Please elaborate. (You can say 'always' if you really wish, but I'm looking for more specific answers.) (Yes, I am trying to justify my use of #define, which to me looks so much neater.)"}
{"_id": "206139", "title": "I18n strategy for java web apps", "text": "Internationalized applications usually display links in header for translating in different languages, e.g.: Spanish | English | Italian. These links usually translate current page in the selected language, and usually the url includes the language: http://www.mysite.com/myapp/es/somePage. Questions:   1. Does this only apply to static content?   2. Is it possible to internationalize this way dynamic content? For instance, a page which results in some form submission, clicking a different language might result in undesirable consequences. Some dynamic requests where transactions are not involved (simple queries, for example) might present no problems with this.    3. For authorized content, I guess I must ask for language in login page and use that language, i.e., disallow changing locale for authorized content, which, probably, has a lot of transactions. Is this correct?   4. How do I structure template files? One JSP for each of the languages? One JSP with a properties file for each of the languages?   5. How do I construct the link according to current request? I guess that url requested and param string should be remembered and reconstructed in JSP."}
{"_id": "203078", "title": "should I create a new class for a specific piece of business logic?", "text": "I have a Request class based on the same Entity in my Domain. It currently only has property definitions. I'd like to add a method for checking a duplicate Request which I'll call from my controller. Should I add a method called CheckDuplicate in the Request class? Would I be violating the SRP? The method will need to access a database context to check already existing requests. I'm thinking creating another class altogether for this logic that accepts a datacontext as part of its constructor. But creating a whole new class for just one method seems like a waste too. Any advice?"}
{"_id": "206136", "title": "How to structure a class in python", "text": "I have come to python from C++ (I also know a little Java). I am writing code to exercise a server so I basically use http methods to send a load of requests to the server. As part of my code I created a class and called it testdata. This contains basically test input data (to send in requests) and output data to check against. With my C++ hat on I created a load of getter and setter methods which were one lines. I even had an `__init__` method to set eg `self.<some_attribute_name> = \"\"` or some safe default. I realise now that you can freely add attributes to a python object and there is no need to pre-initialise simple variables in init. So I have some questions.   1. For my testdata class, should I even be using a class?   2. I just add data items like this:              import testing          td = testing.testdata()     td.sessionid = \"123\"        3. But what about access eg to `td.sessionid` before I have previously assigned a value. I know I can use `hasattr` but that is an extra burden. Do I have to make sure I always assign first? What if I do `td.sessionid` before it is even assigned anything? I will get an AttributeError at runtime. How to handle this?   4. Due to problem 3. above. Should I always use `__init__` to initialise member data to safe default values? eg \"\" for strings.  What are recommended approaches in Python?"}
{"_id": "7439", "title": "Which web site gives the most accurate indication of a programmer's capabilities?", "text": "If you were hiring programmers, and could choose between one of (say) the top 100 coders on topcoder.com, or one of the top 100 on stackoverflow.com, which would you choose? At least to me, it would appear that topcoder.com gives a more objective evaluation of pure ability to solve problems and write code. At the same time, despite obvious _technical_ capabilities, this person may lack any hint of social skills -- he may be purely a \"lone coder\", with little or no ability to help/work with others, may lack mentoring ability to help transfer his technical skills to others, etc. On the other hand, stackoverflow.com would at least appear to give a much better indication of peers' opinion of the coder in question, and the degree to which his presence and useful and helpful to others on the \"team\". At the same time, the scoring system is such that somebody who just throws up a lot of mediocre (or even poor answers) will almost inevitably accumulate a positive total of \"reputation\" points -- a single up-vote (perhaps just out of courtesy) will counteract the effects of no fewer than 5 down-votes, and others are discouraged (to some degree) from down-voting because they have to sacrifice their own reputation points to do so. At the same time, somebody who makes little or no technical contribution seems unlikely to accumulate a reputation that lands them (even close to) the top of the heap, so to speak. So, which provides a more useful indication of the degree to which this particular coder is likely to be useful to your organization? If you could choose between them, which set of coders would you rather have working on your team?"}
{"_id": "16089", "title": "Not specifying a return in a function, good or bad?", "text": "I have coded like this many times, and I've never encountered an issue, but the compiler always warns when it expects a return and there is none. For instance, look at this:               -(NSString *)outputStringForInteger:(NSInteger)int     {         if (int == 0)         {             return @\"Number is Zero\";         }         else         {             return @\"Number is not Zero\";         }         //no \"failsafe\" or other explicit return     }      If the function will never get to the last line, ever, is it important to still have a failsafe option, or do you guys just deal with compiler warnings?"}
{"_id": "117005", "title": "Where can I find an authoritative source documenting the relationships between standards bodies?", "text": "There seems to be a number of different so-called \"standards\" bodies interacting and/or competing with each other. For example, RFC 3629 references ISO/IEC 10646 and appears to be governed by the IETF, but no mention is made of IEEE, which has also documented programming terminology and standards. I'm looking for something like: The Internet Ecosystem http://www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/docs/factsheet_ecosystem_20090310.pdf but less specific to the Internet, and more so to computing. Questions a good resource(s) might answer are: Which orgs are at odds with one another or have come about to fill a need not provided by the other? Which book(s), blog post (or series of blog posts), or some other document that defines the relations ship between the organizations and acronyms? I'm looking for a source or list of sources that might help me understand the history, authority, and importance of these organizations and standards in relation to one another. A good answer might include a link to get me going in the right direction or even just a list of sources that help me put the pieces together."}
{"_id": "203077", "title": "Why is an anemic domain model considered bad in C#/OOP, but very important in F#/FP?", "text": "In a blog post on F# for fun and profit, it says: > In a functional design, it is very important to separate behavior from data. > The data types are simple and \"dumb\". And then separately, you have a number > of functions that act on those data types. > > This is the exact opposite of an object-oriented design, where behavior and > data are meant to be combined. After all, that's exactly what a class is. In > a truly object-oriented design in fact, you should have nothing but behavior > -- the data is private and can only be accessed via methods. > > In fact, in OOD, not having enough behavior around a data type is considered > a Bad Thing, and even has a name: the \"anemic domain model\". Given that in C# we seem to keep borrowing from F#, and trying to write more functional-style code; how come we're not borrowing the idea of separating data/behavior, and even consider it bad? Is it simply that the definition doesn't with with OOP, or is there a concrete reason that it's bad in C# that for some reason doesn't apply in F# (and in fact, is reversed)? (Note: I'm specifically interested in the differences in C#/F# that could change the opinion of what is good/bad, rather than individuals that may disagree with either opinion in the blog post)."}
{"_id": "255949", "title": "Run WebAPI on Azures free web site", "text": "Just a quick question. I see that Azure have an offering where you can host 10 websites for free? Is it possible to use this to host some WebAPI projects instead of a conventional website? Considering WebAPI projects are very similar to an ASP.NET MVC site, i'm going to assume the answer to be yes. But, just checking anyway. Thank you."}
{"_id": "255948", "title": "A legal/Copyright Situation - Employer refuses to pay me fairly (perhaps at all), but expects me to hand over code I've been working on", "text": "This is my first question here, I hope I'm not doing something wrong! I'll start by saying, I'm a 21 year old university student studying a science (this will be interesting later - you'll see why!). I came back from university for summer, and got myself a job at a web design firm in the town I live in. My parents had arranged the work while I was away, as they are a client of said firm. They were explicit in my requirement for earning some money whilst home for summer. I've been doing web design as a hobby for about 6 years, PHP/HTML/CSS/JS as well as C#/Java/vb.NET/Python. The day came to start work, I was enthusiastic and worked hard. The company is run rather badly, and since I started they've fired 2 of the other developers (out of a team of three) after seeing how little they really knew. The boss praises me daily, and asked me to even quit university to come and work for him. I politely declined, as it would be a waste of my time spent at university so far. Anyway, this is beside the point. Last friday (a week before I was due to finish) me and the boss have a meeting to talk about how much I will be paid. I wasn't expecting a fortune (I freelance for \u00a316/hr, I was expecting less than half of that). Stupidly, when I started I didn't sign a contract regarding pay. And this is where the whole situation has devolved. I've spent 5 weeks there, 9-5, 5 days a week. I usually work through lunch, to impress the boss (hoping for a little bonus). So I've racked up some 200 hours of work in this time. The boss opens up the meeting asking how my \"experience\" has been. I tell him I've learned very little because I've been mentoring the other developers almost every day on best practises (they're still using image for buttons...) and introduced them to icon fonts, SASS, and other things to improve workflow. He accepts this, saying me being there has really opened his eyes (he's a non-developer, the root of his problems right there). Anyway, he tells me times are hard, and normally they don't pay people on \"work experience\". I immediately call him up on this, stating that I wasn't here for work experience, but to earn money. He shrugs it off, and says that I'm lucky to be getting anything. And offers me \u00a32.50 an hour, meaning that after 5 weeks I've earned \u00a3500. And to make matters worse, I'm not confident I will be paid at all. I realise this is my fault, because no terms were agreed prior to me starting, but I assumed (wrongly) he would be fair and pay me in good faith. I've been working, for the past week, on a project that nobody else there can do (its really just a laravel site, responsive, from a design), and I've also written an API interfacing library to handle grabbing raw data from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board for one of their clients, along with all the other day-to-day work I have done for them. At the end of the week I will be expected to hand in this code (for the main project) and I was wondering if there are any legal grounds I can stand on. The main thing I'm worried about is that I hand in the code, and don't get paid at all. Could I perhaps license the code and prevent it's use? I guess I own the code? No company assets were used, all code was pulled directly via composer. I guess I did it while at the company, but its all on my laptop, and if I'm not being paid for the time spent there, does the company own it at all? The only issue I see is that the design was given to the company I work for by the client, and the client had that designed by another company. I wasn't planning on using the design, selling it or otherwise. Normally, I wouldn't be like this, I'm not a greedy person. But my living depends on this money. I only have a mere \u00a31900 to live on for the whole year at university after paying for accommodation. So a decent wage would have really helped me in this regard. Any help on proceeding would be greatly appreciated! Tom"}
{"_id": "161222", "title": "Don't Use \"Static\" in C#?", "text": "I submitted an application I wrote to some other architects for code review. One of them almost immediately wrote me back and said \"Don't use \"static\". You can't write automated tests with static classes and methods. \"Static\" is to be avoided.\" I checked and fully 1/4 of my classes are marked \"static\". I use static when I am not going to create an instance of a class because the class is a single global class used throughout the code. He went on to mention something involving mocking, IOC/DI techniques that can't be used with static code. He says it is unfortunate when 3rd party libraries are static because of their un-testability. Is this other architect correct? update: here is an example: APIManager - this class keeps dictionaries of 3rd party APIs I am calling along with the next allowed time. It enforces API usage limits that a lot of 3rd parties have in their terms of service. I use it anywhere I am calling a 3rd party service by calling Thread.Sleep(APIManager.GetWait(\"ProviderXYZ\")); before making the call. Everything in here is thread safe and it works great with the TPL in C#."}
{"_id": "255944", "title": "What is the purpose of a Code Review", "text": "I am in the process of trying to sell my organisation on the value of code reviews. I have worked at several places where they were employed. I have seen them used to nitpick styling choices, and functional decisions, and I have seen them used as nothing more than a gut check to make sure nothing dangerous is being implemented. My gut feeling is that the most effective purpose is somewhere between the two options. So, what is the purpose of a Code Review?"}
{"_id": "255943", "title": "dealing with a very large state machine in a class", "text": "I am currently implementing a class for a network protocol. The protocol uses a quite complex and extensive finite state machine. A pair of an event plus a state is mapped to a function, which does some work and sets the new state. As there are about 150 valid state/event combinations and 28 distinct functions to be called, I refactored the whole state machine logic away from the associating/sending/receiving/... (let's call it service class) into a separate statemachine class. The problem is, that some of these 28 functions need access to the service class, for example to reset a deadline timer. What I could do is befriend the statemachine class and the service class, so they can access each other's internals. This would introduce a very tight coupling (albeit natural, as they belong together). I could also just leave both these classes in one, but this would result in a huge class. But since I doubt that I am the first one running into this problem, I assume that there exists a more or less canned solution to this I haven't found yet."}
{"_id": "137548", "title": "Problems of multiple threads sharing/accessing the same data", "text": "I have been researching into when data is being accessed or shared by multiple threads within Java. And looking into the problems such as:   * Thread Interference   * Memory Consistency    * Deadlock   * Starvation From this, solutions to solve these problems. So far all I seem find to fixing these problems is by using a synchronizing method. Are there other alternatives to using a synchronizing method? I have found most of this information from the sun Java tutorial. Any recommendations on further reading?"}
{"_id": "203071", "title": "HTML Canvas: Should my app x, y values be global?", "text": "I have a large file of functions. Each of these functions is responsible for drawing a particular part of the application. My app has x and y parameters that I use in the setup function to move the whole app around in order to try different placements. So, naturally, I need to use these x and y values to anchor each function's component rendering so that everything moves in unison if the global x,y values ever change. My question is, is it bad practice/architecture to have these x,y values in the global namespace and having the each function directly access them like so?               function renderFace() {        var x = App.x;        var y = App.y;             // drawing here     }      is there a better way i'm missing?"}
{"_id": "110388", "title": "Memory problems with singletons in a test suite", "text": "I am having a memory leak when running a test suite due to singleton objects are created and not cleared after each test case. And these singleton objects are holding references to heavy objects. So I don't know if there is a better solution than clearing the singleton objects in the `tearDown()` methods in each test class! What do you think?"}
{"_id": "77772", "title": "Which sorting algorithms have a different worst case complexity than their average case?", "text": "I'v been working on sorting for a while now but I can't figure these two questions apart, I'm kind of getting mixed up somewhere ... Somebody help a) Which sorting algorithms have a different worst case complexity than their average case? b) Which sorting algorithms have a different best case complexity than their average case?"}
{"_id": "187834", "title": "Sub-Resource data should be embedded in Resource entity or duplicated in NoSQL document?", "text": "I have a scenario similar to as depicted below,               public class Post {         private int id;         private int postType;         private int score;         private User originalPoster;         private String title;         private String body;         private String tags;          }          public class Comment {         private int id;         private int postId;         private String text;         private int score;         private User userId;     }          public class User {         int id;         String displayName;         int score;     }      How do I model my MongoDb document/domain object? My initial options are, **1) Have a separate Post and Comment collections and handle updates/retrievals hide behind my Rest Resource with possible duplicate of Comment in both Post and Comment.** **2) Have a single Document Post and include everything in it and have only one Rest Resource? This will limit my url templates or need for complex data retrievals at MongoDB end.** Whether I should go with 1) or 2) or there is other approach where I can have flexibility of urltemplates and minimize the NoSQL interactions?"}
{"_id": "187836", "title": "How to document events?", "text": "Code documentation is usually related to a piece of code, be it small (method- level) or larger (class- or namespace-level). However, it is always about the _inputs_ and the _outputs_ of that piece of code, possibly describing its behavior and caveats. It doesn't make much sense to document events fired by a class in the methods that may fire them: they may be duplicated and, by the definition of events, the listener is not expected to care about what triggers them, only handling them. Documenting all events at the top of a class seems quite heavy, as someone willing to get an overview of the class behavior might not be so interested at deep diving at this \u201csecondary interface\u201d. This problem is mitigated in strongly-typed languages such as Java (yes, unless you use anonymous classes, but it doesn't seem so common), as the events will be defined in their own classes, which can then be documented. But, in languages with looser types, where an event is simply a String identifier and a series of parameters, it is much more difficult to find the proper place for documenting these id/params combinations. So: where should fired events be documented in languages that don't model them explicitly?"}
{"_id": "63964", "title": "Will Java catch up with C#?", "text": "Today I posted a question asking about which language C# or Java would be better for me to study. I had some great answers. One thing that came up was that perhaps Java is now rather behind C# with new features. I saw some web links and most pointed out what C# had and what java did not have. So my question to you all is will Java catch up with C# again? And if you were to take a guess where would it stand in 5 years time. Would it have all the things that are maybe now missing? How about Java 7?"}
{"_id": "93996", "title": "How to document an algorithm properly with sample data?", "text": "I am wondering what should an algorithm documentation contain? Can't locate a proper guideline to follow. I have in mind to include   * summary of the algorithm   * description of the algorithm   * flowcharts   * pseudo codes   * sample input data set(multiple)   * output data   * unit tests   * experiments The client requests such a documentation to: _Maintain confidence in our own numbers as well as to describe our process to potential customers so they know we are taking steps to check and verify our calculations._   * How would look like such a documentation? (example PDF)    * What would you include more in this documentation?    * What I enumerated is that good, or this should be somehow documented differently?    * How would you search in Google for such documentation samples?"}
{"_id": "96747", "title": "How to create Job Security?", "text": "I just started a new programming job and have been told that I am doing well. However, I'm worried about being laid off because of the economy and how the company is faring. Currently, I'm quietly going about the job as normal and hoping I don't get let go. But I'm worried that isn't a good answer. Is there anything I can do to help create job security? (Besides writing terrible mortgage code that only I can maintain, thus forcing(?) the company to keep me)"}
{"_id": "214225", "title": "Choosing which application instance will do the updates when dealing with multiple workstations w/o server involved?", "text": "So, I've got an interesting design problem and I honestly don't know how to tackle this. I have an application that will be ran on a dozen of workstations. Of those workstations, it is impossible to know at any given time how many of them will be on or using my application. Every 4 hours of local time if any of the applications are on, they would check database and perform some changes. The problem is that if more than one tries to do that, there will be some major complications. So I need a way for only one application to perform the updates if more than one are running. I was thinking of creating a file that would reside on the network drive where applications would append their workstation addresses as they're turned on and remove as they're turned off. Every 4 hours of local time, applications would check the file and whoever is at the top would be the one to run the update. The problem with that is that if an application is shut down in the way that it can't remove itself from the top of the list, no updates will appear from there on. I don't have an option to put any applications to run on the server itself, besides storing files there, so that's out of question. Does anyone know of a solution to this problem? I can't seem to wrap my brain around it. **Edit:** What I have implemented right now is this:                       int updateTimerOffset = (Convert.ToInt32(DateTime.Now.ToString(\"mm\")) * 60000) - 120000;                  updateTimer = new System.Timers.Timer(3600000 - updateTimerOffset);             updateTimer.AutoReset = true;             updateTimer.Enabled = true;                  updateTimer.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(PerformUpdates);      and then down in my PerformUpdates I have some code that looks like this:                       int currentHr = Convert.ToInt32(DateTime.Now.ToString(\"HH\"));                  if (currentHr % 4 >= 0 && currentHr >= fileNum)             {                 // change fileNum in the file to currentHr + 4 if currentHr is not 24,                 // if it is, then make the value equal to 4                 // Update database stuff             }      fileNum is a number that is stored in a file on the server. This is done on every application's start up. So, every application, unless started absolutely at the exact same second will have a difference of 2 minutes (120,000 milliseconds) plus some seconds that I didn't account for between their start ups. What I can do is have a simple file holding a number for the target hour (fileNum). So that when the application checks it, it looks at the number to do comparison. So let's say that it's 16:00, in which case 16 % 4 gives us 0 and it's time for an update. That application checks the file and sees that the value is 12. 16 is equal to or greater than 12. So it changes the value to current hour (16) + 4, which is 20. The next application's timer elapses a minute or so later, and it has 0 for its hour mod value. So, it looks at the file and sees that value is 20, which is greater than 16, so it doesn't do anything. What do you guys think of this solution? It wouldn't work if there were hundreds of workstations, since chances of having both applications trying to do this at the same time are higher, but with a dozen or so workstations I can pull this off? Unless someone has a better solution?"}
{"_id": "97295", "title": "A practical use of \"yield\" keyword in C#", "text": "After almost 4 years of experience, I haven't seen a code where **yield** keyword is used. Can somebody show me a practical usage (along explanation) of this keyword, and if so, aren't there other ways easier to fullfill what it can do?"}
{"_id": "97296", "title": "How can I make myself more attractive to software publishers?", "text": "I have a good amount of experience developing software (5 years) in the corporate/enterprise world and would like to start working for a software publisher such as Microsoft, but never seem to get much of a reception when I talk to recruiters or respond to ads. I don't think it's specific language experience that's holding me back; I've spent the past 2.5 years doing web development in C#/.NET. Before that, I worked with mainstream technologies (C, C++) as well as legacy ones (MVS JCL, COBOL, etc.). I'm concerned that it might be my academic background (physics) or my relatively limited experience with any one _specific_ platform that's holding me back. My specific questions are:   * How should I market myself to get the best response from recruiters and hiring managers?   * What type of additional experience would improve my chances of getting interviewed/hired by software publishers? Should I try to start focusing on a single technology/platform instead of being a jack-of-all-trades, as I am now?"}
{"_id": "65758", "title": "How does SCRUM manage an enviroment where team members are shared?", "text": "Well, the questions said itself. In my workplace those cases happen, but also, many Agile books promote working in the same workplace and being concentrated in the current project to become faster in the pace of work. Maybe i'm not that informed about the topic, maybe is not that strict but, that's why I wanted to know what does Agile proposes in cases like those. Anybody?"}
{"_id": "150459", "title": "Cross-Platform: Develop in parallel or series?", "text": "When starting a new software project that will be used on several platforms, how do you determine the best way to start development? Do you develop for one platform and then port to the next? Do you try to develop all platforms simultaneously? For example, I'm going to start developing a Windows Phone app in C#. Much of my code could theoretically be reused with the .NET Framework and Silverlight. However I find that as I try to develop on all platforms simultaneously, refactoring and redesign tends to be 3 times as difficult and slow. I could try writing my app for Windows Phone and then port to other platforms, but I have no ideas what hairballs await me there, and it seems like there would be a lot of potential for design decisions to bite me in the bum only after I start porting. So which is better: develop the code for all platforms at once, or refactor and port to new platforms one at a time? What traps await me on either road?"}
{"_id": "97293", "title": "NDA, a search for partner", "text": "I have an idea for what i believe would be a profitable Apple app store application. I also know that i don't have sufficient knowledge to complete it from start to finish and need help from more experienced iOS developers. Is there a standard NDA you have used and liked that would allow you to discuss details of the application with a 3rd party having a reasonable comfort that your idea won't be stolen?"}
{"_id": "214228", "title": "Story Point Estimation - Component Based", "text": "I have read that story point estimation is not intended to actually tie with number of hours , but is used to identify the relative capacity. I have a java application which has a adapter layer , a service implementation layer , a DAO layer and an external connector service layer. If I am given a high level requirement , is it a good practice to a classification of story points for each layer - eg: Adapter : small : 1 SP , medium 3 SP , Large : 5 SP , Extra Large : 8 SP Impl : small : 3 SP , medium 5 SP , Large : 8 SP , Extra Large : 11 SP DAO : small : 1 SP , medium 3 SP , Large : 5 SP , Extra Large : 8 SP Is it a good way of estimation? Or should we always estimate by looking as application as whole for each change? For eg, If I have got 2 user stories , should I estimate size of user story as a whole , say 1 US takes up 5 SP and other takes 13 SP? Does component-wise breakdown make sense for story point estimation?"}
{"_id": "65752", "title": "Programming-Related Summer Jobs For A High-School Student?", "text": "I'm a high school student, currently finishing my grade 12 year of high school. I have already been admitted into a software engineering program at at least one university, and I have decided on this as a career choice. I have taught myself almost everything I know about programming, and have worked on numerous open source projects. This past year, I wrote a website for my school, working with a team of ~3 people to do so, learning many things about git source control, and other skills related to working with a team on projects like this. In order to finance my education, I will need to get a summer job of one sort or another. Although I have no objection to working at the local grocery or tech store, I would prefer a job related to the career I will be pursuing long-term, as I believe it will   1. Be more interesting   2. Look better on a resume   3. Teach me more   4. Possibly be better payed (not a primary motivation, just a thought) My issue is, I have no idea where to start, or what companies, if any, will hire me. I have looked into GSOC, but I do not turn 18 until the fall, and as such am ineligible. I have considered going around to various local companies and asking if they want their website done/redone, but even then i'm not sure of the best way to go about it. Going the way of the entrepreneur is also a possibility, but could be risky as a summer job that my education depends on, especially considering I have very little experience deploying things in the real world. Furthermore, coming up with a product that would generate me enough profit over the course of a summer seems extremely unlikely, given that wild successes like Youtube and Facebook were not profitable for several years after they started. So, ultimately, my question is:   * Is it worth the effort to look for a programming-related job, since I am under 18 and don't have a degree? Do I have a decent chance of getting one?   * If it is worth the effort, where should I start my search, and what advice do you have regarding this search? Are there specific companies or websites you would recommend for my case? Not sure if this question is off-topic for this site, but I have seen several others asking for career advice, and this seems to fall under that same category. Let me know if there is anything I should do to make it clearer."}
{"_id": "250277", "title": "How should I approach this from a problem-solving point of view?", "text": "I'm currently working on a project to replace some excel worksheets. There is a lot of industry specifics that change quite often and nobody really knows how things should be but every sure enough thinks they know how they shouldn't be. **Project Priorities:**   * Maintainability - The business processes change frequently. There are like 3-5 different excel templates floating around.   * Agile - My boss wants visible changes every week (sometimes less).   * Structure - This application will work with several other systems for the entire business process. **Approach & Design**: The DB Schema we took was one where we defined some business logic in the database. EntityTypes, Properties of those types, and their values are stored in the database (each having their own table ofcourse). ![DBSchema](http://i.stack.imgur.com/vNDiH.png) Now, I originally thought about the typical approach, having an Estimate Table defining its properties, Bid Table, Joist Table, etc. (Each of these are EntityTypes by the way). My boss wanted the DBSchema we're using now (See picture). **Pros/Cons:** Current Schema:   * Pros: (Theoretically) Adapts to the data allowing for later changes to be as simple as adding the data to the database.   * Cons: Overly complex. I have difficulty even getting my mind around this schema when trying to create the class that will handle it. Typical/Traditional Schema:   * Pros: Simplistic, Anyone without knowledge of the project will be able to pick it up in the future.   * Cons: Many Many Tables. Not what we have now. **Situation:** I am currently retrieving the data using a class I made to represent an entity, then converting them into business model classes (Estimate, Bid, Joist...) to pass to the view. This obviously is extra work for the current schema, but I felt that the other way of having the view/controller parse through the model to determine how to display the data (making us only require a few views/controllers) seemed like bad design/programming (though I'm not entirely sure why). Am I correct thinking this schema/design is bad? If, so why? My Boss wants this Schema because \"it may be complex but once the programming is done no more changes should need done.\" Now obviously the way I'm doing this, that's not true. If I were to do it the way he wants I feel like I might fail to do so as I kept confusing myself with the complexities. One of my boss's arguments is that you find yourself with a lot of NULL fields when you do the traditional schema (which I feel like you're doing it wrong if that's the case. Maybe in some instances but they have tables with like 30 columns where 10+ majority of the rows have a NULL value for that column). Will doing all the programming for supporting the current Schema the way he desires be worth the theoretical simplicity to add things in the future? It's not all that much work to add a small feature to a class, and add the display to the view's template using knockout. Especially considering the project is being done in an Agile environment and doing all the work at once then having something to show for it doesn't sound very Agile to me, which is basically what would need done to code the complex classes and display them in the views, not to mention I'd have to code a bunch of HTML helpers (coupling them a bit with Knockout) in order to do this. So personally it sounds like it's just moving the work not saving any. Am I correct in this thought process? **Proposed solution:** I suggested the other day to switch to the other schema and use Entity Framework Code-First to make changes easier (as the way I'm doing it now I have the change the Business Models regardless. Code-First would theoretically allow me to not have to do the Database Changes as well). My boss's main concern is that with a traditional schema the schema changes and then other systems will need updated as well. Whereas, he states that if we have the current schema then the other systems won't need updated if something changes in the database. Which I don't quite understand since how would it know how to deal with the data? Wouldn't it just mean it too would need complex coding/processes to back it up initially? **Questions:**   * Why is this schema design bad (if it is)? How can I argue this schema design is bad?   * If it is not a bad design, How can I better prepare myself for it? I do my best to Abstract classes/functionality and keep things with single responsibilities.   * If it is a bad design, How can I convince my boss to switch to my suggestion (assuming my suggestion is the best/only alternative)? I understand the last two questions are a but subjective, so it's understandable if they are ignored."}
{"_id": "119436", "title": "What does \"GPL with classpath exception\" mean in practice?", "text": "Oracle seems to license all their Java-related open source code under the GPL with a classpath exception. From what I understand, this seems to allow to combine these libraries with your own code into products that do not have to be covered by the GPL. How does this work? What are examples of how I can and cannot use these classes? Why was this new license used as opposed to the LGPL, which seems to allow for pretty much the same things, but is better established and understood? What are the differences to the LGPL?"}
{"_id": "158203", "title": "How to handle frequent ajax requests in shopping cart", "text": "Is it common and/or acceptable to have Ajax requests every time a button is clicked on a shopping cart page? This is not a high traffic site. It will only have a few users at a time, like 5 max. I'm calling it a shopping cart for lack of a better term. The site is intended to let customers create highly customized orders, which benefits from logic being on the server instead of on the client. I have many questions regarding the best practices in this sort of design. Like, should I block user input until the ajax request is received? Should I be sure to display an error message if the ajax request fails? Should I automatically repeat the ajax request if it fails? Are there any other considerations?"}
{"_id": "119435", "title": "What key factors should a university have for a computer science program?", "text": "I'm planning on heading to college, and I'd like to know what I should be looking for in a school when making a decision about going there for a computer science degree. What are good signs? What are red flags?"}
{"_id": "119432", "title": "Is Windows a \"second class citizen\" in the Django community?", "text": "I'm currently doing R&D for a web application which we plan to host ourselves initially and then allow customers to self host. My task has been evaluating web frameworks to see which would give us the biggest productivity initially and ease of maintence while also allowing us to easily support deployment to customer controlled environments. Our team has experience with ASP.NET (MVC and Webforms) and Ruby on Rails. Our experience with Rails is that Windows deployment is a very taboo subject and any questions on IRC or StackOverflow are met with knee jerk \"why not Linux\" responses. However in this case our target market may be running windows or Linux servers.   * Is this also the case in Django land?   * Is it possible with rubbish performance?   * Is it possible with lost of pain?   * Is it seen as reasonable and not treated as a completely stupid idea for not wanting to run Linux?"}
{"_id": "119430", "title": "How can I refactor client side functionality to create a product line-like generic design?", "text": "Assume the following situation similar to that of Stack Overflow: I have a system with a front-end that can perform various manipulations on the data (by sending messages to REST back-end):   * Posting   * Editing and deleting   * Adding labels and tags Now in the first version we created it well modularized but the need as of now for 'evolving' the system similar to Stack Overflow. My question is how best to separate the commonality and how to incorporate the variability with respect to the following: Commonality:   * The above 'functionalities' and sending/receiving the data from the server   * Look and feel (also a variability as explained below)   * HTTP verbs associated with the above actions Variability:   * The RESTful URLs where the requests are sent   * The text/style of the UI (the commonality is analogous to Stack Overflow - the functionality of upvotes, posting a question remains the same, but the words, the icons, the look and feel is still different across sites) I think this is entirely a client-side code organization/refactoring issue. I'm heavily using jQuery, javascript and backbone for front-end development. My question is how best should I isolate the same to be able to create multiple such aspects to the tool we are currently working on?"}
{"_id": "154519", "title": "How to choose a server side language / framework", "text": "I am trying to come up with a list / ranking system on determining which server language to choose for a particular website. Assume that familiarity with a certain language is not important and the implementation can be done in any language. Here are some things that might be important but I am not sure how to rank them :   * Maintainability.   * Libraries. For example, Memcached and NoSql support right out the box would be really nice addition to a particular framework.   * 3rd party SDK's. For example, if I need Paypal on my site they openly provide SDK's for all senarios in Java, PHP and .Net. If I choose Django I would have to rely on 3rd party libraries that are don't support everything and are not officially maintained. Would that be dealbreaker for Django?   * Performance This one is tricky to put on a generic list because it can be a deal breaker but for many websites performance will not be an issue that the language/framework is responsible for.   * Cost (hosting, open source). edit - Any reason for the votes to close? I didn't see any duplicates mentioned and the question should not drum up a flame war."}
{"_id": "124835", "title": "How do quick & dirty programmers know they got it right?", "text": "If you ask programmers why they should write clean code, the number one answer you get is maintainability. While that's on my list, my main reason is more immediate and less altruistic: I can't tell if my new code is correct if it's too dirty. I find that I have focused on individual functions and lines of code so much that when I finish my first draft and step back to look at the big picture again it sometimes doesn't fit together very neatly. Spending an hour or two refactoring for cleanliness frequently uncovers copy/paste errors or boundary conditions that were very difficult to detect in the rough draft. However, some people feel it's occasionally okay to intentionally check in dirty code in the interest of shipping software, with a plan to \"clean it up later.\" Is there is some practicable technique that gives them confidence in the correctness of their code when the readability is less than ideal? Is it a skill worth trying to develop? Or is a lack of confidence in the code something some people just find easier to accept?"}
{"_id": "46366", "title": "What is the difference between these senior software engineer titles?", "text": "I'm currently a senior research software engineer at a large company and am being offered a \"senior staff engineer\" position somewhere else. I am not sure if the new position's title conveys a sideways move or an advancement. So, all other things being roughly equal (salary, domain of expertise, etc.), what is the external difference between these software engineer titles (in general and regardless of any particular company, if possible):   * senior engineer   * senior research engineer   * senior staff engineer   * member of technical staff   * principal engineer Edit: Let me elaborate on \"member of technical staff\" since it's kind of uncommon. I think it's a high title, commonly associated with research. I know that Oracle, VMWare, and the old Bell Labs have these titles. See: Member of Technical Staff . I know what it means, but I don't know how it stacks up against the other titles, which is why I asked."}
{"_id": "46364", "title": "Should testers automate their work?", "text": "We are trying to setup our testing process. We wonder if our testers should develop automated regression tests, or if the developers should do that. And what about other types of automated tests? Should testers develop them?"}
{"_id": "81077", "title": "Anti patterns - Worth spending time or not", "text": "I have read this question and after a very long time it's clear I still don't understand anti-patterns. perhaps, it raised a new level of curosity to know why should I read Anti design pattern if they are actually nothing but a \"Bad Practice\". Is there any chance I should implement those anti design patterns in my application ? **EDIT** > When Jeff said: \u201cA basic rule of programming is to never write what you can > buy or get for free,\u201d. Which I believe is the way to implement copy & paste programming then should I say that SO is ,in some way or another, following Anti-Pattern?"}
{"_id": "167106", "title": "What is the standard for describing functions and objects?", "text": "What is the standard for describing functions/methods (function name, number of arguments, argument type, return type, etc...) in a manner that is language independent? EDIT: More specifically, how does one describe a function without the use of diagrams? I thought there was a pure text standard."}
{"_id": "199625", "title": "Java language constructs to enforce design decisions", "text": "What constructs in OOP languages (specifically Java) allow you to enforce design decisions and intent? I think some examples would be the 'final' keyword, access modifiers, template methods, perhaps interfaces - but clearly I am having trouble coming up with an exhaustive list. Some constructs, like inheritance, feel like they fit this criterion but I find it difficult to explain exactly why. [edit] Turns out I took down a few more notes: Enum types, constructors, constants, and generic types. Although as in all things explaining why will be more important than just listing examples."}
{"_id": "167109", "title": "What is the recommended MongoDB schema for this quiz-engine scenario?", "text": "I'm working on a quiz engine for learning a foreign language. The engine shows users four images simultaneously and then plays an audio file. The user has to match the audio to the correct image. Below is my MongoDB document structure. Each document consists of an image file reference and an array of references to audio files that match that image. To generate a quiz instance I select four documents at random, show the images and then play one audio file from the four documents at random. The next step in my application development is to decide on the best document schema for storing user guesses. There are several requirements to consider:   1. I need to be able to report statistics at a user level. For example, total correct answers, total guesses, mean accuracy, etc)   2. I need to be able to query images based on the user's learning progress. For example, select 4 documents where guess count is >10 and accuracy is <=0.50.   3. The schema needs to be optimized for fast quiz generation.   4. The schema must not cause future scaling issues vis a vis document size. Assume 1mm users who make an average of 1000 guesses. Given all of this as background information, what would be the recommended schema? For example, would you store each guess in the Image document or perhaps in a User document (not shown) or a new document collection created for logging guesses? Would you recommend logging the raw guess data or would you pre-compute statistics by incrementing counters within the relevant document? * * * Schema for Image Collection:               _id \"505bcc7a45c978be24000005\"                date    2012-09-21 02:10:02 UTC          imageFileName   \"BD3E134A-C7B3-4405-9004-ED573DF477FE-29879-0000395CF1091601\"            random  0.26997075392864645          user    \"2A8761E4-C13A-470E-A759-91432D61B6AF-25982-0000352D853511AF\"     audioFiles       [     0        {     audioFileName   \"C3669719-9F0A-4EB5-A791-2C00486665ED-30305-000039A3FDA7DCD2\"     user    \"2A8761E4-C13A-470E-A759-91432D61B6AF-25982-0000352D853511AF\"     audioLanguage   \"English\"     date    2012-09-22 01:15:04 UTC     }     1        {     audioFileName   \"C3669719-9F0A-4EB5-A791-2C00486665ED-30305-000039A3FDA7DCD2\"     user    \"2A8761E4-C13A-470E-A759-91432D61B6AF-25982-0000352D853511AF\"     audioLanguage   \"Spanish\"     date    2012-09-22 01:17:04 UTC     }     ]"}
{"_id": "199628", "title": "Does this violate the using exceptions for flow control \"rule\"?", "text": "I plan to make use of this interface in a plug-in architecture.               /// <summary>     /// Generic interface allowing you to react to an event.     /// You can block the event or just use it for notification.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name=\"T\"></typeparam>     public interface IEventObserver<in T> where T : class     {         /// <summary>         /// Throw an exception in here if you want to prevent the event firing.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"o\"></param>         void CanFireEvent(T o);              /// <summary>         /// This is only called if no handler threw an event in the CanFire.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"o\"></param>         void OnBeforeEvent(T o);              /// <summary>         /// This is called after the event has happened.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"o\"></param>         void OnAfterEvent(T o);     }      Example usage:               public interface ISendMessageObserver : IEventObserver<SendMessageEventArgs>     {     }      A plug-in can then implement `ISendMessageObserver` and prevent message sending by throwing an exception in the `CanFireEvent` method. However, I know that exceptions should not be used for normal program flow control, yet it is normal and expected for plugins here to stop the flow. I went for this because I'd like the plugin to provide a reason for blocking the event that can be logged or presented to the user. I could change `CanFireEvent` to:               bool CanFireEvent(T o, ref message);      or:               SomeTypeContainingAbortReason CanFireEvent(T o);      But both of those don't smell ideal either. So what do people think, exceptions for flow control OK in this instance? **Edit** I've separated the `CanFire` into it's own interface and renamed it as `PreviewEvent`.               /// <summary>     /// Generic interface allowing you to react to and block an event.     /// </summary>     /// <typeparam name=\"TArgs\"></typeparam>     /// <typeparam name=\"TBlock\"></typeparam>     public interface IEventPreviewer<in TArgs, out TBlock>         where TArgs : class         where TBlock : class, IEventBlock     {         /// <summary>         /// Return an IEventBlock to prevent the event from firing.         /// </summary>         /// <param name=\"args\"></param>         TBlock PreviewEvent(TArgs args);     }          public interface IEventBlock     {         string BlockReason { get; }     }"}
{"_id": "57174", "title": "Which is better: many class definitions in the same file or every class definition in a separate file?", "text": "Which is better: many class definitions in same file or every class definition in separate file? **Examples:** 1) Many classes in same file. Say, `myManyClasses.cs`:               namespace myPack     {        class myClass1()        {        }        class myClass2()        {        }        class myClass3()        {        }       .        .        .     }      2) Every class in separate file: _myClass1.cs_               namespace myPack     {        class myClass1()        {        }     }      _myClass2.cs_                namespace myPack      {        class myClass2()        {        }       }      **. . .**"}
{"_id": "190703", "title": "Where to read from file?", "text": "In Java: I have a class Students. I would like to read a list of students from a file. Which one is more elegant:   1. Reading and constructing the list in main(), and creating a Student object with the new list passed to the constructor   2. Passing a FileReader to the constructor, who does the reading?   3. Something else?"}
{"_id": "197575", "title": "Python reading from stdin while doing other tasks", "text": "I am trying to write a system log parser. It will receive messages from the FreeBsd syslog daemon through stdin. It will use those messages to determine if an ip should be banned or not. The problem I have is that after x seconds the ban should be removed, but if I won't get any input from stdin, my program will just block waiting for it. So in the mean time I can't do anything. I fixed it using threads, but isn't there a better way to do it? For example something like this:               while true:         while <data in stdin>:             handleData              doSomeStuff()      So as long nothing comes in from stdin I want to execute doSomeStuff, and if there is data handle it."}
{"_id": "49485", "title": "How do I decide what type of programmer I want to be?", "text": "I've been working at my current work for some time, and I'm considering a bit of a change of careers. I'm trying to decide what it is exactly that I want to do, and I'm really just not sure. I'm not wanting a solution for my particular case, but what I'd like to know are some generalities of things I can look for. Here are some positions that I'm considering, and what my definitions are (I'm probably calling them something other than what is standard, but hopefully this will do for now). I'm looking for quizzes, articles, explanations, or anything that can help me figure this out.   * Manager - Managing programmers in some sense, mostly in making sure they are kept working.   * Coder - A person who is told to make a program do XYZ, and makes it do that. Doesn't have to model anything, or come up with formulas.   * Algorithm Designer - A person who comes up with a way to make software do something, but doesn't necessarily code that program, at least, not in it's final form.   * QA - A person who tests code for bugs, preferably with the code in hand.   * Architect - This person figures out how all of the pieces fit together, is a technical manager of sorts.    * Maintainer - This person takes someone else's existing code, and makes sure it is fixed when issues arise. Also of some note is figuring out what industry I want to work in. Feel free to add any of your own categories."}
{"_id": "49482", "title": "What do developers want to learn at their next startup?", "text": "As a developer, i know how much I like learning new stuff. Now that I'm hiring developers for my startup, I know I can't compete with Google's zillion-dollar bonuses and fancy cafeterias, but we are rich with opportunities for curious people to learn. I want to set things up to support that. So if you're a developer likely to join a startup, what do you want to learn? Product things? Business things? User research, design, or tech ops things? Or if it's more technical learning you're after, do you want to go deeper in what you know (e.g., back end learning back end) or cross-train (e.g., front end learning back end)? Or is there something else entirely?"}
{"_id": "94677", "title": "Are people succeeding with OrientDB?", "text": "OrientDB looks very attractive from a functionality+license standpoint. I haven't been able to google up much in the way of reports by people who have used it. Can anyone cite particularly notable successes or failures?"}
{"_id": "94670", "title": "Monitoring C++ applications", "text": "We're implementing a new centralized monitoring solution (Zenoss). Incorporating servers, networking, and Java programs is straightforward with SNMP and JMX. The question, however, is what are the best practices for monitoring and managing custom C++ applications in large, heterogenous (Solaris x86, RHEL Linux, Windows) environments? Possibilities I see are:   1. Net SNMP     * Advantages       1. single, central daemon on each server       2. well-known standard       3. easy integration into monitoring solutions       4. we run Net SNMP daemons on our servers already     * Disadvantages:       1. complex implementation (MIBs, Net SNMP library)       2. new technology to introduce for the C++ developers   2. rsyslog     * Advantages       1. single, central daemon on each server       2. well-known standard       3. unknown integration into monitoring solutions (I know they can do alerts based on text, but how well would it work for sending telemetry like memory usage, queue depths, thread capacity, etc)       4. simple implementation     * Disadvantages:       1. possible integration issues       2. somewhat new technology for C++ developers       3. possible porting issues if we switch monitoring vendors       4. probably involves coming up with an ad-hoc communication protocol (or using RFC5424 structured data; I don't know if Zenoss supports that without custom Zenpack coding)   3. Embedded JMX (embed a JVM and use JNI)     * Advantages       1. consistent management interface for both Java and C++       2. well-known standard       3. easy integration into monitoring solutions       4. somewhat simple implementation (we already do this today for other purposes)     * Disadvantages:       1. complexity (JNI, thunking layer between native C++ and Java, basically writing the management code twice)       2. possible stability problems       3. requires a JVM in each process, using considerably more memory       4. JMX is new technology for C++ developers       5. each process has it's own JMX port (we run a lot of processes on each machine)   4. Local JMX daemon, processes connect to it     * Advantages       1. single, central daemon on each server       2. consistent management interface for both Java and C++       3. well-known standard       4. easy integration into monitoring solutions     * Disadvantages:       1. complexity (basically writing the management code twice)       2. need to find or write such a daemon       3. need a protocol between the JMX daemon and the C++ process       4. JMX is new technology for C++ developers   5. CodeMesh JunC++ion     * Advantages       1. consistent management interface for both Java and C++       2. well-known standard       3. easy integration into monitoring solutions       4. single, central daemon on each server when run in shared JVM mode       5. somewhat simple implementation (requires code generation)     * Disadvantages:       1. complexity (code generation, requires a GUI and several rounds of tweaking to produce the proxied code)       2. possible JNI stability problems       3. requires a JVM in each process, using considerably more memory (in embedded mode)       4. Does not support Solaris x86 (deal breaker)       5. Even if it did support Solaris x86, there are possible compiler compatibility issues (we use an odd combination of STLPort and Forte on Solaris       6. each process has it's own JMX port when run in embedded mode (we run a lot of processes on each machine)       7. possibly precludes a shared JMX server for non-C++ processes (?) Is there some reasonably standardized, simple solution I'm missing? Given no other reasonable solutions, which of these solutions is typically used for custom C++ programs? My gut feel is that Net SNMP is how people do this, but I'd like other's input and experience before I make a decision."}
{"_id": "157151", "title": "Does it still make sense to think about effective code on micro scale in C++?", "text": "Early in my programming career I was in love with pointer twiddling, lean code, doing everything with as little layers of abstraction as possible and so on. The code was very C like I would say, close to metal and clever. Time has passed, I have a lot more experience, and I'm noticing my attitude towards the code has changed. And with changed, I mean, I don't want to bother about everyday stuff anymore, unless it's super easy to do. If there is a string concatenation, I will never choose raw pointers deliberately. If I need to concatenate stuff, I might add a quick guess reserve for an STL container, but I don't want to bother with preallocated buffers, C like APIs, caches, avoiding hitting the disk, or trashing. I know realloc might happen from time to time, including all the heap locks, extra copying and so on, but I don't even bother anymore. Maybe, it is because I have spent some time early in my career where I thought of a clean and beautiful schemes with worker threads that process large amount of trivial data, only to find out later that the whole unoptimized realloc+copy+realloc+copy+realloc+copy+5 layers of wrappers doesn't even register in profiler. Maybe it's because I've seen how compilers sometimes do magic. However, such trivial things do add up. When all your code base uses higher order constructs, it has chances that there will be some realloc all over the place, or cold disk hits, that can cause a general perception of a slow application. Sort of like WTL vs MFC. Or how you instantly know that the application is written in Java when you launch it. But is it really? Is there any comparisons of software that's using only very lean and smart code vs software that uses generic containers all over the place? Would you even feel a difference if the string allocation throughout the program would be using prereserves and smart moves vs lazily calling string.append in every place where there is a need for such functionality? Do you try to implement mitigation solutions for such simple, well known things that are cheap to execute anyway? Can software turn into bloatware just because extra caution is not applied to every line of code?"}
{"_id": "116069", "title": "How to pronounce CRUD?", "text": "I was talking to a co-worker and was talking of how Database operations usually can be broken down into one of the elements of CRUD- Create, read, update and delete. That's when I realised that I do not know how to pronounce CRUD. So is there a definite, well accepted way to pronounce CRUD?"}
{"_id": "94679", "title": "How can I get programmers to work together better on shared code with tests", "text": "We keep repeating \"you have to pull first\" (this is git and github by the way). Then you code a little, then get your tests to pass, then commit, then pull and push again. We give tutorial links, try firm / hard. The latest changes broke 2 dozen tests. We document everything. What other things can we do to help folks. We require passing tests. Right now we are tempted to rollback all of todays changes which wouldn't be popular. I'm not a big fan of that harsh an approach to management but perhaps a 'final' warning that we will do that next time is now required. Failing that it's clear they need to fix broken tests, right? We fixed them last time so that didn't 'take'..."}
{"_id": "94678", "title": "What are some of the required tools to gauge how large and complex a product is going to be?", "text": "Let's say I want to start developing a project (for the sake of example, let's use facebook, ultimate-guitar, and all recipes or AutoCAD, outlook, angry birds). All of these apps are successful and vary in the degree of \"depth\" and complexity. As a starting developer most of these apps and especially the web apps seem simplistic to build and design especially if you're using a good framework. How can I gauge, estimate and forecast the complexity of a project?"}
{"_id": "102254", "title": "Should jQuery DOM manipulation be avoided in favor of JavaScript template engines?", "text": "From what I can tell, most developers will use heavy jQuery DOM manipulation tactics to deliver their updated AJAX views. Once things get out of hand, they may consider refactoring using template engines such as Mustache.js. Is this a valid assessment of a natural progression to use a template engine? When I begin a new AJAX heavy project, is the best practice to use a template engine or is jQuery DOM manipulation good enough? I have yet to find any negatives with using a template engine. The maintainability, efficiency and simplicity seem to be the redeeming qualities. Please advise me on whether JavaScript template engines should be used or not by default."}
{"_id": "219020", "title": "Confusion with gpl license", "text": "I am really confused about software linceses, I've read a lot of articles but I can't find an answer to my question, which is: Can I develop and sell applications that uses libraries under gpl license? Like for instance, I want to use agsXMPP library in a windows phone app, and sell it in the market, so is it legal?"}
{"_id": "235533", "title": "Export to Excel - threading", "text": "I am working on an ASP.NET application. One requirement by the users is they are capable of exporting to Excel of some UIs. I have worked on them using the Infragistics library, and I have supplied them with the exports they want. However, some of the UIs they see are so complex that it takes a great amount of time to be accomplished (for a web application experience). For instance, an export may take a few minutes, like 4-5 minutes. I was wondering, if there would be a way, in which I could make this task to be done asynchronously, using threads and make it to last shorter."}
{"_id": "54618", "title": "Is it smart to give idea to company?", "text": "I have a few interesting ideas (business ideas) that can be implemented as add-on features of existing business products (web-based products, mostly startups). Based on experience, can anyone let me know if telling them would be a good idea or not? I'm hoping to get some feedback from both sides (company insiders and outsiders). The upside: They could like it and think about bringing me on board to help build. The downside: They take the idea and implement it. Company size for one is less than 50. Another is less than 25."}
{"_id": "142188", "title": "Which of these looks cleaner?", "text": "I have wrote a small method in a program to do one thing my method looks like this:               public static void removeExpiredAssignments(Module module){         module.removeExpiredAssignments();     }      So the method is called like:               removeExpiredAssignments(module);      When the desired operation could be done by saying:               module.removeExpiredAssignments();       Which is easy to understand from the code point of view?"}
{"_id": "142181", "title": "Tineye.com search algorithm?", "text": "I was wondering how does tineye carry a search. Does it store all the images and then extracts exif data? Which in turn must be stored in a database and queried against. So probably it is using some sort of keyword/pattern matching algorithm..."}
{"_id": "112523", "title": "My manager said \"We're not in the business of building controls\" but I am a WPF dev", "text": "I cannot believe what just happened. I'm an expensive full stack developer, although I have focussed on WPF and Silverlight lately. Much of the time, I write Controls, ViewModels, Repositories and a bunch of asynch code. This contract I'm working today is a shambles. The code is a mess. Everything is tightly-coupled, no MVVM, and a bunch of stuff ripped from CodeProject. I taught a junior guy how work the Parts and States model, build Controls and VMs and be a great UI dev. He tells my boss that he's formalising some new feature into a control and my boss says \"We're not in the business of building controls.\" While their sole product is a WPF client, he could not be more wrong. He just wants crap smashed out my juniors in a hurry. What would you do in this situation? How would you explain it on your CV/resum\u00e9?"}
{"_id": "20573", "title": "Why does Java exit with success after an uncaught exception?", "text": "Any time a Perl, Python, C++ or Tcl program halts with an unhandled exception, those language runtimes take care to register a non-zero exit code for the process. Even Eclipse-based programs return 1 if they fail during startup. Programs run by the standard `java.exe`, however, happily return zero no matter how abruptly they end, unless the program calls `System.exit()` with an exit value. Even `AssertionFailedError` or `UnsatisfiedLinkError` are reported back to the calling program as successful exits. Of course not all systems have program return codes, but Unix and Windows were important enough to warrant `java.lang.Process.exitValue()` for child processes; don't they also warrant honouring conventions for parent processes? Is this a flaw in the language design or just in the implementation? Is there an argument that it's a good idea?"}
{"_id": "186046", "title": "Is this modified BSD license compatible with GPL?", "text": "I am working on open source project, that uses the source code from FlatAssembler project, which uses following license, based on BSD 2-clause with one additional clause added at the end of the text. So, the questions are:   1. What this additional clause changes?   2. Is it legal to use this code and to license my project under GNU GPL? (The original BSD 2-clause license is compatible with GPL, but this one seems to be not.) > flat assembler version 1.71 Copyright (c) 1999-2012, Tomasz Grysztar. All > rights reserved. > > This program is free for commercial and non-commercial use as long as the > following conditions are adhered to. > > Copyright remains Tomasz Grysztar, and as such any Copyright notices in the > code are not to be removed. > > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without > modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: > >   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, > this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. >   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright > notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the   >  documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. > > > THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS \"AS IS\" > AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE > IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE > ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR > ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL > DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR > SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER > CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT > LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY > OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH > DAMAGE. > > The licence and distribution terms for any publically available version or > derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be > copied and put under another distribution licence (including the GNU Public > Licence)."}
{"_id": "143855", "title": "How can describe slow connection issues?", "text": "I have been working on a website containing 3d maps, virtual 3d tours, etc. All of the content is large like images and video. The problem is the site performs well under normal speed connections but it take more time to load if network is busy or the internet connection is slow. How can I describe this to the customer? Yes, we optimize the content where its possible."}
{"_id": "186041", "title": "Help to simplify/model complex decision making (if, then, else scenarios)", "text": "I find my self in a situation, where I need to program a service, that can determine if two object in a huge database are the same. For simplicity, let's say it's used cars, and I want to determine if they are the exact same, based on various attributes e.g. brand, model name, year, milage, price, color etc. The problem is, that some of the attributes are obversely more significant/critical/important than others e.g. brand/model name HAS to be the same, where as the seller might wrongly have typed in the milage a slight bit differently. Additionally some times information such as the color might even have been left out, an hence I must fall back to less \"unique identifying\" information such as for an example the engine size. Apart from the direct weight/importance of each attribute there is another dimension of complexity involved - the attributes' importance vary with each other. So let's say e.g. that the car I'm comparing against the rest is very old, then suddenly the importance of the milage it self increases since it's way more likely to be unique among similar cars, than compared to a younger car. This is obviously due to the fact, that the dispersion of milage on older cars are much wider than the one on younger cars. As you might imagine, modeling this as a lot of nested if-then terms easily ends up in a complete mess, and completely unreadable afterwards, and even hard to model in the first place. So my questions are: What might this kind of problem be called in programming, and how do I deal with it? What solutions/algorithms might be good solutions? References, links? Good reading on the topic?"}
{"_id": "143858", "title": "Array or Malloc?", "text": "I'm using the following code in my application, and it's working fine. But I'm wondering if it's better to make it with malloc or to leave it as is?               function (int len)     {     char result [len] = some chars;     send result over network     }"}
{"_id": "210834", "title": "May non-GPL-compatible scripts be linked at runtime to a GPLv3 library, by that (GPL) library itself?", "text": "First of all, pardon the title, as it's not very clear. I have an application I am writing that is GPLv3, and is in Java, which means that classfiles are generated and linked to for general operation. I am also using a scripting engine which, for performance, links any scripts it runs to my program's scripting libraries(which are class files) at runtime. Given that a script must be linked at runtime, can a GPLv3-incompatible script be run on the application? Can I legally force the script to be interpreted instead? Just to clarify I'm trying to involve the GPLv3 in restricting non- GPL-compatible licenses to scripts. The question is whether a technical linking operation functionally equivalent(except in performance) to parsing is actually linking in the legal sense. Clarification: Scripts will be transmitted to interacting instances of the application. Scripts are loaded from a textual representation in ECMAScript/JavaScript, tokenized and parsed for syntax and then linked. This is what is confusing me. Given the conveyance, is the script being compiled and linked? Or interpreted and the parser actually runtime linking itself?"}
{"_id": "148758", "title": "Design a program and methods of doing so", "text": "I'm working on becoming a self-taught programmer. I've read a little bit through a lot of languages and I decided to start with Java and have been using it for several months now. I didn't have much of a problem since most my programs are relatively simple, or games that don't take much planing. That is until my last project I challenged myself with, making a client/server chat applications with a GUI. With only the idea in my head on how sockets worked and my newly learned syntax I started at it. Before I knew it I ended up with a jumbled mess of program that I was finding VERY difficult to work with and eventually I was just so ridiculous I couldn't get simple things to work and I had to delete everything and now I'm starting over. So I took it that I need some better practices. Now for the questions. As someone who is self-taught I'm bound to develop several bad habits, and I do virtually zero planing before writing a program aside from the idea in my head, so:   1. **What are some good ways I might start developing better programming habits?**   2. **When planning a program, are there any good methods of doing so?**   3. **Besides experience, what else is it that I might need before trying to actually take on a big real-world project as a programmer? Like one for a job.** _(How many languages should I know, what kind of problems should I be able to handle, that kind of thing. )_"}
{"_id": "80302", "title": "Primary reasons for using REST/OData instead of a custom convention", "text": "What do you think would be the primary reasons to make APIs with REST or OData instead of just making everything custom (for example only using GET requests, even for setting variables). Reasons for the opposite also welcome. As a bit of background, it's going to be used for a request that is sent once every few minutes as a master-server updater for a game (as well as by clients for querying)."}
{"_id": "210832", "title": "Mapping software", "text": "Okay, this might sound lame, but it is actually a difficult question (for me at-least)... Now there are many mapping software like Google Maps, Apple maps and others whose existence is outside my knowledge. But my question is how do they work? Do they use GPS to get the images or something? Even if they do, how do they give the 3d view of places? I don't think GPS can zoom to that extent... Even if they use GPS, how do they get access to the GPS satellites? I know that it is an expansive question but any help would be truly appreciated..."}
{"_id": "148752", "title": "Using version control to manage site backups?", "text": "Last week I started making daily backups of my relatively small (~300mb) site. The backups are zipped, so it's less space, but it will quickly add up, especially as my site gets bigger. I was thinking of unzipping the latest backup, and from now on just using mercurial to add/update files from newer backups. Are there any drawbacks to this? Is there a better way to do it?"}
{"_id": "148754", "title": "Why is 24 lines a common default terminal height?", "text": "80x24 characters seems to be a very common default for terminal windows. This answer provides a very good historical reason as to why the width is 80 characters. But why is the height commonly 24 (or 25) lines?"}
{"_id": "56808", "title": "How to convince a client that you will not steal his idea", "text": "I came across a thread entitled How To Stop A Developer From Stealing Your Business Idea and i can't help but raise a brow. The issue talks about a developer being able to pass on the idea to another and benefit from it. As a developer, what is the best way to assure your client that you will not steal his ideas? Are there any practices, laws or anything that takes care of the interests of both sides? edit: linked to thread, and i didnt understand everything that was said"}
{"_id": "164903", "title": "Web Frameworks caring about persistence?", "text": "I have noticed that Play! Framework encompasses persistence strategy (like JPA etc...) Why would a web framework care about persistence ?! Indeed, this would be the job of the server-sides components (like EJB etc...), wouldn't this? Otherwise, client would be too coupled with server's business logic. **UPDATE: One answer would be : it's more likely used for simple application including itself the whole business logics. However, for large applications with well-designed layers(services, domain, DAO's etc..), persistence is not recommended within web client layer since there would be several different web(or not) clients.**"}
{"_id": "143583", "title": "Low coupling processing big quantities of data", "text": "Usually I achieve low coupling by creating classes that exchange lists, sets, and maps between them. Now I am developing a Java batch application and I can't put all the data inside a data structure because there isn't enough memory. I have to read and process one chunk of data and then going to the next one. So having low coupling is much more difficult because I have to check somewhere if there is still data to read, etc. What I am using now is: Source -> Process -> Persist The classes that process have to ask to the Source classes if there are more rows to read. What are the best practices and or useful patterns in such situations? I hope I am explaining myself, if not tell me."}
{"_id": "143587", "title": "Group method parameter or individual parameter?", "text": "I would like to ask on method parameters design consideration. I am usually deciding between using individual variables as parameters versus grouping them to a class or dictionary as one parameter. Is there such a rule when you should use individual parameter against using a class or a dictionary to group the parameter? Individual parameter \\- Straight forward, strongly typed Dictionary parameter \\- Very extensible, like HTTP request but cannot be strongly typed. Class parameter \\- Extensible by adding member to the class parameter, strongly typed. I am looking for a design reference on when to use which? Note: I am not sure if this question is valid in programmers but I definitely think it would be closed in stackoverflow, If it is still not valid, please point me to the proper page."}
{"_id": "48750", "title": "Would you make your website's source code public?", "text": "_Back story:_ My best friend is a self-taught coder for a community art site, written in PHP. Some time ago he mentioned he wanted to make the source code of the site public, to which my response was total horror - surely it was going to be full of security holes waiting to be found, and it was going to lead to hacking and errors on a huge scale. He never ended up doing it. _Current story:_ I'm starting development of a community website built in Rails, and for ease of use I was going to use Github for version control. Then I realized it was pretty much exactly the same thing as my friend making his source code public - which made me stop and think. **Would you make your website's completely-custom source code public? Or is this a case of open source gone too far?** (note: I don't think this applies to people who run things like Wordpress. Or does it?)"}
{"_id": "196622", "title": "how to Read in a list of values store it in a queue and change the order of the inputs?", "text": "How to Read in a list of values store it in a queue and change the order of the inputs? For example, read in `abc123efgh45678` and display `a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8` I know I can use queue to read in the values. But how do I assign `a` to go beside `1`, eg. `a1`?               queue <char> q ;          for (int j=0; j < input.size(); j++) {       q.push (input[j]);     }"}
{"_id": "196623", "title": "Multiple SSH keys for different organizations", "text": "I can see that GitHub allows you to have multiple mail account and associate every _organization_ you are part of with a different address. Can this be done also for SSH keys? What I would like to do is having two different keys, one to push on my private repository, another to push on an _organization_ repository."}
{"_id": "48757", "title": "Clojure: Adding functions to defrecord without defining a protocol", "text": "A record can implement protocols. However, each time I think of a new function that I would like the record to implement, I have to add it to an existing protocol or create a new protocol. How do I get around this? Ideally, I'd just like to associate a function to a record without having to define a protocol."}
{"_id": "95107", "title": "Location of Solution Components - Centralisation versus Multiple Instances versus Libraries", "text": "We're currently in the early stages of building a substantial system, aiming to do much of what several existing systems do, in a flexible, extensible, maintainable way. It will support multiple complete instances for different customers. One of the things which keeps coming up across the whole system is: **where should [component x] sit?** We could:   * **(A)** completely centralise it into a single separate web service, shared by all instances; configuration would be held centrally so that it could give each instance what it needed, and may include instance-specific plugins   * **(B)** have it as a separate service, but install it multiple times, configured individually for each main instance of the solution; the service might be used by several co-operating components within one instance   * **(C)** create the functionality as a library and incorporate it directly into the other components For each there are some clear pros and cons: **A** is resource-efficient, and easily allows e.g. monitoring of activity across the whole solution. Making a single service sufficiently configurable/flexible will create additional development challenges. Upgrades to the code might have an impact across the whole solution both in terms of down-time and testing/deployment planning, whether or not the code change is intended to improve every instance. **B** uses more resources, but localises configuration, which may be less complex. Code changes can be rolled out in a more manageable way, but more effort will be required to do the roll-out in more than one place. **C** removes the need for a separate service at all, and offers the potential for maximum flexibility if calling code doesn't have to be restricted to carrying out all functions via the web service API; upgrades to the code would require redeployment of DLLs everywhere they were used, which could be in every component of an instance rather than just once per instance as in B. I'm specifically thinking about it from a functionality PoV not, worrying about e.g. where the data is actually stored. I've ignored option D, \"copy and paste code all over the place, or reimplement willy nilly\". I'm wondering how it applies to a whole range of components, from specific business functions, to broader things like logging, error-handling, data- access, etc etc. I realise that the final answer will always depend heavily on each example, but are there considerations I haven't mentioned which could have a big impact? Are there examples where it's an absolute no-brainer? Is there some systematic way to help make this decision? Have I completely missed an entire option? EDIT (a little more detail just in case it makes a difference): Historically, because of a lack of forethought, we have catered to the needs of several similar but also substantially different customers by basically forking the entire codebase apart from a handful of trivial libraries. We are definitely committed to some kind of SOA approach with the rewrite, and certainly a dramatically more shared codebase, but there may still be some benefit or requirement to maintaining some separation to each \"instance\", by which I mean an entire collection of services providing everything needed for one customer: the customer may require their own logically or physically or even geographically separate install; one customer's instance may consist of modules A and B, another B and C and D and E. I feel instinctively that there are sort of two ways to be \"SOA\" here: one to have literally one of everything, and let them all work together in different ways for different customers, or alternatively to have one of each of the needed modules within a customer, but the loosely coupled nature of the services would still allow you to add one more module to an existing customer easily, or move a resource- intensive module to its own hardware for only one customer. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the points made, but I think I'm not quite in a mental place where merely the fact that doing something a certain way, which could definitely offer some benefit in some situations, _could_ also lead to problems if managed poorly, is wholly unacceptable. So it's best just to not even let the possibility exist even if that leads to more complexity/effort/etc. Kind of like not allowing booze in the house, because you know that if it's there you might drink it all yourself and run out into the street in your underpants, even though a quiet drink to unwind after work might be nice. I should probably stop waffling now..."}
{"_id": "156201", "title": "What if globals make sense?", "text": "I've got a value that many objects need. For example, a financial application with different investments as objects, and most of them need the current interest rate. I was hoping to encapsulate my \"financial environment\" as an object, with the interest rate as a property. But, sibling objects that need that value can't get to it. So how do I share values among many objects without over-coupling my design? Obviously I'm thinking about this wrong."}
{"_id": "67282", "title": "logical subsystem & physical subsystem", "text": "I've done a google search on both of them, can't find much information. I was wondering what is a logical subsystem and physical subsystem (in an object-oriented system)? Also why would it be useful to keep the two separated?"}
{"_id": "156204", "title": "Are separate business objects needed when persistent data can be stored in a usable format?", "text": "I have a system where data is stored in a persistent store and read by a server application. Some of this data is only ever seen by the server, but some of it is passed through unaltered to clients. So, there is a big temptation to persist data - whether whole rows/documents or individual fields/sub-documents - in the exact form that the client can use (eg. JSON), as this removes various layers of boilerplate, whether in the form of procedural SQL, an ORM, or any proxy structure which exists just to hold the values before having to re-encode them into a client-suitable form. This form can usually be used on the server too, though business logic may have to live outside of the object, On the other hand, this approach ends up leaking implementation details everywhere. 9 times out of 10 I'm happy just to read a JSON structure out of the DB and send it to the client, but 1 in every 10 times I have to know the details of that implicit structure (and be able to refactor access to it if the stored data ever changes). And this makes me think that maybe I should be pulling this data into separate business objects, so that business logic doesn't have to change when the data schema does. (Though you could argue this just moves the problem rather than solves it.) There is a complicating factor in that our data schema is constantly changing rapidly, to the point where we dropped our previous ORM/RDBMS system in favour of MongoDB and an implicit schema which was much easier to work with. So far I've not decided whether the rapid schema changes make me wish for separate business objects (so that server-side calculations need less refactoring, since all changes are restricted to the persistence layer) or for no separate business objects (because every change to the schema requires the business objects to change to stay in sync, even if the new sub-object or field is never used on the server except to pass verbatim to a client). So my question is whether it is sensible to store objects in the form they are usually going to be used, or if it's better to copy them into intermediate business objects to insulate both sides from each other (even when that isn't strictly necessary)? And I'd like to hear from anybody else who has had experience of a similar situation, perhaps choosing to persist XML or JSON instead of having an explicit schema which has to be assembled into a client format each time."}
{"_id": "223896", "title": "Naming CSS classes and IDs", "text": "_I'm quite a CSS beginner. I've read some introductory books but now I came across a sort of question that isn't answered in any of them:_ Let's say I have a basic HTML-based website with a standalone CSS file. Now I'm creating a new CSS class or ID and I want it to have a meaningful name of course because I'll probably come back to those lines a couple of times again. For creating a meaningful name there are two options:   1. I can name them `hide-upper-space` or `small-seethrough-border` \\- these kinds of names are very helpful when reading the HTML file, but in CSS file there will be a mess of all these classes and IDs from all HTML documents mixed together. Moreover, when I want to remove or modify one HTML document I won't be able to clear or modify the appropriate lines in the CSS file because I won't know if they affect also some other HTML documents.   2. On the contrary, I can name them `blog-footnote` or `gallerythumbs-upper-left` and it will make my CSS file thoroughly readable, structured and easily modifiable, but it's useless information in HTML documents - when you're reading the HTML code for the footnote of your blog then _blog-footnote_ is just plain useless class name. I hope you get my point.   I'd guess that one of these options is the actual way how the CSS should be used but I can't figure out which one and why. Thank you for helping me to use the CSS the proper and effective way."}
{"_id": "78416", "title": "Will a computer science college degree ever hurt my employability?", "text": "Too often, I can see that there are many viable programmers without college degrees in Computer Science, Informatics, etc. Now that I've been reading more articles about underperforming education and the insignificance of college degrees (especially as a programmer), will a college degree ever hurt my employability? (Also accounting for four years from now when I do graduate) _P.S. I'm going to UC Irvine; would the school itself matter in the significance of the degree?_"}
{"_id": "223898", "title": "is it good practice to reload a div every second", "text": "I am working on a networking site where I need to reload the notification div _every second_. I wanted to know is it good or bad to load it every second as there are some other divs _also_ loading after every 3-4 seconds. Will it cause any problem like hanging, slowing down, etc? Reloading is done by ajax:               var auto_refresh = setInterval(         function ()  {             $('#notif').load('notiffinder.php #NOOFFNOTIFFC').fadeIn();             $('#jtoloadnot').load('header.php #jtoloadnot').fadeIn();         }, 1000);"}
{"_id": "109343", "title": "Why does the market value of PHP developers make them appear less in demand?", "text": "I decided to edit my question to hopefully make more sense: Going on salary rates alone, why is it more _desirable_ for a company to hire a Java or C# web programmer than a PHP programmer? Their salaries tend to be higher than a PHP programmer, given equal levels of seniority, and it also implies that PHP programmers are less in demand. Granted, there are more PHP developers than in most other web languages, but it's not like C# and Java programmers are rare either. To be more specific, PHP is not often marketed as a \"enterprise\" language and I want to know why that is. A lot of companies use it, yet most people don't usually think Fortune 100 when they talk about real-world uses of PHP, just smaller startups and web shops."}
{"_id": "678", "title": "Test driven development - convince me!", "text": "I know some people are massive proponents of test driven development. I have used unit tests in the past, but only to test operations that can be tested easily or which I believe will quite possibly be correct. Complete or near complete code coverage sounds like it would take a lot of time.   1. What projects do you use test-driven development for? Do you only use it for projects above a certain size?   2. Should I be using it or not? Convince me!"}
{"_id": "72158", "title": "Refactoring Bittersweet PHP: How can I make this less painful?", "text": "I've just been assigned a large project. The client has had multiple developers across different companies working on their (intended to be) large, MySQL driven eCommerce site. The DB schema is ...pretty good, naming is a bit rendundant but nothing real bad. The real issue is the code is in desperate need of _\"OOP-ification\"_. Sadly, while actually being fairly nice procedural code as far as simplicity and legibility, there are so far about 3 functions across...about 50 files. :( Thankfully these are handling database connection but there's not a single function, class or even a foreach anywhere in site that deals with page rendering. All static using _implicitly defined_ php variables and some js. Tons of reduncy and inconsistent use of code vs. html. File/directory structure is probably the worst of all **:/** The client very very much needs a custom CMS, especially for inventory control. Dynamic page generation is a must but I doubt they will want me to start over. So I ask: is there a point of attack that will make transforming this code into a more straightforward task?"}
{"_id": "109348", "title": "What is the best way to provide open and closed source versions side-by-side safely?", "text": "My company is looking to develop and release an open source software project along with a proprietary enhanced version, similar to pre-4.0 VirtualBox. What is the best way to maintain the two code bases such that changes to the open source version can easily be incorporated into the commercial version with minimal risk of accidentally pushing proprietary code to the open source product?"}
{"_id": "237697", "title": "If null is bad, why do modern languages implement it?", "text": "I'm sure designers of languages like Java or C# knew issues related to existence of null references (see Are null references really a bad thing?). Also implementing an option type isn't really much more complex than null references. Why did they decide to include it anyway? I'm sure lack of null references would encourage (or even force) better quality code (especially better library design) both from language creators and users. Is it simply because of conservatism - \"other languages have it, we have to have it too...\"?"}
{"_id": "194702", "title": "Should I retrieve one large set of data to filter or smaller individual sets of data?", "text": "I have a company intranet that utilizes a similar set of data across many different pages and many different methods. Speaking in generalities, is it closer to \"best practice\" to retrieve a large dataset and filter it for each specific page or method or retrieve many smaller specific sets of data to use? I cannot really test both approaches, as I would like to pick a design approach from the beginning and use it throughout. This is for a redesign. Thanks."}
{"_id": "187795", "title": "What API design for storing generic data in a more specific format?", "text": "for In the project I am working on we send messages about widgets over message queues, serializing them onto the queues as XML. The XML schema contains tags for properties that are common to all types of these widget messages, such as the widget type, command name and destination. It can also contain an arbitrarily sized list of key-value pairs to allow storage of properties that are only relevant for a specific type of widget message. The `WidgetMessage` class encapsulates this data and the `WidgetMessageXmlWriter` and `WidgetMessageXmlReader` classes provide serialization to and from the XML. I have made some classes that encapsulate specific messages, for example a `FooPlaySoundMessage` for a 'Foo' widget or a `BarSetLightPatternMessage` for a 'Bar' widget. They each have a `ToWidgetMessage` instance method and a `FromWidgetMessage` static method for converting to and from the `WidgetMessage` class. Each family of messages inherits from an abstract class for that widget type, e.g. `FooMessage` and `BarMessage`, which in turn inherits from the `WidgetMessageMapping` class; this stores the common message properties and the protected methods used by subclasses for conversion. **None of these classes inherit from`WidgetMessage` since I don't want them to inherit its key-value collection property and associated methods**, hence the need for conversion rather than simple casting. I like the simplicity of my API (e.g. `FooPlaySoundMessage msg = FooPlaySoundMessage.fromWidgetMessage(widgetMessage)`), but the fact I am having to use protected methods in a base class to share functionality, and static methods to expose it, makes me wonder if there ought to be a separate class or two involved here (similar to `WidgetMessageXmlWriter` and `WidgetMessageXmlReader`). On the other hand, I thought that part of the point of OOP is to group data and methods together and so avoid \"dumb data objects\". So, do I have the right idea by adding conversion methods to my data objects, or should that functionality be extracted out into another class? **Update:** I think that in all the detail above of my current attempt at a design I didn't explain clearly enough the problem I am trying to solve. In summary, I have a \"generic\" DTO class that has some strongly typed properties and a collection of key-value pairs to store other custom data. I want to have some specialized DTO classes for each set of custom data that store all the same data as the generic DTO, except with the key-value pairs replaced by strongly-typed properties. What is the best design for converting between these two types of DTO?"}
{"_id": "187799", "title": "Functional testing and Acceptance testing leading to redundant code", "text": "What I know is:   * A Functional test aims to test a single component (like a WebApp's Controller) from the **point of view of the developer**. => Did I achieve all the requirements to make it work well?    * An Acceptance test aims to to test a group of components together and is focused on the Business point of view. => Does my program fulfill requirements provided by the Client/Business/Customer? Today, I work on a personal project and I started following BDD/testing methods and thus created Acceptance tests and Functional tests. I notice that a lot of requirement for functional tests are exactly the same that Acceptance tests need. Suppose a webapp controller aiming to add a product to my e-commerce's basket. One of concerned functional tests would be: > _When I go to productList.html page and I call the addProductToBasket > action, I expect my controller to retrieve the right quantity and the right > product name, and expect my view to display it._ (very generic) Surely, Business would expect application to behave the same way a developer had written in some of its functional test, so in this case, an acceptance test would be: > _Given Bob enters in the product list page, when he clicks on the button > \"addToBasket\" near to the \"Nike basket n\u00b02\" product, basket should display > quantity '1' and \"Nike basket n\u00b02\"_. (specification by example) Both tests are very similar, aren't they? So my question is: Do we risk to create a lot of duplication code and redundant tests while creating functional and acceptance tests in parallel? What is a good practice? Making functional test carry about some pure technical things only, like exceptional/buggy behaviours, inconsistent variables scenarios etc... and let acceptance tests deal with the whole business scenarios side? I would even say: **Is functional testing really needed when we attach a huge importance to acceptance test?**"}
{"_id": "29680", "title": "Is remote agile sustainable?", "text": "This is somewhat related to another question i just asked, but I'm freelancing **solo and remotely** for a contractor who is to project management, what big ball of mud is to code, so to speak. I've been thinking a lot about working on a proposition to deal with his projects in a truly agile way. As I see it, this would involve several client- friendly and web-based apps :   * basecamp for communication   * github as a repository   * pivotal tracker for user-stories and as a display of work in progress   * some tool to gather acceptance tests (will upvote suggestions !) I've done a fair bit of reading on agile, and all good resources put much emphasis on the importance of communication in the team, to the point they are _discouraging agile for non-colocated teams_. Being the only programmer this seemed less of an issue, but as I'll rarely meet the client (if at all), **I'm worried the communication may not be effective enough to enable this kind of management**. Edit : Other people on the team would include :   \\- customers (business people)   \\- product manager (my client's client)   \\- project manager (my client)   \\- ui designer"}
{"_id": "237692", "title": "Using subclasses for DataContracts used with JSON", "text": "I have a RESTful call that can modify the state of an instance. My problem is that the JSON is different based on the type of action the user is taking, it could be a `SetProperty` action or a `SetState` action (among others). For example, a `POST /api/sample/` _would send the following JSON               {        instanceId: 12312,             actionId: 12345, // Maps to a SetState action       desiredState: 'CURATION'     }      But when calling the same URL for a _SetProperty_ , the JSON would look like               {        instanceId: 12312,             actionId: 25354, // Maps to a SetProperty action       propName: \"PropA\",       propValue: \"user-input\"      }      I use the following data contract               [DataContract]     class PostInstanceRequest {         [DataMember]         int instanceId;         [DataMember]         int actionId;         [DataMember]         string desiredState;  // Only used for SetState         [DataMember]         string propName;   // Only used for SetProperty         [DataMember]         string propValue;  // Only used for SetProperty         // Many more action specific properties here...     }      I don't really like this because it feels like I should have a base class for the common properties, and then I should define more base classes with the specific properties.   * `SetStatePostInstanceRequest`, that adds `desiredState`   * `SetPropertyPostInstanceRequest`, that adds `propName` and `propValue` However, if I do that, I don't know what class to deserialize it into. I would have to first deserialize as a `PostInstanceRequest`, check the `actionId` property, and then deserialize it to the correct subclass. A possible compromise is to use composition               [DataContract]     class SetStateAction {         [DataMember]         string desiredState;     }          [DataContract]     class SetPropAction {         [DataMember]         string propName;         [DataMember]         string propValue;     }          [DataContract]     class PostInstanceRequest {         [DataMember]         int instanceId;         [DataMember]         int actionId;         [DataMember]         SetPropAction setPropParams;         [DataMember]         SetStateAction setActionParams;         // More references to action specific classes down here     }      Which of the options is going to cause me less trouble? Or is there an even better way that I didn't think of?"}
{"_id": "142454", "title": "Does your programming knowledge decrease if you don't practice?", "text": "I'm a novice programmer. I study languages such as C, C++, Python and Java (mainly focusing on C++). I'm what you'd call \"young and inexperienced\" and I admit that because I can't claim otherwise. As a student, I have many other problems besides programming. I practice programming as often as I can, and especially because my teacher gives me a lot more exercises than the rest of the class (it's a very low level), so oftentimes I spend weeks doing something else such as school projects or sports, or traveling, anything besides programming. Don't get me wrong though, I love programming. I love to build functional code, to watch as a program comes alive at the push of a button, and to learn as much as I can. The thing is, I simply don't have much time for it. Straight to the question, now: does your programming knowledge decrease as time passes and you don't practice? You may ask \"how much time do you mean?\". I don't mean a specific amount of time, but for reference you could take a month-two or even a year as an example. By knowledge I mean anything from syntax to language functionality."}
{"_id": "214045", "title": "Determine file type and then decompile to edit source", "text": "I'm new to this type of programming, but proficient in web development... looking to expand my palette a little. I have this file. In Windows 7 the file properties window claims its a 'system file', my assumption is that this is a generic description and isn't particularly useful, no file extention. This file resides on a usb drive which Windows machines can boot to to run various scripts and applications. How can I determine what type of file this is and is it possible to de-compile it to view its code or even if that's possible? Sorry for two separate questions, a point in the right direction would be very helpful! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "149405", "title": "How to prevent piracy on software which is sold online?", "text": "When selling software online what's the most suitable/secure way to provide activation in order to get rid of pirates copies of the software? Is there any well-known software for this purpose?"}
{"_id": "142450", "title": "Storing data for use on Android and Windows Applications", "text": "I posted this last night on StackOverflow and was advised to move it over to StackExchange, thank you for taking a moment to look at my question. I'm developing a project proposal for my final year project at University and as I aim to use programming languages I am currently not too familiar with I'm looking for some guidance - I can't include details of my project but hopefully you will understand what I'm after. I'm going to be creating an Android application (in Java) and a Windows Application (in C#) that will ideally access, query and update a remotely hosted Database or set of XML files (this would most likely be over the Internet). I've done some looking around the internet and SQLite seems like a safe-bet for cross-platform manipulation of the database; however I would like to keep the system as lightweight as possible and I'm wondering whether XML files may provide a better alternative? Anyone out there that has experience using SQLite and/or remotely hosted XML for the purposes of Android and/or C# development that could point me in the right direction? If there is an alternative solution other than those I have mentioned I would be interested to hear about them too. Thank you for taking the time to read my question. Edit: The purpose of this application is for a small scale business, the data source would not need to be updated by more than one source but may be view from multiple sources (i.e. through multiple phones and a desktop PC). The database wouldn't be updating masses of data at a time (most likely single rows of a few tables at the most)."}
{"_id": "149401", "title": "Is inconsistent formatting a sign of a sloppy programmer?", "text": "I understand that everyone has their own style of programming and that you should be able to read other people's styles and accept it for what it is. However, would one be considered a sloppy programmer if one's style of coding was inconsistent across whatever standard they were working against? Some example of inconsistencies might be:   1. Sometimes naming private variables with _ and sometimes not   2. Sometimes having varying indentations within code blocks   3. Not aligning braces up i.e. same column if using start using new line style   4. Spacing not always consistent around operators i.e. p=>p+1, p+=1 vs other times p =>p+1 or p => p + 1 etc Is this even something that as a programmer I should be concerned with addressing? Or is it such a minor nit picking thing that at the end of the day I should just not worry about it and worry about what the end user sees and whether the code works rather than how it looks while working? Is it sloppy programming or just over obsessive nit picking? **EDIT** : After some excellent comments I realized I may have left out some information in my question. This question came about after reviewing another colleagues code check-in and noticing some of these things and then realizing that I've seen these kind of in-consistencies in previous check-ins. It then got me thinking about my code and whether I do the same things and noticed that I typically don't etc I'm not suggesting his technique is either bad or good in this question or whether his way of doing things is right or wrong. **EDIT** : To answer some queries to some more good feed back. The specific instance this review occurred in was using Visual Studio 2010 and programming in c# so I don't think the editor would cause any issues. In fact it should only help I would hope. Sorry if I left that piece of info out and it effects any current answers. I was trying to be a bit more generic in understanding if this would be considered sloppy etc. And to add an even more specific example of a code piece I saw during reading of the check-in:               foreach(var block in Blocks)     {        // .. some other code in here             foreach(var movement in movements)        {            movement.Moved.Zero();            } // the un-formatted brace        }      Such a minor thing I know, but many small things add up(???), and I did have to double glance at the code at the time to see where everything lined up I guess. Please note this code was formatted appropriately before this check-in. **EDIT** : After reading some great answers and varying thoughts, the summary I've taken from this was.   1. It's not necessarily a sign of a sloppy programmer however as programmers we have a duty (to ourselves and other programmers) to make the code as readable as possible to assist in further ongoing development. However it can hint at inadequacies which is something that is only possible to review on a case by case (person by person) basis.   2. There are many reasons why this might occur. They should be taken in context and worked through with the person/people involved if reasonable. We have a duty to try and help all programmers become better programmers!   3. In the good old days when development was done using good old notepad (or other simple text editing tool) this occurred much more frequently. However we have the assistance of modern IDE's now so although we shouldn't necessarily become OTT about this, it should still probably be addressed to some degree.   4. We as programmers vary in our standards, styles and approaches to solutions. However it seems that in general we all take **PRIDE** in our work and as a trait it is something that can stand programmers apart. Making something to the best of our abilities both internal (code) and external (end user result) goes along way to giving us that big fat pat on the back that we may not go looking for but swells our heart with pride.   5. And finally to quote CrazyEddie from his post below. _Don't sweat the small stuff_"}
{"_id": "142458", "title": "Any Practical Alternative to the Signals + Slots model for GUI Programming?", "text": "The majority of GUI Toolkits nowadays use the Signals + Slots model. It was Qt and GTK+, if I am not wrong, who pioneered it. You know, the widgets or graphical objects (sometimes even ones that aren't displayed) send **signals** to the main-loop handler. The main-loop handler then calls the **events** , **callbacks** or **slots** assigned for that widget / graphical object. There are usually default (and in most cases `virtual`) event-handlers already provided by the toolkit for handling all pre-defined signals, therefore, unlike previous designs where the developer had to write the entire main-loop and handler for each and every message himself (think WINAPI), the developer only has to worry about the signals he needs to implement new functionality on. Now this design is being used in most modern toolkits as far as I know. There are Qt, GTK+, FLTK etc. There is Java Swing. C# even has a language feature for it ( events and delegates ), and Windows Forms has been developed on this design. In fact, over the last decade, this design for GUI programming has become a kind of an unwritten standard. Since it increases productivity and provides greater abstraction. However, my question is: **Is there any alternative design, that is parallel or practical for modern GUI programming?** i.e Is the Signals + Slots design, the only practical one in town? Is it feasible to do GUI Programming with any _other_ design? Are any modern (preferably successful and popular) GUI toolkits built on an alternative design?"}
{"_id": "143327", "title": "Using PHP version 5.2 or 5.3 for commercial products?", "text": "I'm doing research on what version of PHP to use when creating commercial scripts that will be sold to the public. Although the available stats aren't great, PHP 5.3 shows a 18.5% adoption rate. I'd like to use Symfony to create these scripts and it requires 5.3.2 which shows an even lower adoption rate (roughly 13% of that 18.5% use less than 5.3.2). Would I be risking much by jumping straight to PHP 5.3.2+ or should I ignore the stats and plough ahead?"}
{"_id": "143323", "title": "What's the term describing this system for generating user interfaces?", "text": "So, there's this idea, which you already know: Define the layout of your UI by creating a tree of panels. The leaf nodes on the tree are what we used to call 'controls' way back in the day-- the things that the user interacts with, radio buttons and listboxes and such. The internal nodes are mostly concerned with layout; this kind of panel stacks its child panels vertically, that kind puts its children into a grid, etc. It's COMMON. Most of the UI-generating systems I've seen in the past twenty years are implementations of this, and the ones that aren't borrow from it. What's the word for this idea? EDIT: I'm looking for a word, or a phrase, for the _pattern_ I'm describing. It's a big, high-level pattern, and it's become nearly universal. AWT, HTML forms with the controls in table cells, Swing, XAML, Android, and ASP.NET all use it or borrow from it. There's an idea here, on the same level as concepts like \"windowing system\" or \"mesh network.\" What do we call it? I suspect that the real answer is, \"there's no consensus on a name for it yet.\" Which would, itself, be really interesting."}
{"_id": "91900", "title": "What are the absolute, minimum requirement for containing SE Asian charsets for an embedded system project?", "text": "I work for a company that has begun integrating embedded computer systems into our products that we manufacture. We have a pretty wide range of products and they are distributed across the globe. Additionally, we've designed a few integrated boards that can serve multiple purposes depending on the firmware that has been flashed to the system. This way we don't have to redesign our computer hardware for our various products-- all we have to do is re-write the firmware layer to meet the specific product's needs. Because of these hardware limitations, changing our hardware takes an act of congress but writing new software for a hardware is much simpler (relatively speaking.) One of our products has a new requirement that we haven't had to previously implement, which is the need for user-inputted text. Currently, we've been able to store international text in resources and only the necessary fonts characters are compiled to bit-mapped images. This means that we've been able to store highly-ideographic languages like Chinese and Japanese text in a minimal amount of space because we only use a very small percentage of the entire language set. Since this new product will require that our users be able to input text, we will have to implement an extensive character set. As primarily a PC developer, I'm quite familiar with ASCII, Unicode, UTF-8, etc., however, implementing a full character set of any of these languages isn't feasible because we have a limited amount of FRAM on the board to store the font data. My management is hoping that there is a minimal character set that can be used for highly ideographic languages. I believe there is a phonetic alphabet for Japanese (the Hiragana?) Are there similar phonetic alphabets for the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. languages as well and, if so, could speakers of these languages communicate with such a narrow character set? I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is \"absolutely, no\" but it's a question worth asking. Management has set a \"soft\" requirement that we can only have a limited character set of about 8,000 characters covering all major languages in common use. If this is not possible, we need to look for some form of alternative method for meeting our needs based off of our limited hardware resources. I'm sure this problem has had to have been solved before. Does anyone have experience working within such constraints while needing an extensive font and character encoding system? If so, what nuggets of wisdom or tips can you offer? Thanks in advance, devs! We are in a feasibility stage of development so we are mostly looking to get a list of all of our realistic options."}
{"_id": "144118", "title": "How to share problem solving knowledge in a multiteam group?", "text": "I've been working in multiteam groups for as long as I've been a web developer, and in my experience, a team can be a lonely soldier or several people; generally a company will have multiple teams working on different projects and once the project is out in the wild, any team can perform maintenance on it. This is a simple example since I'm not talking only about project related knowledge, but \"craft related\" knowledge, but it should give you an idea of how I'm used to working: Since we work on modularised teams, sometimes I feel like the teams are too tightly focused in their projects. I've seen cases where after an hour of discussion, the question was asked aloud and someone on a totally unrelated project suggested a much simpler solution. The problem is difficult to solve because people tend not to be available all the time, and sometimes the person with the knowledge can't afford the time to go through a problem with the asker, but could do it themselves easily. I've thought about software based solutions, something along the lines of SE, but I'd like to know other programmers opinions on the subject. **EDIT** I don't know if this is a problem that a wiki can solve, because I feel that wikis don't encourage the user to actually ask questions, but rather to write articles, and sometimes we don't know the knowledge we need before needing it."}
{"_id": "111249", "title": "What do you need to succeed with Agile?", "text": "Agile adoption can fail in some organizations, I even worked for a company where waterfall was the only (the true) way but only because they tried Agile on a project and failed. When I asked the people who still remembered that (I was a junior) I was shut down hard, like I was reminding them a bad nightmare that really happened. I don't know why the project failed. There are resources found on the web why Agile fails is some companies but the reason are mostly economic. So I thought I ask here fore some feedback. What are the reasons Agile adoption fails in some organizations? Or, another way of putting it.. What do you need to succeed with Agile?"}
{"_id": "131779", "title": "Is it possible to learn maths via programming, or you should learn maths for programming?", "text": "I am not the best in maths, not very horrid either, but lower than the average, I've always been thinking to improve my maths, but schools and books didn't do the job because I get bored too fast. The only thing I don't get bored with is coding and gaming, so I thought what if coding a program that solves mathematical problems will help me understand maths better, most of these problems are limits (calculus), functions, Differential calculus, and some other subjects (I already said am not that good) similar to the previous noted. My question is: Am I able to achieve a better knowledge in maths if I do some specific program coding, and if possible, is physics possible that way too? Or am I wrong and Maths should be learned before programming to help improve my coding? P.S : C++ is the preferred language."}
{"_id": "183997", "title": "Unit testing markup building logic", "text": "I'm currently writing a library of helper functions to produce some repetitive markup. I have a reference to the markup the functions should produce, but I'm curious about how I should go about unit testing this? There are a lot of unit tests needed to get full coverage of the number of different variations of output from each function. Currently, I have a T4 template for each function which builds unit tests for every combination of inputs to that function. Each unit test does a single assert against a string containing the reference markup. However, writing out these individual bits of markup by hand would take a long time so I wrote another small helper function which basically replicates the same logic I'm testing, but in a less flexible manner, to produce the expected string. **It occurs to me that this may not be the best idea? Or is this an OK approach to this kind of problem? What are the best practices surrounding this?** * * * Example unit test               [TestMethod]     public void Function_P1_P2_P3()     {         string markup = HelperLib.MakeMarkup(P1, P2, P3);         Assert.AreEqual(this.MakeExpectedString(P1, P2, P3), markup);     }"}
{"_id": "107371", "title": "What do we mean by \"design\" in software engineering?", "text": "I have been reading about different software methodologies. Every method has a design phase to some extent, more or less. I am not clear on what we mean by designing. Does this mean writing your thought process on how you will code the feature? Or it is a way of saying what you have coded or will code. The point where I am most confused is the real world, which is different than putting your thoughts in documents and saying it will work. Since coding details can change, I don't know what's the point of having a design before coding."}
{"_id": "2497", "title": "How useful are infix operators in a programming language?", "text": "How useful are infix operators in a programming language? Are they worth the extra complexity they provide? Can you provide any examples where infix operators are better suited to the problem that can't be handled by just overloading the normal operators?"}
{"_id": "198390", "title": "Is it possible to import vb.net form to blend?", "text": "I have created a windows form using visual studio design, that is simply drag n drop component into the form from Toolbox. Is it possible to import it into Blend and change its appearence using Blend? I opened the project from Blend but ony the code appears not the form itself. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "221253", "title": "How do you handle multiple developer configuration in a project?", "text": "I've been thinking lately about how I handle config changes between multiple developers on a project. Specifically here about a Laravel project in PHP, but I guess this applies largely to all frameworks/languages. In general would you say it's a best practice to not commit your configuration? If so what's your practice for doing this with version control such as git? Or do you set up each configuration as a different environment config? E.g. In Laravel there are environment configs, so each developer has a directory of just their own different settings, and this is what I'm _currently_ using. Then in the code you can set how Laravel will detect which environment it's on. This works, I'm just wondering what other developers working on projects with other developers do."}
{"_id": "238091", "title": "Practical use of generic inheritance and interactions with non-generics?", "text": "I've been trying to learn more about generics, and I finally felt that I ran into a situation that it would be more useful to use it instead of only regular classes. Would the following be a practical use of generics? A spaceship has hardpoints that can equip only certain types of equipment. The equip function has code to determine if the hardpoint can equip an equipment item based on what the generic parameter T is assigned to.               class Equipment {     ...     }          class Thruster : Equipment {     ...     }          class Spaceship {         void Equip<T>(Hardpoint<T> hardpoint, Equipment equipment) {             hardpoint.Equip(equipment);         }     }          class Hardpoint<T> where T : Equipment {         void Equip(Equipment equipment) {             ...(check if equipment inherits from or is of type T)         }              ... (some other code common to all hardpoints)     }          class ThrusterHardpoint : Hardpoint<Thruster> {         .... (some code specific to thruster hardpoints)     }"}
{"_id": "145865", "title": "Dealing with estimates as a junior programmer", "text": "I have been working for a couple of months now in a company that estimates (for the general population, not juniors specifically) tasks and then we are given the task, solve it, it goes through two tests and at the end the estimate should be somewhat met. I am beyond stressed because some of the estimates are simply impossible for me to meet. I still don't know the entire system(because it is quite substantial) so sometimes half the time is spent finding out what i need to do and where and by the time I finish sometimes the estimate is over and there is still testing to be done (and correcting mistakes if they were any). The second time I have to deal with a similar functionality it all works much faster, but so far I feel like I am just bad at programming. Is there anything you did when you were just beginning that helped you get over this stage? I get so stressed when I see how little time there is to code that sometimes I can't even focus properly at what I'm doing which makes it even worse."}
{"_id": "145866", "title": "How to make the transition to functional programming?", "text": "Lately, I have been very intrigued with F# which I have been working a bit with. Coming mostly from Java and C#, I like how concise and easily understandable it is. However, I believe that my background with these imperative languages disturb my way of thinking when programming in F#. I found a comparison of the imperative and functional approach, and I surely do recognize the \"imperative way\" of programming, but I also find it difficult to define problems to fit well with the functional approach. So my question is: How do I best make the transition from object-oriented programming to functional programming? Can you provide some tips or perhaps provide some literature that can help one to think \"in functions\" in general?"}
{"_id": "188688", "title": "Compiling multiple languages and Javascript", "text": "I have read numerous times that programming languages when making games or large software often use multiple languages / scripts together. I'm wondering how that works. How do they compile it? How does it work together? Also, how does this work with web design also, i.e. How does one combine their HTML/CSS with their Javascript code and make it run? I know these are really basic low level questions, but I cannot find information on this on google. I'm probably just not searching well enough."}
{"_id": "28484", "title": "What is language-agnosticism and why is it called that way?", "text": "When is something language agnostic? Why is it called that way?"}
{"_id": "23178", "title": "Should a unit/integration test that may result in an infinite loop have a clear assertion?", "text": "Unit: A multithreaded unit reads data of a queue and processes it, sending it off to another queue. When the last item is processed (null value found) the process stops. Test: Place a set of known data in the queue and run. Check that data placed on the output queue is correct. If the unit is incorrectly programmed, it may continue trying to read and process nulls of the queue. This may or may not result in an exception (using Java as the example language). So this test could conceivably cause an infinite loop. Should the test keep track of the number of items read off the queue and throw an error if more than the specified number of elements is read? or should the test continue to run, knowing that the runner(human) will see that it is not ending?"}
{"_id": "188687", "title": "Try to find a word in the dictionary that has most letters given", "text": "Given some random letters , For example \"a,e,o,g,z,k,l,j,w,n\" and a dictionary.Try to find a word in the dictionary that has most letters given I was going through some old interview questions and found this question, I am new to algorithms and I am thinking whether this can be related to dynamic programming(Longest common subsequence) this is the solution that I can think of \"Let us assume that the dictionary is in a trie Start by finding the permutations of the given letters, here we could be using recursion, we can prune the recursion tree, by checking the letters in the dictionary. and we maintain a variable which holds the largest string formed till now.\" I tried searching online but could not find any example that match this could you provide some pointers."}
{"_id": "220220", "title": "How to algorithmically add notes to an existing midi file relative to positions of existing notes in python", "text": "I have a midi file that I'd like to algorithmically add notes to relative to other notes that already exist in the midi file using python, or if it's easier using a different language I'm open to that as well. So basically, I have a midi file with a bunch of notes, and let's say I'd like to add 5 or 6 new notes surrounding each of the existing notes with timing differences that are randomly generated (for example time differences with a random amount of milliseconds difference between -10 and 10). So with each note already existing in the midi file I'd add 5 or 6 new ones surrounding it to a new midi file, offset by a randomly determined amount of milliseconds. Also, if possible, I'd like to randomly vary the velocities of each new note in the same manner relative to the note in the original midi file. The only part I'm not sure how to do is read and write into a midi file based on its note onset contents?"}
{"_id": "185388", "title": "Test driven development when implementing a flexible length list", "text": "According to the commonly used TDD strategy, to implement something, you write a test that fail the code first, write the simplest code, refactor, and then repeat. I am trying to imagine this scenario with implementing a flexible length list (e.g. `List<T>` in .net. Let's say I first test by inserting one item. Probably the simplest way to achieve this is by backing the list with an array with length 1 (which will pass the test). Nothing to refactor here, so I'll go ahead and write another test that insert 2 items. I'll simply change the array length to 2, and the test pass again. Then I write test with 3 items, expand the array, and repeat again. I will end up forever doing this until I'm tired. Is this an exception to the fail-test-first strategy? Or am I missing something in the above strategy? PS: The actual implementation backs the list with an array which grows twice as large every time the number of elements exceed the array length."}
{"_id": "61423", "title": "Should I read \"Head First Design Patterns\" as my first design pattern book?", "text": "I'm planning to read a book to gain some good knowledge of design patterns, why we use them, how to apply them and how to choose the best design for my software. So I have two books on my desk right now: \"Head First Design Patterns\" and \"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software\". Which one do you think I should read as my first book about design patterns?"}
{"_id": "22222", "title": "Techniques and methods to improve and speedup development", "text": "I just got a new project. It\u2019s a WinForm app. And it\u2019s interesting because I will have the possibility to learn how fish farms work and are managed. I will have to develop touch interfaces, and use datasnap to communicate and sync data between farm and office. The development will be done in DELPHI win32, still not sure about the database, but maybe SQLlite. So now comes the difficult part of the project, building it. I am just finishing one. It took me a lot of time to do it and I am a bit \u201cburned out\u201d. I will have time to relax, not much, but a few days. What I am looking is some tips and tricks and possibly tools to be able to speed up the development. It must be up and running in 2 months. So what tricks do you use to speed up things?"}
{"_id": "228983", "title": "Potentially shippable product requires automating tests", "text": "To always have a potentially shippable product at the end of each 2-week Sprint, we need to rerun a lot of regression tests at the end of each Sprint. This is very repetitive and time consuming, so eventually it will probably be cost-effective to automate these tests. However if we don't require a potentially shippable product, but plan for a few stabilization/hardening Sprints, we don't need to rerun all our manual tests each Sprint. In such case automating our tests will not be cost- effective. So which approach do you prefer, to automate tests, to forgo the shippability advantage, or do you think that this trade-off doesn't actually exist?"}
{"_id": "228986", "title": "Live share prices for a side project", "text": "Me and some of my friends would want to start a side project which we will work at our spare time. Here is our criteria 1) A challenging project which will teach us skills which has business value in the future. 2) A potential to make money from the project itself. Quite obvious targets. We are looking into the possibility to create a live price feed. We understand we cannot match the ones in the market now. But we are looking into the possibility to provide a feed which could at least provide a \"live\" feed, even though it cannot match the real time performance provided by the insane hardware and software resources the \"biggies\" could provide. If we could host the feed in a website which can show prices even 5 minutes late, that could do. The current skills pool is C++ and C#. We have WPF, asp.net, silverlight skills for UI (UI doesn't matter much anyway) The questions 1)How is it possible to get the raw price feeds for cheap(or free)? 2)Is it possible to do this idea at least as proof of concept(which means it might not have any commercial value) in a year by 3 developers working 20 hours a week? 3)Is there any information available in the internet to start with? 4)Is there any open source projects in this area?"}
{"_id": "228985", "title": "Could one sample be enough for a perceptron training?", "text": "I need to compare a picture and decide whether or not it is similar to another one. In this case, I would like to use a simple perceptron that compares pixelmaps of both pictures. But I have only very basic understanding of neural networks and I am not sure whether this approach will work if there is only one source picture (to train it with). Anything I could do in this case?"}
{"_id": "73680", "title": "Fun socializing programming ideas", "text": "Recently a friend of mine went the Hackfest sponsored by Quick Left. Which sounded like a lot of fun, and I kind of wish I could have participated in it myself. So, now I'm looking for ideas that like the Hackfest that could help developers on my team innovate, and think wildly about how do stuff with the Web, etc. Anyone have some ideas?"}
{"_id": "77504", "title": "Are naming convention guidelines worth caring about?", "text": "I name my variables using the .Net conventions:   * camelCase for variables and fields (I tend to use _camelCase for private fields in a class)   * PascalCase for methods, properties and classes The only place I deviate is on constants and Enums where I actually prefer the Java SCREAMING_CAPS style. My company's codebase is littered with the pseudo-Hungarian notation style from VB6 and VBScript, if not full-blown Hungarian i.e.   * s or str for Strings   * i or int for Ints   * d for decimal (or sometimes double)   * o or obj for any kind of object I cringe whenever I see that code style used in someone else's code (even in greenfield code, not just the legacy cruft), and I refuse to use that style myself. I've brought up standardizing on the .Net naming conventions in the past and it's just ignored - the people who write in Hungarian notation continue to do so, those of us who don't like me continue to use our own style; I'm a little afraid that if we **do** standardize (which I keep pushing for, but nobody else seems to care), it'll be on Hungarian notation and not the recommended way and then I'll be forced to write code like that. Am I making a mountain out of a molehill in regards to this? Should I not care if the code is littered with redundant identifiers and not descriptive names, and continue to use my own way and push for that to become the standard?"}
{"_id": "77503", "title": "How to solve a general authentication problem for multiple applications?", "text": "At my current job (we're in a MS environment), we have multiple deployed web applications, both inter/intra net. The internal apps generally use an Active Diretory sign in, the forward facing sites each have their own membership implementation. Some use a custom provider we wrote, some use Asp.Net membership. Yes, we have created a problem for ourselves. The question is how to fix it. What would be the best (or at least good) solution for a authentication/authorization service that would allow us to consolidate sign in to one place? Should we implement an oAuth/xAuth provider? Something else? Some questions I was thinking of:   1. Should roles be left to each application to implement? In general, we could think of each resource as having CRUD permissions and perhaps decorate controller actions with required permissions.   2. We have a few really, really legacy web apps (.Net 1.1) that mostly just sit there and run. Where should we draw the cutoff for what we apply this new service to? If there's something else I should be considering, please let me know."}
{"_id": "151266", "title": "How to refuse to give an access to passwords to a customer without being unprofessional or rude?", "text": "Let's say you're creating a website for a customer. This website has its own registration (either combined with OpenID or not). The customer asks you to be able to see the passwords the users are choosing, given that the users will probably be using the same password on every website. In general, I say:   * either that it is impossible to retrieve the passwords, since they are not stored in plain text, but hashed,   * or that I have no right to do that or that administrators must not be able to see the passwords of users, without giving any additional details. The first one is false: even if the passwords are hashed, it is still possible to catch and store them on each logon (for example doing a strange sort of audit which will remember not only which user succeeded or failed to logon, but also with which password). The second one is rude. How to refuse this request, without being either unprofessional or rude?"}
{"_id": "234806", "title": "Change of session/context in rails application", "text": "I'm currently developing an app in Ruby on Rails with a social network side, and have several different models including users, groups and pages. I would like to allow users to be group/page admins, which seems relatively straight forward, however I would also like users to be able to message groups/pages directly, rather than having to state the group/page admin. This is what is done in Facebook. However, I am unsure how this would be done. In order to 'take over' a group/page, would I need to destroy the session and start a new one as the group/page in order to read messages and edit the profile, etc? Another option is just give each admin an extra mailbox and admin rights to edit groups/pages, but this seems like it could get over complicated if a user admins several groups/pages."}
{"_id": "151268", "title": "Differentiating between user script input formats", "text": "I have a .NET project at work that provides a couple of (Iron)Python scripts to the customers, to allow them to customize the output of the program. The application generates code for certain machines, and supports a couple of different formats. Until recently, we only provided a script for one format. We're expanding upon that to include support for the others. If the user is using a script, they select their input script before generating the output code. A script designed for `Format1` output is going to cause errors if they're trying to generate `Format2` output. I need to deal with this. One option would just be to let the customers use common sense, and if they load the wrong script it will just fail, or worse, produce inaccurate data. I'm inclined to provide a little more protection than that. At the moment I'm considering putting a shebang-style comment line at the top of the script, ala:               # OUTPUT - Format1      If the user tries to run a `Format2` _process_ with a `Format1` _script_ , it will warn them. Alternatively I could create different file extensions for the input scripts that vary by type. The file-type comment approach helps prevent the script from actually loading improperly, at the cost of failing to warn the user until they've already selected it, via a dialog box. Using different file extensions would allow me to cut down on visual clutter when providing a File Dialog, but doesn't actually stop them from loading the wrong script. So I'm really not sure if the right approach is to just leave it alone, or provide some safeguards."}
{"_id": "220229", "title": "How much warnings in C to enable?", "text": "This is a tiny project of about 2000LOC. It is being compiled with `-Wall`. Now, I tried adding `-Wextra`. Two things happened:   * Some minor but valid warnings popped up, e.g. Comparing signed with unsigned   * Some minor but false warnings popped up, e.g. Unused function parameter. Those functions implement agreed-upon prototypes. But the extra parameters are really not needed for now. However the unfixable warnings pollute the build log and could hide a much more dangerous warning. _Should the -Wextra be retained or removed? How can a compromise be made for the most robust code development in the future?_"}
{"_id": "28154", "title": "What's the most important feature of quality software?", "text": "This question is along the same lines as this one, but instead of talking about quality of code, I'm talking about the final product from the users' perspective. If you had limited time / budget, and could only guarantee one attribute of the software (other than the basic requirements) that take it from decent software to good quality software, what would you consider most important? Is it having as few bugs as possible? An intuitive interface? Helpful error messages? Good technical support and documentation? If we don't want our software looking like cheap crap to our users, what should we always remember to include?"}
{"_id": "73350", "title": "What route to take to become a systems developer?", "text": "In the past I have done a lot of Java and Python coding. Mostly, I worked on web apps and some simple console or gui apps. I also have a formal education in computer science. What route should I take to become a systems developer? I always did like C++, but never had a chance to use it for anything. Would mastering C++ be one of the steps? If so what resources can you suggest? Also, I would like to know how much different is the work between plain old development and systems development. There seem to be a lot of overlapping between the two."}
{"_id": "98680", "title": "What is Oracle's commitment to Java?", "text": "We are investing heavily in Java, but after recent experiences and reading Joonas' response on that question: > Had you used those flags in Java 6, you could have experienced not only > crashes, but incorrect execution of loops, that is, miscalculations, because > of a minor upgrade from 6u19 to 6u20 (approximately). ... and the related blog post about the notable Java 7 issues has caused us to worry about Java's quality moving forward. Are these issues being addressed by Oracle? What assurances has Oracle provided to ensure Java is well-supported in the future?"}
{"_id": "243322", "title": "Multiuser's impact on Access Database", "text": "Can someone explain to me how are effected the performances of an Access 2003 DB when it's used by a lot (30) of users on the same LAN? I'm working on a vb6 project with this access 2003 DB wich performs ok on my local PC, but it's terrible when used across 20-30 users. It's there something I can do to improve performance? How can I understand what's the cause of this degradation in performance?"}
{"_id": "38901", "title": "As a practitioner, why should I care about Haskell? What is a monad and why do I need it?", "text": "I just do not get what problem they solve."}
{"_id": "114037", "title": "Thread class design?", "text": "I have a method like this in my UI code:               void MyDialog::OnCommandSaveData()     {         std::list<MyClass*> objects;         service_->GetAll(objects);         dataService_->SaveObjects(objects);         AddMessage(\"Saved data.\\n\");     }      Because this method can take some time, I want to kick off a thread to do this. I'm using C++ and I plan on using Boost.Thread. So my question is how to best do this. My understanding is that I need to create a static function, static method, or functor which will contain the above code. Where should this live, in the dialog class? That just seems wrong, but then again maybe not. And then I will need a mutex and lock around at least the SaveObjects method. Where should the mutex live and where do I put the lock? Most examples of threading, as with examples of so many things, don't show the threading in the context of a real application. They show a main method with a global function and that's it. So if you can point me to example of a class that manages threading for an operation that would be great. I buy the logic in the accepted answer to this question: Is It \"Wrong\"/Bad Design To Put A Thread/Background Worker In A Class? However, the answer only tells you why to do it, not how. **UPDATE** I've refactored my code using MVP (Model View Presenter)/Humble Dialog Box pattern:               void MyDialog::OnCommandSaveData()     {         presenter_->SaveData();     }      So now I will need to look at adding multi-threading in the context of MVP. **UPDATE 2** I found this article which talks about creating mulithreaded winforms using MVP. It's in C# so I'll have to translate it into C++ but it looks good: http://aresterline.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/multi-threaded-winforms- application-mvp/ Basically it involves 1) creating a `ThreadSafeView` which is a wrapper or proxy around your view that allows your view to be updated from a worker thread. And 2) creating a `ThreadedPresenter` which allows presenter methods to spawned in a new thread. I really like how this isolates the threading code from the view and the presenter code."}
{"_id": "114032", "title": "how do i tell my boss that i don't know how to do what he wants me to", "text": "my boss recently gave me details of a new program he wants me to write. After I started thinking about he told and doing some research, i feel like the project he has given is outside of my abilities.how do I let my boss know?"}
{"_id": "101232", "title": "Are there any private code review communities?", "text": "Similar to this question Code Review Services, are there any communities out there where I can get my code reviewed. Ideally this would be a private thing between you and the reviewer as it would be large chunks of a full, commercial project, the the whole thing would have to be under NDA or similar. I'm aware of codereview.stackexchange.com but that's not viable as I don't want to put the code in the public domain and the code would be too big for the format of the Q&A site."}
{"_id": "23792", "title": "How can I promote clean coding at my workplace?", "text": "I work with a lot of legacy Java and RPG code on an internal company application. As you might expect, a lot of the code is written in many different styles, and often is difficult to read because of poorly named variables, inconsistent formatting, and contradictory comments (if they're there at all). Also, a good amount of code is not robust. Many times code is pushed to production quickly by the more experienced programmers, while code by newer programmers is held back by \"code reviews\" that IMO are unsatisfactory. (They usually take the form of, \"It works, must be ok,\" than a serious critique of the code.) We have a fair number of production issues, which I feel could be lessened by giving more thought to the original design and testing. I have been working for this company for about 4 months, and have been complimented on my coding style a couple of times. My manager is also a fan of cleaner coding than is the norm. Is it my place to try to push for better style and better defensive coding, or should I simply code in the best way I can, and hope that my example will help others see how cleaner, more robust code (as well as aggressive refactoring) will result in less debugging and change time?"}
{"_id": "230806", "title": "Online and offline point of sales application", "text": "I am going to develop a simple Point of Sales system. Mainly all the data will be stored in a central db (mysql server). All the application are going to be winforms. Together each local client will have its db copy stored locally and all the operation will be based on the local db except for one operation that the transfer of stock between outlet. So at certain interval there will be updates from the local db into the central db. The reason to have the local copy of the db in each client desktop in case there is problem with connectivity with the central server so that business can go on as usual and update once it is online. I need help in deciding the right path to move to solve this solution is my design acceptable or being flaw ?"}
{"_id": "181309", "title": "Multi-platform Mobile Development?", "text": "So my question is this: Is there any easy way for a single developer to release an app on iOS and Android? I am a web developer that primarily plays in PHP, Node, Ruby, AS, and JS. I have dabbled a tiny, tiny bit in Objective-C and Java. Basically I am looking for a good way to release a fairly simple app on both Android and iOS and have a uniform UI that is fairly easy to maintain. The app's main purpose is a well designed visual interface (with animation to help convey actions) to a simple backend API. Currently I was looking at using Flex, but want to find out other options if they exist. Thank you!"}
{"_id": "27083", "title": "How useful are IT headhunters/recruiters when looking for a new job?", "text": "Since they exist for several fields with varying degrees of usefulness, I'm curious as to the reputation of headhunters/recruiters that focus solely on IT professionals (e.g. programmers, software engineers, CIOs, etc) when it comes to finding a new job. Are they actually useful or is it fairly hit or miss? Does the old adage of only working with a limited number apply or can you safely give you resume/CV to several of them?"}
{"_id": "181305", "title": "How are OSS licenses upheld on unbacked projects?", "text": "If an OSS project is not backed (for example, by the Apache Foundation), how is the OSS license upheld? My specific scenario is this: if I create an GPLd mobile application with a non-commercial transformations clause, what's to actually stop someone from re-releasing it as \"Pro\" and charging for it? I assume the owner of the store (Apple/Google/MS) aren't going to uphold licenses on my behalf. Would it come down to me personally having to pay for a lawyer (which seems like a lot of effort to protect a good will gesture)?"}
{"_id": "214981", "title": "Objective-C Lesson in Class Design", "text": "I have the following classes:                  Teacher        Student        Class (like a school class)      They all extend from KObject that has the following code:               - initWithKey     - send     - processKey      Teacher, Student Class all use the functions processKey and initWithKey from KObject parent class. They implement their own version of send. The problem I have is that KObject should not be instantiated ever. It is more like an abstract class, but there is no abstract class concept in objective-c. It is only useful for allowing subclasses to have access to one property and two functions. What can I do so that KObject cannot be instantiated but still allow subclasses to have access to the functions and properties of KObject?"}
{"_id": "183815", "title": "Loop Invariants in Python", "text": "I have a bit of experience with loop invariants but I'm not really clear on them. I'm trying to learn them through an example in Python. Can someone point one out or help me understand? I've searched both on programmers.SX and on the web but the only things I could find were invariants and design by contract -- nothing on loop invariants."}
{"_id": "224860", "title": "Async network programming using Reactive Extensions", "text": "After doing some (more-or-less) \"low-level\" async `socket` programming years ago (in an Event-based Asynchronous Pattern (EAP) fashion) and recently moving \"up\" to a `TcpListener` (Asynchronous Programming Model (APM)) and then trying to move to `async/await` (Task-based Asynchronous Pattern (TAP)) I've pretty much had it with keep having to bother with all this 'low level plumbing'. So I was figuring; why not give `RX` a go (Reactive Extensions) since it might fit more snugly to my problem domain. A lot of code I write has to to with many clients connecting over Tcp to my application which then start a two-way (async) communication. The client _or_ server may at any point decide a message needs to be sent and do so, so this is not your classic `request/response` setup but more of a real-time, two-way, \"line\" open to both parties to send whatever they want, whenever they want. (If anyone has a decent name to describe this I'd be glad to hear it!). The \"protocol\" differs per application (and isn't really relevant to my question). I do, however have an initial question:   1. Given that only one \"server\" is running, but it has to keep track of many (usually thousands) of connections (e.g. clients) each having (for lack of a better description) their own \"state machine\" to keep track of their internal states etc, which approach would you prefer? EAP/TAP/APM? Would RX even be considered an option? If not, why? So, I need to work Async since a) it's not a request/response protocol so I cannot have a thread/client in a \"waiting for message\"-blocking call or \"sending message\"-blocking call (however, if the send is blocking for that client only I could live with it) and b) I need to handle many concurrent connections. I see no way of doing this (reliably) using blocking calls. Most of my applications are VoiP related; be it SIP messages from SIP cients or PBX (related) messaging from applications like FreeSwitch / OpenSIPS etc. but you can, in it's simplest form, try to imagine a \"chat\"server trying to handle many \"chat\"clients. Most protocols are text based (ASCII). So, after having implemented many different permutations of aforementioned techniques I would like to simplify my work by creating an object that I can simply instantiate, tell it on which `IPEndpoint` to listen and have it tell me whenever something of interest is going on (which I usually use events for, so some EAP is usually mixed with the other two techniques). The class should not bother trying to 'understand' the protocol; it should merely handle incoming/outgoing strings. And thus, having my eye on RX hoping that would (in the end) simplify the work, I created a new \"fiddle\" from scratch:               using System;     using System.Collections.Concurrent;     using System.Net;     using System.Net.Sockets;     using System.Reactive.Linq;     using System.Text;          class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             var f = new FiddleServer(new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 8084));             f.Start();             Console.ReadKey();             f.Stop();             Console.ReadKey();         }     }          public class FiddleServer     {         private TcpListener _listener;         private ConcurrentDictionary<ulong, FiddleClient> _clients;         private ulong _currentid = 0;              public IPEndPoint LocalEP { get; private set; }              public FiddleServer(IPEndPoint localEP)         {             this.LocalEP = localEP;             _clients = new ConcurrentDictionary<ulong, FiddleClient>();         }              public void Start()         {             _listener = new TcpListener(this.LocalEP);             _listener.Start();             Observable.While(() => true, Observable.FromAsync(_listener.AcceptTcpClientAsync)).Subscribe(                 //OnNext                 tcpclient =>                 {                     //Create new FSClient with unique ID                     var fsclient = new FiddleClient(_currentid++, tcpclient);                     //Keep track of clients                     _clients.TryAdd(fsclient.ClientId, fsclient);                     //Initialize connection                     fsclient.Send(\"connect\\n\\n\");                          Console.WriteLine(\"Client {0} accepted\", fsclient.ClientId);                 },                 //OnError                 ex =>                 {                      },                 //OnComplete                 () =>                 {                     Console.WriteLine(\"Client connection initialized\");                     //Accept new connections                     _listener.AcceptTcpClientAsync();                 }             );             Console.WriteLine(\"Started\");         }              public void Stop()         {             _listener.Stop();             Console.WriteLine(\"Stopped\");         }              public void Send(ulong clientid, string rawmessage)         {             FiddleClient fsclient;             if (_clients.TryGetValue(clientid, out fsclient))             {                 fsclient.Send(rawmessage);             }         }     }          public class FiddleClient     {         private TcpClient _tcpclient;              public ulong ClientId { get; private set; }              public FiddleClient(ulong id, TcpClient tcpclient)         {             this.ClientId = id;             _tcpclient = tcpclient;         }              public void Send(string rawmessage)         {             Console.WriteLine(\"Sending {0}\", rawmessage);             var data = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(rawmessage);             _tcpclient.GetStream().WriteAsync(data, 0, data.Length);    //Write vs WriteAsync?         }     }      I am aware that, in this \"fiddle\", there is a little implementation specific detail; in this case I'm working with FreeSwitch ESL so the `\"connect\\n\\n\"` in the fiddle should, when refactoring to a more generic approach, be removed. I am also aware that I need to refactor the anonymous methods to private instance methods on the Server class; I'm just not sure what convention (e.g. \"`OnSomething`\" for example) to use for their method-names? This is my basis/starting-point/foundation (which needs some \"tweaking\"). I have some questions about this:   1. See above question \"1\"   2. Am I on the right track? Or are my \"design\" decisions unjust?   3. Concurrency-wise: would this cope with thousands of clients (parsing/handling the actual messages aside)   4. On exceptions: I'm not sure how to get exceptions raised within clients \"up\" to the server (\"RX-wise\"); what would be a good way?   5. I can now get any connected client from my server class (using it's `ClientId`), assuming I expose the clients in one way or another, and call methods on them directly. I can also call methods via the Server class (for example, the `Send(clientId, rawmessage)` method (whereas the latter approach would be a \"convenience\" method for quickly getting a message to the other side).   6. I am not quite sure where (and how) to go from here:      * a) I need to handle incoming messages; how would I set this up? I can get the stream ofcourse, but _where_ would I handle retrieving the received bytes? I think I need some kind of \"ObservableStream\"-something I can subscribe to? Would I put this in the `FiddleClient` or `FiddleServer`?     * b) Assuming I want to avoid using event until these `FiddleClient`/`FiddleServer` classes are implemented more specifically to tailor their application specific protocol handling etc. using more specific `FooClient`/`FooServer` classes: how would I go from getting the data in the underlying 'Fiddle'-classes to their more specific counterparts? Articles/links I already read / skimmed / used for reference:   * Consume a Socket using Reactive Extension   * Creating and Subscribing to Simple Observable Sequences   * How to add or associate context to each ObservableTcpListener Connection/Session   * Asynchronous Programming with the Reactive Framework and the Task Parallel Library \u2014 Part 1, 2 and 3.   * Using Reactive Extensions (Rx) for socket programming practical?   * A .NET Rx Driven Web Server and .NET Rx Driven Web Server, Take 2   * Some Rx tutorials"}
{"_id": "56704", "title": "Are you a member of a trade union?", "text": "Are you a member of a trade union? Why? Why not? If you are, and don't mind mentioning it, which one? Do you know of any programmers who were helped by being in a union, or would have been helped by being in a union? Do you know of any programmers who were hindered or would have been hindered by being in a union?"}
{"_id": "56706", "title": "Today VS 2010 SP1 comes out, any news on the roadmap for Visual Studio 2012?", "text": "Today Visual Studio 2010 SP1 comes out as general availability release. This made me wondering about the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2012: What are Microsoft's plans for Visual Studio 2012? I heard they'll come with a new version every two years. Are there any open fora or discussions? When will a preview be publicly available? But most importantly: what are the new highlights, improvements in .NET and C#/F#/VB (and C++ of course, request from Stijn)?"}
{"_id": "186828", "title": "Event Driven Programming: A sequence of unfortunate events", "text": "I have a very basic game loop whose primary purpose is to check for updates & changes to a list. I have contemplated using event driven programming to replace the game loop/list idea with an ObservableCollection, however I just have this big cloud of doubt on event driven programming. I'm posing these questions to those with experience with event driven programming:   1. What are good ways to test & build an event driven programming design?  That is, how will I know that I cannot run into \"a sequence of unfortunate events\"? I want to avoid the events I didn't plan for.   2. Are there unit tests schemes to test event driven programming? Because I have little reputation at the time of asking this question, I can't post more than two links: Observable collections are found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms668604.aspx"}
{"_id": "186823", "title": "Agile Development - Questions with regards to documentation", "text": "In an agile project -   1. I assume user requirements are captured in terms of user story. Is this correct?   2. How are system requirements encompassing all the constituent applications documented (in case of a large project)?   3. Are there any specific tools used?    4. Is it a good idea to capture system requirements as child user stories under a main user story?    5. Should individual component teams produce SRS document containing requirements specific to the component team?    6. Should there be a low level design document or will it be part of SRS document?"}
{"_id": "229004", "title": "Measuring \"novelty\" of data", "text": "I have a heuristic in mind that should allow me to \"score\" data based on \"novelty\" that I would like to work in real-ish time. In this case, I mean novelty in the sense that the data source is something like a video and I want to know when there is a statistically significant change in the stream. For example, consider a video of a scene where the camera is turning to the right. As long as the velocity of the turn is constant, the data should be considered to be not-novel, or uninteresting. If a bird flies past in the opposite direction, then _the parts of frame where the bird is flying past_ would be considered novel, and would be assigned a high score. If the scores were assigned per 16x16 block of pixels, when the bird reached center frame it might look like:               0 0 0 0 0 0 0     0 0 0 3 1 0 0     0 0 0 0 1 0 0     0 0 0 0 0 0 0      As I understand it, there are algorithms that can do part of this for video compression, block Motion compensation and Global motion compensation, but the result of these algorithms seems to be a difference image that I would then need to digest further (average of differences), when all I want is a simple hash. That is, given the above 7x4 matrix:               0x00003200      The very first frame of the video, having no history, would be maximally novel:               0xFFFFFFFF      The cool thing would be to assign a score to the whole frame, and then for interesting frames break that up into smaller blocks, and for the interesting blocks another set, and so on, like a quadtree. So to summarise, is there a short-cut to get from a series of frames to a single hash value for each frame, based on the most recent frames? Or is there a better way to do this that I'm not aware of? **Further refinements** Reusing the example matrix above, where there is a _3_ the sample is more novel because the block where the bird is in this frame didn't have a bird there before, whereas the samples with a _1_ are still somewhat novel because there is no longer a bird there, but not as much because that block has returned to what would be expected in the background. This leads me to believe that there should be some kind of accumulating effect in the solution, because more than the very last frame needs to be taken into account."}
{"_id": "140743", "title": "How do I handle priority and propagation in an event system?", "text": "Let's say I have a simple event system with the following syntax:               object = new Object();     object.bind(\"my_trigger\", function()  { print \"hello\"; });     object.bind(\"my_trigger\", function()  { print \"hello2\"; });     object.trigger(\"my_trigger\");      How could I make sure hello2 is printed out first? (I do not want my code to depend on which order the events were bind). On top of that, how would I prevent my events from propagating? (e.g. I want to stop every other event from being executed)"}
{"_id": "128529", "title": "Licensing on forked projects", "text": "I forked a project that hasn't been maintained for a while now. I have a lot of changes I'd like to implement and want to actively maintain the project and keep it open source. How does the licensing work for situations like this? The original project is licensed under MIT and I would like to keep it that way. Would I be able to change the licence's copyright holders or would it have to stay the same?"}
{"_id": "85219", "title": "C++ For C# programmers", "text": "I need to learn as much C++ as possible, I'm a senior C# developer. Is there any good tutorial for that? Or a book? And will it be difficult to learn C++? If you ask what I will do with C++, I have to get enough ability to make video processing application or image processing applications and whats the time period for that?"}
{"_id": "85215", "title": "How does a CLI-oriented programmer's workflow differ from a GUI-oriented one?", "text": "I've heard a lot about the advantages of doing less programming work in GUI apps and using more command-line tools (especially with regard to getting things done more efficiently). However, since I don't understand how my workflow would be _different_ if I depended more on command-line tools, I can't readily evaluate whether there's enough of a payoff for me personally to invest time and effort learning a new toolset and changing my workflow. Right now:   * I code some side projects in languages like C/C++/D/C#/Java/Python using Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc., and run them by setting up the build settings, and pressing F5 to build/run.   * I'm developing a web program at work, so that involves using Django to set up a server, connect to a database, etc... almost all within the SciTE text editor.   * For launching regular programs, I use Launchy... still no terminal. :)   * For copying files and whatnot, I use a regular find/move in the graphical file manager (Windows Explorer, Nautilus).   * Debugging: I use either Visual Studio or Debugging tools for Windows (if I'm on Windows). I haven't done much debugging on Linux, but for the things I've done, I've used Eclipse (also for Java on Windows).   * At work: To connect to the build system and set up a project, I just use tools that have been integrated into Eclipse for my use -- no need for a terminal or anything (although I'm certainly welcome to use a terminal if I indeed want to) What is it like to do these things in CLI? Which parts become more/less efficient? Which aspects of my workflow would need to be changed to get the greatest advantage from a shift to working mostly in CLI? In other words... **If you magically transformed me into a command-line guru, how would my new coding workflow be different from my current, GUI-centered, way of doing things?**"}
{"_id": "128520", "title": "What are concrete examples of use cases of linked lists?", "text": "A linked list can be used when you want cheap insertion and deletion of elements and when it doesn't matter that the elements aren't next to each other in memory. This is very abstract and I would like to see some concrete examples of when a linked list is used rather than an array. I'm not very experienced with programming, so I haven't got much (if any) real-world experience."}
{"_id": "198918", "title": "End-to-end tests versus unit tests, should tests be decoupled?", "text": "At our company we typically make sure that we write an end-to-end test for our websites/web apps. That means we access a URL, fill in a form, submit the form to another URL and check the results of the page. We do this to test form validation, test that the HTML templates have the correct context variables, etc. We also use it to indirectly test the underlying logic. I was told by a co-worker that the reason for this is that we can rip out and change the underlying implementation at any point as long as the end-to-end tests pass. I'm wondering if this sort of decoupling makes sense or if it's just a way to avoid writing tests for smaller units of code?"}
{"_id": "198919", "title": "A programming language that allows you to define new limits for simple types", "text": "Many languages like `C++`, `C#`, and `Java` allow you to create objects that represent simple types like `integer` or `float`. Using a class interface you can override operators and perform logic like checking if a value exceeds a business rule of 100. I'm wondering if it's possible in some languages to define these rules as annotations or attributes of a variable/property. For example, in `C#` you might write:               [Range(0,100)]     public int Price { get; set; }      Or maybe in `C++` you could write:               int(0,100) x = 0;      I've never seen something like this done, but given how dependent we have become on data validation before storage. It's strange that this feature hasn't been added to languages. Can you give example of languages where this is possible?"}
{"_id": "75904", "title": "Is the MSDN sufficient for taking MCPD exams?", "text": "I've been approved by management to begin taking the MCPD exams (re-imbursed by them). I've been developing in .NET since 1.1, but just to make sure I'll be going through the training kits so that I don't miss any areas that I haven't had much need to use in the past. The first exam I'll be taking is WCF and I must admit, I've only developed some simple services in the past and it's probably one of the weak points of my development repertoire. There is also currently no book available for WCF on .NET 4. Aside from there being no practice exams, would this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456779.aspx be sufficient/efficient for studying to take the exam? If not, could you suggest any resource that might be? I have a copy of Lowy's Programming WCF Services that a friend lent me, but it's for .NET 3.5. Note: If you're suggesting resources, keep in mind that I'm looking to learn and understand WCF full and not looking _just_ to pass the exam, though the latter is definitely a focus/goal."}
{"_id": "27338", "title": "Does ORM promote database de-normalisation?", "text": "Doctrine and Propel both make use of single and concrete table inheritance to map object relationships. The former sees all possible fields in the class tree mapped to a single table - whereas the latter maps each class to a specific table, duplicating common fields in the inheritance hierarchy. While this facilitates the ORM apparatus, it suggests bad database design to me. Are these bad design patterns to enforce on a database?"}
{"_id": "256033", "title": "how to manage a release of both sw and config data", "text": "in my repository I've got a sw and a cfg(config) folder under trunk, I'm thinking that when I release I'll branch both of these to the releases folder e.g. v1 of my app, with London config data. If I want to release v1 of my app to NewYork too then I'm thinking I'll branch my config data off of main and adjust it in the release folder. Does this sound ok? have I missed something? I want to be able to tell 12 months from now which city has which version of the app, and be able to support their config data too. Cheers               Trunk       sw         qweqwe.cs, asdasd.cs etc.       cfg         setupData.inixmlwhatever          Releases       London         sw@v1         cfg - London config data            NewYork... app at v1, NewYork cfg       Milan... app at v2, cfg data the same as London's but called milan.cfg       Tokyo... app at v2 but with a Tokyo specific patch, with cfg data the same as Milan      of should I go:               Trunk         sw         cfg          Releases         swV1         swV2         cfgTokyo         cfgLondon         cfgMilan      With this latter one, I don't know what version of the app's installed in London etc? I could use tags to get round this, but then someone might shift the tag. With the former, I've got loads of appV1's kicking about (which I'm ok with, branches are cheap etc. but it looks less organised). Cheers"}
{"_id": "27337", "title": "Benefits of TOGAF or similar?", "text": "I can read the website blurb and be impressed by the alleged benefits, but I haven't worked anywhere or with anyone who followed the TOGAF (or any alternative) architecture framework. Our organisation has declared itself dedicated to moving from what is currently a fairly shambolic design & development model towards something approaching a modern structured process. Things like TOGAF have been mentioned as helping achieve a world-class enterprise development environment (!) but I'm convinced that no-one here really understands the real-world benefits that wholesale adoption might bring and, perhaps more importantly, the effort/pain required to achieve the same. Do you have experience in using TOGAF or similar to wrestle control in an organisation? Do you think that use of the framework brought any benefit? **Edit** : For clarification TOGAF is \"The Open Group Architecture Framework\", a detailed method and set of tools for developing an enterprise architecture. See: http://www.opengroup.org/architecture/togaf8-doc/arch/"}
{"_id": "253206", "title": "Old Browsers and Polyfills", "text": "# Polyfilling, when is it too much? I've summed up this question into one sentance. Is it practical to polyfill all of the IE8 deficiencies with one solid javascript file, as in, would there be any drawbacks (performance) or blockages (impossibility to polyfill some features)? **Question Deprecation: (history)** _I've been working with my company for about half a year now, and we've constantly been fighting with clients on upgrading their browsers. Everyone is of the mind that moving to a newer browser is only going to introduce more problems than solutions (they have internal, old web applications designed for in-house work)_ _I'm at the point where I've had to hunt down and polyfill so many things with IE8 that I'm wondering if there is any draw-back to polyfilling every deficiency that IE8 has (or at least making it so that the javascript doesn't error/fail)_ Is it unreasonable to expect to be able to polyfill all of the deficiencies in older outdated browsers such as IE6-IE8, or would that be a bad idea (performance? stability?)... _If this is a possibility, how come there are no full-feature polyfill libraries, everyone will point to \"modernizr\", that is FEATURE DETECTION, and offers no polyfills of it's own._ _So, wheres the IE8 master/full polyfill library hiding, or am I gonna have to slave over this?_ Edit: the reason why I'm not just picking out the parts I need, is because there might be deficiencies we are not aware of, I'd love to have a fix-all for Internet Explorer, so if this doesn't exist I'm going to make it myself.*"}
{"_id": "203658", "title": "Modeling user in MongoDB", "text": "Our team is learning to work with MongoDB. We have to model the **user** among other things for an OAuth-based application. We know how to model in the relational world, but are unsure about how to do it in NoSQL. In our application we identify the user **uniquely** by her **email address**. Email addresses are naturally unique and also verifiable. The email address seems to be a good candidate for a key. We don't model the person. We don't have the possibility to identify a person, only her email address. That means, if a person has more than an email address, she would have several documents in the database. Also if she changes her email address she would use a different document. And also, because people login with OAuth, there's no concept of them managing their data. There's no password, and the user name is given by OAuth. Why not using the email adress for a collection's primary key `_id`? Like this:               {       _id: \"john.doe@example.com\",       name: \"John Doe\",       provider: \"example.com\",       comments: [         // all comments       ]     }      What are the pros and cons of such an approach? **Edited to clarify the difference between _person_ and _user_**"}
{"_id": "203659", "title": "Getting started with AI (Artificial Intelligence)", "text": "I recently got interested in Artificial Intelligence. In my daily life I am a software engineer at a company that develops mobile apps. I am wondering what is the best way to read up on AI? What are 'must-read' books for information about AI?"}
{"_id": "204689", "title": "Comparing performance of different C++ self-made tree data structures", "text": "I have two tree data-structures that I made in C++ , and they give a response for range queries/point queries in that program. I am using Ubuntu. I need help in understanding the way to compare the performance of these two data structures (for answering the query in that program) in external memory. How can I do this? I searched a lot on the Internet, and I didn't find any clear idea on how this is done. I know I can measure disk I/O, memory consumption, CPU usage, etc. using Ubuntu's dstat, and iostat commands. I need some accurate and professional way to do this."}
{"_id": "204683", "title": "How does GDI/+ work and can it be replaced with my own code?", "text": "On wikipedia it says that GDI is an API and core operating system component responsible for representing graphical objects and transmitting them to output devices. I'm not finding much on what GDI+ actually does so I'm wondering, is GDI+ replaceable with gui frameworks like wxWidgets and GTK+ or are those frameworks rather built on top of GDI+? When drawing to screen with GDI+ it seems it makes sure one doesn't draw outside of the application's window. Is it actually GDI+ doing this and if not, what is? If it is GDI then doesn't everything have to go through GDI+ to promise this functionality and not let applications paint anywhere they want? Where does the framebuffer come into all of this? I would imagine that whatever controls the coordinate transforms controls the framebuffer as well. However it seems applications have much control of framebuffers and how to use them. I see that OpenGL has multiple types of framebuffers and functions for generating framebuffers, deleting them, ect. And I'm reading that they are stored in video memory. I would imagine that gui frameworks that are not as heavily involved with the GPU don't store theirs in video memory. So how does this stuff work and interact with the transformations?"}
{"_id": "204681", "title": "Improving the efficiency of containers with dynamically allocated objects", "text": "This is not strictly related to C++ but its type system serves to illustrate the problem well. Assume:   * We have a generic template `Container<T>` (such as a `std::vector<T>`) which stores an unspecified number of elements of the same type `T` on the heap. Each element is allocated and deallocated via the constructor and destructor of `T`.   * A type `M` that stores `m` elements on the heap (so `M` itself is a kind of container). However, the value of `m` is not known at compile time, so it cannot be used as a template parameter to `M`. Problem:   * If we try to use a type `Container<M>`, accessing the elements of `M` inside this container would require two pointer dereferences, which in general has worse performance than if all elements of `M` were laid out contiguously. Non-ideal solution:   * Create a separate class `ContainerFixed<T>` that manages the memory of `T` directly, if `T` is assumed to have the same size throughout the container. `T` would also have to exchange information about its storage with the containing class. However, if we implement another kind of container, then we have to repeat this process again. The problem arises because the container class is oblivious of the storage requirements of `T` so it defers the allocation to `T` itself; if the container had known that `T` only requires a fixed (though not known at compile time) number of elements then this issue could have been avoided. Now I feel as though that if there was some way to communicate to the container that `M` has a definite size `m` (as in `M<m>`, which is not legal in C++), then from the type signature of `Container<M<m> >` one can potentially deduce that a faster allocation scheme is possible. (It's a bit like dependent types, in a way.) That is, any `Container1<Container2<m> >` can be allocated more efficiently as a \"flattened\" container. What would be a more general solution to this problem? I don't think this is something that can be easily solved in C++ (feel free to prove me wrong), so I would certainly like to hear if this is something that other languages can solve in a much simpler way (perhaps with more sophisticated type systems)."}
{"_id": "203655", "title": "Which is faster NSDictionaries or object properties?", "text": "If I abandon creating model objects which I only use to pass information and use NSDictionaries instead and have constant for keys in the same place where I am using the model, then does it have any impact on performance ? **For example:** If I start passing NSDictionaries to custom cell's instead of creating Model classes for the cell, will it be fine if I am not providing any methods in the class of that model. I have seen this a lot in iOS APIs like NSNotifications. I have rarely seen this in Java where collections are being used as an integral part of an API."}
{"_id": "204684", "title": "When should we stop work and make tool?", "text": "As a software engineer, we are always eager to get effective tools to boost our productivity. And in our daily work, we are often unsatisfactory with the existing tools and would like to have better ways such as better GDB script config, Vim script and some Python script to make boring things automatic. However, it is actually a trade-off since making tools also needs time and energy. It does not give productivity boosting immediately. Therefore, how do you judge whether it is time to stop work and to make some tools to ease your future pain?"}
{"_id": "240780", "title": "Origins of code indentation", "text": "I am interested in finding out who introduced code indentation, as well as when and where it was introduced. It seems so critical to code comprehension, but it was not universal. Most Fortran and Basic code was (is?) unindented, and the same goes for Cobol. I am pretty sure I have even seen old Lisp code written as continuous, line- wrapped text. You had to count brackets in your head just to parse it, never mind understanding it. So where did such a huge improvement come from? I have never seen any mention of its origin. Apart from original examples of its use, I am also looking for original discussions of indentation."}
{"_id": "146748", "title": "How relaxed (or not) should a sprint be?", "text": "What should be the attitude towards getting stories done that are assigned to a sprint? Obviously you want to prioritize getting them done in the sprint, but to me the whole point of agile is to be dynamic: You don't want to deliberately procrastinate or make it \"ok\" to miss finishing user stories in a sprint, but at the same time when unexpected things come up, and those stories do not get completed and are pushed to the next sprint, you don't want the feeling that you did something wrong. That shouldn't be a scary or negative experience, should it? Are negative/scary experiences acceptable for missed sprint commitments? Should developers be held accountable for missed sprint commitments when unexpected tasks come up that must be dealt with (Eg. production support)?"}
{"_id": "74362", "title": "Un-Explainable Bugs?", "text": "I've encountered bugs that are extremely difficult to reproduce reliably and/or explain definitively, but that _appear_ to be solved. When this happens, how much time should I spend chasing it down? Example: this SO question and this related jQuery forum post, which offer differing solutions. The issue was reproducible intermittently until the change I discuss in the SO question, and not at all after the change. If I don't conclusively understand what caused the bug, can I claim with confidence that it won't come back in the future by surprise?"}
{"_id": "36080", "title": "Determining Cost of API Calls", "text": "_[This is a cross-post originally posted by me in SO. I think the question is more appropriate here.]_ I was going through the adwords API and came across their rate sheet - http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/ratesheet.html . They charge $0.25 per 1000 API units and under the 'Operation Costs' sections list the cost (in API units) of different API calls. I am curious - based on what factors do they (and others API developers) calculate the cost of an API call? Is there any simple formula or a standard way to determine this? **Note** : When I say 'cost' of an API call, I don't mean the money but the API units. For example, how do you determine one API call costs 100 'units' and another 1000? * * * **Expanding my original post** : Each API call will consume a specific amount of CPU cycles, memory and bandwidth on the server (and perhaps some other metric I haven't thought of). I would specifically like to know what tools / methods are available to determine these metrics if the API is developed using (any of the below combination): Perl, Python, PHP, .net, Ruby (or some other language). Postgres, MySQL, MS SQL Server, Firebird, SQLite (or some other database). Apache, IIS (or some other webserver). Windows, Linux (or some other OS)."}
{"_id": "185552", "title": "Copyright notice in CSS or XML files", "text": "I'm currently working on an open-source project. Currently, we put our copyright notice at the top of every Java source file. I was wondering whether it was advisable or common practice to put copyright notices in CSS or XML files."}
{"_id": "240786", "title": "Creating objects with user-defined variable names", "text": "**Context:** I am making a learning project in XNA. What I would like to be able to do is allow the game to be moddable by allowing the users to place arbitrary values into a JSON data file which is read into the game. The thing is that I want to avoid hardcoding if possible _and_ have it automagically work for whatever the user throws at the engine. **Problem:** I have no idea how to design class(es) that can accommodate this sort of behavior, as my understanding is that whatever loads the JSON has to map it to existing variables on the object:               public class SomeGameEntity     {         public float Strength { get; set; }         public bool IsStrong { get; set; }     }      But what I want is for the client code to be able to do something like:               SomeGameEntity.Stats[\"Strength\"] = 16;     SomeGameEntity.Stats[\"IsStrong\"] = true;      **My Solution:** Upon consideration, I would only define a few valid data types, likely **float** , **bool** , and **string** (other types, such as `XNA.Color`, would probably have to be inferred from a combination of RGB floats on the object.) Thus, what makes sense is to create a class such as the following:               public class EntityStatComponent     {         private readonly Dictionary<string, float> _floatValues;         private readonly Dictionary<string, string> _stringValues;         private readonly Dictionary<string, bool> _boolValues;              public float GetValue(string name) { }         public void SetValue(string name, float value) { }              public string GetString(string name) { }         public void SetString(string name, string value) { }              public bool GetFlag(string name) { }         public void SetFlag(string name, bool value) { }     }      But, this seems like a heavy-handed approach, especially with _three dictionaries per active object_. I would probably say there are less than 250 objects onscreen at a time (characters, projectiles, etc). Unfortunately, I don't think generic typing is the way to go for this, since for T, it would have to accept a single data type into the dictionary. Alternatively, if I allowed any T value to be used via the get/set method, I would have to use the `if(someArg is float)` stuff, which I understand to be frowned upon. Am I overlooking something, or is there a better way to do it?"}
{"_id": "205486", "title": "Starting Development with Python", "text": "I'm currently a beginning developer (3 years). I have been mainly doing Web Development for as long as I have been developing. This is my comfort zone when it comes to programming. I like both JavaScript and PHP because they are easy to use; however, I would really like to further my knowledge when it comes to programming. I've been doing some research on many different languages just getting to know the look and feel of other languages. I like C as it has a similar syntax to JavaScript. I also like Ruby and Java. However, I think I need to learn one at a time. I have decided on Python because of its clean syntax and the fact that a lot of people consider it a good beginner language. ### My Problem I'm coming from languages that are both easy to learn and use (JavaScript and PHP). For example, for JavaScript all you need is:               <script type=\"text/javascript\">         //script here     </script>      And you can execute a script and you can do things such as DOM manipulation. For PHP all you need is a server that has PHP installed and you can use:               <?php         //script here     ?>      You can then just execute it either through AJAX or a request in a form. I don't understand how to use Python. I don't believe you can just do AJAX requests with `python` files like you can with `PHP` files. What can I do with Python? Or do I use it? What have you made using it?"}
{"_id": "139353", "title": "Why should we preferably use first class collections?", "text": "As per rule number 4 of Object Calisthenics by Jeff Bay (RTF) in The ThoughtWorks Anthology, it is recommended that one should \" **Use first-class collections** \". > **Rule 4: First class collections** > > Application of this rule is simple: any class that contains a collection > should contain no other member variables. Each collection gets wrapped in > its own class, so now behaviors related to the collection have a home. You > may find that filters become a part of this new class. Also, your new class > can handle activities like joining two groups together or applying a rule to > each element of the group. What I could understand from this was that we should use a separate class wrapping up the collection and with methods to add,delete modify data of that collection. and We need this so that we are sure of what datatype goes into the collection and what comes out. In case we use generic collection (in languages where it is applicable), do we need to follow this rule? If I am missing an important significance, please clarify."}
{"_id": "205480", "title": "Is there a name for this tree variant?", "text": "So I've created (and I'm sure someone else has come up with this before - I'm not claiming to have invented it) a data structure which consists of a binary search tree, only instead of each node having a single left and right child, they have two `Map<string, Node>` for the left and right, and the parent has a similar `Map<string, Node>` for the roots. When you create the tree, you give it a list of strings, which are the names of fields on the object you are storing on the tree. It creates one empty root for each name. When you insert an object, it is placed in each of the trees and sorted based on the data in that field. (The language in this case is C#, but it could be done in any OOP language. Storage should be by reference, so each object exists only once, but is referenced in multiple trees) So if I had an object like so:               class myObject     {         Map<string, object> attributes;         ...     }      And the map has one object (which must implement `IComparable`) for every string in the list of keys the tree uses. The benefit is that I can now choose a string as my sort-key, and quickly traverse through my tree in sorted order based on any of the sortable attributes. Likewise, I can perform a search on the tree based on any of the sortable attributes in O(log n) time. (A standard BST would allow this only on the single sort-key.) I've called mine a `MultiTree`, but I looked it up and that has another meaning which seems to be entirely unrelated. But I can't come up with a better name for it. Does this structure have an established name already?"}
{"_id": "240784", "title": "How to compute scrum burndown chart when projects overlap?", "text": "In my team we have a multiple projects, some short term and some long term. The team is required to deliver these projects on different dates and the effort to deliver these is run in parallel with the team working on stories for more than one project during each sprint. When trying to compute our burndown we aren't sure what to do. As the team is split between projects the velocity can change dramatically week-on-week as people shuffle to the tasks best suited for their specialty across the projects. This makes it difficult to create a reliable and meaningful burndown chart for each project. However if we combine the stories into a single burndown chart how can we track against the release if the release dates are different and it isn't obvious which points remain for each project. Is there a good method for dealing with this?"}
{"_id": "98530", "title": "Ip address filtering on valid user group : should we include the ip address of developers?", "text": "Imagine if your development team were asked to develop a system. The system should only response to some particular user groups such as \"Group A\", \"Group B\" or \"Boss\" who are the actually users of the system. If you receive a phone call from the user saying that the system crash upon some particular situation/parameters. You tried to reproduce the problem and discovered that you Ip was filtered because there are not any valid user groups which include you/your team. You cannot even reproduce the crash and you go to ask the caller if you can borrow his/her PC to reproduce the problem at once. After this, would you think adding a new valid group such as \"Developers\" would be necessary?"}
{"_id": "227982", "title": "Most efficient multiple condition IF statement", "text": "I am using a function to compare over 100 variables inside of classes to each other an am curious if one method of comparing multiple condition statements is more efficient than another. I am currently considering one of these methods. I think the 'single If using And/Or' looks the cleanest but performance is more important. (my code is VB.Net) Multiple ElseIf               If Not ClassA.num = ClassB.num Then         Return False     ElseIf Not ClassA.str = ClassB.str Then         Return False     Else : Return True     End If      Single If using And/Or               If Not ClassA.num = ClassB.num Or        Not ClassA.str = ClassB.str Then            Return False     Else : Return True     End If      Nested If               If ClassA.num = ClassB.num Then         If ClassA.str = ClassB.str Then             Return True         End If     End If     Return False      Edit: Changed second code snippet from And to Or Edit 2: Changed third snippet from If Not to If"}
{"_id": "227983", "title": "How do we go from assembly to machine code(code generation)", "text": "I know this is abstract as it's all about signals and switch - (electronics) - underneath, but is there a easy way to visualize the step between assembling code to machine code. For example if you open about a binary file in notepad you see a textually formatted representation of machine code. I assume that each byte(symbol) you see is the corresponding ascii character for it's binary value? There is still a part of the puzzle though that I am missing and I can't even explain exactly what that is. I have seen assembler source code(written in C) which obviously uses the C libraries put, getc, write functions etc, to actually generate the machine code. But how do we go from assembly to binary, what's going on behind the scenes?? I mean C/C++ or any language is essentially binary in itself as it's all signals and switches, key and mouse presses. I guess assembling is really organizing the bytes into a structure that is logical to the hardware."}
{"_id": "166775", "title": "How much do they study in the best universities, relative to the other universities?", "text": "In my university, our total required weekly attendance (for lectures and tutorials/similar) is about 12 hours. It was like that in the first year, and then everything required extremely little effort - I believe that if I invested as much efforts as someone who is studying for medicine or law, I could have learnt everything for 1-2 months - if not less! Now I'm second year and it doesn't look like it's going to be too different. This concerns me about the people who study in Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial College. It would be weird if they study that little, and it would be very concerning if they do study very hard, because this would mean that by the end of the year, their first year students will be better than our average third year student. Which is bad news for me, given that I share the market with them. I know the question can't have an absolutely accurate answer, but it can still be answered quite definitely, and it's relevant to many people."}
{"_id": "166774", "title": "Project Resource Organization and Structure at Cocos2d-X Development", "text": "Cocos2d-X is a game engine framework based on Cocos2d-iPhone, which consists of expanding supported platforms, with multiple choice of programming languages thats shares the same API structure. What is be better Project Resource Organization and Structure at Cocos2d-X Development?"}
{"_id": "227989", "title": "Using Hibernate Criteria framework for complex queries vs. just making views in DB", "text": "I like using `Hibernate` for regular simple `CRUD` operations. However, I am trying to understand why anyone would resort to its `Criteria` framework to assemble complex recordset criteria as opposed to simply creating a view at the database level. E.g. here is a paraphrased snippet I am working with:               Criteria tableCriteria = session         .createCriteria(SomeEntity.class)         .add(Restrictions.eq(\"someID\", someID))         .add(Restrictions.gtProperty(\"scoreOne\", \"scoreTwo\"))         .add(Restrictions.gt(\"scoreThree\", scoreThreeMin))         .add(Restrictions.or(Restrictions.eq(\"inactive\", Boolean.FALSE), Restrictions.isNull(\"inactive\"))).addOrder(Order.asc(\"ordCol\"))      From the naked eye perspective, it is possible but let legible to discern what this filter definition is stipulating than to simply make a DB view where these restrictions could be expressed in the form of simpler `WHERE` clauses. Am I missing something? Is there an advantage to using Criteria vs. DB views that I am not aware of? Using views seems much cleaner. Is there a performance upside to Criteria?"}
{"_id": "240788", "title": "How significant is node's advantage of training developers in only one language and putting them on tasks across the tech-stack?", "text": "I have recently joined a startup as CTO/co-founder. The startup and I have been thinking about moving the existing codebase (which is in PHP5.5, laravel framework) to node.js . Main reason for this being that at the stage we are in right now, I'll need to hire talented, but inexperienced developers and train them to work on different parts of the project. JS is already being used in a very big angular app, and will also be used in the mobile app (we are planning to go the phone gap route). The api only exists in PHP. I personally can re-implement the existing api in node.js in 3-6 weeks optimistically (I am confident of that time because I myself built the laravel api backend) and have a pretty good idea of the feature set required. Also, that's a time that the startup can afford at this stage. I think that having one language across our tech stack can increase our ability to get the maximum out of new developers who join the company as we can train them only in JS and in use their skills across the tech stack, by giving them proper training before exposing them to a new area of the stack. My question is, what are the benefits of training inexperienced devs in a single technology stack? Are my assumptions correct based on this list of benefits? Does an affordable 3-6 week turnaround become more realistic if inexperienced devs can focus on a single technology stack?"}
{"_id": "70628", "title": "Why do programming languages generate method signatures without regard to the return type?", "text": "I have worked with many languages that do not generate a method signature based on the return type. I have also worked with one(maybe some?) that do. The ones that don't have given me problems in the past (like here). Why do programming languages generate method signatures without regard to the return type? Update: I'm referring specifically to compiled statically typed languages"}
{"_id": "70624", "title": "Good way to document your software (product)?", "text": "Different from Fastest way to document software architecture and design. I'd like to write a manual for my software which includes   1. Command line usage   2. Howtos/Tutorials on using the software    3. Example code for writing plugins   4. Manual on functions and classes for the plugin sdk I'd like to mark words for linking so i can write \"also see FuncA, FuncB, etc\" with each func as a link. Perhaps have the code sample monospace width/font and indented like you would see in many books. What software/markup/format may i use to generate a manual? I'm unsure what format the manual will be but it will likely be html, pdf or both. Bonus if its a text format and plays nicely with source control (i'm using git) but that doesn't matter as i'll probably have it outside of my source control."}
{"_id": "70625", "title": "is PERT/CPM still being used?", "text": "I wonder whether PERT/CPM is still being used, or, is it an ancient methodology for the world of today? Thanks."}
{"_id": "70620", "title": "What should I name these methods?", "text": "I have two interfaces, one with and one without generic type parameters. The non-generic interface is used internally so that I can store instances of the generic interface in a collection. All would be well except for the fact that C# does not generate method signatures based on the return type. I have a method in each interface called GetItems. One returns an IList the other an IList<T>. Since I cannot give them both the same name I need to come up with two different names that both convey what they do. Here are the interfaces:               public interface IBatchProcessingStorage {         void Enqueue(object o);         void Enqueue(IEnumerable items);         void Dequeue(object o);         void Dequeue(IEnumerable items);         IList GetItems(int maxItems);     }     public interface IBatchProcessingStorage<T> : IBatchProcessingStorage {         void Enqueue(T item);         void Enqueue(IEnumerable<T> item);         void Dequeue(T item);         void Dequeue(IEnumerable<T> item);         IList<T> GetItems(int maxItems);     }      There is a task that runs every so often that will get items from the batch processing store, pass them to an external resource, and if they are processed by the external resource then they are removed from the store. The task needs the non-generic interface, that is the only reason it exists. I have created an abstract class that implements both, and redirects the calls in the non- generic interface to the generic ones and the generic ones are abstract like so:               public abstract class BatchProcessingStorage<T>        : IBatchProcessingStorage<T>       , IBatchProcessingStorage {              void IBatchProcessingStorage.Enqueue(object o) { Enqueue((T)o); }              void IBatchProcessingStorage.Enqueue(IEnumerable items) {             Enqueue((IEnumerable<T>)items); }              void IBatchProcessingStorage.Dequeue(object o) {              Dequeue((T)o); }              void IBatchProcessingStorage.Dequeue(IEnumerable items) {             Dequeue((IEnumerable<T>)items); }              IList IBatchProcessingStorage.GetItems(int maxItems) {             return this.GetItems(maxItems).ToArray(); }              public abstract void Enqueue(T item);              public abstract void Enqueue(IEnumerable<T> item);              public abstract void Dequeue(T item);              public abstract void Dequeue(IEnumerable<T> item);              public abstract IList<T> GetItems(int maxItems);     }      This is supposed to be the class that customers will inherit from, but I'm not going to force them into our inheritance hierarchy. So they may have to implement both interfaces. This is the reason for my great concern about the names. I don't want our API to have crap method names. So, what should I call GetItems in each class that conveys meaning without looking like I'm working around language limitations? ## Update: For those of you who think I am over analyzing this: We have learned a lot about our public API over the past 5 years. I have one chance to get this new one right. After that we are stuck with what is released. This is not your average internal software application. It is a software platform that is very extensible. It is used by some of the most well known companies in the world. It is going to be very hard for them to honestly get on stage at our conferences and tout the usefulness of our software platform, if It has a crappy API. This is not overly complex, or overly abstract. It is designed to serve a specific business need. Our customers are going to need this, better yet, they already do through a very poorly named, and overly complex API that makes you jump through hoops to get things done (hindsight is always 20/20)."}
{"_id": "101905", "title": "How can a borderline beginner jump into open source?", "text": "With all the options and project available, especially the size of most of them, Open Source can be pretty daunting for a newbie to it all. My question is, how can I start helping and learning from open sourced software? Where do I start? Which files do I read first? Any advice to help a programmer above beginner level start contributing?"}
{"_id": "251102", "title": "Modulo Operator Runtime", "text": "I am reading a review sheet for a class and the instructor said this of the modulo operator: Remember that modulus (%) has a runtime of O((logn)^2). He continued to display this piece of code: //Assumes n > 1               public boolean isPrime2 (int n) {         int sqrtN = (int) Math. sqrt (n) ;         for(int i = 2; i < sqrtN + 1; i++) {             if (n % i == 0) return false;         }         return true;     }      He said of this code: O(n) = sqrt(n) x n^2. As you can see, this method of checking if a number is prime only iterates from 2 to sqrt(n). Since we loop over a quadratic operation sqrt(n) times, the runtime is O(sqrt(n)). Two things I don't understand. One, why is the inside the for loop now an n^2 operation rather than a (logn)^2 operation. Two, even if it is only an n^2 operation, shouldn't the total runtime then be O(n)?"}
{"_id": "33105", "title": "Does programming in front of a projector screen work?", "text": "I'm wondering if being in front of a very large screen (say 106\" instead of your usual dual 22\"), with appropriate distance, has any positive impact of your work conditions. I'm thinking about the case you are at home. You'll need to move your office into a large depot if you allow that to all your staff :)"}
{"_id": "105269", "title": "How can I use Windows Workflow for validation of a Silverlight application?", "text": "I want to use Windows Workflow to provide a validation service. The validation that will be provided may have multiple tiers with chaining and redirecting to other stages of validation. The application that will generate the data for validation is a Silverlight app. I imagine the validation will take longer than the blink of an eye, so I don't want to tie the user up. Instead, I would like the user to submit the current data for validation. If the validation happens quickly, the service will perform an asynchronous callback to the app. The viewmodel that made the call would receive the validation output and post into the view. If the validation takes a long time, the user can move forward in the Silverlight app, disregarding the potential output of the validation. The viewmodel that made the call would be gone. I expect there would be another viewmodel that would contain the current validation output in its model. The validation value would change causing the user to get a notification in smaller notifcation area. I can see how the current view's viewmodel would call the validation through the viewmodel that is containing the validation output, but I am concerned that the service call will timeout. Also, I think the user may have already changed the values from the original validation, invalidating the feedback. I am sure asynchronous validation is a problem solved many times over, I am looking to glean from your experience in solving this kind of problem. Is this the right approach to the problem, or is there a better way to approach this?"}
{"_id": "134652", "title": "How to design classes in right way (sending messages)", "text": "Trying to design small project in right way and have a trouble in it:\\ about task: need to realize multiplication of big numbers, using fft First, i have classes               class LargeNumber{};     class Field{}; -- abstract (maybe interface would be better)     class C_C:public virtual Field{};     class Z_p:public virtual Field{};      So, LargeNumber can use Z_P(modulo P) or C_C(complex) classes (more correct: C_C and Z_P have Mul and Sum functions to multiply LargeNumber objects) but another task more interesting and difficult. I need to calculate all operations and time each 'big' operation take. And also need to throw messages and create logs. How to solve this problem? ( what should i do? ) Also will be great, if you comment patterns and your best practices. and so this classes:               class LargeNumber {       private:       int length;       vector <short int> number;       public:       //prototype       LargeNumber clone(){                         return (*this);       }       //get       int Length() const;       vector <short int> Number()const;             //static       static LargeNumber& GenerateOne(int);// create new LargeNumber       static void Print(const LargeNumber& print);       //constructors       LargeNumber();       LargeNumber(const LargeNumber& obj);       explicit LargeNumber(int len);             explicit LargeNumber(vector <short int>);       LargeNumber(int,int);       //destructors       ~LargeNumber();           void Kill();       //operators       LargeNumber& operator= (const LargeNumber& );       LargeNumber& operator--();           LargeNumber& operator++();       bool operator<(const LargeNumber&)const;                 };                class Field {       private:       inline int max(const int a, const int b){return (a>b?a:b);}              inline int min(const int a, const int b){return (a<b?a:b);}            int i;       //need Mod and 2**P-1       LargeNumber& Deux (const int );            LargeNumber& Mod (LargeNumber&);       public:              virtual ~Field();              virtual LargeNumber& Sum (const LargeNumber& , const LargeNumber& );              virtual LargeNumber& Sub (const LargeNumber& , const LargeNumber& );              virtual LargeNumber& Mul (const LargeNumber& , const LargeNumber& );                      virtual LargeNumber& Pow (const LargeNumber& , const LargeNumber& );              virtual bool Prime (LargeNumber& );                 };"}
{"_id": "134651", "title": "How can I get into C++ graphics library?", "text": "I have been programming for a year so far and I know 2 languages: C and C++. I've covered the basics, I've written functional windows programs, and I've written complicated bits of code. When I was using Turbo C for learning the C language I noticed a library called \"Graphics.h\". I've looked it up and I received amazing examples of graphics manipulation. My question is straightforward. How can I get started with learning graphics in C++? Is there a good tutorial that covers it all up?"}
{"_id": "84167", "title": "What design and planning techniques are the most suitable for individual projects?", "text": "This summer I'd like to develop a number of applications, all of them relatively small, yet risky -they're complex, I'm inexperienced-. I'm gonna work on my own because my classmates or other IT people I know really don't have a genuine interest in programming (I swear!). Besides from making good code, I'd like to analyze, design and plan everything correctly. Probably applying standard methodologies would be excesive for a single-person project wouldn't it be? So, what lifecycle and diagrams should I use? In college I've been taught only a very superficial approach to software engineering."}
{"_id": "105264", "title": "Trying to evaluate answers provided by an online technology school", "text": "I've been considering taking some web-related programming courses from an online technology school (it's probably best if I don't name names). When I read the syllabi of the different courses on their website (which included courses on HTML, JS, PHP, Perl, DB admin, and Unix/Linux system admin), I was a little concerned that some of the content and descriptions sounded a bit dated. I emailed my concerns to their representative, who responded promptly. I hope I'm not outside the scope of this forum, but based on the rep's responses (below), I have two questions that I think only experienced programmers can answer:   * Does the rep have a good point when she says that teaching earlier versions of technology is justified because \"most people/sites/businesses do not change quickly\"?   * Is there such a thing as PHP in the SQL style? (I couldn't find anything on that) _Discussion with representative:_ Hi, I'm wondering how much effort is taken to keep these courses up to date? Computer technologies and best practices change fairly quickly and I would obviously want to be taking courses based on current standards. > Yes you are correct that technology & practices change quickly, most > people/sites/businesses do not change quickly. Most often the systems are > several versions behind current upgrades. Our courses are kept as up to date > as possible. However, we find the earlier versions are still in use and a > good foundation for the majority of systems out there. For example, is your web programming certificate based more on HTML 4 or HTML 5? > We are still teaching HTML/CSS from 5 years ago. We are currently in the > process of creating a new HTML/CSS course for the newer technology, however > it is not available yet. Do you teach PHP in an object oriented style? > We are teaching PHP in the SQL style. Hopefully this answers your concerns. > If not, please do not hesitate to contact us with more specific questions. > > Wishing you all the best,"}
{"_id": "159804", "title": "How do you encode Algebraic Data Types in a C#- or Java-like language?", "text": "There are some problems which are easily solved by Algebraic Data Types, for example a List type can be very succinctly expressed as:               data ConsList a = Empty | ConsCell a (ConsList a)          consmap f Empty          = Empty     consmap f (ConsCell a b) = ConsCell (f a) (consmap f b)          l = ConsCell 1 (ConsCell 2 (ConsCell 3 Empty))     consmap (+1) l      This particular example is in Haskell, but it would be similar in other languages with native support for Algebraic Data Types. It turns out that there is an obvious mapping to OO-style subtyping: the datatype becomes an abstract base class and every data constructor becomes a concrete subclass. Here's an example in Scala:               sealed abstract class ConsList[+T] {       def map[U](f: T => U): ConsList[U]     }          object Empty extends ConsList[Nothing] {       override def map[U](f: Nothing => U) = this     }          final class ConsCell[T](first: T, rest: ConsList[T]) extends ConsList[T] {       override def map[U](f: T => U) = new ConsCell(f(first), rest.map(f))     }          val l = (new ConsCell(1, new ConsCell(2, new ConsCell(3, Empty)))     l.map(1+)      The only thing needed beyond naive subclassing is a way to _seal_ classes, i.e. a way to make it impossible to add subclasses to a hierarchy. How would you approach this problem in a language like C# or Java? The two stumbling blocks I found when trying to use Algebraic Data Types in C# were:   * I couldn't figure out what the bottom type is called in C# (i.e. I couldn't figure out what to put into `class Empty : ConsList< ??? >`)   * I couldn't figure out a way to _seal_ `ConsList` so that no subclasses can be added to the hierarchy What would be the most idiomatic way to implement Algebraic Data Types in C# and/or Java? Or, if it isn't possible, what would be the idiomatic replacement?"}
{"_id": "133380", "title": "How do I make sense of the javascript frameworks explosion ? Should I learn them all?", "text": "For a beginner web developer who is still doing web development the conventional way (PHP/J2EE/Struts on server side, HTML/CSS/Javascript on client side), I was bowled over by the recent blog post on Trello technology stack. I can't help feeling overwhelmed by the list of new technologies and frameworks mentioned in this post and specifically the ubiquitousness of Javascript frameworks. My question is, is this the future of web development? Are there any articles, websites or resources that can help me make sense of where each of these new frameworks fit in a modern web application ?"}
{"_id": "133381", "title": "Why should identifiers not begin with a number?", "text": "Most programming languages appear to be designed to not allow one to declare an identifier that starts with a number. I was just curious to know the reason. I have already searched the web, but couldn't find a satisfactory explanation."}
{"_id": "113352", "title": "When to update jQuery?", "text": "When you recommend updating jQuery/jQuery UI? Or in other words: **what are the best practices for updating jQuery/jQuery UI?** I\u2019m working on a long project that will take at least one more year. In that time span, I\u2019m sure that jQuery/jQuery UI will be updated many times. Do you recommend update my jQuery/jQuery UI files every time an update is released? Or is better to stick with a particular version until the end of the project? I\u2019m afraid of \u201cbreaking\u201d code changes, and every time an update is released, I have to test everything. That takes too much time. But on the other hand, if I didn\u2019t update, I\u2019m afraid of bugs that later will bite me in the rear. The project is an ASP.MVC and I use jQuery a lot. Any thoughts?"}
{"_id": "123432", "title": "Does simplicity always improve Readability?", "text": "Recently, I was developing a set of coding standards for our company. (We're a new team branching out into a new language for the company.) On my first draft, I set the purpose of our coding standards as improving Readability, Maintainability, Reliability, and Performance. (I ignored writability, portability, cost, compatibility with previous standards, etc.) One of my goals while writing this document was to push through the idea of simplicity of code. The idea was that there should be only one function call or operation per line. My hope was that this would increase readability. It's an idea that I carried over from our previous language. However, I've questioned the assumption behind this push: **Does simplicity always improve readability?** Is there a case where writing simpler code decreases readability? It should be obvious, but by \"simpler\", I don't mean \"easier to write\", but less stuff going on per line."}
{"_id": "133389", "title": "Can web technologies, like PHP, HTML, and CSS, be used for desktop development?", "text": "I have to develop an application for a gas agency where a database will store consumer numbers, names, addresses, and date delivered for a town with nearly 20,000 people. I only know PHP, MySQL, CSS, jQuery, and other web based technologies. Is it possible to deliver a package to the client using these technologies that can be installed on a computer and used locally? This application will run on a single PC for a single user. I'm familiar with tools such as XAMPP, but I do not want to run a web server locally. Both the application and database will be securely running on a particular computer. In the future, if this application must be on multiple computers, I want the database and application to be portable. I have searched for similar questions on Stack Overflow and I did find some recommendations like Jetty, Adobe Air and the recent Web SQL database. Is PHP GTK also a viable tool for building professional applications? I would like a recommendation specific for this kind of app."}
{"_id": "226167", "title": "Scala class with constructor requiring parameter of the same Class type", "text": "I can't remember but recently in one of the APIs I saw something like this `class A (member:A){}`. Scala does support it and there is no problem creating such a class but how do we initiate it and what purpose would such a class serve?"}
{"_id": "139974", "title": "Should One Be Resilient to Overtime/Crunching/Stressors?", "text": "I ask this, because after two weeks of intense labor with no off-time (eat, sleep, program) I cracked today and went into a rage. Afterwards I fell into a mild depression for a couple of hours before I could finally compose myself and finish my project goals for the day. This is my first project and I took great care in designing a good solution that met all the requirements. The deadline was set very, very tight (less than a week to develop the entire frontend application) and I coded well into the night. This was ok for me, I didn't mind doing so if I knew that 1) I made the system flexible enough to adapt to new change and 2) this is the first project I'm developing on my own and I wanted to make a good impression. What really got me was the lack of communication forcing me to throw out large sections of my code. This needless rework left me without a night's sleep, which is admissable if it didn't happen again. What DID happen was that, on the day the backend people wanted to see some results on the frontend they HAD CHANGED THE SPECS WITHOUT TELLING ME. And then grew annoyed when I grew annoyed at the change! So not only did I have to rework my code because of a miscommunication, I had to rework my code because changes happened that I wans't even informed of! People acting as if it's my fault for missing something like that just tipped me over the edge. I blew up, decided to call it quits and take a walk. I talked to my boss about this, and although he's sympathetic, says that things like requirement changes, overtime, looming deadlines and miscommunication occasionally happen and that I should just take it with a little more ease. (He thinks I'm taking my job way too seriously and should just relax a bit.) I'm just a college student and this is my first job, so I would like to ask this as broadly as possible. What I have described here is the backstory for a hopefully general question: How resilient should I be to these kinds of stressors? Is two weeks too short? Is this common and I really am making a big deal out of it? Should I expect my work life to be filled with these kinds of mishaps and something I will have to deal with if I want to make a living as a programmer? PS: While I can imagine some people (like my professor) advising me to find a new job, this is not in the spirit of the question. I am not asking for career advice- I can tell how badly this is affecting my health and needs to change."}
{"_id": "226164", "title": "What rationale is used when programming language designers decide what sign the result of modulo operation takes?", "text": "Going through Modulo operation (the avenue I entered while exploring the difference between `rem` and `mod`) I came across: > In mathematics the result of the modulo operation is the remainder of the > Euclidean division. However, other conventions are possible. Computers and > calculators have various ways of storing and representing numbers; thus > their definition of the modulo operation depends on the programming language > and/or the underlying hardware. Questions:   * Going through Euclidean division I found that remainnder of this operation is always positive (or 0). What limitation of the underlying computer hardware forces programming language designers to differ from mathematics?   * Every programming language has it predefined, or undefined, rule according to which the result of the modulo operation gets it's sign. What rationale is adopted while making these rules? And if the underlying hardware is the concern then shouldn't rules change according to that, independent of programming language?"}
{"_id": "139970", "title": "How do I dive deep into code that does not have a single entry point?", "text": "I work on enterprise Java projects that do not have a single entry point from where I can trace the flow of execution. Some of the projects have hundreds of classes, and when I'm asked to add a feature to a project, I often find myself at a loss as to where to start looking at code. What's the best way to dive into such projects so that I can implement the feature quickly without wasting time."}
{"_id": "139979", "title": "Is it possible (or desirable, if not) to make an database engine organize the order of sql statements to maintain the referential integrity?", "text": "Today at work I found the following situation: We had two tables, `A` and `B`, with B having a foreign key linked to the primary key of A. On our application, we got two main situations that created the _problem_ : One where we had to add add some records in A, followed by the creation of some records in B referring to the ones in A. This was just fine, since we created our BLL to handle first the changes in A and them B. The _\"problem\"_ is, sometimes we will have to delete the records of B and them delete the referred record in A, wich raises an error, since we are trying to delete A before deleting B, what could break the referential integrity of these tables. Of course everything is inside a transaction, and we could deal with that in our BLL code, simply changing the order of wich changes cames first (in A or in B) based on the actions that have to be made, **but** my question is more conceptual than a _\"please help me solve my problem\"_ one, since the \"problem\" is already solved (but of course, I'm accepting suggestions if they came up! =D). Chatting in the office, we agreed that, inside a transaction, everything is being donne and if some problem occurs, what was done is rolled back. **My idea** : Why can't the transaction evaluate everything and them order the statements and execute that in a way that don't break the referential integrity, since after the transaction everything will be done and the order might not matter at all? After thinking a little about it, even I am not sure if this thing would be nice or create some king of living hell, since I can think of some situations where the order of the statements would matter, so I'm posting it here so we can discuss about it. I hope that my text is not confusing. And just to mention, I'm using `Microsoft SQL Server`. Dunno if this is possible in other databases."}
{"_id": "75016", "title": "Client contracts as a sole proprietor - What should be in the contract?", "text": "If this has already been asked, feel free to redirect me and I'll close this. I gave my current employer notice to quit my job a few months ago, and they haven't been able to find anyone to replace me. I'm able to leave the job in another month, and the company has started to ask me if I'd be willing to continue working on a contract. I've considered registering myself as a sole proprietor and doing some additional work for them, if they're willing to pay me silly amounts of money. If I were to do this, it would be done professionally, with a contract and a lawyer to write up the contract. But that brings up a problem; I'm not sure exactly what should be in the contract. Is there anyone who has experience with this and could suggest what should be covered by the contract, or things that I might overlook until they bite me in the ass? On an additional note, but more specific to my situation, I'm currently working for this company in a foreign country. If I decide to do additional work for them, it will be from my home country. Is there anything that I should be careful of, since the company isn't located in my country? I'm wondering how realistic or financially viable it would be to hold a company located in a foreign country to a contract. If it's not realistic or doesn't make sense financially, I might be better off not accepting the work. Alternatively, skipping the lawyer and contract and just going on trust might be okay, but I'm still weary of doing this even though I've worked with the company for a few years."}
{"_id": "182029", "title": "A good IDE for NodeJS - debugging especially important", "text": "Have a significant amount of a Data Warehousing application written in Javascript. The application is set up so that the Javascript code runs in a web browser (Chrome). Of course, running a Data Warehousing application inside a web browser is pretty dumb (the application is of significant scale that the rest of it runs on a cloud server cluster). Would like to install NodeJS onto the server cluster. A major concern is losing the ease of debugging Javascript inside the Chrome web browser. The developer tools for Chrome are awesome. It is incredibly easy to set break points and view variable values and application state using the Chrome web browser. When we move the Javascript code to the server, what is a good IDE to use with NodeJS? Right now, the server is running Python. For that we use PyCharm and have remote debugging set up such that we can debug line-by-line, view variable values and application state within PyCharm on our local machines even though the code executes on the server. Is there a way to do this with Javascript and NodeJS? Thanks so much!"}
{"_id": "242817", "title": "How to make a non-english clone of CoffeeScript?", "text": "I want to make a non-english programming language that is identical to what CoffeeScript is to JavaScript. What I mean is that I don't want to build my own design or syntax. Just want to have a non-english programming language that compiles to JavaScript. I want to follow everything CoffeeScript fellows so I don't really want to make any design decisions. For example: This is coffeescript:               number   = 42     opposite = true          number = -42 if opposite      I want my language to be something like:               \u0631\u0642\u0645 = 42     \u0639\u0643\u0633 = \u0635\u062d\u064a\u062d          \u0631\u0642\u0645 = -42 \u0625\u0630\u0627 \u0639\u0643\u0633      that get compiled to:               var number, opposite;          number = 42;          opposite = true;          if (opposite) {       number = -42;     }"}
{"_id": "75011", "title": "Do experienced Ruby on Rails developers use scaffolding?", "text": "In the Ruby on Rails tutorial, I read something that suggested that experienced developers do not use scaffolding since they tend to like to just write the code to connect the MVC on their own. In a different place I read that it is a good idea to use scaffolding because it helps you stick to convention so others who look at and interact with your code will understand what you are doing. I am pretty new to Ruby on Rails but not MVC or web application - should I generally try hard to stick to scaffolding conventions and let it guide me?"}
{"_id": "182025", "title": "Creating huge decision tree", "text": "I'm to write an event correlator. A fundamental part of the system will be a decision tree that recognizes the origin of the fault basing on recorded states and log files. Often many accidents will differ with minor details and many decisions taken will be made basing on fuzzy, incomplete or unreliable data, but most of these decisions can be written down as binary logic functions. Thing is, there will be a lot of them. I expect at least 100 nodes in the decision tree, and I may underestimate the value by an order of magnitude. And on top of that, as new, unexpected patterns emerge, unforseen failures happen leaving new traces, or with extension of the system new failure modes become viable, the decision tree will have to be maintained. (and it won't always be a pure tree structure - some faults of the same effect have two or more modes of appearance, some of these branching off into different modes, e.g. event A means failure X, event B means: check event C. If C is true, it's also failure X, but if not, it's failure Y. Although I can always normalize it into X1 and X2, which are technically identical but different from the tree point of view.) Also, the tree will be often fairly deeply nested so I'm afraid a simple series of nested if() will quickly slip out of control. Now my question is, how to store / write / build that tree so that it could be compilable into something the machine can digest, but still maintainable for the developers? Note this is for an embedded system, so heavyweight solutions like JBoss don't really fit unless they appear only on the compiler side, and the final system runs a compiled ruleset in something much more machine friendly. (the system is written in C++, it also makes extensive use of JSON, and will run on an ARM9 CPU if that's of any help.) ![A sample of the tree](http://i.stack.imgur.com/hw9Ur.png)"}
{"_id": "147836", "title": "Is overloading an example of the Open/closed principle?", "text": "Wikipedia says > _\"software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for > extension, but closed for modification\"_ The word **functions** caught my eyes, and I now wonder if we can assume that creating an overload for a method can be regarded as an example of the Open/closed principle or not? Let me explain an example. Consider that you have a method in your service layer, which is used in almost 1000 places. The method gets userId and determines whether user is admin or not:               bool IsAdmin(userId)      Now consider that somewhere it's necessary to determine if the user is admin or not, based on username, not userId. If we change the signature of the above-mentioned method, then we've broken code in 1000 places (functions should be closed to modification). Thus we can create an overload to get the username, find the userId based on username, and the original method:               public bool IsAdmin(string username)     {         int userId = UserManager.GetUser(username).Id;         return IsAdmin(userId);     }      This way, we've extended our function through creating an overload for it (functions should be open to extension). Is it an Open/closed principle example?"}
{"_id": "3558", "title": "I've stopped coding for fun, is this a bad sign?", "text": "At some point in time, I just stopped coding for fun. I used to go to work, finish my assignments and then upon arriving home I'd go and write stuff on the side for fun. However, I now just go home and try to avoid the computer. I'd rather read the paper, watch TV, go out to the bar, etc. Is this a bad sign? I mean I still try to keep up on the latest trends, hit up the developer forums/blogs/etc but I haven't said, \"I want to learn language X - I wonder if I could write app Y in it\" Has this happened to anyone else?"}
{"_id": "209106", "title": "What is bootstrap listener in the context of Spring framework?", "text": "I am studying Spring framework, in web.xml I added following which is a bootstrap listener. Can anyone give me a proper idea of what is a bootstrap listener?               <listener>         <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>     </listener>      You can see the doc here: ContextLoadListener > Bootstrap listener to start up and shut down Spring's root > WebApplicationContext. Simply delegates to `ContextLoader` as well as to > `ContextCleanupListener`. > > This listener should be registered after `Log4jConfigListener` in web.xml, > if the latter is used. > > As of Spring 3.1, `ContextLoaderListener` supports injecting the root web > application context via the `ContextLoaderListener(WebApplicationContext)` > constructor, allowing for programmatic configuration in Servlet 3.0+ > environments. See WebApplicationInitializer for usage examples..."}
{"_id": "204355", "title": "Choosing between performance vs readable/cleaner code?", "text": "If you have to pay the price of performance to make code more readable would you prefer that or you would always prefer performance over it?"}
{"_id": "204351", "title": "Session or request scope for account details", "text": "I have a (browser based) web application. On each page, I want to have a little label and link in a corner that displays the user's username and other account information along with a logout button. The information that will be displayed is immutable. Should I store that account information in session attributes when a user logs in and forget about it or should I use a filter/interceptor and load it on each request in the request attributes?"}
{"_id": "138007", "title": "Throwing an Exception if a Query Doesn't Use an Index", "text": "I'm working on a largish webapp that was developed by several other programmers and I keep running into performance issues caused by poorly written SQL queries and queries that don't use an index. I'm working on fixing the problems by logging how long each query takes to complete and if it's using an index. I was wondering if other people have had this problem before and what they've done to keep it from happening again. My initial idea is to throw an exception if any query doesn't use an index so it has to be taken care of in devel but to continue to log the large/slow queries so we can see long term where the slowness is. **Update 2012-03-05 11:56 EDT** We're using MySQL and my plan WAS to run explain on each query after it's run to check for indexs."}
{"_id": "138005", "title": "Where to define view-specific data objects in Rails", "text": "Background: there are several places in our app where we want to display date- oriented information on a calendar. The event_calendar gem looks nice and has lots of reviews, so it's what I'm planning to use. However, it's designed to work with a model. I'm not going to update our existing models to meet its needs, so will create a DTO class and a helper function to construct an array of instances from our existing models. My question is: where should that DTO class live? It seems like it should be defined inside `ViewHelper`, but that will violate DRY as soon as I use the calendar for two models (note: the helper functions will differ, it's just the DTO class that will remain the same). So, is there a standard place in the Rails directory tree where non-model- related classes live? Or is there a better/more idiomatic way to do this? One thought that I had was to make my helper function decorate the existing model instances with the methods that event_calendar wants to see."}
{"_id": "209108", "title": "What is the exact syntax of inline?", "text": "### CASE 1 (Definition and declaration in same source file) Suppose both my prototype and definition of global function is in .cpp file. Where should I write inline keyword to make compiler know?   1. In the prototype   2. In the definition   3. Both ### CASE 2 (Definition and declaration in same header file) If I have declared prototypes in .h file I want to make that function inline in more than one .cpp file using it, then should I define the function (to be inlined) in that .h file and include it to individual .cpp files? If yes, then in this case where inline keyword should be used? ### CASE 3 (Definition in Header file and declaration in Source file) If the prototype is in a header file, definition in a source file (in which other functions use the inline function), where must the inline keyword be used?   1. In the declaration in header file   2. In the definition in source file   3. In both"}
{"_id": "202213", "title": "Store a tree with near next neighbours", "text": "I would to find an efficient structure (speed and volume) to store nodes and their neighbourhood. My input is build out of stings in the following format                ./X/Y.log      where _X_ \u2208 [0,359] and _Y_ \u2208 [0,169] and each pair of ( _X,Y_ ) defined the coordinate of a cell on a grid of the size [170x360]. I would like to find which cells are neighboured (above, below, right and left), maximal 4 possibilities and to store this information (coordinate and direction). The structure, where the information will be stored, should not contain duplicate information (e.g. cell (50,50) is neighboured to cell (51,50) from the left side, but cell (51,50) is as well neighboured to cell (50,50) from the right side. Only one of those likes should be stored). An additional information, the number of input strings (format _./X/Y.log_ ) is not more then 5% of the total amount of possible cells (360*170 = 61200 possible cells). Which storage structure should I good to my problem? (The code would be written in C++)"}
{"_id": "202215", "title": "How can I best organise a Jekyll + Bootstrap + Git site?", "text": "So after many many many years of building sites from scratch (and doing a lot of the lifting myself) I've dipped my toes into two projects that have been around for a few years that I've been avoiding: Bootstrap and Jekyll. The design was a very customised job that required me digging into the LESS so I've got a Bootstrap source files, source assets and a build directory within that directory. Then there's the Jekyll side. That has its own structure, I'm symlinking in the bootstrap build directory, and the final content (the stuff I want to actually serve) buried in `_site` directory. Here's how it looks:               /.git/*     /.gitignore     /bootstrap/     /bootstrap/... a load of source files ...     /bootstrap/bootstrap/  # the build output     /jek/     /jek/... all the jekyll files ...     /jek/bootstrap/  # symlink on ../bootstrap/bootstrap/     /jek/_site  # the stuff I actually want to upload - but don't really want in git      In _my_ history, I've either been dealing with a Django project layout (which makes a fair amount of sense) or a static layout. What I have here is two separate build systems and it's driving me nuts. Is there a better way of structuring all this junk, or failing that, is there a way I can make bootstrap output directly into the jek directory? How do you handle co-dependent static sites like this?"}
{"_id": "202219", "title": "Is there a standard for Error Codes?", "text": "I've created a gateway which receives a POST from cUrl on one system which is a well-formed XML string. After processing the gateway sends back a response XML. All the fields in the XML are required and while the system sending the data constructs the XML itself I'm running some validation to make sure that every value that's being stored in the Request Class is actually. One thing my gateway does is that the response can also indicate an error and sends a message and response code which is then displaced on the system as the following message: > An unknown error occurred while processing. Code: # Message: ERROR_MESSAGE The original code just sends Code as 0 if there was no error or 1 if there was. I'm thinking of giving Code another value depending on the error since displaying Code in the error message is kinda useless if it's only ever going to be 1 (since you'll never see 0). So I'm wondering if there is a standard for creating error codes, particularly with PHP and XML."}
{"_id": "226293", "title": "Implementation of recurring fee system", "text": "I'm developing an application which will list members who have not paid their any previous month's fee and a separate list for those who have paid the fee. So, lets say a member who will be paying fee through out the year, each month and if he didn't pay fee for march 2013 then app should highlight him as un- paid member. What would be best practice to achieve it. Adding fee invoices for whole year already in database when member is added then loop through his payments to check if fee is paid or not, or add a validation date for member on his each payment, for example payment made in Feb 2013 then member is valid till 28.02.2013. Check if date today is >28.02.2013 then he has not paid.."}
{"_id": "219755", "title": "anonymous checkout", "text": "Working on a E-commerce solution where I need to handle checkout based on anonymous customer and as of now I am not able to think properly how best this can be implemented. Our ShoppingCart is being saved in database and and every update/ edit in ShoppingCart is being updated in database. Now I need to take care about creating an anonymous customer and than assign this cart to that customer so that add to cart and well checkout can be associated with this customer. Can anyone suggest me what can be the right way to go for this?   1. Should I create one anonymous user in database and use it everytime a request for new customer (anonymous ) is being created.   2. Place that user in current user session.   3. Perform any operation on cart with respect to the current session"}
{"_id": "219758", "title": "How to update User interface form through database update", "text": "I have a client server application. Assume I work as a Support executive, resolving customer tickets. We(our support team) have got two tickets to work on. Ticket 1: Client \"Liver\" raised a ticket to update his phone number.   Ticket 2: Same Client \"Liver\" raised a second ticket to update his email ID. I am working on ticket 1: Opened application, clicked edit Customer Info buttton, entered new phone number. I did not save the form(Edit form). In between, I left for CUPPA. My colleague is looking at ticket 2: He has edited the Customer information and updated with new email id: Its persisted in database. When, I come back and save my ticket with phone number update, it would overwrite his changes i.e.., his email ID change is lost or not updated for that Customer \"Liver\". Is there a way that when a get back to my work/page after CUPPA break, can I see the email ID with updated value? How to prevent this? What is the approach? Possible design ideas? How to ensure that there is no data loss?"}
{"_id": "219759", "title": "Semantic versioning when fixing an important bug", "text": "I currently manage a library which has a lot of public usage, and I had a question about semantic versioning. I want to refactor one fairly important part of the library which is implemented incorrectly - and has always been implemented incorrectly. But doing this would mean changes to the public API, which is a major decision. The change I want to make revolves around how iterators are used. Currently, users have to do this:               while ($element = $iterator->next()) {        // ...     }      Which is incorrect, at least in PHP's native Iterator interface. I want to replace with this:               while ($iterator->valid()) {        $element = $iterator->current();        // ...        $iterator->next();     }      which is analogous to:               foreach ($iterator as $element) {         // ...     }      If you look at Tom's guide to semantic versioning, he clearly states that any changes to the public API (i.e. those which are _not_ backward compatible), should justify a major release. So the library would jump from 1.7.3 to 2.0.0 which, for me, is a step too far. We're only talking about one feature being fixed. I do have plans to eventually release 2.0.0, but I thought this was when you completely rewrote the library and implemented _numerous_ public API changes. Does the introduction of this refactoring warrant a major version release? I really can't see how it does - I feel more comfortable releasing it as 1.8.0 or 1.7.4. Does anybody have some advice?"}
{"_id": "76666", "title": "Generating every combination of a 32 character alpha numeric string?", "text": "Is it possible to generate every possible combination of a 32 character alpha numeric string? If so, how long would it take on today's fast computers? My lecturer at university said it's impossible, and I thought \"nothing is impossible\". Any ideas on how long it'd take and how it'd be done? We're using Java at the moment. I would like to think I can prove him wrong."}
{"_id": "208471", "title": "Is SQLite a sensible option for data logging?", "text": "I am trying to setup a small data-logging application under linux. The data arrives via serial port, and from there it should be pumped to logging and to graphical display. The logging functionality is there for initialization purposes of the graphing functionality, after a reboot. The data arrives every second and is composed of 1 number of 5 decimal digit precision, and should be logged for 2 years. My current free space is about 15GB. The languages of the project so far are bash and python. My objectives are to make simple but robust (maybe some live backups to a flash drive?) logging system, that is also fast and easy to read from python and write from bash. Is SQLite suitable for this (I have never used it)? Is a text file in my _home_ directory suitable for this?"}
{"_id": "70996", "title": "'<' versus '!=' as condition in a 'for' loop?", "text": "Say you have the following `for`loop*:               for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {         // ...     }      which it could commonly also be written as:               for (int i = 0; i != 10; ++i) {         // ...     }      The end results are the same, so are there any real arguments for using one over the other? Personally I use the former in case `i` for some reason goes haywire and skips the value 10. * Excuse the usage of magic numbers, but it's just an example."}
{"_id": "232517", "title": "How do I evaluate if an Orchestration is the appropriate design pattern for a given problem?", "text": "Say that you're doing a code review, and you find yourself faced with an orchestration pattern:               class OrchestrationClass {       private Configuration _configuration;       private DataStore1 _dataStore1;       private EfficientComputationService _service;       private ResultPrettifier _formatter;            public DoSomething () {          with (data = _dataStore1.LoadForConfiguration(_configuration)) {             return _formatter.PrettyPrint(_service.Process(data));          }       }     }      Under which circumstances is this considered to be a valid pattern/anti- pattern (and how is the anti-pattern to be cleanedup/refactored)? * * * **For context:** This recently came up in a code review, and several people mentioned the pattern/anti-pattern. Searches of the standard patterns literature, related Google search and scan through blog posts / wikis have all led to indirect mentions. Which leads me to believe that this pattern / anti-pattern hasn't yet had a formal treatment (or, if it has, it's not yet online). Hence - the question is here, where someone more experienced or widely read might be able to answer (or provide a reference)"}
{"_id": "172908", "title": "What kind of image should be used in a web page?", "text": "I have a site that will have lots of images of large size. What is the best format that I should choose for displaying these images? I need the website to load fast. I am jumbled with different formats of images like jpeg, png, gif, bmp, etc. Which to use in this case and why ?"}
{"_id": "70992", "title": "What naming Convention to Use for C# Function Parameters", "text": "There are situations when a name passed in Parameter will be Cast into a new type, but the name of the Passed object should remain similar. For the case of Class Attributes, we can use this operator, but what about for local variable in functions. What coding convention is widely used. example,               void MyFunc(BaseClass myPara)     {       DerivedClass _mypara = (BaseClass)myPara;     }      or on the contrary               void MyFunc(BaseClass _myPara)     {       DerivedClass mypara = (BaseClass)_myPara;     }      or any other conventionl"}
{"_id": "172905", "title": "Use an else after exception (or not)", "text": "Consider this bit of code:               if (x == 1)     {       throw \"no good; aborting\" ;     }          [... more code ...]      Now consider this code:               if (x == 1)     {       throw \"no good; aborting\" ;     }     else     {       [... more code ...]     }      The two cases work exactly the same way. The first case has the advantage that you don't have to \"encase\" the rest of the code in an `else`. The second has the advantage of following the practice of explicitly having an `else` for every `if`. Can anyone provide any solid arguments in favor of one over the other?"}
{"_id": "172901", "title": "Why do Windows commands allow `-` and `/` switches?", "text": "> shutdown /?     > Usage: shutdown [/i | /l | /s | /r | /g | /a | /p | /h | /e | /o] [/hybrid] [/f]      The windows `cmd.exe` command `shutdown` only documents forward slash `/` switches, but it accepts dash `-` switches as well. For instance, both work:               shutdown /s /t 0     shutdown -s -t 0      When was this added and why?"}
{"_id": "181729", "title": "How to implement classes that should be loaded once?", "text": "I'm building a little framework, currently it is just for fun. I'm wondering how should I implement classes that should be instantiated by the framework and be passed to the controller to use? For instance: I have an \"input\" class that houses functions which take POST and GET data and filter it. The class is also used by the framework for routing and similar things. Should I make these methods static? Should I use the singleton pattern? Or maybe should I make something like Codeigniter has - a loader that stores instances of all instantiated classes?"}
{"_id": "233642", "title": "Why does the Mailbox app need their own backend?", "text": "I am only coding in Objective-C and I have no experience with backend coding, only a high-level understanding. I understand why a lot of programming projects require backend servers but I'm not absolutely clear on a high-level perspective why Mailbox needs their own. They get their data from the Gmail API, It is my understanding that most iOS client app receive data from a backend from a public API (like Gmail), download in the iOS app and show it in their app. Therefore they have no need for their own servers in order to receive the appropriate data to show it to their users. My only explanation is that Mailbox follows this logic: Gmail data --> Mailbox's app AND servers --> users interact with app --> save changes on their own servers and Google's via the API The last part to me would mean that they would basically keep the data of all the Archived, Delayed, Deleted, and Listed emails on their own servers rather than Google's. Is my understanding correct? Thank you"}
{"_id": "233647", "title": "faster method of testing uwsgi + nginx", "text": "Im currently looking for a way to test a lot of requests in the shortest amount of time possible on my web application. My current workaround is to just import the modules I want to test into another python file and shoot requests directly into those functions, but I'd rather have it go through the web server framework as it normally does when live. My issue with that is going through all of these requests using HTTP protocol takes too long for my liking. I'm using uwsgi behind nginx, is there any way to just put a request directly through a socket for nginx? Or are there any other methods that could work and still be relatively quick when processing a lot of test requests?"}
{"_id": "233648", "title": "Why don't http headers include device resolution, pixel density, etc.?", "text": "I'm currently developing a responsive website with css media queries. It would be much easier if the server returned a different html/css for each viewport.   I was wondering why couldn't the client include its viewport information when requesting an html file. This behavior is already common for returning websites in the correct language using the `Accept-Language` header."}
{"_id": "238614", "title": "How can we use Tine 2.0 in our closed source software product, without violating the AGPL?", "text": "We develop a closed source product and customers want to add two parts:   * Calendar    * Contacts Tine 2.0 would provide this, but we want to use it as a library. Since Tine 2.0 uses the AGPL licence, we need to open source our code, if we would use some kind of linking. How can we use Tine 2.0 in our closed source software product, without violating the AGPL? The solution I have in mind is this: Our product and Tine 2.0 could communicate over the database. All HTML views get done by our code, and mobile sync stuff gets handled by tine20. (I would like to open source our product, but my boss does not)."}
{"_id": "238615", "title": "Web Services and Computer Services to access low level system functions", "text": "So I think I'm in the right place to ask this question. Its fairly conceptual. I love web development, I work in ASP.NET MVC 3/4/5 C# and have created industry standard applications such as CRM's and Test Case Documenting. I'm very aware of the limited capabilities of Web Application over Desktop Applications. Desktop applications can obviously invoke system level operations, such as reading barcode scanners (leftfield I know). I feel, that this can be possible with web applications through the use of HTML 5 WebSockets and Web Services. Is it possible to abstract out all the domain level architecture from a ASP.NET MVC application into a Web Service and have the Web Service handling, effecitively, the database. So is it possible through the use of a Desktop Service, connect to that Web Service to take advantage of the Desktop Service's ability to invoke system level operations? Now, initially, the Desktop Service will be run on the Web Server, and this is exactly what I want for now. In the long run, this technology would only be running in an Intranet environment. I'm really not interested in the Internet Scope, and none of what has been said is in reference to the Internet Scope."}
{"_id": "108578", "title": "Is it true that once you learn one language most of the rest come easy?", "text": "I was told by someone that I should start with Python and then, once I'm fluent in Python, the rest of the languages will be learned quickly. Is there any truth to this?"}
{"_id": "18072", "title": "Economics of a career in bioinformatics", "text": "I am a software developer looking for a new set of challenges. I am therefore seriously considering undertaking study towards a Masters of Science in Bioinformatics (I have a bachelor degree in Comp Sci). I have done extensive reading on the field and find it fascinating. In a perfect world this would be the only consideration. However, I am a little concerned about the economics of such a move. From talking with people associated with the degree, it looks like salaries in Bioinformatics are about half as much as one would make as an experienced software developer in industry. This would amount to a halving of my wage and all the lifestyle changes that entails. From my reading it appears that most bioinformatics is done in academia, or government / grant supported research labs. Is there much opportunity for bioinformaticists to work within industry (pharma, biotech)? Are industry wages higher? Are these opportunities growing? The people I have spoken to have quoted $50k - $60k for entry level (Masters) positions (in Australia). To go much higher seems to require a phd or post- doc. Does this sound accurate? What is the trend for wages in this field? It seems that almost all the software used in bioinformatics is open source. I agree that this is excellent for research, but does this come at the exclusion of commercial software? Is there opportunity to build commercial software for bioinformatics? Finally, what opportunities exist for bioinformaticists to make a comparable income to software developers working in industry? Thanks."}
{"_id": "18074", "title": "How do open source projects maintain quality?", "text": "How do open source projects maintain quality? What keeps the projects from people with relatively little programming experience checking in poor quality codes?"}
{"_id": "89654", "title": "Learning Haskell and C# Simultaneously", "text": "I'm a programmer who's still in his teens. I've been doing some programming for a couple of years now, I started on Ruby, and later switched to Python due to the massive amount of learning resources there. I never really built anything worthwhile with Python, but feel like I learned a fair amount of programming fundamentals going through Zed Shaw's **Learn Python The Hard Way.** For the last few months I've been looking over languages to learn, as I feel a lack of interest in Python. In the end I decided I want to learn both C# and Haskell as my next languages. My brother, a software engineer, recommends I don't learn Haskell yet, as he thinks I'll get tripped up with some of the ideas associated with it, such as it being pure. Originally I would've just stuck with learning C#, as I have a few books on it and it's frameworks such as XNA, but Haskell keeps drawing me back to it. I also have a copy of **Learn You A Haskell For Great Good!** which seems like a great start into Haskell. I feel like I could learn C# along with Haskell at the same time, although it might take me longer. One of my worries about not learning C# quickly is that with the fast pace of C#/.NET/XNA development that the books I have will be outdated by the time I'm really ready to use them. (I don't have any directly about beginning C#, just C# in Depth, a couple ASP.NET ones and an XNA 4.0 book.) Also note, I have access to Visual Studio Ultimate, which seems like it could be useful in learning how to program while still getting access to Intellisense and other VS features. Haskell on the other hand seems extremely enticing as I'm really interested in some of the things it's best at, such as algorithms/problems at sites such as Project Euler. The advantages of learning two very different paradigmatic languages at the beginning of my programming career seems very advantageous. My question is this, would it be better (considering my situation) to learn C# and write some non-trivial programs in it, something I've yet to really do, then attempt to learn Haskell and write some programs in it? Or could I feasibly learn both at the same time and still be fluent in both and be able to write projects in both of them? **Edit:** I chose tdammers response as the questions answer for the reason that he recognized both options and gave reasons for why either could work. In some ways I agree with Sayem, that generally it's best to learn just one language and master it. However, I have years before I'll be entering the workforce as a programmer, and since it is one of the things I love most I feel like it wouldn't be much of a burden to take the time to learn both and master both simultaneously. That said I still might chose to focus mainly on one language and learn the other on the side. **Edit 2:** I've chosen to learn both C# and Haskell at the same time. I'll be using online resources along with a couple books I have. Below is a list of the resources I'm going to use for each language. **C# -**   * _**Programming C# 4.0_** \\- Ian Griffiths, Matthew Adams, and Jesse Liberty   * _**C# in Depth_** \\- Jon Skeet   * **Framework Specific Books**     * _**XNA Game Studio 4.0 Programming_** \\- Tom Miller & Dean Johnson **Haskell -**   * _**Learn You A Haskell For Great Good_** \\- Miran Lipovaca (Also available free online.)   * _**Yet Another Haskell Tutorial_** \\- Hal Daume (Wiki version found here.)   * _**Real World Haskell_** \\- Bryan O'Sullivan, John Goerzen and Don Stewart (Avaible online here.)"}
{"_id": "76591", "title": "Linux distro for software development support?", "text": "I've spent too much time on setup & maintain a development server, which contains following tools:   * Common services like SSH, BIND, rsync, etc.   * Subversion, Git.   * Apache server, which runs CGit, Trac, Webmin, phpmyadmin, phppgadmin, etc.   * Jetty, which runs Archiva and Hudson.   * Bugzilla.   * PostgresSQL server, MySQL server. I've created a lot of Debian packages, like `my-trac-utils`, `my-bugzilla- utils`, `my-bind9-utils`, `my-mysql-utils`, etc. to make my life more convenient. However, I still feel I need a lot more utils. And I've spent a lot of time to maintain these packages, too. I think there maybe many developers doing the same things. As tools like subversion, git, trac are so common today. It's not to hard to install and configure each of them, but it took a long time to install them all. And it's time consuming to maintain them. Like backup the data, plot the usage graph and generate web reports. (gitstat for example) So, I'd like to hear if there exist any pre-configured distro for Development Server purpose, i.e., something like `BackTrack` for hackers?"}
{"_id": "234915", "title": "How did the \"abnormal\" options in shell commands appear?", "text": "These options which obscure me are like `ps aux`, `route -ee`, `gcc -fPIC xxx`, `find . -name xxx` and so on. The examples above aren't comprehensive. I.e., I don't think that the argument handle function like getopt or getopt_long could handle all the \"strange\" options. In the other hand, these handle ways aren't intuitive. Why do GNU programmers or Unix/BSD programmers code in these ways?"}
{"_id": "234911", "title": "How should the database schema be migrated?", "text": "I am using a bunch of freelance programmers to develop a web application. We are in the early stages of development, meaning that we are making many changes to our database schema. We have one test database and one production database, we also have a replica of the live database, which gets a clone of the live database every night (mostly used to make it easier to recreate bugs found in the live web application. Since I use many freelancers, which I do not know, I often do not trust their database skills and they do not have any understanding of the outmost importance of the data in our live database. My question is what kind of process you would recommend after a freelancer determines the need to make a change in a database. They will currently commit change to our database schema together with their pull request (on GitHub), so I can review their proposed database changes. They are also free to apply the changes to our live database. My question is then how I should migrate the live data to the new schema. I thought about asking the developer of a patch to also create an alter table statement, which I would run on the live database, but I do not trust that they will be careful enough. I prefer such migration to be automatic (at least in most cases) in order to be able to deploy on a daily basis, but I do not know whether that is at all realistic. I also need to have a process that I trust so much that I do not need to make any tests on the live system if I have tested a pull request on our test system (working with our test database). How can this be done?"}
{"_id": "188509", "title": "Commercial software license with free upgrade clause", "text": "If I am selling software commercially and I offer users free upgrade for 12 months after purchase, can I make them agree to a new licence when they download an upgrade? What should the original license say in order to stipulate this? And if I can do this, then wouldn't it be possible to put in the new license that they are no longer entitled to free upgrades _(being the devil's advocate here)_?"}
{"_id": "245260", "title": "Constructors, Ignore Arguments", "text": "Is it possible to have a constructor in a class, that you can ignore certain arguments/parameters? For example, I have this constructor Car(color, make, model, wheels, type, doors) Could I call this constructor and not include the type parameter?"}
{"_id": "83300", "title": "iPhone vs Windows Phone development", "text": "I am a computer science student working on some mobile games. However, I am completely torn and keep going back and forth deciding whether to learn Windows Phone or iPhone development. I love developing for Windows Phone because C# and XNA are both great tools. However, it is unproven on the market and has a market share many times less than that of the iPhone If you have experience in one or both, I would love to hear what you have to say. It would also be helpful to hear what you think about the prospects of learning C#/objective C in terms of job prospects because well, I am a student and that's important. A few things to keep in mind: I own and love the iPhone I understand memory management I want to develop the best programming practices possible (I have heard that because C# hides so much, you can develop bad habits) EDIT: Because some people asked. This is purely for my own benefit, not for a class. I have time to spend this summer to develop my skills and I want to get the most out of it. I have a few game ideas that I have been toying with, but I primarily want to develop good practices."}
{"_id": "132166", "title": "Is a silverlight UserControl considered a view?", "text": "So far I have been implementing MVVM in my silverlight app pretty well, I just had one question. I have a few User Controls that I made and was wondering if they should be placed in the Views folder or in a seperate folder call UserControls. Is a user control considered a view?"}
{"_id": "132165", "title": "Programming a chatterbot - understanding language", "text": "I hope this is an answerable question. Let me give it some context: I am a psychology student and a programmer. I'm going to look into creating a artificial intelligence in the form of a chatterbot. I've been looking around the web, and read about projects such as Eliza which was a first simple psychoterapy program, that has now actually been written in javascript (so you can see how simple this was). **I want to create achatterbot that can converse**, and that will understand semantically and grammatically a sentence, for the purpose of reciprocal communication rather than simply outputting an answer. I'm interested in ways to learn about programming with \"language\". I know that this is a complex question, so the answer will probably be complex too. What programming languages/frameworks should I look into when wanting to analyze the semantics. I know of the excellent Wolfram Alpha project that has an API. But I don't want to create an artificial intelligence that can answer any random question. To parafrase: What frameworks / programming languages are suited to work with deconstructing linguistic units and understanding language, for the purpose of conversing? Also do you know of any projects that implement these?"}
{"_id": "213611", "title": "Old BASIC programming", "text": "I am trying to make sense of the depicted BASIC (old school) \u201cspaghetti\u201d code, but I\u2019m lacking the knowledge. The result should reveal a set of coordinates to be used for my next task. Is there anyone with right skills who can help me? Or maybe direct me towards an online test site where I can do the input myself.               01 GOTO 50     02 B$=\"program \"     03 C$=A$+B$     04 PRINT C$     05 RANDOMIZE TIMER     06 R%=1     08 R%=R%+INT(RND*10)     10 REM      12 GOTO 860     14 A$=\"random \"     16 B$=\"number \"     18 C$=A$+B$     20 PRINT C$     22 GOTO 27     24 REM     26 REM     27 PRINT R%     28 GOTO 212     30 REM     50 A$=\"This \"     60 GOTO 02     210 REM     212 A$=\"and terminates \"     214 B$=\":-) !\"     216 C$=A$+B$     218 PRINT C$     220 END     850 REM     860 A$=\"only \"     870 B$=\"prints \"     880 C$=A$+B$     890 PRINT C$     900 GOTO 14"}
{"_id": "155008", "title": "Which pattern to use with a typical Web Form?", "text": "I am writing a simple ASP.NET Web Forms application. I want to improve the code by implementing any design pattern with which abstraction is achieved and increases manageability and understandability. Which pattern is recommended? Please also provide links to sample applications."}
{"_id": "213617", "title": "c++ web with nginx - Do I have to worry about thread safety?", "text": "I am currently developing my website with c++. I know that nginx handles connections with multiple threads to provide high performance. And not all c++ code is thread safe.   * What's the relationship between nginx's multithreading and c++ application's multithreading?   * Do I have to worry about this?    * What should I do to avoid possible issues?"}
{"_id": "213616", "title": "Could we set priorities only relative to each other instead of fixed numbers?", "text": "AFAIK the lowest priority has the highest number in scheduling and in my system all priorities must be different. But isn't other policies thinkable? For instance, how about a policy where priorities are not numbers but say that a task's priority would be defined only in term of another task's priority, and that other task would be the closest in priority to the task whose priority we are setting. Then we would never use actual numbers for priorities, but we would keep a data structure sorting the tasks in priorities and when a task comes as new or is getting a different priority assigned, then this structure is rebalanced. Would this priority mechanism be feasible or do you not agree that it's a working idea?"}
{"_id": "144878", "title": "Understanding blocking and non-blocking frameworks", "text": "Could someone help me understand what is the difference between the two, far as I understand it when request comes to a blocking framework it creates new thread for that request and processes it, if second request comes to server before the first one has finished it execution it will create another thread. Now for non-blocking server when one request comes to a web server it wont create a thread but will wait for a request to complete and in case another request comes to a framework before first has finished executing it wont be able to process it before it returns result of first request. Did I get it right? Another question I have is what exactly happens with second request in non- blocking framework does browser just waits for server to respond till request expires or something else happens? Yet another question is, why are web apps built with non-blocking servers generally considered faster (is it just because of time spend on scheduling threads or something else?) And finally, if non-blocking frameworks can process one request at a time, how can web apps built with non-blocking frameworks process more requests than ones built with blocking frameworks (assuming that above statement is correct). Does that mean that for each instance of blocking framework on our server we would actually deploy multiple instances of non-blocking framework?"}
{"_id": "193416", "title": "In Scheme, what is formally a program's state?", "text": "I think i've understood more or less what a parsed Scheme program looks like (a binary tree with atomic values on the leaves, if i have understood correctly). Can anybody please define to me, or give a reference, what a _state_ (or a _computation_ ) of a Scheme program is? Is it just the current binding plus a position, or a stack of positions, on the syntax tree? (In such a case, i would appreciate a reference for a formal definition of Scheme binding as well :).) Is there some simple description, like the one for the Turing Machine (the program + the current content of the tape + the current position on the tape)?"}
{"_id": "205821", "title": "Is a \"start\", \"run\" or \"execute\" method a good practice?", "text": "I'm currently working on a code base that has many classes that implement a Start method. This seems like two-phase construction to me, which I had always considered a bad practice. I can't tell the difference between this and a constructor. When is it appropriate to use a start method instead of normal object construction? When should I prefer to use the constructor? Edit: I don't think it is that relevant but the programming language is C#, it could equally apply to Java or C++"}
{"_id": "218939", "title": "Web application structure review", "text": "I'd like to have suggestions about the structure of my web application. **What the app does:**   My app receives files from about 800 scanners around my country and the users see the scanned pages into this web application, then they can organize the pages in groups, choose which one keep and which one discard, and insert some additional information to each group.   After this, another kind of user check what the first type of user has did and approve or discard each group of pages.   After that, a procedure on another server transforms each group in PDF and TIFF multi page. After this little background to have an idea of what my web app does, this is how the files tree looks:               ajax     |- ajaxaction1.php     |- ajaxactionx.php          cache     |- xxx_xxxxxxxxxxxx.gif          css     |- style.min.css     |- font-awesome.min.css          fonts     | here there are the fonts needed by font-awesome.min.css          js     |-functions.min.js     |-main.min.js     |-jquery.x.x.x.min.js     |-jquery.x.x.x.min.map     |-jquery.lib1.min.js     |-jquery.libx.min.js          views     |-features.php     |-features.tpl          config.ini // DB configuration file     index.php // the page that is used by the application     init.php // read description below     web.config // used to restrict access to only the right files      **ajax:**   Folder where there are PHP scripts that are called by Ajax to perform INSERT and UPDATE queries to database. **cache:**   Folder where there are temporary .gif files extracted from the scanned pages sent from the scanners to my server.   These images stay here just the time needed to process them, then them are deleted. **css:**   Here are stored the only two css files needed by my web app. **js:**   in this folder are stored all the JS files.   `functions.min.js` is a file where I declare all the javascript functions   `main.min.js` is where the functions are called **views:**   Here I store the PHP and TPL files that are loaded by AJAX to show the requested pages.   The PHP files perform queries to DB and prepare a matrix, then the TPL files get the matrix and print the markup. **init.php:** In this file I perform the connection to the database and initialize the $pdo session.   I also check that the user is correctly logged in (I use a single sign on provided by an external software to login users).   Here I also set some common PHP function used in the other PHP scripts.   This script is included in each PHP page.       I'd like to have reviews about how I've organized the files and folders of my application."}
{"_id": "218936", "title": "Does a Mixin By Definition Allow Storing Data in Mixin-Level Instance Variables?", "text": "Several implementations of mixins (e.g. Ruby mixin, Scala trait) include support for storing data (e.g. variables, properties) between method calls in instance variables. There was a bit of debate in this question about whether or not a Java virtual extension method qualified as a mixin because they cannot store data in this way; all variables are inputted and outputted within the scope of the method call and cannot be stored in an instance variable. Essentially, there was debate about what a \"mixin\" by definition is and whether or not implementations in Ruby and whatnot go beyond the commonly recognized definition of the programming concept. Unfortunately, the definition of a mixin seem rather vague in this regard. For instance, Wikipedia says the following: > With mixins the class definition defines only the attributes and parameters > associated with that class; methods are left to be defined elsewhere, as in > Flavors and CLOS, and are organized in \"generic functions\". These generic > functions are functions that are defined in multiple cases (methods) by type > dispatch and method combinations. The above says that a mixin defines attributes, but doesn't cite sources that might clarify this. However, every other definition simply fails to mention whether or not mixins allow storing data or if they are limited to methods. To further add confusion, Wikipedia earlier describes mixins as `an interface with implemented methods`, but interfaces can't store instance variables. I tried to find out how it was defined in Flavors, which was the first programming language to use something called \"mixins\", but I couldn't find enough information online about it. So can a mixin by definition allow storing data? Or is this something that is ambiguous and is left up to the programming language to decide?"}
{"_id": "109626", "title": "How do I structure a larger Flask application?", "text": "I have a relatively simple web application that is written in Python using the Flask microframework. I've really enjoyed Flask's ease of use, however, as the app has grown larger it has started to become unwieldy having all of my actions (and utility functions) in a single file. My views.py is about 700 lines of code and I'd really like to break things out into more discrete units. How should I restructure my code?"}
{"_id": "109624", "title": "Scheduling dependent tasks in a scrum sprint", "text": "I'm on a project right now that is using the scrum methodology with 2 week sprints. Here's what our team looks like:   * 1 business analyst   * 1 tester   * 1 user experience designer   * 2 developers (1 for the UI and 1 for the back-end processes)   * 1 project manager In a single sprint, we'll have 1 product backlog item (PBI) to design the UI for a page, another PBI to write the .Net code for the page, and 1 PBI to test the page. How should these 3 product backlog items be scheduled so that they all get completed by the end of the sprint? Since they are all dependent on each other and require at least 3 members of the team to work together, it seems to me like they each need deadlines in order for them to get done in time. The scrum master keeps saying that they don't need deadlines because the cross-functional team will take care of it. This hasn't worked in 10+ sprints, though. Shouldn't the project manager be aware of this critical path and monitor its progress?"}
{"_id": "87531", "title": "Math questions at a programmer interview?", "text": "So I went to an interview at Samsung here in Dallas, Texas. The way the recruiter described the job, he didn't make it sound like it was too math- oriented. The job basically involved graphics programming and C++. Yes, math is implied in graphics programming, especially shaders, but I still wasn't expecting this... The whole interview lasted about an hour and a half and they asked me nothing but math-related questions. They didn't ask me a single programming question, which I found odd. About all they did was ask me how to write certain math routines as a C++ function, but that's about it. What about programming philosophy questions? Design patterns? Code-correctness? Constness? Exception safety? Thread safety? There are a zillion topics that they could have covered. But they didn't. The main concern I have is that they didn't ask any programming questions. This basically implies to me that any programmer who is good at math can get a job here, but they might put out terrible code. Of course, I think I bombed the interview because I haven't used any sort of linear algebra in about a year and I forget math easily if I haven't used it in practice for a while. Are any of my other fellow programmers out there this way? I'm a game programmer too, so this seems especially odd. The more I learn, the more old knowledge that gets \"popped\" out of my \"stack\" (memory). My question is: Does this interview seem suspicious? Is this a typical interview that large corporations have? During the interview they told me that Google's interview process is similar. They have multiple, consecutive interviews where the math problems get more advanced."}
{"_id": "206440", "title": "How should I tackle code testing on a solo project?", "text": "I am writing a piece of software and I would like to release it open source. Should I try just getting it stable on my computer (with normal use; no \"things a monkey wouldn't even do\") before releasing it, or should I take a different approach? * * * **What I am leaning towards doing right now is:**   1. Write it myself during the **`pre-alpha`** stage to get it partially usable. Play around with the functions (like a normal person would).   2. Release it publicly and add some bells and whistles during the **`alpha`** stage   3. Say it's in **`beta`** once all features are complete, and then, along with some others (hopefully) do the \"monkey testing.\"   4. Generate the publicity for my [fairly basic and boring, but still good enough for free and **`stable`** ] project. Then keep improving it. This seems to be a usual system (to me, the one who has never really done this whole thing ever before). * * * **Is there something I could do to automatically test for basic errors before I go alpha? Or is this one of the best things I can do? How should I go about testing?**"}
{"_id": "215769", "title": "How are generics implemented?", "text": "_This is the question from compiler internals perspective._ I am interested in generics, not templates (C++), so I marked the question with C#. Not Java, because AFAIK the generics in both languages differ in implementations. When I look at languages w/o generics it is pretty straightforward, you can validate the class definition, add it to hierarchy and that's it. But what to do with generic class, and more importantly how handle references to it? How to make sure that static fields are singular per instantiations (i.e. each time generic parameters are resolved). Let's say I see a call:               var x = new Foo<Bar>();      Do I add new `Foo_Bar` class to hierarchy? * * * **Update:** So far I found only 2 relevant posts, however even they don't go into much details in sense \"how to do it by yourself\":   * http://www.jprl.com/Blog/archive/development/2007/Aug-31.html   * http://www.artima.com/intv/generics2.html"}
{"_id": "129328", "title": "HTML5 video sprites", "text": "I'm currently working on a project where there is a requirement to dynamically composite multiple synchronised video sources onto a single canvas. The initial prototype I put together loaded the video into HTMLVideoElements and then used requestAnimFrame (via Paul Irish's shim) to draw these onto a single canvas and maintain sync between the different elements. Although this is functional and the system can hold sync fairly well (+/- 80ms tolerance) it is somewhat inefficient to say the least. I've been thinking about optimisations and one approach that seems pretty straight forward is to combine all the media into a single larger 'video sprite' and serve this. This would allow it to be load into a single video element which could then be used extract and render the areas of interest client side using `drawImage()` and remove the need to manage sync between sources. Has anyone else implemented something similar in the past? If so what approach worked well for you?"}
{"_id": "15241", "title": "When/why is it easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission?", "text": "The saying \"It's easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission\" seems pretty popular among programmers and IIRC was attributed to Grace Hopper. In what situations is this typically true, and why do you believe that such a counterintuitive proposition would hold?"}
{"_id": "15247", "title": "What are the main components, technologies, and features of the next generation of web applications?", "text": "What's next in the web industry, as social media reaches a plateau, what are the next milestones in this \"experiment\"? I guess I'm looking for in depth opinions on what's next in our beloved industry? What's beyond facebook, wikis, collaboration, shiny buttons, and interactive instantaneous communications? What will drive the next dot com boom?"}
{"_id": "171766", "title": "How to develop a menu for Linux apps", "text": "I want to create a python panel for Linux like pypanel or tint2 just for fun and to do practice with python development. Now the problem is: I want to create an auto-generated menu, but I don't know where to start. Where can I find all user's installed software in a Linux distro? I know I should look in the `/usr/bin` folder, but I don't know if it's really the best thing to do. Is there a way to filter installed apps to avoid dependecies programs?"}
{"_id": "131067", "title": "Image color/grayscale classification", "text": "I am trying to classify a set of images into grayscale or color groups. I have been using ImageMagic to do that, comparing the color image to a grayscale version of itself and then using the Peak Error to determine if it is a grayscale image, as shown here: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/compare/#type_general This is working, however, it is producing false results for a lot of back and white images. I have tracked this issue down and I believe it is being caused by pseudo-black pixels (e.g.: rgb(0,0,5)). These psuedo black pixels appear as full color, because they technically are. Is there a better way to classify these images? What would you suggest I do to get rid of these false results?"}
{"_id": "39220", "title": "Web2.0, AJAX, HTML5, Facebook, social web, OpenId, OAuth, web browsers... where is it going ?", "text": "We have seen many new things in the last five to seven years on the web: Facebook, HTML5 appeared, new browsers grew strongly, Google failed with Wave. Facebook, GTalk and Gmail are cross-platform and device. Similarly, I **thought** and **hoped** that forums, chat, mail, usenet, conversation rooms and p2p protocols could inter-operate to allow the user to transparently access all those services. Of course I realized that things are far more complicated, for several reasons:   * The IETF cannot invent new things. They just propose standards.   * Microsoft and other big players are often obstacles to relevant innovation regarding open formats. The biggest hurdles are document formats and Internet Explorer, with its delayed reaction supporting web standards.   * Smartphones, thanks to the appearances of OS's such as iOS and Android, are finally able to navigate the internet: Former devices were deaf, and weren't directly connected to the internet.   * The mail protocols were left unchanged despite the growth of spam and malware. I don't know what to think, because I think there is still a lot to do, but I feel like it will never happen. Or that nobody seems interested in the basic text transmit features... So what do **you** think are the next big steps in the evolution of the web? Do you think it will still walk hand in hand with open source?"}
{"_id": "171768", "title": "Suggestions for connecting .NET WPF GUI with Java SE Server", "text": "**BACKGROUND**   We are building a Java (SE) trading application which will be monitoring market data and sending trade messages based on the market data, and also on user defined configuration parameters. We are planning to provide the user with a thin client, built in .NET (WPF) for managing the parameters, controlling the server behavior, and viewing the current state of the trading. The client doesn't need real-time updates; it will instead update the view once every few seconds (or whatever interval is configured by the user). The client has about 6 different operations it needs to perform with the server, for example:   * CRUD with configuration parameters   * query subset of the data   * receive updates of current positions from server It is possible that most of the different operations (except for receiving data) are just different flavors of managing the configuration parameters, but it's too early in our analysis for us to be sure. To connect the client with the server, we have been considering using:   * SOAP Web Service    * RESTful service   * building a custom TCP/IP based API (text or xml) (least preferred - but we use this approach with other applications we have) As best as I understand, pros and cons of the different web service flavors are: **SOAP   ** pro: totally automated in .NET (and Java), modifying server side interface require no code changes in communication layer, just running refresh on Web Service reference to regenerate the classes. con: more overhead in the communication layer sending more text, etc. We're not using J2EE container so maybe doesn't work so well with J2SE **REST   ** pro: lighter weight, less data. Has good .NET and Java support. (I don't have any real experience with this, so don't know what other benefits it has.) con: client will not be automatically aware if there are any new operations or properties added (?), so communication layer needs to be updated by developer if server interface changes. con: (both approaches) Server cannot really push updates to the client at regular intervals (?) (However, we won't mind if client polls the server to get updates.) **QUESTION   ** What are your opinions on the above options or suggestions for other ways to connect the 2 parts? (Ideally, we don't want to put much work into the communication layer, because it's not the significant part of the application so the more off-the-shelf and automated the better.)"}
{"_id": "170417", "title": "Modular enterprise architecture using MVC and Orchard CMS", "text": "I'm making a large scale MVC application using Orchard. And I'm going to be separating my logic into modules. I'm also trying to heavily decouple the application for maximum extensibility and testability. I have a rudimentary understanding of IoC, Repository Pattern, Unit of Work pattern and Service Layer pattern. I've made myself a diagram. I'm wondering if it is correct and if there is anything I have missed regarding an extensible application. Note that each module is a separate project. ![Architecture diagram](http://i.stack.imgur.com/b8da2.png) * * * **Update** So I have many UI modules that use the db module, that's why they've been split up. There are other services the UI modules will use. The UI modules have been split up because they will be made over time, independent of each other."}
{"_id": "215764", "title": "Advice on designing web application with a 40+ year lifetime", "text": "**Scenario** Currently, I am apart of a health care project whose main requirement is to capture data with unknown attributes using user generated forms by health care providers. The second requirement is that data integrity is key and that the application will be used for 40+ years. We are currently migrating the client's data from the past 40 years from various sources (Paper, Excel, Access, etc...) to the database. Future requirements are:   * Workflow management of forms   * Schedule management of forms   * Security/Role based management   * Reporting engine   * Mobile/Tablet support **Situation** Only 6 months in, the current (contracted) architect/senior programmer has taken the \"fast\" approach and has designed a poor system. The database is not normalized, the code is coupled, the tiers have no dedicated purpose and data is starting to go missing since he has designed some beans to perform \"deletes\" on the database. The code base is extremely bloated and there are jobs just to synchronize data since the database is not normalized. His approach has been to rely on backup jobs to restore missing data and doesn't seem to believe in re-factoring. Having presented my findings to the PM, the architect will be removed when his contract ends. I have been given the task to re-architect this application. My team consists of me and one junior programmer. We have no other resources. We have been granted a 6-month requirement freeze in which we can focus on re- building this system. I suggested using a CMS system like Drupal, but for policy reasons at the client's organization, the system must be built from scratch. This is the first time that I will be designing a system with a 40+ lifespan. I have only worked on projects with 3-5 year lifespans, so this situation is very new, yet exciting. **Questions**   * What design considerations will make the system more \"future proof\"?   * What questions should be asked to the client/PM to make the system more \"future proof\"?"}
{"_id": "12626", "title": "How do I report software vulnerabilities found in an open source library that are widely used but have a dilapidated team structure?", "text": "For most open source project, there is a well-founded project team and corporate sponsorship, and a lot of active contributors. The procedure for filing bug reports are clearly documented. However, there are also some open source project(s) that have been in existence for more than 10 years (maybe 15), and were included in all sorts of free and commercial products (OSes and linux distros, etc), and everyone just assumes it is correct, despite some parts of it in a state of despair and full of bugs. It appears to me that the real users (programmers in-the-know) simply choose to use the library in a certain way as not to trigger the bug. Few choose to speak up. There are also big-name companies that fix the bugs quietly (in their own products) without giving out any patches. And use that to their business advantage. There is no leading developer. There is no information as to who are the active developers, except that you can browse the mailing list and see who has recently submitted patches, and assume that they might know someone who is helpful. How should I handle a vulnerability case, without leaking information in a way that gives ammunition to the bad guys? _This question is a spin-off from:http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5168/whats-the-biggest- software-security-vulnerabilty-youve-personally-discovered_"}
{"_id": "88218", "title": "How to keep a project easy to understand and intutive?", "text": "I am working on this project, which will soon contain loads of packages, projects etc. (Java). So, from the start I need to keep track of the high level package and class structure, monitor which class is being called where, so that I don't make it over complicated after 6 months. What is the right way to go about it? Any tools for this?"}
{"_id": "200845", "title": "Testing MVC models when using SQL referential constraints", "text": "I have an MVC web app that's wired against PostgreSQL. The DB uses the full gamut of various referential constraints to ensure referential integrity, as opposed to say the Rails approach, where you try to do most of the checks in the model logic. Also, by choice, I'm not using an ORM, I'm writing the SQL statements by hand for each model. Now, I want to write unit tests and functional tests for it. The problem is that if I write these tests against the database (as opposed to mocking), I will have to create an entire long hierarchical chain of references for each model I'm testing, or the system won't let me generate them in a vacuum. E.g. I cannot create a model without a foreign key, and the foreign key does have to point to an existing record, etc. all the way up the chain. The thing to remember is that, unlike with an ORM, I cannot trust my data access layer (DAL) to work as expected. I might have fat fingered a statement somewhere, or maybe just got the logic wrong. I must test my data access layer to do what it's supposed to. One way to solve this problem is to use something like Rails' Factory Girl, which, when properly configured, will generate the chain of records you need to instantiate any model in your system. This way I test both the DAL and the model logic. This is obviously not ideal because test cases would waste a ton of time hitting the DB and add extra boilerplate that I simply don't need. My suite will go up in run time real fast, which is bad. The solution I'm thinking of is to:   * have a test suite just for the DAL. This test suite would make sure of creating all of the right references and would only test that the SQL statements are working as expected. References won't really be explicitly tested (seems a bit of an overkill, but it can be done if desired), but at the very least it will make sure that a chain of relations can be built in the \"happy path\" scenario. This suite is ultimately going to be comparatively short and thus not consume too many cycles.   * mock both model and controller tests, so that things can be tested in isolation without DB reference constaints getting in the way. This is where the vast majority of testing will happen, so mocking the DB makes complete sense as far as saving time goes. This way I'm also not testing the SQL access layer twice, no need to. My question is, is the proposed solution above how most people solve their SQL with constraints and model/controller tests problem, or am I missing an option here?"}
{"_id": "200846", "title": "Should I use webKit or is there a better technology to make a browser in Windows", "text": "I create web applications most in RoR and PHP. About a year ago a company wanted to use my app but in a stand alone browser window in Linux, so I wrote one in python using webkit, locked it down to just accessing the target web app, easily done. Now what options do I have to do the same for Windows? I want basic browser functionality such as going back and forward pages and to stop the script from loading. It will have to run stand alone or maybe install via .exe file. Sorry for my ignorance on this but I very rarely enter a Windows Environment."}
{"_id": "200847", "title": "Versioning Javascript Files in a Web App", "text": "I am currently building a Web application using a LAMP stack that relies on Javascript on the front end. As the app grows and expands, I naturally plan to expand and change the javascript files. I'm concerned that many of our users' computers will cache the files (which I usually want) but I want to be proactive to make sure that new files are grabbed when I update. The obvious answer seems to version the javascript files throughout the application so that `edit.js` become `edit.0.3.6.js` and can be updated whenever the file changes so a new version is downloaded. I think that this is the most fail-proof method, but I question if there is an easy way to manage these versioning changes automatically. We use Github to version control all our files."}
{"_id": "127842", "title": "SS7(M3UA, SCCP, TCAP, MAP) Stack", "text": "I'm building an open source SMSC from scratch; it's almost finished, The SRI and the forwardSM operations are working, but I still have few things to do for the receiving part. I've built the SS7 stack already, but I'm using DB for saving the TCAP transactions IDs to be updated later to get/generate responses. My approach is this: I created memory table (heap table), saved the TCAP TID in the database, then compared the received TCAP TID with the TIDs saved in the database and then decide whether to end the TCAP session or continue. What is the best way to implement it? I'm thinking of doubly linked list that holds the TCAP TID. Am I going towards the right direction, or should I use another technique other than database or D-linked list? Should I leave it as it is, and let the database do the job for saving the TIDs? Please note that I'm using SCTP implementation available on Linux (lsctp) as a transport protocol, the language I'm using is C and the DB is MYSQL."}
{"_id": "127843", "title": "Question about a \"Benchmark\" regarding Java and .NET", "text": "To get that out of the way - i am not asking about which platform is faster or try to start a flame war. Question: Why is the .NET version slower 5x in the first test ? The results i got were: .NET Test1: 48992696 Test2: 1210070 Java Test1: 9651995 Test2: 1029374 Is this strictly behind list implementations ? If yes, is there something to make list insertion faster on .NET side ? EDIT: Used preallocated lists and removed int appends, got this down to .NET Test1: 11 838 363 Java Test1: 712 481 .NET               namespace TestApp     {         class Program         {             static void Main(string[] args) {                 long samples = 100;                 long test1Average = 0;                 for (int i = 0; i < samples; i++) {                     test1Average += runTest1();                  }                 test1Average = test1Average / samples;                 System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(\"TEST 1 AVERAGE: \" + test1Average);                      List<String> list = new List<String>();                 for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++)                 {                     list.Add(\"String: \" + i);                 }                      long test2Average = 0;                 for (int i = 0; i < samples; i++)                 {                     test2Average += runTest2(list);                 }                 test2Average = test2Average / samples;                 System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(\"TEST 2 AVERAGE: \" + test2Average);             }                  private static long runTest1()             {                 List<String> list = new List<String>();                 long time = System.DateTime.Now.Ticks;                 for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++)                 {                     list.Add(\"String: \" + i);                 }                 return (System.DateTime.Now.Ticks - time) * 100;             }                  private static long runTest2(List<String> list)             {                 long time = System.DateTime.Now.Ticks;                 foreach (String s in list) {                     s.ToString();                 }                 return (System.DateTime.Now.Ticks - time) * 100;             }              }     }      Java               public class Main {          public static void main(String[] args) {         long samples =  100;         long test1Average = 0;         for (int i = 0; i < samples; i++) {             test1Average += runTest1();         }         test1Average = test1Average / samples;         System.out.println(\"TEST 1 AVERAGE: \"+test1Average);              List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();         for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {             list.add(\"String: \" + i);         }         long test2Average = 0;         for (int i = 0; i < samples; i++) {             test2Average += runTest2(list);         }         test2Average = test2Average / samples;         System.out.println(\"TEST 2 AVERAGE: \"+test2Average);     }          private static long runTest1() {         long time = System.nanoTime();         List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();         for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {             list.add(\"String: \" + i);         }         return System.nanoTime()-time;     }          private static long runTest2(List<String> list) {         long time = System.nanoTime();         for (String s : list) {             s.toString();         }         return System.nanoTime()-time;     }      }"}
{"_id": "127841", "title": "How to structure this program?", "text": "I am struggling with the best way to structure a program that I am writing because the method I currently have feels very clunky and each part depends a lot on the others. This is what the program needs to do:   1. Parse a word document to extract a list of contacts.   2. Get a list of contacts in a specified group from my Google account.   3. Compare the contacts from the word document to the Google contacts and either:   4. Update the contacts on Google with the details from the word document or   5. Create a new contact on Google if one doesn't exist or   6. Delete any contacts on Google that are not in the word document. I also want   * to have a GUI for this program that is responsive while all of the above is going on   * the show a preview of the changes that steps 4-6 will make before actually performing them and allow the user to reject the changes (all or nothing would be fine for now) **Edit:** everything from here on down is what I've currently done. I added it so that specific refactoring advice could be given if that was what was deemed necessary. If you have a way that I can structure this program then you can mostly likely skip the rest of it. * * * I've already made a start so allow me to explain how I've written the code so far. The program is written in C#.   1. The parsing of the word document to get a list of contacts is in a class called `WordDocumentParser`. It has a constructor which takes the path of the word document and a `GetContacts` method which performs all of the parsing and returns a list of contacts. For what it's worth, I'm using COM to handle the parsing.   2. Steps 2-6 from above all start from a new class called `GoogleContactsMaintainer` with a constructor that takes the list of contacts from the word document, a couple of important groups on Google and a `ContactsRequest` which is used to retrieve/update/save/delete contacts on Google. The first thing this class does is to get the contacts from Google and match them to the contacts from the word document. The matched Google contact is saved in a property on the word document contact.   3. Then I do a preview which is the next 3 steps.   4. I start off with updating the contacts that have been matched from the word document to the Google contacts. I create a `ContactUpdater` which updates the matched Google contact but doesn't commit the changes. It also adds to a list of strings any changes that have been made and sets a boolean property on the contact to say that it has been updated.   5. Next is creating new Google contacts for those word document contacts that haven't been matched to a Google contact. This is done in a `ContactCreator` class which creates a Google contact, sets it on the word document contact and sets a flag on that contact to indicate it is a new contact. The new contact is not saved.   6. Last is to delete any Google contacts that haven't been matched to a contact from the word document. To do this, I just find those contacts and add them to a list with a description saying that they will be deleted.   7. At the minute, I display these changes to the user and then immediately update them (I'll explain why the user can't stop this in a minute). This is done in the following three stages.   8. Update: find any contacts from the word document that have the `HasBeenUpdated` property set, construct a new `ContactUpdater` and commit the changes.   9. Create: find any contacts from the word document that have the `NewContact` property set, construct a new `ContactCreator` and insert the new Google contact.   10. Delete: find any Google contacts that haven't been matched to a contact from the word document and delete them from Google. In an attempt to keep my GUI responsive while all of this is going on, I created a `MaintainContactsWorker` class which subclasses `BackgroundWorker` and calls all of the above 10 steps from the `OnDoWork` method. This is why I am unable to ask the user if they want to commit the changes or not. To me, everything feels horribly inter-connected and completely untestable so I am hoping you can point out things that I should be doing to break the dependencies and make my code more maintainable and testable. From writing this post, I one thing that I feel I should have is a repository which would handle the CRUD operations I am performing on the Google contacts. Does this seem like a good place to start? Thank you for any suggestions you can offer, hopefully I've explain myself well enough."}
{"_id": "128942", "title": "As a programmer, what am I supposed to know like the back of my hand?", "text": "I am talking of stuff related to programming only and not system or network administration. I am about to finish college and get a programming job, so I am interested to know about this. Although this may seem a subjective question, I think this is not quite and falls in the category of best practices. I don't think a programmer can know everything about OS he works on, all the APIs of the framework he works on, all the features and quirks of the languages he works with, all the data structures and algorithms, all the settings for his compiler, linker, IDE etc. I don't think it is practical either. Or can he? The usual answer is \"most\". What is this most? If you were to interview a programmer with about 5 years experience, what would you expect him to know? Or lets say if you were to attend an interview and you have about 10 years experience behind you, what would you brush up on?"}
{"_id": "180534", "title": "Training Camp Algorithm", "text": "**Problem Statement -** ![Problem Statement](http://i.stack.imgur.com/IVyTN.png) The task is to find the most profitable contiguous segment of tests, given a sequence of test scores, with being allowed to drop any _k_ tests from a chosen range. The problem appears to be a DP problem at the outset, but complexity arises when the test drop condition comes into the picture. What modifications can be made to the classic DP approach for this problem? Or is there a completely different approach to it? Test Range - N <= 104 Source - INOI 2011 Q Paper"}
{"_id": "159589", "title": "moving from software development to business analysis", "text": "I am seasoned analyst/developer who has grown from a senior dev to lead a small team working on line of business applications for a large company. In a last ten years I have been working within the same business domain area and have gained quite a bit of domain knowledge and experience working directly with end (business) users. Because of my business domain knowledge I have been offered the interview for a business analyst (BA) position. It is not to say that I got bored with the software development as such, not at all, in fact in a last two of years I have re-discovered it again and have learned more technologies than in a previous eight years, but I rather see that move (from analyst/dev to ba) as a career progression. I will have a chance to learn new things, but **more importantly I will be able to make a bigger impact on the development process, which should result, well, in a better software**. The pay is slightly better too. This is what motivates me \u2026 to go to the interview. **However:** Should I realize, couple of years down the road, that I am not cut out to be a good BA, would I be able to go back and start programming again, given that I would not be programming at all while performing a BA job? This is what worries me in a near term. In a longer term I think being a BA makes a job knowledge less (or non) transferable. Not sure though if this really is the case, so if you can share your thoughts \u2013 please do. As an software developer, if the things are to go really badly job-wise, and I can always change a job and start programming something what have a huge demand for e.g. mobile applications for today. But I think BAs are different, in a way, that their experience/knowledge is so tied to a particular industry, which only make them valuable for small number of companies within the same business/industry. My another concern is that being a BA will make me a lone-rider, in between person of all other teams/departments (business, IT, management), which would be a difficult position to be in ... daily. Lastly, many times I saw BAs been demoted to do technical writing / testing / support job, rather than extracting the requirements from the business/users and reasoning with IT on what could be done and how (which is what I think a \u201ctrue BA\u201d should be doing). My question is \u2013 should I try and move to BA or my assumptions (which you can infer from what I have written above) about a BA's role in the development process are wrong and I\u2019d better stay where I am now? Thank you."}
{"_id": "180531", "title": "Did \"Viaweb\" work in the browser without JavaScript and somehow use only Lisp?", "text": "I just read Beating the Averages, and Mr. Graham writes that they had a significant advantage over competitors because they used Lisp. From what I understand, Viaweb was a WYSIWYG editor that ran in the browser for customers to create their own 'stores'. This is obviously inconceivable now to do without JavaScript, yet there is no talk of it at all on this article. Mr. Graham only talks about Lisp and nothing else. So is (was?) it somehow possible to bypass JavaScript and use Lisp for the front and back ends?"}
{"_id": "215519", "title": "Why would Java app make RPC call to itself?", "text": "I am working with a multithreaded homegrown multi-module app in my new job. We use the the `Thrift` protocol to communicate `RPC` calls between different stand-alone applications in a distributed system. One of them listens on multiple ports and I just noticed that it actually makes an RPC call to itself from one thread invoked from one socket it listens to (web service call) to another port within the same app. I verified that it could accomplish the same thing if it just went and directly called the method that the remote procedure ultimately invokes as it is all within the same application, same JVM. To make it even more mysterious, the call is completely synchronous, i.e. no callbacks involved. The first thread totally sits and waits until it makes a call across the wire to itself and comes back. Now, I am perplexed why anybody would do it this way. It seems like calling somebody on the phone that sits in the same room as you do. Can anybody provide an explanation why the developer before me would come up with the above mentioned model? Maybe there is a reason and I am missing something."}
{"_id": "224478", "title": "Should I use git and mercurial in the same directory?", "text": "I am looking for a solution for having revision control on framework code and project code at the same time. If I am using a MVC framework, there may be specific directories where I should put my project code. I want to easily apply framework updates using revision control while still keeping project code under a separate repository. The solution I have come up with is to clone the framework repo using git, and then create a mercurial repo on top of it, and creating .gitignores and .hgignores so that they don't pick up on each other's code. My directory structure would in theory look something like this:   * Framework/ (git)      * Framework_Code/ (git)     * Models/ (git)        * projectModel.php (hg)     * Views/ (git)        * projectView.html (hg)     * Controllers/ (git)        * projectController.php (hg)     * Front_Controller.php (git) Assuming I have the correct .gitignores and .hgignores, when there are framework updates I can do a simple               git pull      And when I need to commit project code I can do               hg commit      Is this a bad workflow? Are there any _easier_ ways to set up something like this with either git or mercurial? I'm open to alternative solutions because this seems like something that someone smarter than me would have a solution for."}
{"_id": "228796", "title": "What's the right licensing to sell a web app, without renounce to reuse the code?", "text": "I'm making a web app for a client who is probably going to use it for commercial use. I'm not affialited with me, nor we are commercial partners. However, although I'm making this project for this client, I want to be sure I can reuse the same code on future projects. I know there are many licenses (GPL etc.) but it's not clear to me which one complies the following requirments:   * The code can be sold by me to the client (so he pays me for the code)   * The client may use the code for commercial use   * I still own the ownership on the code, i.e. , I can reuse the code for future works, either in open source works or other projects (which I may sell) Furthermore, it's not clear to me: When I choose I license how can I \"apply\" it? I mean: who \"certifies\" my app is licensed udner that specific licence and do I have to pay for this \"certification\"? Thanks in advance :)"}
{"_id": "159583", "title": "Identifying elements from data feeds generated by affiliate sites", "text": "I am working with data feeds from affiliate sites. The basic idea is to provide an interface where the user can paste a link to an XML datafeed (these are huge btw, around 60 mb) that would then be streamed, parsed into small chunks, and mined for the required data which would then be stored in the database. The problem is that different affiliate sites have different Schemas for their XML's. It is a little hard mapping the elements in an XML to your database attributes when you don't actually know which element contains what. My Solution: Use XPath to traverse through the first set of parent and it's descendent's, fetch the elements as well as the data and and ask the user to map this data to the attributes in the database by selecting from a set of radio buttons that represent the attributes from the database. This will be done just once for each new Feed, once the system know's what's what it will automatically upload the data from the XML to the database. Does this sound viable? Is there a better solution? I realize this leaves an uncomfortable opening for human error.. Thanks."}
{"_id": "240864", "title": "Checking program robustness using static code analysis", "text": "(Building on  this question) If you have a static code analyser such as Checkstyle, is it possible to to relate any of the stuff that it checks for to actual robustness? Some of the things that Checkstyle checks for are e.g.:   * **Class design** : Visibility of class members, enforcing _public_ only static final members, no public constructors for utility classes, exceptions are immutable etc.    * **Coding** : Inline conditionals, no empty statements, no illegal instantiation and magic numbers   * **Duplication** : Checks for code duplication,    * **Import** : Checks that packages are imported correctly   * **Metrics** : Checks everything from the number of times logical operators have been used in a statement to the number of classes that the given class relies on other classes (coupling) etc.   * **Naming Conventions** : Checks many properties of variable name, package names, method names, class names etc These are just some of the main things that Checkstyle checks for. Could any of these areas actually help \"improve\" the robustness of the code by detecting \"errors\" ? I mean sure it helps with the readability and other code smells, but I can't see how I can relate it to robustness. Do you need to look at code in run-time to actually inspect robustness issues?"}
{"_id": "120317", "title": "Name user object and user table correctly", "text": "It's maybe simple but I think about this every time I build a new application. How do you name the class for the _current_ user of the application and for the _orm_ class of the user table? Usually I have something like   * **CurrentUser** : Logged-in user, stored in session, info for last activity etc   * **User** : ORM Class (C# EF CodeFirst, but it doesn't matter) And yes, they could have the same name in different namespaces, but I don't really like that."}
{"_id": "240863", "title": "How can I get my team excited about writing a blog", "text": "My team has all agreed that writing a company development blog is a good idea. There are a lot of documented benefits to blogging, both for the individuals and the company. However, while everyone agrees that a blog is a good idea in theory, no one seems to want to actually sit down and write an entry. Between having and endless flow of other work to be done, most of the team being introverts who don't generally like to put themselves out there, and the notion that there's a good chance the blog won't catch on and will be left to rot in some corner of the internet anyway, I'm not really sure how to get people excited about actually getting started. I don't want to just force someone to start writing if they don't want to, it doesn't help anyone to have a hastily written uninformative boring blog. What can I do to get my team excited about actually getting some article written?"}
{"_id": "154757", "title": "Where should I insert data into the database?", "text": "I am making a pretty standard PHP sign up form that will validate the data the user entered and then redirect to a page with a success message. I would like to store this data in a database. Should I insert this information into the database before I redirect the page or after it is redirected?"}
{"_id": "245989", "title": "How to handle versioning with multiple independent pull requests in a Git repository?", "text": "Let's say Alice has a Git repository, and the version is kept track of inside the repository (let's say `package.json` for npm). Bob sends a pull request to Alice which increments the version number from `0.1.0` to `0.1.1` Carol also sends a pull request to Alice (independently from Bob's request) which increments the version number to `0.1.1` as well. How can Alice deal with this situation?"}
{"_id": "245987", "title": "Nested objects in REST", "text": "I have simple set of resources, not more than 10 types, with some one-to-many relationships. For example   * An order has many entries   * An entry has many comments   * A machine can have multiple entries associated   * A material can have multiple orders associated All the model objects are identified by a unique Primary Key I communicate using REST HTTP calls. How should the objects be modeled? ### Option 1: Nesting objects The relationships can result in nested objects:               entry{       PK: '_',       prop1: '_',       prop2: '_',       machine:{         PK: '_',         prop3: '_'       },       order: {         PK: '_',         material: {           PK: '_',           prop4: '_'         }       }     }      And similarly for the other objects ### Option 2: Reference by PK This approach \"flattens\" the objects:               entry{       PK: '_',       prop1: '_',       prop2: '_',       machinePK: '_',       orderPK: '_'     }      What is the best approach? obviously both have clear advantages and disadvantages. Is an hybrid approach a viable solution? If so, which criteria should I follow to chose between \"flat\" or \"nested\" objects? Could it possibly depend by the technology I use to implement that (Changing the model because of the technologies smells like bad practice though...)? To give some context, I am using ASP.NET WebApi 2 for the backend and AngularJS in Typescript for the frontend"}
{"_id": "241403", "title": "Inserting data to database from Android", "text": "I have to build an application where the requirement is that my clients will send data from their Android device and I have to save that data to a database. I have done the part of coding that inserts data from Android emulator to my XAMPP database on localhost, now I have to implement the real thing. How can I connect the devices where my application will be installed to the XAMPP database I have created so that the data they send can be inserted into it?"}
{"_id": "241402", "title": "How can I work out how many IP addresses there are in a given range?", "text": "I'm wondering if there is a formula to work out the amount of IP addresses in a given range. I have a system that takes either a single IP address or a start and and end IP address:   * A single one might be: `145.16.23.241`   * A range might be: `145.16.23.122 - 145.16.23.144` The people inputting these aren't technical, nor are they receiving these details from technical people, so suggesting using CIDR notation isn't an answer for me. I want to be able to highlight that when entering a range such as: `122.100.10.12 - 128.10.200.140` it might not actually be a range and rather 2 singular IP addresses since such a range would comprise of `x` (large number of) IP addresses. Is there a basic formula to help me highlight this?"}
{"_id": "241401", "title": "How does an optimizing compiler react to a program with nested loops?", "text": "Say you have a bunch of nested loops.               public void testMethod() {         for(int i = 0; i<1203; i++){                     //some computation             for(int k=2; k<123; k++){                             //some computation                 for(int j=2; j<12312; j++){                                     //some computation                     for(int l=2; l<123123; l++){                                             //some computation                         for(int p=2; p<12312; p++){                                 //some computation                         }                     }                 }             }         }          }      When the above code reaches the stage where the compiler will try to optimize it (I believe it's when the intermediate language needs to converted to machine code?), what will the compiler try to do? Is there any significant optimization that will take place? I understand that the optimizer will break up the loops by means of loop fission. But this is only per loop isn't it? What I mean with my question is will it take any action exclusively based on seeing the nested loops? Or will it just optimize the loops one by one? If the Java VM complicates the explanation then please just assume that it's C or C++ code."}
{"_id": "81271", "title": "Converting a 1,000,000 rows database", "text": "If I have a database that stores the login credentials of 1,000,000 users in PLAINTEXT, how much effort will it take me to md5 hash these passwords?"}
{"_id": "81276", "title": "How do you write technical blogs?", "text": "I usually read a lot about programming related stuff. When the topic I read is not related to my work directly ,(say reading about some Algorithms which I don't use in everyday work), I forget them. One way to reinforce what has been learnt is to write blogs. I am a beginner in writing blogs. When I started writing, I figured out that it is very tough. Even simply reproducing the content takes about two hours. Writing a well thought about blog often takes a whole day or sometimes a weekend. Is this normal? Any tips to write technical tutorials/technical blogs?"}
{"_id": "249652", "title": "JavaScript: testing with undefined value", "text": "While learning more about IE\u2019s documentMode property, I came across some sniffing code, which, of cause, fails in browsers like Firefox. However, a simplified version of the test would readas such:               if(undefined < 9) planA();     else planB();      Now in Firefox, it fall through to planB(), but so does this:               if(undefined > 9) planA(); // note: greater than     else planB();      The question is, is this the documented behaviour? That is, does the undefined value short-circuit the test?"}
{"_id": "81278", "title": "Process each row against each other, how much would it cost?", "text": "If I have `n` rows in a database, and I want to compare every row against each other, how many loops (or processes) would I need to do. Is it **n 2**? (so if I have 30,000 rows then it would be 900,000,000) Or is it:               for (i = 0; i < 30000; i++) {         for (j = i + 1; j < 30000; j++) [              // Process         }     }      If it is the later, then how many processes is that (and is there an equation to work it out, given `n`)? Also if I have to process each row `y` times, how does that affect the calculations? I need to check a database of companies for possible duplicates. To check, they want to do a similarity check on common fields like business name, phone number, etc. If a field difference is under a certain percentage threshold, then mark it as a possible duplicate. I can code this fine by my self, but I am curious about he performance ramifications."}
{"_id": "242727", "title": "How to canonise a road network", "text": "I am working on geographical data which represents the road network of some city and I need to automatically fix inaccuracies in the data. Data was manually produced by \u201cdrawing\u201d the road network over some actual map overlay with a geographical system like `qgis`. As a result, many road portions which connect in reality are not connected in the data, that is, endpoints of connected roads might be off by a few centimeters or sometimes a few meters. As a result, the road network is \u201cwrongly\u201d digitized as a graph or combinatorial object\u2014that is, the simple algorithm assuming that roads are connected when they have a common endpoint is too optimistic and misses a lot of connections. How can I process and fix the geographic data to recover the correct combinatorial road network?"}
{"_id": "43421", "title": "web services, J2EE, spring, DB integration project ideas- maybe data mining related?", "text": "I am a graduate CS student (Data mining and machine learning) and have a good exposure to core JAVA (>3 years). I have read up a bunch of stuff on Design patterns J2EE Web services( soap and rest) spring and hibernate Java Concurrency - advanced features like Task and Executors. I would now like to do a project combining this stuff (over my free time of corse) to get a better understanding of these things and to kind of make an end to end software (to learn the best design principles etc + svn, maven). Any good project ideas would be really appreciated. I just wanna build this stuff to learn so I dont really mind re-inventing the wheel. Also, anything related to data mining would be an added bonus (fits with my research) but absolutly not necesary (since this project is more to learn to do large scale software developement)"}
{"_id": "212980", "title": "Web App vs. Desktop App Regarding Deployment", "text": "I'm taking on an opportunity for a local business to develop a small, simple timesheet manager (they still record time by hand) and am currently in the planning phases. It will include basic functionality such as managing employee information, logging time worked on a weekly basis for payroll, and generating reports for administration. I've developed Windows Forms applications for a while and am fairly confident my coding skills are where they need to be for this project, but I'm fairly new to both ASP.NET and the concept of developing a full desktop system as opposed to individual applications, so my questions will probably sound very elementary. I'm mainly struggling with understanding how to choose between ASP.NET and Windows Forms with regard to deployment down the road. Hopefully you guys can offer some insight. I'm still a bit fuzzy on how database/web application hosting works. If I develop for desktop, will the database need a physical server if more than one workstation/client wants access? Could one of the workstations act as a server (there are under 20-30 employees at any given time, so data size shouldn't be an issue)? Would an ASP.NET system require purchasing a web host? Or, can the web files be hosted on a local computer/server with IIS as an intranet? Can virtualization fit somewhere in all this? I guess it boils down to: Can I get them up and going for free, or is a server/hosting cost implied either way? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "212986", "title": "What's the relationship between meta-circular interpreters, virtual machines and increased performance?", "text": "I've read about meta-circular interpreters on the web (including SICP) and I've looked into the code of some implementations (such as PyPy and Narcissus). I've read quite a bit about two languages which made great use of metacircular evaluation, Lisp and Smalltalk. As far as I understood Lisp was the first self-hosting compiler and Smalltalk had the first \"true\" JIT implementation. One thing I've not fully understood is how can those interpreters/compilers achieve so good performance or, in other words, why is PyPy faster than CPython? Is it because of reflection? And also, my Smalltalk research led me to believe that there's a relationship between JIT, virtual machines and reflection. Virtual Machines such as the JVM and CLR allow a great deal of type introspection and I believe they make great use it in Just-in-Time (and AOT, I suppose?) compilation. But as far as I know, Virtual Machines are kind of like CPUs, in that they have a basic instruction set. Are Virtual Machines efficient because they include type and reference information, which would allow language-agnostic reflection? I ask this because many both interpreted and compiled languages are now using bytecode as a target (LLVM, Parrot, YARV, CPython) and traditional VMs like JVM and CLR have gained incredible boosts in performance. I've been told that it's about JIT, but as far as I know JIT is nothing new since Smalltalk and Sun's own Self have been doing it before Java. I don't remember VMs performing particularly well in the past, there weren't many non-academic ones outside of JVM and .NET and their performance was definitely not as good as it is now (I wish I could source this claim but I speak from personal experience). Then all of a sudden, in the late 2000s something changed and a lot of VMs started to pop up even for established languages, and with very good performance. Was something discovered about the JIT implementation that allowed pretty much every modern VM to skyrocket in performance? A paper or a book maybe?"}
{"_id": "212987", "title": "If I send an IPA over TestFlight, can it be used to deploy to the app store?", "text": "I am currently working for a small startup. I was previously under contract, now I am working for equity (no pay). The thing is, there is not yet a signed agreement in place as the details are being worked out. I may finish development before the contract is ready. I'm not currently under any contract or agreement, so the other party doesn't have any legal claim (that I know of) to the code I'm writing now, other than NDA (which just precludes me from cutting him out and releasing on my own). He already has the old code that I wrote under contract. I've made it clear to the other party that I won't submit the app or turn over the code until there's something signed to protect my interests. I've stopped pushing commits to the company repo (I'm now the only developer actively working on the project). However, I would still like to send builds over TestFlight for feedback and testing purposes. The other party has access to the developer portal and iTunes Connect for code signing, etc. Things are amicable and I don't foresee getting burnt on this, but I'm not going to put myself in that position. My concern is that if I send a finished build via TestFlight, it could be extracted and submitted to the app store without my participation. They wouldn't have the source for future maintenance and updates, of course, but it could be reverse-engineered by another developer later working from the old code base. Is this technically feasible at all? If so, is there a way I can send builds for testing while protecting my interests?"}
{"_id": "49640", "title": "Interfacing the payment systems", "text": "I'm a complete newbie to using online payment systems for web projects, and can't really think of where to start. Let's assume that web system in question needs to generate some income online, and the business idea/functionality is in place, while organizing cash flow is the only unsolved problem. Points of interest are how the custom developed software interfaces to payment systems, and how the resulting income is available to the owner. I do understand that there are probably hundreds of systems out there, but to be more specific on which of them suit, I'd have to know how they work, and that's where I don't feel like understanding much. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "21791", "title": "Good example of complex code using TDD", "text": "What would be a good example of the use of TDD in large, real-life, complex, projects? All the examples I've seen so far are toy projects for the purpose of a book or a paper... Can you name an open-source project that heavily uses TDD? Preferably in C++ but I can read Java and C# or other similar languages."}
{"_id": "135245", "title": "God Namespace just as bad as God Object?", "text": "We have about 3/4 different projects, each sharing a certain level of data. Some data is not shared, but all the data access has ended up in a single namespace that is included in every project. Utility methods and other \"shared functionality\" is continually added to this root namespace, and is ultimately fairly organized, but it all ends up in a single dll to be included in projects. To me it seems overly centralized but does it qualify to labeled a God Namespace? (does that term even make sense?)"}
{"_id": "46610", "title": "How to understand Linux kernel source code for a beginner?", "text": "I am a student interested in working on Memory Management, particularly the page replacement component of the linux kernel. What are the different guides that can help me to begin understanding the kernel source? I have tried to read the book _Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager_ by Mel Gorman and _Understanding the Linux Kernel_ by Cesati and Bovet, but they do not explain the flow of control through the code. They only end up explaining various data structures used and the work various functions perform. This makes the code more confusing. My project deals with tweaking the page replacement algorithm in a mainstream kernel and analyse its performance for a set of workloads. Is there a flavor of the linux kernel that would be easier to understand (if not the linux-2.6.xx kernel)?"}
{"_id": "135240", "title": "Best approach to selecting programming languages and 3D graphics API for simulating physics experiments", "text": "I am starting a research project and need to nail down a programming language and 3D graphics API where I will be creating an environment in the field of molecular cell biology where I will be simulating a large range of experiments in silico. This will be an ongoing project which will keep expanding and growing in size. The experiments will be done in discrete time and will encompass a complex physics engine. Pretty graphics are not of importance nor is is audio. I run Ubuntu and this is the environment I will be developing in. The pairs I have investigated thus far are: **java** : flexible,scalable,lib/dependency organization (maven),oo   * jogl: full control of graphics   * jMonkeyEngine: full game library, includes jBullet, maybe a bit overkill for what I need. **c++** : High speed, low level, oo   * opengl:full control of graphics   * maya:built in physics engine, infrastructure already in place, proprietary, not free  **matlab** : Heavily math based, but difficult to maintain and scale   * simulink : proprietary, not free I am least familiar with Maya but it was suggested to me by a friend as a good approach. When would Maya be a good solution and would it be a good selection for this type of case? Just as thinking jMonkey would be overkill this is kinda my feeling on Maya. Are there any other pairings I should investigate? Also has anyone had any experience modifying an existing physics library and the flexibility or complexity of doing so (ie Bullet, JBullet, jinngine)? Unsure at this point if I should start from scratch or try and modify/expand an existing one. Any thoughts, feedback, input or any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks"}
{"_id": "41863", "title": "How to organize a programming course?", "text": "I've been given the task to train our manual testers to become developers in test (write test automation!). Some have basic programming knowledge (either dabbling in PHP or reading stuff) and some who have no experience. Note that I do have teaching experience, but with real students, not employees, and one concern is that they will not put extra hours except the 20% management gave them for the transition. Language to be taught and used: C# We have 8 hours per week to do this and should decide if they will make it in 2 months. I am thinking of a combined approach:   * use a manual such as Head First C# (although I'm not happy with the labs, they're mostly games and I don't want to add UI complexities)   * have them read from the manual    * do labs with them, solving more and more difficult problems and explain the theoretical stuff as well   * have them do a bigger project towards the end  Some questions:   * do you have a better suggestion as far as manuals go?   * do you have a better approach? Focus less on labs?   * what kind of assessments should I use and how often?   * should I let them do a bigger project (bank system or small game) and how much time should I invest in that?   * ideas on labs?   * other resources ? Any other tips would be most welcomed! Thanks!"}
{"_id": "90505", "title": "What is the best way to provide downloadable / uploadable forms?", "text": "I need to allow some of my users to design and upload blank forms, to be downloaded, completed, and uploaded by other users. It would be nice if I could verify the completeness of the uploaded forms, but it is not absolutely necessary. The respondents are motivated to complete the forms, but it would be nice if I could warn them when one is incomplete. If I can't verify the content, I would at least like to verify that the uploaded form is the correct form. I do not intend to implement a form designer. Can anyone recommend a technology that would facilitate this? Currently my code doesn't need to understand the forms at all; I am merely passing the data through as a service for the users."}
{"_id": "90507", "title": "The Future of Golang. Multiple Language Support?", "text": "Golang seems promising. I've been following this lang since its first release. It might take time to be a very good competitor to other programming languages. One brilliant aspect of Java and .NET I see is their designers chose to create their own Virtual Machine so that other programming languages can run on it. Now I see Scala seems to be a very good competitor to Java. It can run on JVM and it has better syntax/concept and very promising chart progress on Tiobe. To make this topic more specific, by _Future_ , I only scope its scalable usage in **various prominent industries** as well as for **campus** and **government**. As golang compile to machine code, my question is **will golang support multiple languages?** Like many languages can run on Java and .NET VM. I can't find other than these 2 environments example that don't have VM but directly compile to machine code like C/C++ or Go Lang. I read from Golang blog that Google invested in golang that much, I wonder what strategy would Google take to boost golang penetration. I saw archive from Golang mailing list about golang roadmap, but no one answered that question. Or would golang make its hybrid into another form, just like how JavaScript can take off this far from its Lisp soul deep down beneath JavaScript, quoting from JS The Good Parts Book by Douglas Crockford: > JavaScript's functions are first class objects with (mostly) lexical > scoping. JavaScript is the first lambda language to go mainstream. Deep > down, JavaScript has more in common with Lisp and Scheme than with Java. It > is Lisp in C's clothing. This makes JavaScript a remarkably powerful > language. Or probably like how FP languages have been inspiring so many other languages this far. If golang really is promising (just like Scala) I would invest one or two of our programmers to learn golang. So far, I just support them to strengthen their concepts instead on OO(A)D, FP, and Theoritical CS to get their fundamental strong enough to face any language progress in the future."}
{"_id": "13570", "title": "Tips for debugging with very little info?", "text": "I've inherited a project with a fairly large codebase, and the original developer rarely, if ever, replies to emails. There's a ton of different ways to do some things in it, and I don't know all of them. A lot of duplicated code along these paths (rather than functions included by, say, 5 pages that do relatively the same thing, it's code copied across 5 pages), and some subtle issues in the database (we've all heard of spaghetti code, but have you ever heard of a spaghetti database?) All of this I can deal with most of the time no problem. The issue is when a client finds a bug somewhere. They'll usually send a screenshot of the ending issue, and say, \"Could you take a look at this?\" while highlighting the specific thing on the page that's wrong, and sometimes what was expected. Very little more information is given, and trying to talk to them and get more (such as what they did to get the result) is like pulling teeth. Basically, it boils down to this:   * Large and complex code base I'm not 100% familiar with   * Many many ways things can go wrong   * Very little information on how a bug came to be Does anybody have any tips, tricks, suggestions, etc. on how to debug this sort of thing?"}
{"_id": "101575", "title": "Influences on the design of Dynamic objects by Alan Kay", "text": "Alan kay in his paper, The power of Context pdf link, page 8, enumerates some of his motivations for dynamic objects. Some of the influences like Paper on lisp, early paper on the design of functional computers, Moleculer biology of the gene (he envisioned objects as biological cells) are somewhat clear and I see the point. However, some of the influences like   1. Paul Halmos, Finite-dimensional Vector Spaces,(Clue: Algebra in the Large, he says). I want to know how has algebra influenced dynamic objects? Are there any examples of algebraic structure in the objects?   2. Carnap, Rudolf, Meaning and Necessity, A Study in Semantics and Modal Logic. How's modal logic helpful in defining dynamic objects. How was this work helpful?   3. Kleinrock, Leonard, Communication Nets: stochastic message flow and delay. It seems like this work influenced early implementations of smalltalk. Has it git something to do with analogy between messages. Any explanation would be really helpful. In short, I want to understand how these works influenced design of dynamic objects as envisioned by Alan Kay. I'd really appreciate any help on this. I understand that viewpoints are highly subjective,but I'd also appreciate new insights/guesses as to how you think these works would have helped."}
{"_id": "101578", "title": "3 threads printing numbers of different range", "text": "This question was asked in an Electronic Arts interview: There are 3 threads. The first thread prints the numbers 1 to 10. The second thread prints the numbers 11 to 20. The third thread prints the numbers from from 21 to 30. Now, all three threads are running. The numbers are printed in an irregular order like 1, 11, 2, 21, 12 etc. If I want numbers to be printed in sorted order like 1, 2, 3, 4..., what should I do with these threads?"}
{"_id": "160358", "title": "hash with file instead of array", "text": "Is it possible to use hash function but with File instead of Array, and it's gonna be saving the record in a file position and then search will fseek to that position, but I'm not sure how to open a file with let's say 1000 line, do you think that method could work?"}
{"_id": "236289", "title": "How to design socks proxy server (OOP)", "text": "I'm working on a socks server application written in C#. But I don't really know how to design this in a nice way. I got this for Socks V4 and V4A: ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/xCHbP.png) _I'm not sure if it clears things up, but I think it easier to explain when you have a look what classes exists._ The _SOCKSServer_ is a wrapper over a _Server_ instance. When a client connects it waits for the SOCKS4 request, here is how that looks:               var remoteEnd = eventArgs.Client.RemoteEndPoint.ToString();     var buffer = new byte[1024];     var task = eventArgs.Client.ReceiveTaskAsync(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);     if (await Task.WhenAny(task, Task.Delay(Timeout)) != task) // Timeout reached     {         Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(\"[{0}] Timeout expired ({1} ms)\", remoteEnd, Timeout));         eventArgs.Client.Disconnect();         return;     }          HandleRequest(eventArgs.Client, buffer);          //....          private void HandleRequest(Client client, byte[] request)     {         var remoteEnd = client.RemoteEndPoint.ToString();         var connectionRequest = ConnectionRequest.CreateInstance(request);         if (connectionRequest == null) //invalid version         {             Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(\"[{0}] Invalid version ({1})\", remoteEnd, request[0]));             return;         }              if (connectionRequest.Version == 0x04) // Could be V4 or V4A         {             HandleRequestV4(client, (ConnectionRequestV4) connectionRequest);             return;         }              //It is V5          }          private void HandleRequestV4(Client client, ConnectionRequestV4 connectionRequest)     {         var remoteEnd = client.RemoteEndPoint.ToString();         Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(\"[{0}] (Id: {3}) SOCKS4(A) Request to: {1}:{2}\", remoteEnd,             connectionRequest.IpAddress, connectionRequest.Port, connectionRequest.Id));         Trace.Write(String.Format(\"[{0}] (Id: {3}) Trying {1}:{2}.. \", remoteEnd, connectionRequest.IpAddress,             connectionRequest.Port, connectionRequest.Id));              var remoteHost = new Client();         if (remoteHost.ConnectTaskAsync(new IPEndPoint(connectionRequest.IpAddress, connectionRequest.Port)).Result)         {             Trace.WriteLine(\"Succes :D\");                  byte[] response;             if (connectionRequest is ConnectionRequestV4A)             {                 Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(\"[{0}] (Id: {2}) Request is SOCKS4A to: {1}\", remoteEnd,                     ((ConnectionRequestV4A) connectionRequest).Domain, connectionRequest.Id));                      ConnectionRequestV4A.AllowConnection(out response, connectionRequest.IpAddress);             }             else             {                 ConnectionRequestV4.AllowConnection(out response);             }                  client.Send(response, 0, response.Length);                  var tunnel = new TunnelV4(remoteHost, client) {BufferSize = BufferSize};             tunnel.DataReceive += DataReceive;             tunnel.DataSend += DataSend;             tunnel.Open();             Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(\"[{0}] (Id: {1}) SOCKS4 Tunnel Opened =D\", remoteEnd, connectionRequest.Id));         }         else         {             Trace.WriteLine(\"Failed :(\");                  byte[] response;             ConnectionRequestV4.RefuseConnection(out response);             client.Send(response, 0, response.Length);         }     }      The request packet looks like:               /*       *  +-----+-----+------+------+--------+      *  | VER | CMD | Port |  IP  |   ID   |      *  +-----+-----+------+------+--------+      *  |  1  |  1  |  2   |  4   |  *'\\0' |      *  +-----+-----+------+------+--------+      */      The numbers are the amount of octet (1 byte = 8 bits). But how can I design SOCKS V5? It is more complex there are 3 authentication methods (No authentication, GSSAPI and Username/Password). When the client connects it sends a greeting message which contains the authentication method (id only) then the server response with what authentication to choose (or 0xFF to say that there wasn't an acceptable method). And then the authentication protocol starts which is different for all methods. And after that the client proxy sends the connection request. The full documentation can be found here: RFC1928 or Wikipedia So how can I design this application to support SOCKSV4, V4A and V5 in an OOP manner? **Edit:** The full source can be found here: Github"}
{"_id": "232497", "title": "Create a loop that visits every link on a site", "text": "I want to create an HTML scraper in Ruby on Rails and I want to implement a progress bar and an ability for it to pick up where it left off if it's interrupted while scraping. I think the best way to do this be to create a database table with a record for every single page, with a boolean column called 'scraped?' I'm thinking my scraper would have two main parts. The first part would loop through the entire site, following all links and saving their URLs in the table, along with a `false` for their `scraped?` attribute. It would also reset the database's pk sequence, meaning the id column would accurately imply which number the record is at (more about that later!) `ActiveRecord::Base.connection.reset_pk_sequence!('pages')` The second part would then move through this table, visiting each link and, once it's done scraping that page, it would change its `scraped?` attribute to true. This second part would start by getting the first page that hasn't been scraped yet:               first_page = Page.where(:scraped? = false).first      The progress bar would work on the following principle:               total_page = Page.count     done_pages = first_page.id # (the first result would always be 1 because the first part resets the sequence)     percentage = done_pages / total_pages * 100      I actually don't see why this wouldn't work, but I'm still really vague about how the scraper would spider over and visit every single link on a website. What would be your ideas on this? I just want some pointers before I dive in: How would it know not to stray off the current site? (I'm thinking regex on the URL to make sure it contains the specified domain before it visits it) How would it not visit infinite loops? Such as a link to the home page on the home page? (I'm guessing a conditional would do the trick here):               if new_uri != current_uri         visit new_uri     end      How would the first part actually go about its spidering, saving an index of every single link? By creating an array of every single link on the page and then iterating through it until it finds a uri that doesn't exist in the database? (this is actually my biggest concern.) If the above is true, how would it know when to stop? I'm guessing it would check every new_link with existing links in the database? This is only a local program that's going to be executed once so I'm not too concerned about performance here, but do you have a better idea to the below:               if new_uri != current_uri # technically not necessary but it would save a few database interactions         if Page.exists?( uri: new_uri) == false             visit new_uri         end     end"}
{"_id": "96837", "title": "Should I use .NET? (IronPython?)", "text": "I asked in another question about where a good place to start learning programming was and I came to the conclusion with the many helpful answers, that I would like to go with Python. So now, would there be a benefit to using a .NET implementation like IronPython or should I just do Python? My understanding is I would get a better grasp of fundamentals _without_ relying on .NET, is that accurate?"}
{"_id": "190271", "title": "How to offer custom word processor like editing power from an application", "text": "I have a very complex Java application which renders spreadsheet tables and summary documents in a window. These outputs are non standard in the sense that for instance the spreadsheet table isn't really a spreadsheet indeed not every row is an instance of an entity and every column an attribute. Some rows might for instance be titles to sub tables. Now the user wants to print these screens so we generally offer to export these screens to word processor or spreadsheet documents so that he can customize font, number of columns, width of columns etc etc. The problem with that is that the management is not happy with this solution because although flexible it forces the user to customize the document for every single print and has to restart from the beginning each time. We had therefore to put some editing features in our program and if the user wants something more (for instance backgroudn color of a row) he can always export what he has so far and add the wanted extra features to the document using his word processor or spreadsheet processor. Thsi solution works but doesn't please me because the more time passes, the more our very complex program has to deal with editing like features at a point where in a future it will be as complex as a standard word or excel processor. Isn't there any solution to keep our program separate from editing features but somehow to let the choices be remembered when the user wants to export the data and not let him redo all again? This solution should be portable enough to work with OpenOffice, Libre Office and Microsoft Word at least... Thank you"}
{"_id": "236283", "title": "Application behavior in different screen sizes", "text": "My company is developing a .NET application that needs to work with 17 inch and 24 inch monitors using the same resolution on both. My question is whether I should expect any different behavior or layout on the two screen sizes. Theoretically since it is the same resolution there should be no clipping, overstretching or any other UI issue. Although maybe WPF does behave differently with different DPI? Now obviously it will be more difficult to read some of the text on the 17 screen monitor, and maybe some low-quality portions of images be more visible on a larger screen, but should I expect any other surprises?"}
{"_id": "160354", "title": "BDD in .NET - Chicken or Egg or..?", "text": "_Predicate: I'm brand new to BDD / TDD, but I've done my homework._ I'm trying to put everything I've read / learned into practice with VS2010, SpecFlow and NUnit. Things are working, but it's quickly becoming a chicken / egg scenario within a blur of unit and acceptance tests. I hope solving these BASIC questions will make everything _click_. From my reading, I expected to:   1. Write a Feature   2. Define Acceptance Tests that fail   3. Define Unit Tests that fail   4. Make Unit Tests pass   5. Now the Acceptance Test pass   6. Write the next Feature That all makes perfect sense, I'm just having a hard time seeing what's what in code... In practice:   1. Write a Feature with Scenarios - fine.   2. Generating Step Definitions - fine.   3. Ahhh. Does completing the step definitions (providing context in GIVEN, setting things up in WHEN and making assertions in THEN) constitute a completed acceptance test? Do you write out classes and methods here first as if you'd defined them already, and generate skeleton code via the IDE? Presumably the assertion needs some kind of implementation to work, but then the implementation code won't have been unit tested? Ahhh. I've looked at a number of example projects and codebases, but as they're all complete there's little sense of ordering in terms of the development process. Any clarification of steps, examples, etc. would be great!"}
{"_id": "166209", "title": "Floating point undesirable in highly critical code?", "text": "Question 11 in the Software Quality section of \"IEEE Computer Society Real- World Software Engineering Problems\", Naveda, Seidman, lists fp computation as undesirable because _\"the accuracy of the computations cannot be guaranteed\"_. This is in the context of computing acceleration for an emergency braking system for a high speed train. This thinking seems to be invoking possible errors in small differences between measurements of a moving object but small differences at slow speeds aren't a problem (or shouldn't be), small differences between two measurements at high speed are irrelevant - can there be a problem with small roundoff errors during deceleration for an emergency braking system? This problem has been observed with airplane braking systems resulting in hydroplaning but could this actually happen in the context of a high speed train? The concern about fp errors seems to not be well-founded in this context. Any insight? The fp is used for acceleration so perhaps the concern is inching over a speed limit? But fp should be just fine if they use a double in whatever implementation language. The actual problem in the text states: During the inspection of the code for the emergency braking system of a new high speed train (a highly critical, real-time application), the review team identifies several characteristics of the code. Which of these characteristics are generally viewed as undesirable?   1. The code contains three recursive functions (well that one is obvious).   2. The computation of acceleration uses floating point arithmetic.   3. All other computations use integer arithmetic.   4. The code contains one linked list that uses dynamic memory allocation (second obvious problem).   5. All inputs are checked to determine that they are within expected bounds before they are used."}
{"_id": "124760", "title": "Best practice for using a user control across many projects", "text": "I have a messaging User Control, that is used across 4 projects, and for each change I have to propagate it in 4 places. This is obviously against the DRY principle. However, centralizing user controls is not an easy task too, because you have both markup, and code-behind, and we know that markup won't get compiled till run-time requests. This means that you can't simply put the User Control in one project, and compile it, and use its result DLL file in many places. So, what do you suggest as a good, neat approach for centralizing use of User Controls?"}
{"_id": "164843", "title": "Is there a constant for \"end of time\"?", "text": "For some systems, the time value 9999-12-31 is used as the \"end of time\" as the end of the time that the computer can calculate. But what if it changes? Wouldn't it be better to define this time as a builtin variable? In C and other programming languages there usually is a variable such as `MAX_INT` or similar to get the largest value an integer could have. Why is there not a similar function for `MAX_TIME` i.e. set the variable to the \"end of time\" which for many systems usually is 9999-12-31. To avoid the problem of hardcoding to a wrong year (9999) could these systems introduce a variable for the \"end of time\"? **Real example ** `End of validity date: 31/12/9999.` (official documents are listed like this) The blogger wants to write a page that is always on top, the welcome page. So it's given a date as far in the future as possible: > 3000? Yes, the welcome page which you're facing is posted at 1 January > 3000\\. So this page will be kept on the top of the blog forever =) It's > actually posted at 31 august 2007."}
{"_id": "81899", "title": "How should I organize my source tree?", "text": "I am an individual developer working, largely, on web-projects (W/LAMP) and, at times, on C/C++ (non-GUI) projects of about average scale. I often struggle with structuring my source-code tree. In fact, usually, I don't complete a project without dumping the entire tree and rearranging the pieces three-four times which really takes up a lot of effort and moreover the end result does seem like a compromise. Sometimes, I end up with over classification of source - very long tree of folders and sub-folders. At other times, I simply end up concentrating all files in a particular folder based on the larger purpose they serve and thereby leading to 'chaotic' folders in the source. I would want to ask:   * Are there any principles/logic/best-practices that can help me better at structuring my source tree?   * Are there any graphical/diagrammatic techniques (for eg.: DFD in case of dataflow) that can help me visualize my source tree beforehand based on the analysis of the project?   * What strategy to adopt to structure multi-media files-tree associated with the project? **About the bounty** : I appreciate existing answers with the members sharing their own practices, however, I'd like to encourage more general and instructive answers (or resources) and more responses from the members."}
{"_id": "164844", "title": "Testing of visualization projects", "text": "We develop small to large visualization projects for different tasks and industries and sometimes while rewriting them a couple of times in the process we hit walls because we discover that we need to add a lot of code to support new requirements. Now we have established a design process that seems to work well (at least we reduced the development time for each new project quite a bit), but we're still left scratching our heads around this question: what exactly should we test when testing visualizations?   * If everything that we want to explore is on the screen (bounded visualizations)?   * If the data is ok - if data is valid (that's one of the nice things about visualizations you can spot errors in your datasets)?   * Usability?   * User interaction?   * Code quality? I can tell you for sure that a simple check of the code quality is certainly not enough! Is there a classic paper / book about how to test visualizations? Also do you happen to know about classic design patterns for visualizations (except the obvious ones like Pub-Sub)?"}
{"_id": "10835", "title": "Best book, articles and literature on unit testing", "text": "In my battle to introduce unit testing in my workgroup, I find a lot of people that have little to none knowledge of the concept. Can you suggest:   * best articles or tutorials for quickly introducing people on the topic   * best comprehensive book(s) for learning unit testing in depth   * academic works and studies that prove the effectiveness of unit testing"}
{"_id": "244637", "title": "Reporting defects in Agile", "text": "I am working in sprint. At the end of sprint I need to send a defect report per sprint. Considering the below scenario please let me know your views. Two teams(A & B) are working at different locations in Sprint-2 and I am a tester from Team-A and report the defects for the items developed by Team-A in each sprint **Question**   1\\. I reported few defects in Sprint-2 for the functionality developed by Team-B in previous sprint. Do I have to consider this as observation or defect and report to Team-A?    2\\. I reported 5 defects of Sprint-2 for the functionality developed by team-A. All the defects are fixed and closed by me in the same sprint. Before the end of sprint I observed 2 defects got reopened for some reason. Now the defect count should be 5 or 7(5+2) should be considered for this sprint? Thanks   Khan"}
{"_id": "237772", "title": "Making the server request with high priority", "text": "I need to connect to a server and do manipulation with respect to HTTP GET and POST for my application and the server is generally used to handle multiple users with heavy load and many users might be sending multiple request at any moment. I have 3 questions here. The server is configured with ASP.NET I am using Java to do my HTTP POST and GET requests. Is there any way available to make my request data to have more priority than others ? Also, I read some article in internet and it is mentioned that using proxies will help in speed up the process and will give us high chance of getting the connection with the server. Is that true ? If yes, why ? Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "203374", "title": "Origin of common list-processing function names", "text": "Some higher-order functions for operating on lists or arrays have been repeatedly adopted or reinvented. The functions **map** , **fold** [ **l** | **r** ], and **filter** are found together in several programming languages, such as Scheme, ML, and Python, that don't seem to have a common ancestor. I'm going with these three names to keep the question focused. To show that the names are not universal, here is a sampling of names for equivalent functionality in other languages. C++ has _transform_ instead of _map_ and _remove_if_ instead of _filter_ (reversing the meaning of the predicate). Lisp has _mapcar_ instead of _map_ , _remove-if-not_ instead of _filter_ , and _reduce_ instead of _fold_ (Some modern Lisp variants have _map_ but this appears to be a derived form.) C# uses _Select_ instead of _map_ and _Where_ instead of _filter_. C#'s names came from SQL via LINQ, and despite the name changes, their functionality was influenced by Haskell, which was itself influenced by ML. The names _map_ , _fold_ , and _filter_ are widespread, but not universal. This suggests that they were borrowed from an influential source into other contemporary languages. Where did these function names come from?"}
{"_id": "244630", "title": "How to name a method that both performs a task and returns a boolean as a status?", "text": "If there is a method               bool DoStuff() {         try {             // doing stuff...             return true;         }         catch (SomeSpecificException ex) {             return false;         }     }      should it rather be called `IsStuffDone()`? Both names could be misinterpreted by the user: If the name is `DoStuff()` why does it return a boolean? If the name is `IsStuffDone()` it is not clear whether the method performs a task or only checks its result. Is there a convention for this case? Or an alternative approach, as this one is considered flawed? For example in languages that have output parameters, like C#, a boolean status variable could be passed to the method as one and the method's return type would be `void`. EDIT: In my particular problem exception handling cannot be directly delegated to the caller, because the method is a part of an interface implementation. Therefore, the caller can't be charged with dealing with all the exceptions of different implementations. It is not familiar with those exceptions. However, the caller can deal with a custom exception like `StuffHasNotBeenDoneForSomeReasonException` as was suggested in npinti's answer and comment."}
{"_id": "128641", "title": "Google Closure Compiler - what does the name mean?", "text": "I am curious about the Google Closure Compiler. Why did they name it that? Does it have anything to do with lexical closures? **EDIT:** I tried researching it in the FAQ and documentation, as well as doing Google searches such as \"closure compiler name\". I couldn't find anything definite, hence the reason I am asking. I don't think I will get a profoundly helpful answer but I was hoping that I could at least satisfy my curiosity. I am not trying to solve a specific problem. I am just curious."}
{"_id": "128640", "title": "Describing the Difference Between Web Library and Web Framework", "text": "I talked myself into a hole at work, and I need some good ideas to help me better describe why we should include both Dojo **and** Knockout in our new web project. A little background: I do mostly computer-computer interactions when I program; updating states, reading/writing to the database -- Knockout is exactly where I want to be. So I said, \"I don't want to use Dojo\"...meaning, \"I don't want to do client side user experience/visual effects programming\". I think it's a great to utilize other people's work, and I think re-inventing the wheel is a bad thing, generally. I just don't enjoy the process as much. But now its turned into an \"all or nothing\" decision. Please help me come up with a good way to describe the difference between a library and a web framework, and not in this technical way. I need something simpler to get my point across. # EDIT We're using mustache.js, since it came with the PhoneGap tutorial. Good looking out, PhoneGap. I'd feel bad closing this question, since someone might want to read it later. Feel free to post some answers later on, but I should be okay, thanks!"}
{"_id": "93141", "title": "Any good site that teaches C++?", "text": "I am searching for any good site that teaches C++, that can explain most to all things about it(general) and has a decent active community. About Me: I am new to programming(knows nothing of it, so please bare with me), I have only learned(to a very basic form) LUA scripting Language, so yes I am your complete newbie. I got interested in programming, from scripting in LUA, so you can say it was my small stepping stone, One would basically take a course in college, but not everyone is well funded for that and I can't buy books for the same said reason(yes I'm somewhat poor, only money for essentials and bills), I'm not trying to get sympathy, just stating my conditions. and Please, something in between the lines of 'Programming for Dummies'(I'm not the brightest crayon in the box), I know this will not be easy, but your help will be most appreciated. I would learn for either Windows and/or Linux/Unix. I use both. Site(s) I know: Cplusplus.org(quite inactive and tutorials are a little for the programming savvy."}
{"_id": "152348", "title": ".NET app - Should we use SQL Server and duplicate some reference data from an external Oracle DB? Or use Oracle and have a DB link?", "text": "We're looking to migrate some existing Excel/Access processes into a new system which will provide the users with a Silverlight frontend to run and view the reports instead of using MS Access. The initial idea was to have SQL Server 2008 as RDBMS. The problem is that we've got some static data such as country codes, counterparties, etc which live in an existing Oracle DB. Since we do not want to duplicate that data (if possible), we were thinking of having a DB link between SQL Server and Oracle, but our firm does not allow that. So the options are either duplicate the data or use Oracle as RDBMS - surprise, the firm does allow DB links between Oracle databases. The initial idea was also to use WCF RIA Services, Entity Framework, etc which we're not sure they play well with Oracle, that's why it was decided to go with SQL Server in the first place. Would you advise to go for Oracle so that we can just link the static data? Or use SQL Server 2008 and replicate it because it's \"safer\" to stay within the Microsoft land? To use or not to use Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services at all? Regards. UPDATE: Thanks everyone for your answers. Nothing is set in stone yet. We'll try to import the data instead of linking, as if the other DB goes down, our system can still carry on. We're likely to use SQL Server just because most developers are more experienced with it. Even if we used RIA Services, we can swap out the Data Access Layer and use other frameworks such those mentioned below."}
{"_id": "254407", "title": "vb.net problem with sql update command", "text": "I'm looking for some help trying to figure out why I'm seeing a SQL error on an update command within vb.net, noting that my SQL experience is very limited. I'm in the midst of building a profile system that will be used in several other tools within our company, as part of the profile system, the user's information is queried against our LDAP directory upon page load and the data stored in variables displayed in labels on the page. The user then has the option to create a new profile if one does not exist, or update an existing if there is already one in place. The code determines the proper action based on a query to the table using the users employee id. My insert command works ok but the update does not, below is my current code and the error. This is the insert statement to create a new entry, this works properly.                   Protected Sub btnInsert_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnInsert.Click         Try             Dim con As New SqlConnection             Dim cmd As New SqlCommand                  con.ConnectionString = \"Data Source=\"server\" Catalog=usertable;Integrated Security=True\"                  con.Open()             cmd.Connection = con                  cmd.CommandText = \"INSERT INTO Profile (FirstName, LastName, Email, Telephone, EmployeeID, NTLogin) VALUES ('\" & lblFirstName.Text & \"','\" & lblLastName.Text & \"','\" & lblEmail.Text & \"','\" & lblPhone.Text & \"','\" & lblEID.Text & \"','\" & lblNT.Text & \"')\"                  cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()             btnInsert.Enabled = False             lblValid.Text = \"Record Inserted Successfully\"             con.Close()         Catch ex As System.Exception             lblValid.Text = (ex.Message)              End Try      The following is the update code that gives an error:               Protected Sub btnUpdate_Click(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles btnUpdate.Click         Try             Dim con As New SqlConnection             Dim cmd As New SqlCommand                  con.ConnectionString = \"server;Initial Catalog=usertable;Integrated Security=True\"             con.Open()             cmd.Connection = con                  cmd.CommandText = \"UPDATE Profile (FirstName, LastName, Email, Telephone, EmployeeID, NTLogin) VALUES ('\" & lblFirstName.Text & \"','\" & lblLastName.Text & \"','\" & lblEmail.Text & \"','\" & lblPhone.Text & \"','\" & lblEID.Text & \"','\" & lblNT.Text & \"') Where [EmployeeID] = '\" & lblEID.text & \"'\"                  cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()             btnUpdate.Enabled = False             lblValid.Text = \"Record Updated Successfully\"             con.Close()         Catch ex As System.Exception             lblValid.Text = (ex.Message)         End Try     End Sub      The exception error returned is                   [SqlException (0x80131904): Incorrect syntax near '('.]        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection, Action`1 wrapCloseInAction) +392        System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj, Boolean callerHasConnectionLock, Boolean asyncClose) +815        System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.TryRun(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler, TdsParserStateObject stateObj, Boolean& dataReady) +4515        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteNonQueryTds(String methodName, Boolean async, Int32 timeout, Boolean asyncWrite) +1390        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.InternalExecuteNonQuery(TaskCompletionSource`1 completion, String methodName, Boolean sendToPipe, Int32 timeout, Boolean asyncWrite) +538        System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery() +290        newprofile.btnUpdate_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) +759        System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +155        System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +3804      I'm at a loss and appreciate any help that can be given."}
{"_id": "254406", "title": "Is method overloading anything more than syntactic sugar?", "text": "Is method overloading a type of polymorphism? To me it seems like simply the differentiation of methods with the same name and different parameters. So `stuff(Thing t)` and `stuff(Thing t, int n)` are entirely different methods as far as the compiler and runtime are concerned. It creates the illusion, on the caller's side, that it's the same method that acts differently on different kinds of objects - polymorphism. But that's only an illusion, because actually `stuff(Thing t)` and `stuff(Thing t, int n)` are completely different methods. Is method overloading anything more than syntactic sugar? Am I missing something? EDIT: A common definition for syntactic sugar, is that it is _purely local_. Meaning changing a piece of code to its 'sweetened' equivalent, or vice versa, involves local changes that don't affect the overall structure of the program. And I think method overloading precisely fits this criterion. Let's look at an example to demonstrate: Consider a class:               class Reader {         public String read(Book b){             // .. translate the book to text         }         public String read(File b){             // .. translate the file to text         }     }      Now consider another class that uses this class:               /* might not be the best example */     class FileProcessor {         Reader reader = new Reader();         public void process(File file){             String text = reader.read(file);             // .. do stuff with the text         }     }      Okay. Now let's see what needs to change if we replace the method overloading with regular methods: The `read` methods in `Reader` change to `readBook(Book)` and `readFile(file)`. Only a matter of changing their names. The calling code in `FileProcessor` changes slightly: `reader.read(file)` changes to `reader.readFile(file)`. And that's it. As you can see, the difference between using method overloading and not using it, are _purely local_. And that's why I think it qualifies as pure syntactic sugar. I'd like to hear your objections if you have some, maybe I'm missing something."}
{"_id": "128648", "title": "Does using new techniques hurt productivity?", "text": "It seems that as experience with the specific set of tools you have to work with grows, the incentive to try out new things weakens. When I was new at this programming job, trying out new things, researching online, made me _more_ productive, because I often found a way (or library) that made the task easier that the code framework already in place. So using something new -- to me as well as in the context of the given codebase -- made me more productive. Now I noticed, that there are more and more instances where, for a given problem, I _know_ that there probably _is_ a better solution \"out there\", and finding it would -- presumably -- improve the code. However, given my now intimate knowledge of the code base, it is by far easier to use the suboptimal tools we have, and get a solution (including tests) running than find someting new and \"better\" and \"improve\" the codebase. So there is this tension: \"do it properly\" vs. \"get the job _decently_ done\". Is this something that happens to a lot of developers? Is this a known specific problem? (Is it a real problem after all?) Does it actually have to do with increasing levels of experience? Oh, and note: I still like my job and like to keep it. It's just that it seems the -- always interesting! -- research part get's smaller as I learn the code base and problem sets we face with our app."}
{"_id": "254403", "title": "Why does the .NET framework have no concept of classes as first-class types?", "text": "It's well known to those familiar with the history that C# and the .NET framework started out as essentially \"Delphi rewritten to feel like Java,\" architected by the chief developer behind Delphi, Anders Hejlsberg. Things have diverged quite a bit since then, but early on the similarities were so obvious that there was even some serious speculation that .NET was actually originally Borland's product. But I've been looking at some .NET stuff lately, and one of the most interesting and useful features from Delphi seems to be missing entirely: the concept of classes as a first-class data type. For those not familiar with it, the type `TClass` represents a reference to a class, similar to the `Type` type in .NET. But where .NET uses `Type` for reflection, Delphi uses `TClass` as a very important built-in part of the language. It allows for various useful idioms that simply don't and can't exist without it, such as class subtype variables and virtual class methods. Every OO language has virtual methods, in which different classes implement the same fundamental concept of a method in different ways, and then the right method gets called at runtime based on the actual type of the object instance it's called on. Delphi extends this concept to classes: if you have a TClass reference defined as a specific class subtype (ie `class of TMyClass` means that the variable can accept any class reference that inherits from `TMyClass`, but not anything outside the heirarchy) that has class-scope virtual methods attached to it, they can be called without an instance by using the actual type of the class. Applying this pattern to constructors makes a Factory implementation trivial, for example. There doesn't seem to be anything equivalent in .NET. With as useful as class references (and especially virtual constructors and other virtual class methods!) are, has anyone said anything about why they were left out? ## Specific Examples ### Form Deserialization The Delphi VCL saves forms in `DFM` format, a DSL for describing a component hierarchy. When the form reader parses DFM data, it runs across objects that are described like this:               object Name: ClassName        property = value        property = value        ...        object SubObjectName: ClassName           ...        end     end      The interesting thing here is the `ClassName` part. Each component class registers its `TClass` with the component streaming system at `initialization` time (think static constructors, only slightly different, guaranteed to happen immediately on startup.) This registers each class in a string->TClass hashmap with the class name as the key. Each component descends from `TComponent`, which has a virtual constructor that takes a single argument, `Owner: TComponent`. Any component can override this constructor to provide for its own initialization. When the DFM reader reads a class name, it looks up the name in the aforementioned hashmap and retrieves the corresponding class reference (or raises an exception if it's not there), then calls the virtual TComponent constructor on it, which is known to be good because the registration function takes a class reference that is required to descend from TComponent, and you end up with an object of the proper type. Lacking this, the WinForms equivalent is... well... a big mess to put it bluntly, requiring any new .NET language to completely re-implement its own form (de)serialization. This is a bit shocking when you think about it; since the whole point of having a CLR is to let multiple languages use the same basic infrastructure, a DFM-style system would have made perfect sense. ### Extensibility An image manager class I wrote can be provided with a data source (such as a path to your image files) and then load new image objects automatically if you attempt to retrieve a name that's not in the collection but is available in the data source. It has a class variable typed as `class of` the base image class, representing the class of any new objects to be created. It comes with a default, but there are some points, when creating new images with special purposes, that the images should be set up in different ways. (Creating it without an alpha channel, retrieving special metadata from a PNG file to specify sprite size, etc.) This could be done by writing extensive amounts of configuration code and passing in special options to all of the methods that might end up creating a new object... or you could just make a subclass of the base image class that overrides a virtual method where the aspect in question gets configured, and then use a try/finally block to temporarily replace the \"default class\" property as needed and then restore it. Doing it with class reference variables is far simpler, and is not something that could be done with generics instead."}
{"_id": "191892", "title": "Why would you use a design pattern?", "text": "I am doing a bit of research for my paper, and I have a general question to you guys. Consider a design pattern or any **commonly accepted, reusable solution** for a particular problem. It doesn't have to have a name or be classified as an actual design pattern. **Why** would you use it? What does it help you to accomplish? Give your reasons and argument them."}
{"_id": "211983", "title": "Are there any valid use-cases for eager boolean evaluation?", "text": "Today I learned about eager boolean evaluation. In the following example, `Bar()` will be evaluated even when `Foo()` is true.               if (Foo() | Bar())      This answer on SO has an example:               if ((first = (i == 7)) & (second = (j == 10))) { //do something }      The use-case here would be that you want to reuse the results, but I would rather write it like this then:               first = (i == 7);     second = (j == 10);     if (first && second) { //do something }      Another use-case would be that `Bar()` has a side-effect that should be executed regardless of `Foo()` being true or false. Question is, can that be good code or would it indicate a code smell?"}
{"_id": "211981", "title": "iOS: Multiple images or single scaling image", "text": "I have a fiery debate running in the office. We have an app with two buttons of different size. (One is 40 px wide and one is 150 px wide). They have the exact same look in terms of background image. I would like to know which is best practice: 1: Make one image for the background that is 40px wide, and another image which is 150px wide. OR 2: Make one image (150px) and scale down and re-use for the 40px button. I'm not sure what performance overhead the scaling operation has, and I need to offset that against the size of the app if we go with seperate images for every different sized control. Thanks!"}
{"_id": "146247", "title": "Domain-aware code text editors", "text": "General text editors don't change greatly. Syntax highlighting and code collapsing are not big changes really. If an editor is structure or domain aware, this usually comes with a different layouts - treeviews, context-menus, drag-and-drops and so on. So are there good example to add more domain control when editing with caret, text selection and so on? When I think about explaining this with example, what comes to mind:   * Sync control (it's when you delete first i in `<div>...</div>` this automatically changes to `<dv></dv>`   * Read-only control (it's you're at \"/\" at the fragment above you can't edit, but if you select `<div>` and press Del, both are deleted   * Layered navigation. Probably different modes when the caret bypasses irrelevant layers when you press Left, Right and so on. For example if you're in text navigation for html, then all tags are bypassed   * Copy-paste control. Selected fragment should contain a valid sentence for domain and the place to insert to should also be compatible with it. These are just examples for you to recall the real world editors where you met something similar. Probably there are editors that allows one or several things from this list, but I suppose that partial solutions is no help and even can do harm and cause inconvenience. So the question is more about complex solution intended for overall improving of productivity in the general text editors."}
{"_id": "122427", "title": "How can one find out if open-source code was used in a commercial product?", "text": "Some open source licenses don't allow its usage in commercial products, but I bet some people/companies use it anyways. Is it possible to prove that a closed source, commercial product illegally incorporates open source code? If so, how? Example: Say Microsoft just gets the Linux kernel, slaps a new GUI on top of it and calls it \"Windows 9.\" Would it be possible to prove they did this?"}
{"_id": "122424", "title": "Does slicing a design in PS create horrible CSS?", "text": "I am a beginning programmer and I really want to have good habits and practices. I have yet to slice up a PSD and code it. Is this a bad practice? I have heard it creates bad code that had to be fixed anyway so why do it? I want to create clean code even if it takes longer. Just wondering if it is as bad as I have heard. Are there advantages to doing it this way? Thanks."}
{"_id": "237482", "title": "How to handle long method names in sequence diagram?", "text": "I have a C# application that is developed with VS 2010 pro. The ultimate version would have a sequence diagram feature. Since I will \"create\" my sequence diagram manually, how do I deal with quite long method names?               object.createPathForCustomerIDblablablabla_click()      Do I just use the method names as they are already given? Use a shorter name in the sequence diagram? I would like it to fit on a A4 page."}
{"_id": "246678", "title": "File exists vs. File does not exist. Is there a difference in performance?", "text": "Let's say I am checking a directory for the existence of a file, and then depending on whether or not the file exists, I act accordingly. For example, see the two Python snippets below.               if os.path.isfile(file_name):         # do task A     else:         # do task B      or               if not os.path.isfile(file_name):         # do task B     else:         # do task A      Is there a difference between the two or is it just semantics? While the example I gave uses Python, would the rules apply the same to other languages?"}
{"_id": "252800", "title": "Is client side JavaScript capable of replicating the Node.JS module loading system?", "text": "I like the Node.JS style of JavaScript, where I can write all of my functionalities into smaller files and then require those neatly from within my code. I'm even thinking about trying to write a framework to mimic that behavior in client-side JS. My goal would be to implement the `module loading system` as accurately as possible - See Module docs. For `require()`, I can use things detailed in answers to this question, most notably JQuery's `$.getScript()`. It seems to me that other aspects of the module loading system should be possible as well. So I'm asking more experienced programmers here first, before I waist my time: **Is there something that I'm missing that's going to cause such an attempt to fail miserably, or can this be successfully done?**"}
{"_id": "48512", "title": "WPF: Reloading app parts to handle persistence as well as memory management", "text": "I created a app using Microsoft's WPF. It mostly handles data reading and input as well as associating relations between data within specific parameters. As a total beginner I made some bad design decision ( not so much decisions as using the first thing I got to work ) but now understanding WPF better I'm getting the urge to refactor my code with better design principles. I had several problems but I guess each deserves it's own question for clarity. Here I'm asking for proper ways to handle the data itself. In the original I wrapped each row in a object when fetched from database ( using LINQ to SQL ) somewhat like Active Record just not active or persistence (each app instance had it's own data handling part). The app has subunits handling different aspects. However as it was setup it loaded everything when started. This creates several problems, for example often it wouldn't be neccesary to load a part unless we were specifically going to work with that part so I wan't some form of lazy loading. Also there was problem with inner persistance because you might create a new object/row in one aspect and perhaps set relation between it and different object but the new object wouldn't appear until the program was restarted. Persistance between instances of the app won't be huge problem because of the small amount of people using the program. While I could solve this now using dirty tricks I would rather refactor the program and do it elegantly, Now the question is how. I know there are several ways and a few come to mind: 1) Each aspect of the program is it's own UserControl that get's reloaded/instanced everytime you navigate to it. This ensures you only load up the data you need and you get some persistancy. DB server located on same LAN and tables are small so that shouldn't be a big problem. Minor drawback is that you would have to remember the state of each aspect so you wouldn't always start at beginners square. 2) Having a ViewModel type object at the base level of the app with lazy loading and some kind of timeout. I would then propegate this object down the visual tree to ensure every aspect is getting it's data from the same instance 3) Semi active record data layer with static load methods. 4) Some other idea What in your opinion is the most practical way in WPF, what does MVVM assume?"}
{"_id": "246673", "title": "What is a good practice to push notifications in a \"near real-time\" delay in this case?", "text": "I want to enable some real-time notifications about friend's activities (social network).   Technical context is: Webapp calling backend (REST API's). Scenario is: _Kevin follows Bob.   When Bob posts a new comment, Kevin should be notified immediately (near real- time).   Besides, when Kevin logs in, he should be able to see some past notifications, similar to what Facebook does.   Meaning that notifications should be stored somewhere._ Here's the technical workflow:   1. Bob posting a new comment involves an insert in database of this new comment.    2. As following Domain-Driven-Design, the event `CommentedItemEvent` is triggered.   3. A distinct worker in the same bounded context (long-running process, polling the database each second) listening to this event captures it. At the end of 3, I see 2 possibilities:   * Creating the corresponding notification, storing it in database and THEN sending it to Redis Pub/sub. This one would feed some specific subscribers acting on the WebSocket connection to send the notification to Kevin's client.   * Creating the corresponding notification, then sending it to Redis THEN storing them in database.  Regarding the first possibility, the advantage would be the transactional aspect. Indeed, no noticification could be sent if it wasn't saved before. => Integrity.   However, the drawback is that the database insertion could slow down the process of \"near real-time notification\". Regarding the second possibility, notifications are immediately sent but if some failure happens regarding database insertion, Kevin might have wondered: \"Humm... I received the Bob's notification, I'm sure I saw it. So why a simple page refresh doesn't show it anymore?\" => Indeed, it wasn't persist successfully, so can't query it. What is a good practice regarding this use case? Of course, one faster way would be to not involve an event listener for this case, but it would violate some principles regarding Domain-Driven Design. IMHO, listener polling database in its own bounded context is necessary. (evoked by Vaughn Vernon in this book IDDD - \"Building an event store\")"}
{"_id": "246674", "title": "Managing database schema for a C++ app", "text": "I have an open source project (Cockatrice) that uses mysql for the server component. I'm planning some changes to the schema, but right now the only management I have is a script that runs the proper `CREATE TABLE` statements. Before I start rolling out changes I'd like to get a schema management solution in place. The app is written in C++ with Qt, and I haven't been able to find anything like rails migrations or play evolutions for C++. I could just use those, but it would introduce a completely unrelated dependency that I'm reluctant to use for this. I've come up with an approach and I'd like some feedback on whether it makes sense or has any drawbacks. Add a new table to manage the schema, with a version column. New migrations would get added with a version up, down, and full creation script (eg 2.up.sql, 2.down.sql, and 2.full.sql). The up script would contain the sql to perform the upgrade, the down script would reverse it, and the full would create a database from scratch at that version. I was thinking I'd write a script runnable by the administrator that would do something like the following:   * Read current version from db   * scan for new patches   * lock whole db   * snapshot db minus volatile tables   * start transaction   * apply each sql file in order to bring it to the latest version   * create a scratch db and apply the full create sql   * compare updated schema against the scratch db   * if schema doesn't match, error out and abort transaction   * if it matches, drop the scratch schema   * unlock"}
{"_id": "44610", "title": "What is a \u201cpretty and proper OO\u201d way for handling sessions and authentication?", "text": "Is coupling these two concepts a bad approach? As of right now I'm delegating all session handling and whether or not a user desires to logout in my config.inc file. As I was writing my Auth class I started wondering whether or not my Auth class should be taking care of most of the logic in my config.inc. Regardless, I'm sure there's a more elegant way of handling this... Here is what I have in my config.inc (also a large chunk of this code is based on a reply I found on SO except I can't find the source ._.):               ini_set('session.name', 'SID');          # session management     session_set_cookie_params(24*60*60); // set SID cookie lifetime     session_start();     if(isset($_SESSION['LOGOUT']) {         session_destroy(); // destroy session data         $_SESSION = array(); // destroy session data sanity check         setcookie('SID', '', time() - 24*60*60); // destroy session cookie data         #header('Location: '.DOCROOT);     } elseif(isset($_SESSION['SID_AUTH'])) { // verify user has authenticated              if (!isset($_SESSION['SID_CREATED'])) {             $_SESSION['SID_CREATED'] = time();         } elseif (time() - $_SESSION['SID_CREATED'] > 6*60*60) {             // session started more than 6 hours ago             session_regenerate_id(); // reset SID value             $_SESSION['SID_CREATED'] = time();  // update creation time         }              if (isset($_SESSION['SID_MODIFIED']) && (time() - $_SESSION['SID_MODIFIED'] > 12*60*60)) {             // last request was more than 12 hours ago             session_destroy(); // destroy session data             $_SESSION = array(); // destroy session data sanity check             setcookie('SID', '', time() - 24*60*60); // destroy session cookie data         }              $_SESSION['SID_MODIFIED'] = time(); // update last activity time stamp     }"}
{"_id": "243004", "title": "Is there a theory for \"transactional\" sequences of failing and no-fail actions?", "text": "My question is about writing transaction-like functions that execute sequences of actions, some of which may fail. It is related to the general C++ principle \"destructors can't throw,\" no-fail property, and maybe also with multi-phase transactions or exception safety. However, I'm thinking about it in language- neutral terms. My concern is with correctly designing error handling in C++ functions that must be reliable. I would like to know what the concepts below are called so that I can learn more about them. I'm sorry that I can't ask the question more directly. Since I don't know this area I have provided an example to explain my question. The question is at the end. Here goes: Consider a sequence of steps or actions executed sequentially, where actions belong to one of two classes: those that always succeed, and those that may fail. In the examples below:   * `S` stands for an action that always succeeds (called \"no-fail\" in some settings).   * `F` stands for an action that may fail (for example, it might fail to allocate memory or do I/O that could fail). Consider a sequences of actions (executed sequentially from left to right):               S->S->S->S      Since each action in the sequence above succeeds, the whole sequence succeeds. On the other hand, the following sequence may fail because the last action may fail:               S->S->S->F      So, **claim:** a sequence has the no-fail (S) property if and only if all of its actions are no-fail. Now, I'm interested in action sequences that form \"atomic transactions\", with \"failure atomicity,\" i.e. where either the whole sequence completes successfully, or there is no effect. I.e. if some action fails, the earlier ones must be rolled back. This requires that any successfully executed actions prior to a failing action must always be able to be rolled back. Consider the sequence:               S->S->S->F     S<-S<-S      In the example above, the first row is the forward path of the transaction, and the second row are inverse actions (executed from right to left) that can be used to roll back if the final top row actions fails. It seems to me that for a transaction to support failure atomicity, the following invariant must hold: **Claim:** To support _failure atomicity_ (either successful completion, or complete roll-back on failure) all actions preceding the latest failable (F) action on the forward path (marked * in the example below) must have no-fail (S) inverses. The following is an example of a sequence that supports failure atomicity:                        *     S->F->F->F     S<-S<-S      Further, if we want the transaction to be able to attempt cancellation mid-way through, but still guarantee either full completion or full rollback then we need the following property: **Claim:** To support _failure atomicity and cancellation_ mid-way through execution, in the face of errors in the inverse (cancellation) path, all actions following the earliest failable (F) inverse on the reverse path (marked *) must be no-fail (S).               F->F->F->S->S     S<-S<-F<-F           *      I believe that these two conditions guarantee that an abortable/cancelable transaction will never get \"stuck\". My questions are: _What is the study and theory of these properties called? are my claims correct? and what else is there to know?_ UPDATE 1: Updated terminology: what I previously called \"robustness\" is called **atomicity** in the database literature. UPDATE 2: Added explicit reference to failure atomicity, which seems to be a thing."}
{"_id": "250819", "title": "How to develop cross platform mobile applications with native UI and Javascript backend?", "text": "I want to build a cross platform(Android, iOS, Windows) mobile application. I want the UX of the application to be different on the different platforms so that it will be more platform specific and does not force different platform users to stick to a common UI, as this common UI might not gel well in terms of look and feel with other native applications in their platform. However since it is the same application that I am trying to build across all platforms my backend will mostly be the same. This image presents what I am trying to achieve. ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/FkOO4.png) Is it possible to build different UI for each platform using native technologies like Storyboard(in iOS), XML(in Android), XAML(in Windows) and then bind these UI elements to native controllers. And making this controller use a common javascript backend for all the platforms. I am aware of the concept of Native and Hybrid applications. The problem that I would face with them are the following   1. Pure native applications will force me to make the entire source code platform specific which will make me write my backend thrice in 3 different languages. (Least reusable)   2. Hybrid applications(like those build on PhoneGap) will let me write my code in javascript and html but will create a common ui with HTML5/CSS3 which should be used across all platforms, I want to have different UI and for the UI to be more native than generic. Is this common javascript backend code achievable. And if it is then is there a way in which I can create this entire javascript code independently and package it as platform specific libraries like .a(for iOS), .jar(for Android), .dll(for Windows). Or should I use some other approach? Thanks in Advance"}
{"_id": "243006", "title": "Is the test, which touches the filenames under directory, a kind of unittest?", "text": "I was told that unittest is fast and the tests which touches DB, across network, and touches FileSystem are not unittest. In one of my testcases, its input are the file names (amount about 300~400) under a specific folder. Although these input are part of file system, the execution time of this test is very fast. Should I moved this test, which is fast but touches file system, to higher level test?"}
{"_id": "139017", "title": "How to organize a framework based project in Git", "text": "Ok, so I have what appears to be a complex situation, and I'm wondering how to best organize it. I have limited experience with Git so I might be missing system. I have a framework developed internally. This framework is being used my ProjectX, ProjectY, and ProjectZ. If I update the core components of the framework (Located in /core and /resources) I want it updated for all of my projects. However I want to be able to update the custom components of each project and have that tracked in Git as well (All custom content is located in /app). So I'm thinking on our central server we should have a Git repository just for the core framework. This will contain the following:               core/*     resources/*     .htaccess     index.php      Then each of our projects will have their own repository on the server containing the app/ folder. Would this work with Git locally however? Can we pull the contents of two repositories to one folder? We might have `/home/brandon/projects/ProjectX`. Just looking for input on how to organize this. Also, how would we push to the live/test environments? Would SSHing into the production environment and pulling from the central repository be the way to go?"}
{"_id": "139012", "title": "what's the most efficient emacs workflow for compilation and interactive execution cycles (C++/makefile)", "text": "I try not to cross-post, but the only response I got at stack-exchange was to post here... What's the preferred practice for a compile-run cycle in emacs? Previously, I used alt-x compile (mapped to F12) with make as my compile command. Within the Makefile I had an entry which would run the program that was compiled. This worked fine when my programs were non-interactive, but the compilation buffer is non-interactive. Of course I could open a shell and run the executable, but I'd like to automate the compile-run cycle as much as possible and I assume there must be a standard practice for this and I'm guessing my executing-from-the-makefile method is a kluge... C-u F12 works, but I'm wondering if that's the best approach for doing this (and if so, how can I bind F12 to be equivalent to C-u alt-x compile instead of just alt-x compile?)."}
{"_id": "139013", "title": "Is the Waterfall software development methodology still viable?", "text": "In my experience, it seems as though the Waterfall model has proven to be too inflexible and non-responsive to requirements changes to be considered a viable method in the modern world of software development. The growth and proven track record of more agile, iterative methods seems to indicate that there is no reason why anyone should be following a process of rigid blocks that assumes little to no changes from project inception to product delivery. Is is the waterfall development methodology still viable for delivering software systems, with respect to time, cost, and quality?"}
{"_id": "163718", "title": "what's the name of this pattern?", "text": "I see this a lot in frameworks. You have a master class which other classes register with. The master class then decides which of the registered classes to delegate the request to. An example based passed in class may be something this.               public interface Processor {       public boolean canHandle(Object objectToHandle);       public void handle(Object objectToHandle);     }          public class EvenNumberProcessor extends Processor {       public boolean canHandle(Object objectToHandle) {          if (!isNumeric(objectToHandle)){           return false          }          return isEven(objectToHandle);        }             public void handle(objectToHandle) {          //Optionally call canHandleAgain to ensure the calling class is fufilling its contract          doSomething();        }      }          public class OddNumberProcessor extends Processor {       public boolean canHandle(Object objectToHandle) {          if (!isNumeric(objectToHandle)){           return false          }              return isOdd(objectToHandle);       }             public void handle(objectToHandle) {          //Optionally call canHandleAgain to ensure the calling class is fufilling its contract          doSomething();        }      }          //Can optionally implement processor interface     public class processorDelegator {            private List processors;       public void addProcessor(Processor processor) {         processors.add(processor);       }            public void process(Object objectToProcess) {          //Lookup relevant processor either by keeping a list of what they can process          //Or query each one to see if it can process the object.               chosenProcessor=chooseProcessor(objectToProcess);          chosenProcessor.handle(objectToProcess);        }          }      Note there are a few variations I see on this. In one variation the sub classes provide a list of things they can process which the `ProcessorDelegator` understands. The other variation which is listed above in fake code is where each is queried in turn. This is similar to chain of command but I don't think its the same as chain of command means that the processor needs to pass to other processors. The other variation is where the `ProcessorDelegator` itself implements the interface which means you can get trees of `ProcessorDelegator` which specialise further. In the above example you could have a numeric processor delegator which delegates to an even/odd processor and a string processordelegator which delegates to different strings. My question is does this pattern have a name?"}
{"_id": "168124", "title": "Sharing a database while we work on local copies?", "text": "A friend and me are working on a webapp. We're using git so each of us has a local copy of the app. But the problem is the database. We want to be able to see the latest changes the other person made. From what I understand, we have two options:   * Host the database on a server   * Add the .sql file to every commit we make. For the first option, we might expose our system to some risks (which I'm scared of). For the second option, we're adding unnecessary work to our daily tasks (importing the .sql file and then creating the .sql file). I'm new to this stuff - so any suggestions are welcome!"}
{"_id": "168127", "title": "Syntactic sugar in PHP with static functions", "text": "The dilemma I'm facing is: should I use static classes for the components of an application just to get nicer looking API? Example - the \"normal\" way:               // example component     class Cache{       abstract function get($k);       abstract function set($k, $v);     }          class APCCache extends Cache{       ...     }              class application{            function __construct()         $this->cache = new APCCache();       }            function whatever(){         $this->cache->add('blabla');         print $this->cache->get('blablabla');       }          }      Notice how ugly is `this->cache->...`. But it gets waay uglier when you try to make the application extensible trough plugins, because then you have to pass the application instance to its plugins, and you get `$this->application->cache->...` With static functions:               interface CacheAdapter{       abstract function get($k);       abstract function set($k, $v);     }          class Cache{            public static         $ad;            public function setAdapter(CacheAdapter $a){         static::$ad = $ad;       }            public static function get($k){         return static::$ad->get($k);       }            ...          }          class APCCache implements CacheAdapter{       ...     }               class application{            function __construct(){         cache::setAdapter(new APCCache);       }            function whatever()             cache::add('blabla', 5);         print cache::get('blabla');       }          }      Here it looks nicer because you just call `cache::get()` everywhere. The disadvantage is that I loose the possibility to extend this class easily. But I've added a setAdapter method to make the class extensible to some point. I'm relying on the fact that I won't need to rewrite to replace the cache wrapper, ever, and that I won't need to run multiple application instances simultaneously (it's basically a site - and nobody works with two sites at the same time) So, am doing it wrong?"}
{"_id": "57860", "title": "What should I learn that I missed by not going to school?", "text": "I'm a software engineer at a local university, and I feel I'm able to competently do my job, but recently I've been interested in \"filling in\" the gaps in my knowledge. I suspect I would have learned some of this in school; for example, I don't have a lot of knowledge of sorting algorithms (something I feel is pretty common in college). So, **what knowledge am I _likely_ missing by not going to college** that I could study on my own? Bonus points for listing resources that might put me on the right track! Some background: I've programmed in **PHP** , **Java** , and **Ruby** (more seriously in Java and Ruby than PHP); I have some experience with **C/C++** , though my workload doesn't really lend itself to those languages; I work mostly (recently) with the web, using frameworks such as **CakePHP** and **Rails**. I'm familiar with **SQL** (though probably not with some of the theory). Note: The university I work for has no technical classes, so taking courses on the university's dime is a great idea but not possible for me. :)"}
{"_id": "161408", "title": "How much should a floating license cost?", "text": "Floating licensing is a software licensing approach in which a limited number of licenses for a software application are shared among a larger number of users over time. Nice for the corporates to reduce the costs. It has also the developer aspect. I saw lots of pricing examples for many software. As far I understood, there is no standard to set the prices. As a software developer, it is also a goal to maximize the yield. Which criteria should I take in account by setting the floating license price?"}
{"_id": "129061", "title": "what kind of relation will exist between a member and a P2P network classes in a class diagram?", "text": "I have a member class which stores the IP, and ports used on that member. Another class P2P stores a list of all the members currently in the network and provides join,leave functionality. What kind of relationship will exist between them in a class diagram?"}
{"_id": "129066", "title": "How should I control the versions of my project on GitHub", "text": "I am trying to spend as much time as I can on GitHub nowadays _(even I am the only person in team at work)_ to really feel how it is going to be like for a real world corporate application. One question I am having is to controlling the **version**. Let's say we started a project. Then, team members created some branches and develop there. When we are ready for the production, we merged all of branches with `master` branch. At the end, we go live with version `1.0`. Now that version `1.0` is live and we have some issues filed for that version of that software. We would like to start developing for version `1.1` in order to fix those issues that we had introduced by rushing the project. Now, the question is this: **How should we control the versioning here?** Should we create a new branch for `v1.0` and keep the version `1.0` of the software there and develop on some branches (or not), merged them with `master`, go live with version `1.1`? Is there convention out there for those kind of situations?"}
{"_id": "161400", "title": "Bump version number in commercial software development?", "text": "Who is responsible for bumping version number in commercial software development? How to setup policies for that? 1) for small team 2) for medium team It is important not to forget to change the version number that self-describes that output file. Such as AssemblyInfo.cs / resource.rc / AndroidManifest.xml"}
{"_id": "161404", "title": "Amortized Analysis? (Worst-case Performance Guarantees)", "text": "What is Amortized Analysis? And how can it help me achieve _worst-case performance guarantees_ in my programs? I was reading that the following techniques can help the programmer achieve _Worst-case performance guarantees_ (i.e. in my own words: guarantee that the running time of a program would not exceed the running time in the worst cast):   * Randomized algorithms (e.g. quicksort algorithm is quadratic in worst case, but randomly ordering the input gives a probabilistic guarantee that its running time is linearithmic )   * Sequences of operations (our analysis must take into account both data and the sequence of operations performed by the client)   * **Amortized Analysis** (another way to provide a performance guarantee is to amortize the cost, by keeping track of the total cost of all operations, divided by the number of operations. In this setting, we can allow some expensive operations, while keeping the average cost of operations low. In other words, we spread the cost of the few expensive operations, by assigning a portion of it to each of a large number of inexpensive operations) The author mentioned the use of _resizing array data structure for Stack_ as one example of how to achieve amortized analysis but I still don't understand what amortized analysis is, and how it can actually be **implemented** (data structure? algorithm?) to achieve worst-cast performance guarantees"}
{"_id": "161406", "title": "How much attention I can expect from an open source community as a newcomer?", "text": "Some days ago I started working in an open source project. The project was from a famous organization and they have many projects, but unfortunately I found that no one is actively working in the project I've chosen right at now (although there are several people subscribed to the developer mailing list for that project). But I decided to work there as the project seems to be relatively easy and a good starting point for me, as I didn't work in a big project before. The team leader of the project welcomed me. I found out two bugs and then submitted the patches. I also asked them what kind of contribution they need from me for this project. But it has been three days and no one gave any reply. I want to work more, but I'm loosing my zeal as I'm thinking that I'm not getting proper attention. Is it a normal scenario? Or I'm really not getting proper attention? How much help and attention I can expect from the community?"}
{"_id": "121736", "title": "Searching for entity awareness in 3D space algorithm and data structure", "text": "I'm trying to do some huge AI system just for the fun and I've come to this problem. How can I let the AI entities know about each other without getting the CPU to perform redundant and costly work? Every entity has a spatial awareness zone and it has to know what's inside when it has to decide what to do. First thoughts, for every entity test if the other entities are inside the first's reach. Ok, so it was the first try and yep, that is redundant and costly. We are working with real time AI over 10000+ entities so this is not a solution. Second try, calculate some grid over the awareness zone of every entity and test whether in this zones are entities (we are working with 3D entities with float x,y,z location coordinates) testing every point in the grid with the indexed-by-coordinate entities. Well, I don't like this because is also costly, but not as the first one. Third, create some multi linked lists over the x's and y's indexed positions of the entities so when we search for an interval between x,y and z,w positions (this interval defines the square over the spatial awareness zone) over the multi linked list, we won't have 'voids'. This has the problem of finding the nearest proximity value if there isn't one at the position where we start the search. I'm not convinced with any of the ideas so I'm searching for some enlightening. Do you people have any better ideas?"}
{"_id": "178311", "title": "What is development automation?", "text": "When someone refers to \"Development Automation\", what is it exactly? What are some frameworks for development automation? My boss asked me to develop a strategy for implementing such in the company but I have not found much information related to the matter. Google seems to think I am referring to testing automation, which is not the case."}
{"_id": "178314", "title": "When should one use \"out\" parameters?", "text": "In Objective-C, there are several methods like `initWithContentsOfFile:encoding:error:` where one passes in a reference to an `NSError` object for the `error:` parameter. In this example, the value of the `NSError` object passed in can change based on what goes on at runtime when the method is being called and whether the body of the method was executed in a certain way successfully. In a way I think of this `NSError` object as sort of like a second return value from the method, and only differs from an object `anObject` in the statement `return anObject;` in that when this statement is called, execution leaves the method. So my question is, **not only in the context of error handling in Objective-C, but in general, when should one use an \"out\" parameter in place of returning said value in a return statement?**"}
{"_id": "99692", "title": "Philosophy behind Undefined Behavior", "text": "C\\C++ specifications leave out a large number of behaviors open for compilers to implement in their own way. There are a number of questions that always keep getting asked here about the same and we have some excellent posts about it:   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/367633/what-are-all-the-common-undefined-behaviour-that-a-c-programmer-should-know-abo   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4105120/what-is-undefined-behavior   * http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4176328/undefined-behavior-and-sequence-points My question is not about what undefined behavior is, or is it really bad. I do know the perils and most of the relevant undefined behavior quotes from the standard, so please refrain from posting answers about how bad it is. This question is about the philosophy behind leaving out so many behaviors open for compiler implementation. I read an excellent blog post that states that performance is the main reason. I was wondering if performance is the only criteria for allowing it, or are there any other factors which influence the decision to leaving things open for compiler implementation? If you have any examples to cite about how a particular undefined behavior provides sufficient room for compiler to optimize, please list them. If you know of any other factors other than performance, please back your answer with sufficient detail. If you do not understand the question or do not have sufficient evidences/sources to back your answer, please do not post broadly speculating answers."}
{"_id": "156241", "title": "Writing a new programming language - when and how to bootstrap datastructures?", "text": "I'm in the process of writing my own programming language which, thus far, has been going great in terms of what I set out to accomplish. However, now, I'd like to bootstrap some pre-existing data structures and/or objects. My problem is that I'm not really sure on how to begin. When the compiler begins do I splice in these add-ins so their part of the scope of the application? If I make these in some core library, my concern is how I distribute the library in addition to the compiler--or are they part _of_ the compiler? I get that there are probably a number of plausible ways to approach this, but I'm having trouble with the setting my direction. If it helps, the language is on top of the .NET core (i.e it compiles to CLR code). Any help or suggestions are very much appreciated!"}
{"_id": "176922", "title": "Apply WCF For Large Projects", "text": "We have a large project that has nearly 20 modules on it. We want to use WCF for the business layer. We have thought of three ways to implement WCF our project:   1. Use only one datacontract and one operation contract. Send ClassName, MethodName to operation and create class by reflection then invoke the method in WCF side.   2. Put all the modules in one wcf application, and create their data contracts, operation contracts.   3. Create a seperate wcf application for each module and host them seperatly. We use web services because, we need call business layer in java and c#. Which one is the best way? I need your ideas."}
{"_id": "221268", "title": "Is doing two things on one line always a bad practice?", "text": "int *itPins = pins;     for(int i = 0; i < count; i++)     {         ConfigureGpifPinAsGpioOutput(itPins);         itPins++;     }      I have the impression that doing two things in one line is bad practice. This is why I am advancing the iterator outside of the only statement, using it. However, I feel blindly following a rule.   * Is this code less error-prone than if the `++` is inside the function invocation?   * Why?   * Does this rule apply to such ultra-simple cases or is it meaningful only for more complex program structures?"}
{"_id": "160537", "title": "how do I know I've split my program into too small pieces?", "text": "Ever since entering the world of programming, I've been bombed with tips like \"file should be only x lines\", which is fair since new programmers tend to stuff everything into one file. But, having done programming professionally for more than a year now, I've mostly found myself getting hindered by the small size of the files, rather than than the large size of them. One of the biggest hindrances I have, is having to shuffle between 10-20 different files when investigating how something works, when some of those files contain only a couple of lines. So I guess my question is: how do I know I've split my program into too small pieces?"}
{"_id": "179952", "title": "Should I implement an interface directly or have the superclass do it?", "text": "Is there a difference between               public class A extends AbstractB implements C     {...}      versus...               public class A extends AbstractB     {...}     AbstractB implements C     {...}      I understand that in both cases, class A will end up conforming to the interface. In the second case, `AbstractB` can provide implementation for interface methods in `C`. Is that the only difference? **If I do NOT want to provide an implementation for any of the interface methods in** `AbstractB`, **which style should I be using**? Does using one or the other have some hidden 'documentation' purpose?"}
{"_id": "111080", "title": "Why is Java considered more portable than other languages like C++?", "text": "What differs between \"writing a specific JRE for each platform\" for Java developers and \"writing a C++ compiler for each platform\" for C++ ones?"}
{"_id": "8758", "title": "Use of pirated/cracked software for development", "text": "Disclaimer: I by no means condone the use of pirated software. Have you ever witnessed the use of pirated software for development purposes? May be a company didn't have enough money to buy a piece of software and there were no free alternatives? May be a company wanted to try something out before buying and there were no trial licenses for that product. Whatever the circumstances, have you worked at a company where using pirated/cracked software was accepted? Were there any consequences to doing this?"}
{"_id": "179956", "title": "Open source license with backlink requirement", "text": "I'm developing a Javascript library, and I'm thinking about releasing it under an open source license (e.g. GPL, BSD, MIT) \u2014 but that requires that websites that use the software link back to my website. Do you know about any such licenses? And how have they formulated the attribution part of the license text? Do you think this BSD-license would do what you think that I want? (I suppose it doesn't :-)) > [...] 3\\. Each website that redistributes this work must include a visible > `rel=follow` link to _my-website.example.com_ , reachable via `rel=follow` > links from each page where the software is being redistributed.   >  (For example, you could have a link back to your homepage, and from your > homepage to an About-Us section, which could link to a Credits section) I realize that some companies wouldn't want to use the library because of legal issues with interpreting non-standard licenses (have a look at this answer: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/156859/54906). \u2014 After half a year, or perhaps some years, I license the work under plain GPL + MIT too (in addition to the original license)."}
{"_id": "164151", "title": "How does eMail encryption work?", "text": "I have been going over YouTube watching videos on eMail encryption and everyone seems to explain it from a different perspective. Some do it for a CompTIA exam while others just provide a primer. Here is what I understood: ![email encryption](http://i.stack.imgur.com/2Ooj8.png)    **Step1** : You compose an email that you want to send. Without encryption, it will be simple ASCII text that will be visible to anyone along the way.   **Step2** : You generate a digital signature to make sure that nobody gets to re-transmit your email and claim it was you. _Digital Signature_ is generated using **_Sender's private key_** which is usually a hash of the password and is then combined with the original message to form one long hash string. These signatures are _one-time-use-only_ and a new one is calculated for every email.   **Step 3** : You encrypt the compose of your email using **_Receiver's public key_** so that the only person who can read it is the intended receiver using their **_private key_**   **Step 4** : When you hit the send the email, what is transmitted now is gibberish to everyone apart from the intended receiver who will decrypt is using their **_private key_**   And there are various ways to do it like PEM, PGP, etc.      Correct me where I am wrong or refine where necessary."}
{"_id": "179958", "title": "What can I do with urllib?", "text": "I grasp that it can fetch internet resources, but I'm not really fully appreciating what that means. I was doing the challenges at pythonchallenge.com, and I got past the one that requires urllib to fetch the page and read the source, but I don't see how this is useful quite yet. And examples are kind of lacking in diversity. What else can it do, or how can I use this to my advantage? (Besides building a web browser...)"}
{"_id": "95020", "title": "Is it standards-compliant to style the <html> node?", "text": "I am working on a website theme. I want to use a repeating background on the `<html>` node so I can have another background overlapping it on the `<body>` node. Otherwise, I would add the first background to the `<body>` node and then have the second background on a nested `<div>` with 100% width/height inside it. I am going for a full-browser repeating pattern that will be visible no matter how the browser is resized. See my examples. Desired:               <html> <!-- background: url(\"...\") repeat; width: 100%; height: 100%; -->       <body> <!-- background: url(\"...\") repeat-x; width: 100%; height: 100%; -->      Not allowed by specification? Not a good idea because of browser quirks? Work- around:               <html> <!-- width: 100%; height: 100%; -->       <body> <!-- background: url(\"...\") repeat; width: 100%; height: 100%; -->         <div> <!-- background: url(\"...\") repeat-x; width: 100%; height: 100%; -->      It is working in FF5 and IE7/8/9. But is there is a specification that says to not add style to the `<html>` node? Is there a particular browser I should watch out for, such as IE6, that will cause me to revert to the alternative if I try this? **EDIT:** I am using a proper `<!DOCTYPE html...>` declaration (XHTML 1.0 Tansitional). The width/height on the `html` node is mostly for clarity of my background pattern's intentions. (Thanks @veryfoolish) **EDIT 2:** I know CSS3 supports multiple backgrounds per node and @merryprankster's comment shows me how to simulate that with CSS 2.1 (thanks!), but I really need to know if HTML/CSS according to specification restricts anything \"visual\" on the `<html>` node, which in practice is generally used as an invisible box surrounding the `<body>` tag. Is there a reason why no one takes advantage of the `<html>` node's guaranteed existence, by applying CSS styles to it (not just cascaded properties, like `font-size`)?"}
{"_id": "95024", "title": "How to facilitate code reviews in a small team for embedded software?", "text": "**Short Question**   Does a cost-effective tool / workflow exist to facilitate code reviews in a small team? More specifically, a small team that relies on post-commit code reviews. **Background**   Our team currently consists of 3 full time and 1 part time software engineers, with plans on hiring more in the near future. Due to our team size and volume of projects we all must juggle, the pre-commit workflow that major tools (such as Review Board and Code Collaborator) use is not obtainable for us right now. The best we can do at the moment is to perform post-commit reviews before major releases or as time permits. Nearly all of our projects are hosted on RepositoryHosting.com (which I _highly_ recommend) and contain a mixture of SVN and GIT repositories. **Current Thoughts**   Since I cannot find a tool that fits our needs right now, I am turning to TRAC that is built into our repository's site. At the moment we use TRAC to file tickets and track milestones, so to me this seems like a natural fit for code review results as well. The direction I am heading in right now is to use a spread sheet(s) to log all of the bugs and comments. Do some macro magic to get it in a format that I can use TRAC's import ticket method and use TRAC's ticketing system to create the action items / bug reports automatically. The auto ticket generation is darn near a must have, adding in bugs and comments one at a time from a web-gui is really painful. _Secondary Question_   If this workflow makes sense, is there a good / standard template to use as a code review log?"}
{"_id": "238934", "title": "Passing parameters in same object as responses", "text": "I have a number of operations that need to be performed, in series, on the same set of data. As the operations progress, later operations require information from the prior operations. So the initial object passed in to the first method snowballs as it collects results and metadata. At first I was passing around both a request and a response, but that painted me into a corner a couple times. So now what I intend to do is just have one parameter object that contains all the initial data, it remembers interim values, and delivers the final results, all within a single object that is passed around to many void methods. My questions: Is this a pattern? Or is this bad form? My contrived example is below.                   class Program         {             static void Main()             {                 var MyObj = new RequestResponseInfo();                 MyObj.InitalValue = \"fo\";                 foobar.DoStuff(MyObj);                 Console.WriteLine(MyObj.FinalAnswer);                 Console.ReadKey();             }         }              public static class foobar         {             public static void DoStuff(RequestResponseInfo myObj)             {                 DoSomething_A(myObj);                 DoSomething_B(myObj);                 myObj.FinalAnswer = myObj.A + myObj.B;             }                  private static void DoSomething_A(RequestResponseInfo myObj)             {                 myObj.A =  myObj.InitalValue + \"ob\";             }                  private static void DoSomething_B(RequestResponseInfo myObj)             {                 myObj.B = \"ar\";             }         }              public class RequestResponseInfo         {             public string InitalValue { get; set; }             public string A { get; set; }             public string B { get; set; }             public string FinalAnswer { get; set; }         }"}
{"_id": "238938", "title": "Logging system interactions as a user vs as a flag", "text": "When running a site that has a CRM with a logging facility that logs users interactions (someone changing a name, address or user permission etc), is it better to log system interactions (automated tasks and alike) as a fake user set up as a constant either in a \"users\" object, or as part of the application settings so you can either do `applicationscope.SystemUser` or `UserObject.getSystemUser()`. Having talked in work, some colleagues believe it is an abuse of the User database to have a fake user in there to represent the System and believe it better to alter up the database so tables that are affected by such a change carry a `isSystem` flag that would be set to 1 should the system make changes."}
{"_id": "255464", "title": "Using the command pattern for a sequence of tasks", "text": "I have a 'sequence of tasks' to undertake on a zip file. It can be simplified into these steps:   1. Validate that the file is a ZIP file and is valid   2. Unzip the file   3. Validate the contents are as expected   4. Turn the contents into a product I am currently using the Command pattern and it looks a little something like this               interface Command {         public function execute($data);     }          class ValidateFile implements Command {          public function execute($filePath) { //... }     }          class UnzipFile implements Command {          public function execute($filePath) { //... }     }          class ValidateContents implements Command {         public function execute($unzippedFilePath) { //... }     }          class ProductGenerator implements Command {         public function execute($unzippedFilePath) { //... }     }      Now, each of these execute commands returns a string that is in turn (by the command invoker) passed to the next command in the chain (defined by configuration). I am having two problems here:   1. Each command requires its own dependencies, i.e. unzip needs access to ZipArchive, a class that handles the unzipping of zip files. How do I inject each command's depenencies? I am quite happy to get around this by instantiating all of the commands through a DIC and plugging them into an 'Invoker' that accepts instantiated objects of type Command, the runs them in sequence, however it doesn't feel right.   2. (More of an issue) How do I persist more than a string between commands? I have seen in places people passing a 'context' object from one command to another, however this feels a bit dirty as the command would be depending upon an untyped interface (they essentially wrap an associative array). It makes sense that it has to be untyped, as if you're to maintain an interface between commands, then the context can't implement any specific methods as that would deter from its abstraction. I would appreciate any advice on how to deal with both of these issues. Edit: Another issue I have is that each of these commands is actually coupled to the state of the file path that's passed to it, they're quite specific to the case at hand, but I doubt it's possible to work past that."}
{"_id": "255465", "title": "Version controlling of a web project", "text": "We (2 developers) are developing a cakephp app that is running on a remote server. In NetBeans we both have project set up as \"PHP application from remote server\". The problem is that whenever one of us modifies any of the files, they get instantly updated on the server, but not in the other developer's IDE. We have git + bitbucket set up, but that still looks somehow confusing So I see two possible ways of doing it and please let me know if I am wrong. First one: 1.) We keep on developing the project as \"PHP application from remote server\" 2.) Once one of us is done with his part, pushes it to the repo 3.) The other fetches, and pushes his commits for the other to fetch But this way it is very confusing in the middle of a sprint, since the other develop had made changes to the script, and you see the system acting depending on those changes, but you cannot really see what exactly has been changed. Second one: 1.) Develop separately on localhosts 2.) Push and fetch the changes 3.) Upload the project to the server This way we loose the usage of server when developing. And it may bring a lot of trouble debugging once the changes are updated on the server The questions are: are both of the views correct and we have to choose one, or do we skip/not know something that would help us in the proccess. Any help, guidance or suggestions are much appreciated."}
{"_id": "148829", "title": "Patterns for integrating with a slow external service", "text": "Was hoping someone could provide some patterns/techniques/ideas to increase performance for the following scenario. Am integrating with an external ordering system via SOAP. The external system can be slow and unfortunately nothing can be changed at that end. All products are retrieved from this external source and an order is only placed with the external system when they've paid so cart functionality will be implemented locally. When a item is added to the cart, it will check the external source if there's enough stock and then add the item to the cart locally, and the user will stay on the same page (eg. wont' redirect to a cart summary screen). It will also check the rest of the items in their cart to ensure there is enough stock, so depending on how many items they have there could be a lot of calls to the external source. I guess, could only check the stock levels for other items in their cart when they get to the checkout summary screen and subsequent checkout screens but i feel that isn't the best user experience. For reference, local site will be using ASP.NET MVC3 Any suggestions? Thanks"}
{"_id": "255461", "title": "I am a high school student and want to be a game developer, Got some questions", "text": "From a very young age, I've always wanted to be a programmer. Being a part of a game is my dream. So here is my questions: 1) I'll be going to university next year, and I'm planning on going to Wien for education. Is computer science to best way to get what I want, or is there another way to learn programming in university? 2) Becasue of all the sutdying for the university exams I can't learn any programming languages right now. Will it be hard for me to learn the languages from scratch? If so, how difficult will it be? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "255463", "title": "What standard to use for RESTful JSON API", "text": "I am currently reading the book RESTful Web APIs by Leonard Richardson, Mike Amundsen and Sam Ruby, that describes the Collection+JSON pattern, and while searching around the web during my exploration of the information in the book, I stumbled upon JSON API. Now I am thinking which to choose? And are there many more attempts and standardizing how a RESTful JSON API should look? So I looked around and found that big players like github invents there own! (Github+JSON) Others just use plain old, no standardized JSON formatting. So what is up with this? Are people actually using Collection+JSON or is it as standardized as Github+JSON, in the practical world? What about JSON API? What have others betted on? What are others doing in this matter?"}
{"_id": "148823", "title": "Open Source license compatibility checker", "text": "Is there a tool available for checking if various combinations of open source licenses are compatible with each other? I'm planning on building various tools that use an Apache license for distribution because Apache's licence seems to strike a good balance between being permissive and being enforceable in law. However, I'd like to include components from other open source projects in my code base, or make adaptors available to allow the end user to integrate such components into my code base. For example, I want to include a rich HTML editor such as CKEditor or TinyMCE in the package, but would doing so violate the licence of either project? I'm pretty sure that if I used GPL code it would force me to make my project GPL as well and I really don't want to do that. But what about MPL, LGPL, etc? I'd rather make such decisions purely on technical grounds but if you're doing open source it would be silly to ignore the wishes of other open source projects. I've tried looking for tools to help decide whether license X is compatible with license Y, if so which direction they're compatible in (X can include Y without issue, but if Y includes X then there could be problems, etc), and what the consequences on your licensing terms are if you include code with alternate licensing terms. All I've managed to find so far, however, is lists and charts that tend to be geared to comparing other licenses against GPL. If there is a tool out there to help with licensing issues I'd appreciate being pointed in the right direction."}
{"_id": "148821", "title": "Reducing number of php files used in project", "text": "I am developing an application in which I have a Class containing various methods. The problem is that i need to call most of the methods on form submission. For that reason, I have to create a new file on each form submission. On every file, I have to create an instance of the same class and then call the appropriate method. Is there any better way to call methods in such situation so that I don't have to create multiple files having similar functionality in php? I surely don't want to use any framework."}
{"_id": "148820", "title": "How to encrypt data using the private key?", "text": "I understand that in asymmetric crypto systems:   1. The public key is generally used to encrypt data and only the private key can be used to decrypt that data.   2. It's trivial to derive a public key from the private key (see this SO question). Firstly, is this correct? My goal is to supply data with my application that is _difficult_ to decrypt and _impossible_ to change, and so I want to be able to encrypt my data using a private key (which only I have) and allow my application to decrypt that data during runtime (hiding the public key as much as possible). I understand that this isn't fool-proof, however, I want to stop casual re-use of the data supplied with my application. Can anyone suggest an algorithm (preferably part of openssl) that can be used to achieve my goal? Looking at `RSA_private_encypt`, for example, shows that the encrypted data is of size `RSA_size()` (something like 128-bytes), which is because that function is used to generate signatures, not encrypted data. Is there a private encryption algorithm that generates data equal to the size of the plaintext data?"}
{"_id": "255468", "title": "Recreating files from shell script or java?", "text": "I have java application which takes a file, which is created by a process running on terminal. I start the process using a small shell script. Then run the Java application and it reads the file created by the process. Whenever this system runs created file need to be removed so that the process creates it using the same name. I have no control over the file creation process so I cant overwrite or append to the file. My question is, on which part should the file be deleted? In the Java application or the little shell script i wrote? I'm sorry if other aspects of the system seems poorly designed but as I said I have little control over it."}
{"_id": "252115", "title": "Can a type provider mimic an anonymous class?", "text": "I'm working on building a website using the F# MVC 5 template, and I noticed that the template creator uses formally declared types for the route defaults. In VB.Net and C#, this is typically done with anonymous classes, but these don't exist in F# my current work around is to use an Expando Object, like this:               [<RequireQualifiedAccess>]     module RouteConfig =              let private createDefaults (propValuePairs : seq<string * obj>) : obj =             let defaults = ExpandoObject() :> IDictionary<string,obj>             propValuePairs |> Seq.iter (fun (key,value) -> defaults.Add(key,value) )             box defaults                /// create a pair, boxing the second item         let inline private (=>) (key : string) value = key, box value              let RegisterWebApi =             Action<_> (fun (config: HttpConfiguration) ->                 // Configure routing                 config.MapHttpAttributeRoutes()                 config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(                     \"DefaultApi\", // Route name                     \"api/{controller}/{id}\", // URL with parameters                     createDefaults [ \"controller\" => \"{controller}\";                                       \"id\" => RouteParameter.Optional]                 ) |> ignore                      // Configure serialization                 config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.UseXmlSerializer <- true                 config.Formatters.JsonFormatter.SerializerSettings.ContractResolver                     <- Newtonsoft.Json.Serialization.CamelCasePropertyNamesContractResolver()                      // Additional Web API settings                     )              let RegisterRoutes(routes:RouteCollection) =                  routes.IgnoreRoute(\"{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}\")             routes.MapRoute(                 \"Default\", // Route name                 \"{controller}/{action}/{id}\", // URL with parameters                 createDefaults [ \"controller\" => \"Home\" ;                                   \"action\" => \"Index\";                                   \"id\" => UrlParameter.Optional; ]             ) |> ignore      I'm mainly wondering if type providers can do something like this at compile time instead of runtime."}
{"_id": "129683", "title": "How can I transition from database development to programming/software engineering?", "text": "I'm looking for some advice on the best path to take to shift careers from database development to software engineering. Some background: I have an undergrad in Mathematics from one of the better engineering/computer science schools in NA. I was lucky to have taken a few computer science courses given me a bit of a foundation in CS theory (java programming, elementary algorithms, data structures). Since graduating I've been working as a database developer (6 yrs now), specifically in data warehousing doing lots of PL/SQL coding for back-end ETL processing and occasionally front-end web/database applications. For a while now I've been finding that I'm far more interested in the work involving building database driven applications and now I want to extend and apply this passion to more traditional areas of software development. I've done research online to come up with some first action steps to catch up on theory and start to practice coding.   1. Study following texts.     * Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software     * The C Programming Language     * The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs   2. Simultaneously work through Python coding tutorials and look into solving as many online challenges, problems using Python.   3. Once reaching comfortable level of understanding of Python, start participating in open source projects, leveraging existing knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, mySQL combined with Python.   4. A few months down the line begin serious study of algorithms via Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen) & MIT 6.006 opencourse. Need to brush up on some discrete math but I think prior exposure to advanced mathematics and basic algorithms from my undergrad will come in handy. So at moment I could use some direction on following:   1. Does the above learning plan look ok? Any other readings, concepts, practice to consider optimizing my time and opportunities?   2. I'm in a dilemma in that I want to leave my current job asap as I'm not gaining anything that will help move me towards software development (not to mention how boring, unchallenging it is), yet I don't have the practical experience on the resume to apply for programming positions. What to do? Ideally I would like to get a position which I can leverage my background in databases/data warehousing, like data services engineering (Amazon for example has several positions in this regard), and transition from there but even those need some work experience in java/c++. If I pick up minor open source work on the side in the following months, how far can that get me in being considered for development positions? Any other paths I should consider?"}
{"_id": "129688", "title": "Are developers/programmers becoming a commodity in the IT world?", "text": "I work in the IT department as a web applications developer for a major company. Recently as I was at a coworker's desk (he's an architect), I saw this graph that was entitled \"Likely Future Roles in IT in 2015\". It basically was this chart outlining the roles in IT that would have more importance in the future and the roles that would diminish in importance. I'm not sure where it came from but it was a printout from our VP of IT. He got it from some magazine I think. Anyway, I was surprised to see that developers/programmers were on the diminished importance list. The roles on this list were projected to be less important and deemed liable for externalization which basically means offshoring. Also included on this list was roles like development managers and system administrators. In the group of increased importance were roles like Business Analysts, Project Managers, Cloud Solutions Engineer, and Technical Architects. I found this strange and surprising. I can tell you for one thing that there is no doubt in my mind that Architects are very important to an organization. Especially ones who still do coding. They are indispensable. But business analysts and project managers? In my company, I've always found the BAs and PMs to be middlemen and tend to \"get in the way.\" The real work is actually done by the developers. The developers in my company aren't just a bunch of coders who have no people skills. We actually work directly with the stakeholders in the business and solve their issues and make the company run more efficiently. The BAs and PMs may scope out things in a bigger picture and more long-term fashion but the actual execution and solving of problems is done by the developers. So I was really surprised to find that our roles were on the diminished importance list. I'm also surprised that our VP doesn't recognize this as he has always seemed to be appreciative of the efforts of the developers and recognize the value we bring. Developers who can code but also have the organizational and communication skills to figure out the problems the business is facing are indispensable in my opinion. They are the ones who keep the wheels rolling. I realize there are certain kinds of development activities you can offshore. And in today's market, it's dirt cheap but there are certain things that you just can't hand off to someone who is in a different time zone and has a language/culture barrier. I know that because my company has tried it before and it just didn't work out. Nevertheless, this has basically raised a concern with me. Are programmers/developers becoming a commodity or will be a commodity? Lots of people can code these days. Of course the best programmers will always have jobs but what about the \"good\" programmers like the rest of us? Are future IT departments just going to consist of a bunch of top-heavy employees like PMs, BAs, VPs, product managers and so on and externalize all the people who actually do the work? It just doesn't make sense to me. I read this article on techrepublic that says we are entering the decade of the developer. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/were-entering-the-decade-of-the- developer/6020 Yet there are other indications that developers are going to be in diminishing importance. I would appreciate some thoughts on this one."}
{"_id": "234111", "title": "Do the Project managers build a structure of an app (with empty methods) then give it to the others for completing the app in real world Project?", "text": "I have very little experience working in a big project. But I did work about 3 months in a small outsourcer (a company that do the coding for a bigger foreigner web development company). This is what I saw. The foreigner company did all the user analysis & all database designs. Then a group of the Project managers in that foreigner company start to build a structure of the Application. That means they build all the basic classes that are the framework of the app. For example, in the framework they got many **undone (empty)** methods like:               int calNoOfCustomer(...){        // do the calculation here     }      My small company then starts to fill in the details of empty methods but it did not build the whole structure. I think it likes an assignment in IT school. The teacher build a structure & empty methods & ask students to complete them. So, I want to ask you that \"is that the way how web development company does in real world big project?\" Do the Project managers build a structure of an application (with empty methods) then give it to the other programmers for completing the app in real world Big Project?"}
{"_id": "9872", "title": "Do you write secondary languages in your CV?", "text": "Every programmer has a primary language that he works with most of the time and is therefore very familiar with. But there are also languages that you kinda know, in the sense that you used to know them really well in the past, but hasn't used in a while, or that you use them infrequently and therefore are not as immersed in them as you are in your primary language. You can definitely bring yourself to be productive with these languages, but you might need to re-familiarize yourself a little, look up a few syntax rules, and such. My question is- will you write these languages in your CV as languages you \"know\"?"}
{"_id": "9873", "title": "What are the most common reasons for lack of forward compatibility", "text": "Some companies, like Blizzard, make software that continues to work well in future versions of Windows and with newer versions of their other software dependencies. Other companies (mostly ones that are not hardcore software companies) sometimes write software that breaks with a release of a new OS or other software dependency. What do the hardcore software companies know that the others don't? What are the major causes for forward compatibility problems?"}
{"_id": "151061", "title": "What design pattern do you use to support graceful fallback on old platforms?", "text": "Let's say I need to add a drop shadow behind a box. Some old platforms do not support drop shadows, so I have to fake it by putting an image behind the box. Here's the pseudo code of how I'm currently handling this fallback:               if (dropShadowsAreSupported) {         box.addDropShadow(\"black\");     } else {         box.putImageBehindIt(\"gaussianBlur.png\");     }      Is this the right way to handle it? It seems too amateur to me. Is there a better design pattern? In my actual project, there are a ton of places where I need to style the user interface differently for different operating system versions. It's not only one if-else."}
{"_id": "11157", "title": "Do GUI programmers have an undue advantage over others?", "text": "It is easy for managers and customers to appreciate what they can see. I have seen many GUI developers who are average programmers with minimal knowledge of design principles or other programming idioms. However, these shortcomings often go unnoticed, specially by management and customers, if the programmer can create an impressive looking user interface. So much so that many GUI developers I know spend hours beautifying the GUI at the expense of writing bad, unmaintainable code. On the other hand, middle tier programmers who develop APIs or business functionality or database code (SQLs etc.) are at a disadvantage as there is nothing tangible to showcase. Perhaps a code reviewer or an architect may appreciate the elegance, good design, scalability etc. of code but it means nothing to the outside world. Your code may run for years without breaking, may be very easy to maintain and have good performance, yet it never elicits the 'wow' that a slick looking GUI does. In my opinion, a corollary to this is (and I am going to get heavily downvoted for this, I know) that there is less motivation for a GUI programmer to write good clean code. **EDIT** : I must explain here that by GUI programmer, I don't mean a full- fledged web/GUI designer but a front-end programmer e.g., a java-swing programmer. Does the rest of the community agree ?"}
{"_id": "151069", "title": "sorting using a custom definition of \">\" and \"< \" in python", "text": "suppose I have a custom function such as               def greater(a, b):         if (a % b) % 2 == 0:             return 1         return 0      It defines how to compare two numbers and determine which is greater. In this case, if the function returns 1 a > b else, a < b. Can I use inbuilt `<built- in function sorted> or`to create a sorted array of numbers with respect to this definition?"}
{"_id": "249501", "title": "Desktop to Web - How to deal with user-interactive workflows", "text": "I start a new project this summer, consisting in developing a web version of a proprietary desktop ERP. The main goal of my company is to be able to propose a web version of its ERP, with all advantages it involves (mobility, possibility of selling SaaS versions, modern look and components ...), **without losing any business feature**. By this, I mean that us developers can't rework the business side of the app. The main goal is to be able to translate same processes into web application. Business layer of the older version is not directly reusable, since it's really GUI-dependent. Those business process were rewritten as UML diagrams, which will be used as support for us to develop the new app. The problem I meet is that I don't know how to deal with process that need user interactions. For example : On validation of a sale order, the validation process checks all products it contains, verifying if there is available stock, and then perform different operations. If there is no stock available, the user is asked if he wants to cancel the order, remove this product or select another one equivalent. It works like a Javascript `alert` or `confirm` : current \"thread\" (ie validation process) is on hold, waiting for user interaction. After user's choice, it finishes dealing with the current product, and then validates the next one, and so on. How to deal with this kind of processes with a web application ? Is there some framework, design pattern or something else that permits to write this kind of business processes, able to start and hold like that ? A solution could be to split those business processes into smaller ones. For my example, we would have 2 sub-processes : the first one checks all products and flags the problematic ones. Then the user has a screen to decide what to do on flagged products, and validates. At this moment we are sure all products are OK, we can start the second sub-process to perform the others operations. The problem with it is that even if it's pretty simple on this example, it can be really more complicated. Some process have a lot of users interactions like this one, and then could be splitted into 10 subparts. Like I earlier precised, we don't want to modify or rethink business process, to be sure that we lose nothing or introduce new business bugs. Does someone has an experience about it ? Do you know some way to deal with this kind of desktop-to-web developments ? * * * **EDIT 15/07/14** There was some misunderstanding about this post, surely related to my poor english expression and vocabulary. To summarize the problem : I got a bunch of business workflows described into UML diagrams. They comes from a huge 30-year-old CAMM (production management ERP). The project is to redevelop this application under **Java** web environment. The main point is that some of those workflows are user-dependent, since, in the middle of the processing, they need a user-interaction. Because web applications are based on a client-server architecture, I don't know how to port them. Reworking/rethinking these workflows is not an option, because it would be too much time-consuming. I need a way to simulate a desktop application on a web app, like Wt, but for Java (i'm not talking about UI but about how to develop workflows ), or to define rules to make those user-dependent workflows web- compatibles."}
{"_id": "28313", "title": "Are the default objects of VB a type of singleton?", "text": "Are the default objects supported by `My` keyword in VB.net is a kind of singleton? If not, what is the difference? Again is this \"default object\" feature is something useful? If yes, then why it is not implemented in other languages like C#?"}
{"_id": "236002", "title": "Is NoSQL a better choice when working with OOP?", "text": "This might be a silly question, but I've reading a little bit about NoSQL databases on the past few days and I'm trying to understand when really they help us. One thing I've realized though is that it seems that NoSQL databases are closer to OOP than RDBMS. I say that because usually when we deal with OOAD we don't get a finished version of the model upfront. The model changes lots of times before getting to the real thing. I've even questioned about this here on Programmers.SE. With NoSQL, however, this seems the most natural thing, since the database can also change without much trouble. Also, for a first try with this kind of technology I've created one MongoDB database and the data was being saved like POJO, so that it seemed much more close to object oriented design. In that setting, NoSQL is really a good idea when working with OOP or it's just a good idea in cases where we need the database to scale, to be accessed by many users and all of that stuff?"}
{"_id": "176274", "title": "python server to manage wervices", "text": "i'm looking for a framework to build a webserver. This server will be used to manage webservices. huge amount of client may be able to connect to principally set data which will populate a noSQL DB. we work with python and naturally we would like a python framework. i looked at bottle, gevent, twisted and tornado but it's hard to choose. Some feedbacks or propositions ?"}
{"_id": "165408", "title": "Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?", "text": "My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas I'm testing tend to be similar enough to need repetition but _not quite similar enough_ to encapsulate code into methods or objects. I find that when I try to use classes or methods more extensively, tests become more cumbersome to maintain and sometimes outright difficult to write in the first place. Instead, I usually copy a big chunk of test code from one section and paste it to another, and make any minor changes I need. I don't use more structured ways of coding, such as using more OO-principles or functions. Do other coders feel this way when writing test code? Obviously I want to follow DRY and YAGNI principles, but I find that test code (automated test code for GUI testing anyway) can make these principles tough to follow. Or do I just need more coding practice and a better overall system of doing things? EDIT: The tool I'm using is SilkTest, which is in a proprietary language called 4Test. As well, these tests are mostly for Windows desktop applications, but I also have tested web apps using this setup as well."}
{"_id": "190918", "title": "Why Java does not support private/protected inheritance like C++?", "text": "While inheriting a class in C++, user can specify the access specifier like,               class Base     {         public int mem1;         protected in mem2;     };          class Derived1 : **private** Base     {         // mem1 will be private here.         // mem2 will be private here.     };          class Derived2 : **protected** Base     {         // mem1 will be protected here.         // mem2 will be protected here.     };          class Derived2 : **public** Base     {         // mem1 will be public here.         // mem2 will be protected here.     };      But the same is not possible in Java, i.e. extends in java is always like \"public\" inheritance in C++. Could someone explain the reason for this?"}
{"_id": "190916", "title": "The way to describe the scale of software in the CV", "text": "I'm writing my CV, and having trouble explaining about the software for enterprise I developed in my previous job. Now I'm thinking of writing following 4 things for each software.   * Abstract explanation about what the software is used for   * How much was the software sold   * About how many data does the software usually handle   * About how many DB tables does the software have Are there any inappropriate ones in these? Or, anything I should add?"}
{"_id": "165405", "title": "Can DVCSs enforce a specific workflow?", "text": "So, I have this little debate at work where some of my colleagues (which are actually in charge of administrating our Perforce instance) say that workflows are strictly a process thing, and that the tools that we use (in this case, the version control system) have no take on it. In otherwords, the point that they make is that workflows (and their execution) are tool-agnostic. My take on this is that DVCSs are better at encouraging people in more flexible and well-defined ways, because of the inherent branching occurring in the background (anonymous branches), and that you can enforce workflows through the deployment model you establish (e.g. pull requests through repository management, dictator/liutenant roles with their machines setup as servers, etc.) I think in CVCSs you have to enforce workflows through policies and policing, because there is only one way to share the code, while in DVCSs you just go with the flow based on the infrastructure/permissions that were setup for you. Even when I have provided the earlier arguments, I'm still unable to fully convince them. Am I saying something the wrong way?, if not, what other arguments or examples do you think would be useful to convince them? **Edit** : The main workflow we have been focusing on, because it makes sense to both sides is the Dictator/Lieutenants workflow: ![Dictator/Lieutenants workflow](http://i.stack.imgur.com/DFDWg.png) My argument for this particular workflow is that there is no pipeline in a CVCS (because there is just sharing work in a centralized way), whereas there is an actual pipeline in DVCSs depending on how you deploy read/write permissions. Their argument is that this workflow can be done through branching, and while they do this in some projects (due to policy/policing) in other projects they forbid developers from creating branches."}
{"_id": "165406", "title": "When is using stdio preferable to fstream?", "text": "I work on a well-established, embedded C++ code base. We have been using a proprietary API to our filesystem. For better integration with third-party C libraries, we are currently in the process of implementing most of `stdio.h` and `fcntl.h`. I made what I thought was a non-controversial proposal that we should also implement the fstream class and encourage new C++ code to use it instead of the new (to our code base) C-style API. We already have the `stdout` parts of `iostream` available, although it is not widely used. Given a choice between using `stdio` and `fstream`, what are good reasons to choose `stdio` for embedded software development in C++?"}
{"_id": "160435", "title": "How can I organize personal git repositories?", "text": "I'm in the process of setting up a GitHub account with the plan of making a pair of libraries I developed as parts of some recent iOS projects freely available for other iOS devs to use. I don't currently have off-site backup for most of my code, so as part of this, I originally thought I would upload all of my personal projects, or at least all of my iOS projects, to a private GitHub-hosted repository. However, I have a _lot_ of projects sitting around, many of which are fairly low-value (i.e., adapted from books and written for the learning experience). Not only does GitHub charge by the private repository, it doesn't seem to have any way of organizing repositories hierarchically. Is there something I'm missing that would allow me to use a git repository with a hierarchy and check out pieces as I need them / work with them, the way I currently do with SVN? Does GitHub (or a competitor, like BitBucket) have some project organization features that I'm missing? Failing that, what's the generally accepted \"git way\" of handling this situation (discard projects not intended for release, store them offline, bundle them together somehow, etc., etc.)? As far as I can tell, my options are:   1. Put libraries on GitHub, continue hosting my own SVN for all other projects, use a non-VCS solution for off-site backup (blech),   2. Put libraries and software I plan to release on GitHub (as public and private, respectively), continue hosting my own SVN for projects I don't care about as much and am only likely to revisit to refresh my memory on how to implement XYZ, decide that I'm willing to write them off if my house implodes (double blech),   3. Put everything on [GitHub and/or BitBucket], deal with having some ridiculous number of repositories by searching for what I need / maintaining some offline set of pointers into my [GitHub and/or BitBucket] account (triple blech)"}
{"_id": "190912", "title": "Limit number of users in a web app?", "text": "I've been asked to look at converting our traditional client-server software into a web-based version (using PHP).   One of the first questions from management was how we'd limit the number of concurrent users, currently handled by our licence manager that every client connects to when running our apps. My initials thoughts:   * Check the number of open sessions on the server (only with valid users that have logged in).   * Logging each login/logout to a DB table and counting them. Is there a standard/best practice way of limiting the number of concurrent users who can log into a web app?"}
{"_id": "165401", "title": "Good Practices for development team in large projects", "text": "Since I started learning C a few years ago, I have never been a part of a team that worked on a project. I am very interested to know what are the best practices for writing large projects in C. One of the things I want to know, is when (not how) do I split my project into different source files? My previous experience is with writing a header-source duo (the functions defined in the header are written in the source). I want to know what are the best practices for splitting a project, and some pointers on important things when writing a project as part of a team?"}
{"_id": "236008", "title": "How do you explain agile process tool (like Scrum or Kanban) to a (traditional) project manager?", "text": "I am sure many people involved in the software development projects came up with this question, but I could not actually come up with satisfying answer.   * How to explain to a manager used to having a huge gantt-chart, resource allocation, critical-paths (etc) benefits of using agile process tool such as Scrum or Kanban? A typical problem is explaining why testing sometimes takes longer than the actually coding..."}
{"_id": "207458", "title": "How should we handle extra cosmetic features in Scrum sprints?", "text": "I was reading the Scrum documents and it says that the tasks in Sprint should be \"potentially shippable\". I am confused by what this means. Suppose in Sprint 1 the goal was, \"user registration form\". How much detail do I need to add for something to be ready to ship? For example:   1. I can show the simple form with fields without any fancy styling and mark them as done   2. I can just do client side validation as mark as done but server side is also the option or both   3. I can also add some jQuery fancy tool tips, hover overs, captcha, colors, labels for the form   4. Then there is whole lot of styling about how to show error messages on screen I can do endlessly on one topic. So how do we divide that and when I can think of that as shipping ready. Or do I need to write each smallest possible thing like showing errors, popup or light box text as subtasks and put them as sprint. This would lead to 1000s of tasks for whole project. I mean then again if some work for Internet Explorer and some for Firefox then again do I need to divide those as tasks as well. Time has to be spent on them and when manager asks me what you did in that time, I won't have any tasks to tell but in reality they all are part of User registration"}
{"_id": "117905", "title": "Will .NET 4.5 Make the Reactive Extensions Obsolete?", "text": "Among other things, .NET's Reactive Extensions simplify concurrency management. From what I've heard, .NET 4.5 will simplify concurrency management with things like the `await` keyword. My Question:   * Will .NET 4.5 make the Reactive Extensions obsolete?   * Or is Microsoft expected to pitch the .NET 4.5 additions as an alternative way to approach asynchronous and concurrent programming?"}
{"_id": "55412", "title": "How do you know when to split an object method into 2 or more other methods?", "text": "I know this is a very basic question, but I sometimes find myself struggling to figure out when to split a single object method into multiple methods. For example, I am trying to set up an ACL using Zend_Acl and Zend_Auth, as shown in this tutorial: http://devzone.zend.com/article/1665. However, I am wondering if the My_Plugin_Auth::preDispatch() method should invoke calls to a method called authenticate() and a method called authorize(), instead of having everything lumped in under preDispatch(). I was thinking that this would make the code more readable and encapsulate the logic into its smaller parts, but i'm not sure if this is reason enough."}
{"_id": "117903", "title": "How do I find test users for my Chrome extension with Google App Engine back end?", "text": "I am new to developing Chrome extensions and I used Stack Overflow to ask many questions and got great answers. I finally finished a beta version and uploaded it to Chrome store only for test users. Now I am not sure where to find test users so I decided to ask here. Is there a separate forum where people post their apps or extensions for review?"}
{"_id": "56149", "title": "iPhone app store -- adding ads to free app", "text": "I have a free app in the store. I am considering an update. It would add some additional options, but also ads. I am curious if anyone else has done this, and if so what was the reaction. Did it piss off your users?"}
{"_id": "196156", "title": "What is the best practice for saving TimeZones in the database?", "text": "We want to start collecting timezones for each of our addresses in the database. What is the best practice to store the timezones? How would you go about acquiring timezones for the existing address records? I'm using Microsoft SQL server, .net mvc, C#. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated."}
{"_id": "195986", "title": "Checking out and compiling repository. What is the correct approach for starting the compilation process?", "text": "I am writing a Bash script that automatically updates a repository containing source code and then compiles it. I have been a bit stuck on the part about how to start the compilation itself, i.e. if I should `cat` all the files in the repository and look for the `main` (or equivalent) function and then compile that file. Or if I should let the user specify which file in the repository contains the `main` function (or possibly a `make`file) in the config file. This option requires more work and insight from the user, but I fear that the first option might cause long delays by unnecessary scanning all the files in the repository. What would be the best approach for solving this problem?"}
{"_id": "104339", "title": "Identify Service Oriented Architecture", "text": "How can I tell if a system is built upon a service oriented architecture when reading its source code?"}
{"_id": "220742", "title": "Using Full GPL Libraries in Software as a Service (SaaS) Models", "text": "I already searched the site, but I could only find answers relating to using GPL libraries in software that people were going to sell/distribute. In this case the answer is that they must also make the source code available. What about SaaS? That is, I'll be building an app that clients will pay a monthly fee to use over the Internet, and they won't download anything or get access to the code. Questions:   1. In this case am I allowed to use full GPL libraries without having to make my source code available?   2. Is there some other restriction/requirement of the GPL that I should be aware even if my model is SaaS?"}
{"_id": "195982", "title": "Moving forward in the programming world", "text": "I have been placed in a recent position where my job title does not adequately represent what my current duties entail. I am worried that this classification will affect me later in my career as the job title does not specify 'programmer'. How important is the job title while maintaining a career when compared to the experience and knowledge I am receiving while working? Should this be something to fret over or will a simple explanation be sufficient when transitioning to another workplace in the future?"}
{"_id": "220746", "title": "Can someone explain the concept behind Haskell's memoization?", "text": "(note I'm putting the question here because it's about the conceptual mechanics of it, rather than a coding problem) I was working on a small program, that was using a sequence of fibonacci numbers in its equasion, but I noticed that if I got over a certain number it got painfully slow, googling around a bit I stumbled upon a technique in Haskell known as `Memoization`, they showed code working like this:               -- Traditional implementation of fibonacci, hangs after about 30     slow_fib :: Int -> Integer     slow_fib 0 = 0     slow_fib 1 = 1     slow_fib n = slow_fib (n-2) + slow_fib (n-1)          -- Memorized variant is near instant even after 10000     memoized_fib :: Int -> Integer     memoized_fib = (map fib [0 ..] !!)        where fib 0 = 0              fib 1 = 1              fib n = memoized_fib (n-2) + memoized_fib (n-1)      So my question to you guys is, how or rather why does this work? Is it because it somehow manages to run through most of the list before the calculation catches up? But if haskell is lazy, there isn't really any calculation that needs to catch up... So how does it work?"}
{"_id": "148171", "title": "What is a good rule of thumb to do technical writing that doesn't confuse people", "text": "Sometimes I'm such a nerd that not even nerds understand me, or rather, sometimes I cannot put stuff in understandable and simple-enough terms... and sometimes I can but cannot really tell until after. I like the details on technical stuff, I enjoy writing about them, but sometimes I cannot stop or tell when it is too technical or too abstract to understand. I often end up putting too much detail into stuff thinking that it will help the understanding of some concept, but it sometimes it backfires. These are all edge cases, I'm not that bad at writing (I hope), but, what would be a good rule of thumb to know when you are probably going to make people dizzy when reading your stuff?, how do you test your analogies?, I'm looking for one or more rules of thumb to know if I'm writing technical explanations right, knowing what to reference and what not, etc. **What is your golden rule for writing about technical stuff to technical people who are not necessarily familiar with what you are writing but are also not noobies in your area?, where is the line?**"}
{"_id": "104332", "title": "best practice when unit testing for embedded development", "text": "I am looking for some best practice strategies for unit testing code written for embedded system. By embedded system, I mean code such as device drivers, ISR handlers etc., stuff that are pretty close to the metal. Most of the unit tests are not possible without testing it on the hardware with the aid of a ICE. Sometimes, the embedded unit also needs to be hooked up to other stimulus such as a mechanical switches, stepper motors and light bulbs. This usually occurs in a manual fashion, automation would be great but hard and expensive to achieve. **Update** I came across a C testing framework that seems to be quite successful in testing embedded projects. It uses the ideas of mocking hardware. Check out Unity, CMock, and possibly Ceedling."}
{"_id": "93072", "title": "Is it more efficient to query once for all settings, or query whenever a setting is needed?", "text": "For my blog script I have a usergroup and permission system set up. Each user is assigned to a usergroup and I have a long list of permission settings. Both are stored in a MySQL database. At the moment I perform around 10 permission queries for each page, for various content management functions. Coupled with another 20 or so queries for general blog use, the number of queries is building up. Would it be more efficient to instead perform one query at the start of the script to retrieve all permission settings into an array, and then have all functions compare values in the array instead of checking the database?"}
{"_id": "148172", "title": "Test-driven development: To create test when issue is filed or when issue is picked up by somebody?", "text": "I've recently been working on a web development project on a team of less- than-five people. Things are going good but now we are decided to go with test-driven development. So far what I've learned is that one of the ultimate goal is that when you are testing your software, everything should be passed. However our current situation is that we have more open issues/stories than what we can handle within an iteration or two and we're a bit confused on how to actually handling test-driven development in this situation. One thing we can do is that when each of us pick a story, that person will write the test for it. Each of us will working within red-green-refactor cycle. Or another thing we can do is that we try to create test cases for all open issues. Then each of us can pick that up and working on eliminating the red for that issue. The first approach looks nice to me that we can ensure what we've done is green across the board. However the latter approach is what I've been thinking it looks more realistic as it reflects the imperfect status of your software. I am not really sure how it is managed in real world or what should be the best practice for this. Inputs from all are welcome."}
{"_id": "93075", "title": "Should deployment errors constitute a build failure?", "text": "Our software uses in-house written deployment software due to the complexity of the product. As part of our current QA (not dev) build process (using more in-house software) we compile the code, patch the databases, deploy the software and run a smoke test and, in some cases, automated UI tests, before the build is \"passed\". We are moving to TFS2010 and getting rid of the in- house build process and I would rather not have to add this process into TFS builds. What processes do you use to ensure that the deployment is successful and reporting errors back to the development team? Should a build be classed as a failure in the event of deployment errors / smoke screen or automated UI test failures? TFS ends it's build process when the files are placed in the drop folder it then marks that build as OK. If I am to use the same solution as we have now, either TFS build has to be extended to perform all these tasks before marking the build as a success or we have to have a mechanism to mark the build as failed after it has previously succeeded."}
{"_id": "115036", "title": "What kind of metrics should I collect for a website/web app", "text": "I have a website that allows users to register for accounts, login, and renew an annual membership fee. They can also update their personal profile, their personal profile, look at a list of their employees, make bulk payments for their employees, view receipts and invoices, etc. For non-members it's a regular website with a lot of pages, but for members, it has quite a few member only areas, with more to come (Such as forums). It also has a job listings page, course registrations, etc. **What are some useful \"metrics\" I can collect to give me meaningful information about the site, that I can share with my clients.** I really don't know a lot about collecting data about this kind of thing, and would like to learn. I already have a dashboard where the admins can view/export registrations this week and registrations by week for the past 30 weeks. I've been able to show them that registrations spiked after sending out an email about the new system. I'm think I'll also be adding stats about how often users update their profiles and how many users have updated their profile that day/week. Thanks"}
{"_id": "149880", "title": "Who was the first software engineer?", "text": "It's fairly well known who the first programmer was but who was or were the first software engineer(s)? By software engineer I mean someone who uses formalized specifications and methods to deliver software not just a batch programming job. When was the term first used?"}
{"_id": "127100", "title": "Package name best practice when porting a library", "text": "What is the suggested way (specifically in the open-source world) for the package name when porting a library. Say I am porting someone else's library where they have used a reverse domain name stucture for there package name, so there library package name was some thing like `com.therename.thelib`. What should I do if I decide to port it to a new language? Should I keep the domain name intact, even though they didn't have a hand in it? Or should I change it to something like `com.myname.thelib`?"}
{"_id": "127106", "title": "Should I use the language I'm most comfortable in, or the company \"standard\"", "text": "I'm going to be developing an Intranet site for my specific plant, and our company standard for web-development is IIS \\+ ASP.Net \\+ VB.Net \\+ Microsoft SQL Server (note that we have about 10+ plants). The Intranet site will only be used by my plant, and I'm the only one who will support it. I'm much more proficient with a LAMP setup, and I could do development and problem solving much more rapidly with PHP than I could ASP.Net. Even though the company \"standard\" is ASP.Net/VB.Net, most of what the company does as a whole is to purchase third party software (which is usually Java based), and very, and I do mean very few people in the company even know VB6, let alone ASP.Net/VB.Net. That being said, **is it better to violate the company standard and go with the setup that I can support better, or is it better to go with the setup that the company can support better if I ever were to leave, even though no one currently in the company can support their own standard anyway?** Some additional factors to consider in my personal case:   * Again, this is only for my plant, and I'm the only one who will ever be supporting it unless I leave the company, and then my replacement would be supporting it. Not someone else already in the company.   * The company does very little development with their standard anyway.   * Hardly any of the companies existing software uses their standard.   * If I choose the company standard, then I have to use the Express version of Microsoft SQL and a Windows 7 OS. From my readings, the Express version is okay for business use, but the database size is limited."}
{"_id": "149885", "title": "Can coding style cause or influence memory fragmentation?", "text": "As the title states, I'd like to know if coding style can cause or influence memory fragmentation in a native application, specifically one written using C++. If it does, I'd like to know how. An example of what I mean by coding style is using `std::string` to represent strings (even static strings) and perform operations on them instead of using the C Library (such as `strcmp`, `strlen`, and so on) which can work both on dynamic strings and static strings (the latter point is beneficial since it does not require an additional allocation to access string functions, which is not the case with `std::string`). A \"forward-looking\" attitude I have with C++ is to not use the CRT, since to do so would, in a way, be a step backwards. However, such a style results in more dynamic allocations, and especially for a long living application like a server, this causes some speculation that memory fragmentation might become a problem."}
{"_id": "253440", "title": "12 factor app config and Java", "text": "I was reading the 12 factor app manifesto. The manifesto recommends storing the configuration data for the application in environment variables. Does this mean that properties like the DB username / password, resource URL should be stored as a part of Java Env variables rather than as property files?   Is this a secure way of storing the information? To me this seems to be a pretty clunky way of storing the information. One option that I can think of is to have a separate configuration service running in the landscape, and use env property to connect to the config service and then query the config service for further detailed configuration data."}
{"_id": "253441", "title": "How to approach a bad request from a client?", "text": "Say you coded up some new feature. Now the client comes to you and asks for a change that would make that new feature less user-friendly and just plain wrong. Should you just accept the change request or can you influence the client that their request is misguided?"}
{"_id": "149888", "title": "What was the historical impact of Ariane 5's Flight 501?", "text": "The disintegration of the Ariane 5 rocket 37 seconds after launch on her maiden voyage (Flight 501) is commonly referred to as one of the most expensive software bugs in history1: > It took the European Space Agency 10 years and $7 billion to produce Ariane > 5, a giant rocket capable of hurling a pair of three-ton satellites into > orbit with each launch and intended to give Europe overwhelming supremacy in > the commercial space business. > > All it took to explode that rocket less than a minute into its maiden voyage > last June, scattering fiery rubble across the mangrove swamps of French > Guiana, was a small computer program trying to stuff a 64-bit number into a > 16-bit space. > > One bug, one crash. Of all the careless lines of code recorded in the annals > of computer science, this one may stand as the most devastatingly efficient. > From interviews with rocketry experts and an analysis prepared for the space > agency, a clear path from an arithmetic error to total destruction emerges. What major changes did Flight's 501 failure and the subsequent investigations inspire to the research of safety critical systems and software testing? I'm not looking for an explanation of the bug itself, but for an explanation of the historical impact of the bug, in terms of research that were inspired from or were directly related to the investigation(s) of the failure. For example this paper concludes: > We have used static analysis to: > >   * check the initialization of variables, >   * provide the exhaustive list of potential data access conflicts for > shared variables, >   * exhaustively list the potential run time errors from the Ada semantics. > > > **To our knowledge this is the first time boolean-based and non boolean- > based static analysis techniques are used to validate industrial programs.** Similarly, this paper(pdf) notes: > Abstract interpretation based static program analyses have been used for the > static analysis of the embedded ADA software of the Ariane 5 launcher and > the ARD. The static program analyser aims at the automatic detection of the > de\ufb01niteness , potentiality, impossibility or inaccessibility of run-time > errors such as scalar and \ufb02oating-point over\ufb02ows, array index errors, > divisions by zero and related arithmetic exceptions, uninitialized > variables, data races on shared data structures, etc. The analyzer was able > to automatically discover the Ariane 501 \ufb02ight error. **The static analysis > of embedded safety critical software (such as avionic software) is very > promising**. I would love a thorough explanation of the impact this single event had on software testing approaches and tools. 1 The $7 billion figure possibly refers to the total cost of the Ariane 5 project, Wikipedia reports that the failure resulted in a loss of more than $370 million. Still a quite expensive failure but nowhere near the $7 billion figure."}
{"_id": "253443", "title": "Testing that an attribute does not exist cannot fail when writing tests before code", "text": "I have been taught to follow the Red->Greeen->Refactor pattern when doing TDD. There have been situations where this pattern have not been applicable though. For instance, a test to make sure that a controller action method (ASP.NET MVC) does not have an Authorize attribute. Since the test is testing the absense of an attribute it will pass on the first go, unless an Authorize attribute is added only to have the test fail. What I have done so far when testing for absense of said Authorize attribute is to write a test for it, then add the Authorize attribute just to make sure that the test actually works, then immediately remove the Authorize attribute. Am I doing something wrong, or is this just the way it is; some tests will pass unless we intentionally add code to make the fail and then remove that particular code?"}
{"_id": "213559", "title": "Algorithm to create an TicTacToe game AI", "text": "What are the algorithms I could use to create an AI for the game TicTacToe. I have already used Alpha\u2013beta pruning and Predictive modelling. What the other good Algorithms I can use to create this AI. I want to practice a new language this would a great way to learn a new language. Thanks"}
{"_id": "215895", "title": "Initiating processing in a RESTful manner", "text": "Let's say you have a resource that you can do normal PUT/POST/GET operations on. It represents a BLOB of data and the methods retrieve representations of the data, be they metadata about the BLOB or the BLOB itself. The resource is something that can be processed by the server on request. In this instance a file that can be parsed multiple times. How do I initiate that processing? It's a bit RPC like. Is there best practice around this? I've read this: RESTFul: state changing actions but it doesn't really answer the question. (First time on programmers. This is the right place for this sort of question, right?)"}
{"_id": "215891", "title": "Loose typing not applied to objects", "text": "I have very little experience working with classes and object. I work in a loosely typed language, PHP. I was working with a SimpleXML object and ran into a problem where I was trying to do math with an element of that object like `$results->ProductDetail->{'Net'.$i};` If I echoed that value, I'd get `0.53` but when I tried to do math with it, it was converted to `0` Is there a reason that a loosely typed language would not recognize that as a float and handle it as such? Why would \"echo\" handle it as a string but the math fail to convert it? Example:               $xml='<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\" ?>';     $xml.='<Test>       <Item>         <Price>0.53</Price>       </Item>     </Test>';          $result=simplexml_load_string($xml);          var_dump($result->Item->Price);     echo '<br>';     echo $result->Item->Price;     echo '<br>';     echo 1+$result->Item->Price;     echo '<br>';     echo 1+(float)$result->Item->Price;      Output:               object(SimpleXMLElement)#4 (1) { [0]=> string(4) \"0.53\" }      0.53     1     1.53      No object version:               $no='.53';     echo 1+$no;      Output:               1.53      ================================ Side note: PHP `strpos()` does not properly convert an integer needle `$i` into a string.               $x=101; $i=1; if(strpos($x,\"$i\")===FALSE){echo $i.\" missing\";}      and               $x=101; $i=1; if(strpos($x,$i)===FALSE){echo $i.\" missing\";}      give different results. I don't want to become a php hater, but I'm beginning to lose that loving feeling."}
{"_id": "215890", "title": "How to collaborate on features using github", "text": "github encourages 1 fork per user, so that that user can work independently on a feature and then request that feature to be accepted into the main repository via pull request. However, what if 2 developers need to collaborate on that feature? What is the ideal workflow for this? I could see a number of options:   1. Both developers fork the original repository. Each developer pulls/pushes changes between each other's repository. This seems like a lot of work (tiny micro operations) and also creates a delay between changes, so increases the window for conflicts.   2. Developer 1 forks from the main repository, developer 2 forks from developer 1. Same as #1 mainly but hopefully simplifies Developer 2's life a little?   3. Developer 1 gives Developer 2 permissions to his own fork, so they both work out of the same central repository. Not sure if this is ideal. I'm also curious where branches come into this. Obviously there would be a branch for the feature itself but that branch can't exist in a single place, it would have to exist on multiple forks and be synchronized. Basically just really confused about this workflow, would like an approach for how this can be best accomplished."}
{"_id": "120457", "title": "What are some of the benefits of a \"Micro-ORM\"?", "text": "I've been looking into the so-called \"Micro ORMs\" like Dapper and (to a lesser extent as it relies on .NET 4.0) Massive as these might be easier to implement at work than a full-blown ORM since our current system is highly reliant on stored procedures and would require significant refactoring to work with an ORM like NHibernate or EF. What is the benefit of using one of these over a full-featured ORM? It seems like just a thin layer around a database connection that still forces you to write raw SQL - perhaps I'm wrong but I was always told the reason for ORMs in the first place is so you didn't **have** to write SQL, it could be automatically generated; especially for multi-table joins and mapping relationships between tables which are a pain to do in pure SQL but trivial with an ORM. For instance, looking at an example of Dapper:               var connection = new SqlConnection(); // setup here...     var person = connection.Query<Person>(\"select * from people where PersonId = @personId\", new { PersonId = 42 });      How is that any different than using a handrolled ADO.NET data layer, except that you don't have to write the command, set the parameters and I suppose map the entity back using a Builder. It looks like you could even use a stored procedure call as the SQL string. Are there other tangible benefits that I'm missing here where a Micro ORM makes sense to use? I'm not really seeing how it's saving anything over the \"old\" way of using ADO.NET except maybe a few lines of code - you still have to write to figure out what SQL you need to execute (which can get hairy) and you still have to map relationships between tables (the part that IMHO ORMs help the most with)."}
{"_id": "222453", "title": "Calculator with 3+ values", "text": "I am new to c++ and have been making the good old Calculator. I have gone forward from a 2 value calculator to a 3 value calculator and wondered.. How is it possible to make a 10 digit calculator (purely using +,-,*,/) that doesn't forever to code.. I have a if statement which returns what happens if the operators are + and + or + and - etc.. and if i was to go to 4 value, i would be writing 64 ifs, and 5 value would be 256 if statements. Is there a way to change this such that it wouldn't require writing out so many if statements? Here is my the important parts of the code: Calculator.cpp:               #include \"stdafx.h\"     #include <iostream>     #include \"headers.h\"     using namespace std;          int main()     {     int nInput1 = GetUserInput();     char chOperation = GetMathematicalOperation();     {         if (chOperation == '=')         {             cout << \"The answer is: \" << nInput1 << endl;             return 0;         }     }     int nInput2 = GetUserInput();     char chOperation2 = GetMathematicalOperation();     {         if (chOperation2 == '=')         {             int nResult = CalculateResult(nInput1, chOperation, nInput2);             cout << \"The answer is: \" << nResult << endl;             return 0;         }     }          int nInput3 = GetUserInput();          int nResult = CalculateResult2(nInput1, chOperation, nInput2, chOperation2, nInput3);          PrintResult(nResult);     }      CalculateResult.cpp:               #include \"stdafx.h\"     #include <iostream>     #include <string>     using namespace std;               int CalculateResult(int nX, char chOperation, int nY)     {     if (chOperation == '+')         return nX + nY;     if (chOperation == '-')         return nX - nY;     if (chOperation == '*')         return nX * nY;     if (chOperation == '/')         return nX / nY;          return 0;     }      GetMathematicalOperation.cpp:               #include \"stdafx.h\"     #include <iostream>     #include <string>     using namespace std;          char GetMathematicalOperation()     {     cout << \"Please enter an operator (+,-,*,/ or =): \";          char chOperation;     cin >> chOperation;     return chOperation;     }      CalculateResult2.cpp:               #include \"stdafx.h\"     #include <iostream>     #include <string>     using namespace std;               int CalculateResult2(int nX, char chOperation, int nY, char chOperation2, int nZ)     {     if (chOperation == '+' && chOperation2 == '+')         return nX + nY + nZ;     if (chOperation == '+' && chOperation2 == '-')         return nX + nY - nZ;     if (chOperation == '+' && chOperation2 == '*')         return nX + nY * nZ;     if (chOperation == '+' && chOperation2 == '/')         return nX + nY / nZ;          if (chOperation == '-' && chOperation2 == '+')         return nX - nY + nZ;     if (chOperation == '-' && chOperation2 == '-')         return nX - nY - nZ;     if (chOperation == '-' && chOperation2 == '*')         return nX - nY * nZ;     if (chOperation == '-' && chOperation2 == '/')         return nX - nY / nZ;          if (chOperation == '*' && chOperation2 == '+')         return nX * nY + nZ;     if (chOperation == '*' && chOperation2 == '-')         return nX * nY - nZ;     if (chOperation == '*' && chOperation2 == '*')         return nX * nY * nZ;     if (chOperation == '*' && chOperation2 == '/')         return nX * nY / nZ;          if (chOperation == '/' && chOperation2 == '+')         return nX / nY + nZ;     if (chOperation == '/' && chOperation2 == '-')         return nX / nY - nZ;     if (chOperation == '/' && chOperation2 == '*')         return nX / nY * nZ;     if (chOperation == '/' && chOperation2 == '/')         return nX / nY / nZ;     return 0;     }"}
{"_id": "144661", "title": "CSS3 will be standardized by browsers?", "text": "I'm using CSS3 for the first time, but using specific styles with prefix for each browser looks strange. The need of using `-moz-`, `-o-`, `-webkit-` and another prefix turns the CSS bigger and harder to maintain. I want to know if the browsers are implementing some standardization to avoid the usage of prefix for styles."}
{"_id": "222450", "title": "Implementation of algorithm to generate chess positions", "text": "I am interested in developing a program that generates an endgame table-base for the chess. I have gone through the technical papers of the greats like Shannon and Ken Thompson. I have found that retrograde analysis is used for the generation. How can I generate all positions in a `KBBK` chess endgame which are mates in 0?"}
{"_id": "222457", "title": "Is it a good idea to const-qualify the fields of structure in C?", "text": "Consider the following program:               #include <stdlib.h>     #include <stdio.h>          typedef struct S_s {         const int _a;     } S_t;          S_t *     create_S(void) {         return calloc(sizeof(S_t), 1);     }          void     destroy_S(S_t *s) {         free(s);     }          const int     get_S_a(const S_t *s) {         return s->_a;     }          void     set_S_a(S_t *s, const int a) {         int *a_p = (int *)&s->_a;         *a_p = a;     }          int     main(void) {         S_t s1;         // s1._a = 5; // Error         set_S_a(&s1, 5); // OK         S_t *s2 = create_S();         // s2->_a = 8; // Error         set_S_a(s2, 8); // OK              printf(\"s1.a == %d\\n\", get_S_a(&s1));         printf(\"s2->a == %d\\n\", get_S_a(s2));              destroy_S(s2);     }      I'm not aware of anything particularly bad with this kind of design, but there might be impact when compiler is heavily optimizing the code and some considerations I'm missing. Is it a good idea to use `const` in `C` as a mechanism of write access control in such a way?"}
{"_id": "115033", "title": "Java vs COBOL programming examples", "text": "I am a COBOL programmer, desperately trying to learn and program Java. Although I understand the OO priciples and concepts, I am at a lost putting all together. I am trying to find some examples on how code will look in COBOL vs Java - something a bit more complicated than \"hello world\" [I am past that initial headache! :-)], that includes OO principles - basically, a decent 1000+ liner in COBOL, with the Java code to work through. After working through book after book, doing the examples, and even writing small java programs at work, I think working through an example I can compare will be the best way to getting my thinking cap converted, and being able to do in Java what I can do after 10 years with COBOL. Can anybody help?"}
{"_id": "151938", "title": "Security aspects of an ASP.NET that can be pointed out to the client", "text": "I need to write several passages of text in an offer to the client about the security layer in ASP.NET MVC web solution. I am aware of security that comes along with MVC 3 and an improvements in MVC 4. But all of them are non conceptual, except for `AntiForgeryToken` (AntiXSS) and built-in SQL Injection immunity (with a little of encoding needed by hand). What would be the main point of ASP.NET security I can \"show off\" in an offer to the client?"}
{"_id": "151937", "title": "Git bug branching convention", "text": "I've been following the successful Git branching model guide for most of my development. I still wonder if the way I handle bug tickets is correct. My current workflow: Once I accept a bug ticket I will do a `git checkout -b bug/{ticket_number}`, create a single commit as a fix and then checkout develop and do a `git merge --no-ff`. I'd love to hear from the experiences of others whether or not I am abusing the --no-ff option in this instance. If I am, could someone suggest a better approach?"}
{"_id": "151933", "title": "Planning milestones and time", "text": "I was hired by a marketing company a year ago initially for link building / SEO stuff, but I'm actually a Web developer and took the job just in desperation to have one (I'm still quite young and just finished 2nd year of University). From the 3rd day my boss realised that I'm not into that stuff at all and since he had an idea of a web based app we started to plan it. I estimated that it shouldn't take me longer than two months to do it, but as I was making it we soon realised that we want to add more and more stuff to make it even better. So the development on my own lasted for about 4 months, but then it became an enterprise size app and we hired another programmer to work along me. The guy was awesome at what he did, but because I was assigned to be programmer/project manager I had to set up milestones with deadlines and we missed most of them, because most of the time it was too much work, and my lack of experience kept me setting really optimistic deadlines. We still kept adding features and had changed the architecture of the application twice. My boss is a great guy and he gets that when we add features it expands the time frame in which things should be done so he wasn't angry at me nor the other guy. But I was feeling bad (I still am) that I suck at planning. I gained loads of experience from the programming side, but I still lack the management/planning skills which make me go nuts. So over the last year I have dedicated probably about 8 months of work to this app (obviously my studies affected it) and we're launching as a closed beta this month. So my question is how do I get better at planning/managing a project, how do you estimate the times? What do you take into consideration when setting goals. I'm working alone again because the other guy moved from the city. But I'm sure we'll be hiring to help me maintain it so I need to get better at it. Any hints, points or anything on the topic are appreciated."}
{"_id": "253993", "title": "Finding the shortest path through a digraph that visits all nodes", "text": "I am trying to find the shortest possible path **that visits every node** through a graph (a node may be visited more than once, the solution may pick any node as the starting node.). The graph is directed, meaning that being able to travel from node A to node B does not mean one can travel from node B to node A. All distances between nodes are equal. I was able to code a brute force search that found a path of only 27 nodes when I had 27 nodes and each node had a connection to 2 or 1 other node. However, the actual problem that I am trying to solve consists of 256 nodes, with each node connecting to either 4 or 3 other nodes. The brute force algorithm that solved the 27 node graph can produce a 415 node solution (not optimal) within a few seconds, but using the processing power I have at my disposal takes about 6 hours to arrive at a 402 node solution. What approach should I use to arrive at a solution that **I can be certain** is the optimal one? For example, use an optimizer algorithm to shorten a non- optimal solution? Or somehow adopt a brute force search that discards paths that are not optimal? EDIT: (Copying a comment to an answer here to better clarify the question) To clarify, I am not saying that there is a Hamiltonian path and I need to find it, I am trying to find the shortest path in the 256 node graph that visits each node AT LEAST once. With the 27 node run, I was able to find a Hamiltonian path, which assured me that it was an optimal solution. I want to find a solution for the 256 node graph which is the shortest."}
{"_id": "253990", "title": "Would this be considered Single Tenant or Multi-Tenant?", "text": "As a company, we lease a managed server from a provider. In that sense, our server is a single tenant server. On this server, we have multiple customer databases. Each customer has its own database. We have been asked by a customer if we are a single tenant or a multi-tenant solution. From our perspective, we are the sole tenant of the server. But, what is the correct answer to the customer?"}
{"_id": "98336", "title": "Is it possible to be agile without use cases and tests?", "text": "Rhetoric teaches us that the answer is probably yes. However I feel that we would no longer relate to the vast majority of Agile success stories. I think that my upper management read the benefits column of an Agile process but forgot to read about the requirements or how successful Agile businesses got there."}
{"_id": "150080", "title": "Is there a faster way to work out this logic?", "text": "The purpose of this assignment was the find the smallest and largest of the integer(User inputs 5 entries) I am a beginner Java programmer with no prior experience. Is there an easier way to do this without a ton of if/else statements? Forgive for the dirty code.                   //Scanner Object         Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);              int num1, num2, num3, num4, num5;         int large;         int small;              System.out.print(\"Enter Num1: \");         num1 = input.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter Num2: \");         num2 = input.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter Num3: \");         num3 = input.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter Num4: \");         num4 = input.nextInt();              System.out.print(\"Enter Num5: \");         num5 = input.nextInt();              //If/Else statements (SMALL)         if (num1<num2 && num1<num3 && num1<num4 && num1<num5) {             small = num1;                  }                   else if (num2<num1 && num2<num3 && num2<num4 && num2<num5) {                     small = num2;                                  }              else if (num3<num1 && num3<num2 && num3<num4 && num3<num5) {                     small = num3;                   }              else if (num4<num1 && num4<num2 && num4<num3 && num4<num5) {                     small = num4;                   }              else {             small = num5;              }              //Large              if (num1>num2 && num1>num3 && num1>num4 && num1>num5) {             large = num1;         }              else if (num2>num1 && num2>num3 && num2>num4 && num2>num5) {                                             large = num2;         }              else if (num3>num1 && num3>num2 && num3>num4 && num3>num5) {                     large = num3;         }              else if (num4>num1 && num4>num2 && num4>num3 && num4>num5) {                         large = num4;         }              else {                     large = num5;                      }                   //Display: Use printf when using a format limiter (%)              System.out.printf(\"The smallest integer: %d\\n\", small);         System.out.printf(\"The largest integer: %d\\n\", large);                             }// end of main          }"}
{"_id": "150081", "title": "How to deal with exceptions to business rules?", "text": "I have been given a file with several records. I have also been given business rules that determine how to process those records and produce an output file. The business rules are relatively simple:   1. If record is of type A, use methodology A.   2. If record is of type B, use methodology B. However my client emailed me with a problem: There is one \"special\" record in the file. It's a type A record, but it needs to be processed with methodology B. How does one deal with these exceptions to business rules? Some options I have thought of so far:   1. Hard-code the exception into the software: `if record.id == \"some_id\" && record.value == 123.45 then methodology B`.   2. Manipulate the file by hand, run the program, and then correct the output by hand. My coworker is astonished that I would even consider option 1. It's messy, and next year (when I have to run this process again) the file could be different. It will turn out to a nice hidden \"gotcha\" that could cause problems long after I forgot about the exception. However option 1 is easier than option 2, and if the exception to the rule stays the same for next year, I won't have to even think about it. It's already been handled. Besides, it's easy to change if I need to change it later. How do I deal with random exceptions to business rules? EDIT: This is very targeted software - written to specifically do one job for one client."}
{"_id": "194167", "title": "MVC4 Service > Controller Models", "text": "I'm working on a MVC4 N-tier application and have a quick question about Service to Controller relation and using Domain/ViewModel.                  public ActionResult Details(int id = 0)         {             TenantDomainModel tenant = _tenantService.GetById(id);             TenantViewModel tenantViewModel = Mapper.Map<TenantViewModel>(tenant);             return View(tenantViewModel);         }      As you can see my service return a DomainModel that my controller use to create a ViewModel using Automapper. Is there a better way to do that ? Ideally I would like to have no domain model referenced in my Presentation/Web layer but i'm not what are the exact best practice on this specific point. Thanks"}
{"_id": "194161", "title": "Dynamic programming proof", "text": "I have aquestion, lets say im trying to maximize: S=\u2211j=1nfj(xj) subject to \u2211j=1nxj\u2264B, where B\u2208\u2124+ and fj:\u211d\u2192\u211d. how would i do this using dynamic programming and what would be the states and recursive formulation. Also how would I go about finding the time complexity of this method? Any help would be much appreciated kind regards"}
{"_id": "64473", "title": "How does VoiceDrop work?", "text": "I'm interested in building some functionality similar in nature to that provided by VoiceDrop (http://www.voicedrop.ws/). I'm thinking about using Twilio, offers some very powerful telephony features, but it's not immediately obvious how one would dial a user's voicemail directly. Anyone have any ideas? _edit:_ apologies for the poor tag, I wanted to put \"voicedrop voice-mail twilio\""}
{"_id": "153577", "title": "Programming for Digital frames", "text": "A project has recently come to my attention but i have no idea where to start or even if its possible. The idea revolves around programming a clock that is displayed inside a digital photo frame. The user would then be able to put different pictures corresponding to different times inside a usb pen for example, which would load as soon as you put the usb in. The project itself would be a really neat project - if it was just on a computer. I have no idea if what im talking about it even possible on a digital photo frame and if it is what language? Anyone who has any input at all would be great. My current idea is to maybe have a small device at the back, SSD, that runs the program through a screen, completely by passing standard digital photo frames, again though i dont know how to begin with this. And yes ive tried google (although it helps to know what to google)."}
{"_id": "51865", "title": "Need Help in Pointing to focus on the Key elements in Code Review Phase?", "text": "Please share your views on the code review process. If someone gave a code snippet and asked you to review that code, then what are the major things you will focus on that code Review process? For instance, I will check if any dead code is available in that code, other than checking dead code, what are the key elements to be focused on in the code review process? **Update:** Please share any free code review e-book which helps me to understand more and more."}
{"_id": "16271", "title": "Why Oracle still loves command-line black dump screen?", "text": "I wanted to know about this since a long time. Other vendors are coming out with intuitive IDEs with even more flexibility to developers and DBAs, whereas we rely on Toad and other third-party IDEs to work with Oracle. Why they are sticking to command-line black dump screen?"}
{"_id": "210111", "title": "Can a daily scrum meeting be replaced by a status email?", "text": "If an agile team has members like Developers, Testers, and Automation Testers from different geographical regions, how can the daily scrum meeting can happen? Obviously they have to work in different time zones. Can this be successfully managed? Do you think the daily scrum meeting can be replaced by sending status emails at the end of day, or by answering the three Scrum questions in an email?"}
{"_id": "251595", "title": "Defining user operations on application/collection+json response?", "text": "I'm fairly new to Collection+JSON. I have a bunch of questions regarding Collection+JSON and user operations. # Use Case Having user permissions in a Collection+JSON response would be useful in telling the client what operations can be enacted on a particular object. As an example, it would allow the client to know which \"buttons\" to render on the user interface. ## Questions   1. Should the user's permissions be bundled into the Collection+JSON response?   2. Should the user's permissions be bundled into a separate call to the user object?   3. Is this beyond the scope of Collection+JSON? ## Thoughts My personal thought is that user permissions should be stored in a user object for a separation of duty, however, if this is the case then every request should then be paired with a request for a user object. This doesn't seem like a correct methodology. ## Examples In the following examples, \"permissions\" are represented by an integer value where 1 represents read, 2 represents create, 3 represents update, and 4 represents delete. The server will always validate the user's request, but this would make it easier for the client to know what operations can be done to the object. ### 1\\. Bundled in the response \"Permissions\" could be added to the Collection+JSON specification, but this would be modifying the specification.               {       \"collection\" :         {           \"rel\" : {string},           \"href\" : {string},           ... links, queries, items, etc...            \"permissions\" : { integer value }         }     }      ### 2\\. Bundled in the User object Permissions are stored in the user object and change based on the URL to provide the client with information on what this user can do at this particular state in the application.               {       \"collection\" : {         items: [{           ... name, username, etc...                \"permissions\" : { integer value }         }]       }     }      ### 3\\. Beyond the scope According to the _draft_ specification: > The Collection+JSON hypermedia type is designed to support full read/write > capability for simple lists. I suspect that by providing a Collection+JSON response, it is assumed that all CRUD operations are available to the client and that the server will provide the appropriate response when a request is made."}
{"_id": "224606", "title": "Best way to assure uniqueness in filename with php", "text": "I was wondering, **without using any kind of user info** (id, nickname, age, etc), what would be the best way to assure filename uniqueness using php **in a large database with high traffic and most probably simultaneously** between many users? I am using `$file = time()` for example but I would like to know if this should suffice whenever two users might go over this code at the same time (at a large large large scale, 10000 users at the same time and the same function ran 200 at the same time)."}
{"_id": "194740", "title": "Should dependency relationships always be shown on class diagrams", "text": "I recently started using the Object aid UML generator plugin for Eclipse and noticed that by default adding of dependency relationships is switched off. This made me wonder if in most cases they should not be shown or rather that most people don't want to show them, seeming as this is the default setting. How do I decide whether to show dependency relationships or not?"}
{"_id": "196983", "title": "is it wrong for my parent object to make assumption about child objects?", "text": "I have a simple domain with about 6 objects in the model. For the most part they have a clear child/parent relationship with parent having multuple children. I'm going to have all of them be immutable. However, at some point I'll need to both fetch a set of all objects of a given type, and be able to fetch a specific object of a certain type by it's label. I was going to have a model with some generic maps, and an abstract class for objects in the model. Adding to the model sticks the object in my map, and asks for the parent objects and sticks those in the map etc. Likewise a delete can delete all classes that called themselves children. This way I can query for specific classes in a generic method without writing logic to hunt down each class. Once I thought of this my next thought was rather I can use a similar framework to save CPU by looking up children in the same manner. If I already have to store \"these objects claimed x was a parent\" to do the delete I can then say \"give me children of X\". However, this assumes that X knows something about the other objects (what classes are effectively children of it). I can put in type safty via reflection mostly; but is it brittle for one object to presume that certain other class is going to claim it as a parent and persumably be in the model as such? TO clarify, lets say I have a node and edge class. My edge would report a node as it's parent. My Node can then say \"give me all Objects that claimed me as parent and are edges\" and do logic on them; even though it never did anything to ensure that there were edges out there using it as a node. Is this wrong? Note, this is a small system. I know that there are great abstraction patterns for huge systems, that I mostly don't think are worth the implementation cost or less explicit code for such a simple system."}
{"_id": "149223", "title": "When to use shared libraries for a web framework?", "text": "**tl;dr:** I've found myself hosting a bunch of sites running on the same web framework (symfony 1.4). Would it be helpful if I moved all of the shared library code into the same directory and shared it across the sites? **more** I see some advantages to this:   * Each site takes up less disk space   * Library updates (an unlikely scenario) can take place across all sites I also see some disadvantages, mostly in terms of a single point of failure and the inability to have sites using different versions of the framework. My real concern, though, is performance. I hypothesize that I will see a performance increase, since the PHP code will already be cached for all sites when they call the framework. Is this a correct hypothesis?"}
{"_id": "117277", "title": "Are there successful examples of development \"shifts\"?", "text": "There is some thinking going on around how to get more output from the current resources we have. The thought is that two teams working different shifts might produce more output. The first shift might work 8am - 5pm, and the second team works 4pm - 1am. There is an hour overlap for status meetings and any communication that needs to happen between the teams. You would obviously need two team leaders, one for each shift. So far, the benefits I can see from this are:   * Better ability to respond to customer issues (time zone affects things less)   * Utilize the same workstations, equipment, and office space (less cost per developer)   * Allows \"night owls\" to work at night, when they're more productive   * Might be able to complete certain less complex tasks in less days (not time, days)   * Less people in the (open-plan) office, meaning less distractions and higher productivity The drawbacks I see are:   * Developers don't have a space or equipment to call their own (am I the only one that cares about this?)   * Communication between the teams will suffer since they only see each other for an hour each day   * Much more documentation and specification writing will be necessary (you can't rely on on-the-fly decisions from decision-makers because they might not be available)   * Older developers tend to have families and night-time activities, and don't want to be at work Any other thoughts? Has anyone worked in this type of environment? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this development model, and your opinion on whether it was a good one or a bad one."}
{"_id": "117274", "title": "Is there a standard name for this search approach?", "text": "In order to create a (Lucene) query, an \"incomplete\" domain object is used. All properties with a value are used for the query, the rest is ignored. In the absence of a better name, we call it \"search by example\", but as with many other \"original\" approaches there is probably a (standard/agreed upon) name for this approach, but I could not find one. Thank you."}
{"_id": "105062", "title": "Are questions about the Singleton pattern a good way to evaluate a job applicant?", "text": "I have been recently assigned the task of taking interviews in my company. I have been taking interviews of developers and engineers with atleast 5-6 years of experience. One of my favorite question is to ask whether they have used any kind of patterns...and the default answer has always been \"Singleton Pattern\" Since it is the most simple pattern, I always end up asking them to write a code for it, and only 1-2 out of 5 end up getting it right, but get confused when I start asking about thread safety, double-checked locking issues and etc.. My questions are:   1. Is it fair on my part to expect a person with 5-6+ years of experience to know how to write a Singleton pattern?    2. Is it fair on my part to judge a person upon their ability to code a Singleton class? EDIT: Some clarifications. \\- When I ask if they know anything about design patterns, I would like to know what kind of GoF patterns they have used, why they have used and how they have used them. And with 5-6 years of development experience, I would expect a person to know about GoF patterns...correct?   \\- The first answer which everyone say when I ask about patterns is \"I have used and written Singleton Classes\". Singletons are at the cusp of being declared an anti-pattern...with asking them to write about it, I try to gauge 1. If they can code, 2. If they can code what they claim they could code, 3. Tell me the problems with Singleton... Do I sound more reasonable now? :)"}
{"_id": "193756", "title": "Querystring Advanced Search where there are about 20 search fields", "text": "I am creating an advanced search page where there are about 20 search fields for a user to filter their search. My question deals with the query string, Is it standard web development practice to have say 20 parameters in a querystring? The search results display large tables of data. Is there an alternative that still uses HTTP GET(querystring), if it is not standard? I would like the users to be able to bookmark their searches."}
{"_id": "191660", "title": "Requiring Explicit Null Reference Handling", "text": "One of the problems I have with null references is that they may not be exceptional. In my current position, there are few requirements and you are lucky if conventions are followed. This means being unable to handle a request is a frequent occurrence and throwing an exception is too slow (think millions of requests). I am in charge of writing an api for handling these requests and I am trying to decide how to handle failures. Our code is written in C# and I am a huge fan of LINQ. I know that LINQ handles this problem by providing two methods \"Function()\" and \"FunctionOrDefault()\". By returning the default value (usually null), we make it very easy for the developer to shoot himself in the foot. On the other hand, throwing an exception is unacceptable for us. There is also the \"TryParse\" pattern, but that doesn't lend its self well to lambda expressions. I recently discovered the Option type in F# and how it requires explicit handling of both the Some and None cases or your assembly will not compile. This seems like a much better solution to the null value problem than leaving it up to the developer to remember to implement error handling. I could implement an option type that will not both compile **and** return the desired value unless both Some and None cases are handled. The contract for my implementation would look like this:               Option<SomeClass> option = new SomeClass { Value = 5 }.ToOption(); // Extension method     int value = option.Some(x => x.Value).None(x => x.Default(25)); // Other helper methods provided as well for None cases.      So my question is, if I have the ability to require explicit null reference handling, are there any downsides to this approach? Would it be better to stick with conventions rather than try to solve this problem upfront to prevent future hidden bugs?"}
{"_id": "991", "title": "5 things before starting a project?", "text": "What are the first 5 things you do before starting a new project? Do you always spend a day researching new frameworks? Or, using similar or competing products?"}
{"_id": "102593", "title": "Tips on Converting a C program to Pure Python", "text": "I'd like to convert an open source C application to pure python (not to Cython, IronPython etc). The documentation and presentations of the original creator of the C application has given me a good understanding of the architecture of the application. Since I want the first version of the python application to be as identical to the C based one, a manual conversion seems to be the best option. I'd appreciate some tips on how to best approach this code conversion (C to Python), based on your experience. (I am just looking for insights on how others have handled a similar task before.) * * * (Python version 2.7; The C application is the popular database SQLite. Please don't let that or C vs python distract you from the actual question. My C is rusty but good enough for the task, and my Python is above average.) * * * Clarifications:   * I was planning a manual rewrite. Appreciate advice on how to analyze the C source and header files and things to keep in mind vis-a-vis python."}
{"_id": "198580", "title": "GPL v 3 & Scripts", "text": "I'm not asking for legal advice; just some rough guidance. I have a host application in Java that uses the Rhino JS engine to execute JavaScript. That JavaScript can then make calls into other Java libraries, some of which might be licensed under the GPL. I distribute my hosting app, the JS files as source and the unmodified Java libs. I have released all of the JavaScript as open source. Am I also required to release my Java hosting apps source?"}
{"_id": "198583", "title": "Name of this algorithm (Create binary image)", "text": "Some days ago I saw in this site the algorithm below to convert color images to binary images and I used it in my application (with some small changes). However, I need to know what is the name of the implemented algorithm and, if possible, some references about it. Thanks in advance!               public static boolean[][] createBinaryImage( Bitmap bm )     {         int[] pixels = new int[bm.getWidth()*bm.getHeight()];         bm.getPixels( pixels, 0, bm.getWidth(), 0, 0, bm.getWidth(), bm.getHeight() );         int w = bm.getWidth();              // Calculate overall lightness of image         long gLightness = 0;         int lLightness;         int c;         for ( int x = 0; x < bm.getWidth(); x++ )         {             for ( int y = 0; y < bm.getHeight(); y++ )             {                 c = pixels[x+y*w];                 lLightness = ((c&0x00FF0000 )>>16) + ((c & 0x0000FF00 )>>8) + (c&0x000000FF);                 pixels[x+y*w] = lLightness;                 gLightness += lLightness;             }         }         gLightness /= bm.getWidth() * bm.getHeight();         gLightness = gLightness * 5 / 6;              // Extract features         boolean[][] binaryImage = new boolean[bm.getWidth()][bm.getHeight()];              for ( int x = 0; x < bm.getWidth(); x++ )             for ( int y = 0; y < bm.getHeight(); y++ )                 binaryImage[x][y] = pixels[x+y*w] <= gLightness;              return binaryImage;     }"}
{"_id": "198586", "title": "What is the best way to represent quantity in stock in domain model?", "text": "A `Transaction` contains one or more `LineItem`. One `LineItem` has a relation with an `Item`. Every `Item` has a number field that represent quantity in stock. Using this approach, every `Transaction` creation will need to decrease quantity in `Item`. If user update a `Transaction` then quantity in `Item` will need to be adjusted. If user delete a `Transaction` then quantity in `Item` will need to be increased. What is the best way to implement this rule or behaviour in domain model layer? `Transaction` operations (like create, update, or delete) are located in data access layer."}
{"_id": "198589", "title": "design strategy pattern with null checking", "text": "When the context class can accept a null strategy, is there another way to do it without check if its null? Is this considered a good strategy design implementation?               class MainApp{         static void Main(){             Context context = new Context();             while(true){                 Strategy strategy = createConcreteStrategy(Console.ReadLine());                 context.setStrategy(strategy);                 context.run();             }         }         static void createConcreteStrategy(string input){             if( input == \"strategyA\" ){                 return new StrategyA();             }             if( input == \"strategyB\" ){                 return new StrategyB();             }                    return null;         }     }     abstract class Strategy { public abstract void doSomething(); }     class Context{         Strategy strategy;         ClassX x;              public Context(){}         public void setStrategy(Strategy strategy){             this.strategy = strategy;         }         public void run(){             if( strategy != null ){                 data = strategy.doSomething();                 x.setData(data);             }         }     }"}
{"_id": "221901", "title": "Why is the following naming guideline different between OO and non-OO languages?", "text": "I am working with a non-OO language and I'm trying to name my routines consistently. I came acrross the following guideline from Steve McConnell's Code Complete: > _To name a procedure, use a strong verb followed by an object_ McConnell gives the following good and bad examples:   * good, non-OO --> `PrintDocument(doc)`   * good, OO -->       `doc.Print()`   * bad, OO -->         `doc.PrintDocument()` For an OO language, `doc.PrintDocument()` is non-recommended on the basis that it is redundant. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this guideline. Why is `PrintDocument(doc)`recommended, and `doc.PrintDocument()` non-recommended? Also, what would be the problem with the simpler name `Print(doc)` in a non-OO language? Am I missing something very basic here?"}
{"_id": "221904", "title": "How can I automate the process of code review", "text": "I have a team that works on multiple technologies. I want to know how can I automate the process of code review for .Net, .Net MVC, Python, PHP, Drupal and HTML5/CSS with JavaScript. I have read about and have used some tools like StyleCop/FxCop for .Net and PHP Code Sniffer and likes for PHP and pyLint for Python. I understand that automated code reviews do not fully replace the manual ones, but I want to setup a process to support manual code reviews. Any suggestions? Thanks"}
{"_id": "221907", "title": "What are common code review processes and what is considered bad?", "text": "My company recently started doing formalized code reviews. The process goes like this: you submit into a github, request a pull request, code gets reviewed by approximately three people, then if all passes, your code goes in. The process seems fair, however the three people who do the code reviews don't seem to be fair. I notice that when I put my code in for review, I get anywhere between 100-200 comments. The top number for me was 300 comments once. Of course you'd think it is big changes, but this can be very small changes as well with less than 50 lines of code (which includes unit tests). All comments are considered \"must do\" and without argument. With that in mind, my main problem here is that it seems a bit excessive. I talked to the group and they told me basically that just because I had so many years of development in php doesn't mean I am an \"developer.\" Of course this seems more hurtful than not. Also I notice that within the group, they don't appear to produce as much comments and most of the time they ignore or otherwise disregard other comments or suggestions rarely accepting it as a valid point even if something is broken. So my question is if this is fair? Or common?"}
{"_id": "58894", "title": "*Hidden Features* in your operating system that increase productivity? ", "text": "_As developers how much time, or do you spend time, In learning the hidden features tricks of your operating system ?_ * * *   * How important do you feel is this for productivity in day to day programming? tasks.   * What do you mean when you list knowledge of an OS in your resume?   * What are your most useful hidden -less known features * * * For example: A common problem of How can i open the cmd window in a specific location a do it yourself solution in say xp and what to do if something breaks * * * Or are these something you look into as and when you find the need to do so?"}
{"_id": "152626", "title": "Is it possible to develop apps with Kendo UI to submit to iOS App Store?", "text": "The number of platforms I have to develops apps for is increasing and It brings me lots of stress to learn new technologies for each target platform. I found out that Telerik's Kendo UI is very good to build websites that look and feel native on mobile platforms (e.g. iOS and Android). My question is, is it possible to build HTML5 apps to deploy them on iTunes App Store and Google Play? Please note that I am eager to know the possibility of creating apps (complete apps bundled in standard format of Apple and Google for distribution in their respective mobile app markets) but not websites."}
{"_id": "152620", "title": "Is beginner knowledge of Java enough to develop for Android?", "text": "I just finished the book \"Tech Yourself Java in 24 Hours, 6th Edition\" I have an understanding of the language (by understanding I mean, the basics and everything covered in the book) and I have been experimenting and building little things with my knowledge. I want to learn about Android and was wondering if I need to increase my knowledge in Java before moving on to Android or can I just go straight to Android?"}
{"_id": "9095", "title": "What are the biggest differences between F# and Scala?", "text": "F# and Scala are both functional programming langugages that don't force the developer to only use immutable datatypes. They both have support for objects, can use libraries written in other languages and run on a virtual machine. Both languages seem to be based on ML. What are the biggest differences between F# and Scala despite the fact that F# is designed for .NET and Scala for the Java platform?"}
{"_id": "213541", "title": "What skills (technologies) get outdated slower?", "text": "It's a common knowledge that since the IT industry develops very quickly, most of the skills get outdated fairly rapidly: jQuery, .NET, Ruby on Rails, etc. They change all the time so that it is difficult to keep track of them and especially learn them. Once I learn Ruby on Rails 3.2, Ruby on Rails 4 has appeared; the same thing for other frameworks and libraries. What skills (or rather, **technologies** ) get outdated slower and, at the same time, pretty useful in terms of being able to find a job? I figure these are knowing networks and algorithms. What else?"}
{"_id": "49363", "title": "Browsing Prog.SE etc instead of paying attention to my degree", "text": "I've just realised that I've spent more time browsing Programmers.SE than actually doing the exercises I should be doing for my Computer Science degree this hour - they aren't coursework, just timetabled, supported, lab sessions - this time basic SQL SELECT statements. I already know SQL, but I have trouble writing syntactically correct statements first time. The exercises are along the form of \"Write a query to get the names of all the pets born more than 10 years ago sorted by owner surname\". Is it bad that I'm doing this? I think this is more useful than those exercises, but I'm not too sure."}
{"_id": "49361", "title": "Addressing a variable in VB", "text": "Why doesn't Visual Basic.NET have the _addressof_ operator like C#? In C#, one can               int i = 123;     int* addr = &i;      But VB has no equivalent counter part. It seems like it should be important. **UPDATE** Since there's some interest, Im copying my response to Strilanc below. > The case I ran into didnt necessitate pointers by any means, but I was > trying to trouble shoot a unit test that was failing and there was some > confusion over whether or not an object being used at one point in the stack > was the same object as an object several methods away."}
{"_id": "223464", "title": "block access to area/controller's methods but allow inherited controller to run methods, asp .net mvc5", "text": "I am trying to find out how to block a whole area/controller from being accessed by typing url website.com/area1/basecontroller/method1 (this area also contains the views that will be displayed) , while still being able to inherit said controller and use the method from original controller like so website.com/area2/extendedbasecontroller/method1. There would not be a method1 in the extendedbasecontroller, it would just perform method1 from the basecontroller Is it possible or could it be achieved in a different way?"}
{"_id": "98800", "title": "Is MapReduce anything more than just an application of divide and conquer?", "text": "Dividing a problem to smaller ones until the individual problems can be solved independently and then combining them to answer the original question is known as the **divide and conquer** algorithm design technique. [See: Introduction to Algorithms by CLR] Recently, this approach to solve computational problems especially in the domain of very large data sets has been referred to as **MapReduce** rather than divide and conquer. My question is as follows: Is MapReduce anything more than a proprietary framework that relies on the divide and conquer approach, or are there details to it that make it unique in some respect?"}
{"_id": "2666", "title": "What was your worst software development day like?", "text": "Sometimes, people really have a bad day...   I think it's interesting to learn why that day was bad and learn from our mistakes made on that day. So... What was your worst software development day like?"}
{"_id": "37149", "title": "\"Testing Plan Lite\" for web project", "text": "How do you draft a quick & easy \"Testing Plan Lite\" for a medium-sized web project (70k lines, 2 developers)? I've seen many tutorials/articles on methods of testing, but all seem cumbersome. For us, the goal is to be able to be able to divide up and delegate testing instructions to our friends for different project segments, browsers, etc. What's the quick & easy way to write test plans for web apps? (the 20 of the 20/80 rule) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "181514", "title": "Feature organization / authentication?", "text": "Let's say I have a product that has different features, or different feature access depending on things (i.e Premium User, Beta, Demo, Logged-in User, etc..). What's the best way to organize a system to where it's not a set of static checks (i.e a bunch of if statements, for example)? The platform isn't important, I'm precisely asking for design principles / general design."}
{"_id": "20988", "title": "Why is Python written in C and not in C++?", "text": "In Python's tutorial one can read that Python's original implementation is in C; > On the other hand, the Python implementation, written in C, (...) I'm very curious why was Python written in C and not C++? I'd like to know the reasoning behind this decision and I'm looking for references to historic data."}
{"_id": "199458", "title": "Difference between sending a message and emitting it", "text": "Halfway through the RabbitMQ tutorial, I noticed that the tutorial stops referring to producers \"sending\" messages and starts using the verb \"emit\" instead \u2014 and pretty consistently, too; after the second tutorial, the verb \"send\" is no longer used to describe a producer transmitting messages. Example: Second Tutorial > The main idea behind Work Queues ... encapsulate a task as a message and > **send** it to the queue. A worker process running in the background .... Fourth Tutorial > We'll use this model for our logging system. ... Let's focus on **emitting** > logs first. What is the difference between sending a message vs. emitting one?"}
{"_id": "198324", "title": "Enterprise application with lots of SQL queries", "text": "**Context:** I'm working on a fairly large Access database (which I inherited) that has its interface and tables separated. In order to make this work together, we have a lot of SQL queries (dozens). Some pointing to that database and some pointing to our datamarts. The code at this moment is somewhere around 12k-14k lines which is not huge by software development standard but not so short that I can just rewrite it. Additionally, that database is fed by a form which is distributed to all our internal clients. **My question:** I'm wondering what's the best way to deal with this. I'd like to know if there is a better way to manage all those queries than to have them in code in string variables. I'm sure it's possible to use files but then we have to distribute those files and that can't happen (i.e. I don't want users to have SQL queries wide open to them). Is there some clean (in terms of design) way to manage SQL queries that still has a decent amount of security (access to those queries) ? Just to be clear, we are using Access 2007 with VBA."}
{"_id": "168240", "title": "Is there any way to get faster app reviews?", "text": "I am trying to build a business around an iPhone app. The app will be our main sales channel, and being able to adapt the sales channel faster than the 9-10 days delay cause by the app review times is crucial. Therefore, I was wondering whether there is anything I can do to improve the speed of reviews. I am thinking that the publishers of Angry Birds, surely would not have to wait in line for reviews on the same terms as some obscure free app. So what can I do? Some things I am considering:   * Would Apple prioritize apps that they earn money on?   * Could I in some way pay Apple directly? I already know of the possibility of requesting an expedite review, but it seems like one can get punished for supplying a non-technical reason."}
{"_id": "108770", "title": "How significant are Spring and Hibernate in software development?", "text": "I am a software professional with about 1.6 years of experience in Java. Due to personal reasons, I had to quit my job, and now after 5 to 6 months, I am about start my career again. I am planning to attempt to take the SCJP exam, but some of my seniors suggested that I should learn Spring and Hibernate. I am totally new to Spring and Hibernate, but I am good in core Java concepts, servlets, and JSPs to some extent. Which option would help me securing a job fast? Do software companies not use Java and JDBC alone, without advanced concepts like EJBs, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, servlets, JSPs, etc? Is it enough for an individual to possess skills in Java alone by attempting to obtain the SCJP certification, or do you need advanced Java skills to secure a job?"}
{"_id": "71808", "title": "How much pressure should programmers be under?", "text": "I have been blessed with an amazing workplace and my colleagues are really understanding.. However this is my first programming \"gig\" and i know some people aren't so lucky, Especially those who run their own company! (I've seen my boss work unhuman hours and go way beyond out of his way to make a customer happy.) The ugly truth is when your contracted by a big corporation, as we have been, you learn quickly that corporations don't care for clean readable code, programmer happiness, best practice or maintainability.. And they will call you on weekends.. At 3AM.. with 1 weeks worth of work they need for a meeting at 7AM!   1. How much pressure is normal for a programmer?   2. How much pressure should a programmer be under?"}
{"_id": "58270", "title": "Bugs vs. Nonexistent Features", "text": "Is it fair to refer to a feature that has not yet been coded as a \"bug\"? For example, I am working on a project that involves three distinct features. If I only start one of them, is it correct to refer to the other two as bugs? Or do bugs only apply to features that have been coded and tested?"}
{"_id": "211798", "title": "Design decision for implementing the cache re-arrange logic", "text": "I'm working on a webapp which has an existing framework to cache values from the database. I have a requirement which needs multiple values from the database and the values have to be rearranged/restructured so that it's easy for the UI framework to handle them. I'm unable to decide where to put this 'complex re-arranging' logic. Should I do it from the database queries itself? or   Should I create a combined cache i.e read values from other caches, rearrange data, then store the result in a new cache? or   Put the rearranging logic in the UI?"}
{"_id": "167305", "title": "What functionality does dynamic typing allow?  ", "text": "I've been using python for a few days now and I think I understand the difference between dynamic and static typing. What I don't understand is under what circumstances it would be preferred. It is flexible and readable, but at the expense of more runtime checks and additional required unit testing. Aside from non-functional criteria like flexibility and readability, what reasons are there to choose dynamic typing? What can I do with dynamic typing that isn't possible otherwise? What specific code example can you think of that illustrates a concrete advantage of dynamic typing?"}
{"_id": "211797", "title": "AS2 vs AS3 communication protocol difference. Server requirement", "text": "I'm researching what's needed for EDI as far as protocols and server/application setup. This is transportation industry and I'm interested in X12 format for transactions like 204, 210, 214. Specific question is: Do BOTH trading partners have to run servers? With AS3 it seems like SFTP server and it seems like one partner can run it and another partner can push/pull. What about AS2? Can it have server only on one side? Or both partners should be able to push?"}
{"_id": "102041", "title": "Why are data structures so important in interviews?", "text": "I am a newbie into the corporate world recently graduated in computers. I am a java/groovy developer. I am a quick learner and I can learn new frameworks, APIs or even programming languages within considerably short amount of time. Albeit that, I must confess that I was not so strong in data structures when I graduated out of college. Through out the campus placements during my graduation, I've witnessed that most of the biggie tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft etc focused mainly on data structures. It appears as if data structures is the only thing that they expect from a graduate. Adding to this, I see that there is this general perspective that a good programmer is necessarily a one with good knowledge about data structures. To be honest, I felt bad about that. I write good code. I follow standard design patterns of coding, I do use data structures but at the superficial level as in java exposed APIs like ArrayLists, LinkedLists etc. But the companies usually focused on the intricate aspects of Data Structures like pointer based memory manipulation and time complexities. Probably because of my java-ish background, Back then, I understood code efficiency and logic only when talked in terms of Object Oriented Programming like Objects, instances, etc but I never drilled down into the level of bits and bytes. I did not want people to look down upon me for this knowledge deficit of mine in Data Structures. So really why all this emphasis on Data Structures? Does, Not having knowledge in Data Structures really effect one's career in programming? Or is the knowledge in this subject really a sufficient basis to differentiate a good and a bad programmer?"}
{"_id": "37802", "title": "Am I going to damage my career if I switched to a completely different route?", "text": "I have been in the Java programming for the last 4 years, basically doing Java web development and JEE. I have spent the last 7 months investing in learning Objective-C and iOS development for fun. Now I'm considering to scout a professional iOS development career. My question is does iOS development career considered a serious profession (like Java or .NET)? Am I going to hurt my career in the long term if I switched to iOS development after four years in the popular platform?"}
{"_id": "149656", "title": "Are There Any Examples of Uncle Bob's High-Falutin' Architecture?", "text": "I just finished watching this presentation by Uncle Bob (as well as his \"Architecture\" section of his \"Clean Code\" videos), but I'm left wondering: Are there any examples out there of applications that implement this Entity- Boundary-Interactor (or Entity-Boundary-Controller) structure? At one point I downloaded the source code to FitNesse (the acceptance testing project he mentions often as an example of not only high test coverage but good architecture, since they were able to defer the decision to not use a database until the very end), and based on a quick glance of it it appears even this project doesn't seem to fit this pattern. **Are there any nontrivial examples of this architecture out in the wild, or should I not bother even looking into it and chalk it up as \"it would be great if you could get there, but nobody really does\"?**"}
{"_id": "227959", "title": "Uploading files(code) on a web server?", "text": "I have a very small and basic web site on a web server. Usually I'm doing the changes on a localhost where the development version is, and after that I upload it to the server with FileZilla. That's the very obvious way, but it's not the most convenient. I've worked with SVN, but I've never needed to set anything - just checkout, commit, update. Reading some tutorials I wonder is this the easier way to upload the files to a server? Or are there any easier?"}
{"_id": "132369", "title": "Should we rename overloaded methods?", "text": "Assume an interface containing these methods :               Car find(long id);          List<Car> find(String model);      Is it better to rename them like this?               Car findById(long id);          List findByModel(String model);      Indeed, any developer who use this API won't need to look at the interface for knowing possible arguments of initial `find()` methods. So my question is more general : What is the benefit of using overloaded methods in code since it reduce readability?"}
{"_id": "132361", "title": "Why are developer commit statistics harmful?", "text": "I have long believed (and heard from others) that keeping track of commit statistics, such as how many commits each developer makes per day, is harmful to the development process. The reason seems obvious - developers will commit in smaller increments, maximising their commit-per-day number, but making it harder to bisect (perhaps all their intermediate patches won't leave the repo well formed) and harder to work with the commit history (a change will suddenly be in multiple commits, instead of just one, reverting a patch is harder etc). Are there any studies that show commit statistics are harmful? Any elegant and well-argued article on the topic? Equally applicable would be anything about why measuring the wrong thing leads to people optimising the wrong thing, which this problem is just a special case of."}
{"_id": "27518", "title": "If you could ask one technical interview question, what would it be", "text": "First off, there are equally important questions for a candidate that are non- technical (do they work well with others, can they imagine a better approach, etc.). But to evaluate the technical skills, what would be your one question? I ask because I have one. I have no idea why this question works so well. I don't even have a good theory. All I have is an incredible correlation between answering this question correctly and being a really strong programmer. The question was suggested to me by someone I respect a lot. I replied that it seemed too easy but he suggested I try it. He's a smart & imaginative guy so I started asking it of people I interview. The interview process at virtually every company I have worked at has been 3 \u2013 4 hours long. We ask basic programming, we ask brain teasers, we have them bring in some code they are proud of and spend 45 minutes having them take us through what they did and why. And 99% of the time, getting this question right or wrong predicts if they will pass the 3 \u2013 4 hour process. Question: For the integers between 0 and 100 (i.e. 1, 2, 3, \u2026, 100) \u2013 how many have the digit 7 in them? Answer at The Best Programming Interview Question \u2013 ever! (so you answer it yourself before seeing the answer)."}
{"_id": "222339", "title": "Using the system tray / notification area app in Windows 7?", "text": "Many dekstop apps have this, such as dropbox (windows version). You right- click the dropbox systray icon and there are shortcuts to the features of the main app. Right now, I want to keep it simple and just want to run a exe(?) and have a custom icon appear in the system tray notification area. How do I build this?"}
{"_id": "222336", "title": "Session management in a Service Oriented Architecture", "text": "Where should you manage a users session in a SOA? Should you manage it in the Web Service or in the client and why? My application is SPA (Considering that this will be the stacked that will be used Apache CXF for Web Services AngularJS for making REST calls)"}
{"_id": "106741", "title": "Is there a canonical reference on GUI programming in Java?", "text": "I'm practicing Java in Netbeans. Is there a reference out there that's the de-facto standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other helpful information on GUI programming in Java? What about that reference makes it special?"}
{"_id": "91000", "title": "The correct choice of tools for a new Deep Zoom application", "text": "I want to create a new application. It will basically be a Deep Zoom application that users can draw annotations on (that will save to a DB so other users can see those annotations.) At first it will just simply run in a browser. However, the app would be useful if it could be used by enthusiasts in the field, so ability to run on smartphones or other handheld devices would be massively beneficial. 3G/4G signal is likely to be practically non existent in those places, so having the ability to download all the images and info for an \"area\" would be good. I can't decide on which technology to use. Silverlight Deep Zoom apps look really nice in browsers, but I have heard that it is not a widely supported technology that MS might be ditching anyway and the only smartphones that would be capable of running Silverlight would be Windows phones = a very small share of the smartphone market. Flash will probably never run on iPhones/Apple products in general. So should I use HTML5? HTML5 all seems a little confusing to me at the moment, would it even be possible to make a HTML5 Deep Zoom application that users could annotate? Any thoughts and advice would be really handy, thanks for reading."}
{"_id": "106747", "title": "Computer Science graduate. Master or full-time job?", "text": "> **Possible Duplicate:**   >  Is a Master's worth it? I have just gotten my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and I have to make choice. Whether to continue with my full-time job I just got or put the job slightly in the background and concentrate on getting a Master's degree. I am currently working as an embedded C developer in a small company. The cool thing is that, because the team is quite small, my engineering ideas really play a part in the final product. Not to mention that I get to work on very different areas of embedded programming: device drivers and development of a Real Time OS. I am very enthusiastic about my job and what I do. On the other hand, in my country there isn't really a master's degree that focuses on embedded development so my gain from getting this degree will mainly in the field of general computer science knowledge. That being said, is it worth giving up all my spare time which I now use to study different areas of embedded devices and work mainly to get a degree rather than pure knowledge and experience in the field I want to work in?"}
{"_id": "137620", "title": "Should developers be expected to compile an internal library before the actual program?", "text": "Recently a senior developer that I work with made a case for requiring that developers get the latest version and compile as part of their project a major internal library. This stands in contrast the the counter argument that project teams should be working off a stable version that they get from an internal Maven repository to which the developer argued that having the source code available on the developer machines saves time as they can read the libraries source code to determine if required functionality is available. Does the senior developer have a valid argument? Or is requiring developers to read the libraries source code run counter to the basic philosophy of encapsulation and even having the library in the first place?"}
{"_id": "67123", "title": "How useful are compile-time functions?", "text": "How useful are compile time functions? Personally I haven't worked in any language that supports them but they seem nifty in some cases. For those who don't what I mean, a compile-time function is evaluated at compilation rather than at runtime, so if you have for instance in your code               int i =   Pow(4,34);      you could instead do something like this               int i =   Pow<compilation>(4,34);      and the actual runtime code would be                int i =   295147905179352825856;      Naturally there are some restrictions on what functions could be run at compile time, they pretty much have to be pure/static but I can also see some instances where it could be used to fetch data into something from a file or database (even though in most cases those things shouldn't be compiled into the code) What do you think, is a feature like that actually useful or just \"cool\"? :)"}
{"_id": "67122", "title": "How do I approach fixing an unreproducible/randomly occurring bug?", "text": "We have a multilingual website in which a bug was discovered some days ago. It was displaying other language data in other language and also the mixture of data like English language was selected but it was displaying other language data as well in the page and vice-versa. It is doing it infrequently but is present in the website. Going through the code also doesn't help because this is not always occurring. Any suggestion in finding the issue in a timely manner? I am asking for strategies here."}
{"_id": "147673", "title": "What are the roles of singletons, abstract classes and interfaces?", "text": "I am studying OOP in C++ and, even though I am aware of the definitions of these 3 concepts, I cannot really realize when or how to use it. Let's use this class for the example:               class Person{         private:                  string name;                  int age;         public:                  Person(string p1, int p2){this->name=p1; this->age=p2;}                  ~Person(){}                       void set_name (string parameter){this->name=parameter;}                                   void set_age (int parameter){this->age=parameter;}                       string get_name (){return this->name;}                  int get_age (){return this->age;}                       };      1.Singleton **HOW** does the restriction of the class to have only one object work? **CAN** you design a class that would have **ONLY** 2 instances? Or maybe 3? **WHEN** is using a singleton recommended/necessary? Is it good practice? 2.Abstract Class As far as i know, if there's only one pure virtual function, the class becomes abstract. So, adding               virtual void print ()=0;      would do it, right? **WHY** would you need a class whose object is not required? 3.Interface If an interface is an abstract class in which all the methods are pure virtual functions, then **WHAT** is the main difference between the 2 of them? Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "188528", "title": "How do I transparently cache data in intermediate stages of processing?", "text": "I am working with MATLAB on a model reduction algorithm. It is basically a data processing pipeline.               ckt = generate_ckt(ckt_properties);     freq = generate_fpoints(fconfig);     result = freq_dom_sim(ckt,freq);     red_ckt = run_PRIMA(ckt, red_order);      Each of these are potentially time consuming activities, being that the data I work with is pretty big (10000 \u00d7 10000 matrices). So in a previous implementation I had all of these as separate scripts that I had to execute one by one (manually or run a master script). Each of these stored the data in `.mat` files. The next program would read from this and write its own result in another directory. And so on. What I would like to use is a framework that can store the dependencies between various pieces of data, such that at any point of time I can just ask it to generate the output. It should :   1. Check if the variable is present in the workspace.   2. If it is, check if its consistent with the expected properties (check with the `config` data)   3. If not, load from file (the exact path to the file will be pre-specified).   4. Check if its consistent with the expected properties.   5. If not, compute it from the command associated with it. (pre-specified) I would like this to be recursive, so that effectively I run the last module and it automatically runs checks and actually computes only those pieces of data that are not already available and consistent. Can you give some suggestions on how to design this? If it is already called something (I assume it must) please point me to it."}
{"_id": "188527", "title": "Using the mouse as a multi-tool creates heavy conditional logic for executing commands, how do I change this?", "text": "The feature is in many different types of editing programs where a mouse click may have completely different commands to execute (using the Command Pattern) Currently I have an overarching `determineClickCommand(clickFocus)` function. The body essentially looked like this:               var command = null;     var args    = null;          if (clickFocus == x) {         if (x.state == state) {             args = // Code to detemine args             command = new CommandA(args)         } else {             command = new CommandB()         }     } else if (clickFocus == y) {         args = blahablah;         command = new CommandC(args)     } else if (clickFocus == z) {         command = new CommandD()     } ...etc..etc...etc...          command.execute()      Which was fine when I was prototyping, but I'd like a more elegant solution. Particularly since at some point, I'm going to want to take advantage of right-click/middle-click, which could add a third nested if statement My first idea is to create a `AbstractClickScope` class with a `determineClickCommand()` method to be overridden in each concrete scope subclass. This breaks the problem into more maintainable classes, but the extensive conditional logic is the exact same. And if I were to decide to have many 'scopes' then a new class each time would be very annoying. Or maybe have some sort of command factory class as opposed to a method? This isolates Command creation to a very specific part of the code. Any other ideas? Or known implementations? Just throwing ideas out there and looking for more info as I think through this."}
{"_id": "147678", "title": "Is there a way to track data structure dependencies from the database, through the tiers, all the way out to a web page?", "text": "When we design applications, we generally end up with the same tiered sets of data structures:   1. A persistent data structure that is described using DDL and implemented as RDBMS tables and columns.   2. A set of domain objects that consist primarily of data structures, usually combined with business-rule level logic, that are implemented in a programming language such as Java.   3. A set of service layer interfaces that directly support use case implementations (which use the domain data structures as parameters), implemented as EJBs or something equivalent in another programming language.   4. UI screens that allow users to **C** reate, **R** etrieve, **U** pdate, and (maybe) **D** elete all manner of data structures and graphs of data structures, with numerous screens and with multiple UI widgets, all structured to support the same data structures. But if you want to change the data structures in any of these tiers, it always seems _extremely_ difficult to assess the impact(s) the change will have across the application. UML can help, but tracing through diagram after diagram is not a real solution to this problem. The best I have ever seen was a homespun data tracking spreadsheet document that listed all of the data structures and walked the relationships from tier-to-tier. Is there a tool or accepted approach that makes it easy to identify a data structure in any tier and easily obtain a list of all dependent:   * database table and column data structures   * domain object data structures   * service layer interface methods and parameter data structures   * screen & UI component data structures"}
{"_id": "185332", "title": "How do I know if I have enough unit test coverage to remove an integration test?", "text": "I'm working on a legacy system (by that I mean it was written without tests). We've tried to test some of the system by writing integration tests that test functionality from the outside. This gives me some confidence to refactor parts of the code without worry about breaking it. But the problem is these integration tests require a deploy (2+ minutes) and many minutes to run. Also, they are a pain to maintain. They each cover thousands of lines of code and when one of them breaks it can take hour(s) to debug why. I've been writing lots of unit tests for these functional changes I've been making lately, but before I commit I always do a new deploy and run all integration tests, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. At this point I know my unit tests and some of the integration tests are overlapping what they test. How do I know when my good unit tests are adequately covering a bad integration test so that I can delete that integration test?"}
{"_id": "131736", "title": "How can I convince a team member to use a web framework?", "text": "The question is this and the detail follows: **is there anything I can say/bring up, as a programmer, to bring him to my side?** I'd love to hear valid arguments for both sides on this one, but mostly suggestions for how to talk him around. * * * My situation is this: I'm working on a team project on my degree course, building a mid-sized website as a prototype for the university. All are considered equals in the group and there is no one appointed leader so the answer to this problem can't be \"pull rank\". All are equals, however there is a huge gap in knowledge between members. The team member in question and I are both capable developers, though he holds no industry experience. The other three members are less capable, and two have opted out of development entirely. All three have declined to comment on the situation due to lack of knowledge. As as a group, we are coming to decide on what technologies to use in the implementation of the website; specifically, whether to use a PHP framework (Code Igniter) or not. I am arguing in favour, citing:   1. Not reinventing the wheel   2. Well written and tested code base to work from   3. Getting going (the deadline is closer than we'd like)   4. Speed of development   5. Sound and maintainable design patterns and good practices He is arguing in favour of working in the way he's used to:   * Writing bespoke, one-time functions in to a \"library\" file as when he needs them      * Functions for data access and rendering that data the page, getting/setting to and from session and get/post data etc   * Having 1 file per page (resulting in no separation of concerns amongst control, presentation and data) His reasons against using are framework are mostly based on him not being able to see the point: he can do all those things already. The framework doesn't change that, it just makes it harder because he has to learn the framework; he doesn't want to use code he hasn't personally written. He has also said that it \"doesn't matter the quality of the code base, since the project is only a prototype and will never be maintained\". For me, that is _no excuse_ to write unmaintainable code. I can see why he makes those arguments, but I hold issue with his \"lack of concern over maintainability\" and his \"disregard for good design\", or even separation of concerns. However, I suspect he has never studied design patterns, so I don't know how effective demonstrating why his method could prove unmaintainable would be. I want to get going on this project, but I don't want to do it without regard for everything I've learnt over the years. As I said before, there is no possibility of pulling rank here, nor are other team members willing to pitch in. Should I just back down and do things his way? Is he too stubborn and inexperienced to know better? Or am I being the stubborn one here? TL;DR Inexperienced team member is being stubborn, how can I win him over?"}
{"_id": "25857", "title": "What questions should I ask on a work environment survey?", "text": "As a result of reading Peopleware, I'm thinking of sending a survey out to our programmers to determine how they feel about their office environment. One obvious question is whether the office is too noisy or not. **What other questions should I ask our programmers about their work environment?** I'll post the final survey I put together onto this thread."}
{"_id": "25856", "title": "Are high office partitions as effective as private offices?", "text": "I'm currently reading DeMarco and Lister's Peopleware, and I've been struck (as everyone is) by their comments about noise reduction via using private offices, and the effect this has on productivity. Private offices are probably not going to happen at my workplace, but I'm wondering if high cubicle partitions (say, 6 feet) might be nearly as good? I imagine they wouldn't deflect quite as much noise, but they would have _some_ effect. One down-side is that the center cubicles would have less natural light. That seems quite a big downer to me. I'd be interested to hear what peoples experiences are."}
{"_id": "196477", "title": "How to port cli c++ program with GNU libraries from windows to Linux", "text": "I need to implement some graph partitioning algorithms for my thesis. I have mostly Windows experience. I would like to know if it is hard to migrate c++ console program to Linux. I want to program it on Windows but I want to test and compile it on Linux as well. It will be pure cli application, with no use of windows APi or anything. I just need to use some external libraries. Specifically GNU linear programming kit and GNU scientific library GSL. I found out, there are windows versions of these libraries, what does it mean for me?, should I compile it on Windows with windows version package and on Linux with linux package. I would like someone to bring a bit clarity to this, I am really not very experienced programmer, so any advice will help. Also I would like to ask, if there is diference if I use Visual Studio for programming or some other IDE in matter of portability issues. Thanks in advance for any help."}
{"_id": "186584", "title": "Annexes in Ada95", "text": "I want to know the differences between normative and informative annexes in Ada 95. I am just able to find a list of each of them but not the differences. What are the differences?"}
{"_id": "196471", "title": "Does JMF have support with Xuggler", "text": "i am working on a project consisting of sending and receiving streaming multimedia.So,i have installed JMF, but i have seen that JMF has 32 bit library as mine is 64 bit so i wanted to use Xuggler for streaming videos. Can anyone clarify me about the support of Java Media FrameWork with Xuggler.."}
{"_id": "184807", "title": "Branch vs decision coverage question", "text": "ISTQB does not distinct between these (it reads \"Branch/decision coverage\") but some sources do say it is different. I would have two question. The essential one is about the difference. And the other one - does this whole concept belongs under the unit testing? Or white box testing? Thanks From the ISTQB: > branch coverage is closely related to decision coverage and at 100% coverage > they give exactly the same results. Decision coverage measures the coverage > of conditional branches; branch coverage measures the coverage of both > conditional and unconditional branches. The Syllabus uses decision coverage, > as it is the source of the branches. Some coverage measurement tools may > talk about branch coverage when they actually mean decision coverage. (c) > ISTQB foundation book."}
{"_id": "156013", "title": "how can python interpreter recognize code block", "text": "The most unusual aspect of Python is that whitespace is significant   instead of block delimiters (braces \u2192 \"{}\" in the C family of languages), indentation is used to indicate where blocks begin and end.   how can python interpreter recognize code block ?"}
{"_id": "216220", "title": "String Formatting with concatenation or substitution", "text": "This is a question about preferences. Assume a programming language offers these two options to make a string with some variables:   1. `\"Hello, my name is \". name .\" and I'm \". age .\" years old.\"`   2. `StringFormat(\"Hello, my name is $0 and I'm $1 years old.\", name, age)` Which do you prefer and why? I have found myself using both without any clear reason to pick either. Considering micro-optimizations is not within the scope of this question. **Localization** has been mentioned as a reason to go with option #2 and I think it's a very valid reason and deserves to be mentioned here. However, would opinions differ based on aesthetic viewpoints?"}
{"_id": "66740", "title": "What language should I seek to learn if I would like to develop for Windows?", "text": "What language should I seek to learn if I would like to develop for Windows? Not command-line stuff (obviously, I guess) but with Windows Forms and such? I've used C before (when working with Rockbox), but that's it. Up until now, I've used Autoit (for basic, simple stuff), but I'm looking for something that has more flexibility and is popular inside of the PC software industry. Plus, I didn't like how easy it was to crack Autoit programs. I'm also a web developer/designer, just to throw that out there. Thanks in advance!"}
{"_id": "74973", "title": "Weaknesses with different types of NoSQL databases", "text": "Here's my question: What are the weaknesses with different types of NoSQL databases? Specifically, what're the weaknesses of key-value stores, graph data stores and document stores? I've had an easy time finding strengths, but documents on weaknesses seem to be scarcer. Edit: In comparison to each other, and to relational databases."}
{"_id": "74970", "title": "How do I use programming experience at a non-programming position on my resume for a programming position?", "text": "I currently work in tier 2 support for an ISP, but don't want to remain here indefinitely. My overall ambition is to be a programmer as it is what I really love to do. The problem is that I came to this conclusion later in my career path and have had only the chance to go back to school to earn an AS in Computer Science and have had no positions as a programmer. Being out of college for a long time now makes it very hard to go after a low level position as I don't have a BS (and realistically at this point, it won't happen for a while, if at all) and employers only seem interested in fresh graduates. I have had the opportunity recently to work on some special projects at my current position that involve coding in my preferred languages to solve various problems. I have now written various tools using a multitude of languages to solve these problems. Now I am not necessarily what I would consider competent in these languages, but I can get around them and I know all the fundamentals (autoit, vb.net, python, perl, pascal, c#, php, batch, bash). I am also very good at finding a way to code what I need when I don't know upfront how to do it. I have some code samples for all these languages that I have used to solve problems at work. How do I incorporate this experience into my resume to be a more viable candidate for an entry level position?"}
{"_id": "34577", "title": "Best approach to designing multi-client applications", "text": "I was wondering how you guys start out if you need to design a multi-client project where multiple clients can interact with a server. In specific how do you go about dealing with different states and message handling, how do you start designing and considering all these cases? For example a video webchat application where it is possible that you call another client, while that client is already in a call, or is stuck in a modal dialog such that the calling dialog does not come through."}
{"_id": "144092", "title": "The rule of 5 - to use it or not?", "text": "The rule of 3 (the rule of 5 in the new c++ standard) states : > If you need to explicitly declare either the destructor, copy constructor or > copy assignment operator yourself, you probably need to explicitly declare > all three of them. But, on the other hand, the Martin's \"Clean Code\" advises to remove all empty constructors and destructors (page 293, _G12:Clutter_ ) : > Of what use is a default constructor with no implementation? All it serves > to do is clutter up the code with meaningless artifacts. So, how to handle these two opposite opinions? Should empty constructors/destructors really be implemented? * * * Next example demonstrates exactly what I mean :               #include <iostream>     #include <memory>          struct A     {         A( const int value ) : v( new int( value ) ) {}         ~A(){}         A( const A & other ) : v( new int( *other.v ) ) {}         A& operator=( const A & other )         {             v.reset( new int( *other.v ) );             return *this;         }              std::auto_ptr< int > v;     };     int main()     {         const A a( 55 );         std::cout<< \"a value = \" << *a.v << std::endl;         A b(a);         std::cout<< \"b value = \" << *b.v << std::endl;         const A c(11);         std::cout<< \"c value = \" << *c.v << std::endl;         b = c;         std::cout<< \"b new value = \" << *b.v << std::endl;     }      Compiles fine using g++ 4.6.1 with :               g++ -std=c++0x -Wall -Wextra -pedantic example.cpp      The destructor for `struct A` is empty, and not really needed. So, should it be there, or should it be removed?"}
{"_id": "72726", "title": "Making sure nobody has created an app for something before?", "text": "I've an idea for a smartphone game app. I want to make sure nobody has made an app like this before; how can I check that? I don't want to remake something that already exists now."}
{"_id": "177528", "title": "Does async/await makes simple thing unnecessary complicated?", "text": "After exposing to Windows App Store development for a month, I begin to feel that `async` / `await` programming model does more harm than good. **It makes simple thing complicated.** Take an example, folder creation. In Java or Desktop .NET, I can simply do ## Java               public Constructor()     {         new File(\"c:\\\\folder\").mkdirs();         System.out.println(\"I am pretty sure c:\\\\folder is ready now\");     }      ## Desktop .NET               Constructor()     {         System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(\"c:\\\\folder\");         Console.WriteLine(\"I am pretty sure c:\\\\folder is ready now\");     }      But when comes to ## Windows App Store .NET               Constructor()     {         // Damm it! Another async function? I don't need aysnc!         Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.CreateFolderAsync(\"c:\\\\folder\", CreationCollisionOption.OpenIfExists);         // I am not sure c:\\\\folder is ready right now!         // OK. I know I can use ContinueWith. No no no. I don't want.         // Why I have to use ContinueWith with such a simple operation?     }      So, my question is, do you find the newly introduced `async` / `await` programming model in Windows App Store,   * Improve your productivity?   * Make programming life easier? **For me, I don't!** Perhaps I have been missing out certain useful techniques. I know, Microsoft says, it helps us to write responsive UI code. But I would say, **No thanks! Hey look, my code is already in non-UI code!** Most of my current operation code is fast enough and doesn't block UI. When my operation code is not fast enough, I am pretty comfortable in making those slow operation code run in separate Thread/ Task. Forcing me to use `async` / `await` which I do not need, only makes my code more complicated. **Message to Microsoft** : May I beg to you, besides async functions, can you provide a same set of non-async functions, please? I already build up my habit of running code in non-UI thread. I promise I will continue make your Windows App perform as smooth as iOS :)"}
{"_id": "177529", "title": "When connecting to a server using the DRDA protocol, is it true that the first Client-To-Server command MUST be EXCSAT chained with ACCSEC?", "text": "When connecting to a server using the DRDA protocol, is it true that the first Client-To-Server command MUST be EXCSAT chained with ACCSEC? I found 2 different answers when I googled it. If you look at The Open Group web site (https://collaboration.opengroup.org/dbiop/) it can be understood that the answer is NO. However, if you look at the IBM website (http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dzichelp/v2r2/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.ims11.doc.apr%2Fims_ddm_excsat.htm) you can understand the answer is YES. So which is it?"}
{"_id": "177526", "title": "If you have several SCRUM teams working on one backlog, how do you divide story point estimation between those teams?", "text": "I'm asking because approach in my company looks as follows:   * stories in the backlog are not estimated   * team that picks the story estimates it in story points during sprint planning part two"}
{"_id": "105807", "title": "Best Practices for Corporate Sponsorship of Open Source Project", "text": "We are preparing to OpenSource our ASP.NET MVC multi-tenancy CMS. We currently use BitBucket.org to host our source repository and we are considering best approaches to repository naming. In terms of the user/host of the repository, We are debating using our company name which is the sponsor of the project versus the project name itself. The company name is JoyaTech Solutions, the project name is JoyaCMS. Do people think that having a company name as the user/owner of an open source project is a turn off or is there value in displaying that relationship?"}
{"_id": "105805", "title": "Storing passwords for usage in scripts", "text": "There are few situations that require users to provide their password while automating things during development process. Site deployment is only one of the common situations. Creating dmg files under OS X requires password as well. Most of the command line utilities used in scripts has an ability to receive a password via stdin. Providing password each time the script is run kinda defeats the purpose of \"automatic\". Storing it plain text in the script defeats the purpose of \"password\". What is the most optimal approach to providing passwords to scripts that requires them?"}
{"_id": "50381", "title": "What tools or way to start a web project", "text": "I am a sandwich training student in a company that has a little informatics service who develop web app Until today, they work with simple php, a little CSS and no version control. So, the code becomes unmaintainable. The project manager would like to use php object, and i am the only one with some knows in it. But i am still a beginner with no experience in web dev, and after some search i am afraid to building a php MVC alone. So my question is : Should i convince the team to start using a framework like symfony ( i'm feeling ok to use it ) with the big change it impose to the team, or simply bring a better work structure with version control and tools like an ORM ? Thanks for your help EDITED : with the hope it's now understandable"}
{"_id": "224275", "title": "Why are there so few comments in C/C++ code?", "text": "I'm a web developer primarily, and I've been learning C/C++ and trying to get involved in some open source projects. Something I find very unusual is the lack of comments in C/C++ source code (I've looked at big projects like Linux, Varnish, and HipHopVM). In web development, I'm used to seeing a **lot** of comments in source code, and I tend to comment a lot as well. I assume it's a culture/attitude thing, as I posted some C code for review and a couple people said I had too many comments."}
{"_id": "228556", "title": "When the ScrumMaster is a technical leader, it's a good or a bad practice?", "text": "I know that the ScrumMaster should be a leader, but it's a good practice to have a technical leader as a ScrumMaster. For example: a coordinator."}
{"_id": "228557", "title": "Entity Translation Should be in the Data Layer or Business Layer", "text": "From my understanding I though the data layer should isolate the Data Technology from the rest of the application, for me this also include the schema in this case the data entity. Recently I've been looking at the Silk project from Patterns & Practices http://silk.codeplex.com/, and noticed that data entities are translated in the business layer rather than in the data layer. I think the advantage is that it avoid the data layer to reference an assembly containing the business model. However the fact that it expose data entities publicly is from my understanding a disadvantage because external components may be dependent of the data schema. I would like to understand why they translate data entities in the business layer and what are the advantages? I know that they use code first entity framework, so that the entities doesn't have data technology related dependency, however there responsibility is still to structure the data model not the business model. Thanks"}
{"_id": "224271", "title": "What are the proper terms for desk/user testing?", "text": "Is there a common and accepted term for the manual tests done by programmers or users on software in lieu of or in addition to automated testing? For example, in a progression as follows:   1. \"Desk Test\" for the non-automated testing a programmer does while writing code.   2. \"Unit Test\" for an automated test for a particular class/method/function.   3. \"Integration Test\" for an automated test of multiple components working together.   4. \"System Test\" or \"Acceptance Test\" for application-wide tests that would be meaningful in conversation with the end user.   5. \"User Test\", for when we hand it to the user and ask them to find bugs. Are there better terms for #1 (\"Desk Test\") and #5 (\"User Test\")? (And I know that TDD would say write #2 before #1... but making that point is exactly why I want to know the right word for #1.)"}
{"_id": "187188", "title": "Do I include third party classes in my UML class diagrams", "text": "I'm developing a system which involves 2 Android applications and a Java web application. For my UML class diagrams I have not included third party classes I use e.g. observer type interfaces. Should I include them? If so how can I differentiate between my entities (classes, interfaces, enums etc) and their entities? Thank you."}
{"_id": "202983", "title": "Can and do compilers convert recursive logic to equivalent non-recursive logic?", "text": "I've been learning F# and it's starting to influence how I think when I'm programming C#. To that end, I have been using recursion when I feel the result improves readability and I can't envision it winding out to a stack overflow. This leads me to ask whether or not compilers could automatically convert recursive functions to an equivalent non-recursive form?"}
{"_id": "219541", "title": "Which of these old criticisms of common lisp still apply today?", "text": "In _A Critique of Common Lisp_ written by Rodney A. Brooks and Richard P. Gabriel from Stanford in 1984, some design decisions retained by the normalizing committee of Common Lisp are discussed. While most of the discussion remains valid, there are two statements that refer to the technology available at the time and may be false today. These two statements are: > Too many costs of the language were dismissed with the admonition that \u2018any > good compiler\u2019 can take care of them. No one has yet written\u2014nor is likely > to without tremendous effort\u2014a compiler that does a fraction of the tricks > expected of it. As I am a Common Lisp novice, or even an apprentice, I am not able to be more specific than the authors are. They seem to state that a great generality and flexibility has been built into several aspects of the language, which makes writing a good compiler quite difficult. > In COMMON LISP a little too much control was placed on floating-point > arithmetic. And certainly, although the correct behavior of a floating- > point-intensive program can be attained, the performance may vary wildly. As far I understand, it seems that writing efficient numerical code in Common Lisp is possible but more challenging than it has to be. This was thirty years ago. How should I regard these statement today if I am willing to write Common Lisp programs for one of the common free software implementations (CLISP, SBCL et al.)?"}
{"_id": "64171", "title": "Which is the best book to learn Facebook App development and Facebook Graph API?", "text": "Which is the best book to learn Facebook App development and Facebook Graph API?"}
{"_id": "144323", "title": "Conditional checks against a list", "text": "I was wondering how computers do this. The most logical way I can think is that they are iterating trough all elements of the list until they find one that matches the condition :) For example if you call `function_exists()`, PHP should iterate trough all defined functions until it meets the one that matches the name you're looking for. Is this true that this is the only way? If it is, it sounds like it's not very efficient :s"}
{"_id": "144324", "title": "Prolog parallelism", "text": "Are there any prolog interpreters that can functionally decompose your 'programs' in order to improve efficiency? I know there's been research on prolog interpreters that reach near-C speeds through parallelism (the kind that a typical C programmer can't \"see\"). Does anyone know more about this topic?"}
{"_id": "144326", "title": "try-catch in javascript... isn't it a good practice?", "text": "There is a provision for **try-catch** block in **javascript**. While in java or any other language it is mandatory to have error handling, I don't see anybody using them in javascript for greater extent. Isn't it a good practice or just we don't need them in javascript?"}
{"_id": "144327", "title": "Synchronous vs. asynchronous for publish subscribe communication between JavaScript objects", "text": "I implemented the publish subscribe pattern in a JavaScript module to be used by entirely client-side oriented JavaScript objects. This module has nothing to do with client-server communications in any way, shape or form. My question is whether it's better for the publish method in such a module to be synchronous or asynchronous, and why. As a very simplified example let's say I'm building a custom UI for an HTML5 video player widget: One of my modules is the \"video\" module that contains the VIDEO element and handles the various features and events associated with that element. This would probably have a namespace something like \"widgets.player.video.\" Another is the \"controls\" module that has the various buttons - play, pause, volume, scrub, fullscreen, etc. This might have a namespace along the lines of \"widgets.player.controls.\" These two modules are children of a parent \"player\" module (\"widgets.player\" ??), and as such would have no inherent knowledge of each other when instantiated as children of the \"player\" object. The \"controls\" elements would obviously need to be able to effect some changes on the video (click \"Play\" and the video should play), and vice versa (video's \"timeUpdate\" event fires and the visual display of the current time in the controls should update). I could tightly couple these modules and pass references to each other, but I'd rather take a more loosely coupled approach by setting up a pubsub type module that both can subscribe to and publish from. SO (thanks for bearing with me) in this kind of a scenario is there an advantage one way or another for synchronous publication versus asynchronous publication? I've seen some solutions posted online that allow for either/or with a boolean flag whereas others automatically do it asynchronously. I haven't personally seen an implementation that just automatically goes with synchronous publication... is this because there's no advantage to it? I know that I can accomplish this with features provided by jQuery, but it seems that there may be too much overhead involved here. The publish subscribe pattern can be implemented with relatively lightweight code designed specifically for this particular purpose so I'd rather go with that then a more general purpose eventing system like jQuery's (which I'll use for more general eventing needs :-)."}
{"_id": "6633", "title": "How are open-source projects able to sustain themselves?", "text": "I always had this question in mind but couldn't find a proper place to ask. There are some really nice and great open source free software available on the net. How do these products sustain themselves financially? It is one thing writing a small utility which does something nice but writing a complicated product with whole lot of features is a totally different ball game. So to repeat myself again, how do they work financially?"}
{"_id": "189694", "title": "Can a programmer renounce ownership of source code?", "text": "I came across this license:               /**      * The author disclaims copyright to this source code. In place of      * a legal notice, here is a blessing:      *      * May you do good and not evil.      * May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.      * May you share freely, never taking more than you give.      */      Would this have the same legal bearing as the WTFPL license?"}
{"_id": "189691", "title": "UML diagrams for small projects", "text": "All of a sudden the need for proper formal documentation has become a thing in our organization. A lot of work I do are enhancements and addition to an existing system. Generally a quick fix or a new method, etc. I am just not sure what kind of diagrams I should/could use for small projects. For instance I am adding a new functionality to an existing system that verifies format of a field and they want proper \"Component design description with diagrams\" for a simple regex that verifies format of one field. In the past we only did pseudocode and that was enough for such projects as the system is somewhat legacy with very little original documentation."}
{"_id": "100350", "title": "What does Google or Microsoft get by hosting JS files on their Content Delivery Networks (CDN)?", "text": "As you know Google, Microsoft and jQuery.com offer JS files on their CDN. To do this, they must need to operate significant servers which must come at a cost to them. Why do they do this and what do they get from it?"}
{"_id": "92062", "title": ".NET CQRS Frameworks nCQRS vs Lokad.CQRS", "text": "For the last couple of weeks I've been reading up and watching any resources I can find on CQRS. I really like the concept and am keen to start delving deeper. I have only found 2 major .NET frameworks for CQRS and I am trying to evaluate the differences between them. I am looking to implement CQRS on a noSql db, most likely RavenDB. Lokad seems very focused on windows Azure, not sure if it supports Raven. It has extensive documentation but not a lot of activity in the community. nCQRS has a lot of activety and supports Raven. I was wondering if anyone has any experience working with these two frameworks and what the major differences are between them."}
{"_id": "209725", "title": "Must OpenCL code be compiled for a specific GPU?", "text": "Most OpenCL Tutorials give a nice introduction to OpenCL, yet I have not found information on the question of interoperability of the compilation targets. It seems that I have to compile OpenCL code for the target GPU. Now when making a binary distribution of an application using OpenCL, does one have to make several builds for the vendor-platforms?"}
{"_id": "209723", "title": "Java exception redundancy", "text": "To what extent should one make exceptions redundant or atomic to a method. For instance, suppose I have a method `public void authenticate(String username, String password)` that calls `private void invokeServer(String username, String password)`. Both methods require those params to be non-zero length, and as such I would raise a `NullPointerException` if needed. Should I sanity check in `invokeServer` as well as `authenticate` on the basis that it could potentially be used independently at a later date?"}
{"_id": "100356", "title": "Can we develop ASP.NET MVC application with MySQL as the database?", "text": "I have mostly seen ASP.NET websites using MSSQL as database. Even I developed one some time ago. Why only MSSQL, when MySQL, a free alternative is available. So, the question is, IS it possible to integrate a MySQL database as easily as MSSQL with ASP.NET application or we need to use some API for doing so ??"}
{"_id": "108867", "title": "How do you decide between putting the code in the database or putting the code in the application?", "text": "For the sake of argument:   * Let's assume the application we are building is an amortization schedule.    * Let's also assume that the database has a table called tblAmortizationPayments that stores the information about each monthly payment in a separate row.    * Let's further assume that the database language can support the math calculations needed to perform the calculations. If you were to build this amortization schedule for a 30 year mortgage, how would you decide between placing the code for performing these 360 calculations inside the database (I'm assuming this would be a stored procedure) or inside the application? I'm more interested in your thought process for making this type of decision or any similar scenario that might come along."}
{"_id": "209729", "title": "Rationale behind C library functions never setting errno to zero", "text": "The C standard mandates that no C standard library functions shall set `errno` to zero. Why exactly is this? I could understand it being useful for calling several functions, and only checking `errno` after the last one - for example:               errno = 0;     double x = strtod(str1, NULL);     long y = strtol(str2, NULL);     if (errno)         // either \"strtod\" or \"strtol\" failed     else         // both succeeded      However, is this not considered \"bad practice\"? Since you're only checking `errno` at the very end, you only know that one of the functions _did_ fail, but not _which_ function failed. Is simply knowing that _something_ failed good enough for most practical programs? I tried looking for various C Rationale documents, but many of them don't have much detail for `<errno.h>`."}
{"_id": "130850", "title": "Difference between DevOps and Software Configuration Management", "text": "What is the difference between Development Operations and Software Configuration Management? For me it seems to be the same as long as both DevOps and Software Configuration Management are focused on:   1. Establishing **development infrastructure** \\- being in charge of version _control, build management, deployment management, dependencies management, continuous integration and delivery_ , etc.    2. Using best practices for organizing **developers environment**.   3. **Quality Assurance** of development processes - gathering metrics of development effectiveness, working on eliminating bottlenecks of development process (running unit-tests, evaluating unit-tests coverage, running inspections, etc)   4. **Infrastructure management** \\- target platforms and its specifics.   5. **Release management** \\- making sure release has been delivered to customer/client in time. Maybe I'm missing something? This link shows that usage of term 'Software Configuration Management' prevails. But still, what word combination would you rather use to describe listed range of activities: **Development Operations** or **Software Configuration Management**?"}
{"_id": "151544", "title": "JQuery / JSON + .Net Service Layer - to WCF or Not to WCF?", "text": "I Recently had a discussion with a colleague of mine about the pros / cons of WCF. He mentioned about how much code is generated to support WCF, and also the overhead required. It was mentioned that a simple jQuery /Ajax post to a .aspx page (or a handler for that matter) that returns JSON would work more efficiently and takes much less code to implement. I am also aware of the new WCF Web API and feel that technology may solve the \"bloated\"-ness required in attaining a proxy etc... by just outputting JSON. So when developing a relational DB (MSSQL) storage model, with a fairly complex Business Layer (C#) and Data Access Layer (EntityFW).. what's a good technology for creating a \"service layer\" which will spit out View Models represented in JSON, with a CQRS(Command Query..) approach in mind.. The app would use the service layer to support it's required UI, as well as provide an available subset of services (outputting JSON data) for service subscribers.. In other words an admin panel to support the admin UI, and service endpoints that return JSON to access the configurations made from the administration UI. What are some potential technologies to use as the transport / communication layer. I'd like to use a pure RESTful approach, but am not against doing some URL rewriting with IIS. Obviously some of the available technologies are: WCF   WCF Web API (should this even be separate?)   Straight request / response (query string to .aspx / handler)   Would using MVC .Net solve this entire problem? maybe their single page app approach? any suggestions / feedback from developing this type of application? Thanks,"}
{"_id": "24722", "title": "Do you have any techniques to help you get started in the morning?", "text": "I'm not a morning person. I got into the habit of working from 10 to 7/8, sometimes 9. Nevertheless, many of the places I've worked for have asked for something more like 8 to 6 or 9 to 6. Honestly, I have a real tough time getting my brain going in the morning and getting into the code. Once I do, I can concentrate for a long time and be quite productive. It's getting into the code and starting to get going with it that I have trouble with. Sometimes I will waste time in the morning just because I can't focus on the problem (yes, I am writing this in the morning). I've put all my busy work in the morning, but as a developer, I don't have a lot of busy work. It kind of becomes a self reinforcing thing; because you don't get things done in the morning, you have to stay later. Because you have to stay later, then its harder to get started the next morning, etc. Do other people have trouble with this? If so, any techniques you've learned? Thanks!"}
{"_id": "110929", "title": "Understanding Cyclomatic Complexity", "text": "I've recently come across Cyclomatic Complexity and I'd like to try to understand it better. What are some practical coding examples of the different factors that go into calculating the complexity? Specifically, for the Wikipedia equation of `M = E \u2212 N + 2P`, I want to better understand what each of the following terms means:   * E = the number of edges of the graph   * N = the number of nodes of the graph   * P = the number of connected components I suspect that either _E_ or _N_ may be the number of decision points (if, else if, for, foreach, etc) in a block of code, but I'm not quite sure which is which or what the other signifies. I'm also guessing that _P_ refers to function calls and class instantiations, but there isn't a clear definition given that I can see. If someone could shed a little more light with some clear code examples of each, it would help. As a follow-up, does the Cyclomatic Complexity directly correlate to the number of unit tests needed for 100% path coverage? As an example, does a method with a complexity of 4 indicate that 4 unit tests are needed to cover that method? Finally, do regular expressions affect Cyclomatic Complexity, and if so, how?"}
{"_id": "50651", "title": "When using membership provider, do you use the user ID or the username?", "text": "I've come across this is in a couple of different applications that I've worked on. They all used the ASP.NET Membership Provider for user accounts and controlling access to certain areas, but when we've gotten down into the code I've noticed that in one we're passing around the string based username, like \"Ralph Waters\", or we're passing around the Guid based user ID from the membership table. Now both seem to work. You can make methods which get by username, or get by user ID, but both have felt somewhat \"funny\". When you pass a string like \"Ralph Waters\" you're passing essentially two separate words that make up a unique identifier. And with a Guid, you're passing around a string/number combination which can be cast and made unique. So my question is this; when using Membership Provider, which do you use, the username or the user ID to get back to the user? Thanks all!"}
{"_id": "130858", "title": "Date as software version number", "text": "Software developers don't typically use date as version number, though YYYYMMDD format (or its variances) looks solid enough to use. Is there anything wrong with that scheme? Or does it apply to limited 'types' of software only (like in-house productions)?"}
{"_id": "187235", "title": "Is HTML5 usable for syncing data between devices?", "text": "I work for an insurance company. They have a contact database that gets pushed to the field agents by Lotus Notes. We're trying to move away from Lotus Notes, but we first have to remove our dependency on it. It has been suggested that a HTML5 solution could provide offline access to agent contacts and be used to sync changed from the server down and the client up. It is my understanding that the SQL storage capabilities of HTML5 aren't fully implemented (IE and Firefox apparently don't support yet per one site I read.) LocalStorage may not be robust enough for the data we need to sync since the size limit is relatively small. Is HTML5 a feasible solution to this issue or should we track down some kind of syncing solution? (I've been reading about one from the Ubuntu folks and Microsoft's, as well.) Thanks!"}
{"_id": "50652", "title": "Should one avoid or be careful with C99 features in C code?", "text": "Some seem to say that one should avoid C99 features in C code as compilers don't really support those features. C99 is a standard from 1999, shouldn't these features be quite widespread now? Should one avoid using C99 features in new code? In legacy code? I happen to use some C99 features quite often, should I stop doing that or be more careful with the use of those features?"}
{"_id": "221175", "title": "problem with High Cohesion - DRY principle across components", "text": "In our company we have to follow a rigid cycle of:   1. Requirement Analysis Document(Use Case Document).   2. Design Document (first High level then Low level)   3. Coding according to the document.   4. Unit Testing.   5. QA team then does testing **Abstract:** It all started when we developed a component in the initial lifecycle of project. The component consisted of its own domain layer/business layer, data layer, interfaces ... etc. After say around a month we had to create a new component due to some other given requirements, it also consisted of its own domain layer/business layer, data layer, interfaces ... etc. There is a Common Component in our solution where we keep all common methods/classes in the entire solution. We kept on developing second component as the requirements were coming and we were providing new features in that component, as a result the design also started evolving in this component. The first component was kept untouched, with old design. There were however some classes/interfaces that were mostly similar but duplicated violating DRY. * * * **Question:** Is it ok to just add reference of the business layer, data layer or \"other relevant components\" of Component2 in Component1, does this approach adhere to any **architecture/ software design best practices**? Or The common classes/methods should be promoted to common component where they could be used by other components (following DRY principle)? * * * With first approach it seems that my component/ solution will be in a danger of Big ball of mud. With second approach it seems that if a class is used in more than one component it should be promoted to Common component. Doesn't this violate High cohesion principle So, long story short **I am asking for any expert advice on the two mentioned approaches or may be another one from software professionals/ architects**. Since this is a common problem which every software product faces, so how to tackle it?"}
{"_id": "187232", "title": "What is this variation of MVC in JavaScript?", "text": "I am working on sorting out my **Javascript** code. Currently I have views implemented without any Model or collection. Now I working on separating Model from View. So for this transformation, I am planning as follows:                        View --->  X  <--- | ---> Server               <  Client side  >      Assumptions:   1. View will not have any data that is to be loaded form server.   2. X will talk to server and get the required data. Then X will fire event.   3. View will listen to events and update themselves accordingly.   4. X is not an exact replica of some entity on server. X will just take those entities/ data from server and then View can request this data from X.   5. There will be exactly one X for each View. Now question is -- What is X called?   Options -- Model, Controller, ViewModel, Presenter, or anything else.   Or Is this very crude thing which can not have terminology?"}
{"_id": "151549", "title": "Which class to start TDD of card game application? What's the next 5-7 tests?", "text": "I have started to write card game applications. Some model classes:   * CardSuit, CardValue, Card   * Deck, IDeckCreator, RegularDeckCreator, DoubleDeckCreator   * Board   * Hand and some game classes:   * Turn, TurnHandler   * IPlayer, ComputerPlayer, HumanPlayer   * IAttackStrategy, SimpleAttachStrategy, IDefenceStrategy, SimpleDefenceStrategy   * GameData, Game are already written. My idea is to create engine, where two computer players could play game and then later I could add UI part. Already for some time I'm reading about Test Driven Development (TDD) and I have idea to start writing application from scratch, as currently I have tendency to write not needed code, which seems usable in future. Also code doesn't have any tests and it is hard to add them now. Seems that TDD could improve all these issue - minimum of needed code, good test coverage and also could help to come to right application design. But I have one issue - I can't decide from where to start TDD? Should I start from bottom - Card related classes or somewhere on top - Game, TurnHandler, ... ? **With which class you would start? And what would be the next 5 to 7 tests?** _(use the card game you know the best)_ I would like to start TDD with your help and then continue on my own!"}
{"_id": "61212", "title": "Portfolio Snippets", "text": "I just got out of school. And was about to make my portfolio.... but really all my code looks so simple that I wonder what are good enough code snippets to add to a portfolio ??? Or is my view of grandeur so high that I am just over thinking this.... And I say snippets because well no one wants to look at a project right ? and there is also all those nda's which are a pain... Please if you can include examples, would be great, especially portfolio snippet examples as I can get at a look at how they present it. thanks..."}
{"_id": "181171", "title": "Why is using classic for loops as iterators in stl considered bad?", "text": "I've read a couple of articles (example) that consider the classic `for (int ...... size() .... i++)` loop bad practice when iterating through for example vectors in stl. Instead the recommended why is to use vector iterators, i.e. `begin, end`, etc. Why is that?"}
{"_id": "181176", "title": "When are RPC-ish approaches more appropriate than REST?", "text": "After watching this talk on REST, Reuse and Serendipity by Steve Vinoski, I wonder if there are business cases in _greenfield_ projects for (XML-)RPC-ish setups, that REST could not solve in a better way. A few RPC-Problems he mentions:   * Focus on language (fit the distributed system to the language, not the other way around)   * \"Make it look local\" (and cope with failure and latency as exceptions rather than the rule)   * intended to be language-independent, but still has \"function calls\" across languages as main ingredient   * IDL boilerplate   * Illusion of type safety   * and a few more ... * * * Just to dramatize it a bit, some Google Instant result for RPC vs REST: ![RPC](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jkIJ3.png) ![REST](http://i.stack.imgur.com/F9C2z.png)"}
{"_id": "181177", "title": "Are there published guidelines, standards, or references that propose more than 80 chars per line?", "text": "Despite increases in screen size and resolution, many sources still suggest that code be limited to 80 characters per line. I realize than there are many different opinions on this subject, but I wonder whether there are any standards bodies or influential firms that use other limits (120 characters is a common alternative). For example, are any standards bodies considering \"enlarging\" the suggested limit? Are there large scale software projects (e.g. at NASA or ESA) that use larger limits? > Note: This is not yet another question about what individuals do, or about > related opinions, though I'd welcome such information as _comments_. This is > a specific question about whether there is any indication that standard > practice or recommendations (in the form of specific examples) is likely to > change soon."}
{"_id": "141313", "title": "How do you price your work?", "text": "Well, let me explain : This has really been an issue for me, for such a long time. And what is worse - since coding is something I simply _ADORE_ (I would definitely do it, even if there was no payment involved whatsoever..) - is that I always end up feeling somewhat awkward... Anyway... **So, here's the deal :** You start working on a project, you may have something in your mind, and even if you're lucky enough and the client needs no \" **cost estimates** \" beforehand, sooner or later you'll face the ultimate dilemma of pricing your own work. * * * **So, how do YOU do it?**   * By estimating the **time** you put into it? _(obviously, this is not exact, 'coz perhaps a more capable coder will need much less time for the very same thing than a not-so-competent coder + even the very same coder may not \"perform\" equally at all times)_   * By the **Lines of code** you've written? _(obviously, this is not a measure either : a 10-line script that does exactly the same with a 1000-line script is, at least for me, \"better\")_   * By taking into account the level of **complexity** of the project and, perhaps, how specialised the subject is?   * By taking into account other factors? _(e.g. the **value** of the project for your customer)_"}
{"_id": "141311", "title": "Are developers expected to have skills of business analysts?", "text": "Our business analyst has left the team. We are now expected to do the work which was previously done by the business analyst, and the management thinks that a task which is done in three months by a business analyst can be done in one month by a developer. My experience is in programming only, and I'm not familiar to the business intelligence tools. To me this seems like maybe an unfair comparison or expectation, and might even trivialize the role of a business analyst. Has anyone else encountered this situation? How to deal with it?"}
{"_id": "141317", "title": "C++ 'using': Should I use it or should I avoid it?", "text": "I realize there are subtly different semantics for some of these, because of ADL. In general, though: Which one should I prefer (if any), and why?   (Or does it depend on the situation (e.g. inline header vs. implementation?) Also: should I prefer `::std::` over `std::`?               using namespace std;          pair<string::const_iterator, string::const_iterator> f(const string &s)     {         return make_pair(s.begin(), s.end());     }      or               std::pair<std::string::const_iterator, std::string::const_iterator> f(const std::string &s)     {         return std::make_pair(s.begin(), s.end());     }      or               using std::pair;     using std::string;          pair<string::const_iterator, string::const_iterator> f(const string &s)     {         return make_pair(s.begin(), s.end());     }      or               std::pair<std::string::const_iterator, std::string::const_iterator> f(const std::string &s)     {         using std::make_pair;         return make_pair(s.begin(), s.end());     }      or               std::pair<std::string::const_iterator, std::string::const_iterator> f(const std::string &s)     {         using namespace std;         return make_pair(s.begin(), s.end());     }      or something else? (This is assuming I don't have C++11 and `auto`.)"}
{"_id": "184528", "title": "Is using unit tests to tell a story a good idea?", "text": "So, I have an authentication module I wrote some time ago. Now I'm seeing the errors of my way and writing unit tests for it. While writing unit tests, I have a hard time coming up with good names and good areas to test. For instance, I have things like   * RequiresLogin_should_redirect_when_not_logged_in   * RequiresLogin_should_pass_through_when_logged_in   * Login_should_work_when_given_proper_credentials Personally, I think it's a bit ugly, even though it seems \"proper\". I also have trouble differentiating between tests by just scanning over them (I have to read the method name at least twice to know what just failed) So, I thought that maybe instead of writing tests that purely test functionality, maybe write a set of tests that cover scenarios. For instance, this is a test stub I came up with:               public class Authentication_Bill     {         public void Bill_has_no_account()          { //assert username \"bill\" not in UserStore         }         public void Bill_attempts_to_post_comment_but_is_redirected_to_login()         { //Calls RequiredLogin and should redirect to login page         }         public void Bill_creates_account()         { //pretend the login page doubled as registration and he made an account. Add the account here         }         public void Bill_logs_in_with_new_account()         { //Login(\"bill\", \"password\"). Assert not redirected to login page         }         public void Bill_can_now_post_comment()         { //Calls RequiredLogin, but should not kill request or redirect to login page         }     }      Is this a heard of pattern? I've seen acceptance stories and such, but this is fundamentally different. The big difference is that I'm coming up with scenarios to \"force\" the tests out. Rather than manually trying to come up with possible interactions that I'll need to test. Also, I know that this encourages unit tests that don't test exactly one method and class. I think this is OK though. Also, I'm aware that this will cause problems for at least some testing frameworks, as they usually assume that tests are independent from each other and order doesn't matter(where it would in this case). Anyway, is this an advisable pattern at all? Or, would this be a perfect fit for integration tests of my API rather than as \"unit\" tests? This is just in a personal project, so I'm open to experiments that may or may not go well."}
{"_id": "22070", "title": "Which useful alternative control structures do you know?", "text": "Similar question was closed on SO. Sometimes when we're programming, we find that some particular control structure would be very useful to us, but is not directly available in our programming language. **What alternative control structures do you think are a useful way of organizing computation?** The goal here is to get new ways of thinking about structuring code, in order to improve chunking and reasoning. You can create a wishful syntax/semantic not available now or cite a less known control structure on an existent programming language. Answers should give ideas for a new programming language or enhancing an actual language. Think of this as brainstorming, so post something you think is a crazy idea but it can be viable in some scenario. It's about imperative programming."}
{"_id": "189347", "title": "Which of these OOP examples demonstrate proper OOP concepts?", "text": "I'm still trying to wrap my head around OOP. All of the following examples work, of course, but is there one (or possibly another) that best exemplifies OOP concepts?               /**      * For the following examples the Image class queries an image      * and associated info from a database, which is passed on      * instantiation via dependency injection.      */          $image = new Image(new Db());      **Example 1:**               if ($image->setImageId($id, $size)) {         header('content-type: ' . $image->content_type);         header('content-length: ' . $image->length);         echo $image->getBytes();     }      **Example 2:**               if ($image_info = $image->getImageInfoByIdAndSize($id, $size)) {         header('content-type: ' . $image_info->content_type);         header('content-length: ' . $image_info->length);         echo $image->getImageBytesByIdAndSize($id, $size);     }      **Example 3:**               $image->setImageIdAndSize($id, $size);          if ($image_info = $image->getImageInfo()) {         header('content-type: ' . $image_info->content_type);         header('content-length: ' . $image_info->length);         echo $image->getImageBytes();     }"}
{"_id": "189346", "title": "Does map-reduce transmit the data and executable instructions?", "text": "When map-reduce divides a task and sends the data to each worker process, does it also transmit the instructions for how to operate on the data? For example, let's say Google has some huge array of computers that use map- reduce to index webpages. If they wanted to temporarily use that same array of systems to do something else, would they have to reconfigure each system manually, or does map-reduce handle transmitting the new executable instructions to the workers?"}
{"_id": "86974", "title": "Company wants to write custom project management tool, rather than use third party product", "text": "At the company I work, we are really wanting to get into the agile methodology for developing software. One thing that I'm not excited about is the fact that management wants us to build a custom project management feature inside the company's Intranet. I think this is a total waste of time. There are many great third party tools available (e.g. Axosoft OnTime) that can do everything we need, and more. For how much development time it would cost us to build our own project management module, we could buy numerous licenses for a third party product. One concern is that, whilst we are writing code for a client, and using our custom Intranet project management module, we find bugs in the module that need fixing ASAP. That means having to stop work on the client code to fix the Intranet. That just puts shivers down my spine. Another worry I have is lack of functionality. This custom module is going to be so basic, that it will just feel really crap to use. That might sound a bit snooty, but for goodness sake, many third party tools are so feature rich, that the idea of having to write our own tool makes feel very uneasy. In fact, I can't be bothered. What do you guys think? I'm going to raise this issue with my boss, since I feel it's such an important topic to talk about. EDIT: Thanks for the great responses, much appreciated. To summarize some of them: **Money** Naturally my boss does want to save money, by not forking out a few hundred \u00a3's for licenses. However, for us to write a custom tool, it will take x number of days, multiplied by approx \u00a3500, which is our costs. I don't see the business value in this. Management have mentioned that they want to sell the Intranet as a product in the future, but it's so custom to our needs (and downright basic), that in order to give it to another client, I can see us having to fork a version of the code and rebuild the majority of it anyway. So it's not like we're gaining anything there in reuse. **Features** Having our own custom module means not feature bloat - only the functionality we require will be in the product. My issue is that there are plenty of free, open-source project management tools out there with minimal features already. So even if cost is an issue, we could look into open-source. Again it all boils down to the fact that I don't see the point in writing a project management tool in this day and age. It's a bit like writing your own web browser - why?, what's the point? Although management are asking for this tool, just because they are, it does not mean I'm going to please them and do it just because they asked for it. If something does not make sense, then I will raise it as a concern. At the end of the day, it's the developers who write the code, it's the developers who make money for a business. Thus, as far I'm concerned, the devs have a very big role in deciding how a company should manage projects and what tools are used. \"I am Spartan, argh!\" :) Hmm, I've not been able to make this question a wiki for some reason, thus I'm going to have to pick an answer to accept. Edit: I had a meeting with my boss today. I told about my concerns on us writing a custom tool from scratch. I even showed him OnTime 2010, plus I ran an OnTime SDK example project which showed we could write our own custom code to interact with the data and do whatever we want. I showed all the lists, features, I could think of. But he wasn't convinced. Un-f@king-believable! :( So we will have to write everything from scratch, knowing full well that we could just buy a tool of the shelf to do the job. There's a lot of swear words I could use right now to describe how I'm feeling!"}
{"_id": "86972", "title": "What does a student do at Microsoft Developer Community", "text": "I am studying Software Engineering and I am currently in 4th semester. I was asked represent my college as a Microsoft Student Partner. I refused because it was mostly organizing event. Later I was selected by Microsoft to be in Microsoft Developer Community. I know little about my role, if I have any, and do not know what I have to do or learn for this selection. I know that I was selected because of my GPA. I have been told to excel at Microsoft technologies by my professor and nothing much information is yet made available. Also I have been told that Microsoft has my information! I am asking here in advance because I do not want to get caught in a situation where Microsoft comes asking me to compete at a programming event or show up some relevant work and I am still not prepared for such a event. What is the role or expectation from students who are selected in Microsoft's Developer Community. Can I contact Microsoft directly to ask about it, how can I do that. Also do I get an account or some ID from Microsoft to access some website?"}
{"_id": "165364", "title": "How to process large files in NetLogo?", "text": "I am running into problems in NetLogo with large *.csv / *.txt files. The documents can consist of about 1 million data sets and I need to read them (to eventually create a diagram based on the data). With the most straightforward source code, my program needs about 2 minutes to process these files. How should I approach reading such large data files faster in NetLogo? Is NetLogo even suitable for such tasks (as it seems to be designed more for teaching and learning)?"}
{"_id": "234893", "title": "Developing a dynamic site with Node.js", "text": "I'm trying to get some pointers on what the best methodology to follow for a web application would be. First, some background: I've built two different APIs using Node.js where Node serves the data to clients using a JSON interface. The clients have both been iOS applications, making heavy use of Socket.io and Express. Now, I'm trying to get into the world of website development- I'd like to be able to create a single-page application that is run in the browser, again using Socket.io and Express. However, I'm hung up a bit on what exactly I should do.   * Should I host my site out of Nginx/Apache and use Node as simply a \"data\" server, funneling data through JavaScript on the client to update the site HTML?   * Should I host it all through Node, adding routes for files as I go?   * Should I attempt to create some form of \"send a command via Socket.io to the client JS to build the page dynamically\" type of framework?   * Should I do something else entirely? Basically, I'm an iOS and API developer unused to web technologies overall, trying to figure out how best to use what I know about Node's data serving methodology and apply it to a client side web app. I've been reading tons of information online and, while helpful, it seems that everything seems to assume that I know a lot about web development already and am just trying to adapt it to Node, whereas instead the opposite is true: I know about Node but not about web development. I've looked into the MEAN stack, for example, and while I love the concept it doesn't appear (at first blush) that Angular is any more suited to Node than, say, jQuery (I'm sure I'm wrong here- there must be some reason 'MEAN' is a thing). Any input is greatly appreciated!"}
{"_id": "165369", "title": "Is script grouping and minification counter-productive?", "text": "On a web page I have 1 script tag that contains all my minified JavaScript (I use SquishIt for .NET). However I see that a few people prefer to load their scripts in parallel using something like requirejs or headjs. I was wondering which is better for performance and whether combining and minifying all my JavaScript is worth the effort?"}
{"_id": "98477", "title": "Problem understanding what \"Exporting functions means\"", "text": "I cannot understand what the following means \"ISAPI applications can be written using any language which allows the export of standard C functions, for instance C, C++, Delphi.\" What is \"allowing export of C/C++/Delphi functions\" ? P.S. I am very very new."}
{"_id": "253872", "title": "Is there a pattern or best practice for passing a reference type to multiple classes vs a static class?", "text": "My .NET application creates HTML files, and as such, the structure looks like               variable myData     BuildHomePage()     variable graph = new BuildGraphPage(myData)     variable table = BuildTablePage(myData)      BuildGraphPage and BuildTablePage both require access data, the myData object. In the above example, I've passed the myData object to 2 constructors. This is what I'm doing now, in my current project. The myData object, and it's properties are all readonly. The problem is, the number of pages which will require this object has grown. In the real project, there are currently 4, but the new spec is to have about 20. Passing this object to the constructor of each new object and assigning it to a field is a little time consuming, but not a hardship! This poses the question whether it's better practice to continue as I have, or to refactor and create a new static class for myData which can be referenced from any where in my project. I guess my abilities to use Google are poor, because I did try and find an appropriate pattern as I am sure this type of design must be common place but my results returned nothing. Is there a pattern which is suited, or do best practices lean towards one implementation over another."}
{"_id": "98471", "title": "Managing DLL files, deployment, and ease of use for the end user", "text": "I've been thinking recently about being an end-user who wishes to download one of my own projects and use it on a perfectly average machine. Having an equal background in Unix as well as Windows, I know that package management on Unix makes it FAR easier for the programmer to make it easy for the end-user. If a package is required, it's simply required, and all the required libraries are just there. However, it's a different story on Windows. I have a project that I store on GitHub that is basically a C++ GUI application to interface with the Wii Remote. Nothing much. However, early on, I separated some of my initial project into a separate library project, because I could foresee that it would be useful to do so. The end result of all this is that I have the actual application project on GitHub, which requires both some wxWidgets DLL files and the DLL from my separate library project, which in turn requires a boost DLL file (threading) and the wiiuse DLL file, none of which the normal user is going to have on their computer, much less their PATH. I could take ALL those DLL files, zip them up, and put them with the application, but I'd have to remember to replace my separate library DLL file whenever I did work on the library. Anyway, what is the common approach for dealing with this on Windows? Are there installer tools that can help me with the kind of issues described above?"}
{"_id": "100975", "title": "How to deal with OOP design problems in interviews?", "text": "This is a question where I seek guidance from fellow/senior developers to get into my dream company - it's a pioneer in OOP and Agile. I've already failed once to clear an interview. One part I feel most challenging is to come up with a proper Object Oriented design(classes, interfaces, methods, interactions etc.) in a very short time for certain situations like Pacman, Game Of Life and so on. As the problems are unprecedented ones - my approach is mostly to try different things and then make decisions - which they feel is not clear and not what they expect from a developer with 5+ years of experience. I've already studied a few books on patterns, OOP - it didn't help me much and I think it'll take a bit more than that. Could some one please guide on what specifically shall I practice so that I can do better at design problems as above. I want to refine my approach and have a better thought process."}
{"_id": "100973", "title": "ASP.NET vs ASP.NET MVC", "text": "I just started learning the ASP.NET MVC framework and it's very different in architecture from regular ASP.NET development. Transitioning from windows forms to WPF was nice, and seemed a way forward in technology. But, while learning ASP.NET MVC, I don't feel the same, I am unable to convince myself that MVC is better than WebForms. It just seems that they made some tweaks to the already available web framework and adopted the MVC architecture from some other language. Is ASP.NET MVC the step ahead in development? Should I learn and develop my future projects based on this platform and architecture? To me, it just seems like Microsoft is throwing a new architecture just along with WPF or copying Ruby on Rails. WPF seems promising and great while ASP.NET MVC just makes you crumb-some _[sic]_. They have removed the controls, thrown a new control system and data-packaging, and it's all together an extreme change to WebForms. I realize that with MVC you have great freedom in the testing aspect, but I don't believe that this makes a lot of difference in small website or projects. If you ignore the value of testing, What are your takes on this?"}
{"_id": "138706", "title": "Why is C++ still \"hybrid\"", "text": "On a related question, it has been clarified why C++ is not compatible with C in many aspects. However C++ is still a \"hybrid\"* language. And unfortunately, many programmers still consider C++ as a \"C with streams and built-in strings\". That results in really bad written code, that it's neither C++ nor C. IMHO, it would be better if the language/compiler forced to some extent programmers to write more elegant code. So is there a rationale for keeping modern C++ (for instance C++0x and future versions) hybrid? * By hybrid I mean that it's up to the programmer to decide if he/she will use: standard strings and streams, classes, namespaces other than the default, etc."}
{"_id": "249712", "title": "PHP Cache Strategy - Genius or Sheer Stupidity?", "text": "I have a shared hosting with limited capabilities. Memcache and mod_cache are not available to me. I would like to implement my own PHP caching method to cache the results of load-intensive SQL query. Using summary tables in SQL is not an option because the query takes multiple parameters that can assume thousands of different values (it's a statistical system). My idea is like this               function execQuery($parameter)     {          $query = \"SELECT ....... \" . $parameter; //query code has been generated               $rand = mt_rand(0,10);           //no need to check/save expiry dates,generate cache randomly for speed               if($rand == 0)          {                //execute query normally and generate new cache                $result = mysql_query($query);                $md5 = md5($query); // the name of the cache file equals the md5 of the query                $cache_file = fopen(\"/cache/\" . $md5 .\"php\", \"w\");                fwrite($cache_file, $result); // the result is written as php code generating a ready for use result array, code has to be modified I think                //return the result          }          else          {                 //cache will be used                 $md5 = md5($query);                 if(file_exists(\"/cache/\" . $md5 .\"php\"))                 {                       include(\"/cache/\" . $md5 .\"php\");                       return $result;                 }                 else                {                       //no cache exists, run query normally and generate cache                }          }        }      What do you think of this and what are the possible pitfalls? What are the implications of using mt_rand, md5? Do you think they will out-perform a load- intensive query? Are the multiple system file writes worth it (only one write for every 10 hits and can be even increased)? Improvements and suggestions are highly welcomed."}
{"_id": "183999", "title": "Best organisation for a team application", "text": "I'm developing an application based on this structure :               /Root     /--- Index.php     /--- /includes/     /--- /modules/     /-------- /Mod1/     /-------- /Mod2/     /-------- /ModN/      In the future, 2 developers will participate in the project.   1. I have to restrict the access for the developers. They shouldn't get access for the \"/includes/\" folder. It contains the system's Core. They just will have to code modules.   2. I Will use Mercurial. What is the best \"organisation\" (repository, lock, permissions...) for this kind of project. A need advices. Thank you :)"}
{"_id": "4647", "title": "Does one's native spoken language affect quality of code?", "text": "There is a school of thought in linguistics that problem solving is very much tied to the syntax, semantics, grammar, and flexibility of one's own native spoken language. Working with various international development teams, I can clearly see a mental culture (if you will) in the codebase. Programming language aside, the German coding is quite different from my colleagues in India. As well, code is distinctly different in Middle America as it is in Coastal America (actually, IBM noticed this years ago). Do you notice with your international colleagues (from ANY country) that coding style and problem solving are in-line with native tongues?"}
{"_id": "93333", "title": "Tools to support learning a new business domain", "text": "Suppose you just accepted a job, writing code in an industry sector that you've never worked in before. To be effective, you want to immerse yourself in the business domain - to understand the vocabulary, issues and people you'll be working with. Obviously the first step is to find good mentors and reading material to begin to get acquainted with the domain. After that, how do you \"learn\" the business? What tools, techniques and resources do you use? For instance, is a wiki a good way to capture the domain language?"}
{"_id": "101008", "title": "Why applications don't have constraint-based security?", "text": "In almost any security system I've ever seen, what is controlled is that **which person has access to which part**. However, in real life, in many situations, security systems also consider **when** and **where** a person is permitted to do something. For example, **you can drive fast in day** , but **you can't drive fast in night** , or **you can marry a homosexual officially in X** , but **you can't marry the same gender in Y**. Does constraint-based security has any meaning in the context of software. For example, a system can prevent you from entering in certain times of the day (after work for example), or another system can let you stay signed in, only if you type fast enough, or another system can let you enter data, only if you are currently located in the USA (Geolocation API), etc. Why computer security systems don't match real life scenarios?"}
{"_id": "93334", "title": "Terminology question: Generalize Heisenbug", "text": "Is there some kind of generalization to the effect called Heisenbug? Because I would like to describe in my documentation how instrumenting a program changes the execution no matter what. In The New Hacker's Dictionary it is defined as following: > **heisenbug** /hi:'zen-buhg/ /n./ [from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle > in quantum physics] > > **A bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or > isolate it.** (This usage is not even particularly fanciful; the use of a > debugger sometimes alters a program's operating environment significantly > enough that buggy code, such as that which relies on the values of > uninitialized memory, behaves quite differently.) Antonym of Bohr bug; see > also mandelbug, schroedinbug. In C, nine out of ten heisenbugs result from > uninitialized auto variables, fandango on core phenomena (esp. lossage > related to corruption of the malloc arena) or errors that smash the stack. Actually this is a general problem, when trying to observe the programs state by instrumentatation (tracing, debugging, etc.) the program execution is changed no matter what. But the definition for Heisenbug clearly says, it is a bug which is masked due to debugging and which disappears. What about bugs, which appear due to debugging - there is no word for that. Is there some kind of generalization, like _Heisenbug principle_?"}
{"_id": "101006", "title": "What is the biggest obstacle ASP.NET MVC ever had for you? Why and how it can be fixed?", "text": "What aspects of ASP.NET MVC can be considered bad practices of Microsoft or problematic? In ASP.NET web forms, thing like ViewState, Automatically generated Id and names, single form usage and pattern like this are many times problematic. As no claim should be reason-less, so, it's better to mention why that aspect is an obstacle. Also finding any problem intrinsically means that we like to solve it. Therefore, Please also recommend ways to solve that issue."}
{"_id": "93339", "title": "Is it legal to show thumbnails on my site of photos that aren't mine?", "text": "I would like build an web-application that has thumbnails (around 100x100) of photos. These thumbnails will be linked to the original site (the copyright holder). Is this something that is legal to do? E.g this will be similar to Google Image Search."}
{"_id": "93338", "title": "JavaScript - Why do frameworks bind to $()", "text": "Disclaimer: I know there is no strictly correct answer to this, but I've come across something that does not make sense to me, and I'd like to try to understand it better by seeing what other people have to say on the subject. Anyways, I was thinking about how many different JavaScript frameworks all define slightly different variations of a `$()` function (and also things like `$$()`, `$E()`, and so on), and was wondering why they do it. This is basically what I came up with: **Pros**   * Typing `$()` is fast. **Cons**   * The name `$` does not imply anything semantically meaningful by itself.   * `$` is a property in the global namespace, and thus can only be claimed by a single framework at any given time.   * Having multiple frameworks competing over the same global name(s) makes them less easily compatible with each other.   * Older code that uses the `$()` function defined in one framework can be accidentally broken by simply importing a second framework that provides its own version of `$()`.   * With everybody providing a different version of `$()`, code becomes less readable because one cannot make assumptions about what `$()` is doing without knowing what framework is in use.   * Sometimes novice developers get the wrong idea from all the dollar signs flying around, and think that they need to prefix all their function declarations with \"$\". So it seems to me that the cons far outweigh the pros. Which begs the question, if there are so many negatives associated with claiming `$()` as one's own, why do many frameworks do this automatically? Are there some other benefits that I am missing?"}
{"_id": "209222", "title": "C++ Linkage Languages other than C?", "text": "The C++ language allows intermixing of both C++ and C in one source file. For example,               extern \"C\" {         struct bar { /* ... */ }     }      Does C++ or has it ever supported any other \"linkage languages\" other than C? e.g. `extern \"Pascal\"` or `extern \"Haskell\"`"}
{"_id": "170890", "title": "Do ASP.Net Web Forms actually produce ADA compliant HTML? Does the ASP/AJAX toolkit undermine the goal of ADA compliance?", "text": "I'm trying to convince my employer to let us use the Microsoft ASP/AJAX toolkit since it simplifies the implementation of many controls. However they have rejected the idea on the grounds that it produces \"AJAX code\" which is not ADA compliant. However the same employer requires webpages to be written in ASP.NET Web Forms which, as far as I can tell from the source, is very very far from ADA compliance. I am new to both web programming and ADA compliance. My questions are:   1. Do ASP.Net Web Forms actually produce ADA compliant HTML?   2. Will the ASP/AJAX toolkit undermine the goal of ADA compliance?"}
{"_id": "246474", "title": "Data Oriented Design - impractical with more than 1-2 structure \"members\"?", "text": "The usual example of Data Oriented Design is with the Ball structure:               struct Ball     {       float Radius;       float XYZ[3];     };      and then they make some algorithm that iterates a `std::vector<Ball>` vector. Then they give you the same thing, but implemented in Data Oriented Design:               struct Balls     {       std::vector<float> Radiuses;       std::vector<XYZ[3]> XYZs;     };      Which is good and all if you're going to iterate trough all radiuses first, then all positions and so on. However, how do you move the balls in the vector? In the original version, if you have a `std::vector<Ball> BallsAll`, you can just move any `BallsAll[x]` to any `BallsAll[y]`. However to do that for the Data Oriented version, you must do the same thing for every property (2 times in the case of Ball - radius and position). But it gets worse if you have a lot more properties. You'll have to keep an index for each \"ball\" and when you try to move it around, you have to do the move in every vector of properties. Doesn't that kill any performance benefit of Data Oriented Design?"}
{"_id": "122629", "title": "Why don't more companies hire remotely?", "text": "I keep hearing about the desperate recruiting efforts of companies in tech hubs such as SF and NYC. However, every time I'm contacted by a startup I'm told the position is on-site and working remotely isn't possible. Let me clarify that these are tech startups. They should be very comfortable with the idea of using technology to get things done and connect teams together. With the housing market the way it is, many of us can't relocate even if we wanted to pay the higher cost of living. Why are so many companies still stuck in the industrial mindset of butts in seats?"}
{"_id": "157552", "title": "Handling fast growing multi-function services", "text": "My team has been developing a web business application for more than a year. It started quite small, but now it is growing bigger and bigger. I think it's time for refactoring. Looking at the code, I see the below situation: IUserService   * addUser   * deleteUser   * updateUser   * addMember   * deleteMember   * updateMember   * registerMember   * deactivateMember    ....   * getExpiringMember   * nominateMember Generally saying, there are about 50 functions for more than 2500 lines of business logic. I once read \"Clean code\", it states that there should be no more than 200 lines for a normal class. Our code violates this requirement seriously, and I'm beginning to feel the hardship of code management. The simple solution might be spliting this service into many other services, but it is not feasible/reasonable:   1. This service class serves as an API point for mobile client, so that every change on Interface (even renaming) requires change for the client as well. I don't want to spend the precious time of our team if not for good reason.   2. I already split a part of this service into another classes, but that class (RegistrationService) also grow quite fast and reach 500 lines of code recently.   3. More and more business logic request recently, and these services are going to grow even more. I'm afraid that at some point we will lose the tracks if a team member who manage a specified service got retired. Is there any way I can make this service more manageable? Any Design Pattern, Refactoring technique that I can apply? I'm still not experienced enough in this field... any suggestions or directions are welcome."}
{"_id": "138429", "title": "Good resources for advanced C++ topics?", "text": "What are some good resources for advanced C++ topics. I know C++, but have little knowledge of threading, advanced meta-programming and inner-workings of meta-programming and I'd like to get better."}
{"_id": "185697", "title": "Are chained methods that require only one parameter per method equivalent to currying?", "text": "I've been toying around with Ruby lately and I found myself wondering if in pure object oriented languages (and even those that are not pure) making methods that take only one parameter and then get chained together is equivalent to currying in languages with a functional style? If not, why not? I'd appreciate a detailed, even rigorous answer on the subject."}
{"_id": "135737", "title": "Does programming in general become easier to read, write and understand as you gain experience?", "text": "I'm a beginner in programming and I've been reading books, studying, reading articles, and whatnot. I'm getting great results since I've started learning programming, and when I was a beginner I used to think I knew everything about programming, but as I learned more I realized how difficult this field is (In fact all fields are difficult, but that's not the point). Nowadays, I've written functional software and I've learned the BASICS of 3 languages and I'm intermediate in just one language. When I look at advanced things like MYSQL, or OpenGL programming, or even visual studio C++ code it gives me headaches, and even when visualising HTML source code of many websites (Most source codes on websites, seen by google chrome seem very messy and unorganized) it makes me confused to the very limit of my brain. It all seems simple at first, yet when looking at these advanced things it just makes me wonder how can one learn so much. The question, in a nutshell, is if these things become clearer to a programmer as he advances in his career. Do complicated topics as the ones listed above (OpenGL, MySQL, advanced html sites) become easier to read, write and understand as you learn more, or does it just get more complicated as you go by? How can you combat this feeling that you're an ant in the programming world and this stuff is the foot about to squash you?"}
{"_id": "140950", "title": "Is it a good approach to rely on 3rd party software ( not library )?", "text": "We have program( written in VB ) using a call to a winzip program or 7zip command line tool to zip some files. Once I accidentally uninstall the winzip on my computer and making one of our program( created by the programmer already left ) crashed. So we cannot uninstall the winzip program. Now we am writing another program with java + windows batch file. And I've come to a point which I need to make a decision between 1) using a call to external tool ( for example 7z ) for gzip in windows batch file, 2) or I make a java program to gzip the file. Obviously a external tool such as 7z is convenient and we can avoid some extra coding with java. On the contrary, if 7z is uninstalled accidentally, our program will crash. What do you think?"}
{"_id": "135730", "title": "When business rules affect presentation in MVC", "text": "The MVC design pattern is supposed to led itself to separating business rules from presentation. But sometimes business rules AFFECT presentation. What is the best way to deal with this? Is that when a ViewModel should be used? For example, going back to my non-existent Library application, a librarian is scanning returned books. The system indicates that a book is late, and applies a fine to that patron. Certain employees may have security to override that fine based on certain conditions. The presentation layer of my library application will need to let the employee set the fine to 0, or click a button to override the fine. But employees who do NOT have security to do this should see the fee as either a disabled input or maybe read only. _Note that security may not be the only business rule_. This is just an example. For example, my application may have configuration information set up somewhere that causes a field on a screen to become unnecessary, etc. While the code could just let anyone change the fine and then show a validation message, that's not a good user experience. What is a good practice to accomplish this? The options I can think of (using ASP.NET MVC) are:   1. Have the view itself check the business rule and disable or enable the field.   2. Use a HTMLHelper function that implements the presentation for the fine field, and have that helper function check the business rule.   3. Have the controller check the business rule and use a different view.   4. Have the controller check the business rule and set a property in the ViewBag that indicates whether the field is enabled.   5. Use a ViewModel checks the business rule and set information indicating that the field is enabled. Options 1 & 2 cause the presentation layer to have to do business rule validation, and that muddles things. Option 3 will cause duplication of effort in that now you have two views defined. Option 4 & 5 requires the presentation layer to know that the field COULD be enabled or disabled, but not WHY. I think I like 4 or 5 best. Our there other options I'm not thinking of?"}
{"_id": "125163", "title": "What is the starting point for Ubuntu app development?", "text": "I'm thinking of developing software for Ubuntu and other related Linux-based distros (like Linux Mint). But currently am at a loss for where to start. Would learning Python be enough/good? And what are the other things I should know about before starting this kind of developing? And will I be able to publish my apps to a software store like Ubuntu store even if I am from outside USA/UK? If not, what are the options I have to make my apps reach the audience? * * * As a lot of users had asked, I intend to build applications only for Linux (I'm thinking of Gnome) that will be a bit business and enterprise oriented. Currently I am an Oracle certified Java developer in J2SE and J2ME. And I know Python a bit."}
{"_id": "85405", "title": "Apply for supercomputing time", "text": "For testing and running some very intensive C++ number crunching applications, we need to apply for supercomputing time. I would like to get feedback and opinions from you; which calls do you follow, which supercomputing centers do you apply to, etc. As of now I only know DEISA in Europe."}
{"_id": "125164", "title": "Resumes: Open-Source Projects, Reinventing the Wheel?", "text": "When writing a resume, should I be concerned that certain open source projects I've created might be a hindrance to me because they would be perceived as reinventing the wheel? I've created a few open source libraries that might be perceived as such by hiring managers, because there are much more established tools that perform similar tasks. I have my reasons for wanting to start from scratch, but they're virtually impossible to explain on a resume and might be mildly controversial among techies. Basically, these libraries are written in D, and there was no D library that did what I wanted. I felt that creating bindings to libraries in another language instead of starting from scratch would constrain my ability to take advantage of D-specific features too much and make the libraries too brittle and hard to get up and running. On the other hand, these projects are related to the domain I'm applying for and would be a good way to show my domain knowledge. Should I put them on my resume or leave them off?"}
{"_id": "45855", "title": "Is it safe to display information about old passwords on login failure?", "text": "When I changed my Facebook password yesterday, by mistake I entered the old one and got this: ![Screen capture of facebook login](http://i.stack.imgur.com/T1M59.png) Am I missing something here or this is a big potencial risk for users. In my opinion this is a problem BECAUSE it is FaceBook and is used by, well, everyone and the latest statistics show that 76.3% of the users are idiots [source:me], that is more that 3/4!! All kidding aside:   * Isn't this useful information for an attacker?   * It reveals private information about the user!   * It could help the attacker gain access to another site in which the user used the same password      * Granted, you should't use use the same password twice (but remember: 76.3%!!!)   * Doesn't this simply increase the surface area for attackers?   * It increases the chances of getting useful information at least.   * In a site like Facebook 1st choice for hackers and (bad) people interested in valued personal information shouldn't anything increasing the chance of a vulnerability be removed? Am I missing something? Am I being paranoid? Will 76.3% of the accounts will be hacked after this post?"}
{"_id": "45856", "title": "How to tell your boss that his programming style is really bad?", "text": "I'm a student and in my spare time I'm working for a big enterprise as Java developer. The job is good, but the problem is, my boss writes very strange code. I don't want to complain, but some issues are in my opinion really strange. For example:   * he doesn't know any booleans. All boolean conditions are Strings called \"YesOrNo\" and then in the condition he uses if (YesOrNo == \"Yes\")   * there are a lot of very strange characters in method names and variables like \u00e9 \u00f5 \u00f4 or \u00e8   * all loops are infinite loops in the style of for(;;). Then at the end of the loop the condition is tested and if the conditions is fulfilled break; is called. I don't know if I should tell him that I think this isn't a good practice, since he is my boss and decides how and what to do. On the other hand some of his examples are really very weird. Any hints how to cope with? And is this only me who thinks that's bad style?"}
{"_id": "122191", "title": "What benefits are there to native JavaScript development?", "text": "Given how much simpler jQuery development is, when compared to native JavaScript, what makes people forgo libraries like jQuery altogether? Is this because jQuery has limitations or it is slow? I mean, if jQuery is so easy compared to native javascript, what reasons do people have to still use pure javascript?"}
{"_id": "122190", "title": "With PHP frameworks, why is the \"route\" concept used?", "text": "The reason I ask this is because isn't a PHP script a route? For example, if you have an article.php then your route is simply http://mysite.com/article.php. Why further abstract away the concept of a route when it already exists as a simple file?"}
{"_id": "122197", "title": "Why is scanf called scanf? (Same for printf.)", "text": "I am just curious why in the C programming language the function to read formatted input was called \"scanf\" as opposed to \"readf\". I assume it is derived from an earlier language, so in that case why was it named that way in the earlier language? (Recurse.) Also, why \"printf\" rather than \"writef\"? In languages other than C, why \"print\" or \"write\" rather than \"display\"?"}
{"_id": "202972", "title": "what's a good approach to working with multiple databases?", "text": "I'm working on a project that has its own database call it InternalDb, but also it queries two other databases, call them ExternalDb1 and ExternalDb2. Both ExternalDb1 and ExternalDb2 are actually required by a few other projects. I'm wondering what the best approach for dealing with this is? Currently, I've just created a project for each of these external databases and then generated Edmx and entities using the entity-framework approach. My thought was that I could then include these projects in any of my solutions that require access to these databases. Also, I don't have any separate business layers. I just have a solution like below:               Project.Domain     ExternalDb1Project.Domain     ExternalDb2Project.Domain     Project.Web      So my Domain projects contain the data access as well as the POCOs generated by Entity Framework and any business logic. But I'm not sure if this is a good approach. For example if I want to do Validation in my Project.Domain on the entities in the InternalDb, it's fine. But if I want to do Validation for entities from either of the ExternalDbs, then I wonder where it should go? To be more specific, I retrieve Employees from ExternalDb1Project.Domain. However, I want to make sure they are Active. Where should this Validation go? How to architect a project like this at a high level? Also, I want to make sure that I use IoC for my data contexts so I can create Fakes when writing tests. I wonder where the interfaces for these various data contexts would reside?"}
{"_id": "202975", "title": "Minimizing data sent over a webservice call on expensive connection", "text": "I am working on a system that has many remote laptops all connected to the internet through cellular data connections. The application will synchronize periodically to a central database. The problem is, due to factors outside our control, the cost to move data across the cellular networks are spectacularly expensive. Currently the we are sending a compressed XML file across the wire where it is being processed and various things are done with (mainly stuffing it into a database). My first couple of thoughts were to convert that XML doc to json, just prior to transmission and convert back to XML just after receipt on the other end, and get some extra compression for free without changing much. Another thought was to test various other compression algorithms to determine the smallest one possible. Although, I am not entirely sure how much difference json vs xml would make once it is compressed. I thought that their must be resources available that address this problem from an information theory perspective. Does anyone know of any such resources or suggestions on what direction to go in. This developed on the MS .net stack on windows for reference."}
{"_id": "133778", "title": "How can I extract words from a sentence and determine what part of speech each is?", "text": "I want to write something that takes a sentence and identifies each word it contains and defines what part of speech each word is. For example > Hello World, I am a sentence would return this               verb noun, pronoun verb adjective noun      Ideally, I'd like to eventually take it one step further and take a sentence and programmatically have it understand what it is trying to interpret and maybe do something about it. So my question is, has someone heard of something like this?"}
{"_id": "218364", "title": "Which data structure for representing possible navigations between a game's screens?", "text": "I am trying to find an appropriate data structure for representing available navigations between a game's screens.   * Using a _linked list_ , a node can only have one node after it : inappropriate.   * Using a _tree_ seems up to the job as nodes can have many children nodes but it's inconsistent in the sense that a supposedly children item _Options_ can have a parent _Title_ as a children. Also how am I supposed to represent the infinite sequence of the case _Title -> Race -> Title -> Race ..._ without endlessly repeating it in my tree ? Still, this is the best structure I found to accomplish the job. Here is an example of the possible sequences :   1. Title      * Options     * Race   2. Options      * Title     * Race   3. Race      * Options     * Title Do you know whether a _tree_ is the way to go or if there's a better structure for this job ? * * * **Edit:** There is a great library for creating graphs for C#/WPF : http://graphsharp.codeplex.com/ It uses http://quickgraph.codeplex.com/ internally. Here's a small example : ![enter image description here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/jsYew.png) Code-behind:               using System.Collections.Generic;     using System.Windows;     using GraphSharp.Controls;     using QuickGraph;          namespace WpfApplication15graph     {         internal class ScreenVertex         {             public string Hello { get; set; }         }              internal class ScreenEdge : Edge<ScreenVertex>         {             public ScreenEdge(ScreenVertex source, ScreenVertex target)                 : base(source, target)             {             }         }              internal class ScreenLayout : GraphLayout<ScreenVertex, ScreenEdge, ScreenGraph>         {         }              internal class ScreenGraph : BidirectionalGraph<ScreenVertex, ScreenEdge>         {         }              public partial class MainWindow : Window         {             public MainWindow()             {                 InitializeComponent();                 Loaded += MainWindow_Loaded;             }                  private void MainWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)             {                 // build graph                 var screenGraph = new ScreenGraph();                 var screenVertex1 = new ScreenVertex {Hello = \"1\"};                 var screenVertex2 = new ScreenVertex {Hello = \"2\"};                 var screenVertex3 = new ScreenVertex {Hello = \"3\"};                 screenGraph.AddVertex(screenVertex1);                 screenGraph.AddVertex(screenVertex2);                 screenGraph.AddVertex(screenVertex3);                 screenGraph.AddEdge(new ScreenEdge(screenVertex1, screenVertex2));                 screenGraph.AddEdge(new ScreenEdge(screenVertex2, screenVertex1));                 screenGraph.AddEdge(new ScreenEdge(screenVertex1, screenVertex3));                 screenGraph.AddEdge(new ScreenEdge(screenVertex3, screenVertex1));                 screenGraph.AddEdge(new ScreenEdge(screenVertex3, screenVertex2));                 ScreenLayout.Graph = screenGraph;                      // get connections for a particular vertex                 IEnumerable<ScreenEdge> inEdges = screenGraph.InEdges(screenVertex3);                 IEnumerable<ScreenEdge> outEdges = screenGraph.OutEdges(screenVertex3);             }         }     }      XAML :               <Window x:Class=\"WpfApplication15graph.MainWindow\"             xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation\"             xmlns:x=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml\"             xmlns:controls=\"clr-namespace:WPFExtensions.Controls;assembly=WPFExtensions\"             xmlns:controls1=\"clr-namespace:GraphSharp.Controls;assembly=GraphSharp.Controls\"             xmlns:wpfApplication15Graph=\"clr-namespace:WpfApplication15graph\"             Title=\"MainWindow\"             Width=\"525\"             Height=\"350\">         <Window.Resources>             <DataTemplate x:Key=\"SvTemplate\" DataType=\"wpfApplication15Graph:ScreenVertex\">                 <Grid>                     <TextBlock Text=\"{Binding Hello}\" />                 </Grid>             </DataTemplate>             <Style TargetType=\"controls1:VertexControl\">                 <Style.Setters>                     <Setter Property=\"Template\">                         <Setter.Value>                             <ControlTemplate TargetType=\"controls1:VertexControl\">                                 <Border CornerRadius=\"5\" Width=\"50\" Height=\"50\" Background=\"LightBlue\">                                     <ContentPresenter Content=\"{TemplateBinding Vertex}\"                                                       ContentTemplate=\"{DynamicResource SvTemplate}\" />                                 </Border>                             </ControlTemplate>                         </Setter.Value>                     </Setter>                 </Style.Setters>             </Style>         </Window.Resources>         <Grid>             <controls:ZoomControl>                 <wpfApplication15Graph:ScreenLayout x:Name=\"ScreenLayout\"                                                     HighlightAlgorithmType=\"Simple\"                                                     LayoutAlgorithmType=\"Circular\"                                                     OverlapRemovalAlgorithmType=\"FSA\" />             </controls:ZoomControl>         </Grid>     </Window>"}
{"_id": "167744", "title": "How can I get better at explaining complex software processes to developers?", "text": "I'm really struggling with my software specs. I am not a professional programmer but enjoy doing it for fun and made some software that I want to sell later but I'm not happy with the code quality. So I wanted to hire a real developer to rewrite my software in a more professional way so it will be maintainable by other developers in the future. I read and found some sample specs and made my own by applying their structure to my document and wanted to get my developer friend to read it and give me advice. After an hour and a half he understood exactly what I was trying to do and how I did it(my algorithms,stack,etc.). **How can I get better at explaining things to developers?** I add many details and explanations for everything(including working code) but I'm unsure the best way I can learn to pass detailed domain knowledge(my software applies big data, machine learning, graph theory to finance). My end goal is to get them to understand as much as possible from the document and then ask anything they do not understand, but right now it seems they need to extract alot of information from me. How can I get better at communicating domain knowledge to developers?"}
{"_id": "203372", "title": "RESTful applications logic and cross resource operations", "text": "I have an RESTful api that allows my users to receive enquiries about their business e.g. 'I would like to book service x on date y. Is this available?'. The api saves this information as a resource to the following URI               users/{userId}/enquiries/{enquiryId}      The information shown when this resource is retrieved are the standard sort of things you'd expect from an enquiry - email, first_name, last_name, address, message The api also allows customers to be created for a user. The customer has a login and password and also a profile. The following URIs expose these two resources               PUT users/{userId}/customers/{customerId}     PUT users/{userId}/customers/{customerId}/profile      The problem I am having is that I would like to have the ability to allow users to create a customer from an enquiry. For example, the user is able to offer their service on the date requested and will then want to setup a customer with login details etc to allow them to manage the rest of the process. The obvious answer would be to use a URI like                users/{userId}/enquiries/{enquiryId}/convert-to-client      The problem with this is is that it somewhat goes against a lot of what I've been reading about how to implement REST (specifically from the book Restful Web Services which suggests that URIs should point to resources not operations on resources). The other option would be to get the client application (i.e. the code that calls the api) to handle some of this application logic. This doesn't quite feel right to me. I have implemented in my design that the client app is fairly dumb. It knows just enough to display the results from the API, and does not contain any application logic. Would be great to hear what others views are on the best way of setting this up Am I wrong to have no application logic in the client app? How would I perform this operation purely in the REST api?"}
{"_id": "203371", "title": "Is sticking to one language on a particular project a good practice?", "text": "I'm developing a pipeline for processing text that will go into production. The question I keep asking myself is: should I stick to one language for the project when I'm looking for a tool to do a particular task (e.g. NLTK, PDFMiner, CLD, CRFsuite, etc.)? Or is it OK to mix and match languages on the project? So I pick the best tool regardless of what language it's written in (e.g. OpenNLP, ParsCit, poppler, CFR++, etc.) and warp (wrap) my code around it? Note, I am _not_ asking about should a developer stick to just one language for their career."}
{"_id": "15895", "title": "WPF - What are the implications of the current rumours", "text": "My personal experience has always been with web applications and lots of \"back-end stuff\" but recently I've been poking around for some personal projects to widen my knowledge. An obvious thing to look at as I'm in the .net world is WPF but now I read this: WPF has no product manager And from the same guy's blog (he is a former Silverlight Product Manager): > WPF has no investment, it\u2019s kept together by a skeleton crew and its > evangelism / community efforts have little to no funding attached to it. > It\u2019s dead, the question now is how is the corpse going to be buried and no > amount of cheer leading will change that outcome in the near future. Although it won't change my short term plans - should this affect the amount of effort I put into learning WPF? What are my alternatives to look at if I want some up-to-date winapp gui knowledge?"}
{"_id": "15896", "title": "When do we need assembly language?", "text": "In what kind of situations, assembly language will be the only solution?"}
{"_id": "15897", "title": "shortening url to cms", "text": "Hi We have a CMS application that lets people create websites under our domain. The system was built a few years ago and it used a method that transfers parameters such as website id, folder code and more using the url. this method created a giant url for every item in the website For example: My domain is www.domain.com   A users website on my domain is www.domain.com/user   and every time that a user enters his website he gets a link like this www.domain.com/page.aspx?code=blablasdsdsdsdsds&folder=blablablablablabla and more. We are trying to reduce the string size in the url. What are our options? can we show the user one url like a virtual one and still work the same with the old url? We are trying to locate a solution that wont make us rewrite our entire application. the application is built in c# and the web server is iis 6. Thanks"}
{"_id": "238408", "title": "How to use data shaped by the UI from the ViewModel while keeping concerns separated?", "text": "I'm coming from a winforms background and trying to get ahold of MVVM and XAML. Right now I'm wondering how I can take advantage from a data-shaping control (either native or provided by a third party) while maintaining separation of concerns intact. An example: I have a typical third party grid that comes with data grouping, sorting and filtering functionalities. I want the end user to be able to use these features so that he can get a custom set of data on which he can perform actions. These actions are exposed by the view model. Of course it knows about the record collection but it has absolutely no clue about how it is currently displayed in the UI. Given that, how can the view model know on which data actions should be performed, **without knowing about the control in which it is displayed**? Right now the only way I can think of is exposing an additional property in the ViewModel (something like `CurrentUIData`) and handling every single data- shaping events within the View so that the property is always representative of the UI state. This, however, feels kind of wrong to me. Is this how I should proceed, or am I missing something here?"}
{"_id": "123570", "title": "Learning C for C++ programmers", "text": "That's right, I learned to program in C++, and of course know the common set of features of both languages, so I can program in C.   But I'd really like to read tutorials or books that teach you C, and _the C way_ of programming, from a C++ programmer's perspective."}
{"_id": "37498", "title": "How to deal with a 'public' work environment?", "text": "In the last 6 months, I have changed desks at my office 4 times. I don't mind, as it's due to expansion of the company and acquiring new office space and getting everybody settled. However, I truly miss the semi-private office I sat in 2 desks ago. I am now sitting in a large room with a number of other people. My problem with this isn't with my co-workers; everybody here is great. My problem is that based on the configuration of the room, no matter which desk I sit in, my monitors WILL be facing an open window. This causes a glare on my monitors, and it drives me crazy. I prefer a dark IDE theme as I find it easier on the eyes, however this just makes the glare that much worse. How should programmers cope with public office settings? Secondly, how should I cope with my specific problem? Should I give in and adopt a light IDE theme that will reduce the visibility of the glare but increase eye strain, or should I stick to my guns and find another solution?"}
{"_id": "37495", "title": "How do you measure the value of your software?", "text": "One of the principles of agile is that you should measure working software: > Working software is the primary measure of progress - 12 principles of Agile The thing is, while I can measure my software in terms of stories done, bugs squashed or the volume of defect reports decreasing, I'm stuck on how to measure the value of my software. If I use Mike Cohn as an example and his helping SalesForce.com deliver 500% more value to it's customers compared to the previous year* - how do I measure that increase? How do I measure where I am right now? Other metrics he uses are the number of features and the number of features per developer. This is something I could work out if my backlog was in good order and the stories were cut up by 'feature', but we're just starting out with Agile, so I need some way of working out what the value is we deliver now, then use a similar metric in say, six months, to see if we've increased our output. I've heard about measuring value of software by an uptick in revenue, or an increase in customer satisfaction (how would you measure that though?) but those increases could be attributed to anything in the company (sales, accounting, support) and not directly to the work my department is doing. So, how do you guys measure the value of your software and how did you start? * Succeeding With Agile \\- Mike Cohn"}
{"_id": "18912", "title": "Book recommendations for a high school drop out", "text": "If one of your friend dropped of high-school and wanted to sharpen his programming & software engineering skills which book would you advise him to read & study to make up for the knowledge he could have gained from a top US Computer Sciences University. All type of books are welcomed : Algorithms, Data Structures, Compiler Design, languages, design patterns, Machine Language, Maths (absolute minimum required for Sofware Engineers), Problem Solving, General Engineering book that can be of some help for SE ..."}
{"_id": "198235", "title": "Best Practice for Argument Checking", "text": "Say I have a web service with a method `MyWebServiceMethod(string passedValue)`. The web service calls a method `MyServiceMethod(string passedValue)` where the value from the web service is passed along. The service calls a repository method `MyRepositoryMethod(string passedValue)` where again, the value from the service is passed along. I hope that is clear enough. I can post code if need be. **My question is around null argument checking.** Should I check `passedValue` and throw an exception in:   1. The Web Service   2. The Service   3. The Repository Obviously, if `passedValue` is null in the web service, the following methods will never get invoked but should I check in case the solution changes in the future? Edit I should have said that I don't expect null to ever be a valid value. Also, My worry in these situations is that someone may change the web service or create another client with no argument checking that will call the service with invalid arguments. So I tend to think the checking should be in both places. Then I think of YAGNI and wonder if we should cross that bridge when we come to it. What is considered best practice in these situations?"}
{"_id": "232725", "title": "Can the Jacquard loom be considered stateless?", "text": "Can the Jacquard loom, pictured below complete with its chains of paper cards ![Jacquard loom](http://i.stack.imgur.com/zyqKB.jpg) be considered stateless? As far as I can tell I can tell, each operation is not dependant on the previous. Or did it have any concept of branching and/or looping?"}
{"_id": "96209", "title": "Ideas for Offline & Sync Across Multiple Platforms", "text": "I'm looking for some implementation ideas to be able to have offline apps sync data to a central server. The server will be Sql Server 2008. The clients will download data from the server when internet access is available and will need to allow the user to make changes offline and then sync the changes back to the server when it becomes available again. The clients will come in multiple flavors ranging from Windows to Android, so whatever I use needs to be easily translated into multiple OSes. I have been looking at using Microsoft's Odata (odata.org) on the server. It looks to have some pretty neat features and appears to even partially support what I want (by means of a concurrency token) -- though I'm not sure how the logic would revolve around the use of this token yet, that's what I hope to get from this. So - my question is this: Is there a 3rd party tool or app that I can use on multiple platforms which can handle offline & sync scenarios? If not, can anyone provide me with ideas on how to implement logic for syncing data back to a server and handle things like conflicts, etc.?"}
{"_id": "229091", "title": "Is there any use for a smart algorithm developer who will delegate the coding?", "text": "In my job as an algorithms developer, I am responsible not only for developing algorithms, but also for implementing them, all the way down to writing the code that goes into production. I've heard that there are companies where there is a separation between algorithms development and implementation. The algorithm people come up with the \"concept\", and don't write any code except for research purposes. Then there are programmers in charge of implementing the algorithms. At my company there are thoughts recently of hiring designated algorithm developers who will not write code, as described above. I am intuitively opposed to that idea, but I've never worked in such a place before, so I may be biased. Is this a viable model for software development?"}
{"_id": "229096", "title": "Is Lisp the first language to adopt structured programming?", "text": "I couldn't find any links or books claiming that Lisp is the first programming language to adopt structured programming (actually, most of them don't even mention Lisp at all), but if conditionals were invented by McCarthy and got into Algol later, is it fair to say that Lisp is the first?"}
{"_id": "196526", "title": "Was C designed to facilitate Object-Oriented programming?", "text": "I am trying to broaden my understanding of the history and development of object-oriented programming, and I am curious to find out **if C was designed to facilitate Object-Oriented programming?** (like **C++** and **Objective-C** definitely are) or if it was, on the contrary, simply just a clever exploitation of the language's constructs. I cannot seem to find any sources, including _K &R_, where the original authors comment on this approach. Recently I have been looking into OOP in ANSI-C, which is described in **Object-Oriented Programming With ANSI-C** by **Axel Schreiner**. For a freely available PDF version visit http://www.cs.rit.edu/~ats/books/ooc.pdf. A slightly different approach is used in the part of the Linux kernel dealing with file systems, visit http://lwn.net/Articles/444910/ for more info. The common idea is to put `function pointers` in a `struct` along with `fields` in order to 'emulate' a `class`' methods and `data members`. **Chronology** From Wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming#History > Objects as a formal concept in programming were introduced in the 1960s in > Simula 67 While Wikipedia.org/wiki/C_programming#K.26R_C states that > In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of > The C Programming Language. The chronology seem to suggests that K&R must have been well aware of OOP. So again: **Was C designed to facilitate Object-Oriented programming?**"}
{"_id": "149964", "title": "Effective way to gain practical knowledge", "text": "I am currently nearing the end of my first year of my CS degree and have been disappointed with the lack of coding I have been asked to do (one unit). I am basically looking for an effective way to gain practical knowledge but am unsure where to look for experience from a near **beginner's** perspective."}
{"_id": "159634", "title": "Should one generally develop a client library for REST services to help prevent API breakages?", "text": "We have a project where UI code will be developed by the same team but in a different language (Python/Django) from the services layer (REST/Java). The code for each layer exits in different code repositories and which _can_ follow different release cycles. I'm trying to come up with a process that will prevent/reduce breaking changes in the services layer from the perspective of the UI layer. I've thought to write integration tests at the UI layer level that we'll run whenever we build the UI or the services layer (we're using Jenkins as our CI tool to build the code which is in two Git repos) and if there are failures then something in the services layer broke and the commit is not accepted. Would it also be a good idea (is it a best practice?) to have the developer of the services layer create and maintain a client library for the REST service that exists in the UI layer that they will update whenever there is a breaking change in their Service API? Conceivably, we would then have the advantage of a statically-typed API that the UI code builds against. If the client library API changes, then the UI code won't compile (so we'll know sooner that there was a breaking change). I'd also still run the integration tests upon building the UI or services layer to further validate that the integration between UI and the service(s) still works."}
{"_id": "159633", "title": "User Configuration of a Shell Script. Best practices?", "text": "I am writing a shell script with a few variables that should be configured by the user. There will be an installer for downloading and configuring the script, possibly by asking a series of question. The script in question is aimed at other developers. This can be implemented in a number of ways:   1. **Use placeholders** in the script itself and use `sed` to replace them during installation (something like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/415677/how-to-replace-placeholders-in-a-text-file)     * Pros: All variable definitions are contained within the script. It's easy to download the script manually and configure the variables for users who prefer an editor over the installer.     * Cons: It's hard to reconfigure the variables through the installer once they are in place. Unless I create a more complex regexp which would be prone to errors.   2. **Use a config file** , basically another shell script with assignments, and use `source` to include it. (And probably place it in `~/.scriptname`? The main script is copied to `/usr/local/bin`)     * Pros: It's easy to reconfigure the script. Could even add a parameter for doing so from the main script (Would probably work in the first solution as well, but editing a script from itself doesn't sound like a very good idea)     * Cons: The script is now dependent on two files and the user is required to run the installer for the configuration file to be created. This can be solved by auto generating a config file if none exists. But locating an external configuration file will still be more cumbersome for users who just want to download the script, edit it, and be done with it. Also, a few options regarding how the configuration should be managed by the user after the installation:   1. **Git like**   $ myscript config server.host example.org $ myscript config server.proxypath /home/johndoe/proxy $ myscript config server.httppath /home/johndoe/web   2. **Interactive**   $ myscript config   Enter the server hostname: example.org   Enter the path to the proxy on the server: /home/johndoe/proxy   Enter the path to the http directory on the server: /home/johndoe/web   3. **getopts with long options**   $ myscript --host example.org --proxypath /home/johndoe/proxy --httppath /home/johndoe/web   4. **Simple**   $ myscript config example.org /home/johndoe/proxy /home/johndoe/web Are there any other ways of doing this that you would consider?   Any best practices, anything elegant?"}
{"_id": "202399", "title": "What specific features of NHibernate cause it to be recommended for legacy database systems?", "text": "So, I've been evaluating Entity Framework and NHibernate (I'm not looking for an EF vs. NH battle here, though!). One thing that I see come up very often is that NHibernate is recommended for \"legacy\"/brownfield database projects, and lighter-weight ORMs (Dapper, etc) are sometimes recommended for newer dbs. I will be applying my ORM to a brownfield database. What specific features of NHibernate make it so widely recommended for \"legacy\" dbs. (I have never heard anyone say \"here's _why_ NHibernate is better for legacy DB's -- I really want to know that, so that I can evaluate NHibernate appropriately) And by the way, what is the definition of legacy here? Do people mean   * \"databases that are not well normalized\"?   (or)   * \"databases that are being accessed through non-ORM means, such as SQL queries or stored procs? (or)   * not talking about the database at all, but referring to classic 2 tier systesms (or 2-tier web apps, where there is thick session state, and no application tier)?   (or)   * Any database that is isn't a noSQL database? If it's of any use the discussion. I will be using this ORM to build distributed, multi-tier software. So I think that a lot the stateful features in ORMs -- like change tracking, etc, will not matter to me very much."}
{"_id": "212043", "title": "Use ruby's array sort() method, or add items in correct place with a binary lookup?", "text": "If I am loading a whole load of items (un-ordered words from a file or something) would it be more efficient to load them all to a Ruby array, and then use the built in `sort!` method or to do a binary lookup for the place of each item in the list as I load it, and add it in that position. Basic code:               array = []     lines.each do |line|         array.push line     end     array.sort!      vs               array = []     lines.each do |line|         array.insert(find_index(line), line)     end      `find_index()` would lookup the correct index for the item in the array using a binary search."}
{"_id": "212042", "title": "Is there any way to limit the scope of a knockout.js application?", "text": "I have a legacy project which I have been approved to work in a `knockout.js` module. This is great, however the application is extremely complex and I need to use some of the pre-built form validation of our application. My form validators work fine until a dynamic template gets switched out. I can't for the life of me figure out the error. Nothing in the console and my vast debugging efforts have been fruitless. I'm thinking that my solution could be something along the lines of limiting the scope of the knockout application similar to how one can declare `ng-app` in `angular.js`. I can't find a working example of how to do this or any documentation relevant to `knockout.js`"}
{"_id": "226313", "title": "Why does Apple only allow for Static Frameworks on iOS?", "text": "Clearly Apple has the ability to create dynamically loaded libraries (known as frameworks) for iOS, as they ship several with XCode (such as UIKit). App developers only have the ability to create static libraries, or at best, trick Xcode into thinking it's loading a framework when it's actually loading a static library, this is known as creating a fake framework, some of the drag- and-drop convenience, but none of the dynamic loading benefits. What is Apple's reasoning for keeping dynamic frameworks from app developers? It seems like it would ease using external libraries considerably, since developers wouldn't have to rely on finicky linker flags or open-source library dependency chains. Edit: I see a common reason is security. Why then does Apple allow it on OSX and not iOS? Isn't security a requirement there as well?"}
{"_id": "219098", "title": "impact of product information leak due to matrix resource models for development projects", "text": "I read somewhere that Amazon has a dedicated team for each of its major products. This approach facilitates the growth of the domain knowledge for each product team and as a result of this retained knowledge, it allows Amazon to rapidly add new functionality to products. I have experience working with lots of companies where they follow more of a matrix based resource model. In this model, the company has a portfolio of products, but architects, developers and project managers are very frequently moved around from product to product. For example, if new functionality is to be added to a product, a completely new project team will be created for this. The project team is likely to have no previous exposure to the product. As a result of this matrix resourcing, the product technical architecture becomes weak (each architect will use a different approach/style), and adding new functionality takes much longer because of the domain knowledge that the new project team needs to acquire before starting the project. Information leak is sometimes used to describe the effects of lost knowledge such, which seems to be exacerbated by the matrix resourcing approach. **Questions** : Is there any research or documentation that supports my experience and identifies the impact (cost/time) of information lost due to matrix resource models? * * * EDIT: Also, most of the companies had a tendency to switch resources mid-project. This cost a lot of time lost due to:   * handovers required between old and new staff (if they even happened at all)   * new staff getting up-to-speed on the project   * low morale due to constant resource changes on projects Link describing Amazon's Philosophy: you build it; you own it. * * *"}
{"_id": "84464", "title": "Builds, continuous integration and deployment for python projects?", "text": "Could you please tell me which tools are used in python to build projects, as well as which continuous integration servers are used and how to deploy projects to the server? What I mean is web projects, but will still be happy to know more of this information not only around the web."}
{"_id": "132824", "title": "Is there somewhere I can post code used to hack my site?", "text": "I left a bit of a door open recently on my site. Someone tried to post PHP code to a CMS page editing module, but it wasn't executed. I have this code and was wondering if there is somewhere I should post this code for peoples interest etc. It's PHP code."}
{"_id": "37141", "title": "How to switch From Java to .Net?", "text": "Has anyone out there done this? Did you have to spend a few years learning .NET before you could get a job or were there employers just willing to throw you into the fire based on your Java experience? I'm wondering if it would be good for me to start learning .NET now in case a few years down the road I end up wanting to make the switch or maybe I don't need to worry."}
{"_id": "219095", "title": "When does one NOT need to use queues in an application?", "text": "I've been developing an application using the Laravel Framework & have been exposed to the idea of queues for the first time. There are a multitude of tutorials & articles about using queues & examples of what to use for, but I've never seen anyone writing about or highlighting when one does not need to actually use any. I've seen examples or even forum questions about using say beanstalked or iron.mq for offloading jobs that then take place in a managed manner, I understand the concept; but is there a need to make use of queues if say my application makes use of a mailing service like Postmark or Mandrill? Is there a benefit in that case? I mean I've tested both & obviously they both queue jobs on their service to allow their service to function; do I need a queue for email when I'm offloading the act of mailing to a service detached from my application. ( my application has not been released into the wild, I do not actually have benchmark type information at present ) How different is giving jobs to ironmq (which still calls an api and sends data) to making a call to say Mandrill by sending data? More to the point; does one need to have a queue like using iron.mq to send mail requests to mandrill which happens to queue stuff too?"}
{"_id": "219097", "title": "Basic OOP theory: misunderstanding surrounding database and user classes", "text": "New to OOP and trying to understand some basic fundamentals. Currently using PHP5 to build a basic web app. In using PHP's built in PDO as my database class and a separately created user class that handles, among other things, user log in and out, is it best to have the db class connect to the database in a log in situation, or does the user class need to directly connect to the db? If the latter, I think I'm likely misunderstanding how PDO would standalone. If the former, presumably some kind of 'helper class' needs to be created that would facilitate the db connection between PDO and my user class?"}
{"_id": "197214", "title": "How do I include the copyright/license for a library if I use on 1 function?", "text": "How do I include the copyright/license for a library if I use on 1 function? Say if I have a class that I have taking 1 function from another library:               class MyClass {         ...         public function someOtherLibrariesFunction() {}     }      And the at the top of the file I took the function from it says:               /*      * This file is part of the Other Library package.      *      * (c) James Smith <j.smith@gmail.com>      *      * For the full copyright and license information, please view the LICENSE      * file that was distributed with this source code.      */      And the LICENSE file:               Copyright (c) 2004-2013 James Smith          Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy     of this software and associated documentation files (the \"Software\"), to deal     in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights     to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell     copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished     to do so, subject to the following conditions:          The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all     copies or substantial portions of the Software.          ...standard as is warranty...      So my understanding is I would have to have a copy of the LICENSE file included with my code, and I would also somehow point out the exact function it it applies to?"}
{"_id": "83118", "title": "Interview question: Percentage of time spent coding", "text": "I've been asked to estimate the percentage of time I spend coding at my current position in a job interview (I said about 70%). This excludes time for things like documentation and meetings. What does this statistic tell an interviewer? I'm guessing that they are looking for a balance between coding too little (thus being out of practice) and coding too much (not seeing the bigger picture of product development). * * * EDIT: After reviewing your answers I'm even more curious what the actual reasoning behind this question was... I should have just asked the interviewer! Your answers are actually really funny in the context of this company."}
{"_id": "242884", "title": "REST Service and CQRS", "text": "I am struggling with architecture on a new project. I am using the following patterns/technology.   * CQRS - anything going in goes through a command   * REST - using WebAPI   * MVC - asp.net mvc   * Angular - building a spa   * nhibernate I belive this provides some great separation and should help keep a very complex domain from growing into a giant set of services that mix queries with other business logic.   * The REST services have become non restful. They are putting methods in rest that are \"SearchByDate\", \"SearchByItem\" etc.    * Service Methods that execute commands are called with a \"web\" model class, a new command is built in the service and executed, I feel like there is a lot of extra code.  I expected this to be much different but I wasn't around to keep things on track. Finally my questions are this... I would have liked to see `PUT Person (CreatePersonCommand)` but then I realized that isn't restful either is it? the put should be a person entity not a command. Can I make CQRS and REST service work together or am I going about this all wrong? How do I handle service methods that don't fit into a REST model. I am not performing CRUD on the object but rather executing some business logic. I.E. I don't want the UI to be responsible for how a shipment is \"unshipped\" I want the service layer to worry about that."}
{"_id": "178847", "title": "\"Mac\" vs \"OS X\" vs \"Mac OS X\"", "text": "I am writing server software that gives administrators options that apply only to Mac OS X clients. When naming those options, I need to decide how I am going to refer to such clients. I can see three choices:   * Mac OS X   * Mac   * OS X In context, I feel that \"Mac OS X\" might be a little clumsy: \"Default protocol for Mac OS X clients\"; \"Change Mac OS X protocol\". In discussing with my boss, he suggests \"OS X\", as that's the name for the OS itself, while I think that \"Mac\" is more recognizable. While \"OS X\" is technically correct and is what Apple recommends, I feel that it has a lot less name recognition than \"Mac\"; in particular, administrators who work in a Windows-only environment may not even recognize \"OS X\" and wonder what the options is about, while I think everyone knows what \"Mac\" refers to. In looking at what several popular pieces of software choose, I see that Microsoft has \"Office for Mac\". Adobe calls it \"Macintosh\" (which sounds very outdated, I believe that Apple stopped using that \"Macintosh\" years ago). Firefox uses \"Mac OS X\". Google has \"Google Software Downloads for Mac\". I don't see many popular pieces of software that refer to it solely as OS X; it seems that either \"Mac OS X\" or \"Mac\" is used most often. Apple does refer to it as OS X, but I think the fact that it's coming from Apple provides the disambiguation that you need, so it's not confusing coming from them, while it may be in another context. Is there any good solution for this? Should I just use the somewhat clumsy \"Mac OS X\" everywhere (or at least, the first time I refer to it in any given screen)? Obviously, my boss has final say, but I'd like to be able to provide a coherent argument."}
{"_id": "86197", "title": "Terminology For Web Development and General Programming/Software?", "text": "EDIT: I should clarify. THe particular terms I listed below I fully understand. I also understand w3schools doesn't have the greatest information. These are just examples. I don't expect everybody to understand what an example is, but I hope the majority do. Does anybody have any resources listing terms related to programming and web development, or care to pitch in? Things like: Runtime   Build time   Framework   Library   Normalize I'm primarily a PHP developer so anything about that. I really am looking for general terms and specific terms related to web development, PHP, SQL, CSS, HTML. Appreciate any input. Couple I found: http://www.w3schools.com/site/site_glossary.asp   http://docs.roxen.com/pike/7.0/tutorial/fundamentals/concepts.xml"}
{"_id": "219543", "title": "Should a class know about its subclasses?", "text": "Should a class know about its subclasses? Should a class do something that is specific for a given subclass for instance? My instincts tells me that is a bad design, it seems like an anti-pattern of some sort."}
{"_id": "14411", "title": "How would I unit test database logic?", "text": "I am still having a issue getting over a small issue when it comes to TDD. I need a method that will get a certain record set of filtered data from the data layer (linq2SQL). Please note that i am using the linq generated classes from that are generated from the DBML. Now the problem is that i want to write a test for this. do i: a) first insert the records in the test and then execute the method and test the results b) use data that might be in the database. Not to keen on this logic cause it could cause things to break. c) what ever you suggest?"}
{"_id": "230386", "title": "What is the difference between a Splay Tree and an Optimal Binary Search Tree?", "text": "Both these trees try to keep the most frequently accessed element at the top. Is there any difference between these two trees?"}
{"_id": "58145", "title": "How Scala Developers Are Being Interviewed", "text": "How are Scala programmers being interviewed? What are the aspects that the interviewer looks for when interviewing a Scala developer?"}
{"_id": "14206", "title": "How do I showcase my work experience in programming?", "text": "I'm a student of web development languages like PHP, Ruby, and Python. Currently I'm working on some school projects but I'm trying to work on some weekend projects which I can use to showcase for potential employers, what's the best way to set this up? Specifically, are there any tips you have for a new programmer because I don't want opinions on how this or that should or shouldn't be set up. If possible please give real examples. **Edit:** what about Git? Is this a good place to show my projects?"}
{"_id": "14419", "title": "How do you deal with e-mail overload?", "text": "Probably many of you receive hundreds/thousands of e-mail every week. This happens especially when you are part of wide distribution lists. How do you find the relevant ones? Do you use any _smart_ plugins (for Outlook)? Until now I tried:   1. Sorting them in folders but it failed because then I got into folder overload   2. Making rules. Fails especially when doing text matching because is not taking into account the context."}
{"_id": "76415", "title": "i want to make some programmer friends but dont know where to really look", "text": "I know this is one good place but what I'm really looking for is contacts, maybe seeing them online, have intelligent conversations etc. Where I live there isn't that many programmers around me because I'm self employed. I'm sure if I were to work in a company I would be surrounded by some. I don't know maybe sharing our screen names or facebooks or something."}
{"_id": "76414", "title": "Development setup in a company with external developers", "text": "EDIT: This is about where the users will have their files, and TEST their changes - a development server so they can edit, save and then refresh a page to see whats changed. I am currently looking over our systems we have in place, here we have 2 internal developers, and 2 designers. All 4 used the same server for development work with their own enviroments and databases and code all housed in an external SVN repo, this works pretty sweet however we are looking at opening up this server for external staff. We have 2 external designers who we'd like to be able to edit files/insert designs etc etc. One runs a mac, other windows - ideally we'd like to open up access to our development server but one of these users it outside the country so access would be slow for anything other than something which runs in terminal however they use graphical IDEs. Do anyone have any experience/how their companies handle doing this? Not really keen on FTP to upload, check, edit, upload, check etc"}
{"_id": "234895", "title": "Why separate unit tests into an assembly", "text": "I primarily develop in .Net, and have been playing around with F#. It's a nice concise language, but I'm just using it for throwaway code currently. I've taken to sitting my tests in the same file as the main code that I'm writing. I am under the unexamined opinion that this is done so that we don't have testing code floating around in production, and that we have separate dependencies for testing which we don't want to go to production. This has raised the question for me: why do we traditionally separate out test assemblies and not just use conditional compilation?"}
{"_id": "207611", "title": "How to implement interactive programs (like games/simulations) using logic programming?", "text": "I've heard that logic programming can serve as a general-purpose alternative to other programming paradigms such as OO or functional programming. (Since Prolog is Turing-complete, this must be so!) However, I'm having trouble seeing how one would implement an interactive program, like a simple, graphical console game in Prolog or a similar language. You have facts, rules which can derive more facts, and queries which retrieve facts. It's easy to see how you can use those basic elements to create something like a sudoku solver. But how about Pac-man, or more simply, Pong? **PLEASE NOTE:** I'm not looking for low-level details, but a conceptual overview. (For example: in high-level terms, how would you handle I/O? How would you store the game state? How would you implement something like a \"main loop\"? How would you measure and respond to the passing of time?)"}
{"_id": "207612", "title": "How to structure a modern web application", "text": "## Background I recently developed, for two different projects, two web applications. The two followed quite different approaches. The first one was a classic inventory application (lists of stuff to view, select, edit.. very CRUD) and was developed with Razor and ASP.NET MVC: controller accepting requests, getting a model through a Repository, building different Viewmodels out of it for view and editing, pass the Viewmodel to the view engine and render of the page. Very direct stuff (you can almost build such an application with wizards only using ASP.NET MVC), with very little Javascript \"magic\" (only the minimal offered out of the box by the MVC framework, mainly for validation). The second one was quite different: this application is basically a bunch of screens (views) through which the user can navigate back and forth, which appearance change as users input data in different places - it is basically a hub in which the user views and reviews information linked to his account(s). I built this second application as a REST service (built with ServiceStack, and therefore following the design patterns it enforces - like Data Transfer Object) and a SPA application implemented using AngularJS. The angular application uses its (excellent) http service to get the JSON objects from the rest service, and then populate its (client side) Viewmodel (the scope). Very neat and clean; it is easy to navigate back and forth the various account information (which is visualized in many different ways: lists, graphs, ...) It is maybe a little more difficult to code at times (authentication/authorization is a bit more difficult (you have to be careful to mimic control on client and server, for example). Now, I am starting a third project. It is something in between: it is still a CRUD application, but it needs to be very responsive. For example, in a page, we have a complex information to enter (combo of form and list); in the list the user need to select a item from another list, but if the item is not there we want to open the \"edit list items\" view, let him/her insert the item, and go back to the original page... all without refresh/pushback/... You got the idea. ## The question Which is the best way to accomplish this, to develop a modern, quick, responsive web application? I have seen too many different approaches:   * \"control based\" (jQuery) approach: build the page using your MVC framework (which will produce html, a table for example), use jQuery to \"enrich\" the html and make it ajax   * \"data based\" (Angular): build the page as an html page with data bindings, a JS application, and structure the server side as a REST service, that the JS app uses to get/post data   * the mix #1: part of the app is built using your MVC framework (which spits out html), part using a data-based framework (like angular). Angular scope/model is initialized using jQuery to extract the initial data out of the html DOM.   * the mix #2: part of the app is built using your MVC framework (which spits out html), part using a data-based framework (like angular). In addition to html, the server writes a \"script\", which is JSON data, and embeds it into the page. Angular then uses it as its model to render the data visualization (client side)   * the mix #3: same, but this time no embedded JSON: the server exposes a REST service that is used by Angular to retrieve the data it needs. It is essentially part generated on the server, part on the client through a secon call to get e JSON object   * (more...?) I personally find the mix #1 and #2 ugly, but I am too \"new\" to modern Javascript development to judge. Are they common? I see for example that one advantage of mix #1 is that you get the initial view immediately, you do not need to wait for JS to render it. And both mix #1 and #2 do only one call to the server. So, which one is the best practice? Or which one(s) should I really avoid? I (personally) am more comfortable with a mix of server-side generated pages and client-side JS; making a SPA completely using services was not that easy, more than one time I wished to have something generated using server-side logic, but I may be doing it wrong (that is why I am asking!)"}
{"_id": "207613", "title": "Encoding a bash script for use in Python", "text": "I am writing some code in Python which checks for the validity of a license key after polling a server. If it is valid then the Python program in turn runs some bash scripts. How to create a combined binary of the python script (to check the license) and the bash script (which performs the task)? Here are what I think could be the solutions but I am really not sure:   1. I use the encode function in python and encode the bash script file once and add combine that file and the license_checker.py file into a single binary. When the binary runs, the python code should decode the file into a temp file, run the script and delete the temp file.   2. Find a mechanism which wraps/embeds the bash code in the python script. I have heard of decorators but I haven't used them and do not know if they would serve the purpose."}
{"_id": "131841", "title": "How can I defend Ruby on Rails against customers' not technical opinion?", "text": "My customer, a translations business owner, just told me that he has been reading about Ruby on Rails and told me that \" _there are more PHP guys around there_ \" and \" _it seems the community prefers it_ \". What would you, as software engineer and freelancer, say to the customer to achieve these goals:   * Sell    * Make him see that the technology is my expert decision and Rails is as good or better than PHP (+ whatever framework) for this particular project. UPDATE: Thank you all for the suggestions! Tomorrow I've got another meeting with him, let's see how it goes, I will update again :) UPDATE 2: Finally I told him to read this thread and the result has been fantastic: He gave me the project and we are going to start right now. Thank you all for the help, you have free beer in my charge if we see someday :) BTW: I learned the lesson: be as transparent as possible, because if you believe in yourself and your work, there is no question compromising enough to beat you. regards"}
{"_id": "222814", "title": "Google App Engine overview", "text": "I have gone through many Google App Engine tutorials, and I became quite familiar with how to do basic stuff like implementing a `webapp2.RequestHandler`, and using `ndb.Models` to manage your data. Now, I kind of reached a wall with a few small concepts that were either missing from the resources I went over, or I simply missed them. So, here they are: ### What happens to class variables? As far as I understood, once I set my app to threadsafe, it can handle multiple requests concurrently, not to mention possibly on different machines. Does that mean I simply cannot use class variables (that can be changed at anytime)? ### How to model an application wide logic? It is very straight forward to write logic associated with requests. I don't have to worry about locking or any of that stuff, since a new RequestHandler is instantiated for each request. What about application-wide logic? Like, if I had a python module called \"Game\", and after importing it, I do somthing like: `Game.matchmaking_queue.append(player)` As far as I can tell, there is just one `Game` instance, and it has an instance variable accessed from within the `RequestHandler` logic. Will that be OK? Must I make the `matchmaking_queue` backed on memcache and/or datastore in order for **all** requests to see it? Do I have to do any thread-saftey magic on `Game`?"}
{"_id": "201619", "title": "Tests for emptiness vs tests for nothingness", "text": "Is there any consensus between languages how tests for emptiness are distinct from tests for noneness? In python the following expression is false: `{} is {}` However this expression evaluates to True `False is False` Why is the first expression not evaluated to True?"}
{"_id": "170334", "title": "How do you pronounce the '...' operator", "text": "Now, in c++ '...' became a first class operator. In speech, how do you pronounce it? So far I've heard:   * dot dot dot   * triple dot   * ellipsis related: Is it OK to replace ... with ellipsis in writing? e.g. \"The ellipsis operator expands the pack\" EDIT (clarification): We are all aware that '...' as a **punctuation** mark is indeed called ellipsis. But in the context of C++ we don't pronounce the names of the punctuation mark. For example, the '&' operator, depends on the context is pronounced as 'and', 'bitwise and', 'address of', 'logical and' (when && is used), or 'reference'. It is rarely pronounced as 'ampersand'. In speeches, I've a feeling that 'dot dot dot' is used more often. For example: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/GoingNative-2012/Variadic- Templates-are-Funadic (an excellent presentation about variadic templates). On the other hand, 'dot dot dot' is awkward hard to pronouce ('d' and 't' are both pronounce with the tongue). Can we pronounce it 'unpack'?"}
{"_id": "170335", "title": "How can I get rid of just the untracked files in git?", "text": "In Mercurial I can do this with the bundled Purge Extension and executing the following command:               hg purge      Also good to get rid of ignored files:               hg purge --all      I'm curious about the most practical/used equivalent solution in git. **Edit** : I want to just get rid of the untracked files, not reset everything (e.g. suppose I have a program generating cache files or generated code and I want to delete them with git's help)"}
{"_id": "230658", "title": "Build Once, Deploy to Multiple Enironments", "text": "I build one **MAIN** branch. This is our trunk and our only code base for the project. Once this is built, ideally it would continuously deploy to our Dev environment. Once the developers have confirmed operation in that Dev environment, I'd like to simply publish the binaries that were previously built, to the Test environment. Once QA has confirmed operation in the Test environment, I'd like to publish the same original binaries to the Stage environment, and then to the Production environment. I guess it's sort of like deploying old school where you just copy over the binaries onto the box you're doing the deployment to. Any strategies, tuturials, tips, links and third party software recommendations (preferably with link to tutorial) are appreciated. I'd like to keep everything within Visual Studio if possible."}
{"_id": "242882", "title": "Processing a list of atomic operations, allowing for interruptions", "text": "I'm looking for a design pattern that addresses the following situation:   1. There exists a list of tasks that must be processed.   2. Tasks may be added at any time.   3. Each task is wholly independent from all other tasks.   4. The order in which tasks are processed has no effect on the overall system or on the tasks themselves.   5. Every task must be processed once and only once.   6. The \"main\" process which launches the task processors may start and stop without warning. When stopped, the \"main\" process loses all in-memory data. Obviously this is going to involve some state, but are there any design patterns which discuss where and how to maintain that state? Are there any relevant anti-patterns? Named patterns are especially helpful so that we can discuss this topic with other organizations without having to describe the entire problem domain."}
{"_id": "234766", "title": "How much segregation is too much in this design?", "text": "We are working on ASP.NET webforms application developed using WCSF (MVP pattern). In the application, there is a search screen that allows the user to enter some fields and display the results. We have segregated the functionality into user controls and each user control has its own view and presenter.   1. Search -> It consists of search fields along with submit button. It contains validations inside the presenter. After the page is validated, it raises the custom event.   2. Search criteria -> Contains DataList control to display the readonly search criteria by subscribing to search event.   3. Search results -> Communicates with controller and binds the grid by subscribing to search event. It also contains sorting and all grid related events. Since each control has its own controls and behavior following SOLID principles, views and presenters are thin and testable. Also, it increased the productivity by facilitating developers to be able to work on tasks independently. But on the other end, we are thinking whether we over-engineered and increased the complexity by introducing the user controls, custom events, etc. for this simple functionality?"}
{"_id": "230650", "title": "RESTful API development : is it web developer's work or software developer's work?", "text": "First of all, I am sorry that the issue I'm going to say is not about a technical thing. I'm just confused. I am trying applying to several companies as a software engineer. The latest work that I developed is to develop RESTful APIs which is written in Python django. Here's the problem that I'm curious. can this work be classified as a software engineer's work? or is it just a web developer's work?"}
{"_id": "96205", "title": "Why shouldn't \"responsive\" web design be a consideration?", "text": "This might seem like more of a graphic design question than a programming question, but I think it has much more technical/programming merit than actual graphic design. The concept of \"responsive\" web design revolves around using media queries in CSS3 to detect the size of the viewing device and adjust the CSS rules accordingly - essentially, dynamic CSS. This fills the void on a lot of deployment cases - mobile, in particular. I think use of media queries is surfacing slowly (I've found that many people don't really know about it), but I'm wondering if there is a reason for slow adoption. Is it impractical for web applications? Is there something I'm missing that might be a fundamental pitfall?"}
{"_id": "230654", "title": "Is there a design pattern for updating lists?", "text": "I want to modify one list (actually info stored in a database). A person doesn't have access to update every part of the list, but can update and delete parts they do have access to and add whatever they want to the list. Here's my pseudocode:               ModifiedList      OriginalList     OriginalListWithUserRights          for each Thing in ModifiedList do       if Thing in OriginalList then         //Leave Along - nothing to change       else         OriginalList.add(Thing)          for each Thing in OriginalList do       if (Thing in ModifiedList) then         //LeaveAlone - nothing to change (same as above)       else          for each RightsThing in OriginalListWithUserRights do            if RightsThing not in OriginalList then              //Leave Alone - don't remove things you don't have rights to            else               OriginalList.Remove(RightsThing)          OriginalList.ReIndex() //because there will be some gaps      So, I guess this would work, but I think it's not right because it's just an obvious solution. I don't need to start with three lists as my inputs to this function. I could look up particular pieces of information while I'm iterating through my modified list. It just seems to structured and not object oriented enough for 2014. One problem I have is that I'm going to be adding everything to the end of the list, seems like I should be adding things relative to where they were in the passed in list, but in a way that doesn't mess up the order of things that are not in my OriginalListWithUserRights."}
{"_id": "245356", "title": "How to stop the WCF service (database queriying) running behind", "text": "I have a WCF service which will get an object with huge data from database in the form of collection. I have a UI which has get and cancel buttons . Get button : make service request and continue with data population with the returned data from service.I start it as below               Thread _workerThread = new Thread(DoExportTreeLoad);     _workerThread.Start();      Cancel : stops the above thread.It does as below               _workerThread.Abort()      My DoExportTreeLoad() has the synchronous service call which in turn hits database and gets data.               result = serivce.GetData(criteria);      Problem: When I cancel the operation after requesting the service, the DAL code is still running in the background (getting data from database) where it should not happen. As soon as i cancel the operation from UI ,the transaction (to get the data ) from database need to be aborted. It leads to big performance problem. Please help me with any way to end up the backend task when thread is cancelled. Thanks in advance."}
{"_id": "229327", "title": "Pythonic design for controlling multiple devices through an I2C bus", "text": "I'm writing a piece of software in python that will communicate with a bunch of devices via an I2C bus. Each of these devices are going to need some sort of a module or class to handle the communication and data conversion in some sensible way. The operations that each of the device modules perform are drastically different. My main concern is the I2C bus control. I fear that sharing the bus, by for example having each of the device modules instantiate a new I2C bus control object results in code that is hard to follow and I'm not sure how these objects would communicate if the there's an interrupt in the bus. However, not sharing it, I fear I'll end up with a _huge_ control class that is hard to maintain and extend. If I lean towards the control class, each of the device modules would hold a map of operations, like an `OrderedDict` or a list of tuples of functions with expected result values or ranges. The I2C control object could then iterate that dictionary, write and read the results from the bus and move to the next function if the result is in the expected range. This sounds like a state machine design, but I'm not sure if I can really generalize all operations enough. I suppose my question boils down to _does anyone have a good suggestion for a design pattern_?"}
{"_id": "245350", "title": "Split up large interfaces", "text": "I'm using a large interface with about 50 methods to access a database. The interface has been written by a colleague of mine. We discussed this: Me: 50 methods is too much. It's a code smell.   Colleague: What shall I do about it? You want the DB access - you have it.   Me: Yeah, but it's unclear and hardly maintainable in the future.   Colleague: OK, you are right, it's not nice. How should the interface look like then?   Me: How about 5 methods that return objects that have, like, 10 methods each? Mmmh, but wouldn't this be the same? Does this really lead to more clarity? Is it worth the effort? Every now and then I'm in a situation where I want an interface and the first thing that comes to mind is _one, big_ interface. Is there a general design pattern for this? * * * **Update** (responding to SJuan's comment): The \"kind of methods\": It's an interface for fetching data from a database. All methods have the form (pseudocode)               List<Typename> createTablenameList()      Methods and tables are not exactly in a 1-1-relation, the emphasis is more on the fact that you always get some kind of list that comes from a database."}
{"_id": "38341", "title": "Web Development Law/Ownership of Website", "text": "I'm a budding web developer, and I wondered if it was illegal to edit a website for a client to include a link that says 'encourage the owner of this site to pay their web developer' and follows up with a pre-made email encouraging the man to pay me. Here are the conditions:   * I've completed the work for the contract.   * I've asked to be paid, and tried to set up meetings with the owner.   * I've informed the owner of the site that my work will not continue unless I am paid.    * I should have been paid nearly a month ago (12/27) Any thoughts other than small claims? This is my first web-development job!"}
{"_id": "38340", "title": "Career Advice: Change from developer to tester", "text": "I have three years and nine months of java development experience specifically in finance domain and now I want to move into testing (functional). But I took a break from my job due to location change. Is it advisable and how should I do it?"}
{"_id": "229328", "title": "Should front-end integration tests make HTTP requests?", "text": "I am developing a single-page web application using AngularJS. Data for this application is consumed over a REST API which is well tested in its own right. The Angular application has a bunch of unit tests that test e.g. individual controllers and their methods. It also has a bunch of integration tests that currently verify that those controllers behave correctly when applied to a view. Both the unit and integration tests are currently sharing a set of stubbed JSON data that is returned when certain HTTP requests are about to be made (by way of the `$httpBackend` Angular service). No actual HTTP requests are sent to the API server during testing. **Is this a good approach for front-end integration testing?** The way I see it, the unit tests are testing small units of code (such as individual methods in controllers) and the integration tests are testing the way those units behave in the wider context of a view or template. The setup allows the front- end application to be tested completely independently. However, the developers of Protractor (the integration testing framework I'm using) have stated on numerous occasion that they believe integration tests should make HTTP requests to a real server (see this GitHub issue): > Protractor is intended for end to end tests, so the primary use case is when > you have an actual backend hooked up. Assuming the answer to the above question is \"yes\" (or \"maybe\"), should there be a third set of tests that do actually test the communication between front- end application and REST API?"}
{"_id": "213799", "title": "SQLite with two python processes accessing it: one reading, one writing", "text": "I'm developing a small system with two components: one polls data from an internet resource and translates it into sql data to persist it locally; the second one reads that sql data from the local instance and serves it via json and a restful api. I was originally planning to persist the data with postgresql, but because the application will have a very low-volume of data to store and traffic to serve, I thought that was overkill. Is SQLite up to the job? I love the idea of the small footprint and no need to maintain yet another sql server for this one task, but am concerned about concurrency. It seems that with write ahead logging enabled, concurrently reading and writing a SQLite database can happen without locking either process out of the database. Can a single SQLite instance sustain two concurrent processes accessing it, if only one reads and the other writes? I started writing the code but was wondering if this is a misapplication of SQLite."}